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‘I’m the new Oppenheimer!’: my soul-destroying day at Palantir’s first-ever AI warfare conference
2025-05-17, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2025-04-22 16:37:11
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/article/2024/may/17/ai-weapons-palanti...

The inaugural “AI Expo for National Competitiveness” [was] hosted by the Special Competitive Studies Project – better known as the “techno-economic” thinktank created by the former Google CEO and current billionaire Eric Schmidt. The conference’s lead sponsor was Palantir, a software company co-founded by Peter Thiel that’s best known for inspiring 2019 protests against its work with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) at the height of Trump’s family separation policy. Currently, Palantir is supplying some of its AI products to the Israel Defense Forces. I ... went to a panel in Palantir’s booth titled Civilian Harm Mitigation. It was led by two “privacy and civil liberties engineers” [who] described how Palantir’s Gaia map tool lets users “nominate targets of interest” for “the target nomination process”. It helps people choose which places get bombed. After [clicking] a few options on an interactive map, a targeted landmass lit up with bright blue blobs. These blobs ... were civilian areas like hospitals and schools. Gaia uses a large language model (something like ChatGPT) to sift through this information and simplify it. Essentially, people choosing bomb targets get a dumbed-down version of information about where children sleep and families get medical treatment. “Let’s say you’re operating in a place with a lot of civilian areas, like Gaza,” I asked the engineers afterward. “Does Palantir prevent you from ‘nominating a target’ in a civilian location?” Short answer, no.

Note: "Nominating a target" is military jargon that means identifying a person, place, or object to be attacked with bombs, drones, or other weapons. Palantir's Gaia map tool makes life-or-death decisions easier by turning human lives and civilian places into abstract data points on a screen. Read about Palantir's growing influence in law enforcement and the war machine. For more, watch our 9-min video on the militarization of Big Tech.


Move fast, kill things: the tech startups trying to reinvent defence with Silicon Valley values
2025-03-29, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2025-04-22 16:35:06
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/mar/29/move-fast-kill-things-the-tech-...

Skydio, with more than $740m in venture capital funding and a valuation of about $2.5bn, makes drones for the military along with civilian organisations such as police forces and utility companies. The company moved away from the consumer market in 2020 and is now the largest US drone maker. Military uses touted on its website include gaining situational awareness on the battlefield and autonomously patrolling bases. Skydio is one of a number of new military technology unicorns – venture capital-backed startups valued at more than $1bn – many led by young men aiming to transform the US and its allies’ military capabilities with advanced technology, be it straight-up software or software-imbued hardware. The rise of startups doing defence tech is a “big trend”, says Cynthia Cook, a defence expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington-based-thinktank. She likens it to a contagion – and the bug is going around. According to financial data company PitchBook, investors funnelled nearly $155bn globally into defence tech startups between 2021 and 2024, up from $58bn over the previous four years. The US has more than 1,000 venture capital-backed companies working on “smarter, faster and cheaper” defence, says Dale Swartz from consultancy McKinsey. The types of technologies the defence upstarts are working on are many and varied, though autonomy and AI feature heavily.

Note: For more, watch our 9-min video on the militarization of Big Tech.


Palantir’s ‘revolving door’ with government spurs huge growth
2025-02-07, Financial Times
Posted: 2025-04-22 16:32:59
https://www.ft.com/content/a65c93af-abf9-427c-a2ee-a9f5b3d518b9

Palantir is profiting from a “revolving door” of executives and officials passing between the $264bn data intelligence company and high level positions in Washington and Westminster, creating an influence network who have guided its extraordinary growth. The US group, whose billionaire chair Peter Thiel has been a key backer of Donald Trump, has enjoyed an astonishing stock price rally on the back of strong rise of sales from government contracts and deals with the world’s largest corporations. Palantir has hired extensively from government agencies critical to its sales. Palantir has won more than $2.7bn in US contracts since 2009, including over $1.3bn in Pentagon contracts, according to federal records. In the UK, Palantir has been awarded more than £376mn in contracts, according to Tussell, a data provider. Thiel threw a celebration party for Trump’s inauguration at his DC home last month, attended by Vance as well as Silicon Valley leaders like Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg and OpenAI’s Sam Altman. After the US election in November, Trump began tapping Palantir executives for key government roles. At least six individuals have moved between Palantir and the Pentagon’s Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office (CDAO), an office that oversees the defence department’s adoption of data, analytics and AI. Meanwhile, [Palantir co-founder] Joe Lonsdale ... has played a central role in setting up and staffing Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency.

Note: Read about Palantir's growing influence in law enforcement and the war machine. For more, read our concise summaries of news articles on corruption in the military and in the corporate world.


Tech firm Palantir spoke with MoJ about calculating prisoners’ ‘reoffending risks’
2024-11-16, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2025-04-22 16:31:11
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/nov/16/tech-firm-palantir-spoke-w...

The US spy tech company Palantir has been in talks with the Ministry of Justice about using its technology to calculate prisoners’ “reoffending risks”, it has emerged. The prisons minister, James Timpson, received a letter three weeks after the general election from a Palantir executive who said the firm was one of the world’s leading software companies, and was working at the forefront of artificial intelligence (AI). Palantir had been in talks with the MoJ and the Prison Service about how “secure information sharing and data analytics can alleviate prison challenges and enable a granular understanding of reoffending and associated risks”, the executive added. The discussions ... are understood to have included proposals by Palantir to analyse prison capacity, and to use data held by the state to understand trends relating to reoffending. This would be based on aggregating data to identify and act on trends, factoring in drivers such as income or addiction problems. However, Amnesty International UK’s business and human rights director, Peter Frankental, has expressed concern. “It’s deeply worrying that Palantir is trying to seduce the new government into a so-called brave new world where public services may be run by unaccountable bots at the expense of our rights,” he said. “Ministers need to push back against any use of artificial intelligence in the criminal justice, prison and welfare systems that could lead to people being discriminated against.”

Note: Read about Palantir's growing influence in law enforcement and the war machine. For more, read our concise summaries of news articles on corruption in the prison system and in the corporate world.


What happens if the robot army is defeated?
2025-03-10, Quincy Center for Responsible Statecraft
Posted: 2025-04-22 16:29:11
https://responsiblestatecraft.org/ai-weapons-from-washington/

The Pentagon’s technologists and the leaders of the tech industry envision a future of an AI-enabled military force wielding swarms of autonomous weapons on land, at sea, and in the skies. Assuming the military does one day build a force with an uncrewed front rank, what happens if the robot army is defeated? Will the nation’s leaders surrender at that point, or do they then send in the humans? It is difficult to imagine the services will maintain parallel fleets of digital and analog weapons. The humans on both sides of a conflict will seek every advantage possible. When a weapon system is connected to the network, the means to remotely defeat it is already built into the design. The humans on the other side would be foolish not to unleash their cyber warriors to find any way to penetrate the network to disrupt cyber-physical systems. The United States may find that the future military force may not even cross the line of departure because it has been remotely disabled in a digital Pearl Harbor-style attack. According to the Government Accountability Office, the Department of Defense reported 12,077 cyber-attacks between 2015 and 2021. The incidents included unauthorized access to information systems, denial of service, and the installation of malware. Pentagon officials created a vulnerability disclosure program in 2016 to engage so-called ethical hackers to test the department’s systems. On March 15, 2024, the program registered its 50,000th discovered vulnerability.

Note: For more, watch our 9-min video on the militarization of Big Tech.


Declassified Cold War-era CIA files detail Soviet clash with aliens who witnesses say turned soldiers to stone
2025-04-13, New York Post
Posted: 2025-04-22 16:24:21
https://nypost.com/2025/04/13/world-news/declassified-cold-war-era-cia-files-...

A declassified Cold War-era file from the CIA has gone viral over its coverage of a supposed clash between Soviet soldiers and a UFO. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the CIA acquired a 250-page KGB report recounting the events that transpired after a platoon fired at a flying saucer over Ukraine. The report included eyewitness accounts and pictures of the aftermath. The report claims Soviets conducting a training exercise in Ukraine spotted a “low-flying spaceship in the shape of a saucer” soaring above their heads. During the encounter, one of the Soviets fired a surface-to-air missile, which struck the UFO and sent it crashing to the ground. “It fell to Earth not far away, and five short humanoids with ‘large heads and large black eyes’ emerged from it,” the report claims. After escaping the debris of their ruined ship, the beings huddled together and “merged into a single object that acquired a spherical shape,” the surviving soldiers recalled. “In a few seconds, the spheres grew much bigger and exploded by flaring up with an extremely bright light. At that very instant, 23 soldiers who had watched the phenomenon turned into ... stone poles,” the report states. “Only two soldiers who stood in the shade and were less exposed to the luminous explosion survived,” it added. The KGB allegedly took custody of the “petrified soldiers” and the ruined spacecraft, which were transported to a secret base near Moscow.

Note: Explore our YouTube playlist of original UFO/UAP videos. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on UFOs. Then explore the comprehensive resources provided in our UFO Information Center.


As more countries enter space, the boundary between civilian and military enterprise is blurring.
2025-04-09, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
Posted: 2025-04-22 16:22:22
https://thebulletin.org/2025/04/as-more-countries-enter-space-the-boundary-be...

Outer space is no longer just for global superpowers and large multinational corporations. Developing countries, start-ups, universities, and even high schools can now gain access to space. In 2024, a record 2,849 objects were launched into space. The commercial satellite industry saw global revenue rise to $285 billion in 2023, driven largely by the growth of SpaceX’s Starlink constellation. While the democratization of space is a positive development, it has introduced ... an ethical quandary that I call the “double dual-use dilemma.” The double dual-use dilemma refers to how private space companies themselves—not just their technologies—can become militarized and integrated into national security while operating commercially. Space companies fluidly shift between civilian and military roles. Their expertise in launch systems, satellites, and surveillance infrastructure allows them to serve both markets, often without clear regulatory oversight. Companies like Walchandnagar Industries in India, SpaceX in the United States, and the private Chinese firms that operate under a national strategy of the Chinese Communist Party called Military-Civil Fusion exemplify this trend, maintaining commercial identities while actively supporting defense programs. This blurring of roles, including the possibility that private space companies may develop their own weapons, raises concerns over unchecked militarization and calls for stronger oversight.

Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on corruption in the military and in the corporate world.


Trump team opts to keep US shell companies in the shadows
2025-04-14, Quincy Center for Responsible Statecraft
Posted: 2025-04-22 16:19:51
https://responsiblestatecraft.org/arms-trade-2671753399/

On March 21, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced that U.S. shell companies and their owners can once again conceal their identities — a move critics warn could weaken national security and spur illicit financial activity that puts the American public at risk. Treasury’s initial beneficial ownership information (BOI) disclosure requirement for all companies with less than 20 employees garnered bipartisan support and Trump’s approval during his first administration, but it was short-lived. Officially brought into force last January 2024, and then stymied by lawsuits, the requirement passed its final legal roadblock in February 2025 — only to be shelved a month later by the administration. Now, when a U.S. citizen sets up a shell company in the U.S., they do not have to disclose their identity or the identities of the company's “beneficial owners,” or the individuals who profit from the company or control its activities. American beneficial owners of foreign shell companies that register in the U.S. have been granted the same anonymity. Under the latest limited regulation, only non-American owners will be required to register with the U.S. government. U.S. shell companies have been successfully used as cover for illegal arms sales for decades. Hints of a business's true breadth and depth only emerge when a trafficker is apprehended, such as the case of Pierre Falcone who used secret accounts in Arizona to hide his proceeds from arms trafficking to Angola.

Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on corruption in government and in the corporate world.


Is it safe? Is it spying? Disquiet over NHS ‘magic eye’ surveillance camera in mental health units
2025-03-30, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2025-04-22 16:18:17
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2025/mar/30/mental-health-surveillance-ca...

On July 2022, Morgan-Rose Hart, an aspiring vet with a passion for wildlife, died after she was found unresponsive at a mental health unit in Essex. Her death was one of four involving a hi-tech patient monitoring system called Oxevision which has been rolled out in nearly half of mental health trusts across England. Oxevision’s system can measure a patient’s pulse rate and breathing without the need for a person to enter the room, or disturb a patient at night, as well as momentarily relaying CCTV footage when required. Oxehealth, the company behind Oxevision, has agreements with 25 NHS mental health trusts, according to its latest accounts, which reported revenues of about £4.7m in ... 2023. But it is claimed in some cases staff rely too heavily on the infra-red camera system to monitor vulnerable patients, instead of making physical checks. There are also concerns that the system – which can glow red from the corner of the room – may worsen the distress of patients in a mental health crisis who may have heightened sensitivity to surveillance or control. Sophina, who has experience of being monitored by Oxevision while a patient ... said: “I think it was something about the camera and it always being on, and it’s right above your bed. “It’s the first thing you see when you open your eyes, the last thing when you go to sleep. I was just in a constant state of hypervigilance. I was completely traumatised. I still felt too scared to sleep properly.”

Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on Big Tech and mental health.


After Gaza protests, more colleges try out an old-fashioned ideal: Civility
2025-04-10, Christian Science Monitor
Posted: 2025-04-22 16:16:03
https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Education/2025/0410/gaza-protests-civility-ston...

Since the Israel-Hamas war, relationships between some students have been nowhere near brotherly, let alone collegial. Some students just aren’t accustomed to contrary or controversial ideas and believe that even hearing them is harmful. What hasn’t made headline news is the spike in civil discourse initiatives at campuses. Here’s one gauge. At the Institute for Citizens & Scholars, a coalition of College Presidents for Civic Preparedness went from a handful of participants prior to Oct. 7, 2023, to well over 100 afterward. The likes of Harvard, Yale, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor have launched civil discourse initiatives since the deadly Hamas attack that sparked the Israeli invasion of Gaza. One success story is the Dialogue, Inclusion, and Democracy (DID) Lab at Providence College in Rhode Island, run by Dr. Bevely and Professor Nick Longo. “With Mutual Respect” events feature two people on opposing sides of an issue. Panelists don’t so much debate as endeavor to foster mutual understanding. In December 2020, Vanderbilt [University's] women’s basketball team elected to protest for racial justice by staying inside the locker room during the national anthem. Vanderbilt ... facilitated structured dialogue between the basketball players and military veterans on the Nashville, Tennessee, campus. Some athletes shared experiences of racism and discrimination. Young men and women, some of whom had combat experience, explained why they felt so strongly about serving their country. The culture of civil discourse needs to be rooted in a relationship of trust. “If as a student, I’m challenging something, or I say something controversial, I’m going to have to trust you that you’re not excluding me,” says [Chancellor] Dr. Diermeier.

Note: Explore more positive stories like this on healing social division and reimagining education.


How social trust propels Ivory Coast
2025-04-15, Christian Science Monitor
Posted: 2025-04-22 16:14:30
https://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/the-monitors-view/2025/0415/How-social-t...

The West African nation of Ivory Coast ... has navigated through two civil wars so far in this century. And it struggles with widespread poverty. Despite all that, it stands out in Africa for its economic progress. Growth in its gross domestic product has lately been 6% to 7% a year. Inflation is low at about 4%. Most of all, it has seen a one-third decline in the percentage of Ivorians living below the poverty line. An underlying cause is an effort by religious and political leaders to build social trust. Interfaith initiatives are frequent. Organizations quickly address misinformation or grievances at the community level to avert wider conflagration. A Christian-Muslim dialogue in January called on “all citizens to promote messages of peace, fraternity, and unity.” President Alassane Ouattara himself seems inclined toward pragmatic peacemaking. He took office amid violence that erupted after former President Laurent Gbagbo vehemently contested Mr. Ouattara’s 2010 electoral victory. More than 3,000 people died in that civil war, fueled by politicization over a concept of nationality that excludes a large portion of the population. Mr. Ouattara’s programs on infrastructure, jobs, and land tenure have targeted previously ignored northern regions susceptible to extremism. But now they’re expanding. Other projects aim to serve and “reintegrate” youth. The nation’s ranking in a global corruption index continues to improve. Regional and local elections have become more credible.

Note: Explore more positive stories like this on healing social division.


How child soldiers heal after the trauma of war
2025-01-10, ScienceNews
Posted: 2025-04-22 16:12:50
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/shadows-into-light-book-review-child

For more than two decades, Theresa S. Betancourt has followed the lives of children (now adults) who returned home after being forced to fight in the civil war that ravaged Sierra Leone from 1991 to 2002. Thousands of children unwillingly participated in the violent conflict as soldiers, spies and laborers. Many took part in attacks on their own neighbors and relatives, many faced sexual violence, many witnessed unspeakable atrocities. Sahr ... was kidnapped as a toddler and spent four years with rebel fighters, returned to rejection and isolation. Then there is Isatu, age 12 when rebels attacked her village, capturing her and her sister. Isatu’s experience upon her return was much different. Initial support from her family and community, combined with her own motivation, led to more help from an extended network. “Isatu’s perseverance generated additional ripples of support, soon to become a self-fulfilling virtuous cycle,” Betancourt writes. Isatu is now a doctor. In her new book, Betancourt ... shares what she has learned about the factors that have helped some of these people recover and even thrive. Shadows into Light is both heart-wrenching and heartening. It tells the stories of the trauma these children faced, their reunion with family, their reintegration into their communities, and their ongoing struggles and healing. One research finding is the importance of family, community, and societal and cultural influences on a person’s trajectory - what psychologist Urie Bronfenbrenner described as “social ecology.”

Note: About 160,000 former child soldiers and their families have been “reintegrated” into Nigerian society, according to estimates by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. Explore more positive stories like this on healing the war machine.


Jay Bhattacharya: ‘Fauci’s Pardon Is a Good Thing’
2025-04-01, Free Press
Posted: 2025-04-17 18:26:25
https://www.thefp.com/p/jay-bhattacharya-fauci-pardon

In 2020, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya was condemned as a quack and considered a pariah by the medical field for co-authoring a public declaration questioning the efficacy of Covid lockdowns. In an October 2020 email to Dr. Anthony Fauci that was later leaked online, [former director of the National Institutes of Health Francis] Collins called Bhattacharya a “fringe epidemiologist,” and urged a “quick and devastating published takedown” of his declaration. Bhattacharya is now the new director of the NIH. He [said] Collins has since apologized for his comments—but only in private. Bhattacharya said of Collins: “I’ve been praying for him ever since I found out that he’d written that email. Reconciliation is really possible. Even if people disagree with each other fundamentally, even hate each other—and I’d never hated him and never will.” Bhattacharya “wants to extend [Fauci] the same grace that I want to extend to everybody. I think he was deeply wrong in his scientific ideas in 2020, but I believe ... he was trying to do what he viewed as the best for the American people.” President Biden preemptively pardoned Fauci for his extreme Covid response measures. The first step to rebuilding trust, Bhattacharya argues, is transparency. A database on doctors’ relationships with Big Pharma already exists, thanks to the 2010 Physician Payments Sunshine Act, which allows anyone to search for and view all pharmaceutical money doctors have received since 2013. Producing a similar website that shows where scientists get their research funding, and the results of their research, “would be a really productive way to reestablish trust ... “The work of the NIH in particular affects basically every single aspect of biomedical research. And of course, there are pecuniary interests involved. People make money off of the results of the research.”

Note: Bhattacharya's tone of reconciliation after being smeared in the media sets a powerful example. He recently received the top intellectual freedom award from the prestigious American Academy of Sciences and Letters. Top leaders in the field of medicine and science have spoken out about the rampant corruption and conflicts of interest in those industries. For more, read our concise summaries of news articles on science corruption.


‘A case study in groupthink’: were liberals wrong about the pandemic?
2025-04-05, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2025-04-17 18:23:36
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/apr/05/covid-policies-lockdown-masks...

In their peer-reviewed book, In Covid’s Wake: How Our Politics Failed Us, [left-leaning political scientists] Stephen Macedo and Frances Lee argue that public health authorities, the mainstream media, and progressive elites often pushed pandemic measures without weighing their costs and benefits, and ostracized people who expressed good-faith disagreement. The book grew out of research Macedo was doing on the ways progressive discourse gets handicapped by a refusal to engage with conservative or outside arguments. “Covid is an amazing case study in groupthink and the effects of partisan bias,” he said. At times, scientific and health authorities acted less like neutral experts and more like self-interested actors, engaging in PR efforts to downplay uncertainty, missteps or conflicts of interest. Reports by Johns Hopkins (2019), the World Health Organization (2019), the state of Illinois (2014) and the British government (2011) had all expressed ambivalence or caution about the kind of quarantine measures that were soon taken. The Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security hosted a wargaming exercise in October 2019, shortly before the pandemic began, to simulate a deadly coronavirus pandemic; the findings explicitly urged that “[t]ravel and trade … be maintained even in the face of a pandemic.” A WHO paper in 2019 said that some measures – such as border closures and contact tracing – were “not recommended in any circumstances”. “In inflation-adjusted terms,” Macedo and Lee write, “the United States spent more on pandemic aid in 2020 than it spent on the 2009 stimulus package and the New Deal combined." The economic strain on poor and minority Americans was particularly severe. Teachers’ unions ... painted school re-openings as “rooted in sexism, racism, and misogyny” ... despite the fact that minority and poor students were most disadvantaged by remote learning.

Note: Pandemic policies led to one of the greatest wealth transfers in history. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on COVID corruption and media manipulation.


US FDA announces online database to track food contaminants
2025-03-20, Yahoo News
Posted: 2025-04-17 18:20:10
https://www.yahoo.com/news/us-fda-announces-online-database-195201543.html

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Thursday launched an online searchable database listing contaminant levels in human foods, reflecting Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s ongoing efforts to reduce chemicals in food since taking office. The FDA said if a food product has contaminants exceeding established levels, the agency may find the food to be unsafe. However, it added these levels do not represent "permissible levels of contamination". The Health Secretary has often stressed reducing chemicals in food and, in the previous week, directed the FDA to revise safety rules to help eliminate a provision allowing companies to self-affirm food ingredient safety. RFK Jr. also told food companies ... that the Trump administration wanted artificial dyes out of the food supply. The FDA said it is establishing an online database called "Chemical Contaminants Transparency Tool" to provide a list of contaminant levels called "tolerances, action levels and guidance levels" to evaluate the potential health risks of these contaminants in human foods. "Ideally there would be no contaminants in our food supply, but chemical contaminants may occur in food when they are present in the growing, storage or processing environments," said Acting FDA Commissioner Sara Brenner. The online database also provides information such as the contaminant name, commodity and contaminant level type.

Note: Read more about the growing list of toxic chemicals banned in other countries but not the US. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on food system corruption and toxic chemicals.


Covid vaccine damage consultants paid more than victims
2025-03-16, The Telegraph (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2025-04-17 18:18:12
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/03/16/covid-vaccine-damage-consultants-...

Consultants assessing Covid vaccine damage claims on behalf of the NHS have been paid millions more than the victims, it has emerged. Freedom of Information requests made by The Telegraph show that US-based Crawford and Company has carried out nearly 13,000 medical assessments, but dismissed more than 98 per cent of cases. Just 203 claimants have been notified they are entitled to a one-off payment of £120,000 through the Vaccine Damage Payment Scheme (VDPS) amounting to £24,360,000. Yet Crawford and Company has received £27,264,896 for its services. Prof Richard Goldberg, chairman in law at Durham University, with a special interest in vaccine liability and compensation, said: “The idea that this would be farmed out to a private company to make a determination is very odd. It’s taxpayers money and money is tight at the moment. “The lack of transparency is not helpful and there is a terrible sense of secrecy about all of this. One gets the sense that their main objective is for these cases not to succeed. “There are no stats available so we don’t know the details about how these claims are being decided or whether previous judgments are being taken into account.” The Hart (Health Advisory and Recovery Team) group, which was set up by medical professionals and scientists during the pandemic, has warned that Crawford and Company has a “troubling reputation with numerous reports of mismanagement and claims denials across various sectors”.

Note: COVID vaccine manufacturers have total immunity from liability if people die or become injured as a result of the vaccine. Our Substack dives into the complex world of COVID vaccines with nuance and balanced investigation. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on COVID vaccine problems.


The trouble with 'donating our dopamine' to our phones, not our friends
2025-01-29, NPR
Posted: 2025-04-17 18:16:26
https://www.npr.org/2025/01/29/nx-s1-5276197/loneliness-isolation-derek-thomp...

In his most recent article for The Atlantic, [Journalist Derek] Thompson writes that the trend toward isolation has been driven by technology. Televisions ... "privatized our leisure" by keeping us indoors. More recently, Thompson says, smartphones came along, to further silo us. In 2023, Surgeon General Vivek H. Murthy issued a report about America's "epidemic of loneliness and isolation." We pull out our phones and we're on TikTok or Instagram, or we're on Twitter. And while externally it looks like nothing is happening internally, the dopamine is flowing and we are just thinking, my God, we're feeling outrage, we're feeling excitement, we're feeling humor, we're feeling all sorts of things. We put our phone away and our dopamine levels fall and we feel kind of exhausted by that, which was supposed to be our leisure time. We are donating our dopamine to our phones rather than reserving our dopamine for our friends. I think that we are socially isolating ourselves from our neighbors, especially when our neighbors disagree with us. We're not used to talking to people outside of our family that we disagree with. Donald Trump has now won more than 200 million votes in the last three elections. If you don't understand a movement that has received 200 million votes in the last nine years, perhaps it's you who've made yourself a stranger in your own land, by not talking to one of the tens of millions of profound Donald Trump supporters who live in America and more to the point, within your neighborhood, to understand where their values come from. You don't have to agree with their politics. But getting along with and understanding people with whom we disagree is what a strong village is all about.

Note: Our latest Substack dives into the loneliness crisis exacerbated by the digital world and polarizing media narratives, along with inspiring solutions and remedies that remind us of what's possible. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on Big Tech and mental health.


The Big Business of Bad Prison Food
2025-03-08, The Marshall Project
Posted: 2025-04-17 18:14:27
https://www.themarshallproject.org/2025/03/08/food-business-michigan-prison-m...

Feeding incarcerated people has become big business. The food behemoth Aramark (which also services colleges, hospitals, and sports stadiums), as well as smaller corporations like Summit Correctional Services and Trinity Services Group, have inked contracts in the last decade worth hundreds of millions of dollars in prisons and jails across the country. The industry was worth almost $3.2 billion in 2022. Cell phone images smuggled out of jails and prisons across the country reveal food that hardly looks edible, let alone nutritious. At a jail in Cleveland, staff warned administrators in 2023 that the meals served by Trinity were so disgusting, that they put staff in danger. A 2020 study by the criminal justice reform advocacy group Impact Justice found that 94% of incarcerated people surveyed said they did not receive enough food to feel full. More than 60% said they rarely or never had access to fresh vegetables. Meager portions have left desperate people eating toothpaste and toilet paper. Most states spend less than $3 per person per day on prison food — and some as little as $1.02. The Food and Drug Administration’s “thrifty plan” estimates that feeding an adult man “a nutritious, practical, cost-effective diet” costs about $10 per day. The major private food providers also have a stake in the booming prison commissary business, where incarcerated people can buy staples like ramen, tuna and coffee. Poor food served in the chow hall drives hungry prisoners to the commissary.

Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on corruption in prisons and in the food system.


At My Texas Prison, Solitary Confinement All But Guarantees Sexual Exploitation by Guards
2025-03-10, The Marshall Project
Posted: 2025-04-17 18:12:36
https://www.themarshallproject.org/2025/03/10/solitary-confinement-guards-sex...

Of the 17 years that I’ve been incarcerated for killing an abusive boyfriend, I spent eight — from 2016 to last May — in what the state calls “restrictive housing,” but I call “solitary confinement” or “the hole.” In women’s prisons, sexual intrusion, harassment, coercion and violence are daily realities. And in solitary confinement, this conduct is so routine that many women — particularly the younger ones — don’t even think of it as abuse. They believe it’s simply an inevitable part of their incarceration. In 2023, the Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TCDJ) reported over 700 allegations of staff-on-prisoner sexual abuse and harassment to the PREA Ombudsman, an independent office that tallies up and investigates complaints. Almost 90 of those cases involved sexual harassment, nearly 150 were categorized as voyeurism, and a little more than 500 were classified as sexual abuse. Of the 505 abuse claims, only 20% met the prison system’s onerous criteria for sexual assault or “improper sexual activity with a person in custody.” On the outside, fewer than half of sexual violence cases are reported to police. Given the power dynamics of prison, underreporting is likely more severe here. Guards use a variety of methods to retaliate against women who complain about their abuse. They can write bogus disciplinary infractions that can lead to ... a longer sentence. Officers can also turn off the electricity and running water in women’s cells and refuse to serve them meals.

Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on prison system corruption and sexual abuse scandals.


What Happened When America Emptied Its Youth Prisons
2025-01-28, New York Times
Posted: 2025-04-17 18:09:50
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/28/magazine/juvenile-prison-crime-rates.html

Between 2000 and 2020, the number of young people incarcerated in the United States declined by an astonishing 77 percent. The number of young people behind bars increased steadily in the 1970s and 1980s and then rose more sharply in the 1990s. In the last two years for which we have data, 2021 and 2022, the number of incarcerated juveniles rose 10 percent. But even factoring in that increase, the country locked up 75 percent fewer juveniles in 2022 than it did in 2000. With fewer juveniles behind bars, many states have shuttered youth facilities. Today America has 58 percent fewer of them than it did in 2000. Beginning in 2008, New York State closed 26 juvenile jails; over the next 12 years, juvenile crime in the state declined 86 percent. [Susan Burke, director of Utah’s juvenile justice system from 2011 to 2018] sees it similarly: “When judges worried that crime would go up if we closed the assessment centers, I could show them data that it was already dropping. Then I could go back and show them data a year later that it was still declining. At that point, what could they say?” Exposé after exposé piled up to prove to the public what many insiders already knew: The biggest recidivists in the system were the institutions. In early 2004, a series of expert reports documented rampant violence and cruelty. Custom-built individual cages where youth deemed violent received their school lessons. Video footage from a facility in Stockton showed counselors kneeling on the backs and necks of prisoners, beating and kicking the motionless young people. Six months later, The San Jose Mercury News published a multipart exposé revealing that youth were regularly tear-gassed, pepper-sprayed and forced into solitary confinement.

Note: Read the research that proves juvenile incarceration does not reduce criminal behavior. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on prison system corruption and inspiring stories on repairing our criminal justice system.


Don’t mess with Mexico’s maíz: Constitutional amendment to ban GMO corn seeds
2025-03-13, Los Angeles Times
Posted: 2025-04-17 18:07:32
https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2025-03-13/mexico-bans-planting-of...

There’s a popular saying in Mexico. Without corn, there is no country. This week, Mexico’s leaders voted to enshrine that concept in the Constitution, declaring native corn “an element of national identity” and banning the planting of genetically modified seeds. The measure, which aims to protect Mexico’s thousands of varieties of heirloom corn from engineered versions sold by American companies, has become a nationalist rallying cry. “Corn is Mexico,” President Claudia Sheinbaum said recently, describing the reform as a way to secure Mexico’s sovereignty. “We have to protect it for biodiversity but also culturally, because corn is what intrinsically links us to our origins, to the resistance of Indigenous peoples.” The amendment to the Constitution comes after the defeat in December of a related effort that sought to phase out all imports of genetically modified corn. Then-President Andrés Manuel López Obrador issued a presidential decree in 2023 banning the use of genetically engineered corn in dough and tortillas and for animal feed and industrial use, but a trade dispute panel ruled that it violated the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement. Mexico agreed to abide by the panel’s ruling, and this week’s action targets seeds, not all products. “There’s a disturbing level of contamination of native maize with genetically modified traits,” said Timothy Wise, a researcher at the Global Development and Environment Institute at Tufts University.

Note: GMO corn from the US threatens the biological integrity of Mexico's traditional corn varieties. Chemical manufacturer Monsanto worked with US officials to pressure Mexico into abandoning a plan to ban glyphosate. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on GMOs and food system corruption.


‘The real thing almost didn’t turn me on enough’: how is online porn shaping the sex lives of young men?
2024-01-27, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2025-04-17 18:05:19
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2024/jan/28/australia-e-safety-commission...

Tom was in the fourth grade when he first googled “sex” on his family computer. It took him to one of the big free porn sites. According to a study released by Australia’s eSafety Commissioner in September, Tom’s experience is similar to many young people: 36% of male respondents were first exposed to porn before hitting their teens, while 13 was the average age for all young people surveyed. Only 22%, however, admitted to intentionally seeking it out, with more accidentally stumbling upon X-rated material via social media or pop-ups on other parts of the internet. When Tom started having sex years later, he found it difficult to connect to his real-life partner. “Functionally, I almost couldn’t have sex with her. Like the real thing almost didn’t turn me on enough – the stimulation just wasn’t quite right. Even now if I go through a phase of watching porn, closing my eyes during sex is much worse. I sort of need that visual stimulation.” When Dr Samuel Shpall, a University of Sydney senior lecturer, teaches his course, Philosophy of Sex, he isn’t surprised to hear young men like Tom critique their own experience of porn. “The internet has completely changed not only the nature and accessibility of pornography, but also the nature and accessibility of ideas about pornography,” he says. “It’s not your desire moving your body, it’s what you’ve seen men do, and added to your sexual toolkit,” [Tom] says. “But it takes you further away from yourself in those sexual moments.”

Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on health and Big Tech.


What is the meaning of life? 15 possible answers – from a palliative care doctor, a Holocaust survivor, a jail inmate and more
2025-03-22, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2025-04-17 18:03:25
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2025/mar/22/what-is-the-meaning-of-life-15-...

In September 2015, I was unemployed, heartbroken and living alone in my dead grandad’s caravan, wondering what the meaning of life was. I discovered an intriguing project carried out by the philosopher Will Durant during the 1930s. Durant had written to Ivy League presidents, Nobel prize winners, psychologists, novelists, professors, poets, scientists, artists and athletes to ask for their take on the meaning of life. I decided that I should recreate Durant’s experiment and seek my own answers. "I agree with the scholar of mythology Joseph Campbell, that it makes more sense to say that what we’re seeking isn’t a meaning for life, so much as the experience of feeling fully alive," [replied journalist Oliver Burkeman]. "There are experiences that I know, in my bones, are "why I’m here" – unhurried time with my son, or deep conversations with my wife, hikes in the North York Moors, writing and communicating with people who’ve found liberation in something I have written. I would struggle, though, if I were to try to argue that any of these will "mean something" in some kind of timeless way. What’s changed for me is that I no longer feel these experiences need this particular kind of justification. I want to show up fully, or as fully as possible, for my time on Earth. That’s all – but, then again, I think that is everything. And so I try, on a daily basis, to navigate more and more by that feeling of aliveness – rather than by the feeling of wanting to be in control of things, which is alluring, but deadening in the end."

Note: Read the full article at the link above to explore the beautiful range of diverse responses about what gives people meaning in life. Explore more positive human interest stories.


When her son was murdered, she wanted revenge. It didn’t go as planned
2025-02-22, CNN News
Posted: 2025-04-17 18:01:32
https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2025/02/us/tina-crawford-son-murder-delaware-...

Tina imagined the sound of Ira’s key in the door, and then she realized she would never hear that sound again. It had all been stolen from her. Someone would have to pay the price. “Whoever killed my son,” she said, “they were gonna get it.” In the days after Ira’s death, there were other things besides retribution to keep Tina busy. Tina had wondered for a while about $50 that disappeared from her bank account. Then a woman approached Tina at a vigil for Ira and told her a story. Her boyfriend had been beating her, and Ira found out, and he gave her $50 for a bus ticket so she could get out of town. Turned out he had his own little ministry. And Tina continued that ministry: listening to Ira’s friends, having them over for lunch or dinner, occasionally giving someone a place to crash. She thought less and less about revenge. That December, a grand jury indicted two men for the murder of Ira Hopkins. On October 27, 2017, following guilty pleas, [Jy’Aire Smith-Pennick] appeared in court for his sentencing. Almost seven years passed from Jy’Aire’s sentencing until the day Tina saw him in person again. “I’m in prison for participating in a murder,” he would later say. “And the mother of this man is here, present, on behalf of me, watching me receive my degree.” When Jy’Aire gets out, he plans to study sociology at the University of Pennsylvania. He and Tina will work together on the IRA Foundation, teaching at-risk kids that there are better options than drugs and violence.

Note: Explore more positive stories like this on healing social division and repairing criminal justice.


I Changed My Violent Prison Life in the Most Random Way: I Quit Drinking Soda
2024-04-04, The Marshall Project
Posted: 2025-04-17 17:59:58
https://www.themarshallproject.org/2025/04/04/prison-self-discipline-quitting...

By the time I was 24 years old, my life was in complete shambles. I had long-standing substance abuse problems. I sold drugs and trafficked guns. My addiction and illegal business culminated in an incident in which an innocent bystander was killed. I was convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to just under 30 years to life. Once in prison ... I lost even more of myself in drugs, violence and jailhouse politics. I knew that I had to change, but I didn’t think it was possible. Furthermore, I didn't know how to start. Then one day, at age 30, I did the most benign-seeming thing that changed everything: I quit drinking soda. I had read some articles about how soda can contribute to health issues like diabetes and obesity, and how it can weaken tooth enamel. This was the first time in my life that I had made that kind of change. Quitting soda was my step one. That simple act allowed me to trace the catastrophic outcomes of my life back to my lack of self-discipline, and it convinced me that change was possible. Step two was to make more behavioral changes related to self discipline, like lifting weights and learning to play chess. By choosing relatively minor changes at first, and implementing them incrementally, they were easy for me to sustain. This led to step three: My new behaviors becoming habits, and those habits elevating my level of self-discipline. This elevation allowed me to tackle more significant behavioral changes like quitting smoking and drugs.

Note: Explore more positive human interest stories and find out how people are repairing criminal justice.


He Was an FBI Informant—and Inspired a Generation of Violent Extremists
2024-08-01, Wired
Posted: 2025-04-07 21:49:59
https://www.wired.com/story/the-dangerous-exploits-of-an-extremist-fbi-inform...

The Federal Bureau of Investigation has a long and checkered history of letting confidential informants run wild. Joshua Caleb Sutter firmly fits into this framework. A longtime occultist and neo-Nazi, Sutter became an FBI informant roughly 20 years ago. Since then, he’s earned at least $140,000 infiltrating a range of far-right organizations, most notoriously the Atomwaffen Division (AWD) starting in 2017. WIRED found evidence of Sutter’s extensive influence on and promotion of an international child abuse network that goes alternatively by “com” or “764.” 764, as WIRED reported in March along with The Washington Post ... is the target of an international law enforcement investigation, with more than a dozen members arrested in the United States, Europe, and Brazil. Participants in 764 and its affiliated splinter groups like CLVT, 7997, H3ll, and Harm Nation extort minors into sexually exploiting or harming themselves. They find minors via Instagram, Roblox, Minecraft, and other popular games and social media apps where children congregate online. “The informant market is run on this tacit, uncomfortable understanding that the cure sometimes might be worse than the disease,” [Harvard Law School professor Alexandra] Natapoff tells WIRED. By utilizing people with criminal or extremist histories to infiltrate hard-to-penetrate milieus like gangs, organized crime, or terrorist groups ... the US government rewards such people for continuing to swim in the same waters. “Baked into that arrangement is the well-understood, avoidable phenomenon that these individuals are going to commit criminal acts,” Natapoff says. According to a New York University Law School study, 41 percent of all federal terrorism cases after 9/11 involve the use of a confidential source.

Note: US agencies used at least 1,000 ex-Nazis as spies and informants during the Cold War. Nazi doctors were also used to teach mind control methods to the CIA. For more along these lines, a Human Rights Watch report found that the nearly all of the highest-profile domestic terrorism plots in the US since 9/11 featured the direct involvement of government agents or informants. The FBI has even targeted vulnerable minors, some of them with brain development issues.


How the US bankrolled Duterte's alleged crimes against humanity
2025-03-21, Quincy Center for Responsible Statecraft
Posted: 2025-04-07 21:48:00
https://responsiblestatecraft.org/us-philippines-2671372980/

Last Tuesday, former president of the Philippines Rodrigo Duterte was arrested in Manila and taken to the Hague, where he will be tried for crimes against humanity at the International Criminal Court. From 2016-2022, Duterte’s government carried out a campaign of mass killings of suspected drug users. It’s estimated that 27,000 people, most of them poor and indigent, were executed without trial by police officers and vigilantes at his behest. Children were also routinely killed during Duterte’s drug raids- both as collateral victims and as targets. While this happened, the United States provided tens of millions of dollars annually to both the Philippine military and the Philippine National Police. Many of the killings examined by [Human Rights Watch] followed a pattern: a group of plainclothes gunmen would enter the home of a suspected drug user, kill them without ever issuing an arrest, and plant drugs or weapons next to the body. Sometimes the gunmen would self-identify as police officers, and other times they would not. Police would also detain suspected drug users without charges and torture them for bribes. Less than a month after Duterte took office, then- Secretary of State John Kerry announced a $32 million weapons and training package specifically to support the Philippine National Police. Obama’s administration authorized $90 million in military aid to the Philippines in 2016 and roughly $1 billion during the 8 years he was in office.

Note: Read our Substack on the dark truth of the war on drugs. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on the war on drugs.


Trump and Biden Financed Duterte’s Crimes. They Too Should Pay for It
2025-03-19, The Intercept
Posted: 2025-04-07 21:46:19
https://theintercept.com/2025/03/19/rodrigo-duterte-icc-arrest-accountability/

The countless victims of former Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte’s bloody war on drugs are celebrating his arrest on charges of crimes against humanity as a momentous first step toward justice. Many of those who financed, enforced, and even continued in his state-sponsored killing campaign have not been held accountable. That list includes U.S. presidents Donald Trump and Joe Biden, and current Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. The Philippines remains one of the largest recipients of U.S. military aid in the Indo-Pacific region. In 2018 and 2024, two international people’s tribunals in Brussels brought together families of victims of extrajudicial killings in the Philippines under both the Duterte and Marcos administrations. Both tribunals ... found the Trump and Biden administrations complicit in heavily funding state-sponsored killings in the Philippines. The killings targeted not only drug users, but also dissidents and activists as well. Duterte established, and Marcos beefed up and continued, the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict, or NTF-ELCAC, which immediately weaponized the Philippines civilian bureaucracy to go after government critics and activists on the grounds that they were fronts for the Communist Party of the Philippines. With no due process, activists under Duterte and Marcos continued to be systematically killed, illegally arrested, and targeted by state forces, even going as far as to be subjected to abduction, torture, and forced to sign affidavits claiming to be captured guerrillas.

Note: Read our Substack on the dark truth of the war on drugs. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on the war on drugs.


Can I Teach the First Amendment If I Only Have a Green Card?
2025-04-02, The Atlantic
Posted: 2025-04-07 21:44:39
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/04/free-speech-deportation-cra...

Starting this week, I once again have the privilege of teaching law students about the First Amendment. I am in the United States on a green card, and recent events suggest that I should be careful in what I say—perhaps even about free speech. The Trump administration is working to deport immigrants, including green-card holders, for what appears to be nothing more than the expression of political views with which the government disagrees. These actions ... make it difficult to work out how to teach cases that boldly proclaim this country is committed to a vision of free speech that, right now, feels very far away. In recent weeks, the Trump administration has been—is there any other way to describe it?—rounding up dissidents. To more easily chase down people with ideas it dislikes, the government is asking universities for the names and nationalities of people who took part in largely peaceful protests and engaged in protected speech. Exactly what kind of expression gets you in trouble is not clear—no doubt that’s partly the point. [Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security Troy] Edgar repeatedly refused to answer [NPR journalist Michel] Martin’s simple question: “Is any criticism of the United States government a deportable offense?” A 2010 Supreme Court decision upheld a law banning certain forms of speech that are classified as “material support” to foreign terrorist groups—in that case, the speech included training designated groups on how to pursue their aims peacefully. But even in that case, which upheld a stunningly broad speech restriction, the Court also insisted that ... advocacy of unlawful action is protected so long as it is not done in coordination with terrorist groups. This ... rests “at the heart of the First Amendment”: “viewpoint discrimination is uniquely harmful to a free and democratic society.”

Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on censorship and immigration enforcement corruption.


An ICE Contractor Is Worth Billions. It’s Still Fighting to Pay Detainees as Little as $1 a Day to Work.
2025-03-19, ProPublica
Posted: 2025-04-07 21:43:01
https://www.propublica.org/article/geo-group-ice-detainees-wage

The for-profit prison company GEO Group has surged in value under President Donald Trump. Its stock price doubled after Election Day. But despite its soaring fortunes, the $4 billion company continues to resist having to pay detainees more than $1 a day for cleaning facilities where the government has forced them to live. At the 1,575-bed detention center GEO runs for Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Tacoma, Washington, detainees once prepared meals, washed laundry and scrubbed toilets, doing jobs that would otherwise require 85 full-time employees, the company estimated. The state’s minimum wage at the time was $11 an hour. (It’s now $16.66.) In 2017, Washington sued GEO to enforce it, and in October 2021 a federal jury ruled unanimously in the state’s favor. This year, GEO and Washington are back in court — for a third time — as the company tries to reverse the earlier decision that sided with the state. Mike Faulk, a spokesperson for the Washington state attorney general’s office, said testimony in the minimum-wage issue highlights the problem with housing detainees in private prisons: profit motive. Not only did GEO pay $1 a day for cleaning in Tacoma, it budgeted less than $1 per meal that each detainee ate, one kitchen worker testified. “So the grade of food is abysmal,” Faulk said of the detainee’s testimony. “He routinely picked out grasshoppers/insects from the food.” Conditions in Tacoma are worsening as the number of detainees rises.

Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on corporate corruption and immigration enforcement corruption.


Meet the ICE Contractor Running Deportation Flights
2025-03-20, Project on Government Oversight
Posted: 2025-04-07 21:41:19
https://www.pogo.org/investigations/meet-the-ice-contractor-running-deportati...

Business is booming for Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) top deportation flight contractor. On February 28, ICE posted a previously unreported notice that it would award a no-bid contract to CSI Aviation to remove immigrants via flights. The contract is worth up to $128 million and will last for at least six months beginning on March 1, and possibly extend up to a year. ICE modified this contract last Friday to increase the number of ICE removal flights. The recent no-bid contract is the latest of numerous awards in the company’s history with ICE, amounting to a combined total of at least $1.6 billion in federal funding since 2005, although business has especially surged in recent years. CSI has long worked with ICE to remove immigrants using planes, working with a network of subcontractors such as GlobalX. Last year, 74% of ICE’s 1,564 removal flights were on GlobalX planes. In late 2017, 92 Somali immigrants on a CSI-contracted plane were forced to stay shackled for nearly two days. For about 23 hours, the plane simply sat on a tarmac, and the immigrants were not allowed off. “As the plane sat on the runway, the 92 detainees remained bound, their handcuffs secured to their waists, and their feet shackled together,” according to a lawsuit. “The guards did not loosen the shackles, even when the deportees told them that the shackles were painful because they were too tight, that their arms and legs were swollen and were bruised. When the plane’s toilets overfilled with human waste, some of the detainees were left to urinate into bottles or on themselves,” the lawsuit states.

Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on corporate corruption and immigration enforcement corruption.


ICE Wastes $16M on Guantanamo Bay Operation as All Migrants Returned to US
2025-03-13, Newsweek
Posted: 2025-04-07 21:37:07
https://www.newsweek.com/ice-guantanamo-bay-migrants-immigration-waste-millio...

In January, President Donald Trump announced plans to detain up to 30,000 immigrants suspected of being in the U.S. illegally at Guantanamo Bay ahead of deportation as part of his hard-line crackdown. Trump said he was signing an executive order "to instruct the departments of Defense and Homeland Security to begin preparing the 30,000-person migrant facility at Guantanamo Bay." 41 migrants were at the Guantánamo Bay base awaiting deportation, nearly evenly divided between low and high threat levels. All have since been flown to Alexandria, Louisiana, on non-military aircraft on Tuesday and Wednesday, where they are being held at a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) processing facility, according to a U.S. official who spoke to ABC News. California Democrat Rep. Sara Jacobs toured the facilities on Friday as part of a bipartisan delegation from the House Armed Services Committee. Jacobs told ABC News that officials at Guantanamo Bay said it cost $16 million to stand up the migrant camp, noting that each tent allegedly cost $3.1 million to construct, despite not being up to DHS standards. U.S. officials told ABC News the tents did not comply with ICE's requirements for migrant detention, including provisions for air-conditioning and other amenities. Some of the hundreds of U.S. troops sent to Guantánamo Bay to prepare the base for housing migrants may be reassigned to assist with the southern border mission in another capacity.

Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on immigration enforcement corruption.


Why President Donald Trump signed an executive order banning government 'censorship'
2025-01-21, USA Today
Posted: 2025-04-07 21:35:34
https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2025/01/21/trump-executive-order-social-...

President Donald Trump on Monday signed an executive order banning “federal censorship” of online speech. “Over the last four years, the previous administration trampled free speech rights by censoring Americans’ speech on online platforms, often by exerting substantial coercive pressure on third parties, such as social media companies, to moderate, deplatform or otherwise suppress speech that the federal government did not approve,” the executive order read. The order bans federal officials from any conduct that would “unconstitutionally abridge the free speech of any American citizen.” It also prohibits taxpayer resources from being used to curtail free speech and instructs the Department of Justice and other agencies to investigate the actions the Biden administration took and to propose “remedial actions.” Limiting communication and coordination between Big Tech companies and the federal government could jeopardize public safety in natural disasters and health emergencies, some observers warned. Multiple lawsuits have accused the Biden administration of leaning on social media platforms to take down lawful speech about the COVID-19 pandemic and the 2020 election. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg recently backed up those claims, alleging senior administration officials pressured his employees to inappropriately take down or throttle content during the pandemic. The Biden administration has said it was combating the spread of falsehoods to protect the public.

Note: Watch our latest 31-min documentary about moving beyond media polarization, which includes a deeper look into content that was being censored that turned out to be true or worthy of investigation. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on censorship.


CIA secrets and exposed agents: See unredacted details from the JFK files
2025-03-21, Washington Post
Posted: 2025-04-07 21:33:38
https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/interactive/2025/jfk-files-assa...

The Trump administration’s unveiling Tuesday of more than 2,000 documents related to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy set off a scramble for any scraps of revelatory information. The newly unredacted files reveal details about CIA agents and operations that the agency kept secret for decades. [A] 1964 document delves into the CIA’s operations out of Mexico City at the time, revealing that the agency had no agents actively operating from Cuba. But the agency had “a number of sources with access to Cuba in third party nationals who are debriefed each time they return to Mexico City from Cuba,” according to the ... file. Questions surrounding the CIA’s activity in Mexico City arose after a previous document release revealed that Oswald had visited the Cuban Consulate and the Soviet Embassy there weeks before the Nov. 22, 1963, assassination. [Another] one-page document divulges that Manuel Machado Llosas – treasurer of the Mexican revolutionary movement and a friend of Cuban president and dictator Fidel Castro – was a CIA agent. Machado Llosas was slated to be stationed in Mexico City, where the document says the CIA planned to “use him to report on the activities of Cuban revolutionaries” and leverage his friendship with Castro and other Cuban leaders so he could act as a “‘political action’ asset.” [A] newly unredacted memo reveals that the CIA surveilled Washington Post reporter Michael Getler.

Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on intelligence agency corruption and the JFK assassination.


JFK wanted to splinter CIA ‘into a thousand pieces.’ Why didn't he?
2025-03-27, Quincy Center for Responsible Statecraft
Posted: 2025-04-07 21:31:50
https://responsiblestatecraft.org/jfk-files-cia/

When the final, declassified records from the John F. Kennedy assassination files were posted on the National Archives’ website last week, the first document researchers and reporters searched for was White House adviser Arthur Schlesinger Jr.’s June 1961 memorandum to the president titled “CIA Reorganization.” "How could I have been so stupid as to let them proceed?" President John Kennedy asked his advisers following the CIA's infamous fiasco at the Bay of Pigs in April 1961. Beyond the fact that the U.S. invasion of Cuba was an egregious act of aggression — violating international law and Cuba’s sovereignty — its failure was a catastrophic embarrassment for JFK, only weeks into his White House tenure. Kennedy held CIA director Allen Dulles, and his deputy for covert operations Richard Bissell, personally responsible for deceiving him on the prospects for success of the ill-planned paramilitary assault. Indeed, as he processed the implications of the failed invasion, Kennedy vented his desire to “splinter the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter it into the winds.” That concept was more than angry rhetoric; the president actually set in motion a secret set of deliberations on breaking up the intelligence, espionage and covert action functions of the CIA and subordinating its operations to the State Department. The CIA’s operational branches would be “reconstituted” under a new agency.

Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on intelligence agency corruption and the JFK assassination.


The Towns That Invent Their Own Money
2025-03-24, Reasons to be Cheerful
Posted: 2025-04-07 21:30:04
https://reasonstobecheerful.world/towns-invent-community-currencies/

Community currencies — alternative forms of money sometimes also referred to as local or regional currencies — are as diverse as the communities they serve, from grassroots time-banking and mutual credit schemes to blockchain-based Community Inclusion Currencies. Local currencies were common until the 19th century, when the newly emerging nation states transitioned to a centralized system of government-issued money as a way of consolidating their power and stabilizing the economy. Far from being a neutral system of exchange, a currency is a tool to achieve certain goals. Inequality and unsustainability are baked into our monetary system, which is based on debt and interest with practically all the money ... being created by private banks when issuing loans. Well-designed community currencies eliminate two main sources of financial inequality: money’s perceived inherent value and the interest rates, which both incentivize people to hoard their money. Like the pipes that bring water to your house, money is the conduit that gives you access to goods and services. The value of money is created in the transaction. In 2015 it was estimated that almost 400 of them are active in Spain alone, and across Africa blockchain-backed systems, like the Sarafu in Kenya, help underserved communities do business without conventional money. Elsewhere, local currencies like the Brixton pound in the U.K. or BerkShares in Massachusetts are a way to keep money in the community, buffering it against the pressures of a globalized economy.

Note: Explore more positive stories like this on reimagining the economy.


Meet the woman who lives without money: ‘I feel more secure than when I was earning’
2025-01-31, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2025-04-07 21:28:18
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2025/feb/01/meet-the-woman-who-lives...

In 2015, [Jo] Nemeth had quit her community development job, given the last of her money to her 18-year-old daughter Amy and closed her bank account. “I was 46, I had a good job and a partner I loved, but I was deeply unhappy,” Nemeth says. “I’d been feeling this growing despair about the economic system we live in.” Her “lightbulb moment” came when her parents ... gave her a book about people with alternative lifestyles. “When I read about this guy choosing to live without money, I thought, ‘Oh my God, I have to do that!’” The first thing Nemeth did was write a list of her needs. "I discovered I really didn’t need much to be comfortable. Then I just started ... figuring out how I could meet my needs without having any negative impacts.” For the first three years, Nemeth lived on a friend’s farm, where she built a small shack from discarded building materials before doing some housesitting and living off-grid for a year in a “little blue wagon” in another friend’s back yard. Instead of paying rent, Nemeth cooks, cleans, manages the veggie garden and makes items such as soap, washing powder and fermented foods. And she couldn’t be happier. She soon started tapping into the “gift economy” more deeply, giving without expecting anything in return, receiving without any sense of obligation. “That second part took a while to get used to,” she says. “It’s very different to bartering or trading, which involves thinking in a monetary, transactional way: I’ll give you this if you give me that. I actually feel more secure than I did when I was earning money,” she says, “because all through human history, true security has always come from living in community and I have time now to build that ‘social currency’. To help people out, care for sick friends or their children, help in their gardens. That’s one of the big benefits of living without money.”

Note: Explore more positive stories like this on reimagining the economy.


Being Kind–and Believing Others are Kind–Makes you Happier Than Wealth: Happiness Report Ranks 150 Countries
2025-03-23, Good News Network
Posted: 2025-04-07 21:26:45
https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/being-kind-and-believing-others-are-kind-make...

Believing that a wallet will be returned if dropped in public is one of the most important indicators of well being and happiness. In fact, it’s 7 times more impactful that doubling your income, according to the World Happiness Report 2025 just released this week. Jeffrey Sachs conceived of the report that would measure wellness in 2012 and Gallup began interviewing people in 150 countries, and compiling those comparisons every year. While analyzing the results for 2024, the researchers found that belief in the kindness of others is much more closely tied to peoples’ happiness than previously thought. For instance, evidence across the world from the perceived—and actual—return of lost wallets shows that people are much too pessimistic about the kindness of their communities compared to the reality. The actual rates of wallet return are around twice as high as people expect. Believing that others are willing to return your lost wallet is shown to be a strong predictor of population happiness—and the Nordic nations once again top the ranking of the world’s happiest countries. They also rank among the top places for expected and actual return of lost wallets. “Human happiness is driven by our relationships with others,” said Lara Aknin, a professor of social psychology and one of the report’s editors. “Investing in positive social connections and engaging in benevolent actions are both matched by greater happiness.”

Note: Explore more positive stories like this on healing social division.


Data Broker Brags About Having Highly Detailed Personal Information on Nearly All Internet Users
2025-03-15, Gizmodo
Posted: 2025-04-01 19:46:36
https://gizmodo.com/data-broker-brags-about-having-highly-detailed-personal-i...

The owner of a data brokerage business recently ... bragged about the degree to which his industry could collect and analyze data on the habits of billions of people. Publicis CEO Arthur Sadoun said that ... his company [can] deliver “personalized messaging at scale” to some 91 percent of the internet’s adult web users. To deliver that kind of “personalized messaging” (i.e., advertising), Publicis must gather an extraordinary amount of information on the people it serves ads to. Lena Cohen, a technologist with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said that data brokers like Publicis collect “as much information as they can” about web users. “The data broker industry is under-regulated, opaque, and dangerous, because as you saw in the video, brokers have detailed information on billions of people, but we know relatively little about them,” Cohen said. “You don’t know what information a data broker has on you, who they’re selling it to, and what the people who buy your data are doing with it. There’s a real power/knowledge asymmetry.” Even when state-level privacy regulations are passed (such as the California Consumer Privacy Law), those cases are often not given enough focus or resources for the laws to be enforced effectively. “Most government agencies don’t have the resources to enforce privacy laws at the scale that they’re being broken,” Cohen said. Cohen added that she felt online behavioral advertising—that is, advertising that is based on an individual web user’s specific browsing activity—should be illegal. Banning behavioral ads would “fundamentally change the financial incentive for online actors to constantly surveil” web users and share their data with brokers, Cohen said.

Note: Read more about the disturbing world of online behavioral ads, where the data isn't just used to sell products. It's often accessed by governments, law enforcement, intelligence agencies, and other actors—sometimes without warrants or oversight. This turns a commercial ad system into a covert surveillance network. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on Big Tech and the disappearance of privacy.


Former Obama administration adviser flew to Britain to rape nine-year-old girl
2025-01-29, The Telegraph (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2025-04-01 19:44:43
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/01/29/obama-adviser-flew-to-britain-rap...

A former policy adviser to Barack Obama’s administration flew to Britain planning to rape a nine-year-old child. Rahamim “Rami” Shy, 47, an investment banker who helped co-ordinate the US government’s counter-terror response, travelled from New York to Bedfordshire to meet an English schoolgirl. He spent more than a month planning the trip and had packed his suitcases with cuddly toys and condoms, Luton Crown Court heard. On an online forum and messaging apps, Shy described the “unspeakable acts” he was planning in graphic detail to someone he believed to be the girl’s grandmother. But the grandmother, using the name Debbie, was in fact an online decoy created by an undercover officer from Bedfordshire Police. In his messages, Shy described the girl as a “tad late” in starting sexual activity at the age of nine, and said that it was an “honour” to be considered “her first”, the court heard. He flew to Gatwick on Feb 23 last year then drove to Bedford to meet the undercover officer, and was promptly arrested. During the trial, the court heard Shy, after arriving in Britain, tried to delete the “depraved messages” he had sent. Other messages retrieved from his phone revealed he had discussed his sexual interest in children with others. A cache of indecent images of children were discovered on his phone by police. Shy was previously employed at banking group Citi, and had worked in a senior role at the US treasury department.

Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on sexual abuse scandals.


Men on secret 1970s pro-paedophile list could still work with children today
2025-01-13, BBC News
Posted: 2025-04-01 19:42:41
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cq62dp092nzo

A secret list of more than 300 people who belonged to a network that called publicly for the legalisation of sex with children has been handed to the BBC. A small number of those named on the list may still have contact with children. They were all members of a group called the Paedophile Information Exchange (PIE). The Metropolitan Police had the list for about 20 years from the late 1970s. Most PIE members were based in the UK - but there are also details of people in other parts of western Europe, Australia and the US. The BBC has established that a small number of the men are still alive and may currently be in contact with, or have care of, children through paid work or volunteering. PIE was formed in 1974. Its leaders sought to further their cause by attempting to align themselves with feminist, anti-racist and gay rights movements. It was not an illegal organisation and cost £4 a year to join, and to receive its members' magazine. Over a decade, PIE spokesmen gave interviews to the media arguing that adults and children had a human right to have sex with each other. Four years old, they argued, was an age at which most children could give consent. Records ... for 45% of the people on the list [showed] that half of them had been convicted or cautioned (or had been charged and died before trial) for sexual offences against children. Charges included distributing abuse images, kidnap and rape.

Note: Margaret Thatcher herself protected top diplomat Sir Peter Hayman from an investigation into his involvement with child sex abuse material. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on sexual abuse scandals.


‘Britain has an institutional addiction to cover-ups’: the scandal of the Paedophile Information Exchange
2025-01-08, The Telegraph (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2025-04-01 19:40:39
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/radio/what-to-listen-to/paedophile-information-ex...

One day last spring, the investigative journalist Alex Renton received an unusual email. It contained a scan of a typewritten document marked with the dates 1983/1984, which appeared to be an authentic list of members of an organisation known as the Paedophile Information Exchange (PIE). PIE operated legally in the UK for a decade from 1974 until the mid-1980s, lobbying publicly for a change in the age of consent – proposing in 1977 that there shouldn’t be one at all. PIE members received a magazine, Magpie, which included news, non-nude photographs of children and a “contact page”. PIE was disbanded in 1984 after several prosecutions relating to child pornography and conspiracy to promote indecent acts via the contact page. There were more than 300 names on the member list that Renton now had in his possession, a number of which he already knew. The police had the list from the late 1970s, Renton says. He and his team were able to find further information for around 45 per cent of the names on the list and discovered that half of these had convictions or cautions, or had been charged and died before trial, for sexual offences against children. And 65 members, Renton notes, “worked in what we now call regulated professions, which are child facing. “We’ve got about 30 teachers, as well as social workers, clergy, doctors. There’s a number of eminent psychologists and quite a large sector of people in youth work.”

Note: Margaret Thatcher herself protected top diplomat Sir Peter Hayman from an investigation into his involvement with child sex abuse material. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on sexual abuse scandals.


Epstein Files Unsealed: Prince Andrew Accused of Groping Woman's Breast, and More Names and Allegations
2024-01-03, AOL
Posted: 2025-04-01 19:38:42
https://www.aol.com/lifestyle/epstein-files-unsealed-prince-andrew-032037414....

A woman who says she was a victim of deceased convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein alleged in a 2016 deposition that Prince Andrew groped her breast at Epstein's home in New York City in 2001, according to court filings. The large cache of documents stem from a 2015 lawsuit filed by Virginia Giuffre. The documents included a deposition from Epstein accuser Johanna Sjoberg, who said Prince Andrew placed his hand on her breast while posing for a group photo with Giuffre, Epstein, [Ghislaine] Maxwell and a puppet bearing Andrew's likeness. "They told us to go get on the couch and so Andrew and Virginia sat on the couch," Sjoberg recalled during her deposition. "They put the puppet, the puppet on her lap. And so then I sat on Andrew's lap. They took the puppet's hands and put it on Virginia's breast, and so Andrew put his on mine." A motion filed in the case in 2014, on behalf of an alleged victim of Epstein's identified only as Jane Doe #3, claimed that Jane Doe #3 "was forced to have sexual relations with [Prince Andrew] when she was a minor in three separate geographical locations." Giuffre herself has alleged she was trafficked by Epstein and forced to have sex with Prince Andrew. Another person named in the documents was former Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz. The motion filed on behalf of Jane Doe #3 claims "Epstein forced then-minor Jane Doe #3 to have sexual relations with former Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz, a close friend of Epstein’s."

Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on Jeffrey Epstein's child sex and blackmail ring.


Ex-JPMorgan banker claims Jeffrey Epstein knew more about ‘upper levels’ of bank than he did
2025-03-11, New York Post
Posted: 2025-04-01 19:37:08
https://nypost.com/2025/03/11/business/ex-jpmorgan-banker-jes-staley-claims-j...

An ex-JPMorgan Chase executive testified in London court that Jeffrey Epstein knew more about what was going on at the top levels of the bank than he did. Jes Staley — who went on to become chief executive of Barclays following his stint at JPMorgan — claimed that Epstein, the convicted child sex offender and disgraced financier who died in prison in 2019, had a “remarkable ability” to gather Wall Street intel. “Mr. Epstein was also well connected within the upper levels of JPMorgan itself,” Staley said during his second day in the witness box as he appealed a proposed ban and $2.3 million fine from London’s financial regulatory agency. “He seemed to be aware of things relating to the bank, that I was not aware of,” Staley added. Staley – who is attempting to overturn a lifetime ban that the Financial Conduct Authority announced in 2023 – acknowledged his relationship with Epstein went beyond work. In 2000, JPMorgan’s then-chief executive Douglas “Sandy” Warner told Staley he should get to know Epstein, Staley claimed in his witness statement. “Sandy Warner recommended that I should become acquainted with Mr. Epstein because he was an exceptionally well connected man who could help me, in my capacity at JPM, to form business relationships with influential and other well connected individuals,” he said. Staley claimed he was not the only high-level figure at JPMorgan in touch with Epstein.

Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on financial system corruption and Jeffrey Epstein's child sex and blackmail ring.


Wyden releases findings on financier’s ties to Jeffrey Epstein, asks Trump admin for docs
2025-03-12, Yahoo News
Posted: 2025-04-01 19:35:34
https://www.yahoo.com/news/wyden-releases-findings-financier-ties-215642482.html

Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) is releasing new information on a financier’s ties to Jeffrey Epstein’s operations, the ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee announced. Since 2022, the committee has been investigating billionaire financier Leon Black — who co-founded and previously led asset management firm Apollo Global Management as CEO and has made payments to Epstein. Wyden is calling on the Department of Justice, the Treasury and the Federal Bureau of Investigation to “lift the veil” on financial support for Epstein. Wyden sent a letter to the federal agencies, providing the new findings from the committee’s investigation, which is looking into payments of at least $158 million from Black to Epstein for “purported tax and estate planning advice.” Wyden says the investigation led to new evidence through federal government records that show funds from Black to Epstein were used to finance Epstein’s sex trafficking operations. The Finance Committee also obtained a 2023 settlement agreement between Black and the Attorney General of the U.S. Virgin Islands. Under the $62 million settlement, Black gained immunity from criminal prosecution in the USVI for financially supporting Epstein, according to Wyden, noting the settlement acknowledges “Jeffrey Epstein used the money Black paid him to partially fund his operations.” A major U.S. bank waited seven years to report Black’s payments to Epstein to the Treasury Department.

Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on financial system corruption and Jeffrey Epstein's child sex and blackmail ring.


Trump’s Spy Chief Urged to Declassify Details of Secret Surveillance Program
2025-03-06, Wired
Posted: 2025-04-01 19:33:37
https://www.wired.com/story/tulsi-gabbard-declassify-details-of-secret-survei...

Former US congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard’s ascendance to director of national intelligence last month signaled a major shift in views toward government surveillance at the highest rung of the US intelligence community. Major privacy groups this week urged Gabbard to declassify information concerning Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA)—the nation’s cornerstone wiretap authority ... known to vacuum up large quantities of calls, texts, and emails belonging to Americans. The groups privately urged Gabbard this week to declassify information regarding the types of US businesses that can now be secretly compelled to install wiretaps on the US National Security Agency’s (NSA) behalf. While it’s no secret that the government routinely compels phone and email service providers like AT&T and Google into conducting wiretaps, Congress passed a new provision last year expanding the range of businesses that can receive such orders. Legal experts had warned in advance that the provision was far too ambiguous and likely to vastly increase the number of Americans whose communications are wiretapped. But their warnings were not heeded. In response to questions from the US Senate ... Gabbard backed the idea of requiring the Federal Bureau of Investigation to obtain warrants before accessing the communications of Americans swept up by the 702 program.

Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of intelligence agency corruption and the disappearance of privacy.


FTC Removes Posts Critical of Amazon, Microsoft, and AI Companies
2025-03-10, Wired
Posted: 2025-04-01 19:32:02
https://www.wired.com/story/federal-trade-commission-removed-blogs-critical-o...

The Trump administration’s Federal Trade Commission has removed four years’ worth of business guidance blogs as of Tuesday morning, including important consumer protection information related to artificial intelligence and the agency’s landmark privacy lawsuits under former chair Lina Khan against companies like Amazon and Microsoft. More than 300 blogs were removed. On the FTC’s website, the page hosting all of the agency’s business-related blogs and guidance no longer includes any information published during former president Joe Biden’s administration. These blogs contained advice from the FTC on how big tech companies could avoid violating consumer protection laws. Removing blogs raises serious compliance concerns under the Federal Records Act and the Open Government Data Act, one former FTC official tells WIRED. During the Biden administration, FTC leadership would place “warning” labels above previous administrations’ public decisions it no longer agreed with, the source said, fearing that removal would violate the law. Since President Donald Trump designated Andrew Ferguson to replace Khan as FTC chair in January, the Republican regulator has vowed to leverage his authority to go after big tech companies. Unlike Khan, however, Ferguson’s criticisms center around the Republican party’s long-standing allegations that social media platforms, like Facebook and Instagram, censor conservative speech online.

Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on Big Tech and government corruption.


A Mission of Kindness
2024-09-11, Tooele Transcript Bulletin
Posted: 2025-04-01 19:28:14
https://www.tooeleonline.com/articles/hometown/a-mission-of-kindness/

“BACA” stands for Bikers Against Child Abuse. BACA is an organization, or corporation, not to be confused with a motorcycle club, whose impact statement reads, “No child deserves to live in fear!” BACA is much more than a group that gets together to ride motorcycles. BACA members’ sole purpose is to do all they can to create a safer environment for abused children, according to Tyson “The Kidd” Hamilton, BACA’s Utah State President. BACA members are ready at any time and any place to support children who have been abused. Members work with local law enforcement and other officials to protect children from further abuse. They consider children to be a part of their organization. They form friendships with the children to let them know they have someone in their corner, even if it’s just a few bikers. The children they empower get to choose their own road name when they receive a vest with a kids’ patch on the back that states “empowered.” Members of BACA will attend court, visit families where they feel safe, and respond to the child’s needs when they are in fear. Although BACA members don’t condone violence or physical force, they are always prepared to protect abused children from further abuse. “We go to court with children, because when they are testifying, they’re scared,” Hamilton explained. “We give kids support at their homes 365 days a year, 24/7. If they call us at 2 a.m. and they’re scared, we are going to respond. We are going to help that child.”

Note: Explore more positive stories like this on healing social division.


‘It’s tough when you see a small child who’s wounded’: How Bikers Against Child Abuse are making a difference
2024-09-08, Chek News
Posted: 2025-04-01 19:26:24
https://cheknews.ca/its-tough-when-you-see-a-small-child-whos-wounded-how-bik...

Revving their engines, the Bikers Against Child Abuse love to ride, and they love to make a difference by helping children who have been abused. It is about giving them back some of the power balance that has been stolen from them, giving them back some of the childhood that has been stolen from them,” says Bikers Against Child Abuse‘s Tom Goudreau, whose road name is ‘Motown’. The Bikers Bikers Against Child Abuse — BACA for short — has chapters all over North America and around the world. Children they help are welcomed in a special ceremony and they can reach out for help whenever they need it. “They get a road name like we have, and two primaries who will be responsible, 24/7, for that child whenever they need it,” Motown says. “We’ll be there at three o’clock in the morning, if necessary.” It’s something Motown wishes he had had as a child after being abused by a family member. “A lot of us are survivors,” he says. “The number one thing that people say to us around the world is, I wish you were there when I was a kid. That’s usually with a tear in their eye. Child abuse is epidemic. We need to face the facts. This happens everywhere. That’s why we’re in 19 countries around the world because child abuse is everywhere.” “It’s tough when you see a small child who’s wounded, needs help, but when you see them, change from that small child to somebody who’s empowered, it’s the best feeling in the world,” [a member] adds.

Note: Explore more positive stories like this on healing social division.


Badass bikers show up for abused children, offering advocacy and protection
2024-07-07, Upworthy
Posted: 2025-04-01 19:24:27
https://www.upworthy.com/bikers-against-child-abuse-biker-family-rp7

When you are a child who has been abused by people who are supposed to protect you, how do you feel safe? That question is the heart of Bikers Against Child Abuse International (B.A.C.A.), an organization dedicated to creating "a safer environment for abused children." With specific training and extensive security checks, the frequently big and burly members of B.A.C.A. serve as protectors of chid abuse survivors. They take a photograph with the child, which the child keeps to remind them that they have family to call on. They serve as escorts when kids feel frightened to go somewhere. They show up at court hearings to help kids feel less intimidated. And check out the B.A.C.A creed to see how dedicated these folks are to this work: "I am a Member of Bikers Against Child Abuse. The die has been cast. The decision has been made. I have stepped over the line. I won't look back, let up, slow down, back away, or be still. My past has prepared me, my present makes sense, and my future is secure. I'm finished and done with low living, sight walking, small planning, smooth knees, colorless dreams, tamed visions, mundane talking, cheap giving, and dwarfed goals. I no longer need pre-eminence, prosperity, position, promotions, plaudits, or popularity. I don't have to be right, first, tops, recognized, praised, regarded, or rewarded. I won't give up, shut up, let up, until I have stayed up, stored up, prayed up, paid up, and showed up for all wounded children."

Note: Explore more positive stories like this on healing social division.


Buy, Borrow, Die: How to be a billionaire and pay no taxes
2025-03-17, The Atlantic
Posted: 2025-04-01 18:50:44
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/03/tax-loophole-buy-borrow-die...

A three-step process called “Buy, Borrow, Die” ... allows people to amass a huge fortune, spend as much of it as they want, and pass the rest—untaxed—on to their heirs. The technique is so cleverly designed that the standard wish list of progressive tax reforms would leave it completely intact. The ... wealth [of the superrich] consists almost entirely of stock in the companies they’ve built or invested in. Instead of selling their assets to make major purchases, the superrich can use them as collateral to secure loans, which, because they must eventually be repaid, are also not considered taxable income. You might think this couldn’t possibly go on forever. Eventually, the rich will need to sell off some of their assets to pay back the loan. That brings us to step three: die. According to a provision of the tax code known as “stepped-up basis”—or, more evocatively, the “angel of death” loophole—when an individual dies, the value that their assets gained during their lifetime becomes immune to taxation. Those assets can then be sold by the billionaire’s heirs to pay off any outstanding loans without them having to worry about taxes. All of this is completely, perfectly legal. The strategy has basically killed the entire concept of an income tax for the wealthiest individuals. The result is a two-tiered tax system: one for the many, who earn their income through wages and pay taxes, and another for the few, who accumulate wealth through paper assets and largely do not pay taxes.

Note: Average individuals also pay more in taxes than major corporations. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on financial inequality.


The Working Class Is Paying To Insure Beach Mansions
2025-03-12, The Lever
Posted: 2025-04-01 18:48:36
https://www.levernews.com/the-working-class-is-paying-to-insure-beach-mansions/

Lawmakers are facing a deadline to reauthorize the federal program providing insurance to homeowners when private insurers abandon their climate-battered locales. The 56-year-old program holds nearly five million policies and more than $22 billion in liabilities. It was envisioned as a stopgap measure for the working class — but the wealthy are now exploiting the program at the expense of low-income homeowners. That includes Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate. A 2020 study ... found that the program “provides a substantial subsidy to upper-income groups.” How? By charging lower-income households higher premiums than high-income households — even though the latter’s properties are generating far higher loss ratios. The study found that “almost all of the excess (flood) losses are in the highest income segments” because “insufficient premium is collected from the higher income groups.” In other words, “Buyers that can most afford the premium are not paying their proper rate.” Facing the program’s March 14 expiration, lawmakers have been trying again to greenlight it with few reforms. But Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) recently gummed up the works with amendments barring the program from insuring second homes and placing a cap on eligible home values. “Is there some level of rich person’s mansion that maybe the average ordinary taxpayer should not have to subsidize their insurance?” Paul asked.

Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on financial inequality.


We Were Badly Misled About the Event That Changed Our Lives
2025-03-16, New York Times
Posted: 2025-04-01 18:47:01
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/16/opinion/covid-pandemic-lab-leak.html

Since scientists began playing around with dangerous pathogens in laboratories, the world has experienced four or five pandemics. Yet in 2020, when people started speculating that a laboratory accident might have been the spark that started the Covid-19 pandemic, they were treated like kooks and cranks. Many public health officials and prominent scientists dismissed the idea as a conspiracy theory, insisting that the virus had emerged from animals in a seafood market in Wuhan, China. Officials and scientists hid or understated crucial facts, misled at least one reporter, orchestrated campaigns of supposedly independent voices and even compared notes about how to hide their communications in order to keep the public from hearing the whole story. A March 2020 paper in the journal Nature Medicine, which was written by five prominent scientists and declared that no “laboratory-based scenario” for the pandemic virus was plausible. But we later learned through congressional subpoenas of their Slack conversations that while the scientists publicly said the scenario was implausible, privately many of its authors considered the scenario to be not just plausible but likely. One of the authors of that paper, the evolutionary biologist Kristian Andersen, wrote in the Slack messages, “The lab escape version of this is so friggin’ likely to have happened because they were already doing this type of work and the molecular data is fully consistent with that scenario.”

Note: Watch our Mindful News Brief on the origins of COVID. Read how the NIH bypassed the oversight process, allowing controversial gain-of-function experiments to proceed unchecked. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on censorship and COVID corruption.


Were the Covid Lockdowns Worth It?
2025-03-20, New York Times
Posted: 2025-04-01 18:45:13
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/20/podcasts/the-daily/were-the-covid-lockdown...

Five years ago, at the urging of federal officials, much of the United States locked down to stop the spread of COVID — a decision that, over time, polarized the country and changed the relationship between many Americans and their government. Now, two prominent political scientists are making the case that there’s no clear evidence that those lockdowns saved lives and that it’s time for a national reckoning about the decision-making that led to those lockdowns in the first place. Stephen Macedo and Frances Lee [wrote] about [it in] their new book “In COVID’s Wake.“ The biggest theme that runs through the book [is that] truth-seeking institutions did not function as well as they should have during COVID. There was a premature policy consensus. And there was an intolerance of criticism and divergent points of view that emerged fairly quickly in the pandemic, and that hurt us, that hurt our policy responses, that hurt our ability to course correct over the course of the pandemic as we learned more and had greater reason to course correct. There wasn’t enough public deliberation about these matters. Too much power was accorded to narrow experts in public health and epidemiology, in particular. There should have been a wider conversation simply involving many more people with broader expertise. But it also should have involved ordinary people in the public, who after all, were being the ones asked to make sacrifices.

Note: The full text of this article is available here. Watch our Mindful News Brief on the origins of COVID. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on COVID corruption.


The latest release of Kennedy assassination records offers intrigue — and lots of breadcrumbs
2025-03-21, Washington Post
Posted: 2025-04-01 18:43:38
https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/2025/03/21/latest-release-kenne...

With the release of more John F. Kennedy assassination records from the National Archives, [a] little paragraph rose from the dust. We already knew the government was opening the mail of American citizens. But it turns out the CIA had as many as 300 of its employees engaged in various aspects of its mail “coverage” operation — which included reading Lee Harvey Oswald’s letters — at a cost of $1 million a year. Jefferson Morley, a former Washington Post editor and reporter ... published a startling conclusion on the Substack page that he edits, JFKFacts: “The fact pattern emerging from the new JFK documents shows that: A small clique in CIA counterintelligence was responsible for JFK’s assassination.” “I’m not saying that [the CIA’s counterintelligence chief James Angleton] was the mastermind of the assassination. But he was the mastermind behind Oswald,” Morley said. “The failure of Angleton to intercept or do anything about Oswald at the same time that he’s running operations around him — that combination, yes — that tells me Angleton played a complicit role in Kennedy’s assassination.” The FBI memo reveals information that had been hidden until now: “The envelopes were microfilmed and the names and addresses appearing thereon were indexed with IBM equipment. Several months ago CIA began opening some of this mail, microfilming the contents and indexing pertinent data therein. Approximately 250,000 names have been indexed by CIA.”

Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on intelligence agency corruption and the Kennedy assassination.


Forget the JFK Files. This is Why Trump Needs to Open up Everything the U.S. Knows About UFOs
2025-03-19, Daily Beast
Posted: 2025-04-01 18:42:01
https://www.thedailybeast.com/forget-the-jfk-files-its-time-trump-declassifie...

For decades, reports of unidentified craft, usually airborne, often over sensitive military and nuclear facilities across the United States (and around the world) have bedeviled officials. The recent drone incursions over military installations in New Jersey, Virginia, and other locations highlight the problem. To date, the Pentagon says it does not know who is controlling these objects. We do not from where they are being launched or on whose behalf. More worryingly, there appears to be a “capability gap” between what our drones can do and what these still-unidentified objects can do. David Grusch, a former high-ranking intelligence official with the National Geospace-Intelligence Agency ... asserts the US government is in possession of an unknown number of crashed and retrieved extraterrestrial craft, including “nonhuman biologics.” According to a 2024 Yougov poll, “60% of Americans believe the U.S. government is concealing information about Unidentified Flying Objects.” In 2024, Sens. Schumer and Rounds introduced the “UAP Disclosure Act,” which would have mandated the release of nearly all relevant classified materials. When introducing the legislation, Schumer said, “The American public has a right to learn about technologies of unknown origins, non-human intelligence, and unexplainable phenomena.” The bill, perhaps unsurprisingly, failed to make it out of Committee.

Note: Watch our latest video on UFO/UAP disclosure titled, "Beyond Fear: The Bigger Picture, UFOs, and Humanity's Incredible Potential." For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on UFOs. Then explore the comprehensive resources provided in our UFO Information Center.


Catherine Herridge: Protecting Sources Is a Hill Worth Dying On
2024-06-23, Free Press
Posted: 2025-04-01 18:40:18
https://www.thefp.com/p/catherine-herridge-protecting-sources

Forcing a journalist to disclose confidential sources will have a crippling effect on effective investigative journalism in this country. The First Amendment provides protections for the press because an informed electorate is essential for robust debate and a strong democracy. But what happens when you find yourself dragged into a lawsuit, ordered to divulge your sources, and held in contempt when you refuse? It is relatively uncommon for a court or the government to try to force a reporter to divulge sources. But it does happen, and when it does, it has a chilling effect on sources, reporters, and journalism itself. Sources wonder if they can trust a journalist who promises confidentiality, while journalists become less willing to offer that promise. It damages the ability of the press to root out wrongdoing. There is some good news, though. Congress appears poised to make it far more difficult for journalists to be compelled to divulge their sources. In January, in a rare display of bipartisanship, the House unanimously passed the Protect Reporters from Exploitative State Spying Act, or the PRESS Act. The bill, which is now awaiting action in the Senate, would mandate the disclosure of sources only in a limited number of cases. It would also bar the government from surveilling journalists. A recent letter from a coalition of more than 130 civil liberties and journalism organizations ... called the legislation “a rare chance to strengthen freedom of the press.”

Note: The above was written by former CBS News reporter Catherine Herridge, who was fired after reporting on the Hunter Biden laptop scandal—after which CBS seized her confidential reporting files. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on censorship and media manipulation.


Military was instructed to search keywords including ‘first’ and ‘history’ during rushed purge of Pentagon websites
2025-03-20, CNN News
Posted: 2025-04-01 18:38:08
https://www.cnn.com/2025/03/20/politics/pentagon-search-keywords-website-purg...

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s February memo ordering all diversity, equity and inclusion-related content to be removed from Pentagon websites was so vague that military units were instructed to simply use keyword searches like “racism,” “ethnicity,” “history” and “first” when searching for articles and photos to remove. The implications of Hegseth’s memo were overwhelming, since the Defense Department manages over 1,000 public-facing websites and a huge visual media database known as DVIDS – with officials expected to purge everything relevant within two weeks. As a result, the manual work of individual units was supplemented with an algorithm that also used keywords to automate much of the purge, officials explained. Other keywords officials were instructed to search for included “firsts” in history, including content about the first female ranger and first Black commanding general, as well as the words “LGBTQ,” “historic,” “accessibility,” “opportunity,” “belonging,” “justice,” “privilege,” respect” and “values,” according to a list reviewed by CNN. The department is now scrambling to republish some of the content, officials said. “Of all the things they could be doing, the places they’re putting their focuses on first are really things that just don’t matter ... This was literally a waste of our time,” a defense official said. “This does absolutely nothing to make us stronger, more lethal, better prepared.”

Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on censorship and military corruption.


$571 million in VA spending on suicide prevention isn’t working, vets groups say
2025-02-10, Task and Purpose
Posted: 2025-04-01 18:36:37
https://taskandpurpose.com/news/veteran-suicide-prevention-accountability/

Veteran advocates are calling on recently confirmed Department of Veterans Affairs Secretary Doug Collins to investigate why the millions of dollars that the agency spends each year to prevent suicides has yet to significantly curtail the number of veterans who take their own lives. The VA received an estimated $571 million for suicide prevention efforts in Fiscal Year 2024 ... and it requested even more money for this fiscal year. In a press release, Grunt Style Foundation, a veteran advocacy group, pressed Collins to look at how the VA’s suicide prevention funds are being used. “We’re looking at 156,000 of our brothers and sisters that have taken their lives over the last 20 years,” [said] Tim Jensen, president of Grunt Style Foundation. “That is just frankly unacceptable.” The foundation has partnered with Veterans of Foreign Wars on looking at different ways to prevent veteran suicide, such as promoting alternative treatments for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and other mental health issues that veterans face. Some of the topics that Grunt Style Foundation officials hope to address in front of Congress are issues that they have long advocated for, such as the overmedication of veterans by the VA and the lack of data around alternative therapies like hyperbaric oxygen therapy and veteran-centric community events like hiking for mental health treatment. Suicide was the second-leading cause of death for veterans younger than 45 in 2022. There was an average of 17.6 veteran suicide deaths per day in 2022.

Note: Task & Purpose is the leading online publication for the military and veterans community. Read about the tragic traumas and suicides connected to military drone operators. A recent Pentagon study concluded that US soldiers are nine times more likely to die by suicide than they are in combat.


First Direct Image of the Cosmic Web Reveals the Universe’s Hidden Highways
2025-02-16, SciTech Daily
Posted: 2025-04-01 18:33:23
https://scitechdaily.com/first-direct-image-of-the-cosmic-web-reveals-the-uni...

Dark matter, which makes up about 85% of all matter in the Universe, plays a crucial role in shaping cosmic structures. Under gravity’s influence, it forms a vast, intricate web of filaments. At the intersections of these filaments, the brightest galaxies take shape. This cosmic web serves as the backbone of the Universe, guiding the flow of gas that fuels star formation in galaxies. Studying how this gas moves and interacts could significantly improve our understanding of how galaxies form and evolve. However, directly observing this intergalactic gas is extremely difficult. In [a] new study, an international team led by researchers at the University of Milano-Bicocca and including scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics (MPA) obtained an unprecedented high-definition image of a cosmic filament using MUSE (Multi-Unit Spectroscopic Explorer), an innovative spectrograph installed on the Very Large Telescope at the European Southern Observatory in Chile. The study, led by Davide Tornotti, PhD student at the University of Milano-Bicocca, used this ultrasensitive data to produce the sharpest image ever obtained of a cosmic filament spanning 3 million light-years and connecting two galaxies, each hosting an active supermassive black hole. The discovery, recently published in Nature Astronomy opens new avenues to directly constrain gas properties within intergalactic filaments and to refine our understanding of galaxy formation and evolution.

Note: Explore more positive stories like this on the mysterious nature of reality.


British woman wakes up from stroke speaking Italian
2024-12-22, The Telegraph (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2025-04-01 18:31:39
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/12/22/althia-bryden-stroke-italian-fore...

A British woman has said a stroke left her with an Italian accent and the ability to speak the language, despite having never visited the country. Althia Bryden, 58, was found unresponsive by her husband Winston one evening after suffering a stroke. Mr Bryden described finding his wife “staring and unable to talk” as “terrifying” and said he immediately called an ambulance. The grandmother of two remained in hospital for nine days. On July 30, Mrs Althia was admitted back into hospital for surgery ... and, after three months being unable to speak, awoke with an Italian accent and the ability to say words in the language. It is thought that she has foreign accent syndrome, which is a rare medical condition that causes a person’s speech to sound as though they have a foreign accent, even if they have not acquired it. Mrs Althia ... said: “I spent three months after my stroke thinking I’d never be able to talk again... I felt like a shell of the person I once was. “A nurse came to my hospital bed do a routine check and completely out of the blue, I just started speaking. She looked as shocked as I did. “Firstly, I couldn’t believe it was me talking, but I also didn’t recognise the sound of my voice. To my amazement, I’m also able to speak Italian... a language I’ve never learnt or spoke ever before. “Without realising, I will say an Italian word mid-conversation, which is the Italian word for what I’m trying to say in English. “I have no idea I’m about to do it – my brain just converts the English word into Italian.”

Note: Explore more positive stories like this on the mysterious nature of reality.


Caltech Researchers Find Evidence of a Real Ninth Planet
2016-01-20, Astrobiology at NASA
Posted: 2025-04-01 18:30:02
https://astrobiology.nasa.gov/news/caltech-researchers-find-evidence-of-a-rea...

Caltech researchers have found evidence of a giant planet tracing a bizarre, highly elongated orbit in the outer solar system. The object, which the researchers have nicknamed Planet Nine, has a mass about 10 times that of Earth and orbits about 20 times farther from the sun on average than does Neptune (which orbits the sun at an average distance of 2.8 billion miles). In fact, it would take this new planet between 10,000 and 20,000 years to make just one full orbit around the sun. The researchers, Konstantin Batygin and Mike Brown, discovered the planet’s existence through mathematical modeling and computer simulations but have not yet observed the object directly. “This would be a real ninth planet,” says Brown. “There have only been two true planets discovered since ancient times, and this would be a third.” Where did Planet Nine come from and how did it end up in the outer solar system? Scientists have long believed that the early solar system began with four planetary cores that went on to grab all of the gas around them, forming the four gas planets—Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. Over time, collisions and ejections shaped them and moved them out to their present locations. “But there is no reason that there could not have been five cores, rather than four,” says Brown. Planet Nine could represent that fifth core, and if it got too close to Jupiter or Saturn, it could have been ejected into its distant, eccentric orbit.

Note: Explore more positive stories like this on the mysterious nature of reality.


Real Government Efficiency: How to 'Actually' End Debt and Restore America's Financial Sovereignty
2025-03-04, Dennis Kucinich on Substack
Posted: 2025-03-19 17:23:04
https://kucinichreport.substack.com/p/real-government-efficiency-how-to

DOGE has fixated on slashing essential government programs in the name of fiscal responsibility. Yet, in order for it to truly serve our nation, it is urgent that it address the ossified, structural reality of our present financial system, which has been designed to manufacture deficits to the benefit of private banks. How is money created? Who creates it? Why are we locked into perpetual debt? Government borrowing, spiraling national debt, and the accompanying tax burden on the American people are not the result of overspending on public services. Rather, they stem from the privatization of the money supply, a system enshrined by the Federal Reserve Act of 1913, which handed the power of money creation to private banks, ensuring their profits through the simultaneous creation of the federal income tax. The U.S. Constitution, Article 1, Section 8, Clause 5, granted Congress the power to create money, yet that power was appropriated. With the passage of the Federal Reserve Act, the constitutional power to coin money was appropriated by private banks. The creation of the federal income tax, through the 16th Amendment to the Constitution ... guaranteed the money borrowed from them by the government would be repaid through the imposition of the federal income tax. This reduced to people of the United States to being collateral for the debt which the country owed to the banks. The Federal Reserve expands the money supply by creating more debt. It has created trillions of dollars of money out of thin air, for the benefit of banks. Inflation ensues. Inflation is a hidden tax which erodes consumers purchasing power, causing people to take on more debt.

Note: This was written by Dennis Kucinich, former Democratic congressman and nationally recognized leader in peace and social justice. For more along these lines, read more about the history of the Federal Reserve, along with concise summaries of news articles on financial system corruption.


Americans borrowed $74 billion last year to cover their health care costs
2025-03-06, CBS News
Posted: 2025-03-19 17:20:17
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/health-care-costs-medical-debt-americans-borrowing/

Health care is so expensive that 31 million U.S. adults, or 12%, had to borrow a total of $74 billion last year to obtain medical care, new data shows. That includes people with health insurance, making such numbers even more troubling. Almost one-third of the more than 3,500 people surveyed by Gallup and West Health, a group of nonprofit health care organizations, said they're "very concerned" that a major health event would lead to medical debt despite most of them having some form of health care coverage. To avoid taking on debt, families sometimes make tradeoffs, such as purchasing fewer groceries or not paying rent in order to get the care they need. Nearly one in five adults between the ages of 18 and 28 reported borrowing money to pay for health care, according to the survey. Only 9% of Americans between 50 and 64 and 2% of those 65 or older reported having to borrow money to obtain needed medical care. "There are a lot of disparities in terms of who borrows," [Tim Lash, president of West Health] said. That's in part because Medicare, which is available to people who are 65 or older, provides enrollees with relatively comprehensive coverage. As of mid-2024, U.S. residents owed at least $220 billion in medical debt, according to data from the American Hospital Association. Health care bills have for years been a leading cause of personal bankruptcies.

Note: Two-thirds of personal bankruptcies in the US are caused by illnesses and medical bills. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on health and financial inequality.


You’ve Already Paid for Overpriced Weight-Loss Drugs
2025-03-06, Jacobin
Posted: 2025-03-19 17:17:54
https://jacobin.com/2025/03/weight-loss-drugs-price-health

US taxpayers spent an estimated $6 billion researching, developing, and implementing new blockbuster weight-loss drugs. Yet Americans are now paying pharmaceutical giants — including one in Denmark — up to eleven times more for these medicines than patients in other countries, markups that are inflating consumers’ insurance premiums and risk bankrupting the country’s health care system. According to data shared with the Lever by researchers at Bentley University, the federal government spent $6.2 billion from 1980 to 2024 on the discovery and development of glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) molecules, as well as research on how to use GLP-1 drugs to treat diabetes, obesity, and other diseases. GLP-1, a hormone that regulates blood sugar, was the foundation of the diabetes drug Ozempic, whose 2017 approval by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) launched a wave of other GLP-1-based diabetes and weight-loss medications coming to market. More than fifteen million people nationwide currently take GLP-1-related drugs like Ozempic, bringing in more than $50 billion in sales for pharmaceutical companies in 2024 — much of which went to the Danish pharmaceutical company Novo Nordisk. A Senate report ... found that if half of all Medicare and Medicaid patients with obesity took Wegovy and other GLP-1 weight-loss drugs, it could cost the federal health care system $166 billion per year.

Note: The makers of these weight-loss drugs could be hit with over 10,000 lawsuits over severe adverse events from these drugs. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on corruption in government and in Big Pharma.


1 Percent Has Sapped $79T in Wealth From Bottom 90 Percent Since 1975
2025-03-05, Truthout
Posted: 2025-03-19 17:16:04
https://truthout.org/articles/sanders-1-percent-has-sapped-79t-in-wealth-from...

Five years ago, researchers for RAND found that roughly $47 trillion earned by the working class between 1975 and 2018 was instead given to the richest 1 percent, in 2018 dollars. This calculation was based on calculations of the growth of the bottom 90 percent in the decades after World War II, when income distribution held steady between groups. In a new analysis published last month by RAND extending the analysis to 2023, RAND found that that figure is now $79 trillion in 2023 dollars, with inflation accounting for roughly $10 trillion of the growth. In 2023 alone, $3.9 trillion was redistributed from the bottom 90 percent to the top 1 percent — enough to give every worker a raise of $32,000 per year. In 1975, RAND found in its most recent report, the bottom 90 percent of Americans received about a third of all taxable income in the U.S. That share dropped to 47 percent by 2019, with over half of income going instead to the top 10 percent. If rates of income growth had remained equitable from the rates prior to the 1970s, the median household income today would be double what it is now, the analysis found. According to a recent analysis by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, President Donald Trump’s tax proposals ... would provide $36,320 yearly in tax savings to the richest 1 percent, or people with incomes of over $914,900 a year. Meanwhile, the bottom 95 percent of Americans would see a tax increase.

Note: Two-thirds of all new wealth created since the pandemic has been captured by the 1%. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on financial inequality.


Pentagon Keeps Pouring Cash Into Golf Courses — Even As Trump Slashes Government Spending
2025-03-10, The Intercept
Posted: 2025-03-19 17:14:09
https://theintercept.com/2025/03/10/pentagon-spending-golf-courses-trump-budg...

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth says he has a singular mission. “We do warfighting here at the Department of Defense,” he said. Right now, the U.S. military is looking to pour money into the renovation of 35 golf course sand traps at the Woodlawn Golf Course at Ramstein Air Base in Germany. Air Force Special Operations Command also wants to purchase sterile mushroom compost for the golf course greens at Cannon Air Force Base in New Mexico. The Army, for its part, plans to issue a service contract that will cover maintenance in the golf course clubhouse at the U.S. Military Academy in West Point, New York. What golf has to do with lethality is a question that the Defense Department failed to answer. Nor would the Pentagon weigh in on the hundreds of millions of dollars wrapped up in, or swallowed up by, military golf courses. The Pentagon did not provide a full tally of its current inventory of golf courses, which The Intercept put at around 145. Even at a time of rampant cost-cutting across the federal government ... the U.S military’s golf habit is not on chopping block. The Trump administration announced this week that hundreds of federal properties were available for sale. The General Services Administration, the government’s real estate arm, released a list of 443 structures and properties deemed “not core to government operations.” Currently, no military golf courses are up for sale on the GSA’s website.

Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on government waste.


Americans stunned after learning US candy sold in Europe have extreme health warning labels
2024-11-25, Daily Mail (One of the UK's Popular Newspapers)
Posted: 2025-03-19 17:12:07
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-14123579/american-candies-sold-eur...

In a new video, Swedish TikTok user SwedishJohan shared a video from within the American section of his local store that sells candies such as Airheads, Laffy Taffy and Sour Patch Kids. In it, he flipped over a watermelon flavored Airhead, a fruit flavored taffy bar, showing that on top of the normal nutrition label, there was a paper tag that listed a warning. When translated, the warning reads: 'Contains the AZO dyes e129, e110, e102 which can have a negative effect on children's behavior and concentration.' These are also known as Red40, Yellow 6 and Yellow5 and are perfectly legal in the US but heavily regulated in Europe. In children, research has linked these dyes to behavioral problems like ADHD, restlessness, inattentiveness, aggression, irritability and problems sleeping. Johan said: 'So American candy comes with warning labels here in Europe'. The EU hasn't outlawed the three dyes, but a 2008 law says that any manufacturer that uses these products must put a warning label on their product. This has meant that many manufacturers have decided to swap the synthetic colorants for natural options. The three dyes are made from petroleum-oil, and found in more than 36,000 food products sold in the US, according to a 2024 report from the Environmental Working Group. They are also found in cosmetics, medications and personal care products like soap. In 1990, the FDA banned Red 3 from cosmetics after reports linked it to thyroid cancer.

Note: Read our latest Substack article on how the US government turns a blind eye to the corporate cartels fueling America’s health crisis. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on food system corruption.


Kennedy Rattles Food Companies With Vow to Rid Food of Artificial Dyes
2025-03-11, New York Times
Posted: 2025-03-19 17:02:22
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/11/health/rfk-jr-food-safety-artificial-dyes....

In his first meeting with top executives from PepsiCo, W.K. Kellogg, General Mills and other large companies, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the health secretary, bluntly told them that a top priority would be eliminating artificial dyes from the nation’s food supply. Later on Monday, Mr. Kennedy issued a directive that would also affect food companies nationwide. He ordered the Food and Drug Administration to revise a longstanding policy that allowed companies — independent of any regulatory review — to decide that a new ingredient in the food supply was safe. Put in place decades ago, the policy was aimed at ingredients like vinegar or salt that are widely considered to be well-understood, and benign. But the designation, known as GRAS, or “generally recognized as safe,” has since grown to include a far broader array of natural and synthetic additives. Mr. Kennedy had vowed to upend the food system as a way to address growing rates of chronic disease and other health concerns even before his appointment as the head of the Department of Health and Human Services. He now oversees the F.D.A. Advocates for food safety have criticized the existing GRAS policy as a loophole that enables food companies to introduce untested ingredients that in some cases have proven hazardous. About 1,000 ingredients deemed safe have been reviewed by the F.D.A., but Mr. Kennedy targeted the ones that companies deem acceptable with no government oversight.

Note: Read our latest Substack article on how the US government turns a blind eye to the corporate cartels fueling America’s health crisis. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on health and food system corruption.


Doctors didn't warn women of 'risky sex' drug urges
2025-03-11, BBC News
Posted: 2025-03-19 17:00:30
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cgkmrev6z2mo

Patients prescribed drugs for movement disorders - including restless leg syndrome (RLS) - say doctors did not warn them about serious side effects that led them to seek out risky sexual behaviour. Twenty women have told the BBC that the drugs - given to them for RLS, which causes an irresistible urge to move - ruined their lives. A report by drugs firm GSK - seen by the BBC - shows it learned in 2003 of a link between the medicines, known as dopamine agonist drugs, and what it described as "deviant" sexual behaviour. It cited a case of a man who had sexually assaulted a child while taking the drug for Parkinson's. Some of the women who described being drawn to risky sexual behaviour told us they had no idea of what was causing it. Others said they felt compelled to gamble or shop with no history of such activities. Impulsive behaviours, including gambling and increased sex drive, have long been listed as side effects in medicine leaflets for dopamine agonist drugs - and are thought to affect between 6% to 17% of RLS patients taking them, according to health guidance body NICE. The cases of what the GSK report from 2003 described as "deviant behaviour" involved two men who were prescribed Ropinirole for Parkinson's disease. In one, a 63-year-old-man sexually assaulted a seven-year-old girl, leading to a custodial sentence. In the second case, a 45-year-old man carried out "uncontrolled acts of exhibitionism and indecent behaviour".

Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on Big Pharma corruption.


$5 a dozen: major egg companies may be using avian flu to hike US prices, new report finds
2025-03-04, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2025-03-19 16:58:18
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/mar/04/egg-prices-bird-flu-corpo...

Major egg corporations may be using avian flu as a ruse to hike up prices, generating record profits while hurting American consumers, new research suggests. The cost of a dozen large eggs hit almost $5 in January – a record high in the US and more than two and a half times the average price three years ago before the avian flu outbreak. This signifies a 157% inflation rate for eggs. “Bird flu does not fully explain the sticker shock consumers experience in the egg aisle ... corporate consolidation is a key culprit behind egg price spikes,” said Amanda Starbuck, lead author of the FWW report The Economic Cost of Food Monopolies: The Rotten Egg Oligarchy. “Powerful corporations that control every step of the supply chain – from breeding hens to hatching eggs to processing and distributing eggs – are making windfall profits off this crisis, raising their prices above and beyond what is necessary to cover any rising costs.” The analysis found that in some regions, prices were going up even before the new strain of the deadly H5N1 virus had affected poultry flocks and reduced egg production. The south-east, for instance, remained free of bird flu in its table egg flocks until January 2025. In fact, egg production rose in 2022 and 2023 compared with 2021 levels. Yet retail egg prices in the region increased alongside national spikes. Even as egg production recovered in 2023, prices did not come down.

Note: Read how skyrocketing food prices are caused by corporate greed. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on food system corruption.


Big Farms Breed Big Flu: End the Cage Age for a Healthier, Affordable Path to Food Security
2025-03-11, The Kucinich Report on Substack
Posted: 2025-03-19 16:56:26
https://kucinichreport.substack.com/p/big-farms-breed-big-flu-end-the-cage

Animal factories—industrial-scale factory farm livestock operations—create ideal conditions for the emergence and rapid spread of disease, including avian flu. High-density confinement, genetic uniformity, and poor air quality weaken birds’ immune systems and enable viruses to mutate and transmit quickly. Unlike in natural settings, where biodiversity and space act as buffers against disease, factory farms concentrate thousands or even millions of animals in close quarters, amplifying viral loads and increasing the risk of spillover to wild birds and even humans. The industry’s reliance on mass culling, vaccines, and “biosecurity measures” fails to address the root cause of so many food safety and food security crises: an unnatural, high-stress system that prioritizes profit over resilience. Nowhere is this more evident than in today’s egg crisis, resulting in soaring prices, plummeting availability, and over 120 million chickens killed due to avian flu scares. Under current protocols, if just one bird in a 100,000-strong confined flock is suspected of infection, the entire flock is exterminated. In conventional caged systems, as many as 500,000 hens suffer in a single facility, each trapped in a space barely larger than a sheet of printer paper. Even in so-called "cage-free" systems, up to 100,000 hens can be packed into a single barn, enduring a relentless cycle of laying, exhaustion, and slaughter.

Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on food system corruption.


This Black Fungus Might Be Healing Chernobyl By Drinking Radiation
2024-11-02, Forbes
Posted: 2025-03-19 16:54:36
https://www.forbes.com/sites/scotttravers/2024/11/02/this-black-fungus-might-...

The explosion of the No. 4 reactor of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant near Pripyat, Ukraine on April 26, 1986 remains the worst nuclear disaster in human history. It left a 30-kilometer exclusion zone—a deserted landscape where high radiation levels remain even now, decades after the incident—where human settlement and habitation are restricted. Within this zone, however, scientists have discovered an unlikely survivor: a resilient black fungus called Cladosporium sphaerospermum. After the Chernobyl disaster, scientists observed patches of blackened growths on the walls of the No. 4 reactor—fungi that seemed to thrive where the radiation was highest. This fungus has adapted to a level of radiation that would be lethal for most life forms. Even more fascinating is its ability to “feed” on this radiation, using it as a source of energy, similar to how plants use sunlight for photosynthesis. Cladosporium sphaerospermum belongs to a group of fungi known as radiotrophic fungi. Radiotrophic organisms can capture and utilize ionizing radiation to drive metabolic processes. In radioactive sites like Chernobyl, where conventional cleanup methods are challenging and hazardous, radiotrophic fungi can provide a safer, natural alternative, according to an April 2008 article published in FEMS Microbiology Letters. Scientists are exploring the feasibility of deploying these fungi to contain and potentially reduce radiation levels in contaminated areas.

Note: Explore more positive stories like this on healing the Earth and technology for good.


This alien plant is lethal for the environment. Now it’s being turned into a plastic to regrow forests
2025-01-07, CNN News
Posted: 2025-03-19 16:53:01
https://www.cnn.com/world/africa/hyacinth-alien-plant-environment-plastic-spc...

Water hyacinths are native to South America, but were introduced as an exotic ornamental to many other countries. They’ve since taken over freshwater environments and are labeled an alien invasive species on every other continent aside from Antarctica. As well as their impact on biodiversity and livelihoods, the floating plant can clog hydroelectric and irrigation systems, meaning that one does not need to live in their proximity to be affected. It’s the highest-profile example of an invasive aquatic plant crisis that has cost the global economy tens of billions of dollars historically, and now more than $700 million annually. Now a Kenyan company is addressing the problem as well as the country’s plastic pollution issue by turning the invasive plant into a bioplastic. HyaPak Ecotech Limited, founded by Joseph Nguthiru, began life as a final year project by the former Egerton University civil and environmental engineering student. Nguthiru’s bioplastic is made from dried water hyacinth combined with binders and additives, which is then mixed and shaped. The product, which biodegrades over a few months, was first used as an alternative for plastic packaging. HyaPak has gained widespread attention, winning the Youth category at the East Africa Climate Action Awards, a prize at UNESCO’s World Engineering Day Hackathon, and a Prototype for Humanity Award 2023 announced at the COP28 climate conference.

Note: Explore more positive stories like this on healing the Earth and technology for good.


A new life for empty offices: Growing kale and cucumbers
2025-01-28, BBC News
Posted: 2025-03-19 16:51:26
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20250127-why-veg-is-growing-in-empty-offic...

In some cities, as many as one in four office spaces are vacant. Some start-ups are giving them a second life – as indoor farms growing crops as varied as kale, cucumber and herbs. In countries including Canada and Australia, landlords are struggling to fill vacant office spaces as companies embrace remote and hybrid work. In the US, the office vacancy rate is more than 20%. "Vertical farms may prove to be a cost-effective way to fill in vacant office buildings," says Warren Seay, Jr ... who authored an article on urban farm reconversions. There are other reasons for the interest in urban farms, too. Though supply chains have largely recovered post-Covid-19, other global shocks, including climate change, geopolitical turmoil and farmers' strikes, mean that they continue to be vulnerable – driving more cities to look for local food production options. Workers are currently aiming to transform a floor of 32-story historic Niels Esperson building in Houston, Texas, into an indoor farm. In September 2024, US indoor farm startup 80 Acres, which opened its first indoor farm inside a vacant building in Hamilton, Ohio, developed a 200,000-sq-ft (18,600-sq-m) facility inside a former commercial building in Florence, Kentucky. Overall, vertical farms have the potential to outperform regular farms on several environmental sustainability metrics like water usage, says [director of the Arell Food Institute] Evan Fraser.

Note: Explore more positive stories like this on healing the Earth and technology for good.


How a post-9/11 law could enable a crackdown on speech
2025-03-06, Quincy Center for Responsible Statecraft
Posted: 2025-03-11 20:07:41
https://responsiblestatecraft.org/trump-protests/

In yet another example of Donald Trump announcing new policy via social media, the president has now pledged to crack down on “illegal protests” at universities, warning that “agitators” will be headed to jail or targeted for deportation. On the campaign trail, Trump already pledged to crush pro-Palestinian protests if they ramp up again, including deporting foreign national students who participate. Peaceful protest isn’t illegal. But what many do not realize is that counterterrorism law gives enormously wide-ranging discretionary authority to the president, to law enforcement, and to immigration officials that could be used to squelch free speech and dissent. For example: providing material support for terrorism is a federal crime. The breathtaking scope of this provision becomes more clear once we see how the terms are defined. “Material support” includes the provision of “service,” “expert advice or assistance,” “communications equipment,” or “personnel” (including yourself). And the Supreme Court has confirmed that the support does not actually have to go toward any particular violent act that might be considered terrorism, only to a group that is designated as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) by the U.S. government, even if that support is otherwise lawful. Hamas is designated as an FTO and those opposing U.S. and Israeli policy are often accused of supporting Hamas. Could peaceful pro-Palestine protesters be charged with materially supporting terrorism?

Note: We have documented decades of free speech repression beginning with COINTELPRO. We support freedom for all peoples including Palestinians, and many of these campus protests have indeed been peaceful. However, we can in no way overlook the disturbing cases of campus protesters glorifying the violent attacks on October 7th and using Hamas symbols in banners and protest signs. Protesters have been caught on film screaming "We are Hamas." At NYU, a sign literally said "Death to Israel" and "Death to America." A University of Michigan pamphlet contained the phrase "Death to America." NBC News reported that the U.S. Treasury Department sanctioned Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network as a sham charity that allegedly funneled money to a pro-Hamas terrorist organization while also helping organize pro-Palestinian protests on US college campuses. Before October 7th, the human rights abuses and sexual violence Hamas committed against Palestinians were extensively documented. Where is the nuanced dialogue beyond media polarization on this tragic issue?


This killer drone is designed to be thrown like a football
2025-03-05, Fast Company
Posted: 2025-03-11 20:05:04
https://www.fastcompany.com/91275004/xdown-killer-drone-designed-like-football

Alexander Balan was on a California beach when the idea for a new kind of drone came to him. This eureka moment led Balan to found Xdown, the company that’s building the P.S. Killer (PSK)—an autonomous kamikaze drone that works like a hand grenade and can be thrown like a football. The PSK is a “throw-and-forget” drone, Balan says, referencing the “fire-and-forget” missile that, once locked on to a target, can seek it on its own. Instead of depending on remote controls, the PSK will be operated by AI. Soldiers should be able to grab it, switch it on, and throw it—just like a football. The PSK can carry one or two 40 mm grenades commonly used in grenade launchers today. The grenades could be high-explosive dual purpose, designed to penetrate armor while also creating an explosive fragmentation effect against personnel. These grenades can also “airburst”—programmed to explode in the air above a target for maximum effect. Infantry, special operations, and counterterrorism units can easily store PSK drones in a field backpack and tote them around, taking one out to throw at any given time. They can also be packed by the dozen in cargo airplanes, which can fly over an area and drop swarms of them. Balan says that one Defense Department official told him “This is the most American munition I have ever seen.” The nonlethal version of the PSK [replaces] its warhead with a supply container so that it’s able to “deliver food, medical kits, or ammunition to frontline troops” (though given the 1.7-pound payload capacity, such packages would obviously be small).

Note: The US military is using Xbox controllers to operate weapons systems. The latest US Air Force recruitment tool is a video game that allows players to receive in-game medals and achievements for drone bombing Iraqis and Afghans. For more, read our concise summaries of news articles on warfare technologies and watch our latest video on the militarization of Big Tech.


From ‘Terrorist’ to ‘Freedom Fighter’: How the West Rebranded Al-Qaeda’s Jolani as Syria’s ‘Woke’ New Leader
2024-12-12, Mint Press News
Posted: 2025-03-11 20:03:10
https://www.mintpressnews.com/from-terrorist-to-freedom-fighter-how-the-west-...

Corporate media is heralding the fall of Bashar al-Assad and the emergence of Abu Mohammed al-Jolani as the new leader of Syria, despite his deep ties to both al-Qaeda and ISIS. CNN portrayed him as a “blazer-wearing revolutionary.” In 2013, [CNN] labeled him one of “the world’s 10 most dangerous terrorists,” known for abducting, torturing and slaughtering racial and religious minorities. Western governments consider Jolani’s new organization, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), as one and the same as Al-Qaeda/Al-Nusra. Jolani – whose real name is Ahmed Hussein al-Shar’a ... was captured by the U.S. military and spent over five years in prison, including a stint at the notorious Abu Ghraib torture center. While in Iraq, Jolani fought with ISIS and was even a deputy to its founder. Immediately upon release in 2011, ISIS sent him to Syria with a rumored $1 billion to found the Syrian wing of al-Qaeda. While both journalists and politicians in the U.S. are scrambling to change their opinions on Jolani and HTS, the reality is that, for much of its existence, Washington has enjoyed a very close relationship with al-Qaeda. The organization was born in Afghanistan in the 1980s, thanks in no small part to the CIA. Between 1979 and 1992, the CIA spent billions of dollars funding, arming, and training Afghan Mujahideen militiamen (like Osama bin Laden) in an attempt to bleed the Soviet occupation dry. The Bush administration would use [the 9/11] attacks as a pretext to invade both Afghanistan and Iraq, claiming that America could never be safe if al-Qaeda were not thoroughly destroyed. And yet, by the 2010s, even as the U.S. was ostensibly at war with al-Qaeda in Iraq and Afghanistan, it was secretly working with [al-Qaeda] in Syria on a plan to overthrow Assad. The CIA spent around $1 billion per year training and arming a wide network of rebel groups to this end. As National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan told Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in a leaked 2012 email, “AQ [al-Qaeda] is on our side in Syria.”

Note: As recently as 2016, Syrian militias armed by the Pentagon were fighting with Syrian militias armed by the CIA. Read more about how radicalized Iraqis were swept into US military detention at Camp Bucca—a notorious facility often called a "terrorist university”—where they forged alliances that directly led to the rise of ISIS.


The War Crimes That the Military Buried
2024-09-10, New Yorker
Posted: 2025-03-11 20:01:00
https://www.newyorker.com/podcast/in-the-dark/the-war-crimes-that-the-militar...

The reporting team of the In the Dark podcast has assembled the largest known collection of investigations of possible war crimes committed in Iraq and Afghanistan since 9/11—nearly eight hundred incidents in all. Much of the time, the reporting concluded, the military delivers neither transparency nor justice. The database makes it possible, for the first time, to see hundreds of allegations of war crimes—the kinds that stain a nation—in one place, along with the findings of investigations and the results of prosecutions. We limited our search to ... allegations of violence perpetrated by U.S. service members or deaths in U.S. custody that happened in Iraq and Afghanistan after September 11, 2001. Of the seven hundred and eighty-one cases we found, at least sixty-five per cent had been dismissed by investigators who didn’t believe that a crime had even taken place. In a hundred and fifty-one cases, however, investigators did find probable cause to believe that a crime had occurred, that the rules of engagement had been violated, or that a use of force hadn’t been justified. These include the case of soldiers raping a fourteen-year-old girl and subsequently murdering her and her family; the alleged killing of a man by a Green Beret who cut off his victim’s ear and kept it; and cruelty toward detainees at Abu Ghraib prison and at the Bagram Air Base detention facility. Yet, even in these cases, meaningful accountability was rare.

Note: Learn more about human rights abuses during wartime in our comprehensive Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center. War destroys, yet these powerful real-life stories show that we can heal, reimagine better alternatives, and plant the seeds of a global shift in consciousness to transform our world.


Trump Perpetuates Undeclared War in Somalia With Renewed Airstrikes
2025-03-03, Truthout
Posted: 2025-03-11 19:58:07
https://truthout.org/articles/trump-perpetuates-undeclared-war-in-somalia-wit...

On February 1, 2025, U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM), in coordination with the federal government of Somalia, conducted the first airstrikes in the country under the new Trump administration. The strikes targeted ... a hub for ISIS-Somalia (IS-S). IS-S is now an integral financial and recruitment hub for the global Islamic State network, generating millions of dollars in revenue and growing its ranks with fighters from as far north as Morocco to as far south as Tanzania. The United States has been carrying out operations in Somalia since at least 2002 without a formal war declaration. Shortly after the September 11, 2001, plane attacks, George W. Bush ... sent Special Forces and CIA operatives to Somalia to capture suspected al-Qaeda members. The Obama years saw an unprecedented rise in drone warfare. The full scale of the air war remains unknown. The death toll of these operations are also unknown; U.S. claims denying civilian casualties are routinely disputed by people on the ground and the Somali government. A 2023 letter authored by 24 Somali and international rights organizations and addressed to the Secretary of Defense says: “Civilian victims, survivors, and their families have yet to receive answers, acknowledgement, and amends despite their sustained efforts to reach authorities over several years.” From Somalia to Afghanistan, Iraq to Libya, the American promise of safety arrives on the wings of drones, its humanitarianism indistinguishable from war.

Note: Read a leaked CIA report that admits drone strikes and targeted killings can backfire by increasing support for extremist groups, especially when civilians are killed or insurgent leaders gain notoriety. For more, read about the failure of US military policy in Somalia.


Hey Elon: We Found a Place to Cut More Than $2 Trillion in Wasteful Spending
2025-02-28, The Intercept
Posted: 2025-03-11 19:56:01
https://theintercept.com/2025/02/28/musk-doge-pentagon-military-spending-f35/

Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency began its cost-cutting efforts by dismantling the U.S. Agency for International Development. DOGE has since targeted agencies focused on children’s education, protecting the natural world, and food safety. But after more than a month running roughshod through government, DOGE has made strikingly few cuts at the Pentagon, whose bloated budget tips the scales at around $850 billion — accounting for about 13 percent of federal spending. One Pentagon official said that DOGE has so far taken on “weak” agencies, but that Musk’s cost-cutters will be “steamrolled” if they lock horns with the Defense Department. Major savings at the Pentagon can be found through the reduction or elimination of dysfunctional, expensive, or dangerous weapon systems like the F-35 combat aircraft; vulnerable Navy ships with limited utility like a new generation of aircraft carriers; and the Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missile program, according to William Hartung, a senior research fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. The F-35 combat aircraft is a bloated boondoggle, and it’s already on Musk’s radar. More than two decades in, the F-35 is still suffering from key flaws in its software and hardware — a total of 873 unresolved defects, according to one Pentagon analysis. If it’s allowed to run its course, the F-35 will be the most expensive weapons program in history, at a total cost of $1.7 trillion.

Note: Learn more about unaccountable military spending in our comprehensive Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center. For more, read our concise summaries of news articles on government waste.


If Musk wants to find waste, here’s where he should look
2025-03-06, Washington Post
Posted: 2025-03-11 19:53:44
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/03/06/elon-musk-gao-waste-fraud-...

Every two years since 1990, at the start of each new Congress, [Government Accountability Office] scientists, actuaries and investigators have produced a “high risk list” of where the federal government mismanages its resources and taxpayer money. Over that 35-year span, more than three-quarters of a trillion dollars has been saved by implementing the GAO’s recommendations. The 2025 list cites at least $150 billion in payment errors and fraud in each of the past seven years — chiefly in overpayments by Medicare, Medicaid, the unemployment insurance system and the Earned Income Tax Credit. And that $150 billion figure is no doubt vastly understated, given that agencies failed to report improper payments for at least nine “risk-susceptible” programs. The government’s failure to collect all the taxes that it is owed was estimated to have cost more than $600 billion in the 2022 tax year alone, which underscores how absurd it is for Musk to cut the Internal Revenue Service workforce in half. The Defense Department ... is responsible for about half of discretionary spending. “There are many major acquisitions across the government, including DOD weapons systems, GAO boss Gene Dodaro [said]. “They’re on the high list.” Pentagon contracts and the ones the Energy Department signs regarding nuclear weapons, he added, “are consistently overrun, over budget and delays occur. And they don’t deliver on the promises.”

Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on government waste.


Welcome to the New Military-Industrial Complex
2025-02-24, The Nation
Posted: 2025-03-11 19:50:53
https://www.thenation.com/article/economy/anduril-military-industrial-complex...

Last April, in a move generating scant media attention, the Air Force announced that it had chosen two little-known drone manufacturers—Anduril Industries of Costa Mesa, California, and General Atomics of San Diego—to build prototype versions of its proposed Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA), a future unmanned plane intended to accompany piloted aircraft on high-risk combat missions. The Air Force expects to acquire at least 1,000 CCAs over the coming decade at around $30 million each, making this one of the Pentagon’s costliest new projects. In winning the CCA contract, Anduril and General Atomics beat out three of the country’s largest and most powerful defense contractors ... posing a severe threat to the continued dominance of the existing military-industrial complex, or MIC. The very notion of a “military-industrial complex” linking giant defense contractors to powerful figures in Congress and the military was introduced on January 17, 1961, by President Dwight D. Eisenhower in his farewell address. In 2024, just five companies—Lockheed Martin (with $64.7 billion in defense revenues), RTX (formerly Raytheon, with $40.6 billion), Northrop Grumman ($35.2 billion), General Dynamics ($33.7 billion), and Boeing ($32.7 billion)—claimed the vast bulk of Pentagon contracts. Now ... a new force—Silicon Valley startup culture—has entered the fray, and the military-industrial complex equation is suddenly changing dramatically.

Note: For more, read our concise summaries of news articles on warfare technologies and watch our latest video on the militarization of Big Tech.


Instead of Pausing a Ban on Bribing Foreign Officials, Trump Should Strengthen It
2025-02-25, Common Dreams
Posted: 2025-03-11 19:47:58
https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/trump-ban-foreign-bribery

On February 10, U.S. President Donald Trump issued an executive order ... to pause the enforcement of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. The FCPA was the first law in modern history to ban a country’s own citizens and companies from bribing foreign officials. Citing the law as one of the “excessive barriers to American commerce abroad,” President Trump has instructed the attorney general to—at her discretion—“cease the initiation of any new FCPA investigations or enforcement actions.” This move ... risks a revival of the pre-1970s period, when bribery was a routine practice among major U.S. arms contractors. In late 1975 and early 1976, Idaho Sen. Frank Church’s Subcommittee on the Conduct of Multinational Corporations of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee exposed widespread foreign bribery on the part of U.S. oil and aerospace firms, with the starring role played by Lockheed Martin, which bribed officials in Japan, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Saudi Arabia, Nigeria, Indonesia, Mexico, and Colombia in pursuit of contracts for its civilian and military aircraft. A 2022 Quincy Institute study found that U.S.-supplied weapons were present in two-thirds of the world’s active conflicts, and that at least 31 clients of the U.S. arms industry were undemocratic regimes. If President Trump is serious about his campaign pledge to “stop the war profiteering,” it is the worst possible time to shelve the FCPA, given that bribery by U.S. companies is alive and well.

Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on government corruption.


Will Absorbing the ATF Into the FBI Rein in Each Agency's Abuses?
2025-02-26, Reason
Posted: 2025-03-11 19:45:54
https://reason.com/2025/02/26/can-kash-patel-rein-in-the-atfs-abuses/

By appointing FBI Director Kash Patel as acting head of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF), President Donald Trump took a step towards reining in a federal agency justifiably viewed by many as a threat to self-defense rights. He also signaled that he may consolidate government bodies that overlap in their responsibilities. It's impossible to credibly argue that the ATF doesn't need a shakeup. After all, this is a federal agency that ran guns to criminal gangs in Mexico as part of a bizarre and failed "investigation," manipulated mentally disabled people into participating in sting operations—and then arrested them, lost thousands of guns and gun parts, killed people over paperwork violations, and unilaterally reinterpreted laws to create new felonies out of thin air (which means more cause for sketchy investigations and stings). The federal police agency obsessively focused on firearms has long seemed determined to guarantee itself work by finding ever more things to police. But what about putting the same person in charge of both the ATF and the FBI? Merging agencies—if that's where this is headed—might improve internal communications by clarifying chains of command and eliminating interagency competition. But—and this is a big concern—done wrong, you'd end up with a supercharged federal enforcement agency with all the hostility to civil liberties its old components embodied when separate, but now with lots more clout.

Note: Read how CBS journalist Sharyl Attkisson was hacked by government operatives over her reporting on Fast and Furious. A.T.F. agents once ran a secret multimillion-dollar slush fund for illicit operations and personal perks, bypassing oversight and violating their own rules. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on intelligence agency corruption.


This Mexican Priest Performed as a Wrestler to Pay for Orphanage that Nurtured Thousands
2025-03-05, Good News Network
Posted: 2025-03-11 19:43:44
https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/this-mexican-priest-performed-as-a-wrestler-t...

Fray Tormenta was a masked wrestler that delighted crowds in Mexico’s lucho libre circuit for years, but few would have known that underneath the mask there was a man of god—a drug addict turned priest, who wrestled purely to raise money for an orphanage. The story, though decades old, resurfaced and was retold recently on a Spanish news outlet. Sergio Gutierrez Benitez was born in 1945 the second-youngest of 18 children. By the tender age of 11, Benitez was addicted to drugs and proceeded down a path of crime, robbery, and odd jobs to fund his various dependencies. After that ... he joined the seminary and became a priest in the Piarist Order, studying in Spain and Italy to cement his faith. After joining the Diocese of Texcoco, he wanted to build a shelter for the city’s many homeless children and orphans, but the costs were prohibitive. So he pulled on a lucho libre mask and started wrestling for $15 per hour under the name Fray Tormenta. He ended up wrestling for 23 years, from 1977 to 2000, traveling from town to town elbow dropping, tombstoning, and double-legging his way to semi-stardom. Relying on his mask to hide his identity, he eventually revealed his double-personality to officiate the wedding of a close wrestling colleague shortly before opening his orphange ... at the turn of the millennium. Fray Tormenta’s Puppies Children’s Home, has seen over 2,000 children pass through its walls.

Note: Explore more positive and inspiring human interest stories.


Mud boots of empathy in Spain
2024-11-05, Christian Science Monitor
Posted: 2025-03-11 19:41:49
https://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/the-monitors-view/2024/1105/Mud-boots-of...

A week after an intense storm battered its eastern coast, Spain has seen thousands of volunteers come from all directions to help towns devastated by floods. “Humanity is still capable of forgetting its differences,” said Toni Zamorano, who spent hours on the roof of his submerged car in the town of Sedaví. “Here, race or economic level don’t matter. This solidarity makes you feel great,” he [said]. Political differences in Spain bore little relation to the unity felt by ordinary citizens during the disaster. “Polarization is a major distraction,” [España Mejor, a civil society group] stated. The storm’s impact brought a visit by King Felipe VI on Sunday to the city of Paiporta, where floods had swept away thousands of homes and businesses. Some residents pelted him and his entourage with mud and insults out of anger over the government’s slow response to the disaster. In Paiporta, the [king's] security detail begged him three times to leave the throng. He and Queen Letizia stayed. They listened, hugged, and wept with residents. Anger softened. In a poll published Tuesday in the online newspaper El Español, the townspeople expressed their gratitude for the monarchs’ visit. They acknowledged the risk they had taken to be there. Back in Madrid, Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez Pérez-Castejón said his government should have done more sooner. Spain’s unity at this moment is from the bottom up. Or, as Spanish professional soccer player Ferran Torres wrote on social media, “The people are the ones who save the people. ... Long live Spain.”

Note: Explore more positive stories like this on healing social division.


When dignity, not labels, defines a people
2025-02-07, Christian Science Monitor
Posted: 2025-03-11 19:39:57
https://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/the-monitors-view/2025/0207/When-dignity...

In coming days, Iraq will do something extraordinary in a Middle East where identities are often anchored by tribe, religion, or ethnicity. It will release detailed results of its first national census in decades – without any of those pigeonholing categories. In other words, data collated from a two-day, door-to-door survey conducted last November will not break down people by labels such as Shiite or Sunni, Kurd or Arab. Aimed at simply helping officials divvy up elected seats and spread resource wealth equally to everyone, the census will not reduce individuals to demographic stereotypes. For more than four decades, [Iraq] suffered major conflicts and several civil wars driven in large part by identity differences. In 2019, student-led protests against corruption took aim at a governing system that ensures the prime minister is always a Shiite Muslim, the parliamentary speaker a Sunni Muslim, and the president a Kurd. (That quota system is akin to one in Lebanon.) With the Mideast in high flux from Gaza to Syria to Iran – and with elections expected in Iraq this year – “There is a maturing among the Iraqi public and its leadership,” wrote analyst Muhammad Al-Waeli in the website 1001 Iraqi Thoughts. Young Iraqis may be the most eager to define themselves as Iraqis first. Preliminary data from the census showed 56% of the population of 45.4 million was born after the 2003 American-led invasion that ousted a dictatorship. This cohort took the brunt of the 2013-2017 civil war fueled by the Islamic State. Civic ideals, not social stigmas, may now unite many Iraqis.

Note: Explore more positive stories like this on healing social division.


US-funded ‘social network’ attacking pesticide critics shuts down after Guardian investigation
2025-02-10, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2025-03-06 17:59:09
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/feb/10/v-fluence-pesticide-critics

A US company that was secretly profiling hundreds of food and environmental health advocates in a private web portal has said it has halted the operations in the face of widespread backlash, after its actions were revealed by the Guardian and other reporting partners. The St Louis, Missouri-based company, v-Fluence, said it is shuttering the service, which it called a “stakeholder wiki”, that featured personal details about more than 500 environmental advocates, scientists, politicians and others seen as opponents of pesticides and genetically modified (GM) crops. The profiles – part of an effort that was financed, in part, by US taxpayer dollars – often provided derogatory information about the industry opponents and included home addresses and phone numbers and details about family members, including children. They were provided to members of an invite-only web portal where v-Fluence also offered a range of other information to its roster of more than 1,000 members. The membership included staffers of US regulatory and policy agencies, executives from the world’s largest agrochemical companies and their lobbyists, academics and others. The profiling was one element of a push to downplay pesticide dangers, discredit opponents and undermine international policymaking, according to court records, emails and other documents obtained by the non-profit newsroom Lighthouse Reports. “I’m quite familiar with corporate harassment of scientists who produce unwelcome research, and sometimes this includes dredging up personal information on the scientist to make their work look less credible,” [law professor Wendy] Wagner said.

Note: When the Guardian initially reported this story, it specified that v-Fluence was funded through a contract with a USAID program to promote GM crops in Africa and Asia. Read how Monsanto employed shadowy networks of consultants, PR firms, and front groups to spy on and influence reporters. For more, explore our concise summaries of news articles on toxic chemicals.


Google Ad-Tech Users Can Target National Security ‘Decision Makers’ and People With Chronic Diseases
2025-02-20, Wired
Posted: 2025-03-06 17:56:36
https://www.wired.com/story/google-dv360-banned-audience-segments-national-se...

A WIRED investigation into the inner workings of Google’s advertising ecosystem reveals that a wealth of sensitive information on Americans is being openly served up to some of the world’s largest brands despite the company’s own rules against it. Experts say that when combined with other data, this information could be used to identify and target specific individuals. Display & Video 360 (DV360), one of the dominant marketing platforms offered by the search giant, is offering companies globally the option of targeting devices in the United States based on lists of internet users believed to suffer from chronic illnesses and financial distress, among other categories of personal data that are ostensibly banned under Google’s public policies. Among a list of 33,000 audience segments obtained by the ICCL, WIRED identified several that aimed to identify people working sensitive government jobs. One, for instance, targets US government employees who are considered “decision makers” working “specifically in the field of national security.” Another targets individuals who work at companies registered with the State Department to manufacture and export defense-related technologies, from missiles and space launch vehicles to cryptographic systems that house classified military and intelligence data. In the wrong hands, sensitive insights gained through [commercially available information] could facilitate blackmail, stalking, harassment, and public shaming.

Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on Big Tech and the disappearance of privacy.


Got waste? Let’s eliminate billions in corporate farm subsidies.
2024-08-16, The Hill
Posted: 2025-03-06 17:53:58
https://thehill.com/opinion/5152241-us-agriculture-reform-brooke-rollins/

Brooke Rollins, our new secretary of Agriculture, is promising to reform the department. If she’s serious about eliminating waste, she’ll take a hard look at the wasteful mandates and billions of U.S. tax dollars that go directly to agricultural corporations every year. Despite spending $20 billion a year of our tax dollars on farm subsidies, Americans never see most U.S. agriculture products. We only eat about 37 percent of major crops produced. Subsidies over-incentivize production of foods that are making us sick. Heavily subsidized corn often ends up as high-fructose corn syrup in heavily processed foods like sugary cereals and beverages. Through direct subsidies and import restrictions, we also prop up sugar cane and sugar beet production. The overconsumption of these unhealthy foods contributes to obesity, diabetes, heart disease and other diet-related illnesses that cost our health system more than $1 trillion a year. If Rollins really cares about making America healthy again, she should stop forcing taxpayers to foot the bill for foods that are making us ill. Consumers can still buy whatever they want without lining the pockets of corporations benefiting from over-producing unnecessary, unhealthy foods. Between 2017-2022, the U.S. agricultural industry lost more than 100,000 small and medium farms to consolidation. Currently, only 6 percent of farms produce 90 percent of all meat, dairy and poultry products.

Note: Read how our centralized, corporate-controlled food system wastes enormous amounts of food, destroys biodiversity, and relies on harmful chemicals — all while crushing local farmers and communities. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on corruption in government and in the food system.


Renowned physicist warns of unseen dangers in farming technique: 'Single biggest destructive force on the planet today'
2025-02-25, Yahoo News
Posted: 2025-03-06 17:51:11
https://www.yahoo.com/news/renowned-physicist-warns-unseen-dangers-110039984....

"Food is a weapon. When you sell real weapons, you control armies. When you control food, you control society. But when you control seeds, you control life on Earth," [Indian physicist and social advocate Vandana] Shiva says in her feature-length documentary The Seeds of Vandana Shiva, referring to industrial farming as the "single biggest destructive force on the planet today." Shiva may be most renowned for her work opposing Asia's Green Revolution, a well-meaning initiative in the 1960s to increase food production in less-developed countries. However, Shiva argued that the revolution's tactics were more harmful than helpful, increasing the use of toxic pesticides and polluting fertilizers while reducing indigenous seed biodiversity. Moreover, farmers became dependent on chemical solutions, which raised their operating costs. To combat this, the [Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology] founded seed banks across India in the 1990s as part of its Nine Seeds project, teaching farmers about sustainable agriculture, which incorporates practices that improve soil and ecosystem health, protect against erosion, and reduce the need for expensive chemicals. Shiva has also authored numerous books addressing corporate plundering of poorer countries, the potential pitfalls of seed biodiversity loss related to genetically modified crops, and proposing the development of innovative solutions. "We will continue to create a new world — seed by seed, person by person," Shiva says.

Note: Read more about Vandana Shiva's courageous activism. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on food system corruption.


Food companies want to confuse consumers. The FDA must push back.
2025-01-21, The Hill
Posted: 2025-03-06 17:48:28
https://thehill.com/opinion/healthcare/5092327-food-labeling-proposal-industr...

The “Make America Healthy Again” agenda has catapulted nutrition issues to the forefront of conversations about Americans’ health. The policy proposals range from getting junk foods out of schools to preventing the government from subsidizing candy through programs like SNAP. To advance these policies, we need a clear system of labeling unhealthy junk foods in the food supply. The Food and Drug Administration is considering implementing this type of labeling system, but the food industry is trying to interfere. Warning labels signaling when foods are high in salt, added sugar and saturated fat can help consumers easily identify which foods they should limit. Ten countries already require such labels, and the National Academy of Medicine first recommended them in the U.S. more than 14 years ago. Food companies criticize the science supporting front-of-package labeling, delay public consultation periods, push for their own confusing label designs and emphasize the possible harms of a mandatory labeling policy. Food companies have deployed these tactics to avoid effective labeling policies around the globe for decades. In the public discourse, food companies are making distracting arguments about the possible harms of a clear front-of-package labeling policy, arguing that such labels may hurt the economy, raise food prices, scare consumers or lead to shame when selecting certain foods. None of these arguments are supported by scientific evidence.

Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on food system corruption.


Farmers ‘very worried’ as US pesticide firms push to bar cancer diagnoses lawsuits
2025-02-10, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2025-03-06 17:46:52
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/feb/10/pesticide-lawsuits-cancer...

Pesticide company efforts to push through laws that could block litigation against them is igniting battles in several US farm states. Laws have been introduced in at least eight states so far and drafts are circulating in more than 20 states, backed by a deluge of advertising supporting the measures. The fight is particularly fierce now in Iowa, where opponents call the pesticide-backed proposed law the “Cancer Gag Act”, due to high levels of cancer in Iowa that many fear are linked to the state’s large agricultural use of pesticides. Iowa has the second-highest rate of new cancer cases in the United States and the fastest growing rate. The bill would bar people from suing pesticide manufacturers for failing to warn them of health risks, as long as the product labels are approved by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Opponents say the legislation will rob farmers and others who use pesticides from holding companies accountable in court if their pesticide products cause disease or injury. “We’re very worried. Our farmers feel that if they have injuries or illnesses due to their use of a pesticide they should have access to the courts,” said [Iowa Farmers Union president] Aaron Lehman. The actions in the states come alongside a simultaneous push for changes in federal law that would in effect shield companies from lawsuits brought by people claiming they developed cancers or other diseases due to their use of pesticides.

Note: Thousands of farmers and everyday people have filed lawsuits against major corporations for failing to warn consumers about the health risks associated with these chemicals. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on toxic chemicals and food system corruption.


Pfizer hires ex-FDA drug chief as top doctor
2025-02-24, The Hill
Posted: 2025-03-06 17:44:42
https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/5161459-former-fda-drug-division-chief-...

The former head of the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) drug division is joining Pfizer as its chief medical officer. Patrizia Cavazzoni was formerly director of the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research (CDER) from 2020 until January, when she resigned just ahead of President Trump’s return to office. Cavazzoni previously worked at Pfizer prior to joining the FDA in 2018. The announcement spurred renewed criticisms about the common “revolving door” between the FDA and industry. Critics worry the close relationship leads to a quid pro quo and favoritism toward industry. Scott Gottlieb, FDA commissioner during Trump’s first term, now serves on the board of Pfizer. Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has long accused the FDA of being corrupt and beholden to industry influence and has pledged to root out supposed conflicts of interest across the agency. Just ahead of the election, while Trump was considering him for HHS secretary, Kennedy posted on social media that FDA employees who are “part of this corrupt system” should “pack their bags.” Watchdog group Public Citizen panned Cavazzoni’s hiring. “Cavazonni’s move demonstrates that the revolving door between the FDA and the industries it regulates is alive and well and continues to undermine the FDA’s credibility as a public health agency,” the organization’s health research group director Robert Steinbrook said.

Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on corruption in government and in Big Pharma.


Gen Zers says antidepressants have ruined their sex lives: ‘I’m dead inside’
2025-02-25, New York Post
Posted: 2025-03-06 17:42:50
https://nypost.com/2025/02/25/us-news/gen-zers-says-antidepressants-have-ruin...

Nick was 19 when a psychiatrist offered him the antidepressant Trintellix to treat his moderate anxiety and depression after just a few short visits. Going on the popular selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) ... didn’t seem like a big deal at the time. But, when Nick went off the medication after six years, he immediately noticed his genitals were losing sensation. Over the course of a couple weeks, he almost entirely lost feeling in the area — and it never returned, nor did the high sex drive he once had. He would ultimately learn he suffers from Post-SSRI Sexual Dysfunction (PSSD). “I wasn’t at risk of taking my own life or anything like that … I still had a hell of a lot of fun in life … I think I definitely should have [done] therapy first and foremost,” he said. “Now there’s just no enjoyment in anything. It’s like watching a brick wall.” For many, antidepressants are lifesaving treatments, but, in rare instances, they can potentially cause debilitating side effects that persist for years after stopping the drugs. SNOMED, the National Institute Of Health’s official source of medical terminology for US healthcare systems, recognizes PSSD as a legitimate disorder as of last year, defining it as “persistent sexual side effects” including genital numbness and loss of libido that “can last for weeks, months, or even years after stopping” antidepressants. The rate of prescriptions for those ages 12 to 25 jumped by about two-thirds from 2016 to 2022. “The studies that were done for SSRIs to be approved by the FDA were not done on children, they were done on adults,” [clinical psychologist Meg Jay] said. “But now it’s much more common for tweens and teens to be prescribed medications than it used to be." In the past two years alone, [Psychopharmacologist and former professor of psychiatry David Healy] said he’s known more than a dozen people, many of them young, who were so distressed by PSSD that they committed suicide.

Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on Big Pharma corruption.


Antidepressants Might Accelerate Dementia Decline
2025-02-25, US News & World Report
Posted: 2025-03-06 17:40:43
https://www.usnews.com/news/health-news/articles/2025-02-25/antidepressants-m...

Antidepressants are frequently prescribed to people with dementia for symptoms like anxiety, depression, aggressiveness and sleeplessness. But a specific class of antidepressant medications - selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) - actually might speed up brain decline among some dementia patients, a new Swedish study suggests. Heavier doses of certain SSRIs are tied to a higher risk for severe dementia, researchers reported in a new study ... in the journal BMC Medicine. The SSRI drug escitalopram was associated with the fastest cognitive decline, followed by citalopram and sertraline. For the study, researchers tracked the brain health of more than 18,700 patients enlisted in the Swedish Registry for Cognitive/Dementia Disorders between May 2007 and Oct. 2018. The patients’ average age was 78. During an average follow-up of more than four years, about 23% of patients received a new prescription for an antidepressant, researchers said. SSRIs were the most commonly prescribed antidepressant, amounting to 65% of all those prescriptions, the study says. “Higher dispensed doses of SSRIs were associated with higher risk for severe dementia, fractures, and all-cause mortality,” the researchers concluded. “These findings highlight the significance of careful and regular monitoring to assess the risks and benefits of different antidepressants use in patients with dementia.”

Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on Big Pharma corruption.


Short ribs, soup and secrets: Our critic’s exclusive lunch at the CIA
2025-02-24, Washington Post
Posted: 2025-03-06 17:38:49
https://www.washingtonpost.com/food/2025/02/24/cia-dining-room-agency-restaur...

The toughest restaurant reservation in the country is at a suburban D.C. dining room. Inside, diners pay in cash for high-quality meals whipped up by a chef identified only by his first name. He can tell outsiders only that he works as the executive chef of a secure government building. Cellphones are forbidden. That’s because the only people who can book a table here at one of the most secure compounds in the world are employees of the Central Intelligence Agency in Langley, Virginia. As the first food critic ever admitted to the 50-seat Agency Dining Room, I find myself in covert company. The director of the agency approves the menus, which change quarterly. Before he made headlines with it in the White House, then-CIA Director George H.W. Bush let it be known that he didn’t want to be served broccoli. William J. Casey had a sweet tooth; one of his favorite desserts was apple tarte Tatin. The agency’s most recent director, William J. Burns, ate on the healthful side, “a salad with a protein,” sometimes Caesar with salmon and often on a tray delivered to his office, says the executive chef. John Ratcliffe, the new director appointed by Trump, always begins his day with a fresh cup of coffee from the Agency Dining Room and is looking forward to trying the smash burger, according to the CIA. Servers aren’t tipped at the CIA because they are paid differently from servers on the outside, Neises says. Waiters at the agency are doing “mission-critical work.”

Note: Learn about the rise of the CIA in our comprehensive Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center. For more, read our concise summaries of news articles on intelligence agency corruption.


From source to stomach: How blockchain tracks food across the supply chain and saves lives
2024-08-12, World Economic Forum
Posted: 2025-03-06 17:36:55
https://www.weforum.org/stories/2024/08/blockchain-food-supply-chain/

Efficiently run food supply chains can positively impact communities and lives across the globe. Real-time tracking supports sustainability, prevents food waste, and ensures compliance with environmental, social and governance (ESG) standards. Communication throughout the supply chain can help producers earn fair compensation for their efforts. Traditional approach to food supply chain management face challenges to efficiency, security and transparency. The consequences can be dire, from food waste to death by contamination. Blockchain technology can provide much-needed transparency, traceability and privacy, as well as co-ordination across disparate parties, enabling greater food access and quality improvements across the global supply chain. Built on a blockchain backend, Silal Fresh adopted a comprehensive traceability solution that utilizes consumer apps, a web-based dashboard, and integration with existing supply chain management systems. This significantly improved identifying and flagging delays in their deliveries, as well as increased satisfaction, trust and brand loyalty. They even added tracking to each piece of produce so that a consumer could pick up a vegetable, scan a QR code, and see that food item's journey. Ultimately, increased transparency and traceability can save lives. With improved traceability, food recalls can happen faster, and the source of contamination can be determined quicker.

Note: Our latest video explores the potential for blockchain to transform society for the better. Explore more positive stories like this on technology for good.


Social prescribing: why purpose is good for your health
2024-07-23, BBC News
Posted: 2025-03-06 17:34:47
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20240723-how-volunteer-social-prescribing-...

Akeela Shaikh is a natural carer. But the care jobs she loved so much started to tax her physically. She tried antidepressants, then counselling although neither worked for her. But then a nurse gave Shaikh a different kind of medicine: "She gave me a card that read 'social prescribing'." The card led to a phone call with Joanne Gavin, at the time a link worker with Bolton Community and Voluntary Services. Instead of asking "what's the matter with you", link workers ask patients "what matters to you" and find suitable community activities that fit their answer. It was clear what mattered to Shaikh was really another chance to take care of someone. Gavin intuited this. And when she asked Shaikh what she thought might help her feel better, she honoured her answer: "a job". Gavin prescribed the perfect gig for Shaikh: a shift at the office of Lagan's Foundation, a non-profit providing caregiving to children with complex needs. After Gavin intervened, Shaikh says she started feeling more like herself. "It was a way for Akeela to still be involved with the care inside, without the heavy lifting." The power of social prescribing – helping patients to improve their health and wellbeing by connecting them to community resources and activities – is increasingly backed by scientific studies. Prescriptions can cover everything from art classes and cycling groups to food and heating bills. One particularly surprising 2019 study of nearly 7,000 older Americans found that life purpose was significantly inversely linked with all-cause mortality. In other words, having a high sense of life-purpose could help you live longer than those who lack one. "My approach is to listen to someone's story and look at not just what's going on now but what they were like before they started to feel depressed or anxious," says Gavin.

Note: Explore more positive stories like this on healing our bodies and healing social division.


'The Connection Cure' explores social prescriptions to improve mental and physical health
2024-06-25, WBUR
Posted: 2025-03-06 17:32:54
https://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2024/06/25/connection-cure

A social prescription is officially defined as a nonmedical resource or activity that aims to improve a person’s health and strengthen their community connections. Don’t let the “social” bit fool you: These are not small-talky, introvert hellscapes where docs sprinkle friendship fairy dust and motley crews of strangers suddenly become best buds. And they’re not prescribed only for social isolation, either. Social prescriptions can cover everything from orchestra practice to fresh vegetables and can help treat everything from depression to poverty. Instead of replacing other kinds of medicine, social prescriptions complement them, offering healing that pills and procedures can’t offer alone. Instead of just treating symptoms of sickness, social prescriptions reconnect us to our sources of wellness. And instead of just addressing “What’s the matter with you?”, social prescriptions address “What matters to you?” History is filled with examples of “social prescribing” from all around the globe. Indigenous groups have long linked an individual’s health to the health of their interconnected relationships— both with their neighbors, and the natural world. African villages have long used community rituals to help heal and prevent stress and pain. Traditional Chinese medicine and Ayurveda in India have long emphasized the relationship between a person’s body and their surrounding environment. If we want to change our health, we have to change our environment, too.

Note: Explore more positive stories like this on healing our bodies and healing social division.


How Working Class Americans Became Second-Class Citizens
2024-04-02, Free Press
Posted: 2025-03-01 17:47:55
https://www.thefp.com/p/working-class-americans-second-class-citizens

Americans are constantly told we are hopelessly divided. Our politicians relentlessly accuse the other side of undermining democracy and endangering the vulnerable, while our legacy media, which no longer even pretends to be objective, consistently portrays its side’s enemies in the starkest of terms. A 2019 study by James Druckman and Matthew Levendusky in Public Opinion Quarterly found that individuals harbor more animus toward the other party’s elites than they do toward people who vote for the other party. I spent one year interviewing working-class Americans across the country from every political persuasion for my new book, and what I found was a remarkable consensus on the issues. The partisan claims of a polarized America ring especially false to working-class Americans. Two-thirds of Americans agree that abortion should be rare and also legal. This is because—unlike the college-educated elites who run the country—they don’t identify with the full list of policy proposals produced by either party. Working-class Americans across the country ... want higher wages. They want better healthcare—or really, just affordable healthcare. They want stable jobs that reward their immense efforts with [what] top income brackets take for granted: a home. And yet, neither political party represents these positions that unify most Americans. They know that the way they vote reflects only a portion of their political views, and extremely little of their larger identities. There is no party that represents the American Dream, in which a life of hard work is rewarded by a home, retirement, the occasional vacation, and a better life for one’s kids. In other words, a life free from the precariousness that plagues the working class today. It’s led to a working-class electorate that feels alienated from both parties.

Note: A groundbreaking 2022 study by More in Common revealed that Americans significantly overestimated the extremity of the beliefs held by those with differing viewpoints. Read our powerful Substack on healing the polarization poisoning our conversations. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on financial inequality.


Dennis Kucinich: The Cost of Freedom
2025-02-16, ScheerPost
Posted: 2025-03-01 17:45:55
https://scheerpost.com/2025/02/16/dennis-kucinich-the-cost-of-freedom/

There is an undeniable link between fiscal integrity and the preservation of our freedoms as Americans. When government becomes corrupt, it erodes not only our personal liberties and financial security, but also fosters a culture of lawlessness in both the public and private sectors. The corruption has been institutionalized in the federal budget. It has been normalized as standard operating procedure. The waste of taxpayers’ money is ubiquitous — trillions for wars, trillions in waste, fraud, and abuse. Trillions have been lost in an accounting jumble. This has been our government’s system of checks and balances: The Administration writes the checks, and Congress doesn’t know what the balance is. Most members do not know what is in the $7.3 Trillion spending bill, and those who do aren’t talking. The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) reported more than $100 billion in improper Medicare and Medicaid payments in 2023. A Commission on Wartime Contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan estimated the cost of waste, fraud, and abuse to be upwards of $60 BILLION, deriving from a lack of oversight, no internal controls in keeping track of who received the money, who spent it, and what it was spent for—and if indeed its purpose was accomplished. This hypocrisy—condemning endless wars while funding and escalating wars—allowed the military-industrial complex to thrive.

Note:This was written by Dennis Kucinich, former Democratic congressman and nationally recognized leader in peace and social justice. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on government corruption and government waste.


How the U.S. Government Controls Ukrainian Media
2025-02-18, Free Press
Posted: 2025-03-01 17:43:51
https://www.thefp.com/p/us-government-controls-ukrainian-media

An independent Ukrainian journalist named Ostap Stakhiv was livestreaming a call with Vasyl Pleskach, a man claiming he was being illegally detained by Ukraine’s infamous military conscription unit, the TCC. The agency has been accused of kidnapping men from the street and forcing them to the front lines. In the middle of the interview, Stakhiv called the police to see if they would free Pleskach. Just then, with the police still on the line, a burly figure entered Vasyl’s frame, walked over to Pleskach, and struck him hard in the face. “They’re beating him right now,” Stakhiv told the police. “People are watching it live. Go to my YouTube channel and see it for yourself.” None of Ukraine’s media outlets covered the beating, but about a month later, a Ukrainian media outlet, Babel, ran an article about Stakhiv. Its headline? “Ostap Stakhiv—a Failed Politician and Antivaxxer—Created a Vast Anti-Conscription Network.” Other Ukrainian outlets ... chimed in with similar stories—some even containing identical phrasing. Nine out of 10 media outlets in Ukraine “survive thanks to grants” from the West. The primary funder of these outlets is an NGO called Internews. And where does Internews get its money? Primarily from USAID, to the tune of $473 million since 2008. There’s no doubt that USAID’s media program in Ukraine has done some good. But critics charge that the money comes with strings. It is one thing for a country to pass laws that restrict speech in times of war. It is quite another when “independent” media outlets ... engage in that same censorship, and orchestrate smear campaigns against journalists who report on abuses. One of the most blatant abuses, which has been going on since 2023, is the military recruiter practice of snatching men from the streets, breaking into apartments, and even torturing men who have refused to join the military. Dozens of videos documenting these abuses have been widely shared on social media.

Note: Read about the Chilean-American war commentator who died in prison under brutal circumstances after being smeared as a pro-Russian propagandist because he challenged the official narrative about the war in Ukraine. For more, watch world-renowned economist and public policy analyst Jeffrey Sach's powerful address at the EU Parliament about the deeper history of US and NATO involvement with Ukraine.


USAID Falls, Exposing a Giant Network of US-Funded ‘Independent’ Media
2025-02-19, ScheerPost
Posted: 2025-03-01 17:41:53
https://scheerpost.com/2025/02/19/usaid-falls-exposing-a-giant-network-of-us-...

The Trump administration’s decision to pause USAID funding has plunged hundreds of so-called “independent media” outlets into crisis, thereby exposing a worldwide network of thousands of journalists, all working to promote U.S. interests in their home countries. USAID spends over a quarter of a billion dollars yearly training and funding a vast, sprawling network of more than 6,200 reporters at nearly 1,000 news outlets. Oksana Romanyuk, the Director of Ukraine’s Institute for Mass Information, revealed that almost 90% of the country’s media are bankrolled by USAID, including many that have no other source of funding. [Independent media is] defined as any media outlet, no matter how big an empire it is, that is not owned or funded by the state. Some USAID-backed journalists candidly admit that their funding dictates ... what stories they do and do not cover. Leila Bicakcic, CEO of Center for Investigative Reporting (a USAID-supported Bosnian organization), admitted, on camera, that “If you are funded by the U.S. government, there are certain topics that you would simply not go after, because the U.S. government has its interests that are above all others.” While the press may be lamenting the demise of USAID-backed media, many heads of state are not. “Take your money with you,” said Colombian President Gustavo Petro, “it’s poison.” Nayib Bukele, President of El Salvador, shared a rare moment of agreement with Petro. “Most governments don’t want USAID funds flowing into their countries because they understand where much of that money actually ends up,” he wrote, explaining that: "At best, maybe 10% of the money reaches real projects that help people in need (there are such cases), but the rest is used to fuel dissent, finance protests, and undermine administrations that refuse to align with the globalist agenda.”

Note: The New York Times reported in 2014 that USAID was used as a front for CIA regime change operations all over the world, and played a central role in overseeing the trillion-dollar failure of the war and reconstruction effort in Afghanistan. USAID has a long history of child sex abuse cover-ups, fraud allegations, indictments, and inadvertently funding terrorists.


Burying the CIA’s Assange Secrets
2025-02-20, ScheerPost
Posted: 2025-03-01 17:38:17
https://scheerpost.com/2025/02/20/burying-the-cias-assange-secrets/

A United States judge dismissed a lawsuit pursued by four American attorneys and journalists, who alleged that the CIA and former CIA Director Mike Pompeo spied on them while they were visiting WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange in Ecuador’s London embassy. The lawsuit claimed that the plaintiffs, like all visitors, were required to “surrender” their electronic devices to employees of Undercover Global, a Spanish security company managed by David Morales that was hired by Ecuador to handle embassy security. They were unaware that UC Global had allegedly “copied the information stored on the devices” and shared the information with the CIA. Pompeo allegedly approved the copying of visitors’ passports, “including pages with stamps and visas.” He ensured that all “computers, laptops, mobile phones, recording devices, and other electronics brought into the embassy,” were “seized, dismantled, imaged, photographed, and digitized.” In September 2021, Yahoo News published an investigation “based on conversations with more than 30 former U.S. officials—eight of whom described details of the CIA’s proposals to abduct Assange.” Pompeo allegedly “championed” proposals to abduct Assange after WikiLeaks published the Vault 7 materials in 2017. Pompeo favored a rendition operation that would involve breaking into the Ecuador embassy to drag Assange out and bring him to the U.S. “via a third country.”

Note: Read about the CIA plots to kidnap or assassinate Assange. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on intelligence agency corruption.


DOGE discovers $4.7 trillion in Treasury payments were missing critical code: ‘Traceability almost impossible’
2025-02-17, AOL
Posted: 2025-03-01 17:35:58
https://www.aol.com/doge-discovers-4-7-trillion-011921056.html

The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) announced Monday that some $4.7 trillion in payments from the Treasury Department were missing a critical tracking code, which made tracing the transactions “almost impossible.” The transactions were reportedly missing the Treasury Account Symbol (TAS), an identification code which links a Treasury payment to a budget line item, according to DOGE, which described the use of such code as a “standard financial process.” “In the Federal Government, the TAS field was optional for ~$4.7 Trillion in payments and was often left blank, making traceability almost impossible,” read an X post from DOGE. The Elon Musk-led project to curb waste, fraud and abuse in the federal government said that in light of the discovery, use of the TAS code is now mandatory. “As of Saturday, this is now a required field, increasing insight into where money is actually going,” DOGE said. “This is methodical and it is going to yield big savings,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said. DOGE recently proposed “deleting paper checks” at Treasury, arguing that it would save taxpayers “at least $750 million per year.” The initiative noted that the Treasury Department must keep “a physical lockbox” to collect the more than 100 million checks it processes each year, which costs about $2.40 per check to maintain. In fiscal year 2023, some $25 billion in tax refunds were delayed or lost due to returned or expired checks.

Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on government corruption and government waste.


I Tried To Fix Government Tech for Years. I'm Fed Up.
2025-02-13, Reason
Posted: 2025-03-01 17:34:19
https://reason.com/2025/02/13/i-tried-to-fix-government-tech-for-years-im-fed...

The years I spent trying to make government more efficient at the Department of Veterans Affairs (V.A.) and USDS required a lot of patience. Now I'm fresh out. I hope DOGE will obliterate the Paperwork Reduction Act (PRA) from space. This law, which was written in 1980—before computers were common in homes—requires that every government form, and every change to every government form, must go through the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA). This office has no expertise in user research or form design. Agencies self-report how many "burden hours" it takes to fill out their forms, and OIRA has no way to check this either. Some of the most talented people I've ever worked with have spent years of their own getting OIRA to agree to, and write down, such novel concepts as "legal things are legal." I'm not kidding—OIRA issued guidance last year that agencies are allowed to get feedback from the public, something which has always been legal. I wanted to have one form "wizard" that would allow a veteran to enter their information once, and automatically apply for all the benefits for which they were eligible. OIRA told me that to do this, I would first have to submit every possible permutation of this wizard for approval—a request I would have found delicious to comply with, were there enough trucks on the planet to deliver that amount of paper. We worked within the system. The system blocked us from helping people. I shouldn't have had to waste two and a half years of my life on this, while millions of veterans went without health care and other benefits they had earned.

Note: This article was written by Marina Nitze, former Chief Technology Officer of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs under President Obama, former Senior Advisor on technology in the Obama White House, and first Entrepreneur-in-Residence at the U.S. Department of Education. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on government corruption and government waste.


Russia and US agree to work toward ending Ukraine war in a remarkable diplomatic shift
2025-02-18, Associated Press
Posted: 2025-03-01 17:32:20
https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-war-riyadh-talks-trump-putin-rubio-...

Russia and the U.S. agreed Tuesday to start working toward ending the war in Ukraine and improving their diplomatic and economic ties, the two countries’ top diplomats said after talks that reflected an extraordinary about-face in U.S. foreign policy under President Donald Trump. After the meeting, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the two sides agreed broadly to pursue three goals: to restore staffing at their respective embassies in Washington and Moscow, to create a high-level team to support Ukraine peace talks and to explore closer relations and economic cooperation. He stressed, however, that the talks — which were attended by his Russian counterpart, Sergey Lavrov, and other senior Russian and U.S. officials — marked the beginning of a conversation, and more work needs to be done. No Ukrainian officials were present at the meeting. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said his country would not accept any outcome from the talks since Kyiv didn’t take part. Ties between Russia and the U.S. have fallen to their lowest level in decades in recent years — a rift that has been widening ever since Russia illegally annexed Crimea from Ukraine in 2014 and only worsened after Moscow’s full-scale invasion. The U.S., along with European nations, imposed a raft of sanctions on Russia in an effort to damage its economy. Meanwhile, Russia continued to pummel Ukraine with drones, according to Kyiv’s military.

Note: Watch our new video on transforming the war machine. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on war.


Hegseth orders 8% cut to Pentagon budget. Not so fast.
2025-02-20, Quincy Center for Responsible Statecraft
Posted: 2025-03-01 17:30:02
https://responsiblestatecraft.org/pentagon-budget-200-billion/

Critics of overspending at the Pentagon were excited to see a Washington Post piece ... that initially gave the impression that the Trump administration was entertaining the idea of imposing substantial cuts in the Pentagon budget. The piece ... opens as follows: “Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has ordered senior leaders at the Pentagon and throughout the U.S. military to develop plans for cutting 8 percent from the defense budget in each of the next five years, according to a memo obtained by The Washington Post and officials familiar with the matter — a striking proposal certain to face internal resistance and strident bipartisan opposition in Congress.” But upon clarification, it became clear that the plan is not to reduce the Pentagon’s top line, but to shift any savings found in one part of the department to pay for other systems and activities more in line with the preferences of the administration. If the Trump team – or any administration – really wants to save substantial sums at the Pentagon, it should rethink America’s overly ambitious military strategy, an interventionist approach that is backed up by hundreds of overseas military bases, up to 170,000 troops stationed abroad, and counter-terror operations in dozens of countries. Add to this near record U.S. arms sales for 2024, and the enormous focus America places on war and preparation for war becomes clear. Making America more secure at a lower cost must involve a genuine reevaluation of the nation’s strategic goals.

Note: Learn more about unaccountable military spending in our comprehensive Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center. For more, read our concise summaries of news articles on military corruption and government waste.


Concern over Google ending ban on AI weapons
2025-02-05, BBC News
Posted: 2025-03-01 17:27:33
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy081nqx2zjo

Alphabet has rewritten its guidelines on how it will use AI, dropping a section which previously ruled out applications that were "likely to cause harm". Human Rights Watch has criticised the decision, telling the BBC that AI can "complicate accountability" for battlefield decisions that "may have life or death consequences." Experts say AI could be widely deployed on the battlefield - though there are fears about its use too, particularly with regard to autonomous weapons systems. "For a global industry leader to abandon red lines it set for itself signals a concerning shift, at a time when we need responsible leadership in AI more than ever," said Anna Bacciarelli, senior AI researcher at Human Rights Watch. The "unilateral" decision showed also showed "why voluntary principles are not an adequate substitute for regulation and binding law" she added. In January, MP's argued that the conflict in Ukraine had shown the technology "offers serious military advantage on the battlefield." As AI becomes more widespread and sophisticated it would "change the way defence works, from the back office to the frontline," Emma Lewell-Buck MP ... wrote. Concern is greatest over the potential for AI-powered weapons capable of taking lethal action autonomously, with campaigners arguing controls are urgently needed. The Doomsday Clock - which symbolises how near humanity is to destruction - cited that concern in its latest assessment of the dangers mankind faces.

Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on AI and Big Tech.


The restaurant staffed solely by people who’ve experienced homelessness
2027-02-17, Positive.News
Posted: 2025-03-01 17:23:47
https://www.positive.news/society/the-restaurant-staffed-by-people-whove-expe...

It’s 4pm on a Friday, and the staff at Home Kitchen, north London’s buzziest new restaurant, are prepping for another busy evening’s service. Not only is the restaurant run not-for-profit, but nearly all of the staff members have experienced homelessness: a first of its kind in the fine-dining industry. The project is run by a five-strong team, which includes two-time Michelin-starred chef Adam Simmonds and Soup Kitchen London director Alex Brown. Home Kitchen partnered with homelessness charity Crisis and social enterprise Beam to fill eight kitchen and eight front of house roles, when they opened their restaurant in autumn 2024. Other partners include the Beyond Food Foundation, the Only A Pavement Away charity and fellow charity, The Passage. Funded by a £500,000 crowdfunding drive and social investment loans, Home Kitchen provides staff with a comprehensive package that’s designed to help them avoid returning to homelessness. The 16 staffers are employed on full-time contracts, paid at London Living Wage, have their travel cards covered for zones one and two, and receive catering qualifications in addition to in-house training. The employee support offered by Crisis and Beam is ongoing, while the Home Kitchen team leaders take it upon themselves to check in with staff every day. “[There’s] a lot of support, a lot mentally. If someone’s upset, straight away they’ll take them to a corner and be like: ‘Talk to me, what’s happening?’ It’s really, really, really nice,” [French-Algerian chef] Mimi says. At the end of daily service, the team sit down and break bread (literally) with a communal meal. “It’s a brilliant team. Everybody supports everybody,” adds Jones, with a smile. “When service starts, we’re all equal.”

Note: Explore more positive stories like this on reimagining the economy.


Cycling to school almost became extinct - until one man revived the bike bus
2025-02-20, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2025-03-01 17:21:53
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/feb/20/cycling-to-school-almost-...

“It’s a movement, not a moment.” That’s the mantra from Sam “Coach” Balto, a former school teacher from Portland, Oregon who quit his day job to stoke a revolution called the “bike bus” – groups of kids and families cycling to school together. How did one person in a mid-sized American city turn a weekly bike ride into something of a phenomenon? He leaned on the power of social media. In the past two years his videos have been viewed by hundreds of millions of people. In Portland, a “bike train” movement kicked off in 2010 when a 24-year-old bike advocate named Kiel Johnson began organising what he referred to as “bike trains” at an elementary school, where riders would join a mass of cyclists at various stops along a route to school. It caught on and in just a few months Johnson had signed up six other schools, won a grant, and had been interviewed by a national television show. “When you joined one of the big bike trains it really felt like you were part of something,” Johnson recalls. The children loved it, and why wouldn’t they? It’s good for children’s health – mental and physical – and also has a ripple effect of advantages for the whole family, as any Dutch person will argue. Many of Balto’s students say the best thing about the bike bus is that it’s simply a cool thing to do with friends. In the past year alone, Balto’s videos have been viewed more than 200m times. Balto, who now runs the nonprofit Bike Bus World, credits social media for building the movement.

Note: Watch an inspiring video of Sam Balto leading a massive bike bus on Earth Day in Portland. Explore more positive human interest stories.


Solar Experiment Lets Neighbors Trade Energy Among Themselves
2017-03-13, New York Times
Posted: 2025-03-01 17:19:31
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/13/business/energy-environment/brooklyn-solar...

Brooklyn is known the world over for things small-batch and local, like designer clogs. In a promising experiment in an affluent swath of the borough, dozens of solar-panel arrays spread across rowhouse rooftops are wired into a growing network. Called the Brooklyn Microgrid, the project is signing up residents and businesses to a virtual trading platform that will allow solar-energy producers to sell excess-electricity credits from their systems to buyers in the group, who may live as close as next door. The project is still in its early stages — it has just 50 participants thus far — but its implications could be far reaching. The idea is to create a kind of virtual, peer-to-peer energy trading system built on blockchain, the database technology that underlies cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin. The ability to complete secure transactions and create a business based on energy sharing would allow participants to bypass the electric company energy supply and ultimately build a microgrid with energy generation and storage components that could function on their own, even during broad power failures. “The long-term goal is to be at least partially independent of the grid in emergencies, which was a reasonable argument to join,” said Patrick Schnell, whose Gowanus basement flooded during Hurricane Sandy in 2012. “Hopefully it will expand and more people will join and it will be more worthwhile.”

Note: Our latest video explores the potential for blockchain to transform society for the better. Explore more positive stories like this in on technology for good.


BlackRock's Larry Fink says the US election 'really doesn't matter' for markets
2024-10-22, Yahoo News
Posted: 2025-02-20 23:12:33
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/blackrocks-larry-fink-says-us-143857961.html

Larry Fink doesn't think the US election will affect markets much. The BlackRock CEO doubled down on saying the outcome of the US election, which will be decided in two weeks, won't matter in the long run. He said that BlackRock works with both administrations and is "having conversations" with both Vice President Kamala Harris and Republican nominee Donald Trump. BlackRock, which manages $11.5 trillion in assets via passive and active strategies, has ties and conflicts to both parties. Trump has invested in BlackRock funds, campaign finance forms showed. Since winning the last election in 2020, President Joe Biden has stocked his administration with BlackRock alumni, including Adewale Adeyemo, the deputy Treasury secretary, and Mike Pyle, Vice President Harris' chief economic advisor. Both previously worked in the Obama administration. Last year, a bipartisan House committee began looking into BlackRock's investments in China, for their stakes in Chinese companies blacklisted over claims of supporting China's military or alleged human rights abuses. Fink is not the only Wall Street heavyweight saying the election won't matter to financial markets. In an interview in May, Mike Gitlin, CEO of the $2.7 trillion investing giant Capital Group, said that over the long term, markets climb higher regardless of who wins, and he doesn't agree with rebalancing a portfolio because of election outcomes.

Note: Blackrock is now considered to be the fourth branch of government. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on financial industry corruption.


At USAID, Waste and Abuse Runs Deep
2025-02-03, Whitehouse.gov
Posted: 2025-02-20 23:09:58
https://www.whitehouse.gov/uncategorized/2025/02/at-usaid-waste-and-abuse-run...

For decades, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) has been unaccountable to taxpayers as it funnels massive sums of money to the ridiculous — and, in many cases, malicious — pet projects of entrenched bureaucrats, with next-to-no oversight. Here are only a few examples of the WASTE and ABUSE: $1.5 million to “advance diversity equity and inclusion in Serbia’s workplaces and business communities”; $70,000 for production of a “DEI musical” in Ireland; $47,000 for a “transgender opera” in Colombia; $32,000 for a “transgender comic book” in Peru; $2 million for sex changes and “LGBT activism” in Guatemala; $6 million to fund tourism in Egypt; Hundreds of thousands of dollars for a non-profit linked to designated terrorist organizations — even AFTER an inspector general launched an investigation; Millions to EcoHealth Alliance — which was involved in research at the Wuhan lab, Hundreds of thousands of meals that went to al Qaeda-affiliated fighters in Syria; Funding to print “personalized” contraceptives birth control devices in developing countries; Hundreds of millions of dollars to fund “irrigation canals, farming equipment, and even fertilizer used to support the unprecedented poppy cultivation and heroin production in Afghanistan,” benefiting the Taliban. The list literally goes on and on — and it has all been happening for decades.

Note: USAID may have funded the creation of COVID-19 and has funneled billions into Ukraine. Could it be that this organization is a front for an intelligence agency? For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on government waste.


Sen. Joni Ernst warns of ‘willful sabotage’ at USAID, cites millions in funding for Wuhan lab, terrorists and more
2025-02-05, New York Post
Posted: 2025-02-20 23:07:10
https://nypost.com/2025/02/05/us-news/sen-joni-ernst-warns-of-willful-sabotag...

The embattled US Agency for International Development has engaged in “willful sabotage of congressional oversight” over recent years while doling out taxpayer dollars to groups that overbilled the US and possibly gave funds to terrorists, Sen. Joni Ernst alleged. [Ernst] listed a slew of examples on social media this week on why “USAID is one of the worst offenders of waste in Washington.” This includes $2 million in funding related to Moroccan pottery classes, some $2 million backing trips to Lebanon, over $1 million to fund research in the Wuhan lab, $20 million to make a Sesame Street in Iraq and $9 million in humanitarian aid that “ended up in the hands of violent terrorists.” The White House has similarly outlined “waste and abuse” in USAID as the Trump administration eyes a dramatic overhaul of the agency. In a Wednesday letter to Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Ernst ... cited her concerns about wasteful spending and recounted obstruction she faced from USAID. In one example she highlighted, an inspector general discovered that Chemonics, a USAID contractor, overbilled the feds by “as much as $270 million through fiscal year 2019” and was caught “possibly offering kickbacks to terrorist groups.” Chemonics had been heavily involved in a $9.5 billion USAID initiative to beef up global health supply chains, which ultimately ended in dozens of arrests and indictments over the resale of agency-funded products on the black market.

Note: USAID may have funded the creation of COVID-19 and has funneled billions into Ukraine. Could it be that this organization is a front for an intelligence agency?


USAID Funded Censorship, Smears of Americans
2025-02-04, Lee Fang on Substack
Posted: 2025-02-20 23:04:12
https://www.leefang.com/p/usaid-funded-censorship-smears-of

Viral social media claims from last night regarding USAID and Politico ... suggested that ongoing spending cuts at USAID, the foreign aid agency, were shutting down domestic media outlets supposedly dependent on government money. There is no evidence that the freeze in USAID funding had any impact on Politico payroll. That said, USAID does separately fund various questionable news operations. The Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), a major investigative news outlet responsible for the Panama Papers and other blockbuster news series, relies heavily on State Department and USAID funding. Officials have used their leverage over OCCRP to influence editorial and personnel decisions at the outlet. USAID money flows to contractors operating news outlets worldwide, such as Pact, Inc. and the East West Management Institute. Yesterday, I wrote about USAID contractor Internews, which operates and funds several Ukrainian news outlets, many of which have called for censoring pro-peace American journalists and activists over false allegations that they are Russian agents. Most insidiously, these Ukrainian outlets act as independent fact-checkers, providing outsourced content moderation services to Meta and TikTok. In other words, these outlets operate as convenient third parties for the U.S. government to censor dissident voices in ways it could not do directly.

Note: USAID may have funded the creation of COVID-19 and has funneled billions into Ukraine. Could it be that this organization is a front for an intelligence agency? For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on censorship.


USAID’s History Of Regime Change, Destabilization, And Censorship Justifies Its Closure By Trump
2025-02-03, Public on Substack
Posted: 2025-02-20 23:01:49
https://www.public.news/p/usaids-history-of-regime-change-destabilization

President Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and their Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) are undermining democracy and national security by taking over the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), say Democrats and the media. But there was nothing illegal, unethical, or inappropriate about DOGE’s takeover of USAID, and nobody has presented any evidence that it threatens national security. The American people elected Trump who appointed Musk to oversee DOGE, as Trump has a right to do. “With regards to the USAID stuff,” said Musk, “I went over it with (the president) in detail and he agreed that we should shut it down.” Trump sought to merge USAID with the State Department in 2017. Researchers have caught USAID abusing its powers, including by funding everything from censorship to the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), which may have done research that resulted in the Covid pandemic. Between 2004 and 2022, USAID was the largest US government funder of EcoHealth Alliance, which sub-awarded grant funding to WIV. USAID gave EcoHealth Alliance $54 million during that period, which was more even than the $42 million the group received from the Pentagon. As for progressive Democrats, they should be embracing Trump’s actions against USAID. Left-wing anti-imperialist groups have for 50 years criticized USAID as an extension of US government interventionism abroad.

Note: USAID may have funded the creation of COVID-19 and has funneled billions into Ukraine. Could it be that this organization is a front for an intelligence agency?


“Scorecard, Scorecard, You Can’t Tell al-Queda Without a Scorecard.”
2025-02-02, The Kucinich Report on Substack
Posted: 2025-02-20 22:54:57
https://denniskucinich.substack.com/p/scorecard-scorecard-you-cant-tell

The topic of Syria seems to have the full attention of the Senate Intelligence committee when it comes to reviewing the deposed Assad Regime, but lacks an understanding of the role that the CIA has played in putting al-Queda, or whatever you want to call it, in the driver’s seat in Damascus. Yes, you read that right, U.S. tax dollars, errantly or not, poured into the hands of jihadists, al-Queda consorts, motley adventurers and soldiers of fortune, with the end of ousting Assad. Former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii and Senator Rand Paul brought this to the attention of Congress through the introduction of the ‘Stop Arming Terrorists Act.’ Unfortunately, the bill went nowhere and the U.S. kept arming terrorists. Al-Queda, their heirs and assigns, somehow made the surrealistic journey from crashing planes into buildings at the World Trade Center ... to being ushered into power with the help of the bungled regime-change-conniving of a U.S. intelligence agency. As a member of Congress for 16 years, I kept track of the runs, hits and errors in the Middle East, to warn about the consequences of U.S. policy in the region, so here is a scorecard on Syria: The new self-declared leader of Syria was born Ahmad Joulani. As a member of al Queda in Iraq, working under al-Zarqawi, his name was Abu Mohammad al-Jolani, a name he kept, while al-Queda in Iraq (a branch of the original al-Queda, founded by Osama bin Laden in 1988) shape-shifted into the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI) and then into ISIS, the Islamic State. As al-Queda in Iraq expanded in 2011, Jolani, received Al-Queda’s Syrian franchise, and renamed it Jabhat al-Nusra (Nusra Front).

Note: This was written by Dennis Kucinich, former Democratic congressman and nationally recognized leader in peace and social justice. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on 9/11 and intelligence agency corruption.


‘DOGE’ might be a punchline, but wasteful federal spending is the real joke
2024-11-24, The Hill
Posted: 2025-02-20 22:53:23
https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/5002949-us-government-efficiency-doge/

For years, the late Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) published an annual report on government waste, appropriately titled “The Wastebook.” Coburn and his staff catalogued billions of dollars in dubious spending, ranging from the ridiculous (like a $1 million grant to study romance novels) to the outrageous (like $65 million in hurricane relief that was spent on tourism advertisements). Last year ... the Government Accountability Office released a report revealing that 17 out of 24 federal agencies are utilizing less than 25 percent of their office space. Not one of the agencies used even half the office space it occupied, topping out at 49 percent. Federal agencies spend about $2 billion every year to operate and maintain these buildings, plus an additional $5 billion per year to lease office buildings. By selling underutilized properties and consolidating operations, the federal government could generate hundreds of millions if not billions of dollars in revenue, in addition to reducing the expense of maintaining property and buildings that are barely being used. Between 2010 and 2023, the federal government saved an estimated $600 billion simply by implementing GAO recommendations, some of which are as simple and common-sense as improved documentation and monitoring to prevent overpayments. Another promising way of reducing federal spending would be to cut redundancy. Multiple federal agencies are concurrently working on the same issues — in some cases, literally dozens of federal agencies are all working independently on the same problem.

Note: GAO estimates that the federal government Federal Government loses an estimated $233 billion to $521 billion annually to fraud and waste. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on government waste.


Why Elites Love Identity Politics
2025-01-14, Jacobin
Posted: 2025-02-20 22:50:48
https://jacobin.com/2025/01/elite-identity-politics-professional-class

“If we broke up the big banks tomorrow, would that end racism? Would that end sexism?” This quote from one of [Hilary Clinton's] campaign rallies has an unusual durability. The Democratic Party’s answer to Bernie Sanders’s propagation of economic justice and economic issues was to smear him as somebody who ignored the plight of what they love to call — their new term — “marginalized groups,” which is people of color, women, trans people, all matters dealing with sexuality. [Hilary Clinton's] victory over Bernie Sanders in the Democratic primary reshaped center-left politics for a decade and established identity politics as a standard tool in the Democratic Party belt. For basically a decade ... you couldn’t even criticize [identity politics] without being smeared as a racist, a sexist, whatever term would work to instantly discredit any criticism while shutting down any critical thought of what that criticism represented. There’s a huge rise in the number of black elected officials, mayors, congressmen, etc. [They] no longer have any reason to cater to working-class blacks because workers are politically disorganized. The political officials end up captured by the same corporate forces as the white politicians — but they get to have the corner on race talk. To deal with the quality of life and life chances of the vast majority of racial minorities, you have to go beyond disparities and look at the actual availability of social goods, not the current distribution of different races. Identity politics promotes strategies and policies that primarily address the interests of elites rather than the vast majority of working Americans. As long as the American political system is run on money, the basic direction of both parties is going to be set by big money. The way out is not by confining ourselves to increasing representation and combating discrimination, but rather by addressing the quality of the jobs and the availability of basic goods.

Note: Watch an excellent interview of journalist Batya Ungar-Sargon discussing how journalism has shifted from being a working class trade that held the powerful accountable to an elite industry that serves the upper class. She articulates that mainstream news has abandoned and divided the working class by creating a culture war around identity and race. Elites shaping the news industry benefit from this political polarization, which hides the tragic reality of income inequality that affect all races across political lines.


I’m a trans-clinic whistleblower — Trump is right to ban sex changes for kids
2025-01-30, New York Post
Posted: 2025-02-20 22:48:36
https://nypost.com/2025/01/30/opinion/im-a-clinic-whistleblower-trans-kids-ba...

Is President Trump pushing gender-confused kids to commit suicide? This shocking claim hit mainstream and social media within minutes of the president’s Jan. 28 executive order banning federal funding for child sex-change treatments. The way the argument goes, if kids can’t get puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and surgeries, their mental health will deteriorate to the point of no return. But as I’ve seen while working with more than 1,000 such kids, there are deeper reasons why they’re so unhappy — and giving them powerful experimental drugs and irreversible surgeries is more likely to worsen their condition. From 2018 to 2022, I worked as a case manager for the Washington University Transgender Center at St. Louis Children’s Hospital. As kids kept coming back for follow-up check-ins and treatment — almost every kid who begins puberty blockers goes on to receive cross-sex hormones — I realized something was very wrong. When my colleagues and I asked about their mental health, they usually reported that it was the same or better. But as soon as we dug deeper, it became clear that the real answer was no — that their mental anguish was worsening. We ignored or explained away co-morbidities like autism, depression and bipolar disorder while using every new development or difficulty in a kid’s life to justify continuing down the sex-change road. In my experience, kids typically find the “treatment brings happiness” mantra of their doctors, nurses and case managers hard to see through. Some literally couldn’t look themselves in the mirror, even if they physically looked the part of a boy-turned-girl or vice-versa. While activists insist that kids simply “know who they are,” reality is more complicated.

Note: This article was written by Jamie Reed, a queer woman married to a trans man. Many transgender medical care experiences can indeed be life-changing and even life-saving, yet not all experiences align with the mainstream narratives. Reed isn't the only whistleblower who's worked in the field of youth transgender medicine. Even advocates who publicly promote gender medicine for kids question its ethics behind closed doors. Watch our nuanced 25-minute Mindful News Brief on the controversy surrounding youth gender medicine. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on transgender medicine.


Has the Government Legalized Secret Defense Spending?
2019-01-16, Rolling Stone
Posted: 2025-02-20 22:46:30
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/secret-government-spe...

October 4th, 2018, was a busy news day. The only thing that did not make the news was an announcement by a little-known government body called the Federal Accounting Standards Advisory Board — FASAB — that essentially legalized secret national security spending. The new guidance, “SFFAS 56 – CLASSIFIED ACTIVITIES” permits government agencies to “modify” public financial statements and move expenditures from one line item to another. It also expressly allows federal agencies to refrain from telling taxpayers if and when public financial statements have been altered. To Michigan State professor Mark Skidmore, who’s been studying discrepancies in defense expenditures for years, the new ruling ... was a shock. “From this point forward,” he says, “the federal government will keep two sets of books, one modified book for the public and one true book that is hidden.” I spent weeks trying to find a more harmless explanation for SFFAS 56, or at least one that did not amount to a rule that allows federal officials to fake public financial reports. I couldn’t find one. This new accounting guideline really does mean what it appears to mean. Late last year ... we saw an incident in which two employees of the National Reconnaissance Office and the NSA were arrested for procurement fraud in Colorado in a case involving a classified signals intelligence program. In that instance, the site turned out to be owned by the Department of Health and Human Services.

Note: Learn more about unaccountable military spending in our comprehensive Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center. For more, read our concise summaries of news articles on intelligence agency corruption.


The role model for Syria’s unity
2024-12-18, Christian Science Monitor
Posted: 2025-02-20 22:44:38
https://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/the-monitors-view/2024/1218/The-role-mod...

Since their liberation from a dictatorship Dec. 8, Syrians have been in a cheering mood. People in the capital gave a hero’s welcome to a grassroots rescue organization widely seen as the country’s most selfless, trusted, and impartial group: the Syrian Civil Defense, otherwise known as The White Helmets. This band of some 3,000 unarmed and local volunteers, who wear white headgear, has saved more than 129,000 people during 13 years of civil war. They have rushed to bombed-out buildings to search for survivors – whether they be children, terrorists, or soldiers of the regime. After they served as first responders, they would then clear rubble, rebuild homes, and restore communities. Even though some 10% of them have been killed, the volunteers hold fast to their motto (a verse in the Quran): “Whoever saves one life, it is as if they have saved all of humanity.” Its leader, Raed Al Saleh, says the group’s neutrality and independence have been an important shield. “We existed before all these armed groups and we continue to exist based on the power of the people,” he told Berkeley News in October. Now The White Helmets wants to help Syrians “shake off the dust of war,” he said in a video on the social platform X. That effort includes their help in freeing political prisoners, clearing land mines, and preserving documents of the regime’s abuses. “The Syria of peace and civilization will return to you,” said Mr. Saleh.

Note: Check out our video on transforming the war machine, highlighting the stories of courageous individuals and groups who channel their skills into service and solidarity. Explore more positive stories like this in our comprehensive healing the war machine.


9 Organizations Promoting Peace That Are Worth Watching In 2025
2024-11-19, Forbes
Posted: 2025-02-20 22:42:08
https://www.forbes.com/sites/timothyjmcclimon/2024/11/19/9-organizations-prom...

While praying for world peace and an end to national, ethnic, and religious conflicts is a good start, as Emmanuel Acho and Noa Tishby remind us in their recent book, Uncomfortable Conversations with a Jew, actions are more important than words. Getting involved with and supporting organizations that fight discrimination and promote peaceful dialogue can do more to change the world. The Carter Center in Atlanta is guided by the principles and its founders, Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter, and it has a commitment to human rights as well as preventing and resolving conflicts, enhancing freedom and democracy, and improving health. One of the ways, the Carter Center advances its mission is by observing elections (125 elections in 40 countries so far), and working in countries such as Ethiopia, South Sudan, Uganda, Haiti, and the Middle East. While The Carter Center is primarily focused outside the United States, during the recent polarized presidential election, it created a series of pro-democracy, sports-themed ads that were centered on the idea that we may not like the same teams, but we love the game and believe that everyone should adhere to its rules. The campaign sought to push the message of American unity into unexpected places where audiences might be more open to it, such as in Sports Illustrated, and professional baseball and football programs.

Note: Check out our video on transforming the war machine, highlighting the stories of courageous individuals and groups who channel their skills into service and solidarity. Explore more positive stories like this in our comprehensive healing the war machine.


This artist turned a forgiveness journey into a film
2024-10-16, Christian Science Monitor
Posted: 2025-02-20 22:40:31
https://www.csmonitor.com/The-Culture/Movies/2024/1016/exhibiting-forgiveness...

Filmmaker [Titus Kaphar] has many reasons to smile. The premiere for “Exhibiting Forgiveness” attracted attendees such as Serena Williams and Oprah Winfrey. The visually sumptuous movie examines what it takes to pardon wrongdoing. Famously, Mr. Kaphar was in his mid-20s when he decided to become an artist. The spark? An art history class in junior college. Mr. Kaphar taught himself how to paint by visiting art museums. In 2001, he completed an MFA degree at Yale. He was awarded the “genius grant” in 2018. Yet for all the artist’s success, he was secretly having panic-attack nightmares about his father. “The thing that was the revelation is that my father is not the villain of my narrative,” says Mr. Kaphar, who’d left home to live with relatives in California after witnessing his father commit a “heinous” act. While completing the script, Mr. Kaphar started writing and thinking from the perspective of La’Ron, the father. Mr. Kaphar realized that there are very few true villains in this world. “I began to realize that my father is as much a victim as I was. My father suffered at the hands of his father and, in fact, did better than his father,” he says. “That was difficult for me to accept initially. But by the time I got finished, it was just clear. It was absolutely clear. It meant that I have developed a new compassion and sympathy for my father.” Like his proxy character in the movie, Mr. Kaphar has let go of resentment toward his father. It had a healing effect. “Since the film, I haven’t had any more of those nightmares,” says Mr. Kaphar. “I haven’t had one for almost two years now."

Note: Explore more positive stories like this on the power of art.


Trump orders release of JFK, RFK and MLK assassination records
2025-01-23, Associated Press
Posted: 2025-02-20 22:37:41
https://apnews.com/article/trump-jfk-mlk-rfk-assassination-files-e92f89d694eb...

President Donald Trump has ordered the release of thousands of classified governmental documents about the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy. The executive order ... also aims to declassify the remaining federal records relating to the assassinations of Sen. Robert F. Kennedy and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. The order is among a flurry of executive actions Trump has quickly taken the first week of his second term. Speaking to reporters, Trump said, “everything will be revealed.” Trump had promised during his reelection campaign to make public the last batches of still-classified documents surrounding President Kennedy’s assassination in Dallas. Trump has nominated Kennedy’s nephew, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., to be the health secretary in his new administration. Kennedy’s father, Robert F. Kennedy, was assassinated in 1968 as he sought the Democratic presidential nomination. The younger Kennedy has said he isn’t convinced that a lone gunman was solely responsible for the assassination of his uncle, President Kennedy, in 1963. The order directs the director of national intelligence and the attorney general to develop a plan within 15 days to release the remaining John F. Kennedy records, and within 45 days for the other two cases. It was not clear when the records would actually be released. Most researchers agree that roughly 3,000 records have not yet been released, either in whole or in part, and many of those originated with the CIA.

Note: Read our comprehensive Substack investigation covering the dark truths behind the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on political assassinations.


Anna Paulina Luna to lead task force on declassification of JFK assassination records, Epstein client list
2025-02-11, Yahoo News
Posted: 2025-02-20 22:35:56
https://www.yahoo.com/news/anna-paulina-luna-lead-task-180011041.html

Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, R-Fla., will lead a new task force focused on the declassification of federal secrets – including records related to the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, Sen. Robert F. Kennedy and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and other documents in the public interest. House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., appointed Luna to chair the "Task Force on the Declassification of Federal Secrets." Comer and Luna sent letters to the State Department, Department of Energy and the CIA for documents relating to the origins of COVID-19; the National Security Agency and CIA for records relating to JFK, MLK and RFK assassinations; the Department of Defense and the CIA for 9/11 files; and to the Justice Department for documents relating to Jeffrey Epstein. The creation of the task force comes after President Donald Trump signed an executive order telling the director of national intelligence ... to present a plan for the full and complete release of all JFK assassination records within 15 days. He also ordered that officials immediately review the records relating to RFK and MLK assassinations and present a plan for their full and complete release within 45 days. "We have spent years seeking information on the assassinations of President Kennedy, Senator Kennedy, Reverend King, and other government secrets without success," Luna told Fox News Digital. "It is time to give Americans the answers they deserve."

Note: Read our comprehensive Substack investigations covering the dark truths behind the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr and the connection between Epstein’s child sex trafficking ring and intelligence agency sexual blackmail operations.


5 of the Worst USAID Scandals in History
2025-02-10, Reason
Posted: 2025-02-20 22:33:54
https://reason.com/2025/02/10/5-of-the-worst-usaid-scandals-in-history/

Drugs were the elephant in the room during the failed U.S. war in Afghanistan. Because opium was such a large part of the poor and war-torn country's economy, the fighting between the Taliban and the U.S.-backed Afghan republic often looked more like a turf war between rival narco gangs, with the U.S. military protecting some opium fields and bombing others. Afghan farmers were happy to take USAID's help while continuing to grow opium. For example, opium cultivation increased by 119 percent in the Kandahar Food Zone between 2013 and 2015, after USAID helped expand the irrigation systems there. A USAID-funded charity in Kenya allegedly covered up rampant sex abuse of children, and USAID funded a second charity in the Central African Republic a month after a major sex abuse scandal broke. The Children of God Relief Institute, which ran an orphanage for Kenyan children affected by AIDS and similar projects, received high praise from the U.S. government. From 2013 onward, USAID gave the institute $29.3 million. In 2021, a whistleblower told USAID that the charity was harboring a dark secret. USAID's inspector general soon determined that Children of God Relief Institute officials "knew or should have known of multiple incidents" of child sex abuse "but failed to take effective remedial measures to address the abuse." In some cases, the victims were forced to apologize for provoking their own abuse, The Washington Post reports.

Note: Watch our latest video on government waste, where we take a thoughtful look at the current political landscape and explore powerful solutions that have the potential to tackle wasteful spending and restore financial freedom. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on the war on drugs.


‘Crisis communications’: emails show how NFL’s Saints and NBA’s Pelicans helped New Orleans church spin abuse scandal
2025-02-03, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2025-02-20 22:31:09
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2025/feb/03/new-orleans-cl...

High-level executives with the NFL’s New Orleans Saints football team and the NBA’s Pelicans basketball team had a deeper role than previously known in connection with a list of priests and deacons faced with credible allegations of child molestation. According to highly sensitive emails ... one top executive even described a conversation with the New Orleans district attorney at the time that allowed them to remove clergy names from the list. The initial allegations about the emails led to local and national media investigations, including by Sports Illustrated and the Associated Press, that highlighted a fierce closeness between the sports franchises and the Catholic church in New Orleans. [Senior vice president of communications for the Saints and Pelicans Greg] Bensel sought to convince media outlets to limit their scrutiny of a list that turned out to be so incomplete it eventually precipitated a joint federal and state law enforcement investigation into whether the archdiocese spent decades operating a child sex-trafficking ring whose crimes were illegally covered up. After first seeing the so-called Saints emails in 2019 through a subpoena, abuse survivors’ attorneys alleged that the two franchises’ top officials had a significant hand in trying to minimize what was then a public-relations nightmare for the city’s archdiocese – but has since triggered a full-blown child sex-trafficking investigation aimed at the church by law enforcement. A [2019] newspaper article about a local deacon and alleged serial child molester thrust [New Orleans archbishop Gregory] Aymond into the center of the global Catholic church’s clergy-abuse scandal. The article questioned how the deacon, George Brignac, had been allowed to keep reading scripture at masses ... after he’d been arrested multiple times on child molestation charges.

Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on sexual abuse scandals.


Andrew emails show contact with Epstein lasted beyond 2010
2025-01-31, BBC News
Posted: 2025-02-20 22:24:58
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cp8qz22dqdzo

The Duke of York was in contact with the US sex offender Jeffrey Epstein longer than he had previously admitted, emails published in court documents appear to show. "Keep in close touch and we'll play some more soon!!!!" said an email sent to Epstein from a "member of the British Royal Family", believed to be Prince Andrew. The court documents, from the UK's Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), show the email as being sent in February 2011. In his BBC Newsnight interview, Prince Andrew had said he had not seen or spoken to Epstein after going to his house in New York in December 2010. Prince Andrew is believed to have first met Epstein in 1999, through Epstein's friend Ghislaine Maxwell. The following year, in June 2000, Epstein and Maxwell were among guests at a party at Windsor Castle. Later that year, Prince Andrew held a birthday party for Maxwell at Sandringham, with Epstein in attendance. The relationship appeared to continue, with Epstein attending another Windsor Castle party in July 2006. Between those times, in 2008, Epstein was convicted in the US for procuring a minor for prostitution and was sentenced to 18 months in prison. After Epstein left prison, Prince Andrew met him in New York in 2010. Andrew said this meeting was to end their relationship. In July 2019, Epstein was arrested on charges of the sex trafficking of minors. He died in prison. In November that year, Prince Andrew ... stepped down from royal duties.

Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on Jeffrey Epstein's child sex trafficking ring.


The US held migrants at Guantanamo before. Is Trump’s approach different?
2025-02-11, Al Jazeera
Posted: 2025-02-20 22:23:19
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/2/11/the-us-held-migrants-at-guantanamo-b...

The Donald Trump administration has started sending flights of undocumented migrants in the United States to Guantanamo Bay. The US has ... previously used a Guantanamo Bay camp to detain certain migrants, but Trump’s use is different, immigration experts have said. On January 29, Trump signed a memo directing the departments of defence and homeland security to expand the Migrant Operations Centre at Guantanamo Bay to “provide additional detention space for high-priority criminal aliens unlawfully present in the United States”. Historically, the US has used Guantanamo Bay to hold migrants stopped at sea. Now, Trump is sending people who were detained on US soil. Trump says he plans to detain 30,000 people. That many people haven’t been detained at Guantanamo Bay since the 1990s. Migrants at Guantanamo Bay lack “access to basic human necessities, appropriate medical care, education, and potable water,” the [International Refugee Assistance Project] said in [a] report. Migrants don’t have access to unmonitored calls with lawyers and can’t candidly speak about poor conditions at the naval base. “The US government intentionally uses Guantanamo in hopes of avoiding oversight and the public eye, which makes the facility ripe for abuse,” [interim senior policy director at the International Refugee Assistance Project Hannah] Flamm said.

Note: Explore our comprehensive news database on the dark history of Guantanamo Bay. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on immigration enforcement corruption.


Science is in trouble. And not just because of Trump.
2025-02-11, Boston Globe
Posted: 2025-02-20 22:21:28
https://www.bostonglobe.com/2025/02/11/opinion/charles-piller-doctored-alzhei...

I’m really annoyed, on behalf of the journalist Charles Piller, about the release date of his book “Doctored: Fraud, Arrogance, and Tragedy in the Quest to Cure Alzheimer’s.” Piller ... presents copious evidence of severe fraud, negligence, and buck-passing in Alzheimer’s research. From fabricated images published in major research journals (many of them still unretracted) to data manipulation conducted by pharmaceutical companies to complete negligence on the part of federal watchdogs, Piller’s reporting demonstrates indisputably that the field of Alzheimer’s research is in sorry shape. Journals ... have proved quite reluctant to retract papers that seem to plainly warrant it, while universities have frequently closed ranks around researchers credibly suspected of fraud rather than engage in prompt and thorough investigations. Journals and individual researchers not only are loath to correct or explain errors but are often unwilling to even respond to basic questions about their work. That’s the problem with demanding that people “trust” science just because it calls itself science, or just because it’s being conducted by an institution or an individual bearing impressive-seeming credentials. More deference is not the answer, because undue deference lies at the root of almost every major scandal in science. Why should you trust a journal that refuses to correct its errors or a university that protects a star researcher credibly accused of fraud?

Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on corruption in science.


In one of the Marines’ most iconic jobs, a stunning pattern of suicide
2025-02-11, Washington Post
Posted: 2025-02-20 22:19:57
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2025/02/11/marine-corps-dril...

Logan Sowell’s suicide in July 2021 is one of at least seven in the past five years involving the Marine Corps’ stable of drill instructors, according to military casualty reports obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests. In 2023, three occurred at Parris Island within less than three months. A study completed by the Marine Corps in 2019 found that during the previous decade, 29 drill instructors either ended their lives or openly acknowledged they had contemplated doing so — an aberration the study’s authors characterized as startlingly high compared with the occurrence of suicidal ideation among Marines who had never held that job. Rates of addiction and divorce among drill instructors also were higher, researchers found. Critics and relatives of those who died accuse the Marine Corps of fostering an environment that contributed to their deaths. They describe routine 90-hour-plus workweeks, sleep deprivation and an always-on culture that frequently caused the job’s requisite intensity to seep into their personal lives, igniting disputes with loved ones. Others detailed bouts of depression or alcohol dependency. The Marine Corps lacks adequate services for those who are struggling and need help, and tacitly condones a culture that stigmatizes those who seek it. “We put a drastic expectation on them to act perfect,” said a Marine officer who has supervised dozens of drill instructors. This top-down pressure ... “causes this stress that trickles into their home life.”

Note: Read about the tragic suicides and traumas of military drone operators. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on military corruption and mental health.


Beyond the scandals: How crypto is quietly revolutionizing philanthropy
2024-11-07, Salon
Posted: 2025-02-20 22:14:26
https://www.salon.com/2024/11/07/beyond-the-scandals-how-crypto-is-quietly-re...

In January 2024, The GivingBlock, one of the largest crypto donation platforms, reported that crypto donations had reached more than $2 billion, projected to exceed $10 billion by 2032. Crypto donors, who are largely millennials, contribute on average 128 times more per donation than cash donors. By leveraging tax incentives like capital gain offsets to eliminate taxes on donations, crypto giving is as financially smart as it is impactful. But the benefits of crypto giving go far beyond the financial incentives. Social impact is embedded in the foundation of Web 3. This new economy is fueled by cutting out traditional middlemen, banks, and allowing transparent, secure, and borderless peer-to-peer payments. No ID or passport is needed. This allows people, especially the unbanked, to have full control of their assets with minimal fees. Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has championed using memecoin momentum for good, saying, “I want to see quality fun projects that positively impact the ecosystem and the world.” He donated nearly $2 million in memecoin winnings to charities, including $532,000 to the Effective Altruism Fund's Animal Welfare Fund and over $1 million to the United Humanitarian Front, an organization providing grants to humanitarian relief initiatives in Ukraine. New Story, a nonprofit building homes to alleviate homelessness worldwide, partnered with artist Brian Ku to release a limited edition series of NFTs where each sale provided a 3D house for a family in Latin America.

Note: Watch our latest video on the potential for blockchain to fix government waste and restore financial freedom. Explore more positive stories like this on technology for good.


Bitcoin offers freedom from political repression—and that’s a key to its future
2021-02-18, Fortune
Posted: 2025-02-20 22:12:56
https://fortune.com/2021/02/18/bitcoin-censorship-political-repression-deplat...

Bitcoin usage in emerging markets is increasing rapidly. And while it’s true that Bitcoin can be a better alternative for unbanked peoples who don’t have the means, access, or even the basic proof of identity to open a bank account, it turns out its biggest benefit today for many people is that Bitcoin is censorship-resistant. In other words, government cannot throttle, control or monitor your behavior as they can in the legacy financial world. In 2020, protests against the government erupted in Lagos and across Nigeria because of the brutal and illegal actions of a unit in the police force. Within days, groups supporting the protesters had their bank accounts frozen. With no other option, they turned to Bitcoin, raising funds that sustained the movement. Peer-to-peer Bitcoin transactions can be zero-fee, a big break from the much higher fees many in Africa are forced to pay for basic financial services, such as those for remittances, which are on average closer to 9%. Alex Gladstein, chief strategy officer for the Human Rights Foundation, has identified a number of other countries, including China, Russia, Belarus, and Myanmar, where the government uses the monetary and banking systems to silence dissidents. Recent deplatforming by big social media companies of certain groups and individuals ... has raised concerns about similar risks in financial services, where banks can limit access to bank accounts, credit cards, and so forth.

Note: Watch our latest video on the potential for blockchain to fix government waste and restore financial freedom. Explore more positive stories like this on technology for good.


Telegram And Youtube Censorship Show Bitcoin And Nostr Are Critical
2024-08-26, Forbes
Posted: 2025-02-20 22:10:48
https://www.forbes.com/sites/digital-assets/2024/08/26/telegram-and-youtube-c...

The arrest of Telegram’s founder and the takedown of Simply Bitcoin’s Youtube channel for violating Youtube’s “harmful and dangerous” policy ... speaks to the power of corporations to mediate the reach of speech. French authorities have claimed that Durov was arrested, for among other things, providing “cryptology” tools. States couch their control of virtual space as an extension of their physical authority. Platforms and individuals are held to account for “crimes” being perpetuated on virtual space. One common thread is ... the idea of “misinformation.” Another is to use the most heinous crimes in a witch hunt - child abuse sexual material for example. Another favorite is “terrorism.” Networks like Bitcoin and Nostr are more needed than ever. They both give people geographic arbitrage, the ability to operate without corporate leadership, and a hedge against state repression. The network cannot be shut down or threatened to change its rules as quickly and as easily as arresting one CEO. Is the idea of “decentralization” possible in a world where states can arrest CEOs and founders? Nothing can prevent somebody from exchanging funds with one another using Bitcoin or expressing something on Nostr. Usage of these networks in a peer-to-peer manner with an array of self-custody wallets and clients shows a popular demand for privacy, encryption, and transmitting value without the prying eyes of the state.

Note: Watch our latest video on the potential for blockchain to fix government waste and restore financial freedom. Explore more positive stories like this on technology for good.


Digital Privacy To Humanitarian Aid: 5 Use Cases For Crypto In 2024
2023-12-28, Forbes
Posted: 2025-02-20 22:09:14
https://www.forbes.com/sites/digital-assets/2023/12/28/digital-privacy-to-hum...

Cryptocurrencies represent the marriage of decentralized networks (what we commonly know as the internet today) and assets like money. [Cryptocurrency] uniquely enables new solutions to otherwise intractable technological and social problems. Users often lose control over their personal information online, either all at once through platform hacks or bit-by-bit in the opaque world of online advertising and data brokers. A major issue is that the business model of big tech firms is advertising, creating an incentive to aggregate data into a single database, creating a “honeypot” for hackers. Blockchains can enable a new form of digital identity document for the web. Using these credentials, users can authenticate for services without having to divulge as much personal information. Traditional payment systems are often slow, costly and inaccessible to many. Cryptocurrencies backed by real-world currencies, dubbed “stablecoins,” provide an efficient alternative for global transactions. In 2023, stablecoins accounted for $4.5 trillion of crypto transaction volume on blockchain networks. Even digital payments giant PayPal announced the launch of its stablecoin earlier this year. Traditional humanitarian aid often suffers from inefficiency, lack of transparency and corruption, undermining its effectiveness and trustworthiness. Blockchain offers a solution by providing a transparent, traceable and secure system for humanitarian aid. A recent UN pilot [provided] aid directly to families affected by the war between Russia and Ukraine. The entertainment industry is famously concentrated, causing writers and actors to recently go on strike ... demanding better pay and new contract clauses. Blockchain technology enables more democratic digital economies through non-fungible token (NFTs) marketplaces like Zora, and decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) like CreatorDAO, allowing creators and artists to take advantage of online marketplaces and earn fair compensation for their contributions.

Note: Watch our latest video on the potential for blockchain to fix government waste and restore financial freedom. Explore more positive stories like this on technology for good.


C.I.A. Now Favors Lab Leak Theory to Explain Covid’s Origins
2025-01-25, New York Times
Posted: 2025-02-07 17:31:50
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/25/us/politics/cia-covid-lab-leak.html

The C.I.A. has said for years that it did not have enough information to conclude whether the Covid pandemic emerged naturally from a wet market in Wuhan, China, or from an accidental leak at a research lab there. But the agency issued a new assessment this week, with analysts saying they now favor the lab theory. There is no new intelligence behind the agency’s shift, officials said. John Ratcliffe, the new director of the C.I.A., has long favored the lab leak hypothesis. He has said it is a critical piece of intelligence that needs to be understood and that it has consequences for U.S.-Chinese relations. The announcement of the shift came shortly after Mr. Ratcliffe told Breitbart News he no longer wanted the agency “on the sidelines” of the debate over the origins of the Covid pandemic. Mr. Ratcliffe has long said he believes that the virus most likely emerged from the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Even in the absence of hard intelligence, the lab leak hypothesis has been gaining ground inside spy agencies. But some analysts question the wisdom of shifting a position in absence of new information. Five agencies, including the National Intelligence Council and the Defense Intelligence Agency, assessed that natural exposure most likely caused the epidemic. But they said that they had only low-confidence in their assessment. Until now, two agencies, the F.B.I. and Department of Energy, thought a lab leak was more likely. But their theories are different.

Note: For years, the lab leak hypothesis was labeled as “racist,” “ thoroughly debunked," and "something out of a comic book." If intelligence agencies are just now admitting the lab leak is ‘more likely,’ does that mean they were ignoring or covering up evidence—or just waiting for the political winds to shift? Watch our Mindful News Brief on the strong evidence that bioweapons research created COVID-19.


Dr. Anthony Fauci writes COVID-19 lab leak is a ‘conspiracy theory’ in memoir — but told Congress it wasn’t
2024-06-20, New York Post
Posted: 2025-02-07 17:29:22
https://nypost.com/2024/06/20/us-news/dr-anthony-fauci-writes-covid-19-lab-le...

Dr. Anthony Fauci writes in his new “tell-all” that those who argue the COVID-19 pandemic stemmed from a lab leak in Wuhan, China, potentially due to experiments funded by US grants, are promoting a “conspiracy theory” — contradicting his own recent testimony before Congress. NIH principal deputy director Dr. Lawrence Tabak told members of the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic last month that US taxpayers did fund gain-of-function research on bat SARS viruses at the WIV. Manhattan-based EcoHealth has denied that its work met the controlling definition for that research — or that the experiments could have led to the pandemic. Earlier this week, two scientific experts testified before another Senate committee that evidence points to the experiments at the Wuhan lab as the most likely cause of the COVID-19 pandemic. NIH, which oversees NIAID, awarded more than $500,000 to EcoHealth between 2014 and 2020 that was funneled toward risky viral research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. The research resulted in a modified virus that was 10,000 times more infectious in lungs, 1 million times more infectious in brains and three times more lethal in humanized lab mice, [Rutgers University molecular biologist Dr. Richard] Ebright testified earlier this week, based on NIH disclosures of the experiment. Another EcoHealth proposal, which was never funded, is seen as a potential way in which the virus could have been created.

Note: Read how the NIH bypassed the oversight process, allowing controversial gain-of-function experiments to proceed unchecked. Watch our Mindful News Brief on the strong evidence that bioweapons research created COVID-19. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on COVID and corruption in biotech.


CIA operative reveals mental disorder agency 'actively seeks to hire' because it makes for better spies
2025-01-22, Daily Mail (One of the UK's Popular Newspapers)
Posted: 2025-02-07 17:25:24
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-14309891/cia-operative-mental...

A former CIA operative has revealed the agency pursues people with a certain mental disorder as it makes them the best agents. John Kiriakou, who had a 14-year career as a CIA officer, said ... 'A CIA psychiatrist told me one time that the CIA looks to hire people with sociopathic tendencies–not sociopaths because sociopaths have no consciences,' said Kiriakou, speaking to The Real News Network. A 'sociopath' is someone who lacks empathy, disregards the feelings of others and may manipulate or harm people without remorse, often for their own personal gain. 'Sociopaths are impossible to control,' said Kiriakou. 'They slip through the cracks because they have no conscience and they pass the polygraph very easily because they don't feel guilty. The CIA has admitted that spies have pathological personality features that help them with their espionage efforts, such as a sense of entitlement or a desire for power and control. While employed by the CIA, Kiriakou was involved in critical counterterrorism missions following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. He was involved in the capture of terrorist Abu Zubaydah. However, he refused to be trained in so-called 'enhanced interrogation techniques.' Kiriakou has claimed that he never authorized or engaged in these techniques. After leaving the CIA, he appeared on ABC News where he said the CIA waterboarded detainees and labeled the action as torture. The interview led to Kiriakou being arrested in 2012 and charged with one count of violating the Intelligence Identities Protection Act for allegedly illegally disclosing the identity of a covert officer. He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 30 months in prison.

Note: Learn more about the rise of the CIA and the dark realities of modern American torture practices in our comprehensive Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center. For more, read our concise summaries of news articles on intelligence agency corruption.


Mark Zuckerberg says Biden officials would 'scream' and 'curse' when seeking removal of [COVID] content
2025-01-10, NBC News
Posted: 2025-02-07 16:28:03
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/mark-zuckerberg-joe-rogan-bide...

On an episode of "The Joe Rogan Experience" released Friday, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg painted a picture of Biden administration officials berating Facebook staff during requests to remove certain content from the social media platform. "Basically, these people from the Biden administration would call up our team and, like, scream at them and curse," Zuckerberg told ... Joe Rogan. "It just got to this point where we were like, 'No, we're not gonna, we're not gonna take down things that are true. That's ridiculous.'" In a letter last year to Rep. Jim Jordan, the Republican chair of the House Judiciary Committee, Zuckerberg said that the White House “repeatedly pressured” Facebook to remove “certain COVID-19 content including humor and satire.” Zuckerberg said Facebook, which is owned by Meta, acquiesced at times, while suggesting that different decisions would be made going forward. On Rogan's show, Zuckerberg said the administration had asked Facebook to remove from its platform a meme that showed actor Leonardo DiCaprio pointing at a TV screen advertising a class action lawsuit for people who once took the Covid vaccine."They're like, 'No, you have to take that down,'" Zuckerberg said, adding, "We said, 'No, we're not gonna. We're not gonna take down things that are, that are true.'" Zuckerberg ... also announced that his platforms — Facebook and Instagram — would relax rules related to political content.

Note: Read a former senior NPR editor's nuanced take on how challenging official narratives became so politicized that "politics were blotting out the curiosity and independence that should have been guiding our work." Opportunities for award winning journalism were lost on controversial issues like COVID, the Hunter Biden laptop story, and more. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on censorship and Big Tech.


You can finally press ‘reset’ on your Instagram feed. Here’s why you should.
2025-01-25, Washington Post
Posted: 2025-02-07 16:24:59
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2025/01/25/reset-instagram-algorith...

Instagram has released a long-promised “reset” button to U.S. users that clears the algorithms it uses to recommend you photos and videos. TikTok offers a reset button, too. And with a little bit more effort, you can also force YouTube to start fresh with how it recommends what videos to play next. It means you now have the power to say goodbye to endless recycled dance moves, polarizing Trump posts, extreme fitness challenges, dramatic pet voice-overs, fruit-cutting tutorials, face-altering filters or whatever other else has taken over your feed like a zombie. I know some people love what their apps show them. But the reality is, none of us are really in charge of our social media experience anymore. Instead of just friends, family and the people you choose to follow, nowadays your feed or For You Page is filled with recommended content you never asked for, selected by artificial-intelligence algorithms. Their goal is to keep you hooked, often by showing you things you find outrageous or titillating — not joyful or calming. And we know from Meta whistleblower Frances Haugen and others that outrage algorithms can take a particular toll on young people. That’s one reason they’re offering a reset now: because they’re under pressure to give teens and families more control. So how does the algorithm go awry? It tries to get to know you by tracking every little thing you do. They’re even analyzing your “dwell time,” when you unconsciously scroll more slowly.

Note: Read about the developer who got permanently banned from Meta for developing a tool called “Unfollow Everything” that lets users, well, unfollow everything and restart their feeds fresh. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on Big Tech and media manipulation.


Is Social Media More Like Cigarettes or Junk Food?
2025-01-22, New Yorker
Posted: 2025-02-07 16:23:09
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/infinite-scroll/is-social-media-more-like-c...

In the nineteen-fifties, the Leo Burnett advertising agency helped invent Tony the Tiger, a cartoon mascot who was created to promote Frosted Flakes to children. In 1973, a trailblazing nutritionist named Jean Mayer warned the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Nutrition and Human Needs that ... junk foods could be described as empty calories. He questioned why it was legal to apply the term “cereals” to products that were more than fifty-per-cent sugar. Children’s-food advertisements, he claimed, were “nothing short of nutritional disasters.” Mayer’s warnings, however, did not lead to a string of state bans on junk food. Advertising continued to target children, and consumers of all ages were free to buy and consume any amount of Frosted Flakes. This health issue was ultimately seen as one that families should manage on their own. In recent years, experts have been warning that social media harms children. Frances Haugen, a former Facebook data scientist who became a whistle-blower, told a Senate subcommittee that her ex-employer’s “profit optimizing machine is generating self-harm and self-hate—especially for vulnerable groups, like teenage girls.” “It is time to require a surgeon general’s warning label on social media platforms, stating that social media is associated with significant mental health harms for adolescents,” Vivek Murthy, whose second term as the U.S. Surgeon General ended on Monday, wrote in an opinion piece last year.

Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on Big Tech and mental health.


Prozac one of 30 antidepressants probed by UK watchdog over links to suicide
2024-05-10, The Independent (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2025-02-07 16:21:22
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/health/antidepressants-prozac-suicide-rate...

More than 30 of the most common antidepressants used in the UK are to be reviewed by the UK’s medicines regulator, as figures point to hundreds of deaths linked to suicide and self-harm among people prescribed these drugs. The medicines, which include Prozac and are prescribed to millions of patients, will all be looked at by the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA). It follows concerns raised by families in Britain over the adequacy of safety measures in place to protect those taking the drugs, such as warnings about potential side effects. There has been a huge rise in the use of antidepressants in England, with 85 million prescriptions issued in 2022-23, up from 58 million in 2015-16, according to NHS figures. Nigel Crisp, a crossbench peer and chair of the Beyond Pills all-party parliamentary group, [said]: “Overprescribing of antidepressants has an enormous cost in terms of human suffering, because so many people become dependent and then struggle to get off them – and it wastes vital NHS resources.” More than 515 death alerts linked to these drugs, involving suicidal ideation and self-harm, have been made to the MHRA since the year 2000. Some antidepressants have been given to children as young as four, and the total cost of the medication to the NHS in 2022-23 was more than £231m. Side effects of many antidepressants can include suicidal thoughts and anxiety, according to the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence.

Note: A UK coroner has issued a warning about the effects of antidepressants and how their use could lead to more deaths without a change in guidance and labeling about the risks. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on mental health and Big Pharma corruption.


The Devastating Legacy of Lies in Alzheimer’s Science
2025-01-24, New York Times
Posted: 2025-02-07 16:19:29
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/24/opinion/alzheimers-fraud-cure.html

Alzheimer’s ... afflicts nearly seven million Americans, about one in every nine people over the age of 65, making it a leading cause of death among older adults. Up to 420,000 adults in the prime of life — including people as young as 30 — suffer from early-onset Alzheimer’s. The annual number of new cases of dementia is expected to double by 2050. Yet despite decades of research, no treatment has been created that arrests Alzheimer’s cognitive deterioration, let alone reverses it. Over the past 25 years, Alzheimer’s research has suffered a litany of ostensible fraud and other misconduct by world-famous researchers and obscure scientists alike. These deceptions have warped the trajectory of Alzheimer’s research and drug development, prompting critical concerns about how bad actors, groupthink and perverse research incentives have undermined the pursuit of treatments and cures. This may have jeopardized the well-being of patients. I asked a team of brain and scientific imaging experts to help me analyze suspicious studies by 46 leading Alzheimer’s researchers. Collectively, the experts identified nearly 600 dubious papers from the group that have distorted the field — papers having been cited some 80,000 times. Many of the most respected Alzheimer’s scholars — whose work steers the scientific discourse — repeatedly referred to those tainted studies to support their own ideas. This has compromised the field’s established base of knowledge.

Note: Top leaders in the field of medicine and science have spoken out about the rampant corruption and conflicts of interest in those industries. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on corruption in science.


70 countries have banned this pesticide. It’s still for sale in the U.S.
2025-01-22, Washington Post
Posted: 2025-02-07 16:17:36
https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2025/01/22/paraquat-epa-pe...

The Environmental Protection Agency said last week that it needed more time to study the health impacts of paraquat, a powerful herbicide that has drawn scrutiny for its possible links to Parkinson’s disease, a move that would allow it to remain on the market. Several advocacy groups had sued the EPA over an interim registration decision it issued in 2021 ... on the grounds that it was not protective enough. In a statement, the EPA said additional data was necessary to resolve uncertainty around the risks of inhaling the herbicide. For as long as David Jilbert could remember, he wanted to be a farmer. For five years, Jilbert personally mixed, loaded and sprayed paraquat to control weeds in his vineyard. Then he began having difficulty tying his shoes and buttoning his shirts. He started to walk with a slow, shuffling gait around the winery. He was soon diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, a degenerative neurological disorder that affects motor functions and causes cognitive impairment, despite having no family history or genetic predisposition to the disease. He and his doctors blame paraquat. Jilbert is among the nearly 6,000 Americans who have filed lawsuits against Syngenta and Chevron, which distributed paraquat products in the United States until 1986. The suits allege that the companies failed to warn consumers about paraquat’s substantial health risks. Paraquat ... is among the most widely used pesticides in the United States.

Note: Read our latest Substack article on how the US government turns a blind eye to the corporate cartels fueling America’s health crisis. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on government corruption and toxic chemicals.


So many young people with colon cancer have clean diets. What gives?
2025-01-18, Business Insider
Posted: 2025-02-07 16:15:38
https://www.businessinsider.com/colon-cancer-environmental-causes-microplasti...

Colon cancer rates are rocketing among athletic young people in their 20s, 30s, and 40s, and survival rates are dropping. The most convenient explanations for the rise in young colon cancer are diet and weight. We know diet can influence colorectal cancer risk, and it's something people can fix, to a degree. Plus, our diets have changed. These days we all consume more sugar, more ultra-processed foods, more oil and butter, while moving less. Still, doctors say the trend we're seeing now defies neat categories of genetics or lifestyle, and it's baffling. Other factors are clearly messing with our digestive systems, but they're tough to pinpoint. Pollution, microplastics, and artificial light — all are pervasive in society, yet very tricky to study. Something shifted in the 1960s. Everyone born after 1960 has a higher colon cancer risk than previous generations. In the US, young colon cancer rates have been rising about 3% every year since the early 1990s, according to National Cancer Institute data. It's hard to dismiss the role our changing food landscape has played. We are undoubtedly eating worse than our grandparents did 100 years ago. Take fiber, for example. Found in abundance in whole plant foods like beans, it is a nutrient clearly associated with lower risk of cancer. Some of the most popular foods in US supermarkets ... have fiber stripped out during processing, and extra salt, sugar, and oils added in to make them more palatable and shelf-stable.

Note: Read our latest Substack article on how the US government turns a blind eye to the corporate cartels fueling America’s health crisis. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on health and toxic chemicals.


Teams Training For World ‘Plogging’ Championship–Picking Up Litter While Jogging
2025-01-04, Good News Network
Posted: 2025-02-07 16:13:34
https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/teams-training-for-world-plogging-championshi...

An eco-friendly fitness trend that started in 2016 is now growing in popularity with its own world championship competition in Italy. Originating in Sweden, when Erik Ahlström began picking up litter while jogging in Stockholm, the term is a combination of the Swedish word plocka, which means “to pick up”, and the English word “jogging”. The activity of picking up litter while on your outdoor jog, has spread to other countries, and now an estimated 2 million people ‘plog’ regularly in over 100 countries. The workout adds bending, squatting, and stretching to the main action of running—with ‘pliking’ being the latest offshoot for hikers who want to clean up the trail. The third annual World Plogging Championship in 2023, resulted in approximately 6,600 pounds of litter (3,000 kg) removed from the environment around the city of Genoa. Later this year, a British team will be traveling to the competition with the goal of running the farthest and picking up the most rubbish. Claire Petrie recently kick-started her training with community events in her hometown of Bristol. “I love that you help the environment, the planet and meet new people,” said the 48-year-old personal trainer who became passionate about combining health and the environment. “We want to grow plogging in as many cities as possible.” During the past year, Claire’s group, which plans to expand into other areas in Bristol but currently has an average of 9 people joining in, collected 220 pounds of trash (100 kg).

Note: Explore more positive stories like this on healing our bodies and healing the Earth.


‘The dead zone is real’: why US farmers are embracing wildflowers
2024-12-26, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2025-02-07 16:12:02
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/dec/26/us-farmers-embracing-wild...

Lee Tesdell walks through a corridor of native prairie grasses and wildflowers. This is a prairie strip. Ranging from 10-40 metres (30-120ft) in width, these bands of native perennials are placed strategically in a row-crop field, often in areas with low yields and high runoff. Tesdell has three on his farm. He points out several native plants – big bluestem, wild quinine, milkweed, common evening primrose – that came from a 70-species seed mix he planted here six years ago. These prairie plants help improve the soil while also protecting his more fertile fields from bursts of heavy rain and severe storms. Research shows that converting as little as 10% of a corn or soya bean field into a prairie strip can reduce soil erosion by 95%. Prairie strips also help reduce nutrient pollution, store excess carbon underground and provide critical habitat for pollinators and grassland birds. Thanks to federal funding through the USDA’s conservation reserve programme, they’ve taken off in recent years. Farmer Eric Hoien says he first heard about the conservation practice a decade ago, right around the time he was becoming more concerned about water issues in Iowa. Hoien says prairie strips offer other benefits close to home. Neighbours often tell him they appreciate the wildflowers and hearing the “cackle” of pheasants. He also enjoys hunting in the prairie strips and spotting insects he’s never seen before. The strips are hugely beneficial for pollinator populations.

Note: Explore more positive stories on healing the Earth.


‘I felt death in the flames’: how lighting a forest fire inspired one man to transform barren ranches into rainforest
2024-12-22, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2025-02-07 16:08:22
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/jan/22/colombia-wildlife-paradis...

Juan Guillermo Garcés remembers coming face to face with death at age 17. Garcés and his brother started the fire that nearly killed them to clear a large stretch of land. The brothers survived, but the fire destroyed the little remaining patch of virgin forest on the family’s 2,500-hectare (6,200-acre) ranch, nestled along Colombia’s Magdalena River. In an attempt to undo the damage he caused in his youth, the 74-year-old created the Rio Claro nature reserve, a 3,000-hectare (7,400-acre) oasis teeming with wildlife. Today, Garcés’s reserve marks him as one of Colombia’s most successful environmental protectors. The Rio Claro basin is home to almost 850 species of fauna and more than 3,000 of flora. “More than 100 new species have been discovered in Rio Claro … and counting,” says Saúl E Hoyos-Gómez, a botanical biologist. “It is a very special place – one of the few where you can find this level of biodiversity.” His method is simple. He buys plots of land from peasant farmers, often deforested pastures, and then lets them rest. Recovery in the region’s hot and humid climate is fast. Left alone, pasture reverts to jungle within decades. About 80% of Garcés’ reserve consists of land reforested in this way. To build his reserve, Garcés has had to navigate complex relationships with peasant farmers, the government and armed groups. Growing numbers of Colombian landowners are following Garcés’s lead, turning pastures into reserves.

Note: Learn about the logger who fell in love with trees. Explore more positive stories on healing the Earth.


'Circle of blood': The club no Israeli or Palestinian wants to be in. Yet, they urge peace.
2023-11-03, USA Today
Posted: 2025-02-01 17:09:36
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2023/11/03/israeli-and-palestinian-...

They are both bereaved fathers, of young daughters. Somehow, against the odds, both have resisted the urge for vengeance. Rami Elhanan, an Israeli, and Bassam Aramin, a Palestinian, were once united by their anger and grief. Elhanan lost his 14-year-old daughter Smadar when she was killed in a Palestinian suicide bombing in Jerusalem in 1997. Aramin's daughter Abir was 10 when she was shot in the head and killed in 2007 by a bullet fired by an Israeli soldier as she stood outside her school with some classmates. Now they are close friends, refer to one another as "my brother" and share the belief that no amount of fighting between Israelis and Palestinians will lead to peace, just more killing in a "circle of blood." With Israel embroiled in a war with Hamas ... "We have the moral authority to tell people this is not the way," said Elhanan, 74, a former solider in the Israeli army whose father was an Auschwitz survivor. Elhanan has said he still struggles to explain his conversion to a "peace warrior." It coincided with a meeting of bereaved Israeli and Palestinian families he was invited to by Yitzhak Frankenthal, one of the co-founders of the Parents Circle. "I saw an amazing spectacle. Something completely new to me," Elhanan said. "I saw Arabs getting off the buses, bereaved Palestinian families: men, women and children, coming towards me, greeting me for peace, hugging me and crying with me. ... From that day on ... I got a reason to get out of bed in the morning." For Aramin, the journey to nonviolence began as he was being beaten by Israeli prison guards. One day ... he was stripped naked and beaten until he could hardly stand. "As I was being beaten, I remembered a movie I’d seen the year before about the Holocaust. At the time I’d been happy that Hitler had killed 6 million Jews," Aramin has previously recalled. "But some minutes into the movie, I found myself crying and feeling angry that the Jews were being herded into gas chambers without fighting back," he said. "It was the first time I felt empathy."

Note: War destroys, yet these powerful real-life stories show that we can heal, reimagine better alternatives, and plant the seeds of a global shift in consciousness to transform our world.


To Sow Seeds of Peace, One Camp Puts Teens Face-to-Face With Their 'Enemy'
2018-10-04, Newsweek
Posted: 2025-02-01 16:53:44
https://www.newsweek.com/sow-seeds-peace-one-camp-puts-teens-face-face-their-...

In a remote part of Maine shrouded by trees, 14- and 15-year-olds from the Middle East, Asia, Europe and the U.S, many of whom have long considered one another "the enemy," spend three weeks side-by-side united by one goal: to open their minds and their ears. At the Seeds of Peace camp, the teens eat, interact and engage in dialogue with people from countries some of them are banned from visiting. Seeds of Peace campers are identified by only their first names because, for some, the release of their full identity could put them in danger. Broken up into groups of about 15, campers aren't only asked to share their own narrative. It's also time spent listening and engaging in conversations with people whose opinions are often contrasting and even offensive. They're also placed together for a physical group challenge. Habeeba [a 22-year-old Egyptian] found herself paired with the Israeli, who in dialogue group was so vocal and resolute, she couldn't establish one piece of common ground. Blindfolded, she had a single choice: to depend on someone she couldn't trust or risk falling. As he guided her through each step of the course, she felt a shift in herself, finding an ability to care about a person she never imagined was possible. "He is just as human as me. He's also 14 or 15. I am him and he is me," she realized. "Up on the high ropes, I didn't care that he was Israeli; I cared that we wouldn't fall." What Seeds of Peace does have are the tools needed for these teenagers to break out of a world that wants to force people into one ideological box. "I connected it to the culture that seems to be growing in the United States in universities today of needing a safe space and being triggered very easily," Adaya [22-year-old Israeli] said. "If you're not able to engage someone that you disagree with, how are you going to grow? You have to challenge yourself from different directions in order to know that your opinion stands."

Note: War destroys, yet these powerful real-life stories show that we can heal, reimagine better alternatives, and plant the seeds of a global shift in consciousness to transform our world.


The Unseen Scars of Those Who Kill Via Remote Control
2022-04-15, The New York Times
Posted: 2025-02-01 16:40:42
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/15/us/drones-airstrikes-ptsd.html

In the Air Force, drone pilots did not pick the targets. That was the job of someone pilots called “the customer.” The customer might be a conventional ground force commander, the C.I.A. or a classified Special Operations strike cell. [Drone operator] Captain Larson described a mission in which the customer told him to track and kill a suspected Al Qaeda member. Then, the customer told him to use the Reaper’s high-definition camera to follow the man’s body to the cemetery and kill everyone who attended the funeral. In December 2016, the Obama administration loosened the rules. Strikes once carried out only after rigorous intelligence-gathering and approval processes were often ordered up on the fly, hitting schools, markets and large groups of women and children. Before the rules changed, [former Air Force captain James] Klein said, his squadron launched about 16 airstrikes in two years. Afterward, it conducted them almost daily. Once, Mr. Klein said, the customer pressed him to fire on two men walking by a river in Syria, saying they were carrying weapons over their shoulders. The weapons turned out to be fishing poles. Over time, Mr. Klein grew angry and depressed. Eventually, he refused to fire any more missiles. In 2020, he retired, one of many disillusioned drone operators who quietly dropped out. “We were so isolated," he said. “The biggest tell is that very few people stayed in the field. They just couldn’t take it.” Bennett Miller was an intelligence analyst, trained to study the Reaper’s video feed. In late 2019 ... his team tracked a man in Afghanistan who the customer said was a high-level Taliban financier. For a week, the crew watched the man feed his animals, eat with family in his courtyard. Then the customer ordered the crew to kill him. A week later, the Taliban financier’s name appeared again on the target list. “We got the wrong guy. I had just killed someone’s dad,” Mr. Miller said. “I had watched his kids pick up the body parts.” In February 2020, he ... was hospitalized, diagnosed with PTSD and medically retired. Veterans with combat-related injuries, even injuries suffered in training, get special compensation worth about $1,000 per month. Mr. Miller does not qualify, because the Department of Veterans Affairs does not consider drone missions combat. “It’s like they are saying all the people we killed somehow don’t really count,” he said. “And neither do we.”

Note: Captain Larson took his own life in 2020. Furthermore, drones create more terrorists than they kill. Read about former drone operator Brandon Bryant's emotional experience of killing a child in Afghanistan that his superiors told him was a dog. For more along these lines, explore concise summaries of revealing news articles on war.


The Loophole That Allows the U.S. to Fund Child Soldiers
2016-03-31, Newsweek
Posted: 2025-02-01 14:50:01
https://www.newsweek.com/loophole-allows-us-fund-child-soldiers-442393

The Child Soldiers Prevention Act of 2008 (CSPA) should be fairly straightforward: The law bans the United States from providing military assistance or arms sales to governments that use children in combat. Simply put, if a country's government uses child soldiers, it cannot receive military support from the United States.Except several countries that use child soldiers do. This is because of a loophole in the child soldiers ban called a "national interest waiver," which allows the president to bypass the law if it is deemed in the U.S. national interest to do so. For the past five years, the State Department has compiled an annual list of governments known to recruit and use children as soldiers called the Trafficking in Persons (TIP) list. Yet countries on this list have been denied only a smattering of military support—in many cases, military arms and assistance were provided to countries identified by the United States as using child soldiers. For instance, last year full waivers were granted to the Democratic Republic of Congo, Nigeria and Somalia. All of these countries are guilty of putting children in combat. The U.S. government's failure to apply the CSPA uniformly and consistently detracts from its commitment to protect the rights of children globally. Ultimately, no amount of "national interest" should stand in the way of pressuring abusive governments to end grave violations against children, including war crimes. By not listing all forces that egregiously violate children's rights, the United States is sending a message that abuse can be justified under certain circumstances. Surely, this can't be right.


Why Won't the US Help Negotiate a Peaceful End to the War in Ukraine?
2024-06-19, Common Dreams
Posted: 2025-01-29 22:47:48
https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/role-of-us-in-russia-ukraine-war

For the fifth time since 2008, Russia has proposed to negotiate with the U.S., this time in proposals made by President Vladimir Putin on June 14, 2024. Four previous times, the U.S. rejected the offer of negotiations. The 30-year U.S. project, hatched originally by Cheney and the neocons ... has been to weaken or even dismember Russia, surround Russia with NATO forces, and depict Russia as the belligerent power. [One] Russian proposal for negotiations came from Putin following the violent overthrow of Ukraine’s President Viktor Yanukovych in February 2014, with the active complicity if not outright leadership of the U.S. government. The post-coup government invited me for urgent economic discussions. When I arrived in Kiev, I was taken to the Maidan, where I was told directly about U.S. funding of the Maidan protest. The violent coup induced the ethnic-Russia Donbas region of Eastern Ukraine to break from the coup leaders, many of whom were extreme Russophobic nationalists, and some in violent groups with a history of Nazi SS links in the past. Almost immediately, the coup leaders took steps to repress the use of the Russian language even in the Russian-speaking Donbas. The government in Kiev [deployed] neo-Nazi paramilitary units and U.S. arms. In the course of 2014, Putin called repeatedly for a negotiated peace, and this led to the Minsk II Agreement in February 2015 based on autonomy of the Donbas and an end to violence by both sides. Russia did not claim the Donbas as Russian territory, but instead called for autonomy and the protection of ethnic Russians within Ukraine. The UN Security Council endorsed the Minsk II agreement, but the U.S. neocons privately subverted it.

Note: More than 1 million people on both sides have been either killed or injured. This article was written by Jeffrey Sachs, world-renowned economist and public policy analyst. This isn’t about defending Russia, but highlighting how US foreign policy has exploited Ukraine for strategic interests—fueling ongoing conflict rather than promoting peace. Azov Battalian is a neo-nazi group tied to credible human rights violations, a group that the CIA directly supported with weapons and military training leading up to the 2014 Maidan coup.


Former State Department officials concerned about the U.S. role in Israel's war in Gaza
2025-01-12, CBS News
Posted: 2025-01-29 22:46:07
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/former-state-department-officials-concerned-abou...

Children on top of rubble… playing with ammunition casings. A close look reveals where they come from -- printed on the side: USA... DOD for the Department of Defence. Hala Rharrit was an American diplomat who ... worked on human rights and counterterrorism. Part of her job was to monitor Arab press and social media to document how America's role in the war was perceived in the Middle East. Daily reports Rharrit sent to senior leadership in Washington [contained] gruesome images: Hala Rharrit: "I would show the complicity that was indisputable. Fragments of U.S. bombs next to massacres of ... mostly children. And that's the devastation. It's been overwhelmingly children ... I would show images of children that were starved to death. I was basically berated, 'Don't put that image in there. We don't wanna see it.'" Three months into the war ... she was told her reports were no longer needed. The U.S. has sent $18 billion in American military assistance to Israel since the war began, largely in the form of taxpayer-funded weapons. Most of the bombs come from America. Most of the technology comes from America. And all of the fighter jets, all of Israel's fixed-wing fleet - comes from America. Andrew Miller was the deputy assistant secretary of state for Israeli-Palestinian affairs. He ... has since become the highest ranking Biden administration official to go public with his concerns about the U.S. role in the war. The State Department issued a report saying it is "reasonable to assess" that Israel may have used American weapons in violation of international law. Hala Rharrit: "Protests began erupting in the Arab world ... with people burning American flags. We worked so hard after the war on terror to strengthen ties with the Arab world."

Note: A new study shows that death feels imminent for 96% of children in Gaza. War destroys, yet these powerful real-life stories show that we can heal, reimagine better alternatives, and plant the seeds of a global shift in consciousness to transform our world.


The US military wants to explore blood biohacks to boost warfighter performance in extreme conditions
2025-01-22, Business Insider
Posted: 2025-01-29 22:44:31
https://www.businessinsider.com/darpa-exploring-how-blood-biohacks-could-help...

The Defense Advanced Research Project Agency, the Pentagon's top research arm, wants to find out if red blood cells could be modified in novel ways to protect troops. The DARPA program, called the Red Blood Cell Factory, is looking for researchers to study the insertion of "biologically active components" or "cargoes" in red blood cells. The hope is that modified cells would enhance certain biological systems, "thus allowing recipients, such as warfighters, to operate more effectively in dangerous or extreme environments." Red blood cells could act like a truck, carrying "cargo" or special protections, to all parts of the body, since they already circulate oxygen everywhere, [said] Christopher Bettinger, a professor of biomedical engineering overseeing the program. "What if we could add in additional cargo ... inside of that disc," Bettinger said, referring to the shape of red blood cells, "that could then confer these interesting benefits?" The research could impact the way troops battle diseases that reproduce in red blood cells, such as malaria, Bettinger hypothesized. "Imagine an alternative world where we have a warfighter that has a red blood cell that's accessorized with a compound that can sort of defeat malaria," Bettinger said. In 2019, the Army released a report called "Cyborg Soldier 2050," which laid out a vision of the future where troops would benefit from neural and optical enhancements, though the report acknowledged ethical and legal concerns.

Note: Read about the Pentagon's plans to use our brains as warfare, describing how the human body is war's next domain. Learn more about biotech dangers.


'Big Day... for Justice': US Jury Finds Contractor CACI Liable for Abu Ghraib Torture
2024-11-12, Common Dreams
Posted: 2025-01-29 22:42:51
https://www.commondreams.org/news/caci-torture-verdict

In a landmark verdict cheered by human rights defenders around the world, a federal jury in Virginia found a U.S. military contractor liable for the torture of three prisoners at the notorious Abu Ghraib prison during the invasion and occupation of Iraq in the early 2000s. The jury ordered CACI Premier Technology to pay each of the three Iraqi plaintiffs $3 million in compensatory damages and $11 million in punitive damages, for a total of $42 million. It is the first time that a civilian contractor has been found legally responsible for abusing Abu Ghraib detainees. The lawsuit against CACI—filed in 2008 by the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) on behalf of Suhail Al Shimari, Asa'ad Al Zuba'e, and Salah Al-Ejaili—alleged that company officials conspired with U.S. military personnel in subjecting the plaintiffs to torture and other crimes. Dozens of Abu Ghraib detainees died in U.S. custody, some of them as a result of being tortured to death. Abu Ghraib prisoners endured torture ranging from rape and being attacked with dogs to being forced to eat pork and renounce Islam. A separate U.S. Army report concluded that most Abu Ghraib prisoners were innocent, with the Red Cross estimating that between 70-90% of inmates there were wrongfully detained. These include women who were held as bargaining chips to induce suspected militants to surrender. Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, the prison's commanding officer, was demoted. No other high-ranking military officer faced accountability for the abuse.

Note: Learn more about US torture programs in our comprehensive Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center. War destroys, yet these powerful real-life stories show that we can heal, reimagine better alternatives, and plant the seeds of a global shift in consciousness to transform our world.


Who’s funding DC’s pro-war think tanks? 'Independent' experts push defence-contractor agendas
2024-01-08, UnHerd
Posted: 2025-01-29 22:40:41
https://unherd.com/2025/01/whos-funding-dcs-pro-war-think-tanks/?emci=eb084a3...

Last year, the US Commission on National Defense Strategy published its final report, creating intense buzz in Washington. “The threats the United States faces are the most serious and most challenging the nation has encountered since 1945,” the report warned. To meet the challenge, “the US government needs to harness all elements of national power,” starting with a 5% boost to the Pentagon budget, currently at $886 billion. Congress created the bipartisan commission as “an independent body.” Yet some of the members of the commission are connected to think tanks and the defence contractors that fund them: from Boeing to General Electric, Northrop Grumman to Lockheed Martin. If taxpayers go along with the military buildup advocated by the report, these and other firms stand to profit handsomely. The Atlantic Council recently published its own nuclear report, which called for boosting funding for missile-defense technologies. The Atlantic Council has received at least $10 million from major Pentagon contractors that manufacture nuclear weapons and missile-defense systems. There are so many reports paid for by vested interests, commissions on which they sit, and governments getting their piece, it’s hard to keep track. Consider Michèle Flournoy, a former Pentagon official who founded the Center for New American Security and sits on its board. CNAS published a report in September titled “Integration for Innovation” as part of its “defense technology task force.” Executives from RTX (which contributed at least $450,000 to CNAS), Lockheed Martin ($600,000), Palantir ($175,000), Leidos ($300,000), and Booz Allen ($250,000) all directly contributed as members of the task force, even as they benefit from every single proposal in it.

Note: Learn more about arms industry corruption in our comprehensive Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center. For more, read our concise summaries of news articles on military corruption.


The Pentagon Keeps Losing Equipment and Buying Stuff It Doesn't Need
2025-01-12, Reason
Posted: 2025-01-29 22:38:56
https://reason.com/2025/01/12/materiel-loss/

In 2023, the Government Accountability Office revealed that a government contractor had lost 2 million spare parts for the F-35 fighter jet, together worth tens of millions of dollars, since 2018. The Department of Defense followed up on only 20,000 of those parts. Military officials don't know how many F-35 spare parts exist in total, paid for by American taxpayers but spread out at contractor warehouses around the world. The 1985 aircraft carrier scandal continued this pattern of failure to keep track of valuable materiel. After a group of smugglers was caught stealing F-14 parts to sell to Iran, the Pentagon ran an audit on the spare parts stored on aircraft carriers. Auditors found the Navy had lost track of $394 million in parts between 1984 and 1985. Not to worry! It turns out only about $7 million in parts had been stolen by the gunrunners, and the remaining $387 million were misidentified or misplaced. Perhaps the most infamous cases of waste occurred in Afghanistan, where the United States spent 20 years trying to prop up a friendly Afghan government only to have Taliban rebels sweep the capital in a lightning-quick August 2021 offensive. Although the U.S. military extracted all of its own gear, it left $7.12 billion of American-provided equipment with the doomed Afghan army; it soon fell into the Taliban's hands. Images of Taliban fighters riding around with captured vehicles became a symbol of American failure.

Note: Learn more about unaccountable military spending in our comprehensive Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center. For more, read our concise summaries of news articles on military corruption.


Whistleblower reveals UAP retrieval program; object caught on video
2025-01-19, NewsNation
Posted: 2025-01-29 22:37:18
https://www.newsnationnow.com/space/ufo/hfr-uap-recovery-video-egg-shaped-obj...

In October 2024, an unknown man stepped out of the shadows, arriving in our nation’s capital to deliver an important message about what the public calls “UFOs” and what the government calls “UAPs,” or unidentified aerial phenomena. His name is Jacob Barber, and he says for the past 30 years, he’s worked in both an official and unofficial capacity for the United States government and its partners in the intelligence community. Barber ... says he was part of that covert program that worked with alien spacecraft for years. NewsNation checked Barber’s records and confirmed that he was an airman in the U.S. Air Force who worked as an aerospace mechanic in the late 1990s. He was also recruited into Air Force Special Operations. Barber said his team recovered “things that were exotic in nature.” “I was a helicopter pilot, and I operate with a 150-to-200-foot-long line. So, I got within 150 feet of this object,” he said. That’s when he saw it. “I saw an egg, a white egg,” he said. “There was no engine. There was no thermal signature. I was operating at night when I finally came in to pick it up. So, I’m working under night vision goggles at the time, and it was quite clear. I flipped them up, flipped them down and looked at it a couple of different ways.” Barber said the “metallic, pearly white” object was about the size of an SUV. “I can tell you that the reaction by my team ... we all knew we were dealing with something extraordinary,” he said.

Note: See this latest UFO footage for yourself. Then watch our latest video on UFO disclosure exploring the big picture behind this fascinating topic. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on UFOs. Then explore the comprehensive resources provided in our UFO Information Center.


The criminal hypocrisy of Hernandez’s drug conviction in a US court
2024-03-17, Al Jazeera
Posted: 2025-01-29 22:35:31
https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2024/3/17/the-criminal-hypocrisy-of-hernan...

On Friday, March 8, former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández was convicted on three counts of drug trafficking and weapons conspiracy in a Manhattan federal court. Extradited to the United States shortly after completing his second presidential term in 2022, the 55-year-old Hernández is up against a mandatory minimum sentence of 40 years in jail. US Attorney General Merrick Garland accused Hernández of having run Honduras as a “narco-state where violent drug traffickers were allowed to operate with virtual impunity”. Hernández was until very recently a good chum of successive US administrations, which appointed him a vital ally in the so-called “war on drugs” and flung money at Honduras accordingly. The messianically right-wing leader came to power five years after the 2009 US-facilitated coup d’état against Manuel Zelaya. The fabricated pretext for the coup ... was that Zelaya was scheming to remain president of Honduras in violation of the constitutional one-term limit. Later this limit was quickly dispensed with in order to enable the continued reign of Hernández. Post-election protests triggered a characteristically lethal response from Honduran security forces, which didn’t stop the US from continuing to fund those very same forces. The CIA’s narco-operations have spanned the globe from Pakistan to Laos to Venezuela, while many an international narco-politician has – like Hernández – found at least fleeting favour with the US government.

Note: Read our Substack on the dark truth of the war on drugs. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on intelligence agency corruption.


CIA Arms Dealer Was Actually DEA Target
2023-06-28, The Intercept
Posted: 2025-01-29 22:33:00
https://theintercept.com/2023/06/28/intercepted-podcast-flaviu-georgescu-dea-...

In 2016, Flaviu Georgescu was found guilty and sentenced of attempting to traffic weapons to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, an insurgent group on the U.S. terror list. But when he was arrested by Drug Enforcement Administration agents, he told the officials he was working for the CIA. The majority of defendants in post-9/11 terrorist cases had no actual ties to terrorism or to terrorist organizations. Many were caught in FBI stings, where informants posed as terrorists often crossing the line into encouraging and even facilitating crimes that would otherwise not have occurred. As the war on terror has waned, the DOJ has shifted its focus, with its agencies – including the DEA – now targeting people for similar sting operations on allegations of involvement in so-called “narcoterrorism.” The FBI ... would identify someone who was espousing views that might be sympathetic to those organizations, or even an attack, and they would encourage that person to get involved. Some of the targets of investigations were very financially desperate. The FBI, through the informant, would dangle the opportunity to make money. In those cases, the vast majority of people have no connections to real terrorist groups, they have no access to weapons. And the FBI provides everything. A bomb, grenades, automatic rifles ... guns that would be very difficult to obtain, even by sophisticated criminals. When the defendant goes about to use the weapon, they’re arrested, and they’re charged, and announced to the public as a terrorist who was about to get involved in this very deadly plot were it not foiled by the FBI. The Intercept [documents] these cases through Trial and Terror. We’ve seen hundreds of these cases involving sting operations since 9/11. What this has done ... in the post-9/11 era, was really exaggerate the threat of terrorism from within Muslim communities in the United States. And, on the news, it really made the public think that the threat of terrorism within the United States from these communities was much, much greater than it really was.

Note: The FBI has had a notorious history of manufacturing terrorist plots, often targeting vulnerable minors who have significant cognitive and intellectual disabilities yet no history of harming anyone. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on intelligence agency corruption.


Mexican official: CIA ‘manages’ drug trade
2012-07-24, Al Jazeera
Posted: 2025-01-29 22:31:11
https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2012/7/24/mexican-official-cia-manages-dru...

The US Central Intelligence Agency and other international security forces “don’t fight drug traffickers”, a spokesman for the Chihuahua state government in northern Mexico has told Al Jazeera, instead “they try to manage the drug trade”. “It’s like pest control companies,” Guillermo Terrazas Villanueva, the Chihuahua spokesman, [said]. “If you finish off the pests, you are out of a job.” Under the Merida Initiative, the US Congress has approved more than $1.4bn in drug war aid for Mexico, providing attack helicopters, weapons and training for police and judges. “It’s true, they want to control it,” a mid-level official with ... Mexico’s equivalent to the US Department of Homeland Security, told Al Jazeera of the CIA and DEA’s policing of the drug trade. Jesús Zambada Niebla, a leading trafficker from the Sinaloa cartel currently awaiting trial in Chicago, has said he was working for the US Drug Enforcement Agency during his days as a trafficker, and was promised immunity from prosecution. “Under that agreement, the Sinaloa Cartel under the leadership of [Jesus Zambada’s] father, Ismael Zambada and ‘Chapo’ Guzmán were given carte blanche to continue to smuggle tonnes of illicit drugs into the United States, and were protected by the United States government from arrest and prosecution in return for providing information against rival cartels,” Zambada’s lawyers wrote as part of his defence. “Indeed, the Unites States government agents aided the leaders of the Sinaloa Cartel.”

Note:The US helped arm and finance the Sinaloa cartel for decades, which was barely covered in the American media. For more, read our Substack on the dark truth of the war on drugs.


This U.S. Minister Is Training Rebels in a Civil War
2023-04-16, Rolling Stone
Posted: 2025-01-29 22:28:43
https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/free-burma-rangers-rebe...

A former U.S. Special Forces officer and ordained Christian minister, [Dave Eubank] ... is a diehard humanitarian who has risked his life time and again to help the most vulnerable in a forsaken place that most Americans can’t find on a map. [He] started the Free Burma Rangers (FBR) in the late 1990s to provide medical care and aid to people resisting the Southeast Asian nation’s military junta, a brutal dictatorship that has crushed dissent and oppressed ethnic minorities for seven decades in what is the world’s longest-running civil war. Eubank [leads] an all-volunteer staff of ethnic minorities and foreigners — many of them ex-military, teachers, students, engineers, poets, and shopkeepers — working on the front line. On missions, the Rangers bring gifts and entertainment to brighten the lives of the children living in harm’s way. With his own wife and kids in tow, Eubank set FBR apart with a relentless commitment to go places other humanitarian groups would not. And that’s built FBR into a movement that fields teams and tracks human-rights abuses across Burma’s front lines and beyond, from northern Syria to Sudan. “You could be a murderer. You only have to say ‘I don’t think that’s the best behavior, and I’m trying not to do those things,’ and then you can join us,” [Eubank] says, adding that FBR includes atheists, agnostics, and spirit worshipers. Eubank insists that love is the force that drives him to take extreme risks, and also what makes FBR so effective. “[You will] run forward through the bullets, even if you don’t know the person you’re trying to save,” he says. “If I’m shot and I’m bleeding out on the trail and dying and I can’t see my wife and kids again — if I’m not doing that for love, what a disaster.”

Note: Check out their powerful work in action on their Youtube channel. The Free Burma Rangers are featured in our latest video on healing the war machine.


The Israeli and Palestinian Women Working for Peace
2024-02-02, Foreign Policy
Posted: 2025-01-29 22:26:04
https://foreignpolicy.com/2024/02/02/women-peace-israel-palestine-gaza/

As war rages between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip, it is hard to envision an end to the conflict. For decades, though, a growing movement of Palestinian and Israeli women has not only envisioned a peaceful coexistence, but also demanded it. Just three days before Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, attack, thousands of women from two peacebuilding groups gathered at Jerusalem’s Tolerance Monument. Israelis from Women Wage Peace carried blue flags, and Palestinians from Women of the Sun flew yellow ones. Members of the two groups traveled to the Dead Sea—believed since ancient times to have healing qualities—and set a table. Women from both sides pulled up chairs as a symbol of a good-faith resumption of negotiations to reach a political solution.“We, Palestinian and Israeli mothers, are determined to stop the vicious cycle of bloodshed,” reads the preamble to their campaign, the Mother’s Call. This campaign ... involved aligning around a single agenda that demands a political solution within a limited time frame. They set the table to show the importance of dialogue and women’s involvement in decision-making. Ensuring women’s participation isn’t about equity or fairness. It’s about winning the peace. A quantitative analysis of 156 peace agreements over time ... found that when women are decision-makers—serving as negotiators and mediators—the probability of an agreement lasting at least two years increased by 20 percent.

Note: Explore more positive stories like this on healing the war machine.


Dehumanizing Each Other Won’t Effect Real Change. Here’s How We Move Forward
2024-05-12, Rolling Stone
Posted: 2025-01-29 22:24:24
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/political-commentary/seeds-of-peace-dia...

Seeds of Peace has, for over 30 years, been bringing young people together across lines of difference from the United States and more than 25 other countries. Over 8,000 of these young leaders have now spent part of a summer at the Seeds of Peace Camp, engaging face-to-face in the hard work of dialogue. Connection is an antidote to division and violence. Instead of avoiding or attacking those you disagree with, seek out opportunities to go deeper. Enter conversations with genuine curiosity and practice ways to regulate your body and emotions in order to stay open to listening, even when met with opinions with which you fiercely disagree. Polarization typically results in pressure to take sides: to be ‘pro’ one group necessitates being ‘anti’ the other. The goal of dialogue isn’t to validate all sides but to increase our capacity to hold multiple truths and redefine the ‘sides’ altogether. Any path forward will require us to first imagine beyond our current realities. Seeds of Peace creates spaces like our camp that allow us to imagine and practice a version of the future that has yet to be born into existence. Doing so is messy and often challenging, but it also expands our ideas for what’s possible and inspires people to work towards realizing it in their communities. As our alumni declared upon returning home after experiencing living together, “We refuse to accept what is when we know what can be.” “The wish to not have to deal with the other is an illusion,” wrote one of our alumni in the Middle East recently. “And I hope this realization becomes a source of strength rather than weakness. That inevitably, we have to find a way to make this work for all of us. Otherwise, it will work for none of us.”

Note: Explore more positive stories like this on healing social division.


How Big Companies and the Courts Killed Net Neutrality
2025-01-03, Common Dreams
Posted: 2025-01-27 13:03:06
https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/fcc-net-neutrality

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit ... threw out the Federal Communication Commission’s Net Neutrality rules, rejecting the agency’s authority to protect broadband consumers and handing phone and cable companies a major victory. The FCC moved in April 2024 to restore Net Neutrality and the essential consumer protections that rest under Title II of the Communications Act, which had been gutted under the first Trump administration. This was an all-too-rare example in Washington of a government agency doing what it’s supposed to do: Listening to the public and taking their side against the powerful companies that for far too long have captured ... D.C. And the phone and cable industry did what they always do when the FCC does anything good: They sued to overturn the rules. The court ruled against the FCC and deemed internet access to be an “information service” largely free from FCC oversight. This court’s warped decision scraps the common-sense rules the FCC restored in April. The result is that throughout most of the country, the most essential communications service of this century will be operating without any real government oversight, with no one to step in when companies rip you off or slow down your service. This ruling is far out of step with the views of the American public, who overwhelmingly support real Net Neutrality. They’re tired of paying too much, and they hate being spied on.

Note: Read about the communities building their own internet networks in the face of net neutrality rollbacks. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on censorship and Big Tech.


Online Behavioral Ads Fuel the Surveillance Industry—Here’s How
2025-01-06, Electronic Frontier Foundation
Posted: 2025-01-27 13:01:02
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/01/online-behavioral-ads-fuel-surveillance...

Each time you see a targeted ad, your personal information is exposed to thousands of advertisers and data brokers through a process called “real-time bidding” (RTB). This process does more than deliver ads—it fuels government surveillance, poses national security risks, and gives data brokers easy access to your online activity. RTB might be the most privacy-invasive surveillance system that you’ve never heard of. The moment you visit a website or app with ad space, it asks a company that runs ad auctions to determine which ads it will display for you. This involves sending information about you and the content you’re viewing to the ad auction company. The ad auction company packages all the information they can gather about you into a “bid request” and broadcasts it to thousands of potential advertisers. The bid request may contain personal information like your unique advertising ID, location, IP address, device details, interests, and demographic information. The information in bid requests is called “bidstream data” and can easily be linked to real people. Advertisers, and their ad buying platforms, can store the personal data in the bid request regardless of whether or not they bid on ad space. RTB is regularly exploited for government surveillance. The privacy and security dangers of RTB are inherent to its design. The process broadcasts torrents of our personal data to thousands of companies, hundreds of times per day.

Note: Clearview AI scraped billions of faces off of social media without consent and at least 600 law enforcement agencies tapped into its database. During this time, Clearview was hacked and its entire client list — which included the Department of Justice, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Interpol, retailers and hundreds of police departments — was leaked to hackers. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on Big Tech and the disappearance of privacy.


Facebook Fact Checks Were Never Going to Save Us. They Just Made Liberals Feel Better.
2025-01-07, The Intercept
Posted: 2025-01-27 12:58:34
https://theintercept.com/2025/01/07/facebook-fact-check-mark-zuckerberg-trump/

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced Tuesday that his social media platforms — which include Facebook and Instagram — will be getting rid of fact-checking partners and replacing them with a “community notes” model like that found on X. For a decade now, liberals have wrongly treated Trump’s rise as a problem of disinformation gone wild, and one that could be fixed with just enough fact-checking. Disinformation, though, has been a convenient narrative for a Democratic establishment unwilling to reckon with its own role in upholding anti-immigrant narratives, or repeating baseless fearmongering over crime rates, and failing to support the multiracial working class. Long dead is the idea that social media platforms like X or Instagram are either trustworthy news publishers, sites for liberatory community building, or hubs for digital democracy. “The internet may once have been understood as a commons of information, but that was long ago,” wrote media theorist Rob Horning in a recent newsletter. “Now the main purpose of the internet is to place its users under surveillance, to make it so that no one does anything without generating data, and to assure that paywalls, rental fees, and other sorts of rents can be extracted for information that may have once seemed free but perhaps never wanted to be.” Social media platforms are huge corporations for which we, as users, produce data to be mined as a commodity to sell to advertisers — and government agencies. The CEOs of these corporations are craven and power-hungry.

Note: Read a former senior NPR editor's nuanced take on how challenging official narratives became so politicized that "politics were blotting out the curiosity and independence that should have been guiding our work." Opportunities for award winning journalism were lost on controversial issues like COVID, the Hunter Biden laptop story, and more. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on censorship and Big Tech.


Facebook’s Fact-Checkers Changed the Way I See Tech—and Speech—Forever
2025-01-07, The Free Press
Posted: 2025-01-27 12:56:50
https://www.thefp.com/p/facebook-fact-checkers-shut-down-my-story-on-covid-la...

We published the piece on February 22, [2020], under the headline “Don’t Buy China’s Story: The Coronavirus May Have Leaked from a Lab.” It immediately went viral, its audience swelling for a few hours as readers liked and shared it over and over again. I had a data tracker on my screen that showed our web traffic, and I could see the green line for my story surging up and up. Then suddenly, for no reason, the green line dropped like a stone. No one was reading or sharing the piece. It was as though it had never existed at all. Seeing the story’s traffic plunge, I was stunned. How does a story that thousands of people are reading and sharing suddenly just disappear? Later, the [New York Post’s] digital editor gave me the answer: Facebook’s fact-checking team had flagged the piece as “false information.” I was seeing Big Tech censorship of the American media in real time, and it chilled me to my bones. What happened next was even more chilling. I found out that an “expert” who advised Facebook to censor the piece had a major conflict of interest. Professor Danielle E. Anderson had regularly worked with researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology ... and she told Facebook’s fact-checkers that the lab had “strict control and containment measures.” Facebook’s “fact-checkers” took her at her word. An “expert” had spoken, Wuhan’s lab was deemed secure, and the Post’s story was squashed in the interest of public safety. In 2021, in the wake of a lawsuit, Facebook admitted that its “fact checks” are just “opinion,” used by social media companies to police what we watch and read.

Note: Watch our brief newsletter recap video about censorship and the suppression of the COVID lab leak theory. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on censorship and Big Tech.


Zuckerberg announces end to Facebook’s third-party fact-checking, admits model became a tool for censorship: ‘Too many mistakes’
2025-01-07, New York Post
Posted: 2025-01-27 12:54:43
https://nypost.com/2025/01/07/business/meta-boss-mark-zuckerberg-says-faceboo...

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said Facebook has done “too much censorship” as he revealed the social network is scrapping fact-checking and restrictions on free speech as President-elect Donald Trump prepares to return to the White House. The 40-year-old tech tycoon — who dined with Trump at Mar-a-Lago the day before Thanksgiving and gave him a pair of Meta Ray Ban sunglasses, with Meta later donating $1 million to his inaugural fund — claimed on Tuesday that the dramatic about-face was signal that the company is returning to an original focus on free speech. The stunning reversal will include moving Meta’s content moderation team from deep-blue California to right-leaning Texas in order to insulate the group from cultural bias. “As we work to promote free expression, I think that will help build trust to do this work in places where there’s less concern about the bias of our team,” the Meta boss said. Facebook will do away with “restrictions on topics like immigration and gender that are just out of touch with mainstream discourse,” Zuckerberg said. “What started as a movement to be more inclusive has increasingly been used to shut down opinions and shut out people with different ideas,” he said, adding: “It’s gone too far.” In late July, Facebook acknowledged that it censored the image of President-elect Donald Trump raising his fist in the immediate aftermath of the assassination attempt in Pennsylvania.

Note: Read a former senior NPR editor's nuanced take on how challenging official narratives became so politicized that "politics were blotting out the curiosity and independence that should have been guiding our work." Opportunities for award winning journalism were lost on controversial issues like COVID, the Hunter Biden laptop story, and more. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on censorship and Big Tech.


Five times Facebook’s fact-checking went wrong
2025-01-07, The Telegraph (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2025-01-27 12:52:19
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2025/01/07/five-times-facebooks-fact-che...

Mark Zuckerberg has announced he is scrapping fact-checks on Facebook, claiming the labels intended to warn against fake news have “destroyed more trust than they have created”. Facebook’s fact-checkers have helped debunk hundreds of fake news stories and false rumours – however, there have been several high-profile missteps. In 2020, Facebook and Twitter took action to halt the spread of an article by the New York Post based on leaked emails from a laptop belonging to Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden. As coronavirus spread around the world, suggestions that the vaccine could have been man-made were suppressed by Facebook. An opinion column in the New York Post with the headline: “Don’t buy China’s story: The coronavirus may have leaked from a lab” was labelled as “false information”. In 2021, Facebook lifted its ban on claims the virus could have been “man-made”. It was months later that further doubts emerged over the origins of coronavirus. In 2021, Facebook ... was accused of wrongly fact-checking a story about Pfizer’s Covid-19 vaccine. A British Medical Journal (BMJ) report, based on whistleblowing, alleged poor clinical practices at a contractor carrying out research for Pfizer. However, Facebook’s fact-checkers added a label arguing the story was “missing context” and could “mislead people”. Furious debates raged over the effectiveness of masks in preventing the spread of Covid-19. Facebook’s fact-checkers were accused of overzealously clamping down on articles that questioned the science behind [mask] mandates.

Note: Read a former senior NPR editor's nuanced take on how challenging official narratives became so politicized that "politics were blotting out the curiosity and independence that should have been guiding our work." Opportunities for award winning journalism were lost on controversial issues like COVID, the Hunter Biden laptop story, and more. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on censorship and Big Tech.


Giant Companies Took Secret Payments to Allow Free Flow of Opioids
2024-12-17, New York Times
Posted: 2025-01-27 12:43:34
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/17/business/pharmacy-benefit-managers-opioids...

In 2017, the drug industry middleman Express Scripts announced that it was taking decisive steps to curb abuse of the prescription painkillers that had fueled America’s overdose crisis. Why hadn’t the middlemen, known as pharmacy benefit managers, acted sooner to address a crisis that had been building for decades? One reason, a New York Times investigation found: Drugmakers had been paying them not to. For years, the benefit managers, or P.B.M.s, took payments from opioid manufacturers, including Purdue Pharma, in return for not restricting the flow of pills. As tens of thousands of Americans overdosed and died from prescription painkillers, the middlemen collected billions of dollars in payments. The P.B.M.s exert extraordinary control over what drugs people can receive and at what price. The three dominant companies — Express Scripts, CVS Caremark and Optum Rx — oversee prescriptions for more than 200 million. The P.B.M.s are hired by insurers and employers to control their drug costs by negotiating discounts with pharmaceutical manufacturers. They often pursue their own financial interests in ways that increase costs for patients, employers and government programs, while driving independent pharmacies out of business. Regulators have accused the largest P.B.M.s of anticompetitive practices. In addition ... P.B.M.s sometimes collaborated with opioid manufacturers to persuade insurers not to restrict access to their drugs.

Note: A former DEA agent has said that Congress helped drug companies create the opioid epidemic. Read how pharmacy benefit managers inflate the price of medications behind the scenes. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on Big Pharma corruption.


What I Learned Reporting in Cities That Take Belongings From Homeless People
2024-12-27, ProPublica
Posted: 2025-01-27 12:39:10
https://www.propublica.org/article/homeless-encampments-essay

My colleagues Ruth Talbot, Asia Fields, Maya Miller and I have investigated how cities have sometimes ignored their own policies and court orders, which has resulted in them taking homeless people’s belongings during encampment clearings. We also found that some cities have failed to store the property so it could be returned. People told us about local governments taking everything from tents and sleeping bags to journals, pictures and mementos. Even when cities are ordered to stop seizing belongings and to provide storage for the property they take, we found that people are rarely reunited with their possessions. The losses are traumatizing, can worsen health outcomes, and can make it harder for people like Stratton to find stability and get back inside. Cities have recently passed new camping bans or started enforcing ones already on the books following a Supreme Court decision in June that allows local officials to punish people for sleeping outside. The U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness earlier this year released updated strategies for addressing encampments “humanely and effectively,” advising communities to treat encampment responses with the same urgency they would any other crises. The council recommends providing 30 days’ notice before a removal and giving people two days to pack. The council also recommends that cities store belongings for as long as it typically takes for someone to get permanent housing.

Note: Read about the private contractors clearing California's homelessness camps. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on financial inequality.


FDA bans Red No. 3, artificial coloring used in beverages, candy and other foods
2025-01-15, NBC News
Posted: 2025-01-27 12:37:18
https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/fda-bans-red-no-3-artificial-color...

The Food and Drug Administration said Wednesday it’s banning the use of Red No. 3, a synthetic dye that gives food and drinks their bright red cherry color but has been linked to cancer in animals. The dye is still used in thousands of foods, including candy, cereals, cherries in fruit cocktails and strawberry-flavored milkshakes, according to the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a food safety advocacy group that petitioned the agency in 2022 to end its use. More than 9,200 food items contain the dye, including hundreds of products made by large food companies. The FDA is not prohibiting other artificial dyes, including Red No. 40, which has been linked to behavioral issues in children. The FDA’s decision is a victory for consumer advocacy groups and some U.S. lawmakers who have long urged it to revoke Red No. 3’s approval, citing ample evidence that its use in beverages, dietary supplements, cereals and candies may cause cancer as well as affect children’s behavior. “At long last, the FDA is ending the regulatory paradox of Red 3 being illegal for use in lipstick, but perfectly legal to feed to children in the form of candy,” said Dr. Peter Lurie, president of the CSPI. The agency banned the additive in cosmetics in 1990 under the Delaney Clause, a federal law that requires the FDA to ban food additives that are found to cause or induce cancer in humans or animals. Food manufacturers will have until Jan. 15, 2027, to reformulate their products.

Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on food system corruption.


Vaccine injury scheme has cost taxpayers more to run than it has paid out to victims
2025-01-14, The Telegraph (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2025-01-27 12:35:18
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/01/14/vaccine-injury-scheme-taxpayers-p...

The payment scheme for people injured by vaccines has cost taxpayers more to run than it has paid out to victims, official figures suggest, fuelling calls for “urgent reform”. The Government has spent more than £25 million since Nov 1 2021 on medically assessing thousands of claims that vaccinations have left people seriously disabled. It is more than the total £23.6 million that since that date has been paid out to 197 victims, with each claim worth £120,000. The Vaccine Damage Payment Scheme (VDPS) was established in 1979 and pays tax-free cash to those deemed to have suffered life-changing injuries as a result of certain vaccinations – including those against Covid-19. It awards a one-off £120,000 tax-free payment to people who have been severely injured, or to the families of those who have died, as a result of a vaccination. The scheme has been heavily criticised for being too slow to assess cases. Victims also claim that the payouts are insufficient and that the threshold claimants must meet to qualify for a payout is too harsh a measure. Kate Scott, whose husband was left with permanent brain damage after taking the AstraZeneca vaccine against Covid-19, criticised the imbalance between the money the scheme costs to run and the sums paid out. Public hearings for the fourth module of the Covid-19 inquiry started in London on Tuesday. It will hear issues around vaccine safety from families of those who suffered side effects from Covid jabs.

Note: The Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) is a voluntary government reporting system that only captures a portion of the actual injuries. Vaccine adverse event numbers are made publicly available, and currently show 38,264 COVID Vaccine Reported Deaths and 1,658,330 COVID Vaccine Adverse Event Reports. Our Substack dives into the complex world of COVID vaccines with nuance and uncensored investigation.


Meals as Medicine
2024-12-16, Philadelphia Citizen
Posted: 2025-01-27 12:33:03
https://thephiladelphiacitizen.org/meals-as-medicine/

MANNA [is a] nonprofit that provides free, medically-tailored meals (MTMs) and education about how nutrition affects health conditions to Philadelphians who need it. Last month, the journal BMC Nutrition released research ... showing that its clients achieved a “significant decrease in malnutrition risk” and meaningful changes in conditions like diabetes and hypertension. ”This is the first of its kind,” explains Jule Anne Henstenburg, PhD, director of The MANNA Institute. “There has never been research involving an in-depth evaluation of a functioning medically tailored meal program.” Of the clients at risk for malnutrition when starting the program, 56 percent experienced a clinically significant reduction in malnutrition risk by program finish; 62 percent of clients with hypertension reduced their blood pressure by five or more units; among clients with diabetes, median hemoglobin A1C dropped from 8.3 percent to 7.7 percent, indicating improved blood sugar control. Body mass index (BMI) remained stable or decreased for 88 percent of clients who started the program with obesity. Clients can be referred to MANNA either by their medical care provider or through their health insurance plan. The majority of MANNA’s clients are low-income, a population that often lives in food deserts, where healthy food is already hard to come by, and health literacy (the kind of insight needed to understand medically complex diets) can be low. “I see MANNA as the pharmacy for your prescription diet,” [Chief executive officer of MANNA Sue] Daugherty says. “Imagine getting a prescription for your high blood pressure medicine and not having a pharmacy to fill it — that’s what happens every day when folks are discharged with complex diets.” The top five illnesses MANNA serves are heart disease, cancer, diabetes, HIV / AIDS and congestive heart failure. Originally created in 1990 to provide comfort foods to patients with AIDS, MANNA overhauled its menu and began expanding its reach to anyone with a life-threatening illness 10 years later.

Note: Explore more positive stories like this on healing our bodies.


‘Like a sylvan spa!’ Inside Zurich’s staggering, revolutionary new hospital for kids
2024-10-09, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2025-01-27 12:31:10
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2024/oct/09/zurich-hospital-kindersp...

"Hospitals are the ugliest places in the world,” says Jacques Herzog. “They are a product of blind functionalist thinking, while neglecting basic human needs.” Welcome to Zurich’s remarkable new children’s hospital, the Kinderspital – or “Kispi” for short – a 14-year endeavour to revolutionise how we think about the architecture of healing. It is not trying to be a fancy hotel, like some private hospitals. It is just a place where simple things like the quality of light and views, the scale and proportion of spaces and the texture of materials have been thought about with immense care, and honed to make the experience as pleasant as possible for everyone. The firm [Herzog & de Meuron] completed an impressive, yet oddly undersung, rehabilitation clinic in Basel in 2002, and is now building a huge amoeba-shaped hospital in Denmark as well as a terracotta-clad ziggurat teaching hospital in San Fransisco. “I am totally convinced that architecture can contribute to the healing process," [Herzog says]. The 600-strong practice has been quietly tackling the topic of healthcare for the last two decades. Kispi ... is unlike any other hospital. The rooms have a more domestic feel than typical hospital rooms, like being in the attic of an alpine chalet. They have big picture windows and clever window seats that can be pulled out to become beds, giving weary parents a place to sleep. Having a sloped wooden roof and natural light makes a huge psychological difference when you’re lying in bed staring at the ceiling all day. Fun porthole windows at child height can be opened for natural ventilation, while every room has an en suite bathroom. Wooden floors add a sense of warmth in contrast to the usual stark vinyl – and they’re just as hygienic, coated with ultra-hardwearing polyurethane. “We’ve tried to make the architecture address the curiosity of children,” says Christine Binswanger, partner in charge of the project.

Note: Don't miss the incredible photos of this children's hospital at the link above. Explore more positive stories like this on healing our bodies.


We can be heroes: the inspiring people we met around the world in 2024
2024-12-25, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2025-01-27 12:29:16
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2024/dec/25/global-development...

Nine years ago, Cecilia Llusco was one of 11 Indigenous women who made it to the summit of the 6,088 metre-high Huayna Potosí in Bolivia. They called themselves the cholitas escaladoras (the climbing cholitas) and went on to scale many more peaks in Bolivia and across South America. Llusco takes enormous pride in being an Indigenous woman and always goes up mountains wearing her pollera, a voluminous traditional floral skirt. Her belief in the strength of others, particularly women, is steadfast and reassuring. Though he cannot speak or hear, Asom Khan has so much to say. When I arrived at his shelter in a Rohingya refugee camp in Bangladesh, he was quick to dig out his art books so I could see his drawings, to show me the photos he takes with his phone, and to tell me his story through the makeshift sign language he has developed. Photography has allowed Asom to communicate to the world what it is like to live in a refugee camp, where he has now spent almost half of his life. [Human rights lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh's] determination to stand up for victims of injustice in Iran is resolute. For decades she has fought for justice, defending children on death row, child victims of domestic abuse and prominent activists. The government has been relentless in its efforts to crush her spirit, but Sotoudeh refuses to give up hope. Some question how, as a wife and mother, she could risk imprisonment, after she was sentenced to 38 years and 148 lashes for her human rights work in 2019. But her husband and children’s support is unwavering: “People say life is precious, don’t sacrifice your family life, but human rights and freedom are also valuable and precious.”

Note: Explore more positive and inspiring human interest stories.


US ‘prepared Syrian rebel group to help topple Bashar al-Assad’
2024-12-18, The Telegraph (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2025-01-25 16:50:38
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2024/12/18/us-prepared-syrian-rebel-gr...

The United States prepared a rebel force to join the offensive that overthrew the regime of Bashar al-Assad, fighters have claimed. British and American-trained fighters in the Revolutionary Commando Army (RCA), a group aligned against Islamic State, were told “this is your moment” in a briefing by US Special Forces before Assad was ousted. The RCA revealed it had been told to scale-up its forces and “be ready” for an attack that could lead to the end of the Assad regime. Having worked with the RCA to dismantle the Islamic State’s Syrian caliphate, the US still pays its fighters a salary to prevent the terror group’s resurgence. Syria’s 13-year civil war ... threw up a bewildering array of militias and alliances, most of them backed by foreign powers. It would therefore be only one of many ironies if the US has been in an effective alliance with a group like HTS, which was al-Qaeda’s affiliate in Syria until it broke away in 2017. It is equally ironic that rebel factions supported by the US are co-operating with those backed by Turkey in places like Palmyra, while fighting against each other elsewhere in the country. While Turkey opposed the US-supported Kurds in Syria, it was in full agreement about the threat posed by Isis. In recent days, the US has carried out dozens of air strikes on Isis positions even as its Kurdish allies have come under sustained attack from Syrian factions supported by Turkey.

Note: Watch former CIA director John Brennan suggest that the Syrian rebels we previously supported now pose more of a threat to Syrians and American interests. As recently as 2016, Syrian militias armed by the Pentagon were fighting with Syrian militias armed by the CIA. Learn more about war failures and lies in our comprehensive Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center.


Video Surfaces of Syria’s New Justice Minister Overseeing Executions of Women in 2015
2025-01-06, ScheerPost
Posted: 2025-01-25 16:48:36
https://scheerpost.com/2025/01/06/video-surfaces-of-syrias-new-justice-minist...

Videos have surfaced online of Syria’s new justice minister, Shadi al-Waisi, overseeing the execution of two women in 2015 over charges of adultery and prostitution. Al-Waisi is part of the new Syrian government led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which took power after ousting former President Bashar al-Assad on December 8. In one video, al-Waisi is seen reading a ruling that the woman was found guilty of “corruption and prostitution” and sentencing her to death. In the other video, al-Waisi appears to be carrying a gun and tells a woman to sit down as she’s pleading for her life. Once she moves down, another armed man shoots her in the head. At the time, al-Waisi was working as a “judge” enforcing Sharia law in areas of Syria’s northwest Idlib province that were under the control of the al-Nusra Front, the al-Qaeda affiliate in Syria that merged with other Islamist groups in 2017 to form HTS. HTS and its leader, Abu Mohammed al-Julani, who has been going by his real name Ahmad al-Sharaa, have tried to present themselves as moderates since taking over Syria despite their al-Qaeda past. An HTS official speaking to Verify-Sy downplayed the video, insisting the group has “moved beyond” such practices. The US supported the HTS takeover of Syria even though the group still being listed as a foreign terrorist organization by the State Department. US officials also seem to be buying the rebranding campaign despite HTS’s brutal history.

Note: Watch former CIA director John Brennan suggest that the Syrian rebels we previously supported now pose more of a threat to Syrians and American interests. As recently as 2016, Syrian militias armed by the Pentagon were fighting with Syrian militias armed by the CIA. Learn more about war failures and lies in our comprehensive Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center.


Sednaya Prison and the CIA
2025-01-07, The Nation
Posted: 2025-01-25 16:44:24
https://www.thenation.com/article/world/torture-prisons-syria-war/

Even before 9/11, as the US hunted for terrorists, the CIA launched “extraordinary rendition”—an ingenious scheme to interrogate “high-value” suspects outside the country and thus avoid US laws on torture. The first suspects were taken to Egypt as early as in the mid-1990s and the program continued until 2007. How many did the CIA render? A 2014 Senate Intelligence Committee report noted that exact numbers can’t be known. But according to a ... Washington Post article, “thousands were arrested and held with US assistance in countries known for brutal treatment of prisoners.” In 2004, former CIA agent Robert Baer [said] that “conceptually, the practice is a rendition to torture. If you wanted a serious interrogation, you send a prisoner to Jordan. If you want them to be tortured, you send them to Syria. If you want someone to disappear, Egypt.” Survivors [of Syria's Sednaya military prison] tell horrific tales: they were sodomized with swords, suspended in shackles from cages, beaten with iron rods, kept naked in freezing cells the size of coffins, forced to kill cellmates and starved. Some say their genitals were subject to electric shocks. Besides Syria, the CIA dispatched suspects to Egypt, Uzbekistan, Morocco, Algeria, Jordan, Pakistan, Poland, Thailand and Romania. The Senate report stated that “the CIA provided millions of dollars in cash payments to foreign government officials to host secret CIA detention sites.”

Note: Most of the Senate Torture Report remains classified. Read the "10 Craziest Things in the Senate Report on Torture." Learn more about US torture programs in our comprehensive Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center. For more, read our concise summaries of news articles on intelligence agency corruption.


After Failing to Comply With the CFO Act Every Year for 33 Years, Pressure Is On The Military To Show Where The Money Went
2024-12-03, Forbes
Posted: 2025-01-25 16:41:46
https://www.forbes.com/sites/steelrose/2024/12/03/dod-fails-to-obtain-a-clean...

The Department of Defense (DoD) has failed for the last 33 years to pass a financial audit. With assets that are approximated at $3.8 trillion probably maybe ... the DoD is surpassed by only JPMorgan/Chase and its $4.2 trillion as the largest U.S. entity when ranked by assets. According to a General Accountability Office (GAO) report last year, “DOD financial management has been on our High-Risk List since 1995. DOD’s spending makes up about half of the federal government’s discretionary spending. Its physical assets comprise almost 68 percent of the federal government’s physical assets. DOD has not yet received an audit opinion on its annual department-wide financial statements. It has been unable to accurately account for and report on its spending or physical assets.” The DoD’s Number 2 largest supplier, Raytheon and the Government’s Number 31 largest supplier, Dell, both agreed to pay millions to resolve Department of Justice (DoJ) investigations this past October and November. The DoJ reported that Raytheon agreed to pay more than $950 million to resolve the government’s investigations into a major government fraud scheme involving defective pricing on certain government contracts and violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) and the Arms Export Control Act (AECA) and its implementing regulations, the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR).

Note: Learn more about unaccountable military spending in our comprehensive Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center. For more, read our concise summaries of news articles on military corruption.


Matthew Livelsberger Alleged Manifesto: Read Full Email Sent to Retired Soldier
2025-01-03, Newsweek
Posted: 2025-01-25 16:38:48
https://www.newsweek.com/matthew-livelsberger-alleged-manifesto-read-full-ema...

Matthew Livelsberger, a Green Beret and the main suspect in the Cybertruck attack in Las Vegas, reportedly sent a manifesto-like email to retired U.S. Army intelligence officer Sam Shoemate just days before a car bomb exploded in front of Trump International Hotel. Shoemate revealed the email on The Shawn Ryan Show podcast, describing its contents as allegations of advanced drone technology, a cover-up of a 2019 airstrike in Afghanistan, and claims of being under U.S. government surveillance. Livelsberger allegedly [detailed] concerns about advanced drones using "GDIC propulsion systems," which he described as anti-gravity technology. Livelsberger claimed that the U.S. and China developed and deployed the drones. He alleged that China launched them from submarines along the U.S. East Coast, calling them "the most dangerous threat to national security" because of their stealth, ability to evade detection and unlimited payload capacity. Livelsberger also referenced his involvement in a 2019 U.S. airstrike in Nimruz Province, Afghanistan. He claimed the operation, which targeted drug facilities, caused civilian casualties, including women and children, and was covered up by U.S. authorities. The allegations align with a 2019 U.N. report criticizing the strikes as unlawful. Livelsberger said the incident pushed him to speak out. Additionally, he accused the FBI and Homeland Security of monitoring and tracking him, describing efforts to avoid being detained.

Note: Watch this episode of the The Shawn Ryan Show. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on UFOs and military corruption.


U.S. Military Service Is the Strongest Predictor of Carrying Out Extremist Violence
2025-01-02, The Intercept
Posted: 2025-01-25 16:36:00
https://theintercept.com/2025/01/02/military-veterans-extremism-attack-new-or...

The two men who carried out apparent terror attacks on New Year’s Day — killing 15 people by plowing a pickup truck into a crowd of New Year’s revelers in New Orleans, and detonating a Tesla Cybertruck outside a Trump hotel in Las Vegas — both had U.S. military backgrounds, according to the Pentagon. From 1990 to 2010, about seven persons per year with U.S. military backgrounds committed extremist crimes. Since 2011, that number has jumped to almost 45 per year. Military service is also the single strongest individual predictor of becoming a “mass casualty offender,” far outpacing mental health issues, according to a ... study of extremist mass casualty violence. From 1990 through 2023, 730 individuals with U.S. military backgrounds committed criminal acts that were motivated by their political, economic, social, or religious goals. From 1990 to 2022, successful violent plots that included perpetrators with a connection to the U.S. military resulted in 314 deaths and 1,978 injuries — a significant number of which came from the 1995 bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. [Matthew] Livelsberger’s weaponized Tesla Cybertruck was rented from Turo, the vehicle-sharing service that was also used in the New Orleans attack. [Shamsud-Din] Jabbar reportedly used the Turo app. Both Livelsberger and Jabbar spent time at the military base formerly known as Fort Bragg and now called Fort Liberty, a massive Army garrison in North Carolina.

Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on terrorism and military corruption.


Why the police ignored the rape gangs
2025-01-07, UnHerd
Posted: 2025-01-25 16:32:03
https://unherd.com/2025/01/why-the-police-ignored-the-rape-gangs/

The statistics behind the rape gang scandal — let’s banish the wholly inadequate word “grooming” — are staggering. For over 25 years, networks of men, predominantly from Pakistani Muslim backgrounds, abused young white girls from Yeovil to London to Glasgow. Why did British police services turn a blind eye to the gang rape of tens of thousands of young girls? The answer, in the end, is simple. Racism, for police services from Chester to Penzance, remains the original sin. Institutional reticence over race goes beyond the police themselves: even the Independent Office for Police Conduct’s (IOPC) review of the rape gang scandal tiptoed around the heritage and religion of offenders. Yet given the scale of the rape gang scandal, is it now unreasonable to ask if any babies were chucked out with the bathwater? I think they were. With ... many incentives to toe the line, no wonder more free-thinking coppers stayed away, with the remainder grimly susceptible to groupthink. We used to call it “having the CD Rom inserted” — whereby a reasonably competent copper would morph into a pound-shop commissar to achieve the next rank. The next time you watch a press conference with a senior officer, play “bullshit bingo” with the language they use, usually involving words like community, proportionality and diversity. Meanwhile, away from the TV cameras, thousands of young girls were raped, abused and treated like chattel in their own hometowns.

Note: Read more about the organized pedophile gangs that operated with impunity for decades in the UK. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on police corruption and sexual abuse scandals.


Timeline of grooming cases and investigations in recent years
2025-01-06, The Independent (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2025-01-25 16:30:25
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/alexis-jay-rotherham-suella-braverman-r...

Five men are given lengthy jail terms [in 2010] after they are found guilty of grooming teenage girls in Rotherham for sex. The same year, police finally act on sexual grooming in Rochdale – going back years – with a series of arrests. Police and child protection agencies in Rotherham had extensive knowledge of these activities for a decade, yet a string of offences went unprosecuted. [In 2014], Professor Alexis Jay publishes her devastating report on child sexual exploitation in Rotherham between 1997 and 2013. The report describes how more than 1,400 children were sexually exploited by gangs of mainly Asian males in the South Yorkshire town. It is scathing about a culture among police and council officials which ignored the industrial scale of abuse, instead treating the victims as troublesome teenagers. A gang of men who embarked on a “campaign of rape and other sexual abuse” against vulnerable teenage girls in Huddersfield were given lengthy jail sentences [in 2018]. The pattern of large-scale exploitation of mainly white girls by groups of men of mainly Pakistani heritage uncovered by West Yorkshire Police in Huddersfield mirrors what has happened in a number of other towns including Rotherham, Rochdale and Telford. Greater Manchester Police Chief Constable Ian Hopkins apologises [in 2020] to the children abused “in plain sight” by the grooming gangs his officers failed to bring to justice.

Note: Read more about the organized pedophile gangs that operated with impunity for decades in the UK. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on sexual abuse scandals.


The Observer view on calls for a national inquiry into child sexual abuse
2025-01-04, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2025-01-25 16:28:18
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/jan/04/the-observer-view-on-ca...

A decade ago, with the publication of an independent inquiry, Britain confronted the horror of the sexual abuse of children that had taken place in Rotherham over 16 years by organised gangs of men, mostly of Pakistani origin. The 2014 report conservatively estimated that 1,400 children – some as young as 11, many in the care of the state – were raped, abducted and sexually abused in Rotherham by groups of men. There have been many other reviews and inquiries in other towns and cities where children have been subjected to similar abuse by organised groups of men, including in Rochdale, Oxford, Telford and Bristol. Child victims of sexual abuse were not only routinely ignored by those whose job it was to protect them – including social workers and the police – but how young girls were viewed by child protection authorities as complicit in their own rape and abuse, as if it were something they could consent to. A further 2015 review into Rotherham led by Louise Casey was also clear that these abusers could hide behind their race to perpetrate their abuse: she uncovered what she called an “archaic culture of sexism, bullying and discomfort around race”, with councillors and staff fearing being labelled racist if they mentioned the ethnicity of perpetrators. In suppressing an issue that should have been dealt with openly and properly, this was a factor in enabling the abuse to go on. As a society, we have a terrible track record of tackling child sexual abuse.

Note: Read more about the organized pedophile gangs that operated with impunity for decades in the UK. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on sexual abuse scandals.


Ohio Puts Police Bodycam Footage Behind a Paywall
2025-01-03, The Intercept
Posted: 2025-01-25 16:26:22
https://theintercept.com/2025/01/03/police-body-camera-footage-ohio/

Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine signed into law on Thursday changes to the state’s public records statute that allow law enforcement agencies to charge hundreds of dollars for body camera footage. Though such videos are central to watchdog reporting and police oversight, Ohio opted to join a handful of states that have made it easier for cops to put a steep price tag on transparency. Over the past decade, more law enforcement agencies have deployed body cameras. At the same time, law enforcement agencies and police unions have begun complaining about the time and expense of turning these videos over to the public when requested. State and local law enforcement agencies can now charge steep fees for reviewing and redacting videos — up to $75 per hour of footage produced and a maximum of $750 per video. Police can require that the fees be paid in advance. Gary Daniels, chief lobbyist for the American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio, was alarmed that the bill was passed and signed with “zero legislative debate.” “Ohioans deserve government transparency, especially regarding policing. Instead, crucial records will now be sequestered behind a paywall few can afford,” Daniels said. “Advocates, news media, and victims of police actions are right to be concerned how these unnecessary changes will impact their safety and insight into how police operate in and around the state.”

Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on police corruption.


‘I like giving the gift of time’: Time banks build economies — and communities — without the almighty dollar
2019-04-26, Washington Post
Posted: 2025-01-25 16:24:07
https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2019/04/26/i-like-giving-gift-time-t...

Time banks offer an alternative, powered by 21st-century technology, to the U.S. dollar. About 70 exist across the country — some with a few members, others with hundreds — to give value to work that members say often goes uncompensated in a traditional market economy. The Silver Spring Time Bank formed in 2015 and has about 300 members, said co-founder Mary Murphy. Last year, she said, 1,000 hours were exchanged for basic home repairs, dog walking, cooking and tailoring, among other services, without the exchange of money. “You get to save that money that you would have spent,” she said. “You get to meet somebody else in your community and get to know that person. That's a bonus.” Edgar S. Cahn, an 84-year-old law professor who had worked on civil rights and anti-poverty legislation in president Lyndon B. Johnson’s Justice Department, suffered a heart attack in 1980. He said doctors gave him two years to live, with “maybe two good hours a day. I thought: What do I do with two good hours a day?” he said, having beaten doctors’ expectations by nearly four decades. “I have to teach people to value themselves ... We’re all trained as human service professionals: 'How can I help you?'' ” he said. “None of us is trained to say: ‘How can you make a difference?’ I need you as much as you need me.” Cahn became a proselytizer for what he called the “time dollar” — a currency in which an hour of work is worth an hour of work, whether it’s performed by a maid, a mechanic or a mechanical engineer. In 1995, he founded the D.C. nonprofit TimeBanks USA, which developed the software used by many time banks around the world. Time banks can serve as small-business incubators and a way for seniors to remain active after retirement.

Note: Read more about the potential of time banking. Explore more positive stories like this in on reimagining the economy.


Bob's Red Mill is owned by its 700 employees. Its CEO says that is key to its success.
2024-11-14, Business Insider
Posted: 2025-01-25 16:21:53
https://www.businessinsider.com/bobs-red-mill-ceo-employee-owned-esop-benefit...

When 94-year-old Bob Moore died in February, Bob's Red Mill not only lost its founder but also the face of the company, literally — he's on every package. But in 2010, the natural foods company initiated a process that would help prepare it for Moore's eventual passing. Moore, who founded the whole-grain food company in 1978 and turned it into a global empire, decided to transfer ownership to its more than 700 employees. By 2020, Bob's Red Mill was entirely employee-owned. "By becoming 100% employee-owned, we knew that when Bob passed that we would control our future," Trey Winthrop, the company's CEO since 2022, [said]. Moore said he frequently fended off large corporations that wanted to buy them out. But because of the employee-ownership program, Winthrop, who has worked at Bob's Red Mill for 19 years, said he did not have to worry about an external threat coming in and trying to buy up shares. Bob's Red Mill is one of about 6,500 American companies that operate with an Employee Stock Ownership Plan, or ESOP. The largest majority employee-owned company in the US as of November is Publix, a Florida-based supermarket chain. Winthrop ... said being employee-owned boosts employee engagement and retention. He said it creates a two-way street of communication, where the company can share financials with employees and workers are given a voice, in part through being active in committees.

Note: Explore more positive stories like this in on reimagining the economy.


‘Negative news publications should come with a health warning’
2024-12-18, Positive.News
Posted: 2025-01-25 16:20:08
https://www.positive.news/society/negative-news-publications-should-come-with...

Imagine. You heard the on-the-hour radio news bulletin while you got dressed that morning. You glanced at headlines on your phone on the way to work. You read the paper while you waited for your coffee in a cafe. Each encounter was, typically for the mainstream news, filled with death and doom. But after each snippet, you also heard or read a warning: ‘Too much negative news may cause a distorted view of reality and harm your mental health.’ Since the mandatory health warnings for majority-bad news media outlets were introduced, you’ve been much more aware of balancing your media intake so that you get a wider perspective on problems and progress. For the first time, you’ve really thought about it. Less doomscrolling, and more conscious solution-seeking. You’re surprised at how much you accepted negative news to be normal, and how much better your mental health has felt as a result of the shift. This is the vision of Seán Wood, CEO of Positive News. The news media amounts to, he points out, an overarching shared story of how the world is. “The impact of that is obviously significant,” says Wood. “While it’s important to highlight problems so that society can course-correct ... Positive News shows that there can be a more balanced way of understanding the world, that keeps us informed, but allows people to engage more because we see a bigger picture, we see potential solutions and opportunities to contribute, we see the human potential.”

Note: Explore more positive stories like this on technology for good.


Almost one in five children live in conflict zones, says Unicef
2024-12-27, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2025-01-09 23:35:09
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2024/dec/28/almost-one-in-five-children-l...

Nearly one in five of the world’s children live in areas affected by conflicts, with more than 473 million children suffering from the worst levels of violence since the second world war, according to figures published by the UN. The UN humanitarian aid organisation for children, Unicef, said on Saturday that the percentage of children living in conflict zones around the world has doubled from about 10% in the 1990s to almost 19%, and warned that this dramatic increase in harm to children should not become the “new normal”. With more conflicts being waged around the world than at any time since 1945, Unicef said that children were increasingly falling victim. Citing its latest available data, from 2023, the UN verified a record 32,990 grave violations against 22,557 children, the highest figures since the security council mandated monitoring of the impact of war on the world’s children nearly 20 years ago. The death toll after nearly 15 months of Israel’s war in Gaza is estimated at more than 45,000 and out of the cases it has verified, the UN said 44% were children. In Ukraine, the UN said it had verified more child casualties during the first nine months of 2024 than during all of 2023. Unicef drew attention in particular to the plight of women and girls, amid widespread reports of rape and sexual violence in conflicts. It said that in Haiti there had been a 1,000% increase in the number of reported incidents of sexual violence against children over the course of 2024.

Note: UNICEF's recent findings reveal that human conflicts are behind 80% of the world's humanitarian needs, calling 2024 one of the worst years in history for children affected by conflict. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on war.


Military vs. zombies: CONPLAN-8888 details how the US plans to defeat the undead
2025-01-01, Business Insider
Posted: 2025-01-09 23:33:02
https://www.businessinsider.com/military-vs-zombies-us-conplan-8888

If zombies attack, the US military has a plan. Really. Upon authorization from the president or the defense secretary, US Strategic Command would begin preparations for safeguarding the civilian population, protecting vital infrastructure, and eradicating the zombie menace. And all without violating the rights of threatened humans and possibly the zombies themselves. "This plan was not actually designed as a joke," says CONPLAN 8888-11 (or "Counter Zombie Dominance"), issued on April 30, 2011, by USSTRATCOM, whose normal responsibilities include overseeing America's strategic nuclear weapons, global strike capabilities, and missile defense. It originated as a scenario to train junior officers in the Department of Defense's Joint Operation Planning and Execution System, through which the US military devises contingency plans. Instructors discovered that a zombie-apocalypse scenario was a better teaching tool than using fictional scenarios about Tunisia or Nigeria as was customary at the time, which also risked being misunderstood by the public as real scenarios. One potential hurdle to deploying the US military is lawfare. Laws such as the Insurrection and the Posse Comitatus Acts strictly limit the deployment of the US military in domestic affairs. Though martial law would almost certainly be declared in the event of a mass zombie plague, deployment against undead who were formerly living US citizens could raise questions of Constitutional rights.

Note: Read about the US military's fake town to train its soldiers for warfare, where actors are often recent refugees, having fled one real-world conflict only to enter another, simulated one. For more, read our concise summaries of news articles on military corruption.


Weird robot dogs for future wars and more are showing up with guns, rocket launchers, and even flamethrowers
2024-12-27, Business Insider
Posted: 2025-01-09 23:30:43
https://www.businessinsider.com/these-are-the-us-and-other-top-militaries-rob...

Militaries, law enforcement, and more around the world are increasingly turning to robot dogs — which, if we're being honest, look like something straight out of a science-fiction nightmare — for a variety of missions ranging from security patrol to combat. Robot dogs first really came on the scene in the early 2000s with Boston Dynamics' "BigDog" design. They have been used in both military and security activities. In November, for instance, it was reported that robot dogs had been added to President-elect Donald Trump's security detail and were on patrol at his home in Mar-a-Lago. Some of the remote-controlled canines are equipped with sensor systems, while others have been equipped with rifles and other weapons. One Ohio company made one with a flamethrower. Some of these designs not only look eerily similar to real dogs but also act like them, which can be unsettling. In the Ukraine war, robot dogs have seen use on the battlefield, the first known combat deployment of these machines. Built by British company Robot Alliance, the systems aren't autonomous, instead being operated by remote control. They are capable of doing many of the things other drones in Ukraine have done, including reconnaissance and attacking unsuspecting troops. The dogs have also been useful for scouting out the insides of buildings and trenches, particularly smaller areas where operators have trouble flying an aerial drone.

Note: Learn more about the troubling partnership between Big Tech and the military. For more, read our concise summaries of news articles on military corruption.


America Gets a Taste of Its Own Medicine: Drone Terror
2024-12-18, The Intercept
Posted: 2025-01-09 23:28:03
https://theintercept.com/2024/12/18/drones-new-jersey-sighting/

American officials are apoplectic about alleged mystery drones flying over the United States. Last Thursday, New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy sent a letter to President Joe Biden, expressing “growing concern” about the drones and seeking federal help “to fully understand what is behind this activity.” After beginning in New Jersey, drone hysteria is spreading like wildfire. The widespread anxiety ... about living beneath potentially malign mystery drones is striking, given America’s proclivity for employing drones to spy on people across the world without their consent — and, in many cases, kill them. “After decades of the U.S. government flying armed military drones over cities and villages around the world, Americans are finally seeing how uncomfortable it is to have unknown aircraft buzzing overhead,” said Erik Sperling of Just Foreign Policy, an advocacy group. “Even when drones are not killing people, it shouldn’t be hard to imagine that having an unknown aircraft hovering above your head is not something most people are comfortable with.” Populations subjected to constant drone activity report “exaggerated startle responses, fleeing indoors and hiding when seeing or hearing drones, fainting, poor appetite, psychosomatic symptoms, insomnia, and startled awakening at night with hallucinations about drones,” according to a 2017 study. The psychological toll exists even when the perceived threat is merely aerial surveillance from on high.

Note: Read more about the tragic consequences of US drone warfare. A former US general once said that drones create more terrorists than they kill. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on UFOs.


Former CIA officer claims agency tried to downplay 'anomalous health incidents'
2024-12-30, ABC News (Oregon Affiliate)
Posted: 2025-01-09 23:26:06
https://katu.com/news/nation-world/former-cia-officer-claims-agency-tried-to-...

A former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officer claimed in an interview released Monday the agency has tried to downplay "anomalous health incidents" endured by government officials. The whistleblower, going by the pseudonym "Alice," told former CBS News reporter Catherine Herridge she was attacked by an "energy weapon" in 2021, prior to her medically retiring from the agency. She said that while serving in Africa, she heard a "weird noise" in her home one night before then experiencing what felt like "the reverb from a speaker." "I think that there are probably multiple weapons, I think there are weapons that can be fit in backpacks, ones that can be fit in the trunks of cars, ones that can be planted at a position with line of sight to people from across the street," she said. Alice told Herridge she experienced an "anomalous health incident (AHI)", alleging she has since suffered vertigo, cognitive difficulties and ear and head pressure. AHIs, not officially recognized by the medical community, were first reported by federal employees serving overseas in 2016. Alice claimed the CIA has continually "gaslight[ed]" her and other former officers, seeking to make them "question" their AHIs. She told Herridge she watches the agency continue to "deny people's humanity and their injuries." Herridge reported that multiple sources told her CIA Director William Burns privately said in 2021 he believed Russia was behind some of the attacks.

Note: Learn more about non-lethal weapons in our comprehensive Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center. For more, read our concise summaries of news articles on intelligence agency corruption.


20 Years After His Death, Gary Webb’s Truth Is Still Dangerous
2024-12-29, Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting
Posted: 2025-01-09 23:24:08
https://fair.org/home/20-years-after-his-death-gary-webbs-truth-is-still-dang...

Twenty years ago this month, on December 10, 2004, former San Jose Mercury News investigative reporter Gary Webb died by apparent suicide. Webb had left the newspaper in 1997 after his career was systematically destroyed because he had done what journalists are supposed to do: speak truth to power. In August 1996, Webb penned a three-part series ... that documented how profits from the sale of crack cocaine in Los Angeles in the 1980s had been funneled to the Contras, the right-wing, CIA-backed mercenary army responsible for helping to perpetrate [a] large-scale terrorist war against Nicaragua. At the same time, the crack epidemic had devastated Black communities in South Central LA—which meant that Webb’s series generated understandable uproar among Black Americans. Webb was subjected to a concerted assault by the corporate media, most notably the New York Times, Washington Post and LA Times, as detailed in a 1997 intervention by FAIR’s Norman Solomon. The media hit job relied heavily on denials from the CIA itself—as in “CIA Chief Denies Crack Conspiracy.” In December 1997, the same month Webb left the Mercury News after being discredited across the board and abandoned by his own editors, the New York Times reassured readers that the “CIA Says It Has Found No Link Between Itself and Crack Trade.” Leading media outlets ... buried or obstructed news suggesting Contra-cocaine links.

Note: Read more about journalist Gary Webb. Learn more about the dark truth behind the US war on drugs. For more, read our concise summaries of news articles on war on drugs.


Analysis Shows US Lawmakers Traded Up to $113 Million in Arms Stocks This Year
2024-12-26, Common Dreams
Posted: 2025-01-09 23:21:54
https://www.commondreams.org/news/congress-defense-stock-trading

The Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft found that at least 37 members of Congress and their relatives traded between $24-113 million worth of stock in companies listed on Defense and Security Monitor's Top 100 Defense Contractors index. As the Quincy Institute noted: "Eight of these members even simultaneously held positions on the Armed Services and Foreign Affairs Committees, the committees overseeing defense policy and foreign relations. Members of Congress that oversee the annual defense bill and are privy to intelligence briefings have an upper hand in predicting future stock prices." The analysis found that one Democratic congressman accounted for the vast bulk of defense stock trading in 2024. Rep. Josh Gottheimer of New Jersey traded at least $22 million and as much as $104 million worth of shares in companies on the index. The Quincy Institute asserted: "If Congress wants to wash itself of conflicts of interest it can start by passing a stock trading ban. The Ending Trading and Holdings in Congressional Stocks Act, or ETHICS Act, would prohibit members of Congress from trading individual stocks." Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib ... has introduced the Stop Politicians Profiting from War Act, which would ban members of Congress, their spouses, and their dependent children from trading defense stocks or having financial interests in companies that do business with the U.S. Department of Defense.

Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on war and government corruption.


I Audited the Afghan Reconstruction. It Was Doomed From the Start.
2025-01-02, New York Times
Posted: 2025-01-09 23:19:52
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/02/opinion/afghanistan-audit-reconstruction-u...

As the special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction since 2012, my staff and I have audited and investigated U.S. programs and spending to rebuild Afghanistan. We have detailed a long list of systemic problems. One general told us that he faced a challenge: How to spend the remaining $1 billion from his annual budget in just over a month? Returning the money was not an option. Another official we spoke to said he refused to cancel a multimillion-dollar building project that field commanders did not want, because the funding had to be spent. The building was never used. The entire system became a self-licking ice cream cone: More money was always being spent to justify previous spending. Important information for measuring the success of initiatives was — at times deliberately — hidden from Congress and the American public. Since 2021 the United States has funneled $3.3 billion to Afghanistan through public international organizations, mainly United Nations offices, for humanitarian purposes. Some of this money helps the Afghan people, and some goes to the Taliban. Between the American withdrawal in August 2021 and this past May, U.S.-funded partners paid at least $10.9 million in taxes and fees to Taliban authorities. In July, we reported that two out of five State Department bureaus were unable to show that their contractors working in Afghanistan in 2022 had been vetted sufficiently to ensure their work was not benefiting terrorist organizations.

Note: The US was involved in human rights abuses including torture in Afghanistan. Learn more about war failures and lies in our comprehensive Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center. For more, read our concise summaries of news articles on military corruption.


How A Nebraska Woman Named Kathryn Bolkovac Uncovered A Vast Pedophile Ring — Run By A U.S. Military Contractor
2021-06-30, All That's Interesting
Posted: 2025-01-09 23:17:28
https://allthatsinteresting.com/kathryn-bolkovac

Kathryn Bolkovac arrived in the Bosnian capital of Sarajevo in 1999. A former police officer from Lincoln, Nebraska, she was grateful to join the U.N.’s International Police Task Force (IPTF) that was retraining local law enforcement there. Bolkovac was to work alongside officers from dozens of countries under the umbrella of DynCorp, a defense contractor. But it didn’t take long for Bolkovac to realize that DynCorp was engaging in the kinds of human rights violations it was meant to combat. While there, she made the harrowing discovery of a child sex trafficking ring that not only was connected to the company’s most powerful people but was also being covered up by the United Nations. [Bolkovac] found that many international aid workers on her task force had not only engaged in prostitution and child rape, but facilitated these operations at secretive establishments across the city. Victims confided in her that American contractors were raping or buying underage women, sometimes as young as 12. There were no safe homes to place victims in. Many were either simply jailed or deported, at which point law enforcement on the other side forced them back into prostitution. Bolkovovac ... was blocked every time she tried to bring her concerns to someone above her in DynCorp. Finally, after a series of ineffective raids at various establishments, Bolkovac decided to officially blow the whistle [and] was demoted to a desk job.

Note: DynCorp was also involved in the sexual abuse of at least 53 underage girls in Colombia in 2004. Mercenaries reportedly filmed and sold the assaults as pornographic material, and no one was prosecuted due to immunity agreements protecting U.S. military personnel and contractors. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on military corruption and sexual abuse scandals.


Washington Trained Guatemala’s Killers for Decades
2019-01-25, The Nation
Posted: 2025-01-09 23:15:08
https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/border-patrol-guatemala-dictatorship/

John Longan was an agent with the US Border Patrol in the 1940s and ’50s. Following the 1959 Cuban Revolution, Longan ... moved on to work for the CIA. Put simply, Longan taught local intelligence and police agencies how to create death squads to target political activists, deploying tactics that he’d used earlier to capture migrants on the border. He arrived in Guatemala in late 1965 and put into place a paramilitary unit that, early the next year, would execute what he called Operación Limpieza, or Operation Cleanup. Within three months, this unit conducted over 80 raids and multiple assassinations, including an action that, over the course of four days, led to the capture, torture, and execution of more than 30 prominent left-wing opposition leaders. The military dumped their bodies into the sea, while the government denied any knowledge of their whereabouts. Longan’s Operación Limpieza was a decisive step in the unraveling of Guatemala, empowering an intelligence system that over the course of the country’s civil war would be responsible for tens of thousands of disappearances, 200,000 deaths, and countless tortures. It was common practice during the Cold War to send former Border Patrol agents to train foreign police through CIA-linked “public safety” programs. Men like Longan helped speed up the pace with which local security forces could target and kill political reformers, thus accelerating political polarization and social misery.

Note: Learn more about CIA crimes in our comprehensive Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center. For more, read our concise summaries of news articles on intelligence agency corruption.


Giving Blood to the Enemy: When Your Enemy Surrenders What Do you Do?
2024-04-01, Free Ranger Burma
Posted: 2025-01-09 23:13:08
https://www.freeburmarangers.org/2024/04/01/giving-blood-to-the-enemy-when-yo...

Since the coup in Burma three years ago, over 3 million people have been displaced and thousands have been killed. Not only was there heavy fighting between resistance forces and the Burma Army, but the Burma military regularly attacked civilian populations. Local pro-democracy resistance groups, the Karenni National Defense Force (KNDF) and Karenni Army, asked us to provide medical support as they tried to push the Burma Army out of the town of Shadaw in Karenni State. We went to help treat any wounded from the battle. 33 Burma Army soldiers were brought out of the camp. We told them, “Don’t be afraid, we’re not going to hurt you. See, this is what the people of Burma have been facing these last three years. For the ethnic people it’s been over 70 years! The cause of the dictators is lost. Please give up on that idea, rooted in force, control, greed, and hate. We are not better than you. God has made us to love each other and help each other. We’ll take care of you, but we first have to survive this attack together.“ As the jetfighters came in, screaming over us and releasing their bombs just over our heads, I gathered the couple to me with both of my arms and shielded them with my body the best I could. Our team followed my example, shielding their former enemies with their own bodies. One of the wounded had lost a lot of blood so one of Rangers, named Barnya, volunteered to give his blood to the Burma Army soldier. He lay down and looked straight at his former enemy as he gave the blood. The medics ... administered the transfusion, saving the soldier’s life. This was blood given for the enemy out of love, not spilled by the enemy in hate.

Note: Don't miss the powerful pictures of those providing medical care in the jungle to victims of this conflict at the link above. This article was written by the director of Free Ranger Burma and former US Army Special Forces officer David Eubank. Free Burma Rangers is a humanitarian service movement for oppressed ethnic minorities of all races and religions in the Burma, Iraq, Kurdistan, Syria and Sudan war zones. Explore more positive stories like this on healing the war machine.


How Do You Forgive the People Who Killed Your Family?
2024-10-04, The Atlantic
Posted: 2025-01-09 23:11:21
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2024/11/genocide-rwanda-forgiven...

By the early 1990s, extremist Hutu propaganda had started to spread in newspapers and on the radio, radicalizing Rwandans. Over the course of just 100 days [in 1994], about 800,000 Rwandans, primarily Tutsi, were killed. On April 22, 1994, [Hussein] Longolongo recounted, he and an armed group of men entered a chapel where dozens of Tutsi were hiding. “We killed about 70 people,” he said. “I was brainwashed.” Eventually, more than 120,000 Hutu were arrested on charges of participating in the genocide. In prison, [Longolongo] was forced to take part in a government-sanctioned reeducation program. He initially dismissed much of what he heard. “But as time went on, I became convinced that what I did was not right,” he told me. Longolongo also participated in more than 100 of what were known as gacaca trials. Gacaca—which roughly translates to “justice on the grass”—had historically been used in Rwandan villages and communities to settle interpersonal and intercommunal conflicts. Now the government transformed the role of the gacaca court to handle allegations of genocide. Many survivors were initially reluctant. “They would say, ‘How can you forgive those people?’” [Albert] Rutikanga told them that these conversations weren’t something they should do for the perpetrators. “Forgiveness is a choice of healing yourself,” he would say. “You cannot keep the anger and bitterness inside, because it will destroy you.”

Note: Read how a Rwandan woman forgave the man who killed her husband during the 1994 genocide and allowed his daughter to marry her son. Explore more positive stories like this on healing social division.


‘This is medicine’: inside the psilocybin retreat for US first responders
2024-12-29, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2025-01-09 23:09:01
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/dec/29/psilocybin-therapy-first-resp...

Seven first responders from across the US traveled to Mexico seeking a therapy they hoped would transform their lives. Over the course of three days a team would guide them through ceremonies with psilocybin, the psychedelic 5-MeO-DMT and tobacco. The retreat ... offered a chance at healing that had eluded the first responders through years of counseling, medication and meditation. The US is in the midst of a mental health crisis, and it is particularly acute among first responders – including police, firefighters and paramedics – who are at greater risk of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), depression and suicide. A wide body of peer-reviewed research from scientists across the world has found that supervised use of psychedelics, such as psilocybin, can be a powerful tool to treat symptoms of depression, PTSD and other conditions. During the days-long event, [Angela Graham-Houweling] took psilocybin and later five doses of 5-MeO-DMT, a powerful psychedelic. The ... session was grueling, she said, describing it as one of the most difficult things she’d ever done. She felt a sense of tranquility and a less frantic, reactive brain. “Two weeks [later] I still was able to be calm with [my son] and everyone. I remember thinking: ‘Wow, is this how everyone else gets to feel all the time?’” That sense of peace and the tools Graham-Houweling gained during the retreat, such as practicing mindfulness and staying aware of her emotional state, changed her. She felt better.

Note: Explore more positive stories like this on psychedelic medicine.


Public’s understanding of paedophiles has not improved, says charity boss
2024-11-19, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2024-12-31 19:28:29
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2024/nov/19/public-understanding-paedophi...

Public understanding of paedophiles has not improved over the past 30 years, according to the founder of the pioneering charity Circles, which offers support to some of society’s most reviled offenders. While the Rev Harry Nigh says child protection must always be paramount, he stresses the importance of breaking the isolation and shame that often leads people who commit child sexual abuse to reoffend, arguing that “anything that drives people underground even further endangers the community itself”. The Circles programme provides a local network of volunteers who support and hold accountable their “core member”, a child sexual offender who wants to reintegrate into the community after serving their sentence. The core model of grassroots community support – and accountability – has remained the same for the past three decades: “It’s not just about risk management, it has to be about affirmation,” Nigh said. “Just to reinforce the humanity of the person is really important. “That’s a very powerful thing for a person to be able to find a new narrative of his life that can lead him forward. But it’s not all hugs and kisses. There can be some very hard conversations in the Circle and confrontations. But the studies show that men with a Circle are 70 to 80% less likely to reoffend than a control group. The underlying principles of restorative justice are what’s guiding this work, that harm cannot be remedied completely by locking people up.”

Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on sexual abuse scandals, repairing our criminal justice system, and healing social division.


Prison guards used work assignments to lure and rape female inmates, shocking investigation finds
2024-11-01, Daily Mail (One of the UK's Popular Newspapers)
Posted: 2024-12-31 19:25:49
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14029995/Prison-guards-prison-work-a...

Guards are using prison work assignments at correctional facilities across the United States to lure and rape female inmates, a shocking investigation by the Associated Press has found. Many complaints follow a similar pattern: Accusers are retaliated against, while those accused face little or no punishment. In all 50 states, the AP found cases where staff allegedly used inmate work assignments to lure women to isolated spots, out of view of security cameras. The prisoners said they were attacked while doing jobs like kitchen or laundry duty inside correctional facilities or in work-release programs that placed them at private businesses like national fast-food restaurants and hotel chains. Things were so bad at FCI Dublin in California that prisoners and staff named it 'the rape club,' a 2022 AP investigation found. At least two men who pleaded guilty to sexual abuse were work supervisors: Nakie Nunley targeted at least five female prisoners who worked at the federal government's call center ... and Andrew Jones abused women who worked for him in the kitchen. A civil lawsuit filed in September said that officer Jose Figueroa-Lizarraga moved cameras in an Arizona state facility and raped a prisoner who was on a job assignment, forcing her inside the guard's control room. After reporting the incident, the woman was attacked again. She became pregnant and nearly died after hemorrhaging during childbirth.

Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on prison system corruption and sexual abuse scandals.


We Tracked Every Visitor to Epstein Island
2024-11-22, Yahoo News
Posted: 2024-12-31 19:23:48
https://www.yahoo.com/tech/tracked-every-visitor-epstein-island-170000863.html

In 2024 WIRED conducted an investigation uncovering the data of mobile devices belonging to almost 200 of his visitors. How strong was the data? So precise that we followed visitor's movements to and from Epstein Island to within centimeters—tracking their countries, neighborhoods, and even buildings of origin. These digital trails document the numerous trips of wealthy and influential individuals seemingly undeterred by Epstein's status as a convicted sex offender. Little St. James is a private island that is part of the U.S. Virgin Islands, an unincorporated territory of the United States in the Caribbean Sea. Epstein purchased little St. James in 1998 for $7.95 million. It's about 71 acres, the size of 54 football fields. He made the island his primary residence and soon after began welcoming visitors and throwing infamous parties where he was accused of having groomed, sexually assaulted, and trafficked untold numbers of women and girls. The tracking of phones wasn't contained to Little St. James surveillance continued long after the visitors left. The Near Intelligence data we uncovered pinpoints 166 locations throughout the United States and 80 cities across 26 states. Topping the list were Florida, Massachusetts, Texas, Michigan, and New York. Many of the visitors were likely wealthy, as indicated by coordinates pointing to gated communities in Michigan, as well as homes in Martha's Vineyard, and Nantucket in Massachusetts.

Note: Read about the connection between Epstein’s child sex trafficking ring and intelligence agency sexual blackmail operations. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on Jeffrey Epstein's trafficking and blackmail ring.


Bank of America Flagged Suspicious Payments to Epstein Only After He Died
2024-12-13, New York Times
Posted: 2024-12-31 19:22:11
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/13/business/jeffrey-epstein-bank-of-america.html

When Bank of America alerted financial regulators in 2020 to potentially suspicious payments from Leon Black, the billionaire investor, to Jeffrey Epstein, the disgraced financier, the bank was following a routine practice. The bank filed two “suspicious activity reports,” or SARs, which are meant to alert law enforcement to potential criminal activities like money laundering, terrorism financing or sex trafficking. One was filed in February 2020 and the other eight months later, according to a congressional memorandum. SARs are expected to be filed within 60 days of a bank spotting a questionable transaction. But the warnings in this case ... were not filed until several years after the payments, totaling $170 million, had been made. By the time of the first filing, Mr. Epstein had already been dead for six months. The delayed filings have led congressional investigators to question if Bank of America violated federal laws against money laundering. Bank of America is not the only big bank to have been questioned about suspicious transactions involving Mr. Epstein. In litigation involving hundreds of Mr. Epstein’s sexual abuse victims, it was disclosed that JPMorgan Chase had filed several SARs after the bank kicked him out as a client in 2013. Deutsche Bank, which subsequently became Mr. Epstein’s primary banker, paid a $150 million fine to New York bank regulators, in part because of its due diligence failures in monitoring Mr. Epstein’s financial affairs.

Note: Read about the connection between Epstein’s child sex trafficking ring and intelligence agency sexual blackmail operations. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on financial industry corruption and Jeffrey Epstein's trafficking and blackmail ring.


More than 300m children victims of online sexual abuse every year
2024-05-26, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2024-12-31 19:19:56
https://www.theguardian.com/society/article/2024/may/27/more-than-300m-childr...

More than 300 million children across the globe are victims of online sexual exploitation and abuse each year, research suggests. In what is believed to be the first global estimate of the scale of the crisis, researchers at the University of Edinburgh found that 12.6% of the world’s children have been victims of nonconsensual talking, sharing and exposure to sexual images and video in the past year, equivalent to about 302 million young people. A similar proportion – 12.5% – had been subject to online solicitation, such as unwanted sexual talk that can include sexting, sexual questions and sexual act requests by adults or other youths. Offences can also take the form of “sextortion”, where predators demand money from victims to keep images private, and abuse of AI deepfake technology. The US is a particularly high-risk area. The university’s Childlight initiative – which aims to understand the prevalence of child abuse – includes a new global index, which found that one in nine men in the US (equivalent to almost 14 million) admitted online offending against children at some point. Surveys found 7% of British men, equivalent to 1.8 million, admitted the same. The research also found many men admitted they would seek to commit physical sexual offences against children if they thought it would be kept secret. Child abuse material is so prevalent that files are on average reported to watchdog and policing organisations once every second.

Note: New Mexico's attorney general has called Meta the world's "single largest marketplace for paedophiles." For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on Big Tech and sexual abuse scandals.


Canadian billionaire, 81, accused of sexually abusing dozens of underage girls in prostitution ring
2024-11-20, New York Post
Posted: 2024-12-31 19:18:07
https://nypost.com/2024/11/20/world-news/canadian-billionaire-robert-miller-8...

A Canadian billionaire is facing allegations he sexually abused more than five dozen women when they were children — with the victims alleging they were recruited and paid to participate in his chilling sex ring. Robert Miller, the founder of Future Electronics, is accused of repeatedly giving underage girls money and gifts in exchange for sex between 1994 and 2016. The alleged abuse happened in hotels throughout Montreal. Miller was ordered on Friday to fork over two of his million-dollar Montreal homes as part of a lawsuit filed by four of his accusers. The women accused the alleged predator of recruiting them as high school students to have sex in exchange for money, describing his prostitution scheme as a “planned system of sexual exploitation” of girls and teens, according to court documents. One victim alleged she had sex with Miller more than 30 times over two years starting in 1999 when she was 14 years old. On one occasion, she was given $1,000 to have sex with Miller — who allegedly refused to wear a condom due to a latex allergy — at the Queen Elizabeth Hotel. The victim said the alleged sexual abuse left her suicidal as she struggled with alcohol and drugs. Miller, who has denied the allegations, is also facing a separate proposed lawsuit by more than 50 women who reported that he gave them money and gifts in exchange for sex between 1996 and 2006, CBC reported. He was also arrested in May on sexual abuse and exploitation charges involving 10 victims.

Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on sexual abuse scandals.


John Smyth abuse report triggers ‘existential crisis’ in Church of England
2024-11-16, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2024-12-31 19:16:14
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/nov/16/john-smyth-abuse-report-trigger...

The Church of England is facing its biggest crisis in modern times, and there is no clear pathway to recovery. The archbishop of Canterbury has been forced to resign, other senior figures are facing calls to quit and the church is reeling from its shameful failures over a prolific and sadistic child abuser. A 253-page report detailing the appalling brutality of the late barrister John Smyth, repeated cover-ups and omissions by church figures, and the lifelong trauma suffered by victims has triggered an “existential crisis” for the C of E, according to Linda Woodhead ... at King’s College London. “It’s seismic,” said Tim Wyatt, who writes ... a weekly newsletter about the Church of England. The context to the report on Smyth was, he said, “more than 10 years of damning investigations into C of E abuse failures. Bishops, clergy and senior lay volunteers have been exposed as abusers, and church figures knew about the abuse in some instances and failed to stop it or report it to the police.” In the C of E, since Welby became archbishop of Canterbury almost 12 years ago, report after report has detailed sexual, psychological and spiritual abuse stretching back half a century or more. Welby has made repeated apologies for the church’s failures, and under his watch millions of pounds have been pumped into improving safeguarding. In 2012 ... average weekly church attendance was more than a million people. By 2023, the figure had fallen to 685,000.

Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on sexual abuse scandals.


Abbey head apologises to children sexually abused by late monk after cover-up
2024-12-10, The Independent (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2024-12-31 19:14:18
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/child-abuse-monk-caldey-islan...

An independent review found Father Thaddeus Kotik, who died in 1992, lured young girls and boys into the monastery garden, where he would sexually abuse, including rape, them over the course of many years – and that leaders within the order and abbey repeatedly failed to report allegations of his abuse to authorities. Father Jan Rossey, who last year became the Abbot of Caldey Abbey, which sits on an island off the coast of Pembrokeshire in west Wales and is home to Cistercian Order monks, admitted that “it is clear opportunities were missed to stop the abuse of children” on Tuesday after he commissioned the review into alleged historical child sex abuse by monks. The review, led by former assistant police and crime commissioner at South Wales Police, Jan Pickles, examined allegations dating from the late 1960s to 1992, made by people who experienced abuse on the remote Welsh island as children, some who lived there and others who visited. The review concluded that Kotik, who sexually abused girls and boys while he was a monk at the abbey, used a tortoise and “other attractive treats” to entice children into the monastery garden, where he would sexually abuse them. The report also said he “groomed” parents by “overwhelming” them with attention, offering babysitting help and giving small gifts. The abuse in the case of some victims persisted over a period of many years, as children returned to Caldey with their families for holidays.

Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on sexual abuse scandals.


Losing Finders: How the US Government Worked to Keep the CIA Connection Secret
2021-07-15, Mint Press News
Posted: 2024-12-31 19:12:33
https://www.mintpressnews.com/finders-cult-us-government-worked-keep-cia-conn...

The connection between the CIA and the Finders cult ... would constitute not simply an outlandish and perhaps criminal group purported to be abusing and trafficking children, but one sanctioned by the most powerful government on earth. U.S. Customs documents penned by Special Agent Ramon Martinez [reports that] the CIA stepped in to cover up the criminal activity of the Finders in the initial 1987 investigation. This would link the CIA with evidence of organized child trafficking, child abuse and allegations of ritual abuse and mind control. Martinez reportedly learned of this development from Sgt. Stitcher, the MPD detective who wrote reports indicative of CIA involvement with the Finders. Stitcher passed away from septic shock prior to the 1993 DOJ inquiry into allegations of a CIA coverup of the original investigation. Martinez wrote of his attempts to review evidence collected at Finders properties in Washington, D.C. during the initial 1987 investigation: "[I] attempted to access the evidence collected for a period of approximately two months. I was unsuccessful ... and was informed by Sergeant Stitcher (now deceased) that the Finders was a CIA (Central Intelligence Agency) front gone bad, and that the evidence was unavailable." The leader of the Finders cult was Marion G. Pettie, a former Air Force master sergeant who admitted that his son worked for CIA-front Air America. Former Nebraska State Senator John Decamp, author of “The Franklin Coverup,” claimed that the Finders were associated with the CIA and that they were abusing children by means of indoctrination. “I was getting information anonymously," [he said]. “I found out later that it came from CIA people who were concerned. There is enough documentation to show that children, at a fairly tender age, were being used for sexual purposes, to compromise people, and for the “mind control” nonsense.”

Note: Read more about the Finders. The CIA's Air America was also involved in illegal drug smuggling operations. In fact, the CIA’s inspector general implicated the company in cocaine trafficking. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on intelligence agency corruption and mind control.


The secret history of Fort Detrick, the CIA’s base for mind-control experiments
2019-09-15, Politico
Posted: 2024-12-31 19:10:00
https://www.politico.eu/article/the-secret-history-of-fort-detrick-the-cias-b...

In 1954, a prison doctor in Kentucky isolated seven black inmates and fed them “double, triple and quadruple” doses of LSD for 77 straight days. No one knows what became of the victims. They may have died without knowing that they were part of the CIA’s highly secretive program to develop ways to control minds — a program based out of a little-known Army base with a dark past, Fort Detrick. Detrick, still thriving today as the army’s principal base for biological research ... was for years the literal nerve center of the CIA’s hidden chemical and mind-control empire. [CIA chemist Sidney] Gottlieb searched relentlessly for a way to blast away human minds so new ones could be implanted. He tested an astonishing variety of drug combinations, often in conjunction with other torments like electro-shock or sensory deprivation. In the United States, his victims were unwitting subjects at jails and hospitals, including a federal prison in Atlanta and an addiction research center in Lexington, Kentucky. In Europe and East Asia, Gottlieb’s victims were prisoners in secret detention centers. MK-ULTRA ended in failure in the early 1960s. “The conclusion from all these activities,” [Gottlieb] admitted, “was that it was very difficult to manipulate human behavior in this way.” Gottlieb was the most powerful unknown American of the 20th century — unless there was someone else who conducted brutal experiments across three continents and had a license to kill issued by the U.S. government.

Note: Read more about the troubling experiments of Sidney Gottlieb. Much remains unknown about the 150+ subprograms sponsored by MUKUltra. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on intelligence agency corruption and mind control.


What Does Love Mean? See How 4-8 Year-Old Kids Describe Love
2024-11-15, Daily Good
Posted: 2024-12-31 19:07:44
https://www.dailygood.org/story/3260/what-does-love-mean-how-4-8-year-old-kid...

A group of professional people posed this question to a group of 4 to 8 year-olds: "What does love mean?" The answers they got were broader and deeper than anyone could have imagined. "When my grandmother got arthritis, she couldn't bend over and paint her toenails anymore. So my grandfather does it for her all the time, even when his hands got arthritis too. That's love." -Rebecca, age 8. "When someone loves you, the way they say your name is different. You just know that your name is safe in their mouth." -Billy, age 4. "If you want to learn to love better, you should start with a friend who you hate." -Nikka, age 6. "Love is what's in the room with you at Christmas if you stop opening presents and listen." -Bobby, age 7. "You really shouldn't say 'I love you' unless you mean it. But if you mean it, you should say it a lot. People forget." -Jessica, age 8. Author and lecturer Leo Buscaglia once talked about a contest he was asked to judge. The purpose of the contest was to find the most caring child. The winner was a four year old child whose next door neighbor was an elderly gentleman who had recently lost his wife. Upon seeing the man cry, the little boy went into the old gentleman's yard, climbed onto his lap, and just sat there. When his Mother asked what he had said to the neighbor, the little boy said, "Nothing, I just helped him cry."

Note: Explore more positive stories like this on healing social division.


Messages of kindness and peace from students around the world stretch 18 miles
2021-11-21, Los Angeles Times
Posted: 2024-12-31 19:05:53
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-11-21/messages-of-kindness-and-...

Each link of that paper trail carries a handwritten message of love and kindness. These 360,000 chain links were created with used paper — homework assignments, old tests, artwork, paper bags, cereal boxes — by students from schools in all 50 U.S. states and on all continents. You get the gist of this colossal undertaking by Kids for Peace, a global nonprofit based in Carlsbad. Instead of stretching the paper chain from Carlsbad’s Pacific Rim Elementary School to Westfield UTC, however, they arranged the strands into a giant heart on the football field. This paper chain project, more than 18 months in the making, came to fruition on Nov. 13, World Kindness Day. “It was started because of the pandemic,” explains Jill McManigal ... who co-founded and heads Kids for Peace. Students, isolated for months at home, needed to find ways to connect and to remain optimistic during this uncertain time, she says. “By doing this paper chain, they were symbolically connected.” The recycled paper “love links” were written in several languages, including Chinese, Farsi, Hebrew, Italian, Japanese, Spanish, Swahili and Tagalog. One message read “love” in Braille. Messages sent from other states and from abroad were stapled and assembled into chains by local student volunteers. Among thoughts shared were: “You’re loved,” “Kindness matters,” “Have faith,” Care for each other,” “Have a good day,” “All we need is hope,” “Stay Strong!,” “Be the source of someone’s joy” and “Learn to dance in the rain.”

Note: Don't miss the pictures of this incredible event at the link above. Explore more positive stories like this on healing social division.


The video game helping children through grief
2024-12-07, BBC News
Posted: 2024-12-31 19:03:55
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c0mz2pw7rk0o

A video game is helping thousands of vulnerable young people turn their darkest moments into moments of creativity and hope that they can pass on to others. Apart of Me is designed to help children and young adults open up about their loss and trauma in a safe and supportive environment. The game, co-founded by Manchester psychologist Louis Weinstock, is now a charity and has helped 44,000 people in the UK, and 160,000 worldwide to understand and process their grief. Created in 2018, [Apart of Me] is designed for 11-18-year-olds who have been affected by a loss which is potentially impacting their mental health. Set on an island, users can play the 3D game anonymously as it introduces characters who each have a grief-related struggle they are finding hard to deal with. It is the user's task to help the characters find a way through and this is done by collecting objects, with each object informing the user about different aspects of grief, Mr Weinstock explains. The game also allows the user to ask questions they may feel scared or uncomfortable to talk about generally. "It gives young people an outlet to have those conversations that otherwise might be difficult to have," he added. Mr Weinstock said the original idea for the game came from young people themselves as "not all want to sit in a room with a stranger and talk about their feelings". He met with young people at a hospice who all expressed the idea of a game to help them with their bereavement.

Note: Explore more positive stories like this on technology for good.


‘Unprecedented risk’ to life on Earth: Scientists call for halt on ‘mirror life’ microbe research
2024-12-12, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2024-12-27 19:25:38
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2024/dec/12/unprecedented-risk-to-life-on...

World-leading scientists have called for a halt on research to create “mirror life” microbes amid concerns that the synthetic organisms would present an “unprecedented risk” to life on Earth. The international group of Nobel laureates and other experts warn that mirror bacteria, constructed from mirror images of molecules found in nature, could become established in the environment and slip past the immune defences of natural organisms, putting humans, animals and plants at risk of lethal infections. Many molecules for life can exist in two distinct forms, each the mirror image of the other. The DNA of all living organisms is made from “right-handed” nucleotides, while proteins, the building blocks of cells, are made from “left-handed” amino acids. Why nature works this way is unclear: life could have chosen left-handed DNA and right-handed proteins instead. Scientists have already manufactured large, functional mirror molecules to study them more closely. Some have even taken baby steps towards building mirror microbes, though constructing a whole organism from mirror molecules is beyond today’s know-how. The fresh concerns over the technology are revealed in a 299-page report and a commentary in the journal Science. Beyond causing lethal infections, the researchers doubt the microbes could be safely contained or kept in check by natural competitors and predators. Existing antibiotics are unlikely to be effective, either.

Note: COVID-19 probably came from a lab. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on corruption in science and weapons of mass destruction.


‘I’m afraid I can’t do that’: Should killer robots be allowed to disobey orders?
2024-08-06, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
Posted: 2024-12-27 19:22:53
https://thebulletin.org/2024/08/im-afraid-i-cant-do-that-should-killer-robots...

It is often said that autonomous weapons could help minimize the needless horrors of war. Their vision algorithms could be better than humans at distinguishing a schoolhouse from a weapons depot. Some ethicists have long argued that robots could even be hardwired to follow the laws of war with mathematical consistency. And yet for machines to translate these virtues into the effective protection of civilians in war zones, they must also possess a key ability: They need to be able to say no. Human control sits at the heart of governments’ pitch for responsible military AI. Giving machines the power to refuse orders would cut against that principle. Meanwhile, the same shortcomings that hinder AI’s capacity to faithfully execute a human’s orders could cause them to err when rejecting an order. Militaries will therefore need to either demonstrate that it’s possible to build ethical, responsible autonomous weapons that don’t say no, or show that they can engineer a safe and reliable right-to-refuse that’s compatible with the principle of always keeping a human “in the loop.” If they can’t do one or the other ... their promises of ethical and yet controllable killer robots should be treated with caution. The killer robots that countries are likely to use will only ever be as ethical as their imperfect human commanders. They would only promise a cleaner mode of warfare if those using them seek to hold themselves to a higher standard.

Note: Learn more about emerging warfare technology in our comprehensive Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center. For more, read our concise summaries of news articles on AI and military corruption.


The Terminator’s Vision of AI Warfare Is Now Reality
2024-12-06, Jacobin
Posted: 2024-12-27 19:20:21
https://jacobin.com/2024/12/terminator-ai-war-palestine-ukraine

Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority. However, as many AI ethicists warn, this blinkered focus on the existential future threat to humanity posed by a malevolent AI ... has often served to obfuscate the myriad more immediate dangers posed by emerging AI technologies. These “lesser-order” AI risks ... include pervasive regimes of omnipresent AI surveillance and panopticon-like biometric disciplinary control; the algorithmic replication of existing racial, gender, and other systemic biases at scale ... and mass deskilling waves that upend job markets, ushering in an age monopolized by a handful of techno-oligarchs. Killer robots have become a twenty-first-century reality, from gun-toting robotic dogs to swarms of autonomous unmanned drones, changing the face of warfare from Ukraine to Gaza. Palestinian civilians have frequently spoken about the paralyzing psychological trauma of hearing the “zanzana” — the ominous, incessant, unsettling, high-pitched buzzing of drones loitering above. Over a decade ago, children in Waziristan, a region of Pakistan’s tribal belt bordering Afghanistan, experienced a similar debilitating dread of US Predator drones that manifested as a fear of blue skies. “I no longer love blue skies. In fact, I now prefer gray skies. The drones do not fly when the skies are gray,” stated thirteen-year-old Zubair in his testimony before Congress in 2013.

Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on AI and military corruption.


A new military-industrial complex: How tech bros are hyping AI’s role in war
2024-10-07, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
Posted: 2024-12-27 19:17:39
https://thebulletin.org/2024/10/a-new-military-industrial-complex-how-tech-br...

The current debate on military AI is largely driven by “tech bros” and other entrepreneurs who stand to profit immensely from militaries’ uptake of AI-enabled capabilities. Despite their influence on the conversation, these tech industry figures have little to no operational experience, meaning they cannot draw from first-hand accounts of combat to further justify arguments that AI is changing the character, if not nature, of war. Rather, they capitalize on their impressive business successes to influence a new model of capability development through opinion pieces in high-profile journals, public addresses at acclaimed security conferences, and presentations at top-tier universities. Three related considerations have combined to shape the hype surrounding military AI. First [is] the emergence of a new military industrial complex that is dependent on commercial service providers. Second, this new defense acquisition process is the cause and effect of a narrative suggesting a global AI arms race, which has encouraged scholars to discount the normative implications of AI-enabled warfare. Finally, while analysts assume that soldiers will trust AI, which is integral to human-machine teaming that facilitates AI-enabled warfare, trust is not guaranteed. Senior officers do not trust AI-enhanced capabilities. To the extent they do demonstrate increased levels of trust in machines, their trust is moderated by how machines are used.

Note: Learn more about emerging warfare technology in our comprehensive Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center. For more, read our concise summaries of news articles on AI and military corruption.


The US military is now talking openly about going on the attack in space
2024-12-13, Ars Technica
Posted: 2024-12-27 19:14:44
https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/12/the-us-military-is-now-talking-openly-a...

Earlier this year, officials at US Space Command released a list of priorities and needs, and among the routine recitation of things like cyber defense, communications, and surveillance was a relatively new term: "integrated space fires." Essentially, "fires" are offensive or defensive actions against an adversary. The Army defines fires as "the use of weapon systems to create specific lethal and nonlethal effects on a target." The inclusion of this term in a Space Command planning document was another signal that Pentagon leaders, long hesitant to even mention the possibility of putting offensive weapons in space for fear of stirring up a cosmic arms race, see the taboo of talking about space warfare as a thing of the past. Wartime scenarios in space range from a one-off cyberattack against a satellite system ... to a destructive nuclear detonation in Earth orbit. The Pentagon is also concerned with the ability of potential adversaries, particularly China, to use their satellites to bolster their land, air, and naval forces, similar to the way the US military leans on its space-based capabilities. One concept proposed by some government and industry officials is to launch roving "defender" satellites into orbit, with the sole purpose of guarding high-value US satellites against an attack. [Space Force General Chance] Saltzman said the service is already thinking about what to do to maintain what the Pentagon now calls "space superiority"—a twist on the term air superiority.

Note: Learn more about emerging warfare technology in our comprehensive Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center. Read more about the arms race in space. For more, read our concise summaries of news articles on military corruption.


How the US and Israel Destroyed Syria and Called it Peace
2024-12-12, Common Dreams
Posted: 2024-12-27 19:14:41
https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/us-israel-syria

The fall of Syria this week is the culmination of the Israel-U.S. campaign against Syria that goes back to 1996 with Netanyahu’s arrival to office as Prime Minister. In [Netanyahu's] 1996 book Fighting Terrorism, Israel would not fight the terrorists; it would fight the states that support the terrorists. More accurately, it would get the US to do Israel’s fighting for it. This was confirmed to General Wesley Clark after 9/11. He was told ... that “we’re going to attack and destroy the governments in seven countries in five years—we’re going to start with Iraq, and then we’re going to move to Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Iran.” Since 2011, the Israel-U.S. perpetual war on Syria, including bombing, jihadists, economic sanctions, U.S. seizure of Syria’s oil fields, and more, has sunk the Syrian people into misery. The Israel-U.S. war on Syria escalated in 2011 and 2012, when Barack Obama covertly tasked the CIA with the overthrow of the Syrian Government in Operation Timber Sycamore. That effort finally came to “fruition” this week, after more than 300,000 deaths in the Syrian war since 2011. The U.S. has by now led or sponsored wars against Iraq (invasion in 2003), Lebanon (U.S. funding and arming Israel), Libya (NATO bombing in 2011), Syria (CIA operation during 2010’s), Sudan (supporting rebels to break Sudan apart in 2011), and Somalia (backing Ethiopia’s invasion in 2006). A prospective U.S. war with Iran, ardently sought by Israel, is still pending. Strange as it might seem, the CIA has repeatedly backed Islamist Jihadists to fight these wars, and jihadists have just toppled the Syrian regime. The CIA, after all, helped to create al-Qaeda in the first place by training, arming, and financing the Mujahideen in Afghanistan from the late 1970s onward.

Note: Remember when Syrian militias armed by the Pentagon fought with Syrian militias armed by the CIA? Learn more about how war is a tool for hidden agendas in our comprehensive Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center. For more, read our concise summaries of news articles on intelligence agency corruption.


Cheap and Lethal: The Pentagon’s Plan for the Next Drone War
2024-06-17, The Intercept
Posted: 2024-12-27 19:11:53
https://theintercept.com/2024/06/17/pentagon-ai-kamikaze-cheap-drones-replica...

The Pentagon is turning to a new class of weapons to fight the numerically superior [China's] People’s Liberation Army: drones, lots and lots of drones. In August 2023, the Defense Department unveiled Replicator, its initiative to field thousands of “all-domain, attritable autonomous (ADA2) systems”: Pentagon-speak for low-cost (and potentially AI-driven) machines — in the form of self-piloting ships, large robot aircraft, and swarms of smaller kamikaze drones — that they can use and lose en masse to overwhelm Chinese forces. For the last 25 years, uncrewed Predators and Reapers, piloted by military personnel on the ground, have been killing civilians across the planet. Experts worry that mass production of new low-cost, deadly drones will lead to even more civilian casualties. Advances in AI have increasingly raised the possibility of robot planes, in various nations’ arsenals, selecting their own targets. During the first 20 years of the war on terror, the U.S. conducted more than 91,000 airstrikes ... and killed up to 48,308 civilians, according to a 2021 analysis. “The Pentagon has yet to come up with a reliable way to account for past civilian harm caused by U.S. military operations,” [Columbia Law’s Priyanka Motaparthy] said. “So the question becomes, ‘With the potential rapid increase in the use of drones, what safeguards potentially fall by the wayside? How can they possibly hope to reckon with future civilian harm when the scale becomes so much larger?’”

Note: Learn more about emerging warfare technology in our comprehensive Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center. For more, read our concise summaries of news articles on military corruption.


Death feels imminent for 96% of children in Gaza, study finds
2024-12-11, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2024-12-27 19:06:20
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/dec/11/death-feels-imminent-for-96-of-...

A new study of children living through the war in Gaza has found that 96% of them feel that their death is imminent and almost half want to die as a result of the trauma they have been through. A needs assessment, carried out by a Gaza-based NGO sponsored by the War Child Alliance charity, also found that 92% of the children in the survey were “not accepting of reality”, 79% suffer from nightmares and 73% exhibit symptoms of aggression. “This report lays bare that Gaza is one of the most horrifying places in the world to be a child,” Helen Pattinson, chief executive of War Child UK, said. “Alongside the levelling of hospitals, schools and homes, a trail of psychological destruction has caused wounds unseen but no less destructive on children who hold no responsibility for this war.” The estimated death toll in Gaza is more than 44,000 and a recent assessment by the UN Human Rights Office found that 44% of the fatalities it was able to verify were children. About 1.9 million Palestinians in Gaza, approximately 90% of the territory’s total population, have been displaced, many several times. Half of that number are children who have lost their home and been forced to flee their neighbourhoods. More than 60% of the surveyed children reported having experienced traumatic events during the war and some had been exposed to multiple traumatic events. An estimated 17,000 children in Gaza are unaccompanied, separated from their parents.

Note: American companies are profiting from the war in Gaza. Learn more about human rights abuses during wartime in our comprehensive Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center.


Democrats can work with DOGE. I know exactly where to start.
2024-12-10, MSNBC News
Posted: 2024-12-27 19:04:32
https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/ro-khanna-doge-spending-musk-rama...

The U.S. defense budget is approaching $1 trillion. About half is going to defense contractors, who have a history of overcharging the Pentagon and fleecing American taxpayers. Raytheon recently agreed to pay $950 million to resolve investigations concerning defective pricing, foreign bribery and export control schemes. I look forward to working with the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to reduce waste and fraud at the Pentagon. Consolidation in the defense industry has allowed companies to drive up prices. The price of stinger missiles has increased from $25,000 in 1991 to $480,000 today. One reason is that Raytheon became the sole supplier and can drive up costs. We should make defense contracting more competitive, helping small and medium-sized businesses to compete for Defense Department projects. We can do this by reducing massive sole-source contracts that only specific large companies can fulfill, breaking up major acquisitions into smaller programs, and improving funding and administrative support to help companies cross the “valley of death” between research and product commercialization. The Defense Department also needs better acquisition oversight. Defense contractors have gotten away with overcharging the Pentagon and ripping off taxpayers for too long. DOGE should provide recommendations for systems to better manage government spending and acquisition.

Note: The above was written by Rep. Ro Khanna, representative for California's 17th congressional district. Learn more about unaccountable military spending in our comprehensive Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center. For more, read our concise summaries of news articles on military corruption.


NASA Found a Secret Military Base Buried 100 Feet Deep in Greenland’s Ice Shelf
2024-11-27, Popular Mechanics
Posted: 2024-12-27 19:00:50
https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/a63024551/greenland-ice-secret-base/

During an April flight over the Greenland Ice Sheet, NASA scientist Chad Greene [detected] a secret military base. After taking radar images of the ice, Greene was surprised to see what was shortly thereafter confirmed to be Camp Century—a 65-year-old Cold War United States military base buried 100 feet deep in the massive ice sheet. Built in secret between June of 1959 and October of 1960 by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Camp Century—also known as “the city under the ice”—was comprised of 21 underground tunnels spanning 9,800 feet. The U.S. and Denmark signed the Defense of Greenland agreement in 1951 “to negotiate arrangements under which armed forces of the parties to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization may make use of facilities in Greenland in defense of Greenland and the rest of the North Atlantic Treaty area,” according to the National Museum of Nuclear Science and History. This allowed the U.S. to build bases in Greenland. While operating at the base, scientists made major geological breakthroughs. But that research was just a cover-up. Camp Century itself was not a secret. The Army even made a promotional video for the project. The scientific research angle, as significant as the discoveries were, was merely a front for a major U.S. nuclear weapon strategy of which the Danish government wasn’t even aware. Known as “Project Iceworm,” the plan was for Camp Century to house ballistic missiles under the Greenland ice.

Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on military corruption.


I was an atheist until a near-death experience made me a believer... here's what I saw
2024-12-04, Daily Mail (One of the UK's Popular Newspapers)
Posted: 2024-12-27 18:58:40
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-14153087/atheist-near-death-e...

A former 'true atheist' has come forward to tell his story of the dramatic near-death experience that made him a believer and left him with a 'deep sense of love.' Jose Hernandez, from Canada, said his journey to the other side began with a brutal accident as an electrical engineer tending to roadside power lines. When his colleague crashed their utility truck on January 6, 2000, the then 46-year-old Hernandez was left with multiple broken ribs preventing him from breathing as emergency medical technicians raced him to intensive care. Despite his disbelief in the afterlife, Hernandez said that he spent those moments of deep physical pain seeking help from a higher power. Hernandez said his consciousness was soon transported through a dark otherworldly portal that led to a mysterious transitional realm of living light and color. He spent three minutes clinically dead, came back but fell back into the same state for another two minutes, which he said felt like hours as he watched his lifeless body in the hospital. [A] spirit-like figure [offered] him words of comfort as he transitioned to 'the other side.' 'I heard the voice next to me say 'Think of the your body as a car, and that car has like five million miles on it, and there's nothing we can do to fix it anymore. So you have to now say goodbye to your body,'' he remembered. This realm allowed him to reconcile with his deceased father. 'It was even more amazing because me and my father had a very hard relationship,' Hernandez noted. 'We had a lot of clashes and I don't ever remember saying to my father in life, 'I love you,' or he to me.' But all that changed when they met again in this realm. When I met my dad on the other side,' he told the podcast, 'I realized sometimes we may not be able to say something here, [but] we're gonna be able to say it somewhere else.'

Note: Watch a video of Hernandes talking about his experiences. Read more about the fascinating study of near-death experiences. Explore more positive stories like this on near-death experiences.


After 3 near-death experiences, local man’s mission is to help dying veterans
2021-05-03, CBS News (Las Vegas Affiliate)
Posted: 2024-12-27 18:56:06
https://www.8newsnow.com/investigators/dannionbrinkley/

Dannion Brinkley says he has seen the other side at least three times. Brinkley was a U.S. Marine and a successful businessman, not very interested in spiritual matters. That changed in 1975 when a bolt of lightning struck a telephone pole, traveled down the phone line, and slammed into his body melting the phone he was holding. “It went into the side of my head above my ear, it went down my spine,” Brinkley said. He left his body, floated along with the ambulance as it raced to a hospital, and watched from above as doctors declared him dead. 28 minutes later he awoke in the hospital morgue. During those 28 minutes, Brinkley says his consciousness traveled through a tunnel, where he encountered a spiritual being of light, and underwent a grueling replay of his entire life. And then, in a flash, he says he was back. “If I didn’t go to hell ... nobody’s going to hell, okay,” Brinkley said. “So, when you learn you don’t die, when you learn you’re a spiritual being, you’re not going to go to hell. That’s enough to inspire you to change.” Brinkley put his beliefs into action. For decades, he’s been counseling ... his fellow veterans, assuring them they have nothing to fear from death. He has spent tens of thousands of hours at the bedsides of the dying. He has been with more than 2,000 people as they passed on. His passion led him to create a program called the Twilight Brigade ... to ensure that no military veteran should die alone.

Note: Read more about the fascinating study of near-death experiences. Explore more positive stories like this on near-death experiences.


A Psychologist Explains ‘Past Life Memories’—And What They Mean
2024-12-08, Forbes
Posted: 2024-12-27 18:54:13
https://www.forbes.com/sites/traversmark/2024/12/08/a-psychologist-explains-p...

A 2021 study published in Explore suggests that past life experiences have been reported across various parts of the world. Children often begin recalling past life memories around the age of 2 and gradually stop discussing them by about 9, when they’re well into their schooling years. Many children describe events, names, families or places from their alleged past life. Many also recall violent or unnatural deaths in their previous life, and about 20% participants mention an “intermission” period between lives, with an average gap of 16 months between a previous death and rebirth. Children can also display skills or behaviors they haven’t been taught, such as xenoglossy (speaking a language they’ve never learned). Research on near-death experiences, published in the Journal of Near-Death Studies, also suggests that survivors sometimes experience past-life memories, similar to those that young children in past-life recollection studies recall. Mr. David Moquin ... was in a coma and hospitalized with double pneumonia. “During that time, I experienced at least two events that felt like past lifetimes. The one that has haunted me for the past 24 years was that of burning to death in an airplane crash. Many years later a psychic told me that in my last lifetime I died landing a fighter plane on an odd single digit day in November 1944. I was born December 21, 1944,” Moquin explains. “My daughter, hearing the recording of the reading, googled and found that Captain Fryer was the only pilot that died on an odd single digit day that November, and that he died trying to land his burning P-51 Mustang. My favorite plane has always been the P-51. The model sits on my desk. My daughter asked me questions and I seemed to know the names of my wing commander, squadron commander, mother and father."

Note: Explore more positive stories like this on near-death experiences.


DOJ secretly investigated nonprofit at center of Wuhan COVID lab leak questions, bombshell House report reveals
2024-12-02, New York Post
Posted: 2024-12-16 21:08:51
https://nypost.com/2024/12/02/us-news/doj-secretly-investigated-ecohealth-all...

The Department of Justice secretly launched a grand jury investigation into a US nonprofit that steered American taxpayer funding to the Chinese lab suspected of leaking the COVID-19 virus and causing the global pandemic. Scientific experts and former federal officials have suggested that EcoHealth Alliance’s grants to the China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) funded gain-of-function research that could have led to a lab leak — but records requests have repeatedly been blocked by the National Institutes of Health. The details of the apparent federal investigation of EcoHealth Alliance remain secret — and members of the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, which released [a] 520-page report on the origins of and response to the pandemic, have declined to talk about it, citing concerns about interfering in any potential DOJ investigation. The National Institutes of Health (NIH), US Agency for International Development (USAID) and other agencies awarded millions of dollars’ worth of grants to the now-suspended public health nonprofit — including a $4 million NIH project titled “Understanding the Risk of Bat Coronavirus Emergence.” More than $1.4 million dollars flowed from NIH and USAID to the WIV for that project, which the agency’s principal deputy director Dr. Lawrence Tabak later acknowledged was gain-of-function research on bat coronaviruses modified with SARS and MERS viruses to become 10,000 times more infectious.

Note: Read how the NIH bypassed the oversight process, allowing controversial gain-of-function experiments to proceed unchecked. Watch our Mindful News Brief on the strong evidence that bioweapons research created COVID-19. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on COVID corruption and biotech dangers.


COVID-19 came from lab leak, report finds
2024-12-02, News Nation
Posted: 2024-12-16 21:06:41
https://www.newsnationnow.com/health/coronavirus/covid-lab-leak-misinformatio...

A final congressional report on COVID-19 released Monday has determined the virus likely emerged from a lab accident in China and that the U.S. government perpetrated “misinformation” by incorrectly calling the lab leak theory a “conspiracy.” The House Oversight and Accountability Committee’s COVID-19 panel, controlled by Republicans, issued its 520-page report two years after its investigation began. The report affirmed ... that a “lab-related incident” involving gain-of-function research in Wuhan is the most likely origin of the COVID-19 pandemic. The report specifically calls out Anthony Fauci ... saying that he pushed back on the lab leak theory and “prompted” a research report called “The Proximal Origin” that was used to discredit it. “Although Dr. Fauci believed the lab-leak theory to be a conspiracy theory at the start of the pandemic, it now appears that his position is that he does have an open mind about the origin of the virus—so long as it does not implicate EcoHealth Alliance, and by extension himself and NIAID. Understandably, as he signed off on the EcoHealth Alliance grant,” the report stated. The massive report also examined the effectiveness and consequences of masks and mask mandates and stated that they were ineffective at controlling the spread of COVID-19. Prolonged lockdowns caused immeasurable harm to not only the American economy but also to the mental and physical health of Americans, with a particularly negative effect on younger citizens.

Note: Read how the NIH bypassed the oversight process, allowing controversial gain-of-function experiments to proceed unchecked. Watch our Mindful News Brief on the strong evidence that bioweapons research created COVID-19. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on COVID corruption and biotech dangers.


Fragrances may seem harmless. But the research is raising alarm.
2024-12-02, Washington Post
Posted: 2024-12-16 21:04:26
https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/2024/12/02/phthalates-perfume-safe-he...

A spritz of perfume may feel like such a minor chemical exposure compared to the pollutants elsewhere in our environment — microplastics, air pollution, PFAS. But scientists and clinicians are increasingly raising alarm over a group of chemicals used in many personal care products: phthalates. Phthalates — found in popular perfumes, nail polishes and hair care products — have been linked to numerous adverse health outcomes: insulin resistance, cardiovascular disease and impaired neurodevelopment. A study published in JAMA Network Open found that higher urinary concentrations of phthalates from personal care products was linked to a 25 percent increased risk of hyperactivity problems among adolescents. Another study of the same cohort found that increased phthalate exposure was also associated with poorer performance in math. The concerns about childhood exposure to phthalates are high enough that in the United States, certain types of the chemical are banned in children’s toys and items such as pacifiers and baby bottles. For Andrea Gore, a professor of pharmacology and toxicology at the University of Texas at Austin ... the harms are clear enough that she advises everyone to try to reduce their exposure, especially parents starting a family and those with young children. “I recommend avoiding added fragrances altogether — in perfumes, scented lotions and shampoos, even scented detergents and antiperspirants,” she said.

Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on health and toxic chemicals.


Their Fertilizer Poisons Farmland. Now, They Want Protection From Lawsuits.
2024-12-06, New York Times
Posted: 2024-12-16 21:02:31
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/06/climate/sludge-fertilizer-synagro-lobbying...

For decades, a little-known company now owned by a Goldman Sachs fund has been making millions of dollars from the unlikely dregs of American life: sewage sludge. Synagro, sells farmers treated [sewage] sludge from factories and homes to use as fertilizer. But that fertilizer, also known as biosolids, can contain harmful “forever chemicals” known as PFAS linked to serious health problems including cancer and birth defects. Farmers are starting to find the chemicals contaminating their land, water, crops and livestock. Just this year, two common types of PFAS were declared hazardous substances by the Environmental Protection Agency under the Superfund law. Now, Synagro is part of a major effort to lobby Congress to limit the ability of farmers and others to sue to clean up fields polluted by the sludge fertilizer. In a letter to the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works in March, sludge-industry lobbyists argued that they shouldn’t be held liable because the chemicals were already in the sludge before they received it and made it into fertilizer. [Synagro's] earnings hit $100 million to $120 million last year. An investment fund run by Goldman Sachs ... acquired Synagro in 2020 in a deal reported to be worth at least $600 million. As concerns over PFAS risks have grown, Synagro has stepped up its lobbying. Chemical giants 3M and DuPont, the original manufacturers of PFAS, for decades hid evidence of the chemicals’ dangers. The chemicals are now so ubiquitous ... that nearly all Americans carry PFAS in their bloodstream. As many as 200 million Americans are exposed to PFAS through tap water.

Note: Remember when Goldman Sachs once asked in a biotech research report: "Is curing patients a sustainable business model?" For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on toxic chemicals and food system corruption.


Inside the shady world of health insurers — and the 1.2 seconds it takes them to deny claims
2024-12-06, The Telegraph (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2024-12-16 20:59:27
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/us/news/2024/12/06/inside-the-shady-world-of-heal...

When Megan Rothbauer suffered a heart attack at work in Wisconsin, she was rushed to hospital in an ambulance. The nearest hospital was “not in network”, which left Ms Rothbauer with a $52,531.92 bill for her care. Had the ambulance driven a further three blocks to Meriter Hospital in Madison, the bill would have been a more modest $1,500. The incident laid bare the expensive complexity of the American healthcare system with patients finding that they are uncovered, despite paying hefty premiums, because of their policy’s small print. In many cases the grounds for refusal hinge on whether the insurer accepts that the treatment is necessary and that decision is increasingly being made by artificial intelligence rather than a physician. It is leading to coverage being denied on an industrial scale. Much of the work is outsourced, with the biggest operator being EviCore, which ... uses AI to review — and in many cases turn down — doctors’ requests for prior authorisation, guaranteeing to pay for treatment. The controversy over coverage denials was brought into sharp focus by the gunning down of UnitedHealthcare’s chief executive Brian Thompson in Manhattan. The [words written on the] casings [of] the ammunition — “deny”, “defend” and “depose” — are thought to refer to the tactics the insurance industry is accused of using to avoid paying out. UnitedHealthcare rejected one in three claims last year, about twice the industry average.

Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on AI and corporate corruption.


New FDA rules for TV drug ads: Simpler language and no distractions
2024-11-14, Associated Press
Posted: 2024-12-16 20:57:22
https://apnews.com/article/drug-ads-fda-risks-side-effects-influencers-80bbe0...

New rules require drugmakers to be clearer and more direct when explaining their medications’ risks and side effects. The [new] guidelines ... are designed to do away with industry practices that downplay or distract viewers from risk information. But while regulators were drafting them, a new trend emerged: Thousands of pharma influencers pushing drugs online with little oversight. A new bill in Congress would compel the FDA to more aggressively police such promotions on social media platforms. “Some people become very attached to social media influencers and ascribe to them credibility that, in some cases, they don’t deserve,” said Tony Cox ... at Indiana University. Still, TV remains the industry’s primary advertising format, with over $4 billion spent in the past year. Even so, many companies are looking beyond TV and expanding into social media. They often partner with patient influencers who post about managing their conditions, new treatments or navigating the health system. Advertising executives say companies like the format because it’s cheaper than TV and consumers generally feel influencers are more trustworthy than companies. “The power of social media and the deluge of misleading promotions has meant too many young people are receiving medical advice from influencers instead of their health care professional,” Sens. Dick Durbin of Illinois and Mike Braun of Indiana wrote the FDA in a February letter.

Note: Prescription drug advertising is only legal in the US and New Zealand. Read more about the influencers who are paid to promote pharmaceuticals on social media. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on Big Pharma profiteering and media manipulation.


COVID-19 Report Suggests Wuhan Lab as Virus Origin, Criticizes WHO and Vaccine Messaging
2024-12-03, NBC News (Palm Springs Affiliate)
Posted: 2024-12-16 20:55:23
https://www.nbcpalmsprings.com/2024/12/03/covid19-report-suggests-wuhan-lab-a...

The House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic has released its final report, summarizing two years of investigations into the origins and handling of COVID-19. The 520-page report, published Monday, concludes that the virus most likely originated from a laboratory in Wuhan, China. The Republican-led committee cited biological characteristics of the virus and reports of illnesses among researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in late 2019 as key evidence for its findings. The report also scrutinized the World Health Organization (WHO), accusing it of prioritizing the Chinese Communist Party’s interests over its global mission to protect public health. The subcommittee criticized U.S. health officials and the Biden administration for what it described as overselling the effectiveness of vaccines in preventing transmission and infection. However, the report praised the early travel restrictions implemented by the Trump administration as a significant step in mitigating the pandemic's spread. This conclusion contrasts with other research pointing to the Huanan Seafood Market in Wuhan as the most likely origin of the virus. The WHO and many scientists have stated that the exact origins of the pandemic remain uncertain. The release of the report highlights the ongoing debate over the pandemic's beginnings and the global response, underscoring the complexities of managing an unprecedented public health crisis.

Note: Watch our Mindful News Brief on the strong evidence that bioweapons research created COVID-19. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on COVID corruption and COVID vaccines.


Vaccine mandates did more harm than good, House report claims
2024-12-03, The Telegraph (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2024-12-16 20:50:17
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/us/news/2024/12/03/vaccine-mandates-did-more-harm...

Covid-19 vaccine mandates did “more harm than good”, a House of Representatives report has claimed. A 525-page report from the coronavirus pandemic select committee argued that Joe Biden’s policy had cost thousands of people their jobs, harmed public confidence in health professionals and damaged military readiness. The report said that “the vaccine ... did not stop transmission and therefore making the jabs mandatory was ineffective at stopping the spread of Covid. The report also suggested that the “more likely” origin of the coronavirus pandemic was a lab leak. “Since the Select Subcommittee commenced its work ... more and more senior intelligence officials, politicians, science editors, and scientists increasingly have endorsed the hypothesis that Covid-19 emerged as the result of a laboratory or research related accident,” it said. Mr Biden’s administration introduced several vaccine mandates from 2021 for members of the armed forces, federal workers, healthcare workers, and businesses with more than 100 employees. Many state and local governments, along with private employers, followed suit. Some 8,000 members of the armed services were discharged as a result of the vaccine mandate. Only 43 rejoined when this was rescinded. The report argued that vaccine mandates appeared to “fly in the face of decades of scientific research”, by not making an exception for those who had acquired immunity by having previously been infected.

Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on COVID vaccines and government corruption.


Planned Parenthood’s stomach-churning emails ‘negotiating’ for fetus donations exposed
2024-11-21, New York Post
Posted: 2024-12-16 20:46:52
https://nypost.com/2024/11/21/us-news/planned-parenthoods-emails-negotiating-...

Emails show Planned Parenthood negotiating terms regarding the donation of aborted fetuses for medical research. The emails discuss fetal tissue like any other commodity such as sugar or rice, nonchalantly negotiating for fetuses up to 23 weeks old from elective abortions. A heavily-redacted so-called “Research Plan” submitted to the University of California San Diego (UCSD) Institutional Review Board and approved in 2018 states scientists wanted 2,500 fetuses from up to almost the sixth month of gestation for experimentation. Although selling fetal tissue is illegal, donating it is not illegal. The contract between UCSD and Planned Parenthood appears to allow Planned Parenthood to retain “intellectual property rights relating to the” fetal tissue, although it also does not grant UCSD the independent right to “commercialize” the tissue. The emails were shared with The Post by [founder of Center for Medical Progress] David Daleiden. Daleiden ... accuses Planned Parenthood of racism. The English language consent forms contain 15 bullet points including language disclosing that the donated tissue may have “significant commercial value.” However, that specific information is not included in the Spanish language consent forms which contain only 14 bullet points. “I don’t understand why Planned Parenthood…. and UCSD felt that Spanish speaking mothers did not deserve to know that the body parts of their aborted children would be ‘commercialized” while English speaking mothers did deserve to have this fact disclosed to them,” Daleiden [said]. The transfer of any aborted human fetal tissue for “valuable consideration” across state lines is a federal felony punishable by up to 10 years in prison or a fine of up to $500,000.

Note: Watch all the leaked footage of Planned Parenthood executives discussing the sale of aborted fetal tissue here. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on corruption in science.


Felony charges are a disturbing overreach for the duo behind the Planned Parenthood sting videos
2017-03-30, Los Angeles Times
Posted: 2024-12-16 20:43:21
https://www.latimes.com/opinion/editorials/la-ed-planned-parenthood-charges-2...

There’s no question that activist David Daleiden surreptitiously recorded healthcare and biomedical services employees across the state of California with the intent of discrediting the healthcare provider, Planned Parenthood. It’s against state law to record confidential conversations without the consent of all the parties involved. But that doesn’t mean that California Atty. Gen. Xavier Becerra should have charged Daleiden and his co-conspirator, Susan Merritt, with 15 felony counts — one for each of the 14 people recorded, and a 15th for conspiracy. It’s disturbingly aggressive for Becerra to apply this criminal statute to people who were trying to influence a contested issue of public policy. In similar cases, we have denounced moves to criminalize such behavior, especially in the case of animal welfare investigators who have gone undercover at slaughterhouses and other agricultural businesses to secretly record horrific and illegal abuses of animals. That work, too, is aimed at revealing wrongdoing and changing public policy. The videos ... were published online nearly two years ago by Daleiden’s organization, the Center for Medical Progress. Officials of Planned Parenthood, whose staff members were seen on some of the recordings, denied any wrongdoing. Still, the online posting of the edited tapes triggered more than a dozen different state investigations ... and several now concluded congressional investigations into whether fetal tissue was being sold.

Note: Watch all the leaked footage of Planned Parenthood executives discussing the sale of aborted fetal tissue here. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on corruption in science.


‘You have to find your own recipe’: Dutch suburb where residents must grow food on at least half of their property
2024-11-28, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2024-12-16 20:34:52
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/nov/28/oosterwold-dutch-suburb-w...

When Marco de Kat starts planning his meals, he doesn’t need to travel far for fresh food. Right outside his house is an 800 square metre plot with all sorts of produce – apples, pears, peppers, basil, beets and cauliflower, to name a few. Oosterwold, where de Kat has lived since 2017, is a 4,300 hectare (10,625 acre) urban experiment located east of Amsterdam, in a suburb of the city of Almere, where de Kat works as a municipal councillor. The area, which has about 5,000 residents and a growing waiting list, is completely self-sufficient. Residents can build houses however they like, and must collaborate with others to figure out things such as street names, waste management, roads, and even schools. But the local government has included one extremely unusual requirement: about half of each plot must be devoted to urban agriculture. Some, like de Kat, have turned their gardens into an Eden of sorts to provide for their own household unit. Other residents just plant a few apple trees or outsource by owning plots of land on site that are tended to by professional farmers. Others, such as Jalil Bekkour, have been able to capitalise on it. “I never had experience gardening my own food or anything like that,” he said. But he taught himself how to garden, and three years ago he opened his own restaurant, Atelier Feddan, where 80% of the food is directly from Oosterwold. His newfound excitement for gardening and agriculture is palpable.

Note: Learn about the community-powered movement that's transforming yards into microfarms in Los Angeles. Explore more positive stories like this on healing social division and healing the Earth.


Spending less, living longer: What the U.S. can learn from Portugal’s innovative health system
2024-12-10, Stat News
Posted: 2024-12-16 20:32:13
https://www.statnews.com/2024/12/10/us-health-care-system-reform-how-portugal...

Portugal has a life expectancy nearly four years longer than the U.S. despite spending 20% of what the U.S. does on health care per person. According to the 2021 Global Security Index, which measures the ability to respond to pandemics, Portugal ranked third out of 195 countries in providing access to affordable health care. The United States ranked 183rd. Portugal has a national health care system, entitling every resident to free or very low-cost health care. It embraces innovative programs such as “social prescribing” that expand the boundaries of what is considered health care, while progressive laws on drug use and treatment have been credited with driving down overdose deaths, even as they rose in the U.S. In the 1990s, Portugal had one of the highest rates of heroin use and fatal overdoses anywhere. In 2001, the country not only decriminalized the use and possession of drugs, but also, in partnership with several non-governmental organizations such as Crescer, created a network of mostly free inpatient and outpatient treatment centers and mobile street teams that seek out drug users to provide medical care, clean needles, and support to enter addiction programs. Two decades later, drug overdose deaths have fallen sharply, from one per day to about 70 to 80 per year. New Jersey, with a smaller population than Portugal, sees 3,000 a year. HIV infection rates have dropped dramatically, too.

Note: Read our Substack to learn about social prescribing and other inspiring remedies to the chronic illness crisis ravaging the world. Explore more positive stories like this on healing social division and healing our bodies.


From eyesore to asset: How a smelly seaweed could fuel cars
2024-11-24, BBC News
Posted: 2024-12-16 20:30:03
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/czr71vpz4ypo

When large swathes of invasive seaweed started washing up on Caribbean beaches in 2011, local residents were perplexed. Soon, mounds of unsightly sargassum – carried by currents from the Sargasso Sea and linked to climate change – were carpeting the region’s prized coastlines, repelling holidaymakers with the pungent stench emitted as it rots. Now, a pioneering group of Caribbean scientists and environmentalists hope to turn the tide on the problem by transforming the troublesome algae into a lucrative biofuel. They recently launched one of the world’s first vehicles powered by bio-compressed natural gas. The innovative fuel source created at the University of the West Indies (UWI) in Barbados also uses wastewater from local rum distilleries, and dung from the island’s indigenous blackbelly sheep which provides the vital anaerobic bacteria. The team says any car can be converted to run on the gas via a simple and affordable four-hour installation process, using an easily available kit, at a total cost of around $2,500 (£1,940). “Tourism has suffered a lot from the seaweed; hotels have been spending millions on tackling it. It’s caused a crisis,” Dr Henry, a renewable energy expert and UWI lecturer, [said]. The idea that it could have a valuable purpose was suggested by one of her students, Brittney McKenzie, who had observed the volume of trucks being deployed to transport sargassum from Barbados’ beaches.

Note: Explore more positive stories like this on technology for good.


Before the pandemic, top contractor received billions from government to help prepare the nation for biowarfare
2020-06-17, Washington Post
Posted: 2024-12-16 15:05:23
https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/before-the-pandemic-top-contrac...

The Trump administration this month announced that one of its largest pandemic-related contracts would go to a little-known biodefense company named Emergent BioSolutions. The $628 million deal to help manufacture an eventual vaccine cemented Emergent's status as the highest-paid and most important contractor to the HHS office responsible for preparing for public health threats and maintaining the government's stockpile of emergency medical supplies. Emergent has long been the government's sole provider of BioThrax, a vaccine for anthrax poisoning. Emergent's advocacy for biodefense spending over more than a decade was aided by influential allies in Washington and tens of millions of dollars in lobbying campaigns. "It has strategically placed itself to be, let's just say, the company that can't fail," said a former senior government official who worked with Emergent on stockpile operations. The company that would become Emergent began as BioPort Corp., formed in 1998 to buy an aging, state-owned company in Lansing, Mich., that was the only licensed supplier of anthrax vaccine to the Pentagon. The Pentagon ... awarded a $29 million no-bid contract for the anthrax vaccine, BioThrax. Controversy swamped the operation. Hundreds of U.S. troops who received the BioThrax treatment complained of bad reactions, such as headaches and nerve problems. Some troops risked courts-martial by refusing vaccination. Emergent spent nearly $4 million on lobbying last year alone.

Note: To understand the huge influence of lobbying and profits on the development and stockpiling of vaccines, don't miss reading this entire, eye-opening article.


She Joined Facebook to Fight Terror. Now She’s Convinced We Need to Fight Facebook.
2024-12-04, The Intercept
Posted: 2024-12-12 12:53:10
https://theintercept.com/2024/12/04/meta-facebook-terrorism-censorship-speech/

Within Meta’s Counterterrorism and Dangerous Organizations team, [Hannah] Byrne helped craft one of the most powerful and secretive censorship policies in internet history. She and her team helped draft the rulebook that applies to the world’s most diabolical people and groups: the Ku Klux Klan, cartels, and terrorists. Meta bans these so-called Dangerous Organizations and Individuals, or DOI, from using its platforms, but further prohibits its billions of users from engaging in “glorification,” “support,” or “representation” of anyone on the list. As an armed white supremacist group with credible allegations of human rights violations hanging over it, Azov [Battalion] had landed on the Dangerous Organizations list. Following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Meta not only moved swiftly to allow users to cheer on the Azov Battalion, but also loosened its rules around incitement, hate speech, and gory imagery so Ukrainian civilians could share images of the suffering around them. Within weeks, Byrne found the moral universe around her inverted: The heavily armed hate group sanctioned by Congress since 2018 were now freedom fighters resisting occupation, not terroristic racists. It seems most galling for Byrne to compare how malleable Meta’s Dangerous Organizations policy was for Ukraine, and how draconian it has felt for those protesting the war in Gaza. “I know the U.S. government is in constant contact with Facebook employees,” she said. Meta’s censorship systems are “basically an extension of the government,” Byrne said. “You want military, Department of State, CIA people enforcing free speech? That is what is concerning.”

Note: Read more about Facebook's secret blacklist, and how Facebook censored reporting of war crimes in Gaza but allowed praise for the neo-Nazi Azov Brigade on its platform. Going deeper, click here if you want to know the real history behind the Russia-Ukraine war. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on censorship and Big Tech.


Google just updated its algorithm. The Internet will never be the same
2024-05-25, BBC News
Posted: 2024-12-12 12:51:17
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20240524-how-googles-new-algorithm-will-sh...

HouseFresh.com ... started in 2020 by Gisele Navarro and her husband, based on a decade of experience writing about indoor air quality products. They filled their basement with purifiers, running rigorous science-based tests ... to help consumers sort through marketing hype. HouseFresh is an example of what has been a flourishing industry of independent publishers producing exactly the sort of original content Google says it wants to promote. The website grew into a thriving business with 15 full-time employees. In September 2023, Google made one in a series of major updates to the algorithm that runs its search engine. The second Google algorithm update came in March, and it was even more punishing. "It decimated us," Navarro says. "Suddenly the search terms that used to bring up HouseFresh were sending people to big lifestyle magazines that clearly don't even test the products." HouseFresh's thousands of daily visitors dwindled to just hundreds. Over the last few weeks, HouseFresh had to lay off most of its team. Results for popular search terms are crowded with websites that contain very little useful information, but tonnes of ads and links to retailers that earn publishers a share of profits. "Google's just committing war on publisher websites," [search engine expert Lily] Ray says. "It's almost as if Google designed an algorithm update to specifically go after small bloggers. I've talked to so many people who've just had everything wiped out." A number of website owners and search experts ... said there's been a general shift in Google results towards websites with big established brands, and away from small and independent sites, that seems totally disconnected from the quality of the content.

Note: These changes to Google search have significantly reduced traffic to WantToKnow.info and other independent media outlets. Read more about Google's bias machine, and how Google relies on user reactions rather than actual content to shape search results. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on censorship and Big Tech.


Universities shred their ethics to aid Biden’s social-media censorship
2024-10-13, MSN News
Posted: 2024-12-12 12:49:08
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/universities-shred-their-ethics-to-...

Under the guise of combating misinformation, the US government funds universities, ostensibly to analyze social-media trends — but in truth, to help censor the Internet. Agencies like the National Science Foundation provide taxpayer dollars to universities like Stanford and the University of Washington as part of a broader government effort to pressure social-media companies into censoring speech related to elections, public health and other matters. A lawsuit against the Biden administration in the case that became Murthy v. Missouri uncovered emails in which federal officials threatened to penalize social-media companies unless they complied with orders to banish users who posted speech contrary to the administration’s priorities. Last year, a federal judge reviewing this evidence dubbed the administration’s effort a de facto “Ministry of Truth.” Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg recently wrote that in 2021, the Biden-Harris administration “repeatedly pressured” his social-media empire to censor speech — even humor and satire. When Elon Musk bought Twitter in 2022 and revealed similar evidence in the “Twitter Files,” the public first learned that university misinformation research teams, funded by the government, actively participated in those censorship efforts. These academics served as a front for the government’s censorship policy, essentially laundering it in the name of science. But if this is research, it is unethical research that harms the human subjects under study.

Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on censorship and government corruption.


Top Media Outlet Killed My Piece Praising
2024-11-22, The Illusion of Consensus on Substack
Posted: 2024-12-12 12:46:49
https://www.illusionconsensus.com/p/top-media-outlet-killed-my-piece

Last week, I was on the path to publishing a piece in a major legacy media outlet—a name all of you would instantly recognize—about Trump’s bold appointment of RFK Jr. as head of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). For weeks, I had been in discussions with an editor about publishing this article, which argued that Trump appears to be genuinely signalling toward transformative health policy reform. After submitting the piece late Tuesday night to meet a Wednesday deadline, I received a surprising email from my editor the following morning: “Appears we don’t approve.” She linked to a new editorial board piece labeling RFK Jr. a “fringe conspiracy theorist” likely to harm public health. Her follow-up message read, “We have come out aggressively against Kennedy.” Just like that, my piece was axed. My commitment to honest reporting and ideological independence opened many doors. Until it didn’t. I discovered that hot-button topics I tackled like identity politics and police brutality were actually far less contentious than the third rail of Big Pharma and government health policies. Wokism is a far less pernicious, gargantuan force in American politics and media than Pfizer, Merck, and Moderna. By 2021, as the pandemic and vaccine mandates became politically charged, my pitches began to hit a wall. Outlets that once published polarizing takes now resisted anything questioning mainstream pandemic narratives.

Note: This article was written by independent journalist Rav Arora. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on censorship and media manipulation.


Taxpayer Funded Censorship: How Government is Using Your Tax Dollars to Silence Your Voice
2024-11-22, Open the Books on Substack
Posted: 2024-12-12 12:44:59
https://openthebooks.substack.com/p/taxpayer-funded-censorship-how-government

With the misinformation category being weaponized across the political spectrum, we took a look at how invested government has become in studying and “combatting” it using your tax dollars. That research can provide the intellectual ammunition to censor people online. Since 2021, the Biden-Harris administration has spent $267 million on research grants with the term “misinformation” in the proposal. Of course, the Covid pandemic was the driving force behind so much of the misinformation debate. There is robust documentation by now proving that the Biden-Harris administration worked closely with social media companies to censor content deemed “misinformation,” which often included cases where people simply questioned or disagreed with the Administration’s COVID policies. In February the U.S. House Committee on the Judiciary and the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government issued a scathing report against the National Science Foundation (NSF) for funding grants supporting tools and processes that censor online speech. The report said, “the purpose of these taxpayer-funded projects is to develop artificial intelligence (AI)-powered censorship and propaganda tools that can be used by governments and Big Tech to shape public opinion by restricting certain viewpoints or promoting others.” $13 million was spent on the censorious technologies profiled in the report.

Note: Read the full article on Substack to uncover all the misinformation contracts with government agencies, universities, nonprofits, and defense contractors. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on censorship and government corruption.


Pentagon, other agencies funded potential ‘agent of censorship campaigns,’ House committee reveals
2024-10-25, New York Post
Posted: 2024-12-12 12:43:15
https://nypost.com/2024/10/25/us-news/pentagon-other-agencies-funded-censorsh...

A House committee revealed Friday that the Pentagon, other US agencies and the European Union — in addition to the State Department — have funded a for-profit “fact-checking” firm that allegedly served “as a nontransparent agent of censorship campaigns.” House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) wrote a letter to the firm, NewsGuard, demanding more details about the public-private collaboration that led last year to the State Department being sued by conservative outlets that were labeled more “risky” than their liberal counterparts. NewsGuard has briefed committee staff on contracts it had with the Defense Department in 2021, including the Cyber National Mission Force within US Cyber Command; the State Department and its Global Engagement Center; and the EU’s Joint Research Centre. The Oversight panel in June opened its investigation into NewsGuard’s apparent participation in a government-funded “censorship campaign” to allegedly discredit and even demonetize news outlets by sharing its ratings of their reliability with advertisers. “These wide-ranging connections with various government agencies are taking place as the government is rapidly expanding into the censorship sphere,” the chairman wrote. “One search of government grants and contracts from 2016 through 2023 revealed that there were 538 separate grants and 36 different government contracts specifically to address ‘misinformation’ and ‘disinformation.’”

Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on censorship and intelligence agency corruption.


Scientist who battled for COVID common sense over media and government censors wins top award
2024-10-28, New York Post
Posted: 2024-12-12 12:41:21
https://nypost.com/2024/10/28/opinion/scientist-who-battled-for-covid-common-...

Few in the media seemed eager to attend a ceremony last week in Washington, D.C., where the prestigious American Academy of Sciences and Letters was awarding its top intellectual freedom award. The problem may have been the recipient: Stanford Professor Dr. Jay Bhattacharya. Bhattacharya has spent years being vilified by the media over his dissenting views on the pandemic. As one of the signatories of the 2020 Great Barrington Declaration, he was canceled, censored, and even received death threats. That open letter called on government officials and public health authorities to rethink the mandatory lockdowns and other extreme measures in light of past pandemics. All the signatories became targets of an orthodoxy enforced by an alliance of political, corporate, media, and academic groups. Most were blocked on social media despite being accomplished scientists with expertise in this area. It did not matter that positions once denounced as “conspiracy theories” have been recognized or embraced by many. Some argued that there was no need to shut down schools. Others argued that the virus’s origin was likely the Chinese research lab in Wuhan. That position was denounced by the Washington Post as a “debunked” coronavirus “conspiracy theory.” The New York Times Science and Health reporter Apoorva Mandavilli called any mention of the lab theory “racist.” Federal agencies now support the lab theory as the most likely based on the scientific evidence.

Note: Read more about the Great Barrington Declaration. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on censorship and COVID corruption.


Police departments across U.S. are starting to use artificial intelligence to write crime reports
2024-11-26, CNBC News
Posted: 2024-12-12 12:39:27
https://www.cnbc.com/2024/11/26/police-departments-are-using-ai-to-write-crim...

Technology companies are having some early success selling artificial intelligence tools to police departments. Axon, widely recognized for its Taser devices and body cameras, was among the first companies to introduce AI specifically for the most common police task: report writing. Its tool, Draft One, generates police narratives directly from Axon’s bodycam audio. Currently, the AI is being piloted by 75 officers across several police departments. “The hours saved comes out to about 45 hours per police officer per month,” said Sergeant Robert Younger of the Fort Collins Police Department, an early adopter of the tool. Cassandra Burke Robertson, director of the Center for Professional Ethics at Case Western Reserve University School of Law, has reservations about AI in police reporting, especially when it comes to accuracy. “Generative AI programs are essentially predictive text tools. They can generate plausible text quickly, but the most plausible explanation is often not the correct explanation, especially in criminal investigations,” she said. In the courtroom, AI-generated police reports could introduce additional complications, especially when they rely solely on video footage rather than officer dictation. New Jersey-based lawyer Adam Rosenblum said “hallucinations” — instances when AI generates inaccurate or false information — that could distort context are another issue. Courts might need new standards ... before allowing the reports into evidence.

Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on AI and police corruption.


The Guardian view on the ‘spy cops’ inquiry: police lies are finally being exposed
2024-11-28, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2024-12-12 12:37:57
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/nov/28/the-guardian-view-on-th...

Even for those familiar with parts of the stories about women who were deceived into intimate relationships with undercover police officers, the evidence that has emerged in recent weeks has been shocking. The litany of destructive behaviour either carried out by, or caused by, officers deployed to spy on campaigners, who were mostly active in leftwing causes, is being laid bare as never before: self-harm, heroin use, unprotected sex leading to emergency contraception, coercive control and the sudden abandonment of female partners and children. On Tuesday, Belinda Harvey told the public inquiry how she was manipulated by Bob Lambert, who tricked at least three other women into relationships as well. Next week, Mr Lambert will face questions about who authorised the tactic of targeting and seducing young, female activists – and why he employed it so many times. Last month, another undercover officer testified that Mr Lambert had “bragged” about fathering a child. In their jointly authored book, Deep Deception, five women described how they found out that they had been systematically lied to by former partners – in some cases after decades of confusion and self-doubt. Mr Lambert stands out not only for the number of secret relationships he initiated and his alleged involvement in an arson plot, but also because his five-year deployment as a police spy in the 1980s was treated as a triumph. He was given a commendation and went on to run covert operations.

Note: Read more about the dozens of activists tricked into having romantic relationships with undercover police. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on police corruption.


Secrets and lies: untangling the UK 'spy cops' scandal
2020-10-28, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2024-12-12 12:35:53
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/oct/28/secrets-and-lies-untangling-t...

The existence of a squad of police officers sent deep undercover in political groups was so top secret that many of the UK’s most senior officers were completely oblivious until they began reading reports in the Guardian 10 years ago. When Lisa Jones ... and her friends established that [her boyfriend Mark] Kennedy was a police officer who had been spying on climate change activists, the story [collapsed] a major trial ... quashing the convictions of environmental activists who had been prosecuted for conspiring to shut down one of the UK’s biggest power stations. The police spies initially belonged to the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS), which was created to control the restive protests of the late 1960s, including those opposed to the war in Vietnam, but continued to monitor protest groups for a further four decades. Their deployments typically lasted four to five years, with officers living alongside political campaigners, forming deep bonds of friendship, or romantic liaisons, with their targets. At least three of the police spies fathered children with women they met while undercover. Over more than four decades, at least 139 police officers were given fake identities to closely monitor the inner workings of more than 1,000 political groups. These police spies were tasked with gathering intelligence that could be used to disrupt and monitor political groups. Their targets included the black power movement, the anti-apartheid campaign, leftwing groups, and anarchists. Many ... were instructed by their superiors to adopt the identities of dead children to lend credibility to their aliases – with some, in a macabre ritual, even visiting the graves of the deceased children whose identities they were using. One of the most notorious police spies, Bob Lambert, who adopted the identity of a seven–year-old boy who had died of a congenital heart defect in 1959.

Note: Read more about the dozens of activists tricked into having romantic relationships with undercover police. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on police corruption.


The radical power of gratitude to rewire your life
2024-11-29, MSN News
Posted: 2024-12-12 12:33:43
https://www.msn.com/en-ca/health/wellness/the-radical-power-of-gratitude-to-r...

Science is revealing that ... giving thanks might be more powerful than we ever imagined. Research shows that expressing gratitude doesn’t just make us feel good momentarily — it actually reshapes our brains in ways that enhance our well-being. When you take a moment to count your blessings, your brain releases dopamine and serotonin, chemicals that create feelings of pleasure and contentment. But what’s really fascinating is that this isn’t just a temporary boost — these moments of thankfulness create a positive feedback loop, training your brain to look for more reasons to be grateful. Brain imaging studies have captured this process in action. When people express gratitude, they activate the prefrontal cortex, the brain’s command center for decision-making and emotional regulation. This triggers a cascade of beneficial effects, including sharper attention and increased motivation. Think of it like building a muscle — the more you exercise gratitude, the stronger these neural pathways become, making it progressively easier to access positive emotions. Perhaps even more remarkable is gratitude’s effect on stress. When you focus on appreciation, your brain actually dials down the production of cortisol, your body's primary stress hormone. Research conducted at Indiana University found that practicing gratitude can actually change the structure of your brain, particularly in areas linked to empathy and emotional processing. Even simply pausing throughout the day — my favorite practice — to notice and appreciate positive moments can help reshape your neural circuitry.

Note: Explore more positive stories like this about healing social division and healing our bodies.


Can We Ease Loneliness With a Little Gratitude?
2024-11-19, Greater Good Magazine
Posted: 2024-12-12 12:32:07
https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/can_we_ease_loneliness_with_a_l...

In a recent Gallup poll, 20% of U.S. adults said they felt lonely “a lot of the day yesterday.” While there might be many steps we can take to encourage connection, on both individual andß societal levels, a big new study suggests there is one step anyone can take right now to blunt the pain of isolation: giving thanks. College of Charleston researchers James B. Hittner and Calvin D. Widholm collected 26 studies of gratitude and loneliness involving nearly 10,000 people around the world. Then [they] conducted a “meta-analysis” of all the studies together, which can provide stronger evidence for a finding than one study alone. Their results suggest that grateful people tend to be less lonely—no matter their age, their gender, or whether they live in the U.S. or elsewhere. If someone was above average in gratitude, they had a 62% chance of being below average in loneliness. Loneliness, research suggests, is ultimately about how we perceive our relationships and whether they measure up to what we want. And “if one is grateful, then what that should be facilitating are richer, stronger social relationships,” says Hittner. One study found that grateful people were more “psychologically flexible,” able to nimbly cope with adversity and act in service of their values and sense of meaning in life. Hittner believes that this openness to taking in new ideas, meeting new people, and having new experiences is one good antidote to loneliness.

Note: Explore more positive stories like this about healing social division and healing our bodies.


‘I’m motivated by the puzzle’: how Courtney Dauwalter became ultrarunning’s GOAT
2024-09-25, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2024-12-12 12:26:02
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2024/sep/25/courtney-dauwalter-ultrarunner-...

In 2023, Courtney Dauwalter became the first person, male or female, to win the Triple Crown, the three most iconic 100-mile races in the world, in a single season. Dauwalter does not have a coach or a strict training plan. She’s never been on Strava and doesn’t plan races far ahead of time. She runs in long shorts and baggy clothes because, she says, they are more comfortable. She eats candy while training and drinks beer afterwards, because that’s what makes her the most happy. “If I’m happy, the engine works way better.” While her philosophy may sound casual, the results say otherwise. In the last decade, Dauwalter has won more than 50 ultras, often in dominant fashion, and is widely considered the greatest of all time. Without a coach or set training plan, Dauwalter trains entirely on feel. Her days are structured loosely, which allows for adaptability. She makes decisions intuitively, like how many hill repeats to run or how big her loop should be that day. Curiosity led her to ultrarunning, but success didn’t come immediately. In 2012, Dauwalter dropped out of her first 100-mile race, which initially made her doubt herself. “I remember thinking I was a joke for trying it, but that moment was a key part of my path. It taught me about the mental side of ultrarunning and how important the things you tell yourself are, especially in the hardest moments.” Years later, Dauwalter’s mental fortitude is what truly sets her apart.

Note: Explore more positive human interest stories and stories about healing our bodies.


Congress heard more testimony about UFOs: Here are the biggest revelations
2024-11-13, USA Today
Posted: 2024-12-02 18:15:35
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2024/11/13/ufo-hearing-takeaways-u...

Congressional leaders continue to pay serious heed to the possibility that not only are unexplained objects violating U.S. airspace, but that the military has spent decades covertly recovering the craft to bolster its own technology. On Wednesday, a new slate of witnesses provided fresh testimony on precisely these concerns during a joint hearing by subcommittees of the House Oversight Committee. The hearing, which surpassed two hours, represented Congress' latest foray into the topic of UFOs following another round of testimony in July 2023. The hearing's title? “Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena: Exposing the Truth.” The UAP acronym is the official term the government now uses to refer to the unexplained phenomena, arguing it is less loaded and stigmatized than "UFO," but it also accounts for the fact that, as witnesses reinforced on Wednesday, many sightings are of objects in the water. One of the more compelling revelations was a report shared by journalist Michael Shellenberger about a shadowy UAP program created in 2017. Shellenberger, who publishes the “Public” newsletter on Substack, claimed sources have told him that intelligence communities "are sitting on a huge amount of visual and other information" about UAP. "And they have for a very long time and it's not those fuzzy photos and videos we've been given, it's very clear, high resolution," he added. Asked how many images or videos, Shellenberger said "hundreds, maybe thousands."

Note: Watch our 15-min fascinating video vlog from this year’s 10th anniversary of the world’s largest UFO/UAP conference. For more along these lines, explore concise summaries of news articles on UFOs from reliable major media sources. Then explore the excellent, reliable resources provided in our UFO Information Center.


Did the government confirm aliens exist?
2024-11-13, News Nation
Posted: 2024-12-02 18:13:53
https://www.newsnationnow.com/space/ufo/did-government-confirm-aliens-exist/

The House held a second hearing following a widely-watched congressional hearing on UAPs and UFOs last year that prompted people to flock to social media, many proclaiming the government confirmed aliens exist. While witnesses and lawmakers discussed the issue of UFOs, the government has not issued any official confirmation of alien life. Whistleblower David Grusch largely recounted second-hand testimony and provided no evidence to support his claims. Grusch is a former member of the UAP Task Force. Former Navy Commander and pilot David Fravor recounted a first-hand experience with the so-called ‘Tic Tac’ UFO but said he was never briefed on the object or its potential origins. Former Navy pilot Ryan Graves, who founded the Americans for Safe Aerospace, also recounted an encounter he had with an object he described as a black sphere floating inside a clear cube. Graves indicated such encounters were extremely common among pilots. Only Rep. Matt Gaetz, R.-Fla., said he had seen any evidence of alien life firsthand. Grusch was unable to answer a number of inquiries regarding specific evidence or proof in an open setting, though he indicated he would be willing to say more in a secure, classified briefing. At the heart of Grusch’s whistleblower complaint is his claim that the government, specifically the Department of Defense, is operating programs to retrieve material from crashes that are extraterrestrial in nature and are keeping those programs secret.

Note: Watch our 15-min fascinating video vlog from this year’s 10th anniversary of the world’s largest UFO/UAP conference. For more along these lines, explore concise summaries of news articles on UFOs from reliable major media sources. Then explore the excellent, reliable resources provided in our UFO Information Center.


Why I’m helping Malcolm X’s daughters sue the U.S. government
2024-11-21, MSNBC News
Posted: 2024-12-02 18:12:21
https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/malcolm-x-federal-lawsuit-assassi...

Malcolm X (El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz) was more than a leader — he was a force, a relentless advocate who confronted an entrenched culture of injustice with courage and strength. Malcolm X set the stage for me and many others who were called to continue the fight against injustice. His fight was cut short by a horrific assassination carried out in front of his wife and children, followed by a cover-up that his family believes involved some of the most highly regarded agencies in our country at the time. On Nov. 15, I joined some of our nation’s foremost attorneys in filing a lawsuit on behalf of the Shabazz family, seeking to uncover the truth surrounding Malcolm’s assassination on Feb. 21, 1965, in New York City. Through this lawsuit, we plan to prove in court the accusation that government agencies, including the FBI, the CIA and the New York Police Department, actively facilitated and then covered up Malcolm X’s assassination through several coordinated actions. We believe the FBI and the NYPD engaged in a cover-up after the assassination, concealing key documents, manipulating witness testimony and wrongfully prosecuting innocent men to divert attention from their own roles in his death. Our case is being brought forward in the wake of a public apology from former Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance Jr., who, in November 2021, acknowledged that ... two of three men who’d been convicted of murdering Malcolm X, hadn’t committed the crime.

Note: The above was written by civil rights attorney Ben Crump. Malcolm X was one of four prominent figures killed for speaking truth to power during this era. For more along these lines, explore concise summaries of news articles on assassinations and intelligence agency corruption. Read our Substack to learn more about the undeniable evidence that connects these same abuses of power to Dr. Martin Luther King's assassination.


Government conspiracy led to assassination of Malcolm X, lawsuit claims
2024-11-15, USA Today
Posted: 2024-12-02 18:10:32
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2024/11/15/malcolm-x-ben-crump-law...

Civil rights attorney Ben Crump announced he has filed a $100 million lawsuit against multiple government and law enforcement agencies for an alleged conspiracy that led to the 1965 assassination of civil rights activist and religious leader Malcolm X. Crump was joined by one of Malcolm X's daughters, Ilyasah Shabazz, in announcing the news on the family's behalf. The suit accuses the U.S. government, the Department of Justice, the FBI, the CIA and the New York Police Department of being involved in the events that led to Malcolm X's assassination and a decadeslong cover-up. It includes claims of excessive use of force against Malcolm X, deliberate creation of danger, failure to protect, denial of access to the courts for Malcolm X’s family, conspiracy, fraudulent concealment and wrongful death. Malcolm X was 39 when he was shot 21 times by multiple gunmen who opened fire at him during a speech at the Audubon Ballroom in New York on Feb. 21, 1965. His wife and children were in the crowd at the time. The suit claims that the government agencies had knowledge of credible threats to Malcolm X's life and didn't act to prevent the assassination. The suit claims the FBI coordinated with undercover informants within the Nation of Islam, from which Malcolm X separated. It accuses the agencies of removing security personnel from the ballroom, encouraging the assassination and failing to intervene, later taking steps to conceal their involvement after the assassination.

Note: Malcolm X was one of four prominent figures killed for speaking truth to power during this era. Read our Substack to learn more about the undeniable evidence that connects these same abuses of power to Dr. Martin Luther King's assassination. For more along these lines, explore concise summaries of news articles on assassinations and intelligence agency corruption.


These 10 Companies Run Our ‘Democracy’
2024-11-01, ScheerPost
Posted: 2024-12-02 18:08:30
https://scheerpost.com/2024/11/01/these-10-companies-run-our-democracy/

There is only one group of people that matter the most: those who Dr. Peter Phillips, professor emeritus at Sonoma State University, calls the “titans of capital.” In his new book by the same name, Phillips studies the economic trends following the COVID-19 pandemic and how the wealth concentration in the world took a dramatic turn towards the already ultra-wealthy. The main problem is simple to understand: the ultra-wealthy “doubled their wealth concentration.” That means, according to Phillips, that “the upper one half of 1% of the people got richer and basically, the rest of the world got poorer.” Phillips names the top 10 capital investment companies, such as BlackRock, Vanguard, State Street, Morgan Stanley and others as the main culprits. Over $50 trillion are controlled by 117 people across these 10 companies, according to Phillips. This immense concentration of wealth inevitably renders any semblance of democracy almost useless, as the main decision makers are those who hold the biggest bag. And then there’s policy groups. The largest now is the World Economic Forum, which is the top 2,000 to 3,000 corporations in the world send their CEOs there, to Davos every year. And there’s a global leaders attend, and they’re talking about a better capitalism, a state, what they call stakeholders capitalism, in other words, capitalism with a conscience. It’s not working. They’re not doing anything different, other than allowing the continued concentration of capital globally.

Note: Read more about how the ultra-wealthy profited immensely from the COVID economy. For more along these lines, explore concise summaries of news articles on corporate corruption and financial inequality from reliable major media sources.


The High-Tech Tools Police Can Use to Surveil Protesters
2024-11-12, The Marshall Project
Posted: 2024-12-02 18:05:57
https://www.themarshallproject.org/2024/11/12/protest-surveillance-technologies

“Anonymity is a shield from the tyranny of the majority,” wrote Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens in a 1995 ruling affirming Americans’ constitutional right to engage in anonymous political speech. That shield has weakened in recent years due to advances in the surveillance technology available to law enforcement. Everything from social media posts, to metadata about phone calls, to the purchase information collected by data brokers, to location data showing every step taken, is available to law enforcement — often without a warrant. Avoiding all of this tracking would require such extrication from modern social life that it would be virtually impossible for most people. International Mobile Subscriber Identity (IMSI) catchers, or Stingrays, impersonate cell phone towers to collect the unique ID of a cell phone’s SIM card. Geofence warrants, also known as reverse location warrants ... lets law enforcement request location data from apps on your phone or tech companies. Data brokers are companies that assemble information about people from a variety of usually public sources. Tons of websites and apps that everyday people use collect information on them, and this information is often sold to third parties who can aggregate or piece together someone’s profile across the sites that are tracking them. Companies like Fog Data Science, LexisNexis, Precisely and Acxiom possess not only data on billions of people, they also ... have information about someone’s political preferences as well as demographic information. Surveillance of social media accounts allows police to gather vast amounts of information about how protests are organized ... frequently utilizing networks of fake accounts. One firm advertised the ability to help police identify “activists and disruptors” at protests.

Note: For more along these lines, explore concise summaries of news articles on police corruption and the erosion of civil liberties from reliable major media sources.


I Love Facebook. That’s Why I’m Suing Meta.
2024-05-05, New York Times
Posted: 2024-12-02 18:03:39
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/05/opinion/facebook-court-internet-meta.html

Facebook’s inscrutable feed algorithm, which is supposed to calculate which content is most likely to appeal to me and then send it my way ... feels like an obstacle to how I’d like to connect with my friends. British software developer Louis Barclay developed a software ... known as an extension, which can be installed in a Chrome web browser. Christened Unfollow Everything, it would automate the process of unfollowing each of my 1,800 friends, a task that manually would take hours. The result is that I would be able to experience Facebook as it once was, when it contained profiles of my friends, but without the endless updates, photos, videos and the like that Facebook’s algorithm generates. If tools like Unfollow Everything were allowed to flourish, and we could have better control over what we see on social media, these tools might create a more civic-minded internet. Unfortunately, Mr. Barclay was forced by Facebook to remove the software. Large social media platforms appear to be increasingly resistant to third-party tools that give users more command over their experiences. After talking with Mr. Barclay, I decided to develop a new version of Unfollow Everything. I — and the lawyers at the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia — asked a federal court in California last week to rule on whether users should have a right to use tools like Unfollow Everything that give them increased power over how they use social networks, particularly over algorithms that have been engineered to keep users scrolling on their sites.

Note: The above was written by Ethan Zuckerman, associate professor of public policy and director of the UMass Initiative for Digital Public Infrastructure at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. For more along these lines, explore concise summaries of news articles on Big Tech from reliable major media sources.


End the Phone-Based Childhood Now
2024-03-13, The Atlantic
Posted: 2024-12-02 18:01:09
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2024/03/teen-childhood-smartph...

Something went suddenly and horribly wrong for adolescents in the early 2010s. Rates of depression and anxiety in the United States—fairly stable in the 2000s—rose by more than 50 percent in many studies. The suicide rate rose 48 percent for adolescents ages 10 to 19. For girls ages 10 to 14, it rose 131 percent. Gen Z is in poor mental health and is lagging behind previous generations on many important metrics. Once young people began carrying the entire internet in their pockets, available to them day and night, it altered their daily experiences and developmental pathways. Friendship, dating, sexuality, exercise, sleep, academics, politics, family dynamics, identity—all were affected. There’s an important backstory, beginning ... when we started systematically depriving children and adolescents of freedom, unsupervised play, responsibility, and opportunities for risk taking, all of which promote competence, maturity, and mental health. Hundreds of studies on young rats, monkeys, and humans show that young mammals want to play, need to play, and end up socially, cognitively, and emotionally impaired when they are deprived of play. Young people who are deprived of opportunities for risk taking and independent exploration will, on average, develop into more anxious and risk-averse adults. A study of how Americans spend their time found that, before 2010, young people (ages 15 to 24) reported spending far more time with their friends. By 2019, young people’s time with friends had dropped to just 67 minutes a day. It turns out that Gen Z had been socially distancing for many years and had mostly completed the project by the time COVID-19 struck. Congress has not been good at addressing public concerns when the solutions would displease a powerful and deep-pocketed industry.

Note: The author of this article is Jonathan Haidt, a social psychologist and ethics professor who's been on the frontlines investigating the youth mental health crisis. He is the co-founder of LetGrow.org, an organization that provides inspiring solutions and ideas to help families and schools support children's well-being and foster childhood independence. For more along these lines, explore concise summaries of news articles on mental health.


Why Is the U.S. Still Pretending We Know Gender-Affirming Care Works?
2024-07-12, New York Times
Posted: 2024-12-02 17:58:48
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/12/opinion/gender-affirming-care-cass-review....

The Cass Review [was] an independent assessment of gender treatment for youths. The four-year review of research, led by Dr. Hilary Cass ... found no definitive proof that gender dysphoria in children or teenagers was resolved or alleviated by what advocates call gender-affirming care, in which a young person’s declared “gender identity” is affirmed and supported with social transition, puberty blockers and/or cross-sex hormones. Why would our government and medical institutions continue to frame gender-affirming care as medically necessary [despite] the risks and irreversible consequences of gender interventions for youths, including bone density loss, possible infertility, the inability to achieve orgasm and the loss of functional body tissue and organs? In Britain, a lawsuit by a gay girl named Keira Bell against Britain’s leading gender clinic instigated the investigation that led to the Cass Review. “I’m already hearing from the boards of directors and trustees of some hospital systems who are starting to get nervous about what they’ve permitted,” [said] Erica Anderson, a former president of the U.S. Professional Association for Transgender Health and a transgender woman. In recent years, a number of detransitioners in the United States have brought suit charging malpractice or the failure to provide informed consent. If American doctors admit their approach was wrong, it’s going to be a costly and politically explosive practice to undo.

Note: Watch our 25 minute Mindful News Brief on the controversy surrounding gender medicine for kids. For more along these lines, explore concise summaries of news articles on transgender medicine from reliable major media sources.


US FDA finds widely used asthma drug impacts the brain
2024-11-22, Reuters
Posted: 2024-12-02 17:44:45
https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/us-fda-finds-wide...

U.S. government researchers have found that a widely prescribed asthma drug originally sold by Merck & Co, may be linked to serious mental health problems for some patients, according to a scientific presentation reviewed by Reuters. The researchers found that the drug, sold under the brand name Singulair and generically as montelukast, attaches to multiple brain receptors critical to psychiatric functioning. By 2019, thousands of reports of neuropsychiatric episodes, including dozens of suicides, in patients prescribed the drug had piled up on internet forums and in the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s tracking system. Such “adverse event” reports do not prove a causal link between a medicine and a side effect, but are used by the FDA to determine whether more study of a drug’s risks are warranted. The reports and new scientific research led the FDA in 2020 to add a "black box" warning to the montelukast prescribing label, flagging serious mental health risks like suicidal thinking or actions. The behavior of montelukast appears similar to other drugs known to have neuropsychiatric effects, such as the antipsychotic risperidone. When the FDA added the black box, it cited research from Julia Marschallinger and Ludwig Aigner. The two scientists told Reuters ... the new data showed significant quantities of montelukast present in the brain. The receptors involved play a role in governing mood, impulse control, cognition and sleep, among other functions, they said.

Note: Reuters reported that the FDA received more than 80 reports of suicides in people taking the medicine. Learn more about how US courts protected Merck from lawsuits regarding Singulair. For more along these lines, explore concise summaries of news articles on mental health and Big Pharma profiteering from reliable major media sources.


Can a 'prescription' for free fruits and vegetables improve health? Study after study say yes.
2024-03-21, NBC News
Posted: 2024-12-02 17:42:17
https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-care/prescriptions-free-produce-improve...

If doctors prescribed fruits and vegetables like medicine, could people improve their health through diet alone? That’s the theory behind a growing number of programs in the U.S. that deliver free produce. These produce prescription programs aim to combat heart problems and obesity-related diseases by either preparing free bundles of fruits and veggies for participants to pick up on a regular schedule, delivering fresh batches of produce to people’s homes or giving them money to buy produce. Carol Grand ... joined one such program in late 2022 after she was diagnosed with diabetes. Grand signed up for FreshRx Oklahoma, a nonprofit food prescription service for people with diabetes. The yearlong program distributes bags of locally grown fruits and vegetables, along with recipes, every two weeks. Participants also receive free health screenings. Grand said her blood sugar dropped to nondiabetic levels and she lost 50 pounds. Before the program, she said, she regularly ate junk food because it was more affordable: “My diet was horrible: anything quick, anything loaded with sugar.” Now, Grand said, she cooks recipes like sauteed tofu and sweet peppers. Recent studies support the benefits of these programs. “The prescription, instead of going to the pharmacy, goes to the farm,” said Lisa Goldman Rosas ... at Stanford School of Medicine. “It’s sending the message that food is part of your health because your provider cares about it.”

Note: What if the negative news overload on America’s chronic illness crisis isn’t the full story? Check out our Substack to learn more about the inspiring remedies to the chronic illness crisis! Explore more positive stories like this about healing our bodies.


The Hospitals That Send Patients Home With Nutritious Food
2024-09-20, Reasons to be Cheerful
Posted: 2024-12-02 17:40:10
https://reasonstobecheerful.world/food-pantries-in-hospitals-nutrition/

The waiting room in the basement of Boston Medical Center looks like any other. But when patients here are called in ... they’re welcomed into the Preventive Food Pantry. Over the next few minutes, staff members tailor a grocery cart to each patient’s needs. Someone with a renal condition won’t get foods high in potassium, like oranges or potatoes. If they’re diabetic, they’ll get whole-grain pasta and brown rice. And everyone leaves with vegetables, fruit and other fresh ingredients. The pantry opened in 2001 after doctors raised the alarm that many of their patients reported not having enough food for their families. Setting up on hospital premises, the pantry was an early pioneer in incorporating access to nutritious food directly into the medical system. The pantry was initially expected to serve 500 people a month. Today, it serves more than 6,200. Addressing hunger isn’t just a question of quantity of food, but also quality. Healthy produce, fresh meat and dairy products tend to be more expensive, so for families trying to stretch their dollar, those foods are harder to afford. Faced with high costs of treating conditions linked to food insecurity, medical systems, health insurers and government programs have become more interested in ways to support nutrition access. A [Greater Boston Food Bank] survey found that among people who were screened for food insecurity in a medical setting, 87 percent followed up on recommended resources.

Note: Read about how German hospitals are offering patients the "planetary health diet," a plant-based, whole food approach that's also in service to the Earth. Explore more positive stories like this about healing our bodies.


Combating Parkinson's with rock climbing
2024-11-17, CBS News
Posted: 2024-12-02 17:38:23
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/combating-parkinsons-disease-with-rock-climbing/

On a sweltering summer's day ... a group of people with Parkinson's Disease began rock-climbing on the Carderock Cliffs of Maryland. It's all part of their therapy, says Molly Cupka, the no-nonsense instructor and cheerleader for this community. She started this program, called UpENDing Parkinsons, as a non-profit twelve years ago. "There's a lot of balance involved, mobility involved, strength, cardio, and then there's the cognitive part, where you have to look at the hold, and figure out how to get your body to move to get to that hold," she said. There's no cure for Parkinson's, which usually affects mobility, coordination, balance, and even speech. Some people with Parkinson's, like Vivek Puri, get dyskinesia (involuntary jerking motions). Puri ... was only 38 when he found out he had Parkinson's. "Fine motor skills have kind of really suffered dramatically," he said. "When I don't climb for some periods of time, I get worse." But once he gets on the wall, he calls himself Spider-Man. "Honestly, I climb like a monkey," he said. "I get my finger strength moving, which gets my fine motor skills – maybe not back, but kind of keeps that in motion." Cupka joined forces with Marymount University last year to study patients climbing for the first time. "We have people literally walking and carrying weights, you know, walking and looking, multitasking," she said. The study found that, in so many words, if you climb, you may walk better.

Note: What if the negative news overload on America’s chronic illness crisis isn’t the full story? Check out our Substack to learn more about the inspiring remedies to the chronic illness crisis! Explore more positive stories like this about healing our bodies.


'I was moderating hundreds of horrific and traumatising videos'
2024-11-10, BBC News
Posted: 2024-11-27 13:28:51
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/crr9q2jz7y0o

Beheadings, mass killings, child abuse, hate speech – all of it ends up in the inboxes of a global army of content moderators. You don’t often see or hear from them – but these are the people whose job it is to review and then, when necessary, delete content that either gets reported by other users, or is automatically flagged by tech tools. Moderators are often employed by third-party companies, but they work on content posted directly on to the big social networks including Instagram, TikTok and Facebook. “If you take your phone and then go to TikTok, you will see a lot of activities, dancing, you know, happy things,” says Mojez, a former Nairobi-based moderator. “But in the background, I personally was moderating, in the hundreds, horrific and traumatising videos. “I took it upon myself. Let my mental health take the punch so that general users can continue going about their activities on the platform.” In 2020, Meta then known as Facebook, agreed to pay a settlement of $52m (£40m) to moderators who had developed mental health issues. The legal action was initiated by a former moderator [who] described moderators as the “keepers of souls”, because of the amount of footage they see containing the final moments of people’s lives. The ex-moderators I spoke to all used the word “trauma” in describing the impact the work had on them. One ... said he found it difficult to interact with his wife and children because of the child abuse he had witnessed. What came across, very powerfully, was the immense pride the moderators had in the roles they had played in protecting the world from online harm.

Note: Read more about the disturbing world of content moderation. For more along these lines, explore concise summaries of revealing news articles on Big Tech from reliable major media sources.


The 'bias machine': How Google tells you what you want to hear
2024-11-01, BBC News
Posted: 2024-11-27 13:26:07
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20241031-how-google-tells-you-what-you-wan...

Ask "is the British tax system fair", and Google cites a quote ... arguing that indeed it is. Ask "is the British tax system unfair", and Google's Featured Snippet explains how UK taxes benefit the rich and promote inequality. "What Google has done is they've pulled bits out of the text based on what people are searching for and fed them what they want to read," [Digital marketing director at Dragon Metrics Sarah] Presch says. "It's one big bias machine." The vast majority of internet traffic begins with a Google Search, and people rarely click on anything beyond the first five links. The system that orders the links on Google Search has colossal power over our experience of the world. You might choose to engage with information that keeps you trapped in your filter bubble, "but there's only a certain bouquet of messages that are put in front of you to choose from in the first place", says [professor] Silvia Knobloch-Westerwick. A recent US anti-trust case against Google uncovered internal company documents where employees discuss some of the techniques the search engine uses to answer your questions. "We do not understand documents – we fake it," an engineer wrote in a slideshow used during a 2016 presentation. "A billion times a day, people ask us to find documents relevant to a query… We hardly look at documents. We look at people. If a document gets a positive reaction, we figure it is good. If the reaction is negative, it is probably bad. Grossly simplified, this is the source of Google's magic. That is how we serve the next person, keep the induction rolling, and sustain the illusion that we understand." In other words, Google watches to see what people click on when they enter a given search term. When people seem satisfied by a certain type of information, it's more likely that Google will promote that kind of search result for similar queries in the future.

Note: For more along these lines, explore concise summaries of revealing news articles on Big Tech from reliable major media sources.


Protest Under a Surveillance State Microscope
2024-11-04, Project on Government Oversight
Posted: 2024-11-27 13:24:13
https://www.pogo.org/analysis/protest-under-a-surveillance-state-microscope

Before the digital age, law enforcement would conduct surveillance through methods like wiretapping phone lines or infiltrating an organization. Now, police surveillance can reach into the most granular aspects of our lives during everyday activities, without our consent or knowledge — and without a warrant. Technology like automated license plate readers, drones, facial recognition, and social media monitoring added a uniquely dangerous element to the surveillance that comes with physical intimidation of law enforcement. With greater technological power in the hands of police, surveillance technology is crossing into a variety of new and alarming contexts. Law enforcement partnerships with companies like Clearview AI, which scraped billions of images from the internet for their facial recognition database ... has been used by law enforcement agencies across the country, including within the federal government. When the social networking app on your phone can give police details about where you’ve been and who you’re connected to, or your browsing history can provide law enforcement with insight into your most closely held thoughts, the risks of self-censorship are great. When artificial intelligence tools or facial recognition technology can piece together your life in a way that was previously impossible, it gives the ones with the keys to those tools enormous power to ... maintain a repressive status quo.

Note: Facial recognition technology has played a role in the wrongful arrests of many innocent people. For more along these lines, explore concise summaries of revealing news articles on police corruption and the disappearance of privacy.


Pentagon’s Budget Is Nearly $1 Trillion. It’s Now Failed 7 Audits in a Row.
2024-11-18, Truthout
Posted: 2024-11-27 13:18:17
https://truthout.org/articles/pentagons-budget-is-nearly-1-trillion-its-now-f...

The Pentagon announced late last week that it failed its seventh consecutive audit. As with its past failures to achieve a clean audit, the U.S. Defense Department attempted to cast the 2024 results in a positive light, with the Pentagon’s chief financial officer declaring in a statement that “momentum is on our side.” The Pentagon is the largest U.S. federal agency and is responsible for roughly half of the government’s annual discretionary spending, with its yearly budget approaching $1 trillion despite long-standing concerns about the department’s inability to account for vast sums of money approved by lawmakers and presidents from both major parties. The latest financial assessment published Friday by the Defense Department’s inspector general office estimates that the Pentagon has $4.1 trillion in assets. It is the only major federal agency that has never passed a clean audit, as required by law. Since the department’s first failed audit in 2018, Congress has authorized trillions of dollars in additional military spending. According to the Costs of War Project, more than half of the department’s annual budget “is now spent on military contractors” that are notorious for overbilling. Lawmakers have long cited the Pentagon’s failure to pass a clean audit as evidence of the department’s pervasive waste and fraud. The Pentagon buried a 2015 report identifying $125 billion in administrative waste out of concern that the findings would be used as a justification “to slash the defense budget.”

Note: Learn more about unaccountable military spending in our comprehensive Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center. For more, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on military corruption from reliable major media sources.


The AI Machine Gun of the Future Is Already Here
2024-11-11, Wired
Posted: 2024-11-27 13:16:03
https://www.wired.com/story/us-military-robot-drone-guns/

At the Technology Readiness Experimentation (T-REX) event in August, the US Defense Department tested an artificial intelligence-enabled autonomous robotic gun system developed by fledgling defense contractor Allen Control Systems dubbed the “Bullfrog.” Consisting of a 7.62-mm M240 machine gun mounted on a specially designed rotating turret outfitted with an electro-optical sensor, proprietary AI, and computer vision software, the Bullfrog was designed to deliver small arms fire on drone targets with far more precision than the average US service member can achieve with a standard-issue weapon. Footage of the Bullfrog in action published by ACS shows the truck-mounted system locking onto small drones and knocking them out of the sky with just a few shots. Should the Pentagon adopt the system, it would represent the first publicly known lethal autonomous weapon in the US military’s arsenal. In accordance with the Pentagon’s current policy governing lethal autonomous weapons, the Bullfrog is designed to keep a human “in the loop” in order to avoid a potential “unauthorized engagement." In other words, the gun points at and follows targets, but does not fire until commanded to by a human operator. However, ACS officials claim that the system can operate totally autonomously should the US military require it to in the future, with sentry guns taking the entire kill chain out of the hands of service members.

Note: Learn more about emerging warfare technology in our comprehensive Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center. For more, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on AI from reliable major media sources.


A police chief was accused of paying $100 to rape a teen — and trying to cover it up.
2024-11-14, Washington Post
Posted: 2024-11-27 13:02:38
https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/interactive/2024/west-virginia-...

[Larry] Clay was the law until one day in the fall of 2020, when a teenage girl ... reported that her stepmother sold her to be raped for $100 when she was 17 years old. The buyer, she told the sheriff’s department, wasn’t just anyone — it was Police Chief Larry Clay. While he was in uniform and on duty. The first time, against his department-issued vehicle. The second, inside a police office. Clay, 55, and the stepmother, 27, were both charged with sex trafficking of a minor. When law enforcement officers are charged with crimes involving child sexual abuse, they usually avoid trials. The Post examined the cases of 1,800 of these officers. The majority of those convicted took plea deals, which frequently allowed them to evade lengthy sentences and public reckonings over their crimes. Other cases quietly fell apart when children said they were too afraid to continue. Sgt. James Pack ... led child sex crimes investigations for the [Fayette County] sheriff’s department. Pack knew that sex trafficking rarely looked like it did in the movies, with strangers abducting kids. Far more often, it involved people who knew each other, one taking advantage of the other’s vulnerabilities. Did selling her stepdaughter strike her, the prosecutor [in Clay's case] asked, as something out of the ordinary? “It was done to me,” [stepmother] Naylor-Legg said. “My mom used to sell me for money or for drugs if we needed something.” “And how old were you at the time?” “It started at 10,” Naylor-Legg answered.

Note: Read more on the Washington Post's investigation into the 1,800 officers charged with sexually abusing children. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on police corruption and sexual abuse scandals from reliable major media sources.


Suge Knight claims Diddy participated in abuse, assault with higher-ups
2024-09-25, News Nation
Posted: 2024-11-27 12:58:38
https://www.newsnationnow.com/entertainment-news/suge-knight-claims-diddy-par...

Suge Knight, co-founder and former CEO of Death Row Records tells [Chris Cuomo] that Sean “Diddy” Combs is “not the only one” to put younger artists through humiliating sexual acts, describing various industry practices throughout the decades. Combs, who has gone by various aliases including P. Diddy, Diddy, Puffy and Puff Daddy, was arrested on Sept. 16 following a grand jury indictment for several felonies, including sex trafficking and racketeering. The arrest came as the producer faced a mounting list of civil lawsuits alleging abuse and assault spanning over three decades. Knight claims Diddy “was taught from people before him, and he did it to the younger people after him.” It’s an industry that, according to Knight, has a long history of sexually abusing and assaulting its newest members. Without attending “those butt naked parties,” it’s hard to comprehend what happened — but that doesn’t mean it was a secret, according to Knight. Knight also said he believes Diddy’s allegations stem from his own experiences. “You know, hurt people hurt people … Someone was sexually abused, they wind up being a perpetrator. Is that what you’re suggesting about Sean Combs, that he was sexually abused, and he now sexually abuses?” NewsNation’s Chris Cuomo asked. “Yeah, I think that’s absolutely right. I think it was done to him,” Knight said. He also mentioned artists by name who should have been “whistleblowers,” including Jay-Z, Snoop Dogg and Rick Ross, among others.

Note: Diddy has been called the Jeffrey Epstein of the entertainment industry. Read more about the disturbing history of child sex abuse in Hollywood from the courageous voices of actor Corey Feldman and Lord of the Rings star Elijah Wood.


Abu Ghraib Detainees Awarded $42 Million in Torture Trial Against U.S. Defense Contractor
2024-11-12, The Intercept
Posted: 2024-11-27 12:55:12
https://theintercept.com/2024/11/12/abu-ghraib-torture-caci/

A federal jury held a defense contractor legally responsible for contributing to the abuse of detainees at Abu Ghraib for the first time. The jury awarded a total of $42 million to three Iraqi men — a journalist, a middle school principal, and fruit vendor — who were held at the notorious prison two decades ago. The plaintiffs’ suit accused Virginia-based CACI, which was hired by the U.S. government to provide interrogation services at Abu Ghraib, of conspiring with American soldiers to torture detainees. CACI had argued that while abuses did occur at Abu Ghraib, it was ultimately the Army who was responsible for this conduct, even if CACI employees may have been involved. The defense contractor also argued there was no definitive evidence that their staff abused the three Iraqi men who filed the case — and that it could have been American soldiers who tortured them. The jury did not find that argument persuasive. The case was filed 16 years ago but got caught up in procedural hurdles, as CACI tried more than 20 times to dismiss the lawsuit. The plaintiffs — Suhail Najim Abdullah Al Shimari, Salah Hasan Nusaif Al-Ejaili, and Asa’ad Hamza Hanfoosh Zuba’e — had testified about facing sexual abuse and harassment, as well as being beaten and threatened with dogs at Abu Ghraib. “My body was like a machine, responding to all external orders,” [said] Al-Ejaili, a former journalist with Al Jazeera. “The only part I owned was my brain.”

Note: Read more about the horrors of Abu Ghraib. Learn more about US torture programs in our comprehensive Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center. For more, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on military corruption from reliable major media sources.


How the revolving door at FAA spins Boeing’s way
2024-10-30, Seattle Times
Posted: 2024-11-27 12:52:28
https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-aerospace/how-the-revolving-door...

After a fuselage panel blew off a 737 in January, Boeing found itself in a familiar place — on Capitol Hill, under Congress’s microscope. In 2008, Congress had found that nearly 60,000 Southwest flights in 2006 and 2007 were allowed even though the airline knew the Boeing planes were out of compliance with Federal Aviation Administration safety standards. A common theme ran through Congress’ findings in those instances: The FAA was often deferential to the manufacturer whose work it was meant to police. Congressional hearings revealed Boeing had been hiring ex-government workers, people with personal connections to and intimate knowledge of Beltway politics, to pressure the agency whose primary purpose is to assure safe air travel. Critics of the practice view the Boeing hearings of 2008 and 2020 as clear evidence that a “revolving door” — when ex-government officials move to jobs in industries they had policed, sometimes returning to government after their stints in the private sector — was undermining oversight. In 2022 alone, the 20 highest-paid defense contractors hired 672 former government officials, military officers, members of Congress and senior legislative staff, according to a report commissioned by Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass. Boeing hired the most by far, 85. Boeing also hired more former government officials to executive positions than any other Pentagon contractor, the report showed.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corruption in the military and in the corporate world from reliable major media sources.


Chinese Couple Created ‘Cancer Kitchen’ in Their Alley to Let Family Members Cook for Loved Ones in Nearby Hospital
2024-10-14, Good News Network
Posted: 2024-11-27 12:48:25
https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/chinese-couple-honored-for-their-cancer-kitch...

In the city of Nanchang, in an alleyway near a cancer hospital, two senior citizens run a “community cancer kitchen” to support those caring for their loved ones. Wan Zuocheng and Hong Gengxiang have been doing this charity work for two decades. “No matter what life throws at you, you must eat good food,” Mr. Wan told South China Morning Post. For just 3 RMB, the equivalent of around $0.32, anyone can use the kitchen spaces they’ve set up in the alleyway to cook meals. Sometimes it’s for the patients so they can eat something familiar rather than hospital food, while sometimes it’s for the people who care for the patients. “There was a couple who came to us with their child,” Wan said, talking about the day in 2003 they decided to start their charity kitchen. “They said he didn’t want treatment, he just wanted a meal cooked by his mom. So we let them use our kitchen.” As time passed they added more utensils, appliances, stoves, and ovens to their stall. This came with gradually increasing use of water, electricity, and coal, but as the costs rose, so too did the community, supporting the couple and their efforts to provide the invaluable service they relied on. Donations began to outpace expenditures, and now nearly 10,000 people come to cook in the cancer kitchen. It’s been thoroughly observed in medicine that the odds of beating cancer can be improved with positivity, and what could be more positive than a loved one bringing you a home-cooked meal?

Note: Explore more positive stories like this on healing our bodies and healing social division.


How Virtual Power Plants are empowering communities through clean energy
2024-10-22, Shareable
Posted: 2024-11-27 12:43:27
https://www.shareable.net/how-virtual-power-plants-are-empowering-rural-commu...

A Virtual Power Plant (VPP) is a network that connects homes, farms, and businesses using renewable energy sources like rooftop solar, batteries, heat pumps, and smart appliances. Unlike traditional power plants, a VPP doesn’t rely on one central facility. Instead, it creates a coordinated system where each participant contributes power and flexibility. For rural communities, VPPs offer a powerful solution to increasing energy demand and the challenges posed by severe weather. These systems allow smarter energy management, helping communities stabilize their energy use and reduce their reliance on costly fossil fuels like coal and gas. A standout example comes from Colorado’s Holy Cross Energy. Their Power+ Program offers members affordable, lease-to-own home battery storage systems. These batteries store energy during off-peak hours and release it when demand is high or during outages. This not only saves money but also improves energy security and resilience. Similar success stories are unfolding in Vermont, where Green Mountain Power operates a VPP using Tesla Powerwalls. The program saved millions by strategically using stored energy to offset peak demand. These savings are shared with customers through bill credits, creating a win-win model for utilities and participants. Virtual Power Plants show how local, cooperative solutions can drive a national energy transformation.

Note: Explore more positive stories like this about technology for good.


Pfizer Accused of Hiding Contraceptive's Brain Tumor Link
2024-11-05, Bloomberg
Posted: 2024-11-22 13:23:29
https://news.bloomberglaw.com/litigation/pfizer-accused-of-hiding-birth-contr...

Pfizer Inc. failed to warn patients that its injectable contraceptive drug Depo-Provera can increase the risk of developing brain tumors, a new lawsuit alleged. “For several decades the manufacturers and sellers of Depo-Provera and its authorized generic and generic analogues” had a responsibility to investigate whether the medication could contribute to the growth of brain tumors, according to the complaint filed Monday in the US District Court for the Central District of California. Plaintiff Taylor Devorak alleged that researchers have found Depo-Provera and similar progesterone medications have been linked to a greater incidence of brain tumors called intracranial meningioma. She’s seeking damages on her failure-to-warn, defective design, negligence, misrepresentation, and breach of warranty claims against the pharmaceutical giant. Devorak’s complaint comes in the wake of a handful of substantially similar lawsuits filed in other federal courts in California and Indiana in recent weeks. The American label for Depo-Provera “still makes no mention of the increased risk to patients of developing intracranial meningiomas,” even though the EU and UK now list meningioma under the medication’s warning section, Devorak’s complaint said. Devorak cited a 2024 study published in the British Medical Journal that said prolonged use of medroxyprogesterone acetate medications like Depo-Provera were found to significantly increase the risk of developing intracranial meningioma.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on Big Pharma corruption from reliable major media sources.


Some ultra-processed foods are as addictive as cigarettes and cocaine
2024-02-28, US Right to Know
Posted: 2024-11-22 13:21:50
https://usrtk.org/ultra-processed-foods/addictive/

Ultra-processed foods are industrially formulated with added sugar, artificial sweeteners, additives and flavorings to be highly rewarding and even addictive. They can alter the brain’s reward pathways the same way that other addictive substances do, making them challenging to consume in moderation. In fact, a body of scientific research has emerged in recent years to show that some ultra-processed foods (UPFs) can be as addictive as cigarettes and cocaine. Several major food brands were once owned by the world’s largest tobacco companies. Evidence suggests the same tactics used to formulate and market cigarettes were used in the creation of food products. Manufacturers of ultra-processed foods often seek to find ... “the bliss point,” a term coined by American market researcher and food scientist Howard Moskowitz in the 1990s. The bliss point triggers dopamine – a neurotransmitter in the brain that is responsible for feelings of pleasure and well-being – to spike, then crash. This brings about good feelings, then bad feelings, and generates the craving to feel good once more. Food companies not only research taste, but also consumers’ responses to color, smell, and “mouth feel” of products. “Measured in milliseconds, and the power to addict, nothing is faster than processed food in rousing the brain.” “Ultraprocessed foods … were consistently more associated with [the Yale Food Addiction Scale] indicators than were naturally occurring, minimally processed foods,” according to the study ... Is Food Addictive, republished in 2021 in the Annual Review of Nutrition. About 57% of the calories American adults consume comes from UPFs. That percentage rises to 67% in American children. The food industry spends about $14 billion annually on advertising, with 80% of that devoted to highly processed foods.

Note: Eating junk food is more deadly than smoking and is linked to $50 billion in US health care costs due to how harmful it is on our bodies. Meanwhile, the NIH invests very little funding into nutrition studies and students in medical schools spend less than 1 percent of their education learning about diet. Read our latest Substack article on how the US government turns a blind eye to the corporate cartels fueling America’s health crisis.


Idaho health agency halts COVID vaccine program, joining backlash
2024-11-11, USA Today
Posted: 2024-11-22 13:19:51
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/health/2024/11/11/covid-vaccine-ban-idaho...

A health department in Idaho has voted to halt its COVID-19 vaccination program, joining the growing number of regional governments pushing back against federal vaccination recommendations. Board members at Southwest District Health, outside of Boise, questioned the vaccine’s safety during their Oct. 22 meeting and narrowly voted to stop providing the shot in the six counties they serve. Health departments in Texas, Florida and Michigan ... have also pushed back against the COVID-19 vaccine. Last year, Texas policymakers banned health departments and other organizations funded by the state government from using funds to promote their vaccination efforts. The Florida Department of Health issued guidance in September warning Floridians not to get mRNA COVID-19 shots. In Michigan, commissioners in Ottawa County turned down a $900,000 grant for their health department in September. Joe Moss, chair of the commission, said at the time he was “opposed to accepting any COVID grants.” The [Idaho] board's physician representative, Dr. John Tribble, questioned the vaccine's safety and cited COVID-19's "diminishing risk" as a reason for the agency's decision to discontinue the shot. "We weighed the risks versus the benefits for all individuals considering the shots," Tribble wrote. "We could not, in good faith, continue to offer a pharmaceutical product that does more harm than good."

Note: The Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) is a voluntary government reporting system that only captures a portion of the actual injuries. Vaccine adverse event numbers are made publicly available, and currently show 38,068 COVID Vaccine Reported Deaths and 1,652,230 COVID Vaccine Adverse Event Reports. Our Substack dives into the complex world of COVID vaccines with nuance and uncensored investigation.


Most common US pesticide may affect brain development similarly to nicotine
2024-10-19, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2024-11-22 13:17:53
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/oct/19/pesticide-neonicotinoids-brai...

Industry research reviewed by independent scientists show that exposure to the nation’s most common pesticides, neonicotinoids, may affect developing brains the same way as nicotine, including by significantly shrinking brain tissue and neuron loss. Exposure could be linked to long-term health effects like ADHD, slower auditory reflexes, reduced motor skills, behavioral problems and delayed sexual maturation in males. The industry science will be used by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to set new regulations, but the independent scientists say they found pesticide makers withheld information or did not include required data, and allege the EPA has drawn industry friendly conclusions from the research. Neonicotinoid residue is common on produce, and the EPA seems poised to set limits that are especially dangerous for developing children. Neonicotinoids are a controversial class of chemicals used in insecticides spread on over 150m acres of US cropland to treat for pests, in addition to being used on lawns. The pesticides work by destroying an insect’s nerve synapse, causing uncontrollable shaking, paralysis and death – but a growing body of science has found it harms pollinators, decimates bee populations and kills other insects not targeted by the chemical. Recent research has found the chemicals in the bodies of over 95% of pregnant women, and in human blood and urine at alarming levels.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on health and toxic chemicals from reliable major media sources.


Why Farmers Use Harmful Insecticides They May Not Need
2024-10-30, Civil Eats
Posted: 2024-11-22 13:15:58
https://civileats.com/2024/10/30/why-farmers-use-harmful-insecticides-they-ma...

Neonicotinoids—“neonics” for short—[are] now the most common chemicals used to kill bugs in American agriculture. Farmers can spray them on fields, but these insecticides are also attached to seeds as an outer coating, called a seed treatment. As the seeds germinate and grow, the plant’s tissues become toxic. Research shows neonics threaten pollinators, birds, aquatic organisms, and mammals, and pose risks to humans. Data from 2015 to 2016 showed about half of Americans over three years old were recently exposed to a neonic. Nearly all commodity corn farmers receive seed coated with neonics at the start of each season; many cannot identify the chemical that’s in the coating and don’t even know if another option exists. In corn and soy fields, new research ... suggest that widespread use of neonic-treated seeds provide minimal benefit to farmers. One study from Quebec helped convince the Canadian province to change its laws to restrict the use of neonic seed treatments. After five years and a 95 percent drop in the use of neonic-coated seeds, there have been no reported impacts on crop yields. For agronomist Louis Robert, the success of the Quebec government’s decision to move away from neonics on corn and soy seeds is apparent ... in the silence. “The most reliable proof is that it’s not even a matter of discussion anymore,” Robert said. “Today, as we speak in 2024 in Quebec, over half of the corn and soy acreage doesn’t carry any insecticide, and we’re going to have a fantastic year in terms of yield. So, the demonstration is right there in front of you.”

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on food system corruption and toxic chemicals from reliable major media sources.


Ex-director for tobacco giant advising UK government on cancer risks
2024-11-10, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2024-11-22 13:14:17
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/nov/10/revealed-ex-director-for-tob...

A former director at the tobacco giant Philip Morris International (PMI) was handed a role on an influential expert committee advising the UK government on cancer risks. Ruth Dempsey, the ex-director of scientific and regulatory affairs, spent 28 years at PMI before being appointed to the UK Committee on Carcinogenicity of Chemicals in Food, Consumer Products and the Environment (CoC). The committee’s role is to provide ministers with independent advice. Yet since taking up the position in February 2020, Dempsey has continued to be paid by PMI for work including authoring a sponsored paper about regulatory strategies for heated tobacco products. She also owns shares in the tobacco giant ... and receives a PMI pension. But her appointment, unreported until now, raises questions about the potential for undue influence and possible access to inside information on policy and regulatory matters that may be valuable to the tobacco industry. PMI has a long history of lobbying and influence campaigns, including pushing against planned crackdowns on vaping. It has also invested heavily in promoting heated tobacco as an alternative to smoking and expects to ship around 140bn heated tobacco units in 2024, a 134% increase on its 59.7bn sales in 2019. Sophie Braznell, who monitors heated tobacco products as part of the University of Bath’s Tobacco Control Research Group, said Dempsey’s position on the committee risked undermining its work. “In permitting a former senior tobacco employee and consultant for the world’s largest tobacco company to join this advisory committee, we jeopardise its objectivity and integrity.”

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on health and government corruption from reliable major media sources.


Tobacco giant accused of ‘manipulating science’ to attract non-smokers
2024-06-28, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2024-11-22 13:12:36
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/article/2024/jun/28/tobacco-gi...

The tobacco company Philip Morris International has been accused of “manipulating science for profit” through funding research and advocacy work with scientists. Campaigners say that leaked documents from PMI and its Japanese affiliate also reveal plans to target politicians, doctors and the 2020 Tokyo Olympics as part of the multinational’s marketing strategy to attract non-smokers to its heated tobacco product, IQOS. A paper from researchers at the Tobacco Control Research Group at the University of Bath said that Philip Morris Japan (PMJ), funded a Kyoto University study into smoking cessation via a third-party research organisation. The researchers said they could find no public record of PMJ’s involvement, although a PMI spokesperson said its involvement had been attributed when the results were presented at a scientific conference in Greece in 2021. PMJ paid about £20,000 a month to FTI-Innovations, a life sciences consultancy run by a Tokyo University professor, for tasks such as promoting PMI’s science and products at academic events. In one internal email, a PMJ employee claimed they had been told “to keep it a secret”. Dr Sophie Braznell, one of [the paper's] authors, said: “The manipulation of science for profit harms us all, especially policymakers and consumers. It slows down and undermines public health policies, while encouraging the widespread use of harmful products.”

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on health and science corruption from reliable major media sources.


Plastics companies blocked mitigation efforts and may have broken US laws
2024-06-26, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2024-11-22 13:10:42
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/jun/26/plastics-companie...

Research from the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL) details the widespread burdens that plastic pollution places on US cities and states, and argues that plastic producers may be breaking public-nuisance, product-liability and consumer-protection laws. It comes as cities such as Baltimore have begun to file claims against plastic manufacturers, but the authors write that existing cases “are likely only the beginning, as more states and municipalities grapple with the challenges of accumulating plastic waste and microplastics contamination.” Taxpayers foot the bill to clean plastic pollution from streets and waterways, and research shows people could ingest the equivalent of one credit card’s worth of plastic per week. From 1950 to 2000, global plastic production soared from 2m tons to 234m tons annually. And over the next 20 years, production more than doubled to 460m tons in 2019. As the public grew concerned about plastic pollution, the industry responded with “sophisticated marketing campaigns” to shift blame from producers to consumers – for instance, by popularizing the term litterbug. Plastic has clogged sewer grates, leading to increased flooding. It has also exposed populations to microplastics. The report outlines different legal theories that could help governments pursue accountability. Nuisance could account for the harms themselves ... and consumer-protection law could be used to combat deceitful marketing practices.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corporate corruption and toxic chemicals from reliable major media sources.


At the NIH, a Scandal Grows Around an Official’s Evasion of Public Records Law
2024-05-28, The Nation
Posted: 2024-11-22 13:08:38
https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/nih-foia-covid-origins-morens-hearing/

The House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, which is conducting an investigation into the origin of SARS-CoV-2, sent a letter to the National Institutes of Health today in which it suggests that there has been “a conspiracy at the highest levels of NIH and NIAID to avoid public transparency regarding the COVID-19 pandemic.” Dr. David Morens, a longtime senior adviser to Dr. Anthony Fauci ... engaged in efforts to evade the Freedom of information Act. In a September 2021 e-mail to a group of high-profile critics of the so-called lab leak theory, Morens wrote: “As you know, I try to always communicate on gmail because my NIH email is FOIA’d constantly.” In a November 2021 e-mail to Gerald Keusch, a former high-level NIH official, he asked that “NOTHING gets sent to me except to my gmail, and make sure that what gets sent to my gmail doesn’t have a cc to another government employee who could be FOIA’d.” Morens’s e-mails also suggest that the problem of FOIA noncompliance at the NIH may not be limited to him. In one February 2021 e-mail, Morens wrote: “i learned from our foia lady here how to make emails disappear after i am foia’d but before the search starts.” In another April 2021 e-mail, Morens wrote: “PS, I forgot to say there is no worry about FOIAs. I can either send stuff to Tony on his private gmail, or hand it to him at work or at his house. He is too smart to let colleagues send him stuff that could cause trouble.”

Note: Watch our Mindful News Brief on the strong evidence that bioweapons research created COVID-19. Fauci was literally the highest paid federal employee within the US government, even higher than the president. Yet while he told the world that attacking him is attacking science, he lied about funding risky gain of function research on bat coronaviruses. In hearings earlier this year, he said “I don’t recall” over 100 times when asked important information on his role in COVID and pandemic policies. What does this say about our public health leaders?


Growing Food Instead of Lawns in California Front Yards
2024-11-05, New York Times
Posted: 2024-11-22 12:55:07
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/05/climate/microfarms-cropswapla-food-deserts...

Tangles of grapes and blackberries grow in clusters along a trellis. Leafy rows of basil, sweet potatoes and mesclun spring from raised garden troughs. Most striking are corridors of elevated planters stacked four high, like multilevel bunk beds, filled with kale, cabbage, arugula, various lettuces, eggplants, tatsoi and collard greens. Run by a gardening wizard named Jamiah Hargins, this wee farm in the front yard of his bungalow provides fresh produce for 45 nearby families, all while using a tiny fraction of the water required by a lawn. At just 2,500 square feet, this farm forms the heart of Mr. Hargins’s nonprofit, Crop Swap LA, which transforms yards and unused spaces into microfarms. It runs three front yard farms that provide organic fruits and vegetables each week to 80 families, all living in a one-mile radius, and often with food insecurity. Rooted in the empowering idea that people can grow their own food, Crop Swap LA has caught on, with a wait list of 300 residents wanting to convert their yards into microfarms. The mini farms bring environmental benefits, thanks to irrigation and containment systems that capture and recycle rain. That allows the farms to produce thousands of pounds of food without using much water. “Some people pay $100 a month on their water because they’re watering grass, but they don’t get to eat anything, no one gets any benefit from it,” Mr. Hargins said. “I can’t think of a more generous gift to give to the community than to grow delicious, naturally organic food for the direct community,” [says Crop Swap LA subscriber] Katherine Wong. “This is one of the noblest things anyone is doing today.”

Note: Explore more positive stories like this about healing our bodies and healing the Earth.


What Art Does for Your Brain
2023-04-25, Greater Good
Posted: 2024-11-22 12:52:39
https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/what_art_does_for_your_brain

A new book, Your Brain on Art, by Susan Magsamen and Ivy Ross, helps explain ... the science of “neuroaesthetics”—how our brains respond to aesthetic and artistic experiences. The authors make the case that art is good for our physical and mental health. Appreciating or making art involves using many parts of our brain—from those that process our senses to those involved in emotion, memory, and cognition. “When you experience virtual reality, read poetry or fiction, see a film or listen to a piece of music, or move your body to dance, to name a few of the many arts, you are biologically changed,” write Magsamen and Ross. “There is a neurochemical exchange that can lead to what Aristotle called catharsis, or a release of emotion that leaves you feeling more connected.” One study involving more than 23,000 ... participants found that those who either made art at least once a week or attended cultural events at least once or twice a year were happier and had better mental health than those who didn’t. This was independent of their age, marital status, income, health behaviors, social support, and more. “The arts are being used in at least six distinct ways to heal the body: as preventative medicine; as symptom relief for everyday health issues; as treatment or intervention for illness, developmental issues, and accidents; as psychological support; as a tool for successfully living with chronic issues; and at the end of life to provide solace and meaning,” the authors write.

Note: Explore more positive stories like this about the incredible power of art.


The Best Way to Restore a Rainforest Is Simply to Leave It Be
2024-11-09, Mother Jones
Posted: 2024-11-22 12:50:44
https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2024/11/tropical-rainforest-restorati...

Left on their own, some deforested areas can rebound surprisingly fast with minimal help from humans, sequestering loads of atmospheric carbon as they grow. New research from an international team of scientists, recently published in the journal Nature, finds that 830,000 square miles of deforested land in humid tropical regions—an area larger than Mexico—could regrow naturally if left on its own. Five countries—Brazil, China, Colombia, Indonesia, and Mexico—account for 52 percent of the estimated potential regrowth. That would boost biodiversity, improve water quality and availability, and suck up 23.4 gigatons of carbon over the next three decades. “A rainforest can spring up in one to three years,” said Matthew Fagan, a conservation scientist and ... coauthor of the paper. “In five years, you can have a completely closed canopy that’s 20 feet high. I have walked in rainforests 80 feet high that are 10 to 15 years old. It just blows your mind.” That sort of regrowth isn’t a given, though. First of all, humans would have to stop using the land for intensive agriculture—think big yields thanks to fertilizers and other chemicals—or raising hoards of cattle, the sheer weight of which compacts the soil and makes it hard for new plants to take root. A global goal known as the Bonn Challenge aims to restore 1.3 million square miles of degraded and deforested land by 2030. More than 70 governments and organizations from 60 countries ... have signed on.

Note: Explore more positive stories like this about healing the Earth.


Advocacy over science: How youth gender medicine overran our institutions
2024-10-10, The Hill
Posted: 2024-11-12 13:59:44
https://thehill.com/opinion/4923929-aap-convention-rachel-levine/

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Assistant Secretary for Health Rachel Levine, the highest-ranking transgender official in the Biden administration ... has supported a misinformation campaign that has turned the U.S. into an international outlier in the use of the “gender-affirming” model of care, which recommends hormones and surgeries rather than psychotherapy as the first-line treatment for adolescent distress around puberty. In 2022, Levine pressured the World Association for Transgender Health to remove age minimums for gender surgeries. Since 2017, a Manhattan Institute analysis of health insurance claims has shown, that more than 5,000 teenage girls had their breasts amputated as part of a “gender-affirming” procedure designed to help them achieve a male look. These figures ... do not include procedures performed at large health care systems like Kaiser Permanente (which is currently being sued by two young women who underwent “top surgery”). These surgeries do not seem to pose a problem for those like Levine who believe the theory that “trans kids know who they are.” Children who do not fit sex stereotypes and same-sex attracted adolescents are now given the idea they are “trans” and encouraged to perceive hormones and surgeries as a solution to the substantial difficulties that society imposes on gender non-conforming young people. Contrary to the slogans, these treatments are not lifesaving.

Note: For more along these lines, explore concise summaries of revealing news articles on transgender medicine.


Biden Officials Pushed to Remove Age Limits for Trans Surgery, Documents Show
2024-06-25, New York Times
Posted: 2024-11-12 13:57:41
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/25/health/transgender-minors-surgeries.html

Health officials in the Biden administration pressed an international group of medical experts to remove age limits for adolescent surgeries from guidelines for care of transgender minors. Email excerpts from members of the World Professional Association for Transgender Health recount how staff for Adm. Rachel Levine, assistant secretary for health at the Department of Health and Human Services and herself a transgender woman, urged them to drop the proposed limits from the group’s guidelines and apparently succeeded. If and when teenagers should be allowed to undergo transgender treatments and surgeries has become a raging debate within the political world. Opponents say teenagers are too young to make such decisions, but supporters ... posit that young people with gender dysphoria face depression and worsening distress if their issues go unaddressed. The draft guidelines, released in late 2021, recommended lowering the age minimums to 14 for hormonal treatments, 15 for mastectomies, 16 for breast augmentation or facial surgeries, and 17 for genital surgeries or hysterectomies. The proposed age limits were eliminated in the final guidelines. Gender-related medical interventions for adolescents have been steadily rising as more young people seek such care. A Reuters analysis of insurance data estimated that 4,200 American adolescents started estrogen or testosterone therapy in 2021, more than double the number from four years earlier.

Note: For more along these lines, explore concise summaries of revealing news articles on transgender medicine.


Why are foods banned in other places still on US grocery shelves?
2024-11-05, Vox
Posted: 2024-11-12 13:55:41
https://www.vox.com/explain-it-to-me/381121/food-candy-ingredients-coloring-d...

How is America allowed to feed us certain products that are harmful and banned in other countries? What some people may dismiss as a fixation of “granola moms” is actually a legitimate concern, says Melanie Benesh, the vice president of government affairs at the Environmental Working Group. The impact many of these chemicals have is chronic: They accumulate over time, after a lot of tiny exposures. For example, the whitening agent titanium dioxide in soups and dairy products can build up in the body and even damage DNA. European countries take a much more precautionary approach to additives in their food, Benesh says. “If there are doubts about whether a chemical is safe or if there’s no data to back up safety, the EU is much more likely to put a restriction on that chemical.” California banned four chemicals in 2023: brominated vegetable oil, Red Dye No. 3, propylparaben, and potassium bromate. This year, lawmakers in about a dozen states have introduced legislation banning those same chemicals and, in some states, additional chemicals as well. But federal oversight has been limited. When Congress wrote the food chemical law, they included an exception for things that are generally recognized as safe, or GRAS. This was intended to be a narrow loophole, an exception for ... things like spices or vinegar or flour or table salt. An analysis in 2022 ... found that 99 percent of new food chemicals were exploiting this GRAS loophole.

Note: Read more about the growing list of chemicals banned in the EU but not the US. For more along these lines, explore concise summaries of revealing news articles on food system corruption.


The Globalized, Industrialized Food System Is Destroying the World—We Urgently Need to Support Local Food Economies
2024-11-04, Counterpunch
Posted: 2024-11-12 13:51:33
https://www.counterpunch.org/2024/11/04/the-globalized-industrialized-food-sy...

The food system is inextricably linked to an economic system that, for decades, has been fundamentally biased against the kinds of changes we need. Economic policies almost everywhere have systematically promoted ever-larger scale and monocultural production. Those policies include: Massive subsidies for globally traded commodities, direct and hidden subsidies for global transport infrastructures and fossil fuels, ‘free trade’ policies that open up food markets in virtually every country to global agribusinesses, [and] health and safety regulations [that] destroy smaller producers and marketers and are not enforced for giant monopolies. Monocultures rely heavily on chemical inputs—fertilizers, herbicides, fungicides, and pesticides—which pollute the immediate environment, put wildlife at risk, and—through nutrient runoff—create “dead zones” in waters ... thousands of miles away. More than half of the world’s food varieties have been lost over the past century; in countries like the U.S., the loss is more than 90 percent. Agribusiness has gone to great lengths to convince the public that large-scale industrial food production is the only way to feed the world. But the global food economy is massively inefficient. More than one-third of the global food supply is wasted or lost; for the U.S., the figure is closer to one-half. The solution to these problems ... requires a commitment to local food economies. [Several towns in the state of Maine] declared “food sovereignty” by passing ordinances that give their citizens the right “to produce, process, sell, purchase, and consume local foods of their choosing.” In 2013, the government of Ontario, Canada, passed a Local Food Act to increase access to local food, improve local food literacy, and provide tax credits for farmers who donate a portion of their produce to nearby food banks.

Note: Read the full article for a comprehensive explanation of why local food and economies are far better for human health and environment. For more along these lines, explore concise summaries of news articles on food system corruption.


How a government scientist is pushing to supersize research into ultra-processed foods
2024-09-11, Stat News
Posted: 2024-11-12 13:49:25
https://www.statnews.com/2024/09/11/ultra-processed-foods-health-nih-research...

[Kevin] Hall’s work at the National Institutes of Health presents an existential challenge to the food industry, which has staked its business model for decades on developing ultra-processed meals that are cheap, easy to prepare. The NIH invested just over $2 billion on nutrition research last year. That includes both research, like Hall’s, done in government facilities, and grants to outside scientists at universities. The agency, meanwhile, spent nearly $11.9 billion on neuroscience, $8.9 billion on brain disorders, and $5.1 billion on neurodegenerative diseases. Hall’s first study on ultra-processed foods ... housed 20 adults at the NIH’s clinical hospital. For half the time, participants were fed a diet of ultra-processed foods, and the other half, they got unprocessed foods. Participants had no control over what they ate, except that they could eat as much or as little ... as they wanted. The study found that people ate, on average, over 500 calories more on the ultra-processed diet. The results made Hall a minor celebrity by NIH standards. “The take-home lesson from this was absolutely unambiguous: If you’re worried about weight, don’t eat ultra-processed foods,” [NYU professor of nutrition and public health Marion] Nestle said. “The idea that the NIH isn’t sinking a fortune into this is just shocking to me,” said [Nestle], who called Hall’s first clinical trial on ultra-processed foods “the most important study in nutrition that’s been done since vitamins.” "Nutrition funding represents around 4 to 5% of total obligations from the NIH ... Which is like — compared to the impact that nutrition and food can have — just a really low number.”

Note: For more along these lines, explore concise summaries of revealing news articles on health and food system corruption.


These 7 watchdogs scour scientific papers for problems — and often find them
2024-11-04, Stat News
Posted: 2024-11-12 13:47:25
https://www.statnews.com/2024/11/04/who-to-know-series-science-sleuths-watchd...

A small, tight-knit community of scientific sleuths has been unearthing growing evidence that many studies, including landmark papers published in top journals, contain manipulated images and falsified findings. These revelations have led to high-profile investigations, raised concerns about clinical trials, and culminated in the departure of university presidents. Their work — often posted on PubPeer, a website where users comment on published studies — has also forced a reckoning around how the crushing pressure to publish splashy results incentivizes fraud. “Claire Francis” is a pseudonym for someone who has commented on, by their own reckoning, 20,000 articles since 2010. About 2,000 of these studies were later retracted. Elisabeth Bik ... comments on papers using her real name, and she has earned a reputation for her preternatural ability to spot fishy figures. Bik has flagged issues with about 8,500 studies, contributing to 1,300 retractions and about 1,100 corrections, she told STAT. Those retractions include a study supporting a popular hypothesis for Alzheimer’s disease that has been cited more than 2,000 times, as well as a stem cell paper cited nearly 4,500 times. Her work has made her the recipient of more derisive emails, cease-and-desist letters, and legal threats than Bik can count. That’s not an uncommon experience, and Bik is an adviser to the Scientific Integrity Fund, which has set aside money to support sleuths being sued for their work.

Note: Top leaders in the field of medicine and science have spoken out about the rampant corruption and conflicts of interest in those industries. For more along these lines, explore concise summaries of revealing news articles on science corruption.


Is your air fryer spying on you? Concerns over ‘excessive’ surveillance in smart device
2024-11-04, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2024-11-12 13:45:11
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/nov/05/air-fryer-excessive-survei...

Air fryers that gather your personal data and audio speakers “stuffed with trackers” are among examples of smart devices engaged in “excessive” surveillance, according to the consumer group Which? The organisation tested three air fryers ... each of which requested permission to record audio on the user’s phone through a connected app. Which? found the app provided by the company Xiaomi connected to trackers for Facebook and a TikTok ad network. The Xiaomi fryer and another by Aigostar sent people’s personal data to servers in China. Its tests also examined smartwatches that it said required “risky” phone permissions – in other words giving invasive access to the consumer’s phone through location tracking, audio recording and accessing stored files. Which? found digital speakers that were preloaded with trackers for Facebook, Google and a digital marketing company called Urbanairship. The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) said the latest consumer tests “show that many products not only fail to meet our expectations for data protection but also consumer expectations”. A growing number of devices in homes are connected to the internet, including camera-enabled doorbells and smart TVs. Last Black Friday, the ICO encouraged consumers to check if smart products they planned to buy had a physical switch to prevent the gathering of voice data.

Note: A 2015 New York Times article warned that smart devices were a "train wreck in privacy and security." For more along these lines, read about how automakers collect intimate information that includes biometric data, genetic information, health diagnosis data, and even information on people’s “sexual activities” when drivers pair their smartphones to their vehicles.


TD Bank hit with record $3 billion fine over drug cartel money laundering
2024-10-10, CNN News
Posted: 2024-11-12 13:43:18
https://www.cnn.com/2024/10/10/investing/td-bank-settlement-money-laundering/...

TD Bank will pay $3 billion to settle charges that it failed to properly monitor money laundering by drug cartels. The fine includes a $1.3 billion penalty that will be paid to the US Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, a record fine for a bank. TD also intends to pay $1.8 billion to the US Justice Department and plead guilty to resolve the US government’s investigation that the bank violated of the Bank Secrecy Act and allowed money laundering. More than 90% of transactions went unmonitored between January 2018 to April 2024, which “enabled three money laundering networks to collectively transfer more than $670 million through TD Bank accounts,” according to a legal filing. In one instance, TD Bank employees collected more than $57,000 worth of gift cards to process more than $470 million in cash deposits from a money laundering network to “ensure employees would continue to process their transactions” and not declare them in required reports, the DoJ said. The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), a US agency that regulates banks, said TD processed hundreds of millions of dollars of transactions the clearly indicated highly suspicious activity. The Canadian bank will be subject to four years of monitoring [to] ensure it is following the agreement. The US Federal Reserve also fined TD Bank and will force the company to relocate to the United States its anti-money laundering compliance office.

Note: Several years ago, Europe's biggest bank was caught laundering millions for cartels and terrorists. For more, read our latest Substack on the dark truth behind the war on drugs.


Mexico is treating corn from the U.S. as a threat. Here's why.
2024-02-27, National Geographic
Posted: 2024-11-12 13:40:58
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/article/mexico-ban-genetically...

Mexico is fighting to phase out genetically modified (GM) U.S.-grown corn. The Mexican government says this will protect its citizens’ health and the country’s native corn varieties. Yet the announcement provoked strong objections from the U.S., whose largest annual customer for GM corn is often Mexico—between 2018 and 2020, Mexico bought nearly 30 percent of all U.S. corn exports. The dispute has escalated to formal negotiations under the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA). Mexico ... insists that GM corn threatens human health, and that modified seeds threaten Mexico’s agricultural traditions and cultural identity. What began as a wild grass called teosinte nearly 10,000 years ago ... has evolved through millennia of domestication and selective breeding to yield the corn that we know today. Mexico is concerned that GM corn poses the risk of genetic contamination—genes from U.S. corn have a history of crossing the border and entering Mexican varieties. Pollen from GM crops can travel considerable distances and cross-pollinate with the native varieties, potentially altering their genetic makeup and, in some cases, making them less suited to the specific conditions they were bred for. In the U.S., most corn is grown with seed produced by large corporations, which create just a handful of genetically identical corn varieties grown at mass scale.

Note: Read how big agrochemical giant Monsanto worked with US officials to pressure Mexico into abandoning its intended ban on glyphosate. For more along these lines, explore concise summaries of revealing news articles on GMOs and food system corruption from reliable major media sources.


AstraZeneca Sued Over Covid-19 Vaccine Clinical Trial Injury
2024-05-13, Bloomberg
Posted: 2024-11-12 13:38:59
https://news.bloomberglaw.com/health-law-and-business/astrazeneca-sued-over-c...

AstraZeneca is being sued by a woman who claims she was disabled by the company’s Covid-19 vaccine. Brianne Dressen said she was “the picture of good health” when getting the AstraZeneca Covid vaccine in 2020 at the age of 39 through a Salt Lake County, Utah, clinical trial. In the hours that followed, her arm began to tingle and the feeling spread up to her shoulder, then to her opposite arm. Later, other symptoms followed, including blurred vision, a headache, ringing ears, and vomiting. In 2021, National Institutes of Health neurologists diagnosed her with “post vaccine neuropathy.” Dressen is the co-chair of React19, an interest group for people alleging injury from Covid-19 vaccines. Now, she’s suing AstraZeneca over medical expenses and more, arguing she’s still disabled and unable to work and carry on with many activities as she once had. The lawsuit, which accuses AstraZeneca of breaching contractual obligations, comes days after AstraZeneca pulled its Covid-19 vaccine off the market. AstraZeneca has said it was doing so due to a lack of demand and not for safety reasons. The vaccine, however, has faced concerns over its efficacy and safety. As of April 1, over 10,000 claims alleging injury or death from a Covid-19 shot have been filed with the Countermeasures Injury Compensation Program, according to the HHS. In a separate lawsuit, Dressen’s React19 and people alleging vaccine injuries are suing the HHS over the program.

Note: People injured by AstraZeneca's vaccine were censored on social media when they tried to talk about their experiences. While mainstream narratives emphasize how rare these injuries are, the numbers speak for themselves. The Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) is a voluntary government reporting system that only captures a portion of the actual injuries. Vaccine adverse event numbers are made publicly available, and currently show 38,068 COVID Vaccine Reported Deaths and 1,652,230 COVID Vaccine Adverse Event Reports.


Healing the political divide
2021-01-01, American Psychological Association
Posted: 2024-11-12 13:35:34
https://www.apa.org/monitor/2021/01/healing-political-divide

Psychological science suggests that it is both possible and imperative for members of our society to find common ground. “Some of this divide is a matter of perception,” says Tania Israel, PhD, professor of counseling psychology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. “Most people are not on the extremes of any of these issues, but most of what we hear is from people who are more on the extremes.” (More in Common, 2018; More in Common, 2019) People have a natural tendency to conceptualize everyone on the other side of the political spectrum as if they were the same as the leaders and spokespeople of that side. “[Leaders] can be very effective at creating and strengthening ‘mutual radicalization,’” says Fathali Moghaddam, PhD, using a term he coined to describe the growth of two opposing sides toward more and more extreme stances. One way to mitigate the divisiveness is to physically bring people together in safe, highly structured dialogue groups. We must also let go of our tendencies to want to bring someone to our own side of the political divide. “People are married to the notion that they can change minds—this almost always isn’t true,” says [psychotherapist Jeanne] Safer. In our personal relationships, Tania Israel [at the University of California, Santa Barbara] stresses to keep in mind our own sometimes-faulty perceptions of the other side. “Don’t make assumptions about someone based on their vote. Instead, I encourage people to be curious about what their vote meant to them. That’s an opportunity to open up a conversation to learn more about people that are important to us.”

Note: Our latest 7-min video explores the importance of healing the polarization that's poisoning our conversations and sabotaging democracy. For more, read our recent article on healing the culture wars and explore more positive stories like this on healing social division.


Democrats and Republicans Are More Similar Than You Might Think, and That Matters!
2023-11-29, The Society for Personality and Social Psychology
Posted: 2024-11-12 13:33:18
https://spsp.org/news/character-and-context-blog/syropoulos-leidner-republica...

Whether revealed in a post on social media, a short video on TikTok, or the latest piece of news on Fox or NBC, it is hard to ignore political divisions in the U.S. We ... conducted a survey of over 2,400 Republicans and Democrats in the lead-up to the 2020 presidential elections. We included questions about each person's moral and sociopolitical attitudes and beliefs. We found considerable similarity in their moral and political attitudes. At least 75% of responses overlapped. Both groups endorsed the importance of considering how fair or harmful their actions are for others, and they both believed that upholding democracy and finding bipartisan solutions is important for the U.S. In a series of subsequent experiments involving more than 4,400 participants, we presented our findings to people who had not participated in the survey. Participants all saw the same findings, but they were randomly assigned to see the information described in different ways. For some participants, our results were described as showing small differences between Democrats and Republicans, whereas for others they were described as showing a high degree of similarity between the two groups. When findings were described as showing similarities, participants thought that their political opponents had attitudes and beliefs that were more similar to their own group. They were more willing to find common ground with their political opponents on major social issues like gun control and abortion. Focusing on group differences might inadvertently contribute to political tension.

Note: Our latest 7-min video explores the importance of healing the polarization that's poisoning our conversations and sabotaging democracy. For more, read our recent article on healing the culture wars and explore more positive stories like this on healing social division.


Politeness or civility? Alexandra Hudson untangles the difference.
2023-10-17, Christian Science Monitor
Posted: 2024-11-12 13:31:44
https://www.csmonitor.com/Books/2023/1017/Politeness-or-civility-Alexandra-Hu...

For Alexandra Hudson, working in Washington, D.C., was a culture shock. Ms. Hudson hails from Canada, land of the nice. "I realized that these people would smile at you, flatter you, and stab you in the back the moment that you no longer served their purposes," [said Ms. Hudson]. Her first book, "The Soul of Civility: Timeless Principles To Heal Society and Ourselves," looks at how to bridge gaps and find commonalities. "Clarity came when I understood there was a difference between civility and politeness," [said Ms. Hudson]. "That politeness, I argue in my book, is a technique. Civility, by contrast, is a disposition of the heart, a way of seeing others as our moral equals and worthy of respect because of our shared dignity as human beings. When we are cruel and malicious to others, it doesn’t happen in a vacuum. It’s not just us hurting someone else. We are hurt as well. It deforms us, our souls, as well. The soul of civility [is] acting in ways that cultivate our soul. We further appreciate the humanity and dignity and personhood of those around us. The differences that may exist between us are far outweighed by the commonalities we have as members of the human community. If we go through life without a care in the world for how our actions affect others, that has a negative, vicious ripple effect. If enough of us choose to reclaim the soul of civility, I think we might be able to change the world."

Note: Our latest 7-min video explores the importance of healing the polarization that's poisoning our conversations and sabotaging democracy. For more, read our recent article on healing the culture wars and explore more positive stories like this on healing social division.


The Pentagon Wants to Use AI to Create Deepfake Internet Users
2024-10-17, The Intercept
Posted: 2024-11-06 17:51:15
https://theintercept.com/2024/10/17/pentagon-ai-deepfake-internet-users/

The United States’ secretive Special Operations Command is looking for companies to help create deepfake internet users so convincing that neither humans nor computers will be able to detect they are fake. Academic and private sector researchers have been engaged in a race ... to create undetectable deepfakes. The plan, mentioned in a new 76-page wish list by the Department of Defense’s Joint Special Operations Command, or JSOC, outlines advanced technologies desired for country’s most elite, clandestine military efforts. “Special Operations Forces (SOF) are interested in technologies that can generate convincing online personas for use on social media platforms, social networking sites, and other online content.” JSOC wants the ability to create online user profiles that “appear to be a unique individual that ... does not exist in the real world,” with each featuring “multiple expressions” and “Government Identification quality photos.” The document notes that “the solution should include facial & background imagery, facial & background video, and audio layers.” JSOC hopes to be able to generate “selfie video” from these fabricated humans. Each deepfake selfie will come with a matching faked background, “to create a virtual environment undetectable by social media algorithms.” A joint statement by the NSA, FBI, and CISA warned [that] the global proliferation of deepfake technology [is] a “top risk” for 2023. An April paper by the U.S. Army’s Strategic Studies Institute was similarly concerned: “Experts expect the malicious use of AI, including the creation of deepfake videos to sow disinformation to polarize societies and deepen grievances, to grow over the next decade.”

Note: Why is the Pentagon investing in advanced deepfake technology? Read about the Pentagon's secret army of 60,000 operatives who use fake online personas to manipulate public discourse. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on AI and media corruption from reliable major media sources.


Declassify State Dept. COVID documents: Former CDC director
2024-05-08, News Nation
Posted: 2024-11-06 17:48:53
https://www.newsnationnow.com/vargasreports/declassify-scovid-docs-former-cdc...

The man who headed the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention when the COVID pandemic began says still-classified State Department documents add credibility to his long-held contention that the virus spread because of a leak from a laboratory. “Once they are declassified, the American public will get a much better understanding of the knowledge base we have,” Dr. Robert Redfield [said]. Rep. Brad Wenstrup, R-Ohio, chair of the House Select Subcommittee son the Coronavirus Pandemic, says he recently viewed the State Department’s documents, which he says strongly hint that ... COVID first spread due to a lab leak at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Wenstrup is asking Secretary of State Antony Blinken to declassify the report, and Redfield agrees. On Wednesday, Wenstrup announced that his panel has issued a subpoena “to compel Dr. David Morens — a top adviser to Dr. Anthony Fauci at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases — to appear for a public hearing.” The committee’s news release says “Dr. Morens will be asked to address new evidence suggesting he deliberately obstructed the Select Subcommittee’s investigations into the origins of COVID-19 to protect his former boss, Dr. (Anthony) Fauci.” “I think he (Wenstrup) is gonna get to the truth,” said Redfield, who has long complained that he was “sidelined” because his lab leak theory contradicted other scientists including Fauci. Redfield says it’s also vital that researchers minimize the danger of future lab leaks. He’s calling for an end to “gain of function” research. “That’s the real biosecurity threat,” he said.

Note: Watch our Mindful News Brief on the strong evidence that bioweapons research created COVID-19. For more, tune into a nuanced interview with Dr. Robert Redfield about the origins and ongoing impact of COVID-19.


Emails detail Fauci’s controversial biodefense legacy
2024-10-28, US Right to Know
Posted: 2024-11-06 17:46:33
https://usrtk.org/risky-research/fauci-controversial-biodefense-legacy/

Anthony Fauci detailed how the research portfolio of his longtime former institute, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, did not distinguish between “biodefense efforts” and “naturally occurring” pathogens in a fall 2017 presentation. Fauci described “the joining with and ultimate indistinguishing of biodefense efforts and efforts directed at naturally occurring emerging and re-emerging infections. “Gain-of-function” research (GOF) makes viruses more pathogenic or transmissible. Much of this gain-of-function research is considered “dual use research of concern” (DURC) because it can be applied toward benevolent civilian aims or misapplied toward the development of bioweapons. Fauci’s biodefense legacy has taken on a new significance in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. Critics, especially those who believe the pandemic is likely to have resulted from a lab accident, say the global proliferation of maximum security labs and GOF/DURC has made the world less safe. After the 2001 anthrax attacks, amid concerns about alleged “weapons of mass destruction,” including biological weapons, former President George W. Bush asked Congress to invest billions in building maximum security labs capable of combating bioterrorism. By the late 2000s, fears of bioterrorism from the Middle East had faded. The Federal Bureau of Investigation’s conclusion that a researcher at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute on Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick had been responsible for the 2001 anthrax attacks stoked a new kind of fear — of an expanding population of scientists with classified knowledge and access to pathogens. Counter-bioterrorism research at the National Institutes for Health surged from $53 million in 2001 to at least $1.6 billion in 2004. GAO reports uncovered major biosecurity breaches.

Note: Watch our Mindful News Brief on the strong evidence that bioweapons research created COVID-19. Meanwhile, Anthony Fauci admitted to congress that there was no scientific basis for many pandemic policies. Can anything he's said about gain-of-function research be trusted?


'Will You Bring My Dad and Give Me My Hand Back?' The World's War on Children
2024-10-22, Common Dreams
Posted: 2024-11-06 17:44:13
https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/impact-of-war-on-children-s-mental-health

About 468 million children ... live in areas affected by armed conflict. Verified attacks on children have tripled since 2010. Last year, global conflicts killed three times as many children as in 2022. “Killings and injuries of civilians have become a daily occurrence,” U.N. human rights chief Volker Türk commented in June when he announced the 2023 figures. “Children shot at. Hospitals bombed. Heavy artillery launched on entire communities.” In 2005, [the United Nations Security Council] identified — and condemned — six grave violations against children in times of war: killing or maiming; recruitment into or use by armed forces and armed groups; attacks on schools or hospitals; rape or other grave acts of sexual violence; abduction; and the denial of humanitarian access to them. Between 2005 and 2023, more than 347,000 grave violations against youngsters were verified across more than 30 conflict zones in Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America, according to UNICEF. Israa Al-Qahwaji, a mental health and psychosocial support coordinator for Save the Children in Gaza, shared the story of a young boy who survived an airstrike. In one therapy session, he was asked to mold something out of clay to represent a wish. With his remaining hand, he carefully shaped a house. After finishing the exercise, he turned to the counselor with a question that left Al-Qahwaji emotionally overwhelmed. “Now,” the boy asked, “will you bring my dad and give me my hand back?”

Note: Learn more about human rights abuses during wartime in our comprehensive Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center. For more, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on war from reliable major media sources.


John Kiriakou: US Prisons Still a Disaster Zone
2024-10-18, ScheerPost
Posted: 2024-11-06 17:42:15
https://scheerpost.com/2024/10/18/john-kiriakou-us-prisons-still-a-disaster-z...

When Joe Biden took office ... he promised an overhaul of the federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP). Biden inherited Michael Carvajal as BOP director. Carvajal ... began as an entry-level prison guard, worked his way up into administration, became a warden, and finally made his way to BOP headquarters. Carvajal resigned in 2022 after more than 100 BOP officers were arrested for, or convicted of, serious crimes during his short tenure, including smuggling drugs and cell phones into prisons to sell to prisoners, theft from prison commissaries, committing violence against prisoners, and even one warden running a “rape club,” where he and other officials, including the prison chaplain, raped female prisoners at will. Carvajal finally resigned after Congress learned of the “rape club” and Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY), the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, demanded that he leave. Carvajal’s problem was obvious from the beginning. He brought literally no outside expertise to the job. He had never worked anywhere in his adult life other than the BOP. There would be no bold, new programs, no new ideas for reducing recidivism, no move to train prisoners to lead productive lives. According to Peter Mosques, a criminal justice professor of John Jay College, the BOP is ... an employment agency for otherwise unemployable white men with no education and no outside job experience, many of whom washed out of the military or the local police academy.

Note: John Kiriakou is a whistleblower, former CIA counter-terrorism officer, and former senior investigator on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on prison system corruption from reliable major media sources.


Police seldom disclose use of facial recognition despite false arrests
2024-10-06, Washington Post
Posted: 2024-11-06 17:37:38
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2024/10/06/police-facial-recognition-...

Police departments in 15 states provided The Post with rarely seen records documenting their use of facial recognition in more than 1,000 criminal investigations over the past four years. According to the arrest reports in those cases and interviews with people who were arrested, authorities routinely failed to inform defendants about their use of the software — denying them the opportunity to contest the results of an emerging technology that is prone to error. Officers often obscured their reliance on the software in public-facing reports, saying that they identified suspects “through investigative means” or that a human source such as a witness or police officer made the initial identification. Defense lawyers and civil rights groups argue that people have a right to know about any software that identifies them as part of a criminal investigation, especially a technology that has led to false arrests. The reliability of the tool has been successfully challenged in a handful of recent court cases around the country, leading some defense lawyers to posit that police and prosecutors are intentionally trying to shield the technology from court scrutiny. Misidentification by this type of software played a role in the wrongful arrests of at least seven innocent Americans, six of whom were Black. Charges were later dismissed against all of them. Federal testing of top facial recognition software has found the programs are more likely to misidentify people of color.

Note: Read about the secret history of facial recognition. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on AI and police corruption from reliable major media sources.


S.F.’s Internet Archive was hacked. They say it’s part of a larger war.
2024-10-24, San Francisco Chronicle (San Francisco's Leading Newspaper)
Posted: 2024-11-06 17:33:21
https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/internet-archive-hack-19851974.php

Inside the Internet Archive it is as quiet as any library. But the subterranean staff working room in its cavernous San Francisco headquarters feels more like a bunker, the nerve center of an invisible war for the open web. Mark Graham, the director of the archive’s Wayback Machine, which saves billions of snapshots of the web, and his team of engineers have spent most of this month fighting to ensure the site is online and accessible after archive.org was swarmed with traffic by a hacker and forced offline earlier this month. Archive.org and its collections are back online, and the Wayback Machine is searchable again, although ... some features are not available yet. Prior to the hack the archive had been online uninterrupted for nearly 30 years, pursuing its mission to provide open access to knowledge for all. Now that mission has become an increasingly fraught battle, and amongst its staff a siege mentality prevails, the result of not only the monumental cyberattack but also a growing culture of censorship and the restriction of knowledge repositories — like the recent wave of book bannings or the copyright lawsuit that the archive have been fending off for a group of book publishers. “Libraries are under attack,” said Brewster Kahle, the Internet Archive’s founder. Graham said he sees the recent cyberattack on archive.org and Wayback Machine in the context of hacks on the Calgary Public Library and another targeting the Seattle library system.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on censorship from reliable major media sources.


When Blood Money Isn’t Enough: Raytheon Admits to Defrauding Pentagon
2024-10-18, The Intercept
Posted: 2024-11-06 17:29:25
https://theintercept.com/2024/10/18/raytheon-rtx-bribery-fraud-weapons-war-cr...

RTX Corporation, the weapons giant formerly (and better) known as Raytheon, agreed on Wednesday to pay almost $1 billion to resolve allegations that it defrauded the U.S. government and paid bribes to secure business with Qatar. RTX, as part of this agreement that spanned multiple investigations into its business, admitted to engaging in two separate schemes to defraud the Defense Department, which included deals for a radar system and Patriot missile systems. “The Raytheon allegations are stunning, even by the lax standards of the arms industry,” [said William Hartung with the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft]. “Engaging in illegal conduct on this scale suggests that, far from being an aberration, this behavior may be business as usual for the company.” Raytheon has been ... embroiled in scandals and malfeasance for decades. The company pleaded guilty to “illegally trafficking in secret military budget reports” (1990); paid $4 million to settle charges that it overbilled the Pentagon (1994); paid $10 million to settle a class-action lawsuit contending that its Amana unit sold defective furnaces and water heaters (1997); paid $2.7 million to settle allegations that it improperly charged the Pentagon for expenses incurred in marketing products to foreign governments (1998); [and] agreed to pay a $25 million civil penalty to resolve State Department charges that the company violated export controls (2003).

Note: Learn more about unaccountable military spending in our comprehensive Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corporate corruption from reliable major media sources.


Air Force overpaid nearly 8,000% for soap dispensers on military aircraft, watchdog report says
2024-10-29, CBS News
Posted: 2024-11-06 17:27:20
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/air-force-overpaid-8000-percent-soap-dispensers-...

The Air Force overpaid for soap dispensers used in the bathrooms of C-17 military aircraft by 7,943% — or more than 80 times the price of similar commercially available dispensers — according to a Defense Department inspector general report released Tuesday. The dispensers were one of about a dozen spare parts for which Boeing overcharged the Air Force, according to the report, resulting in nearly $1 million in additional and unnecessary costs. The costs of the soap dispenser from Boeing, the similar soap dispenser and the number of dispensers purchased by the Air Force were redacted in the report, but in total, the Air Force overpaid $149,072 for the soap dispensers. An anonymous tip about the dispensers launched the inspector general's audit into the spare parts. "The Air Force needs to establish and implement more effective internal controls to help prevent overpaying for spare parts for the remainder of this contract, which continues through 2031," Defense Department Inspector General Robert Storch said in a statement. Boeing has a contract with the Air Force that lets Boeing purchase needed spare parts for the C17, and the Air Force reimburses Boeing for the spare parts purchased, according to the report. "Significant overpayments for spare parts may reduce the number of spare parts that Boeing can purchase on the contract, potentially reducing C-17 readiness worldwide," Storch said.

Note: Learn more about unaccountable military spending in our comprehensive Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on military corruption from reliable major media sources.


Philip Zimbardo, psychologist who led Stanford prison experiment, dies at 91
2024-10-16, Washington Post
Posted: 2024-11-06 17:25:29
https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2024/10/18/philip-zimbardo-stanford...

Philip G. Zimbardo, a Stanford University social psychologist whose aborted 1971 experiment, employing college students to play prison guards and inmates, became one of the most controversial episodes in modern psychology and yielded disturbing insights into the effect of stress on human behavior, died Oct. 14. He was 91. For his prison experiment, conducted over a school break, Dr. Zimbardo recruited 24 male students, screening them to ensure that they had no history of crime or violence and that they were emotionally stable. He randomly assigned half to be guards and half to be prisoners. The guards were instructed not to physically harm the prisoners but to otherwise maintain control as they saw fit. Wearing uniforms and sunglasses, they forced the prisoners to follow strict rules, and punishments for violators included solitary confinement in a converted closet. The prisoners ... were referred to by numbers. After an attempted revolt on the second day, the guards began asserting their authority by turning fire extinguishers on the prisoners and demanding that they ... strip naked. Dr. Zimbardo [wrote] that the experiment was “a cautionary tale” about what can happen when “we underestimate the extent to which the power of social roles and external pressures can influence our actions.” He saw parallels between the guards’ behavior during his exercise and the conduct of U.S. soldiers who had abused prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison.

Note: Read more about Zimbardo's revealing experiments. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on mind control from reliable major media sources.


How this hospital is treating food as medicine
2024-10-29, Washington Post
Posted: 2024-11-06 17:19:39
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/10/29/boston-medical-center-food...

Clinicians know that their patients’ health is determined not just by the care they receive but also factors outside the confines of medicine — employment, financial stability, safe housing and access to nutritious food, to name a few. Boston Medical Center ... is well ahead of the curve; 23 years ago, it began its first “food as medicine” program. Patients identified as having food insecurity receive a food “prescription,” meaning they could visit a food pantry run by the hospital once every two weeks and receive boxes customized for their medical conditions. Latchman Hiralall, manager of BMC’s Preventive Food Pantry, explained that clinicians give a referral to the program, so workers know whether the patient requires a diet for diabetes, kidney disease, autoimmune conditions and so forth. Eligible patients can walk in right away, chat with pantry staff and leave with a wide array of food. Crucially, it’s patients who decide what food they take. Eligibility is simply a matter of answering yes to two questions about whether they are worried about getting enough food. They don’t need to show proof of financial stress. The program serves about 6,800 patients, distributing 50,000 pounds of food a month. The source of much of the fresh produce: The hospital itself. That’s right — BMC operates its own rooftop farm. Seventy percent of the vegetables grown there go to Preventive Food Pantry participants. A portion of the rest is served in the hospital cafeteria.

Note: Read about how German hospitals are offering patients the "planetary health diet," a plant-based, whole food approach that's also in service to the Earth. Explore more positive stories like this about healing our bodies.


Georgia 9th grader invents AI tool to detect pesticides on food
2024-10-26, News Nation
Posted: 2024-11-06 17:17:24
https://www.newsnationnow.com/science/9th-grader-invents-tool-pesticides-food/

Sirish Subash is no ordinary ninth-grade student. The 14-year-old from Gwinnett School of Mathematics, Science, and Technology in Snellville, Georgia, was named America’s top young scientist after winning the 2024 3M Young Scientist Challenge. The reason? Subash’s creation of an AI handheld pesticide detector named “Pestiscand.” “It works on a method called spectrophotometry. Now what this means is that it uses different ways that light interacts with different chemicals to look for different chemicals on the produce,” Subash [said]. “Each chemical reflects different parts or wavelengths of light, and that creates a spectral signature, which is basically a catalog of what wavelengths are reflected back. So, “Pestiscand” can look for those wavelengths that are reflected by side residues on the produce.” While the product is not on the market for the broader public at this time, Subash aims to dedicate his time to ensuring it has mass availability in the near future. “I want to continue developing projects like “Pestiscand” and eventually get them out to the world, to the market. That’s one of my goals for “Pestiscand”, to get it out to everyone,” Subash added. In his downtime, Subash enjoys reading both fiction and non-fiction and making origami. His $25,000 prizefund will go toward his college education

Note: Explore more positive stories like this about healing our bodies and technology for good.


An Age-Old Midwife Tradition’s Revival Is Saving Vulnerable Newborns
2024-10-25, Reasons to be Cheerful
Posted: 2024-11-06 17:14:27
https://reasonstobecheerful.world/kangaroo-mother-care-newborns/

The world over, thousands of babies are adjusting to life outside the womb not in incubators in hospital nurseries, but on the warm chests of their parents. This is kangaroo mother care, modern medicine’s latest protocol for babies born prematurely or underweight — and a long-standing traditional midwifery practice. It derives its fetching name from female kangaroos who keep their infants warm and stable in a pouch on their bodies. This immediate skin contact provides warmth and protection from infections while also aiding stress relief and emotional bonding. In 2017, [researchers] began studying whether kangaroo mother care (KMC) could be used for every preterm baby. They randomly assigned unstable newborns ... to two groups. Group 1 received immediate KMC. Group 2 received conventional care in an incubator or warmer until the baby’s condition stabilized. They observed a 25 percent reduction in preterm deaths, 35 percent reduction in incidence of hypothermia and 18 percent fewer infections in the immediate KMC group, compared to babies in the control group. Public health advocate [Aarti] Kumar is helping design one of India’s first KMC-enabled special newborn care units. “We need such facilities,” she says. “More than science and modern medicine, the most powerful treatment for a premature, underweight infant is their mother, no matter if she is educated or illiterate, rich or poor ... I think that’s amazing.”

Note: Explore more positive stories like this about healing our bodies.


Kellogg's faces protests over food dyes in popular breakfast cereals
2024-10-16, ABC News
Posted: 2024-10-28 22:57:05
https://abcnews.go.com/GMA/Food/protestors-push-kelloggs-remove-artificial-fo...

Hundreds of people gathered outside the WK Kellogg headquarters in Michigan on Tuesday calling for the company to hold up its promise to remove artificial dyes from its breakfast cereals sold in the U.S. Nearly 10 years ago, Kellogg's, the maker of Froot Loops and Apple Jacks, committed to removing such additives from its products by 2018. While Kellogg's has done so in other countries including Canada, which now makes Froot Loops with natural fruit juice concentrates, the cereals sold in the U.S. still contain both food dyes and a chemical preservative. In the U.S., Froot Loops ingredients include Red Dye No. 40, Yellow Dye No. 5, Yellow Dye No. 6 and Blue Dye No. 1. Kellogg's insisted its products are safe for consumption, saying its ingredients meet the federal standards set by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.The agency has said that most children experience no adverse effects from color additives, but critics argue the FDA standards were developed without any assessment for possible neurological effects. The protests come in the wake of a new California law known as the California School Food Safety Act that bans six potentially harmful dyes in foods served in California public schools. The ban includes all of the dyes in Froot Loops, plus Blue Dye No. 2 and Green Dye No. 3. Consumption of said dyes ... may be linked to hyperactivity and other neurobehavioral problems in some children.

Note: Big Food profits immensely as American youth face a growing health crisis. Read about the health concerns linked to these food dyes, including neurobehavioral problems, attention issues, DNA damage, allergies, chronic digestive issues, cancer, and more. Check out our latest Substack for a deep dive into who's behind the chronic disease epidemic that's threatening the future of humanity.


Ex-FDA food expert reveals worst cereal in America with link to cancer
2024-10-18, New York Post
Posted: 2024-10-28 22:55:15
https://nypost.com/2024/10/18/lifestyle/ex-fda-expert-reveals-the-worst-break...

An ex-FDA employee has revealed what he claims is the most harmful breakfast cereal on the US market. Dr. Darin Detwiler, who previously served as a food safety expert for the agency, [said] that Kellogg’s Froot Loops is the worst of the bunch, pointing out that the rainbow rings are “heavily processed and contain high levels of added sugars, artificial dyes and preservatives, which are linked to health concerns.” Given the laundry list of bad-for-you ingredients in the bagged cereal, Detwiler says excess sugar is the least odious. A 1-cup serving of Froot Loops contains 12.35 grams of sugar, nearly half of the recommended daily allowance for children. However ... that serving size is unrealistic as most kids eat more than the recommended single cup. The bright red hue found in Froot Loops comes courtesy of Red 40, a controversial additive linked to a slew of health problems. A 2022 study yielded “alarming” results about the effects of Red 40 — sometimes called Allura red — on the human digestive tract. Researchers from McMaster University ... claimed the synthetic dye could potentially trigger irritable bowel syndrome and Crohn’s disease after observing the biomarkers of damage in the gut cells of mice. The good doctor’s revelation comes as more than 1,000 cereal lovers and health activists marched on Kellogg’s Michigan headquarters on Tuesday, demanding the end of “harmful additives” being injected into US batches of products like Froot Loops and Apple Jacks.

Note: Big Food profits immensely as American youth face a growing health crisis. Read our latest Substack for a deep dive into who's behind the chronic disease epidemic that's threatening the future of humanity. For more along these lines, explore summaries of news articles on health and food system corruption from reliable major media sources.


As obesity rises, Big Food and dietitians push ‘anti-diet’ advice
2024-04-03, Washington Post
Posted: 2024-10-28 22:53:02
https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/2024/04/03/diet-culture-nutrition-inf...

Jaye Rochon struggled to lose weight for years. But she felt as if a burden had lifted when she discovered YouTube influencers advocating “health at every size” — urging her to stop dieting and start listening to her “mental hunger.” In two months, she regained 50 pounds. As her weight neared 300 pounds, she began to worry about her health. The videos that Rochon encountered are part of the “anti-diet” movement, a social media juggernaut that began as an effort to combat weight stigma and an unhealthy obsession with thinness. But now global food marketers are seeking to cash in on the trend. General Mills, maker of Cocoa Puffs and Lucky Charms cereals, has launched a multipronged campaign that capitalizes on the teachings of the anti-diet movement. General Mills has toured the country touting anti-diet research it claims proves the harms of “food shaming.” It has showered giveaways on registered dietitians who promote its cereals online with the hashtag #DerailTheShame, and sponsored influencers who promote its sugary snacks. The company has also enlisted a team of lobbyists and pushed back against federal policies that would add health information to food labels. Since the 1980s, the U.S. obesity rate has more than doubled, according to federal data. Nearly half a million Americans die early each year as a result of excess body weight, according to estimates in a 2022 Lancet study. The anti-diet approach essentially shifts accountability for the health crisis away from the food industry for creating ultra-processed junk foods laden with food additives, sugars and artificial sweeteners.

Note: For more along these lines,explore summaries of news articles on health and food system corruption from reliable major media sources.


The US government-funded ‘private social network’ attacking pesticide critics
2024-09-27, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2024-10-28 22:50:32
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/sep/26/government-funded-social-netw...

Industry advocates have established a “private social network” to counter resistance to pesticides and genetically modified (GM) crops in Africa, Europe and other parts of the world, while also denigrating organic and other alternative farming methods. In 2017, two United Nations experts called for a treaty to strictly regulate dangerous pesticides, which they said were a “global human rights concern”, citing scientific research showing pesticides can cause cancers, Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s and other health problems. Derogatory profiles of the two UN experts, Hilal Elver and Baskut Tuncak, are hosted on an online private portal for pesticide company employees and a range of influential allies. [These] efforts were spearheaded by a “reputation management” firm ... called v-Fluence. The company then launched a platform called Bonus Eventus, named after the Roman god of agriculture whose name translates to “good outcome”. Bonus Eventus is invite-only and counts more than 1,000 members. They include executives from the world’s largest agrochemical companies and their lobbyists, as well as academics, government officials and high-profile policymakers. The individuals profiled in the portal include more than 500 environmental advocates, scientists, politicians and others seen as opponents of pesticides and GM crops. Many profiles include personal details such as the names of family members, phone numbers, home addresses and even house values. The profiling is part of an effort – that was financed, in part, by US taxpayer dollars – to downplay pesticide dangers, discredit opponents and undermine international policymaking. More than 30 current government officials are on the membership list, most of whom are from the US Department of Agriculture.

Note: Read about how pesticide companies dominate Google News searches. For more along these lines, explore summaries of news articles on toxic chemicals from reliable major media sources.


PFAS widely added to US pesticides despite EPA denial, study finds
2024-07-23, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2024-10-28 22:47:48
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/jul/23/pfas-pesticides-e...

Toxic PFAS “forever chemicals” are widely added to pesticides, and are increasingly used in the products in recent years, new research finds, a practice that creates a health threat by spreading the dangerous compounds directly into the US’s food and water supply. The analysis of active and inert ingredients that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has approved for use in pesticides proves recent agency claims that the chemicals aren’t used in pesticides are false. The researchers also obtained documents that suggest the EPA hid some findings that show PFAS in pesticides. About 14% of all active ingredients in the country’s pesticides are PFAS, a figure that has doubled to more than 30% ... during the last 10 years. PFAS are a class of about 15,000 compounds typically used to make products that resist water, stains and heat. They are called “forever chemicals” because they do not naturally break down and accumulate, and are linked to cancer, kidney disease, liver problems, immune disorders, birth defects and other serious health problems. PFAS are added to a range of pesticides, including those used on crops, to kill mosquitoes, or to kill fleas. About two years ago, an EPA research fellow identified PFOS in pesticides and raised the alarm. In a Freedom of Information Act request that was part of the new study, researchers found documents showing the EPA had in fact found PFOS in pesticides but omitted those findings from the final study.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and toxic chemicals from reliable major media sources.


The FBI’s Weapons of Mass Destruction Program Has a New Target: Animal Rights Activists
2024-10-19, The Intercept
Posted: 2024-10-28 22:45:26
https://theintercept.com/2024/10/19/fbi-meat-industry-animal-rights-activists...

On a chilly, early morning in January 2019, a group of animal rights activists descended upon a poultry farm in central Texas. Activists with Meat the Victims, a decentralized, global movement to abolish animal exploitation, later uploaded gruesome photos of injured and dead chicks to social media platforms. The police identified [Sarah Weldon] and issued a warrant for her arrest, along with 14 other activists. She was charged with criminal trespassing. The local police weren’t the only ones paying attention. An FBI agent in Texas had been secretly monitoring the demonstration. His focus? Weapons of mass destruction. The FBI has been collaborating with the meat industry to gather information on animal rights activism, including Meat the Victims, under its directive to counter weapons of mass destruction, or WMD, according to agency records. The records also show that the bureau has explored charging activists who break into factory farms under federal criminal statutes that carry a possible sentence of up to life in prison — including for the “attempted use” of WMD — while urging meat producers to report encounters with activists to its WMD program. “This ... is textbook escalation by government actors against successful efforts by social movements that they disagree with or find subversive,” said Justin Marceau, a law professor. “Framing of civil disobedience against factory farms as terrorism is a form of government repression.”

Note: Animal rights activists are relentlessly prosecuted while the evidence of animal cruelty they uncover is ruthlessly suppressed. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corruption in law enforcement and in the food system from reliable major media sources.


An Informant Pushed Him to Plot a Subway Bombing. After 20 Years Behind Bars, He Has a Chance at Freedom.
2024-10-11, The Intercept
Posted: 2024-10-28 22:42:48
https://theintercept.com/2024/10/11/subway-bombing-plot-informant-terrorism/

Two decades ago, Shahawar Matin Siraj started to feel uneasy about a plan to bomb a subway station in Manhattan. Osama Eldawoody, a New York City Police Department informant recruited after 9/11, had established himself as a father figure to Siraj, who was 21 when they met. But as it started to feel real, Siraj tried to back out — insisting about 18 times that he was not willing to place bombs in the station. “I have to, you know, ask my mom’s permission,” he had said. Siraj [was] arrested a week later ... and was sentenced in 2007 to 30 years in prison after three years of pretrial detention. Siraj is one of almost 1,000 terrorism defendants prosecuted by the U.S. since 9/11. More than 350 defendants’ cases involved FBI stings with an informant or undercover agent. The fear of this kind of surveillance transformed the social fabric of Muslim communities and made them more insular. “You didn’t know if the person you’re talking to was an informant or undercover,” says Fahd Ahmed, executive director of Desis Rising Up and Moving, or DRUM. (Siraj’s family are members.) A 2014 Human Rights Watch report closely reviewed 27 federal prosecutions involving 77 defendants and found that in some instances, “the FBI may have created terrorists out of law-abiding individuals by suggesting the idea of taking terrorist action or encouraging the target to act.” The report also described a pattern of targeting people with mental or intellectual disabilities in these stings.

Note: Read more about the FBI's manufacture of terrorist plots. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on law enforcement corruption and terrorism from reliable major media sources.


U.S. Study on Puberty Blockers Goes Unpublished Because of Politics, Doctor Says
2024-10-23, New York Times
Posted: 2024-10-28 22:40:01
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/23/science/puberty-blockers-olson-kennedy.html

An influential doctor and advocate of adolescent gender treatments said she had not published a long-awaited study of puberty-blocking drugs because of the charged American political environment. The doctor, Johanna Olson-Kennedy, began the study in 2015 as part of a broader, multimillion-dollar federal project on transgender youth. She and colleagues recruited 95 children from across the country and gave them puberty blockers, which stave off the permanent physical changes — like breasts or a deepening voice — that could exacerbate their gender distress, known as dysphoria. The researchers followed the children for two years to see if the treatments improved their mental health. An older Dutch study had found that puberty blockers improved well-being, results that inspired clinics around the world to regularly prescribe the medications as part of what is now called gender-affirming care. But the American trial did not find a similar trend. Puberty blockers did not lead to mental health improvements, she said. In the nine years since the study was funded ... and as medical care for this small group of adolescents became a searing issue in American politics, Dr. Olson-Kennedy’s team has not published the data. Asked why, she said the findings might fuel the kind of political attacks that have led to bans of the youth gender treatments in more than 20 states, one of which will soon be considered by the Supreme Court. “I do not want our work to be weaponized,” she said.

Note: We believe that everyone has a right to exist and express themselves the way they want. Yet we value the health of all beings and the importance of informed choice when it comes to any potentially life-changing medical procedure. For more along these lines, explore summaries of revealing news articles on transgender medicine from reliable major media sources.


Billionaire Investors Are 'Supercharging' Housing Crisis: Report
2024-10-21, Common Dreams
Posted: 2024-10-28 22:37:45
https://www.commondreams.org/news/wall-street-buying-houses

The Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) joined Popular Democracy in compiling a 71-page report titled Billionaire Blowback on Housing. The two groups found that a small number of wealthy individuals and their investment arms, who control "huge pools of wealth," have spent some of their vast resources on "predatory investment and wealth-parking in luxury housing." Billionaires and their investment firms, such as Blackstone—now the world's largest corporate landlord—are "taking advantage of the tight low-income rental market, lack of publicly funded affordable housing, displacement after the foreclosure crisis, and inaccessible homeownership to get into the business of single-family and multifamily home rentals, and buying up mobile home parks," the report reads. Blackstone now owns 300,000 residential units across the U.S. and nearly doubled its portfolio in 2021. The housing crisis ... is characterized by record-breaking homelessness in 2023 with more than 653,000 people unhoused; half of tenants paying more than 30% of their income on rent ... and a significantly widened gap between the income needed to buy a house and the actual cost of a home. The number of vacant units in some communities exceed the number of unhoused people. For example, in 2017 there were more than 93,500 vacant units in Los Angeles and an estimated 36,000 unhoused residents, with vacancies treated as "a structural feature of the market thanks to the presence of a small class of wealthy investors who engage in speculative financial behavior."

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on banking system corruption and financial inequality from reliable major media sources.


US private equity invests in chemical industry tied to global lead poisoning, worrying health experts
2024-09-25, The Examination
Posted: 2024-10-28 22:35:54
https://www.theexamination.org/articles/us-private-equity-invests-in-chemical...

U.S. private equity firms have bought up producers and distributors of a chemical compound known to cause brain damage, cancer and other illnesses. Blackstone and American Securities LLC, which control assets worth billions of dollars, have in recent years acquired operations in Canada and elsewhere that sell lead chromate, a toxic powder used in paint, on roads and machinery, and even in food. Studies have shown declines in safety practices following private equity investment, including more workplace accidents and deaths. Health experts and others focused on corporate accountability say private equity’s expansion into the lead chromate industry is concerning. "These firms set up structures for ownership to have zero legal responsibility for what happens at that company,” said Justin Flores, campaign director at the Private Equity Stakeholder Project, a U.S. nonprofit research and advocacy organization. Lead chromate in paint covers parking lots, children’s playgrounds, and hospitals from Mexico to Greece, studies show, raising concerns over what happens when the pigment breaks down, leaching lead into dust, soil and water runoff. Earlier this year, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration confirmed that lead chromate was found in cinnamon applesauce pouches that sickened hundreds of children. The tainted applesauce sailed through loopholes and food safety systems around the world.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on financial system corruption and toxic chemicals from reliable major media sources.


How One Indian State Went 100% Organic
2024-10-15, Reasons to be Cheerful
Posted: 2024-10-28 22:33:31
https://reasonstobecheerful.world/how-one-indian-state-went-100-organic/

Western Sikkim in India ... officially went 100 percent organic in 2016, and won what many regard as the Oscar for best public policies — the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation’s Future Policy Gold Award — in 2018. This change is necessary: An estimated 52 percent of agricultural land across the globe is moderately to severely degraded due to monoculture, chemical pesticide and fertilizer use, and groundwater extraction — and this will accelerate unless these practices change. Sikkim is India’s most sparsely populated state. Its mainly subsistence farms were, and continue to be, spread thinly across mountainous terrain, which makes supplying inorganic fertilizers expensive. Consequently, using homegrown organic manure and vermicompost (compost created from worm waste) was very much the norm. It also helped that the local populace already understood the value of organic food. “As children, we were taught that basti (local) vegetables grown without any chemical inputs by small farmers, were the best vegetables to eat,” says Renzino Lepcha, CEO of Mevedir, an organic agri-business and certification agency in Sikkim. [Former] chief minister Pawan Chamling wrote, “[W]e have not inherited this earth from our forefather but have borrowed it from our future generations, it is our duty to protect it by living in complete harmony with nature and environment.” Rain-fed agriculture has helped reduce the need for irrigation and conserve water. Some reports suggest that since 2014, bee populations have been rebounding, with yields of pollinator-dependent cardamom increasing by more than 23 percent.

Note: Explore more positive stories like this on healing our bodies and healing the Earth.


Asteroid impact may have turned ants into fungus farmers 66 million years ago
2024-10-03, Science
Posted: 2024-10-28 22:31:38
https://www.science.org/content/article/asteroid-impact-may-have-turned-ants-...

Hundreds of ant species farm fungi today, and studies of ant evolution suggest the adaptation goes back tens of millions of years. Now, scientists have sharpened the picture by bringing in the fungal family tree as well. They pinpoint a date for the origins of the partnership and suggest a surprising catalyst: the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs 66 million years ago. Since ants’ fungal gardens were first described 150 years ago, entomologists have uncovered 247 species of ants that tend them and rely on this fungal crop to survive. Researchers surmise that the ants descend from a common ancestor that later evolved into separate species nurturing different types of fungi. The ant and fungal taxa involved in farming both arose about 66 million years ago, which coincides with the massive asteroid strike that drove nonavian dinosaurs and many other species extinct. That cataclysmic impact produced lingering clouds of debris that shut down photosynthesis across the planet for several months, possibly even years. Researchers suggest ants that had already developed a loose relationship with fungi were ready to take advantage of this newly abundant source of food. For the first few million years, the ants tended fungal species also found in the wild. Then, about 27 million years ago, a subset of ants completely domesticated their fungal cultivars, just as humans have done with most of our staples, which are now remote from their wild roots.

Note: Explore more positive stories like this on animal wonders.


'It was a pie-in-the-sky ridiculous idea': The US homes made from waste materials
2024-10-07, BBC News
Posted: 2024-10-28 22:29:44
https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20241002-the-us-homes-made-from-waste-mate...

Venture into New Mexico's beautifully stark high desert and you may well stumble across some fantastical and unconventional homes – some palatial and sculpturally rounded; others with an ancient temple-like form – that look like they're from a Star Wars movie. Set in and around the town of Taos where they were invented almost 40 years ago, these are Earthships: net-zero, sustainably designed homes built mostly from both natural and waste materials, such as old tyres, empty wine bottles and wood and mud. Earthship construction requires less in the way of toxic or carbon-emitting construction materials like concrete and plastics, and doesn't require precious woodland and other natural resources. An earth berm (a purposefully built bank of soil) surrounds the Earthship on three sides, providing insulating mass that controls temperature. Each has a greenhouse ... either on the north or south side depending on location. Most Earthships are purely solar powered; some also have wind turbines to supplement or a wood-burning stove as back up. Taos has cold snowy winters and often dry, hot summers, but in an Earthship, the internal temperature remains close to 72F (21C) year-round, regardless of outside weather conditions. What does it feel like to stay inside an Earthship? "It feels like you're inside the womb," says Earthship construction manager Deborah Binder. "You feel constantly hugged and snuggled. The temperature is always comfortable."

Note: Don't miss the great Earthship pictures at the link above. Explore more positive stories like this on technology for good.


The cult of Covid censorship is finally being broken
2024-10-11, The Telegraph (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2024-10-25 15:35:11
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/us/comment/2024/10/11/the-cult-of-covid-censorshi...

Stanford University hosted the first major university-sponsored conference where different viewpoints on the appropriate management of pandemics were aired and debated. For much of 2020-2022, critical debate about the wisdom and effectiveness of mandatory Covid policies ... was treated with deep hesitation at best and outright hostility at worst. Professors and students who publicly questioned the mainstream consensus were censored on social media, vilified by their colleagues, and, in the case of Covid vaccine mandates, fired by administrators. Universities failed in their mission to promote academic debate and freedom during the most significant domestic policy issue of this century. During these years, colleagues and students with critical, sceptical viewpoints and countless members of the public [asked] why institutions of higher education were not hosting reasoned debate. The pandemic taught us a valuable lesson for those interested to hear. We need more freedom of expression and academic debate during crises and emergencies, not less. Many are tired of the vapid arguments of ideologues and hungry for a return to the ... academic tradition of debate. By that standard, the Stanford Covid conference was a huge success. The panels addressed key issues regarding the evidence for Covid lockdowns, the management of information and censorship, the impact of lockdowns on the world’s poor, and the contentious question of the origin of the virus. Experts who supported early school closures reasoned together with those who did not. Those who support the lab leak hypothesis argued their case with those who disagree. And they disagreed about the wisdom of social media censorship in a pandemic. In the end, the conference achieved its stated purpose: to bring serious thinkers and scientists into constructive dialogue with one another.

Note: Learn more about the Stanford conference that inspired this article. An article by The Nation about this Stanford conference is a significant example of how dissenting views get spun into divisive partisan rhetoric, contributing to the larger culture wars poisoning public discourse.


On Censorship, Academic Freedom, and the Pandemic
2024-10-04, Stanford Review
Posted: 2024-10-25 15:31:56
https://stanfordreview.org/dr-scott-atlas-on-censorship-academic-freedom-and-...

Lockdowns were instituted, they failed to stop the dying, they failed to stop the spread - that’s the data: Bjornskov, 2021; Bendavid, 2021; Agarwal, 2021; Herby, 2022; Kerpen, 2023; Ioannidis, 2024. And yes, lockdowns also inflicted massive damage on children and literally killed people. Lockdowns were not caused by the virus. Human beings decided to do lockdowns. I was the ONLY health policy scholar on the White House Task Force. My interviews as Advisor to the President were pulled down: by YouTube on September 11, 2020, by Twitter blocking me on October 18, 2020. You might think the public – in a free society - should know what the Advisor to the President was saying? When you censor health policy, it's not simply ... a less-than-ideal environment for diverse views. People die. And people died from the censorship of correct health policy. Why is Censorship used? To shut someone up, yes; but more importantly, to deceive the public – to stop others from hearing, to convince a public there is a “consensus”. Truth is not determined by consensus, or by numbers of people who agree, or by titles. It is discovered by debate, proven by critical analysis of evidence. Arguments are won by data and logic, not by personal attack or censoring others. THAT is why lockdowners - at Stanford and elsewhere - needed censorship and propaganda; they couldn’t win on the data; they needed to delegitimize and demonize opposing views as highly dangerous, to convince the public.

Note: This was written by Scott W. Atlas, MD, who served as Advisor to the President and on the White House Coronavirus Task Force. Read an insightful article by New York Magazine about the harmful effects of COVID lockdowns, highlighting how some countries achieved low death rates without resorting to lockdown measures. Former chief economist for the White House Council of Economic Advisers published a study last year showing how non-COVID excess deaths soared as a result of lockdown policies. Prominent economists from John Hopkins University and Lund University concluded that lockdowns reduced mortalities by 0.2%. For more, explore our COVID Information Center.


Why Aren’t Students Protesting U.S. Weapons Sales to Ukraine?
2024-05-16, Covert Action
Posted: 2024-10-25 15:28:55
https://covertactionmagazine.com/2024/05/16/why-arent-students-protesting-u-s...

In late April, students at universities across the United States set up tent encampments and occupied buildings, protesting their campuses’ complicity in the Israeli war in Gaza. Wouldn’t it have been nice if protesters had extended their critique of U.S. foreign policy to include Ukraine? The Biden White House has extended massive new military aid packages to Ukraine that include long range weapons designed to strike into Russia. Ukraine is the graveyard for the post-Cold War neo-conservative dream of establishing American unipolar power. The late Zbigniew Brzezinski, Jimmy Carter’s former National Security Adviser, argued that, “if Moscow regains control over Ukraine with its 52 million people and major resources as well as its access to the Black Sea, Russia automatically regains the wherewithal to become a powerful imperial state.” To help advance this strategy, the George W. Bush administration supported a 2004 color revolution that brought to power pro-Western leader Viktor Yushchenko who pursued North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) membership against the will of the vast majority of Ukrainians and ended his term with a 2.7% approval rating. When Russia-friendly Viktor Yanukovych won 2010 elections and sought to strengthen Ukraine’s economy by keeping Ukraine’s access to the Russian market, the Obama administration backed the February 2014 Maidan coup. The coup resulted in the replacement of Yanukovych with a regime that compromised Ukraine’s economic and political sovereignty, terrorized the political opposition, and deliberately provoked a war with Russia as Ukraine was turned into a de facto CIA base whose ports were upgraded to fit U.S. warships. The U.S. calculatingly sabotaged the Minsk peace agreements, which provided a way to resolve the conflict between western and eastern Ukraine that resulted from the 2014 coup.

Note: This isn’t about defending Russia, but highlighting how US foreign policy has exploited Ukraine for strategic interests—undermining its sovereignty and fueling ongoing conflict rather than promoting peace. Meanwhile, the Russia-Ukraine war has led to half a million war casualties and the Pentagon is unable to account for the billions of US weaponry and financial aid flowing into Ukraine. Read a former CIA's agent sobering view on US involvement in the Russia-Ukraine war.


This Video Game Controller Has Become the US Military’s Weapon of Choice
2024-10-04, Wired
Posted: 2024-10-25 15:27:21
https://www.wired.com/story/fmcu-us-military-controller/

Over the past several years, the US Defense Department has been gradually integrating what appear to be variants of the Freedom of Movement Control Unit (FMCU) handsets as the primary control units for a variety of advanced weapons systems. Produced since 2008 by Measurement Systems Inc. (MSI), a subsidiary of British defense contractor Ultra that specializes in human-machine interfaces, the FMCU offers a similar form factor to the standard Xbox or PlayStation controller but with a ruggedized design intended to safeguard its sensitive electronics against whatever hostile environs American service members may find themselves in. A longtime developer of joysticks used on various US naval systems and aircraft, MSI has served as a subcontractor to major defense “primes” like General Atomics, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and BAE Systems to provide the handheld control units for “various aircraft and vehicle programs,” according to information compiled by federal contracting software GovTribe. At the moment, it’s unclear how exactly many US military systems use the FMCU. When reached for comment, the Pentagon confirmed the use of the system on the NMESIS, M-SHORAD, and RADBO weapons platforms and referred WIRED to the individual service branches for additional details. The Marine Corps confirmed the handset’s use with the GBOSS, while the Air Force again confirmed the same for the RADBO.

Note: The latest US Air Force recruitment tool is a video game that allows players to receive in-game medals and achievements for drone bombing Iraqis and Afghans. Learn more about emerging warfare technology in our comprehensive Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center. For more, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on military corruption from reliable major media sources.


The military showers universities with hundreds of millions of dollars
2024-01-01, Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft
Posted: 2024-10-25 15:23:38
https://responsiblestatecraft.org/pentagon-divestment/

Pentagon-funded research is once again on the rise. In 2022, the most recent year for which full data is available, 14 universities received at least — and brace yourself for this — $100 million in Pentagon funding, from Johns Hopkins’s astonishing $1.4 billion (no, that is not a typo!) to Colorado State’s impressive $100 million. The social sciences also have a long, conflicted history of ties to the Pentagon and the military services. Two prominent examples from earlier in this century were the Pentagon’s Human Terrain Program (HTS) and the role of psychologists in crafting torture programs associated with the Global War on Terror. The HTS was initially intended to reduce the “cultural knowledge gap” suffered by U.S. troops involved in counterinsurgency operations in Afghanistan and Iraq early in this century. The program sparked intense protests in the academic community, with a particularly acrimonious debate within the American Anthropological Association. An even more controversial use of social scientists in the service of the war machine was the role of psychologists as advisors to the CIA’s torture programs at Abu Ghraib in Iraq, the Guantánamo Bay detention center in Cuba, and other of that agency’s “black sites.” James E. Mitchell, a psychologist under contract to U.S. intelligence, helped develop the “enhanced interrogation techniques” used by the U.S during its post-9/11 “war on terror,” even sitting in on a session in which a prisoner was waterboarded.

Note: Read more about the the American Psychological Association's complicity in US government torture. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on military corruption from reliable major media sources.


The US Keeps Pouring Money Into Nuclear Weapons
2024-08-07, Jacobin
Posted: 2024-10-25 15:21:30
https://jacobin.com/2024/08/nuclear-weapons-budget-contractors-icbms

The Pentagon is in the midst of a massive $2 trillion, multiyear plan to build a new generation of nuclear-armed missiles, bombers, and submarines. A large chunk of that funding will go to major nuclear weapons contractors like Bechtel, General Dynamics, Honeywell, Lockheed Martin, and Northrop Grumman. And they will do everything in their power to keep that money flowing. This January, a review of the Sentinel Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) program under the Nunn-McCurdy Act ... found that the missile, the crown jewel of the nuclear overhaul plan involving 450 missile-holding silos spread across five states, is already 81 percent over its original budget. It is now estimated that it will cost a total of nearly $141 billion to develop and purchase, a figure only likely to rise in the future. The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists’Doomsday Clock” — an estimate of how close the world may be at any moment to a nuclear conflict — is now set at ninety seconds to midnight, the closest it’s been since that tracker was first created in 1947. Considering the rising tide of nuclear escalation globally, is it really the right time for this country to invest a fortune of taxpayer dollars in a new generation of devastating “use them or lose them” weapons? The American public has long said no, according to a 2020 poll by the University of Maryland’s Program for Public Consultation, which showed that 61 percent of us actually support phasing out ICBM systems like the Sentinel.

Note: Learn more about arms industry corruption in our comprehensive Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center. For more, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on military corruption from reliable major media sources.


Pentagon's secret UFO data retrieval program 'Immaculate Constellation' revealed for first time in new whistleblower report
2024-10-09, Daily Mail (One of the UK's Popular Newspapers)
Posted: 2024-10-25 15:06:50
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-13942241/Pentagon-secret-UFO-...

A secretive Pentagon UFO data retrieval program has been hidden from Congressional oversight since 2017, a new report claims. Whistleblowers assert the program — codenamed 'Immaculate Constellation' — was established to 'detect' and 'quarantine' the military's best UFO imagery, as well as its best videos, eyewitness testimonies and electronic sensor evidence. This trove of high quality, multi-sensor UFO data is so tightly held that 'talking about it will put you in the danger zone,' according to a US official who confirmed the leak. The quite literally 'above top secret' program allegedly sprang into action in the wake of the 2017 leak of three, still-as-yet unexplained US Navy infrared UFO videos. The source of the leaked report, who supplied the document to the independent news site Public, described the program as an 'Unacknowledged Special Access Program' or USAP with unique secrecy privileges. 'The multitude of wavelengths collected by these sensors ... have captured UAP characteristics that are difficult or impossible to observe with the human eye alone,' according to the leaked report, allegedly intended for cleared members of Congress. 'Subtle atmospheric effects associated with UAPs are also visible through the sensors,' the leaked report added. 'Some of the phenomena we may be seeing,' ex-CIA head John Brennan [said], 'results from something that we don't yet understand and ... some might say constitutes a different form of life.'

Note: Watch a fascinating NewsNation interview about this secret Pentagon UAP program. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of news articles on UFOs from reliable major media sources. Then explore the resources provided in our UFO Information Center.


Astronomers have warned against colonial practices in the space industry
2024-08-21, Salon
Posted: 2024-10-25 15:05:15
https://www.salon.com/2024/08/21/astronomers-have-warned-against-colonial-pra...

The past decade has seen a rapid expansion of the commercial space industry. In a 2023 white paper, a group of concerned astronomers warned against repeating Earthly “colonial practices” in outer space. Some of these colonial practices might include the enclosure of land, the exploitation of environmental resources and the destruction of landscapes – in the name of ideals such as destiny, civilization and the salvation of humanity. People of Bawaka Country in northern Australia have told the space industry that their ancestors guide human life from their home in the galaxy, and that this relationship is increasingly threatened by large orbiting satellite networks. Similarly, Inuit elders say their ancestors live on celestial bodies. Navajo leadership has asked NASA not to land human remains on the Moon. Kanaka elders have insisted that no more telescopes be built on Mauna Kea, which Native Hawaiians consider to be ancestral and sacred. These Indigenous positions stand in stark contrast with many in the industry’s insistence that space is empty and inanimate. In 1967, a slew of nations including the U.S., U.K. and USSR, signed the Outer Space Treaty. This treaty declared, among other things, that no nation can own a planetary body or part of one. The nations that signed the Outer Space Treaty were effectively saying, “Let’s not battle each other for territory and resources again. Let’s do outer space differently.”

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on Big Tech from reliable major media sources.


Shortly after the Big Bang, conditions were perfect for life. Did aliens emerge long before us?
2024-06-15, Salon
Posted: 2024-10-25 15:03:43
https://www.salon.com/2024/06/15/shortly-after-the-big-bang-conditions-were-p...

The question of how life first came into existence has exercised scientists and philosophers for millenia. Avi Loeb, director of the Institute for Theory and Computation at the Center for Astrophysics co-operated by Harvard University and the Smithsonian, [said] that with some creative thinking, it might be possible to find evidence that life started far, far earlier than the earliest evidence we have for it on Earth. “I would say one hundred million years after the Big Bang, there were pockets of enriched material that could have led to planets and life as we know it, potentially,” Loeb said. Loeb cited the Dragonfly mission, currently scheduled by NASA to launch in 2028 to explore Saturn’s largest moon, Titan (as well as Enceladus, which is Saturn’s sixth-largest moon, another candidate for life in our solar system is Jupiter’s moon, Europa). Loeb describes the Dragonfly mission as a fishing expedition. Literally: looking for alien fish. “You go there and you look for fish, and if there is something moving and alive, that would be amazing,” Loeb said. “Because not only would we realize that life exists elsewhere, but also that it could take very different forms. Of course, I would not recommend putting these fish in restaurants on Earth and eating them, because it might not be good for our stomachs. But you can imagine — I mean, we just don’t understand how life emerged on Earth with its complexity and definitely not in other liquids.”

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on UFOs and the mysterious nature of reality from reliable major media sources.


Lucid Dreaming Breakthrough: Startup Claims First-Ever Two-Way Dream Communication
2024-10-08, The Debrief
Posted: 2024-10-25 15:00:02
https://thedebrief.org/lucid-dreaming-breakthrough-startup-claims-first-ever-...

REMspace, a California-based neurotech startup, claims to have achieved the first two-way communication between individuals during lucid dreaming. Using specially designed equipment, participants reportedly exchanged a message while asleep—an extraordinary claim that has yet to be peer-reviewed. This milestone, if validated, could mark a turning point in dream research, with REMspace suggesting applications from mental health therapies to skill training. Lucid dreaming ... is the state of being aware that you are dreaming while asleep. While around 50 percent of people report experiencing at least one lucid dream, the idea of communication within such a state is still in its early stages of research. The REMspace team claims they achieved communication between two participants during a lucid dream on September 24, 2024. Participants received random words generated by a server through earbuds while they were dreaming. One participant reportedly repeated the word in their dream, and the second confirmed it after waking. Looking ahead, they claim to be working on enabling more complex forms of dream communication, including full conversations and interactions with external servers. [REMspace founder Michael] Raduga predicts that within a few years, “dream communication will become common.” Until then, the scientific community awaits peer-reviewed evidence to substantiate these intriguing, but currently unverified claims.

Note: Explore more positive stories like this on the mysterious nature of reality and technology for good.


104-Year-Old Grandma, The New Face Of Yarn Bombing 'Graffiti' Attacks
2015-09-27, Forbes
Posted: 2024-10-25 14:58:21
https://www.forbes.com/sites/ceciliarodriguez/2015/09/27/yarn-bombing-grandma...

When she agreed to join the Souter Stormers, Grace Brett had no idea that she would become a sensation, the unwitting public face of the Yarn Bombing movement surprising residents of towns and cities around the world. Brett, knitting for most of her 104 years, has more experience than most. Together with her group of “yarnstorming” accomplices, earlier this month they attacked their town by “covering everything from benches to telephone booths” with their creations. They also targeted 48 landmarks in towns across southeastern Scotland. And from one day to the next this great-grandmother became the Yarn Bomber of the year, her photo with her hands busy knitting the next weapons zipping around the world. You may have seen tree trunks wearing socks, bicycle racks in knitted leotards or streetlight posts wearing colorful scarves. Think of it as “knitted graffiti,” appearing unannounced in parks, streets, and public monuments in countless countries. No place seems safe from their assault: old buses, entire bridges, fences, cars, and statues are among the items that can suddenly appear covered by colorful decorations knitted or crocheted by any of hundreds of mostly-retirement-aged women. Yarn bombing, also known as yarn storming or guerrilla knitting, can be defined as 'the art of enhancing a public place or object with graffiti knitting.' In fact, many of the so-called “surprise attacks” are conducted after permits have been granted by local authorities.

Note: Don't miss the pictures of this colorful knitted graffiti at the link above. Explore more positive stories like this on amazing seniors and the power of art.


From dinosaurs to dolphins, what gaze following reveals about the evolution of empathy
2024-09-13, Salon
Posted: 2024-10-25 14:56:36
https://www.salon.com/2024/09/13/from-dinosaurs-to-dolphins-what-gaze-followi...

Following someone’s gaze may seem like a simple act, but it has profound implications for the evolution of intelligence. And humans are far from the only animals that do it. A recent study of bottlenose dolphins in the journal Heliyon adds to previous research identifying the ability to follow the gazes of members of other species — a visual and cognitive trick that may relate to the development of empathy — across a wide range of mammals, not just humans and our fellow primates. What’s even more interesting is to trace this ability through not just the mammal family but beyond, to reptiles and birds — and perhaps back as far as the Jurassic period. In general, by identifying important objects in their environment, an animal’s ability to follow the gaze of another, including another species, may form a basis for advanced social cognition, paving the way for cooperation and empathy. One such high level type, “geometrical gaze following,” occurs if you block the thing that the other is looking at so the subject can’t see it, so that they will physically reposition themself to see what others are seeing. Geometrical gaze following isn’t even seen in human children before eighteen months of age – and yet wolves, apes and monkeys, and birds of the crow (corvid) and starling genuses have all been found to engage in it. Looking at which living species show evidence of advanced gaze following and which don’t suggests that even the more advanced type ... evolved back in the time of dinosaurs.

Note: Read about the world's biggest eye contact experiment and explore a powerful social experiment in Australia where people rekindle human connection through a minute of silent eye contact. For more inspiring news related to this article, check out our news archive on animal wonders.


It Was Supposed to Be a Sting Operation. Did ICE Traffic Drugs Instead?
2024-09-25, Rolling Stone
Posted: 2024-10-14 18:12:02
https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/operation-mayan-jaguar-...

On Sept. 24, 2007, a red, white, and blue Gulfstream II fell from the sky over the Yucatán Peninsula. From the wreckage, [Mexican commandos] removed 132 industrial trash bags, weighing around 4 tons. The bags were filled with cocaine. The Gulfstream ... had flown for the CIA’s rendition program. When it went down, it belonged to a newly-formed company near Boca Raton, Florida, called Donna Blue Aircraft ... an “undercover company” of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. A Rolling Stone investigation into thousands of pages of government documents, flight logs, court filings, and local news reports ... confirmed there was a secret ICE operation called Mayan Jaguar. According to classified reports, ICE bought private planes from 2004 to 2007, intending to tag them with hidden tracking beacons and, through front companies like Donna Blue, sell them to drug traffickers. ICE agents would draw “approximately 20 planes” into Operation Mayan Jaguar. ICE stopped none of them, while other governments thwarted some, without ICE. The Drug Enforcement Administration, convinced that traffickers controlled Mayan Jaguar, ordered ICE to shut it down. “ICE Headquarters advised the agents … to continue working,” according to another agent’s IG testimony. Operation Mayan Jaguar would be “a coordinated interagency task force developed by the intelligence community,” according to an internal ICE memo. The narcotics trade was largely legal until global prohibition began in the early 20th century. Waves of drug planes and state-sponsored trafficking weren’t far behind. From the 1950s to the 1970s, CIA proprietary airlines flew arms into the Golden Triangle for anti-communist guerillas, and were suspected of flying out with the guerillas’ opium. It was allegedly the same deal in the Eighties, but in Central America, with cocaine. In Asia, the CIA paid Afghan heroin lords to fight the Soviets, and later to fight the Taliban. In 1998, the CIA’s marquee aviation front, Southern Air Transport, declared bankruptcy a week before the CIA’s inspector general implicated the company in cocaine trafficking.

Note: Our investigative Substack article explores the dark truths behind the US war on drugs that the mainstream media ignores. For more, watch our Mindful News Brief on who's really behind the war on drugs. Check out our database of concise and revealing news summaries on the war on drugs from reliable media sources.


Nixon Started the War on Drugs. Privately, He Said Pot Was ‘Not Particularly Dangerous.’
2024-09-14, New York Times
Posted: 2024-10-14 18:10:25
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/14/us/nixon-marijuana-tapes.html

Two years after former President Richard M. Nixon launched a war on drugs in 1971, calling substance use the nation’s “public enemy No. 1,” he made a startling admission during a meeting in the Oval Office. Speaking to a small group of aides and advisers at the White House in March 1973, Nixon said he knew that marijuana was “not particularly dangerous.” Nixon, who had publicly argued that curbing drug use globally warranted an “all-out offensive,” also privately expressed unease about the harsh punishments Americans were facing for marijuana crimes. The remarks were captured on the president’s secret recording system amid a set of tapes that were only recently made widely available. The comments, on scratchy, sometimes hard-to-hear recordings, provide a surprising glimpse into the thinking of the president who implemented the federal government’s drug classification system and decided that marijuana belonged in a category of substances deemed most prone to abuse and of no proven medical value. Over five decades, that designation has led to millions of arrests, which disproportionately affected Black people and hobbled efforts to rigorously study the therapeutic potential of cannabis. Experts on the Nixon years said that they were previously unaware of the recordings of Nixon speaking about marijuana and that the remarks were significant in light of the policies he had championed, which remain the backbone of today’s drug laws.

Note: Our investigative Substack article explores the dark truths behind the US war on drugs that the mainstream media ignores. For more, watch our Mindful News Brief on who's really behind the war on drugs. Check out our database of concise and revealing news summaries on the war on drugs from reliable media sources.


Watchdog found $7B in untapped FEMA funds — even though DHS Secretary Mayorkas said none available for future disasters
2024-10-07, Aol/New York Post
Posted: 2024-10-14 18:08:54
https://www.aol.com/watchdog-found-7b-untapped-fema-215221923.html

A Department of Homeland Security inspector general’s report from August reveals more than $7 billion remain in emergency funding that could be used for natural disasters — even though DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said last week none was available after Hurricane Helene. Mayorkas, 64, told reporters following the devastation of Helene in North Carolina, Tennessee, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama and Florida that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) “does not have the funds” to endure more hurricanes this fall. “We are expecting another hurricane hitting,” the DHS chief said. “FEMA does not have the funds to make it through the season.” But DHS Inspector General Joseph Cuffari found in his Aug. 14 report that as of October 2022, FEMA had $8.3 billion in unliquidated funds meant to relieve declared disasters from 2012 or earlier. More than $7 billion of that “could potentially be returned to the Disaster Relief Fund,” the report notes. So far, the feds have paid just $4 million to Americans hit by Helene. “It took one week for some of the county mayors in my home state to even get a phone call from FEMA, and Kamala Harris has the nerve to announce ‘a dire humanitarian situation’ in another country,” Sen. Marsha Blackburn [said], referencing the VP’s announcement of $157 million in US aid to Lebanon. The Biden-Harris administration has shelled out $1.4 billion [to] groups helping migrants settle in the US.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption from reliable major media sources.


Many of today’s unhealthy foods were brought to you by Big Tobacco
2023-09-19, Washington Post
Posted: 2024-10-14 18:07:17
https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/2023/09/19/addiction-foods-hyperpalat...

In the 1980s, tobacco giants Philip Morris and R.J. Reynolds acquired the major food companies Kraft, General Foods and Nabisco, allowing tobacco firms to dominate America’s food supply and reap billions in sales from popular brands such as Oreo cookies, Kraft Macaroni & Cheese and Lunchables. New research, published in the journal Addiction, focuses on the rise of “hyper-palatable” foods, which contain potent combinations of fat, sodium, sugar and other additives that can drive people to crave and overeat them. In the decades when the tobacco giants owned the world’s leading food companies, the foods that they sold were far more likely to be hyper-palatable than similar foods not owned by tobacco companies. In the past 30 years, hyper-palatable foods have spread rapidly into the food supply, coinciding with a surge in obesity and diet-related diseases. The steepest increase in the prevalence of hyper-palatable foods occurred between 1988 and 2001 — the era when Philip Morris and R.J. Reynolds owned the world’s leading food companies. To broaden the reach of its cigarettes, Philip Morris used a marketing strategy called “line extensions”: Marlboro cigarettes were marketed to men, Virginia Slims targeted women and menthol cigarettes were heavily advertised to Black consumers. The company applied the same tactic to processed foods. It added new flavors and formulas to many of its existing products, giving consumers an endless variety of hyper-palatable foods to buy.

Note: Companies spend $14 billion each year on marketing to children, over 80% of which is for fast food and other ultraprocessed foods. Read our latest Substack article on how the US government turns a blind eye to the corporate cartels fueling America’s health crisis.


The federal loophole that allows food companies to decide what's safe for you to eat
2024-09-07, CBS News
Posted: 2024-10-14 18:05:51
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ultra-processed-foods-fda-health-safety/

Fifteen-year-old Tiara Channer was 13 when she was diagnosed with prediabetes — a condition 1 in 5 American kids faces that causes an increased risk of Type 2 diabetes, chronic kidney disease and cardiovascular disease. She and her mother, Crystal Cauley, blame her diagnosis on a poor diet. By transitioning from a diet of ultra-processed foods to healthier whole foods and getting more active, Tiara overcame or shed her prediabetes diagnosis — and lost 50 pounds in the process. But it wasn't an easy journey for her, given the challenge of understanding what's healthy and what's not. Ultra-processed food ... comprise over half of an average American adult's diet and two-thirds of an American child's. Lawmakers like Sen. Bernie Sanders say the FDA, the agency that regulates 80% of the country's food, hasn't done enough to protect consumers. Almost half of the approved food additives in the U.S. fall under a category known as GRAS — Generally Recognized As Safe. The nonprofit Environmental Working Group found 99% of the 766 food chemicals introduced between 2000 and 2021 avoided FDA scrutiny using the GRAS designation. Experts like Emily Broad Leib, the director of Harvard's Food Law and Policy Clinic, say GRAS has become a loophole that gives companies a provisional green light to put new additives in food. "Thousands of substances have entered the food supply using that mechanism," explained Broad Leib.

Note: Read our latest Substack article on how the US government turns a blind eye to the corporate cartels fueling America’s health crisis. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on health and food system corruption from reliable major media sources.


Wall Street Is Buying Up Entire Neighborhoods
2024-05-15, Jacobin
Posted: 2024-10-14 18:04:09
https://jacobin.com/2024/05/single-family-homes-rentals-wall-street

As Wall Street buys up entire neighborhood blocks, driving up corporate purchases of single-family homes to historic highs, housing advocates warn companies ... are harming their tenants and pricing out would-be homebuyers. Now policymakers in states across the country and Washington, DC, are finally beginning to push back — but they’re facing the might of a powerful new single-family rental lobby. Driven by the pandemic-era real estate boom, corporate landlords are ramping up their purchases of assets like apartment buildings and mobile home communities nationwide. They’re especially active in fast-growing Sun Belt markets like Phoenix and Atlanta, where more than a third of homes on the market are now being purchased by private equity firms like Blackstone or dedicated single-family rental companies. Even Amazon founder Jeff Bezos has entered the single-family housing market. Critics say that such companies’ encroaching presence in the housing market and their focus on short-term profits are pricing out first-time homebuyers and gentrifying neighborhoods, contributing to an ongoing housing crisis. A 2022 study by federal lawmakers found that five major rental companies hiked their fees by 40 percent over a three-year period and saw their tenants fall behind in rent. In California, the state’s largest corporate landlord, Invitation Homes, was forced to pay $2 million in sanctions after the state attorney general found it was charging tenants illegally high rents.

Note: Read about the shadowy global interests buying up land all over the US. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on financial system corruption and income inequality from reliable major media sources.


DDT, WWII munitions and radioactive waste: L.A.’s ocean dumping reckoning continues
2024-02-21, Los Angeles Times
Posted: 2024-10-14 18:02:27
https://www.latimes.com/california/newsletter/2024-02-21/ddt-wwii-munitions-a...

The Los Angeles County coastline is renowned for its stunning views and famous beaches. But move into deeper waters and another legacy comes into view: industrial waste dumped on a scale we’re just beginning to understand. Using a deep-sea robot, UC Santa Barbara scientists discovered an eerie graveyard of leaking barrels in 2020, spread out on the seafloor near Santa Catalina Island. DDT, a powerful pesticide that was banned 50 years ago, was found in high concentrations near the barrels, leading scientists to suspect they were full of it. (Scientists later discovered that companies didn’t even bother putting DDT in barrels — they dumped it directly into the sea.) The barrels may actually contain low-level radioactive waste. “From the 1940s through the 1960s, it was not uncommon for local hospitals, labs and other industrial operations to dispose barrels of tritium, carbon-14 and other low-level radioactive waste at sea,” [Rosanna Xia] reported. That was a key finding in a new study. Researchers found clues while reviewing hundreds of pages of records, which indicated that a company tasked with pouring the DDT waste off the L.A. coast had also dumped low-level radioactive waste. The radioactive waste sitting down there is unequivocally terrible, but the “concerning concentrations” of DDT in the deep ocean are worse. Researchers have found high levels of DDT across an area of seafloor larger than the entire city of San Francisco.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on toxic chemicals from reliable major media sources.


Honduras, 15 Years After the Coup: An Interview With Ousted President Manuel Zelaya
2024-07-26, The Intercept
Posted: 2024-10-14 18:00:18
https://theintercept.com/2024/07/26/deconstructed-honduras-coup-manuel-zelaya...

On June 28, 2009, democratically elected Honduran President Manuel Zelaya was ousted by a military coup. The coup led to nearly 13 years of right-wing rule, marked by collusion with drug trafficking organizations, widespread privatization, violence, repression, and a significant migrant exodus. "During these 13 years that the right wing was in power, they were fully supported by the U.S. government," [said Zelaya]. "There was a lot of repression. There were killings of activists and land defenders throughout the country. Also, a lot of right-wing neoliberal policies that were put in place. We have no preference in [US] elections, between the Republican Party and the Democratic Party. In the end, they act the same. They act in the interest of Wall Street, the military industrial complex, the interest of a global elite that, through capitalism, has already taken over all the assets of wealth: the rivers, the seas, the forests, oil — the world elite manages it all through the speculative financial system. The planet’s main resources, of raw economic goods, are those that influence the United States’ government. Here, the coup plotters don’t even get a traffic ticket — not even a slap on the wrist. Instead, they are offered political parties as if they are a democratic option. It is so absurd: the Honduran right, which put the generals in office who carried out the coup, proclaim themselves to be a democratic alternative. Those who murdered, those who looted, are democratic alternatives — totally absurd."

Note: Read more about the narco-state that the US supported in Honduras. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on intelligence agency corruption from reliable major media sources.


The US’s Long History of Destabilizing Iran
2024-10-09, Jacobin
Posted: 2024-10-14 17:58:19
https://jacobin.com/2024/10/destabilizing-iran-history-kamala-harris

Following Iran’s missile barrage into Israel last week, carried out in retaliation for Israel’s assassinations of Hamas and Hezbollah leaders, vice president and Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris called Iran a “destabilizing, dangerous force” in the Middle East, opening a new chapter in a long history of US hawkishness against Iran. This past Monday, she went even further, calling Iran the United States’ “greatest adversary.” It’s hard to hear such statements without hearkening back to New Year’s Eve, 1977, a year before the Iranian Revolution broke out. In the heat of growing civil unrest in Iran, US president Jimmy Carter attended a lavish state dinner with the shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. Twenty-four years earlier, during “Operation Ajax,” the CIA, in collaboration with the British MI6, had orchestrated a coup that ousted the democratically elected Iranian prime minister Mohammed Mossadegh, who had won on a platform of nationalizing Iranian oil and taking it back from Western control. The coup set into motion the destruction of the country’s budding democracy and would haunt Iranians for decades. The United States has worked to destabilize Iran for nearly a century. With the Democratic presidential nominee once again trotting out hawkish tirades against Iran while backing Israel’s new assault on Lebanon, American officials seem to have learned nothing from history.

Note: Read more about the CIA-backed 1953 coup in Iran. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on intelligence agency corruption from reliable major media sources.


Critiques of Gates Foundation’s agricultural interventions in Africa
2024-09-04, US Right to Know
Posted: 2024-10-14 17:55:07
https://usrtk.org/bill-gates/critiques-of-gates-foundation/

The Gates Foundation is a major influencer and funder of agricultural development in Africa, yet there are no avenues to hold the foundation accountable to the communities it influences. Gates Foundation is the main funder of the controversial AGRA program. AGRA rebranded after evidence-based critiques showed that its 15-year effort to expand high-input, chemical-dependent monoculture farming in Africa has failed to provide food security, despite billions in funding from private donors and government subsidies. Critics say the “green revolution” approach is exacerbating hunger, worsening inequality and entrenching the power of outside corporate agribusiness interests in the hungriest regions of the world. AGRA works to transition farmers away from traditional seeds and crops to patented seeds, fossil-fuel based fertilizers and other inputs to grow commodity crops for the global market. The strategy is modeled on the Indian “green revolution” that boosted production of staple crops but also left a legacy of structural inequity and escalating debt for farmers. Evidence suggests that the green revolution has failed to improve health or reduce poverty and has created many problems. These include hooking farmers in a debt cycle with expensive inputs, growing pesticide use, environmental degradation, worsening soil quality, reduced diversity of food crops, and increased corporate control over food systems.

Note: 50 food sovereignty organizations wrote an open letter to Bill Gates on how the Green Revolution has failed to reduce hunger or increase food access as promised. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on food system corruption and income inequality from reliable major media sources.


Heart Attack Doctor: Science Shows Death Is Not the End
2024-07-25, Evolution News
Posted: 2024-10-14 17:49:51
https://evolutionnews.org/2024/07/heart-attack-doctor-science-shows-death-is-...

Sam Parnia’s medical specialty at the New York University Langone Health System is resuscitation. He also directs large clinical studies of heart attacks (cardiac arrest). That has brought him into contact with a lot of people who are on the brink. It has also strengthened his conviction that near-death experiences show that death is not the end of human consciousness. Hence his new book, Lucid Dying (Hachette 2024). From early on, he was puzzled by the relationship between the mind and the brain. He came to see that the message “from science” was not what he had been led to expect. "Although life and death remain a mystery, science is showing that contrary to what some philosophers, doctors, and scientists have argued for centuries, neither biological nor mental processes end in an absolute sense with death," [he said]. "There is much more to be discovered, but science does ... suggest that our consciousness and selfhood are not annihilated when we cross over into death and into the great unknown. In death, we may also come to discover that each of our actions, thoughts, and intentions in life, from the most minute, to the most extreme, do matter." Many believe that science proves — and must prove — that life beyond death is impossible. But it is difficult for science to refute, for example, veridical near-death experiences, where experiencers recount events that they could not have observed under natural circumstances.

Note: Explore more positive stories like this about near-death experiences.


Sebastian Junger Is Reporting Live From the Brink of Death
2024-05-21, New York Times
Posted: 2024-10-14 17:48:18
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/21/books/in-my-time-of-dying-sebastian-junger...

Over the course of his reporting career, Sebastian Junger has had several close calls with death. In the introduction to his memoir, “In My Time of Dying” ... he describes his own near-drowning while surfing. On June 16, 2020, Junger found himself face-to-face with mortality in a way he’d never been. One minute he was enjoying quiet time with his wife at a remote cabin on Cape Cod in Massachusetts; the next, he was in excruciating pain from a ruptured aneurysm. “It never crossed my mind to start believing in God,” [said Junger]. “But what did happen was I was like, maybe we don’t understand the universe on a fundamental level. Maybe we just don’t understand that this world we experience is just one reality and that there’s some reality we can’t understand that’s engaged when we die. All this stuff happens — ghosts and telepathy and the dead appearing in the rooms of the dying — that’s consistent in every culture in the world. Maybe anything’s possible. If there’s ever an example of “anything can happen,” it’s the universe popping into existence from nothing. Two nights before I went to the hospital, I dreamed that I had died and was looking down on my grieving family. Because I had that experience, which I still can’t explain, it occurred to me that maybe I had died and ... was a ghost. I went into this very weird existential Escher drawing. Am I here, or not? At one point, I said to my wife, “How do I know I didn’t die?” She said, “You’re here, right in front of me. You survived.””

Note: Sebastian Junger is an American journalist, author and filmmaker focused on wartime issues. Explore more positive stories like this about near-death experiences.


Predator or prey? Undercover federal agents target vulnerable teens
2024-01-26, Denver Post
Posted: 2024-10-09 13:03:26
https://www.denverpost.com/2024/01/26/opinion-predator-or-prey-undercover-fed...

A disturbing trend of undercover federal agents engaging minors online to plan acts related to terrorism abroad, then arresting them shortly after they turn 18, ought to raise eyebrows as well as outrage, given that many of these targets are teens who have significant cognitive and intellectual disabilities. The most recent case in Colorado involves Humzah Mashkoor, an 18-year-old from Westminster charged with “attempting to provide material support to a designated foreign terrorist organization,” according to a U.S. Department of Justice December 2023 press release. Months earlier, in July last year, FBI agents arrested Davin Daniel Meyer, 18, of Castle Rock, charged with the same crime, which can carry a stiff penalty of decades in prison. And in June, 18-year-old Mateo Ventura of Massachusetts was charged with a similar crime of intention after being in contact not with terrorists but with undercover FBI agents. A fourth case occurred last year in Philadelphia. When you look at the striking similarities of these cases, it’s not unreasonable to conclude that federal agents are failing morally and ethically by seemingly coaxing and cajoling minors – including two Colorado children with limited intellectual capacity and no history of harming anyone — to cross a line. The FBI agents then “get their man” – even before these individuals are in fact men. Enough time has gone by to show the human element to this story, but no reporters seem to be interested.

Note: Read more about the FBI's manufacture of terrorist plots. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on law enforcement corruption and terrorism from reliable major media sources.


The FBI Groomed a 16-Year-Old With “Brain Development Issues” to Become a Terrorist
2023-06-15, The Intercept
Posted: 2024-10-09 12:07:58
https://theintercept.com/2023/06/15/fbi-undercover-isis-teenager-terrorist/

A flurry of reports picked up on the arrest of Mateo Ventura, an 18-year-old resident of the sleepy town of Wakefield, echoing government claims that an international terrorist financier and ISIS supporter had just been busted. The Department of Justice’s own press release on the case likewise trumpeted Ventura’s arrest for “knowingly concealing the source of material support or resources that he intended to go to a foreign terrorist organization.” Ventura had never actually funded any terrorist group. The only “terrorist” he is accused of ever being in contact with was an undercover FBI agent who befriended him online as a 16-year-old, solicited small cash donations in the form of gift cards, and directed him not to tell anyone else. Ventura’s father, Paul Ventura, told The Intercept that Mateo suffered from childhood developmental issues. “He was born prematurely, he had brain development issues. I had the school do a neurosurgery evaluation on him and they said his brain was underdeveloped,” Ventura said. “He was suffering endless bullying at school with other kids taking food off his plate, tripping him in the hallway, humiliating him, laughing at him.”. His case is less a serious terrorism bust than one of the many instances in which a troubled or mentally unfit young man was groomed by undercover FBI agents to commit a crime that would not have otherwise happened. This law enforcement tactic has been criticized by national security researchers who have scrutinized the FBI’s role in manufacturing terrorism cases using vulnerable people who would have been unable to commit crimes without prolonged government assistance and encouragement. A 2014 Human Rights Watch report ... said, “In this way, the FBI may have created terrorists out of law-abiding individuals.”

Note: Read more about the FBI's manufacture of terrorist plots. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on law enforcement corruption and terrorism from reliable major media sources.


Undercover FBI Agents Helped Autistic Teen Plan Trip to Join ISIS
2024-01-10, The Intercept
Posted: 2024-10-09 12:06:08
https://theintercept.com/2024/01/10/fbi-sting-isis-autistic-teen/

Humzah Mashkoor had just cleared security at Denver International Airport when the FBI showed up. The agents had come to arrest the 18-year-old, who is diagnosed with a developmental disability, and charge him with terror-related crimes. Mashkoor had gone to the airport ... as part of his alleged plot to join the Islamic State. The trip had been spurred by over a year of online exchanges starting when Mashkoor was 16 years old with four people he believed were members of ISIS. According to the Justice Department’s criminal complaint, the four were actually undercover FBI agents. As a result of his conversations with the FBI, Mashkoor could face a lengthy sentence for attempting to provide material support to a terrorist organization. Law enforcement agents first became aware of Mashkoor’s online activities in support of ISIS in November 2021. But instead of alerting his family ... FBI agents posing as ISIS members befriended him a year later and strung him along until he became a legal adult. Almost all of the conduct he is alleged to have committed took place when he was a juvenile. “This case appears consistent with a common fact pattern seen in tens, if not hundreds, of terrorism-related cases in which the FBI has effectively manufactured terrorist prosecutions,” said Sahar Aziz, a national security expert. “If there was a serious terrorist threat in America, the FBI would not be spending its time entrapping a mentally ill minor.”

Note: Read more about the FBI's manufacture of terrorist plots. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on law enforcement corruption and terrorism from reliable major media sources.


At least 13 mayors arrested on child sex crimes since 2021
2023-03-03, Fox News
Posted: 2024-10-09 12:03:10
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/at-least-13-mayors-arrested-child-sex-crimes...

The now-former mayor of College Park, Maryland, was arrested on child pornography charges Thursday morning, adding to a long list of mayors accused of preying on young children. Patrick Wojahn, 47, is charged with 40 counts of possession of child exploitative material and 16 counts of distribution of child exploitative material. Wojahn’s case isn’t an unusual one. At least 12 additional then-current and former mayors have been accused of child sex crimes since 2021, ranging from child pornography to sexual assault. Phil Briggs, the mayor of Spencerville, Ohio, resigned last month after he was arrested for allegedly secretly recording his girlfriend’s teenage daughters while they undressed. Ted Tomaszewski, the former mayor of Mansfield Township, New Jersey, was charged in January with sexual assault, luring and child endangerment. He is accused of engaging in multiple sex acts with a 15-year-old. Carl Johnson, the former mayor of West Bountiful, Utah, and a former bishop for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, was charged in September 2022 with sexually abusing three girls under the age of 13. He pleaded not guilty to seven counts of aggravated abuse of a child. An earlier Fox News Digital analysis found that at least 349 public school educators were arrested on child sex-related crimes spanning nearly every state in the country last year, averaging to almost an arrest every day on crimes ranging from grooming to child porn to raping students.

Note: Why is Fox News the only major media outlet covering this shocking issue? For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and sexual abuse scandals from reliable major media sources.


Kids as young at 8 are drugged and trafficked into the US by smugglers posing as their parents, Border Patrol warns
2024-09-24, New York Post
Posted: 2024-10-09 12:01:35
https://nypost.com/2024/09/24/us-news/kids-are-being-drugged-and-trafficked-i...

Border Patrol agents are warning that kids as young as 8 are being drugged and smuggled into the US by traffickers posing as their parents or family members — and nobody knows how common the horrifying practice is. Authorities have rescued children caught up in two different instances of such smuggling in recent weeks — including one instance in which the alleged traffickers had birth certificates for multiple kids to whom they weren’t related, according to the Border Patrol. Authorities say it’s not clear what is happening to the children once they are smuggled into the US — but many are vulnerable to being exploited for child labor and child sex trafficking. “Sometimes we encounter criminal actions so horrendous, they defy human decency,” said Gregory Bovino, the Border Patrol chief of California’s El Centro sector in the southeast of the state, in response to the case. In one case, border agents rescued a child at the California border who had been “heavily dosed with sleep aids to prevent him from talking” to authorities, Bovino said Friday. Those agents found that the traffickers had birth certificates for more children. Under the Biden-Harris administration, the number of children crossing illegally into the US alone and without relatives has skyrocketed. Thousands of those children have also gone unaccounted for after they’ve been released to sponsors, who whistleblowers say aren’t properly vetted, in the US.

Note: Why is this horrific issue not being discussed on a significant mainstream level? According to a report by The Center for Public Integrity, thousands have disappeared from sponsors' homes after the federal government placed them there. Watch our Mindful News Brief video on how the US government facilitates child trafficking at the border.


School Surveillance Earns Tech Companies Billions. Students Pay the Price.
2024-09-23, Truthout
Posted: 2024-10-09 11:58:13
https://truthout.org/articles/school-surveillance-earns-tech-companies-billio...

Tech companies have outfitted classrooms across the U.S. with devices and technologies that allow for constant surveillance and data gathering. Firms such as Gaggle, Securly and Bark (to name a few) now collect data from tens of thousands of K-12 students. They are not required to disclose how they use that data, or guarantee its safety from hackers. In their new book, Surveillance Education: Navigating the Conspicuous Absence of Privacy in Schools, Nolan Higdon and Allison Butler show how all-encompassing surveillance is now all too real, and everything from basic privacy rights to educational quality is at stake. The tech industry has done a great job of convincing us that their platforms — like social media and email — are “free.” But the truth is, they come at a cost: our privacy. These companies make money from our data, and all the content and information we share online is basically unpaid labor. So, when the COVID-19 lockdowns hit, a lot of people just assumed that using Zoom, Canvas and Moodle for online learning was a “free” alternative to in-person classes. In reality, we were giving up even more of our labor and privacy to an industry that ended up making record profits. Your data can be used against you ... or taken out of context, such as sarcasm being used to deny you a job or admission to a school. Data breaches happen all the time, which could lead to identity theft or other personal information becoming public.

Note: Learn about Proctorio, an AI surveillance anti-cheating software used in schools to monitor children through webcams—conducting "desk scans," "face detection," and "gaze detection" to flag potential cheating and to spot anybody “looking away from the screen for an extended period of time." For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on Big Tech and the disappearance of privacy from reliable major media sources.


School lunch tests reveal dozens of pesticides on single items, heavy metals, other toxins
2024-09-26, ABC News
Posted: 2024-10-09 11:56:16
https://wjla.com/features/i-team/school-lunch-tests-meals-reveal-pesticides-h...

In America’s schools, 30 million lunches are served every day. There are standards in place for things like calories, sodium, and added sugar. The USDA asserts that lunches consumed from schools are the most nutritious. We sent school lunches to the Health Research Institute, an accredited lab in Iowa, to hunt for what standards don’t cover: heavy metals, pesticides, and veterinary drugs. Our tests revealed unseen, largely unregulated components increasingly connected to everything from attention deficit disorder and liver disease to hormone disruption and cancer. Samples we collected from schools in Washington DC, Virginia, and Maryland included common fare like breadsticks, pizza, potatoes, and fruit. The lab identified more than 50 pesticides in our samples, with dozens often layered into one meal. 38 different pesticides were detected in just one elementary school lunch. 23 pesticides were found in a single strawberry cup. The fungicide, carbendazim, which is banned in most European countries, Brazil and Australia because it is increasingly connected to cancer, infertility, and birth defects, was found in five of our twelve samples. Glyphosate, a widely used and controversial weed killer ... connected to cancer, diabetes, and heart problems, was detected in multiple samples, often in wheat-based products like bread. Cadmium, a known carcinogen, was detected in our samples at a level 12 times higher than the FDA’s limit for bottled water.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on food system corruption and toxic chemicals from reliable major media sources.


Federal court rules against EPA in lawsuit over fluoride in water
2024-09-25, CBS News
Posted: 2024-10-09 11:54:16
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/epa-fluoride-drinking-water-federal-court-ruling/

A federal court in California ruled late Tuesday against the Environmental Protection Agency, ordering officials to take action over concerns about potential health risks from currently recommended levels of fluoride in the American drinking water supply. The ruling by District Court Judge Edward Chen ... deals a blow to public health groups in the growing debate about whether the benefits of continuing to add fluoride to the water supply outweighs its risks. While Chen was careful to say that his ruling "does not conclude with certainty that fluoridated water is injurious to public health," he said that evidence of its potential risk was now enough to warrant forcing the EPA to take action. "In all, there is substantial and scientifically credible evidence establishing that fluoride poses a risk to human health; it is associated with a reduction in the IQ of children and is hazardous at dosages that are far too close to fluoride levels in the drinking water of the United States," the judge wrote in his ruling. The judge's ruling cites a review by the National Institutes of Health's toxicology program finalized last month, which concluded that "higher levels" of fluoride is now linked to lowered IQ in children. Chen said he left it up to the EPA which of a number of options the agency could take in response to his ruling. They range from a warning label about fluoride's risks at current levels to taking steps towards tightening restrictions on its addition to drinking water.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on health and government corruption from reliable major media sources.


The logger who learned the value of living trees
2024-09-28, BBC News
Posted: 2024-10-09 11:51:07
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20240927-the-logger-who-learned-the-value-...

[Robert] Brito and his family, who live along the Rio Negro in the Brazilian Amazon, only saw the monetary value of logged trees. Now, when Brito looks at a tree, everything has changed. "We stopped thinking about price and started thinking about [a different kind of] value. For example, when I see a beautiful cumaru [Brazilian teak] tree, 300 to 400 years old ... I still touch it, but with a different mindset. I have access to education, technology, a future for the young people living here, and I still contribute to the preservation of our planet in relation to climate change." Brito's transition ... required the support and alignment of financial, social and environmental incentives. In 2008, the government of the Brazilian state of Amazonas created the Rio Negro Sustainable Development Reserve, in order to preserve nature and to support communities living within it. The designation of the sustainable development reserve led to organisations including the Foundation for Amazon Sustainability (FAS) establishing education and health projects there. Brito recalls that one day Virgilio Viana, the director general of FAS, suggested that he might like to work in community-based tourism. "I started receiving people in my own home," Brito says. This trial was a success. He realised that he earned more in a week than he had ever seen in three months of logging. In 2011 – three years after the creation of the sustainable development reserve and over two decades since he cut down his first tree – Brito opened his nature lodge. And he put down his chainsaw. Moving away from blaming or shaming individuals can bring more people into the environmental movement. So can valuing people's prior experiences, such as Brito drawing on his decades of logging as he guides visitors around the forest in his flip-flops.

Note: Explore more positive stories like this about healing the Earth.


Ex-FARC members aim to restore 1 million native trees in the Colombian Amazon
2023-11-07, Mongabay
Posted: 2024-10-09 11:49:40
https://news.mongabay.com/2023/11/ex-farc-members-aim-to-restore-1-million-na...

Duberney López Martinéz was only 13 when he joined the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) in 2003. Today, Duberney, 33, lives with his wife and young son after spending more than a decade fighting in the FARC 32nd Front and two years in jail. As part of his reintegration into society ... Duberney got involved in the ecological restoration of the Colombian Amazon. He and another 23 ex-FARC members are promoting the ecological restoration of the Colombian Amazon. The Communitarian Multiactive Cooperative of the Common (Comuccom) ... aims to plant and care for 1 million native trees in order to counteract deforestation from illegal gold mining, cattle ranching, coca-growing and illegal logging. Despite the peace agreement, the conflict is still present in daily lives and memories, according to Kristina Lyons, professor of anthropology ... who has been working in the region. “In Putumayo, armed conflict and antidrug policies heavily impacted bonds among people, communities and their relations with the region’s ecosystems,” Lyons [said]. “The ecological restoration of the Amazon has deep significance for healing relations between humans ruptured by the conflict and among people and their territories. It can be understood as a form of reparation for war crimes and other kinds of violence in the wake of the peace agreements.” “To me, restoring the Amazon is the same process needed for healing the heart of a person,” [said Aroca Sanchez with Comuccom].

Note: Read how tourists in Colombia can now take jungle hikes with ex-FARC guerilla guides. Explore more positive stories like this about healing the war machine.


Only love can stop war: a Northern Cheyenne chief's call to the world
2022-06-17, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2024-10-09 11:47:51
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/jun/17/only-love-can-stop-war-a-call...

At the Battle of the Little Bighorn, 146 years ago, my ancestors defeated the US army’s Seventh Cavalry led by George Armstrong Custer, who had previously massacred Cheyenne people. I want to share with you the story of how my people and my family survived through generations – despite many attempts to exterminate us. We are peace chiefs – we never provoke war, our main role is to steward our people and way of life. My father’s grandmother, Quill Dress Woman ... witnessed Cheyenne matriarchs push sewing awls into Custer’s ears so that next lifetime he would listen. They did this because after the Washita massacre in 1868, where Custer had attacked a peaceful Cheyenne camp resulting in the killing of many women and children, our Cheyenne chiefs still made peace with him in a sacred pipe ceremony. The Creator wants us to love each other. Looking at the wars, mass shootings and genocides happening around the world right now, and reading about what has been done to my people above, you might ask: how can people do this to each other? In 1946, Albert Einstein made a call to “let the people know that a new type of thinking is essential if mankind is to survive and move to higher levels”. We will never end war and genocide unless we change the mindset that created it. War cannot defeat war, only love can stop war. My love and my forgiveness do not depend on you. I want to forgive you for what you have done to my people, the genocide and the eradication process. This might be our last chance to put an end to this genocidal and suicidal mindset. I love you, and there is nothing you can do about it.

Note: This article was written by Heove ve 'keso (Yellowbird), Chief Phillip Whiteman Jr, traditional Northern Cheyenne Chief. He is part of an organization, Yellowbird Lifeways, that organizes a run in which Cheyenne children follow the footsteps of their ancestors. During this event, they run 400 miles across four states, enduring the harsh conditions of winter. Explore more positive stories like this about healing the war machine.


EPA officials retaliated against 3 scientists, watchdog says
2024-09-18, The Hill
Posted: 2024-10-01 14:09:56
https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/4887473-epa-officials-retaliate...

The Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) internal watchdog has found that top agency officials retaliated against three staffers for expressing different scientific opinions. The employees who were victims of this alleged retaliation thought chemicals should be considered more toxic, while top officials sought to consider them safer, according to the reports from the EPA’s inspector general. EPA scientist Sarah Gallagher says she thought the agency should consider the chemical as toxic to fetal development, while another official wanted to classify it as a lower-priority body weight issue. In another case documented in a report finding retaliation against scientist Martin Phillips, a senior science adviser allegedly changed an assessment in a way that removed “reproductive toxicity” as a concern from safety information that goes to people who work with the chemical. In a third report finding retaliation against scientist William Irwin, a manager also allegedly tried to remove evidence of reproductive toxicity. These instances appeared to have a chilling effect that could impact other agency scientists’ willingness to stand up to management. “Other assessors noticed how those who disagreed with management were perceived,” the reports said. They added that a person whose name was redacted testified that disagreeing or delaying the resolution of backlogged cases could cause management to label an employee “problematic.”

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and toxic chemicals from reliable major media sources.


I'm a doctor on the frontlines of America's colon cancer crisis - I believe two ingredients found in 'healthy' foods are to blame
2024-09-26, Daily Mail (One of the UK's Popular Newspapers)
Posted: 2024-10-01 14:07:56
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-13890137/doctor-colon-cancer-crisi...

Dr Maria Abreu is on the cutting edge of one of the biggest health tragedies in a generation. Over the past decade, the Miami gastroenterologist has diagnosed an increasing number of young people with colon cancer - once considered an old person's disease. Dr Abreu [said] she believes two additives that became common in the 1970s ... are seldom talked about in relation to the colon cancer crisis. The first is high-fructose corn syrup, a liquid sweetener uniquely common to the United States and not used in other countries. High fructose corn syrup was introduced in the 1970s as a bid to stabilize food prices. At the time, President Richard Nixon authorized subsidizing corn crops. High-fructose corn syrup ... became cheaper to produce than sugar. The other ingredient is emulsifiers, which is used to give foods a creamy texture and found in healthy foods such as low-fat yogurts, cottage cheese, and peanut butter. Dr Abreu said these ingredients wreak havoc on the microbiome, a network of healthy bacteria in our guts, [reducing] our ability to protect the digestive tract from pathogens that irritate our cells and create inflammation. Chronic inflammation can also lead to inflammatory bowel conditions like Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis, which Dr Abreu said 'significantly' raises the risk of colon cancer. The introduction of high-fructose corn syrup and emulsifiers in the 1970s and 80s could explain why so many adults in their 40s are getting colon cancer. Researchers from the University of Missouri-Kansas City [found that] the rate of colorectal cancers grew 500 percent among children ages 10 to 14 and 333 percent among teenagers aged 15 to 19 years. Rates rose by 71 percent among people 30 to 34 to seven cases per 100,000 people.

Note: Big Food profits immensely as American youth face a growing health crisis, with close to 30% prediabetic, one in six youth obese, and over half of children facing a chronic illness. Nearly 40% of conventional baby food contains toxic pesticides. Yet what if the negative news overload on America’s chronic illness crisis isn’t the full story? Check out our Substack article to learn more about the inspiring remedies to the chronic illness crisis!


Should We Blame Fauci for the COVID Pandemic?
2024-09-14, Yahoo! News
Posted: 2024-10-01 14:06:17
https://www.yahoo.com/news/blame-fauci-covid-pandemic-100053993.html

For nearly 40 years prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, [Anthony] Fauci had served as the ... director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), a subsidiary of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Prior to COVID-19, Fauci had long supported funding pandemic research that other scientists found risky, if not downright dangerous. In 2014, there was a series of embarrassing safety lapses at U.S. government labs. In October 2014, President Barack Obama's administration paused federal funding of gain-of-function research that could make ... viruses transmissible via the respiratory route in mammals. In 2017, the White House produced the ... P3CO framework. Under P3CO, the NIH would forward grant proposals involving research on known pandemic pathogens or research that might create or enhance such pathogens to a new P3CO committee within HHS for a department-level risk-benefit analysis. To date, the P3CO committee has vetted just three research proposals involving so-called enhanced potential pandemic pathogens, out of potentially dozens that should have been examined. Fauci and NIH Director Francis Collins ... found a way to skirt the oversight process. They "realized that if they don't [forward proposals to HHS for review], there is no review." In 2014, [EcoHealth Alliance] received a five-year, $3.7 million NIAID grant to collect virus samples from human beings and bats in China and then experiment on these viruses at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. EcoHealth announced that it intended to create "chimeric" or hybrid viruses out of spike proteins, the part of a virus that allows it to enter and infect hosts cells, from SARS-like coronaviruses discovered in the wild and the backbone of another, already-known SARS virus. When EcoHealth's year five report was eventually submitted two years late, in 2021, it showed that additional chimeric viruses created in Wuhan demonstrated both enhanced transmission and lethality in humanized mice. By that time, the COVID-19 pandemic was already well underway.

Note: Watch our latest Mindful News Brief series on the strong evidence that bioweapons research created COVID-19. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on COVID-19 and government corruption from reliable major media sources.


Ex-NYC COVID czar fired from job after copping to drug-fueled sex parties during pandemic
2024-09-23, New York Post
Posted: 2024-10-01 14:03:48
https://nypost.com/2024/09/23/us-news/ex-nyc-covid-czar-jay-varma-fired-from-...

The city’s ex-COVID czar got the boot from his job at a pharmaceutical firm Monday — a week after he was caught bragging about hosting sex parties and attending an underground rave at the height of the pandemic. Dr. Jay Varma was serving as a senior health adviser to then-Mayor Bill de Blasio during COVID-19 when he and his wife put on the sex- and drug-fueled debauchery and attended a packed Wall Street rave, according to secretly recorded conversations the doctor had with a woman. “Varma boasted about harassing people into submission over the vaccine mandate and admitted to participating in illegal sex parties, all while he, former Health Commissioner Dr. David Chokshi, and then-Mayor Bill de Blasio imposed draconian measures that shut down the entire city,” [city Councilman Bob Holden] said. Varma’s seamy chats ... were made public last week. Michael Kane of Teachers for Choice said, “What disgusts me the most was hearing Varma say having drug-fueled group sex orgies was necessary for him to be his ‘authentic self’ because COVID had him ‘pent up.'” Varma said at one point, “My wife and I had one with our friends in August [2020] of like that first summer.” “So we rented a hotel ... we all took, like, you know, molly [MDMA] and like it was like eight or nine or us, eight to 10 of us were in a room and everybody had a blast because everybody was like so pent up.”

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on health and government corruption from reliable major media sources.


NYC COVID czar reveals he pushed monkeypox drug despite 'very low' risk to public
2024-09-25, NBC News (Alabama Affiliate)
Posted: 2024-10-01 14:02:10
https://mynbc15.com/news/nation-world/nyc-covid-czar-reveals-he-pushed-monkey...

Former New York City Mayor’s Office Senior Advisor for Public Health Jay Varma admitted to pushing monkeypox drug TPOXX despite the low risk of the disease to the general public, according to undercover video shared by podcaster Steven Crowder. Varma helped guide former NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio’s response to COVID-19, including crucial decisions about public schools and issuing a vaccine mandate for healthcare workers. He was exposed last week for having admitted to hosting large nude gatherings during the pandemic while urging city residents to remain isolated. In the new clip shared by Crowder, Varma revealed the risk of monkeypox to the general U.S. population is "very low," and it is mainly a concern for gay men who have unprotected sex. Despite this, Varma said he was pushing to receive FDA approval for TPOXX, otherwise known as Tecovirimat. “We want the Food and Drug Administration, the FDA, to approve our drug specifically for monkeypox,” he said. Varma added the news cycle was a key component of his push to get approval for the drug. “We also need to keep up the people’s belief that the [TPOXX] drug works,” Varma said. “So, that’s why spinning it in the media is helpful. Basically what we’re trying to get the media to say is ‘oh, the drug didn’t work because it was designed the wrong way, so they’re going to do another study and it’ll probably work,’” he added. “That’s what we want the story to be.”

Note: Back in 2022, Dr. Jay Varma appeared on a talk show, warning that he feared "monkeypox could become permanently entrenched." For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on health and government corruption from reliable major media sources.


With TV drug ads, what you see is not necessarily what you get
2024-09-12, Salon
Posted: 2024-10-01 14:00:19
https://www.salon.com/2024/09/12/with-tv-ads-what-you-see-is-not-necessarily-...

Drug ads have been ubiquitous on TV since the late 1990s and have spilled onto the internet and social media. The United States and New Zealand are the only countries that legally allow direct-to-consumer pharmaceutical advertising. Manufacturers have spent more than $1 billion a month on ads in recent years. Last year, three of the top five spenders on TV advertising were drug companies. A 2023 study found that, among top-selling drugs, those with the lowest levels of added benefit tended to spend more on advertising to patients than doctors. “I worry that direct-to-consumer advertising can be used to drive demand for marginally effective drugs or for drugs with more affordable or more cost-effective alternatives,” the study’s author, Michael DiStefano ... said. Indeed, more than 50% of what Medicare spent on drugs from 2016 through 2018 was for drugs that were advertised. The government has, in recent years, tried to ensure that prescription-drug advertising gives a more accurate and easily understood picture of benefits and harms. But the results have been disappointing. When President Donald Trump’s administration tried to get drugmakers to list the price of any treatments costing over $35 on TV ads, for example, the industry took it to federal court, saying the mandate violated drugmakers’ First Amendment rights. Big Pharma won. With a bit of commonsense, truth-in-advertising enforcement, many of the ads would disappear.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on Big Pharma corruption from reliable major media sources.


You’d Think Doctors Would Know About Big Pharma’s Rap Sheet — Many Don’t
2024-09-11, The Brownstone Institute
Posted: 2024-10-01 13:58:43
https://brownstone.org/articles/big-pharmas-rap-sheet/

The pharmaceutical industry, as a whole and by its nature, is conflicted and significantly driven by the mighty dollar, rather than altruism. A 2020 peer-reviewed article published in the Journal of the American Medical Association outlines the extent of the problem. The group studied both the type of illegal activity and financial penalties imposed on pharma companies between the years 2003 and 2016. Of the companies studied, 85 percent (22 of 26) had received financial penalties for illegal activities with a total combined dollar value of $33 billion. The illegal activities included manufacturing and distributing adulterated drugs, misleading marketing, failure to disclose negative information about a product (i.e. significant side effects including death), bribery to foreign officials, fraudulently delaying market entry of competitors, pricing and financial violations, and kickbacks. The highest penalties were awarded to Schering-Plough, GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), Allergan, and Wyeth. The biggest overall fines have been paid by GSK (almost $10 billion), Pfizer ($2.9 billion), Johnson & Johnson ($2.6 billion), and other familiar names including AstraZeneca, Novartis, Merck, Eli Lilly, Schering-Plough, Sanofi Aventis, and Wyeth. Five US states – Texas, Kansas, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Utah – are taking Pfizer to court for withholding information, and misleading and deceiving the public through statements made in marketing its Covid-19 injection.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on Big Pharma corruption from reliable major media sources.


Selling War: How Raytheon and Boeing Fund the Push for NATO’s Nuclear Expansion
2024-09-18, Mint Press News
Posted: 2024-10-01 13:56:56
https://www.mintpressnews.com/raytheon-boeing-fund-push-nato-nuclear-expansio...

A MintPress News investigation into the funding sources of U.S. foreign policy think tanks has found that they are sponsored to the tune of millions of dollars every year by weapons contractors. Arms manufacturing companies donated at least $7.8 million last year to the top fifty U.S. think tanks, who, in turn, pump out reports demanding more war and higher military spending, which significantly increase their sponsors’ profits. The only losers in this closed, circular system are the American public, saddled with higher taxes, and the tens of millions of people around the world who are victims of the U.S. war machine. The think tanks receiving the most tainted cash were, in order, the Atlantic Council, CSIS, CNAS, the Hudson Institute, and the Council on Foreign Relations, while the weapons manufacturers most active on K-Street were Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, and General Atomics. There is obviously a massive conflict of interest if groups advising the U.S. government on military policy are awash with cash from the arms industry. The Atlantic Council alone is funded by 22 weapons companies, totaling at least $2.69 million last year. Even a group like the Carnegie Endowment for Peace, established in 1910 as an organization dedicated to reducing global conflict, is sponsored by corporations making weapons of war, including Boeing and Leonardo, who donate tens of thousands of dollars annually.

Note: Learn more about arms industry corruption in our comprehensive Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center. For more, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on military corruption from reliable major media sources.


How a circle of spies, Blinken covered up Biden scandals: Miranda Devine’s new book exclusive
2024-09-19, New York Post
Posted: 2024-10-01 13:55:15
https://nypost.com/2024/09/19/opinion/how-a-circle-of-spies-blinken-covered-u...

On Oct. 14, 2020, three weeks out from the election, with Joe and President Donald Trump neck and neck in the polls, the New York Post’s first story about Hunter Biden’s abandoned laptop exploded like a bomb. The front page featured an email from Hunter’s Burisma paymaster, Vadym Pozharskyi, thanking him for “the opportunity to meet your father.” It was hard to square with Joe’s assertions throughout the campaign that he knew nothing about Hunter’s seeming international influence-peddling operation. Even as Twitter and Facebook, in collusion with the FBI, censored The Post, and the mainstream media collectively looked the other way, the Biden campaign knew that the sheer weight of the evidence would eventually be impossible to ignore. [Antony] Blinken’s solution was to set in motion one of the most brazen dirty tricks in US electoral history. Using the intelligence community to sound the false alarm of “Russian disinformation,” ground already prepared by corrupt elements inside the FBI, he set out to discredit the whole laptop story. CIA veteran Mike Morell [organized] 50 intelligence colleagues to sign a letter falsely insinuating that the damning material from Hunter’s laptop published by The Post was Russian disinformation. The Dirty 51 letter, as it came to be known, was timed to appear on the eve of the final presidential debate, to maximize its benefit to Joe, by giving him a “talking point to push back on [President] Trump on this issue,” as Morell put it.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on censorship and intelligence agency corruption from reliable major media sources.


Oops! Army training mislabeled nonprofits as terror groups for years
2024-09-19, Army Times
Posted: 2024-10-01 13:53:05
https://www.armytimes.com/news/your-army/2024/09/19/oops-army-training-mislab...

At Fort Liberty, thousands of soldiers who were trained on the Army’s antiterrorism policy saw slides that labeled several legitimate nonprofits as terrorist organizations – a blunder that went on for seven years before photos of the slides were posted to social media this summer, prompting outrage. Nonprofits that were incorrectly labeled as terrorist groups included People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, known as PETA, as well as the anti-abortion groups Operation Rescue and National Right to Life. The advocacy groups Earth First, Earth Liberation Front and Animal Liberation Front were also listed. “Incorrectly labeling legitimate organizations as terrorist groups not only undermines the credibility of the training, but also puts service members at risk of being unfairly scrutinized or penalized based on their associations or memberships,” said Rep. Andy Kim, D-NJ. “We must be cautious and purposeful in how we define and identify threats to our national security.” The soldier who created the slides was an employee of the local garrison and added the nonprofits based on open-source research. The Army didn’t find any evidence that the soldier sought to subvert Defense Department policy or to further a personal political viewpoint. Members of Congress first became aware of Fort Liberty’s antiterrorism training this summer, when photos of slides used during a July 10 training were shared online.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on military corruption and the erosion of civil liberties from reliable major media sources.


The Farmers Abandoning Big Ag to Grow Mushrooms and Herbs
2024-09-17, Reasons to be Cheerful
Posted: 2024-10-01 13:51:03
https://reasonstobecheerful.world/farmers-quitting-factory-farming-transfarma...

Leah Garcés considered Craig Watts her enemy. As CEO and president of the nonprofit Mercy for Animals, Garcés has devoted her life to protecting animals. When she met Watts in the spring of 2014 at his poultry farm in North Carolina, he was one those factory farmers she deeply despised. Watts had raised over 720,000 chickens in 22 years for Perdue, the fourth-largest chicken company in the US. He took out a $200,000 bank loan to build four giant chicken houses. Squeezed by Perdue’s profit margins, Watts struggled to pay the bills. Garcés realized that Watts was not her enemy, but an ally: Chicken farmers like him wanted to end chicken farming as much as she did. Yet because of his hefty loans, Watts saw no way out. Together, they released footage from the horrors of chicken farming in the New York Times. Watts has now become one of the poster farmers for the Transfarmation Project, which Garcés founded as an offshoot of the nonprofit Mercy for Animals in 2019. Ultimately, Garcés’s vision is not just “helping a few dozen farmers transition to a healthier and more sustainable model, it is about how we transition away entirely from factory farming.” The Transfarmation Project connects farmers with consultants and is producing resources and pilots to model successful transitions. In the same warehouse where Watts once had to kill chickens and where he and Garcés filmed the whistleblower video, he is now harvesting mushrooms.

Note: Explore more positive stories like this about healing our Earth.


‘Every building sits on a thermal asset’: how networked geothermal power could change cities
2024-08-09, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2024-10-01 13:49:22
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/aug/09/every-building-si...

There is a massive battery right under your feet. Unlike a flammable lithium ion battery, though, this one is perfectly stable, free to use, and ripe for sustainable exploitation: the Earth itself. While temperatures above ground fluctuate throughout the year, the ground stays a stable temperature, meaning that it is humming with geothermal energy. “Every building sits on a thermal asset,” said Cameron Best, director of business development at Brightcore Energy in New York, which deploys geothermal systems. “I really don’t think there’s any more efficient or better way to heat and cool our homes.” A couple of months ago Eversource Energy commissioned the US’s first networked geothermal neighbourhood operated by a utility, in Framingham, Massachusetts. Pipes run down boreholes 600-700ft (about 180-215 metres) deep, where the temperature of the rock is consistently 55F (13C). A mixture of water and propylene glycol ... pumps through the piping, absorbing that geothermal energy. Heat pumps use the liquid to either heat or cool a space. If deployed across the country, these geothermal systems could go a long way in helping decarbonise buildings, which are responsible for about a third of total greenhouse gas emissions in the US. Once a system is in place, buildings can draw heat from water pumped from below their foundations, instead of burning natural gas. The networks ... can be set up almost anywhere.

Note: Explore more positive stories like this on technology for good.


How a gas company and environmentalists united on a first-of-its-kind geothermal project
2024-08-29, Christian Science Monitor
Posted: 2024-10-01 13:47:18
https://www.csmonitor.com/Environment/2024/0828/geothermal-energy-renewable-p...

In December 2016, William Akley sat down in his sprawling headquarters for the biggest gas utility in Massachusetts, Eversource. Across the table were three women from a group that had become increasingly troublesome to his company. The group was Mothers Out Front, and it had been doing things like dressing up in orange costumes depicting gas flames and putting big signs where the company’s natural gas lines leaked into the air. As the meeting started, Zeyneb Magavi and each of the other mothers calmly explained their passion to Mr. Akley: “I have three kids,” Ms. Magavi said. “I’m worried about climate change. And I’m worried about their future.” It was the start of an unlikely partnership that eventually became an audacious idea: to use heat from underground – instead of natural gas – to both cool and heat homes and buildings. The test of that idea is now blinking on in Framingham, Massachusetts. Eversource workers have buried a mile-long loop of plastic pipe underground ... to collect geothermal energy. They are now connecting the loop to heat and cool 36 buildings – homes, a fire station, and businesses. It is the first U.S. trial of this innovative technology being provided to an entire neighborhood by a major utility. It’s the kind of scaled-up model that could bring a wholesale change to the nation’s infrastructure, replacing natural gas just as natural gas supplanted coal and oil in much of the United States.

Note: Explore more positive stories like this on technology for good.


How ‘fighting disinformation’ turns into political censorship
2024-05-08, Washington Post
Posted: 2024-09-26 13:35:16
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/05/08/disinformation-political-c...

UnHerd, the Britain-based publication I lead, published an investigation on April 17 into a transatlantic organization called the Global Disinformation Index. Having received money from the U.S. State Department, as well as the British, German and European Union governments, the GDI issues what amount to blacklists of news publications, on highly tendentious grounds, that online advertising exchanges then consult and can use to justify turning off ad revenue. What has emerged ... is an opaque network of private and government-supported enterprises that appear intent on censoring political views they find unpalatable. When the [GDI] was originally set up, in 2018, it defined disinformation as “deliberately false content, designed to deceive.” On this basis, you could see the argument for having fact-checkers to identify the most egregious offenders. But mission creep has set in at the GDI. It has since come up with a definition of disinformation that encompasses anything that deploys an “adversarial narrative” — stories that might be factually true but pit people against one another by creating “a risk of harm to at-risk individuals, groups or institutions” — with institutions defined as including “the current scientific or medical consensus.” The de facto alliance between government and groups working to defund disfavored publications — a sort of state censorship laundering arrangement — is particularly alarming. The 2024 National Defense Authorization Act [bars] the Defense Department from placing military-recruitment advertising in publications utilizing GDI, NewsGuard or “any similar entity.” The unaddressed problem with these disinformation referees is how their rulings affect online ad services themselves, not just advertisers, with the power to throttle revenue to publications simply for ideological reasons.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on censorship and media manipulation from reliable sources.


Bombshell report details how a little-known corporate cartel targets outlets — including The Post — claimed to be spreading ‘misinformation’
2024-07-11, New York Post
Posted: 2024-09-26 13:32:43
https://nypost.com/2024/07/11/us-news/bombshell-report-details-how-a-little-k...

A little-known advertising cartel that controls 90% of global marketing spending supported efforts to defund news outlets and platforms including The Post — at points urging members to use a blacklist compiled by a shadowy government-funded group that purports to guard news consumers against “misinformation.” The World Federation of Advertisers (WFA), which reps 150 of the world’s top companies — including ExxonMobil, GM, General Mills, McDonald’s, Visa, SC Johnson and Walmart — and 60 ad associations sought to squelch online free speech through its Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM) initiative, the House Judiciary Committee found. “The extent to which GARM has organized its trade association and coordinates actions that rob consumers of choices is likely illegal under the antitrust laws and threatens fundamental American freedoms,” the Republican-led panel said in its 39-page report. The new report establishes links between the WFA’s “responsible media” initiative and the taxpayer-funded Global Disinformation Index (GDI), a London-based group that in 2022 unveiled an ad blacklist of 10 news outlets whose opinion sections tilted conservative or libertarian, including The Post, RealClearPolitics and Reason magazine. Internal communications suggest that rather than using an objective rubric to guide decisions, GARM members simply monitored disfavored outlets closely to be able to find justification to demonetize them.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on censorship and media manipulation from reliable sources.


FBI abuses security clearance to ‘purge’ conservatives, views them as ‘unworthy’ of employment: whistleblower
2024-07-02, New York Post
Posted: 2024-09-26 13:30:10
https://nypost.com/2024/07/02/us-news/fbi-harbors-security-concerns-about-con...

The FBI is abusing its security clearance process to “purge” political conservatives from the bureau, according to recent whistleblower disclosures. The federal law enforcement agency’s Security Division has been suspending or revoking clearances for employees whose political affiliation or COVID-19 vaccination status are suspect, a supervisory special agent who formerly worked in the division alleges. he unnamed agent, who is described as “a registered Democrat” and is represented by the nonprofit Empower Oversight, further claims that high-ranking officials in the division believed “if an FBI employee fit a certain profile as a political conservative, they were viewed as security concerns and unworthy to work at the FBI.” In the case of Marcus Allen, a former FBI staff operations specialist (SOS) suspended without pay for more than two years, the officials ignored “possibly exculpatory information” and overruled investigators who “concluded [that] the suspension of his security clearance was not warranted.” That decision came after Allen informed his supervisors ... that he did not intend to take the COVID-19 vaccine. “The FBI has used the clearance process as a means to force employees out of the FBI by inflicting severe financial distress: suspending their clearance, suspending them from duty without pay, [and] requiring them to obtain permission to take any other job while stuck in this unpaid limbo,” [Empower President Tristan Leavitt] told House Judiciary Committee chairman Jim Jordan.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption from reliable major media sources.


They Protested a Military Base Expansion. So The FBI Investigated Them As Terrorism Suspects.
2024-09-13, The Intercept
Posted: 2024-09-26 13:28:10
https://theintercept.com/2024/09/13/fbi-protest-terrorism-stop-camp-grayling-...

In February 2023, government recruiters came to the student union at the University of Michigan Ann Arbor. Activists had come to protest the expansion of Camp Grayling, already the largest National Guard training facility in the country. “Want blood on your hands?” read the flyers activists distributed on recruiting tables. “Sign up for a government job.” When the recruiters returned from lunch, two protesters rushed in, dousing the NSA recruiting table and two Navy personnel with fake blood sprayed out of a ketchup container. The local sheriff’s office in Oakland County, Michigan, documented the incident in a case report as a hate crime against law enforcement. The FBI recorded the incident as part of a terrorism investigation. Treating the Stop Camp Grayling protesters as terrorists is the latest episode in a worldwide trend of governments smearing climate and environmental activists as terrorists. Misapplication of the terrorism label frequently serves as pretext for invasive surveillance and sustained scrutiny. Stop Camp Grayling — like most other movements organized around environmental activism — is not engaged in any type of systematic criminal activity. Movement adherents have never endangered human life. Yet the FBI saw fit to share an activist zine with military intelligence, drag in other alphabet agencies, and justify physical surveillance operations — all underpinned by the designation of the movement as worthy of a domestic terrorism investigation.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on intelligence agency corruption and the erosion of civil liberties from reliable major media sources.


DOJ sued for stonewalling on ‘secret’ surveillance records of congressional staff during Russiagate
2024-08-27, New York Post
Posted: 2024-09-26 13:24:10
https://nypost.com/2024/08/27/us-news/doj-sued-for-stonewalling-on-secret-rus...

A whistleblower group is suing the Department of Justice over its efforts to “secretly surveil” congressional staff conducting oversight on the FBI’s Trump-Russia investigation. Empower Oversight Whistleblowers and Research says in a civil suit filed Tuesday that the DOJ has repeatedly stonewalled records requests involving the “undisputed” surveillance. Its suit seeks to force the Justice Department to hand over records related to the alleged unconstitutional surveillance. Empower’s founder, Jason Foster, discovered in October that he was one of those congressional staff members surveilled by the Justice Department while serving as Iowa GOP Sen. Chuck Grassley’s chief investigative counsel. “Last fall, @Google told me @TheJusticeDept forced it to secretly turn over my comms records in 2017,” Foster posted on X, referencing a Sept. 12 subpoena that year for his private cell phone and email communications. Foster confirmed the DOJ and FBI also “targeted a dozen or so other Capitol Hill attorneys’ personal accounts — from both political parties” who were looking into the FBI misconduct that included Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act abuses as well. Both federal law-enforcement agencies later imposed non-disclosure orders for six years on Google and other big tech giants such as Apple and Verizon that had been subpoenaed for congressional staff communications.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and the disappearance of privacy from reliable major media sources.


How 2 Companies Came to Dominate the Media Business
2023-12-13, The Nation
Posted: 2024-09-26 13:19:51
https://www.thenation.com/article/society/netflix-disney-media-consolidation/

It wasn’t so long ago that the traditional film and television business was thriving. The Big Six media conglomerates—General Electric, Time Warner, Sony, Disney, News Corporation, and Viacom—ruled the industry. But the double whammy of streaming and the pandemic toppled the old-media oligopoly. So most of the legacy media giants now are struggling simply to survive, while a new breed of digital-age behemoths, led by Amazon and Apple, gauge their film and television prospects, and Disney and Netflix lead the way into an uncharted online landscape. The failure of the conglomerates to adapt is none too surprising. Spurred by Reagan-era economic policies and the FCC’s deregulation campaign, the media industries converged in a series of M&A waves that began in the 1980s with the News Corp–Fox, Time-Warner, and Sony-Columbia mergers and culminated in the acquisition of Universal by GE, NBC’s owner, and the launch of NBC Universal in 2004. At that point, the Big Six owned all the major film studios, all the broadcast networks, and most of the top cable networks. They dominated other media industries as well, but their key assets were their film and television holdings. The Disney+ launch was a tipping point in the streaming era, prompting the ramp-up of Warner’s HBO Max, NBCU’s Peacock and ViacomCBS’s Paramount+. It also came just before the outbreak of Covid-19, which accelerated the global move to streaming.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on censorship and media corruption from reliable sources.


There Are So Many Armed Cops on Subways That Now They’re Shooting Each Other
2024-09-16, The Intercept
Posted: 2024-09-26 13:18:05
https://theintercept.com/2024/09/16/brooklyn-subway-fare-shooting-police-viol...

In a Brooklyn subway station on Sunday afternoon, police shot and injured three people and a fellow New York Police Department officer over a $2.90 fare. Sunday’s police shooting should be a lesson in why the subway should not be teeming with cops, responding to “crimes” of poverty — like fare evasion and panhandling — with deadly force. The NYPD recorded more stops of New Yorkers in 2023 than it has in nearly a decade, and 89 percent of those who were stopped are Black and Latine. A staggering 93 percent of riders arrested for subway fare evasion were Black or Latine. Police have arrested 1,700 people for fare evasion and ticketed another 28,000 people so far this year. Overtime pay for police in the subways skyrocketed from $4 million in 2022 to $155 million in 2023. “The NYPD spent $150 Million *extra* last year to catch people who weren’t able to afford to pay the subway fare. They owed just $104,000,” wrote civil rights attorney Scott Hechinger on X, referring to the total of fares unpaid by fare evaders caught by police in 2023. “$150 million could buy free fares ... for 95,000 poor New Yorkers.” It would be naive, however, to overlook the deeply entrenched political economy of carceral punishment in New York and throughout the country — treating poor people, particularly Black people, as accounts from which to extract fines or bodies to fill jails and prisons. It will take more than fiscal sense to upend the current bipartisan political consensus around “law and order.”

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on police corruption from reliable major media sources.


A Brief History of Booby-Trapping Electronics to Blow Up
2024-09-18, The Intercept
Posted: 2024-09-26 13:16:29
https://theintercept.com/2024/09/18/pagers-explosives-history-booby-traps-ele...

Two large-scale, coordinated attacks this week rocked Lebanon — the latest iteration in a historical pattern of booby-trapping electronics. On Tuesday, one attack caused pagers to explode across Lebanon and Syria, injuring thousands of people and killing at least 12. A second wave of bombings unfolded on Wednesday, when explosives detonated inside a slew of hand-held radios across the country, leaving nine dead and 300 wounded. Israel, which is widely assumed to be behind both attacks, reportedly booby-trapped pagers used by Hezbollah members, carrying out a similar feat with the hand-held radios. The bombings appear to be supply-chain attacks — meaning the gadgets were tampered with or outright replaced with rigged devices containing explosives and a detonator at some point prior to arriving in the hands of the targets. The tactic of turning an electronic gadget into an explosive device ... dates back at least half a century. Field Manual 5-31, titled simply “Boobytraps” and first published by the U.S. Department of the Army in 1965, describes the titular objects as explosive charges “cunningly contrived to be fired by an unsuspecting person who disturbs an apparently harmless object or performs a presumably safe act.” In 1996, the Israeli Security Agency, also known as Shin Bet, is said to used a similar technique to detonate a small charge of explosives near the ear of Hamas bomb-maker Yahya Ayyash.

Note: Learn more about emerging warfare technology in our comprehensive Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center. For more, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on military corruption from reliable major media sources.


Company Behind Walkie-Talkie Devices Transformed into Bombs Also Supplies the U.S. Military
2024-09-18, Lee Fang on Substack
Posted: 2024-09-26 13:14:26
https://www.leefang.com/p/company-behind-walkie-talkie-devices

One day after pagers detonated across Lebanon, reportedly killing twelve people ... a second wave of explosions has been reported across the country. Today’s detonations were reportedly through the manipulation of walkie-talkies made by ICOM, a Japanese firm whose American branch also serves as a significant supplier to the U.S. military. The combined confirmed death toll has already reached 26, and roughly 3,000 people have been reported injured. The Tuesday explosions are primarily linked to the ICOM IC-V82, an electronic receiver with both military and civilian uses. ICOM, based in Osaka, Japan, has a global footprint. U.S. government disclosures show that the company’s American affiliate has received at least $8.2 million in contracts with the U.S. federal government since 2008. The series of explosions in Lebanon have raised concerns about the future of war that includes infiltration of supply chains and limitless exploits through electronically connected devices. The attacks will likely fuel increased scrutiny over military and civilian supply chain security, which has long been a potential vulnerability. The two rounds of blasts happened one day after Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant reportedly stepped up demands for the U.S. to support “military action” against Hezbollah, the powerful Lebanese militia linked to Iran. Social media posts have also claimed that ATMs, solar panels, and other electronic devices across Lebanon exploded today.

Note: Intelligence agencies from several countries have infiltrated computer supply chains to spy on people more easily. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on military corruption from reliable major media sources.


At Least Two Saudi Officials May Have Deliberately Assisted 9/11 Hijackers, New Evidence Suggests
2024-09-11, ProPublica
Posted: 2024-09-26 13:12:20
https://www.propublica.org/article/saudi-officials-may-have-assisted-911-hija...

From the start of U.S. investigations into the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the question of whether the Saudi government might have been involved has hovered over the case. New evidence has emerged to suggest more strongly than ever that at least two Saudi officials deliberately assisted the first Qaida hijackers. Most of the evidence has been gathered in a long-running federal lawsuit against the Saudi government by survivors of the attacks and relatives of those who died. The court files also raise questions about whether the FBI and CIA, which repeatedly dismissed the significance of Saudi links to the hijackers, mishandled or deliberately downplayed evidence of the kingdom’s possible complicity in the attacks. The plaintiffs’ account still leaves significant gaps in the story of how two known al-Qaida operatives, Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar, avoided CIA surveillance overseas, flew into Los Angeles under their own names and then ... settled in Southern California. Still, the lawsuit has exposed layers of contradictions and deceit in the Saudi government’s portrayal of Omar al-Bayoumi. FBI agents identified Bayoumi as having helped the two young Saudis rent an apartment, set up a bank account and take care of other needs. Bayoumi, then 42, was arrested on Sept. 21, 2001, in Birmingham, England. After pressure from Saudi diplomats, Bayoumi was freed by the British authorities without being charged. U.S. officials did not try to have him extradited.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on 9/11 from reliable major media sources. Then explore the excellent, reliable resources provided in our 9/11 Information Center.


After Police Didn’t Take it Seriously He Exposed an International Bike Theft Ring on His Own
2024-08-30, Good News Network
Posted: 2024-09-26 13:10:40
https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/after-police-didnt-take-it-seriously-he-expos...

Mr. Brian Hance is urgently attempting to get the police to investigate what he says is an organized international bicycle smuggling ring depriving hundreds of Americans of their high-end bikes. The police in counties like Sonoma, Santa Clara, and Santa Cruz didn’t listen to him. “We’re not Interpol” they would say. Mr. Hance took up the charge himself, putting together dossiers of evidence on a one-man mission to prevent bike theft in America. Submitting them to various district attorneys, he watched as several key cogs in a giant machine of sophisticated bike theft and smuggling were dismantled. Hance runs Bike Index, a website where bike owners can register their bikes with serial numbers and photos to help ensure that if they’re ever stolen, there’s a community of people who may be able to help find it. There are 1.3 million bikes on the site. In the spring of 2020, scores of high-end bikes began appearing as missing on Bike Index, and Hance began seeing pictures on Facebook and Instagram of bikes for sale that matched the descriptions of those listed as stolen. Hance urged theft victims to report the crime in as detailed a way as possible to build a case file, and then ask the police to contact him so he could explain what he had stumbled upon. Finally, a major development occurred when the Attorney General’s office of Colorado indicted eight people on 227 counts of theft, including 29 bike shop burglaries. All eight pled guilty.

Note: Read about Iceland’s "bike whisperer," the man who finds stolen bicycles and helps thieves change. Explore more positive stories like this about repairing criminal justice.


Latin America has two models for eradicating violent crime. One is rooted in dignity and forgiveness.
2024-04-29, Christian Science Monitor
Posted: 2024-09-26 13:09:16
https://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/the-monitors-view/2024/0429/A-tender-way...

Latin America is the world’s most dangerous region due to cartel and gang violence. It has 9% of the global population but one-third of the world’s homicides. Kidnapping and extortion are on the rise. The trend is driving a turn toward increasingly militarized solutions. El Salvador, for example, has incarcerated some 75,000 people – nearly 2% of its population – in recent years on suspicion of being involved in gangs. In Colombia, by contrast, exchanging the threat of arrest for dialogue is a key part of the government’s painstaking strategy of negotiating peace simultaneously with some 20 armed factions to end 60 years of conflict. That process, known as Paz Total (“total peace”) and launched less than two years ago by President Gustavo Petro, has been marked by reversals and unintended effects. But a key distinction lies in its emphasis on both empathy and the rule of law. The strategy’s first example of “restorative incarceration,” launched earlier this month, shows how. In exchange for admitting guilt for violent acts and seeking forgiveness from victims and the families, 48 military and former guerrilla leaders are now serving “sentences” by planting trees and helping heal the communities they once dominated through fear. “We’re going to sow life to try to make amends and build peace,” [said] Henry Torres, a former army general. As Colombia’s new attorney general put it, “our mission will be ... a mission for the dignity and well-being of our people.” Peace requires patience, said Juan Manuel Santos, a former president who negotiated a 2016 peace accord with Colombia’s main guerrilla faction that still serves as a template for Mr. Petro’s broader peace plan. “You need to convince, to persuade, to change people’s sentiments, to teach them how to forgive, how to reconcile,” he told The Harvard Gazette.

Note: A prison in Brazil with low recidivism rates uses a humane approach, where there are no armed guards and inmates have the keys to their own cells. Explore more positive stories like this about repairing criminal justice.


A prize for repairing riven societies
2024-06-07, Christian Science Monitor
Posted: 2024-09-26 13:07:28
https://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/the-monitors-view/2024/0607/A-prize-for-...

This year’s winner of the Templeton Prize, which highlights discoveries that yield "new insights about religion" ... was given to Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela, a South African scholar who has explored ways to nurture deep empathy between victims and perpetrators of conflict. Her particular focus is on the power of forgiveness to expunge hatred and historical harms. Such an approach is now widely acknowledged as essential because of wars – from Ukraine and Gaza to Myanmar and Sudan – that have resulted in extensive harm to innocent civilians. Serving on South Africa’s post-apartheid Truth and Reconciliation Commission in the 1990s, Dr. Gobodo-Madikizela gained insights into both the needs of those who suffered under decades of apartheid and the motivations of those who upheld racial separation through violence. Her life work, she said following the award announcement Tuesday, involves understanding “the conditions necessary to restore the values of what it means to be human.” “There’s no better time to shove away prejudices, pull up a chair with a supporter of that party you can’t stand, and talk with them about how we can work together for a brighter future,” wrote Ian Siebörger, a senior lecturer of linguistics at Rhodes University. Dr. Gobodo-Madikizela offers ways to avoid “the passing on of grievance and a sense of victimhood from one generation to the next.” The “reparative quest,” she told Time magazine this week, is “a constant journey to repair and to heal” through atonement and forgiveness. It is not a singular moment. Victims and perpetrators move each other beyond the boundaries of their own experiences.

Note: To explore more stories of forgiveness and healing in the face of atrocities, check out our powerful interview with Marina Cantacuzino, journalist and founder of The Forgiveness Project. Explore more positive stories like this about healing the war machine.


Baby's first junk food: How companies prey on new parents
2024-08-23, The Blaze
Posted: 2024-09-15 18:56:04
https://www.theblaze.com/align/study-baby-food-unhealthy-misleading-marketing

Almost two-thirds of supermarket baby food is unhealthy while nearly all baby food labels contain misleading marketing claims designed to "trick" parents. Those are the conclusions of an eyebrow-raising study in which researchers at Australia's George Institute for Global Health analyzed 651 foods marketed for children ages 6 months to 36 months at 10 supermarket chains in the United States. The study ... found that 60% of the foods failed to meet nutritional standards set by the World Health Organization. In addition, 70% of the baby food failed to meet protein requirements, 44% exceeded total sugar recommendations, 25% failed to meet calorie recommendations, and 20% exceeded recommended sodium limits set by the WHO. The most concerning products were snack foods and pouches. "Research shows 50% of the sugar consumed from infant foods comes from pouches, and we found those were some of the worst offenders,” said Dr. Elizabeth Dunford, senior study author. Sales of such convenient baby food pouches soared 900% in the U.S. in the past 13 years. Consumption of processed foods in early childhood can set lifelong habits of poor eating that could lead to obesity, diabetes, and some cancers. The study also found that 99.4% of the baby food analyzed had misleading marketing claims on the labels that violated the WHO's promotional guidelines. On average, products contained four misleading marketing claims; some had as many as eleven.

Note: Big Food profits immensely as American youth face a growing health crisis, with close to 30% prediabetic, one in six youth obese, and over half of children facing a chronic illness. Nearly 40% of conventional baby food contains toxic pesticides. For more along these lines, explore concise summaries of news articles on food system corruption from reliable major media sources.


The junk food industry is targeting our children
2024-04-20, The Hill
Posted: 2024-09-15 18:54:02
https://thehill.com/opinion/healthcare/4605533-the-junk-food-industry-is-targ...

A 30-second commercial seems harmless. However, new research from my lab shows that food marketing to kids is more than a nuisance: it’s a key driver of poor diets. Food marketing impacts what kids like, buy and eat — increasing the risk of dental caries, obesity and type 2 diabetes. Like tobacco, tighter regulation of junk food marketing to children is needed to protect their health. This week, a bill introduced in the Senate, the Childhood Diabetes Reduction Act, proposes a crucial step forward by proposing limits on the types of techniques used to target kids ... as well as limits on where such ads can appear. The bill would cut kids’ exposure to the most harmful types of food marketing. Companies spend $14 billion each year on marketing to children, over 80 percent of which is for fast food and other ultraprocessed foods like snacks, candy and sodas. In 2016, Chile restricted child-directed appeals and placement of ads on children’s programming for unhealthy products and banned their sale and promotion in schools. In 2018, the country began prohibiting unhealthy food ads on any television program between 6am – 10pm. These regulations cut kids’ exposure to unhealthy food marketing by over two-thirds. While the Chilean regulation is much more comprehensive than what is being proposed in the U.S., the Senate bill would still achieve important progress by reducing kids’ exposure to the types of targeted marketing most likely to hook them on products.

Note: Big Food profits immensely as American youth face a growing health crisis, with close to 30% prediabetic, one in six youth obese, and over half of children facing a chronic illness. Nearly 40% of conventional baby food contains toxic pesticides. For more along these lines, explore concise summaries of news articles on food system corruption from reliable major media sources.


Police across US given new UFO handbook as they warn craft 'pose significant safety risks'
2024-09-07, Daily Mail (One of the UK's Popular Newspapers)
Posted: 2024-09-15 18:52:08
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-13742439/Police-given-new-UFO...

Police chiefs of America's largest cities have published the first guide about UAPs, which details chilling encounters and how officers can report such incidents. The 11-page document warned that unidentified flying objects 'pose significant safety risks to law enforcement air support units,' urging teams to be vigilant when in helicopters. The report also highlights stories from officers who claimed to confront UFOs. The organization, called the Major Cities Chiefs Association (MCCA), includes nearly 80 executives from major US cities who work together to advance public safety through a range of initiatives, including community outreach, research and policy development and now, UFO investigations. The report ... includes links to various UAP reporting websites, urging officers to report any bizarre sightings. More interesting, the pages detail first-person stories from police officers who encountered unknown spacecraft while out in the field. An officer patrolling Blairsville, Georgia in November 2023 claimed to have witnessed green lights in the sky. 'I am a police officer and deputy sheriff. While on duty after dark, near the top of my windshield (frame of view) I witnessed movement in the sky (southbound direction of view),' the officer's report stated. 'Upon concentrating my focus, viewing through the low light, I was able to make out a triangle craft, with 3 dim green lights per side (just bright enough to assess size, shape, and movement).'

Note: Watch our 15-min fascinating video vlog from this year’s 10th anniversary of the world’s largest UFO/UAP conference. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on UFOs from reliable major media sources. Then explore the excellent, reliable resources provided in our UFO Information Center.


Ex-Pentagon official Luis Elizondo alleges US recovered nonhuman specimens: report
2024-08-23, New York Post
Posted: 2024-09-15 18:50:33
https://nypost.com/2024/08/23/us-news/ex-pentagon-official-luis-elizondo-alle...

“The United States has been involved in the recovery of objects, vehicles of unknown origin that are neither from our country or any other foreign country,” former senior US government intelligence Luis Elizondo told NewsNation. Elizondo claimed that one of the two spacecraft the Department of Defense has is from the alleged 1947 unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP) crash in Roswell, New Mexico. “We as a nation have been interested in not only the vehicles themselves but the occupants of these vehicles; to include biological specimens. “We are not alone in this universe. The US government has been aware of that fact for decades.” Elizondo claims: “I saw a technical device that had been removed, excised by the Department of Veterans Affairs by a surgeon, a trained physician, from a US military service member who claimed to have a UAP encounter,” he told the outlet. “The physician claimed that the object tried to run on him or evade being excised.” Elizondo ... graduated from the University of Miami with majors in microbiology and immunology, with studies in parasitology. After a stint in the army, he claims to have “served as a special agent in counterintelligence” for the US and was tasked with helping protect “advanced aerospace technology” from falling into the wrong hands. In 2008, however, Elizondo claims he took “a new position at the Pentagon,” where he was later “approached by two individuals who were part of a program I hadn’t heard of before,” who knew his “background” and were considering him to join their “organization.” “After meeting the director and several other individuals, I agreed to take on a role in their program, which was called the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP), a niche program under the umbrella of AWSAPP,” he wrote. He would eventually make his way up the chain in the AATIP, where a “typical day” would be investigating UAP reports, “primarily from the Navy,” specifically in incidents where they “came dangerously close to our aircraft.”

Note: Watch our 15-min fascinating video vlog from this year’s 10th anniversary of the world’s largest UFO/UAP conference. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on UFOs from reliable major media sources. Then explore the excellent, reliable resources provided in our UFO Information Center.


‘I was the Pentagon’s UFO chief – I’ve held alien matter in my hands’
2024-09-07, i News
Posted: 2024-09-15 18:47:48
https://inews.co.uk/news/science/pentagons-ufo-chief-alien-matter-hands-3258387

Luis Elizondo [was the] director of the [Pentagon's] Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Programme (AATIP). He claims to have been told categorically by senior fellow researchers that the notorious Roswell incident in New Mexico in 1947 really did involve a UAP crash, perhaps involving two flying saucers – and that “four deceased non-human bodies” were recovered from the wreckage and examined. Asked what happened to these supposed bodies, he says on our video call: “We know where they were. We don’t know where they are.” He adds: “I’ve got to be careful what I say here, to not get in trouble – I still have my security clearance.” Other bodies have also been retrieved from subsequent incidents. He accuses major aerospace companies of trying to obtain crashed UAPs, to “reverse-engineer” the advanced machinery and replicate it. He warns that UAPs appear to be attracted to nuclear technology, sometimes interfering with weapons. He claims to have once even discussed setting a “trap” to catch a UAP by using US nuclear-powered aircraft carriers and submarines as bait. And he believes that UAPs have already cost lives. Ten people are said to have died in the “Colares incidents” after being harmed by lasers on a Brazilian island in the 1970s. Many of Elizondo’s assertions rely on unnamed people, who he describes as “credible sources.” But he also believes he’s seen pieces of a UAP himself – and that he’s even handled “alleged alien implants found in humans”.

Note: Watch our 15-min fascinating video vlog from this year’s 10th anniversary of the world’s largest UFO/UAP conference. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on UFOs from reliable major media sources. Then explore the excellent, reliable resources provided in our UFO Information Center.


The possibility of life on other planets is more likely than we know
2024-08-17, New York Post
Posted: 2024-09-15 18:46:16
https://nypost.com/2024/08/17/opinion/life-on-other-planets-is-more-likely-th...

As the chief scientist of the SETI Institute in Mountain View, Calif. — the world’s leading center for the search for extraterrestrial intelligence — I am convinced that finding life beyond Earth is not a matter of if but a matter of when. As recently as May of this year, scientists discovered a new potentially habitable planet, Gliese 12 b, just 40 light years away. This Earth-sized exoplanet, identified using NASA’s TESS satellite system, orbits a cool red dwarf star and shares intriguing similarities with Venus. Nearly 200 hundred types of prebiotic organic molecules have been detected over decades of astronomical observation in interstellar clouds near the center of our galaxy. They include the kinds of molecules that could play a role in forming amino acids — those building blocks of life. The sheer number of potential alien worlds adds to the probability that life could be abundant in the universe. Tens of billions of Earth-sized planets could be located in the habitable zone of sun-like stars in our galaxy alone. Because the probability distribution in nature predicts more puddles than large lakes ... the universe is likely teeming with planets harboring that simple life. Even if only one in a billion of those planets has developed life that’s made it to higher levels of complexity and intelligence, nearly a dozen advanced civilizations could populate our entire galaxy. Even if it were only one per 100 galaxies, there could still be billions of them throughout the cosmos.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on UFOs from reliable major media sources. Then explore the excellent, reliable resources provided in our UFO Information Center.


Aliens might be living among us disguised as humans — or in a base inside the moon, according to new Harvard study
2024-06-12, New York Post
Posted: 2024-09-15 18:44:53
https://nypost.com/2024/06/12/us-news/aliens-might-be-living-among-us-accordi...

Aliens might be living among us, according to a study by Harvard academics. The study by Harvard University’s Human Flourishing program further puts forward the idea that UFOs, or unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP), may be spaceships visiting their Earth-based alien friends. The researchers have investigated so-called ‘cryptoterrestrials’. These could be disguising themselves as humans to fit in, may have come from Earth’s future or might have descended from intelligent dinosaurs. The study was created to offer an alternate “unconventional” explanation for UAP sightings and to hypothesize what they might mean, and “the possibility that UAP may involve forms of non-human intelligence (NHI) that are already present in Earth’s environment in some sense” that exist “alongside us in distinct stealth”. The paper reads: “The author became increasingly aware of the depth of evidence and theory that also tentatively supports another ultraterrestrial explanation: the “cryptoterrestrial” hypothesis (CTH) – our focus here – which holds that UAP may reflect activities of NHIs concealed here on Earth (e.g., underground) and its environs.”

Note: Watch our 15-min fascinating video vlog from this year’s 10th anniversary of the world’s largest UFO/UAP conference. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on UFOs from reliable major media sources. Then explore the excellent, reliable resources provided in our UFO Information Center.


7 Ridiculous Examples of Government Waste in 2023
2024-01-12, Foundation for Economic Education
Posted: 2024-09-15 18:43:19
https://fee.org/articles/7-ridiculous-examples-of-government-waste-in-2023/

In his annual Festivus report—named after the fictional Seinfeld holiday—Senator Rand Paul tallies up some of the most egregious examples of government waste from the year. In all, Paul identified $900 billion in government waste from 2023. The national debt continues to skyrocket. One of the many problems with carrying such a heavy debt burden is the sheer volume of money that needs to be spent on interest. The U.S. Department of the Treasury spent $659 billion(!) in Fiscal Year 2023 just on interest payments. The Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has been pursuing some ... creative training programs. In a federally funded workshop last year, CISA employees focused on “effective strategies to build and sustain psychological safety that allows individuals to show up to work as their authentic and best selves.” “Ironically, the workshop coincided with CISA’s efforts to suppress protected speech on social media platforms,” Paul notes. “Even I was censored at the behest of our government speech minders. And all while I thought I was being my best self.” In addition ... CISA has been hard at work creating not one, but two graphic novels about “disinformation” as part of their “Resilience Series.” The first one covers foreign interference in elections. The second covers COVID vaccines. “There is nothing comical about wasting taxpayer money to justify censorship of constitutionally protected speech,” Paul notes in his report.

Note: Read more about CISA's role in manipulating and controlling public discourse. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and censorship from reliable major media sources.


DOJ’s Healthcare Probes of AI Tools Rooted in Purdue Pharma Case
2024-01-29, Bloomberg
Posted: 2024-09-15 18:41:13
https://news.bloomberglaw.com/us-law-week/dojs-healthcare-probes-of-ai-tools-...

Justice Department investigators are scrutinizing the healthcare industry’s use of AI embedded in patient records that prompts doctors to recommend treatments. Prosecutors have started subpoenaing pharmaceuticals and digital health companies to learn more about generative technology’s role in facilitating anti-kickback and false claims violations, said three sources familiar with the matter.. Two of the sources—speaking anonymously to discuss ongoing investigations—said DOJ attorneys are asking general questions suggesting they still may be formulating a strategy. “I have seen” civil investigative demands “that ask questions about algorithms and prompts that are being built into EMR systems that may be resulting in care that is either in excess of what would have otherwise been rendered, or may be medically unnecessary,” said Jaime Jones, who co-leads the healthcare practice at Sidley Austin. DOJ attorneys want “to see what the result is of those tools being built into the system.” The probes bring fresh relevance to a pair of 2020 criminal settlements with Purdue Pharma and its digital records contractor, Practice Fusion, over their collusion to design automated pop-up alerts pushing doctors to prescribe addictive painkillers. The kickback scheme ... led to a $145 million penalty for Practice Fusion. Marketers from Purdue ... worked in tandem with Practice Fusion to build clinical decision alerts relying on algorithms.

Note: Read how the US opioid industry operated like a drug cartel. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on AI and Big Pharma corruption from reliable major media sources.


AI medical devices often aren’t based on real patient data
2024-08-26, Cosmos (One of Australia’s Leading Science Magazines)
Posted: 2024-09-15 18:39:15
https://cosmosmagazine.com/health/medicine/ai-medical-devices-data-fda/

Nearly half of the AI-based medical devices approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) have not been trained on real patient data, according to a new study. The study, published in Nature Medicine, finds that 226 of the 521 devices authorised by the FDA lack published clinical validation data. “Although AI device manufacturers boast of the credibility of their technology with FDA authorisation, clearance does not mean that the devices have been properly evaluated for clinical effectiveness using real patient data,” says first author Sammy Chouffani El Fassi. The US team of researchers examined the FDA’s official “Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning (AI/ML)-Enabled Medical Devices” database. “Using these hundreds of devices in this database, we wanted to determine what it really means for an AI medical device to be FDA-authorised,” says Professor Gail Henderson, a researcher at the University of North Carolina’s Department of Social Medicine. Of the 521 devices in this database, just 22 were validated using the “gold standard” – randomised controlled trials, while 43% (226) didn’t have any published clinical validation. Some of these devices used “phantom images” instead – computer-generated images that didn’t come from real patients. The rest of the devices used retrospective or prospective validation – tests based on patient data from the past or in real-time, respectively.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on health and artificial intelligence from reliable major media sources.


NASA astronaut who watched Earth from space for 178 days realized humanity is 'living a lie'
2024-09-04, GOOD Magazine
Posted: 2024-09-15 18:37:19
https://www.good.is/when-nasa-astronaut-realized-a-heartbreaking-lie-after-se...

Former NASA astronaut Ron Garan ... described the striking beauty and stark reality he witnessed from space. “When I looked out the window of the International Space Station, I saw ... dancing curtains of auroras that seemed so close it was as if we could reach out and touch them,” he exclaimed. He also noticed something concerning. “I saw the unbelievable thinness of our planet's atmosphere,” the astronaut remarked. That “paper-thin” atmosphere is all that stands between humanity and disaster. Garan was troubled by how easily this fact is overshadowed by economic priorities. “I saw an iridescent biosphere teeming with life. I didn't see the economy. But since our human-made systems treat everything, including the very life-support systems of our planet, as the wholly owned subsidiary of the global economy, it's obvious from the vantage point of space that we're living a lie,” he said. He shared the concept of the “overview effect,” something many astronauts feel after they visit space. “It describes the shift that astronauts have when they see the planet hanging in the blackness of space. There's this light bulb that pops up where they realize how interconnected and interdependent we all are,” the astronaut explained. "When we can evolve beyond a two-dimensional us versus them mindset, and embrace the true multi-dimensional reality of the universe that we live in, that's when we're going to no longer be floating in darkness. That's our true calling.”

Note: Watch a powerful video where Ron Garan shares the profound revelations he experienced in space. Read about astronaut Edgar Mitchell's mystical experience in space as the sixth person to walk on the moon. Explore more positive stories like this about healing social division.


Robot controlled by a king oyster mushroom blends living organisms and machines
2024-09-04, CNN News
Posted: 2024-09-15 18:34:44
https://www.cnn.com/2024/09/04/science/fungus-robot-mushroom-biohybrid/index....

A wheeled bot rolls across the floor. A soft-bodied robotic star bends its five legs, moving with an awkward shuffle. Powered by conventional electricity via plug or battery, these simple robotic creations would be unremarkable, but what sets these two robots apart is that they are controlled by a living entity: a king oyster mushroom. By growing the mushroom’s mycelium, or rootlike threads, into the robot’s hardware, a team led by Cornell University researchers has engineered two types of robots that sense and respond to the environment by harnessing electrical signals made by the fungus and its sensitivity to light. The robots are the latest accomplishment of scientists in a field known as biohybrid robotics who seek to combine biological, living materials such as plant and animal cells or insects with synthetic components to make partly living and partly engineered entities. [Lead author Anand] Mishra engineered an electrical interface that accurately reads the mycelia’s raw electrical activity, then processes and converts it into digital information that can activate the robot’s actuators or moving parts. The robots were able to walk and roll as a response to the electrical spikes generated by the mycelia. [Professor of unconventional computing at the University of the West of England Andrew Adamatzky's] lab has produced more than 30 sensing and computing devices using live fungi, including growing a self-healing skin for robots that can react to light and touch. “When an adequate drivetrain (transmission system) is provided, the robot can, for example, monitor the health of ecological systems. The fungal controller would react to changes, such as air pollution, and guide the robot accordingly,” Adamatzky said.

Note: Explore more positive stories like this about technology for good.


“Out-of-Body Experiences” Can Lead to Profound and Lasting Psychological Transformations, New Research Reports
2024-09-10, The Debrief
Posted: 2024-09-15 18:32:24
https://thedebrief.org/out-of-body-experiences-can-lead-to-profound-and-lasti...

A new study from the University of Virginia’s School of Medicine says that out-of-body experiences (OBEs), like near-death experiences, can lead to profound psychological transformations, including increases in empathy and emotional connectivity. The findings ... suggest that these altered states of consciousness transform how people connect with others, fostering greater compassion and understanding. In this state, the sense of self becomes less distinct, allowing individuals to feel a deeper connection to the world around them. “We propose that OBEs might engender these profound changes through the process of ego dissolution,” researchers explained. “Ego dissolution fosters a sense of unity and interconnectedness with others. These sensations of interconnectedness can persist beyond the experience itself.” Researchers report that 55% of individuals who had an out-of-body experience reported that the experience profoundly changed their lives, and 71% described it as having a lasting benefit. The researchers cite numerous personal accounts that illustrate the transformative power of OBEs. One woman described her experience as being surrounded by “100% unconditional love” and feeling deeply connected to everyone and everything around her. “In an instant, I became part of the Universe. I felt connected to everything. Connected to everyone. I was completely surrounded by 100% unconditional love. I did not want to leave!”

Note: Explore more positive stories like this about near-death experiences and the nature of reality.


Your Car Is No Longer a Sanctuary—It's a Surveillance Tool
2024-09-02, Newsweek
Posted: 2024-09-11 14:31:14
https://www.newsweek.com/your-car-no-longer-sanctuaryits-surveillance-tool-op...

Ford Motor Company is just one of many automakers advancing technology that weaponizes cars for mass surveillance. The ... company is currently pursuing a patent for technology that would allow vehicles to monitor the speed of nearby cars, capture images, and transmit data to law enforcement agencies. This would effectively turn vehicles into mobile surveillance units, sharing detailed information with both police and insurance companies. Ford's initiative is part of a broader trend among car manufacturers, where vehicles are increasingly used to spy on drivers and harvest data. In today's world, a smartphone can produce up to 3 gigabytes of data per hour, but recently manufactured cars can churn out up to 25 gigabytes per hour—and the cars of the future will generate even more. These vehicles now gather biometric data such as voice, iris, retina, and fingerprint recognition. In 2022, Hyundai patented eye-scanning technology to replace car keys. This data isn't just stored locally; much of it is uploaded to the cloud, a system that has proven time and again to be incredibly vulnerable. Toyota recently announced that a significant amount of customer information was stolen and posted on a popular hacking site. Imagine a scenario where hackers gain control of your car. As cybersecurity threats become more advanced, the possibility of a widespread attack is not far-fetched.

Note: FedEx is helping the police build a large AI surveillance network to track people and vehicles. Michael Hastings, a journalist investigating U.S. military and intelligence abuses, was killed in a 2013 car crash that may have been the result of a hack. For more along these lines, explore summaries of news articles on the disappearance of privacy from reliable major media sources.


Fighting for a Free Press: Protecting Journalists and their Sources
2024-04-11, US House of Representatives Judiciary Committee
Posted: 2024-09-11 14:29:20
https://judiciary.house.gov/committee-activity/hearings/fighting-free-press-p...

Today’s managed information landscape makes it more difficult for journalists and our sources to report on ethical lapses, wrongdoing, and crimes. Today, much of the media is less likely to report those things, unless it serves certain political or financial interests. It’s been 11 years since CBS News officially announced that I was targeted by unauthorized intrusions into my work computer. Subsequent forensics unearthed government-controlled IP addresses used in the intrusions, and proved that not only did the guilty parties monitor my work in real time, they also accessed my Fast and Furious files, got into the larger CBS system, planted classified documents deep in my operating system, and were able to listen in on conversations by activating Skype audio. I sued after it was clear the Department of Justice would not hold their own accountable. The case is the first we know of in which a journalist spied on by the government received a clerk’s default against an agent working for government parties in a surveillance operation. It’s a small victory because he was soon reported dead, which means we can’t access potential information leading to the larger players. Besides that, I’ve learned that wrongdoers in the federal government have their own shield laws that protect them from accountability. Our intelligence agencies have been working hand in hand with the telecommunications firms for decades, with billions of dollars in dark contracts and secretive arrangements. They don’t need to ask the telecommuncations firms for permission to access journalists’ records, or those of Congress or regular citizens.

Note: The above testimony is from award-winning journalist and former CBS reporter Sharyl Attkisson, who was hacked by government operatives for pursuing stories that cast the Obama administration in an unfavorable light. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and media manipulation from reliable sources.


How ‘Big Pharma’ traded principles for profits: ‘Hype fears’ and ‘exaggerate supposed benefits’
2024-09-01, New York Post
Posted: 2024-09-11 14:26:26
https://nypost.com/2024/09/01/lifestyle/big-pharma-traded-principles-for-prof...

In December of 2002, Sharyl Attkisson, an Emmy-winning investigative reporter for CBS News, had an unsettling interview with smallpox expert Jonathan Tucker. In a post-9/11 world, with fears of terrorists using a long-eradicated disease like smallpox as a bioweapon, the US was preparing to bring back the smallpox inoculation program. But to Tucker, the very idea was “agonizing,” writes Attkisson. Why? Because it involved “weighing the risk of a possible terrorist use of smallpox ... against the known risks of the vaccine,” Tucker told the author. “A ‘toxic’ vaccine?” She writes. “Didn’t the smallpox vaccine save the world?” But as she soon discovered, it had serious side effects, including a surprisingly high possibility of death. Attkisson witnessed firsthand how deadly the vaccine could be in April of 2003, when a colleague at NBC, journalist David Bloom, died from deep vein thrombosis while on assignment in Iraq. He’d also recently been vaccinated for smallpox, and ... thrombosis was a possible side effect of the inoculation. The majority of scientific studies are funded and even dictated by drug companies. “Studies that could stand to truly solve our most consequential health problems aren’t done if they don’t ultimately advance a profitable pill or injection,” Attkisson writes. “These aren’t necessarily drugs designed to make us well, but ones we’ll ‘need’ for life,” writes Attkisson. Some [drug companies] hire “ghostwriters” to author studies promoting a new drug, exaggerating benefits and downplaying risks, and then paying a doctor or medical expert to sign their name to it. “We exist largely in an artificial reality brought to you by the makers of the latest pill or injection,” she writes. “It’s a reality where invisible forces work daily to hype fears about certain illnesses, and exaggerate the supposed benefits of treatments and cures.”

Note: Top leaders in the field of medicine and science have spoken out about the rampant corruption and conflicts of interest in those industries. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on Big Pharma corruption from reliable major media sources.


The staggering death toll of scientific lies
2024-08-26, Vox
Posted: 2024-09-11 14:21:26
https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/368350/scientific-research-fraud-crime-jai...

[Don] Poldermans was a prolific medical researcher at Erasmus Medical Center in the Netherlands, where he analyzed the standards of care for cardiac events after surgery, publishing a series of definitive studies from 1999 until the early 2010s. One crucial question he studied: Should you give patients a beta blocker, which lowers blood pressure, before certain surgeries? Poldermans’s research said yes. European medical guidelines (and to a lesser extent US guidelines) recommended it accordingly. The problem? Poldermans’s data was reportedly fake. A 2012 inquiry by Erasmus Medical School, his employer, into allegations of misconduct found that he “used patient data without written permission, used fictitious data and ... submitted to conferences [reports] which included knowingly unreliable data.” Poldermans admitted the allegations and apologized. After the revelations, a new meta-analysis was published in 2014, evaluating whether to use beta blockers before non-cardiac surgery. It found that a course of beta blockers made it 27 percent more likely that someone would die within 30 days of their surgery. Millions of surgeries were conducted across the US and Europe during the years from 2009 to 2013 when those misguided guidelines were in place. One provocative analysis ... estimated that there were 800,000 deaths compared to if the best practices had been established five years sooner.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corruption in science and in Big Pharma from reliable major media sources.


Science Has a Major Fraud Problem. Here’s Why Government Funding Is the Likely Culprit
2024-01-09, Foundation for Economic Education
Posted: 2024-09-11 14:19:43
https://fee.org/articles/science-has-a-major-fraud-problem-here-s-why-governm...

Although seemingly noble, the billions pumped into the US government’s National Science Foundation don’t always translate into finding cures for debilitating diseases, or developing groundbreaking technologies. In recent years, although technology and peer-review techniques have become more widespread, fraud has remained a consistent issue. As [J.B.] Carlisle analyzed dozens of government-funded control trials, he found a staggering 44% contained false data. These findings are swept under the rug by most mainstream news outlets. There are several ways the government introduces bias into research. For one, the state often ignores certain scientific queries, forcing researchers to adopt different hypotheses or study different questions to gain any funding. Without any market forces guiding research and development, study objectives start aligning more with the interests of bureaucrats and less with the interests of patients. Government agencies also don’t want to fund proposals that contradict the agency’s political ideas. If the research’s outcome even slightly threatens the government’s power, funding is likely to be cut off, often for extended periods. These outcomes are clearest when it comes to funding regarding the social sciences and economics. 34% percent of scientists receiving federal funding have acknowledged engaging in research misconduct to align research with their funder’s political and economic agenda.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corruption in government and in the scientific community from reliable major media sources.


A Psychologist Explains The ‘Streisand Effect’ —When Censorship Fails
2024-08-24, Forbes
Posted: 2024-09-11 14:17:54
https://www.forbes.com/sites/traversmark/2024/08/24/a-psychologist-explains-t...

We humans, by nature, are curious and rebellious; we strive to know more, and we often bristle when we’re told what we can and cannot do—especially when it concerns our right to knowledge. This very blend of curiosity and defiance is what often leads to a fascinating and ironic psychological phenomenon: the “Streisand effect.” In 2003, the California Coastal Records Project shared a photo online as part of an effort to document coastal erosion along the Florida coastline. However, the photo also happened to capture the Malibu mansion of the famous singer and actress Barbra Streisand. Streisand sued ... seeking a whopping $50 million in damages. However, Streisand’s lawsuit only served to make the issue she was facing exponentially worse. Before taking legal action, the photo of her residence had been downloaded only six times. But once news of the lawsuit broke, the photo became an internet sensation; it was downloaded over 420,000 times in the span of a month. In 2010, WikiLeaks released a trove of classified U.S. diplomatic cables, which exposed majorly sensitive information about international relations. In response, several governments—including the United States—attempted to block access to the WikiLeaks website. These efforts backfired spectacularly; the more governments tried to suppress the information, the more people were determined to access and share it. The documents spread like wildfire across the internet.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on censorship from reliable major media sources.


From Fight The Power To Work For It: Chuck D, Public Enemy And How The CIA Neutralized Rap
2024-08-22, Mint Press News
Posted: 2024-09-11 14:16:07
https://www.mintpressnews.com/fight-the-power-chuck-d-public-enemy-cia-neutra...

Rapper and activist Chuck D appeared at the White House earlier this summer, announcing that he was joining forces with YouTube and Antony Blinken’s State Department to become one of Washington’s “global music ambassadors.” Throughout the Cold War, the United States ... spent vast sums sending famous artists such as Nina Simone, Louis Armstrong, Dizzy Gillespie and Ella Fitzgerald overseas. The CIA deliberately chose to front the campaign with black musicians, helping to soften America’s image and promote a (false) message of racial harmony. Despite the official end of the Cold War, the United States has never stopped using music and musicians to foment unrest and spark regime change. The partnership between YouTube and the State Department will see the platform push pro-U.S. music and messaging across the world. This is far from YouTube’s only connection to the U.S. national security state. Its parent company, Google, is essentially a creation of the CIA. Both the CIA and the NSA bankrolled the Ph.D. research of Google founder Sergey Brin, and senior CIA officials oversaw the evolution of Google during its pre-launch phase. As late as 2005, the CIA was still a major shareholder in Google. These shares resulted from Google’s acquisition of Keyhole, Inc., a CIA-backed surveillance firm whose software eventually became Google Earth – the civilian offshoot of a spying software the U.S. government uses.

Note: Learn more about the CIA’s longstanding propaganda network in our comprehensive Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center. For more, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on intelligence agency corruption and media manipulation from reliable sources.


AI ‘Surveillance Pricing’ Could Use Data to Make People Pay More
2024-09-03, Scientific American
Posted: 2024-09-11 14:14:29
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/ai-surveillance-pricing-practices-...

Big tech companies have spent vast sums of money honing algorithms that gather their users’ data and scour it for patterns. One result has been a boom in precision-targeted online advertisements. Another is a practice some experts call “algorithmic personalized pricing,” which uses artificial intelligence to tailor prices to individual consumers. The Federal Trade Commission uses a more Orwellian term for this: “surveillance pricing.” In July the FTC sent information-seeking orders to eight companies that “have publicly touted their use of AI and machine learning to engage in data-driven targeting,” says the agency’s chief technologist Stephanie Nguyen. Consumer surveillance extends beyond online shopping. “Companies are investing in infrastructure to monitor customers in real time in brick-and-mortar stores,” [Nguyen] says. Some price tags, for example, have become digitized, designed to be updated automatically in response to factors such as expiration dates and customer demand. Retail giant Walmart—which is not being probed by the FTC—says its new digital price tags can be remotely updated within minutes. When personalized pricing is applied to home mortgages, lower-income people tend to pay more—and algorithms can sometimes make things even worse by hiking up interest rates based on an inadvertently discriminatory automated estimate of a borrower’s risk rating.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on AI and corporate corruption from reliable major media sources.


Erik Prince Calls for U.S. to Colonize Africa and Latin America
2024-02-10, The Intercept
Posted: 2024-09-11 14:12:40
https://theintercept.com/2024/02/10/erik-prince-off-leash-imperialism-colonia...

Erik Prince has been many things in his 54 years on Earth: the wealthy heir to an auto supply company; a Navy SEAL; the founder of the mercenary firm Blackwater, which conducted a notorious 2007 massacre in the middle of Baghdad. Last November, Prince started a podcast called “Off Leash,” which in its promotional copy says he “brings a unique and invaluable perspective to today’s increasingly volatile world.” On an episode last Tuesday, [he said] that the U.S. should “put the imperial hat back on” and take over and directly run huge swaths of the globe. Here’s are Prince’s exact words: “If so many of these countries around the world are incapable of governing themselves, it’s time for us to just put the imperial hat back on, to say, we’re going to govern those countries ... ’cause enough is enough, we’re done being invaded. You can say that about pretty much all of Africa, they’re incapable of governing themselves.” Prince’s co-host Mark Serrano then warned him that listeners might hear his words and believe he means them: “People on the left are going to watch this,” said Serrano, “and they’re going to say, wait a minute, Erik Prince is talking about being a colonialist again.” Prince responded: “Absolutely, yes.” He then added that he thought this was a great concept not just for Africa but also for Latin America. Previous bouts of the European flavor of colonialism led to the deaths of tens of millions of people around the world.

Note: Erik Prince's Blackwater served as a "virtual extension of the CIA." Learn more about how war is a tool for hidden agendas in our comprehensive Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center.


The Pentagon Is Planning a Drone ‘Hellscape’ to Defend Taiwan
2024-08-19, Wired
Posted: 2024-09-11 14:10:41
https://www.wired.com/story/china-taiwan-pentagon-drone-hellscape/

On the sidelines of the International Institute for Strategic Studies’ annual Shangri-La Dialogue in June, US Indo-Pacific Command chief Navy Admiral Samuel Paparo colorfully described the US military’s contingency plan for a Chinese invasion of Taiwan as flooding the narrow Taiwan Strait between the two countries with swarms of thousands upon thousands of drones, by land, sea, and air, to delay a Chinese attack enough for the US and its allies to muster additional military assets. “I want to turn the Taiwan Strait into an unmanned hellscape using a number of classified capabilities,” Paparo said, “so that I can make their lives utterly miserable for a month, which buys me the time for the rest of everything.” China has a lot of drones and can make a lot more drones quickly, creating a likely advantage during a protracted conflict. This stands in contrast to American and Taiwanese forces, who do not have large inventories of drones. The Pentagon’s “hellscape” plan proposes that the US military make up for this growing gap by producing and deploying what amounts to a massive screen of autonomous drone swarms designed to confound enemy aircraft, provide guidance and targeting to allied missiles, knock out surface warships and landing craft, and generally create enough chaos to blunt (if not fully halt) a Chinese push across the Taiwan Strait. Planning a “hellscape" of hundreds of thousands of drones is one thing, but actually making it a reality is another.

Note: Learn more about warfare technology in our comprehensive Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on military corruption from reliable major media sources.


In Nigeria, anti-government protests unite a divided country
2024-08-12, Christian Science Monitor
Posted: 2024-09-11 14:08:53
https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Africa/2024/0812/nigeria-protests-muslim-chri...

Since religious riots tore across the central Nigerian city of Jos two decades ago, its Muslim and Christian residents have largely kept apart. They have their own neighborhoods. They vote for different political parties. But the cost-of-living crisis that has swept Nigeria over the past year has blurred some of those boundaries. “If there is hunger in the land, the hunger that the Christian is feeling is not different from the hunger the Muslim is feeling,” observes Tony Young Godswill, national secretary of the Initiative for a Better and Brighter Nigeria, a pro-democracy group. When nationwide anti-government protests broke out in early August, hungry, angry Jos residents from all backgrounds poured into the streets. When Muslim demonstrators knelt to pray on a busy road one Friday afternoon, hundreds of Christian marchers spontaneously formed a tight, protective circle around them. Nigeria’s protests began in response to the soaring costs of food and transport over the past year and a half, which have more than doubled in some cases. Protesters blame the economic stabilization policies of President Bola Tinubu, which have included removing a heavy subsidy on petrol and devaluing the naira, Nigeria’s currency. In Abuja, the capital, Ibrahim Abdullahi was among those who marched. As a Muslim, he says he previously thought it was inappropriate for him to protest against a fellow Muslim like Mr. Tinubu. Now, he held a placard that read “We regret Tinubu.”

Note: Explore more positive stories like this about healing social division.


Boko Haram made them child soldiers. Will their communities take them back?
2024-08-27, Christian Science Monitor
Posted: 2024-09-11 14:06:50
https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Africa/2024/0827/Boko-Haram-child-fighters-co...

Abba Gana was only 10 years old when Boko Haram insurgents attacked his village in northern Nigeria in 2014. Along with the other boys his age, he was kidnapped. By the time he was 15, Mr. Gana had joined the ranks of the group’s fighters, carrying out raids like the one on his own village. “Growing up with them, I thought I was fighting for a greater cause,” he says of his time with the group, whose goal is to create a fundamentalist Islamic state. In 2022, he heard a government radio program urging Boko Haram members to surrender. “They said ... that we are welcome back [to our communities] if we repent,” he recalls. For the first time, Mr. Gana says, he allowed himself to imagine that he might be able to go home. Today, some 160,000 former fighters and their families have been “reintegrated” into Nigerian society, according to estimates by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC). The experiences of former child soldiers ... point to how complex those efforts can be. Many have struggled to find a place for themselves. But their supporters say it isn’t impossible. “Kindness always pays,” says Bulama Maina Audu, whose nephew was abducted by Boko Haram in 2014, and who now works with a group helping former child soldiers return home. “The fears and concerns of the communities they are returning to are completely legitimate, but they can only be addressed through dialogue,” says Oliver Stolpe, UNODC country representative for Nigeria.

Note: Explore more positive stories like this about healing the war machine.


Kids as cooks and dog walkers? How one elementary school encourages independence.
2024-06-25, Christian Science Monitor
Posted: 2024-09-11 14:05:05
https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Education/2024/0625/las-vegas-elementary-school...

“I can do things by myself more instead of having my dad or my mom do them,” says Deven Doutis. Deven’s teacher, Amy Wolfe, sensed students were entering higher grades with more needs than in past years. Some couldn’t open a water bottle, for instance, or navigate minor conflicts with their peers. So when Ms. Wolfe heard about a program called Let Grow, she decided to pilot it within select classrooms. The program’s premise is simple: When children gain independence, they grow into more confident and capable people. In a commentary piece published by The Journal of Pediatrics last year, researchers pointed to evidence showing a correlation between children’s dwindling independence and increasing mental health problems over several decades. “We are not suggesting that a decline in opportunities for independent activity is the sole cause of the decline in young people’s mental well-being over decades, only that it is a cause, possibly a major cause,” the authors wrote. In Ms. Wolfe’s classroom each month, students chose an independent activity, loosely tied to a theme, and completed it by themselves. Then they reported back to their classmates and teacher about the experience. There were no grades or critiques. If Ms. Wolfe asked any probing questions, it was to suss out how her students felt after, say, baking a cake or pulling weeds. Her hope is that their newfound confidence carries into the academic realm.

Note: Explore more positive stories like this about reimagining education.


Gabbard cites ‘political retaliation’ for her addition to TSA watch list
2024-08-14, Hawaii Tribune-Herald
Posted: 2024-09-04 18:04:00
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2024/08/14/hawaii-news/gabbard-cites-pol...

State House Republicans defended former colleague, presidential candidate and U.S. Rep. Tulsi Gabbard in a letter sent Sunday to the Transportation Security Administration demanding she be removed from the federal government’s terrorist watch list. The letter, sent to David P. Pekoske, TSA’s director in Washington, D.C., noted that one of their “former Hawaii State House colleagues, one of Hawaii’s ‘favorite daughters’, former Congresswoman, former Presidential Candidate, and combat veteran is on your TSA terrorist watch list.” “We understand that you are harassing her with your Air Marshals from flight to flight. We strongly urge you to immediately withdraw her name from the Quiet Skies program and/or provide full public transparency of the TSA’s reasons for maligning her name and reputation,” read the letter. Gabbard ... said that her inclusion on the watch list “is clearly an act of political retaliation.” “It’s no accident that I was placed on the Quiet Skies list the day after I did a prime-time interview warning the American people about ... why Kamala Harris would be bad for our country if elected as President and Commander in Chief. What hurts me the most is the fact that like so many Americans I enlisted because of the terrorist attack on 9/11, deployed to war zones to go after those terrorists, still serve in the US Army for over 21 years, and now my government is surveilling me as a potential domestic terrorist,” Gabbard said. “The real pain this has caused is the stress of forever looking over my shoulder, wondering if and how I am being watched, what secret terror watch list I’m on, and having no transparency or due process.”

Note: Why is the government targeting individuals who are simply exercising their First Amendment rights? For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption from reliable major media sources.


Meet The Spy Tech Companies Helping Landlords Evict People
2023-01-04, Vice
Posted: 2024-09-04 18:01:06
https://www.vice.com/en/article/meet-the-spy-tech-companies-helping-landlords...

Some renters may savor the convenience of “smart home” technologies like keyless entry and internet-connected doorbell cameras. But tech companies are increasingly selling these solutions to landlords for a more nefarious purpose: spying on tenants in order to evict them or raise their rent. Teman, a tech company that makes surveillance systems for apartment buildings ... proposes a solution to a frustration for many New York City landlords, who have tenants living in older apartments that are protected by a myriad of rent control and stabilization laws. The company’s email suggests a workaround: “3 Simple Steps to Re-Regulate a Unit.” First, use one of Teman’s automated products to catch a tenant breaking a law or violating their lease, such as by having unapproved subletters or loud parties. Then, “vacate” them and merge their former apartment with one next door or above or below, creating a “new” unit that’s not eligible for rent protections. “Combine a $950/mo studio and $1400/mo one-bedroom into a $4200/mo DEREGULATED two-bedroom,” the email enticed. Teman’s surveillance systems can even “help you identify which units are most-likely open to moving out (or being evicted!).” Two affordable New York City developments made headlines when tenants successfully organized to stop their respective owners’ plans to install facial recognition systems: Atlantic Towers in Brooklyn and Knickerbocker Village in the Lower East Side.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on AI and corporate corruption from reliable major media sources.


Department of Homeland Security may have lost track of thousands of unaccompanied migrant children
2024-08-22, The Independent (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2024-09-04 17:59:22
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/ice-report-lost-unaccompani...

US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) may have lost track of thousands of children who immigrated to the country as unaccompanied minors, imperiling both the children’s safety and the effectiveness of the immigration process, an internal watchdog report found. Between 2019 and 2023, more than 32,000 unaccompanied minors failed to show up for their immigration court hearings, and ICE was “not able to account” for all of their locations, according to a report from the ICE inspector general’s office. During that period, more than 448,000 unaccompanied children overall immigrated to the US and were transferred from ICE custody to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the agency responsible for placing them with a sponsor or in foster care. Once they were handed off to HHS for settlement, ICE couldn’t determine all of these children’s locations, and more than 291,000 of the kids were not placed into removal proceedings because ICE had never served them notices to appear or scheduled a court date for them. "Without an ability to monitor the location and status of [unaccompanied migrant children], ICE has no assurance [they] are safe from trafficking, exploitation, or forced labor," Inspector General Joseph Cuffari wrote in the report. ICE agreed with some of the report’s recommendations to incorporate more automated tracking mechanisms, but argued the watchdog had “misunderstandings about the process.”

Note: Watch our Mindful News Brief video on how the US government facilitates child trafficking at the border. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on immigration corruption and sexual abuse scandals from reliable major media sources.


Vulnerable and Voiceless—The Ongoing Failure to Protect Unaccompanied Migrant Children
2024-08-13, Newsweek
Posted: 2024-09-04 17:56:50
https://www.newsweek.com/vulnerable-voiceless-ongoing-failure-protect-unaccom...

In 2015, my career with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency led me to step forward as a whistleblower, exposing a grave issue—the placement of unaccompanied migrant children with inadequately vetted sponsors. Since 2012, Homeland Security officials have released over 730,000 children they encountered to Health and Human Services (HHS) for placement with sponsors. This year alone, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection data, nearly 95,000 unaccompanied migrant children have been encountered at the border. Each of these numbers represents a vulnerable life. The crux of the issue lies in our inadequate vetting processes for sponsors. Despite my whistleblowing efforts in 2015 that briefly led to policy changes, we've regressed. Children continue to be placed with potentially dangerous sponsors, exposing them to risks of trafficking, abuse, and neglect. This is not a partisan issue; it's a moral imperative that transcends political affiliations. Despite the gravity of this crisis, it's important to note that Congress is not meaningfully acting on the problem. Senator Chuck Grassley ... revealed that the HHS had placed children with sponsors connected to MS-13, a notorious international criminal gang, and even with individuals suspected of involvement in human trafficking rings. The trafficking of minors across our borders has become a dark and lucrative business, and our failure to adequately safeguard these children makes us complicit.

Note: This article was written by former U.S. Army Captain Jason Piccolo. Watch our Mindful News Brief video on how the US government facilitates child trafficking at the border. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on immigration corruption and sexual abuse scandals from reliable major media sources.


Telegram CEO Pavel Durov's Arrest Is Part of a Global War on Free Speech
2024-08-28, Reason
Posted: 2024-09-04 17:53:40
https://reason.com/2024/08/28/telegram-ceo-pavel-durovs-arrest-is-part-of-a-g...

Days after the French government arrested Pavel Durov, CEO of the encrypted messaging app Telegram, for failing to monitor and restrict communications as demanded by officials in Paris, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg confirmed that his company, which owns Facebook, was subjected to censorship pressures by U.S. officials. Durov's arrest, then, stands as ... part of a concerted effort by governments, including those of nominally free countries, to control speech. Durov's alleged crime is offering encrypted communications services to everybody, including those who engage in illegality or just anger the powers that be. If bad people occasionally use encrypted apps such as Telegram, they use phones and postal services, too. The qualities that make communications systems useful to those battling authoritarianism are also helpful to those with less benign intentions. There's no way to offer security to one group without offering it to everybody. Given that Telegram was founded by a free speech champion who fled his home country after refusing to monitor and censor speech for the authorities, it's very easy to suspect that Pavel Durov has run afoul of authoritarians operating under a different flag. The Twitter Files and the Facebook Files revealed serious pressure brought to bear by the U.S. government on social media companies to stifle dissenting views and inconvenient (to the political class) news stories.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on censorship and government corruption from reliable major media sources.


Mark Zuckerberg Blames Biden for 'Government Pressure' To Censor Facebook
2024-08-27, Reason
Posted: 2024-09-04 17:51:49
https://reason.com/2024/08/27/mark-zuckerberg-blames-biden-for-government-pre...

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg told the House Judiciary Committee that his company's moderators faced significant pressure from the federal government to censor content on Facebook and Instagram—and that he regretted caving to it. In a letter to Rep. Jim Jordan (R–Ohio), the committee's chairman, Zuckerberg explained that the pressure also applied to "humor and satire" and that in the future, Meta would not blindly obey the bureaucrats. The letter refers specifically to the widespread suppression of contrarian viewpoints relating to COVID-19. Email exchanges between Facebook moderators and CDC officials reveal that the government took a heavy hand in suppressing content. Health officials did not merely vet posts for accuracy but also made pseudo-scientific determinations about whether certain opinions could cause social "harm" by undermining the effort to encourage all Americans to get vaccinated. But COVID-19 content was not the only kind of speech the government went after. Zuckerberg also explains that the FBI warned him about Russian attempts to sow chaos on social media by releasing a fake story about the Biden family just before the 2020 election. This warning motivated Facebook to take action against the New York Post's Hunter Biden laptop story when it was published in October 2020. In his letter, Zuckerberg states that this was a mistake and that moving forward, Facebook will never again demote stories pending approval from fact-checkers.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on censorship and government corruption from reliable major media sources.


How US Big Tech Monopolies Colonized the World: Welcome to Neo-Feudalism
2024-08-20, ScheerPost
Posted: 2024-09-04 17:49:32
https://scheerpost.com/2024/08/20/how-us-big-tech-monopolies-colonized-the-wo...

In almost every country on Earth, the digital infrastructure upon which the modern economy was built is owned and controlled by a small handful of monopolies, based largely in Silicon Valley. This system is looking more and more like neo-feudalism. Just as the feudal lords of medieval Europe owned all of the land ... the US Big Tech monopolies of the 21st century act as corporate feudal lords, controlling all of the digital land upon which the digital economy is based. A monopolist in the 20th century would have loved to control a country’s supply of, say, refrigerators. But the Big Tech monopolists of the 21st century go a step further and control all of the digital infrastructure needed to buy those fridges — from the internet itself to the software, cloud hosting, apps, payment systems, and even the delivery service. These corporate neo-feudal lords don’t just dominate a single market or a few related ones; they control the marketplace. They can create and destroy entire markets. Their monopolistic control extends well beyond just one country, to almost the entire world. If a competitor does manage to create a product, US Big Tech monopolies can make it disappear. Imagine you are an entrepreneur. You develop a product, make a website, and offer to sell it online. But then you search for it on Google, and it does not show up. Instead, Google promotes another, similar product in the search results. This is not a hypothetical; this already happens.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on Big Tech from reliable major media sources.


How a US health agency became a shield for polluters
2024-08-07, Reuters
Posted: 2024-09-04 17:47:54
https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-pollution-atsdr-landf...

The 43,000 tons of radioactive waste and soil came from a top-secret initiative: The Manhattan Project, which built the atomic bombs America dropped on Japan in 1945. In 1973, that waste ended up in an unlined landfill in Bridgeton, Missouri, a St. Louis suburb. Workers spread it to cover trash and construction debris. In 1990, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency declared the West Lake Landfill one of the nation’s most contaminated sites requiring cleanup. [In 2012], residents mobilized, spotlighting stories of children dying from cancer. And they pressed waste-management giant Republic Services, the dump’s owner, to remove the radioactive waste. In refuting neighbors’ complaints, Republic tapped an unlikely ally that U.S. corporations have leaned on for decades: a federal health agency set up to protect people from environmental hazards just like the West Lake dump. A 2015 report by that small bureaucracy, the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) ... declared that the landfill posed no health risk to the community. Deborah Mitchell grew up ... less than a mile from the dump. She lost both parents to cancer and battled the disease herself. Dozens of neighbors have similar stories. Three cancer researchers told Reuters the number of cases in the neighborhood is worrisome. “You just feel like you’re being gaslighted by your own government,” Mitchell said of the ATSDR’s role.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and toxic chemicals from reliable major media sources.


Your food is more expensive – are US corporate profits to blame?
2024-07-26, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2024-09-04 17:45:52
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/jul/26/food-price-inflat...

While you may be feeling the pain from high prices at restaurants and supermarkets, many companies making and selling the products are doing remarkably well. Most have seen their profits jump as they continue raising prices on customers. Some companies say they have no choice but to pass inflationary pain on to consumers. Others, however, acknowledge they are exploiting the inflationary atmosphere to raise prices, or to shrink product sizes. Meanwhile, companies spent billions rewarding investors with stock buybacks. Menu and grocery store prices may remain elevated. In earnings calls, executives detail plans to maintain high prices even as some costs are falling. The companies’ net profits are up by a median of 51% since just prior to the pandemic, and in one case as much as 950%. The average American worker has not fared as well: wages are only up 5% since inflation’s peak. For the lowest earners, food price increases during the last two years are outpacing wage gains by over 340%. Kroger’s CEO told investors in June 2022, “a little bit of inflation is always good for our business”, while Hostess’s CEO said rising prices across the economy “helps” it profit because they can raise prices to levels that exceed their increased costs. Food prices have increased more than most other industries, federal data shows. While prices in the economy overall have risen by around 16% since mid-2022, families are now paying 19% more for food.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on food system corruption and income inequality from reliable major media sources.


How companies made $100m clearing California homeless camps
2024-04-16, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2024-09-04 17:42:30
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/apr/16/us-homeless-encampments-compa...

On an October morning, a small army arrived to evict Rudy Ortega from his home in the Crash Zone, an encampment located near the end of the airport runway in San Jose, California. The camp, one of the largest in California, was cleared between 2021 and 2023 in part by a private company named Tucker Construction. Public spending on private sweep contractors is soaring across California. In total, private firms have been paid at least $100m to clear homeless camps, an investigation by the Guardian and Type Investigations has found. Pete White, the founder of the Los Angeles Community Action Network ... says he’s observed a steady increase in the privatization of sweeps in recent years. “The growth of a private industry geared towards removing and dismantling informal settlements and houseless encampments has grown steadily in Los Angeles and across the country,” said White. “Not only are we seeing a growth in the loss of property, but also the loss of rights.” Firms vying for contracts to sweep encampments in California include mid-size construction companies that also do home renovations, as well as large environmental services firms that specialize in cleaning up hazardous waste and responding to public emergencies. A study of the health impacts of sweeps where the Crash Zone is located found that unhoused residents often lost medicines and other “health necessities” and that sweeps “drove unhoused people into hazardous, isolated, less visible spaces”. As well as the loss of their homes, they allege the destruction of belongings that rules are meant to protect.

Note: Read more about the unprecedented rise in food costs that are leaving millions of Americans facing higher prices and growing food insecurity. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corruption in government and in the corporate world from reliable major media sources.


How Norway Avoided Becoming a Fascist State
2017-02-16, Yes! Magazine
Posted: 2024-09-04 17:39:19
https://www.yesmagazine.org/issue/science/2017/02/16/how-norway-avoided-becom...

Consider the Norwegians, who experienced extreme polarization at the same time as the Germans did. The Norwegian economic elite organized against striking laborers and produced a polarized country that included both Nazi Brown Shirts goose-stepping in the streets and Norwegian Communists agitating to overthrow capitalism. The politician Vidkun Quisling, an admirer of Hitler, organized in 1933 a Nazi party, and its uniformed paramilitary wing sought to provoke violent clashes with leftist students. Quisling reportedly held discussions with military officers about a possible coup d’etat.The stage was set for a fascist “solution.” Instead, Norway broke through to a social democracy. Progressive movements of farmers and workers, joined by middle-class allies, launched nonviolent direct action campaigns that made the country increasingly ungovernable by the economic elite. The majority forced the economic elite to take a back seat and invented a new economy with arguably the most equality, individual freedom, and shared abundance the developed world has known. The key to avoiding fascism? An organized left with a strong vision and broad support. Grassroots movements built a large infrastructure of co-ops that showed their competency and positivity when the government and political conservatives lacked both. Additionally, activists reached beyond the choir, inviting participation from people who initially feared making large changes. Norwegians also ... chose nonviolent direct action campaigns consisting of strikes, boycotts, demonstrations, and occupations. Norway therefore lacked the dangerous chaos that in Germany led the middle classes to accept the elite’s choice of Hitler to bring “law and order.”

Note: Explore more positive stories like this about healing social division and reimagining the economy.


Ending a war by embracing innocence
2024-08-20, Christian Science Monitor
Posted: 2024-09-04 17:32:02
https://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/the-monitors-view/2024/0820/Ending-a-war...

In Sudan ... civilians have endured 16 months of a violent civil war. Last week, talks to end the war began in Switzerland, but only one of the two warring factions showed up. By the weekend, however, each side had taken a critical step. The armed group attending the talks agreed to enable the delivery of emergency aid to parts of the East African country where hundreds of thousands of people are at risk of starvation. About the same time, and seemingly independently, the other faction opened a vital border crossing for the same purpose. The mutual acknowledgment of the need to protect innocent life may have opened a door to solving one of the world’s gravest crises. “These constructive decisions by both parties will enable the entry of aid needed to stop the famine, address food insecurity and respond to immense humanitarian needs,” international mediators in Geneva said in a joint statement. Recent trends in conflict resolution, the International Committee of the Red Cross noted, have shown that protecting innocent civilians from harm “can have an impact on the success of peace negotiations and agreements, as well as on the chances for post-conflict reconciliation.” Humanitarian gestures, the ICRC observed, helped the Colombian government build trust with guerrilla factions and strengthen compliance with a 2016 peace accord. More recently, two armed groups in the Democratic Republic of Congo signed a mutual pledge in March to respect and protect civilians caught in the vast African country’s fragmented wars.

Note: Explore more positive stories like this about healing the war machine.


What quantum physics can tell us about nonviolence
2024-08-01, Waging Nonviolence
Posted: 2024-09-04 17:30:21
https://wagingnonviolence.org/metta/podcast/what-quantum-physics-can-tell-us-...

Dr. Amit Goswami [is the] founder of the Center for Quantum Activism and former professor at the University of Oregon. the quantum revolution, which started at the beginning of the last century, has put us in the position of an unfinished revolution, otherwise known as a kind of suspended paradigm shift where the world is shifting from a situation of materialist reductionism, as it’s called, where everything is regarded as based on material particles, to a world where everything is based on energy cannot be understood apart from consciousness. And that’s important for us because nonviolence does not operate materially. Nonviolence operates spiritually in the domain of consciousness. "Matter is just a possibility in consciousness," [said Gaswami]. "So, consciousness chooses out of the matter waves the actual events that we experience. In the process, consciousness identifies with our brain, the observer’s brain. We can talk about nonviolence in a very scientific way. If we are all originating from the same source, if we are ultimately the same consciousness that works through us, then it is complete ignorance to be violent to each other. So, the issue of nonviolence is basically a challenge of transformation. How do we transform using creativity, using the archetype of goodness, bring that into the equation of power, and learn to be nonviolent with each other?" There’s a lot of mental violence going on. But the point is that the way we approach it as violence begets more violence. So, it never stops. The answer, of course, is that nonviolence has to grow from inside of us. It has to be an intuition that often happens not just once or twice during the day, but becomes a conviction, a faith that I cannot be violent to my fellow human.

Note: Explore more positive stories like this about healing social division.


Censoring the Internet Won't Protect Kids
2024-08-20, Reason
Posted: 2024-08-26 13:13:54
https://reason.com/2024/08/20/censoring-the-internet-wont-protect-kids/

The internet can be misused. It is understandable that those in the Senate might seek a government solution to protect children. The Kids Online Safety Act, known as KOSA, would impose an unprecedented duty of care on internet platforms to mitigate certain harms associated with mental health. As currently written, the bill is far too vague, and many of its key provisions are completely undefined. The bill empowers the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to regulate content that might affect mental health, yet KOSA does not explicitly define the term "mental health disorder." Instead, it references the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Health Disorders…or "the most current successor edition." Even more concerning, the definition could change without any input from Congress. The sponsors of this bill will tell you that they have no desire to regulate content. In truth, this bill opens the door to nearly limitless content regulation, as people can and will argue that almost any piece of content could contribute to some form of mental health disorder. Anxiety and eating disorders are two of the undefined harms that this bill expects internet platforms to prevent and mitigate. Should we silence discussions about gun rights because it might cause some people anxiety? Could pro-life discussions cause anxiety in teenage mothers considering abortion? What about violent images from war? They are going to censor themselves, and users, rather than risk liability. This bill does not merely regulate the internet; it threatens to silence important and diverse discussions that are essential to a free society. [This] task is entrusted to a newly established speech police. The ACLU brought more than 300 high school students to Capitol Hill to urge Congress to vote no on KOSA.

Note: This article was written by Kentucky Senator Rand Paul. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on censorship and mental health from reliable major media sources.


'We have A.I. landlords,' housing attorney warns of automated evictions in Columbus
2024-07-15, ABC News (Ohio Affiliate)
Posted: 2024-08-26 13:11:13
https://abc6onyourside.com/on-your-side/6-on-your-side/ai-landlords-attorney-...

Columbus landlords are now turning to artificial intelligence to evict tenants from their homes. [Attorney Jyoshu] Tsushima works for the Legal Aid Society of Southeast and Central Ohio and focuses on evictions. In June, nearly 2,000 evictions were filed within Franklin County Municipal Court. Tsushima said the county is on track to surpass 24,000 evictions for the year. In eviction court, he said both property management staffers and his clients describe software used that automatically evicts tenants. He said human employees don't determine who will be kicked out but they're the ones who place the eviction notices up on doors. Hope Matfield contacted ABC6 ... after she received an eviction notice on her door at Eden of Caleb's Crossing in Reynoldsburg in May. "They're profiting off people living in hell, basically," Matfield [said]. "I had no choice. I had to make that sacrifice, do a quick move and not know where my family was going to go right away." In February, Matfield started an escrow case against her property management group which is 5812 Investment Group. When Matfield missed a payment, the courts closed her case and gave the escrow funds to 5812 Investment Group. Matfield received her eviction notice that same day. The website for 5812 Investment Group indicates it uses software from RealPage. RealPage is subject to a series of lawsuits across the country due to algorithms multiple attorneys general claim cause price-fixing on rents.

Note: Read more about how tech companies are increasingly marketing smart tools to landlords for a troubling purpose: surveilling tenants to justify evictions or raise their rent. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on AI and corporate corruption from reliable major media sources.


We Built a Surveillance State. What Now?
2024-08-20, Project on Government Oversight
Posted: 2024-08-26 13:08:56
https://www.pogo.org/analysis/we-built-a-surveillance-state-what-now

Surveillance technologies have evolved at a rapid clip over the last two decades — as has the government’s willingness to use them in ways that are genuinely incompatible with a free society. The intelligence failures that allowed for the attacks on September 11 poured the concrete of the surveillance state foundation. The gradual but dramatic construction of this surveillance state is something that Republicans and Democrats alike are responsible for. Our country cannot build and expand a surveillance superstructure and expect that it will not be turned against the people it is meant to protect. The data that’s being collected reflect intimate details about our closely held beliefs, our biology and health, daily activities, physical location, movement patterns, and more. Facial recognition, DNA collection, and location tracking represent three of the most pressing areas of concern and are ripe for exploitation. Data brokers can use tens of thousands of data points to develop a detailed dossier on you that they can sell to the government (and others). Essentially, the data broker loophole allows a law enforcement agency or other government agency such as the NSA or Department of Defense to give a third party data broker money to hand over the data from your phone — rather than get a warrant. When pressed by the intelligence community and administration, policymakers on both sides of the aisle failed to draw upon the lessons of history.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and the disappearance of privacy from reliable major media sources.


The Slow-Burn Nightmare of the National Public Data Breach
2024-08-16, Wired
Posted: 2024-08-26 13:06:15
https://www.wired.com/story/national-public-data-breach-leak/

Data breaches are a seemingly endless scourge with no simple answer, but the breach in recent months of the background-check service National Public Data illustrates just how dangerous and intractable they have become. In April, a hacker known for selling stolen information, known as USDoD, began hawking a trove of data on cybercriminal forums for $3.5 million that they said included 2.9 billion records and impacted “the entire population of USA, CA and UK.” As the weeks went on, samples of the data started cropping up as other actors and legitimate researchers worked to understand its source and validate the information. By early June, it was clear that at least some of the data was legitimate and contained information like names, emails, and physical addresses in various combinations. When information is stolen from a single source, like Target customer data being stolen from Target, it's relatively straightforward to establish that source. But when information is stolen from a data broker and the company doesn't come forward about the incident, it's much more complicated to determine whether the information is legitimate and where it came from. Typically, people whose data is compromised in a breach—the true victims—aren’t even aware that National Public Data held their information in the first place. Every trove of information that attackers can get their hands on ultimately fuels scamming, cybercrime, and espionage.

Note: Clearview AI scraped billions of faces off of social media without consent. At least 600 law enforcement agencies were tapping into its database of 3 billion facial images. During this time, Clearview was hacked and its entire client list — which included the Department of Justice, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Interpol, retailers and hundreds of police departments — was leaked to hackers.


A Memoir Offers an Insider’s Perspective Into the Pentagon’s U.F.O. Hunt
2024-08-16, New York Times
Posted: 2024-08-26 13:04:36
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/16/books/booksupdate/imminent-luiz-elizondo.html

Luis Elizondo made headlines in 2017 when he resigned as a senior intelligence official running a shadowy Pentagon program investigating U.F.O.s and publicly denounced the excessive secrecy, lack of resources and internal opposition that he said were thwarting the effort. Now Elizondo, 52, has gone further in a new memoir. In the book he asserted that a decades-long U.F.O. crash retrieval program has been operating as a supersecret umbrella group made up of government officials working with defense and aerospace contractors. Over the years, he wrote, technology and biological remains of nonhuman origin have been retrieved from these crashes. “Humanity is, in fact, not the only intelligent life in the universe, and not the alpha species,” Elizondo wrote. The book, “Imminent: Inside the Pentagon’s Hunt for U.F.O.s,” is being published ... after a yearlong security review by the Pentagon. In a foreword to the book, Christopher Mellon, a former deputy assistant secretary of defense for intelligence, wrote that, without Elizondo, “the U.S. government would still be denying the existence of U.A.P. and failing to investigate a phenomenon that may well be the greatest discovery in human history.” The program led by Elizondo investigated sightings, near-misses and other encounters between U.A.P. and Navy jets. It also collected data from incidents involving military and intelligence operations, including images of extraordinary craft maneuvers.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on UFOs from reliable major media sources. Then explore the excellent, reliable resources provided in our UFO Information Center.


Week of wonder: 'Are we alone?'
2024-07-25, WBUR
Posted: 2024-08-26 13:03:07
https://www.wbur.org/onpoint/2024/07/25/week-of-wonder-ufo-alien-aerospace-go...

Ryan Graves was in the Navy for more than 10 years. He's since left the service. This summer, he testified before the House Subcommittee on National Security, the Border and Foreign Affairs. And he told the representatives that as a pilot and a formally trained engineer, he'd witnessed many phenomena that he could not explain. "During a training mission in Warning Area Whiskey 72, 10 miles off the coast of Virginia Beach, two F-18 Super Hornets were split by a UAP," [said Graves]. "The object, described as a dark gray or black cube inside of a clear sphere, came within 50 feet of the lead aircraft and was estimated to be 5 to 15 feet in diameter. The mission commander terminated the flight immediately and returned to base. Our squadron submitted a safety report, but there was no official acknowledgement of the incident and no further mechanism to report the sightings. Soon, these encounters became so frequent that aircrew would discuss the risk of UAP as part of their regular preflight briefs." Graves now runs an organization called Americans for Safe Aerospace. It's a non-profit dedicated to understanding unidentified anomalous phenomena as a national security threat. He says he still doesn't know what he saw in the skies. Part of the reason for that is that any unidentified aerial phenomenon, as the government now calls them, is automatically highly classified. But he says, whatever they are, they must be taken seriously.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on UFOs from reliable major media sources. Then explore the excellent, reliable resources provided in our UFO Information Center.


The full truth of 9/11 is still emerging
2024-08-15, Los Angeles Times
Posted: 2024-08-26 13:01:22
https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2024-08-15/sept-11-saudi-arabia-hijacke...

As the 23rd anniversary of 9/11 approaches, Americans still don’t have a full accounting of the role of a supposed U.S. ally, Saudi Arabia, in the terrorist attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people. The voids in our knowledge owe both to the Saudi government’s opacity and denials ... as well as to our government’s lid on information gleaned through federal investigations, a congressional inquiry and blue-ribbon commission. President Biden in 2021 finally ordered many documents declassified, fulfilling a promise to the 9/11 victims’ families, but the releases were heavily redacted. “What we’ve uncovered, with no help from our FBI and no help from our own government, is that [the terrorists] had a significant amount of help, and that help came in the form of the Saudi government,” Brett Eagleson, president of the families group 9/11 Justice, told reporters after a court hearing. The lawsuit turns on whether assistance from Saudi individuals and groups to two hijackers who had lived in San Diego was part of the Al Qaeda plot. Of the 19 attackers, 15 were Saudis, including the two in California who would commandeer the jetliner that they crashed into the Pentagon. Osama bin Laden belonged to one of Saudi Arabia’s wealthiest clans. In a 1999 video first aired by CBS’ “60 Minutes”in late June, Saudi citizen Omar Al Bayoumi — an informant to Saudi intelligence, the FBI confirmed, despite Saudi denials — surveills the U.S. Capitol ... presumably for his Al Qaeda handlers.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on 9/11 from reliable major media sources.


Spies and Their Lies: the Trials and Tribulations at Guantanamo
2024-04-10, Counterpunch
Posted: 2024-08-26 12:59:42
https://www.counterpunch.org/2024/04/10/spies-and-their-lies-the-trials-and-t...

Nearly 25 years ago, a group of suicide bombers attacked the U.S.S. Cole off Aden, Yemen, with the loss of 17 U.S. sailors. A Saudi, Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, believed to be the mastermind of the attack, was captured in 2002, and was officially charged in 2011 with leading the attack. He has become the longest-running capital murder case at Guantanamo. Al-Nashiri, like so many captives at Guantanamo, was subjected to secret imprisonment by the CIA as well as waterboarding, rectal abuse, and prolonged sleep deprivation. A previous judge at Guantanamo excluded the confessions of al-Nashiri and others because of CIA’s torture and abuse. The al-Nashiri case was particularly egregious because his interrogators found him to be compliant, but a senior CIA official ordered the reinstatement of torture and abuse to include waterboarding. The CIA has always maintained that secret memoranda of George W. Bush’s Department of Justice permitted the use of “enhanced interrogation techniques” to include waterboarding in order to break the will of the captives. The CIA also had the support of psychologists and the American Psychological Association (APA) in conducting the coercive interrogation of terror suspects in Guantanamo and its secret prisons in East Europe and Southeast Asia. Two former military psychologists developed the CIA’s sadistic techniques, which were based on Chinese efforts to obtain false confessions from American prisoners in the 1950s.

Note: Read more about how the American Psychological Association supported CIA torture operations. Learn more about US torture programs in our comprehensive Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center. For more, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on intelligence agency corruption from reliable major media sources.


Bodycam Footage: Cop At Trump Shooting Says He Warned Secret Service About Roof
2024-08-16, The Intercept
Posted: 2024-08-26 12:57:57
https://theintercept.com/2024/08/16/trump-shooting-police-bodycam-video-secre...

Body camera footage from a police officer who responded to the assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump last month in Pennsylvania shows the intra-cop quarrels in the immediate aftermath of the attack. Video footage from body cameras on Butler Township Police Department officers, obtained by The Intercept, shed light on the chaos among law enforcement officials responding to the assassination attempt. The videos confirm previous reporting that a lack of communication and coordination between federal, state, and local police led to confusion at the rally and reflected insufficient preparation. Additional body camera footage shows one officer telling his colleagues minutes after the shooting that he warned the Secret Service well ahead of the rally to post agents at the building used by the shooter. One Butler Township police officer started to help other law enforcement teams climb onto a plastic shed to access the roof. As police teams scattered around the building debriefed on what happened, two Butler officers and the Secret Service agent stood looking at the storage shed. “Is that how he got up?” one police officer asked. “I have no idea,” the other said. “I fucking told them they need to post the guys fucking over here,” the first officer said to his colleague. “I told them that — the Secret Service — I told them that fucking Tuesday. I told them to post fucking guys over here.” “I thought you guys were on the roof?” the other cop responded.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on assassinations and government corruption from reliable major media sources.


Geofence Warrants Ruled Unconstitutional—but That’s Not the End of It
2024-08-17, Wired
Posted: 2024-08-26 12:55:25
https://www.wired.com/story/geofence-warrants-ruled-unconstitutional-tmobile-...

A US federal appeals court ruled last week that so-called geofence warrants violate the Fourth Amendment’s protections against unreasonable searches and seizures. Geofence warrants allow police to demand that companies such as Google turn over a list of every device that appeared at a certain location at a certain time. The US Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled on August 9 that geofence warrants are “categorically prohibited by the Fourth Amendment” because “they never include a specific user to be identified, only a temporal and geographic location where any given user may turn up post-search.” In other words, they’re the unconstitutional fishing expedition that privacy and civil liberties advocates have long asserted they are. Google ... is the most frequent target of geofence warrants, vowed late last year that it was changing how it stores location data in such a way that geofence warrants may no longer return the data they once did. Legally, however, the issue is far from settled: The Fifth Circuit decision applies only to law enforcement activity in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas. Plus, because of weak US privacy laws, police can simply purchase the data and skip the pesky warrant process altogether. As for the appellants in the case heard by the Fifth Circuit, well, they’re no better off: The court found that the police used the geofence warrant in “good faith” when it was issued in 2018, so they can still use the evidence they obtained.

Note: Read more about the rise of geofence warrants and its threat to privacy rights. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on Big Tech and the disappearance of privacy from reliable major media sources.


‘Empowering and healing, people’s assemblies are the future of democracy’
2024-08-21, Positive News
Posted: 2024-08-26 12:53:01
https://www.positive.news/opinion/galvanising-communities-to-confront-the-cri...

A wave of local democracy is sweeping across Europe. On the streets of Hull ... democracy is coming to life through people’s assemblies. Assemblies are public meetings where local people get together to discuss and decide on a specific issue, without political interference or hidden agendas. These assemblies can help us fundamentally rethink how we make decisions in our society, and create strong, active communities in the process. To survive ecological breakdown and the collapse of our failing economy, we need both, urgently. The culture war has gained a lot of ground. Overcoming these divisions is one of our biggest, most pressing challenges. Through assemblies, it’s possible to form self-organising communities where we lift each other out of the conditions that these ideologies prey on. Where we are forced to work alongside people we disagree with or even dislike, and organise positive initiatives that feed us, lower our energy bills, give us purpose and contribute to a stronger community spirit. Our assembly ground rules ask us to look for what we have in common, and there is a wealth of agreement to be found if you care to look for it. Cooperation Hull is holding Neighbourhood Assemblies across the city, and in each one we are learning what happens when a room full of strangers upend social norms to break bread, hold hands (an ice-breaker) and voice their honest opinions on the most important questions of our time. Soon we will launch the first citywide assembly: hundreds of people weighing in on a big issue, then attempting to make practical changes with the help of local organisations – and there are groups like us popping up from Cornwall to Glasgow, and Italy and Germany, too. The potential of assemblies is nothing short of revolutionary. It is the potential to change everything.

Note: Explore more positive stories like this about healing social division.


China ‘Angel’ Stops 469 Suicidal People Jumping off Bridge Over 21 years
2024-08-02, Good News Network
Posted: 2024-08-26 12:50:46
https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/china-angel-stops-469-suicidal-people-jumping...

Mr. Chen Si, known as the Angel of Nanjing, has volunteered to patrol the Yangtze Bridge every day, and over a 21-year career, he has saved 469 people from committing suicide. One of the most famous bridges in the country, it is also the world’s most popular location to commit suicide. Almost daily there are people lingering alone or wandering aimlessly along its sidewalk, and Chen engages them in conversation to test whether or not they are prospective jumpers. It started for Chen back in 2000, when he saw a desperate-looking girl wandering on the bridge. He was worried something might happen to her so he brought lunch for them to share and started to chat with her. He eventually paid for a bus ticket for her to go home, but realized that this was something that must happen all the time. For the past 21 years, he’s crossed the bridge 10 times a day on his electric scooter wearing his red jacket with the words “cherish all life” written across the back, he’s charismatic, he’s determined, he can be almost rude, in a certain Chinese way, in his efforts saving people’s life, and he’s become an expert. “People with an extreme internal struggle don’t have relaxed body movements, their bodies look heavy,” Chen [said]. He’s caught suicidal people who’ve been cheated on by their spouses, those who can’t afford school, and many other reasons. He has spare rooms in his house to keep those he pulls off the bridge in a safe environment.

Note: Watch the trailer for a 2015 documentary about Chen. Explore more positive human interest stories focused on solutions and bridging divides.


How doulas and cafes help people break the last taboo – talking about death
2024-05-20, Christian Science Monitor
Posted: 2024-08-26 12:48:00
https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Society/2024/0520/death-taboo-conversation-educ...

Ms. Gatto is Green-Wood [Cemetery's] resident death educator. She coordinates programs that include financial end-of-life planning seminars and the Mortality & Me book club. For much of human history, the issues of death and dying have been predominantly handled though religion and rites of organized faith. But as the United States became more secular, the loss of customs left a void. “Many people are raised with different ideas about fear connected to death. People end up carrying this stuff with them throughout their whole lives ... It’s creating these more positive outlets for processing these kinds of feelings with community. I get to see what people are yearning for, and then create events and programs around it – and make it, dare I say, a little fun, right?” [Gatto] says. The goal of today’s death education, says Anita Hannig, an anthropologist and author who studies death, is to find ways to address mortality without taking on the baggage that often accompanies it. “We’re trying to create a safe container for us to have those conversations and not be labeled as morbid, suicidal, or weird and obsessed with death,” she says. Some people’s first encounter might be a death cafe. The unstructuredness of death cafes means participants can steer the conversation to larger topics, like questions of an afterlife, legacy, or a bucket list. But they can also find it helpful to dig into more functional topics, like funeral planning, wills, and burial methods. These gatherings numbering in the thousands have taken place across 90 countries. The rules of death cafes are simple: They are respectful and confidential. They shouldn’t have any particular agenda. They shouldn’t be held with the intention of leading participants to any particular conclusion. And they should, ideally, involve cake.

Note: Explore more positive stories like this about healing social division.


Kamala Harris doctored headlines on Google present ‘significant ethical concern’: media analyst
2024-08-14, New York Post
Posted: 2024-08-20 21:38:57
https://nypost.com/2024/08/14/media/kamala-harris-doctored-headlines-on-googl...

Kamala Harris’ campaign team’s decision to doctor headlines on Google that tout the Democratic presidential candidate has sparked “significant ethical concern” over possibly “misleading” the public. The vice president’s team launched the sponsored posts on the search giant that linked to real news stories from various unsuspecting publishers such as CNN, USA Today, The Guardian and the Associated Press — but featured headlines and descriptions that were edited by her team. Google called the practice “common” and said the ads did not violate its policies because they were clearly labeled as “sponsored.” However, Rich Hanley, Quinnipiac University associate professor of journalism emeritus, called the marketing move “troubling” and “exploitative.” Hanley, who teaches a class in disinformation, said the Harris campaign is “exploiting a vulnerability in the information ecosystem” which is dangerous in this “climate of disinformation and misinformation.” “What they are actually doing is manipulating someone else’s content by changing headlines,” he said. “There should be a clear and bright line when it comes to news organizations.” The altered headlines ... were changed without the news outlets’ knowledge. For instance, one sponsored ad that links to NPR’s website features the headline “Harris will Lower Health Costs” while another that links to the Associated Press reads “VP Harris’s Economic Vision – Lower Costs and Higher Wages.”

Note: Both parties engage in sophisticated media manipulation to influence voter behavior, as with the Hilary Clinton campaign and DNC conspiracy to keep Bernie Sanders from getting the party nomination in 2016 and Cambridge Analytica's role in targeting voters with personalized ads in the UK on behalf of the political right. For more along these lines, explore summaries of revealing news articles on elections corruption and media manipulation from reliable sources.


Paxton's win against Meta is a win for privacy. It's only a first step.
2024-08-12, Houston Chronicle
Posted: 2024-08-20 21:36:39
https://www.houstonchronicle.com/opinion/editorials/article/paxton-facebook-m...

If you appeared in a photo on Facebook any time between 2011 and 2021, it is likely your biometric information was fed into DeepFace — the company’s controversial deep-learning facial recognition system that tracked the face scan data of at least a billion users. That's where Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton comes in. His office secured a $1.4 billion settlement from Meta over its alleged violation of a Texas law that bars the capture of biometric data without consent. Meta is on the hook to pay $275 million within the next 30 days and the rest over the next four years. Why did Paxton wait until 2022 — a year after Meta announced it would suspend its facial recognition technology and delete its database — to go up against the tech giant? If our AG truly prioritized privacy, he'd focus on the lesser-known companies that law enforcement agencies here in Texas are paying to scour and store our biometric data. In 2017, [Clearview AI] launched a facial recognition app that ... could identify strangers from a photo by searching a database of faces scraped without consent from social media. In 2020, news broke that at least 600 law enforcement agencies were tapping into a database of 3 billion facial images. Clearview was hit with lawsuit after lawsuit. That same year, the company was hacked and its entire client list — which included the Department of Justice, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Interpol, retailers and hundreds of police departments — was leaked.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on AI and Big Tech from reliable major media sources.


With JPMorgan, Mastercard on board in biometric ‘breakthrough’ year, you may soon start paying with your face
2024-05-20, CNBC News
Posted: 2024-08-20 21:34:19
https://www.cnbc.com/2024/05/20/this-may-be-the-year-you-pay-with-your-face-a...

Automated fast food restaurant CaliExpress by Flippy, in Pasadena, Calif., opened in January to considerable hype due to its robot burger makers, but the restaurant launched with another, less heralded innovation: the ability to pay for your meal with your face. CaliExpress uses a payment system from facial ID tech company PopID. It’s not the only fast-food chain to employ the technology. Biometric payment options are becoming more common. Amazon introduced pay-by-palm technology in 2020, and while its cashier-less store experiment has faltered, it installed the tech in 500 of its Whole Foods stores last year. Mastercard, which is working with PopID, launched a pilot for face-based payments in Brazil back in 2022, and it was deemed a success — 76% of pilot participants said they would recommend the technology to a friend. As stores implement biometric technology for a variety of purposes, from payments to broader anti-theft systems, consumer blowback, and lawsuits, are rising. In March, an Illinois woman sued retailer Target for allegedly illegally collecting and storing her and other customers’ biometric data via facial recognition technology without their consent. Amazon and T-Mobile are also facing legal actions related to biometric technology. In other countries ... biometric payment systems are comparatively mature. Visitors to McDonald’s in China ... use facial recognition technology to pay for their orders.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on AI and Big Tech from reliable major media sources.


How A Former Palantir Exec Built A Google-Like Surveillance Tool For The Police
2024-08-13, Forbes
Posted: 2024-08-20 21:31:03
https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2024/08/13/how-a-former-palantir-...

Peregrine ... is essentially a super-powered Google for police data. Enter a name or address into its web-based app, and Peregrine quickly scans court records, arrest reports, police interviews, body cam footage transcripts — any police dataset imaginable — for a match. It’s taken data siloed across an array of older, slower systems, and made it accessible in a simple, speedy app that can be operated from a web browser. To date, Peregrine has scored 57 contracts across a wide range of police and public safety agencies in the U.S., from Atlanta to L.A. Revenue tripled in 2023, from $3 million to $10 million. [That will] triple again to $30 million this year, bolstered by $60 million in funding from the likes of Friends & Family Capital and Founders Fund. Privacy advocates [are] concerned about indiscriminate surveillance. “We see a lot of police departments of a lot of different sizes getting access to Real Time Crime Centers now, and it's definitely facilitating a lot more general access to surveillance feeds for some of these smaller departments that would have previously found it cost prohibitive,” said Beryl Lipton ... at the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). “These types of companies are inherently going to have a hard time protecting privacy, because everything that they're built on is basically privacy damaging.” Peregrine technology can also enable “predictive policing,” long criticized for unfairly targeting poorer, non-white neighborhoods.

Note: Learn more about Palantir's involvement in domestic surveillance and controversial military technologies. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on police corruption and the disappearance of privacy from reliable major media sources.


We’re Entering an AI Price-Fixing Dystopia
2024-08-10, The Atlantic
Posted: 2024-08-20 21:26:04
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/08/ai-price-algorithms-realpag...

If you rent your home, there’s a good chance your landlord uses RealPage to set your monthly payment. The company describes itself as merely helping landlords set the most profitable price. But a series of lawsuits says it’s something else: an AI-enabled price-fixing conspiracy. The late Justice Antonin Scalia once called price-fixing the “supreme evil” of antitrust law. Agreeing to fix prices is punishable with up to 10 years in prison and a $100 million fine. Property owners feed RealPage’s “property management software” their data, including unit prices and vacancy rates, and the algorithm—which also knows what competitors are charging—spits out a rent recommendation. If enough landlords use it, the result could look the same as a traditional price-fixing cartel: lockstep price increases instead of price competition, no secret handshake or clandestine meeting needed. Algorithmic price-fixing appears to be spreading to more and more industries. And existing laws may not be equipped to stop it. In more than 40 housing markets across the United States, 30 to 60 percent of multifamily-building units are priced using RealPage. The plaintiffs suing RealPage, including the Arizona and Washington, D.C., attorneys general, argue that this has enabled a critical mass of landlords to raise rents in concert, making an existing housing-affordability crisis even worse. The lawsuits also argue that RealPage pressures landlords to comply with its pricing suggestions.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on AI and corporate corruption from reliable major media sources.


The era of freeloading is officially over
2024-08-12, CNN News
Posted: 2024-08-20 21:24:07
https://www.cnn.com/2024/08/12/business/disney-costco-netflix-password-sharin...

Once upon a time, you could have yourself a nice little Saturday of stocking up at Costco (using your sister’s membership card, naturally), before hitting up a museum (free admission with your 15-year-old expired student ID) or settling into a reality TV binge sesh (streaming on your college roommate’s ex-boyfriend’s Netflix login). Thanks to the fine-tuning of the tech that Corporate America uses to police subscriptions, those freeloading days are over. Costco and Disney this month took a page from the Netflix playbook and announced they are cracking down on account sharers. Want to put on “Frozen” for the kids so you can have two hours to do literally anything else? You’re going to need a Disney+ login associated with your household. The tech that tracks your IP address and can read your face has gotten more sophisticated. Retailers and streaming services are increasingly turning to status-verification tech that make it harder for folks to claim student discounts on services like Amazon Prime or Spotify beyond graduation. Cracking down on sharing was hugely successful for Netflix. For years, the streaming giant turned a blind eye to password sharing because doing so allowed more people to experience the product and, crucially, come to rely on it. Netflix kept growing and growing until 2022, when [it] cashed in on its brand loyalty, betting that it had made itself indispensable to enough viewers that they’d be willing to cough up $7-$15 a month to keep their access.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corporate corruption from reliable major media sources.


This African Country Kicked Out The U.S. Military. Did The Pentagon Lie About It?
2024-07-24, The Intercept
Posted: 2024-08-20 21:22:26
https://theintercept.com/2024/07/24/niger-us-military-troops/

For more than a decade, the U.S. had a significant counterterrorism partnership with Niger, with nearly 1,000 American troops stationed at two airbases: one near the capital in the populated south of the country, and another, on the southern fringe of the Sahara Desert. That partnership came to a sudden end this past March 16, when a spokesperson for the country’s ruling junta took to national television to announce that the government was unceremoniously kicking the U.S. military out. “The government of Niger, taking into account the aspirations and interests of its people, revokes, with immediate effect, the agreement concerning the status of United States military personnel and civilian Defense Department employees,” Col. Maj. Amadou Abdramane said. “The United States is proud of the past security cooperation between U.S. forces and Nigerien forces, a partnership which effectively contributed to stability in Niger and the region,” a State Department official [said]. But statistics supplied by the Africa Center for Strategic Studies ... show that terrorist violence in West Africa spiked while that partnership was in effect. Fatalities from attacks by militant Islamist groups in the Sahel, for example, have jumped more than 5,200 percent since 2016. As violence has spiraled, at least 15 officers who benefited from U.S. security assistance have been involved in 12 coups in West Africa and the greater Sahel during the war on terror.

Note: Learn more about how war is a tool for hidden agendas in our comprehensive Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center. Since 2008, the US military has been connected to coups in Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger, Mauritania, Gambia, Chad, and Guinea. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on military corruption from reliable major media sources.


Why is the U.S. spending $2 trillion on more weapons that could end the world?
2024-08-11, Salon
Posted: 2024-08-20 21:20:31
https://www.salon.com/2024/08/11/why-is-the-us-spending-2-trillion-on-more-we...

The Pentagon is in the midst of a massive $2 trillion multiyear plan to build a new generation of nuclear-armed missiles, bombers and submarines. A large chunk of that funding will go to major nuclear weapons contractors like Bechtel, General Dynamics, Honeywell, Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman. And they will do everything in their power to keep that money flowing. This January, a review of the Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missile program under the Nunn-McCurdy Act — a congressional provision designed to rein in cost overruns of Pentagon weapons programs — found that the missile, the crown jewel of the nuclear overhaul plan involving 450 missile-holding silos spread across five states, is already 81% over its original budget. It is now estimated that it will cost a total of nearly $141 billion to develop and purchase, a figure only likely to rise in the future. That Pentagon review had the option of canceling the Sentinel program because of such a staggering cost increase. Instead, it doubled down on the program, asserting that it would be an essential element of any future nuclear deterrent and must continue. Considering the rising tide of nuclear escalation globally, is it really the right time for this country to invest a fortune of taxpayer dollars in a new generation of devastating “use them or lose them” weapons? The American public has long said no, according to a 2020 poll by the University of Maryland’s Program for Public Consultation.

Note: Learn more about unaccountable military spending in our comprehensive Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center. For more, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on military corruption from reliable major media sources.


How Honduras’s Narco-State Leaders Fell Out With Washington
2024-08-12, Jacobin
Posted: 2024-08-20 19:40:56
https://jacobin.com/2024/08/honduras-hernandez-coup-narco-state

Honduras’s former president Juan Orlando Hernández has been jailed in the US for drug trafficking. But the narco-state he ran was a product of US foreign policy and of the US-backed coup against Manuel Zelaya’s left-wing government. By the time Hernández was extradited to the United States on April 22, 2022, the former director of the Honduran police was already in US custody. Juan Carlos Bonilla, known as “El Tigre” and trained and educated at Fort Moore, Georgia, was on August 2 sentenced to nineteen years in prison in the United States. Bonilla had been a “highly trusted” torpedo loyal to the Hernández tribe. According to a Justice Department press release, the president and his brother had “El Tigre” shielding their drug shipments while also conducting “special assignments, including murder” of a rival trafficker. In heading the Honduran police, Bonilla also organized the return of death squads, tasked with “socially cleansing” Honduras of environmental activists, indigenous spokespersons, and investigative reporters. Hernández began his second term in 2017 atop a heap of killed and tear-gased protesters. [Honduras] was, according to Honduras scholar Dana Frank, “the first domino that the United States pushed over to counteract the new governments in Latin America.” After Honduras, a parliamentary coup took place against Paraguay’s progressive president Fernando Lugo in 2012, Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff was impeached in 2015, and Brazil’s current president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was sentenced to a now-annulled prison sentence in 2017. Obama, hailed as the US president of “hope” and “change,” oversaw all three modern coups that overthrew left-leaning governments in favor of undemocratic, conservative, and US-friendly replacements.

Note: Bonilla was trained at the School of the Americas at Fort Moore, Georgia (now known as The Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation), which graduated more than 500 human rights abusers all over the world. For more along these lines, watch our latest Mindful News Brief on who's really behind the deadly war on drugs.


The US Created the Border Crisis
2024-05-10, Jacobin
Posted: 2024-08-20 19:38:37
https://jacobin.com/2024/05/everyone-who-is-gone-review-us-latin-america

Justified by the Monroe Doctrine — the United States’ claim to unchallenged dominance over the Western Hemisphere — the United States has criminalized asylum seekers, militarized the southern border, and intervened directly in Latin America. Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here: The United States, Central America, and the Making of a Crisis ... is a harrowing indictment of the United States’ criminal role in Latin America, a region in which it has sown crisis for over a century with scant regard for the lives of millions. Ronald Reagan ... was keen on avoiding another nation falling into the sphere of influence of Cuba and the Soviet Union. To prevent a drift away from the United States’ orbit, he pumped military aid to El Salvador’s caudillismo military. The result was carnage and mass displacement. In 1992, three million Salvadoreans were living in Los Angeles, a tenfold growth. [Guatemala's] General Fernando Romeo Lucas García adopted El Salvador’s El Mozote strategy of “cleansing” ... indigenous Mayans. By 1984 around 1.5 million people were internally displaced. Thousands would flee to the United States. Two hundred thousand civilians had been killed; there were 669 massacres; 93 percent of the crimes involved the US-funded and -trained military. The Reagan administration “transformed Honduras from a banana republic where the United Fruit Company picked the country presidents . . . into a virtual US military base.” By the 1990s, the states of Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras were heavily militarized. The armed forces acted with impunity, civil organizations had been hollowed out or were nonexistent, and gross inequality and racism were rampant. The CIA decided that the cocaine and heroin coming through Central America could be trafficked by various local military forces. The Northern Triangle countries [El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras] were used by the CIA to generate illicit earnings that financed the Contras — right-wing militias of Nicaragua — and Iran during its war against Iraq, an episode that came to be known as the Iran-Contra affair.

Note: This article also goes into how Reagan's war on drugs and the crack epidemic in Los Angeles fueled rampant gang violence, creating conditions that formed the Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) gang. Watch our Mindful News Brief videos on how the US government facilitates child trafficking at the border and who's really behind the deadly war on drugs.


Inside the L.A.P.D.’s Experiment in Trust-Based Policing
2021-02-25, Reasons to be Cheerful
Posted: 2024-08-20 19:35:51
https://reasonstobecheerful.world/lapd-community-safety-partnership-policing/

[Captain Emada] Tingirides, 50, is only the second Black female officer in Los Angeles to reach the position of Deputy Chief. Since September 1, 2020, she has been in charge of the Department’s new Community Safety Partnership Bureau (CSP). “It’s about trust,” Tingirides says when asked to describe CSP. “The community has to hold law enforcement accountable, and law enforcement has to hold communities accountable. We ask the communities what they expect from us, and we take their goals seriously.” CSP represents a major shift in L.A.’s notoriously hardline approach to policing. But there’s reason to believe it could stick — independent studies have shown that the CSP has increased trust in police, reduced violent crime and saved the city millions of dollars. Under the CSP concept, police officers are stationed in an area for at least five years. They become part of the community, attend neighborhood meetings, organize soccer tournaments, hand out “Donuts for Dads,” and “Muffins for Moms.” They work closely with gang intervention workers, social workers, non-profits and, most important, neighborhood residents. “I thought all cops were bad,” a nine-year old boy admits. But now, he says, he loves Community Officer Jeff Joyce, who started “Nicks Kids,” a soccer club for youths. “Our methods are unconventional, and we are adaptable,” Tingirides says. “Each neighborhood is different.”

Note: Explore more positive stories like this on repairing criminal justice.


Sending Unarmed Responders Instead of Police: What We’ve Learned
2024-07-25, The Marshall Project
Posted: 2024-08-20 19:33:48
https://www.themarshallproject.org/2024/07/25/police-mental-health-alternativ...

Many sweeping attempts to reform policing have faltered. But one proposal that has taken hold across the country, and continues to spread, is launching alternative first response units that send unarmed civilians, instead of armed officers, to some emergencies. In Dayton, Ohio, trained mediators are dispatched to neighbor disputes and trespassing calls. In Los Angeles, outreach workers who have lived through homelessness, incarceration or addiction respond to 911 calls concerning people living on the street. In Anchorage, Alaska, trained clinicians and paramedics are showing up to mental health crises. Researchers have tracked over 100 alternative crisis response units operating across the U.S. Some distinguish between mobile crisis teams, which exclusively send clinicians to mental health emergencies, and community responder programs, which send civilians to a wider range of calls. The key tenets are that they can be the first response to an emergency situation and that they arrive without armed officers. There have been no known major injuries of any community responder on the job. Eventually, a large portion of current police work could be handed off to alternative responders. A 2020 review of 911 calls ... estimates that up to 68% of calls “could be handled without sending an armed officer,” according to a report by the Center for American Progress and the Law Enforcement Action Partnership.

Note: Explore more positive stories like this on repairing criminal justice.


There was no medicine, so this Ukrainian nurse sang lullabies to wounded soldiers
2024-03-19, Christian Science Monitor
Posted: 2024-08-20 19:31:29
https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Europe/2024/0319/There-was-no-medicine-so-thi...

Not long after Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, Oksana Sokhan found herself in an evacuation minibus, wedged between two stricken soldiers in the dark, as the vehicle tried to safely get away from the front line. She began singing Ukrainian lullabies to the wounded fighters, and stroking them as a mother would. Their anxiety eased. If she stopped the soothing singing for a moment, she saw their anxiety surge again. “I was surprised myself that it worked – surely it worked on a subconscious level for both of them,” recalls the nurse. Ms. Sokhan still laughs about that moment of serendipitous support with the lullabies in the minibus, and about how – after they had all arrived safely at the hospital – a nurse came out to report that one of the men was convinced his mother had been with him during the evacuation. Ms. Sokhan may be just one senior nurse, but she is emblematic of the legions of Ukrainian military medics devoted to preserving the lives of the country’s outnumbered forces. For years a member of the 128th Separate Transcarpathian Mountain Assault Brigade, she has seen a whirlwind of casualties at different points along the front line since Russia’s all-out invasion. “We want to save everyone,” she says. “Of course, it’s very important to see the results of your work, because when they come here” the soldiers are traumatized, in pain, “and when they leave ... they are already waving sometimes.”

Note: Explore more positive stories like this on healing the war machine.


More Than Half of Americans Think the First Amendment Provides Too Many Rights
2024-08-03, Aol News
Posted: 2024-08-12 23:08:35
https://www.aol.com/news/more-half-americans-think-first-110049490.html?gucco...

More than half of Americans believe the First Amendment can go too far in the rights it guarantees, according to a new survey from the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), a First Amendment–focused nonprofit. The survey, released on Thursday, asked 1,000 American adults a range of questions about the First Amendment, free speech, and the security of those rights. Fifty-three percent of respondents agreed with the statement "The First Amendment goes too far in the rights it guarantees" to at least some degree, with 28 percent reporting that it "mostly" or "completely" describes their thoughts. Americans were further divided along partisan lines. Over 60 percent of Democrats thought the First Amendment could go too far, compared to 52 percent of Republicans. "Evidently, one out of every two Americans wishes they had fewer civil liberties," Sean Stevens, FIRE's chief research adviser, said. "Many of them reject the right to assemble, to have a free press, and to petition the government. This is a dictator's fantasy." Further, 1 in 5 respondents said they were "somewhat" or "very" worried about losing their job if someone complains about something they said. Eighty-three percent reported self-censoring in the past month, with 23 percent doing so "fairly" or "very" often. Just 22 percent of respondents said they believed the right to free speech was "very" or "completely" secure.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on censorship and the erosion of civil liberties from reliable major media sources.


There’s no way for humanity to win an AI arms race
2024-08-04, Washington Post
Posted: 2024-08-12 23:06:33
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/08/04/sam-altman-ai-arms-race/

In 2017, hundreds of artificial intelligence experts signed the Asilomar AI Principles for how to govern artificial intelligence. I was one of them. So was OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. The signatories committed to avoiding an arms race on the grounds that “teams developing AI systems should actively cooperate to avoid corner-cutting on safety standards.” The stated goal of OpenAI is to create artificial general intelligence, a system that is as good as expert humans at most tasks. It could have significant benefits. It could also threaten millions of lives and livelihoods if not developed in a provably safe way. It could be used to commit bioterrorism, run massive cyberattacks or escalate nuclear conflict. Given these dangers, a global arms race to unleash artificial general intelligence AGI serves no one’s interests. The true power of AI lies ... in its potential to bridge divides. AI might help us identify fundamental patterns in global conflicts and human behavior, leading to more profound solutions. AI’s ability to process vast amounts of data could help identify patterns in global conflicts by suggesting novel approaches to resolution that human negotiators might overlook. Advanced natural language processing could break down communication barriers, allowing for more nuanced dialogue between nations and cultures. Predictive AI models could identify early signs of potential conflicts, allowing for preemptive diplomatic interventions.

Note: Learn more about emerging warfare technology in our comprehensive Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center. For more, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on AI from reliable major media sources.


A booming industry of AI age scanners, aimed at children’s faces
2024-08-07, Washington Post
Posted: 2024-08-12 23:03:54
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/08/07/face-scanning-kids-onlin...

In 2021, parents in South Africa with children between the ages of 5 and 13 were offered an unusual deal. For every photo of their child’s face, a London-based artificial intelligence firm would donate 20 South African rands, about $1, to their children’s school as part of a campaign called “Share to Protect.” With promises of protecting children, a little-known group of companies in an experimental corner of the tech industry known as “age assurance” has begun engaging in a massive collection of faces, opening the door to privacy risks for anyone who uses the web. The companies say their age-check tools could give parents ... peace of mind. But by scanning tens of millions of faces a year, the tools could also subject children — and everyone else — to a level of inspection rarely seen on the open internet and boost the chances their personal data could be hacked, leaked or misused. Nineteen states, home to almost 140 million Americans, have passed or enacted laws requiring online age checks since the beginning of last year, including Virginia, Texas and Florida. For the companies, that’s created a gold mine. But ... Alex Stamos, the former security chief of Facebook, which uses Yoti, said “most age verification systems range from ‘somewhat privacy violating’ to ‘authoritarian nightmare.'” Some also fear that lawmakers could use the tools to bar teens from content they dislike, including First Amendment-protected speech.

Note: Learn about Proctorio, an AI surveillance anti-cheating software used in schools to monitor children through webcams—conducting "desk scans," "face detection," and "gaze detection" to flag potential cheating and to spot anybody “looking away from the screen for an extended period of time." For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on AI and the disappearance of privacy from reliable major media sources.


Big tech firms profit from disorder. Don’t let them use these riots to push for more surveillance
2024-08-07, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2024-08-12 23:01:25
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/aug/07/big-tech-disord...

The eruption of racist violence in England and Northern Ireland raises urgent questions about the responsibilities of social media companies, and how the police use facial recognition technology. While social media isn’t the root of these riots, it has allowed inflammatory content to spread like wildfire and helped rioters coordinate. The great elephant in the room is the wealth, power and arrogance of the big tech emperors. Silicon Valley billionaires are richer than many countries. That mature modern states should allow them unfettered freedom to regulate the content they monetise is a gross abdication of duty, given their vast financial interest in monetising insecurity and division. In recent years, [facial recognition] has been used on our streets without any significant public debate. We wouldn’t dream of allowing telephone taps, DNA retention or even stop and search and arrest powers to be so unregulated by the law, yet this is precisely what has happened with facial recognition. Our facial images are gathered en masse via CCTV cameras, the passport database and the internet. At no point were we asked about this. Individual police forces have entered into direct contracts with private companies of their choosing, making opaque arrangements to trade our highly sensitive personal data with private companies that use it to develop proprietary technology. There is no specific law governing how the police, or private companies ... are authorised to use this technology. Experts at Big Brother Watch believe the inaccuracy rate for live facial recognition since the police began using it is around 74%, and there are many cases pending about false positive IDs.

Note: Many US states are not required to reveal that they used face recognition technology to identify suspects, even though misidentification is a common occurrence. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on Big Tech and the disappearance of privacy from reliable major media sources.


Texas AG wins $1.4B settlement from Facebook parent Meta over facial-capture charges
2024-07-30, NBC News
Posted: 2024-08-12 22:59:04
https://www.nbcnews.com/business/business-news/texas-ag-wins-1point4-billion-...

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has won a $1.4 billion settlement from Facebook parent Meta over charges that it captured users' facial and biometric data without properly informing them it was doing so. Paxton said that starting in 2011, Meta, then known as Facebook, rolled out a “tag” feature that involved software that learned how to recognize and sort faces in photos. In doing so, it automatically turned on the feature without explaining how it worked, Paxton said — something that violated a 2009 state statute governing the use of biometric data, as well as running afoul of the state's deceptive trade practices act. "Unbeknownst to most Texans, for more than a decade Meta ran facial recognition software on virtually every face contained in the photographs uploaded to Facebook, capturing records of the facial geometry of the people depicted," he said in a statement. As part of the settlement, Meta did not admit to wrongdoing. Facebook discontinued how it had previously used face-recognition technology in 2021, in the process deleting the face-scan data of more than one billion users. The settlement amount, which Paxton said is the largest ever obtained by a single state against a business, will be paid out over five years. “This historic settlement demonstrates our commitment to standing up to the world’s biggest technology companies and holding them accountable for breaking the law and violating Texans’ privacy rights," Paxton said.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on Big Tech and the disappearance of privacy from reliable major media sources.


Google remains focused on its long quest for your eyeballs
2024-05-19, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2024-08-12 22:57:04
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/article/2024/may/19/google-ai-overview...

Google announced this week that it would begin the international rollout of its new artificial intelligence-powered search feature, called AI Overviews. When billions of people search a range of topics from news to recipes to general knowledge questions, what they see first will now be an AI-generated summary. While Google was once mostly a portal to reach other parts of the internet, it has spent years consolidating content and services to make itself into the web’s primary destination. Weather, flights, sports scores, stock prices, language translation, showtimes and a host of other information have gradually been incorporated into Google’s search page over the past 15 or so years. Finding that information no longer requires clicking through to another website. With AI Overviews, the rest of the internet may meet the same fate. Google has tried to assuage publishers’ fears that users will no longer see their links or click through to their sites. Research firm Gartner predicts a 25% drop in traffic to websites from search engines by 2026 – a decrease that would be disastrous for most outlets and creators. What’s left for publishers is largely direct visits to their own home pages and Google referrals. If AI Overviews take away a significant portion of the latter, it could mean less original reporting, fewer creators publishing cooking blogs or how-to guides, and a less diverse range of information sources.

Note: WantToKnow.info traffic from Google search has fallen sharply as Google has stopped indexing most websites. These new AI summaries make independent media sites even harder to find. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on AI and Big Tech from reliable major media sources.


Google loses antitrust trial in major blow to tech giant
2024-08-05, Yahoo News
Posted: 2024-08-12 22:54:24
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/google-loses-antitrust-trial-in-major-blow-to-...

The bedrock of Google’s empire sustained a major blow on Monday after a judge found its search and ad businesses violated antitrust law. The ruling, made by the District of Columbia's Judge Amit Mehta, sided with the US Justice Department and a group of states in a set of cases alleging the tech giant abused its dominance in online search. "Google is a monopolist, and it has acted as one to maintain its monopoly," Mehta wrote in his ruling. The findings, if upheld, could outlaw contracts that for years all but assured Google's dominance. Judge Mehta ruled that Google violated antitrust law in the markets for "general search" and "general search text" ads, which are the ads that appear at the top of the search results page. Apple, Amazon, and Meta are defending themselves against a series of other federal- and state-led antitrust suits, some of which make similar claims. Google’s disputed behavior revolved around contracts it entered into with manufacturers of computer devices and mobile devices, as well as with browser services, browser developers, and wireless carriers. These contracts, the government claimed, violated antitrust laws because they made Google the mandatory default search provider. Companies that entered into those exclusive contracts have included Apple, LG, Samsung, AT&T, T-Mobile, Verizon, and Mozilla. Those deals are why smartphones ... come preloaded with Google's various apps.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on Big Tech from reliable major media sources.


Silicon Valley is giving off divorced dad energy
2024-08-06, Business Insider
Posted: 2024-08-12 22:50:40
https://www.businessinsider.com/tech-industry-divorced-dad-energy-google-micr...

Liquid capital, growing market dominance, slick ads, and fawning media made it easy for giants like Google, Microsoft, Apple, and Amazon to expand their footprint and grow their bottom lines. Yet ... these companies got lazy, entitled, and demanding. They started to care less about the foundations of their business — like having happy customers and stable products — and more about making themselves feel better by reinforcing their monopolies. Big Tech has decided the way to keep customers isn't to compete or provide them with a better service but instead make it hard to leave, trick customers into buying things, or eradicate competition so that it can make things as profitable as possible, even if the experience is worse. After two decades of consistent internal innovation, Big Tech got addicted to acquisitions in the 2010s: Apple bought Siri; Meta bought WhatsApp, Instagram, and Oculus; Amazon bought Twitch; Google bought Nest and Motorola's entire mobility division. Over time, the acquisitions made it impossible for these companies to focus on delivering the features we needed. Google, Meta, Amazon, and Apple are simply no longer forces for innovation. Generative AI is the biggest, dumbest attempt that tech has ever made to escape the fallout of building companies by acquiring other companies, taking their eyes off actually inventing things, and ignoring the most important part of their world: the customer.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on Big Tech from reliable major media sources.


My home insurer is spying on me
2024-08-07, Business Insider
Posted: 2024-08-12 22:47:26
https://www.businessinsider.com/homeowners-insurance-nightmare-cancellation-s...

My insurance broker left a frantic voicemail telling me that my homeowner's insurance had lapsed. When I finally reached my insurance broker, he told me the reason Travelers revoked my policy: AI-powered drone surveillance. My finances were imperiled, it seemed, by a bad piece of code. As my broker revealed, the ominous threat that canceled my insurance was nothing more than moss. Travelers not only uses aerial photography and AI to monitor its customers' roofs, but also wrote patents on the technology — nearly 50 patents actually. And it may not be the only insurer spying from the skies. No one can use AI to know the future; you're training the technology to make guesses based on changes in roof color and grainy aerial images. But even the best AI models will get a lot of predictions wrong, especially at scale and particularly where you're trying to make guesses about the future of radically different roof designs across countless buildings in various environments. For the insurance companies designing the algorithms, that means a lot of questions about when to put a thumb on the scale in favor of, or against, the homeowner. And insurance companies will have huge incentives to choose against the homeowner every time. When Travelers flew a drone over my house, I never knew. When it decided I was too much of a risk, I had no way of knowing why or how. As more and more companies use more and more opaque forms of AI to decide the course of our lives, we're all at risk.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on AI and the disappearance of privacy from reliable major media sources.


Who owns the Moon? A new space race means it could be up for grabs
2024-06-08, BBC News
Posted: 2024-08-12 22:45:03
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cxwwjlrk1mlo

This week, images were beamed back to Earth of China’s flag unfurled on the Moon. It’s the country’s fourth landing there. In the past 12 months, India and Japan have also set down spacecraft on the lunar surface. In February, US firm Intuitive Machines became the first private company to put a lander on the Moon. Meanwhile, Nasa wants to send humans back to the Moon, with its Artemis astronauts aiming for a 2026 landing. China says it will send humans to the Moon by 2030. And instead of fleeting visits, the plan is to build permanent bases. A UN agreement from 1967 says no nation can own the Moon. Instead, the fantastically named Outer Space Treaty says it belongs to everyone, and that any exploration has to be carried out for the benefit of all humankind and in the interests of all nations. While the lunar terrain looks rather barren, it contains minerals, including rare earths, metals like iron and titanium - and helium too, which is used in everything from superconductors to medical equipment. Estimates for the value of all this vary wildly, from billions to quadrillions. So it’s easy to see why some see the Moon as a place to make lots of money. In 1979, an international treaty declared that no state or organisation could claim to own the resources there. Only 17 countries are party to it, and this does not include any countries who’ve been to the Moon. The US passed a law in 2015 allowing its citizens and industries to extract, use and sell any space material.

Note: Along with a rush to mine minerals from the moon, a new arms race in space is starting, led by private companies like SpaceX.


How Nature Inspires Technology: The Field of Biomimicry
2023-06-09, Mirage
Posted: 2024-08-12 22:42:53
https://www.miragenews.com/how-nature-inspires-technology-the-field-of-1023128/

Biomimicry is grounded in the concept that nature, with its 3.8 billion years of evolution, has already solved many of the problems we grapple with today. Animals, plants, and microbes are the consummate engineers. Rather than designing new technology from scratch, scientists and engineers often look to nature for inspiration. In its approach, biomimicry involves three essential aspects: Emulating natural forms, mimicking natural processes, and imitating ecosystems. Nature operates under specific principles: it runs on sunlight, uses only the energy it needs, fits form to function, recycles everything, rewards cooperation, banks on diversity, demands local expertise, curbs excesses from within, and taps the power of limits. By aligning our technologies and practices with these principles, we can create not only innovative but also sustainable solutions to our challenges. Architects and engineers are designing buildings that mimic termite mounds, which maintain constant temperature despite external fluctuations. This biomimetic approach reduces energy consumption for heating and cooling. The self-cleaning properties of lotus leaves have inspired a whole range of products. The microscopic structure of a lotus leaf repels water and dirt particles. Today, we have self-cleaning paints and fabrics based on this principle. The bumps on the fins of humpback whales, called tubercles, increase their efficiency in water. Applying this concept to the design of wind turbines has led to blades that produce power more efficiently. Corals can heal themselves by producing an organic mineral in response to physical damage. Scientists have mimicked this process to create a type of concrete that can "heal" its own cracks.

Note: Explore more positive stories like this on healing the Earth and technology for good.


How time in nature builds happier, healthier and more social children
2024-08-04, Washington Post
Posted: 2024-08-12 22:40:53
https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/2024/08/04/outdoor-nature-children-co...

The average American today spends nearly 90 percent of their time indoors. Yet research indicates that children benefit greatly from time spent in nature; that not only does it improve their cognition, mood, self-esteem and social skills, but it can also make them physically healthier and less anxious. “Outdoor time for children is beneficial not just for physical health but also mental health for a multitude of reasons,” says Janine Domingues, a senior psychologist in the Anxiety Disorders Center at the Child Mind Institute. “It fosters curiosity and independence. It helps kids get creative about what they can do … and then just moving around and expending energy has a lot of physical health benefits.” [A] 2022 systematic review found that time outdoors can improve prosocial behaviors, including sharing, cooperating and comforting others. Research has found that nature can be particularly helpful for those who’ve had adverse childhood experiences. Such experiences can include growing up with poverty, abuse or violence. One 2023 study published in the Journal of Environmental Psychology looked at how making art in nature affected about 100 children in a low-income neighborhood in England. Their confidence, self-esteem and agency all improved. For all these reasons, it’s important for even very young children to have access to nature where they already are, says Nilda Cosco, a research professor.

Note: Explore more positive stories like this about reimagining education.


Ants can carry out life-saving amputations on injured nest mates, study shows
2024-07-02, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2024-08-12 22:39:09
https://www.theguardian.com/science/article/2024/jul/02/ants-emergency-amputa...

It sounds like a scene from a Spielberg film: an injured worker undergoes an emergency amputation, performed by one of her colleagues, allowing her to live another day. But this is not a human story – it is behaviour seen in ants. While it is not the first time wound care has been seen in ants, scientists say their discovery is the first example of a non-human animal carrying out life-saving amputations. Surprisingly, the insects appear to tailor the treatment they give to the location of injury. “The ants are able to diagnose, to some extent, the wounds and treat them accordingly to maximise the survival of the injured,” said Dr Erik Frank, from the University of Lausanne. Writing in the journal Current Biology, Frank and colleagues report how they cut Florida carpenter ants (Camponotus floridanus) on their right hind limb, then observed the responses of their nest mates for a week. “Nest mates would begin licking the wound before moving up the injured limb with their mouthparts until they reached the trochanter. The nest mates then proceeded to repeatedly bite the injured leg until it was cut off,” the team wrote. By contrast, no amputations were observed for the nine ants with injuries on their tibia, or lower leg. Instead, these ants received only wound care from their nest mates in the form of licking. “It is another example of an adaptation in the lives of social insect workers in which workers help each other to work for their colony and to help their colony,” [Prof Francis Ratnieks at the University of Sussex] said. “Such as when a worker honeybee makes a waggle dance to direct a nest mate to food, or when a worker sacrifices its life in defence of the colony, or here where workers amputate the limbs of an injured or infected worker.”

Note: Explore more positive stories like this about animal wonders.


National Science Foundation spent millions on AI censorship tools to quash ‘misinformation’
2024-02-06, Washington Times
Posted: 2024-08-05 20:08:48
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2024/feb/6/national-science-foundation-s...

The National Science Foundation spent millions of taxpayer dollars developing censorship tools powered by artificial intelligence that Big Tech could use “to counter misinformation online” and “advance state-of-the-art misinformation research.” House investigators on the Judiciary Committee and Select Committee on the Weaponization of Government said the NSF awarded nearly $40 million ... to develop AI tools that could censor information far faster and at a much greater scale than human beings. The University of Michigan, for instance, was awarded $750,000 from NSF to develop its WiseDex artificial intelligence tool to help Big Tech outsource the “responsibility of censorship” on social media. The release of [an] interim report follows new revelations that the Biden White House pressured Amazon to censor books about the COVID-19 vaccine and comes months after court documents revealed White House officials leaned on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and other sites to remove posts and ban users whose content they opposed, even threatening the social media platforms with federal action. House investigators say the NSF project is potentially more dangerous because of the scale and speed of censorship that artificial intelligence could enable. “AI-driven tools can monitor online speech at a scale that would far outmatch even the largest team of ’disinformation’ bureaucrats and researchers,” House investigators wrote in the interim report.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on AI and censorship from reliable sources.


Google’s wrong answer to the threat of AI – stop indexing content
2024-07-20, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2024-08-05 20:05:55
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/jul/20/googles-wrong-a...

Once upon a time ... Google was truly great. A couple of lads at Stanford University in California had the idea to build a search engine that would crawl the world wide web, create an index of all the sites on it and rank them by the number of inbound links each had from other sites. The arrival of ChatGPT and its ilk ... disrupts search behaviour. Google’s mission – “to organise the world’s information and make it universally accessible” – looks like a much more formidable task in a world in which AI can generate infinite amounts of humanlike content. Vincent Schmalbach, a respected search engine optimisation (SEO) expert, thinks that Google has decided that it can no longer aspire to index all the world’s information. That mission has been abandoned. “Google is no longer trying to index the entire web,” writes Schmalbach. “In fact, it’s become extremely selective, refusing to index most content. This isn’t about content creators failing to meet some arbitrary standard of quality. Rather, it’s a fundamental change in how Google approaches its role as a search engine.” The default setting from now on will be not to index content unless it is genuinely unique, authoritative and has “brand recognition”. “They might index content they perceive as truly unique,” says Schmalbach. “But if you write about a topic that Google considers even remotely addressed elsewhere, they likely won’t index it. This can happen even if you’re a well-respected writer with a substantial readership.”

Note: WantToKnow.info and other independent media websites are disappearing from Google search results because of this. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on AI and censorship from reliable sources.


The AI Search War Has Begun
2024-07-30, The Atlantic
Posted: 2024-08-05 20:03:35
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2024/07/perplexity-ai-search-m...

Google and a few other search engines are the portal through which several billion people navigate the internet. Many of the world’s most powerful tech companies, including Google, Microsoft, and OpenAI, have recently spotted an opportunity to remake that gateway with generative AI, and they are racing to seize it. Nearly two years after the arrival of ChatGPT, and with users growing aware that many generative-AI products have effectively been built on stolen information, tech companies are trying to play nice with the media outlets that supply the content these machines need. The start-up Perplexity ... announced revenue-sharing deals with Time, Fortune, and several other publishers. These publishers will be compensated when Perplexity earns ad revenue from AI-generated answers that cite partner content. The site does not currently run ads, but will begin doing so in the form of sponsored “related follow-up questions.” OpenAI has been building its own roster of media partners, including News Corp, Vox Media, and The Atlantic. Google has purchased the rights to use Reddit content to train future AI models, and ... appears to be the only major search engine that Reddit is permitting to surface its content. The default was once that you would directly consume work by another person; now an AI may chew and regurgitate it first, then determine what you see based on its opaque underlying algorithm. Many of the human readers whom media outlets currently show ads and sell subscriptions to will have less reason to ever visit publishers’ websites. Whether OpenAI, Perplexity, Google, or someone else wins the AI search war might not depend entirely on their software: Media partners are an important part of the equation. AI search will send less traffic to media websites than traditional search engines. The growing number of AI-media deals, then, are a shakedown. AI is scraping publishers’ content whether they want it to or not: Media companies can be chumps or get paid.

Note: The AI search war has nothing to do with journalists and content creators getting paid and acknowledged for their work. It’s all about big companies doing deals with each other to control our information environment and capture more consumer spending. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on AI and Big Tech from reliable sources.


‘You feel like you’re in prison’: workers claim Amazon’s surveillance violates labor law
2024-05-21, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2024-08-05 20:01:01
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/may/21/amazon-surveillance-l...

Amazon has been accused of using “intrusive algorithms” as part of a sweeping surveillance program to monitor and deter union organizing activities. Workers at a warehouse run by the technology giant on the outskirts of St Louis, Missouri, are today filing an unfair labor practice charge with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). A copy of the charge ... alleges that Amazon has “maintained intrusive algorithms and other workplace controls and surveillance which interfere with Section 7 rights of employees to engage in protected concerted activity”. There have been several reports of Amazon surveilling workers over union organizing and activism, including human resources monitoring employee message boards, software to track union threats and job listings for intelligence analysts to monitor “labor organizing threats”. Artificial intelligence can be used by warehouse employers like Amazon “to essentially have 24/7 unregulated and algorithmically processed and recorded video, and often audio data of what their workers are doing all the time”, said Seema N Patel ... at Stanford Law School. “It enables employers to control, record, monitor and use that data to discipline hundreds of thousands of workers in a way that no human manager or group of managers could even do.” The National Labor Relations Board issued a memo in 2022 announcing its intent to protect workers from AI-enabled monitoring of labor organizing activities.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on Big Tech and the disappearance of privacy from reliable major media sources.


‘Encryption is deeply threatening to power’: Meredith Whittaker of messaging app Signal
2024-06-18, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2024-08-05 19:58:58
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/article/2024/jun/18/encryption-is-deep...

Meredith Whittaker practises what she preaches. As the president of the Signal Foundation, she’s a strident voice backing privacy for all. In 2018, she burst into public view as one of the organisers of the Google walkouts, mobilising 20,000 employees of the search giant in a twin protest over the company’s support for state surveillance and failings over sexual misconduct. The Signal Foundation ... exists to “protect free expression and enable secure global communication through open source privacy technology”. The criticisms of encrypted communications are as old as the technology: allowing anyone to speak without the state being able to tap into their conversations is a godsend for criminals, terrorists and paedophiles around the world. But, Whittaker argues, few of Signal’s loudest critics seem to be consistent in what they care about. “If we really cared about helping children, why are the UK’s schools crumbling? Why was social services funded at only 7% of the amount that was suggested to fully resource the agencies that are on the frontlines of stopping abuse? Signal either works for everyone or it works for no one. Every military in the world uses Signal, every politician I’m aware of uses Signal. Every CEO I know uses Signal because anyone who has anything truly confidential to communicate recognises that storing that on a Meta database or in the clear on some Google server is not good practice.”

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on Big Tech and the disappearance of privacy from reliable major media sources.


Wall Street’s $2 Trillion AI Reckoning
2024-08-02, New York Magazine
Posted: 2024-08-05 19:56:45
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/wall-streets-usd2-trillion-ai-reckoni...

On July 16, the S&P 500 index, one of the most widely cited benchmarks in American capitalism, reached its highest-ever market value: $47 trillion. 1.4 percent of those companies were worth more than $16 trillion, the greatest concentration of capital in the smallest number of companies in the history of the U.S. stock market. The names are familiar: Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, Nvidia, Meta, Alphabet, and Tesla. All of them, too, have made giant bets on artificial intelligence. For all their similarities, these trillion-dollar-plus companies have been grouped together under a single banner: the Magnificent Seven. In the past month, though, these giants of the U.S. economy have been faltering. A recent rout led to a collapse of $2.6 trillion in their market value. Earlier this year, Goldman Sachs issued a deeply skeptical report on the industry, calling it too expensive, too clunky, and just simply not as useful as it has been chalked up to be. “There’s not a single thing that this is being used for that’s cost-effective at this point,” Jim Covello, an influential Goldman analyst, said on a company podcast. AI is not going away, and it will surely become more sophisticated. This explains why, even with the tempering of the AI-investment thesis, these companies are still absolutely massive. When you talk with Silicon Valley CEOs, they love to roll their eyes at their East Coast skeptics. Banks, especially, are too cautious, too concerned with short-term goals, too myopic to imagine another world.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on AI and corporate corruption from reliable major media sources.


Ozempic's biggest side effect: Turning Denmark into a 'pharmastate'?
2024-07-30, NPR
Posted: 2024-08-05 19:54:24
https://www.npr.org/sections/planet-money/2024/07/26/g-s1-13534/ozempic-bigge...

What if your entire economy was based on one product? For all intents and purposes, Denmark quite literally runs on Ozempic, a diabetes medication that is now widely used by consumers to lose weight. Worldwide sales have increased by over 60% in the past year alone. In the United States, which is one of its largest markets, prescriptions for Ozempic and similar drugs quadrupled between 2020 and 2022. At the end of 2023, Novo became the largest company in Europe. And its rise has eclipsed the Danish economy, creating a lot of value on the one hand, but an imbalanced economy on the other. You might have heard of "petrostates," countries where fossil fuel extraction dominates the economy. By that measure, you might call Denmark a pharmastate, because Novo now dominates the Danish economy. Nearly 1 out of every 5 Danish jobs created last year was at Novo. And that's just directly. If you also include the jobs that Novo has created indirectly — like, for example, at its suppliers, or from all the newly wealthy Novo employees spending their money at shops and restaurants — nearly half of all private-sector nonfarm jobs created in Denmark can be traced back to Novo. Novo Nordisk's meteoric trajectory raises a question about economic growth that's much bigger than just Denmark: Namely, what are the risks of having one giant company driving your entire economy? And crucially, what happens if that company's fortunes take a turn for the worse?

Note: The makers of these weight-loss drugs could be hit with over 10,000 lawsuits over severe adverse events from these drugs. It is now estimated that 1 in 8 adults in the US have taken Ozempic or another weight-loss drug. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on Big Pharma profiteering from reliable major media sources.


Wealth of global top 1% grew by $42 trillion over past decade: Oxfam
2024-07-25, CNN News
Posted: 2024-08-05 19:52:37
https://www.cnn.com/2024/07/25/economy/wealth-tax-super-rich-oxfam-report?cid...

The top 1% has seen its wealth soar by $42 trillion over the past decade, according to a new analysis by Oxfam International, which is being released ahead of the G20 finance ministers and central bank governors’ meeting in Brazil. That’s nearly 34 times more than the bottom 50% of global population. The average net worth of the elite jumped by nearly $400,000 per person, after adjusting for inflation, compared to $335 for the bottom half of residents. “Inequality has reached obscene levels, and until now governments have failed to protect people and planet from its catastrophic effects,” said Max Lawson, Oxfam International’s head of inequality policy. “The richest one percent of humanity continues to fill their pockets while the rest are left to scrap for crumbs.” As part of its G20 presidency, the Brazilian government recently commissioned a study on raising taxes on the wealthy. The report, prepared by French economist and inequality expert Gabriel Zucman, found that a 2% minimum tax on global billionaires’ wealth would yield between $200 billion and $250 billion from about 3,000 taxpayers annually. According to the EU Tax Observatory ... the super-rich in big countries pay a far smaller share of their income in taxes than ordinary people. Plus, their wealth is taxed at effective rates of just 0%-0.5%. Finance officials from the world’s biggest countries began talks earlier this year on introducing a global minimum tax on billionaires.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on financial inequality from reliable major media sources.


Pesticides as big a cancer risk as smoking, study finds
2024-07-25, The Hill
Posted: 2024-08-05 19:51:07
https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/4792919-pesticides-cancer-link-...

Pesticides may cause cancer on a level equivalent to smoking cigarettes, a new study has found. The widespread use of pesticides may lead to hundreds of thousands of additional cancer cases in major corn-producing states like Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Missouri and Ohio — even for Americans who don’t work on farms, according to findings published ... in Frontiers in Cancer Control and Society. In February, scientists from the Endocrine Society and the International Pollutants Elimination Network raised concerns that there was no safe level of exposure to many common pesticides. Research ... has tended to focus on specific pesticides, regions or cohorts of the population (like farm workers) — which obscures the fact that pesticides are used across the country, and that those exposed to any of them tend to be exposed to many of them, creating a greater compound risk. The researchers found a difference of 154,000 cancer cases per year, adjusted for population, between the area with the lowest pesticide use — the Great Plains — and that with the highest, the corn belt of the inner Midwest, where hundreds of millions of pounds of glyphosate are applied each year across millions of acres. When it came to individual cancers, pesticide use seemed to have the strongest association with blood cancers like leukemia or non-Hodgkin lymphoma. Half again as many cases of the latter appeared to be “caused by pesticides compared to smoking,” the researchers wrote.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on health and food system corruption from reliable major media sources.


Toxic Harvest
2024-07-25, The Lever
Posted: 2024-08-05 19:48:29
https://www.levernews.com/toxic-harvest/

A new study found the amount of pesticides used on farms was strongly associated with the incidence of many cancers — not only for farmers and their families, but for entire communities. The just-released analysis showed that “agricultural pesticides can increase your risk for some cancers just as much as smoking,” says co-author Isain Zapata. Living in places with high pesticide use increased the risk of colon and pancreatic cancers by more than 80 percent. Pesticides are currently an integral part of the country’s industrialized agricultural system. About a million pounds of pesticides are used each year, across nearly every state in the country. These chemicals make their way through the food system: a pesticide linked to infertility, for example, is widely found in household staples like Cheerios. When a pesticide is first registered with federal regulators, the vast majority of the information available about it is science conducted by the company who made it. “The presumption in the U.S. is in favor of the safety of the chemical,” Burd says. Elsewhere, like the European Union, “chemicals are not presumed safe, they adopt a much more precautionary approach.” There’s also a revolving door between the [Environmental Protection Agency] and the industry it regulates. Alexandra Dunn, the former assistant administrator for the Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention, for example, is now running CropLife America, the pesticide industry’s leading lobbying group. She’s only the latest; since 1974, all of the office’s directors went on to work for pesticide companies.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on toxic chemicals and food system corruption from reliable major media sources.


‘A disposition of the heart’: Exploring the power of civility to heal divides
2023-11-03, Christian Science Monitor
Posted: 2024-08-05 19:45:46
https://www.csmonitor.com/Podcasts/Why-We-Wrote-This/wwwt_2341

As the Monitor’s chief culture writer, Stephen Humphries stays open to a sprawling landscape of story ideas. Lately that has meant exploring empathy gaps – situations where, in some cases, groups hail the misfortune and losses of those whom they view as their ideological foes. No-tolerance side-taking has emerged over everything from the Mideast conflict to stances on policing or vaccines. That got Stephen talking to a solution-seeker on the matter of fraying human connections: Alexandra Hudson, author of "The Soul of Civility." "I am hopeful," she says, "because I’ve spoken to thousands of people who are working to be part of the solutions in their every day." Through the power of connection, she says, “we can reclaim the soul of civility and heal our broken world." As these traditional touchstones of meaning in life, family, faith, friendship, community, have been on the [decline] in recent decades, more and more people have found their ultimate meaning in public life, in political issues. Now it’s easy for people to feel like their very identity is being assaulted because of that disagreement, because their identity has been misplaced in a public and political issue. Democracy depends on reasonable, deliberative discourse and conversation and debate. And if people are constantly being thrown into fight or flight mode, we’re not doing our public issues well, we’re not doing democracy well. We’re not doing life together very well. We live in this era of a strange perfectionism. We take one aspect of who a person is and extrapolate that: “OK, that’s all I need to know about who you are and what you stand for.” But that’s so reductive and it’s degrading to the dignity of the human person. Unbundling people is seeing the part in light of the whole, seeing someone’s mistakes even in light of the dignity and an irreducible worth they have as human beings.

Note: Explore more positive stories like this about healing social division.


Poland appears torn by abortion. Research hints divide isn’t so deep.
2024-02-09, Christian Science Monitor
Posted: 2024-08-05 19:43:37
https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Europe/2024/0209/Poland-appears-torn-by-abort...

The issue of abortion has neatly cleaved the Polish political class, yet researchers find that Poles themselves feel much more empathy around it than their elected leaders. And the idea that people hold compassion around many divisive issues presents an opportunity to bridge a societal divide, says Zofia Wodarczyk, a researcher at the social science think tank More in Common, which published a study. “We basically only talk [in politics] about abortion – are you for, or are you against, but there’s so much in between that’s gray,” she says. And when she and her colleagues interviewed voters of all stripes, they saw the gray. Even among the most staunchly conservative, religious group – about 6% of those surveyed – about a third of men and women surveyed would support someone close to them getting an abortion. The vast majority of Polish men and women of all persuasions oppose punishing women who choose abortion. Anna Wójcik, a legal scholar ... says people are ready to move past what she calls “civil war conditions,” after eight years in which the conservative majority questioned loyalty to country for simply expressing divergent views. “I feel that Polish people are tired of this polarizing political scene and division,” says Ms. Wójcik. “Basically people want to move forward, to be able to discuss topics in democracy that we have conflicting views on, like energy transition and education and stuff like that.”

Note: Explore more positive stories like this about healing social division.


5 Countries That Ditched Their Military Forces
2024-04-16, Howstuffworks.com
Posted: 2024-08-05 19:41:48
https://science.howstuffworks.com/5-countries-without-military-forces.htm

Between 136.5 and 148.5 million people became casualties of war in the 20th century alone. The economics are equally staggering. For instance, U.S. spending on the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan could top $4 trillion. Despite the exorbitant human and financial costs, the vast majority of governments consider defense spending to be a necessity. A few renegade countries have opted to shed their militaries, however. The first country is the most recent one on our list to get rid of its armed forces. After Jean-Bertrand Aristide was elected president [of Haiti] on Dec. 16, 1990, his government was overrun by a military coup. Aristide ... moved quickly to disband Haiti's armed forces before they could pose any further problems. What prompted Costa Rica to eliminate its armed forces? In 1948, after an unusual period of political upheaval ... the new government drafted a constitution that not only guaranteed free and open elections but also abolished the country's armed forces. The island nation of Mauritius is home to more than a million people and one of the strongest economies in Africa. What you won't find, however, are regular military forces. Thanks to the deep distrust Panamanians held for the military, the government adopted a constitutional amendment disbanding the military in 1994. In 1986, Micronesia entered into a Compact of Free Association with the United States.

Note: Explore more positive stories like this on healing the war machine.


Biden admin whistleblowers claim ‘billions of taxpayer dollars’ used by gov contractor to traffic children on the border
2024-07-09, New York Post
Posted: 2024-07-29 16:04:05
https://nypost.com/2024/07/09/us-news/biden-admin-whistleblowers-claim-billio...

The Biden administration’s Office of Refugee Resettlement failed to vet sponsors responsible for caring for unaccompanied children apprehended crossing the border, whistleblowers told Senators Tuesday, describing several cases of apparent human trafficking involving the minors and their sponsors. [Whistleblower Deborah] White revealed that she and her colleague, Tara Rodas, first discovered a case of trafficking involving minors crossing the border in June 2021, but even after reporting it, “children continued to be sent to dangerous locations with improperly vetted sponsors.” “Children were sent to addresses that were abandoned houses or nonexistent in some cases,” White said. “In Michigan, a child was sent to an open field, even after we reported making an 911 call after hearing someone screaming for help, yet the child was still sent. When I raised concerns about contractor failures and asked to see the contract I was told, ‘You’re not gonna get the contract and don’t ask for it again.’” White ... described the case of a 16-year-old girl from Guatemala, whose sponsor claimed to be her older brother. “He was touching her inappropriately. It was clear her sponsor was not her brother,” Rodas said, noting that the girl “looked drugged” and as if “she was for sale” on her sponsor’s social media postings. The sponsor had other social media accounts containing child pornography, according to Rodas, explaining that it keeps her up at night.

Note: Watch our Mindful News Brief video on how the US government facilitates child trafficking at the border. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on immigration corruption and sexual abuse scandals from reliable major media sources.


Government complicit in migrant child trafficking: Whistleblower
2024-07-09, News Nation
Posted: 2024-07-29 16:02:03
https://www.newsnationnow.com/us-news/immigration/border-coverage/migrant-chi...

Three Republican U.S. senators and federal whistleblowers raised alarm over the government’s alleged complicity in human trafficking at the nation’s southern border. The New York Times [reported that] Health and Human Services could not reach more than 85,000 children between 2021 and 2023, adding that DHS and HHS leaders refused to attend the roundtable. Deborah White, who worked in Health and Human Services’ Unaccompanied Child Program, joined those senators in calling for justice. “Make no mistake, children were not going to their parents. They were being trafficked with billions of taxpayer dollars by a contractor failing to vet sponsors and process children safely, with government officials complicit in it,” White said at the roundtable. White began working at HHS’ Pomona, California, Office of Refugee Resettlement site in 2021, where she said she saw hundreds of children sent to unknown fates. “What I found there was horrifying and shocking, as I made [the] initial discovery at the site that children were actually being trafficked,” White told NewsNation. The last time HHS published a report on sexual abuse and sexual harassment among unaccompanied minors was in 2017. “We don’t know what happens to them afterwards, right? We never hear from them again,” White said. “Once they leave HHS or our custody, they wipe their hands of it. They’re not concerned with what’s happening to them once they leave. They’re supposed to do 30-day wellness calls, but … when they did 30-day wellness calls, the case managers were finding that the children were not anywhere to be found in most cases.”

Note: Watch our Mindful News Brief video on how the US government facilitates child trafficking at the border. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on immigration corruption and sexual abuse scandals from reliable major media sources.


DOJ says largest housing provider for migrant kids engaged in pervasive sexual abuse
2024-07-19, The Hill
Posted: 2024-07-29 16:00:17
https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/4782611-southwest-key-programs-sexual-a...

Employees of a Texas-based nonprofit that provides housing to unaccompanied migrant children repeatedly subjected minors in its care to sexual abuse and harassment, the Department of Justice (DOJ) alleged in a new lawsuit. From 2015 through at least the end of 2023, multiple employees at Southwest Key Programs, the country’s largest private provider of housing for unaccompanied children, subjected unaccompanied children in their care to “repeated and unwelcome sexual abuse, harassment, and misconduct,” the lawsuit said. Minors housed in its shelters were subjected to severe sexual abuse and rape, solicitation of sex acts, solicitation of nude photos and entreaties for sexually inappropriate relationships, among other acts. The children range in age from as young as five years old to teenagers just shy of eighteen years old. Southwest Key employees allegedly discouraged children from reporting abuse, in some cases threatening them and their families. One report describes a Southwest Key Youth Care Worker who repeatedly sexually abused a five-year-old girl, an eight-year-old girl and an eleven-year-old girl. He entered their bedrooms in the middle of the night to touch their “private area,” and threatened to kill their families if they disclosed the abuse, according to the lawsuit. The company has come under scrutiny before. Videos from Arizona Southwest Key shelters in 2018 showed staffers physically abusing children.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on immigration corruption and sexual abuse scandals from reliable major media sources.


The FDA Just Quietly Gutted Protections for Human Subjects in Research
2024-07-08, Newsweek
Posted: 2024-07-29 15:58:40
https://www.newsweek.com/fda-just-quietly-gutted-protections-human-subjects-r...

Late last year, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) quietly introduced a regulation that may be one of the most important shifts in how [clinical research organizations, universities large and small, pharma companies, and multi-billion dollar corporations] conduct future medical and public health research. A bedrock of ethical research design is the universal requirement of informed consent for any medical procedure, treatment, or intervention. These measures have generally been strengthened since the Nuremberg Trials, formally adopted across the U.S. government through the institutional review board (IRB) system. An IRB is a committee of specialists and administrators at each institution that oversees research design and assures the protection of research subjects. At its core, the new FDA rule change allows any IRB to broadly assume the FDA's own exemption power, dubiously granted under the 21st Century Cures Act of 2016, to grant exemptions to informed consent requirements based on "minimal risk." Based on vague guidelines, it effectively gives thousands of IRB committees the unilateral ability to determine that researchers need not obtain true informed consent from research participants. The relaxed standards could facilitate the quick approval of controversial research projects. The Gates Foundation-backed Oxitec program is currently releasing millions of genetically modified mosquitos in the Florida Keys. Another application of the relaxed standards is to government-funded studies of online posts designed to identify "misinformation." Entities like the Stanford Internet Observatory have laundered government demands for censorship of speech—even true speech—in online settings like Facebook and X (formerly Twitter). The literal purpose of this research is to harm its research subjects by censoring their speech and labeling them as purveyors of misinformation. In 2021, a conservative journalist sued Stanford University for slandering him via this research project, which never sought his informed consent to be a subject of their study. Under the new FDA rule, IRBs everywhere would feel no compunction to require it.

Note: Read about the shocking history of human experimentation. See a disturbing timeline of corporate and government experiments that treated people like guinea pigs. For more, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corruption in science from reliable major media sources.


State Insists It Can Keep Babies’ Blood Without Parental Consent
2024-06-10, Forbes
Posted: 2024-07-29 15:56:21
https://www.forbes.com/sites/instituteforjustice/2024/06/10/state-insists-it-...

Every state in the U.S. requires hospitals to take a small blood sample from newborns to test for genetic diseases. In most places, the samples are destroyed or given to parents shortly after the testing, but New Jersey keeps them stored in a state facility—for 23 years—without asking for the parents’ consent. During the decades that New Jersey keeps the baby blood samples, it can do whatever it wants with the samples. In fact, on at least a few occasions, samples have been handed over to law enforcement, without consent or a warrant. There is an opt out of testing for religious objections, and parents can request the state to destroy the sample after the testing is complete. But parents don’t even know that the state is keeping the blood in the first place. This puts New Jersey out of step with other states, who in recent years were forced to end the sharing of blood samples without consent. Texas destroyed more than 5.3 million blood samples after a 2009 lawsuit revealed that the state had sold some of them to private companies and the Pentagon. Suits in Minnesota and Michigan also led those states to destroy millions of samples. The New Jersey parents aren’t suing for money. What they want is for the state to do one of three things: 1) obtain informed consent including the specific uses New Jersey may have for the samples; 2) promptly return all samples that are produced without consent; or 3) destroy all samples once the screening tests are completed.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and the disappearance of privacy from reliable major media sources.


Eat This, Not That—Why Medical Schools Need to Emphasize Nutrition
2024-07-16, Newsweek
Posted: 2024-07-29 15:54:06
https://www.newsweek.com/eat-this-not-thatwhy-medical-schools-need-emphasize-...

Being overweight or obese is a serious, common, and costly chronic disease. More than two in five U.S. adults have obesity. By 2030, nearly one of two adults in the U.S. are projected to be obese. More than 108 million U.S. adults live with obesity and more than 1 billion people are obese around the world. Obesity accounted for nearly $173 billion in medical expenditures in 2019. Recent news that weight loss medications, including GLP-1 receptor agonists like Ozempic and others, are revolutionizing obesity medicine. Some patients lose up to 20 percent of their initial body weight in a year or two on these drugs. Yet a recent lawsuit challenging a top brand heightens concerns about this relatively new class of drugs. More than half of graduating medical students report that the time dedicated to clinical nutrition instruction is insufficient. In a striking study of 115 medical doctors, the majority of participants (65.2 percent) demonstrated inadequate nutrition knowledge, with 30.4 percent of those scoring low having a high self-perception of their nutrition knowledge. The important role of medical doctors in addressing nutrition in clinical practice has been acknowledged by multiple authoritative professional bodies. Ironically, most doctors often lack the knowledge to help a patient eat healthy and to realize the importance of food to wellness. In a contested space filled with commercial interests and influencers, it is critical for a doctor to be a reliable source of evidence-based nutrition.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on health and food system corruption from reliable major media sources.


The medical community must stop gaslighting COVID vaccine victims like me
2024-07-14, The Hill
Posted: 2024-07-29 15:52:01
https://thehill.com/opinion/4767739-covid-vaccine-injuries-neglected/

Vaccine adverse effects are real. I know it makes some people uncomfortable to acknowledge this, but alongside the benefits of vaccines, there are cases of profound harm. Recently, the New York Times covered my story: “Thousands Believe COVID Vaccines Harmed Them. Is Anyone Listening?” Sadly, no one is listening yet, and very few people are willing to help. I am a research nurse practitioner who has dedicated my professional career to community health and clinical research, including vaccines. My beliefs are firmly rooted in science. Three years ago, when the COVID-19 vaccine emerged, I stepped forward to receive it. What followed was unexpected and devastating. Within hours I developed tingling along my right arm, which over days radiated across my body. A neurologist and colleague recommended that I proceed with a second dose. With the vaccine mandate from my employer at the top of my mind, I proceeded, against my own medical judgment. After the second dose, my condition rapidly worsened. I developed positional tachycardia, wildly fluctuating blood pressures, internal tremors, electrical zap sensations on my legs, intense right-sided headaches, abdominal pain and severe tinnitus. I struggle to live with all of this and more to this day. Medical gaslighting, coupled with the absence of legal recourse or adequate compensation, compounds the challenges we endure. When I reach out for help, my pleas often fall on deaf ears, or I am disparaged as a misinformed “anti-vaxxer.”

Note: This article was written by Shaun Barcavage, a nurse practitioner in New York City. Explore our nuanced, uncensored investigation about this important issue. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on COVID vaccine problems from reliable major media sources.


The global food system is owned by an ever smaller number of companies – it’s damaging our health, our communities and the planet
2024-07-17, The Conversation
Posted: 2024-07-29 15:49:55
https://theconversation.com/the-global-food-system-is-owned-by-an-ever-smalle...

Across the world, over 800 million people spend their days hungry. More than 2 billion have limited access to food. Yet today’s global food system produces enough to feed every person on the planet. To account for these trends, we need to look at market concentration, and how a small number of very big companies have come to dominate the production and supply of the food we all eat. The global food system has become much more concentrated in recent years, partly through an increase in mergers and acquisitions, where large firms buy up rival companies until they completely dominate key areas. High levels of market concentration mean less transparency, weaker competition, and more power in the hands of fewer firms. And our research reveals that a rise in the number of mergers and acquisitions is taking place at all stages of the global food system – from seeds and fertilisers to machinery and manufacturing. This is all part of food being increasingly seen as a source not only of human sustenance, but as a profitable investment – or what is known as the “financialisation of food. Just four firms control 44% of the global farm machinery market, two companies control 40% of the global seed market, and four businesses control 62% of the global agrochemicals market. This trend is matched in food retail, with four firms – Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Asda, and Morrisons – estimated to control over 64% of the UK grocery market.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corruption in the food system and in the corporate world from reliable major media sources.


What Is “Big Ag,” and Why Should You Be Worried About Them?
2024-05-09, The Equation (Union of Concerned Scientists Blog)
Posted: 2024-07-29 15:47:58
https://blog.ucsusa.org/karen-perry-stillerman/what-is-big-ag-and-why-should-...

Corporations across the food system increasingly have the power, by virtue of their size, market domination, political connections, and deep pockets, to set prices, meddle with science, evade regulation, and write the rules to benefit themselves. “Big Ag” and “Big Food” are shorthand for a sprawling collection of giant, often multinational corporations that wield enormous market power throughout our food system. Some of these companies are household names—for example, Tyson Foods, John Deere, and General Mills—while others are virtually unknown to consumers. Those lesser-known companies tend to operate up the supply chain, and include Bayer and Syngenta, which sell the seeds farmers need and the pesticides they’ve come to rely on, and Nutrien and CF Industries Holdings, which manufacture synthetic fertilizers. The consequences of extreme agriculture and food industry concentration ... include supply chain instability, unsafe working conditions and downward pressure on wages, and higher food prices for consumers. Some 40% of farmland nationally is owned, in ever-larger tracts, by absentee landlords who don’t farm but rent to others (in the Corn Belt bullseye of Iowa, it’s more than half). Billionaires, including Microsoft founder Bill Gates, are among the largest private owners of US farmland. And corporations and investment funds like Nuveen and Manulife are buying up farmland at a rate that should alarm you.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on food system corruption from reliable major media sources.


Ask a Scientist: Stopping Big Ag from Hijacking US Farm and Food Policy
2024-05-14, The Equation (Union of Concerned Scientists Blog)
Posted: 2024-07-29 15:46:11
https://blog.ucsusa.org/elliott-negin/ask-a-scientist-stopping-big-ag-from-hi...

Every five years or so, Congress reauthorizes a comprehensive, multibillion-dollar law that has a major impact not only on farmers and ranchers—who make up less than 2 percent of the US population—but also on the environment, public health, and the economy. Generically called the “farm” bill, it is actually a farm and food bill that supports a wide range of programs, including ones that cover crop insurance, financial credit, and export subsidies for farmers, as well as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), formerly known as food stamps. SNAP, which eats up 80 percent of the bills’ total budget, currently serves 41 million low-income Americans. A major ... reason farm and food bills routinely fail to live up to their original intent is the undue influence the agribusiness sector has over Congress, which it exerts via campaign contributions and lobbying. The sector includes commodity crop traders, meat and poultry processors, fertilizer and pesticide makers, multinational food and beverage companies, giant supermarket chains, and all of their related trade associations. The agribusiness sector spent more than $793 million on lobbying on a range of issues between 2019 and 2023. Top spenders included the American Crystal Sugar Company, the American Farm Bureau Federation, Koch Industries, and the US Chamber of Commerce. Agribusiness’s influence peddling is largely overlooked by the mainstream news media.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corruption in government and in the food system from reliable major media sources.


Arts on Prescription: Embracing a New Culture of Health with “Social Prescribing”
2023-10-23, Bloomberg
Posted: 2024-07-29 15:43:54
https://www.bloomberg.org/blog/arts-on-prescription-embracing-a-new-culture-o...

Someday soon, in addition to prescribing medication or therapy, doctors may begin directing patients to visit a museum or join a choir. The growing practice of “social prescribing” is a way for healthcare providers to address patients’ health and wellbeing by connecting them to a range of nonclinical services, often taking the form of community arts and cultural activities. Attention on the healing power of the arts grew during the COVID-19 pandemic. A UK study found that during lockdown in 2020, individuals who spent 30 minutes per day on arts activities had lower rates of depression and anxiety, as well as greater life satisfaction. The first social prescribing pilots in the United States are kicking off on the heels of research demonstrating the long-term health benefits of arts engagement. Adolescents who regularly engage in arts activities have lower odds of behavioral problems, criminalized behaviors, and substance use and higher odds of maintaining strong social support networks. Creatively engaged older adults have 20% lower odds of depression and are more likely to have better memory, life satisfaction, and overall aging experiences. One particularly striking study found that older adults with frequent cultural engagement are less likely to use inpatient healthcare or nursing home stays. In a study of people experiencing chronic pain, doing monthly arts activities is associated with better physical wellbeing, specifically less difficulty with everyday activities.

Note: Explore more positive stories like this about healing our bodies and healing social division.


When the Prescription Is for a Dance Class, not a Pill
2024-04-17, New York Times
Posted: 2024-07-29 15:41:59
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/17/well/mind/social-prescription-health-medic...

A practice called social prescribing is being explored in the United States, after being adopted in more than 20 other countries. Social prescriptions generally aim to improve health and well-being by connecting people with nonclinical activities that address underlying problems, such as isolation, social stress and lack of nutritious food, which have been shown to play a crucial role in influencing who stays well and for how long. For Ms. Washington, who is among thousands of patients who have received social prescriptions from the nonprofit Open Source Wellness, the experience was transformative. She found a less stressful job, began eating more healthfully and ... was able to stop taking blood pressure medication. At the Cleveland Clinic, doctors are prescribing nature walks, volunteering and ballroom dancing. In Newark, an insurance provider has teamed up with the New Jersey Performing Arts Center to offer patients glassblowing workshops, concerts and museum exhibitions. A nonprofit in Utah is connecting mental health patients with community gardens and helping them participate in other activities that bring them a sense of meaning. Universities have started referring students to arts and cultural activities like comedy shows and concerts. Research on social prescribing suggests that it can improve mental health and quality of life and that it might reduce doctor visits and hospital admissions.

Note: Explore more positive stories like this about healing our bodies and healing social division.


Social prescribing looks beyond medicine to non-clinical methods of treatment
2024-07-18, Broadview
Posted: 2024-07-29 15:39:54
https://broadview.org/social-prescribing-looks-beyond-medicine-to-non-clinica...

Dr. Kate Mulligan is the Senior Director of the Canadian Institute for Social Prescribing (CISP), a new national hub created to support health care providers and social services professionals to connect people to non-clinical supports and community resources. Mulligan ... led one of Canada’s first social prescribing projects. "They have a conversation with someone with expertise [like a doctor] to determine a plan, and get support to follow through on something non-clinical that benefits their health. It should be happening systematically, as a regular part of our health system," [said Mulligan]. Someone experiencing food insecurity or an illness like diabetes can be prescribed fresh foods. That could mean a voucher for your local farmers’ market, a food box delivery to your home or a credit card that you can spend at the regular grocery store. Social prescribing also means making sure the provided food is culturally appropriate ... thinking about possible connections to include and benefit local farmers. A small community largely inhabited by retirees — lots of people ending up living alone without a strong support network — implemented social prescribing. An older man was diagnosed with depression after his wife died. He kept going for primary care, but really what he was experiencing was unsupported grief. Through social prescribing, he was connected with a fishing rod and a fishing buddy. This is like a $20 intervention. Within a fairly short time, he got off his medication and reconnected with other services too — built friendships, got connected to other community offerings. The health centre started developing their own services, like grief support cooking classes for older grieving widows.

Note: Explore more positive stories like this about healing our bodies and healing social division.


AI’s ‘Oppenheimer moment’: autonomous weapons enter the battlefield
2024-07-14, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2024-07-21 19:37:15
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/article/2024/jul/14/ais-oppenheimer-mo...

The Ukrainian military has used AI-equipped drones mounted with explosives to fly into battlefields and strike at Russian oil refineries. American AI systems identified targets in Syria and Yemen for airstrikes earlier this year. The Israel Defense Forces used another kind of AI-enabled targeting system to label as many as 37,000 Palestinians as suspected militants during the first weeks of its war in Gaza. Growing conflicts around the world have acted as both accelerant and testing ground for AI warfare while making it even more evident how unregulated the nascent field is. The result is a multibillion-dollar AI arms race that is drawing in Silicon Valley giants and states around the world. Altogether, the US military has more than 800 active AI-related projects and requested $1.8bn worth of funding for AI in the 2024 budget alone. Many of these companies and technologies are able to operate with extremely little transparency and accountability. Defense contractors are generally protected from liability when their products accidentally do not work as intended, even when the results are deadly. The Pentagon plans to spend $1bn by 2025 on its Replicator Initiative, which aims to develop swarms of unmanned combat drones that will use artificial intelligence to seek out threats. The air force wants to allocate around $6bn over the next five years to research and development of unmanned collaborative combat aircraft, seeking to build a fleet of 1,000 AI-enabled fighter jets that can fly autonomously. The Department of Defense has also secured hundreds of millions of dollars in recent years to fund its secretive AI initiative known as Project Maven, a venture focused on technologies like automated target recognition and surveillance.

Note:Learn more about emerging warfare technology in our comprehensive Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center. For more, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on AI from reliable major media sources.


Who’s the real purveyor of disinformation? Your government
2024-07-18, The Hill
Posted: 2024-07-21 19:35:08
https://thehill.com/opinion/healthcare/4773496-government-disinformation-publ...

According to the American Psychological Association, “Misinformation is false or inaccurate information — getting the facts wrong. Disinformation is false information which is deliberately intended to mislead — intentionally misstating the facts.” What we’ve seen over the past several years is our government purveying disinformation — deliberately misleading the public. When our government peddles disinformation, it undermines the public trust. That’s why only 22 percent of Americans say they trust the government. Hillary Clinton’s campaign made and paid for the Russian collusion hoax, which asserted that Donald Trump had “worked with the Russians to try to rig the 2016 election,” to quote then-House Judiciary Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.). Clinton and her campaign ... were working behind the scenes with government agents — including the FBI and elected Democrats — to spread disinformation. Several operatives within the FBI were promoting the hoax and giving it the appearance of fact, which allowed the media to cover the issue ad infinitum. One FBI agent, Kevin Clinesmith, even lied to the FISA Court so the government could continue monitoring the phone calls of U.S. citizens. The hoax cost taxpayers millions of dollars, first with the Mueller Report and then the Durham Report. Yet no collusion was found, just disinformation. Retired Dr. Anthony Fauci, who served as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases ... [asserted] the natural origin of the COVID-19 virus. Several years later, there is a widespread assumption that the virus leaked from the Wuhan Virility Institute in China. Fauci did not want people to believe the lab-leak theory, perhaps because he and others had worked with and provided federal funds to that laboratory.

Note: Watch our 15-min Mindful News Brief video on the strong evidence that bioweapons research created COVID-19. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and media manipulation from reliable sources.


Stop mourning the Murthy case, start fighting the censorship-industrial complex
2024-07-11, The Hill
Posted: 2024-07-21 19:31:57
https://thehill.com/opinion/judiciary/4763829-big-tech-censorship-murthy-gove...

After government officials like former White House advisers Rob Flaherty and Andy Slavitt repeatedly harangued platforms such as Facebook to censor Americans who contested the government’s narrative on COVID-19 vaccines, Missouri and Louisiana sued. They claimed that the practice violates the First Amendment. Following years of litigation, the Supreme Court threw cold water on their efforts, ruling in Murthy v. Missouri that states and the individual plaintiffs lacked standing to sue the government for its actions. The government often disguised its censorship requests by coordinating with ostensibly “private” civil society groups to pressure tech companies to remove or shadow ban targeted content. According to the U.S. House Weaponization Committee’s November 2023 interim report, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency requested that the now-defunct Stanford Internet Observatory create a public-private partnership to counter election “misinformation” in 2020. This consortium of government and private entities took the form of the Election Integrity Partnership (EIP). EIP’s “private” civil society partners then forwarded the flagged content to Big Tech platforms like Facebook, YouTube, TikTok and Twitter. These “private” groups ... receive millions of taxpayer dollars from the National Science Foundation, the State Department and the U.S Department of Justice. Legislation like the COLLUDE Act would ... clarify that Section 230 does not apply when platforms censor legal speech “as a result of a communication” from a “governmental entity” or from an non-profit “acting at the request or behest of a governmental entity.”

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on censorship and government corruption from reliable sources.


‘We’ve got drone swarms, dirty bombs, radar-jamming’: the fake town where America practises for war
2024-05-15, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2024-07-21 19:28:56
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/may/15/weve-got-drone-swarms...

Razish [is] a fake village built by the US army to train its soldiers for urban warfare. It is one of a dozen pretend settlements scattered across “the Box” (as in sandbox) – a vast landscape of unforgiving desert at the Fort Irwin National Training Center (NTC), the largest such training facility in the world. Covering more than 1,200 square miles, it is a place where soldiers come to practise liberating the citizens of the imaginary oil-rich nation Atropia from occupation by the evil authoritarian state of Donovia. Fake landmines dot the valleys, fake police stations are staffed by fake police, and fake villages populated by citizens of fake nation states are invaded daily by the US military – wielding very real artillery. It operates a fake cable news channel, on which officers are subjected to aggressive TV interviews, trained to win the media war as well as the physical one. Recently, it even introduced internal social media networks, called Tweeter and Fakebook, where mock civilians spread fake news about the battles – social media being the latest weapon in the arsenal of modern war. Razish may still have a Middle Eastern look, but the actors hawking chunks of plastic meat and veg in the street market speak not English or Arabic, but Russian. This military role-playing industry has ballooned since the early 2000s, now comprising a network of 256 companies across the US, receiving more than $250m a year in government contracts. The actors are often recent refugees, having fled one real-world conflict only to enter another, simulated one.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on military corruption from reliable major media sources.


OnlyFans vows it's a safe space. Predators are exploiting kids there.
2024-07-02, Reuters
Posted: 2024-07-21 19:26:47
https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/onlyfans-sex-children/

OnlyFans makes reassuring promises to the public: It’s strictly adults-only, with sophisticated measures to monitor every user, vet all content and swiftly remove and report any child sexual abuse material. Reuters documented 30 complaints in U.S. police and court records that child sexual abuse material appeared on the site between December 2019 and June 2024. The case files examined by the news organization cited more than 200 explicit videos and images of kids, including some adults having oral sex with toddlers. In one case, multiple videos of a minor remained on OnlyFans for more than a year, according to a child exploitation investigator who found them while assisting Reuters. OnlyFans “presents itself as a platform that provides unrivaled access to influencers, celebrities and models,” said Elly Hanson, a clinical psychologist and researcher who focuses on preventing sexual abuse and reducing its impact. “This is an attractive mix to many teens, who are pulled into its world of commodified sex, unprepared for what this entails.” In 2021 ... 102 Republican and Democratic members of the U.S. House of Representatives called on the Justice Department to investigate child sexual abuse on OnlyFans. The Justice Department told the lawmakers three months later that it couldn’t confirm or deny it was investigating OnlyFans. Contacted recently, a department spokesperson declined to comment further.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on sexual abuse scandals from reliable major media sources.


Smartphones are bad for kids – we don’t need to call on scientific data to know it
2024-07-13, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2024-07-21 19:24:47
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/jul/13/smartphones-are...

Jonathan Haidt is a man with a mission ... to alert us to the harms that social media and modern parenting are doing to our children. His latest book, The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness ... writes of a “tidal wave” of increases in mental illness and distress beginning around 2012. Young adolescent girls are hit hardest, but boys are in pain, too. He sees two factors that have caused this. The first is the decline of play-based childhood caused by overanxious parenting, which allows children fewer opportunities for unsupervised play and restricts their movement. The second factor is the ubiquity of smartphones and the social media apps that thrive upon them. The result is the “great rewiring of childhood” of his book’s subtitle and an epidemic of mental illness and distress. You don’t have to be a statistician to know that ... Instagram is toxic for some – perhaps many – teenage girls. Ever since Frances Haugen’s revelations, we have known that Facebook itself knew that 13% of British teenage girls said that their suicidal thoughts became more frequent after starting on Instagram. And the company’s own researchers found that 32% of teen girls said that when they felt bad about their bodies, Instagram made them feel worse. These findings might not meet the exacting standards of the best scientific research, but they tell you what you need to know.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on Big Tech and mental health from reliable major media sources.


‘Forever chemicals’ used in lithium ion batteries threaten environment, research finds
2024-07-14, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2024-07-21 19:22:44
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/article/2024/jul/14/forever-chemicals-...

Toxic PFAS “forever chemicals” used in lithium ion batteries essential to the clean energy transition present a dangerous source of chemical pollution that new research finds threatens the environment and human health. The multipronged, peer-reviewed study zeroed in on a little-researched and unregulated subclass of PFAS called bis-FASI that are used in lithium ion batteries. Researchers found alarming levels of the chemicals in the environment near manufacturing plants, noted their presence in remote areas around the world, found they appear to be toxic to living organisms, and discovered that waste from batteries disposed of in landfills was a major pollution source. PFAS are a class of about 16,000 human-made compounds most often used to make products resistant to water, stains and heat. They are called “forever chemicals” because they do not naturally break down and have been found to accumulate in humans. The chemicals are linked to cancer, birth defects, liver disease, thyroid disease, plummeting sperm counts and a range of other serious health problems. The paper notes that few end-of-life standards for PFAS battery waste exist, and the vast majority ends up in municipal dumps where it can leach into waterways, accumulate locally or be transported long distances. It looked at the presence of the chemicals in historical leachate samples and found none in those from prior to the mid-1990s, when the chemical class was commercialized.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on toxic chemicals from reliable major media sources.


Banana giant held liable for funding paramilitaries
2024-06-11, BBC News
Posted: 2024-07-21 19:20:35
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c6pprpd3x96o

A court in the United States has found multinational fruit company Chiquita Brands International liable for financing a Colombian paramilitary group. The group, the United Self-Defence Forces of Colombia (AUC), was designated by the US as a terrorist organisation at the time. Following a civil case brought by eight Colombian families whose relatives were killed by the AUC, Chiquita has been ordered to pay $38.3m (£30m) in damages to the families. The AUC engaged in widespread human rights abuses in Colombia, including murdering people it suspected of links with left-wing rebels. The victims ranged from trade unionists to banana workers. The case was brought by the families after Chiquita pleaded guilty in 2007 to making payments to the AUC. During the 2007 trial, it was revealed that Chiquita had made payments amounting to more than $1.7m to the AUC in the six years from 1997 to 2004. The banana giant said that it began making the payments after the leader of the AUC at the time, Carlos Castaño, implied that staff and property belonging to Chiquita's subsidiary in Colombia could be harmed if the money was not forthcoming. The AUC claimed to have been created to defend landowners from ... left-wing rebels, the paramilitary group more often acted as a death squad for drug traffickers. At its height, it had an estimated 30,000 members who engaged in intimidation, drug trafficking, extortion, forced displacement and killings.

Note: Read more about Chiquita's payments to this Colombian paramilitary group. Chiquita succeeded the United Fruit Company, which once owned most of the land in Guatemala and had close ties with the CIA. When Guatemala's democratically elected president aimed to nationalize land, US covert operations installed a military dictator, returning the land to United Fruit. This led to a bloody 40-year civil war and a series of repressive military regimes, armed with CIA-funded weapons.


The Companies Making It Easy To Buy In A West Bank Settlement
2024-07-09, The Intercept
Posted: 2024-07-21 19:17:49
https://theintercept.com/2024/07/09/west-bank-settlement-israel-real-estate/

Real estate companies are making an explicit appeal to wartime patriotism, leading with the conflict as a selling point and a reason to invest. In late June, a company called My Israel Home hosted an expo at a Los Angeles synagogue catering to a specific clientele: Jewish Americans looking to buy a new home in Israel — or on illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank. Similar real estate fairs have popped up across North America this year ... and several have faced protests as the war on Gaza has brought the issue of Israeli settlements and Palestinian sovereignty to the fore. On websites largely tailored for Jewish American buyers looking to move to Israel, prospective homeowners can browse properties that include listings for homes in settlement communities, which offer the typical trappings of suburban life. Around a dozen real estate firms have participated in real estate fairs organized by My Israel Home across North America this year. Six of these firms are actively marketing at least two dozen separate properties for sale located within eight different West Bank and East Jerusalem settlements, according to their online listings. Other real estate firms commonly list dozens of West Bank properties on their sites. West Bank settlements have long drawn criticism from the international community, which regards the settlements as illegal, in violation of Article 49 of the Geneva Conventions. Criticism of settlements have only intensified in recent months amid a spike in settler violence against Palestinians in the occupied territory.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corruption in government and in the corporate world from reliable major media sources.


How the United States Arms the Mexican Cartels
2024-04-16, Rolling Stone
Posted: 2024-07-21 19:16:02
https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/mexican-cartels-atf-gun...

Project Gunrunner [was] a nationwide initiative launched in Laredo, Texas, in 2005, which sought to reduce the smuggling of firearms across the U.S. southern border. But while the primary tactic of Gunrunner was the interdiction of buyers and sellers who were violating the laws, [ATF] agents in Phoenix had other plans. They wanted to see where the guns went if they were allowed to cross the border — to follow the small fish until they caught bigger ones. Agents named their operation “Fast and Furious,” after the popular movie about car racing. Between September 2009 and December 2010, a joint task force comprised of federal officials from ATF, FBI, DEA, and ICE, working under the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Arizona, let over two thousand guns “walk” to Mexico. The murder that made the flawed operation public and political in the United States was of an American citizen on US soil: the killing of US Border Patrol agent Brian Terry. Though the investigators could not identify the specific gun that fired the bullet, two AK-47 style WASR-10 rifles were recovered at the scene. Both were traced to ... one of the straw purchasers the agents were monitoring under the Fast and Furious operation. ATF agents who shared their experiences during interviews conducted by a congressional committee admitted they knew that the only way they would learn the whereabouts of the guns they let go would be when Mexican law enforcement recovered them at crime scenes.

Note: Read more about the thousands of illegal guns American officials allowed into Mexico during Operation Fast and Furious. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption from reliable major media sources.


‘I saw a man transform before my eyes’
2024-06-15, Positive News
Posted: 2024-07-21 19:13:50
https://www.positive.news/society/i-saw-a-man-transform-before-my-eyes/

In A Band of Brothers, we believe that, when a man is willing to hold himself accountable and be supported by his community, magic can happen. And if you ask me what healthy masculinity looks like, it’s that. A man who has been arrogant, ignorant, selfish, rageful ... in short, who has made mistakes (and show me a human who hasn’t), having the courage to step into the circle and say: ‘I need help’. And other men holding him accountable without ever closing their hearts to him. I have compassion for all the men I meet who are still so focused on their own wounds that they cannot lift their heads to see the wounds of others. Suicide is the biggest killer of men under 50 in the UK, which is the acute end of a much wider men’s mental health crisis. The young men who come to us are often torn between competing pressures: an old story about needing to be tough, to make money, to dominate, and a newer one about needing to be gentle, to value more than money, to stop dominating, to renounce the old values. Compassion and accountability – you need both. And the compassion comes first. I am still struck by the words of the young man who said: “No-one had ever actually asked me why I was angry.” He had also never been in a space where he was taught the difference between healthy anger, which is a natural and vital human emotion, and unhealthy anger, which leads to violence against yourself or others.

Note: This article was written by Conroy Harris, founder of A Band of Brothers. Explore more positive stories like this about healing social division.


The bid to ensure that no one dies alone
2024-07-16, Positive News
Posted: 2024-07-21 19:12:11
https://www.positive.news/society/the-bid-to-ensure-that-no-one-dies-alone/

The No One Dies Alone (NODA) movement ... trains and supports volunteers to act as companions to people in the last hours of their lives. Award-winning Scottish nurse Alison Bunce was among the first to pioneer the concept in the UK, but as her team kept bedside vigils in homes, hospitals and hospices she began to ask herself: might they help people have good lives, too? “Being present and accompanying someone as they’re dying is such a privilege – it’s a profound, unique moment,” says Bunce. “But over the years, people were speaking to me about social isolation and loneliness, and I realised this was about life as well as death.” She set up Compassionate Inverclyde (CI) as a project funded by Ardgowan Hospice – where she worked as director of care – and recruited an initial 20 volunteers who could sit with people who were dying alone, initially in the hospice and a local hospital, but eventually in their own homes. Bunce soon realised her volunteers could do more and began curating a range of community care services which operate alongside healthcare professionals and support people at various stages of life. “Our very ethos is about being kind, and how ordinary people can make a difference together,” she says. Volunteers might lend a hand and a friendly ear to new mums, create ‘back home parcels’ for hospital leavers, visit socially isolated neighbours or keep the tea flowing out at CI’s bereavement cafe.

Note: Explore more positive stories about human interest topics.


Turning Brownfields to Blooming Meadows, With the Help of Fungi
2024-06-27, Yale Environment 360
Posted: 2024-07-21 19:10:33
https://e360.yale.edu/features/danielle-stevenson-interview

Danielle Stevenson ... has been pioneering a nature-based technique for restoring contaminated land, using fungi and native plants to break down toxins like petroleum, plastics, and pesticides into less toxic chemicals. The usual way of dealing with tainted soil is to dig it up and cart it off to distant landfills. In a recent pilot project funded by the city of Los Angeles, Stevenson ... working with a team of UC Riverside students and other volunteers, significantly reduced petrochemical pollutants and heavy metals at an abandoned railyard and other industrial sites in Los Angeles. Stevenson says she believes her bioremediation methods can be scaled up to clean polluted landscapes worldwide. "Decomposer fungi can degrade petrochemicals the same way they would break down a dead tree," [said Stevenson]. "And in doing so, they reduce the toxicity of these petrochemicals and create soil that no longer has these contaminants or has much reduced concentrations of it. They can also eat plastic and other things made out of oil. People who live in a place impacted by pollution need to have a say in how their neighborhood is being cleaned up. We need to empower them with the tools to do this. That’s why along with doing these studies and pilot projects, I’ve been running workforce development programs. Potentially, they could bring economic opportunities and benefits to the community in addition to cleaning up the contaminated site."

Note: Explore more positive stories like this about healing the Earth.


Microsoft’s climbdown over its creepy Recall feature shows its AI strategy is far from intelligent
2024-07-06, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2024-07-16 13:20:50
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/jul/06/microsoft-recal...

Recall ... takes constant screenshots in the background while you go about your daily computer business. Microsoft’s Copilot+ machine-learning tech then scans (and “reads”) each of these screenshots in order to make a searchable database of every action performed on your computer and then stores it on the machine’s disk. “Recall is like bestowing a photographic memory on everyone who buys a Copilot+ PC,” [Microsoft marketing officer Yusuf] Mehdi said. “Anything you’ve ever seen or done, you’ll now more or less be able to find.” Charlie Stross, the sci-fi author and tech critic, called it a privacy “shit-show for any organisation that handles medical records or has a duty of legal confidentiality.” He also said: “Suddenly, every PC becomes a target for discovery during legal proceedings. Lawyers can subpoena your Recall database and search it, no longer being limited to email but being able to search for terms that came up in Teams or Slack or Signal messages, and potentially verbally via Zoom or Skype if speech-to-text is included in Recall data.” Faced with this pushback, Microsoft [announced] that Recall would be made opt-in instead of on by default, and also introducing extra security precautions – only producing results from Recall after user authentication, for example, and never decrypting data stored by the tool until after a search query. The only good news for Microsoft here is that it seems to have belatedly acknowledged that Recall has been a fiasco.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on Big Tech and the disappearance of privacy from reliable major media sources.


Revolving door: You are free to influence us “behind the scenes,” FDA tells staff leaving for industry jobs
2024-07-01, The BMJ (Formerly British Medical Journal)
Posted: 2024-07-16 13:18:59
https://www.bmj.com/content/386/bmj.q1418.short

During his final three years at the US Food and Drug Administration the physician scientist Doran Fink’s work focused on reviewing covid-19 vaccines. But a decade after joining the agency Fink had accepted a job with Moderna, the covid vaccine manufacturer. As he left for the private sector, the FDA’s ethics programme staff emailed him guidelines on post-employment restrictions, “tailored to your situation.” The email, obtained by The BMJ under a freedom of information request, explained that, although US law prohibits a variety of types of lobbying contact, “they do not prohibit the former employee from other activities, including working ‘behind the scenes.’” The legal ability to work “behind the scenes” is enshrined in federal regulations and highlights a “critical, critical loophole” in US revolving door policy. Craig Holman, a government affairs lobbyist for the organisation Public Citizen, told The BMJ that the rules forbid various forms of direct lobbying contact but permit lobbying activity that is indirect. “So, people will leave government service and can immediately start doing influence peddling and lobbying,” Holman explained. “They can even run a lobbying campaign, as long as they don’t actually pick up the telephone and make the contact with their former officials.” A majority of former FDA reviewers take up jobs in industry. Since 2000 every FDA commissioner, the agency’s highest position, has gone on to work for industry.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corruption in government and in Big Pharma from reliable major media sources.


Supreme Court opioid case makes it harder to shield wealth in bankruptcy
2024-06-29, Washington Post
Posted: 2024-07-16 13:16:32
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2024/06/29/bankruptcy-supreme-court-p...

A Supreme Court ruling against the opioid company Purdue Pharma ... substantially raised the bar for executives and owners trying to shield their wealth. Johnson & Johnson, Boy Scouts of America and Rite Aid are among the entities trying to handle a vast number of lawsuits in bankruptcy court, seeking to resolve all claims in a single settlement. These proceedings have echoes of the Purdue Pharma case decided by the Supreme Court on Thursday, in which the Sackler family, which owns the bankrupt opioid-maker, offered plaintiffs about $6 billion of the $11 billion they extracted from the company. In exchange, family members would have received immunity from future lawsuits, without filing for bankruptcy themselves. A 5-4 Supreme Court held that settlement was inadequate. Its ruling threw the massive bankruptcy case against Purdue Pharma into doubt after years of court battles over the company’s role in the nation’s opioid epidemic. The decision also adds a fresh wrinkle to a controversial legal strategy, called the Texas two-step, in which companies use a Texas law to split into separate companies and shift a large volume of legal claims onto the newly created entity. In the second step, the entity carrying the lawsuits files for bankruptcy and seeks to release its parent organization from all liability in exchange for a payout. Johnson & Johnson transferred some of its assets and all of the legal claims against it over asbestos-tainted talcum powder into a new legal entity that filed for Chapter 11. Boy Scouts of America ... agreed to pay $2.5 billion to settle claims of sexual abuse in bankruptcy court, a deal that shields from future litigation insurance companies as well as schools, churches and community organizations involved with the nonprofit.

Note: For more like this, read about how powerful corporations use the bankruptcy system to dodge lawsuits over sexual abuse and deadly products. Along US opioid industry lines, read how the industry operated like a drug cartel. Watch our Mindful News Brief video on how the deadly War on Drugs protects the activities of the rich and powerful: military-intelligence interests within the US government, big banks, Big Pharma, and drug cartels.


More Than 10 Years Later, The Senate Torture Report Is Still Secret
2024-06-27, The Intercept
Posted: 2024-07-16 13:14:08
https://theintercept.com/2024/06/27/senate-torture-report-cia-lawsuit/

The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence submitted its 6,700-page “torture report” about the CIA to the White House in April 2014. More than 10 years later, the full report remains secret after a federal appellate court dismissed a lawsuit I filed in the hopes of forcing its release. The document “includes comprehensive and excruciating detail” about the CIA’s “program of indefinite secret detention and the use of brutal interrogation techniques,” the late Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who chaired the Senate intelligence committee at the time, wrote in a 2014 summary. “The full report details how the CIA lied to the public, the Congress, the president, and to itself about the information produced by the torture program,” said Tom Blanton, director of the National Security Archive at George Washington University. So far, efforts to obtain the torture report using the federal Freedom of Information Act have been unsuccessful. In late 2016, despite the CIA director’s objections, former President Barack Obama placed a copy in his presidential papers. But that copy is not subject to FOIA until 2029 — 12 years after Obama left office. The CIA and a handful of federal agencies also have copies of the torture report, although the Trump administration returned several of these to the Senate intelligence committee vaults in 2017. The Obama, Trump, and Biden administrations all fought strenuously against FOIA requests for these agencies’ copies.

Note: The above was written by media law attorney Shawn Musgrave. No one been charged in connection with the unethical CIA torture program. Many of the architects and enablers of the program are now in powerful and esteemed positions in academia, high levels of government, the federal judiciary, and more. For more, read the "10 Craziest Things in the Senate Report on Torture" and check out our summary on US torture programs in our comprehensive Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center.


540 Days at CIA Black Sites. 18 Years at Guantanamo Without Charge. Hundreds of Paintings, Now Out in The World.
2023-08-12, Wall Street Journal
Posted: 2024-07-16 13:11:53
https://www.wsj.com/articles/540-days-at-cia-black-sites-18-years-at-guantana...

In the early days of America’s war on terror, U.S. authorities detained Ahmed Rabbani thinking he was someone else. They soon realized their mistake. Rabbani ... was never charged with a crime. Rabbani’s lawyer says he ... was taken by Pakistani authorities who misidentified him and handed him over to U.S. intelligence officers for a $5,000 reward. Rabbani [was] a taxi driver in Karachi. He spoke three languages—Urdu, Arabic and English. When he was detained, on Sept. 10, 2002, Rabbani didn’t know his wife was pregnant. He said he found out about it three years later from a letter—the first communication he had received from her since his detention. He met his 20-year-old son, Jawwad, for the first time upon his return to Pakistan in February. After 18½ years at Guantanamo Bay, he stepped off a plane in Pakistan in February—a free but broken man. Years of hunger strikes and force feeding have left him unable to eat most solid food. “I never, never, ever sleep at night,” he said. His only means of escape was art. By the time of his release, he had made hundreds of paintings. In May, 20 of Rabbani’s paintings were shown at a gallery in the Pakistani city of Karachi. Rabbani said he was transferred several times to camps in Pakistan and Afghanistan known as black sites—secret CIA interrogation facilities. There, he said, he was tortured until he told his captors anything he thought they wanted to hear. A total of 779 men were at some point detained [at Guantanamo]. Like Rabbani, most were eventually released without ever having been charged with a crime. Rabbani says he doesn’t expect he will ever fully recover, physically or mentally. “Some things will never be fixed,” he said.

Note: Read more about Guantanamo Bay's horrors. Check out the incredible ships created by Moath al-Alwi, another prisoner held at Guantánamo Bay without charges since 2002. The Pentagon has declared that art produced at Guantánamo Bay belongs to the US government, and not the artists. Authorities have refused to release the artworks from prison.


The U.S. Says a Far-Right Ukrainian Army Unit Can Now Get Aid. A Photo Shows Training Was Already Happening.
2024-06-22, The Intercept
Posted: 2024-07-16 13:09:12
https://theintercept.com/2024/06/22/ukraine-azov-battalion-us-training-ban/

Last week, the Biden administration said it would allow the Azov Brigade, a Ukrainian military unit, to receive U.S. weaponry and training, freeing it from a purported ban imposed in response to concerns that it committed human rights violations and had neo-Nazi ties. A photo posted by the unit itself, however, seems to suggest that the U.S. was providing support as far back as December of last year. The photo, in tandem with the administration’s own statements, highlights the murky nature of the arms ban, how it was imposed, and under what U.S. authority. Two mechanisms could have barred arms transfers: a law passed by Congress specifically prohibiting assistance to Azov, and the so-called Leahy laws that block support to units responsible for grave rights violations. The State Department said this month that weapon shipments will now go forward after a Leahy law review, but won’t comment on if and when a Leahy ban was in effect. The congressional prohibition, the U.S. says, does not apply because it barred assistance to the Azov Battalion, a predecessor to the Azov Brigade. The original unit had earned scrutiny for alleged human rights violations and ties to neo-Nazi and white supremacist ideologies. The U.S. has not made clear about when the apparent ban started, but a deputy Azov commander and media reports indicate some type of prohibition has been in effect for nearly a decade — though the congressional ban has only been in effect since 2018.

Note: Facebook changed its censorship policies to permit calls for the death of Russian soldiers and praise for the Azov Battalion. Learn more about US covert military support for Neo-Nazis in our comprehensive Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center.


In Fresh Hell, American Vending Machines are Selling Bullets Using Facial Recognition
2024-07-08, Futurism
Posted: 2024-07-16 13:06:53
https://futurism.com/vending-machines-bullets-facial-recognition

A growing number of supermarkets in Alabama, Oklahoma, and Texas are selling bullets by way of AI-powered vending machines, as first reported by Alabama's Tuscaloosa Thread. The company behind the machines, a Texas-based venture dubbed American Rounds, claims on its website that its dystopian bullet kiosks are outfitted with "built-in AI technology" and "facial recognition software," which allegedly allow the devices to "meticulously verify the identity and age of each buyer." As showcased in a promotional video, using one is an astoundingly simple process: walk up to the kiosk, provide identification, and let a camera scan your face. If its embedded facial recognition tech says you are in fact who you say you are, the automated machine coughs up some bullets. According to American Rounds, the main objective is convenience. Its machines are accessible "24/7," its website reads, "ensuring that you can buy ammunition on your own schedule, free from the constraints of store hours and long lines." Though officials in Tuscaloosa, where two machines have been installed, [said] that the devices are in full compliance with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives' standards ... at least one of the devices has been taken down amid a Tuscaloosa city council investigation into its legal standing. "We have over 200 store requests for AARM [Automated Ammo Retail Machine] units covering approximately nine states currently," [American Rounds CEO Grant Magers] told Newsweek, "and that number is growing daily."

Note: Facial recognition technology is far from reliable. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on artificial intelligence from reliable major media sources.


Intelligence Officials Secretly Paid by Big Tech to Fight Antitrust Reforms
2024-06-14, Lee Fang on Substack
Posted: 2024-07-16 13:03:43
https://www.leefang.com/p/intelligence-officials-secretly-paid

High-level former intelligence and national security officials have provided crucial assistance to Silicon Valley giants as the tech firms fought off efforts to weaken online monopolies. John Ratcliffe, the former Director of National Intelligence, Brian Cavanaugh, a former intelligence aide in the White House, and [former White House National Security Advisor Robert] O'Brien jointly wrote to congressional leaders, warning darkly that certain legislative proposals to check the power of Amazon, Google, Meta, and Apple would embolden America's enemies. The letter left unmentioned that the former officials were paid by tech industry lobbyists at the time as part of a campaign to suppress support for the legislation. The Open App Markets App was designed to break Apple and Google's duopoly over the smartphone app store market. The companies use their control over the app markets to force app developers to pay as much as 30 percent in fees on every transaction. Breaking up Apple and Google’s hold over the smartphone app store would enable greater free expression and innovation. The American Innovation and Choice Online Act similarly encourages competition by preventing tech platforms from self-preferencing their own products. The Silicon Valley giants deployed hundreds of millions of dollars in lobbying efforts to stymie the reforms. For Republicans, they crafted messages on national security and jobs. For Democrats, as other reports have revealed, tech giants paid LGBT, Black, and Latino organizations to lobby against the reforms, claiming that powerful tech platforms are beneficial to communities of color and that greater competition online would lead to a rise in hate speech.The lobbying tactics have so far paid off. Every major tech antitrust and competition bill in Congress has died over the last four years.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on intelligence agency corruption and Big Tech from reliable major media sources.


If You Don’t Trust Media Now, Wait Until It’s Government-Funded
2024-07-08, Reason
Posted: 2024-07-16 13:01:09
https://reason.com/2024/07/08/if-you-dont-trust-media-now-wait-until-its-gove...

In May, the New York State government agreed to subsidize news media. The legislation allows tax credits for up to half of journalists' salaries. Not every outlet can write off employment costs. Excluded ... are nonprofit operations as well as those owned by publicly traded companies. Governments have tried to suppress dissenting views. If a massive chunk of journalists' income comes from one reliable source—government coffers—they'll inevitably treat government as the audience to please rather than locals who've proven difficult to court and who distrust the press. Under such subsidies, the future of local media could be one of well-funded media outlets ignored by their nominal communities as they produce reports tailored for the tastes of bureaucrats with funding power. That's been an ongoing problem with publicly funded journalism. "In Europe, we have seen governments harm the reputation and independence of public media to the point of limiting their citizens' access to differing points of view," Freedom House research analyst Jessica White wrote. In December, a report from The Future of Free Speech, an independent think tank ... warned, "the global landscape for freedom of expression has faced severe challenges in 2023. Even open democracies have implemented restrictive measures." The report documented how obsession with "hate speech," "terrorist content," and "disinformation" are wielded as bludgeons by officials against critics of government officials and their policies.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and media manipulation from reliable sources.


Our Spy And Intelligence Agencies Are Out Of Control
2024-06-04, Public on Substack
Posted: 2024-07-16 12:58:50
https://www.public.news/p/our-spy-and-intelligence-agencies

Starting in 2016, United States government intelligence agencies, news media, and establishment leaders in both political parties warned of a vast Russian conspiracy to interfere in elections. Every major allegation proved to be wrong or profoundly misleading. According to every serious political scientist, Russia had no measurable influence in the 2016 elections. According to intelligence and security services, the news media, and establishment political leaders across the Western World, Russia is currently interfering in European elections by secretly bribing conservative politicians. Yesterday, the Washington Post repeated the claim. But neither the government agencies nor the news media have produced any evidence to support their accusations, and every single individual accused of taking money from the Russians has denied it. What we are witnessing appears to be establishment politicians weaponizing government intelligence agencies to interfere in Europe’s elections, with the active participation of mainstream German NGOs and news media companies. The weaponization of government by politicians and intelligence agencies should terrify us all. Just because you’re not the victim in this particular case, either because you’re not European or conservative, is no reason to think that what’s happening couldn’t affect you and the people you love and care about in the future.

Note: Read about the 2016 leak of DNC documents that was blamed on Russian Hackers. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on intelligence agency corruption from reliable major media sources.


An experiment doled out money to homeless people in Denver, no strings attached. Here’s what happened.
2024-06-19, Colorado Sun
Posted: 2024-07-16 12:56:19
https://coloradosun.com/2024/06/19/homeless-payments/

More than 800 people were selected to participate in the Denver Basic Income Project while they were living on the streets, in shelters, on friends’ couches or in vehicles. They were separated into three groups. Group A received $1,000 per month for a year. Group B received $6,500 the first month and $500 for the next 11 months. And group C, the control group, received $50 per month. About 45% of participants in all three groups were living in a house or apartment that they rented or owned by the study’s 10-month check-in point, according to the research. The number of nights spent in shelters among participants in the first and second groups decreased by half. And participants in those two groups reported an increase in full-time work, while the control group reported decreased full-time employment. Parents of kids under 18 ... reported statistically significant improvements in “parental distress” after receiving money for 10 months. Researchers tallied an estimated $589,214 in savings on public services, including ambulance rides, visits to hospital emergency departments, jail stays and shelter nights. The $9.4 million project was funded by a mix of public and private money, including $1.5 million from The Colorado Trust and $2 million from the city of Denver’s pot of federal pandemic relief money.

Note: Explore more positive stories about reimagining the economy and healing social division.


U.S. Marshals Find 200 Missing Children Across the Nation During 6-Week Special Operation
2024-07-04, Good News Network
Posted: 2024-07-16 12:54:16
https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/u-s-marshals-find-200-missing-children-across...

The U.S. Marshals Service (USMS), along with federal, state, and local agencies led a six-week national operation that resulted in finding 200 critically missing children, which includes endangered runaways and those abducted by noncustodial persons. This is the second rendition of this coordinated effort, and so it was called Operation We Will Find You 2 (WWFY2). Running from May 20 to June 24 it focused on geographical areas with high clusters of missing children. WWFY2 resulted in the recovery and removal of 123 children from dangerous situations. An additional 77 missing children were located and found to be in safe locations, according to law enforcement or child welfare agencies. These so-called dangerous situations involved human trafficking, captivity by family relations, or situations of sexual exploitation, some involuntarily and others violently. “One of the most sacred missions of U.S. Marshals Service is locating and recovering our nation’s critically missing children,” said USMS Director Ronald L. Davis on completion of the case. “This is one of our top priorities as there remain thousands of children still missing and at risk.” Some of the most notable and frightening cases can be read on the USMS release of the operation, and included kidnapping in Michigan, human trafficking in Miami-Dade, sex trafficking in Arizona, familial kidnapping in Oregon, and potential infanticide in North Carolina.

Note: Explore more positive stories about ending human trafficking.


This 12-year-old memorized the periodic table at age 2. He’s heading to NYU after finishing high school in just 2 years
2024-06-30, CNN News
Posted: 2024-07-16 12:52:04
https://www.cnn.com/us/new-york-12-year-old-college-trnd/index.html

Recent high school graduate Suborno Isaac Bari, 12, plans to start studying math and physics at New York University in the fall. “I hope to graduate college at 14 in spring 2026,” said Suborno, who recently became the youngest graduate from his Long Island high school. The gifted tween, who memorized the periodic table at 2 years old and has taught lectures at colleges in India since he was 7, graduated on Wednesday from Malverne High School in Nassau County, New York. The bright young student, whose family says he’s also skilled in painting, debate and playing the piano, could also be making history at NYU when he begins pursuing his bachelor of science degree. A university spokesperson informed the Bari family “NYU is unaware of anyone younger than Suborno being admitted,” according to a copy of an email shared with CNN. In 2016, then-President Barack Obama sent Suborno a letter praising the bright student for his hard work and accomplishments. The family shared a copy of the letter with CNN. In 2020 when he was 7, Suborno began receiving invitations from colleges in India to teach, which he does three times a year. “That gives him lots of chances to have conversations with different levels of expertise, students, faculties, college presidents, so many people,” [father] Rashidul Bari said. Suborno plans to continue his family’s trend of teaching by one day becoming a math and physics professor.

Note: Explore more positive stories about human interest topics.


Mexican cartels boast of increased lethal firepower, including some weapons from the U.S.
2024-06-29, USA Today
Posted: 2024-07-11 15:09:06
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/investigations/2024/06/29/mexican-cartels...

“El Flaco” ... works as a mercenary, he said, and had come to discuss a closely guarded secret of Mexico’s most powerful cartels: The FGM 148 Javelin infrared-guided, missile launcher. El Flaco maintains he has been trained to perform special operations using shoulder-fired weapons, including the Javelin. He said he now trains others to use it as well. If El Flaco is telling the truth, Javelins would be among the most extreme examples of the escalation in the arms race between cartels and Mexican military. Cartels’ arsenals now include belt-fed gatling guns, drone bombs and land mines. The U.S.-made Javelin is the most sophisticated shoulder-fired missile launcher in the world, with a range of a mile and a half. Its main purpose is to destroy military tanks, but it also has the capacity to take down low-flying helicopters. There are holes in the U.S. tracking system. During the Iraq War in 2003, the department lost track of 35 Javelins provided to Iraqi allied forces. ISIS was found to have a Javelin in Syria, Kurdish fighters there also obtained a Javelin and the weapon was found at a Libyan warlord base. Since 2018, the Mexican government has reported seizing a dozen rocket launchers and 56 grenade launchers from cartels. Thomas Brandon with the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives said it was clear that “criminal organizations and drug cartels based in Mexico continue to look towards the United States as a source of supply for firearms and in this case military grade weapons such as grenades, machine guns, and Man-Portable Air Defense.”

Note: American officials allowed thousands of illegal guns to be trafficked into Mexico during Operation Fast and Furious. For more, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on military corruption from reliable major media sources.


FedEx’s Secretive Police Force Is Helping Cops Build An AI Car Surveillance Network
2024-06-19, Forbes
Posted: 2024-07-11 15:06:38
https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2024/06/19/fedex-police-help-cops...

Twenty years ago, FedEx established its own police force. Now it's working with local police to build out an AI car surveillance network. The shipping and business services company is using AI tools made by Flock Safety, a $4 billion car surveillance startup, to monitor its distribution and cargo facilities across the United States. As part of the deal, FedEx is providing its Flock surveillance feeds to law enforcement, an arrangement that Flock has with at least four multi-billion dollar private companies. Some local police departments are also sharing their Flock feeds with FedEx — a rare instance of a private company availing itself of a police surveillance apparatus. Such close collaboration has the potential to dramatically expand Flock’s car surveillance network, which already spans 4,000 cities across over 40 states and some 40,000 cameras that track vehicles by license plate, make, model, color and other identifying characteristics, like dents or bumper stickers. Jay Stanley ... at the American Civil Liberties Union, said it was “profoundly disconcerting” that FedEx was exchanging data with law enforcement as part of Flock’s “mass surveillance” system. “It raises questions about why a private company ... would have privileged access to data that normally is only available to law enforcement,” he said. Forbes previously found that [Flock] had itself likely broken the law across various states by installing cameras without the right permits.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on AI and the disappearance of privacy from reliable major media sources.


Law enforcement is spying on thousands of Americans’ mail, records show
2024-06-24, Washington Post
Posted: 2024-07-11 15:03:37
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/06/24/post-office-mail-surveil...

The U.S. Postal Service has shared information from thousands of Americans’ letters and packages with law enforcement every year for the past decade, conveying the names, addresses and other details from the outside of boxes and envelopes without requiring a court order. Postal Service officials have received more than 60,000 requests from federal agents and police officers since 2015. Each request can cover days or weeks of mail sent to or from a person or address, and 97 percent of the requests were approved. The surveillance technique, known as the mail covers program, has long been used by postal inspectors to help track down suspects or evidence. The practice is legal, and the inspectors said they share only what they can see on the outside of the mail. [Sen. Ron] Wyden said in a statement, “Thousands of Americans are subjected to warrantless surveillance each year, and ... the Postal Inspection Service rubber stamps practically all of the requests they receive.” He also criticized the agency for “refusing to raise its standards and require law enforcement agencies monitoring the outside of Americans’ mail to get a court order, which is already required to monitor emails and texts.” Anxieties over postal surveillance are classically American. In 1798, Vice President Thomas Jefferson wrote in a letter that his fears of having his private communications exposed by the “infidelities of the post office” had stopped him from “writing fully & freely.”

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on police corruption and the disappearance of privacy from reliable major media sources.


Pattern of Brain Damage Is Pervasive in Navy SEALs Who Died by Suicide
2024-06-30, New York Times
Posted: 2024-07-11 15:01:27
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/30/us/navy-seals-brain-damage-suicide.html

David Metcalf’s last act in life was an attempt to send a message — that years as a Navy SEAL had left his brain so damaged that he could barely recognize himself. He shot himself in the heart, preserving his brain to be analyzed by a state-of-the-art Defense Department laboratory in Maryland. The lab found an unusual pattern of damage seen only in people exposed repeatedly to blast waves. The vast majority of blast exposure for Navy SEALs comes from firing their own weapons, not from enemy action. The damage pattern suggested that years of training intended to make SEALs exceptional was leaving some barely able to function. At least a dozen Navy SEALs have died by suicide in the last 10 years. A grass-roots effort by grieving families delivered eight of their brains to the lab. Researchers discovered blast damage in every single one. The damage may be just as widespread in SEALs who are still alive. A Harvard study ... scanned the brains of 30 career Special Operators and found an association between blast exposure and altered brain structure and compromised brain function. The more blast exposure the men had experienced, the more problems they reported with health and quality of life. Doctors treating the injured troops give them diagnoses of psychiatric disorders that miss the underlying physical damage. Much of what is categorized as post-traumatic stress disorder may actually be caused by repeated exposure to blasts.

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After Training African Coup Leaders, Pentagon Blames Russia For African Coups
2024-06-06, The Intercept
Posted: 2024-07-11 14:59:11
https://theintercept.com/2024/06/06/africa-coups-pentagon-blames-russia/

Russia is to blame for coups in the African Sahel, according to a new analysis by the Pentagon’s top Africa researcher, which ignores the U.S. role in training leaders of these mutinies — and two decades of failed U.S. counterterrorism policies in the region. A series of reports by The Intercept found that military personnel who had received U.S. support were involved in coups in Burkina Faso (in 2014, 2015, and twice in 2022), Mali (in 2012, 2020, and 2021), and Niger (in 2023). U.S.-supported officers also played a role in coups in Mauritania (2008), Gambia (2014), Chad (2021), and Guinea (2021). The total number of U.S.-trained mutineers across Africa since 9/11 may be far higher than is known, but the State Department, which tracks data on U.S. trainees, is either unwilling or unable to supply it. The Pentagon is mandated to provide a briefing on coups carried out by U.S.-trained African partners to the Senate and House Armed Services committees but missed its March deadline. Throughout all of Africa, the State Department counted a total of just nine terrorist attacks in 2002 and 2003, the first years of U.S. counterterrorism assistance in the Sahel. Last year, the number of violent events in Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger alone reached 3,716, according to the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project, a crisis monitoring organization. This represents a jump of more than 41,000 percent.

Note: Learn more about how war is a tool for hidden agendas in our comprehensive Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center. For more, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on military corruption from reliable major media sources.


Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin ‘shielded’ biotech firms in gain-of-function research audit, GOP senator claims
2024-06-26, New York Post
Posted: 2024-07-11 14:55:52
https://nypost.com/2024/06/26/us-news/secretary-of-defense-lloyd-austin-shiel...

A recent audit of Pentagon funding of gain-of-function research outside the US “may have shielded” collaborations with Chinese biotech firms — including at least one linked to Beijing’s military, a Republican senator alleged. Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.) pressed Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin for answers about redactions that had concealed the firms — WuXi AppTec, Pharmaron Beijing Co., and Genscript Inc. — from public scrutiny in the audit, according to a letter. “American taxpayers deserve transparency about the programs they are funding, and I am disappointed this OIG report does not provide that accountability,” Marshall wrote. According to the Defense Department Office of Inspector General audit, more than $15.5 million in grants between 2014 and 2023 flowed through subrecipients to “contracting research organization[s] in China or other foreign countries for research related to potential enhancement of pathogens of pandemic potential.” However, the 20-page audit cited “significant limitations with the adequacy of data” — and said the Pentagon “did not track funding at the level of detail necessary to determine whether the DoD provided funding ... for the gain-of-function experiments. Such research is classified as “offensive biological work” by the Pentagon, which Marshall said “raises questions” about National Institutes of Health (NIH) officials having admitted this year to funding gain-of-function experiments at the ... Wuhan Institute of Virology.

Note: Watch our 15-min Mindful News Brief video on the strong evidence that bioweapons research created COVID-19. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on COVID-19 and military corruption from reliable major media sources.


Florida prosecutors knew Epstein raped teenage girls 2 years before cutting deal, transcript shows
2024-07-01, CNN News
Posted: 2024-07-11 14:52:42
https://www.cnn.com/2024/07/01/us/jeffrey-epstein-grand-jury/index.html

Florida prosecutors heard graphic testimony about how the late millionaire and financier Jeffrey Epstein sexually assaulted teenage girls two years before they cut a plea deal, according to transcripts released Monday of the 2006 grand jury investigation. Epstein’s ties to the rich and the powerful seems to have allowed him to continue to rape and sex traffic teenagers. Transcripts show that the grand jury heard testimony that Epstein, who was then in his 40s, had raped teenage girls as young as 14 at his Palm Beach mansion. The teenagers testified and told detectives they were also paid to find him more girls. After the grand jury investigation, Epstein cut a deal with South Florida federal prosecutors in 2008 that allowed him to escape more severe federal charges and instead plead guilty to state charges of procuring a person under 18 for prostitution and solicitation of prostitution. He was sentenced to one and a half years in the Palm Beach County jail system, followed by a year of house arrest. He was required to register as a sex offender. According to the transcripts, Palm Beach Police Det. Joe Recarey testified in July 2006 that the initial investigation began when a woman reported in March 2005 that her stepdaughter who was in high school at the time said she received $300 in exchange for “sexual activity with a man in Palm Beach,” Recarey testified. Another teenager ... told detectives that she was 17 years old when she was approached by a friend who said she could make $200 by providing a massage at Epstein’s home. Epstein told her that he would pay her if she brought other “girls” to his home. “And he told her, ‘The younger, the better,’” Recarey said.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on Jeffrey Epstein's child sex ring from reliable major media sources.


Aliens are interacting with humans: Ret. Army Col.
2024-05-31, NewsNation
Posted: 2024-07-11 14:50:39
https://www.newsnationnow.com/space/ufo/aliens-interacting-humans/

Retired Army Col. Karl Nell claims nonhuman intelligence not only exists and has been to Earth but has been actively interacting with humanity. Nell has a long career with the Army, has worked for aerospace companies and was the former director of the UAP Task Force, which investigated anomalous phenomena for the Pentagon. He isn’t the only senior figure to have come forward, with other senior figures like former Deputy Undersecretary of Defense Christopher Mellon and retired Navy Admiral Tim Gallaudet also making many of the same points Nell did. Interest in UFOs and extraterrestrials has spiked since former intelligence officer David Grusch came forward with claims the Pentagon is operating a secret UFO retrieval program. Grusch said he had heard credible stories of the program from officials he spoke to during his time on the UAP Task Force. He said that not only is the program being kept secret from the American public, it is also being concealed from Congress. A bipartisan UFO Caucus has also formed in Congress, with lawmakers hearing several classified briefings. Many, including de facto caucus leader Rep. Tim Burchett, R-Tenn., have been skeptical of the information offered in those briefings. Burchett has repeatedly suggested the government is purposefully siloing information and relying on private contractors to prevent Congress from getting the full picture of what is going on.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on UFOs from reliable major media sources. Then explore the excellent, reliable resources provided in our UFO Information Center.


The shocking history of UFOs and nuclear weapons
2024-04-15, The Hill
Posted: 2024-07-11 14:47:59
https://thehill.com/opinion/technology/4588030-the-shocking-history-of-ufos-a...

Interactions between UFOs and ultra-sensitive U.S. nuclear assets date back nearly eight decades. New Mexico ... is the site of a remarkable number of baffling, unsolved UFO incidents. In late 1948, for example, dozens of pilots, defense personnel and scientists associated with the famed Los Alamos and Sandia nuclear weapons programs began seeing mysterious “green fireballs” in the sky. Such objects were frequently observed flying on a perfectly horizontal trajectory, often moving directly toward nearby aircraft. In 1979, the New York Times and the Washington Post had reported on a series of alarming incidents at key nuclear weapons facilities in the United States. The incidents involved “unknown entities and brightly lighted, fast-moving vehicles that hovered over nuclear weapons storage areas and evaded all pursuit efforts.” The unnerving events have notable parallels to allegations by former Air Force missile officers, that UFOs had rendered nuclear weapons inoperable at Minot Air Force Base in 1966 and Malmstrom Air Force Base in 1967. Astronomer J. Allen Hynek, the Air Force’s long-time scientific consultant on UFOs, described how an unknown object high above Minot’s nuclear silos interfered with a missile command station’s communications equipment in August 1966. A local Minot, N.D., newspaper reported the extraordinary incident.

Note: Read more about UFO interference with nuclear missiles. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on UFOs from reliable major media sources. Then explore the excellent, reliable resources provided in our UFO Information Center.


Pentagon official reveals tantalizing seven-minute encounter with glowing blue UFO - which emitted enough energy to 'power a small city'
2024-06-12, Daily Mail (One of the UK's Popular Newspapers)
Posted: 2024-07-11 14:45:03
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-13514283/pentagon-official-bl...

A US Department of Defense contractor's tantalizing encounter with a giant, glowing UFO has sparked 10 years of research and two patents inspired by his encounter. Three witnesses, including that Pentagon engineer, report that they captured electronic evidence of a 'barbell' UFO, half the length of a football field, that glowed an eerie 'indigo' blue. The craft, they said, flew silently over an old logging road in southwestern Ontario, Canada, on August 28, 2013, near where the trio had camped for a hunting trip. The case's first investigators ... shared electronic data from the contractor's attempt to film the object — showing 'white noise' pulses in the video that recur in one-second loops identical to strobing light from the UFO itself. 'The captured data of the event,' the witness reported, 'may be the first real physical proof of not just a craft flying, but that it flies by virtue of an incredibly complex and ... powerful spinning electromagnetic propulsion system.' UFO investigator Robert ... Powell told DailyMail.com that UFO cases with this shape are so rare that only about '50 to 60 cases' exist 'throughout history.' [One] witness described 'an indigo plasma that covered most of the craft,' which was bone-shaped or barbell-shaped and extended about 170-feet long, 60-feet wide and 20-feet tall, as it flew slowly just over the tree-line. 'The craft rotated slowly around its center while emitting an electrical-spark-like shower, always opposite of the direction of travel,' [said the witness].

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on UFOs from reliable major media sources. Then explore the excellent, reliable resources provided in our UFO Information Center.


Are animals conscious? How new research is changing minds
2024-06-15, BBC News
Posted: 2024-07-11 14:43:10
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cv223z15mpmo

If new evidence emerges of animals’ abilities to feel and process what is going on around them, could that mean they are, in fact, conscious? We now know that bees can count, recognise human faces and learn how to use tools. Prof Lars Chittka of Queen Mary University of London has worked on many of the major studies of bee intelligence. "If bees are that intelligent, maybe they can think and feel something, which are the building blocks of consciousness," he says. Prof Chittka’s experiments showed that bees would modify their behaviour following a traumatic incident and seemed to be able to play, rolling small wooden balls, which he says they appeared to enjoy as an activity. A government review led by Prof Birch in 2021 assessed 300 scientific studies on the sentience of decapods and Cephalopods, which include octopus, squid, and cuttlefish. Prof Birch’s team found that there was strong evidence that these creatures were sentient in that they could experience feelings of pain, pleasure, thirst, hunger, warmth, joy, comfort and excitement. The conclusions led to the government including these creatures into its Animal Welfare (Sentience) Act in 2022. Prof [Kristin] Andrews was among the prime movers of the New York Declaration on Animal Consciousness signed earlier this year, which has so far been signed by 286 researchers. The short four paragraph declaration states that it is “irresponsible” to ignore the possibility of animal consciousness.

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The Search For Alien Technology May Have Actually Found Something
2024-05-21, The Debrief
Posted: 2024-07-11 14:40:52
https://thedebrief.org/the-search-for-alien-technology-may-have-actually-foun...

Astronomers scanning distant star systems for signs of alien technology say they have found 60 candidates, including seven M-dwarf stars giving off unexpectedly high infrared heat signatures, which may be surrounded by orbiting extraterrestrial power plants known as Dyson Spheres (DSs). First proposed by theoretical physicist Freeman Dyson back in 1960, confirmation of these aptly named devices would not only represent the first verifiable signs of life beyond Earth but would likely indicate a species that is more technologically advanced than humans. Since humanity’s most powerful telescopes cannot image objects orbiting distant stars directly, researchers ... knew they would have to analyze light spectrum data emitted by millions of stars across the galaxy to search for signs of alien technology. In the case of Dyson Spheres, the team would need to look for an ‘unnatural’ imbalance between the visible light and the infrared light emitted by a distant star. As proposed by Dyson, the more technologically advanced a species becomes, the more energy it needs. If they become advanced enough, a species could, in theory, surround an entire star with a “sphere” designed to capture all of its emitted energy. The sphere would radiate an excess of heat energy in the infrared spectrum as it captures the star’s radiated energy and then releases it into space. In their published study [they explain:] “Dyson spheres, megastructures that could be constructed by advanced civilizations to harness the radiation energy of their host stars, represent a potential technosignature that, in principle, may be hiding in public data already collected as part of large astronomical surveys." Dubbed Project Hephaistos (named for the armorer of the Greek Gods), the effort [examined] data from over one hundred million stars. As hoped, the effort ... not only found 60 stars that had the right light ratios, but seven of these were particularly tantalizing, with IR heat signatures that lacked any other good explanation.

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‘I’ve waited a long time for this’: woman earns Stanford master’s degree at 105
2024-06-19, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2024-07-11 14:38:28
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/jun/19/ive-waited-a-long-tim...

Virginia Hislop took 83 years to get her master’s degree from Stanford University. Now, at 105 years old, she’s finally graduated. “My goodness, I’ve waited a long time for this,” she said, walking across the stage on Sunday to receive her diploma. She was cheered on by her family, grandchildren and the 2024 graduating class. Hislop had to leave Stanford early in 1941 when her fiance, George, was called to serve in the second world war. Unable to complete her thesis, she put her degree on hold and her university days behind her, later moving to Washington to raise their family. When her son-in-law contacted the university recently, though, he discovered that the final thesis was no longer required to obtain the degree. Hislop was eligible to graduate decades later. “I’ve been doing this work for years, and it’s nice to be recognized,” she [said]. Hislop’s educational journey at Stanford began in 1936 when she enrolled to study for her bachelor’s degree in education. A few years later, she completed this milestone and immediately transitioned to her postgraduate studies, driven by her ambition to teach after university. In 1941, Hislop, like many other women across the US, was forced to trade her career for marriage in support of the broader war mobilization. Focusing on the family was seen as the pinnacle of American sacrifice in that period, and she left Stanford to marry George before his deployment.

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‘I log into a torture chamber each day’: the strain of moderating social media
2023-09-11, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2024-07-02 11:35:49
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2023/sep/11/i-log-into-a-tortu...

I had to watch every frame of a recent stabbing video ... It will never leave me,” says Harun*, one of many moderators reviewing harmful online content in India, as social media companies increasingly move the challenging work offshore. Moderators working in Hyderabad, a major IT hub in south Asia, have spoken of the strain on their mental health of reviewing images and videos of sexual and violent content, sometimes including trafficked children. Many social media platforms in the UK, European Union and US have moved the work to countries such as India and the Philippines. While OpenAI, creator of ChatGPT, has said artificial intelligence could be used to speed up content moderation, it is not expected to end the need for the thousands of human moderators employed by social media platforms. Content moderators in Hyderabad say the work has left them emotionally distressed, depressed and struggling to sleep. “I had to watch every frame of a recent stabbing video of a girl. What upset me most is that the passersby didn’t help her,” says Harun. “There have been instances when I’ve flagged a video containing child nudity and received continuous calls from my supervisors,” [said moderator Akash]. “Most of these half-naked pictures of minors are from the US or Europe. I’ve received multiple warnings from my supervisors not to flag these videos. One of them asked me to ‘man up’ when I complained that these videos need to be discussed in detail.”

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corporate corruption and Big Tech from reliable major media sources.


Facing disturbing content daily, online moderators in Africa want better protections and a fair wage
2023-05-19, CBC (Canada's Public Broadcasting System)
Posted: 2024-07-02 11:33:16
https://www.cbc.ca/radio/thecurrent/content-moderators-union-social-media-ai-...

Trevin Brownie had to sift through lots of disturbing content for the three years he worked as an online content moderator in Nairobi, Kenya. "We take off any form of abusive content that violates policies such as bullying and harassment or hate speech or violent graphic content suicides," Brownie [said]. Brownie has encountered content ranging from child pornography, material circulated by organized crime groups and terrorists, and images taken from war zones. "I've seen more than 500 beheadings on a monthly basis," he said. Brownie moved from South Africa, where he previously worked at a call center, to Nairobi, where he worked as a subcontractor for Facebook's main moderation hub in East Africa, which was operated by a U.S.-based company called Sama AI. Content moderators working in Kenya say Sama AI and other third-party outsourcing companies took advantage of them. They allege they received low-paying wages and inadequate mental health support compared to their counterparts overseas. Brownie says ... PTSD has become a common side effect he and others in this industry now live with, he said. "It's really traumatic. Disturbing, especially for the suicide videos," he said. A key obstacle to getting better protections for content moderators lies in how people think social media platforms work. More than 150 content moderators who work with the artificial intelligence (AI) systems used by Facebook, TikTok and ChatGPT, from all parts of the continent, gathered in Kenya to form the African Content Moderator's Union. The union is calling on companies in the industry to increase salaries, provide access to onsite psychiatrists, and a redrawing of policies to protect employees from exploitative labour practices.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corporate corruption and Big Tech from reliable major media sources.


Sure, Google’s AI overviews could be useful – if you like eating rocks
2024-06-01, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2024-07-02 11:31:43
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/jun/01/sure-googles-ai...

Once upon a time, Google was great. They intensively monitored what people searched for, and then used that information continually to improve the engine’s performance. Their big idea was that the information thus derived had a commercial value; it indicated what people were interested in and might therefore be of value to advertisers who wanted to sell them stuff. Thus was born what Shoshana Zuboff christened “surveillance capitalism”, the dominant money machine of the networked world. The launch of generative AIs such as ChatGPT clearly took Google by surprise, which is odd given that the company had for years been working on the technology. The question became: how will Google respond to the threat? Now we know: it’s something called AI overviews, in which an increasing number of search queries are initially answered by AI-generated responses. Users have been told that glue is useful for ensuring that cheese sticks to pizza, that they could stare at the sun for for up to 30 minutes, and that geologists suggest eating one rock per day. There’s a quaint air of desperation in the publicity for this sudden pivot from search engine to answerbot. The really big question about the pivot, though, is what its systemic impact on the link economy will be. Already, the news is not great. Gartner, a market-research consultancy, for example, predicts that search engine volume will drop 25% by 2026 owing to AI chatbots and other virtual agents.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on AI and Big Tech from reliable major media sources.


Global rush for farmland could trigger world war, documentary argues
2024-06-14, The Hill
Posted: 2024-07-02 11:30:18
https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/4720483-farmland-water-internat...

A global network of powerful entities, fueled in part by Wall Street, is buying up land and water around the world. This global land rush has led to wrecked wells and lost farms from Arizona to Zambia — and it risks sowing the seeds for future global conflict, according to “The Grab,” a new documentary out today from Gabriela Cowperthwaite. The film follows a seven-year investigation by producer and journalist Nathan Halverson of The Center for Investigative Reporting. In part, “The Grab” argues that power is being exercised over individual landowners by a convoluted and opaque network of sovereign wealth funds, national governments and Wall Street. One critical focus of this push is Africa. Halverson interviewed Brig Siachitema, an activist in the Zambian town of Serenje, where he says foreign investors have been buying up the ancestral land of villagers and kicking them off it. Late in the movie, he presents La Paz County Supervisor Holly Irwin with evidence that the Arizona State Retirement System — her own pension fund — is invested in the project that is draining the aquifer beneath the county. Rather than fighting to protect U.S. land and food from other multinational corporations, “the governments are working for the corporations.” There are enough calories worldwide to feed a growing global population, even with climate change, and even in 2050. The race to lock down resources, and governments’ panic over the unrest caused by spiking food prices, risks scaling up to a war between great powers.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corruption in the financial system and in the corporate world from reliable major media sources.


The top 10 big ‘lies’ the medical community is telling patients, revealed by a doctor
2024-06-26, New York Post
Posted: 2024-07-02 11:27:56
https://nypost.com/2024/06/26/lifestyle/the-top-10-big-lies-the-medical-commu...

Dr. Robert Lufkin, a physician and father of two young children, has been diagnosed with four chronic diseases — the same ones that claimed his father’s life. Inspired by his own medical struggles, Lufkin decided to write a book exposing what he calls “medical lies” that contribute to the risk of chronic disease in the US – some of which he says he himself once taught as a professor at UCLA and USC. His own diagnoses, Lufkin said, “woke him up” to the flaws in the medical system. The doctor noted that ... a “new class of diseases” has posed a challenge. These include obesity, diabetes, hypertension, cancer, cardiovascular disease, Alzheimer’s disease and even mental illness, Lufkin said. “Up to 80% of our resources are now spent on these chronic diseases.” The tools that were so effective in the 20th century — “the pills and surgeries” — might save lives in the moment. But they only address the symptoms of these chronic diseases — not their root causes. “There’s a common metabolic cause that underlies most of these diseases,” Lufkin said. Ten percent of American adults have type 2 diabetes, and about 38% have prediabetes. The diabetes lie declares that the best way to treat type 2 diabetes is with insulin. However, it will also raise the body’s overall insulin levels, worsening insulin resistance, the underlying cause of type 2 diabetes. Additionally, elevated insulin levels drive other chronic diseases. There are also financial incentives. In 2013, sales of insulin and other diabetes drugs reached $23 billion, according to data from IMS Health, a drug market research firm. That was more than the combined revenue of the National Football League, Major League Baseball and the National Basketball Association.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on health from reliable major media sources.


The Opaque Industry Secretly Inflating Prices for Prescription Drugs
2024-06-21, New York Times
Posted: 2024-07-02 11:25:19
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/21/business/prescription-drug-costs-pbm.html

Americans are paying too much for prescription drugs. Pharmacy benefit managers ... are driving up drug costs for millions of people, employers and the government. The three largest pharmacy benefit managers, or P.B.M.s, act as middlemen overseeing prescriptions for more than 200 million Americans. They are owned by huge health care conglomerates — CVS Health, Cigna and UnitedHealth Group — and are hired by employers and governments. The job of the P.B.M.s is to reduce drug costs. Instead, they frequently do the opposite. They steer patients toward pricier drugs, charge steep markups on what would otherwise be inexpensive medicines and extract billions of dollars in hidden fees. Most Americans get their health insurance through a government program like Medicare or through an employer, which pay for two different types of insurance for each person. One type covers visits to doctors and hospitals, and it is handled by an insurance company. The other pays for prescriptions. That is overseen by a P.B.M. The P.B.M. negotiates with drug companies, pays pharmacies and helps decide which drugs patients can get at what price. In theory, everyone saves money. But those savings appear to be largely a mirage, a product of a system where prices have been artificially inflated so that major P.B.M.s and drug companies can boost their profits while taking credit for reducing prices.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on Big Pharma corruption from reliable major media sources.


Big Food, Big Profits, Big Lies
2024-06-03, The Lever
Posted: 2024-07-02 11:23:17
https://www.levernews.com/big-food-big-profits-big-lies/

Food costs have skyrocketed. Americans paid roughly 25 percent more on groceries and dining out this March than they paid in January 2020, outpacing the rate of general inflation. Over that same period, the companies behind the country’s 10 largest grocery and restaurant brands have together returned or pledged to return more than $77 billion to shareholders. The Department of Agriculture calculates that the average American spent 11 percent of their disposable income on food in 2022, the highest amount in nearly four decades. Grocery prices rose over 10 percent that year alone, the largest annual increase since the 1970s. According to an analysis by Food and Water Watch, a corporate watchdog group, food costs for an average family of four living on a “thrifty” budget increased 50 percent from January 2020 to January 2024, from $654 to $976 a month. The number of households facing food insecurity grew by 3.5 million between 2020 and 2022. Some 28 million adults in America lack constant access to enough food to lead an active and healthy life, forcing them to eat unbalanced diets, cut portion sizes, and skip meals. The nation’s biggest food processors and retailers [are] spending billions of their record profits buying back their own shares on the open market to inflate stock value and issuing generous dividends. The main purpose of buybacks is to enrich senior corporate executives and hedge-fund managers.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on food system corruption and financial inequality from reliable major media sources.


Corporate Landlords' Profits Soar as Tenants Drown in Rent Hikes and Fees
2024-06-12, Common Dreams
Posted: 2024-07-02 11:21:19
https://www.commondreams.org/news/corporate-landlords

An analysis from Accountable.US showed how more than 100 million people who rent their homes in the U.S. are not seeing the benefits of what one Biden spokesperson called "the great American comeback" in their housing costs, particularly millions of people whose homes are owned by corporate landlords. The government watchdog found that the six largest corporate landlord companies brought in close to a combined $300 million in increased profits in the first quarter of 2024, with the profits mostly stemming from rent hikes. Overall in the U.S., rent prices have skyrocketed by 31.4% since 2019 while wages have increased by just 23%, meaning tenants need to earn nearly $80,000 per year to keep from being rent-burdened. The six companies included in the Accountable.US analysis on Wednesday have more than rent increases in common: They have all faced lawsuits regarding their use of the property management software company RealPage, which is alleged to have used an algorithm to fix rent prices, impacting about 16 million rental units in the United States. The group's analysis was released weeks after the Federal Bureau of Investigation conducted a raid on an Atlanta-based property management firm in the Department of Justice's antitrust investigation into RealPage regarding "allegations of a nationwide conspiracy to artificially inflate apartment rents." RealPage's ... influence covers 70% of multifamily apartment buildings.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corporate corruption from reliable major media sources.


Silicon Valley Rushes Toward Automated Warfare That Deeply Incorporates AI
2024-06-25, Truthout
Posted: 2024-07-02 11:19:24
https://truthout.org/articles/silicon-valley-rushes-toward-automated-warfare-...

Venture capital and military startup firms in Silicon Valley have begun aggressively selling a version of automated warfare that will deeply incorporate artificial intelligence (AI). This surge of support for emerging military technologies is driven by the ultimate rationale of the military-industrial complex: vast sums of money to be made. Untold billions of dollars of private money now pouring into firms seeking to expand the frontiers of techno-war. According to the New York Times, $125 billion over the past four years. Whatever the numbers, the tech sector and its financial backers sense that there are massive amounts of money to be made in next-generation weaponry and aren’t about to let anyone stand in their way. Meanwhile, an investigation by Eric Lipton of the New York Times found that venture capitalists and startup firms already pushing the pace on AI-driven warfare are also busily hiring ex-military and Pentagon officials to do their bidding. Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt [has] become a virtual philosopher king when it comes to how new technology will reshape society. [Schmidt] laid out his views in a 2021 book modestly entitled The Age of AI and Our Human Future, coauthored with none other than the late Henry Kissinger. Schmidt is aware of the potential perils of AI, but he’s also at the center of efforts to promote its military applications. AI is coming, and its impact on our lives, whether in war or peace, is likely to stagger the imagination.

Note: Learn more about emerging warfare technology in our comprehensive Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center. For more, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on AI from reliable major media sources.


Blueprint Shows Why Only Real Barrier to Global Billionaire Tax Is 'Political Will'
2024-06-25, Common Dreams
Posted: 2024-07-02 11:16:52
https://www.commondreams.org/news/billionaires-tax

Renowned economist Gabriel Zucman released a blueprint Tuesday showing the world's governments that a global minimum tax on billionaires would be both technically feasible and economically beneficial, leaving political will as the only major obstacle preventing transformative changes to an international tax structure long exploited by the ultra-rich. A 2% minimum tax on the wealth of global billionaires would raise between $200 billion and $250 billion annually in revenue from roughly 3,000 individuals globally, resources that "could be invested to support sustained economic development through investments in education, health, public infrastructure, the energy transition, and climate change mitigation." Billionaires ... pay lower effective income tax rates than those in the working class, often making use of holding companies and other complex maneuvers to dodge their obligations and stockpile massive fortunes. The world's billionaires collectively own $14.2 trillion in wealth. Structuring a new tax based on a specific percentage of billionaires' wealth would prevent ultra-rich individuals who report little to no taxable income from completely avoiding taxation. The primary barrier to establishing a global tax on billionaires is not technical, Zucman argued, but political, particularly given the sway the ultra-rich have over economic policy. A YouGov poll ... found that 59% of U.S. millionaires would support a global tax on billionaires equal to 2% of their wealth.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on financial inequality from reliable major media sources.


To Keep Clean Drinking Water Flowing to Paris, Farmers Are Going Organic
2024-06-25, Reasons to be Cheerful
Posted: 2024-07-02 11:14:45
https://reasonstobecheerful.world/paris-organic-farming-clean-water-supply/

About 100 miles southeast of Paris ... a charming stone aqueduct cuts across the green fields. “That’s the Aqueduct of the Vanne,” says [farmer] Zoltan Kahn. The Vanne, which supplies a fifth of Paris’s tap water, is fed by the water sources in these parts. The region is rich in biodiversity and has been a key drinking water catchment area for centuries. Since 2020, Eau de Paris, the city’s public water service, has been supporting farmers near its watersheds ... to reduce the use of pesticides and fertilizers on their crops. In other words, to go organic. When Kahn was approached by Eau de Paris with support to go fully organic, he jumped at the opportunity. In exchange for switching to organic, he would receive a so-called “Payment for Environmental Services” for each hectare of his farmland. As part of the €48 million ($51.8 million) project, Eau de Paris and the Seine-Normandy Water Agency, a public institution fighting water pollution in the region, are supporting 115 farmers based in watersheds that supply the city to either reduce their use of chemicals or go fully organic (as 58 percent of the farmers have). Already €32 million of that funding has been granted, according to Anne-Sophie Leclere, deputy director general of Eau de Paris. “It’s better for us to have cleaner, purer watersheds,” says Leclere. “This will save Paris from having to pay much more to process the water once it arrives in the city.”

Note: Explore more positive stories about healing the Earth.


How Philadelphia Is Giving Fallen Trees New Life
2024-06-24, Reasons to be Cheerful
Posted: 2024-07-02 11:12:38
https://reasonstobecheerful.world/philadelphia-reforestation-hub-carbon-smart...

Each year, US cities lose an estimated 36 million trees to development, disease and old age, many of which ultimately end up in landfills. Losing these urban trees — known to help cool their neighborhoods, lower carbon emissions and improve mental health, among other benefits — costs an estimated $96 million annually. In Philadelphia, a partnership is giving the City of Brotherly Love’s fallen trees new life. Philadelphia Parks & Rec joined forces with Cambium Carbon, a Washington, D.C.-based startup that repurposes waste wood, and PowerCorpsPHL, a local nonprofit that creates job opportunities for unemployed and under-employed 18- to 30-year-olds, to launch the Reforestation Hub. Rather than sending trees straight to the landfill or the city’s organic recycling center to simply become mulch or wood chips, the Reforestation Hub (which is co-located in the city’s organic recycling center) will salvage as many trees as it can. As many as possible will be turned into Cambium’s Carbon Smart Wood, which stores 5.23 pounds of carbon in each board foot. Fifteen percent of sales that come out of the hub will be donated to Tree Philly at the end of each year to support tree planting and maintenance across the city. While the hub formally launched only recently, in the year and a half that it’s taken to get the infrastructure in place, it has already diverted 542 logs to create 28,000 board feet of Carbon Smart Wood.

Note: Explore more positive stories about healing the Earth and technology for good.


CEO on why giving all employees minimum salary of $70,000 still "works" six years later: "Our turnover rate was cut in half"
2021-09-16, CBS News
Posted: 2024-07-02 11:10:37
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/dan-price-gravity-payments-ceo-70000-employee-mi...

It was six years ago when CEO Dan Price raised the salary of everyone at his Seattle-based credit card processing company Gravity Payments to at least $70,000 a year. Price slashed his own salary by $1 million to be able to give his employees a pay raise. He was hailed a hero by some and met with predictions of bankruptcy from his critics. But that has not happened; instead, the company is thriving. He said his company has tripled and he is still paying his employees $70,000 a year. "I make $70,000 a year," Price [said]. According to the Economic Policy Institute, average CEO compensation is 320 times more than the salaries of their typical workers. Price said despite the success his company has had with the policy, he wishes other companies would follow suit. "I would say that's the failure of this. You know, I feel like I've been shouting from the rooftops like, 'This works, this works, everybody should do it!' and zero big companies are following suit because the system values having the highest return with the lowest risk and the lowest amount of work," Price said. Price thinks Gravity's returns are up in large part because bigger paychecks have lead to fiercely loyal employees. "Our turnover rate was cut in half, so when you have employees staying twice as long, their knowledge of how to help our customers skyrocketed over time and that's really what paid for the raise more so than my pay cut," said Price.

Note: Explore more positive stories about reimagining the economy.


Kansas Sues Pfizer Over Covid-19 Vaccine’s Safety, Efficacy
2024-06-17, Bloomberg
Posted: 2024-06-24 22:50:35
https://news.bloomberglaw.com/health-law-and-business/kansas-sues-pfizer-over...

Kansas on Monday sued Pfizer Inc., accusing the pharmaceutical giant of misrepresenting the safety of its Covid-19 vaccine and violating the state’s consumer protection law. The lawsuit was filed by state Attorney General Kris Kobach in Kansas District Court, Thomas County. The suit alleges the drugmaker misled the public when it said it had a safe and effective Covid-19 vaccine. “Pfizer said its COVID-19 vaccine was safe even though it knew its COVID-19 vaccine was connected to serious adverse events, including myocarditis and pericarditis, failed pregnancies, and deaths,” the state wrote in the complaint. The company administered more than 3.5 million vaccine doses in Kansas as of Feb. 7, 2024, according to the lawsuit. The complaint also said Pfizer maintained its own adverse events database, separate from the federal Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), a national early warning system managed by the Food and Drug Administration and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to detect possible safety problems in US-licensed vaccines. Pfizer’s database contained cases of adverse events reported spontaneously to Pfizer, cases reported by the health authorities, and cases published in the medical literature, according to the suit. “Pfizer’s adverse events database contained more adverse event data than VAERS because it included both information in VAERS and information not in VAERS,” Kobach wrote.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of news articles on COVID vaccines from reliable major media sources.


Abused by the badge
2024-06-12, Washington Post
Posted: 2024-06-24 22:48:18
https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/interactive/2024/police-officer...

A Washington Post investigation has found that over the past two decades, hundreds of law enforcement officers in the United States have sexually abused children while officials at every level of the criminal justice system have failed to protect kids, punish abusers and prevent additional crimes. Accused cops have used their knowledge of the legal system to stall cases, get charges lowered or evade convictions. Prosecutors have given generous plea deals to officers who admitted to raping and groping minors. Judges have allowed many convicted officers to avoid prison time. Children in every state ... have continued to be targeted, groomed and violated by officers sworn to keep them safe. James Blair, a Lowell, N.C., police officer, met a 13-year-old girl who ran away from home. He offered to help with her school work and presented himself as a mentor. Months later, court records show, he got the girl pregnant. Matthew Skaggs, a Potosi, Mo., police officer, offered money or vape cartridges to three boys he sexually exploited. Joshua Carrier, a Colorado Springs, police officer, sexually assaulted 18 boys at the middle school where he had once worked as school police officer and later volunteered as a wrestling coach. The Post identified at least 1,800 state and local law enforcement officers who were charged with crimes involving child sexual abuse from 2005 through 2022. Officers charged with child sex crimes worked at all levels of law enforcement. Many used the threat of arrest or physical harm to make their victims comply. Nearly 40 percent of convicted officers avoided prison sentences. Children who are sexually abused by law enforcement officers sworn to protect them face lifelong consequences.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of news articles on police corruption and sexual abuse scandals from reliable major media sources.


The Little-Known Reason Counties Keep Building Bigger Jails: Architecture Firms
2024-05-31, The Intercept
Posted: 2024-06-24 22:45:49
https://theintercept.com/2024/05/31/jail-construction-justice-architecture-fi...

Elevatus, a Fort Wayne-based architecture firm ... has designed jails all over Indiana and in several other states. For counties that are considering expanding their current jail or building a new one, Elevatus produces feasibility studies that usually predict growing incarceration needs. In many cases, Elevatus also wins a contract to draw up the plans for the facility it recommended. That’s what happened in Allen County. Four months after Elevatus released its study, the company was hired to design the new jail. If the county’s elected officials approve the project, the firm’s design fees — factored as a percentage of the project’s total cost, as is standard for architecture firms — could be around $10 million. Elevatus is far from the only architecture firm creating feasibility studies and needs assessments that recommend substantially larger jails and then designing those buildings. Such blatant conflict of interest is occurring in counties all over the country. These studies rely on thin data to justify spending millions of dollars in public funds. The most significant consequence, though, is that more people wind up incarcerated. “Who’s in jail is a product of the policies and practices of [the] criminal justice system,” said David Bennett, a consultant for the National Institute of Corrections. “There’s no correlation between crime and incarceration rates.” Bennett [emphasizes] that the real way to reduce jail overcrowding is through policy, especially at the local level. Sheriffs have great discretion over how minor infractions are treated, who gets released on their own recognizance, and whether failure-to-appear warrants are called in. Changes like these were implemented during the pandemic, and jail populations dropped precipitously, with little downside.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of news articles on prison system corruption from reliable major media sources.


A Pentagon budget of $1 trillion is looming. Here’s how to stop it
2024-04-26, The Hill
Posted: 2024-06-24 22:38:39
https://thehill.com/opinion/4623255-a-defense-budget-of-1-trillion-is-looming...

The Pentagon budget is $146 billion higher than when Trump left office. Between last month’s regular appropriations and this week’s war supplemental, the 2024 Pentagon budget will be at least $953 billion. Adjusted for inflation, that’s more than the average annual U.S. military budget during World War II. A trillion-dollar Pentagon budget used to be hyperbole; now it’s almost reality. Lawmakers who want to move toward a more sensible level of military spending should know two things. The first is that public opinion is on their side. The second is that public opinion is not enough to challenge the arms industry’s influence over Washington — public pressure on Congress is needed. Political leaders demand a cash-strapped public to fund a foreign policy that’s deeply flawed and incredibly expensive. As a practical matter, the Pentagon hasn’t shown that it can even manage such gargantuan budgets, having never passed an audit. More than half of the annual military budget goes to private contractors, and the Pentagon allows these contractors to overcharge taxpayers on almost everything it buys. The arms industry goes great lengths to keep it this way. Military contractors fund influential think tanks to give their profit-driven demands a scholarly gloss, retain more lobbyists than Congress has elected officials, and pour tens of millions of dollars into elections. These tactics work. For instance, before voting to authorize $886 billion in military spending this year, each House member had received on average $20,000 in political donations from military contractors this election cycle. House members who voted for the bill accepted four times more arms industry cash than those who voted no, on average. Senators who supported the bill took five times more, on average. This correlation has been apparent in each of the last three years.

Note: Learn more about unaccountable military spending in our comprehensive Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center.


US federal budget crosses grim milestone as interest payments overtake defense spending
2024-05-22, Yahoo News
Posted: 2024-06-24 22:36:50
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/us-federal-budget-crosses-grim-milestone-as-in...

The United States has long had the world’s biggest defense budget, with spending this year set to approach $900 billion. Yet this spending is rapidly being eclipsed by the fastest-growing portion of federal outflows: interest payments on the national debt. For the first seven months of fiscal year 2024, which began last October, net interest payments totaled $514 billion, outpacing defense by $20 billion. Budget analysts think that trend will continue, making 2024 the first year ever that the United States will spend more on interest payments than on national defense. Interest is now the third-biggest expenditure after Social Security and health. And not because any of the other programs are shrinking. While most government expenditures grow modestly from year to year, interest expenses in 2024 are running 41% higher than in 2023. Interest payments are ballooning for two obvious reasons. The first is that annual deficits have exploded, leaving the nation with a gargantuan $34.6 trillion in total federal debt, 156% higher than the national debt at the end of 2010. As a percentage of GDP, the annual deficit has nearly doubled in just 10 years, from 2.8% in 2014 to a projected 5.3% in 2024. The government is also paying more to borrow. From 2010 through 2021, the average interest rate on all Treasury securities sold to the public was just 2.1%. But in 2022, the Federal Reserve started jacking up rates to tame inflation, and the government now pays an average interest rate of 3.3%.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption from reliable major media sources.


OpenAI adds former NSA chief to its board
2024-06-13, CNBC News
Posted: 2024-06-24 22:34:23
https://www.cnbc.com/2024/06/13/openai-adds-former-nsa-chief-to-its-board-pau...

OpenAI on Thursday announced its newest board member: Paul M. Nakasone, a retired U.S. Army general and former director of the National Security Agency. Nakasone was the longest-serving leader of the U.S. Cyber Command and chief of the Central Security Service. The company said Nakasone will also join OpenAI’s recently created Safety and Security Committee. The committee is spending 90 days evaluating the company’s processes and safeguards before making recommendations to the board and, eventually, updating the public, OpenAI said. OpenAI is bolstering its board and its C-suite as its large language models gain importance across the tech sector and as competition rapidly emerges in the burgeoning generative artificial intelligence market. While the company has been in hyper-growth mode since late 2022, when it launched ChatGPT, OpenAI has also been riddled with controversy and high-level employee departures. The company said Sarah Friar, previously CEO of Nextdoor and finance chief at Square, is joining as chief financial officer. OpenAI also hired Kevin Weil, an ex-president at Planet Labs, as its new chief product officer. Weil was previously a senior vice president at Twitter and a vice president at Facebook and Instagram. Weil’s product team will focus on “applying our research to products and services that benefit consumers, developers, and businesses,” the company wrote.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on AI and intelligence agency corruption from reliable major media sources.


Edward Snowden Releases New Message: 'You Have Been Warned'
2024-06-14, Newsweek
Posted: 2024-06-24 22:31:59
https://www.newsweek.com/edward-snowden-open-ai-nsa-warning-1913173

Edward Snowden wrote on social media to his nearly 6 million followers, "Do not ever trust @OpenAI ... You have been warned," following the appointment of retired U.S. Army General Paul Nakasone to the board of the artificial intelligence technology company. Snowden, a former National Security Agency (NSA) subcontractor, was charged with espionage by the Justice Department in 2013 after leaking thousands of top-secret records, exposing the agency's surveillance of private citizens' information. In a Friday morning post on X, formerly Twitter, Snowden reshared a post providing information on OpenAI's newest board member. Nakasone is a former NSA director, and the longest-serving leader of the U.S. Cyber Command and chief of the Central Security Service. In [a] statement, Nakasone said, "OpenAI's dedication to its mission aligns closely with my own values and experience in public service. I look forward to contributing to OpenAI's efforts to ensure artificial general intelligence is safe and beneficial to people around the world." Snowden wrote in an X post, "They've gone full mask-off: do not ever trust @OpenAI or its products (ChatGPT etc.) There is only one reason for appointing an @NSAGov Director to your board. This is a willful, calculated betrayal of the rights of every person on Earth." Snowden's post has received widespread attention, with nearly 2 million views, 43,500 likes, 16,000 reposts and around 1,000 comments as of Friday afternoon.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on AI and intelligence agency corruption from reliable major media sources.


Report Sounds Alarm Over Growing Role of Big Tech in US Military-Industrial Complex
2024-04-17, Common Dreams
Posted: 2024-06-24 22:29:37
https://www.commondreams.org/news/military-industrial-complex-big-tech

The center of the U.S. military-industrial complex has been shifting over the past decade from the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area to Northern California—a shift that is accelerating with the rise of artificial intelligence-based systems, according to a report published Wednesday. "Although much of the Pentagon's $886 billion budget is spent on conventional weapon systems and goes to well-established defense giants such as Lockheed Martin, RTX, Northrop Grumman, General Dynamics, Boeing, and BAE Systems, a new political economy is emerging, driven by the imperatives of big tech companies, venture capital (VC), and private equity firms," [report author Roberto J.] González wrote. "Defense Department officials have ... awarded large multibillion-dollar contracts to Microsoft, Amazon, Google, and Oracle." González found that the five largest military contracts to major tech firms between 2018 and 2022 "had contract ceilings totaling at least $53 billion combined." There's also the danger of a "revolving door" between Silicon Valley and the Pentagon as many senior government officials "are now gravitating towards defense-related VC or private equity firms as executives or advisers after they retire from public service." "Members of the armed services and civilians are in danger of being harmed by inadequately tested—or algorithmically flawed—AI-enabled technologies. By nature, VC firms seek rapid returns on investment by quickly bringing a product to market, and then 'cashing out' by either selling the startup or going public. This means that VC-funded defense tech companies are under pressure to produce prototypes quickly and then move to production before adequate testing has occurred."

Note: Learn more about emerging warfare technology in our comprehensive Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center. For more, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on military corruption from reliable major media sources.


The Publicly Funded Defense Contractor Revolving Door
2024-04-23, Jacobin
Posted: 2024-06-24 22:26:49
https://jacobin.com/2024/04/pentagon-fellows-program-sdef-defense-contractors

The Department of Defense has used taxpayer money to send elite military officers to work for some of the Pentagon’s top private contractors. From 1995 to 2021, more than 315 military officers with elite ranks as high as colonel and rear admiral have been placed at top weapons manufacturers such as Boeing, Raytheon, and Lockheed Martin, as well as other companies with billion-dollar government contracts. The arrangement has also coincided with a dramatic rise in Defense Department spending on private contractors valued in the trillions of dollars. The arrangement, called the Secretary of Defense Executive Fellows (SDEF) program, sends officers with promising military careers to work for top corporations in the defense, tech, finance, and other industries for one year. These fellows then report on how the Defense Department could incorporate some of these companies’ business practices and policies. The program has helped place corporate interests at the very heart of US military strategy. [A] report from Quincy Institute, a nonprofit think tank, is the first detailed examination of the SDEF program. The report casts doubt on the integrity of the fellowship program, calling it a “de facto lobbying tool” for private companies and a “taxpayer-funded revolving door” where more than 40 percent of the fellows have gone on to work for government contractors at some point in their postmilitary careers.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corruption in the military and in the corporate world from reliable major media sources.


How the IRS went soft on billionaires and corporate tax cheats
2024-06-11, International Consortium of Investigative Journalists
Posted: 2024-06-24 22:24:25
https://www.icij.org/inside-icij/2024/06/how-the-irs-went-soft-on-billionaire...

Michael Welu worked at the IRS for decades. During his time at the IRS, he says, upper management in the division tasked with auditing large corporations and ultrawealthy people — the Large Business and International Division — was quick to dismiss any suggestion that a powerful taxpayer may have committed a crime, and commonly discouraged frontline agents from pursuing big cases. This stood in deep contrast to the office that policed small businesses and self-employed people, which was empowered to ... take an appropriately firm stance toward taxpayers breaking the law. “I was putting butchers, bakers and candlestick makers in jail, but the big stuff we really wanted to go after was being ignored,” Welu told the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. “It could be the most egregious, ridiculous scheme and they were just not interested.” Over the past five years, [the Large Business and International Division] flagged no more than 22 instances of possible tax crimes for the agency’s criminal investigators to review further — out of trillions of dollars in annual income from large corporations and ultrawealthy people that the office oversees. During the same five years, the IRS office that covers small businesses and self-employed people flagged roughly 40 times more possible crimes, sending criminal investigators 848 referrals. The IRS says the amount of U.S. taxes left uncollected could exceed $600 billion per year.

Note: According to The Guardian, "Thirty-nine of the S&P 500 or Fortune 500 paid no federal income tax at all from 2018 to 2020 while reporting a combined $122bn in profits to their shareholders." For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and income inequality from reliable major media sources.


Dutch digital detoxers unplug en masse. Will the world follow?
2024-05-31, Positive.News
Posted: 2024-06-24 22:22:24
https://www.positive.news/society/dutch-digital-detoxers-unplug-will-the-worl...

The Offline Club, which began life in Amsterdam, offers an oasis of calm and respite from the incessant digital hustle of life lived through the black glass of a smartphone. It nurtures moments of quiet introspection over vapid doomscrolling, and encourages spontaneous conversations with strangers instead of endless keyboard arguments. The concept grew organically from the ‘offline getaway’ retreats [co-founder Ilya] Kneppelhout set up with pals Valentijn Klok and Jordy van Bennekom. The trio opened their first phone-free hangout in Amsterdam’s Cafe Brecht in February this year, and to their astonishment drew 125,000 new Instagram followers in the space of a month. Customers alternate between time to themselves and time to connect. “People don’t just pay to get rid of their phones – they’re also paying to meet others,” says Kneppelhout. “We live in quite an isolated world where we’re ever more connected online, but in the physical world, it’s hard to meet people. This is a real experience: where else are you going to be in a cafe with 30 others, and read a book or draw? It’s quite unique.” His hope is that customers will take away lasting habits from their cafe visits. “Big tech companies and the biggest social media companies are really playing with our minds, and with our time and our attention,” he says. “I think that’s bad: a counter movement is really necessary, and I think it’s happening.”

Note: Explore more positive stories on healing social division.


Planetary health diet cuts early death risk, new study shows
2024-06-10, Washington Post
Posted: 2024-06-24 22:20:29
https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/2024/06/10/planetary-diet-lower-morta...

Can you eat a diet that’s good for your health and good for the planet? A new study suggests that it’s possible. It found that people who ate mostly minimally processed plant foods such as nuts, beans, fruits, vegetables, whole grains and olive oil, along with modest amounts of meat, fish, eggs and dairy, had lower rates of premature death from heart disease, cancer and other chronic diseases. At the same time, their diets had a smaller environmental footprint because they consisted of foods that were grown using relatively less land and water and that were produced with fewer greenhouse gas emissions. The study ... was inspired by a landmark 2019 report from the EAT-Lancet Commission, which designed a “Planetary Health Diet” capable of sustaining 10 billion people and the planet by 2050. The planetary health diet, in broad strokes, encourages people to eat more plants and whole foods alongside small portions of meat and dairy. People whose eating habits most closely adhered to the planetary health diet were 30 percent less likely to die prematurely compared to people who ate the lowest amounts of foods that form the basis of the planetary health diet. Planetary health eaters had a 10 percent lower risk of dying from cancer, a 14 percent lower likelihood of dying from cardiovascular diseases, a 47 percent reduction in the risk of dying from lung disease, and a 28 percent lower likelihood of dying of Alzheimer’s disease and other neurodegenerative disorders.

Note: Explore more positive stories on healing our bodies and healing the Earth.


Denmark’s Radical Plan for a Plant-Based Future
2024-06-17, Reasons to be Cheerful
Posted: 2024-06-24 22:18:51
https://reasonstobecheerful.world/denmark-radical-plan-plant-based-future/

Trine Krebs is sometimes called “the leek woman,” or even Miss Dry-Legume, of Denmark. The 48-year-old has for decades traveled around the country as, in her words, a “food inspirer,” proselytizing about all things vegetables. So when, in October 2023, the Danish government published the world’s first ever national action plan for shifting towards plant-based diets, Krebs was ecstatic. The Danish government has three main goals: to increase demand for plant-based foods, to develop supply for plant-based foods, and to improve how all the different stakeholders — from scientists to farmers and chefs, food sociologists, and nutrition experts — in this nascent domestic industry are working together. Danish authorities see reducing meat and dairy consumption as key to reaching the Nordic state’s goal of cutting carbon emissions by 70 percent before 2030, when compared to 1990. The climate think tank Concito estimates that more than half of Denmark’s land is used for farming and that agriculture accounts for about a third of its carbon emissions. Yet a published in 2021 found that the emissions made by producing plant-based foods are roughly half the amount incurred by meat production. Denmark believes ... that the necessary shift toward plant-based eating also offers a massive economic opportunity. If the country were to gain a three percent share of the global plant-based food market, it could create up to 27,000 jobs.

Note: Explore more positive stories on healing our bodies and healing the Earth.


‘The big story of the 21st century’: is this the most shocking documentary of the year?
2024-06-12, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2024-06-17 13:19:35
https://www.theguardian.com/film/article/2024/jun/12/the-grab-documentary-review

The Grab [is] a riveting new documentary which outlines the move by national governments, financial investors and private security forces to snap up food and water resources. What oil was to the 20th century, food and water will be to the 21st – precious, geopolitically powerful and contested. “The 20th century had Opec,” says [Nate] Halverson ... a journalist with the Center for Investigative Reporting. “In the future, we’re going to have Food Pec. [In] rural La Paz county, Arizona, a Saudi company bought about 15 square miles of farmland [and] drained the region’s aquifers beyond a generation’s worth of rain. Residents describe going without water, discovering empty wells, their houses cracked and sinking, with little recourse. The film connects their confusion to the despair of Zambian farmers displaced, via a complicated and westernized deeds system, by mercenary militias to make way for commercial farmland controlled by outside actors from various countries – China, Gulf states, the US. The culprit is not one country or company but a shadowy network of mercenary interests. Halverson and his team [obtained] ... a year’s worth of emails within the private equity firm Frontier Resource Group, founded by Erik Prince, who also founded and was the CEO of the military contracting company Blackwater – a notorious mercenary group during the US invasion of Iraq. The emails, from 2012, reveal a clear plan to obtain, by whatever means necessary, land in Africa to fulfill competing national interests. "I just want people to have great information ... because right now the people that have this information are the CIA, and Wall Street, and foreign governments and very wealthy people.”

Note: Why is the founder of Blackwater, a US defense contractor tied to countless scandals and criminal activities, buying up land in Africa? For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on food system corruption from reliable major media sources.


Ozempic and Mounjaro makers could be hit with 10,000 lawsuits over claims the drugs cause life-threatening side effects
2024-06-12, Daily Mail (One of the UK's Popular Newspapers)
Posted: 2024-06-17 13:17:26
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-13522187/patients-lawsuit-ozempic-...

The pharma firms behind blockbuster weight loss drugs could face up to 10,000 lawsuits from patients who claim the drugs caused debilitating side effects like stomach paralysis and 'tearing holes' in the food pipe. Ozempic and sister shots like Wegovy and Mounjaro have recently come under fire over claims that the injections cause a roster of complications patients were allegedly not warned about. One woman told DailyMail.com that she suffered life-threatening stomach paralysis after taking Mounjaro, and has now joined a massive lawsuit against its maker Eli Lilly and Ozempic manufacturer Novo Nordisk. She claims she may never eat a solid meal again. Another said Ozempic caused so much internal damage she had to have her gallbladder removed, while another said the drug induced such violent vomiting it tore a hole in her esophagus. Now, Robert Peirce & Associates, a law firm based in Pittsburgh, estimates that the number of plaintiffs could explode to as many as 10,000. In addition to lawsuits, some patients have also claimed the drugs caused suicidal thoughts, psychosis, and appearance issues like deflated breasts. 'Unfortunately, the manufacturers of Ozempic and other GLP-1 agonists failed to adequately warn of the associated risks,' the Robert Peirce & Associates team wrote. Attorney Ken Moll ... said it was 'unconscionable' that the firms still hadn't added warnings to their labels which warn about the risk of gastroparesis and stomach paralysis.

Note: It is now estimated that 1 in 8 adults in the US have taken Ozempic or another weight-loss drug. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on Big Pharma corruption from reliable major media sources.


Why Gen X is getting cancer more often than their parents’ generation
2024-06-10, New York Post
Posted: 2024-06-17 13:15:04
https://nypost.com/2024/06/10/lifestyle/why-gen-x-is-getting-cancer-more-ofte...

Bummer news for Gen X: A new study finds that the forgotten generation is being diagnosed with more cancer than their parents’ and grandparents’ generations. “Our results speak to the rate of incidence per 100,000 people,” the researchers [said]. “Gen X is experiencing more cancer than their parents. They are outpacing both baby boomers and the Silent Generation.” The researchers analyzed the number of newly diagnosed cancer cases among Gen X (born between 1965 and 1980), baby boomers (1946-1964), and the Silent Generation (1928-1945). The study ... was published Monday in JAMA Network Open. The researchers noted that public health initiatives have led to “substantial declines” in smoking. “However, other suspected carcinogenic exposures are increasing,” the researchers reported. They said it seems likely that some of the growth is attributable to rising obesity rates and increasingly sedentary lifestyles. In their study of 3.8 million cancer patients, researchers found there have been declines in lung and cervical cancers among Gen X women, but also “significant increases” in thyroid, kidney, rectal, endometrial, colon, pancreatic and ovarian cancers, non-Hodgkin lymphoma and leukemia. Among Gen X men, declines in non-Hodgkin lymphoma and lung, liver and gallbladder cancers have been offset by gains in thyroid, kidney, rectal, colon and prostate cancers and leukemia.

Note: This is a critically important issue that can bring people together across our polarized divides. Why is this not being thoroughly investigated? For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on health and toxic chemicals from reliable major media sources.


Why the Pandemic Probably Started in a Lab, in 5 Key Points
2024-06-03, New York Times
Posted: 2024-06-17 13:12:53
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/06/03/opinion/covid-lab-leak.html

The year before the outbreak, the Wuhan institute, working with U.S. partners, had proposed creating viruses with SARS-CoV-2's defining feature. Much of this work was conducted in partnership with the EcoHealth Alliance, a U.S.-based scientific organization that, since 2002, has been awarded over $80 million in federal funding to research the risks of emerging infectious diseases. The laboratory pursued risky research that resulted in viruses becoming more infectious: Coronaviruses were grown from samples from infected animals and genetically reconstructed and recombined to create new viruses unknown in nature. In 2021, The Intercept published a leaked 2018 grant proposal for a research project named Defuse, which had been written as a collaboration between EcoHealth, the Wuhan institute and Ralph Baric at the University of North Carolina. The Defuse project proposed to search for and create SARS-like viruses carrying spikes with a unique feature: a furin cleavage site — the same feature that enhances infectiousness in humans, making it capable of causing a pandemic. As the pandemic raged, their American collaborators failed to publicly reveal the existence of the Defuse proposal. One alarming detail — leaked to The Wall Street Journal and confirmed by current and former U.S. government officials — is that scientists ... fell ill with Covid-like symptoms in the fall of 2019. One of the scientists had been named in the Defuse proposal as the person in charge of virus discovery work. [This] would be the most costly accident in the history of science. U.S. federal funding helped to build an unprecedented collection of SARS-like viruses at the Wuhan institute, as well as contributing to research that enhanced them.

Note: Watch our 15-min Mindful News Brief video for a deeper dive into the strong evidence that bioweapons research created COVID-19. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on COVID and government corruption from reliable major media sources.


Covid vaccines may have helped fuel rise in excess deaths
2024-06-05, The Telegraph (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2024-06-17 13:11:00
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/06/04/covid-vaccines-may-have-helped-fu...

Covid vaccines could be partly to blame for the rise in excess deaths since the pandemic. Researchers from The Netherlands analysed data from 47 Western countries and discovered there had been more than three million excess deaths since 2020, with the trend continuing despite the rollout of vaccines and containment measures. Writing in the BMJ Public Health, the authors ... said: “Although Covid-19 vaccines were provided to guard civilians from suffering morbidity and mortality by the Covid-19 virus, suspected adverse events have been documented as well. “Both medical professionals and citizens have reported serious injuries and deaths following vaccination.” The study found that across Europe, the US and Australia there had been more than one million excess deaths in 2020, at the height of the pandemic, but also 1.2 million in 2021 and 800,000 and 2022. Researchers said the figure included deaths from Covid-19, but also the “indirect effects of the health strategies to address the virus spread and infection”. They warned that side effects linked to the Covid vaccine had included ischaemic stroke, acute coronary syndrome and brain haemorrhage, cardiovascular diseases, coagulation, haemorrhages, gastrointestinal events and blood clotting. German researchers have pointed out that the onset of excess mortality in early 2021 in the country coincided with the rollout of vaccines, which the team said “warranted further investigation”.

Note: While mainstream narratives emphasize how rare these injuries are, the numbers speak for themselves. The Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) is a voluntary government reporting system that only captures a portion of the actual injuries. Vaccine adverse event numbers are made publicly available, and currently show 1,640,416 COVID vaccine injury reports, 37,647 COVID Vaccine Reported Deaths, and 216,757 COVID Vaccine Reported Hospitalizations. Explore our nuanced, uncensored investigation about this important issue.


Fauci’s institute hid mpox gain-of-function plans from Congress and the media
2024-06-11, US Right to Know
Posted: 2024-06-17 13:08:41
https://usrtk.org/risky-research/fauci-institute-hid-mpox-gain-of-function-pl...

For nearly nine years Anthony Fauci’s institute concealed plans to engineer a pandemic capable mpox virus with a case fatality rate of up to 15 percent, congressional investigators revealed in a new report. In June 2015, a scientist at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases received formal approval from the National Institutes of Health’s Institutional Review Board for experiments expected to engineer an mpox virus with high transmissibility and moderate mortality. NIAID — the institute Fauci oversaw for nearly four decades and which underwrites most federally funded gain-of-function research — concealed the project’s approval from investigators with the House Committee on Energy and Commerce over the course of a 17 month-long investigation. [The] report describes the obstruction and secrecy around the mpox proposal as a case study in how the institute “oversees and accounts for the monitoring of potentially dangerous gain-of-function research of concern.” The revelations land amid global concerns about whether coronavirus gain-of-function research — research that might generate pathogens with increased pathogenicity or transmissibility — may have contributed to the worst pandemic in a century. The committee, in conjunction with the House Committee on Oversight and Reform, is also investigating coronavirus gain-of-function research underwritten by NIAID at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, and faces similar stonewalling in that investigation.

Note: Watch our 15-min Mindful News Brief video on the strong evidence that bioweapons research created COVID-19. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on COVID and government corruption from reliable major media sources.


The time has come for a 9/11-like commission on COVID-19
2023-03-05, The Hill
Posted: 2024-06-17 13:06:40
https://thehill.com/opinion/healthcare/3883819-the-time-has-come-for-a-9-11-l...

The 9/11 Commission was ... created in 2002 one year after the terrorist attacks. Its objective was to learn how the attacks happened and to prevent another massive terror attack from occurring on U.S. soil again. No event since Sept. 11, 2001, has had such a profound effect on the United States as the COVID-19 pandemic that began three years ago. Thirty-six months later, the death toll stands at more than 1.14 million Americans and more than 6.8 million people worldwide. Businesses were shut down; some never recovered. Schools were shuttered. Mental health issues, alcoholism, drug use and suicides skyrocketed from the isolation and lack of interaction with family and friends. So, it would only make sense, even in these hopelessly divided times, for a COVID-19 commission to be formed in the bipartisan, sober spirit of the 9/11 Commission. Did COVID come from a bat in a wet market in Wuhan? Or did it come from the Wuhan respiratory coronavirus lab that studies bat coronaviruses through gain of function research? If the origin is question number one, then a close second must be a serious investigation into the response here in the United States, and the draconian shutdowns that did so much damage. Millions died. Our children’s test scores fell to their lowest level in 30 years. Some people lost their businesses and everything they ever worked for. Hard questions and definitive answers are needed on the most consequential global event of our lifetime.

Note: Watch our 15-min Mindful News Brief video on the strong evidence that bioweapons research created COVID-19. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on COVID and government corruption from reliable major media sources.


UFO Disclosure Deadline set for October 2024 as US Government prepares to unveil alien secrets
2024-06-05, MSN News/Irish Star
Posted: 2024-06-17 13:03:46
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/ufo-disclosure-deadline-set-for-oct...

A prominent lawyer representing leading UFO whistleblowers has made a startling revelation: the US government is set to unveil its alien secrets by October 18, 2024. Daniel Sheehan, a vocal advocate for disclosing the Pentagon's encounters with extraterrestrials, disclosed this information on the Freedom Pact podcast. Sheehan, who has been advocating for "disclosure" for several years, claims that a 64-page document signed by a bipartisan group of senators was condensed into a shorter bill containing a crucial deadline for disclosure. He claims the bill, passed into law on December 22, 2023, initiated a 300-day countdown. He [said], "The law has now mandated that all six of our United States military services, all 18 of our United States intelligence agencies, all 32 of our United States defense department agencies are all ordered to gather together every single piece of information they have acquired pertaining to the UFO phenomenon and non-human intelligence that is understood to be responsible for it. They are to gather that all together and have it available in a digitized and retrievable form by October 18 of 2024. The bill is said to include any UFO data over 25 years old that was previously classified. This would encompass some of the most renowned encounters, such as the Roswell Incident, the Phoenix Lights, and perhaps the most persuasive sighting, the lesser-known 1957 RB-47 encounter.

Note: We interviewed Daniel Sheehan to discuss the details of this unprecedented UFO disclosure process. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on UFOs from reliable major media sources. Then explore the excellent, reliable resources provided in our UFO Information Center.


The haunting connection between UFOs and America's nuclear weapons is laid bare in fascinating new study which concludes: They're trying to stop us from annihilating ourselves
2024-06-08, Daily Mail (One of the UK's Popular Newspapers)
Posted: 2024-06-17 13:02:07
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-13502357/The-haunting-connect...

Since the United States detonated its first atomic bomb at the Trinity test site in 1945, dozens of accounts of UFOs have been logged by military witnesses and government scientists working with America's sensitive nuclear arsenal. Now a new, decades-long study has analyzed over 500 of the best supported UFO cases from the heights of the Cold War and hauntingly concluded: 'This intelligence understands atomics, and they understand atomic weaponry.' UFO reports over America's nuclear arsenal appeared to shift from sites where the bombs were made to missile silos and US air bases as the Cold War arms race grew. That's one of the key findings from the new work, a series of three studies led by a retired US Air Force staff sergeant, Larry Hancock, and a data analyst affiliate with Harvard's UFO-hunting Galileo Project, Ian Porritt. Their qualified, but haunting conclusion: Data from this three decade-long period lends credence to the idea that extraterrestrials, or some other intelligence, has methodically surveilled America's rise to a nuclear power. 'This intelligence understands the developmental cycle. They have some contextual knowledge of what they're looking at and what they're looking for,' Hancock [said]. Among the hundreds of cases included in their analysis was the infamous March 16, 1967 Malmstrom case in which Air Force witnesses reported that ten nuclear missiles were switched off by a UFO, confirmed by a US Strategic Air Command report.

Note: Read more about UFO interference with nuclear missiles. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on UFOs from reliable major media sources.


Key senators believe the Pentagon’s UFO office is lying
2024-06-11, The Hill
Posted: 2024-06-17 13:00:35
https://thehill.com/opinion/congress-blog/4712445-key-senators-believe-the-pe...

Key members of Congress delivered an astounding rebuke to the Pentagon’s UFO analysis office last week, doubling down on whistleblower allegations of secret U.S government UFO programs. In March, the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), the Department of Defense’s UFO analysis program, released a 63-page report categorically denying the existence of such activities. But congressional legislation formally introduced last week represents a remarkable rebuke of AARO's emphatic denials. Congressional displeasure with AARO should come as no surprise. The office’s landmark report shooting down allegations of unreported UFO programs is riddled with basic factual errors, stunning omissions and a laundry list of historical distortions. Notably, the Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2025 would cut off funding for “any activity involving [UFOs] protected under any form of special access or restricted access limitations” that has not been reported to Congress, as required by law. In other words, despite AARO’s sweeping denials of secret, unreported UFO activities, the Senate Intelligence Committee believes that such programs do indeed exist. The legislation released last week also requires the Government Accountability Office to conduct a review of AARO. This formal review by Congress’s in-house investigative agency is a stark demonstration of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s lack of confidence in AARO. Key senators ... believe that the Pentagon’s UFO office is either not being truthful with the American public or is not executing its mission effectively.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on UFOs from reliable major media sources. Then explore the excellent, reliable resources provided in our UFO Information Center.


Scientists document remarkable sperm whale 'phonetic alphabet'
2024-05-08, NBC News
Posted: 2024-06-17 12:58:37
https://www.nbcnews.com/science/science-news/scientists-document-remarkable-s...

The various species of whales inhabiting Earth’s oceans employ different types of vocalizations to communicate. Sperm whales, the largest of the toothed whales, communicate using bursts of clicking noises — called codas — sounding a bit like Morse code. A new analysis of years of vocalizations by sperm whales in the eastern Caribbean has found that their system of communication is more sophisticated than previously known, exhibiting a complex internal structure replete with a “phonetic alphabet.” The researchers identified similarities to ... human language. “The research shows that the expressivity of sperm whale calls is much larger than previously thought,” said Pratyusha Sharma ... lead author of the study published on Tuesday in the journal Nature Communications. “Why are they exchanging these codas? What information might they be sharing?” asked study co-author Shane Gero, Project CETI’s lead biologist. “I think it’s likely that they use codas to coordinate as a family, organize babysitting, foraging and defense,” Gero said. Variations in the number, rhythm and tempo of the clicks produced different types of codas, the researchers found. The whales, among other things, altered the duration of the codas and sometimes added an extra click at the end, like a suffix in human language. “All of these different codas that we see are actually built by combining a comparatively simple set of smaller pieces,” said study co-author Jacob Andreas.

Note: Explore more stories about amazing marine mammals.


How the virtual world is inspiring gamers to become botanists
2024-06-10, Positive.News
Posted: 2024-06-17 12:56:18
https://www.positive.news/society/virtual-world-inspiring-gamers-become-botan...

What if computer games could facilitate a tangible, meaningful connection with nature? Now they can thanks to a new botany project that empowers gamers to cultivate plants featured in their favourite video game. The idea was that of Hannah Young and Aleks Atanasovski, two gamers who wanted to fuse their love of nature with their passion for gaming. The result is Seed Saga, a botanical pilot that allows players of Guild Wars – a popular roleplaying game renowned for its spectacular flora – to apply for seed packs so they can grow plants that feature in the game. The pair pitched the idea to the developer behind Guild Wars, Arena Net, which was “really up for it”. So much so, that the firm provided renders from the game for the seed packets and gave the project a push on its social channels. Due to the limited availability of seeds ... gamers must submit an application explaining why they want them. The responses, says Young, have been heartening. Said one applicant: “[Guild Wars] saved my life during a period of deep depression. It would be an honour to grow [crimson sunflowers] in my yard to pay homage to the game and support the surrounding insects that could benefit from these flowers.” The first seed packs went out in April. The idea now is to partner with other players in the industry and scale the concept to cultivate a new generation of botanists. Doing so could boost mental health: research shows that interacting with plants counteracts stress brought on by computers.

Note: Explore more positive stories about using technology for good.


A woman undergoing chemotherapy gets a special message from a stranger
2024-06-11, NPR
Posted: 2024-06-17 12:54:18
https://www.npr.org/2024/06/11/nx-s1-4996500/chemotherapy-cancer-stranger-uns...

In 2003, Mary Fran Lyons was going through chemotherapy for ovarian cancer. One day after a treatment session, she went to the mall to have lunch. Lyons had lost all her hair, so she was wearing a baseball cap. “You didn't have to look at me very hard to know things were not quite right,” Lyons said. As she was walking along, looking at the stores, a woman approached her. She told her something that Lyons will never forget. “She said, ‘I've been sent to tell you that you're going to be OK,’” Lyons remembered. “I stood there and looked at her and I thought, ‘Well, who sent you? I mean, who are you?’ And I did not say anything. And she said it again: 'You're going to be OK.’” Then the woman simply walked away. Lyons watched her leave, trying to understand what had just happened. But nothing about the woman stood out. "She looked like a completely normal human being,” Lyons recalled. “I never met her before, never heard of her since.” Later, Lyons told a good friend about her unusual encounter. “And she said, ‘Do you believe in angels?’" Lyons recalled. “And I said, ‘I do now.’” More than 20 years later, Lyons continues to hold the experience close. “If that woman were standing in front of me right now, I would say to her, ‘You gave me hope at a time when I really needed to hear it,’” Lyons said. “And I still think of that to this day.”

Note: Explore more positive human interest stories.


Cats on the moon? Google’s AI tool is producing misleading responses that have experts worried
2024-05-24, Associated Press
Posted: 2024-06-11 12:52:47
https://apnews.com/article/google-ai-overviews-96e763ea2a6203978f581ca9c10f1b07

Ask Google if cats have been on the moon and it used to spit out a ranked list of websites so you could discover the answer for yourself. Now it comes up with an instant answer generated by artificial intelligence - which may or may not be correct. “Yes, astronauts have met cats on the moon, played with them, and provided care,” said Google’s newly retooled search engine. It added: “For example, Neil Armstrong said, ‘One small step for man’ because it was a cat’s step. Buzz Aldrin also deployed cats on the Apollo 11 mission.” None of this is true. Similar errors — some funny, others harmful falsehoods — have been shared on social media since Google this month unleashed AI overviews, a makeover of its search page that frequently puts the summaries on top of search results. It’s hard to reproduce errors made by AI language models — in part because they’re inherently random. They work by predicting what words would best answer the questions asked of them based on the data they’ve been trained on. They’re prone to making things up — a widely studied problem known as hallucination. Another concern was a deeper one — that ceding information retrieval to chatbots was degrading the serendipity of human search for knowledge, literacy about what we see online, and the value of connecting in online forums with other people who are going through the same thing.Those forums and other websites count on Google sending people to them, but Google’s new AI overviews threaten to disrupt the flow of money-making internet traffic.

Note: Read more about the potential dangers of Google's new AI tool. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on artificial intelligence controversies from reliable major media sources.


News Publishers Try To Sic the Government on Google AI
2024-06-03, Reason
Posted: 2024-06-11 12:50:50
https://reason.com/2024/06/03/news-publishers-try-to-sic-the-government-on-go...

"Agency intervention is necessary to stop the existential threat Google poses to original content creators," the News/Media Alliance—a major news industry trade group—wrote in a letter to the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). It asked the agencies to use antitrust authority "to stop Google's latest expansion of AI Overviews," a search engine innovation that Google has been rolling out recently. Overviews offer up short, AI-generated summaries paired with brief bits of text from linked websites. Overviews give "comprehensive answers without the user ever having to click to another page," the The New York Times warns. And this worries websites that rely on Google to drive much of their traffic. "It potentially chokes off the original creators of the content," Frank Pine, executive editor of MediaNews Group and Tribune Publishing (owner of 68 daily newspapers), told the Times. Media websites have gotten used to Google searches sending them a certain amount of traffic. But that doesn't mean Google is obligated to continue sending them that same amount of traffic forever. It is possible that Google's pivot to AI was hastened by how hostile news media has been to tech companies. We've seen publishers demanding that search engines and social platforms pay them for the privilege of sharing news links, even though this arrangement benefits publications (arguably more than it does tech companies) by driving traffic.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on artificial intelligence controversies from reliable major media sources.


'I was misidentified as shoplifter by facial recognition tech'
2024-05-25, BBC News
Posted: 2024-06-11 12:49:06
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-69055945

Sara needed some chocolate - she had had one of those days - so wandered into a Home Bargains store. "Within less than a minute, I'm approached by a store worker who comes up to me and says, 'You're a thief, you need to leave the store'." Sara ... was wrongly accused after being flagged by a facial-recognition system called Facewatch. She says after her bag was searched she was led out of the shop, and told she was banned from all stores using the technology. Facewatch later wrote to Sara and acknowledged it had made an error. Facewatch is used in numerous stores in the UK. It's not just retailers who are turning to the technology. On the day we were filming, the Metropolitan Police said they made six arrests with the assistance of the tech. 192 arrests have been made so far this year as a result of it. But civil liberty groups are worried that its accuracy is yet to be fully established, and point to cases such as Shaun Thompson's. Mr Thompson, who works for youth-advocacy group Streetfathers, didn't think much of it when he walked by a white van near London Bridge. Within a few seconds, he was approached by police and told he was a wanted man. But it was a case of mistaken identity. "It felt intrusive ... I was treated guilty until proven innocent," he says. Silkie Carlo, director of Big Brother Watch, has filmed the police on numerous facial-recognition deployments. She says that anyone's face who is scanned is effectively part of a digital police line-up.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on artificial intelligence controversies from reliable major media sources.


Navigating the Deadly Maze of the Prison Industrial Complex
2024-05-24, ScheerPost
Posted: 2024-06-11 12:46:36
https://scheerpost.com/2024/05/24/navigating-the-deadly-maze-of-the-prison-in...

The greed of the prison industrial complex squeezing slave profits out of imprisoned people through the exploitation of the 13th amendment and the brutal system set up to limit opportunity usually leaves most who walk through the gates hopeless and abandoned. "At the point that I got to prison, I had never went into the liquor store and never pulled a tricker," [said former inmate Dorsey Nunn]. "I never did kill anybody. And I had never thought about killing anybody. We talked about the marriage of, of profit and you talk about the prison industrial complex, which is, essentially the practice of, marrying profit and punishment. One of the ugly realities in California under article one, section six, you still claim as a society to practice slavery, the right to practice slavery on the government level. They call it involuntary servitude. They mentioned it again in the 13th amendment. So people are still laboring without consent. The maximum amount of money that I was paid was 32 cents an hour. The maximum amount of money that I was paid for working a month. It’s $32 a month, so at a certain point and the maximum amount of money that they gave me to start this fresh new life with was $200 gate money, and they’ve been giving that probably since the early seventies, no account for inflation, no account for anything. And they say, start your life over. People are rising up to do away with and challenge the notion of the 13th Amendment and the practice of slavery. Should we actually make a question of maintaining slavery, a question of morals, and do we actually want to actually profit off of slaves?"

Note: Dorsey Nunn wrote a book about his experiences advocating for the rights of former prison inmates titled, "What Kind of Bird Can’t Fly: A Memoir of Resilience and Resurrection." With about 2 million people locked up, U.S. prison labor from all sectors has morphed into a multibillion-dollar empire. For more, read about America's dystopian "pay-to-stay" incarceration system.


COVID guidelines caused millions to suffer. Now Fauci admits 'there was no science behind it.'
2024-06-05, USA Today
Posted: 2024-06-11 12:44:10
https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/columnist/2024/06/05/fauci-hearing-cov...

In his testimony to the House Oversight and Accountability Committee on Monday ... Dr. Anthony Fauci told members of Congress that the COVID guidelines he preached in 2020 had no scientific support. These disclosures are damning and maddening for all of us who had structured our lives around these rules for years. As a result, millions of people suffered needlessly. He also admitted in the January interview that there was little science that backed requiring children to wear masks. The real effect of social distancing which Fauci basically admitted Monday and in January's testimony was just an educated guess on how to deter COVID-19 devastated America's economy, small businesses and families. For what? Closing schools was devastating to kids. Pandemic closings resulted in two decades of learning loss. Anxiety and depression skyrocketed, especially among adolescents and teens. The real effect of social distancing ... devastated America's economy, small businesses and families. In the second quarter of 2020, 1.2 million jobs were destroyed. In June 2021, 6.2 million people did not work at all or worked fewer hours because their employers closed or lost business. Family-owned businesses were lost, savings wiped, all for rules that had no real scientific basis. On Monday, Fauci did concede that some COVID-19 preventative measures may have gone too far and led to harmful outcomes.

Note: Fauci was literally the highest paid federal employee within the US government, even higher than the president. Yet while he told the world that attacking him is attacking science, he lied about funding risky gain of function research on bat coronaviruses. In hearings earlier this year, he said “I don’t recall” over 100 times when asked important information on his role in COVID and pandemic policies. What does this say about our public health leaders?


In the pandemic, we were told to keep 6 feet apart. There’s no science to support that.
2024-06-02, Washington Post
Posted: 2024-06-11 12:42:24
https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2024/06/02/six-foot-rule-covid-no-scien...

Elinore McCance-Katz, the Trump administration’s assistant secretary for mental health and substance use, was urging the CDC to justify its recommendation that Americans stay six feet apart to avoid contracting covid-19 — or get rid of it. “I very much hope that CDC will revisit this decision or at least tell us that there is more and stronger data to support this rule than what I have been able to find online,” McCance-Katz wrote in a June 2020 memo submitted to the CDC and other health agency leaders. The CDC would keep its six-foot social distance recommendation in place until August 2022. There was little science behind the six-foot rule. “It sort of just appeared, that six feet is going to be the distance,” Fauci testified to Congress in a January closed-door hearing, according to a transcribed interview released Friday. Fauci characterized the recommendation as “an empiric decision that wasn’t based on data.” Francis S. Collins, former director of the National Institutes of Health, also privately testified to Congress in January that he was not aware of evidence behind the social distancing recommendation. The U.S. distancing measure was particularly stringent, as other countries adopted shorter distances; the World Health Organization set a distance of one meter, or slightly more than three feet, which experts concluded was roughly as effective as the six-foot mark at deterring infections, and would have allowed schools to reopen more rapidly.

Note: Fauci was literally the highest paid federal employee within the US government, even higher than the president. Yet while he told the world that attacking him is attacking science, he lied about funding risky gain of function research on bat coronaviruses. In hearings earlier this year, he said “I don’t recall” over 100 times when asked important information on his role in COVID and pandemic policies. What does this say about our public health leaders?


NIH scientists made $710M in royalties from drug makers — a fact they tried to hide
2024-06-02, New York Post
Posted: 2024-06-11 12:40:12
https://nypost.com/2024/06/02/opinion/nih-scientists-made-710m-in-royalties-f...

New data from the National Institutes of Health reveal the agency and its scientists collected $710 million in royalties during the pandemic, from late 2021 through 2023. These are payments made by private companies, like pharmaceuticals, to license medical innovations from government scientists. Almost all that cash — $690 million — went to the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, the subagency led by Dr. Anthony Fauci, and 260 of its scientists. Information about this vast private royalty complex is tightly held by the National Institutes of Health (NIH). My organization, OpenTheBooks.com, was forced to sue to uncover the royalties paid from September 2009 to October 2021, which amounted to $325 million over 56,000 transactions. Payments skyrocketed during the pandemic era: Those years saw more than double the amount of cash flow to NIH from the private sector, compared to the prior 12 combined. All told, it’s $1.036 billion. NIH is still redacting pieces of the data that would help us more easily connect therapeutics with their government-paid inventors. For example, they refuse to show us the amount of royalties paid to each individual scientist. So we still can’t entirely follow the money. In the meantime, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) has sponsored the Royalty Transparency Act, which sailed unanimously through the committee process and deserves a floor vote immediately.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corruption in government and in the pharmaceutical industry from reliable major media sources.


1 in 9 children now diagnosed with this ‘expanding health concern’
2024-05-23, New York Post
Posted: 2024-06-11 12:38:03
https://nypost.com/2024/05/23/lifestyle/1-in-9-us-children-diagnosed-with-adhd/

A new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reveals a staggering uptick in ADHD, or attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, diagnoses among American children. Calling ADHD an “expanding public health concern,” researchers found that 1 in 9 children aged 3-17 had been diagnosed with the disorder, symptoms of which include trouble paying attention, overactivity and impulsive behaviors. The study, which appears in the Journal of Clinical Child & Adolescent Psychology, found that between 2016 and 2022, ADHD diagnoses among kids jumped by more than one million. Melissa Danielson, a statistician with the CDC’s National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities, attributes the increase to the mental toll of the pandemic. The report found that nearly 78% percent of children diagnosed with ADHD had at least one other diagnosed disorder. Common among these additional diagnoses were behavioral or conduct problems, anxiety, developmental delays, autism and/or depression. Meanwhile, an unrelated study found that between 2000 and 2021, the number of calls to US poison control centers for children’s ADHD medication errors jumped 300%, and a University of Michigan study revealed that 1 in 4 middle and high school students are abusing stimulants prescribed for ADHD. Additionally, ADHD medications are known to cause side effects like headache and loss of appetite.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on mental health from reliable major media sources.


Hunter Biden is being hounded by truth and justice – and he only has his repeated lies to blame
2024-05-22, New York Post
Posted: 2024-06-11 12:35:53
https://nypost.com/2024/05/22/opinion/hunter-biden-is-being-hounded-by-truth-...

Hunter Biden was hit with a double whammy Wednesday. First, a new filing by the prosecution in his upcoming gun-felony trial in Delaware poured scorn on Hunter’s legal team’s bizarrely persistent denial that his laptop and its contents are authentic. Then IRS whistleblowers Gary Shapley and Joe Ziegler delivered 100 pages of new bombshell evidence showing Hunter lied repeatedly to investigators in his sworn congressional testimony in February, prompting House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Jason Smith to raise the prospect of perjury charges against the first son. Shapley also produced a document that adds further weight to the suspicion that Hunter’s “sugar brother” ... Kevin Morris, was under CIA protection. Hunter lied about his shakedown WhatsApp message to CEFC employee Raymond Zhao on July 30, 2017, said Smith, when his committee voted to publicly release the new whistleblower documents. “These documents make clear that Hunter Biden was using his father’s name to shake down a Chinese businessman — and it worked. And when confronted by congressional investigators about it, he lied,” the panel said. The CIA’s shadowy hand can be seen elsewhere in the Hunter Biden story, including in the rapid approval of the “Dirty 51” letter signed by 51 former intelligence operatives (mainly from the CIA) before the 2020 election that falsely claimed that Hunter’s laptop was Russian disinformation.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on intelligence agency corruption from reliable major media sources.


‘I don’t know how this happened’: A $3B secret program undermining Biden’s tech policy
2024-05-24, Politico
Posted: 2024-06-11 12:34:08
https://www.politico.com/news/2024/05/23/3-billion-secret-program-undermining...

In recent weeks, Biden and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer have been taking victory laps for the 2022 CHIPS and Science Act, a law intended to create jobs and fund innovation in a key global industry. It has already launched a series of grants, incentives and research proposals to help America regain its cutting-edge status in global semiconductor manufacturing. But quietly, in a March spending bill, appropriators in Congress shifted $3.5 billion that the Commerce Department was hoping to use for those grants and pushed it into a separate Pentagon program called Secure Enclave, which is not mentioned in the original law. The diversion of money from a flagship Biden initiative is a case study in how fragile Washington’s monumental spending programs can be in practice. Several members of Congress involved in the CHIPS law say they were taken by surprise to see the money shifted to Secure Enclave, a classified project to build chips in a special facility for defense and intelligence needs. Critics say the shift in CHIPS money undermines an important policy by moving funds from a competitive public selection process meant to boost a domestic industry to an untried and classified project likely to benefit only one company. No company has been named yet to execute the project, but interviews reveal that chipmaking giant Intel lobbied for its creation, and is still considered the frontrunner for the money.

Note: Learn more about unaccountable military spending in our comprehensive Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center. For more, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption from reliable major media sources.


The all-female patrol guarding Ecuador's Amazon Rainforest
2024-05-07, BBC News
Posted: 2024-06-11 12:30:44
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20240503-the-indigenous-women-fighting-min...

It is the break of dawn in the Serena community, in the middle of the Ecuadorian Amazon. Elsa Cerda, a 43-year-old indigenous Kichwa woman, brews guayusa leaves – a native plant from the rainforest – in a pot. It marks the start of the Guayusa Upina, a ritual performed by Amazonian indigenous peoples before beginning their daily activities. This tradition is more than a routine; it's a spiritual connection to their ancestral roots. As the first rays of light begin to filter through the tree canopy, a diverse assembly of 35 women, ranging from 23 to 85 years old, arrives one by one at the ceremony. The group goes by the name of "Yuturi Warmi". Their role as Amazonian guardians involves safeguarding the territory from pollution and preserving the land and rivers from activities that jeopardise biodiversity – such as deforestation and mining operations. The women undergo regular training sessions, with younger women teaching older members how to operate these phone cameras and drones. Each patrol involves a rotation of members, particularly the younger ones, who primarily patrol the land, ensuring continued presence and surveillance. The women do not carry any weapons, relying instead on their collective presence to act as a deterrent. In the event of witnessing illegal mining activities, the women prioritise non-violent measures such as contacting the authorities and gathering evidence.

Note: Explore more positive stories like this about healing the Earth.


How Electric Harps Are Protecting Honey Bees
2024-05-23, Reasons to be Cheerful
Posted: 2024-06-11 12:28:23
https://reasonstobecheerful.world/electric-harps-protect-honey-bees-from-asia...

Michel Costa had become a frustrated veteran of an obscure yet devastating war in Europe. The enemy: invasive Asian hornets, which had been massacring his honey bees. When Costa, a retiree and avid beekeeper, discovered a new weapon with the potential to change the course of the entire war, he was intrigued. Several companies had begun selling so-called “electric harps,” which they claimed could kill the hornets in droves by electrocuting them as they flew through. Although the harps take different forms, each one is made of some sort of large frame, which is then “strung” with conductive metal wires. These are then connected to a source of electricity, often solar panels, so that the wires conduct simultaneously positive and negative charges. When a hornet flies through, its wings touch the wires on either side, completing a circuit, and thereby delivering a fatal current of electricity. Beekeepers then place the harps around their hives in positions along the hornets’ frequent flight paths. The harps can reduce predation pressure by 89 percent — enough to give hives the chance to replenish their stores. In one study only 56 percent of unprotected hives survived through winter, while 78 percent of those protected by harps did. Harps are also cheaper than other methods for beekeepers to install and operate. Beekeepers can buy them in complete kits that cost around $300 ... as Costa did. When combined with solar panels, maintenance costs are minimal.

Note: Explore more positive stories like this about healing the Earth.


‘The tranquility frees you’: Bogotá, the city that shuts out cars every week
2024-05-30, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2024-06-11 12:25:13
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/may/30/the-tranquility-f...

Once a week the citizens of Bogotá take back the streets of their city. Every Sunday, between 7am and 2pm, many of the biggest roads are shut to cars and left open to bikes, skates and feet. “Ciclovía is really cool because there is a lot more space for us,” says seven-year-old Oliver Rojas, who is out cycling with his parents and is baffled to hear that this innovative scheme does not exist in the rest of the world. The weekly event was born out of a one-day protest in 1974 against cars taking over the world’s streets. It now covers 127 km (79 miles) of streets in the city and, on average, 1.5 million Bogotanos use the Ciclovía every Sunday. It has spread to most other Colombian cities and has been copied by mayors across the world, from Buenos Aires to Bengaluru, who hope the initiative can help get people in shape, improve mental health, reduce car usage and help fight climate change in the way that it has in Colombia. Part of the attraction is the fun and the family-friendly atmosphere. Bogotá’s cycleways are punctuated with aerobics classes, people selling fresh juices, and the sound of salsa. On a regular weekday, the level of PM 2.5 particles on the main road through Bogotá ... is dangerously high at 65 µg/m3. During Ciclovía, however, that number falls to 5 µg/m3 on the same stretch of road – 13 times less and in line with the WHO’s recommendations for the tiny, harmful particles. Noise levels are seven times lower.

Note: Read about the successful story of a US community that banned cars.


How Fat Leonard compromised admirals in charge of Navy intelligence
2024-05-07, Washington Post
Posted: 2024-06-04 01:02:28
https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/2024/05/07/how-fat-leonard-comp...

Leonard Glenn Francis, and his company, Glenn Defense Marine Asia, held $200 million in contracts to resupply U.S. Navy ships and provide port security in Asia. But Francis had recently been arrested. Federal agents were shocked to discover ... that he had obtained reams of classified information from corrupt Navy officers about the itineraries of U.S. warships and submarines. Francis, a high school dropout with a prior felony record, penetrated the Navy’s elaborate counterintelligence defenses with astonishing ease — and far more extensively than the Pentagon has publicly acknowledged — by bribing ... officers for classified material. Navy counterintelligence officials failed to detect hemorrhaging leaks of military secrets to Francis while he exploited the information for his company’s bottom line. Since 2015, 10 Navy officers have admitted to leaking classified material to Francis and his firm in exchange for prostitutes, cash and other favors, the records show, making the Malaysian defense contractor among the most prolific espionage agents in modern history. After a lengthy investigation and the suspension of [Vice Adm. Ted Branch and Rear Adm. Bruce Loveless'] access to classified information, the Navy determined that Branch violated federal ethics rules and committed official misconduct by accepting meals and other gifts from Francis. Loveless was indicted and tried on bribery charges, though prosecutors dropped the case against him.

Note: Read more about the massive bribery scheme that Leonard Francis used to compromise the US Navy. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on military corruption from reliable major media sources.


Fat Leonard bribery cases fall apart because of prosecution blunders
2024-05-20, Washington Post
Posted: 2024-06-04 01:00:08
https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/2024/05/20/fat-leonard-navy-sca...

Few Navy officers entangled themselves in the Fat Leonard corruption scandal more than Steve Shedd. In court documents and testimony, the former warship captain confessed to leaking military secrets on 10 occasions for prostitutes, vacations, luxury watches and other bribes worth $105,000. Shedd might avoid punishment for his crimes. The reason: a pattern of prosecutorial misconduct in the Fat Leonard investigation that has caused several cases to unravel so far and is threatening to undermine more. The cases collapsed after defense attorneys alleged that prosecutors from the U.S. attorney’s office in San Diego relied on flawed evidence and withheld information favorable to the defense during the 2022 bribery trial of five other officers who had served in the Navy’s 7th Fleet in Asia. After Francis’s arrest in 2013, nearly 1,000 individuals came under scrutiny, including 91 admirals. Federal prosecutors brought criminal charges against 34 defendants. Twenty-nine of them, including Shedd, pleaded guilty. Legal analysts said it is possible that even Francis might catch a break, though he has already pleaded guilty to bribing “scores” of military officers and defrauding the Navy of tens of millions of dollars. During the 2022 trial ... the prosecution team led by Assistant U.S. Attorney Mark Pletcher withheld a witness statement that contradicted some of the government’s allegations and did not divulge that one of its lead investigators had made inaccurate statements.

Note: Read more about the massive bribery scheme that Leonard Francis used to compromise the US Navy. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on military corruption from reliable major media sources.


America’s Monster: How the U.S. Backed Kidnapping, Torture and Murder in Afghanistan
2024-05-22, New York Times
Posted: 2024-06-04 00:58:13
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/22/world/asia/afghanistan-abdul-raziq.html

Abdul Raziq [was] one of America’s most important partners in the war against the Taliban. American generals cycling through Afghanistan made regular pilgrimages to visit him, praising ... the loyalty he commanded from his men, who were trained, armed and paid by the United States and its allies. The Americans were by his side until the very end. When he was gunned down by an undercover Taliban assassin in 2018, he was walking next to the top American commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Austin S. Miller, who celebrated him as a “great friend” and “patriot.” But to countless Afghan civilians under his reign, Raziq was something else entirely: America’s monster. His battlefield prowess was built on years of torture, extrajudicial killings and the largest-known campaign of forced disappearances during America’s 20-year war in Afghanistan. He transformed the police into a fearsome combat force without constraints, and his officers abducted hundreds, if not thousands, of people to be killed or tortured in secret jails. Most were never seen again. The culture of lawlessness and impunity he created flew in the face of endless promises by American presidents, generals and ambassadors to uphold human rights and build a better Afghanistan. Raziq’s tactics ... stirred such enmity in parts of the population that the Taliban turned his cruelty into a recruiting tool, broadcasting it to attract new fighters. Many Afghans came to revile the American-backed government and everything it represented.

Note: Learn more about human rights abuses during wartime in our comprehensive Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center. For more, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on military corruption from reliable major media sources.


New COVID Select Memo Details Allegations of Wrongdoing and Illegal Activity by Dr. Fauci’s Senior Scientific Advisor
2024-05-22, Committee on Oversight and Accountability
Posted: 2024-06-04 00:56:19
https://oversight.house.gov/release/new-covid-select-memo-details-allegations...

The Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic released a staff memorandum titled “Allegations of Wrongdoing and Illegal Activity by Dr. David Morens, Senior Advisor to National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases former-Director, Dr. Anthony Fauci.” This memo presents overwhelming evidence from Dr. Morens’s own email that he engaged in serious misconduct ... while serving as a Senior Advisor to Dr. Fauci during the COVID-19 pandemic. The memo includes previously unreleased email correspondence ... that incriminates Dr. Morens in undermining the operations of the U.S. government, unlawfully deleting federal COVID-19 records, using a personal email to avoid the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), and repeatedly acting unbecoming of a federal employee. Further, the memo reveals new emails suggesting Dr. Fauci was aware of Dr. Morens’s nefarious behavior and may have even engaged in federal records violations himself. Email evidence suggests Dr. Fauci used his personal email to conduct official business. This raises serious questions as to whether Dr. Fauci took part in a conspiracy amongst the highest levels of NIH to hide official records related to the origins of COVID-19. Dr. Fauci was potentially aware of, and may have engaged in, undermining the operations of the U.S. government by assisting Dr. Morens’s efforts to backchannel internal NIH information to EcoHealth Alliance President Dr. Peter Daszak.

Note: Watch our 15-min Mindful News Brief video on the strong evidence that bioweapons research created COVID-19. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on COVID from reliable major media sources.


Biggest Bombshells From New Fauci COVID Emails
2024-05-23, Newsweek
Posted: 2024-06-04 00:54:34
https://www.newsweek.com/inside-fauci-morens-coronavirus-emails-1904099

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, is under fire after the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic reviewed more than 30,000 pages of subpoenaed emails and documents from Dr. David Morens, Fauci's former senior adviser. The subcommittee ... said the emails raised "serious questions as to whether Dr. Fauci took part in a conspiracy amongst the highest levels of [the National Institutes of Health] to hide official records related to the origins of COVID-19." The 35-page memo "incriminates Dr. Morens in undermining the operations of the U.S. government, unlawfully deleting federal COVID-19 records, [and] using a personal email to avoid the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA)." Many of Morens' emails were sent to or copied Peter Daszak, the president of EcoHealth Alliance. EcoHealth Alliance received a $3.4 million NIH grant in 2014, of which about $600,000 was sent to the Wuhan virology lab. Many of Morens' emails mentioned avoiding FOIA requests and urged individuals to contact his private email address rather than his NIH government-issued account. On May 13, 2021, Morens wrote an email, which Daszak was copied on, suggesting someone speak with Fauci through an unofficial, private channel. He wrote: "Interview Tony directly and connected him to our 'secret' back channel." The subject line of the email suggested the conversation was about the origins of COVID-19.

Note: Watch our 15-min Mindful News Brief video on the strong evidence that bioweapons research created COVID-19. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on COVID from reliable major media sources.


The US food industry has long buried the truth about their products. Is that coming to an end?
2024-05-20, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2024-06-04 00:51:53
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/may/20/food-companies-nu...

More than a dozen countries require that companies print nutritional labels on the front of food packages – a move that’s come as the rate of diet-related diseases, like hypertension, type 2 diabetes, heart disease, stroke and obesity, increases worldwide. So far, the United States does not require any front-of-package nutrition labels. But that could soon change. The US Food and Drug Administration is currently developing front-of-package labels that it could require corporations to begin printing as early as 2027. Despite significant opposition from food companies ... the FDA is evaluating different mandatory label designs to determine which is most effective at informing consumers, but also which is legal under US corporate free speech laws. The labels under consideration by the FDA ... mark only “nutrients of concern”, like sugar and sodium – not-ultra processed foods. But many advocates say that should change. UPFs are industrially formulated products made out of substances extracted from foods, like sugars, salts, hydrogenated fats, bulking agents and starches. Today, UPFs make up 73% of the US food supply, according to Northeastern University’s Network Science Institute, and provide the average US adult with more than 60% of their daily calories. But research is increasingly linking UPFs to a whole host of health issues: from cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes to colorectal cancer and depression.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on food system corruption from reliable major media sources.


Doomsday prepping: Inside elite underground survival bunker
2024-02-19, NewsNation
Posted: 2024-06-04 00:49:06
https://www.newsnationnow.com/banfield/inside-elite-underground-survival-bunk...

From everyday Americans to celebrities, doomsday preppers are stocking up for fears of the end of the world, nuclear war, a major economic collapse or World War III. Now, real estate speculators say there are plenty of people concerned about the future to buy properties in bunker communities. Doomday prepping has been defined as: “The management of stockpiled household items in anticipation of market disruption.” Preppers are people who make preparations to survive without government assistance in the event there is a disaster. They may learn survivalist skills as well as stockpile supplies such as food and ammunition. In the past year, Finder.com says 39% of millennials and 40% of those in Generation Z reported spending money on prepping. [Vivos xPoint is] a former Army base turned bunker community in South Dakota that’s off-grid and built to be self-sufficient. Some people have a plane full of gas to get them to their bunkers at any moment. Some of the bunkers have generators, a bomb blast door, gun safes, an electrical room and storage for food, along with bedrooms and bathrooms. The South Dakota property of more than 530 bunkers is built to be self-sufficient. Out of all the $55,000 bunkers on site, about 200 have sold and sales have been picking up. Many countries in the world, including the U.S., advise people to prepare to survive for three days without assistance from authorities in the case of an emergency.

Note: Read more about elite doomsday bunkers.


From luxury bunkers to tactical vehicles, the ultra-rich are preparing for the Big One
2024-05-09, CBC News (Canada's Public Broadcasting System)
Posted: 2024-06-04 00:47:07
https://www.cbc.ca/news/billionaire-bunkers-doomsday-1.7130152

In December, Wired magazine revealed that Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta and one of the richest individuals on the planet, was building a $100-million US compound in Hawaii. The compound includes a bunker — 5,000 square feet, to be specific, with concrete walls and an escape hatch. What does this tell us? It's a sign that at least some of the ultra-rich are anxious about global events and are making contingency plans for the Big One — whatever form that may take. The feeling is very much in the air. Architectural Digest named "luxury bunkers" one of the real estate trends of 2023. Brian Cramden, president of Hardened Structures, a Virginia-based firm that builds multimillion-dollar fortified homes and bomb shelters, said work has been "steady" for years but that he has seen a "major uptick in the last two, three months." "With Putin and North Korea and what's going on in Gaza, I'm getting lots of inquiries," he said. "It's [wars], it's Trump, it's the divisiveness of the nation." Cramden said the most commonly cited threats include a breakdown of law and order; the detonation of a nuclear weapon; a hostile power activating an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) to disrupt the communications network; and the diffuse effects of climate change. Vivos, a California-based company that provides "shelter solutions," told CBC "inquiries and applications are up over 2,000 per cent year over year."

Note: Read more about elite doomsday bunkers.


World's billionaires are building bunkers and assembling fortresses outside their mansions
2024-01-21, Daily Mail (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2024-06-04 00:44:39
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-12974609/What-know-Worlds-bil...

'Doomsday prepping' used to be seen as a hobby relegated to the paranoid fringe — but ordinary Americans spent a staggering $11 billion on survival items, just last year, from April 2022 to April 2023. About a third of US citizens admit to prepping, surveys show, but few have the resources today's billionaire bunker-builders have to devote to their own shelters. The world's wealthiest have increasingly spent hundreds of millions on securing underground compounds, private islands and (for the merely rich) 'survival condos.' Last year, the nonprofit coalition of physicists and other researchers behind Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists set their Doomsday Clock 90 seconds to midnight: the closest humanity has been to doom in the clock's 76 year history. 'Russia's war on Ukraine has raised profound questions about how states interact, eroding norms of international conduct,' their 2023 Doomsday Clock statement explained. It's Gen-Z adults, those born after 1997, who have proven the most likely to be preparing for a disaster: a whooping 40 percent claimed to have spent money on doomsday supplies in 2022, according to a Finder survey. As one sustainable prepping influencer, content creator Brekke Wagoner, put it, 'Basically our weather is going to be more intense because of global climate change, if for no other reason you should have an emergency plan to deal with these inclement disasters, because they're coming whether we want them or not.'

Note: Read more about elite doomsday bunkers.


New Bipartisan Bill Allows Military Contractors To Fleece Taxpayers
2024-05-21, The Lever
Posted: 2024-06-04 00:42:06
https://www.levernews.com/new-bipartisan-bill-allows-military-contractors-to-...

After receiving more than $3.8 million in 2024 campaign donations from political action committees and individuals associated with the military industry, members of the House committee overseeing Pentagon spending just inserted two provisions into an upcoming bill that would exempt many more private products and services from competitive pricing guidelines and provide contractors far more leeway in what they can charge the Defense Department. Last year’s Pentagon spending bill totaled nearly $884 billion. Over the past decade, more than half of that budget has gone to military contractors. Many of the top military contractors — including Boeing, RTX Corporation, Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics, and Northrop Grumman — have seen sizable stock-value increases since the war in Gaza began in October 2023 while shooting down shareholder efforts at increased transparency. The provisions in the 2025 Pentagon spending bill are part of the 344-page National Defense Authorization Act of 2025 (NDAA). The provisions in question — Sections 811 and 812 — make good on a wishlist of policy changes that many military companies have been lobbying on for years. “As a member of the House Armed Services Committee, I’m disappointed to see provisions in the NDAA that would allow contractors to further obscure pricing data,” Rep. Ro Khanna [said]. “This would lead to more inflated costs and waste taxpayer money when we could be investing it instead.”

Note: Learn more about unaccountable military spending in our comprehensive Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center. For more, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on military corruption from reliable major media sources.


At age 90, America's first Black astronaut candidate has finally made it to space
2024-05-19, NPR
Posted: 2024-06-04 00:39:57
https://www.npr.org/2024/05/19/1252354052/blue-origin-rocket-ed-dwight-astronaut

Ed Dwight, the man who six decades ago nearly became America's first Black astronaut, made his first trip into space at age 90 on Sunday along with five crewmates aboard Blue Origin's New Shepard rocket. The approximately 10-minute suborbital flight put Dwight in the history books as the oldest person ever to reach space. He beat out Star Trek actor William Shatner for that honor by just a few months. Shatner was a few months younger when he went up on a New Shepard rocket in 2021. In the 1960s, Dwight, an Air Force captain, was fast tracked for space flight after then-President John F. Kennedy asked for a Black astronaut. Despite graduating in the top half of a test pilot school, Dwight was subsequently passed over for selection as an astronaut, a story he detailed in his autobiography, Soaring On The Wings Of A Dream: The Untold Story of America's First Black Astronaut Candidate. After leaving the Air Force, Dwight went on to become a celebrated sculptor, specializing in creating likenesses of historic African American figures. Speaking with NPR by phone a few hours after Sunday's launch, Dwight said, "I've got bragging rights now." "All these years, I've been called an astronaut," Dwight said, but "now I have a little [astronaut] pin, which is ... a totally different matter." He said he'd been up to 80,000 feet in test flights during his Air Force career, but at four times that altitude aboard New Shepard, the curvature of the Earth was more pronounced.

Note: Explore more positive human interest stories.


Priced Out of Housing, Communities Take Development Into Their Own Hands
2024-05-13, New York Times
Posted: 2024-06-04 00:38:18
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/13/business/gentrifying-neighborhoods-communi...

“Community-owned cooperative real estate” ... was developed a decade ago by a nonprofit legal group and a nonprofit neighborhood group in Oakland, Calif., and has been refined by legal and development groups in Atlanta, Boston, Minneapolis, Philadelphia, Portland, Ore., and other cities. The cooperative strategy enables neighborhood groups to finance unconventional construction or renovation projects that banks and institutional lenders, which prefer strong cash-flow operations, won’t touch. Much of the approach stems from efforts by the federal and local governments to make it easier for small investors to put money into real estate developments. Federal rules once barred small investors — those whose net worth is less than $1 million or who make less than $200,000 a year in income — from participating in development projects; that changed in 2015. At the same time, a few states enacted laws allowing small investors to put their money into local developments. “Until that change, 90 percent of the residents in a community couldn’t make direct investments in a real estate project,” said Chris Miller [with] the National Coalition for Community Capital, a nonprofit group. “Michigan allows nonaccredited investors to invest up to $10,000 in a project now.” In Oakland, the East Bay Permanent Real Estate Cooperative is widely credited with being one of the first community groups to apply the community-owned cooperative concept to a neighborhood project.

Note: Explore more positive stories about reimagining the economy.


How Women Are Helping Their Neighbors Heal From Depression
2024-05-16, Reasons to be Cheerful
Posted: 2024-06-04 00:36:24
https://reasonstobecheerful.world/women-peer-led-therapy-depression/

Rhoda Phiri was having a hard time sleeping. She found it difficult to mingle with people in her community and at church. Even basic chores were hard. She was, she says, in a “dark corner.” Then one day in 2020, a couple of women knocked on the door of her home in Zambia. The women were with StrongMinds, an international nonprofit that provides support for depression, particularly among women and adolescents. She accepted the women’s invitation to join a group therapy program, held under a tree in an area near her home, and as she learned about depression, she recognized the signs in herself. “All the symptoms they were talking about, it’s like they were talking about me,” Phiri says. “It’s like they knew what I was going through.” Instead of relying on mental health professionals, StrongMinds offers group therapy facilitated by trained community members — often clients who have completed the treatment themselves, like Phiri. This group therapy model has proven to be an effective way to treat depression. Since the organization launched in 2013, half a million people have gone through the treatment program. Three-quarters of participants screened as being free of depression symptoms two weeks after completing it. “What we’ve learned in 11 years is that depression treatment can be, what we call, democratized,” says StrongMinds founder ... Sean Mayberry. “You can take it out of the hands of doctors and nurses and give it to the community itself.”

Note: Explore more positive stories like this in our comprehensive inspiring news articles archive focused on solutions and bridging divides.


Top senators believe the US secretly recovered UFOs
2024-05-09, The Hill
Posted: 2024-05-26 20:47:37
https://thehill.com/opinion/technology/4646417-top-senators-believe-the-us-se...

Has the U.S. government secretly retrieved exotic craft of “non-human” origin? Newly declassified documents, along with extraordinary legislation, illustrate how two successive Democratic Senate majority leaders appear to have believed so. Notably, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and the late Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.) were not alone in their focus on UFOs. [They] received critical support and encouragement from a bipartisan group of high-profile senators over the years, including former fighter pilot and famed astronaut John Glenn (D-Ohio); Ted Stevens (R-Alaska), who observed a UFO as a World War II pilot; Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii), then-chairman of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense; 2008 GOP presidential nominee Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.); Senate Intelligence Vice Chairman Marco Rubio (R-Fla.); Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) and Joe Lieberman (D-Conn.). Recently, Schumer and a bipartisan group of five other senators introduced extraordinary legislation alleging the existence of surreptitious “legacy programs” that retrieve and seek to reverse-engineer UFOs of “non-human” origin. On the Senate floor, Schumer said the government “has gathered a great deal of information about [UFOs] over many decades but has refused to share it with the American people.” Critically, according to Schumer, “multiple credible sources” have alleged that elements of the U.S. government have withheld UFO-related information from Congress illegally.

Note: For more along these lines, read more about these alleged top secret UFO programs in our UFO Information Center.


Natural Spies: Animals in Espionage
2024-04-22, CIA.gov
Posted: 2024-05-26 20:45:08
https://www.cia.gov/stories/story/natural-spies-animals-in-espionage/

At CIA, we find inspiration in all kinds of places. From robotic catfish to real-life spy birds, animals and their look-alikes have helped Agency officers perform a variety of critical duties, including eavesdropping, intelligence gathering, security, covert communications, and photo surveillance. During the Cold War ... CIA’s Office of Research and Development created a camera so tiny and lightweight that a pigeon could carry it. The camera was strapped to the bird’s chest with a little harness, and the bird would be released over a secret area ... that we wanted to know more about. The camera would snap pictures as the bird flew back home to us. During the Vietnam War ... CIA scientists invented what is known as the seismic intruder detection device. It could be strategically placed to monitor movements up to 300 meters away. However, our scientists had to disguise the technology. Since tigers are native to Vietnam ... they provided the ideal cover. The detection device was designed to look like tiger droppings. In the 1970s, CIA’s Office of Research and Development created “Insectothopter,” the first insect-sized unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) of its kind! It was disguised as an everyday dragon fly. CIA’s Office of Technical Services thought rats would be a great way to conceal things during the Cold War. They treated the rat’s carcass with a preservation agent, cut it open, and created a hollow cavity where our officers could hide things like money, notes, or even film. The rat would then be sewn back up, placed at a pre-determined dead drop location, and then left for the asset to retrieve. During testing phases, the rats went missing because stray cats had stolen them.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on intelligence agency corruption and the disappearance of privacy from reliable major media sources.


Are your kids being spied on? The rise of anti-cheating software in US schools
2024-04-18, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2024-05-26 20:43:21
https://www.theguardian.com/education/2024/apr/18/us-schools-anti-cheating-so...

In the middle of night, students at Utah’s Kings Peak high school are wide awake – taking mandatory exams. Their every movement is captured on their computer’s webcam and scrutinized by Proctorio, a surveillance company that uses artificial intelligence. Proctorio software conducts “desk scans” in an effort to catch test-takers who turn to “unauthorized resources”, “face detection” technology to ensure there isn’t anybody else in the room to help and “gaze detection” to spot anybody “looking away from the screen for an extended period of time”. Proctorio then provides visual and audio records to Kings Peak teachers with the algorithm calling particular attention to pupils whose behaviors during the test flagged them as possibly engaging in academic dishonesty. Such remote proctoring tools grew exponentially during the pandemic, particularly at US colleges and universities. K-12 schools’ use of remote proctoring tools, however, has largely gone under the radar. K-12 schools nationwide – and online-only programs in particular – continue to use tools from digital proctoring companies on students ... as young as kindergarten-aged. Civil rights activists, who contend AI proctoring tools fail to work as intended, harbor biases and run afoul of students’ constitutional protections, said the privacy and security concerns are particularly salient for young children and teens, who may not be fully aware of the monitoring or its implications. One 2021 study found that Proctorio failed to detect test-takers who had been instructed to cheat. Researchers concluded the software was “best compared to taking a placebo: it has some positive influence, not because it works but because people believe that it works, or that it might work.”

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on AI and the disappearance of privacy from reliable major media sources.


These cities bar facial recognition tech. Police still found ways to access it.
2024-05-18, Washington Post
Posted: 2024-05-26 20:41:20
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2024/05/18/facial-recognition-law-enf...

As cities and states push to restrict the use of facial recognition technologies, some police departments have quietly found a way to keep using the controversial tools: asking for help from other law enforcement agencies that still have access. Officers in Austin and San Francisco — two of the largest cities where police are banned from using the technology — have repeatedly asked police in neighboring towns to run photos of criminal suspects through their facial recognition programs. In San Francisco, the workaround didn’t appear to help. Since the city’s ban took effect in 2019, the San Francisco Police Department has asked outside agencies to conduct at least five facial recognition searches, but no matches were returned. SFPD spokesman Evan Sernoffsky said these requests violated the city ordinance and were not authorized by the department, but the agency faced no consequences from the city. Austin police officers have received the results of at least 13 face searches from a neighboring police department since the city’s 2020 ban — and have appeared to get hits on some of them. Facial recognition ... technology has played a role in the wrongful arrests of at least seven innocent Americans, six of whom were Black, according to lawsuits each of these people filed after the charges against them were dismissed. In all, 21 cities or counties and Vermont have voted to prohibit the use of facial recognition tools by law enforcement.

Note: Crime is increasing in many cities, leading to law enforcement agencies appropriately working to maintain public safety. Yet far too often, social justice takes a backseat while those in authority violate human rights. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on police corruption and artificial intelligence from reliable major media sources.


Police departments sell their used guns. Thousands end up at crime scenes.
2024-05-16, CBS News
Posted: 2024-05-26 20:39:25
https://www.cbsnews.com/police-selling-guns/

Candace Leslie was leaving church when she got the call she will never forget. Someone shot Leslie's son four times. Police recovered at least one gun. It was a Glock pistol. Unbeknownst to investigators at the time, the gun once served as a law enforcement duty weapon, carried by a sheriff's deputy more than 2,000 miles away in California. According to data from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the Glock was one of at least 52,529 police guns that have turned up at crime scenes since 2006, the earliest year provided. While that tally includes guns lost by or stolen from police, many of the firearms were released back into the market by the very law enforcement agencies sworn to protect the public. Law enforcement resold guns to firearms dealers for discounts on new equipment and, in some cases, directly to their own officers, records show. Some of the guns were later involved in shootings, domestic violence incidents, and other violent crimes. Reporters surveyed state and local law enforcement agencies and found that at least 145 of them had resold guns on at least one occasion between 2006 and 2024. That's about 90 percent of the more than 160 agencies that responded. Records from 67 agencies showed they had collectively resold more than 87,000 firearms over the past two decades. That figure is likely a significant undercount, however, because many agencies' records were incomplete or heavily redacted.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on police corruption from reliable major media sources.


Youth detention facilities face increased scrutiny amid a wave of abuse lawsuits
2024-05-17, NPR
Posted: 2024-05-26 20:37:28
https://www.npr.org/2024/05/17/1251963778/youth-detention-juvenile-crime-sexu...

As a teenager almost 20 years ago, Jeffery Christian was sent to a juvenile detention center in southern Illinois. He was abused by multiple staff over the course of several years, starting just a few days into his detention. According to a lawsuit filed last week in the Illinois Court of Claims, his mother reported at least some of the alleged abuse to leadership but no one followed up. He is one of more than 90 people who sued the state last week, saying they were abused by employees when they were in juvenile detention, some as young as 12 years old. It is the latest in a flurry of legal cases around the country claiming similar sexual misconduct by employees of facilities housing children charged with a crime. The U.S. Justice Department on Wednesday announced an investigation into Kentucky's youth detention facilities. Since the start of the year, there have been lawsuits filed in at least four states, including the one in Illinois. The men and women in the lawsuits allege very similar abuse. Some say they were raped. Others say they were forced to perform oral sex or were inappropriately touched by employees. Some say they were given rewards, like special snacks or extra recreational time, if they complied; others say they were punished for refusing. According to the Sentencing Project, a research and advocacy group, recurring abuse has been documented in state-funded juvenile detention facilities in 29 states and the District of Columbia.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on prison system corruption and sexual abuse scandals from reliable major media sources.


Mainstream Media Doesn’t Care That the CIA May Have Helped Cause 9/11
2023-05-05, Jacobin
Posted: 2024-05-26 20:35:29
https://jacobin.com/2023/05/cia-fbi-911-hijackers-cover-up-bush-media

A signed affidavit from Guantanamo military commission investigator Don Canestraro ... outlines the findings of a 2016 investigation by Canestraro, a longtime veteran of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), into Saudi and CIA complicity in the [9/11] terrorist attacks, findings that are squarely at odds with the story given to the public in their wake. Relaying the information gathered from dozens of interviews he conducted with former FBI and CIA personnel, members of the 9/11 Commission, and US government officials, Canestraro’s affidavit outlines a sequence of events that, if true, suggest a botched and illegal domestic CIA operation was at the heart of the intelligence failure that enabled the attacks. More than that, it suggests there was a concerted cover-up of the grave blunder after the fact by both the CIA and the George W. Bush administration. The CIA impeded law enforcement efforts that could have prevented the attacks. Several former agents recalled being blocked by the agency from sharing intelligence about the hijackers with the rest of the FBI. A “former senior FBI official” likewise told Canestraro that the CIA sat on the news that the hijackers had entered the United States in 2000. Why did the CIA so intensely gatekeep information on the future hijackers? One former agent recalled the FBI faced “diplomatic pressure” not to investigate the Saudi links to the attacks, while another ... charged that agents were told not to interview Saudi nationals.

Note: Read the full article for more important details on this alleged cover-up, including the close relationship between the CIA and Saudi intelligence agency. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of revealing news articles on intelligence agency corruption and explore our comprehensive 9/11 Information Center.


The CIA Conducted Mind-Control Experiments in Canada for Decades
2023-11-06, Jacobin
Posted: 2024-05-26 20:32:42
https://jacobin.com/2023/11/cia-mkultra-mind-control-torture-iraq-canada-mcgill

For two decades, the CIA ran mind-control experiments in Montreal that later influenced modern “enhanced interrogation” techniques such as those used at Abu Ghraib. The experiments have not only crossed ethical boundaries but also raised profound questions of accountability and justice. This is particularly true in light of the ongoing class-action lawsuits initiated by those who suffered through the Montreal experiments. Established in 1940, the Allan Memorial Institute (known as “the Allan”) used to be a psychiatric institute and research facility. The majority of the Montreal experiments were orchestrated and implemented by a man named Donald Ewen Cameron ... the first director of the Allan. Cameron received funds brokered by then CIA director Allen Dulles to subject his unwitting “patients” to high-voltage electroshock treatments, insulin-induced comas, sensory deprivation, and large doses of hallucinogenic drugs like LSD. To justify these treatments, Cameron touted his psychiatric techniques as innovative and experimental. The CIA obtained their desired test results from Cameron, whose patients unknowingly paid for the operation with the loss of their memories and cognitive abilities. Even though countless individuals who left the Allan were reduced to childlike states and unable to recognize their own family members, the US government has yet to be held accountable.

Note: Read more about the disturbing experiments of Ewen Cameron. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on intelligence agency corruption and mind control from reliable major media sources.


NSA Used Porn To “Break Down Detainees” In Iraq — And Other Revelations From 297 Snowden Documents
2018-03-01, The Intercept
Posted: 2024-05-26 20:30:02
https://theintercept.com/2018/03/01/iraq-porn-nsa-snowden-files-sidtoday/

An NSA staffer deployed to Iraq led a counterterrorism and counterintelligence mission involving forensic investigations on computers seized in raids. The staffer’s “Media Exploitation” team found pornographic videos and photos alongside thousands of audio files of the Quran and sermons, and recruitment and training CDs with video of bombings, torture, and beheadings. The team “jokingly” referred to the content as the “three big ‘P’s – porn, propaganda and prayer.” Reports and files were distributed to the NSA and other intelligence agencies. Among the customers of the material ... were the military units interrogating captured insurgents. Special Forces interrogators found the pornography “extremely useful in breaking down detainees who maintained that they were devout Muslims, but had porn on their computers,” according to an account by the NSA staffer. As the conflict with insurgents escalated in Fallujah ... NSA staff with “top-secret” clearances were deployed to the combat zone. Marines gave the NSA staff seized computers, CDs, phones, and radios directly from the battlefield, some “covered in blood.” This material, too, was used in interrogations. A former interrogator at the U.S. detention center at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, has said ... that pornography was used at the facility to reward some detainees and as a tool against others, who were forced to look at the material. The Associated Press has also reported on the use of pornography at Guantánamo.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on intelligence agency corruption from reliable major media sources.


Shocking doc exposes mystery surrounding alleged 1988 prostitution ring, detailing child victims' horrific claims of being flown across US and abused by high-powered officials - and their accusations of 'cover up' by the FBI
2022-07-22, Daily Mail (One of the UK's Popular Newspapers)
Posted: 2024-05-26 20:27:51
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-11033217/Documentary-explores-alle...

A resurfaced documentary is exposing a series of horrific accusations made by alleged victims of a 1988 child sex trafficking ring in 1988, who claim they were flown around the US to abused by high-ranking officials - alleging that FBI 'covered up' the shocking crimes. Back in the 1980s, several alleged victims claimed that a man named Lawrence King ran an underground club in Omaha, Nebraska, through which he, along with well-known politicians, businessmen, and media moguls, are said to have forced children as young as eight years old to have sex with them. In 1990, a Nebraska county grand jury concluded that the claims were a 'hoax,' and a federal grand jury later agreed. However, in 1993 ... alleged victims told documentary makers that the government forced them into silence by threatening those who spoke out, using scare tactics, and even murder. 'Obviously, the FBI was protecting something ... significant,' [lawyer John] DeCamp concluded. 'They were protecting some very prominent politicians, some very powerful and wealthy individuals associated with those politicians and the political system, up to and including the highest political people in this entire country. 'Every victim-witness who stepped forward in any way, or even was a potential witness that somebody heard about, has either been killed, put in jail under some theory or other, terrified or run out of the state, or discredited.'

Note: For an in-depth look at this disturbing crime ring, read The Franklin Cover-Up by John W. DeCamp or watch the suppressed Discovery Channel documentary Conspiracy of Silence. For more, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on sexual abuse scandals from reliable major media sources.


Future Space Travel Might Require Mushrooms
2021-08-03, Scientific American
Posted: 2024-05-26 20:24:06
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/space-travels-most-surprising-futu...

The list of mycologists whose names are known beyond their fungal field is short, and at its apex is Paul Stamets. In a new “astromycological” venture launched in conjunction with NASA, Stamets and various research teams are studying how fungi can be leveraged to build extraterrestrial habitats and perhaps someday even terraform planets. [Stamets:] Fungi were the first organisms that came to land, munching rocks, and fungi gave birth to animals about 650 million years ago. We’re descendants of the descendants of these fungal networks. [Plants that support terraforming] need minerals, and pairing fungi up with the plants and debris from humans [causes them to] decompose into a form that then creates rich soils that could help generate the foods that astronauts need. We grow lots of reishi mycelium. We grow reishi blocks. We wanted to crush these blocks in order to turn them into soil. This great engineer built us a hydraulic stainless steel press, and I had like 2,000 psi [pounds per square inch] in this press, and we gave it my reishi blocks, and it bent the stainless steel. Trying to compress it, it actually broke the machine. This thing will crush rocks all day long and could not crush mycelium. They’re also good at retaining heat, so their insulation properties are phenomenal. Moreover, these could become batteries. You can have solar panels on a structure on Mars made of mycelium. (The entire mycelium is about 85 percent carbon, and studies have shown that porous carbon can be an excellent capacitor.) You could then pregrow these and arrange them on a form such that they become nanobatteries. And they could then not only insulate you from the cold on the Martian or asteroid surface, but the house itself becomes a giant battery for power because they’re so rich in carbon fibers.

Note: Explore more positive stories like this in our comprehensive inspiring news articles archive focused on solutions and bridging divides.


Try something new to stop the days whizzing past, researchers suggest
2024-04-22, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2024-05-26 20:21:49
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2024/apr/22/try-something-new-to-stop-the...

If every day appears to go in a blur, try seeking out new and interesting experiences, researchers have suggested, after finding memorable images appear to dilate time. Researchers have previously found louder experiences seem to last longer, while focusing on the clock also makes time dilate, or drag. Now researchers have discovered the more memorable an image, the more likely a person is to think they have been looking at it for longer than they actually have. Prof Martin Wiener, co-author of the study ... said the findings could help develop improve artificial intelligence that interacts with humans. Writing in the journal Nature Human Behaviour, Wiener and colleagues described how they showed scenes of six different sizes and six different levels of clutter to participants for between 300 and 900ms, and asked them to indicate if they thought the duration was long or short. Participants were more likely to think they had been looking at small, highly cluttered scenes – such a crammed pantry – for a shorter duration than was the case, whereas the reverse occurred when people viewed large scenes with little clutter. More memorable images were processed faster. What’s more, the processing speed for an image was correlated with how long participants thought they had been looking at it. “When we see things that are more important or relevant, like things that are more memorable, we dilate our sense of time in order to get more information,” Wiener said.

Note: Explore more positive stories like this in our comprehensive inspiring news articles archive focused on solutions and bridging divides.


The children who remember their past lives
2024-05-02, Washington Post
Posted: 2024-05-26 20:19:28
https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2024/05/02/children-past-lives/

In Oklahoma in 2009, 5-year-old Ryan Hammons would lie awake at night and plead: “Can I go home? Can I see my mom?” or “What happened to my children?” He was lying beside [his mother] one night, Cyndi Hammons remembers, when he said that he needed to tell her something. “I think I used to be somebody else,” he whispered. Ryan was waking up sobbing at night and describing things his mother couldn’t fathom: that he remembered living in Hollywood in a big white house with a swimming pool. That he once had three sons and a younger sister. That he drove a green car, and his wife drove a black one. Not long after, Ryan saw a man he recognized in one of his library books, a peripheral figure in a photograph of six men: “That’s me!” he told his mother. With the help of a production crew from the A&E series “The Unexplained,” they were able to identify the man as Marty Martyn, a movie extra and talent agent who died in 1964. Cyndi and Ryan traveled to California to meet Martyn’s daughter, Marisa Martyn Rosenblatt, who was 8 when her father died. She ultimately confirmed many of Ryan’s statements about Marty Martyn. She didn’t know that her father had driven a green car, or that he had a younger sister, but it turned out both claims were accurate. Marty Martyn’s death certificate cited his age as 59, but Ryan insisted he had died at 61; census records and marriage listings ... confirmed this, as did Martyn’s daughter. Since the 1960s, more than 2,200 children from across the world have described apparent recollections from a previous life. Sometimes a child presents enough identifying information for relatives or researchers to pinpoint a deceased person, but ... about a third of the cases in the database do not include such a match. The most pronounced and convincing cases ... tend to occur in children between the ages of 2 and 6. They might suddenly describe places they have never been, people they have never met, sometimes using words or phrases that seem beyond their vocabulary. Their descriptions of past-life recollections often fade away entirely by the time the child turns 7 or 8.

Note: A 2006 University of Virginia study found that memories of past lives are not uncommon in kids. These fascinating recollections are all documented in a database maintained by the Division of Perceptual Studies ... at the University of Virginia School of Medicine. Explore more positive stories like this about the mysterious nature of reality.


Hilary Cass Says U.S. Doctors Are ‘Out of Date’ on Youth Gender Medicine
2024-05-13, New York Times
Posted: 2024-05-19 14:26:56
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/13/health/hilary-cass-transgender-youth-puber...

After 30 years as one of England’s top pediatricians, Dr. Hilary Cass ... took on a project that would throw her into an international fire: reviewing England’s treatment guidelines for the rapidly rising number of children with gender distress, known as dysphoria. Staff members who said they felt pressure to approve children for puberty-blocking drugs had filed whistle-blower complaints. Over the next four years, Dr. Cass commissioned systematic reviews of scientific studies on youth gender treatments and international guidelines of care. She also met with young patients and their families, transgender adults, people who had detransitioned, advocacy groups and clinicians. Her final report, published last month, concluded that the evidence supporting the use of puberty-blocking drugs and other hormonal medications in adolescents was “remarkably weak.” On her recommendation, the N.H.S. will no longer prescribe puberty blockers outside of clinical trials. Dr. Cass also recommended that testosterone and estrogen, which allow young people to develop the physical characteristics of the opposite sex, be prescribed with “extreme caution.” “We have to stop just seeing these young people through the lens of their gender and see them as whole people, and address the much broader range of challenges that they have ... I’ve spoken to young adults where it was the wrong decision, where they have regret, where they’ve detransitioned. The critical issue is trying to work out how we can best predict who’s going to thrive and who’s not going to do well," [said Dr. Cass]. "Medicine should never be politically driven. It should be driven by evidence and ethics and shared decision-making with patients and listening to patients’ voices. Once it becomes politicized, then that’s seriously concerning, as you know well from the abortion situation in the United States."

Note: We believe that everyone has a right to exist and express themselves the way they want. Yet when it comes to transgender medicine, research suggests significant health concerns. Why aren't we openly discussing this so that people (especially children) can make informed choices about their bodies? Explore our concise summaries of important news articles on transgender medicine.


Thousands Believe Covid Vaccines Harmed Them. Is Anyone Listening?
2024-05-03, New York Times
Posted: 2024-05-19 14:22:24
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/03/health/covid-vaccines-side-effects.html

Thousands of Americans believe they suffered serious side effects following Covid vaccination. As of April, just over 13,000 vaccine-injury compensation claims have been filed with the federal government. Only 19 percent have been reviewed. Only 47 of those were deemed eligible for compensation, and only 12 have been paid out, at an average of about $3,600. In a recent interview, Dr. Janet Woodcock, a longtime leader of the Food and Drug Administration ... said she believed that some recipients had experienced uncommon but “serious” and “life-changing” reactions beyond those described by federal agencies. “I feel bad for those people,” said Dr. Woodcock, who became the F.D.A.’s acting commissioner in January 2021. “I believe their suffering should be acknowledged, that they have real problems, and they should be taken seriously.” The government’s understaffed compensation fund has paid so little because it officially recognizes few side effects for Covid vaccines. People who said they had been harmed by Covid shots ... described a variety of symptoms following vaccination, some neurological, some autoimmune, some cardiovascular. All said they had been turned away by physicians, told their symptoms were psychosomatic, or labeled anti-vaccine by family and friends — despite the fact that they supported vaccines. The National Institutes of Health is conducting virtually no studies on Covid vaccine safety, several experts noted.

Note: Explore our nuanced, uncensored investigation about this important issue. While mainstream narratives emphasize how rare these injuries are, the numbers speak for themselves. The Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) is a voluntary government reporting system that only captures a portion of the actual injuries. Vaccine adverse event numbers are made publicly available, and currently show 1,640,416 COVID vaccine injury reports, 37,647 COVID Vaccine Reported Deaths, and 216,757 COVID Vaccine Reported Hospitalizations.


Biden Administration Strips Federal Funding From Nonprofit at Center of COVID Lab Leak Controversy
2024-05-15, Aol News/Reason
Posted: 2024-05-19 14:19:42
https://www.aol.com/news/biden-administration-strips-federal-funding-21253768...

The Biden administration suspended federal funding to the scientific nonprofit whose research is at the center of credible theories that the COVID-19 pandemic was started via a lab leak at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced that it was immediately suspending three grants provided to the New York-based nonprofit EcoHealth Alliance (EHA) as it starts the process of debarring the organization from receiving any federal funds. For years now, EcoHealth has generated immense controversy for its use of federal grant money to support gain-of-function research on bat coronaviruses at the Wuhan lab. HHS said that EcoHealth had failed to properly monitor the work it was supporting at Wuhan. It also failed to properly report on the results of experiments showing that the hybrid viruses it was creating there had an improved ability to infect human cells. In testimony to the House's coronavirus subcommittee, [EcoHealth President Peter ] Daszak claimed that EcoHealth attempted to report the results of its gain-of-function experiments on time in 2019, but was frozen out of NIH's reporting system. [An] HHS memo released today says a forensic investigation found no evidence that EcoHealth was locked out of NIH's reporting system. The department also said that EcoHealth had failed to produce requested lab notes and other materials from the Wuhan lab detailing the work being done there.

Note: Watch our 15-min Mindful News Brief video on the strong evidence that bioweapons research created COVID-19. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on COVID and government corruption from reliable major media sources.


Pfizer agrees to settle over 10K lawsuits linking Zantac to cancer
2024-05-08, New York Post
Posted: 2024-05-19 14:16:09
https://nypost.com/2024/05/08/business/pfizer-to-settle-over-10k-lawsuits-lin...

Pfizer has agreed to settle more than 10,000 lawsuits which alleged that the company failed to warn patients about possible cancer risks caused by the anti-heartburn medication Zantac. The lawsuits were filed in state courts across the country, but the agreements don’t completely resolve Pfizer’s exposure to the claims linking Zantac and cancer. Zantac was brought to market in 1983 by Glaxo Holdings, a company that is now part of the GlaxoSmithKline company. By 1988, it was the world’s best selling drug as patients reported benefits for conditions such as heartburn, ulcers and acid reflux. In 2020, the Food and Drug Administration asked drugmakers to pull Zantac and its generic versions off the market after a cancer-causing substance called NDMA was found in samples of the drug. Thousands of lawsuits began piling up in federal and state courts against Pfizer, GSK, Sanofi and Boehringer Ingelheim. Last month, Sanofi reached an agreement in principle to settle 4,000 lawsuits linking Zantac to cancer. Sanofi did not disclose the financial terms of the deal, but Bloomberg News reported that the company will pay $100 million — or $25,000 to each plaintiff. Sanofi still faces about 20,000 lawsuits over Zantac in Delaware state court. A judge in Delaware Superior Court in Wilmington is weighing the fate of about 70,000 cases filed against Sanofi and other defendants, including GSK, Pfizer and Boehringer Ingelheim.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on Big Pharma corruption from reliable major media sources.


In bed with big pharma: Corruption fears as report finds US doctors received record $12bn in pharma payments in past decade
2024-03-04, MSN News/Daily Mail (One of the UK's Popular Newspapers)
Posted: 2024-05-19 14:13:53
https://www.msn.com/en-sg/health/other/in-bed-with-big-pharma-corruption-fear...

Almost six in ten doctors in the US received more than $12 billion in payments from pharma firms in the past decade, an analysis has revealed. A study by researchers at Yale University found that 57 percent of doctors earned the huge sums from manufacturers in relation to medical drugs or devices between 2013 and 2022. Most of the money was for consulting services or fees for things such as serving as a speaker at a venue, but the physicians also received large amounts of money for food and beverages and gifts. Orthopedic surgeons were found to receive the largest total sum of payments, at $1.36bn, and the most common drugs related to payments were blood thinners Xarelto and Eliquis. 'Despite evidence that financial conflicts of interest may influence physician prescribing and may damage patients' trust in medical professionals, such payments remain pervasive,' the researchers wrote. After orthopedic surgeons, the physicians that received the largest total sum of payments were neurologists and psychiatrists, who received $1.32bn, and cardiologists, who got $1.29bn. Although the median payment to doctors was $48, payments to the top 0.1 percent of doctors were far higher and differed depending on specialty. The average amount paid to the top 0.1 percent of orthopedists was $4,826,944. For the top 0.1 percent of cardiologists, it was $3,197,675, and for the top 0.1 percent of neurologists and psychiatrists it was $2,588,819.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on Big Pharma corruption from reliable major media sources.


If you want to tackle junk food, target the advertisers
2023-10-13, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2024-05-19 14:09:55
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2023/oct/13/if-you-want-to-tackle-ju...

Unhealthy foods are becoming a silent epidemic, with one in seven adults and one in eight children globally now effectively addicted to ultra-processed foods. It’s time to address this issue at its source: advertising. Consumption of junk food begins not with what goes in our mouths but with the messaging into our brains via advertising. UK junk food advertising is an industry worth tens of millions of pounds working to glamorise unhealthy diets. My own work looks at outdoor advertising, such as on billboards and bus stops. In 2022, among the biggest spenders on outdoor advertising were the likes of Coca-Cola, McDonald’s, KFC, Subway and Müller. They spent £195m filling public spaces with monuments to fat, salt and sugar. Advertisers will say this is simply a question of choice, and that junk food ads respond to consumer demand. But do any of us feel deprived of choice by the absence of ads touting the supposed health benefits of smoking? Of course not. Society would be better off without ads for junk food on street corners. The good news? We can take action. Local authorities can introduce ethical ad policies that ban junk food ads on council-owned sites. Somerset council recently took this step, following in the footsteps of Bristol and Transport for London, whose junk food ad ban was predicted to save the NHS more than £200m. Outdoor advertising offers a poorly regulated platform for big corporations to push unhealthy diets on an unassuming public.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on food system corruption from reliable major media sources.


What you eat could alter your unborn children and grandchildren’s genes and health outcomes
2024-04-23, Yahoo News
Posted: 2024-05-19 14:07:51
https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/eat-could-alter-unborn-children-123630907.html

Epigenetics refers to shifts in gene expression that occur without changes to the DNA sequence. Some epigenetic changes are an aspect of cell function, such as those associated with aging. However, environmental factors also affect the functions of genes, meaning people’s behaviors affect their genetics. For instance, identical twins develop from a single fertilized egg, and as a result, they share the same genetic makeup. However, as the twins age, their appearances may differ due to distinct environmental exposures. One twin may eat a healthy balanced diet, whereas the other may eat an unhealthy diet, resulting in differences in the expression of their genes that play a role in obesity. Nutritional epigenetics is the study of how your diet, and the diet of your parents and grandparents, affects your genes. The dietary choices a person makes today affects the genetics of their future children. A ... study in sheep showed that a paternal diet supplemented with the amino acid methionine given from birth to weaning affected the growth and reproductive traits of the next three generations. Methionine is an essential amino acid involved in DNA methylation, an example of an epigenetic change. These studies underscore the enduring impact parents’ diets have on their children. They also serve as a powerful motivator for would-be parents and current parents to make more healthy dietary choices, as the dietary choices parents make affect their children’s diets.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on health from reliable major media sources.


Toxic plastic chemicals number in the thousands, most are unregulated, report finds
2024-03-14, CNN News
Posted: 2024-05-19 14:04:12
https://www.cnn.com/2024/03/14/health/toxic-unregulated-chemicals-report-well...

For the first time, researchers have pulled together scientific and regulatory data to develop a database of all known chemicals used in plastic production. It’s a staggering number: 16,000 plastic chemicals, with at least 4,200 of those considered to be “highly hazardous” to human health and the environment, according to the authors. “Only 980 of those highly hazardous chemicals have been regulated by agencies around the world, leaving us with 3,600 chemicals that are unregulated — and these are only the known chemicals,” said Martin Wagner, first author and project lead of the PlastChem Report. The ... report outlines a systematic approach to identify and prioritize chemicals of concern that can be used by agencies and regulators around the world, including those attending the April meeting of the International Negotiating Committee on Plastic Pollution. The committee is part of the United Nations Environment Programme, which has committed to developing a Global Plastics Treaty between 175 nations by the end of 2024. “The most important criterion we used is toxicity,” Wagner said. “Many of these chemicals are known to be very toxic for human health or the environment. They are carcinogenic or mutagenic or toxic to reproduction. Some have organ-specific toxicity, typically the liver, as that is where many of the chemicals are absorbed from circulation.” The report [also] found that detailed hazard information is missing for more than 10,000 of the 16,000 chemicals.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on toxic chemicals and corporate corruption from reliable major media sources.


Weight Loss Drugs Go Hand-in-Hand With Junk Food Industry
2024-05-14, CounterPunch
Posted: 2024-05-19 14:02:01
https://www.counterpunch.org/2024/05/14/weight-loss-drugs-go-hand-in-hand-wit...

What Americans eat, how they diet and exercise, what nutritional supplements they take, the sugar content of their sodas, the high fructose corn syrup in their processed foods, and the price of their diabetes medication have long been objects of endless gambling on Wall Street. Now, with drugs like Mounjaro, Wegovy, and Ozempic in the mix, new vistas of corporate exploitation have opened up. It’s not a conspiracy theory that food addiction is a tool of corporate profiteering. Consider that tobacco companies, upon being regulated out of the business of addictive smoking, turned their sights onto addictive eating. Health columnist Anahad O’Connor wrote, “In America, the steepest increase in the prevalence of hyper-palatable foods occurred between 1988 and 2001—the era when Philip Morris and R.J. Reynolds owned the world’s leading food companies.” Many of these ultra-processed foods are specially marketed to children, which in turn can change their brain chemistry to desire those foods for life. Alongside the aggressive marketing of hyper-palatable foods is a massively profitable weight-loss industry that preys upon individual shame to the tune of more than $60 billion a year. In fact, some of the same companies pushing high-calorie foods are in the business of weight loss. The ultra-processed food industry is becoming symbiotic with the weight-loss drug industry. The former ensures we eat poorly and the latter is there to feed off our shame.

Note: This is strangely comparable to when pharmaceutical giant Purdue Pharma LP secretly pursued a plan to become "an end-to-end pain provider" by selling both opioids and drugs to treat opioid addiction. It is now estimated that 1 in 8 adults in the US have taken Ozempic or another weight-loss drug. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on food system corruption and Big Pharma profiteering from reliable major media sources.


The Well-Heeled and Our Personal Well-Being
2024-05-09, ScheerPost
Posted: 2024-05-19 13:59:51
https://scheerpost.com/2024/05/09/the-well-heeled-and-our-personal-well-being/

People who live in societies with wide gaps between the wealthy and everyone else turn out to live briefer lives than people who call more equal societies home. People who live in more equal societies, meanwhile, tend to live happier lives than their unequal-society counterparts. They face less crime. Their economies crash less often. Recent studies from Northwestern’s Maryam Kouchaki and her colleagues ... have been illuminating how unequal distributions of income and wealth are serving to increase “the acceptability of self-interested unethical behaviors.” The bottom line: People who live in highly unequal societies feel “a lower sense of control” and look less askance at unethical behaviors, either from others or from themselves, than do people who live in distinctly more equal societies. “Overall,” Kouchaki and her colleagues conclude, “our results suggest inequality changes ethical standards.” Other recent psychological research has come to the same core conclusion. “When are people more open to cheating?” asked the Canadian researchers Anita Schmalor, Adrian Schroeder, and Steven Heine in a paper published earlier this year. “Economic inequality makes people expect more everyday unethical behavior.” The longer we let inequality define our contemporary daily lives, this new research helps us understand, the more the unethical behavior all around us will seem to reflect just the way our world naturally works. Economic inequality, in effect, normalizes unethical behavior.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on income inequality and mental health from reliable major media sources.


From hip hop to ‘Top Chef’: How two NYC after-school programs teach students about healthy eating
2023-10-06, Chalkbeat
Posted: 2024-05-19 13:57:43
https://www.chalkbeat.org/newyork/2023/10/6/23901806/nyc-healthy-eating-after...

Kevin, a sixth grader at P.S. 146 in Queens who hopes to one day work as a doctor, said he’s always tried to study nutrition. But it wasn’t until he participated in the Hip Hop H.E.A.L.S., or Healthy Eating and Living in Schools, after-school program last year that he found an engaging way to learn about it at school. The program, developed in partnership between Columbia University neurologist Olajide Williams and hip hop artist Doug E. Fresh, relies on music to help teach students about healthy eating. What Kevin participated in was one of two after-school healthy eating programs that are being studied as part of a partnership between the after-school provider New York Edge and Columbia University. About 300 students across 20 school sites were provided with either the Hip Hop H.E.A.L.S. program, or NY Edge’s Food Explorers program, with their nutritional choices tracked over the course of 10 or more weeks. Through the partnership, researchers aim to learn if the educational interventions from these programs can help kids make healthier choices, particularly at chain restaurants. The focus on teaching students to navigate settings like chain restaurants is especially important as many kids in the programs live in “food swamps,” or areas with few healthy food options, Williams said. “We’d love to have community gardens everywhere,” he added. “But the reality is many people live in food swamps. It’s about how we get them to make better decisions within those swamps.”

Note: Explore more positive stories on healing our bodies and the power of art.


Balinese Foundation Treats Autistic Children with Organic Food
2017-01-02, Jakarta Post
Posted: 2024-05-19 13:55:06
https://www.thejakartapost.com/life/2017/01/02/balinese-foundation-treats-aut...

“People think that Bali is a paradise, but if you come inside you see it’s a different story,” said Ni Nyoman Sri Wahyuni. For 12 years she has been caring for orphans, autistic children and children with Down Syndrome. “Many Balinese believe that these children are cursed, due to bad karma." children with very low IQs are not received by Sekolah Luar Biasa (Special Needs Schools). Such children, many with autism and Down Syndrome, have little to no support. This is what inspired Sri Wahyuni and her husband, I Ketut Sadia, to open the Yayasan Widya Guna school 10 years ago. Today Yayasan Widya Guna provides daily schooling to over 100 students, both disabled and non-disabled. Besides providing English, exercise and art classes to the children, it also teaches organic farming and promotes a healthy diet among students. “We’ve received lots of information suggesting that poor nutrition is a factor in developing autism,” said Sri Wahyuni. The foundation serves meals with lots of vegetables, and tries to not include too many fried foods. Sri Wahyuni says that kids who used to catch colds and the flu rarely fall sick these days. A student with epilepsy, whose parents complained was having three seizures a day, has stopped having seizures completely since he started attending the yayasan. The Yayasan Widya Guna ... also offers English classes for local children attending regular schools.

Note: Explore more positive stories on healing our bodies.


The miracle that cured my son’s autism was in our kitchen
2015-06-17, New York Post
Posted: 2024-05-19 13:52:31
https://nypost.com/2015/06/17/is-diet-the-key-to-curing-autism/

When a doctor told Susan Levin her 4-year-old son, Ben, was autistic, she was shocked. “Oh my God. What are we going to do?” Levin recalls. “Everyone knew autism was a lifelong disorder and couldn’t be cured.” Except that in Ben’s case, it could be. And it was. The family’s journey ... is detailed in her new memoir, “Unlocked: A Family Emerging From the Shadows of Autism.” Levin is part of a growing group of people who are paying more attention to diet — organic, gluten- and casein-free among them — as a way to treat the symptoms of autism and other disorders. Now 12, Ben is studying for his bar mitzvah. Eight years after that chilling diagnosis, he’s become more empathetic, frequently saying “I love you” to his mother, his father and sister. Levin says his newfound compassion is nothing short of a miracle. While the scientific verdict is still out on diet as a cure, statistics point to a definite link between gastrointestinal issues and autism. A 2012 study published by the Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology found a direct link between GI issues and behavior. As many as 70 percent of children with autism have gastrointestinal issues at some point during childhood or adolescence. Kathleen DiChiara ... was diagnosed with sudden onset neuropathy, which left her unable to walk. When the doctors told her there was little to be done, she went back to school to study. She’s now a nutrition educator, chef and speaker who credits an all-organic diet for healing not only herself, but her 11- year-old son, Steven, who’d been diagnosed as autistic but is no longer considered to be.

Note: Explore more positive stories on healing our bodies.


Israeli Weapons Firms Required To Buy Cloud Services From Google And Amazon
2024-05-01, The Intercept
Posted: 2024-05-13 19:00:10
https://theintercept.com/2024/05/01/google-amazon-nimbus-israel-weapons-arms-...

Google and Amazon are both loath to discuss security aspects of the cloud services they provide through their joint contract with the Israeli government, known as Project Nimbus. Both the Ministry of Defense and Israel Defense Forces are Nimbus customers. According to a 63-page Israeli government procurement document ... two of Israel’s leading state-owned weapons manufacturers are required to use Amazon and Google for cloud computing needs. Though details of Google and Amazon’s contractual work with the Israeli arms industry aren’t laid out in the tender document, which outlines how Israeli agencies will obtain software services through Nimbus, the firms are responsible for manufacturing drones, missiles, and other weapons Israel has used to bombard Gaza. Project Nimbus ... has already created a public uproar. Google and Amazon have faced backlash ranging from street protests to employee revolts. Following anti-Nimbus sit-ins organized at the company’s New York and Sunnyvale, California, offices, Google fired 50 employees. Emaan Haseem, [was] a cloud computing engineer at Google until she was fired after participating in the Sunnyvale protest. “A lot of us signed up or applied to work at Google because we were trying to avoid working at terrible unethical companies,” she said. “Why are we pretending that because my logo is colorful and has round letters that I’m any better than Raytheon?”

Note: When Google employees protested Project Maven, a DoD drone program that used Google technology, the Big Tech giant dropped the contract with the Pentagon in 2018. Read about how Silicon Valley has been infiltrated by intelligence agencies.


I tried the new Google. Its answers are worse.
2024-04-01, Washington Post
Posted: 2024-05-13 18:58:00
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/04/01/new-ai-google-search-sge/

Have you heard about the new Google? They “supercharged” it with artificial intelligence. Somehow, that also made it dumber. With the regular old Google, I can ask, “What’s Mark Zuckerberg’s net worth?” and a reasonable answer pops up: “169.8 billion USD.” Now let’s ask the same question with the “experimental” new version of Google search. Its AI responds: Zuckerberg’s net worth is “$46.24 per hour, or $96,169 per year. This is equivalent to $8,014 per month, $1,849 per week, and $230.6 million per day.” Google acting dumb matters because its AI is headed to your searches sooner or later. The company has already been testing this new Google — dubbed Search Generative Experience, or SGE — with volunteers for nearly 11 months, and recently started showing AI answers in the main Google results even for people who have not opted in to the test. To give us answers to everything, Google’s AI has to decide which sources are reliable. I’m not very confident about its judgment. Remember our bonkers result on Zuckerberg’s net worth? A professional researcher — and also regular old Google — might suggest checking the billionaires list from Forbes. Google’s AI answer relied on a very weird ZipRecruiter page for “Mark Zuckerberg Jobs,” a thing that does not exist. The new Google can do some useful things. But as you’ll see, it sometimes also makes up facts, misinterprets questions, [and] delivers out-of-date information. This test of Google’s future has been going on for nearly a year, and the choices being made now will influence how billions of people get information.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on AI technology from reliable major media sources.


The internet is in decline – it needs rewilding
2024-05-04, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2024-05-13 18:55:10
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/may/04/the-internet-is...

[Tim] Berners-Lee, a British computer scientist, [came] up with the idea for a “world wide web” as a way of locating and accessing documents that were scattered all over the internet. He was able to do this because the internet, which had been publicly available since January 1983, enabled it. The network had no central ownership or controller. The result was an extraordinary explosion of creativity, and the emergence of ... a kind of global commons. However, the next generation of innovators to benefit from this freedom – Google, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft, Apple et al – saw no reason to extend it to anyone else. The creative commons of the internet has been gradually and inexorably enclosed. Google and Apple’s browsers have nearly 85% of the world market share. Microsoft and Apple’s two desktop operating systems have almost 90%. Google runs about 90% of global search. More than half of all phones come from Apple and Samsung, while 99% of mobile operating systems are from Google or Apple. Apple and Google’s email clients manage nearly 90% of global email. GoDaddy and Cloudflare serve about 50% of global domain name system requests. And so on. One of the consequences of this concentration, say Farrell and Berjon, is that the creative possibilities of permissionless innovation have become increasingly constrained. The internet has become an extractive and fragile monoculture. We can revitalise it, but only by “rewilding” it.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corporate corruption from reliable major media sources.


A college professor wants to use Section 230 against Big Tech
2024-05-08, Washington Post
Posted: 2024-05-13 18:52:56
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/05/08/college-professor-wants-us...

Ethan Zuckerman, a longtime technologist and social media scholar, thought he fully understood Section 230, the 1996 statute that contains the famous “26 words that created the internet.” But three years ago, he was reading its full text aloud to his class at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst when suddenly, in his words, “a lightbulb went off in my head.” It struck him that the law, widely understood to shield tech companies from being sued for their users’ posts, also protects users. In particular, it protects people who build tools to filter or moderate online content. People like Zuckerman’s friend Louis Barclay, a developer who in 2021 was permanently banned from Facebook and Instagram for developing a tool called “Unfollow Everything” that lets users, well, unfollow everything and restart their feeds fresh. Three years later, that eureka moment has turned into a lawsuit — one that, if successful, could loosen Big Tech’s grip on how people use social media. The suit ... asks a California court to declare that Meta can’t ban or sue him for building an unfollowing tool inspired by Barclay’s. If the suit succeeds, Zuckerman plans to release the tool, called “Unfollow Everything 2.0,” and hopes a wave of other tools to give users more control over their online lives will follow. Such tools are sometimes called “middleware” and have been touted by the Stanford political scientist Francis Fukuyama as a way to break Silicon Valley’s chokehold on online speech.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on censorship and corporate corruption from reliable major media sources.


Border Patrol Agents Joked About Killing Migrant Children, Records Show
2024-04-30, Huffington Post
Posted: 2024-05-13 18:50:14
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/border-patrol-agents-joked-about-killing-migra...

U.S. Border Patrol agents freely used the derogatory slur “tonk” to describe unauthorized migrants on government computers, at times while joking about killing or beating them, according to emails and text messages disclosed to HuffPost under the Freedom of Information Act. The documents, from 2017 to 2020, reveal yet another instance of the Border Patrol’s use of a slang term that officials in Washington have condemned but have struggled to stamp out. This is the second disclosure that Border Patrol personnel used the word in internal communications since HuffPost first requested a global search of its use among Border Patrol agents four years ago. The origin of the term is uncertain, but most insiders believe it comes from the sound made by bashing an arrested migrant’s head with a government-issued flashlight. Some of the records reference that origin story, with one agent writing: “ah, savor the sound.” Use of the term remained surprisingly common among both rank-and-file agents and those in leadership positions, the records show. Many agents appeared to use the term as a synonym for unauthorized migrants, with little apparent derogatory intent. But the slur often appeared alongside expressions of raw contempt for the people whom Border Patrol officers police. Border Patrol agents who used the slur at times gloated about migrants’ misfortunes or made references to beating them. In one instance, agents joked about killing migrant children in their custody.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption from reliable major media sources.


U.S.-Trained Burkina Faso Military Executed 220 Civilians
2024-04-25, The Intercept
Posted: 2024-05-13 18:47:55
https://theintercept.com/2024/04/25/burkina-faso-military-massacre-civilians/

Burkina Faso’s military summarily executed more than 220 civilians, including at least 56 children, in two villages in late February, according to a new report by Human Rights Watch. “We saw the bloody corpses riddled with bullets. We were able to save a 2-year-old child whose mother was killed shielding him with her body,” a 19-year-old witness [said]. “The attackers were soldiers from our own army. They arrived on motorbikes and in vehicles, and they were armed with Kalashnikovs and heavy weapons.” The mass killings came as the U.S. counterterrorism strategy in the West African Sahel crumbled, with U.S.-trained military officers launching a long string of coups, including in Burkina Faso itself. Despite the coups and massacres, the U.S. has not cut ties with Burkina Faso, and a contingent of U.S. personnel remain in-country to “engage” with the armed forces serving the ruling junta. The United States has assisted Burkina Faso with counterterrorism aid since the 2000s, providing funds, weapons, equipment, and American advisers, as well as deploying commandos. In 2018 and 2019, alone, the U.S. pumped a total of $100 million in “security cooperation” funding into Burkina Faso, making it one of the largest recipients of U.S. military aid in West Africa. U.S.-trained Burkinabè military officers have also repeatedly overthrown their government. At the same time, militant Islamist violence skyrocketed. Burkina Faso ... suffered 7,762 fatalities from militant Islamist attacks last year.

Note: Since 2008, the US has supported at least nine coups in African countries, with a vast network of military bases scattered across the continent. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on military corruption from reliable major media sources.


‘Correct a black mark in US history’: former prisoners of Abu Ghraib get day in court
2024-04-14, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2024-05-13 18:45:03
https://www.theguardian.com/world/ng-interactive/2024/apr/14/abu-ghraib-iraq-...

The first trial to contend with the post-9/11 abuse of detainees in US custody begins on Monday, in a case brought by three men who were held in the US-run Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. The jury trial, in a federal court in Virginia, comes nearly 20 years to the day that the photographs depicting torture and abuse in the prison were first revealed to the public, prompting an international scandal that came to symbolize the treatment of detainees in the US “war on terror”. The long-delayed case was brought by Suhail Najim Abdullah Al Shimari, Salah Al-Ejaili and As’ad Al-Zuba’e, three Iraqi civilians who were detained at Abu Ghraib, before being released without charge in 2004. The men are suing CACI Premier Technology, a private company that was contracted by the US government to provide interrogators at the prison. Only a handful of lower-rank soldiers faced military trials; no military or political leaders, or private contractors, were held legally accountable for what happened at Abu Ghraib or at any other facility where US detainees were tortured. As governments’ reliance on private actors in conflict zones and crisis situations has grown exponentially since the war in Iraq, the case is also a test of the courts’ ability to hold those contractors responsible for human rights abuses. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan ... earned private companies trillions in defense and other government contracts. To this day, CACI continues to make millions in US government contracts.

Note: Read more about the horrific abuses at Abu Ghraib. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on military corruption from reliable major media sources.


In This Police Youth Program, a Trail of Sexual Abuse Across the U.S.
2024-05-01, The Marshall Project
Posted: 2024-05-13 18:43:03
https://www.themarshallproject.org/2024/05/01/police-explorer-sexual-abuse-bo...

Created by the Boy Scouts of America decades ago, law enforcement Explorer posts are designed to help teens and young adults learn about policing. [There are] at least 194 allegations that law enforcement personnel, mostly policemen, have groomed, sexually abused or engaged in inappropriate behavior with Explorers since 1974, an ongoing investigation by The Marshall Project has found. The vast majority of those affected were teenage girls — some as young as 13. In many programs, armed officers were allowed to be alone with teenage Explorers. In a few instances, departments minimized or dismissed the concerns of those who reported troubling behavior, records show. The officers accused of abusing teenagers spanned the ranks, from patrolmen to police chiefs. Some were department veterans cited in news articles for their community work. Many cases led to criminal charges. Some officers went to prison, while others received probation or weren’t required to register as sex offenders. A few departments allowed officers to keep their jobs after a reprimand or short suspension. The Marshall Project’s analysis found at least 14 departments, among 111 agencies, that had a history of repeated allegations. Slightly more than half of the cases reporters found occurred since 2000. In 2022, the Boy Scouts agreed to settle with more than 82,000 people, most of them men, who said they were abused as minors in Scouting programs.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on police corruption and sexual abuse scandals from reliable major media sources.


Columbia Crackdown Led by University Prof Doubling as NYPD Spook
2024-05-03, ScheerPost
Posted: 2024-05-13 18:41:12
https://scheerpost.com/2024/05/03/columbia-crackdown-led-by-university-prof-d...

The violent crackdown carried out on Columbia University students protesting Israel’s genocidal assault on the Gaza Strip was led by a member of the school’s own faculty, New York City Mayor Eric Adams has declared. During a May 1 press conference, just hours after the New York Police Department arrested nearly 300 people on university grounds, Adams praised adjunct Columbia professor Rebecca Weiner, who moonlights as the head of the NYPD counter-terrorism bureau, for giving police the green light to clear out anti-genocide students by force. Weiner maintained an office at Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA). Her SIPA bio describes her as an “Adjunct Associate Professor of International and Public Affairs” who simultaneously serves as the “civilian executive in charge of the New York City Police Department’s Intelligence & Counterterrorism Bureau.” In that role ... Weiner “develops policy and strategic priorities for the Intelligence & Counterterrorism Bureau and publicly represents the NYPD in matters involving counterterrorism and intelligence.” A 2011 AP investigation revealed that a so-called “Demographics Unit” operated secretly within the NYPD’s Counterterrorism and Intelligence Bureau. This shadowy outfit spied on Muslims around the New York City area. The unit was developed in tandem with the CIA. As a former police official told the AP, the unit attempted to “map the city’s human terrain” through a program “modeled in part on how Israeli authorities operate in the West Bank.”

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on police corruption and the erosion of civil liberties from reliable major media sources.


War Zone Surveillance Technology Is Hitting American Streets
2024-04-30, NOTUS
Posted: 2024-05-13 18:38:53
https://www.notus.org/technology/war-zone-surveillance-border-us

Federal and state Homeland Security grants allow local law enforcement agencies to surveil American citizens with technology more commonly found in war zones and foreign espionage operations. At least two Texas communities along the U.S.-Mexico border have purchased a product called “TraffiCatch,” which collects the unique wireless and Bluetooth signals emitted by nearly all modern electronics to identify devices and track their movements. The product is also listed in a federal supply catalog run by the U.S. government’s General Services Administration, which negotiates prices and contracts for federal agencies. Combining license plate information with data collected from wireless signals is the kind of surveillance the U.S. military and intelligence agencies have long used, with devices mounted in vehicles, on drones or carried by hand to pinpoint the location of cell phones and other electronic devices. Their usage was once classified and deployed in places like Afghanistan and Iraq. Today, similar devices are showing up in the streets of American cities. The Supreme Court has said that attaching a GPS tracking device to a car or getting historical location data from a cell carrier requires a search warrant. However, law enforcement has found ways around these prohibitions. Increasingly, as people walk around with headphones, fitness wearables and other devices ... their data can be linked to a car, even after they have ditched the car. Courts have not definitively grappled with the question: Under what circumstances can law enforcement passively capture ambient signal information and use it as a tracking tool?

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on police corruption and the disappearance of privacy from reliable major media sources.


Watch these hungry waxworms eat through plastic and digest it too
2024-04-24, BBC News
Posted: 2024-05-13 18:36:24
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20240419-the-worms-that-eat-through-plastic

At first glance there's nothing particularly remarkable about waxworms. The larval form of wax moths, these pale wriggling grubs feed on the wax that bees use to make their honeycomb. For beekeepers, the pests are something to swiftly get rid of without a second thought. But in 2017 molecular biologist Federica Bertocchini ... stumbled on a potentially game-changing discovery about these creatures. Bertocchini, an amateur beekeeper, threw some of the waxworms in a plastic bag after cleaning her hive, and left them alone. A short time later, she noticed the worms had started producing small holes in the plastic, which begun degrading as soon as it touched the worms' mouths. The worms were doing something that we as humans find remarkably difficult to do: break down plastic. Not only that, but the worms appeared to be digesting the plastic as though it was food. Bertocchini and her fellow researchers began collecting the liquid excreted from the worms' mouths. They found this "saliva" contained two critical enzymes, Ceres and Demeter – named after the Roman and Greek goddesses of agriculture, respectively – which were able to oxidise the polyethylene in the plastic, essentially breaking down that material on contact. Bertocchini is now chief technology officer at bioresearch startup Plasticentropy France, working with a team to study the viability of scaling up these enzymes for widespread use in degrading plastic.

Note: Explore more positive stories about healing the Earth.


Plastic-eating bacteria can help waste self-destruct
2024-04-30, BBC News
Posted: 2024-05-13 18:34:50
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-68927816

Scientists have developed a "self-digesting plastic", which, they say, could help reduce pollution. Polyurethane is used in everything from phone cases to trainers, but is tricky to recycle and mainly ends up in landfill. However, researchers have come up with a sci-fi like solution. By incorporating spores of plastic-eating bacteria they've developed a plastic that can self-destruct. The spores remain dormant during the useful lifetime of the plastic, but spring back to life and start to digest the product when exposed to nutrients in compost. There's hope "we can mitigate plastic pollution in nature", said researcher Han Sol Kim, of the University of California San Diego, La Jolla. And there might be an added advantage in that the spores increase the toughness of the plastic. "Our process makes the materials more rugged, so it extends its useful lifetime," said co-researcher, Jon Pokorski. "And then, when it's done, we're able to eliminate it from the environment, regardless of how it's disposed." The plastic is currently being worked on at the laboratory bench but could be in the real world within a few years, with the help of a manufacturer, he added. The type of bacteria added to the plastic is Bacillus subtilis, widely used as a food additive and a probiotic. Crucially, the bacteria has to be genetically engineered to be able to withstand the very high temperatures needed to make plastic.

Note: Explore more positive stories about healing the Earth.


Toward truly compostable plastic
2024-02-27, Knowable Magazine
Posted: 2024-05-13 18:32:38
https://knowablemagazine.org/content/article/technology/2024/compostable-plas...

Humans have created 8 billion metric tons of plastic. More than half the plastic ever produced —some 5 billion metric tons — lies smeared across the surface of the Earth. Chemists were creating “synthetic” plastics decades before the oil industry took off, from, among other materials, waste oat husks and vegetable oil. One of the tacks toward more sustainable plastics is to turn back to such biological sources. The ideal materials are not just biodegradable but also compostable — a narrower category that indicates the material can break down into organic components that are harmless to plants and animals. Compostability, unfortunately, is not easily achieved. The natural world already supplies promising polymers that are all compostable, says David Kaplan, a biomedical engineer at Tufts University. [Physicist Eleftheria] Roumeli, for example, has mined the promise of algal cells. They’re small, and therefore easily manipulable; they contain large amounts of proteins, which are biological polymers, alongside other useful materials. She and her students took powdered algae and passed it through a hot presser. After several trials ... they found they could produce a material that was stronger than many commodity plastics. The material was also recyclable: It could be ground back to powder and pressed again. If it were to be carelessly tossed into the dirt, the material would break apart at the same rate as a banana peel.

Note: Explore more positive stories about healing the Earth.


America’s Dystopian Incarceration System of Pay to Stay Behind Bars
2023-04-19, Brennan Center for Justice
Posted: 2024-05-05 15:24:19
https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/americas-dystopian-in...

There are almost 2 million people locked away in one of the more than 5,000 prisons or jails that dot the American landscape. While they are behind bars, these incarcerated people can be found standing in line at their prison’s commissary waiting to buy some extra food or cleaning supplies that are often marked up to prices higher than what one would pay outside of those prison walls. If they want to call a friend or family member, they need to pay for that as well. And almost everyone who works at a job while incarcerated, often for less than a dollar an hour, will find that the prison has taken a portion of their salary to pay for their cost of incarceration. States and local governments spent $82 billion on corrections in 2019. To offset these costs, policymakers have justified legislation authorizing an ever-growing body of fees to be charged to the people (and, as a result, often their families) in prison and jail. Fees for room and board—yes, literally for a thin mattress or even a plastic “boat” bed in a hallway, a toilet that may not flush, and scant, awful tasting food—are typically charged at a “per diem rate for the length of incarceration.” It is not uncommon for these fees to reach $20 to $80 a day for the entire period of incarceration. Those who work regular jobs in prisons such as maintaining the grounds, working in the kitchen, and painting the walls of the facilities earn on average between $0.14 and $0.63 an hour.

Note: Read about a woman who only served 10 months in bars, yet now owes $127,000 for her original 7-year prison sentence. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of revealing news articles on prison system corruption from reliable major media sources.


New Title IX Rules Erase Campus Due Process Protections
2024-04-19, AOL News
Posted: 2024-05-05 15:22:06
https://www.aol.com/news/title-ix-rules-erase-campus-183518533.html

On Friday, the Biden administration unveiled final Title IX regulations, nearly two years after the administration proposed dramatic changes to how colleges handle sexual assault allegations. According to the final regulations, accused students will lose their right to a guaranteed live hearing with the opportunity to have a representative cross-examine their accuser. This is accompanied by a return to the "single-investigator model," which allows a single administrator to investigate and decide the outcome of a case. Further, under the new rules, most schools will be required to use the "preponderance of the evidence" standard, which directs administrators to find a student responsible if just 51 percent of the evidence points to their guilt. Schools are also no longer required to provide accused students with the full content of the evidence against them. Instead, universities are only bound to provide students with a description of the "relevant evidence," which may be provided "orally" rather than in writing. This is a stunning rollback of due process rights for accused students. Under the new regulations, a student can be found responsible for sexually assaulting a classmate because a single administrator believed there was a 51 percent chance he had committed the assault, and this conclusion can be reached without ever allowing the accused student to know the full evidence against him or providing a hearing during which he could defend himself.

Note: Sexual abuse is real and deeply important to address. Yet where is the due process in entrusting a single administrator working behind closed doors to decide the fate of accused individuals who aren't allowed to know the full evidence against them? Social justice activist adrienne maree brown has called attention to how abuse, harm, and conflict often get conflated, leading to damaging misinterpretations of behavior. Brown articulates: "We absolutely have a culture that affirms rape and abuse of power. But we also have a developing culture of moving to callouts and calling for cancellation very quickly." In a time where cancel culture has led to unprecedented in-house fighting and toxic public discourse, how do we honor context and healthy dialogue before accusing someone of sexual assault?


Confronting Illusions Can Help Heal Trauma
2024-01-01, Scientific American
Posted: 2024-05-05 15:20:23
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/confronting-illusions-can-help-hea...

Physician and author Gabor Maté is known for his insights into the imprints that trauma leaves on the mind and body—and for his compassionate guidance on healing. In Maté’s most recent work, The Myth of Normal, written with his son, Daniel Maté, he postulates that trauma—by which he means “wound,” as in the original Greek—is woven into the fabric of Western society. It is so pervasive that it is the norm. "Take the politics of neoliberalism, [bestowed by] its patron saints of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan and continued under different governments of all sorts: under neoliberalism, you’ve had more social isolation, elimination of social programs, insecurity and loneliness," [said Maté]. "And each of these factors contributes to illness. In the U.S. last year [nearly] twice as many people died of drug overdoses than Americans who died in the Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq wars put together—in one year. This is strictly a result of social and economic factors. Politics has a lot to do with traumatizing people. And the other way [politics spreads trauma], which is a bit more subtle, is that very often we elect traumatized people to be our leaders, who then implement traumatizing policies." Once people realize that they were traumatized, they see there’s nothing wrong with them fundamentally. They’re not flawed, they’re not damaged goods, but something happened that made them behave in ways that were self-harming or harmful to others.

Note: The Wisdom of Trauma is a powerful film that travels alongside Dr. Gabor Maté in his quest to discover the connection between illness, addiction, trauma, and society. Deeply touching and captivating in its diverse portrayal of real human stories, the film also provides a new vision of a trauma-informed society that seeks to “understand the sources from which troubling behaviors and diseases spring in the wounded human soul.” Anyone can watch this donation-optional film at the above link.


Turning Trauma Into Social Change
2024-03-07, The Nation
Posted: 2024-05-05 15:17:58
https://www.thenation.com/article/society/gabor-mate-v-interview/

Experts in illness and healing say the only way to come to grips with pain is to look at the root of things and understand the context. Dr. Gabor Maté and V (formerly Eve Ensler) have experienced personal trauma and turned it into effective fuel for making social change. "Loneliness is as much of a risk factor for illness as smoking 15 cigarettes a day," [said Maté]. "In the Western world, there’s been an epidemic of loneliness. Twice as many Americans 10 years ago described themselves as lonely as 20 years earlier. Physiologically, loneliness works to undermine your immune system and disturb your hormones. It’s a basis for illness. Loneliness is not an accident. It’s an outcome and a factor in the way this society’s organized, run, and managed day to day. It’s an outcome of economic and political decisions made at the top over the last several decades." "Every time I have that “too much,” I know this is what I must face," [said V]. "That’s on a personal level. We have to do that on a historical level. If you don’t want to look at the history of what happened to the Indigenous people in this country, it is where you must look. If you are afraid to look at what happened to African Americans in the 400 years of slavery and Jim Crow, that is where you must look. That does not mean it’s going to feel good all the time. You’re going to go through a process of humanization. You get to be deeply compassionate and deeply human and deeply open, more than you’ve ever been before."

Note: The Wisdom of Trauma is a powerful film that travels alongside Dr. Gabor Maté in his quest to discover the connection between illness, addiction, trauma, and society. Deeply touching and captivating in its diverse portrayal of real human stories, the film also provides a new vision of a trauma-informed society that seeks to “understand the sources from which troubling behaviors and diseases spring in the wounded human soul.” Anyone can watch this donation-optional film at the above link.


The “Twinkie defense”: What we know about diet and crime
2024-04-29, Big Think
Posted: 2024-05-05 15:15:21
https://bigthink.com/neuropsych/is-the-twinkie-defense-legitimate/

In the 1979 murder trial of Dan White, his legal team seemed to attempt to blame his heinous actions on junk-food consumption. The press dubbed the tactic, the "Twinkie defense." Various studies have demonstrated that consuming nutritious, whole foods rather than processed, high-fat, high-sugar foods improves mental health, mood, and academic outcomes. All heavily factor into one's likelihood of committing crime. In the 1980s. Under the direction of a nutritionist, food staff secretly altered the diet at a juvenile detention facility in Virginia to reduce the amount of refined sugar fed to inmates. Social scientist and criminologist Dr. Stephen J. Schoenthaler oversaw the trial. He found that prisoners on the better diet had a 45% lower incidence of documented disciplinary actions. This preliminary success led to a dozen trials at other correctional facilities. “In the twelve correctional institutions that we studied, through 1985, we found that there was a 47% reduction in documented offenses, infractions, and other indicators of antisocial behavior,” Schoenthaler said. Is it possible that investing in better prison nutrition would save money overall? Schoenthaler thinks so. “A single preventable infraction that leads to four months of additional jail or prison time might cost us $10,000 or more. If you look at this through the larger lens of prevention and treatment along the entire criminal justice continuum, then the financial savings would be incalculable,” he said.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on health and prison system corruption from reliable major media sources.


‘Widespread’ sexual abuse of children in entertainment business revealed
2024-03-05, United Nations News
Posted: 2024-05-05 15:13:31
https://news.un.org/en/story/2024/03/1147247

Widespread sexual abuse of children in the entertainment industry must be urgently stamped out, an independent UN expert told the Human Rights Council on Tuesday, presenting hard-hitting findings and recommendations on how to end the scourge. “The sexual abuse and the exploitation of children within the entertainment industry resulting from unethical systems, structures, practices or abuse of power and authority is widespread,” said Mama Fatima Singhateh, the UN Special Rapporteur on sale and sexual exploitation of children. Child performers in the entertainment industry are exposed to sexualized, violent and aggressive environments that are unsafe for their integral development and in which they can be exposed to the consumption of addictive substances, she said the report. The Special Rapporteur found that predatory sexual behaviour, including grooming, was accepted as the norm in the entertainment industry. Moreover, perpetrators often faced no repercussions for unlawfully exercising power and authority over young and aspiring child performers. “Abusive work conditions and portrayal of sexual abuse and exploitation of children in various entertainment platforms ... objectify and instrumentalise children,” Ms. Singhateh said. “Victims and survivors have been met with silence, non-acknowledgement, lack of investigation, duress, intimidation or non-availability of reparation measures.”

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on media corruption and sexual abuse scandals from reliable major media sources.


How the 'Romeo and Juliet' lawsuit could force Hollywood to reckon with its history of child abuse
2023-01-15, Business Insider
Posted: 2024-05-05 15:11:18
https://www.businessinsider.com/hollywood-history-of-child-abuse-romeo-and-ju...

In the 1960s, 15-year-old Olivia Hussey and 16-year-old Leonard Whiting secured career-making roles in a film that retells the iconic love story of "Romeo and Juliet," the first film to use actors that were similar in age to the characters in the play. They were legally children when they were filmed in the nude together; the performance can now be found on sites meant for pornography. Fifty-five years later, Hussey, now 71, and Whiting, now 72, are suing Paramount Pictures for child abuse. They claim that "Romeo and Juliet" director Franco Zefirelli assured the actors that they would be wearing flesh colored garments and would not be physically nude in the scene. This allegedly changed in the last days of filming when Zefirelli asked the actors to do the scene fully nude with makeup, according to the lawsuit. [Judy] Garland was forced to take barbiturates and other drugs and live on a death-defying diet while working with the studio. Garland wrote in an unpublished autobiography that she was constantly molested behind the scenes by older men, including Louis B. Mayer, the producer and cofounder of MGM. Alyson Stoner was made to act out a rape scene when she was only 6 years old. "At 6 years old, I enter a sterile white room where a stranger stands apathetically behind a camcorder on a tripod. On cue, I perform the scene. This morning, I'm being kidnapped and raped," Stoner wrote. She developed eating disorders — among other health problems — due to stress.

Note: Read more about the disturbing history of child sex abuse in Hollywood from the courageous voices of actor Corey Feldman and Lord of the Rings star Elijah Wood. Explore our archive of revealing reports from reliable media sources on high-level pedophilia and sexual abuse.


James Marsden, Taran Killam wrote support letters for Brian Peck amid Drake Bell abuse case
2024-03-14, USA Today
Posted: 2024-05-05 15:09:12
https://www.usatoday.com/story/entertainment/tv/2024/03/14/drake-bell-brian-p...

Several prominent Hollywood actors wrote letters of support for Brian Peck, the Nickelodeon dialogue coach convicted of child sexual abuse in 2004. In the Investigation Discovery documentary series "Quiet on Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV," former "Drake & Josh" star Drake Bell accuses Peck of sexually assaulting him when he was 15, for the first time identifying himself as the victim at the center of the case. Peck was arrested in 2003 and the following year pleaded no contest to two child sexual abuse charges. But the documentary's fourth episode discusses Bell's surprise that Peck still received support in Hollywood after he was convicted. Before Peck was sentenced in 2004, several famous actors wrote letters of support for him, including James Marsden, 50, and Taran Killam, 41. In "Quiet on Set," Bell alleges that Peck, a dialogue coach on "The Amanda Show," subjected him to "extensive" and "brutal" sexual abuse. He also describes being "shocked" when he went to court for Peck's sentencing and found his "entire side of the courtroom was full" with supporters, noting there were "definitely some recognizable faces." During the sentencing, Bell ... made a statement to those supporting him. "I looked at all of them and I just said, 'How dare you?'" Bell recalled. "I said, 'You will forever have the memory of sitting in this courtroom and defending this person, and I will forever have the memory of the person you're defending violating me.'"

Note: Brian Peck was charged with 11 counts of child sex abuse. Explore our archive of revealing reports from reliable media sources on high-level pedophilia and sexual abuse.


Corey Feldman Says Rejection of Child Abuse Documentary Left Him With PTSD
2023-06-15, Newsweek
Posted: 2024-05-05 15:04:44
https://www.newsweek.com/corey-feldman-rejection-child-abuse-documentary-ptsd...

Corey Feldman says that the rejection of his self-financed documentary (My) Truth: The Rape of 2 Coreys, in which he shared allegations of the abuse that he and his late friend, Corey Haim endured as children, left him with Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). [The film] documents the sexual abuse Feldman and Haim allegedly suffered as child actors in the 1980s. Then known as "The Two Coreys," the actors starred in movies including The Goonies, Stand by Me, The Lost Boys, License to Drive and Dream a Little Dream. Feldman publicly named Jon Grissom, Alphy Hoffman and Marty Weiss as his alleged abusers in 2017. In the documentary, Feldman alleged that Haim told him that he was sexually assaulted by Charlie Sheen while they were filming the movie Lucas in 1986 when Haim was 13. Back in 2013, journalist Barbara Walters accused Feldman of "damaging an entire industry" with his abuse allegations. "The people that did this to both me and Corey [Haim] are still working, are still out there. They're some of the richest, most powerful people in this business," Feldman explained. "And they do not want me saying what I'm saying right now." Feldman and Haim had claimed that they were "passed around to pedophiles," adding: "They would throw these parties where you'd walk in and it would be mostly kids and there would be a handful of adult men. They would also be at the film awards and children's charity functions."

Note: Explore our archive of revealing reports from reliable media sources on high-level pedophilia and sexual abuse.


Jesse Watters Claims FBI and CIA Can Blackmail the President with Hunter Biden’s Laptop: ‘He Has to Do Whatever They Say’
2023-06-21, MSN News
Posted: 2024-05-05 15:02:45
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/jesse-watters-claims-fbi-and-cia-can-...

Fox News host Jesse Watters claimed during a Wednesday airing of The Five that the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Central Intelligence Agency can use information found on the Hunter Biden laptop to blackmail President Joe Biden. Watters’ monologue was preceded by talks of the recent plea deal that the president’s son reached with federal prosecutors earlier this week to avoid jail time on three federal charges. He failed to pay $1 million in taxes and faced a gun felony count. Conservative politicians and pundits in the media have used this to claim the Department of Justice is creating a two-tiered justice system. Earlier this month, former President Donald Trump was formally indicted by the DOJ for 37 charges related to his handling of classified material. “The feds are never going to crack open the laptop as long as Joe Biden’s president. His administration is not going to investigate corruption in the Biden family. It’s just not going to happen,” Watters told the Fox panel. “Plus, the FBI in the CIA has this is blackmail. They can just dangle it in front of Joe and he has to do whatever they say or else ‘boop!'” Watters then called the former president an “outsider” in Washington. “But the bottom line is that insiders protect insiders. You said it the other day, Trump’s an outsider. He goes to prison, his people go to prison. But if you’re a Washington insider, you get to Hunter Biden treatment,” Watters concluded.

Note: If the article fails to load, here's an alternate source. Read about how the intelligence agencies infiltrated the media to censor the Hunter Biden laptop story and other important topics. While Hunter Biden was indicted for three felony gun charges and nine counts of tax-related crimes, his laptop also revealed suspicious business dealings with corrupt overseas firms.


Compassion is making a comeback in America
2024-04-23, Vox
Posted: 2024-05-05 14:59:39
https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/24137520/americans-empathy-new-compassion-...

Since the late 1970s, psychologists have measured empathy by asking millions of people how much they agreed with statements such as “I feel tender, concerned feelings for people less fortunate than me.” In 2011, a landmark study led by researcher Sara Konrath examined the trends in those surveys. The analysis revealed that American empathy had plummeted: The average US college student in 2009 reported feeling less empathic than 75 percent of students three decades earlier. A few months ago, [Konrath] and her colleagues published an update to their work: They found that empathy among young Americans is rebounding, reaching levels indistinguishable from the highs of the 1970s. Our biased minds tempt us to see the worst in people. The empathy decline reported 13 years ago fit that narrative and went viral. This decline is almost certainly an illusion. In other surveys, people reported on kindness and morality as they actually experience it — for instance, how they were treated by strangers, coworkers, and friends. Answers to these questions remained steady over the years. As with the decline, we might grasp for explanations for this rise. One possibility is collective suffering. Hard times can bring people together. In her beautiful book, A Paradise Built in Hell, Rebecca Solnit chronicles disasters including San Francisco’s 1906 and 1989 earthquakes, Hurricane Katrina, and 9/11. In the wake of these catastrophes, kindness ticked up, strangers stepping over lines of race and class to help one another.

Note: Explore more positive stories like this in our comprehensive inspiring news articles archive focused on solutions and bridging divides.


Feminist and reproductive rights activist Loretta Ross doesn’t believe in cancel culture
2023-11-04, Boston Globe
Posted: 2024-05-05 14:54:19
https://www.bostonglobe.com/2023/11/02/magazine/loretta-ross-has-a-radical-idea/

[Loretta] Ross has worked at the forefront of the movement for reproductive justice. But recently she has become better known for championing “call-in culture,” a philosophy that approaches someone’s wrongdoing with accountability and, most importantly, love. In the summer of 2020 ... I felt myself crumbling. I called out snide comments by alumni of my college about Black Lives Matter protests, demanded people boycott the college newspaper ... and used Twitter to call out the behavior of fellow students. Each tactic left no room for discussion. Calling in, by contrast, asks us to always be the bigger person, even in the most hateful and painful situations. I ask Ross: Whose well-being are we prioritizing here? And why isn’t it our own? Ross tells me about another Black woman who asked the same question. “I’m confused,” Ross recalls the woman saying. “I don’t want to fall into the stereotype of the angry Black woman. But I feel like if I embrace the calling-in strategies you’re talking about, then I’m ... giving a pass to all this injustice. What should I do?” Ross responds with a question of her own: “Well, who are you inside? Go deep inside and find out who you are. What’s the emotion that you feel is true to you?” “Inside, I feel like I’m filled with love,” the woman replies. “Then, why aren’t you leading with your authentic self?” Ross asks her. Accountability and love are not mutually exclusive, Ross explains.

Note: Smith College Professor and civil rights activist Loretta Ross worked with Ku Klux Klan members and practiced restorative justice with incarcerated men convicted or raping and murdering women. Watch Loretta Ross's powerful Ted Talk on simple tools to help shift our culture from fighting each other to working together in the face of polarizing social issues. Explore more positive stories about healing social division and polarization.


‘Healing spaces’ in post-conflict societies
2024-03-01, Christian Science Monitor
Posted: 2024-05-05 14:51:50
https://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/the-monitors-view/2024/0301/Healing-spac...

The Afghanistan Memory Home is a growing online archive of testimonies of endurance by ordinary Afghans during years of conflict and repressive rule under the Taliban. The virtual museum is an example of the kind of community-led initiatives that Somali President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud has described as “healing spaces” – local sites of nation-building where the traumas and resentments of war are salved through traditional forms of civic engagement based on cultural values, spirituality, and listening. These projects in reconciliation quietly persist almost everywhere people seek freedom from conflict or repression, from Afghanistan to Yemen. They often supplant the work of national transitional justice initiatives stalled by political disagreements or lack of cooperation. They also underscore that “justice isn’t just punishment or prosecution and presenting evidence against perpetrators,” said Ruben Carranza, an expert on post-conflict community healing. In South Sudan, for instance, a local peace and reconciliation process called Wunlit gave grassroots strength to a 2018 national peace agreement. Led by tribal chiefs and spiritual leaders, the “peace to peace” dialogue defused cattle raids and abductions between the Nuer and Dinka communities. In Iraq, the Ministry of Human Rights has relied on tribal, religious, and civil society leaders to help forge local support for a national dialogue on reconciliation. History has “taught us that relying solely on military force will not bring about lasting peace and stability,” Hodan Ali, a Somali presidential policy adviser, wrote. The more durable work of peace involves empowering individuals and communities to tell their own stories – and listen to each other.

Note: Explore more positive stories about healing the war machine.


Democracy Dies Behind Paywalls
2024-04-14, The Atlantic
Posted: 2024-04-29 13:09:31
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/04/paywall-problems-media-trus...

According to the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, more than 75 percent of America’s leading newspapers, magazines, and journals are behind online paywalls. And how do American news consumers react to that? Almost 80 percent of Americans steer around those paywalls and seek out a free option. Paywalls create a two-tiered system: credible, fact-based information for people who are willing to pay for it, and murkier, less-reliable information for everyone else. Simply put, paywalls get in the way of informing the public, which is the mission of journalism. And they get in the way of the public being informed, which is the foundation of democracy. It is a terrible time for the press to be failing at reaching people, during an election in which democracy is on the line. There’s a simple, temporary solution: Publications should suspend their paywalls for all 2024 election coverage and all information that is beneficial to voters. Democracy does not die in darkness—it dies behind paywalls. Less than a third of Americans in a recent Gallup poll say they have “a fair amount” or a “a great deal” of trust that the news is fair and accurate. Part of the problem ... is that the platform companies, which are the largest distributors of free news, have deprioritized news. Meta has long had an uncomfortable relationship with news on Facebook. In the past year ... Meta has changed its algorithm in a way that has cost some news outlets 30 to 40 percent of their traffic.

Note: It's ironic that this story is behind a paywall. Read the complete article here using Textise, an excellent tool that converts most webpages into text-only versions. For a powerful reflection on the rise of paywalls and online ads in news outlets, read this Substack piece written by our news editor Mark Bailey. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on media corruption from reliable sources.


House Votes to Extend—and Expand—a Major US Spy Program
2024-04-12, Wired
Posted: 2024-04-29 13:07:04
https://www.wired.com/story/house-section-702-vote/

The House of Representatives voted on Friday to extend Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) for two years. Section 702 permits the US government to wiretap communications between Americans and foreigners overseas. Hundreds of millions of calls, texts, and emails are intercepted by government spies each with the “compelled assistance” of US communications providers. The government argues that Americans are not themselves being targeted and thus the wiretaps are legal. Nevertheless, their calls, texts, and emails may be stored by the government for years, and can later be accessed by law enforcement without a judge’s permission. The House bill also dramatically expands the statutory definition for communication service providers. “They’re pushing for a major expansion of warrantless spying on Americans,” US senator Ron Wyden tells WIRED. “Their amendment would force your cable guy to be a government spy and assist in monitoring Americans’ communications without a warrant.” “Section 702 has been abused under presidents from both political parties, and it has been used to unlawfully surveil the communications of Americans across the political spectrum,” says Kia Hamadanchy, senior policy counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union. “The Senate must add a warrant requirement and rein in this out-of-control government spying.”

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of important news articles on government corruption and the disappearance of privacy from reliable major media sources.


Americans Are Paying Billions to Take Drugs That Don’t Work
2024-04-15, Bloomberg
Posted: 2024-04-29 13:05:09
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-04-15/cancer-als-drugs-that-don-...

One ALS drug made $400 million in sales for its maker. It doesn’t work. A cancer treatment brought in $500 million. That one turned out to have no effect on survival. A blood cancer medication made nearly $850 million before being withdrawn for two of its uses. That drug had been linked to patient deaths years prior. All of them were allowed to be sold to Americans because of the US Food and Drug Administration’s drive to get new drugs to patients quickly — sometimes even before they’re done testing. Drug companies are profiting, though. Since 2014, they’ve made at least $3.6 billion in global sales of medications that have either later been shown to be ineffective or had most or all of their uses withdrawn in the US. There are a number of ways a drug company can get its treatment to patients faster: There’s the “priority review” pathway, then “fast track,” “accelerated approval” and “breakthrough therapy.” The majority of new drugs in the US are approved through one or more of these sped-up pathways. Last year two thirds of all new drugs reached the market this way. One of the problems is that sometimes drugmakers resist pulling a drug off the market, even after it’s obvious it doesn’t work. Makena, a drug to reduce the risk of premature birth, received a sped-up approval in 2011. Eight years later, a large trial found it didn’t work. Yet it took another four years for the FDA to force it off the market. Makena ... generated over $1.6 billion in sales.

Note: The US spends the most on health care but has the worst health outcomes among high-income countries. More than half of children now have chronic health conditions. What is behind this? For more along these lines, see concise summaries of important news articles on Big Pharma corruption and health from reliable media sources.


Thanks to Cass, evidence not ideology will be used to guide children seeking gender advice
2024-04-14, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2024-04-29 13:02:05
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/apr/14/hilary-cass-review-gend...

The publication of Hilary Cass’s final report on healthcare for gender-questioning children laid bare the devastating scale of NHS failures of a vulnerable group of children and young people, buoyed by adult activists bullying anyone who dared question a treatment model so clearly based on ideology rather than evidence. Cass is a renowned paediatrician and her painstakingly thorough review was four years in the making. She sets out how the now-closed NHS specialist gender clinic for children abandoned evidence-based medicine. Significant numbers of gender-questioning children ... were put on an unevidenced medical pathway of puberty-blocking drugs and/or cross-sex hormones, despite risks of harm in relation to brain development, fertility, bone density, mental health and adult sexual functioning. Cass finds a childhood diagnosis of gender dysphoria is not predictive of a lasting trans identity and clinicians told the review they are unable to determine in which children gender dysphoria will last into adulthood. If this is indeed impossible, is it ever ethical to put a young person on a life-altering medical pathway? If there are no objective diagnostic criteria, on what basis would a clinician be taking this decision other than a professional hunch? Cass’s vision is what gender-questioning children deserve: to be treated with the same level of care as everyone else, not as little projects for activists seeking validation for their own adult identities and belief systems.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on health and corruption in science from reliable major media sources.


'Extreme caution': U.K. review of trans health care could have lessons for Canada
2024-04-11, MSN News
Posted: 2024-04-29 12:59:57
https://www.msn.com/en-ca/health/other/extreme-caution-u-k-review-of-trans-he...

A robust British review found guidelines for the treatment of children with gender dysphoria ignored standards and are based on flimsy foundations. Pediatrician Hilary Cass’ much-anticipated report found no reliable evidence on which to base gender-affirming care for youth; the rationale for blocking puberty in young children remains unclear and muddled and that the use of cross-sex hormones in the under-18s presents numerous unknowns. Cass said published studies suffer from “remarkably weak evidence,” that results are “exaggerated or mispresented” by people on both sides of the debate over transgender health care to bolster their own viewpoint. Cass found that there is no solid evidence on the long-term outcomes of any of the interventions. Cass said the toxicity of the debate has been exceptional. “There are few other areas of healthcare where professionals are so afraid to openly discuss their views, where people are vilified on social media and where name-calling echoes the worst bullying behaviour. This must stop,” Cass wrote. The systematic review on puberty blockers found no evidence the drugs improve body image or dysphoria. The drugs might temporarily or permanently disrupt adolescent brain maturation, “which could have a significant impact on the young person’s ability to make complex risk-laden decisions, as well as having possible longer-term neuropsychological consequences,” according to the Cass report.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on health and corruption in science from reliable major media sources.


The US needs a bipartisan, open-minded gender medicine commission
2024-04-15, Boston Globe
Posted: 2024-04-29 12:58:09
https://www.bostonglobe.com/2024/04/15/opinion/cass-review-gender-affirming-c...

The toxicity of the culture war over youth gender medicine is well known to most of us. What’s less well understood is how that poisonous climate affects the very cohort being argued about — and those who care for them. The Cass Review, led by Dr. Hilary Cass, examines the events and evidence (or lack thereof) that led to the closing of the UK’s only public youth gender clinic, the Gender Identity Development Services. Social justice/civil rights framing has made it harder to reckon with what Cass calls the “exponential rise” in adolescent patients starting around 2014. Once it was mostly natal males who transitioned, but now it is mostly natal females, many of whom had no history of gender distress but did suffer from other mental health issues. As for the evidence about how to treat these patients and others who have sought care, Cass concludes: “The reality is that we have no good evidence on the long-term outcomes of interventions to manage gender-related distress.” Individual studies may make claims about the efficacy of social transition, puberty blockers, or hormones, but they are too biased and low quality to draw conclusions from. As for the claim that these interventions prevent suicide, Cass reports that “the evidence found did not support this conclusion.” Perhaps most important, Cass notes that “clinicians have told us they are unable to determine with any certainty which children and young people will go on to have an enduring trans identity.”

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on health and corruption in science from reliable major media sources.


‘This isn’t how good scientific debate happens’: academics on culture of fear in gender medicine research
2024-04-12, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2024-04-29 12:55:58
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2024/apr/12/this-isnt-how-good-scientific...

Experienced professionals are increasingly scared to openly discuss their views on the treatment of children questioning their gender identity. This was the conclusion drawn by Hilary Cass in her review of gender identity services for children this week, which warned that a toxic debate had resulted in a culture of fear. Her conclusion was echoed by doctors, academic researchers and scientists. Some said they had been deterred from pursuing what they believed to be crucial studies, saying that merely entering the arena would put their reputation at risk. Others spoke of abuse on social media, academic conferences being shut down, biases in publishing and the personal cost of speaking out. Sallie Baxendale, a professor of clinical neuropsychology ... received abuse after publishing a systematic review of studies that investigated the impact of puberty blockers on brain development. Her review found that “critical questions” remained around the nature, extent and permanence of any arrested development of cognitive function linked to the treatment. The paper, which summarised the state of relevant research, was met with an immediate backlash. “I’ve been accused of being an anti-trans activist, and that now comes up on Google and is never going to go away,” Baxendale said. “Imagine what it’s like if that is the first thing that comes up when people Google you? Anyone who publishes in this field has got to be prepared for that.”

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on health and corruption in science from reliable major media sources.


Not Enough War on the Ground, the US Is Taking It To Space
2024-04-13, ScheerPost
Posted: 2024-04-29 12:52:18
https://scheerpost.com/2024/04/13/not-enough-war-on-the-ground-the-us-is-taki...

SpaceX recently secured a classified contract to build an extensive network of “spy satellites” for an undisclosed U.S. intelligence agency, with one source telling Reuters that “no one can hide” under the prospective network’s reach. The U.S. is funding or otherwise supporting a range of defense contractors and startups working to create a new generation of space-bound weapons, surveillance systems, and adjacent technologies. In other words, America is hell-bent on a new arms race — in space. The Space Force, an entirely new branch of the military “focused solely on pursuing superiority in the space domain,” was launched in 2019, signaling renewed emphasis on space militarization as U.S. policy. Space Force’s Space Development Agency recently granted defense contractors L3Harris and Lockheed Martin and space company Sierra Space contracts worth $2.5 billion to build satellites for the U.S. military’s Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture (PWSA), a constellation of hundreds of satellites, built out on tranches, that provide various warfighting capabilities, including the collection and transmission of critical wartime communications, into low-Earth orbit. The PWSA will serve as the backbone of the Pentagon’s Joint All-Domain Command and Control project, an effort to bolster warfighting capacities and decision-making processes by facilitating “information advantage at the speed of relevance.” Other efforts are just as sci-fi-esque.

Note: Learn more about emerging warfare technology in our comprehensive Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center. For more, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on military corruption from reliable major media sources.


‘Huge Win’: Court Rules Big Telecom Must Comply With State Environmental Laws
2024-04-04, The Defender
Posted: 2024-04-29 12:49:23
https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/chd-lawsuit-la-county-court-telec...

Los Angeles County officials must comply with state environmental law when issuing permits for new wireless infrastructures, a Los Angeles County Superior Court judge ruled. The ruling is a win for Children’s Health Defense (CHD) and a coalition of community and environmental groups in a historic case challenging the fast-tracked proliferation of wireless infrastructure in Los Angeles County. W. Scott McCollough, lead attorney for the plaintiffs, said in a press release, “The court’s ruling is a huge win in the battle against unfettered proliferation of wireless because of the known risks to the environment and people’s health.” The lawsuit alleged Los Angeles County violated California’s state environmental law — the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) — when it passed two ordinances allowing telecommunications companies to install wireless infrastructure without environmental review. In his 65-page opinion, Judge Chalfant said that state environmental law generally applies to wireless projects and is only preempted by federal law — in this case, the Telecommunication Act of 1996 — when it comes to minor modifications and “collocations,” meaning additions to existing towers, upgrades or repairs. The judge also noted that an environmental impact analysis is necessary for proposed wireless projects, like 5G small cells or cell towers, along scenic highways or historical sites.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on the dangers of wireless technologies from reliable major media sources.


The FBI Colluded With Twitter to Suppress Free Speech. Where Is the Outrage?
2022-12-21, Newsweek
Posted: 2024-04-29 12:47:07
https://www.newsweek.com/fbi-colluded-twitter-suppress-free-speech-where-outr...

For the past few weeks, journalists have been reporting on what they've found in the "Twitter Files." The revelations have been astonishing and deeply troubling, exposing solid evidence of collusion between top executives at the FBI and their cozy counterparts at Twitter. FBI leadership and Twitter censors conferred constantly about how to shut down political speech based on its content, confirming the suspicions of, well, anyone who was paying attention. And it proves without a doubt that over the past few years, countless Americans have undergone a real violation of their First Amendment rights. The First Amendment mandates that government can't abridge—meaning limit or censor—speech based on its content. Even if attempting to advance the noblest of causes, government actors must not collide with this constitutional guardrail. The Constitution simply isn't optional. The government can't enlist a private citizen or corporation to undertake what the Constitution precludes it from doing. When Twitter acquiesced to the FBI's urging, it essentially became an agent and of the government. FBI officials created a special, secure online portal for Twitter staff, where the two sides could secretly exchange information about who was saying what on the platform and how that speech could be squelched. In this virtual "war room," the FBI made dozens of requests to censor political speech. Twitter chirpily complied.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on censorship and government corruption from reliable major media sources.


Why do people forgive? It's messy, complex and 'the best form of self-interest'
2024-04-23, Minneapolis Star Tribune
Posted: 2024-04-29 12:44:20
https://www.startribune.com/forgiveness-project-minneapolis-laura-yuen/600360...

Forgiveness is a principle promoted by just about every faith tradition. Even neuroscientists agree on its mental and physical benefits — from lowered risk of heart attacks to improved sleep. Twenty years ago, UK-based journalist Marina Cantacuzino launched the Forgiveness Project, a collection of stories from survivors and victims of crime and conflict, as well as perpetrators who reshaped their aggression into a force for peace. Cantacuzino documented real-life stories of seemingly supernatural examples of forgiveness. A Canadian woman who forgave her husband's killer. An Israeli filmmaker wounded in a terrorist attack. A Minneapolis mother who grew to love the person who murdered her only child. But even Cantacuzino admits it can seem difficult to relate to those who forgive the seemingly unforgivable. Are they morally superior? Extremely religious? Some are, but they are more likely to share the traits of curiosity, empathy and a flexible viewpoint. It feels like those characteristics are harder to come by today. The cacophony of "if you're not with us, you're against us" has divided families and entire communities. One's ability to recognize the pain on both sides of the Israel-Hamas war can evoke outrage, for example. But Cantacuzino continues to support discussions that bring together Israeli and Palestinian victims of the conflict, stories that require people to embrace complexity and contradiction while honoring the "sanctity of every human life ... Stories stick, whereas facts fade," she says. The Forgiveness Project's exhibit has now journeyed to 17 countries, including Kenya, Australia and Israel.

Note: Explore Cantacuzino's latest inspiring book, Forgiveness: An Exploration, which delves into the politics, mechanics and psychology of forgiveness. Explore more positive stories that reveal the power of healing social division and polarization.


A daycare built a ‘forest floor’, and it changed kids’ immune systems
2020-10-28, The Optimist Daily
Posted: 2024-04-29 12:40:27
https://www.optimistdaily.com/2020/10/a-daycare-turned-their-playground-into-...

One daycare in Finland decided to invest in a playground that replicated the forest floor. The results were amazing. The daycare replaced their sandy playground surface with lawn and added indigenous forest species like dwarf heather and blueberries. They also added planter boxes and allowed children to tend them. After just one month, children at the daycare had healthier microbiomes and stronger immune systems than their counterparts in other urban daycares. Specifically, the children had increased T-cells, increased immune-boosting gammaproteobacteria microbes, and a reduction in interleukin-17A, a contributor to immune-transmitted disease. Environmental scientist Marja Roslund from the University of Helsinki said, “We also found that the intestinal microbiota of children who received greenery was similar to the intestinal microbiota of children visiting the forest every day.” These results demonstrate that loss of biodiversity in urban areas can contribute to poorer health outcomes and that easy environmental manipulation can radically change these health dynamics, especially in young children. Children living in rural areas tend to have fewer cases of allergies and asthma which seems to be directly tied to time outdoors. More studies are needed to definitively draw the correlation between time in nature and childhood health, but this experiment strengthens the argument for this link.

Note: Explore more positive stories about healing our bodies.


How Schools in Germany Are Preparing Students for Flexible Futures
2024-04-08, Reasons to be Cheerful
Posted: 2024-04-29 12:37:53
https://reasonstobecheerful.world/german-students-vocational-training-future-...

Kein Abschluss ohne Anschluss (KAoA) — or “no graduation without connection” — [is] a program that has been rolled out across the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia to help students better plan for their futures. Young people get support with resumes and job applications; in ninth grade, they participate in short internships with local businesses and have the option of doing a year-long, one-day-a week work placements in grade 10. “You don’t learn about a job in school,” said Sonja Gryzik, who teaches English, math and career orientation at ... Ursula Kuhr Schule. “You have to experience it.” Students in Germany can embark on apprenticeships directly after finishing general education at age 16 in grade 10, attending vocational schools that offer theoretical study, alongside practical training at a company. College-bound kids stay in school for three more years, ending with an entry exam for university. Businesses in Germany seem keen to participate in vocational training. Chambers of commerce and industry support company-school partnerships and help smaller businesses train their interns. Students are even represented in unions, said Julian Uehlecke, a representative of the youth wing of Germany’s largest trade union alliance. The goal of apprenticeships is to offer training in the classroom and in the workplace. The system gives students “a pretty good chance of finding a well-paid stable job,” said [policy researcher] Leonard Geyer.

Note: Explore more positive stories about reimagining education.


Meta is the world’s ‘single largest marketplace for paedophiles’, says New Mexico attorney general
2024-01-31, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2024-04-22 22:43:28
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2024/jan/31/meta-worlds-single...

The New Mexico attorney general, Raúl Torrez, who has launched legal action against Meta for child trafficking on its platforms, says he believes the social media company is the “largest marketplace for predators and paedophiles globally”. The lawsuit claims that Meta allows and fails to detect the trafficking of children and “enabled adults to find, message and groom minors, soliciting them to sell pictures or participate in pornographic videos”, concluding that “Meta’s conduct is not only unacceptable; it is unlawful”. Torrez says that he has been shocked by the findings of his team’s investigations into online child sexual exploitation on Meta’s platforms. Internal company documents obtained by the attorney general’s office as part of its investigation have also revealed that the company estimates about 100,000 children using Facebook and Instagram receive online sexual harassment each day. The idea of the lawsuit came to [Torrez] after reading media coverage of Meta’s role in child sexual exploitation, including a Guardian investigation that it was failing to report or detect the use of Facebook and Instagram for child trafficking. If it progresses, the New Mexico lawsuit is expected to take years to conclude. Torrez wants his lawsuit to provide a medium to usher in new regulations. “Fundamentally, we’re trying to get Meta to change how it does business and prioritise the safety of its users, particularly children.”

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corporate corruption and sexual abuse scandals from reliable major media sources.


The Vile Sextortion and Torture Ring Where Kids Target Kids
2024-02-20, Vice
Posted: 2024-04-22 22:40:46
https://www.vice.com/en/article/7kxjnz/the-vile-sextortion-and-torture-ring-w...

764 has been responsible for horrific abuse and blackmail across the globe. It’s a network of online communities using several social media platforms (primarily Telegram, where the recruitment and spread of content occur, and Discord, where the actual abuse and grooming take place). The engine behind this nightmare factory is sextortion, a form of blackmail that’s becoming increasingly prevalent. It refers to a predator convincing a victim to send sexually explicit images of themselves, and then using that to bend the victim to their will—this most commonly involves money but can, for instance, involve threatening to send pictures to the victim’s parents if they don’t cut themselves. In many cases, these demands involve the creation of child sexual abuse material, or CSAM, and “hurtcore” content, which focuses on the non-simulated infliction of pain and humiliation on children, typically toddlers. The members of 764 boast that they have left thousands of children traumatized. [Discord] removed 37,000 accounts for child safety in the last quarter of 2022; that number exploded to 116,000 in the final quarter of 2023. The FBI said that from October 2021 to March 2023 it received over 13,000 reports of sextortion of minors, which led to “at least 20 suicides.” There are also tools like Take It Down, which youths can anonymously use to aid them in removing content that is being used to abuse them. The tool works by issuing a unique digital fingerprint to content, which platforms can use to track the image and take it down. This can be done without informing a parent or law enforcement or giving any sort of personal information.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on sexual abuse scandals and mind control from reliable major media sources.


The Dark Side of Nickelodeon
2024-03-22, Newsweek
Posted: 2024-04-22 22:38:53
https://www.newsweek.com/nickelodeon-dark-side-dan-schneider-brian-peck-1881413

It prides itself on offering an "assortment of family-friendly programming." For Alexa Nikolas, however, Nickelodeon's claims concealed a darker truth. She says young stars were exploited into taking part in sexually suggestive scenes. "Kids are groomed into thinking that the lines that they're doing are pretend, that it's not real life," the star, who played Nicole Bristow on the Nickelodeon TV series Zoey 101, [said]. Nikolas spoke out in the wake of docuseries Quiet on Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV, which aired on the Investigation Discovery channel ... and exposed the "toxic culture" and alleged abuse on the set of some of Nickelodeon's biggest shows. In addition to Nikolas, several former child stars have spoken out, claiming sexual assault and harassment while working for the channel. Drake & Josh star Drake Bell speaks publicly for the first time about being repeatedly molested by his dialogue coach, Peck, when he was 15. "I was sleeping on the couch where I usually sleep and I woke up to him... I opened my eyes and I woke up and he was...he was sexually assaulting me." Bell claimed the abuse occurred more than once and said he was scared to report it. He explained: "And it just got worse, and worse, and worse, and worse, and I was just trapped. I had no way out. The abuse was extensive and it got pretty brutal." The four-part docuseries documents the child sexual abuse committed by assistant Jason Handy, dialogue coach Brian Peck, and studio freelancer Ezel Channel, as well as the alleged abusive and misogynistic behavior of showrunner Dan Schneider.

Note: Read more about the disturbing history of child sex abuse in Hollywood from the courageous voices of actor Corey Feldman and Lord of the Rings star Elijah Wood. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corporate corruption and sexual abuse scandals from reliable major media sources.


If allegations are true, Diddy’s case shows the pattern of another abusive powerful man
2024-03-27, Miami Herald
Posted: 2024-04-22 22:36:17
https://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/editorials/article287101685.html

No criminal charges have been filed against rap mogul Sean Combs, even though one of his two mansions on Star Island — and one in Los Angeles — were raided by Homeland Security agents on Monday. That’s a disturbing development. The question: Is Combs another South Florida-grown Jeffrey Epstein? A civil lawsuit filed one month before the raid alleges Combs, better known as Diddy, his staff and executives engaged in “serious illegal activity,” including using drugs, possessing illegal firearms and providing laced alcoholic beverages to drug sex workers and minors, all for Comb’s pleasure. The lawsuit, filed by producer Rodney “Lil Rod” Jones, says Combs was running a “widespread and dangerous criminal sex trafficking organization.” Combs settled another suit filed by singer Cassie in November that accused him of raping her. Jones said in the lawsuit that Combs, his staff and music executives knew about — and were involved in — illicit and unwanted sexual activities in Florida, New York, California and the U.S. Virgin Islands. In December ... four civil lawsuits filed by women [alleged that Combs] promised to launch their singing careers, then sexually abused them, trafficked them and forced them to have sex with other people. If the allegations are true, then Combs used his position of power over aspiring female artists, models and assistants in a manner comparable to Weinstein’s serial abuse of women hoping to advance their careers.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on Jeffrey Epstein's child sex trafficking ring and other sexual abuse scandals from reliable major media sources.


P. Diddy’s Legal Drama: A ‘Hip Hop Epstein’ Situation?
2024-03-28, Yahoo News
Posted: 2024-04-22 22:34:32
https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/p-diddy-legal-drama-hip-214533888.html

Diddy has been dubbed the Jeffrey Epstein of the music industry. The internet was shaken to its core when Homeland Security Investigators' raid of Diddy's Los Angeles and Miami homes hit the headlines. Even though the cause of the raid has remained undisclosed, sources suggested it has to do with the s-x trafficking allegations against the music mogul. In a lawsuit filed by Rodney "Lil Rod" Jones, Diddy was accused of hosting "freak parties" that were attended by "celebrities, athletes, politicians, international dignitaries, and music label executives." The music producer further stated that these parties were sponsored by major players in the recording industry, giving them access to "s-x, drugs, and underage girls." He also alleged that the ... rapper hired underage girls to work for him and drugged their drinks. The lawsuit further stated that Combs Global Enterprises chief of staff, Kristina Khorram, "ordered s-x workers and prostitutes for Mr. Combs." According to lawsuits against Diddy and Epstein, both men had their homes fitted with hidden cameras that captured the debauchery that went on during their parties. In Jones' civil lawsuit against Diddy, he stated: "Mr. Combs had hidden cameras in every room of his home... has recordings of several celebrities, artists, music label executives, and athletes engaging in illegal activity. Mr. Combs possesses compromising footage of every person who has attended his freak-off parties and his house parties."

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on Jeffrey Epstein's child sex trafficking ring and other sexual abuse scandals from reliable major media sources.


Fired CBS News reporter Catherine Herridge accuses network of ‘journalistic rape’ for seizing her files at Capitol Hill hearing
2024-04-11, New York Post
Posted: 2024-04-22 22:32:14
https://nypost.com/2024/04/11/media/crossed-a-red-line-fired-cbs-news-reporte...

Catherine Herridge — the acclaimed CBS News investigative journalist known for her reporting on the Hunter Biden laptop scandal — accused the network of “journalistic rape” for seizing her files after she was fired during a House Judiciary Committee hearing. “CBS News’ decision to seize my reporting records crossed a red line that I believe should never be crossed by any media organization,” Herridge said. “Multiple sources said they were concerned that by working with me to expose government corruption and misconduct they would be identified and exposed.” Herridge, who had spent nearly five years at the network after being hired away from Fox News, was among 20 CBS News staffers let go as part of a larger purge of 800 employees by Paramount. Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan (R-OH) asked Herridge if she wrote critical stories about Hunter Biden, the laptop, the Biden family, the business operation and the Biden brand. Herridge replied: ”I reported out the facts of the story.” “You sure did,” Jordan said. “You reported the facts and then CBS fired you!” The House Judiciary Committee also heard testimony from former CBS News reporter Sharyl Attkisson, who quit the network in 2014 over claims that CBS killed stories that put then-President Barack Obama in a bad light. Attkisson’s told the committee that her critical reporting of the government resulted in her phone being tapped.

Note: While Hunter Biden was indicted for three felony gun charges and nine counts of tax-related crimes, his laptop also revealed suspicious business dealings with corrupt overseas firms. For more, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corporate corruption and media manipulation from reliable sources.


Senior NPR editor claims public broadcaster lacks ‘viewpoint diversity’
2024-04-10, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2024-04-22 22:29:09
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2024/apr/10/npr-uri-berliner-reaction

A debate about media bias has broken out at National Public Radio after a longtime employee published a scathing letter accusing the broadcaster of a “distilled worldview of a very small segment of the US population”. In the letter published on Free Press, NPR’s senior business editor Uri Berliner claimed Americans no longer trust NPR – which is partly publicly funded – because of its lack of “viewpoint diversity." Berliner wrote that “an open-minded spirit no longer exists within NPR, and now, predictably, we don’t have an audience that reflects America”. Berliner noted that in 2011 the public broadcaster’s audience identified as 26% conservative, 23% as middle of the road and 37% liberal. Last year it identified as 11% very or somewhat conservative, 21% as middle of the road, and 67% very or somewhat liberal. “We weren’t just losing conservatives; we were also losing moderates and traditional liberals,” Berliner wrote. Berliner identified the station’s coverage of the Covid-19 lab leak theory, Hunter Biden’s laptop and allegations that Donald Trump colluded with Russia in the 2016 election as all examples of how “politics were blotting out the curiosity and independence that ought to have been driving our work”. When he brought up [a] survey of newsroom political voter registration at a 2021 all-staff meeting, showing there were no Republicans, he claimed he was met with “profound indifference”.

Note: Read Berliner's full article about how NPR misled the public on the most important issues making front page news. For more, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corporate corruption and media manipulation from reliable sources.


NPR editor says network ‘turned a blind eye’ to Hunter Biden laptop story because ‘it could help Trump’
2024-04-09, New York Post
Posted: 2024-04-22 22:25:23
https://nypost.com/2024/04/09/media/npr-editor-says-network-turned-a-blind-ey...

A veteran National Public Radio journalist slammed the left-leaning broadcaster for ignoring the Hunter Biden laptop scandal because it could have helped Donald Trump get re-elected. Uri Berliner, an award-winning business editor and reporter at NPR, penned a lengthy essay ... in which he called out his bosses for turning the public radio broadcaster into “an openly polemical news outlet serving a niche audience.” “The laptop was newsworthy,” Berliner wrote. “But the timeless journalistic instinct of following a hot story lead was being squelched.” The Post was the first to reveal the existence of the laptop that Hunter Biden left at a Delaware computer shop. The Post published the contents of emails taken from the laptop, which shed light on Hunter Biden’s business dealings in Ukraine and China while his father, Joe Biden, was vice president during the Obama administration. Initially, national security experts and former intelligence officials declared the laptop a hoax and was the product of a Russian disinformation campaign. Social media sites like Twitter even barred its users from sharing links to The Post's reporting. The authenticity of the emails were later confirmed. According to Berliner, NPR’s managing editor for news at the time said that the outlet had no interest in “[wasting] our time on stories that are not really stories, and we don’t want to waste the listeners’ and readers’ time on stories that are just pure distractions.”

Note: While Hunter Biden was indicted for three felony gun charges and nine counts of tax-related crimes, his laptop also revealed suspicious business dealings with corrupt overseas firms. For more, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corporate corruption and media manipulation from reliable sources.


Did Intel-Linked Dataminr Play Sinister Role In Hunter Biden Laptop Suppression?
2023-05-09, MintPress News
Posted: 2024-04-22 22:23:12
https://www.mintpressnews.com/intel-linked-dataminr-sinister-role-hunter-bide...

On April 20, former acting CIA Director Michael Morell admitted he orchestrated the joint letter that torpedoed the New York Post’s bombshell reporting on Hunter Biden’s laptop in the weeks leading up to the November 2020 US Presidential election, at the direct request of Joe Biden’s campaign team. That letter ... asserted the leaked material bore unambiguous hallmarks of a Kremlin “information operation.” In all, 51 former senior intelligence officials endorsed the declaration. This intervention was sufficient for Twitter to block all sharing of the NY Post’s exposés and ban the outlet’s official account. Twitter’s public suppression of the NY Post’s disclosures was complemented by a covert operation to identify and neutralize anyone discussing the contents of Hunter Biden’s laptop, courtesy of Dataminr, a social media spying tool heavily connected to British and American intelligence services. In-Q-Tel [is] the CIA’s venture capital arm. In 2016, The Intercept revealed In-Q-Tel was financing at least 38 separate social media spying tools, to surveil “erupting political movements, crises, epidemics, and disasters.” Among them was Dataminr, which enjoys privileged access to Twitter’s “firehose” – all tweets published in real time – in order to track and visualize trends as they happen. [In 2020], the U.S. was ... engulfed by incendiary large-scale protests. Dataminr kept a close eye on this upheaval every step of the way, tipping off police to the identities of demonstrators.

Note: While Hunter Biden was indicted for three felony gun charges and nine counts of tax-related crimes, his laptop also revealed suspicious business dealings with corrupt overseas firms. Learn more about the history of military-intelligence influence on the media in our comprehensive Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center. For more, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corporate corruption and media manipulation from reliable sources.


The Slow Death of a Prison Profiteer: How Activism Brought Securus to the Brink
2024-04-12, ScheerPost
Posted: 2024-04-22 22:20:56
https://scheerpost.com/2024/04/12/the-slow-death-of-a-prison-profiteer-how-ac...

Last week, the nation’s largest prison and jail telecom corporation, Securus, effectively defaulted on more than a billion dollars of debt. After decades of preying on incarcerated people and their loved ones with exploitative call rates and other predatory practices that have driven millions of families into debt, Securus is being crushed under the weight of its own. Securus is one of two corporations that dominate roughly 80 percent of the U.S. prison telecom industry. Both companies are owned by private-equity firms: Securus, by Platinum Equity, and ViaPath (previously Global Tel Link), by American Securities. Together, Securus and ViaPath contract with 43 state prison systems and over 800 county jails. Their dominance of the market allows them to routinely charge incarcerated people and their families egregious rates for rudimentary communications services: A 15-minute phone call can run as high as $8.25; a 25-minute video call up to $15; and basic emails as much as $0.50, or more with attachments. The nature of agreements between these telecom providers and correctional agencies often further incentivizes the financial exploitation of the incarcerated, creating profit-sharing kickback schemes that provide prisons and jails with a portion of sales revenue. The ... tactics that brought Securus down—narrative change, policy campaigns, regulatory efforts, and investor activism—offer a roadmap for tackling exploitative corporate profiteers across the prison industry.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on prison system corruption from reliable major media sources.


At four, I was kidnapped and sex-trafficked for years. Now I fight for the powerless – and win every case
2024-03-25, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2024-04-22 22:09:59
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2024/mar/25/at-four-i-was-kidnapped-...

Although it happened more than 60 years ago, Antonio Salazar-Hobson remembers every detail of his kidnapping. After being snatched from his back yard, he is taken into a nightmarish landscape of sex trafficking, violence and exploitation. Rather than being broken by what he experienced, he instead rose from the ashes of his stolen childhood to accomplish extraordinary academic feats and become one of the US’s most successful labour rights attorneys, representing vulnerable and powerless communities, and dedicating his life to justice and compassion. “I chose not to be obliterated by the abuse and trauma I was forced to endure,” he says. “Instead of being swallowed by the darkness, I survived by walking towards the light.” He has taken on multibillion-dollar corporations, represented First Nation people and LGBTQ+ farm worker communities, and won every case. “I’m used to people underestimating me, this poor Chicano boy going up against rooms full of corporate lawyers in suits, but I always prevail,” he says. He now plans to dedicate the rest of his life to the anti-trafficking movement. “It is my hope that somehow my story can be of service to the community of survivors of sexual assault and trafficking; what happened to me can show other kids that they don’t have to be ashamed, that they can rise up to become whoever they want to be. I want to show them that I refused to be broken and, in the end, I ... made it home.”

Note: Explore more positive stories about ending human trafficking.


Doctors deliver healthy baby 117 days after mother’s brain-death in world first
2019-09-03, The Independent (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2024-04-22 22:07:54
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/baby-brain-death-mother-birth...

Czech doctors have delivered a healthy baby girl 117 days after her mother was declared brain dead. The baby was born by Caesarean section weighing 2.13kg (4.7lb) and measuring 42cm (16.5in) on 15 August, setting a new world record in the process, Brno’s University Hospital has said. It said the 117 days she had been kept alive in the womb were believed to be a record for the longest artificially-sustained pregnancy in a brain-dead mother. The mother had suffered a stroke in April and was declared brain dead shortly after reaching the hospital. Doctors immediately began battling to save her child. They put the 27-year-old woman on artificial life support to keep the pregnancy going, and regularly moved her legs to stimulate walking to help the child’s growth. The baby was delivered in the 34th week of gestation, with the husband and other family members present. Medical staff then disconnected the mother’s life support systems and allowed her to die. “This has really been an extraordinary case when the whole family stood together ... without their support and their interest it would never have finished this way,” said Pavel Ventruba, head of gynaecology and obstetrics at the hospital.

Note: Explore more positive stories like this in our comprehensive inspiring news articles archive focused on solutions and bridging divides.


They’re Not Cops. They Don’t Have Guns. But They’re Responding to More 911 Calls.
2024-03-23, The Marshall Project
Posted: 2024-04-22 22:06:00
https://www.themarshallproject.org/2024/03/23/police-emergency-mental-health-911

People experiencing mental or behavioral health crises and addiction have often been subject to police use of force, arrest and incarceration. [There are] efforts around the country to change that. One of the most common new approaches ... are civilian co-responder programs, in which behavioral health specialists, often social workers, show up to certain emergency calls alongside police. These can include situations like suicide threats, drug overdoses, and psychiatric episodes. Typically, the officers on the team have special training in crisis intervention. Generally, these teams aim to de-escalate any crisis or conflict, avoiding arrest and solving the reason for the emergency call, especially if it’s a simple one. This week, the New Jersey Monitor reported that one call “for a welfare check on a woman with anxiety ended with the [state] trooper picking up her new cell phone from the post office and fixing a broken toilet” and the emergency call screener setting up her new phone. The Monitor also found that the program avoided arrests or police use of force in 95% of responses. The B-HEARD program in New York City, which is just three years old in a diverse city of 8.5 million, responded to roughly a quarter of mental health calls in precincts where it operated in the first half of 2023. Mental health calls make up 10% of all 911 calls in the city. In Denver, a study of the city’s STAR program found the alternative response model reduced low-level crime.

Note: Explore more positive stories about repairing the criminal justice system.


Reducing pesticides in food: Major food manufacturers earn an F grade
2023-11-08, CNN News
Posted: 2024-04-15 13:00:17
https://www.cnn.com/2023/11/08/health/pesticides-food-report-wellness/index.html

Seventeen major food manufacturers earned an average grade of F for their lack of progress in reducing pesticides in the products they sell, according to a new analysis by As You Sow, a nonprofit specializing in shareholder advocacy. “It’s disheartening to see so many bad grades across the board for these major food production companies,” said Jane Houlihan, research director for Healthy Babies, Bright Futures. “Studies find the highest amounts of pesticides in some of the most popular foods children eat — berries and apples, for example,” said Houlihan. “Pesticides are also found in breast milk and umbilical cord blood, meaning that exposures start before birth and continue through infancy and beyond.” Long-term exposure to pesticides has been linked to cancer, asthma, anxiety, Parkinson’s disease, depression, and attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder, according to the report. Kale, collard and mustard greens contained the largest number of pesticides — 103 types — while nearly 90% of blueberry and green bean samples had concerning findings, according to the analysis. Green bean samples contained extremely high levels of acephate, an insecticide banned for use in the vegetable in 2011. Blueberry samples contained acephate, phosmet and malathion — organophosphates which interfere with the normal function of the nervous system. What can consumers do? Choosing organic foods is a surefire way to reduce pesticide exposure.

Note: Read the complete study, titled, "Pesticides in the Pantry: Transparency & Risk in Food Supply Chains." A groundbreaking study found that eating a completely organic diet (even just for a week) can dramatically reduce the presence of pesticide levels in our bodies. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on food system corruption from reliable major media sources.


‘I wouldn’t put my damn daughter in these’: Toxic ‘forever chemicals’ lurk in feminine products
2024-04-03, The Hill
Posted: 2024-04-15 12:58:00
https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/4569864-pfas-toxic-forever-chem...

Forever chemicals, also known as per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), are a pervasive group of compounds that have been linked to a number of cancers and other illnesses. The toxic substances have become widespread in the air, soil and water via industrial discharge and are found in a number of common household items, from cookware to dental floss to stain-resistant furniture. And many of the products in which they have been detected — including waterproof makeup, workout leggings and period products — are primarily marketed toward women. In May 2022, a team of researchers at the Massachusetts-based Silent Spring Institute published a study ... looking at the presence of PFAS in underwear and several other consumer items. Among those products was menstrual underwear. Research released in August ... also found indicators of PFAS in some period products, including wrappers for several pads and some tampons and outer layers of menstrual underwear. A 2021 study ... tested 231 makeup products and found that 63 percent of the foundations, 58 percent of the eye products, 55 percent of the lip products and 47 percent of the mascaras it looked at contained high levels of fluorine. The Environmental Working Group has identified 300 cosmetic products from 50 different popular brands that contain PFAS in its Skin Deep database. The advocacy organization found that 200 of these products contain PTFE, which is also used in Teflon pans.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on health and corporate corruption from reliable major media sources.


US appeals court kills ban on plastic containers contaminated with PFAS
2024-03-30, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2024-04-15 12:55:53
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/mar/30/pfas-ban-plastic-containers-c...

A federal appeals court in the US has killed a ban on plastic containers contaminated with highly toxic PFAS “forever chemicals” found to leach at alarming levels into food, cosmetics, household cleaners, pesticides and other products across the economy. Houston-based Inhance manufactures an estimated 200m containers annually with a process that creates, among other chemicals, PFOA, a toxic PFAS compound. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in December prohibited Inhance from using the manufacturing process. But the conservative fifth circuit court of appeals court overturned the ban. The judges did not deny the containers’ health risks, but said the EPA could not regulate the buckets under the statute it used. The rule requires companies to alert the EPA if a new industrial process creates hazardous chemicals. Inhance has produced the containers for decades and argued that its process is not new, so it is not subject to the regulations. The EPA argued that it only became aware that Inhance’s process created PFOA in 2020, so it could be regulated as a new use, but the court disagreed. PFAS are a class of about 15,000 compounds [that] have been linked to cancer, high cholesterol, liver disease, kidney disease, fetal complications and other serious health problems. A peer-reviewed study in 2011 found Inhance’s containers leached the toxic compounds into their contents.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on health and corporate corruption from reliable major media sources.


New Report Reveals Dirty Secret Of Army Psychological Operations
2024-04-02, The Intercept
Posted: 2024-04-15 12:53:00
https://theintercept.com/2024/04/02/pentagon-army-psyops/

A devastating new Defense Department inspector general report finds that ... the Army, the primary Defense Department proponent for battlefield influence and deception, has failed to staff its own psyops units. Recent revelations about the Pentagon’s psyops call into question just how effective these programs really are. In 2022, an extensive report by the Washington Post revealed widespread concern inside DOD that psychological operations were being waged both recklessly and ineffectively by the armed services. The report was spurred by research from the Stanford Internet Observatory which detailed over 150 instances of Facebook and Twitter removing accounts linked to U.S. military influence campaigns. The 2019 National Defense Authorization Act gave the Defense Department a green light to engage in offensive psyops campaigns, including clandestine operations that align with the same definition as covert, meaning that the armed forces can carry out influence operations that deny an American connection. After the congressional authorization, an unnamed defense official said, “Combatant commanders got really excited” and were “eager to utilize these new authorities. The defense contractors were equally eager to land lucrative classified contracts to enable clandestine influence operations.” Researchers at Stanford ultimately found that despite the dozens of Defense Department obscured accounts spreading misinformation, the effect on foreign populations was far less than information conveyed overtly from self-identified U.S. sources.

Note: Read about the Pentagon's secret army of 60,000 undercover operatives that manipulate public perception. Learn more about the history of military-intelligence influence on the media in our comprehensive Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center.


Congress Has A Chance To Rein In Police Use Of Surveillance Tech
2024-04-02, The Intercept
Posted: 2024-04-15 12:50:42
https://theintercept.com/2024/04/02/surveillance-tech-new-york-state-police/

Hardware that breaks into your phone; software that monitors you on the internet; systems that can recognize your face and track your car: The New York State Police are drowning in surveillance tech. Last year alone, the Troopers signed at least $15 million in contracts for powerful new surveillance tools. Surveillance technology has far outpaced traditional privacy laws. In New York, lawmakers launched a years-in-the-making legislative campaign last year to rein in police intrusion. None of their bills have made it out of committee. A report from the U.S. Office of the Director of National Intelligence, put it succinctly: “The government would never have been permitted to compel billions of people to carry location tracking devices on their persons at all times, to log and track most of their social interactions, or to keep flawless records of all their reading habits.” That report called specific attention to the “data broker loophole”: law enforcement’s practice of obtaining data for which they’d otherwise have to obtain a warrant by buying it from brokers. The New York State Police have taken greater and greater advantage of the loophole in recent years. They’ve also spent millions on mobile device forensic tools, or MDFTs, powerful hacking hardware and software that allow users to download full, searchable copies of a cellphone’s data, including social media messages, emails, web and search histories, and minute-by-minute location information.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on police corruption and the disappearance of privacy from reliable major media sources.


The Police Have A Dark Money Slush Fund
2024-03-29, The Lever
Posted: 2024-04-15 12:48:02
https://www.levernews.com/the-police-have-a-dark-money-slush-fund/

Private donors including big-box stores, fossil fuel companies, and tech giants are secretly giving hundreds of millions of dollars annually to law enforcement agencies and related foundations, allowing police to buy specialized weapons and technology with little public oversight. Experts say this huge deluge of police “dark money” funding, detailed in a new University of Chicago working paper ... leaves law enforcement beholden to the companies and powerful donors bankrolling them, rather than the communities that officers are sworn to serve. The study, which analyzed a database of nonprofit tax returns, found that from 2014 to 2019, more than 600 private donors and organizations collectively funneled $461 million to police and to other nonprofits supporting police. The Baltimore Police Department for years used private money to fund a secret aerial surveillance program that could track the locations of people throughout the city in real time. The program ... was eventually ruled unconstitutional in court. In Los Angeles, the city’s police department used money from Target ... routed through a local police foundation — to purchase software from Palantir, venture capitalist Peter Thiel’s data analytics company, that provides police massive amounts of sensitive data and purports to identify crime “hot spots.” For the most part, the millions in dark-money funding that police agencies receive each year is perfectly legal. There are largely no laws or policies governing foundation donations to the police.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on police corruption and the disappearance of privacy from reliable major media sources.


Missing Links in Textbook History: War
2024-03-28, ScheerPost
Posted: 2024-04-15 12:46:34
https://scheerpost.com/2024/03/28/missing-links-in-textbook-history-war/

According to Wikipedia, the United States has been involved in 107 wars since its founding and 41 of these were fought against the Indigenous peoples of North America. Most of these wars are ignored by schools, textbooks and the media, but the pressure to become involved in additional conflict is ever-present. At times the number of private contractors has been larger than that of enlisted troops. In April 2008, there were 163,900 contractors and 160,000 enlisted troops in Iraq. But when most media reported the number of Americans in the war zone, they reported the number of enlisted troops and not the contractors. This results in a predictable under-estimate of American involvement and additional earnings for contractor providers. Every year, the defense industry donates millions of dollars to the campaigns of members of Congress, creating pressure on the legislative branch to fund specific weapons systems, maintain an extremely high Pentagon budget, and add ever more military spending. In 2022 the weapons/defense industry donated $10.2 million to the 84 members of the House and Senate Armed Services Committees. And the wars continue. In his book “The United States of War,” David Vine reports that, “In the nearly two decades since U.S. forces invaded Afghanistan and Iraq, the U.S. military has fought in at least 22 countries.” If we are to escape a future of forever wars, all justifications for war should be questioned and debated before the killing starts.

Note: Learn more about war failures and lies in our comprehensive Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center. For more, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on war from reliable major media sources.


Haitian Community Defenders Fight US-Armed Death Squads and Puppet Governments
2024-03-28, Truthout
Posted: 2024-04-15 12:44:54
https://truthout.org/articles/haitian-community-defenders-fight-us-armed-deat...

The Haitian Bald Headed Party (PHTK) has tyrannically ruled Haiti since 2011. The U.S. State Department, who unilaterally picked Ariel Henry to be Haiti’s prime minister in July of 2021, has now decided Henry no longer fits their interests and has forced him to step down. Henry was prevented from returning to Haiti on March 5 by paramilitary gangs who attempted to take the Toussaint Louverture International Airport, opening fire and hitting a plane bound for Cuba. The imperial forces responsible for over half a million illegal U.S. guns in Haiti that fuel this unparalleled violence are now preparing their next move to keep Haiti subdued. For the past 18 months, the Biden administration has sought to facilitate what will be the fourth U.S.-led foreign invasion and occupation of Haiti in the last 100 years by deputizing Kenya, Benin, the Bahamas, and other western neocolonies to carry out the occupation. The CIA remains active as well seeking a neocolony the U.S. can deputize to carry out this invasion. The only Haitian representatives that can be considered for the U.S.-led transitional government have to agree to the occupation. U.S. policy empowers and works with corrupt political leadership in Haiti because they can be relied upon to do the U.S.’s bidding. Meanwhile, those leaders who refuse to sell out to imperial interests are repressed and murdered. The ruling PHTK [has] bragged about being “legal bandits” above the law and employing ... government death squads armed with hundreds of thousands of U.S. weapons.

Note: The US government wants Ariel Henry out to purportedly prevent a full scale civil war. Is the US now trying to address Haitian stability and violence that US policies have helped create? Read about US involvement in the assassination of Haitian President Jovenel Moïse. Learn more about the role the arms industry plays in global conflicts in our comprehensive Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center.


It’s time to ban paraquat
2024-02-13, Environmental Working Group
Posted: 2024-04-15 12:42:40
https://www.ewg.org/news-insights/news/2024/02/its-time-ban-paraquat

The Environmental Protection Agency must ban the toxic weedkiller paraquat – a step more than 60 other countries have taken because of its threats to human health. Paraquat has been linked to Parkinson’s disease, non-Hodgkin lymphoma, childhood leukemia and more. While the EPA says paraquat is too toxic for use on U.S. golf courses, it still allows use of the herbicide on farms. This threatens the health of the people who apply it, other farmworkers and those who live or work near crop fields where it’s used. More than 10 million pounds of paraquat were sprayed in 2018 alone, twice as much as has been sprayed since 2014. While much of the paraquat applied winds up in the soil for years, the chemical can also drift through the air or linger in dust. Syngenta makes paraquat in China and the United Kingdom. The Swiss-based company, which was acquired by a Chinese state-owned chemical conglomerate, has long understood the chemical’s health risks. But it spent decades hiding this knowledge from the public and the EPA. Ironically, Chinese, U.K. and Swiss farmers are prohibited by their respective governments from using paraquat due to potential health risks from exposure. But the weedkiller isn’t prohibited in the U.S. Ingesting even tiny amounts of paraquat can be lethal. Recently, findings from researchers at UCLA show paraquat sprayed within 500 meters ... of where people lived and worked could more than double a person’s odds of developing Parkinson’s.

Note: Read more about the dangers of paraquat. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on health from reliable major media sources.


Q&A: COVID-19 vaccine study gains attention
2022-03-10, Lund University
Posted: 2024-04-15 12:38:45
https://www.lunduniversity.lu.se/article/qa-covid-19-vaccine-study-gains-atte...

A new study from Lund University in Sweden on how the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine affects human liver cells under experimental conditions, has been viewed more than 800,000 times in just over a week. A previous study from MIT has indicated that the SARS-CoV-2 virus mRNA can be converted to DNA and integrated into the human genome. Indeed, about 8 percent of human DNA comes from viruses inserted into our genomes during evolution. Does the Pfizer-BioNTech mRNA vaccine get converted to DNA or not? We show that the vaccine enters liver cells as early as 6 hours after the vaccine has been administered. We saw that there was DNA converted from the vaccine's mRNA in the host cells we studied. These findings were observed in petri dishes under experimental conditions, but we do not yet know if the converted DNA is integrated into the cells' DNA in the genome - and if so, if it has any consequences. About 18 percent of the vaccine accumulates in the liver just 30 minutes after the vaccine is injected in mice as reported by Pfizer in EMA assessment report, and therefore we chose to study liver cells. This also explains the choice of vaccine concentrations in our study ... which are 0.5-2% of the injection site concentration. We think it is self-evident that this type of research should be pursued. We have a new vaccine, and ... it is also a bit surprising that such studies do not seem to have been carried out before.

Note: The major media immediately published articles seriously downplaying the significance of this important study, which states that after COVID vaccines were administered, “there was DNA converted from the vaccine's mRNA in the host cells we studied.” The study calls for further investigation, yet the mainstream media downplays this point. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on COVID vaccines from reliable major media sources.


The new science of death: ‘There’s something happening in the brain that makes no sense’
2024-04-02, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2024-04-15 12:36:04
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2024/apr/02/new-science-of-death-brain-ac...

Jimo Borjigin, a professor of neurology at the University of Michigan ... took the first close look at the record of electrical activity in the brain of Patient One after she was taken off life support. After Patient One was taken off oxygen, there was a surge of activity in her dying brain. Areas that had been nearly silent while she was on life support suddenly thrummed with high-frequency electrical signals called gamma waves. In particular, the parts of the brain that scientists consider a “hot zone” for consciousness became dramatically alive. Since the 1960s, advances in resuscitation had helped to revive thousands of people who might otherwise have died. About 10% or 20% of those people brought with them stories of near-death experiences in which they felt their souls or selves departing from their bodies. According to several international surveys and studies, one in 10 people claims to have had a near-death experience involving cardiac arrest, or a similar experience in circumstances where they may have come close to death. That’s roughly 800 million souls worldwide who may have dipped a toe in the afterlife. If there is consciousness without brain activity, then consciousness must dwell somewhere beyond the brain. Parapsychologists point to a number of rare but astounding cases. One of the most famous is about a woman who apparently travelled so far outside her body that she was able to spot a shoe on a window ledge in another part of the hospital where she went into cardiac arrest; the shoe was later reportedly found by a nurse.

Note: Read more about the fascinating field of near-death experiences. Explore more positive stories like this in our comprehensive inspiring news articles archive focused on solutions and bridging divides.


How I rewired my brain in six weeks
2023-09-18, BBC News
Posted: 2024-04-15 12:34:23
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20230912-how-i-hacked-my-brain

There is growing evidence that simple, everyday changes to our lives can alter our brains and change how they work. Our brain has an incredible ability to adapt, learn and grow because by its nature, it is plastic – that is, it changes. This is called neuroplasticity, which simply means the brain's ability to adapt and evolve over time in structure and function. Every time we learn a new skill, our brain adapts. Neuroscientists and psychologists are now finding that we have the power to control that to some extent. And there's good reason to want to boost our brain – an increasing number of studies suggest it can play a role in delaying or preventing degenerative brain diseases. Research has found that after only a few months of mindfulness training, certain depression and anxiety symptoms can ease – though as with any complex mental health problem, this may of course vary depending on individual circumstances. There's more to it. Mindfulness can change the brain. That's because when the stress hormone cortisol increases and remains high, "it can become toxic for your brain", says [psychologist Thorsten] Barnhofer. Stress can also directly inhibit neuroplasticity, so managing it allows the brain to remain more plastic. What's fascinating about this area of research is that mindfulness, which appears to be such a simple process, can have a measurable effect. "What mindfulness does is it can buffer stress, you become aware of challenges," explains Barnhofer.

Note: Explore more positive stories like this in our comprehensive inspiring news articles archive focused on solutions and bridging divides.


These athletes suffered life-changing injuries. Then, they turned to psychedelics
2024-02-26, CNN News
Posted: 2024-04-15 12:32:34
https://www.cnn.com/2024/02/19/sport/psilocybin-athletes-life-changing-injuri...

Daniel Carcillo wanted two things in life: to play hockey and to be a father. By 30, he was a two-time Stanley Cup winner. By age 31, he was suicidal. After seven diagnosed concussions, Carcillo tells CNN that he was suffering from “dementia-like” symptoms, along with depression, anxiety and headaches. Carcillo says he also suffered from insomnia and disrupted sleep. He spent over $500,000 on prescription medications and treatments at stroke rehabilitation centers, brain centers, and concussion centers, as well as holistic therapies. Then in a “last-ditch effort” to try and alleviate his symptoms, he says he took a dose of psilocybin – the main psychoactive ingredient in magic mushrooms – in Denver, which became the first US city to decriminalize hallucinogenic mushrooms. “And I woke up the next day and I describe it as feeling the way I should,” said Carcillo. “I felt like, for the first time in a very, very long time, I had a zest for life. All I wanted to do was get on FaceTime and call my wife and call my kids and get back home.” Carcillo isn’t the only athlete – former or current – openly talking about using psychedelics to treat various conditions. In 2022, residents in Colorado joined Oregon in voting to legalize psilocybin. Small clinical trials have shown that one or two doses of psilocybin, given in a therapeutic setting, can make dramatic and long-lasting changes in people suffering from treatment-resistant major depressive disorder.

Note: Read more about the the healing potential of psychedelic medicine. Explore more positive stories like this in our comprehensive inspiring news articles archive focused on solutions and bridging divides.


Former US Navy admiral leads search for underwater alien USOs
2024-03-30, The Telegraph (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2024-04-08 23:25:24
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2024/03/30/ufos-noaa-timothy-gallaudet...

Unidentified flying objects (UFOs) have caused so much concern in recent years that even Nasa launched a lengthy probe to find out what they were. Now some experts believe the hunt should move from the skies to the sea. The former head of the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is launching a probe into unidentified submersible objects (USOs) and, in particular, a strange anomaly seen on the seabed off the coast of California. Timothy Gallaudet, a former rear admiral in the US Navy, has spent the past 18 months interviewing dozens of sailors, submariners, military personnel and members of the US Coastguard, all who say they have seen unidentified craft in the water. One incident was filmed by the USS Omaha off the coast of San Diego in southern California in 2019, when a dark-shaped object was seen moving quickly before splashing down into the water. In the renowned Tic Tac incident in 2004, US Navy pilots described an oblong craft shaped like the sweet hovering just above the water off the California coast. Sonar has revealed an unusual trench on the seafloor as if an object has crashed into a ridge and then skidded to a halt. Mr Gallaudet believes that evidence for USOs may be present in the US Navy’s acoustic data, but it is currently classified. This week Mr Gallaudet launched a report into the phenomenon alongside the Sol Foundation, a group of academics, military and government officials committed to researching UFOs.

Note: Watch this intriguing leaked video taken by a Navy ship and this video of more strange UFO sightings by US Navy warships. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on UFOs from reliable major media sources. Then explore the excellent, reliable resources provided in our UFO Information Center.


Forget UFOs, alien hunters say we should be focusing on Unidentified Submerged Objects (USOs)
2024-03-16, Daily Mail (One of the UK's Popular Newspapers)
Posted: 2024-04-08 23:23:34
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-13191835/Forget-UFOs-alien-hu...

From sightings by U.S. submarines to mysterious humanoids in the depths of Russian lakes, there is an even more mysterious cousin to the UFO - the USO, or Unidentified Submerged Object. There are multiple reports of USOs from around the world, often from respected military and academic professionals - with some claiming that underwater ‘fast movers’ are a common part of life on board submarines. Nigel Watson, author of Captured by Aliens? A History and Analysis of American Abduction Claims, said: ‘We live on an ocean planet, so it is not surprising that UFOs are seen over or in the vicinity of the great expanses of water that surround us. 'Concentrations of USO sightings indicate bases in the North Sea, and off the coasts of California and Puerto Rico.' A craft moving through the water faster than the speed of sound ‘whizzed by’ the submarine U.S.S. Hampton, a professor has claimed. Professor Bob McGwier of Virginia Tech and the Institute for Defence Analyses, said the craft’s onboard sonar detected a USO moving through the water faster than the speed of sound. Lake Baikal in Siberia has been the site of multiple sightings of USOs and UFOs. Russian former Navy officer turned UFO researcher Vladimir Azhazha said, "Fifty percent of UFO encounters are connected with oceans. Fifteen more - with lakes. UFOs tend to stick to the water.” Azhazha has claimed that humanoid beings in strange shiny suits were seen in the water by military divers in 1982.

Note: Watch this intriguing leaked video taken by a Navy ship and this video of more strange UFO sightings by US Navy warships. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on UFOs from reliable major media sources. Then explore the excellent, reliable resources provided in our UFO Information Center.


Defense specialist encounters unidentified object 'going faster than the speed of sound underwater' while doing classified work on the Navy's USS Hampton submarine
2023-12-29, Daily Mail (One of the UK's Popular Newspapers)
Posted: 2024-04-08 23:22:04
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-12910629/defense-specialist-u...

Bob McGwier, a professor at Virginia Tech and with the Institute for Defense Analyses, was carrying out classified work on the USS Hampton submarine when he heard the sound of 'something whizzing by.' The onboard sonar determined the unidentified submerged object (USO) was traveling through the water faster than the speed of sound, he has calimed. Such speeds underwater should have crushed the submarine, according to McGwire, but he said it was as if they were standing still. McGwier said he urged the naval team to report the encounter, but they determined it would hinder the mission. The strange incident happened in the late 1990s, but McGwire recently came forward with the story on the YouTube channel UAP Society, where he wanted to 'blow the whole thing wide open.' The USS Hampton is limited by how fast it can travel due to the incompressibility of water in front of it, but the USO 'blew by' the sub. 'A person with knowledge of onboard systems' who was likely monitoring the sonar tech is said to have announced that something just soared past the submarine faster than the speed of sound, McGwire said during the YouTube interview. Sound travels faster in water, about 3,330 miles per hour because the liquid is about 1,000 times denser than air. The only manmade object comparable would be Russia's Shkval torpedo, but this can only hit speeds of 230 miles per hour.

Note: Watch this intriguing leaked video taken by a Navy ship and this video of more strange UFO sightings by US Navy warships. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on UFOs from reliable major media sources. Then explore the excellent, reliable resources provided in our UFO Information Center.


Feds Ordered Google To Unmask Certain YouTube Users. Critics Say It’s ‘Terrifying.’
2024-03-22, Forbes
Posted: 2024-04-08 23:20:33
https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2024/03/22/feds-ordered-google-to...

Federal investigators have ordered Google to provide information on all viewers of select YouTube videos. In a just-unsealed case from Kentucky ... undercover cops sought to identify the individual behind the online moniker “elonmuskwhm,” who they suspect of buying bitcoin for cash. In conversations with the user in early January, undercover agents sent links of YouTube tutorials for mapping via drones and augmented reality software, then asked Google for information on who had viewed the videos, which collectively have been watched over 30,000 times. The court orders show the government telling Google to provide the names, addresses, telephone numbers and user activity for all Google account users who accessed the YouTube videos between January 1 and January 8, 2023. The government also wanted the IP addresses of non-Google account owners who viewed the videos. The cops argued, “There is reason to believe that these records would be relevant and material to an ongoing criminal investigation, including by providing identification information about the perpetrators.” The court granted the order and Google was told to keep the request secret. Privacy experts said the orders were unconstitutional because they threatened to undo protections in the 1st and 4th Amendments covering free speech and freedom from unreasonable searches. Albert Fox-Cahn, executive director at the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project [says that] “no one should fear a knock at the door from police simply because of what the YouTube algorithm serves up. I’m horrified that the courts are allowing this.”

Note: The article refers to federal investigators and to undercover cops, but it doesn't specify who was actually doing the investigating. What agency or agencies were involved in these secret operations? For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on police corruption and the disappearance of privacy from reliable major media sources.


U.S. Park Service Says to Leave Your Cash at Home, but Some Object
2024-03-21, New York Times
Posted: 2024-04-08 23:17:49
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/21/us/cashless-national-parks-lawsuit.html

The National Park Service is continuing to convert dozens of its sites across the country to cashless payments only, drawing complaints and, now, a lawsuit. Starting in June last year, visitors to Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado were told that they could not use cash to enter the park or use its campgrounds. The negative reactions were swift, with visitors raising privacy concerns and expressing confusion about why the American dollar would not be welcome in the U.S. parks system. Now these complaints are the subject of a lawsuit filed on March 6 in U.S. District Court in the District of Columbia, asserting that the service’s policies violate federal law defining cash as “legal tender” and the visitors’ “lawful right to pay in cash” at national sites, including those without bank accounts or cards or those who simply prefer to pay cash. In addition to the park service, its director, Charles F. Sams, III, and the Department of the Interior were named as defendants. One of the three plaintiffs, Toby Stover, a New York woman, drove to Hyde Park, N.Y., in January. She ... was not allowed to enter after trying to pay $10 in cash, the filing said. The plaintiffs’ lawyer, Ray L. Flores, II, said in an emailed reply to questions that the legal action is being financially backed by the Children’s Health Defense. Mr. Flores said in the email that cashless policies were “a key component — if not the linchpin — of the surveillance state.”

Note: This article is also available here. A 2018 Guardian piece titled "The cashless society is a con and big finance is behind it" describes some of the basic problems with the push to go cashless.


Palmer Luckey says Anduril is working on AI weapons that 'give us the ability to swiftly win any war'
2024-03-28, Business Insider
Posted: 2024-04-08 23:15:46
https://www.businessinsider.in/tech/news/palmer-luckey-says-anduril-is-workin...

A Silicon Valley defense tech startup is working on products that could have as great an impact on warfare as the atomic bomb, its founder Palmer Luckey said. "We want to build the capabilities that give us the ability to swiftly win any war we are forced to enter," he [said]. The Anduril founder didn't elaborate on what impact AI weaponry would have. But asked if it would be as decisive as the atomic bomb to the outcome of World War II he replied: "We have ideas for what they are. We are working on them." In 2022, Anduril won a contract worth almost $1 billion with the Special Operations Command to support its counter-unmanned systems. Anduril's products include autonomous sentry towers along the Mexican border [and] Altius-600M attack drones supplied to Ukraine. All of Anduril's tech operates autonomously and runs on its AI platform called Lattice that can easily be updated. The success of Anduril has given hope to other smaller players aiming to break into the defense sector. As an escalating number of global conflicts has increased demand for AI-driven weaponry, venture capitalists have put more than $100 billion into defense tech since 2021, according to Pitchbook data. The rising demand has sparked a fresh wave of startups lining up to compete with industry "primes" such as Lockheed Martin and RTX (formerly known as Raytheon) for a slice of the $842 billion US defense budget.

Note: Learn more about emerging warfare technology in our comprehensive Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center. For more, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corruption in the military and in the corporate world from reliable major media sources.


FBI Agent Says He Hassles People 'Every Day, All Day Long' Over Facebook Posts
2024-03-29, Reason
Posted: 2024-04-08 23:13:23
https://reason.com/2024/03/29/fbi-agent-says-he-hassles-people-every-day-all-...

The FBI spends "every day, all day long" interrogating people over their Facebook posts. At least, that's what agents told Stillwater, Oklahoma, resident Rolla Abdeljawad when they showed up at her house to ask her about her social media activity. Three FBI agents came to Abdeljawad's house and said that they had been given "screenshots" of her posts by Facebook. Her lawyer Hassan Shibly posted a video of the incident. "Facebook gave us a couple of screenshots of your account," one agent in a gray shirt said in the video. "So we no longer live in a free country and we can't say what we want?" replied Abdeljawad. "No, we totally do. That's why we're not here to arrest you or anything," a second agent in a red shirt added. "We do this every day, all day long. It's just an effort to keep everybody safe and make sure nobody has any ill will." Shibly says that he doesn't know which Facebook post caught the agents' attention, and that it was the first time he had heard of Facebook's parent company, Meta, preemptively reporting posts to law enforcement. [Abdeljawad] made multiple angry posts per day about the war in Gaza, referring to Israel as "Israhell." But none of the posts on her feed call for violence. Ironically, Abdeljawad had also posted a warning about exactly the kind of government monitoring she was later subjected to. "Don't fall for their games. Our community is being watched & they are just waiting for any reason to round us up," Abdeljawad wrote.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and the erosion of civil liberties from reliable major media sources.


The Weaponization of the Secret Service Has Put Bobby Kennedy’s Life at Risk
2024-04-01, ScheerPost
Posted: 2024-04-08 23:10:21
https://scheerpost.com/2024/04/01/the-weaponization-of-the-secret-service-has...

For 55 years, every presidential administration has granted early protection to major candidates who requested it. The Biden administration is the sole outlier. The Kennedy campaign made its fifth formal request for Secret Service protection in March, citing a 67-page report of repeated death threats, nutjob letters, two heavily armed intruders to a campaign event, an invader in Kennedy’s Cape Cod house, and another man who invaded Kennedy’s home twice in one day when Kennedy and his wife, Cheryl Hines, were at home. President Biden’s decision to deny Secret Service protection to Kennedy seems to be based on political considerations and weaponizes the Secret Service by making it necessary for Kennedy to raise and spend millions of dollars each month for security. Kennedy appears to fit neatly into the law governing Secret Service protection for presidential candidates. Security costs the campaign 30 cents out of each dollar raised. Secret Service records recently revealed the agency’s conclusions that Kennedy is at “elevated risk for adverse attention,” and after reviewing credible armed threats against Kennedy, the agency assembled a group of eight teams ready to step in quickly after they get the go-ahead. But they never got it. RFK Jr. has provoked and challenged some of the most powerful forces in our country, especially concerning the military-industrial complex, the CIA, and endless foreign wars that so enrich defense contractors. The perils to Kennedy arise not only because of his name but also because of the mainstream media’s relentless demonization of him.

Note: Nikki Haley asked for Secret Service protection earlier this month, and the Secret Service agreed even though she is no longer in the race. Read more about the JFK assassination. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption from reliable major media sources.


'Four Died Trying': The Assassinations That Changed the World
2023-11-20, Truthdig
Posted: 2024-04-08 23:08:02
https://www.truthdig.com/articles/there-was-a-coup-in-this-country-in-1963/

A new nonfiction streaming series, “Four Died Trying” ... investigates not only the JFK liquidation, but also the people and players allegedly behind the assassinations of Malcolm X on Feb. 21, 1965; Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., on April 4, 1968; and Sen. Robert Francis Kennedy on June 6, 1968. Each of these killings is a false mystery. We know what happened to these guys. Each of these leaders in the 1960s were killed by the powers-that-be because of what they were doing at the time. Who planned it? It’s a combination of people within the Pentagon, the CIA, Johnson, elements of the mob. There’s continually more evidence to show that all of these groups were involved. They were each of them, in their own ways, working for a better world. President Kennedy ... was trying to end the Cold War. Malcolm was going to bring charges against the U.S. in the U.N., in the World Court. Martin Luther King came out against the Vietnam War and was planning the occupation of Washington, D.C. [with the Poor People’s Campaign]. Bobby was becoming the candidate of the poor and disenfranchised and was talking about investigating his brother’s death and pulling out of Vietnam. We haven’t had any president since then who hasn’t been a creature of this military-industrial-intelligence-complex. This is the profound warning Eisenhower gives us. He worries that a technocracy, a scientific elite, could control American democracy. It’s a profound warning from a general and a president to the American public that we unfortunately did not heed as we should have.

Note: Listen to an excellent podcast with the filmmakers about what these tragic assassinations had in common. For more along these lines, read our in-depth essay on the MLK assassination, along with concise summaries of revealing news articles on assassinations.


U.S. Army Moves Closer To Unleashing ‘Dark Eagle’ Long-Range Hypersonic Weapon In Major Test With U.S. Navy
2024-03-30, The Debrief
Posted: 2024-04-08 23:05:42
https://thedebrief.org/u-s-army-moves-closer-to-unleashing-dark-eagle-long-ra...

The U.S. Navy is reportedly preparing to test a hypersonic weapon as part of a joint developmental program with the U.S. Army, which aims to unleash the military’s Long-Range Hypersonic Weapon (LRHW) capabilities. The forthcoming test will involve the C-HGB, which relies on the Navy’s booster rocket motor to propel the weapon to hypersonic speeds. Once the rocket is ejected, the C-HGB can glide at speeds of Mach 5 or greater.Production of the C-HGB for the Army and the Navy has been underway for several years in cooperation with Dynetics ... who was contracted to develop the prototypes. Dynetics’ development of the C-HGB prototypes marks the first time that a domestic private sector entity has been tasked with building hypersonic weapons. Known as Dark Eagle, the Army says its LRHW will be capable of reaching targets within a range of 1,725 miles and reportedly traveling at speeds exceeding 3,800 miles per hour. Presently, the U.S. is racing against similar hypersonic developments being undertaken by Russia and China, who have been actively testing similar weapons capabilities for years. Earlier this month, it was revealed that the U.S. Air Force conducted a test with a prototype hypersonic missile in the Marshall Islands. Formally known as the AGM-183, the missile is an air-launched rapid response weapon (ARRW), a type of hypersonic air-to-ground missile that was the result of a $480 million contract granted to Lockheed Martin in 2018.

Note: Learn more about emerging warfare technology in our comprehensive Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center. For more, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on military corruption from reliable major media sources.


Device Pulls Dozens of Liters of Water from the Air–Already Being Installed in Jordanian Desert Homes
2023-04-20, Good News Network
Posted: 2024-04-08 23:03:31
https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/device-pulls-dozens-of-liters-of-water-from-t...

Entrepreneurs in Jordan have created a sophisticated machine that pulls water from the desert air at a rate that could cure the country’s water woes. 1,000 units of their flagship device have already been pre-ordered by the Jordanian government, and the success of the invention has allowed the innovators to attract dozens of promising scientists who can hopefully expand on their success and bring water resources up to speed in the relatively-stable Near Eastern nation. Aquaporo [is] a relatively straightforward, air conditioning-sized machine that can harvest 35 liters of water every day in a desert climate of 20% humidity. Aquaporo CEO Kyle Cordova and engineering director Husam Almassad got their start at Jordan’s Royal Scientific Society. Their invention looked a bit like a chest freezer. Inside, rows of nanomaterials formed into tubes and other shapes act like a sieve that filters water out of the air. The physics behind it are much the same as those found in this Classical Indian architectural feature and takes advantage of air’s tendency to speed up as it moves through a narrow passageway; called the Venturi Effect. It leaves behind the heavier water vapor, which condenses, drops into a collection apparatus, and is fed then into a reservoir. Research on the efficacy of Aquaporo’s invention shows it can achieve levels of water purity greater than Nestle brand bottled water, and collects it from the air at double the rate of existing moisture capture technology.

Note: Explore more positive stories like this in our comprehensive inspiring news articles archive focused on solutions and bridging divides.


The Alternative by Nick Romeo review – moral substitutes for the free market model
2024-01-08, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2024-04-08 23:01:33
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2024/jan/08/the-alternative-how-to-build-a-...

You can’t help but applaud Nick Romeo for showing the workable alternatives to capitalism and the moral driver behind them – everything from the way companies are incorporated to how employees are hired, paid and enabled to share in the value they create. There is no need for ordinary workers to be pawns in a system that makes humanity and ethics secondary to the unbending logic of the marketplace and blind, selfish capital. He takes us to the Marienthal job guarantee programme in Austria. Today the town is piloting the impact of a universal jobs guarantee for all of its out-of-work citizens. Essentially there is a job for anyone unemployed for more than 12 months – you can even have a hand in designing what it is you will do with your time when you work – and you get paid up to £2,000 a month. People opt to work rather than receive welfare benefit, and there is ample evidence it raises their self-worth while delivering a service – care to the elderly or tidier parks – that was not there before. Better still, it costs the state virtually nothing because unemployment benefit is simply transferred to the now employed worker’s pay packet. Romeo takes his reader from one inspiring example to another – from the Purpose economy programme in the US, in which firms are dedicated to delivering greater purpose in perpetuity, to examples of companies paying genuine living wages to their employees to encourage commitment. Around 7,000 B Corps, which commit in their founding constitution to put social goals before profit, now trade in more than 90 countries – there were effectively none 25 years ago.

Note: Explore more positive stories like this in our comprehensive inspiring news articles archive focused on solutions and bridging divides.


Deep underground, robotic teamwork saves the day
2023-07-20, Knowable Magazine
Posted: 2024-04-08 22:59:37
https://knowablemagazine.org/content/article/technology/2023/deep-underground...

When a Manhattan parking garage collapsed in April this year, rescuers were reluctant to stay in the damaged building, fearing further danger. So they used a combination of flying drones and a doglike walking robot to inspect the damage, look for survivors and make sure the site was safe for human rescuers to return. Soon, rescuers may be able to call on a much more sophisticated robotic search-and-rescue response. Researchers are developing teams of flying, walking and rolling robots that can cooperate to explore areas that no one robot could navigate on its own. And they are giving robots the ability to communicate with one another and make many of their own decisions independent of their human controller. Such teams of robots could be useful in other challenging environments like caves or mines where it can be difficult for rescuers to find and reach survivors. In cities, collapsed buildings and underground sites such as subways or utility tunnels often have hazardous areas where human rescuers can’t be sure of the dangers. As robots become better, teams of them may one day be able to go into a hazardous disaster site, locate survivors and report back to their human operators with a minimum of supervision. “More work ... needs to be done,” [roboticist Viktor] Orekhov says. “But at the same time, we’ve seen the ability of the teams advanced so rapidly that even now, with their current capabilities, they’re able to make a significant difference in real-life environments.”

Note: Explore more positive stories like this in our comprehensive inspiring news articles archive focused on solutions and bridging divides.


After a handcuffed ride in the back of a police van, a man was left paralyzed and needed his legs amputated, lawsuit alleges
2024-03-20, CNN News
Posted: 2024-04-01 19:56:27
https://www.cnn.com/2024/03/20/us/florida-man-paralyzed-police-lawsuit/index....

A man filed a federal lawsuit Monday alleging he was paralyzed and needed his legs amputated after police officers in St. Petersburg, Florida, put him in restraints, placed him in the back of a police van without a seatbelt and then drove in a reckless manner. Heriberto Alejandro Sanchez-Mayen filed the lawsuit in US District Court for the Middle District of Florida against the city of St. Petersburg and officers Sarah Gaddis and Michael Thacker. After being handcuffed, Sanchez-Mayen was placed in the back of [a police] van where there were no seatbelts. Thacker allegedly drove “in a reckless manner and at an unsafe rate of speed,” before he suddenly came to a hard stop at an alleged red light, the suit states. The hard stop caused Sanchez-Mayen to be thrown forward, and his head struck a metal partition. After driving to the Pinellas County jail, Thacker opened the rear doors of the van and found Sanchez-Mayen “lying face down, motionless, unconscious, and unresponsive,” the suit states. The officer unsuccessfully attempted to wake him up and then dragged his limp body out of the van, causing Sanchez-Mayen to hit his head on the bumper, the door and the concrete floor. Sanchez-Mayen suffered spinal cord injuries that left him a quadriplegic, or paralyzed in all of his limbs, and resulted in the amputation of both of his legs. The lawsuit states Sanchez-Mayen should not have been arrested in the first place, noting the criminal trespassing charge was later dismissed.

Note: New Haven, Connecticut has agreed to a $45 million settlement with Randy Cox, another man who was paralyzed while being transported handcuffed and without a seat belt in the back of a police van. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of important news articles on police corruption from reliable major media sources.


Plundered and corrupted for 200 years, Haiti was doomed to end in anarchy
2024-03-16, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2024-04-01 19:54:06
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/mar/16/plundered-and-corrupted...

Haiti was born in 1804 out of a 13-year revolution in which the enslaved people of the then French colony of Saint-Domingue dismantled their chains, defeated, in succession, the armies of France, Britain and Spain, and established a new nation. Elites in Europe and America, meanwhile, fearful that the Haitian example might embolden others struggling for freedom, sought to isolate the new nation, refusing for decades even to recognise it. In 1825, France demanded, as the price of recognition, reparations of 150m francs. France was compelling enslaved people and their descendants to pay their former masters ... forcing [Haiti] to take out loans from French banks at exorbitant rates. By 1914, 80% of the government budget went to repaying the debt. Western nations have not only impoverished Haiti, they have also constantly intervened. Jean-Bertrand Aristide [was] a leftwing priest with mass support among Haiti’s working class and poor. Twice, in 1990 and 2001, waves of public support propelled Aristide to the presidency. And twice, in 1991 and 2004, he was ousted in bloody coups. After the first coup, Aristide returned to power with US support. Nevertheless, many of the coup leaders were on the CIA payroll and the agency did not hide its hostility. A decade later, opposition to Aristide’s economic and social policies led America to force him out of office. Today, the Haitian state barely exists.

Note: In 2021, Colombian mercenaries who had received training in the US assassinated Haitian President Jovenel Moïse. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of important news articles on intelligence agency corruption from reliable major media sources.


Elon Musk v OpenAI: tech giants are inciting existential fears to evade scrutiny
2024-03-10, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2024-04-01 19:51:56
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/mar/10/ai-wont-destroy-us-but-...

In 2015, the journalist Steven Levy interviewed Elon Musk and Sam Altman, two founders of OpenAI. A galaxy of Silicon Valley heavyweights, fearful of the potential consequences of AI, created the company as a non-profit-making charitable trust with the aim of developing technology in an ethical fashion to benefit “humanity as a whole”. Musk, who stepped down from OpenAI’s board six years ago ... is now suing his former company for breach of contract for having put profits ahead of the public good and failing to develop AI “for the benefit of humanity”. In 2019, OpenAI created a for-profit subsidiary to raise money from investors, notably Microsoft. When it released ChatGPT in 2022, the model’s inner workings were kept hidden. It was necessary to be less open, Ilya Sutskever, another of OpenAI’s founders and at the time the company’s chief scientist, claimed in response to criticism, to prevent those with malevolent intent from using it “to cause a great deal of harm”. Fear of the technology has become the cover for creating a shield from scrutiny. The problems that AI poses are not existential, but social. From algorithmic bias to mass surveillance, from disinformation and censorship to copyright theft, our concern should not be that machines may one day exercise power over humans but that they already work in ways that reinforce inequalities and injustices, providing tools by which those in power can consolidate their authority.

Note: Read more about the dangers of AI in the hands of the powerful. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on media manipulation and the disappearance of privacy from reliable sources.


Some of the Most Popular Websites Share Your Data With Over 1,500 Companies
2024-03-20, Wired
Posted: 2024-04-01 19:49:42
https://www.wired.com/story/cookie-pop-up-ad-tech-partner-top-websites/

Everywhere you go online, you’re being tracked. Almost every time you visit a website, trackers gather data about your browsing and funnel it back into targeted advertising systems, which build up detailed profiles about your interests and make big profits in the process. At the end of last year, thousands of websites started being more transparent about how many companies your data is being shared with. A WIRED analysis of the top 10,000 most popular websites shows that dozens of sites say they are sharing data with more than 1,000 companies, while thousands of other websites are sharing data with hundreds of firms. Quiz and puzzle website JetPunk tops the pile, listing 1,809 “partners” that may collect personal information, including “browsing behavior or unique IDs.” More than 20 websites from publisher Dotdash Meredith—including Investopedia.com, People.com, and Allrecipes.com—all say they can share data with 1,609 partners. The newspaper The Daily Mail lists 1,207 partners, while internet speed-monitoring firm Speedtest.net, online medical publisher WebMD, and media outlets Reuters, ESPN, and BuzzFeed all state they can share data with 809 companies. DuckDuckGo keeps a record of the companies that have the biggest tracking footprint across the web. Among the most common trackers, Google has its technology on 79 percent of websites, while those from five other companies are on more than 20 percent of websites.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corporate corruption and the disappearance of privacy from reliable major media sources.


FDA Settles Lawsuit over Ivermectin Social Media Posts
2024-03-22, Newsweek
Posted: 2024-04-01 14:53:03
https://www.newsweek.com/fda-settles-lawsuit-over-ivermectin-social-media-pos...

The FDA has agreed to delete and never republish several social-media posts suggesting that ivermectin, a drug that some doctors used to treat COVID-19, is for animals and not humans. While the FDA still does not approve of using ivermectin to treat COVID, it settled Thursday a lawsuit brought by three doctors who sued it, as well as the Department of Health and Human Services and its secretary, Xavier Becerra, and FDA secretary Robert Califf. All parties have settled. The lawsuit, filed on June 2, 2022, was brought by doctors Mary Talley Bowden, Paul Marik and Robert Apter, each of whom claimed the FDA was interfering with their ability to practice medicine. The case was initially dismissed on the grounds the FDA had "sovereign immunity," though a U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit reversed the lower court's decision saying that the "FDA is not a physician." The appeals court also said that, "Even tweet-sized doses of personalized medical advice are beyond the FDA's statutory authority." The FDA will retire a Consumer update titled, "Why You Should Not Use Ivermectin to Treat or Prevent COVID-19." The FDA also will delete and not republish posts to Twitter (now X), LinkedIn and Facebook that read: "You are not a horse. Your are not a cow. Seriously, y'all. Stop it." Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. wrote on X: "The FDA is biased against many low-cost, generic, and/or natural therapies with low profit potential. Could it be because half its funding comes from Big Pharma?"

Note: A US Senate Committee hearing on evidence of Ivermectin's benefits was once censored on Youtube. Explore a comprehensive look into the benefits and uses of ivermectin, despite establishment media's concerted effort to discredit its efficacy and safety.


Weaponizing Reality: The Dawn of Neurowarfare
2024-03-25, ScheerPost
Posted: 2024-04-01 14:48:58
https://scheerpost.com/2024/03/25/weaponizing-reality-the-dawn-of-neurowarfare/

Billionaire Elon Musk’s brain-computer interface (BCI) company Neuralink made headlines earlier this year for inserting its first brain implant into a human being. Such implants ... are described as “fully implantable, cosmetically invisible, and designed to let you control a computer or mobile device anywhere you go." They can help people regain abilities lost due to aging, ailments, accidents or injuries, thus improving quality of life. Yet, great ethical concerns arise with such advancements, and the tech is already being used for questionable purposes. Some Chinese employers have started using “emotional surveillance technology” to monitor workers’ brainwaves. Governments and militaries are already ... describing the human body and brain as war’s next domain. On this new “battlefield,” an era of neuroweapons ... has begun. The Pentagon’s research arm DARPA directly or indirectly funds about half of invasive neural interface technology companies in the US. DARPA has initiated at least 40 neurotechnology-related programs over the past 24 years. As a 2024 RAND report speculates, if BCI technologies are hacked or compromised, “a malicious adversary could potentially inject fear, confusion, or anger into [a BCI] commander’s brain and cause them to make decisions that result in serious harm.” Academic Nicholas Evans speculates, further, that neuroimplants could “control an individual’s mental functions,” perhaps to manipulate memories, emotions, or even to torture the wearer. In a [military research paper] on neurowarfare: "Microbiologists have recently discovered mind-controlling parasites that can manipulate the behavior of their hosts according to their needs by switching genes on or off. Since human behavior is at least partially influenced by their genetics, nonlethal behavior modifying genetic bioweapons that spread through a highly contagious virus could thus be, in principle, possible.

Note: The CIA once used brain surgery to make six remote controlled dogs. For more, see important information on microchip implants and CIA mind control programs from reliable major media sources.


Cops Running DNA-Manufactured Faces Through Face Recognition Is a Tornado of Bad Ideas
2024-03-22, Electronic Freedom Foundation
Posted: 2024-04-01 14:44:58
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2024/03/cops-running-dna-manufactured-faces-thr...

Police in the U.S. recently combined two existing dystopian technologies in a brand new way to violate civil liberties. A police force in California recently employed the new practice of taking a DNA sample from a crime scene, running this through a service provided by US company Parabon NanoLabs that guesses what the perpetrators face looked like, and plugging this rendered image into face recognition software to build a suspect list. Parabon NanoLabs ... alleges it can create an image of the suspect’s face from their DNA. Parabon NanoLabs claim to have built this system by training machine learning models on the DNA data of thousands of volunteers with 3D scans of their faces. The process is yet to be independently audited, and scientists have affirmed that predicting face shapes—particularly from DNA samples—is not possible. But this has not stopped law enforcement officers from seeking to use it, or from running these fabricated images through face recognition software. Simply put: police are using DNA to create a hypothetical and not at all accurate face, then using that face as a clue on which to base investigations into crimes. This ... threatens the rights, freedom, or even the life of whoever is unlucky enough to look a little bit like that artificial face. These technologies, and their reckless use by police forces, are an inherent threat to our individual privacy, free expression, information security, and social justice.

Note: Law enforcement officers in many U.S. states are not required to reveal that they used face recognition technology to identify suspects. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of important news articles on police corruption and the erosion of civil liberties from reliable major media sources.


New York Times Backhandedly Acknowledges Getting Censored by DHS
2024-03-26, Lee Fang on Substack
Posted: 2024-04-01 14:42:52
https://www.leefang.com/p/new-york-times-backhandedly-acknowledges

Last month, I revealed internal Twitter and Department of Homeland Security emails showing that the agency had successfully pressured the social media platform to censor the New York Times during the 2020 presidential election. It was impossible to get the Times to comment on my reporting that revealed that a government agency, enacted to protect national security, had muzzled one of its own. The paper remained silent. That was the case until last week when the Times finally mentioned the issue. In a lengthy article that falsely paints efforts to promote free speech as orchestrated entirely by Trump supporters, the Times buried an acknowledgment of our reporting some 52 paragraphs down. The backhanded way in which the Times finally noted that the government had suppressed the speech — in an article that essentially argues that free speech is a dangerous right-wing plot — reflects the institution's changing nature. Many in the public may view the paper as a beacon of the free press. After all, the most important Supreme Court case enshrining media rights was New York Times v. U.S., the 1971 case that made it clear that journalists have the right to publish even classified documents. There are sprawling constitutional issues at heart here that should go beyond left and right. This government or the next administration may use the DHS apparatus to control what is said about almost any political issue. DHS bureaucrats ... have planned to suppress “misinformation” about the Ukraine war, the origins of COVID-19, and topics as broad as “racial justice.” That power can easily be exploited. Last month, I testified before Congress on the importance of free speech. I also filed an amicus brief to the Supreme Court ... urging the justices to consider the lengthy evidence that the government has already overstepped its authority with respect to online censorship.

Note: This Substack was written by independent journalist Lee Fang. Read more about Department of Homeland Security's censorship efforts, including offensive operations to manipulate public opinion, discredit individuals, and infiltrate online groups. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of important news articles on censorship and media manipulation from reliable sources.


What Might the US Owe the World for Covid-19?
2024-03-16, Common Dreams
Posted: 2024-04-01 14:40:30
https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/covid-19-gain-of-function-us-research

The US government (USG) funded and supported a program of dangerous laboratory research that may have resulted in the creation and accidental laboratory release of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that caused the Covid-19 pandemic. Following the outbreak, the USG lied in order to cover up its possible role. The evidence of a possible laboratory creation revolves around a multi-year US-led research program that involved US and Chinese scientists. The research was designed by US scientists, funded mainly by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Department of Defense, and administered by a US organization, the EcoHealth Alliance (EHA), with much of the work taking place at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV). The NIH became the home for biodefense research starting in 2001. Biodefense funding from the Defense Department budget went to Dr. Anthony Fauci’s division, the National Institute for Allergies and Infectious Diseases (NIAID). NIAID and DARPA (in the Defense Department) supported extensive research on potential pathogens for biowarfare and biodefense, and for the design of vaccines to protect against biowarfare. NIAID became a large-scale financial supporter of Gain of Function (GoF) research, meaning laboratory experiments designed to genetically alter pathogens to make them even more pathogenic. There is a high likelihood that the US Government continues to this day to fund dangerous GoF work.

Note: Watch our latest Mindful News Brief series on the strong evidence that bioweapons research created COVID-19. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on COVID from reliable major media sources.


U.N. Has Flown More Than $2.9 Billion in Cash to Afghanistan Since the Taliban Seized Power, Diverting U.S. Funds
2024-03-20, ProPublica
Posted: 2024-04-01 14:38:26
https://www.propublica.org/article/united-nations-cash-afghanistan-following-...

The United Nations has delivered more than $2.9 billion in cash to Afghanistan since the Taliban seized control, resulting in the flow of U.S. funds to the extremist group, according to a recent government report. The U.N. deposits the cash into a private Afghan bank and disburses funds to the agency’s aid organizations and nonprofit humanitarian groups. But the money does not stop there. Some winds up at the central bank of Afghanistan, which is under the control of the Taliban. The group took over the country after the withdrawal of U.S. forces in August 2021. The report, from the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, provides the first detailed account of how U.S. cash falls under the control of the Taliban and adds to a growing body of evidence that contributions to the U.N. are not always reaching Afghans in need. After getting the money from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the U.N. flies shrink-wrapped $100 bills to the Kabul International Airport. The money arrives on a regular basis, as much as $40 million at a time. “Aid diversion does happen, and when it does, humanitarian work has to halt and solutions need to be found,” said one U.N. official who was not authorized to make public comment. “There are cases where the Taliban seek to take control of distribution according to their priorities, or other cases where aid work is stopped altogether.” The only way to stop [the diversion of foreign aid] would be to halt the flow of money.

Note: Read more about how the Taliban are now arms dealers after the US military left billions of dollars worth of weapons in Afghanistan. Learn more about war failures and lies in our comprehensive Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center.


I'm a Black musician who has befriended and encouraged over 200 Ku Klux Klan members to give up their robes.
2023-06-02, Business Insider
Posted: 2024-04-01 14:36:17
https://www.businessinsider.com/daryl-davis-ku-klux-klan-kkk-musician-racism-...

In 1983, I was out playing at the Silver Dollar Lounge. I had just finished playing the first song when someone put an arm around my shoulder. It was a white guy. He said it was his first time sitting with a Black guy, and I asked why. The man looked at me and said, "I'm a member of the Ku Klux Klan." I thought he was joking. But he pulled out his wallet and handed me his KKK membership card. It only dawned on me a couple years later that I blew my chance to ask them the question that had been plaguing me since I was 10 years old: How can you hate me when you don't know me? Who better to ask that of than someone who went out of their way to join an organization that has, for over 100 years, practiced hating people who don't look like them? I spent the next several years traveling across the country, interviewing the man from that night, Klan leaders, and Klan members, and eventually writing a book about it. I did not convert anybody. Over 200 Klan members have converted themselves. The more we conversed, the more people would change. One time, someone said we should put Black people down. But I sat there calmly, and they'd be curious about why I didn't fight back. Now their ears are open. Now we can nourish those seeds, water them, and, in most cases, they bloom. Of course, some people go to their graves with hatred in their hearts. But what gives me hope, despite the current state of this country, is the fact that I've seen it work. I've seen people change.

Note: Daryl Davis has successfully persuaded more than 200 KKK members and other white supremacists to disavow their allegiances. Read more about the power of calling people in with love, rather than criticism and judgment. Explore more positive stories like this in our comprehensive inspiring news articles archive focused on solutions and bridging divides.


Paraplegic Veteran Uses Skydiving to Reclaim Lost Sensation in His Legs and Soul
2024-03-12, Good News Network
Posted: 2024-04-01 14:34:28
https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/paraplegic-veteran-uses-skydiving-to-reclaim-...

There was a lot that Army veteran Alex Dillman lost when he became a paraplegic after an IED blew up under his legs in Afghanistan, but now an unlikely activity has allowed him to take some of what he lost back. Hurtling through the air at 120 mph, Dillman doesn’t need his wheelchair to skydive; he doesn’t really need his legs either. In that unique state of concentration and freedom, he says he’s “expected to perform,” a do-or-die state of mind that he says he hasn’t felt since his old life on deployment. Dillman originally saw adventure therapy as a way to combat depression and PTSD he suffered from in the wake of his lost abilities, but he never imagined it would help him get some of those abilities back. Now he’s part of an adventure therapy non-profit called Skydive First Project, where he utilizes outdoor adventures to assist individuals suffering from PTSD and depression. Based in Tampa, activities encompass hiking, kayaking, rock climbing, horseback riding, scuba diving, and tandem skydiving. “[The] great thing about skydiving is that it gets me out of the chair,” said Dillman. “I don’t bring my chair with me, so I’m in a free state. I don’t need to be in the chair to perform the act of skydiving.” “I can feel my legs and my feet to a certain extent. I can get a better sense of my overall being, feel what my legs are doing, feel what my hips are doing. Having that feeling again ... even if it’s for 30 seconds or 60 seconds ... is enough for me!”

Note: Read more inspiring news articles on incredible people with disabilities.


German hospitals serve planetary health diet
2024-03-28, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2024-04-01 14:32:41
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/mar/28/planetary-health-diet-mea...

Patrick Burrichter did not think about saving lives or protecting the planet when he trained as a chef. But 25 years later he has focused his culinary skills on doing exactly that. On the outskirts of Berlin, Burrichter and his team cook for a dozen hospitals that offer patients a “planetary health” diet – one that is rich in plants and light in animals. Compared with the typical diet in Germany, known for its bratwurst sausage and doner kebab, the 13,000 meals they rustle up each day are better for the health of people and the planet. In Burrichter’s kitchen, the steaming vats of coconut milk dal and semolina dumpling stew need to be more than just cheap and healthy – they must taste so good that people ditch dietary habits built up over decades. The biggest challenge, says Burrichter, is replacing the meat in a traditional dish. Moderate amounts of meat can form part of a healthy diet, providing protein and key nutrients, but the average German eats twice as much as doctors advise. Patients on the wards of Waldfriede praise the choice of meals on offer. Martina Hermann, 75, says she has been inspired to cook more vegetables when she gets home. Followers of the planetary health diet need not abandon animal products altogether. The guidelines, which were proposed by 37 experts from the EAT-Lancet Commission in 2019, translate to eating meat once a week and fish twice a week, along with more wholegrains, nuts and legumes.

Note: Explore more positive stories like this in our comprehensive inspiring news articles archive focused on solutions and bridging divides.


Can a 50-year-old treaty still keep the world safe from the changing threat of bioweapons?
2023-04-28, Vox
Posted: 2024-03-25 20:41:08
https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/23700801/bioweapons-biological-weapons-con...

The Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) prohibits the production, use, development, stockpiling, or transfer of biological toxins or disease-causing organisms against humans, animals, or plants. More than 180 countries are party to the pact, which came into force in 1975 as the first multilateral treaty to ban an entire class of weapon. And in the years since, the taboo against state use of biological weapons has largely held. Yet a volatile geopolitical environment, combined with the rapid advance and increased access in the ability to edit and engineer pathogens, is straining and testing the nearly 50-year-old BWC as never before. From the BWC’s beginnings, critics have said it lacked vital elements, like a verification mechanism to make sure everyone is following it. Global tensions, scientific advances, and the ever-expanding repertoire of what is possible with both biology and chemistry are making those flaws and cracks ever more visible. Some high-profile mishaps linked to the US chemical and biological weapons programs ... along with public anger over the use of herbicides like Agent Orange during the Vietnam War, prompted Congress to pressure the Nixon administration to review the biological and chemical weapons programs. Contagions are hard to control and contain, and the same pathogens that can infect your target can also sicken you and your population. This is also why they tend to be used as a stealth agent of war. “The holy grail that we’ve struggled with with the Biological Weapons Convention is how do you verify that the countries that have signed up to the treaty are not making biological weapons?” said Kenneth Ward, US special representative to the Biological Weapons Convention.

Note: Watch our latest Mindful News Brief series on the strong evidence that bioweapons research created COVID-19. Learn more about emerging warfare technology in our comprehensive Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center. For more, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on science corruption from reliable major media sources.


Dangerous lab leaks happen far more often than the public is aware
2023-05-30, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2024-03-25 20:38:55
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/may/30/lab-leaks-shrouded-secrecy

Safety breaches happen every year at labs experimenting with dangerous pathogens. Scientists and other lab workers are bitten by infected animals, stuck by contaminated needles and splashed with infectious fluids. Yet the public rarely learns about these incidents, which tend to be shrouded in secrecy. For example, when a safety breach occurred in 2019 at a University of Wisconsin-Madison lab experimenting with a dangerous and highly controversial lab-created H5N1 avian influenza virus, the university never told the public – or local and state public health officials. In another incident, a pipe burst on a lab waste-holding tank in 2018 at a US army research facility at Fort Detrick, near Washington DC. Workers initially dismissed that any safety breach had occurred. Then army officials belatedly issued public statements that left out key details and created the misleading impression that no dangerous pathogens could have left the base. Yet my reporting has uncovered government documents and even a photo showing the giant tank spewing an estimated 2,000 to 3,000 gallons of unsterilized lab wastewater near an open storm drain that feeds into a popular public waterway. Regulation of lab safety in the US and around the world is fragmented and often relies heavily on scientific institutions policing themselves. There is no comprehensive tracking of which labs hold collections of the most dangerous viruses, bacteria and toxins.

Note: Watch our latest Mindful News Brief series on the strong evidence that bioweapons research created COVID-19. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corruption in government and in the scientific community from reliable major media sources.


Pentagon’s flawed UFO report demands congressional action
2024-03-15, The Hill
Posted: 2024-03-25 20:36:02
https://thehill.com/opinion/technology/4526160-pentagons-flawed-ufo-report-de...

On March 8, the Department of Defense published the most significant report on UFOs in at least two generations — a congressionally mandated historical review of U.S. government involvement with unidentified anomalous phenomena or UAP. Unfortunately, the report from the Pentagon’s All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) contains an array of striking omissions and one particularly egregious misrepresentation. The result is a misleading report which, like so much government UFO-related propaganda over seven decades, tells the reader just to move on, nothing to see here. AARO has not provided a plausible explanation for naval aviators’ more recent encounters — including one harrowing near-collision — with spherical objects exhibiting extraordinary flight characteristics. Worst of all, AARO’s review misrepresents the most exhaustive, comprehensive historical analysis of UFO incidents, conducted on behalf of the Air Force by the Battelle Memorial Institute in the early 1950s. According to AARO, the resulting report found that “all cases that had enough data were resolved and explainable.” But this is not what Battelle’s analysis found at all, and AARO’s misrepresentation of its conclusions speaks volumes. According to the Battelle analysis ... of the UFO cases considered “Excellent” and with sufficient data to draw a conclusion, 33 percent were categorized as having “unknown” origin.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on UFOs from reliable major media sources. Then explore the excellent, reliable resources provided in our new UFO Information Center.


The 4 Big Questions the Pentagon’s New UFO Report Fails to Answer
2024-03-11, Wired
Posted: 2024-03-25 20:34:08
https://www.wired.com/story/questions-pentagon-ufo-report/

The United States Defense Department announced Friday that it found no evidence that the government is covering up contact with extraterrestrials. The report was issued by the Pentagon’s All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), the unit created and tasked in recent years with studying UAP sightings. The report in its own way raises as many new questions as it answers. AARO investigators, for instance, dug through the claims of witnesses and whistleblowers and successfully traced back the underlying research projects, Special Access Programs (SAPs), and classified compartments. As the report says, “AARO investigated numerous named, and described, but unnamed programs alleged to involve UAP exploitation conveyed to AARO through official interviews,” and ultimately, “conclude[d] many of these programs represent authentic, current and former sensitive, national security programs, but none of these programs have been involved with capturing, recovering, or reverse-engineering off-world technology or material.” What exactly are the secret compartmentalized programs that the whistleblowers and government witnesses misidentified as being related to UAP technology? What, exactly, are the Pentagon, intelligence community, or defense contractors working on that ... looks and sounds like reverse-engineering out-of-this-world technology or even studying so-called “non-human biologics”?

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on UFOs from reliable major media sources. Then explore the excellent, reliable resources provided in our new UFO Information Center.


World Bank Chief Apologizes to Staff for Handling of Child Sex Abuse Scandal
2024-03-14, The Intercept
Posted: 2024-03-25 20:31:56
https://theintercept.com/2024/03/14/world-bank-child-sex-abuse-scandal-bridge...

Over the past year, Neha Wadekar and I unearthed a whistleblower’s shocking claim of a cover-up of a child sex abuse scandal, a who’s who of international do-good financiers, and a for-profit education chain operating mostly in Africa called Bridge International Academies. An investigator working for the World Bank was stymied and retaliated against. We got notes from a critical phone call between World Bank officials and company executives showing a plan to “neutralize Adler” — the lead internal investigator who had uncovered the allegations — and to slow down the process. “Time matters,” as one person on the call put it. “Need to delay until Series F.” (That’s a name for a financing round.) Following our reporting, Sens. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and Peter Welch, D-Vt., sent multiple letters to the World Bank, warning the new president that how he responded to the scandal would be used by Congress as a proxy for his broader seriousness about reforming the bank. “We view the Bridge case as a litmus test for the conversation currently taking place around IFC’s responsibility to remedy social and environmental harm caused by its projects, especially those where IFC is not following its own policies,” the senators wrote. Bridge International Academies was backed by the World Bank’s IFC, as well as prominent Silicon Valley and venture capital leaders, including private funds linked to Bill Ackman, Mark Zuckerberg, and Pierre Omidyar.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corporate corruption and sexual abuse scandals from reliable major media sources.


A is For Abuse: Two Harvard Grads Saw Big Profits in African Education. Children Paid the Price.
2023-03-23, The Intercept
Posted: 2024-03-25 20:30:03
https://theintercept.com/2023/03/23/bridge-schools-africa-kenya-education/

Bridge International Academies ... grew into a chain of schools providing a homogeneous curriculum developed by researchers in Cambridge, Massachusetts, to hundreds of thousands of students in Kenya, Uganda, Nigeria, Liberia, and India. Today, it is the largest for-profit primary education chain in the world. The company is financed today by some of the highest-profile do-good donors in the game — or rather, the for-profit arms of their networks. In March 2022, the World Bank’s financing arm — the International Finance Corporation — quietly divested from NewGlobe, the parent company of Bridge International. A series of abuse and neglect allegations in Kenya ... had caught the eye of a Nairobi-based human rights group, the East African Centre for Human Rights, or EACHRights, as well as the internal watchdog at the World Bank, known as the Compliance Advisor Ombudsman, or CAO. “I find it deeply suspect that CAO uncovers explosive child sexual abuse allegations in the course of a compliance investigation and shortly thereafter, the World Bank president unexpectedly terminates the head of the CAO,” said one well-placed civil society representative whose clients have complaints before the CAO. “Meanwhile, three years after the child sexual abuse allegations came to light, the CAO has still not produced an investigation report.” It’s very sad, because the CAO has always been the kind of beacon of accountability of any kind of institution, public or private. No more.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corporate corruption and sexual abuse scandals from reliable major media sources.


Biometrics Giant Accenture Quietly Took Over LA Residents’ Jail Reform Plan
2024-03-12, The Intercept
Posted: 2024-03-25 20:28:30
https://theintercept.com/2024/03/12/los-angeles-jail-accenture-measure-j/

In November 2020 ... a ballot initiative known as Measure J passed with 57 percent support, amending the LA County charter so that jailing people before trial would be treated as a last resort. In June, LA County signed over the handling of changes to pretrial detention under Measure J to the consulting firm Accenture, a behemoth in the world of biometric databases and predictive policing. Accenture has pushed counterterror and policing strategies around the globe: The company built the world’s biggest biometric identification system in India, which has used similar technologies to surveil protesters and conduct crowd control as part of efforts by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party to investigate the citizenship of Muslim residents. Accenture ballooned into a giant in federal consulting over the course of the “war on terror,” winning hundreds of millions of dollars in lucrative contracts from federal agencies like the Department of Homeland Security for projects from a “virtual border” to recruiting and hiring Customs and Border Protection and Border Patrol agents. In 2006, Accenture won a $10 million contract for a DHS biometric ID program, the world’s second biggest, to collect and share biometric data on foreign nationals entering or leaving the U.S. Several LA-based advocates told The Intercept that the contract is yet another development that calls into question the county’s commitment to real criminal justice reform.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corporate corruption and the disappearance of privacy from reliable major media sources.


Musk's SpaceX is building spy satellite network for US intelligence agency, sources say
2024-03-16, Reuters
Posted: 2024-03-25 20:26:34
https://www.reuters.com/technology/space/musks-spacex-is-building-spy-satelli...

SpaceX is building a network of hundreds of spy satellites under a classified contract with a U.S. intelligence agency, five sources familiar with the program said. The network is being built by SpaceX's Starshield business unit under a $1.8 billion contract signed in 2021 with the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), an intelligence agency that manages spy satellites. The plans show the extent of SpaceX's involvement in U.S. intelligence and military projects and illustrate a deeper Pentagon investment into vast, low-Earth orbiting satellite systems aimed at supporting ground forces. If successful, the sources said the program would significantly advance the ability of the U.S. government and military to quickly spot potential targets almost anywhere on the globe. Reuters reporting discloses for the first time that the SpaceX contract is for a powerful new spy system with hundreds of satellites bearing Earth-imaging capabilities that can operate as a swarm in low orbits. The planned Starshield network is separate from Starlink, SpaceX's growing commercial broadband constellation that has about 5,500 satellites in space. The classified constellation of spy satellites represents one of the U.S. government’s most sought-after capabilities in space because it is designed to offer the most persistent, pervasive and rapid coverage of activities on Earth. "No one can hide," one of the sources said of the system’s potential capability, when describing the network's reach.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on intelligence agency corruption and the disappearance of privacy from reliable major media sources.


Pentagon UAP Report Says No Evidence U.S. Has Collected Exotic Technology, Kept Programs Hidden From Congress
2024-03-09, The Debrief
Posted: 2024-03-25 20:24:26
https://thedebrief.org/pentagon-uap-report-says-no-evidence-u-s-has-collected...

A historical report issued by the Pentagon’s office tasked with the investigation of unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP), commonly referred to as UFOs, says it found no evidence that sightings of mysterious aerial objects represent extraterrestrial technology, or that secret programs related to the recovery of crashed exotic vehicles have been hidden from Congress. The report is the first installment in a two-volume series produced by the Defense Department’s All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO). “To date, AARO has not discovered any empirical evidence that any sighting of a UAP represented off-world technology or the existence a classified program that had not been properly reported to Congress,” the report said. Citing investigations that revealed most sightings to result from the “misidentification of ordinary objects and phenomena,” the report acknowledged that “many UAP reports remain unsolved.” Following the release of AARO’s report ... few mainstream outlets discussed the numerous intriguing allusions to legitimate advanced capabilities the U.S. possesses that are peppered throughout the report—many of which, in likelihood, actually have contributed to UAP sightings over the years. These seemingly went unnoticed, as well as several factual errors that appear throughout the new report that, for some, potentially undermine the level of rigor AARO appears to have applied in its investigations.

Note: In our UFO Information Center, we reveal significant evidence of top-secret UFO government programs that not even most presidents and Congressional members have access to.


AARO Report Unearths Odd Claims Involving U.S. Recovery Of Material From 1952 UFO Incident
2024-03-12, The Debrief
Posted: 2024-03-25 20:22:23
https://thedebrief.org/fragmented-facts-aaro-report-unearths-odd-claims-invol...

During the summer of 1952, the United States was on high alert as UFO sightings over the nation’s capital were making frequent headlines. One of the objects—a small, glowing disc—was pursued and shot at by a military aircraft, blasting off a fragment that fell into a field near Washington D.C., which a naval officer later retrieved. Last week, the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) released a long-awaited historical report on its findings involving the United States government’s involvement with UAP and related programs since the end of World War II. In the report, AARO investigators maintained the U.S. federal government’s longstanding position that it has never found any convincing evidence of extraterrestrial technologies operating near Earth, nor of any secret programs involving the acquisition or reverse engineering of crashed exotic technologies that have remained hidden from Congress. Although the recent AARO historical report only provides a cursory summary of the alleged 1952 incident ... there is still more to this bizarre story of alleged UAP debris. Much of this involves the Canadian engineer and UFO researcher Wilbert Smith, who eventually received the alleged flying saucer fragment. “Smith assessed that UFOs were of extraterrestrial origin and that they flew by magnetism,” the recent AARO historical report states. “Smith believed he was in personal contact with extraterrestrial beings through telepathy,” AARO’s investigators add.

Note: Wilbert Smith was the head of the Canadian government’s first study on UFOs. He concluded in a declassified 1950 memo that US authorities consider UFO phenomena to be “of tremendous significance,” and that UFOs are the “most highly classified subject in the US government.” In our UFO Information Center, we reveal significant evidence of top-secret UFO government programs that not even most presidents and Congressional members have access to.


Penguin Becomes ‘Guide Bird’ Companion For Zoo Pal Suffering with Cataracts: Waddle I do Without You?
2024-02-10, Good News Network
Posted: 2024-03-25 20:19:36
https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/penguin-becomes-guide-bird-companion-for-his-...

A penguin has become a ‘guide-bird’ for a fellow African Penguin with poor eyesight, escorting her around their enclosure to get food and build confidence. The animal helper named ‘Penguin’ has bonded with ‘Squid’ the three-year-old that suffers from cataracts, a debilitating condition that clouds the lens of the eye. Squid is often disoriented during busy feeding times and relies on Penguin’s “unwavering calmness”. Penguin has become Squid’s beacon, guiding her around the enclosure and acting as her ‘eyes’. The hand-reared birds are now inseparable—to the delight of their human keepers at Birdworld who are sharing their remarkable relationship. “The intuitive behavior observed between Penguin and Squid has revealed a remarkable level of empathy and understanding, showcasing the profound connections that can form within the animal kingdom,” said Polly Branham a spokesperson for the aviary in Surrey, England. Having been nurtured within the colony, Squid honed her skills alongside her peers—learning the essence of being a penguin—but she used to be quite anxious about approaching the fish bucket at feeding time. “The excitement of the other penguins created a more unpredictable environment, and she would shy away from this for fear of getting caught in the crossfire of beaks,” explained Branham. “That is how Penguin has been such an enormous help to her. “His stability was something she could rely on.”

Note: Explore more positive stories like this in our comprehensive inspiring news articles archive focused on solutions and bridging divides.


Need to track animals around the world? Tap into the 'spider-verse,' scientists say
2024-02-01, NPR
Posted: 2024-03-25 20:17:59
https://www.npr.org/2024/02/01/1228141523/track-animals-edna-spiderweb

The rich tapestry of life on Earth is fraying, due in large part to human-caused habitat loss and climate change. As more species disappear, researchers are racing to track this global decline in biodiversity to understand its consequences and counteract it through conservation initiatives. Those efforts rely on accurate animal monitoring, which can be difficult, time-consuming and costly. Now, in new research published in the journal iScience, researchers present evidence for a new low-cost, noninvasive tool that can be used to monitor animals: spiderwebs. They're using environmental DNA, or eDNA, which is simply different creatures' DNA just lying around in the environment. Previous work showed that webs are good sources of insect DNA, including what spiders are gorging on. But [evolutionary biologist Morton] Allentoft and [student Josh] Newton wanted to see whether the webs were also trapping DNA from vertebrate animals. So Newton ... collected spiderwebs. Back in the lab, Newton amplified the small amounts of DNA from the webs. They were filled with genetic material from animals. "It was wonderful," says Allentoft. "We could see these kangaroos [and] wallabies." There were nine other mammals, 13 species of birds, the motorbike frog and the snake-eyed skink. In other words, the technique worked. It represents a new way of tracking animal biodiversity and alerting us when we should intervene to conserve native species.

Note: Explore more positive stories like this in our comprehensive inspiring news articles archive focused on solutions and bridging divides.


A Guantanamo Guard And His Detainee Reunite
2018-08-12, NPR
Posted: 2024-03-25 20:16:06
https://www.npr.org/2018/08/12/637932193/a-guantanamo-guard-and-a-detainee-re...

Mohamedou Ould Slahi and Steve Wood met in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in 2004. At the time, Slahi had been in captivity for two years, accused of acts of terrorism. Wood, then a member of the National Guard, was assigned to watch the Mauritania native. For nine months, they spent their days together. After more than a decade, the two saw each other once again this spring, when Wood traveled to Slahi's home in Mauritania to see his old friend. The two became fast friends. They bonded over the movie The Big Lebowski. Slahi related to the main character, "The Dude," a victim of mistaken identity. The U.S. government detained Slahi in Guantanamo for 14 years, but never charged him with an offense. In 2010, a federal judge ruled that Mohamedou should be released from Guantanamo. Wood reached out to Slahi's legal team, telling them that he'd like to help in any way he could. He wrote a letter supporting Slahi's release. While Slahi was still in prison, his 2015 memoir, Guantanamo Diary, became a bestseller. The next year, the Department of Defense finally allowed Slahi to return to his home. Wood ... flew there in May to see the man he once guarded. "We never believed in this war," Slahi said. "There is no war between Muslims and Americans. There is no war between Americans and the poor people in the world. There is only a war between people on the top who have their own agenda. People are people no matter what ... When we die it doesn't matter what passport we hold."

Note: Explore more positive stories like this in our comprehensive inspiring news articles archive focused on solutions and bridging divides.


In Brazil, prisons without guards offer inmates path to recovery
2023-05-16, AlJazeera
Posted: 2024-03-25 11:22:12
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/5/16/in-brazil-prisons-without-guards-off...

APAC, a Brazilian non-profit that advocates for better treatment of prisoners, has a unique model in the dozens of facilities it manages across the country. Inmates oversee security and discipline, make their own food and wear their own clothes. Referred to as "recovering persons", prisoners are called by their name rather than by a number. The more than 400 inmates in the Sao Joao del-Rei APAC facility have the keys to their own cells - and unlike in a typical prison, there are no armed guards monitoring their movements. This is a far cry from the norm in Brazil, where the total prison population exceeds 800,000. The country's human rights ministry has cited inhumane conditions, including rotten food and torture, inside prisons in the state of Rio Grande do Norte. In 2021, a report from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights said that across Brazil, inmates were "often held in overcrowded and structurally deficient prisons, maltreated, and frequently subjected to torture". In APAC prisons, cells appear clean, food is fresh and education is part of the rehabilitation programme. In terms of recidivism, while the Brazilian state reports its national average at 39 percent after five years - a number much lower than the 80 percent cited by international observers - APAC says its facilities have a rate of around 14 percent. New inmates entering the Sao Joao del-Rei facility are greeted by a sign bearing the words: "Here the man enters, the crime stays outside."

Note: Explore more positive stories like this in our comprehensive inspiring news articles archive focused on solutions and bridging divides.


Is it long COVID or long vax? Does the government want to know?
2024-03-06, The Hill
Posted: 2024-03-18 19:48:31
https://thehill.com/opinion/healthcare/4512451-is-it-long-covid-or-long-vax-d...

Long COVID as it’s commonly known is a serious and poorly understood problem. But there is also growing evidence that the COVID vaccine could cause a similar disease. We are critical care physicians with the FLCCC Alliance (the Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance) who have treated COVID patients throughout the pandemic. One of us recently opened a private practice focused on patients with long COVID. In two years, the practice has evaluated and treated over 1,000 individuals. Approximately 70 percent of these patients said their reported symptoms occurred in the minutes, hours, days and weeks after COVID vaccination, as opposed to after COVID infection. This could be tied to a new condition that’s flown under the radar until recently. This syndrome, dubbed “long vax,” is just starting to make its way into the medical literature. Dr. Harlan Krumholz at the Yale School of Medicine published a survey of 241 patients who described post-COVID vaccination symptoms of exercise intolerance, excessive fatigue, numbness, brain fog and neuropathy, a nervous system disorder that can cause pain, tingling sensations, numbness or weakness. Long COVID patients were excluded from the study. The concern is that our findings, Krumholz’s study, and any reports of adverse events from COVID-19 vaccination, will be subject to the same institutional censorship we saw throughout the pandemic.

Note: We've documented the growing public backlash against the COVID vaccine, including landmark lawsuits. Vaccine adverse event numbers are made publically available through the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), and currently show 1,630,913 COVID vaccine injury reports, 37,231 COVID Vaccine Reported Deaths, and 214,906 COVID Vaccine Reported Hospitalizations.


Chemical in Water Bottles Linked to Child Obesity
2024-03-01, Newsweek
Posted: 2024-03-18 19:45:30
https://www.newsweek.com/chemical-water-bottles-child-obesity-1875069

A chemical found in water bottles has been linked to child obesity, according to a new study. The synthetic chemical Bisphenol A, or BPA, was found in a variety of widely used products, such as plastic water bottles and eyewear. But it is also a chemical known to disrupt the body's hormones. The chemical, which can make its way into other avenues, such as food and the soil, accumulates in the body's tissues and organs when ingested. It is known to affect weight and can affect certain cells. A new study published in mSystems found that this chemical could be playing a role in causing different bacteria groups in children of normal weight than those who were overweight. "We found that the gut microbial community responds differently to BPA exposure depending on the BMI (body-mass index) of the individual," [said] microbiologist Margarita Aguilera of the University of Granada. "[Those connections] underscore the intricate interplay between gut microbiota and potential human pathophysiology resulting from cumulative BPA exposure." Researchers ... found overall that there were more unique bacteria groups in the children of a normal weight. This strongly suggests that the bacteria in those children may be able to fight off harmful chemicals like BPA. This study, and future studies into the effects of BPA, "could point to future interventions and policy changes that may reduce the risk of childhood obesity worldwide," Aguilera said.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on health and corporate corruption from reliable major media sources.


Cancer-causing chemical found in skincare brands including Target, Proactive, Clearasil
2024-03-11, USA Today
Posted: 2024-03-18 19:43:34
https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2024/03/11/carcinogen-linked-popular-acn...

High levels of a chemical known to cause cancer have been found at "unacceptably high levels" in popular acne products from brands like Proactive, Target's Up & Up, Clinique, and Clearasil, according to a recent report by independent laboratory Valisure. Benzene, a known human carcinogen, was found to develop in products with benzoyl peroxide, a chemical used to treat acne, at a level of over 800 times the concentration limit of 2 parts per million set by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, the March 6 report said. The drug product was found to be "fundamentally unstable" especially when stored at high temperatures. The report found a Proactiv product left in 158 degrees Fahrenheit of a hot compact car resulted in the detection of benzene at around 1,270 times the Environmental Protection Agency’s calculated threshold for increased cancer risk. "There is not a safe level of benzene that can exist in any skin care product, over the counter or prescription," Christopher Bunick, MD, PhD, Associate Professor of Dermatology at Yale University, said in a statement for Valisure. The report also found that benzene can leak out of packaging and "pose a potential inhalation risk" to consumers, according to the report. The company sent a citizen petition to the FDA on Tuesday describing its report and requesting "recalls and a suspension of sales for products containing the active pharmaceutical ingredient benzoyl peroxide."

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on health and corporate corruption from reliable major media sources.


US Lawmaker Cited NYC Protests in a Defense of Warrantless Spying
2024-03-12, Wired
Posted: 2024-03-18 19:41:30
https://www.wired.com/story/hpsci-us-protests-section-702-presentation/

Last year, the Republican chairman of the US House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) presented an image of Americans protesting the war in Gaza while implying possible ties between the protesters and Hamas, an allegation that was used to illustrate why surveillance reforms may prove detrimental to national security. In December, as many as 200 Republican staffers gathered behind closed doors to hear a presentation ... aimed at shoring up support for a US surveillance program known as Section 702. Section 702 authorizes the government to surveil foreigners located physically overseas ... but not Americans or individuals on US soil. While eavesdropping on foreigners is permitted, doing so for the explicit purpose of gaining access to an American’s communications—a practice commonly referred to as “reverse targeting”—is strictly forbidden. “Yes, it’s true, you cannot ‘target’ protesters under 702,” one aide, a legislative director for a Republican lawmaker, says. “But that doesn’t mean the FBI doesn't still have the power to access those emails or listen to their calls if it wants.” Between 2020 and early 2021, the FBI conducted “tens of thousands” of queries related to “civil unrest” in the United States. “Political protest is literally how America was founded. It’s in our DNA,” says Jason Pye, senior policy analyst at the nonprofit FreedomWorks. “Whether you agree with these protesters or not is irrelevant.”

Note: The FBI has a long history of spying on political activists. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and the disappearance of privacy from reliable major media sources.


Biden’s Big Brother teams are now watching what you buy
2024-01-19, New York Post
Posted: 2024-03-18 19:39:10
https://nypost.com/2024/01/19/news/bidens-big-brother-teams-are-now-watching-...

Anything you purchase can be used against you. After the Jan. 6 Capitol clash, the Biden administration vastly expanded federal surveillance of average Americans. The Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) stretched its “suspicious behavior” definition, warning banks to track “‘extremism’ indicators that include ‘transportation charges, such as bus tickets, rental cars, or plane tickets, for travel to areas with no apparent purpose,’ or ‘the purchase of books (including religious texts),’” the House committee reported. If you bought a gun or ammo since 2021, Team Biden bureaucrats may have automatically classified you as a “potential active shooter.” FinCEN encouraged banks to use terms including “TRUMP” and “MAGA” for “identifying transactions on behalf of federal law enforcement,” the House Judiciary Committee reports. Rep. Jordan is seeking sworn testimony about the FBI’s “mass accumulation and use of Americans’ private information without legal process.” Jordan complained that the FBI “prepared an official report that broadly characterized certain political beliefs as indicative of domestic violent extremism.” The Canadian government used emergency decrees to freeze the bank accounts of anyone suspected of being tied to COVID “Freedom Convoy” protests in 2022.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and the disappearance of privacy from reliable major media sources.


US Court Sides With Apple, Tesla, Other Tech Companies Over Child Labor in Africa
2024-03-05, US News & World Report/Reuters
Posted: 2024-03-18 19:36:46
https://www.usnews.com/news/top-news/articles/2024-03-05/us-appeals-court-dis...

A federal appeals court on Tuesday refused to hold five major technology companies liable over their alleged support for the use of child labor in cobalt mining operations in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. In a 3-0 decision, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruled in favor of Google parent Alphabet, Apple, Dell Technologies, Microsoft and Tesla, rejecting an appeal by former child miners and their representatives. The plaintiffs accused the five companies of joining suppliers in a "forced labor" venture by purchasing cobalt, which is used to make lithium-ion batteries. Nearly two-thirds of the world's cobalt comes from the DRC. According to the complaint, the companies "deliberately obscured" their dependence on child labor, including many children pressured into work by hunger and extreme poverty, to ensure their growing need for the metal would be met. The 16 plaintiffs included representatives of five children who were killed in cobalt mining operations. Circuit Judge Neomi Rao said the plaintiffs had legal standing to seek damages, but did not show the five companies had anything more than a buyer-seller relationship with suppliers. Terry Collingsworth, a lawyer for the plaintiffs ... said his clients may appeal further. The decision provides "a strong incentive to avoid any transparency with their suppliers, even as they promise the public they have 'zero tolerance' policies against child labor," he said. "We are far from finished seeking accountability."

Note: Unreported deaths of children, devastating diseases, toxic environments, and sexual assault are just some of the tragedies within the hidden world of cobalt mining in the DRC. Furthermore, entire communities have been forced to leave their homes to make way for new mining operations. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corporate corruption from reliable major media sources.


Emotion-tracking AI on the job: Workers fear being watched – and misunderstood
2024-03-06, Yahoo News
Posted: 2024-03-18 19:33:53
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/emotion-tracking-ai-job-workers-133506859.html

Emotion artificial intelligence uses biological signals such as vocal tone, facial expressions and data from wearable devices as well as text and how people use their computers, promising to detect and predict how someone is feeling. Over 50% of large employers in the U.S. use emotion AI aiming to infer employees’ internal states, a practice that grew during the COVID-19 pandemic. For example, call centers monitor what their operators say and their tone of voice. We wondered what workers think about these technologies. My collaborators Shanley Corvite, Kat Roemmich, Tillie Ilana Rosenberg and I conducted a survey. 51% of participants expressed concerns about privacy, 36% noted the potential for incorrect inferences employers would accept at face value, and 33% expressed concern that emotion AI-generated inferences could be used to make unjust employment decisions. Despite emotion AI’s claimed goals to infer and improve workers’ well-being in the workplace, its use can lead to the opposite effect: well-being diminished due to a loss of privacy. On concerns that emotional surveillance could jeopardize their job, a participant with a diagnosed mental health condition said: “They could decide that I am no longer a good fit at work and fire me. Decide I’m not capable enough and not give a raise, or think I’m not working enough.” Participants ... said they were afraid of the dynamic they would have with employers if emotion AI were integrated into their workplace.

Note: The above article was written by Nazanin Andalibi at the University of Michigan. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corporate corruption and the disappearance of privacy from reliable major media sources.


Who Could Have Predicted The U.S. War In Somalia Would Fail? The Pentagon.
2024-03-07, The Intercept
Posted: 2024-03-18 19:32:05
https://theintercept.com/2024/03/07/pentagon-somalia-africa-terrorism-failure/

The Pentagon has known of fundamental flaws with U.S. military operations in the Horn of Africa for nearly 20 years but has nonetheless forged ahead, failing to address glaring problems, according to a 2007 study. The 50-page analysis, conducted by the Institute for Defense Analyses, a private think tank that works solely for the U.S. government, is based on anonymized interviews with key U.S. government officials from across various departments and agencies. It found America’s nascent war in the Horn of Africa was plagued by a failure to define the parameters of the conflict or its aims; an overemphasis on military measures without a clear definition of the optimal military strategy; and barriers to coordination between the military and other government agencies. In 2007, the year the ... U.S. Africa Command, or AFRICOM, began operations, the U.S. conducted its first declared airstrike in Somalia. Since then, it has carried out more than 280 air attacks and commando raids, aimed primarily at the terrorist group al-Shabab, while the CIA and elite troops created local proxy forces to conduct low-profile operations on behalf of the United States. At the same time, the U.S. has provided Somalia with billions of dollars in counterterrorism assistance. The IDA study lamented the “presence of al-Qaeda” in the Horn of Africa and the “failed state of Somalia.” Both remain realities despite two decades of forever war.

Note: Learn more about war failures and lies in our comprehensive Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center. For more, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on military corruption from reliable major media sources.


Disclosure And National Security: Should The U.S. Government Reveal What It Knows About UAP?
2023-11-22, The Debrief
Posted: 2024-03-18 19:30:13
https://thedebrief.org/disclosure-and-national-security-should-the-u-s-govern...

Information confirming an extraterrestrial presence on Earth ... has the potential to be a genuine Pandora’s box. When I first became publicly involved in the UAP topic, the alleged recovery of ET technology was not an issue. My immediate goal was to alert policymakers to a dangerous intelligence failure, namely, the fact of serious and recurring intrusions into restricted DoD airspace by strange, unidentified aircraft. It was shocking to learn our vaunted multi-billion-dollar intelligence system was paralyzed by ineffable stigma, as effectively as any electromagnetic warfare (EW) weapon, placing US personnel and the nation at risk. This situation reminded me of both Pearl Harbor, where vital warning information was not forwarded up the chain of command, as well as 9/11, when intelligence agencies failed to share vital information that could have saved the lives of thousands of innocent civilians. Having survived the attack on the Pentagon myself, this was not a purely theoretical consideration. Our military is encountering intelligently controlled, solid objects invading restricted military airspace, sometimes even flying in formation, on an almost daily basis. Multiple credible reports indicate that UAP has rendered segments of our nuclear deterrent inoperable. I penned an article for Politico titled, "If the US Government has UFO Crash Materials It is Time to Reveal Them." In the article, I made several points, including the following: Democracy requires transparency. The American people own any materials recovered by our government. The public can handle disclosure. The government cannot forever stifle the truth, so it is better to get ahead of it. Secrecy stifles Science. There is no evidence of an imminent threat. If there is a threat, we need to know so we can prepare.

Note: The author of this article is Christopher Mellon, former deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Intelligence. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on UFOs from reliable major media sources. Then explore the excellent, reliable resources provided in our new UFO Information Center.


Why Congress needs a select committee to investigate UAP
2024-02-25, New Paradigm Institute
Posted: 2024-03-18 19:27:37
https://newparadigminstitute.org/2024/02/25/why-congress-needs-a-select-commi...

Unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP) have not only fueled public curiosity but have underscored the urgency for enhanced transparency from our government and its agencies. There is [a] need for Congress to initiate thorough public hearings on UAP, following explosive testimony last summer from intelligence officer-turned-whistleblower David Grusch regarding above top-secret crash retrieval and reverse engineering programs of technologies of unknown origin and nonhuman intelligence. Drawing inspiration from the historic U.S. Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, commonly known as the Church Committee, Congress could adopt a similar, no-nonsense approach, which would unearth government secrets about UAP, establish unprecedented transparency and instill unwavering accountability in the process. The Church Committee, led by then-Senator Frank Church (D-ID) in 1975, was pivotal in investigating and exposing US intelligence agency abuses. Taking a cue from this historic success, a Church-style Select Committee on UAP is not just advisable but imperative. Such a committee would compel government agencies and officials to testify openly about their knowledge of UAP encounters. The committee would unearth the extent to which the intelligence community engaged in a disinformation campaign against the American people to keep its UAP secrets buried.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on UFOs from reliable major media sources. Then explore the excellent, reliable resources provided in our new UFO Information Center.


How Self-Compassion Can Help People Achieve Weight Loss Goals Despite Setbacks–and Resume Dieting Faster
2024-03-10, Good News Network
Posted: 2024-03-18 19:25:25
https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/how-self-compassion-can-help-people-achieve-w...

A study of 140 overweight or obese adults enrolled in a weight loss program found that higher levels of self-compassion, particularly self-kindness, were linked to reduced negative feelings following a dietary lapse. Individuals who practiced self-kindness tended to feel less guilty and more positive about themselves despite the setback. Afterward, they reported feeling more in command of their eating habits, suggesting that self-compassion can help people regain a sense of agency after a lapse. The research from the Center for Weight, Eating and Lifestyle Sciences (WELL Center) at Drexel University, published in Appetite, found that when study participants had more self-compassionate responses to their lapse, they reported better mood and self-control over their eating and exercise behavior in the hours following the lapse. “Many people worry that self-compassion will cause complacency and lead them to settle for inadequacy, but this study is a great example of how self-compassion can help people be more successful in meeting their goals,” said [lead author] Charlotte Hagerman, PhD. “The next time you feel the urge to criticize yourself for your eating behavior, instead try speaking to yourself with the kindness that you would speak to a friend or loved one.” For example, instead of a person saying to his or herself, “You have no willpower,” reframe it to a kinder – and truer – statement: “You’re trying your best in a world that makes it very difficult to lose weight.”

Note: Explore more positive stories like this in our comprehensive inspiring news articles archive focused on solutions and bridging divides.


Eve by Cat Bohannon review – long overdue evolutionary account of women and their bodies
2023-10-10, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2024-03-18 19:23:42
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/oct/10/eve-how-female-body-drove-200-m...

Over hundreds of thousands of years, women have developed more sensitive noses (particularly around ovulation and pregnancy), finer hearing at high frequencies, extended colour vision, and longer life expectancy than men by an impressive half decade. Forget plasma exchange and supplementation – entrepreneurs trying to extend human life should be studying women, who comprise around 80% of today’s centenarians. American academic and author Cat Bohannon asks how this came to be, tracing defining female features back to our “presumed true ancestors”, our Eves as she calls them. Bohannon calls on her astounding disciplinary range to tell this epic tale. Her writing ripples with references from literature, film studies, biochemistry, cognitive science and anthropology. Evolution, as Bohannon emphasises, doesn’t care about our contemporary preferences or sensitivities. This emboldens her to confront uncomfortable stereotypes, like whether women’s brains have evolved to be inferior to men’s (in fact, the sexes have strikingly similar cerebral equipment). The author’s parting plea is that we learn more about women and girls. In the UK, unlike the US, there is still no regulation that insists women are included in medical research. Not everyone agrees with the ethical good of extending participation. Might they acknowledge that being specific about people’s sex and gender leads to more rigorous and reproducible scientific results?

Note: Read more about author Cat Bohannon's fascinating take on a wide range of discoveries and differences between the male and female body.


Legally blind Texas student defies the odds, gets accepted into veterinarian school: ‘Anything is possible’
2024-03-06, New York Post
Posted: 2024-03-18 19:21:37
https://nypost.com/2024/03/06/lifestyle/legally-blind-texas-student-defies-th...

Faith Snapp has never let her blindness get in the way of pursuing her dreams. A 22-year-old Texas native who is legally blind, Snapp was accepted into the Texas Tech University School of Veterinary Medicine. “My entire life, my family has raised horses and goats for as long as I can remember,” Snapp shared. “I always loved animals.” Snapp and her twin brother were both born prematurely — and with very limited vision. Snapp has had a guide dog since high school, but she has never let her disability come across as a limitation. She was in several clubs in high school and even worked at local animal clinics. While her blindness may have been a challenge at first, she “needed” people to come alongside her and support her dreams. “I just needed to find the people and the accommodations and the places that would be willing to help me,” the 22-year-old student [said]. “That was a little bit challenging because I think oftentimes people place limitations on somebody with a disability because they assume that they are limited.” Snapp will begin classes in August, and hopes to pursue a career as a mixed-animal veterinarian, working with both large and small animals. It doesn’t matter what challenges a person may be facing, Snapp said; people should not give up on their dreams. “No matter who you are or what your circumstances… anything is possible,” she said. “I just hope my story can help others realize that you can accomplish anything you set your mind to.”

Note: Read more inspiring news articles on incredible people with disabilities.


In Holland People With Dementia Can Work on a Farm
2022-03-07, Reasons to be Cheerful
Posted: 2024-03-13 13:14:08
https://reasonstobecheerful.world/netherlands-care-farms-aging-dementia-work/

On Dutch ‘care farms,' aging folks tend to livestock, harvest vegetables and make their own decisions. Boerderij Op Aarde is one of hundreds of Dutch “care farms” operated by people facing an array of illnesses or challenges, either physical or mental. Today, there are roughly 1,350 care farms in the Netherlands. They provide meaningful work in agricultural settings with a simple philosophy: rather than design care around what people are no longer able to do, design it to leverage and emphasize what they can accomplish. Studies in Norway and the Netherlands found that people with dementia at care farms tended to move more and participate in higher-intensity activities than those in traditional care, which can help with mobility in daily life and have a positive impact on cognition. Dementia is often linked to social isolation, and care farms were found to boost social involvement. In traditional dementia care settings ... the focus tends to be on preventing risk. There’s often a fixed schedule of simple activities, like games or movies, and the only choice attendees are given is whether to participate or not. In the course of his research, [Jan] Hassink has spoken to countless people with dementia. Common to many of them is a desire to not only participate in society, but contribute to it. “We don’t focus on what’s missing, but what is still left,” says Arjan Monteny, cofounder of Boerderij Op Aarde, “what is still possible to develop in everybody."

Note: Explore more positive stories like this in our comprehensive inspiring news articles archive focused on solutions and bridging divides.


COVID Lockdowns Were a Giant Experiment. It Was a Failure.
2023-10-30, New York Magazine
Posted: 2024-03-11 23:28:02
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/covid-lockdowns-big-fail-joe-nocera-b...

In the U.S. and the U.K. especially, lockdowns went from being regarded as something that only an authoritarian government would attempt to an example of “following the science.” But there was never any science behind lockdowns — not a single study had ever been undertaken to measure their efficacy in stopping a pandemic. One New York emergency-room doctor recalls that after the steady stream of COVID patients during March and April of 2020, “our ER was basically empty.” During the first two years of the pandemic — 2020 and 2021 — the U.S. had 19 percent more deaths than it normally saw in two years’ time. For Sweden — one of the few countries that had refused to lock down its society — it was just 4 percent. An analysis by Bloomberg found broadly similar results. In other words, for all the criticism Sweden shouldered from the world’s public health officials for refusing to institute lockdowns, it wound up seeing a lower overall death rate during the pandemic than most peer nations that shut down schools and public gatherings. The downsides of lockdowns and school closings were not being openly discussed in the mainstream media. Emily Oster, a Brown University economist … set up what she called the National COVID-19 School Response Dashboard, which eventually tracked 12 million kids in both public and private schools and continued to collect infection-rate data over the next nine months. Not once did the student rate hit one percent during any two-week span. Three CDC scientists acknowledged in the Journal of the American Medical Association: “As many schools have reopened for in-person instruction in some parts of the U.S. … there has been little evidence that schools have contributed meaningfully to increased community transmission.”

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on COVID and government corruption from reliable major media sources.


Scientist claims ‘smoking gun’ evidence COVID-19 intentionally created by researchers in Chinese lab
2024-02-29, New York Post
Posted: 2024-03-11 23:25:26
https://nypost.com/2024/02/29/world-news/scientists-may-have-started-the-covi...

COVID-19 may have been created in a Chinese lab, a British professor told the UN Wednesday. Richard H. Ebright, a molecular biologist at Rutgers University, was quoted saying in a new Wall Street Journal article that the virus that killed millions around the world may actually have been manmade in China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology. He cited evidence found in a 2018 document from the lab that talked of making such a virus. “[The document] elevates the evidence provided by the genome sequence from the level of noteworthy to the level of a smoking gun,” Ebright said. The papers from the lab cited by Ebright contained drafts and notes regarding a grant proposal called Project DEFUSE, which sought to test engineering bat coronaviruses in a way that would make them more easily transmissible to humans. The proposal was ultimately rejected and denied funding by the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, but Wade suggested that their work could have been carried out by researchers in Wuhan who had secured Chinese government funding. “Viruses made according to the DEFUSE protocol could have been available by the time Covid-19 broke out,” wrote [Nicholas] Wade, a former science editor of the New York Times. Along with the research notes, Wade claimed the specific genetic structure of the coronavirus that allowed it to infect humans served as another strong indication of “the virus’s laboratory birth.”

Note: Explore a list of news article summaries on the significant likelihood that COVID was engineered in the context of bioweapons research with US funding and Chinese military involvement at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.


US uses loophole to keep 100 arms sales to Israel under the radar amid Gaza war – report
2024-03-06, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2024-03-11 23:21:33
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/mar/06/israel-weapons-sales-loophole

The US is reported to have made more than 100 weapons sales to Israel, including thousands of bombs, since the start of the war in Gaza, but the deliveries escaped congressional oversight because each transaction was under the dollar amount requiring approval. The Biden administration ... has kept up a quiet but substantial flow of munitions to help replace the tens of thousands of bombs Israel has dropped on the tiny coastal strip, making it one of the most intense bombing campaigns in military history. Administration officials informed Congress of the 100 foreign military sales to Israel in a classified briefing. The sales ... are reported to have included precision-guided munitions, small diameter bombs, bunker busters, small arms and other lethal aid. The under-the-radar deliveries made by the Biden administration to Israel were additional to the three major military sales that were made public since the start of the war: $320m in precision bomb kits in November and 14,000 tank shells costing $106m and $147.5m of fuses and other components needed to make 155mm artillery shells in December. “Whether it is arms sales to Saudi Arabia and the UAE under the Trump administration, or sales to Israel under the Biden administration, Congress – and the American public – deserve full transparency about who is buying US weapons and how many weapons we are selling them,” said Democratic congressman Joaquin Castro.

Note: Learn more about arms industry corruption in our comprehensive Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on war from reliable major media sources.


Biden administration admits flying 320,000 migrants secretly into the U.S. to reduce the number of crossings at the border has national security 'vulnerabilities'
2024-03-04, Daily Mail (One of the UK's Popular Newspapers)
Posted: 2024-03-11 23:19:52
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13155765/biden-illegal-migrant-flyin...

Joe Biden's administration has admitted transporting migrants on secret flights into the U.S. and lawyers for its immigration agencies claim revealing the locations could create national security 'vulnerabilities'. Customs and Border Protection has refused to disclose crucial information about a program last year arranging flights for thousands of undocumented immigrants from foreign airports directly to U.S. cities. While record numbers of migrants were flowing over the southern border last year, the Biden White House was also directly transporting them into the country. Use of a cell phone app has allowed for the near undetected arrival by air of 320,000 [migrants] with no legal rights to enter the United States. Included in details of a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit first reported by Todd Bensman, the Center for Immigration Studies found Biden's CBP approved the latest secretive flights that transported hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants from foreign countries into at least 43 different American airports from January through December 2023. The program was part of Biden's expansion of the CBP One app, which kicked off at the start of last year. [Migrants] who cannot legally enter the U.S. use CBP One to apply for travel authorization. Migrants are able to remain in the U.S. for two years without obtaining legal status and meanwhile are eligible for work authorization.

Note: Read the full in-depth report by the Center for Immigration studies here. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption from reliable major media sources.


The Government Really Is Spying On You — And It’s Legal
2024-02-28, Politico
Posted: 2024-03-11 23:17:20
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/02/28/government-buying-your-data...

In 2018 ... the government was buying up reams of consumer data — information scraped from cellphones, social media profiles, internet ad exchanges and other open sources — and deploying it for often-clandestine purposes like law enforcement and national security in the U.S. and abroad. The places you go, the websites you visit, the opinions you post — all collected and legally sold to federal agencies. The data is used in a wide variety of law enforcement, public safety, military and intelligence missions, depending on which agency is doing the acquiring. We’ve seen it used for everything from rounding up undocumented immigrants or detecting border tunnels. We’ve also seen data used for man hunting or identifying specific people in the vicinity of crimes or known criminal activity. And generally speaking, it’s often used to identify patterns. It’s often used to look for outliers or things that don’t belong. So say you have a military facility, you could look for devices that appear suspicious that are lingering near that facility. Did you know that your car tires actually broadcast a wireless signal to the central computer of your car, telling it what the tire pressure is? It’s there for perfectly legitimate safety reasons. Governments have ... figured out that the car tire is a proxy for the car. And if you just put little sensors somewhere or you run the right code on devices that you scatter around the world, then you can kind of track people with car tires.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and the disappearance of privacy from reliable major media sources.


CIA in Ukraine — An Ex-CIA Agent’s View
2024-03-03, ScheerPost
Posted: 2024-03-11 23:15:40
https://scheerpost.com/2024/03/03/cia-in-ukraine/

The New York Times on February 25 published an explosive story of what purports to be the history of the CIA in Ukraine from the Maidan coup of 2014 to the present. The story, “The Spy War: How the CIA Secretly Helps Ukraine Fight Putin” ... relied on more than 200 interviews in Ukraine, the US, and “several European countries.” There is a CIA listening post in the forest along the Russian border, one of 12 “secret” bases the US maintains there. Beginning in 2016, the CIA trained an “elite Ukrainian commando force known as Unit 2245, which captured Russian drones and communications gear so that CIA technicians could reverse-engineer them.” One of the reasons that I believe the Times article was “authorized” by the intelligence community is because of what isn’t in it. There’s no mention, for example, that the United Nations has deemed Ukraine to be one of the most corrupt countries in the world, where money just seems to disappear into foreign accounts and the pockets of Ukrainian government officials. There’s no mention that Ukraine has become a “supermarket” for black market weapons and that western weapons meant for the war effort have popped up all over the world. And there is no mention at all that it was the CIA and the State Department that were responsible for the 2014 overthrow of the Ukrainian government in the first place, an action that resulted in Russia’s decision to invade eight years later.

Note: John Kiriakou is a whistleblower, former CIA counter-terrorism officer, and former senior investigator on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. In our War Failures and Lies section in our comprehensive Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center, we discuss how the CIA has supported Neo-Nazis in Ukraine since at least 2014, the year of the far-right coup that incorporated the Nazi group Azov Battalion into the country’s National Guard. Since then, declassified government documents show that Ukraine was systematically developed as a proxy for US war against Russia. In 2016, Congress removed a ban on funding Ukrainian neo-fascist groups, effectively paving the way for American arms and weapons to fall in the hands of Ukraine’s Nazi organizations.


COVID Cover-Up: Government ‘Forced’ COVID Vaccines to Protect Bioweapons Industry
2024-02-27, The Defender
Posted: 2024-03-11 23:13:51
https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/government-forced-covid-vaccines-...

Government officials covered up the origins of COVID-19 and “forced” the vaccination of millions of people worldwide to “protect the integrity of the bioweapons industry,” according to a senior research scientist [at] Yale University. Harvey Risch, M.D., Ph.D. ... provided compelling testimony on what he believes accounts for the “crushingly obsessive push to COVID-vaccinate every living person on the planet.” Risch was among the medical experts ... who participated in Monday’s Senate roundtable discussion on “Federal Health Agencies and the COVID Cartel: What Are They Hiding?” Risch highlighted circumstantial evidence that COVID-19 “leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology” (WIV) in China in fall 2019. There is evidence the virus contains a unique genetic sequence “that also exists in Moderna patents from 2017,” while intelligence has “overwhelmingly” indicated the WIV as the source of the virus. According to Risch, “This work and the WIV leak was what I consider to be the fruit of our bioweapons industry that has been performing secretive and nefarious biological weapons development for the last 70 years.” Risch said that much of this research was banned in 1975, with the enactment of the United Nations Biological Weapons Convention, which prohibited the development of offensive bioweapons. However, a carve-out in the treaty allows “small quantities of offensive bioweapons ... to be developed in order to do research on vaccine countermeasures.”

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on COVID and government corruption from reliable major media sources.


Natural Disasters are Not All Natural
2023-11-10, Journal of Geography, Environment and Earth Science International
Posted: 2024-03-11 23:11:46
https://journaljgeesi.com/index.php/JGEESI/article/view/727

For a half century, the military has been developing technologies to turn climate and extreme environmental phenomena into weapons. This study is a literature review. Results of the literature review reveal that HAARP (High-frequency Active Auroral Research Program), the most powerful ionospheric heater in operation, is able to influence climate. High-power electromagnetic pulses in the earth's crust, produced by a mobile magneto-hydrodynamic generator, is a technique developed since the 1970s to trigger earthquakes. Directed energy weapons, a real technology, can ignite destructive fires at range. For several years, official documents report effects on health and the environment similar in all aspects to those that would be detected if solar geoengineering by stratospheric aerosol injection, a climate-altering technique, was used. Due to numerous biases and a lack of objectivity, the IPCC's arguments on the causes of the growth in extreme environmental phenomena (heat and cold waves, storms, hurricanes, tornadoes, droughts, floods, wildfires, air pollution, etc.) are flawed. The solar hypothesis isn't appropriate either, given its low activity for several years. In conclusion, the use of military climatic and environmental modification technologies appears to be the most relevant explanation to understand the increase in natural disasters over the last 20 years.

Note: In 2015, a senior climate scientist spoke out about being approached by an intelligence agency seeking to use weather as a weapon with geoengineering technologies. Read about the High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP), which some beleve was a weather control weapon. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on military corruption from reliable major media sources.


Inside the Military's Secret Undercover Army
2021-07-05, Newsweek
Posted: 2024-03-11 23:08:59
https://www.newsweek.com/exclusive-inside-militarys-secret-undercover-army-15...

The largest undercover force the world has ever known is the one created by the Pentagon over the past decade. Some 60,000 people now belong to this secret army, many working under masked identities and in low profile, all part of a broad program called "signature reduction." The force, more than ten times the size of the clandestine elements of the CIA, carries out domestic and foreign assignments ... sometimes hiding in private businesses and consultancies. The newest and fastest growing group is the clandestine army that never leaves their keyboards. These are the cutting-edge cyber fighters and intelligence collectors who assume false personas online ... or even engage in campaigns to influence and manipulate social media. Hundreds work in and for the NSA, but over the past five years, every military intelligence and special operations unit has developed some kind of "web" operations cell that both collects intelligence and tends to the operational security of its very activities. No one knows the program's total size, and the explosion of signature reduction has never been examined for its impact on military policies and culture. Congress has never held a hearing on the subject. And yet the military developing this gigantic clandestine force challenges U.S. laws, the Geneva Conventions, the code of military conduct and basic accountability. A major task of signature reduction is keeping all of the organizations and people, even the automobiles and aircraft involved in the clandestine operations, masked. The signature reduction industry also works to figure out ways of spoofing and defeating everything from fingerprinting and facial recognition at border crossings, to ensuring that undercover operatives can enter and operate in the United States, manipulating official records to ensure that false identities match up.

Note: Learn more about mission creep in our comprehensive Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center. For more, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corruption in the military and in the intelligence community from reliable major media sources.


Pentagon reportedly running secret army of 60,000 around the world
2021-05-19, New York Post
Posted: 2024-03-11 23:07:24
https://nypost.com/2021/05/18/pentagon-reportedly-running-secret-global-army-...

The Pentagon is running a 60,000-strong secret army made up of soldiers, civilians and contractors, who travel the world under false identities embedded in consultancies and name-brand companies — without the knowledge of the American people or most of Congress. The top-secret army was created by the Pentagon over the past 10 years as part of a program called “signature reduction,” and operates both domestically and internationally using a low-profile force of clandestine warriors who sometimes wear civilian clothes as they carry out their assignments, Newsweek reported. The force is 10 times the size of the covert elements of the CIA, comes with a cost of more than $900 million, and engages about 130 private companies in operations in locales like the Middle East and Africa. About half of the “signature reduction” force is made up of special forces. Military intelligence specialists comprise the second-largest element inside the force. But the ... fastest-growing group in the unit is made up of cyber-warriors who use false personas and “nonattribution” or “misattribution” techniques online to disguise themselves so they can track high-value targets, collect “publicly accessible information” and engage in influence campaigns to manipulate social media. One recently retired senior officer who oversaw one of the programs said no one is fully aware of their extent or the implications they have for military warfare.

Note: Learn more about mission creep in our comprehensive Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center. For more, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corruption in the military and in the intelligence community from reliable major media sources.


How to Integrate Gift Circles into Any Community
2014-02-26, Shareable
Posted: 2024-03-11 23:05:19
https://www.shareable.net/how-to-integrate-gift-circles-into-any-community/

What if there was a way to create more community, instill a deeper sense of belonging, and begin bringing healing to the vast sense of isolation experienced in modern Western culture? The Gift Circle, as founded by Alpha Lo and spread by Charles Eisenstein, is a group facilitation format that holds great possibility as a way to match resources with needs, create community and inspire gratitude and generosity. The goals of a Gift Circle are simply to provide a warm, free, and welcoming space for community to gather and share Gifts and Needs, most often while literally sitting in a circle. The Gift Circle format [provides] a sense of psycho-spiritual belonging and connection to ameliorate the vast sense of alienation and scarcity experienced by so many. We would eat and socialize a bit, then gather sitting in a circle, and go around the circle with each person speaking what gift they’d enjoy sharing with the community. For instance someone might offer giving a massage, making a custom mix CD, giving a life coaching session, dance class, or a home-cooked meal – the gifts were generally more service-oriented, though there was an occasional item gifted as well, like a futon or pair of headphones. Most importantly, there would be a time at the end where we’d leave 20-30 min for givers and receivers to connect with one another directly and coordinate a time to meet up later to give or receive whatever it was. It was highly encouraged to schedule the gift or need session during that meeting, while the energy was still fresh.

Note: Read the full article to see how you can start a gift circle in your community! Explore more positive stories like this in our comprehensive inspiring news articles archive focused on solutions and bridging divides.


Jane Goodall Champions Pragmatism For Progress In National Geographic Documentary ‘Jane Goodall: The Hope’
2020-04-30, Forbes
Posted: 2024-03-11 23:03:29
https://www.forbes.com/sites/francesbridges/2020/04/30/jane-goodall-champions...

In 1986, [Dr. Jane Goodall] attended a conference in Chicago with researchers studying chimps in six areas of Africa, and the reports of environmental devastation shocked Goodall. Her activism evolved quickly, from chimps, to their habitat to human welfare, and how animal rights and the future of the planet are inherently interconnected. Some of her decisions have been deemed controversial: her friendship with for US Secretary of State James Baker, her work with Conoco ... oil company to build a chimpanzee sanctuary, hard conversations with the National Institutes of Health regarding their medical research and testing practices on chimpanzees and visiting their labs. "I lost a lot of friends because of going into the labs, sitting down and talking to the people, organizing a conference to bring in the lab people, the scientists and also the animal welfare people ..."There were a lot of animal rights people who refused to speak to me — they said, 'Wow can you sit down with these evil people and have a cup of tea with them?' I was totally and completely flabbergasted. If you don’t talk to people, how can expect them to change?” When speaking to the NIH, “I didn’t stand there and accuse them of being cruel monsters. I showed slides and some film of the Gombe chimpanzees and talked about their lives, and then showed some slides of the chimps in the small cages and said, ‘You know, it’s like putting a person in a prison like that,’” said Goodall. “Many of the scientists said, ‘We really have never thought about this in this way’ a lot of them were actually crying." She stands by all of it because it produces results. It took decades, but the NIH phased out medical testing and research on chimpanzees. Conoco built the chimpanzee sanctuary, the Tchimpounga Chimpanzee Rehabilitation Center, saving all of the starving chimpanzees in the Brazzaville Zoo in the Republic of Congo. In this age of cancel culture and unprecedented political polarity, Goodall’s pragmatism, and insistence that arguing does not change minds but appealing to people’s hearts and to their better nature is what produces progress distinguishes her from contemporary activists.

Note: Explore more positive stories like this in our comprehensive inspiring news articles archive focused on solutions and bridging divides.


If the Government Has UFO Crash Materials, It’s Time to Reveal Them
2023-06-03, Politico
Posted: 2024-03-04 14:00:18
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2023/06/03/ufo-crash-materials-intelli...

Since 2017, my life has been dominated by efforts to help Congress and the public discover the truth about unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP), what many still refer to as UFOs. Working closely with former Pentagon official Lue Elizondo and later a group of U.S. Navy aviators, we quickly captured the attention of Congress. We managed to convince them the phenomena were real. Congress [established] the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO). AARO is charged with reviewing all non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) pertaining to UAP; evaluating all historical UAP intelligence documents; and extending protections to anyone who has signed an official U.S. government secrecy agreement related to UAP, thereby allowing them to come forward without fear of prosecution. Since AARO was established, I have referred four witnesses to them who claim to have knowledge of a secret U.S. government program involving the analysis and exploitation of materials recovered from off-world craft. Other sources who, rightly or wrongly do not trust AARO’s leadership, have also contacted me with additional details and information about an alleged secret U.S. government reverse engineering program. Some have supplied information to the intelligence community’s inspector general, others directly to staff of the congressional oversight committees. Disclosure is only a matter of time.

Note: The author of this article is Christopher Mellon, former deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Intelligence. Read more about his involvement in studying UFO phenomena in our UFO Disclosure Timeline. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on UFOs from reliable major media sources. Then explore the excellent, reliable resources provided in our UFO Information Center.


New Paradigm Institute and Ubiquity University Launch First Ever Extraterrestrial Studies Program
2024-01-24, ABC News (Harrisburg, PA Affiliate)
Posted: 2024-03-04 13:58:30
https://www.abc27.com/business/press-releases/ein-presswire/683517569/new-par...

Last December, the US Government enacted legislation mandating that all government agencies and contracting agencies having any evidence of unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP), technologies of unknown origin (TUO), and non-human Intelligence (NHI) must turn the information over to the National Archives and Records Administration. This legislation is an extraordinary milestone in human history. It marked the first time a government stated it possessed records regarding the reality of UFOs/UAP. The world will now ask three fundamental questions: what are the facts about UFO/UAP, who are these beings, and how might we communicate with them? To begin answering these fundamental questions, the New Paradigm Institute (NPI) is collaborating with Ubiquity University to offer an Academic Certificate program leading to graduate degrees in Extraterrestrial Studies. NPI will offer a Certificate on “The History Law, Politics and Technology of UFO/UAP,” starting with two courses taught by Daniel Sheehan, President and General Counsel to NPI, and two courses taught by Richard Dolan, the premier UFO/UAP historian. Ubiquity’s Certificate in “ET Awareness and Communication” will be offered through its School of Science and Consciousness beginning in the fall of 2024. All courses are open to the public and available for anyone seeking advanced degrees in Extraterrestrial Studies.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on UFOs from reliable major media sources. Then explore the excellent, reliable resources provided in our UFO Information Center.


Whistleblower tells Congress that govt is delivering migrant children to human traffickers
2023-04-26, Fox News
Posted: 2024-03-04 13:56:50
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/whistleblower-tells-congress-that-govt-deliv...

A whistleblower who viewed first-hand what she testified is a "sophisticated network" of child migrant smuggling into forced labor and other forms of slavery is calling on Congress to act to crack down on the U.S. role in that network. The hearing, "The Biden Border Crisis: Exploitation of Unaccompanied Alien Children," was held by the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration Integrity, Security and Enforcement and included Health and Human Services (HHS) whistleblower Tara Lee Rodas as a witness. Rodas, who was detailed with HHS at an Emergency Intake Site in Pomona, California, ... told lawmakers about what she experienced on the ground. "I thought I was going to help place children in loving homes. Instead, I discovered that children are being trafficked through a sophisticated network that begins with recruiting in their home country, smuggled to the U.S. border, and ends when [Office of Refugee Resettlement] delivers a child to a sponsor — some sponsors are ... members of Transnational Criminal Organizations. Some sponsors view children as commodities," Rodas said. The number of unaccompanied alien children (UACs) who arrive at the border has swelled from 33,239 in fiscal year 2020 to more than ... 152,000 in fiscal year 2022. "The U.S. government has become the middleman in a large scale, multibillion-dollar child trafficking operation that is run by bad actors seeking to profit off of the lives of children," Rodas said.

Note: Why is this horrific issue not being discussed on a significant mainstream level? According to a report by The Center for Public Integrity, thousands have disappeared from sponsors' homes after the federal government placed them there. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and sexual abuse scandals from reliable major media sources.


Hundreds of immigrants have reported sexual abuse at ICE facilities. Most cases aren’t investigated
2023-07-21, PBS
Posted: 2024-03-04 13:55:06
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/hundreds-of-immigrants-have-reported-sexu...

When 23-year-old Mari walked out of the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention in 2022, she felt invisible. Her time inside ICE’s Stewart Detention Center in Lumpkin, Georgia, between December 2021 and January 2022, left a deep mark on her self-worth. A year and a half later, it continues to wake her up in the middle of the night, shivering and in tears. Mari is not her real name. We’re using it to protect her identity. She is one of five women who complained of being sexually assaulted by a male nurse who worked at Stewart. There is a pattern of sexual abuse complaints in ICE detention. Official records and testimonies obtained by Futuro Investigates ... show disturbing details of 308 sexual assault and sexual abuse complaints filed by immigrants detained in ICE facilities nationwide between 2015 and 2021. The data obtained by Futuro Investigates reveals a systemic pattern of abuse by detention officers, contractual guards, and ICE employees, accused of sexually assaulting the individuals they are meant to protect. According to the obtained data, more than half of all abuse allegations made in the past six years were directed against staff. At least five complaints in the records allege that ICE employees threatened them with deportation. Over the past two years, Futuro Investigates interviewed at least a dozen immigrants about their time in detention across the country. Read the original investigation here.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and sexual abuse scandals from reliable major media sources.


Dr. Phil tells Joe Rogan about ‘out of control’ southern border: ‘We’re paying to sell children into sex slavery’
2024-02-21, New York Post
Posted: 2024-03-04 13:53:07
https://nypost.com/2024/02/21/media/dr-phil-tells-joe-rogan-about-out-of-cont...

Dr. Phil called the migrant crisis at the southern border “out of control” during on appearance on Joe Rogan’s podcast — blasting the Biden administration for “paying money to take these children and sell them into sex slavery.” Phil McGraw, the former TV host, shared video footage of a conversation that he had with Brandon Judd, president of the National Border Patrol Council, during Tuesday’s episode of “The Joe Rogan Experience.” Judd told McGraw that US border authorities no longer had rapid DNA testing kits due to the massive influx of migrants that have poured into the country from Mexico. McGraw speculated that the lack of DNA testing could lead to minors being linked up with traffickers. “They come in with these addresses written on their bodies, written on their arm and we call up there and say, ‘Do you know so and so?’ ‘Yes, we’re waiting for them.’ ‘Okay, they’ll be on a plane or a bus’.” McGraw lashed out at President Biden and his administration for what he perceives as lax enforcement of immigration laws. “This is a weird thing they are doing. They’re just letting people come in, and the Red Cross and different groups are giving people maps, showing them how to do it, and encouraging it,” McGraw said. McGraw praised Texas for deploying agents to the border with Mexico. He said state law enforcement is a greater deterrent of illegal immigration than Customs and Border Protection.

Note: Watch a concerning interview with an investigative journalist exposing who's behind the large government-funded facilities housing thousands of undocumented children. A Department of Homeland Security whistleblower Aaron Stevenson is trying to stop the facilitation of child trafficking at the US border. Watch a 23-min video of his experience with this deeply concerning issue, including his investigation into a common pattern of criminals (many of them sex traffickers) across the world who become sponsors for unaccompanied children. Worst off, when he tried to track down who was monitoring and vetting the sponsors, he couldn't find any information about it. According to a report by The Center for Public Integrity, thousands have disappeared from sponsors' homes after the federal government placed them there. Why is this not being talked about on a mainstream level?


Florida grand jury focused on unaccompanied migrant children, blasts feds in new report
2023-03-30, Miami Herald
Posted: 2024-03-04 13:51:17
https://www.miamiherald.com/news/politics-government/article273781510.html

Florida’s statewide prosecutor Thursday explicitly accused federal immigration authorities of “human trafficking” in their oversight of unaccompanied migrant children in the state. The Statewide Prosecutors’ Office released an acerbic, 46-page grand jury report that denounces the federal Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), for leaving vulnerable migrant children with unvetted caregivers, or “sponsors” — and then abdicating all oversight of their welfare. The report suggests the policy amounts to criminal child neglect. The Statewide Grand Jury, which is an arm of Attorney General Ashley Moody’s office, also accuses the federal government of covering up its alleged misdeeds. [Gov. Ron] DeSantis asked the state Supreme Court to empanel a statewide grand jury to investigate undocumented migrants last June. “The purpose of the grand jury will be to investigate individuals and organizations that are actively working with foreign nationals, drug cartels and coyotes to illegally smuggle minors, some as young as 2 years old, across the border,” DeSantis said. By “incentivizing” illegal migration, the grand jury wrote, the Biden administration has encouraged children “to undertake and/or be subjected to a harrowing trek to our border. “This process exposes children to horrifying health conditions, constant criminal threat, labor and sex trafficking, robbery, rape, and other experiences not done justice by mere words,” grand jurors added.

Note: A Department of Homeland Security whistleblower Aaron Stevenson is trying to stop the facilitation of child trafficking at the US border. Watch a 23-min video of his experience with this deeply concerning issue, including his investigation into a common pattern of criminals (many of them sex traffickers) across the world who become sponsors for unaccompanied children. Worst off, when he tried to track down who was monitoring and vetting the sponsors, he couldn't find any information about it. According to a report by The Center for Public Integrity, thousands have disappeared from sponsors' homes after the federal government placed them there. Why is this not being talked about on a mainstream level? For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and sexual abuse scandals from reliable major media sources.


Patients of Army doctor accused of sexual abuse describe betrayal of trust, fight to endure
2024-02-22, CBS News
Posted: 2024-03-04 13:49:00
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/patients-of-army-doctor-accused-of-sexual-abuse-...

As Army pain doctor Maj. Michael Stockin prepares to be arraigned Friday on charges that he sexually abused dozens of patients at Madigan Army Medical Center, near Tacoma, Washington, two of those former patients described to CBS News what they say was conduct that betrayed their trust. "Myself and Dr. Stockin were left alone in the room. He first checked my shoulders and then he asked me to stand up and to pull down my pants and lift up my gown," said one of the soldiers, who had consulted the Army physician for shoulder pain. "Dr. Stockin, he was face level with my groin, and he started touching my genitals." Both men, now retired after more than 20 years in the Army including three combat tours each, spoke exclusively to CBS News, describing alleged misconduct hidden under the guise of medical care. They described visits to a doctor who was supposed to treat their pain, but they say instead inflicted even worse. The Army has charged Stockin with 48 counts of abusive sexual contact and five counts of indecent viewing under the military code of justice. The Army has confirmed that all of the 42 alleged victims who were treated at the clinic at Joint Base Lewis-McChord are men. The case is being prosecuted by the Army's Office of Special Trial Counsel (OSTC). Ryan Guilds, a civilian attorney representing seven of Stockin's accusers ... says he believes there could be hundreds of victims, making the scope of this case "historic."

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on sexual abuse by healthcare providers from reliable major media sources.


Why Wikileaks Matters
2024-02-26, Lee Fang on Substack
Posted: 2024-03-04 13:46:40
https://www.leefang.com/p/why-wikileaks-matters

Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, as of this writing, faces a final attempt to appeal his extradition from the U.K. to the U.S. If he fails, he faces Espionage Act charges that could lead to living out the remainder of his life in federal prison. If Assange is extradited and successfully prosecuted for espionage, it would create a dangerous precedent for the government to suppress future reporting. The New York Times has a long and storied record of publishing classified materials going back to the 1971 Pentagon Papers, which showed the true history of the Vietnam War. More recently, the Washington Post and other outlets reported on the Discord intelligence leaks, revealing that Pentagon officials had suspected that the Ukrainian counter-offensive against Russia would fail ... among many other revelations. In 2013, DOJ officials noted that the legal theory used to prosecute Assange would apply almost equally to most major newspapers with a history of reporting on government secrets, such as the many news outlets that covered Edward Snowden’s disclosures about warrantless NSA mass surveillance of Americans. It’s not hard to see how the U.S. views Assange as an enemy of the state. He has exposed secrets and hypocrisy of American policymakers on the highest level. Diplomatic cables show the extent to which the State Department often acts as an extension of narrow multinational corporate interests. Wikileaks has published many documents that go well beyond the diplomatic cables and Democratic emails. The Afghanistan war documents disclosed by Wikileaks show extensive civilian deaths and Taliban militancy, far beyond what the Pentagon had previously acknowledged.

Note: The US prosecution of Assange undermines press freedom. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and media manipulation from reliable sources.


How the CIA Destabilizes the World
2024-02-16, ScheerPost
Posted: 2024-03-04 13:43:24
https://scheerpost.com/2024/02/16/how-the-cia-destabilizes-the-world/

There are three basic problems with the CIA: its objectives, methods, and unaccountability. In effect, the CIA is a secret army of the U.S., capable of creating mayhem across the world with no accountability whatsoever. When President Dwight Eisenhower decided that Africa’s rising political star, democratically elected Patrice Lumumba of Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of Congo), was the “enemy,” the CIA conspired in his 1961 assassination, thus undermining the democratic hopes for Africa. The CIA has been held to serious public account just once, in 1975. In that year, Idaho Senator Frank Church led a Senate investigation that exposed the CIA’s shocking rampage of assassinations, coups, destabilization, surveillance, and Mengele-style torture and medical “experiments.” Since 1975, the CIA has run secretive operations backing Islamic jihadists in Afghanistan that utterly wrecked Afghanistan while giving rise to al-Qaeda. The CIA has likely run secretive operations in the Balkans against Serbia, in the Caucuses against Russia, and in Central Asia targeting China, all deploying CIA-backed jihadists. In the 2010s, the CIA ran deadly operations to topple Syria’s Bashir al-Assad, again with Islamic jihadists. For at least 20 years, the CIA has been deeply involved in fomenting the growing catastrophe in Ukraine, including the violent overthrow of Ukraine’s President Viktor Yanukovych in February 2014 that triggered the devastating war now engulfing Ukraine.

Note: Learn more about the rise of the CIA in our comprehensive Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center. For more, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on intelligence agency corruption from reliable major media sources.


Manufacturing Consent: The Border Fiasco and the “Smart Wall”
2024-02-19, Unlimited Hangout
Posted: 2024-03-04 13:40:58
https://unlimitedhangout.com/2024/02/investigative-reports/manufacturing-cons...

The disastrous situation at the US-Mexico border is, and has been, intentionally produced. Illegal crossings have risen to unprecedented levels. There is a bipartisan consensus about what must be done. Tellingly, the same “solution” is also being quietly rolled out at all American ports of entry that are not currently being “overrun”, such as airports. That solution, of course, is biometric surveillance, enabled by AI, facial recognition/biometrics and autonomous devices. This “solution” is not just being implemented throughout the United States as an alleged means of thwarting migrants, it is also being rapidly implemented throughout the world in apparent lockstep. Global policy agendas, ratified by nearly every country in the world ... seek both to restrict the extent of people’s freedom of movement and to surveil people’s movements ... through the global implementation of digital identity. The defense tech firm Anduril ... is one of the main beneficiaries of government contracts to build autonomous surveillance towers along the US-Mexico border, which are now also being rolled out along the US-Canada border. Anduril will create “a digital wall that is not a barrier so much as a web of all-seeing eyes, with intelligence to know what it sees.” While Anduril is one of the main companies building the “virtual wall,” they are not alone. General Dynamics, a defense firm deeply connected to organized crime, espionage scandals and corruption, has developed several hundred remote video surveillance systems (RVSS) towers for CBP while Google, another Big Tech firm with CIA connections, has been tapped by CBP to have its AI used in conjunction with Anduril’s towers, which also utilize Anduril’s own AI operating system known as Lattice.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and the disappearance of privacy from reliable major media sources.


The School Day When No One Eats Alone
2024-02-12, Reasons to be Cheerful
Posted: 2024-03-04 13:38:41
https://reasonstobecheerful.world/no-one-eats-alone-day-2024/

Laura Talmus felt helpless when her then-11-year-old daughter Lili kept calling her from school in tears. After her daughter passed away from medical complications in her sleep at age 15 in 2009, Talmus put together a video celebrating her life. When she showed the video, Lili’s classmates were shocked to realize how isolated Lili had felt. The next year, Talmus ... and her husband channeled their grief into forming Beyond Differences, a nonprofit that focuses on raising awareness about social isolation in youth and providing solutions. Talmus believes the social isolation her daughter experienced is affecting students all over the country and contributing to serious health issues, mental health problems, suicide and school violence. Beyond Differences ... has now grown to reach over one million students in all 50 states. On February 16, 2,500 schools [participated] in No One Eats Alone Day, a day of action ... that encourages fifth through eighth graders to mingle, make new friends and become more aware and proactive about social isolation, especially at lunch. “No One Eats Alone is completely rooted in the experience Lili had,” Talmus explains. “For many children, the lunch break or recess are the worst parts, so we started with that.” Beyond Differences sends backpacks or “Belonging Boxes” with a lesson plan, games, toys, art projects, stickers and conversation starters to participating educators, at no cost to the schools.

Note: Explore more positive stories like this in our comprehensive inspiring news articles archive focused on solutions and bridging divides.


Guy Cycles Across Africa Hoping to be Accepted at Prestigious University in Egypt–Gets Full Scholarship
2024-01-09, Good News Network
Posted: 2024-03-04 13:36:43
https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/guy-cycles-across-africa-hoping-to-be-accepte...

Our moms and dads used to tell us about their mile-long walk to school. But if we’re talking about peda-powered travel to school, this man has set a new standard. Leaving his home in Conakry, Guinea, on a bike, Mamadou Safayou Barry traveled across the whole of West Africa and the Sahara Desert’s road network—2,500 miles—and across 5 countries in the mere hopes he’d be accepted into an Egyptian university. Along the way, the husband and father of one crossed Benin, southern Mali, Togo, and Chad, as well as some of the most bandit-filled areas on Earth, including parts of Burkina Faso and Niger. He was detained without cause or charge on three separate occasions, twice in Burkina Faso and once in Togo. It was in Chad, nearly four months after he left home, that he caught an auspicious wind. A local journalist reported on his efforts which led to a local philanthropist getting the man a flight to Cairo. Once there, the prestigious Al-Azhar University offered him a full scholarship, first for Islamic studies, then for engineering. Will Smith heard about Barry’s successful voyage, and gave a surprise congratulations to the man. He video-called the Guinean in Cairo to gift him a new bicycle and a laptop for his studies. “When I saw him, I was confused in my head, because I had seen that man before,” Barry told the BBC from Cairo. “Then I remember—it’s Will Smith! Wow ... I used to watch his films. I was sat on a chair in front of Will Smith!”

Note: Don't miss the deeply inspiring video of Mamadou Safayou Barry's interview with Will Smith about his fascinating journey across Africa. Explore more positive stories like this in our comprehensive inspiring news articles archive focused on solutions and bridging divides.


When a Preschool Was Opened Inside a Dementia Care Home, All Heaven Broke Loose
2024-02-20, Good News Network
Posted: 2024-03-04 13:34:55
https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/when-a-preschool-was-opened-inside-a-dementia...

They say it takes a village to raise a child. Centered on that concept of communal flourishing, a dementia care village in England has incorporated a day nursery for small children—bringing together young and old for learning and sharing. Stimulation, learning, and fun—these are all activities that are known to delay the progression of dementia, and what better way to add these critical elements of life to a daily regimen than to let a flock of preschoolers do it? Belong is a nonprofit operator of senior homes, specializing in dementia care. This is the first to integrate children. The pioneering facility supports older people to live their lives independently, with access to several shops and services on site. The UK charity Ready Generations partnered with Belong to run the village’s day nursery. Children feature in the daily life of residents and tenants, enjoying experiences together including shared mealtimes, stories, arts and crafts, and exercise. Centered around a vibrant hub of amenities, including a bistro, hair salon, and specialist exercise studio, the site is open to the public, creating a bustling environment with customers from the local community. Similar projects have been pioneered in America as well. The Intergenerational Learning Center at Mount St. Vincent nursing home in Seattle opened its doors to the oldest—and the youngest—in 2015. The 400 adults in that assisted-living center join the kids in daily activities from music and dancing to storytelling and just plain visiting.

Note: Explore more positive stories like this in our comprehensive inspiring news articles archive focused on solutions and bridging divides.


The AI firm that conducted ‘state surveillance’ of your social media posts
2023-06-03, The Telegraph (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2024-02-26 13:49:37
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/06/03/logically-ai-firm-social-media-po...

An industrial estate in Yorkshire is an unlikely location for ... an artificial intelligence (AI) company used by the Government to monitor people’s posts on social media. Logically has been paid more than £1.2 million of taxpayers’ money to analyse what the Government terms “disinformation” – false information deliberately seeded online – and “misinformation”, which is false information that has been spread inadvertently. It does this by “ingesting” material from more than hundreds of thousands of media sources and “all public posts on major social media platforms”, using AI to identify those that are potentially problematic. It has a £1.2 million deal with the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS), as well as another worth up to £1.4 million with the Department of Health and Social Care to monitor threats to high-profile individuals within the vaccine service. It also has a “partnership” with Facebook, which appears to grant Logically’s fact-checkers huge influence over the content other people see. A joint press release issued in July 2021 suggests that Facebook will limit the reach of certain posts if Logically says they are untrue. “When Logically rates a piece of content as false, Facebook will significantly reduce its distribution so that fewer people see it, apply a warning label to let people know that the content has been rated false, and notify people who try to share it,” states the press release.

Note: Read more about how NewsGuard, a for-profit company, works closely with government agencies and major corporate advertisers to suppress dissenting views online. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and media manipulation from reliable sources.


Largest Covid Vaccine Study Yet Finds Links to Health Conditions
2024-02-19, MSN News
Posted: 2024-02-26 13:47:04
https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/other/largest-covid-vaccine-study-yet-finds-...

Vaccines that protect against severe illness, death and lingering long Covid symptoms from a coronavirus infection were linked to small increases in neurological, blood, and heart-related conditions in the largest global vaccine safety study to date. The rare events — identified early in the pandemic — included a higher risk of heart-related inflammation from mRNA shots made by Pfizer Inc., BioNTech SE, and Moderna Inc., and an increased risk of a type of blood clot in the brain after immunization with viral-vector vaccines such as the one developed by the University of Oxford and made by AstraZeneca Plc. The viral-vector jabs were also tied to an increased risk of Guillain-Barre syndrome, a neurological disorder in which the immune system mistakenly attacks the peripheral nervous system. More than 13.5 billion doses of Covid vaccines have been administered globally over the past three years. Still, a small proportion of people immunized were injured by the shots, stoking debate about their benefits versus harms. The new research, by the Global Vaccine Data Network, was published in the journal Vaccine last week. Exercise intolerance, excessive fatigue, numbness and “brain fog” were among common symptoms identified in more than 240 adults experiencing chronic post-vaccination syndrome in a separate study conducted by the Yale School of Medicine. The cause of the syndrome isn’t yet known, and it has no diagnostic tests or proven remedies.

Note: Vaccine adverse event numbers are made publically available, and currently show 2,579,111 COVID vaccine injury reports and 37,100 COVID Vaccine Reported Deaths (out of 47,290 Total Reported Deaths from all vaccines). Read our in-depth report about this concerning trend that is often discussed by mainstream media as a rare occurrence. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on COVID vaccines from reliable major media sources.


‘They lied’: plastics producers deceived public about recycling, report reveals
2024-02-15, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2024-02-26 13:45:31
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/feb/15/recycling-plastics-producers-...

Plastic producers have known for more than 30 years that recycling is not an economically or technically feasible plastic waste management solution. That has not stopped them from promoting it, according to a new report. “The companies lied,” said Richard Wiles, president of fossil-fuel accountability advocacy group the Center for Climate Integrity (CCI), which published the report. “It’s time to hold them accountable for the damage they’ve caused.” Plastic, which is made from oil and gas, is notoriously difficult to recycle. Doing so requires meticulous sorting, since most of the thousands of chemically distinct varieties of plastic cannot be recycled together. That renders an already pricey process even more expensive. Another challenge: the material degrades each time it is reused, meaning it can generally only be reused once or twice. The industry has known for decades about these existential challenges, but obscured that information in its marketing campaigns. The report does not allege that the companies broke specific laws. But Alyssa Johl, report co-author and attorney, said she suspects they violated public-nuisance, racketeering and consumer-fraud protections. The industry’s misconduct continues today. Over the past several years, industry lobbying groups have promoted so-called chemical recycling, which breaks plastic polymers down into tiny molecules. But the process creates pollution and is even more energy intensive than traditional plastic recycling.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corporate corruption from reliable major media sources.


ICE's Use Of Solitary Confinement “Only Increasing” Under Biden
2024-02-06, The Intercept
Posted: 2024-02-26 13:42:08
https://theintercept.com/2024/02/06/ice-solitary-confinement-detention-immigr...

U.S. immigration authorities locked thousands of people in solitary confinement in 2023. A new report by Harvard University-affiliated researchers ... found the dangerous confinements have not only persisted over the past decade, but also increased in frequency and duration under the Biden administration. The adverse effects of solitary confinement — generally defined as isolation without meaningful human interaction for 22 hours a day or more — are well documented. One of ICE’s directives acknowledges that isolating detainees — who aren’t considered prisoners and aren’t held for punitive reasons under federal law — is “a serious step that requires careful consideration of alternatives.” And yet the new report found the agency recorded more than 14,000 solitary confinement cases from 2018 to 2023. Researchers said the number is likely an undercount due to ICE’s poor recordkeeping. The average length of the recorded confinements was 27 days, researchers found, stretching well beyond the 15-day period that meets the threshold for “inhuman and degrading treatment” defined by the U.N. special rapporteur on torture. The data revealed dozens of examples of facilities holding people in solitary confinement for over a year. Researchers also gathered accounts of the grueling conditions inside isolation cells. Interviewees described cells that were freezing cold; constantly lit, causing sleep deprivation; or had toilets only guards could flush.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on prison system corruption from reliable major media sources.


Covid mRNA Vaccines Were Developed Under a Military Protocol and Required No Safety Oversight
2023-12-07, The Daily Skeptic
Posted: 2024-02-26 13:39:43
https://dailysceptic.org/2023/12/07/covid-mrna-vaccines-were-developed-under-...

When the U.S. Government entered into its Covid vaccine agreement with Pfizer, which was acting on behalf of the BioNTech/Pfizer partnership, in July 2020, the agreement encompassed a minimum of 100 million doses of a “vaccine to prevent COVID-19” and a payment of at least $1.95 billion. The Government declared that we were “at war” with a catastrophically dangerous virus. In keeping with the declaration of war, it was a military framework that was used for acquiring the aspirational products that became known as Covid mRNA vaccines. The Government side to the agreement with Pfizer was the Department of Defence (DoD), represented by a convoluted chain of parties, each operating as a subcontractor, or co-contractor, for the next. In fact, agencies governing civilian and public health, like the NIH, NIAID and HHS, do not have the authority to grant certain types of special acquisition contracts, which is why the Covid vaccine contracts had to be overseen by the Department of Defence. Emergency Use Authorisation (EUA) ... is a very special way to authorise a medical countermeasure in very specific types of emergencies. EUA was meant for dire situations of warfare or terrorism, not to protect the entire population from naturally occurring pathogens. For this reason, EUA products do not require the type of legal safety oversight that is applied in civilian contexts by the FDA.

Note: Read how the Department of Defense and the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority allowed vaccine makers to bypass standard safety testing of their products. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on COVID vaccines from reliable major media sources.


Prison Lockdowns Are Becoming More Frequent and More Brutal Across the US
2024-02-06, Truthout
Posted: 2024-02-26 13:37:38
https://truthout.org/articles/prison-lockdowns-are-becoming-more-frequent-and...

At least 33 U.S. state prison systems and the majority of federal medium-, high- and maximum-security prisons have placed general population (“gen pop”) adults under nondisciplinary lockdown at least once (but more often repeatedly or for a prolonged period) from 2016-2023. While most lockdowns are intermittent (lasting from a few days to several weeks), an increasing number of state and federal prisons keep prisoners locked down for most or even all of the year. In addition, many prisons make people suffer through constant lockdown “cycles,” where prisoners get a very brief return to normal “gen pop” status before they are once again subject to several days or weeks of lockdown. Prisoners have no routines or any real rights whatsoever under lockdown. There is no guarantee of exercise, showers are irregular at best, and access to phone, email or visitation are nonexistent. Education, religious activities, rehabilitative programs, psychiatric intervention to crises, access to commissary ... are typically denied or are nearly impossible to get. Meetings with attorneys come to a halt or are hard to obtain. People under lockdown are often not even given basic hygiene materials such as soap or toothpaste. Modern prison lockdowns can ... be traced back to 2016, in a decidedly repressive, politicized reaction to nationwide prison strikes. Entire prisons were and are still punished for the relatively minor actions of a few, including ... something as simple as a shouting match.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on prison system corruption from reliable major media sources.


John Kiriakou: Dying by Callous Disregard
2024-02-07, ScheerPost
Posted: 2024-02-26 13:35:31
https://scheerpost.com/2024/02/07/john-kiriakou-dying-by-callous-disregard/

Look at the case of Lucas Bellamy. He had been arrested in Minnesota. Immediately before the arrest, he ate a bag of drugs in an effort to fool police into thinking that he didn’t have any. But he immediately began feeling sick. Jail officers took him to a local hospital, where he was treated. The doctors there told the jailers to return him to the hospital if he became ill again. He began vomiting as soon as he got back to his cell. By evening he was refusing food and crawling around his cell as a guard and nurse stood and watched him. By noon the next day, he was dead on the floor. The case of Brandon Clay Dodson is even worse. Dodson was arrested on a burglary charge and was being held in the local jail in Clayton, Alabama. He told a guard that several other prisoners had been beating him, and he asked to be moved into segregated housing for his own protection. He later told the guards in solitary that he wasn’t feeling well, but they ignored him. And a day after that, the 43-year-old was found dead in his bed. In a 104-page ruling, a federal judge in Louisiana ruled against the administrators of the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola, [highlighting] just a few of the untold number of medical horrors that prisoners suffer all the time there, including “a man denied medical attention four times during a stroke, leaving him blind and paralyzed; a man denied access to a specialist for four years while his throat cancer advanced; even a blind man denied a cane for 16 years.”

Note: John Kiriakou is a former CIA counter-terrorism officer and former senior investigator on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. In 2015, investigations in Arizona, Florida, Maine, Minnesota, and New York uncovered escalating inmate deaths related to the use of for-profit medical services in prisons. A New York Times article about this was published but it quickly disappeared. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on prison system corruption from reliable major media sources.


How is the World Health Organization funded, and why does it rely so much on Bill Gates?
2023-02-03, Yahoo News
Posted: 2024-02-26 13:32:44
https://uk.news.yahoo.com/world-health-organization-funded-why-143601256.html...

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation ... said last month it was “not right” for the charity to take on such a big role in funding the World Health Organization (WHO). Over the years, the billionaire philanthropists have become the WHO’s second biggest donor, making the health agency heavily dependent on their support to keep functioning. Global health experts say that while this money is welcome, it gives the Gates an outsized influence and underscores the chronic funding problem WHO faces even as it contends with more and more health crises. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation alone is responsible for over 88 per cent of the total amount donated by philanthropic foundations to the WHO. Other contributors include the Bloomberg Family Foundation (3.5 per cent), the Wellcome Trust (1.1 per cent) and the Rockefeller Foundation (0.8 per cent). In 2018-2019, the United States was the largest donor at $893 million, accounting for around 15 per cent of WHO’s budget. The Gates Foundation came only second, with $531 million. Most of these voluntary contributions are “specified” - meaning they are tied to a specific programme or health campaign in a specific part of the world and are given a detailed time frame during which to be spent. Polio eradication, for instance, has long been WHO’s best-funded program, mainly because much of the Gates Foundation’s contributions have been directed to that cause.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on health from reliable major media sources.


How Bill Gates and partners used their clout to control the global Covid response — with little oversight
2022-09-14, Politico
Posted: 2024-02-26 13:30:22
https://www.politico.com/news/2022/09/14/global-covid-pandemic-response-bill-...

When Covid-19 struck ... four organizations took on roles often played by governments — but without the accountability of governments. While nations were still debating the seriousness of the pandemic, the groups identified potential vaccine makers and targeted investments in the development of tests, treatments and shots. And they used their clout with the World Health Organization to help create an ambitious worldwide distribution plan. The largest and most powerful was the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, one of the largest philanthropies in the world. Then there was Gavi, the global vaccine organization that Gates helped to found to inoculate people in low-income nations, and the Wellcome Trust, a British research foundation with a multibillion dollar endowment that had worked with the Gates Foundation in previous years. Finally, there was the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, or CEPI, the international vaccine research and development group that Gates and Wellcome both helped to create in 2017. The organizations spent at least $8.3 million lobbying the U.S. and E.U., according to an analysis of lobbying disclosures. Now, critics are raising significant questions about the equity and effectiveness of the group’s response to the pandemic — and the serious limitations of outsourcing the pandemic response to unelected, privately-funded groups.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on COVID from reliable major media sources.


Death and redemption in an American prison
2024-02-19, NPR
Posted: 2024-02-26 13:26:47
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2024/02/19/1231119824/prison-hospic...

When Garner entered the gates at Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola, Louisiana, he didn't know what to expect. The maximum security facility has been dubbed "America's Bloodiest Prison" and its brutal conditions have made headlines for decades. It wasn't until five years later that Garner would get his chance to show everyone he wasn't the hardened criminal they thought he was. When the prison warden, Burl Cain, decided to start the nation's first prison hospice program, Garner volunteered. In helping dying inmates, Garner believed he could claw back some meaning to the life he had nearly squandered. For the next 25 years, he cared for his fellow inmates, prisoners in need of help and compassion at the end of their lives. The Angola program started by Cain, with the help of Garner and others, has since become a model. Today at least 75 of the more than 1,200 state and federal penal institutions nationwide have implemented formal hospice programs. The volunteers [in Angola] were issued hospice T-shirts that allowed them free movement through the prison. The primary rule of the hospice program was that no one would die alone. When death was imminent, the hospice volunteers conducted a vigil round-the-clock. The program used medications ... for the palliative care of patients, though the inmate volunteers were not allowed to administer them. The hospice volunteers ... functioned as confidants, giving dying inmates a last chance to get something off their chest.

Note: Explore more positive stories like this in our comprehensive inspiring news articles archive focused on solutions and bridging divides.


The Pentagon Has Reportedly Found ‘Off-World Vehicles Not Made on This Earth’
2020-07-24, New York Magazine
Posted: 2024-02-22 11:04:10
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/07/ufo-report-pentagon-has-off-world-veh...

In March, astrophysicist Eric W. Davis, who spent years working as a consultant for the Pentagon UFO program and is now a defense contractor, gave a classified briefing to the Defense Department on what he called “off-world vehicles not made on this earth.” In other words, spaceships. The bombshell quote came in the latest UFO report from the New York Times. In December 2017, the paper reported on the existence of the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, a Pentagon effort to investigate UFOs, that was supposedly shuttered in 2012. That article, hailed as a “historical inflection point in our attitudes regarding UFOs,” implied the same message that the most recent one does: Basically, “flying saucers are real.” This week’s Times report says that while the program to study mysterious aerial vehicles was renamed and moved to a different part of the Pentagon, the effort remains active. And Luis Elizondo, the ex-director of the predecessor program, told the Times that the new program is moving toward an era of “transparency.” Elizondo, the Times reports, is “among a small group of former government officials and scientists with security clearances who, without presenting physical proof, say they are convinced that objects of undetermined origin have crashed on earth with materials retrieved for study.” Davis, who once produced a report urging the federal government to research time travel through wormholes, said he has studied the materials. What he found led him to a stark conclusion: “We couldn’t make it ourselves.”

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on UFOs from reliable major media sources.


This man ran the Pentagon's secretive UFO programme for a decade. We had some questions
2021-11-09, GQ Magazine
Posted: 2024-02-22 10:32:27
https://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/politics/article/luis-elizondo-interview-2021

When it came to UFOs, there was a time when the US government’s official line was that it didn’t study them.

Luis Elizondo was instrumental in changing that.

In late 2017, he met with the freelance journalist Leslie Kean and revealed the existence of a $22 million (£16m) Pentagon programme investigating military reports of UFOs – a programme he had been in charge of since 2010. He had left the job the day before and decided to turn whistle-blower in the name of national security. As he put it in his resignation letter to secretary of defense Jim Mattis: “Bureaucratic challenges and inflexible mindsets continue to plague the department at all levels... The department must take serious the many accounts by the Navy and other services of unusual aerial systems interfering with military weapon platforms and displaying beyond next-generation capabilities... There remains a vital need to ascertain the capability and intent of these phenomena for the benefit of the armed forces and the nation.”

Kean joined forces with two other reporters, one from the New York Times, and on 16 December 2017 the story appeared on the paper’s front page. It detailed the “Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program” set up in 2007 to investigate unidentified aerial phenomena or “UAP”, the term that has replaced the now stigmatised “UFO”.

Kean joined forces with two other reporters, one from the New York Times, and on 16 December 2017 the story appeared on the paper’s front page. It detailed the “Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program” set up in 2007 to investigate unidentified aerial phenomena or “UAP”, the term that has replaced the now stigmatised “UFO”. Many UAPs, the Times reported, appeared impossible to explain, lacking any visible means of lift but able to travel at unfathomable speed. What’s more, the story stated, Elizondo and his colleagues had “determined that the phenomena they had studied did not seem to originate from any country”.

But the reader didn’t have to take the Times’ word for all this. There were videos. An ally of Elizondo’s, former deputy assistant secretary of defense for intelligence Chris Mellon, had helped the reporters obtain footage shot from the cockpits of US Navy fighter jets. One of the videos corroborates arguably the most compelling UAP episode ever to come to light.

According to reports, it took place in November 2004, when pilots were flying training missions from the USS Nimitz aircraft carrier. While squadron leader commander David Fravor was in the air, he was asked to intercept a mysterious aircraft. Upon arrival at its coordinates, what he saw was extraordinary: a 40-foot object, resembling a huge white Tic Tac, that had no visible propulsion system, rotors, wings or exhaust plume. Yet Fravor says it was able to jam radar, react to his movements and run rings around his F/A-18 Super Hornet fighter jet – turning so sharply it was as if the UAP had no inertia – before flying away faster than anything he had ever seen. Simply put, it defied the known laws of physics. Not only were there multiple eyewitnesses – including another pilot who filmed the Tic Tac using his plane’s targeting camera (this was the footage passed to the Times) – but the UAP was also detected by the radar of the nearby USS Princeton, an Aegis-class missile cruiser with state-of-the-art sensor systems.

Now, Elizondo’s hopes for government action have started to be realised. On 27 April 2020, the US Department Of Defense confirmed the veracity of the Times’ UAP videos and released them officially into the public domain. In a statement, the Pentagon said, “The aerial phenomena observed in the videos remain characterized as ‘unidentified’.” In August that same year, the Pentagon announced a new UAP Task Force “to detect, analyse and catalogue UAPs that could potentially pose a threat to US national security”. And in June 2021, the Office Of The Director Of National Intelligence released a report to congress about the government’s work on the UAP issue. Of the 144 encounters studied, it stated, 143 could not be explained. It didn’t blame extraterrestrials, but nor did it rule that explanation out.

One of the consequences of his efforts, he says, is a significant piece of legislation that is going through congress. The 2022 National Defense Authorization Act contains important developments for the study of UAPs. It requires that the secretary of defense sets up a permanent office to carry out the duties currently performed by the UAP Task Force but on a department-wide basis. This new office would have to submit an annual report to congressional committees on a range of its findings, including updates on efforts to track, understand, capture and exploit UAPs – as well as an assessment of health-related effects on those who encounter these strange flying objects. Elizondo calls it “historic”. GQ spoke to Elizondo as he prepared to head to Washington, DC, to brief members of congress on how to work with foreign allies on the issue.

Elizondo: I have in my possession official US government documentation that describes the exact same vehicle that we now call the Tic Tac [seen by the Nimitz pilots in 2004] being described in the early 1950s and early 1960s and performing in ways that, frankly, can outperform anything we have in our inventory. For some country to have developed hypersonic technology, instantaneous acceleration and basically transmedial travel in the early 1950s is absolutely preposterous.

Elizondo: I’ve got to be careful, I can’t speak too specifically, but one might imagine that you get a report from a pilot who says, “Lue, it’s really weird. I was flying and I got close to this thing and I came back home and it was like I got a sunburn. I was red for four days.” Well, that’s a sign of radiation. That’s not a sunburn; it’s a radiation burn. Then [a pilot] might say, if [they] had got a little closer, “Lue, I’m at the hospital. I’ve got symptoms that are indicative of microwave damage, meaning internal injuries, and even in my brain there’s some morphology there.” And then you might get somebody who gets really close and says, “You know, Lue, it’s really bizarre. It felt like I was there for only five minutes, but when I looked at my watch 30 minutes went by, but I only used five minutes’ worth of fuel. How is that possible?” Well, there’s a reason for that, we believe, and it probably has to do with warping of space time. And the closer you get to one of these vehicles, the more you may begin to experience space time relative to the vehicle and the environment.

Elizondo: The government has already admitted not only that they’re real, but that they truly are unidentified objects and they’re behaving in a very peculiar way. For example, you have an object that is at altitude, going at 120 knots against the wind, that is rotating at 90 degrees without losing altitude. Anybody who understands aerodynamics, when you’re flying an aircraft and you turn 90 degrees you lose lift, unless you’re in a hard bank. What makes those videos more compelling is not so much what you see, but what you don’t see. It’s the radar signatures, it’s the call signs from pilot to pilot, and pilot to ship, saying, “Hey, we’ve got a bogey up here.” And in one case you hear one of them say, “Look, we have a whole fleet of these things on the ASA [radar display].” Some of the pilots have come out and said there was actually a whole fleet of these things manoeuvring right off camera. The pilots are trained observers. They are trained to identify an aircraft silhouette at 20 miles away – an SU-22, a European Tornado, a Harrier or even an F-16 – and literally within a split moment’s notice be able to identify friend or foe and shoot it down. What they’re reporting doesn’t fit any type of parameters of any type of conventional aircraft that we know of.

Elizondo: I have been told I have to be very careful how I answer this question. I am not allowed to expound upon anything I’ve already said. What I have said is that it is my opinion, my belief – a strong belief, hint, hint – that the US government is in possession of exotic material associated with UAPs. That is all I’m allowed to say.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on UFOs from reliable major media sources.


The 3D-Printed Affordable Housing of the Future Will Be Recyclable
2024-01-26, Reasons to be Cheerful
Posted: 2024-02-19 21:50:04
https://reasonstobecheerful.world/future-affordable-housing-3d-printed-recycl...

When you imagine a 3D-printed home, you probably picture a boxy concrete structure. As 3D printing’s popularity has grown in the construction industry — thanks to its efficiency when it comes to time, energy and cost — carbon-intensive concrete has become the go-to building material. But a project in Maine has set its sights on something different: a neighborhood of 600-square-foot, 3D-printed, bio-based houses crafted from materials like wood fibers and bioresins. The aim: a complex of 100-percent recyclable buildings that will provide homes to those experiencing houselessness. In late 2022, an initiative between the University of Maine and local nonprofit Penquis unveiled its prototype — BioHome3D, the first 100-percent recyclable house. Now, the pioneering project is working toward completing its first livable housing complex. It will be fully bio-based, meaning all materials will be derived from living organisms such as plants and other renewable agricultural, marine and forestry materials. As the materials are all 100-percent recyclable, so become the buildings. The materials are also all renewable. And thanks to its natural composition, the home acts as a carbon sink, sequestering 46 tons of carbon dioxide per 600-square-foot unit. The materials for this project will mainly come from wood left over by local mills. “The wood fiber material that’s used in the mix is essentially waste wood here in Maine,” says Jason Bird, director of housing development for Penquis.

Note: Don't miss pictures of beautiful homes built by this process at the link above. Explore more positive stories like this in our comprehensive inspiring news articles archive focused on solutions and bridging divides.


Why Do UFO Sightings Keep Happening Near Nuclear Sites?
2023-10-20, Vice
Posted: 2024-02-19 21:47:05
https://www.vice.com/en/article/v7bxdx/why-do-ufo-sightings-keep-happening-ne...

The Enmyoin Temple in the Fukushima prefecture of Japan is now known colloquially by a different name, said its Chief Monk, Tomonori Izumi: “The Miracle Temple.” On March 11 2011, the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant was the site of one of the worst nuclear disasters ever after an earthquake and subsequent tsunami caused its electrical grid to fail. Miraculously, the temple was untouched. “ The UFO's came after the explosion. There were so many of them. I was shocked,” said the monk. “Radioactive energy was leaking everywhere. I believe the UFOs came to readjust the flood of radioactive energy in order to save us. That's my theory, anyway,” said Izumi. UFO’s have been documented repeatedly around places where humans have spawned nuclear activity. Andresen cited declassified U.S. government reports from agencies like the FBI and CIA about UFO sightings near nuclear sites, saying she had looked at 39 different accounts between the 1940s and 1990s. “It goes back to the 1930s when the science and research was being done to understand fission. But then it really heats up in the 1940s, in particular, right after the detonation of the two atomic bombs in Japan in 1945. Then ... you see one after another event occurring in proximity specifically to sites associated with nuclear weapons,” said Andresen. “There was a lot of UFO activity reported [around Chernobyl] also. At the height of the fire in Chernobyl, the reading was 3000 milliroentgens, which is a unit of ionizing radiation. And right at the height of the fire, many people observed a UFO come, stayed for 3 minutes, shown a light right at Unit 4 and departed,” she said. “They took another reading and it had apparently dropped to 800. That seems like a very conscious attempt to remediate the danger caused by the malfunction there.”

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on UFOs from reliable major media sources.


Multiple US military whistleblowers reveal how a disc-shaped UFO intercepted nuclear missile and disabled it with 'laser-beams' in mid-air
2024-02-12, Daily Mail (One of the UK's Popular Newspapers)
Posted: 2024-02-19 21:44:42
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-13074513/Military-whistleblow...

The US military is in possession of a video of a UFO apparently disabling a nuclear warhead during a routine test, according to multiple former officials. They claim the video in question captured a saucer-shaped craft circling the unarmed, dummy warhead shortly after it detached from the Atlas missile booster, then shooting four beams of light at the warhead, disabling it. Retired US Air Force officers Lieutenant Bob Jacobs and Major Florenze Mansmann claim to have viewed the recording of the 1964 encounter before the tape went missing. The former officials were part of a team responsible for capturing video of missile test launches in California with telescopic photography and videography equipment. Two days later, after they screened the video, they claim that two plain-clothed CIA agents confiscated the footage and swore them to secrecy. The incredible account is part of a pattern that some UFO experts have identified, where UFOs seem to interfere with nuclear weapons. The craft inadvertently caught on film was domed and disc-shaped, according to Jacobs and Mansmann. It was a 'classic disc, the center seemed to be a raised bubble ... the entire lower saucer shape was glowing and seemed to be rotating slowly,' according to a letter Mansmann wrote about the incident in 1983. Radar data of the September 15, 1964 event apparently confirmed that an unidentified aerial object was observed near the dummy warhead during the missile test.

Note: Watch Lt. Bob Jacob's intriguing full testimony here, where he discusses how he was sworn to secrecy about what he saw for 18 years. An anonymous US Senate investigator allegedly confirmed that the existence of the footage was verified by Luis Elizondo, the former head of the Pentagon’s advanced aerospace threat identification program (AATIP). For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on UFOs from reliable major media sources.


US court bans three weedkillers and finds EPA broke law in approval process
2024-02-07, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2024-02-19 21:42:21
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/feb/07/us-weedkiller-ban-dicamba...

A US court this week banned three weedkillers widely used in American agriculture, finding that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) broke the law in allowing them to be on the market. The ruling is specific to three dicamba-based weedkillers manufactured by Bayer, BASF and Syngenta, which have been blamed for millions of acres of crop damage and harm to endangered species and natural areas across the midwest and south. Discovery documents turned up in the litigation showed the companies knew that their dicamba weedkillers would probably lead to off-target crop damage. This is the second time a federal court has banned these weedkillers since they were introduced for the 2017 growing season. In 2020, the ninth circuit court of appeals issued its own ban, but months later the Trump administration reapproved the weedkilling products. But a federal judge in Arizona ruled on Monday that the EPA made a crucial error in reapproving dicamba, finding the agency did not post it for public notice and comment as required by law. US district judge David Bury wrote ... that it was a “very serious” violation and that if EPA had done a full analysis, it probably would not have made the same decision. Bury wrote that the EPA did not allow many people who are deeply affected by the weedkiller – including specialty farmers, conservation groups and more – to comment. “The evidence has shown that dicamba cannot be used without causing massive and unprecedented harm to farms as well as endangering plants and pollinators,” said George Kimbrell [with] the Center for Food Safety, which litigated the case.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on health and government corruption from reliable major media sources.


Artist says he'll destroy $45M worth of Rembrandt, Picasso and Warhol masterpieces if Julian Assange dies in prison
2024-02-14, CBS News
Posted: 2024-02-19 21:40:07
https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/andrei-molodkin-destroy-rembrandt-picasso-wa...

An artist in the south of France says he's planning to destroy up to $45 million worth of art, including pieces by Rembrandt, Picasso, and Andy Warhol, if WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange dies in prison. Andrei Molodkin [said] that he put a collection of masterpieces that had been donated to him into a 29-ton safe hooked up to two barrels — one containing an acid powder and the other containing an accelerator — which, when pumped into the safe, will create a reaction strong enough to destroy all its contents. The project is called "Dead Man's Switch," and it is backed by Assange's wife, Stella. Assange is currently in jail in the U.K. awaiting his final appeal over extradition to the United States to face charges under the Espionage Act, which will take place later this month. WikiLeaks published thousands of leaked documents relating to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and Assange is alleged to have conspired to obtain and disclose U.S. national defense information. Molodkin says that the safe will be hooked up to a 24-hour timer which must be reset every day or else it will trigger the release of the two barrel's corrosive substances inside. He says, each day, the timer will only be reset when someone "close to Assange" confirms he is alive. Assange's wife, Stella, says the project asks the question of "which is the greater taboo: destroying art or destroying human life? If democracy wins, the art will be preserved - as will Julian's life."

Note: The US prosecution of Assange undermines press freedom. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and media manipulation from reliable sources.


‘I slept with my half-sibling’: Woman’s horror story reflects loosely regulated nature of US fertility industry
2024-02-14, CNN News
Posted: 2024-02-19 21:37:47
https://www.cnn.com/2024/02/14/us/fertility-fraud-accidental-incest-invs/inde...

Victoria Hill never quite understood how she could be so different from her father – in looks and in temperament. Worried about a health issue, and puzzled because neither of her parents had suffered any of the symptoms, Hill purchased a DNA testing kit from 23andMe a few years ago and sent her DNA to the genomics company. What should have been a routine quest to learn more about herself turned into a shocking revelation that she had many more siblings than just the brother she grew up with – the count now stands at 22. Some of them reached out to her and dropped more bombshells: Hill’s biological father was not the man she grew up with but a fertility doctor who had been helping her mother conceive using donated sperm. That doctor, Burton Caldwell, a sibling told her, had used his own sperm to inseminate her mother, allegedly without her consent. Hill’s story appears to represent one of the most extreme cases to date of fertility fraud in which fertility doctors have misled their female patients and their families by secretly using their own sperm instead of that of a donor. A CNN investigation into fertility fraud nationwide found that most states, including Connecticut, have no laws against it. More than 30 doctors around the country have been caught or accused of covertly using their own sperm to impregnate their patients, CNN has confirmed; advocates say they know of at least 80. No doctors have yet been criminally charged for the behavior.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on sexual abuse by doctors from reliable major media sources.


Down With the Corporate Price-Gougers Ripping Us Off!
2024-02-02, Common Dreams
Posted: 2024-02-19 21:35:53
https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/corporate-greed-inflation-price-gouging

Our new report for the Groundwork Collaborative finds that corporate profits accounted for more than half — 53 percent — of inflation from April to September 2023. That’s an astronomical percentage. Corporate profits drove just 11 percent of price growth in the four decades prior to the pandemic. Businesses have been quick to blame rising costs on supply chain shocks from the pandemic and the war in Ukraine. But two years later, our economy has mostly returned to normal. In some cases, companies’ costs to make things and stock shelves have actually decreased. A recent survey from the Richmond Fed and Duke University revealed that 60 percent of companies plan to hike prices this year by more than they did before the pandemic, even though their costs have moderated. Corporations across industries, from housing to groceries and used cars, are juicing their profit margins even as the cost of doing business goes down. Since the summer of 2021, Groundwork began listening in on hundreds of corporate earnings calls where we heard CEO after CEO boasting about their ability to raise prices on consumers. Now we hear something slightly different: CEOs crowing about keeping their prices high while their costs go down. PepsiCo raised its prices on snacks and beverages by roughly 15 percent twice in the last year while bragging to shareholders that their profit margins will grow as input costs come down.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corporate corruption from reliable major media sources.


How Wealthy Corporations Use Investment Agreements to Extract Millions From Developing Countries
2024-01-25, ScheerPost
Posted: 2024-02-19 21:33:27
https://scheerpost.com/2024/01/25/how-wealthy-corporations-use-investment-agr...

When Rafael Correa entered Ecuador’s presidency in 2007, the nation faced an opportunity and a challenge. Ecuador’s economy depended on oil, and global crude prices were near a record high. Much of the oil was extracted by foreign companies ... as prices surged more wealth began flowing overseas. Soon after taking office, Correa increased a recently enacted windfall tax on oil companies. The idea was to use the tax as leverage to extract better terms from the companies. Within months, two oil companies working as partners—the independent Anglo-French firm Perenco and Burlington Resources, a subsidiary of ConocoPhillips—ceased paying the tax and sued the government through a system of international tribunals known as investor state dispute settlements, or ISDS. The system allows foreign investors to sue governments before tribunals outside the jurisdiction of national courts. Perenco and Burlington [convinced] arbitrators in two separate tribunals to award the companies more than $800 million. Critics say the ISDS system gives corporations an exclusive, parallel justice system that elevates foreign interests above human rights and environmental concerns. The vast majority of cases have been brought by companies based in North America or Europe against governments in Latin America, Africa and Asia, prompting many critics to liken the ISDS system to a form of market-based colonialism that continues to extract wealth from the Global South.

Note: According to the analysis in the article, fossil fuel companies and investors filed one in five of 1,720 claims since the 1970s, and "have been awarded at least $82.8 billion in compensation from governments." For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corporate corruption and income inequality from reliable major media sources.


Source Who Revealed How Taxes Steal for the Rich Rewarded With Five Years in Prison
2024-02-02, Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting
Posted: 2024-02-19 21:29:41
https://fair.org/home/source-who-revealed-how-taxes-steal-for-the-rich-reward...

Because of Charles Littlejohn, we know that former President Donald Trump and a whole bunch of other rich people pay next to nothing in taxes. Littlejohn, a former consultant at the Internal Revenue Service, leaked these tax returns. For leaking this sensitive information, Littlejohn has been sentenced to five years in federal prison, the maximum jail term. Littlejohn’s lawyers (Bloomberg, 1/18/24) had argued that he had acted “out of a deep, moral belief that the American people had a right to know the information and sharing it was the only way to effect change.” Littlejohn now joins people like Reality Winner (New York Times, 8/23/18) and Chelsea Manning (NPR, 1/17/17), security and military-sector leakers who put their freedom on the line to disclose government secrets they felt should be a matter of the public record. The fact of the matter is that investigative journalism can only happen because of leakers who take great risks. Adrian Schoolcraft, an NYPD officer who provided the Village Voice (5/4/10) with evidence of statistics manipulation, felt the wrath of government power when he was eventually forced into a psychiatric ward (Chief, 10/5/15). Edward Snowden, who provided the Guardian (6/11/13) with details about widespread NSA surveillance, is still in exile in Russia as a result of his decision to be a whistleblower. By revealing what the rich can legally get away with, [Littlejohn] was demonstrating that we live in an increasingly divided society.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and income inequality from reliable major media sources.


EWG finds little-known toxic chemical in four out of five people tested
2024-02-15, Environmental Working Group
Posted: 2024-02-19 21:27:22
https://www.ewg.org/news-insights/news/2024/02/ewg-finds-little-known-toxic-c...

A new EWG peer-reviewed study has found chlormequat, a little-known pesticide, in four out of five, or 80 percent, of people tested. The groundbreaking analysis of chlormequat in the bodies of people in the U.S. rings alarm bells, because the chemical is linked to reproductive and developmental problems in animal studies, suggesting the potential for similar harm to humans. EWG’s research, published February 15 in the Journal of Exposure Science and Environmental Epidemiology, tested for the presence of chlormequat in urine collected from 96 people between 2017 and 2023. The chemical was found in the urine of 77 of them. We detected the chemical in 92 percent of oat-based foods purchased in May 2023, including Quaker Oats and Cheerios. The fact that so many people are exposed raises concerns about its potential impact on public health, since animal studies link chlormequat to reduced fertility, harm to the reproductive system and altered fetal growth. Environmental Protection Agency regulations allow the chemical to be used on ornamental plants only – not food crops – grown in the U.S. But its use is permitted on imported oats and other foods sold here. Many oats and oat products consumed in the U.S. come from Canada. Chlormequat was not allowed on oats sold in the U.S. before 2018, when the Trump EPA gave first-time approval for some amount of the chemical on imported oats. The same administration in 2020 increased the allowable level.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on health and food system corruption from reliable major media sources.


'UFO Hacker' Tells What He Found
2006-06-21, Wired
Posted: 2024-02-19 21:24:30
https://www.wired.com/2006/06/ufo-hacker-tells-what-he-found/

The search for proof of the existence of UFOs landed Gary McKinnon in a world of trouble. After allegedly hacking into NASA websites - where he says he found images of what looked like extraterrestrial spaceships - the 40-year-old Briton ... could receive a 70-year prison term. "A NASA photographic expert said that there was a Building 8 at Johnson Space Center where they regularly airbrushed out images of UFOs from the high-resolution satellite imaging," [said McKinnon]. "I logged on to NASA and was able to access this department. They had huge, high-resolution images stored in their picture files. They had filtered and unfiltered, or processed and unprocessed, files. My dialup 56K connection was very slow trying to download one of these picture files. I was able to briefly see one of these pictures. It was a silvery, cigar-shaped object with geodesic spheres on either side. There were no visible seams or riveting. There was no reference to the size of the object and the picture was taken presumably by a satellite looking down on it. The object didn't look manmade or anything like what we have created. I also got access to Excel spreadsheets. One was titled "Non-Terrestrial Officers." It contained names and ranks of U.S. Air Force personnel who are not registered anywhere else. It also contained information about ship-to-ship transfers, but I've never seen the names of these ships noted anywhere else."

Note: See pg. 293 of the Disclosure Project to read the fascinating testimony of NASA photographic expert Donna Hare. Going further, NASA reportedly erased the original tapes of the first lunar landing. Was there something on those tapes that they didn't want the public to see? For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on UFOs from reliable major media sources.


Blind Jazz Sax Teacher Inspires Students to ‘Feel’ Their Instruments, Uses His Disability as Teaching Tool
2024-02-09, Good News Network
Posted: 2024-02-19 21:22:02
https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/blind-jazz-sax-teacher-inspires-students-to-f...

From a Tampa performing arts conservatory comes the story of a blind jazz saxophonist who uses his disability as a teaching tool. He encourages his students to act on instinct; to feel the music through their instruments, and not let the waking world deceive them. “Welcome to every day of my life,” says Matthew Weihmuller in his jazz improvisation class after turning the lights off. “Then we have a big laugh,” he adds. When Weihmuller started playing, he needed braille sheet music, and pieces would take months; even years to learn. As if that weren’t difficult enough, few people in the country were capable of providing braille music, so he started “brailling” his own, with the help of his mom. “They can’t look at their instrument. Now, they have to feel their instrument with their fingers and hands, right?” Weihmuller told Fox 13. “Now, we’ve got to listen to the music. We can’t read it. It forces the students to use their other senses.” During improvisational sessions, a musician has to be ready for sudden changes in time signature or key. This is nearly impossible to express through sheet music. At least in this regard, the children are learning in the best way for this unorthodox, yet traditional form of jazz music. As an educator with blindness, Weihmuller stresses turning any disadvantage into an advantage, a teaching philosophy that has led some students to tell the man that he has changed the way they look at life.

Note: Read more inspiring news articles on the power of art. For more, explore our uplifting Inspiration Center, which focuses on solutions and the best of humanity and life.


A Holocaust survivor identifies with the pain of both sides in the Israel-Hamas war
2024-01-30, NPR
Posted: 2024-02-19 21:20:03
https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2024/01/30/1227849885/a-holocaust-s...

Last week, the International Court of Justice issued a preliminary ruling that the charge brought by South Africa that Israel is guilty of genocide in Gaza is "plausible." The court called on Israel to take all measures to prevent the killing of civilians in the Palestinian enclave. The war began after Hamas struck southern Israel on October 7, killing some 1,200 people and taking more than 200 hostages. The day of the attack has been described as the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust. When [Holocaust survivor Estelle] Laughlin was a schoolgirl in Warsaw, children regularly pelted her and the other Jewish kids with pebbles. "We were so frightened," she recalls. "The antisemitism was right in front of me — it was so visceral." For Laughlin, besides luck, it was her mother and sister who helped her make it out of the camps alive. "Love maintained us," she says. She says she survived with an enduring sense of compassion and love for humanity, including for the Germans. "Without those values, survival would be hardly meaningful," she says. Laughlin says she's holding the Jewish pain of this war alongside the Palestinian pain. "When the dignity of any human being is diminished, the dignity of all humanity is diminished," she says. "Not only in relationship to my community but to any community of innocent people being attacked." When Laughlin considers the Palestinians living in Gaza, she says, "I identify with their plight ... with their isolation that the rest of the world keeps on going on as though nothing happened, and their world is crumbling." "I feel their pain," she adds. She longs for a better way forward.

Note: Check out the 12 organizations working for Israel-Palestine peace. Explore more positive stories like this in our comprehensive inspiring news articles archive focused on solutions and bridging divides.


GOP Congressman Stands By Accusation Some Fellow Members Have Been Compromised
2024-01-13, Huffington Post
Posted: 2024-02-12 19:38:57
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/tim-burchett-stands-by-allegation-members-blac...

One of the more colorful conservative members of the U.S. House ... stands by recent remarks in which he said some of his fellow members were likely victims of blackmail. But Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.), who made the comments on a Dec. 21 podcast ... declined to elaborate on who he was talking about or give any other details. “You as a member of the media understand confidentiality, and I appreciate that, and I am going to keep that confidential unless those people tell me otherwise,” Burchett [said]. Asked if he was standing by his comments, Burchett said, “Sure. I’m not going to back up.” And when asked if he believed there were House members who had decided how to vote based on compromising material about them held by foreign powers, Burchett said, “Absolutely. And other powers. It doesn’t have to be foreign powers.” He said members may be on a trip or at a bar, meet someone and buy them a drink. “Next thing you know, you’re in a hotel room with them, naked. Next thing you know, you’re about to make a key vote, and what happens? Some well-dressed person comes up and whispers into your ear, ‘Hey, man, there’s tapes out on you. Were you in a motel room on whatever with whoever?’ And then you’re, like, ‘Uh-oh.’ And they say, ‘You really ought not be voting for this thing.’” Burchett’s remarks were the most lurid accusations since former Rep. Madison Cawthorn [alleged that he] had been invited by colleagues to orgies in Washington.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption from reliable major media sources.


Sexual violence is an ancient and often unseen war crime. Is it inevitable?
2024-02-08, NPR
Posted: 2024-02-12 19:36:50
https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2024/02/08/1229815241/sexual-violen...

Despite its long history as part of conflicts, sexual violence is often not reported because of the trauma and shame it brings to survivors, their families and their wider communities. There has also been reticence among various authorities to speak out. Only in modern times, in the 1990s when wars broke out in Rwanda and Yugoslavia, did the United Nations begin to recognize sexual violence as ... a category of war crime. The specific term "conflict-related sexual violence," or CRSV, was first introduced in 2000 when the United Nations Security Council issued a resolution that launched the Women, Peace and Security Agenda. The U.N. defined the term as "rape, sexual slavery, forced prostitution, forced pregnancy, forced abortion, enforced sterilization, forced marriage and any other form of sexual violence of comparable gravity perpetrated against women, men, girls or boys that is directly or indirectly linked to a conflict." [CRSV] is widespread and is used as a tactic of war to assert dominance and power. "It can be just as traumatizing to see your daughter, your sister or your parents being raped in front of you," says [Dr. Ranit] Mishori. "Or you're forced to strip naked in front of soldiers or in the city square. People often carry this trauma without knowing it's an international crime and minimize what happened to them." For conflict resolution and peace building to be successful, survivors need to be included in the process. For some countries this method has already started to work. [In Colombia], they have built women into the peace process. It's not perfect — no peace is perfect — but it is progressive and it is intentional, and that is important. Intentional peace building must be inclusive of survivors of this form of violence.

Note: The public receives censored and sanitized versions of war from the government and the media. Yet in reality, unethical violations of domestic and international human rights law are common and often kept hidden during wartime. For more, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on sexual abuse scandals from reliable major media sources.


Bodycam Maker Axon Is on a Mission to Surveil America with AI
2024-02-01, Vice
Posted: 2024-02-12 19:35:15
https://www.vice.com/en/article/m7bwp4/axon-acquires-fusus-ai-surveillance-re...

Axon, maker of Tasers and police body cameras, has acquired a surveillance company that allows police to tap into camera networks in schools, retail stores, and other locations in cities and towns across America and apply AI technology to the footage. Axon acquired Fusus for an undisclosed sum. Fusus operates what it calls “real time crime centers (RTCC)” which allow police and other public agencies to analyze a wide array of video sources at a single point and apply AI that detects objects and people. These centers are reminiscent of the Department of Homeland Security’s Fusion Centers—where intelligence from a diverse number of sources is collected and shared among agencies—and have already expanded to over 250 cities and counties. Last week, Axon announced a new line of cameras called Axon Body Workforce designed to be worn by workers in retail and in healthcare. Despite pushing the cameras as deterrents, data shows no evidence that they’ve been effective in reducing police violence or increasing transparency. The rise of Fusus is concerning to rights groups like the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which has raised alarm over the expansion of law enforcement’s ability to easily surveil Americans. Notably, the concept behind Fusus’ solution is similar to technology that has been deployed in South Africa for years, and which experts have said exacerbates inequality in the country.

Note: Axon has ties to paid experts who are used to exonerate police after deaths in custody. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corporate corruption and the disappearance of privacy from reliable major media sources.


TSA sparks privacy concerns amid plans to install facial recognition systems at 400 US airports
2024-02-01, New York Post
Posted: 2024-02-12 19:32:58
https://nypost.com/2024/02/01/lifestyle/tsa-sparks-privacy-concerns-amid-plan...

The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) sparked privacy concerns after unveiling plans to roll out controversial facial recognition tech in over 400 US airports soon. “TSA is in the early stages of deploying its facial recognition capability to airport security checkpoints,” a spokesperson [said] regarding the ambitious program. They explained that the cutting-edge tech serves to both enhance and expedite the screening process for passengers. Dubbed CAT-2 machines, these automated identification systems accomplish this by incorporating facial recognition tech to snap real-time pictures of travelers. They then compare this biometric data against the flyer’s photo ID to verify that it’s the real person. These CAT-scans enable “traveler use of mobile driver’s licenses,” thereby improving the security experience, per the spokesperson. The TSA currently has 600 CAT-2 units deployed at about 50 airports nationwide and plans to expand them to 400 federalized airports in the future. Following the implementation of these synthetic security accelerators at US airports last winter, lawmakers expressed concerns that the machines present a major privacy issue. “The TSA program is a precursor to a full-blown national surveillance state,” said Oregon Senator Jeff Merkley. “Nothing could be more damaging to our national values of privacy and freedom. No government should be trusted with this power.”

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and the disappearance of privacy from reliable major media sources.


‘A privacy nightmare’: the $400m surveillance package inside the US immigration bill
2024-02-06, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2024-02-12 19:31:26
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/feb/06/us-immigration-bill-mexico-bo...

The $118bn bipartisan immigration bill that the US Senate introduced on Sunday is already facing steep opposition. The 370-page measure, which also would provide additional aid to Israel and Ukraine, has drawn the ire of both Democrats and Republicans over its proposed asylum and border laws. But privacy, immigration and digital liberties experts are also concerned over another aspect of the bill: more than $400m in funding for additional border surveillance and data-gathering tools. The lion’s share of that funding will go to two main tools: $170m for additional autonomous surveillance towers and $204m for “expenses related to the analysis of DNA samples”, which includes those collected from migrants detained by border patrol. The bill describes autonomous surveillance towers as ones that “utilize sensors, onboard computing, and artificial intelligence to identify items of interest that would otherwise be manually identified by personnel”. The rest of the funding for border surveillance ... includes $47.5m for mobile video surveillance systems and drones and $25m for “familial DNA testing”. The bill also includes $25m in funding for “subterranean detection capabilities” and $10m to acquire data from unmanned surface vehicles or autonomous boats. As of early January, CBP had deployed 396 surveillance towers along the US-Mexico border, according to the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF).

Note: Read more about the secret history of facial recognition technology and undeniable evidence indicating these tools do much more harm than good. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and the disappearance of privacy from reliable major media sources.


Ad agency tied to Purdue Pharma settles opioid claims for $350 million
2024-02-01, Washington Post
Posted: 2024-02-12 19:29:42
https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2024/02/01/opioids-oxycontin-purdue-pub...

An advertising agency that helped market the blockbuster painkiller OxyContin will pay $350 million to states ravaged by the nation’s opioid crisis. Attorneys general from multiple states alleged that Publicis Health developed “unfair and deceptive” marketing campaigns aimed at persuading doctors to prescribe the addictive drug for longer periods of time and at higher doses. The company’s client was Purdue Pharma, the Connecticut drugmaker accused in lawsuits of helping ignite the epidemic through aggressive marketing and sales of OxyContin. Publicis, a subsidiary of French ad giant Publicis Groupe, settled with 50 states and D.C. Under the agreements, Publicis Health will stop accepting work related to prescription opioids and must release thousands of internal documents chronicling its dealings with companies such as Purdue. It is the first settlement with an advertising agency connected to the opioid crisis, according to the New York attorney general’s office. “Publicis was responsible for creating advertisements and materials, such as pamphlets and brochures that promoted OxyContin as safe and unable to be abused, even though this claim was not true,” according to a news release from the office of New York Attorney General Letitia James. Drug overdoses killed nearly 110,000 people in the United States in 2022, a record high, according to federal death statistics.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on Big Pharma corruption from reliable major media sources.


Jeffrey Epstein list: New documents reveal paedophile’s responses to sex trafficking claims
2024-01-14, The Independent (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2024-02-12 19:27:40
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/crime/jeffrey-epstein-list-...

Over the past week thousands of pages of court documents relating to late paedophile Jeffrey Epstein, have been made public after US judge Loretta Preska ordered the release of filings in a lawsuit brought by Virginia Giuffre against Ghislaine Maxwell. The documents named scores of prominent figures including, Prince Andrew, Bill Clinton, Donald Trump and Victoria’s Secret boss Les Wexner. Being identified through the court documents does not mean that the individual was involved in or aware of any wrongdoing by Epstein. The final batch of documents, released on Tuesday, included depositions from Ms Giuffre, Maxwell and Epstein. In Epstein’s deposition, he was questioned about his campaign of abuse of young and underage girls. He pleaded the Fifth over 1,000 times. In Maxwell’s deposition, she was confronted with disturbing messages left for Epstein – one of which referenced what appeared to be code for procuring an underage Russian girl for Epstein. “She is two times eight years old. Not blond. Lessons are free and you can have your first today if you call,” it read.

Note: Read about the new evidence suggesting Epstein ran a sex blackmail operation for intelligence agencies. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on Jeffrey Epstein from reliable major media sources.


Internal Prison Files Suggest Epstein ‘Suicide’ Coverup
2024-02-04, ScheerPost
Posted: 2024-02-12 19:25:06
https://scheerpost.com/2024/02/04/internal-prison-files-suggest-epstein-suici...

Internal US Bureau of Prison (BOP) documents obtained by The Grayzone under Freedom of Information laws raise extremely serious questions about whether Jeffrey Epstein’s alleged first suicide attempt on July 23, 2019 in fact happened, and suggest the Bureau distorted evidence to attribute his death to suicide before his autopsy had even been completed. Officially, Epstein was found to have died in his cell at New York City’s Metropolitan Correctional Center on August 10, 2019, with a medical examiner ruling at the time that he had taken his own life by hanging. The ruling was aggressively contested by Epstein’s associates and widely disbelieved. Epstein’s legal team publicly declared available evidence on his death was “far more consistent” with murder. On August 9 ... regular checks on [Epstein] ceased. Three CCTV cameras nearby apparently malfunctioned. Two on-duty guards fabricated records to hide how they allegedly flouted their legal duties to surf the internet. And the next day, the prison’s most infamous inmate was dead. In the immediate wake of Epstein’s death ... BOP suicide prevention coordinator Robert Nagle visited the Metropolitan Correctional Center to initiate a “psychological reconstruction” of Epstein’s last moments. His resultant report recorded that a video of the “significant incident” was confiscated by the FBI before his review began. He was also prohibited from conducting formal interviews with prison staff.

Note: Many questions remain unanswered regarding Epstein's death. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on Jeffrey Epstein and prison system corruption from reliable major media sources.


New Research Shows Pfizer’s mRNA Vaccine Can Instruct Cells To Produce ‘off-target’ Proteins
2023-01-30, The Pulse
Posted: 2024-02-12 19:23:14
https://www.thepulse.one/p/new-research-shows-pfizers-mrna-vaccine

Since the rollout of mRNA COVID-19 vaccines, experts and academics from around the world have been raising numerous short-term and long-term safety concerns. One of these deals with the spike protein that the human cell is instructed to generate as a result of the shot, and how it differs from the spike protein that’s generated from a natural infection. A “pseudouridine” molecule has been added to the mRNA to give it a longer half-life than normal mRNA. Therefore, the production of spike protein within the cell, of those who have been vaccinated, is not being turned off. This is concerning because multiple studies have shown that the vaccine induced spike protein can leak outside of the cell and enter into the blood- stream. This is one possible mechanism of action in which vaccine injuries are occurring. During an autopsy of a vaccinated person who had died after mRNA vaccination, it was found that the vaccine disperses rapidly from the injection site and can be found in nearly all parts of the body. Looking into these concerns is important to figure out why so many COVID vaccine injuries around the world have been reported compared to previous vaccines. Approximately 50 percent of vaccine injuries reported to the Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (VAERS) in the last 30 years have all been from COVID products. Concerning autopsy results have also been published. It’s quite clear something very serious about these shots is and has been ignored.

Note: VAERS only captures a portion of vaccine injuries and deaths. Vaccine adverse event numbers are made publically available, and currently show 2,579,111 COVID vaccine injury reports and 37,100 COVID Vaccine Reported Deaths (out of 47,290 Total Reported Deaths from all vaccines). Read our in-depth report about this concerning trend, and how the VAERS system presents an incomplete picture of vaccine injuries. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on COVID vaccines from reliable major media sources.


Pentagon Report Predicts New Age of COVID Bioweapons and Brain Chip Warfare
2024-01-25, Lee Fang on Substack
Posted: 2024-02-12 19:19:43
https://www.leefang.com/p/pentagon-report-predicts-new-age

Military strategists believe that a "coronavirus bioweapon" may lurk on the horizon. This possibility is one of several outlined in a new report sponsored by the Office of the Secretary of Defense. The report “Plagues, Cyborgs, and Supersoldiers: The Human Domain of War Research” delves into how CRISPR gene-editing technology, mRNA vaccines, brain networking, and other technological advancements could unleash new forms of military conflict. “We see a complex, high-threat landscape emerging where future wars are fought with humans controlling hyper-sophisticated machines with their thoughts” and “synthetically generated, genomically targeted plagues” that cripple the American military-industrial base,” the report warns. At the same time, authoritarian states might ... brutally suppress "anti-vaccine populists" and enforce compliance. The report claims this could hinder the U.S. due to its more relaxed regulatory environment that values individual liberties, where such crackdowns and forced vaccinations are more difficult to deploy. The report takes aim at Congress, criticizing the recent repeal of the COVID-19 vaccine mandate for service members. It urges lawmakers to resist "anti-vaccine populism" to ensure military readiness. Simultaneously, the report urges the Pentagon to consider using genetic screening to find qualified military recruits and develop clear plans for integrating bioweapon warfare capabilities.

Note: Learn more about emerging warfare technology in our comprehensive Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center. For more, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on military corruption and microchip implants from reliable major media sources .


One unexpected way to reduce violent crime? Create green spaces.
2023-12-14, National Geographic
Posted: 2024-02-12 19:17:43
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/article/urban-greening-violent...

In 2012, according to FBI data, 2,774 violent crimes were reported to the Flint Police Department. In 2022, 985 were reported. Like other “legacy cities” that have experienced significant economic decline and population loss, Flint, [Michigan] is still struggling. But now, through the Genesee County Land Bank’s Clean & Green program, Ishmel and hundreds of other residents have been mowing vacant lots. Greening projects like these maintain abandoned spaces, either by mowing them or converting them into gardens and parks. But these projects don’t just make the neighborhood feel safer. Researchers who have been studying the effects of greening in Flint; Philadelphia; Youngstown, Ohio; and other legacy cities have shown repeatedly that it actually reduces violent crime. “It is one of the most consistent findings I’ve ever had in my 34-year career of doing research,” says Marc A. Zimmerman, professor at the University of Michigan School of Public Health. A review of 45 papers found that the presence of green spaces, including parks and trees, reduces crime in urban areas. In Flint, Zimmerman and his colleagues compared streets where community members maintained vacant lots through Clean & Green with streets where vacant lots were left alone, over five years. The maintained ones had almost 40 percent fewer assaults and violent crimes. One study found that while simply maintaining vacant lots reduced burglaries, turning them into gardens reduced assaults.

Note: Explore more positive stories like this in our comprehensive inspiring news articles archive focused on solutions and bridging divides.


A big idea for small farms: How to link agriculture, nutrition and public health
2024-02-03, NPR
Posted: 2024-02-12 19:15:44
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2024/02/03/1228749130/nutrition-far...

Jimena Cordero is chopping up vegetables and fanning them out onto trays. Cordero is the farm manager at Ollin Farms, not far from Boulder, Colo. — she's put together bright pink and purple radishes, apple, fresh turnips. At the meeting with about a dozen local farmers, two state representatives, and the Colorado commissioner of agriculture, [Cordero's father Mark] Guttridge will explain how Boulder county has made creative investments in his farm that could be scaled up to the state or even national level. Before the meeting, Guttridge shows me one of those investments. A dozen sheep mill about in a field bordered by a simple white fence. Around the field is a special moveable type of fencing that Ollin Farms bought using grants from the Boulder County Sustainability Office. It allows them to move the sheep from one field to another, fertilizing as they go. The goal of these investments is "really building up our soil health," he explains. "That relates directly to the nutrient quality and nutrient density of the food — healthy soil grows healthy food." The county also makes an effort to get that healthy food out to different communities to be able to boost public health. That's where the Boulder County Public Health department comes in. It created a coupon program that low-income families — many of mixed immigration status — can use to get free fruits and vegetables from Ollin Farms' farm stand.

Note: Explore more positive stories like this in our comprehensive inspiring news articles archive focused on solutions and bridging divides.


Cells of people living in greener areas age more slowly, research finds
2023-12-02, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2024-02-12 19:13:41
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/dec/02/green-space-ageing-neighborhood

Many studies have shown that people living in greener neighborhoods have several health benefits, including lower levels of stress and cardiovascular disease. But new research indicates that exposure to parks, trees and other green spaces can slow the rates at which our cells age. The study, published in Science of the Total Environment, found that people who lived in neighborhoods with more green space had longer telomeres, which are associated with longer lives and slower ageing. Telomeres are structures that sit on the ends of each cell’s 46 chromosomes, like the plastic caps on shoelaces, and keep DNA from unraveling. The longer a cell’s telomeres, the more times it can replicate. When telomeres become so short that cells can’t divide, the cells die. [Study co-author Aaron] Hipp and his colleagues looked at the medical records (that included measures of telomere lengths from biological samples) and survey responses from more than 7,800 people who participated in a national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention survey conducted between 1999 and 2002. The researchers connected that information with census data to estimate the amount of green space in each person’s neighborhood. They found that a 5% increase in a neighborhood’s green space was associated with a 1% reduction in the ageing of cells. “The more green the area, the slower the cell ageing,” said Hipp.

Note: Explore more positive stories like this in our comprehensive inspiring news articles archive focused on solutions and bridging divides.


The Pentagon Tried to Hide That It Bought Americans’ Data Without a Warrant
2024-01-26, Wired
Posted: 2024-02-04 21:29:44
https://www.wired.com/story/pentagon-data-purchases-wyden-letter/

United States officials fought to conceal details of arrangements between US spy agencies and private companies tracking the whereabouts of Americans. Obtaining location data from US phones normally requires a warrant, but police and intelligence agencies routinely pay companies instead for the data, effectively circumventing the courts. Ron Wyden, the US senator from Oregon, informed the nation’s intelligence chief, Avril Haines, on Thursday that the Pentagon only agreed to release details about the data purchases, which had always been unclassified, after Wyden hindered the Senate's efforts to appoint a new director of the National Security Agency. “The secrecy around data purchases was amplified,” Wyden wrote, “because intelligence agencies have sought to keep the American people in the dark." Pentagon offices known to have purchased location data from these companies include the Defense Intelligence Agency and the NSA, among others. Wyden's letter ... indicates that the NSA is also “buying Americans' domestic internet metadata.” Wyden's disclosure comes amid a fight in the US House of Representatives over efforts to outlaw the purchases. Members of the House Judiciary Committee attached legislation doing so ... to a bill reauthorizing a contentious surveillance program known as Section 702. Biden administration officials and members of the intelligence committee staged a campaign against the privacy-enhancing measures.

Note: Learn more about mission creep in our comprehensive Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center. For more, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on military corruption and the disappearance of privacy from reliable major media sources.


Mental Health App Data Privacy Problem is Getting Worse
2024-01-22, Yahoo News
Posted: 2024-02-04 21:27:59
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/the-mental-health-app-data-privacy-problem-is-...

Mental health apps have become increasingly common over the past few years, particularly due to the rise in telehealth during the coronavirus pandemic. However, there's a problem: Data privacy is being compromised in the process. In 2023 the Federal Trade Commission ordered the mental health platform BetterHelp, which is owned by Teladoc (TDOC), to pay a $7.8 million fine to consumers for sharing their mental health data for advertising purposes with Facebook (META) and Snapchat (SNAP) after previously promising to keep the information private. Cerebral, a telehealth startup, admitted last year to exposing sensitive patient information to companies like Google (GOOG, GOOGL), Meta, TikTok, and other third-party advertisers. This info included patient names, birth dates, insurance information, and the patient's responses to mental health self-evaluations through the app. Overall, according to the Mozilla Foundation’s Privacy Not Included online buyer’s guide, only two out of the 27 mental health apps available to users met Mozilla's privacy and security standards in 2023. A December 2022 study of 578 mental health apps published in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that 44% shared data they collected with third parties. A February 2023 report from Duke University found that out of 37 different data brokers that researchers contacted ... firms “were ultimately willing and able to sell the requested mental health data.”

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on health and the disappearance of privacy from reliable major media sources.


Prisoners in the US are part of a hidden workforce linked to hundreds of popular food brands
2024-01-29, Yahoo News/Associated Press
Posted: 2024-02-04 21:26:17
https://news.yahoo.com/prisoners-us-part-hidden-workforce-125458768.html

Unmarked trucks packed with prison-raised cattle roll out of the Louisiana State Penitentiary, where men are sentenced to hard labor and forced to work, for pennies an hour or sometimes nothing at all. They are among America’s most vulnerable laborers. If they refuse to work, some can jeopardize their chances of parole or face punishment like being sent to solitary confinement. The goods ... prisoners produce wind up in the supply chains of a dizzying array of products found in most American kitchens, from Frosted Flakes cereal and Ball Park hot dogs to Gold Medal flour, Coca-Cola and Riceland rice. They are on the shelves of virtually every supermarket in the country, including Kroger, Target, Aldi and Whole Foods. It’s completely legal. Enshrined in the Constitution by the 13th Amendment, slavery and involuntary servitude are banned – except as punishment for a crime. With about 2 million people locked up, U.S. prison labor from all sectors has morphed into a multibillion-dollar empire. Almost all of the country’s state and federal adult prisons have some sort of work program, employing around 800,000 people. Altogether, labor tied specifically to goods and services produced through state prison industries brought in more than $2 billion in 2021. “Slavery has not been abolished,” said Curtis Davis, who spent more than 25 years at [Louisiana's Angola] penitentiary. “It is still operating in present tense,” he said. “Nothing has changed.”

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corruption in prisons and in the food system from reliable major media sources.


New York has paid record $322m to people wrongly incarcerated since 1989
2024-01-17, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2024-02-04 21:24:13
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/jan/17/new-york-payouts-wrongul-inca...

New York has paid out the most of any state in the US to people wrongly incarcerated, according to a new study. High Rise Financial ... analyzed data from the National Registry of Exonerations, a database on exonerated people in each state. New York state has paid out a total of $322m to those wrongfully incarcerated. The state has awarded 237 claims for wrongful imprisonment out of 326 exonerated people. Such payouts cost New York taxpayers $15.97 per person, also the largest per-capita payment out of any state, the study found. Texas, Connecticut, Maryland and Michigan were the other states in the top five that paid out the most to exonerated people. Texas paid out the second highest amount, awarding a total of $155m to 128 people out of 450 people exonerated. The most recent study comes as the amount of exoneration has steadily increased in recent years, according to Maurice Chammah, a journalist with the Marshall Project. Chammah added that getting compensation for a wrong conviction can be tough in some states. In Texas, where lawmakers have paid out large sums to exonerees, legislators have also placed “really harsh limits on accessing that money”. “You sometimes need to be declared actually innocent by a court in a way that is like a very high and difficult barrier to meet,” Chammah said. Overall, Chammah noted that such figures could prompt legislators to pass bills that could limit wrongful incarceration in the first place.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corruption in the courts and in the prison system from reliable major media sources.


Boom, bang! Tales from a cell below the ‘crazy unit’ of a US prison
2023-12-20, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2024-02-04 21:22:33
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/dec/20/inside-new-jersey-state-priso...

I was moved on to unit 1EE on the south compound inside New Jersey State Prison a year ago. On the floor just above me is 2EE, which is known as “the crazy unit”. This unit is where incarcerated men throughout the state are sent when they experience mental health difficulties. Men are stripped down and given “turtle suits”, thin vests that barely keep them covered. There are no pillows, blankets or sheets. In the United States, roughly 40% of people in state prisons and local jails have a history of mental illness, but less than half of those folks receive treatment. Individuals with signs of mental health issues can face additional risks and discipline while inside, including prison misconduct charges, longer solitary confinement periods and barriers to accessing medication. As a juvenile, a kid might try to get out of being locked up by saying they were going to kill themselves, so they could get sent to a psych unit where they might be treated better. They don’t realize that it will put them on the special needs list forever. As an adult, at least in New Jersey State Prison, a person can get labeled special needs for complaining that they can’t sleep. A special needs designation means that you’ll be at the mercy of the mental health department. It can land you in a bad spot. The side-effects of medication they might give you could be crippling. Some guys get hooked on the drugs and never wake up again.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on prison system corruption from reliable major media sources.


Pentagon Suggests There’re No U.S. Troops In Yemen — But Last Month The White House Said There Are
2024-01-26, The Intercept
Posted: 2024-02-04 21:20:53
https://theintercept.com/2024/01/26/us-troops-yemen-pentagon-white-house/

Amid a raft of U.S. strikes targeting Houthi rebels in Yemen, the Pentagon has boots on the ground in the country — a fact the Defense Department has recently refused to acknowledge. “A small number of United States military personnel are deployed to Yemen to conduct operations against al-Qa’ida in the Arabian Peninsula and ISIS,” the White House told Congress ... on December 7. This month, the U.S. began its military campaign against the Houthis for attacking shipping vessels in the Red Sea. As the U.S. began to attack, defense officials suddenly became more reticent about the American military presence in Yemen. In a press briefing on January 17, Pentagon press secretary Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder was asked if he could give assurances that the U.S. had no troops on the ground in Yemen. “It’s possible that U.S. forces are spread so widely around the globe that not even the professional tasked with knowing that can keep track of it all,” said Erik Sperling, the executive director of Just Foreign Policy, who worked on Yemen as a Capitol Hill staffer. “But it’s also possible that, given the dramatic expansion in US presence in the region in recent months, he is trying to skirt the question to avoid greater scrutiny.” The U.S. has conducted eight rounds of strikes on Houthi targets in the past month alone. On December 18, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin announced the creation of a U.S.-led coalition to defend ships against Houthi attacks.

Note: Learn more about war failures and lies in our comprehensive Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on military corruption from reliable major media sources.


Scientific Misconduct and Fraud: The Final Nail in Psychiatry’s Antidepressant Coffin
2024-01-17, Counterpunch
Posted: 2024-02-04 21:18:22
https://www.counterpunch.org/2024/01/17/scientific-misconduct-and-fraud-the-f...

Researchers have long known that any single antidepressant drug is little more effective than a placebo in the majority of trials, shown to be less effective than a placebo in some studies, and generally found to be “clinically negligible” with respect to depression remission, while often resulting in severe adverse effects; for example, resulting in a higher percentage of sexual dysfunction than depression remission. However, for nearly twenty years, psychiatry and Big Pharma have told us that while one antidepressant may not work for the majority of patients, in the “real world,” doctors provide patients who have been failed by their initial antidepressant with another antidepressant, and if that fails, still another; and that this real-world treatment is successful for nearly 70% of patients. The problem with this “nearly 70%” story is that the research that has been used to justify it, a 2006 report on the results of the Sequenced Treatment Alternatives to Relieve Depression (STAR*D), has long been disputed by researchers. Moreover, a recent reanalysis of previously undisclosed data reveals that STAR*D, owing to scientific misconduct that dramatically inflated remission rates, may go down in US medical history as one of its most harmful scandals. Even [STAR*D's] fabricated 67% depression remission rate should never have been celebrated. 85% of depressed individuals who go without somatic treatments spontaneously recover within 1 year.

Note: Read more important news articles we've summarized on medical and scientific corruption regarding antidepressants. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on Big Pharma corruption from reliable major media sources.


Behind the Curtain: Finding Counternarratives About Death Row
2024-01-21, ScheerPost
Posted: 2024-02-04 21:16:30
https://scheerpost.com/2024/01/21/behind-the-curtain-finding-counternarrative...

After poking and prodding [Doyle] Hamm with needles for almost 3 hours, prison officials gave up as Mr. Hamm lay strapped to a gurney in a pool of blood. They called off the execution because they were unsuccessful in gaining IV access to administer the lethal injection. This was a risk Mr. Hamm’s attorney had predicted given Hamm’s advanced cancer and long history of IV drug use. At the time, ADOC Commissioner Jeff Dunn did not provide details to reporters about what happened. “I wouldn’t characterize what we had tonight as a problem,” Dunn said. Hamm’s attorney later released photos and examination notes showing that prison employees had punctured Hamm’s bladder and an artery causing him to urinate blood. The state ... privately agreed to never try to execute Doyle Hamm again. Counternarratives about death row can be found in the 2023 book titled Ghosts Over the Boiler: Voices from Alabama’s Death Row. The book is a collection of writings previously published by Project Hope to Abolish the Death Penalty, or PHADP, the nation’s only nonprofit formed on and operated from death row. The organization ... has a goal to educate the public about capital punishment and the features of inequality that define it, while advocating for an end to the death penalty. All of the featured writers have been convicted of murder, although based on the rate of death row exonerations, some are likely wrongly convicted.

Note: The current system often puts innocent people to death. Over half of all wrongful convictions are the result of government misconduct. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on prison system corruption from reliable major media sources.


DOCUMENTS: Chinese Researcher Who Mapped COVID Virus Two Weeks Before China Released Sequence Was on Anthony Fauci’s Payroll
2024-01-19, The DisInformation Chronicle on Substack
Posted: 2024-02-04 21:14:59
https://disinformationchronicle.substack.com/p/documents-chinese-researcher-who

A Chinese researcher who first submitted the genetic sequence for the SARS-CoV-2 virus in late December 2019, around two weeks before China disclosed the deadly virus to outside scientists, was on the payroll of Anthony Fauci’s institute at the time, according to a grant awarded to EcoHealth Alliance, a nonprofit operated by Peter Daszak. The disclosures call into further question what officials at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) knew about research they were funding in China where the pandemic began. “The grant doesn't work on SARS-CoV-2,” Daszak [said], when the NIH was forced to review the grant in the summer of 2020. “Our organization has not actually published any data on SARS-CoV-2. We work on bat coronaviruses that are out there in the wild and trying to predict what the next one is.” NIH officials refused to respond to multiple requests to explain how much salary they provided to Dr. Lili Ren, a scientist at the Beijing-based Institute of Pathogen Biology, who wrote a letter in support of Daszak’s grant application to Fauci’s NIH institute. Ren first uploaded the COVID virus sequence to the NIH’s GenBank on December 28, 2019—two weeks before scientists celebrated China’s release of the genetic sequence on January 11, 2020. Fauci’s NIH grant also paid for Ren’s expenses, including travel to the United States to meet with Daszak as well as her collaborator Ralph Baric at the University of North Carolina.

Note: The author of Disinformation Chronicle on Substack is Paul Thacker, an American investigative journalist who served as an investigator in the US Senate, focusing on financial ties between doctors and pharmaceutical companies. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on COVID-19 from reliable major media sources.


Louis Armstrong and the spy: how the CIA used him as a ‘trojan horse’ in Congo
2021-09-12, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2024-02-04 21:11:52
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2021/sep/12/louis-armstrong-and-the-spy-how...

Louis Armstrong, his wife and a diplomat from the US embassy were out for dinner in a restaurant in what was still Léopoldville, capital of the newly independent Congo. The [musician] was in the middle of a tour of Africa ... organised and sponsored by the State Department. What Armstrong did not know was that his host that night in November 1960 was not the political attaché as described, but the head of the CIA in Congo. “Armstrong was basically a Trojan horse for the CIA,” said Susan Williams ... author of White Malice, a new book which exposes the astonishing extent of the CIA’s activities across central and west Africa. Armstrong's host, CIA station chief Larry Devlin, and other US intelligence officers posted to Congo used the cover of the musicians’s visit to get access to the strategically important and very wealthy province of Katanga, which had recently seceded. There was much of interest to the CIA in Katanga, ranging from senior officials with whom they could not otherwise meet to crucial mining infrastructure, with 1,500 tons of uranium and vast potential to procure more. The CIA in the Congo, led by Devlin, was trying to kill the Congo’s first democratically elected prime minister, 35-year-old Patrice Lumumba, fearful that he would lead the country into the Soviet camp. A mile or so from where Armstrong and Devlin had dined, the charismatic Lumumba was being held prisoner ... by soldiers loyal to Joseph-Désiré Mobutu, the young military chief with a close working relationship with the CIA, who had effectively seized power some weeks earlier. Within two months of Armstrong’s tour, Lumumba was murdered in Katanga. Devlin later claimed that the CIA was responsible, telling a US Congressional investigation “that the coup of Mobutu … was arranged and supported, and indeed, managed, by the CIA”.

Note: Read how the CIA used modern art and other cultural figures as weapons during the Cold War in our Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on intelligence agency corruption from reliable major media sources.


Can a Big Village Full of Tiny Homes Ease Homelessness in Austin?
2024-01-08, New York Times
Posted: 2024-02-04 21:09:29
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/08/headway/homelessness-tiny-home-austin.html

On the outskirts of Austin, Texas, what began as a fringe experiment has quickly become central to the city’s efforts to reduce homelessness. To Justin Tyler Jr., it is home. Mr. Tyler, 41, lives in Community First! Village, which aims to be a model of permanent affordable housing for people who are chronically homeless. In the fall of 2022, he joined nearly 400 residents of the village, moving into one of its typical digs: a 200-square-foot, one-room tiny house furnished with a kitchenette, a bed and a recliner. Eclectic tiny homes are clustered around shared outdoor kitchens, and neat rows of recreational vehicles and manufactured homes line looping cul-de-sacs. There are chicken coops, two vegetable gardens, a convenience store ... art and jewelry studios, a medical clinic and a chapel. In the next few years, Community First is poised to grow to nearly 2,000 homes across three locations, which would make it by far the nation’s largest project of this kind, big enough to permanently house about half of Austin’s chronically homeless population. Many residents have jobs in the village, created to offer residents flexible opportunities to earn some income. Last year, they earned a combined $1.5 million working as gardeners, landscapers, custodians, artists, jewelry makers and more. Ute Dittemer, 66, faced a daily struggle for survival during a decade on the streets before moving into Community First five years ago with her husband. Now she supports herself by painting and molding figures out of clay at the village art house. A few years ago, a clay chess set she made sold for $10,000 at an auction. She used the money to buy her first car.

Note: Explore more positive stories like this in our comprehensive inspiring news articles archive focused on solutions and bridging divides.


Banking the Most Valuable Currency: Time
2024-01-12, Reasons to be Cheerful
Posted: 2024-02-04 21:05:30
https://reasonstobecheerful.world/time-banks-valuable-currency-aging-communit...

A time bank does with time what other banks do with money: It stores and trades it. “Time banking means that for every hour you give to your community, you receive an hour credit,” explains Krista Wyatt, executive director of the DC-based nonprofit TimeBanks.Org, which helps volunteers establish local time banks all over the world. Thousands of time banks with several hundred thousand members have been established in at least 37 countries, including China, Malaysia, Japan, Senegal, Argentina, Brazil and in Europe, with over 3.2 million exchanges. There are probably more than 40,000 members in over 500 time banks in the US. Many time banks are volunteer community projects, but the one in Sebastopol, [CA] is funded by the city. “Every volunteer hour is valued around $29,” Wyatt calculates. “Now think about the thousands of dollars a city saves when hundreds of citizens serve their community for free.” The Sebastopol time bank has banked more than 8,000 hours since its launch in 2016. Five core principles ... guide time banks to this day: First, everyone has something to contribute. Second, valuing volunteering as “work.” Third, reciprocity or a “pay-it-forward” ethos. Fourth, community building, and fifth, mutual accountability and respect. “What captured me is that people are doing things out of their own good heart,” Wyatt says. “Many years ago, a woman ... said to [civil rights lawyer] Edgar Cahn, ‘I have nothing to give.’ Edgar Cahn listened and finally responded, ‘You have love to give.’ And the whole room just went silent.” Every hour of service is valued the same, no matter how much skill and expertise a task takes, whether it’s an hour keeping someone company, helping them file their taxes or repair a roof.

Note: Explore more positive stories like this in our comprehensive inspiring news articles archive focused on solutions and bridging divides.


Colorado Becomes One of the First to Employ an Incarcerated Professor
2024-01-07, ScheerPost
Posted: 2024-02-04 21:03:50
https://scheerpost.com/2024/01/07/colorado-becomes-one-of-the-first-to-employ...

On a late-November afternoon, at the head of a cramped classroom, David Carrillo stood at a small podium and quizzed 17 students on macroeconomic terminology. For the two-hour class, Carrillo, the adjunct professor teaching for Adams State University, mostly kept his hands in his pockets as he lectured students in green uniforms. Like his students at the Colorado Territorial Correctional Facility, Carrillo, 49, also wears green. He holds a position that is extremely rare in prison: He’s an incarcerated professor teaching in a prison bachelor’s degree program. A new initiative at Adams State — one of the first of its kind in the country — focuses on employing incarcerated people with graduate degrees as college professors, rather than bringing in instructors from the outside. Most people in Colorado prisons only make 80 cents a day, so it would take them around 17 years to earn the $3,600 that Carrillo gets for a single class. Higher wages help incarcerated individuals build savings to help cover their basic needs when they are released. Poverty can often be a driver of decisions that land people back in prison. Adams State hopes to eventually employ more graduates of their own programs in the future. Currently ... around 100 people in prisons across the country are working towards their MBA through Adams State like Carrillo did. The 36-credit print-based MBA correspondence program costs $350 per credit for a total of $12,600, plus textbooks.

Note: Explore more positive stories like this in our comprehensive inspiring news articles archive focused on solutions and bridging divides.


Getting On the Dance Floor Will Shred Pounds in Overweight People, Improve Blood Pressure and Mental Health
2024-01-23, Good News Network
Posted: 2024-02-02 11:24:36
https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/getting-on-dance-floor-will-shred-pounds-in-o...

Boogying the night away produces meaningful improvements in one's body mass and waist circumference in people who are overweight or obese, a new study found. Dancing was also seen to improve blood pressure, insulin sensitivity, physical fitness, cognitive disorders, hypertension, cardiovascular ailments, diabetes, and mental health—in other words, all the root causes of the non-communicable diseases that kill most people in the West. The researchers believed that dance would be a more ideal form of exercise because it is sustainable—it's a sociable, entertaining way of exercising that participants will enjoy, rather than a drudgery they have to push themselves through. “Dance is effective on fat loss in people overweight and obese and has a significant improvement on body composition and morphology,” said Zhang Yaya, a Ph.D. student at Hunan University, China. To get their results, published in the journal PLoS ONE, the team studied data from 646 participants who were overweight and obese across ten different studies. They found that dance is very effective for improving body composition and showed that more creative dance types had the most pronounced body composition improvement when compared with traditional dance. Improvements were also found in overweight children and patients with Parkinson’s disease.

Note: Explore more positive stories like this in our comprehensive inspiring news articles archive focused on solutions and bridging divides.


‘It only takes one to be real and it changes humanity for ever’: what if we’ve been lied to about UFOs?
2024-01-14, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2024-01-29 14:26:00
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2024/jan/14/what-happens-if-we-have-been-...

At the end of last year, a US government bill that would have mandated the controlled release of all classified documents and artifacts relating to UFOs was significantly watered down at the last minute so that it would get through Congress. Interest in unidentified aerial phenomena (UAPs), the new term for UFOs, reignited in June 2023 when ex-US intelligence agency whistleblower David Grusch told the Debrief website that during his official duties he had discovered the US had indeed been retrieving spacecraft of non-human origin for decades. The prospect of alien spacecraft raises serious issues that go beyond whether we’re alone in the universe. Lots of scientific work is under way not only to look for signs of extraterrestrial life, but more recently to ask what it would mean psychologically for us if aliens really do exist, and – potentially worse – if the authorities have been lying to us about what they know. What happens if [someone] uncovers irrefutable proof that non-human intelligences have visited or are visiting Earth? Physicist John Priestland ... found himself wondering what this would mean to us as individuals. “There are a lot of people who will be affected. There isn’t an entity out there, as far as I can see, that is putting people first,” he says. So he set up Unhidden, a charity dedicated to decreasing the stigma associated with discussing UAPs, non-human intelligences, and the possibility that evidence is being covered up by governments.

Note: Read the riveting testimonies of 60 government and military witnesses of UFO phenomenon, which include astronauts, generals, admirals, and other top government and military officials. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on UFO disclosure from reliable major media sources. Then explore the excellent, reliable resources provided in our UFO Information Center.


While Inflation Beat The Post-Pandemic Economy, Billionaires Beat Inflation 3 Times Over
2024-01-15, Huffington Post
Posted: 2024-01-29 14:23:57
https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/inflation-economy-2023-billionaires-in...

All billionaires’ wealth has grown three times faster than the rate of inflation since before the Covid pandemic, according to a new report. That means they’re 34% richer than they were in 2020, the anti-poverty charity Oxfam International has claimed. Meanwhile, the cost of living crisis for the majority of the global population has risen due to inflation, food prices around the world increasing by 21% to 50% between 2022 and 2023. The five richest men in the world have seen their personal wealth double in three years – all while five billion people around the world found themselves getting poorer. The richest 1% own 43% of all global financial assets, according to Oxfam’s findings. In the UK, the richest 1% own 33% of all financial assets. Seven out of 10 of the world’s biggest corporations also have a billionaire as CEO or principle shareholder. The worth of these companies exceeds the combined GDPs of all countries in Africa and Latin America. In the last three years, the poorest 60% (close to five billion people) around the world have lost money – a figure calculated from the UBS Global Wealth Report and the Credit Suisse Global Wealth Data book 2019. Average real wages for nearly 800 million workers have fallen across 52 countries in the same time frame the billionaires have been building on their personal wealth. Governments worldwide are making deliberate political choices that enable and encourage this distorted concentration of wealth.

Note: The COVID pandemic was extremely profitable for billionaires. At least 75 federal lawmakers were financially invested in COVID vaccines, treatments, and tests. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on income inequality from reliable major media sources.


OpenAI Quietly Deletes Ban On Using ChatGPT For “Military And Warfare”
2024-01-12, The Intercept
Posted: 2024-01-29 14:20:03
https://theintercept.com/2024/01/12/open-ai-military-ban-chatgpt/

OpenAI this week quietly deleted language expressly prohibiting the use of its technology for military purposes. Up until January 10, OpenAI’s “usage policies” page included a ban on “activity that has high risk of physical harm, including,” specifically, “weapons development” and “military and warfare.” That plainly worded prohibition against military applications would seemingly rule out any official, and extremely lucrative, use by the Department of Defense or any other state military. The new policy retains an injunction not to “use our service to harm yourself or others” and gives “develop or use weapons” as an example, but the blanket ban on “military and warfare” use has vanished. OpenAI spokesperson Niko ... Felix [said] that OpenAI wanted to pursue certain “national security use cases that align with our mission,” citing a plan to create “cybersecurity tools” with DARPA, and that “the goal with our policy update is to provide clarity and the ability to have these discussions.” The real-world consequences of the policy are unclear. Last year, The Intercept reported that OpenAI was unwilling to say whether it would enforce its own clear “military and warfare” ban in the face of increasing interest from the Pentagon and U.S. intelligence community. “Given the use of AI systems in the targeting of civilians in Gaza, it’s a notable moment to make the decision to remove the words ‘military and warfare’ from OpenAI’s permissible use policy,” said [former AI policy analyst] Sarah Myers West.

Note: Learn more about emerging warfare technology in our comprehensive Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center. For more, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corporate corruption from reliable major media sources.


‘Different rules’: special policies keep US supplying weapons to Israel despite alleged abuses
2024-01-18, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2024-01-29 14:12:04
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/jan/18/us-supply-weapons-israel-allege...

Top US officials quietly reviewed more than a dozen incidents of alleged gross violations of human rights by Israeli security forces since 2020, but have gone to great lengths to preserve continued access to US weapons for the units responsible for the alleged violations, contributing ... to the sense of impunity with which Israel has approached its war in Gaza. An estimated 24,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, have been killed by Israeli forces since Hamas’s 7 October attack on Israel. Special mechanisms have been used over the last few years to shield Israel from US human rights laws, even as other allies’ military units who receive US support – including, sources say, Ukraine – have privately been sanctioned and faced consequences for committing human rights violations. Under the Leahy law ... a foreign military unit is granted US military assistance or training after it is vetted by the state department for any reported human rights violations. The law prohibits the Department of State and the Department of Defense from providing funds, assistance or training to foreign security force units where there is “credible information” that the forces have committed a gross violation of human rights. In the case of at least three countries – Israel, Ukraine and Egypt – the scale of foreign assistance is so great that US military assistance can be difficult to track, and the US often has no knowledge of where specific weapons end up or how they are used.

Note: Learn more about the dysfunctional nature of the US war machine in our comprehensive Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center. For more, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on military corruption from reliable major media sources.


Open the Congo files and face up to what the CIA did
2023-10-24, Washington Post
Posted: 2024-01-29 14:10:04
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/10/24/congo-lumumba-cia-amends/

Never in its 63 years of independence has Congo experienced a peaceful and democratic transfer of power. On June 30, 1960, after 75 years of Belgian rule, Congo became an independent country. At the helm as prime minister was Patrice Lumumba. On Aug. 18, 1960, Dwight D. Eisenhower became the first U.S. president known to order the assassination of a sitting foreign leader. During a National Security Council meeting, an official note taker ... recalled, President Eisenhower said “something — I can no longer remember his words— that came across to me as an order for the assassination of Lumumba.” The CIA’s top chemist procured a poison to kill Lumumba, flew it to Congo, and instructed the CIA station chief there, Larry Devlin, to put it in the prime minister’s food or toothpaste. But by that time, Lumumba had been removed from office and put under house arrest, so the plot fizzled. Lumumba was flown to the breakaway province of Katanga and shot dead ... by Congolese soldiers commanded by Belgian officers and answering to the separatist government. The CIA ... had blood on its hands for the death of Lumumba. It played a role in every event leading to his downfall. As part of what came to be known as “Project Wizard,” the CIA subsidized at least two opposition senators, and the agency received White House authorization to pay the president as well. CIA cash also paid for anti-Lumumba radio propaganda and street protests.

Note: Learn more about the rise of the CIA in our comprehensive Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center. For more, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on intelligence agency corruption from reliable major media sources.


Moderna Surveillance Operation Targeted Independent Media Voices
2024-01-16, Lee Fang on Substack
Posted: 2024-01-29 14:07:54
https://www.leefang.com/p/moderna-surveillance-operation-targeted

Finances at the vaccine manufacturer Moderna began to fall almost as quickly as they had risen, as most Americans resisted getting yet another COVID booster shot. In a September call aimed at shoring up investors, Moderna’s then-chief commercial officer, Arpa Garay, attributed some of the hesitancy pummeling Moderna's numbers to uninformed vaccine skeptics. What Garay hinted at during the call, but didn’t disclose, was that Moderna already had a sprawling media operation in place aimed at identifying and responding to critics of vaccine policy and the drug industry. Internal company reports and communications ... show that Moderna has worked with former law enforcement and public health officials and a drug industry-funded non-governmental organization called The Public Good Projects (PGP) to confront the “root cause of vaccine hesitancy” by rapidly identifying and “shutting down misinformation.” Part of this effort includes providing talking points to some 45,000 healthcare professionals “on how to respond when vaccine misinformation goes mainstream.” PGP routinely sent Excel lists of accounts to amplify on Twitter and others to de-platform, including populist voices such as ZeroHedge. The messages also suggested emerging narratives to remove from the platform. The growing network these efforts rely on shows the growth of what has been called the censorship industrial complex.

Note: Learn more about Moderna's misinformation department. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on pharmaceutical industry corruption and media manipulation from reliable sources.


The Military-Industrial Complex Is the Winner (Not You)
2024-01-17, ScheerPost
Posted: 2024-01-29 14:05:32
https://scheerpost.com/2024/01/17/the-military-industrial-complex-is-the-winn...

2023 was a year marked by devastating conflicts from Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine to Hamas’s horrific terror attacks on Israel, from that country’s indiscriminate mass slaughter in Gaza to a devastating civil war in Sudan. And there’s a distinct risk of even worse to come this year. Still, there was one clear winner in this avalanche of violence, suffering, and war: the U.S. military-industrial complex. In December, President Biden signed a record authorization of $886 billion in “national defense” spending for 2024, including funds for the Pentagon proper and work on nuclear weapons at the Department of Energy. Add to that tens of billions of dollars more in likely emergency military aid for Ukraine and Israel, and such spending could well top $900 billion for the first time. Annual spending on the costly, dysfunctional F-35 combat aircraft alone is greater than the entire budget of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In 2020, Lockheed Martin’s contracts with the Pentagon were worth more than the budgets of the State Department and the Agency for International Development combined, and its arms-related revenues continue to rival the government’s entire investment in diplomacy. One $13 billion aircraft carrier costs more than the annual budget of the Environmental Protection Agency. Before investing ever more tax dollars ... the military strategy of the United States in the current global environment should be seriously debated.

Note: Learn more about unaccountable military spending in our comprehensive Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center. For more, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on military corruption from reliable major media sources.


Face Recognition Technology Follows a Long Analog History of Surveillance and Control Based on Identifying Physical Features
2024-01-22, ScheerPost
Posted: 2024-01-29 14:02:37
https://scheerpost.com/2024/01/22/face-recognition-technology-follows-a-long-...

American Amara Majeed was accused of terrorism by the Sri Lankan police in 2019. Robert Williams was arrested outside his house in Detroit and detained in jail for 18 hours for allegedly stealing watches in 2020. Randal Reid spent six days in jail in 2022 for supposedly using stolen credit cards in a state he’d never even visited. In all three cases, the authorities had the wrong people. In all three, it was face recognition technology that told them they were right. Law enforcement officers in many U.S. states are not required to reveal that they used face recognition technology to identify suspects. Surveillance is predicated on the idea that people need to be tracked and their movements limited and controlled in a trade-off between privacy and security. The assumption that less privacy leads to more security is built in. That may be the case for some, but not for the people disproportionately targeted by face recognition technology. As of 2019, face recognition technology misidentified Black and Asian people at up to 100 times the rate of white people. In 2018 ... 28 members of the U.S. Congress ... were falsely matched with mug shots on file using Amazon’s Rekognition tool. Much early research into face recognition software was funded by the CIA for the purposes of border surveillance. More recently, private companies have adopted data harvesting techniques, including face recognition, as part of a long practice of leveraging personal data for profit.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on police corruption and the disappearance of privacy from reliable major media sources.


The Secret History of Facial Recognition
2020-01-21, Wired
Posted: 2024-01-29 13:59:00
https://www.wired.com/story/secret-history-facial-recognition/

Facial recognition has become a security feature of choice for phones, laptops, passports, and payment apps. Yet it is also, increasingly, a tool of state oppression and corporate surveillance. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the FBI have deployed the technology as a digital dragnet, searching for suspects among millions of faces in state driver’s license databases, sometimes without first seeking a court order. In early 1963, [Woody Bledsoe] proposed to conduct “a study to determine the feasibility of a simplified facial recognition machine.” A recently declassified history of the CIA’s Office of Research and Development mentions just such a project in 1965; that same year, Woody sent a letter on facial recognition to John W. Kuipers, the division’s chief of analysis. In 1967 ... Woody took on one last assignment that involved recognizing patterns in the human face. The purpose of the experiment was to help law enforcement agencies quickly sift through databases of mug shots and portraits, looking for matches. As before, funding for the project appears to have come from the US government. A 1967 document declassified by the CIA in 2005 mentions an “external contract” for a facial-recognition system that would reduce search time by a hundredfold. Woody’s work set an ethical tone for research on facial recognition that has been enduring and problematic. The potential abuses of facial-recognition technology were apparent almost from its birth.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on intelligence agency corruption and the disappearance of privacy from reliable major media sources.


Titan’s Surface Organics Surpass Oil Reserves on Earth
2008-02-13, NASA
Posted: 2024-01-29 13:52:09
https://science.nasa.gov/solar-system/planets/saturn/saturn-moons/titans-surf...

Saturn's orange moon Titan has hundreds of times more liquid hydrocarbons than all the known oil and natural gas reserves on Earth, according to new data from NASA's Cassini spacecraft. The hydrocarbons rain from the sky, collecting in vast deposits that form lakes and dunes. The new findings from the study led by Ralph Lorenz, Cassini radar team member from the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, Laurel, Md., are reported in ... the Geophysical Research Letters. "Titan is just covered in carbon-bearing material -- it's a giant factory of organic chemicals," said Lorenz. "This vast carbon inventory is an important window into the geology and climate history of Titan." At a balmy minus 179 degrees Celsius (minus 290 degrees Fahrenheit), Titan is a far cry from Earth. Instead of water, liquid hydrocarbons in the form of methane and ethane are present on the moon's surface. Cassini has mapped about 20 percent of Titan's surface with radar. Several hundred lakes and seas have been observed, with each of several dozen estimated to contain more hydrocarbon liquid than Earth's oil and gas reserves. Proven reserves of natural gas on Earth total 130 billion tons, enough to provide 300 times the amount of energy the entire United States uses annually for residential heating, cooling and lighting. Dozens of Titan's lakes individually have the equivalent of at least this much energy in the form of methane and ethane.

Note: Weren’t we taught that oil and gas come from fossils? Yet the many who have shown evidence otherwise have been dismissed and ridiculed. Why is this? For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on the mysterious nature of reality from reliable major media sources.


'Dead' Man Jolted Back to Life by the Intolerable Bumps of India’s Potholes
2024-01-15, Good News Network
Posted: 2024-01-29 13:50:14
https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/dead-man-jolted-back-to-life-by-the-intolerab...

India’s famous potholes actually saved a life on Friday. The ‘late’ Darshan Singh Brar was being transported to the Indian version of a wake after his untimely death from a chest infection at the age of 80. Family, relatives, and friends had already gathered for a banquet and cremation, when the ambulance he was being caried in received a nasty jolt from a pothole on the roads in Nising, in far-Northern India’ Haryana state. It was then that Mr. Brar’s grandson who was onboard the ambulance at the time noticed his hand moving. Checking his pulse and finding—to his great shock—there was one, he notified the driver to immediately turn toward the nearest hospital. He was declared alive and savable, and was referred to the Rawal Hospital in the city of Karnal. “It is a miracle. Now we are hoping that my grandfather recovers soon,” said Balwan Singh, another of Mr. Brar’s grandsons. “Everyone who had gathered to mourn his death congratulated us, and we requested them to have the food we had arranged. It is God’s grace that he is now breathing and we are hoping he will get better.” Doctors at Rawal Hospital said that the grandfather is breathing without the aid of a ventilator and his heartbeat has normalized. They can’t say for certain why the other hospital declared him dead, but speculated it may have been a technical error. The next time you are planning to go to town hall or the council about the potholes on your street, consider the story of Darshan Singh Brar.

Note: Explore more positive stories like this in our comprehensive inspiring news articles archive focused on solutions and bridging divides.


Scientists invent dirt-fuelled power source that ‘lasts forever’
2024-01-16, The Independent (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2024-01-29 13:48:42
https://www.independent.co.uk/tech/battery-fuel-cell-forever-power-b2479535.html

Scientists have developed a new type of fuel cell that can provide endless power through electricity harvested from dirt. A team from Northwestern University in the US say the book-sized unit could be used to power sensors used in farming, as well as remote devices in the Internet of Things (IoT). The technology works by generating electricity from naturally-occurring bacteria within the soil, offering a sustainable and renewable alternative to toxic and flammable batteries. “These microbes are ubiquitous; they already live in soil everywhere,” said George Wells ... at Northwestern University. “We can use very simple engineered systems to capture their electricity. We’re not going to power entire cities with this energy. But we can capture minute amounts of energy to fuel practical, low-power applications.” The soil-based microbial fuel cell (MFC) is based on a 113-year-old technology first developed by British botanist Michael Cressé Potter, who was the first person to successfully generate electricity from microorganisms. It took until the 21st century for the first commercial applications to be proposed, with Foster’s Brewing using a prototype to convert the yeast in brewery wastewater into electricity. The latest fuel cell was tested in wet and dry conditions to power sensors measuring soil moisture and detecting touch, outlasting the power of similar technologies by 120 per cent.

Note: Explore more positive stories like this in our comprehensive inspiring news articles archive focused on solutions and bridging divides.


A school in Jerusalem brings Arab and Jewish kids together to boost understanding
2024-01-23, NPR
Posted: 2024-01-29 13:46:53
https://www.npr.org/2024/01/23/1221957556/israel-schools-arabs-jews-gaza-war

When the bell rings at Jerusalem's Hand in Hand school, you hear something that's not common in Israel: the sound of young people's voices rising together in laughter and conversation in both Hebrew and Arabic. Israeli society is largely segregated. The separation begins at kindergarten, when Jewish and Arab children are sent to different schools and experience completely separate education "tracks" or systems. "Arabs go to Arab schools in their neighborhoods and Jews go to Jewish schools in the areas where they live," says Nour Younis, events manager for Hand in Hand. Hand in Hand [was] founded in 1998 by a group of parents who wanted their children to grow up differently. What began as two kindergarten classes in Jerusalem and Galilee has now become six campuses nationwide, with some 2,000 students. The school's eventual goal is to create a fifth track of education within the Israeli school system. Today there are four options: Arab schools and three Jewish tracks — secular, religious and ultra-Orthodox. The students at Hand in Hand campuses are around 60% Arab and 40% Jewish. There is a waiting list of Arab children who would like to attend. Since Oct. 7 ... this school has become a rare oasis of freedom for Palestinians who say they can be harassed or worse for expressing their anguish over the war. "For our students, this is a safe place, a safe environment," says [school vice principal Engie] Wattad.

Note: Explore more positive stories like this in our comprehensive inspiring news articles archive focused on solutions and bridging divides.


Panel members for new psychiatric ‘bible’ received over $14m from industry
2024-01-10, The BMJ (Formerly British Medical Journal)
Posted: 2024-01-22 14:50:10
https://www.bmj.com/company/newsroom/panel-members-for-new-psychiatric-bible-...

Sixty percent of US physicians serving as panel and task force members for the American Psychiatric Association’s official manual of psychiatric disorders received payments from industry totalling $14.24m, finds a study published by The BMJ. Because of the enormous influence of diagnostic and treatment guidelines, the researchers say their findings “raise questions about the editorial independence of this diagnostic manual.” Often referred to as the ‘bible’ of psychiatric disorders, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, fifth edition, text revision (DSM-5-TR) is the latest edition of the guide that doctors use to diagnose and treat patients. It is thus critical that authors of this psychiatric taxonomy should be free of industry ties. But until the development of Open Payments ... it wasn't possible to determine the amount of monies received by authors of diagnostic and clinical practice guidelines. Their analysis included 92 physicians based in the US who served as members of either a panel (86) or task force (6) on the DSM-5-TR from 2016-19. Of these 92 individuals, 55 (60%) received payments from industry. Collectively, these panel members received a total of $14.24m (£11.21m; €12.96m). The most common types of payment were for food and beverages (91%), followed by travel (69%) and consulting (69%). The greatest proportion of compensation by category of payment was for research funding (70%). To ensure unbiased, evidence based mental health practice, there should be a rebuttable presumption of prohibiting financial conflicts of interest among the panel and task force members.

Note: A recent study found that 80% of the global population will be treated for mental illness at some point in their lives, and that their lives are worse in many ways after receiving diagnosis and treatment. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on health and Big Pharma profiteering from reliable major media sources.


US did not properly track more than $1 billion worth of weapons sent to Ukraine, watchdog report finds
2024-01-11, CNN News
Posted: 2024-01-22 14:48:26
https://www.cnn.com/2024/01/11/politics/pentagon-tracking-weapons-ukraine-rep...

The Pentagon did not properly track $1 billion worth of military equipment sent to Ukraine, according to a watchdog report. The report from the Pentagon Inspector General says that while the Defense Department has improved its ability to track military aid sent to Ukraine, it “did not fully comply” with requirements and much of the equipment sent is “delinquent,” meaning it’s not possible to complete an inventory of everything sent. Among the items that are designated for enhanced end-use monitoring (EEUM) are weapons like Javelin and Stinger missiles, night-vision devices, AIM-9X missiles, and Advanced Medium-Range Air-to-Air Missiles. According to the IG report, roughly $1.005 billion of the total $1.699 billion of equipment subject to end-use monitoring was not inventoried as of June 2023. The new report comes at a critical moment for Ukraine aid, as Congress debates whether to authorize a supplemental package of more than $60 billion in aid. While delinquency could suggest weapons had been stolen or diverted away from Ukrainian forces, the inspector general said it was outside the scope of its probe to determine what had happened to the weapons that were not properly tracked. “The DoD OIG now has personnel stationed in Ukraine,” the report says, “and the DoD OIG’s Defense Criminal Investigative Service continues to investigate allegations of criminal conduct with regard to U.S. security assistance to Ukraine.”

Note: Learn more about unaccountable military spending in our comprehensive Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on military corruption from reliable major media sources.


New Spin on a Revolving Door: Pentagon Officials Turned Venture Capitalists
2023-12-30, New York Times
Posted: 2024-01-22 14:46:44
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/30/us/politics/pentagon-venture-capitalists.html

The high-stakes world of Pentagon lobbying is being altered by the rise of defense technology startups. Retiring generals and departing top Pentagon officials once migrated regularly to the big established weapons makers like Lockheed Martin and Boeing. Now they are increasingly flocking to venture capital firms that have collectively pumped billions of dollars into Silicon Valley-style startups offering the Pentagon new war-fighting tools like autonomous killer drones, hypersonic jets and space surveillance equipment. The New York Times has identified at least 50 former Pentagon and national security officials, most of whom left the federal government in the last five years, who are now working in defense-related venture capital or private equity as executives or advisers. In many cases, The Times confirmed that they continued to interact regularly with Pentagon officials or members of Congress to push for policy changes or increases in military spending that could benefit firms they have invested in. Pentagon procurement officials confirmed that they had repeatedly met with former Defense Department officials who are now venture capitalists. They said recommendations pushed by the venture capitalists had played a role in changes they are making in the way they acquire technology. In the last four years, at least $125 billion of venture capital has flooded into startups that build defense technology ... compared with $43 billion in the prior four years.

Note: If you can't access the above article, here's an alternate link. Learn more about arms industry corruption in our comprehensive Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on military corruption from reliable major media sources.


The New Space Race Is Causing New Pollution Problems
2024-01-09, New York Times
Posted: 2024-01-22 14:44:43
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/09/science/rocket-pollution-spacex-satellites...

In the past few years, the number of rocket launches has spiked as commercial companies — especially SpaceX, founded by Elon Musk — and government agencies have lofted thousands of satellites into low-Earth orbit. And it is only the beginning. Satellites could eventually total one million, requiring an even greater number of space launches that could yield escalating levels of emissions. Scientists worry that more launches will scatter more pollutants in pristine layers of Earth’s atmosphere. And regulators across the globe, who assess some risks of space launches, do not set rules related to pollution. Experts say they do not want to limit the booming space economy. But they fear that ... we may understand the consequences of pollution from rockets and spacecraft only when it is too late. Already, studies show that the higher reaches of the atmosphere are laced with metals from spacecraft that disintegrate as they fall back to Earth. In a paper published in 2022, soot from rockets was shown to be nearly 500 times as efficient at heating the atmosphere as soot released from sources like airplanes closer to the surface. A separate study also published in 2022 found that if the rate of rocket launches increased by a factor of 10, their emissions could cause temperatures in parts of the stratosphere to rise as much as 2 degrees Celsius. This could begin to degrade the ozone over most of North America, all of Europe and a chunk of Asia.

Note: The risks posed by satellites expand beyond emissions. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on climate change from reliable major media sources.


Bottled water contains thousands of nanoplastics so small they can invade the body’s cells, study says
2024-01-08, CNN News
Posted: 2024-01-22 14:41:02
https://www.cnn.com/2024/01/08/health/bottled-water-nanoplastics-study-wellne...

Researchers have discovered bottled water sold in stores can contain 10 to 100 times more bits of plastic than previously estimated — nanoparticles so infinitesimally tiny they cannot be seen under a microscope. At 1,000th the average width of a human hair, nanoplastics are so teeny they can migrate through the tissues of the digestive tract or lungs into the bloodstream, distributing potentially harmful synthetic chemicals throughout the body and into cells. One liter of water — the equivalent of two standard-size bottled waters — contained an average of 240,000 plastic particles from seven types of plastics, of which 90% were identified as nanoplastics and the rest were microplastics. Microplastics are polymer fragments that can range from less than 0.2 inch (5 millimeters) down to 1/25,000th of an inch (1 micrometer). Anything smaller is a nanoplastic that must be measured in billionths of a meter. The new finding reinforces long-held expert advice to drink tap water from glass or stainless steel containers to reduce exposure. In the new study, published ... in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers from Columbia University presented a new technology that can see, count and analyze the chemical structure of nanoparticles in bottled water. Nanoplastics ... can invade individual cells and tissues in major organs, potentially interrupting cellular processes and depositing endocrine-disrupting chemicals.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on health from reliable major media sources.


Plastic chemicals linked to $249 billion in US health care costs in 2018 alone, study finds
2024-01-11, CNN News
Posted: 2024-01-22 14:38:37
https://www.cnn.com/2024/01/11/health/health-care-costs-plastic-study-wellnes...

By contributing to the development of chronic disease and death, a group of hormone-disruptive plastic chemicals is costing the US health care system billions — over $249 billion in 2018 alone, a new study found. The new research analyzed the impact of four groups of chemicals used in the production of plastic products: Flame retardants called polybrominated diphenyl ethers, or PBDE; phthalates, which are used to make plastic more durable; bisphenols such as BPA and BPS used to create hard plastics and resins; and per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, also known as PFAS. However, these are just a fraction of the chemicals used to make plastics. A United Nations report published in May found more than 13,000 chemicals are used in plastics production. The four chemicals measured in the new study ... are thought to interfere with the body’s mechanism for hormone production, known as the endocrine system, and cause damage to developmental, reproductive, immune and cognitive systems. “The biggest impact of endocrine-disrupting chemicals is on children’s brain development because they disrupt thyroid hormones in pregnancy,” [lead author Dr. Leonardo] Trasande said. The report recommended blood tests for people at high risk such as firefighters, workers in fluorochemical manufacturing plants, and those who live near commercial airports, military bases, landfills, incinerators, wastewater treatment plants and farms.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on health and corporate corruption from reliable major media sources.


Toxicologists Find 829 Chemicals in Everyday Items May Cause Breast Cancer
2024-01-10, Newsweek
Posted: 2024-01-22 14:36:49
https://www.newsweek.com/toxicologists-chemicals-hormones-breast-cancer-1859190

Common consumer products may contain hundreds of chemicals that could increase our risk of developing breast cancer, scientists have warned. While some chemicals are known to directly cause cancer, many others indirectly promote the cancer by increasing our susceptibility to the establishment and growth of certain tumors. Breast cancer occurs when cells in the breast tissue grow out of control. Among the many risk factors associated with this disease is over-exposure to estrogen, progesterone and hormonal disruption. And it's not just hormonal contraception that can influence our body's hormone levels; numerous synthetic chemicals have been shown to disrupt our hormones, with potential impacts on our risk of developing various diseases. "Breast cancer is a hormonal disease, so the fact that so many chemicals can alter estrogen and progesterone is concerning," Jennifer Kay, a research scientist at Silent Spring Institute, said. In a new study, published in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives, Kay and colleagues searched through multiple international and U.S. government databases to identify chemicals that had been found to cause mammary tumors in animals. In total, the team identified 921 chemicals that could potentially promote the development of breast cancer, 90 percent—or 829—of which are commonly included in consumer products, food, drinks, pesticides, medications and workplaces.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on health and corporate corruption from reliable major media sources.


Under Biden, Prosecutions Of Corporate Wrongdoers Near A Historic Low
2023-10-30, Huffington Post
Posted: 2024-01-22 14:34:52
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/biden-corporate-accountability_n_653fe004e4b0a...

The number of corporate prosecutions under President Joe Biden’s Department of Justice in 2022 hovered near the lowest level in decades, according to a new analysis published by the good government group Public Citizen. Federal prosecutors concluded just 99 criminal cases against corporations in 2022, the same number as Donald Trump’s DOJ during his second year, and only a modest increase from the 90 cases the agency brought in 2021. As a consequence, the pace of new prosecutions is at its lowest point since the start of the Clinton administration. “The light-touch approach to enforcement creates opportunities for corporate scofflaws to push the limits of what is legally allowed — risking our health and safety, our environment, our finances, and our communities — in their efforts to maximize profits,” the report warned. The slow pace of enforcement continues a two-decade decline that started after 2000, when there were three times as many corporate prosecutions as today. The Biden administration has also presided over a decline in deferred prosecution agreements and non-prosecution agreements, which the DOJ can use as an alternative to filing charges for corporate malfeasance. These more lenient agreements typically involve large multinational companies. In 2022, there were just 11. Biden’s DOJ has also expanded a policy that allows corporations to self-report misconduct in exchange for the government’s guarantee not to prosecute.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption from reliable major media sources.


FDA Shuts Down Enquiries about DNA Contamination in Covid Vaccines
2023-11-28, Brownstone Institute
Posted: 2024-01-22 14:32:34
https://brownstone.org/articles/fda-shuts-down-enquiries-about-dna-contaminat...

The recent findings of DNA fragments in the Pfizer and Moderna Covid-19 vaccines has led many to question why the FDA, which is responsible for monitoring the quality and safety of the vaccines, has failed to sound the alarm. For years, the FDA has known about the risk posed by residual DNA in vaccines. Its own guidance to industry states: “Residual DNA might be a risk to your final product because of oncogenic and/or infectivity potential. There are several potential mechanisms by which residual DNA could be oncogenic, including the integration and expression of encoded oncogenes or insertional mutagenesis following DNA integration.” Put simply ... fragments of DNA left over by the manufacturing process can be incorporated into a patient’s own DNA, to potentially cause cancer. A recent preprint paper ... analysed batches of the monovalent and bivalent mRNA vaccines. The authors found “the presence of billions to hundreds of billions of DNA molecules per dose in these vaccines. Using fluorometry all vaccines exceed the guidelines for residual DNA set by FDA and WHO.” For the Pfizer product, the higher the level of DNA fragments found in the vaccine, the higher the rate of serious adverse events. Pfizer’s vaccine used in the clinical trials (PROCESS 1) was manufactured differently to the vaccine that was injected into the wider population (PROCESS 2). This switch from PROCESS 1 to PROCESS 2 is what introduced the plasmid DNA impurities.

Note: Watch a fascinating interview with Dr. Ryan Cole, who discusses DNA contamination in the COVID vaccines and its concerning links to the rise in cancers and autoimmune diseases. Although you need a subscription to watch the full video, the full transcript is accessible. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and COVID vaccines from reliable major media sources.


Cluster Bombs Are as Outdated as War
2023-08-18, Yes! Magazine
Posted: 2024-01-22 14:30:23
https://www.yesmagazine.org/opinion/2023/08/18/cluster-bombs-ukraine-war-biden

President Joe Biden’s administration has taken a cruel weapon—the cluster bomb—off the shelf and sent it to Ukraine to be used in the war against Russia. Prior to being transferred to Ukraine, cluster bombs made in the United States were used by Saudi Arabia as recently as last year to devastating effect in its war in Yemen. Cluster bombs are large bombs that contain dozens or even hundreds of smaller bombs, or “bomblets.” Cluster bombs are designed to scatter the bomblets over a wide area upon detonation. Inevitably, not all of the smaller, scattered bombs explode on impact. The bomblets lie on or below the surface of the ground, potentially for years or even decades, waiting to be detonated when touched. They are, in effect, land mines. The U.S. has used cluster bombs in large-scale military operations since World War II, including its invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. The bomblets that the U.S. used in those invasions were the same size and color as the packaged meals—humanitarian daily rations, or HDRs—that the U.S. also air-dropped for civilians. Human rights groups warned at the time against using cluster bombs, pointing to a similar problem that occurred when the U.S. used them in the Balkan Wars in the 1990s and children mistook the bomblets for toys—but the Pentagon used them anyway. More than 120 countries have signed the 2008 Convention on Cluster Munitions. The U.S. remains in the minority of countries that refuses to sign the Convention on Cluster Munitions, along with Ukraine and Russia.

Note: The cluster bomb trade is funded by the world's biggest banks. It's been estimated that 98% of cluster bomb victims are civilians. Learn more about arms industry corruption in our comprehensive Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center.


A Surprising Way to Stop Bullying
2024-01-08, Reasons to be Cheerful
Posted: 2024-01-22 14:28:23
https://reasonstobecheerful.world/a-surprising-way-to-stop-bullying/

When Ben was 11 years old, his parents noticed that his grades dropped. He stopped talking about school. “These are all typical signs there might be a bullying problem,” says Bettina Dénervaud, co-founder of the Swiss initiative Hilfe bei Mobbing, which translates as “Help with Bullying.” She and her two colleagues use a 30-point checklist to evaluate if there is an underlying issue of mental, emotional and physical bullying or something else — maybe a conflict, which might require conflict resolution. Instead of being punished, the bullies are invited to help the bullied student. In a 2008 study that looked at 220 bullying cases, the No-Blame Approach was successful in 192, or 87 percent, of the cases. In most schools that were evaluated, it only took two or three weeks for the bullying to stop. The second step is the core of the No-Blame Approach. It includes calling six to eight children that the teacher chooses into a meeting that is set up as a social get together: in Ben’s case, three of the bullies, three students Ben felt he could count on and two “neutral” tag-alongs. The children are not told the meeting is about Ben. “I have a problem,” the teacher might start the discussion. “I noticed some students don’t feel supported in class. What can we do to help them, for instance, Ben?” The third step includes follow-ups with all students, including Ben, within the next few weeks. If necessary, the intervention might be repeated or tweaked. "The goal is to change the social dynamic," Dénervaud says. Younger children often start crying in these meetings, Dénervaud has observed, “because they realize for the first time what has been happening and how unhappy the bullying victim has been."

Note: Explore more positive stories like this in our comprehensive inspiring news articles archive focused on solutions and bridging divides.


Digital Justice: Internet Co-ops Resist Net Neutrality Rollbacks
2018-10-02, Project Censored
Posted: 2024-01-22 14:26:37
https://www.projectcensored.org/15-digital-justice-internet-co-ops-resist-net...

More than 300 electric cooperatives across the United States are building their own Internet with high-speed fiber networks. These locally-owned networks are poised to do what federal and state governments and the marketplace have not accomplished. First, they are protecting open Internet access from the Internet service providers (ISPs) that stand to pocket the profits from the rollbacks of net neutrality the Trump administration announced. Second, they are making affordable and fast Internet accessible to anyone. In Detroit, for example, 40 percent of the population has no access of any kind to the Internet. Detroit residents started a grassroots movement called the Equitable Internet Initiative, through which locals have begun to build their own high-speed Internet. The initiative started by enlisting digital stewards—locals who were interested in working for the nonprofit coalition. They aim to build shared tools, like a forum and a secured emergency communication network—and to educate their communities on digital literacy. Just 30 of the more than 300 tribal reservations in the United States have Internet access. Seventeen tribal reservation communities in San Diego County have secured wireless Internet access under the Tribal Digital Village initiative. Another local effort, Co-Mo Electric Cooperative ... has organized to crowdfund the necessary resources to establish its own network. The biggest dilemma for cities is the erosion of the capacity for communities to solve their own problems. As a result, local Internet service providers are bringing the power back to their people.

Note: Explore more positive stories like this in our comprehensive inspiring news articles archive focused on solutions and bridging divides.


Rwanda genocide: 'I forgave my husband's killer - our children married'
2022-04-23, BBC News
Posted: 2024-01-22 14:24:36
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-61105532

To heal you must love - so believes a woman who not only forgave the man who killed her husband 28 years ago during Rwanda's genocide, but allowed his daughter to marry her son. Bernadette Mukakabera has been telling her story as part of continuing efforts by the Catholic Church to bring reconciliation to a society torn apart in 1994 when some 800,000 people were slaughtered in 100 days. "Our children had nothing to do with what happened. They just fell in love and nothing should stop people from loving each other," Bernadette told the BBC. [In 1994] thousands of Hutus ... began well organised killings - turning on their Tutsi neighbours. One of these was Gratien Nyaminani, whose family lived next to Bernadette's. After the massacres ended, with a Tutsi rebel group taking power, hundreds of thousands of people accused of involvement in the killings were detained. Gratien was taken into custody and eventually tried by one of the community courts, known as gacaca, set up to deal with genocide suspects. At these weekly hearings, communities were given a chance to face the accused and both hear and give evidence about what really happened - and how it happened. The final reconciliation happens in public where the accused and the victim stand together. The victim stretches their hands towards the accused as a sign of forgiveness. In 2004, Gratien told Bernadette how he had killed her husband and apologised - and at the same hearing she chose to forgive him. This meant that he did not have to serve a 19-year jail term, but a two-year community service sentence instead.

Note: Explore more positive stories like this in our comprehensive inspiring news articles archive focused on solutions and bridging divides.


COVID ‘6-feet’ social distancing ‘sort of just appeared,’ likely lacked scientific basis, Fauci admits
2024-01-10, New York Post
Posted: 2024-01-15 18:59:19
https://nypost.com/2024/01/10/news/fauci-admits-to-congress-that-certain-covi...

Dr. Anthony Fauci confessed to lawmakers Tuesday that guidelines to keep six feet of separation — ostensibly to limit the spread of COVID-19 — “sort of just appeared” without scientific input. Fauci, 83, revealed to the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic that the “six feet apart” recommendation championed by him and other US public health officials was “likely not based on scientific data.” Schools nationwide remained closed well into the second year of the pandemic as a result of the social distancing guidelines, which were disputed by both research studies and other health officials. Rep. Michael Cloud (R-Texas), who sits on the panel, said Tuesday night that Fauci had shown an “amazing ability to either forget what happened or then to find ways to shirk any sort of responsibility for the influence that was had,” during the two-day affair. “They wash their hands of any sort of responsibility, saying, ‘Oh, those decisions were made by school districts.’ But the school districts know, if you don’t follow the guidance that’s coming out of the federal government, you open yourselves up to lawsuits,” Cloud said of Fauci and other US pandemic response officials. “He says he’s still not convinced that there was learning loss — that in his view, that’s still really open for discussion,” Cloud [said]. “I think [if] you ask any parent, they’ll tell you it was a major hit on their child’s development.”

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on COVID and government corruption from reliable major media sources.


We’re being censored, claim victims of AstraZeneca Covid vaccine
2024-01-06, The Telegraph (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2024-01-15 18:57:23
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/01/06/were-being-censored-victims-of-as...

Victims who suffered life-changing injuries from the Oxford-AstraZeneca Covid vaccine say they have faced censorship on social media when trying to discuss their symptoms. The UK-based pharmaceutical giant is being sued in the High Court in a test case by a father-of-two who suffered a significant permanent brain injury as a result of a blood clot after receiving the jab in spring 2021. A second claim is also being brought by the widower and two young children of a woman who died after having the jab. Some who have experienced serious adverse reactions from the AstraZeneca vaccine ... have been given “warnings” on social media websites such as Facebook when trying to talk to one another about their experiences. They say they are being forced to “self censor” and speak in code to avoid having their support groups shut down. In one instance, YouTube attempted to censor a video of testimony given by lawyers to the Covid Inquiry about vaccines, flagging the clip as a violation of its “medical misinformation policy”. UK CV Family, a private Facebook group with 1.2k members for people left injured or bereaved from Covid vaccines, was started in November 2021 by Charlet Crichton after she suffered an adverse reaction from the AstraZeneca jab. Facebook blocked Ms Crichton from commenting at one stage “to prevent misuse” and there were occasions where her account was temporarily banned because her “activity didn’t follow our community standards”.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government COVID vaccines and media manipulation from reliable sources.


A scientist who helped Fauci discredit the lab leak theory is now speaking out
2023-12-04, Washington Examiner
Posted: 2024-01-15 18:54:30
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/beltway-confidential/2780389/a-sci...

In March 2020, Dr. Robert Kadlec addressed a House committee to confirm his role and responsibilities as the federal government’s top preparedness official coordinating the government’s COVID-19 response. As assistant secretary for preparedness and response at the Department of Health and Human Services, Kadlec offered a lengthy statement to lawmakers on the “four principal functions” of his role. None of those functions involved downplaying without scientific evidence a theory that the virus emerged from a laboratory in the Wuhan Institute of Virology. But that’s what Kadlec now says he did by assisting Dr. Anthony Fauci ... in his effort to suppress the lab leak theory. Kadlec says it’s a decision that keeps him up at night. “I wake up at usually about 2 or 3 a.m. and think about it honestly, because it’s something that we all played a role in,” Kadlec [said]. For much of 2020 and 2021, anyone who brought up the possibility that COVID-19 emerged from Wuhan risked being labeled a conspiracy theorist by legacy media and “fact-checkers.” In September, the chairman of the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic revealed that Fauci was secretly admitted to CIA headquarters while the agency conducted its analysis of the virus’s origins, allegedly to “‘influence’ the Agency’s review.” A ... CIA whistleblower claims the agency attempted to bribe six analysts tasked with assessing the origin of the virus.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on COVID and government corruption from reliable major media sources.


There is little scrutiny of 'natural' deaths behind bars
2024-01-02, NPR
Posted: 2024-01-15 18:52:05
https://www.npr.org/2024/01/02/1219667393/there-is-little-scrutiny-of-natural...

Kesha Jackson was preparing for her husband, John, to be home in a few weeks. But then Jackson got a concerning call from other inmates. Her husband, in the special housing unit, was going in and out of consciousness. He died soon after. And as she waited for some explanation, Jackson was surprised to learn what prison officials pronounced as the manner of death: "natural." By deeming the death natural, prison authorities were not required to conduct an autopsy for Jackson's death. It's how they characterize at least three-quarters of all federal prison deaths since 2009. "When his medical records came home after he passed away, I saw that it was MRSA," Jackson said. "Saying that it's a natural death can sometimes be misleading because I believe that having the proper medical treatment could have possibly saved his life," Jackson said. The CDC says natural deaths happen either solely or almost entirely because of disease or old age. Yet 70% of the inmates who died in federal prison the last 13 years were under the age of 65. NPR found that potential issues such as medical neglect, poor prison conditions and a lack of health care resources were left unexplained once a "natural" death designation ended hopes of an investigation. Meanwhile, family members were left with little information about their loved one's death. Homer Venters, a federal court monitor of jail and prison health care, calls deaths like Jackson's "jail attributable."

Note: Private companies like Corizon are often responsible for inmate medical care. In 2015, investigations in Arizona, Florida, Maine, Minnesota, and New York uncovered escalating inmate deaths related to Corizon's for-profit medical services. A New York Times article about this was published but it quickly disappeared. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on prison system corruption from reliable major media sources.


Epstein documents allege sex tapes of Bill Clinton, Prince Andrew and Richard Branson
2024-01-09, The Independent (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2024-01-15 18:48:13
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/epstein-sex-tapes-richard-b...

Newly unsealed Jeffrey Epstein documents have described bombshell allegations about sex tapes involving Bill Clinton, Prince Andrew and Richard Branson. In emails sent by Epstein victim Sarah Ransome – sections of which were included as exhibits in one of the filings unsealed on Monday – she said that an unnamed friend “had sexual intercourse with Clinton, Prince Andrew and Richard Branson” and that these encounters had been filmed by Epstein and that she herself had later seen the sex tapes. In the messages, Ms Ransome said that her friend later came forward to report what happened “with Epstein, Clinton, Branson and Prince Andrew” to the police in 2008 but said that “nothing was done” and “she was made to feel like a dirty whore and a liar”. A couple of months later, her friend was allegedly “approached by Special Agents Forces Men sent directly by Hilary [sic] Clinton herself, in order to protect her presidential campaign in 2008”, Ms Ransome claimed. Ms Ransome went on to allege that the friend was given a “substantial” payout directly from the Clinton Foundation “to keep her quiet”. She alleged that if her friend was to break the agreement to stay quiet, “she is dead”. The woman also allegedly tried to sue Epstein for damages but was “severely bullied and threatened” by his attorney, Mr Dershowitz – a man who she claimed “she also had sexual relations with and who was also heavily involved in Epstein’s paedophile ring”.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on Jeffrey Epstein's child sex ring from reliable major media sources.


Jeffrey Epstein Ran Sex Blackmail Operation For Intelligence Agencies, New Evidence Suggests
2024-01-04, Public on Substack
Posted: 2024-01-15 18:46:04
https://public.substack.com/p/jeffrey-epstein-ran-sex-blackmail

While nobody has offered hard evidence that intelligence agencies, and in particular the CIA or Mossad, were directly involved in Epstein and [Ghislaine] Maxwell's blackmailing of public figures, many of the journalists who investigated the Epstein case have concluded that they were running what is known in the intelligence community as a “honeypot” or “honeytrap” aimed at using sex to blackmail people. The current director of the Central Intelligence Agency, William Burns, had scheduled three meetings with Epstein in 2014. Epstein's private calendar showed that he had dozens of meetings with Kathryn Ruemmler, a former White House counsel under President Barack Obama. Meetings with many other wealthy, well-connected individuals occurred years after Epstein became a convicted sex offender. Reporter Vicky Ward ... wrote a story about the Justice Department's 2007 “non-prosecution agreement” with Epstein. Alexander Acosta was the U.S. Attorney for South Florida who arranged the lenient sentence. “I was told Epstein 'belonged to intelligence' and to leave it alone," Acosta said. In addition to his possible ties to American intelligence, Epstein may have also been connected to the Israeli Mossad. A former Israeli spy, Ari Ben-Menashe, said he was Robert Maxwell's “handler” and claimed to have introduced Epstein to Mossad. “They were agents of the Israeli Intelligence Services,” said Ben-Menashe. The CIA has a long record of using sexual blackmail. In 1975, the Washington Post reported that for years, the CIA had “operated love traps in New York City and San Francisco, where foreign diplomats were lured by prostitutes in the pay of the CIA ...Through hidden one-way mirrors, CIA agents filmed the sexual adventures and later tried to blackmail the victims into becoming informants."

Note: Read more about former Israeli spy Ari Ben-Menashe's claims that Epstein was running a sexual blackmail operation on behalf of Israeli military intelligence. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on Jeffrey Epstein and intelligence agency corruption from reliable major media sources.


Scientists at the center of the ‘lab leak’ controversy met with NIH, Fauci
2024-01-06, U.S. Right to Know
Posted: 2024-01-15 18:44:03
https://usrtk.org/covid-19-origins/daszak-shi-visits-nih-fauci/

Scientists at the center of the “lab leak” controversy visited Anthony Fauci’s institute at the National Institutes of Health in 2017 to discuss their research — just months before NIH lifted a pause on high-risk virology. Wuhan Institute of Virology Senior Scientist Shi Zhengli [visited] National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases staffers in June 2017, where she gave a presentation about novel coronaviruses. Shi is known internationally as the “Bat Lady” for her work with bats and their coronaviruses. Though ostensibly a civilian lab, the Wuhan Institute of Virology has conducted research projects “for defensive and biosecurity needs of the military” since at least 2017, according to U.S. intelligence. EcoHealth Alliance, a U.S. research organization, partnered closely with the Wuhan Institute of Virology, subcontracting NIAID funding to Shi’s lab, and arranged the meeting. Fauci himself met with [EcoHealth Alliance President Peter] Daszak four months later, in October 2017. By December 2017, NIH had resumed funding for gain-of-function research that generates new viruses in the lab following a three year pause and debate about the possibility that such research could cause a pandemic. A 2021 State Department fact sheet stated that “despite the WIV presenting itself as a civilian institution,” it has conducted classified research on behalf of the Chinese military “since at least 2017.”

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on COVID and government corruption from reliable major media sources.


New Systematic Review Finds No Data To Support Masking Children Against COVID
2023-12-04, The Pulse
Posted: 2024-01-15 18:41:35
https://www.thepulse.one/p/new-mask-meta-analysis-finds-no-data

A paper published in Archives of Disease in Childhood found that real-world effectiveness of child mask mandates to prevent COVID-19 transmission and infection has “not been demonstrated with high-quality evidence” and that “the current body of scientific data does not support masking children for protection against COVID-19.” “There were no radomised controlled trials in children assessing the benefits of mask wearing to reduce SARS-CoV-2 infection or transmission,” [said the study]. “The six observational studies reporting an association between child masking and lower infection rate or antibody seropositivity had critical (n=5) or serious (n=1) risk of bias; all six were potentially confounded by important differences between masked and unmasked groups and two were shown to have non-significant results when reanalysed. Sixteen other observational studies found no association between mask wearing and infection or transmission. Real-world effectiveness of child mask mandates against SARS-CoV-2 transmission or infection has not been demonstrated with high-quality evidence.” The importance of this study is that it examined the risks of bias among studies across the board. The higher the risk of bias in a study, the less trustworthy its results can be. The authors of the study pointed out that the risk of bias in studies across the board was present ... but that in the best studies out there (least bias) no benefit was found for masking children.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on COVID from reliable major media sources.


The State Department has been funding trolls. I’m one of their targets
2019-06-04, Washington Post
Posted: 2024-01-15 18:39:38
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/06/04/state-department-has-been-...

Even after spending a year and a half in prison in Tehran, I knew that if I wanted to go on writing about Iran, I would be a target for plenty of public attacks. But I never imagined the U.S. State Department would be funding my attackers. Last week, several astute Iran watchers drew attention to a series of inflammatory tweets associated with the Iran Disinformation Project, a State Department-funded initiative that its website claims “brings to light disinformation emanating from the Islamic Republic of Iran via official rhetoric, state propaganda outlets, social media manipulation and more.” The targets of the tweets included think-tank analysts, human rights activists and journalists. The common thread is that we are all perceived by regime change proponents and supporters of the Trump administration’s so-called maximum pressure policy to be soft on Iran because we are critical of crushing economic sanctions and the threat of the use of military force. For these thought crimes, we are branded by @IranDisinfo and similar social media accounts as Tehran’s “mouthpieces,” “apologists,” “collaborators,” and “lobbyists” in the West. We’re faced with the irony that an initiative aimed at combating Tehran’s disinformation campaigns is resorting to disinformation campaigns of its own, using taxpayer funds to spread lies about U.S. citizens. We need programs that fight the spread of falsehoods and propaganda, but such efforts shouldn’t combat lies with other lies.

Note: For lots more on this eye-opening event, see this excellent article by Matt Taibbi. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and media manipulation from reliable sources.


What We Learned From Creating the Largest Guaranteed Income Program in America
2024-01-01, Newsweek
Posted: 2024-01-15 18:37:17
https://www.newsweek.com/what-we-learned-creating-largest-guaranteed-income-p...

Direct cash programs are growing across America, offering a path out of poverty through economic mobility. During a two-week period in 2022, nearly a quarter of a million people in the Chicago area applied for the Cook County Promise Guaranteed Income Pilot, the nation's largest direct cash pilot, and ultimately 3,250 families were randomly selected to get $500 a month for two years. Similar direct cash initiatives have changed the physical, emotional, and economic lives of families that participate. Children are better cared for, and they excel in school. Adults experience improved health and stronger familial relationships. And crucially, when recipients have economic stability, they can plan and invest in their futures—many, for the first time in their lives. The Stockton SEED project, which gave $500 a month for two years to 130 people, saw results that mirrored prior direct cash research. The study ... found that the expansion of finances and the predictable, stable source of income brought by the program created "self-determination and capacity for risk-taking not present prior," meaning that when participants could predictably afford child care, transportation, and training programs they had the financial freedom to invest in their own futures. People have big ambitions, no matter the size of their bank account. For most Americans facing economic struggles, their chief problem is a lack of cash, and not a lack of character.

Note: Explore more positive stories like this in our comprehensive inspiring news articles archive focused on solutions and bridging divides.


‘Life-changing impacts’: can a guaranteed income program work?
2023-06-13, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2024-01-15 18:35:29
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2023/jun/13/its-basic-documentary-guaranteed...

Michael Tubbs had just been elected the youngest and first Black mayor of Stockton, California, when he announced his intention to launch what would be the country’s first universal basic income program in decades. The year was 2017, and the plan was to pay some residents $500 a month, no strings attached. In the years since his announcement ... the 125 participants of the Stockton program showed that they used that extra $500 a month not for luxuries or frivolities, but to pay off debt, obtain full-time jobs and get medical treatment like dental work that they had put off for years because they could not afford it. Now, more than 100 cities and jurisdictions around the country have launched their own guaranteed income programs. The basis of guaranteed income is simple: poverty, a problem at the crux of so many societal woes, can be solved with money and it is the government’s job to solve it. It’s a guaranteed monthly income without the requirements that come with a welfare program – requirements that often keep recipients in poverty when the program benefits outweigh any job or income advancement they could make. “We’re talking about like life-changing impacts for a very small amount of dollars, in the grand scheme of things,” Tubbs said. The Stockton program was originally funded by a grant from the Economic Security Project, but some programs today are drawing directly from their governmental budgets.

Note: A documentary about the Stockton program titled "It's Basic" was recently featured at the Tribeca Film Festival. Explore more positive stories like this in our comprehensive inspiring news articles archive focused on solutions and bridging divides.


Court documents reveal names of powerful men allegedly linked to Jeffrey Epstein
2024-01-04, NPR
Posted: 2024-01-08 21:03:47
https://www.npr.org/2024/01/03/1222130537/jeffrey-epstein-court-records-revea...

Court documents made public on Wednesday disclosed the names of dozens of powerful men with alleged connections to convicted sex-trafficker Jeffrey Epstein who died by suicide in 2019. Federal Judge Loretta Preska in Manhattan unsealed the documents, revealing the names of numerous individuals described in a 2015 civil lawsuit as associates, affiliates or victims of Epstein. The documents include references to former Presidents Bill Clinton and Donald Trump, the magician David Copperfield, Prince Andrew, former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, actor Kevin Spacey, lawyer Alan Dershowitz, the late New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson and former Vice President Al Gore, among others. The fact that people were named in these documents doesn't mean any of them face allegations or evidence of wrongdoing. Federal prosecutors say Epstein — who worked for decades as a private financier for a secretive list of wealthy clients — also operated an underage sex-trafficking ring based in Manhattan and Palm Beach, Florida. Epstein allegedly developed a scheme to identify and exploit "dozens" of vulnerable girls and young women, some as young as 14 years old, beginning around 1994 and continuing at least until 2004. Some of his victims later claimed in civil lawsuits that Epstein instructed them to have sex with a who's-who of powerful men. Authorities in Florida first investigated Epstein for alleged sexual activity involving minors as early as 2005.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of news articles on Jeffrey Epstein's child sex ring from reliable major media sources.


4 Biggest Revelations in the Jeffrey Epstein Docs
2024-01-05, Rolling Stone
Posted: 2024-01-08 21:01:22
https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/jeffrey-epstein-documen...

Hundreds of pages of sealed records related to Jeffrey Epstein were made public on Wednesday, revealing previously unknown details about the late accused sex trafficker. Previously, the documents had been part of Epstein accuser Virginia Giuffre’s 2015 civil case against Ghislaine Maxwell. (Maxwell was convicted of sex trafficking in 2022 and is currently serving a 20-year sentence. Epstein was facing 45 years in prison for his alleged crimes, but he was found hanged in his Manhattan prison cell in August 2019.) Bill Clinton was friends with Epstein for years, and he was widely speculated to be one of the high-profile figures who would appear in the documents. In a transcript of a deposition given by Epstein accuser Johanna Sjoberg, she said Epstein once told her that Clinton “likes them young, referring to girls.” In February 2022, Prince Andrew reached a settlement with Giuffre over accusations that he’d sexually abused her numerous times when she was still a minor. He denied the allegations, but was officially stripped of his royal and military titles. Alan Dershowitz, Epstein’s former attorney who helped him clinch the 2008 “sweetheart deal” in which he avoided prosecution for sex crimes against minors, also plays a big role in the unsealed documents. According to testimony from Epstein’s former household staff, Dershowitz visited Epstein’s Florida home “very often,” allegedly going there by himself and spending time “in the presence of young girls.”

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of news articles on Jeffrey Epstein's child sex ring from reliable major media sources.


In the name of ‘fake news,’ NewsGuard extorts sites to follow the government narrative
2023-12-10, New York Post
Posted: 2024-01-08 20:59:33
https://nypost.com/2023/12/10/opinion/newsguard-extorts-sites-to-follow-the-g...

An opaque network of government agencies and self-proclaimed anti-misinformation groups ... have repressed online speech. News publishers have been demonetized and shadow-banned for reporting dissenting views. NewsGuard, a for-profit company that scores news websites on trust and works closely with government agencies and major corporate advertisers, exemplifies the problem. NewsGuard’s core business is a misinformation meter, in which websites are rated on a scale of 0 to 100 on a variety of factors, including headline choice and whether a site publishes “false or egregiously misleading content.” Editors who have engaged with NewsGuard have found that the company has made bizarre demands that unfairly tarnish an entire site as untrustworthy for straying from the official narrative. In an email to one of its government clients, NewsGuard touted that its ratings system of websites is used by advertisers, “which will cut off revenues to fake news sites.” Internal documents ... show that the founders of NewsGuard privately pitched the firm to clients as a tool to engage in content moderation on an industrial scale, applying artificial intelligence to take down certain forms of speech. Earlier this year, Consortium News, a left-leaning site, charged in a lawsuit that NewsGuard’s serves as a proxy for the military to engage in censorship. The lawsuit brings attention to the Pentagon’s $749,387 contract with NewsGuard to identify “false narratives” regarding the war [in] Ukraine.

Note: A recent trove of whistleblower documents revealed how far the Pentagon and intelligence spy agencies are willing to go to censor alternative views, even if those views contain factual information and reasonable arguments. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of news articles on corporate corruption and media manipulation from reliable sources.


Apple now requires court-order to release customers’ information to law enforcement
2023-12-12, New York Post
Posted: 2024-01-08 20:57:44
https://nypost.com/2023/12/12/tech/apple-now-requires-court-order-to-release-...

Apple has said it now requires a judge’s order to hand over information about its customers’ push notification to law enforcement, putting the iPhone maker’s policy in line with rival Google and raising the hurdle officials must clear to get app data about users. It follows the revelation from Oregon Senator Ron Wyden that officials were requesting such data from Apple as well as from Google. Apps of all kinds rely on push notifications to alert smartphone users to incoming messages, breaking news, and other updates. These are the audible “dings” or visual indicators users get when they receive an email or their sports team wins a game. What users often do not realize is that almost all such notifications travel over Google and Apple’s servers. In a letter first disclosed by Reuters last week, Wyden said the practice gave the two companies unique insight into traffic flowing from those apps to users, putting them “in a unique position to facilitate government surveillance of how users are using particular apps.” Apple and Google both acknowledged receiving such requests. Apple added a passage to its guidelines saying such data was available “with a subpoena or greater legal process.” The passage has now been updated to refer to more stringent warrant requirements. Wyden said in a statement that Apple was “doing the right thing by matching Google and requiring a court order to hand over push notification related data.”

Note: Read more about the controversial geofence warrants that use Big Tech data. As an older article about the Apple court order articulates, law enforcement can "intercept your messages, access your health records or financial data, track your location, or even access your phone’s microphone or camera without your knowledge." For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on the disappearance of privacy from reliable major media sources.


How Meta’s New Face Camera Heralds a New Age of Surveillance
2023-12-13, New York Times
Posted: 2024-01-08 20:51:53
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/13/technology/personaltech/meta-ray-ban-glass...

For the past two weeks, I’ve been using a new camera to secretly snap photos and record videos of strangers in parks, on trains, inside stores and at restaurants. I was testing the recently released $300 Ray-Ban Meta glasses that Mark Zuckerberg’s social networking empire made in collaboration with the iconic eyewear maker. The high-tech glasses include a camera for shooting photos and videos, and an array of speakers and microphones for listening to music and talking on the phone. The glasses, Meta says, can help you “live in the moment” while sharing what you see with the world. Meta, Apple and Magic Leap have all been hyping mixed-reality headsets that use cameras to allow their software to interact with objects in the real world. To inform people that they are being photographed, the Meta Ray-Bans include a tiny LED light embedded in the right frame to indicate when the device is recording. When a photo is snapped, it flashes momentarily. When a video is recording, it is continuously illuminated. As I shot 200 photos and videos with the glasses in public, including on BART trains, on hiking trails and in parks, no one looked at the LED light or confronted me about it. And why would anyone? It would be rude to comment on a stranger’s glasses, let alone stare at them. The ubiquity of smartphones, doorbell cameras and dashcams makes it likely that you are being recorded anywhere you go. But Chris Gilliard, an independent privacy scholar who has studied the effects of surveillance technologies, said cameras hidden inside smart glasses would most likely enable bad actors — like the people shooting sneaky photos of others at the gym — to do more harm.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corporate corruption and the disappearance of privacy from reliable major media sources.


Sidney Wolfe, fierce critic of Big Pharma and FDA, dead at 86
2024-01-02, New York Post
Posted: 2024-01-08 20:49:59
https://nypost.com/2024/01/02/business/sidney-wolfe-fierce-critic-of-drug-com...

Sidney M. Wolfe, an American physician turned activist who relentlessly lobbied against drug companies and the US Food and Drug Administration, died on Monday in his Washington home. He was 86. Wolfe ... co-founded the Public Citizen’s Health Research Group, which “promotes research-based, system-wide changes in health-care policy and drug safety,” according to the group’s website. He also served as the director and senior adviser of the non-profit, where he crusaded against FDA rulings on more than two dozen dangerous or ineffective drugs until they were yanked off the market. In an op-ed published in HuffPost in 2011, Wolfe ridiculed the FDA for being “cautious on food safety — reckless on prescription drug safety.” The banned medicines include the diabetes drug phenformin, which was linked to hundreds of deaths and sold under the trade names DBI and Meltrol in the US for 20 years. Wolfe was also responsible for the banning of the anti-inflammatory Vioxx ... which he warned caused serious heart damage years before it was taken off the market — as well as the anti-diarrheal alosetron. His group also successfully petitioned federal regulators to include a warning on aspirin bottles about Reye’s syndrome, a rare but potentially fatal condition that causes swelling in the liver and brain. In addition, Wolfe was a fierce foe of silicone gel-filled breast implants for breast augmentation and reconstruction surgeries, claiming in the 1980s that they cause cancer.

Note: Read the full remembrance of Dr. Sidney Wolfe’s legacy. His leadership helped remove 28 dangerous medications off the market, and paved the way for “vital and path-breaking research and advocacy on doctor discipline, mental health, tobacco, pharmaceutical marketing, drug company payments to doctors, medical devices, health insurance and the imperative of Medicare for All, unnecessary Cesarean sections, unregulated supplements, medical resident work hours, and more.” For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on health and Big Pharma corruption from reliable major media sources.


Journalism profession has ‘lost its way’ — and it’s not just the New York Times
2024-01-01, The Hill
Posted: 2024-01-08 20:48:14
https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/4380053-journalism-profession-has-lost-i...

The former opinion editor of the New York Times, James Bennet, took his former employer to task recently in a lengthy essay. The headline of the piece boldly asserted that the New York Times has “lost its way.” Inasmuch as the newspaper represents professional expectations and standards for the entire journalism world, Bennet could be translated as saying the broader news industry has also lost its way. The Times is just the largest float at the front of a parade heading in the wrong direction. Public sentiment about the news industry as a whole is at dismal levels. Gallup polling shows Americans’ confidence in the news media to report in a “full, fair and accurate way” is at historically low levels. Given this lack of trust, it only stands to reason that Americans are less likely to follow the news at all. There is no need to consume news from sources one can’t trust. Journalists rank near the bottom of public ratings of professions in terms of ethics and honesty. Activism has replaced journalism’s former mission to provide fact-based information on which citizens can manage their lives and hold the powerful accountable. Of course, opinion and analysis have always been a part of journalism. But there has long been a sense in the journalism profession that such activist content was to be confined to designated sections, and that the news was to be fact-driven and balanced. Fairness is a skill that journalists once prided themselves on achieving.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of revealing news articles on media corruption from reliable sources.


The Military Industrial Complex Scam
2023-12-30, LA Progressive
Posted: 2024-01-08 20:46:34
https://www.laprogressive.com/foreign-policy/military-industrial-complex-scam

In the past 20 years, every major US foreign policy objective has failed. The Taliban returned to power after 20 years of US occupation of Afghanistan. Post-Saddam Iraq became dependent on Iran. Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad stayed in power despite a CIA effort to overthrow him. Libya fell into a protracted civil war after a US-led NATO mission overthrew Muammar Gaddafi. Ukraine was bludgeoned on the battlefield by Russia in 2023 after the US secretly scuttled a peace agreement between Russia and Ukraine in 2022. Despite these remarkable and costly debacles ... the same cast of characters has remained at the helm of US foreign policy for decades. American foreign policy is not at all about the interests of the American people. It is about the interests of the Washington insiders, as they chase campaign contributions and lucrative jobs. In short, US foreign policy has been hacked by big money. To understand the foreign-policy scam, think of today’s federal government as a multi-division racket controlled by the highest bidders. The Wall Street division is run out of the Treasury. The Health Industry division is run out of the Department of Health and Human Services. The Big Oil and Coal division is run out of the Departments of Energy and Interior. And the Foreign Policy division is run out of the White House, Pentagon and CIA. Each division uses public power for private gain through insider dealing, greased by corporate campaign contributions and lobbying outlays.

Note: War profiteering is an old game. General Smedley Butler wrote War is a Racket in 1935. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on war and government corruption from reliable major media sources. Then explore the excellent, reliable resources provided in our Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center.


Ukraine Needs a Ceasefire, Not Biden’s $50 Billion Escalation of Failing War
2023-12-30, LA Progressive
Posted: 2024-01-08 20:44:26
https://www.laprogressive.com/war-and-peace/ukraine-needs-a-ceasefire

The latest White House spending package includes $50 billion in additional military funding, which is more than Ukraine has received from the United States since the war began in early 2022. There’s a better way. The United States can take an active role in organizing a ceasefire, to be followed by negotiations toward a permanent settlement. Unfortunately, so far Biden has made little effort to end the slaughter. In fact, there is serious evidence that Great Britain and the US played a decisive role in blocking a 2022 peace deal between Ukraine and Russia. The State Department reports that the United States has given Ukraine $44.2 billion in military aid since Russia invaded at the end of February, 2022. At the current pace of spending, the additional military aid requested by the White House would keep the Ukraine war going until sometime in mid-2026 – that is, unless there is a plan to intensify the attacks, which would increase the risk of a nuclear conflict. The US has reportedly spent a total of $111 billion on Ukraine since Russia’s invasion. If the supplemental spending package is approved ... military-only spending for Ukraine will be greater than the annual budget of the National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Disease Control, and the Food and Drug Administration – combined. The US has already spent ten times as much on Ukraine as we spend on the Centers for Disease Control. That does not mean Ukraine doesn’t deserve to be defended, but it does raise serious questions about the direction of the war and our government’s priorities.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on war and government corruption from reliable major media sources. Then explore the excellent, reliable resources provided in our Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center.


Meet the Companies Profiting From Israel’s War on Gaza
2023-12-21, ScheerPost
Posted: 2024-01-08 20:42:32
https://scheerpost.com/2023/12/21/meet-the-companies-profiting-from-israels-w...

As of Wednesday, a U.S.-based Quaker group’s online database listed over two dozen companies profiting from the bloodshed in the Gaza Strip, where Israeli forces have spent the last 10 weeks waging what experts call a “genocidal” war that sent defense stocks soaring. Backed by $3.8 billion in annual military aid from the United States, Israel declared war on October 7 in retaliation for a Hamas-led attack that killed over 1,100 people. Since then, Israeli forces have killed over 20,000 Palestinians in Gaza. “The scale of destruction and war crimes in Gaza would not be possible without massive weapon transfers from the U.S.,” said Noam Perry of the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC). Boeing, the world’s fifth-largest weapon manufacturer, makes F-15 fighter jets and Apache AH-64 attack helicopters used by the Israeli forces, as well as “multiple types of unguided small diameter bombs (SDBs) and Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM) kits” that have been used “extensively” during the war. Caterpillar’s armored D9 bulldozers ... have been crucial in the Israeli military’s ground invasion. Other companies on the list include weapons giants such as General Dynamics, General Electric, L3Harris Technologies, Leonardo, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and RTX—formerly Raytheon—as well as vehicle companies AM General, Ford, Oshkosh, Toyota, and drone manufacturers AeroVironment, Skydio, and XTEND.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on war and corporate corruption from reliable major media sources. Then explore the excellent, reliable resources provided in our Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center.


Zimbabwe’s therapeutic ‘friendship benches’, coming to a city near you
2023-07-26, Positive News
Posted: 2024-01-08 20:40:35
https://www.positive.news/lifestyle/zimbabwe-friendship-benches-are-coming-to...

A legacy of poverty, genocide and dictatorship left Zimbabwe struggling with an epidemic of depression, colloquially known as kufungisisa, or ‘thinking too much’. Known as ‘gogos’ (elder women) or ‘ambuya utano’ (community grannies), these Zimbabwean community health workers (CHWs) have a record in treating mild to moderate anxiety and depression that beats many traditional talking therapies and pharmacological interventions. Meet the Friendship Bench grandmothers of Zimbabwe. Founded in 2007, the Friendship Bench project has treated 280,000 people in its 16 years of existence, in 70 communities across Zimbabwe and at spin-off projects in Malawi, Kenya and most recently Zanzibar and Vietnam. In 2024 it will arrive in London, with a series of Friendship Benches set to be installed in the city’s most marginalised communities. “Whether it’s London, New York or Zimbabwe, everywhere the issues are similar,” Friendship Bench founder, Harare-based psychiatrist Dr Dixon Chibanda tells Positive News. “There are issues related to loneliness, access to care, and to just being able to know that what you’re experiencing – whether you call it stress or depression or anxiety – is treatable.” Most of the therapists are older women, who are traditionally turned to for counsel in Zimbabwean culture. The women are trained in the basics of cognitive behavioural therapy [CBT] and allocated a park bench in their communities.

Note: Explore more positive stories like this in our comprehensive inspiring news articles archive focused on solutions and bridging divides.


New Orleans landlord gifts tenants 1 month of free rent for holidays:
2023-12-26, CBS News
Posted: 2024-01-08 20:38:56
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/britni-ricard-free-rent-new-orleans/

Britni Ricard is the CEO of her own cosmetics company, COTA Skin Care, which she started in 2019. Last year, she also became a landlord when she bought her first investment property. The apartment building in New Orleans has 10 units and, according to Ricard, many of the tenants are single women with children. That made her think of her own childhood growing up in public housing, and how difficult Christmastime could be for her mom. "It was tough," Ricard told CBS News. "My mom was a single woman raising three children alone, and watching her continuously struggle as a child and wanting to figure out, 'How can I help?'" In November, Ricard gathered her tenants for a pre-holiday meeting and, while decked out in a chartreuse suit, she delivered a gift to her tenants that would make Santa Claus green with envy: one month of free rent. A video of her surprise announcement went viral on TikTok. In the video, Ricard also offered to organize a seminar to help her tenants become homeowners. Kedesha Dunn lives in one of the building's units with her two boys. The single mom said Ricard's gift would allow her family to celebrate more and worry less. "Now I, you know, I don't have to go try to take a loan out or something like ask my family for money," Dunn said. "Like, I can do it now. Like, I can do it." "I'm an emotional person," Dunn added. "I start to cry. 'Cause I'm just like, that is so sweet. She's uh, better than Santa Claus at this point. ... Like a guardian angel."

Note: Explore more positive stories like this in our comprehensive inspiring news articles archive focused on solutions and bridging divides.


Farmer sells her food for pennies in a trendy Tokyo district to help
2023-12-13, CBS News
Posted: 2024-01-08 20:36:47
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/japan-farmer-sells-food-for-pennies-in-trendy-to...

There's a quiet alley in Japan's capital where passersby often do a double-take. Sharing space with chic cafes and world-class bars, the tiny fruit and vegetable stand seems to have been teleported from a country road far away. Weather-beaten wood tables groan under stacks of carrots, potatoes, mandarin oranges and other fresh farm produce. But what makes the stall even more remarkable in the heart of Tokyo is that payment is on the honor system — customers just toss coins into an old mailbox — and most of the items on offer are priced at 100 yen, or about 70 cents, in a neighborhood where fresh food usually goes for much, much more. A handwritten mission statement on the stall is addressed: "Dear young people." "I came here from Hiroshima with nothing. Lived on watermelon for a month, but couldn't ask mom for help. Thirty years on, I grow plenty of vegetables," the note continues. "Tomo-chan is on your side, so don't worry about the future." Opened five years ago, the produce stand has struck a chord with some of the city's hard-pressed younger residents, revealing a well of hidden despair beneath the glitter and gloss of a world-famous metropolis. The greengrocer with a heart of gold is rarely glimpsed by her grateful customers. "I want young people to feel that they're not forgotten, that they are treasured," she said. "That not everyone is out for himself. I can make money anytime. Right now, I want to give young people a helping hand."

Note: Explore more positive stories like this in our comprehensive inspiring news articles archive focused on solutions and bridging divides.


CIA accused of hiding records that analysts took ‘monetary incentives’ to bury COVID lab leak finding
2023-12-26, New York Post
Posted: 2024-01-02 14:36:07
https://nypost.com/2023/12/26/news/cia-accused-of-hiding-payments-to-bury-cov...

An offshoot of the conservative Heritage Foundation is suing the Central Intelligence Agency, accusing it of withholding records detailing payoffs to analysts to bury findings that a lab leak was the most likely explanation for the COVID-19 pandemic. The think tank’s Oversight Project filed a federal lawsuit against the CIA Dec. 22, alleging the agency did not comply with its Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request about analysts who allegedly “received monetary incentives to change their position on the origins of the virus,” according to a copy of the complaint. A senior-level CIA agent told House Republican committee chairmen in September that the agency offered payments to six analysts tasked with determining the origins of SARS-CoV-2 if they said that the virus jumped from animals to humans. The Sept. 12 letter from Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic Chairman Brad Wenstrup (R-Ohio) and Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence Chairman Mike Turner (R-Ohio) to CIA Director William Burns also demanded documentation ... about the payments. “According to the whistleblower, at the end of its review, six of the seven members of the Team believed the intelligence and science were sufficient to make a low confidence assessment that COVID-19 originated from a laboratory in Wuhan, China,” the House panel chairmen wrote. In February, the FBI became the first US intelligence agency to conclude the coronavirus pandemic most likely began with a lab leak.

Note: Former chief White House medical adviser Anthony Fauci will testify before Congress on COVID origins in early 2024. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on COVID and intelligence agency corruption from reliable major media sources. Then explore the excellent, reliable resources provided in our COVID Information Center.


Nearly 40% of conventional baby food contains toxic pesticides, US study finds
2023-11-23, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2024-01-02 14:34:05
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/nov/23/baby-food-pesticides-study

Nearly 40% of conventional baby food products analyzed in a new US study were found to contain toxic pesticides, while none of the organic products sampled in the survey contained the chemicals. The research, conducted by the Environmental Working Group (EWG) non-profit, looked at 73 products and found at least one pesticide in 22 of them. Many products showed more than one pesticide, and the substances present a dangerous health threat. “Babies and young children are particularly vulnerable to the health risks posed by pesticides in food,” said Sydney Evans, a senior science analyst at EWG. The study looked at products from Beech-Nut, Gerber and Parent’s Choice, though it did not specifically identify which of the companies’ products contained pesticide residue. Among pesticides it detected were acetamiprid, a neonicotinoid insecticide that harms bees and humans, and captan, which is linked to cancer. Fludioxonil, a product commonly used on fruits, vegetables and cereals, was found in five products and is thought to harm fetal development, cause changes in immune system cells and disrupt hormones. Apple-based products were the most likely to contain high levels of pesticide residue, and blueberries, pears and strawberries are also among produce that commonly hold high levels of the chemicals. The best way to avoid pesticides is to buy organic baby food products, which are subjected to much stricter regulations.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on health and food system corruption from reliable major media sources.


Former EPA official says agency fails to protect public from toxic pesticides
2023-12-15, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2024-01-02 14:32:19
https://amp.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/dec/15/epa-failing-public-health-pes...

Karen McCormack, a retired Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) scientist who spent 40 years with the agency, told Al Jazeera’s investigative show Fault Lines that she believed the EPA was not fulfilling its mission to protect the public from harmful chemicals. “In the last three decades that I have worked at EPA it has been very rare for a toxic pesticide to be taken off the market,” she told Fault Lines. “Just about every, every new pesticide application that is submitted to the agency is approved, no matter how high the risk.” As the Al Jazeera report notes, paraquat is banned in 58 countries but its use is on the rise in the United States. The Guardian’s Paraquat Papers, published in 2022 in collaboration with the New Lede, exposed years of corporate efforts to cover up paraquat’s links to Parkinson’s disease, mislead the public, challenge published scientific literature and influence the EPA. Dr Deborah Cory-Slechta, a prominent researcher, told Al Jazeera: “There is a very strong and compelling body of evidence based on the epidemiology studies and what we know from animal models of Parkinson’s disease” that paraquat causes changes in the brain that lead to Parkinson’s. As revealed by the Guardian, in 2005 Syngenta worked behind the scenes to keep Cory-Slechta from sitting on an EPA advisory panel, deeming her a threat to paraquat. Company officials wanted to make sure the efforts could not be traced back to Syngenta, the documents showed.

Note: Internal corporate documents reveal how global chemical giant Syngenta secretly influenced scientific research regarding links between its top-selling weedkiller and Parkinson's disease. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on health and government corruption from reliable major media sources.


'Burns me to a crisp': Farmers allege link between popular herbicide paraquat and Parkinson's disease
2023-11-28, ABC News
Posted: 2024-01-02 14:30:06
https://abcnews.go.com/US/burns-crisp-farmers-allege-link-popular-herbicide-p...

It is against the law to use paraquat in China, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and dozens of other countries. Many countries have banned the herbicide due to its extreme toxicity, while others have expressed concerns over the possible risk for Parkinson's disease. Yet the herbicide, manufactured by a Swiss company that is owned by the Chinese state, is still widely used throughout the United States in part because it is a highly effective way to kill weeds. The company, Syngenta, says that paraquat, which it produces under the name Gramoxone, "is safe for its intended and labelled use." Clayton Tucholke, who used Gramoxone for years on his farm in LaBolt, South Dakota, and has since been diagnosed with Parkinson's disease, says otherwise. "It should have been pulled, I think, you know, so it didn't happen to somebody else," Tucholke told ABC News. The Tucholkes are among the more than 4,000 Americans who have filed lawsuits as part of a multi-district litigation against Syngenta, which currently manufactures Gramoxone, and Chevron, which distributed it in the U.S. from 1966 until 1986. Although Syngenta and Chevron told ABC News that there is no scientific evidence that supports a causal link between paraquat and Parkinson's disease, the Tucholkes and other plaintiffs allege that such a link exists, arguing that Syngenta and Chevron knew or should have known that the herbicide could "cause severe neurological injuries."

Note: Internal corporate documents reveal how global chemical giant Syngenta secretly influenced scientific research regarding links between its top-selling weedkiller and Parkinson's disease. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on health and food system corruption from reliable major media sources.


Appeals panel invalidates EPA approval of streptomycin pesticide on citrus groves, citing risks to bees
2023-12-13, Courthouse News
Posted: 2024-01-02 14:28:03
https://www.courthousenews.com/appeals-panel-invalidates-epa-approval-of-stre...

A Ninth Circuit panel on Wednesday rolled back the Environmental Protection Agency’s approval of the use of the pesticide streptomycin sulfate on citrus groves to fight citrus disease. The underlying lawsuit was brought by farmworkers and other interest groups, which argued the EPA had greenlit streptomycin sulfate for use on citrus plants without adequately considering potential harms from the chemical. The panel, consisting of U.S. Circuit Judges Ronald Gould and Johnnie Rawlinson ... and Daniel Bress ... partially ruled in favor of the EPA — determining there was substantial evidence for the EPA’s assessment concerning risks which could lead to antibiotic resistance. However, they said, the EPA’s assessment concerning risks to bees and other pollinators was incomplete. In a statement after the ruling, the Center for Biological Diversity, one of the groups involved in the suit, applauded the Ninth Circuit's decision. The rollback of streptomycin approval "is a significant win for public health, farmworker safety and endangered species," [said attorney] Hannah Connor. Streptomycin sulfate is used as an antibiotic to treat serious illnesses but has also found use as a pesticide. The Center for Biological Diversity claims spraying streptomycin on citrus trees to combat citrus greening disease is “highly ineffective” and argues that its use as a pesticide violates the Endangered Species Act because it causes long-term health effects to endangered animals and plants.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on health and government corruption from reliable major media sources.


Who is 'Fat Leonard' and how did he end up as part of the Venezuelan prisoner swap?
2023-12-20, NPR
Posted: 2024-01-02 14:25:05
https://www.npr.org/2023/12/20/1220816420/who-is-fat-leonard-and-how-did-he-e...

The notorious and once portly defense contractor known as "Fat Leonard," who scammed the U.S. Navy out of millions of dollars for more than a decade, is being extradited to the U.S. as part of a prisoner swap deal with Venezuela, the White House announced. Leonard Glenn Francis, now 59, escaped from house arrest in San Diego in September 2022 after cutting off an ankle tracking bracelet shortly before a sentencing trial for his role behind one of the largest corruption scandals in the country's military history that ensnared more than two dozen U.S. Navy officials. But his life on the run was short lived. Francis was captured weeks later by authorities in Venezuela where he has remained in custody until now. In 2015 Francis pleaded guilty to plying more than 30 officials, including more than two dozen naval officers, with a slew of bribes to gain lucrative contracts for his Singapore-based company Glenn Defense Marine Asia Ltd. According to the Department of Justice, officers were lavished with a criminal potpourri of cash, prostitutes, parties and luxury travel and items such as "Cuban cigars, Kobe beef and Spanish suckling pig." Francis also admitted to overcharging the Pentagon for made up services. In all, the Department of Justice said he bilked the Navy out of $35 million, leading officials to call it "one of the most brazen bribery conspiracies in the U.S. Navy's history." In exchange, officers handed over classified and other sensitive material to Francis' company.

Note: This massive conspiracy at one point redirected an aircraft carrier. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on military corruption from reliable major media sources.


Advocates Demand Compensation For U.S. Drone Strike Victims In Somalia
2023-12-18, The Intercept
Posted: 2024-01-02 14:21:46
https://theintercept.com/2023/12/18/somalia-drone-strike-civilians-letter/

Two Dozen human rights organizations called on the Pentagon Monday to make amends to a Somali family following an investigation by The Intercept of a 2018 U.S. drone strike that killed a woman and her 4-year-old daughter. The 14 Somali groups and 10 international organizations devoted to the protection of civilians urged Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III to take immediate action. The family is seeking an explanation, an apology, and compensation. Congress appropriates millions of dollars annually for the Defense Department to compensate families of civilians killed or injured in U.S. attacks, but the Pentagon has shown an aversion to confronting its mistakes and rarely makes compensation payments, even in cases as clear cut as this one. A drone pilot and analyst, who served in Somalia the year Luul [Dahir Mohamed] and [her daughter] Mariam were killed and spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the attack was no anomaly. “When I went to Africa, it seemed like no one was paying attention. It was like, ‘We can do whatever we want,’” he told The Intercept. When he counted the civilians he knew the U.S. had killed and compared that tally with publicly announced figures, he said, “the numbers just didn’t add up.” Luul’s family was traumatized by the airstrike and has suffered for more than half a decade. Her brothers say their elderly father — who died earlier this month — never recovered from his daughter’s sudden death.

Note: Since 2008, the US has supported at least nine coups in African countries, with a vast network of military bases scattered across the continent. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on military corruption from reliable major media sources. Then explore the excellent, reliable resources provided in our Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center.


Big tech and geopolitics are reshaping the internet’s plumbing
2023-12-20, The Economist
Posted: 2024-01-02 14:19:01
https://www.economist.com/business/2023/12/20/big-tech-and-geopolitics-are-re...

Submarine cables used to be seen as the internet’s dull plumbing. Now giants of the data economy, such as Amazon, Google, Meta and Microsoft, are asserting more control over the flow of data, even as tensions between China and America risk splintering the world’s digital infrastructure. The result is to turn undersea cables into prized economic and strategic assets. Subsea data pipes carry almost 99% of intercontinental internet traffic. By 2010 the rise in data traffic led internet and cloud-computing giants—Amazon, Google, Meta and Microsoft—to start leasing capacity on these lines. The data-cable business is ... being entangled in the tech contest between America and China. Take the Pacific Light Cable Network (PLCN). The 13,000km data pipeline was announced in 2016, with the backing of Google and Meta. It aimed to link the west coast of America with Hong Kong. By 2020 it had reached the Philippines and Taiwan. But last year America’s government denied approval for the final leg to Hong Kong, worried that this would give Chinese authorities easy access to Americans’ data. Hundreds of kilometres of cable that would link Hong Kong to the network are languishing unused on the ocean floor. China is responding by charting its own course. PEACE, a 21,500km undersea cable linking Kenya to France via Pakistan, was built entirely by Chinese firms as part of China’s “digital silk road”, a scheme to increase its global influence.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption from reliable major media sources.


Fauci’s ‘Perjury of Striking Audacity’: Excerpt From RFK Jr.’s New Book, ‘The Wuhan Cover-Up’
2023-12-18, The Defender
Posted: 2024-01-02 14:16:13
https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/anthony-fauci-perjury-excerpt-rfk...

During the entirety of the ongoing two-and-a-half-year public health emergency, while he was acting as the president’s top COVID-19 advisor, Dr. Fauci made no effort to genuinely investigate COVID-19’s origins. On May 11, 2021, Senator Rand Paul finally asked: “Dr. Fauci, do you still support NIH funding of the lab in Wuhan?” Dr. Fauci angrily denounced the question: “Senator Paul, with all due respect, you are entirely, entirely, and completely incorrect. That the NIH has not ever and does not now fund gain-of-function research in the Wuhan Institute of Virology.” Dr. Fauci was then under oath, so his blanket denial was a perjury of striking audacity: [The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases'] decade-long funding of gain-of-function experiments at the Wuhan lab had left a public record abundantly and unambiguously documented on PubMed, the official NIH archives of the world’s peer-reviewed published research. The authors of myriad gain-of-function studies openly thank NIAID and NIH for funding their research at the Wuhan lab. The ease of finding these incontrovertible proofs of his deception makes Dr. Fauci’s lie seem reckless. But the savvy NIAID chief evidently calculated that the issue was now so politicized and the media so committed to fortifying official government orthodoxies that truth was irrelevant. The nation’s leading journalistic outlets abetted Dr. Fauci’s public deception by shielding him from difficult questions.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on COVID from reliable major media sources. Then explore the excellent, reliable resources provided in our COVID Information Center.


American scientists misled Pentagon on research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology
2023-12-18, US Right to Know
Posted: 2024-01-02 14:14:21
https://usrtk.org/covid-19-origins/american-scientists-misled-pentagon-on-wuh...

American researchers concealed their intention to conduct high-risk coronavirus research in Wuhan under lax safety standards from the Pentagon the year before the COVID-19 pandemic, according to documents obtained by U.S. Right to Know. A 2018 grant proposal called Project DEFUSE, coauthored by the Wuhan Institute of Virology and American scientists, has stoked concern that the pandemic resulted from a lab accident. It proposed engineering high-risk coronaviruses of the same species as SARS and SARS-CoV-2. The proposal involved synthesizing spike proteins with furin cleavage sites — the same feature that supercharged SARS-CoV-2 into the most infectious pandemic pathogen in a century. These experiments were proposed to occur in part in Wuhan with fewer safety precautions than required in the U.S. — apparently to save on costs. American scientists at the center of the “lab leak theory” controversy appear to have concealed this from their desired funder — the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency — in order to evade any national security concerns about doing high-level biosecurity work in China. The documents call into question the credibility of these scientists’ assurances that the pandemic could not have sprung out of their collaboration ... with the lab in Wuhan. Conducting coronavirus engineering and testing work in Wuhan entailed greater biosafety risks, the American researchers privately acknowledged.

Note: Anthony Fauci lied to Congress about funding this risky research. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on COVID from reliable major media sources. Then explore the excellent, reliable resources provided in our COVID Information Center.


'He's my angel. He gave me life': the breathtaking story of two enemy soldiers saving each other's lives
2021-09-10, CBC (Canada's Public Broadcasting System)
Posted: 2024-01-02 14:11:37
https://www.cbc.ca/radio/ideas/he-s-my-angel-he-gave-me-life-the-breathtaking...

The story of two enemies cuts through the darkness. It begins on a battlefield in the Iran-Iraq war, and ends 20 years later in a waiting room in Vancouver. The Iran-Iraq war began in 1980, and ended eight years later. It was the longest conventional war of the 20th century, claiming at least a million casualties. Najah Aboud was nearly one of them. Najah was severely wounded. He crawled off to a bunker, where he saw corpses from both sides and prepared himself to die. Zahed Haftlang ... was assigned as a medic. After the Iranians recaptured Khorramshahr in May 1982, Zahed was ordered to go into the bunkers and treat wounded countrymen. It was then that he ... spotted Najah near the back. Both men were suspicious of each other. Zahed thought Najah's body might be booby-trapped. Najah thought Zahed might kill him. Then Zahed reached into Najah's breast pocket and pulled out a photograph. It showed Najah, with a beautiful woman, and infant son. It was at that very moment that Zahed decided to save Najah's life, even though it meant risking his own. Najah was taken to a prisoner of war camp, where he'd remain in unspeakable conditions for the next 17 years. While reading magazines in [a Vancouver] waiting room, Zahed noticed the door open as another man entered the room. The two men erupted into shouts, hugs, kisses and tears. Their spectacular reunion happened two decades years after the battle of Khorramshahr and on the other side of the world. "Najah is like my family … he really is my angel, because he gave me life. After he got a new chance at life, he gave me a new chance at life. He is the dearest and most precious thing in the entire world to me."

Note: Don’t miss the powerful 16-min documentary about Zahed and Najah. Explore more positive stories like this in our comprehensive inspiring news articles archive focused on solutions and bridging divides.


The sports movement spreading positivity in war-torn Yemen
2023-08-16, Positive News
Posted: 2024-01-02 14:10:04
https://www.positive.news/society/yemen-best-team-sports-club/

By the time the sun casts its first beams on war-ravaged Yemen, hundreds of men will have taken their positions across the park, and the workout begins. Enthusiastic chants of “Ahsan Fareek”, or “Best Team”, boom across the park as members of this daily, free, open-to-all sports club begin a set of 33 exercises designed to work the whole body. For the next hour, they temporarily put aside the stressors they’ve accumulated from the devastating eight-year civil war that has claimed 377,000 lives, touching their toes, standing on one leg and reaching for the sky. By 6.30am the crowd disperses, and everyone goes about their day, rejuvenated and energized, ready to meet again the following morning. “It is a sports club for everyone, but it’s particularly vital for the elderly, who suffer from illnesses and anxiety and for whom treatment is unaffordable,” says Najy Abu Hatem, co-founder of the initiative. “Being part of Best Team lifts their morale and gives them free exercise classes in a healthy and social setting.” In a country of 33 million people, there are only 59 psychiatrists – one psychiatrist per 500,000 people – and the total number of mental health workers is just 304. Although Best Team can hardly tackle this huge, ongoing mental health crisis, the twin benefits it provides of camaraderie and physical exercise – under the guise of a more socially acceptable men’s sports club – is nonetheless quietly improving people’s mental wellbeing across the capital and beyond.

Note: Explore more positive stories like this in our comprehensive inspiring news articles archive focused on solutions and bridging divides.


Iceland’s ‘bike whisperer’: the vigilante who finds stolen bicycles – and helps thieves change
2023-12-25, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2024-01-02 14:08:22
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2023/dec/25/bicycle-jesus-vigilante-who-find...

It all started in 2019, when Bjartmar Leósson started to see a rise in bike theft in Reykjavík. The bus driver and self-confessed “bike nerd” decided to start tracking them down and returning them to their rightful owners. Four years and, he estimates, hundreds of salvaged bikes later, the 44-year-old has developed a reputation in the Icelandic capital among cyclists and potential bike thieves. Known as the Reykjavík “bike whisperer”, people across his home city turn to him for help to find their missing bicycles, tools and even cars. Often, he says, bike thieves hand over bikes without being asked and some former bike thieves have started to help him. Now when somebody loses their bike it can take as little as 48 hours to track it down on his Facebook page, Hjóladót ofl. tapað fundið eða stolið (Bicycle stuff etc lost, found or stolen), updated every few hours with missing and found items and which has more than 14,500 members. “It’s not only me,” he says. “Many times someone sees a bike hidden in a bush, takes a picture and then someone else comments ‘hey that’s my bike’. So everyone’s looking out.” Now when people’s bikes get stolen, he says, the police direct them to his Facebook page. When there is a finder’s fee he gives it to people living in [a homeless] shelter. "Now when I see these guys on a stolen bike, I just talk to them very peacefully and calmly. The other day I talked to one of these guys and didn’t even mention the bike, I just basically said: tell me your story,” he says. At the end of the conversation, the man handed him the bike.

Note: Explore more positive stories like this in our comprehensive inspiring news articles archive focused on solutions and bridging divides.


US military says national security depends on ‘forever chemicals’
2023-11-17, USA Today
Posted: 2023-12-27 19:05:01
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2023/11/17/us-military-national-se...

The Department of Defense relies on hundreds, if not thousands, of weapons and products such as uniforms, batteries, and microelectronics that contain PFAS, a family of chemicals linked to serious health conditions. Now, as regulators propose restrictions on their use or manufacturing, Pentagon officials have told Congress that eliminating the chemicals would undermine military readiness. PFAS, known as “forever chemicals” because they don’t break down in the environment and can build up in the human body, have been associated with such health problems as cancer. In July, a new federal study showed a direct link between testicular cancer and PFOS, a PFAS chemical that has been found in the blood of thousands of military personnel. In a report delivered to Congress in August, Defense Department officials pushed back against health concerns raised by environmental groups and regulators. According to the report, most major weapons systems, their components, microelectronic chips, lithium-ion batteries, and other products contain PFAS chemicals. These include helicopters, airplanes, submarines, missiles, torpedoes, tanks, and assault vehicles; munitions; semiconductors and microelectronics; and metalworking, cooling, and fire suppression systems. Beyond cancer, some types of PFAS have been linked to low birth weight, developmental delays in children, thyroid dysfunction, and reduced response to immunizations.

Note: If the above link fails, you can read the article here.  PFAS are linked to serious health conditions: cancer, liver damage, hormonal disruption, reproductive issuesreduced sperm count, reduced immune response, and more. PFAS have also been found in 45% of US tap water. Read more on how war is hazardous to our health and environment in our Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center.


Poison centers see nearly 1,500% increase in calls related to injected weight-loss drugs as people accidentally overdose
2023-12-18, CNN News
Posted: 2023-12-27 19:03:11
https://edition.cnn.com/2023/12/13/health/semaglutide-overdoses-wellness/inde...

Poison control centers across the US say they are seeing a steep increase in calls related to semaglutide, an injected medication used for diabetes and weight loss, with some people reporting symptoms related to accidental overdoses. Some have even needed to be hospitalized for severe nausea, vomiting and stomach pain, but their cases seem to have resolved after they were given intravenous fluids and medications to control nausea. From January through November, the America’s Poison Centers reports nearly 3,000 calls involving semaglutide, an increase of more than 15-fold since 2019. In 94% of calls, this medication was the only substance reported. In most of the calls, people reported dosing errors, said Dr. Kait Brown, clinical managing director of the association. “Oftentimes, it’s a person who maybe accidentally took a double dose or took the wrong dose,” Brown said. Semaglutide was approved by the US Food and Drug Administration in 2017. It is sold as Ozempic when used for diabetes and Wegovy when used for weight loss. Even when used as directed by a doctor, people can have stomach and bowel side effects, including nausea, vomiting and constipation, especially when they start the drugs. After celebrities began openly embracing Ozempic on social media in 2022 as a way to lose weight, demand overwhelmed supply. There’s no specific antidote for a semaglutide overdose.

Note: The money behind the makers of weight-loss drugs is staggering, with the economic value of Wegovy's Novo Nordisk soaring to over $420 billionexceeding the entire GDP of Denmark, its home country. Read more on the significant adverse effects associated with these drugs. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on Big Pharma corruption from reliable major media sources.


That jet the Marines lost? Taxpayers will pay $1.7 trillion for the F-35 program
2023-09-18, CNN News
Posted: 2023-12-27 19:01:24
https://www.cnn.com/2023/09/18/politics/f-35-missing-jet-what-matters/index.html

“How in the hell do you lose an F-35?” wondered Rep. Nancy Mace, the South Carolina Republican, in a post on social media Sunday that speaks for everyone who read the headline about the state-of-the-art military plane that went missing earlier in the day. A more general ... question could be asked of the F-35 program: How in the heck can you spend so much money on a plane that doesn’t work the way it’s supposed to? The exact amount of money for a single aircraft like the one that went missing is somewhere around $100 million. The entire F-35 program is on track to cost $1.7 trillion. The Project on Government Oversight, a nonpartisan watchdog group, has written extensively on the F-35 and its cost overruns. I asked Dan Grazier, an F-35 expert for POGO, what has gone wrong. It all boils down to “failure at the conceptual level,” he told me in an email. “The architects of the program attempted to build a single aircraft to meet multiple mission requirements for not just three separate services but also those of multiple countries,” Grazier said. The jet has never reached its full operational capability and already needs updates and tweaks, including a new engine. “Every F-35 built until now is nothing more than a very expensive prototype,” Grazier told me. The Government Accountability Office ... earlier this year described the F-35 program as “more than a decade behind schedule and $183 billion over original cost estimates.”

Note: Watch a brief, 2-min video about the F-35 fighter jet. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on military corruption from reliable major media sources.


Congress Clashes Over the Future of America’s Global Spy Program
2023-12-11, Wired
Posted: 2023-12-27 18:59:46
https://www.wired.com/story/section-702-house-bills-plewsa-frra/

Under ... Section 702 [of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act], the US government collects hundreds of millions of phone calls, emails, and text messages each year. An inestimable chunk belongs to American citizens, permanent residents, and others in the United States neither suspected nor accused of any crime. Police and intelligence agencies buy their way around the Fourth Amendment by paying US companies for information that they’d otherwise demand a warrant to disclose. The House Intelligence Committee’s bill—the FISA Reform and Reauthorization Act, or FRRA—does nothing to address this privacy threat. What the FRRA does appear to do, despite its name, is explode the number of companies the US government may compel to cooperate with wiretaps under Section 702. That was the assessment on Friday of Marc Zwillinger, amicus curiae to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review (FISCR). Section 702 currently allows the government to compel a class of companies called “electronic communications providers” to collect communications. If the FRRA becomes law, according to Zwillinger, that category would be greatly expanded to include a slew of new businesses, including “data centers, colocation providers, business landlords, and shared workspaces,” as well as, he says, “hotels where guests connect to the internet.” Communications may be seized under 702 and only years later dug up for an entirely different reason.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and the disappearance of privacy from reliable major media sources.


Defying presidents and Congress, the ATF, DEA, FBI and U.S. Marshals shroud their shootings in secrecy
2023-12-05, NBC News
Posted: 2023-12-27 18:57:43
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/investigations/defying-presidents-congress-atf-d...

In 2021, bullets flew outside a 7-Eleven during a Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives operation in Colorado Springs, Colorado. The same year, U.S. Marshals fired shots inside a barbecue restaurant in the Chicago area, and a firefight erupted during a Drug Enforcement Administration search aboard an Amtrak passenger train in Tucson, Arizona. Three suspects and a federal officer were killed. Miraculously, no bystanders were struck. Had they been local police shootings, they might have generated public demands to release body camera video and use-of-force investigation reports. But they were federal operations, conducted by agents and task forces with four federal law enforcement agencies — the FBI, the ATF, the DEA and the U.S. Marshals Service — in which the use of force remains largely a black box, free from public scrutiny. Those four agencies overseen by the Justice Department, among the most prestigious in the country, have been slow to adopt reforms long embraced by big-city police departments, such as the use of body cameras and the release of comprehensive use-of-force data. From 2018 to 2022, 223 people were shot by an on-duty federal officer, a member of a federal task force or a local officer participating in an operation with federal agents, according to an NBC News analysis. A total of 151 were killed. More than 100 of the shootings were investigated by local prosecutors, with only two resulting in criminal charges for officers.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corruption in intelligence agencies and in police departments from reliable major media sources.


How Palantir Is Shaping the Future of Warfare
2023-07-10, Time Magazine
Posted: 2023-12-27 18:55:14
https://time.com/6293398/palantir-future-of-warfare-ukraine/

Palantir’s founding team, led by investor Peter Thiel and Alex Karp, wanted to create a company capable of using new data integration and data analytics technology — some of it developed to fight online payments fraud — to solve problems of law enforcement, national security, military tactics, and warfare. Palantir, founded in 2003, developed its tools fighting terrorism after September 11, and has done extensive work for government agencies and corporations though much of its work is secret. Palantir’s MetaConstellation platform allows the user to task ... satellites to answer a specific query. Imagine you want to know what is happening in a certain location and time in the Arctic. Click on a button and MetaConstelation will schedule the right combination of satellites to survey the designated area. The platform is able to integrate data from multiple and disparate sources — think satellites, drones, and open-source intelligence — while allowing a new level of decentralised decision-making. Just as a deep learning algorithm knows how to recognise a picture of a dog after some hours of supervised learning, the Palantir algorithms can become extraordinarily apt at identifying an enemy command and control centre. Alex Karp, Palantir’s CEO, has argued that “the power of advanced algorithmic warfare systems is now so great that it equates to having tactical nuclear weapons against an adversary with only conventional ones.”

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corporate corruption and the disappearance of privacy from reliable major media sources.


How Police Have Undermined the Promise of Body Cameras
2023-12-14, ProPublica
Posted: 2023-12-27 18:53:11
https://www.propublica.org/article/how-police-undermined-promise-body-cameras

When body-worn cameras were introduced a decade ago, they seemed to hold the promise of a revolution. Once police officers knew they were being filmed, surely they would think twice about engaging in misconduct. And if they crossed the line, they would be held accountable: The public, no longer having to rely on official accounts, would know about wrongdoing. Police and civilian oversight agencies would be able to use footage to punish officers and improve training. In an outlay that would ultimately cost hundreds of millions of dollars, the technology represented the largest new investment in policing in a generation. It was a fix bound to fall far short. As policymakers rushed to equip the police with cameras, they often failed to grapple with a fundamental question: Who would control the footage? They defaulted to leaving police departments ... with the power to decide what is recorded, who can see it and when. Departments across the country have routinely delayed releasing footage, released only partial or redacted video or refused to release it at all. They have frequently failed to discipline or fire officers when body cameras document abuse. We conducted a review of civilians killed by police officers in June 2022, roughly a decade after the first body cameras were rolled out. We counted 79 killings in which there was body-worn-camera footage. A year and a half later, the police have released footage in just 33 cases — or about 42%.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on police corruption from reliable major media sources.


Palestine: “Peace to Prosperity” Through Technocracy
2023-12-12, Unlimited Hangout
Posted: 2023-12-27 18:51:26
https://unlimitedhangout.com/2023/12/investigative-reports/palestine-peace-to...

The Palestinian population is intimately familiar with how new technological innovations are first weaponized against them–ranging from electric fences and unmanned drones to trap people in Gaza—to the facial recognition software monitoring Palestinians in the West Bank. Groups like Amnesty International have called Israel an Automated Apartheid and repeatedly highlight stories, testimonies, and reports about cyber-intelligence firms, including the infamous NSO Group (the Israeli surveillance company behind the Pegasus software) conducting field tests and experiments on Palestinians. Reports have highlighted: “Testing and deployment of AI surveillance and predictive policing systems in Palestinian territories. In the occupied West Bank, Israel increasingly utilizes facial recognition technology to monitor and regulate the movement of Palestinians. Israeli military leaders described AI as a significant force multiplier, allowing the IDF to use autonomous robotic drone swarms to gather surveillance data, identify targets, and streamline wartime logistics.” The Palestinian towns and villages near Israeli settlements have been described as laboratories for security solutions companies to experiment their technologies on Palestinians before marketing them to places like Colombia. The Israeli government hopes to crystalize its “automated apartheid” through the tokenization and privatization of various industries and establishing a technocratic government in Gaza.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and the disappearance of privacy from reliable major media sources.


The number of people with Top Secret clearance will shock you
2022-08-16, CNN News
Posted: 2023-12-27 18:49:04
https://www.cnn.com/2022/08/15/politics/classified-information-what-matters/i...

It’s actually a very large universe of people with access to Top Secret data. The Director of National Intelligence publishes what is described as an annual report, “Security Clearance Determinations,” although the most recent one I could find was from 2017. In it, more than 2.8 million people are described as having security clearance as of October 2017 – more than 1.6 million have access to either Confidential or Secret information and nearly 1.2 million are described as having access to Top Secret information. There are additional people who have security clearance but don’t currently have access to information. This includes civilian employees, contractors and members of the military. Each agency that deals in classification has its own system. Top Secret ... is the highest level of classification. Information is classified as Top Secret if it “reasonably could be expected to cause exceptionally grave damage to the national security,” according to a 2009 executive order. A subset of Top Secret documents known as SCI, or sensitive compartmented information, is reserved for certain information derived from intelligence sources. Access to an SCI document can be even further restricted to a smaller group of people with specific security clearances. Information is classified as Secret if the information is deemed to be able to cause “serious damage” to national security if revealed. Confidential is the least sensitive level of classification.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption from reliable major media sources.


US apologizes for infecting Guatemalans with STDs in the 1940s
2010-10-01, CNN News
Posted: 2023-12-27 18:47:21
https://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/americas/10/01/us.guatemala.apology/index.html

The United States apologized Friday for a 1946-1948 research study in which people in Guatemala were intentionally infected with sexually transmitted diseases. A statement by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Secretary of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius called the action "reprehensible." President Barack Obama called his Guatemalan counterpart Friday "offering profound apologies and asking pardon for the deeds of the 1940s," President Alvaro Colom told CNN. "Though it happened 64 years ago, it really is a profound violation of human rights," said Colom. The U.S. Public Health Service Sexually Transmitted Disease Inoculation Study of 1946-1948 aimed at determining the effectiveness of penicillin in treating or preventing syphilis after subjects were exposed to the disease. Gonorrhea and chancres were also studied. The tests were carried out on female commercial sex workers, prisoners in the national penitentiary, patients in the national mental hospital and soldiers. According to the study, more than 1,600 people were infected: 696 with syphilis, 772 with gonorrhea and 142 with chancres. The published literature contains more than 40 other U.S.-based studies "where intentional infection was carried out with what we could now consider to be completely inadequate consent in the United States." Many of those studies were funded by the Public Health Service.

Note: Read about the long history of humans being used as guinea pigs in unethical experiments. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption from reliable major media sources.


Batteries of the future: How cotton and seawater might power our devices
2023-11-08, BBC News
Posted: 2023-12-27 18:45:03
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20231108-batteries-of-the-future-how-cotto...

The power's out. But on a street in India, there's a cash machine still happily dispensing banknotes. Thanks, in part, to burnt cotton. For this cash machine has a backup battery inside it – a battery that contains carbon from carefully combusted cotton. "The exact process is secret," says Inketsu Okina, chief intelligence officer at PJP Eye, the Japanese firm that made the battery. "The temperature is secret and atmosphere is secret. Pressure is secret," he continues. Okina does say that a high temperature is required, above 3,000C (5,432F). And that 1kg (2.2lbs) of cotton yields 200g (7oz) of carbon – with just 2g (0.07oz) needed for each battery cell. PJP Eye also touts the possibility of improving battery performance as well as making batteries greener. "Our carbon has a bigger surface area than graphite," says Okina, describing how the chemistry of the anode in their Cambrian single carbon battery allows for a battery that charges very quickly, up to 10 times faster than existing lithium ion batteries, he claims. The battery's cathode is made from a "base metal" oxide. Although Okina won't disclose exactly which one, these metals include copper, lead, nickel and zinc. The company claims to be working on a dual carbon electrode battery, where both electrodes are made from plant-based carbon. Other researchers are looking at using materials as diverse as corn waste and melon seed shells to generate new types of electrodes for use in batteries.

Note: Explore more positive stories like this in our comprehensive inspiring news articles archive focused on solutions and bridging divides.


Scientists invent popcorn-based home insulation material that’s waterproof and biodegradable
2021-11-23, The Independent (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2023-12-27 18:42:27
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/popcorn-home-insulation-gottingen-...

Popcorn could soon be used to create sustainable insulation for buildings, replacing the current non-biodegradable materials. Scientists have invented a method to create sustainable building insulation boards using “granulated” popcorn with “excellent” thermal insulation properties and good protection against fire. The plant-based, environmentally friendly material is a sustainable alternative to current building insulation products that are derived from petroleum, said scientists from the University of Göttingen in Germany. About 90 per cent of the materials currently used to make insulation for buildings are made of plastics or mineral fibre, which are non-biodegradable, according to the scientists. These materials generate carbon dioxide during their manufacturing stages and are also rarely recycled when a building is torn down, contributing to pollution and making them unsustainable. Conventional insulating materials made of polystyrene also tend to damage the environment, the scientists pointed out. On the contrary, the researchers said, granulated popcorn is similar to polystyrene and just as lightweight, without having the synthetic material’s downsides. “This new process, based on that of the plastics industry, enables the cost-effective production of insulation boards at an industrial scale,” Alireza Kharazipour, head of the research group from the University of Göttingen, said in a statement.

Note: Explore more positive stories like this in our comprehensive inspiring news articles archive focused on solutions and bridging divides.


'Always Seen With a Smile': Dad With No Arms or Legs Raises Two Girls After Their Mom Abandons Them
2023-05-08, Epoch Times
Posted: 2023-12-27 18:39:41
https://www.theepochtimes.com/bright/always-seen-with-a-smile-dad-with-no-arm...

A Paraguayan father of two with no arms or legs found the strength and determination to raise both his girls, despite his limitations, when their mother abandoned them. Pablo Acuña was born with a limb deformity, causing his arms and legs to not grow properly. Yet he's a happy, grateful man who lives in the city of Son Pedro del Parana, Paraguay. At 63 years old, he's a proud father of two daughters in their twenties, whom he has raised since they were babies with the help of his mother, Ignacia del Valle. Although Pablo has suffered from his condition since his birth, he said it has never affected him. Apart from not being able to attend high school and having his parents take care of him, he had a pretty normal childhood. His youngest daughter, Elida, 26, sings his praises for providing a "very nice" childhood despite him not having arms and legs. "I was raised by my dad and grandmother," Elida said. "My dad is incredible. He is a very wonderful person, he is always seen with a smile; never have I seen him depressed." Since Pablo cannot walk, he has used a wooden wheelbarrow as a sitting and sleeping platform for decades. He is known locally as "El Hombre Carretilla," or "The Wheelbarrow Man." According to Elida, Pablo's greatest wish is to own his home. Elida [said] that her family, who "lives for rent," is desperately saving to this end. Since her grandmother turned 93, Elida has returned to the family home ... to help take care of her father.

Note: After reading this article, one man spearheaded a campaign which enabled this amazing dad to buy his own home. Explore more stories like this in our inspiring disabled persons articles archive.


The Taliban Are Now Arms Dealers
2023-07-05, Foreign Policy
Posted: 2023-12-18 19:04:28
https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/07/05/taliban-afghanistan-arms-dealers-weapons...

The U.S. military retreated from Afghanistan two years ago, leaving behind weapons that are now turning up in far-flung trouble spots. In markets that have sprung up across the southern and eastern badlands ... merchants with Taliban permits are offering U.S.-made automatic assault rifles and handguns for sale. Ad hoc weapons bazaars are offering rockets and bombs, shoulder-fired grenade launchers, night vision goggles, sniper rifles and scopes, and ammunition. The Taliban, allies of if not quite affiliates of al Qaeda ... appear to be funneling small arms to like-minded extremists. U.S. assault weapons have reportedly been used in recent attacks by non-state groups in Kashmir, bitterly divided between India and Pakistan, and in Israel’s Gaza Strip. The U.S. Department of Defense estimated that left-behind stockpiles of arms and vehicles were worth $7.12 billion of the $18.6 billion spent from 2002 on arming the Afghan security forces. “This included roughly 600,000 weapons of all calibers, nearly 300 fixed-wing and rotary-wing aircraft, over 80,000 vehicles of several models, communications equipment, and other advanced materiel such as night vision goggles and biometric systems,” according to the U.S. Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR). SIGAR quoted a Taliban official as saying, “The group took possession of more than 300,000 light arms, 26,000 heavy weapons, and about 61,000 military vehicles.”

Note: Why didn’t the US military prioritize removing this huge amount of equipment that they knew would be taken over by the Taliban? Read more about the shocking lack of oversight of money and equipment sent to Afghanistan. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on military corruption from reliable major media sources.


Pharmacies share medical data with police without a warrant, inquiry finds
2023-12-12, Washington Post
Posted: 2023-12-18 19:02:35
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/12/12/pharmacy-records-police-...

The nation’s largest pharmacy chains have handed over Americans’ prescription records to police and government investigators without a warrant, a congressional investigation found, raising concerns about threats to medical privacy. Though some of the chains require their lawyers to review law enforcement requests, three of the largest — CVS Health, Kroger and Rite Aid, with a combined 60,000 locations nationwide — said they allow pharmacy staff members to hand over customers’ medical records in the store. Pharmacies’ records hold some of the most intimate details of their customers’ personal lives, including years-old medical conditions and the prescriptions they take for mental health and birth control. Because the chains often share records across all locations, a pharmacy in one state can access a person’s medical history from states with more-restrictive laws. The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, or HIPAA, regulates how health information is used and exchanged among “covered entities” such as hospitals and doctor’s offices. But the law gives pharmacies leeway as to what legal standard they require before disclosing medical records to law enforcement. In briefings, officials with eight American pharmacy giants — Walgreens Boots Alliance, CVS, Walmart, Rite Aid, Kroger, Cigna, Optum Rx and Amazon Pharmacy — told congressional investigators that they required only a subpoena, not a warrant, to share the records.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corporate corruption and the disappearance of privacy from reliable major media sources.


The secret science of how drugs like Ozempic and Jardiance get their weird names
2023-12-12, New York Post
Posted: 2023-12-18 19:00:23
https://nypost.com/2023/12/07/lifestyle/the-secret-science-of-how-ozempic-and...

If you’ve ever found yourself absentmindedly humming the “oh-oh-oh-Ozempic” jingle, you have David Paton to blame. The singer-songwriter ... co-wrote “Magic” — the 1975 hit for his band Pilot that he reworked and sang for the trendy weight-loss drug’s TV commercials, which play incessantly. “I have heard from doctors about patients not remembering the names of drugs but singing the songs,” a former product manager for drug companies that include Merck and Pfizer, [said]. It can cost billions of dollars to develop a pharmaceutical, so promoting it is essential. And that all starts with the name. “We try to craft a name that [has] five to nine letters and two to four syllables.” But it even comes down to the exact letters. “Let’s say there is an oral drug instead of an injectable, we’ll explore something that sounds liquidy or has an O in it,” Fernando Fernandez, managing director of BX: Brand Experience Design Group, [said]. “If we expect a product to have an extra level of efficacy, we might put an X in the name.” Consumers like taking drugs with the letter Z, which may have played a role in the naming of Ozempic and Zepbound. According to the Canadian Medical Journal, the letters X, Y and Z all impart a “high tech, sciency” [sic] feeling to drugs such as the sleeping medication Xanax. “People have hesitancy about taking drugs,” a medical advertising veteran told The Post. “If they don’t have diabetes, they wonder why they are taking a diabetes drug to lose weight. The weight-loss drug has to be called something different, even though it is very close to being the same thing. The name Wegovy is playful and memorable and obviously works.”

Note: The money behind the makers of weight-loss drugs is staggering, while concerns grow about the significant adverse effects of these drugs. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on Big Pharma profiteering from reliable major media sources.


COVID Vaccine Death Data Leak Sparks Arrest: It 'Blew My Mind'
2023-12-06, Newsweek
Posted: 2023-12-18 18:58:17
https://www.newsweek.com/covid-vaccine-death-data-leak-sparks-arrest-it-blew-...

A New Zealand man was recently arrested after allegedly illegally accessing COVID-19 vaccine data from the country's health agency. Barry Young, 56, a former IT employee at Te Whatu Ora, the country's health agency, was arrested and accused of illegally obtaining COVID-19 vaccine data and sharing it on the internet. Young appeared on Infowars, where he was interviewed by ... Alex Jones. "I just looked at the data and what I was seeing, since the rollout, it just blew my mind. I was just seeing more and more people dying that shouldn't have been dying. It was just obvious," Young told Jones. The incident comes as COVID-19 vaccine skeptics have continued to question the efficacy of the inoculation. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton recently announced that he was suing vaccine manufacturer Pfizer "for unlawfully misrepresenting the effectiveness of the company's COVID-19 vaccine and attempting to censor public discussion of the product." During the interview with Infowars, Young explained that he had suspicions about the COVID-19 vaccine in New Zealand since its rollout. "I want people to analyze this, I want people to look at it...we need to open it up and the government needs to have an inquiry about it. Just bring it to the public's attention," Young said.

Note: U.S.-based genomics scientist Kevin McKernan had uploaded Barry Young's data onto a file hosting service, MEGA, only to have his whole account deleted by MEGA overnight. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on COVID vaccine problems from reliable major media sources.


As U.S.-funded Wars Rage In Israel And Ukraine, Pentagon Watchdog Warns Of Military Failures
2023-12-06, The Intercept
Posted: 2023-12-18 18:55:36
https://theintercept.com/2023/12/06/pentagon-military-failures-waste/

The Department of Defense’s Office of Inspector General issued a report that details widespread failures in the Pentagon’s operations. In a semiannual report to Congress, the watchdog found a breakdown in the process to provide care for sexual assault survivors, damaged artillery earmarked for Ukraine, and continued failures to monitor the Defense Department’s single most expensive program, the scandal-ridden F-35 fighter jet. Taken together, the inspector general’s findings paint a picture of a sprawling military-industrial complex that, while providing billions in aid to foreign militaries, has failed to solve long-standing issues that result in extreme levels of taxpayer waste. In October, President Joe Biden asked Congress to approve $75 billion in combined security assistance for Israel and Ukraine. The request would add to the $44 billion in security assistance already pledged to Ukraine since Russia’s invasion, and the tens of billions of dollars in security assistance delivered to Israel over the past five years. Just last month, the Department of Defense failed its sixth straight audit, underscoring the lack of oversight of the funds that Congress forks over to the armed forces every year. The inspector general also reported that the Defense Department’s protocols for protecting its employees are not routinely followed. The Pentagon’s medical treatment facilities failed to consistently triage and record care administered to survivors of sexual assault. 

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on war and military corruption from reliable major media sources.


Rand Paul Wants To End Undeclared War In Syria
2023-12-05, The Intercept
Posted: 2023-12-18 18:53:50
https://theintercept.com/2023/12/05/rand-paul-syria-war-troops/

Kentucky Republican Sen. Rand Paul plans to force a vote this week on a joint resolution to remove all U.S. troops from Syria within 30 days, according to sources on Capitol Hill familiar with his plans. “The American people have had enough of endless wars in the Middle East,” Paul told The Intercept by email. “Yet, 900 U.S. troops remain in Syria with no vital U.S. interest at stake, no definition of victory, no exit strategy, and no congressional authorization to be there.” The U.S. conflict in Syria is just one of several forever wars — including conflicts in Niger and Somalia — that continue to smolder more than two decades after 9/11 and more than two years after President Joe Biden declared that, for the first time in 20 years, the United States was “not at war.” For almost 10 years, the U.S. has battled a rotating cast of enemies in Syria, including the Syrian Armed Forces and pro-Syrian government forces; terrorist organizations such as ISIS; Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps; Iranian-backed militias; the Russian-backed Wagner Group; and the armed forces of Turkey, according to Paul’s bill, which notes that Congress has not declared war against Syria or any group in that country. “The United States cannot fix Syria. Yet we still have 900 troops in eastern Syria for eight years, going on nine,” said Robert Ford, the former U.S. ambassador to Syria. “I’m puzzled that we haven’t had a national debate on what U.S. troops are doing in Syria.”

Note: Read how the Pentagon-trained Kurdish militia group once brutally fought with CIA-trained militia group Fursan al Haq (who fights alongside Al-Qaeda) in war-torn Syria. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on war from reliable major media sources.


Biden Is Overseeing the Silent Death of the First Amendment
2023-12-08, The Nation
Posted: 2023-12-18 18:52:03
https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/julian-assange-belmarsh-tribunal/

In early 2024, a new, grim chapter may be written in the annals of journalistic history. Julian Assange, the publisher of Wikileaks, could board a plane for extradition to the United States, where he faces up to 175 years in prison on espionage charges for the crime of publishing newsworthy information. The persecution of Assange is clear evidence that the Biden administration is overseeing the silent death of the First Amendment—with global consequences. Wikileaks exposed not only civilian casualties, torture, and other human rights abuses through projects such as the Iraq War Logs, but also published documents that offer invaluable insight into conflicts still raging today. For example, cables released by Wikileaks in the 2010 Cablegate leaks show Israel’s policy towards Gaza in the years following Hamas’s election victory in 2006. According to the cable, Israel determined that Hamas’s rise in Gaza would benefit them as it would allow the Israeli military to “deal with Gaza as a hostile state” and so turned down a Palestinian Authority request for assistance in defeating Hamas. Israeli policy to blockaded Gaza was to “keep the Gazan economy functioning at the lowest possible level consistent with avoiding humanitarian crisis.” The application of the Espionage Act in the US sets a chilling precedent that reverberates far beyond Assange’s individual fate. The struggle for press freedom is ongoing.

Note: The US prosecution of Assange undermines press freedom. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and media manipulation from reliable sources.


CTIL Files #1: US And UK Military Contractors Created Sweeping Plan For Global Censorship In 2018, New Documents Show
2023-11-28, Public on Substack
Posted: 2023-12-18 18:49:59
https://public.substack.com/p/ctil-files-1-us-and-uk-military-contractors

A whistleblower has come forward with an explosive new trove of documents. They describe the activities of an “anti-disinformation” group called the Cyber Threat Intelligence League, or CTIL, that officially began as the volunteer project of data scientists and defense and intelligence veterans but whose tactics over time appear to have been absorbed into ... those of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). In 2019, US and UK military and intelligence contractors ... developed the sweeping censorship framework. CTIL ... partnered with [Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency] (CISA) in the spring of 2020. CTIL’s approach to “disinformation” went far beyond censorship. The group engaged in offensive operations to influence public opinion, discussing ways to promote “counter-messaging,” co-opt hashtags, dilute disfavored messaging, create sock puppet accounts, and infiltrate private invite-only groups. The ambitions of the 2020 pioneers of the Censorship Industrial Complex went far beyond simply urging Twitter to slap a warning label on Tweets, or to put individuals on blacklists. The [Adversarial Misinformation and Influence Tactics and Techniques] framework calls for discrediting individuals as a necessary prerequisite of demanding censorship against them. It calls for training influencers to spread messages. And it calls for trying to get banks to cut off financial services to individuals who organize rallies or events. [CTIL] laments that governments and corporate media no longer have full  control of information. “For a long time, the ability to reach mass audiences belonged to the nation-state (e.g. in the USA via broadcast licensing through ABC, CBS and NBC). Now, however, control of informational instruments has been allowed to devolve to large technology companies who have been blissfully complacent and complicit in facilitating access to the public for information operators at a fraction of what it would have cost them by other means.”

Note: The extensive collusion between Big Tech and government officials to censor COVID information is barely beginning to come to light. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on military corruption and media manipulation from reliable sources.


Pentagon Was Involved In Domestic Censorship Scheme, New CTIL Whistleblower Files Show
2023-12-07, Public on Substack
Posted: 2023-12-18 18:47:32
https://public.substack.com/p/pentagon-was-involved-in-domestic

A second whistleblower has come forward with Slack messages showing far greater government and military involvement in the Cyber Threat Intelligence League (CTIL) than we had previously discovered. The CTIL Slack “disinformation” channel and the “law enforcement escalation” channel included current and former FBI employees, as well as personnel from the Michigan Cyber Command Center, the US Defense Digital Service (DDS), and at least one European government. Some of the military’s involvement in censoring information and shaping opinion has been out in the open. In 2017, the DOD added “information” as the seventh joint function of the military. With the addition of “information” as a function of defense, DOD effectively declared that citizens’ perceptions, attitudes, decisions, and behaviors were subject to military scrutiny and manipulation. The Censorship Industrial Complex ... aims to undermine and denigrate populist actors and movements through allegations that anti-government sentiment is linked to hate, conspiracy theories, or Russia. Supposed attempts to stop “disinformation” are really attempts to prevent opposition and challenges to the international political and military order. The new files suggest that the US and UK military and intelligence officials and contractors created the Censorship Industrial Complex’s to defeat populist sentiment, not just individuals.

Note: The extensive collusion between Big Tech and government officials to censor COVID information is barely beginning to come to light. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on military corruption and media manipulation from reliable sources.


‘Chilling’: Some Smart Toys Can Collect Kids’ Iris Scans, Fingerprints, Vital Signs and More
2023-12-07, The Defender
Posted: 2023-12-18 18:44:45
https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/smart-toys-biometric-data-collect...

The annual “Trouble in Toyland” report, produced by the U.S. Public Interest Research Group (PIRG) and released before the holiday season, historically has focused on safety hazards found in traditional children’s toys. According to the 38th annual “Trouble in Toyland” report, released in mid-November, “Toys that spy on children are a growing threat.” The threats “stem from toys with microphones, cameras and trackers, as well as recalled toys, water beads, counterfeits and Meta Quest VR headsets.” “The riskiest features of smart toys are those that can collect information, especially without our knowledge or used in a way that parents didn’t agree to,” said Teresa Murray, Consumer Watchdog at the U.S. PIRG Education Fund and author of the report. “It’s chilling to learn what some of these toys can do,” Murray said. Smart toys include “stuffed animals that listen and talk, devices that learn their habits, games with online accounts, and smart speakers, watches, play kitchens and remote cars that connect to apps or other technology,” according to PIRG. Smart toys can pose the risk of data breaches, hacking, potential violations of children’s privacy laws such as the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998 (COPPA), and exposure to “inappropriate or harmful material without proper filtering and parental controls.” According to PIRG, “We don’t know with certainty when our child plays with a connected toy that the company isn’t recording us or collecting our data.”

Note: A 2015 New York Times article called smart objects a "trainwreck in privacy and security." For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corporate corruption and the disappearance of privacy from reliable major media sources.


It's one of the biggest experiments in fighting global poverty. Now the results are in
2023-12-07, NPR
Posted: 2023-12-18 18:42:59
https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2023/12/07/1217478771/its-one-of-th...

Since 2017 the U.S.-based charity GiveDirectly has been providing thousands of villagers in Kenya what's called a "universal basic income" – a cash grant of about $50, delivered every month, with the commitment to keep the payments coming for 12 years. This week a team of independent researchers who have been studying the impact released their first results. Their findings ... compare the outcomes for about 5,000 people who got the monthly payments to nearly 12,000 others in a control group who got no money. The researchers also compared the recipients to people in two other categories: nearly 9,000 who received the monthly income for just two years; and another roughly 9,000 people who got that same two years' worth of income but in a lump-sum payment. When it came to measures of well-being such as consumption of protein or spending money on schooling, all of the groups who were given cash were better off than people in the control group that got no money. Those who got the money in a lump sum vastly outperformed people who were promised the same amount for just two years but received it in monthly installments. Lump-sum recipients had 19% more enterprises – businesses such as small shops in local markets, motorbike taxis and small-scale construction concerns. And the lump sum recipients' net revenues from their businesses were a whopping 80% higher. The grants did not seem to fuel inflation.

Note: Explore more positive stories like this in our comprehensive inspiring news articles archive focused on solutions and bridging divides.


‘You live in your own bubble’: Swedish city takes on loneliness with a simple hi
2023-11-21, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2023-12-18 18:39:39
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/nov/21/swedish-city-lulea-loneliness-c...

On the snowy shore of the northern Swedish city of Luleå, bathers are lowering themselves into a rectangular hole in the frozen seawater. “It’s like a happiness rush afterwards,” says Katariina Yliperttula, 44, who is taking a dip before work. While many have their own hobbies that keep them going through the cold dark winter months here – ice swimming, cross-country skiing, walking on the “ice road” out into the archipelago – one thing remains a problem: loneliness. In an attempt to counter that, authorities in Luleå have launched a campaign to ease that social isolation, ever so slightly, by encouraging people to say hello to one another. The Säg hej! (say hello!) campaign says it aims to create a friendlier city by nudging people towards small but significant social interactions. Adverts are running on buses, and workshops are being held in schools. Recent research found that among 16- to 29-year-olds, 45% of people in Luleå were experiencing problems as a result of loneliness. Åsa Koski, who works for Luleå municipality, came up with the idea for the campaign. She wants the city, which is undergoing a period of rapid growth as it tries to attract tens of thousands of new people to work in “green” industry ... to not grow more atomised as a result. “We don’t just want that Luleå is going to grow as a city; we want Luleå to be a pleasant and safe and friendly city,” says Koski. Being greeted by strangers makes people feel “more seen and a bit more like you belong”, she adds.

Note: Explore more positive stories like this in our comprehensive inspiring news articles archive focused on solutions and bridging divides.


‘It’s kind of gross but we can do it’: How a community learned to go zero waste
2023-12-07, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2023-12-18 18:37:20
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/dec/07/its-kind-of-gross-but-we-...

When [city councillor] Alexandre Garcin dreamed up Zero-Waste Roubaix, it wasn’t sustainability he wanted to tackle, but the litter problem that plagued his city. Garcin sent out leaflets looking for 100 volunteers to participate in a free, year-long pilot programme that would teach them how to live waste-free. These familles zéro déchet, or zero-waste families, would receive training and attend workshops on topics such as making your own yoghurt and cleaning with homemade products, with the goal of halving their waste by the year’s end. Volunteers weren’t offered any direct financial incentives to participate – only the promise of helping solve the litter problem and protecting the environment. The project focused on creating an identity around zero-waste and assigning families quantitative waste-reduction targets – strategies that are proven to be effective in other contexts, and everyone got pretty straightforward guidelines – for example, “don’t buy more food than you can eat”. According to Garcin, it’s actually “not that difficult” to halve a household’s waste production. Composting gets you most of the way there, since organic waste makes up about a third of the average French family’s municipal waste by weight. Another third is glass and metal, a significant chunk of which can probably be kept out of the landfill through recycling, and 10% is plastic, much of which can be avoided by finding reusable alternatives to plastic grocery bags, cutlery, packaging and other single-use items.

Note: Explore more positive stories like this in our comprehensive inspiring news articles archive focused on solutions and bridging divides.


CIA's secret office has conducted UFO retrieval missions on at least NINE crash sites around the world, whistleblowers reveal
2023-11-28, Daily Mail (One of the UK's Popular Newspapers)
Posted: 2023-12-11 17:00:56
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12796167/CIA-secret-office-UFO-retri...

A secretive CIA office has been coordinating the retrieval of crashed UFOs around the world for decades, multiple sources told DailyMail.com. One source said that at least nine apparent 'non-human craft' have been recovered by the US government – some wrecked from a crash, and two completely intact. Three sources briefed on those alleged top secret operations [said] that the Office of Global Access (OGA), a wing of the Central Intelligence Agency's Science and Technology Directorate, has played a central role since 2003 in orchestrating the collection of what could be alien spacecraft. 'There's at least nine vehicles. There were different circumstances for different ones,' one source briefed by UFO program insiders [said]. 'It has to do with the physical condition they're in. If it crashes, there's a lot of damage done. Others, two of them, are completely intact.' The source said the CIA has a 'system in place that can discern UFOs while they're still cloaked,' and that if the 'non-human' craft land, crash or are brought down to earth, special military units are sent to try to salvage the wreckage. Sources said the CIA office then often hands the wreckage or material over to private aerospace contractors for analysis, where it is not subject to rigorous government audits and can be shielded with protections for trade secrets. Multiple sources said that many of the people involved in these programs may not even realize they are dealing with non-human craft.

Note: Read the riveting testimonies of 60 government and military witnesses of UFO phenomenon, which include astronauts, generals, admirals, and other top government and military officials. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of revealing news articles on UFOs from reliable major media sources. Then explore the excellent resources provided in our UFO Information Center.


Powerful members of Congress are dead-set on killing UFO transparency
2023-12-05, The Hill
Posted: 2023-12-11 16:58:48
https://thehill.com/opinion/national-security/4341947-powerful-members-of-con...

Since 2020, no fewer than 10 former government officials, military officers and scientists, along with a former senate majority leader, have alleged (or suggested) publicly that the U.S. government has recovered advanced craft of unknown origin — that is, UFOs. Nearly all of these individuals also claim that the government transferred multiple craft to defense contractors for scientific and technical analysis. Key members of Congress, drawing on testimony from dozens of whistleblowers, appear to find these extraordinary allegations credible. Bipartisan legislation sponsored by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) aimed to establish a process with the ostensible goal of revealing the existence of “non-human intelligence” to the public. But the legislation ... is now in jeopardy. In comments yesterday on the Senate floor, Schumer stated that “House Republicans are also attempting to kill another commonsense, bipartisan measure passed by the Senate, which I was proud to cosponsor ... to increase transparency around what the government does and does not know about unidentified aerial phenomena.” Notably, the legislation calls for the U.S. government to reassert control over “recovered technologies of unknown origin” currently held by defense contractors. Some analysts suspect that corporations potentially holding such exotic technology are exerting undue pressure and influence to oppose the provision in Schumer’s legislation.

Note: Read the riveting testimonies of 60 government and military witnesses of UFO phenomenon, which include astronauts, generals, admirals, and other top government and military officials. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of revealing news articles on UFOs from reliable major media sources. Then explore the excellent resources provided in our UFO Information Center.


‘The Gospel’: how Israel uses AI to select bombing targets in Gaza
2023-12-01, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2023-12-11 16:57:01
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/dec/01/the-gospel-how-israel-uses-ai-t...

Israel’s military has made no secret of the intensity of its bombardment of the Gaza Strip. There has, however, been relatively little attention paid to the methods used by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) to select targets in Gaza, and to the role artificial intelligence has played in their bombing campaign. After the 11-day war in Gaza in May 2021, officials said Israel had fought its “first AI war” using machine learning and advanced computing. The latest Israel-Hamas war has provided an unprecedented opportunity for the IDF to use such tools in a much wider theatre of operations and, in particular, to deploy an AI target-creation platform called “the Gospel”, which has significantly accelerated a lethal production line of targets. In early November, the IDF said “more than 12,000” targets in Gaza had been identified by its target administration division. Aviv Kochavi, who served as the head of the IDF until January, has said the target division is “powered by AI capabilities” and includes hundreds of officers and soldiers. According to Kochavi, “once this machine was activated” in Israel’s 11-day war with Hamas in May 2021 it generated 100 targets a day. “To put that into perspective, in the past we would produce 50 targets in Gaza per year. Now, this machine produces 100 targets a single day, with 50% of them being attacked.” A separate source [said] the Gospel had allowed the IDF to run a “mass assassination factory” in which the “emphasis is on quantity and not on quality”.

Note: Read about Israel's use of AI warfare since at least 2021. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on war from reliable major media sources.


New York Times report says Israel knew about Hamas attack over a year in advance
2023-12-01, ABC News
Posted: 2023-12-11 16:54:49
https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/new-york-times-report-israel-k...

Israel's military was aware of Hamas ' plan to launch an attack on Israeli soil over a year before the devastating Oct. 7 operation that killed hundreds of people, The New York Times reported Friday. It was the latest in a series of signs that top Israeli commanders either ignored or played down warnings that Hamas was plotting the attack, which triggered a war against the Islamic militant group that has devastated the Gaza Strip. The Times said Israeli officials were in possession of a 40-page battle plan, code-named “Jericho Wall,” that detailed a hypothetical Hamas attack on southern Israeli communities. The document was seen by many Israeli military and intelligence officials, the report said, though it was unclear if Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu or other top leaders had seen it. The document predicted that Hamas would bombard Israel with rockets, use drones to disable Israel's security and surveillance abilities at the border wall, and take over southern communities and military bases. Another 2016 Israeli defense memo obtained by the Times said Hamas intended to take hostages back to Gaza. The Oct. 7 attack — in which 1,200 people were killed and 240 people were abducted and taken to Gaza — would uncannily mirror the one outlined in the battle plan. But Israeli officials had brushed off the plan, the report said, dismissing it as “aspirational” rather than something that could practically take place, the report said.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on war and intelligence agency corruption from reliable major media sources.


Maker of Wegovy, Ozempic showers money on U.S. obesity doctors
2023-12-01, Reuters
Posted: 2023-12-11 16:52:59
https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/health-obesity-novonordis...

Drugmaker Novo Nordisk paid U.S. medical professionals at least $25.8 million over a decade in fees and expenses related to its weight-loss drugs [Wegovy and Saxenda], a Reuters analysis found. It concentrated that money on an elite group of obesity specialists who advocate giving its powerful and expensive drugs to tens of millions of Americans. Those payments are part of a campaign to convince U.S. doctors to make Wegovy one of the most widely prescribed drugs in history – and to persuade skeptical insurers to pay for it. Overall, at least 57 U.S. physicians each accepted at least $100,000 from Novo in payments associated with Wegovy or Saxenda. They were an influential group: Forty-one were obesity specialists who run weight-management clinics, work at academic hospitals, write obesity-treatment guidelines or hold top positions at medical societies, according to a Reuters review. "As sales grow, Medicare and the insurance industry come under intense pressure to pay for these hugely expensive drugs,” [Former dean of the US military's medical school Dr. Arthur] Kellermann said. “The end result is that everybody's healthcare costs go up.” U.S. and European regulators are studying whether GLP-1 drugs can cause suicidal thoughts. Reuters reported in September that at least 265 reports have been filed with the FDA since 2010 describing suicidal ideation or behavior in patients taking these drugs. Thirty-six reports described a death by suicide or suspected suicide.

Note: The money behind these obesity drug makers is staggering. The economic value of Novo Nordisk soared to over $420 billion, which exceeds the entire GDP of Denmark, its home country. As Lee Fang reports in this investigative piece on the issue, “The company is growing so fast, bringing in so many American dollars, that the Danish central bank recently devalued its currency to keep it in line with the euro.” For more along these lines, read the growing reports of concerning adverse side effects from these weight-loss drugs.


Why Are Nonprofit Hospitals Focused More on Dollars Than Patients?
2023-11-30, New York Times
Posted: 2023-12-11 16:50:52
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/30/opinion/hospitals-nonprofit-community.html

Nonprofit hospitals have been caught doing some surprising things, given how they are supposed to serve the public good in exchange for being exempt from federal, state and local taxes — exemptions that added up to $28 billion in 2020. Detailed media reports show them hounding poor patients for money, cutting nurse staffing too aggressively and giving preferential treatment to the rich over the poor. Nurses and other workers recently resorted to strikes to improve workplace safety at Kaiser Permanente and the Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital in New Brunswick, N.J. That’s not the end of it. Nonprofit executives have embarked on an acquisition spree, assembling huge systems of hospitals and physician practices to raise prices and increase profits. Ample evidence indicates that the growth of these giant systems makes health care less affordable for patients, families and businesses. Calling these hospitals nonprofits can be confusing. It doesn’t mean they can’t make money. What it means is that they are considered charities by the Internal Revenue Service (as opposed to being owned by investors, like for-profit hospitals). And in return for their tax exemptions, these institutions are supposed to invest the money that would have gone to taxes into their communities by lowering health care costs, providing community health services and free care to those unable to afford it and conducting research.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on health and corporate corruption from reliable major media sources.


Experts call for fewer antidepressants to be prescribed in UK
2023-12-05, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2023-12-11 16:48:45
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/dec/05/experts-call-for-fewer-antide...

Medical experts and politicians have called for the amount of antidepressants being prescribed to people across the UK to be reduced in an open letter to the government. The letter coincides with the launch of the all-party parliamentary group Beyond Pills, which aims to reduce what it calls the UK healthcare system’s over-reliance on prescription medication. A total of 8.6 million patients in England were prescribed antidepressants in 2022-23, with the amount having almost doubled since 2011. Published in the British Medical Journal ... the letter says: “Rising antidepressant prescribing is not associated with an improvement in mental health outcomes at the population level, which, according to some measures, have worsened as antidepressant prescribing has risen.” The letter goes on to say that reducing the rate of antidepressant prescriptions could be achieved through measures that includes stopping the prescribing of antidepressants for mild conditions, and funding and delivering a national 24-hour prescribed drug withdrawal helpline ... to help those experiencing withdrawal symptoms from prescription medication. [Former chief executive of NHS England, Nigel] Crisp said: “The high rate of prescribing of antidepressants over recent years is a clear example of over-medicalisation, where patients are often prescribed unnecessary and potentially harmful drugs instead of tackling the root causes of their suffering, such as loneliness, poverty or poor housing.

Note: Antidepressants are some of the most commonly prescribed medications, yet their significant risks are often withheld from public debate. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on health and Big Pharma corruption from reliable major media sources.


OxyContin's Reformulation Linked to Rising Suicides by Children
2023-12-04, Reason
Posted: 2023-12-11 16:45:55
https://reason.com/2023/12/04/oxycontins-reformulation-linked-to-rising-suici...

In 2010, Purdue Pharma replaced the original version of OxyContin, an extended-release oxycodone pill, with a reformulated product that was much harder to crush for snorting or injection. The reformulation of OxyContin was instead associated with an increase in deaths involving illicit opioids and, ultimately, an overall increase in fatal drug overdoses. Researchers ... found that death rates rose fastest in states where reformulation would have had the biggest impact. A new study by RAND Corporation senior economist David Powell extends those findings by showing that the reformulation of OxyContin also was associated with rising suicides among children and teenagers. The root cause of such perverse effects was the substitution that occurred after the old version of OxyContin was retired. Nonmedical users turned to black-market alternatives that were more dangerous because their potency was highly variable and unpredictable—a hazard that was compounded by the emergence of illicit fentanyl as a heroin booster and substitute. The fallout from the reformulation of OxyContin is one example of a broader tendency: Interventions aimed at reducing the harm caused by substance abuse frequently have the opposite effect. Based on interstate differences in nonmedical use of OxyContin prior to 2010, Powell estimates that "the reformulation of OxyContin can explain 49% of the rise in child suicides."

Note: More than 107,000 people in the United States died due to opioid overdoses in 2021. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on Big Pharma corruption from reliable major media sources.


Reform Bill Would Protect Americans from Warrantless Surveillance
2023-11-07, Brennan Center for Justice
Posted: 2023-12-11 16:44:00
https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/reform-bill-would-pro...

In the 1970s, congressional investigators revealed that the FBI, NSA, and CIA had spent decades illegally surveilling and harassing the civil rights and anti-war movements. These abuses shocked the American public and led Congress to implement a series of intelligence reforms, including the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which set strict limitations on when and how intelligence agencies could perform domestic spying. In the decades since the 9/11 attacks, changing laws and aggressive executive branch lawyering have significantly relaxed the rules that govern surveillance of Americans. We are once again seeing abuses of these powers, including instances of intelligence agents seeking access to the communications of politiciansprotesters, and journalists. Today, a bipartisan group of lawmakers ... introduced the Government Surveillance Reform Act of 2023 (GSRA) to reverse this erosion of privacy rights. The GSRA begins by tackling Section 702, a controversial surveillance law that expires at the end of this year. Section 702 allows the government to collect the communications of non-Americans located abroad without a warrant. But Americans’ private phone calls, emails, and text messages are inevitably captured, too — and intelligence officials frequently perform warrantless searches for them. Intelligence officials conducted more than 200,000 of these “backdoor searches” for Americans’ communications last year alone.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on intelligence agency corruption and the disappearance of privacy from reliable major media sources.


DHS Must Overhaul Its Flawed Automated Systems
2023-10-24, Brennan Center for Justice
Posted: 2023-12-11 16:42:01
https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/dhs-must-overhaul-its...

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is likely the single largest collector and consumer in the U.S. government of detailed, often intimate, information about Americans and foreigners alike. The department stores and analyzes this information using vast data systems to determine who can enter the country and who is subjected to intrusive inspections, including by parsing through travel records, social media data, non-immigrant visa applications, and other information to detect patterns of behavior that the department has determined are worthy of scrutiny. As we explain in a new Brennan Center report, these systems ... are too often deployed in discriminatory ways that violate Americans’ constitutional rights and civil liberties. It is past time for DHS to stop improvising how it designs and implements its automated systems, with inadequate mechanisms for evaluation and oversight, weak standards, and disproportionate impacts on marginalized communities and individuals. DHS must disclose additional information about its systems, including the policies that govern their operations and reports explaining how they are used. An independent body should undertake a rigorous investigation of DHS’s automated systems, evaluating whether they are useful and accurate, assessing how they function, and determining whether they contain sufficient safeguards to protect privacy, civil rights, and civil liberties.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and the disappearance of privacy from reliable major media sources.


For the first time, US prisoners graduate from top university
2023-11-16, Reuters
Posted: 2023-12-11 16:39:18
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/first-time-us-prisoners-graduate-top-univers...

Northwestern University's Prison Education Program welcomed its inaugural graduating class of incarcerated students on Wednesday, marking the first time a top-ranked U.S. university has awarded degrees to students in prison. Evanston, Illinois-based Northwestern ... runs the program in partnership with Oakton College and the Illinois Department of Corrections. It was a moving commencement ceremony for the 16 graduating men and their loved ones at the Stateville correctional facility in Crest Hill. "I have no words for this, (it's) otherworldly. Coming from where I came from, the things that I've been through and to be here is indescribable," said graduate Michael Broadway after the ceremony. Broadway attained his degree despite several setbacks, including battling stage 4 prostate cancer. "I'm just so proud of him," said his mother Elizabeth. "I really am. He looks so good in that gown." Due to ill health, she had not seen Broadway since ... 2005. Professor Jennifer Lackey is the program's founding director. "Twenty years ago, some of these guys were in rival gangs, and here they are swapping poetry with each other and giving critical engagements on sociology assignments," said Lackey. "The love and growth that we see in the community is really unlike anything I've experienced at the on-campus commencements." Around 100 students are enrolled in the Northwestern program across Stateville and the Logan Correctional Center, a women's prison.

Note: Explore more positive stories like this in our comprehensive inspiring news articles archive focused on solutions and bridging divides.


Come for the Free Meals, Stay for the Company
2023-11-24, Reasons to be Cheerful
Posted: 2023-12-11 16:37:17
https://reasonstobecheerful.world/foodcycle-pop-up-cafes-hunger-food-waste-lo...

Brandon, Jackie and Julie meet for dinner every Thursday, sitting at their regular table. As they leave, there’s no check to pay for this generous meal. The pop-up cafe at a church hall in Chelmsford, England is one of 80 held across the country throughout the week. They’re an initiative of FoodCycle, the UK’s largest community dining organization, which turns produce that supermarkets would otherwise throw out into a free meal for anyone who wants to attend. In 2022, FoodCycle’s pop-up cafes served nearly 500,000 meals to 62 communities across the UK, saving 209 tonnes of food from going to waste. Forty-three percent of people who attend FoodCycle meals, like Jackie and Julie, live on their own, with 68 percent of them feeling lonely, according to a survey of 910 FoodCycle guests in 2022. Loneliness is considered to be a significant mental and public health issue in the country, affecting over half the population, with the Mental Health Foundation linking it to depression and declining physical health. Sixty-eight percent of FoodCycle guests worry about affording food, and 92 percent are concerned about the increasing price of food, to the extent that 75 percent regularly skip meals. “These issues are intertwined and interlinked. We know there’s a correlation between people who are facing food poverty, and feeling isolated and disconnected from their communities,” says Sophie Tebbetts, FoodCycle’s head of programs and incoming CEO.

Note: Explore more positive stories like this in our comprehensive inspiring news articles archive focused on solutions and bridging divides.


Rich Folks Import This Building Material. A Minnesota Tribe Makes Its Own.
2023-12-04, Mother Jones
Posted: 2023-12-11 16:34:14
https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2023/12/minnesota-tribe-mdewakanton-b...

For now, it’s only a gaping hole in the ground. But when construction is complete next April, the Lower Sioux—also known as part of the Mdewakanton Band of Dakota—will have a 20,000-square-foot manufacturing campus that will allow them to pioneer a green experiment, the first of its kind in the United States. They will have an integrated vertical operation to grow hemp, process it into insulation called hempcrete, and then build healthy homes with it. Right now, no one in the US does all three. Once the tribe makes this low-carbon material, they can begin to address a severe shortage of housing and jobs. Recapturing a slice of sovereignty would be a win for the Lower Sioux. They lost most of their lands in the 19th century, and the territory finally allotted to them two hours south of Minneapolis consists of just 1,743 acres of poor soil. That stands in contrast to the fertile black earth of the surrounding white-owned farmlands. Nearly half of the 1,124 enrolled members of the tribe need homes. “The idea of making homes that would last and be healthy was a no-brainer,” said Robert “Deuce” Larsen, the tribal council president. Leading the national charge on an integrated hempcrete operation is no mean feat, seeing that virtually no one in the community had experience with either farming or construction before the five-person team was assembled. Hemp can grow in a variety of climates. What’s more, hemp regenerates soil, sequesters carbon, and doesn’t require fertilizers.

Note: Explore more positive stories like this in our comprehensive inspiring news articles archive focused on solutions and bridging divides.


AI doesn’t cause harm by itself. We should worry about the people who control it
2023-11-26, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2023-12-04 14:35:03
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/nov/26/artificial-intelligence...

OpenAI was created as a non-profit-making charitable trust, the purpose of which was to develop artificial general intelligence, or AGI, which, roughly speaking, is a machine that can accomplish, or surpass, any intellectual task humans can perform. It would do so, however, in an ethical fashion to benefit “humanity as a whole”. Two years ago, a group of OpenAI researchers left to start a new organisation, Anthropic, fearful of the pace of AI development at their old company. One later told a reporter that “there was a 20% chance that a rogue AI would destroy humanity within the next decade”. One may wonder about the psychology of continuing to create machines that one believes may extinguish human life. The problem we face is not that machines may one day exercise power over humans. That is speculation unwarranted by current developments. It is rather that we already live in societies in which power is exercised by a few to the detriment of the majority, and that technology provides a means of consolidating that power. For those who hold social, political and economic power, it makes sense to project problems as technological rather than social and as lying in the future rather than in the present. There are few tools useful to humans that cannot also cause harm. But they rarely cause harm by themselves; they do so, rather, through the ways in which they are exploited by humans, especially those with power.

Note: Read how AI is already being used for war, mass surveillance, and questionable facial recognition technology.


Secretive White House Surveillance Program Gives Cops Access to Trillions of US Phone Records
2023-11-20, Wired
Posted: 2023-12-04 14:32:56
https://www.wired.com/story/hemisphere-das-white-house-surveillance-trillions...

A surveillance program now known as Data Analytical Services (DAS) has for more than a decade allowed federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies to mine the details of Americans’ calls, analyzing the phone records of countless people who are not suspected of any crime, including victims. Using a technique known as chain analysis, the program targets not only those in direct phone contact with a criminal suspect but anyone with whom those individuals have been in contact as well. The DAS program, formerly known as Hemisphere, is run in coordination with the telecom giant AT&T, which captures and conducts analysis of US call records for law enforcement agencies, from local police and sheriffs’ departments to US customs offices and postal inspectors across the country, according to a White House memo reviewed by WIRED. Records show that the White House has provided more than $6 million to the program, which allows the targeting of the records of any calls that use AT&T’s infrastructure—a maze of routers and switches that crisscross the United States. Documents released under public records laws show the DAS program has been used to produce location information on criminal suspects and their known associates, a practice deemed unconstitutional without a warrant in 2018. Orders targeting a nexus of individuals are sometimes called “community of interest” subpoenas, a phrase that among privacy advocates is synonymous with dragnet surveillance.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and the disappearance of privacy from reliable major media sources.


Joe Biden Moves To Lift Nearly Every Restriction On Israel’s Access To U.S. Weapons Stockpile
2023-11-25, The Intercept
Posted: 2023-12-04 14:30:49
https://theintercept.com/2023/11/25/biden-israel-weapons-stockpile-arms-gaza/

The White House has requested the removal of restrictions on all categories of weapons and ammunition Israel is allowed to access from U.S. weapons stockpiles stored in Israel itself. The move to lift restrictions was included in the White House’s supplemental budget request, sent to the Senate on October 20. “This request would,” the proposed budget says, “allow for the transfer of all categories of defense articles.” The request pertains to little-known weapons stockpiles in Israel that the Pentagon established for use in regional conflicts, but which Israel has been permitted to access in limited circumstances — the very limits President Joe Biden is seeking to remove. Created in the 1980s ... the War Reserve Stockpile Allies-Israel, or WRSA-I, is the largest node in a network of what are effectively foreign U.S. weapons caches. Highly regulated for security, the stockpiles are governed by a set of strict requirements. Under circumstances laid out in these requirements, Israel has been able to draw on the stockpile, purchasing the weapons at little cost. With the WRSA-I, Biden is looking to lift virtually all the meaningful restrictions on the stockpile and the transfer of its arms to Israel, with plans to remove limitations to obsolete or surplus weapons, waive an annual spending cap on replenishing the stockpile, remove weapon-specific restrictions, and curtail congressional oversight. All of the changes ... would be permanent, except for lifting the spending cap, which is limited to the 2024 fiscal year.

Note: Israel has received at least $158 billion in military aid from the US since 1948. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on war from reliable major media sources.


Gaza Civilians, Under Israeli Barrage, Are Being Killed at Historic Pace
2023-11-25, New York Times
Posted: 2023-12-04 14:29:05
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/25/world/middleeast/israel-gaza-death-toll.html

Israel has cast the deaths of civilians in the Gaza Strip as a regrettable but unavoidable part of modern conflict, pointing to the heavy human toll from military campaigns the United States itself once waged in Iraq and Syria. But ... experts say that even a conservative reading of the casualty figures reported from Gaza shows that the pace of death during Israel’s campaign has few precedents in this century. People are being killed in Gaza more quickly, they say, than in even the deadliest moments of U.S.-led attacks in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan, which were themselves widely criticized by human rights groups. Civilian casualties are notoriously hard to calculate, and officials in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip do not separate the deaths of civilians and combatants. Researchers point instead to the roughly 10,000 women and children reported killed in Gaza as an approximate — though conservative — measure of civilian deaths in the territory. More women and children have been reported killed in Gaza in less than two months than the roughly 7,700 civilians documented as killed by U.S. forces and their international allies in the entire first year of the invasion of Iraq in 2003. And the number of women and children reported killed in Gaza since the Israeli campaign began last month has already started to approach the roughly 12,400 civilians documented to have been killed by the United States and its allies in Afghanistan during nearly 20 years of war.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on war from reliable major media sources.


High mobile phone use may impact sperm count, study says
2023-11-01, CNN News
Posted: 2023-12-04 14:27:07
https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2023/11/01/health/mobile-phone-sperm-count-wellness/i...

Male sperm count has fallen by more than 50% globally in the last 50 years, leaving researchers scrambling to understand why. Could it be pollution, PFAS and other potential toxins in our food and water, an increase in obesity and chronic disease, or even the ever-present mobile phone? A new study explored the role of cell phones and found men between the ages of 18 and 22 who said they used their phones more than 20 times a day had a 21% higher risk for a low overall sperm count. The men also had a 30% higher risk for a low sperm concentration. The study did not specify whether the men called or texted or used their phones to do both. Radiofrequency electromagnetic fields are greatly reduced when texting and highest when downloading large files, streaming audio or video, when only one or two bars are displayed, and when in a fast-moving bus, car or train, according to the California Department of Public Health. The agency recommends keeping the phone away from the body and head — use the speakerphone or headphones instead — and carry the phone in a backpack in a backpack, briefcase or purse. Studies in mice have found RF-EMF fields at levels similar to cell phones do lower male fertility and contribute to sperm death and changes in the tissue of the testes. Observational studies in humans have also found that frequent use of mobile phones was connected to a decline in sperm viability as well as an impact on how the sperm swam.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on health and the dangers of wireless technologies from reliable major media sources.


FDNY veteran says heart damage from required COVID vax forced early retirement
2023-11-25, New York Post
Posted: 2023-12-04 14:25:01
https://nypost.com/2023/11/25/metro/fdny-vet-sues-for-disability-pension-afte...

An FDNY firefighter says he was forced to retire on half his salary after the city-mandated COVID-19 vaccine left him with permanent heart damage. O’Brian Pastrana now wants a judge to award him a more lucrative disability pension, which would pay three-quarters of his final salary tax-free, according to court papers. Pastrana, 37, got the jab in October 2021 because the city required it, and had an immediate allergic reaction, including swollen lips, chills and body aches. Despite three trips to the emergency room, he claims he was forced to get the second Pfizer shot a month later. “I thought I was going to die after that second dose,” Pastrana [said], adding he was again rushed to the ER after the second shot. By February 2022, the married father of two was diagnosed with myocarditis, which results in potentially fatal inflammation of the cardiac muscle, and was nearly in heart failure, court records show. The heart condition is a rare side effect of the vaccine, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Pastrana was then told he could never be a firefighter again, and forced to retire in March after over a decade on the job. “I was completely blindsided,” he wrote in a statement to the court. The FDNY Uniformed Firefighter Association called his injury “totally avoidable.” The city “held his job over his head and forced him to choose between a vaccine that he did not want, and feeding his family,” Andrew Ansbro, the union’s president, said

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and COVID vaccines from reliable major media sources.


COVID vaccine 'black hole' for injury claims is unconstitutional, lawsuit says
2023-10-10, Reuters
Posted: 2023-12-04 14:22:07
https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/column-covid-vaccine-black-hole-inju...

Kangaroo court. That’s how plaintiffs lawyers in a federal lawsuit ... describe the obscure U.S. government tribunal charged with adjudicating claims for compensation by thousands of people who say they suffered serious injuries from COVID-19 vaccines. The lawsuit ... alleges that the Countermeasures Injury Compensation Program (CICP) violates the 5th and 7th amendments of the U.S. Constitution by failing to provide “basic due process protections, transparency, and judicial oversight.” The plaintiffs — eight people who say they experienced debilitating side-effects from the COVID-19 vaccine, as well as React 19, a nonprofit organization for people who claim vaccine-related injuries, want to stop the government from forcing their claims into the CICP until due process safeguards are added. Those include the right to review evidence, obtain discovery, present expert witnesses and appeal adverse decisions. Vaccine makers Pfizer, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson, which have been indemnified by the government and are not named in the suit, also did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The plaintiffs blame the COVID vaccine for causing a wide range of ailments including Bell’s palsy, blood clots in the brain, vertigo, vascular inflammation, chronic fatigue syndrome, small fiber neuropathy, heart palpitations and more. Four plaintiffs have filed claims for compensation with the CICP but have been told there is “no timeline” for adjudicating their cases.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and COVID vaccines from reliable major media sources.


Moderna is spying on you
2023-11-27, Lee Fang on Substack
Posted: 2023-12-04 14:20:18
https://www.leefang.com/p/moderna-is-spying-on-you

The Moderna misinformation reports, reported here for the first time, reveal what the pharmaceutical company is willing to do to shape public discourse around its marquee product. The mRNA COVID-19 vaccine catapulted the company to a $100 billion valuation. Behind the scenes, the marketing arm of the company has been working with former law enforcement officials and public health officials to monitor and influence vaccine policy. Key to this is a drug industry-funded NGO called Public Good Projects. PGP works closely with social media platforms, government agencies and news websites to confront the “root cause of vaccine hesitancy” by rapidly identifying and “shutting down misinformation.” A network of 45,000 healthcare professionals are given talking points “and advice on how to respond when vaccine misinformation goes mainstream”, according to an email from Moderna. An official training programme, developed by Moderna and PGP, alongside the American Board of Internal Medicine, [helps] healthcare workers identify medical misinformation. The online course, called the “Infodemic Training Program”, represents an official partnership between biopharma and the NGO world. Meanwhile, Moderna also retains Talkwalker which uses its “Blue Silk” artificial intelligence to monitor vaccine-related conversations across 150 million websites in nearly 200 countries. Claims are automatically deemed “misinformation” if they encourage vaccine hesitancy. As the pandemic abates, Moderna is, if anything, ratcheting up its surveillance operation.

Note: Strategies to silence and censor those who challenge mainstream narratives enable COVID vaccine pharmaceutical giants to downplay the significant, emerging health risks associated with the COVID shots. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corporate corruption and the disappearance of privacy from reliable major media sources.


Lawsuit: COVID Vaccine Injury Claims Diverted to Unconstitutional 'Kangaroo Court'
2023-11-21, Reason
Posted: 2023-12-04 14:17:25
https://reason.com/2023/11/21/lawsuit-covid-vaccine-injury-claims-diverted-to...

People injured by the COVID-19 vaccines are suing the federal government, claiming the federal program they're forced to pursue compensation through is an opaque and unconstitutional "kangaroo court" that unjustly rejects almost all claims it receives. React19, a patient group of the vaccine injured ... is one of several plaintiffs challenging the constitutionality of the Countermeasures Injury Compensation Program (CICP). The other plaintiffs are all individuals whose compensation claims were rejected by the CICP, despite many having diagnoses from their doctors that the severe injuries they experienced within a few hours or days of receiving a COVID-19 vaccine were a result of the vaccine. Their lawsuit was filed in October. The CICP is currently the only avenue through which those with a COVID-19 vaccine injury can seek compensation. A mix of federal law and pandemic-era emergency declarations bar the vaccine injured from suing vaccine manufacturers in civil court. Those with a COVID-19 vaccine injury are also prohibited from pursuing compensation through the standard Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP). People must file a CICP claim within one year of vaccination. "Most of us don't know what's wrong with us for over a year if we can ever get a diagnosis," says [legal affairs director for React19 Christopher] Dreisbach, who himself suffered a COVID-19 vaccine injury. "So many ... don't even know the program even exists." The CICP was first authorized in 2005 by a piece of war-on-terror legislation intended to encourage companies to produce emergency countermeasures to a bioweapons attack or a similar disaster by shielding them from lawsuits.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and COVID vaccines from reliable major media sources.


Unearthing the Hidden Impact of Wars: Tunnels and Tragedies
2023-11-26, Truthout
Posted: 2023-12-04 14:15:22
https://truthout.org/articles/unearthing-the-hidden-impact-of-wars-tunnels-an...

When we think of how to rescue suffering children from the unbridled carnage of numerous wars that have forced people to go underground, the vast network of tunnels built by the Vietnamese comes to mind. Following the U.S. defeat in Vietnam, weapons makers in the United States focused on developing ordnance that could destroy underground tunnels and bases. In Afghanistan, on April 13, 2017, the United States used a Massive Ordinance Air Blast bomb nicknamed MOAB, the Mother of All Bombs, to destroy a network of tunnels in the Hindu Kush mountains. The United States had helped the Mujahideen construct these tunnels during their war against the Soviet Union in the late 1970s. Locals say this harsh terrain has been haunted by a deadly, hidden hazard: chemical contamination. Living as we do in a world where countries like the United States maintain a permanent warfare state, we must reckon with the horrific cost of war — and the obscene profits. The Merchants of Death War Crimes Tribunal notes that weapons makers’ stocks on Wall Street have risen 7 percent since the Israel-Hamas war started. As much as we might long to grasp the hand of the child trying to free herself from underneath a collapsed building’s rubble, we need to imagine and long for the chance to grasp the hand of someone outside our own community, someone we’ve been taught to regard as an enemy or an invisible “other.”

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on war from reliable major media sources.


Why Is the Moneyless Economy Thriving in America?
2023-08-29, LA Progressive
Posted: 2023-12-04 14:13:39
https://www.laprogressive.com/economic-equality/moneyless-economy

The free, moneyless economy is flourishing in America. Roughly 250 million people were still visiting Craigslist worldwide each month in 2022, 27 years after the site was launched in 1995—and many of those Craigslist users are posting and sharing goods under the site’s popular “free stuff” section. About eight years after Craigslist was launched, Freecycle Network came online in 2003. More than 9 million Americans were still using Freecycle as of 2020, which I detailed in an article that year. And then there’s the relatively young Buy Nothing Project, which turned 10 years old in July of 2023. In addition to providing a digital space where people can request things they need, post things they’re giving away, and share gratitude, one of the B corp’s social benefit model goals is to encourage people to organize community and local events around buying nothing. Over the years, Buy Nothing has been gaining popularity—not through any marketing on the part of the organization but through word-of-mouth and organic growth. The Buy Nothing app, which has only been around for about two years, is ... zeroing in on 1 million users. Buy Nothing’s model varies from that of Craigslist’s “free stuff” and Freecycle in that it is focused on community groups, gatherings, and events organized by and for local communities. The idea is that a global reuse economy will emerge community by community. Buy Nothing exists ... “to build resilient communities where our true wealth is the connections forged between neighbors.”

Note: Explore more positive stories like this in our comprehensive inspiring news articles archive focused on solutions and bridging divides.


‘You can walk around in a T-shirt’: how Norway brought heat pumps in from the cold
2023-11-23, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2023-12-04 14:11:01
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/nov/23/norway-heat-pumps-cold-he...

In most of Europe, fitting a heat pump is one of the most powerful actions a person can take to reduce their carbon footprint. But in Norway, where clean-yet-inefficient electrical resistance heaters have long been common, upgrading to a heat pump is often a purely financial decision. Two-thirds of households in this Nordic country of 5 million people have a heat pump, more than anywhere else in the world. For many years, Norwegians and their neighbours heated their homes with fossil fuels. But during the 1973 oil crisis, when prices shot up, the country’s political leaders made a conscious choice to promote alternatives. “Norway ensured early on that fossil-fuel heating was the most expensive option, making heat pumps cost competitive,” said Dr Jan Rosenow from the Regulatory Assistance Project, a thinktank that works to decarbonise buildings. “They did this by taxing carbon emissions from fossil heating fuels. That’s been the key to incentivise heat pump adoption.” Norway also trained up a workforce to install them. Heat pumps’ efficiency has been increased over decades, partly because of the early adopters in Nordic countries who tinkered away to the point where a modern version can deliver three to five units of heat for every unit of electricity used to power it. An efficient gas boiler, on the other hand, can only produce as much heat as the energy contained in the fuel being burned. A heat pump will have a smaller carbon footprint than a gas boiler even when plugged into an electricity grid.

Note: Explore more positive stories like this in our comprehensive inspiring news articles archive focused on solutions and bridging divides.


‘A treasure beneath our feet’: How the Dutch went down the toilet looking for heat
2023-11-08, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2023-12-04 14:07:54
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/nov/08/how-the-dutch-went-down-t...

Dutch sewage waste is being seen as a reliable heat source for millions of homes that the government wants to be unhooked from the country’s gas system by 2050. Lieven de Key, a housing corporation in Amsterdam, is planning what is believed to be the first sewer warmth project that will tap into a main district sewage pipe to warm 1,600 existing social and student homes. “We have a photo of the street covered with snow, and the manhole covers all without snow,” says Jeroen Rademaker, the project leader. “Even when there’s snow in the winter, the sewer is warm. Warm sewage water flows 24 hours a day and we should capture it. This can happen wherever there is a big sewage pipe.” “The warmth comes from showers, the toilet, wastewater from washing, from the dishwasher, from the washing machine,” says Postuma. “Together it all gives, throughout the year, a temperature between 15 and 18 degrees. And we are going to make a bypass around the main sewer, put a heat exchanger around it and bring it to the houses in insulated pipes. We place it in an electric heat pump, and the water is heated up to 60 or 70C – medium temperature.” The heat exchanger transfers that source heat from the drain to a working fluid that can be transported to the buildings without needing to circulate the actual sewage waste. Then the blocks’ heat pumps, fired by solar energy, can amplify that heat in the opposite way to the workings of a refrigerator.

Note: Explore more positive stories like this in our comprehensive inspiring news articles archive focused on solutions and bridging divides.


Is the US’s Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System broken?
2023-11-10, The BMJ (Formerly British Medical Journal)
Posted: 2023-11-26 17:42:39
https://www.bmj.com/content/383/bmj.p2582

The Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) ... collects reports of symptoms, diagnoses, hospital admissions, and deaths after vaccination. VAERS is supposed to be user friendly, responsive, and transparent. However, investigations by The BMJ have uncovered that it’s not meeting its own standards. Not only have staffing levels failed to keep pace with the unprecedented number of reports since the rollout of covid vaccines but there are signs that the system is overwhelmed. In the face of an unprecedented 1.7 million reports since the rollout of covid vaccines, VAERS’s staffing was likely not commensurate with the demands of reviewing the serious reports submitted, including reports of death. While other countries have acknowledged deaths that were “likely” or “probably” related to mRNA vaccination, the CDC—which says that it has reviewed nearly 20,000 preliminary reports of death using VAERS (far more than other countries)—has not acknowledged a single death linked to mRNA vaccines. In November 2022, React19, an advocacy group of some 30,000 people who have experienced prolonged illness after covid vaccination, reviewed 126 VAERS reports among its ranks. 22% had never been given a permanent VAERS ID number and 12% had disappeared from the system entirely. The BMJ has found that the FDA and CDC essentially maintain two separate VAERS databases: a public facing database, containing only initial reports; and a private, back end system containing all updates and corrections—such as a formal diagnosis, recovery, or death.

Note: Vaccine adverse event numbers on VAERS are made publically available here, and only capture a portion of the actual vaccine injuries. Albert Benavides is a VAERS researcher who recently wrote a comprehensive Substack piece investigating the corruption and dysfunction of the VAERS system, including how the VAERS system even deleted dead Pfizer Trial patients. Another excellent article explores these concerning implications from the perspective of cardiologists, physicians, and science researchers.


JFK’s Parkland Doctors Come Forward: Oswald Didn’t Act Alone
2023-11-13, Rolling Stone
Posted: 2023-11-26 17:39:51
https://www.rollingstone.com/tv-movies/tv-movie-news/jfk-assassination-parkla...

This year marks the 60th anniversary of John F. Kennedy’s assassination. JFK: What the Doctors Saw [is] a documentary featuring previously unreleased footage — and the testimony of seven doctors who were there in the emergency room of Parkland Hospital trying to save the then-president’s life after he was shot as his motorcade passed through Dealey Plaza on Nov. 22, 1963. The film raises serious doubts about whether Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in killing JFK (Oswald was shot to death two days later by local nightclub owner Jack Ruby as he was escorted through the Dallas Police building). “I became involved with the story because one of my personal physicians told me he was in the emergency room at Parkland Hospital when JFK was brought in,” Jacque Lueth, the film’s executive producer who interviewed the seven Parkland doctors, [said]. “He introduced me to six of the other doctors who were there that day and when I interviewed them, I began to realize their observations from Trauma Room 1 didn’t match the government story.” She adds, “Based upon my interviews with the doctors, Jim Jenkins and Robert Tanenbaum, and my own research, there’s no question in my mind there was a government cover-up.” The doctors in the film contend one of the bullets that hit JFK entered through his throat, meaning it was an entrance wound from the front — and that there were potentially two gunmen, with Oswald firing from the rear.

Note: Explore concise summaries of revealing news articles on the JFK assassination from reliable major media sources. For more along these lines, check out our JFK Assassination Information Center.


Common pesticides in food reducing sperm count worldwide, study says
2023-11-15, CNN News
Posted: 2023-11-26 17:37:43
https://www.cnn.com/2023/11/15/health/sperm-damage-pesticides-wellness/index....

Pesticides used in our homes, gardens and lawns and sprayed on foods we eat are contributing to a dramatic decline in sperm count among men worldwide, according to a new analysis of studies over the last 50 years. “Over the course of 50 years, sperm concentration has fallen about 50% around the world,” said senior study author Melissa Perry. “While there are likely many more contributing causes, our study demonstrates a strong association between two common insecticides —organophosphates and N-methyl carbamates — and the decline of sperm concentration.” Organophosphates are the main components of nerve gas, herbicides, pesticides and insecticides and are also used to create plastics and solvents. They are widely used in agriculture on the crops we eat. We use them in structural applications within homes and buildings. N-methyl carbamates are structurally and operationally similar to organophosphates, killing insects by damaging their brains and nervous systems. The study, published ... in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives, examined 25 studies around the world on the two chemicals. Those studies looked at 42 different levels of impact among 1,774 men in 21 different study populations. Men who were more highly exposed to the pesticides, such as those who work in agriculture, had significantly less sperm concentration than men who had the least exposure to organophosphates and N-methyl carbamates, the study found.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on health and food system corruption from reliable major media sources.


Court tosses EPA ban on pesticide linked to brain damage in kids
2023-11-02, The Hill
Posted: 2023-11-26 17:35:46
https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/4291117-court-tosses-epa-ban-pe...

A federal appeals court on Thursday is tossing the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) ban on a pesticide that has been linked to brain damage in children. The decision from the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals to send the rule back to the agency does not preclude the agency from reinstating the ban in the future. But it said the EPA needs to give greater consideration to whether there are cases where the pesticide, called chlorpyrifos, could be used safely. Chlorpyrifos has been used as an insecticide, protecting crops like soybeans, broccoli, cauliflower and fruit trees. The EPA banned chlorpyrifos for use in growing food in 2021. That came after a prior court ruling gave the agency just 60 days to either find a safe use for chlorpyrifos or ban it outright. The appeals court determined that this deadline contributed to a rushed decision from EPA that was ultimately “arbitrary and capricious.” The ruling comes from Judges Lavenski Smith, Raymond Gruender and David Stras, two of whom were appointed by former President George W. Bush and one of whom was appointed by former President Trump. The chlorpyrifos issue has ping-ponged between administrations. The Obama administration had proposed to ban its use on food, but the Trump administration reversed course and had proposed to allow some uses of the chemical. 

Note: Did you know that chlorpyrifos was originally developed by Nazis during World War II for use as a nerve gas? Read more about the history and politics of chlorpyrifos, and how U.S. regulators relied on falsified data to allow its use for years. See other concise news articles we've summarized about the harms of chlorpyrifos.


EU Commission to extend use of glyphosate for 10 more years after member countries fail to agree
2023-11-17, Nature
Posted: 2023-11-26 17:33:50
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-03589-z

The European Commission says it has decided to renew the license for the weedkiller compound glyphosate, approving its use in European Union countries for ten more years. Following the decision yesterday, the Commission released a statement saying that, on the basis of comprehensive safety assessments carried out by the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) and the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA), it would renew the licence, “subject to certain new conditions and restrictions”. These include a ban on the use of the chemical to dry crops before harvest, and “the need for certain measures to protect non-target organisms”. Governments can still restrict the use of glyphosate in their own countries if they consider the risks too high. Glyphosate is the active ingredient in Roundup, the world’s most widely used herbicide. Some studies point to a link between glyphosate and certain cancers. Robin Mesnage, a toxicologist at King’s College London, welcomes the Commission’s decision to continue to allow the use of glyphosate. Others have expressed disappointment. “It is unacceptable that the Commission still plans to go ahead with its proposal, considering the amount of scientific evidence of the substance’s health impacts,” says Natacha Cingotti, a campaigner at the Health and Environment Alliance. “While we can’t undo the decades of exposure, the Commission can still seize the opportunity to turn the tide towards more sustainable agricultural practices.”

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corruption in government and in the food system from reliable major media sources.


UN hunger expert: US must recognize ‘right to food’ to fix broken system
2023-11-09, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2023-11-26 17:32:09
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/nov/09/united-nations-right-to-f...

The US must acknowledge the right to food in order to transform its broken food system in the post-pandemic era and make it more resilient in the face of the climate crisis and biodiversity loss, according to a United Nations hunger expert. “Whether we’re talking about right to food, food justice or food sovereignty, there has been growing momentum over the last 10 years to understand that food is not just something we just leave to be determined by what is available or by corporations or the status quo,” said Michael Fakhri, the UN special rapporteur on the right to food. Last month, Fakhri presented a report on the right to food – which would entail that adequate food be available and accessible to all people – as a means of food system recovery and transformation to the UN general assembly. The right to food, which can also be characterized as a right to culturally appropriate nutrition that a person needs to live a healthy and active life, is recognized in the UN’s 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights and is enshrined in the 1966 International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. In 2021, the US and Israel were the only countries to vote against a United Nations committee’s draft that asserted food as a human right. The draft also expressed alarm that the number of people lacking access to adequate food rose by 320 million to 2.4 billion in 2020 – nearly one-third of the world’s population. In 2022, 44.2 million people in the US lived in food-insecure households.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corruption in government and in the food system from reliable major media sources.


Nearly half of American adults faced medical bill issues in last year – survey
2023-11-16, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2023-11-26 17:30:34
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/nov/16/hospital-bill-healthcare-cost...

High-income Americans are almost as likely to defer healthcare because of cost as people with low or average incomes in eight other developed countries, a new survey brief by the Commonwealth Fund finds. The survey findings also show that nearly half of American adults (46%) faced a problem with a medical bill in the last year, and almost half with low or average incomes (46%) skipped or delayed needed care because of price – the highest rate in any of nine countries analyzed. “In some cases, lower-income people in other countries are better off than higher-income Americans,” said Munira Gunja, lead author of the study. Decades of research shows the US health system is both wildly expensive and inefficient. Internationally, it has been seen as a kind of "bogeyman" and as a way not to structure a health system, according to the late Princeton University health economist Uwe Reinhardt. A staggering 18% of US GDP goes to healthcare spending, the highest in the world, and the logical result of the highest healthcare prices of any nation. Despite runaway spending, Americans also have among the worst outcomes. Recent work by population researchers at Virginia Commonwealth University, found US life expectancy has slipped for decades and now ranks 46th among 200 nations. The US is also the only nation surveyed without guaranteed universal health coverage for every citizen.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on health from reliable major media sources. Then explore the excellent, reliable resources provided in our Health Information Center.


The Covid Vaccine Windfall Turns for Pfizer and Moderna
2023-11-20, Wall Street Journal
Posted: 2023-11-26 17:28:33
https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-covid-vaccine-windfall-turns-on-pfizer-and-m...

The U.S. was in a fit of Covid panic during Thanksgiving week two years ago. By month’s end, Pfizer’s stock-market value had surpassed $300 billion, up 50% from the start of the pandemic. Moderna’s shares had soared by more than 1,000% over the same period. In 2022 Pfizer became the first pharmaceutical company to book more than $100 billion in annual sales owing to government purchases of its vaccines and antiviral pill. Fast-forward to today. The pandemic is over. Demand for Covid vaccines and treatments has plunged. Pfizer’s total revenue has fallen more than 40% since last year. Earlier this month the company took a $5.5 billion write-off on its Covid products owing to “lower-than-expected demand.” Only 14% of American adults have received the latest updated booster shots. The jabs’ greatest benefit was in providing political leaders with the courage to lift destructive lockdowns and mask mandates. The vaccines were supposed to be a two-shot-and-done regimen, not blockbuster medicines that rung up tens of billions of dollars in sales every year with government support. Statins and diabetes medicines prevent heart attacks, but the government doesn’t run ads urging Americans to use Lipitor or Ozempic. The government’s vaccine boosterism ... has increased public cynicism toward pharmaceutical companies. Drug makers can dine out on any given medicine only for so long before needing to cook up another pharmaceutical bonanza.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on Big Pharma profiteering and coronavirus vaccines from reliable major media sources.


Connecticut City Rejects 5G Citing Evidence of Health Risks
2023-11-20, The Defender
Posted: 2023-11-26 17:26:59
https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/stamford-connecticut-rejects-5g-h...

The Board of Representatives in Stamford, Connecticut, earlier this month voted to reject a model agreement that would have allowed AT&T and Verizon to install 5G equipment on city-owned utility poles. In a bid to get 5G swiftly installed in his state, Gov. Ned Lamont’s office created a template contract between the nation’s top two telecommunication carriers and the state’s five major cities. Stamford, the state’s second-largest city, is the only city so far to have voted against using the contract. [City] representatives were largely persuaded by presentations by six independent experts on the scientific evidence of harm from radiofrequency (RF) radiation, including 5G. The experts, including toxicologist and epidemiologist Devra Davis, Ph.D., MPH, said there were many documented health and environmental impacts of wireless radiation, including brain damage, memory loss, decline in reproductive function, DNA damage and harm to insects. “Confronted with overwhelming, independent scientific information about the real and present dangers of bringing electromagnetic fields closer to humans than ever before, Stamford voted to protect people,” [said Davis]. Some representatives, like City Rep. Don Mays, worried that rejecting the pact would mean AT&T and Verizon would sue the city. A 2018 ruling by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) blocks states and municipalities from taking actions that would impede or delay the rollout of 5G technology.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on the risks and dangers of wireless technologies from reliable major media sources.


US regulator cracks down on food industry for paid dietitian ‘influencer’ posts
2023-11-15, The Examination
Posted: 2023-11-26 17:25:16
https://www.theexamination.org/articles/ftc-crackdown

Federal regulators announced warnings against two major food and beverage industry groups and a dozen nutrition influencers on Wednesday, as part of a broad action to enforce stricter standards for how companies and social media creators disclose paid advertising. The Federal Trade Commission sent warning letters on Monday to American Beverage, a lobbying group whose members include Coca-Cola and PepsiCo, as well as the Canadian Sugar Institute and a dozen health influencers who collectively have over 6 million followers on TikTok and Instagram. The agency flagged nearly three dozen social media posts that it said failed to clearly disclose who was paying the influencers to promote artificial sweeteners or sugary foods. The action follows a months-long investigation by The Examination and The Washington Post that revealed how the food and beverage industry had enlisted popular dietitians to promote industry-friendly messages on social media posts that often failed to disclose the names of sponsors. Social media marketing ... has been described as the Wild West of advertising. Over $6 billion is expected to be spent on influencer marketing in the United States in 2023. The enforcement action is the first the FTC has taken against major food and beverage industry groups for social media marketing. The agency urged the trade groups and nutrition influencers to remove posts or add proper disclosures and noted that future failures could trigger fines of more than $50,000 for each violation.

Note: Read how cereal giant Kellogg used fake experts to sell its sugary cereals. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on food system corruption from reliable major media sources.


Scientists Have Created Synthetic Sponges That Soak Up Microplastics
2023-10-05, Smithsonian Magazine
Posted: 2023-11-26 17:23:17
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/scientists-have-created-synthetic-s...

For millennia, humans have used dried natural sponges to clean up, to paint and as vessels to consume fluids like water or honey. Whether synthetic or natural, sponges are great at ensnaring tiny particles in their many pores. And, as scientists around the world are beginning to show, sponges’ cavity-filled forms mean they could provide a solution to one of our era’s biggest scourges: microplastic pollution. In August, researchers in China published a study describing their development of a synthetic sponge that makes short work of microscopic plastic debris. In tests, the researchers show that when a specially prepared plastic-filled solution is pushed through one of their sponges, the sponge can remove both microplastics and even smaller nanoplastics from the liquid. Optimal conditions allowed the researchers to remove as much as 90 percent of the microplastics. The plastic-gobbling sponges are made mostly from starch and gelatin. Looking a bit like large white marshmallows, the biodegradable sponges are so light that balancing one atop a flower leaves the plant’s petals upright and unyielding, which the researchers suggest ought to make them cheap and easy to transport. The sponges, if ever produced at an industrial scale ... could be used in wastewater treatment plants to filter microplastics out of the water or in food production facilities to decontaminate water. It would also be possible to use microplastic-trapping sponges like this in washing machines.

Note: Explore more positive stories like this in our comprehensive inspiring news articles archive focused on solutions and bridging divides.


The EU Just Banned Microplastics. How Are Companies Replacing Them?
2023-11-16, Reasons to be Cheerful
Posted: 2023-11-26 17:21:52
https://reasonstobecheerful.world/microplastics-europe-ban-natural-alternatives/

Microplastics — solid plastic particles up to five millimeters in size that are not biodegradable — are pretty much everywhere. They have been detected in over 1,500 different marine animal species. They also find their way into our bodies via the water cycle and the food chain. In fact, the average person consumes up to five grams of microplastics per week. The European Union has now banned intentionally added microplastics. This applies to plastic glitter or polyethylene particles used as abrasives in scrubs, shower gel and toothpaste (these have been banned in the US since the 2015 Microbead-Free Waters Act). Under the terms of the ban, some products, such as plastic glitter found in creams or eye shadow, have been granted a transitional period to give manufacturers a chance to develop new designs. LUSH and The Body Shop are among the companies that have long been offering natural alternatives, using ground nuts, bamboo, sea salt and sugar. Beiersdorf AG ... has not used microbeads for exfoliation purposes since 2015. Instead, it has used, for example, cellulose particles or shredded apricot kernels. Since the end of 2019, all Beiersdorf wash-off products have been free of microplastics. Before the EU ban, Germany stopped providing public funding for artificial turf pitches with granules containing a high proportion of microplastic. As a result, the country already has hundreds of pitches that are filled with cork and sand instead of microplastics.

Note: Explore more positive stories like this in our comprehensive inspiring news articles archive focused on solutions and bridging divides.


US cancer patient's dying wish erases $16m in people's medical debt
2023-11-17, BBC News
Posted: 2023-11-26 17:20:26
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-67459257

A New York City woman who died of ovarian cancer has raised enough money to pay off millions of dollars in other people's medical debts. In a social media post she arranged to be posted after her death, Casey McIntyre, 38, asked followers to consider donating to her cause. She said she planned to pay off other people's medical debt as a way of celebrating her life. She wrote on social media: "if you're reading this I have passed away." "I loved each and every one of you with my whole heart and I promise you, I knew how deeply I was loved... to celebrate my life, I've arranged to buy up others' medical debt and then destroy the debt." She added that she was lucky to have access to high-quality medical care while battling stage four ovarian cancer and wanted others to have the same. McIntyre and her family ... raised over $170,000 (£136,000) for her campaign with non-profit RIP Medical Debt. The organisation pays off a dollar of medical debt for every penny that is donated, meaning McIntyre's campaign has helped erase up to $17m in unpaid medical bills. The organisation says it buys medical debt "in bundled portfolios, millions of dollars at a time at a fraction of the original cost". "On average, whatever you donate has 100x the impact," it says on its website. In the social media post announcing her own death, McIntyre's family included a note that they would have a memorial service ... where they would celebrate her life by anonymously purchasing and forgiving other's medical debt.

Note: Explore more positive stories like this in our comprehensive inspiring news articles archive focused on solutions and bridging divides.


Feds make arrests in connection with 'prostitution network' whose clients allegedly included politicians
2023-11-08, NBC News
Posted: 2023-11-19 15:04:06
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/justice-department/3-arrested-connection-pro...

Three people have been arrested and charged in connection with running “high-end brothels” in the Boston area and Northern Virginia. Prosecutors said the Massachusetts brothels were in Cambridge and Watertown, and the Virginia locations were in Fairfax and Tysons, primarily with Asian women in both states. The defendants are Han Lee, 41, of Cambridge, Massachusetts; Junmyung Lee, 30, of Dedham, Massachusetts; and James Lee, 68, of Torrance, California. All three were charged with conspiracy to coerce and entice to travel to engage in illegal sexual activity. "These customers spanned a wide array of different professional disciplines," the case agent said in court documents. “Some of these professional disciplines included, but are not limited to, politicians, pharmaceutical executives, doctors, military officers, government contractors that possess security clearances, professors, lawyers, business executives, technology company executives, scientists, accountants, retail employees, and students.” Investigators also said that James Lee made deposits in his personal and business bank accounts since January 2020 that totaled $4.5 million. More than $550,000 of Covid relief funds, the agent wrote, were among those deposits. Investigators acquired records from the Small Business Administration that ... show James Lee applied for these loans for various businesses, including one listed as E.P.A. Green Services, and potentially under different identities.

Note: This case echoes the case of D.C. Madam Deborah Jeane Palfrey, who ran a prostitution ring catering to elite clients. Jeane reportedly hung herself before all of the details of her operation could come out. Learn about other major sexual abuse scandal cover-ups that took place in the highest levels of government.


‘High-end brothel’ serving politicians and executives busted, feds say
2023-11-08, Washington Post
Posted: 2023-11-19 15:02:16
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2023/11/08/three-arrested-brothels-bost...

Three people have been arrested in connection with operating high-end brothels in Virginia and the Boston area that served an exclusive clientele of elected officials, military officers, government contractors with security clearances and myriad other professionals, according to federal investigators. Since at least July 2020, prosecutors allege that Han Lee, 41, James Lee, 68, and Junmyung Lee, 30, ran brothels that advertised primarily Asian women under the guise that they were nude models selling their services to professional photographers. The brothels’ clients, which prosecutors allege could number in the hundreds, also included tech and pharmaceutical executives, doctors, professors, lawyers, scientists and accountants. The allegations mirror a sex service that for 13 years catered to Washington’s political elite, including a sitting senator. Known as the D.C. Madam, Deborah Jeane Palfrey was convicted of running that operation in 2008. Records of her ring included the names of 815 clients, and in 2016, Palfrey’s former lawyer said her phone records “could be relevant” to the presidential election. A judge later blocked the release of those records. To make an appointment with a brothel, a prospective client had to go through a verification process that included filling out a form with their name, emails, phone numbers, employers and a reference, court filings alleged. They also had to submit a photo of themselves and credit card information.

Note: The D.C. Madam Deborah Jeane Palfrey mentioned above reportedly hung herself in 2008. More recently, Jeffrey Epstein reportedly hung himself in a jail cell while awaiting trial for running a child sex ring involving powerful people. In both cases, the identities of elite sex buyers were shielded from public scrutiny by authorities. Learn about other major sexual abuse scandal cover-ups that took place in the highest levels of government.


A COVID-19 vaccine reckoning is coming for the DOJ over federal mandates
2023-11-12, New York Post
Posted: 2023-11-19 15:00:00
https://nypost.com/2023/11/12/opinion/a-covid-19-vaccine-reckoning-is-coming-...

The Justice Department has just posted a new jobs ad — it’s looking for eight new attorneys to defend the federal government in vaccine injury cases. Presumably, the hiring spree is in anticipation of a surge of COVID vaccine lawsuits, as people who were forced by government mandates to take the jab, and suffered serious side effects as a result, try to extract compensation from a system that is stacked against them. “The office is currently expanding to address workload created by an increase in cases filed under the Vaccine Act,” reads the ad posted by the Torts Branch of the DOJ on the USAJobs website. The recruitment drive comes on the heels of a little-noticed lawsuit filed in Louisiana last month by six vaccine-injured plaintiffs against the federal government. The suit aims to overturn the legal immunity that pharmaceutical giants like Pfizer and Moderna enjoy on their COVID shots. Meanwhile, almost 13,000 Americans who claim the COVID vaccine caused them or their dead loved ones adverse reactions ... remain in limbo after doing what they were told was “the right thing”: heeding government mandates to submit to the jab. The unaccountable, understaffed government tribunal that presides over the so-called Countermeasures Injury Compensation Program (CICP), for vaccines administered under emergency measures, is a “kangaroo court,” says the lawsuit filed by attorney Aaron Siri, partner at New York firm Siri & Glimstad. 

Note: Learn about the legal landmark case in the UK alleging significant injuries and damages from the AstraZeneca COVID vaccine. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of revealing news articles on government corruption and coronavirus vaccines from reliable major media sources.


Silicon Valley is piling into the business of snooping
2023-11-05, The Economist
Posted: 2023-11-19 14:58:38
https://www.economist.com/business/2023/11/05/silicon-valley-is-piling-into-t...

New Yorkers may have noticed an unwelcome guest hovering round their parties. In the lead-up to Labour Day weekend the New York Police Department (NYPD) said that it would use drones to look into complaints about festivities, including back-yard gatherings. Snooping police drones are an increasingly common sight in America. According to a recent survey by researchers at the Northwestern Pritzker School of Law, about a quarter of police forces now use them. Among the NYPD’s suppliers is Skydio, a Silicon Valley firm that uses artificial intelligence (AI) to make drones easy to fly. The NYPD is also buying from BRINC, another startup, which makes flying machines equipped with night-vision cameras that can smash through windows. Facial-recognition software is now used more widely across America, too, with around a tenth of police forces having access to the technology. A report released in September by America’s Government Accountability Office found that six federal law-enforcement agencies, including the FBI and the Secret Service, were together executing an average of 69 facial-recognition searches every day. Among the top vendors listed was Clearview AI. Surveillance capabilities may soon be further fortified by generative AI, of the type that powers ChatGPT, thanks to its ability to work with “unstructured” data such as images and video footage. The technology will let users “search the Earth for objects”, much as Google lets users search the internet.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on police corruption and the disappearance of privacy from reliable major media sources.


For A Century, The American Way Of War Has Meant Killing Civilians
2023-11-12, The Intercept
Posted: 2023-11-19 14:56:59
https://theintercept.com/2023/11/12/america-wars-bombing-killing-civilians/

Over the last century, the U.S. military has shown a consistent disregard for civilian lives. It has repeatedly cast or misidentified ordinary people as enemies; failed to investigate civilian harm allegations; excused casualties as regrettable but unavoidable; and failed to prevent their recurrence or to hold troops accountable. These long-standing practices stand in stark contrast to the U.S. government’s public campaigns to sell its wars as benign, its air campaigns as precise, its concern for civilians as overriding, and the deaths of innocent people as “tragic” anomalies. Such campaigns have mainly served to obscure the true toll of the American way of war, from the “banana wars” of the 1920s to the “forever wars” a century later. During the first 20 years of the war on terror, the U.S. conducted more than 91,000 airstrikes across seven major conflict zones — Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Pakistan, Somalia, Syria, and Yemen — and killed up to 48,308 civilians, according to a 2021 analysis by Airwars, a U.K.-based airstrike monitoring group. A 2020 study of post-9/11 civilian casualty incidents found most have gone uninvestigated. When they do come under official scrutiny, American military witnesses are interviewed while civilians — victims, survivors, family members — are almost totally ignored, “severely compromising the effectiveness of investigations,” according to the Center for Civilians in Conflict and Columbia Law School’s Human Rights Institute.

Note: The profit motive behind these wars was clearly described in 1935 by General Smedley Butler in War is a Racket. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on war from reliable major media sources.


What Does the U.S. Space Force Actually Do?
2023-11-08, New York Times
Posted: 2023-11-19 14:55:26
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/08/magazine/space-force.html

Chief Master Sgt. Ron Lerch of the U.S. Space Force sat down in his office in Los Angeles one morning in September to deliver a briefing known as a threat assessment. The current “threats” in space are less sci-fi than you might expect, but there are a surprising number of them: At least 44,500 space objects now circle Earth, including 9,000 active satellites and 19,000 significant pieces of debris. What’s most concerning isn’t the swarm of satellites but the types. “We know that there are kinetic kill vehicles,” Lerch said — for example, a Russian “nesting doll” satellite, in which a big satellite releases a tiny one and the tiny one releases a mechanism that can strike and damage another satellite. China, whose presence in space now far outpaces Russia’s, is launching unmanned “space planes” into orbit, testing potentially unbreakable quantum communication links and adding A.I. capabilities to satellites. An intelligence report, Lerch said, predicted the advent, within the next decade, of satellites with radio-frequency jammers, chemical sprayers and lasers that blind and disable the competition. All this would be in addition to the cyberwarfare tools, electromagnetic instruments and “ASAT” antisatellite missiles that already exist. Space Force leaders readily describe their guardians as working toward a state of combat readiness, even as they hope an era of actual conflict never arrives. As space becomes commercialized, it increasingly becomes a geopolitical arena for competition too.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on military corruption from reliable major media sources.


‘Buying influence’: top US nuclear board advisers are tied to arms business
2023-11-10, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2023-11-19 14:54:02
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/nov/10/us-congress-nuclear-weapon-comm...

Nine of the 12 members of a high-level congressional commission charged with advising on the US’s nuclear weapons strategy have direct financial ties to contractors that would benefit from the report’s recommendations or are employed at thinktanks that receive considerable funding from weapons manufacturers. While the Congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United States (CCSPUS) purports to recommend steps to avoid nuclear conflict, it does nothing to disclose its own potential conflicts of interest with the weapons industry in its final report or at rollout events. “What we’ve consistently seen is the nuclear weapons industry buying influence and that means we cannot make serious decisions about our security when the industry is buying influence through thinktanks and commissioners that are skewing the debate,” said Susi Snyder, program coordinator at the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons. “Instead of having a debate about the tools and materials we need to make ourselves safe,” she added, “we’re having a debate about which company should get the contracts.” The most recognizable member of the CCSPUS is its vice-chair, Jon Kyl, who served as a senator. In 2017 Kyl, personally, was registered to lobby for Northrop Grumman, which manufactures the B-21 nuclear bomber that the commission recommends the US should purchase in greater numbers, at a cost to taxpayers of nearly $700m each.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on military corruption from reliable major media sources.


Execs ignored the damage Instagram does to teens, Meta whistleblower tells Congress
2023-11-07, CNN News
Posted: 2023-11-19 14:52:27
https://www.cnn.com/2023/11/07/tech/meta-ignored-warnings-instagrams-harm/ind...

Meta’s top executives, including CEO Mark Zuckerberg, ignored warnings for years about harms to teens on its platforms such as Instagram, a company whistleblower told a Senate subcommittee. Meta instead fosters a culture of “see no evil, hear no evil” that overlooks evidence of harm internally while publicly presenting carefully crafted metrics to downplay the issue, said Arturo Bejar, an ex-Facebook engineering director and consultant. Bejar is the latest former insider to level public allegations that the tech giant knowingly turns a blind eye to problems that its policies and technology cannot cheaply or easily address. [Bejar] first became motivated to study the issue because of unwanted sexual advances his own 14-year-old daughter received from strangers on Instagram. “It is unacceptable that a 13-year-old girl gets propositioned on social media,” Bejar testified, citing a statistic from his research finding that more than 25% of 13-to-15-year-olds have reported receiving unwanted sexual advances on Instagram. Lawmakers on Tuesday ripped into the social media giant. “They hid from this committee and all of Congress evidence of the harms that they knew was credible,” said ... Sen. Richard Blumenthal. Missouri Republican Josh Hawley blasted Big Tech companies for spending “gobs” of money ... to thwart bills that would restrict the industry’s power. He also accused Meta of “cooking the books” on data related to mental health harms.

Note: Read how Instagram connects a vast pedophile network. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corporate corruption from reliable major media sources.


Biden’s Border: Record Contracts for Private Industry on the World’s Deadliest Land Border
2023-11-09, TomDispatch
Posted: 2023-11-19 14:50:58
https://tomdispatch.com/bidens-border/

If you count all the contracts for private industry from U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) since Joe Biden took office — for, that is, 2021, 2022, and 2023 — the number comes to $23.5 billion. And though you’d never guess it, given what we normally hear, that already beats Donald Trump’s total for his full four years in office, $20.9 billion. Or, to put the matter in a more historical perspective, private contracts for the Biden years already top the cumulative $22.5 billion spent in border and immigration enforcement budgets from 1975 to 1997. Budgets and private-sector contracts tell an all-too-familiar story in which the border-enforcement apparatus only continues to grow ever larger, regardless of who’s president. As 2023 nears its end, there have simply never been as many opportunities to make a killing (figuratively as well as literally) by surveilling, arresting, caging, and expelling people from this country. In 2023, there were 8,033 such opportunities — and I’m speaking here about contracts in play — or about 22 contracts a day. 1,421 remains of dead people were recovered along the border during Biden’s first two years in office, higher in other words than the 1,133 during Trump’s full four years. Imagine the national news stories, if the remains of nearly 1,500 hikers had been found in the Southwest during a two-year period. But for migrants in those ever more profitable, ever deadlier borderlands, mum’s the word.

Note: Carlos Arellano is a whistleblower and former immigration contractor, who alleges that the US government is the largest trafficker of children in the world. Watch an interview of Arellano share his shocking experiences at some of the immigration facilities. For further exploration of this troubling topic, read about MVM Inc, the ex-CIA defense contractor making millions of dollars hauling children away from the Mexico border on commercial airline flights. Where is the transparency about what is happening to these children?


How Pfizer Hid Nearly 80% of COVID Vaccine Trial Deaths From Regulators
2023-10-27, The Defender
Posted: 2023-11-19 14:49:21
https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/pfizer-hid-data-covid-vaccine-tri...

Pfizer-BioNTech delayed reporting vaccine-associated deaths among BNT162b2 clinical trial participants until after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued an Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) for the product. The vaccine makers also failed to account for a large number of subjects who dropped out of the trial. Together, these strategies kept regulators and the public ignorant of a 3.7-fold increase in cardiac deaths among subjects who received the vaccine, according to analysis in the International Journal of Vaccine Theory, Practice, and Research. Investigators looked at each of the 38 deaths occurring between July 27, 2020, the start of phase 2/3 of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine trial, and March 13, 2021, the end date culminating in Pfizer-BioNTech’s 6-month interim report. This trial phase involved 44,060 subjects. Half received a dose of BNT162b2, half got a placebo. The trial was unusual because at week 20 after the FDA issued the EUA for the vaccine, trial subjects in the placebo group were allowed to switch to the vaccinated group and receive their first BNT162b2 shot. Of 20,794 unblinded placebo subjects in the Pfizer trial, 19,685 received at least one dose of BNT162b2. After 33 weeks the data revealed no significant difference between deaths in the vaccinated and placebo groups for the initial 20-week placebo-controlled portion of the trial. 79% of relevant deaths were not recorded in time to be included in Pfizer’s regulatory paperwork.

Note: Read our recent essay on Big Pharma corruption to further explore the significant harms associated with the COVID vaccine. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on Big Pharma corruption and coronavirus vaccines from reliable major media sources.


Lessons from brain science — and history's peacemakers — for resolving conflicts
2023-11-04, NPR
Posted: 2023-11-19 14:46:38
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2023/11/04/1209395551/argument-us-i...

Tim Phillips, a veteran conflict-resolution expert, helped negotiate some of the most fraught conflicts in modern history — ceasefires of religious clashes in Northern Ireland and the establishment of what became South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission after apartheid. Defusing an escalating situation ... first requires releasing a brain hijacked by defensive emotion. Phillips says it means saying to your opponent, for example: "I understand how important this is to you; I understand this is core to your identity and your community, and I respect your sacred values." It means reflecting your opponent's humanity back to them. A similar approach, he says, can help reduce toxic polarization. It's effective because in the heat of argument, people tend to demonize one another; counteracting that can neutralize assumptions of negative intent. Phillips says he's seen people emotionally disarm the opposition in a disagreement simply by recognizing their humanity. It can bring together fierce adversaries, and change history. Shirley Chisholm, the first Black congresswoman in the U.S., was battling for the Democratic presidential nomination with political rival ... George Wallace, a fierce segregationist. After he was shot in an attempted assassination, Chisholm visited him in the hospital and prayed at his bedside. "Wallace's daughter later said that that gesture of compassion completely changed her father," Phillips says. Wallace reportedly wept openly, and shifted his stance on racial segregation.

Note: Explore more positive stories like this in our comprehensive inspiring news articles archive focused on solutions and bridging divides.


How the Korean Concept of “Han” Teaches Solidarity
2022-08-04, Yes! Magazine
Posted: 2023-11-19 14:44:25
https://www.yesmagazine.org/opinion/2022/08/04/korean-concept-han-solidarity-...

At the heart of the Korean spirit is a concept called “Han.” I define Han as “irreparable sorrow.” A more accurate definition might be achieved by describing how Han expresses itself—through storytelling, song, poetry, prayer. It is the language of humanity. Suh Nam-Dong, one of the founders of Korean minjung liberation theology, described Han as “a feeling of unresolved resentment against injustices suffered, a sense of helplessness because of the overwhelming odds against one, a feeling of acute pain in one’s guts and bowels, making the whole body writhe and squirm, and an obstinate urge to take revenge and to right the wrong—all these combined.” What is omitted from such definitions, though, is the very quality that makes Han transcendent; that is, the poeticization of these profound feelings of grief and loss. It gives us a common song. That is why the African American tradition of blues serves as a great model for resilience—joy, even—in the face of unimaginable adversity. It is all the sorrows of the world experienced in communion with others. Communion and fellowship are what will get us through, no matter what the bastards do. I also think of my Quaker grandmother, Elinor Ashkenazy, who helped organize the peace boat, the Golden Rule, in the 1950s. The tiny ketch first set sail across the Pacific in 1958 with the intention of stopping the U.S. from dropping atomic bombs on the Marshall Islands. Its story was another kind of prayer, another kind of poetry—and the inspiration for the founding of Greenpeace and many other peace projects.

Note: This article was written by respected journalist and environmental activist Koohan Paik-Mander. Explore more positive stories like this in our comprehensive inspiring news articles archive focused on solutions and bridging divides.


The Theory That Men Evolved to Hunt and Women Evolved to Gather Is Wrong
2023-11-01, Scientific American
Posted: 2023-11-19 14:41:52
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-theory-that-men-evolved-to-hun...

The influential idea that in the past men were hunters and women were not isn’t supported by the available evidence. Women are physiologically better suited than men to endurance efforts such as running marathons. This advantage bears on questions about hunting because a prominent hypothesis contends that early humans are thought to have pursued prey on foot over long distances until the animals were exhausted. Furthermore, the fossil and archaeological records, as well as ethnographic studies of modern-day hunter-gatherers, indicate that women have a long history of hunting game. Females are ... dominating ultraendurance events such as the more than 260-mile Montane Spine foot race through England and Scotland, the 21-mile swim across the English Channel and the 4,300-mile Trans Am cycling race. In 2018 English runner Sophie Power ran the 105-mile Ultra-Trail du Mont-Blanc race in the Alps while still breastfeeding her three-month-old at rest stations. Observations of recent and contemporary foraging societies provide direct evidence of women participating in hunting. The most cited examples come from the Agta people of the Philippines. Agta women hunt while menstruating, pregnant and breastfeeding, and they have the same hunting success as Agta men. They are hardly alone. A recent study of ethnographic data spanning the past 100 years ... found that women from a wide range of cultures hunt animals for food.

Note: Explore more positive stories like this in our comprehensive inspiring news articles archive focused on solutions and bridging divides.


Middle East War Adds to Surge in International Arms Sales
2023-10-17, New York Times
Posted: 2023-11-12 19:46:23
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/17/us/politics/israel-gaza-global-arms-sales....

The conflict between Israel and Hamas is just the latest impetus behind a boom in international arms sales that is bolstering profits and weapons-making capacity among American suppliers. The surge in sales is providing the Biden administration with new opportunities to tie the militaries of other countries more closely to the United States, the world’s biggest arms exporter, while also raising concerns that a more heavily armed world will be prone to careen into further wars. Even before Israel responded to the deadly Hamas attack, the combination of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the perception of a rising threat from China was spurring a global rush to purchase fighter planes, missiles, tanks, artillery, munitions and other lethal equipment. Worldwide military spending last year — on weapons, personnel and other costs — hit $2.2 trillion, the highest level in inflation-adjusted dollars since at least the end of the Cold War, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, which prepares an annual tally. Excluding sales within the United States, China and Russia, worldwide spending on military procurement is expected to hit $241 billion next year, a 23 percent increase since last year. That is by far the largest two-year increase in the database maintained by Janes, a company that has been tracking military spending for nearly two decades. As of last year, the United States controlled an estimated 45 percent of the world’s weapons exports, nearly five times more than any other nation.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on military corruption from reliable major media sources.


Oxford AstraZeneca Covid jab was ‘defective’, claims landmark legal case
2023-11-08, The Telegraph (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2023-11-12 19:44:36
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/11/08/oxford-astrazeneca-covid-jab-defe...

The Oxford-AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine has been branded “defective” in a multi-million pound landmark legal action that will suggest claims over its efficacy were “vastly overstated”. The pharmaceutical giant is being sued in the High Court in a test case by Jamie Scott, a father-of-two who suffered a significant permanent brain injury that has left him unable to work as a result of a blood clot after receiving the jab in April 2021. A second claim is being brought by the widower and two young children of 35-year-old Alpa Tailor, who died after having the jab made by AstraZeneca. The test cases could pave the way for as many as 80 damages claims worth an estimated £80 million over a new condition known as Vaccine-induced Immune Thrombocytopenia and Thrombosis (VITT) that was identified by specialists in the wake of the AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine rollout. In the months following the rollout, the potential serious side effect of the AstraZeneca jab was identified by scientists. Following this, it was recommended it no longer be given to the under-40s in the UK because the risk of receiving the jab outweighed the harm posed by Covid. Official figures ... show at least 81 deaths in the UK are suspected to have been linked to the adverse reaction that caused clotting in people who also had low blood platelets. Victims and their lawyers question the Government’s monitoring of the rollout and point out that ... Germany suspended the vaccine’s use for the under 60s at the end of March 2021.

Note: In the US, when current and former FDA advisers and academics asked the FDA to improve COVID vaccine labeling given the risk of severe vaccine injuries, the agency denied almost every single request. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on coronavirus vaccines from reliable major media sources.


Killer Jab? 24% Say Someone They Know Died From COVID-19 Vaccine
2023-11-02, Rasmussen Reports
Posted: 2023-11-12 19:41:41
https://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/public_surveys/kille...

Nearly a quarter of Americans believe someone they know died from COVID-19 vaccine side effects, and even more say they might be willing to become plaintiffs in a class-action lawsuit against vaccine makers. The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone and online survey finds that 24% of American Adults say they know someone personally who died from side effects of the COVID-19 vaccine. Sixty-nine percent (69%) don’t know anyone who died from being vaccinated against the virus. (To see survey question wording, click here.) Forty-two percent (42%) say that, if there was a major class-action lawsuit against pharmaceutical companies for vaccine side effects, they would be likely to join the lawsuit, including 24% who say it’s Very Likely they’d join such a lawsuit. Forty-seven percent (47%) aren’t likely to join a class-action lawsuit against vaccine makers, including 25% who say it’s Not At All Likely. Another 11% are not sure. The survey of 1,110 American Adults was conducted on October 26 and 29-30, 2023 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Nearly half (47%) say they know someone personally who died from the COVID-19 virus, while 49% don’t know anyone who died from the virus, which became a pandemic in the United States in 2020. Among those who say someone they know died from the COVID-19 virus, 41% also say they know someone who died from side effects of the COVID-19 vaccine.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on coronavirus vaccines from reliable major media sources.


FDA Defends COVID Vaccine Against Smoking Gun Claims
2023-11-01, Newsweek
Posted: 2023-11-12 19:39:45
https://www.newsweek.com/fda-defends-covid-vaccine-against-smoking-gun-claims...

Anti-vaccine advocates have recently made allegations against the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine in hopes that the charges may hurt the drug manufacturer. In a series of posts on X (formerly Twitter), Steve Kirsch expressed concern over reports that Pfizer's vaccine was contaminated, saying that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) "is now at a crossroads." "Either they admit that they knew about the plasma contamination, and failed to disclose that to the public and to the outside committees, or they can claim that they didn't know about it in which case Pfizer is liable. But we have the Pfizer documents that were given to the FDA so we know what the FDA got," Kirsch wrote. "I seriously doubt there's any disclosure of SV40 contamination. That means we have an adulterated vaccine and the FDA has to remove it from the market until the adulteration is fixed. If the FDA doesn't do that, they should face criminal prosecution for endangering the public, and not following the law." (SV40 refers to simian virus 40.) In his posts, Kirsch also references an incident in Michigan where a judge ruled that the manufacturer of the COVID-19 medication Remdesivir was no longer protected by the federal Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness (PREP) Act after a man filed a lawsuit against the manufacturer. The man filed the suit after suffering strokes and an amputation following treatment with the drug, Remdesivir, which was contaminated with glass particles.

Note: While the data is still being uncovered, read an in-depth, scientific investigation into vaccine contamination, including concerns that Pfizer hid this contamination from regulators. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on coronavirus vaccines from reliable major media sources.


U.S. Weapons Transfers To Israel Shrouded In Secrecy — But Not Ukraine
2023-11-07, The Intercept
Posted: 2023-11-12 19:37:24
https://theintercept.com/2023/11/07/israel-us-weapons-secret/

One month since Hamas’s surprise attack, little is known about the weapons the U.S. has provided to Israel. Whereas the Biden administration released a three-page itemized list of weapons provided to Ukraine, down to the exact number of rounds, the information released about weapons sent to Israel could fit in a single sentence. A retired Marine general who worked in the region, who asked for anonymity because he was not authorized by his former employer to speak publicly, attributed the secrecy to the political sensitivity of the conflict. In particular, the retired officer said, weapons used in door-to-door urban warfare, which are likely to result in civilian casualties, are not going to be something the administration wants to publicize. The goal of removing Hamas completely from power is widely expected to take a significant commitment to a long-term ground presence and heavy urban fighting. According to the New Yorker, Israeli officials told their American counterparts that the war could last 10 years. Hamas’s attack on Israel ... resulted in a cascade of arms assistance from the U.S. Though the Biden administration at first declined to identify any specific weapons systems, as details trickled out in the press, it has gradually acknowledged some. These include “precision guided munitions, small diameter bombs, artillery, ammunition, Iron Dome interceptors and other critical equipment,” [said] Pentagon spokesperson Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder. What “other critical equipment” entails remains a mystery.

Note: From 2018-2022, the US was responsible for 40 percent of global weapons exports. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on military corruption from reliable major media sources.


Counterterror Director Used Hamas Attack To Justify Mass Surveillance Program Renewal
2023-11-06, The Intercept
Posted: 2023-11-12 19:35:55
https://theintercept.com/2023/11/06/hamas-counterterrorism-mass-surveillance-...

During a Senate briefing last week, a federal counterterrorism official cited the October 7 Hamas attack while urging Congress to reauthorize a sprawling and controversial surveillance program repeatedly used to spy on U.S. citizens on U.S. soil. “As evidenced by the events of the past month, the terrorist threat landscape is highly dynamic and our country must preserve [counterterrorism] fundamentals to ensure constant vigilance,” said Director of the National Counterterrorism Center Christine Abizaid. She pointed to Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which enables the U.S. government to gather vast amounts of intelligence — including about U.S. citizens ... without first seeking a warrant. Section 702 “provides key indications and warning on terrorist plans and ... gives us strategic insight into foreign terrorists and their networks overseas,” Abizaid said. “I respectfully urge Congress to reauthorize this vital authority.” The controversial program is set to expire at the end of the year, and lawmakers sympathetic to the intelligence community are scrambling to protect it. Sean Vitka ... at the civil liberties group Demand Progress [said] that now is the time to enact lasting and dramatic oversight of the 702 authority. “The government has completely failed to demonstrate that any of the privacy protections reformers have called for would impair national security ... so now we’re seeing people grasping at straws trying to turn everything into an excuse for reauthorization,” Vitka said.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and the disappearance of privacy from reliable major media sources.


The Israel-Hamas war has not quashed their compassion, their empathy, their hope
2023-11-05, NPR
Posted: 2023-11-12 19:34:07
https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2023/11/05/1209976575/israel-hamas-...

The morning of the Hamas attack, [Maoz] Inon's parents were at home in their community of Netiv HaAsara, a mere quarter-mile from Gaza. A Hamas fighter launched a rocket-propelled grenade that directly hit his parents' wooden house. Amid this sea of grief that he's cratered into, Inon says he feels no urge for revenge. "I was crying, and I'm still crying, for all the innocent victims from both sides that will die," he says. "And I'm crying for this 100 years of bloodshed, of cycle of death." Inon says that this cycle can seem endless, but he has hope. "It seems like there is no solution," he says, "but there is." Inon says he had something of a vision after this war began. "I saw an image of everyone crying," he recalls. He says we shouldn't have more weapons, build higher walls and create better security systems. "That's the old world, OK? You want to start a new world? We need to cry ... And then," he says, "we'll see the path for peace." In one of [political psychologist Oded Adomi] Leshem's research studies, he shows that Jewish Israelis and Palestinians consistently underestimate the other group's hope for peace. "This underestimation actually reduces one's own hope." Unlike conflict, which Leshem says is bloody but familiar to Israelis and Palestinians, hope is different. It's unfamiliar and unpredictable. "If we kind of accept this unpredictability," he says, "take the chance [on] this uncertain thing — which is called peace between the [Jordan] River and the [Mediterranean] Sea — then this is closely related to hope."

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on war from reliable major media sources.


Billion-dollar prisons: why the US is pouring money into new construction
2023-10-28, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2023-11-12 19:32:40
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/oct/28/states-spending-money-build-p...

At a time when the US has narrowly skirted a recession, and people around the country are still struggling with the cost of living, a curious number of states have found billions of dollars for one thing: building prisons and jails. In September, Alabama announced that a new prison, currently under construction, would have a final cost of $1.082bn. The same month Indiana broke ground on a $1.2bn prison. Nebraska is spending $350m on a new prison, while some in Georgia are lobbying for $1.69bn for construction of a jail in Fulton county. The willingness to spend vast amounts of money on locking people up, particularly in states like Alabama, which has one of the highest poverty rates in the country, is staggering. It’s also wrong-headed, experts say. “Any money spent on caging human beings is not money well spent, period,” said Carmen Gutierrez ... at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. “We have decades of research showing that incarceration does not improve public safety, and that it in fact harms individuals who themselves are incarcerated. It also harms their families and it harms the communities that they come from. So the damage outweighs any potential benefit.” The US has an incarceration rate of 664 people in every 100,000 ... far higher than other founding Nato countries. In Alabama, Georgia and other southern states about one in every 100 people is incarcerated in prisons, jails, immigration detention and juvenile justice facilities.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on prison system corruption from reliable major media sources.


Insurance Industry Execs ‘Alarmed’ by Surge in Deaths Among Young People — But Stop Short of Blaming COVID Shots
2023-11-06, The Defender
Posted: 2023-11-12 19:30:52
https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/surge-young-people-deaths-insuran...

Executives at the largest insurance companies in the United States are alarmed that teenagers, young and white-collar Americans in the prime of life are inexplicably dying at a record pace, causing a “monumental outflow” of death claims. According to an Oct. 26 report in InsuranceNewsNet, U.S. insurance companies expected higher-than-normal payouts from excess deaths during the COVID-19 pandemic. Insurers saw death benefits rise 15.4% in 2020, the biggest one-year increase since the 1918 Spanish flu epidemic, followed by a record $100.28 billion — nearly double the historic norm — in total death benefits paid out by the industry in 2021. CDC numbers ... show the death rate for Americans ages 15-45 rose 20-24% above normal in 2020, and soared in 2021, to a nearly 30% death increase for 15-year-olds and a more than 45% increase for 45-year-olds. CDC data reported in August showed that Americans in the period January-May 2023 were still dying at abnormally high rates with the pandemic long over. Dr. Pierre Kory ... who treats long COVID and vaccine-injured patients in his practice, called on insurance companies to work with media and governments and investigate the powerful evidence that countless deaths and disabilities are temporally linked to the COVID-19 mRNA vaccines. Kory cited the more than 1 million COVID-19 vaccine-linked injuries, disabilities and more than 30,000 deaths reported ... to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS).

Note: Mentioned in this article is critical care physician Dr. Pierre Kory, who recently published an in-depth explanation on the link between COVID-19 mRNA vaccines and excess death among American youth. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on coronavirus vaccines from reliable major media sources.


Innocent Lives in the Balance: The Real Risk of Executing the Innocent
2023-10-10, ScheerPost
Posted: 2023-11-12 19:29:04
https://scheerpost.com/2023/10/10/innocent-lives-in-the-balance-the-real-risk...

Since 1973, at least 194 people have been freed from death row after evidence of innocence revealed that they had been wrongfully convicted. That’s almost one person exonerated for every ten who’ve been executed. Wrongful convictions rob innocent people of decades of their lives, waste tax dollars, and re-traumatize the victim’s family, while the people responsible remain unaccountable. Contrary to popular belief, the appeals process is not designed to catch cases of innocence. It is simply to determine whether the original trial was conducted properly. Most exonerations came only because of the extraordinary efforts of people working outside the system – pro bono lawyers, family members, even students. Wrongfully convicted people have spent up to 33 years on death row ... before the truth came to light. Any effort to streamline the death penalty process or cut appeals will only increase the risk that an innocent person is executed. Frank Lee Smith was sentenced to death in Florida on the testimony of a single witness. Four years later, the same witness saw a photo of a different man and realized she had made a mistake. DNA tests later confirmed that Smith was innocent, but it was too late. He had died in prison. Cameron Todd Willingham was executed in Texas in 2004 for setting fire to his home, killing his three children. Experts now say that the arson theories used in the investigation are scientifically invalid. Willingham may very well have been executed for an accidental fire.

Note: Read more about the innocent people sentenced to death in the US. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on judicial system corruption from reliable major media sources.


Healing Past the Trauma
2021-08-05, The Philadelphia Citizen
Posted: 2023-11-12 19:25:17
https://thephiladelphiacitizen.org/healing-past-the-trauma/

In October of 2020 I sat in on a Zoom call with a group of formerly incarcerated men brainstorming the causes of escalating gun violence in Philadelphia. The meeting was part of an intergenerational healing circle for formerly incarcerated men from ages 17 to 50. All of the men are trying to figure out their place in the world post-incarceration. The hope was to support them in achieving their self-determined vision of wellness, through connections to community resources and opportunities. The program was created as part of a $100,000 grant that the Philadelphia Youth Sentencing & Reentry Project (YSRP) received from Impact100. The men talk about emotions in ways they probably can’t in other parts of their lives, but they also talk about practical things—finding work, maintaining healthy relationships, looking for a place to live. But most importantly they are able to talk to someone else who has experienced the things they experienced. The Intergenerational Healing Circle ... had four core goals: understanding and healing from trauma; creating connectedness rooted in shared experience of incarceration and reentry; developing agency and liberation-oriented leadership; and community building. “It’s this relatedness and willingness to be vulnerable in the IGHC that makes this experience rewarding and transformative,” says John Pace, [a] Reentry Coordinator at the Youth Sentencing & Reentry Project. “While in prison, we often had to suppress our vulnerabilities ... so this space for us is truly healing.”

Note: Explore more positive stories like this in our comprehensive inspiring news articles archive focused on solutions and bridging divides.


The Prison-to-Hollywood Pipeline Is the Stuff of Cinematic Dreams
2023-10-26, Reasons to be Cheerful
Posted: 2023-11-12 19:23:29
https://reasonstobecheerful.world/hollywood-jobs-film-tv-manifestworks/

ManifestWorks [is] a unique program that guides people from homelessness, incarceration and foster care directly into entry-level jobs in film and TV. “When I started the ManifestWorks program, it was more than just learning the steps. It was really therapeutic for me,” says Leslie. “It was uplifting during a time when I was really not in a good place.” By the third week of classes, Leslie had secured her first gig as a production assistant. The same person who hired her brought her back for the next two years and seeded additional relationships that led to more work. Today, Leslie works in a sound department as a union member, has consistent work at a living wage and has been able to upgrade both her housing and her car. The nonprofit ManifestWorks has more than 270 alumni currently working in the film industry, and purposely recruits its students from populations that face barriers to success. According to ManifestWorks, 25 percent of foster care youth end up incarcerated within two years of turning 18, and unemployment impacts the formerly incarcerated at a rate 12 times higher than the national average. Some 71 percent of ManifestWorks’ trainees are on welfare when they start the program — after a year, that number drops to seven percent on average. And 92 percent of ManifestWorks alumni are employed full time with an average annual income of $62,000, up from the average of $12,500 when trainees first start.

Note: Explore more positive stories like this in our comprehensive inspiring news articles archive focused on solutions and bridging divides.


Students building bridges across the American divide
2023-10-08, CBS News
Posted: 2023-11-12 19:21:55
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/american-exchange-project-building-bridges-acros...

This past summer more than 300 high school graduates signed up for a unique student exchange program. Unlike the well-known foreign exchange model ... this program gives students the opportunity to soak in a brand-new culture without ever leaving the country. It's called the American Exchange Project, or AEP for short, co-founded by 29-year-old David McCullough III. "We fund kids to spend a week in the summer after senior year in an American town that is politically and socio-economically and culturally very different from the one that they're growing up in," McCullough said. One student, Alex, said, "My groups of friends are not really close to each other, so I feel like I've actually bonded with you guys more than I have with my own friends." One girl from South Dakota said, "I've never been a part of a community where ... I'm not the minority, I'm not the odd one out. So, this is very much an experience that I really appreciate so much." McCullough hopes to offer the program to a million students a year by decade's end, and all free of charge, thanks to big name donors, including the likes of Steven Spielberg. "I think this all ought to be as typical to the American high school experience as the prom," McCullough said. There's that old adage about walking a mile in someone else's shoes; the problem is, you can't see the person face-to-face if you're walking away. What David McCullough is hoping is the next generation will turn around, look those they differ with in the eye, and just talk.

Note: Explore more positive stories like this in our comprehensive inspiring news articles archive focused on solutions and bridging divides.


Food Industry Influence Could Cloud the U.S. Dietary Guidelines, a New Report Says
2023-10-04, New York Times
Posted: 2023-11-07 16:25:37
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/04/well/eat/dietary-guidelines-food-industry....

Some of the experts responsible for helping to craft the U.S. dietary guidelines also take money from big food and drug companies. A report ... by the nonprofit U.S. Right to Know makes those concerns plain. Nine of the 20 experts on the 2025 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee have had conflicts of interest in the food, beverage, pharmaceutical or weight loss industries in the last five years, the report found. Gary Ruskin, the executive director of the nonprofit, said the finding “erodes confidence in the dietary guidelines,” which provide recommendations on how people can eat a healthier diet. The guidelines are widely used by policymakers to set priorities in federal food programs, health care and education. Questions about industry influence could damage the public’s trust that the recommendations are based in science. When committee members receive funding from certain industry groups or organizations, it raises the concern that they may be biased, Dr. [Marion] Nestle said. “Part of the problem is the influence is unconscious,” she said. “People don’t recognize it,” she added, and will often deny it. Even if such relationships do not influence the experts, Mr. Ruskin said, they can create the appearance that they do — which can seed doubt about how independent the committee’s recommendations actually are. Industry influence can [also] creep in later in the process ... when the U.S.D.A. and the H.H.S. produce the final guidelines based on the committee’s advice.

Note: U.S. Right to Know is an excellent resource for investigating how the food industry shapes science, policy and public opinion. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on food system corruption from reliable major media sources.


Food additive or carcinogen? The growing list of chemicals banned by EU but used in US
2022-06-23, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2023-11-07 16:18:05
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/jun/23/titanium-dioxide-banned-c...

There’s a hidden ingredient used as a whitener in an array of foods. It’s called titanium dioxide, and while commonly used in the US, it’s being banned in the EU as a possible carcinogen. The additive, also known as E171, joins a host of other chemicals that are banned in foods in the European Union but allowed in the US. These include Azodicarbonamide, a whitening agent found in food such as breads, bagels, pizza, and pastries in the US, which has been banned in the EU for more than a decade. The additive has been linked to asthma and respiratory issues in exposed workers and, when baked, to cancer in mice studies. The Food and Drug Administration classifies these food chemicals, and many others prohibited by the EU, as “generally recognized as safe”. Chemical safety processes in the EU and US work in starkly different ways. Where European policy tends to take a precautionary approach – trying to prevent harm before it happens – the US is usually more reactive. And while the EU has consistently updated its methods and processes for evaluating new chemicals, some experts say the US system, set up more than half a century ago, needs updating. In the case of additives like titanium dioxide, manufacturers petition the FDA for its approval by submitting evidence that the substance is safe for its intended use. The FDA evaluates the application, and will authorize the additive if it concludes the data provided demonstrates that the substance is safe to use.

Note: Unlike other countries, the U.S. is known to raise objections to the regulation of toxic chemicals in our food, with its regulatory agencies having deep financial ties to powerful food and agrichemical industries. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on food system corruption from reliable major media sources.


‘Hamas has created additional demand’: Wall Street eyes big profits from war
2023-10-30, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2023-11-07 16:16:28
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/30/wall-street-morgan-stanley-td-b...

The United Nations has warned that there was “clear evidence” that war crimes may have been committed in “the explosion of violence in Israel and Gaza”. Meanwhile, Wall Street is hoping for an explosion in profits. During third-quarter earnings calls this month, analysts from Morgan Stanley and TD Bank took note of this potential profit-making escalation in conflict and asked unusually blunt questions about the financial benefit of the war between Israel and Hamas. TD Cowen’s Cai von Rumohr, managing director and senior research analyst specializing in the aerospace industry, [asked] about the upside for General Dynamics, an aerospace and weapons company in which TD Asset Management holds over $16m in stock. The aerospace and weapons sector ... enjoyed a 7-percentage point jump in value in the immediate aftermath of Hamas’s 7 October attack on Israel and the beginning of Israel’s bombardment of Gaza. “Hamas has created additional demand, we have this $106bn request from the president,” said Von Rumohr, during General Dynamics’ earnings call on 25 October. “Can you give us some general color in terms of areas where you think you could see incremental acceleration in demand?” Aside from the callousness of casually discussing the financial benefits of far-off armed conflict, the comments raise questions about whether these major institutional shareholders of weapons stocks are abiding by their own human rights policies.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on war and corporate corruption from reliable major media sources.


As Gaza crumbles, those speaking up for innocent Palestinians are being silenced and sacked
2023-10-31, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2023-11-07 16:14:42
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/oct/31/gaza-innocent-palestini...

Ever since Israel responded to Hamas’s atrocities with a vicious onslaught that has killed more than 8,000 Palestinians there has been an attempt to silence, intimidate and harass Palestinian sympathisers. Inevitably, it is Palestinians who suffer the brunt of a campaign to stigmatise even the most basic opposition to the mass slaughter of their people. Viet Thanh Nguyen, the son of refugees and a sympathiser with other displaced people, had a talk at the 92nd Street Y centre in New York postponed after he signed an open letter demanding an “end to the violence and destruction in Palestine”. What of the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights, whose longstanding conference in Houston was cancelled following the Orthodox Jewish Chamber of Commerce describing the event as “a conference for Hamas supporters”? The Hilton cited security concerns as the reason for the cancellation. The keynote speaker, Rashida Tlaib, the first ever elected Palestinian-American congresswoman, has been targeted by a Republican smear campaign, with an attempt to censure her for “antisemitic activity” and “sympathising with terrorist organisations” – all baseless attacks. Meanwhile, MSNBC reportedly stopped three of its Muslim broadcasters from presenting their shows, with no explanation. The broadcaster claimed any change in programming as “coincidental”. This intimidation has deadly consequences: it undermines public pressure on Israel’s western allies to stop the slaughter and end the occupation.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on war and media manipulation from reliable sources.


The growing case for doing less: How harmless cancers are being overdiagnosed in America
2023-10-02, Fortune
Posted: 2023-11-07 16:13:05
https://fortune.com/2023/10/02/growing-case-for-doing-less-harmless-cancers-o...

In 2009, Laura Esserman, a breast cancer surgeon and oncology specialist in San Francisco, co-published an article in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) suggesting that it was time to rethink routine screening for breast and prostate cancer. The current approach, she wrote, wasn’t reducing aggressive or late-stage disease as much as had been hoped. Instead, it was leading to overdiagnosis. Ductal carcinoma in situ, a condition sometimes called non-invasive or stage-zero breast cancer, is a very early finding of disease in the cells that line the milk ducts of the breast. For decades, the diagnosis of DCIS has routinely led to surgery–a mastectomy or a lumpectomy (a partial breast resection) that’s often combined with radiation treatment. The issue? In a study of 100,000 women who were followed for two decades, patients who’d been diagnosed with and treated for DCIS ultimately had about the same chance of dying from breast cancer as those in the general population. In August, a meta-analysis of 18 randomized clinical trials involving 2.1 million people, published in JAMA Internal Medicine, concluded that “current evidence does not substantiate the claim” that common cancer screens (mammography, colonoscopy, prostate-specific antigen (PSA) testing, etc) save lives. “In our exuberance to find these cancers, we have basically turned a lot of healthy people who are not destined to die from the cancers into patients,” says Ade Adamson, a cancer screening expert.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on health from reliable major media sources. Then explore the excellent, reliable resources provided in our Health Information Center.


As Ozempic use grows, so do reports of possible mental health side effects
2023-09-21, NPR
Posted: 2023-11-07 16:11:43
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2023/09/21/1200201186/as-ozempic-us...

Nearly three months into taking Ozempic for diabetes, Jenny Kent had already lost 12 pounds, and her blood sugar numbers were looking better than they had in a while. Ozempic, the injectable drug approved for Type 2 diabetes, has taken the world by storm. Despite not being approved by the Food and Drug Administration for weight loss, Ozempic has prompted people on TikTok and Instagram to speculate about which stars have used it to shed pounds seemingly overnight. But for Kent something else changed after she started taking Ozempic. "I was just constantly in a state of being overwhelmed," says Kent. "So my response to that was just I was just crying all the time. Sobbing, crying ... I still didn't put it together, so I kept ... taking my injections." She's one of many people taking Ozempic and related drugs who describe mental health problems. But that side effect isn't mentioned in Ozempic's instructions for use, or drug label. In July, the European Medicines Agency said that it was looking into the risk of thoughts of self-harm and suicidal thoughts with the use of Ozempic and similar drugs. The FDA hasn't taken that step. NPR analyzed the FDA's adverse event reporting system, or FAERS, and learned that the agency has received 489 reports of patients experiencing anxiety, depression or suicidal thoughts while taking semaglutide drugs, including Ozempic, Wegovy and Rybelsus. In 96 of those reports, the patient had suicidal thoughts. Five of them died.

Note: A deeper investigation explores the concerning scope of health issues related to weight-loss drug side effects. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on Big Pharma corruption from reliable major media sources.


Ozempic, Mounjaro manufacturers testing weight loss drugs for kids
2023-10-22, MSN News
Posted: 2023-11-07 16:10:04
https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/other/ozempic-mounjaro-manufacturers-testing...

Companies that make popular weight loss shots like Ozempic and Mounjaro are starting to test a version for kids as young as six years old who suffer from obesity. Pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly signaled its plans to start clinical trials with Mounjaro for kids ages 6-11, over the weekend. Novo Nordisk, the company that makes Ozempic, reported it is in phase three of testing Saxenda, a version of its drug for children ages 6-12. The rates of obesity for children in the U.S. have tripled since the 1980s, affecting close to 15 million children nationwide, according to the CDC. This is nearly one in five kids. “It’s unlikely it’s going to do much if you just give them the medication. You need to instill all these behavior changes, lifestyle changes, talk about the diet, nutrition consults, the exercise,” said pediatrician Dr. Alison Mitzner. The concern for possible long-term impacts and side effects is one nutritionist Carrie Lupoli echoes. Both drug companies were sued earlier this year after a plaintiff said she suffered stomach paralysis. “It’s scary to me that we are going down that path instead of actually working on the root cause because we know weight gain is a symptom of health and hormones,” Lupoli said. CDC data shows kids may have gained weight twice as fast during the pandemic. Earlier this year, the American Academy of Pediatrics came out with new guidance that includes medication and surgery as suggestions for patients 12 and up suffering from obesity.

Note: The pharmaceutical companies behind these weight loss drugs are raking it in despite significant efficacy and safety concerns. Sales of Ozempic generated revenue of $3.2 billion in the second quarter (up from $2.1 billion during the same period in 2022) and Mounjaro generated $980 million in sales for the company during the second quarter (a 72% increase compared to the first quarter). For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on Big Pharma corruption from reliable major media sources.


‘Very little yield’: has genetically targeted medicine really made us healthier?
2023-09-09, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2023-11-07 16:08:28
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/sep/09/precision-medicine-targeted-p...

After spending 13 years and $2.7bn, the Human Genome Project announced in 2003 that it had successfully mapped our DNA, paving the way for a new era of medicine that would deliver “the right treatment, for the right patient, at the right time”. Twenty years later, some say the “era of precision medicine” has arrived. But others disagree. They argue that the gains have been small, and pursuing them may have diverted attention from the preventable causes of common diseases. Some doctors and academics say that too much emphasis is placed on our genes, and not enough on environment and lifestyle. “There’s this paradox where the more we learn about the human genome, the less we should expect it to actually have significant impacts for most patients,” [Prof. James] Tabery says. “There’s plenty of information to suggest that if we really wanted to combat common diseases, we should be focusing on environmental causes.” In countries with insurance-based healthcare systems such as the US, expensive drugs can take an enormous toll on individuals, leading some clinicians to identify a new side-effect: “financial toxicity”. “A new drug offers some health benefits to those patients that receive it,” explains Mark Sculpher ... at the University of York. “But depending on the cost of that drug, you may end up with other patients losing more health, because that’s resources taken from them. So you can have this negative overall population health effect if you pay too much for a drug.”

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on health from reliable major media sources.


Americans Are Fools for Pharma
2023-10-24, The DisInformation Chronicle on Substack
Posted: 2023-11-07 16:06:44
https://disinformationchronicle.substack.com/p/americans-are-fools-for-pharma

While I was out of town on business, I got a call from my dad who told me my husband Woody had been found hanging—dead at age 37. Woody wasn’t depressed and he hadn’t had a history of depression nor any other mental illness. His doctor had prescribed the antidepressant Zoloft to take the edge off. In the following weeks, I started to investigate, to try and understand why my perfectly normal husband had decided to end his life. The only thing that made sense ... Zoloft. Figuring out Zoloft’s dangers completely altered my life’s trajectory, absorbing years of my time. Today, I sit on one of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) advisory committees that reviews new drugs coming to market. I initially thought that what I was learning about Zoloft was just an isolated issue with antidepressants. But I soon realized it was part of a much bigger, systemic problem with our nation’s drug safety system. The pharmaceutical industry is driven by commercial interests, not public health, and this problem is compounded by a lack of transparency, conflicts of interests, manipulation of clinical trials, and undue corporate influence across the government. Marketing companies ghostwrite pharmaceutical studies for academics who sometimes barely read the papers that get submitted to medical journals, and drug makers then cite these ghostwritten studies as peer-reviewed proof of their products’ safety and efficacy. The revolving door between Big Pharma and the FDA spins faster than the one between the Pentagon and the defense industry.

Note: This guest essay is written by Kim Witczak, a globally renowned advocate for pharmaceutical drug safety and FDA reform. Antidepressants have been found to increase the risk of suicide in some patients. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on health and Big Pharma corruption from reliable major media sources.


Eighty Percent of the Population Will Get Treated for Mental Illness in their Lifetime—and They’re Worse Off Afterward
2023-10-23, Mad in America
Posted: 2023-11-07 16:05:13
https://www.madinamerica.com/2023/10/eighty-percent-of-the-population-will-ge...

A new study published in JAMA Psychiatry finds that almost everyone will be treated for mental illness at some point in their lives and that their lives are worse in many ways after receiving diagnosis and treatment. About 80% of the population will be hospitalized or receive psychiatric drugs. After treatment, they are more likely to end up poor, unemployed, and receiving disability benefits, and they have worsening social connections. According to the researchers, the likelihood of getting prescribed psychiatric drugs during your lifetime was 82.6% (87.5% for women and 76.7% for men). The likelihood of being hospitalized for mental illness was 29.0% (31.8% for women and 26.1% for men). On average, the 80% who were treated for mental illness were already struggling before treatment. But after treatment, things only got worse. After treatment, “individuals with any mental health disorder were more likely to experience new socioeconomic difficulties, compared with control individuals from the general population,” the researchers write. “During follow-up, they were more likely to become unemployed or receive a disability benefit, to earn lower income, to be living alone, and to be unmarried.” There is copious evidence that antidepressant use leads to worse outcomes in the long term, even after controlling for the severity of depression and other factors. The adverse effects of the drugs lead to worse health outcomes for those taking them, and withdrawal symptoms prevent people from being able to discontinue.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on health from reliable major media sources. Then explore the excellent, reliable resources provided in our Health Information Center.


Building bridges in the midst of conflict: 12 organizations working for Israel-Palestine peace
2023-10-25, Optimist Daily
Posted: 2023-11-07 16:03:32
https://www.optimistdaily.com/2023/10/building-bridges-in-the-midst-of-confli...

While the sad reality of violence and division dominates the media, countless grassroots organizations are working tirelessly to bring peace and reconciliation to the Israel-Palestine conflict. As the region continues to be ravaged by violence, Standing Together, Israel’s largest Arab-Jewish grassroots organization, brings together Jewish and Palestinian volunteers. They labor relentlessly to assist victims of continuous violence while also campaigning for peace, equality, social justice, and climate justice. Their message is clear: the future they envision is one of peace, Israeli and Palestinian independence, full equality, and environmental justice. The Parents Circle – Families Forum, which includes over 600 families who have lost loved ones in the conflict, is a symbol of reconciliation. This joint Israeli-Palestinian organization encourages conversation and reconciliation through education, public gatherings, and media participation, presenting a ray of hope for a future of coexistence. Integrated schools in Israel, where Jewish and Palestinian children attend classes together, serve as an example of a more inclusive future. Hand in Hand promotes understanding by bringing parents together for debate and shared study of Hebrew and Arabic. They are sowing seeds of oneness. Jerusalem Peacebuilders brings together Israelis, Palestinians, and Americans with the goal of developing tomorrow’s leaders. Their work highlights the futility of violent war and the critical need for nonviolence.

Note: Explore more positive stories like this in our comprehensive inspiring news articles archive focused on solutions and bridging divides.


Rojava’s Women-Led Restorative Justice System Centers Mediation, Not Retribution
2023-10-20, Truthout
Posted: 2023-11-07 16:01:47
https://truthout.org/articles/rojavas-women-led-restorative-justice-system-ce...

A growing women-led restorative justice system ... operates within the territory of the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES), also known as Rojava, a revolutionary social experiment involving more than 4.5 million people. The system features a network, autonomous from the AANES, of more than 60 Mala Jin, or “women’s houses,” which allow people to solve disputes at the community level, instead of through courts or police, by offering reconciliation and mediation processes for domestic and family situations. Activist and independent researcher Clara Moore ... recently returned from spending two years in the region, working at both the Rojava Information Center and at Mala Jin. "Essentially, they’re trying to build a system around the political philosophy of Democratic Confederalism, which was initially inspired by the ideas of [the American intellectual] Murray Bookchin and theorized by [Kurdish leader] Abdullah Öcalan from prison in Turkey," [said Moore]. "It’s based on ideas of pluralism, direct democracy, decentralization, gender equality and self-defense. In practice, this means that all communities have the ability and right to defend themselves and provide for their own needs. The idea of the justice system in Rojava, in North and East Syria in general, is that it’s possible to solve a dispute without going to court. There are laws in Rojava and courts. Ideally, those only become relevant when people can’t come to a resolution together outside of court."

Note: Explore more positive stories like this in our comprehensive inspiring news articles archive focused on solutions and bridging divides.


California becomes the first state to ban 4 food additives linked to disease
2023-10-10, NPR
Posted: 2023-11-07 16:00:20
https://www.npr.org/2023/10/10/1204839281/california-ban-food-additives-red-d...

California has become the first U.S. state to outlaw the use of four potentially harmful food and drink additives that have been linked to an array of diseases, including cancer, and are already banned in dozens of countries. The California Food Safety Act prohibits the manufacturing, distribution and sale of food and beverages that contain brominated vegetable oil, potassium bromate, propylparaben and red dye 3 — which can be found in candy, fruit juices, cookies and more. The Food and Drug Administration banned the use of red dye 3 in cosmetics in 1990 after evidence showed it caused cancer in lab animals. But the government hasn't prohibited its use in food, and it's an ingredient in candies. Brominated vegetable oil and potassium bromate have also been associated with harmful effects on the respiratory and nervous systems, while propylparaben may negatively impact reproductive health. The proposal has been the target of a false claim that California is attempting to ban Skittles. In fact, Assemblymember Jesse Gabriel, a Democrat who sponsored the bill, has said that Skittles are sold with alternative ingredients in the European Union, where the four additives are already banned. "It's unacceptable that the U.S. is so far behind the rest of the world when it comes to food safety," Gabriel said in a statement. In addition to the EU, countries that have banned the four additives in food include the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, China and Japan.

Note: Explore more positive stories like this in our comprehensive inspiring news articles archive focused on solutions and bridging divides.


What will the children who survive the onslaught of Gaza think of those who let it happen?
2023-10-23, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2023-10-29 17:32:36
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/oct/23/israel-palestine-childr...

The screams of children are difficult to hear over the noise and fury of the Gaza maelstrom. In a joint statement on Sunday, the US, Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Canada called for “adherence to international humanitarian law, including the protection of civilians”. But they know full well that, in Gaza, the exact opposite is happening. And it’s not only them. The likes of China and Russia are doing nothing to stop it, either. Last week, the Save the Children charity reported that one child in Gaza was being killed every 15 minutes. On Saturday, the Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor was estimating a daily death toll of 200 children and infants. Of the more than 4,600 Palestinians killed since Israeli forces began their bombardment, about 40% are children, the Hamas-run Palestinian health ministry says. Behind these stark figures lies a world of pain. At least 3,250 children have been injured, with 1,240 needing specialised medical care, as of last week. Many have extensive burns and shrapnel wounds or have lost limbs. Yet hospitals and clinics that have been damaged or destroyed or are short of medical supplies – due to Israel’s siege – are unable to treat them adequately. “Israel’s bombardment and unlawful total blockade of Gaza mean that countless wounded and sick children, among many other civilians, will die for want of medical care,” said Human Rights Watch. Killing and targeting civilians, especially children, is illegal under international humanitarian law.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on war from reliable major media sources.


The U.N. Is Powerless to Help Gaza. That’s How the U.S. Wants It.
2023-10-21, The Intercept
Posted: 2023-10-29 17:30:59
https://theintercept.com/2023/10/21/security-council-veto-united-nations/

On Wednesday, the United States was the only country to vote “no” on a proposed U.N. Security Council resolution authored by Brazil that called for “humanitarian pauses” in Israel’s bombing of Gaza. Twelve countries voted for the resolution, including several surprising ones, such as France and the United Arab Emirates. Two more, Russia and the U.K., abstained. But according to the Security Council’s rules, America’s sole “no” vote meant that the resolution failed. The Security Council has 15 countries. Ten are rotating members, elected by the U.N. General Assembly and serving on the council for a period of two years. Five are permanent members: the U.S., Russia, China, France, and the U.K. If any of the permanent members vetoes a resolution, it will not pass, no matter how many votes are in favor. The first U.S. veto to protect Israel occurred in 1972. Since then, the U.S. has vetoed about four dozen more resolutions criticizing Israel. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia has similarly vetoed numerous resolutions to protect its own client state, Syria, as well as itself concerning Ukraine. Since the U.N.’s founding, it has largely always been a debating society because the world’s most powerful countries, led by the U.S., want it that way. There has recently been renewed energy at the U.N. to change things. However, given the fact that the five permanent members can block any changes, the best idea that anyone could come up with was to ask them nicely to change.

Note: Israel has been the largest recipient of U.S. military assistance, receiving $158 billion since the country’s establishment in 1948. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on war and government corruption from reliable major media sources.


‘On Thin Ice’: Some Biden Administration Staffers Feel Stifled Discussing Horrors In Gaza
2023-10-18, Huffington Post
Posted: 2023-10-29 17:29:22
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/biden-administration-gaza-dissent_n_652f42b0e4...

President Joe Biden departed for Israel on Tuesday evening on a high-stakes diplomatic visit amid ongoing Israeli-Palestinian bloodshed. As Biden grapples with the crisis, several U.S. officials told HuffPost it has become difficult to have a full debate within his administration about what’s happening in Israel-Palestine and in particular that people who want to talk about Israeli restraint or humanitarian protections for Palestinians feel stifled. Several staffers across multiple agencies, most of whom work on national security issues, told HuffPost they and their colleagues worry about retaliation at work for questioning Israel’s conduct amid the U.S.-backed Israeli campaign to avenge an Oct. 7 attack by Hamas, the Palestinian militant group, that killed more than 1,400 Israelis. The fear is especially intense among staffers with Muslim backgrounds. On Sunday, presidential personnel office chief Gautam Raghavan organized a call with close to a dozen current and former high-level Muslim appointees to discuss their concerns. Some staffers said they felt unsafe voicing their opinions around colleagues because it could endanger their careers, according to a person on the call. The period since the Hamas attack represents “the first time in the administration that there was a real culture of silence,” one official said. “It feels like post-9/11 where you feel like your thoughts are being policed, and you’re really afraid of being seen as anti-American or an anti-Semite.”

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on war and government corruption from reliable major media sources.


Law enforcement eyes opioid settlement cash for squad cars and body scanners
2023-10-20, NPR
Posted: 2023-10-29 17:27:34
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2023/10/20/1206326239/law-enforceme...

Policing expenses mount quickly: $18,000 for technology to unlock cellphones in Southington, Conn.; $2,900 for surveillance cameras and to train officers and canines in New Lexington, Ohio. And in other communities around the country, hundreds of thousands for vehicles, body scanners, and other equipment. State and local governments are turning to a new means to pay those bills: opioid settlement cash. This money — totaling more than $50 billion across 18 years — comes from national settlements with more than a dozen companies that made, sold, or distributed opioid painkillers, including Johnson & Johnson, AmerisourceBergen, and Walmart, which were accused of fueling the epidemic that addicted and killed millions. In August, more than 200 researchers and clinicians delivered a call to action to government officials in charge of opioid settlement funds. "More policing is not the answer to the overdose crisis," they wrote. Years of research suggests law enforcement and criminal justice initiatives have exacerbated the problem. "Police activity is actually causing the very harms that police activity is supposed to be stemming," says Jennifer Carroll, an author of that study and an addiction policy researcher. In Louisiana ... 80% of settlement dollars are flowing to parish governments and 20% to sheriffs' departments. Over the lifetime of the settlements, sheriffs' offices in the state will receive more than $65 million — the largest direct allocation to law enforcement nationwide. And they do not have to account for how they spend it.

Note: Explore past news articles we've summarized on opioids, a crisis fueled by US drug companies and captured government agencies. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on police corruption from reliable major media sources.


Police love Google’s surveillance data. Here’s how to protect yourself.
2023-10-24, Washington Post
Posted: 2023-10-29 17:26:09
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/10/24/google-privacy-police-ge...

A recent court ruling in Colorado highlighted how Google’s tracking of our locations and web searches helps police find suspects when they have few leads — but it’s also sweeping innocent people into investigations. Google says it has procedures to “protect the privacy of our users while supporting the important work of law enforcement.” But defense attorneys and civil liberties advocates say that Google is a gold mine for novel police methods that they call unconstitutional fishing expeditions. Even if you believe you have nothing to hide from law enforcement, relentless digital tracking of Americans risks our information falling into criminals’ hands, too. Law enforcement officials say that Google’s data on people’s locations and search histories helps solve crimes, including in the 2021 Capitol riot. In initial court-ordered warrants to Google, the company typically gives police information that isn’t connected to people’s identity. Only after they single out potentially suspicious data do the police go back for individually identifiable information. But defense lawyers and privacy advocates say the two types of broad warrants to Google turn normal police work upside down and threaten Americans’ rights. In a typical search warrant, police have a suspect in mind and ask for a judge’s approval to search their home, phone data and other potential evidence. In the large-scale search term and location warrants, police know a crime occurred but don’t know who might have committed it.

Note: Explore news articles we've summarized on the troubling nature of the use of location tracking by governments and corporations. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on police corruption and the disappearance of privacy from reliable major media sources.


New York Court Just Reinstated Fired Unvaccinated Workers – What That Could Mean For Workers Across The Country
2022-10-28, Forbes
Posted: 2023-10-29 17:23:22
https://www.forbes.com/sites/tomspiggle/2022/10/28/a-new-york-court-just-rein...

George Garvey, along with several other individuals (collectively, Petitioners) are former NYC Department of Sanitation workers who got fired for their failure to get vaccinated or obtain an approved exemption. They filed a lawsuit pursuant to Article 78 of the New York Civil Practice Law and Rules. They sued NYC, the NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, the NYC Department of Sanitation, the NYC Commissioner of the NY Department of Health and Mental Hygiene and the Mayor of NYC (collectively, Respondents). Judge Ralph J. Porzio issued an order essentially dismissing the Respondent’s arguments and accepting most of the Petitioners’ arguments. The order commanded that all terminated Petitioners be reinstated on October 25, 2022 and collect back pay from their date of termination. The court held that the vaccination mandate was unlawful. First, it was arbitrary and capricious. The court ... argued that it treated similarly situated people differently without providing evidence to support the unequal treatment. Athletes, performers and artists could be exempted from the vaccination requirement, but the Petitioner could not. The court noted that the Petitioners could continue working while their exemption requests were being processed. Therefore, the court felt that the vaccination mandate was never about public safety. Because if it was, any unvaccinated workers would have immediately been placed on leave until a decision concerning their requests for a coronavirus vaccine exemption.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and coronavirus vaccines from reliable major media sources.


Is Biden Willing to Damage Relations With a Staunch Ally Like Australia in His Headlong Prosecution of Julian Assange?
2023-10-22, LA Progressive
Posted: 2023-10-29 17:20:55
https://www.laprogressive.com/law-and-the-justice-system/headlong-prosecution...

Last month, a multi-party delegation of Australian Members of Parliament visited the United States to actively lobby U.S. officials to cease their efforts to extradite Julian Assange. The founder of Wikileaks is an Australian citizen facing charges filed by the Trump administration under the infamous Espionage Act of 1917 for revealing US war crimes and violations of international law. The revelations were called “Cable gate,” a set of 251,000 confidential cables from the US State Department that disclosed corruption, diplomatic scandals and spy affairs on an international scale. On January 4, 2021, British criminal court judge Vanessa Baraister denied the US government’s request to extradite Assange. Given the fact that he had been confined in the Ecuadorian embassy for seven years and then held in the Balmarsh high-security prison since April 12, 2019, the judge found that Assange’s mental condition “is such that it would be oppressive to extradite him to the United States of America.” The Biden DOJ appealed that ruling and convinced the British higher courts to reverse Judge Baraister. As a result, Assange is now subject to extradition unless his further legal appeals can prevail. For Australians, securing the release of Assange is broadly supported by a coalition that transcends partisan politics. The Australian delegation last month included members of Parliament from the majority Labor Party, the conservative opposition, the Greens, the National party, and an independent party.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption from reliable major media sources.


Media Decides Censorship Is Bad Now That It Hits The Left
2023-10-23, Public on Substack
Posted: 2023-10-29 17:18:52
https://public.substack.com/p/media-decides-censorship-is-bad-now

The Washington Post has published at least four long articles dismissing the censorship revealed by the Twitter Files and Missouri v. Biden lawsuit, which is headed to the Supreme Court. By contrast, in its story on the censorship of pro-Palestinian voices, the Washington Post expresses great skepticism of Big Tech and sympathy for the people censored — the exact opposite of how it treated the issue when it was non-Leftists who were being censored. To be sure, there has been a concerning increase in demands for censorship and blacklisting since the October 7 Hamas attacks. New York University appears to be investigating a student who said, “Israel bears full responsibility for this tremendous loss of life.” But the alarm that the news media are raising is in striking contrast to the indifference ... to the evidence of governmental and nongovernmental censorship of a variety of disfavored views and voices relating to climate change, Covid, Ukraine, and the Biden family’s influence-peddling. Media outrage about censorship of pro-Palestinian voices sent social media platforms scrambling in order to end the censorship. The Washington Post’s queries forced at least one social media company to stop censoring. “After The Washington Post sent questions to TikTok about the video, the sound was restored.” A Meta spokesperson said a “bug” had caused some of the trouble. “We fixed a problem that briefly caused inappropriate Arabic translations in some of our products,” the statement said.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on media corruption from reliable sources.


The secret history of Area 51, explained by an expert
2019-09-18, Vox
Posted: 2023-10-29 17:17:04
https://www.vox.com/2019/9/18/20864480/area-51-secret-planes-aliens-jacobsen-...

Annie Jacobsen [is] author of the book Area 51: An Uncensored History of America’s Top Secret Military Base. To write the book, Jacobsen interviewed over 70 people who had first-hand knowledge of the secret facility, including 32 who lived and worked at Area 51. The result is basically the most comprehensive account of the history of Area 51 you can get without a super-high-level security clearance. "Area 51 was the birthplace of overhead espionage for the CIA," [said Jacobsen]. "It’s where the U-2 spy plane was first built back in the 1950s, and it’s where the intelligence community has worked with its military partners and others to work on espionage platforms. It’s also a place where all elements of the Defense Department work on some of their most classified programs along with members of the intelligence community. There’s also an element of Area 51 where the CIA trains its foreign paramilitary partners in counterterrorism tactics. They do this out on the wilds of Area 51 because they can bring some foreign fighters there who would otherwise not be welcomed into the country. I have interviewed scores of very smart, very highly placed government personnel who visited the base and believe the technology they saw is so advanced that they question whether or not it’s manmade. That’s intriguing to me. I don’t report on that because there is no documentation to support that claim, but that is the opinion of many people that I know."

Note: Don’t miss Jacobsen’s engaging, educational book Area 51: An Uncensored History of America's Top Secret Military Base, which reveals how the public, U.S. Congress, and even presidents were lied to about what was going on at this mysterious facility. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on UFOs from reliable major media sources.


Finland is the world's happiest country, but Finns say we're confusing happiness for something else
2023-06-10, Business Insider
Posted: 2023-10-29 17:15:19
https://www.businessinsider.com/finland-happiest-country-in-world-happiness-r...

Finland's high levels of social trust could be one reason the country has been ranked as the world's happiest for six years in a row. As the World Happiness Report, which does the ranking, notes, most Finns expect their wallet to be returned to them if they lose it. Finns have liberated children, trust their neighbors, commune with nature, and leave work on time. But ask them what they think of the happiness report, and you'll get a surprising answer. "We're always surprised that we are still the first," Meri Larivaara, a mental-health advocate, told me in [a] Helsinki coffee shop. "Every year there is a debate like, 'How is this possible?'" In fact, locals I talked to were exasperated by the survey and even annoyed by the global perception of them as happy. Finnish people are often stereotyped as introverted and keeping to themselves. But it's also true that Finns are very content with what they have. "They call us up and just ask if we like our lives. We just say there's nothing wrong right now, maybe call back tomorrow," one local said of the survey. Maybe it's not so much that Finns are happy but that they don't have some of the intense fears you might find in other places. Finland's government sponsors one of the most robust welfare systems in the world. In 2021, the Nordic country spent 24% of its gross domestic product on social protection — the highest of any other OECD country that year. Healthcare and education are free for all residents — all the way through to the Ph.D. level.

Note: Explore more positive stories like this in our comprehensive inspiring news articles archive focused on solutions and bridging divides.


A surprisingly radical proposal: Make people happier — not just wealthier and healthier
2023-10-18, Vox
Posted: 2023-10-29 17:13:52
https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/23862090/subjective-wellbeing-wealth-philan...

Economists love things they can measure objectively, like the number of deaths in a village or the number of dollars in an account. So over the past century, they’ve focused on measuring health and wealth. The best policy programs for society are deemed to be the ones that save the most lives, say, or increase gross domestic product (GDP) by the widest margin. And there’s a good rationale for using a metric like GDP as a shorthand for well-being: There is a very high correlation between a nation’s GDP per capita and its self-reported life satisfaction. But a strong predictor is not a perfect predictor. As we’ve gathered more data on the happiness of different populations, it’s become clear that increasing wealth and health do not always go hand in hand with increasing happiness. By the economists’ objective measures, people in rich countries like the US should be doing great — and yet Americans are only becoming more miserable. A growing chorus of experts argues that helping people is ultimately about making them happier — not just wealthier or healthier — and the best way to find out how happy people are is to just ask them directly. It’s a revolution in thinking that’s gathering force in policy and charity circles alike, and it’s starting to upend conventional wisdom about the best ways to do good. Part of the virtue of the subjective approach is that people can bring whatever matters to them into their assessments. So, how much meaning you have in your life could be an input into that.

Note: Explore more positive stories like this in our comprehensive inspiring news articles archive focused on solutions and bridging divides.


‘This feels more like spin-the-bottle than science’: my mission to find a proper diagnosis – and treatment – for my son’s psychosis
2023-02-25, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2023-10-29 17:12:33
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/feb/25/this-feels-more-like-spin-the...

Psychosis is often thought to be genetic, or a symptom of brain chemistry gone awry, which is what I was led to believe for much of my journey through the traditional mental health system. [My son] Zach’s first diagnosis was psychosis NOS (Not Otherwise Specified). Later ... he was classified with either schizophrenia, paranoid schizophrenia, depression with psychotic symptoms or, more recently, schizoaffective disorder. I craved solutions, and the more I searched the more confused I became. First, I discovered that no disease markers show up in brain scans or blood tests for any of these so-called disorders. Nobody seems to know for sure what is really going on, which feels more like a spin-the-bottle game than science. The effects of the antipsychotic drugs were intolerable for Zach, far worse than the symptoms that they were meant to alleviate. In Finland, a more radical understanding of extreme distress led to a programme called Open Dialogue which aims to avoid hospitalisation and medication with therapy that revolves around families and other networks, and involves contact, preferably in the person’s home. It has contributed to lowering the suicide rate in Finland; one of the highest in the world in the 1990s, it has dropped by 50% since Open Dialogue began. Despite a quarter of a trillion pounds spent on mental health in Britain since the 1980s, it is the only area of medicine where outcomes have stalled, and by some measures are even going backwards.

Note: Explore more positive stories like this in our comprehensive inspiring news articles archive focused on solutions and bridging divides.


Across Israel, Jews and Arabs Join Forces to Help War Victims and Prevent Riots
2023-10-12, Haaretz (One of Israel's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2023-10-23 14:28:09
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2023-10-12/ty-article-magazine/.premium/a...

In the shadow of war, Arab-Jewish solidarity initiatives emerge. “On Sunday, the second day of the war, we saw that there was enormous chaos and realized we must do something,” said Sleman Shlebe, a Bedouin resident of the northern Negev, who in a short time recruited some 600 volunteers, mostly from the Azazmeh tribe, who arrived with their ATVs and created emergency teams to search for missing Israelis. On Saturday evening, a message was sent to members of a host of activist WhatsApp groups about the establishment of a joint Arab-Jewish civil guard in Tel Aviv-Jaffa. Its goal: to protect local residents, regardless of religion or ethnic background, should clashes erupt among them. Within hours, some 1,000 people joined the guard’s new WhatsApp group. Nearly 500 listened in during a video conference that evening – Jews and Arabs, all ready to make sure the events of May 2021, when inter-communal riots broke out in Jaffa and other “mixed” cities during a round of fighting between Israel and Palestinians in Gaza, wouldn’t be repeated. Members of the new patrol group, which is unarmed, are tasked with trying to keep the streets calm as the war evolves. One way they are helping ease tensions under such circumstances is by documenting incidents by video; they also express their solidarity with local residents. The new guards are planning to deploy if there is a potentially explosive situation, such as during prayers at a mosque, church or synagogue.

Note: The full text of the article is available here. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on war from reliable major media sources.


Stunning State Department Memo Warns Diplomats: No Gaza 'De-Escalation' Talk
2023-10-13, Huffington Post
Posted: 2023-10-23 14:26:25
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/state-department-internal-emails-gaza-israel_n...

As Israel escalates its attacks on Gaza, the State Department is discouraging diplomats working on Middle East issues from making public statements suggesting the U.S. wants to see less violence. In messages circulated on Friday, State Department staff wrote that high-level officials do not want press materials to include three specific phrases: “de-escalation/ceasefire,” “end to violence/bloodshed” and “restoring calm.” The revelation provides a stunning signal about the Biden administration’s reluctance to push for Israeli restraint as the close U.S. partner expands the offensive it launched after Hamas ... attacked Israeli communities. U.S. officials have said they expect Israel to abide by the laws of war in its operation against Hamas. But they have avoided discussion of a ceasefire, even as aid groups and some analysts have suggested that may be essential to allow civilians to flee Gaza and allow vital supplies to enter the area after Israel cut off electricity and water. U.S. President Joe Biden has repeatedly pledged to support Israel as it seeks to avenge the unprecedented Hamas assault. Yet as Israel’s biggest source of diplomatic and military support, the U.S. has significant leverage in the matter of how the country chooses to seek retribution and whether Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu tries to limit the civilian toll of his response. Biden allies may nudge the president and his team to issue stronger calls for Netanyahu to prioritize humanitarian concerns.

Note: Why wasn’t this headline in other major media? Both Washington Post and NBC News included this in only one paragraph in longer articles as if it were unimportant. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on war from reliable major media sources.


We owe it to humanity to see the rules of war are observed – no matter how tough a test the Israel-Hamas conflict proves
2023-10-18, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2023-10-23 14:24:24
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/oct/18/rules-of-war-israel-ham...

For almost 4,000 years, some governments have insisted that if wars must be fought, there should be rules. During its assault, on Black Saturday, Hamas broke numerous laws of war, starting with its rocket fire into Israel, which made no attempt to discriminate between military and civilian targets, breaking article 13 of protocol II of the Geneva conventions. Its fighters murdered, tortured and raped, breaking common article 3 of the Geneva conventions and articles 27 and 32 of the fourth convention. They also engaged in pillage and terrorism (33, fourth convention) and the taking of hostages (34, fourth, and article 8 of the Rome statute). In responding to this attack, Israel has also broken several laws of war. These crimes begin with the use of collective penalties against the people of Gaza (article 33 of the fourth convention and article 4 of protocol II). One aspect of this punishment appears to be the pattern of Israel’s bombing and shelling of Gaza. The war crime in this case is the damage to property: article 50 of the first Geneva convention, article 51 of the second Geneva convention and article 147 of the fourth Geneva convention. Many of the buildings hit, including numerous schools and health facilities, do not appear to qualify as military targets, despite Israeli claims that Hamas uses people as human shields. Such indiscriminate attacks contravene article 13, protocol II and article 53, fourth convention. The bombing of mosques breaks article 16 of protocol II.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on war from reliable major media sources.


Over 80 percent of four-star retirees are employed in defense industry
2023-10-04, Washington Post
Posted: 2023-10-23 14:22:48
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2023/10/04/retired-generals-...

More than 80 percent of four-star officers retiring from the U.S. armed forces go on to work in the defense industry, a new study has found, underscoring the close relationship between top U.S. brass and government-contracted companies. Twenty-six of 32 four-star admirals and generals who retired from June 2018 to July 2023 were later employed in roles including executive, adviser, board member or lobbyist for companies with significant defense business, according to the analysis from the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, a think tank that advocates restraining the military’s role in U.S. foreign policy. “The revolving door between the U.S. government and the arms industry, which involves hundreds of senior Pentagon officials and military officers every year, generates the appearance — and in some cases the reality — of conflicts of interest in the making of defense policy and in the shaping of the size and composition of the Pentagon budget,” authors William Hartung and Dillon Fisher wrote. The findings shed new light on a phenomenon examined in a 2021 report from the Government Accountability Office, which found that 14 major defense contractors ... employed 1,700 former senior officials or acquisition officials in 2019. The GAO concluded that while defense contractors benefit from the practice, it could “affect public confidence in the government” by creating a perception that military officials may favor a company they see as a future employer.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corruption in the military and in the corporate world from reliable major media sources.


CIA admits 1953 Iranian coup it backed was undemocratic
2023-10-13, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2023-10-23 14:21:15
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/oct/13/cia-1953-iran-coup-undemocrat...

The CIA has for the first time acknowledged that the 1953 coup it backed in Iran that overthrew its prime minister and cemented the rule of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi was undemocratic. The CIA in 2013 admitted its role in the coup that brought down Iran’s then prime minister, Mohammad Mosaddeq, but until now has not publicly acknowledged that the move was undemocratic. Much of the agency’s official history of the coup remains classified, complicating the public’s understanding of an event that still resonates, as tensions remain high between Tehran and Washington. Iran’s mission to the United Nations described the 1953 coup as marking “the inception of relentless American meddling in Iran’s internal affairs” and dismissed the US acknowledgments. “The US admission never translated into compensatory action or a genuine commitment to refrain from future interference, nor did it change its subversive policy towards the Islamic Republic of Iran,” the mission said in a statement. Seven decades later, the 1953 coup remains as hotly debated as ever in Iran, where many see a straight line leading from the coup to the 1979 Islamic Revolution that ultimately toppled the shah. The coup also prompted the CIA into a series of further actions in other countries, including Guatemala, where US clandestine operations in 1954 installed a military dictator and sparked a 40-year civil war that likely killed approximately 245,000 people.

Note: This admission came in the CIA's official podcast. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on intelligence agency corruption from reliable major media sources.


Why Big Tech, Cops, and Spies Were Made for One Another
2023-10-16, The Intercept
Posted: 2023-10-23 14:19:43
https://theintercept.com/2023/10/16/surveillance-state-big-tech/

Silicon Valley techies are pretty sanguine about commercial surveillance. But they are much less cool about government spying. Government employees and contractors are pretty cool with state surveillance. But they are far less cool with commercial surveillance. What are they both missing? That American surveillance is a public-private partnership: a symbiosis between a concentrated tech sector that has the means, motive, and opportunity to spy on every person in the world and a state that loves surveillance as much as it hates checks and balances. The tech sector has powerful allies in government: cops and spies. No government agency could ever hope to match the efficiency and scale of commercial surveillance. Meanwhile, the private sector relies on cops and spies to go to bat for them, lobbying against new privacy laws and for lax enforcement of existing ones. Think of Amazon’s Ring cameras, which have blanketed entire neighborhoods in CCTV surveillance, which Ring shares with law enforcement agencies, sometimes without the consent or knowledge of the cameras’ owners. Ring marketing recruits cops as street teams, showering them with freebies to distribute to local homeowners. Google ... has managed to play both sides of the culture war with its location surveillance, thanks to the “reverse warrants” that cops have used to identify all the participants at both Black Lives Matter protests and the January 6 coup. Distinguishing between state and private surveillance is a fool’s errand.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on the disappearance of privacy from reliable major media sources.


San Francisco's secretive Bohemian Grove sued by valets
2023-06-12, San Francisco Chronicle (San Francisco's Leading Newspaper)
Posted: 2023-10-23 14:17:23
https://www.sfgate.com/local/article/san-francisco-bohemian-club-sued-by-vale...

A lawsuit brought against the Bohemian Club has revealed the inner workings of one of America’s most secretive clubs, headquartered in San Francisco. Three valets who worked for years at the private club's infamous summer camp at Monte Rio in Sonoma County brought the complaint. The complaint alleges a litany of unlawful labor practices at Bohemian Grove, including “nonstop” 16-hour work days, during which employees were not provided bathroom and lunch breaks, and a failure to pay minimum wage and overtime. Every summer for 150 years, a 2,700-acre clearing in the ancient redwoods near the Russian River becomes a gathering place for the world's elite. The Bohemian Club's summer camp is shrouded in mystery but is rumored to end with a ritual that involves a human effigy and the burning of a giant sacrificial owl. The all-male club has successfully kept much of its activity, and its member list, secret over the years, but the new complaint, filed with the U.S. District Court in Northern California on June 6, shines a light on how the camp allegedly operates. The lawsuit claims that the camp hosts three events every year: the Spring Jinx, the Spring Picnic and the Summer Encampment. Bohemian Grove itself is split into over 100 separate camps. The camp's operations are so secretive the plaintiffs in the case don't yet know exactly whom they are accusing, instead referring to some of the defendants as John Doe.  

Note: Read more about Bohemian Grove. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on secret societies from reliable major media sources.


I Was the Only U.S. Official Imprisoned Over the Torture Program — Because I Opposed It
2023-09-25, ScheerPost
Posted: 2023-10-23 14:15:19
https://scheerpost.com/2023/09/25/john-kiriakou-torture-at-guantanamo/

When I joined the CIA in January 1990, I did it to serve my country. My whole world, like the worlds of all Americans, changed dramatically and permanently on September 11, 2001. Within months of the attacks, I found myself heading to Pakistan as the chief of CIA counterterrorism operations in Pakistan. Almost immediately, my team began capturing al-Qaeda fighters at safehouses all around Pakistan. Just a month after the September 11 attacks, the CIA leadership gathered its army of lawyers and black ops people and came up with a plan to legalize torture. This was despite the fact that torture has long been patently illegal in the United States. But it didn’t matter. In the end, I was the only person associated with the CIA’s torture program who was prosecuted and imprisoned. I never tortured anybody. But I was charged with five felonies, including three counts of espionage, for telling ABC News and the New York Times that the CIA was torturing its prisoners, that torture was official U.S. government policy, and that the policy had been approved by the president himself. I served 23 months in a federal prison. Former CIA Director George Tenet, former CIA Deputy Director John McLaughlin, former CIA Deputy Director for Operations Jose Rodriguez, former CIA Executive Director John Brennan, and CIA [contractors] James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen ... weakened our democracy by pretending that the Constitution and the rule of law didn’t exist.

Note: This article was written by CIA whistleblower John Kiriakou. For more along these lines, see the "10 Craziest Things in the Senate Report on Torture". For more, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on intelligence agency corruption from reliable major media sources.


How Peter Thiel-Linked Tech is Fueling the Ukraine War
2023-10-15, ScheerPost
Posted: 2023-10-23 14:13:54
https://scheerpost.com/2023/10/15/how-peter-thiel-linked-tech-is-fueling-the-...

As war in Ukraine continues, controversial defense contractors and adjacent companies like Palantir, Anduril, and Clearview AI are taking advantage to develop and level-up controversial AI-driven weapons systems and surveillance technologies. These organizations’ common link? The support of the controversial, yet ever-more powerful Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel. Thiel-backed groups’ involvement in war serves to develop not only problematic and unpredictable weapons technologies and systems, but also apparently to advance and further interconnect a larger surveillance apparatus formed by Thiel and his elite allies’ collective efforts across the public and private sectors, which arguably amount to the entrenchment of a growing technocratic panopticon aimed at capturing public and private life. What’s more, Thiel’s funding efforts signal interest in developing expansive surveillance technologies, especially in the name of combatting “pre-crime” through “predictive policing” style surveillance. As an example, Thiel’s provided significant funds to Israeli intelligence-linked startup Carbyne911 (as did Jeffrey Epstein), which develops call-handling and call-identification capacities for emergency services, and has ... a predictive-policing component. Thiel also assisted in the development and subsequent privatized spinoffs of the US Government’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s (DARPA) Total Information Awareness project.

Note: Peter Thiel was also recently reported to be an FBI informant. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corporate corruption and the disappearance of privacy from reliable major media sources.


The CIA's Secret Quest For Mind Control: Torture, LSD And A 'Poisoner In Chief'
2020-10-20, NPR
Posted: 2023-10-23 14:11:50
https://www.npr.org/2020/11/20/937009453/the-cias-secret-quest-for-mind-contr...

Journalist Stephen Kinzer has spent several years investigating the CIA's mind control program, which was known as MKUltra. LSD was just one of the mind-altering drugs that were used in the program to see if and how they could be weaponized to control human behavior. Many of the unwitting subjects of these experiments were subjected to what amounts to psychological torture. The CIA basically set up phony philanthropic foundations which then funded university and college research, and it's through those research experiments that people like Ginsberg and Kesey and Robert Hunter got introduced to LSD. And the university researchers had no idea that their research was actually being funded by the CIA. Stanford University was running a program in which they asked for volunteers to come in and try this new substance. Allen Ginsberg was one of the volunteers; so was Robert Hunter. A similar set of experiments was going on at the Menlo Park Veterans Administration Hospital. That's where Ken Kesey took LSD for the first time. He was so excited about it he took a job in the hospital and began stealing the LSD to give it to his friends. That became the basis for "One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest." So all of these original strands that came together in the '60s to produce this great countercultural revolt based around LSD can be traced back through these bogus foundations to the CIA and, ultimately, the director of MKUltra, Sidney Gottlieb.

Note: Read more about the MKUltra program. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on intelligence agency corruption and mind control from reliable major media sources.


Revolutionary Civic Social Media Is On the Horizon
2023-10-10, LA Progressive
Posted: 2023-10-23 14:09:38
https://www.laprogressive.com/techie-tips/revolutionary-civic-social-media

Social media platforms have become an integral part of our lives, but they also pose significant challenges for our society. From spreading misinformation and hate speech to undermining democracy and privacy, social media can have negative impacts on the public good. How can we harness the power of social media for positive purposes, such as civic engagement, social justice, and education? One possible solution is to create a new kind of social media platform that is designed to serve the public interest, not the profit motive. This platform would be owned and governed by its users, who would have a say in how it operates and what content it promotes. Such a platform may sound utopian, but it is not impossible. In fact, there are already some examples of social media platforms that are trying to achieve these goals, such as Mastodon, Diaspora, and Aether. These platforms are based on the principles of decentralization, federation, and peer-to-peer communication, which allow users to have more control and autonomy over their online interactions. Civic Works ... is an emerging social networking platform that provides a more democratic, inclusive, and responsible online space for everyone. It is built on the idea that social media can be a force for good when the objective is not subverted by advertisers, marketers, or shadowy political operatives. It is a platform that inspires people to become active citizens, through civic, political, economic, and/or educational actions.

Note: The social media platform PeakD is censorship-proof and is governed by network operators who are elected by the community. Explore more positive stories like this in our comprehensive inspiring news articles archive focused on solutions and bridging divides.


‘People are happier in a walkable neighborhood’: the US community that banned cars
2023-10-11, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2023-10-23 14:08:00
https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2023/oct/11/culdesac-car-free-neighborhood...

If you were to imagine the first car-free neighborhood built from scratch in the modern US, it would be difficult to conceive such a thing sprouting from the environs of Phoenix, Arizona. But it is here that such a neighborhood, called Culdesac, has taken root. On a 17-acre site ... an unusual experiment has emerged that invites Americans to live in a way that is rare outside of fleeting experiences of college, Disneyland or trips to Europe: a walkable, human-scale community devoid of cars. Culdesac ushered in its first 36 residents earlier this year and will eventually house around 1,000 people. Residents are provided no parking for cars and are encouraged to get rid of them. The apartments are also mixed in with amenities, such as a grocery store, restaurant, yoga studio and bicycle shop, that are usually separated from housing by strict city zoning laws. The $170m Culdesac project shows “we can build walkable neighborhoods successfully in the US,” according to Ryan Johnson, the 40-year-old who co-founded the company. “We look back nostalgically at college, because it’s the only time most people have lived in a walkable neighborhood. People are happier and healthier, and even wealthier when they’re living in a walkable neighborhood.” Vanessa Fox, a 32-year-old who moved into Culdesac with her husky dog in May, had always wanted to live in a walkable place only to find such options unaffordable. For her, Culdesac provided a sense of community without having to rely on a car.

Note: Explore more positive stories like this in our comprehensive inspiring news articles archive focused on solutions and bridging divides.


The butterflies of Liberia: transforming the lives of former child soldiers
2023-10-03, Positive News
Posted: 2023-10-23 14:06:48
https://www.positive.news/society/the-butterflies-of-liberia-transforming-the...

In Liberia, two brutal civil wars have produced a generation of traumatised young men. Anthony Kamara likes to use the analogy of a butterfly emerging from its chrysalis. It’s an old story, he admits, but useful in reaching through the years of compounded shame that form the exterior skin of Liberia’s lost and marginalised young men. “I tell the men that their true colours are there, hidden within them,” says Kamara, 32, a former street drug user and a facilitator for a radical Liberian mental health nonprofit Network for Empowerment and Programme Initiatives (Nepi). Nepi targets Liberia’s most marginalised men – street dwellers, petty criminals, chronic drug users: traumatised ex-combatants and their sons with anger issues and little to live for – in an effort to ripple benefits across Liberia’s population, 68% of whom are living on less than $1.90 (£1.60) a day. Nepi offers a tailored combination of cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) and cash transfers to young people who are at the highest risk for violent behaviour, in a programme called Sustainable Transformation of Youth in Liberia (Styl). Styl has since helped tens of thousands of young men in Liberia, with studies on the project finding that men receiving therapy with cash were half as likely as a control group to engage in antisocial behaviours, with beneficial impacts concentrated in the highest-risk men.

Note: Explore more positive stories like this in our comprehensive inspiring news articles archive focused on solutions and bridging divides.


What went wrong? Questions emerge over Israel’s intelligence prowess after Hamas attack
2023-10-09, Associated Press
Posted: 2023-10-16 01:37:16
https://apnews.com/article/israel-hamas-gaza-attack-intel-a5287a18773232f26ca...

For Palestinians in Gaza, Israel’s eyes are never very far away. Surveillance drones buzz constantly from the skies. The highly-secured border is awash with security cameras and soldiers on guard. But Israel’s eyes appeared to have been closed in the lead-up to an unprecedented onslaught by the militant Hamas group, which broke down Israeli border barriers and sent hundreds of militants into Israel to carry out a brazen attack that has killed hundreds. Israel withdrew troops and settlers from the Gaza Strip in 2005. But even after Hamas overran Gaza in 2007, Israel appeared to maintain its edge, using technological and human intelligence. It claimed to know the precise locations of Hamas leadership and appeared to prove it through the assassinations of militant leaders in surgical strikes, sometimes while they slept in their bedrooms. Israel has known where to strike underground tunnels used by Hamas to ferry around fighters and arms. Despite those abilities, Hamas was able to keep its plan under wraps. The ferocious attack, which likely took months of planning and meticulous training and involved coordination among multiple militant groups, appeared to have gone under Israel’s intelligence radar. An Egyptian intelligence official said Egypt, which often serves as a mediator between Israel and Hamas, had spoken repeatedly with the Israelis about “something big,” without elaborating. He said Israeli officials were focused on the West Bank and played down the threat from Gaza.

Note: According to Efrat Fenigson, a former Israeli soldier who served on the Gaza border, "A cat moving alongside the fence is triggering all forces." How could Israeli intelligence not have known that this attack was coming? For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on intelligence agency corruption and war from reliable major media sources.


Deadly pharmacy errors mount as companies push quotas, limit staff: ‘I am a danger to the public’
2023-09-05, New York Post
Posted: 2023-10-16 01:35:37
https://nypost.com/2023/09/05/deadly-pharmacy-errors-are-mounting-a-danger-to...

Every year, up to 9,000 people die in the US as a result of a prescription medication error. That figure doesn’t include the hundreds of thousands of patients who suffer adverse effects from taking the wrong medication or taking meds in the wrong way. Now, an investigative report from the Los Angeles Times reveals that pharmacies make an estimated 5 million errors every year in California alone, according to the state’s Board of Pharmacy. But even as pharmacy errors mount across the US, pharmaceutical lobbyists are pushing to keep reports of errors hidden from officials and the public. The problem, according to pharmacists and others, is most acute at big retail pharmacy chains such as CVS and Walgreens, where overworked staff are pushed to the limit to meet sales quotas, despite desperate staffing shortages. To combat the rising tide of pharmacy errors, the California State Board of Pharmacy is sponsoring a bill that would require pharmacies to report every error to a third party outside the government. The bill would also allow the pharmacist responsible for the store to increase staffing if the workload has become too overwhelming to keep patients safe. But the bill is opposed by the California Community Pharmacy Coalition, a lobbying group representing retail pharmacies, including the big chains. The coalition believes pharmacy staffing requirements are too strict and it does not want the pharmacy board to have access to the error reports.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corporate corruption and Big Pharma profiteering from reliable major media sources.


Popular ‘Benzo’ drugs linked to suicide, brain damage — even if you stop taking them: study
2023-06-30, New York Post
Posted: 2023-10-16 01:34:07
https://nypost.com/2023/06/30/popular-benzo-drugs-linked-to-suicide-brain-dam...

Over 30 million Americans a year use benzodiazepines, or “benzos,” including Xanax, Valium, Ativan and Klonopin. Benzodiazepines are prescribed to treat anxiety disorders, insomnia, muscle spasms, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, seizures and epilepsy. But this widely used class of drugs is linked to severe side effects and life impacts that can last for years — even after people have stopped taking the drugs — a new study finds. “Patients have been reporting long-term effects from benzodiazepines for over 60 years. I am one of those patients,” Dr. Christy Huff, a cardiologist and co-author of the study, said in a news release. The new research, published in PLOS One, includes a lengthy list of side effects that a majority of benzo users experienced more than a year after they stopped taking the drugs. Those long-lasting symptoms include low energy, difficulty focusing, memory loss, anxiety, insomnia, sensitivity to light and sounds, digestive problems, symptoms triggered by food and drink, muscle weakness and body pain. Alarmingly, users also struggled with severe life impacts: 54.7% reported suicide attempts or suicidal thoughts, for example. Health experts noted numerous other problems with benzos, including an increased risk of suicide and dependence on the drug, among other adverse side effects. Withdrawal from benzos can produce troubling symptoms as soon as within 24 hours, and these adverse effects can last for months.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on Big Pharma corruption from reliable major media sources.


The FDA is now fast-tracking new drug approvals — why that’s so worrying
2023-08-24, New York Post
Posted: 2023-10-16 01:32:35
https://nypost.com/2023/08/24/fda-fast-tracking-approval-of-new-drugs-fewer-t...

The Food and Drug Administration is now regularly approving new drugs after just one or two clinical trials — a significant departure from the more rigorous vetting process the agency was previously known for, newly published research reveals. Furthermore, the authors say, there’s now less information available to the public about the results of all trials. Of the 37 drugs approved by the FDA last year, 24 (about 65%) were approved based on just one study, according to a paper published in JAMA Network Open. Only four of those 37 drugs, or about 11%, reported three or more studies before approval. Another piece of new research, published in Health Affairs Scholar, found that of the 46 new drugs approved in 2017, 19 of them (41%) were approved based on a single study — though the drugmakers conducted an average of 2.2 studies per drug, including 165 studies for the popular weight-loss drug Ozempic. The ease with which novel drugs are approved is in part the result of the 21st Century Cures Act, passed in 2016 to speed the approval of new medicines so patients could gain access to life-saving treatments. As part of that law, the FDA relaxed some standards to allow treatments for priority health conditions such as cancer to be approved with fewer supporting studies, and with less emphasis on randomized clinical trials. But in the years following the passage of the 21st Century Cures Act, the FDA has faced a firestorm of criticism over the approval process for some new drugs.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and Big Pharma profiteering from reliable major media sources.


Orgy of sugar: how school donations turned my free pantry into a junk-food fever dream
2023-10-09, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2023-10-16 01:30:20
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/oct/09/free-food-pantry-junk-foo...

In December 2010 under the Obama administration, Congress enacted the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act. This legislation provided for more fruits and vegetables in school meal programs, a focus on whole grains and a lot fewer starchy vegetables and trans-fat laden foods. In response, some food companies rejiggered ingredients just enough to add “whole grain” to their packaging. Things went downhill from there. Congress caved to lobbying in 2014, allowing schools to serve high-salt french fries and pizza sold by these companies. Again, big food lobbied hard and legislators pulled back on restrictions for sodium levels, flavored milks and amounts of refined grains. We in the United States seem to believe that ... education is unconnected to food and how we eat. Instead, our kids are at the mercy of the companies and brands inundating them: Tyson, General Mills, Kraft, Heinz and many others. Before the pandemic began, the overwhelming majority of US schools offered branded foods during or around mealtimes, and that this is worth $20bn in ... profits for the food industry. Pantries and food banks get in bed with corporate food companies because they don’t want to lose access to large quantities of foods and beverages that fill people up. That these products are unhealthy is a secondary or tertiary concern. Food banks and pantries are not always meeting the nutritional profiles of the people they serve, particularly people who are struggling with diabetes, obesity and decades of poor eating.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on food system corruption from reliable major media sources.


J&J unit, P&G, Walgreens misled consumers about decongestants, lawsuits say
2023-09-15, Reuters
Posted: 2023-10-16 01:28:08
https://www.reuters.com/legal/jj-pg-sued-after-fda-panel-ruling-cold-medicine...

Procter & Gamble (PG.N), Walgreens (WBA.O) and Johnson & Johnson's (JNJ.N) former consumer business are among several companies accused in lawsuits of deceiving consumers about cold medicines containing an ingredient that a unanimous U.S. Food and Drug Administration advisory panel declared ineffective. Proposed class actions were filed on Wednesday and Thursday, after the panel reviewed several studies and concluded this week that the ingredient phenylephrine marketed as a decongestant was essentially no better than a placebo. According to an agency presentation, about 242 million products with phenylephrine were sold in the United States last year, generating $1.76 billion of sales and accounting for about four-fifths of the market for oral decongestants. The first lawsuit appeared to have been filed in Pensacola, Florida, federal court. It said Johnson & Johnson Consumer and Procter & Gamble should have known by 2018 that their marketing claims about products with phenylephrine were "false and deceptive." That year was when new FDA guidance for evaluating symptoms related to nasal congestion demonstrated that earlier data about phenylephrine's effectiveness could no longer be relied upon, the complaint said. The plaintiff Steve Audelo, a Florida resident, said he bought Johnson & Johnson's Sudafed PE and Benadryl Allergy Plus, and Procter & Gamble's Vicks NyQuil, based on the companies' claims that the products worked.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on health and corporate corruption from reliable major media sources.


Biden extends 9/11 state of emergency by a year
2023-09-08, Courthouse News
Posted: 2023-10-16 01:26:20
https://www.courthousenews.com/biden-extends-9-11-state-of-emergency-by-a-year/

The United States will continue in a decades long, post-9/11 state of emergency for at least another year. In a Thursday night declaration, President Joe Biden ensured the emergency will extend at least 23 years after coordinated attacks killed nearly 3,000 people in New York, Virginia and Pennsylvania. Biden penned his signature to a one-year extension of President George W. Bush’s Proclamation 7463, retaining broad powers over the organization of the military. The proclamation is officially titled “The National Emergency with Respect to Certain Terrorist Attacks.” Most emergencies are used to impose economic sanctions. But Proclamation 7463, along with the broad 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force, gives the president the power to call up the National Guard, alter the size and shape of the military's top officers and hire or fire commissioned officers — even ordering them out of retirement if necessary. Biden has most recently cited the 2001 authorization to justify drone strikes against al-Shabab militants in Somalia in 2021. The National Emergencies Act, adopted in 1976, requires presidents to renew emergencies each year. Presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump also extended the 9/11 state of emergency each year of their respective tenures. Trump used it in 2017 to fill a chronic shortage in Air Force pilots. So far, Biden has declared eight new emergencies, continued 34 from his predecessors and ended three.

Note: An article by The Atlantic explores the alarming scope of president’s emergency powers, stating that “the moment the president declares a “national emergency”—a decision that is entirely within his discretion—he is able to set aside many of the legal limits on his authority.” For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption from reliable major media sources.


Schools Are Normalizing Intrusive Surveillance
2023-10-06, Reason
Posted: 2023-10-16 01:22:47
https://reason.com/2023/10/06/schools-are-normalizing-intrusive-surveillance/

Public schools ... are the focus of a new report on surveillance and kids by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). "Over the last two decades, a segment of the educational technology (EdTech) sector that markets student surveillance products to schools — the EdTech Surveillance industry — has grown into a $3.1 billion a year economic juggernaut," begins Digital Dystopia The Danger in Buying What the EdTech Surveillance Industry is Selling. "The EdTech Surveillance industry accomplished that feat by playing on school districts' fears of school shootings, student self-harm and suicides, and bullying — marketing them as common, ever-present threats." As the authors detail, among the technologies are surveillance cameras. These are often linked to software for facial recognition, access control, behavior analysis, and weapon detection. That is, cameras scan student faces and then algorithms identify them, allow or deny them entry based on that ID, decide if their activities are threatening, and determine if objects they carry may be dangerous or forbidden. "False hits, such as mistaking a broomstick, three-ring binder, or a Google Chromebook laptop for a gun or other type of weapon, could result in an armed police response to a school," cautions the report. Students are aware that they're being observed. Of students aged 14–18 surveyed by the ACLU ... thirty-two percent say, "I always feel like I'm being watched."

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and the disappearance of privacy from reliable major media sources.


CDC Covered Up COVID Vaccine Myocarditis
2023-10-03, Public on Substack
Posted: 2023-10-16 01:21:19
https://public.substack.com/p/cdc-covered-up-covid-vaccine-myocarditis

On April 27, 2021, then-director of the CDC, Rochelle Walensky stated, “we have not seen any reports” of post-vaccination myocarditis, but this was a false statement. When Walensky claimed to have “not seen any reports,” there were dozens of reports in the US Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS). “The CDC,” notes [journalist Zachary] Stieber, “was warned by Israel on Feb. 28, 2021, about a ‘large number’ of myocarditis cases after Pfizer COVID-19 vaccination. Internally, the warning was designated as ‘high’ importance and set off a review of US data.” The Israeli Ministry of Health requested a joint meeting with the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the CDC to respond to this trend. “The Israeli National Focal Point is noticing a large number of reports of myocarditis, particularly in young people, following the administration of the Pfizer vaccines,” the email stated. Even when more information about myocarditis became public, [Walensky's] agency continued to downplay the risks. Stieber also found that the CDC’s V-Safe self-reporting system did not include a category for myocarditis reports. To this day, the CDC has not released complete, updated data on myocarditis. The agency’s cover-up of adverse cardiac events has had profound consequences and represents a major breach of trust and abuse of authority. Due to the higher risks of myocarditis after Moderna, Sweden, Norway, FinlandGermany, and France suspended the use of the Moderna vaccine for people under 30 two years ago.

Note: When current and former FDA advisers and academics asked the FDA to improve COVID vaccine labeling given the significant risk of severe vaccine injuries, the agency denied almost every single request. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and coronavirus vaccines from reliable major media sources.


This joint Memorial Day ceremony for fallen Israelis and Palestinians overcame hate
2023-04-28, Philadelphia Inquirer
Posted: 2023-10-16 01:18:51
https://www.inquirer.com/opinion/israel-memorial-day-palestinians-independenc...

Memorial Day used to be Israel’s most sacred secular holiday because it honored those who died in wars or terrorist attacks. I attended one memorial service in Tel Aviv that rose above these tensions and penetrated to the heart of the issues troubling the country: a meeting of Israeli and Palestinian families who had lost relatives to the conflict and gathered together to share their grief. What was most astonishing about the event was to see the Palestinians fall into the arms of their Israeli hosts and hold on tightly. Why astonishing? Because these days, Palestinians and Israelis almost never come into contact, except at Israeli military checkpoints on the West Bank, or when violent Israeli settlers attack their fields — or when Palestinian workers come to Israel to work in construction or in agriculture. It was moving in the extreme to see Palestinians and Israelis who had experienced heartbreak at the hands of the other side embrace each other tightly and talk about family. It was also moving to watch thousands of Israelis file into the fenced-off area of the ceremony and fill endless rows of plastic chairs (the organizers say that 300,000 watched online). They listened in total silence as Israeli Jews and Palestinian Muslims told their personal stories on the stage. Yuval Sapir, whose sister Tamar was murdered in Tel Aviv in 1994 by a Palestinian suicide bomber ... choked out these words: “It is easy and natural to hate ... I chose to try to break the chain of revenge and hatred.”

Note: Explore more positive stories like this in our comprehensive inspiring news articles archive focused on solutions and bridging divides.


What survivors of trauma have taught this eminent psychiatrist about hope
2023-10-08, NPR
Posted: 2023-10-16 01:17:27
https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2023/10/08/1203975027/what-survivor...

In 1968, at the age of 42, psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton sat down to write Death in Life, a book about his experiences interviewing survivors of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Over the course of his career, Lifton studied not only survivors of the atomic bombings but Auschwitz survivors, Vietnam war veterans and people who'd been subjected to repression by the Chinese government. The COVID pandemic prompted him to reflect on what he'd learned about mass trauma and resilience – that telling stories about trauma, and even trying to influence policy, can often help people recover. Now 97, Lifton has just published his 13th book, Surviving Our Catastrophes: Resilience and Renewal from Hiroshima to the Covid-19 Pandemic. "I interviewed people who had undergone the most extreme kind of trauma and victimization," [said Lifton]. "And yet some of the very same people who had so suffered from trauma have shown what I call "survivor wisdom" — they transformed themselves from helpless victims to agents of survival. If ... storytelling can include the transformation from the helpless victim to the life-enhancing survivor, then the storytelling is crucial. The storytelling we most encourage is that kind that enables the formerly helpless victim to be transformed in the story, to transform himself or herself, collectively transform themselves into life-affirming survivors. That's the key transformation, and that's the story we [listeners] seek to help them achieve."

Note: Explore more positive stories like this in our comprehensive inspiring news articles archive focused on solutions and bridging divides.


Can cooking and gardening at school inspire better nutrition? Ask these kids
2023-10-09, NPR
Posted: 2023-10-16 01:15:59
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2023/10/09/1204077086/can-cooking-a...

After a decline in nutrition education in U.S. schools in recent decades, there's new momentum to weave food and cooking into the curriculum again. Remember the hands-on cooking in home economics class, which was a staple in U.S. schools for decades? "I'd love to see it brought back and have the science around healthy eating integrated," says Stacy Dean, deputy under secretary for food, nutrition and consumer services at the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Dean told me she was inspired by a visit to Watkins Elementary, in Washington, D.C., where this idea is germinating. Students grow vegetables in their school garden. They also roll up their sleeves in the school's kitchen to participate in a FRESHFARM FoodPrints class, which integrates cooking and nutrition education. Evaluations show participation in FRESHFARM programs is associated with increased preference for fruits and vegetables. And, the CDC points to evidence that nutrition education may help students maintain a healthy weight and can also help students recognize the connection between food and emotional wellbeing. Given the key role diet plays in preventing chronic disease, the agency says it would be ideal to offer more nutrition education. Programs like FRESHFARM can help kids expand their palettes by introducing them to new tastes. At first, many kids are turned off by the bitter taste of greens. But through the alchemy of cooking, caramelizing the onions, and blending in fresh ginger, kids can be inspired.

Note: Explore more positive stories like this in our comprehensive inspiring news articles archive focused on solutions and bridging divides.


‘IDK what to do’: Thousands of teen boys are being extorted in sexting scams
2023-10-02, Washington Post
Posted: 2023-10-08 19:52:59
https://www.washingtonpost.com/parenting/2023/10/02/teen-boys-sextortion/

Lynn and Paul were sitting in their Seattle home one night earlier this year when their son, Michael, a 17-year-old high school football player, burst into the room and made a beeline for his mom’s purse. “I’m being blackmailed,” he said. Michael had fallen prey to what online safety and law enforcement experts call financial sextortion, in which predators befriend victims online under false pretenses, entice them to send incriminating photos and then demand payment under threat that they’ll expose the photos to family and friends. The number of sextortion cases targeting young people “has exploded in the past couple of years,” with teen boys being specific targets, said Lauren Coffren, executive director of the Exploited Children Division at the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC). NCMEC, which serves as a clearinghouse for records of abuse, received more than 10,000 tips of financial sextortion of minors, primarily boys, in 2022 from the public as well as from electronic service providers, such as Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat, which are required by law to report cases. By the end of July 2023, NCMEC had already received more than 12,500 reports. The repercussions of the abuse are devastating: At least a dozen boys died by suicide in 2022, after they were blackmailed, according to the FBI. Meanwhile, social media companies are playing catch up to stem the tidal wave of sextortion scams targeting children.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on sexual abuse scandals from reliable major media sources.


FBI Hoovering Up DNA At A Pace That Rivals China, Holds 21 Million Samples And Counting
2023-08-29, The Intercept
Posted: 2023-10-08 19:51:18
https://theintercept.com/2023/08/29/fbi-dna-collection-surveillance/

The FBI has amassed 21.7 million DNA profiles — equivalent to about 7 percent of the U.S. population — according to Bureau data reviewed by The Intercept. The FBI aims to nearly double its current $56.7 million budget for dealing with its DNA catalog with an additional $53.1 million, according to its budget request for fiscal year 2024. “The requested resources will allow the FBI to process the rapidly increasing number of DNA samples collected by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security,” the appeal for an increase says. “When we’re talking about rapid expansion like this, it’s getting us ever closer to a universal DNA database,” Vera Eidelman, a staff attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union, [said]. “I think the civil liberties implications here are significant.” The rapid growth of the FBI’s sample load is in large part thanks to a Trump-era rule change that mandated the collection of DNA from migrants who were arrested or detained by immigration authorities. Until recently, the U.S. DNA database surpassed even that of authoritarian China, which launched an ambitious DNA collection program in 2017. That year, the BBC reported, the U.S. had about 4 percent of its population’s DNA, while China had about 3 percent. While DNA has played an important role in prosecuting crimes, less than 3 percent of the profiles have assisted in cases, the Bureau’s data reveals. By comparison, fingerprints collected by the FBI from current and former federal employees linked them to crimes at a rate of 12 percent each year.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on intelligence agency corruption and the disappearance of privacy from reliable major media sources.


Google User Data Has Become a Favorite Police Shortcut
2023-09-27, Bloomberg
Posted: 2023-10-08 19:49:22
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2023-09-28/google-user-data-is-police...

Google maintains one of the world’s most comprehensive repositories of location information. Drawing from phones’ GPS coordinates, plus connections to Wi-Fi networks and cellular towers, it can often estimate a person’s whereabouts to within several feet. It gathers this information in part to sell advertising, but police routinely dip into the data to further their investigations. The use of search data is less common, but that, too, has made its way into police stations throughout the country. Traditionally, American law enforcement obtains a warrant to search the home or belongings of a specific person, in keeping with a constitutional ban on unreasonable searches and seizures. Warrants for Google’s location and search data are, in some ways, the inverse of that process, says Michael Price, the litigation director for the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers’ Fourth Amendment Center. Rather than naming a suspect, law enforcement identifies basic parameters—a set of geographic coordinates or search terms—and asks Google to provide hits, essentially generating a list of leads. By their very nature, these Google warrants often return information on people who haven’t been suspected of a crime. In 2018 a man in Arizona was wrongly arrested for murder based on Google location data. Google says it received a record 60,472 search warrants in the US last year, more than double the number from 2019. The company provides at least some information in about 80% of cases.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on police corruption and the disappearance of privacy from reliable major media sources.


TechScape: How police use location and search data to find suspects – and not always the right ones
2023-10-03, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2023-10-08 19:47:59
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/oct/03/techscape-geofence-warrants

From Virginia to Florida, law enforcement all over the US are increasingly using tools called reverse search warrants – including geofence location warrants and keyword search warrants – to come up with a list of suspects who may have committed particular crimes. While the former is used by law enforcement to get tech companies to identify all the devices that were near a certain place at a certain time, the latter is used to get information on everyone who’s searched for a particular keyword or phrase. It’s a practice public defenders, privacy advocates and many lawmakers have criticised, arguing it violates fourth amendment protections against unreasonable searches. Unlike reverse search warrants, other warrants and subpoenas target a specific person that law enforcement has established there is probable cause to believe has committed a specific crime. But geofence warrants are sweeping in nature and are often used to compile a suspect list to further investigate. Google broke out how many geofence warrants it received for the first time in 2021. The company revealed it received nearly 21,000 geofence warrants between 2018 and 2020. The tech giant did not specify how many of those requests it complied with but did share that in the second half of 2020, it responded to 82% of all government requests for data in the US with some level of information. Apple has taken steps to publish its own numbers. In the first half of 2022 the company fielded a total of 13 geofence warrants and complied with none.

Note: The legal world is struggling to keep up with the rise of tech firms building ever more sophisticated means of surveilling people and their devices. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on police corruption and the disappearance of privacy from reliable major media sources.


Decades Later, Closed Military Bases Remain a Toxic Menace
2023-09-27, New York Times
Posted: 2023-10-08 19:46:28
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/27/us/military-base-closure-cleanup.html

Fort Ord was one of 800 U.S. military bases, large and small, that were shuttered between 1988 and 2005. The cities of Seaside and Marina, Calif., where Fort Ord had been critical to the local economy, were left with a ghost town of clapboard barracks and decrepit, World War II-era concrete structures that neither of the cities could afford to tear down. Also left behind were poisonous stockpiles of unexploded ordnance, lead fragments, industrial solvents and explosives residue, a toxic legacy that in some areas of the base remains largely where the Army left it. Across the country, communities were promised that closed bases would be restored, cleaned up and turned over for civilian use. But the cleanup has proceeded at a snail’s pace at many of the facilities, where future remediation work could extend until 2084 and local governments are struggling with the cost of making the land suitable for development. At more than 1,000 sites within the closed bases, the land is so badly contaminated that no one will ever be allowed to live on it. Sites that were supposed to be clean were later found full of asbestos, radioactivity and other health threats. Military base cleanups are often full of surprises, but Hunters Point is in a league of its own. Two former supervisors at an environmental firm, Tetra Tech EC, which the Navy hired to help clean up the base, were convicted in 2018 of fraudulently submitting clean dirt to a laboratory in place of the contaminated dirt at the shipyard.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on military corruption from reliable major media sources.


Garbage In, Toxics Out: They Promised “Advanced Recycling” for Plastics and Delivered Toxic Waste
2023-09-28, The Intercept
Posted: 2023-10-08 19:44:48
https://theintercept.com/2023/09/28/braven-plastic-recycling-toxic-waste/

Braven Environmental [is] a company that says it can recycle nearly 90 percent of plastic waste through a form of chemical recycling called pyrolysis. Traditional recycling is able to process only about 8.7 percent of America’s plastic waste; pyrolysis uses high temperatures and low-oxygen conditions to break down the remaining plastics, like films and Styrofoam, ideally turning them into feedstock oil for new plastic production. The American Chemistry Council, the country’s leading petrochemical industry trade group, claims that chemical recycling will create a “circular economy” for the bulk of the world’s plastic, diverting it from oceans and landfills. Plastic giants have gone so far as to dub the process “advanced recycling,” but environmentalists say this is a misnomer because the majority of the plastic processed at such facilities is not recycled at all. In fact, researchers have found that the process uses more energy and has a worse overall environmental impact than virgin plastic production. Despite these challenges, lawmakers nationwide are now embracing the technology, thanks to a massive lobbying push from ... petrochemical groups. One list of warnings in a Braven air permit application reads like a toxicologist’s worst nightmare: The pyrolysis oil may cause cancer and genetic defects, as well as damage to organs, fertility, and unborn children. Other hazards included being “extremely flammable” and “very toxic to aquatic life” with “long lasting effects.”

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corporate corruption from reliable major media sources.


A mysterious source has been sending radio signals to Earth from space for decades
2023-07-24, The Independent (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2023-10-08 19:39:58
https://www.independent.co.uk/space/mystery-radio-signals-earth-space-b238063...

An unknown source has been sending radio blasts towards Earth since at least 1988, scientists say. For 35 years, the source has been sending out regular 20-minute blasts of energy that vary considerably in their brightness, researchers say. The emissions appear something like the blasts that come out of pulsars or fast radio bursts, which last for milliseconds to several seconds. But the newly discovered source sends radio signals that pulsate on a period of 21 minutes – something previously thought impossible by expected explanations. Pulsars are neutron stars that spin around quickly, throwing out radio blasts as they do. When one crosses Earth, the emissions can be picked up very briefly and brightly, like being in the path of the light from a rotating lighthouse. Scientists believe that process can only work if the magnetic field of the pulsar is strong, and it is rotating quickly enough – if not, there would not be enough energy to see the pulsar from Earth. That has led to the development of the “pulsar death line”, which suggests that sources must be spinning fast and strong enough to be detected. The newly discovered object named GPMJ1839-10, however, is way beyond that death line. If it is a pulsar, then it seems to be operating in ways that scientists thought impossible. It could also be a highly magnetised white dwarf or magnetar, an extra kind of neutron star with incredibly strong magnetic fields. But they do not tend to send out emissions of this kind, researchers believe.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on the mysterious nature of reality from reliable major media sources.


The New Push for Censorship Under the Guise of Combating Hate
2023-10-01, Tablet
Posted: 2023-10-08 19:37:49
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/censorship-center-guise-comb...

In March of 2021 a nonprofit group called the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) released a report about online misinformation. Founded [by] Imran Ahmed, the CCDH ... provides the White House with a powerful weapon to use against critics including RFK Jr. and [Elon] Musk, while also pressuring platforms like Facebook and Twitter to enforce the administration’s policies. One rumor that came up ... is that [Ahmed] works for British intelligence. “There’s nothing surprising about this,” said Mike Benz, a former State Department official who now runs the Foundation for Freedom Online, a free-speech watchdog. “This is not the first rodeo of British and U.S. intelligence services creating a cutout for the purpose of influencing the online news economy, to rig public debate in favor of political speech that supports agency agendas.” CCDH’s ... chairman is Simon Clark, a former senior fellow at the Center for American Progress (CAP), a D.C. think tank aligned with the corporate arm of the Democratic Party. One might conclude that CCDH functions as an arm of the corporate wing of the Democratic Party, to be deployed against the perceived enemies of corporate Democrats, whether they come from the left or the right. Clark was also a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensics Lab. “The Atlantic Council, in the past several years, has had seven CIA directors on its board of directors or board of advisers,” said Benz. “And it’s one of the premier architects of online censorship.”

Note: Read an excellent piece on what gave rise to the modern censorship regime. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on intelligence agency corruption and media manipulation from reliable sources.


You Are Reading This Thanks to Semiconductors
2023-05-04, ScheerPost
Posted: 2023-10-08 19:32:41
https://scheerpost.com/2023/05/04/you-are-reading-this-thanks-to-semiconductors/

On 7 October 2022, the United States government implemented export controls in an effort to hinder the development of China’s semiconductor industry. The next day, China’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said: "... By politicising tech and trade issues and using them as a tool and weapon, the US cannot hold back China’s development but will only hurt and isolate itself when its action backfires." Under the Trump and Biden administrations, the US has placed hundreds of Chinese companies on trade and investment blacklists. These restrictions have banned any company in the world that uses US products – effectively every chip designer and manufacturer – from doing business with Chinese tech firms. The US has also pressured governments and firms around the world to impose similar restrictions. Washington fears that China’s technological development will lead, through trade and investment, to the dispersal of advanced technologies more broadly throughout the world, namely, to states in the Global South that the US sees as a threat. This would be a significant blow to the US’s power over these countries. The scale of the developments in digital technology is staggering. Earlier conflicts took place over energy and food, but now this conflict has heated up ... the resources of our digital world. This technology can be used to solve so many of our dilemmas, and yet, here we are, at the precipice of greater conflict to benefit the few over the needs of the many.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption from reliable major media sources.


The power of contact in the rehumanization process
2023-09-12, Waging Nonviolence
Posted: 2023-10-08 19:30:06
https://wagingnonviolence.org/metta/podcast/the-power-of-contact-theory-rehum...

‘Contact theory’ has been shown to lead to harmony and an enlarged sense of a common good, even when there are limited resources and competing interests. It's a theory that suggests that the more contact that people have, the more willing they are to rehumanize and understand each other, even across their personal differences. It originated in the 50s with the work of Gordon Allport. After World War II, he asked himself, how can we reduce conflict in society? He put forward that, under the right conditions, having positive experiences with people of another social, ethnic, cultural, religious backgrounds could improve our tolerance and reduce our prejudice against them. 50 years later, the vast majority of studies show that it does work. If you talk about moving beyond past violence and having a harmonious society, one of the biggest things that could hamper having these contact experiences [is] the homophilia principle, where you go with your own group. It's easy to avoid having experiences with other groups. But once we do, they're very beneficial. We spoke with someone named Ali Abu Awad [who] is a Palestinian activist. He said he never had contact with an Israeli ... until he was in his 30s. And they were brought together into a group. This Israeli woman was crying, and he was crying. They were both grieving the loss of family members of the conflict. That moment of contact actually changed the whole direction of his life because he realized that this Israeli woman was human like he was. He ended up becoming an activist working toward a solution that humanizes Israelis and humanizes Palestinians at the same time.

Note: This summary is a transcript of an interview with Jasper Van Assche, professor at the University of Ghent in Belgium. Explore more positive stories like this in our comprehensive inspiring news articles archive focused on solutions and bridging divides.


The Norwegian secret: how friluftsliv boosts health and happiness
2023-09-27, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2023-10-08 19:28:45
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2023/sep/27/the-norwegian-secret-how...

Friluftsliv [is] a way of being that is part of the Norwegian national identity. The term was coined by the playwright Henrik Ibsen in his 1859 poem On the Heights, although the concept is much older. Its literal translation is “free-air life”, but Ibsen used it to convey a spiritual connection with nature. To modern Norwegians, it means participating in outdoor activities, but also has a deeper sense of de-stressing in nature and sharing in a common culture. An astonishingly high percentage of Norwegians report spending time outdoors. A survey in June by the market research company Kantar TNS found that 83% are interested in friluftsliv, 77% spend time in nature on a weekly basis and 25% do so most days. At many nurseries, toddlers spend 80% of their time outside; at school, there are special days throughout the year when children go out in nature and build campfires. Studies show that being in green spaces helps reduce anxiety and improve cognition. In a 2020 survey, 90% of Norwegians said they felt less stressed and in a better mood when they spent time in nature. Helga Synnevåg Løvoll, a professor of friluftsliv at Volda University College, says the five documented ways to wellbeing can be achieved through friluftsliv (they are “connect”, “be active”, “take notice”, “keep learning” and “give”). This nature-induced wellbeing could be one reason why Norway ranks among the happiest countries in the world. It came seventh in the UN’s World Happiness report in 2023.

Note: Read about the rise of "green prescription" programs in different healthcare systems around the world. Explore more positive stories like this in our comprehensive inspiring news articles archive focused on solutions and bridging divides.


Can a map of the ocean floor be crowdsourced?
2023-10-01, BBC News
Posted: 2023-10-08 19:26:56
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20230929-can-a-map-of-the-ocean-floor-be-c...

In 2023, Seabed 2030 announced that its latest map of the entire seafloor is nearly 25% complete. The data to make the world's first publicly available map is stored at the International Hydrography Organization (IHO)'s Data Centre for Digital Bathymetry. 17 research vessels owned by American universities ... constantly circle the globe studying the deep ocean. The ocean mappers came up with a new plan: crowdsourcing. By attaching a data logger to a boat's echosounder, any vessel can build a simple map of the seafloor. Tion Uriam, the head of the Hydrographic Unit at the Republic of Kiribati's Ministry of Communications, Transport and Tourism Development, recently received two data loggers that he's planning to install on local ferries. "It's a win to be part of that initiative," he says. "Just to put us on the map and raise our hands [to say] we want to be part of a global effort." The military or commercial value of nautical charts will always be a barrier. "Sea charts were destined to be removed from the academic realm and from general circulation," wrote the map historian Lloyd Brown. "They were much more than an aid to navigation; they were the key to empire, the way to wealth." [Marine geologist Kevin] Mackay experienced this on a scientific-mapping expedition. He received a call from a military he chooses not to name and "they said 'you need to destroy that data because there was military value ... it's a place where submarines like to hide'," he recalls. "Obviously, we ignore them because we're [mapping] for science, we don't care."

Note: Explore more positive stories like this in our comprehensive inspiring news articles archive focused on solutions and bridging divides.


How NASA Got a 'UFO Czar'—And Why it Matters
2023-09-15, Time Magazine
Posted: 2023-10-03 15:32:44
https://time.com/6314791/nasa-ufo-director-mark-mcinernay/

At a press conference at NASA’s Washington, D.C., headquarters, the space agency [appointed] the country’s, and indeed the world’s, first-ever UFO Czar. Only NASA didn’t use either one of those terms. Fewer and fewer people ... talk about UFOs. The preferred term now is UAP, for unidentified anomalous (or, variously, aerial) phenomenon. And NASA didn’t use the label czar either. Instead, the full name for the new job is director of UAP research, and the man tapped to do the work is Mark McInernay, a former Pentagon liaison for NASA. It will be McInernay’s job to study the sightings, advancing science if the vehicles are confirmed to be extraterrestrial, and protecting national security if they’re of international military origin. He’ll have a lot to work with. Over the past 20 years, there have been more than 120 sightings of objects that often appear to be flying with no identified means of propulsion, and maneuvering in quick, head-snapping, often stop-and-start ways that no conventional machines can manage. It helps that the sightings have been called in by witnesses most people think of as unimpeachably reliable: U.S. military pilots. NASA Administrator Bill Nelson yesterday stepped up to offer his view of the possibility of life in space. “There’s a global fascination with UAP,” he said. “Now, NASA has a statutory authority to look for life in the universe. Do I believe there's life in a universe that is so vast that it's hard for me to comprehend how big it is? My personal answer is yes.”

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on UFOs from reliable major media sources. Then explore the excellent, reliable resources provided in our UFO Information Center.


Why has France banned sales of Apple's iPhone 12?
2023-09-15, Reuters
Posted: 2023-10-03 15:30:48
https://www.reuters.com/technology/why-has-france-banned-sales-apples-iphone-...

France's radiation watchdog has banned sales of Apple's iPhone 12 after tests that it said showed the smartphone breached European radiation exposure limits. The Agence Nationale des Frequences (ANFR) said on Tuesday the model's Specific Absorption Rate (SAR) - a measure of the rate of radiofrequency energy absorbed by the body from a piece of equipment - was higher than legally allowed. Jean-Noel Barrot, France's junior minister for the digital economy, told newspaper Le Parisien a software update could fix the problem. If Apple does not resolve the issue, the ANFR said it would order a recall of the device across France. "Specific Absorption Rate" refers to the dose of energy that the body absorbs from any source of radiation. It is expressed as watts per kilogram of body weight. The radiation from mobile phones is a result of the way they work, by transmitting radiofrequency waves, creating electromagnetic fields. The ANFR said it recently carried out random tests on 141 phones, including iPhone 12, bought from shops. In independent laboratory tests, two iPhone 12s did not comply with EU standards, the office of the Digital Minister told Reuters. Smartphone radiation tests have so far led to 42 imposed sale stops in the country, it said. The ANFR said accredited labs had found an SAR of 5.74 watts per kilogram during tests of the iPhone 12 being held in the hand or kept in a trouser pocket. The EU standard is 4.0 watts per kilogram.

Note: Explore an excellent investigation into how the FCC shields cell phone companies from valid safety concerns. This Wired article quotes the result of a mega-study that reveals there is “significant evidence linking cellular phone use to increased tumor risk.” Unlike the U.S., many countries have regulations in place to protect people from cell phone radiation exposure. Check out this comprehensive list of countries with official recommendations and policies on cell phone radiation exposure. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of news articles on wireless technology risks from reliable major media sources.


America's poverty rate soared last year. Children were among the worst hit.
2023-09-12, CBS News
Posted: 2023-10-03 15:29:03
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/poverty-rate-census-income/

Millions of American families fell into poverty last year as the well of government-funded pandemic aid dried up and incomes shrank, according to new data from the U.S. Census. Children were particularly hard-hit, with the poverty rate for kids doubling compared with 2021. The rise in poverty amounts to an increase of 15.3 million people around the U.S. living in poverty. Rising inflation [has] hobbled many households. Last year also marked the end of all pandemic-era benefits that helped families stay afloat during the health crisis, such as stimulus checks and the Child Tax Credit, which distributed as much as $300 per child in cash payments. The Supplemental Poverty Measure (SPM), which measures whether people have enough resources to cover their needs, was 12.4% for U.S. households in 2022, an increase of 4.6 percentage points from a year earlier, the Census said on Tuesday. The child poverty rate, as measured by the SPM, jumped from a historic low of 5.2% in 2021 to 12.4% in 2022, the Census said. That's the largest change in child poverty since the Census began tracking the SPM in 2009, Census officials said. If the expanded Child Tax Credit had been renewed, about 3 million additional children would have been kept out of poverty last year. U.S. households also earned less last year, the Census said. The median household income in 2022 was $74,580, a decline of 2.3% from 2021 and the third year in a row that incomes have dipped. 

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on income inequality from reliable major media sources.


The Biden administration tried to censor this Stanford doctor, but he won in court
2023-09-20, New York Post
Posted: 2023-10-03 15:27:07
https://nypost.com/2023/09/20/how-dr-jay-bhattacharya-beat-biden-administrati...

A federal court of appeals ruled earlier this month that the White House, surgeon general, CDC and FBI “likely violated the First Amendment” by exerting a pressure campaign on social media companies to censor COVID-19 skeptics — including Stanford epidemiologist Dr. Jay Bhattacharya. Bhattacharya, a professor of medicine, economics and health research policy at Stanford University, co-authored the Great Barrington Declaration in the fall of 2020 with professors from Harvard and Oxford. The epidemiologists advocated for “focused protection” — safeguarding the most vulnerable Americans while cautiously allowing others to function as normally as possible — rather than broad pandemic lockdowns. “We were just acting as scientists, but almost immediately we were censored,” said Bhattacharya. “Google de-boosted us. Our Facebook page was removed. It was just a crazy time. “The kinds of things that the federal government was telling social media companies to censor included us — along with millions of other posts from countless other people who were criticizing government COVID policy,” he added. A New Orleans-based three-judge panel found that the federal government “likely coerced or significantly encouraged social-media platforms to moderate content” by vaguely threatening adverse regulatory consequences if social media companies did not suppress certain viewpoints on the pandemic.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on the coronavirus and media manipulation from reliable sources.


The real data behind the new COVID vaccines the White House is pushing
2023-09-14, New York Post
Posted: 2023-10-03 15:24:35
https://nypost.com/2023/09/14/the-real-data-behind-the-new-covid-vaccines-the...

What if I told you one in 50 people who took a new medication had a “medically attended adverse event” and the manufacturer refused to disclose what exactly the complication was — would you take it? And what if the theoretical benefit was only transient, lasting about three months, after which your susceptibility goes back to baseline? And what if we told you the Food and Drug Administration cleared it without any human-outcomes data. That’s what we know about the new COVID vaccine the Biden administration is firmly recommending. COVID vaccines are very different from flu vaccines. COVID vaccines have higher complication rates, including severe and life-threatening cardiac reactions. Flu shots have a 50-plus-year safety record whereas COVID vaccines have been associated with a serious adverse event rate of one in 5,000 doses, according to a German study by the Paul-Ehrlich-Institut. Another study, published last year in the medical journal Vaccine, estimated the rate of serious adverse events to be as high as one in 556 COVID vaccine recipients. And for young people, the incidence of myocarditis is six to 28 times higher after the vaccine than after infection, even for females, according to a 2022 JAMA Cardiology study. That’s one of the reasons a study that we and several national colleagues published last year found that college booster mandates appear to have resulted in a net public health harm.

Note: The above was written by Marty Makary, MD, a professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. Anecdotals is a powerful documentary that follows the lives of many people who stepped up to get vaccinated for themselves or the greater good, yet whose lives changed drastically as a result. Instead of having their stories of vaccine injuries heard and seen, they were discredited and abandoned by the medical system and our media systems.


‘War is back. People want to stock up’: inside Europe’s biggest arms fair
2023-09-20, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2023-10-03 15:22:46
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2023/sep/20/war-military-inside-euro...

Defence and Security Equipment International (DSEI) [is] Europe’s biggest arms fair, which takes place every two years in the Excel convention centre in east London. It is a sprawling supermarket of modern warfare, where the world’s armies come to buy the latest AI-guided missiles and tanks, inspect giant warships moored in the Royal Docks, and queue to take a turn sitting in the cockpits of fighter jets. Joystick manufacturers jostle with makers of invisibility cloaks, while purveyors of VR simulators compete with those of radar jammers, next to endless ranks of machine guns. Sleek submarines sparkle on spotlit plinths while flocks of missile-carrying drones dangle from the ceiling like menacing mobiles. “This year feels much busier than usual,” one bomb salesman tells me, standing by a gleaming rack of cone-shaped warheads, polished like trophies in a glass cabinet. “It seems war is back in a big way. People are looking to stock up.” Whereas attendees of this great murderous bazaar may once have felt sheepish, they now proudly march through the entrance gates with their heads held high. Recent events in Ukraine have sharpened minds and opened wallets in relation to government spending on defence. Total global military expenditure reached an all-time high of $2.2tn (£1.8tn) in 2022. Outside the exhibition halls, reality hits. “Please be aware,” a polite protester tells visitors, “that many of the countries you are doing business with are on the UK government’s human rights priority list.”

Note: As one defense executive flat-out told Reuters during the event, "war is good for business." For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on war and military corruption from reliable major media sources.


Matt Gaetz Wants To Make The Pentagon Answer For Training Coup Leaders
2023-08-30, The Intercept
Posted: 2023-10-03 15:21:17
https://theintercept.com/2023/08/30/coup-leaders-us-military-training-matt-ga...

In response to a spate of coups by U.S.-trained military personnel in West Africa and the greater Sahel, Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., has authored an amendment to the 2024 defense spending bill to collect information on trainees who overthrow their governments. It would require the Pentagon for the first time to inform Congress about U.S.-mentored mutineers. “The Department of Defense, up until this point, has not kept data regarding the people they train who participate in coups to overthrow democratically elected — or any — governments,” said Gaetz. The Intercept has found that at least 15 officers who benefited from U.S. security assistance have been involved in 12 coups in West Africa and the greater Sahel during the war on terror. At least five leaders of the Niger coup in late July received American training. They, in turn, appointed five U.S.-trained members of the Nigerien security forces to serve as governors. The Intercept identified more than 70 other African military personnel involved in coups since 2001 who might have received U.S. training or assistance, but when provided with names, State Department spokespeople either failed to respond or replied, “We do not have the ability to provide records for these historical cases.” Gaetz’s proposed legislation ... would require the defense secretary to submit a report listing “the number of partner countries whose military forces have participated in security cooperation training or equipping programs or received security assistance training.”

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corruption in government and in the military from reliable major media sources.


Honduras Defense Official And U.S. Drug War Ally Tied To Narco-trafficker, Notorious Mercenary Firm
2023-08-25, The Intercept
Posted: 2023-10-03 15:19:50
https://theintercept.com/2023/08/25/honduras-military-elias-melgar/

Col. Elias Melgar Urbina, a top-ranking Honduran military official and U.S. partner in joint drug war operations, has been tied to a Honduran drug trafficker, according to a U.S. Justice Department filing, and a private security company accused of assassinating land rights activists, according to eyewitness testimony and documents obtained by The Intercept. During the trial of Geovanny Fuentes Ramírez in federal district court in Manhattan, U.S. prosecutors suggested the possibility that Melgar himself had links to the drug trade. Fuentes was convicted in March 2021 of conspiring with high-ranking Honduran politicians and military officials to traffic tons of cocaine into the United States. One of Fuentes’s “military contacts,” according to prosecutors, was Melgar. For decades, the U.S. has supported Honduran governments whose security forces have violently repressed protest, protected select figures in the drug trade, and executed perceived criminals with so-called extermination squads. Since 2009, when a military coup greenlit by the State Department ousted former President Manuel Zelaya, the husband of current president Castro, the U.S. has supported sweeping security initiatives to militarize Honduran forces in the name of the war on drugs — even as they engaged in widespread human rights abuses. “The armed forces have been the key for turning Honduras into a narco-state,” [Pro-Honduras Network head Cristián] Sánchez told The Intercept.

Note: The US government has a long history of involvement in drug trafficking. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on military corruption from reliable major media sources.


What to Know About Cellphone Radiation
2023-01-04, ProPublica
Posted: 2023-10-03 15:17:31
https://www.propublica.org/article/what-to-know-about-cellphone-radiation

Federal regulators have maintained that cellphones pose no danger. But a growing body of scientific research is raising questions, with the stakes heightened by the ongoing deployment of hundreds of thousands of new transmitters in neighborhoods across America. ProPublica recently examined the issue in detail, finding that the chief government regulator, the Federal Communications Commission, relies on an exposure standard from 1996 ... and that the agency brushed aside a lengthy study by a different arm of the federal government that found that cellphone radiation caused rare cancers. The newest generation of cellphone technology, known as 5G, remains largely untested. A growing body of research has found evidence of health risks even when people are exposed to radiation below the FCC limits. The array of possible harms ranges from effects on fertility and fetal development to associations with cancer. Some studies of people living near cell towers have also confirmed an array of health complaints, including dizziness, nausea, headaches, tinnitus and insomnia. In 2011, the International Agency for Research on Cancer, an arm of the World Health Organization, cited troubling but uncertain evidence in classifying wireless radiation as “possibly carcinogenic to humans.” In 2018, a study by the federal government that was nearly two decades in the making found “clear evidence” that cellphone radiation caused cancer in lab animals.

Note: Unlike the U.S., many countries have regulations in place to protect people from cell phone radiation exposure. Check out this comprehensive list of countries with official recommendations and policies on cell phone radiation exposure. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on wireless technology risks from reliable major media sources.


What Would Real “National Defense” Look Like?
2023-09-24, TomDispatch
Posted: 2023-10-03 15:15:33
https://tomdispatch.com/what-would-real-national-defense-look-like/#more

What would a progressive Pentagon look like? I’m not talking about a “woke” Pentagon that touts and celebrates its “diversity,” including its belated acceptance of LGBTQ+ members. Painting “Black Lives Matter” and rainbow flags on B-52 bombers doesn’t make the bombs dropped any less destructive. All too many Americans didn't know how badly they'd been lied to about the Vietnam War until the Pentagon Papers emerged near the end of that disastrous conflict. All too many Americans didn't know how badly they'd been lied to about the Afghan War until the Afghan War Papers emerged near the end of that disastrous conflict. All too many Americans didn't know how badly they'd been lied to about the Iraq War until the myth of Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction (which had been part of the bogus rationale for invading that country) crumbled. A progressive Pentagon would ... celebrate the insights of Generals Smedley Butler and Dwight D. Eisenhower that war is fundamentally a racket (Butler) and that the military-industrial-congressional complex poses the severest of threats to freedom and democracy in America (President Eisenhower). A progressive Pentagon would ... recognize that one cannot serve both a republic and an empire, that a choice must be made, and that a Pentagon of the present kind in a genuine republic would voluntarily downsize itself, while largely dismantling its imperial infrastructure of perhaps 800 overseas bases.

Note: Read decorated general Smedley Butler's 1935 book War is a Racket. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on military corruption from reliable major media sources.


The Backyard Farmers Who Grow Food With Fog
2023-09-18, Reasons to be Cheerful
Posted: 2023-10-03 15:13:48
https://reasonstobecheerful.world/lima-fog-catchers-water-scarcity-irrigation/

At the highest point of Los Tres Miradores, a terrifyingly steep urban settlement with soaring views across Peru’s capital, Lima, there is a curious set of large structures that resemble a fleet of ships in the sky. They are so-called “fog catchers.” About 40 of these netted devices, made of high density Raschel polyethylene and spanning several meters wide, are lined up atop a misty mound and linked by a network of tubes that lead to storage containers. Home to a population of more than 10 million, Lima is one of the driest cities in the world. [The nonprofit] El Movimiento Peruanos sin Agua has helped install 600 fog catchers across Lima and a total of 2,000 across Peru, including in the regions of Arequipa, Iquitos and Cuzco. According to [founder Abel] Cruz, one man he supported is even able to raise 1,000 chickens thanks to fog catchers. In June, the project received a significant boost when it signed an agreement with the Mayor of Lima to install 10,000 more fog catchers in the hills surrounding the city in the next four years. The municipality ... said the project has the potential to “reforest, create ecological lungs, ecotourism and at the same time provide water for human consumption, for bio-orchards, botanical gardens, washing clothes, utensils and more.” In Los Tres Miradores, the 40 fog catchers — which were installed in 2021 — provide enough water for 180 families, whether to bathe, clean, drink (after being filtered at home) or to irrigate crops on small garden patches.

Note: Explore more positive stories like this in our comprehensive inspiring news articles archive focused on solutions and bridging divides.


Getting the Soil Right: How Carbon Farming Combats Climate Change
2023-09-15, Reasons to be Cheerful
Posted: 2023-10-03 15:11:59
https://reasonstobecheerful.world/carbon-farming-climate-change-regenerative-...

The solution to stopping climate change might be buried on 10 acres in the Pauma Valley of California. “The idea is not just to produce food but to improve the soil,” says Alvarez, Solidarity Farm’s Climate Resilience Specialist. “We stopped using the plow to turn the soil, and we do a lot of composting and mulching to improve our soil health.” Solidarity Farm had used organic principles in the 10 years since its inception, but it pivoted to carbon farming after the extreme heat in the summer of 2017. Carbon farmers cultivate plants and trees in a way that maximizes carbon sequestration in the soil. Among the most important practices for carbon farmers are minimizing soil erosion by planting perennials and ground cover, which also lowers soil temperatures, and only working the land by hand or with low-tech solutions. “The soil has the capacity to store more carbon than all plants on the planet together,” Alvarez says. Solidarity Farms produces a diverse range of about 60 different fruits and vegetables, at least 70 percent of them perennial crops such as plums and pomegranates. Stacks of organic chicken manure in front of the vegetable beds wait to be distributed. The farmers enrich the soil with compost and mulch, while deterring pests with diverse crop rotation. According to soil tests, the Solidarity farmers have tripled the amount of carbon in the ground since 2018. “This equates to a drawdown of nearly 600 metric tons of CO2 per year, offsetting the emissions of 80 American households,” Alvarez says.

Note: Have you seen the groundbreaking and inspiring movie Kiss the Ground? In a time where we're told hopeless and divisive narratives about our current environmental challenges, people all over the world are reversing the damage from destroyed ecosystems, regenerating the world's soils, and creating abundant food supplies. Don't miss this powerful film on the growing regenerative agriculture movement and its power to revive global community and our connection to the natural world.


Navigating the Waves
2023-08-21, Reasons to be Cheerful
Posted: 2023-10-03 15:10:27
https://reasonstobecheerful.world/navigating-the-waves/

Natalie Small looks at the ocean. “How high are the waves today – the ones out there on the water and the emotional ones within me? These are questions she likes to ask at the start of every group therapy session on Ocean Beach in San Diego, California. Small ... is part of a burgeoning niche of psychotherapy that blends traditional therapy with a sport proven to build resilience, confidence and well-being. More than a hippie wellness novelty or New Age fad, surf therapy is being embraced by psychologists and government agencies alike as a way to increase access to mental health care while delivering evidence-based, lasting results. Kristen Walter ... received a $1 million grant from the Navy to research surf therapy for military personnel. “We see immediate benefits,” Walter confirms. “Post-traumatic stress, depression and anxiety decrease significantly.” Walter’s research has shown that the effects of surf therapy are lasting: When she randomly assigned 96 military participants with mental health diagnoses to either hiking or surf therapy, both groups spent three to four hours per week in nature. After six weeks, both groups showed improvements — 55 percent of the surfers and 46 percent of the hikers were no longer considered clinically ill. “But when we checked again three months later, the improvements in the surfer group lasted significantly longer,” Walter says. “74 percent of the surfers were considered healed versus only 47 percent of the hikers.”

Note: Explore more positive stories like this in our comprehensive inspiring news articles archive focused on solutions and bridging divides.


How American Institutions Went From Trust to Bust
2023-09-08, Wall Street Journal
Posted: 2023-09-24 17:11:28
https://www.wsj.com/articles/american-institutions-went-from-trust-to-bust-me...

At the heart of America’s political and cultural turmoil is a crisis of trust. In the space of a generation, the people’s confidence in their leaders and their most important institutions to do the right thing has collapsed. The federal government, big business, the media, education, science and medicine, technology, religious institutions, law enforcement and others have seen a precipitous decline. Since 1979 Gallup has measured trust among the public in the most important American institutions. Its latest survey ... found that across the nine key institutions Gallup has tracked consistently, the proportion of Americans who said they had “a great deal or quite a lot of confidence” averaged out at 26%. That is the lowest figure ever recorded. Some institutions have forfeited more trust than others. In 1979 Gallup found that 51% of Americans had a great deal or quite a lot of confidence in newspapers. This year the number was 18%. The biggest factor driving mistrust ... is surely the widening cultural gap between the people who have led and thrived in our major institutions and the rest of the population. The past 20 years have seen the rapid emergence of a new elite—expensively educated, versed in progressive nostrums, increasingly distant from and disdainful of the rest of America and its values. This crowd comprises much of the nation’s permanent government classes, almost its entire academic establishment, most of the people who control its news and cultural output, and a good deal of its corporate elite.

Note: About half of Americans lost faith in the scientific community after this "new elite" repeatedly misled the public on issues related to the pandemic. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on the coronavirus and media manipulation from reliable sources.


Biden officials ‘likely violated First Amendment’ in Big Tech COVID censorship efforts, appeals court affirms
2023-09-08, New York Post
Posted: 2023-09-24 17:08:40
https://nypost.com/2023/09/08/biden-officials-likely-violated-first-amendment...

The Biden administration likely infringed upon the First Amendment when it leaned on social media companies to remove false or misleading COVID-19 content, a federal court of appeals ruled Friday — narrowing a bombshell district court order that barred several officials and agencies from communicating with the platforms. The White House, surgeon general, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the FBI “likely coerced or significantly encouraged social-media platforms to moderate content” and in doing so, “likely violated the First Amendment,” the New Orleans-based Fifth US Circuit Court of Appeals determined. The three-judge panel, however, adjusted the scope of US District Judge Terry Doughty’s July 4 order ... removing officials from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and the State Department from the injunction. The Fifth Circuit vacated nine of the 10 provisions in Doughty’s order that prevented Biden administration officials from “urging, encouraging, pressuring” or “inducing” social media companies from removing content. Similarly, the appeals court determined that “following up with social-media companies” about content moderation, “requesting content reports from social-media companies” or asking platforms to “Be on The Lookout” for certain types of material does not violate individuals’ First Amendment rights. 

Note: Many posts that were censored contained factual information on COVID-related issues. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on the coronavirus and media manipulation from reliable sources.


Rumble Had Exclusive Rights To Stream Republican Debate — Yet Was Buried In Google Search
2023-09-20, The Intercept
Posted: 2023-09-24 17:06:44
https://theintercept.com/2023/09/20/republican-debate-google-search-rumble/

Leading up to the August Republican presidential primary debate ... An RNC official told Google via email that the debate would be streaming exclusively on the upstart video platform Rumble. The August 23 debate was broadcast on Fox News and streamed on Fox Nation, which requires a subscription, while Rumble was the only one to stream it for free. On the day of and during the debate, however, potential viewers who searched Google for “GOP debate stream” were returned links to YouTube, Fox News, and news articles about the debate, according to screen recordings. Rumble was nowhere on the first page. For Rumble, which is currently in discovery in an antitrust lawsuit against Google in California, this is a case of Google suppressing its competitors in favor of its own product, YouTube. YouTube is owned by Google, and it has regularly been the subject of anticompetitive allegations from rivals, who charge that Google unfairly and illegally favors YouTube in its search algorithm. Google, in fact, is in the middle of a landmark antitrust trial, charged with anticompetitive practices by the Department of Justice. The company would not have been required by antitrust law to promote [Rumble's] link. It would, however, be barred from suppressing the competitor’s link from organic results. The fact that Rumble’s link did not appear on the first page even though it was the most relevant link the search could return means either the search engine failed at its task or the link was suppressed.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corporate corruption and media manipulation from reliable sources.


New York Times Doesn’t Want Its Stories Archived
2023-09-17, The Intercept
Posted: 2023-09-24 17:04:59
https://theintercept.com/2023/09/17/new-york-times-website-internet-archive/

The New York Times tried to block a web crawler that was affiliated with the famous Internet Archive. The Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine has long been used to compare webpages as they are updated over time, clearly delineating the differences between two iterations of any given page. Several years ago, the archive added a feature called “Changes” that lets users compare two archived versions of a website from different dates or times on a single display. The tool can be used to uncover changes in news stories that have been made without any accompanying editorial notes, so-called stealth edits. The Times has, in the past, faced public criticisms over some of its stealth edits. In a notorious 2016 incident, the paper revised an article about then-Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt. ... drastically after publication — changing the tone from one of praise to skepticism. More recently, the Times stealth-edited an article that originally listed “death” as one of six ways “you can still cancel your federal student loan debt.” Following the edit, the “death” section title was changed to a more opaque heading of “debt won’t carry on.” A service called NewsDiffs — which provides a similar comparative service but focuses on news outlets such as the New York Times, CNN, the Washington Post, and others — has also chronicled a long list of significant examples of articles that have undergone stealth edits, though the service appears to not have been updated in several years.

Note: The manipulation of media coverage for Bernie Sanders' campaign was widespread, as discussed in an WantToKnow.info interview with media activist Tony Brasunas. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corporate corruption and media manipulation from reliable sources.


Google wanted to ‘manipulate choices’ to become default search engine, behavioral expert testifies at antitrust trial
2023-09-14, New York Post
Posted: 2023-09-24 17:03:27
https://nypost.com/2023/09/14/google-wanted-to-manipulate-choices-to-become-d...

Google fought hard to be the default search engine on smartphones and browsers so it “can manipulate your choices,” an expert on human behavior testified for the government at the closely watched antitrust trial. Antonio Rangel, a behavioral economist ... took the stand for the second day and said Google has leaned heavily on default settings to keep users hooked on its search engine and other lucrative services. The Justice Department is arguing ... that the Alphabet unit sought agreements with mobile carriers to win powerful default positions on smartphones to dominate search. The antitrust case – the largest of its kind in more than two decades – will ultimately hinge on whether Google is determined to have taken anticompetitive steps to cut off rivals while building its search behemoth. In testimony on Wednesday, Rangel questioned Google’s argument that users could easily switch their default search engine, telling the court that he acquired an Android smartphone and found that it took 10 steps for the owner to switch Google for Microsoft’s Bing. “That is considerable choice friction,” Rangel said. Justice Department attorneys said Google paid “more than $10 billion per year” to major companies, including smartphone makers Apple and Samsung, browser operators like Mozilla and wireless providers such as AT&T, to secure a 91% share of the search market. The case’s outcome won’t be determined by a jury. Instead, US District Judge Amit Mehta will reach a determination on the outcome.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corporate corruption and media manipulation from reliable sources.


In our blood: how the US allowed toxic chemicals to seep into our lives
2023-09-13, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2023-09-24 17:01:23
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/sep/13/us-environmental-protecti...

For decades, it was the secret behind the magic show of homemaking across the US. Applied to a pan, it could keep a fried egg from sticking to the surface. Perfluorooctanoic acid, or PFOA, was ... seeping into the blood and organs of hundreds of millions of people who used products containing the chemical. PFOA is just one of dozens of modern-day chemicals that are found in the bodies of the majority of Americans. Research has also shown that more Americans are facing a growing number of ailments and disorders, from autoimmune disease to developmental disorders such as autism and some cancers. Scientists are increasingly concerned these two truths are linked. Scientists have accumulated enough data to conclude with confidence that humans face significant health risks from exposure to common commercial chemicals, and that regulations designed to protect them are failing. Due to flaws in federal regulation, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is perennially playing catch up. The majority of the 86,000 consumer chemicals registered with the agency have never received vigorous toxicity testing. Kyla Bennett, a former EPA employee [said] that at recent rates of review, it would take thousands of years to assess all 86,000 chemicals currently approved for use. EPA staff ... say the agency’s chemical programs remain understaffed, overwhelmed and burdened by still-ineffective regulations and a persistent culture that enables the chemical industry instead of counterbalancing it.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and health issues from reliable major media sources.


Revolving door redux: The DEA’s recently departed No. 2 returns to a Big Pharma consulting firm
2023-09-20, Associated Press
Posted: 2023-09-24 16:59:56
https://apnews.com/article/dea-opioids-fentanyl-cocaine-drugs-pharmaceutical-...

Louis Milione retired from the DEA a second time this summer amid reporting by The Associated Press on potential conflicts caused by his prior consulting for the pharmaceutical industry. Less than three months later, Milione again landed a plum job at Guidepost Solutions, a New York-based firm hired by some of the same companies he had been tasked with regulating when he returned to the DEA in 2021. Milione had spent four years at Guidepost prior to his return, leveraging his extensive experience and contacts from a 21-year DEA career. Milione is the most senior of a slew of DEA officials to have traded their badge and gun for a globe-trotting consulting job. His career stands out for two cycles through the revolving door between government and industry, raising questions about the potential impact on the DEA’s mission to police drug companies blamed for tens of thousands of American overdose deaths. Milione’s private-sector clientele also included Morris & Dickson Co., the nation’s fourth-largest wholesale drug distributor, as it tried to stave off DEA sanctions for disregarding thousands of suspicious, high-volume orders. The DEA allowed the company to continue shipping drugs for nearly four years after a judge recommended its license be revoked for “cavalier disregard” of rules aimed at preventing opioid abuse. It was not until AP began asking questions this spring that the DEA moved to finally strip the Shreveport, Louisiana-based company of its license to distribute highly addictive painkillers.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corruption in government and in the pharmaceutical industry from reliable major media sources.


How “windfall profits” from AI companies could fund a universal basic income
2023-07-28, Vox
Posted: 2023-09-24 16:57:46
https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/23810027/openai-artificial-intelligence-go...

There’s a lot of money in AI. Economists are predicting a massive boom in productivity as AI use takes off, buoyed by empirical research showing tools like ChatGPT boost worker output. Demis Hassabis, the founder of DeepMind, sold his company to Google in 2014 only after the latter agreed to an independent ethics board that would govern how Google uses DeepMind’s research. ChatGPT maker OpenAI is structured as a nonprofit that owns a for-profit arm. Anthropic, which makes the chatbot Claude, is divesting control over a majority of its board to a trust composed not of shareholders, but independent trustees meant to enforce a focus on safety ahead of profits. Those three companies, plus Microsoft, got together ... to start a new organization meant to self-regulate the AI industry. There are three broad ways the profits reaped by AI companies could make their way to a more general public. The first ... is taxes. The second, considerably less important, is charity. The third is if the companies themselves decide to donate a large share of their profits. This was the key proposal of a landmark 2020 paper called “The Windfall Clause.” The idea is simple: The clause is a voluntary but binding commitment that AI firms could make to donate a set percentage of their profits in excess of a certain threshold to a charitable entity. They suggest the thresholds be based on profits as a share of the gross world product (the entire world’s economic output).

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corporate corruption from reliable major media sources.


The US Is Fanning the Flames of War With China
2023-08-31, Truthout
Posted: 2023-09-24 16:56:09
https://truthout.org/articles/the-us-is-fanning-the-flames-of-war-with-china/

The United States is gunning for war with China. By cozying up to Taiwan and arming it to the teeth, President Joe Biden is undermining the “One China” policy which has been the cornerstone of U.S.-China relations since 1979. In March, U.S. Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines called China the “leading and most consequential threat to U.S. national security.” More than 90 percent of the most advanced microchips in the world are manufactured in Taiwan. The chips are used to power our smartphones, train artificial intelligence systems and guide missiles. The Trump administration imposed heavy tariffs on Chinese imports to cut off China’s access to the software technology and equipment required to build the advanced chips. Biden has maintained and dramatically expanded Trump’s coercive economic measures and imposed a blockade on advanced semiconductors. Biden has repeatedly stated that the United States would use military force to defend Taiwan if it is attacked by China. The Biden administration has provided Taiwan with $619 million worth of high-tech arms. China has not been at war with any country since 1979. By contrast, the United States has had only 16 years of peace in its 247 years. K.J. Noh, an activist scholar who writes about the geopolitics of the Asian continent ... described South Korea as key to the U.S.’s escalating war on China. “The United States has operational control over South Korean troops,” Noh said. The U.S. is also “weaponizing Taiwan into an imperial outpost for war.”

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption from reliable major media sources.


EFF to Michigan Court: Governments Shouldn’t Be Allowed to Use a Drone to Spy on You Without a Warrant
2023-09-19, ScheerPost
Posted: 2023-09-24 16:54:07
https://scheerpost.com/2023/09/19/eff-to-michigan-court-governments-shouldnt-...

Should the government have to get a warrant before using a drone to spy on your home and backyard? We think so, and in an amicus brief filed last Friday in Long Lake Township v. Maxon, we urged the Michigan Supreme Court to find that warrantless drone surveillance of a home violates the Fourth Amendment. In this case, Long Lake Township hired private operators to repeatedly fly drones over Todd and Heather Maxon’s home to take aerial photos and videos of their property in a zoning investigation. The Township did this without a warrant and then sought to use this documentation in a court case against them. In our brief, we argue that the township’s conduct was governed by and violated the Fourth Amendment and the equivalent section of the Michigan Constitution. Drone prevalence has soared in recent years, fueled by both private and governmental use. We have documented more than 1,471 law enforcement agencies across the United States that operate drones. In some cities, police have begun implementing “drone as first responder” programs, in which drones are constantly flying over communities in response to routine calls for service. Authorities have routinely used aerial surveillance technologies against individuals participating in racial justice movements. Under this backdrop, states like Florida, Maine, Minnesota, Nevada, North Dakota, and Virginia have enacted statutes requiring warrants for police use of drones.  

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and the disappearance of privacy from reliable major media sources.


Psychedelic drug MDMA moves closer to US approval following success in PTSD trial
2023-09-14, Nature
Posted: 2023-09-24 16:48:44
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-02886-x

The psychedelic drug MDMA, also known as ecstasy or molly, has passed another key hurdle on its way to regulatory approval as a treatment for mental illness. A second large clinical trial has found that the drug — in combination with psychotherapy — is effective at treating post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). In June, Australia became the first country to allow physicians to prescribe MDMA for treating psychiatric conditions. MDMA is illegal in the United States and other countries because of the potential for its misuse. But the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS) ... has long been developing a proprietary protocol for using MDMA as a treatment for PTSD and other disorders. MAPS has been campaigning for its legalization. In 2021, researchers sponsored by MAPS reported the results of a study in which 90 people received a form of psychotherapy developed by the organization alongside either MDMA or a placebo. After three treatment sessions, 67% of those who received MDMA with therapy no longer qualified for a PTSD diagnosis, compared with 32% of those who received therapy and a placebo. The results of a second trial ... were similar: 71% of people who received MDMA alongside therapy lost their PTSD diagnosis. A MAPS spokesperson says that the organization plans to seek formal FDA approval before the end of this year, and that because the agency has already designated MDMA as a ‘breakthrough therapy’ ... it will be evaluated quickly.

Note: Read more about the healing potentials of mind-altering drugs. Explore more positive stories like this in our comprehensive inspiring news articles archive focused on solutions and bridging divides.


The History And Potential Of MDMA
2023-06-29, NPR
Posted: 2023-09-24 16:47:21
https://www.npr.org/2023/06/29/1185170371/the-history-and-potential-of-mdma

Stuck indoors during the peak of COVID lockdown, science journalist Rachel Nuwer found herself at a professional crossroads. She had already published a nonfiction book on the dark world of wildlife trafficking and was looking for her next subject. A moment of clarity came at a surprising time. She and her partner, at home with nothing much to do, ingested MDMA. MDMA, also known as ecstasy or molly, is illegal. It is listed as a Schedule 1 drug by the U.S. federal government (the same group as marijuana and psilocybin, or magic mushrooms). A growing body of academic research has suggested potential benefits of MDMA beyond the recreational ecstasy some partygoers are familiar with. One study found that MDMA-enhanced therapy dramatically reduced PTSD symptoms. Another showed that psychedelics like MDMA could reopen so-called critical periods of time when brains are especially impressionable and open to learning. A scientific case study profiled a former white supremacist who reformed his extremist views after taking MDMA. Nuwer experienced similar clarity while on the drug. Her new book, "I Feel Love: MDMA and the Quest for Connection in a Fractured World," is the result of her epiphany. She explores the history and potential of the so-called love drug.

Note: Read more about the healing potentials of mind-altering drugs. Explore more positive stories like this in our comprehensive inspiring news articles archive focused on solutions and bridging divides.


Can a Tiny Restaurant Surcharge Move the Needle on Climate?
2023-09-19, Reasons to be Cheerful
Posted: 2023-09-24 16:45:50
https://reasonstobecheerful.world/zero-foodprint-changing-the-food-system/

When Anthony Myint and his wife Karen Leibowitz opened their San Francisco restaurant The Perennial in 2016, they had big ambitions: They wanted it to be the first carbon-neutral restaurant in the world, and they succeeded. From the recycled floor tiles and reclaimed lumber to the aquaponic herb garden and compostable paper menus, the culinary duo designed every part of the diner with the climate in mind. “We shifted the menus, reduced food waste, switched to renewable energy, started composting and bought carbon offsets,” Myint says. They were motivated by the knowledge that agriculture and food systems contribute nearly a third of greenhouse gas emissions worldwide. The Perennial’s menu championed sourdough loaves baked with perennial Kernza grains, and the chefs bought their steaks from regenerative ranches associated with the Marin Carbon Project, the country’s foremost center for regenerative farming. The more Myint learned about regenerative agriculture, the more he became convinced that this was the global solution he needed to champion. “It became clear to me that this is the future of food, similar to the way renewable energy is the future of energy,” he says. “The whole food system needs to gradually transition.” Zero Foodprint is asking restaurant customers and other participating businesses to give one percent of their sales to a pool that funds regenerative agriculture. More than 80 businesses have signed up.

Note: We've summarized a handful of stories about the power of regenerative agriculture practices to reverse and heal global ecological destruction. Explore more positive stories like this in our comprehensive inspiring news articles archive focused on solutions and bridging divides.


J.F.K. Assassination Witness Breaks His Silence and Raises New Questions
2023-09-09, New York Times
Posted: 2023-09-18 14:28:16
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/09/us/politics/jfk-assassination-witness-paul...

He still remembers the first gunshot. Now, 60 years later, Paul Landis, one of the Secret Service agents just feet away from President John F. Kennedy on that fateful day in Dallas, is telling his story in full for the first time. His account differs from the official version. At age 88, he said, all he wants is to tell what he saw and what he did. He will leave it to everyone else to draw conclusions. What it comes down to is a copper-jacketed 6.5-millimeter projectile. The Warren Commission decided that one of the bullets fired that day struck the president from behind, exited from the front of his throat and continued on to hit Mr. Connally, somehow managing to injure his back, chest, wrist and thigh. It seemed incredible that a single bullet could do all that, so skeptics called it the magic bullet theory. Investigators came to that conclusion partly because the bullet was found on a stretcher believed to have held Mr. Connally at Parkland Memorial Hospital. In fact, [Mr. Landis] said, he was the one who found the bullet — and he found it not in the hospital near Mr. Connally but in the presidential limousine lodged in the back of the seat behind where Kennedy was sitting. “If what he says is true, which I tend to believe, it is likely to reopen the question of a second shooter, if not even more,” [Historian James] Robenalt said. “If the bullet we know as the magic or pristine bullet stopped in President Kennedy’s back, it means that the central thesis of the Warren Report, the single-bullet theory, is wrong.”

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of revealing news articles on the Kennedy assassination from reliable major media sources. For deeper exploration, check out our comprehensive Information Center on John F. Kennedy's assassination, which challenge mainstream narratives about his assassination and the events leading up to it.


A New JFK Assassination Revelation Could Upend the Long-Held “Lone Gunman” Theory
2023-09-09, Vanity Fair
Posted: 2023-09-18 14:25:41
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2023/09/new-jfk-assassination-revelation-upen...

Paul Landis was one of two Secret Service agents tasked with guarding first lady Jacqueline Kennedy on November 22, 1963—the day President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. In a new book, The Final Witness, to be published in October, Landis claims to have seen something that afternoon that he had never publicly admitted before. Landis was approximately 15 feet away when Kennedy was mortally wounded. Landis saw and did something that he has kept secret for six decades, he says now. He claims he spotted a bullet resting on the top of the back of the seat. He says he picked it up, put it in his pocket, and brought it into the hospital. Then, upon entering Trauma Room No. 1 (at that stage, he was the only nonmedical person in the room besides Mrs. Kennedy, and both stayed for only a short period), he insists, he placed the bullet on a white cotton blanket on the president’s stretcher. This secret, as it turns out, may upend key conclusions of the Warren Commission, the body created by President Lyndon Johnson to investigate the assassination. Landis ... never sat for an interview before the FBI and never testified before the commission. There have been endless theories surrounding the assassination, but not one of them considered that a Secret Service agent might have brought a fully intact bullet, found on top of the rear seat of the limousine, into Parkland Memorial Hospital and placed it on the president’s stretcher. Not one.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of revealing news articles on the Kennedy assassination from reliable major media sources. For deeper exploration, check out our comprehensive Information Center on John F. Kennedy's assassination, which challenge mainstream narratives about his assassination and the events leading up to it.


CIA tried to pay off analysts to bury findings that COVID lab leak was likely: whistleblower
2023-09-12, New York Post
Posted: 2023-09-18 14:23:22
https://nypost.com/2023/09/12/cia-tried-to-pay-off-analysts-to-bury-covid-lab...

The Central Intelligence Agency offered to pay off analysts in order to bury their findings that COVID-19 most likely leaked from a lab in Wuhan, China, new whistleblower testimony to Congress alleges. A senior-level CIA officer told House committee leaders that his agency tried to pay off six analysts who found SARS-CoV-2 likely originated in a Wuhan lab if they changed their position and said the virus jumped from animals to humans, according to a letter sent Tuesday to CIA Director William Burns. Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic Chairman Brad Wenstrup (R-Ohio) and Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence Chairman Mike Turner (R-Ohio) requested all documents, communications and pay info from the CIA’s COVID Discovery Team by Sept. 26. “According to the whistleblower, at the end of its review, six of the seven members of the Team believed the intelligence and science were sufficient to make a low confidence assessment that COVID-19 originated from a laboratory in Wuhan, China,” the House panel chairmen wrote. “The seventh member of the Team, who also happened to be the most senior, was the lone officer to believe COVID-19 originated through zoonosis.” “The whistleblower further contends that to come to the eventual public determination of uncertainty, the other six members were given a significant monetary incentive to change their position,” they said, noting that the analysts were “experienced officers with significant scientific expertise.”

Note: Explore more revealing articles we've summarized about the COVID origin story. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of news articles on intelligence agency corruption and the coronavirus from reliable major media sources.


Nissan, Kia can collect data on drivers’ ‘sexual activity’ and ‘sex lives’: privacy watchdog
2023-09-06, New York Post
Posted: 2023-09-18 14:20:00
https://nypost.com/2023/09/06/nissan-kia-collect-data-about-drivers-sexual-ac...

Car makers Nissan and Kia can collect data on their drivers’ “sexual activity” and “sex lives” — and may sell the info to third-party advertisers, according to a shocking study by an internet privacy watchdog. The creepy collection of personal information by the two auto companies earned them failing grades from The Mozilla Foundation, maker of the Firefox web browser, which ran privacy checks on 25 car brands. The foundation said most car companies can comb through a variety of sources to glean personal information about drivers after they pair their smartphones with a vehicle’s connected services. “This invasive harvesting of information is collected via a web of sensors, microphones, cameras and the phones, apps, and connected services you use in your vehicle,” according to Mozilla Foundation. The car firms can then take that data and sell it to or share it with vendors, insurance companies and others. Of the 25 car brands that were reviewed, Nissan’s privacy policy “is probably the most ... messed up privacy policy we have ever read,” according to Mozilla Foundation. “They come right out and say they can collect and share your sexual activity, health diagnosis data, and genetic information and other sensitive personal information for targeted marketing purposes,” the foundation wrote. Mozilla Foundation also flagged other car companies such as Chrysler, Chevrolet, Toyota, Audi, Jeep, and Honda for “brazenly collecting deeply personal information from the moment they get into a car.”

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corporate corruption and the disappearance of privacy from reliable major media sources.


The FBI’s Most Controversial Surveillance Tool Is Under Threat
2023-02-10, Wired
Posted: 2023-09-18 14:16:54
https://www.wired.com/story/fbi-section-702/

New details about the FBI’s failures to comply with restrictions on the use of foreign intelligence for domestic crimes have emerged. Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) ... grants the government the ability to intercept the electronic communications of overseas targets who are unprotected by the Fourth Amendment. That authority is set to expire at the end of the year. But errors in the FBI’s secondary use of the data—the investigation of crimes on US soil—are likely to inflame an already fierce debate over whether law enforcement agents can be trusted with such an invasive tool. Central to this tension has been a routine audit by the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) national security division and the office of the director of national intelligence (ODNI) ... which unearthed new examples of the FBI failing to comply with rules limiting access to intelligence ostensibly gathered to protect US national security. Such “errors,” they said, have occurred on a “large number” of occasions. A report on the audit, only recently declassified, found that in the first half of 2020, FBI personnel unlawfully searched raw FISA data on numerous occasions. In one incident, agents reportedly sought evidence of foreign influence linked to a US lawmaker. In another, an inappropriate search pertained to a local political party. In what privacy and civil liberties lawyers have termed a “backdoor search,” the FBI regularly searches through unminimized data during investigations, and routinely prior to launching them.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on intelligence agency corruption and the disappearance of privacy from reliable major media sources.


Time to reassess the war on terror
2023-08-30, The Hill
Posted: 2023-09-18 14:15:04
https://thehill.com/opinion/national-security/4178099-time-to-reassess-the-wa...

Candid public discourse about the “war on terror” is long overdue. Hindsight offers an opportunity to take a fresh look at the official pronouncements and unheeded dissent that came soon after September 11, 2001. When the first U.S. missiles struck Afghanistan, a Gallup poll found that “90 percent of Americans approve of the United States taking such military action, while just 5 percent are opposed, and another 5 percent are unsure.” A frenzy for war had taken hold, despite the fact that none of the 9/11 hijackers were Afghans. In effect, the United States proceeded, with displaced rage, to inflict collective punishment on vast numbers of Afghan people. More than 20 years later, are we ready to face up to the human toll of the war on terror? Counting only the people killed directly in U.S. wars since 2001, researchers at the Costs of War project at Brown University have estimated those deaths at between 906,000 and 937,000. The study found that at least 364,000 of them were civilians who lost their lives “in the violence of the U.S. post-9/11 wars in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen and elsewhere.” Meanwhile, “several times as many more have been killed as a reverberating effect of the wars.” The estimated number of people directly and indirectly killed is 4.5 million. Labeled as a war on terror, open-ended U.S. warfare remains so routine that no one asks anymore when it might end.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and war from reliable major media sources.


In Ukraine, a U.S. Arms Dealer Is Making a Fortune and Testing Limits
2023-09-09, New York Times
Posted: 2023-09-18 14:13:09
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/09/world/europe/ukraine-military-arms-dealer-...

A half-dozen or so men gathered last month [at] one of Kyiv’s swankiest hotels to discuss the lucrative business of arming Ukrainian troops. The group included Ukrainian military and government officials, who are always in the market for explosive shells. The center of attention was their gregarious host, a Florida-based arms contractor named Marc Morales. And joining the group was a stout, bearded man who served both the buyers and sellers: Vladimir Koyfman, a chief sergeant in the Ukrainian military whom Mr. Morales pays to arrange meetings with his government contacts. The [Biden] administration has sent Ukraine more than $40 billion in security aid, including advanced weapons like HIMARS rockets and Patriot missiles. But the Pentagon also relies heavily on little-known arms dealers like Mr. Morales. The Pentagon has awarded his company about $1 billion in contracts, mostly for ammunition. And records show he has built a roughly $200 million side business selling to the Ukrainians directly. Mr. Morales’s competitors say that he has an unfair advantage. His ties to the Pentagon. Arms brokers from around the world are competing for a limited supply of Soviet-style arms, mostly from Eastern Europe, to then sell to Ukraine. With cash pouring in from Washington, Mr. Morales can afford to pay more than his competitors do, several Eastern European arms dealers complained. He then makes good on his American contracts and buys more ammunition on his own to sell to Ukraine directly.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and war from reliable major media sources.


U.S. Spy Agency Dreams Of Surveillance Underwear It’s Calling “SMART ePANTS”
2023-09-02, The Intercept
Posted: 2023-09-18 14:11:35
https://theintercept.com/2023/09/02/smart-epants-wearable-technology/

The future of wearable technology, beyond now-standard accessories like smartwatches and fitness tracking rings, is ePANTS, according to the intelligence community. The federal government has shelled out at least $22 million in an effort to develop “smart” clothing that spies on the wearer and its surroundings. Similar to previous moonshot projects funded by military and intelligence agencies, the inspiration may have come from science fiction and superpowers, but the basic applications are on brand for the government: surveillance and data collection. Billed as the “largest single investment to develop Active Smart Textiles,” the SMART ePANTS — Smart Electrically Powered and Networked Textile Systems — program aims to develop clothing capable of recording audio, video, and geolocation data, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence announced in an August 22 press release. Garments slated for production include shirts, pants, socks, and underwear, all of which are intended to be washable. There is already evidence that private industry outside of the national security community are interested in smart clothing. Meta, Facebook’s parent company, is looking to hire a researcher “with broad knowledge in smart textiles and garment construction, integration of electronics into soft and flexible systems, and who can work with a team of researchers working in haptics, sensing, tracking, and materials science.”

Note: Smart objects have been called a "train wreck in privacy and security." For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on intelligence agency corruption and the disappearance of privacy from reliable major media sources.


How 9/11 Bred a “War on Terror” from Hell
2023-09-07, TomDispatch
Posted: 2023-09-18 14:10:05
https://tomdispatch.com/how-9-11-bred-a-war-on-terror-from-hell/

The day after the U.S. government began routinely bombing faraway places, the lead editorial in the New York Times expressed some gratification. Nearly four weeks had passed since 9/11 ... and America had finally stepped up its “counterattack against terrorism” by launching airstrikes on al-Qaeda training camps and Taliban military targets in Afghanistan. The Project on Defense Alternatives concluded that American air strikes had killed more than 1,000 [Afghan] civilians during the last three months of 2001. By mid-spring 2002, the Guardian reported, “as many as 20,000 Afghans may have lost their lives as an indirect consequence of the U.S. intervention.” Under the “war on terror” rubric, open-ended warfare was well underway — “as if terror were a state and not a technique,” as Joan Didion wrote in 2003. “We had seen, most importantly, the insistent use of September 11 to justify the reconception of America’s correct role in the world as one of initiating and waging virtually perpetual war.” Unlike those killed on 9/11, the Iraqi dead were routinely off the American media radar screen, as were the psychological traumas suffered by Iraqis and the decimation of their country’s infrastructure. For the White House, the Pentagon, and Congress, the war on terror offered a political license to kill and displace people on a large scale in at least eight countries. The resulting carnage often included civilians. The dead and maimed had no names or faces that reached those who signed the orders and appropriated the funds.

Note: A 2021 report estimated that the War on Terror had "killed up to 929,000 people and cost over $8 trillion." For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on military corruption from reliable major media sources.


22 Years of Drone Warfare and No End in Sight
2023-09-07, ScheerPost
Posted: 2023-09-18 14:07:21
https://scheerpost.com/2023/09/07/22-years-of-drone-warfare-and-no-end-in-sight/

In 2023, this country’s drone warfare program has entered its third decade with no end in sight. Despite the fact that the 22nd anniversary of 9/11 is approaching, policymakers have demonstrated no evidence of reflecting on the failures of drone warfare and how to stop it. Instead, the focus continues to be on simply shifting drone policy in minor ways within an ongoing violent system. Washington’s war on terror has inflicted disproportionate violence on communities across the globe, while using this form of asymmetrical warfare to further expand the space between the value placed on American lives and those of Muslims. Since the war on terror was launched, the London-based watchdog group Airwars has estimated that American air strikes have killed at least 22,679 civilians and possibly up to 48,308 of them. Such killings have been carried out for the most part by desensitized killers, who have been primed towards the dehumanization of the targets of those murderous machines. In the words of critic Saleh Sharief, “The detached nature of drone warfare has anonymized and dehumanized the enemy, greatly diminishing the necessary psychological barriers of killing.” While the use of drones in the war on terror began under President George W. Bush, it escalated dramatically under Obama. Then, in the Trump years, it rose yet again. Though the use of drones in Joe Biden’s first year in office was lower than Trump’s, what has remained consistent is the lack of ... accountability for the slaughter of civilians.

Note: A 2014 analysis found that attempts to kill 41 people with drones resulted in 1,147 deaths. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on military corruption from reliable major media sources.


A Canadian study gave $7,500 to homeless people. Here’s how they spent it.
2023-09-02, Vox
Posted: 2023-09-18 14:05:43
https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/21528569/homeless-poverty-cash-transfer-ca...

Ray, a man in his 50s, used to live in an emergency homeless shelter in Vancouver, Canada. Then he participated in a study that changed his life. The newly published, peer reviewed PNAS study, conducted by the charity Foundations for Social Change in partnership with the University of British Columbia, was fairly simple. It identified 50 people in the Vancouver area who had become homeless in the past two years. In spring 2018, it gave them each one lump sum of $7,500 (in Canadian dollars). And it told them to do whatever they wanted with the cash. Over the next year, the study followed up with the recipients periodically, asking how they were spending the money and what was happening in their lives. The recipients of the cash transfers did not increase spending on drugs, tobacco, and alcohol, but did increase spending on food, clothes, and rent. What’s more, they moved into stable housing faster and saved enough money to maintain financial security over the year of follow-up. “Counter to really harmful stereotypes, we saw that people made wise financial choices,” Claire Williams, the CEO of Foundations for Social Change, [said]. What’s more ... giving out the cash transfers in the Vancouver area actually saved the broader society money. Enabling 50 people to move into housing faster saved the shelter system $8,277 per person over the year, for a total savings of $413,850. That’s more than the value of the cash transfers, which means the transfers pay for themselves.

Note: Explore more positive stories like this in our comprehensive inspiring news articles archive focused on solutions and bridging divides.


How rhythm shapes our lives
2023-05-26, BBC News
Posted: 2023-09-18 14:04:23
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20230526-how-rhythm-shapes-our-lives

Why do we care about rhythm? It connects us to the world. It plays a role in listening, in language, in understanding speech in noisy places, in walking, and even in our feelings toward one another. Rhythm is much more than a component of music. We experience the rhythmic changes of the seasons. Some of us have menstrual cycles. We have circadian rhythms – daily cycles of mental and physical peaks and troughs. Tides, 17-year cicadas, lunar phases, perigees, and apogees are other naturally occurring rhythms. Human-made rhythms include the built world – street grids, traffic lights, crop fields, mowed designs in baseball diamond outfields, the backsplash behind the kitchen counter, spatial patterns in geometric visual artforms. Rhythms in the brain have been called out as a basis for consciousness itself. Even in very young children, being (literally) "in sync" with another person engenders positive feelings toward them. Music in general, and rhythm in particular, does an uncommonly good job fostering a sense of community. Indeed, music being played at negotiation sessions helps to smooth the conversations and leads to breakthroughs and compromisesMusicians Without Borders is used to form relationships in troubled regions around the world, to bring hope, comfort, and healing to diverse populations. The Resonance Project and the Jerusalem Youth Chorus, which are forming bonds between Israeli and Palestinian children, are other examples of using musical rhythm to overcome differences.

Note: Explore more positive stories like this in our comprehensive inspiring news articles archive focused on solutions and bridging divides.


I was every woman’s worst nightmare. Restorative justice changed me.
2023-04-26, Waging Nonviolence
Posted: 2023-09-18 14:02:18
https://wagingnonviolence.org/2023/04/restorative-justice-changed-me-every-wo...

There are over 4,100 private companies in the U.S. profiting off of mass incarceration, which is a multi-billion-dollar business. With an incarcerated population of 2.2 million, the U.S. does not have a system premised on reform or creating model citizens. Most return to public life worse than when they began their prison sentences, only to be overshadowed by a national recidivism rate that’s staggering — as high as 70 percent within the first five years out and 80 percent for prisoners with juvenile records. In the restorative justice theory of change, prisoners self-identify with new, positive identities, replacing old negative self-identities. As a result, they develop healthy social support that reinforces these new identities. The concept: If you think you are scum, you will act like scum. However, if you think you are gifted, with talents, abilities and a positive identity, that’s how you will more likely act on a regular basis. Restorative justice views crime not simply as the breaking of a law, but as damage to individuals, property, relationships and the community. It represents a holistic approach to addressing criminal behavior. And it becomes a great tool toward healing the communities harmed. When we build relationships, we humanize each other and rather than simply being faceless people, we become friends, family members, students and mentors. It then becomes easier for participants to understand the harm they caused and to take responsibility. It’s a chance for the offenders to examine themselves, and understand why they made the choices they did, how they harmed the victim, family and community, and what they can do differently in the future.

Note: We've summarized many articles about the power of restorative justice. Explore more positive stories like this in our comprehensive inspiring news articles archive focused on solutions and bridging divides.


School Diet Change Brings Improved Behavior, Healthier, More Focused Students
2020-05-05, WantToKnow.info
Posted: 2023-09-15 11:59:47
https://www.wanttoknow.info/050520schooldietchange

"Before the Appleton Wisconsin high school replaced their cafeteria's processed foods with wholesome, nutritious food, the school was described as out-of-control. There were weapons violations, student disruptions, and a cop on duty full-time. After the change in school meals, the students were calm, focused, and orderly. There were no more weapons violations, and no suicides, expulsions, dropouts, or drug violations. The new diet and improved behavior has lasted for seven years, and now other schools are changing their meal programs with similar results."
  ~~  Jeffrey M. Smith, Author of Seeds of Deception

The informative article below clearly demonstrates the importance of a healthy school diet for our children. Diet is being shown to clearly influence both behavior and mood. A healthy diet fosters calmer, healthier, more focused behavior. Studies like the one below demonstrate that excessive amounts of fast food can lead to severe behavior changes, and suggest that avoiding genetically modified foods may be a very healthy option. Links at the bottom of the article provide lots more information on this topic for those interested.

Two excellent, humorous videos also reveal important health-related information. First, "Store Wars" is hilarious! This incredibly well done, five-minute spoof on the movie Star Wars is available here. Have fun watching Cuke Skywalker battle Darth Tater and lots more. A second fun one is a spoof on the Matrix called "The Meatrix," available here. A little humor goes a long way in delivering a great message. Spread the humor and spread the news by forwarding this great information to your friends and family. Have a great day, and may the force be with you!

Why Schools Should Remove GE-Tainted Foods from Their Cafeterias

Institute for Responsible Technology
Newsletter on GM Foods, Spilling the Beans
By Jeffrey M. Smith, author of Seeds of Deception

Before the Appleton Wisconsin high school replaced their cafeteria's processed foods with wholesome, nutritious food, the school was described as out-of-control. There were weapons violations, student disruptions, and a cop on duty full-time. After the change in school meals, the students were calm, focused, and orderly. There were no more weapons violations, and no suicides, expulsions, dropouts, or drug violations. The new diet and improved behavior has lasted for seven years, and now other schools are changing their meal programs with similar results.

Years ago, a science class at Appleton found support for their new diet by conducting a cruel and unusual experiment with three mice. They fed them the junk food that kids in other high schools eat everyday. The mice freaked out. Their behavior was totally different than the three mice in the neighboring cage. The neighboring mice had good karma; they were fed nutritious whole foods and behaved like mice. They slept during the day inside their cardboard tube, played with each other, and acted very mouse-like.

The junk food mice, on the other hand, destroyed their cardboard tube, were no longer nocturnal, stopped playing with each other, fought often, and two mice eventually killed the third and ate it. After the three month experiment, the students rehabilitated the two surviving junk food mice with a diet of whole foods. After about three weeks, the mice came around.

Sister Luigi Frigo repeats this experiment every year in her second grade class in Cudahy, Wisconsin, but mercifully, for only four days. Even on the first day of junk food, the mice's behavior "changes drastically." They become lazy, antisocial, and nervous. And it still takes the mice about two to three weeks on unprocessed foods to return to normal. One year, the second graders tried to do the experiment again a few months later with the same mice, but this time the animals refused to eat the junk food.

Across the ocean in Holland, a student fed one group of mice genetically modified (GM) corn and soy, and another group the non-GM variety. The GM mice stopped playing with each other and withdrew into their own parts of the cage. When the student tried to pick them up, unlike their well-behaved neighbors, the GM mice scampered around in apparent fear and tried to climb the walls. One mouse in the GM group was found dead at the end of the experiment.

It's interesting to note that the junk food fed to the mice in the Wisconsin experiments also contained genetically modified ingredients. And although the Appleton school lunch program did not specifically attempt to remove GM foods, it happened anyway. That's because GM foods such as soy and corn and their derivatives are largely found in processed foods. So when the school switched to unprocessed alternatives, almost all ingredients derived from GM crops were taken out automatically.

Does this mean that GM foods negatively affect the behavior of humans or animals? It would certainly be irresponsible to say so on the basis of a single student mice experiment and the results at Appleton. On the other hand, it is equally irresponsible to say that it doesn't.

We are just beginning to understand the influence of food on behavior. A study in Science in December 2002 concluded that "food molecules act like hormones, regulating body functioning and triggering cell division. The molecules can cause mental imbalances ranging from attention-deficit and hyperactivity disorder to serious mental illness." The problem is we do not know which food molecules have what effect.

The bigger problem is that the composition of GM foods can change radically without our knowledge. Genetically modified foods have genes inserted into their DNA. But genes are not Legos; they don't just snap into place. Gene insertion creates unpredicted, irreversible changes. In one study, for example, a gene chip monitored the DNA before and after a single foreign gene was inserted. As much as 5 percent of the DNA's genes changed the amount of protein they were producing. Not only is that huge in itself, but these changes can multiply through complex interactions down the line.

In spite of the potential for dramatic changes in the composition of GM foods, they are typically measured for only a small number of known nutrient levels. But even if we could identify all the changed compounds, at this point we wouldn¹t know which might be responsible for the antisocial nature of mice or humans. Likewise, we are only beginning to identify the medicinal compounds in food. We now know, for example, that the pigment in blueberries may revive the brain¹s neural communication system, and the antioxidant found in grape skins may fight cancer and reduce heart disease. But what about other valuable compounds we don¹t know about that might change or disappear in GM varieties?

Consider GM soy. In July 1999, years after it was on the market, independent researchers published a study showing that it contains 12-14 percent less cancer-fighting phytoestrogens. What else has changed that we don¹t know about? [Monsanto responded with its own study, which concluded that soy¹s phytoestrogen levels vary too much to even carry out a statistical analysis. They failed to disclose, however, that the laboratory that conducted Monsanto¹s experiment had been instructed to use an obsolete method to detect phytoestrogens results.]

In 1996, Monsanto published a paper in the Journal of Nutrition that concluded in the title, "The composition of glyphosate-tolerant soybean seeds is equivalent to that of conventional soybeans." The study only compared a small number of nutrients and a close look at their charts revealed significant differences in the fat, ash, and carbohydrate content. In addition, GM soy meal contained 27 percent more trypsin inhibitor, a well-known soy allergen. The study also used questionable methods. Nutrient comparisons are routinely conducted on plants grown in identical conditions so that variables such as weather and soil can be ruled out. Otherwise, differences in plant composition could be easily missed. In Monsanto's study, soybeans were planted in widely varying climates and geography.

Although one of their trials was a side-by-side comparison between GM and non-GM soy, for some reason the results were left out of the paper altogether. Years later, a medical writer found the missing data in the archives of the Journal of Nutrition and made them public. No wonder the scientists left them out. The GM soy showed significantly lower levels of protein, a fatty acid, and phenylalanine, an essential amino acid. Also, toasted GM soy meal contained nearly twice the amount of a lectin that may block the body's ability to assimilate other nutrients. Furthermore, the toasted GM soy contained as much as seven times the amount of trypsin inhibitor, indicating that the allergen may survive cooking more in the GM variety. (This might explain the 50 percent jump in soy allergies in the UK, just after GM soy was introduced.)

We don't know all the changes that occur with genetic engineering, but certainly GM crops are not the same. Ask the animals. Eyewitness reports from all over North America describe how several types of animals, when given a choice, avoided eating GM food. These included cows, pigs, elk, deer, raccoons, squirrels, rats, and mice. In fact, the Dutch student mentioned above first determined that his mice had a two-to-one preference for non-GM before forcing half of them to eat only the engineered variety.

Differences in GM food will likely have a much larger impact on children. They are three to four times more susceptible to allergies. Also, they convert more of the food into body-building material. Altered nutrients or added toxins can result in developmental problems. For this reason, animal nutrition studies are typically conducted on young, developing animals. After the feeding trial, organs are weighed and often studied under magnification. If scientists used mature animals instead of young ones, even severe nutritional problems might not be detected. The Monsanto study used mature animals instead of young ones.

They also diluted their GM soy with non-GM protein ten- or twelve-fold before feeding the animals. And they never weighed the organs or examined them under a microscope. The study, which is the only major animal feeding study on GM soy ever published, is dismissed by critics as rigged to avoid finding problems.

Unfortunately, there is a much bigger experiment going on one which we are all a part of. We're being fed GM foods daily, without knowing the impact of these foods on our health, our behavior, or our children. Thousands of schools around the world, particularly in Europe, have decided not to let their kids be used as guinea pigs. They have banned GM foods.

The impact of changes in the composition of GM foods is only one of several reasons why these foods may be dangerous. Other reasons may be far worse (see http://www.seedsofdeception.com).

With the epidemic of obesity and diabetes and with the results in Appleton, parents and schools are waking up to the critical role that diet plays. When making changes in what kids eat, removing GM foods should be a priority.


Note: For an inspiring video showing the dramatic results from a change in school diet, click here.


The above article about genetically modified foods was written by Jeffrey Smith. Individuals may subscribing to his excellent, free newsletter. For a powerful, engaging, ten-page summary of Jeffrey's book on GM foods, Seeds of Deception, click here. For more, see our information-packed Health Information Center.


Study finds yet another potential use for aloe plants—Natural insecticide
2023-08-24, Optimist Daily
Posted: 2023-09-10 21:23:50
https://www.optimistdaily.com/2023/08/study-finds-yet-another-potential-use-f...

Aloe vera unveiled a new weapon in its arsenal: its discarded peels. Previously discarded as agricultural trash, these peels are now set to become nature’s response to crop-munching pests. Scientists at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley developed a mechanism for converting this underutilized resource into a powerful natural insecticide, presenting a novel approach to pest management. Humans have already used aloe vera for a plethora of reasons. However, none of these applications takes advantage of the peel. “Millions of tons of aloe peels are likely discarded globally each year,” the driving force behind this botanical discovery, Dr. Debasish Bandyopadhyay, stated. The idea came to Bandyopadhyay after he noticed bugs biting plants at an aloe manufacturing center but leaving the aloe vera leaves alone. Based on this discovery, the team embarked on an adventure to unearth the hidden potential of aloe peels. Bandyopadhyay emphasizes the dual benefit of inventing a pesticide that avoids dangerous synthetic chemicals, which not only maintains agricultural output but also saves public health. The researchers ... extracted a number of compounds, each with its own set of properties. Octacosane stood out among these for its ability to repel mosquitos. In terms of insecticidal activity, DCM, a separate molecule, outperformed hexane extract. During this procedure, more than 20 compounds were isolated from aloe vera peels, six showing considerable insecticidal activity.

Note: Explore more positive stories like this in our comprehensive inspiring news articles archive focused on solutions and bridging divides.


Cancer cases in under-50s worldwide up nearly 80% in three decades, study finds
2023-09-05, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2023-09-10 20:52:40
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/sep/05/cancer-cases-in-under-50s-wor...

The number of under-50s worldwide being diagnosed with cancer has risen by nearly 80% in three decades, according to the largest study of its kind. Global cases of early onset cancer increased from 1.82 million in 1990 to 3.26 million in 2019, while cancer deaths of adults in their 40s, 30s or younger grew by 27%. More than a million under-50s a year are now dying of cancer, the research reveals. The authors of the study, published in BMJ Oncology, say poor diets, alcohol and tobacco use, physical inactivity and obesity are likely to be among the factors. “Since 1990, the incidence and deaths of early onset cancers have substantially increased globally,” the report says. “Encouraging a healthy lifestyle, including a healthy diet, the restriction of tobacco and alcohol consumption and appropriate outdoor activity, could reduce the burden of early onset cancer.” Previous studies have suggested that the incidence of cancer in adults under the age of 50 has been rising in various parts of the world over the last few decades. The latest study, led by the University of Edinburgh in Scotland and Zhejiang University School of Medicine in Hangzhou, China, was the first of its kind to examine the issue on a global scale and the risk factors for younger adults. Based on the observed trends for the past three decades, the researchers estimate that the global number of new early onset cancer cases and associated deaths will rise by a further 31% and 21% respectively by 2030.

Note: This article strangely fails to mention the contamination of the food system and environment with cancer-causing chemicals as possible contributors to this trend. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on health from reliable major media sources.


JPMorgan allegedly processed more than $1bn for Epstein over 16 years
2023-08-31, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2023-09-10 20:50:15
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/aug/31/jeffrey-epstein-jpmorgan-1-bi...

JPMorgan Chase told US authorities it processed more than $1bn for Jeffrey Epstein over 16 years. JPMorgan reported the transactions as suspicious to the US treasury department following Epstein’s suicide in 2019, Mimi Liu, a lawyer for the territory, said at a hearing concerning its lawsuit against the largest US bank. Epstein had been a JPMorgan client from 1998 to 2013, when the bank dropped him. The disgraced financier had been awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges at the time of his death. The US Virgin Islands, where Epstein owned two private islands, is suing JPMorgan for at least $190m and likely much more, saying it ignored red flags that Epstein was running a sex-trafficking operation because he was a lucrative client. Liu mentioned the $1bn amount, which had not been previously disclosed, in arguing that the US district judge Jed Rakoff in Manhattan should find before the case goes to trial that the bank participated in Epstein’s sex trafficking. She said no reasonable juror could find that JPMorgan was in the dark about its jet-setting client. “JPMorgan was a full service bank for Jeffrey Epstein’s sex trafficking,” Liu said. Felicia Ellsworth, a lawyer for JPMorgan, said it was not appropriate for the judge to determine the question of the bank’s knowledge before trial because current and former employees have testified that they were unaware of Epstein’s sex trafficking. In June, Rakoff preliminarily approved JPMorgan’s $290m settlement with women who say Epstein abused them.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on financial system corruption and Jeffrey Epstein from reliable major media sources.


EPA approved fuel ingredient with sky-high lifetime cancer risk, document reveals
2023-08-04, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2023-09-10 20:48:26
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/aug/04/epa-boat-fuel-cancer-risk...

The Environmental Protection Agency approved a component of boat fuel made from discarded plastic that the agency’s own risk formula determined was so hazardous, everyone exposed to the substance continually over a lifetime would be expected to develop cancer. Current and former EPA scientists said that threat level is unheard of. It is a million times higher than what the agency usually considers acceptable for new chemicals and six times worse than the risk of lung cancer from a lifetime of smoking. Federal law requires the EPA to conduct safety reviews before allowing new chemical products on to the market. If the agency finds that a substance causes unreasonable risk to health or the environment, the EPA is not allowed to approve it without first finding ways to reduce that risk. But the agency did not do that in this case. Instead, the EPA decided its scientists were overstating the risks and gave Chevron the go-ahead to make the new boat fuel ingredient at its refinery in Pascagoula, Mississippi. Though the substance can poison air and contaminate water, EPA officials mandated no remedies other than requiring workers to wear gloves, records show. The EPA division that approves new chemicals usually limits lifetime cancer risk from an air pollutant to one additional case of cancer in a million people. That means that if a million people are continuously exposed over a presumed lifetime of 70 years, there would likely be at least one case of cancer on top of those from other risks people already face.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and health from reliable major media sources.


EPA’s new definition of PFAS could omit thousands of ‘forever chemicals’
2023-08-18, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2023-09-10 20:46:03
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/aug/18/epa-new-definition-pfas-f...

The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) office responsible for protecting the public from toxic substances has changed how it defines PFAS for a second time since 2021, a move critics say they fear will exclude thousands of “forever chemicals” from regulation and largely benefit industry. Instead of using a clear definition of what constitutes a PFAS, the agency’s Office of Pollution Prevention and Toxics plans to take a “case-by-case” approach that allows it to be more flexible in determining which chemicals should be subjected to regulations. Among other uses for the compounds, the EPA appears to be excluding some chemicals in pharmaceuticals and pesticides that are generally defined as PFAS, current and former EPA officials say, and the shift comes amid fierce industry opposition to proposed limits on the chemicals. PFAS, or per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, are a class of about 15,000 compounds most frequently used to make products water-, stain- and grease-resistant. They have been linked to cancer, birth defects, decreased immunity, high cholesterol, kidney disease and a range of other serious health problems. They are dubbed “forever chemicals” because they do not naturally break down in the environment. Speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal, a current EPA employee in the toxics office said the chemical’s definition has been evolving for several years. “EPA can’t get its act together on what PFAS are,” they added.

Note: These chemicals have contaminated 41 percent of US tap water. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and health from reliable major media sources.


Chemical industry used big tobacco’s tactics to conceal evidence of PFAS risks
2023-06-07, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2023-09-10 20:44:33
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jun/07/pfas-3m-dupont-chemical-i...

In 1953, a paper developed for cigarette maker RJ Reynolds detailed possible cancer-causing agents in tobacco, but the document would remain hidden from public view for decades. In the interim, the industry told the public: “We don’t accept the idea that there are harmful agents in tobacco.” The chemical industry, it seemed, took note. Just a few years later, DuPont scientists found PFAS enlarged lab rats’ livers and likely caused birth defects in workers. Still, the company told its employees the cancer-linked compounds are “about as toxic as table salt”. Like the tobacco industry before it, the chemical industry managed to keep PFAS’s health risks hidden from the public for decades. A new peer-reviewed study dissecting PFAS producers’ public relations strategies provides a smoking gun timeline composed of industry studies and comments from DuPont and 3M officials showing they knew the dangers, but publicly insisted the chemicals were safe. Between 1961 and 2006, the authors identified dozens of instances where DuPont or 3M scientists discovered or acknowledged PFAS toxicity internally, but did not publish the findings or report them to the EPA, as required under federal law. DuPont’s chief toxicologist in 1961 found rats’ livers enlarged at very low doses of exposure, a health impact recognized as “the most sensitive sign of toxicity.” The report recommended PFAS be handled “with extreme care” and that “contact with the skin should be strictly avoided.”

Note: These chemicals have contaminated 41 percent of US tap water. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corruption in science and in the corporate world from reliable major media sources.


Hospitals Improperly Refuse to Allow Ivermectin for COVID and Yet Defend Right to Do So, according to Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons
2023-06-19, Yahoo News
Posted: 2023-09-10 20:42:41
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/hospitals-improperly-refuse-allow-ivermectin-1...

A number of hospitals have been sued for refusing to allow patients dying of COVID to receive treatment with ivermectin. If the hospital lost, it appealed the decision, even if the patient did receive ivermectin and recover, according to attorney Andrew Schlafly in the summer issue of the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons. “Hospitals wanted to establish precedents for their side, so that next time they could deny treatment by pointing to appellate decisions in their favor,” Schlafly writes. They adopted a “strategy of seeking to establish precedents that increased their authority, and to remove any precedents against unlimited power for them.” Ivermectin is a long-established safe drug that is widely used to treat parasitic infections. It has also been shown to have antiviral activity. Many physicians have reported successful use in COVID patients, and many though not all studies have shown safety and benefit. Many state appellate courts cite the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA’s) disparagement of ivermectin as a legal basis for hospitals to deny access by dying patients to this drug, long approved by the FDA as safe. Schlafly writes that the FDA has “been able to evade judicial review for too long. The more the FDA avoids submitting to discovery procedures that are commonplace for every other defendant, the bigger the mushrooms can grow in the dark at this federal agency.”

Note: Explore a comprehensive look into the benefits and uses of ivermectin, despite establishment media's concerted effort to discredit its efficacy and safety. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corporate corruption and the coronavirus from reliable major media sources.


Court revives doctors’ lawsuit saying FDA overstepped its authority with anti-ivermectin campaign
2023-09-01, Associated Press
Posted: 2023-09-10 20:40:56
https://apnews.com/article/coronavirus-ivermectin-fda-doctors-lawsuit-bbc8d4f...

A federal appeals court Friday revived a lawsuit by three doctors who say the Food and Drug Administration overstepped its authority in a campaign against treating COVID-19 with the anti-parasite drug ivermectin. Ivermectin ... has been championed by some conservatives as a treatment for COVID-19. The FDA has not approved ivermectin as a COVID-19 treatment. Friday’s ruling from a panel of three judges on the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeal ... focused on various aspects of an FDA campaign against ivermectin as a COVID-19 treatment. The ruling acknowledged FDA’s receiving reports of some people requiring hospitalization after self-medicating with ivermectin intended for livestock. But the ruling said the campaign — which at times featured the slogan “You are not a horse!” — too often left out that the drug is sometimes prescribed for humans. The doctors can proceed with their lawsuit contending that the FDA’s campaign exceeded the agency’s authority under federal law, the ruling said. “FDA is not a physician. It has authority to inform, announce, and apprise—but not to endorse, denounce, or advise,” Judge Don Willett wrote. “The Doctors have plausibly alleged that FDA’s Posts fell on the wrong side of the line between telling about and telling to.” Drs. Robert L. Apter, Mary Talley Bowden and Paul E. Marik filed the lawsuit last year. All three said their reputations were harmed by the FDA campaign.

Note: Explore a comprehensive look into the benefits and uses of ivermectin, despite establishment media's concerted effort to discredit its efficacy and safety. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and the coronavirus from reliable major media sources.


COVID-19 to blame for just 1% of new deaths: data
2023-08-28, New York Post
Posted: 2023-09-10 20:39:27
https://nypost.com/2023/08/28/99-of-new-covid-19-deaths-reported-by-cdc-not-j...

Less than 2% of the deaths reported by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention last week were caused by the coronavirus, new data shows. According to the CDC’s COVID-19 dashboard, just 324 deaths logged in the week ending Aug. 19 — 1.7% of all fatalities nationwide — were attributed to the virus. This is a staggering difference from the peak of the pandemic in 2021, when one in three deaths had COVID-19 cited as the main cause. In New York, 2.1% of the deaths last week were tied to the virus. Florida and Maryland have the highest COVID-19 death rates at 3.4%, followed by Washington with 2.4%, while Tennessee and North Carolina each reported 2% — behind New York, but above the national average. The primary cause of death is defined as the condition, injury, disease, situation or event that initiated the chain of events resulting in a person’s death. Weekly COVID-19 deaths are at their lowest numbers since March 2020, according to CDC data. But coronavirus cases recently jumped nationwide — with New York reporting a 55% increase at the beginning of August. The spike came as a new variant — dubbed EG.5, or Eris — emerged as the dominant strain, causing about 17% of COVID cases nationwide.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on the coronavirus from reliable major media sources.


Glyphosate Linked to Severe Depression and Cognitive Decline in U.S. Adults
2023-08-29, The Defender
Posted: 2023-09-10 20:37:36
https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/glyphosate-depression-cognitive-d...

A new peer-reviewed study released by a group of scientists in Taiwan has revealed an astonishingly strong link between severe depression, cognitive decline and exposure to the world’s most used herbicide, glyphosate. The study was fully published on Aug. 22 in the highly respected Elsevier Journal, Environmental Research. It was met with silence by the manufacturers of glyphosate-based herbicides such as Bayer/Monsanto, who produce the infamous weedkiller Roundup. The study authors stated that they: “Conducted analyses on existing data collected from 1532 adults of the 2013–2014 U.S. National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) to explore the possible relationship between glyphosate exposure and cognitive function, depressive symptoms, disability, and neurological medical conditions.” The proportion of individuals with detectable levels of glyphosate was 80.4%. The scientists concluded: “Our study provides important evidence of an association between urinary glyphosate levels and adverse neurological outcomes in a representative cohort of U.S. adult population. “Specifically, we observed lower cognitive function scores, greater odds of severe depressive symptoms, and increased risk of serious hearing difficulty in individuals with higher glyphosate exposure.” Some other recent independent studies ... suggest that both glyphosate alone and glyphosate-based herbicides such as Roundup are neurotoxins.

Note: A 2019 study found that glyphosate increases cancer risk by 41%. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on food system corruption and health from reliable major media sources.


Internal Pharma Documents Reveal Strategies Used to Corrupt the Medical Field
2023-05-09, Mad in America
Posted: 2023-09-10 20:35:02
https://www.madinamerica.com/2023/05/internal-pharma-documents-reveals-strate...

A recent Cochrane Evidence Synthesis and Methods article examines internal pharma industry documents, primarily obtained through litigation. The study finds that the pharmaceutical industry employs numerous ghost management strategies to corrupt research, circumvent and undermine regulations, manipulate consumers, and protect its interests. The authors write: “The scientific literature using internal documents confirmed widespread corporate influence in the pharmaceutical sector. While the academic literature used internal documents related to only a handful of products, our research results, based on ghostmanagement categories, demonstrate the extent of corporate influence in every interstice of pharmaceutical markets, particularly in clinical research and clinical practice.” Analysis of the articles revealed several common ghost management strategies the pharmaceutical industry utilizes. Ghost management is a system of behind-the-scenes processes by which the industry corrupts researchers, clinicians, and regulatory agencies with gifts and bribes and determines what research will be funded, what scientific journals can publish, and how physicians, etc., will present their product. The present research reveals eight broad categories of ghost management: scientific capture, professional capture, regulatory capture, media capture, market capture, technological capture, civil society capture, and others. Scientific capture was the most commonly analyzed ghost management strategy.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on Big Pharma corruption from reliable major media sources.


Microplastic pollution: Plants could be the answer
2023-08-16, University of British Columbia
Posted: 2023-09-10 20:33:00
https://news.ubc.ca/2023/08/16/microplastic-pollution-plants-could-be-the-ans...

Could plants be the answer to the looming threat of microplastic pollution? Scientists at UBC’s BioProducts Institute found that if you add tannins—natural plant compounds that make your mouth pucker if you bite into an unripe fruit—to a layer of wood dust, you can create a filter that traps virtually all microplastic particles present in water. While the experiment remains a lab set-up at this stage, the team is convinced that the solution can be scaled up easily and inexpensively. For their study, the team analyzed microparticles released from popular tea bags made of polypropylene. They found that their method (they’re calling it “bioCap”) trapped from 95.2 per cent to as much as 99.9 per cent of plastic particles in a column of water, depending on plastic type. When tested in mouse models, the process was proved to prevent the accumulation of microplastics in the organs. Dr. Rojas, a professor in the departments of wood science, chemical and biological engineering, and chemistry at UBC, adds that it’s difficult to capture all the different kinds of microplastics in a solution, as they come in different sizes, shapes and electrical charges. “There are microfibres from clothing, microbeads from cleansers and soaps, and foams and pellets from utensils, containers and packaging. By taking advantage of the different molecular interactions around tannic acids, our bioCap solution was able to remove virtually all of these different microplastic types.”

Note: Explore more positive stories like this in our comprehensive inspiring news articles archive focused on solutions and bridging divides.


How gardens enable refugees and immigrants to put down roots in new communities
2023-09-06, PBS News
Posted: 2023-09-10 20:29:31
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/arts/how-gardens-enable-refugees-and-immigrants-...

Gardening and community gardens can be ways for immigrant and refugee communities to supplement their pantries by growing their own food, especially culturally appropriate food that is not readily found in grocery stores. It also helps people send literal roots down into a new place while maintaining a connection with their homeland. The Arab American National Museum (AANM) has created a new heritage garden on its roof with donated seeds, cuttings, and plants from local Arab American community members around Dearborn, Michigan. These include plants with a connection to the Arab world, but also plants from Michigan that have become meaningful to the Arab American community here. Accompanying the plants in the garden are oral histories of those community members about what gardening means to them, collected by the museum’s community historian. In Ann Arbor, Michigan, Phimmasone Kym Owens ... said, ‘Why don’t I create a garden for refugees?’” In 2021, Owens reached out to Jewish Family Services of Washtenaw County. They formed a partnership to create an innovative refugee-to-refugee community garden program ... and to work with refugees and grow culturally appropriate vegetables. “What sold this as being different is giving autonomy to the clients,” Owens said. “So we had a vote. They voted [for] Freedom Garden. And that’s a name that says it all. The fact that they chose Freedom Garden says exactly what you know, being a refugee, what you want.”

Note: Explore more positive stories like this in our comprehensive inspiring news articles archive focused on solutions and bridging divides.


In deadly Maui fires, many had no warning and no way out. Those who dodged a barricade survived
2023-08-24, Associated Press
Posted: 2023-09-03 14:08:25
https://apnews.com/article/hawaii-fires-timeline-maui-lahaina-road-block-c852...

As flames tore through a West Maui neighborhood, car after car of fleeing residents headed for the only paved road out of town in a desperate race for safety. And car after car was turned back toward the rapidly spreading wildfire by a barricade blocking access to Highway 30. One family swerved around the barricade and was safe in a nearby town 48 minutes later, another drove their four-wheel-drive car down a dirt road to escape. One man took a dirt road uphill, climbing above the fire and watching as Lahaina burned. He later picked his way through the flames, smoke and rubble to pull survivors to safety. But dozens of others found themselves caught in a hellscape, their cars jammed together on a narrow road, surrounded by flames on three sides and the rocky ocean waves on the fourth. Some died in their cars, while others tried to run for safety. The road closures — some because of the fire, some because of downed power lines — contributed to making historic Lahaina the site of the deadliest U.S. wildfire in more than a century. Many of the survivors are angry, and haunted by the thought that a just few minutes of notice could have saved many lives. [Nate] Baird’s neighborhood near Lahainaluna Road was filled with kids who were home alone when the flames hit, he said. “We needed like 10 more minutes, and we could have saved a lot of kids,” he said, choking back tears. “If we’d just had like a 10- or 15-minute warning.”

Note: Despite years of Maui wildfire warnings, Hawaii government officials and Hawaiian Electric did little to address the wildfire threat, spending more on lobbying and peddling influence with regulators and politicians than preventing the fires from happening. For further exploration, watch Robert Kennedy Jr. and former leading BlackRock portfolio manager Edward Dowd discuss this tragic issue.


Maui residents who disobeyed barricade survived fires
2023-08-23, The Hill
Posted: 2023-09-03 14:07:02
https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/4166222-maui-residents-who-disobeyed...

Those who disobeyed the barricaded road closures during the Maui fires survived the disaster, while many of those who heeded orders to turn around perished in their cars and homes with no way out. At least 114 people were killed in the fires earlier this month, and the FBI is estimating that up to 1,100 more are unaccounted for. Officials are facing increased scrutiny for the emergency response, including why the emergency sirens were not set off and whether closing the roads prevented people from getting to safety. In the early hours of the Maui fires, there were more than 30 power poles downed alongside the Honoapiilani Highway at the south end of Lahaina — a historic town that was decimated in the fires earlier this month. Officials closed Lahaina Bypass Road due to the fires, blocking the only way out of Lahaina to the southern part of the island. Maui Police Chief John Pelletier said during a news conference that officers never stopped people from leaving the area, but the AP report suggests that residents were discouraged from disobeying the barricade. Kim Cuevas-Reyes said that she survived with her two sons by ignoring orders to turn right onto Front Street, which has now been devastated by the fires. Instead, she turned left and drove in the wrong lane to escape the town. “The gridlock would have left us there when the firestorm came,” Cuevas-Reyes [said].

Note: Despite years of Maui wildfire warnings, Hawaii government officials and Hawaiian Electric did little to address the wildfire threat, spending more on lobbying and peddling influence with regulators and politicians than preventing the fires from happening. For further exploration, watch Robert Kennedy Jr. and former leading BlackRock portfolio manager Edward Dowd discuss this tragic issue.


No app, no entry: How the digital world is failing the non tech-savvy
2023-08-20, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2023-09-03 14:05:45
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/aug/20/no-app-no-entry-how-the-di...

The cashless society is effectively already a reality for most of us, but there remains a minority for whom it represents a continuing headache. The government last week told high street banks that they must offer access to cash machines within three miles of customers after the closure of thousands of branches had reduced the number of ATMs. There are also an estimated to be 1.3 million adults in this country who are “unbanked” – ie do not have a bank account. For them, something as mundane as parking a car is increasingly fraught – a quarter of London councils have removed pay and display parking machines in favour of smartphone-centred apps. The shiny, bright future of full computerisation looks very much like a dystopia to someone who either doesn’t understand it or have the means to access it. And almost by definition, the people who can’t access the digitalised world are seldom visible, because absence is not easy to see. What is apparent is that improved efficiency doesn’t necessarily lead to greater wellbeing. Technology doesn’t have to be dehumanising, but if it’s to avoid that outcome it has to be human-focused, not just consumer-focused, and in particular not just digital-consumer-focused. Cash, like printed air tickets or indeed train tickets, will no doubt one day soon seem as anachronistic as the barter system. In the meantime the transition should focus on ensuring that no one is discounted because they are too old, too poor or too disabled to matter to the gods of efficiency.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corporate corruption and income inequality from reliable major media sources.


Bipartisan Senate group introduces bill to force clean audit of Pentagon funding amid price gouging concerns
2023-06-21, The Hill
Posted: 2023-09-03 14:04:06
https://thehill.com/homenews/4061378-bipartisan-senate-group-introduces-bill-...

A bipartisan group of Senators introduced legislation Wednesday to ensure the Defense Department passes a clean audit next year, with the bill following repeated concerns from Congress about fraud, waste and abuse in the Pentagon. The Audit the Pentagon Act of 2023 would require the Defense Department to pass a full, independent audit in fiscal 2024. Agencies within the Pentagon that fail to pass a clean audit would be forced to return 1 percent of its budget for deficit reduction, according to the legislation. The legislation comes after ... a CBS News report found defense contractors overcharged the Defense Department by nearly 40 percent to 50 percent. According to the Office of the Inspector General for the Defense Department, sometimes overcharging reached more than 4,000 percent. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said the Pentagon “and the military industrial complex have been plagued by a massive amount of waste, fraud, and financial mismanagement for decades.” “That is absolutely unacceptable,” Sanders said in a statement announcing the legislation. “If we are serious about spending taxpayer dollars wisely and effectively, we have got to end the absurdity of the Pentagon being the only agency in the federal government that has never passed an independent audit.” The Defense Department failed its fifth audit last year and was unable to account for more than half of its assets, or more than $3 trillion.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on military corruption from reliable major media sources.


America Is Living on Borrowed Money
2023-07-05, New York Times
Posted: 2023-09-03 14:02:17
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/05/opinion/debt-crisis.html

Government borrowing and spending are necessary to stimulate the economy during recessions. The United States, however, now borrows heavily during periods of economic growth to meet basic and ongoing obligations. It’s increasingly unsustainable. Over the next decade, the Congressional Budget Office projects that annual federal budget deficits will average around $2 trillion per year, adding to the $25.4 trillion in debt the government already owes to investors. Borrowing is expensive. A mounting share of federal revenue, money that could be used for the benefit of the American people, goes right back out the door in the form of interest payments to investors who purchase government bonds. Rather than collecting taxes from the wealthy, the government is paying the wealthy to borrow their money. By 2029, the government is on pace to spend more each year on interest than on national defense, according to the Congressional Budget Office. By 2033, interest payments will consume an amount equal to 3.6 percent of the nation’s economic output. The debt ceiling is part of the problem. It was never intended to limit the federal debt. It was actually created to facilitate borrowing. During World War I, Congress got tired of authorizing each new round of bonds, so it gave the Treasury permission to borrow up to a specific limit. Its current use ... is even less productive. Larger changes are going to happen only if both political parties are willing participants.

Note: Explore an excellent analysis of the substantial role that the defense budget has in federal government’s spending, which was not mentioned in this New York Times article. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption from reliable major media sources.


A New, Chilling Secret About the Manhattan Project Has Just Been Made Public
2023-08-08, Slate
Posted: 2023-09-03 14:00:17
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2023/08/oppenheimer-manhattan-project-rad...

Newly declassified documents reveal that Gen. Leslie Groves—director of the Manhattan Project, the top-secret operation that built the atomic bomb during World War II—misled Congress and the public about the effects of radiation. He did so initially out of ignorance, then denial, and finally, willful deception. The documents also show that some scientists in the project, including J. Robert Oppenheimer, director of the Los Alamos lab where the bomb was first tested, kept mum about Groves’ lie rather than dispute him or confront the general directly. The cache of documents ... was released on Monday, within days of the 78th anniversary of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and in the wake of the release of Oppenheimer, the wildly (and deservedly) successful film. One of the new documents the archive obtained is a memo by four scientists, titled “Calculated Biological Effects of Atomic Explosion in Hiroshima and Nagasaki,” dated Sept. 1, 1945. Until this memo was written, it had been assumed the A-bomb’s victims would be killed by its blast and its heat. But this memo concluded that at least some of the deaths had been caused by radioactive fallout, days or weeks after the explosions. And yet, the day before the memo’s date, at a press conference in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, Groves said radiation had caused no deaths and that claims to the contrary—some published in Asian newspapers—were “propaganda.”

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on military corruption from reliable major media sources.


Carbon credit speculators could lose billions as offsets deemed ‘worthless’
2023-08-24, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2023-09-03 13:58:26
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/aug/24/carbon-credit-speculators...

Carbon credit speculators could lose billions as scientific evidence shows many offsets they have bought have no environmental worth and have become stranded assets. Amid growing evidence that huge numbers of carbon credits do nothing to mitigate global heating and can sometimes be linked to alleged human rights concerns, there is a growing pile of carbon credits ... that are unused in the unregulated voluntary market, according to market analysis. Many of the largest companies in the world have used carbon credits for their sustainability efforts from the unregulated voluntary market, which grew to $2bn (£1.6bn) in size in 2021 and saw prices for many carbon credits rise above $20 per offset. The credits are often generated on the basis they are contributing to climate change mitigation such as stopping tropical deforestation, tree planting and creating renewable energy projects. A new study in the journal Science has found that millions of forest carbon credits approved by Verra, the world’s leading certifier, are largely worthless and could make global heating worse if used for offsetting. The analysis ... found that 18 big forest offsetting projects had produced millions of carbon credits based on calculations that greatly inflated their conservation impact. The schemes, which generate credits by avoiding hypothetical deforestation, were found not to reduce forest loss or to reduce it by only small amounts, far less than the huge areas they were claiming to protect, rendering the credits largely hot air.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on financial industry corruption and climate change from reliable major media sources.


CDC Now Refusing New COVID Vaccine Adverse Event Reports in Its V-Safe Program
2023-08-24, Brownstone Institute
Posted: 2023-09-03 13:55:04
https://brownstone.org/articles/cdc-refusing-new-covid-vaccine-adverse-event-...

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) V-safe website quietly stopped collecting adverse event reports with no reason or explanation. The V-safe website simply states: “Thank you for your participation. Data collection for COVID-19 vaccines concluded on June 30, 2023.” If you go there today, V-safe directs users to the FDA’s VAERS website for adverse event reporting, even though officials continually derided VAERS as “passive” and “unverified.” VAERS and V-safe are mutually exclusive safety collection databases operated by the FDA and CDC, respectively. According to the FDA Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) database, mRNA “vaccines” have been named the primary suspect in over 1.5 million adverse event reports, of which there are >20,000 heart attacks and >27,000 cases of myocarditis and pericarditis just in the USA alone. VAERS reports represent fewer than 1 percent of vaccine adverse events. Based on VAERS and previous V-safe findings, adverse events from mRNA shots in the USA alone could be considered a humanitarian crisis. Despite those alarming clinical findings, the CDC has concluded that collecting new safety reports is somehow no longer in the interest of America’s public health. Existing data from the V-safe site showed around 6.5 million adverse events/health impacts out of 10.1 million users, with around 2 million of those people unable to conduct normal activities of daily living.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and coronavirus vaccines from reliable major media sources.


10 Years After HHS Asked CDC to Study Safety of Childhood Vaccine Schedule, CDC Hasn’t Produced It
2023-08-21, Children's Health Defense
Posted: 2023-09-03 13:53:05
https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/vax-unvax-hhs-cdc-safety-childhoo...

In 2013, the National Vaccine Program Office of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) commissioned an update of earlier findings on the lack of evidence to support claims that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) infant/child vaccination schedule was safe. The Institute of Medicine (IOM) committee [was] charged with producing the update. The lack of information on the overall safety of the vaccination schedule was so compelling that the committee then recommended HHS incorporate the study of the safety of the overall childhood immunization schedule into its processes for setting priorities for research, “recognizing stakeholder concerns, and establishing the priorities on the basis of epidemiological evidence, biological plausibility, and feasibility.” The IOM also recommended the CDC use its private database, the Vaccine Safety Datalink (VSD), to study the overall health effects of the vaccination schedule using retrospective analyses. Ten years later, the CDC has yet to do such a comparison study, even though it is sitting on a vast repository of data in the VSD, which include comprehensive medical records for more than 10 million individuals and 2 million children. The VSD also contains records for a significant number of unvaccinated children, yet the CDC refuses to compare the health outcomes of vaccinated children to completely unvaccinated children. The CDC also prohibits VSD outside researchers from accessing the VSD data.

Note: Read more about how HHS was in violation of the “Mandate for Safer Childhood Vaccines” as stipulated in the Vaccine Injury Compensation Act. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on vaccines from reliable major media sources.


How worker ownership builds community wealth and a more just society
2023-02-03, Waging Nonviolence
Posted: 2023-09-03 13:51:28
https://wagingnonviolence.org/2023/02/how-worker-ownership-builds-community-w...

Community wealth building initiatives are taking hold in cities across the world, strengthening worker pay, local economies and democracy. A recent help-wanted ad for a laundry worker in Cleveland contained some unusual language, asking prospective candidates: “Have you ever wanted to work for a company that is 90 percent employee-owned?” The ad went on to identify Evergreen Cooperative Laundry as the only employee-owned commercial laundry firm in the country, citing a commitment to building the wealth and careers of its employees. The cooperative movement in the Rust Belt city of Cleveland has deep roots in community struggle for shared wealth. Its earliest origins are in the Mondragon co-op movement of the Basque Country in northern Spain, where tens of thousands of workers are organized into a vast co-op network that has flourished since the 1950s. Here in the U.S., when steel companies were closing down throughout the Ohio Valley in the 1970s ... a small band of activists promoted the idea of worker ownership. The model is a simple one: First, identify anchor institutions — hospitals, universities, seats of government — that are not going to relocate in search of higher profits and incentivize them to do their procurement of supplies and services locally, so that those dollars stay at home. Then, make regulatory, financing and policy changes that support the growth of cooperatives to supply their needs, so that the business profits stay with the workers.

Note: Explore more positive stories like this in our comprehensive inspiring news articles archive focused on solutions and bridging divides.


Beyond Banking Scandals: The Blockchain Promise of Transparency and Trust
2023-08-10, The Street
Posted: 2023-09-03 13:49:57
https://www.thestreet.com/cryptocurrency/beyond-banking-scandals-the-blockcha...

In a recent discussion on the implications of blockchain technology and its democratization of finance, Roundtable anchor, Rob Nelson and Jordan Fried, CEO of Immutable Holdings explored the depth and magnitude of the possible changes ahead. Jordan Fried ... discussed the roots of Bitcoin, stating it was a direct protest against institutions like BlackRock and the financial systems that seemed to work only for the wealthy. Recalling the 2008 financial crisis, Fried expressed the sentiments of many who wondered why banks were bailed out while average individuals suffered. Bitcoin arose from this frustration, offering a transparent financial system unlike anything before. Expanding on this, Fried emphasized the transparency of Bitcoin in comparison to traditional currencies. In Bitcoin's blockchain, every transaction is traceable, unlike the ambiguous dealings within the current banking system. Contrary to common misconceptions ... only a fraction of crime occurs in crypto, as compared to the US dollar. Most financial crimes, including money laundering, are committed in US dollars. Rob Nelson humorously highlighted the recurring financial scandals of banks like Wells Fargo, suggesting that these financial giants often factor in their fines as just another "cost of doing business." In this evolving era of blockchain and cryptocurrency, one thing is clear: the potential impact on the financial world is vast. The very essence of how we view and interact with money is on the cusp of profound change.

Note: Explore more positive stories like this in our comprehensive inspiring news articles archive focused on solutions and bridging divides.


Private Banks Are In Crisis. What If They Were Public Banks?
2023-03-20, Vice
Posted: 2023-09-03 13:47:36
https://www.vice.com/en/article/3akzbb/private-banks-are-in-crisis-what-if-th...

Public banks are typically operated by government or tribal authorities and, in theory, would be chartered to achieve social good and invest in communities. Only two public banks currently operate in the United States: the Bank of North Dakota, founded in 1919, and the Territorial Bank of American Samoa, founded in 2018. Organizations pushing for a public banking option exist in 37 states, according to the Public Banking Institute. In contrast to private banks, which are responsible to their shareholders, public banks are responsible to their boards and are chartered to invest in public needs. The Bank of North Dakota, for instance, is chartered to offer a “revolving loan fund” to farmers, and profits from loans are directed back into the fund to keep interest rates low. The modern movement to invest in public banks grew out of the 2008 financial crisis and was galvanized during the pandemic, fueled by a populist distrust of the banking and finance sectors. In October 2020, Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rashida Tlaib introduced the federal Public Banking Act, which would allow state and local governments across the country to create public banks. In the first two months of 2021 there were sixteen bills across the country designed to pave the way for public banks. Supporters of public banks are hoping that any deposits from state and local governments can be used to fund community-based projects that have trouble getting funded by private banks.

Note: Explore more positive stories like this in our comprehensive inspiring news articles archive focused on solutions and bridging divides.


Doctor died from rare reaction to AstraZeneca Covid jab, UK coroner rules
2023-04-19, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2023-08-28 16:39:28
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/apr/19/doctor-died-from-rare-reaction-...

A doctor died from a rare reaction to the AstraZeneca Covid jab in one of the first rounds of vaccinations, a coroner has ruled. Dr Stephen Wright, 32, an NHS clinical psychologist and frontline health worker, suffered from a combination of a brainstem infarction, bleed on the brain and vaccine-induced thrombosis, an inquest at London’s Southwark coroner’s court heard. He was in one of the earliest groups of people to be given the jab, and died 10 days after it was administered. After the inquest, Wright’s widow, Charlotte, said she is considering legal action against AstraZeneca and the government. She remembered Wright as “the most amazing husband” and a good father to their sons, and said it was a relief to have a “black and white” conclusion. Medical experts told the court nothing could be done to save Wright. Dr Mark Howard, a consultant pathologist and medical examiner at King’s College hospital, said scientists and medical experts were not aware of the vaccine’s possible deadly side effects when Wright received the jab as it was so early in its rollout, but even at later stages there would have been no way of predicting this “rare and unintended consequence”. He said: “Stephen was a very fit, young and healthy man in January 2021. It is a truly tragic and very rare complication of a well-meant vaccination. It’s not fully understood why this happens. It’s an idiosyncratic reaction. The circumstances arise in a very small number of people.”

Note: An excellent documentary reveals how mild to severe reactions to vaccines were more common than was being told. Anecdotals follows the lives of many people who stepped up to get vaccinated for themselves or the greater good, yet were greatly harmed by the vaccine. Instead of having their stories heard and seen, they were discredited and abandoned by the medical system and our media systems. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on coronavirus vaccines from reliable major media sources.


Revealed: WHO aspartame safety panel linked to alleged Coca-Cola front group
2023-08-17, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2023-08-28 16:36:58
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/aug/17/who-panel-aspartame-diet-cok...

In May, the World Health Organization issued an alarming report that declared widely used non-sugar sweeteners like aspartame are likely ineffective for weight loss, and long term consumption may increase the risk of diabetes, cardiovascular diseases and mortality in adults. A few months later, WHO declared aspartame, a key ingredient in Diet Coke, to be a “possible carcinogen”, then quickly issued a third report that seemed to contradict its previous findings – people could continue consuming the product at levels determined to be safe decades ago. That contradiction stems from beverage industry corruption of the review process by consultants tied to an alleged Coca-Cola front group, the public health advocacy group US Right to Know said in a recent report. It uncovered eight WHO panelists involved with assessing safe levels of aspartame consumption who are beverage industry consultants who currently or previously worked with the alleged Coke front group, International Life Sciences Institute (Ilsi). Aspartame was first approved for use in the US in the early 1980s over the objection of some researchers who warned of potential health risks. In recent years, as evidence of health threats has mounted, industry has ramped up a PR campaign to downplay the issues. Ilsi representatives have sought to shape food policy worldwide. [Gary Ruskin, US Right to Know’s executive director], characterized the aspartame controversy as a “masterpiece in how Ilsi worms its way into these regulatory processes”.

Note: Explore a comprehensive overview of key scientific studies on aspartame harms, and how they were covered up by the sugar industry. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corruption in the food system and in the corporate world from reliable major media sources.


Surgeon general declares loneliness an epidemic
2023-05-02, The Hill
Posted: 2023-08-28 16:35:18
https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/3983153-surgeon-general-declares-loneli...

U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy declared loneliness as an epidemic in the country on Tuesday, outlining a series of actions Americans can take to address the growing issue. “Our epidemic of loneliness and isolation has been an underappreciated public health crisis that has harmed individual and societal health. Our relationships are a source of healing and well-being hiding in plain sight — one that can help us live healthier, more fulfilled, and more productive lives,” Murthy said in a statement. Murthy issued an advisory laying out the consequence of loneliness, which can include a 29 percent increased risk of heart disease, a 32 percent increased risk of stroke, a 50 percent increased risk of developing dementia for older adults, and an increased risk of premature death by more than 60 percent. Strengthening social infrastructure, like building more parks and libraries, and enacting pro-connection policies, like having accessible public transportation or paid family leave, are two of Murthy’s pillars he says will help overcome loneliness. He also said reforming digital environments is a pillar of his plan, saying people must be aware of how online environments may negatively affect their social connections. The other pillars of his plan include mobilizing the health care sector, deepening knowledge of loneliness and social connections, and cultivating a culture of connections. The advisory said everyday practices, like acting kind and respectful toward one another, can help strengthen social connections.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on health from reliable major media sources.


Rich countries ‘trap’ poor nations into relying on fossil fuels
2023-08-21, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2023-08-28 16:33:23
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2023/aug/21/rich-countries-tra...

The pressure to repay debts is forcing poor nations to continue investing in fossil fuel projects to make their repayments on what are usually loans from richer nations and financial institutions, according to new analysis from the anti-debt campaigners Debt Justice and partners in affected countries. The group is calling for creditors to cancel all debts for countries facing crisis – and especially those linked to fossil fuel projects. “High debt levels are a major barrier to phasing out fossil fuels for many global south countries,” said Tess Woolfenden, a senior policy officer at Debt Justice. “Many countries are trapped exploiting fossil fuels to generate revenue to repay debt while, at the same time, fossil fuel projects often do not generate the revenues expected and can leave countries further indebted than when they started. This toxic trap must end.” According to the report, the debt owed by global south countries has increased by 150% since 2011 and 54 countries are in a debt crisis, having to spend five times more on repayments than on addressing the climate crisis. Sharda Ganga, the director of the Surinamese civil society group Projekta, said ... “The reality is that this is the new form of colonialism – we have exchanged one ruler for the rule of our creditors who basically already own what is ours. The difference is this time we signed the deal ourselves.”

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and income inequality from reliable major media sources.


Plants aren’t silent. They make clicking sounds, a study finds
2023-03-30, CNN News
Posted: 2023-08-28 16:28:00
https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/30/world/plants-make-sounds-scn/index.html

Plants make popping sounds that are undetectable to the human ear, according to recordings made in a new study — and they make more sounds when thirsty or under other kinds of stress. The research shakes up what most botanists thought they knew about the plant kingdom, which had been considered largely silent, and suggests the world around us is a cacophony of plant sounds, said study coauthor Lilach Hadany. To figure out whether plants actually were emitting sounds, Hadany and her team commissioned soundproofed acoustic boxes. The researchers placed tobacco and tomato plants in the boxes, rigged with ultrasonic microphones that record at frequencies between 20 and 250 kiloherz. (The maximum frequency that a human adult’s ear can detect is about 16 kilohertz.) Some of the plants had cut stems or had not been watered for five days, and others were untouched. The team found that the plants emitted sounds at a frequency of 40 to 80 kilohertz, and when condensed and translated into a frequency humans can hear, the noises were a bit similar to the pop of popcorn being made or bubble wrap bursting. A stressed plant emitted around 30 to 50 of these popping or clicking sounds per hour at seemingly random intervals, but unstressed plants emitted far fewer sounds — around one per hour. “When tomatoes are not stressed at all, they are very quiet,” Hadany said. The researchers don’t know exactly how the sounds are made.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on the mysterious nature of reality from reliable major media sources.


From fatal eyedrops to mislabeled melatonin, why the FDA is failing the public
2023-08-21, Salon
Posted: 2023-08-28 16:26:15
https://www.salon.com/2023/08/21/from-fatal-eyedrops-to-mislabeled-melatonin-...

A 2022 investigation by the journal The BMJ declared that FDA oversight of clinical trials, including those for Pfizer and Moderna's mRNA Covid-19 vaccines, was "grossly inadequate," from not conducting enough inspections to failing to alert scientific journals or the public when violations were flagged. But the issues here are not confined to behind the pharmacy counter. Dr. John Abramson, author of the recent book "Sickening: How Big Pharma Broke American Health Care and How We Can Repair It," traces the roots of issue back decades. "In 1992, when what turned out to be effective HIV drugs were stuck in the bottleneck of the FDA, they didn't have enough staff to get them through quickly enough. Many people were dying, and it was a real crisis," he explains. "The solution was that the Prescription Drug User Fee Agreement was passed. The drug companies started to pay a user fee with that was due upon application for new drug approval. And now roughly 65% of the FDA budget for overseeing human products comes from the drug and device companies. This comes with rigid timelines, and as I see from the outside, some degree of influence and obligation to the drug companies that derives from this agreement." The numbers here vary — Forbes puts that budget figure as high as 75%. Another similar conflict of interest that concerns Abramson is what he calls "the revolving door that goes between FDA and the drug industry."

Note: Read about Brook Jackson, a researcher for the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine trials, who discovered patient safety concerns, data integrity issues, and other significant issues at her site. When she reported it to the FDA, she was fired the same day. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and health from reliable major media sources.


Taliban’s Massively Successful Opium Eradication Raises Questions About What US Was Doing All Along
2023-08-04, MintPress News
Posted: 2023-08-28 16:23:49
https://www.mintpressnews.com/taliban-successful-opium-eradication-afgahnista...

The Taliban government in Afghanistan – the nation that until recently produced 90% of the world’s heroin – has drastically reduced opium cultivation across the country. Western sources estimate an up to 99% reduction in some provinces. This raises serious questions about the seriousness of U.S. drug eradication efforts in the country over the past 20 years. And, as global heroin supplies dry up, experts tell MintPress News that they fear this could spark the growing use of fentanyl – a drug dozens of times stronger than heroin that already kills more than 100,000 Americans yearly. A similar attempt by the Taliban to eliminate the drug occurred in 2000, the last full year that they were in power. It was extraordinarily successful, with opium reduction dropping from 4,600 tons to just 185 tons. However, as soon as the United States invaded in 2001, poppy cultivation shot back up to previous levels and the supply chain recommenced. Afghanistan’s transformation into a preeminent narco-state owes a significant debt to Washington’s actions. Poppy cultivation in the 1970s was relatively limited. However, the tide changed in 1979 with the inception of Operation Cyclone, a massive infusion of funds to Afghan Mujahideen factions aimed at exhausting the Soviet military. The U.S. directed billions toward the insurgents, yet their financial needs persisted. Consequently, the Mujahideen delved into the illicit drug trade. By the culmination of Operation Cyclone, Afghanistan’s opium production had soared twentyfold.

Note: Read powerful evidence that the CIA and US military are directly involved in the drug trade. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on military corruption from reliable major media sources.


New Book Exposes the Horror of the US’s Endless, Invisible Wars
2023-07-22, Truthout
Posted: 2023-08-28 16:21:15
https://truthout.org/articles/new-book-exposes-the-horror-of-the-uss-endless-...

Swiss journalist Maurine Mercier found several United States citizens fighting in Ukraine under the guise of humanitarian work. These rudderless warriors are a symbol of a society addicted to warfare. They reflect the tensions that author and antiwar activist Norman Solomon unwinds in his brilliant new book, War Made Invisible, which examines the profound causes and costs of U.S. interventionism. Solomon’s book unveils the disturbing proximity between the ruling class and corporate media since the Vietnam War, revealing how the fourth estate sustains the assumptions that make intervention possible in Ukraine and elsewhere. “The essence of propaganda is repetition,” he argues. “The frequencies of certain assumptions blend into a kind of white noise,” conditioning U.S. people to support military operations they never see or truly understand. This was never clearer than during the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Indeed, across the media landscape, embedded intellectuals mobilized their pens to solidify public support for war. ABC, NBC, CBS and PBS all skewed their coverage. In many ways, militarism is a form of class warfare. “The fat profit margins from supplying the Pentagon and kindred agencies,” Solomon explains, exacerbate economic inequality while redirecting resources away from social programs. In effect, war is perpetual because it is profitable, enriching an elite firmly entrenched in the military-industrial complex.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on war from reliable major media sources.


Japan can teach the world a better way to age
2023-08-15, Washington Post
Posted: 2023-08-28 16:19:45
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/08/15/japan-elderly-care-dignity...

If you want a glimpse of the future, go to Japan. What lies ahead for many other countries, including the United States, is in rural areas and regional cities outside greater Tokyo: lots of people aging and dying, and relatively few giving birth and raising kids. In today’s Japan, the young and middle-aged are consumed by caring for the old, and small-town resources are overstretched. Japanese innovators are already demonstrating what’s possible — and, in many cases, not with high-tech fixes but by showcasing design thinking, dignity and respect. Instead, they would be invited to share their wisdom and skills to help them stay active, sharp and socially engaged. Old people at the center cook for one another and teach young people how to grow vegetables and make art. The city [of Toyama] repurposed old train and tram lines into a sleek light-rail system, with platforms placed at the level of the train cars so that people would not need to climb or descend stairs. Public transit ridership among people in their 60s and 70s has since more than tripled, and this has helped seniors maintain active and social lifestyles. Other social entrepreneurs in Japan have focused on food — for instance, bringing children and the elderly together in cafeterias that serve traditional dishes. One Tokyo pop-up eatery, dubbed the Restaurant of Mistaken Orders, has employed people with dementia as its waitstaff. [Japanese innovators have] yielded ideas that prioritize helping old people flourish, not just managing their illnesses, disabilities and deaths.

Note: Explore more positive stories like this in our comprehensive inspiring news articles archive focused on solutions and bridging divides.


The US cannot be complicit in allowing child soldiers
2023-07-31, The Hill
Posted: 2023-08-20 16:39:15
https://thehill.com/opinion/international/4125729-the-us-cannot-be-complicit-...

In its newly released 2023 Trafficking in Persons Report, the Biden administration provided a glaring, but largely unnoticed, admission that it has failed to implement a key provision of U.S. law aimed at preventing the recruitment and use of child soldiers. The report acknowledged that the administration has yet to finalize a congressionally mandated list of governments complicit in child soldier recruitment or use. With this list responsible for spurring urgently needed U.S. child soldier prevention efforts, its delay could have potentially severe consequences. Despite decades of concerted action to end the use of children as tools of war, the recruitment and use of child soldiers remains one of the most widespread abuses inflicted upon children in conflict, with the UN having verified the recruitment and use of 7,622 child soldiers last year — a 21 percent increase compared to 2021. Among those implicated in the use of child soldiers are security forces and armed groups led or supported by governments that rely heavily on U.S. defense cooperation to sustain their security operations. Somalia, for example, which recruited and used dozens of child soldiers in 2022, is among the most significant recipients of U.S. military aid in sub-Saharan Africa, with U.S. security assistance to and peacekeeping operations in the country amounting to roughly $3 billion over the past decade. The Biden administration can incentive governments implicated in the recruitment or use of child soldiers to put an end to these horrendous practices.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on war from reliable major media sources.


More young Americans are dying – and it's not COVID. Why aren't we searching for answers?
2023-08-11, USA Today
Posted: 2023-08-20 16:37:44
https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2023/08/11/more-americans-dying-than-b...

Life insurance actuaries are reporting that many more people are dying – still – than in the years before the pandemic. Among working people 35 to 44 years old, a stunning 34% more died than expected in the last quarter of 2022, with above-average rates in other working-age groups, too. “COVID-19 claims do not fully explain the increase,” a Society of Actuaries report says. There was an extreme and sudden increase in worker mortality in the fall of 2021 even as the nation saw a precipitous drop in COVID-19 deaths. In the third quarter of 2021, deaths among workers ages 35-44 reached a pandemic peak of 101% above ... the three-year pre-COVID baseline. In two other prime working-age groups, mortality was 79% above expected. In the year ending April 30, 2023 ... at least 104,000 more Americans died than expected. In the U.K., 52,427 excess deaths were reported in that period; in Germany, 81,028; France, 17,731; Netherlands, 10,418; and Ireland, 2,640. The actuarial reports can only speculate on the factors causing these deaths, including oft-cited delayed health care, drug overdoses and even weather patterns. But the question remains: What explains this ongoing wave of excess deaths? Life insurance data suggests something happened in the fall of 2021 in workplaces, especially among white-collar workers. These are people whose education, income level and access to health care would predict better outcomes.

Note: Critical care physician Dr. Pierre Kory, one of the co-authors of this article, recently published an in-depth explanation on what he believes is behind the excess death among American youth, and why it wasn’t mentioned in the USA Today article. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on health from reliable major media sources.


Researchers find increase in younger people diagnosed with cancer
2023-08-16, The Hill
Posted: 2023-08-20 16:33:45
https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/4155325-researchers-find-increase-in-yo...

New research has found an increase in early-onset cancer rates among younger people between 2010 and 2019. In a study published in the journal JAMA Network Open, researchers found that “the incidence rates of early-onset cancers increased substantially” between 2010 and 2019. The researchers said that gastrointestinal cancers had the fastest-growing rates among all the ones they looked at. The study, using data from the National Cancer Institute Surveillance, Epidemiology and End Results program, found that there was a .74 percent increase among all age groups in the incidence of early-onset cancers. The study found that the rates increased in those aged 30 to 39 years and remained stable in all other age groups below the age of 50. “There is a need to inform health care professionals about the increasing incidence of early-onset cancer, and investigations for possible tumors need to be considered when clinically appropriate, even in patients younger than 50 years,” the study’s discussion states. “These data ... serve as a call to action for further research into the various environmental factors that may be associated with this concerning pattern,” the discussion said. Rates also “disproportionately” increased among women, American Indian or Alaska Native individuals and Asian or Pacific Islander individuals. The study found that while gastrointestinal cancers had the fastest growing rates, breast cancer had the highest number of incident cases. 

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on health from reliable major media sources. Then explore the excellent, reliable resources provided in our Health Information Center.


Gov’t scientists got $325M in royalties from China, Russia, pharma firms: report
2023-08-09, New York Post
Posted: 2023-08-20 16:32:18
https://nypost.com/2023/08/09/325m-in-royalty-payments-to-nih-scientists-incl...

National Institutes of Health scientists raked in more than $325 million in royalties from Chinese and Russian entities — as well as pharmaceutical companies — over more than a decade, according to a new report. Former NIH director Dr. Francis Collins and former National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) director Dr. Anthony Fauci were among the thousands of government whitecoats who took the cash between September 2009 and October 2020, the taxpayer watchdog OpenTheBooks.com revealed. Several of those royalties came from companies that in turn received federal contracts and grants, prompting concerns about conflicts of interest. Unredacted documents obtained by the group through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) show at least 34 Chinese companies are licensing NIH technologies initially funded by US taxpayers. Some of those licensing fees came from the Wuhan Institute of Biological Products Co. Ltd., a subsidiary of the Chinese government-owned pharmaceutical company Sinopharm, which produced a COVID-19 vaccine. In 2016, the biological products company moved its headquarters next to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, where risky “gain-of-function” research funded by the US government may have led to the outbreak of the pandemic. The late Dr. Robert Chanock, the former head of the NIAID’s laboratory of infectious diseases, and Dr. Jeffrey Cohen, his successor, were just a few of the virologists on the take from the Wuhan-based company.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corruption in government and in the scientific community from reliable major media sources.


Fire Razes Rand Paul's Kentucky Office Amid Senator's Investigation Into Fauci's Taxpayer-Funded U.S. Marshals Service
2023-07-21, MSN News
Posted: 2023-08-20 16:30:18
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/fire-razes-rand-paul-s-kentucky-office-amid...

A fire broke out in the early hours of Friday morning causing extensive damage to a building housing the Kentucky Senator Rand Paul's Bowling Green law office. According to Bowling Green Fire Department spokeswoman Katie McKee, fire crews were alerted to the blaze on State Street at approximately 1:45 a.m., and upon arrival, they found a vicious blaze that required additional units. “We have just been working on this structure fire ever since,” McKee said of their efforts. Six fire teams were deployed to fight the flames, with firefighters utilizing aerials to combat the fire from above. The intensity of the blaze caused the roof of the building to collapse, and come sunrise, a plume of dense gray smoke billowed from the top of the building and clouded the sky. Authorities are still investigating the cause and origin of the fire.

Note: This fire happened immediately after Sen. Rand Paul announced that he was referring Anthony Fauci to the Department of Justice for prosecution for lying to Congress.


What progressives get wrong when it comes to crypto
2023-08-12, Fortune
Posted: 2023-08-20 16:26:00
https://fortune.com/crypto/2023/08/12/what-progressives-get-wrong-when-it-com...

Progressives are confused and distressed over the choice by many of our allies to devalue decentralization in the technology space, and even to portray it as worse than Big Tech alternatives. In recent months, a number of progressive commentators have attacked the very idea of decentralization, arguing that it’s a distraction from other political goals. This has also led to progressives making crypto a favorite target and, bizarrely, taking the positions of big banks, which are notoriously monopolistic. To us, the more pressing concern is legacy tech platforms—and their ongoing capture of user data. Decentralizing technology will prove crucial in ensuring that the world isn’t run by a handful of unelected technologists. Crypto is an exception to so much technology because it runs on blockchain and no single person or corporation can control it. We value a world where power is dispersed to the people, where no one is so powerful that they can dictate terms to the rest of us. A blockchain allows everyone to own their own data, to control their own information, and to port that information and data to another system at their discretion. It also allows for people to exchange both data and money in a peer-to-peer manner, without permission from expensive, bureaucratic, and—in many cases—unnecessary intermediaries. Migrants also use crypto to send money to their home countries, and this activity alone will become increasingly important as political and climate migration continues to accelerate.

Note: The US government financially attacked Wikileaks in 2010 after the organization published documentation of US military war crimes. This attack would have ended Wikileaks, but the organization instead embraced bitcoin and survived for several more years. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on financial system corruption from reliable major media sources.


Senate Democrats Blocked Watchdog For Ukraine Aid — Ignoring Lessons From Afghanistan
2023-08-02, The Intercept
Posted: 2023-08-20 16:23:38
https://theintercept.com/2023/08/02/ukraine-aid-special-inspector-afghanistan/

Hours after Senate Democrats blocked an effort to install greater oversight over the billions of dollars the United States is sending to Ukraine, the watchdog who oversaw U.S. spending in Afghanistan issued a warning. Spending too much too fast, with little oversight, would lead to “unanticipated consequences,” John Sopko, the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, or SIGAR, said at an event. Sopko especially warned about the risk of fueling corruption, perhaps the most damaging legacy of the billions the U.S. spent in Afghanistan and a major factor in the collapse of its effort in the country. “If that much money is coming in, you know some of it is going to be stolen,” he said. “In Afghanistan, corruption was the existential threat. It wasn’t the Taliban. It was corruption that did us in.” Debate over installing a special inspector for Ukraine modeled after SIGAR began swirling on Capitol Hill as it became clear that U.S. support for Ukraine in the face of Russia’s full-scale invasion would reach unprecedented levels. Congress approved some $113 billion in aid to Ukraine last year, and some analysts put the full figure to date at closer to $137 billion. By comparison, the U.S. spent some $146 billion in reconstruction efforts in Afghanistan between 2002 and 2022 (although it spent far more going to war there in the first place). “By the end of this year, we will have spent more money in Ukraine than we did to do the entire Marshall Plan after World War II,” Sopko said.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on war from reliable major media sources.


Resisting the Shock Doctrine: A Conversation on Ukraine, Debt and Reconstruction
2023-07-16, Truthout
Posted: 2023-08-20 16:21:30
https://truthout.org/articles/resisting-the-shock-doctrine-a-conversation-on-...

The IMF and other neoliberal institutions in Ukraine are saying that there are quite a few jobs being created there. But the people I speak to can’t find jobs. On top of that, there are those 12 million people who are abroad. Where will there be jobs for them? There is a lot of talk about the Marshall Plan. But the main lessons from the Marshall Plan I did not see reflected in these recovery plans. First of all, there was the write-off of debts. Second of all, there were grants given to countries, and states were allowed to act as investors and were allowed to directly buy food for families or buy supplies for industries. This is not the case in Ukraine. In reality, a big part of the financial assistance given to Ukraine is in the form of debt. The help supposedly given by the IMF of $15 billion ... is actually $15 billion of debt. And because it’s debt, the interest rate on this debt will be something like 7 or 8 percent. The IMF, The World Bank, and the European Investment Bank have investments that total more than $20 billion of the Ukraine external debt. Countries like Germany, France, and Italy of the European Union are bilateral creditors. The European Commission has a plan of assistance to Ukraine. There are bilateral arrangements with the USA, Russia, and China. Although it is not exactly clear the amount due to China, it appears to be around $5 billion. There are private bondholders like BlackRock. BlackRock is the main investor in Ukrainian external bonds—sovereign bonds What the European Union is doing with Ukraine is what they did with Greece after 2010. The European Union made an agreement in 2010 with the IMF to gather money to give to the Greek government with very strong and brutal conditionalities. And that’s exactly what [is happening] with the type of assistance given to Ukraine. The debt trap for Ukraine is very dangerous. With the new financial assistance given to Ukraine, in the next ten years, the debt will increase by something like $40 billion. Essentially, from $132 to $170 billion. And the creditors know perfectly that it will be impossible for Ukraine to pay back all this debt.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on war and banking corruption from reliable major media sources.


Investigative Reporter: “The CIA Is Playing an Outsize Role” in Ukraine
2023-07-19, Truthout
Posted: 2023-08-20 16:19:55
https://truthout.org/video/investigative-reporter-the-cia-is-playing-an-outsi...

A new investigation reveals the extent of the CIA’s involvement in the war in Ukraine, where the agency operates clandestinely in what, under a formal declaration of war, would be the domain of the military. The author of the investigation [is] William Arkin, a national security reporter and senior editor at Newsweek, who says that the CIA has “got its hand in a little bit of everything” in Ukraine. "This might come as a surprise to some people, but, as my sources explained it to me, the reality is that Ukraine is not an ally of the United States," [said Arkin]. "We have no treaty obligations towards Ukraine. And the United States is not at war with Russia. So this is a particularly unique battlefield in which the CIA is playing an outsize role, but it is playing an outsize role because the Biden administration has been firm in saying that the U.S. military will not be involved in any direct way in the fighting or on the battlefield or, indeed, inside Ukraine." The CIA is no stranger to Ukraine. Clearly, in the post-World War II period, it was involved in developing right-wing groups within Ukraine that were opposing the Soviet Union, a lot of them former neo-Nazis. "I don’t see much movement or much interest even on the part of the U.S. government in Washington ... to find a peaceful resolution" [said Arkin]. "So, really, no one is playing that role. The United Nations is not playing that role. There is no neutral party that really is playing the role of trying to end the conflict between the two parties."

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on intelligence agency corruption from reliable major media sources.


What does cancer smell like? These animals can sniff it out
2023-02-27, National Geographic
Posted: 2023-08-20 16:17:03
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/article/these-animals-detect-disea...

Next time you’re irritated that ants have gotten into your kitchen, you might take a moment to consider their extraordinary powers of perception. These tiny animals can detect markers of illness, such as cancer. In fact, ants are just one of many creatures whose senses can register signs of human disease: dogs, rats, bees, and even tiny worms can as well. The silky ant, Formica fusca, a common species found throughout Europe, can be taught to identify the scent of breast cancer in urine. Research from the University Sorbonne Paris Nord in France published this year in Proceedings of the Royal Society B shows ants can learn to distinguish between the scent of urine derived from mice carrying human breast cancer tumors from that of healthy mice. Ants and other animals pick up signs of disease by perceiving various volatile organic compounds, or VOCs. These chemicals are produced in a variety of ways and can be found in exhaled breath, and in sweat, urine, and blood. Diseases can change the VOCs we emit, resulting in giving off a different odor. By placing a sugar reward near the cancer sample the ants learned to seek out that scent, a process called operant conditioning. Dogs can be trained to smell several types of cancers, including melanoma, breast and gastrointestinal cancers and some infectious diseases in humans, including malaria and Parkinson’s disease. They can also smell infectious disease in other animals, including chronic wasting disease, which affects the brains of deer and can be fatal.

Note: Explore more positive stories like this in our comprehensive inspiring news articles archive focused on solutions and bridging divides.


‘This way of farming is really sexy’: the rise of regenerative agriculture
2023-08-14, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2023-08-20 16:15:42
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/aug/14/this-way-of-farming-is-re...

Hollie Fallick looks over Brading on the Isle of Wight, at a patchwork of fields bordered by ancient oaks. She farms with her best friend, Francesca Cooper. The friends ... are part of a growing global movement practising regenerative agriculture – or regen ag for short. “Regenerative agriculture is nature-friendly farming,” says Fallick. “It’s thinking about the health of soil, animals, humans and how they all link together.” On Nunwell home farm, which sits alongside land the pair manage for the Wildlife Trust and produces meat and eggs for their direct-to-consumer business, chickens peck away alongside belted Galloway cows, nomadic pigs graze on grass as well as kale and bean “cover crops” sown to boost nutrients in the soil. The idea is that by following the basic principles of regen ag – not disturbing the soil, keeping it covered, maintaining living roots, growing a diverse range of crops and the use of grazing animals – they can regenerate tired and depleted soil and produce nutritious food.  The work, they argue, is urgent. Up to 40% of the world's land is now degraded by industrial and harmful farming methods, according to the UN. Barnes Edwards, co-director of the Garlic Farm ... argues that regen ag farmers recognise the “hideously negative impact” of badly managed livestock farming. But they also argue “it’s the how, not the cow”, and say that cows pooing and trampling in diversely planted fields boosts soil health, micronutrients and attracts insects, birds and butterflies.

Note: Don't miss Kiss the Ground, a powerful documentary on the growing regenerative agriculture movement and its power to build global community, reverse the many environmental crises we face, and revive our connection to the natural world. Explore more positive stories like this in our comprehensive inspiring news articles archive focused on solutions and bridging divides.


Dead flies could be used to make biodegradable plastic, scientists say
2023-08-14, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2023-08-20 16:13:43
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/aug/14/dead-flies-biodegradable-...

Dead flies could be turned into biodegradable plastic, researchers have said. The finding, presented at the autumn meeting of the American Chemical Society (ACS), could be useful as it is difficult to find sources for biodegradable polymers that do not have other competing uses. “For 20 years, my group has been developing methods to transform natural products – such as glucose obtained from sugar cane or trees – into degradable, digestible polymers that don’t persist in the environment,” said the principal investigator, Karen Wooley. A colleague suggested she could use waste products left over from farming black soldier flies. The larvae of the flies contain proteins and other nutritious compounds so are being raised for animal feed. However, adult flies are less useful and are discarded. Wooley’s team has been trying to use these carcasses to make useful materials from a waste product. The researchers found that chitin, a sugar-based polymer, is a major component of the flies and it strengthens the shell, or exoskeleton, of insects and crustaceans. From the fly products, the team created a hydrogel that can absorb 47 times its weight in water in just one minute. This product could be used in cropland soil to capture flood water and then slowly release moisture during droughts. The scientists hope they will soon be able to create bioplastics such as polycarbonates or polyurethanes, which are traditionally made from petrochemicals, from the flies. These plastics will not contribute to the plastic pollution problem.

Note: Explore more positive stories like this in our comprehensive inspiring news articles archive focused on solutions and bridging divides.


What if We’re the Bad Guys Here?
2023-08-02, New York Times
Posted: 2023-08-15 13:30:04
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/02/opinion/trump-meritocracy-educated.html

When I began my journalism career in Chicago in the 1980s, there were still some old crusty working-class guys around the newsroom. Now we’re not only a college-dominated profession; we’re an elite-college-dominated profession. Only 0.8 percent of college students graduate from the super-elite 12 schools (the Ivy League colleges, plus Stanford, M.I.T., Duke and the University of Chicago). A 2018 study found that more than 50 percent of the staff writers at the beloved New York Times and The Wall Street Journal attended one of the 29 most elite universities in the nation. Members of our class also segregate ourselves into a few booming metro areas. In 2020, Biden won only 500 or so counties, but together they are responsible for 71 percent of the American economy. Trump won over 2,500 counties, responsible for only 29 percent. Like all elites, we use language and mores as tools to recognize one another and exclude others. Using words like “problematic,” “cisgender,” “Latinx” and “intersectional” is a sure sign that you’ve got cultural capital. Meanwhile, members of the less-educated classes have to walk on eggshells because they never know when we’ve changed the usage rules so that something that was sayable five years ago now gets you fired. Does this mean that I think the people in my class are vicious and evil? No. Most of us are earnest, kind and public-spirited. But we take for granted and benefit from systems that have become oppressive.

Note: Watch an excellent interview of journalist Batya Ungar-Sargon discussing how journalism has shifted from being a working class trade that held the powerful accountable to an elite industry that serves the upper class. She articulates that mainstream news has abandoned and divided the working class by creating a culture war around identity and race. Elites shaping the news industry benefit from this political polarization, which hides the tragic reality of income inequality that affect all races across political lines.


At least half of all people likely to develop mental health disorders before 75: study
2023-08-05, The Hill
Posted: 2023-08-15 13:28:10
https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/mental-health/4139267-at-least-half-dev...

A recent study in The Lancet found that by the age of 75 about half of all people will develop a mental disorder. “These disorders typically first emerge in childhood, adolescence, or young adulthood,” reads the study, co-led by researchers from Harvard Medical School and the University of Queensland. “Services should have the capacity to detect and treat common mental disorders promptly and to optimize care that suits people at these crucial parts of the life course.” The study included over 150,000 respondents aged 18 and older from 29 countries between 2001 and 2022. The study also noted a finding of different disorders more commonly affecting different genders than others. “The two most prevalent disorders were alcohol use disorder and major depressive disorder for male respondents and major depressive disorder and specific phobia for female respondents,” the study said. The study noted the importance of studying the frequency and timing of mental disorder development, calling it “fundamental importance for public health planning.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on health from reliable major media sources. Then explore the excellent, reliable resources provided in our Health Information Center.


Map: Does your drinking water contain ‘forever chemicals’?
2023-08-05, The Hill
Posted: 2023-08-15 13:26:06
https://thehill.com/homenews/nexstar_media_wire/4133806-map-does-your-drinkin...

So-called “forever chemicals” have been found in 45% of the nation’s tap water, according to a recent government study, but is your tap water affected? If you’re wondering whether or not your tap water might contain synthetic chemicals known as PFAS, nonprofit Environmental Working Group created an interactive map using official records and data from public drinking water systems to show where forever chemicals were found to be above and below the advised maximum concentration level, 4 parts per trillion (PPT). EWG notes that while researchers used the highest quality data available, contamination levels are based on a single point in time and may not reflect changes to the water system or treatment efforts. PFAS is an umbrella term for thousands of chemicals that are used to make nonstick pans, food packaging, fire-fighting foams, to-go boxes, furniture, rugs, clothing and more. The chemicals are so ubiquitous it would be nearly impossible for most Americans to rid their home of them. The chemicals are both extremely common and potentially dangerous. Described as “forever chemicals” because they don’t degrade naturally in the environment, PFAS have been linked to a variety of health problems, including liver and immune-system damage. Studies of lab animals have found potential links between PFAS chemicals and some cancers, including kidney and testicular, plus issues such as high blood pressure and low birth weight.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corporate corruption and health from reliable major media sources.


Chemical companies’ PFAS payouts are huge – but the problem is even bigger
2023-08-03, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2023-08-15 13:24:40
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/aug/03/chemical-companies-pfas-p...

When the chemical giant 3M agreed in early June to pay up to $12.5bn to settle a lawsuit over PFAS contamination in water systems across the nation, it was hailed by attorneys as “the largest drinking water settlement in American history”, and viewed as a significant win for the public in the battle against toxic “forever chemicals”. A second June settlement with the PFAS manufacturers DuPont, Chemours and Corteva tallied a hefty $1.1bn. But while the sums are impressive on their face, they represent just a fraction of the estimated $400bn some estimate will be needed to clean and protect the nation’s drinking water. Orange county, California, alone put the cost of cleaning its system at $1bn. Because PFAS are so widely used and the scale of their harm is so great ... the industry’s final bill could exceed the $200bn paid by big tobacco in the 1990s. PFAS are a class of about 15,000 compounds used to make products across dozens of industries resistant to water, stains and heat. They are called “forever chemicals” because they do not naturally break down, and are linked to cancer, kidney disease, liver conditions, immune disorders, birth defects and other health problems. The chemicals are thought to be contaminating drinking water for over 200 million Americans. Tens of thousands of contaminated private wells are not included in the settlement. The chemicals are also widely used in thousands of consumer products from dental floss to cookware to clothing, and have been found to contaminate food, soil and air.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corporate corruption and health from reliable major media sources.


A Democrat’s obsessive quest to change the way America is farmed and fed
2023-07-26, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2023-08-15 13:23:09
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jul/26/earl-blumenauer-agricultu...

Each year for the last 26 years – nearly his entire tenure in the US Congress – Earl Blumenauer has advocated for a law that would utterly transform US agriculture. Nearly every time, though, his proposals have been shut down. Even so, he persists. Blumenauer, a Democrat from Oregon, wants to see a version of US agriculture that centers people, animals and the environment, rather than the large-scale, energy-intensive commodity crop farms that currently receive billions of dollars in subsidies. Blumenauer’s newest plan, the Food and Farm Act, was introduced earlier this year, as an alternative to the farm bill – the package of food and agricultural policies passed every five years that is up for renewal this fall. His proposal would redirect billions of dollars away from subsidies for commodity farms towards programs that support small farmers, climate-friendly agriculture and increasing healthy food access. “Most of us don’t even know that the public dollars initially designed to protect farmers and keep supply managed to feed a hungry nation in the Great Depression are now reinforcing wealthy agribusiness corporations to grow commodities that are not even meant for human consumption,” said Joshua Newell, a policy analyst. Most of the farms excluded from subsidy payments are those using sustainable growing methods that preserve soil and benefit the climate. Blumenauer’s bill would ... ensure more funding goes toward sustainable farming practices.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corruption in government and in the food system from reliable major media sources.


There’s far more scientific fraud than anyone wants to admit
2023-08-09, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2023-08-15 13:21:11
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/aug/09/scientific-misconduct-r...

Scientific misconduct does not happen only at Stanford and Harvard. Of the nearly 5,500 retractions we catalogue in 2022, and the thousands of cases we have reported on since launching our watchdog website Retraction Watch in 2010, the vast majority involve researchers at institutions without anywhere near Stanford and Harvard’s pedigrees. The number of retractions each year reflects about a tenth of a percent of the papers published in a given year – in other words, one in 1,000. Yet the figure has grown significantly from about 40 retractions in 2000, far outpacing growth in the annual volume of papers published. Retractions have risen sharply in recent years for two main reasons: first, sleuthing, largely by volunteers who comb academic literature for anomalies, and, second, major publishers’ (belated) recognition that their business models have made them susceptible to paper mills – scientific chop shops that sell everything from authorships to entire manuscripts to researchers who need to publish lest they perish. These are not merely academic matters. Particularly when it comes to medical research, faker hurts real people. The truth, however, is that the number of retractions in 2022 – 5,500 – is almost definitely a vast undercount of how much misconduct and fraud exists. We estimate that at least 100,000 retractions should occur every year. Journals and publishers ... fail to do their part, finding ways to ignore criticism of what they have published, leaving fatally flawed work flagged.

Note: Back in 2015, the editor-in-chef of The Lancet, one of the most prestigious medical journals in the world, wrote that much of scientific literature, perhaps half, may simply be untrue. According to a revealing article by Nature, a leading science journal, medicine is plagued by untrustworthy clinical trials. Who can we trust? For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on science corruption from reliable major media sources.


America’s state media: The blackout on Biden corruption is truly ‘Pulitzer-level stuff’
2023-05-13, The Hill
Posted: 2023-08-15 13:19:31
https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/4003066-americas-state-media-the-blac...

This week, Rep. Byron Donald (R-Fla.) tried to do the impossible. After he and his colleagues presented a labyrinth of LLC shell companies and accounts used to funnel as much as $10 million to Biden family members, Donald tried to induce the press to show some interest in the massive corruption scandal. “For those in the press, this easy pickings & Pulitzer-level stuff right here,” he pleaded. Despite showing nine Biden family members allegedly receiving funds from corrupt figures in Romania, China and other countries, The New Republic quickly ran a story headlined “Republicans Finally Admit They Have No Incriminating Evidence on Joe Biden.” For many of us, it was otherworldly. A decade ago, when then-Vice President Joe Biden was denouncing corruption in Romania and Ukraine and promising action by the United States, massive payments were flowing to his son Hunter Biden and a variety of family members, including Biden grandchildren. The brilliance of the Biden team was that it invested the media in this scandal at the outset by burying the laptop story as “Russian disinformation” before the election. That was, of course, false, but it took two years for most major media outlets to admit that the laptop was authentic. But the media then ignored what was on that “authentic laptop.” Hundreds of emails detailed potentially criminal conduct and raw influence peddling in foreign countries. The media simply fails to see the story.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and media manipulation from reliable sources.


Why did the National Honey Board hire a PR firm that works for the pesticide industry?
2023-08-08, U.S. Right to Know
Posted: 2023-08-15 13:16:54
https://usrtk.org/pesticides/national-honey-board-porter-novelli/

In 2016, the American honey industry faced a crisis: The U.S. Food and Drug Administration had found high levels of glyphosate, an herbicide linked to cancer, in honey samples from Iowa. The National Honey Board (NHB), a honey industry-funded agency of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, did what many businesses under fire have done: They hired a crisis management public relations firm, in this case to downplay the risks of glyphosate in honey. The PR firm, Porter Novelli, later worked with the NHB to deflect concerns about honey containing neonicotinoids. The insect-killing chemicals are tied to the collapse of bee colonies. At the same time, Porter Novelli was working for Bayer, a leading manufacturer of glyphosate and neonicotinoids. The PR firm’s work for Bayer included promoting the use of neonicotinoids and opposing regulations that would safeguard honey bees. CropLife America, the pesticide industry lobby group, has also hired Porter Novelli’s subsidiary, Paradigm Communications, to “lead the effort to shift how pesticide products were portrayed in search engine results,” according to the Intercept. Search terms compiled by CropLife America staff included “neonicotinoid,” “pollinators,” and “neonics.” As other countries responded to the science by banning neonics, in the U.S., “industry dug in, seeking not only to discredit the research but to cast pesticide companies as a solution to the problem." Studies show the insecticides are toxic to the brain and nervous system [of humans].

Note: According to the CDC, about half the U.S. population is exposed to at least one neonic on a regular basis, with children ages 3-5 years old having the highest levels. Merchants of Poison: How Monsanto Sold the World on a Toxic Pesticide is a recent and comprehensive analysis of documents released in litigation against Monsanto that expose years of pesticide industry disinformation. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on food system corruption.


It’s a Bird. It’s a Plane. It’s the Police Responding to a 911 Call.
2023-07-29, The Marshall Project
Posted: 2023-08-15 13:14:22
https://www.themarshallproject.org/2023/07/29/police-drone-california-911

If you call 911 to report an emergency, the odds are increasing that a drone will be the first unit sent to respond. More than 1,500 departments across the country now use them, “mostly for search and rescue as well as to document crime scenes and chase suspects,” according to ... MIT Technology Review. Generally, police drones don’t carry weapons and are used primarily for video surveillance. It is possible for small drones to deliver chemical irritants like tear gas, however, a technology that police in Israel have used against Palestinians. In a report published on Thursday, American Civil Liberties Union Senior Policy Analyst Jay Stanley worries that these kinds of drone programs may normalize usage and “usher in an era of pervasive, suspicionless, mass aerial surveillance.” He notes far more invasive turns that police drone usage could take, including warrantless surveillance of specific people, crime “hotspots” or even whole neighborhoods or cities. Stanley wonders if drone usage won’t just ... “amplify the problems with the deeply broken U.S. criminal legal system.” Many of the cities using drones in policing are doing so from so-called “real-time crime centers.” These units function as centralized hubs to connect the various bits of surveillance and data that police collect from things like stationary cameras, drones, license plate readers and technology that listens for possible gunshots. Some centers can even integrate police body cameras and video from Ring doorbells.

Note: Police have been using military predator drones for domestic law enforcement since 2011. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on police corruption and the disappearance of privacy from reliable major media sources.


Wikipedia and the Military-Intelligence Complex: How the Free Encyclopedia Feeds the National Security State from Which It Emerged
2021-06-25, Counterpunch
Posted: 2023-08-15 13:12:21
https://www.counterpunch.org/2021/06/25/wikipedia-and-the-military-intelligen...

Wikipedia is part of the very internet developed by the military with public money in the 1950s-60s, then called ARPANET. Generally speaking, corporations hope that the systems developed in the military that evolve in the public-corporate realm—satellites, computers, data analysis, etc.—will inspire new military-intelligence innovations in a permanent feedback loop. The overarching “values” [of Wikipedia] and its contributors—mainly young, white, middle-class liberals—will reflect those “values”. They include progressive slogans but reactionary policies, humanitarianism but pro-war positions, and conformity to consensus opinion even when the consensus is wrong (e.g., “regime change” in Libya and Syria). By 2006, the Intelligence Community had developed its own Intellipedia. A Top Secret report released under a FOIA request instructed intelligence officers how to edit Wikipedia’s entry on MK-ULTRA, the CIA’s mind control program (1953-circa 1970s), for Intellipedia. Funded by weapons contractors like BAE Systems and Boeing, and until recently led by people like Katherine Maher, ex-World Banker and Fellow of the Truman National Security Project, which exists to promote “US values” at home and abroad, the Wikimedia Foundation that enables Wikipedia does not exist in a vacuum. Wikipedia does not present unbiased, scholarly encyclopedia entries. It is as much part of the military-industrial-complex as mainstream corporate media.

Note: Some Wikipedia entries have been professionally manipulated. Watch a fascinating video with Larry Sanger, the co-founder of Wikipedia, who now says he no longer trusts the website he's helped created. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on intelligence agency corruption and media manipulation from reliable sources.


We need regenerative farming, not geoengineering
2015-03-09, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2023-08-15 13:10:07
https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2015/mar/09/we-need-regenera...

Geoengineering is a technological fix that leaves the economic and industrial system causing climate change untouched. The mindset behind geoengineering stands in sharp contrast to an emerging ecological, systems approach taking shape in the form of regenerative agriculture. More than a mere alternative strategy, regenerative agriculture represents a fundamental shift in our culture’s relationship to nature. Regenerative agriculture comprises an array of techniques that rebuild soil and, in the process, sequester carbon. Typically, it uses cover crops and perennials so that bare soil is never exposed, and grazes animals in ways that mimic animals in nature. It also offers ecological benefits far beyond carbon storage: it stops soil erosion, remineralises soil, protects the purity of groundwater and reduces damaging pesticide and fertiliser runoff. Yields from regenerative methods often exceed conventional yields. Likewise, since these methods build soil, crowd out weeds and retain moisture, fertiliser and herbicide inputs can be reduced or eliminated entirely, resulting in higher profits for farmers. No-till methods can sequester as much as a ton of carbon per acre annually. In the US alone, that could amount to nearly a quarter of current emissions. Ultimately, climate change challenges us to rethink our long-standing separation from nature. It is time to fall in love with the land, the soil, and the trees, to halt their destruction and to serve their restoration.

Note: Don't miss Kiss the Ground, a powerful documentary on the growing regenerative agriculture movement and its power to build global community, reverse the many environmental crises we face, and revive our connection to the natural world. Explore more positive stories like this in our comprehensive inspiring news articles archive focused on solutions and bridging divides.


‘Common Ground’: Tribeca Film Connects Regenerative Farming, Politics And Public Health
2023-06-20, Forbes
Posted: 2023-08-15 13:08:37
https://www.forbes.com/sites/lipiroy/2023/06/20/common-ground-tribeca-film-co...

Healthy soil makes healthy food which makes healthy people. That’s one of the key premises behind the documentary, Common Ground, which premiered at the Tribeca Festival. The documentary explores the connection between farming, public policy and disease, and aims to spark a cultural and political movement rooted in the practice of regenerative agriculture. The film hopes to rally for the transition of 100 million more acres of U.S. land to regenerative by tripling the reach and impact of the filmmakers’ 2020 film, Kiss the Ground. Common Ground’s core message about soil, climate and human health is endorsed by star-studded narration from actor-activists Laura Dern, Jason Momoa, Donald Glover, Woody Harrelson, Rosario Dawson and Ian Somerhalder as well as New Jersey Senator Cory Booker. Regenerative agriculture [is] a philosophy and approach to land management that nourishes people and the earth. The holistic principles of regenerative farming aim to restore soil and ecosystem health, address inequity and leave our land, waters and climate in better shape for future generations. According to North Dakota farmer ... Gabe Brown, “Regenerative agriculture is a renewal of a food and farming system that focuses on the whole chain, from soil to plant health to animal and human health. The nutrient density of the foods we produce is directly related to the health of the soil.” The current model doesn’t pay farmers who make nutrient-dense products. Regenerative agriculture is changing that.

Note: Explore more positive stories like this in our comprehensive inspiring news articles archive focused on solutions and bridging divides.


Psychedelics as Antidepressants
2021-01-30, Scientific American
Posted: 2023-08-15 13:05:45
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/psychedelics-as-antidepressants/

As of 2018, nearly one in eight Americans use antidepressants. Unfortunately, more than a third of patients are resistant to the mood-improving benefits of medicine’s best antidepressant drugs. These people are not completely out of options. There are chemicals already out there that can restore their mood balance, and in some cases, even save their lives. Chemicals such as lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), psilocybin (magic mushrooms) and dimethyltryptamine (DMT) are more accurately called “serotonergic psychedelics” among the neuroscience community. At the correct doses, psychedelics are well tolerated, producing only minor side effects such as transient fear, perception of illusions, nausea/vomiting or headaches. These fleeting side effects pale in comparison to the severity of commonly prescribed antidepressants, which include dangerous changes in heart rate and blood pressure, paradoxical increases in suicidality, and withdrawal symptoms. As far as outcomes go, psychedelics in combination with psychotherapy are remarkably efficient at treating depression. Compared to selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, or SSRIs, the current gold standard in antidepressant medication, psychedelics have a faster effect on patients, sometimes effective with only a single therapy session. Psychedelics also have a longer-lasting effect than an SSRI regimen. A 2015 study ... demonstrated that past history of psychedelic use decreases the odds of suicidal thoughts or actions over the course of a lifetime.

Note: Read more about the healing potentials of psychedelic medicine. Explore more positive stories like this in our comprehensive inspiring news articles archive focused on solutions and bridging divides.


Covid cover-up: how the science was silenced
2023-07-28, The Australian (One of Australia's leading newspapers)
Posted: 2023-08-07 21:48:50
https://www.theaustralian.com.au/weekend-australian-magazine/covid-coverup-wu...

America's top infectious diseases adviser, Anthony Fauci, deliberately decided to downplay suspicions from scientists that Covid-19 came from a laboratory to protect his reputation and deflect from the risky coronavirus research his agency had funded, according to his boss, one of the most senior US health officials during the pandemic. In an exclusive interview, Robert Kadlec – former assistant secretary for preparedness and response at the US Department of Health – [said] that he, Dr Fauci and National Institutes of Health director Francis Collins privately discussed how to "turn down the temperature" on accusations against China in the early days of the pandemic. The National Institutes of Health and other US agencies funded 65 scientific projects at the Wuhan Institute of Virology over the past decade, many involving risky research on bat coronaviruses. "I think Tony Fauci was trying to protect his institution and his own reputation from the possibility that his agency was funding the Wuhan Institute of Virology researchers who, beyond the scope of the grants received from the National Institutes of Health, may have been working with People's Liberation Army researchers on defensive coronavirus vaccines," Dr Kadlec said. "We think vaccine research resulted in the pandemic – that vaccine research was the proximate cause." Dr Fauci has denied his agency funded gain-of-function research, but Dr Kadlec said this wasn't true.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on science corruption and the coronavirus from reliable major media sources.


US academics 'may be prosecuted' over Covid-19 lab leak: top scientist
2023-08-01, The Australian (One of Australia's leading newspapers)
Posted: 2023-08-07 21:46:00
https://www.theaustralian.com.au/world/us-academics-may-be-prosecuted-over-co...

A leading US scientist expects academics who played down the idea Covid-19 leaked from a Chinese laboratory, despite their private doubts, will face criminal prosecution for fraud. Richard Ebright, a molecular biologist [said] the "preponderance of evidence" available supported the notion the new virus emerged from research-related activities at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, before rapidly spreading throughout the world in early 2020. Professor Ebright, a long term advocate for reducing the risk of biological weapons programs, said the arguments over the origin of Covid-19 was "moving out of the scientific community arena, into the congressional arena, and ultimately it will move into the judicial arena". "There will be referrals for prosecution of violations of law, including, based on what we know already, very clear evidence for criminal fraud, for criminal conspiracy to defraud or criminal misuse of federal funds," he said. Professor Ebright's comments came days after Republican Senator Rand Paul ... referred Dr Anthony Fauci, a former top US health bureaucrat, to the Department of Justice for prosecution over allegations he lied to Congress over the extent of US funding that had been directed to the Wuhan lab. "There's no question in my mind that [Tony] Fauci committed a felony on each of those three occasions, and ... he has not been held accountable," Professor Ebright said. "Lying to Congress is a felony and the penalty is five years in prison; there have been at least three instances".

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on science corruption and the coronavirus from reliable major media sources.


Intelligence Board Recommends Curbing F.B.I.'s Power to Use Surveillance Program
2023-07-31, New York Times
Posted: 2023-08-07 21:44:11
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/31/us/politics/fbi-warantless-surveillance-se...

An advisory board to President Biden has recommended limiting the F.B.I.'s ability to use a controversial warrantless surveillance program to hunt for information about Americans, even as it urged lawmakers to renew the law that authorizes it. The panel, known as the President's Intelligence Advisory Board, suggested barring the bureau from searching a database of intercepted information when looking for evidence about Americans in criminal investigations that do not involve foreign intelligence. The board ... delivered the recommendation in a declassified 39-page report. It came as Congress was debating whether to extend the law authorizing the program, known as Section 702. Under Section 702, the government can collect – from American companies like Google and AT&T and without a warrant – the communications of targeted foreigners abroad, even when they are talking to or about Americans. The notion that Section 702 creates a backdoor to the Fourth Amendment by allowing the F.B.I. to read private communications to or from an American without a warrant in ordinary criminal contexts has raised particular alarm. But the board rejected as unjustified the more sweeping reform proposal: to require the government to obtain a court warrant before using Americans' identifiers to search the repository. Requiring a court order before doing so, the board said, would prevent intelligence agencies from discovering threats to the country in a timely manner.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on intelligence agency corruption and the disappearance of privacy from reliable major media sources.


US Spies Are Lobbying Congress to Save a Phone Surveillance 'Loophole'
2023-07-27, Wired
Posted: 2023-08-07 21:42:25
https://www.wired.com/story/nsa-ndaa-lobbying-privacy-loophole/

An effort by United States lawmakers to prevent government agencies from domestically tracking citizens without a search warrant is facing opposition internally from one of its largest intelligence services. Officials at the National Security Agency (NSA) have approached lawmakers charged with its oversight about opposing an amendment that would prevent it from paying companies for location data instead of obtaining a warrant in court. Introduced by US representatives Warren Davidson and Sara Jacobs, the amendment ... would prohibit US military agencies from "purchasing data that would otherwise require a warrant, court order, or subpoena" to obtain. The ban would cover more than half of the US intelligence community, including the NSA, the Defense Intelligence Agency, and the newly formed National Space Intelligence Center, among others. A government report declassified by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence last month revealed that US intelligence agencies were avoiding judicial review by purchasing a "large amount" of "sensitive and intimate information" about Americans, including data that can be used to trace people's whereabouts over extended periods of time. The sensitivity of the data is such that "in the wrong hands," the report says, it could be used to "facilitate blackmail," among other undesirable outcomes. The report also acknowledges that some of the data being procured is protected under the US Constitution's Fourth Amendment.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on intelligence agency corruption and the disappearance of privacy from reliable major media sources.


The professor trying to protect our private thoughts from technology
2023-03-26, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2023-08-07 21:40:28
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2023/mar/26/nita-farahany-the-battle-for-...

Private thoughts may not be private for much longer, heralding a nightmarish world where political views, thoughts, stray obsessions and feelings could be interrogated and punished all thanks to advances in neurotechnology. In a new book, The Battle for Your Brain, Duke University bioscience professor Nita Farahany argues that such intrusions into the human mind by technology are so close that a public discussion is long overdue and lawmakers should immediately establish brain protections as it would for any other area of personal liberty. Farahany, who served on Barack Obama’s commission for the study of bioethical issues, believes that advances in neurotechnology mean that intrusions through the door of brain privacy, whether by way of military programs or by way of well-funded research labs at big tech companies, are at hand via brain-to-computer innovations like wearable tech. “All of the major tech companies have massive investments in multifunctional devices that have brain sensors in them,” Farahany said. “Neural sensors will become part of our everyday technology and a part of how we interact with that technology.” François du Cluzel, a project manager at Nato Act Innovation Hub, issued a report in November 2020 entitled Cognitive Warfare that, it said, “is not limited to the military or institutional world. Since the early 1990s, this capability has tended to be applied to the political, economic, cultural and societal fields.”

Note: Read more about these troubling developments. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on the disappearance of privacy from reliable major media sources.


The Biden Appointee Spearheading AI Accountability Has Close Ties To Google
2023-07-31, Huffington Post
Posted: 2023-08-07 21:38:18
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/alan-davidson-google-ai-accountability_n_64c7f...

Alan Davidson currently leads the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, or NTIA, the agency now crafting recommendations on how federal regulators can hold AI companies accountable. But for years, he worked as Google's chief lobbyist in Washington. NTIA's recommendations will help form the basis of the Biden administration's response to AI and machine learning. "People are warning that there are really serious downsides possible to AI, and I would want a hard-headed regulator to run down those concerns," said Jeff Hauser, the executive director of the Revolving Door Project, a watchdog focused on conflicts of interest in government. "Davidson is not likely, based on his CV, to be detached." Rapid advances in AI present a potential turning point for Silicon Valley's dominant tech firms. Notably, the first company to capture national attention with the launch of a new AI product was not a household name, like Google or Microsoft, but the independent research lab OpenAI, with its splashy launch of ChatGPT. Google reportedly sees the AI products it has in the pipeline as so pivotal to the company's future that Sergey Brin, the Google co-founder lately absorbed with outside projects, has returned to company headquarters to work directly with the team building its flagship AI system. "Google is the biggest player who cares about this issue," [said former Hill aide involved in antitrust policy]. "I cannot imagine Google doesn't view Alan Davidson as an asset to them."

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corruption in government and in the corporate world from reliable major media sources.


'Verified human': Worldcoin users queue up for iris scans
2023-07-25, Reuters
Posted: 2023-08-07 21:36:41
https://www.reuters.com/technology/verified-human-worldcoin-users-queue-up-ir...

People around the world are getting their eyeballs scanned in exchange for a digital ID and the promise of free cryptocurrency. The Worldcoin project says it aims to create a new "identity and financial network" and that its digital ID will allow users to, among other things, prove online that they are human, not a bot. The project launched on Monday, with eyeball scans taking place in countries including Britain, Japan and India. At a crypto conference in Tokyo, people on Tuesday queued in front of a gleaming silver globe flanked by placards stating: "Orbs are here." Applicants lined up to have their irises scanned by the device, before waiting for the 25 free Worldcoin tokens the company says verified users can claim. Worldcoin's data-collection is a "potential privacy nightmare," said the Electronic Privacy Information Center. Worldcoin's privacy policy ... says that data may be passed to subcontractors and could be accessed by governments and authorities. UK privacy campaign group Big Brother Watch said there was a risk biometric data could be hacked or exploited. "Digital ID systems increase state and corporate control over individuals' lives and rarely live up to the extraordinary benefits technocrats tend to attribute to them," senior advocacy officer Madeleine Stone said. In a mall in Bengaluru, India, orb-operators approached passers-by on Tuesday and showed them how to sign up. Most interviewed by Reuters said they were not worried about privacy.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corporate corruption and the disappearance of privacy from reliable major media sources.


'Fairly shocking': Secret medical lab in California stored bioengineered mice laden with COVID
2023-07-31, USA Today
Posted: 2023-08-07 21:35:11
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2023/07/31/illegal-lab-california-...

A months long investigation into a rural California warehouse uncovered an illegal laboratory filled with infectious agents, medical waste and hundreds of mice bioengineered "to catch and carry the COVID-19 virus," according to Fresno County authorities. Health and licensing said Monday that Prestige Biotech, a Chinese medical company registered in Nevada, was operating the unlicensed facility in Reedley, California, a small city about 24 miles southeast of Fresno. The company, according to Reedley City Manager Nicole Zieba, had a goal of being a diagnostics lab. "They never had a business license," Zieba [said]. "The city was completely unaware that they were in this building." The Fresno County Public Health Department launched its investigation into the facility in December 2022 after a code enforcement officer saw a garden hose attached to a building that was presumed to be vacant and had no active business license, Zieba said. Hundreds of mice also were found at the warehouse, where they were "kept in inadequate conditions in overcrowded cages" with no food or water, according to court documents. An associate with Prestige Biotech told investigators the mice were "genetically engineered to catch and carry the COVID virus." The city seized the mice in April and euthanized 773 of them. Zieba said officials called in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention after about 30 freezers and refrigerators were found, with some set to minus 80 degrees. The CDC detected at least 20 potentially infectious agents.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on science corruption and the coronavirus from reliable major media sources.


The Military Origins of Facebook
2021-04-12, Unlimited Hangout
Posted: 2023-08-07 21:32:08
https://unlimitedhangout.com/2021/04/investigative-reports/the-military-origi...

While Facebook has long sought to portray itself as a "town square" that allows people from across the world to connect, a deeper look into its apparently military origins and continual military connections reveals that the world's largest social network was always intended to act as a surveillance tool to identify and target domestic dissent. LifeLog was one of several controversial post-9/11 surveillance programs pursued by the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) that threatened to destroy privacy and civil liberties in the United States. LifeLog sought to .. build a digital record of "everything an individual says, sees, or does." In 2015, [DARPA architect Douglas] Gage told VICE that "Facebook is the real face of pseudo-LifeLog." He tellingly added, “We have ended up providing the same kind of detailed personal information without arousing the kind of opposition that LifeLog provoked.” A few months into Facebook's launch, in June 2004, Facebook cofounders Mark Zuckerberg and Dustin Moskovitz [had] its first outside investor, Peter Thiel. Thiel, in coordination with the CIA, was actively trying to resurrect controversial DARPA programs. Thiel formally acquired $500,000 worth of Facebook shares and was added its board. Thiel's longstanding symbiotic relationship with Facebook cofounders extends to his company Palantir, as the data that Facebook users make public invariably winds up in Palantir's databases and helps drive the surveillance engine Palantir runs for a handful of US police departments, the military, and the intelligence community.

Note: Consider reading the full article by investigative reporter Whitney Webb to explore the scope of Facebook's military origins and the rise of mass surveillance. Read more about the relationship between the national security state and Google, Facebook, TikTok, and the entertainment industry. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on intelligence agency corruption and media manipulation from reliable sources.


New Files Reveal MKUltra's Terrifying Reach: Ethnic Bioweapons, Mind Control and Disturbing Experiments
2023-07-26, ScheerPost
Posted: 2023-08-07 21:30:10
https://scheerpost.com/2023/07/26/new-files-reveal-mkultras-terrifying-reach-...

Anthropologist Orisanmi Burton has blown the lid off a dark chapter in CIA history. Classified Agency files, recently obtained through Freedom of Information laws, expose shocking ties between the infamous MKULTRA program and nightmarish experiments on prisoners of color within the United States. Burton's findings expose MKULTRA's sinister mission to develop psychological warfare and behavioral manipulation tactics specifically aimed at people of color under the guise of "counterinsurgency." [In] 1968, the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders underwent an alarming update, adding "hostility" and "aggression" as prominent symptoms of schizophrenia. The implications were profound: civil rights activists daring to resist were at risk of being diagnosed and institutionalized. Prisoners refusing to bend to oppressive jail regimes could be conveniently labeled as "criminally insane." In August 2022, MintPress News revealed how Black Americans were disproportionately targeted by the CIA's monstrous mind control machinations. Many MKULTRA trials appeared to have been expressly conducted to gauge potentially varying reactions to psychedelic drugs in Black and White participants. The CIA had a specific – or greater – interest in the effect of certain substances on people of color, rather than the general civilian population. The CIA did indeed seek to determine optimal drugs for targeting Black Americans, if not other ethnic groups.

Note: The MKULTRA program was also used to create mind-controlled assassins. Government and business interests have a long history of experimenting on human beings. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on intelligence agency corruption and mind control from reliable major media sources.


Mangrove forest thrives around what was once Latin America's largest landfill
2023-07-26, CBS/Associated Press
Posted: 2023-08-07 21:27:55
https://www.cbs42.com/news/international/ap-mangrove-forest-thrives-around-wh...

It was once Latin America's largest landfill. Now, a decade after Rio de Janeiro shut it down and redoubled efforts to recover the surrounding expanse of highly polluted swamp, crabs, snails, fish and birds are once again populating the mangrove forest. "If we didn't say this used to be a landfill, people would think it's a farm. The only thing missing is cattle," jokes Elias Gouveia, an engineer with Comlurb, the city's garbage collection agency that is shepherding the plantation project. "This is an environmental lesson that we must learn from: nature is remarkable. If we don't pollute nature, it heals itself." The former landfill is located right by the 148 square miles (383 square kilometers) Guanabara Bay. Between the landfill's inauguration in 1968 and 1996, some 80 million tons of garbage were dumped in the area, polluting the bay and surrounding rivers with trash and runoff. In 1996, the city began implementing measures to limit the levels of pollution in the landfill, starting with treating some of the leachate, the toxic byproduct of mountains of rotting trash. But garbage continued to pile up until 2012, when the city finally shut it down. Mangroves are of particular interest for environmental restoration for their capacity to capture and store large amounts of planet-warming carbon dioxide, Gouveia explained. Experts say mangroves can bury even more carbon in the sediment than a tropical rainforest, making it a great tool to fight climate change. Comlurb and its private partner, Statled Brasil, have successfully recovered some 60 hectares.

Note: Explore more positive stories like this in our comprehensive inspiring news articles archive focused on solutions and bridging divides.


'It's a beautiful thing': how one Paris district rediscovered conviviality
2022-07-14, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2023-08-07 21:26:38
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jul/14/its-a-beautiful-thing-how-one-p...

A 215-metre-long banquet table, lined with 648 chairs and laden with a home cooked produce, was set up along the Rue de l'Aude and those in attendance were urged to openly utter the most subversive of words: bonjour. For some, that greeting led to the first meaningful exchange between neighbours. "I'd never seen anything like it before," says Benjamin Zhong who runs a cafe in the area. "It felt like the street belonged to me, to all of us." The revolutionaries pledged their allegiance that September day in 2017 to the self-styled R©publique des Hyper Voisins, or Republic of Super Neighbours, a stretch of the 14th arrondissement on the Left Bank, encompassing roughly 50 streets and 15,000 residents. In the five years since, the republic – a "laboratory for social experimentation" – has attempted to address the shortcomings of modern city living, which can be transactional, fast-paced, and lonely. The experiment encourages people ... to interact daily through mutual aid schemes, voluntary skills-sharing and organised meet ups. A recent event at the Place des Droits de l'Enfant allowed neighbours to celebrate reclaiming the public space. A lifeless road junction ... no longer performed its role as an "urban square" – a place for life, interaction and meetings. But after residents were consulted about what they thought the square should become, it was cleaned, pedestrianised, planted and had street clutter removed with a grant of nearly 200,000 euros from the City of Paris.

Note: Explore more positive stories like this in our comprehensive inspiring news articles archive focused on solutions and bridging divides.


From Bayanihan to Talkoot: Communal work practices from around the world
2021-05-18, Shareable
Posted: 2023-08-07 21:24:45
https://www.shareable.net/from-bayanihan-to-talkoot-communal-work-practices-f...

Communal work refers to a collaborative effort where members of a community come together to achieve a common goal or objective. Different cultures have different names for it, such as Talkoot (Finland), Gotong-royong (Indonesia), Nachbarschaftshilfe (Germany), and Bayanihan in the Philippines. During the eruption of the Taal volcano in the Philippines, the traditional support networks known as Bayanihan came into effect not as a temporary solution to the disaster but as an innate response that Filipinos have in both good times and bad. A response that may have its root in their concept of the “shared self” or Kapwa. Unlike the English word ‘Other’, Kapwa is not used in opposition to the self and does not recognize the self as a separate identity. Rather, Kapwa is the unity of self and others and hence implies a shared identity or inner self. From this arises the sense of fellow being that underlies Filipino social interaction. Not only is it socially beneficial, but also the act of completing the task with others is infinitely rewarding. In the book “Shop Class as Soulcraft,” Matthew Crawford writes: “The satisfactions of manifesting oneself concretely in the world through manual competence have been known to make a man quiet and easy. They seem to relieve him of the felt need to offer chattering interpretations of himself to vindicate his worth. He can simply point: the building stands, the car now runs, the lights are on.”

Note: Explore more positive stories like this in our comprehensive inspiring news articles archive focused on solutions and bridging divides.


Nearly 1 in 10 US kids diagnosed with developmental disability: CDC
2023-07-13, New York Post
Posted: 2023-07-31 13:58:36
https://nypost.com/2023/07/13/nearly-1-in-10-us-kids-diagnosed-with-developme...

The number of American children that have been diagnosed with developmental disabilities has increased, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported. The agency unveiled new findings Thursday showing that nearly one in 10 children in the US were diagnosed with a developmental disability in 2021, an increase from previous years. Specifically, the prevalence in children aged 3 to 17 grew from 7.4% in 2019 to 8.6% in 2021, according to data from the National Health Interview Survey, which monitors the nation's health through household questionnaires. Survey findings were broken down into four categories: any developmental disability, intellectual disability, autism spectrum disorder and other developmental delay. While the percentage of children diagnosed with an intellectual disability or autism spectrum disorder remained relatively stagnant, the agency saw an uptick in "other developmental delays" from 5.1% in 2018 to 6.1% in 2021. Boys were more likely than girls to be diagnosed with any developmental disability – 10.8% compared to 5.3% – and specifically were an estimated three times more likely to develop autism spectrum disorder. The CDC report follows the news of soaring autism spectrum disorder rates in the NYC metro area, according to findings released earlier this year. Researchers from Rutgers claimed that rates tripled over the course of 16 years, from 1% in 2000 to 3% in 2016.

Note: More than half of American youth now deal with at least one chronic health issue. Why is this not being thoroughly investigated? Explore a collection of revealing news articles we've summarized that investigates the sharp rise of autism in children. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on health from reliable major media sources.


Medicine is plagued by untrustworthy clinical trials. How many studies are faked or flawed?
2023-07-18, Nature
Posted: 2023-07-31 13:56:14
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-02299-w

How many clinical-trial studies in medical journals are fake or fatally flawed? In October 2020, John Carlisle reported a startling estimate. Carlisle, an anaesthetist who works for England's National Health Service, is renowned for his ability to spot dodgy data in medical trials. He is also an editor at the journal Anaesthesia, and in 2017, he decided to scour all the manuscripts he handled that reported a randomized controlled trial (RCT) – the gold standard of medical research. Over three years, he scrutinized more than 500 studies. For more than 150 trials, Carlisle got access to anonymized individual participant data (IPD). By studying the IPD spreadsheets, he judged that 44% of these trials contained at least some flawed data: impossible statistics, incorrect calculations or duplicated numbers or figures, for instance. And 26% of the papers had problems that were so widespread that the trial was impossible to trust, he judged – either because the authors were incompetent, or because they had faked the data. Carlisle called these 'zombie' trials. Even he was surprised by their prevalence. "I anticipated maybe one in ten," he says. The issue is, in part, a subset of the notorious paper-mill problem: over the past decade, journals in many fields have published tens of thousands of suspected fake papers, some of which are thought to have been produced by third-party firms, termed paper mills. "It ... has the potential to amplify a wrong result, suggesting that treatments work when they don't," he says.

Note: Back in 2015, the editor-in-chef of The Lancet, one of the most prestigious medical journals in the world, wrote that much of scientific literature, perhaps half, may simply be untrue. Who can we trust? For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on science corruption from reliable major media sources.


The US Is Openly Stockpiling Dirt on All Its Citizens
2023-06-12, Wired
Posted: 2023-07-31 13:53:41
https://www.wired.com/story/odni-commercially-available-information-report/

The United States government has been secretly amassing a "large amount" of "sensitive and intimate information" on its own citizens, a group of senior advisers informed Avril Haines, the director of national intelligence. The government effort to accumulate data revealing the minute details of Americans' lives [is] described soberly and at length by the director's own panel of experts in a newly declassified report. The report states that the government believes it can "persistently" track the phones of "millions of Americans" without a warrant, so long as it pays for the information. It is often trivial "to deanonymize and identify individuals" from data that was packaged ... for commercial use. Such data may be useful, it says, to "identify every person who attended a protest or rally based on their smartphone location or ad-tracking records." Such civil liberties concerns are prime examples of how "large quantities of nominally 'public' information can result in sensitive aggregations." What's more, information collected for one purpose "may be reused for other purposes," which may "raise risks beyond those originally calculated," an effect called "mission creep." "In the wrong hands," [Office of the Director of National Intelligence] advisers warn, the same mountain of data the government is quietly accumulating could be turned against Americans to "facilitate blackmail, stalking, harassment, and public shaming." These are all offenses that have been committed by intelligence agencies and White House administrations in the past.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and the disappearance of privacy from reliable major media sources.


Why is healthy food so expensive in America? Blame the Farm Bill that Congress always renews to make burgers cheaper than salad
2023-07-21, Fortune
Posted: 2023-07-31 13:51:26
https://fortune.com/2023/07/21/why-healthy-food-so-expensive-in-america-blame...

The 2023 Farm Bill is projected to spend $700 billion over the next five years, with powerful industry lobbyists directing funds to enrich themselves at the expense of agricultural communities, human health, animal welfare, and environmental sustainability. It's far from its original intention: to help struggling farmers and hungry citizens during The Great Depression and Dustbowl. Most Americans have never heard of this massive omnibus bill, which Congress reauthorizes every five or so years. It shapes our food system–from subsidizing factory farms to funding food and nutrition programs, and it is why burgers are artificially cheap and salads cost more than they should. How did this happen? After World War II, to meet the needs of a booming U.S. population and a growing export market, the Farm Bill invested heavily in monocrops, including millions of acres of corn and soy, used to feed animals on industrialized farms. We subsidize the overproduction of fat-laden animal products and highly processed foods, making unhealthy food cheap and accessible. This contributes to heart disease and other chronic diet-related illnesses that cost our nation billions of dollars annually in preventable health care costs. Nine out of 10 U.S. adults do not consume nutritionists' recommended fruits and vegetables. The Farm Bill should invest in enterprises that act with integrity, not unethical profiteers who lobby for unconstitutional "ag-gag" laws that prevent free speech, transparency, and accountability.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corruption in government and in the food system from reliable major media sources.


House Republicans Accidentally Released a Trove of Damning Covid Documents
2023-07-12, The Intercept
Posted: 2023-07-31 13:49:12
https://theintercept.com/2023/07/12/covid-documents-house-republicans/

House Republicans on the subcommittee probing the origin of the Covid-19 virus appear to have inadvertently released a trove of new documents related to their investigation that shed light on deliberations among the scientists who drafted a key paper in February and March of 2020. The paper, published in Nature Medicine on March 17, 2020, was titled “The Proximal Origin of SARS-CoV-2” and played a leading role in creating a public impression of a scientific consensus that the virus had emerged naturally in a Chinese “wet market.” The paper was the subject of a hearing on Capitol Hill on Tuesday, which coincided with the release of a report by the subcommittee devoted to the “Proximal Origin” paper. The scientists believed one thing in private — that lab escape was likely — while working to produce a paper saying the opposite in public. Much of Tuesday’s hearing focused on a critical few days in early February 2020, beginning with a conference call February 1 that included the eventual authors of the paper and Drs. Anthony Fauci, then head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and Francis Collins, then head of its parent agency, the National Institutes of Health. Later minutes showed that the consensus among the experts leaned toward a lab escape. Yet within days, they were circulating a draft — including to Fauci and Collins — that came to the opposite conclusion, the first draft of which had been finished the same day of the conference call.

Note: Read more about the leaked documents that reveal high level covid science manipulation. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and the coronavirus from reliable major media sources.


FBI facilitated social media ‘takedown requests’ made by Ukrainian spy agency: report
2023-07-10, New York Post
Posted: 2023-07-31 13:46:23
https://nypost.com/2023/07/10/fbi-facilitated-social-media-takedown-requests-...

The FBI colluded with a Ukrainian intelligence agency to pressure social media companies into taking down accounts accused of spreading Russian disinformation — some of which belonged to Americans, a House committee said. The report issued by the House Judiciary Committee and the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government ... is based on documents subpoenaed from Meta – the parent company of Facebook and Instagram – and Alphabet – the parent company of Google and YouTube. It alleges that the “FBI violated the First Amendment rights of Americans and potentially undermined our national security.” The committees found that following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) enlisted the FBI in support of an effort to combat the spread of “Russian disinformation” on social media. As part of the effort, the SBU transmitted lists of social media accounts to the FBI that it wanted to be banned and the bureau, in turn, “routinely relayed these lists to the relevant social media platforms.” The committee claims that “the authentic accounts of Americans, including a verified US State Department account and those belonging to American journalists” were ensnared in the censorship effort and flagged for social media companies to take down. The State Department’s Russian-language Instagram account ... was one of the authentic American accounts flagged for removal in a list composed by the SBU and transmitted to Big Tech companies by the FBI.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and media manipulation from reliable sources.


Key Scientist In COVID Origin Controversy Misled Congress on Status of $8.9 Million NIH Grant
2023-07-21, The Intercept
Posted: 2023-07-31 13:44:04
https://theintercept.com/2023/07/21/covid-origin-nih-lab-leak/

Key researchers who testified before the House subcommittee investigating the origin of Covid-19 virus last week misled Congress about the nature of a multimillion-dollar grant that was pending at the time they joined a critical conference [call] with Drs. Francis Collins and Anthony Fauci in February 2020. On the call, the scientists suggested they leaned toward a lab escape as the most likely scenario, but they made a U-turn later that day when they began drafting it. The paper eventually ran in Nature Medicine under the headline "The Proximal Origin of SARS-CoV-2." Fauci and Collins were kept in the loop on the preparation of the paper, and Fauci highlighted it to the public in order to dismiss the notion of a lab escape. House Republicans convened a hearing last week on the conference call and the resulting paper, and one of the major sources of contention was the extent to which Fauci and Collins held financial sway over the scientists, who also had a grant application pending before the NIH. Democrats repeatedly characterized the argument in terms of a "bribe" being paid in exchange for a paper that exonerated a lab in Wuhan, China, that the NIH had been funding to do the kind of risky research that could spark a pandemic. Rather than a bribe, though, the question is one of leverage. "I hate when politics is injected into science – but it's impossible not to, especially given the circumstance," [said scientist Kristian Anderson]. "We should be sensitive to that."

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on science corruption and the coronavirus from reliable major media sources.


Many censored social media posts did not contain Covid-19 misinformation
2023-07-21, The Australian (One of Australia's leading newspapers)
Posted: 2023-07-31 13:38:24
https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/many-censored-social-media-posts-did-...

Many of 4000 social media posts secretly censored by government during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic contained ­factual information and reasonable arguments rather than ­misinformation, new documents reveal. Digital posts released after Freedom of Information applications show the censored information shared facts such as the ineffectiveness of vaccines in preventing Covid-19 infection and transmission or argued against measures such as mask mandates and lockdowns. For instance, the then Coalition government sought the removal of an Instagram post in April 2021 that claimed "Covid-19 vaccine does not prevent Covid-19 infection or Covid-19 transmission". That statement clearly was accurate yet the official intervention via the Home Affairs Department claimed it breached Instagram's community guidelines because it was "potentially harmful information" that was "explicitly prohibited" by the platform. An April 2021 tweet was challenged because it claimed "Covid-19 was released or escaped from Wuhan laboratory in China and that it was funded by the US government". The Home Affairs Department claimed this was "explicitly prohibited" under Twitter's rules because it might "invoke a deliberate conspiracy by malicious and/or powerful forces", yet American intelligence agencies have found the most likely source of the virus was the Wuhan Institute of Virology, and it has been revealed that some work at the laboratory was funded by the US.

Note: The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) recently published a study that tracked the spread of COVID-19 'misinformation' during the course of the pandemic. Despite significant evidence pointing to the likelihood that COVID leaked from a lab and the unprecedented collusion between the Biden administration and tech giants to remove politically unfavorable views on social media, this JAMA study stated that these claims were inaccurate. How do we stay open to debate, instead of silencing voices with legitimate concerns and labeling it as misinformation? For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and media manipulation from reliable sources.


New Docs Link CIA to Medical Torture of Indigenous Children and Black Prisoners
2023-06-22, Truthout
Posted: 2023-07-31 13:28:19
https://truthout.org/articles/new-docs-link-cia-to-medical-torture-of-indigen...

In early 1973 ... the head of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) ordered the destruction of all documents related to MK Ultra. MK Ultra involved a range of grotesque experiments on unwitting test subjects within and beyond U.S. borders. In October of 2021, new evidence surfaced linking disappeared Indigenous children to MK Ultra experiments conducted by CIA-sponsored researchers. A white Winnipeg resident named Lana Ponting testified in Quebec’s Superior Court that in 1958, when she was 16 years old, doctors from the Allan Memorial Institute, a former psychiatric hospital ... held her against her will, drugged her with LSD and other substances, subjected her to electroshock treatments, and exposed her to auditory indoctrination: playing a recording telling Ponting over and over again, that she was either “a bad girl” or “a good girl.” Ponting recalls sneaking out at night and happening upon “people standing over by the cement wall” with shovels and flashlights. She and other children had heard rumors that bodies were buried on the property. The CIA, along with the U.S. and Canadian military and powerful U.S. charitable foundations, are directly implicated in this ordeal. The Memorial Institute was home to MK Ultra “Subproject 68.” Under the leadership of psychiatrist Ewen Cameron, whom Ponting accused of raping her, experiments in this subproject sought to “depattern” people’s minds using violent methods Cameron termed “psychic driving.”

Note: Read the complete article for a glimpse into how CIA mind control programs were used in US prisons. Government and business interests have a long history of experimenting on human beings. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on intelligence agency corruption and mind control from reliable major media sources.


How A Notorious Georgia Army School Became America’s Training Ground For Global Torture
2023-07-05, MintPress News
Posted: 2023-07-31 13:25:58
https://www.mintpressnews.com/notorious-georgia-army-school-became-americas-t...

Fort Benning, the infamous Georgia U.S. military base, is once again in the news, changing its name to Fort Moore, thereby ditching its Confederate name. Across Latin America, the very name of Fort Benning is enough to strike terror into the hearts of millions, bringing back visions of massacres and genocides. This is because the fort is home to the School of the Americas (now known as Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation or WHINSEC), a shadowy academy where around 84,000 Latin American soldiers and police officers have been taught on the U.S. dime on how to kill, torture and how to stamp out political activists. “The school is controversial partly because of its role in promoting US hegemony in Latin America,” James Jordan, national co-coordinator at Alliance for Global Justice, told MintPress, adding, “But even worse, it is how the school has promoted this: teaching methods of torture – even publishing torture manuals, counterintelligence, psyops, repression of political voices that don’t meet the approval of Washington DC. If one looks at cases of human rights abuses by the military throughout Latin America, the number of those responsible who were trained at the School of the Americas is simply staggering.” In 1996, the Pentagon was pressured into releasing the school’s official training manuals. Even a casual glance through the nearly 1200 pages of instructions makes for sobering reading and dispels the myth forever that the U.S. is a benevolent global force.

Note: The School of the Americas graduated more than 500 human rights abusers. The identities of many other US-trained troops operating in other countries remain hidden by US courts. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on military corruption from reliable major media sources.


Why a game in which you look for a real, live pink elephant could help save the world
2023-07-09, NPR
Posted: 2023-07-31 13:22:45
https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2023/07/09/1185014763/why-a-game-in...

Edgard Gouveia Jr., 58, says the key to solving the world's problems is games. "I use games and narrative to mobilize crowds," says the Brazilian game inventor and co-founder of Livelab. He's worked with schools, companies, government offices and slums. "Games that can make a whole town, a whole city or even a whole country play together." And now he's developing a global game called "Jornada X" whose goal is to get kids and teenagers to save nothing less than all life on the planet. Through games and playful activities, we create a field of trust. When you create abundance of connection, abundance of possibility, people sense it right away. It doesn't matter if for 30 or 40 years they were living in scarcity. By belonging to a group that we love and that's doing good in the world – these are ways of energizing our collective power, our collective meaning. When you do some good, you feel like you have an identity. [Jornada X] starts with young people. They receive a call that's like a Matrix video that says, "Humanity isn't doing well. Society is violent and nature is dying. But you are one of a group of special kids with superpowers – things like love, helping others, strength, and friendship. As soon as they sign up, the team starts to receive missions. We might say, "Look at your neighborhood. What's wrong?" By the end of seven weeks, they have to find a solution ... Kids play war games all the time. They collaborate to kill people. It's not that they like death, but they want to have this kind of adrenaline. What could be more exciting? My answer is saving the planet in a way that adults haven't been able to."

Note: The latest US Air Force recruitment tool is a video game that allows players to receive in-game medals and achievements for drone bombing Iraqis and Afghans. What world do we want our youth to live in? Explore more positive stories like this in our inspiring news articles archive, which aims to inspire each of us to make a difference.


'It Affects All of Us': Free Financial Counseling Helps Tulsans Thrive
2023-07-13, Reasons to be Cheerful
Posted: 2023-07-31 13:19:11
https://reasonstobecheerful.world/tulsa-financial-empowerment-center-stability/

In 2021, Latoya Tart found herself deep in debt. She had taken out several loans, and struggled to pay them off while still paying for other necessities, including rent and groceries. Then Tart ... learned about a program offering financial counseling free of charge to any resident of Tulsa, Oklahoma. She started seeing a financial counselor at The Financial Empowerment Center in September 2021. The Center is a partnership between the City of Tulsa and Goodwill Industries. "We are really building capacity at the city level, to support and grow and build collaboration among the providers in town who are working to move the needle on financial stability, financial resiliency for Tulsans," says Janae Bradford, director of the City of Tulsa's Office for Financial Empowerment and Community Wealth. During the first session with each new client, a counselor conducts a financial health assessment. "That's where the counselor and the client just go through the financial situation," she says. "How much are you making from your job? What money is coming in? What money's going out? And it's a completely non-judgmental, just comfortable, conversation about what are the facts." Then the counselor and client decide on their main focus area and set a goal. Since the Center opened in December 2020, the FEC has worked with more than 1,300 clients, and counselors have completed more than 2,000 sessions. There are currently 639 active clients working with counselors on their financial goals.

Note: Explore more positive stories like this in our inspiring news articles archive, which aims to inspire each of us to make a difference.


Congressman Says People 'Deserve to Know' About Aliens
2023-07-13, Newsweek
Posted: 2023-07-23 15:30:14
https://www.newsweek.com/congressman-says-people-deserve-know-aliens-1812881

Tennessee Republican Representative Tim Burchett said this week that Americans "deserve to know" about aliens and UFOs or unidentified aerial phenomena (UAPs). "That's what it is about: aliens ... I think people deserve to know," Burchett told Politico, while speaking about a potential House Oversight Committee hearing on UFOs and UAPs. The comments by Burchett come amid ongoing discussion about UFOs, UAPs and aliens throughout the U.S. after Air Force veteran David Grusch, told NewsNation that the U.S. Military has a secret program that previously recovered wreckage of a UFO. "These are retrieving non-human origin technical vehicles, call it spacecraft if you will, non-human exotic origin vehicles that have either landed or crashed," Grusch, who also previously served as the National Reconnaissance Office's representative to the UAP Task Force [said]. "Well, naturally, when you recover something that's either landed or crashed, sometimes you encounter dead pilots and, believe it or not, as fantastical as that sounds, it's true." The remarks by Grusch prompted many Republicans, including Burchett, to call for a further investigation into the alleged discovery of crashed UFOs and UAPs. In June, House Oversight Committee chair James Comer said that the committee was planning to have a hearing on UFOs and UAPs in the coming weeks, and a spokesperson for Comer's office told Politico on Thursday that the hearing is "looking like it will happen towards the end of this month."

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on UFOs from reliable major media sources. Then explore the excellent, reliable resources provided in our UFO Information Center.


Ezra Klein Interviews Leslie Kean
2023-06-20, New York Times
Posted: 2023-07-23 15:28:27
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/20/podcasts/ezra-klein-podcast-transcript-les...

A decorated former combat officer and an intelligence officer named David Grusch, who had worked on the government's Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force, said he had turned whistle-blower, and he had testified under oath that he has been told reliably, and given evidence of, secret government programs that have, over a long period of time, recovered and definitively analyzed crash materials – that we have this stuff, and it is being kept from Congress, it is being hidden. And if it were just him, maybe you would dismiss it. But there were others in the intelligence community, who had served around him, who were themselves very highly credentialed, who backed him up on this. The House and Senate Intelligence committees were very interested in this. More and more of them were briefed. Eventually, they actually authorized – or set up this U.A.P. Task Force, which was sort of an offshoot of this original AATIP program. This entity was instructed by Congress to study these cases and come up with reports, including reports for the public, and to just investigate this. The numbers of incidents that they had were just extraordinary, and they could not explain the behavior of these objects, the fact that some of them would hang around for 22 hours or something like that with, which is longer than they believed any drones could remain aloft. And one was described as a sphere with a cube inside it. So these were different kinds of things than we had been hearing about.

Note: Leslie Kean is an American investigative journalist and author who is most notable for books about UFOs and the afterlife. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on UFOs from reliable major media sources. Then explore the excellent, reliable resources provided in our UFO Information Center.


Pentagon Profiteers: Executive Compensation In The Arms Industry
2022-12-12, Forbes
Posted: 2023-07-23 15:26:28
https://www.forbes.com/sites/williamhartung/2022/12/12/pentagon-profiteers-ex...

Funding for the Department of Defense and related work on nuclear weapons at the Department of Energy will reach more than $850 billion in Fiscal Year 2023, far higher than spending at the height of the Cold War or the peak years of the Korean and Vietnam conflicts. While advocates of spending these enormous sums often argue that the money is needed to "support the troops," more than half of the Pentagon's yearly budget goes to private contractors, many of whom are making hefty profits at taxpayer expense while producing flawed products at exorbitant prices. One telling example of how these companies waste taxpayer dollars is how much they pay their top executives. In 2021 ... the CEOs of the top five contractors received compensation ranging from $18 million to $23 million each, including James Taiclet of Lockheed Martin, $18.1 million; David Calhoun of Boeing, $21.1 million; Gregory Hayes of Raytheon, $21.8 million; Phebe Novakovic of General Dynamics, $23.5 million; and Kathy Warden of Northrop Grumman, $19.9 million. Since these firms receive a large share of their revenue from U.S. government contracts, much of this excessive executive compensation is essentially subsidized by the taxpayers. Defense executives wouldn't be able to earn multi-million dollar salaries if their companies weren't grabbing billions in Pentagon contract awards. In addition to campaign contributions, the industry spent over $100 million on lobbying in just the first three quarters of 2022.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corruption in the military and in the corporate world from reliable major media sources.


The Future of AI Is War
2023-07-17, The Nation
Posted: 2023-07-23 15:24:30
https://www.thenation.com/article/world/artificial-intelligence-us-military/

Though once confined to the realm of science fiction, the concept of supercomputers killing humans has now become a distinct possibility. In addition to developing a wide variety of "autonomous," or robotic combat devices, the major military powers are also rushing to create automated battlefield decision-making systems, or what might be called "robot generals." In wars in the not-too-distant future, such AI-powered systems could be deployed to deliver combat orders to American soldiers, dictating where, when, and how they kill enemy troops or take fire from their opponents. In its budget submission for 2023, for example, the Air Force requested $231 million to develop the Advanced Battlefield Management System (ABMS), a complex network of sensors and AI-enabled computers designed to ... provide pilots and ground forces with a menu of optimal attack options. As the technology advances, the system will be capable of sending "fire" instructions directly to "shooters," largely bypassing human control. The Air Force's ABMS is intended to ... connect all US combat forces, the Joint All-Domain Command-and-Control System (JADC2, pronounced "Jad-C-two"). "JADC2 intends to enable commanders to make better decisions by collecting data from numerous sensors, processing the data using artificial intelligence algorithms to identify targets, then recommending the optimal weapon ... to engage the target," the Congressional Research Service reported in 2022.

Note: Read about the emerging threat of killer robots on the battlefield. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on military corruption from reliable major media sources.


World's 722 biggest companies 'making $1tn in windfall profits'
2023-07-05, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2023-07-23 15:22:28
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/jul/06/worlds-722-biggest-companies...

The world's 722 biggest companies collectively are making more than $1tn a year in windfall profits on the back of soaring energy prices and rising interest rates. The companies made $1.08tn this way in 2021 and $1.09tn last year, according to analysis of Forbes magazine data by the charities Oxfam and ActionAid. The collective profits were 89% higher than the previous four-year average covering 2017-2020. Windfall profits are defined as those exceeding average profits in the previous four years by more than 10%. Energy companies recorded the highest windfall profits. Of the 45 energy firms on Forbes list of the 2,000 biggest companies, they made on average $237bn a year in windfall profits in 2021 and 2022. Many food and beverage corporations, banks, pharmaceutical companies and retailers also reported a surge in profits during a cost-of-living crisis in which more than a quarter of a billion people in 58 countries experienced acute food insecurity in 2022. Those profits have stoked accusations of "greedflation" – pushing through excessive price increases and driving up inflation. Katy Chakrabortty, Oxfam's head of advocacy, said "A corporate bonanza is supercharging inflation, leaving millions of people in the UK and around the world struggling to pay their bills and feed their families. The windfall profits of 18 food and beverage corporations are more than twice the amount needed to cover the shortfall in life-saving assistance to tens of millions of people."

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corporate corruption from reliable major media sources.


'Outrageous': MEPs condemn pesticide companies for withholding toxicity data
2023-07-19, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2023-07-23 15:20:23
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jul/19/meps-condemn-pesticide-co...

The pesticide companies Bayer and Syngenta have been excoriated in a European parliament hearing after failing to disclose studies on the brain toxicity of their products. European regulators said the companies had breached legal obligations and behaved unethically. The withholding of nine brain toxicity studies from European regulators over the last 20 years was revealed by the Guardian in June, reporting findings from Swedish academics. They discovered that these toxicity studies had been submitted to the US pesticide regulator but not to the EU authorities. Dr Axel Mie, of Stockholm University, who led the research ... told a special hearing in the European parliament on Tuesday: "If a company decides by themselves which studies to disclose and which ones to withhold, it is obvious that the decisions by the [regulatory] authorities become unreliable." He said risk management decisions had been delayed by 18 years in one case. MEPs were scathing about the companies. The Swedish MEP Emma Wiesner, a member of the European parliament's committee on the environment, public health and food safety, said: "The behaviour found in this study is really unacceptable. More than a quarter of the studies [sent to US authorities] were not sent into the European agencies – that is outrageous." Martin H¤usling, a German MEP and member of the agriculture committee, said: "This is a right old scandal. These [are] clear breaches of existing law and previous law. And yet there are no consequences."

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corruption in the corporate world and in the food system from reliable major media sources.


The environmental impacts of war
2023-07-07, The Hill
Posted: 2023-07-23 15:18:19
https://thehill.com/opinion/energy-environment/4083962-the-environmental-impa...

Research by Brown University is shedding light on the impact of the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and other conflict zones, finding that the U.S. military, among others, contributes significantly to climate change, becoming one of the world's top greenhouse gas emitters through the fighting of battles. Air pollution from military vehicles and weaponry has adversely affected public health among civilians in the war zone and U.S. service members. The report examines everything from the destruction of military base garbage in burn pits to the deforestation in Afghanistan to cancer, birth defects and other conditions associated with war-related toxins. "The water supply in the war zones has been contaminated by oil from military vehicles and depleted uranium from ammunition. Along with the degradation of the natural resources in these countries ... the animal and bird populations have also been adversely affected." Now think about Russia and Ukraine. Russia's targeting of Ukraine's energy grid has been particularly damaging, as oil depots and gas power plants explode, releasing carbon and methane into the air. Reports suggest that ordinary Ukrainians are feeling the impact, forced to rely on dirtier fuels to keep warm. A recent report by GHG, a Dutch firm examining the war's greenhouse gas impact, found that each explosion of a missile or projectile causes pollution of air, water and land with toxic substances, and that Russian bombing of industrial infrastructure in Ukraine has led to uncontrolled chemical releases.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on war from reliable major media sources.


Veterans Push Back Against Military Recruitment in Schools
2023-04-03, Yes! Magazine
Posted: 2023-07-23 15:16:37
https://www.yesmagazine.org/democracy/2023/04/03/military-recruitment-veteran...

The U.S. military is facing its worst recruitment crisis since the end of the Vietnam War. We Are Not Your Soldiers is a project of New York City-based nonprofit World Can’t Wait. The organization sends military veterans into schools to share honest stories of the harm they have caused and suffered. In doing so, they hope to prevent young people from signing up.Susan Cushman is a professor at Nassau Community College ... where military recruiters have a heavy presence. She hosts veterans from We Are Not Your Soldiers to help her students “think about alternative ways to achieve an education and get a pension and get a job and travel, without feeling the only option is to join the military.” In order to counter both the narrative and incentives that military recruiters offer young people, veterans try to share the truth about traumatic personal experiences as well as practical information. In addition to the military’s preparedness for counter-recruitment, there’s also the issue of simple math. The Pentagon has a multibillion-dollar budget for recruiting alone. By contrast, We Are Not Your Soldiers has an annual budget of $25,000. With these challenges in mind, [the nonprofit] NNOMY produced a video called “Before You Enlist!” The 16-minute video seeks to lay out a case against military service that preempts the military’s psychological recruitment tactics. With veteran stories and statistics, the video debunks perks, such as “free education” and job training, that the military uses to appeal to potential recruits.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on military corruption from reliable major media sources.


The U.S. Banned Farmers From Using a Brain-Harming Pesticide on Food. Why Has It Slowed a Global Ban?
2023-07-06, ProPublica
Posted: 2023-07-23 15:15:13
https://www.propublica.org/article/chlorpyrifos-ban-epa-official-kovner-pesti...

President Joe Biden announced that his administration planned to scrutinize a Trump-era decision to allow the continued use of chlorpyrifos, a pesticide that can damage children's brains. The Environmental Protection Agency went on to ban the use of the chemical on food. Yet when officials from around the world gathered in Rome last fall to consider whether to move forward with a proposed global ban on the pesticide, chlorpyrifos had a surprising defender: a senior official from the EPA. Karissa Kovner, a senior EPA policy adviser, is a key leader of the U.S. delegation at a United Nations body known as the Stockholm Convention, which governs some of the worst chemicals on the planet. Kovner made it clear that the U.S. was not ready to support taking the next step through the convention to provide similar protections for the rest of the world. The U.S. is known for throwing a wrench into the international convention's efforts to restrict pollutants. "They're usually seen as a country that raises objections to the regulation of chemicals," said [attorney] David Azoulay. Chlorpyrifos is so harmful that the American government not only banned its use on food but also barred the import of fruits and vegetables grown with it. Persistent organic pollutants ... lodge in fat cells, allowing them to spread from contaminated animals to anything that eats them. Humans sit at the top of this polluted food pyramid, and we can pass the chemicals to our babies through the umbilical cord before birth and through breast milk afterward.

Note: Did you know that chlorpyrifos was originally developed by Nazis during World War II for use as a nerve gas? Read more about the history and politics of chlorpyrifos, and how U.S. regulators relied on falsified data to allow its use for years. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corruption in government and in the food system from reliable major media sources.


All aboard the gravy train: an independent audit of US funding for Ukraine
2023-06-27, The Grayzone
Posted: 2023-07-23 15:13:15
https://thegrayzone.com/2023/06/27/gravy-train-independent-audit-ukraine/

In the roughly 16 months since Russia's February 2022 escalation of the Ukraine conflict, the US government has approved several multi-billion dollar spending packages to sustain the Kiev military's fight against Moscow. Though many Americans likely believe that US dollars allocated for Ukraine are spent directly on supplies for the war effort, the lead author of this report, Heather Kaiser, conducted a thorough review of Washington's budget for the 2022 and 2023 fiscal year and discovered that is far from the case. US taxpayers may be shocked to learn that as their families grappled with fears of Social Security's looming insolvency, the Social Security Administration in Washington sent $4.48 million to the Kiev government in 2022 and 2023 alone. In another example of bizarre spending, USAID paid off $4.5 billion worth of Ukraine's sovereign debt through payments made to the World Bank – all while Congress went to loggerheads over America's ballooning national debt. (Western financial interests including BlackRock Inc. are among the largest holders of Ukrainian government bonds.) Calculating the total dollar amount that the US has given to Ukraine is incredibly challenging for multitude of reasons: there is a lag in reporting expenditures; covert money given by the CIA (Title 50 Covert Action) won't be publicly disclosed; and direct military assistance in the form of military equipment is not calculated in the same manner as raw cash.

Note: The above article doesn't provide a total figure. Congress approved $113 billion in aid to Ukraine in 2022. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption from reliable major media sources.


This Brazilian activist stared down mining giants to protect the rainforest she loves
2023-06-11, NPR
Posted: 2023-07-23 15:11:26
https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2023/06/11/1181172630/this-brazilia...

Destruction in the Amazon is, once again, approaching an all-time high. Some 335 square miles of rainforest were felled in the first three months of 2023 alone, the second worst quarter in the last 16 years. In 2015, the Munduruku [Indigenous people] had long been fighting the extractive industries encroaching on their land. But this was the first time Korap Munduruku, a 38-year-old teacher and mother of two whose face and body are often painted with traditional geometric designs of her people, decided to take a stand and join them. "So our rights are being violated. Everything going on here is wrong," she recalls saying at the meeting. "We need to do something about it. We can't just sit here and do nothing." The next meeting was with her chief and other leaders from the wider community – there are more than 13,000 Munduruku in Brazil. She eventually left the classroom to take up the fight for land rights full-time. Before long she learned that Anglo American, one of the world's largest mining companies, had applied to extract copper on Sawr© Muybu, a Munduruku territory next to her own. That information and the fight that she would lead against the developers led Korap Munduruku to become one of six recipients of the prestigious 2023 Goldman Environmental Prize, which honors grassroots environmental activists. She built a coalition of other Munduruku and, along with 45 chiefs and 200 other participants, published a declaration in December 2020 opposing mining and deforestation in the Amazon.

Note: Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.


Still nurturing love and vines: the centenarian who built Barcelona's first roof garden
2023-06-26, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2023-07-23 15:08:57
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jun/26/barcelona-centenarian-org...

When Joan Carulla Figueres turned the roof terrace of his Barcelona apartment into a garden, it was out of nostalgia for his rural origins. Sixty-five years later, the ecological concepts he has long followed have become commonplace, and he is acclaimed as a pioneer of organic farming. Carulla, who celebrated his 100th birthday this year, is credited with creating the city's first roof garden. However, his "allotment in the sky" boasts far more than the usual tomato plants and pots of geraniums. It is home to more than 40 fruit trees, vines that produce 100kg (220lbs) of grapes a year, olives, peaches, figs, garlic, aubergines and even potatoes. He is passionate about potatoes. His approach to agriculture is what today we call organic, but Carulla insists he is not doing anything new and that poor farmers have always practised organic farming out of necessity. "My grandparents had little land and no money for fertiliser," he says. "They used animal and vegetable waste and straw. We lived a frugal life. We didn't go hungry, we just lived." Like his forebears, Carulla makes compost from everything, including old magazines and thin wooden fruit boxes. "There's almost nothing we don't use, everything decomposes eventually." If the war made him a vegetarian, it also made him a pacifist. He was 15 when Juneda was bombed and strafed by fascist warplanes. Carulla speaks with sorrow of the 117 people killed in the village and how the reprisals carried out by both sides at the end of the war broke his father’s spirit and drove his mother to an early grave. “She was one of the war’s silent victims,” he says. “I think she died from pain and suffering.” He also talks about how at the age of 10 he had an epiphany when he vowed to become un generador de amor (someone who generates love). "I don't know where this phrase came from, but I decided that what I had to do was to create love in everyone, universal love."

Note: Don't miss a great video on Figueres and his garden. Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.


Walking and yoga 'can cut risk of cancer spreading or returning'
2023-06-06, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2023-07-23 15:07:02
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/jun/06/walking-and-yoga-can-cut-risk...

Walking for 30 minutes a day and practising yoga can help reduce fatigue in cancer patients and cut the risk of the disease spreading, coming back or resulting in death, research suggests. Globally, more than 18 million people develop cancer every year. It is well known that being inactive raises your risk of various forms of the disease. For decades, many oncologists and health professionals have remained reluctant to push patients to exercise in the wake of sometimes gruelling treatment regimes. But the tide appears to be turning. Three studies presented at the annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO), the world's largest cancer conference, add weight to growing evidence that physical activity can help, not hinder, patients. The first study [examined] the impact of yoga's effect on inflammation. The research ... found those who took up yoga had "significantly lower levels of pro-inflammatory markers" compared with patients in the other group. In the second study, [participants] attended 75-minute yoga or health education classes twice a week for four weeks. Yoga was found to be better at helping relieve fatigue and maintain quality of life, the research found. A third study found cancer patients who are active can reduce their risk of dying by almost a fifth. Patients were ranked by their activity levels, with "active" classed as going for at least one 30-minute walk five days a week. After 180 days, 90% of people in the active group were still alive, compared with 74% in the sedentary group.

Note: Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.


Covid Censorship Proved to Be Deadly
2023-07-07, Wall Street Journal
Posted: 2023-07-17 15:14:30
https://www.wsj.com/articles/covid-censorship-proved-to-be-deadly-social-medi...

On July 4, U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty temporarily blocked numerous federal agencies and the White House from collaborating with social-media companies and third-party groups to censor speech. Discovery in Missouri v. Biden exposed relationships among government agencies and social-media firms and revealed an additional layer of university centers and self-styled disinformation watchdogs and fact-checking outfits. Elon Musk's release of some of Twitter's internal files revealed that up to 80 Federal Bureau of Investigation agents were embedded with social-media companies. The agents mostly weren't fighting terrorism but flagging wrongthink by American citizens, including eminent scientists who suggested different paths on Covid policy. The U.S. government spent $6 trillion to buoy its shuttered economy, and most people got Covid anyway. Excess mortality in most high-income nations was worse in 2021 and 2022 than in 2020, the initial pandemic year. Sweden, which didn't have a lockdown, performed better than nearly every other advanced nation. Hiding these realities has become more difficult in the internet age. The information explosion has allowed more people to spot quickly the mistakes of officials. Those in charge feel threatened. Digital censorship is their response to this crisis of authority. True, misinformation is rampant online. But it was far worse before the internet, when myths could persist for centuries.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on the government corruption and media manipulation from reliable sources.


Fantasy fears about AI are obscuring how we already abuse machine intelligence
2023-06-11, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2023-07-17 15:11:40
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/jun/11/big-tech-warns-of-threa...

A young African American man, Randal Quran Reid, was pulled over by the state police in Georgia. He was arrested under warrants issued by Louisiana police for two cases of theft in New Orleans. The arrest warrants had been based solely on a facial recognition match, though that was never mentioned in any police document; the warrants claimed "a credible source" had identified Reid as the culprit. The facial recognition match was incorrect and Reid was released. Reid ... is not the only victim of a false facial recognition match. So far all those arrested in the US after a false match have been black. From surveillance to disinformation, we live in a world shaped by AI. The reason that Reid was wrongly incarcerated had less to do with artificial intelligence than with ... the humans that created the software and trained it. Too often when we talk of the "problem" of AI, we remove the human from the picture. We worry AI will "eliminate jobs" and make millions redundant, rather than recognise that the real decisions are made by governments and corporations and the humans that run them. We have come to view the machine as the agent and humans as victims of machine agency. Rather than seeing regulation as a means by which we can collectively shape our relationship to AI, it becomes something that is imposed from the top as a means of protecting humans from machines. It is not AI but our blindness to the way human societies are already deploying machine intelligence for political ends that should most worry us.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on police corruption and the disappearance of privacy from reliable major media sources.


World powers in rush to get killer robots on battlefield in AI arms race, as concerns grow they can turn on humans
2023-07-10, New York Post
Posted: 2023-07-17 15:09:22
https://nypost.com/2023/07/10/new-netflix-doc-unknown-killer-robots-warns-of-...

Weapons-grade robots and drones being utilized in combat isn't new. But AI software is, and it's enhancing – in some cases, to the extreme – the existing hardware, which has been modernizing warfare for the better part of a decade. Now, experts say, developments in AI have pushed us to a point where global forces now have no choice but to rethink military strategy – from the ground up. "It's realistic to expect that AI will be piloting an F-16 and will not be that far out," Nathan Michael, Chief Technology Officer of Shield AI, a company whose mission is "building the world's best AI pilot," says. We don't truly comprehend what we're creating. There are also fears that a comfortable reliance in the technology's precision and accuracy – referred to as automation bias – may come back to haunt, should the tech fail in a life or death situation. One major worry revolves around AI facial recognition software being used to enhance an autonomous robot or drone during a firefight. Right now, a human being behind the controls has to pull the proverbial trigger. Should that be taken away, militants could be misconstrued for civilians or allies at the hands of a machine. And remember when the fear of our most powerful weapons being turned against us was just something you saw in futuristic action movies? With AI, that's very possible. "There is a concern over cybersecurity in AI and the ability of either foreign governments or an independent actors to take over crucial elements of the military," [filmmaker Jesse Sweet] said.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on military corruption from reliable major media sources.


The Google employee who helped Edward Snowden in Hong Kong
2023-06-18, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2023-07-17 15:06:45
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jun/18/google-employee-edward-snowde...

On the morning of 10 June 2013 ... the journalist Glenn Greenwald and film-maker Laura Poitras published on the Guardian site a video revealing the identity of the NSA whistleblower behind one of the most damning leaks in modern history. It began: "My name is Ed Snowden." William Fitzgerald, then a 27-year-old policy employee at Google, knew he wanted to help. Fitzgerald found himself waiting in the lobby of the Hong Kong W Hotel to meet Greenwald and introduce him to Robert Tibbo and Jonathan Man – the men who became Snowden's legal representatives and hid him in the homes of Tibbo's refugee clients. The Snowden files told a ... sinister story, revealing mass surveillance by the US National Security Agency (NSA). The NSA files suggested that some tech firms, including Google, Facebook and Apple, were aware. Google and other tech firms worked to distance themselves from the NSA's efforts. But over time [Google's] culture appeared to shift, reflecting the changing needs of various governments. Google stopped promoting its transparency report to the media, free expression advocates were replaced by more traditional business-focused executives, and then there was Project Maven – the controversial Department of Defense drone project that Google signed on to build artificial intelligence for. Google isn't alone in vying for government contracts – Microsoft, Amazon, IBM have all since made a play for or struck multimillion-dollar deals to build tools of surveillance for various entities including the Pentagon.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on intelligence agency corruption and the disappearance of privacy from reliable major media sources.


Meltdowns Have Brought Progressive Advocacy Groups to a Standstill at a Critical Moment in World History
2022-06-13, The Intercept
Posted: 2023-07-17 15:03:31
https://theintercept.com/2022/06/13/progressive-organizing-infighting-callout...

Planned Parenthood, NARAL Pro-Choice America, and other reproductive health organizations [have] been locked in knock-down, drag-out fights between competing factions of their organizations ... which has, more or less, effectively ceased to function. The Sierra Club, Demos, the American Civil Liberties Union, Color of Change, the Movement for Black Lives, Human Rights Campaign, Time's Up, the Sunrise Movement, and many other organizations have seen wrenching and debilitating turmoil in the past couple years. In fact, it's hard to find a Washington-based progressive organization that hasn't been in tumult, or isn't currently in tumult. This is a caricature of the left: spend more time in meetings ... fighting with each other than changing the world. It has become nearly all-consuming for some organizations, spreading beyond subcultures of the left and into major liberal institutions. "My last nine months, I was spending 90 to 95 percent of my time on internal strife," [a] former executive director said. [Activist Loretta] Ross, in an essay for the New York Times, ends with a call for grace. "I say to people today, as a survivor of COINTELPRO," she told me, referring to the FBI scheme to infiltrate and disrupt leftist movements by sowing internal dissension, "if you're more wedded to destabilizing an organization than unifying it, part of me is gonna think you're nave, and the other part of me is gonna think you're a plant. And neither one of those is going to look good on you."

Note: Watch Loretta Ross's powerful Ted Talk on simple tools to help shift our culture from fighting each other to working together in the face of polarizing social issues. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corporate corruption from reliable major media sources.


How a group of Ohio voters are working to bridge the widening partisan divide
2023-07-05, PBS News
Posted: 2023-07-17 15:01:32
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/how-a-group-of-ohio-voters-are-working-to-b...

The group was brought together with the help of Braver Angels, one of hundreds of grassroots organizations that have sprung up in recent years to try to bridge the partisan divide. "I think the media has such a big part in dividing us, whether it is racially or politically or gender or sex," [said Nancy Miranda]. "The media tends to foster the extremes by fueling a lot of the rhetoric that is at the extremes of both red and blue," [said Dr. Bill Shaul]. "And the rhetoric and the disrespect and the lack of civility that we sometimes see portrayed in the media, I think, has made this a lot worse." "Now we have a 24-hour news cycle," [said Leah Nichols]. "And the news I see is probably different than the news Nancy sees, which is probably different than the news that you see, because we're all – have our own tailored algorithms when it comes down to social media. I think that the news is just so different than it used to be. It is hard for us to even be on the same page sometimes. I think it's really easy to look at the other side and be able to say, oh, maybe they just don't have the knowledge that I have or they don't know the things that I know. But, in reality, we all have our own lived experiences that have brought us to where we are. And if we could listen to each other, maybe we'd actually be able to understand a little better." "I really think the answer to our polarization politically in this country is in our communities, and it is in the relationships that we have with one another, especially across lines of difference," [said John Shi].

Note: Read more about the inspiring mission of Braver Angels. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on media manipulation from reliable sources.


'Ways of Being' Review: Whole Earth Network
2022-06-17, Wall Street Journal
Posted: 2023-07-17 14:59:13
https://www.wsj.com/articles/ways-of-being-book-review-whole-earth-network-11...

The artist, writer and technologist James Bridle begins "Ways of Being" with an uncanny discovery: a line of stakes tagged with unfathomable letters and numbers in thick marker pen. The region of [Greece] is rich in oil, we learn, and the company that won the contract to extract it from the foothills of the Pindus mountains is using "cognitive technologies" to "augment ... strategic decision making." The grid of wooden stakes left by "unmarked vans, helicopters and work crews in hi-vis jackets" are the "tooth- and claw-marks of Artificial Intelligence, at the exact point where it meets the earth." "Ways of Being" sets off on a tour of the natural world, arguing that intelligence is something that "arises ... from thinking and working together," and that "everything is intelligent." We hear of elephants, chimpanzees and dolphins who resist and subvert experiments testing their sense of self. We find redwoods communicating through underground networks. In the most extraordinary result of all, in 2014 the Australian biologist Monica Gagliano showed that mimosa plants can remember a sudden fall for a month. Ever since the Industrial Revolution, science and technology have been used to analyze, conquer and control. But "Ways of Being" argues that they can equally be used to explore and augment connection and empathy. The author cites researchers studying migration patterns with military radar and astronomers turning telescopes designed for surveillance on Earth into instruments for investigating the dark energy of the cosmos.

Note: Read a thought-provoking article featuring a video interview with artist and technologist James Bridle as he explores how technology can be used to reflect the innovative and life-enhancing capacities of non-human natural systems. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on mysterious nature of reality from reliable major media sources.


Ten Years Later, Snowden's Heroism Shines Ever Brighter
2023-06-08, CounterPunch
Posted: 2023-07-17 14:54:40
https://www.counterpunch.org/2023/06/08/ten-years-later-snowdens-heroism-shin...

In 2010, the Washington Post reported that "every day, collection systems at the [NSA] intercept and store 1.7 billion emails, phone calls and other type of communications." In 2011, NSA expanded a program to provide real-time location information of every American with a cell phone, acquiring more than a billion cell phone records each day from AT&T. Later, newspapers around the world began publishing confidential documents leaked by [Edward] Snowden. Americans learned that the NSA can tap almost any cell phone in the world, exploit computer games like Angry Birds to poach personal data, access anyone's email and web browsing history [and] remotely penetrate almost all computers. The NSA used Facebook and Google apps to send malware to targeted individuals. NSA filched almost 200,000,000 records a month from private computer cloud accounts. Obama perpetuated perverse Bush-era legal doctrines to totally shield federal surveillance from judicial scrutiny. Obama's Justice Department secretly decreed that all phone records of all Americans were "relevant" to terrorism investigations and that the NSA could therefore justifiably seize everyone's personal data. Snowden revealed how the NSA had covertly carried out "the most significant change in the history of American espionage from the targeted surveillance of individuals to the mass surveillance of entire populations."

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on intelligence agency corruption and the disappearance of privacy from reliable major media sources.


Digital Privacy Legislation is Civil Rights Legislation
2023-05-18, ScheerPost
Posted: 2023-07-17 14:52:17
https://scheerpost.com/2023/05/18/digital-privacy-legislation-is-civil-rights...

Our personal data and the ways private companies harvest and monetize it plays an increasingly powerful role in modern life. One unifying thread to this pervasive system is the collection of personal information from marginalized communities, and the subsequent discriminatory use by corporations and government agencies–exacerbating existing structural inequalities across society. Data surveillance is a civil rights problem, and legislation to protect data privacy can help protect civil rights. Where mobile apps are used disparately by specific groups, the collection and sharing of personal data can aggravate civil rights problems. For example, a Muslim prayer app (Muslim Pro) sold geolocation data about its users to a company called X-Mode, which in turn provided access to this data to the U.S. military through defense contractors. In 2016, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and nine other social media platforms were found to have provided software company Geofeedia with social media information and location data from their users. This data was subsequently used by police departments across the U.S. to track down and identify individuals attending Black Lives Matter protests. Moreover, lower-income people are often less able to avoid corporate harvesting of their data. For example, some lower-priced technologies collect more data than other technologies, such as inexpensive smartphones that come with preinstalled apps that leak data and can't be deleted.

Note: Read how Clearview AI gave law enforcement access to 30 billion images from social media sites. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and the erosion of civil liberties from reliable major media sources.


How social media platforms can reduce polarization
2022-12-21, Brookings Institute
Posted: 2023-07-17 14:49:30
https://www.brookings.edu/articles/how-social-media-platforms-can-reduce-pola...

Polarization is widely recognized as one of the most pressing issues now facing the United States. Even as polarization has increased in recent years, survey research has consistently shown that many Americans think the nation is more divided than it truly is. Meanwhile, Democrats and Republicans think they dislike each other more than they actually do. Social media companies are often blamed for driving greater polarization by virtue of the way they segment political audiences and personalize recommendations in line with their users' existing beliefs and preferences. Given their scale and reach, however, they are also uniquely positioned to help reduce polarization. Jamie Settle's work demonstrates, through a combination of surveys and experiments, that affective polarization is likely to rise when social media users encounter content with partisan cues, even if the content is not explicitly political. A 2020 study by Hunt Allcott and colleagues echoes these concerns. The authors asked some participants to refrain from using Facebook for four weeks. Afterward, these participants reported holding less polarized political views than those who had not been asked to refrain from using Facebook. Deactivating Facebook also made people less hostile toward "the other party." When people interact with someone from their social "outgroup," they often come to view that outgroup in a more favorable light. Spreading more examples of positive intergroup contact ... could go a long way.

Note: Read the full article to explore what social media platforms can do to reduce polarization. For more, read how the people of Taiwan created an online space for debate where politicians can interact with citizens in ways that foreground consensus, and not division.


Calling In: Loretta J. Ross's Antidote to Cancel Culture
2022-10-24, Atmos
Posted: 2023-07-17 14:44:02
https://atmos.earth/calling-in-macarthur-fellow-loretta-j-ross-cancel-culture/

What does it take to have a challenging conversation in the era of cancel culture? For MacArthur Fellow Loretta J. Ross, the answer lies in calling in: a communicative strategy rooted in compassion, accountability, and restorative justice. Cancel culture [is] a phenomenon whereby people deemed to be moral transgressors are publicly discredited on social media platforms, and in some instances, punished through cultural, social, and professional ostracism. Professor Ross thinks this readiness to cancel a person on the basis of their beliefs is toxic. Instead, she espouses empathy and stresses the importance of context in challenging conversations. Calling in is not what you do for other people–it's what you do for yourself. It gives you a chance to offer love, grace, and respect, and to showcase one's own integrity and one's own ability to hold nuance and depth. People mistakenly think that you're doing it because you're trying to change somebody else. That's not possible. And since we don't have the power to control and change others, the only power we're left with is self-empowerment. In this sense, calling in is a conscious decision to not make the world crueler than it needs to be. We're all capable of using a technique I call "the mental parking lot" where you temporarily put aside any visceral reactions you have to what others are saying. It's a technique that requires you not to pay attention to your reaction but rather to devote your focus and respect to the person you're talking to.

Note: Smith College Professor and civil rights activist Loretta Ross worked with Ku Klux Klan members and practiced restorative justice with incarcerated men convicted or raping and murdering women. Watch Loretta Ross's powerful Ted Talk on simple tools to help shift our culture from fighting each other to working together in the face of polarizing social issues.


Brain Waves Synchronize when People Interact
2023-07-01, Scientific American
Posted: 2023-07-17 14:41:45
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/brain-waves-synchronize-when-peopl...

Collective neuroscience, as some practitioners call it, is a rapidly growing field of research. An early, consistent finding is that when people converse or share an experience, their brain waves synchronize. Neurons in corresponding locations of the different brains fire at the same time, creating matching patterns, like dancers moving together. Auditory and visual areas respond to shape, sound and movement in similar ways, whereas higher-order brain areas seem to behave similarly during more challenging tasks such as making meaning out of something seen or heard. The experience of "being on the same wavelength" as another person is real, and it is visible in the activity of the brain. Interbrain synchrony prepares people for interaction and beginning to understand it as a marker of relationships. Given that synchronized experiences are often enjoyable, researchers suspect this phenomenon is beneficial: it helps us interact and may have facilitated the evolution of sociality. This new kind of brain research might also illuminate why we don't always "click" with someone or why social isolation is so harmful to physical and mental health. Preliminary evidence ... shows synchrony between interacting brains and, more intriguingly, that correlations in some brain regions are greater between people while they are telling a joint story than during the independent stories, particularly in the parietal cortex. "That area is active for memory and narrative construction," [neuroscientist Thalia] Wheatley says. "It seems to fit."

Note: Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.


The Biden-Big Tech Collusion Case
2023-07-05, Wall Street Journal
Posted: 2023-07-10 16:52:13
https://www.wsj.com/articles/missouri-v-biden-judge-terry-doughty-rob-flahert...

Missouri and Louisiana, joined by scientists and conservatives whose posts were censored, sued to protect their First Amendment rights. The issue in Missouri v. Biden [is] whether government officials can be held responsible for their censorship. Judge Terry Doughty ruled they can and his 155-page opinion describes disturbing coordination between the government and tech firms to suppress unpopular views, especially on Covid-19. White House officials and public-health agency leaders held biweekly meetings with tech companies over how to curb the spread of misinformation. Former White House director of digital strategy Rob Flaherty and Covid-19 adviser Andy Slavitt were in constant contact with social-media executives. Officials weren't merely flagging false statements. They were bullying companies to censor anything contradicting government guidance. On July 16, 2021, the President accused social-media companies of "killing people." Judge Doughty concludes from all this that "the public and private pressure from the White House apparently had its intended effect." All 12 people dubbed the "Disinformation Dozen" by the Center for Countering Digital Hate were censored, and pages, groups and accounts linked to them were removed. Some Covid claims flagged by the White House were ... scientifically debatable–for instance, that vaccines can cause Bell's palsy and multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children, and that Covid had a 99.96% survival rate.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and media manipulation from reliable sources.


Judge blocks U.S. officials from contacting social media companies
2023-07-04, Washington Post
Posted: 2023-07-10 16:49:33
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/07/04/biden-social-lawsuit-mis...

A federal judge on Tuesday blocked key Biden administration agencies and officials from meeting and communicating with social media companies about "protected speech," in an extraordinary preliminary injunction in an ongoing case. The injunction came in response to a lawsuit brought by Republican attorneys general in Louisiana and Missouri, who allege that government officials went too far in their efforts to encourage social media companies to address posts that they worried could contribute to vaccine hesitancy during the pandemic. Over the last five years, coordination and communication between government officials and [social media] companies increased. Public health officials also frequently communicated with the companies during the coronavirus pandemic. The injunction was a victory for the state attorneys general, who have accused the Biden administration of enabling a "sprawling federal 'Censorship Enterprise'" to encourage tech giants to remove politically unfavorable viewpoints and speakers. The judge, Terry A. Doughty, has yet to make a final ruling in the case, but in issuing the injunction, he signaled he is likely to ... find that the Biden administration ran afoul of the First Amendment. The state attorneys general have argued that starting in 2017 ... officials within the government began laying the groundwork for a "systemic and systematic campaign" to control speech on social media. These efforts accelerated in 2020 ... amid the response to the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and media manipulation from reliable sources.


An Area 51 blogger was raided at gunpoint by federal agents. He says the US Government is trying to silence him
2023-06-30, The Independent (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2023-07-10 16:47:23
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/area-51-fbi-raid-joerg-arnu...

Joerg Arnu has been obsessed with Area 51 ever since his first visit to the perimeter of the secretive military base in 1998. The rumours of alien life forms, CIA spy plane testing programmes, and sense of forbidden mystery surrounding the massive military base in the southern Nevada desert instantly intrigued the 61-year-old retired software developer. In 1999, he launched the DreamlandResort blog as a comprehensive one-stop-shop for photos, videos and discussion about the base and the top secret military aircraft that are built and tested there. He eventually bought a second home near the gates of the military base. Last year, he was in bed when around 20 armed counter-terrorism agents in tactical gear raided his Rachel home, handcuffed him and led him out of his home in the freezing cold for questioning. The agents seized four of Mr Arnu's computers, containing his life's work on Area 51, along with treasured photos of his deceased parents, and medical and tax records. The agents handed Mr Arnu a search warrant signed by a federal magistrate judge. The first 39 pages were missing, and it only provided vague hints of what the agents had been looking for. A joint team from the FBI and the Air Force Office of Special Investigations (USAF OSI) had conducted the raids. Eight months on, he still has no idea whether he will face charges, or if he'll ever get back the more than $30,000 he says he's out of pocket for as a result of seized equipment, property damage and legal fees.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and UFOs from reliable major media sources.


'I'm not a doctor just FYI': the influencers paid to hawk drugs on TikTok
2023-03-17, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2023-07-10 16:44:46
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/mar/17/patient-influencers-tiktok-in...

A young TikTok user has long, wavy hair. She's slim and wants you to know exactly why: she's using Wegovy, a prescription drug originally developed to treat diabetes that's become a popular drug for weight loss. In one clip, she picks up the medication from a pharmacy ... then demonstrates in a following clip how she injects it into her leg. She's what's called a patient influencer. They have no medical training and claim that they're simply sharing their personal experiences with their TikTok and Instagram followers. But in this ... unregulated arena, it's gotten harder to tell when influencing crosses legal and ethical lines. Many patient influencers offer prescription drug advice to their followers without always revealing their relationships with drug companies, according to Erin Willis ... who authored a study about patient influencers. A patient influencer can expect to earn anywhere from "the low hundreds to a few thousand dollars" per social media post. Part of what makes patient influencers effective is that they often push messaging further than what would be allowed on media like TV, where ads are far more closely scrutinized by regulators like the FDA and Federal Trade Commission. Willis calls patient influencing "an interactive form of advertising" that's "difficult to regulate, if it's been regulated at all". Studies find [direct-to-consumer] ads lead to doctors prescribing them more – driving the market for these ads to nearly $7bn last year, industry statistics show.

Note: This controversial marketing tactic is only legal in the United States and New Zealand. Read more about how these tactics are quickly becoming the "wild west of pharma advertising," especially when the FDA’s social media guidance hasn’t been updated since 2014. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on Big Pharma corruption from reliable major media sources.


Top NIH Official Advised Covid Scientists That He Uses Personal Email To Evade FOIA
2023-06-29, The Intercept
Posted: 2023-07-10 16:42:49
https://theintercept.com/2023/06/29/covid-nih-personal-email-foia/?emci=f6e59...

A top adviser to Anthony Fauci at the National Institutes of Health admitted that he used a personal email account in an apparent effort to evade the strictures of the Freedom of Information Act. "As you know, I try to always communicate on gmail because my NIH email is FOIA'd constantly," wrote David M. Morens, a high-ranking NIH official. The email that contains Morens's statements was part of a broader exchange in which Morens and his scientist correspondents denounced media coverage by The Intercept and other publications concerning the origins of Covid and harshly criticized those who take seriously the possibility that the virus emerged from a research accident in Wuhan, China. "I have not been approved to talk about 'origins' on the record. But today, to my total surprise, my boss [Anthony Fauci] actually ASKED me to speak to the National Geographic on the record about origins," Morens wrote at the time. "I interpret this to mean that our government is lightening up but that Tony doesn't want his fingerprints on origin stories." On Thursday, Rep. Brad Wenstrup, R-Ohio, the chair of the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, sent a letter to Morens. Documents ... "suggest that you may have used your personal e-mail to avoid transparency and the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), potentially intentionally deleted federal records, and acted in your official capacity to disparage your fellow scientists, including by encouraging litigation against them."

Note: Originally deemed a conspiracy theory, there is now significant evidence revealing how COVID-19 was engineered in the context of bioweapons research with US funding and Chinese military involvement at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and the coronavirus from reliable major media sources.


With Ukraine's Cluster Bombs Killing Its Own Citizens, Biden Readies Order To Send More
2023-07-05, The Intercept
Posted: 2023-07-10 16:40:32
https://theintercept.com/2023/07/05/ukraine-cluster-bombs-biden/

As the Ukraine war drags on, the Biden administration is now reportedly in the final stages of deciding whether to send more [cluster munitions] to the Ukrainian military. The decision to supply cluster munitions to Ukraine would likely be seen as a setback to nonproliferation efforts aimed at stopping use of the weapon. The report by Human Rights Watch analyzing the impact of previous cluster munition attacks carried out last summer by the Ukrainian military found numerous dead and wounded civilians in Izium who were hit by exploding cluster bomblets. Cluster munitions are controversial due to the manner in which "bomblets" are scattered around a targeted area, creating secondary explosions that can cause death and injury even long after a conflict has ceased. The bombs are currently at the center of an international campaign to ban their use in armed conflict. More than 100 states have signed an international convention on cluster munitions vowing not to employ them in war, produce them domestically, or encourage their use in foreign conflicts. Despite public pressure to join, the U.S. has not become a signatory to the convention. The Ukrainian military was reported to have requested significant transfers of the munitions late last year. "Cluster munitions used by Russia and Ukraine are killing civilians now and will continue to do so for many years," said Mary Wareham, advocacy director of the Arms Division at Human Rights Watch, in the report.

Note: The global cluster bombs trade is funded by the world's biggest banks. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and war from reliable major media sources.


Weapons contractors hitting Department of Defense with inflated prices for planes, submarines, missiles
2023-05-21, CBS News
Posted: 2023-07-10 16:36:38
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/weapons-contractors-price-gouging-pentagon-60-mi...

With the U.S. supplying billions-of-dollars of munitions to Ukraine and growing tensions in the Taiwan Strait, some Pentagon generals are sounding alarms about the dwindling supply of U.S. weapons ... at a time when the cost of replacing them is skyrocketing. A six-month investigation by 60 Minutes found it has less to do with foreign entanglements than domestic ones - what can only be described as price gouging by U.S. defense contractors. It wasn't always like this. The roots of the problem can be traced to 1993, when the Pentagon, looking to cut costs, urged defense companies to merge. Fifty one major contractors consolidated to five giants. The landscape has totally changed. In the '80s, there was intense competition amongst a number of companies. And so the government had choices. They had leverage. We have limited leverage now. The problem was compounded when the Pentagon, in another cost saving move, cut 130,000 employees whose jobs were to negotiate and oversee defense contracts. The Pentagon granted companies unprecedented leeway to monitor themselves. Instead of saving money ... the price of almost everything began to rise. In the competitive environment before the companies consolidated, a shoulder fired stinger missile cost $25,000 in 1991. With Raytheon now the sole supplier, it costs more than $400,000 to replace each missile sent to Ukraine ... even accounting for inflation and some improvements that's a seven-fold increase

Note: Leading military contractors are hiking up prices of everyday products as well, costing US taxpayers more than $1.3 million in unnecessary markups. Explore how the Pentagon paid arms manufacturer Boeing over $200,000 for four trash cans used in surveillance planes (roughly $51,606 per unit).  War profiteering happens on many levels, as articulated in a summary of War is a Racket by General Smedley D. Butler.


The AI firm that conducted ‘state surveillance’ of your social media posts
2023-06-03, The Telegraph (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2023-07-10 16:34:03
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/06/03/logically-ai-firm-social-media-po...

These blank-looking warehouses are home to an artificial intelligence (AI) company used by the Government to monitor people’s posts on social media. Logically has been paid more than £1.2 million of taxpayers’ money to analyse what the Government terms “disinformation” – false information deliberately seeded online – and “misinformation”, which is false information that has been spread inadvertently. It does this by “ingesting” material from more than hundreds of thousands of media sources and “all public posts on major social media platforms”, using AI to identify those that are potentially problematic. It has a £1.2 million deal with the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS), as well as another worth up to £1.4 million with the Department of Health and Social Care to monitor threats to high-profile individuals within the vaccine service. Other blue-chip clients include US federal agencies, the Indian electoral commission, and TikTok. It also has a “partnership” with Facebook, which appears to grant Logically’s fact-checkers huge influence over the content other people see. A joint press release issued in July 2021 suggests that Facebook will limit the reach of certain posts if Logically says they are untrue. “When Logically rates a piece of content as false, Facebook will significantly reduce its distribution so that fewer people see it, apply a warning label to let people know that the content has been rated false, and notify people who try to share it,” states the press release.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and the disappearance of privacy from reliable major media sources.


Agency Under Homeland Security Masterminded the Attempt to Control Public's Thought and Speech During Pandemic
2023-06-30, The Defender
Posted: 2023-07-10 16:31:18
https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/cisa-homeland-security-control-th...

On Monday, the House Judiciary Committee released a report on how the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) "colluded with Big Tech and 'disinformation' partners to censor Americans." The 36-page report raises three familiar issues: first, government actors worked with third parties to overturn the First Amendment; second, censors prioritized political narratives over truthfulness; and third, an unaccountable bureaucracy hijacked American society. The House Report reveals that CISA, a branch of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, worked with social media platforms to censor posts it considered dis-, mis- or malinformation. Brian Scully, the head of CISA's censorship team, conceded that this process, known as "switchboarding," would "trigger content moderation." Additionally, CISA funded the nonprofit EI-ISAC in 2020 to bolster its censorship operations. In launching the nonprofit, the government boasted that it "leverage[d] DHS CISA's relationship with social media organizations to ensure priority treatment of misinformation reports." The switchboard programs directly contradict sworn testimony from CISA Director Jen Easterly. The report outlines how CISA censored "malinformation – truthful information that, according to the government, may carry the potential to mislead." Dr. Kate Starbird, a member of CISA's "Misinformation & Disinformation" subcommittee, lamented that many Americans seem to "accept malinformation as 'speech' and within democratic norms."

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on intelligence agency corruption and media manipulation from reliable sources.


Government Contracts With COVID Vaccine Makers Let Federal Agencies Bypass Normal Regulatory Process, FOIA Documents Show
2023-06-30, The Defender
Posted: 2023-07-10 16:28:49
https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/hhs-barda-covid-vaccine-makers-by...

A little-known federal agency called BARDA dedicated to countering "health security threats" was responsible for conducting the quality review of every COVID-19 vaccine dose administered in the U.S., Sasha Latypova reported on her Substack. But BARDA, the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, which has a "militarized" purpose according to Latypova, is not subject to the same regulations as typical pharmaceutical manufacturers, distributors or regulatory agencies. "The public was told these vaccines are made by Pfizer and Moderna and rigorously approved by the FDA," [said Latypova]. That ... would mean that the "consumer protections we expect from pharmaceutical products, medical devices and even food ... we expect them to be in place." But in fact, countermeasures contracts made available through Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests ... and U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission disclosures show the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) and BARDA contracts with the pharmaceutical companies were structured such that these protections weren't required. The contracts also specified that manufacturers and federal agencies were protected by the Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness (PREP) Act, which shields "covered persons" – such as pharmaceutical companies, or the DOD/BARDA – from liability for injuries sustained from "countermeasures," such as vaccines ... administered during a public health emergency.

Note: Sasha Latypova is a former pharmaceutical industry executive who now specializes in uncovering fraud in pharmaceutical research, development, and manufacturing. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and coronavirus vaccines from reliable major media sources.


Faced with a violent killing, a family chooses forgiveness over prison
2023-06-26, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2023-07-10 16:26:47
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jun/26/restorative-justice-murder-ch...

Alex Fields had not spoken to his nephew in four years. Not since the killing. But when his nephew Donald Fields Jr finally appeared over Zoom from the county jail, Alex Fields was consumed by the moment. Don Jr was charged with the murder of his father, Donald Fields Sr, in 2016. Today was the first step in a long journey that would see a tragedy transformed into a pioneering case of compassion in America's punitive criminal justice system. It marked the first time that restorative justice – the act of resolving crimes through community reconciliation and accountability over traditional punishment – had been used in a homicide case in the state of North Carolina. And probably the first case of its kind in the US. The DA's office forged a new plea deal, which offered Don Jr the opportunity to plead guilty to voluntary manslaughter, which could see him sentenced to "time served". The family worked on a new repair agreement, which was 13 points long and had conditions facilitating Don Jr's release. There is increasing evidence that use of restorative justice lowers rates of recidivism. Those who are victims of violence are far more likely to become perpetrators of violent acts later on. "Just as we cannot incarcerate our way out of violence, we cannot reform our way out of mass incarceration without taking on the question of violence," [Danielle Sered] writes. "The context in which violence happens matters, as do the identities and experiences of those involved.”

Note: Danielle Sered is the founder of a Brooklyn-based restorative justice organization Common Justice, which is the first alternative-to-incarceration and victim-service program in the United States that focuses on violent felonies in the adult courts. For further reading, explore her book, Until We Reckon: Violence, Mass Incarceration, and a Road to Repair.


Strangers became roommates through a program that connects formerly incarcerated with safe places to live:
2023-02-03, CBS News
Posted: 2023-07-10 16:24:24
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/homecoming-project-formerly-incarcerated-matched...

Last year, when Tyler Jenk was looking for a roommate to share his house in Oakland, California, he met man named Askari Johnson who was looking for a fresh start. Johnson had recently been released from San Quentin State Prison after more than 20 years. The pair ended up forming a symbiotic relationship as roommates, despite coming from different walks of life. While in prison, Johnson had several goals for his new life. One of them was to live independently. His lawyer told him about The Homecoming Project. "The Homecoming Project is a program to place formerly incarcerated people into homes that are potentially a better situation than halfway houses," Jenk explained. "The program pays their rent and gives them a laptop and a cellphone and guidance to help get started back in society." The program is run by Impact Justice and funded by Wells Fargo. Impact Justice says formerly incarcerated people are almost 10 times more likely to become homeless than the general population. And without the right support and resources, more than two-thirds of prisoners are rearrested within three years of their release. Johnson landed a job as a contractor within two months of joining the homecoming project. After six months, he moved out of Jenk's place and was looking for a home of his own. Since it started in August 2022, 100% of The Homecoming Project's more than 80 participants have successfully returned to their community and began rebuilding their lives, the organization said.

Note: Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.


'Impactful and beautiful': how US homeless shelters are getting a radical redesign
2023-06-26, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2023-07-10 16:22:24
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jun/26/us-homeless-shelters-redesign

Family Village is not what many people may think of when they envision a homeless shelter: crowded, dingy, maybe dangerous. There are natural bamboo wood floors and walls painted in hues inspired by the ocean – seafoam green, gray and turquoise. Clients can use spacious, multipurpose rooms as they wish, and glass doors allow people to make an informed choice about whether they want to enter that space. The walls are curved, and there's a garden with vegetables and flowers. Severe stress can literally change the brain, affecting memory, coping skills and abilities to regulate emotions. Aware of just how much the physical environment can shape people's lives, more architects are starting to rethink how they design homeless shelters. The goal of trauma-informed design is to help people quiet the part of the brain that stays in survival mode when in a traditional shelter setting. Instead of feeling fearful and on high alert, they can focus on actions like applying for jobs and getting their children to school. The shelter can be what it's suited for: a short-term stopover where people can get back on their feet. A room constructed for family visits can reinforce a sense of community; a personal reading light can promote a sense of autonomy. Some of these discoveries come from ... people who have been residents of shelters. Facilitating effective design requires bringing people who have experienced homelessness and housing instability into the design conversation.

Note: Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.


UFO Crash '100 Percent' Covered-Up by U.S. Government, Congressman Says
2023-06-18, Newsweek
Posted: 2023-07-03 15:56:37
https://www.newsweek.com/ufo-crash-100-percent-covered-us-government-congress...

Representative Tim Burchett, a Tennessee Republican, is convinced that the United States government covered up an alleged UFO crash in Roswell, New Mexico, in 1947. Burchett has ... accused the U.S. government of covering-up incidents related to UFOs, also known as Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP). The congressman commented on the way the military handled the alleged UFO crash in Roswell. An inquiry by a General Accounting Office (GAO) ... looked into whether or not the U.S. Air Force or any federal agency kept information on the alleged crash and the recovery of the extraterrestrial vehicle and its alien occupants in July 1947. The 1994 report concluded that the debris recovered was from an U.S. Army Air Force balloon-bore research project called MOGUL. "The military said we've recovered a saucer and then the next day they dropped this poor officer out and claim he holds up a piece of a hot air balloon and says, 'No in fact it was a hot air balloon,' which apparently was a top secret program at the time and they've never would have disclosed it," he said. Burchett made similar remarks earlier this week in reference to a January unclassified report published by the Office for the Director of National Intelligence (DNI). The term UFO was mentioned in the government report in favor of the label "unidentified aerial phenomena." There were a total of 510 UAP sightings, according to the 2022 report, with the overall reported sightings increasing by 366 compared to the year prior.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of revealing news articles on UFOs from reliable major media sources. Then explore the excellent, reliable resources provided in our UFO Information Center.


Top US officials have 'first-hand knowledge' of UFOs: Sen. Marco Rubio
2023-06-27, New York Post
Posted: 2023-07-03 15:54:47
https://nypost.com/2023/06/27/rubio-confirms-officials-have-first-hand-knowle...

High-ranking US government officials have "first-hand knowledge" of a secret Pentagon crash retrieval program for UFOs, Sen. Marco Rubio has claimed. Rubio (R-Fla.), who serves as vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, told NewsNation Monday that "serious" whistleblowers – who "have held very high clearances and high positions within our government" – have come forward to the panel about several incidents in recent years. "Some of these people still work in the government," the 52-year-old Rubio told the outlet. "And frankly, a lot of them are very fearful, fearful of their jobs, fearful [of] their clearances, fearful of their career, and some, frankly, are fearful of harm coming to them." Rubio's comments bolster the testimony of an Air Force veteran and former intelligence official who recently told Congress he had "proof" that the US government had been covertly storing extraterrestrial aircraft for decades. "These are retrieving non-human origin technical vehicles, call it spacecraft if you will, non-human exotic origin vehicles that have either landed or crashed," 36-year-old David Grusch [said]. "Well, naturally, when you recover something that's either landed or crashed, sometimes you encounter dead pilots and, believe it or not, as fantastical as that sounds, it's true." Grusch said the US government even received a tip from the Vatican about a UFO – and later recovered the alien craft from Italian Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini.

Note: Watch the revealing interview of Grusch concisely alleging what was once deemed as a speculative theory: the U.S. government has recovered non-human craft for decades and kept this secret to the public.  For more along these lines, see concise summaries of revealing news articles on UFOs from reliable major media sources. Then explore the excellent, reliable resources provided in our UFO Information Center.


Merck accused of downplaying early evidence of drug's brain impact
2023-06-26, Reuters
Posted: 2023-07-03 15:52:52
https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/merck-accused-dow...

An early magazine advertisement for Merck's breakthrough asthma and allergy medicine, Singulair, featured a happy child, hanging upside-down from a tree. Asthmatic kids could now breathe easier, the text assured, and side effects were "usually mild" and "similar to a sugar pill." When the drug launched in 1998, its label said the drug's distribution in the brain was "minimal," with no mention of psychiatric side effects. Merck's early safety claims later faced intense scrutiny amid reports over two decades that patients, including many children, had died by suicide or experienced neuropsychiatric problems after taking the drug. The FDA in 2020 ordered its most serious warning, known as a "black box," on Singulair's label. And Merck now faces a raft of lawsuits alleging it knew from its early research that the drug could impact the brain and that it minimized the potential for psychiatric problems in statements to regulators. The lawsuits cite the research of Julia Marschallinger, a cell biologist who has studied the drug along with colleagues at the Institute of Molecular Regenerative Medicine in Austria. That team found in 2015 that the drug's distribution into the brain was more significant than its label described. In its original patent for Singulair, Merck cited other applications for the drug, beyond asthma and allergies, including as a treatment for "cerebral spasm," a neurological condition. Lawsuits filed against Merck cite this 1996 patent as evidence of Merck's knowledge of the drug's potential brain impacts.

Note: Read more about Singulair and its dangers to human health, along with the tremendous financial conflicts of interests resulting in the FDA protecting the pharmaceutical industry first, and the health of the people second. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on pharmaceutical industry corruption from reliable major media sources.


A son died, his parents tried to sue. How U.S. courts protect Big Pharma
2023-06-26, Reuters
Posted: 2023-07-03 15:50:33
https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-lawsuits-merck-singul...

Nicholas England, a healthy 22-year-old from Virginia, shot himself in the head in 2017, less than two weeks after he started taking an allergy medicine that had been linked for years to episodes of depression and suicidal thinking. His parents soon started exploring a lawsuit against Merck, the developer of the blockbuster asthma and allergy drug, Singulair. Nicholas had no history of mental-health problems, they said. The Englands were shocked to learn from legal advisers that they had no case. Like countless other potential plaintiffs, they had run into one of Corporate America's most effective liability shields: the legal doctrine of preemption, the principle that federal law supersedes state law. Armed with U.S. Supreme Court rulings on preemption starting in the 1990s, companies increasingly argue that federally regulated products or services should be immune from lawsuits alleging state-law violations. State laws historically have provided the legal basis for some of the most common lawsuits against U.S. companies alleging injuries, deaths or illnesses caused by negligence or defective products. Pending lawsuits against Merck allege that the company's own early research indicated the drug could impact the brain but that Merck downplayed any risks in statements to regulators. It wasn't until 2020 that the FDA slapped its most serious warning, called a "black box," on the drug's label. By that time, the FDA had received more than 80 reports of suicides in people taking the medicine.

Note: Read more about Singulair and its dangers to human health, along with the tremendous financial conflicts of interests resulting in the FDA protecting the pharmaceutical industry first, and the health of the people second. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on pharmaceutical industry corruption from reliable major media sources.


Ukraine Blocks Journalists From Front Lines With Escalating Censorship
2023-06-22, The Intercept
Posted: 2023-07-03 15:48:20
https://theintercept.com/2023/06/22/ukraine-war-journalists-press-credentials/

Since Russia launched its full-scale invasion last year, Ukrainian authorities have threatened, revoked, or denied press credentials of journalists working for half a dozen Ukrainian and foreign news outlets because of their coverage. Veteran war correspondents, for their part, are accusing Ukrainian officials of making reporting on the reality of the war ... nearly impossible. "I've covered four wars, and I've never seen such a chasm between the drama and intensity and historic import of the reality of the conflict on the one hand, and the superficiality and meagerness of its documentation by the press on the other," Luke Mogelson, a contributing writer for the New Yorker, told The Intercept. "It's wild how little of what's happening is being chronicled. And the main reason, though not the only one, is that the Ukrainian government has made it virtually impossible for journalists to do real front line reportage." Mogelson added that the restrictions come from military and political brass and run counter to rank-and-file soldiers' desire to share their experiences. "The guys who are actually out doing the killing and dying and enduring the misery of the front are almost always thrilled to have journalists witness what they're going through," he added. Ukrainian journalists have also warned that military handlers' tight oversight of journalists is skewing coverage of the war. The Ukrainian military doesn't have a formal embed system. Most press access consists of short, chaperoned visits to military positions.

Note: The proxy war in Ukraine was designed to serve U.S. military-intelligence interests. Read an excellent analysis by Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Chris Hedges, who covers what's going on in Ukraine and Russia beyond the official media establishment narrative. For further exploration, read an in-depth report by veteran journalist Seymour Hersh, who received revealing information from U.S. intelligence sources about how US taxpayer money is being used in this war.


Daniel Ellsberg Wanted Americans To See The Truth About War
2023-06-16, The Intercept
Posted: 2023-07-03 15:45:04
https://theintercept.com/2023/06/16/daniel-ellsberg-pentagon-papers-dead/

More than 50 years had passed since Ellsberg – risking prison for the rest of his life – had provided the New York Times and other newspapers with 7,000 pages of top-secret documents that quickly became known as the Pentagon Papers. From then on, he continued to speak, write, and protest as a tireless antiwar activist. I asked what the impacts would likely be if pictures of people killed by the U.S. military's bombing campaigns were on the front pages of American newspapers. "I am in favor, unreservedly, of making people aware what the human consequences are of what we're doing – where we are killing people, what the real interests appear to be involved, who is benefiting from this, what are the circumstances of the killing," Ellsberg replied. "I want that to come out. It is not impossible, especially [with] social media, where people can be their own investigative journalists." Ellsberg died today from pancreatic cancer. While he is best known as the whistleblower who gave the Pentagon Papers about the Vietnam War to the world, he went on for 52 years to expose other types of secrets – including hidden truths about the psychology and culture of U.S. militarism. Ellsberg added, “How much of a role does the media actually play in ... deceiving the public? I would say, as a former insider, one becomes aware: It’s not difficult to deceive them. First of all, you’re often telling them what they would like to believe – that we’re better than other people, we are superior in our morality and our perceptions of the world.”

Note: This article was written by Norman Soloman, longtime political activist and media critic on war coverage. Explore a powerfully written adaptation from Soloman's new book, War Made Invisible: How America Hides the Human Toll of Its Military Machine. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of news articles on government corruption and the war machine from reliable major media sources.


Anthony Fauci to become professor at Georgetown University medical school
2023-06-23, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2023-07-03 15:42:33
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jun/26/anthony-fauci-georgetown-univ...

Anthony Fauci, who was previously the top public health official leading the US response to the Covid-19 pandemic, will be joining the faculty at Georgetown University, in Washington DC. University officials announced in a statement on Monday that Fauci will join as a "distinguished university professor" in the university's School of Medicine and McCourt School of Public Policy. Fauci and his family have deep connections to Georgetown. Fauci's wife, Christine Grady, is a Georgetown alumnus. The couple were also married at Dahlgren Chapel of the Sacred Heart, a chapel on Georgetown's campus. All three of Fauci's children were born at Georgetown University hospital. In December, Fauci, 82, stepped down as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases after serving for 38 years, to "pursue the next chapter" of his career, though not naming what that would entail. Fauci is, arguably, the country's leading expert on infectious diseases. He has served under seven presidents, providing guidance on infectious disease outbreaks in the US, including Ebola and the HIV/Aids epidemic. In 2008, Fauci was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom for his "determined and aggressive efforts to help others live longer and healthier lives" in efforts to address the HIV/Aids epidemic.

Note: Significant concerns surround Fauci and his part in the rising "biosecurity state," given his controversial past in shaping public health policy that put corporate profits and the special interests of US intelligence over the health of the people. Read a compelling investigation that explores the extensive financial and political relationship between the CIA and Georgetown University, often considered the number one school for CIA recruits. Not only does the investigation reveal how Georgetown teaching staff is filled with former CIA agents and spies, the article makes a solid case for the CIA's continued role in covertly shaping public opinion through propaganda and disinformation.


Pandemic Leaders Were Biodefense Puppets and Profiteers
2023-06-26, Brownstone Institute
Posted: 2023-07-03 15:40:27
https://brownstone.org/articles/pandemic-leaders-were-biodefense-puppets-and-...

Public health leaders like Rochelle Walensky and Anthony Fauci make false claims, or contradict themselves repeatedly, on subjects related to the pandemic response, while leading scientists, like Peter Hotez in the US and Christian Drosten in Germany, are equally susceptible to such flip-flops and lies. All of these figures publicly and aggressively promoted anti-public health policies, including universal masking, social distancing, mass testing and quarantining of healthy people, lockdowns and vaccine mandates. All the top pro-lockdown scientists and public health experts – in perfect lockstep – suddenly started (and continue to this day) to misread studies and advocate policies that they had claimed in the past were unnecessary. The public health experts were not responsible for pandemic response policy. The military-intelligence-biodefense leadership was in charge. The most startling switch was the replacement of the public health agencies by the National Security Council and Department of Homeland Security at the helm of pandemic policy and planning. As part of the secret switch, all communications – defined in every previous pandemic planning document as the responsibility of the CDC – were taken over by the National Security Council under the auspices of the White House Task Force. The CDC was not even allowed to hold its own press conferences!

Note: Read more about how the national security state was involved in COVID public health policies. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and the coronavirus from reliable major media sources.


How US And UK Government Propaganda Specialists Collaborated With Nazis In Ukraine
2023-06-20, MintPress News
Posted: 2023-07-03 15:38:08
https://www.mintpressnews.com/us-uk-government-propaganda-specialists-collabo...

A MintPress investigation has found that a host of Western government officials, intelligence agents and assets have been directly involved in intimate collaboration with Nazi groups and individuals since at least 2014. This has included involvement in creating and operating the Nazi-run kill list in Ukraine. While Western media have belatedly been forced to concede that there are Nazi influences in Ukraine, many journalists have insisted that the visible fascist patches on uniforms are only there to troll Russians and that they are insignificant and a gift to Russian propaganda. Still, other journalists admit to asking Ukrainian service members to cover up their Nazi symbols. Last May, The Irish Independent claimed that [former adviser to Ukraine's foreign minister Cormac] Smith is "an unlikely key player in the information war," who "estimates he has given about 100 TV, radio and print interviews with the international media in the past few months to tell Kyiv's side of the story." Smith has a nice line in outrageous propaganda gambits, claiming that Russians are the actual Nazis and that they murder, rape and pillage, including the rape of children. As it turns out, the source of many of the allegations ... was the Ukraine parliamentary commissioner for human rights, Lyudmila Denisova. Last year, it was comprehensively demonstrated that her stories had little evidential basis. She ... admitted to "promoting fake news to persuade Western countries to send more arms and aid." Smith nonetheless carried on making vague allegations of rape for months afterward.

Note: US agencies used at least 1,000 ex-Nazis as spies and informants during the Cold War. Nazi doctors were also used used to teach the CIA mind control methods. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on intelligence agency corruption and the war machine from reliable major media sources.


“Independent” Ukrainian “Kill List” Actually Run By Kiev, Backed By Washington
2023-05-12, MintPress News
Posted: 2023-07-03 15:36:14
https://www.mintpressnews.com/independent-ukraine-kill-list-actually-run-by-k...

Last year, my name was added to a blacklist published online by the Ukraine Center for Countering Disinformation. I joined over ninety others deemed to be “speakers who promote narratives consonant with Russian propaganda.“ These included Manuel Pineda and Clare Daly, both leftist Members of the European Parliament (MEP); Also counted are ... a slew of rightist MEPs; Ex CIA officer, Ray McGovern; former military and intelligence figures such as Scott Ritter and Douglas McGregor. Journalists on the list included Glenn Greenwald, Tucker Carlson and Eva Bartlett. The Center for Countering Disinformation ... is an official governmental body created in late March 2021, along with a similar organization, the Center for Strategic Communication, by President Zelensky himself. They [are] related to other blacklisting websites like Myrotvorets (“Peacemaker”), widely seen as a “kill list.” The covert “kill list” website is a product of the Ukraine regime, effectively funded by the CIA (amongst others) and is hosted by NATO. One extraordinary thing is that many American citizens, including ex-military and intelligence operatives, are included, as well as a significant number of citizens of NATO member countries. Perhaps the most remarkable element is that NATO has hosted the site ... on its servers in Brussels. Myrotvorets lists thousands of “saboteurs”, “separatists”, “terrorists” and “traitors”. Sometimes, it has crossed out their photographs once they had been killed, with the label “liquidated”.

Note: This article was written by sociology professor and investigative researcher David Miller, who is widely known for his writings on propaganda, lobbying, and media issues. Tune into an entertaining yet revealing video from The Jimmy Dore Show to further explore interesting perspectives about the Ukrainian "Kill List."


Revolutionary Music Therapy Helps Paralyzed Man Walk and Talk Again – It 'Unlocked the Brain'
2023-04-30, Good News Network
Posted: 2023-07-03 15:34:14
https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/music-therapy-helps-paralyzed-man-walk-and-ta...

A patient who was left almost completely paralyzed from a rare disease is now walking and talking again, after a music therapist prescribed mindful listening to his favorite song every night–in this case, a tune by The Carpenters. 71 year-old Ian Palmer was struck down with Guillain-Barr© syndrome last June, forcing him to spend seven months in a hospital where he was unable to walk or speak properly. The rare condition happens when a person's own immune system attacks their body's motor nerves, causing muscle weakness and sometimes paralysis. But when Ian was transferred to Sue Ryder Neurological Care Centre, a state-of-the-art care unit in Lancashire, England, clinicians used music therapy techniques to overcome 'near total paralysis of his body'. His specialist, Clare, taught him mindfulness techniques using his favorite records–and he began listening to The Carpenters each night. Ian was admittedly skeptical, but he can now walk 2 miles a day (3k) and have conversations with his family after the exercises "opened up" his brain. He's never been very musical, so when Sue Ryder first suggested music therapy he said, 'What good is that going to do?' "I'm a typical Northern man, and I thought, 'What's a girl with a guitar going to do for me–get me to the gym.'" "But it really worked. Clare sat me down and explained the process. I learned that music is very unlike other therapies, as it opens up all of the brain."

Note: Watch a profoundly touching documentary about a man who takes on the broken healthcare system to demonstrate music's ability to heal, combat memory loss, and awaken the soul and the deepest parts of humanity. Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.


How a dose of MDMA transformed a white supremacist
2023-06-14, BBC News
Posted: 2023-07-03 15:31:29
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20230614-how-a-dose-of-mdma-transformed-a-...

Harriet de Wit, a professor of psychiatry and behavioural science at the University of Chicago, was running an experiment on whether the drug MDMA increased the pleasantness of social touch in healthy volunteers. Mike Bremmer, de Wit's research assistant, appeared at her office door with a concerned look on his face. A man named Brendan had filled out a standard questionnaire at the end. Strangely, at the very bottom of the form, Brendan had written in bold letters: "This experience has helped me sort out a debilitating personal issue. Google my name. I now know what I need to do." Brendan had been the leader of ... a notorious white nationalist group. "Go ask him what he means by 'I now know what I need to do,'" [de Wit] instructed Bremmer. As he clarified to Bremmer, love is what he had just realised he had to do. "Love is the most important thing," he told the baffled research assistant. "I conceived of my relationships with other people not as distinct boundaries with distinct entities, but more as we-are-all-one. I realised I'd been fixated on stuff that doesn't really matter. There are moments when I have racist or antisemitic thoughts ... But now I can recognise that those kinds of thought patterns are harming me more than anyone else." While MDMA cannot fix societal-level drivers of prejudice and disconnection, on an individual basis it can make a difference. In certain cases, the drug may even be able to help people see through the fog of discrimination and fear that divides so many of us.

Note: A case study about Brendan was published in the journal Biological Psychiatry. Read more on the healing potentials of psychedelic medicine, including science journalist Rachel Nuwer's new book, I Feel Love: MDMA and the Quest for Connection in a Fractured World. Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.


Scientists Detect Brain Activity in Dying People Linked to Dreams, Hallucinations
2023-05-01, Vice
Posted: 2023-07-03 15:29:46
https://www.vice.com/en/article/dy3p3w/scientists-detect-brain-activity-in-dy...

Scientists have observed a surge of energetic activity in the brains of dying patients, a discovery that reveals that our brains can be active even as our hearts stop beating, reports a new study. The results challenge a longstanding assumption that brains become nonfunctional as they lose oxygen during cardiac arrest, and could eventually open a new window into the weird phenomena associated with near-death experiences (NDE). Jimo Borjigin, an associate professor of neurology at the University of Michigan, has been interested in these questions since she first observed surges of activity in the brains of dying rats. The surges consisted of gamma waves, the fastest oscillations in the brain, which are associated with conscious perceptions, lucid dreams, and hallucinations. Now, Borjigin and her colleagues have discovered similar gamma activity in the brains of patients who died in the hospital while they were monitored by electroencephalogram (EEG) sensors, which record neural activity. The findings could ... help explain near-death experiences, which the study described as "a biological paradox that challenges our fundamental understanding of the dying brain, which is widely believed to be nonfunctioning" during death. "The dying brain was thought to be inactive; our study showed otherwise," said Borjigin, the senior author of the study. "As far as I am concerned, our study may be as good as it will ever get for finding neural signatures of near-death consciousness."

Note: Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles on near-death experiences.


Instagram Connects Vast Pedophile Network
2023-06-07, Wall Street Journal
Posted: 2023-06-26 19:05:45
https://www.wsj.com/articles/instagram-vast-pedophile-network-4ab7189?mod=tre...

Instagram, the popular social-media site owned by Platforms, helps connect and promote a vast network of accounts openly devoted to the commission and purchase of underage-sex content, according to investigations by The Wall Street Journal and researchers at Stanford University and the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Instagram doesn't merely host these activities. Its algorithms promote them. Instagram connects pedophiles and guides them to content sellers via recommendation systems that excel at linking those who share niche interests. Certain accounts invite buyers to commission specific acts. Some menus include prices for videos of children harming themselves and "imagery of the minor performing sexual acts with animals." At the right price, children are available for in-person "meet ups." Current and former Meta employees who have worked on Instagram child-safety initiatives estimate the number of accounts that exist primarily to follow such content is in the high hundreds of thousands, if not millions. In 2022, the [National Center for Missing & Exploited Children] received 31.9 million reports of child pornography ... up 47% from two years earlier. Meta accounted for 85% of the child pornography reports filed to the center, including some 5 million from Instagram. Instagram has permitted users to search for terms that its own algorithms know may be associated with illegal material. In such cases, a pop-up screen for users warned that "These results may contain images of child sexual abuse."

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corporate corruption and sexual abuse scandals from reliable major media sources.


How Facebook and Instagram became marketplaces for child sex trafficking
2023-04-27, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2023-06-26 19:04:10
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2023/apr/27/how-facebook-and-instagram-becam...

Maya Jones* was only 13 when she first walked through the door of Courtney’s House, a drop-in centre for victims of child sex trafficking. When she was 12, she had started receiving direct messages on Instagram from a man she didn’t know. She decided to meet him in person. Then came his next request: “Can you help me make some money?” According to Frundt, Maya explained that the man asked her to pose naked for photos, and to give him her Instagram password so that he could upload the photos to her profile. Frundt says Maya told her that the man, who was now calling himself a pimp, was using her Instagram profile to advertise her for sex. The internet is used by human traffickers as “digital hunting fields”, allowing them access to both customers and potential victims, with children being targeted by traffickers on social media platforms. The biggest of these, Facebook, is owned by Meta, the tech giant whose platforms, which also include Instagram, are used by more than 3 billion people. In 2020, according to a report by US-based not-for-profit the Human Trafficking Institute, Facebook was the platform most used to groom and recruit children by sex traffickers (65%), based on an analysis of 105 federal child sex trafficking cases that year. The HTI analysis ranked Instagram second most prevalent, with Snapchat third. While Meta says it is doing all it can, we have seen evidence that suggests it is failing to report or even detect the full extent of what is happening.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corporate corruption and sexual abuse scandals from reliable major media sources.


JPMorgan to Pay $290 Million in Settlement With Epstein's Victims
2023-06-12, New York Times
Posted: 2023-06-26 19:02:43
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/12/business/jpmorgan-settlement-jeffrey-epste...

JPMorgan Chase reached a tentative settlement with sexual abuse victims of Jeffrey Epstein, the deceased financier, after weeks of embarrassing disclosures about the bank's longstanding relationship with him. David Boies, one of the lead lawyers for the victims, said the bank was prepared to pay $290 million to resolve the lawsuit. The proposed deal would settle a lawsuit filed ... on behalf of victims who were sexually abused by Mr. Epstein over a roughly 15-year period when they were teenage girls and young women. The number of victims could potentially rise to more than 100. JPMorgan still faces a related lawsuit by the government of the U.S. Virgin Islands. That suit remains the biggest outstanding Epstein-related case after years of lawsuits against Mr. Epstein's estate and Ghislaine Maxwell's conviction in 2021 in Manhattan federal court for helping Mr. Epstein engage in sex trafficking. The lawsuit filed by the victims claimed that JPMorgan ignored repeated warnings that Mr. Epstein had been trafficking teenage girls and young women for sex, even after he registered as a sex offender and pleaded guilty in a 2008 Florida case to soliciting prostitution from a teenage girl. The complaint said the bank had overlooked red flags in Mr. Epstein's activity because it valued him as a wealthy client who had access to dozens of even wealthier people. Legal documents revealed that after designating Mr. Epstein a "high risk client" in 2006, the bank kept him on as a customer.

Note: One Nation Under Blackmail is a new book by Whitney Webb, an investigative journalist who explores the deep ties between Jeffrey Epstein and US and Israeli Intelligence criminal networks. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of news articles on Jeffrey Epstein's child sex ring from reliable major media sources.


The long shadow of Jeffrey Epstein forces a reckoning between JPMorgan and the US Virgin Islands
2023-06-12, The Independent (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2023-06-26 19:00:57
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/epstein-jpmorgan-virgin-isl...

In 1998, Jeffrey Epstein purchased Little Saint James in the US Virgin Islands and began trafficking girls as young as 14 into "sexual servitude" at the secluded island. The same year, he opened his first account with JPMorgan Chase, the start of a lucrative partnership for the Wall Street giant that would continue for years after the late financier had been "red flagged" by the bank as a child sex offender. To keep his illicit sex-trafficking scheme running, Epstein needed access to large amounts of cash to pay off recruiters and attempt to silence victims. JPMorgan is alleged to have "pulled the levers" through which Epstein paid his network of enablers, according to a lawsuit filed by the US Virgin Islands (USVI) Attorney General in a US court. The lawsuit claims that JPMorgan concealed wire and cash transactions that were part of a "criminal enterprise" whose currency was vulnerable and desperate women and girls, groomed and recruited over decades by Epstein and his chief lieutenant Ghislaine Maxwell. In separate lawsuits, several survivors of Epstein's abuse sued JPMorgan and Deutsche Bank accusing them of actively enabling his abuse. The sprawling US Virgin Islands legal action is still pending. It has already drawn in some of the world's wealthiest individuals including billionaire JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon, Tesla CEO and Twitter owner Elon Musk, Google's co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, and Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates. All have denied any involvement in Epstein's offending.

Note: One Nation Under Blackmail is a new book by Whitney Webb, an investigative journalist who explores the deep ties between Jeffrey Epstein and US and Israeli Intelligence criminal networks. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of news articles on Jeffrey Epstein's child sex ring from reliable major media sources.


Documents Link Potential Covid Patient Zero to U.S.-funded Research in Wuhan
2023-06-17, The Intercept
Posted: 2023-06-26 18:59:19
https://theintercept.com/2023/06/17/covid-origin-wuhan-patient-zero/

One of the first Wuhan researchers reportedly sickened with Covid in fall 2019, Ben Hu, was getting U.S. financial support for risky gain-of-function research on coronaviruses, according to documents obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request. The funding came in three grants totaling $41 million, doled out by USAID and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, or NIAID, the agency then headed by Dr. Anthony Fauci. The news that U.S. intelligence had learned that three Wuhan Institute of Virology lab workers had been hospitalized with Covid symptoms in November 2019, significantly before the outbreak at the city's seafood market, was first reported by the Wall Street Journal in May 2021. But the revelation had curiously little impact on the broader debate over the origin of the pandemic, even as it would invalidate, if confirmed, the claim that the pandemic originated at the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market. New reporting by Michael Shellenberger and Matt Taibbi, sourced to three government sources familiar with a State Department investigation, has identified the three lab workers as Ben Hu, Yu Ping, and Yan Zhu. The Times of London, meanwhile, also recently reported new details about activity in the Wuhan Institute of Virology. That report includes allegations about the Wuhan labs' collaboration with Chinese military scientists, buttressing what had once been dismissed as a fringe conspiracy theory: that the virus was connected to bioweapons research.

Note: Although it's clear that the US funded the research for the creation of the virus, the origin site from which the virus was created is still in question. To explore alternative views, Dr. David Martin has worked for various government agencies, where he uncovered significant biological and chemical weapons treaty violations. He makes an intriguing case for the virus being created in the US, exploring the history of bioweapons attacks tested on US soil and the possibility that SARS-CoV-2 was invented as a weapon.


Covid Vaccine Injury Payout Plan Push Comes After Emergency End
2023-05-31, Bloomberg Law
Posted: 2023-06-26 18:57:08
https://news.bloomberglaw.com/health-law-and-business/covid-vaccine-injury-pa...

Thousands of Covid-19 vaccine injury allegations have been submitted to the federal government and are unlikely to be reviewed any time soon without intervention by the Biden administration and Congress, according to attorneys whose potential clients feel they have nowhere to turn. Appendicitis, cognitive difficulty, abdominal pain, and abnormal heart rhythm are just some of the Covid vaccine-related injuries cited by the 8,208 individuals who have filed requests for benefits with the Health and Human Services Department's Countermeasures Injury Compensation Program. The CICP has reached only 749 decisions on claims related to Covid treatments, with four cases resulting in compensation. Now, with the public health emergency officially over, attorneys say it's time for the administration and Congress to move Covid vaccine injury claims to a program they say is better suited for addressing them. But doing so would require lawmakers to tackle some much-needed reforms. "It doesn't have the infrastructure yet," Renee Gentry, director of the Vaccine Injury Litigation Clinic at the George Washington University, said of the ... Vaccine Injury Compensation Program. Even half of the Covid caseload "would double the size of the vaccine program. It would come to a crashing halt." "A lot of these people have devastating injuries, and they need at least a fair shot at compensation," Gentry said.

Note: Although significant evidence reveals how COVID vaccines harmed more people than what was announced by US government agencies, the FDA recently refused to improve COVID vaccine safety labeling despite calls from current and former FDA officials. For more along these lines, watch a powerful documentary that follows the lives of people significantly harmed by the vaccine, yet were discredited and abandoned by the medical and media establishment.


'Operation Midnight Climax': The CIA mixed LSD and sex at this SF brothel
2023-06-06, San Francisco Chronicle (San Francisco's Leading Newspaper)
Posted: 2023-06-26 18:52:05
https://www.sfgate.com/cannabis/article/cia-agents-mixed-lsd-and-sex-at-sf-br...

Between 1955 and 1963, federal agents ran a hidden brothel in one of San Francisco's poshest neighborhoods and tested LSD on unsuspecting Bay Area residents. The apartment building is still there, although it has been converted from a CIA brothel into a four-story mansion. At the center of this wildly unethical program was George Hunter White ... who became one of the biggest crusaders of America's early war on drugs. In public, he railed against drug use and ruthlessly investigated jazz legends like Billie Holiday. Privately, however, he drank martinis by the pitcher and even used drugs like LSD and marijuana. White was the federal agent responsible for a top-secret CIA program called "Operation Midnight Climax." The CIA thought it could use hallucinogenic drugs like LSD as weapons of war against its enemies. To find out, the agency got Bay Area residents high without their consent. White outfitted rooms inside a Telegraph Hill apartment building, at 225 Chestnut St., into a safe house for testing LSD. He gave sex workers get-out-of-jail-free cards in exchange for luring unsuspecting johns to the apartment, where the men were dosed with acid while White watched from the other side of a one-way mirror. According to a letter unearthed by John Marks in his 1979 book "The Search for the 'Manchurian Candidate,'" it was nothing but "fun, fun, fun." "Where else could a red-blooded American boy lie, kill, cheat, steal, rape, and pillage with the sanction and blessing of the All-Highest?" White asked.

Note: Read more about Operation Midnight Climax and the larger MK-ULTRA project it was a part of. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on intelligence agency corruption and mind control from reliable major media sources.


How the Military is Using E-Girls to Recruit Gen Z Into Service
2023-06-01, MintPress News
Posted: 2023-06-26 18:50:05
https://www.mintpressnews.com/simp-to-soldier-e-girls-military-recuitment-gen...

Amid a crisis in recruitment, the U.S. military has found a new way of convincing a war-weary Generation Z to enlist: thirst traps. Chief among these attractive young women in uniform posting sexually suggestive content alongside subtle ... calls to join up is Hailey Lujan. In between the thirst traps and memes, the 21-year-old makes content extolling the fun of Army life to her 731,000 TikTok followers. Lujan is a psychological operations specialist with the Army. Her [job] is to convince, persuade and propagandize in creative new ways. The Army recruitment website description of the role sounds eerily similar to her own content. "As a Psychological Operations Specialist, you'll be an expert at persuasion," it reads, adding: "You'll assess and develop the information needed to influence and engage specific audiences. You'll broadcast important information through various mediums and assist U.S. and foreign governments, militaries, and civilian populations." Lujan is far from the only serviceperson on military TikTok (#MilTok) promoting military life, however. Juliana Keding – a military policewoman with over 900,000 followers – regularly combines thirst traps with videos about Army life. TikTok is not the only battleground for young people's minds, however. In the last year, a significant portion of the Biden administration's record-breaking $857 billion defense budget went on advertising. The Army in particular has spent large sums of money collaborating with some of YouTube's biggest stars.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corruption in the military and media manipulation from reliable sources.


Call of Duty is a Government PsyOp: These Documents Prove It
2022-11-18, MintPress News
Posted: 2023-06-26 18:48:19
https://www.mintpressnews.com/call-of-duty-is-a-government-psyop-these-docume...

Within ten days [of its release], the first-person military shooter video game [Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II] earned more than $1 billion in revenue. The Call of Duty franchise is an entertainment juggernaut, having sold close to half a billion games since it was launched in 2003. Its publisher, Activision Blizzard, is a giant in the industry. Details gleaned from documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act reveal that Call of Duty is not a neutral first-person shooter, but a carefully constructed piece of military propaganda, designed to advance the interests of the U.S. national security state. Not only does Activision Blizzard work with the U.S. military to shape its products, but its leadership board is also full of former high state officials. Chief amongst these is Frances Townsend, Activision Blizzard's senior counsel. As the White House's most senior advisor on terrorism and homeland security, Townsend ... became one of the faces of the administration's War on Terror. Activision Blizzard's chief administration officer, Brian Bulatao ... was chief operating officer for the CIA, placing him third in command of the agency. Bulatao went straight from the State Department into the highest echelons of Activision Blizzard, despite no experience in the entertainment industry. [This] raises serious questions around privacy and state control over media. "Call of Duty ... has been flagged up for recreating real events as game missions and manipulating them for geopolitical purposes," [journalist Tom] Secker told MintPress.

Note: The latest US Air Force recruitment tool is a video game that allows players to receive in-game medals and achievements for drone bombing Iraqis and Afghans. For more on this disturbing "military-entertainment complex" trend, explore the work of investigative journalist Tom Secker, who recently produced a documentary, Theaters of War: How the Pentagon and CIA Took Hollywood, and published a new book, Superheroes, Movies and the State: How the U.S. Government Shapes Cinematic Universes.


Woodworking and Hugs: Inside the Mental Health Movement for Men
2023-06-12, Reasons to be Cheerful
Posted: 2023-06-26 18:45:42
https://reasonstobecheerful.world/mens-sheds-mental-health-woodworking-therapy/

In 2002, Chris Morgan lost his wife to cancer. A British army veteran who had put in 24 years of service as a gunner in the Royal Artillery, he was already struggling with PTSD when she passed away, and the grief from the loss triggered a breakdown. In despair, Morgan contemplated taking his own life. Instead, Morgan retreated to his shed. "It was my woodworking shed that was my safe place. And although I may not have done too much woodworking, it was just being in there that I knew helped," Morgan shared. "In fact, it saved my life." In 2008, he held an impromptu spoon carving class for a group of visiting wounded soldiers. The spontaneous seminar became a weekly workshop, and ultimately evolved into a dedicated permanent woodworking seminar that has been known as Veterans Woodcraft since 2016. Veterans Woodcraft is one of 3,000 so-called Men's Sheds scattered across the UK, Ireland, New Zealand, Canada, the US, Kenya and South Africa. The concept began in Australia in the 1990s to help tackle isolation and loneliness in predominantly older men. Men's Sheds UK chief officer Charlie Bethel ... says that of all the impacts he's seen from Men's Sheds in his five-year tenure, suicide prevention is the one that stands out the most. In a recent survey of 178 of the UK's 600 Men's Sheds, 25 percent of respondents said they had definitely saved a member's life, and 14 percent felt confident they had. Bethel hopes to set up a further 1,900 Men's Sheds across the UK over the next 10 years.

Note: Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.


Trafficking Victims Are Becoming Anti-Trafficking Warriors
2023-04-06, Reasons to be Cheerful
Posted: 2023-06-26 18:44:08
https://reasonstobecheerful.world/human-trafficking-victims-become-attorneys/

School for Justice empowers girls who have been victims of child trafficking by helping them attain degrees and jobs through which they can defend other trafficking victims. The school collaborates with local NGOs to identify trafficking survivors and helps them gain admission to universities to pursue law, social work and journalism degrees. Along the way, School for Justice provides the girls with an array of supports, and after completion of their studies, assists them in obtaining internships and jobs at law firms. “All the girls are very eager to pursue their education, especially law, and we give them all kinds of support for pursuing their studies and further internships and jobs,” says Rishi Kant, one of the founders of Shaktivahini, the Delhi-based NGO that runs the program. Some become attorneys or paralegals, while others train to become police officers or journalists focused on human trafficking. Along the way, School for Justice helps them cover expenses for hostels, food, medical needs, traveling, internet charges and English communication classes. The program also runs trainings and workshops. Even as it works with trafficking victims specifically, the School for Justice is striving to ignite a broader conversation about the realities of child prostitution. “We should create awareness [among] not only girls, but also adolescent boys, about sex being a part of their life and to not treat it as a commodity available in the market,” says Tapoti Bhowmick, senior program coordinator at the anti-trafficking NGO Sanlaap.

Note: Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.


‘Collective strength’: the LRA captive restoring dignity to survivors in Uganda
2021-08-03, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2023-06-26 18:42:45
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2021/aug/03/collective-strengt...

When Victoria Nyanjura was abducted from her Catholic boarding school in northern Uganda by members of the Lord’s Resistance Army, she prayed to God asking to die. She was 14 when she was taken, along with 29 others, in the middle of the night. During the next eight years in captivity she was subjected to beatings, starvation, rape and other horrors. Nyanjura gave birth to two children. After a dramatic escape one rainy night, Nyanjura was able to return to her family with her children, go back into education and start the process of healing. Now, her work has helped push through a major law reform in Uganda. She coordinated the Women’s Advocacy Network, made up of more than 900 women who were also survivors of the war in northern Uganda. Together they launched a petition in 2014 asking the Ugandan parliament to address the challenges they faced as they tried to rebuild their lives. The petition asked for free healthcare and better access to services, funding to support children born in captivity, training for teachers on how to work with trauma and a review of laws that require information on paternity, among other things. Officials listened to their accounts and demands for change, and in 2019 the government passed a transitional justice policy to remedy the plight of survivors. “I need to tell the story of change,” [Nyanjura] says. “I want to make people smile, and use my voice to see global change in stopping violence.”

Note: Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.


What really went on inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid erupted
2023-06-10, Sunday Times (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2023-06-18 22:55:46
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/inside-wuhan-lab-covid-pandemic-china-amer...

Scientists in Wuhan working alongside the Chinese military were combining the world's most deadly coronaviruses to create a new mutant virus just as the pandemic began. Investigators who scrutinized top-secret intercepted communications and scientific research believe Chinese scientists were running a covert project of dangerous experiments, which caused a leak from the Wuhan Institute of Virology and started the Covid-19 outbreak. The US investigators say one of the reasons there is no published information on the work is because it was done in collaboration with researchers from the Chinese military, which was funding it and which, they say, was pursuing bioweapons. The investigators' report was published in early 2021. It made two assertions: that Wuhan scientists were conducting experiments on RaTG13 from the Mongolian mine, and that covert military research, including laboratory animal experiments, was being done at the institute before the pandemic. Dr Steven Quay, a US scientist who advised the State Department on its investigation ... believes Covid-19 was created by inserting a furn cleavage site into one of the mine viruses and then serial passaging it through humanized mice. He submitted a statement to the US Senate explaining the process. "You infect the mice, wait a week or so, and then recover the virus from the sickest mice. Then you repeat. In a matter of weeks this directed evolution will produce a virus that can kill every humanized mouse."

Note: Don't miss this article by Michael Heisenberg titled "First People Sickened By COVID-19 Were Chinese Scientists At Wuhan Institute Of Virology, Say US Government Sources." And this article sheds more light on the pandemic's origins. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on the coronavirus from reliable major media sources.


We tried to improve COVID vaccine labeling – the FDA said 'no thanks'
2023-06-09, The Hill
Posted: 2023-06-18 22:53:10
https://thehill.com/opinion/healthcare/4037145-we-tried-to-improve-covid-vacc...

Current Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-approved labels for the Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines are obsolete, misleading and out of touch with regulators elsewhere. Take the ongoing uncertainty over whether vaccines reduce viral transmission. We asked the FDA to clarify in labeling that there isn't substantial evidence that mRNA vaccines reduce viral transmission. The FDA also failed to warn about the documented risk of sudden death, even though myocarditis is now a well-recognized side effect, particularly among young men. To support adding "sudden death" to product labeling, we pointed to multiple autopsy studies on lethal vaccination-associated myocarditis. We asked the FDA to add seven adverse event types to product labeling: multi system inflammatory syndrome in children (MIS-C), pulmonary embolism, sudden cardiac death, neuropathology and autonomic disorders, decreased sperm concentration, heavy menstrual bleeding and detection of vaccine mRNA in breast milk. Current and former FDA advisers and academics from around the country ... tried to fix this problem by asking the FDA to make critical changes to official product labels. But four months later, in a 33-page response letter, the agency denied almost every single request. In doing so, the FDA failed to follow the lead of regulators elsewhere. We cited the European regulator's addition of heavy menstrual bleeding to product information as a potential vaccine adverse reaction. The FDA's response was a sophisticated version of "who cares!"

Note: Explore a deeper look into why medical experts are calling for more accurate COVID-19 vaccine labeling. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and coronavirus vaccines from reliable major media sources.


Antidepressants increase the risk of suicide for some patients, scientists warn
2023-04-17, The Telegraph (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2023-06-18 22:51:38
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/04/17/antidepressants-suicide-drugs-pro...

Antidepressants raise the risk of suicide while also giving people the means to kill themselves, scientists have warned, after discovering thousands of inquests linked to the drugs. Psychologists at the University of East London (UEL) analysed media reports of nearly 8,000 coroners' inquests in England and Wales between 2003 and 2020, in which antidepressants were mentioned. They found the drugs were linked to 2,718 cases of hanging and 2,329 overdoses, of which 933 people had overdosed on antidepressants themselves. A further 2,083 had been struck by a train, tube, lorry or other vehicle, had jumped or fallen to their death, drowned, shot themselves, or been involved in a fire or electrocution. Study author Dr John Read ... said: "Not only do antidepressants not reduce suicidality, but they also actually increase it for many, and for some they provide the mechanism for killing oneself." The research, ... concluded: "If the goal is to prevent suicide then clearly they are not working for thousands of people." Around one in six of the adult population takes antidepressants each year. In 2018, Prof Read surveyed nearly 1,500 people taking antidepressants and found that 50 per cent reported suicidal thoughts after starting the drugs. Recent studies have also called into question the benefits of antidepressants. Last year, University College London (UCL) concluded that depression is not caused by a chemical imbalance of serotonin and argued that life events were a larger factor.

Note: Antidepressants are some of the most commonly prescribed medications, yet their significant risks are often withheld from public debate. Furthermore, an in-depth investigation reveals the glaring conflicts of interest and financial ties to corporate drugmakers that are behind many studies marketing clinical antidepressants as safe. 


Ministers had 'chilling' secret unit to curb lockdown dissent
2023-06-02, The Telegraph (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2023-06-18 22:50:15
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/06/02/counter-disinformation-unit-gover...

A secretive government unit worked with social media companies in an attempt to curtail discussion of controversial lockdown policies during the pandemic. The Counter-Disinformation Unit (CDU) was set up by ministers to tackle supposed domestic "threats", and was used to target those critical of lockdown and questioning the mass vaccination of children. Critics of lockdown had posts removed from social media. There is growing suspicion that social media firms used technology to stop the posts being promoted, circulated or widely shared after being flagged by the CDU or its counterpart in the Cabinet Office. Documents revealed under Freedom of Information (FoI) and data protection requests showed that the activities of prominent critics of the Government's Covid policies were secretly monitored. An artificial intelligence firm (AI) was used by the Government to scour social media sites. The company flagged discussions opposing vaccine passports. Many of the issues being raised were valid at the time and have since been proven to be well-founded. The BBC also took part in secretive meetings of a government policy forum to address the so-called disinformation. It can now be revealed that the activities of Prof Carl Heneghan, the Oxford epidemiologist who has advised Boris Johnson, and Dr Alexandre de Figueiredo, a research fellow at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM), were monitored by government disinformation units.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on the coronavirus and media manipulation from reliable sources.


Why Americans Feel More Pain
2023-05-03, New York Times
Posted: 2023-06-18 22:48:49
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/03/opinion/chronic-pain-america-working-class...

Ever since Bobbie Wert was 8 years old, her stomach has ached. Wert is part of a vast and mysterious panorama of pain that is increasing, sometimes with no obvious physical cause. And while chronic pain is a global problem, it is particularly puzzling in America. In other wealthy countries, it’s the elderly who report the most chronic pain, which makes some sense. But in the United States it’s the middle-aged — especially the jobless and people like Wert, who did not graduate from high school — who suffer the most. It is a plague on the less educated. All this raises the question: Is this physical suffering a canary in the coal mine warning us of larger dysfunction in our society? Chronic pain is not just a result of car accidents and workplace injuries but is also linked to troubled childhoods, loneliness, job insecurity and a hundred other pressures on working families. “People’s lives are coming apart, and this leads to huge increases in physical pain,” said Angus Deaton, a Nobel Prize winner in economics who with Anne Case popularized the term “deaths of despair.” Americans die from deaths of despair — drugs, alcohol and suicide — at a rate of more than a quarter-million a year, and the number of walking wounded is far greater. Acute pain typically has a specific anatomical source — such as the shock you feel when you touch a hot stove — while chronic pain sometimes, not always, originates in the brain rather than the body.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on health from reliable major media sources. Then explore the excellent, reliable resources provided in our Health Information Center.


Rising Physical Pain Is Linked to More ‘Deaths of Despair’
2023-01-30, Scientific American
Posted: 2023-06-18 22:47:19
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/rising-physical-pain-is-linked-to-...

Roughly 110,000 Americans died from a drug overdose between February 2021 and February 2022. That figure is part of a larger troubling trend. Life expectancy in the U.S. fell in 2020 and again in 2021, after decades of progress. Deaths linked to alcohol, drugs, and suicide are a major part of that change. Overdoses, suicides and other “deaths of despair” ... have been climbing since the 1990s and may have accelerated in recent years. Losing a job, recovering from an accident or illness, and experiencing divorce or financial difficulties may trigger desperation. People may use drugs and alcohol to ease these uncomfortable mental states. Scientific evidence shows that one common denominator in this cycle of stress, anxiety, depression and substance abuse is physical pain. The relationship between despair and pain is multifaceted. As most people know from personal experience, physical pain increases psychological distress and anxiety. The reverse relationship is also possible: psychological distress can cause physical pain. When someone is in a negative mood, researchers have found, the brain areas that play a role in physical pain also engage. The opioid epidemic may be the most prominent example of how physical pain and despair interact. The misuse of painkillers, especially opioids, generates changes in the brain that trigger higher pain sensitivity, as well as greater tolerance of and addiction to these drugs. As a result, people are more likely to overdose on these medications.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on health from reliable major media sources. Then explore the excellent, reliable resources provided in our Health Information Center.


The uncounted: how millions died unseen in America’s post-9/11 wars
2023-05-21, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2023-06-18 22:45:52
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/may/21/the-uncounted-how-milli...

How Death Outlives War: The Reverberating Impact of the Post-9/11 Wars on Human Health, published by the Costs of War project at Brown University’s Watson Institute, focuses on what [author Stephanie Savell] terms “indirect deaths” – caused not by outright violence but by consequent, ensuing economic collapse, loss of livelihoods, food insecurity, destruction of public health services, environmental contamination and continuing trauma, including mental health problems, domestic and sexual abuse and displacement. Calculated this way, the total number of deaths that occurred as a result of post-9/11 warfare in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Libya and Somalia rises dramatically from an upper estimate of 937,000 to at least 4.5 million, of which up to 3.6 million were “indirect deaths”. Such deaths grow in scale over time. In Afghanistan, where the war ignited by the 2001 US-led invasion ended in 2021, the indirect death toll and related health problems are still rising. Experts suggest “a reasonable, conservative average estimate for any contemporary conflict is a ratio of four indirect deaths for every one direct death”, Savell says. The poorer the population, the higher the resulting indirect mortality when conflict erupts. Savell does not attempt to apportion blame between various actors, although the US, which launched the “global war on terror” in 2001, bears heavy responsibility. An estimated 38 million people have been displaced since 2001.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on war from reliable major media sources.


Ukraine war: The deadly landmines killing hundreds
2023-04-11, BBC News
Posted: 2023-06-18 22:44:23
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-65204053

Across Ukraine's vast expanse, there are thought to be 174,000 square kilometres which are contaminated by landmines. It is an area of land larger than England, Wales and Northern Ireland combined. In the war-scarred Kharkiv region, warning signs occasionally appear next to brown, barren fields which were once front lines. Even more infrequent is the sight of demining teams sweeping their metal detectors across small, taped-off areas. A literal scratching of the surface. More landmines have been found in the Kharkiv region than anywhere else in Ukraine. The Russians deployed landmines to both defend their positions and slow the Ukrainians. After leaving in a rush, a lethal footprint was left behind. In the small town of Balakliya, on a patch of land next to an apartment block, Oleksandr Remenets' team have already found six anti-personnel mines. They'd earlier uncovered around 200 nearby. "My family calls me every morning to tell me to watch where I tread," he says. "One of our guys lost his foot last year." The day after we spoke, another member of his team was wounded by a mine. Since September, 121 civilians have been injured in the Kharkiv region alone, according to the State Emergency Service. 29 were killed. More than 55,000 explosives have been found in the area. So-called butterfly mines [are] the most common in the area. They're only three to four inches wide, propeller shaped, and are scattered from a rocket. They're banned by international law. That hasn't stopped them from being used in this war.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on war from reliable major media sources.


'Landmark Victory': New York Passes Nation's First Legislation Restricting Bee-Killing Pesticides
2023-06-10, Common Dreams
Posted: 2023-06-18 22:42:56
https://www.commondreams.org/news/new-york-passes-first-in-nation-neonics-leg...

New York state on Friday became the first state in the nation to pass legislation restricting neonicotinoid pesticides (neonics) that are toxic to bees and other pollinators and wildlife. The Birds and Bees Protection Act would eliminate 80 to 90% of the neonics used in New York each year by banning applications that are either easily replaceable or do not give an economic boost to farmers. "Every year for the past decade, New York beekeepers have lost more than 40% of their bee colonies–largely due to neonic pesticides," bill sponsor State Senator Brad Hoylman-Sigal said in a statement. "Today, in this landmark victory for our pollinators, economy, and farming industry, New York is working to reverse that trend." The bill ... bans the use of neonics to coat corn, soybean, and wheat seeds as well as for lawns and gardens. Neonics are a class of pesticides that work by attacking the nervous systems of insect pests. A lethal dose will cause paralysis and death, while non-lethal effects include memory, immune, navigation, and fertility problems. They are one of the deadliest pesticides out there, yet they are also the leading insecticide used in the U.S. This is a problem because about 95% of neonics used to coat seeds don't enter the plant at all, but instead spread into the environment via the soil, where they do not break down easily. They also harm the development of birds and mammals; and studies have linked ingredients of neoicotinoid insecticides with adverse human health outcomes as well.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on food system corruption and health from reliable major media sources.


If the Police Can Decide Who Qualifies as a Journalist, There Is No Free Press
2023-06-01, Truthout
Posted: 2023-06-18 22:41:15
https://truthout.org/articles/if-the-police-can-decide-who-qualifies-as-a-jou...

In 2021 in the picturesque mountain city of Asheville, North Carolina, The Asheville Blade journalist Veronica Coit sat in a police station waiting to be booked. Both Coit and their colleague Matilda Bliss were processed for trespassing while covering the eviction of unhoused people at Aston Park in Asheville. As of this writing, both journalists are awaiting a jury trial after appealing the guilty verdict handed down by Judge James Calvin Hill on April 19. With that decision, Judge Hill stepped brazenly on the throat of a free press, potentially introducing a precedent that makes journalism illegal – if it's the kind of journalism the ruling class doesn't like. Since 2018, as reported by the Freedom of the Press Foundation's U.S. Press Freedom Tracker, there have been four trials – including this one – against journalists for "offenses allegedly committed while gathering and reporting the news." But this is the first case of its kind to find the defendants guilty. Nearly 50 civil society and media freedom organizations, along with the ACLU of North Carolina, Freedom of the Press Foundation, Reporters Without Borders, National Press Club, the Committee to Protect Journalists and Project Censored, have called on the city of Asheville to drop the charges. But there has been no national outcry over the case in corporate media. "It's a very dangerous precedent to allow the police or anyone in government to define what it means to be a journalist," said Ben Scales, Bliss and Coit's attorney. "We simply don't allow it in this country."

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on judicial system corruption and media manipulation from reliable sources.


With Green Prescriptions, Getting Healthier Is a Walk in the Park
2023-05-29, Reasons to be Cheerful
Posted: 2023-06-18 22:39:38
https://reasonstobecheerful.world/green-prescriptions-health-nature-parks/

Scientific research has long established the healing powers of the outdoors, but now programs promoting regular visits to nature – known as green or nature prescriptions – are nourishing the health of people and parks across the globe. Green prescriptions were pioneered decades ago. In 1982, doctors in Japan began encouraging therapeutic so-called "forest bathing," or Shinrin-yoku, which is now available in 62 certified forest-therapy bases. In New Zealand, green prescriptions ... have become a formal part of the health care system. Canada last year launched its first nationwide green prescription program. Today, 4,000 green prescriptions have been written by over 10,000 physicians ... in all 10 provinces. The benefits of spending time in nature are as established as a centuries-old oak trunk, and include reduced stress and improved sleep, happiness, attention, memory and creativity. In one 2015 study, researchers in Canada found that adding 10 more trees to a city block improved perceived health and well-being as much as increasing people's income by $10,000 or making them seven years younger. Time in nature even impacts the very functioning of our bodies: a study by a professor at University College London found that contact with microbes in the environment strengthens our immune systems, improving the resilience of our skin, airways and guts. 

Note: Read more about the fascinating "hope molecules" that get released when we exercise, which can act as a powerful antidepressant for improved mental health.


New research illuminates how the human brain creates its own psychedelic drugs
2023-02-20, Salon
Posted: 2023-06-18 22:37:56
https://www.salon.com/2023/02/20/new-research-illuminates-how-the-human-brain...

The World Health Organization estimates that ... depression and anxiety rose by more than 25 percent in the first year of the COVID pandemic, adding to the nearly one billion people who were already living with a mental disorder. One of the principal ways mental health disorders are thought to manifest is through severed connections between neurons — the winding, spindly cells in our brain and throughout our body essential for interpreting info from the external environment. Certain antidepressant drugs seem to work by increasing serotonin levels, an important neurotransmitter that the brain uses to send signals between neurons. They can help regrow neuronal connections ... only the effect seems to be slower, less dramatic [and] can come with significant drawbacks. In contrast, psychedelics can promote this kind of regrowth in as little as 24 hours, often less. Many experts believe psychedelic drugs ... act like Miracle Grow for neurons, helping them flourish like a dense forest. Pretty much the only reason drugs have a psychoactive effect on us at all is because they closely resemble chemicals our body already produces. Most psychedelic drugs like LSD, DMT and psilocybin are structurally similar to serotonin, so they can act on serotonin receptors, but in a slightly different way. You can think of it like clumsily-made lockpicks that still work in a lock designed for a specific key. But even the slight differences can have profound effects, specifically, altered perception of time and space and intensified colors and sounds.

Note: Read more on the healing potentials of psychedelic medicine. Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.


'Everything is natural and tastes so good': microfarms push back against 'food apartheid'
2023-06-10, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2023-06-18 22:36:23
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jun/10/local-food-microfarms-equity

In South Los Angeles, Crop Swap LA volunteers and staffers harvested bags of freshly picked produce from the front yard of a residence. "Everything we're growing is nutrient-dense and the food remains in the neighborhood," says Jamiah Hargins, who founded Crop Swap LA in 2018 as a small monthly swap of surplus produce. After spending years in finance and consulting, Hargins decided to create a local food distribution system to address the fact that his neighborhood was a food desert, meaning most residents have little access to healthy food. It's now one of many Bipoc-led groups across the US that are reclaiming their agricultural heritage and redefining the local food movement by growing on traditional farms and unconventional spaces such as yards, medians and vacant lots as a way to increase food security and health in their own communities. There are similar groups run by communities of color across the US. After the Chicora-Cherokee community in North Charleston, South Carolina, was left without a grocery store for more than 10 years, Fresh Future Farm stepped in. Founded in 2014, the non-profit transformed a vacant lot into a flourishing urban farm that grows bananas, sugarcane, meyer lemons, satsuma oranges, collard greens, okra and tomatoes, among other crops. Two years later, it opened a sliding scale grocery store on the same property – the first one in the area in 11 years. The non-profit also teaches home gardening classes, which is inspiring a new crop of home growers.

Note: Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.


Whistleblower claims spacecrafts and the bodies of 'pilots' have been found by the US government for decades
2023-06-07, The Telegraph (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2023-06-13 00:25:31
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2023/06/07/ufos-made-with-non-human-ma...

"Non-human spacecrafts" and the bodies of "pilots" have been recovered by the US government for decades, a former intelligence officer has claimed. Whistleblower David Charles Grusch, 36, has said the intelligence community has engaged in a "sophisticated disinformation campaign" to hide the discovery of fragments of and whole vehicles. Mr Grusch previously worked for the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) and the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO). At the latter he was the representative to the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force, before becoming the NGA's co-lead for UAP analysis. Asked whether intelligence agencies ever came across the bodies of these extra-terrestrial species, he told NewsNation: "When you recover something that's either landed or crashed, sometimes you encounter dead pilots. And believe it or not, as fantastical as that sounds, it's true." Mr Grusch, who stepped down from Government on 7 April 2023, has reportedly filed a complaint saying he suffered illegal retaliation for disclosing information about the discoveries to Congress and the Intelligence Community Inspector General. Mr Grusch has not seen the alleged material himself. "We are not talking about prosaic origins or identities," Mr Grusch said, referencing information he provided Congress and the current ICIG. "The material includes intact and partially intact vehicles." Karl Nell, a retired Army colonel who was also on the UFO task force, described [Mr Grusch] as "beyond reproach".

Note: Watch the revealing interview of Grusch concisely alleging what was once deemed as a speculative theory: the U.S. government has recovered non-human craft for decades and kept this secret to the public. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on UFOs from reliable major media sources. Then explore the excellent, reliable resources provided in our UFO Information Center.


How doctors buy their way out of trouble
2023-03-24, Reuters
Posted: 2023-06-13 00:23:44
https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-healthcare-settlements/

Over the last decade alone, at least 540 doctors and healthcare practitioners collectively paid the government hundreds of millions of dollars to negotiate their way out of trouble via civil settlements, then continued to practice medicine without restrictions on their licenses despite allegations that included fraud and patient harm, a Reuters investigation found. That figure is the result of the first-ever comprehensive analysis of federal civil settlements and state disciplinary actions. Separately, more than 2,200 hospitals and healthcare companies likewise negotiated civil deals to sidestep prosecution for alleged offenses that included paying bribes, falsifying patients records and billing the government for unnecessary patient care, the Reuters analysis shows. In many of those cases, the physicians, staffers and top brass who purportedly committed those misdeeds were not named publicly by prosecutors or forced to pay settlements themselves. Federal enforcers said they sometimes withhold names of individuals in these situations because of ongoing or planned investigations. The U.S. government collected more than $26.8 billion in healthcare-related civil settlements and judgments from 2013 to 2022, the Reuters analysis found. Victims, meanwhile, received no share of these settlements, which are funneled to a Treasury Department general fund. Consequently, they must pursue their own civil cases in search of restitution for suffering and harm, Reuters found.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corporate corruption and health from reliable major media sources.


Covid-19 Isn't a Pandemic of the Unvaccinated Anymore
2022-12-07, New York Times
Posted: 2023-06-13 00:21:04
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/07/opinion/environment/covid-19-pandemic-elde...

Though it's sometimes uncomfortable to say it, the risk of mortality from Covid has been dramatically skewed by age throughout the pandemic. The earliest reports of Covid deaths from China sketched a pattern quickly confirmed everywhere in the world: In an immunologically nave population, the oldest were several thousand times more at risk of dying from infection than the youngest. Today Americans 65 and over account for 90 percent of new Covid deaths, an especially large share given that 94 percent of American seniors are vaccinated. Yet these facts seem to contradict stories we've told about what drives vulnerability to Covid-19. In January, Joe Biden warned that the illness and death threatened by the Omicron variant represented "a pandemic of the unvaccinated." Over the months that followed, the unvaccinated share of mortality fell even further, to 38 percent in May 2022. The share of deaths among people vaccinated and boosted grew significantly as well, from 12 percent in January 2022 to 36 percent in April. Throughout the duration of the summer ... about as many boosted Americans were dying as the unvaccinated. The share of deaths among older adults kept growing: In April, 79 percent of American deaths were among those 65 and older. In November, 90 percent. If it was ever comfortable to say that the unconscionable levels of American deaths were a pandemic of the unvaccinated, it is surely now accurate to describe the ongoing toll as a pandemic of the old.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on coronavirus vaccines from reliable major media sources.


Probe reveals Canberra silenced 4213 Covid posts
2023-05-22, The Australian (One of the Australia's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2023-06-13 00:19:05
https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/antic-probe-reveals-canberra-silenced...

In less than three years the federal government intervened at least 4213 times to restrict or censor posts about the Covid-19 pandemic on digital platforms. A freedom of information request by Liberal senator Alex Antic has revealed the number of interventions, but details about the reasons or the guidelines under which they were made remain secret. "It is entirely unclear to me why the Department of Home Affairs, a department which is primarily charged with the duty of overseeing matters like border control, has been using a backdoor arrangement with social media companies to influence the media in relation into matters such as public health," Senator Antic said. Senator Antic ... is now in possession of the Department of Home Affairs Online Content Incident Arrangement Procedural Guideline, which details how the government works with digital platforms such as Facebook, Meta, Twitter, Instagram and Google to monitor and intervene on content. The document is subheaded "Australia's domestic crisis response protocol for online terrorist and extreme violent content". It runs to 28 pages but aside from the title, every page has been fully redacted. A separate document ... revealed that between January 2017 and December 2022 it "had made 13,636 referrals to digital platforms to review content". More than 9000 of these were related to terrorism and violent extremism. But 4213 were "Covid-19-related referrals".

Note: Read this article without a subscription on this webpage. For a deeper analysis, see Matt Taibbi's report. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on the coronavirus and media manipulation from reliable sources.


Survivors of Kissinger's Secret War in Cambodia Reveal Unreported Mass Killings
2023-05-23, The Intercept
Posted: 2023-06-13 00:15:38
https://theintercept.com/2023/05/23/henry-kissinger-cambodia-bombing-survivors/

The U.S. carpet bombing of Cambodia between 1969 and 1973 has been well documented, but its architect, former national security adviser and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger ... bears responsibility for more violence than has been previously reported. An investigation by The Intercept provides evidence of previously unreported attacks that killed or wounded hundreds of Cambodian civilians during Kissinger's tenure in the White House. "You can trace a line from the bombing of Cambodia to the present," said Greg Grandin, author of "Kissinger's Shadow." "The covert justifications for illegally bombing Cambodia became the framework for the justifications of drone strikes and forever war." Kissinger bears significant responsibility for attacks in Cambodia that killed as many as 150,000 civilians, according to Ben Kiernan, former director of the Genocide Studies Program at Yale University and one of the foremost authorities on the U.S. air campaign in Cambodia. That's up to six times the number of noncombatants thought to have died in U.S. airstrikes in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Pakistan, Somalia, Syria, and Yemen during the first 20 years of the war on terror. Grandin estimated that, overall, Kissinger – who also helped to prolong the Vietnam War and facilitate genocides in Cambodia, East Timor, and Bangladesh; accelerated civil wars in southern Africa; and supported coups and death squads throughout Latin America – has the blood of at least 3 million people on his hands.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on military corruption and war from reliable major media sources.


What's really changed 10 years after the Snowden revelations?
2023-06-07, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2023-06-13 00:13:33
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jun/07/edward-snowden-10-years-surve...

When Edward Snowden blew the whistle on mass surveillance by the US government, he traded a comfortable existence in Hawaii, the paradise of the Pacific, for indefinite exile in Russia, now a pariah in much of the world. But 10 years after Snowden was identified as the source of the biggest National Security Agency (NSA) leak in history, it is less clear whether America underwent a similarly profound transformation in its attitude to safeguarding individual privacy. Was his act of self-sacrifice worth it – did he make a difference? On 6 June 2013, the Guardian published the first story based on Snowden's disclosures, revealing that a secret court order was allowing the US government to get Verizon to share the phone records of millions of Americans. The impact was dramatic. James Clapper, the director of national intelligence, who earlier that year had testified to Congress that the NSA did not collect data on millions of Americans, was forced to apologise and admit that his statement had been "clearly erroneous". The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed a constitutional lawsuit in federal court. It eventually led to a ruling that held the NSA telephone collection program was and always had been illegal, a significant breakthrough given that national security surveillance programs had typically been insulated from judicial review. You will not find any coherent statement by any US security official that says clearly what harm was done by these disclosures.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on intelligence agency corruption and the disappearance of privacy from reliable major media sources.


The Last Honest Man: Frank Church and the fight to restrain US power
2023-05-07, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2023-06-13 00:11:13
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/may/07/last-honest-man-frank-church-bo...

Frank Forrester Church sat in the US Senate for 24 years. He battled for civil rights and came to oppose the Vietnam war. He believed Americans were citizens, not subjects. Chairing the intelligence select committee was his most enduring accomplishment. James Risen, a Pulitzer-winning reporter now with the Intercept, sees him as a hero. The Last Honest Man is both paean and lament. “For decades ... the CIA’s operations faced only glancing scrutiny from the White House, and virtually none from Congress,” Risen writes. “True oversight would have to wait until 1975, and the arrival on the national stage of a senator from Idaho, Frank Church.” For 16 months, Church and his committee scrutinized the CIA, FBI and National Security Agency and their many abuses. Political assassinations, covert operations and domestic surveillance finally received scrutiny and oversight. A plot to kill Fidel Castro, with an assist from organized crime, made headlines. So did the personal ties that bound John F Kennedy, mob boss Sam Giancana and their shared mistress, Judith Campbell Exner. Giancana was murdered before he testified. Before John Rosselli, another mobster, could make a third appearance, his decomposed body turned up in a steel fuel drum near Miami. Against this grizzly but intriguing backdrop, Risen’s book is aptly subtitled: The CIA, the FBI, the Mafia, and the Kennedys – And One Senator’s Fight to Save Democracy.

Note: Read more about James Risen's courageous reporting on the intelligence community. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on intelligence agency corruption from reliable major media sources.


The Taliban Is Fighting Iran With American Weapons
2023-06-01, Vice
Posted: 2023-06-13 00:06:44
https://www.vice.com/en/article/epvvgk/the-taliban-is-fighting-iran-with-amer...

The Taliban clashed with Iranian border guards over the weekend, and it used American equipment to do it. Videos of the skirmish are all over social media, and they show Afghanistan fighters using a mix of old Soviet gear and U.S. weapons from the War on Terror. On Telegram, videos from the advocacy group HalVash showed U.S. armored Humvees rolling down a road. One dramatic video ... showed a Humvee with an M240 machine gun in the back. Taken from the point of view of the man behind the gun, the shot lingers on the spent ammunition littering the top of the Humvee. According to the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR), a U.S. agency that tracked waste, fraud, and abuse in Afghanistan, America spent around $18.6 billion equipping the Afghan National. Much of that equipment is now in the hands of the Taliban. The Pentagon has said it left behind about $7.12 billion worth of military equipment, and it's had a hard time keeping track of it all in the wake of its withdrawal. The U.S. would frequently ship guns and equipment into the country only to have it go missing later. Shipping containers filled with small arms would sit unattended for years. The Taliban has much of it now. After the collapse, a Taliban official told AL Jazeera that it had taken more than 300,000 light arms, 26,000 heavy weapons, and around 61,000 military vehicles when it took over the country. He said the plan was to use these weapons and the Soviet-era armor to create a "grand army."

Note: Read how the U.S. documented 12 years of failed reconstruction efforts in Afghanistan involving billions of dollars wasted and thousands of lives lost. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on military corruption from reliable major media sources.


U.S. Intelligence Building System to Track Mass Movement of People Around the World
2023-05-22, Vice
Posted: 2023-06-13 00:03:53
https://www.vice.com/en/article/88xq54/us-intelligence-building-system-to-tra...

The Pentagon’s intelligence branch is developing new tech to help it track the mass movement of people around the globe and flag “anomalies.” The project is called the Hidden Activity Signal and Trajectory Anomaly Characterization (HAYSTAC) program and it “aims to establish ‘normal’ movement models across times, locations, and populations and determine what makes an activity atypical,” according to a press release from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI). HAYSTAC will be run by the DNI’s Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA). It’s kind of like DARPA, the Pentagon’s blue-sky research department, but with a focus on intelligence projects. According to the agency, the project will analyze data from internet-connected devices and “smart city” sensors using AI. “An ever-increasing amount of geospatial data is created every day,” Jack Cooper, HAYSTAC’s program manager, said. Cooper also mentioned privacy, or rather a lack of it. “Today you might think that privacy means going to live off the grid in the middle of nowhere,” he said. “That’s just not realistic in today’s environment. Sensors are cheap. Everybodys got one. There’s no such thing as living off the grid.” In one project, [contractor] AIS simulated a cyber attack. “Devices included traditional desktop systems, laptops, tablets, and mobile platforms,” the firm said. “The technology tracks users through biometric features, including keystroke biometrics, mouse movement behavior, and gait detection.”

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on intelligence agency corruption and the disappearance of privacy from reliable major media sources.


No Longer in Shadows, Pentagon’s U.F.O. Unit Will Make Some Findings Public
2020-07-23, New York Times
Posted: 2023-06-13 00:01:52
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/23/us/politics/pentagon-ufo-harry-reid-navy.html

Despite Pentagon statements that it disbanded a once-covert program to investigate unidentified flying objects, the effort remains underway — renamed and tucked inside the Office of Naval Intelligence. Pentagon officials will not discuss the program. Yet it appeared last month in a Senate committee report outlining spending on the nation’s intelligence agencies for the coming year. The report said the program, the Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon Task Force, was “to standardize collection and reporting” on sightings of unexplained aerial vehicles, and was to report at least some of its findings to the public within 180 days. Mr. Reid, the former Democratic senator from Nevada who pushed for funding the earlier U.F.O. program when he was the majority leader, said he believed that crashes of objects of unknown origin may have occurred and that retrieved materials should be studied. “After looking into this, I came to the conclusion that there were reports — some were substantive, some not so substantive — that there were actual materials that the government and the private sector had in their possession,” Mr. Reid said in an interview. Eric W. Davis, an astrophysicist who worked as a subcontractor and then a consultant for the Pentagon U.F.O. program since 2007, said that, in some cases, examination of the materials had so far failed to determine their source and led him to conclude, “We couldn’t make it ourselves.”

Note: Watch a revealing interview with an Air Force veteran and former member of the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency, who concisely alleges what was once deemed as a speculative theory: the U.S. government has recovered non-human craft for decades and kept this secret to the public. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on UFOs from reliable major media sources. Then explore the excellent, reliable resources provided in our UFO Information Center.


Scientists Discover Microbes That Could Revolutionize Plastic Recycling
2023-05-26, Smithsonian Magazine
Posted: 2023-06-12 23:58:33
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/scientists-discover-microbes-that-c...

High in the Swiss Alps and the Arctic, scientists have discovered microbes that can digest plastics–importantly, without the need to apply excess heat. Their findings, published this month in the journal Frontiers in Microbiology, could one day improve plastic recycling. It's no secret that plastic pollution is a big, global issue. Since its production exploded during and after World War II, humans have created more than 9.1 billion tons of plastic–and researchers estimate that less than one tenth of the resulting waste has been recycled. To make matters worse, the most common recycling option–when plastic is washed, processed and turned into new products–doesn't actually reduce waste: The recycled materials are often lower quality and might later end up in a landfill all the same. Researchers are looking for solutions to the plastics problem. One process they've experimented with is breaking down plastics using microorganisms. Enzymes from the microorganisms found in the Arctic and Swiss Alps ... were able to break down biodegradable plastics at 59 degrees Fahrenheit. "These organisms could help to reduce the costs and environmental burden of an enzymatic recycling process for plastic," co-author Joel RÄthi [said]. Of the total 34 types of microbes examined, 19 were successfully able to break down a form of plastic called polyester-polyurethane, and 17 could break down two types of biodegradable plastic mixtures.

Note: Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.


More than 5,000 new species discovered in Pacific deep-sea mining hotspot
2023-05-25, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2023-06-12 23:55:08
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/may/25/more-than-5000-new-specie...

Scientists have discovered more than 5,000 new species living on the seabed in an untouched area of the Pacific Ocean that has been identified as a future hotspot for deep-sea mining, according to a review of the environmental surveys done in the area. It is the first time the previously unknown biodiversity of the Clarion-Clipperton Zone (CCZ), a mineral-rich area of the ocean floor that spans 1.7m sq miles between Hawaii and Mexico in the Pacific, has been comprehensively documented. The research will be critical to assessing the risk of extinction of the species, given contracts for deep-sea mining in the near-pristine area appear imminent. Most of the animals identified by researchers exploring the zone are new to science, and almost all are unique to the region: only six, including a carnivorous sponge and a sea cucumber, have been seen elsewhere. One of the deep-sea animals discovered was nicknamed the "gummy squirrel", because of its huge tail and jelly-like appearance, he said. There are also glass sponges, some of which look like vases. The most common categories of creatures in the CCZ are arthropods, worms, members of the spider family and echinoderms, which include spiny invertebrates such as sea urchins, and sponges. "Our role as scientists ... is to provide the data," [biologist Dr. Adrian Glover] said. "Everyone who lives on this planet should be concerned about using it in a sustainable way. I see it as very positive that we can come up with a regulatory structure before mining takes place."

Note: Don't miss the incredible photos of these newly discovered deep-sea species, from the 'gummy squirrel' to deep-sea cucumbers. Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.


Dogs Do It, Birds Do It, and Dolphins Do It, Too. Here Are 65 Animals That Laugh, According to Science
2021-05-19, Smithsonian Magazine
Posted: 2023-06-12 23:52:59
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/study-finds-65-animals-laugh-180977...

People seem to love nothing more than anthropomorphizing our non-human counterparts in nature. These videos might make us giggle, but what about the creatures that star in them, can they laugh? The answer, according to a new paper studying animals at play, may be yes—to the tune of some 65 species that researchers pegged as “laughing” during bouts of playful activity, reports Mindy Weisberger for Live Science. “This work lays out nicely how a phenomenon once thought to be particularly human turns out to be closely tied to behavior shared with species separated from humans by tens of millions of years,” says Greg Bryant, a cognitive scientist at the University of California, Los Angeles and co-author of the study. Most of the 65 species identified by the study, which was published last month in the journal Bioacoustics, were mammals, such as primates, foxes, killer whales and seals, but three bird species also made the list. For animals, the researchers suggest, a laughing noise may help signal that roughhousing, or other behavior that might seem threatening, is all in good fun. “[Some actions] could be interpreted as aggression. The vocalization kind of helps to signal during that interaction that 'I'm not actually going to bite you in the neck. This is just going to be a mock bite,'” [said] Sarah Winkler ... the paper’s lead author. “It helps the interaction not escalate into real aggression.” Many of the animal laughs identified by the study sound nothing like a human chuckle. For example, Rocky Mountain elk emit a kind of squeal.

Note: Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.


More Than Half of Young U.S. Adults Have a Chronic Health Condition
2022-07-28, U.S. News & World Report
Posted: 2023-06-04 19:09:30
https://www.usnews.com/news/health-news/articles/2022-07-28/more-than-half-of...

Obesity, depression, high blood pressure, asthma: These are just a few of the chronic health conditions that are now affecting almost 40 million Americans between the ages 18 and 34, new federal data shows. Overall, the 2019 data found that more than half of young adults (nearly 54%) now deal with at least one chronic health issue. Almost one in every four (22%) have two or more of these conditions, according to a team of researchers from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “The most prevalent conditions were obesity (25.5%), depression (21.3%), and high blood pressure (10.7%),” said a team led by Kathleen Watson. High cholesterol levels affected about 10% of adults under 35, asthma affected over 9%, and about 6% had arthritis, the study found. Unhealthy lifestyles were often a part of the mix for people with chronic conditions. Young adults “with a chronic condition were more likely than those without one to report binge drinking, smoking or physical inactivity,” Watson’s team found. Certain factors seemed to raise a person’s odds for the leading chronic health condition, obesity. About one-third of young adults living in rural areas were obese, compared to about one-quarter of city dwellers. Black Americans were somewhat more likely to be dealing with obesity than whites — 33.7% versus 23.9%, respectively. Depression tended to affect young adult women (27%) more than men (about 16%) ... and depression rates were especially high among the unemployed (about 31%).

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on health from reliable major media sources. Then explore the excellent, reliable resources provided in our Health Information Center.


Spooks infiltrate Silicon Valley: Facebook is riddled with ex-CIA agents
2022-12-22, Daily Mail (One of the UK's Popular Newspapers)
Posted: 2023-06-04 19:06:28
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11562433/Facebook-riddled-ex-CIA-age...

A large number of ex-officers from the FBI, CIA, NSC, and State Department have taken positions at Facebook, Twitter, and Google. The revelation comes amid fears the FBI operated control over Twitter censorship and the Hunter Biden laptop story. The Twitter files have revealed the close relationship with the FBI, how the Bureau regularly demanded accounts and tweets be banned and suspicious contact before the Hunter laptop story was censored. The documents detailed how so many former FBI agents joined Twitter's ranks over the past few years that they created their own private Slack channel. A report by Mint Press' Alan MacLeod identified dozens of Twitter employees, who had previously held positions at the Bureau. He also found that former CIA agents made up some of the top ranks in almost every politically-sensitive department at Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp. And in another report, MacLeod detailed the extent to which former CIA agents started working at Google. DailyMail.com has now been able to track down nine former CIA agents who are working, or have worked, at Meta, including Aaron Berman, the senior policy manager for misinformation at the company who had previously written the president's daily briefings. Six others have worked for other intelligence agencies before joining the social media giant, many of whom have posted recently about Facebook's efforts to tamp down on so-called 'covert influence operations.'

Note: Explore a deeper analysis on the ex-CIA agents at Facebook and at Google. Additionally, read how Big Tech censors social media on behalf of corporate and government interests. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on intelligence agency corruption and media manipulation from reliable sources.


Federal prison rules help abusive staff to escape punishment, report finds
2022-10-28, Washington Post
Posted: 2023-06-04 19:04:22
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/28/federal-prison-rules-abusi...

Federal prison officials accused of misconduct, including sexual abuse, are more likely to escape sufficient punishment because of the agency’s reluctance to rely on inmate testimony, a watchdog investigation found. This hesitancy ... “emboldens miscreant staff members” who believe they can “act without fear of disciplinary consequences,” said a Justice Department Office of Inspector General (OIG) report. The memo to Bureau of Prisons Director Colette S. Peters from Inspector General Michael E. Horowitz said “the circumstances that gave rise to this memorandum and the BOP’s conflicting response to it continue to raise significant concerns about the BOP’s handling of disciplinary matters in cases where inmate testimony is necessary to sustain misconduct charges.” “Staff throughout the Bureau know that they can abuse men and women in federal custody with impunity, as long as they don’t admit it or do it on camera,” said Deborah Golden, a D.C. lawyer who focuses on prisoner rights. Not handling internal investigations properly, she added, “is how the widespread abuse at FCI Dublin flourished.” Five former employees of the Federal Correctional Institution in Dublin, Calif., including a warden and a chaplain, have been charged with sexually abusing prisoners. Dublin is not an isolated case. During the six-month reporting period that ended March 31, the inspector general’s office received 4,252 complaints involving the BOP, with force, abuse and rights violations among the most common allegations.

Note: In 2022, U.S. Department of Justice investigators had to open 14,361 cases of misconduct against 17,907 employees of the Bureau of Prisons, which is a bureau with 37,000 employees. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on prison system corruption from reliable major media sources.


Federal Prison Officials Knew of Misconduct, Corruption, and Abuse, Senate Investigation Finds
2022-07-22, The Intercept
Posted: 2023-06-04 19:01:24
https://theintercept.com/2022/07/26/atlanta-prison-suicide-senate-investigation/

When a detainee at a federal prison facility in Atlanta, Georgia, was found hanging from a ligature in his cell in November 2018, prison staff had to borrow a razor blade from another detainee in order to cut them down. The scene was one of several alarming accounts of conditions at U.S. Penitentiary Atlanta detailed Tuesday during a Senate subcommittee hearing. Public reporting has described several years’ worth of security and health issues at the facility, including deaths, escapes, corruption, and a smuggling ring. According to congressional investigators who spoke at the hearing, senior officials at the federal prison complex and at the federal Bureau of Prisons were aware of the issues for years and failed to adequately address them, amounting to gross misconduct. The findings are part of an ongoing 10-month bipartisan congressional investigation into allegations of corruption and abuse at the Atlanta facility. Started last September by a subcommittee of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, the investigation has focused on the Atlanta complex to highlight broader issues in the federal prison system. The facility has the highest number of suicides by detainees at any federal prison over the last five years. Previous reporting has documented at least 13 suicides at the facility between 2012 and 2021, including five between October 2019 and June 2021. The hearing ... painted a damning picture of a bloated federal prison system run by well-informed and willfully inactive leaders.

Note: In 2022, U.S. Department of Justice investigators had to open 14,361 cases of misconduct against 17,907 employees of the Bureau of Prisons, which is a bureau with 37,000 employees. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on prison system corruption from reliable major media sources.


Common Chemical Strongly Linked to Parkinson's
2023-05-23, Smithsonian Magazine
Posted: 2023-06-04 18:59:31
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/common-chemical-strongly-linked-to-...

A study of military veterans has shown the strongest evidence yet that the widespread chemical trichloroethylene (TCE)–used in spot removers, office products and dry-cleaning–is linked to Parkinson's disease. The research focused on service members who were stationed at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina between 1975 and 1985, when levels of TCE in the base's water reached 70 times higher than the Environmental Protection Agency's limit. After accounting for demographic factors, Camp Lejeune veterans were 70 percent more likely to develop the movement disorder than service members stationed at Camp Pendleton in California, where the water was uncontaminated. The large study, published last week in the journal JAMA Neurology, adds to a handful of smaller, earlier papers that found a link between TCE and Parkinson's. TCE, which can be in liquid or vapor form, has been commonly used since the 1920s, including as an inhaled surgical anesthetic and in several cleaning products. Today, it's primarily used in making refrigerants and degreasing metal equipment. The chemical breaks down slowly and can be detected in the air, water and soil. It's also found in one-third of U.S. drinking water. The Camp Lejeune drinking water was contaminated with TCE and other chemicals from 1953 to 1987, per the study, due to leakage from underground storage tanks, industrial spills, waste disposal sites and a dry-cleaning business.

Note: Internal corporate documents reveal how global chemical giant Syngenta secretly influenced scientific research regarding links between its top-selling weedkiller and Parkinson's disease. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on health from reliable major media sources.


A potentially cancer-causing chemical is sprayed on much of America’s farmland. Here is where it is used the most.
2022-10-10, NBC News
Posted: 2023-06-04 18:57:12
https://www.nbcnews.com/data-graphics/toxic-herbicides-map-showing-high-use-s...

Every day, farms across the country use a potentially cancer-causing chemical that is in the world’s most common weedkillers. And data shows that it’s most used in the Midwest and parts of the South. Glyphosate, the active ingredient in many herbicides, has been in use for nearly 50 years. The World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer concluded in a 2015 report that the chemical “is probably carcinogenic to humans.” Glyphosate’s main use is in agriculture. Weedkillers containing it are used on nearly half of all planted acres of corn and soybeans in the U.S. They’re also used on acres of farmland where wheat, oats, fruits and cotton are grown. Pesticide residue testing from the FDA found glyphosate residues on a wide variety of crops, including oats, soybeans, cranberries, grapes, raisins, oranges, apples, cherries and beans. A 2020 Department of Health and Human Services report notes that the greatest potential exposure is among farm workers and gardeners that use glyphosate-based herbicides and those who live near farms, manufacturing plants ... and hazardous waste disposal sites. For the general public, the report notes that exposure to glyphosate typically comes by touching or eating food or water containing residues. Some studies have found a link between increased cancer rates and higher levels of exposure. Several peer-reviewed studies have also suggested that herbicides containing glyphosate may disrupt hormones and alter the gut microbiome

Note: Don't miss the interactive map of glyphosate usage available at the link above. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on food system corruption and health from reliable major media sources.


Recycled and reused food contact plastics are 'vectors' for toxins – study
2023-05-27, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2023-06-04 18:55:29
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/may/27/recycled-reused-food-plas...

Recycled and reused food contact plastics are "vectors for spreading chemicals of concern" because they accumulate and release hundreds of dangerous toxins like styrene, benzene, bisphenol, heavy metals, formaldehyde and phthalates, new research finds. The study assessed hundreds of scientific publications on plastic and recycled plastic to provide a first-of-its-kind systematic review of food contact chemicals in food packaging, utensils, plates and other items and what is known about how the substances contaminate food. "Hazardous chemicals can accumulate in recycled material and then migrate into foodstuffs, leading to chronic human exposure," the study's authors wrote, noting bottles made from polyethylene terephthalate (PET) plastic as a common example. The study ... identified 853 chemicals used in PET recycled plastic and many of those have been discovered during the last two years. The most commonly detected were antimony and acetaldehyde, while potent toxins like 2,4-DTBP, ethylene glycol, lead, terephthalic acid, bisphenol and cyclic PET oligomers were also most frequently found. The review also highlighted widespread "illicit" recycling in which industry uses non-food grade plastic made with flame retardants and other toxic compounds in recycled food packaging. Despite strict regulations on which types of plastic can be used for food contact, studies identified [contaminated materials from] recycled electronics in the US, South Korea and European markets.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on food system corruption and health from reliable major media sources.


Pipeline Company Spent Big On Police Gear To Use Against Standing Rock Protesters
2023-05-22, The Intercept
Posted: 2023-06-04 18:53:24
https://theintercept.com/2023/05/22/standing-rock-energy-transfer-tigerswan/

By March 2017, the fight over the construction of the Dakota Access pipeline had been underway for months. Law enforcement was ... discussing plans with Energy Transfer, the parent company of the Dakota Access pipeline. Throughout much of the uprising against the pipeline, the National Sheriffs’ Association talked routinely with TigerSwan, Energy Transfer’s lead security firm on the project, working hand in hand to craft pro-pipeline messaging. Documents, released by the North Dakota Private Investigation and Security Board, reveal how TigerSwan and the sheriffs’ group worked together to twist the story in the media so that it aligned with the oil company’s interests, seeking to pollute the public’s perception of the water protectors. The private security firm pushed for the purchase, by Energy Transfer, of hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of radios for the cops. TigerSwan also placed an order for a catalog of so-called less-lethal weapons for police use, including tear gas. Off the Record Strategies, the public relations firm working for the National Sheriffs' Association, coordinated with the opposition research firm Delve to track activists' social media pages, arrest records, and funding sources. The companies sought to paint the protesters as violent, professional, billionaire-funded, out-of-state agitators whose camps represented the true ecological disaster, as well as to identify movement infighting that might be exploited.

Note: Read how TigerSwan treated water protectors as terrorists. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corporate corruption and the erosion of civil liberties from reliable major media sources.


Monsanto and the Merchants of Poison
2022-12-23, CounterPunch
Posted: 2023-06-04 18:51:49
https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/12/23/monsanto-and-the-merchants-of-poison/

Last week, the report Merchants of Poison: How Monsanto Sold the World on a Toxic Pesticide was published by authors Stacy Malkan, Kendra Klein and Anna Lappé. [In 2012], pesticide and processed food companies spent $45 million to defeat a ballot initiative to label GMOs (genetically modified foods) in California. This campaign was led by Monsanto, one of the planet’s largest producers of GMOs. Monsanto created a PR storm through the mouths of so-called third-party “experts” from across the fields of academia and science. It was later revealed that these allegedly neutral voices were closely tied to Monsanto. The World Health Organization (WHO) in 2015 concluded that glyphosate—the chemical contained within herbicides that most GMO crops have been engineered to resist—is likely a human carcinogen. Thousands sued Monsanto claiming that their exposure of Monsanto’s glyphosate-based product, Roundup, caused their cancers. Monsanto employees ghostwrote scientific papers on the safety of glyphosate and strategized how to discredit journalists and scientists raising concerns about the pesticide. Major universities, including University of California Davis and University of Florida, played a significant role in legitimizing and amplifying pesticide industry product-defense efforts. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Cornell University, and the American Academy for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) ... also provided essential aid and cover for pesticide industry propaganda.

Note: A 2019 study found that glyphosate increases cancer risk by 41%. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on GMOs and science corruption from reliable major media sources.


How the Juvenile System Forces Minors Into Unsafe Institutions
2023-04-15, The Marshall Project
Posted: 2023-06-04 18:49:38
https://www.themarshallproject.org/2023/04/15/texas-california-children-juven...

A 2020 reform law was supposed to remake the way the California juvenile justice system looks. “De-escalation rooms” stocked with essential oils and weighted blankets are among the changes some county youth facilities have been pushed to install. It was all part of an effort to make the system less punitive and more therapeutic. But this air of change might be news to young people held in Los Angeles County, where this week, California Attorney General Rob Bonta asked a state judge to sanction local officials for what he called “illegal and unsafe conditions.” County officials across the state pushed back against the 2020 law — which phased out state-run juvenile facilities in favor of county-run ones. Tasked with rolling out the changes, local officials formed a multi-county non-profit organization — not subject to public information laws — to share resources and data. Some local advocates worry that this approach is creating a “shadow jury and justice system that operates outside of the public,” reports the Sacramento Bee. The way this has played out in California may be instructive to Texas, where some lawmakers are seeking a similar overhaul for a juvenile system long-plagued by abusive conditions and mismanagement. As in California, county juvenile justice officials in Texas oppose the changes. A recent report from the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics found 1,762 confirmed incidents of young people being sexually harassed, abused, or assaulted in juvenile facilities between 2013 and 2018.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on prison system corruption from reliable major media sources.


After The Genocide, Author Witnessed How Rwandans Defined Forgiveness
2019-04-09, NPR
Posted: 2023-06-04 18:47:32
https://www.npr.org/2019/04/09/711314421/after-the-genocide-author-witnessed-...

It happened 25 years ago - up to 800,000 people in Rwanda killed - mostly from the minority Tutsi community, all of that over the course of just a hundred days. Today the hundreds of thousands of people who carried out those killings live among their victims. Journalist and author Philip Gourevitch has witnessed the unique way Rwandans have defined and navigated forgiveness after the massacre. There was a lot of agency in the local level. And the experience of the genocide was extremely localized. People were killed by neighbors. It was intimate. They knew each other. And to simply ignore that wouldn't work. In order to navigate the aftermath of the genocide, the Rwandan government set up this nationwide reconciliation process. So they set up a system of community courts - without lawyers - to sort of repurpose a system that really had only been used for small claims mitigation in traditional Rwanda, called gacaca, and have open, communal - what we might call a town hall - format for trials. And then the idea was to hold people accountable and have a system of punishment. And this system banked very heavily on encouraging confession and rewarding it. But the confessions were supposed to be also verified by the community. The motto of the gacaca courts was, truth heals. Forgiveness doesn't require trust. Forgiveness simply means letting go of the idea of getting even, forgoing the idea of revenge. Right? Now, even that's a big ask. But it means accepting coexistence. There's never been as comprehensive a reckoning with such communal violence or mass atrocity. It was an ongoing, multi-year confrontation with the past in the communities.

Note: Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.


A man spent 29 years in prison for a rape he didn’t commit. The survivor just helped free him
2023-05-16, CNN News
Posted: 2023-06-04 18:46:11
https://edition.cnn.com/2023/05/09/us/patrick-brown-wrongful-conviction-vacat...

After spending 29 years in prison for the rape of his stepdaughter, a New Orleans man is free thanks to the help of the local district attorney’s office and testimony from the victim herself, who has insisted for 20 years that he is not the man who raped her. Patrick Brown was convicted of raping his 6-year-old stepdaughter in 1994 after pleading not guilty in a trial in which the victim did not testify. Since 2002, the stepdaughter had repeatedly asked the DA’s office under former administrations to review the case and prosecute the actual perpetrator, the release said. The office’s civil rights division opened an investigation into the victim’s case, found that the evidence corroborated her account and asked the court to rectify the case. “The attorneys in the Civil Rights Division in Orleans Parish are the only prosecutors I have ever worked with in Louisiana who truly take the admonition to ‘do Justice’ seriously – as evidenced by the fact that they listened to the victim in this case the first time she reached out, instead of ignoring her like their predecessors did for more than 20 years,” Kelly Orians told CNN. “The State is actively reviewing the viability (of) charges against the actual perpetrator,” Orleans Parish District Attorney Jason Williams told CNN. Williams launched the civil rights division in part to “review cases of wrongful convictions and excessive sentences." The division has intervened in 284 cases since 2021, boasting an estimated $266 million in taxpayer savings on lifetime incarceration.

Note: Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.


The Lullaby Project helps incarcerated mothers connect with their kids through music
2023-04-16, NPR
Posted: 2023-06-04 18:44:40
https://www.npr.org/2023/04/16/1170315860/the-lullaby-project-helps-incarcera...

When someone is pregnant and they're incarcerated, separation after they give birth is almost immediate. At a women's prison outside Columbia, S.C., a project is underway to help reconnect a few mothers with their children through the creation of lullabies. Ashley [is] incarcerated at the Graham Camille Griffin Correctional Institution, and she's taking part in the prison's pilot songwriting program, working with graduate students from the University of South Carolina School of Music. Together, the grad students and the mothers chart out lyrics, workshop the melodies and collaborate on the layers of musicality needed to get the lullabies just right for a vocalist with the university. Ashley has five children, including her most recent. She says the hardest part of this is being away from them as she counts down the days till her parole or release. And she says the good graces of the students is not lost on those serving out their sentences. "It's - yeah, they could be volunteering anywhere else, like an elementary or something," [said Ashley]. "But they took their time to come to a prison. And even though we are here for crimes and we are sitting here being punished and everything, we're still human, and we still have families that care about us. And everybody makes mistakes, and we're here paying for our mistakes. So any mother out there that has kids, and they're your world, let them know it."

Note: Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.


Stanford prof says aliens are '100%' living among us
2023-05-23, MSN News
Posted: 2023-05-28 21:01:48
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/stanford-prof-says-aliens-are-100-living-am...

A Stanford University professor and prominent ufologist says he "100 percent" believes extraterrestrials have not only visited Earth – but have "been here a long time" and may even still be on the planet today. Dr. Garry Nolan, a professor of pathology at Stanford's medical school, made the stunning claim during last week's Salt iConnections conference in Manhattan at a session titled, "The Pentagon, Extraterrestrial Intelligence and Crashed UFOS." Moderator Alex Klokus asked Nolan if he believes extraterrestrial life has visited Earth, and the prof replied, "I think you can go a step further – it hasn't just visited, it's been here a long time, and it's still here." "You know, people talk about the 'Wow! signal' looking for extraterrestrial intelligence. The 'Wow! signal' is that people see it on an almost regular basis, that's the communication that's already here," Nolan said. The "Wow! signal' refers to a burst of radio waves captured from outer space in 1977. The signal was 30 times stronger than typical background radiation and prompted some astronomers to believe it may have come from aliens. Klokus noted that for many, Nolan's statement about alien life would be "tough to believe" and asked him to assign a probability to his claims. "One hundred percent," Nolan said. "And that's not just my opinion. Thirty pages of [the National Defense Authorization Act] is the establishment of an unidentified aerial phenomena office."

Note: Read an in-depth Vice article that describes details of testing materials recovered from UFOs. Watch the engaging trailer of Accidental Truth, a new film on UFO revelations featuring exclusive interviews with some of the most respected researchers in the field of UFOs. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on UFOs from reliable major media sources. Then explore the excellent, reliable resources provided in our UFO Information Center.


Six whistleblowers who claim they worked on military UFO programs retrieving and analyzing crash material have come forward to spill their secrets to senior members of congress
2023-04-26, Daily Mail (One of the UK's Popular Newspapers)
Posted: 2023-05-28 21:00:14
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11996773/Six-whistleblowers-spill-UF...

Senior members of Congress have spoken to as many as six whistleblowers who claim they worked on Roswell-style UFO crash retrieval and reverse engineering programs. Congress passed a law last year creating whistleblower protections for anyone who has worked in such mind-boggling secret programs. Daniel Sheehan said he is in contact with at least six former government officials or military contractors who say they worked on just such a program. Sheehan says witnesses who allegedly know about Roswell-style programs, including a former Defense Intelligence Agency director, have been referred for interviews with the Pentagon's UFO office, the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO). Immunologist and Nobel Prize nominee Dr. Garry Nolan was commissioned by the CIA to investigate cases of the mysterious Havana Syndrome inflicting embassy officials worldwide, and has conducted experiments analyzing material allegedly jettisoned in UFO flyovers. He claims to be in contact with several former staffers of extraordinary UFO 'reverse engineering' programs. Another Nobel Prize nominee and CIA scientist Dr. Hal Puthoff, who worked in the government's 2008-2012 UFO program called AAWSAP, told DailyMail.com that he had briefed congress on classified information about reverse engineering programs, and knew of whistleblowers who had worked in the alleged programs. AARO has 72 hours to report to Congress any program discovered that has not been properly reported.

Note: Watch the engaging trailer of Accidental Truth, a new film on UFO revelations featuring exclusive interviews with some of the most respected researchers in the field of UFOs. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on UFOs from reliable major media sources. Then explore the excellent, reliable resources provided in our UFO Information Center.


Mysteries in the sky: One-fifth of academics report witnessing UFOs
2023-05-22, MSN News
Posted: 2023-05-28 20:58:36
https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/medical/mysteries-in-the-sky-one-fifth-of-ac...

UFOs have been reported by almost one-fifth of academics a new survey reveals. Out of the 1,460 academics asked, 19 percent said they or someone they knew had witnessed an unidentified aerial phenomenon (UAP) – an observation in the sky that cannot be explained. The findings reveal that some of the brightest minds are interested in uncovering the mysteries of our skies, with 37 percent saying they have a degree of interest in conducting research into UAP. The survey was taken by 1,460 academics from 133 US universities across 14 academic disciplines in 2022. The participants, who were 62 percent male and 80 percent white, were asked about their perceptions and opinions of UAPs, formerly known as UFOs, as well as their experiences with them. Of the 14 different disciplines represented, 10 percent of people worked in political science physics and psychology, while six percent worked in engineering. These phenomena can leave even the cleverest of people baffled. Out of the academics, 39 percent said they did not know what could explain these sightings.

Note: Watch the engaging trailer of Accidental Truth, a new film on UFO revelations featuring exclusive interviews with some of the most respected researchers in the field of UFOs. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on UFOs from reliable major media sources. Then explore the excellent, reliable resources provided in our UFO Information Center.


‘The forever prisoner’: Abu Zubaydah’s drawings expose the US’s depraved torture policy
2023-05-11, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2023-05-28 20:56:28
https://www.theguardian.com/law/2023/may/11/abu-zubaydah-drawings-guantanamo-...

A detainee held in the US prison camp at Guantánamo Bay who was used as a human guinea pig in the CIA’s post-9/11 torture program has produced the most comprehensive and detailed account yet seen of the brutal techniques to which he was subjected. Abu Zubaydah has created a series of 40 drawings that chronicle the torture he endured in a number of CIA dark sites between 2002 and 2006 and at Guantánamo Bay. In the absence of a full official accounting of the torture program, which the CIA and the FBI have labored for years to keep secret, the images give a unique and searing insight into a grisly period in US history. The drawings, which Zubaydah has annotated with his own words, depict gruesome acts of violence, sexual and religious humiliation, and prolonged psychological terror committed against him and other detainees. Zubaydah’s sketches provide a unique visual record of the US government’s use of torture in the wake of 9/11. Videotapes of Zubaydah being tortured were filmed by the CIA but then destroyed in violation of a court order, while a 6,700-page torture report by the Senate intelligence committee remains secret almost a decade after it was completed. Though the full Senate report has never been made public, its conclusion is known: that the abuse of Zubaydah and other detainees failed to elicit any new intelligence. In other words, torture does not work. The US initially claimed [Zubaydah] was a top al-Qaida operative but was forced to concede he was not even a member of the terror group.

Note: Read the "10 Craziest Things in the Senate Report on Torture." For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on intelligence agency corruption from reliable major media sources.


When a prison sentence becomes a death sentence
2023-04-27, NPR
Posted: 2023-05-28 20:54:36
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2023/04/27/1172320844/when-a-prison...

At least 6,182 people died in state and federal prisons in 2020, a 46% jump from the previous year, according to data recently released by researchers from the UCLA Law Behind Bars Data Project. "During the pandemic, a lot of prison sentences became death sentences," says Wanda Bertram, a spokesperson for the Prison Policy Initiative. A Senate report last year found the U.S. Department of Justice failed to identify more than 900 deaths in prisons and local jails in fiscal year 2021. The report said the DOJ's poor data collection and reporting undermined transparency and congressional oversight of deaths in custody. A major reason the U.S. trails other developed countries in life expectancy is because it has more people behind bars and keeps them there far longer, says Chris Wildeman, a Duke University sociology professor who has researched the link between criminal justice and life expectancy. "It's a health strain on the population," Wildeman says. "The worse the prison conditions, the more likely it is incarceration can be tied to excess mortality." Over a 40-year span starting in the 1980s, the number of people in the nation's prisons and jails more than quadrupled, fueled by tough-on-crime policies and the war on drugs. The federal government can't definitively say how many people have died in prisons and jails since the covid-19 pandemic began, researchers say. "Without data, we are operating in the dark," says Andrea Armstrong, a professor ... who has testified before Congress on the issue.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on prison system corruption from reliable major media sources.


FBI broke own rules in January 6 and BLM intelligence search, court finds
2023-05-19, The Guardian/Associated Press
Posted: 2023-05-28 20:52:20
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/may/19/fbi-intelligence-surveillance...

FBI officials repeatedly violated their own standards when they searched a vast repository of foreign intelligence for information related to the January 6 insurrection and racial justice protests in 2020, according court order released Friday. The violations were detailed in a secret court order issued last year by the foreign intelligence surveillance (Fisa) court, which has legal oversight of the US government’s spy powers. At issue are improper queries of foreign intelligence information collected under section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which enables the government to gather the communications of targeted foreigners outside the US. That program, which is set to expire at the end of the year, creates a database of intelligence that US agencies can search. FBI searches must have a foreign intelligence purpose or be aimed at finding evidence of a crime. But congressional critics of the program have long raised alarm about what they say are unjustified searches of the database for information about Americans, along with more general concerns about surveillance abuses. In repeated episodes disclosed on Friday, the FBI’s own standards were not followed. The April 2022 order, for instances, details how the FBI queried the section 702 repository using the name of someone who was believed to have been at the Capitol during the January 6 riot. Officials obtained the information despite it not having any “analytical, investigative or evidentiary purpose”, the order said.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on intelligence agency corruption and the disappearance of privacy from reliable major media sources.


Trump-era special counsel's final report criticizes FBI's Russia probe
2023-05-15, NPR
Posted: 2023-05-28 20:50:45
https://www.npr.org/2023/05/15/1176219884/trump-russia-investigation-durham

The special counsel-led investigation looking into the FBI's probe of Russian interference in the 2016 Trump campaign has ended, the Department of Justice announced Monday, and in a 306-page final report, concludes the FBI did not have enough intelligence to merit a full Trump-Russia investigation. The report says that investigation — which was originally called the "Crossfire Hurricane" — was treated different from how cases related to Donald Trump's then-opponent, Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton, had been handled. "The speed and manner in which the FBI opened and investigated Crossfire Hurricane during the presidential election season based on raw, unanalyzed and uncorroborated intelligence also reflected a noticeable departure from how it approached prior matters involving possible attempted foreign election interference plans aimed at the Clinton campaign," the report says. The report concludes that the DOJ and FBI "failed to uphold their important mission of strict fidelity to the law." "Our investigation also revealed that senior FBI personnel displayed a serious lack of analytical rigor towards the information they they received, especially information received from politically affiliated persons and entities," the report says. In particular, there was a significant reliance on investigative leads provided by, or funded by, political opponents of Trump. "The Department did not adequately examine or question thee materials and the motivations of those providing them," the report says.

Note: Explore a much more in-depth analysis of this important news by crack reporter Matt Taibbi. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on intelligence agency corruption from reliable major media sources.


US Sold Weapons to Nearly 60 Percent of World’s Authoritarian Nations in 2022
2023-05-14, Truthout
Posted: 2023-05-28 20:47:59
https://truthout.org/articles/us-sold-weapons-to-nearly-60-percent-of-worlds-...

President Joe Biden claims that the United States is leading “democracies” in a fight against “autocracies” to establish a peaceful international order, but his administration approved weapons sales to nearly three-fifths of the world’s authoritarian countries in 2022. That’s according to a new analysis conducted by Security Policy Reform Institute co-founder Stephen Semler. The U.S. has been the world’s largest arms dealer since the end of the Cold War. Data released in March showed that the U.S. accounted for 40% of global weapons exports from 2018 to 2022. Semler relied on data from the Varieties of Democracy project at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden, which uses a classification system called Regimes of the World. “Of the 84 countries codified as autocracies under the Regimes of the World system in 2022, the United States sold weapons to at least 48, or 57%, of them,” Semler wrote. “These findings fly in the face of Biden’s preferred framing of international politics as a “battle between democracies and autocracies.” The president’s narrative “lends itself more to a self-righteous foreign policy than an honest or productive one,” Semler argued. “Dividing the world between democratic and autocratic countries — in the spirit of ‘with us or against us’ — makes conflict more likely and has had a chilling effect on calls for diplomacy and détente. It’s also harder to cooperate with the international community while insisting you’re locked in an existential fight with roughly half of them.”

Note: Beyond arms sales, the US loses track of huge quantities of weapons in combat zones. Read an in-depth article on how the Ukraine war is shaking up the arms industry in unprecedented ways. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on military corruption from reliable major media sources.


Confessions of a CIA Terrorist
2023-05-20, LA Progressive
Posted: 2023-05-28 20:45:55
https://www.laprogressive.com/foreign-policy/confessions-of-a-cia-terrorist

In 1979 the Sandinista revolution overthrew the Somoza dictatorship in Nicaragua. As a Spanish speaking Latino, [Enrique] Prado ... was recruited as a CIA officer responsible for overseeing the development of the Contra army based in Honduras and conducting cross border attacks on communities in Nicaragua. Prado believes they [were] the "good guys". The International Court of Justice thought otherwise. In 1986 the court ruled the US attacks on Nicaragua were violations of international law. The Reagan administration and media largely ignored the ruling. Later, journalist Gary Webb documented the catastrophic social damage inside the US caused by the cheap cocaine flooding some US cities. Webb was attacked by establishment media. In 1998 the CIA Inspector General acknowledged, "There are instances where C.I.A. did not, in an expeditious or consistent fashion, cut off relationships with individuals supporting the contra program who were alleged to have engaged in drug-trafficking activity, or take action to resolve the allegations." The US deployed Nicaraguans, Afghans and extremist Arab recruits in proxy wars across the globe. "The attacks of September 11 descend in a direct line from events in 1979, the year in which the CIA, with full presidential authority, began carrying out its largest ever clandestine operation - the secret arming of Afghan freedom fighters (mujaheddin) to wage a proxy war against the Soviet Union," [said author Chalmers Johnston].

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on intelligence agency corruption from reliable major media sources.


Rendlesham Forest UFO sighting 'new evidence' claim
2015-07-13, BBC News
Posted: 2023-05-28 20:44:05
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-suffolk-33447592

New evidence has been gathered to back up claims a UFO landed near a US airbase in Suffolk, a former deputy commander has claimed. Col Charles Halt told the BBC he saw unidentified objects at Rendlesham Forest in December 1980. He says he now has statements from radar operators at RAF Bentwaters and nearby Wattisham airfield that an unknown object was tracked at the time. Col Halt claimed it was seen by himself and base security staff. The 75-year-old, who was deputy commander at the Bentwaters base and now lives in the US state of Virginia, said some former service people had not wanted to speak until they retired but had now provided written statements to him. "I have confirmation that (Bentwaters radar operators)... saw the object go across their 60 mile (96km) scope in two or three seconds, thousands of miles an hour, he came back across their scope again, stopped near the water tower, they watched it and observed it go into the forest where we were," said Col Halt. "At Wattisham, they picked up what they called a 'bogie' and lost it near Rendlesham Forest. "Whatever was there was clearly under intelligent control." UFO researcher John Hanson said he found Col Halt to be a reliable witness and there had been a "concerted effort to hide the truth". He said the evidence of the UFO being picked up by radar seriously undermined the suggestion by the government at the time that the reported phenomena was due to witnesses seeing the light from Orfordness lighthouse.

Note: Read the official report of this mind-boggling incident on this webpage. Read riveting accounts of dozens of senior officials about their personal involvement in a major cover-up. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on UFOs from reliable major media sources. Then explore the excellent, reliable resources provided in our UFO Information Center.


The Library Where the ‘Books’ Are Human Beings
2021-11-29, Reasons to be Cheerful
Posted: 2023-05-28 20:41:27
https://reasonstobecheerful.world/human-library-borrow-person-locations/

“Don’t judge a book by its cover” is the kind of advice most people forget when they meet Joel Hartgrove. Maori tattoos cover his neck, ears and his shaved skull. Hartgrove is an open book. You can borrow him for 20 minutes, talk to him about his time in the Australian army, his Indigenous roots, his tattoos, anything you’d like. You’ll find you’re speaking with a deep thinker who answers nosy questions with humor and heart — a common trait among the “books” available for loan in Ronni Abergel’s library. “They are stigmatized,” Abergel says of his collection, “maybe because of their weight, their looks, their profession, their religious, sexual or political orientation, or because they survived abuse and traumas. We can’t just judge someone on face value.” Abergel, 48, is the director of the biggest and most beautiful library in the world: the Human Library, where you borrow people instead of books and speak with them about their lives. His library rules are simple: Treat the books respectfully; bring them back on time and in the same shape you borrowed them; don’t take them home. “They will answer any question you have the courage to ask,” Abergel promises. The Human Library is now active in 80 countries, with branches in Texas and Tokyo, Bangladesh and Berlin. Every reader who visits, virtually or in-person, chooses two or three topics that interest them: rugby, depression, refugees, sex work, cancer, grief. “There is a great book hidden in all of us, and most of us would be bestsellers,” Abergel believes.

Note: Don't miss a deeply moving series called HUMAN by filmmaker Yann Arthus-Bertrand, who spent three years collecting real-life stories from thousands of people in 60 countries. Their stories, although unique to them, speak to the human condition and the parts of life that unite us all: love, happiness, poverty, war, and the future of our planet.


The scientists coaxing back nature with sound
2023-05-19, BBC News
Posted: 2023-05-28 20:39:46
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20230519-the-sound-recordings-used-to-coax...

Beyond human hearing, a cacophony of natural clicks, whistles and hums pass all around us, linking billions of living beings in networks of sound. Mother whales whisper to their young so predators can't hear them. Bees emit unique buzzing signals to distinguish threats from specific predators. Turtle embryos synchronise their collective moment of birth by making sounds through their shells. And unknown fish species buzz to one another in the depths – their very identities one of nature's countless sonic mysteries. What if tapping into these sounds could allow us to not only to learn more about the natural world, but actually help to begin healing it? An emerging appreciation for the biological importance of sound has led to new strategies for environmental conservation. From microscopic larvae lost at sea to birds that travel hundreds of miles from home, conservationists are now starting to use the sounds of nature to guide them back to where they belong. "Sound is so important," says Cheryl Tipp, curator of wildlife and environmental sound at the British Library. "In the natural world, it's used in mating displays, in territorial disputes, as alarm signals." For humans trying to support nature, meanwhile, sound can be used to identify new species, monitor populations and assess the health of ecosystems, she says. There is now a growing interest in the use of sound to accelerate habitat restoration itself, by coaxing certain species to certain locations using their very own sounds.

Note: Listen to a fascinating interview with biologist and innovation consultant Janine Benyus, who explores the power of biomimicry, a practice that learns from and mimics the strategies used by natural systems and species alive today. Benyus proposes that biomimicry can solve some of the gravest of societal and environmental problems by discovering how nature has already solved some of these challenges.


A Biodiversity Hotspot Flourishes as Costa Rica Puts Nature on the Payroll
2023-05-15, Reasons to be Cheerful
Posted: 2023-05-28 20:38:13
https://reasonstobecheerful.world/costa-rica-paying-locals-protect-wildlife-b...

The Osa Peninsula on Costa Rica’s west coast occupies just 0.001 percent of the planet’s surface area, yet is home to an estimated 2.5 percent of all the biodiversity in the world. Inhabited by jaguar, tapir and close to 400 species of birds, the forests here — and others like them around the world — combat biodiversity loss and play a key role in capturing carbon and fighting climate change. “For us it has been important because before, we protected [the forests], we looked after them, but we didn’t receive anything for it,” says Lineth Picado Mena, a rural farmer living on the peninsula and participant in the government’s Payments for Environmental Services (PES) program. “Now we can support ourselves with what we have.” By paying landowners for ecosystem services, the government incentivizes them to conserve the environment. That counteracts the market forces that put pressure on landowners to convert tropical forests to farmland or other land uses. In Costa Rica, the PES program’s annual budget is between $20 million and $25 million, of which 92 percent is funded from a sales tax on fossil fuels, while nearly six percent comes from water usage fees. This allocation is fixed and provides assurance that funds will be available each year. The remaining amount is collected through various government initiatives, such as carbon credits and public-private partnerships. The program ... is credited with turning Costa Rica’s deforestation rate from one of the highest in the world to a net reforestation.

Note: Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.


Health care providers were 'bribed' into suggesting COVID vaccines, congressman says leaked document shows
2023-04-14, ABC News (Charleston, SC affiliate)
Posted: 2023-05-22 01:18:01
https://abcnews4.com/news/nation-world/health-care-providers-were-bribed-into...

Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., shared a document on social media Thursday, outlining Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield's "Vaccine Provider Incentive program" for Kentucky-based providers. The document showed doctors could make thousands of dollars in bonus compensation for inoculating their patients during the pandemic. Two separate categories were outlined in the document. The first included bonus parameters for providers based on their practice's total vaccination numbers by Sept. 1, 2021. Providers in the state of Kentucky could have made anywhere from $20 to $125 per vaccinated patient. For example, to receive the $125 bonus per vaccinated patient, the provider must have vaccinated at least 75% of their practice's total Anthem members by Sept. 1, 2021. The second category bumped up the bonuses but was specifically for inoculations between Sept. 1, 2021, and Dec. 31, 2021. The parameters for that shorter time frame gave Anthem providers as much as $250 per newly vaccinated individual if the provider has inoculated at least 75% of its Anthem members. As with the previous category ... the bonus amount per newly inoculated patient varies. For context, a health provider with roughly 265 patients could have received as much as a $25,000 bonus for vaccinating 200 of their patients before Sept. 1, 2021. "Your primary care provider was bribed to suggest you should take the COVID vaccine," Massie tweeted alongside an image of a FAQ sheet laying out the parameters for the program.

Note: Read more on the concerns regarding massive financial incentives for doctors and hospitals to implement public health strategies that many say caused more harm than good. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on coronavirus vaccines from reliable major media sources.


Loneliness poses risks as deadly as smoking: surgeon general
2023-05-02, Associated Press
Posted: 2023-05-22 01:15:49
https://apnews.com/article/surgeon-general-loneliness-334450f7bb5a77e88d8085b...

Widespread loneliness in the U.S. poses health risks as deadly as smoking up to 15 cigarettes daily, costing the health industry billions of dollars annually, the U.S. surgeon general said. About half of U.S. adults say they’ve experienced loneliness, Dr. Vivek Murthy said in an 81-page report. “Loneliness is ... a feeling the body sends us when something we need for survival is missing,” Murthy [said]. “Millions of people in America are struggling. That’s why I issued this advisory.” Research shows that Americans, who have become less engaged with worship houses, community organizations and even their own family members in recent decades, have steadily reported an increase in feelings of loneliness. People culled their friend groups during the coronavirus pandemic. Americans spent about 20 minutes a day in person with friends in 2020, down from 60 minutes daily nearly two decades earlier. The loneliness epidemic is hitting young people, ages 15 to 24, especially hard. The age group reported a 70% drop in time spent with friends during the same period. Loneliness increases the risk of premature death by nearly 30%, with the report revealing that those with poor social relationships also had a greater risk of stroke and heart disease. Isolation also elevates a person’s likelihood for experiencing depression, anxiety and dementia. People who used social media for two hours or more daily were more than twice as likely to report feeling socially isolated than those who were on such apps for less than 30 minutes a day.

Note: Listen to an inspiring interview with U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy, where he envisions a new 'social' infrastructure for humanity that consists of programs, policies, and structures that foster healthy relationships and bring healing to the mental health crisis. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on health from reliable major media sources.


EPA accused of failing to regulate use of toxic herbicides despite court order
2023-04-24, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2023-05-22 01:14:09
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/apr/24/epa-monsanto-toxic-herbic...

The US Environmental Protection Agency has in effect ignored a 2020 federal court order prohibiting the use of Monsanto and other producers' toxic dicamba-based herbicides that are destroying millions of acres of cropland, harming endangered species and increasing cancer risks for farmers, new fillings in the lawsuit charge. Instead of permanently yanking the products from the market after the 2020 order, the EPA only required industry to add further application instructions to the herbicides' labels before reapproving the products. A late 2021 EPA investigation found the same problems persist even with new directions added to the label, but the agency still allows Monsanto, BASF and other producers to continue using dicamba. The EPA's pesticide office is included in allegations that career managers are influenced by or have colluded with industry, and in some cases falsified science to make dangerous substances appear less toxic. About one-third of the pesticide office's funding comes from industry fees. The agency in 2016 approved the dicamba-based herbicide developed by Monsanto, which was to be used on genetically modified soybean and cotton crops. The herbicide can damage or kill neighboring crops and plants that are not engineered to be dicamba-resistant. The results are "devastating" and destroying millions of acres as "as never before seen in the history of US agriculture", the plaintiffs said. In some cases, direct dicamba exposure can kill insects, mammals and other animals.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corruption in government and in the food system from reliable major media sources.


Less Than a Third of Heavily Advertised Drugs have 'High Therapeutic Value': Study as reported by US News and World Report
2023-01-18, US News & World Report
Posted: 2023-05-22 01:11:57
https://www.usnews.com/news/health-news/articles/2023-01-18/less-than-a-third...

Television ads for drugs are filled with glowing images of people living their best lives, all thanks to that new med they've been prescribed. But drugs being touted on TV often have little to no benefit compared to other treatments, a new study published online Jan. 13 in JAMA Network Open finds. Fewer than one-third of drugs commonly advertised in the United States are highly rated first-line therapies, based on regulatory reviews from three different health agencies, the researchers said. Further, medications categorized as "low benefit" accounted for nearly $16 billion of the $22 billion in TV ad spending during the six-year study period, the results showed. "Proponents of direct-to-consumer pharmaceutical advertising often argue that these ads have high public health value by encouraging uptake of the most therapeutically beneficial therapies. Our study pushes back against this argument," said lead researcher Neeraj Patel. "The U.S. is one of only two high-income countries in the world that widely permits direct-to-consumer advertising of prescription drugs," Patel said. "And there's been a ton of empirical research over the past two decades that has suggested that this type of advertising can be misleading, lead to inappropriate prescribing, and inflate health care costs." In the meantime, people should have frank discussions with their doctor about any drug that's caught their eye on TV, focusing on the real risks and benefits, Patel said.

Note: This profoundly eye-opening interview of a top cardiologist reveals without doubt how big Pharma has corrupted science and greatly damaged public health. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on big Pharma corruption from reliable major media sources.


The pharmaceutical industry finances about 75 percent of the [FDA]'s drug division
2022-09-15, New York Times
Posted: 2023-05-22 01:09:34
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/15/health/fda-drug-industry-fees.html

Every five years, top officials of the Food and Drug Administration go behind closed doors to negotiate the terms of its core budget – about $3 billion this year. But the F.D.A. is not at the table with members of Congress or with White House officials. Instead, it's in dozens of meetings with representatives of the giant pharmaceutical companies whose products the agency regulates. The negotiations are a piece of the "user fee" program in which drug, device and biotech companies make payments to the agency partly to seek product approvals. The fees ... make up nearly half of the F.D.A.'s budget, financing 6,500 jobs at the agency. The pharmaceutical industry funding alone has become so dominant that last year it accounted for three-quarters – or $1.1 billion – of the agency's drug division budget. Advocates for patients and doctors say the agreements have enabled the industry to weaken the approval process meant to ensure that drugs are safe and effective. "It's kind of like a devil's bargain," said Dr. Joseph Ross, a professor at the Yale School of Medicine who has studied F.D.A. policies, "that I think is not in the best interest of the agency, because it turns this every-five-year cycle into the F.D.A. essentially asking industry, 'What can we do to secure this money?'" Senator Bernie Sanders ... suggested that the pharmaceutical companies' tendency to charge "outrageous" prices was related to their significant role in funding and advancing policy goals of the F.D.A.'s drug division.

Note: A revealing interview of a top cardiologist illuminates the history of how Big Pharma has corrupted science and greatly damaged public health. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of news articles on big Pharma corruption from reliable major media sources.


Does Direct-to-Consumer Advertising Directly Harm Patients?
2023-03-29, Time Magazine
Posted: 2023-05-22 01:07:48
https://time.com/6266695/direct-to-consumer-advertising-harm-patients/

Researchers from Johns Hopkins University recently published an article in JAMA that highlights rising concern around the effects of direct-to-consumer advertising (DTC) on health care. Their work shows that DTC advertising might have direct harm on patients. They studied drug characteristics and total advertising expenditures for the 150 top-selling branded prescription drugs in the United States, finding that total promotional spending by the manufacturer was associated with a significantly lower added clinical benefit for the drug. In fact, companies spent nearly 15% more on DTC advertising for drugs that had demonstrated lower added benefit. Even more troubling, each 1.5% increase in spending was associated with a 10% increase in sales. Simply put, pharmaceutical companies spent more money on DTC advertising when medical research found that the drug was less effective, and this spending directly led to more sales for those inferior drugs. The U.S. is one of only two countries in the world that still allows direct-to-consumer advertising. Aside from increased pressure on providers to prescribe particular drugs which may not be the best option, there are other downsides to DTC. The data show that DTC advertising leads to increased drug costs overall, adding to the already skyrocketing costs of medical care in America. Additionally, DTC advertising tends to reduce use of generic medications, which are often equally effective but significantly cheaper for patients.

Note: This profoundly eye-opening interview of a top cardiologist reveals without doubt how big Pharma has corrupted science and greatly damaged public health. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on big Pharma corruption from reliable major media sources.


Fighting giants: eco-activist Vandana Shiva on her battle against GM multinationals
2023-04-28, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2023-05-22 01:05:20
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2023/apr/28/fighting-giants-ec...

For almost five decades, [Dr. Vandana] Shiva has been deeply engaged in the fight for environmental justice in India. Regarded as one of the world's most formidable environmentalists, she has worked to save forests, shut down polluting mines, exposed the dangers of pesticides, spurred on the global campaign for organic farming, championed ecofeminism and gone up against powerful giant chemical corporations. Her battle to protect the world's seeds in their natural form – rather than genetically altered and commercially controlled versions – continues to be her life's work. "I couldn't understand why were we told that new technology brings progress, but everywhere I looked, local people were getting poorer and landscapes were being devastated as soon as this development or new technology came in," she says. "No one was stopping to ask: what will be the impact on the environment? What will this cost the farmers? They only wanted to win the race and control all the world's seeds." Currently more than 60% of the world's' commercial seeds are sold by just four companies, which have led the push to patent seeds, orchestrated a global monopoly of certain [genetically modified] crops such as cotton and soya and sued hundreds of small-scale farmers for saving seeds from commercial crops. Shiva considers her most important work to be her travels through India's villages, collecting and saving seeds ... setting up more than 100 seed banks, and helping farmers return to organic methods.

Note: The Seeds of Vandana Shiva is an excellent documentary that reveals the remarkable life story of Dr. Shiva, her significant influence in creating an international food justice movement, and how she stood up to the big players of industrial agriculture. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on GMOs and food system corruption from reliable major media sources.


Human DNA can now be pulled from thin air or a footprint on the beach. Here’s what that could mean
2023-05-15, CNN News
Posted: 2023-05-22 01:02:22
https://www.cnn.com/2023/05/15/health/human-dna-captured-from-air-scn/index.html

Footprints left on a beach. Air breathed in a busy room. Ocean water. Scientists have been able to collect and analyze detailed genetic data from human DNA from all these places, raising thorny ethical questions about consent, privacy and security when it comes to our biological information. The researchers from the University of Florida, who were using environmental DNA found in sand to study endangered sea turtles, said the DNA was of such high quality that the scientists could ... determine the genetic ancestry of populations living nearby. They could also match genetic information to individual participants who had volunteered to have their DNA recovered. Human DNA that has seeped into the environment through our spit, skin, sweat and blood could be used to help find missing persons, aid in forensic investigations to solve crimes, locate sites of archaeological importance, and for health monitoring. However, the ability to capture human DNA from the environment could have a range of unintended consequences — both inadvertent and malicious. These included privacy breaches, location tracking, data harvesting, and genetic surveillance of individuals or groups. [Researchers] retrieved DNA from footprints made in sand by four volunteers. They were able to sequence part of the participants’ genomes. Next, the researchers took samples of air from a ... room in an animal clinic. The team recovered DNA that matched the staff volunteers [and] animal patients.

Note: This research was published in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on the disappearance of privacy from reliable major media sources.


The FCC Is Supposed to Protect the Environment. It Doesn’t.
2023-05-02, ProPublica
Posted: 2023-05-22 01:00:03
https://www.propublica.org/article/fcc-environment-cell-towers-failures

Few people think of the FCC as an environmental cop. It’s known for regulating television and radio and overseeing the deployment of communications technology. But the agency also has a broad mandate to ensure that technology doesn’t damage the environment. This role is particularly critical now, as the FCC presides over a nationwide buildout for 5G service, which will require 800,000 new “small cell” transmitters, those perched on street poles and rooftops, often near schools, apartments and homes. But even with this massive effort underway, as ProPublica previously reported, the FCC has refused to revise its radiation-exposure limits, which date back to the era of flip phones. In addition, the agency has cut back on the environmental reviews that it requires while also restricting local governments’ control over wireless sites. The agency operates on the honor system, delegating much of its responsibility to the industries that it regulates. It allows companies to decide for themselves whether their projects require environmental study. And if the companies break the rules, they’re expected to report their own transgression. Few do. In the rare instances in which the FCC investigates, even brazen illegality is often met with a minor fine, a scolding “admonishment” or no action at all. Just 10% of FCC enforcement cases between 2014 and 2016 resulted in a monetary penalty, while 40% ended with a warning and the rest resulted in no action.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption from reliable major media sources.


How a Human Rights Lawyer Went From Hero to House Arrest
2020-03-31, The Nation
Posted: 2023-05-22 00:57:23
https://www.thenation.com/article/activism/steven-donziger-chevron/

More than a quarter-century ago, Steven Donziger, a young American human rights lawyer, joined the legal effort to force Texaco to clean up the Ecuadoran headwaters of the Amazon rain forest. Between 1972 and 1992, the company dumped toxic waste and spilled billions of gallons of oil-exposed water across 1,700 square miles, an area larger than Rhode Island. In response, a coalition of rural Ecuadorans in the Lago Agrio region sued the US oil giant, and Donziger signed on to help and soon became the lead attorney on the case. In 2013, after a legal campaign that stretched across two continents, the 30,000 indigenous people and small farmers whom Donziger represented in a class-action lawsuit won a $9.5 billion judgment in Ecuadoran courts against Chevron, which acquired Texaco in 2001. It was one of the largest financial judgments ever against an oil company. Fast-forward to today, and Don­ziger is under house arrest in New York City, forced to wear an ankle monitor. The lawyer, now 59, is fighting contempt charges. Meanwhile, his clients in Ecuador have received nothing from Chevron. Without that funding, they have no way to cleanse the poisoned soil or treat what they say is an elevated number of cancer cases. In 2010 ... Chevron launched a countersuit in a New York federal court, alleging that Donziger and his allies had committed bribery and fraud in Ecuador to win the case. Meanwhile, residents in the Amazon rain forest live and work on poisoned land.

Note: Read more about this troubling case. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corporate corruption from reliable major media sources.


The secret to why exercise is so good for mental health? 'Hope molecules'
2023-05-04, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2023-05-22 00:51:27
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/may/04/exercise-mental-health-...

One of the most interesting health research projects of the past decade or so has looked at how exactly exercise makes us feel good. Research shows that there appears to be a clear scientific reason, that we can see at a cellular level. When muscles contract, they secrete chemicals into the bloodstream. Among these chemicals are myokines, which have been referred to as "hope molecules". These small proteins travel to the brain, cross the blood-brain barrier, and act as an antidepressant. They do this by improving our mood, our ability to learn, our capacity for locomotor activity, and protect the brain from the negative effects of ageing. This has been referred to as "muscle-brain cross-talk". They're also responsible for improved metabolism, reduced inflammation, and increased muscle strength. Myokines are not solely responsible for feeling good: exercise also releases neurotransmitters such as dopamine, noradrenaline and serotonin that have a positive impact on our brains. So when you're feeling low, it's tempting to do a Netflix binge, or spend hours scrolling on social media comparing others' lives to yours, and feeling increasingly sad. This is especially true for teenagers. The antidote we know clearly from epidemiology and biology is to just get moving: whether it's joining a team, going for a long walk, or finding a community gym or yoga class. You'll certainly feel more hopeful afterwards.

Note: Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.


Inside Too Good To Go’s Mission To Make Unused Food Accessible To All
2023-04-21, Forbes
Posted: 2023-05-22 00:48:18
https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevenaquino/2023/04/21/inside-too-good-to-gos-m...

Food costs, especially in times of inflation, can be exorbitant. Likewise, getting to a brick-and-mortar grocery store may well be logistically impossible due to health and/or mobility concerns. It’s also true having limited access to food may be detrimental not merely because a person lacks basic sustenance, but also because certain medications work only when taken with food. Without it, those drugs may cease to work as effectively, if at all. Founded in 2016 in Copenhagen by five entrepreneurs, the team at Too Good To Go is trying to curb food insecurity around the globe by fighting food waste. On its website, Too Good To Go (TGTG) reports 2.8 billion tons of food is wasted every year. The app, available on iOS and Android, features a number of partner businesses—bakeries, supermarkets, and restaurants—nearest a user’s location that are giving away so-called “Surprise Bags” of unsold food. Rather than perfectly good food wasting away in a waste basket somewhere, TGTG users can stop by said businesses and pick up the food for themselves. The app’s UI is similar to those of on-demand food delivery services like ... DoorDash, UberEats, and Postmates. Users are able to see which places are available, what they may get, and then sign up to pick up the items at a designated time. To date, TGTG boasts 4.2 million users and 9,790 businesses on its platform. Earlier this month, the company ... announced they are carbon neutral and have saved 100 million bags in the last seven years.

Note: Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.


The Surprising Role of Blind Women in India's Health Care System
2023-05-18, Reasons to be Cheerful
Posted: 2023-05-22 00:43:43
https://reasonstobecheerful.world/blind-women-detect-breast-cancer-india/

On a sunny March morning in Bengaluru, Ayesha Banu and Noorunnisa walk up to the stage of Nitte Meenakshi Institute of Technology. Their white canes folded and held aside, they speak to a packed hall of students and teachers about their work as Medical Tactile Examiners (MTEs). "We assist doctors in detecting the early signs of breast cancer in women," Banu speaks into the mic. "Using the first two fingers of both hands, we examine women's breasts for abnormalities." She explains that blind women like herself and Noorunnisa are especially well-suited to this profession because of the "high tactile sense in our fingertips, which helps us find tiny lumps in the breast." Tactile breast examinations, or TBEs, are clinical breast examinations specially designed for blind women trained as MTEs. Employing MTEs for routine breast cancer screening – and reaching women in their communities and workplaces – could help in the early detection of cancer and save lives, says Dr. Poovamma CU, the breast specialist under whom Banu and Noorunnisa work. Studies prove that in the absence of sight, blind people's brains can develop a heightened sense of touch, as well as hearing. Through the MTE training, a woman with vision impairment is able to empower another woman, by offering her preventive health care. In a recent Indian study where two MTEs conducted TBEs on 1,338 women, their success rate of detecting malignant cancers was over 78 percent, and the miss rate, only one percent.

Note: Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring disabled persons news articles.


AI makes non-invasive mind-reading possible by turning thoughts into text
2023-05-01, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2023-05-15 15:48:26
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/may/01/ai-makes-non-invasive-mind...

An AI-based decoder that can translate brain activity into a continuous stream of text has been developed, in a breakthrough that allows a person’s thoughts to be read non-invasively for the first time. The decoder could reconstruct speech with uncanny accuracy while people listened to a story – or even silently imagined one – using only fMRI scan data. Previous language decoding systems have required surgical implants. Large language models – the kind of AI underpinning OpenAI’s ChatGPT ... are able to represent, in numbers, the semantic meaning of speech, allowing the scientists to look at which patterns of neuronal activity corresponded to strings of words with a particular meaning rather than attempting to read out activity word by word. The decoder was personalised and when the model was tested on another person the readout was unintelligible. It was also possible for participants on whom the decoder had been trained to thwart the system, for example by thinking of animals or quietly imagining another story. Jerry Tang, a doctoral student at the University of Texas at Austin and a co-author, said: “We take very seriously the concerns that it could be used for bad purposes and have worked to avoid that. We want to make sure people only use these types of technologies when they want to and that it helps them.” Prof Tim Behrens, a computational neuroscientist ... said it opened up a host of experimental possibilities, including reading thoughts from someone dreaming.

Note: This technology has advanced considerably since Jose Delgado first stopped a charging bull using radio waves in 1965. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on mind control and the disappearance of privacy from reliable major media sources.


How "media literacy" became the new "fake news": A meaningless corporate buzzword
2022-10-14, Salon
Posted: 2023-05-15 15:46:06
https://www.salon.com/2022/10/14/media-literacy-has-become-the-new-fake-news-...

Tessa Jolls, president of the Center for Media Literacy, published a report last month entitled "Building Resiliency: Media Literacy as a Strategic Defense Strategy for the Transatlantic." It reads like a blueprint for indoctrinating students in corporatism and militarism under the auspices of media literacy education. The standard definition of media literacy used in American education is "the ability to access, analyze, evaluate, create and act using all forms of communication." In response to the post-2016 panic over fake news, there was a demand for more media literacy education in schools. This provided a window of opportunity for major media companies — which had long sought to enter the classroom to advertise their products and collect student data — to move rapidly toward indoctrinate students with corporate propaganda under the "media literacy" umbrella. The same military and intelligence communities now calling for "media literacy" have been producing and spreading fake news, at home and abroad, for at least 70 years. Jolla' report ignores that members of the same military and intelligence communities that she lauds have produced and spread fake news to U.S. citizens, from the time of Operation Mockingbird in the mid-20th century up through the present on various social media platforms. She also never discusses public efforts to disempower the military-industrial complex's ability to dictate truth. Real media literacy education empowers students to ... ask their own questions.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and media manipulation from reliable sources.


Army Info War Division Wants Social Media Surveillance to Protect 'NATO Brand'
2023-04-07, The Intercept
Posted: 2023-05-15 15:43:40
https://theintercept.com/2023/04/27/army-cyber-command-nato-social-media/

The U.S. Army Cyber Command told defense contractors it planned to surveil global social media use to defend the "NATO brand," according to a 2022 webinar recording reviewed by The Intercept. "NATO is one of our key brands that we are pushing, as far as our national security alliance," [Lt. Col. David Beskow] explained. The mass social media surveillance appears to be just one component of a broader initiative to use private-sector data mining to advance the Army's information warfare efforts. Beskow expressed an interest in purchasing access to nonpublic commercial web data, corporate ownership records, supply chain data, and more. While the U.S. national security establishment frequently warns against other countries' "weaponization" of social media and the broader internet, recent reporting has shown the Pentagon engages in some of the very same conduct. Researchers from Graphika and the Stanford Internet Observatory uncovered a network of pro-U.S. Twitter and Facebook accounts covertly operated by U.S. Central Command, an embarrassing revelation that led to a “sweeping audit of how it conducts clandestine information warfare." Despite years of alarm in Washington over the threat posed by deepfake video fabrications to democratic societies, The Intercept reported last month that U.S. Special Operations Command is seeking vendors to help them make their own deepfakes to deceive foreign internet users.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on military corruption and media manipulation from reliable sources.


How George Soros funds ‘fact checkers’ to silence dissent
2023-01-25, New York Post
Posted: 2023-05-15 15:42:09
https://nypost.com/2023/01/25/how-george-soros-funds-fact-checkers-to-silence...

It’s not enough for George Soros to fund the media and encourage stories that back up his point of view — he has to make sure no one disagrees with it. Last year, Soros partnered with ... billionaire Reid Hoffman (the co-founder of LinkedIn) to financially back a project to fight so-called disinformation. The name they chose: Good Information Inc. Major fact-checking organizations such as PolitiFact, Snopes, and others have long faced allegations of left-wing political bias — allegations a series of studies over the years have confirmed. One of the more recent studies of bias on PolitiFact found sources six times more likely to defend Biden in their “fact-checks” than check his facts. Major funding for PolitiFact’s parent company, The Poynter Institute, includes the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, Ford Foundation, Soros-backed Tides Foundation ... among many others. One project of the Poynter Institute specifically, the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN), was launched in 2015 with its initial funding coming from the National Endowment for Democracy (backed by the US State Department), the Omidyar Network, Google, Facebook, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and George Soros’ Open Society Foundations. The problem, of course, is that these “fact checks” are anything but impartial. Facebook and other social-media companies censored any articles that suggested the COVID-19 virus leaked from a Wuhan lab, based on denials of scientists who had a conflict of interest.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on mass media manipulation from reliable sources.


Schools Are Pouring Millions Into AI-Powered Weapon Detection Systems. Do They Work?
2023-05-07, The Intercept
Posted: 2023-05-15 15:40:38
https://theintercept.com/2023/05/07/ai-gun-weapons-detection-schools-evolv/

As school shootings proliferate across the country — there were 46 school shootings in 2022, more than in any year since at least 1999 — educators are increasingly turning to dodgy vendors who market misleading and ineffective technology. Utica City is one of dozens of school districts nationwide that have spent millions on gun detection technology with little to no track record of preventing or stopping violence. Evolv’s scanners keep popping up in schools across the country. Over 65 school districts have bought or tested artificial intelligence gun detection from a variety of companies since 2018, spending a total of over $45 million, much of it coming from public coffers. “Private companies are preying on school districts’ worst fears and proposing the use of technology that’s not going to work,” said Stefanie Coyle ... at the New York Civil Liberties Union. In December, it came out that Evolv, a publicly traded company since 2021, had doctored the results of their software testing. In 2022, the National Center for Spectator Sports Safety and Security, a government body, completed a confidential report showing that previous field tests on the scanners failed to detect knives and a handgun. Five law firms recently announced investigations of Evolv Technology — a partner of Motorola Solutions whose investors include Bill Gates — looking into possible violations of securities law, including claims that Evolv misrepresented its technology and its capabilities to it.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption from reliable major media sources.


Julian Assange at Vanguard for World Press Freedom
2023-05-07, LA Progressive
Posted: 2023-05-15 15:38:55
https://www.laprogressive.com/the-media-in-the-united-states/julian-assange-a...

We celebrate World Press Freedom Day in May as a reminder that the role of news organizations is to speak truth to power. It’s an occasion to remember three people who exemplify the need to speak the truth: Daniel Ellsberg of Pentagon Papers fame and Julian Assange of WikiLeaks; and also of Chelsea Manning, without whom we would not have the proof of what the United States was doing, not only in Iraq and Afghanistan but all across the globe. Ellsberg’s Pentagon Papers were a mere 7,000 pages, and he photocopied them by hand. Chelsea Manning’s “papers”, which Assange outed, earning the U.S. government’s enmity, consisted of about 750,000 documents. Assange and WikiLeaks that made possible for Manning’s information to reach people across the globe. And even when he and Manning have been arrested, jailed and isolated, the information on Wikileaks still continues to be accessible to all of us. Even today the Baghdad video of Collateral Murder, posted on WikiLeaks, was seen across the world and brought home that the United States was lying and involved in a massive cover-up of its war crimes. The Diplomatic Cables on Wikileaks informed the Tunisian people about the kleptocratic rule of the Ben Ali family and started what was later named as Arab Spring. Just as the surveillance state has invaded every nook and corner of our lives, the pathological need of the surveillance state to access and store all this information also makes the state porous and vulnerable.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and media manipulation from reliable sources.


How the Murder of a CIA Officer Was Used to Silence the Agency's Greatest Critic
2023-05-09, The Intercept
Posted: 2023-05-15 15:36:31
https://theintercept.com/2023/05/09/cia-frank-church-richard-welch-book/

[CIA station chief Richard] Welch's assassination was huge news and struck a painful political nerve in Washington, coming at the end of a year of stunning disclosures about the CIA and the rest of the U.S. intelligence community by the Senate's Church Committee ... throughout 1975. The Church Committee's unprecedented investigation marked the first effort by Congress to unearth decades of abusive and illegal acts secretly committed by the CIA. [The Church Committee] is responsible for bringing the CIA, the FBI, the National Security Agency, and the rest of the government's intelligence apparatus under the rule of law. The White House and CIA quickly realized that the Welch killing, which occurred just as the Church Committee was finishing its investigations and preparing its final report ... could be used as a political weapon. President Gerald Ford's White House and the agency falsely sought to blame the Church Committee for Welch's murder, claiming, without any evidence, that its investigations had somehow exposed Welch's identity and left him vulnerable to assassination. There was absolutely no truth to the claims. Welch had been murdered by Greek terrorists. The false narrative that Welch had been murdered because of reckless disclosures in Washington remained powerful for years afterward, ultimately leading to legislation that made it illegal to publish the names of covert CIA officers, a law that has since often been abused by the government to crack down on whistleblowers and dissent.

Note: Read more on how US intelligence agencies are intentionally designed to not have oversight over the blatant human rights violations they take a part of. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on intelligence agency corruption from reliable major media sources.


Saudi Arabia Owns Stake in Firm that Bought Democratic Party’s Campaign Tech
2023-04-23, The Intercept
Posted: 2023-05-15 15:34:54
https://theintercept.com/2023/04/23/saudi-arabia-democratic-party-campaign-ng...

The government of Saudi Arabia is an investor in the private company that owns a virtual monopoly on software that powers Democratic candidates — including management of the Democratic National Committee’s all-important voter list. Sanabil Investments, the company that manages Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, recently published its first list of investments. The list includes two private equity firms involved two years ago in the sale and acquisition of EveryAction and NGP VAN, the companies that make up the Democratic Party’s campaign tech apparatus. Federal regulations are designed to stop sovereign wealth funds from interfering in domestic politics. If a particular investment includes a national security risk, federal regulators can force the transaction to be undone through the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States under the Department of the Treasury. Most of that risk is typically mitigated because sovereign wealth funds tend to be invested in companies through intermediaries. Investment in a company that deals with data related to voting and politics could be of potential concern to the Committee on Foreign Investment, even if the investor has no real influence over relevant data. The Sanabil investment doesn’t mean the Saudi government has an interest in the functions of the companies. Instead, said progressive strategist Gabe Tobias, the disclosure is a further indication that the fate of EveryAction and NGP VAN is not a priority for their owners.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on elections corruption from reliable major media sources.


Big Tech Companies Are Becoming More Powerful Than Nation-States
2023-04-25, Common Dreams
Posted: 2023-05-15 15:33:27
https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/big-tech-companies-more-powerful-than-na...

U.S. citizens are being subjected to a relentless onslaught from intrusive technologies that have become embedded in the everyday fabric of our lives, creating unprecedented levels of social and political upheaval. These widely used technologies ... include social media and what Harvard professor Shoshanna Zuboff calls "surveillance capitalism"—the buying and selling of our personal info and even our DNA in the corporate marketplace. But powerful new ones are poised to create another wave of radical change. Under the mantle of the "Fourth Industrial Revolution," these include artificial intelligence or AI, the metaverse, the Internet of Things, the Internet of Bodies (in which our physical and health data is added into the mix to be processed by AI), and my personal favorite, police robots. This is a two-pronged effort involving both powerful corporations and government initiatives. These tech-based systems are operating "below the radar" and rarely discussed in the mainstream media. The world's biggest tech companies are now richer and more powerful than most countries. According to an article in PC Week in 2021 discussing Apple's dominance: "By taking the current valuation of Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, and others, then comparing them to the GDP of countries on a map, we can see just how crazy things have become… Valued at $2.2 trillion, the Cupertino company is richer than 96% of the world. In fact, only seven countries currently outrank the maker of the iPhone financially."

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corporate corruption and the disappearance of privacy from reliable major media sources.


The ‘Big Lie’: Election Denialism is an Art Practiced by Both Sides
2022-10-31, ScheerPost
Posted: 2023-05-15 15:31:41
https://scheerpost.com/2022/10/31/the-big-lie-election-denialism-is-an-art-pr...

Electoral denialism did not start with Trump. In the U.S., this chicanery dates back to the early days of the republic. In [2016], Clinton and the DNC machine borrowed from the Republican playbook, and rationalized with speculations and outright falsehoods to cover for her loss in order to delegitimize the Trump presidency. Unlike the Democrats who rightly rejected the results in 2000, Clinton and her DNC supporters spent four years spreading false and baseless reasons for their defeat. If past is prologue, each party may well continue to escalate their electoral denial to a level where election results will simply not matter at all. In 2016, Clinton officially conceded, but publicly denied the election results. In 2020, Trump exploited the electoral cynicism that was decades in the making and refused to officially concede. This inspired his supporters to storm the U.S. Capitol and reject the election results. Granted, Democrats didn’t do the same in 2016, but who knows the degree to which continued hyper-partisanship will escalate electoral denialism in the future? Nonetheless, the point remains that denial and lack of acceptance of election outcomes was very much part of the Democrats’ narrative from 2016, parroted by MSNBC and CNN in particular. It’s not just Fox News and Trump that are the problem here. It’s civic decay. Bottom line: it is simply unsustainable for a country to have half of the voters, not to mention the candidates or party leaders, refuse to accept election results.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on elections corruption from reliable major media sources.


Local communities are buying medical debt for pennies on the dollar–and freeing American families from the threat of bankruptcy
2023-03-10, Fortune
Posted: 2023-05-15 15:30:03
https://fortune.com/2023/03/10/local-communities-are-buying-medical-debt-for-...

No one chooses medical debt. Many Americans who fall ill have no choice but to rack up debt in order to stay healthy or, in some cases, stay alive. For the underinsured and uninsured, incurring debt is inevitable. In a June 2022 survey, 40% percent of adults said they were burdened with medical debt. But progress on this issue is already underway. A recent report found that medical debt has fallen by almost 18% since 2020. This change is no coincidence, rather it points to the real impact that relief programs ... have had on everyday Americans. One such program comes out of my city of Toledo, Ohio. In November, Toledo City Council passed a community-scale medical debt relief initiative in partnership with Lucas County. We partnered with the national charity RIP Medical Debt and devoted $800,000 of Toledo’s ARPA funds (and $800,000 of the matched commitment from Lucas county) to medical debt relief. The way it works is simple: RIP Medical Debt purchases debt for pennies on the dollar and then relieves the debt. Our groundbreaking program will wipe out as much as $240 million in medical debt for as many as 41,000 people at a cost of only $1.6 million. There are no administrative hurdles for community members to overcome. Instead, relief recipients are simply sent a letter informing them their debt has been canceled. Two-thirds of Americans (67%) would support the Toledo model for medical debt relief being adopted in their community, including strong majorities of Democrats, Republicans, and Independents. 

Note: Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.


Minnesota’s Prison-to-Grilled-Cheese Pipeline Is Changing Lives
2023-04-27, Reasons to be Cheerful
Posted: 2023-05-15 15:28:38
https://reasonstobecheerful.world/minnesota-all-square-prison-entrepreneurs/

All Square in Minneapolis, Minnesota ... with its bright pink neon sign buzzing in the window on Minnehaha Avenue, is serving up much more than gooey sandwiches. Launched in September 2018 by a civil rights lawyer, All Square is a social enterprise that uses its restaurant (and a food truck) to right the wrongs of the American criminal justice system. The staff of All Square “fellows” is a rotating cohort of formerly incarcerated people. During the nine-month fellowship, employees receive not only a living wage, but also wraparound services like therapy sessions, professional development support and access to funding opportunities. To date, All Square has provided 48 fellowships, $2.8 million in wages ($1.6 million of which has gone directly to formerly incarcerated Minnesotans), 400 therapy sessions, and more than $60,000 in micro-grants for seed capital and debt alleviation. The overarching goal of All Square is to offer a true second chance at life post-incarceration that is otherwise systematically denied through near insurmountable restrictions to necessities like housing and jobs. Leveraging entrepreneurship to sidestep the inability to access traditional employment is just what Onika Goodluck, one of the original 14 fellows, did. Turned onto the program by her probation officer, Goodluck applied and after two interviews, landed the gig. After 10 years of on-and-off incarceration ... she says that therapy has made the biggest difference.

Note: Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.


Pope Francis gives women right to vote in bishops’ meeting for first time
2023-04-26, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2023-05-15 15:27:13
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/apr/27/pope-francis-gives-women-right-...

Pope Francis has decided to give women the right to vote at an upcoming meeting of bishops, an unprecedented change that reflects his hopes to give women greater decision-making responsibilities. Francis approved changes to the norms governing the Synod of Bishops, a Vatican body that gathers the world’s bishops together for periodic meetings, following decades of demands by women to have the right to vote. The Vatican on Wednesday published the modifications he approved, which emphasise his vision for the lay faithful taking on a greater role in church affairs that have long been left to clerics, bishops and cardinals. Ever since the Second Vatican Council, the 1960s meetings that modernized the church, popes have summoned the world’s bishops to Rome for a few weeks at a time to debate particular topics. At the end of the meetings, the bishops vote on specific proposals and put them to the pope, who then produces a document taking their views into account. Until now, the only people who could vote were men. But under the new changes, five religious sisters will join five priests as voting representatives for religious orders. In addition, Francis has decided to appoint 70 non-bishop members of the synod and has asked that half of them be women. They too will have a vote. The aim is also to include young people among these 70 non-bishop members, who will be proposed to the pope by regional blocs, with Francis making a final decision.

Note: Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.


JPMorgan’s Ties to Jeffrey Epstein Were Deeper Than the Bank Has Acknowledged
2023-04-21, Wall Street Journal
Posted: 2023-05-08 12:14:37
https://www.wsj.com/articles/jpmorgan-jeffrey-epstein-525febe3

JPMorgan Chase & Co. had ties to Jeffrey Epstein that ran deeper than the bank has acknowledged and extended years beyond when it decided to close the convicted sex offender’s accounts. Mary Erdoes, a top lieutenant to Chief Executive Jamie Dimon, made two trips to Epstein’s townhouse on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, in 2011 and 2013, when Epstein still was a client of the bank, said the people familiar with the matter. She exchanged dozens of emails with him and discussed sharing with him fees related to a charitable fund the bank was considering launching. John Duffy, who ran JPMorgan’s U.S. private bank for the ultrarich, went to Epstein’s townhouse for a meeting in April 2013, the people said. One month later, the private bank renewed an authorization allowing Epstein to borrow money against his accounts despite repeated warnings from compliance staffers about his unusual banking practices. Justin Nelson, one of Epstein’s bankers at JPMorgan, had about a half-dozen meetings at Epstein’s townhouse between 2014 and 2017. He also traveled to Epstein’s ranch in New Mexico in 2016. Epstein was convicted of soliciting a minor for prostitution in 2008 and forced to register as a sex offender. The new details show that JPMorgan was treating Epstein like a star client after his first conviction and despite repeated warnings from its own employees. And after JPMorgan closed Epstein’s accounts, bankers kept meeting with him for years.

Note: One Nation Under Blackmail is a new book by Whitney Webb, an investigative journalist who explores the deep ties between Jeffrey Epstein and US and Israeli Intelligence criminal networks. Epstein had many concerning associations, including with Noam Chomsky as reported in Webb's most recent article. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on banking corruption and Jeffrey Epstein's crime ring from reliable major media sources.


Lab-created bird flu virus accident shows lax oversight of risky 'gain of function' research
2023-04-12, USA Today
Posted: 2023-05-08 12:12:26
https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2023/04/11/lab-leak-accident-h-5-n-1-v...

Inside the high-security Influenza Research Institute at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, two experienced scientists were pulling ferrets out of their HEPA-filtered cages on a Monday in December 2019. Another researcher, still in training, was also in the room to watch and learn. This particular experiment involved exposing the animals to a highly controversial lab-engineered strain of H5N1 avian influenza virus. Scientists had taken an avian influenza virus that was mostly dangerous to birds and manipulated it in ways that potentially increased its threat to humans. The research was supported [by] Dr. Francis S. Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health, and Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. On that December day, two experienced researchers from Kawaoka’s team were helping train a colleague as they collected samples from ferrets. One of their most important pieces of personal protective equipment was the air-purifying respirator that each wore. As one of the senior researchers prepared to start collecting samples from the next round of ferrets, the trainee realized there was a problem with their respirator. The powered air-purifying respirator (PAPR) hose had somehow disconnected from the unit. The detached hose dangled loose in the lab’s potentially contaminated air. In the end, the trainee apparently didn’t become infected. But how the university and the lab oversight system handled the incident should be cause for concern.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on science corruption from reliable major media sources.


Australian government is hit with class action lawsuit over Covid vaccines
2023-04-26, MSN News
Posted: 2023-05-08 12:09:51
https://www.msn.com/en-au/news/australia/australian-government-is-hit-with-cl...

A landmark Covid-19 vaccine injury class action lawsuit has been filed against the Australian government and the medicines regulator. The nation-wide suit, which reportedly has 500 members including three named applicants, seeks redress for those allegedly left injured or bereaved by the Covid-19 vaccines. One of the applicants who suffered a severe heart condition after getting the Pfizer jab is even claiming there was 'cover-up' during the vaccine rollout which hid the potential risks. The federal government, the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) and the Department of Health - in addition to a number of senior public servants - are all named as parties to the class action, which was filed in the New South Wales Federal Court. The named parties are accused of negligence in their approval and monitoring of Covid-19 vaccines, breach of statutory duty and misfeasance in public office. Instructing solicitor Natalie Strijland, of Brisbane law firm NR Barbi, said the action would argue the TGA caused considerable harm and damage by failing to regulate the COVID-19 vaccinations properly. The class action names three applicants, one of whom is 41-year old father-of-two Gareth O'Gradie. Mr O'Gradie, a teacher from Melbourne, was left with a 20-centimetre scar down his chest after developing severe pericarditis — inflammation of the lining around the heart — following his first Pfizer vaccination in July 2021. In February 2022 doctors performed open heart surgery to remove his the pericardial sac lining his heart.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on coronavirus vaccines from reliable major media sources.


COVID-19 vaccine claims yield small payouts from U.S. government
2023-04-18, Reuters
Posted: 2023-05-08 12:08:12
https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/covid-19-vaccine-claims-yield-small-...

Of more than 8,000 people who filed claims with the federal government alleging injuries from COVID-19 vaccines, three have now received cash payouts, new government data shows. Their combined compensation? Less than $5,000. One person who had an anaphylactic reaction to the shot received $2,020 from the government’s Countermeasures Injury Compensation Program, or CICP. Another who got myocarditis – an inflammation of the heart muscle – from the jab received $1,583, while a second myocarditis sufferer got $1,033, according to the data, which was released last week. A third myocarditis patient’s claim was approved but the person was denied compensation due to lack of eligible expenses. The CICP has doled out just three small awards confirms [that] the government program is ill-suited to adjudicate these cases. The no-fault tribunal run by the Health Resources and Services Administration is stymied by statute in the relief it can offer, with compensation limited to unreimbursed medical expenses and up to $50,000 a year in lost wages. A death benefit of up to $422,035 may also be available. There’s no allowance for pain and suffering, no punitive damages, no attorneys’ fees, no public hearings or opinions, no right to judicial appeal. But it’s the only legal recourse available for the unlucky few who have experienced serious adverse effects from the vaccines. The COVID-19 vaccine makers are indemnified by the government and are not party to CICP proceedings.

Note: This article attributes vaccine injuries to the "unlucky few." However, an increasing amount of evidence makes it clear that vaccine injuries are more common than what we're told, as revealed in countless anecdotal stories of those significantly harmed from the vaccine and Pfizer's very own disclosed documents. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on coronavirus vaccines from reliable major media sources.


America only had a handful of billionaires 40 years ago. We’re now creating ‘centibillionaires’–and unless we tax them, trillionaires
2023-04-05, Fortune
Posted: 2023-05-08 12:06:40
https://fortune.com/2023/04/05/america-billionaires-40-years-creating-centibi...

The centibillionaire club–those with over $100 billion in wealth–likely will be welcoming a new member soon. Forbes now estimates Michael Bloomberg’s wealth at $94.5 billion, making him the sixth richest American. If his wealth continues to grow at the rate it’s grown since 2013, Michael Bloomberg will join the centibillionaire club by the end of the year. At that point, he will be the 10th American to have reached that wealth level. Forty years ago, the mere billionaire club had just 13 members, and Daniel Ludwig, the richest American at the time, had a total wealth (adjusted for inflation) of $6.15 billion. Today, $1 billion of wealth in one person’s hands often means far too much political power, but that astounding amount of money is now considered a rounding error in the context of America’s largest fortunes. America’s 20 richest billionaires spent more than the entire Biden campaign on the 2020 elections. According to political scientists Jeffrey Winters and Benjamin Page, the political influence of each of the 400 richest Americans is 22,000 times that of the average member of the bottom 90%. What all Americans whose wealth has passed the $100 billion threshold have in common ... is tax avoidance. Between 2013 and 2018, none made federal income tax payments greater than 11% of their wealth growth–and all but two paid less than 5%. Even Ronald Reagan recognized that it’s “crazy” for a society to tax a bus driver at a higher rate than a millionaire.

Note: The pandemic response sharply increased the wealth of billionaires. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on income inequality from reliable major media sources.


Lockdowns, school closures and limiting gatherings only reduced COVID mortality by 0.2% at 'enormous economic and social costs', study finds
2022-02-02, Daily Mail (One of the UK's Popular Newspapers)
Posted: 2023-05-08 12:04:17
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10466995/New-study-says-lockdowns-re...

The original coronavirus lockdowns had 'little to no' effect on pandemic death tolls in the US, UK and Europe, a controversial report suggests. Economists who carried out a meta-analysis found draconian restrictions imposed in spring 2020 — including stay-at-home orders, compulsory masks and social distancing — only reduced Covid mortality by 0.2 per cent. They warned that lockdowns caused 'enormous economic and social costs' and concluded they were 'ill-founded and should be rejected as a pandemic policy instrument' going forward. The review, led by a Johns Hopkins University professor, argued that border closures had virtually zero effect on Covid mortality, reducing deaths by just 0.1 per cent. There has been a growing consensus that draconian restrictions have led to a rise in non-Covid deaths, thought to be people whose conditions worsened during the pandemic when they could not access healthcare. In the latest report, the researchers admit their review does not answer 'why' lockdowns didn't achieve their ultimate goal in saving lives but they float a number of explanations. They claimed the best explanation for differing Covid death rates in countries was 'differences in population age and health' and the 'quality of the health sector. But they could not rule out 'less obvious factors, such as culture, communication, and coincidences'. Covid deaths are also skewed by the volume of testing each country carries out, which many scientists have highlighted as the driving factor behind Britain's large toll.  

Note: Why did other major media completely ignore this vitally important news? You can find this critical study on the Johns Hopkins University website at this link. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on the coronavirus from reliable major media sources.


3 prominent economists slam COVID lockdowns and school closures and say they should never happen again
2022-02-02, Fortune
Posted: 2023-05-08 12:02:52
https://fortune.com/2022/02/02/3-prominent-economists-slam-covid-lockdowns-an...

When the COVID outbreak began in early 2020, a number of studies predicted that government-imposed lockdowns would prove highly effective in preventing deaths. A widely cited epidemiological paper by researchers at Imperial College London predicted that such measures as bans on travel and shelter-in-place mandates would reduce mortality from the virus by 98%. But now, a new analysis by three prominent economists that surveys all empirical data from the academic literature measuring the relationship between death and lockdowns finds that forced restrictions didn’t work. Their conclusion: Lockdowns reduced mortalities by a minuscule 0.2%. The study defines lockdowns as “compulsory non-pharmaceutical interventions,” or what’s commonly known as NPIs. They include restrictions on travel, school closures, bans on international travel, restrictions on movement within a country’s borders, and mask mandates. The authors note that lockdowns were virtually universal. Of the 186 nations followed by the Oxford COVID-19 Government Response Tracker, all but one - the Indian Ocean island nation of Comoros - imposed at least one NPI by the end of March 2020. The U.S. paid a huge price in lost jobs, businesses that never reopened, and kids deprived of going to school - not to mention the deep malaise that caused a pandemic of suicides. The world’s citizens left to their own devices would have handled the pandemic better, and ... fewer lives would perhaps have been lost with no lockdowns at all.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and the coronavirus from reliable major media sources.


More than half of humans on track to be overweight or obese by 2035
2023-03-02, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2023-05-08 12:01:26
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/mar/02/more-than-half-of-humans-on-t...

More than half of the world’s population will be overweight or obese by 2035 unless governments take decisive action to curb the growing epidemic of excess weight, a report has warned. About 2.6 billion people globally – 38% of the world population – are already overweight or obese. But on current trends that is expected to rise to more than 4 billion people (51%) in 12 years’ time, according to research by the World Obesity Federation. Obesity among children and young people is on course to increase faster than among adults. By 2035 it is expected to be at least double the rate seen in 2020, according to the federation’s latest annual World Obesity Atlas report. It is expected to rise by 100% among boys under 18, leaving 208 million affected, but go up even more sharply – by 125% – among girls the same age, which would see 175 million of them affected. The federation is an alliance of health, scientific, research and campaign groups, and works closely on obesity with various global agencies. It wants governments to use tax systems; restrictions on the marketing of foods that are high in fat, salt or sugar; front-of-pack labels; and provision of healthy food in schools to address rising obesity. The federation’s report also highlights that many of the world’s poorest countries are facing the sharpest increases in obesity yet are the least well prepared to confront the disease. Nine of the 10 countries set to experience the biggest rises in coming years are low- or middle-income nations in Africa and Asia.

Note: Nutritional policy in the US is heavily influenced by processed foods manufacturers. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on health from reliable major media sources. Then explore the excellent, reliable resources provided in our Health Information Center.


Lockheed Martin Got $106 From the Average Taxpayer, While Renewables Got Just $6
2023-04-17, Truthout
Posted: 2023-05-08 11:58:34
https://truthout.org/articles/lockheed-martin-got-106-from-the-average-taxpay...

The average U.S. taxpayer in 2022 spent over four times as much on Pentagon contractors than on primary and secondary education, according to the annual Tax Day analysis published in recent days by the Institute for Policy Studies’ National Priorities Project. NPP found that, on average, American taxpayers contributed $1,087 to Pentagon contractors, compared with $270 for K-12 education. The top military contractor — Lockheed Martin — received $106 from the average taxpayer, while just $6 went to funding renewable energy. According to the analysis, the average 2022 U.S. taxpayer: Paid $74 for nuclear weapons, and just $43 for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; Spent $70 on deportations and border control, versus just $19 for refugee assistance; Contributed $20 for federal prisons, and just $11 for anti-homelessness programs; and Gave $298 to the top five military contractors, and just $19 for mental health and substance abuse. “The main message? Our government is continuing to invest too much in the military, and in militarized law enforcement, and not nearly enough on prevention, people, and our communities,” NPP said. NPP’s analysis comes just over a month after the White House released President Joe Biden’s $1.6 trillion budget request for fiscal year 2024. More than half of that amount—$886 billion — would go to the military.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption from reliable major media sources.


Will China’s Push for Multipolar World End US Global Domination?
2023-04-25, Truthout
Posted: 2023-05-08 11:55:26
https://truthout.org/video/will-chinas-push-for-multipolar-world-end-us-globa...

China is taking an increasingly assertive role in world affairs, helping to broker a restoration of relations between Iran and Saudi Arabia, offering a 12-point peace plan for Ukraine, and strengthening its relationships with European and Latin American powers. Last week, China continued its diplomatic outreach by offering to hold talks between Israel and Palestine. "What China is after, if we view it from China’s perspective, is what was also said: true multilateralism. And what that means, or true multipolarity, another term that they use, and that means they don’t want a U.S.-led world, they want a multipolar world," [said Jeffrey Sachs at Columbia University]. "And while the United States sometimes talks about a rule-based order, the fact of the matter is that ... the grand strategists of the U.S. state see our grand strategy in the United States as being dominance. Well, China doesn’t want the United States to be the preeminent power. It wants to live alongside the United States. But what’s very important and interesting to understand, and we’ve seen it clearly in the dynamics involving the Ukraine war, most of the world also does not want the U.S. as the global preeminent power. Most of the world wants a multipolar world, and is, therefore, not lined up behind the United States’ sanctions on Russia and so forth. In fact, the United States is withdrawing ... our politicians are withdrawing from the world financial and monetary scene and opening up the space for a completely different kind of international finance."

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption from reliable major media sources.


Researchers Use Algae to Power a Computer for Months
2022-05-17, Smithsonian Magazine
Posted: 2023-05-08 11:53:19
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/researchers-use-algae-to-power-comp...

Researchers have discovered how to use cyanobacteria—commonly called blue-green algae—to continuously power a microprocessor for a span of more than six months. The system, which uses inexpensive and largely recyclable materials, contains a type of non-toxic photosynthetic algae called Synechocystis, per a statement. The research was published in the journal Energy & Environmental Science. “We were impressed by how consistently the system worked over a long period of time—we thought it might stop after a few weeks but it just kept going,” says Paolo Bombelli, a researcher from the University of Cambridge’s Department of Biochemistry and lead author of the paper. The scientists created an enclosure out of aluminum and clear plastic and put the bacteria inside it. The device, which is about the size of a AA battery, was placed on a windowsill in Bombelli’s home during Covid-19 lockdown in 2021 and remained there from February to August. The bacteria powered an Arm Cortex M0+ processor—a microprocessor widely used in the network of appliances connected to the internet, also called the Internet of Things (IoT). The cyanobacteria produced energy even without light, perhaps because they process some of their food in the dark, which generates an electrical current. Several billion IoT devices already exist, and that number is expected to rise to one trillion by 2035. Powering all those devices would require 109,000 tons of lithium, which is three times more than what the world produced in 2017.

Note: Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.


Seal’s mystery ability to tolerate toxic metal could aid medical research, say scientists
2023-04-29, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2023-05-08 11:51:23
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/apr/29/seals-mystery-ability-to-...

One of the world’s most isolated aquatic mammals, Arctocephalus philippii, can tolerate high levels of cadmium, as well as other metallic pollutants, without suffering ill effects. A. philippii is the second smallest species of fur seal and lives only on the Juan Fernández archipelago and one or two nearby islands in the Pacific Ocean, hundreds of miles off the coast of Chile. By the 19th century, the species had disappeared and was believed to be extinct until, in the 1960s, a small colony was found in a cave on the island. Since then, the Juan Fernández seal, which has become a protected species, has slowly recovered and has a population of around 80,000. “We collected samples of their faeces and found they contained extremely high levels of cadmium and other elements such as mercury,” said Constanza Toro-Valdivieso of Cambridge University’s conservation research institute. “The discovery was very surprising,” she said. “Cadmium is poisonous to mammals but somehow these seals were processing it and passing it through their digestive systems and seem to be suffering little harm in the process.” High levels were found not only in its faeces but in the bones of seals that had died of natural causes. The researchers also found high levels of silicon in their bones, which may be offsetting the impact of cadmium, they suggest. “The discovery that these animals appear to tolerate high levels of cadmium in their bodies has important medical implications,” said Toro-Valdivieso. “These animals have a lot to tell us.”

Note: Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.


Botanist Stefano Mancuso: ‘You can anaesthetise all plants. This is extremely fascinating’
2023-04-15, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2023-05-08 11:49:26
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/apr/15/scientist-stefano-mancuso...

Stefano Mancuso is a pioneer in the plant neurobiology movement, which seeks to understand “how plants perceive their circumstances and respond to environmental input in an integrated fashion”. Mancuso teaches at the University of Florence, his alma mater, where he runs the International Laboratory of Plant Neurobiology. He has written five bestselling books on plants. "Communication means you are able to emit a message and there is something able to receive it, and in this sense plants are great communicators. If you are unable to move, if you are rooted, it’s of paramount importance for you to communicate a lot," [said Mancuso]. "Plants are obliged to communicate a lot, and they use different systems. The most important is through volatiles, or chemicals that are emitted in the atmosphere and received by other plants. It’s an extremely sophisticated form of communication, a kind of vocabulary. Every single molecule means something, and they mix very different molecules to send a specific message. My approach to studying consciousness in plants ... started by seeing if they were sensitive to anaesthetics and found that you can anaesthetise all plants by using the same anaesthetics that work in humans. This is extremely fascinating. We were thinking that consciousness was something related to the brain, but I think that both consciousness and intelligence are more embodied, relating to the entire body."

Note: Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.


Psychologist's death due to AstraZeneca Covid vaccine reaction
2023-04-19, BBC News
Posted: 2023-04-30 17:02:55
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-london-65321937

The death of a psychologist after his Oxford-AstraZeneca Covid-19 jab was due to "unintended complications of the vaccine", an inquest has ruled. Stephen Wright, an NHS employee in south-east London, died 10 days after his first dose in January 2021, senior coroner Andrew Harris found. Dr Wright, 32, suffered a blood clot to the brain after receiving the vaccine. His wife Charlotte has been trying to get the "natural causes" wording on her husband's death certificate changed. She is pursuing legal action against the pharmaceutical company. At London Inner South Coroner's Court, Mr Harris described it as a "very unusual and deeply tragic case". Dr Wright suffered from a combination of a brainstem infarction, bleed on the brain and "vaccine-induced thrombosis", the inquest heard. His condition rapidly worsened, but the nature of the bleed meant he was unfit for surgery. After the inquest, Mrs Wright ... said: "It was made clear that Stephen was [previously] fit and healthy and that his death was by vaccination of AstraZeneca. For us, it allows us to be able to continue our litigation against AstraZeneca. This is the written proof." Speaking about the coroner's ruling, mother-of-two Charlotte Wright said: "It provides relief but it doesn't provide closure. I think we're only going to get that when we have an answer from AstraZeneca and the government." From May 2021, the AZ jab was no longer offered to adults under 40 after it became clear the vaccine carried [a] risk of blood clots which could be fatal.

Note: Dr. Wright's death is one of many tragedies related to the COVID-19 vaccine, as revealed in a powerful documentary that follows the lives of people significantly harmed by the vaccine, yet were discredited and abandoned by the medical system and our media systems. A recent analysis report estimates that in 2022 alone, out of 148 million people, the mass COVID-19 inoculations injured 26.6 million, disabled 1.36 million, and caused 300,000 excess deaths, with an estimated economic cost of nearly $150 billion. For more along these lines, explore revealing news articles on coronavirus vaccines from reliable major media sources.


Clearview AI scraped 30 billion images from Facebook and other social media sites and gave them to cops: it puts everyone into a 'perpetual police line-up'
2023-04-02, Business Insider
Posted: 2023-04-30 17:00:54
https://www.businessinsider.com/clearview-scraped-30-billion-images-facebook-...

A controversial facial recognition database, used by police departments across the nation, was built in part with 30 billion photos the company scraped from Facebook and other social media users without their permission. The company, Clearview AI, boasts of its potential for identifying rioters at the January 6 attack on the Capitol, saving children being abused or exploited, and helping exonerate people wrongfully accused of crimes. But critics point to privacy violations and wrongful arrests fueled by faulty identifications made by facial recognition, including cases in Detroit and New Orleans, as cause for concern over the technology. Once a photo has been scraped by Clearview AI, biometric face prints are made and cross-referenced in the database, tying the individuals to their social media profiles and other identifying information forever — and people in the photos have little recourse to try to remove themselves. CNN reported Clearview AI last year claimed the company's clients include "more than 3,100 US agencies, including the FBI and Department of Homeland Security." BBC reported Miami Police acknowledged they use the technology for all kinds of crimes, from shoplifting to murder. The risk of being included in what is functionally a "perpetual police line-up" applies to everyone, including people who think they have nothing to hide, [said] Matthew Guariglia, a senior policy analyst for the international non-profit digital rights group Electronic Frontier Fund.

Note: Read about the rising concerns of the use of Clearview AI technology in Ukraine, with claims to help reunite families, identify Russian operatives, and fight misinformation. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corporate corruption and the disappearance of privacy from reliable major media sources.


Georgia National Guard Will Use Phone Location Tracking to Recruit High School Children
2023-04-16, The Intercept
Posted: 2023-04-30 16:59:17
https://theintercept.com/2023/04/16/georgia-army-national-guard-location-trac...

The Georgia Army National Guard plans to combine two deeply controversial practices — military recruiting at schools and location-based phone surveillance — to persuade teens to enlist, according to contract documents reviewed by The Intercept. The federal contract materials outline plans by the Georgia Army National Guard to geofence 67 different public high schools throughout the state, targeting phones found within a one-mile boundary of their campuses with recruiting advertisements “with the intent of generating qualified leads of potential applicants for enlistment while also raising awareness of the Georgia Army National Guard.” Geofencing refers generally to the practice of drawing a virtual border around a real-world area. The ad campaign will make use of a variety of surveillance advertising techniques, including capturing the unique device IDs of student phones, tracking pixels, and IP address tracking. It will also plaster recruiting solicitations across Instagram, Snapchat, streaming television, and music apps. The campaign plans not only call for broadcasting recruitment ads to kids at school, but also for pro-Guard ads to follow these students around as they continue using the internet and other apps, a practice known as retargeting. While the state’s plan specifies targeting only high school juniors and seniors ages 17 and above, demographic ad targeting is known to be error prone, and experts told The Intercept it’s possible the recruiting messages could reach the phones of younger children.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on military corruption and the disappearance of privacy from reliable major media sources.


Johns Hopkins study shows lockdowns only reduced COVID-19 death rate by .2%
2022-02-02, Fox News
Posted: 2023-04-30 16:57:50
https://www.foxnews.com/us/lockdowns-reduced-covid-19-mortality-by-2-study-fi...

Lockdowns during the first COVID-19 wave in the spring of 2020 only reduced COVID-19 mortality by .2% in the U.S. and Europe, according to a Johns Hopkins University meta-analysis of several studies. "While this meta-analysis concludes that lockdowns have had little to no public health effects, they have imposed enormous economic and social costs where they have been adopted," the researchers wrote. "In consequence, lockdown policies are ill-founded and should be rejected as a pandemic policy instrument." The researchers – Johns Hopkins University economics professor Steve Hanke, Lund University economics professor Lars Jonung, and special advisor at Copenhagen's Center for Political Studies Jonas Herby – analyzed the effects of lockdown measures such as school shutdowns, business closures, and mask mandates on COVID-19 deaths. "We find little to no evidence that mandated lockdowns in Europe and the United States had a noticeable effect on COVID-19 mortality rates," the researchers wrote. The researchers also examined shelter-in-place orders, finding that they reduced COVID-19 mortality by 2.9%. Studies that looked at only shelter-in-place orders found they reduced COVID-19 mortality by 5.1%, but studies that looked at shelter-in-place orders along with other lockdown measures found that shelter-in-place orders actually increased COVID-19 mortality by 2.8%. The researchers concluded that limiting gatherings may have actually increased COVID-19 mortality. 

Note: Why did other major media platforms overlook this vitally important news? You can find this critical study on the Johns Hopkins University website at this link. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and the coronavirus from reliable major media sources.


Lockdowns in the U.S. and Europe had little or no impact in reducing deaths from COVID-19
2022-01-31, Washington Times
Posted: 2023-04-30 16:56:04
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2022/jan/31/lockdowns-had-little-or-no-i...

Lockdowns in the U.S. and Europe had little or no impact in reducing deaths from COVID-19, according to a new analysis by researchers at Johns Hopkins University. The lockdowns during the early phase of the pandemic in 2020 reduced COVID-19 mortality by about 0.2%, said the broad review of multiple scientific studies. "We find no evidence that lockdowns, school closures, border closures, and limiting gatherings have had a noticeable effect on COVID-19 mortality," the researchers wrote. But the research paper said lockdowns did have "devastating effects" on the economy and contributed to numerous social ills. "They have contributed to reducing economic activity, raising unemployment, reducing schooling, causing political unrest, contributing to domestic violence, and undermining liberal democracy," the report said. "Such a standard benefit-cost calculation leads to a strong conclusion: lockdowns should be rejected out of hand as a pandemic policy instrument," the paper concluded. Early on, many states and 186 countries imposed bans on work, socialization, in-person schooling, travel and other restrictions to limit the spread of the disease, citing recommendations by top health care experts. Researchers at the Imperial College London, for example, predicted that such steps could reduce death rates by up to 98%. That never happened, according to the new study by researchers Steve Hanke, Jonas Herby, and Lars Jonung at Johns Hopkins.

Note: Why did other major media platforms overlook this vitally important news? You can find this critical study on the Johns Hopkins University website at this link. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and the coronavirus from reliable major media sources.


Possible links between Covid shots and tinnitus emerge
2023-04-23, NBC News
Posted: 2023-04-30 16:54:40
https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/covid-vaccine-side-effects-tinnitu...

Thousands of people say they've developed tinnitus after they were vaccinated against Covid. Shaowen Bao, an associate professor in the physiology department of the College of Medicine at the University of Arizona, Tucson, believes that ongoing inflammation, especially in the brain or spinal cord, may be to blame. Bao, a longtime tinnitus sufferer and a representative of the American Tinnitus Association's scientific advisory board, has studied tinnitus for more than a decade. A Facebook group of people who developed tinnitus after getting a Covid vaccine convinced Bao to look into the possible link. One man told Bao that he couldn’t hear the car radio over the noise in his head while driving. Along with ringing in their ears, participants reported a range of other symptoms, including headaches, dizziness, vertigo, ear pain, anxiety and depression. Significantly more people first developed tinnitus after the first dose of the vaccine, compared with the second. This suggests "that the vaccine is interacting with pre-existing risk factors for tinnitus. If you have the risk factor, you will probably get it from the first dose," Bao said. As of Sunday, at least 16,183 people had filed complaints with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that they'd developed tinnitus, or ringing in their ears, after receiving a Covid vaccine. [Vaccine expert Dr. Gregory] Poland, who was stricken with tinnitus after he received his Covid vaccines two years ago, suggested that the CDC remains "unconcerned" about these reports of tinnitus.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on coronavirus vaccines from reliable major media sources.


As Drug Crisis Mounted, Sacklers Gave Millions to Group That Advises on Opioids
2023-04-23, New York Times
Posted: 2023-04-30 16:52:52
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/23/health/sacklers-opioids-national-academies...

For the past decade, the White House and Congress have relied on the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, a renowned advisory group, to help shape the federal response to the opioid crisis, whether by convening expert panels or delivering policy recommendations and reports. Yet officials with the National Academies have kept quiet about one thing: their decision to accept roughly $19 million in donations from members of the Sackler family, the owners of Purdue Pharma, the maker of the drug OxyContin that is notorious for fueling the opioid epidemic. The opioid crisis has led to hundreds of thousands of overdose deaths, spawned lawsuits and forced other institutions to publicly distance themselves from Sackler money or to acknowledge potential conflicts of interest from ties to Purdue Pharma. The National Academies has largely avoided such scrutiny as it continues to advise the government on painkillers. Institutions that more publicly examined their use of Sackler donations include Tufts University, which released a review of possible conflicts of interest related to pain research education funded by Purdue Pharma. Concerns noted in the report included a senior Purdue executive’s delivering lectures to students each semester. The World Health Organization in 2019 retracted two guidance documents on opioid policy after lawmakers aired concerns about ties to opioid makers, including a Purdue subsidiary, among report authors and funders.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on Big Pharma corruption from reliable major media sources.


TikTok: Chinese “Trojan Horse” is Run By State Department Officials
2023-04-13, MintPress News
Posted: 2023-04-30 16:51:23
https://www.mintpressnews.com/tiktok-chinese-trojan-horse-run-by-state-depart...

A MintPress News investigation has found dozens of ex-U.S. State Department officials working in key positions at TikTok. Many more individuals with backgrounds in the FBI, CIA and other departments of the national security state also hold influential posts at the social media giant, affecting the content that over one billion users see. The influx of State Department officials into TikTok’s upper ranks is a consequence of “Project Texas,” an initiative the company began in 2020 in the hopes of avoiding being banned altogether in the United States. During his time in office, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo led the charge to shut the platform down, frequently labeling it a “spying app” and a “propaganda tool for the Chinese Communist Party.” It was widely reported that the U.S. government had forced the sale of TikTok to Walmart and then Microsoft. But in late 2020, as Project Texas began, those deals mysteriously fell through, and the rhetoric about the dangers of TikTok from officials evaporated. Project Texas is a $1.5 billion security operation to move the company’s data to Austin. In doing so, it announced that it was partnering with tech giant Oracle, a corporation that, as MintPress has reported on, is the CIA in all but name. Evidently, Project Texas also secretly included hiring all manner of U.S. national security state personnel to oversee the company’s operations – and not just from the State Department. Virtually every branch of the national security state is present at TikTok.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corruption in intelligence agencies and in the corporate world from reliable major media sources.


Renowned Medical Researcher & Colleague Publish Systematic Review of Serious Harms From COVID-19 Vaccines
2023-04-04, The Pulse
Posted: 2023-04-30 16:48:22
https://www.thepulse.one/p/renowned-medical-researcher-and-colleague

Dr. Peter Gøtzsche is a well known Danish physician with four decades of research experience, publishing 97 papers in the “big five” (BMJ, Lancet, JAMA, Annals of Internal Medicine, and New England Journal of Medicine) and 19 Cochrane reviews. He is a co-founder of the Cochrane Collaboration. Gøtzsche, along with ... Maryanne Demasi, PhD, have published a new paper titled “Serious harms of the COVID-19 Vaccines: A Systematic Review.” It’s been a task for academics to look into this phenomenon given the fact that vaccine manufacturers and drug regulators never allowed independent researchers to examine the raw trial data, forcing transparency advocates to sue the FDA for access to the documents. The adenovirus vector vaccines increased the risk of venous thrombosis and thrombocytopenia. (Authorities have responded by suspending the use of AstraZeneca’s vaccine across many European countries, and in the US, regulators have advised restricted use of Janssen’s vaccine). The mRNA-based vaccines increased the risk of myocarditis, with a mortality of about 1-2 per 200 cases. It was more common in younger males. We found evidence of serious neurological harms, including Bell’s Palsy, Guillain-Barré syndrome, myasthenic disorder and stroke, which are likely due to an autoimmune reaction from mRNA and adenoviral vector vaccines. Severe harms, i.e. those that prevent daily activities, were underreported in the randomized trials.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on coronavirus vaccines from reliable major media sources.


Reassessing Technology for Time-Warp Space Travel
1998-08-30, Los Angeles Times
Posted: 2023-04-30 16:45:13
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1998-aug-30-me-18021-story.html

A 17-year-old boy ... received the Air Force’s highest science award in the 1960s. This young man had the audacity and guts to build and test a new and unusual rocket. The boy’s name was David Adair, and the engine he built was a nuclear-fusion electromagnetic containment engine. This rocket was tested successfully and had an eventful landing in that land beyond lands that doesn’t exist, the famous Area 51. This vehicle had the capability of achieving light speed and, according to the builder, was capable of exceeding light speed with capabilities to propel an interstellar ship to the stars. Where did David Adair, now head of Intersect Inc. in Atlanta, get the design for this engine? As he tells it, directly from NASA. The organization evidently had 18 engine designs, and guess what? Only two were solid- or liquid-propelled rocket engines. This was in the 1960s. I wonder what happened to the rest of those engine types in the past 30 years. I also wonder what type of engines have been and are being tested at the old Rocketdyne facility in the Santa Susana Mountains above Simi Valley. One might ask if the massive class-action lawsuit against Rocketdyne, which alleges contamination of the nuclear type, has any relationship to the engines that were developed and continue to be developed today. If we look at some of these modern concepts and then consider the possibility of extraterrestrial visitation, it doesn’t seem quite so impossible.

Note: Don’t miss this mind-blowing video of prodigy rocket scientist David Adair describing a most stunning and intriguing encounter with an ET craft in an underground hanger at Area 51. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on UFOs from reliable major media sources.


'Bees are sentient': inside the stunning brains of nature’s hardest workers
2023-04-02, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2023-04-30 16:42:44
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/apr/02/bees-intelligence-minds-p...

When Stephen Buchmann finds a wayward bee on a window inside his Tucson, Arizona, home, he goes to great lengths to capture and release it unharmed. This March, Buchmann released a book that unpacks just how varied and powerful a bee’s mind really is. The book, What a Bee Knows: Exploring the Thoughts, Memories and Personalities of Bees, draws from his own research and dozens of other studies to paint a remarkable picture of bee behavior and psychology. It argues that bees can demonstrate sophisticated emotions resembling optimism, frustration, playfulness and fear, traits more commonly associated with mammals. Experiments have shown bees can experience PTSD-like symptoms, recognize different human faces, process long-term memories while sleeping, and maybe even dream. Approximately one-third of the American diet, including many fruits, vegetables and nuts, relies on bees for pollination. In the past, bee research has focused on their role in crop pollination, but the work being pioneered by Buchmann and his contemporaries could force an ethical reckoning with how the animals are treated. Can large-scale agriculture and scientific research continue without causing bees to suffer, and is the dominant western culture even capable of accepting that the tiniest of creatures have feelings, too? Buchmann hopes an ethical shift will happen as details about the emotional lives of invertebrates – especially bees – are shared with the public.

Note: Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.


Magnetic Crystals, Guides for Animals, Found in Humans
1992-05-12, New York Times
Posted: 2023-04-30 16:41:04
https://www.nytimes.com/1992/05/12/science/magnetic-crystals-guides-for-anima...

An intriguing claim that human brain cells possess crystals of a highly magnetic mineral known as magnetite was described today by Dr. Joseph Kirschvink, a professor at the California Institute of Technology. The 38-year-old geobiologist said he believed that magnetite crystals enabled animals from bees to whales to navigate by using the earth's magnetic field. He said he doubted that they supported any sensory capability in humans, although he suspected that they might account for the possible influence of strong electromagnetic fields on human health. That magnetite, one of the hardest metals on earth, is synthesized by the human brain "is sure to astound most scientists," Dr. Kirschvink said, but what it is doing there is a "total mystery." It might be a vestige from evolution and serve no purpose, he said. Or it could play a role in biology, explaining why electromagnetic fields have been associated with brain cancer and leukemia and why certain odd blips, called spin echoes, show up on magnetic resonance images of the brain. Each human brain on average contains seven billion particles of magnetite, weighing a total of one-millionth of an ounce. Magnetite interacts over a million times more strongly with external magnetic fields than any other biological material, Dr. Kirschvink said, including the iron in red blood cells. If only one cell in a million contains magnetite, he said, magnetic fields could exert an effect on the tissue.

Note: Robert O. Becker’s classic book “The Body Electric” presents amazing scientific experiments showing the importance of electrical fields and magnetic crystals in the human body. Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.


Mushrooms communicate with each other using up to 50 ‘words’, scientist claims
2022-04-05, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2023-04-30 16:38:52
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2022/apr/06/fungi-electrical-impulses-hum...

Mathematical analysis of the electrical signals fungi seemingly send to one another has identified patterns that bear a striking structural similarity to human speech. Previous research has suggested that fungi conduct electrical impulses through long, underground filamentous structures called hyphae – similar to how nerve cells transmit information in humans. It has even shown that the firing rate of these impulses increases when the hyphae of wood-digesting fungi come into contact with wooden blocks, raising the possibility that fungi use this electrical “language” to share information about food or injury with distant parts of themselves, or with hyphae-connected partners such as trees. Prof Andrew Adamatzky at the University of the West of England’s unconventional computing laboratory in Bristol analysed the patterns of electrical spikes generated by four species of fungi – enoki, split gill, ghost and caterpillar fungi. The research, published in Royal Society Open Science, found that these spikes often clustered into trains of activity, resembling vocabularies of up to 50 words, and that the distribution of these “fungal word lengths” closely matched those of human languages. The most likely reasons for these waves of electrical activity are to maintain the fungi’s integrity – analogous to wolves howling to maintain the integrity of the pack – or to report newly discovered sources of attractants and repellants to other parts of their mycelia, Adamtzky suggested.

Note: Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.


Once Shocking, U.S. Spying on Its Allies Draws a Global Shrug
2023-04-13, New York Times
Posted: 2023-04-27 20:29:11
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/13/us/politics/us-spying-allies.html

The last time a trove of leaked documents exposed U.S. spying operations around the world, the reaction from allied governments was swift and severe. In Berlin, thousands of people protested in the streets, the C.I.A. station chief was expelled, and the German chancellor told the American president that "spying on friends is not acceptable." In Paris, the American ambassador was summoned for a dressing-down. That was a decade ago, after an enormous leak of classified documents detailing American surveillance programs by ... Edward Snowden. The latest leak of classified documents that appeared online this year, the motive behind which remains unknown, has again illustrated the broad reach of U.S. spy agencies, including into the capitals of friendly countries such as Egypt, South Korea, Ukraine and the United Arab Emirates. Though the documents mainly focus on the war in Ukraine, they include C.I.A. intelligence briefs describing conversations and plans at senior levels of government in those countries, in several cases attributed to "signals intelligence," or electronic eavesdropping. Unlike in 2013, however, U.S. allies appear to be mostly shrugging off the latest examples of apparent spying. So far, the only evident political fallout from the latest leaks has occurred in South Korea, where one classified U.S. document described a debate among senior national security officials about whether to send artillery shells abroad that might wind up in Ukraine, potentially angering Russia.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on intelligence agency corruption and the disappearance of privacy from reliable major media sources.


Revealed: the terrorist hired by the CIA to catch Carlos the Jackal
2023-04-09, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2023-04-27 20:26:43
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/apr/09/revealed-the-terrorist-hired-by...

The story of Bruno Bréguet, one the most enigmatic figures of the shadowy battle between western security services and international violent extremists during the so-called “golden age of terrorism” in the 1970s and 1980s, has been given a new twist. A new book has revealed that in his later years Bréguet served not only the infamous Illich Ramírez Sánchez, better known as Carlos the Jackal, but the US government too. Bréguet’s spying for the CIA earned him tens of thousands of dollars, and contributed to the capture of his erstwhile boss by French secret services in 1994. The news that the CIA was prepared to hire as an agent a man like Bréguet, who had been twice convicted by Israel and France for his terrorist activities and is believed to have bombed a pro-democracy radio station in Munich funded by the US government, underlines the moral and ethical questions facing intelligence services when it comes to recruiting such individuals. If anyone in the CIA balked at employing Bréguet as an agent, there is no record of their concerns. For the next four years, Bréguet appears to have supplied information to the CIA, possibly indirectly contributing key elements to the French intelligence operation that successfully grabbed Carlos from a clinic in Khartoum in 1994. Breguet’s final mystery remains unresolved however. In 1995, the veteran extremist turned CIA agent disappeared definitively after boarding a ferry from a Greece to Italy. Was he murdered? Or did he commence a new life under a false identity?

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on intelligence agency corruption and terrorism from reliable major media sources.


Congress Suddenly Wants to Know If US Taxpayers Were Helping El Chapo
2023-03-02, Vice
Posted: 2023-04-27 20:24:33
https://www.vice.com/en/article/m7gmzn/garcia-luna-trial-dea-fbi

After flying under the radar for years, the case of Genaro García Luna is finally raising alarms in Congress, with one of the Senate’s top Republicans demanding answers about how Mexico’s highest-ranking cop was able to partner with DEA and FBI, “at the time that he funneled roughly 103,000 pounds of cocaine into the United States” for the Sinaloa Cartel. García Luna became the most senior Mexican law enforcement official ever convicted of narco-corruption when a Brooklyn federal jury delivered a unanimous guilty verdict on a five-count indictment that charged him with taking massive bribes to enable cartel drug smuggling, kidnappings, and murders while he was in office from 2001 to 2012. García Luna’s position involved close collaboration with U.S. anti-narcotics agencies that operate in Mexico, and it gave him discretion over the spending of hundreds of millions in American tax dollars delivered as security aid. That money was supposed to go toward fighting the cartels, but his trial showed he was leaking sensitive intelligence, protecting drug shipments, and disrupting efforts to capture ... cartel leaders. On Feb. 22, a day after the guilty verdict, Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley sent a letter to the heads of the DEA and FBI asking what the agencies knew about García Luna and when, and demanding evidence ... that could shed new light on the relationship. In short, Grassley wants to know if American tax dollars were being sent to Mexico while the DEA and FBI were tolerating García Luna’s corruption.

Note: This case adds to the evidence that the War on Drugs is a trillion dollar failure. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption from reliable major media sources.


The Man Who Knew Exactly What the F.B.I. Was Doing to Martin Luther King Jr.
2023-04-12, New York Times
Posted: 2023-04-27 20:22:43
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/12/opinion/lyndon-johnson-martin-luther-king-...

We have long known about the F.B.I. director J. Edgar Hoover’s animus toward the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Hoover built an extensive apparatus of surveillance and disruption designed to destroy King. It’s time to ... recognize the power structure that supported the F.B.I.’s campaign. Many Americans — starting with the president — thought movement activists like King posed threats to the established order and needed to be watched and controlled. Members of the press could have exposed the bureau’s campaign. And many government officials who could have stopped, curtailed or exposed the F.B.I.’s attack on King instead enabled or encouraged it. F.B.I. records declassified in the past several years and documents from the Johnson archives released in 2022 force us to reconsider the nature of Johnson’s involvement in the F.B.I.’s campaign against King. White House documents ... suggest that Johnson, from the beginning of his presidency in 1963 to King’s assassination in 1968, was apprised almost weekly by Hoover himself on the F.B.I.’s surveillance of King. Johnson did nothing to stop or rein in the F.B.I., even after at least one top administration official expressed concern. In addition to the president and the media, other officials at the F.B.I. ... worked to ruin King. Scores of ranking officials and agents at the F.B.I., dozens of elected officials and several informants embedded in King’s inner circles knew what was going on, and none, as far as the public records indicate, blew a whistle on the campaign.

Note: Few people know about the 1999 King Family civil trial in Memphis, where it took a jury only one hour to find the U.S. government guilty for the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and the erosion of civil liberties from reliable major media sources.


Ukraine War Is Shaking Up Global Arms Industry
2023-04-16, LA Progressive (A popular Los Angeles Newspaper)
Posted: 2023-04-27 20:20:35
https://www.laprogressive.com/war-and-peace/global-arms-industry

The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) estimates that six countries—the U.S., Russia, France, China, Germany, and Italy—were responsible for 80 percent of global weapons exports from 2018 to 2022. The U.S. alone counted for 40 percent, while Russia was a distant second at 16 percent. Maintaining and growing their market share is a prerogative for countries that export weapons. Turkey has sold many drones to Ukraine, while Iran has sold its own arsenal to Russia. Both Turkey and Iran are aiming to pitch their products as low-cost alternatives to Western manufacturers. Turkey, however, is still in talks to buy Russia's S-400 missile defense system. Its provision of weapons to Ukraine, while it continues to negotiate weapons deals with Russia, demonstrates the complicated nature of the global arms industry. The war in Ukraine continues to underline how integral the arms industry is to geopolitics. China, for example, has not provided weapons to either Ukraine or Russia, but its largest civilian drone maker, DJI, is one of the most important suppliers for their militaries. The U.S. has been criticized in recent years for its weapons exports to Saudi Arabia, which is under fire for human rights abuses and for its conflict in Yemen.  And though claims of Western weapons being smuggled out of Ukraine have often been dismissed, there is concern that many of the weapons sent to the Ukrainian military have or will end up on the black market.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on military corruption from reliable major media sources.


Leaks Reveal Reality Behind U.S. Propaganda in Ukraine
2023-04-19, LA Progressive (A popular Los Angeles Newspaper)
Posted: 2023-04-27 20:18:25
https://www.laprogressive.com/war-and-peace/propaganda-in-ukraine

The U.S. corporate media’s first response to the leaking of secret documents about the war in Ukraine was to throw some mud in the water, declare “nothing to see here,” and cover it as a depoliticized crime story about a 21-year-old Air National Guardsman who published secret documents to impress his friends. What these documents reveal, however, is that the war is going worse for Ukraine than our political leaders have admitted to us, while going badly for Russia too, so that neither side is likely to break the stalemate this year, and this will lead to “a protracted war beyond 2023,” as one of the documents says. We can’t help wondering what President Biden’s plan could be, or if he even has one. In what amounts to a second leak that the corporate media have studiously ignored, U.S. intelligence sources have told veteran investigative reporter Seymour Hersh that they are asking the same questions, and they describe a “total breakdown” between the White House and the U.S. intelligence community. According to Hersh’s report, the CIA assesses that Ukrainian officials, including President Zelenskyy, have embezzled $400 million from money the United States sent Ukraine to buy diesel fuel for its war effort, in a scheme that involves buying cheap, discounted fuel from Russia. Meanwhile, Hersh says, Ukrainian government ministries literally compete with each other to sell weapons paid for by U.S. taxpayers to private arms dealers in Poland, the Czech Republic and around the world.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on media manipulation and war from reliable sources.


In Pentagon Leak, The Problem is What’s Classified, Not What Gets Out
2023-04-13, The Intercept
Posted: 2023-04-27 20:16:26
https://theintercept.com/2023/04/13/pentagon-classified-documents-leak/

A set of secret national security documents burst into public view last week. The intelligence documents appear to have entered the public domain in an unusual way — someone began sharing them, starting late last year, on an obscure Discord server called Thug Shaker Central. The alleged leaker, Jack Teixeira, a member of the Massachusetts Air National Guard, was arrested. It is traditional for the government to exaggerate the alleged harms of classified information becoming public, and this appears to be happening again. The real problem isn’t what’s leaked, but what’s classified. Almost every news story about the latest disclosures has noted that the Pentagon and other government agencies will now put tighter lids on secret documents, even though, as historian Matthew Connelly points out in his new book, “The Declassification Engine,” the government already puts way too much material behind its moat. In fact, the human harm caused by unauthorized leaks is almost always inflicted by the government itself in the form of egregious prosecutions of leakers. Although Snowden, [Chelsea] Manning, and, more recently, Reality Winner, revealed secrets that the public had a right to know, the government charged all of them under the draconian Espionage Act. While Snowden sought safety in Russia, Manning served seven years in prison (she was originally sentenced to 35 years), and Winner was sentenced to more than five years for leaking just a single document.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on intelligence agency corruption from reliable major media sources.


Neoliberalism as the U.S. Empire Declines
2023-04-18, LA Progressive (A popular Los Angeles Newspaper)
Posted: 2023-04-27 20:14:52
https://www.laprogressive.com/democracy/neoliberal-u-s-empire-declines

The neoliberal globalizing paradigm is now the old. Economic nationalism is the new. Neoliberal globalization ... celebrated the profits and growth brought to both private and state-owned/operated enterprises around the world. It downplayed or ignored the other sides of globalization: (1) growing income and wealth inequalities; (2) the shift of production from old to new centers of capitalism; and (3) faster growth of output and markets in new centers than old centers. Instead of a mostly private capitalist system (like that of the U.S. or UK) or a mostly state capitalist system (like that of the USSR), places like China and India produced hybrids. Strong national governments presided over coexisting large private and state sectors to maximize economic growth. The days of the U.S. dollar as the supreme global currency are numbered. U.S. supremacy in high-tech industries must already be shared with China’s high-tech industries. The U.S. empire’s decline raises the question of what comes next. The most interesting possibility and perhaps the likeliest is that China and the entire BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) grouping of nations will undertake the construction and maintenance of a new world economy. The war in Ukraine has already enhanced the prospects of such an outcome by strengthening the BRICS alliance. They have the population, resources, productive capacity, connections, and accumulated solidarity to be a new pole for world economic development.  

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on income inequality from reliable major media sources.


CIA’s War on WikiLeaks Is a Scandal Worthy of Congressional Investigation
2023-04-10, Truthout
Posted: 2023-04-27 20:12:14
https://truthout.org/articles/cias-war-on-wikileaks-is-a-scandal-worthy-of-co...

In 2010, Chelsea Manning shocked the world with leaked documents that exposed abuses and crimes committed by the United States military in Iraq. These revelations also made the publisher of those documents, Julian Assange, and his organization, WikiLeaks, household names. The U.S. government [is] charging Assange — a publisher — with violating the Espionage Act. Under the Espionage Act, one does not have the ability to make a public interest defense. All prosecutors have to do is show that a whistleblower possessed documents or transferred “national defense information” to a member of the press. Damage has already been done, but the future of journalism is in further jeopardy if the U.S. government holds a trial against Assange, convicts him, and shows the world that it has the final say over who is and is not a journalist. CIA Director Mike Pompeo and other officials sketched plans to target Assange that included poisoning or kidnapping him. This, along with the disruption campaign against WikiLeaks, represented the CIA’s all-out war against a dissident media organization. The agency went so far as to redefine the organization as a “non-state hostile intelligence service” to carry out operations that it could never get away with against a group of journalists. It should be the subject of an intense investigation in Congress, and the Justice Department should be dropping the charges after publicly conceding that the CIA’s actions mean Assange could never have a fair trial.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on intelligence agency corruption and media manipulation from reliable sources.


Billionaire Space Flight Isn’t About Colonization. It’s Stoking a New Cold War.
2023-04-16, Truthout
Posted: 2023-04-27 20:09:53
https://truthout.org/articles/billionaire-space-flight-isnt-about-colonizatio...

The U.S. has not engaged in a defensive war for nearly 80 years, instead destabilizing governments worldwide in Vietnam, the Korean Peninsula, Iraq, Afghanistan, throughout Africa and across Latin America. Although all weapons of mass destruction in space are technically prohibited by the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, it isn’t without precedent for major military powers to withdraw from such treaties. In 2019, President Donald Trump diverged from President Barack Obama’s promise he would “not weaponize space,” and created an official Space Force. Countersurveillance and counter-communications have been central goals of U.S. military space operations since the 1990s, alongside attaining U.S. “full spectrum dominance” of all potential conflict sites — including space. Space infrastructure ... increases the risk of global nuclear war by presenting new opportunities for armament and hostility. The government’s ability to militarize this technology is strongly related to investment and development in the private sector through companies such as Boeing, SpaceX and Blue Origin. The commercial arm of the military-industrial complex is extending into space. Along with Blue Origin, SpaceX has collaborated with DOD in developing rapid global military cargo delivery systems, which the DOD hopes will make for global military logistics — delivery of supplies, weapons and even human soldiers anywhere on earth — in under 60 minutes.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on military corruption from reliable major media sources.


Norway helped remake a US prison. Here’s what happened.
2022-11-02, Freethink
Posted: 2023-04-27 20:07:54
https://www.freethink.com/society/norway-helped-remake-a-us-prison-heres-what...

Correctional systems throughout much of Scandinavia are guided by a general set of philosophical principles. In Norway, core values of safety, transparency and innovation are considered fundamental to the idea of creating normality in prison, the feeling that life as part of a community continues. Incarcerated people can wear their own clothes, work in jobs that prepare them for employment and cook their own meals. Cells in Norway are also for a single person – not multiple people, as in most cases in the U.S. Importantly, correctional officers have at least a two-year, university-level education and are directly involved in rehabilitation and planning for the incarcerated person’s re-entry into the world outside of prison. In the U.S., most officers receive just a few weeks of training. Recidivism rates in Scandinavia are low. In Norway ... less than half of people released from prison are rearrested after three years. In Pennsylvania, that figure is closer to 70%. In State Correctional Institution Chester, known as SCI Chester, a medium-security prison located just outside of Philadelphia, a correctional officer-guided team has worked since 2018 to incorporate Scandinavian penal principles into its own institution. Six men in SCI Chester – each sentenced to life in prison – were selected to participate. They then moved on to the new housing unit, which had come to be known as “Little Scandinavia.” SCI Chester shows that it is, in fact, possible to adapt Scandinavian-style penal philosophies.

Note: Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.


Inside the Prisoner-led Struggle to Win Education for All
2023-04-06, ScheerPost
Posted: 2023-04-27 20:06:05
https://scheerpost.com/2023/04/06/inside-the-prisoner-led-struggle-to-win-edu...

Washington State prisoners were recently forced to gather in a janitor’s closet to organize and facilitate college education for people incarcerated in several prisons across the state. New official restrictions are jeopardizing a liberating, prisoner-led program known as Taking Education And Creating History, or TEACH. TEACH’s goal is to democratize education for people with long sentences. Between community support and financial backing outside the correctional system, TEACH successfully circumvented the Department of Corrections, or DOC, policy of excluding long-term prisoners from education. Since 2013, over 300 incarcerated individuals across three state prisons have become college students. Progressively, TEACH began breaking down barriers between various racial and cultural groups — contradicting administrative beliefs that the Black Prisoners Caucus would further racial tension. Prisoners who would’ve never interacted with one another were now sitting at tables thumbing through books, while preparing for exams. When asked how TEACH has impacted the prison environment, Darrell Jackson, co-chair of the TEACH program at Washington Correction Center, said, “It has reduced the violence in prison, while creating a positive educational community for everyone — regardless of one’s crime, race or affiliation.” He added, “Those with lengthy sentences were given a sense of purpose, something that many are stripped of when they enter into prison.”

Note: Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.


Recovery high schools help kids heal from an addiction and build a future
2023-04-04, NPR
Posted: 2023-04-27 20:04:36
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2023/04/04/1167856499/recovery-high...

Every weekday at 5280 High School in Denver starts the same way. Students in recovery from drug and alcohol addiction gather on the steps of the school's indoor auditorium to discuss a topic chosen by staff members. One recent morning, they talked about mental health and sobriety. The students attend Colorado's only recovery high school — one of 43 nationwide. These schools are designed for students who are recovering from substance use disorder and might also be dealing with related mental health disorders. Compared with their peers at regular schools who have gone through treatment, recovery high school students have better attendance and are more likely to stay sober, and their graduation rate is at least 21% higher, according to one study. Recovery high schools often weave components of treatment into the school day — activities like 5280's daily recovery program meeting. In the afternoon, the school offers wellness electives such as spiritual principles and journaling. The school also employs a director of recovery and recovery coach to work with and counsel the students individually. "The No. 1 step is just letting them know out of the gate, no matter what's going on, that we love them," said Brittany Kitchens, the school's recovery coach. "We are here for them." Kitchens teaches students how to navigate recovery and regulate their emotions. She likens herself to a hall monitor, constantly checking in with students and looking for changes in behavior.

Note: Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.


Here’s Why Big Pharma Spends More On Ads Pushing Lower Benefit Drugs
2023-02-07, Forbes
Posted: 2023-04-17 14:00:24
https://www.forbes.com/sites/roberthart/2023/02/07/heres-why-big-pharma-spend...

Big pharma spends more money on advertising for drugs that have lower health benefits for patients, according to a study published in JAMA on Tuesday, shedding new light on the almost uniquely American practice amid fierce debate over whether direct-to-consumer prescription drug ads should be banned. The proportion of advertising spending allocated to direct-to-consumer ads was an average of 14.3 percentage points higher for drugs with a low added benefit compared to those with a high added benefit, according to the peer-reviewed analysis of the 150 best-selling branded prescription drugs. Manufacturers of the top six best-selling drugs spent the bulk of their promotional budgets—more than 90%—targeting consumers directly rather than clinicians for a range of treatment options for conditions including HIV, multiple sclerosis and numerous cancers. The findings could suggest pharma firms are aiming promotional dollars directly towards consumers ... as part of a “strategy to drive patient demand for drugs that clinicians would be less likely to prescribe,” said the study’s lead author Michael DiStefano. Just two countries in the world allow drug makers to market prescription medications directly to consumers: the U.S. and New Zealand. Most countries prohibit directly advertising prescription medications to the public, something the WHO says influences both people and, indirectly, the medical professionals treating them, making it “harder to make decisions on evidence based medicine.”

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on pharmaceutical corruption and media manipulation from reliable sources.


‘Patient influencers’ paid by Big Pharma to mislead followers: report
2023-03-17, New York Post
Posted: 2023-04-17 13:58:38
https://nypost.com/2023/03/17/patient-influencers-paid-by-big-pharma-to-misle...

There’s no better way to reach an audience today than through social media — and Big Pharma is well aware of that. The video-sharing platform TikTok, for example, is being flooded with videos of users testifying to wellness through prescription drugs, with hashtags like #adhd (22.3B views), #ozempic (675.1M views) and #wegovy (259.3M views) consistently trending. Now, experts are warning about this misleading tactic by drugmakers, in paying popular social media users to espouse their products under the guise of honest reviews, in a new study published this week in the Journal of Medical Internet Research. These so-called patient influencers, or patient “advocates,” are social media influencers who use their platform to promote pharmaceutical medications and/or medical devices. Researchers at the University of Colorado Boulder analyzed 26 recent interviews with patient influencers, who had been diagnosed with conditions such as lupus, fibromyalgia, Parkinson’s disease, asthma, HIV, celiac disease, chronic migraines and perimenopause. The majority (69%) had previously collaborated with a pharmaceutical company in some way. The Federal Trade Commission mandates that influencers must disclose if they have been paid by using hashtags, such as by adding #ad or #sponsored to related posts, while the Food and Drug Administration has rules and regulations regarding what can be said on social posts. Nevertheless, many consumers fail to decipher a sponsored ad from genuine peer-to-peer advice.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on pharmaceutical corruption and media manipulation from reliable sources.


Psychoactive Drugs Often Linked to Mass Shootings
2022-07-16, Epoch Times
Posted: 2023-04-17 13:57:07
https://www.theepochtimes.com/health/psychoactive-drugs-are-often-behind-mass...

We urgently need a national debate about guns. But we also urgently need a national debate about the epidemic of mood-altering drugs being prescribed to young Americans. Mass shooters in the United States tend to be young, obsessive, male loners and many have been prescribed psychoactive drugs. For example, Eric Harris, one of the two shooters at Columbine High School in Columbine, Colorado, in 1999—which ushered in the current spate of mass shootings—was on the psychotropic drug Luvox. Prescribing information for the antidepressant says, “Close supervision of patients and in particular those at high risk should accompany drug therapy.” Jeff Weise, who fatally shot his grandfather, his grandfather’s girlfriend, and then seven others at the Red Lake Senior High School in Minnesota in 2005, was on the well-known antidepressant Prozac. Two years later, Cho Seung-Hui, who perpetrated the Virginia Tech mass shooting, also was found to be on psychoactive antidepressants. Jeanne Stolzer, associate professor of child and adolescent development at the University of Nebraska-Kearney, observes that “despite the multitude of international drug regulatory warnings on all classifications of psychiatric medications citing adverse reactions such as suicidal ideation, homicidal ideation, violence, and psychosis, not one local, state, or federal commission has investigated the correlation between the mass shootings in America and the use of psychiatric medications.”

Note: Although Epoch Times is often deemed as a controversial media platform, this article raises legitimate questions on an important topic seldom discussed. Read a revealing article that investigates the alarming adverse events associated with common mood-altering medications prescribed for those struggling with mental illness. For more on this concerning trend, consider exploring an in-depth article written by an anonymous doctor who reveals the decades of evidence showing how adverse reactions from psychiatric drugs can manifest as both suicides and homicides.


Do COVID-19 vaccine mandates still make sense?
2023-03-14, Science
Posted: 2023-04-17 13:55:19
https://www.science.org/content/article/do-covid-19-vaccine-mandates-still-ma...

Visitors to the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) in Washington, D.C. ... must show a guard proof that they have been vaccinated against COVID-19. Such demands were common around the world a year ago. But by now, almost everyone has had natural infections with SARS-CoV-2 or been vaccinated against the coronavirus—sometimes both—and it’s become clear that vaccine-induced immunity quickly loses its ability to prevent infection and spread of the latest variants. Some now say the mandates are outdated. The persistent requirements are “baffling to say the least,” says Heidi Larson, an anthropologist at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and director of the Vaccine Confidence Project. She spoke at a major infectious disease meeting this year that required all attendees to show they had had two doses of a vaccine—with no need for a recent booster. “It’s not like it’s going to mitigate the spread.” Larson and other vaccine acceptance researchers who spoke to Science all emphasize that COVID-19 vaccines clearly prevent severe disease, but they worry maintaining the mandates could undermine future public health efforts. “Having to show these old vaccination proofs or certificates really doesn’t make sense, and it could cause harm, because people might lose trust in the competence of the organization,” says University of Konstanz psychologist Katrin Schmelz. Compared with Europe and Asia, the United States appears to be holding on to vaccine mandates more tightly.

Note: Many people are questioning the legitimacy of vaccine mandates, regardless of their stance on the efficacy and safety of the COVID vaccines. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on coronavirus vaccines from reliable major media sources.


Immunity acquired from a Covid infection is as protective as vaccination against severe illness and death, study finds
2023-02-16, NBC News
Posted: 2023-04-17 13:53:25
https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/natural-immunity-protective-covid-...

Immunity acquired from a Covid infection provides strong, lasting protection against the most severe outcomes of the illness, according to research published Thursday in The Lancet — protection, experts say, that’s on par with what’s provided through two doses of an mRNA vaccine. Infection-acquired immunity cut the risk of hospitalization and death from a Covid reinfection by 88% for at least 10 months, the study found. “This is really good news, in the sense that protection against severe disease and death after infection is really quite sustained at 10 months,” said the senior study author, Dr. Christopher Murray ... at the University of Washington. The study was the largest meta-analysis to date to look at immunity following infection. It included 65 studies from 19 countries and compared the risk of developing Covid again in people who had recovered from infections to people who hadn’t been infected through September. The immunity generated from an infection was found to be “at least as high, if not higher” than that provided by two doses of an mRNA vaccine, the authors wrote. While Murray and Wachter agreed that vaccination remains the safest route, having a past Covid infection should at least be considered in policymaking decisions going forward, such as vaccination requirements, they said. “What Europe did with this evidence made a lot of sense, which is where evidence of past infection was seen as essentially equal to vaccination in terms of requirements to go into events or for employment,” Murray said.  

Note: It's worthy of mentioning that much of the media previously dismissed the effectiveness of natural immunity to protect against COVID, with mainstream media platforms blatantly claiming that natural immunity is "not panning out" and "comes at a cost." For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on coronavirus vaccines from reliable major media sources.


Japan says 1.5m people are living as recluses after Covid
2023-04-03, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2023-04-17 13:49:54
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/apr/03/japan-says-15-million-people-li...

Almost 1.5 million people of working age in Japan are living as social recluses, according to a government survey, with about a fifth of cases attributed to the pressures unleashed by the Covid-19 pandemic. Large numbers of hikikomori said they had begun retreating from mainstream society due to relationship issues and after losing or leaving their jobs. A significant proportion – 20.6% – said their predicament had been triggered by changes in lifestyle imposed during the pandemic. Hikikomori – classed as people who withdraw from society, spending all or almost all of their time isolated at home – account for 2% of people aged 15-62. The cabinet office surveyed 30,000 people between the ages of 10 and 69. The poll found that just over a fifth of respondents aged 15-39 had been socially isolated. More than 20% said they had experienced problems with interpersonal relationships, while just over 18% cited the pandemic. Among people in the 40-64 age range, 44.5% said their behaviour had been triggered by leaving their jobs, followed by 20.6% who cited the pandemic. Japan did not enforce UK-style lockdowns to help contain the spread of the virus, but people were asked to avoid unnecessary outings ... and some employers and universities encouraged teleworking and remote learning. On streets that would normally have been teeming with people there was a dramatic drop in footfall after restaurants, bars and other sectors of the nighttime economy were asked to stop serving alcohol and close early, or face fines.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on the coronavirus and health from reliable major media sources.


South Korea to give $490 allowance to reclusive youths to help them leave the house
2023-04-13, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2023-04-17 13:47:57
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/apr/13/south-korea-to-give-490-allowan...

South Korea is to offer reclusive youths a monthly living allowance of 650,000 won ($490) in order to encourage them out of their homes, as part of a new measure passed by the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family. The measure also offers education, job and health support. The condition is known as “hikikomori”, a Japanese term that roughly translated means, “to pull back”. The government wants to try to make it easier for those experiencing it to leave the house to go to school, university or work. Included in the programme ... is a monthly allowance for living expenses for people aged between nine and 24 who are experiencing extreme social withdrawal. It also includes an allowance for cultural experiences for teenagers. About 350,000 people between the ages of 19 and 39 in South Korea are considered lonely or isolated – about 3% of that age group – according to the Korea Institute for Health and Social Affairs. Secluded youth are often from disadvantaged backgrounds and 40% began living reclusively while adolescents, according to a government document outlining the measures. The document includes case studies that describe young people using reclusiveness as a way to cope. One young person describes their depression as a result of domestic violence. “When I was 15 years old, domestic violence made me depressed so much that I began to live in seclusion.” Another said that they had become a recluse when their family “went bankrupt”.

Note: A deeper perspective on this social crisis is how lockdown policies significantly deteriorated youth mental health during the lockdown, as seen in a new University of Cambridge paper. This paper is the first longitudinal study to trace the mental health effects of lockdowns and social isolation on younger children. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on health from reliable major media sources.


The Most Dangerous International Treaty Ever Proposed
2023-03-29, Brownstone Institute
Posted: 2023-04-17 13:45:56
https://brownstone.org/articles/most-dangerous-international-treaty-ever-prop...

Two international legal agreements [are] currently working their way through the World Health Organisation: a new pandemic treaty, and amendments to the 2005 International Health Regulations, both due to be put before the governing body of the WHO, the World Health Assembly, in May next year. As concerned scholars and jurists have detailed, these agreements threaten to fundamentally reshape the relationship between the WHO, national governments, and individuals. They would hardwire into international law a top-down supranational approach to public health in which the WHO, acting in some cases via the sole discretion of one individual, its Director General (DG), would be empowered to impose sweeping, legally binding directions on member states and their citizens. A global system for digital ‘health certificates’ for verification of vaccine status or test results would be routinised, and a bio-surveillance network ... would be embedded and expanded. The WHO has fallen largely under the control of private capital and other vested interests. Over 80 percent of the WHO’s budget is now ‘specified’ funding by way of voluntary contributions typically earmarked for specific projects or diseases in a way that the funder specifies. The WHO [is] ordaining itself as the exclusive global controller not just of the identification of pandemics and potential pandemics but of the design and execution of pandemic responses, while also granting itself a vast health surveillance network and a global workforce.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and health from reliable major media sources.


Scientific Paper on Children, Wireless Technology, and Health Effects by Renowned Experts in Environmental Health
2023-03-23, Global Research
Posted: 2023-04-17 13:43:52
https://www.globalresearch.ca/scientific-paper-children-wireless-technology-h...

A state-of-the-art assessment on the scientific evidence of wireless radiation impacts on children’s health published in the journal Current Problems in Pediatric and Adolescent Health Care concludes that the medical community has a critical role to play to prevent harm from wireless radiation. Written by distinguished experts in medicine, epidemiology, toxicology, physics, biochemical engineering and public health ... the paper references numerous studies that associate wireless exposure to effects including oxidative stress, DNA damage, cardiomyopathy, carcinogenicity, sperm damage, memory damage and neurological effects. Pregnancy, infancy and childhood are periods of critical susceptibility, especially for the brain, which is rapidly developing. “Current government safety limits are outdated and do not reflect the latest science nor the way children use wireless technology today,” stated Linda Birnbaum Ph.D, former Director of the National Toxicology Program. Theodora Scarato, Executive Director of Environmental Health Trust, highlighted the international policies to reduce children’s exposure, such as France and Belgium’s bans on the sale of cell phones designed for young children and the numerous countries that have restrictions on Wi-Fi exposure in classrooms. She stated that, “US government limits allow radiation emissions 10 to 100 times higher than numerous countries such as Switzerland, Italy, China, Russia and India.”

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on wireless technology dangers from reliable major media sources.


The Pesticide Industry’s Playbook for Poisoning the Earth
2020-01-18, The Intercept
Posted: 2023-04-17 13:40:36
https://theintercept.com/2020/01/18/bees-insecticides-pesticides-neonicotinoi...

In 2013, the European Union called for a temporary suspension of the most commonly used neonicotinoid-based products on flowering plants, citing the danger posed to bees — an effort that resulted in a permanent ban in 2018. In the U.S., however, industry dug in, seeking not only to discredit the research but to cast pesticide companies as a solution to the problem. Lobbying documents and emails ... show a sophisticated effort over the last decade by the pesticide industry to obstruct any effort to restrict the use of neonicotinoids. Bayer and Syngenta, the largest manufacturers of neonics, and Monsanto, one of the leading producers of seeds pretreated with neonics, cultivated ties with prominent academics ... and other scientists who had once called for a greater focus on the threat posed by pesticides. A study published in peer-reviewed journal PLOS One found that the American landscape has become 48 times more toxic to insects since the 1990s, a shift largely fueled by the rising application of neonics. “Generally, we see the U.S. waiting longer than the EU to take action on a variety of pesticides and other chemicals,” said [Willa] Childress ... with Pesticide Action Network North America. Part of the divergence, Childress continued, stems from a regulatory system in the U.S. that assumes chemical products are generally safe until proven hazardous. In contrast, the EU tends to use the “precautionary principle,” removing products that may cause harm.

Note: Merchants of Poison: How Monsanto Sold the World on a Toxic Pesticide is a recent and comprehensive analysis of documents released in litigation against Monsanto and their dangerous use of glyphosate. These revealing documents expose years of pesticide industry disinformation, attacks on scientists and journalists, and Monsanto’s deep influence on US regulatory agencies to manipulate science and prioritize profits over public health. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corruption in science and in the food system from reliable major media sources.


The trauma doctor: Gabor Maté on happiness, hope and how to heal our deepest wounds
2023-04-12, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2023-04-17 13:38:34
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2023/apr/12/the-trauma-doctor-gabor-...

[Gabor] Maté was born in January 1944; in May of that year, the deportation of Hungary’s Jews to Auschwitz began. By the end of the Holocaust, 565,000 Hungarian Jews had been murdered, Maté’s maternal grandparents among them. When he was 11 months old, his mother sent him with a stranger to be cared for by his aunt. Maté says trauma, from the Greek for “wound”, “is not what happens to you; it is what happens inside you as a result of what happens to you. It is not the blow on the head, but the concussion I get.” That, he says, is the good news. “If my trauma was that my mother gave me to a stranger ... that will never not have happened. But if the wound was that I decided as a result that I wasn’t worthwhile as a human being, I wasn’t lovable, that’s a wound that can heal at any time.” There can be two types of wound, he says. “There’s the capital-T traumatic events,” which include things like being abused as a child and the loss of a parent. Then there are “small-T traumas”. “You can wound a kid not only by doing bad things to them, but by also not meeting their needs,” he says. Maté has a heightened level of compassion. For him, the real villain is our culture. Many of the plights of modern society are, he says, natural responses to an unhealthy culture. Take addiction. His view is that there is no such thing as an “addictive personality”. Nor is addiction a disease. His mantra is: “Don’t ask why the addiction, ask why the pain. Addiction is a normal response to trauma.”

Note: The Wisdom of Trauma is a powerful film that travels alongside Dr. Gabor Maté in his quest to discover the connection between illness, addiction, trauma, and society. Deeply touching and captivating in its diverse portrayal of real human stories, the film also provides a new vision of a trauma-informed society that seeks to “understand the sources from which troubling behaviors and diseases spring in the wounded human soul.” Anyone can watch this donation-optional film at the above link.


What Everyone Should Know About the Brain’s Ability to Heal
2022-10-25, New York Times
Posted: 2023-04-17 13:36:52
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/25/opinion/brain-stroke-recovery-fetterman.html

Our brains are made up of billions of cells that work together to create our every ability. Wipe out those cells, through a stroke or other brain trauma, and you may no longer be able to read, but you might still be able to speak, sing or write. It’s all about where the brain is damaged — which systems of cells are traumatized and which are not. The three-pound mass of neurological tissue that we call the brain has the power not only to create every ability we have but also to manifest our perception of reality. Our brains have a two-pronged defense mechanism that kicks in when brain trauma occurs. Not only are we able to grow some new neurons — a process called neurogenesis — especially in the sites where physical trauma has occurred, our brain cells are capable of neuroplasticity, which means they can rearrange which other neurons they are in communication with. That’s why, whenever I meet someone who has experienced a brain trauma of any sort, I don’t focus on what abilities that person has lost, but rather I marvel at what insights that person might have gained because of the experience. Few things have greater impact on how people choose to live their lives than neurological trauma or near-death experiences. And when we find ourselves to be neurologically impaired, we become vulnerable and need others to support us rather than criticize or judge us. I became a much more compassionate and empathetic person following my stroke and recovery. Perhaps I am not the only one.

Note: The above was written by Jill Bolte Taylor, a neuroscientist and the author of "My Stroke of Insight: A Brain Scientist’s Personal Journey." Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.


Mindfulness better than CBT for treating depression, study finds
2023-03-27, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2023-04-17 13:35:21
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/mar/27/mindfulness-better-than-cbt-f...

Practising mindfulness is much better than taking part in talking therapies at helping people recover from depression, a British study has found. People who used a mindfulness self-help book for eight weeks and had six sessions with a counsellor experienced a 17.5% greater improvement in recovery from depressive symptoms than those who underwent cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) while being supported by a mental health practitioner. Their results have been published in JAMA Psychiatry. The NHS says mindfulness involves people paying attention to “what is going on inside and outside ourselves, moment by moment” and “the sights, sounds, smells and tastes of the present moment” as well as being aware of their thoughts and feelings as they happen. People using mindfulness in the LIGHTMind 2 trial spent eight weeks following the advice in The Mindful Way Workbook, which helps them build up their mindfulness skills by guiding them on what they should do every day in order to be aware of their thoughts, feelings and physical sensations in a non-judgmental way. Doing that helps people address some of the behaviours that can maintain feelings of depression. They also had six one-to-one half-hour “support sessions” on the telephone with a therapist discussing their progress, experience of practising mindfulness and asking questions. Mindfulness-based treatment is also a cheaper way of tackling depression because people using it needed on average £526 less of subsequent treatment.

Note: Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.


A Front Company and a Fake Identity: How the U.S. Came to Use Spyware It Was Trying to Kill
2023-04-02, New York Times
Posted: 2023-04-10 13:32:11
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/02/us/politics/nso-contract-us-spy.html

The secret contract was finalized on Nov. 8, 2021, a deal between a company that has acted as a front for the United States government and the American affiliate of a notorious Israeli hacking firm. Under the arrangement, the Israeli firm, NSO Group, gave the U.S. government access to one of its most powerful weapons — a geolocation tool that can covertly track mobile phones around the world without the phone user’s knowledge or consent. Only five days earlier, the Biden administration had announced it was taking action against NSO, whose hacking tools for years had been abused by governments around the world to spy on political dissidents, human rights activists and journalists. The White House placed NSO on a Commerce Department blacklist, declaring the company a national security threat. The secret contract ... violates the Biden administration’s public policy, and still appears to be active. The contract, reviewed by The Times, stated that the “United States government” would be the ultimate user of the tool, although it is unclear which government agency authorized the deal and might be using the spyware. Elements of America’s expansive national security apparatus in recent years have bought the weapons, deployed them against drug traffickers, and have quietly pushed to consolidate control of them into the hands of the United States and its closest allies. The F.B.I. purchased access in 2019 to NSO’s most powerful hacking tool, known as Pegasus, which invades mobile phones and mines their contents.

Note: Read how journalists and activists have been targeted with NSO Group spyware. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and the disappearance of privacy from reliable major media sources.


Censorship by Proxy: How Big Tech Censors Global News Platforms
2022-12-11, LA Progressive (A popular Los Angeles Newspaper)
Posted: 2023-04-10 13:30:00
https://www.laprogressive.com/the-media-in-the-united-states/censorship-by-proxy

Big Tech giants and their oligarchic owners now engage in a new type of censorship, which we have called “censorship by proxy.” Censorship by proxy describes restrictions on freedom of information undertaken by private corporations that exceed limits on governmental censorship and serve both corporate and government or third-party interests. Censorship by proxy is not subject to venerable First Amendment proscriptions on government interference with freedom of speech or freedom of the press. Censorship by proxy alerts us to the power of economic entities that are not normally recognized as “gatekeepers.” For example, in 2022, the digital financial service PayPal (whose founders include Peter Thiel and Elon Musk) froze the accounts of Consortium News and MintPress News for “unspecified offenses” and “risks” associated with their accounts, a ruling that prevented both independent news outlets from using funds maintained by PayPal. Consortium News and MintPress News have each filed critical news stories and commentary on the foreign policy objectives of the United States and NATO. PayPal issued notices to each news outlet, stating that, in addition to suspending their accounts, it might also seize their assets for “damages.”  Joe Lauria, editor in chief of Consortium News, said he believed this was a case of “ideological policing.” Mnar Adley, head of MintPress News, warned, “The sanctions-regime war is coming home to hit the bank accounts of watchdog journalists.”

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corporate corruption and media manipulation from reliable sources.


Pentagon Tries to Cast Bank Runs as National Security Threat
2023-04-03, The Intercept
Posted: 2023-04-10 13:27:54
https://theintercept.com/2023/04/03/silicon-valley-bank-bailout-pentagon/

In recent months, the Pentagon has moved to provide loans, guarantees, and other financial instruments to technology companies it considers crucial to national security — a step beyond the grants and contracts it normally employs. So when Silicon Valley Bank threatened to fail in March following a bank run, the defense agency advocated for government intervention to insure the investments. The Pentagon had even scrambled to prepare multiple plans to get cash to affected companies if necessary, reporting by Defense One revealed. Their interest in Silicon Valley Bank stems from the Pentagon’s brand-new office, the Office of Strategic Capital. The secretary of defense established the OSC in December specifically to counteract the investment power of adversaries like China in U.S. technologies, and to secure separate funding for companies whose products are considered vital to national security. The national security argument for bailout, notably, found an influential friend in the Senate. As the Biden administration intervened to protect Silicon Valley Bank depositors on March 12, Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., who chairs the powerful Senate Intelligence Committee and also sits on the Banking Committee, issued a press release warning that the bank run posed a national security risk. Warner — the only member of Congress to have publicly tied SVB to national security — has received significant contributions from the financial sector. Since 2012, Warner has received over $21,000 from Silicon Valley Bank’s super PAC.

Note: Many tech startups with funds in Silicon Valley Bank were working on projects with defense and national security applications. Explore revealing news articles on the rising concerns of the emerging technologies that the Defense Department is investing in, given their recent request for $17.8 billion to research and develop artificial intelligence, autonomy, directed energy weapons, cybersecurity, 5G technology, and more.


Who Controls How We Remember the Iraq War?
2023-03-18, LA Progressive (A popular Los Angeles Newspaper)
Posted: 2023-04-10 13:22:00
https://www.laprogressive.com/the-media-in-the-united-states/remember-the-ira...

As mainstream U.S. media outlets pause to remember the U.S. invasion of Iraq, it’s clear that there’s a lot they hope we’ll forget – first and foremost, the media’s own active complicity in whipping up public support for the war. But the more you dig into mainstream news coverage from that period ... the harder it is to forget how flagrantly news networks across the broadcast and cable landscape uncritically spread the Bush administration’s propaganda and actively excluded dissenting voices. A 2003 report by the media watchdog Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR) found that in the two weeks leading up to the invasion, ABC World News, NBC Nightly News, CBS Evening News, and the PBS Newshour featured a total of 267 American experts, analysts, and commentators on camera to supposedly help make sense of the march to war. Of these 267 guests, an astounding 75% were current or former government or military officials, and a grand total of one expressed any skepticism. The bedrock democratic principle of an independent, adversarial press was simply tossed out the window. “Often journalists blame the government for the failure of the journalists themselves to do independent reporting,” [author Norman] Solomon says. “But nobody forced the major networks like CNN to do so much commentary from retired generals and admirals and all the rest of it. That really runs directly counter to the idea of an independent press.”

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corporate corruption and media manipulation from reliable sources.


Congressional Effort to End Assange Prosecution Underway
2023-03-30, The Intercept
Posted: 2023-04-10 13:16:55
https://theintercept.com/2023/03/30/julian-assange-congress-rashida-tlaib/

Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., is circulating a letter among her House colleagues that calls on the Department of Justice to drop charges against Julian Assange and end its effort to extradite him from his detention in Belmarsh prison in the United Kingdom. The Justice Department has charged Assange, the publisher of WikiLeaks, for publishing classified information. The Obama administration had previously decided not to prosecute Assange, concerned with what was dubbed internally as the “New York Times problem.” The Times had partnered with Assange when it came to publishing classified information and itself routinely publishes classified information. Publishing classified information is a violation of the Espionage Act, though it has never been challenged in the Supreme Court, and constitutional experts broadly consider that element of the law to be unconstitutional. The Obama administration could not find a way to charge Assange without also implicating standard journalistic practices. The Trump administration, unburdened by such concerns around press freedom, pushed ahead with the indictment and extradition request. The Biden administration, driven by the zealous prosecutor Gordon Kromberg, has aggressively pursued Trump’s prosecution. Tlaib noted that the Times, The Guardian, El País, Le Monde, and Der Spiegel had put out a joint statement condemning the charges, and alluded to the same problem that gave the Obama administration pause.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and media manipulation from reliable sources.


US Virgin Islands subpoenas four top businessmen in Epstein banking inquiry
2023-04-01, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2023-04-10 13:14:28
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/apr/01/us-virgin-islands-subpoenas-e...

A US Virgin Islands investigations into the sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein’s ties to an American bank issued subpoenas to four wealthy business leaders on Friday, extending its reach into the highest echelons of tech, hospitality and finance. The subpoenas issued to the Google co-founder Sergey Brin, Hyatt Hotels chairperson Thomas Pritzker, American-Canadian businessman Mortimer Zuckerman and former CAA talent agency chairperson Michael Ovitz are crafted to gather more information about Epstein’s relationship with JPMorgan Chase. The Virgin Islands’ lawsuit against JP Morgan, the world’s largest bank in terms of assets, alleges that the institution “facilitated and concealed wire and cash transactions that raised suspicion of – and were in fact part of – a criminal enterprise whose currency was the sexual servitude of dozens of women and girls in and beyond the Virgin Islands”. “Human trafficking was the principal business of the accounts Epstein maintained at JP Morgan,” it said. The disgraced financier ... owned two private islands – Little Saint James, or “Epstein Island”, and Great Saint James – in the American territory, and authorities there have secured a $105m settlement from his estate. The demand for any communications and documents related to the bank and Epstein from four of the wealthiest people in the US comes days after it was reported that Jamie Dimon, JP Morgan’s chairperson and chief executive, is expected to be deposed in the case.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on Jeffrey Epstein's child sex trafficking ring from reliable major media sources.


20 Years After Illegal US Invasion of Iraq, Its Architects Are Still Cashing In
2023-03-19, Truthout
Posted: 2023-04-10 13:11:30
https://truthout.org/articles/20-years-after-illegal-us-invasion-of-iraq-its-...

It had been 15 years since the U.S. invaded Iraq when, on March 19, 2018, the celebrated Iraqi novelist and poet Sinan Antoon published a blistering op-ed in The New York Times. He took readers through his observations of the steady deterioration of Iraqi society since the war began, but the most scathing words came toward the end. “No one knows for certain how many Iraqis have died as a result of the invasion 15 years ago,” Antoon wrote. “Some credible estimates put the number at more than one million. You can read that sentence again. The invasion of Iraq is often spoken of in the United States as a ‘blunder,’ or even a ‘colossal mistake.’ It was a crime. Those who perpetrated it are still at large.” That the invasion was not just a moral catastrophe but an egregious war crime has been echoed by everyone from United Nations heads to human rights leaders. With the 20th anniversary of the invasion now approaching, the sanitizing of the war’s major culprits — or, at the very least, the soft forgetting of their crimes — continues. As the very top decision-makers faded into retirement, the next layer of war pushers, enablers and overseers — the top defense and national security officials and the celebrity generals — went on to profit immensely following their leadership of an illegal war, darting through the revolving door to snag coveted corporate board seats and prestigious university appointments. Many of them remain in these positions with defense industry giants, tech firms and Wall Street investors today.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on military corruption and war from reliable major media sources.


Two Decades and $90 Billion US Dollars Later: Dissecting the Afghan Military’s Total Collapse
2023-03-27, MintPress News
Posted: 2023-04-10 13:08:57
https://www.mintpressnews.com/90-billion-us-dollars-sigar-report-afghanistan/...

In February, the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) published an extensive investigation into the spectacular collapse of the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces’ (ANDSF), which the U.S. spent two decades and $90 billion building. In common with previous SIGAR reports, it offers a remarkably uncompromising, no-punches-pulled assessment, exposing corruption, incompetence, lies, and delusion every step of the way. The Pentagon and State Department rejected SIGAR’s jurisdiction over them, declined to review interim drafts of the report, denied access to their staff, and “mostly” refused to answer requests for information. The Afghan government and military, their trainers and the Pentagon alike were all heavily incentivized to lie to one another, and political leaders in Washington, who were in turn motivated to mislead the public. As prior SIGAR reports also found, so much money and equipment were flowing into Afghanistan without any supervision whatsoever, and weaponry and other aid were misused, stolen or illegally sold off with ease by Afghans, U.S. personnel and Pentagon contractors. SIGAR ominously warns that a similar absence of accountability is evident in the “unprecedented” U.S. arms shipments to Ukraine since Russia’s invasion on February 24, 2022. Despite U.S. leaders promising a keen eye is being kept on the weapons shipments, SIGAR’s report makes clear these same officials did not even know what was being sent to Afghanistan. Is the same true for Kiev?

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on military corruption and war from reliable major media sources.


How Nelson Mandela’s former prison guard is keeping his legacy alive
2023-01-22, The Independent (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2023-04-10 13:06:33
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/nelson-mandela-christo-brand-...

“Nelson Mandela – I’d never heard the name before in my life,” a former prison guard to the South African icon recalls. Christo Brand casts his mind back to 1978, and his first night guarding one of the most influential people of the past century. He was just 19 years old. A sergeant informed him the ageing man sleeping uncomfortably on the floor of the Robben Island jail cell was “a terrorist trying to overthrow your country”. Mr Brand ... soon became close with Mandela. He began to spend days and nights with Mandela, who he says remained charming even after some 16 years as prisoner 466/64. In time he saw virtue in the older man’s crimes. Reflecting after years at Mandela’s side, years in which he saw his friend slowly but surely topple the old order, Mr Brand says: “Mandela was fighting for the freedom of the country, he was prepared to go to the gallows for freedom for his people”. “When Mandela was in prison,” Mr Brand says, “he studied Martin Luther King and Gandhi, he tried to follow their footsteps and try to bring a change.” In his memoir Long Walk to Freedom, Mandela hints at why he kept his prison officer at his side even after being freed. Mr Brand, he writes, “reinforced my belief in the essential humanity even of those who had kept me behind bars”. Mandela emerged from prison in 1990 already negotiating with South Africa’s leadership for the changes that would see the country’s first democratic election a few years later.

Note: Read more on Nelson Mandela's powerful capacity for empathy, and how he served as a striking role model for addressing the hearts, not minds, of people we deem as opponents or oppressors.


How Peace Activists Are Beating the U.S. Military at its Own (Video) Game
2022-09-10, The Progressive
Posted: 2023-04-10 13:04:49
https://progressive.org/latest/peace-video-games-military-recruitment-gallagh...

In 2018, the military, struggling to meet enlistment goals, began invading gaming communities as part of a larger, digital-first strategy. Recruiters who had once stalked school assemblies and shopping malls began streaming games on social media and competing in tournaments to court new enlistees online. Since then, the military’s online recruiting strategy has expanded to the Amazon-owned streaming platform Twitch, which attracts 140 million active users per month. The Army, Navy, and Air Force churn out hours of Twitch content per week, including streams of popular first-person-shooter games. The Armed Forces claim their gamers ... aren’t technically recruiters. But anti-war advocates say they might as well be. To counter this, [Marine veteran Chris] Velazquez became a community developer for Gamers for Peace (GFP), the first peace organization formed to mirror the military’s online recruiting practices: While streaming popular games like Halo and Rocket League, its members—many of them veterans—offer career advice and mentorship to teens, talk politics, and discuss the realities of war. They also share information about online military recruitment tactics at in-person gaming conventions such as PAX Unplugged. These initiatives, members say, give prospective recruits the tools and knowledge to see other options and reconsider enlisting. The group has already accrued nearly 600 Twitch followers as well as 400 members on the popular messaging service Discord.

Note: The latest US Air Force recruitment tool is a video game that allows players to receive in-game medals and achievements for drone bombing Iraqis and Afghans. For more on this topic, read an article we've summarized about how one of the best-selling video games, Call of Duty, is a carefully constructed piece of military propaganda.


New Mobile Phone Service Shows We Can Have Both Privacy and Nice Things
2023-02-15, ACLU
Posted: 2023-04-10 13:03:04
https://wp.api.aclu.org/news/privacy-technology/new-mobile-phone-service-show...

The recent launch of a new mobile phone service introduced significant new privacy protections into the mobile phone system. This exciting new approach highlights the failure of the existing mobile phone infrastructure to protect privacy, and points the way forward for a wide variety of technologies. Today’s cellphones are generally a privacy disaster. Partly that’s the result of the two companies that control the operating system software on the vast majority of the world’s pocket computers. In order for your carrier to route calls and data to your phone, the network needs to constantly know which cell tower your phone is near. And when you make a call or use data, the provider can see where that traffic is going. Cell carriers track and store this accidental byproduct of the technology in order to record people’s location history and network activity for marketing purposes and, in certain circumstances, for sharing with law enforcement. The new phone service, called Pretty Good Phone Privacy (PGPP), uses encryption techniques to deliberately blind itself so that it can’t know that the user of a mobile device is you, or what data you are sending from that phone. You connect to the PGPP service for payment, and that’s all. With PGPP’s approach, the carrier simply does not have the data to turn over to anyone. It cannot be sold, leaked, or hacked, let alone offered to overreaching law enforcement agencies. Verizon, T-Mobile, AT&T, and their smaller competitors could be offering such a privacy-protecting service, but don’t want to.

Note: Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.


After 20 Years, the Department of Homeland Security Is a Money-Guzzling Failure
2023-03-13, Newsweek
Posted: 2023-04-02 20:27:14
https://www.newsweek.com/after-20-years-department-homeland-security-money-gu...

In March 2003, the newly christened Department of Homeland Security, or DHS, opened its doors. The department took everything from immigration enforcement and counterterrorism to airport security and disaster response under one gargantuan bureaucracy. Despite these wide-ranging missions, the department's unifying logic in the post 9/11 era has been to wage the so-called war on terror at home. The result has been systemic abuse of minority communities, a dangerous militarization of American life, and a massive waste of money that sapped resources from addressing the real threats to our homeland. DHS agencies have militarized U.S. streets, sending officers in tactical gear to respond to civilian protests and conducting surveillance of U.S. citizens engaged in constitutionally protected activities. There are stories of DHS drones surveilling Indigenous water and land protectors and DHS forces spying on Black Lives Matter protesters. DHS even monitored journalists who reported on the department's tactics. None of these abuses have come cheap. Since its founding in 2003, the U.S. has spent $1.4 trillion on the agency. That's more than seven times what the government spent over the same period on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), including the CDC's COVID-19 pandemic response—and more than five times more than on the Environmental Protection Agency. The [DHS] was supposed to be about making the U.S. safer. But it has failed.

Note: A thorough investigation reveals details on the DHS "Disinformation Governance Board," an unsuccessful effort in 2022 to police online speech it considers inaccurate and dangerous. Now, the DHS board and its key subcommittees are undergoing sweeping changes as public concern grows over social media censorship and government overreach.


US courts must stop shielding government surveillance programs from accountability
2022-09-26, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2023-04-02 20:23:55
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/sep/26/us-courts-government-ac...

Under a post-9/11 surveillance program known as “Upstream”, the NSA is systematically searching Americans’ internet communications as they enter and leave the United States. The agency sifts through these streams of data looking for “identifiers” associated with its many thousands of foreign targets – identifiers like email addresses and phone numbers. The NSA does all of this without warrants, without any individual judicial approval, and without showing that any of the people it is surveilling – including countless Americans – have done anything wrong. This surveillance raises serious constitutional concerns, but no court has ever considered a legal challenge to it because the government has claimed that allowing a suit against Upstream surveillance to go forward would implicate “state secrets”. In 2007, for example, an appeals court dismissed a lawsuit filed by Khaled El-Masri claiming that, in a case of mistaken identity, he had been kidnapped and tortured by the CIA. The court acknowledged the public evidence of El-Masri’s mistreatment but held that state secrets were too central to the case to allow it to go forward. And in 2010, a different appeals court dismissed a lawsuit filed by five individuals who claimed that one of Boeing’s subsidiary companies had flown the planes carrying them to the black sites where they were tortured by the CIA. This use of the state secrets privilege – to dismiss cases – departs from the supreme court’s narrow framing of the privilege.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on court system corruption and the disappearance of privacy from reliable major media sources.


A Four-Decade Secret: One Man’s Story of Sabotaging Carter’s Re-election
2023-03-18, New York Times
Posted: 2023-04-02 20:21:59
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/18/us/politics/jimmy-carter-october-surprise-...

It has been more than four decades, but Ben Barnes said he remembers it vividly. His longtime political mentor invited him on a mission to the Middle East. What Mr. Barnes said he did not realize until later was the real purpose of the mission: to sabotage the re-election campaign of the president of the United States. It was 1980 and Jimmy Carter was in the White House, bedeviled by a hostage crisis in Iran that had paralyzed his presidency and hampered his effort to win a second term. Mr. Carter’s best chance for victory was to free the 52 Americans held captive before Election Day. That was something that Mr. Barnes said his mentor was determined to prevent. His mentor was John B. Connally Jr., a titan of American politics. Now Mr. Connally resolved to help Mr. Reagan beat Mr. Carter. What happened next Mr. Barnes has largely kept secret for nearly 43 years. Mr. Connally, he said, took him to one Middle Eastern capital after another that summer, meeting with a host of regional leaders to deliver a blunt message to be passed to Iran: Don’t release the hostages before the election. Mr. Reagan will win and give you a better deal. Mr. Connally’s files indicated that he did, in fact, leave Houston on July 18, 1980, for a trip that would take him to Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Israel before returning to Houston on Aug. 11. Iran did hold the hostages until after the election, which Mr. Reagan won, and did not release them until minutes after noon on Jan. 20, 1981, when Mr. Carter left office.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on elections corruption from reliable major media sources.


Facial recognition bias frustrates Black asylum applicants to US, advocates say
2023-02-08, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2023-04-02 20:19:26
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/feb/08/us-immigration-cbp-one-app-fa...

The US government’s new mobile app for migrants to apply for asylum at the US-Mexico border is blocking many Black people from being able to file their claims because of facial recognition bias in the tech, immigration advocates say. The app, CBP One, is failing to register many people with darker skin tones, effectively barring them from their right to request entry into the US. People who have made their way to the south-west border from Haiti and African countries, in particular, are falling victim to apparent algorithm bias in the technology that the app relies on. The government announced in early January that the new CBP One mobile app would be the only way migrants arriving at the border can apply for asylum and exemption from Title 42 restrictions. Racial bias in face recognition technology has long been a problem. Increasingly used by law enforcement and government agencies to fill databases with biometric information including fingerprints and iris scans, a 2020 report by Harvard University called it the “least accurate” identifier, especially among darker-skinned women with whom the error rate is higher than 30%. Emmanuella Camille, a staff attorney with the Haitian Bridge Alliance ... said the CBP One app has helped “lighter-skin toned people from other nations” obtain their asylum appointments “but not Haitians” and other Black applicants. Besides the face recognition technology not registering them ... many asylum seekers have outdated cellphones – if they have cellphones at all – that don’t support the CBP One app.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and the erosion of civil liberties from reliable major media sources.


Big oil on campus: how US universities are ‘colonized’ by the fossil-fuel industry
2023-03-27, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2023-04-02 20:14:39
https://www.theguardian.com/education/2023/mar/27/fossil-fuel-firms-us-univer...

Even as elite American universes such as Harvard have bowed to pressure to divest their multibillion-dollar endowments from fossil fuels, and student activists take recalcitrant holdouts to court, oil and gas companies continue to exert a grip upon campus life, through funded research and the physical presence of oil and gas industry employees in lectures and meetings with faculty. Fossil-fuel firms have purposely sought to “colonize” academia with industry-friendly science, rather than seed overt climate denial, according to Ben Franta, a senior research fellow at the University of Oxford who has studied industry’s influence over universities. Their research dollars, he said, had effectively discouraged academic endeavors that challenge the core business model of burning oil and gas, instead shifting the focus to favored topics such as capturing carbon emissions from polluting facilities, a still niche technology that would allow industry to continue business as usual. The reach of fossil fuels into academia “never ceases to amaze me”, said Robert Brulle, an environmental sociologist at Brown University. “You can barely study climate change at elite universities and not be funded by fossil-fuel companies,” he added. “They drive all this study into carbon capture, so that influences policy and becomes a part of the Biden administration’s agenda. The influence is profound, and the students are right to be wondering what kind of education they are getting here.”

Note: Read more on how fossil companies donated $700 million to US universities over 10 years. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corporate corruption from reliable major media sources.


The links between pollution and miscarriage: ‘This is the stuff nightmares are made of’
2023-03-28, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2023-04-02 20:12:16
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/mar/29/the-links-between-pollution-a...

The world we live in is slowly poisoning every single one of us. And the chemicals doing the most damage are byproducts of the fossil fuel industry, agribusiness and manufacturing. There doesn’t seem to be the appetite at a regulatory or governmental level to stop it. In Australia, 50,000 agricultural, industrial and veterinary chemicals are being used; 1,500 are suspected to interfere with endocrine function, which is essential to the healthy working of our reproductive and hormonal systems. Only a very small number have been tested. Microplastics, which can cause inflammation in the body, is being found in our blood streams and also in the placentas of unborn fetuses. Walking down a major intersection during rush hour can expose you to as much particulate matter as a major bushfire event. Even if chemicals are tested, the testing regimen means that chemicals are only being tested in isolation and not in conjunction with others to see how compounds react. Also, they might be tested for carcinogenic effects ... but the test subjects aren't monitored for other ill-effects, such as endocrine disruption. Some effects take place long after the research has concluded. Some of these chemicals can stay in the body forever. Or affect the way our DNA functions. There’s even an Australian website (not widely enough publicised) called yourfertility.org.au. It has an entire section on chemicals in our environment and what to avoid, stating that “avoiding these chemicals may increase the chance of having a baby”.

Note: The above was written by Isabelle Oderberg, author of Hard to Bear: Investigating the science and silence of miscarriage. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corporate corruption and health from reliable major media sources.


Federal Agencies Are Still Using Our Phones as Tracking Beacons
2023-03-24, Reason
Posted: 2023-04-02 20:09:48
https://reason.com/2023/03/24/federal-agencies-are-still-using-our-phones-as-...

Recent reports about the Secret Service and Immigration and Customs Enforcement playing fast and loose with rules regarding cellphone tracking and the FBI purchasing phone location data from commercial sources constitute an important wake-up call. They remind us that those handy mobile devices many people tote around are the most cost-effective surveillance system ever invented. "The United States Secret Service and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Homeland Security Investigations (ICE HSI) did not always adhere to Federal statute and cellsite simulator (CSS) policies when using CSS during criminal investigations," the Department of Homeland Security's Office of the Inspector General reported last month. "Separately, ICE HSI did not adhere to Department privacy policies and the applicable Federal privacy statute when using CSS." The OIG report referred to the use of what is commonly called "stingray" technology—devices that simulate cellphone towers and trick phones within range into connecting and revealing their location. "They also gather information about the phones of countless bystanders who happen to be nearby," the ACLU warns. Even the most precise phone company location data remains available with court approval. The courts are currently mulling multiple cases involving "geofence warrants" whereby law enforcement seeks data not on individuals, but on whoever was carrying a device in a designated area at a specified time.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and the disappearance of privacy from reliable major media sources.


Geofencing Warrants Are a Threat to Privacy
2022-12-05, Reason
Posted: 2023-04-02 20:07:43
https://reason.com/2022/12/05/geofencing-warrants-are-a-threat-to-privacy/

The House committee investigating the events of January 6, 2021, is nearly finished. Nearly 900 ... criminal prosecutions of alleged rioters remain underway, and one case has shed troubling new light on how the FBI investigated these defendants. The suspect's name is David Rhine. His lawyer is the first to present a potentially successful challenge to the geofencing warrant the FBI used to place some defendants inside the Capitol building during the attack. A previous Wired report last year found 45 federal criminal cases citing the warrant, which required Google to provide the FBI with data on devices using its location services inside a set geographic area. Rhine's case has revealed just how expansive the FBI's request to Google really was. Google initially listed 5,723 devices in response to the warrant, then whittled the tally to exclude likely Capitol staff and police as well as anyone who wasn't "entirely within the geofence, to about a 70 percent probability." The final list of identifying details handed over to the FBI had 1,535 names. It included people whose phones had been turned off or put in airplane mode, and "people who attempted to delete their location data following the attacks were singled out by the FBI for greater scrutiny." It's ... easy to envision geofencing warrants undergoing the usual surveillance mission creep. Left unchecked, law enforcement could decide geofence data would come in handy while looking for a journalist's whistleblowing source, or perhaps at political protests.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and the disappearance of privacy from reliable major media sources.


Air Force paid $1,280 apiece for coffee cups
2018-10-30, CNN News
Posted: 2023-04-02 20:05:18
https://www.cnn.com/2018/10/29/politics/air-force-coffee-cups-reheating-chuck...

The US Air Force is facing more questions as to why it spent tens of thousands of dollars over the last three years on large cups that can reheat beverages, like coffee or tea, on refueling tankers and cargo aircraft during flight. Despite being assured by Air Force Secretary Dr. Heather Wilson earlier this month that the service has “suspended its purchasing of the exorbitantly priced cups,” Sen. Chuck Grassley sent a follow-up letter last week asking for further explanation as to why they were purchased in the first place. Grassley raised the issue of the cups in an October 2 letter to Wilson after reports surfaced this summer that the 60th Ariel Port Squadron at Travis Air Force Base had spent $1,280 on each cup in 2018 – a dramatic increase from the $693 per-cup price in 2016. In her response to that letter, Wilson said the Air Force has spent $326,785 on nearly 400 cups since 2016 – an average of $817. “You are right to be concerned about the high costs of spare parts, and I remain thankful to have your support in addressing this problem,” Wilson told the senator in a letter dated October 17. The increasing cost of the cups was first reported ... in July as part of a report on how airmen at Travis Air Force Base are attempting to use 3D printing to develop a cost-effective way to replace the cups’ plastic handles, which have a tendency to break. “Unfortunately, when dropped, the handle breaks easily leading to the expenditure of several thousand dollars to replace the cup as replacement parts are not available,” the Air Force said.

Note: Read this eye-opening article to learn the many ways the government wastes your tax dollars. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on military corruption from reliable major media sources.


Meet the 'glass-half-full girl' whose brain rewired after losing a hemisphere
2023-03-22, NPR
Posted: 2023-04-02 20:03:08
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2023/03/22/1165131907/neuroplastici...

In most people, speech and language live in the brain's left hemisphere. Mora Leeb is not most people. When she was 9 months old, surgeons removed the left side of her brain. Yet at 15, Mora plays soccer, tells jokes, gets her nails done, and, in many ways, lives the life of a typical teenager. "I can be described as a glass-half-full girl," she says, pronouncing each word carefully and without inflection. Her slow, cadence-free speech is one sign of a brain that has had to reorganize its language circuits. Yet to a remarkable degree, Mora's right hemisphere has taken on jobs usually done on the left side. It's an extreme version of brain plasticity, the process that allows a brain to modify its connections to adapt to new circumstances. People like Mora represent the upper bounds of human brain plasticity because their brains were radically altered very early in life — a period when the wiring is still a work in progress. During an interview with Mora, both her abilities and deficits were apparent. So was her outgoing personality and curiosity about the world. Mora began by telling me a joke: "How do you make a hot dog stand?" she asks. "You take away its chair." What scientists still want to know is precisely what allowed Mora's brain to rewire so extensively. One thing is clear: Understanding the basis of this sort of extreme plasticity, they say, could help millions of people whose brains are still trying to recover from a stroke, tumor, or traumatic injury. And Mora is helping scientists deepen their understanding, simply by being herself.

Note: Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring disabled persons news articles.


A fish can sense another’s fear, a study shows
2023-03-03, Associated Press
Posted: 2023-04-02 20:01:09
https://apnews.com/article/empathy-zebrafish-oxytocin-origins-800d30fd9058df8...

Our capacity to care about others may have very, very ancient origins, a new study suggests. It might have been deep-rooted in prehistoric animals that lived millions of years ago, before fish and mammals like us diverged on the tree of life, according to researchers who published their study Thursday in the journal Science. Scientists are usually reluctant to attribute humanlike feelings to animals. But it’s generally accepted that many animals have moods, including fish. The new study shows that fish can detect fear in other fish, and then become afraid too – and that this ability is regulated by oxytocin, the same brain chemical that underlies the capacity for empathy in humans. The researchers demonstrated this by deleting genes linked to producing and absorbing oxytocin in the brains of zebrafish. Those fish were then essentially antisocial – they failed to detect or change their behavior when other fish were anxious. But when some of the altered fish received oxytocin injections, their ability to sense and mirror the feelings of other fish was restored — what scientists call “emotional contagion.” “They respond to other individuals being frightened. In that regard, they behave just like us,” said ... neuroscientist Ibukun Akinrinade, a co-author of the study. The study also showed that zebrafish will pay more attention to fish that have previously been stressed out – a behavior the researchers likened to consoling them. Previous research has shown that oxytocin plays a similar role in transmitting fear in mice.

Note: Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.


Psychedelic brew ayahuasca’s profound impact revealed in brain scans
2023-03-20, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2023-04-02 19:59:29
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2023/mar/20/psychedelic-brew-ayahuasca-pr...

The brew is so potent that practitioners report not only powerful hallucinations, but near-death experiences, contact with higher-dimensional beings, and life-transforming voyages through alternative realities. Often before throwing up, or having trouble at the other end. Now, scientists have gleaned deep insights of their own by monitoring the brain on DMT, or dimethyltryptamine, the psychedelic compound found in Psychotria viridis, the flowering shrub that is mashed up and boiled in the Amazonian drink, ayahuasca. The recordings reveal a profound impact across the brain, particularly in areas that are highly evolved in humans and instrumental in planning, language, memory, complex decision-making and imagination. The regions from which we conjure reality become hyperconnected, with communication more chaotic, fluid and flexible. “It is incredibly potent,” said Robin Carhart-Harris, a professor of neurology and psychiatry. “People describe leaving this world and breaking through into another that is incredibly immersive and richly complex, sometimes being populated by other beings that they feel might hold special power over them, like gods.” He added: “DMT breaks down the basic networks of the brain, causing them to become less distinct from each other. The major rhythms of the brain – that serve a largely inhibitory, constraining function – break down, and in concert, brain activity becomes more entropic or information-rich.”

Note: Read more about the healing potentials of mind-altering drugs. Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.


Central Bank Digital Currencies Are About Control – They Should Be Stopped
2022-04-12, Forbes
Posted: 2023-03-27 14:29:34
https://www.forbes.com/sites/norbertmichel/2022/04/12/central-bank-digital-cu...

I participated in an online forum called US CBDC—A Disaster in the making? We had a very productive discussion about the policy aspect of central bank digital currencies (CBDCs). I believe that the Fed should not launch a CBDC. Ever. And I think that Congress should amend the Federal Reserve Act, just to be on the safe side. I want to distinguish between a wholesale CBDC and retail CBDC. With a wholesale CBDC, banks can electronically transact with each other using a liability of the central bank. That is essentially what banks do now. But retail CBDCs are another animal altogether. Retail CBDCs allow members of the general public to make electronic payments of all kinds with a liability of the central bank. This feature–making electronic transactions using a liability of the Federal Reserve–is central to why Congress should make sure that the Fed never issues a retail CBDC. The problem is that the federal government, not privately owned commercial banks, would be responsible for issuing deposits. And while this fact might seem like a feature instead of bug, it’s a major problem for anything that resembles a free society. The problem is that there is no limit to the level of control that the government could exert over people if money is purely electronic and provided directly by the government. A CBDC would give federal officials full control over the money going into–and coming out of–every person’s account. This level of government control is not compatible with economic or political freedom.

Note: The above was written by Norbert Michel, Vice President and Director of the Cato Institute's Center for Monetary and Financial Alternatives. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on financial system corruption from reliable major media sources.


119K people hurt by riot-control weapons since 2015
2023-03-22, Associated Press
Posted: 2023-03-27 14:27:52
https://apnews.com/article/tear-gas-protests-black-lives-matter-police-32b931...

More than 119,000 people have been injured by tear gas and other chemical irritants around the world since 2015 and some 2,000 suffered injuries from “less lethal” impact projectiles, according to a report released Wednesday. Physicians for Human Rights and the International Network of Civil Liberties Organizations, which produced the report, called it “the most comprehensive study on crowd-control weapons to date.” The report on casualties from a largely unregulated industry cites an alarming evolution of crowd-control devices into more powerful and indiscriminate designs and deployment, including dropping tear gas from drones. Some of the injuries were fatal but it was impossible from the data to estimate the total number of deaths, said the report’s lead author, Rohini Haar. The vast majority of the data comes from cases in which a person came to an emergency room with injuries from crowd-control weapons and the attending doctor or hospital staff made the effort to document it, Haar said. Protesters have been blinded and suffered brain damage from beanbag rounds. In November, the city of Portland reached a $250,000 settlement with five demonstrators in a federal lawsuit over police use of tear gas and other crowd-control devices during racial justice protests. But last month, a federal judge threw out an excessive force claim against an unnamed federal agent who fired an impact munition at the forehead of protester Donavan La Bella, fracturing his skull.

Note: For an idea of how common the deployment of nonlethal weapons against protesters has become, see a list of incidents of police violence that took place in the US in 2020. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on police corruption and non-lethal weapons from reliable major media sources.


The FBI Just Admitted It Bought US Location Data
2023-03-08, Wired
Posted: 2023-03-27 14:26:20
https://www.wired.com/story/fbi-purchase-location-data-wray-senate/

The United States Federal Bureau of Investigation has acknowledged for the first time that it purchased US location data rather than obtaining a warrant. The disclosure came today during a US Senate hearing. Senator Ron Wyden ... put the question of the bureau’s use of commercial data to its director, Christopher Wray: “Does the FBI purchase US phone-geolocation information?” Wray said his agency was not currently doing so. “To my knowledge, we do not currently purchase commercial database information that includes location data derived from internet advertising,” Wray said. “I understand that we previously—as in the past—purchased some such information for a specific national security pilot project. But that’s not been active for some time.” In its landmark Carpenter v. United States decision, the Supreme Court held that government agencies accessing historical location data without a warrant were violating the Fourth Amendment’s guarantee against unreasonable searches. The decision left open a glaring loophole that allows the government to simply purchase whatever it cannot otherwise legally obtain. US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and the Defense Intelligence Agency are among the list of federal agencies known to have taken advantage of this loophole. The Department of Homeland Security ... purchased the geolocations of millions of Americans from private marketing firms. The data were derived from ... benign sources, such as mobile games and weather apps.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and the disappearance of privacy from reliable major media sources.


Mapping Project Reveals Locations of U.S. Border Surveillance Towers
2023-03-20, The Intercept
Posted: 2023-03-27 14:24:38
https://theintercept.com/2023/03/20/border-surveillance-map/

The precise locations of the U.S. government’s high-tech surveillance towers along the U.S-Mexico border are being made public for the first time as part of a mapping project by the Electronic Frontier Foundation. While the Department of Homeland Security’s investment of more than a billion dollars into a so-called virtual wall between the U.S. and Mexico is a matter of public record, the government does not disclose where these towers are located, despite privacy concerns of residents of both countries — and the fact that individual towers are plainly visible to observers. The surveillance tower map is the result of a year’s work steered by EFF Director of Investigations Dave Maass. As border surveillance towers have multiplied across the southern border, so too have they become increasingly sophisticated, packing a panoply of powerful cameras, microphones, lasers, radar antennae, and other sensors. Companies like Anduril and Google have reaped major government paydays by promising to automate the border-watching process with migrant-detecting artificial intelligence. Opponents of these modern towers, bristling with always-watching sensors, argue the increasing computerization of border security will lead inevitably to the dehumanization of an already thoroughly dehumanizing undertaking. Nobody can say for certain how many people have died attempting to cross the U.S.-Mexico border in the recent age of militarization and surveillance. Researchers estimate that the minimum is at least 10,000 dead.

Note: As the article states, the Department of Homeland Security was "the largest reorganization of the federal government since the creation of the CIA and the Defense Department," and has resulted in U.S. taxpayers funding corrupt agendas that have led to massive human rights abuses. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and the disappearance of privacy from reliable major media sources.


‘Here it is better not to be born’: Cobalt mining for Big Tech is driving child labor, deaths in the Congo
2023-03-23, The Independent (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2023-03-27 14:20:52
https://www.independent.co.uk/climate-change/news/phone-electric-vehicle-cong...

During one of his many visits to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Siddharth Kara ... met a young woman sifting dirt for traces of cobalt. Priscille told him she had suffered two miscarriages and that her husband, a fellow “artisanal” miner, died of a respiratory disease. It is just one of many devastating personal accounts in Cobalt Red, a detailed exposé into the hidden world of small-scale cobalt mining in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). The “quaint” moniker of artisanal mining, Mr. Kara points out, belies a brutal industry where hundreds of thousands of men, women and children dig with bare hands and basic tools in toxic, perilous pits, eking out an existence on the bottom rung of the global supply chain. If you own a smartphone, tablet, laptop, e-scooter, [or] electric vehicle ... then it is a system in which you are unwittingly complicit. Around 75 per cent of the world’s cobalt is mined in the DRC. The rare, silvery metal is an essential component to every lithium-ion rechargeable battery. Congolese miners ... have experienced life-changing injuries, sexual assault, physical violence, corruption, displacement and abject poverty. Cobalt Red also documents many unreported deaths, including those of children buried alive in makeshift mining tunnels, and their bodies never recovered. Cobalt is toxic to touch and breathe in, and can be found alongside traces of radioactive uranium. Cancers, respiratory illnesses, miscarriages, headaches and painful skin conditions occur among adults who work without protective equipment. Children in mining communities suffer birth defects, developmental damage, vomiting and seizures from direct and indirect exposure to the heavy metals. Female miners, who earn less than the average two dollars per day paid to men, typically work in groups as sexual assault is common in mining areas. Major tech and EV companies extol commitments to human rights, zero-tolerance for child labor, and clean supply chains. Mr. Kara described these statements as “utterly inconsistent” with what’s happening on the ground.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corporate corruption from reliable major media sources.


W.H.O. Do You Trust?
2023-03-16, Newsweek
Posted: 2023-03-27 14:19:21
https://www.newsweek.com/who-do-you-trust-opinion-1787783

Trust in public health has been shattered—half of America has lost faith in the scientific community altogether. Our current government is doubling down on World Health Organization (WHO) decrees that directly circumvent public oversight. The WHO has drafted a new global Pandemic Accord. The U.S. ambassador to the WHO, Pamela Hamamoto, on February 27 imprudently promised "The United States is committed to the Pandemic Accord." This comes immediately after the exposure of yet another disgrace undermining trust in public health institutions. It turned out the February 2020 Lancet article calling the lab origin of the SARS-CoV-2 virus a "conspiracy theory" was itself the true conspiracy, contrived behind closed doors contemporaneously with a March 2020 publication in Nature. If that coordinated media campaign was designed to conceal malfeasance by Drs. Francis Collins and Anthony Fauci—who, as leaders of America's National Institutes of Health, reportedly sent American tax dollars to fund China's dangerous gain-of-function research and circumvent Obama administration-introduced restrictions—we may be witnessing the deadliest cover-up scandal in history. News media are also beginning to acknowledge facts that refute the original reasons behind lockdowns. Despite protestations to the contrary, all signers of the Pandemic Accord clearly relinquish critical autonomy to the WHO. Most ominous is that WHO defines "public health emergency" on its own terms.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and the coronavirus from reliable major media sources.


America's COVID Response Was Based on Lies
2023-03-06, Newsweek
Posted: 2023-03-27 14:17:16
https://www.newsweek.com/america-covid-response-was-based-lies-opinion-1785177

Almost all of America's leaders have gradually pulled back their COVID mandates, requirements, and closures—even in states like California, which had imposed the most stringent and longest-lasting restrictions on the public. At the same time, the media has been gradually acknowledging the ongoing release of studies that totally refute the purported reasons behind those restrictions. This overt reversal is falsely portrayed as "learned" or "new evidence." Little acknowledgment of error is to be found. We have seen no public apology for promulgating false information, or for the vilification and delegitimization of policy experts and medical scientists like myself who spoke out correctly about data, standard knowledge about viral infections and pandemics, and fundamental biology. History's biggest public health policy failure came at the hands of those who recommended the lockdowns and those who implemented them, not those who advised otherwise. Lies were told. Those lies harmed the public. Those lies were directly contrary to the evidence, to decades of knowledge on viral pandemics, and to long-established fundamental biology. To ensure that this never happens again, government leaders, power-driven officials, and influential academics and advisors often harboring conflicts of interest must be held accountable. Investigations must proceed. Remember G.K. Chesterton's critical lesson that "Right is right, even if nobody does it. Wrong is wrong, even if everybody is wrong about it."

Note: The above was written by Scott W. Atlas, MD, the Robert Wesson Senior Fellow in health policy at Stanford University's Hoover Institution. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and the coronavirus from reliable major media sources.


PETA Urges Pentagon to Stop 'Cruel' Pulsed Radiation Experiments on Animals
2023-03-13, Common Dreams
Posted: 2023-03-27 14:14:52
https://www.commondreams.org/news/havana-syndrome

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals on Monday implored the U.S. military to reinstate a ban on the intentional wounding of animals in experiments and to stop radiation testing in an attempt to determine the cause of the mystery ailment popularly known as "Havana syndrome" that has afflicted U.S. government officials posted at diplomatic facilities in Washington, D.C. and several foreign countries. PETA argues that the military's decision to use live animals in testing related to Havana syndrome is "counterproductive" due to biological differences between humans and species subjected to the experiments, as well as the widespread availability of non-wounding research methods and the likelihood that radio frequency waves did not cause the mysterious ailment. The U.S. government has a long history of radiation experiments not only on animals but also on human beings. Scores of institutions, including some of North America's most prominent universities, laboratories, and hospitals hosted government and military experimentation on both volunteers and unwitting test subjects in the MK-ULTRA mind control experiments and other highly unethical and sometimes deadly programs. People suffering from Havana syndrome—so named because it was first identified by U.S. and Canadian diplomats and embassy staff in the Cuban capital—experienced what The Lancet described as "an abrupt onset of unusual clinical symptoms."

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on military corruption and non-lethal weapons from reliable major media sources.


The Girl Scouts’ Latest Business Project: Hailing 5G Cellphone Technology
2022-12-09, ProPublica
Posted: 2023-03-27 14:13:14
https://www.propublica.org/article/ericsson-girl-scouts-5g-cellphones-wireles...

Beyond developing their camping skills, participating in a food drive to aid the hungry and donating pajamas for seniors, Girl Scouts across America this year were offered a new way to earn a special uniform patch: learning about the wonders of 5G cellphone technology and, in some cases, promoting it. The opportunity came courtesy of Ericsson, the Swedish telecommunications giant, which sponsored the “Ericsson Limited Edition 5G & IoT” (Internet of Things) patch program. The program, still available on at least one Girl Scout website, targets all age levels, from Daisies (kindergarten-age Scouts) to Ambassadors (those in high school), with an array of activities intended to “introduce Girl Scouts to 5G and the Internet of Things.” Scouts of all ages are invited to “discuss with your troop or an adult how mmWave spectrum is safe and does not cause harm to our health.” Health experts, who are concerned that wireless radiation poses a health risk to children, criticize the Ericsson program as an improper and inaccurate form of industry marketing. “Anytime corporations advertise directly to children, I’m very suspicious,” Dr. Jerome Paulson, a pediatrician ... told ProPublica. “It would be like Exxon Mobil sponsoring a patch on climate change.” The Environmental Health Trust, an activist nonprofit ... recently sent a letter of protest to the Girl Scouts’ national office, saying the patch materials “misleadingly state that 5G networks and cellphones are safe,” and urging their removal from all Girl Scout websites.

Note: Read an in-depth article that investigates how the FCC shields cell phone companies from significant safety and health concerns raised by the public about technologies emitting wireless radiation. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on the dangers of wireless technologies from reliable major media sources.


How mud boosts your immune system
2022-10-10, BBC News
Posted: 2023-03-27 14:09:27
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20220929-how-outdoor-play-boosts-kids-immu...

"Don't get dirty!" was once a constant family refrain, as parents despairingly watched their children spoil their best clothes. Today, many parents may secretly wish their children had the chance to pick up a bit of grime. According to recent research, the dirt outside is teaming with friendly microorganisms that can train the immune system and build resilience to a range of illnesses, including allergies, asthma and even depression and anxiety. Certain natural materials, such as soil and mud ... contain surprisingly powerful microorganisms whose positive impact on children's health we are only beginning to fully understand. Our brains evolved in natural landscapes, and our perceptual systems are particularly well suited to wild outdoor spaces. Supporting this theory, one study from 2009 found that children with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) were better able to concentrate following a 20-minute walk in the park, compared to a 20-minute walk on the streets of a well-kept urban area. People who grow up on farms are generally less likely to develop asthma, allergies, or auto-immune disorders like Crohn's disease [due to] their childhood exposure to a more diverse range of organisms in the rural environment. Michele Antonelli, a doctor from Italy ... has researched the ways that mud therapies can influence health. People with [skin] disorders ... seem to have an impoverished community of organisms. "These microorganisms can play a major role in many major chronic diseases," he says.

Note: Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.


Your Brain Could Be Controlling How Sick You Get—And How You Recover
2023-02-27, Scientific American
Posted: 2023-03-27 14:07:08
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/your-brain-could-be-controlling-ho...

Mental states can have a profound impact on how ill we get — and how well we recover. Understanding this could help to boost the placebo effect, destroy cancers, enhance responses to vaccination and even re-evaluate illnesses that, for centuries, have been dismissed as being psychologically driven. Neuroscientist Catherine Dulac and her team at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, have pinpointed neurons in an area called the hypothalamus that control symptoms including fever, warmth-seeking and loss of appetite in response to infection. “Most people probably assume that when you feel sick, it’s because the bacteria or viruses are messing up your body,” she says. But her team demonstrated that activating these neurons could generate symptoms of sickness even in the absence of a pathogen. An open question, Dulac adds, is whether these hypothalamic neurons can be activated by triggers other than pathogens, such as chronic inflammation. The insula ... is involved in processing emotion and bodily sensations. A 2021 study ... found that neurons in the insula store memories of past bouts of gut inflammation — and that stimulating those brain cells reactivated the immune response. Such a reaction might prime the body to fight potential threats. But these reactions could also backfire. This could be the case for certain conditions, such as irritable bowel syndrome, that can be exacerbated by negative psychological states.

Note: Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.


Europe's unique trials in food 'social security’
2023-03-21, BBC News
Posted: 2023-03-27 14:04:13
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20230321-cost-of-living-europes-trials-in-...

As food prices rise around the world and access to healthy nutrition falls, trials in France and Belgium are experimenting with a unique "social security" for food. The affordability of food is a growing concern for increasing numbers of households worldwide as people struggle to cope with the greatest cost of living crisis in a generation. With some forced to cut back on food to meet other essential expenses, food insecurity is on the rise around the world. The idea of social security for food might sound far-fetched. But through recently launched projects in Montpellier in France and Brussels in Belgium, burgeoning collectives of NGOs, farmers, researchers and citizens are experimenting with the idea that quality, nutritious and organic food should be accessible to everyone – regardless of income. "Eating healthy and having access to quality food is expensive and only a minority of the population can afford to do so," says Margherita Via, project manager at BEES Coop. Inspired by universal healthcare systems such as those in France and Belgium, civil society groups have proposed establishing a new branch of social security, under which each citizen would receive a monthly allowance enabling them to buy food meeting certain environmental and ethical criteria. At its heart, the idea is about moving away from food as a commodity. "A total overhaul of [the agro-industrial food] system based on the right to food is necessary," says agronomist Mathieu Dalmais, who has led the movement since its inception.

Note: Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.


How the FBI Took an Innocent Woman’s Savings
2023-03-07, Wall Street Journal
Posted: 2023-03-19 18:44:06
https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-fbi-took-an-innocent-womans-savings-linda-ma...

The Federal Bureau of Investigation regularly seizes cash, cars and other valuables that belong to people who aren’t accused of any crimes. Months later, many of those people receive a dense, boilerplate notice stating that the FBI plans to keep their property forever, without any explanation of why—a blatantly unconstitutional practice. That’s what happened to Linda Martin. When the FBI took her life savings from a safe-deposit box during a 2021 raid of US Private Vaults in Beverly Hills, Calif., she assumed her money would be returned. The company’s alleged wrongdoing had nothing to do with her. But several months later, she—and hundreds of other innocent people who had their safe-deposit boxes taken—received a notice stating that the government wanted to forfeit her money. The [notice] didn’t accuse Ms. Martin of any crime or even lay out why the FBI was trying to take her property. The FBI sends out similarly inscrutable notices whenever it wants to forfeit property, in a clear violation of the Fifth Amendment. Federal agencies keep the proceeds from forfeited property. In the US Private Vaults case, the FBI admitted under oath that even before the raid occurred it had decided to pursue property forfeiture against everything worth over $5,000 in the renters’ boxes. Using federal forfeiture records, the Institute for Justice calculated that from 2017 to 2021 Justice Department agencies gained more than $8 billion through forfeiture, with the FBI taking in more than $1.19 billion of that bounty.

Note: Read more about the government's theft of private property under civil asset forfeiture rules. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on police corruption from reliable major media sources.


U.S. Special Forces Want to Use Deepfakes for Psy-Ops
2023-03-06, The Intercept
Posted: 2023-03-19 18:41:36
https://theintercept.com/2023/03/06/pentagon-socom-deepfake-propaganda/

U.S. Special Operations Command, responsible for some of the country’s most secretive military endeavors, is gearing up to conduct internet propaganda and deception campaigns online using deepfake videos, according to federal contracting documents. SOCOM’s next generation propaganda aspirations are outlined in a procurement document that lists capabilities it’s seeking for the near future and soliciting pitches from outside parties that believe they’re able to build them. Last October, SOCOM quietly released an updated version of its wish list with a new section: “Advanced technologies for use in Military Information Support Operations (MISO),” a Pentagon euphemism for its global propaganda and deception efforts. Perhaps as provocative as the mention of deepfakes is the section that follows, which notes SOCOM wishes to finely tune its offensive propaganda seemingly by spying on the intended audience through their internet-connected devices. Described as a “next generation capability to ‘takeover’ Internet of Things (loT) devices for collect [sic] data and information from local populaces to enable breakdown of what messaging might be popular and accepted through sifting of data once received,” the document says that the ability to eavesdrop on propaganda targets “would enable MISO to craft and promote messages that may be more readily received by local populace.” In 2017, WikiLeaks published pilfered CIA files that revealed a roughly similar capability to hijack into household devices.

Note: Read more about the potential pitfalls of deepfake technologies. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on military corruption and the disappearance of privacy from reliable major media sources.


'Project Fear' authors discussed when to 'deploy' new Covid variant
2023-03-04, The Telegraph (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2023-03-19 18:38:55
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/03/04/project-fear-covid-variant-lockdo...

[Former UK Health Secretary] Matt Hancock wanted to "deploy" a new Covid variant to "frighten the pants off" the public and ensure they complied with lockdown, leaked messages seen by The Telegraph have revealed. The Lockdown Files – more than 100,000 WhatsApp messages sent between ministers, officials and others – show how the Government used scare tactics to force compliance and push through lockdowns. Hancock ... appeared to suggest in one message that a new strain of Covid that had recently emerged would be helpful in preparing the ground for the looming lockdown, by scaring people into compliance. In a WhatsApp conversation on Dec 13 ... Damon Poole - one of Mr Hancock's media advisers - informed his boss that Tory MPs were "furious already about the prospect" of stricter Covid measures and suggested "we can roll pitch with the new strain". The comment suggested that they believed the strain could be helpful in preparing the ground for a future lockdown and tougher restrictions in the run-up to Christmas 2020. Mr Hancock then replied: "We frighten the pants off everyone with the new strain." Mr Poole agreed, saying: "Yep that's what will get proper behaviour [sic] change." Mr Hancock expressed his worry that talks over Brexit would dominate headlines and reduce the impact, and probed Mr Poole for his media advice. "When do we deploy the new variant," asked Mr Hancock. During the pandemic, the Government was accused of scaremongering but it was denied.

Note: This article is available for free viewing on this webpage. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on the coronavirus and media manipulation from reliable sources.


Project Fear’s ‘psychological warfare’ must never be repeated
2023-03-05, MSN News
Posted: 2023-03-19 18:37:29
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/project-fears-psychological-warfare-mus...

Leaked messages seen by The Telegraph showed that in December 2020, Matt Hancock, the health secretary at the time, suggested that the Government “frighten the pants off everyone” to ensure strict Covid rules were adhered to. Sir Charles Walker, who was a leading member of the Covid Recovery Group of Conservative backbenchers, said that he was distressed by the leaked conversations. “What makes me so angry is the evils and the psychological warfare we deployed against young people and the population, all those behavioural psychologists,” he [said]. “And there needs to be a reckoning. We need to understand and fully appreciate the damage that those sorts of campaigns did.” Sir Charles lamented Parliament going “missing in action” as most MPs waved through dozens of Covid restrictions with little debate. He said: “Those voices that raised concerns were just othered. We were positioned as being anti-lockdown, Right-wing headbangers. And actually wanting to do the right thing isn’t Right-wing. “We did terrible things to youngsters. We did terrible things to a large number of people. We need to make sure we never do those things again.” Paul Dolan, a professor of behavioural science at the London School of Economics, blamed a mix of “mission creep” and “expertise creep” for a response dominated by groupthink. “It was wrong in every sense to make younger people scared of a virus that we knew very early on was of very limited risk to them,” he [said].

Note: The unethical use of "nudge" tactics to inflate fear among the public prompted 40 psychologists in the UK to write a letter to the Parliament’s Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee, saying it was “highly questionable whether a civilised society should knowingly increase the emotional discomfort of its citizens as a means of gaining their compliance." For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on the coronavirus and media manipulation from reliable sources.


BOOK REVIEW: ‘The Truth About Wuhan: How I Uncovered the Biggest Lie in History’
2023-01-26, Washington Times
Posted: 2023-03-19 18:35:25
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2023/jan/26/book-review-the-truth-about-...

The origin of SARS-CoV-2, the agent that causes the disease COVID-19, remains a mystery. But there are purportedly a few high up in government and scientific communities well aware of its genesis. In “The Truth About Wuhan: How I Uncovered the Biggest Lie in History,” Andrew G. Huff, former EcoHealth Alliance vice president and senior scientist, details his coming forward “as a material witness and whistleblower related to SARS-CoV-2.” “The Truth About Wuhan” [contains] an insider’s view of working for EcoHealth Alliance; a damning critique of models and techniques used to hunt coronaviruses; a reasoned aversion to “gain of function” research; the real COVID-19 timeline; China and U.S. culpability in the virus mayhem; and the multifarious, direct attacks used by the federal government to harass and discredit Mr. Huff. According to the author, “SARS-CoV-2 leaked from the [Wuhan Institute of Virology] laboratory as early as August 2019. The probable cases detected in Italy in 2019 make sense as Italy is one of the most popular tourist destinations of the Chinese. By mid-October 2019 the disease was likely already on every continent except Antarctica. The DoD, along with militaries globally, detected the disease in their countries’ service members that attended the Military World Games in Wuhan. Trying to avoid global panic, governments began to implement response plans, which included the U.S. government’s mobilization of the mRNA SARS-CoV-2 gene therapy.”

Note: Before buying this book, you might read this review and the reviews on Amazon. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on the coronavirus from reliable major media sources.


Conflicting Reports Thicken Nord Stream Bombing Plot
2023-03-10, The Intercept
Posted: 2023-03-19 18:31:50
https://theintercept.com/2023/03/10/nord-stream-pipeline-bombing/

In the month since veteran journalist Seymour Hersh published his bombshell report alleging that President Joe Biden personally authorized a covert action to bomb the Nord Stream pipelines, we’ve seen a frenzy of speculation, detailed dissection of Hersh’s specific assertions, and the emergence of competing narratives both supporting and denouncing the report. On March 7, the New York Times and the German newspaper Die Zeit both published stories that thicken the plot. The Times story was based on a narrative clearly being pushed by U.S. intelligence sources that “a pro-Ukrainian group carried out the attack.” If the bombing of the Nord Stream pipelines was, as Hersh alleges, directed by the U.S., then the leaked suggestion that the culprits were a “pro-Ukrainian group” could indicate a nascent effort at floating a cover story. No one has claimed responsibility for this attack, but there are recent precedents for foreign actors taking credit for U.S. operations to conceal Washington’s involvement. Military officials have lied or misled the public ... throughout U.S. history. There is no U.S. law or rule prohibiting the government from promoting a false alternative explanation to conceal an operation. “This is an established practice in military operations and intelligence activities where it is often known as ‘cover and deception,’” [said former Government Secrecy Project director Steven Aftergood]. “Sometimes, in order to maintain the operational security of X, you have to declare that it is actually Y.”

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on military corruption and media manipulation from reliable sources.


The Iraq war started the post-truth era. And America is to blame
2023-03-14, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2023-03-19 18:29:57
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/mar/14/iraq-war-9-11-george-bu...

This month marks the 20th anniversary of the US invasion of Iraq. We must not forget how the George W Bush administration manipulated the facts, the media and the public after the horrific attacks of 9/11, hellbent as the administration was to go to war in Iraq. On 11 September 2001, mere hours after the attacks, Donald Rumsfeld, the then secretary of defense, was already sending a memo to the joint chiefs of staff to find evidence that would justify attacking the Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein (as well as Osama bin Laden). In the two years following 9/11, Bush and his top officials publicly uttered at least 935 lies about the threat that Saddam posed to the United States, according to the Center for Public Integrity. In the run-up to war, Bush & associates flooded the airwaves with the talking point “we don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud” so often that it began to sound like a jingle from a cheap law firm commercial. No weapons of mass destruction were ever found. Bush succeeded at the time because the public, primed to be afraid, was susceptible to his lies. The New York Times, as the nation’s leading newspaper, played a key role in disseminating the administration’s lies. The Iraq war ushered in a style of politics where truth is, at best, an inconvenience. Long before Trump spokesperson Kellyanne Conway ... told NBC’s Chuck Todd about “alternative facts” ... we were already living in a post-truth world, one created in part by an established media willing and able to amplify government lies.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and media manipulation from reliable sources.


Chris Hedges: Lynching the Deplorables
2023-03-06, MintPress News
Posted: 2023-03-19 18:27:40
https://www.mintpressnews.com/chris-hedges-lynching-deplorables/283942/

At least 1,003 people have been arrested and charged so far for participation in events on Jan. 6, with 476 pleading guilty, in what has been the largest single criminal investigation in U.S. history. Of the 394 federal defendants who have had their cases adjudicated and sentenced ... approximately 220 "have been sentenced to periods of incarceration" with a further 100 defendants "sentenced to a period of home detention." There are six convictions and four guilty pleas on charges of "seditious conspiracy." This offense is so widely defined that it includes conspiring to levy war against the government and delaying the execution of any law. Those charged and convicted of "seditious conspiracy" were accused of collaborating to oppose "the lawful transfer of presidential power by force" by preventing or delaying the Certification of the Electoral College vote. Those who walked to the Capitol were not aware that the Department of Justice had created arbitrary markers. Anyone who crossed that invisible line was charged with violating Capitol grounds. The vast majority of those caught up in the incursion of the Capitol did not commit serious crimes, engage in violence or know what they would do in Washington other than protest the election results. Environmental activists ... anti-war activists and even congressional staffers have engaged in numerous occupations of congressional offices and interrupted congressional hearings. Will they be given lengthy prison terms based on dubious interpretations of the law?

Note: Read this article in full to understand the scope of this criminal investigation undertaken by the federal government, and why there are massive concerns of government overreach and erosion of civil liberties. Watch a brief video of Attorney Joseph D. McBride discussing his work with the Jan. 6 defendants, describing the horrendous conditions many of them faced.


Most Major "Threats" These Days Are Based On Lies: False Flag Terrorism is a Great Example
2023-03-09, The Pulse
Posted: 2023-03-19 18:19:28
https://www.thepulse.one/p/most-major-threats-these-days-are

We are stuck in a never ending cycle of disaster that has led to one giant sense-making crises. False flag terrorism ... refers to governments creating, supporting, or staging events, like acts of terrorism in their own country and on their own citizenry, and then blaming it on someone else. Sometimes events can be created and even staged, and other times events are completely real yet the narrative we receive is where the deception lies. Either way, in many cases these events are used for control and/or political and financial gain. Take, for example, Operation Northwoods. This was a plan hatched by the US government in the early 1960s to fool the American public and the international community into supporting a war against Cuba in order to oust Fidel Castro. The plan included blowing up a US ship, attacking a US military base, sinking and blowing up boats of Cuban refugees, hijacking planes, and orchestrating violent terrorism in multiple US cities against American citizens. And of course, blaming Cuba for these actions. 9/11 could perhaps be one of the best examples of false flag terrorism, but the evidence that has lead the majority of people to feel this sentiment has not seen the light of day within the mainstream. There are many similarities between 9/11 and COVID, and in my mind COVID has been a clear act of bioterrorism by the same entities who proposed the ‘solution.’ These included vaccine mandates, mask mandates and more, which we are likely to see resurface again in the future.

Note: Read more about false flag terrorism. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption from reliable major media sources.


Cell phones and cancer: New UC Berkeley study suggests cell phones sharply increase tumor risk
2021-07-06, Fox News (San Francisco affiliate)
Posted: 2023-03-19 18:17:06
https://www.ktvu.com/news/new-uc-berkeley-study-draws-strong-link-between-cel...

Researchers took a comprehensive look at statistical findings from 46 different studies around the globe and found that the use of a cell phone for more than 1,000 hours, or about 17 minutes a day over a ten year period, increased the risk of tumors by 60 percent. Researchers also pointed to findings that showed cell phone use for 10 or more years doubled the risk of brain tumors. Joel Moskowitz ... with the UC Berkeley School of Public Health conducted the research in partnership with Korea’s National Cancer Center, and Seoul National University. Their analysis took a comprehensive look at statistical findings from case control studies from 16 countries including the U.S., Sweden, United Kingdom, Japan, Korea, and New Zealand. With the increased use of mobile devices, the research has been vast on their potential link to cancer. The findings have varied and at times been controversial. Many studies looking into the health risks of cell phone use have been funded or partially funded by the cellular phone industry. In 2017, California regulators alerted the public of potential health risks related to cell phone use. The California Department of Public Health ... provided advice on how to reduce exposure, including keeping phones away from your body and carrying devices in a backpack, briefcase, or purse. Health experts said cell phones should not be held in a pocket, bra, or belt holster, as a phone’s antenna tries to stay connected with a cell tower whenever it’s on, emitting radio frequency (RF) energy even when not in use. 

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on the dangers of wireless technologies from reliable major media sources.


‘Dead’ Electric Car Batteries Find a Second Life Powering Cities
2023-03-13, Reasons to be Cheerful
Posted: 2023-03-19 18:15:26
https://reasonstobecheerful.world/electric-vehicle-batteries-reused-power-sta...

Last month, a small warehouse in the English city of Nottingham received the crucial final components for a project that leverages the power of used EV batteries to create a new kind of circular economy. Inside, city authorities have installed 40 two-way electric vehicle chargers that are connected to solar panels and a pioneering battery energy storage system, which will together power a number of on-site facilities and a fleet of 200 municipal vehicles. Each day Nottingham will send a combination of solar-generated energy — and whatever is left in the vehicles after the day’s use — from its storage devices into the national grid. What makes the project truly circular is the battery technology itself. Funded by the European Union’s Interreg North-West Europe Programme, the energy storage system, E-STOR, is made out of used EV batteries by the British company Connected Energy. After around a decade, an EV battery no longer provides sufficient performance for car journeys. However, they still can retain up to 80 percent of their original capacity, and with this great remaining power comes great reusability. “As the batteries degrade, they lose their usefulness for vehicles,” says Matthew Lumsden, chairman of Connected Energy. “But batteries can be used for so many other things, and to not do so results in waste and more mining of natural resources.” One study ... calculated that a second life battery system saved 450 tons of CO2 per MWh over its lifetime.

Note: Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.


Could bartering become the new buying in a changed world?
2020-08-26, BBC News
Posted: 2023-03-19 18:13:32
https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20200821-the-rise-of-bartering-in-a-chan...

Around the world, people have been turning to swapping, trading and bartering during the coronavirus pandemic, whether to do their bit for the local community, save money or simply source hard-to-find baking ingredients. With economic uncertainty looming and anxiety levels soaring, barter is becoming an emerging alternative solution to getting by – and staying busy. The increase in bartering is nowhere better exemplified than in Fiji. The country has a long tradition of barter, known as ‘veisa’ ... and Fijians have harnessed modern technology to connect even more people. “I knew that money would be tight to stretch out and even harder to come by. I asked myself what happens when there’s no more money? Barter was a natural solution to that,” says Marlene Dutta, who started the Barter for a Better Fiji group on 21 April. Its membership is just under 190,000 – more than 20% of Fiji’s population. Items changing hands have run the gamut – pigs for kayaks, a violin for a leather satchel and doughnuts for building bricks – but the most commonly requested items have been groceries and food. Bartering isn’t just for individuals looking for baking items or help with grocery shopping, however. Businesses are increasingly interested in joining barter exchanges, which have “doctors, lawyers, service companies, retailers – you name it”, says Ron Whitney, President of the US-based International Reciprocal Trade Association, a non-profit organisation founded in 1979 that promotes and advances modern trade and barter systems.

Note: Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.


Swarming honeybees can produce as much electricity as a thunderstorm, study shows
2022-10-26, CNN News
Posted: 2023-03-19 18:12:01
https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/26/world/bees-swarms-produce-electricity-scn-scli...

Swarms of honeybees can generate as much electrical charge as a thunderstorm, new research shows. In a study published in the journal iScience on Monday, researchers from the University of Bristol ... discovered this phenomenon by chance. Biologist Ellard Hunting [said] that the Bristol team was studying how different organisms use the static electric fields that are everywhere in the environment. Atmospheric electricity has a variety of functions, mainly in shaping weather events and helping organisms, for example in finding food. “Flowers have an electric field and bees can sense these fields. And these electric fields of flowers can change when it has been visited by a bee, and other bees can use that information to see whether a flower has been visited,” Hunting explained. Having set up equipment to measure atmospheric electric fields at the university’s field station, which features several honeybee hives, Hunting and his team noticed that whenever the bees swarmed, there was “a profound effect on atmospheric electric fields,” even though the weather hadn’t changed. All insects create a charge during flight as a result of friction in the air, with the size of the charge varying between species. Individual bees carry a charge that is small enough to be overlooked by researchers, so “this effect (in swarming bees) came as a surprise,” Hunting said. They found that, depending on the swarm density, the atmospheric charge could be similar to that of a storm cloud, thunderstorm or electrified dust storm.

Note: Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.


Governments shut down the internet more often than ever, report says
2023-02-28, Washington Post
Posted: 2023-03-12 17:13:52
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/02/28/internet-shutdowns-highest-in...

More countries shut down the internet in 2022 than ever before, according to a new report by digital rights researchers. Authorities in 35 countries instituted internet shutdowns at least 187 times, according to the New York-based digital rights watchdog Access Now. Nearly half of these shutdowns occurred in India, and if that nation is excluded, 2022 saw the most number of shutdowns globally since the group began monitoring disruptions in 2016. [The] report ... spans complete blackouts, suspensions of specific phone networks or social media apps, and the slowing down of internet speeds. Triggers for shutdowns have included large protests, conflict situations, elections and even examinations. Whatever the situation, they make it substantially more difficult for people to communicate and receive or send news, and they incur significant economic costs, which prompted the United Nations last year to call for governments to avoid using such a blunt tactic. “This can be a big warning sign of how the human rights situation is deteriorating, and shutdowns are often associated with increased levels of insecurity and other restrictions,” said Liz Throssell, a spokeswoman at the U.N. Human Rights Office. A majority of [India's] 84 disruptions were logged in Indian-administered Kashmir, part of a disputed region in the Himalayas. India has at times cited a desire to control social unrest in the territory, where there is a separatist movement. The Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and mass civilian protests in Iran also led to internet shutdowns

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption from reliable major media sources.


U.S. regulators rejected Elon Musk’s bid to test brain chips in humans, citing safety risks
2023-03-02, Reuters
Posted: 2023-03-12 17:12:27
https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/neuralink-musk-fda/

On at least four occasions since 2019, Elon Musk has predicted that his medical device company, Neuralink, would soon start human trials of a revolutionary brain implant to treat intractable conditions such as paralysis and blindness. Yet the company, founded in 2016, didn’t seek permission from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) until early 2022 – and the agency rejected the application. Musk has detailed a bold vision for Neuralink: Both disabled and healthy people will pop into neighborhood facilities for speedy surgical insertions of devices with functions ranging from curing obesity, autism, depression or schizophrenia to web-surfing and telepathy. Musk also has said Neuralink would restore full mobility to paralyzed patients. Reuters exclusively reported late last year that the federal government was investigating the company’s treatment of its research animals. The probe was launched amid growing employee concern that the company is rushing experiments, causing additional suffering and deaths of pigs, sheep and monkeys. Musk’s company ... trails at least one direct rival in the race for FDA approval. Synchron, a competitor making a BCI implant, has won the agency’s blessing for human trials. The company first tested its device on four patients in Australia who successfully sent text messages with their minds. Synchron recently raised $75 million, including from funds backed by tech billionaires Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on microchip implants from reliable major media sources.


‘Aims’: the software for hire that can control 30,000 fake online profiles
2023-02-14, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2023-03-12 17:11:05
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/feb/15/aims-software-avatars-team-jorg...

Advanced Impact Media Solutions, or Aims, which controls more than 30,000 fake social media profiles, can be used to spread disinformation at scale and at speed. It is sold by “Team Jorge”, a unit of disinformation operatives based in Israel. Tal Hanan, who runs the covert group using the pseudonym “Jorge”, told undercover reporters that they sold access to their software to unnamed intelligence agencies, political parties and corporate clients. Team Jorge’s Aims software ... is much more than a bot-controlling programme. Each avatar ... is given a multifaceted digital backstory. Aims enables the creation of accounts on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Telegram, Gmail, Instagram and YouTube. Some even have Amazon accounts with credit cards, bitcoin wallets and Airbnb accounts. Hanan told the undercover reporters his avatars mimicked human behaviour and their posts were powered by artificial intelligence. [Our reporters] were able to identify a much wider network of 2,000 Aims-linked bots on Facebook and Twitter. We then traced their activity across the internet, identifying their involvement ... in about 20 countries including the UK, US, Canada, Germany, Switzerland, Greece, Panama, Senegal, Mexico, Morocco, India, the United Arab Emirates, Zimbabwe, Belarus and Ecuador. The analysis revealed a vast array of bot activity, with Aims’ fake social media profiles getting involved in a dispute in California over nuclear power; a #MeToo controversy in Canada ... and an election in Senegal.

Note: The FBI has provided police departments with fake social media profiles to use in law enforcement investigations. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corporate corruption and media manipulation from reliable sources.


FBI, Pentagon helped research facial recognition for street cameras, drones
2023-03-07, Washington Post
Posted: 2023-03-12 17:09:01
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/03/07/facial-recognition-fbi-d...

The FBI and the Defense Department were actively involved in research and development of facial recognition software that they hoped could be used to identify people from video footage captured by street cameras and flying drones, according to thousands of pages of internal documents that provide new details about the government's ambitions to build out a powerful tool for advanced surveillance. The documents, revealed in response to an ongoing Freedom of Information Act lawsuit the American Civil Liberties Union filed against the FBI, show how closely FBI and Defense officials worked with academic researchers to refine artificial-intelligence techniques that could help in the identification or tracking of Americans without their awareness or consent. Many of the records relate to the Janus program, a project funded by the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Agency, or IARPA. The improved facial recognition system was ultimately folded into a search tool, called Horus, and made available to the Pentagon's Combating Terrorism Technical Support Office, which helps provide military technologies to civilian police forces. No federal laws regulate how facial recognition systems can be used. The tool's use in domestic mass surveillance would be a "nightmare scenario," said Nathan Wessler, a deputy director at the ACLU. "It could give the government the ability to pervasively track as many people as they want for as long as they want. There's no good outcome for that in a democratic society."

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on intelligence agency corruption and the disappearance of privacy from reliable major media sources.


C.I.A. Is Collecting in Bulk Certain Data Affecting Americans, Senators Warn
2022-02-10, New York Times
Posted: 2023-03-12 17:07:26
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/10/us/politics/cia-data-privacy.html

The Central Intelligence Agency has for years been collecting in bulk, without a warrant, some kind of data that can affect Americans’ privacy. At the same time, [the C.I.A.] declared that a report about the same topic, which had prompted the letter, must remain fully classified. That report, called “Deep Dive II,” was part of a set of studies by a watchdog board scrutinizing intelligence community operations under Executive Order 12333. In March 2021, the Senate Intelligence Committee received a copy of the report. Two Democrats on the panel, Senators Ron Wyden of Oregon and Martin Heinrich of New Mexico, urged Avril D. Haines, the director of national intelligence, and William J. Burns, the C.I.A. director, to declassify the activity. The senators suggested that its hidden existence cut against Americans’ understanding that various pieces of legislation enacted in recent years “limit and, in some cases, prohibit the warrantless collection of Americans’ records.” In 2015, Congress banned bulk collection of telecommunications metadata under the Patriot Act and limited other types of bulk collection by the F.B.I. under laws governing domestic activities like the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA. Yet “the C.I.A. has secretly conducted its own bulk program” under Executive Order 12333, the senators wrote. “It has done so entirely outside the statutory framework that Congress and the public believe govern this collection, and without any of the judicial, congressional or even executive branch oversight.”

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on intelligence agency corruption and the disappearance of privacy from reliable major media sources.


The U.S. Set Up the Afghan Army to Fail
2023-03-01, The Intercept
Posted: 2023-03-12 17:05:49
https://theintercept.com/2023/03/01/us-afghanistan-war-vietnam/

When the Afghan military and government collapsed in the summer of 2021, it was the worst failure of the U.S. defense establishment since the fall of Saigon. A new report by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, or SIGAR, issued this week sheds critical light on what went so terribly wrong in America’s longest war — and how tens of thousands of ordinary Afghans were set up by their leaders and foreign partners to fight and die for a doomed cause. The American mission in Afghanistan had been to build an army that could stand on its own feet to resist the Taliban. In the end, however, the Afghan military was not only riddled with corruption, but also designed to function properly only so long as the foreign contractors and soldiers remained around to manage it. In effect, similar to its disastrous experience in South Vietnam, the United States had attempted to build an army suitable for a modern, industrialized country like itself, rather than one that would fit the realities of a poor and agrarian state. “The types of security forces that we were trying to build, which were relatively sophisticated and relied on advanced technology and electronics logistics systems, were just not within the general capacity of what Afghanistan would be able to use in sustainable ways,” said Jonathan Schroden, an Afghanistan expert at the Center for Naval Analyses. “The real damning thing about what is in the report is that people had been telling the U.S. military this for years.”

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on military corruption from reliable major media sources.


Hawkish Israel Is Pulling U.S. Into War With Iran
2023-03-01, The Intercept
Posted: 2023-03-12 17:03:35
https://theintercept.com/2023/03/01/us-israel-iran-war/

Last week, U.S. Ambassador to Israel Thomas Nides appeared to endorse a plan for Israel to attack Iranian nuclear facilities with U.S. support. Nides’s words come after recent high-level military drills between Israel and the United States intended to showcase the ability to strike Iranian targets, as well as recent acts of sabotage and assassination inside Iran believed to have been carried out by both countries. The Israeli escalations mean that the U.S. now faces the unsavory prospect of a major crisis flaring up in the Middle East at the exact moment when its bandwidth is already stretched thin because of a major war in Europe and its deteriorating relationship with China. “The decision to leave the JCPOA ... allowed Iran to restart its nuclear program and raise once again the question of what the U.S., Israel, or anyone else might do about it,” said Stephen Walt ... at the Harvard Kennedy School, referring to the nuclear deal by the initials of its former name, Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. The nuclear deal was intended to avoid the Middle East confrontation now visible on the horizon. Signed by President Barack Obama in 2015, the deal traded strict limits on Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for its reintegration into the global economy. When President Donald Trump violated the deal ... this pragmatic arrangement went out the window — not only removing limits on Iran’s nuclear program, but also politically empowering hard-liners inside Iran who had balked at negotiating in the first place.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on military corruption from reliable major media sources.


Biden’s Chip War With China Is an Imperial Struggle for High-Tech Supremacy
2023-02-28, Truthout
Posted: 2023-03-12 16:57:53
https://truthout.org/articles/bidens-chip-war-with-china-is-an-imperial-strug...

The rivalry between the U.S. and China has hit fever pitch. Despite their deep economic integration and record trade in goods of $690 billion in 2022, the two powers are at loggerheads over everything from military supremacy in the Indo-Pacific to Russia’s imperialist invasion of Ukraine, to trade and investment in the Global South. The U.S., of course, remains the world’s dominant imperialist power, but now China poses a threat to its hegemony. At the center of this conflict are microchips, which are as important to global capitalism today as oil. Washington put its high-tech weaponry on full display in the 1991 Gulf War. Triumphant, Washington adopted a new imperial strategy of superintending the world economy by incorporating states into a neoliberal world order of free trade globalization. The U.S. used the International Monetary Fund, World Bank, World Trade Organization and UN to enforce this order. The U.S. retained its lead in the design of chips, but increasingly fabrication was done by [Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company] in Taiwan. The Trump administration ... targeted Beijing’s tech industry. Using national security as justification, the Commerce Department prohibited U.S. companies from selling chips, hardware and software to the company. The Biden administration doubled down on Trump’s strategy of great power rivalry. [Author Chris] Miller argues, “Taiwan isn’t simply the source of the advanced chips that both countries’ militaries are betting on. It’s also the most likely battleground."

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption from reliable major media sources.


The Forgotten Terrorist Pretext of the Vietnam War
2023-02-24, Counterpunch
Posted: 2023-03-12 16:54:42
https://www.counterpunch.org/2023/02/24/the-forgotten-terrorist-pretext-of-th...

Antiterrorist moral fervor and ideological blinders propelled the U.S. into its biggest foreign policy blunder since World War Two. The U.S. government constantly embellished the storyline to demonize the communist opposition. A CIA operative provided materials for a massive bomb that ripped through a main square in Saigon in 1952. A Life magazine photographer was waiting on the scene, and his resulting snap appeared with a caption blaming the carnage on Viet Minh Communists. The Kennedy administration sought credibility by profoundly deceiving the American people and Congress regarding its Vietnam policy. In August 1963, South Vietnamese Special Forces “carried out midnight raids against Buddhist pagodas throughout the country. More than 1400 people, mostly monks were arrested and many of them were beaten,” according to the Pentagon Papers. The CIA was bankrolling these Special Forces, which were supposed to be used for covert operations against the Viet Cong or North Vietnam, not for religious repression. The Johnson administration exploited the terrorist label to sway Americans to support greater U.S. Involvement in Vietnam. In a special message to Congress on May 18, 1964 seeking additional fund for Vietnam, LBJ declared, “the Viet Cong guerrillas, under orders from their Communist masters in the North, have intensified terrorist actions against the peaceful people of South Vietnam. This increased terrorism requires increased response.”

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on intelligence agency corruption and terrorism from reliable major media sources.


How a Movement That Never Killed Anyone Became the FBI’s No. 1 Domestic Terrorism Threat
2019-03-23, The Intercept
Posted: 2023-03-12 16:52:53
https://theintercept.com/2019/03/23/ecoterrorism-fbi-animal-rights/

Who the Justice Department decides to prosecute as a domestic terrorist has little to do with the harm they’ve inflicted or the threat they pose to human life. Police and FBI agents ... arrested a dozen of [activist Joe] Dibee’s associates in the Animal Liberation Front and Earth Liberation Front. They were charged with conspiring to burn down factories that slaughtered animals for meat, timber mills that disrupted sensitive ecosystems, government facilities that penned wild horses, and a ski resort. While the arsons, which never hurt or killed anyone, largely took place in the late 1990s, the wave of arrests known as the “Green Scare” came in the post-9/11 era, when terrorism was the FBI’s prevailing obsession. The fur and biomedical industries had spent years lobbying the Justice Department and lawmakers to go after eco-activists. When the planes hit the twin towers, industry groups seized on the opportunity to push legislation, and federal law enforcement ramped up pursuit of radical activists in the name of counterterrorism. Of 70 federal prosecutions of radical environmentalists and animal rights activists identified by The Intercept, 52 did not result in charges under anti-terrorism laws. Yet the defendants were repeatedly called terrorists by the Justice Department. The Patriot Act’s broad new definition of domestic terrorism, signed into law in October 2001, was another step toward institutionalizing the notion that eco-saboteurs were terrorists.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and terrorism from reliable major media sources.


If we can farm metal from plants, what else can we learn from life on Earth?
2022-04-15, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2023-03-12 16:51:00
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/apr/15/farm-metal-from-plants-...

For the past couple of years, I’ve been working with researchers in northern Greece who are farming metal. They are experimenting with a trio of shrubs known to scientists as “hyperaccumulators”: plants which have evolved the capacity to thrive in naturally metal-rich soils that are toxic to most other kinds of life. They do this by drawing the metal out of the ground and storing it in their leaves and stems, where it can be harvested like any other crop. As well as providing a source for rare metals – in this case nickel, although hyperaccumulators have been found for zinc, aluminium, cadmium and many other metals, including gold – these plants actively benefit the earth by remediating the soil, making it suitable for growing other crops, and by sequestering carbon in their roots. Hyperaccumulators are far from being the only non-humans that we might learn from. Physarum polycephalum, a particularly lively slime mould, can solve the “travelling salesman” problem – a test for finding the shortest route between multiple cities – faster and more efficiently than any supercomputer humans have devised. Spiders store information in their webs, using them as a kind of extended cognition: a mind outside the body entirely. A new conception of intelligence is emerging from scientific research: rather than human intelligence being unique or the peak of some graduated curve, there appear to be many different kinds of intelligence with their own strengths, competencies and suitabilities.

Note: This was written by James Bridle, an artist and technologist who was able to paralyze a self-driving car using salt and road markers. For more on his work, check out his fascinating perspective on how artificial intelligence technologies could be designed based on cooperation and relationships naturally reflected in living systems, as opposed to competition and domination.


Rats with backpacks could help rescue earthquake survivors
2022-10-24, CNN News
Posted: 2023-03-12 16:49:39
https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/24/world/search-and-rescue-rats-apopo-hnk-spc-int...

Natural disasters like earthquakes and hurricanes can level entire towns, and for the search and rescue teams trying to find survivors, it’s a painstaking task. But an unlikely savior is being trained up to help out: rats. The project, conceived of by Belgian non-profit APOPO, is kitting out rodents with tiny, high-tech backpacks to help first responders search for survivors among rubble in disaster zones. “Rats are typically quite curious and like to explore – and that is key for search and rescue,” says Donna Kean, a behavioral research scientist and leader of the project. In addition to their adventurous spirit, their small size and excellent sense of smell make rats perfect for locating things in tight spaces, says Kean. The rats are currently being trained to find survivors in a simulated disaster zone. They must first locate the target person in an empty room, pull a switch on their vest that triggers a beeper, and then return to base, where they are rewarded with a treat. While the rodents are still in the early stages of training, APOPO is collaborating with the Eindhoven University of Technology to develop a backpack, which is equipped with a video camera, two-way microphone, and location transmitter to help first responders communicate with survivors. APOPO has been training dogs and rats at its base in Tanzania in the scent detection of landmines and tuberculosis for over a decade. Its programs use African Giant Pouched Rats, which have a longer lifespan in captivity of around eight years.

Note: Don't miss the images of these adorable and heroic rats at the link above. Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.


Mobilising Assam’s ‘hargila army’: how 10,000 women saved India’s rarest stork
2023-02-09, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2023-03-12 16:48:13
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2023/feb/09/assam-hargila-army...

Some of the women are wearing papier-mache headdresses shaped like long-necked birds. As they sing, one of them gets to her feet and starts dancing. They are part of the “hargila army”, a group of rural women in the Indian state of Assam who work to protect one of the world’s rarest storks: the greater adjutant (Leptoptilos dubius) – or hargila (meaning “bone swallower” in Assamese) as the scavenger bird is known locally. They are celebrating the recent UN Environment Programme’s Champions of the Earth award, conferred on the group’s biologist founder, Dr Purnima Devi Barman. Barman won the award for her achievement in mobilising more than 10,000 women to help save the stork. “They are the protectors of the birds and of their nesting trees,” says Barman. The birds were not just reviled, they were seen as a bad omen and carriers of disease. Villagers attacked them with stones, cut down trees where they roosted communally and burned their nests. Today the greater adjutant is endangered, with fewer than 1,200 adult birds in its last strongholds. Most of the global population is found in Assam, making Barman and the hargila army’s work critical to its survival. Today, the once-maligned bird is now a cultural symbol, appearing on everything from towels to road-safety campaigns. In the villages of Dadara, Pacharia and Singimari (all in Kamrup district), greater adjutants’ nests have increased from 28 in 2010 to more than 250 according to Barman’s last count, making the area the world’s largest breeding colony.

Note: Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.


The Mask Mandates Did Nothing. Will Any Lessons Be Learned?
2023-02-21, New York Times
Posted: 2023-03-05 18:36:52
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/21/opinion/do-mask-mandates-work.html

The most rigorous and comprehensive analysis of scientific studies conducted on the efficacy of masks for reducing the spread of respiratory illnesses — including Covid-19 — was published late last month. Its conclusions, said Tom Jefferson, the Oxford epidemiologist who is its lead author, were unambiguous. “There is just no evidence that they” — masks — “make any difference,” he told the journalist Maryanne Demasi. “Full stop.” But, wait, hold on. What about N-95 masks, as opposed to lower-quality surgical or cloth masks? “Makes no difference — none of it,” said Jefferson. These observations don’t come from just anywhere. Jefferson and 11 colleagues conducted the study for Cochrane, a British nonprofit that is widely considered the gold standard for its reviews of health care data. The conclusions were based on 78 randomized controlled trials, six of them during the Covid pandemic, with a total of 610,872 participants in multiple countries. And they track what has been widely observed in the United States: States with mask mandates fared no better against Covid than those without. People may have good personal reasons to wear masks, and they may have the discipline to wear them consistently. Their choices are their own. But when it comes to the population-level benefits of masking, the verdict is in: Mask mandates were a bust. The mainstream experts and pundits who supported mandates were wrong.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and the coronavirus from reliable major media sources.


Trial of Mexico’s Former Top Cop Neglected U.S. Role in War on Drugs
2023-02-21, The Intercept
Posted: 2023-03-05 18:35:07
https://theintercept.com/2023/02/21/garcia-luna-verdict/

Genaro García Luna, Mexico’s former top law enforcement official known as the “architect” of the Mexican side of the drug war, was found guilty in New York federal court of collaborating with the Sinaloa cartel, the biggest organized crime group in North America. For years, García Luna was the U.S. government’s most trusted ally in the war on drugs. As public security secretary, he wielded incredible power, overseeing Mexico’s Federal Police, the prison network, and a vast intelligence-gathering infrastructure, while working with the Drug Enforcement Administration, FBI, CIA, and Department of Homeland Security in the fight against Mexican cartels. The case portrayed García Luna and his network of corrupt officials as a handful of bad apples, and what U.S. officials knew about García Luna’s illicit activities went mostly unexplored, despite the government’s role in providing funding, equipment, and training that has fueled drug-related violence. García Luna was found guilty of all five charges, including drug trafficking and continuing a criminal enterprise. Prosecutors alleged that he received around $274 million in bribes from the cartel from 2001 to 2012, first as head of the Federal Investigative Agency, the Mexican equivalent of the FBI, and then as secretary of public security. García Luna left public office in 2012 following a change in presidency and moved to Miami where he started a security consulting company and lived a lavish lifestyle.

Note: The War on Drugs has been described as a trillion dollar failure. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corruption in government and in intelligence agencies from reliable major media sources.


‘Extinction is on the table’: Jaron Lanier warns of tech’s existential threat to humanity
2022-11-27, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2023-03-05 18:32:09
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/nov/27/jaron-lanier-tech-threat-h...

Jaron Lanier, the eminent American computer scientist, composer and artist, is no stranger to skepticism around social media. The web is not a free market of information as originally envisioned. It is a gamed system being rampantly abused. [Lanier] helped create modern ideologies – Web 2.0 futurism, digital utopianism, among them. But Lanier is no longer a fan of how the digital utopia is coming along. He’s called it “digital Maoism” and accused tech giants like Facebook and Google of being “spy agencies”. In his latest thinking Lanier draws attention to Harvard psychologist BF Skinner’s theories of “operant conditioning”, or behavior controlled by its consequences, otherwise known as behavior modification. In Skinner’s studies, lab rats were subjected alternately to electric shocks and treats to achieve a change in response. On social media, he says, we experience something similar. Approval, disapproval or being ignored, such techniques can be manipulated online as part of what is euphemistically called “engagement” and the creation of addictive patterns for individuals and then – by proxy – eventually whole societies. “As we enter an era where nothing means anything because it’s all just about power, intermediation and influence, it’s very hard to put ideas out and very easy for them to come across not as intended,” he said. “I do believe that our survival depends on modifying the internet – to create a structure that is friendlier to human cognition and to the ways people really are.”

Note: This was written by Jaron Lanier, who is widely considered to be the “Father of Virtual Reality.” For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on media manipulation from reliable sources.


How the Supreme Court could re-shape the internet as you know it
2023-02-04, CNN News
Posted: 2023-03-05 18:30:11
https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/24/business/section-230-explainer/index.html

Passed in 1996, Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act sought to foster the growth of the early internet. Congress created a special form of legal immunity for websites so they could develop uninhibited by lawsuits that might suffocate the ecosystem. In the time since, companies ... have invoked Section 230 to nip user-content lawsuits in the bud, arguing, usually successfully, that they are not responsible for the content their users create. Democrats say the law has given websites a free pass to overlook hate speech and misinformation; Republicans say it lets them suppress right-wing viewpoints. The Supreme Court [is] reviewing Section 230; Congress and the White House have also proposed changes to the law. Understanding how the internet may work differently without Section 230 ... starts with one, simple concept: Shrinking the liability shield means exposing websites and internet users to more lawsuits. A Supreme Court ruling restricting immunity for recommendations could mean any decision to like, upvote, retweet or share content could be identified as a “recommendation” and trigger a viable lawsuit. One option would be to preemptively remove any and all content that anyone, anywhere could even remotely allege is objectionable ... reducing the range of allowed speech on social media. Another option would be to stop moderating content altogether, to avoid claims that a site knew or should have known that a piece of objectionable material was on its platform.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and media manipulation from reliable sources.


As crime-solving goes hi-tech, public defenders scramble to keep up
2023-02-24, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2023-03-05 18:27:35
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/feb/24/fourth-amendment-battles-g...

Caleb Kenyon, a defense attorney in Florida, saw a geofence warrant was when a new client received an alarming email from Google in January 2020. Police were requesting personal data from the client, Zachary McCoy, and Kenyon had just seven days to stop Google from turning it over, the email said. The geofence warrant included a map and GPS coordinates, and instructed Google to provide identifying information for every user whose device was found within the radius of that location at a certain date and time. “It was so bizarre that I just didn’t even have a concept for what I was dealing with,” he said. Kenyon is not alone. As tech firms build ever more sophisticated means of surveilling people and their devices – technology that law enforcement is eager to take advantage of – the legal community is scrambling to keep up. The National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (NACDL) ... recently created the Fourth Amendment Center, named for the constitutional right against unreasonable searches. The center is one of the few resources available for helping attorneys better understand how new technology is being used against their clients. It can be years before the defense community catches wind of the newest surveillance tools. Unlike other search warrants, geofence warrants don’t require probable cause or a specific suspect in mind; they gather information on anyone within the vicinity of an alleged crime. Advocates argue this violates the fourth amendment.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on court system corruption and the disappearance of privacy from reliable major media sources.


Three Years Late, the Lancet Recognizes Natural Immunity
2023-02-26, Wall Street Journal
Posted: 2023-03-05 18:25:06
https://www.wsj.com/articles/three-years-late-the-lancet-recognizes-natural-i...

The Lancet medical journal this month published a review of 65 studies that concluded prior infection with Covid—i.e., natural immunity—is at least as protective as two doses of mRNA vaccines. “Immunity acquired from a Covid infection is as protective as vaccination against severe illness and death, study finds,” NBC reported on Feb. 16. The study found that prior infection offered 78.6% protection against reinfection from the original Wuhan, Alpha or Delta variants at 40 weeks, which slipped to 36.1% against Omicron. Protection against severe illness remained around 90% across all variants after 40 weeks. These results exceed what other studies have found for two and even three mRNA doses. This comes after nearly three years of public-health officials’ dismissing the same hypothesis. But now that experts at the University of Washington have confirmed it in a leading—and left-leaning—journal, it’s fit to print. The Lancet study’s vindication of natural immunity fits a pandemic pattern: The public-health clerisy rejects an argument that ostensibly threatens its authority; eventually it’s forced to soften its position in the face of incontrovertible evidence; and yet not once does it acknowledge its opponents were right. The concept of natural immunity isn’t scientifically controversial, yet it was disparaged by public-health officials who associated it with opposition to lockdowns and the Great Barrington Declaration in autumn 2020.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on science corruption and coronavirus vaccines from reliable major media sources.


The CDC’s Long-Covid Deception
2023-02-19, Wall Street Journal
Posted: 2023-03-05 18:22:54
https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-cdcs-long-covid-deception-depression-anxiety...

Consider a recent study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that claims to find that nearly 36% of Covid cases among students, faculty and staff at George Washington University resulted in “long Covid.” The study suggests ... that the unvaccinated were at more than twice as high a risk of developing long Covid as those fully vaccinated who had gotten boosters. This sounds plausible. But drill down, and it becomes clear that the evidence is too thin to draw any conclusions. The study ... doesn’t include a control group. The finding that nearly 36% reported long Covid symptoms is meaningless without such a sample to determine how common such symptoms were among people who never had Covid. Long Covid in general isn’t well-defined, but the study defines it expansively to include problems common among college students—difficulty making decisions, fatigue, anxiety, sadness, trouble sleeping and the catch-all “other symptoms.” If a student reported at least one physical or psychological problem, he was classified as having long Covid. A CDC survey in January 2021 reported that 57% of respondents between 18 and 29 had experienced anxiety or depression within the previous seven days. A November 2021 study ... found that many people with persistent physical symptoms that are commonly ascribed to long Covid didn’t test positive for antibodies. A belief that one had Covid was more strongly associated with physical symptoms than a lab-confirmed infection.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and the coronavirus from reliable major media sources.


The pandemic spawned a better model for family courts
2023-02-24, The Hill
Posted: 2023-03-05 18:20:43
https://thehill.com/opinion/judiciary/3871942-the-pandemic-spawned-a-better-m...

With the recent news that the Biden administration will end the COVID-19 public health emergencies this spring, it is time to take stock of the different policies and adaptations that came out of the lockdowns. Initially ... the lockdowns meant that courts were shut down in most states, creating long waits and lack of access to vital judicial proceedings. But the courts quickly pivoted. Despite initial technological challenges, the switch to remote family court hearings saved time and money, increased participation in court proceedings, improved legal representation for families living in rural areas, and created a more welcoming environment for children. This week, the American Enterprise Institute is releasing a report, authored by Maura Corrigan, former director of Michigan Health and Human Services, explaining what we can learn from how these courts operated and what practices we should use in the post-pandemic era. Major studies done on remote hearings found benefits to the practice, particularly in terms of participation. Parties to these hearings appreciated the end of “cattle call” docketing, which forced participants to wait (in person) until their case was called — a significant waste of time and resources for parties, attorneys, witnesses, the public and the judges. Under the new remote system, the times for these hearings were precise, wasting neither the time nor the resources of any parties to the case. There were also many anecdotal reports that children felt more comfortable in remote hearings.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on court system corruption and the coronavirus from reliable major media sources.


As Public Trust Wanes, FDA Pledges to ‘Save Lives’ by Policing Online Content
2023-02-22, Children's Health Defense
Posted: 2023-03-05 18:17:53
https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/fda-robert-califf-combat-misinfor...

Since U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Commissioner Dr. Robert Califf began his second tenure as the agency’s head in February 2022, he has made combating “misinformation” one of his top priorities, arguing it is “a leading cause of preventable death in America now” — though “this cannot be proved,” he said. In an interview ... Califf, who also headed the FDA between 2016 and 2017, reiterated his pledge to “save lives” by policing online content. The FDA may be facing an uphill battle, as multiple factors are combining to foster public mistrust toward the agency. For instance, in January, Frank Yiannas, the FDA’s deputy commissioner for food policy and response, resigned over concerns about the FDA’s oversight structure. A 2022 study by The BMJ found that the FDA gets 65% of its funding for drug evaluation from industry user fees, while another 2022 study found that 95% of the members of an HHS committee that establishes dietary guidelines for Americans have one or more conflicts of interest with industry actors. Members of the FDA’s Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee have also been found to have conflicts of interest with the very pharmaceutical companies and vaccine manufacturers they are meant to be regulating. And while public health authorities in other countries have begun to come forward with admissions that the COVID-19 vaccines resulted in cases of myocarditis and death, no such admissions appear to be forthcoming from the FDA at this time.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and media manipulation from reliable sources.


The CDC Is Breaking Trust in Childhood Vaccination
2022-07-05, Tablet
Posted: 2023-03-05 18:15:24
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/science/articles/cdc-is-endangering-childh...

On June 18, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) officially recommended Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines for all children between the ages of 6 months and 5 years. While the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is the agency responsible for authorizing emergency use of vaccines, it’s the CDC that crafts subsequent messaging, makes specific recommendations, and prioritizes who can, should, or should not get vaccinated. In her briefing, CDC Director Rochelle Walensky strongly urged all parents of the nearly 20 million American children in this age group to vaccinate them as soon as possible. There remains ... no solid consensus among physicians about the importance of vaccinating healthy children against COVID-19. In a Food and Drug Administration (FDA) meeting on June 28, Pfizer Vice President for Viral Vaccines Kena Swanson even acknowledged that “there is no established correlate” between antibody levels and protection from disease. Approval for the COVID vaccines in infants and toddlers is based on two trials that used changes in antibody levels as an estimate of efficacy, but did not assess protection from severe disease, hospitalization, or multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children (MIS-C), important outcomes that parents worry about. Additionally, neither trial met the 50% efficacy requirement established by the FDA for approval of adult COVID vaccines. More puzzling is the fact that ... the pediatric vaccines now being administered target an outdated variant.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and coronavirus vaccines from reliable major media sources.


This Minecraft library is making censored journalism accessible all over the world
2020-03-18, The Verge
Posted: 2023-03-05 18:13:23
https://www.theverge.com/2020/3/18/21184041/minecraft-library-censored-journa...

Minecraft has established itself as a cultural phenomenon for many reasons: it’s creative, collaborative, and sufficiently facile as to be considered accessible to almost anybody. These benefits ... form the perfect vehicle for Reporters Without Borders’ Uncensored Library, a virtual hub housing a collection of otherwise inaccessible journalism from all over the world, with specific sections devoted to Russia, Egypt, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, and Vietnam. “In Egypt there’s no free information,” Reporters Without Borders media and public relations officer Kristin Bässe tells me. Mexico is the country where journalists are most at risk, she adds, with governmental and cartel interference often culminating in the death of those voices deemed dissident. “It’s a different form of censorship,” Bässe explains. “People don’t want to publish because they’re scared.” “In the Mexico room we built memorials to 12 Mexican journalists who have been murdered,” [said Blockworks managing director James] Delaney. Delaney tells me that the forms of censorship in Egypt are more blatant. “The articles you see in this room are actually banned,” he explains. “If you live in Egypt you’re unable to access them unless you come to our Minecraft server.” This is the case for the Russian, Vietnamese, and Saudi Arabian sections, too. “The content you find in these rooms is illegal, but we can see from the server logins that we’ve already had people from all five of these countries join and read up on this information,” he says.

Note: Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.


How to Fix Twitter—And All of Social Media
2022-05-26, The Atlantic
Posted: 2023-03-05 18:11:25
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2022/05/how-to-fix-twitter-soc...

Those debating the future of Twitter and other social-media platforms have largely fallen into two opposing camps. One supports individuals’ absolute freedom of speech; the other holds that speech must be modulated through content moderation, and by tweaking the ways in which information spreads. Both sides are peddling an equally dismal vision. My purpose here is to point out a logical third option. In this approach, a platform would require users to form groups through free association, and then to post only through those groups. This simple, powerful notion could help us escape the dilemma of supporting online speech. Platforms like Facebook and Reddit have similar structures—groups and subreddits—but those are for people who share notifications and invitations to view and post in certain places. The groups I’m talking about, sometimes called “mediators of individual data” or “data trusts,” are different: Members would share both good and bad consequences with one another, just like a group shares the benefits and responsibilities of a loan in microlending. This mechanism has emerged naturally ... on the software-development platform GitHub. Whatever its size, each group will be self-governing. Some will have a process in place for reviewing items before they are posted. Others will let members post as they see fit. It will be a repeat of the old story of people building societal institutions and dealing with unavoidable trade-offs, but people will be doing this on their own terms.

Note: This was written by Jaron Lanier, who is widely considered to be the “Father of Virtual Reality.” Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.


Can We Build Less Biased Medical Bots?
2022-04-11, Reasons to be Cheerful
Posted: 2023-03-05 18:09:28
https://reasonstobecheerful.world/can-we-build-less-biased-medical-bots/

Avery Smith ... and LaToya, a podiatrist, tied the knot in 2008. A year and a half into their marriage ... she was diagnosed with Stage 2A Melanoma. A minor surgical procedure is usually enough to cure it. But the following 18 months were revealing for Smith; on December 9th, 2011, LaToya died. He was left scarred by the experience: “I learned about going through illness while being Black,” he says. Today, over a decade later, Smith is putting his skills as a software developer to work in an effort to end the racial bias and inequity in skin care that contributed to his wife’s death. In 2021, he launched Melalogic, a Baltimore-based startup that provides skin health resources to people with dark skin. A 2016 study shows that the five-year survival rate of Black people with skin cancer is 65 percent, compared to 92 percent for white people. The problem is rooted in racial inequities and biases in medical research and technology. In skin cancers, for instance, AI systems have been used to drastically improve diagnosis. However, these are mostly helpful to white people because diagnostic AI datasets are trained with images of white skin. Smith teamed up with dermatologist Dr. Adewole Adamson to conduct a research project, endorsed by the American Medical Association, on machine learning and health care disparities in dermatology. It was from the research’s findings that Smith conceived Melalogic, an app ... dedicated to providing Black people with skin health resources.

Note: Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.


US has spent billions on Ukraine war aid. But is that money landing in corrupt pockets?
2023-02-19, USA Today
Posted: 2023-02-26 22:42:01
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2023/02/19/oversight-ukraine-rus...

With more than $100 billion in U.S. weaponry and financial aid flowing to Ukraine in less than a year — and more on the way to counter Russia's invasion — concerns about arms falling into terrorists' hands and dollars into corrupt officials' pockets are mounting. The special inspector general who has overseen aid to Afghanistan since 2012, and some House Republicans, warn of the need for closer oversight of the military and humanitarian aid to Ukraine. The scale of the effort is massive. The $113 billion appropriated by Congress in 2022 approaches the $146 billion spent in 20 years for military and humanitarian assistance to Afghanistan. The Pentagon spent $62.3 billion in 2022 on Ukraine for weapons, ammunition, training, logistics, supplies, salaries and stipends, according to the Joint Strategic Oversight Plan for Ukraine Response report. Inspectors general for several agencies released the report in January. The State Department and U.S. Agency for International Development spent $46 billion for activities ranging from border security to funds for basic government services. Other government agencies, including the Department of Agriculture, spent another $5 billion. The report noted the difficulty U.S. agencies had accounting for the billions spent. The Pentagon, for example, was "unable to provide end-use monitoring in accordance with DoD policy" in Ukraine. "End-use monitoring" includes tracking serial numbers of weapons and ammunition to ensure they're used as intended.

Note: Watch a concise, 15-min overview that reveals the background of the US-Ukraine-Russia war beyond the official narrative portrayed by Western media. This includes the decades-long US campaign to overthrow governments across Europe via US-funded radical militia groups, as part of efforts to maintain control over other nations and the world's resources. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on war from reliable major media sources.


The toxic legacy of the Ukraine war
2023-02-21, BBC News
Posted: 2023-02-26 22:39:58
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20230221-the-toxic-legacy-of-the-ukraine-war

On 6 June, satellite images captured hundreds of craters made by artillery shells and a 40m-wide (131 ft) hole left by a bomb in fields around the village of Dovhenke, in eastern Ukraine. It is just one site left scarred by Russia's invasion of its neighbour. And as the war continues to wreak a devastating humanitarian toll on the people caught up in the fighting, the conflict is leaving a far less obvious, toxic legacy on the land itself. Amongst the pockmarked landscape and burned-out buildings of Dovhenke, heavy metals, fuel and chemical residues from ammunition and missiles have seeped into the soil. Although the full extent of soil contamination in Ukraine is not yet known, there are concerns that the conflict will cause long-lasting damage to the country's agricultural productivity. Ukraine is one of the world's most important producers and exporters of cereals and oilseeds, including corn, wheat, barley and sunflower oil. The widespread pollution caused by the conflict also threatens local wildlife and the health of communities, who are at risk of eating contaminated crops. The latest figures collated in January by the UNEP estimate that 618 industrial or critical infrastructure sites have been damaged or destroyed in the year since the war began. A special taskforce coordinated by the Ecological Inspectorate of Ukraine, is investigating environmental crimes such as attacks on water facilities, chemical factories and nuclear power plants. UNEP warns that this impact assessment could be "a colossal task."

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on war from reliable major media sources.


How microplastics are infiltrating the food you eat
2023-01-03, BBC News
Posted: 2023-02-26 22:37:57
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20230103-how-plastic-is-getting-into-our-food

Microplastics have infiltrated every part of the planet. One study estimated that there are around 24.4 trillion fragments of microplastics in the upper regions of the world's oceans. But they aren't just ubiquitous in water – they are spread widely in soils on land too and can even end up in the food we eat. Unwittingly, we may be consuming tiny fragments of plastic with almost every bite we take. In 2022, analysis by the Environmental Working Group, an environmental non-profit, found that sewage sludge has contaminated almost 20 million acres (80,937sq km) of US cropland with per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), often called "forever chemicals", which are commonly found in plastic products and do not break down under normal environmental conditions. Sludge is commonly used as organic fertiliser in the US and Europe. Due to this practice ... between 31,000 and 42,000 tonnes of microplastics, or 86 trillion to 710 trillion microplastic particles, contaminate European farmland each year. Plastic particles can also contaminate food crops directly. A 2020 study found microplastics and nanoplastics in fruit and vegetables sold by supermarkets and in produce sold by local sellers. Crops absorb nanoplastic particles from surrounding water and soil through tiny cracks in their roots. Chemicals found in plastic have been linked to cancer, heart disease and poor fetal development. High levels of ingested microplastics may also cause cell damage which could lead to inflammation and allergic reactions.

Note: There seems to be no part of the planet that is unaffected by the pervasiveness of microplastics, from being found in human veins, human lungs, flying insects, and in 90% of table salt, to heavily polluting our skies and now spiraling around the globe through Earth’s atmosphere. Read more on simple ways that you can reduce microplastic pollution and consumption in your life, and support the many organizations making a meaningful difference to address this issue.


How pesticides impair our senses
2023-02-15, BBC News
Posted: 2023-02-26 22:35:53
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20230215-how-pesticides-harm-human-health

Regenerative agriculture is an approach to farming that prioritises soil and environmental health by minimising synthetic inputs. [Farm manager Tim Parton] switched to using biologically active inputs after experiencing headaches and skin rashes from using pesticides. After sheep dipping, which involves immersing sheep in insecticide and pesticide mixtures to eliminate parasites, lumps would often show up on his arms. "I would be a mess, but if I went to the doctors, they would say 'you've just had a reaction' and would not take it seriously," he says. Since adopting a biological farming method, Parton has not experienced any negative health impacts. He has not had to use any phosphorus and potassium fertilisers on his crops for over 10 years. He says he has observed a big increase in insect and bird species since he stopped using pesticides. Pesticides may be responsible for the loss of smell in honeybees and salmon. Despite global regulations on pesticide use, one study estimates that about 385 million cases of unintentional, acute pesticide poisoning occur among farm workers each year. A 2020 study found that of the estimated 860 million agricultural workers worldwide, 44% are affected by pesticide poisoning annually. Acute health impacts can range from seizures to respiratory depression. Pesticide exposure has been associated with conditions such as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and Parkinson's disease. Pesticide exposure has also been linked to sensory deterioration.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on food system corruption and health from reliable major media sources.


Vinyl chloride's invisible threat: Thousands of pounds are released every year in the U.S. as part of
2023-02-20, CBS News
Posted: 2023-02-26 22:33:41
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/vinyl-chloride-ohio-train-derailment-thousands-p...

Vinyl chloride entered the spotlight after the Feb. 3 Ohio train derailment. But the hazardous substance has been around for decades and is everywhere — from buildings and vehicle upholstery to children's toys and kitchen supplies — and factories have been emitting the EPA-designated toxic chemical into the air for years. The train that derailed had the manmade and volatile compound on board, prompting temporary evacuations. But the derailment isn't the first time vinyl chloride has alarmed experts. Experts say that the volatile compound, "used almost exclusively by the plastics industry," has "leached into groundwater from spills, landfills, and industrial sources," and that people who live around plastic manufacturing facilities "may be exposed to vinyl chloride by inhalation of contaminated air." According to the EPA's Toxics Release Inventory (TRI), which "tracks the management of certain toxic chemicals that may pose a threat to human health and the environment," there are 38 TRI facilities in 15 states — mostly around the Gulf of Mexico and the eastern U.S. — that use vinyl chloride, emitting about half a million pounds of the substance every year. The problem begins at vinyl chloride's origins. It's generated from ethane, which is obtained through fracking natural gas. The U.S. Energy Information Administration said ethane production hit a monthly record last year of more than 2.4 million barrels per day. The global PVC market is expected to become a $56.1 billion industry within the next 3 years. 

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corporate corruption and health from reliable major media sources.


Australia becomes first country to recognise psychedelics as medicines
2023-02-03, Sydney Morning Herald
Posted: 2023-02-26 22:31:08
https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/australia-becomes-first-country-to-re...

Australia has become the first country to recognise psychedelics as medicines, after the Therapeutic Goods Administration took researchers by surprise and approved the psychedelic substances in magic mushrooms and MDMA for use by people with certain mental health conditions. MDMA and psilocybin, the active ingredient in magic mushrooms, will be considered schedule 8 drugs - meaning they’re approved for controlled use when prescribed by a psychiatrist - from July this year after the TGA acknowledged there were few other options for patients with specific treatment-resistant mental illnesses. The changes will allow MDMA to be used to treat post-traumatic stress disorder, and psilocybin for treatment-resistant depression. They will still be considered prohibited substances ... for all other usages. “Prescribing will be limited to psychiatrists, given their specialised qualifications and expertise to diagnose and treat patients with serious mental health conditions,” a TGA statement published on Friday said. Associate Professor David Caldicott, an emergency department doctor who appeared at the Royal Commission into Defence and Veteran Suicide ... was pleasantly surprised by Friday’s decision. “The conditions for which these drugs might be used [post-traumatic stress disorder and treatment-resistant depression] are currently conditions for which you’re basically destined to a lifetime of drug use. Whereas the MDMA particularly is used to facilitate psychotherapy, only for a few doses,” [said Caldicott].

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on mind-altering drugs from reliable major media sources.


Society has never produced so much food, yet we live in a world where only the rich get to be healthy
2023-02-15, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2023-02-26 22:28:49
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/feb/16/society-has-never-produ...

According to the World Health Organization definition, 1.9 billion adults are considered overweight. Of these, more than 650 million people are classified as obese. In Australia, health authorities suggest being overweight is more dangerous to us than alcohol, and only second in “preventable health risk” to smoking. ABS health data claims 67% of Australian adults are overweight, an increase on 63.4% a decade ago. Last year, Australia’s former conservative government released a “National Obesity Strategy”, concerned Australia was facing health risks of cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, and cancers. That government did recognise weight is influenced by complex “social, environmental, and economic factors”, but their framework of encouraging “healthy choices” as a remedy unhelpfully individualises a collective problem. First, shaming individuals into weight loss doesn’t work. 95% of weight loss attempts fail. Two-thirds of dieters regain the weight they lose. Second, the structural giveaway here is an admission that the poorest “experience the greatest burden of disease linked to excess weight”. Our societies have never produced so much food, yet we live in a capitalist perversion where fresh, healthy food – and the time to prepare it – are priced as a luxury, while highly processed items are inexpensive, easy and aggressively mass-marketed. It’s not a failure of collective willpower that’s jeopardising our health, but a diet of bad food that’s culturally familiar, low in nutrition and super available.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on food system corruption from reliable major media sources.


Media Ignore Seymour Hersh Bombshell Report of US Destroying Nord Stream II
2023-02-15, MintPress News
Posted: 2023-02-26 22:25:46
https://www.mintpressnews.com/media-ignore-seymour-hersh-bombshell-report-of-...

It has now been one week since Seymour Hersh published an in-depth report claiming that the Biden administration deliberately blew up the Nord Stream II gas pipeline without Germany’s consent or even knowledge – an operation that began planning long before the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Hersh – the journalist who broke the stories of the My Lai Massacre, the CIA spying program and the Abu Ghraib torture scandal – claims that in June, U.S. Navy divers traveled to the Baltic Sea and attached C4 explosive charges to the pipeline. President Biden himself ordered its destruction. All understood ... that, if caught, it would be seen as a flagrant “act of war” against their allies. Despite this, corporate media have overwhelmingly ignored the Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter’s bombshell. A MintPress News study analyzed the 20 most influential publications in the United States, according to analytics company Similar Web, and found only four mentions of the report between them. This lack of interest cannot be explained due to the report’s irrelevance. If the Biden administration really did work closely with the Norwegian government to blow up Nord Stream II, causing billions of dollars worth of immediate damage and plunging an entire region of the world into a freezing winter without sufficient energy, it ranks as one of the worst terrorist attacks in history. The Nord Stream attack was also one of the world’s worst ecological disasters, constituting the largest single leak of methane in history.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and media manipulation from reliable sources.


US Attempt to Sabotage Mexico's GMO Corn Ban Denounced as '21st-Century Imperialism'
2023-02-15, Common Dreams
Posted: 2023-02-26 22:23:06
https://www.commondreams.org/news/mexico-gmo-corn-ban

Environmental groups on Tuesday accused the Biden administration of putting the profits of big agribusiness over public health and critical pollinators by attempting to obstruct the Mexican government's ongoing push to ban genetically engineered corn. The U.S. government claims that Mexico's plans, which have also drawn fierce opposition from industry lobbying groups, would run afoul of provisions in the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) and harm American farmers. The Biden administration has threatened to take legal action under the USMCA if Mexico doesn't reverse course. The USMCA entered into force in 2020 and replaced the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), under which U.S. corn flooded the Mexican market. An estimated 90% of U.S. corn production is genetically modified. But Mexico—the largest destination for U.S. corn exports—reiterated its intention to prohibit GE corn for human consumption by 2024 in its latest decree. Mexico is also aiming to ban imports and use of glyphosate, a cancer-linked chemical that is often sprayed on genetically engineered corn. In February 2021, The Guardian reported that "internal government emails reveal Monsanto owner Bayer AG and industry lobbyist CropLife America have been working closely with U.S. officials to pressure Mexico into abandoning its intended ban on glyphosate, a pesticide linked to cancer that is the key ingredient in Monsanto's Roundup weedkillers."

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on food system corruption and GMOs from reliable major media sources.


Whales Will Save Climate — Unless the Military Destroys Them First
2021-12-14, LA Progressive (A popular Los Angeles Newspaper)
Posted: 2023-02-26 22:20:22
https://www.laprogressive.com/animal-rights-2/whales-will-save-climate

With the Biden administration’s mandate to slash carbon emissions “at least in half by the end of the decade,” the Pentagon has committed to using all-electric vehicles and transitioning to biofuels for all its trucks, ships and aircraft. The plan ignores the Pentagon’s continuing role in the annihilation of whales, in spite of the miraculous role that large cetaceans have played in delaying climate catastrophe and “maintaining healthy marine ecosystems,” according to a report by Whale and Dolphin Conservation. This fact has mostly gone unnoticed. The decimation of populations of whales and dolphins over the last decade - resulting from the year-round, full-spectrum military practices carried out in the oceans ... has fast-tracked us toward a cataclysmic environmental tipping point. The other imminent danger that whales and dolphins face is from the installation of space-war infrastructure, which is taking place currently. This new infrastructure comprises the development of the so-called “smart ocean,” rocket launchpads, missile tracking stations and other components of satellite-based battle. Throughout their lives, whales enable the oceans to sequester a whopping 2 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide per year. That astonishing amount in a single year is nearly double the 1.2 billion metric tons of carbon that was emitted by the U.S. military in the entire 16-year span between 2001 and 2017. Clearly, key path forward toward a livable planet is to make whale and ocean conservation a top priority.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on military corruption and marine mammals from reliable major media sources.


Plastic-Eating Mushrooms: Species, Benefits, Impact
2022-12-14, Treehugger
Posted: 2023-02-26 22:18:23
https://www.treehugger.com/mushroom-that-eats-plastic-5121023

Certain mushroom species have the ability to consume polyurethane, one of the main ingredients in plastic products. Some scientists believe that these natural composters could be the key to cleaning up our planet. Mycoremediation is the natural process that fungi use to degrade or isolate contaminants in the environment. A 2020 study published in Biotechnology Reports found that mycoremediation applied to agricultural wastes like pesticides, herbicides, and cyanotoxins is more cost-effective, eco-friendly, and effective. A project using the mycelium (the vegetative part of the mushroom similar to a plant’s root system) of two common mushrooms made headlines in 2014. Using Pleurotus ostreatus, also known as the oyster mushroom, and Schizophyllum commune, aka the split gill mushroom, the team was able to turn plastic into human-grade food. The mushrooms were cultivated on circular pods made of seaweed-derived gelatin filled with UV-treated plastics. As the fungus digests the plastic, it grows around the edible base pods to create a mycelium-rich snack after just a few months. According to a study by the University of Rajasthan in India, plastic-eating mushrooms can sometimes absorb too much of the pollutant in their mycelium, and therefore cannot be consumed. If more research is performed regarding the safety aspects, however, mycoremediation through mushroom cultivation could perhaps address two of the world’s greatest problems: waste and food scarcity.

Note: Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.


How to fight microplastic pollution with magnets
2021-08-25, BBC News
Posted: 2023-02-26 22:16:31
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20210825-how-to-fight-microplastic-polluti...

Huge amounts of plastic ends up rivers and oceans every year, harming the environment and potentially also human health. But what if we could pull it out of water with the power of magnets? [Chemistry student] Ferreira became determined to find a solution to remove microplastics from water. He started by designing his own spectrometer, a scientific instrument that uses ultraviolet light to measure the density of microplastics in solutions. "I could see there were a lot of microplastics in the water and they weren't just coming from big plastic breaking down in the sea," he says. It was on his local beach that Ferreira came up with a solution that could extract microplastics from water. "I found some oil spill residue with loads of plastic attached to it," he says. "I realised that oil could be used to attract plastic." Ferreira mixed vegetable oil with iron oxide powder to create a magnetic liquid, also known as ferrofluid. He then blended in microplastics from a wide range of everyday items, including plastic bottles, paint and car tyres, and water from the washing machine. After the microplastics attached themselves to the ferrofluid, Ferreira used a magnet to remove the solution and leave behind only water. Following 5,000 tests, Ferreira's method was 87% effective at extracting microplastics from water. Ferreira is currently in the process of designing a device which uses the magnetic extraction method to capture microplastics as water flows past it. The device will be small enough to fit inside waterpipes to continuously extract plastic fragments.

Note: Researchers from Australia are also finding innovative ways to rapidly remove hazardous microplastics from water using magnets. Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.


‘Filling in the gaps’ for food access: women-run farms rethink California agriculture
2023-02-15, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2023-02-26 22:14:59
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2023/feb/15/california-women-led-farms-food-...

At Radical Family Farms, Leslie Wiser recently planted bitter melons, what she refers to as “one of our most beloved crops”, a staple in many types of Asian cuisine that grows on a vine and is related to zucchini, squash and cucumber. Women like Wiser are increasingly the face of farming in California, and nationally as well. Experts say the growing presence of women in agriculture is having an impact on how the industry operates, especially in the face of generational challenges like pandemics and climate change, with research showing that women-led businesses are more likely to take a community-minded approach to how they operate and fill in gaps during crises. During the pandemic, for example ... women farmers filled the gaps in local communities for food access. Radical Family Farm stepped in to feed food-insecure seniors throughout the Bay Area when it was not safe for them to go to the grocery store or farmers’ market. “A lot of this was driven by the attacks on our Asian elders during the pandemic,” Wiser said. “It’s still happening, with seniors afraid to walk on the streets.” Her long-term goal is to dedicate one-third of the produce from her farm to seniors in the Bay Area. “It is part of my cultural heritage to honor our elders,” she said, adding that her grandparents on both sides took care of her growing up, so delivering “culturally relevant produce” to seniors is meaningful. “Instead of getting bags of potatoes, they can get vegetables, produce and herbs that are familiar to them.”

Note: Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.


Now for sale: Data on your mental health
2023-02-13, Washington Post
Posted: 2023-02-19 23:32:16
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/02/13/mental-health-data-brokers/

A study published Monday ... outlines how expansive the market for people’s health data has become. After contacting data brokers to ask what kinds of mental health information she could buy, researcher Joanne Kim reported that she ultimately found 11 companies willing to sell bundles of data that included information on what antidepressants people were taking, whether they struggled with insomnia or attention issues, and details on other medical ailments, including Alzheimer’s disease or bladder-control difficulties. Some of the data was offered in an aggregate form that would have allowed a buyer to know, for instance, a rough estimate of how many people in an individual Zip code might be depressed. But other brokers offered personally identifiable data featuring names, addresses and incomes, with one data-broker sales representative pointing to lists named “Anxiety Sufferers” and “Consumers With Clinical Depression in the United States.” Some even offered a sample spreadsheet. The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, known as HIPAA, restricts how hospitals, doctors’ offices and other “covered health entities” share Americans’ health data. But the law doesn’t protect the same information when it’s sent anywhere else, allowing app makers and other companies to legally share or sell the data. Some of the data brokers offered ... opt-out forms. But ... many people probably didn’t realize the brokers had collected their information in the first place. Privacy advocates have for years warned about the unregulated data trade, saying the information could be exploited by advertisers or misused for predatory means. The health-data issue has in some ways gotten worse, in large part because of the increasing sophistication with which companies can collect and share people’s personal information — including not just in defined lists, but through regularly updated search tools and machine-learning analyses.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corporate corruption and the disappearance of privacy from reliable major media sources.


Juvenile Crime Surges, Reversing Long Decline. ‘It’s Just Kids Killing Kids.
2023-01-23, Wall Street Journal
Posted: 2023-02-19 23:29:51
https://www.wsj.com/articles/violent-crime-rate-juvenile-11674485556?mod=hp_l...

Violence among children has soared across the country since 2020, a stark reversal of a decades long decline in juvenile crime. In the U.S., homicides committed by juveniles acting alone rose 30% in 2020 from a year earlier, while those committed by multiple juveniles increased 66%. The number of killings committed by children under 14 was the highest in two decades, according to the most recent federal data. One consequence is a mounting toll of young victims. The number of juveniles killing other juveniles was the highest it has been in more than two decades, the 2020 federal data show. In New York City, police said 124 juveniles committed shootings during 2022, up from 62 in 2020 and 48 in 2019. “The tragedy here is that we’re talking about a gunman who is too young to be called a gunman because he’s 15 years old,” said Bronx District Attorney Darcel D. Clark after Kyhara’s death. “These ages make you weep.” The jump comes amid an overall wave of violent crime in the first two years of the pandemic—particularly homicides and shootings—that swept through urban and rural areas alike. Police, prosecutors and community groups attribute much of the youth violence to broad disruptions that started with the pandemic and lockdowns. Schools shut down, depriving students of structure in daily life, as did services for troubled children. Increased stress compounded a swelling mental-health crisis. Social-media conflicts increasingly turned deadly.

Note: For more along these lines, read an incisive essay written by a caring school teacher on the lockdown's tragic effects, including poor and homeless children.


The pandemic missing: The kids who didn't go back to school
2023-02-08, Seattle Times/Associated Press
Posted: 2023-02-19 23:26:11
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/health/the-pandemic-missing-the-kid...

Kailani Taylor-Cribb hasn't taken a single class in what used to be her high school since the height of the coronavirus pandemic. She vanished from Cambridge, Massachusetts' public school roll in 2021 and has been, from an administrative standpoint, unaccounted for since then. She is among hundreds of thousands of students around the country who disappeared from public schools during the pandemic and didn't resume their studies elsewhere. An analysis by The Associated Press, Stanford University's Big Local News project and Stanford education professor Thomas Dee found an estimated 230,000 students in 21 states whose absences could not be accounted for. These students didn't move out of state, and they didn't sign up for private school or home-school. In short, they're missing. The analysis highlights thousands of students who may have dropped out of school or missed out on the basics of reading and school routines in kindergarten and first grade. Over months of reporting, the AP learned of students and families avoiding school for a range of reasons. Some are still afraid of COVID-19, are homeless or have left the country. Some students couldn't study online and found jobs instead. Some slid into depression. During the prolonged online learning, some students fell so far behind developmentally and academically that they no longer knew how to behave or learn at school. Many of these students, while largely absent from class, are still officially on school rosters.

Note: Along with the previously mentioned essay on the lockdown's tragic effects on youth and society, read a thought-provoking article on the educational crisis fueled by COVID policies, raising questions about whether school closures had an effect on COVID morbidity and mortality rates.


Why the train wreck in Ohio is such a major public health disaster
2023-02-15, Salon
Posted: 2023-02-19 23:23:41
https://www.salon.com/2023/02/15/why-the-train-wreck-in-ohio-is-such-a-major-...

On Feb. 3, a train of about 150 freight cars — many carrying several loads of hazardous materials — crashed and exploded in the town of East Palestine, Ohio. The tangled knot of boxcars operated by Norfolk Southern Railway shot out flames reaching 100 feet and sent a massive plume of coal-black smog. Five days later, crews ignited a controlled burn of the toxic chemicals in order to prevent a much bigger explosion, but the situation appears to be worsening. Residents and local news agencies have posted viral videos of streams and creeks cluttered with dead fish and frogs. Reports have also surfaced that fumes sickened and even killed pets. Many are drawing comparisons to the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster, which turned Pripyat, a city of roughly 50,000 people, into a ghost town. "We basically nuked a town with chemicals so we could get a railroad open," Sil Caggiano, a hazardous materials specialist, told WKBN. On Feb. 8, state officials told residents that they could "safely" return home. "If it's safe and habitable, then why does it hurt?" Nathen Velez, a resident of East Palestine, said to CNN. "Why does it hurt me to breathe?" As more details emerge, the gravity of the situation only seems to worsen. In a letter sent to Norfolk Southern Railway on Feb. 11, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) said that in addition to vinyl chloride, four additional toxic chemicals were on board the train: ethylene glycol monobutyl ether, ethylhexyl acrylate, butyl acrylate and isobutylene.

Note: An on-the-ground report discusses this tragic issue beyond the official narrative: how corporate greed is the underlying cause of the crash, local media outlets owned by private equity firms who have significant stakes in Norfolk Southern, and potential long-term impacts. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corporate corruption from reliable major media sources.


A world in which your boss spies on your brainwaves? That future is near
2023-02-09, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2023-02-19 23:21:50
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/feb/09/boss-spies-brainwaves-d...

The reptilian annual World Economic Forum at Davos, where the masters of the universe meet to congratulate themselves on their benevolent dictatorship, is home to many sinister ideas. This year, one of the creepiest discussions of all was delivered under the guise of progress and productivity. Nita Farahany, a Duke University professor and futurist, gave a presentation at Davos about neurotechnology that is creating “brain transparency.” The new technologies, which Farahany says are being deployed in workplaces around the world ... include a variety of wearable sensors that read the brain’s electrical impulses and can show how fatigued you are, whether you’re focused on the task at hand or if your attention is wandering. According to Farahany, thousands of companies have hooked workers ranging from train drivers to miners up to these devices already, in the name of workplace safety. But what we are really discussing is workplace surveillance. Farahany paints a picture of a near future in which every office worker could be fitted with a small wearable that would constantly record brain activity, creating an omnipotent record of your thoughts, attention and energy that the boss could study at leisure. Farahany acknowledges that there could be drawbacks here: “Done poorly, it could become the most oppressive technology we’ve ever introduced on a wide scale.” All of this raises the question: what exactly is your employer buying when they give you a paycheck? For bosses, the answer is simple: “Everything.”

Note: Tune into a fascinating, 17 min. conversation about this issue that raises important questions about the overreliance on technology as a tool of control, under the guise of workplace safety. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corporate corruption from reliable major media sources.


Fingerprints of unvaccinated NYC teachers reportedly sent to FBI with 'problem codes': 'Invasion of privacy'
2023-02-14, MSN News
Posted: 2023-02-19 23:20:03
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/fingerprints-of-unvaccinated-nyc-teachers-r...

The fingerprints of unvaccinated New York City teachers were reportedly sent to the FBI with "problem code" flags, prompting outrage from former educators who lost their jobs over the mandate. Earlier this month, John Bursch, who is representing teachers who are suing the city over the mandate, said teachers who refused the shot now have a "flag in their file," which will impact their ability to get another job. "When the city puts these problem codes on employees who have been terminated because of their unconstitutional policies, not only do they have this flag in their files, but their fingerprints are sent with that flag to the FBI and the New York Criminal Justice Services, so it impacts their ongoing ability to get employment at other places," Bursch said Feb. 8. Investigative journalist Betsy Combier wrote an affidavit uncovering how the Education Department was allegedly able to "flag" certain teachers without sufficient evidence of wrongdoing. "I found out that the DOE has right now an agency called the Office of Personnel Investigation, and what they do is they have employees of the DOE who, forgive me, call themselves investigators, but they're not," Combier said. "So they work for OPI, and when they get an accusation from anybody, it doesn't matter who, well, the principals send it to them, but the original complaint against somebody could be made by anybody that this employee, that employee did something wrong."

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on coronavirus vaccines from reliable major media sources.


‘A recipe for disaster.’ Deadly encounter in Memphis comes at a critical time in American policing
2023-02-11, CNN News
Posted: 2023-02-19 23:18:17
https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/11/us/tyre-nichols-memphis-police-law-enforcement...

Since the night Tyre Nichols was kicked, pepper-sprayed, punched and struck with a baton by Memphis police officers, six cops have been fired and five of them charged with murder. Seven others face internal disciplinary charges. Nichols died three days after the January 7 traffic stop and subsequent fatal encounter captured on video and principally involving five officers with two to six years on the job. The death of the 29-year-old Black man comes at a critical juncture in American law enforcement, as departments across the country – including the Memphis PD – struggle to recruit qualified officers and fill shifts, lure candidates with signing bonuses worth thousands of dollars, and at times curtail standards and training. “That is a recipe for disaster,” said Kenneth Corey, a retired NYPD chief who once ran the training division. “We’ve seen it happen before. You couldn’t fill seats. You lowered standards. And now you’ve got scandal and use of force. And when you look at the individuals involved you say, we never would have hired this guy once upon a time.” [Corey] added, "What we ask of our cops is that they think like lawyers, speak like psychologists, and perform like athletes but we pay them as common laborers. A starting officer in New York City makes $42,000 a year, which means about $20 dollars an hour. It also means that at McDonald's they could be making $15 dollars an hour with none of the stress, trauma or risk."

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on police corruption from reliable major media sources.


The One Thing That Could Improve American Policing That No One Is Talking About
2023-02-14, Newsweek
Posted: 2023-02-19 23:16:34
https://www.newsweek.com/one-thing-that-could-improve-american-policing-that-...

American policing is plagued with many problems, but when it comes to the inappropriate use of violence, one culprit is weaknesses in the selection of police officers and in academy training. Better selection and better training can reduce the problem of police brutality, and one strategy for improving both is expanding the use of police apprenticeships as an alternative to the traditional police academy. Unlike the shorter police academies, future officers serve as apprentices or cadets for a two-to-three-year program involving comprehensive learning through years of field experience and classroom instruction. Most officers spend far less time receiving field training than they do in a classroom, where they are insulated from the realities of police work. While average training in the U.S. is about 20 weeks in the academy and 13 weeks of field training, Japan's officers undergo 15 and 21 months of training, and many European countries require two to three years of training, much of which is in the field. Moreover, other countries emphasize communications and interpersonal skills far more than the U.S. does. In Switzerland, psychological training and "softer" qualities are considered essential for a professional police officer, and the recruit curriculum focuses largely on appreciation of emotion, sensibility, and understanding of a variety of situations. In Scotland, communication skills are emphasized throughout the recruit curriculum, particularly when teaching de-escalation skills and dealing with people in crisis.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on police corruption from reliable major media sources.


Did the CIA Set Up NSA Leaker Reality Winner?
2023-02-02, MintPress News
Posted: 2023-02-19 23:14:36
https://www.mintpressnews.com/did-cia-set-up-nsa-leaker-reality-winner/283488/

In June 2017, The Intercept published a leaked N.S.A. document, which it claimed revealed “a months-long Russian hacking effort against the U.S. election infrastructure.” Ever since, it has been an article of faith in the mainstream media and among Democratic politicians that Russian G.R.U. cyberwarriors “hacked” the 2016 election. Moreover, Reality Winner, the N.S.A. analyst who leaked the document and ended up in jail as a result, has been elevated to the status of a heroic whistleblower. There are strong grounds to believe Winner unwittingly walked into a trap laid by the C.I.A. Winner has always claimed she acted alone, and there is no reason to doubt that she felt it was her patriotic duty to release the document. But her clumsiness, naivety and incompetence suggest she may well be easily manipulable, and a great many individuals and organizations had an interest in the dud intelligence report’s release. Foremost among them, elements of the C.I.A. loyal to John Brennan, Agency director between 2013 and January 2017. Brennan fudged ... findings to keep the F.B.I. Trump-Russia “collusion” investigation alive. Launched by the Bureau in 2016, it found no evidence Trump or members of his campaign were conspiring with Moscow. It is an obvious question whether Winner’s leak – in addition to furthering the RussiaGate fiction and damaging Trump – also served to discredit the N.S.A. by creating the illusion it had been asleep at the wheel over Kremlin meddling.

Note: Listen to audio of renowned journalist Seymour Hersch debunking the intelligence agency lie that Russia was responsible for the 2016 DNC email leaks, which exposed corruption in the party. Reality Winner's leak gave credence to this lie. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on intelligence agency corruption and media manipulation from reliable sources.


Federal Prisons Were Told to Provide Addiction Medications. Instead, They Punish People Who Use Them
2022-12-12, The Marshall Project
Posted: 2023-02-19 23:12:49
https://www.themarshallproject.org/2022/12/12/suboxone-federal-prison-opioid-...

Timothy York knows what works to treat his decades-long opioid addiction: Suboxone, a medication that effectively quiets cravings. In 2019, he was relieved to learn that the federal Bureau of Prisons was starting a program to expand access to Suboxone. He’s still waiting. In the meantime, he’s been punished for using Suboxone without a prescription. Last year, after York, 46, was caught with the medication, he spent a month in solitary confinement and had his visitor privileges revoked for a year. York is not alone. The Marshall Project spoke to more than 20 people struggling with addictions in federal prison, and they described the dire consequences of being unable to safely access a treatment that Congress has instructed prisons to provide. Some have overdosed. The lack of Suboxone treatment comes amid a rise in drug-related deaths behind bars. A variety of substances are routinely smuggled into prisons and jails through mail, drone drops, visitors or corrections officers and other staff. In the last two decades, federal data shows that fatal overdoses increased by more than 600% inside prisons and more than 200% inside jails. Forty-seven incarcerated people died of overdoses in federal prison from 2019 through 2021. The data does not specify how many of these overdose deaths were caused by opioids and could have been prevented by medications like Suboxone. During the same period, correctional staff administered Narcan — a drug that reverses opioid overdoses — almost 600 times.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on prison system corruption from reliable major media sources.


Want Safer Streets? Cover Them in Art
2022-08-22, Reasons to be Cheerful
Posted: 2023-02-19 23:10:10
https://reasonstobecheerful.world/safer-streets-painted-intersections-crosswa...

Crosswalks don’t work. According to various studies, only between five and fifteen percent of drivers slow down at pedestrian crossings. The vast majority of drivers simply don’t pay attention to them. America’s deadly streetscape is the subject of The Street Project, a new PBS documentary about citizen-led efforts to make streets safer. When filmmaker Jennifer Boyd started making it, she assumed distracted driving must be behind the alarming rise in pedestrian deaths. But as she soon learned, digital screens are less of a culprit than most people realize. “Less than one percent of pedestrian deaths involved portable electronic devices,” she found. Instead, she discovered that two of the biggest factors are speeding and bigger cars. If speeding and visibility are the problem and crosswalks can’t stop it, color might. The Asphalt Art Initiative, a program funded by Bloomberg Philanthropies, provides grants to create art to modify dangerous streets. One of these projects is in Chattanooga, Tennessee, where artists and residents transformed a high-traffic commercial thoroughfare with a block-long asphalt mural, while students marked safe walking paths in the area with stencils and wheat paste. Overall, according to the Initiative, “the data showed a 50 percent drop in crashes involving pedestrians or cyclists and a 37 percent drop in crashes leading to injuries. Intersections with asphalt art saw a 17 percent reduction in total accidents.”

Note: Don't miss the great pictures and video of public art available at the link above. Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.


Syrian veterinarians save pets, farm animals who lost their humans in earthquake
2023-02-11, Washington Post
Posted: 2023-02-19 23:08:39
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/02/11/syria-earthquake-animal-rescu...

An animal sanctuary in rebel-held Syria rescued a cat trapped inside its human’s shop for three days, a chicken stuck in the middle of a flooding river and a dog bleeding profusely from its leg. But it couldn’t save them all. “Just like humans, we had to do triage,” said Mohamad Youssef, one of two veterinarians with Ernesto’s Sanctuary for Cats in Syria. “But we saved a lot, and we are still searching.” As hopes for rescuing earthquake survivors in northwest Syria dwindled, roughly a dozen of Ernesto’s workers continued pulling out dogs, cats, goats and chickens from underneath the rubble. In a region devastated by tragedy upon tragedy, returning lost pets to owners can bring emotional comfort, and gathering up displaced farm animals ensures a steady source of food for a people largely cut off from international trade. “Humans cannot exist without dogs, without cats, without goats, without chickens,” Youssef said in Arabic. “They are part of our families, like a mom or a dad. They give us food, they give us happiness, they give us comfort. We would not be without them.” After a traumatic event such as an earthquake, Youssef added, pets provide a love that few humans can match, a psychological support that can be a lifeline following so much loss. They ... now have roughly 2,000 cats, 30 dogs, five monkeys, three donkeys, a horse, a fox, a chicken and a goat. Ernesto’s hopes to change the culture of violence toward animals that roam the region in part by going out to villages to sterilize ownerless dogs.

Note: Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.


These Black and White churches began worshiping together during the pandemic and haven’t stopped
2023-02-11, Washington Post
Posted: 2023-02-19 23:07:06
https://www.washingtonpost.com/religion/2023/02/11/maryland-deal-island-churc...

Since 2020, three pastors who lead a combined seven churches on the Deal Island Peninsula have been worshiping together at a small beach on Maryland’s lower Eastern Shore. The pastors, two White and one Black, are part of the United Methodist Church. A spur-of-the-moment idea to bring the faithful together during the pandemic has become a once-a-month gathering where hundreds of worshipers honk along to a boisterous service that offers a mix of polemics, politics and preaching. “There isn’t a better church than this one right here,” said Cathy Sikos, a retired Walmart worker who lives in nearby Dames Quarter. “It’s a true depiction of what a church should be. No fancy building. Just pure worship. It’s God’s place. I wouldn’t want to go anywhere else.” Martin Luther King Jr. famously called 11 o’clock on Sunday morning “America’s most segregated hour.” In many places, it still is. The three Church by the Bay pastors say they never set out to be an example of integration. They simply wanted to offer Communion to parishioners starved of that opportunity. After three months of virtual worships, the trio decided to offer a joint Communion at the beach for 30 minutes. The joint worship has introduced the parishioners to different styles and messages. The three pastors have no plans to stop the once-a-month service, showing unity even as the United Methodist Church is splitting over the national organization’s decision to allow same-sex marriages and ordain gay and lesbian clergy.

Note: Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.


Police seize on COVID-19 tech to expand global surveillance
2022-12-20, Associated Press
Posted: 2023-02-13 14:13:41
https://apnews.com/article/technology-police-government-surveillance-covid-19...

In the pandemic’s bewildering early days, millions worldwide believed government officials who said they needed confidential data for new tech tools that could help stop coronavirus’ spread. In return, governments got a firehose of individuals’ private health details, photographs that captured their facial measurements and their home addresses. Now, from Beijing to Jerusalem to Hyderabad, India, and Perth, Australia, The Associated Press has found that authorities used these technologies and data to halt travel for activists and ordinary people, harass marginalized communities and link people’s health information to other surveillance and law enforcement tools. In some cases, data was shared with spy agencies. China’s ultra-strict zero-COVID policies recently ignited the sharpest public rebuke of the country’s authoritarian leadership since ... 1989. Just as the balance between privacy and national security shifted after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, COVID-19 has given officials justification to embed tracking tools in society that have lasted long after lockdowns. What use will ultimately be made of the data collected and tools developed during the height of the pandemic remains an open question. Australia’s intelligence agencies were caught “incidentally” collecting data from the national COVIDSafe app. In the U.S. ... the federal government took the opportunity to build out its surveillance toolkit, including two contracts in 2020 worth $24.9 million to the data mining and surveillance company Palantir Technologies Inc.

Note: Read an essay by constitutional attorney John W. Whitehead on COVID and the surveillance state. Detroit police recently sought COVID relief funds to install ShotSpotter microphones throughout the city. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on the coronavirus and the disappearance of privacy from reliable major media sources.


Congress is set to expose what may be the largest censorship system in U.S. history
2023-02-04, The Hill
Posted: 2023-02-13 14:11:13
https://thehill.com/opinion/judiciary/3843751-congress-is-set-to-expose-what-...

The “Twitter files” revealed an FBI operation to monitor and censor social media content. Dozens of FBI employees worked on the identification and removal of material on a wide range of subjects and that Twitter largely carried out their requests. Nor was it just the FBI, apparently. Emails reveal FBI figures like a San Francisco assistant special agent in charge asking Twitter executives to “invite an OGA” (or “Other Government Organization”) to an upcoming meeting. A week later, Stacia Cardille, a senior Twitter legal executive, indicated the OGA was the CIA, an agency under strict limits regarding domestic activities. Twitter’s own ranks included dozens of ex-FBI agents and executives. The dozens of disclosed emails ... do not include still-undisclosed but apparent government coordination with Facebook and other social media companies. Much of that work apparently was done through the multi-agency Foreign Influence Task Force (FITF), which operated secretly it seems to censor citizens. This is a First Amendment violation. The Twitter files have substantiated long-standing concerns over “censorship by surrogate” or proxy. As with other amendments like the Fourth Amendment, which protects against unreasonable searches or seizures, the government cannot use private agents to do indirectly what it cannot do directly. Just as a police officer cannot direct a security guard to break into an apartment and conduct a search, the FBI cannot use Twitter to censor Americans.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and media manipulation from reliable sources.


We Still Don’t Know the Truth About Covid
2023-02-08, Wall Street Journal
Posted: 2023-02-13 14:08:56
https://www.wsj.com/articles/we-still-dont-know-the-truth-about-covid-wuhan-l...

Some believe the novel coronavirus probably escaped from a laboratory in Wuhan. Others maintain the virus first jumped to people from caged animals at a Wuhan seafood market. Testing either hypothesis would require access to Wuhan lab records, biological samples, and personnel as well as frozen blood samples collected in 2019 by various Wuhan blood banks. The malfeasance of China’s rulers is the primary reason the international community doesn’t have access to these resources and data. But China hasn’t been the only problem. In the early days of the pandemic, a small group of Western virologists came together to consider the pandemic’s origin. Emails that eventually came to light revealed their plan to push the public conversation away from the lab-accident hypothesis and toward the natural-origins explanation. In a now infamous February 2020 letter in the Lancet, and in an equally problematic letter in Nature Medicine the next month, some of these scientists labeled any questions about a possible lab origin as “conspiracy theories.” Some of the same scientists had worked together, along with the Wuhan Institute of Virology, on a 2018 proposal to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. Their project? Genetically engineering rare gain-of-function features ... into SARS-like viruses. Scientists who had called the lab-leak hypothesis a conspiracy had failed to disclose that the lethal virus sweeping the world was eerily similar to the one they had wanted to create.

Note: A probing investigation of unredacted NIH emails further reveals how Anthony Fauci and other top scientists played an early role in shaping the debate about the origin of the virus, downplaying or dismissing any type of lab theory despite substantial evidence that favors the plausibility of a lab leak. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on the coronavirus from reliable major media sources.


Look at how the 1% are doing right now, and tell me the system isn’t rigged
2023-01-23, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2023-02-13 14:06:51
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/jan/23/system-rigged-inequalit...

According to Oxfam’s annual inequality report, released to coincide with the World Economic Forum meetings in Davos, the richest 1% of people have captured nearly twice as much new wealth as the rest of the world combined since the pandemic. Their fortune soared by $26tn, increasing their share of new wealth from 50% to two-thirds. The breakdown of these figures exposes how on a global basis, extreme wealth is accumulated not by innovating or increasing production, but by taking advantage of rising prices and exploiting labour. This has been happening for a while, but the pandemic accelerated the trend. Rich people benefited from everything – every positive intervention from the state and negative impact of the crisis somehow still ended up increasing their wealth. They benefited from rising costs by using them as an alibi to charge higher-than-inflation prices, then distributing the rewards as dividends instead of higher wages. Food and energy corporations made a killing, making $306bn in windfall profits in 2022, then distributing 84% to shareholders. Wealthy people have used their wealth to purchase democracy, to warp democracy in their own interests. They’ve done that through a global template that involves lowering taxes, privatising formerly public attempts to deal with common problems, liquidating the spending that went into things like social services, and then putting that money into their own pockets. The system ... is rigged.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on the coronavirus and income inequality from reliable major media sources.


How the richest shield themselves from danger — at our expense
2022-10-26, Washington Post
Posted: 2023-02-13 14:04:43
https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2022/10/26/survival-richest-review-rus...

Douglas Rushkoff’s new book, “Survival of the Richest: Escape Fantasies of the Tech Billionaires,” opens with a surreal scene: For a fee equal to one-third of his annual salary as a professor, Rushkoff flies to a luxurious resort to advise five ultrawealthy men on how to survive the collapse of civilization. More terrifying than the men’s Hollywood-derived nightmares is their naive and profoundly antisocial response: They’d rather optimize their bunkers than work to avert the apocalypse. While few have the means to indulge dystopian fantasies so lavishly, the men are an extreme instance of a broader trend. Bunker sales in America are soaring, and the market now caters to a range of income levels, from $40,000 starter bunkers to a nearly $10 million Luxury Series “Aristocrat” that offers a pool and a bowling lane. Many people now seem fixated on stockpiling enough money to protect themselves from the rest of the world, rather than considering the sort of world they are creating by making money in these ways. Rushkoff ... calls this dynamic the “Insulation Equation.” Anyone who asks some version of the question — can I earn enough money doing X to insulate myself from the effects of doing X — is considering the Insulation Equation. The Insulation Equation is a provocative and illuminating concept, and Rushkoff devotes much of the book to tracing the manifestations and origins of a mind-set that seduces people into believing they can insulate themselves from harms they help create.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on income inequality from reliable major media sources.


White House-Linked Venture Capital Fund Boasts China War Would Be Great For Business
2023-02-03, The Intercept
Posted: 2023-02-13 14:02:58
https://theintercept.com/2023/02/03/china-americas-frontier-fund/

A war between China and Taiwan will be extremely good for business at America’s Frontier Fund ... according to audio from a February 1 event. The remarks occurred at a tech finance symposium hosted at the Manhattan offices of Silicon Valley Bank. “If the China-Taiwan situation happens, some of our investments will 10x, like overnight,” [a] person who identified as “Tom” said. “So I don’t want to share the name, but the one example I gave was a critical component that ... the total market value is $200 million, but it is a critical component to a $50 billion market cap. That’s like a choke point, right. And so if it’s only produced in China, for example, and there’s a kinetic event in the Pacific, that would 10x overnight, like no question about it. There’s a couple of different things like that.” AFF is surely not the only venture fund that would see stratospheric returns throughout their portfolio in the case of a destabilizing global crisis, like a “kinetic event in the Pacific” — that is to say, war. Gilman Louie, AFF’s co-founder and current CEO, serves as chair of the National Intelligence University, advises Biden through his Intelligence Advisory Board, and was tapped for the State Department’s Foreign Affairs Policy Board. Louie previously ran In-Q-Tel, the CIA’s venture capital arm. In other words, AFF stands to massively profit from a geopolitical crisis while its CEO advises the Biden administration on geopolitical crises. AFF was founded last year with support from former Google CEO Eric Schmidt.

Note: While the detection of a Chinese spy balloon drums up significant fear and outrage over hostile foreign “threats,” an incisive article reveals how US surveillance of foreign countries is quite common, including their recent expansion of military bases in Southeast Asia to monitor and surveil China. Furthermore, many independent journalists are questioning the war-fueling narrative that China is a threat to national security. Watch an insightful analysis uncovering the deeper story of what’s behind the growing tensions between the US and China.


J&J’s Talc Bankruptcy Case Thrown Out by Appeals Court
2023-01-30, Wall Street Journal
Posted: 2023-02-13 14:00:04
https://www.wsj.com/articles/j-js-talc-bankruptcy-case-thrown-out-by-appeals-...

A federal appeals court in Philadelphia rejected Johnson & Johnson ‘s use of chapter 11 bankruptcy to freeze roughly 40,000 lawsuits linking its talc products to cancer, blunting a strategy the consumer health giant and a handful of other profitable companies have used to sidestep jury trials. The Third U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Monday dismissed the chapter 11 case of J&J subsidiary LTL Management LLC, which the company created in 2021 to move the talc injury lawsuits to bankruptcy court and freeze them in place. J&J is now exposed once again to talc-related cancer claims that have cost the company’s consumer business $4.5 billion in recent years and are expected to continue for decades. J&J tried to stanch those costs through an emerging corporate restructuring strategy that offered J&J and other companies the protections of bankruptcy, despite their solvent balance sheets and solid credit ratings, and put a total of more than 250,000 injury lawsuits against the businesses on hold. Monday’s decision marks the first time a federal appeals court has disapproved of the bankruptcy strategy, known in legal circles as the Texas Two-Step. The court’s decision could mark tougher scrutiny of the legal tactic, which would make it harder for big companies to move past potentially costly and time-consuming personal-injury litigation. Bankruptcy allows companies swamped by lawsuits to drive settlements of legal liabilities through a chapter 11 plan and stop litigation from advancing in the civil justice system.

Note: Johnson & Johnson knew that its products caused cancer and lied to the public about it for decades. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corporate corruption from reliable major media sources.


Congress Should Address Health Care Monopolies
2023-01-30, Newsweek
Posted: 2023-02-13 13:58:11
https://www.newsweek.com/congress-should-address-health-care-monopolies-opini...

A recent Gallup poll found that a whopping 18 million Americans—including 20 percent of Americans who make less than $24,000 annually—cannot afford at least one of their prescriptions. The status quo is sad and tragic and needs to end. Congress can help by addressing seemingly monopolistic forces in the industry that may be keeping costs high. Congress should start by investigating the potential anti-competitive activities posed by the nation's leading drug wholesalers. The nation's three largest pharmaceutical distributors own an estimated 75 percent of the nation's pharmacy services administrative organizations (PSAOs)—the organizations that are supposed to negotiate good drug contract deals on pharmacies' behalf. If the major companies that sell drugs owning the entities that are supposed to restrain drug prices sounds like a clear conflict of interest, that's because it probably is one. And the fact that these three pharma distributors have already been the subject of nationwide Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission lawsuits for seemingly predatory business activities only compounds this alarming antitrust issue. A growing number of states—including Louisiana, Maryland, and Wisconsin—have begun investigating the role that PSAOs may play in America's drug price-gouging problem and have passed legislation to increase PSAO transparency and oversight. That said, this is a federal issue and requires a federal solution.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on Big Pharma profiteering from reliable major media sources.


How giant African rats are helping uncover deadly land mines in Cambodia
2019-09-10, PBS
Posted: 2023-02-13 13:56:32
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/how-giant-african-rats-are-helping-uncover-...

How giant African rats are helping uncover deadly land mines in Cambodia
September 10, 2019, PBS
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/how-giant-african-rats-are-helping-uncover...

From Angola to the former Yugoslavia, land mines are a lethal legacy of wars over long ago. Cambodia is among the most affected countries, with millions of buried explosives that kill and maim people each year. Now, an organization is deploying an unexpected ally to find mines: the giant pouch rat, whose sharp sense of smell can detect explosives. Mark Shukuru is head rat trainer in Cambodia for the Belgian non-profit APOPO. He is from Tanzania, where this species is also native, and he learned early that they have some of the most sensitive noses in the animal kingdom. Each comes out of a rigorous program in Tanzania that trains them to distinguish explosives from other scents. Each time they sniff out TNT buried in this test field, a trainer uses a clicker to make a distinct sound, and they get a treat. Since 2016, APOPO's hero rats have found roughly 500 anti-personnel mines and more than 350 unexploded bombs in Cambodia. They're the second animal to be deployed in mine clearance. Dogs were first. Animals can work much faster than humans, although, when the land is densely mined, metal detectors are considered more efficient. APOPO plans to bring in some 40 more rats to expand the force and replace retirees. Each animal works about eight years, and then lives out the rest of its days alongside fellow heroes, all working toward the day when they can broadcast to the world that Cambodia has destroyed the last unexploded bomb.

Note: Don't miss the cute video of these hero rats at work, available at the link above. Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.


3 innovative ways former inmates are getting help to restart their lives
2019-07-22, PBS
Posted: 2023-02-13 13:55:04
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/agents-for-change/3-innovative-ways-former...

The odds are against former prisoners in the U.S. when it comes to staying out of incarceration. About eight in 10 who were released from prison in 2005 were arrested again at least once by 2014, according to the most recent study by the U.S. Department of Justice. And the risk of former prisoners recidivism is highest the first year after release — about 44 percent of state prisoners were arrested again within a year of release. Formerly incarcerated people are nearly 10 times as likely to be homeless as the average American. Weld Seattle, a nonprofit based in Washington state, aims to reduce homelessness by using vacant buildings as temporary housing until development officially begins. In total, Weld Seattle has housed 125 people and has seen 43 residents move on to independent permanent housing. In 2018, formerly incarcerated people faced an unemployment rate of 27 percent. That’s higher than the unemployment rate was for all Americans during the peak of the Great Depression. Having proper business attire may not solve the unemployment problem, but it can help former inmates get a foot in the door with potential employers. The New York nonprofit 100 Suits for 100 Men is committed to giving recently released men, women and gender non-conforming people a “boutique experience.” Founded by Kevin Livingston, the organization has given out more than 13,200 suits since 2011, and more than 800 since the start of this year.

Note: Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.


Ants can be better than pesticides for growing healthy crops, study finds
2022-08-17, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2023-02-13 13:53:23
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/aug/17/ants-can-beat-pesticides-...

Ants can be more effective than pesticides at helping farmers produce food, according to new research. They are better at killing pests, reducing plant damage and increasing crop yields, according to the first systematic review of ants’ contributions to crop production. Ants are generalist predators and hunt pests that damage fruits, seeds and leaves, leading to a drop in crop yields. A greater diversity of ants generally provides more protection against a wider range of pests, the study found. The analysis looked at 17 crops, including citrus, mango, apple and soya bean in countries including the US, Australia, the UK and Brazil. “In general, with proper management, ants can be useful pest controls and increase crop yield over time. Some ant species have similar or higher efficacy than pesticides, at lower costs,” researchers wrote in the paper published in Proceedings of Royal Society B. There are more ants than any other insect, making up half of the planet’s insect biomass. There are at least 14,000 known species of ant, with many more likely to remain unknown. Citrus growers in China have used ants in farming for centuries, and the insects have also been used to help control forest pests in Canada, cocoa pests in Ghana and crop pests in Nigeria. Dr Patrick Milligan, from the University of Nevada Pringle Lab ... said the findings were “both heartening and not at all surprising”. He added: “They offer a neat and tidy description of ant-derived benefits that are ubiquitous across ecological and agricultural systems.

Note: Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.


Another Year, Another Failed Pentagon Audit
2022-11-18, Yahoo News
Posted: 2023-02-06 12:31:02
https://www.yahoo.com/now/another-another-failed-pentagon-audit-235617067.html

The Department of Defense underwent its fifth annual financial audit this year, and for the fifth time in a row, it failed. This year’s audit involved a team of 1,600 analysts who visited 220 sites in person and 750 sites virtually as they reviewed the Pentagon’s $3.5 trillion in assets and $3.7 trillion in liabilities. The overall audit was broken down into 27 units, of which nine received “clean” or passing grades, one received a modified grade, which can pass once an identified issue is resolved, and the rest received disclaimers due to a lack of complete data. The cost of the audit was estimated to be $218 million. Defense Department Comptroller Mike McCord said the results were similar to last year’s. “We failed to get an ‘A’,” he told reporters earlier this week. “The process is important for us to do, and it is making us get better. It is not making us get better as fast as we want.” McCord said he expects to see steady improvement in the use of financial controls at the Pentagon, but there are still challenges ahead. “Valuing properties is probably the hardest thing for us to do,” he said. Dive into the fiscal year 2022 Defense Department audit here.

Note: Every company is expected to account for every dollar spent, yet the largest branch of government cannot account for literally trillions of dollars. Read other major media news articles showing incredible corruption in the Department of Defense to the tune of trillions of dollars. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on military corruption from reliable major media sources.


The ‘carbon pirates’ preying on Amazon’s Indigenous communities
2023-01-21, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2023-02-06 12:28:38
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jan/21/amazon-indigenous-communi...

A number of Indigenous communities in the Amazon say that “carbon pirates” have become a threat to their way of life as western companies seek to secure deals in their territories for offsetting projects. Across the world’s largest rainforest, Indigenous leaders say they are being approached by carbon offsetting firms promising significant financial benefits from the sale of carbon credits if they establish new projects on their lands, as the $2bn (£1.6bn) market booms with net zero commitments from companies in Europe and North America. Proponents of carbon markets, especially those that aim to protect rainforests, say that carbon credits are a good way to fund the new areas and pay Indigenous communities for the stewardship of their lands. The resulting credits could then be used for climate commitments by western companies. Indigenous communities are being taken advantage of in the unregulated sector, with opaque deals for carbon rights that can last up to a century, lengthy contracts written in English, and communities being pushed out of their lands for projects. Examples include Peru’s largest ever carbon deal involving an unnamed extractive firm, where the Kichwa community claim they have been forced from their land in Cordillera Azul national park and received nothing from the $87m agreement. Several Indigenous communities spoke of training themselves in carbon market regulation and organising global exchanges to help others avoid falling victim to “carbon pirates”.

Note: An excellent investigation reveals that over 90% of rainforest offsets are likely to be “phantom credits” and do not represent real carbon reductions, yet are being used by Disney, Shell, Gucci, Salesforce, the band Pearl Jam, and other large corporations. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on climate change from reliable major media sources.


$5.4 billion in covid aid may have gone to firms using suspect Social Security numbers
2023-01-30, Washington Post
Posted: 2023-02-06 12:26:28
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2023/01/30/ppp-covid-fraud-social-sec...

The U.S. government may have awarded roughly $5.4 billion in coronavirus aid to small businesses with potentially ineligible Social Security numbers, offering the latest indication that Washington’s haste earlier in the pandemic opened the door for widespread waste, fraud and abuse. The top watchdog overseeing stimulus spending — called the Pandemic Response Accountability Committee, or PRAC — offered the estimate in an alert issued Monday and shared early with The Washington Post. It came as House Republicans prepared to hold their first hearing this week to study the roughly $5 trillion in federal stimulus aid approved since spring 2020. The suspected wave of grift targeted two of the government’s most generous emergency initiatives: the Paycheck Protection Program, known as PPP, and the Economic Injury Disaster Loan, dubbed EIDL. Studying more than 33 million applicants, the PRAC uncovered more than 221,000 ineligible Social Security numbers on requests for small-business aid. That included thousands of cases where the number was “not issued” by the government, for example, or it did not match the correct name and birth information. More than a quarter of those applications, using nearly 70,000 suspect Social Security numbers, were still approved between April 2020 and October 2022 despite the questionable data — and the government loaned those applicants about $5.4 billion, the watchdog found. The full extent of taxpayers’ losses remains unknown, even to Washington.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corporate corruption and the coronavirus from reliable major media sources.


It's Time for the Scientific Community to Admit We Were Wrong About COVID and It Cost Lives
2023-01-30, Newsweek
Posted: 2023-02-06 12:24:23
https://www.newsweek.com/its-time-scientific-community-admit-we-were-wrong-ab...

I staunchly supported the efforts of the public health authorities when it came to COVID-19. I was with them when they called for lockdowns, vaccines, and boosters. I was wrong. We in the scientific community were wrong. And it cost lives. The scientific community from the CDC to the WHO to the FDA and their representatives, repeatedly overstated the evidence and misled the public about its own views and policies, including on natural vs. artificial immunity, school closures and disease transmission, aerosol spread, mask mandates, and vaccine effectiveness and safety, especially among the young. All of these were scientific mistakes at the time, not in hindsight. Some of these obfuscations continue to the present day. We excluded important parts of the population from policy development and castigated critics, which ... exacerbated longstanding heath and economic disparities. We systematically minimized the downsides of the interventions we imposed–imposed without the input, consent, and recognition of those forced to live with them. In so doing, we violated the autonomy of those who would be most negatively impacted by our policies: the poor, the working class, small business owners, Blacks and Latinos, and children. We severely judged lockdown critics as lazy, backwards, even evil. We believed "misinformation" energized the ignorant. If our public health officials had led with less hubris, the course of the pandemic in the United States might have had a very different outcome, with far fewer lost lives.

Note: The above was written by MD/PhD student Kevin Bass. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on the coronavirus from reliable major media sources.


COVID-19: Denmark currently not offering booster shots to those under 50
2022-09-16, MSN News
Posted: 2023-02-06 12:22:05
https://www.msn.com/en-in/money/topstories/covid-19-denmark-currently-not-off...

Denmark is currently not offering booster vaccine doses against COVID-19 to people under 50, said the guidelines published on the Danish Health Authority's website. The guidelines added that people below 50 years of age were not at a particularly higher risk of developing serious COVID-19 symptoms. "In addition, younger people aged under 50 are well protected against becoming severely ill from covid-19, as a very large number of them have already been vaccinated and have previously been infected with covid-19, and there is consequently good immunity among this part of the population," the country's health authority said. The Danish health authority said it was likely that many people will contract COVID-19 in autumn and winter months. "With the autumn vaccination programme, we aim to prevent serious illness, hospitalisation and death," it said, advising people to take appropriate precautions. Denmark had become the first country in the world to pause its broad vaccination programme starting May 15 this year. “Spring has arrived, vaccine coverage in the Danish population is high, and the epidemic has reversed,” the Danish Health Authority was quoted as saying by CNBC. “Therefore, the National Board of Health is now ending the broad vaccination efforts against Covid-19 for this season." Pausing broad inoculation only meant people were no longer invited for vaccination but everyone was allowed to complete their vaccination course.

Note: Read the policy on the website of the Danish health authority. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on coronavirus vaccines from reliable major media sources.


California Loses on Medical Censorship
2023-01-30, Wall Street Journal
Posted: 2023-02-06 12:20:31
https://www.wsj.com/articles/california-loses-on-medical-censorship-gavin-new...

Gov. Gavin Newsom boasts that California is the land of the free, yet courts keep rebuking state lawmakers for violating individual liberties. A federal judge did so again last week in enjoining a new state law that threatened to punish doctors accused of promulgating Covid “misinformation.” Democrats last year passed legislation empowering the state medical board to discipline doctors licensed in the state who “disseminate misinformation or disinformation” that contradicts the “contemporary scientific consensus” or is “contrary to the standard of care.” The law’s goal is to enforce a public-health orthodoxy among doctors and silence dissenters. But as federal Judge William Shubb explains, the law’s definitions of “misinformation” and “contemporary scientific consensus” are unconstitutionally vague under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Doctors have no way of knowing how the law will be applied by the board or interpreted by courts, which chills their practice of medicine. “Who determines whether a consensus exists to begin with? If a consensus does exist, among whom must the consensus exist (for example practicing physicians, or professional organizations, or medical researchers, or public health officials, or perhaps a combination)?” Judge Shubb wrote. Under the law, doctors could be punished for contradicting the public-health orthodoxy on Covid vaccines for children or for booster shots.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and the coronavirus from reliable major media sources.


Rainmaking Is Used As Weapon by U.S.
1972-07-03, New York Times
Posted: 2023-02-06 12:16:36
https://www.nytimes.com/1972/07/03/archives/rainmaking-is-used-as-weapon-by-u...

The United States has been secretly seeding clouds over North Vietnam, Laos and South Vietnam to increase and control the rainfall for military purposes. Government sources, both civilian and military, said during an extensive series of interviews that the Air Force cloud seeding program has been aimed most recently at hindering movement of North Vietnamese troops and equipment and suppressing enemy antiaircraft missile fire. The disclosure confirmed growing speculation in Congressional and scientific circles about the use of weather modification in Southeast Asia. Despite years of experiments with rainmaking in the United States and elsewhere, scientists are not sure they understand its long term effect on the ecology of a region. The weather manipulation in Indochina, which was first tried in South Vietnam in 1963, is the first confirmed use of meteorological warfare. One well-informed source said that Navy scientists were responsible for developing a new kind of chemical agent effective in the warm stratus clouds that often shielded many key antiaircraft sites in northern parts of North Vietnam. The chemical, he said, “produced a rain that had an acidic quality to it and it would foul up mechanical equipment—like radars, [and] trucks.” “This wasn't originally our planning,” the official added, “it was a refinement.” Apparently, many Air Force cloud-seeding missions were conducted over North Vietnam and Laos simply to confuse or “attenuate” ... the radar equipment that controls anti aircraft missiles.

Note: Despite potentially grave risks, some are calling for large scale geoengineering to combat climate change. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on climate change from reliable major media sources.


This optometrist-on-wheels helps kids see clearly for the first time
2019-10-10, PBS
Posted: 2023-02-06 12:13:51
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/health/this-optometrist-on-wheels-helps-kids-see...

Schools and nonprofits are trying to address what they see as a growing problem, as more children need eyeglasses but can’t afford them. “Kids are getting nearsighted from close work and machines, electronic devices,” [Dr. Robert Abel] said. The American Academy of Ophthalmology estimates half of the world’s population will be nearsighted, or myopic, by 2049, with children being the most at risk. In Maryland’s Kent County Public Schools, a mobile vision clinic has helped to ensure more children have access to free eye exams, glasses. The national organization works with local funding partners, states and ophthalmologists to offer free eye care to school children in need. Last November, the nonprofit Vision to Learn made a stop at Galena Elementary. One by one, students boarded a converted 151-square-foot Mercedes-Benz Sprinter van, where an optometrist and optician conducted eye exams inside. Children who needed glasses then selected from a choice of 30 frames. A few weeks later, the Vision to Learn van returned to hand out the glasses at a school assembly. The glasses were given out like awards. That way, educators and health providers hoped to combat any stigma of wearing glasses. Vision to Learn has expanded to 14 states, each with their own corresponding mobile clinic van. Other organizations, like OnSight’s “Vision Van” in New York and VSP Global’s “Eyes of Hope” mobile clinic, headquartered in California, have taken up the same cause in an effort to improve student outcomes.

Note: Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.


Clearing a Path from Prison to the Bar Exam
2021-06-21, Reasons to be Cheerful
Posted: 2023-02-06 12:12:04
https://reasonstobecheerful.world/formerly-incarcerated-people-pass-bar-exam/

As a teenager, Phil Miller dreamt of becoming a CIA field officer. But incarceration derailed that dream. Miller became a jailhouse lawyer — an incarcerated person who informally helps others challenge their convictions while in prison. This year, he’s finishing his first year of law school at the City University of New York. But, he says, he wouldn’t be where he is without support: at CUNY Law that came from the Formerly Incarcerated Law Students Advocacy Association (FILSAA). FILSAA is part of a growing movement of organizations working to change the overwhelming scrutiny that discourages — and often disqualifies — people with records from pursuing a law degree. The National Inventory of Collateral Consequences of Conviction catalogues around 40,000 official restrictions limiting or excluding people with convictions from accessing employment, education and more in the United States. While other organizations work to tackle the barriers to the Bar on a political level, FILSAA works on a deceptively simple level, offering free LSAT training, mentorship and a needed supportive space at school for people with records. FILSAA’s impact has been small in numbers but deep in value. Thanks to what Williams calls “mythbusting” YouTube videos, they’ve heard this year from 12 currently or formerly incarcerated people expressing interest. “Hope is a necessity. It’s like food and air,” [Miller] says. “Finding out there’s something that other people value you for, that can help you take yourself seriously.”

Note: Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.


A post-capitalist guide to the future: crypto-commoners only want the earth
2018-05-23, Shareable
Posted: 2023-02-06 12:10:17
https://www.shareable.net/blockchain-as-a-force-for-good-how-this-technology-...

Just as we don't pay much attention to the critical infrastructure that powers our digital world and exists just out of sight — from the Automated Clearing House (ACH), which undergirds our financial system, to the undersea cables that enable the Internet to be globally useful, blockchain is likely to change our lives in ways that will eventually be invisible. In the sharing economy, we have traditionally just used existing infrastructure and built platforms and services on top of it. Considering that those undersea cables are owned by private companies with their own motives and that the locations of ACH data centers are heavily classified, there is a lot to be desired in terms of transparency, resilience, and independence from self-interested third parties. That's where open-source, decentralized infrastructure of the blockchain for the sharing economy offers much promise and potential. Origin ... is working to reduce the cost, difficulty, and barriers to entry for building marketplaces, enabling people to build truly peer-to-peer marketplaces on the blockchain. In creating this kind of decentralized underpinning, blockchains offer communities alternatives to one-size-fits all solutions and economies of scale. Another crucial part of the sharing economy infrastructure is financial infrastructure. Consider the two billion unbanked and underbanked adults around the world. Can blockchain benefit them as well? WeTrust is one of the blockchain startups working to do this, and has already put out a lending circle product.

Note: Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.


We are overcounting covid deaths and hospitalizations. That's a problem.
2023-01-13, Washington Post
Posted: 2023-01-29 21:02:28
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/01/13/covid-pandemic-deaths-hosp...

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the United States is experiencing around 400 covid deaths every day. At that rate, there would be nearly 150,000 deaths a year. But are these Americans dying from covid or with covid? Robin Dretler ... the former president of Georgia's chapter of Infectious Diseases Society of America, estimates that at his hospital, 90 percent of patients diagnosed with covid are actually in the hospital for some other illness. "Since every hospitalized patient gets tested for covid, many are incidentally positive," he said. A gunshot victim or someone who had a heart attack, for example, could test positive for the virus, but the infection has no bearing on why they sought medical care. If these patients die, covid might get added to their death certificate. But the coronavirus was not the primary contributor to their death and often played no role at all. Earlier in the pandemic, a large proportion of covid-positive hospitalizations were due to covid. But as more people developed some immunity through vaccination or infection, fewer patients were hospitalized because of it. During some days, [infectious-disease physician Shira Doron] said, the proportion of those hospitalized because of covid were as low as 10 percent of the total number reported. Both Dretler and Doron ... want the public to see what they're seeing, because, as Doron says, "overcounting covid deaths undermines people's sense of security and the efficacy of vaccines."

Note: Further explore the troubling inflation of COVID death numbers in this thought-provoking article, which shows how factual information and good science are being labeled as a "conspiracy" within mainstream culture. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on the coronavirus from reliable major media sources.


Crypto Firm FTX’s Ownership of a U.S. Bank Raises Questions
2022-11-23, New York Times
Posted: 2023-01-29 21:00:06
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/23/business/ftx-cryptocurrency-bank.html

Among the many surprising assets uncovered in the bankruptcy of the cryptocurrency exchange FTX is a relatively tiny one that could raise big concerns: a stake in one of the country’s smallest banks. The bank, Farmington State Bank in Washington State, has a single branch and, until this year, just three employees. It did not offer online banking or even a credit card. The tiny bank’s connection to the collapse of FTX is raising new questions about the exchange and its operations. The ties between FTX and Farmington State Bank began in March when Alameda Research, a small trading firm and sister to FTX, invested $11.5 million in the bank’s parent company, FBH. At the time, Farmington was the nation’s 26th-smallest bank out of 4,800. Its net worth was $5.7 million. FTX is a now bankrupt company that was one of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges. A judge allowed the law firm Sullivan & Cromwell to continue advising FTX on bankruptcy. It’s unclear how FTX was allowed to buy a stake in a U.S.-licensed bank, which would need to be approved by federal regulators. Banking veterans say it’s hard to believe that regulators would have knowingly allowed FTX to gain control of a U.S. bank. “The fact that an offshore hedge fund that was basically a crypto firm was buying a stake in a tiny bank for multiples of its stated book value should have raised massive red flags for the F.D.I.C., state regulators and the Federal Reserve,” said Camden Fine, a bank industry consultant.

Note: An in-depth investigation by Whitney Webb and Ed Berger further unearths the mysterious connections between FTX and Farmington State Bank. Extending far beyond Sam Bankman-Fried and FTX, they make a case for a deeper criminal network at play, with troubling connections to this bank. Incidentally, the firm Sullivan & Cromwell has old connections with the CIA. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on financial industry corruption from reliable major media sources.


Sam Bankman-Fried’s Lawyers Are Veterans of Ghislaine Maxwell and ‘El Chapo’ Cases
2023-01-09, Wall Street Journal
Posted: 2023-01-29 20:58:34
https://www.wsj.com/articles/sam-bankman-frieds-defense-team-led-by-battle-te...

A pair of attorneys defending FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried against one of the biggest white-collar prosecutions in decades are veterans of high-profile cases, including ones involving drug lord “El Chapo” and disgraced socialite Ghislaine Maxwell. Mark Cohen and Christian Everdell, former federal prosecutors who are now partners in the New York-based boutique firm Cohen & Gresser ... are up against hard-charging Justice Department lawyers who moved quickly to indict Mr. Bankman-Fried after FTX’s collapse and secured two of his former top lieutenants as cooperating witnesses. The Manhattan U.S. attorney’s office this past month charged Mr. Bankman-Fried with stealing billions of dollars from FTX customers while misleading investors and lenders connected to his crypto-trading firm Alameda Research. He faces charges of fraud, conspiracy, money laundering and campaign-finance violations and pleaded not guilty last week. Messrs. Cohen, 59 years old, and Everdell, 48, have already navigated their client through a thorny extradition from the Bahamas, where Mr. Bankman-Fried had been jailed after the Justice Department requested that local police arrest him. The two lawyers worked with local counsel to secure his transfer to U.S. custody while negotiating with federal prosecutors his pretrial release under a $250 million bond. They are now tasked with combing through voluminous and technical discovery, including documents relating to FTX investors, debtors and political campaigns.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on financial industry corruption from reliable major media sources.


History of DDT ocean dumping off L.A. coast even worse than expected, EPA finds
2022-08-04, Los Angeles Times
Posted: 2023-01-29 20:56:19
https://www.latimes.com/environment/story/2022-08-04/ddt-ocean-dumping-in-l-a...

After an exhaustive historical investigation into the barrels of DDT waste reportedly dumped decades ago near Catalina Island, federal regulators concluded that the toxic pollution in the deep ocean could be far worse ... than what scientists anticipated. In internal memos made public recently, officials from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency determined that acid waste from the nation’s largest manufacturer of DDT — a pesticide so powerful it poisoned birds and fish — had not been contained in hundreds of thousands of sealed barrels. Most of the waste, according to newly unearthed information, had been poured directly into the ocean from massive tank barges. Other chemicals — as well as millions of tons of oil drilling waste — had also been dumped decades ago in more than a dozen areas off the Southern California coast. “That’s pretty jaw-dropping in terms of the volumes and quantities of various contaminants that were dispersed in the ocean,” said John Chesnutt ... who has been leading the EPA’s technical team on the investigation. “This also begs the question: So what’s in the barrels? There’s still so much we don’t know.” These revelations build on much-needed research into DDT’s toxic — and insidious — legacy in California. As many as half a million barrels of DDT waste have not been accounted for in the deep ocean. Women face greater risk of obesity, earlier menstruation and possibly breast cancer if their grandmothers were exposed to DDT during pregnancy, researchers say.

Note: Back in 2020, LA Times wrote an excellent investigative piece on the history and background of this unsettling issue. Consider watching a brief and shocking video of how the US government made the public believe DDT was so safe you could eat it and spray it on children. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on health from reliable major media sources.


The country where 30 farmers die each day
2022-03-17, CNN News
Posted: 2023-01-29 20:54:28
https://www.cnn.com/2022/03/17/opinions/india-farmer-suicide-agriculture-refo...

The situation for India’s more than 260 million agricultural workers is dire. Nearly 30 people in the farming sector die by suicide daily, according to the most recent figures available, typically due to overwhelming debt. Indeed in 2020, more than 10,000 people in the agricultural sector ended their own lives, according to government data. India’s economic backbone – its farmers and their families – is in collapse. They face crushing pressures: insurmountable debt, environmental degradation, and extreme rates of cancer linked to exposure to pesticides. This strain is compounded by climate change and extreme weather – from ground water depletion to water shortages and crop damage due to rising temperatures – effects which have been tied to increasing suicides in India. Many are subsistence farmers who are drowning in the volatility caused by the Green Revolution which began in the 1960s as a way of industrializing the agriculture sector with high yielding seeds, mechanized tools and pesticides. In some cases, farmers cannot work their land due to illness linked to the revolution’s pesticides and fertilizers. They are dealing with deep-rooted battles against multinational corporations. And all the while having to take out loans each year to make the agricultural cycle possible. And then, when farmers are unable to get loans from legitimate banks, illegal moneylenders ... step in, charging exorbitant interest rates and creating an inescapable debt-trap for farmers, in some instances pushing them to suicide.

Note: Watch a compelling talk by food sovereignty advocate Vandana Shiva, who explains how the "Green Revolution" doesn't bring any gain in food security, and has done more harm than good in India. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on food system corruption from reliable major media sources.


‘Experts’ Are Fueling Distrust in Vaccines
2023-01-09, Wall Street Journal
Posted: 2023-01-29 20:51:50
http://www.wsj.com/articles/experts-fueling-distrust-vaccines-antivax-public-...

Nearly half of Americans believe Covid vaccines have probably caused a significant number of unexplained deaths, according to a Rasmussen Reports survey. Rasmussen reported that a near equal proportion worry that Covid vaccines may have major side effects (57%) as believe they are effective (56%). The mRNA vaccines ... were authorized by the Food and Drug Administration on an emergency basis after only 10 months of testing. Vaccine trials usually take about 10 years. The FDA in December 2020 decided it couldn’t wait for an exhaustive study and authorized the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines after two large randomized controlled trials showed they were nearly 95% effective against symptomatic infection. But patients had been tracked for only a few months. The trials included too few participants to identify relatively rare adverse effects, especially among those of different age groups or with particular medical conditions. Public-health officials couldn’t conclude with any certainty whether the vaccines cause, for example, neurological symptoms in 1 of every 100,000 recipients or cardiac problems in 1 of every 10,000 young men. While the FDA later granted both vaccines full approval, boosters were never tested in large clinical trials. Nor has the government’s recommended vaccine regimen, which for seniors has been five doses in less than two years. The internet is full of stories of unexplained deaths that follow vaccines, many of which may be coincidence but some of which may not.

Note: Media coverage is increasing about the questionable efficacy and safety of the COVID vaccines. If almost half of Americans believe COVID vaccines likely caused a significant number of unexplained deaths, why is the FDA now proposing annual COVID vaccinations? For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on coronavirus vaccines from reliable major media sources.


COVID-19 Drugmakers Pressured Twitter to Censor Activists Pushing for Generic Vaccine
2023-01-16, The Intercept
Posted: 2023-01-29 20:49:49
https://theintercept.com/2023/01/16/twitter-covid-vaccine-pharma/

Vaccine-makers sought to shape content moderation actions at Twitter. Stronger, a campaign run by Public Good Projects, a public health nonprofit specializing in large-scale media monitoring programs, regularly communicated with Twitter on regulating content related to the pandemic. The firm worked closely with the San Francisco social media giant to help develop bots to censor vaccine misinformation and, at times, sent direct requests to Twitter with lists of accounts to censor and verify. Internal Twitter emails show regular correspondence between an account manager at Public Good Projects, and various Twitter officials, including Todd O’Boyle, lobbyist with the company who served as a point of contact with the Biden administration. The content moderation requests were sent throughout 2021 and early 2022. The entire campaign ... was entirely funded by the Biotechnology Innovation Organization, a vaccine industry lobbying group. BIO, which is financed by companies such as Moderna and Pfizer, provided Stronger with $1,275,000 in funding for the effort, which included tools for the public to flag content on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook for moderation. Many of the tweets flagged by Stronger contained absolute falsehoods. But others hinged on a gray area of vaccine policy through which there is reasonable debate, such as requests to label or take down content critical of vaccine passports and government mandates to require vaccination.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on coronavirus vaccines and media manipulation from reliable sources.


Revealed: how US transition to electric cars threatens environmental havoc
2023-01-24, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2023-01-29 20:47:20
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jan/24/us-electric-vehicles-lithium-...

The US’s transition to electric vehicles could require three times as much lithium as is currently produced for the entire global market, causing needless water shortages, Indigenous land grabs, and ecosystem destruction inside and outside its borders, new research finds. It warns that unless the US’s dependence on cars in towns and cities falls drastically, the transition to lithium battery-powered electric vehicles by 2050 will deepen global environmental and social inequalities linked to mining – and may even jeopardize the 1.5C global heating target. But ambitious policies investing in mass transit, walkable towns and cities, and robust battery recycling in the US would slash the amount of extra lithium required in 2050 by more than 90%. In fact, this first-of-its-kind modeling shows it is possible to have more transport options for Americans that are safer, healthier and less segregated, and less harmful mining while making rapid progress to zero emissions. If Americans continue to depend on cars at the current rate, by 2050 the US alone would need triple the amount of lithium currently produced for the entire global market, which would have dire consequences for water and food supplies, biodiversity, and Indigenous rights. Lithium mining is, like all mining, environmentally and socially harmful. More than half the current lithium production, which is very water intensive, takes place in regions blighted by water shortages that are likely to get worse due to global heating.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption from reliable major media sources.


School lunch goes farm-to-table for some California students
2023-01-24, PBS
Posted: 2023-01-29 20:45:00
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/education/school-lunch-goes-farm-to-table-for-so...

The food served at the suburban San Francisco school system, Mount Diablo Unified, reflects a trend away from mass-produced, reheated meals. Its lunch menus are filled with California-grown fruits and vegetables, grass-fed meats and recipes that defy the stereotype of inedible school food. Among American schoolchildren, these students are in the lucky minority. Making fresh meals requires significant investment and, in many areas, an overhaul of how school kitchens have operated for decades. What’s more, federal money to boost lunch budgets has declined. The government last year ended a pandemic-era program offering free school meals to everyone. A few states, such as California, have been paying to keep meals free for all students, but most states went back to charging all but the neediest kids for meals. Increases in money from California’s state government have made it possible for Mount Diablo to buy fresher local ingredients and hire the chef, Josh Gjersand, a veteran of Michelin-starred restaurants. Local farms, bakers, creameries and fishermen now supply most ingredients to the district, which serves 30,000 students from wealthy and low-income communities east of San Francisco. Making food from scratch isn’t just healthier, it’s cheaper, many school nutrition directors say. In 2021, California committed to spending $650 million annually to supplement federal meal reimbursements — money for food, staff, new equipment and other upgrades.

Note: Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.


What The Future Could Look Like: Jacque Fresco’s Venus Project
2021-09-01, The Pulse
Posted: 2023-01-29 20:42:54
https://thepulse.one/2021/09/01/what-the-future-could-look-like-jacque-fresco...

Jacque Fresco is an inspiration to many, with his innovative ideas and blue prints for a sustainable society and planet that reject the current models of mass consumerism and self-destruction. His latest venture, called The Venus Project, advocates what Fresco has coined as a “resource-based economy”, a society which runs on socio-cooperation and which utilizes the methodology of science and the advancements in technology in one of the cleanest and most energy efficient systems ever conceptualized. Located in Venus, Florida, The Venus Project is a research center which develops innovations in the fields of freelance inventing, industrial engineering, and conventional architectural modeling. The Venus Project aims to answer the question, how can we utilize technology wisely so that there is more than enough for everyone on our planet? To make this happen, Fresco proposes that a planning process must first occur, where the entire infrastructure of the planet is re-worked. This means the planet working together as one, eliminating the false borders that separate continents and countries and looking at our planet as an open trading highway system. The Venus Project works to showcase the amazing and inspiring potential of computers and technology, and to help people understand that it is not technology that is responsible for the deterioration of the planet and society, but rather it is the abuse and misuse of machines and automated technology for selfish benefits that we should be weary of.

Note: Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.


Once an Open Sewer, New York Harbor Now Teems With Life
2022-12-30, New York Times
Posted: 2023-01-29 20:41:35
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/30/opinion/new-york-harbor-clean-water-act.html

Fifty years ago, Congress voted to override President Richard Nixon’s veto of the Clean Water Act. It has proved to be one of the most transformative environmental laws ever enacted. At the time of the law’s passage, hundreds of millions of gallons of raw sewage was dumped by New York City into the Hudson River every day. This filth was compounded by industrial contaminants emptied into the river along much of its length. The catch basin for all of this was New York Harbor, which resembled an open sewer. At its worst, 10 feet of raw human waste blanketed portions of the harbor bottom. Health advisories against eating fish from the Hudson remain, but its ecology has largely recovered, thanks to the law, which imposed strict regulations on what could be discharged into the water by sewage treatment plants, factories and other sources of pollution. Today people swim in organized events in New York Harbor, which would have been unthinkable in 1972 when the law was passed. Across the country, billions of dollars were also spent to construct and improve sewage treatment plants, leading to recoveries of other urban waterways. Cleaner water has made the harbor far more hospitable, and other steps have helped to rebuild life there, like fishing restrictions and the removal of some dams on tributaries in the Hudson River watershed. The bald eagle has made a strong comeback, taking advantage of the harbor’s resurgent fish life. In December 2020 a humpback whale was seen in the Hudson just one mile from Times Square.

Note: Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.


UFO reports by US troops skyrocket to over 500
2023-01-13, BBC News
Posted: 2023-01-22 23:01:02
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-64252340

A new de-classified US government report on UFO sightings by US troops has revealed hundreds of new cases. The US National Intelligence office is now aware of 510 reported sightings, an increase over the 144 compiled in the spy agency's first 2021 assessment. Nearly half of the new sightings were deemed "unremarkable" and attributed to human origins, according to the report. However, more than 100 of the encounters remain unexplained. The report says that encounters with UFOs - which the government calls Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAPs) - continue "to occur in restricted or sensitive airspace, highlighting possible concerns for safety" and national security. The report was issued in part to help "destigmatise" experiences with UFOs and improve air safety. And it says increased reports of encounters are indeed the result of "a concentrated effort to destigmatise the topic of UAP and instead recognise the potential risks that it poses as both a safety of flight hazard and potential adversarial activity", the report states. It goes on to say that 171 sightings still remain "uncharacterised and unattributed" - meaning, not enough information was collected to effectively identify them. "Some of these uncharacterised UAP appear to have demonstrated unusual flight characteristics or performance capabilities, and require further analysis," the report says. The reports are being examined by the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), an office in the Pentagon created last year to review UAP incidents.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on UFOs from reliable major media sources. Then explore the excellent, reliable resources provided in our UFO Information Center.


‘Several hundred’ UFO reports received by Pentagon’s new tracking office
2022-12-16, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2023-01-22 22:59:10
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/dec/16/several-hundred-ufo-reports-rec...

A new Pentagon office set up to track reports of unidentified flying objects has received “several hundred” new reports, but no evidence so far of alien life. The All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) was set up in July and is responsible for not only tracking unidentified objects in the sky, but also underwater or in space – or potentially an object that has the ability to move from one domain to the next. The office was established following more than a year of attention on unidentified flying objects that military pilots have observed but have sometimes been reluctant to report due to fear of stigma. In June 2021 the Office of the Director of National Intelligence reported that between 2004 and 2021, there were 144 such encounters, 80 of which were captured on multiple sensors. Since then, “we’ve had lots more reporting”, said anomaly office director Sean Kirkpatrick. When asked to quantify the amount, Kirkpatrick said “several hundreds”. This May, Congress held its first hearing in more than half a century on the topic, with members expressing concern that – whether or not the objects are alien or potentially new technology being flown by China, Russia or another potential adversary – the unknown creates a security risk. So far, “we have not seen anything, and we’re still very early on, that would lead us to believe that any of the objects that we have seen are of alien origin”, said Ronald Moultrie, under secretary of defense for intelligence and security. “Any unauthorized system in our airspace we deem as a threat.”

Note: Read an in-depth essay by former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Intelligence Christopher Mellon questioning why this important topic is being dismissed by the major media when reported at all. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on UFOs from reliable major media sources. Then explore the excellent, reliable resources provided in our UFO Information Center.


How Deadly Were the Covid Lockdowns?
2023-01-11, Wall Street Journal
Posted: 2023-01-22 22:57:25
https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-deadly-were-the-covid-lockdowns-excess-death...

Covid-19 is deadly, but so were the draconian steps taken to mitigate it. During the first two years of the pandemic, “excess deaths”—the death toll above the historical trend—markedly exceeded the number of deaths attributed to Covid. In a paper we just published in Inquiry, based on data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, we found that “non-Covid excess deaths” totaled nearly 100,000 a year in 2020 and 2021. Even these numbers likely overestimate deaths from Covid and underestimate those from other causes. The official count of “Covid deaths” includes people who tested positive but died of other causes. What are non-Covid excess deaths? During the pandemic, deaths from accidents, overdoses, alcoholism and homicide all soared, as did deaths from hypertension, heart disease and diabetes. From April 2020 through December 2021, deaths from Covid averaged 350,000 a year for Americans 65 and older, 100,000 a year for those 45 to 64, and 20,000 a year for those 18 to 44. That produced excess deaths for these age groups of 16%, 19% and 11% respectively. The CDC data show the rate of non-Covid excess deaths in the first half of 2022 was even higher than 2020 or 2021. These deaths therefore likely already exceed 250,000, disproportionately among young adults. We now have more overdose deaths each year than all military deaths of the last 60 years combined. Homicides, accidents and alcohol deaths are collectively running tens of thousands per year above pre-pandemic norms.

Note: The above was written by Rob Arnott and Casey B. Mulligan. Mr. Arnott founded asset management firm Research Affiliates. Mr. Mulligan was chief economist for the White House Council of Economic Advisers. For more along these lines, watch an articulate interview discussing excess deaths since 2021 that aren't linked to COVID-19, yet are most likely associated with the rollout of the COVID vaccines.


FDA vaccine advisers 'disappointed' and 'angry' that early data about new Covid-19 booster shot wasn't presented for review last year
2023-01-11, CNN News
Posted: 2023-01-22 22:55:18
https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/11/health/moderna-bivalent-transparency/index.html

Some vaccine advisers to the federal government say they're "disappointed" and "angry" that government scientists and the pharmaceutical company Moderna didn't present a set of infection data on the company's new Covid-19 booster during meetings last year when the advisers discussed whether the shot should be authorized and made available to the public. That data suggested the possibility that the updated booster might not be any more effective at preventing Covid-19 infections than the original shots. US taxpayers spent nearly $5 billion on the new booster, which has been given to more than 48.2 million people. "I was angry to find out that there was data that was relevant to our decision that we didn't get to see," said Dr. Paul Offit, a member of the Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee, a group of external advisers that helps the FDA make vaccine decisions. The data that was not presented to the experts looked at actual infections: who caught Covid-19 and who did not. It found that 1.9% of the study participants who received the original booster became infected. Among those who got the updated bivalent vaccine ... a higher percentage, 3.2%, became infected. A 22-page FDA briefing document given to the advisers did not mention this infection data. Dr. Jerry Weir, director of the Division of Viral Products at the FDA's Office of Vaccines Research and Review, also did not mention the infection data in his presentation to the advisers.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and coronavirus vaccines from reliable major media sources.


The US should break up monopolies – not punish working Americans for rising prices
2023-01-08, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2023-01-22 22:53:01
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/jan/08/us-monopolies-inflation...

Job growth and wages are slowing. This is music to the ears of Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell, because the Fed blames inflation on rising wages. The Fed has been increasing interest rates to slow the economy and thereby reduce the bargaining power of workers to get wage gains. But aren’t higher wages a good thing? The typical American worker’s wage has been stuck in the mud for four decades. Most of the gains from a more productive economy have been going to the top – to executives and investors. The richest 10% of Americans now own more than 90% of the value of shares of stock owned by Americans. Powell’s solution to inflation is to clobber workers even further. But if the demand for workers exceeds the supply, isn’t the answer to pay workers more? Not according to Powell and the Fed. Their answer is to continue to raise interest rates to slow the economy and put more people out of work, so workers can’t get higher wages. The Fed projects that as it continues to increase interest rates, unemployment will rise to 4.6% by the end of 2023 – resulting in more than 1m job losses. The problem isn’t that wages are rising. The real problem is that corporations have the power to pass those wage increases – along with record profit margins – on to consumers in the form of higher prices. If corporations had to compete vigorously for consumers, they wouldn’t be able to do this. Competitors would charge lower prices and grab those consumers away.

Note: The above was written by former US Secretary of Labor Robert Reich. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and income inequality from reliable major media sources.


The world’s biggest PR firm claims to be an expert on trust – but is it?
2023-01-15, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2023-01-22 22:50:55
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/jan/15/edelman-pr-firm-davos-trust

At the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland this week, the public relations juggernaut Edelman will publish the latest edition of its “trust barometer”, an annual survey that purports to measure whether people around the world trust businesses, governments, NGOs and the media. There’s just one problem: even as Edelman promotes its brand and pursues clients with stern warnings about the importance of trust, critics charge the company appears reluctant to follow its own advice. The firm’s clients have ranged from ExxonMobil to the Saudi government and members of the Sackler family, the former owners of the opioid manufacturer Purdue Pharma. Successful PR firms do more than simply promote and spin – they actually infuse the public discourse with their clients’ perspectives. “These companies are trying not just to manage trust, but to make trust,” [media studies professor Melissa] Aronczyk said. “And if they themselves are the owners of that survey, or barometer, or whatever it is, then, of course, they become the proprietors of that kind of value.” Edelman’s most effective case study might be the firm itself. It has managed to cultivate a reputation for trust even as its business model appears regularly to contradict its advice and its CEO’s admonitions. Over the past four years Edelman has signed about $9.6m worth of deals with the government of Saudi Arabia and companies controlled by the regime, while simultaneously urging businesses to stand up for human rights.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corporate corruption from reliable major media sources.


Call for new taxes on super-rich after 1% pocket two-thirds of all new wealth
2023-01-15, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2023-01-22 22:48:52
https://www.theguardian.com/inequality/2023/jan/16/oxfam-calls-for-new-taxes-...

Oxfam has called for immediate action to tackle a post-Covid widening in global inequality after revealing that almost two-thirds of the new wealth amassed since the start of the pandemic has gone to the richest 1%. In [a] report to coincide with the annual gathering of the global elite at the World Economic Forum in Davos, the charity said the best-off had pocketed $26tn (£21tn) in new wealth up to the end of 2021. That represented 63% of the total new wealth, with the rest going to the remaining 99% of people. Oxfam said extreme concentrations of wealth led to weaker growth, corrupted politics and the media, corroded democracy and led to political polarisation. The report called on governments to introduce immediate one-off wealth levies on the richest 1%, together with windfall taxes to clamp down on profiteering during the global cost of living crisis. Subsequently, there should be a permanent increase in taxes on rich. In support of its call for redistribution of wealth, Oxfam said: Food and energy companies had more than doubled their profits in 2022, paying out $257bn to wealthy shareholders at a time when more than 800 million people were going hungry. Only 4 cents in every dollar of tax revenue came from wealth taxes, and half the world’s billionaires lived in countries with no inheritance tax. A tax of up to 5% on the world’s multimillionaires and billionaires could raise $1.7tn a year, enough to lift 2 billion people out of poverty, and fund a global plan to end hunger.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on income inequality from reliable major media sources.


2 top FDA officials resigned over the Biden administration's booster-shot plan, saying it insisted on the policy before the agency approved it, reports say
2021-09-01, Business Insider
Posted: 2023-01-22 22:46:55
https://www.businessinsider.com/2-top-fda-officials-resigned-biden-booster-pl...

The US Food and Drug Administration announced the resignations of two top vaccine officials on Tuesday, and reports said the two were leaving in anger over the Biden administration's plan to roll out COVID-19 booster shots before officials had a chance to approve it. Dr. Marion Gruber, the director of the FDA's Office of Vaccines Research and Review, and her deputy, Dr. Philip Krause, plan to leave the FDA. Dr. Peter Marks, the director of the FDA's Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, praised the pair for their work during the COVID-19 pandemic. He didn't give a reason for their departures. But sources told ... Politico that Gruber and Krause were upset with Biden administration's booster-shot plan. One former senior FDA leader [said] that Gruber and Krause were leaving because they felt that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was making vaccine decisions that should have been left to the FDA and were upset with Marks, the leader of their division, for not insisting on the agency's oversight. The source said the final straw was the Biden administration's announcing the booster-shot plan before the FDA had officially signed off on it. A former FDA official told Politico that the resignations were tied to anger over the FDA's lack of autonomy in booster planning.

Note: We don’t use Business Insider as a normal reliable source, but in this case, the major media (like this CNN article) avoids linking this decision to the boosters. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and coronavirus vaccines from reliable major media sources.


A Monthly Ritual of Selflessness Has Transformed Rwanda
2021-12-06, Reasons to be Cheerful
Posted: 2023-01-22 22:44:51
https://reasonstobecheerful.world/umuganda-rwanda-community-improvement-proje...

Luc, along with just about every able-bodied Rwandan aged 18 to 65, participates in the monthly activity known as “Umuganda,” a Kinyarwanda word that means “coming together in common purpose.” On the last Saturday of every month, from 8 to 11 a.m., Rwandans across the country gather together to partake in community improvement projects. In Luc’s neighborhood, this has meant trimming back bushes that attract malaria-spreading mosquitoes, and making sure roads are clear. According to Luc, these monthly gatherings have helped his community recover from a long, devastating period of genocide, making it clean, innovative, loving and self-reliant. Across the country ... the tradition of Umuganda has unfolded in similar fashion, helping Rwanda to piece itself back together and recover from ruin. Though Umuganda is a national phenomenon, the mobilization of it takes place at the community level — specifically, in “cells” of at least 50 households called Umudugudu. Spearheaded by a community leader, members of a cell often use the mobile messaging service WhatsApp to work out the logistics. This small-scale organizational structure is key to making Umuganda work. Luc thinks Umuganda has value beyond the projects themselves, promoting self-reliance among Rwandans. “When you see something wrong within your surroundings, you do not wait for someone else to come and do it for you, you just go for it and do it,” he says. “Do Umuganda. Solve the problem yourselves.”

Note: Read about the community courts in Rwanda after the deadly genocide, which served as a powerful model for forgiveness and reconciliation. Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.


This Kenyan Slum Has Something to Teach the World
2023-01-11, New York Times
Posted: 2023-01-22 22:42:39
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/11/opinion/kenya-development-slum.html?action...

Here in the Kibera slum, life sometimes seems a free-for-all. Yet this is an uplifting slum. Kennedy [Odede] taught himself to read ... then formed a Kibera self-help association called Shining Hope for Communities, better known as SHOFCO. Let’s just acknowledge that development is hard, particularly in urban slums that are growing fast around the world. Billions of dollars are poured into the poorest countries, and in Haiti and South Sudan one sees fleets of expensive white S.U.V.s driven by aid organizations; what’s missing is long-term economic development. International aid keeps children alive, which is no small feat. But it has had less success in transforming troubled places. That’s where SHOFCO is intriguing as an alternative model. “Development has been part of imperialism — you know better than anybody else because you’re from America or Europe,” Kennedy [said]. He thinks international aid sometimes is ineffective partly because it feels imposed by the outside. SHOFCO has spread through low-income communities across Kenya and now boasts 2.4 million members, making it one of the largest grass-roots organizations in Africa. It provides clean water, fights sexual assault, runs a credit union, coaches people on starting small businesses, runs libraries and internet hot spots, mobilizes voters to press politicians to bring services to slums, runs public health campaigns and does 1,000 other things. It exemplifies a partnership: local leadership paired with a reliance on the best international practices.

Note: Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.


Pets in prison: the rescue dogs teaching Californian inmates trust and responsibility
2021-04-19, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2023-01-22 22:41:08
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2020/apr/19/pets-in-prison-the-rescu...

Zach Skow [is] a man on a mission to bring dogs into every US prison. Skow is the founder of Pawsitive Change, a rehabilitation programme that pairs rescue dogs with inmates. He began a pilot programme at California City Correctional Facility in January 2016, teaching inmates to become dog trainers, and it’s now been rolled out to four more California state prisons and one female juvenile correction centre. To date more than 300 men have graduated from the programme and roughly 200 dogs from “high-kill” shelters have been rescued and adopted as a result of the inmates’ work with them (the shelters accept any animal [and] euthanise a certain percentage if they can’t rehome them). Seventeen of the programme’s human graduates have been paroled and so far none has returned to prison (at a time when the US recidivism rate stands at 43%). Working with the dogs and seeing what the animals are going through prompts the men to speak of their own experiences. When one student relates how his dog didn’t want to come out of the kennel in the first few days, another shares how he too didn’t want to leave his cell when he first came to prison. Many of these men have been told repeatedly from a young age that they’re not to be trusted, that they make a mess of things, that they’re not fit to take charge of anything. This message is then reinforced ... through the penal system. This programme challenges the “branding” these men have had imposed on them from an early age. It allows them to create new narratives.

Note: Watch a beautiful 4-minute video of an inmate and his beloved pup. Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.


Microplastics can cross placenta into unborn babies, study shows
2022-12-28, The Independent (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2023-01-16 13:02:53
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/health/microplastics-in-humans-baby-placen...

Microplastics have been found to cross the placenta into unborn babies, a shocking study reveals. Scientists warn it is impossible to stop children ingesting the tiny plastic particles as well as even smaller nanoplastics, which can be found almost everywhere. Microplastics have also been found in newborn children, the researchers add. Infants ingest microplastics from baby bottles, toys, textiles and food packaging. When microplastics end up in household dust, children can ingest them by playing and crawling on the floor. Microplastics contain other harmful chemicals as well as plastic, such as phthalates and metals added for colour, stabilisation or as a biocide. When microplastics end up outdoors, for example as particles from car tires, this plastic core is often coated with air pollution and car exhaust. Study author Kam Sripada from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology said: “It’s quite possible that children are more exposed to microplastics than adults, similar to children’s greater exposure to many other environmental toxic chemicals. “No one knows exactly how much microplastic a child ingests, but several studies now suggest that today’s children absorb microplastics in their bodies as early as at fetal age. “Children do not have a fully developed immune system and are in a very important phase of their brain development. “This makes them particularly vulnerable. Nano and microplastics are so miniscule that they can travel deep into the lungs and can also cross into the placenta.”

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on health from reliable major media sources. Then explore the excellent, reliable resources provided in our Health Information Center.


Study finds ‘huge’ increase in children going to the emergency room with suicidal thoughts
2022-11-14, CNN News
Posted: 2023-01-16 13:01:33
https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/14/health/suicide-er-visits-kids/index.html

There has been a steady increase in the number of children who are seen in emergency rooms for suicidal thoughts, according to a new study. The study, published ... in the journal Pediatrics, used data from hospitals in Illinois. The researchers looked at the number of children ages 5 to 19 who sought help for suicide in emergency departments between January 2016 and June 2021. In that period, there were 81,051 emergency department visits by young people that were coded for suicidal ideation. About a quarter of those visits turned into hospital stays. The study found that visits to the ER with suicidal thoughts increased 59% from 2016-17 to 2019-21. There was a corresponding increase in cases in which suicidal ideation was the principal diagnosis, which rose from 34.6% to 44.3%. Hospitalizations for suicidal thoughts increased 57% between fall 2019 and fall 2020. “It just really highlights how mental health concerns were really a problem before the pandemic. I mean, we saw this huge increase in [emergency department] visits for kids of all ages, honestly, in 2019, and it’s very concerning,” said study co-author Dr. Audrey Brewer. Dr. Nicholas Holmes ... at Rady Children’s Hospital in San Diego, said the increase in the number of kids seeking help in his health care system has been “profound.” “Over the last nine years, where we would see about anywhere from one to two patients a day that were having a behavioral health crisis, now we’re seeing 20-plus a day,” said Holmes.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on health from reliable major media sources.


Facebook Wanted Out of Politics. It Was Messier Than Anyone Expected.
2023-01-05, Wall Street Journal
Posted: 2023-01-16 12:57:49
https://www.wsj.com/articles/facebook-politics-controls-zuckerberg-meta-11672...

A Journal article in 2021 cited internal [Facebook] research showing that steps to promote engagement had favored inflammatory material, with publishers and political parties reorienting their posts toward outrage and sensationalism. After the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, Facebook parent Meta Platforms Inc. said it wanted to scale back how much political content it showed users. [Chief Executive Mark] Zuckerberg and [Meta's] board chose the most drastic, instructing the company to demote posts on “sensitive” topics as much as possible ... an initiative that hasn’t previously been reported. Depending on the mix of suppression features deployed, projected Facebook traffic to Fox News, MSNBC, the New York Times, Newsmax, the Atlantic and The Wall Street Journal would initially fall by as much as 40% to 60% beyond the already enacted reductions. Suppressing civic content didn’t appear likely to convince users that Facebook wasn’t politically toxic. According to internal research, the percentage of users who said they thought Facebook had a negative effect on politics didn’t budge with the changes, staying consistently around 60% in the U.S. Ravi Iyer, a former Meta data-science manager ... said there should be more focus on the way platforms allow certain content to go viral, rather than subjective decisions about what to leave up or take down. “Having employees judge good vs. bad speech often creates more problems than it solves,” he said. “Our goal should be fewer judgment calls.”

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corporate corruption and media manipulation from reliable sources.


A high-stakes criminal investigation is a window into the often unseen threat of white-supremacist prison gangs
2022-09-14, Washington Post
Posted: 2023-01-16 12:55:55
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/09/15/oklahoma-murders-...

In April, authorities acting on a tip said they found charred piles of wood and bone on a five-acre patch of Logan County, opening one of the grisliest and most sensitive criminal investigations in Oklahoma’s recent history. Behind the 10-foot metal walls of a compound with links to the Universal Aryan Brotherhood, a white-supremacist prison gang, officers found what they believe to be a body dumping ground where multiple people ended up dismembered and burned. “We’re just trying to keep some people alive at this point,” [an] official said, describing the struggle to protect potential witnesses. That level of danger is a jarring reminder of the unseen threat of white-supremacist prison gangs, whose leaders run crime syndicates from behind bars through a network of “enforcers” on the outside. The gangs have carried out hate-fueled attacks both in and out of prison, with the bulk of their free-world violence targeting rivals and informants. Because the gangs typically keep their business within the criminal underground, the attacks go largely undiscussed in the broader national conversation. The UAB is known to be a major player in Oklahoma meth trafficking, according to authorities and a 2018 federal indictment of 18 members on racketeering charges. The indictment, one of the most detailed public accounts of UAB operations, accused the gang of distributing an estimated 2,500 kilos of meth annually in Oklahoma, and laid out related crimes such as “murder, kidnapping, witness intimidation, home invasions.”

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on prison system corruption from reliable major media sources.


In county jails, guards use pepper spray and stun guns to subdue people in mental crisis
2023-01-02, NPR
Posted: 2023-01-16 12:50:45
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2023/01/02/1137208190/in-county-jai...

When police arrived on the scene, they found Ishmail Thompson standing naked outside a hotel. After they arrested him, a mental health specialist at the county jail said Thompson should be sent to the hospital for psychiatric care. However ... a doctor cleared Thompson to return to jail. With that decision, he went from being a mental health patient to a Dauphin County Prison inmate. Thompson soon would be locked in a physical struggle with corrections officers – one of 5,144 such "use of force" incidents that occurred in 2021 inside Pennsylvania county jails. An investigation by WITF and NPR looked at 456 of those incidents from 25 county jails in Pennsylvania. Nearly 1 in 3 "use of force" incidents involved a person who was having a mental health crisis or who had a known mental illness. Guards used aggressive – and distressing – weapons like stun guns and pepper spray to control and subdue such prisoners, despite the fact that their severe psychiatric conditions meant they may have been unable to follow orders – or even understand what was going on. For Ishmail Thompson, this played out within hours of returning to jail from the hospital. An officer covered Thompson's head with a hood and put him in a restraint chair. Thompson died. The district attorney declined to bring charges. "The vast majority of people who are engaged in self-harm are not going to die," [Attorney Alan] Mills says. "What they really need is intervention to de-escalate the situation, whereas use of force escalates the situation."

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on prison system corruption from reliable major media sources.


Tensions with Virgin Islands governor over Epstein led to attorney general’s firing
2023-01-06, New York Times
Posted: 2023-01-16 12:48:59
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/06/business/virgin-islands-epstein-attorney-g...

The former attorney general for the Virgin Islands, who recently secured a $105 million settlement from the estate of Jeffrey Epstein, was recently fired following months of friction between her and the U.S. territory’s governor over the handling of the investigation into the disgraced financier, according to people briefed on the matter. Denise N. George, the former official, was dismissed by Albert Bryan Jr., the governor of the Virgin Islands, on New Year’s Eve, four days after her office sued JPMorgan Chase in federal court in Manhattan for its dealings with Mr. Epstein, who died of an apparent suicide in 2019 while in federal custody. The timing of Ms. George’s firing fueled media speculation in the Virgin Islands and beyond that the suit against JPMorgan was the immediate cause. In late December, Ms. George’s office sued JPMorgan in federal court in Manhattan, claiming that bank was derelict in providing banking services to Mr. Epstein during the time he was charged with sexually abusing teenage girls and young women at Little St. James and elsewhere in the U.S. The lawsuit accused JPMorgan of facilitating and concealing wire and cash transactions that should have raised suspicions that Mr. Epstein was engaging in the sexual trafficking of teen girls and young women. The lawsuit contends the bank essentially turned a “blind eye” to Mr. Epstein’s conduct because it was profitable. JPMorgan, the largest U.S. bank by assets, was Mr. Epstein’s primary banker from the late 1990s to 2013.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on banking corruption and Jeffrey Epstein's sex trafficking ring from reliable major media sources.


#MeToo is five years old. These trials show how far we’ve come
2022-10-15, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2023-01-16 12:47:07
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/oct/15/metoo-is-five-years-old...

Five years nearly to the day since the New York Times and the New Yorker published their explosive exposés on Harvey Weinstein and his myriad misdeeds – all of them leveraging his vaunted position in Hollywood to extract sex and force humiliation on hopeful actresses – Weinstein and several other men accused as part of the broader #MeToo movement are seeing the inside of a courtroom. Weinstein, who was already sentenced to 23 years in prison for rape and sexual assault in New York, now faces trial for similar crimes in California. Paul Haggis, who won an Oscar for directing the film Crash ... goes to trial next month in a civil suit filed by a film publicist who says he raped her. And Kevin Spacey is also facing a civil suit filed by actor Anthony Rapp, who says Spacey got on top of him and made a sexual advance when he was just 14 and Spacey was 26. All three men have a few things in common. They are (or were) among Hollywood’s most powerful men. They are a tiny minority among men accused of assault as part of the #MeToo movement to actually see the inside of a courtroom. And they all demonstrate both the benefits and the limitations of the legal system adjudicating sexual assault claims. Is this justice? No, not for everyone; not even for most. It also probably doesn’t give many feminists much pleasure to hear that men like Weinstein are now suffering the same cruelties and dehumanizing humiliations our criminal justice system has long leveled on more invisible men.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on sexual abuse scandals from reliable major media sources.


The CIA plot to kidnap or kill Julian Assange in London is a story that is being mistakenly ignored
2021-10-01, The Independent (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2023-01-16 12:45:22
https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/julian-assange-cia-kidnap-plot-yahoo-new...

In 2017, the CIA had plotted to kidnap or assassinate Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, who had taken refuge five years earlier in the Ecuador embassy in London. A senior US counter-intelligence official said that plans for the forcible rendition of Assange to the US were discussed “at the highest levels” of the Trump administration. The informant was one of more than 30 US officials – eight of whom confirmed details of the abduction proposal – quoted in a 7,500-word investigation by Yahoo News into the CIA campaign against Assange. The plan was to “break into the embassy, drag [Assange] out and bring him to where we want”, recalled a former intelligence official. Another informant said that he was briefed about a meeting in the spring of 2017 at which President Trump had asked if the CIA could assassinate Assange and provide “options” about how this could be done. The Trump-appointed head of the CIA, Mike Pompeo, said publicly that he would target Assange and WikiLeaks as the equivalent of “a hostile intelligence service”. Top intelligence officials intended to decide themselves who is and who is not a journalist, and lobbied the White House to redefine other high-profile journalists as “information brokers”, who were to be targeted as if they were agents of a foreign power. In 2013 ... a team of 120 counter-intelligence officers ... failed to find a single person in Iraq and Afghanistan who had died because of the disclosures by WikiLeaks.

Note: CIA interest in assassinating Assange coincided with Wikileaks' publication of leaked CIA hacking tools. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on intelligence agency corruption from reliable major media sources.


“You Are Watching the Power of Music Changing Brain Chemistry”
2022-05-27, Reasons to be Cheerful
Posted: 2023-01-16 12:42:28
https://reasonstobecheerful.world/dementia-music-healing-brain-neurology/

Music, it turns out, is medicine for the mind. [A 2021 study] set out to see what happens in the brain when a person with mild cognitive impairment or early Alzheimer’s disease listens to their favorite playlist for an hour every day. The 14 participants had brain scans and took neuropsychological tests that involved memory exercises. At the end of the trial the participants showed a small but statistically significant improvement in memory — something that is extremely unusual. New connections had formed between different regions of the brain ... that actually changed brain plasticity and also improved function in relaying information. Thaut says the research shows that while music is in no way a cure for Alzheimers, it can provide a "cognitive boost." That’s why a person with memory impairment may not recall their daughter’s name but may remember all the lyrics to her favorite lullaby. “It’s pulling from emotions, it’s pulling from feelings, it’s pulling from interpersonal associations, it’s pulling from a date or time or period of one’s life — historical things,” [Concetta] Tomaino says. Music serves as a clue, coaxing the brain to fill in the blanks. “It is painful to watch your beloved slip away inch by inch,” [Carol Rosenstein] says. “And if it weren’t for the music, I wouldn’t be sitting here today. As a caregiver and first responder, I can tell you, I would have never survived the journey.”

Note: Watch a deeply moving video of Henry, a 94-year old man with dementia, experience music for the first time in years.


New Mexico’s governor just signed a bill to make college tuition-free
2022-03-07, CNN News
Posted: 2023-01-16 12:38:41
https://edition.cnn.com/2022/03/07/us/new-mexico-college-tuition-free-cec/ind...

For most New Mexico residents, college will now be officially tuition-free. New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham signed on Friday Senate Bill 140, otherwise known as the New Mexico Opportunity Scholarship Act. First introduced in 2019, the plan will waive tuition for any students attending any in-state public school or tribal college, including community colleges. “For over a quarter of a century, New Mexico has been a national leader in providing free college to its residents. A fully funded Opportunity Scholarship opens the door for every New Mexican to reach higher, strengthening our economy, our families and our communities,” Lujan Grisham said. “Signing this legislation sends a clear message to New Mexicans that we believe in them and the contributions they will make for their families and the future of our great state.” Eligible students must enroll in a minimum of six credit hours and maintain a grade point average of at least 2.5 during their time in college. The scholarship has already been awarded to more than 10,000 students over the last two years, but now $75 million has been allocated to the fund. That could support up to 35,000 students this fall alone ... and allows part-time students and adult learners to take advantage, as well. Across the country, many states have moved to provide some sort of tuition-free college education, typically at the community college level. In 2019, California waived tuition for first-time, full-time students attending two years of community college.

Note: Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.


AI In Space And Its Future Use In Warfare
2022-12-21, Forbes
Posted: 2023-01-09 14:33:28
https://www.forbes.com/sites/charlesbeames/2022/12/21/ai-in-space-and-its-fut...

Artificial intelligence (AI) has graduated from the hype stage of the last decade and its use cases are now well documented. Whichever nation best adapts this technology to its military – especially in space – will open new frontiers in innovation and determine the winners and losers. The US Army has anticipated this impending AI disruption and has moved quickly to stand up efforts like Project Linchpin to construct the infrastructure and environment necessary to proliferate AI technology across its intelligence, cyber, and electronic warfare communities. However, it should come as no surprise that China anticipated this advantage sooner than the US and is at the forefront of adoption. Chinese dominance in AI is imminent. The Chinese government has made enormous investments in this area (much more than Western countries) and is the current leader in AI publications and research patents globally. Meanwhile, China's ambitions in space are no longer a secret – the country is now on a trajectory to surpass the US in the next decade. The speed, range, and flexibility afforded by AI and machine learning gives those on orbit who wield it an unprecedented competitive edge. The advantage of AI in space warfare, for both on-orbit and in-ground systems, is that AI algorithms continuously learn and adapt as they operate, and the algorithms themselves can be upgraded as often as needed, to address or escalate a conflict. Like electronic warfare countermeasures during the Cold War, AI is truly the next frontier.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on military corruption and war from reliable major media sources.


Epstein's sex trafficking was aided by JPMorgan, a U.S. Virgin Islands lawsuit says
2022-12-30, NPR
Posted: 2023-01-09 14:31:37
https://www.npr.org/2022/12/30/1146221454/epstein-jpmorgan-virgin-islands-law...

The government of the U.S. Virgin Islands alleges in a lawsuit filed this week that JPMorgan Chase "turned a blind eye" to evidence that disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein used the bank to facilitate sex-trafficking activities on Little St. James, the private island he owned in the territory until his 2019 suicide. In a more than 100-page complaint filed by U.S.V.I. Attorney General Denise George in the Southern District of New York in Manhattan on Tuesday, the territory alleges that JPMorgan failed to report Epstein's suspicious activities and provided the financier with services reserved for high-wealth clients after his 2008 conviction for soliciting a minor for prostitution in Palm Beach, Fla. The complaint says the territory's Department of Justice investigation "revealed that JP Morgan knowingly, negligently, and unlawfully provided and pulled the levers through which recruiters and victims were paid and was indispensable to the operation and concealment of the Epstein trafficking enterprise." It accused the bank of ignoring evidence for "more than a decade because of Epstein's own financial footprint, and because of the deals and clients that Epstein brought and promised to bring to the bank." "These decisions were advocated and approved at the senior levels of JP Morgan," it said. The bank allegedly "facilitated and concealed wire and cash transactions that raised suspicion of — and were in fact part of — a criminal enterprise whose currency was the sexual servitude of dozens of women and girls," according to the complaint.

Note: Just days after filing the lawsuit against JP Morgan Chase, the district attorney of US Virgin Islands was fired. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on Jeffrey Epstein's sex trafficking ring from reliable major media sources.


Are Vaccines Fueling New Covid Variants?
2021-01-01, Wall Street Journal
Posted: 2023-01-09 14:29:51
https://www.wsj.com/articles/are-vaccines-fueling-new-covid-variants-xbb-nort...

Public-health experts are sounding the alarm about a new Omicron variant dubbed XBB. It isn’t clear that XBB is any more lethal than other variants, but its mutations enable it to evade antibodies from prior infection and vaccines. Growing evidence also suggests that repeated vaccinations may make people more susceptible to XBB and could be fueling the virus’s rapid evolution. Prior to Omicron’s emergence in November 2021, there were only four variants of concern: Alpha, Beta, Delta and Gamma. Only Alpha and Delta caused surges of infections globally. But Omicron has begotten numerous descendents. “Such rapid and simultaneous emergence of multiple variants with enormous growth advantages is unprecedented,” a Dec. 19 study in the journal Nature notes. The same study posits that immune imprinting may be contributing to the viral evolution. Vaccines do a good job of training the immune system to remember and knock out the original Wuhan variant. But when new and markedly different strains come along, the immune system responds less effectively. A Cleveland Clinic study that tracked its healthcare workers found that ... workers who had received more [vaccine] doses were at higher risk of getting sick. Those who received three more doses were 3.4 times as likely to get infected as the unvaccinated, while those who received two were only 2.6 times as likely. “This is not the only study to find a possible association with more prior vaccine doses and higher risk of COVID-19,” the authors noted.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on coronavirus vaccines from reliable major media sources.


Opposition to School Vaccine Mandates Has Grown Significantly, Study Finds
2022-12-26, New York Times
Posted: 2023-01-09 14:28:22
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/16/health/vaccines-public-opinion.html

For generations of most American families, getting children vaccinated was just something to check off on the list of back-to-school chores. But after the ferocious battles over Covid shots of the past two years, simmering resistance to general school vaccine mandates has grown significantly. Now, 35 percent of parents oppose requirements that children receive routine immunizations in order to attend school, according to a new survey released Friday by the Kaiser Family Foundation. Forty-four percent of adults who either identify as Republicans or lean that way said in the latest survey that parents should have the right to opt out of school vaccine mandates, up from 20 percent in a prepandemic poll conducted in 2019 by the Pew Research Center. In contrast, 88 percent of adults who identify as or lean Democratic endorsed childhood vaccine requirements, a slight increase from 86 percent in 2019. The survey found that 28 percent of adults overall believed parents should have the authority to make school vaccine decisions for their children, a stance that in the 2019 Pew poll was held by just 16 percent of adults. The shift in positions appears to be less about rejecting the shots than a growing endorsement of the so-called parents' rights movement. Indeed, 80 percent of parents said that the benefits of vaccines for measles, mumps and rubella outweighed the risks, down only slightly from 83 percent in 2019. The latest survey was based on interviews with a nationally representative sample of 1,259 adults.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on coronavirus vaccines from reliable major media sources.


The American PR firm helping Saudi Arabia clean up its image
2022-12-22, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2023-01-09 14:26:49
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/dec/22/edelman-saudi-arabia-pr-image

Richard Edelman, the CEO of the $1bn public relations firm Edelman, published a blogpost in June reflecting on his trip to the elite gathering of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. “I left Davos inspired by the bravery of the Ukrainians and Poles,” Edelman wrote, “[and] more convinced than ever about the global rift between democracy and autocracy.” Freedom House named Saudi Arabia as one of the “worst of the worst” nations in the world for human rights and civil and political liberties. The Saudi government “really restricts almost all political rights and civil liberties and engages in arbitrary imprisonment, torture, [and] execution of perceived opponents”, said Michael Abramowitz, the president of Freedom House. “It’s a pretty grim picture.” For those on the receiving end of Saudi repression, that picture has improved little since the October 2018 assassination and dismemberment of the Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi, an operation that US intelligence concluded was “approved” by the Saudi crown prince. Over that same period, however, the picture presented by the Saudi government to influential American audiences has been brightened with the help of key contractors, including Edelman. Since Khashoggi’s murder, the powerful PR firm has received or is contracted to receive $9.6m (£7.9m) in fees from Saudi government agencies and companies controlled by the regime. Most of Edelman’s work for the regime has focused on rehabilitating its reputation in the United States.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption from reliable major media sources.


Elon Musk, Matt Taibbi, and a Very Modern Media Maelstrom
2022-12-04, New York Times
Posted: 2023-01-09 14:24:03
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/04/business/media/elon-musk-twitter-matt-taib...

The so-called Twitter Files, released ... by the independent journalist Matt Taibbi, set off a firestorm among pundits, media ethicists and lawmakers in both parties. It also offered a window into the fractured modern landscape of news, where a story’s reception is often shaped by readers’ assumptions about the motivations of both reporters and subjects. Mr. Musk teased the release of internal documents that he said would reveal the story behind Twitter’s 2020 decision to restrict posts linking to a report in the New York Post about Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s son, Hunter. Mr. Musk, who has accused tech companies of censorship ... pointed readers to the account of Mr. Taibbi, an iconoclast journalist. Published in the form of a lengthy Twitter thread, Mr. Taibbi’s report included images of email exchanges among Twitter officials deliberating how to handle dissemination of the Post story on their platform. Skeptics of Mr. Taibbi seized on what appeared to be an orchestrated disclosure. “Imagine volunteering to do online PR work for the world’s richest man on a Friday night, in service of nakedly and cynically right-wing narratives, and then pretending you’re speaking truth to power,” the MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan wrote in a Twitter post. Mr. Taibbi clapped back on Saturday, writing: “Looking forward to going through all the tweets complaining about ‘PR for the richest man on earth,’ and seeing how many of them have run stories for anonymous sources at the FBI, CIA, the Pentagon, White House, etc.”

Note: Matt Taibbi is one of the few journalists who reports it as he sees it and is willing to look far beneath the surface. We subscribe to his excellent reports as one very useful source of unraveling the jumble of news that comes our way. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on media manipulation from reliable sources.


Twitter Is Said to Have Struggled Over Revealing U.S. Influence Campaign
2022-12-22, New York Times
Posted: 2023-01-09 14:21:30
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/22/technology/twitter-military-influence-camp...

In response to a 2017 request from the Pentagon, Twitter kept online a network of accounts that the U.S. military used to advance its interests in the Middle East, according to internal company emails that were made public on Tuesday by The Intercept, a nonprofit publication. A counterterrorism division at Twitter knew about the arrangement, but others did not, five people with knowledge of the matter said. The situation was unusual because Twitter normally removes and publicly discloses influence campaigns conducted by governments. The internal documents published by The Intercept were provided by Twitter under its new owner, Elon Musk. Mr. Musk has made an archive of documents available to select journalists to scrutinize the decisions of the company’s previous leaders. The situation began in 2017 when an official working with U.S. Central Command requested that Twitter verify some of the military’s accounts. The accounts had been flagged by a Twitter system used to automatically detect terrorist content and were not easy to find in searches. The Pentagon asked Twitter to “whitelist” the accounts, which would prevent the automatic tools from flagging them and make them more broadly visible on the platform. Twitter’s counterterrorism team complied. While the company regularly disclosed other state-backed influence campaigns in transparency reports, executives ... feared they could violate national security laws by speaking publicly about the takedown of the campaign.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on military corruption and media manipulation from reliable sources.


Inventor of the world wide web wants us to reclaim our data from tech giants
2022-12-16, CNN News
Posted: 2023-01-09 14:19:30
https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/16/tech/tim-berners-lee-inrupt-spc-intl/index.html

The internet has come a long way since Tim Berners-Lee invented the world wide web in 1989. Now, in an era of growing concern over privacy, he believes it’s time for us to reclaim our personal data. Through their startup Inrupt, Berners-Lee and CEO John Bruce have created the “Solid Pod” — or Personal Online Data Store. It allows people to keep their data in one central place and control which people and applications can access it, rather than having it stored by apps or sites all over the web. Users can get a Pod from a handful of providers. Not only is user data safe from corporations, and governments, it’s also less likely to be stolen by hackers, Bruce says. Launched in 2017, Inrupt reportedly raised $30 million in December 2021 and Berners-Lee says it will help deliver the next iteration of the web — “Web 3.” Paul Brody, a blockchain expert for analysts Ernst and Young, believes Web 3 could change the way we use the internet. “You’ll hear people talk about Web 3 and decentralization as being very similar in ideas and goals,” he says. “Owning your own data and really controlling your own commerce infrastructure is something that Web 3 will enable. It will be ultimately really transformational for users.” Berners-Lee hopes his platform will give control back to internet users. “I think the public has been concerned about privacy — the fact that these platforms have a huge amount of data, and they abuse it,” he says. “You need to get back to a situation where you have autonomy, you have control of all your data.”

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on the erosion of privacy from reliable major media sources.


Medical Debt Is Being Erased in Ohio and Illinois. Is Your Town Next?
2022-12-29, New York Times
Posted: 2023-01-09 14:17:21
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/29/us/toledo-medical-debt-relief.html

In the next few weeks, tens of thousands of people in Cook County, Ill., will open their mailboxes to find a letter from the county government explaining that their medical debt has been paid off. Officials in New Orleans and Toledo, Ohio, are finalizing contracts so that tens of thousands of residents can receive a similar letter. In Pittsburgh on Dec. 19, the City Council approved a budget that would include $1 million for medical debt relief. More local governments are likely to follow as county executives and city councils embrace a new strategy to address the high cost of health care. They are partnering with RIP Medical Debt, a nonprofit that aims to abolish medical debt by buying it from hospitals, health systems and collections agencies at a steep discount. About 18 percent of Americans have medical debt that has been turned over to a third party for collection. Cook County plans to spend $12 million on medical debt relief and expects to erase debt for the first batch of beneficiaries by early January. In Lucas County, Ohio, and its largest city, Toledo, up to $240 million in medical debt could be paid off at a cost of $1.6 million. New Orleans is looking to spend $1.3 million to clear $130 million in medical debt. The $1 million in Pittsburgh's budget could wipe out $115 million in debt, officials said. These initiatives are all being funded by President Biden's trillion-dollar American Rescue Plan, which infused local governments with cash to spend on infrastructure, public services and economic relief programs.

Note: Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.


An Indigenous reservation has a novel way to grow food – below the earth’s surface
2022-12-03, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2023-01-09 14:15:57
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/dec/03/south-dakota-reservation-...

Near the southern border of the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, a curved translucent roof peeks out a few feet above the dusty plains. Below ground, at the bottom of a short flight of stairs, the inside of this 80ft-long sleek structure is bursting with life – pallets of vivid microgreens, potato plants growing from hay bales and planters full of thick heads of Swiss chard and pak choi. This is an underground greenhouse, or walipini, and the harvesters are members of the Oglala Sioux Tribe. It is one of at least eight underground greenhouses that, over the past decade, have been built or are being constructed on the reservation – which has one of the highest poverty rates in the US. Some hope they can help solve the interconnected problems of the lack of affordable, nutritious food and the difficulties of farming in the climate crisis. Today, more than half of the residents of Oglala Lakota county, one of three counties within the boundaries of the reservation, live below the poverty line. Food access is a huge problem. The 2.1m-acre reservation is classified as a “food desert” with only a handful of grocery stores. And health outcomes, including diet related diseases, are poor – about 50% of adults over 40 have diabetes. Neil Mattson, professor and greenhouse extension specialist at Cornell University’s School of Integrative Plant Science, says underground greenhouses could help to usher in more year-round food production across the northern US but they are still fairly new in the country.

Note: Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.


South Korea has almost zero food waste. Here’s what the US can learn
2022-11-20, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2023-01-09 14:14:20
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/nov/20/south-korea-zero-food-was...

Beginning in the late 1990s, as landfills in the crowded capital area approached their limits, South Korea implemented a slate of policies to ease what was becoming seen as a trash crisis. The government banned burying organic waste in landfills in 2005, followed by another ban against dumping leachate – the putrid liquid squeezed from solid food waste – into the ocean in 2013. Universal curbside composting was implemented that same year, requiring everyone to separate their food from general waste. In 1996, South Korea recycled just 2.6% of its food waste. Today, South Korea recycles close to 100% annually. Ease-of-use and accessibility have been crucial to the success of the South Korean model. “South Korea’s waste system, especially in terms of frequency of collection, is incredibly convenient compared to other countries,” says Hong Su-yeol, a waste expert and director of Resource Recycling Consulting. “Some of my peers working at non-profits overseas say that disposal should be a little bit inconvenient if you want to discourage waste but I disagree: I think that it should be made as easy as possible as long as it goes hand-in-hand with other policies that attack the problem of reducing waste itself.” National and municipal governments in South Korea have been actively investing in urban farming programs, which include composting courses. These sort of community-based efforts might be where the US can shine, increasing initial access to composting options in cities that presently have few other options.

Note: Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.


Wells Fargo ordered to pay $3.7 billion for ‘illegal activity’ including unjust foreclosures and vehicle repossessions
2022-12-20, CNN News
Posted: 2023-01-03 00:46:14
https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/20/investing/wells-fargo-cfpb-foreclosure-fine/in...

Federal regulators fined Wells Fargo a record $1.7 billion on Tuesday for “widespread mismanagement” over multiple years that harmed over 16 million consumer accounts. Wells Fargo’s “illegal activity” included repeatedly misapplying loan payments, wrongfully foreclosing on homes, illegally repossessing vehicles, incorrectly assessing fees and interest and charging surprise overdraft fees. The CFPB ordered Wells Fargo to pay the $1.7 billion civil penalty in addition to more than $2 billion to compensate consumers for a range of “illegal activity.” CFPB officials say this is the largest penalty imposed by the agency. The misconduct described by the CFPB echoes previously reported revelations that have emerged about Wells Fargo since 2016 when the bank’s fake-accounts scandal created a national firestorm. “Wells Fargo’s rinse-repeat cycle of violating the law has harmed millions of American families,” Rohit Chopra, the CFPB’s director, said in a statement. Chopra noted that the settlement does not provide immunity for individuals at Wells Fargo, and the agency recognizes the $3.7 billion in fines and restitution will not fix the bank’s problems. Although Chopra credited Wells Fargo with making some progress, he said it’s not clear “they are making rapid enough progress” and said the agency is concerned that the bank’s product launches, growth initiatives and profit-boosting efforts have “delayed needed reform.”

Note: In 2016, Wells Fargo was caught opening millions of fake accounts in its customers' names. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on financial system corruption from reliable major media sources.


Can geoengineering fix the climate? Hundreds of scientists say not so fast
2022-12-25, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2023-01-03 00:44:54
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/dec/25/can-controversial-geoengi...

The White House has set into motion a five-year outline for research into “climate interventions”. Those include methods such as sending a phalanx of planes to spray reflective particles into the upper reaches of the atmosphere, in order to block incoming sunlight from adding to rising temperatures. Previous attempts at running experiments for what is known as solar radiation management (SRM) have faced staunch opposition. Last year, an exploratory flight in Sweden of a high-altitude SRM balloon, led by Harvard University researchers, was halted after objections by environmentalists and Indigenous leaders. This prospect horrifies opponents of solar geoengineering. An open letter signed by more than 380 scientists demands a global non-use agreement for SRM; it also says that growing calls for research in this area are a “cause for alarm”, due to an unknown set of ramifications that will have varying consequences in different parts of the world and could scramble “weather patterns, agriculture and the provision of basic needs of food and water”. Frank Biermann, an expert in global governance ... said he’s also disturbed that solar geoengineering will create a sort of moral hazard where governments ease off efforts to cut emissions and fossil fuel companies use it as cover to continue business as usual. There isn’t any international governance around solar geoengineering. Unilateral action to alter the climate could spark conflict if one part of the world benefits, while another suffers.

Note: There is much controversy around geoengineering, yet there is considerable evidence that reveals the possibility of its many applications. For more along these lines, explore revealing media articles on geoengineering and HAARP (High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program), a little-known U.S. military defense project that conducted investigations into weather control technologies, among many other concerning explorations.


Why the government fails to limit many dangerous chemicals in the workplace
2022-12-15, NPR
Posted: 2023-01-03 00:43:20
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2022/12/15/1142915184/ortho-toluidi...

The permissible exposure limit for ortho-toluidine is 5 parts per million in air, a threshold based on research conducted in the 1940s and '50s without any consideration of the chemical's ability to cause cancer. Despite ample evidence that far lower levels can dramatically increase a person's cancer risk, the legal limit has remained the same. Paralyzed by industry lawsuits from decades ago, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration has all but given up on trying to set a truly protective threshold for ortho-toluidine and thousands of other chemicals. The agency has only updated standards for three chemicals in the past 25 years; each took more than a decade to complete. David Michaels, OSHA's director throughout the Obama administration, [said] that legal challenges had so tied his hands that he decided to put a disclaimer on the agency's website saying the government's limits were essentially useless: "OSHA recognizes that many of its permissible exposure limits (PELs) are outdated and inadequate for ensuring protection of worker health." The agency has also allowed chemical manufacturers to create their own safety data sheets, which are supposed to provide workers with the exposure limits and other critical information. OSHA does not require the sheets to be accurate or routinely fact-check them. As a result, many fail to mention the risk of cancer and other serious health hazards. Almost one-third of more than 650 sheets for dangerous chemicals contain inaccurate warnings.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corruption in government and in the corporate world from reliable major media sources.


Congress and Industry Leaders Call for Crackdown on Hospice Fraud
2022-12-19, MSN News
Posted: 2023-01-03 00:41:47
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/congress-and-industry-leaders-call-for-crac...

After ProPublica and the New Yorker published an exposé of hospice fraud, members of Congress have called on the Department of Health and Human Services to “immediately investigate this situation.” The ... investigation described how the lucrative design of the Medicare benefit incentivizes many profit-seeking hospices to cut corners on care and target patients who are not actually dying. It chronicled the lack of regulation and the frustrated efforts of whistleblowers to hold end-of-life care conglomerates accountable. And it drew on state and federal data to reveal how, in the absence of oversight, the number of for-profit hospice providers in California, Texas, Arizona and Nevada has lately exploded. Hospice began more than 60 years ago as a countercultural charity movement to help patients die with comfort, support and as little pain as possible. After the 1980s, when President Ronald Reagan authorized Medicare to cover the service, dying became a big business. In 2000, less than a third of all hospices were for-profit. Today, more than 70% are. Between 2011 and 2019, the number of hospices owned by private equity firms tripled. For profit-seeking providers, hospice is lucrative: Medicare pays a fixed rate per patient a day, regardless of how much help is offered. The aggregate Medicare margins of for-profit providers hover around 20% compared with just 5% for nonprofits. For-profit hospices are more likely than their nonprofit counterparts to have less skilled staff ... and fewer home visits.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corporate corruption and health from reliable major media sources.


In the Southeast, power company money flows to news sites that attack their critics
2022-12-19, NPR
Posted: 2023-01-03 00:39:55
https://www.npr.org/2022/12/19/1143753129/power-companies-florida-alabama-med...

Six news outlets across Alabama and Florida [have] financial connections to the consulting firm Matrix LLC. The firm, based in Montgomery, Alabama, has boasted clients including Alabama Power and another major U.S. utility, Florida Power & Light. Last year, Florida Power & Light wrote a bill that was passed by the Florida Legislature and that would have gutted the ability of homeowners to make money off solar panels. One state away, Alabama Power runs and owns a coal-fired power plant that is the largest single source of carbon dioxide emissions in the United States. In Alabama and Florida, Matrix sought to ensure much coverage was secretly driven by the priorities of its clients. Payments flowed as the utilities in Florida and Alabama fought efforts to incorporate more clean energy in electric grids — a fight they are still waging. [Floodlight and NPR investigations reveal] a complex web of financial links, in which the six outlets collectively received, at minimum, $900,000 from Matrix, its clients, and associated entities between 2013 and 2020. Matrix shrewdly took advantage of the near collapse of the local newspaper industry and a concurrent plunge in trust in media in propelling its clients' interests. Matrix founder Joe Perkins has long held an interest in the power of the media. As a doctoral student at the University of Alabama, he wrote his thesis about a specific quandary: How can journalists' choice of sources and anecdotes affect public sentiment?

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corporate corruption and media manipulation from reliable sources.


The Scorched-Earth Legal Strategy Corporations Are Using to Silence Their Critics
2022-12-16, The Intercept
Posted: 2023-01-03 00:38:23
https://theintercept.com/2022/12/16/corporate-rico-environmental-advocate/

Weeks before he was murdered, Victor Hugo Orcasita presented his wife with a letter describing his last wishes. Orcasita, a union leader, had been pushing for better conditions at his workplace, a mine in northern Colombia owned by a subsidiary of the Alabama-based coal company Drummond. Then the death threats started coming in. The miners’ union was convinced that Drummond was involved in the murders. To make the case that the company was complicit in the killings, the union turned to Terry Collingsworth, a lifelong human rights attorney. In March 2015, the case took a surprising turn. Drummond had returned fire in the legal fight with an unusual accusation. The company charged that Collingsworth — an advocate who recently brought a case before the U.S. Supreme Court — had led a “multifaceted criminal campaign” to extort Drummond into paying a costly settlement. This campaign, Drummond alleged, was in fact a racketeering conspiracy as defined by the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, better known as RICO. Drummond’s charges represent a scorched-earth legal strategy in which corporations are turning the tables on attorneys and advocates who accuse them of wrongdoing. By shifting the spotlight to these attorneys’ conduct, corporations effectively sidestepped the original allegations against them. The true purpose ... is to send attorneys and activists a message: Going toe-to-toe with heavyweight corporations can lead to personal ruin.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corporate corruption from reliable major media sources.


What the Pentagon Doesn't Want You to Know About China
2022-12-20, Common Dreams
Posted: 2023-01-03 00:36:42
https://www.commondreams.org/views/2022/12/20/what-pentagon-doesnt-want-you-k...

To encourage Congress to authorize the largest defense budget ever, the Pentagon just released its annual report on China, which dangerously misrepresents the country's defense strategy. Such deliberate lies about China to drum up justification for more US war spending need to be urgently addressed. The Pentagon reports that China may challenge the US in the international arena. It is true that China is taking the lead internationally in economic development, in technological innovation, and in fighting climate change. Other countries around the world are happy for its support in growing their capacities to be independent of United States hegemony in their regions. China builds relationships through economic cooperation and good diplomacy. In contrast, the United States asserts its global dominance through direct or proxy war, occupation, crippling sanctions, and regime-changing coups. The international order that the United States seeks to maintain is rooted in violence and destruction. While the United States is desperately pursuing its outdated policy of enforcing global hegemony, the rest of the world is already moving towards a multilateral sphere, which ensures the greatest chance for peace. Escalating tension with China was a mistake, and building a colossal military budget is doubling down on this mistake. We must be vigilant about the warmongering lies about China. "China is not our enemy" is not a hollow slogan but firm ground that peacemakers stand on.

Note: The US attempts to position itself as a global leader of democracy and peaceful diplomacy, while its policies continue to demonstrate just the opposite. Why aren’t many media outlets questioning the aggressive efforts to escalate tension with China, including proposals for billions of dollars in military assistance to Taiwan? For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption from reliable major media sources.


Another Runaway General: Army Deploys Psy-Ops on U.S. Senators
2011-02-24, Rolling Stone
Posted: 2023-01-03 00:34:57
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/another-runaway-general-a...

The U.S. Army illegally ordered a team of soldiers specializing in “psychological operations” to manipulate visiting American senators into providing more troops and funding for the war. The orders came from the command of Lt. Gen. William Caldwell, a three-star general in charge of training Afghan troops – the linchpin of U.S. strategy in the war. Over a four-month period last year, a military cell devoted to what is known as “information operations” at Camp Eggers in Kabul was repeatedly pressured to target visiting senators and other VIPs who met with Caldwell. When the unit resisted the order, arguing that it violated U.S. laws prohibiting the use of propaganda against American citizens, it was subjected to a campaign of retaliation. “My job in psy-ops is to play with people’s heads, to get the enemy to behave the way we want them to behave,” says Lt. Colonel Michael Holmes, the leader of the IO unit, who received an official reprimand after bucking orders. “I’m prohibited from doing that to our own people. When you ask me to try to use these skills on senators and congressman, you’re crossing a line.” Those singled out in the campaign included senators John McCain, Joe Lieberman, Jack Reed, Al Franken and Carl Levin; Rep. Steve Israel of the House Appropriations Committee; Adm. Mike Mullen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff ... and a host of influential think-tank analysts.

Note: Read more about military PsyOps used to manipulate populations. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on military corruption from reliable major media sources.


What if Instead of Calling People Out, We Called Them In?
2020-11-19, New York Times
Posted: 2023-01-03 00:33:02
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/19/style/loretta-ross-smith-college-cancel-cu...

Loretta J. Ross [identifies] the characteristics, and limits, of call-out culture: the act of publicly shaming another person for behavior deemed unacceptable. Civil conversation between parties who disagree has also been part of activism, including her own, for quite some time. “I am challenging the call-out culture,” Ross said. “I think you can understand how calling out is toxic. It really does alienate people, and makes them fearful of speaking up.” The antidote to that ... Professor Ross believes, is “calling in.” Calling in is like calling out, but done privately and with respect. “It’s a call out done with love,” she said. That may mean simply sending someone a private message, or even ringing them on the telephone to discuss the matter, or simply taking a breath before commenting, screen-shotting or demanding one “do better” without explaining how. Calling out assumes the worst. Calling in involves conversation, compassion and context. “I think we overuse that word ‘trigger’ when really we mean discomfort,” she said. “And we should be able to have uncomfortable conversations.” Ross told the students ... “I think we actually sabotage our own happiness with this unrestrained anger. And I have to honestly ask: Why are you making choices to make the world crueler than it needs to be and calling that being woke?" She thought of what her organization’s founder, the Rev. C.T. Vivian ... told her: “When you ask people to give up hate, you have to be there for them when they do.”

Note: Watch Ross's powerful Ted Talk on simple, yet deeply inspiring tools for calling people in instead of calling people out.


In Baltimore, Healing Trauma Is Now Official Policy
2022-12-02, Reasons to be Cheerful
Posted: 2023-01-03 00:31:24
https://reasonstobecheerful.world/in-baltimore-healing-trauma-is-now-official...

In the year since Donna Bruce started working at the Baltimore public library’s Penn North branch, she has connected more than 400 visitors to housing programs, food assistance and substance abuse recovery options — and saved a man from dying of a drug overdose by administering the emergency treatment Narcan. Poverty is pervasive in the neighborhoods around the Penn North library, and many people come in simply looking for heat or shelter. Bruce is leading a team of “peer navigators” in the library system trained to provide trauma-informed engagement and support to the public. All navigators have personal experience with mental health challenges or substance abuse disorders and act as role models in the community. Peer Navigators is the first city agency program that owes part of its origin story to Baltimore’s 2020 Elijah Cummings Healing City Act. The goal of the groundbreaking legislation is to help departments reckon with and change policies that have caused — and continue to cause — trauma, while charting a new path rooted in healing. The act mandates that city employees receive training, to gain awareness and learn how to help those who have been harmed. At the same time, agency leaders must evaluate their practices and procedures to determine if they are causing trauma and how to change those that are to better serve Baltimore’s communities. Evidence shows the approach can improve social environments, decrease violence, and reduce other negative encounters.

Note: Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.


First ever EU-wide limits for underwater noise
2022-11-29, European Commission
Posted: 2023-01-03 00:29:58
https://environment.ec.europa.eu/news/zero-pollution-and-biodiversity-first-e...

Underwater noise due to human activities at sea can harm marine biodiversity, leading for example to hearing impairment and behavioural disturbances. EU experts have adopted recommendations on maximum acceptable levels for impulsive (for example from oil and gas exploration and extraction) and continuous (such as from shipping) underwater noise. The new limits mean, that to be in tolerable status, no more than 20% of a given marine area, can be exposed to continuous underwater noise over a year Similarly, no more than 20% of a marine habitat can be exposed to impulsive noise over a given day, and no more than 10% over a year. These underwater noise pollution limits deliver on the Zero Pollution Action Plan and are the first of this kind at global level. The threshold values will contribute to set limits on where and for how long marine habitats can be exposed to underwater noise. Impulsive underwater noise, such as from oil and gas exploration, occurs in about 8 % of the EU’s seas: it is particularly present in large areas of the Baltic, North and Celtic Seas, and the Mediterranean area. Maritime traffic is the main source of continuous underwater noise. With 27% of its area subject to shipping, the Mediterranean Sea sees the highest shipping traffic in the EU. This is followed by the Baltic Sea (19 % of the area). Overall, only 9% of the EU’s sea area has no shipping traffic. EU Member States will now need to take these threshold values into account when they update their marine strategies.

Note: Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.


Biden releases most JFK assassination records — but withholds thousands
2022-12-15, NBC News
Posted: 2022-12-26 21:05:15
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/joe-biden/biden-releases-jfk-assassination-r...

President Joe Biden’s administration released more than 13,000 records of President John F. Kennedy's assassination Thursday, but it fell short of fully complying with the spirit of a 30-year-old law demanding transparency by now. With Thursday's action, about 98% of all documents related to the 1963 killing have now been released and just 3% of the records remain redacted in whole or in part, according to the National Archives, which controls the John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection. The records include more information on accused gunman Lee Harvey Oswald and his time spent in Mexico City. But about 4,300 records remain redacted in part. [CIA agent George] Joannides ... guided and monitored an anti-Fidel Castro group called Directorio Revolucionario Estudiantil (Revolutionary Student Directorate) in 1963 that came into contact with Oswald in New Orleans in the months before the assassination, leading some to speculate about CIA-related complicity in the killing. As Oswald interacted with DRE and became known as an activist who supported President Castro, the Pentagon was formulating a plan called Operation Northwoods to stage a false flag attack in the United States to blame on Cuba and justify a military confrontation to make up for the aborted Bay of Pigs fiasco two years before. The records and the CIA's deceit over Joannides' ties to Oswald spans decades and came to light only after the records act began to unearth information about him.

Note: While the mainstream narrative points to the CIA being complicit in the killing of Kennedy by a Communist lone gunman, there is overwhelming evidence not often talked about, that reveals how Kennedy was murdered by rogue elements within US government agencies as a result of his efforts towards peacemaking strategies over nuclear weapon warfare, among other reasons. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on intelligence agency corruption and the Kennedy assassination from reliable major media sources.


Lee Harvey Oswald, The CIA, And LSD: New Clues In Newly Declassified Documents
2022-12-19, The Intercept
Posted: 2022-12-26 21:02:11
https://theintercept.com/2022/12/19/lee-harvey-oswald-cia-lsd-jfk/

Among the intersections between [Lee Harvey] Oswald and the CIA, his time as a young Marine at the Atsugi naval air facility in Japan in 1957 is high among them. Atsugi was a launching pad for U-2 spy flights over the Soviet Union and was also a hub of the CIA's research into psychedelic drugs. "A CIA memo titled 'Truth Drugs in Interrogation' revealed the agency practice of dosing agents who were marked for dangerous overseas missions," wrote author David Talbot in "The Devil's Chessboard." A new document released in full last week relates directly to Oswald's time at Atsugi, revealing details about the CIA's response to testimony from a former agency accountant that the spy service had employed Oswald – who went on to be a gunman in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963. The CIA's claim to have had no contact with Oswald is undercut by the fact that George de Mohrenschildt, a CIA asset, became close friends with Oswald in the months before the assassination. According to documents found in the newly declassified files, at the same time as his trip, the CIA's Domestic Operations Division ran a search on de Mohrenschildt, "exact reason unknown," according to two documents created by a CIA analyst included in last week's declassification. The covert arm of the division was run at the time by E. Howard Hunt, a black ops specialist who confessed later in life to learning ahead of time of a conspiracy to assassinate Kennedy that involved high-level figures in the CIA.

Note: The CIA's MK-ULTRA program routinely administered drugs to unsuspecting victims. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on intelligence agency corruption and the Kennedy assassination from reliable major media sources.


‘Not anti-vaxxers’: Dr Kerryn Phelps says she suffered COVID vaccine injury, calls for more research
2022-12-20, Sydney Morning Herald
Posted: 2022-12-26 20:59:16
https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/not-anti-vaxxers-dr-kerryn-phelps-say...

Former federal MP Dr Kerryn Phelps says she and her partner experienced vaccine injury, calling for tests for long COVID and vaccine injuries as well as more research on the long-term harms of the coronavirus and immunisation side effects. In a submission to an ongoing parliamentary inquiry on long COVID Phelps said she and her wife had both been injured after receiving COVID vaccinations. She said her wife, Jackie Stricker-Phelps, suffered long-term symptoms including ongoing nerve pain and fatigue following her first injection, while Phelps herself experienced symptoms including breathlessness and irregular blood pressure following her second shot. In an interview, the former Australian Medical Association president and medical practitioner said more research was vital to understanding both the disease and vaccine injury as the pandemic continues. “People who have vaccine injuries are not anti-vaxxers, because they have turned up to have vaccines ...” she said. She noted in her submission that for many vaccine-injured people, the symptoms were similar to long COVID, including brain fog and fatigue. More than 64 million vaccine doses have been administered across the country, as of November 16, and since December 2021 people injured by one have been able to make a claim for compensation through the vaccine claims scheme. A Services Australia spokesperson said as of November 23, the department has received 3100 applications, and 79 have been approved for claims totaling $3.9 million.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on coronavirus vaccines from reliable major media sources.


Joe Biden Can’t Quit the Saudi “Pariahs”
2022-12-14, The Intercept
Posted: 2022-12-26 20:57:13
https://theintercept.com/2022/12/14/biden-saudi-arabia-mbs/

Two years into Biden’s presidency, it is crystal clear that the Saudis have nothing significant to fear from the U.S. government. For decades, Democratic and Republican administrations have propped up the Saudi monarchy, lathering it with weapons sales and intelligence sharing, all while normalizing the draconian, antidemocratic grip on power held by the monarchy. When Donald Trump was president, a lot of Democrats were given political cover to finally come around to opposing the Saudi-led campaign of annihilation in Yemen. It was the Obama-Biden administration that gave the initial green light to the Saudi-led war in the first place. Barack Obama began bombing Yemen in December 2009 and continued to hit the country with drone strikes and cruise missile attacks throughout most of his presidency. In fact, by the time Obama left office, his administration had offered the Saudis more military support, $115 billion, than any in the history of the seven-decade U.S.-Saudi alliance. On the campaign trail, Biden pledged to continue the momentum and end U.S. bodyguarding of Saudi Arabia’s crimes, particularly after the execution of Khashoggi, a permanent U.S. resident, inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. As president, Biden has greenlighted a series of U.S. weapons purchases by the Saudis, including $3 billion worth of Patriot missiles in August. Last week, Biden stated that there are currently 2,755 U.S. military personnel deployed in Saudi Arabia.

Note: When it comes to matters involving the ever-profitable war machine, both parties follow similar agendas. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and war from reliable major media sources.


US health agency accused of bowing to drug industry with new opioid guidance
2022-12-17, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2022-12-26 20:55:10
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/dec/17/cdc-accused-opioid-guidelines...

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has been accused of bowing to drug industry pressure after releasing new guidelines that doctors say put lives at risk by rowing back on warnings about the dangers of opioid prescribing. The latest CDC guidelines have caused controversy after dropping specific limits on dosages and lengths of prescribing from a key summary of recommendations used by physicians. Dr Andrew Kolodny, president of Physicians for Responsible Opioid Prescribing, sees the drug industry’s hand behind the change. Kolodny has testified against opioid makers in legal actions over their part in driving the opioid epidemic by pushing sales with false claims about their safety and effectiveness. They include Purdue Pharma, manufacturer of OxyContin, a powerful narcotic pill that kickstarted the US’s opioid epidemic alongside the company’s marketing strategy to see the drugs widely prescribed. Kolody said ... that the drug industry calculated how much the 2016 CDC guidelines would cost it if doctors followed the recommendations to limit prescribing of high dosage pills. “The highest dosage products have had the highest profit margin. It only costs a few extra pennies to make the higher dosage pill, but retail it’s almost double what they get per pill or prescription. So the industry fought very hard to block the release of the 2016 guideline and when that failed they did everything they could to make the guidelines appear controversial. And that worked,” he said.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corruption in government and in Big Pharma from reliable major media sources.


Lessons from Germany to help solve the U.S. medical debt crisis
2022-12-14, NPR
Posted: 2022-12-26 20:53:07
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2022/12/14/1142601526/lessons-from-...

In one recent study of health care in 11 high-income countries, the nonprofit Commonwealth Fund found that 44% of Americans had out-of-pocket medical expenses that topped $1,000 in the previous year. Just 16% of Germans reported paying that much. The rates were even lower in France, at 10%, and Great Britain, where only 7% reported similar medical expenses. "Many Americans may not understand how affordable health care is for patients in other countries," said Reginald D. Williams II, who oversees international research at the Commonwealth Fund. "Medical debt is a largely U.S. phenomenon. It just doesn't happen in other countries." Germany, like the U.S., has a largely private health care system that relies on private doctors and private insurers. Like Americans, many Germans enroll in a health plan through work, splitting the cost with their employer. But Germany has long done something the U.S. does not: It strictly limits how much patients have to pay out of their own pockets for a trip to the doctor, the hospital or the pharmacy. This regulation occurs through a highly structured system in which insurers negotiate collectively with physician and hospital groups to set prices. American hospitals and other medical providers for decades have fiercely resisted limits on their prices, spending millions to fight government regulation. [Dr. Eckart] Rolshoven's patients pay nothing when they see him. That not only bolsters their health, he said. It helps maintain what Rolshoven called social peace.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption, pharmaceutical corruption, and health from reliable major media sources.


The Universe Is Not Locally Real, and the Physics Nobel Prize Winners Proved It
2022-10-06, Scientific American
Posted: 2022-12-26 20:51:08
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-universe-is-not-locally-real-a...

One of the more unsettling discoveries in the past half a century is that the universe is not locally real. In this context, “real” means that objects have definite properties independent of observation—an apple can be red even when no one is looking. “Local” means that objects can be influenced only by their surroundings and that any influence cannot travel faster than light. Investigations at the frontiers of quantum physics have found that these things cannot both be true. Instead the evidence shows that objects are not influenced solely by their surroundings, and they may also lack definite properties prior to measurement. Blame for this achievement has now been laid squarely on the shoulders of three physicists: John Clauser, Alain Aspect and Anton Zeilinger. They equally split the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physics “for experiments with entangled photons, establishing the violation of Bell inequalities and pioneering quantum information science.” From about 1940 until as late as 1990, studies of so-called quantum foundations were often treated as philosophy at best and crackpottery at worst. Today quantum information science is among the most vibrant subfields in all of physics. It links Einstein’s general theory of relativity with quantum mechanics. It dictates the design and function of quantum sensors. And it clarifies the often confusing nature of quantum entanglement, a phenomenon that is pivotal to modern materials science and that lies at the heart of quantum computing.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on the mysterious nature of reality from reliable major media sources.


A New Biography Traces the Pathology of Allen Dulles and His Appalling Cabal
2015-11-02, The Intercept
Posted: 2022-12-26 20:47:34
https://theintercept.com/2015/11/02/the-deepest-state-the-safari-club-allen-d...

The Devil’s Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America’s Secret Government [is] a new book by Salon founder David Talbot. As Talbot explains, “What I was really trying to do was a biography on the American power elite from World War II up to the 60s.” Dulles ... served as CIA director from 1953 to 1961. Dulles would have had no moral qualms about killing any politician, including Americans. He went on to wield far greater power than most elected officials ever have. The Devil’s Chessboard ... includes detailed reexaminations of Dulles’s most notorious failures, such as the Bay of Pigs in 1961 and the nightmarish mind control program MK-ULTRA, as well as his most notorious “successes,” the CIA’s overthrow of democratic governments in Iran in 1953 and in Guatemala in 1954. As the Swiss director of the Office of Strategic Services during World War II, Dulles — whose law firm had represented German corporations and many U.S. corporations with German interests — quietly attempted to undermine Franklin D. Roosevelt’s demand that Germany surrender unconditionally, going so far as to order the rescue of an SS general surrounded by Italian partisans. Dulles also led the push to save Reinhard Gehlen, Nazi head of intelligence on the Eastern Front and a genuine monster, from any post-war justice. Dulles then made certain Gehlen and his spies received a cozy embrace from the CIA, and helped push him to the top of West Germany’s Federal Intelligence Service.

Note: Read more about the CIA Nazi link. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on intelligence agency corruption and the Kennedy assassination from reliable major media sources.


A Device That Literally Generates Electricity Out of Thin Air
2022-10-20, The Pulse
Posted: 2022-12-26 20:42:31
https://thepulse.one/2022/10/20/a-device-that-literally-generates-electricity...

A study published in Nature in February 2020 entitled “Power generation from ambient humidity using protein nanowires” discovered an interesting way to harvest energy from the environment, creating the potential for another clean power generating system that is self-sustaining. According to the authors, “Thin-film devices made from nanometre-scale protein wires harvested from the microbe Geobacter sulfurreducens can generate continuous electric power in the ambient environment. The devices produce a sustained voltage of around 0.5 volts across a 7-micrometre-thick film, with a current density of around 17 microamperes per square centimetre. We find the driving force behind this energy generation to be a self-maintained moisture gradient that forms within the film when the film is exposed to the humidity that is naturally present in air.” The study also mentions that “connecting several devices linearly scales up the voltage and current to power electronics” and that their results “demonstrate the feasibility of a continuous energy-harvesting strategy that is less restricted by location or environmental conditions than other sustainable approaches.” One of the electrical engineers, Jun Yao, from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, stated that they are “literally making electricity out of thin air.” They are calling it the “Air-gen” and it generates clean energy 24/7, thanks to the electrically conductive protein nanowires produced by Geobacter.

Note: As the article states, why do none of the truly "free" energy sources we keep hearing about never come to market? Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.


Scientists Have Used Mushrooms to Make Biodegradable Computer Chip Parts
2022-11-15, CNN News
Posted: 2022-12-26 20:40:30
https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/15/world/mushroom-skin-electrical-circuits-scn-sc...

New research has shown that mushroom skins could provide a biodegradable alternative to some plastics used in batteries and computer chips, making them easier to recycle. Researchers from the Johannes Kepler University in Austria were working on flexible and stretchable electronics, with a focus on sustainable materials to replace non-degradable materials, when they made their discovery, published in the journal Science Advances. “There was a fair share of serendipity involved,” Martin Kaltenbrunner ... co-author of the paper, told CNN. At the time, a member of the team had been looking at using fungus-derived materials for use in other areas. This work led to the latest study, which shows how Ganoderma lucidum mushroom skin could work as a substitute for the substrate used in electrical circuits. A substrate is the base of a circuit that insulates and cools the conductive metals sitting on top of it. Typically, they are made of non-degradable plastics, which are discarded after use. The mushroom ... forms a compact protective skin made of mycelium, a root-like network, to protect its growth medium (the wood). The skin has many properties that set it apart from other biodegradable materials, Kaltenbrunner said, “but most importantly, it can simply be grown from waste wood and does not need energy or cost intensive processing.” “Our mycelium ... can last a long time if kept dry, but in just a standard household compost, it would degrade entirely within two weeks or less,” he added.

Note: Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.


Wales’s “One Planet” Policy Is Transforming Rural Life
2021-02-12, Reasons to be Cheerful
Posted: 2022-12-26 20:38:54
https://reasonstobecheerful.world/one-planet-development-policy-wales-rural-s...

In Wales, the average citizen uses almost three times their share of the world’s resources. But Cassandra [Lishman] and her family are part of a groundbreaking scheme launched by the Welsh government in 2011 that aims to address that imbalance. The One Planet Development Policy (OPD) and its predecessor, Pembrokeshire’s Policy 52, allow people to bypass tight planning laws and move to protected areas to live ecologically sustainable lifestyles. So far, 46 individual smallholdings have signed on to the programs, which require residents to sustain themselves using the resources available on land they inhabit. The policy aims to combat an array of problems: rising temperatures, soil degradation, rural depopulation, a rampant housing crisis and wasteful global supply chains. But ... by limiting consumption and allocating resources wisely, ecologically responsible development is possible, even in pristine environments. To qualify for the scheme, there are four requirements. First, each household must use only their global fair share of resources, which has been calculated by the Welsh government as equivalent to six acres of land. Second, applicants must show that within five years this land can fulfill 65 percent of their basic needs, including food, water, energy and waste. Third, they must come up with a zero-carbon house design using locally sourced and sustainable materials. Finally, they must set up a land-based enterprise to pay the sort of bills ... that can’t be met with a subsistence lifestyle.

Note: Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.


How the Global Spyware Industry Spiraled Out of Control
2022-12-08, New York Times
Posted: 2022-12-18 19:51:40
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/08/us/politics/spyware-nso-pegasus-paragon.html

The Biden administration took a public stand last year against the abuse of spyware to target human rights activists, dissidents and journalists: It blacklisted the most notorious maker of the hacking tools, the Israeli firm NSO Group. But the global industry for commercial spyware — which allows governments to invade mobile phones and vacuum up data — continues to boom. Even the U.S. government is using it. The Drug Enforcement Administration is secretly deploying spyware from a different Israeli firm, according to five people familiar with the agency’s operations, in the first confirmed use of commercial spyware by the federal government. The most sophisticated spyware tools — like NSO’s Pegasus — have “zero-click” technology, meaning they can stealthily and remotely extract everything from a target’s mobile phone, without the user having to click on a malicious link to give Pegasus remote access. They can also turn the mobile phone into a tracking and secret recording device, allowing the phone to spy on its owner. But hacking tools without zero-click capability, which are considerably cheaper, also have a significant market. Commercial spyware has been used by intelligence services and police forces to hack phones used by drug networks and terrorist groups. But it has also been abused by numerous authoritarian regimes and democracies to spy on political opponents and journalists. This has led governments to a sometimes tortured rationale for their use.

Note: Read about how NSO Group spyware was used against journalists and activists by the Mexican government. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on the disappearance of privacy from reliable major media sources.


Google, YouTube pour millions into left-leaning nonprofit for new 'Global Fact Check Fund'
2022-11-20, Fox News
Posted: 2022-12-18 19:49:18
https://www.foxnews.com/media/google-youtube-millions-left-leaning-organizati...

Google and YouTube are pouring millions into over 100 fact-checking organizations as part of a new Global Fact Check Fund aimed at stomping out misinformation online. On Tuesday, Google and YouTube announced a $13.2 million grant to the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN) at the left-leaning nonprofit Poynter Institute. The IFCN previously labeled YouTube as one of the "major conduits" of disinformation and misinformation across the world. In an open letter, the IFCN proposed a partnership with YouTube to curb the issue. The new Global Fact Check Fund is expected to support its network of 135 fact-checking organizations across 65 countries, covering 80 languages. It is the largest grant Google and YouTube have ever shelled out regarding fact-checks. "Helping people to identify misinformation is a global challenge. The Global Fact Check Fund will help fact-checkers to scale existing operations or launch new ones that elevate information, uplift credible sources and reduce the harm of mis- and disinformation around the globe," Google said in Tuesday’s press release. Google also noted that fact-checking organizations can use their new funding in a variety of ways, including new technologies, the creation or expansion of their digital footprints, new verification tools, and deeper audience engagement through audio, video or podcast formats. Since 2018, the Google News Initiative has invested nearly $75 million to "strengthen media literacy" and "combat misinformation."

Note: Freedom of expression is being greatly limited with the excuse of battling misinformation, which is often valuable, easily verifiable information the elite don’t want us to know. Read this informative article to see how what is labeled as fact is many times just opinion or questionable government policy. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corporate corruption and media manipulation from reliable sources.


CIA Venture Capital Arm Partners with Ex-Googler’s Startup to “Safeguard the Internet”
2022-12-09, The Intercept
Posted: 2022-12-18 19:47:35
https://theintercept.com/2022/12/02/cia-google-content-moderation-trust-lab/

Trust Lab was founded by a team of well-credentialed Big Tech alumni who came together in 2021 with a mission: Make online content moderation more transparent, accountable, and trustworthy. A year later, the company announced a “strategic partnership” with the CIA’s venture capital firm. The quiet October 29 announcement of the partnership is light on details, stating that Trust Lab and In-Q-Tel — which invests in and collaborates with firms it believes will advance the mission of the CIA — will work on “a long-term project that will help identify harmful content and actors in order to safeguard the internet.” Key terms like “harmful” and “safeguard” are unexplained, but the press release goes on to say that the company will work toward “pinpointing many types of online harmful content, including toxicity and misinformation.” It’s difficult to imagine how aligning the startup with the CIA is compatible with [Trust Lab co-founder Tom] Siegel’s goal of bringing greater transparency and integrity to internet governance. What would it mean, for instance, to incubate counter-misinformation technology for an agency with a vast history of perpetuating misinformation? Placing the company within the CIA’s tech pipeline also raises questions about Trust Lab’s view of who or what might be a “harmful” online, a nebulous concept that will no doubt mean something very different to the U.S. intelligence community than it means elsewhere. Trust Lab’s murky partnership with In-Q-Tel suggests a step toward greater governmental oversight of online speech.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on intelligence agency corruption and media manipulation from reliable sources.


Revealed: group shaping US nutrition receives millions from big food industry
2022-12-07, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2022-12-18 19:45:02
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2022/dec/09/academy-nutrition-financial-t...

Newly released documents show an influential group that helps shape US food policy and steers consumers toward nutritional products has financial ties to the world's largest processed food companies and has been controlled by former industry employees who have worked for companies like Monsanto. The documents reveal the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics has a record of quid pro quos with a range of food giants, owns stock in ultra-processed food companies and has received millions in contributions from producers of pop, candy, and processed foods linked to diabetes, heart disease, obesity and other health problems. The findings are a part of a recently published peer-reviewed study that examined a trove of financial documents and internal communications obtained through a Freedom of Information Act (Foia) request. "It's incredibly influential so if the Academy is corrupt then nutritional policy in the US is going to be corrupt," said Gary Ruskin ... a co-author of the study. The Academy accepted at least $15m from corporate and organizational contributors from 2011-2017, and over $4.5m in additional funding went to the Academy's foundation. Among the highest contributions came from companies such as Nestl©, PepsiCo, Hershey, Kellogg's, General Mills, Conagra, the National Dairy Council and the baby formula producer Abbott Nutrition. The Academy and its foundation also received food industry fundings via sponsorships, which are in effect quid pro quos.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on food system corruption from reliable major media sources.


The War Caucus Always Wins
2022-12-02, The Intercept
Posted: 2022-12-18 19:43:01
https://theintercept.com/2022/12/07/ukraine-weapons-russia-china-ndaa/

Throughout the Trump and Biden administrations, the U.S. has been on an escalating trajectory toward a new Cold War featuring the prime adversaries from the original, Russia and China. The ratcheted-up rhetoric from U.S. politicians — combined with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the tensions between China and Taiwan, and Beijing’s major advancements and investments in weapons systems and war technology — has heralded a bonanza for the defense industry. Congress will soon vote on a record-shattering $857 billion defense spending bill that authorizes $45 billion more than Biden requested. Included in the National Defense Authorization Act of 2023, finalized on December 6, is the establishment of a multiyear no-bid contract system through which Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Boeing, and other weapons manufacturers are being empowered to expand their “industrial base” and business. The unprecedented flow of weapons to Ukraine has included a substantial transfer of weapons from the U.S. stockpile, amounting to approximately $10 billion worth of weapons. U.S. lawmakers have used this fact to push for expanding the scope of not only weapons procurements to “replenish” the arsenal, but also to maintain the pipeline of weapons to Ukraine and European-allied nations through at least the end of 2024. While Russia’s invasion of Ukraine remains a central focus, the appetite for countering China’s own expansive weapons and technology development is on track to grow for years to come.

Note: Another eye-opening article on this issue reports that the U.S. has spent more than $21 trillion on militarization since September 11, 2001.” For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on military corruption from reliable major media sources.


'Publishing is not a crime': media groups urge US to drop Julian Assange charges
2022-12-28, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2022-12-18 19:39:22
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2022/nov/28/media-groups-urge-us-drop-julia...

The US government must drop its prosecution of the WikiLeaks co-founder Julian Assange because it is undermining press freedom, according to the media organisations that first helped him publish leaked diplomatic cables. Twelve years ago today, the Guardian, the New York Times, Le Monde, Der Spiegel, and El Pa­s collaborated to release excerpts from 250,000 documents obtained by Assange in the "Cablegate" leak. The material, leaked to WikiLeaks by the then American soldier Chelsea Manning, exposed the inner workings of US diplomacy around the world. The editors and publishers of the media organisations that first published those revelations have come together to publicly oppose plans to charge Assange under a law designed to prosecute first world war spies. "Publishing is not a crime," they said, saying the prosecution is a direct attack on media freedom. Assange has been held in Belmarsh prison in south London since his arrest at the Ecuadorian embassy in London in 2019. He had spent the previous seven years living inside the diplomatic premises to avoid arrest after failing to surrender to a UK court on matters relating to a separate case. The then UK home secretary, Priti Patel, approved Assange's extradition to the US. Under Barack Obama's leadership, the US government indicated it would not prosecute Assange for the leak in 2010 because of the precedent it would set. The media outlets are now appealing to the administration of President Joe Biden ... to drop the charges.

Note: WikiLeaks exposed US war crimes and CIA hacking tools. The New York Times and others mentioned above published Assange's findings, so why aren't they being prosecuted for being accessories to Assange? For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and media manipulation from reliable sources.


CDC Director: Covid vaccines can't prevent transmission anymore
2022-01-10, MSN News
Posted: 2022-12-18 19:37:02
https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/medical/cdc-director-covid-vaccines-cant-pre...

The director for the CDC publicly acknowledged in a CNN interview that the COVID-19 vaccine is not effective at preventing transmission of the virus. In a segment on CNN with Wolf Blitzer, Walensky said that while the vaccines are doing very well to protect against serious illness and death, what they cannot do anymore is stop transmission. “Our vaccines are working exceptionally well. They continue to work well for Delta with regard to severe illness and death. They prevent it," Walensky said. The following statement is more notable, however, as it is one of the only times the CDC has acknowledged that the vaccines are not capable of stopping the spread of the virus. "...what they can’t do anymore is prevent transmission" ... Walensky stated.

Note: Why did many officials state emphatically early on that vaccines were the only thing that would stop the pandemic when they do not stop transmission of the virus? Doesn't this show the vaccine mandates were a sham? A BMJ (British Medical Journal) article states “Vaccines aren’t preventing onward transmission by reducing the viral load—or amount of SARS-CoV-2—in your body.” For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on coronavirus vaccines from reliable major media sources.


A Fast-Growing Network of Conservative Groups Is Fueling a Surge in Book Bans
2022-12-12, New York Times
Posted: 2022-12-18 19:35:20
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/12/books/book-bans-libraries.html

The Keller Independent School District, just outside of Dallas, passed a new rule in November: It banned books from its libraries that include the concept of gender fluidity. The change was pushed by three new school board members, elected in May with support from Patriot Mobile, a self-described Christian cellphone carrier. Through its political action committee, Patriot Mobile poured hundreds of thousands of dollars into Texas school board races to promote candidates with conservative views on race, gender and sexuality — including on which books children can access at school. The issue has been supercharged by a rapidly growing and increasingly influential constellation of conservative groups. The groups have pursued their goals by becoming heavily involved in local and state politics, where Republican efforts have largely outmatched liberal organizations in many states for years. They have created political action committees, funded campaigns, endorsed candidates and packed school boards, helping to fuel a surge in challenges to individual books and to drive changes in the rules governing what books are available to children. The materials the groups object to are often described in policies and legislation as sensitive, inappropriate or pornographic. In practice, the books most frequently targeted for removal have been by or about Black or L.G.B.T.Q. people, according to the American Library Association.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on media manipulation from reliable sources.


How a Bronx Community Is Winning the Census
2020-06-01, Reasons to be Cheerful
Posted: 2022-12-18 19:33:14
https://reasonstobecheerful.world/bronx-co-op-city-winning-census-participation/

Co-Op City is amazing. A massive housing development on the eastern edge of the Bronx, it has its own schools, power plant, newspaper, even a planetarium. It was built by a clothing workers union and the United Housing Federation in the 1960s to provide affordable middle-class housing in New York City. From the beginning, it embraced a social justice mandate that included participatory self-government, ethnic diversity and a sharing of resources. Just 49 percent of New York City households have responded to the 2020 Census so far — well behind the national average of nearly 60 percent. At stake are potentially billions of dollars in desperately needed federal funds as well as seats in the House of Representatives. But not all Census tracts are created equal. In Co-Op City, the world’s largest co-operative housing complex, with more than 15,000 apartments, residents are not only well ahead of the rest of the Bronx and of New York City — they also outpace much of the nation. Among Co-Op City’s seven tracts, five exceed 70 percent in participating, and the others are not far behind — making “the city in a city” an outlier in the Bronx, where fewer than 40 percent in many tracts have responded to Census Bureau mailings. Noel Ellison, 67, general manager for Co-Op City’s property management company, Riverbay Corporation, said the coronavirus crisis has galvanized residents, bringing an already tight community even closer. So did Co-Op City’s unusual inclusiveness, he suggested.

Note: Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.


Blind man runs New York half marathon with three guide dogs
2019-03-18, BBC News
Posted: 2022-12-18 19:31:48
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-47616376

Thomas Panek has completed 20 marathons, however, he made history on Sunday at the New York City Half Marathon. While visually impaired runners usually use human guides, Mr Panek became the first person to complete the race supported by guide dogs. A trio of Labradors - Westley, Waffle and Gus - each accompanied him for a third of the race. The team finished in two hours and 21 minutes. Mr Panek, who lost his sight in his early 20s, told CNN that while he appreciated the support of human volunteers, he missed the feeling of independence. "It never made sense to me to walk out the door and leave my guide dog behind when I love to run and they love to run," he said. "It was just a matter of bucking conventional wisdom and saying why not. In 2015, Mr Panek established the Running Guides programme which trains dogs to support runners. "The bond is really important. You can't just pick up the harness and go for a run with these dogs," Mr Panek told CNN. "You're training with a team no matter what kind of athlete you are, and you want to spend time together in that training camp." Each dog wears a special harness and set of running boots, to protect their paws. Before the race, Mr Panek told Time magazine that guide dogs give visually impaired people the freedom to "do whatever it is a sighted person does, and sometimes, even run a little faster than them".

Note: Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring disabled persons news articles.


Athlete with Down syndrome becomes first to complete the Ironman World Championship
2022-10-08, USA Today
Posted: 2022-12-18 19:30:12
https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/2022/10/08/athlete-down-syndrome-first-...

Chris Nikic became the first athlete with Down syndrome to complete the Ironman World Championship when he crossed the finish line during Thursday’s event in Kailua-Kona, Hawaii. The Ironman involves three events: a 2.4-mile swim, a 112-mile bike ride, and a 26.2-mile run. Nikic finished in 16 hours, 31 minutes and 27 seconds. He completed the swim in one hour, 42 minutes, the bike ride in eight hours, five minutes and the run in six hours and 29 minutes, placing 2,265th out of 2,314 athletes that competed that day. Nikic, who celebrated his 23rd birthday after crossing the finish line with his volunteer guide, accomplished the feat during Down syndrome awareness month. Nikic's perseverance has won him many admirers and his dedication won him the 2021 Jimmy V Award for Perseverance at the ESPYs after he became the first person with Down syndrome to finish an Ironman triathlon after completing the Florida Ironman in November 2020. In a video, Nikic explained his motivation in competing in the grueling events. “I rarely saw anyone who looks like me in mainstream sports. And now, we’re changing that,” Nikic said. “Running changed my life, but now I want everyone like me to see it’s possible for them, too.”

Note: Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring disabled persons news articles.


Meta’s new AI is skilled at a ruthless, power-seeking game
2022-12-01, Washington Post
Posted: 2022-12-12 01:21:18
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/12/01/meta-diplomacy-ai-cicero/

Researchers at Meta, the parent company of Facebook, have unveiled an artificial intelligence model, named Cicero after the Roman statesman, that demonstrates skills of negotiation, trickery and forethought. More often than not, it wins at Diplomacy, a complex, ruthless strategy game where players forge alliances, craft battle plans and negotiate to conquer a stylized version of Europe. It is the latest evolution in artificial intelligence, which has experienced rapid advancements in recent years that have led to dystopian inventions, from chatbots becoming humanlike, to generated art becoming hyper-realistic, to killer drones. Cicero, released in November, was able to trick humans into thinking it was real, according to Meta, and can invite players to join alliances, craft invasion plans and negotiate peace deals when needed. Its mastery of language surprised some scientists and its creators, who thought this level of sophistication was years away. But experts said its ability to withhold information, think multiple steps ahead of opponents and outsmart human competitors sparks broader concerns. This type of technology could be used to concoct smarter scams that extort people or create more convincing deep fakes. “It is a great example of just how much we can fool other human beings,” said Kentaro Toyama, a professor and artificial intelligence expert ... who read the Meta paper. “These things are super scary” and “could be used for evil.”

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corporate corruption from reliable major media sources.


‘Life no longer as we know it’: war in space would have devastating effects, military experts say
2022-11-28, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2022-12-12 01:19:38
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2022/nov/29/life-no-longer-as-we-know-it-...

It would no longer be “life as we know it” if a space war destroyed the satellites that the world now relies on, space commanders have warned, and China and Russia have demonstrated that they’re capable of doing just that. Lt Gen Nina Armagno, staff director of the US Space Force, said Russia’s destruction of one of their own satellites last year was a “stunning display”. “We’re interpreting that ... as a message and demonstration of capability,” she said. She said China was openly documenting and describing its demonstrations of power in space. Asked what the end game could be, she said, “Life as we know it would no longer be as we know it.” Attacks on satellites can take out GPS systems, banking systems, power grids, first responders’ communications, and impact on military operations. “I don’t want to be dramatic,” Armagno said. “What does war in space look like? We probably won’t see it with our naked eye but we will definitely feel the consequences from the moment it begins.” She also described China’s 2007 destruction of one of its own satellites as shocking, irresponsible and intentional. There are two ways attacks on satellites could take out communication networks. A direct attack – through anti-satellite missiles, grappling arms, or hacking or jamming a satellite – is one. The other is the debris created by a destroyed satellite. Armagno said the US was still tracking 600 pieces of debris from China’s 2007 “demonstration”.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on military corruption from reliable major media sources.


U.S. Government Quietly Declassifies Post-9/11 Interview With Bush and Cheney
2022-11-10, The Intercept
Posted: 2022-12-12 01:17:25
https://theintercept.com/2022/11/10/september-11-bush-cheney-interview/

A U.S. government panel quietly released a newly declassified summary of an Oval Office joint interview conducted with President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney about the September 11 attacks. The interview, carried out by members of the 9/11 Commission, was not recorded and the summary document constitutes the only known official record of the meeting. The meeting took place on April 29, 2004. One of the most striking aspects of the declassified document is the apparent absence of even a glimmer of self-awareness by Bush about the significance of the death and destruction he was unleashing with his global war. Bush comes off as almost childishly simplistic in his insights and analysis. The lack of any sensitive information contained within the document should spur questions as to why it took more than 18 years to be made public. One of the 9/11 commissioners “asked if the President or the Vice President had been involved in permitting planes carrying Saudi nationals to leave after 9/11. No, the President said. He had no idea about this until he read about it in the papers.” Several 9/11 commissioners raised the issue of the infamous Presidential Daily Briefing from August 6, 2001, titled “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US.” That document cites foreign intelligence indicating that Osama bin Laden “wanted to hijack US aircraft.” It also stated that the FBI had information “that indicates patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings."

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on 9/11 from reliable major media sources. Then explore the excellent, reliable resources provided in our 9/11 Information Center.


Major funds exposed to companies allegedly engaged in Uyghur repression in China
2022-11-23, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2022-12-12 01:15:40
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/nov/23/major-pension-funds-exposed-com...

Many of the world’s largest asset managers and state pension funds are passively investing in companies that have allegedly engaged in the repression of Uyghur Muslims in China, according to a new report. The report, by UK-based group Hong Kong Watch and the Helena Kennedy Centre for International Justice at Sheffield Hallam University, found that three major stock indexes provided by MSCI include at least 13 companies that have allegedly used forced labour or been involved in the construction of the surveillance state in China’s Xinjiang region. In recent years, China has come under increased scrutiny over what the UN has called “serious human rights violations” against Uyghur Muslims in the region, including systemic discrimination, mass arbitrary detention, torture, and sexual and gender-based violence. The report includes a list of major asset managers, including BlackRock, HSBC and Deutsche Bank among others, exposed to index funds that include companies accused of engaging in labour transfers and the construction of repressive infrastructure in the region. It found public pension funds across the UK, Canada and the US and funds in New Zealand and Japan exposed by the investments. “So many people’s pensions, retirement funds and savings are invested passively because, as average consumers, we don’t have time to investigate each and every investment,” said Laura Murphy, one of the report’s authors and professor of human rights and contemporary slavery at Sheffield Hallam University.

Note: Read an eye-opening article about the shocking human rights violations happening to the Uyghur people under the auspices of the Chinese government. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on financial system corruption from reliable major media sources.


China operating over 100 police stations across the world with the help of some host nations, report claims
2022-12-04, CNN News
Posted: 2022-12-12 01:13:29
https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/04/world/china-overseas-police-stations-intl-cmd/...

Beijing has set up more than 100 so-called overseas police stations across the globe to monitor, harass and in some cases repatriate Chinese citizens living in exile, using bilateral security arrangements struck with countries in Europe and Africa to gain a widespread presence internationally, a new report shared exclusively with CNN alleges. Madrid-based human rights campaigner Safeguard Defenders says it found evidence China was operating 48 additional police stations abroad since the group first revealed the existence of 54 such stations in September. Beijing has denied it is running undeclared police forces outside its territory. Instead, China has claimed the facilities are administrative hubs. Undeclared consular activities outside of a nation’s official diplomatic missions are highly unusual and illegal. “What we see coming from China is increasing attempts to crack down on dissent everywhere in the world, to threaten people, harass people, make sure that they are fearful enough so that they remain silent or else face being returned to China against their will,” said Safeguard Defenders Campaign director Laura Harth. “It will start with phone calls. They might start to intimidate your relatives back in China, to threaten you, do everything really to coax the targets abroad to come back. If that doesn’t work, they will use covert agents abroad. They will send them from Beijing and use methods such as luring and entrapment,” Harth said.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption from reliable major media sources.


Revealed: more than 70% of English water industry is in foreign ownership
2022-11-30, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2022-12-12 01:08:21
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/nov/30/more-than-70-per-cent-eng...

Foreign investment firms, private equity, pension funds and businesses lodged in tax havens own more than 70% of the water industry in England, according to research by the Guardian. The complex web of ownership is revealed as the public and some politicians increasingly call for the industry to be held to account for sewage dumping, leaks and water shortages. Six water companies are under investigation for potentially illegal activities as pressure grows on the industry to put more money into replacing and restoring crumbling infrastructure to protect both the environment and public health. More than three decades after the sector was sold off with a promise to the public they would become individual small shareholders or “H2Owners”, control of the water industry has become dominated by overseas investment vehicles, the super-rich, companies in tax havens and pension fund investors. The ownership structure is such that transparency and accountability are limited, according to Dr Kate Bayliss ... at Soas University of London. The Qatar Investment Authority is the third largest shareholder in Severn Trent, with a 4.6% holding, while almost 10% is held by the US investment company BlackRock and its subsidiaries. A subsidiary of the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority has a 9.9% stake in Thames Water, while 8.7% is owned by China, the analysis shows. At least 72% of the industry is controlled by firms in 17 countries, while UK firms own 10%. Ownership of 82% of the water industry was traced overall.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corruption in government and in the corporate world from reliable major media sources.


Elon Musk speaks out on ‘Twitter Files’ release detailing platform’s inner workings
2022-12-04, CNN News
Posted: 2022-12-12 01:06:33
https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/04/business/elon-musk-twitter-files-comments/inde...

Twitter owner Elon Musk spoke out on Saturday evening about the so-called “Twitter Files,” a long tweet thread posted by journalist Matt Taibbi, who had been provided with details about behind-the-scenes discussions on Twitter’s content moderation decision-making, including the call to suppress a 2020 New York Post story about Hunter Biden and his laptop. During a two-hour long Twitter Spaces session, Musk said a second “Twitter Files” drop will again involve Taibbi, along with journalist Bari Weiss, but did not give an exact date for when that would be released. Musk – who claims to have not read the released files himself – said the impetus for the original tweet thread was about what happened in the run-up to the 2020 presidential election and “how much government influence was there.” Taibbi’s first thread reaffirmed how, in the initial hours after the Post story about Hunter Biden went live, Twitter employees grappled with fears that it could have been the result of a Russian hacking operation. It showed employees on several Twitter teams debating over whether to restrict the article under the company’s hacked materials policy, weeks before the 2020 election. The emails Taibbi obtained are consistent with what former Twitter site integrity head Yoel Roth told journalist Kara Swisher in an onstage interview last week. Taibbi said the contact from political parties happened more frequently from Democrats, but provided no internal documents to back up his assertion.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on media corruption from reliable sources.


Why Our Movements Need to Start Singing Again
2022-12-04, Common Dreams
Posted: 2022-12-12 01:03:08
https://www.commondreams.org/views/2022/12/04/why-our-movements-need-start-si...

Social movements are stronger when they sing. That's a lesson that has been amply demonstrated throughout history, and it's one that I have learned personally in working to develop trainings for activists over the past decade and a half. In Momentum, a training program that I co-founded and that many other trainers and organizers have built over the last seven years, song culture is not something we included at the start. And yet, it has since become so indispensable that the trainers I know would never imagine doing without it again. We developed a session within Momentum devoted to reviving song culture. We named it "Why did we stop singing?" This module teaches how to bring more music to our movements by breaking down common barriers like self-consciousness, discomfort with vulnerability, and lack of a shared repertoire. Once Momentum began incorporating it into its curriculum, "Why did we stop singing?" quickly became one of the most popular parts of the training. Over several years, many of the organization's trainers and leaders worked to develop the module and, as they did, some important lessons emerged. Chief among them: Music is a powerful tool that we have too often neglected in our organizing–and members of our movements are hungry to bring it back. The training was designed to promote a more sustainable culture of direct action, as well as to put traditions of mass protest in dialogue with longer-term models of structure-based organizing.

Note: The above was written by Paul Engler, a co-founder of Momentum Training, which instructs hundreds of activists each year in the principles of effective protest. Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.


Helsinki Built a Library That Brings a Whole City Together
2022-12-01, Reasons to be Cheerful
Posted: 2022-12-12 01:00:34
https://reasonstobecheerful.world/oodi-library-helsinki-future/

When Andy Johansen first visited Helsinki’s Oodi Library in early 2020 he was struck with amazement by the elegant three-story mass of wood, steel and glass, and the labyrinth of wonders within it. “I think it’s so creative and innovative,” says Johansen. Two steel arches span over 100 meters to create a fully enclosed, column-free public entrance space; the timber facade is clad with 33-millimeter-thick Finnish spruce planks. There are all manner of curious, Alice in Wonderland-esque places to sit — or indeed, lie down — while leafing through a book. Among the vast number of amenities, what caught Johansen’s attention were the library’s 3D printers, laser cutters and equipment to digitally sculpt wood. But over time, he realized that there was a more radical and increasingly rare service that the library provides: a free and egalitarian public space. “Students can sit and study and just hang out,” he explains. “Or you can have your kid walking around, playing around. I always spend time there with my daughter. It’s more of a cultural space. You don’t need to consume anything.” Since opening in December 2018, Oodi has begun to write a new chapter in the history of public space. Instead of being merely a repository for books, it is an alternative working and learning space, a cultural and community center, and a platform for democracy and citizen initiatives. Anyone can enter and use the facilities, many of which are free, without needing to provide ID.

Note: Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.


Jim Harris Was Paralyzed. Then He Ate Magic Mushrooms.
2022-11-09, Yahoo News
Posted: 2022-12-12 00:58:46
https://sports.yahoo.com/jim-harris-paralyzed-then-ate-103056289.html

Against all odds, Jim Harris was walking. There he was, at a music festival, getting around with the assistance of a walker, eight months out from a spinal-cord injury that left him paralyzed from the chest down. In November 2014, a snowkiting accident in Chile changed how the mountaineering instructor turned adventure photographer moved through the world. His days ... were now filled with rehabilitation exercises. A friend and former physical therapist invited him to the High Sierra Music Festival. "The disability made me feel like an outsider," he says. Then someone offered him magic mushrooms, which are packed with the psychoactive compound psilocybin. He commandeered an acquaintance's padded knee scooter so he could rest one leg at a time and still sway to the music. In the middle of a switch, he discovered that he could pick up his right foot and pull it back toward his butt. He tapped his right hamstring with a finger and the muscle contracted - a muscle that had been completely unresponsive since his injury, even in the low-gravity environment of a pool, despite eight months of physical therapy. With wonder and some degree of hesitation, he showed his physical-therapist friend. They marveled together at what had been impossible for Harris earlier that day. The next morning, Harris woke up afraid he'd imagined the whole thing, or that he'd lost his newfound ability while he slept, but his hamstring was still firing. The neuromuscular connection that had formed the night before wasn't going anywhere.

Note: Read more about the healing potentials of psychedelic medicine. Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.


The Israeli-made Lanius is a tiny racing drone that could scout and kill enemies while using artificial intelligence. It’s a nightmare scenario, weapons critics say
2022-11-18, Washington Post
Posted: 2022-12-05 10:33:05
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/11/18/killer-racing-drone-weap...

Last week, an Israeli defense company painted a frightening picture. In a roughly two-minute video on YouTube that resembles an action movie, soldiers out on a mission are suddenly pinned down by enemy gunfire and calling for help. In response, a tiny drone zips off its mother ship to the rescue, zooming behind the enemy soldiers and killing them with ease. While the situation is fake, the drone — unveiled last week by Israel-based Elbit Systems — is not. The Lanius, which in Latin can refer to butcherbirds, represents a new generation of drone: nimble, wired with artificial intelligence, and able to scout and kill. The machine is based on racing drone design, allowing it to maneuver into tight spaces, such as alleyways and small buildings. After being sent into battle, Lanius’s algorithm can make a map of the scene and scan people, differentiating enemies from allies — feeding all that data back to soldiers who can then simply push a button to attack or kill whom they want. For weapons critics, that represents a nightmare scenario, which could alter the dynamics of war. “It’s extremely concerning,” said Catherine Connolly, an arms expert at Stop Killer Robots, an anti-weapons advocacy group. “It’s basically just allowing the machine to decide if you live or die if we remove the human control element for that.” According to the drone’s data sheet, the drone is palm-size, roughly 11 inches by 6 inches. It has a top speed of 45 miles per hour. It can fly for about seven minutes, and has the ability to carry lethal and nonlethal materials.

Note: US General Paul Selva has warned against employing killer robots in warfare for ethical reasons. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on military corruption from reliable major media sources.


How corporate chiefs dodge lawsuits over sexual abuse and deadly products
2022-11-07, Reuters
Posted: 2022-12-05 10:30:27
https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/bankruptcy-tactics-releases/

Scandals brought down Harvey Weinstein’s movie studio and major opioid supplier Mallinckrodt. But their wealthy owners, directors and executives were granted lifetime immunity from related lawsuits in bankruptcy court — an overwhelmingly common tactic in major U.S. Chapter 11 cases, a Reuters review found. Such immunity grants have become a pervasive but little-understood feature of the U.S. bankruptcy system. The releases are now granted by judges in 9 of 10 major Chapter 11 cases. The lawsuit shields, requested by the company or organization in bankruptcy, are called “nondebtor” releases because they are bestowed on people and entities that never have to declare Chapter 11 themselves. The recipients effectively get the benefits of bankruptcy protection without the associated financial or reputational damage. Reuters ... examined 29 U.S. bankruptcies that were preceded by mass tort litigation against companies or other entities, many of which included allegations involving dangerous products or sexual abuse. The review found that about 1.2 million claimants in these cases have signed away their rights to sue related parties or face pressure to approve such releases in ongoing bankruptcy-court negotiations. The 29 bankruptcies included those of 14 Catholic dioceses or religious orders and the Boy Scouts of America amid lawsuits alleging child molestation; [and] the collapse of opioid suppliers Purdue Pharma LP and Mallinckrodt plc over their alleged roles in a deadly addiction epidemic.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corporate corruption and sexual abuse scandals from reliable major media sources.


FBI hero paying the price for exposing unjust ‘persecution’ of conservative Americans
2022-09-21, New York Post
Posted: 2022-12-05 10:28:12
https://nypost.com/2022/09/21/fbi-hero-paying-the-price-for-exposing-unjust-p...

Allegations by FBI Special Agent Steve Friend contained in a whistleblower complaint filed late Wednesday with the Department of Justice inspector general reveal a politicized Washington, DC, FBI field office cooking the books to exaggerate the threat of domestic terrorism, and ­using an “overzealous” January 6 investigation to harass conservative Americans and violate their constitutional rights. Friend, 37, a respected 12-year veteran of the FBI and a SWAT team member, was suspended Monday, stripped of his gun and badge, and escorted out of the FBI field office in Daytona Beach, Fla., after complaining to his supervisors about the violations. He was declared absent without leave last month for refusing to participate in SWAT raids that he believed violated FBI policy and were a use of excessive force against Jan. 6 subjects accused of misdemeanor offenses. “I have an oath to uphold the Constitution,” he told supervisors when he asserted his conscientious objection to joining an Aug. 24 raid on a J6 subject. “I have a moral objection and want to be considered a conscientious objector.” In his whistleblower complaint to DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz ... Friend lays out multiple violations of FBI policy involving J6 investigations in which he was involved. He says he was removed from active investigations into child sexual exploitation and human trafficking to work on J6 cases sent from DC. As a result, he believes his child exploitation investigations were harmed.

Note: Read how Facebook is silencing activity related to this whistleblower. Read also Matt Taibbi’s reporting on this important case. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption from reliable major media sources.


In U.S. Military, Sexual Assault Against Men Is Vastly Underreported
2022-11-29, The Intercept
Posted: 2022-12-05 10:26:15
https://theintercept.com/2022/11/29/military-sexual-assault-men/

On New Year’s Eve 2005, Justin Rose headed to Camp Lemonnier’s cantina for celebratory $2.50 beers with his fellow Marines before heading back to his “hooch” around 1:30 a.m. Sometime after daybreak, Rose woke up to find someone stroking his penis. Disoriented for a moment, he lept down from his raised bunk and gave chase as a man dressed in red dashed out of his quarters and into another tent. He found [Jase Derek] Stanton, dressed in red, feigning sleep in his bed; Rose was certain Stanton was the attacker. So Rose did what he had been trained to do. He went to his team leader, a young corporal, and reported the assault. The first question he heard was: “Are you sure you’re not making this up?” Nearly 1 in 4 U.S. servicewomen reports being sexually assaulted — a rate far higher than that of men. But sexual assault of men in the military is also widespread and vastly underreported. Each day, on average, more than 45 men in the armed forces are sexually assaulted, according to the latest Pentagon estimates. For women, it is 53 per day, according to a September 2022 Pentagon report that uses a new euphemism “unwanted sexual contact” as a “proxy measure for sexual assault.” Nearly 40 percent of veterans who report to the Department of Veterans Affairs, or VA, that they have experienced military sexual trauma, or MST — sexual assault or sexual harassment — are men. 90 percent of men in the military did not report a sexual assault they experienced in 2021.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on military corruption and sexual abuse scandals from reliable major media sources.


Racism, gruesome errors, and botched executions: Inside America’s four-person, 48-hour execution spree
2022-11-23, The Independent (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2022-12-05 10:24:33
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/crime/death-penalty-executi...

Even for the US, one of few countries that still uses the death penalty, last week was exceptionally violent, with four executions planned in the span of 48 hours. The killings were marred with errors, accusations of racism and discrimination, and claims of innocence. One was called off after officials took more than an hour and were unable to place an IV line. Officials can't seem to carry off an execution in which the right drugs are used, an IV is placed quickly and the inmate doesn't suffer ... but state officials disclose little about who conducts executions or how they are trained. "The recent spate of botched lethal injection executions have shown that, whatever the drug, whatever the protocol, condemned prisoners often spend their final moments in agonising pain and distress,” Maya Foa, director of advocacy group Reprieve US, said.With each gruesome scene in the death chamber, we are witnessing the consequences of persisting with a broken method of execution in real time.” Numerous people on death row suffer from severe mental illness, so [Kat Jutras of Death Penalty Alternatives for Arizona is] hoping mental health reform can limit the pipeline of people heading towards the execution chamber. “Mental health is not a political issue. There are people on both sides of the aisle who can identify with loved ones suffering from mental health issues,” she said. “We can address why our death row has 110 people on it, starting with mental health.”

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corruption in government and in the prison system from reliable major media sources.


Ex-Vatican auditor sues, threatens to expose financial mismanagement
2022-11-10, Washington Post
Posted: 2022-12-05 10:22:39
https://www.washingtonpost.com/religion/2022/11/10/vatican-finances-lawsuit-m...

A former Vatican financial auditor has filed suit against the Vatican Secretariat of State, demanding the Catholic Church pay for damage to his reputation that he alleges followed his unceremonious firing in 2017. Libero Milone was hired in 2015 by Pope Francis to look into the notoriously convoluted and troubled finances of Vatican departments, as part of continuing financial reforms begun by Pope Benedict XVI. Only two years later, the Vatican announced that Milone had resigned in the face of accusations of embezzlement and of spying. Cardinal Angelo Becciu told reporters that the auditor “went against all rules and was spying on the private lives of his superiors and staff, myself included.” Milone called the cardinal “a liar.” Now, Milone says, he is ready to share proof of the financial mismanagement he said he witnessed at Vatican-owned hospitals and in the church bureaucracy. Milone framed his firing as a battle between “the Middle Ages and modernity” and called out “the small mafia at the Vatican” that was offended by his findings of lapses in the Catholic institution’s finances, including “many cases of rule violations, improper predisposition of accounting records, incorrect registrations.” He said he has proof that several other Vatican offices concealed transactions or obstructed auditors’ attempts to see real estate and investment portfolios. He also pointed to significant anomalies in the management of funds at the troubled Catholic pediatric hospital Bambino Gesù.

Note: In 2012, leaked documents revealed that the Vatican Bank was used for money laundering. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on financial corruption from reliable major media sources.


Biden’s decision to grant Saudi crown prince immunity is a profound mistake
2022-11-21, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2022-12-05 10:20:49
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/nov/21/bidens-decision-to-gran...

The Biden administration told a US judge last week that Mohammed bin Salman, the Saudi crown prince, should be granted immunity in a civil lawsuit over his role in the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi. That decision effectively ends one of the last efforts to hold the prince accountable for Khashoggi’s assassination by a Saudi hit team inside the kingdom’s consulate in Istanbul in October 2018. In July, Biden swallowed his pride and traveled to Saudi Arabia, trying to reset his relationship with a regime he called a “pariah” as a presidential candidate. Biden greeted Prince Mohammed with an embarrassing fist bump, hoping that the photo op would convince the Saudis to increase oil production and lower gasoline prices. By October, the Saudi-led Opec+ cartel did the opposite of what the Biden administration asked – it decided to cut oil production by 2 million barrels a day, which will mean higher global fuel prices this winter. Thanks to the Biden administration’s immunity decision, Prince Mohammed now has a level of protection from US legal actions that even Trump did not offer him. The prince’s lawyers started seeking immunity in US federal courts in August 2020, when Saad Aljabri, a former top Saudi intelligence official, sued the crown prince in Washington. Aljabri alleged that the royal had dispatched a hit squad to kill him in Canada in 2018, just weeks after Khashoggi’s murder. The Trump administration declined to grant Prince Mohammed immunity in that case, and the suit was ultimately dismissed.

Note: U.S. Presidents from both parties continue to coddle up to the Saudi regime -- one of the most repressive regimes in the world. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption from reliable major media sources.


India is trying to build the world's biggest facial recognition system
2019-10-18, CNN News
Posted: 2022-12-05 10:18:12
https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/17/tech/india-facial-recognition-intl-hnk/index.html

India has just 144 police officers for every 100,000 citizens. In recent years, authorities have turned to facial recognition technology to make up for the shortfall. India's government now ... wants to construct one of the world's largest facial recognition systems. The project envisions a future in which police from across the country's 29 states and seven union territories would have access to a single, centralized database. The daunting scope of the proposed network is laid out in a detailed 172-page document published by the National Crime Records Bureau, which requests bids from companies to build the project. The project would match images from the country's growing network of CCTV cameras against a database encompassing mug shots of criminals, passport photos and images collected by [government] agencies. It would also recognize faces on closed-circuit cameras and "generate alerts if a blacklist match is found." Security forces would be equipped with hand-held mobile devices enabling them to capture a face in the field and search it instantly against the national database, through a dedicated app. For privacy advocates, this is worrying. "India does not have a data protection law," says [Apar] Gupta [of the Internet Freedom Foundation]. "It will essentially be devoid of safeguards." It might even be linked up to Aadhaar, India's vast biometric database, which contains the personal details of 1.2 billion Indian citizens, enabling India to set up "a total, permanent surveillance state," he adds.

Note: Read an excellent article by The Civil Liberties Union for Europe about the 7 biggest privacy issues that concern facial recognition technology. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and the disappearance of privacy from reliable major media sources.


‘It’s like a place of healing’: the growth of America’s food forests
2021-05-08, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2022-12-05 10:15:48
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/may/08/its-like-a-place-of-heali...

America’s biggest “food forest” is just a short drive from the world’s busiest airport, Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson. When the Guardian visits the Urban Food Forest at Browns Mill there are around a dozen volunteers working. Food forests are part of the broader food justice and urban agriculture movement and are distinct from community gardens in various ways. They are typically backed by grants rather than renting plots, usually rely on volunteers and incorporate a land management approach that has a focus on growing perennials. The schemes vary in how they operate in allocating food ... but they are all aimed at boosting food access. Organizers in Atlanta stress that they properly distribute the food to the neighborhoods that the food forest is intended to support and it’s not open to the public beyond volunteer workers. Other schemes have areas where the public is free to take what they want. Celeste Lomax, who manages community engagement at the Brown Mills forest and lives in the neighborhood, believes education is key to the forest’s success and beams like sunlight when sharing her vision for the fertile soil she tends. “We’re using this space for more than just growing food. We have composting, beehives, bat boxes, and this beautiful herb garden where we’re teaching people how to heal themselves with the foods we eat. We’ll be doing walkthrough retreats and outside yoga. This is a health and wellness place. It’s so much more than just free food.”

Note: Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.


Dad Wakes From Coma to Discover Artistic Skills He Never Had Before
2022-11-07, Yahoo News
Posted: 2022-12-05 10:13:35
https://uk.news.yahoo.com/dad-wakes-month-long-coma-092327320.html?guccounter=1

A dad has left medics baffled after waking from a coma with extraordinary artistic talents he never had before - and he's now a professional carpenter and model maker. Moe Hunter, 38, spent more than a month in a coma where his heart even stopped after being diagnosed with a rare form of bacterial meningitis and tuberculosis in his brain. He awoke from brain surgery with no memory but soon left his friends and family gobsmacked when he started to display a special gift he didn't possess before. Moe suddenly discovered he had a newfound creative flair and an inexplicable talent for drawing, painting and model building - despite being 'rubbish' at art at school. He used his new skills to embark on a career as a self-employed carpenter and began building intricate life-size model replicas from the world of TV and film. Married dad-of-one Moe has since sold pieces of his artwork and has displayed his amazing creations at Comic-Con events. Moe said: "I really wasn't creative before in the slightest, in fact people used to laugh at my drawings. “Even to this day some of my family can’t believe it. When I spoke to the neurologist he just said 'enjoy it' and said there's so much about the brain they still can't decipher and this is just a phenomenon. I look at all of my stuff now and I'm like 'never in a trillion years could I do this stuff'. I have no idea how it happened. “My doctor said that I was a walking miracle to be able to recover as quickly as I did - but when I started displaying these new artistic talents they were just stumped."

Note: Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.


In Barcelona, Kids Bike to School in Large, Choreographed Herds
2022-11-07, Reasons to be Cheerful
Posted: 2022-12-05 10:11:43
https://reasonstobecheerful.world/students-ditch-school-buses-for-bicycles-in...

With breakfast finished and backpacks prepped for the day, children across Spain’s Barcelona province strap on their helmets and, at around 8 a.m., head to school not by bus or car, but in a critical mass of bikes dubbed “bicibús.” As with traditional bus lines, each bicibús route has stops where other cycling students can join along the way. Parents, teachers and other volunteer adults ride, too, to ensure the kids’ safety. Bicibús is just a couple years old, but already more than 1,200 kids pedal 90-plus routes to more than 70 schools across 25 cities in Catalonia. (Barcelona is one of four provinces in the region, in addition to being a major city.) Biking in groups increases awareness of riders on the road, especially where dedicated infrastructure is lacking. And families around the world, from Portland, Oregon to Edinburgh, Scotland, have embraced this commuting alternative. “The idea for bicibús came from the mix of my two passions: the bike and education,” says Helena Vilardell, the elementary school teacher who started bicibús in February 2020. She subsequently launched the nonprofit Canvis en Cadena (“change in chain”) to widely promote bicycles as a healthier, more sustainable commute for all. Fewer gas-powered vehicles on the road decreases pollutants that contribute to unhealthy air. “I have been working as a teacher for many years. The children in my class who arrive by bike are more active during the first hours, more attentive and participatory,” [Vilardell] says.

Note: Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.


Vaccinated people now make up a majority of covid deaths
2022-11-23, Washington Post
Posted: 2022-11-29 01:36:38
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/23/vaccinated-people-now-make...

It's no longer a pandemic of the unvaccinated. As vaccination rates have increased and new variants appeared, the share of deaths of people who were vaccinated has been steadily rising. Fifty-eight percent of coronavirus deaths in August were people who were vaccinated or boosted, according to an analysis conducted ... by Cynthia Cox, vice president at the the Kaiser Family Foundation. It's a continuation of a troubling trend that has emerged over the past year. "We can no longer say this is a pandemic of the unvaccinated," Cox told [the Post]. At this point in the pandemic, a large majority of Americans have received at least their primary series of coronavirus vaccines. [Yet] vaccines lose potency against the virus over time and variants arise that are better able to resist the vaccines.

Note: The public was sold on vaccines with claims of 90 to 95% efficacy. Yet we were not told that they would not stop transmission or that they would lose much of their efficacy after several months. Meanwhile big Pharma rakes in billions in profits. Notice also that this article plays down this important news and focuses on dubious facts to support getting more boosters, thus ever bigger profits to big Pharma. This article continues to promote COVID-19 vaccines and boosters, despite blatant suppression of the many injuries, and deaths caused by them.


Gates-funded ‘green revolution’ in Africa has failed, critics say
2022-09-08, Seattle Times
Posted: 2022-11-29 01:34:53
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/gates-funded-green-revolution-in-af...

The push for a “green revolution” in Africa ... has spent $1 billion to date, much of it from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. As an annual African farming summit takes place this week in Rwanda, activists, farmers and faith leaders from Seattle to Nairobi are calling on the Gates Foundation and other funders to stop supporting an effort they say has failed to deliver on promises to radically reduce hunger and increase farmer productivity. Critics say the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa, founded in 2006 with money from the Gates and Rockefeller foundations, has promoted an industrial model of agriculture that poisons soils with chemicals and encourages farmers to go into debt by buying expensive seeds, fertilizers and pesticides. As a result of that debt, some farmers have had to sell their land or household goods like stoves and TVs, said Celestine Otieno and Anne Maina, both active with organizations in Kenya advocating for ecologically friendly practices. “I think it’s the second phase of colonization,” Otieno said. A donor-funded evaluation last December ... found “AGRA did not meet its headline goal of increased incomes and food security.” Peter Little, director of the global development program at Emory University, puts it another way: “I don’t think it’s come close to what it promised to do.” The criticism ... has clearly stung. This week, AGRA is launching a rebranding that drops the term “green revolution” from the organization’s name, to be known from now on by its acronym only.

Note: Read a sobering open letter to Bill Gates written by 50 food sovereignty organizations that reveals how the “Green Revolution” and genetic engineering technologies have done the opposite of reducing hunger and increasing food access. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on food system corruption from reliable major media sources.


Sperm counts may be declining globally, review finds, adding to debate over male fertility
2022-11-18, CNN News
Posted: 2022-11-29 01:33:07
https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/18/health/sperm-counts-decline-debate#:~:text=On%...

Over the past 50 years, human sperm counts appear to have fallen by more than 50% around the globe, according to an updated review of medical literature. The review, and its conclusions, have sparked a debate among experts in male fertility. “I think one of the fundamental functions of any species is reproduction. So I think if there is a signal that reproduction is in decline, I think that’s a very important finding,” said Dr. Michael Eisenberg, a urologist with Stanford Medicine who was not involved in the review. “There is a strong link between a man’s reproductive health and his overall health. So it could also speak to that too, that maybe we’re not as healthy as we once were,” he said. The new analysis updates a review published in 2017 and for the first time includes new data from Central and South America, Asia and Africa. It was published in the journal Human Reproduction Update. An international team of researchers combed through nearly 3,000 studies that recorded men’s sperm counts and were published between 2014 and 2020. Overall, the researchers determined that sperm counts fell by sightly more than 1% per year between 1973 and 2018. The study concluded that globally, the average sperm count had fallen 52% by 2018. When the study researchers restricted their analysis to certain years, they found that the decline in sperm counts seemed to be accelerating, from an average of 1.16% per year after 1973 to 2.64% per year after 2020.

Note: There are strong links between sperm quality and motility, and environmental toxins like pesticides and endocrine-disruptors. Consider also reading an excellent collection of resources and studies that associate cell phone radiation with men’s reproductive health issues. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on health from reliable major media sources.


Shell and Total, Oil Giants, Report Huge Profits on High Energy Prices
2022-10-27, New York Times
Posted: 2022-11-29 01:30:51
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/27/business/shell-earnings-profit-oil-gas.html

Gargantuan profits continue to roll in at Europe’s energy giants. London-based Shell reported adjusted earnings of $9.45 billion for the third quarter, its second-highest profit on record. On the same day, Paris-based TotalEnergies reported a profit of $9.9 billion. For both companies, the profits were more than double what they earned in the same period a year ago. Shell and Total, like other energy companies this year, are benefiting from high oil and natural gas prices partly stoked by the war in Ukraine, as Russia squeezes gas flows to Europe. For Shell, the profit was a step down from the record-breaking $11.5 billion it reported for the second quarter, when it received an average of just over $100 a barrel for oil, compared with $93 in the third quarter. Natural gas prices, however, increased in the third quarter. Shell is returning a large chunk of this bounty to shareholders. The company said that it planned to increase its dividend to shareholders for the fourth quarter by 15 percent, to about 29 cents a share. In what may provoke a political storm in Britain, Shell said it had not yet been obliged to pay the “windfall” tax on oil and gas profits enacted earlier this year by the British government. The tax allows companies to deduct capital expenditures.

Note: Once again mega-corporations rake in the cash and stick it to the consumers. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corporate corruption from reliable major media sources.


This lawyer should be world-famous for his battle with Chevron – but he’s in jail
2022-02-08, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2022-11-29 01:28:08
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/feb/08/chevron-amazon-ecuador-...

What if I told you that a multinational oil company allegedly polluted the Amazon for almost three decades? And that the oil company has spent even more years refusing to accept liability? Or that a US attorney who agreed to represent thousands of Ecuadorian villagers in a lawsuit against that oil company has lost his law license, income, spent hundreds of days under house arrest in New York, and in 2021 was sentenced to six months in prison? From 1964 to 1990, Texaco, which merged with Chevron in 2001, allegedly spilled more than 16m gallons of crude oil – “80 times more oil than was spilled in BP’s 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster”, according to Gizmodo – and 18bn gallons of polluted wastewater in the Amazon rainforest. The pollution allegedly contaminated the ground and waterways with toxic chemicals that the plaintiffs – mostly Indigenous people and poor farmers – say has caused cancer, miscarriages, skin conditions and birth defects. In 1993, [attorney] Steven Donziger ... began working on an environmental case on behalf of Ecuadorians. In 2011 ... an Ecuadorian court ruled that Texaco, which had been bought by Chevron at this point, was “responsible for vast contamination.” PR advisers for Chevron promised to “demonize” Donziger in the public eye. The oil company “hired private investigators to track Donziger, created a publication” which smeared him, and “put together a legal team of hundreds of lawyers from 60 firms, who have successfully pursued an extraordinary campaign against him.”

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corruption in government and in the corporate world from reliable major media sources.


New-officer training presents ‘immediate crisis for policing,’ report says
2022-11-14, Washington Post
Posted: 2022-11-29 01:26:25
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/11/14/police-training-brutality-pe...

Public outrage over how police use force has fueled protests in the streets, spurred calls to cut their funding and ignited broad debates over how to reform law enforcement. Despite this intense focus on the present and future of policing, one key component has remained woefully inadequate, according to a report from a prominent policing think tank: how new officers are trained. Training for recruits “presents an immediate crisis for policing,” according to the report from the Police Executive Research Forum (PERF). The report describes a system that, even after years of push and pull over change, is “built to train officers quickly and cheaply.” That system then hurries the new officers onto streets across the United States without helping them develop vital skills, including crisis intervention and communication, that they will need on the job. Police in the United States typically spend about 20 weeks in the academy, the report said, while recruits in Japan might spend up to 21 months training. Their peers in many European countries spend two to three years training. The report also touches on why, despite all the pleas to rethink policing, training remains behind the times in many places. “At many academies,” the report said, instruction “is based largely on what has been taught in the past.” In many cases, the report continued, academies “seem to rely almost exclusively on current or retired law enforcement officers to develop their training curricula,” even though these people lack backgrounds in designing course instruction.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on police corruption from reliable major media sources.


Colorado voters legalize psilocybin and psychedelic therapy
2022-11-08, Denver Post
Posted: 2022-11-29 01:24:38
https://www.denverpost.com/2022/11/08/colorado-results-prop-122-legalizing-ps...

Colorado is poised to become the second U.S. state to legalize medicinal psychedelics. Proposition 122, Access to Natural Psychedelic Substances, was supported by about 52% of the vote ... according to the Secretary of State’s Office. The measure legalizes psilocybin and psilocin, two compounds found in “magic mushrooms,” for use in therapeutic settings and paves the way for the establishment of “healing centers” where adults 21 years old and up can use the substances under the supervision of licensed professionals. Additionally, Proposition 122 decriminalizes the personal growing, use and sharing of psilocybin and psilocin, as well as ibogaine, mescaline and dimethyltryptamine, or DMT, for adults. Colorado follows Oregon, which legalized psilocybin in 2020. Natural Medicine Colorado lauded the results as a history-making win. “Colorado voters saw the benefit of regulated access to natural medicines, including psilocybin, so people with PTSD, terminal illness, depression, anxiety and other mental health issues can heal,” said the measure’s co-proponents, Kevin Matthews and Veronica Lightening Horse Perez, in a statement. Proposition 122 gives the Department of Regulatory Agencies (DORA) until January 2024 to develop licensing criteria for psychedelic treatment centers, facilitators, and ancillary businesses.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on mind-altering drugs from reliable major media sources.


Key Articles From Years Past


A Partnership With the Philippines Brings Composting to Detroit
2022-10-24, Yes! Magazine
Posted: 2022-11-29 01:22:56
https://www.yesmagazine.org/environment/2022/10/24/detroit-zero-waste-composting

[Pamela] McGhee and her neighbors are participating in a pilot program to build zero-waste systems for Detroit. It’s something they say the city sorely needs. For decades, Detroit was home to one of the country’s largest waste incinerators. East Side residents formed Breathe Free Detroit, one of several groups behind a successful campaign to shut down the incinerator; the plant closed in 2019. Now, that same group is working with the city to develop a composting system. Many ... see a direct line between composting and recycling and improving their community health. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, food waste is the most common material found in landfills and sent to incinerators in the U.S., comprising 24% of landfill materials and 22% of combusted municipal solid waste. But Detroit organizers didn’t have much experience with communitywide composting, so when they began developing a program, they turned to an unlikely mentor more than 8,000 miles away: the Mother Earth Foundation in the Philippines. Over the past 20 years, the organization has earned a reputation for training low-income communities, government agencies, civic organizations, and businesses in zero-waste practices. The two groups organized monthly calls, in which Mother Earth Foundation organizers offered advice based on their experiences setting up community composting systems. Members of Mother Earth Foundation and community organizers in Detroit plan to visit each other’s cities early next year.

Note: Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.


India’s Retired Sex Workers Get a Second Act
2022-11-15, Reasons to be Cheerful
Posted: 2022-11-29 01:20:45
https://reasonstobecheerful.world/india-older-sex-workers-supreme-court/

In May, India’s Supreme Court ruled that sex work is a legitimate profession. Now, its older practitioners are finding ways to start their life anew. 47-year-old [Jyoti] is a former sex worker from the brothels of Delhi’s biggest red light district ... who has left her previous life behind. “I was sold to a brothel by an aunt when I was only 12 years old, so there never was any time to learn anything else,” she says. Now, Jyoti not only has a job, she is earning enough to give her children a promising future: $250 a month through Savhera, a women-led organization that connects and provides retired sex workers with jobs. As a result of the capacity building training by Savhera, the workers have successfully launched their own collective, WePower, with technical support from Shakti Vahini, an anti-trafficking NGO. The collective aims to manufacture handmade goods that provide ongoing employment and empowerment to the women. Savhera and similar organizations are helping aging and retired Indian sex workers transition into their new lives with jobs, bank accounts and ID cards. Now, as one of the core members of WePower, Jyoti makes handmade goods like candles, bags, and jewelry. She intends to use the money she earns to build a fund for her daughter’s future education. Like Savhera, the Durbar Mahila Samanwaya Committee (DMSC), a group of 67,000 sex workers in West Bengal, helps aging sex workers ... and even runs its own bank, USHA co-operative, for sex workers without ID cards.

Note: Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.


New Rooftop Wind Energy Invention Is Up To 16X More Efficient Than Solar Panels
2022-11-03, The Pulse
Posted: 2022-11-29 01:19:10
https://thepulse.one/2022/11/03/a-new-rooftop-wind-energy-invention-is-16x-mo...

A new rooftop wind harvesting device is capable of generating 50 percent more electricity than solar panels for the same cost, according to its inventors, a Texas-based startup called Aeromine Technologies. The new technology replaced the blades found in traditional wind turbines with an aerodynamic system that harvests energy from the airflow that’s created above a building, which makes it silent and safe for birds and other wildlife. These units produce the same amount of power as up to 16 solar panels. As their company website states: "Aeromine’s patented aerodynamic design captures and amplifies building airflow in wind speeds as low as 5 m.p.h., similar to the airfoils on a race car. Unlike turbines that require rotating rotor blades and many moving parts, making them prone to maintenance issues, the motionless and durable Aeromine solution generates more energy in less space." This is a game-changer ... helping corporations meet their resilience and sustainability goals with an untapped distributed renewable energy source. The Aeromine system can utilize a small footprint on a building’s roof, leaving ample space for existing solar and utility infrastructure. It provides commercial property owners, who are facing increased energy costs and rising demand for features such as electric vehicle charging stations, with an effective new tool. Aeromine’s patented technology was validated through joint research with Sandia National Laboratories and Texas Tech University.

Note: Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.


FDA urged to publish follow-up studies on covid-19 vaccine safety signals
2022-10-25, The BMJ (Formerly British Medical Journal)
Posted: 2022-11-22 04:10:56
https://www.bmj.com/content/379/bmj.o2527.full?ijkey=HQrSI4MO2nNKz6O&keytype=ref

In July 2021 the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) quietly disclosed findings of a potential increase in four types of serious adverse events in elderly people who had had Pfizer’s covid-19 vaccine: acute myocardial infarction, disseminated intravascular coagulation, immune thrombocytopenia, and pulmonary embolism. Little detail was provided, such as the magnitude of the increased potential risk, and no press release or other alert was sent to doctors or the public. Eighteen days later, the FDA published a study planning document (or protocol) outlining a follow-up epidemiological study intended to investigate the matter more thoroughly. This recondite technical document disclosed the unadjusted relative risk ratio estimates originally found for the four serious adverse events, which ranged from 42% to 91% increased risk. More than a year later, however, the status and results of the follow-up study are unknown. The agency has not published a press release, or notified doctors, or published the findings ... or updated the vaccine’s product label. Cody Meissner, a paediatrician and member of the FDA’s Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee, said ... "One of the great problems was the suppression of opposing voices to various recommendations and that’s going to cause extraordinary harm ... everyone is aware that there are going to be side effects from any vaccine and as time goes by, we’re going to find out more and more about those side effects."

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on coronavirus vaccines from reliable major media sources.


Myocarditis after Covid vaccination: Research on possible long-term risks underway
2022-11-12, NBC News
Posted: 2022-11-22 04:08:23
https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/myocarditis-covid-vaccine-research...

The first research in the U.S. is underway, tracking adverse health effects — if any — that may appear in the years following a diagnosis of vaccine-associated heart problems. Early findings from the research could be published as early as next year, sources told NBC News. In October 2021, Da’Vion Miller was found unconscious in the bathroom of his home in Detroit a week after receiving his first dose of Pfizer's Covid vaccine. Miller was rushed to Henry Ford West Bloomfield Hospital, where he was diagnosed with myocarditis, an inflammation of the heart muscle, and pericarditis, an inflammation of the outer lining of the heart. His doctor advised him not to receive a second dose of either the Pfizer or the Moderna vaccines. In some cases, people who’ve developed myocarditis after a viral infection can suffer scarring along the heart’s tissue, reducing its ability to pump blood and circulate oxygen around the body, said Dr. Leslie Cooper, the chair of the department of cardiology at the Mayo Clinic. “It could be 2%. It could be 0%. It could be 20%,” he said, referring to the percentage of people with vaccine-associated myocarditis who could experience long-term heart consequences. “We don’t know the answer.” Scientists still don’t have a clear explanation yet for why the vaccines cause the condition, according to Dr. Paul Burton, Moderna's chief medical officer. He expects the virus’s spike protein, once produced in the cell after vaccination, may generate a reaction in the body that can cause inflammation in the heart.

Note: Leading medical journal JAMA published a study earlier this year showing that the risk of myocarditis “increased across multiple age and sex strata and was highest after the second vaccination dose in adolescent males and young men.” Consider also watching an excellent video by Dr. Vinay Prasad at the University of California, San Francisco who discusses a revealing Switzerland study showing that myocardial injury is more common than previously thought, with concerning implications on the cumulative burden of myocardial injury from yearly boosters.


Mysterious company with government ties plays key internet role
2022-11-08, Washington Post
Posted: 2022-11-22 04:06:35
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/11/08/trustcor-internet-addres...

An offshore company that is trusted by the major web browsers and other tech companies to vouch for the legitimacy of websites has connections to contractors for U.S. intelligence agencies and law enforcement, according to security researchers, documents and interviews. Google’s Chrome, Apple’s Safari, nonprofit Firefox and others allow the company, TrustCor Systems, to act as what’s known as a root certificate authority, a powerful spot in the internet’s infrastructure that guarantees websites are not fake, guiding users to them seamlessly. The company’s Panamanian registration records show that it has the identical slate of officers, agents and partners as a spyware maker identified this year as an affiliate of Arizona-based Packet Forensics, which ... has sold communication interception services to U.S. government agencies for more than a decade. TrustCor’s products include an email service that claims to be end-to-end encrypted, though experts consulted by The Washington Post said they found evidence to undermine that claim. A test version of the email service also included spyware developed by a Panamanian company related to Packet Forensics. A person familiar with Packet Forensics’ work confirmed that it had used TrustCor’s certificate process and its email service, MsgSafe, to intercept communications and help the U.S. government catch suspected terrorists. The physical address in Toronto given in [TrustCor's] auditor’s report, 371 Front St. West, houses a UPS Store mail drop.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corporate corruption and the disappearance of privacy from reliable major media sources.


Meet the Military Contractor Running Fare Collection in New York Subways — and Around the World
2022-10-03, The Intercept
Posted: 2022-11-22 04:05:00
https://theintercept.com/2022/10/03/cubic-military-public-transit-mta-omny/

In a cheerfully animated promotional video, a woman narrates Cubic Transportation Systems’ vision for the future. Travelers will pay fares using a ticket-free mobile account. Real-time data will be aggregated, linked, and shared. “The more information that is gathered, the more powerful the system becomes,” the narrator tells us. “The piece of the puzzle missing ... is you.” Over the past decade, Cubic has taken the first steps toward actualizing its vision by snapping up contracts for the development of mobile-based, contactless fare collection systems in eight of America’s 10 largest public transit networks. Transit authorities have embraced tap-to-pay technology for its convenience and speed, but privacy advocates are worried that the new fare collection systems pose serious surveillance and security risks. In addition to its transit operation, Cubic is a vast military contractor doing hundreds of millions of dollars in business with the U.S. military and sales to foreign militaries. The company supplies surveillance technologies, training simulators, satellite communications equipment, computing and networking platforms, and other military hardware and software. As Cubic’s quiet grip on fare collection takes hold in more cities, the company’s ability to process rider data grows with it, creating a sprawling corporate apparatus that has the extraordinary potential to gather up reams of information on the very people it is supposed to serve.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corporate corruption and the disappearance of privacy from reliable major media sources.


New Report Sheds Light on Pentagon's Secret Wars Playbook
2022-11-03, The Intercept
Posted: 2022-11-22 04:02:04
https://theintercept.com/2022/11/03/us-military-secret-wars/

The United States has fought more than a dozen "secret wars" over the last two decades, according to a new report from the Brennan Center for Justice. Through a combination of ground combat, airstrikes, and operations by U.S. proxy forces, these conflicts have raged from Africa to the Middle East to Asia, often completely unknown to the American people and with minimal congressional oversight. These clandestine conflicts have been enabled by the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force, enacted in the wake of the September 11 attacks, as well as the covert action statute, which allows secret, unattributed operations, primarily conducted by the CIA. [The new] analysis is particularly illuminating in the case of Somalia, where the United States developed two key proxy forces, the Danab Brigade and the Puntland Security Force. The CIA began building the Puntland Security Force in 2002 to battle the Al Qaeda-affiliated al-Shabab and later the Islamic State in Somalia, or ISS. The force was transferred to U.S. military control around 2012 and went on to fight alongside U.S. Special Operations forces for a decade. [The Brennan Center's Katherine Yon] Ebright notes that the proxy fighters were "largely independent of the Somali government, despite being an elite armed brigade and one of Somalia's most capable special operations units. And their relationship with U.S. forces was long kept secret, with U.S. officials disavowing the presence of military advisers in Somalia until 2014."

Note: Since 2008, the US has supported at least nine coups in five African countries. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on military corruption from reliable major media sources.


When is a lynching a lynching?
2022-10-25, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2022-11-22 04:00:09
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/oct/25/lynching-michael-williams-iow...

Authorities swiftly called the death a homicide. The victim was 44-year-old Michael Williams. Days later, law enforcement agencies announced they had arrested and charged a 31-year-old army veteran, Steven Vogel, with murder. Williams had been strangled, according to the medical examiner’s office. Authorities arrested and charged three others with helping Vogel move the body. The case attracted national attention. Michael Williams was Black, and his body was burned and dumped in an almost-exclusively white part of Iowa. The four people arrested were white. These events occurred 15 weeks after Minneapolis police publicly murdered George Floyd. And yet, law enforcement immediately declared that no evidence suggested the murder had been motivated by racism. Williams’s family and other members of central Iowa’s Black community weren’t convinced. The simple fact a white man hanged a Black man with a rope and then set him on fire in an easily visible spot – with three other white people helping cover up the murder – was telling. Data analyzed by the Guardian reveals this to be common: victims’ loved ones clearly see racist motives, while law agencies often don’t. From the outset, authorities rejected a racial motive. “They never pursued it,” says Paula Terrell, Williams’s aunt. “They just kept saying ‘it’s a love triangle.’” In fact, Williams’s murder was one of several incidents in central Iowa that targeted Black people in short sequence.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on police corruption from reliable major media sources.


Shanghai Disney: Visitors unable to leave without negative Covid test as park shuts
2022-10-31, BBC News
Posted: 2022-11-22 03:58:18
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-63456107

Shanghai Disney has become the latest high-profile venue to shut its gates thanks to China's strict zero-Covid policy, trapping visitors inside. People have been told they will not be allowed out of the theme park until they can show a negative test. China's controversial zero-Covid policy has already seen millions of people repeatedly locked down, sometimes in unusual locations. The sudden nature lockdowns have seen people fleeing shops - including a Shanghai branch of Swedish furniture giant Ikea - and workplaces as they try to avoid being trapped inside. However, those awaiting their freedom at Shanghai Disney can console themselves with one positive: rides are continuing to operate for those trapped inside The Happiest Place on Earth. As well as the theme park, surrounding areas such as the shopping street were also abruptly closed. Videos posted on Chinese social media site Weibo showed people rushing to the park's gates following the announcement but finding them already locked. Posting on Chinese social media site WeChat, the Shanghai government said the park was barring people from entering and those inside could only leave once they had returned a negative test result. It added that anyone who has visited the park since Thursday must provide three negative test results over three consecutive days. Millions of people are under 200 different lockdowns in China, as of October 24, as the country of 1.45 billion consistently records more than 1,000 new Covid cases a day.

Note: By comparison, the U.S. had about 40,000 cases per day in late October. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on the coronavirus from reliable major media sources.


‘I Helped Destroy People’
2021-09-01, New York Times Magazine
Posted: 2022-11-22 03:56:45
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/01/magazine/fbi-terrorism-terry-albury.html

On April 17, 2018, Terry Albury appeared in a federal court in Minneapolis, where he pleaded guilty to charges of leaking classified information to the press. The allegations — that Albury downloaded, printed and photographed internal F.B.I. documents on his office computer, sending some of them electronically to a journalist and saving others on external devices found in his home — resulted from a 17-month-long internal investigation by the F.B.I., prompted by two Freedom of Information Act requests by a news organization ... in March 2016. Nine months after these FOIA requests were made, a trove of internal F.B.I. documents shedding new light on the vast and largely unrestricted power of the post-9/11 F.B.I. was posted on the investigative-journalism site The Intercept. The cache included hundreds of pages of unredacted policy manuals, including the F.B.I.’s byzantine rule book, the Domestic Investigations and Operations Guide, exposing the hidden loopholes that allowed agents to violate the bureau’s own rules against racial and religious profiling and domestic spying as they pursued the domestic war on terror. In October 2018, he was sentenced to four years in prison. Albury says he felt a moral imperative to make his disclosures, motivated by his belief that the bureau had been so fundamentally transformed by Sept. 11 that its own agents were compelled to commit civil and human rights violations.

Note: Listen to Albury talk about his experiences in this podcast. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and the erosion of civil liberties from reliable major media sources.


Mushroom walls and waste-fuelled stoves: inside the self-sufficient home of tomorrow
2022-11-09, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2022-11-22 03:54:24
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2022/nov/10/mushroom-walls-and-waste...

Joost Bakker believes a house can be more than a place to live: it can be a self-sustaining weapon against the climate crisis. A new Australian documentary explores his bold blueprint. Bakker – a multi-disciplinary designer, no-waste advocate and the film’s eponymous protagonist – has long been something of a provocateur. In 2020, the Dutch-born, Australian-raised designer’s two decades of high-concept sustainability projects came to a head when he hit go on the construction of Future Food System. Erected in one of the busiest areas of Melbourne, the off-grid, three-storey house and urban farm produced all of its own power and food. Even the cooking gas was generated from human and food waste. “We can have it all,” Bakker [says]. “We can have houses covered with biology, plants, ecosystems and waterfalls. It’s not necessary for us to be destroying the planet or killing each other with materials that are making us sick. The infrastructure is already there. It’s just about reimagining our suburbs and reimagining our buildings.” Shadowing Bakker throughout the project from set-up to pack-down, was film-maker Nick Batzias ... who squeezes plenty of action into the pacy 90-minute documentary. The bulk of the film focuses on the building’s green-thinking initiatives. Steam from the showers is used to grow mushrooms; the foundation-less building is anchored by self-watering garden beds filled with 35 tonnes of soil.

Note: Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.


Voters in 4 states reject forced work for prisoners
2022-11-09, Washington Post/Associated Press
Posted: 2022-11-22 03:52:52
https://www.washingtonpost.com/kidspost/2022/11/09/voters-reject-forced-labor...

Voters in four states approved ballot measures that will change their state constitutions to prohibit slavery and forcing someone to work against their will as punishment for crime. The initiatives won’t force immediate changes in the states’ prisons, but they may invite legal challenges over the practice of pressuring prisoners to work under threat of punishment or loss of privileges if they refuse the work. The results were celebrated among anti-slavery advocates, including those pushing to further amend the U.S. Constitution, which prohibits enslavement and forced work except as a form of criminal punishment. Nearly 160 years after enslaved Africans and their descendants were released from bondage through ratification of the 13th Amendment, the slavery exception continues to allow jails and prisons to use inmates for low-cost labor. U.S. Senator Jeff Merkley of Oregon and Representative Nikema Williams of Georgia, both Democrats, reintroduced legislation to revise the 13th Amendment to end the slavery exception. If it wins approval in Congress, the constitutional amendment must be ratified (approved) by three-fourths of the states. After Tuesday’s vote, more than a dozen states still have constitutions that include language permitting slavery and forced labor for prisoners. Prison labor is a multibillion-dollar practice. Workers usually make less than $1 per hour, sometimes only pennies. Prisoners who refuse to work can be denied privileges such as phone calls and visits with family.

Note: Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.


India’s ‘Open Prisons’ Are a Marvel of Trust-Based Incarceration
2022-05-12, Reasons to be Cheerful
Posted: 2022-11-22 03:51:07
https://reasonstobecheerful.world/india-open-prisons-escape-trust/

Though the people held at Sanganer open prison are technically incarcerated, they can leave the facility during the day and travel within the city limits. Almost immediately upon his arrival, Arjiram’s sense of self-worth grew. “It didn’t feel like I was in a prison,” he says. “I could go out and work and come back, and the best thing was they trusted me.” After being faceless and nameless for over a decade, he felt like a person again. According to the country’s National Crime Records Bureau, there are about 88 open prisons in India, the largest share of which are in the state of Rajasthan, where the model is being pioneered. India’s open prisons are defined by minimal security. They are run and maintained by the state, and those incarcerated within them are free to come and go as they please. At Sanganer, the prison is open for up to 12 hours each day. Every evening, prisoners must return to be counted at an end-of-day roll call. Designed to foster reform as opposed to punishment, the system is based on the premise that trust is contagious. It assumes — and encourages — self-discipline on the part of the prisoners. Letting incarcerated folks go to work also allows them to earn money for themselves and their families, build skills, and maintain contacts in the outside world that can help them once they’re released. In addition to allowing inmates to support themselves, open prisons require far less staff, and their operating costs are a fraction of those in closed prisons.

Note: Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.


Homeland Security Admits It Tried to Manufacture Fake Terrorists for Trump
2022-11-05, MSN News
Posted: 2022-11-14 23:51:05
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/homeland-security-admits-it-tried-to-...

The Department of Homeland Security launched a failed operation that ensnared hundreds, if not thousands, of U.S. protesters in what new documents show was as a sweeping, power-hungry effort before the 2020 election to bolster President Donald Trump’s spurious claims about a “terrorist organization” he accused his Democratic rivals of supporting. An internal investigative report, made public this month by Sen. Ron Wyden ... details the findings of DHS lawyers concerning a previously undisclosed effort by Trump’s acting secretary of homeland security, Chad Wolf, to amass secret dossiers on Americans in Portland attending anti-racism protests in summer 2020 sparked by the police murder of ... George Floyd. The report describes attempts by top officials to link protesters to an imaginary terrorist plot in an apparent effort to boost Trump’s reelection odds, raising concerns now about the ability of a sitting president to co-opt billions of dollars’ worth of domestic intelligence assets for their own political gain. DHS analysts recounted orders to generate evidence of financial ties between protesters in custody; an effort that, had they not failed, would have seemingly served to legitimize President Trump’s false claims about “Antifa.” The report describes the dossiers generated by DHS as having detailed the past whereabouts and the “friends and followers of the subjects, as well as their ... First Amendment speech activity.”

Note: Read about the FBI's use of entrapment to manufacture terrorist plots. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and the erosion of civil liberties from reliable major media sources.


Leaked Documents Outline DHS’s Plans to Police Disinformation
2022-10-31, The Intercept
Posted: 2022-11-14 23:48:55
https://theintercept.com/2022/10/31/social-media-disinformation-dhs/

The Department of Homeland Security is quietly broadening its efforts to curb speech it considers dangerous, an investigation by The Intercept has found. The work, much of which remains unknown to the American public, came into clearer view earlier this year when DHS announced a new “Disinformation Governance Board”: a panel designed to police misinformation (false information spread unintentionally), disinformation (false information spread intentionally), and malinformation (factual information shared, typically out of context, with harmful intent) that allegedly threatens U.S. interests. While the board was widely ridiculed, immediately scaled back, and then shut down within a few months, other initiatives are underway as DHS pivots to monitoring social media now that its original mandate — the war on terror — has been wound down. Behind closed doors, and through pressure on private platforms, the U.S. government has used its power to try to shape online discourse. Discussions have ranged from the scale and scope of government intervention in online discourse to the mechanics of streamlining takedown requests for false or intentionally misleading information. There is also a formalized process for government officials to directly flag content on Facebook or Instagram and request that it be throttled or suppressed through a special Facebook portal that requires a government or law enforcement email to use. How disinformation is defined by the government has not been clearly articulated.

Note: The Department of Homeland Security's Disinformation Governance Board has been paused, not stopped. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and media manipulation from reliable sources.


For Sex Traffickers, Jack Dorsey’s Cash App Is ‘King’
2022-11-03, Forbes
Posted: 2022-11-14 23:46:55
https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2022/11/03/cash-app-block-sex-tra...

Earlier this year, Kik Messenger user “heyyyydude1” was selling a stash of videos he’d amassed of child sexual abuse. One customer, who said he was a 35-year-old father of two, offered to buy 200 videos for $45. “How do I pay?” he asked. “Cash App,” heyyyydude1 responded, sending over his payment details and a code for a Cash App referral fee. With each transaction, and many more disturbing videos sent, the seller was unknowingly providing a pile of evidence to an undercover agent with the Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s child exploitation unit. Current and former police, as well as nonprofits working directly with cops to fight child exploitation, say that such crimes are often happening via Cash App, which brings in billions in gross profit every year for Block, Inc., the Jack Dorsey-run payments giant formerly known as Square. They say that whether it’s to pay for sex with a minor, to send children funds in return for nude images or to traffic a young adult victim, Cash App is often the payment tool of choice. Though it recently launched a Cash App for Teens feature, the company is conspicuously absent from collaborative efforts to fight abuse, failing to provide any tips to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC), America’s national clearing house for sexual abuse material found on tech platforms. Hundreds of pages of court filings describe cases where law enforcement said Cash App was used to either pay for sexualized images or sex with minors and adults.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corporate corruption and sexual abuse scandals from reliable major media sources.


A Plea for Making Virus Research Safer
2022-10-30, New York Times
Posted: 2022-11-14 23:45:21
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/30/opinion/virology-safety.html

New scientific breakthroughs make it increasingly easy to identify dangerous viruses in nature, manipulate them in the lab and synthetically create them from genetic sequences. But some scientists have taken it further, adding “gain of function” mutations that make potential pandemic viruses more transmissible. The National Institutes of Health funded two research groups to increase the transmissibility of an earlier strain of avian influenza that had killed hundreds of people but could not efficiently spread from person to person. Both groups created viral mutants that could transmit in ferrets. The Obama administration was so alarmed that it halted gain-of-function work on potential pandemic influenza viruses in 2014, but the N.I.H. allowed it to restart by 2019. In my view, there is no justification for intentionally making potential pandemic viruses more transmissible. The consequences of an accident could be too horrific, and such engineered viruses are not needed for vaccines anyway. Natural viruses that haven’t yet infected humans can also pose a risk if researchers try to find the most dangerous ones and bring them back to the lab for experiments. Suspicions about a lab-accident origin of SARS-CoV-2 have been fueled by the fact that the Wuhan Institute of Virology was involved in Chinese and international efforts to find and experiment with new high-risk coronaviruses. A final category of pandemic risk involves viruses that used to transmit in humans but became extinct long ago — like the 1918 influenza virus.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on science corruption and the coronavirus from reliable major media sources.


House Progressives Float Diplomatic Path Toward Ending War in Ukraine, Get Annihilated, Quickly "Clarify"
2022-10-24, The Intercept
Posted: 2022-11-14 23:43:37
https://theintercept.com/2022/10/25/house-progressives-letter-russia-ukraine-...

On Monday morning, 30 members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus sent a letter to the White House that attempted to gingerly open a conversation about a potential diplomatic end to Russia’s war on Ukraine. The door was slammed shut by the evening, met with enough fury to elicit a “clarification” in the form of a statement from caucus Chair Pramila Jayapal. “Let me be clear,” Jayapal said in a statement issued just before 7 p.m., “We are united as Democrats in our unequivocal commitment to supporting Ukraine in their fight for their democracy and freedom in the face of the illegal and outrageous Russian invasion, and nothing in the letter advocates for a change in that support.” On Tuesday afternoon, Jayapal followed the clarification by fully withdrawing the letter, saying it was “released by staff without vetting.” That the letter was met with fierce opposition is a measure of the space available for debate among congressional Democrats when it comes to support for the war and how it might be stopped before it turns nuclear: roughly zero. “I have voted for every defense package to Ukraine and stand firmly for Ukraine’s sovereignty,” Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., a letter signer, told The Intercept. “It should not be controversial to say we need to explore every diplomatic avenue to seek a just peace.” “The alternative to diplomacy is protracted war, with both its attendant certainties and catastrophic and unknowable risks,” the letter read.

Note: The powerful war machine can compromise even those with good intentions. Read an excellent article calling for urgent diplomacy on both sides of the political aisle to promote peaceful and democratic outcomes. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on war from reliable major media sources.


How a Rare Effort to Compensate Iraqi Airstrike Victims Failed
2022-10-29, The Intercept
Posted: 2022-11-14 23:41:45
https://theintercept.com/2022/10/29/iraq-hawija-airstrike-accountability/

Ashwaq Abdel Kareem heard the roar of a jet plane that foretold an airstrike. It was near midnight on June 1, 2015. Ashwaq, her husband, and five children were in the backyard. Far above Ashwaq and her family, a Dutch F-16 fighter jet released a bomb that whistled down to hit a car-bomb factory in the center of Hawija’s industrial district. The F-16’s mission was coordinated by the U.S.-led coalition fighting ISIS and was planned by the U.S. military. From 2014 to the present day, between 8,000 and 13,000 civilians have died as a result of bombing by the U.S.-led coalition in Iraq, according to the monitoring organization Airwars; the coalition only acknowledges the deaths of 1,417 civilians. At the height of the bombing in 2017, as the coalition bombed tightly packed urban areas like Mosul, at least 9,000 civilians died. Yet only one civilian received compensation, although the U.S. military did distribute a limited number of condolence or “ex gratia” payments — which are voluntary payments and not an admission of legal liability — reportedly to the families of around 14 victims. Despite its involvement [with the Hawija bombing], the United States has not offered an apology or individual compensation. This is consistent with U.S. policy that has made compensation for civilians extremely rare. The only legal way for civilians to pursue compensation in the U.S. has been through the Foreign Claims Act, but that excludes compensation for death or injury during combat, making victims of the Hawija bombing ineligible.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on war from reliable major media sources.


BBC tries to understand politics by creating fake Americans
2022-11-04, Associated Press
Posted: 2022-11-14 23:40:04
https://apnews.com/article/us-elections-misinformation-social-media-BBC-ameri...

BBC reporter Marianna Spring ... created five fake Americans and opened social media accounts for them, part of an attempt to illustrate how disinformation spreads on sites like Facebook, Twitter and TikTok despite efforts to stop it, and how that impacts American politics. Spring worked with the Pew Research Center in the U.S. to set up five archetypes. Besides the very conservative Larry and very liberal Emma, there’s Britney, a more populist conservative from Texas; Gabriela, a largely apolitical independent from Miami; and Michael, a Black teacher from Milwaukee who’s a moderate Democrat. Emma is a lesbian who follows LGBTQ groups, is an atheist, takes an active interest in women’s issues and abortion rights, supports the legalization of marijuana and follows The New York Times and NPR. These “traits” are the bait, essentially, to see how the social media companies’ algorithms kick in and what material is sent their way. That’s ... left Spring and the BBC vulnerable to charges that the project is ethically suspect in using false information to uncover false information. “By creating these false identities, she violates what I believe is a fairly clear ethical standard in journalism,” said Bob Steele, retired ethics expert. “We should not pretend that we are someone other than ourselves, with very few exceptions.” For a story last year, the Wall Street Journal created more than 100 automated accounts to see how TikTok steered users in different directions.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on media manipulation from reliable sources.


Florida man arrested for voting: 'What is wrong with this state?'
2022-10-19, MSNBC News
Posted: 2022-11-14 23:37:41
https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/florida-man-arrested-voti...

Gov. Ron DeSantis ... held a news conference two months ago, announcing that the Florida Office of Election Crimes and Security had found roughly 20 people who voted illegally in 2020. DeSantis, surrounded by uniformed officers, assured the public that the suspects were in custody and would be prosecuted. The Tampa Bay Times published a report yesterday, highlighting the nature of those arrests, alongside a video of police bodycam footage that's painful to watch. Politico reported a week after the arrests that several of those taken away in handcuffs had been "notified by official government entities they were eligible to vote." Floridians ... seemed utterly baffled as to why they were being taken away in handcuffs, insisting they had cast perfectly legal votes – not only because Floridians approved a state constitutional amendment in 2018, restoring voting rights to many felons, but also because they'd been explicitly told by officials that they could legally cast ballots.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corruption in government and in elections from reliable major media sources.


The architect helping sinking cities fight flooding
2022-10-28, CNN News
Posted: 2022-11-14 23:35:57
https://www.cnn.com/style/article/kotchakorn-voraakhom-landscape-architect-sp...

When floods devastated Bangkok more than a decade ago, Thai landscape architect Kotchakorn Voraakhom became determined to help her sinking hometown fight this deadly climate threat. The floods "changed my life," said Voraakhom. "I started using the tools of landscape architecture (to tackle) climate change." The 2011 floods killed hundreds and displaced millions. "For us, climate change is primarily a water crisis," she said. "Our people can feel its impacts in their daily lives, each year through worsening floods, rising sea levels, and severe drought." In many sinking cities, including Bangkok, the current urban infrastructure is not fit for purpose and is "reducing our ability to adapt," said Voraakhom, noting that many of Bangkok's waterways and canals have been destroyed or have fallen into disrepair. "For us, as a city of water, the only way is to go back to our amphibious culture and reclaim the relationship with water." The architect said she integrates nature and water into her designs to create landscapes that help alleviate flooding and add greenery to densely populated cities. Voraakhom also created Asia's largest rooftop farm, Siam Green Sky, transforming 22,400 square meters (241,000 square feet) into a lush haven. The farm, which recycles food waste from restaurants in the building below and uses it as plant fertilizer, also slows down, soaks up and stores large amounts of rainwater. It is then used to grow vegetables, herbs and fruit, as well as rice.

Note: Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.


No pooh-poohing poo: Researchers envision an extreme circular economy
2022-09-06, CNN News
Posted: 2022-11-14 23:34:14
https://www.cnn.com/2022/09/06/world/repurposed-poop-waste-natural-resource-s...

Imagine you’re eating dinner on a ceramic plate and drinking water from a plastic cup while sitting in a brick house – a seemingly ordinary scenario except that your plate, cup, and your home are all fashioned in part from recycled feces. In my upcoming book, “Flush: The Remarkable Science of an Unlikely Treasure,” I describe how the misunderstood byproduct of our daily living is a vastly undervalued natural resource. Try to reimagine wastewater treatment plants ... doubling as multipurpose resource recovery facilities. As an alternative to plastics made from fossil fuels, for example, researchers are making headway in producing safe and biodegradable bioplastics from existing waste streams. Creating planet-friendly bottles, containers, and other bioplastic products from what we leave behind is still a work in progress, said Zeynep Cetecioglu Gurol ... at the KTH Royal Institute of Technology. Developing an efficient and affordable method for recovering new products from wastewater could help offset the money, time, and effort spent by treatment plants to meet pollution limits in discharged water. “It’s a win-win,” she said. Engineers ... have focused on relieving the environmental problem of excavating clay soil for brick production, in part by exploring how to incorporate treated sewage solids, or biosolids, into fired bricks. Bricks with varying amounts of treated biosolids from Melbourne residents weren’t quite as strong as traditional counterparts. But they were lighter and better insulators.

Note: Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.


A ‘game-changer’ for millions of Americans: You can now buy hearing aids over the counter
2022-10-17, CNN News
Posted: 2022-11-14 23:31:43
https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/17/health/over-the-counter-hearing-aids-available...

For the first time, adults with mild to moderate hearing loss in the US will be able to buy over-the-counter hearing aids. Those who are under 18 or who have severe hearing loss will still need a prescription. In July, President Joe Biden signed an executive order meant to promote competition; it encouraged the US Food and Drug Administration allow over-the-counter, prescription-free hearing aids, and the FDA announced the long-awaited rule change in August. The move ushers in options that should be cheaper and possibly even better. Now, instead of getting a prescription and having a custom fitting with a hearing health professional, adults can buy hearing aids directly from a store or online. Some doctors estimate that 90% of the population with hearing loss could benefit from these over-the-counter devices. Experts say the move is a “game-changer.” The number of people with hearing loss is substantial. About 1 in 8 people in the US ages 12 and older has hearing loss in both ears. About a quarter of people 65 to 74 have hearing loss. On average, people spend at least $4,000 out of pocket for devices for both ears, according to a 2020 study published in the medical journal JAMA. Prices can vary: Large retailers may offer a pair for about $1,400, but some can cost as much as $6,000 per ear. Until now, five companies have controlled 90% of the global marketplace for hearing aids. That kind of consolidation meant there was little price competition.

Note: Why were these not available over the counter before? Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.


TikTok Browser Can Track Users’ Keystrokes, According to New Research
2022-08-19, New York Times
Posted: 2022-11-08 15:00:37
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/19/technology/tiktok-browser-tracking.html

The web browser used within the TikTok app can track every keystroke made by its users, according to new research that is surfacing as the Chinese-owned video app grapples with U.S. lawmakers’ concerns over its data practices. The research from Felix Krause, a privacy researcher and former Google engineer, did not show how TikTok used the capability, which is embedded within the in-app browser that pops up when someone clicks an outside link. But Mr. Krause said the development was concerning because it showed TikTok had built in functionality to track users’ online habits if it chose to do so. Collecting information on what people type on their phones while visiting outside websites, which can reveal credit card numbers and passwords, is often a feature of malware and other hacking tools. Apps sometimes use in-app browsers to prevent people from visiting malicious sites or to make online browsing easier with the auto-filling of text. But while Facebook and Instagram can use in-app browsers to track data like what sites a person visited ... TikTok goes further by using code that can track each character entered by users. As with many apps, TikTok offers few chances for people to click away from its service. Instead of redirecting to mobile web browsers like Safari or Chrome, an in-app browser appears when users click on ads or links embedded within the profiles of other users. These are often the moments people enter key information like credit card details or passwords.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corporate corruption and the disappearance of privacy from reliable major media sources.


TikTok has become a global giant. The US is threatening to rein it in
2022-10-31, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2022-11-08 14:58:35
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/oct/30/tiktok-regulation-data-pri...

Since Buzzfeed reported in June that employees of TikTok’s Chinese parent company ByteDance had access to US consumer data, TikTok has been the focus of rare bipartisan calls for regulation and inquiry. Those inquiries became more pressing when in July, the FBI director, Christopher Wray, called Chinese espionage the “greatest long-term threat to our nation’s ... economic vitality”. TikTok is a relatively new player in the arena of massive global social media platforms but it’s already caught the eye of regulators in Europe. New laws around child safety and general internet safety in the UK and the EU have forced the company to become more transparent about the way it operates and the way content spreads on its platform. In the US, moves to rein in the video platform have gained momentum only relatively recently, although there’s little debate that the round of regulatory pressure is warranted. With 1 billion users, the platform, which uses an algorithmic feed to push users short-form videos, has had its fair share of run-ins with misinformation, data privacy and concerns about child safety. Experts the Guardian spoke with did not question the cybersecurity threat China posed. However, some said they worried regulators’ hyper-focus on TikTok’s China connection could distract from other pressing concerns, including TikTok’s algorithm and how much user data the company collects, stores and shares. There are currently no federal regulations that protect such information.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corporate corruption and the disappearance of privacy from reliable major media sources.


Detroit Cops Want $7 Million in COVID Relief Money for Surveillance Microphones
2022-09-17, The Intercept
Posted: 2022-11-08 14:57:00
https://theintercept.com/2022/09/17/police-surveillance-shotspotter-detroit/

Detroit’s city council will soon vote on whether to spend millions in federal cash meant to ease the economic pains of the coronavirus pandemic on ShotSpotter, a controversial surveillance technology critics say is invasive, discriminatory, and fundamentally broken. ShotSpotter purports to do one thing very well: telling cops a gun has been fired as soon as the trigger is pulled. Using a network of microphones hitched to telephone poles, rooftops, and other urban vantage points, ShotSpotter is essentially an Alexa that listens for a bang rather than voice commands. Despite ShotSpotter’s corporate claims of 97 percent accuracy, the technology’s efficacy has been derided as dangerously ineffective — a techno-solutionist approach to public safety. ShotSpotter’s opponents in Detroit agreed that gun violence is a serious problem but said Covid-19 relief money would be far better spent on addressing the social ills that form the basis of crime. “If people had jobs, money, after-school programs, housing, the things that they need, that’s going to reduce gun violence,” said Alyx Goodwin, a campaign organizer with Action Center on Race and the Economy. Snyder pointed to the fundamental irony of diverting public money billed as form of relief for the pandemic’s downtrodden to surveil those very same people. ShotSpotter explicitly urges cities to tap funds from the American Rescue Plan Act, intended to salve financial hardship caused by the pandemic, to buy new surveillance microphones.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on police corruption and the coronavirus from reliable major media sources.


US firms exploiting Trump-era loophole over toxic ‘forever chemicals’
2022-10-12, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2022-11-08 14:54:15
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/oct/12/pfas-toxic-forever-chemic...

Chemical companies are dodging a federal law designed to track how many PFAS “forever chemicals” their plants are discharging into the environment by exploiting a loophole created in the Trump administration’s final months, a new analysis of federal records has found. The Fiscal Year 2020 National Defense Authorization Act put in place requirements that companies discharging over 100lb annually of the dangerous chemicals report the releases to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). But during the implementation process, Trump’s EPA created an unusual loophole that at least five chemical companies have exploited. PFAS ... accumulate in humans and the environment. A growing body of evidence links them to serious health problems like cancer, birth defects, liver disease and autoimmune disorders. The Trump EPA gave PFAS an unusual exemption under the law that allows companies not to report discharges if the amounts are ... less than 1% of a total mixture. Companies discharging thousands of pounds of PFAS could have gotten their releases under the 1% threshold via several routes. Companies may have added water to PFAS to dilute it to the point that it is below 1%. However, the total amount of PFAS released is still high, and may present a threat once in the environment. Companies may also be using complex mixtures with multiple PFAS. If the companies keep any one PFAS compound below the 1% threshold, then they won’t have to report it.

Note: Read more about the risks and dangers of these 'forever chemicals.' For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption from reliable major media sources.


The Fed Likes to Tout its Independence, So Why are Big Banks Lobbying It?
2022-10-26, The Intercept
Posted: 2022-11-08 14:52:44
https://theintercept.com/2022/10/26/federal-reserve-bank-lobby/

The Federal Reserve, far from the independent institution it often touts itself as, is under intense pressure at all times from massive commercial banks and other financial institutions advocating for favorable regulations, according to federal lobbying disclosures reviewed by The Intercept, as well as interviews with former Fed and other finance employees. The Federal Reserve has come under scrutiny in recent months for its aggressive interest rate hikes. The Fed’s own research has warned that its aggressive policy mirrors a similar one that caused a “severe recession” under Paul Volcker in the 1980s. Even the United Nations ... recently warned that the Fed’s rate hikes risk “inflicting worse damage than the financial crisis in 2008 and the COVID-19 shock in 2020.” Besides setting monetary policy, the Fed is also tasked with regulating commercial banks. The intense lobbying the Fed is subjected to is targeted at these banking regulations. Paid lobbyists make their case on behalf of massive financial corporations in the same fashion as K Street lobbyists hawking their wares to members of Congress. In 2022 alone, over 120 groups reported lobbying the Fed on issues ranging from credit card fees to cryptocurrency to sprawling monetary policy initiatives such as mortgage finance. Postings on the Federal Reserve website in the past year record meetings with Discover Financial, Student Loan Servicing Alliance, National Bankers Association, Capital One, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, and Goldman Sachs.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on financial system corruption from reliable major media sources.


Australia’s Covid lockdown rules found to have lacked fairness and compassion
2022-10-19, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2022-11-08 14:51:08
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/oct/20/australia-covid-lockdo...

Australia’s Covid-19 response failed the nation’s most vulnerable people and in many cases amounted to overreach, according to a new report. The report, Fault lines: an independent review into Australia’s response to Covid-19, led by former public servant Peter Shergold and released on Thursday, found some lockdowns and border closures were not necessary and schools should have remained open. “For many of us, the story of Covid-19 will be one of inconvenience,” the private- sector funded report says. “It will be a story of cutting our own hair, struggling to exercise, missed holidays ... and endless Zoom meetings. “For others, Covid-19 will be a story of trauma, isolation and terrifying uncertainty. “It will be a story of being locked in overcrowded housing, job loss and missing out on government supports. “It will be a story of more domestic violence, increased alcohol abuse, deteriorating mental and physical health. “It will be a story of loss and the brutal realisation of not being able to say final goodbyes to loved ones.” The report says politically driven health orders and excessive lockdowns failed to protect the old, ignored the young and abandoned disadvantaged communities. While school closures were probably the right decision when the virus was little understood, “it was wrong to close entire school systems, particularly once new information indicated that schools were not high-transmission environments”, the report says.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on the coronavirus from reliable major media sources.


Specialized invisible dye, delivered along with a vaccine, could enable “on-patient” storage of vaccination history
2019-12-18, MIT News
Posted: 2022-11-08 14:48:23
https://news.mit.edu/2019/storing-vaccine-history-skin-1218

MIT researchers have now developed a novel way to record a patient’s vaccination history: storing the data in a pattern of dye, invisible to the naked eye, that is delivered under the skin at the same time as the vaccine. The researchers showed that their new dye, which consists of nanocrystals called quantum dots, can remain for at least five years under the skin, where it emits near-infrared light that can be detected by a specially equipped smartphone. The researchers designed their dye to be delivered by a microneedle patch rather than a traditional syringe and needle. Such patches are now being developed to deliver vaccines for measles, rubella, and other diseases. “It’s possible someday that this ‘invisible’ approach could create new possibilities for data storage, biosensing, and vaccine applications that could improve how medical care is provided, particularly in the developing world,” [study co-author Robert] Langer says. Tests using human cadaver skin showed that the quantum-dot patterns could be detected by smartphone cameras after up to five years of simulated sun exposure. The research was funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Koch Institute Support (core) Grant from the National Cancer Institute.

Note: Could these quantum dots be used for tracking and monitoring people? This revealing article shows patents by Moderna suggesting their use in human vaccines. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on vaccines and the disappearance of privacy from reliable major media sources.


U.S. military suicides drop as leaders push mental health programs
2022-10-20, PBS/Associated Press
Posted: 2022-11-08 14:46:24
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/u-s-military-suicides-drop-as-leaders-pus...

Suicides across the active duty U.S. military decreased over the past 18 months, driven by sharp drops in the Air Force and Marine Corps last year and a similar decline among Army soldiers during the first six months of this year, according to a new Pentagon report. The numbers show a dramatic reversal of what has been a fairly steady increase in recent years. The shift follows increased attention by senior military leaders and an array of new programs aimed at addressing what has been a persistent problem in all the services. The numbers provide a glimmer of hope that some of the recent changes — which range from required counseling visits to stress relief education and recreational outings — may be working. According to the data, the number of suicides in the Air Force and Marine Corp dropped by more than 30 percent in 2021 compared with 2020, and the Navy saw a 10 percent decline. The Army saw a similar 30 percent decrease during the first six months of this year, compared with the same time period last year. The National Guard and the Reserves both saw a small dip in suicides, from 121 in 2020 to 119 in 2021. And there were also fewer Guard deaths in the first half of 2022, compared with last year. The Guard has worked over the last year to reduce suicides through outreach and other changes, including policies to destigmatize getting mental health help and a program that provides firearms locks for service members who keep weapons at home.

Note: Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.


Psychedelics And Mental Health: What Does The Science Say?
2022-09-02, Forbes
Posted: 2022-11-08 14:43:57
https://web.archive.org/web/20221021092440/https://www.forbes.com/health/mind...

Psychedelic therapy is the use of psychedelic substances, often alongside traditional talk therapy (psychotherapy), as a treatment for mental health issues such as anxiety, depression, suicidality and PTSD. Michael Mithoefer, M.D. ... at the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS), likens psychedelic therapy to applying a cast to a broken bone. “[Psychedelic]-assisted therapy engages the mind’s innate power to heal itself—the participants’ ‘inner healing intelligence,’” claims Dr. Mithoefer, going on to explain that “the source of the healing process is the person themselves—the psychedelic and therapists are catalysts.” In the U.S., psychedelics continue to undergo medical trials, with some being granted a “breakthrough therapy” designation by the FDA, indicating that preliminary clinical evidence has shown the drug can demonstrate substantial improvement over currently available therapy. COMPASS Pathways, a mental health treatment company, received the designation for its psilocybin therapy for treatment-resistant depression in 2018. In 2019, Usona Institute ... received the designation to continue its testing of psilocybin as a treatment for major depressive disorder. Psilocybin-assisted therapy is also being tested as a treatment for various addictions ... as well as certain conditions such as anxiety, depression, post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), cluster headaches, migraines and chronic pain.

Note: Read more about the healing potentials of psychedelic medicine. Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.


What Do Athletes Get From Ayahuasca, Mushrooms and Ecstasy?
2022-08-12, Sports Illustrated
Posted: 2022-11-08 14:42:24
https://www.si.com/more-sports/2022/08/12/psychedelics-sports-aaron-rodgers-d...

Aaron Rodgers and Kenny Stills are among the few who have spoken publicly about their use of psychedelics for mental health purposes. But a future where the treatment is more widespread across sports may not be so far away. “Some people still ... don’t recognize these as legitimate, life-saving medical medicines,” [NBA agent Daniel] Poneman says. “There are athletes that I know who have had life-changing experiences with these medicines, but only a few of them are brave enough to speak out for fear of being stigmatized.” There’s still stigma around taking medication of any kind for mental illness, but it’s slowly lessening. Aaron Rodgers said on a recent podcast that he has taken psychedelics to improve his mental health. The Packers’ quarterback said he does not identify as having a mental illness like depression or anxiety, but that his most recent psychedelic experience—with ayahuasca, in March 2020, in Peru—has helped increase his “self-love.” Before Rodgers spoke out, NFL free-agent wide receiver Kenny Stills was thought to be the only active professional athlete vocal about his psychedelic use. Stills, who last season played for the Saints, says his case of depression in 2016 felt like a “permanent cloud.” Last year he went to a clinic run by Field Trip Health, a for-profit that provides people with ketamine-assisted psychotherapy—meaning they have to take the medication under supervision of a licensed therapist and debrief with them afterward.

Note: Read more about the healing potentials of psychedelic medicine. Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.


Vaccine Passports Are Here to Stay. Why Worry?
2022-01-01, The Intercept
Posted: 2022-10-31 16:15:16
https://theintercept.com/2022/01/01/covid-vaccine-passports-surveillance/

The digital Covid vaccination certification, or “passport,” is a mobile app that instantaneously affirms the vaccinated status, Covid test results, birth date, gender, and/or other identifiers of its holder. The information is usually mosaicked in a QR code, read by a proprietary scanner, and linked to a government registry. Led by New York, California, and Louisiana, as many as 30 states are rolling them out. The Biden administration announced last spring that it would wrangle them under national standards but so far it hasn’t. Internationally, the EU and a growing number of countries are adopting them, from repressive regimes like Bahrain to democracies like Denmark. Twenty U.S. states have banned the passes, and hashtags like #NoVaccinePassports are proliferating on both sides of the Atlantic. “Spoiler alert,” tweeted British DJ ... Lange. “They are not planning on removing vax passports once introduced. This is just the first step to get you conditioned to accepting government restrictions in your daily life via your mobile phone. This digital ID is going to expand to all aspects of your life.” Evidence supports the detractors’ suspicions. Every government introducing a vaccine certification vows that their use is voluntary and no personal information will be held beyond its necessity. But governments are far from unanimous even on such basics as ... how long and by whom our intimate information will be held, owned, or overseen. New York, for one, is not expecting to mothball the technology when Covid wanes.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on coronavirus vaccines and the disappearance of privacy from reliable major media sources.


‘Slavery by any name is wrong’: the push to end forced labor in prisons
2022-09-27, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2022-10-31 16:13:02
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/sep/27/slavery-loophole-unpaid-labor...

“We have a system that forces people to work and not only forces them to work but does not give them an adequate living wage,” said [prison reformer Johnny] Perez. “Slavery by any name is wrong. Slavery in any shape or form is wrong.” Perez is now part of a nationwide movement that hopes to reform what some have called the “slavery loophole” that allows incarcerated people to be paid tiny sums for jobs that – if they refuse to do them – can have dire consequences. The 13th amendment of the US constitution, ratified in 1865, abolished slavery and involuntary servitude. But it contained an exception for “a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted”. This exception clause has been used to exploit prisoners in the US as workers, paying them nothing to a few dollars a day to perform jobs ranging from prison services to manufacturing or working for private employers where the majority of their pay is deducted for room and board and other expenses. A report published by the American Civil Liberties Union in June 2022 found about 800,000 prisoners out of the 1.2 million in state and federal prisons are forced to work, generating a conservative estimate of $11bn annually in goods and services while average wages range from 13 cents to 52 cents per hour. Five states – Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Mississippi and Texas – force prisoners to work without pay. The report concluded that the labor conditions of US prisoners violate fundamental human rights to life and dignity.

Note: The #EndTheException coalition is working to end slavery. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on prison system corruption from reliable major media sources.


Philadelphia apologizes for experiments on Black inmates
2022-10-07, NPR/Associated Press
Posted: 2022-10-31 16:10:45
https://www.npr.org/2022/10/07/1127406363/philadelphia-apologizes-experiments...

The city of Philadelphia issued an apology Thursday for the unethical medical experiments performed on mostly Black inmates at its Holmesburg Prison from the 1950s through the 1970s. The move comes after community activists and families of some of those inmates raised the need for a formal apology. It also follows a string of apologies from various U.S. cities over historically racist policies or wrongdoing in the wake of the nationwide racial reckoning after the killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer. The city allowed University of Pennsylvania researcher Dr. Albert Kligman to conduct the dermatological, biochemical and pharmaceutical experiments that intentionally exposed about 300 inmates to viruses, fungus, asbestos and chemical agents including dioxin — a component of Agent Orange. The vast majority of Kligman's experiments were performed on Black men, many of whom were awaiting trial and trying to save money for bail, and many of whom were illiterate, the city said. Many of the former inmates would have lifelong scars and health issues from the experiments. A group of the inmates filed a lawsuit against the university and Kligman in 2000 that was ultimately thrown out because of a statute of limitations. Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney said in the apology that the experiments exploited a vulnerable population and the impact of that medical racism has extended for generations. Last year, the University of Pennsylvania issued a formal apology.

Note: Read about the long and disturbing history of people being treated like guinea pigs in science experiments. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corruption in science and in the prison system from reliable major media sources.


Animal populations experience average decline of almost 70% since 1970, report reveals
2022-10-12, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2022-10-31 16:08:32
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/oct/13/almost-70-of-animal-popul...

Earth's wildlife populations have plunged by an average of 69% in just under 50 years, according to a leading scientific assessment, as humans continue to clear forests, consume beyond the limits of the planet and pollute on an industrial scale. From the open ocean to tropical rainforests, the abundance of birds, fish, amphibians and reptiles is in freefall, declining on average by more than two-thirds between 1970 and 2018, according to the WWF and Zoological Society of London's (ZSL) biennial Living Planet Report. Two years ago, the figure stood at 68%, four years ago, it was at 60%. Many scientists believe we are living through the sixth mass extinction – the largest loss of life on Earth since the time of the dinosaurs – and that it is being driven by humans. The Living Planet Index combines global analysis of 32,000 populations of 5,230 animal species to measure changes in the abundance of wildlife across continents and taxa, producing a graph akin to a stock index of life on Earth. Latin America and the Caribbean region – including the Amazon – has seen the steepest decline in average wildlife population size, with a 94% drop in 48 years. Land use change is still the most important driver of biodiversity loss across the planet, according to the report. Mike Barrett, executive director of science and conservation at WWF-UK, said: "At a global level, primarily the declines we are seeing are driven by the loss and fragmentation of habitat driven by the global agricultural system and its expansion into intact habitat."

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on mass animal deaths from reliable major media sources.


Pfizer COVID vaccine price hike to boost revenue for years, rivals may follow
2022-10-21, Reuters
Posted: 2022-10-31 16:05:48
https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/pfizer-covid-vacc...

Pfizer's plan to as much as quadruple U.S. prices for its COVID-19 vaccine next year is beyond Wall Street's expectations and will spur its revenue for years despite weaker than anticipated demand for the new booster shot so far, analysts said. The drugmaker, which developed and sells the vaccine with Germany's BioNTech, said on Thursday evening that it is targeting a range of $110 to $130 a dose for the vaccine once the United States moves to a commercial market next year. Analysts said the move could lead to price hikes by rivals. The companies have varied the pricing during the pandemic, with wealthy countries paying the most for the shots and the poorest countries the least. Wells Fargo analyst Mohit Bansal said the new pricing range for the vaccine could add around $2.5 billion to $3 billion in annual revenue for Pfizer. "This is much higher than our assumption of $50 per shot," Bansal wrote in a research note. Global vaccine access group the People’s Vaccine Alliance, which has pushed for Pfizer to allow cheaper copies of the vaccine to be made, called the proposed price hike "daylight robbery." The price range announced by Pfizer represented a more than 10,000% markup over what experts have estimated it costs the vaccine makers to produce the shots.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on coronavirus vaccines from reliable major media sources.


The CIA Just Invested in Woolly Mammoth Resurrection Technology
2022-09-28, The Intercept
Posted: 2022-10-31 16:03:34
https://theintercept.com/2022/09/28/cia-extinction-woolly-mammoth-dna/

The Dallas-based biotechnology company Colossal Biosciences has a vision: “To see the Woolly Mammoth thunder upon the tundra once again.” Founders George Church and Ben Lamm have already racked up an impressive list of high-profile funders and investors, including Peter Thiel, Tony Robbins, Paris Hilton, Winklevoss Capital — and, according to the public portfolio its venture capital arm released this month, the CIA. Colossal says it hopes to use advanced genetic sequencing to resurrect two extinct mammals — not just the giant, ice age mammoth, but also a mid-sized marsupial known as the thylacine, or Tasmanian tiger, that died out less than a century ago. In-Q-Tel, its new investor, is registered as a nonprofit venture capital firm funded by the CIA. On its surface, the group funds technology startups with the potential to safeguard national security. In addition to its long-standing pursuit of intelligence and weapons technologies, the CIA outfit has lately displayed an increased interest in biotechnology and particularly DNA sequencing. “Biotechnology and the broader bioeconomy are critical for humanity to further develop. It is important for all facets of our government to develop them and have an understanding of what is possible,” Colossal co-founder Ben Lamm wrote. The embrace of this technology, according to In-Q-Tel’s blog post, will help allow U.S. government agencies to read, write, and edit genetic material, and, importantly, to steer global biological phenomena that impact “nation-to-nation competition.”

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on intelligence agency corruption from reliable major media sources.


477 whales die in 'heartbreaking' New Zealand strandings
2022-10-12, ABC News/Associated Press
Posted: 2022-10-31 16:01:29
https://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory/477-whales-die-heartbreaking-zeal...

Some 477 pilot whales have died after stranding themselves on two remote New Zealand beaches over recent days, officials say. None of the stranded whales could be refloated and all either died naturally or were euthanized in a “heartbreaking” loss, said Daren Grover, the general manager of Project Jonah, a nonprofit group which helps rescue whales. The whales beached themselves on the Chatham Islands, which are home to about 600 people and located about 800 kilometers (500 miles) east of New Zealand's main islands. The Department of Conservation said 232 whales stranded themselves Friday at Tupuangi Beach and another 245 at Waihere Bay on Monday. The deaths come two weeks after about 200 pilot whales died in Australia after stranding themselves on a remote Tasmanian beach. Mass strandings of pilot whales are reasonably common in New Zealand, especially during the summer months. Scientists don't know exactly what causes the whales to strand, although it appears their location systems can get confused by gently sloping sandy beaches. Grover said there is a lot of food for the whales around the Chatham Islands, and as they swim closer to land, they would quickly find themselves going from very deep to shallow water. “They rely on their echolocation and yet it doesn't tell them that they are running out of water,” Grover said. “They come closer and closer to shore and become disoriented. The tide can then drop from below them and before they know it, they're stranded on the beach.”

Note: What so many articles on the mass whale strandings fail to mention is military devices which are known to damage echolocation abilities. As this article states, “The low frequency active sonar (LFA sonar) used by the military to detect submarines is the loudest sound ever put into the seas. Yet the U.S. Navy is planning to deploy LFA sonar across 80 percent of the world ocean. At an amplitude of 240 decibels, it is loud enough to kill whales and dolphins and has already caused mass strandings and deaths in areas where U.S. and/or NATO forces have conducted exercises.”


The cover-up: Israel attacked a US spy ship
2001-08-07, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2022-10-31 15:58:43
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/aug/08/israel

In 1967, Israel attacked a US spy ship, killing 34 men and injuring many more. The Israelis claimed it was an accident, the Americans backed them up. Both governments concealed the horrific truth. As the [USS] Liberty sat within eyeshot of El Arish, eavesdropping on surrounding communications, Israeli soldiers turned the town into a slaughterhouse, systematically butchering their prisoners. In the shadow of the El Arish mosque, they lined up about 60 unarmed Egyptian prisoners, hands tied behind their backs, and then opened fire with machine guns until the pale desert sand turned red. This and other war crimes were just some of the secrets Israel had sought to conceal since the start of the conflict. An essential element in the Israeli battle plan seemed to have been to hide much of the war behind a carefully constructed curtain of lies: lies about the Egyptian threat, lies about who started the war, lies to the US. Into this sea of deception and slaughter sailed the USS Liberty, an enormous spy factory loaded with the latest eavesdropping gear. The order was given to kill her and at 12.05pm, three motor torpedo boats from the port of Ashdod, about 50 miles away, departed. Israeli air force fighters, loaded with 50mm cannon ammunition, rockets and napalm, followed. According to information, interviews and documents obtained, for nearly 35 years the NSA has hidden the fact that one of its planes - a Navy EC-121 ferret - was overhead at the time of the incident, eavesdropping on what was going on below.

Note: Watch an excellent documentary on this cruel attack. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on military corruption from reliable major media sources.


How Taiwan's 'civic hackers' helped find a new way to run the country
2020-09-21, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2022-10-31 15:56:47
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/sep/27/taiwan-civic-hackers-polis-cons...

It came to be known as the Sunflower movement, a sudden three-week stand-off in 2014 between the government and Taiwanese protesters. Months later, government officials arrived at a ... university campus to ask for the help of a group that few knew even existed: the civic hackers. Taiwan's civic hackers were organized around a leaderless collective called g0v (pronounced "gov zero.") Many believed in radical transparency ... and in the idea that everyone who is affected by a decision should have a say in it. They preferred establishing consensus to running lots of majority-rule votes. These were all principles, incidentally, that parallel thinking about how software should be designed – a philosophy that g0v had begun to apply to the arena of domestic politics. As g0v saw it, the problem of politics was essentially one of information. They needed a way not to measure division, but construct consensus. The hackers' answer was called vTaiwan. The platform invites citizens into an online space for debate that politicians listen to and take into account when casting their votes. As people expressed their views, rather than serving up the comments that were the most divisive, it gave the most visibility to those finding consensus. Soon, vTaiwan was being rolled out on issue after issue, especially those related to technology, and each time a hidden consensus was revealed. "Invariably, within three weeks or four, we always find a shape where most people agree on most of the statements.” Most valuable of all, by clearing away the noise and divisiveness, vTaiwan created outcomes that the government could actually act on. It has formed the core of around a dozen pieces of laws and regulations now implemented in Taiwan, on everything from revenge porn to fintech regulation. More are waiting to be passed. The system's potential to heal divisions, to reconnect people to politics, is a solution made for the problems of our age.

Note: Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.


Postcards from Kamikatsu, Japan’s ‘zero-waste’ town
2022-04-27, Washington Post
Posted: 2022-10-31 15:55:27
https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-solutions/interactive/2022/japan-zero-...

Tucked away in the mountains of Japan’s Shikoku island, a town of about 1,500 residents is on an ambitious path toward a zero-waste life. In 2003, Kamikatsu became the first municipality in Japan to make a zero-waste declaration. Since then, the town has transformed its open-air burning practices for waste disposal into a system of buying, consuming and discarding with the goal of reaching carbon neutrality. Now, the town estimates it is more than 80 percent of its way toward meeting that goal by 2030. The Zero Waste Center is the town’s recycling facility, where residents can sort their garbage into 45 categories — there are nine ways to sort paper products alone — before they toss the rest into a pile for the incinerators. Residents clean and dry dirty items so they are suitable for recycling. The town offers an incentive system in which people can collect recycling points in exchange for eco-friendly products. There are signs depicting what new items will be made out of those recycled items, and how much money the town is saving by working with recycling companies rather than burning the trash. It’s a way to remind them of their social responsibility. Attached to the Zero Waste Center is a thrift shop where residents can drop off items they don’t want anymore, and others can take them free. All they need to do is weigh the item they take from the shop and log the weight in a ledger so the shop can keep track of the volume of reused items. In January alone, about 985 pounds’ worth of items were rehomed.

Note: Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.


Braver Angels: Seeking to de-polarize America
2022-10-16, CBS News
Posted: 2022-10-31 15:54:05
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/braver-angels-seeking-to-de-polarize-america/

Michigan is a battleground state, in every sense of the word. Here, purple doesn't mean moderate; it means the 50-50, Red/Blue split is a chasm. On a recent Saturday in Traverse City, Mich., people gathered – half of them Red, the other half Blue – brought together by Braver Angels, a not-for-profit attempting to narrow the divide. "I'm here out of concern for our country, and our democracy," said one attendee, Jane. Started in 2016, Braver Angels now holds sessions nationwide. It was shaped by Bill Doherty, who teaches relationships at the University of Minnesota. He's also a marriage counselor. Correspondent Martha Teichner asked Doherty, "Is it a proper analogy: Reds and Blues in America, and couples on the brink of divorce?" "There is an analogy to couples on the brink," Doherty replied. "A big difference is that divorce is not possible in America." In Traverse City, participants arrived uneasy at first, defensive. Task #1 at a Red/Blue workshop: stereotypes. Reds and Blues, seated in separate rooms, are asked to list what "they" call "you." Facilitators then ask each side if there's is a kernel of truth in those stereotypes. Tim said, "The passion for the pro-life cause sometimes seems not to hear women." And so it goes, for three hours, peeling back the onion of opinion, looking for common ground. No trying to change anybody's mind. Divided they were, but they showed up, because they wanted to know each other not by label, but by name. Braver Angels has held more than 2,000 workshops and is growing.

Note: Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.


Women said coronavirus shots affect periods. New study shows they’re right.
2022-09-27, Washington Post
Posted: 2022-10-24 23:05:30
https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/2022/09/27/covid-vaccine-period-late/

Not long after the rollout of coronavirus vaccines last year, women around the country began posting on social media about what they believed was a strange side effect: changes to their periods. Now, new research shows that many of the complaints were valid. A study of nearly 20,000 people around the world shows that getting vaccinated against covid can change the timing of the menstrual cycle. Vaccinated people experienced, on average, about a one-day delay in getting their periods, compared with those who hadn’t been vaccinated. The data for the study, published Tuesday in the British Medical Journal, was taken from a popular period-tracking app called Natural Cycles and included people from around the world, but most were from North America, Britain and Europe. The researchers used “de-identified” data from the app to compare menstrual cycles among 14,936 participants who were vaccinated and 4,686 who were not. The data showed that vaccinated people got their periods 0.71 days late, on average, after the first dose of vaccine. However, people who received two vaccinations within one menstrual cycle experienced greater disruptions. In this group, the average increase in cycle length was four days, and 13 percent experienced a delay of eight days or more. Many people on social media have complained of longer, heavier and more-painful periods after getting vaccinated. Preliminary findings from a different study suggest that getting a coronavirus vaccine sometimes may cause heavier periods.

Note: This news article states, "men who contract COVID-19 may experience a temporary reduction in fertility." Yet this Guardian article, titled "No data linking Covid vaccines to menstrual changes, US experts say" quotes an expert claiming, "I suspect the awful people who invented this lie saw the reports of menstrual irregularities post Covid-19 vaccine online and decided to warp it for their campaign of chaos. No, the Covid-19 vaccine is not capable of exerting reproductive control via proxy. Nothing is. This is because it is a vaccine, not a spell."


Yes, they claimed the vaccines would prevent transmission
2022-10-17, News.com.au (One of Australia's popular news sources)
Posted: 2022-10-24 23:03:14
https://www.news.com.au/technology/science/human-body/yes-they-claimed-the-va...

No, you’re not crazy. Yes, they claimed the vaccines would prevent transmission. One of the most bizarre lies being told this week in response to Pfizer executive Janine Small’s testimony to EU Parliament is that, actually, the Covid vaccines were never supposed to stop the spread of the virus. Asked by Dutch MEP Rob Roos whether the company had tested its vaccine on “stopping the transmission of the virus” before it rolled out globally, Ms Small said “no” because “we had to really move at the speed of science to really understand what is taking place in the market”. In a viral Twitter video which has now been viewed more than 12 million times, Mr Roos described the response as “scandalous”, arguing “millions of people worldwide felt compelled to get vaccinated because of the myth that ‘you do it for others’”. Mr Roos said the admission removed the entire basis for vaccine mandates and passports which “led to massive institutional discrimination as people lost access to essential parts of society”. The public was told repeatedly, for months, both explicitly and implicitly, that the vaccines would prevent transmission. They’re all on tape saying it. US President Joe Biden, for example, said in July 2021 that “you’re not going to get Covid if you have these vaccinations”. CDC director Rochelle Walensky said in March 2021 that “vaccinated people do not carry the virus”. In Australia, politicians ... held millions of people hostage for months, lecturing and threatening them to get vaccinated to regain their “freedoms”.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and coronavirus vaccines from reliable major media sources.


Federal Officials Trade Stock in Companies Their Agencies Oversee
2022-10-11, Wall Street Journal
Posted: 2022-10-24 23:01:11
https://www.wsj.com/articles/government-officials-invest-in-companies-their-a...

Thousands of officials across the government’s executive branch reported owning or trading stocks that stood to rise or fall with decisions their agencies made, a Wall Street Journal investigation has found. More than 2,600 officials at agencies from the Commerce Department to the Treasury Department, during both Republican and Democratic administrations, disclosed stock investments in companies while those same companies were lobbying their agencies for favorable policies. That amounts to more than one in five senior federal employees across 50 federal agencies reviewed by the Journal. A top official at the Environmental Protection Agency reported purchases of oil and gas stocks. The Food and Drug Administration improperly let an official own dozens of food and drug stocks on its no-buy list. A Defense Department official bought stock in a defense company five times before it won new business from the Pentagon. The Journal obtained and analyzed more than 31,000 financial-disclosure forms for about 12,000 senior career employees, political staff and presidential appointees. The review spans 2016 through 2021 and includes data on about 850,000 financial assets and more than 315,000 trades. More than five dozen officials at five agencies, including the Federal Trade Commission and the Justice Department, reported trading stock in companies shortly before their departments announced enforcement actions, such as charges and settlements, against those companies.

Note: You can read the entire article free of charge on this webpage. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption from reliable major media sources.


New data is out on COVID vaccine injury claims. What's to make of it?
2022-10-12, Reuters
Posted: 2022-10-24 22:59:30
https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/new-data-is-out-covid-vaccine-injury...

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, facing a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit seeking a vast trove of data about the safety and side-effects of the COVID-19 vaccines, made a pledge in August. The agency in court papers said that on or before Sept. 30, it would post on its website a "public use" set of data from about 10 million people who signed up for its "v-safe" program -- a smartphone-based system that periodically sends people text messages and web surveys to monitor potential side effects from the Pfizer, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccines. But the CDC missed its deadline. In the meantime, the CDC handed over the v-safe data (minus personal identifying information) to the plaintiff in the FOIA case, the Informed Consent Action Network, or ICAN, a Texas-based nonprofit. ICAN crunched the numbers on its own and came up with some statistics that its lawyer says appear to be "alarming." According to ICAN, 7.7% of the v-safe users - 782,913 people - reported seeking medical attention via a telehealth appointment, urgent care clinic, emergency room intervention or hospitalization following a COVID-19 vaccine. About 25% of v-safe users said they experienced symptoms that required them to miss school or work or prevented them from doing other normal activities, according to ICAN's "dashboard" that summarizes the results. In addition to the dashboard summary, ICAN on its website has made the underlying dataset available for public download.

Note: These are very significant numbers, yet other than this Reuters report, the media is largely silent about this very important data. For lots more on this important development with access to the data, see this webpage. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on coronavirus vaccines from reliable major media sources.


CDC's Covid-19 Vaccine v-safe Data Released Pursuant to Court Order
2022-10-03, PR Newswire
Posted: 2022-10-24 22:57:47
https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/cdcs-covid-19-vaccine-v-safe-data-re...

In response to a lawsuit filed by Siri & Glimstad LLP on behalf of the Informed Consent Action Network (ICAN), the CDC has released the first set of data from its v-safe program. V-safe is a smartphone-based program created by CDC specifically for Covid-9 vaccines. It allows users to register and provide health check-ins after receiving a Covid-19 vaccine. Out of the approximate 10 million v-safe users, 782,913 individuals, or over 7.7% of v-safe users, had a health event requiring medical attention, emergency room intervention, and/or hospitalization. Another 25% of v-safe users had an event that required them to miss school or work and/or prevented normal activities. There were also 71 million symptoms reported in the pre-populated fields. This is an average of more than 7 symptoms reported per v-safe user. Reported symptoms include, for example, over 4 million reports of joint pain. While around 2 million of these joint pain reports were mild, over 1.8 million were for moderate joint pain and over 400,000 were for severe joint pain. There were also around 13,000 infants under 2 years of age registered in v-safe. Among these infants, over 33,000 symptoms were reported, with the most common symptoms being irritability, sleeplessness, pain, and loss of appetite. The data also reflects a disproportionate amount of negative health impacts, including medical events, following the Moderna vaccine versus the Pfizer vaccine and shows a disproportionate number of negative events reported by women versus men.

Note: For lots more on this important development with access to the data, see this webpage. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on coronavirus vaccines from reliable major media sources.


Retired U.S. Generals, Admirals Take Top Jobs with Saudi Crown Prince
2022-10-18, Washington Post
Posted: 2022-10-24 22:55:41
https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/interactive/2022/veterans-us-fo...

More than 500 retired U.S. military personnel — including scores of generals and admirals — have taken lucrative jobs since 2015 working for foreign governments, mostly in countries known for human rights abuses and political repression, according to a Washington Post investigation. In Saudi Arabia, for example, 15 retired U.S. generals and admirals have worked as paid consultants for the Defense Ministry since 2016. The ministry is led by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the kingdom’s de facto ruler, who U.S. intelligence agencies say approved the 2018 killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, a Post contributing columnist, as part of a brutal crackdown on dissent. Saudi Arabia’s paid advisers have included retired Marine Gen. James L. Jones, a national security adviser to President Barack Obama, and retired Army Gen. Keith Alexander, who led the National Security Agency under Obama and President George W. Bush. Others who have worked as consultants for the Saudis since Khashoggi’s murder include a retired four-star Air Force general and a former commanding general of U.S. troops in Afghanistan. All the while, the gulf countries’ security forces have continued to commit human rights abuses at home and beyond their borders. With shared intelligence, aerial refueling and other support from the U.S. government and contractors, Saudi Arabia and the UAE have intervened in Yemen’s civil war to disastrous effect, triggering a global humanitarian crisis and killing thousands of civilians.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption from reliable major media sources.


Saudi Arabia sentences U.S. citizen to 16 years in prison for tweets
2022-10-17, Washington Post
Posted: 2022-10-24 22:54:03
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/17/almadi-sentenced-tweets-sa...

The Saudi government has sentenced a 72-year-old U.S. citizen to 16 years in prison for tweets he posted while inside the United States, some of which were critical of the Saudi regime. His son, speaking publicly for the first time, alleges that the Saudi government has tortured his father in prison and says that the State Department mishandled the case. While the Biden administration has gone to considerable effort to secure the release of high-profile Americans from Russia, Venezuela and Iran, it has been less public and less successful in securing the release of U.S. citizens held in Saudi Arabia. In fact, despite that Saudi Arabia is supposedly a U.S. ally, the Saudi government under Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) is dealing with its U.S.-citizen critics more harshly than ever. Saudi American Saad Ibrahim Almadi ... is not a dissident or an activist; he is simply a project manager from Florida. But last November, when he traveled to Riyadh to visit family, he was detained regarding 14 tweets posted on his account. Almadi was charged with harboring a terrorist ideology, trying to destabilize the kingdom, as well as supporting and funding terrorism. The State Department told [his son] Ibrahim not to speak publicly about the case, but he no longer believes that staying quiet will secure his father’s freedom. And he says that State has handled his father’s case with neglect and incompetence. Ibrahim said that Saudi jailers threaten to torture prisoners who involve foreign governments in their cases.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption from reliable major media sources.


The ‘very, very bad look' of remdesivir, the first FDA-approved COVID-19 drug
2020-10-28, Science
Posted: 2022-10-24 22:51:52
https://www.science.org/content/article/very-very-bad-look-remdesivir-first-f...

October was a good month for Gilead Sciences, the giant manufacturer of antivirals. On 8 October, the company inked an agreement to supply the European Union with its drug remdesivir as a treatment for COVID-19—a deal potentially worth more than $1 billion. Two weeks later, on 22 October, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved remdesivir for use against the pandemic coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 in the United States. Both decisions baffled scientists who have closely watched the clinical trials of remdesivir unfold. At best, one large, well-designed study found remdesivir modestly reduced the time to recover from COVID-19 in hospitalized patients with severe illness. A few smaller studies found no impact of treatment on the disease whatsoever. Then ... the World Health Organization's (WHO's) Solidarity trial showed that remdesivir does not reduce mortality or the time COVID-19 patients take to recover. Both [the] FDA's decision and the EU deal came about under unusual circumstances that gave the company important advantages. FDA never consulted a group of outside experts that it has at the ready to weigh in on complicated antiviral drug issues. The European Union, meanwhile, decided to settle on the remdesivir pricing exactly 1 week before the disappointing Solidarity trial results came out. Gilead, having donated remdesivir to the trial, was informed of the data on 23 September and knew the trial was a bust.

Note: Remdesivir had never been approved by the FDA for use before Oct. 2020, yet was rushed through the approval process, while Nobel-prize winning drug Ivermectin was all but banned, even though there was minimal evidence of harm. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on the coronavirus from reliable major media sources.


This Styrofoam-eating ‘superworm’ could help solve the garbage crisis
2022-06-17, Washington Post
Posted: 2022-10-24 22:49:26
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/06/17/plastic-eating-superworm...

A plump larva the length of a paper clip can survive on the material that makes Styrofoam. The organism, commonly called a “superworm,” could transform the way waste managers dispose of one of the most common components in landfills, researchers said, potentially slowing a mounting garbage crisis that is exacerbating climate change. In a paper released last week in the journal of Microbial Genomics, scientists from the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia, showed that the larvae of a darkling beetle, called zophobas morio, can survive solely on polystyrene, commonly called Styrofoam. The findings come amid a flurry of research on ways bacteria and other organisms can consume plastic materials, like Styrofoam and drinking bottles. Now, the researchers will study the enzymes that allow the superworm to digest Styrofoam, as they look to find a way to transform the finding into a commercial product. Industrial adoption offers a tantalizing scenario for waste managers: A natural way to dispose and recycle the Styrofoam trash that accounts for as much as 30 percent of landfill space worldwide. Among plastics, Styrofoam is particularly troublesome. The material is dense and takes up a lot of space, making it expensive to store at waste management facilities, industry experts said. The cups, plates and other materials made from it are also often contaminated with food and drink, making it hard to recycle. Polystyrene fills landfills, where it can often take 500 years to break down.

Note: Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.


Wax worm saliva rapidly breaks down plastic bags, scientists discover
2022-10-04, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2022-10-24 22:47:57
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/oct/04/wax-worm-saliva-rapidly-b...

Enzymes that rapidly break down plastic bags have been discovered in the saliva of wax worms, which are moth larvae that infest beehives. The enzymes are the first reported to break down polyethylene within hours at room temperature. The discovery came after one scientist, an amateur beekeeper, cleaned out an infested hive and found the larvae started eating holes in a plastic refuse bag. The researchers said the study showed insect saliva may be “a depository of degrading enzymes which could revolutionise [the cleanup of polluting waste]”. Polyethylene makes up 30% of all plastic production and is used in bags and other packaging that make up a significant part of worldwide plastic pollution. The only recycling at scale today uses mechanical processes and creates lower-value products. Chemical breakdown could create valuable chemicals or, with some further processing, new plastic, thereby avoiding the need for new virgin plastic made from oil. The enzymes can be easily synthesised and overcome a bottleneck in plastic degradation, the researchers said, which is the initial breaking of the polymer chains. That usually requires a lot of heating, but the enzymes work at normal temperatures, in water and at neutral pH. Previous discoveries of useful enzymes have been in microbes, with a 2021 study indicating that bacteria in oceans and soils across the globe are evolving to eat plastic. It found 30,000 different enzymes that might degrade 10 different types of plastic.

Note: This research was published in the journal Nature Communications. Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.


Australia to set aside at least 30% of its land mass to protect endangered species
2022-10-04, Reuters
Posted: 2022-10-24 22:46:06
https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/australia-set-aside-least-30-its-l...

Australia will set aside at least 30% of its land mass for conservation in a bid to protect plants and animals in the island continent famed for species found nowhere else in the world, Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek said. Australia has lost more mammal species than any other continent and has one of the worst rates of species decline among the world's richest countries, a five-yearly environmental report card released in July by the government showed. That report showed the number of species added to the list of threatened species or in a higher category of risk grew on average by 8% from the previous report in 2016. "The need for action to protect our plants, animals and ecosystems from extinction has never been greater," Plibersek said in a statement. By prioritising 110 species and 20 places, Plibersek said the areas managed for conservation will be increased by 50 million hectares. Australia ... is home to unique animals like koalas and platypus although their numbers have been dwindling due to extreme weather events and human encroachment into their habitats. Koalas along much of the east coast were listed as endangered in February. Australia has been battered recently by frequent extreme weather events including the devastating bushfires in 2019 and 2020 in the east that killed ... billions of animals and burned an area nearly half the size of Germany.

Note: Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.


‘The Cash Monster Was Insatiable’: How Insurers Exploited Medicare for Billions
2022-10-08, New York Times
Posted: 2022-10-17 09:45:57
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/08/upshot/medicare-advantage-fraud-allegation...

By next year, half of Medicare beneficiaries will have a private Medicare Advantage plan. Most large insurers in the program have been accused in court of fraud. The health system Kaiser Permanente called doctors in during lunch and after work and urged them to add additional illnesses to the medical records of patients they hadn’t seen in weeks. Doctors who found enough new diagnoses could earn bottles of Champagne, or a bonus in their paycheck. Anthem, a large insurer now called Elevance Health, paid more to doctors who said their patients were sicker. And executives at UnitedHealth Group, the country’s largest insurer, told their workers to mine old medical records for more illnesses. Each of the strategies — which were described by the Justice Department in lawsuits against the companies — led to diagnoses of serious diseases that might have never existed. But the diagnoses had a lucrative side effect: They let the insurers collect more money from the federal government’s Medicare Advantage program. A New York Times review of dozens of fraud lawsuits, inspector general audits and investigations by watchdogs shows how major health insurers exploited the program to inflate their profits by billions of dollars. Eight of the 10 biggest Medicare Advantage insurers — representing more than two-thirds of the market — have submitted inflated bills, according to the federal audits. And four of the five largest players — UnitedHealth, Humana, Elevance and Kaiser — have faced federal lawsuits alleging ... fraud.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corporate corruption and health from reliable major media sources.


Biden offers mass pardon for those convicted of marijuana possession
2022-10-06, Washington Post
Posted: 2022-10-17 09:44:02
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/06/biden-marijuana-decriminal...

President Biden announced major steps toward decriminalizing marijuana possession Thursday, offering mass pardons for anyone convicted of a federal crime for simply possessing the drug, and urging governors to do the same. He also directed his administration to expedite a review of whether marijuana should continue to be listed as a Schedule I substance, a classification reserved for the most dangerous drugs, including heroin, LSD and ecstasy. “Too many lives have been upended because of our failed approach to marijuana,” Biden said in a video statement. “It’s time that we right these wrongs.” He added: “There are thousands of people who were convicted for marijuana possession who may be denied ... opportunities as a result.” While no one is currently serving time in federal prison solely for the crime of simple marijuana possession, officials said, about 6,500 people have such convictions on their records. Those convictions would be pardoned, and the offenders’ records cleared, under an administrative process. Thousands of additional people who are residents of the District, which is subject to federal law, could also be pardoned, officials said. Others affected could be those arrested in places such as airports and federal parks, which are under federal law enforcement jurisdiction. Biden’s actions, however, do not directly affect the vast majority of marijuana-related convictions, which are pursued under state law.

Note: The War on Drugs has been called a trillion dollar failure. In the US, police arrest more people for marijuana use than for all violent crimes combined.


Has the C.I.A. Done More Harm Than Good?
2022-10-03, New Yorker
Posted: 2022-10-17 09:41:38
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/10/10/has-the-cia-done-more-harm-than...

Harry Truman became President in April, 1945. Two years later, he signed the National Security Act, which established the C.I.A.. It was supposed to do what its name suggested: centralize the intelligence that various agencies gathered. “It was not intended as a ‘Cloak and Dagger’ Outfit!,” Truman later wrote. In its charter, the C.I.A. was banned from domestic spying. There was no mention of covert action in the law that chartered the C.I.A., but Presidents—starting with Truman—began using it that way. One of the agency’s first operations involved meddling in the 1948 Italian election. During the Vietnam War, the C.I.A. had discouraging intelligence to offer, and, when successive Administrations didn’t want to hear it, focused on being helpful by providing ... supposedly quick fixes. That meant abetting a coup in 1963, spying on antiwar protesters, and launching the Phoenix Program, an anti-Vietcong campaign marked by torture and by arbitrary executions. More than twenty thousand people were killed under Phoenix’s auspices. The C.I.A. has had a “defining failure” for every decade of its existence—sometimes more than one. In the nineteen-nineties, it was the lack of foresight about the Soviet Union; in the two-thousands, it was the phantom weapons of mass destruction, followed by torture and, in still evolving ways, by the drone-based program of targeted killings, with its high toll of civilian deaths. It’s difficult to know, at this point, what the C.I.A.’s next defining failure ... will be.

Note: Read more about the CIA's Phoenix Program, which included the kidnapping, torture, and murder of civilians during the Vietnam War. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on intelligence agency corruption from reliable major media sources.


NIH Awards New Grant to U.S. Organization at Center of COVID-19 Lab Leak Controversy
2022-10-04, The Intercept
Posted: 2022-10-17 09:39:24
https://theintercept.com/2022/10/04/ecohealth-alliance-lab-leak-nih-grant/

The main U.S.-based scientific organization at the center of the controversy over the origin of the Covid-19 pandemic has won a new grant from the National Institutes of Health for risky bat coronavirus surveillance research, despite losing a previous award for failing to provide records essential to an investigation into that origin. The grant was awarded September 21 to EcoHealth Alliance, helmed by Peter Daszak, and is titled “Analyzing the potential for future bat coronavirus emergence in Myanmar, Laos, and Vietnam.” The new grant comes despite an open congressional investigation into the organization, which has two other ongoing NIH grants and a third in negotiation. The aim of the new research is to identify areas of potential concern for future pandemic emergence in order to help public health authorities suppress an outbreak before it breaks containment. But the process of performing the research introduces the risk of sparking an outbreak that would not otherwise have occurred, a concern highlighted by The Intercept last year: “Virtually every part of the work of outbreak prediction can result in an accidental infection. Even with the best of intentions, scientists can serve as vectors for the viruses they hunt — and as a result, their work may put everyone else’s lives on the line along with their own.” “It is disturbing that additional funding continues to be awarded for the same high-risk research that may have caused the current pandemic,” said [molecular biologist] Richard Ebright.

Note: Watch an excellent interview in which a former EcoHealth Alliance VP turned whistleblower reveals blatant law-breaking and lies committed by Peter Daszak and EcoHealth Alliance. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and the coronavirus from reliable major media sources.


86% of kids under 17 have antibodies from a past COVID infection, CDC data shows
2022-10-06, ABC News
Posted: 2022-10-17 09:37:31
https://abcnews.go.com/Health/86-kids-17-antibodies-past-covid-infection-cdc/...

More than eight in 10 kids under the age of 17 have antibodies from a past COVID-19 infection, according to new data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The analysis shows that as of August, 86% of children between 6 months and 17-years-old have had at least one COVID infection since the pandemic began. That number is an increase from data in April, when the public health agency found 75% of people under the age of 17 had been infected with the virus. "What we have to recognize is this is more of an indication that there's been broad spread of this virus in the pediatric community," said Dr. John Brownstein, an ABC News contributor. "And that, you know, the kids are not sheltered from this virus. And we know that in a small number of cases, there's severe impacts." What the findings don't mean is that 86% of children and adolescents are now protected against COVID reinfection because they've had COVID before. Experts have noted that they don't know exactly how long protection from infection lasts after contracting the virus. "What we should not take away from this data is that that the kids are now immune from infection," Brownstein said. "As we know, immunity wanes, variants evolved to evade prior immunity."

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on the coronavirus from reliable major media sources.


US buys $290 million in anti-radiation drugs amid Putin’s nuke threats
2022-10-07, New York Post
Posted: 2022-10-17 09:35:29
https://nypost.com/2022/10/07/us-buys-290m-in-anti-radiation-drugs-amid-nuke-...

The Biden administration bought $290 million of anti-radiation drugs this week as the president warned of “the prospect of Armageddon” being sparked by warmongering Russian leader Vladimir Putin. The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) confirmed that the major supply of Nplate was part of “ongoing efforts to be better prepared to save lives following radiological and nuclear emergencies.” The drug — which can be used on kids as well as adults — is “approved to treat blood cell injuries that accompany acute radiation syndrome [ARS] in adult and pediatric patients,” the department said. Such radiation sickness “occurs when a person’s entire body is exposed to a high dose of penetrating radiation, reaching internal organs in a matter of seconds,” the alarming HHS release noted. Nplate, made by California-based Amgen, stimulates the body’s production of platelets “to reduce radiation-induced bleeding.” The $290 million funding came from Project BioShield, the 2004 law that provides investment that encourages companies to “develop the medical countermeasures that are critical to national security.” The initial announcement did not detail how ... the drug would be distributed. An HHS spokesperson insisted that the investment was part of “ongoing” nuclear prep, and had “not been accelerated by the situation in Ukraine.” However, it was approved just days before President Biden publicly admitted that Putin was “not joking when he talks about the use of tactical nuclear weapons.”

Note: Is it any surprise that the US government is giving a gift of $290 million (US taxpayer money) to big Pharma? Remember that like previous huge purchases of drugs that were never used, these drugs have expiration dates after which they must be tossed. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption from reliable major media sources.


The traditional think tank is withering. In its place? Bankers and consultants.
2017-04-06, Washington Post
Posted: 2022-10-17 09:33:34
https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2017/04/06/the-traditional-t...

Anybody who works in Washington knows that think tanks play an important role in advising the government on policy. One organization in particular has dramatically increased its influence over the past decade. The policy shop in question is McKinsey, a global — and highly profitable — consulting firm. In the foreign policy community, think tanks are widely viewed as the traditional brokers in the marketplace of ideas. But this is changing. Whether based in investment banks like Goldman Sachs, management consultancies like McKinsey or political risk firms like the Eurasia Group, private-sector institutions have started to act like policy knowledge brokers. Consultants have been key advisers to the government for decades, but recent trends have caused their star to rise at the same time that traditional think tanks face new challenges. The University of Pennsylvania’s annual think tank report has stressed “the fierce competition think tanks are facing from consulting firms” in recent years. And think tank officials have acknowledged the sway of donors. Bill Goodfellow, the executive director of the Center for International Policy, told the Times: “It’s absurd to suggest that donors don’t have influence. The danger is we in the think tank world are being corrupted in the same way as the political world.” The irony is that the nonprofit actors, in trying to expand their base of support, have been accused of compromising their independence, while the explicitly for-profit world of consultants has avoided the charge.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption from reliable major media sources.


The History Of The FBI's Secret 'Enemies' List
2012-02-14, NPR
Posted: 2022-10-17 09:31:09
https://www.npr.org/2012/02/14/146862081/the-history-of-the-fbis-secret-enemi...

Even before he became director of the FBI, [J. Edgar] Hoover was conducting secret intelligence operations against U.S. citizens he suspected were anarchists, radical leftists or communists. After a series of anarchist bombings went off across the United States in 1919, Hoover sent five agents to infiltrate the newly formed Communist Party. "From that day forward, he planned a nationwide dragnet of mass arrests to round up subversives, round up communists, round up Russian aliens," [author Tim] Weiner says. On Jan. 1, 1920, Hoover sent out the arrest orders, and at least 6,000 people were arrested and detained throughout the country. "When the dust cleared, maybe 1 in 10 was found guilty of a deportable offense," says Weiner. Hoover, Attorney General Mitchell Palmer and Secretary of the Navy Franklin Delano Roosevelt all came under attack for their role in the raids. Hoover started amassing secret intelligence on "enemies of the United States" — a list that included terrorists, communists, spies — or anyone Hoover or the FBI had deemed subversive. Later on, anti-war protesters and civil rights leaders were added to Hoover's list. "Hoover saw the civil rights movement from the 1950s onward and the anti-war movement from the 1960s onward, as presenting the greatest threats to the stability of the American government since the Civil War," [Weiner] says. "These people were enemies of the state, and in particular Martin Luther King [Jr.] was an enemy of the state."

Note: Read more about the FBI's COINTELPRO program. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on intelligence agency corruption and the erosion of civil liberties from reliable major media sources.


Tsunamika, the dolls that give voice to the ocean, livelihood to women
2019-11-10, CNBC (India affiliate)
Posted: 2022-10-17 09:28:21
https://www.cnbctv18.com/buzz/tsunamika-the-dolls-that-give-voice-to-the-ocea...

She gave birth to Tsunamika, the doll that brought hope to hundreds of women who had lost everything in their life to the devastating 2004 tsunami that hit the southern India coast. Fifteen years down the line, she, again through Tsunamika is giving hope to the same ocean that once took away much from many. Uma Prajapati, 50, an entrepreneur-cum-social activist, who built the fashion garment company Upasana Design Studio in Auroville, now plans to carry out her business to sustain the future of the planet. Prajapati's mission is now to protect the environment and promote sustainable living for those dependent on it. Her fashion garments only uses khadi, organic cotton and handloom. "When I visited the tsunami-affected fishing villages in Puducherry, I saw the women staring emptily and silent. It suddenly struck me to ask them whether they would like to make dolls. My idea was to make them to focus on something else and ignite the fire of hope in their minds." When the fisherwomen agreed, Prajapati brought loads of garment waste from Upasana and taught them how to make tiny dolls - these were named 'Tsunamika'. She took the doll idea to several fishing villages in Puducherry and soon had thousands of dolls on hand giving rise to the concept of a 'gift economy'. The Tsunamika dolls are not sold but given as gifts. The recipient of the gift or others can make a donation as per their capacity. Donations received were used for making more dolls and payments made to the fisherwomen.

Note: See this webpage for more on this inspiring story. Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.


Goodbye, Columbus? Here's what Indigenous Peoples' Day means to Native Americans
2022-10-10, NPR
Posted: 2022-10-17 09:26:33
https://www.npr.org/2021/10/11/1044823626/indigenous-peoples-day-native-ameri...

For only the second time, a U.S. president has officially recognized Indigenous Peoples' Day. President Biden issued a proclamation on Friday to observe this Oct. 10 as a day to honor Native Americans, their resilience and their contributions to American society throughout history, even as they faced assimilation, discrimination and genocide spanning generations. The move shifts focus from Columbus Day, the federal holiday celebrating Christopher Columbus, which shares the same date as Indigenous Peoples' Day this year. The idea was first proposed by Indigenous peoples at a United Nations conference in 1977 held to address discrimination against Natives. But South Dakota became the first state to replace Columbus Day with Indigenous Peoples day in 1989. Ten states and Washington, D.C., now recognize Indigenous Peoples' Day via proclamation. More than 100 cities celebrate the day, with many of them having altogether dropped the holiday honoring Columbus to replace it with Indigenous Peoples' Day. Oregon marked its first statewide recognition of Indigenous Peoples' Day, in place of Columbus Day, in 2021 after its legislature passed a bill brought by its Indigenous lawmakers. Rep. Tawna Sanchez, one of those lawmakers, said the movement to recognize the day is an ideal time to capitalize on the momentum of political recognition. "History is always written by the conqueror," said Sanchez. "How do we actually tell the truth about what happened?"

Note: Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.


Can plants think? The burgeoning field of plant neurobiology has a lot to say on the matter
2022-09-30, Salon
Posted: 2022-10-17 09:25:05
https://www.salon.com/2022/09/30/can-plants-think-the-burgeoning-field-of-pla...

Recent research suggests that plants are far from the stationary automatons that most of us think of them as. And though they don't have brains in the same way most animals do, plants seem to possess a different set of evolutionary tools that suggest they may experience consciousness, albeit in a radically different way from us. Dr. Paco Calvo has an upcoming book, co-authored with Natalie Lawrence, called "Planta Sapiens: Unmasking Plant Intelligence." Calvo works at the MINT Lab (Minimal Intelligence Lab) at the University of Murcia in Spain. "Sentience, we may say, makes sense for life, as an essential underpinning to the business of living," Calvo explained. "And it is very unlikely that plants are not far more aware than we intuitively assume." To the "skeptics" who insist that consciousness must be tied to a central nervous system, and that plants would not need to evolve consciousness in the first place, "even if 'consciousness', as understood in vertebrates, is generated by complex neuronal systems, there is no objective way of knowing that subjective experience has not evolved with entirely different kinds of hardware in other organisms," Calvo argued. "We have no evidence to conclude that no brain means no awareness. It is certainly true that we cannot yet know if plants are conscious. But we also cannot assume that they are not." Calvo added, "Plants ... might well have significant conscious experience, although there is no way for us to intuit it nor for them to communicate it to us."

Note: Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.


Pentagon UFO study led by researcher who believes in the supernatural
2022-06-29, Science
Posted: 2022-10-10 13:21:33
https://www.science.org/content/article/pentagon-ufo-study-led-researcher-who...

When the U.S. government released a much-anticipated report on UFOs a year ago, many were perplexed that it couldn’t explain 143 of the 144 sightings it examined. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which released the study, provided no details about who had investigated the cases. Last week, however, a former Department of Defense (DOD) astrophysicist and reality TV personality named Travis Taylor asserted that he was the ‘chief scientist’ for the congressionally mandated study. The revelation shocked UFO skeptics in the science community. They note that Taylor has made extraordinary claims during TV appearances, including to have "seen more UFOs than I can count," and that he’s been tracked by supernatural entities that caused his car and appliances to malfunction. In fact, Taylor did serve in a lead role with the government's Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP) Task Force, which produced 2021's fuzzy UFO report, Pentagon spokesperson Susan Gough confirmed. In recent statements to George Knapp, a TV journalist in Las Vegas, Taylor said he was asked to be the government’s lead scientist on UFOs in 2019 by Jay Stratton, whom he counts as a long-time DOD colleague and friend. At the time, Taylor was with the U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command, where he was employed from 2007 until retiring 2 months ago. Stratton was based at the Office of Naval Intelligence before retiring recently. Both men now work for Radiance Technologies.

Note: If you’ve ever had the feeling your soul might not be from this planet, you might enjoy this interview. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on UFOs from reliable major media sources. Then explore the excellent, reliable resources provided in our UFO Information Center.


Whistleblower: Hundreds Left FBI Over Misconduct in 20 Years
2022-10-06, U.S. News & World Report/Associated Press
Posted: 2022-10-10 13:19:28
https://www.usnews.com/news/politics/articles/2022-10-06/whistleblower-hundre...

A U.S. senator is pressing the FBI for more information after a whistleblower alleged that an internal review found 665 FBI personnel have resigned or retired to avoid accountability in misconduct probes over the past two decades. The whistleblower told the office of Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley ... that the Justice Department launched the review of the FBI’s disciplinary database in 2020 following an Associated Press investigation into sexual misconduct allegations involving at least six senior FBI officials. The follow-up review found 665 FBI employees, including 45 senior-level officials, resigned or retired between 2004 and 2020 following a misconduct probe but before a final disciplinary letter could be issued, according to a letter this week from Grassley to FBI Director Christopher Wray and Attorney General Merrick Garland. It was not clear how many of those cases involved sexual misconduct. Grassley’s office, which declined to make the whistleblower or underlying documents available to protect the person’s identify, said that was the kind of information it was still seeking but estimated the number could be in the “hundreds.” The AP investigation in December 2020 identified at least six sexual misconduct allegations involving senior FBI officials over the prior five years ranging from unwanted touching and advances to coercion. It found that several senior FBI officials have avoided discipline — quietly transferring or retiring with full benefits — even after claims of sexual misconduct against them were substantiated.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and sexual abuse scandals from reliable major media sources.


What happens to weapons sent to Ukraine? The US doesn’t really know
2022-04-19, CNN News
Posted: 2022-10-10 13:16:58
https://www.cnn.com/2022/04/19/politics/us-weapons-ukraine-intelligence/index...

The US has few ways to track the substantial supply of anti-tank, anti-aircraft and other weaponry it has sent across the border into Ukraine, sources tell CNN, a blind spot that’s due in large part to ... the easy portability of many of the smaller systems now pouring across the border. In the short term, the US sees the transfer of hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of equipment to be vital to the Ukrainians’ ability to hold off Moscow’s invasion. But the risk, both current US officials and defense analysts say, is that in the long term, some of those weapons may wind up in the hands of other militaries and militias that the US did not intend to arm. “We have fidelity for a short time, but when it enters the fog of war, we have almost zero,” said one source briefed on US intelligence. “It drops into a big black hole.” In making the decision to send billions of dollars of weapons and equipment into Ukraine, the Biden administration factored in the risk that some of the shipments may ultimately end up in unexpected places, a defense official said. The Biden administration and NATO countries say they are providing weapons to Ukraine based on what the Ukrainian forces say they need, whether it’s portable systems like Javelin and Stinger missiles or the Slovakian S-300 air defense system that was sent over the last week. For decades, the US sent arms into Afghanistan. Inevitably, some weapons ended up on the black market including anti-aircraft Stinger missiles, the same kind the US is now providing to Ukraine.

Note: CBS released a documentary revealing that most weapons sent to the Ukraine never made it to their intended destination. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on military corruption from reliable major media sources.


Dr. Fauci and wife’s wealth ‘skyrocketed’ by $5 million during pandemic: analysis
2022-09-29, New York Post
Posted: 2022-10-10 13:15:04
https://nypost.com/2022/09/29/fauci-and-wifes-wealth-skyrocketed-by-5m-during...

Dr. Anthony Fauci and his wife’s net worth grew by $5 million during the COVID-19 pandemic as thousands of US residents struggled financially, according to a government spending watchdog group. The combined wealth of the 81-year-old retiring director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and his bioethicist wife, Christine Grady, soared from $7.5 million in 2019 to $12.6 million at the end of 2021, according to a report from the non-profit OpenTheBooks. “Despite becoming a figure of controversy, the system has rewarded Dr. Fauci handsomely,” the group’s CEO, Adam Andrzejewski, [said]. “Fauci’s soaring net worth was based on career-end salary spiking, lucrative cash prizes awarded by non-profit organizations around the world and an ever-larger investment portfolio. He is the top-paid federal employee, his first-year golden parachute retirement pension is the largest in federal history, and he’s accepting $1 million prizes from foreign non-profits.” Last year, Fauci raked in lucrative awards from nonprofits, including $1 million from the Dan David Foundation for “speaking truth to power” and “defending science” during the Trump Administration. He kept $910,400 of that award, while roughly 10% went to scholarship winners. His total compensation was $456,028 last year, up from the $434,312 he earned in 2020. Overall, the couple’s investments also increased by more than $900,000 in 2021 while their portfolios — which included trust, retirement and college education accounts — jumped $800,000 in 2020.

Note: Why is Anthony Fauci paid more than the U.S. president? Could it be a reward for gifting big Pharma with many billions in profits? For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and the coronavirus from reliable major media sources.


Thousands were released from prison during covid. The results are shocking.
2022-09-29, Washington Post
Posted: 2022-10-10 13:13:06
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/29/prison-release-covid-pande...

We are keeping many people in prison even though they are no danger to the public, a jaw-dropping new statistic shows. That serves as proof that it’s time to rethink our incarceration policies for those with a low risk of reoffending. To protect those most vulnerable to covid-19 during the pandemic, the Cares Act allowed the Justice Department to order the release of people in federal prisons and place them on home confinement. More than 11,000 people were eventually released. Of those, the Bureau of Prisons (BOP) reported that only 17 of them committed new crimes. That’s not a typo. Seventeen. That’s a 0.15 percent recidivism rate in a country where it’s normal for 30 to 65 percent of people coming home from prison to reoffend within three years of release. Of those 17 people, most new offenses were for possessing or selling drugs or other minor offenses. Of the 17 new crimes, only one was violent (an aggravated assault), and none were sex offenses. This extremely low recidivism rate shows there are many, many people in prison we can safely release to the community. These 11,000 releases were not random. People in low- and minimum-security prisons or at high risk of complications from covid were prioritized for consideration for release. The federal Cares Act home confinement program should inspire similar programs across the country. Virtually all states have programs available to release elderly or very sick people from prison, but they are hardly used and should be expanded.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on the coronavirus and prison system corruption from reliable major media sources.


Study links in utero ‘forever chemical’ exposure to low sperm count and mobility
2022-10-05, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2022-10-10 13:10:48
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2022/oct/05/pfas-sperm-count-mobility-tes...

A new peer-reviewed Danish study finds that a mother’s exposure to toxic PFAS “forever chemicals” during early pregnancy can lead to lower sperm count and quality later in her child’s life. PFAS – per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances – are known to disrupt hormones and fetal development, and future “reproductive capacity” is largely defined as testicles develop in utero during the first trimester of a pregnancy, said study co-author Sandra Søgaard Tøttenborg. PFAS are a class of about 12,000 chemicals typically used to make thousands of products resistant to water, stains and heat. They are called “forever chemicals” because they accumulate in humans and the environment and do not naturally break down. A growing body of evidence links them to serious health problems such as cancer, birth defects, liver disease, kidney disease and decreased immunity. The study ... examined semen characteristics and reproductive hormones in 864 young Danish men born to women who provided blood samples during their pregnancies’ first trimesters between 1996 and 2002. Mothers with higher levels of exposure more frequently raised adult men with lower sperm counts, as well as elevated immotile sperm levels, meaning their sperm did not swim. This exposure also increased the amount of non-progressive sperm – sperm that do not swim straight or swim in circles. Both issues can lead to infertility. The ubiquitous chemicals are estimated to be in 98% of Americans’ blood.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on health from reliable major media sources.


The Democrats are purposely boosting far-right Republicans. This will backfire
2022-10-03, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2022-10-10 13:08:45
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/oct/03/the-democrats-are-purpo...

Democratic strategists have spent millions of dollars to aid extremists. In the current election cycle ... Democrats across the country spent millions of dollars to boost the candidacies of right-wing Maga candidates in the Republican primaries, on the theory that those extremists would be easier to defeat in the general election. The Washington Post found that Democrats had spent close to $20m in eight states on ads meant to elevate the profile of far-right candidates and election deniers running for governorships and for Congress. A number of those candidates, like the maniacal Christian zealots Doug Mastriano in Pennsylvania and Darren Bailey in Illinois, did in fact win their primaries, setting up, in theory, easier races for the Democrats in those states to win, because, in theory, swing voters prefer not to vote for lunatics. It is not hard to see why it is dumb to dedicate resources to making Maga Republicans more visible and viable within their own party. You are promoting an awful ideology in hopes of winning votes – but in the long run, politics is a battle of ideology. The votes follow the ideology. The consultants are fighting on the wrong battleground, and no matter how many polls they have, they are not clever enough to predict the chaotic long-run effects of fueling a movement that is the opposite of the movement we should be trying to build. Spending money to try to dupe hapless Republican voters into backing the goofiest fascist is not just stupid; it goes against justice.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on elections corruption from reliable major media sources.


What to Know About the Bilderberg Group's Secret Annual Meeting
2016-06-09, Time Magazine
Posted: 2022-10-10 13:06:52
https://time.com/4362872/bilderberg-group-meetings-2016-conspiracy-theories/

A shadowy world government. Political kingmakers. A capitalist cabal looking to impose its will across the globe. For decades, conspiracy theorists have tried to decode the secretive Bilderberg Group, an annual gathering of the some of the world’s most powerful figures. Since 1954, the Bilderberg Group has been gathering in secret to discuss everything from the rise and fall of communism to nuclear warfare to cybersecurity. The group began as a way to create more cooperation between Europe and North America during the Cold War, and Bilderberg releases an annual list of the people who will attend and the topics they’ll discuss, but beyond that, little leaves the walls of the meeting rooms. Theorists also cite the inclusion of Bill Clinton at the meetings in 1991 before he was president and Tony Blair’s presence in 1993 before he became the British prime minister as examples of the group’s power. Past attendees have included former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger (who will also be attending this year), former Chase Manhattan chief executive David Rockefeller, and British Prime Minister David Cameron. Two-thirds of this year’s attendees are from Europe while a third are from the U.S., including Sam Altman, president of the tech seed accelerator Y Combinator; NBC News’s Richard Engel; Sen. Lindsay Graham of South Carolina; LinkedIn CEO Reid Hoffman; and PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on secret societies from reliable major media sources.


4-Day Workweek Brings No Loss of Productivity, Companies in Experiment Say
2022-09-22, New York Times
Posted: 2022-10-10 13:03:47
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/22/business/four-day-work-week-uk.html

Most of the companies participating in a four-day workweek pilot program in Britain said they had seen no loss of productivity during the experiment, and in some cases had seen a significant improvement, according to a survey of participants. Nearly halfway into the six-month trial, in which employees at 73 companies get a paid day off weekly, 35 of the 41 companies that responded to a survey said they were “likely” or “extremely likely” to consider continuing the four-day workweek beyond the end of the trial in late November. All but two of the 41 companies said productivity was either the same or had improved. Remarkably, six companies said productivity had significantly improved. Talk of a four-day workweek has been around for decades. In 1956, then-Vice President Richard M. Nixon said he foresaw it in the “not too distant future,” though it has not materialized on any large scale. But changes in the workplace over the coronavirus pandemic around remote and hybrid work have given momentum to questions about other aspects of work. Are we working five days a week just because we have done it that way for more than a century, or is it really the best way? More than 3,300 workers in banks, marketing, health care, financial services, retail, hospitality and other industries in Britain are taking part in the pilot, which is one of the largest studies to date. Experiments similar to the one conducted in Britain are being conducted ... in the United States, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand and Australia.

Note: Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.


Belgium to offer employees four-day working week
2022-02-16, Washington Post
Posted: 2022-10-10 13:02:27
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/02/16/belgium-four-day-work-week/

Belgium is the latest country to announce plans to offer employees the option to request a four-day workweek, as the government seeks to boost flexibility in the workplace amid the coronavirus crisis after what Prime Minister Alexander De Croo said had been two “difficult years.” The overhaul of the country’s labor laws will give workers more freedom — and the right to ignore their bosses and work emails after working hours, another growing trend in the coronavirus era. The agreement, which was struck by the seven-party coalition federal government, aims “to be able to make people and businesses stronger,” De Croo said during a news conference Tuesday, adding that the country was seeking to become “more innovative, sustainable and digital.” De Croo said his administration aims to incentivize more people to work. The employment rate in Belgium stood at roughly 71 percent at the end of last year, and the government hopes to increase that proportion to 80 percent by 2030. If trade unions agree, employees can opt to work for a maximum of 10 hours a day to accrue hours that will help them earn a three-day weekend. Previously, workdays were capped at eight hours. They can also choose to work more during one week and less the next. Employees will not be paid any less, and the decision will be theirs to make. “This has to be done at the request of the employee, with the employer giving solid reasons for any refusal,” Labor Minister Pierre-Yves Dermagne said.

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Success of experimental Alzheimer’s drug hailed as ‘historic moment’
2022-09-28, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2022-10-10 13:00:50
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2022/sep/28/alzheimers-disease-progressio...

An experimental drug has slowed the rate of decline in memory and thinking in people with early Alzheimer’s disease. The cognition of Alzheimer’s patients given the drug, developed by Eisai and Biogen, declined by 27% less than those on a placebo treatment after 18 months. This is a modest change in clinical outcome but it is the first time any drug has been clearly shown to alter the disease’s trajectory. “This is a historic moment for dementia research, as this is the first phase 3 trial of an Alzheimer’s drug in a generation to successfully slow cognitive decline,” said Dr Susan Kohlhaas, the director of research at Alzheimer’s Research UK. “Many people feel Alzheimer’s is an inevitable part of ageing. This spells it out: if you intervene early you can make an impact on how people progress.” In the study, which enrolled roughly 1,800 patients with early stage Alzheimer’s, patients were given twice-weekly infusions of the drug, called lecanemab. It was also shown to reduce toxic plaques in the brain and slow patients’ memory decline and ability to perform day-to-day tasks. The results offer a boost to the “amyloid hypothesis”, which assumes that sticky plaques seen in the brains of dementia patients play a role in damaging brain cells and causing cognitive decline. A series of previous drug candidates had been shown to successfully reduce levels of amyloid in the brain, but without any improvement in clinical outcomes, leading some to question whether the research field had been on the wrong track.

Note: Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.


Hundreds of prison and jail deaths go uncounted by the federal government, report finds
2022-09-20, NBC News
Posted: 2022-10-02 22:14:51
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/hundreds-prison-jail-deaths-go...

The Justice Department is failing to adequately and efficiently collect data about deaths in state prisons and local jails, with at least 990 incidents going uncounted by the federal government in fiscal year 2021 alone, according to a newly released bipartisan Senate report. The report's findings were the focus of a hearing ... which took the federal Bureau of Prisons and then-Director Michael Carvajal to task this summer over accusations of unsanitary and unsafe conditions at a penitentiary in Atlanta and other allegations of misconduct across the federal prison system. Now, the conclusion of a 10-month investigation into how the Justice Department oversees the federal Death in Custody Reporting Act accuses the agency of missing death counts that are readily available on public websites and in arrest-related databases. The law requires that states and federal agencies report in-custody death information to the attorney general. The information was due at the end of 2016, but the Senate report says it won't be completed until 2024. "DOJ's failure to implement DCRA has deprived Congress and the American public of information about who is dying in custody and why," the report says. "This information is critical to improve transparency in prisons and jails, identifying trends in custodial deaths that may warrant corrective action — such as failure to provide adequate medical care, mental health services, or safeguard prisoners from violence — and identifying specific facilities with outlying death rates."

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corruption in government and in the prison system from reliable major media sources.


They Were Entitled to Free Care. Hospitals Hounded Them to Pay.
2022-09-24, New York Times
Posted: 2022-10-02 22:13:09
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/24/business/nonprofit-hospitals-poor-patients...

In 2018, senior executives at one of the country’s largest nonprofit hospital chains, Providence, were frustrated. They were spending hundreds of millions of dollars providing free health care to patients. It was eating into their bottom line. The executives, led by Providence’s chief financial officer at the time, devised a solution: a program called Rev-Up. Rev-Up provided Providence’s employees with a detailed playbook for wringing money out of patients — even those who were supposed to receive free care because of their low incomes, a New York Times investigation found. If patients did not pay, Providence sent debt collectors to pursue them. More than half the nation’s roughly 5,000 hospitals are nonprofits like Providence. They enjoy lucrative tax exemptions; Providence avoids more than $1 billion a year in taxes. In exchange, the Internal Revenue Service requires them to provide services, such as free care for the poor, that benefit the communities in which they operate. But in recent decades, many of the hospitals have become virtually indistinguishable from for-profit companies, adopting an unrelenting focus on the bottom line and straying from their traditional charitable missions. And, as Providence illustrates, some hospital systems have not only reduced their emphasis on providing free care to the poor but also developed elaborate systems to convert needy patients into sources of revenue. The result ... is that thousands of poor patients were saddled with debts that they never should have owed.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corporate corruption and health from reliable major media sources.


Did a Famous Doctor's Covid Shot Make His Cancer Worse?
2022-09-24, The Atlantic
Posted: 2022-10-02 22:11:31
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2022/09/mrna-covid-vaccine-booste...

Last year, Michel Goldman, a Belgian immunologist and one of Europe’s best-known champions of medical research, walked into a clinic near his house, rolled up his sleeve, and had a booster shot delivered to his arm. Michel was having night sweats, and he could feel swollen lymph nodes in his neck. It was cancer of the immune system—lymphoma. Michel understood this meant he’d soon be immunocompromised by chemotherapy. He had just a narrow window of opportunity in which his body would respond in full to COVID vaccination. Having received two doses of Pfizer the prior spring, Michel quickly went to get his third. Within a few days, though, Michel was somehow feeling even worse. His night sweats got much more intense, and he found himself—quite out of character—taking afternoon naps. Most worryingly, his lymph nodes were even more swollen than before. Scans ... showed a brand-new barrage of cancer lesions. It looked like someone had set off fireworks inside Michel’s body. More than that, the lesions were now prominent on both sides of the body, with new clusters blooming in Michel’s right armpit in particular, and along the right side of his neck. When Michel’s hematologist saw the scan, she told him to report directly to the nearest hospital pharmacy. He’d have to start on steroid pills right away. Such a swift progression for lymphoma in just three weeks was highly unusual. As he followed these instructions, Michel felt a gnawing worry that his COVID booster shot had somehow made him sicker.

Note: A study of this case was published in Frontiers in Medicine. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on coronavirus vaccines from reliable major media sources.


Revealed: How scientists who dismissed Wuhan lab theory are linked to Chinese researchers
2021-09-10, The Telegraph (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2022-10-02 22:09:29
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/09/10/revealed-scientists-dismissed-wuh...

All but one scientist who penned a letter in The Lancet dismissing the possibility that coronavirus could have come from a lab in Wuhan were linked to its Chinese researchers, their colleagues or funders, a Telegraph investigation can reveal. The influential journal published a letter on March 7 last year from 27 scientists in which they stated that they “strongly condemned conspiracy theories” surrounding Covid-19. It effectively shut down scientific debate into whether coronavirus was manipulated or leaked from a lab in Wuhan. Researchers who tried to investigate a link but were stonewalled and branded conspiracy theorists called it an “extreme cover-up”. Despite declaring no conflicts of interest at the time, it has since emerged that the letter was orchestrated by British zoologist Peter Daszak, president of the US-based EcoHealth Alliance, which funded research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, where the leak was suspected. However, The Telegraph can disclose that 26 of the 27 scientists listed in the letter had connections to the Chinese lab, through researchers and funders closely linked to Wuhan. While Mr Daszak eventually declared his involvement in the EcoHealth Alliance, he failed to mention that five other signatories also worked for the organisation. A further three of the signatories were from Britain’s Wellcome Trust, which has funded work at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in the past. Out of 27 signatories, only Prof Ronald Corley, of Boston University, appears to have no links to funders or researchers.

Note: Watch an excellent interview in which a former EcoHealth Alliance VP turned whistleblower reveals blatant law-breaking and lies committed by Peter Daszak and EcoHealth Alliance. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on the coronavirus from reliable major media sources.


UK scientist with links to Wuhan lab 'recuses himself' from inquiry into Covid origins
2021-06-22, The Telegraph (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2022-10-02 22:07:58
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/science-and-disease/uk-scientist-ce...

A controversial British-born scientist has recused himself from an inquiry into the origins of the Covid pandemic. Dr Peter Daszak, president of the US-based EcoHealth Alliance, has “recused himself” from the inquiry by leading medical journal the Lancet after he failed to declare ties to the Wuhan Laboratory of Virology, which was conducting research into coronavirus in bats. Dr Daszak was also a member of the WHO investigation into the source of the pandemic that issued its report earlier this year. In February 2020 Dr Daszak, who has strongly condemned any suggestion that the virus came from the institute, co-authored a letter published in the Lancet with 26 other experts “in support of scientists, public health professionals and medical professionals combating Covid-19 in China”. Dr Daszak has worked closely with Shi Zhengli, known as “batwoman”, who leads work into bat viruses at the institute. And the EcoHealth Alliance, which has been a world leader in the hunt for animal viruses, has channeled some of its funding towards the institute, which involved collecting samples from bats and people at risk of infection from bat viruses. That grant was stopped in April 2020 on the orders of then president Donald Trump but was reinstated later in the year. Before he recused himself from the Lancet commission, which is supported by the United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network, Dr Daszak was one of a 12-strong international team looking at the origins of the pandemic.

Note: Watch an excellent interview in which a former EcoHealth Alliance VP turned whistleblower reveals blatant law-breaking and lies committed by Peter Daszak and EcoHealth Alliance. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on the coronavirus from reliable major media sources.


Former NSA Chief Signed Deal to Train Saudi Hackers Months Before Jamal Khashoggi's Murder
2022-09-26, The Intercept
Posted: 2022-10-02 22:06:18
https://theintercept.com/2022/09/26/keith-alexander-saudi-hackers-khashoggi/

In early 2018, former National Security Agency chief Keith Alexander worked out a deal with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and the cyber institute led by one of his closest aides, Saud al-Qahtani, to help the Saudi ruler train the next generation of Saudi hackers. The agreement between IronNet, founded by Alexander, and the cyber school ... faced no scrutiny for its association with Qahtani, after the brutal killing of Jamal Khashoggi he reportedly orchestrated just a few months later. Alexander officially inked the deal with the Prince Mohammed bin Salman College of Cyber Security, Artificial Intelligence, and Advanced Technologies — a school set up to train Saudi cyber intelligence agents — at a signing ceremony in Washington, D.C.. Saudi Arabia’s agreement with IronNet was part of a host of moves to step up its cyber capabilities, coinciding with a campaign against the kingdom’s critics abroad. Khashoggi, then a Washington Post columnist and prominent Salman critic, received a series of threatening messages, including one from Qahtani, warning him to remain silent. Khashoggi, whose family and close associates discovered listening malware electronically implanted on their smartphones, was then lured to the Saudi Embassy in Istanbul. It was there that a team dispatched by Qahtani detained and tortured the Saudi government critic. Qahtani, according to reports, beamed in through Skype to insult Khashoggi during the ordeal. Khashoggi was then dismembered with a bone saw.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on intelligence agency corruption from reliable major media sources.


Psilocybin as mental health therapy? Here’s what I found.
2022-09-05, Washington Post
Posted: 2022-10-02 22:04:26
https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/09/05/psilocybin-mental-health-psy...

A few weeks ago, I mentioned to a friend that I was interested in learning more about psychedelics, especially how they might help me with depression and anxiety. That’s a broad category of plant medicines including psilocybin (“magic”) mushrooms, MDMA (ecstasy), DMT (Dimitri or the Businessman’s Trip), ketamine (“special K”) and some others. My friend told me he’d recently taken his first “trip,” which he described as life-changing. I asked him — a real estate developer living in Northern California, married with kids — why he decided to try a psychedelic substance. “My work felt increasingly stale and meaningless,” he explained to me over a beer. “Despite a massive amount of reflection and coaching around how to break the rut, I felt as though I was still off track.” When I confided my interest in psychedelics to a few other friends, several said they had tried the drugs and experienced several benefits: from easing anxiety to finding spiritual insights to combating depression and, among some with cancer, helping to reduce the fear of dying. They are hardly outliers. According to a new YouGovAmerica study, “one in four Americans say they’ve tried at least one psychedelic drug,” amounting to some 72 million U.S. adults. When I queried my psychiatrist about participating to help improve my mental health, he was supportive, with two caveats: Do it with a trained therapist or guide, and do your best to ensure that the substance is what it’s said to be.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on the healing potentials of mind-altering drugs from reliable major media sources.


Ghostwriters Used in Vioxx Studies, Article Says
2008-04-15, New York Times
Posted: 2022-10-02 22:02:33
https://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/15/business/15cnd-vioxx.html

The drug maker Merck drafted dozens of research studies for a best-selling drug, then lined up prestigious doctors to put their names on the reports before publication, according to an article ... in a leading medical journal. The article, based on documents unearthed in lawsuits over the pain drug Vioxx, provides a rare, detailed look in the industry practice of ghostwriting medical research studies that are then published in academic journals. The article cited one draft of a Vioxx research study that was still in want of a big-name researcher, identifying the lead writer only as “External author?” Vioxx was a best-selling drug before Merck pulled it from the market in 2004 over evidence linking it to heart attacks. Last fall the company agreed to a $4.85 billion settlement to resolve tens of thousands of lawsuits. The lead author of Wednesday’s article, Dr. Joseph S. Ross ... said a close look at the Merck documents raised broad questions about the validity of much of the drug industry’s published research, because the ghostwriting practice appears to be widespread. “It almost calls into question all legitimate research that’s been conducted by the pharmaceutical industry with the academic physician,” Dr. Ross said, whose article ... was published Wednesday in JAMA, the journal of the American Medical Association. Although the role of pharmaceutical companies in influencing medical journal articles has been questioned before, the Merck documents provided the most comprehensive look at the magnitude of the practice.

Note: Vioxx may have been responsible for 500,000 premature deaths. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on Big Pharma corruption from reliable major media sources.


The Unexpected Power of Random Acts of Kindness
2022-09-02, New York Times
Posted: 2022-10-02 22:00:37
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/02/well/family/random-acts-of-kindness.html

In late August, Erin Alexander, 57, sat in the parking lot of a Target store in Fairfield, Calif., and wept. Her sister-in-law had recently died, and Ms. Alexander was having a hard day. A barista working at the Starbucks inside the Target was too. The espresso machine had broken down and she was clearly stressed. Ms. Alexander — who’d stopped crying and gone inside for some caffeine — smiled, ordered an iced green tea, and told her to hang in there. After picking up her order, she noticed a message on the cup: “Erin,” the barista had scrawled next to a heart, “your soul is golden.” The warmth of that small and unexpected gesture, from a stranger ... moved her deeply. New findings, published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology in August, corroborate just how powerful experiences like Ms. Alexander’s can be. Researchers found that people who perform a random act of kindness tend to underestimate how much the recipient will appreciate it. And they believe that miscalculation could hold many of us back from doing nice things for others more often. “People tend to think that what they are giving is kind of little, maybe it’s relatively inconsequential,” [study co-author Amit] Kumar said. “But recipients are less likely to think along those lines. They consider the gesture to be significantly more meaningful because they are also thinking about the fact that someone did something nice for them.” What skills and talents do you already have? And how can you turn that into an offering for other people?”

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A little good goes an unexpectedly long way: Underestimating the positive impact of kindness on recipients
2022-08-18, Journal of Experimental Psychology
Posted: 2022-10-02 21:59:06
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35980709/

Performing random acts of kindness increases happiness in both givers and receivers, but we find that givers systematically undervalue their positive impact on recipients. In both field and laboratory settings (Experiments 1a through 2b), those performing an act of kindness reported how positive they expected recipients would feel and recipients reported how they actually felt. From giving away a cup of hot chocolate in a park to giving away a gift in the lab, those performing a random act of kindness consistently underestimated how positive their recipients would feel, thinking their act was of less value than recipients perceived it to be. Givers' miscalibrated expectations are driven partly by an egocentric bias in evaluations of the act itself (Experiment 3). Whereas recipients' positive reactions are enhanced by the warmth conveyed in a kind act, givers' expectations are relatively insensitive to the warmth conveyed in their action. Underestimating the positive impact of a random act of kindness also leads givers to underestimate the behavioral consequences their prosociality will produce in recipients through indirect reciprocity (Experiment 4). We suggest that givers' miscalibrated expectations matter because they can create a barrier to engaging in prosocial actions more often in everyday life (Experiments 5a and 5b), which may result in people missing out on opportunities to enhance both their own and others' well-being.

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The Surprise of Reaching Out: Appreciated More than We Think
2022-06-13, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
Posted: 2022-10-02 21:57:32
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4115683

People are fundamentally social beings and enjoy connecting with others, sometimes reaching out to others—whether simply to say hello and to check in on how others are doing with a brief message, or to send a small gift to show that one is thinking of the other person. Yet despite the importance and enjoyment of social connection, do people accurately understand how much other people value being reached out to by someone in their social circle? Across a series of pre-registered experiments, we document a robust underestimation of how much other people appreciate being reached out to. We find evidence compatible with an account wherein one reason this underestimation of appreciation occurs is because responders (vs. initiators) are more focused on their feelings of surprise at being reached out to; such a focus on feelings of surprise in turn predicts greater appreciation. We further identify process-consistent moderators of the underestimation of reach-out appreciation, finding that it is magnified when the reach-out context is more surprising: when it occurs within a surprising (vs. unsurprising) context for the recipient and when it occurs between more socially distant (vs. socially close) others. Altogether, this research thus identifies when and why we underestimate how much other people appreciate us reaching out to them, implicating a heightened focus on feelings of surprise as one underlying explanation.

Note: You can read the full study at this link. Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.


Pentagon opens sweeping review of clandestine psychological operations
2022-09-19, Washington Post
Posted: 2022-09-26 22:12:26
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/09/19/pentagon-psycholo...

The Pentagon has ordered a sweeping audit of how it conducts clandestine information warfare after major social media companies identified and took offline fake accounts suspected of being run by the U.S. military in violation of the platforms’ rules. The takedowns in recent years by Twitter and Facebook of more than 150 bogus personas and media sites created in the United States was disclosed last month by internet researchers Graphika and the Stanford Internet Observatory. U.S. Central Command is among those whose activities are facing scrutiny. Some [takedowns] involved posts from the summer that advanced anti-Russia narratives. One fake account posted an inflammatory tweet claiming that relatives of deceased Afghan refugees had reported bodies being returned from Iran with missing organs. The tweet linked to a video that was part of an article posted on a U.S.-military affiliated website. In 2020 Facebook disabled fictitious personas created by Centcom to counter disinformation spread by China suggesting the coronavirus responsible for covid-19 was created at a U.S. Army lab in Fort Detrick, Md.. The pseudo profiles ... were used to amplify truthful information from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Congress in late 2019 passed a law affirming that the military could conduct operations in the “information environment” to defend the United States. The measure, known as Section 1631, allows the military to carry out clandestine psychological operations.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on intelligence agency corruption and media manipulation from reliable sources.


Fat Leonard: Malaysian businessman linked to US Navy scandal escapes
2022-09-06, BBC News
Posted: 2022-09-26 22:10:44
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-62764226

A Malaysian businessman at the heart of the worst scandal to hit the US Navy in modern times has escaped house arrest, the US Marshals Service has said. Leonard Glenn Francis, known as "Fat Leonard", cut his ankle bracelet off before disappearing from his home in San Diego, California. His escape comes three weeks before he was due for sentencing after pleading guilty in 2015 to bribing senior US Navy officers. Francis had been the key figure behind a sprawling multi-million dollar bribery scheme that he operated by way of his Singapore-based company which serviced the US Navy's Pacific fleet. The US justice department describes it as a colossal fraud that cost the navy tens of millions of dollars. Francis ... used his influence with senior commanders to secure lucrative military contracts often involving the Indo-Pacific based 7th Fleet - the largest of the Navy's forward deployed fleets. Prosecutors say he overcharged the navy to the tune of $35m (£30m) and plied navy officers with cash, gourmet meals, expensive cigars, rare liquor and wild sex parties in upscale hotels to procure the contracts. Arrested in 2013 he pled guilty in 2015 to offering $500,000 in bribes to US Navy officers in an attempt to funnel official work towards his shipyards. Dozens of navy officials have been ensnared in the case, with four officers having been found guilty, and 28 others, including contractors and naval officials, having pleaded guilty so far. Francis [was] placed under house arrest while acting as a co-operating witness.

Note: At one point, Francis bribed officials to redirect an aircraft carrier. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on military corruption from reliable major media sources.


Revealed: how UK targeted American civil rights leader in covert campaign
2022-09-13, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2022-09-26 22:09:11
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/sep/13/revealed-how-uk-targeted-americ...

The British government targeted the American civil rights leader Stokely Carmichael and sought to weaken the Black Power movement with covert disinformation campaigns, recently declassified documents have revealed. The effort was the work of a secret unit known as the Information Research Department, based in London and part of the Foreign Office, which created and distributed literature from fake sources as part of a broader effort to destabilise cold war enemies. The effort against Carmichael, a firebrand orator who travelled to west Africa in part to escape harassment by US law enforcement agencies, aimed to portray the prominent Black Power leader as a foreign interloper in Africa who was contemptuous of the inhabitants of the continent. Based mainly in Guinea from July 1969, the 28-year-old activist had became a vocal advocate of socialist, pan-Africanist ideologies, which worried British officials. The IRD was particularly worried by the movement’s potential influence in the Caribbean. In 1969, the IRD also created a new fake group: The Organisation of African Students for African Power. This was supposedly based in East Germany and adopted contemporary radical New Left ideas, “proclaiming a plague on both” the capitalist west and the Soviet bloc. The IRD felt this provided a better platform to “damage opponents” than the dated nationalist approach, while being difficult to trace back to Britain because many similar groups had genuinely sprung up in the late 1960s.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on intelligence agency corruption and the erosion of civil liberties from reliable major media sources.


The FBI monitored Aretha Franklin's role in the civil rights movement for years
2022-09-12, NPR
Posted: 2022-09-26 22:07:36
https://www.npr.org/2022/09/12/1122319306/aretha-franklin-fbi-surveillance

The FBI spent years surveilling the "Queen of Soul" Aretha Franklin, trying to gauge how involved she was with the civil rights movement, communism and the Black Power movement, a 270-page document shows. Franklin, who died in 2018, was monitored ahead of several performances and attendances she made for civil rights groups, such as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, whose first president was Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Informants mentioned Franklin, a Detroit native, in separate memos for possibly appearing at the SCLC's 1967 and 1968 national conventions, in Atlanta and Memphis, respectively. The FBI mailed several copies of "The Atlanta Voice" newspaper, which reported on her visit to town, to FBI offices around the country, as well as the U.S. attorney general and the Secret Service. During this time, Franklin was, in fact, actively involved in the civil rights movement through her music and personal connections. She was identified in a 1969 memo titled "Possible Racial Violence, Urban Areas, Racial Matters" when, in the year before, Denver concertgoers rioted after she refused to perform at the Red Rocks amphitheater due to not being properly paid. In 1971, memos named the Black Panther Party of Los Angeles and the Boston Young Workers Liberation League as organizations who intended to book her for rallies.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on intelligence agency corruption and the erosion of civil liberties from reliable major media sources.


The US has a ruling class – and Americans must stand up to it
2022-09-02, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2022-09-26 22:05:44
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/sep/02/the-us-has-a-ruling-cla...

The most important economic and political issues facing this country are the extraordinary levels of income and wealth inequality, the rapidly growing concentration of ownership, the long-term decline of the American middle class and the evolution of this country into oligarchy. We know how important these issues are because our ruling class works overtime to prevent them from being seriously discussed. We now have more income and wealth inequality than at any time in the last hundred years. Wages ... are lower today than they were almost 50 years ago. When I was a kid growing up, most families were able to be supported by one breadwinner. Now an overwhelming majority of households need two paychecks to survive. Since 1975, there has been a massive redistribution of wealth in America that has gone in exactly the wrong direction. Over the past 47 years, according to the Rand Corporation, $50tn in wealth has been redistributed from the bottom 90% of American society to the top 1%, primarily because a growing percentage of corporate profits has been flowing into the stock portfolios of the wealthy and the powerful. During this terrible pandemic ... some 700 billionaires in America became nearly $2tn richer. Just three Wall Street firms (Blackrock, Vanguard and State Street) control assets of over $20tn and are the major stockholders in 96% of S&P 500 companies. In terms of media, some eight multinational media conglomerates control what we see, hear and read.

Note: The above was written by Sen. Bernie Sanders. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on income inequality from reliable major media sources.


Insurers force change on police departments long resistant to it
2022-09-14, Washington Post
Posted: 2022-09-26 22:03:29
https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/interactive/2022/police-miscond...

Where community activists, use-of-force victims and city officials have failed to persuade police departments to change dangerous and sometimes deadly policing practices, insurers are successfully dictating changes to tactics and policies. The movement is driven by the increasingly large jury awards and settlements that cities and their insurers are paying in police use-of-force cases, especially since the 2020 deaths of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd. Those cases led to settlements of $12 million and $27 million, respectively. Insurance companies are passing the costs — and potential future costs — on to their law enforcement clients. Larger law enforcement agencies — like the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department or the New York Police Department — handle it in different ways, often by creating a special fund to finance settlements or by paying those costs from the county’s or city’s general fund. This insulates them from external demands by insurers. Departments with a long history of large civil rights settlements have seen their insurance rates shoot up by 200 to 400 percent over the past three years, according to insurance industry and police experts. Even departments with few problems are experiencing rate increases of 30 to 100 percent. Now, insurers also are telling departments that they must change the way they police. A Post investigation in March documented more than $3.2 billion spent over the past decade to resolve nearly 40,000 claims at 25 of the nation’s largest police and sheriff’s departments.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on police corruption from reliable major media sources.


Democratic National Committee Edited Bylaws to Let it Overrule Convention
2022-09-14, The Intercept
Posted: 2022-09-26 22:02:01
https://theintercept.com/2022/09/14/dnc-overrule-convention-bylaws/

During its summer meeting over the weekend, the Democratic National Committee quietly amended its bylaws, giving the narrower body power to override decisions made by its members at its quadrennial convention. The national committee approved language requiring that it must ratify any bylaw amendments that the convention, a broader body, wants to adopt. “No such Bylaw or amendment shall be effective unless and until it is subsequently ratified by a vote of the majority of the entire membership of the Democratic National Committee,” the amended measure from the Rules and Bylaws Committee states. “These decisions are made to move ultimate power from the members of the convention into the hands of the committee, and that can become a dangerous precedent,” Nevada Democratic Party Chair Judith Whitmer [said]. “These seem to us as increasingly anti-democratic decisions.” The amendment removes the authority over DNC decisions from the national convention, which includes thousands of members, and places it instead with the smaller national committee of just under 500. Democratic National Committee Member Jessica Chambers ... called the DNC “the least democratic organization that I’m involved with,” in part because paid staff whip votes against members. The recent attempt to suppress dissent is an example of how committee staff undermine elected members “for someone else’s agenda,” she added. “And I don’t know whose agenda it really is.”

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on elections corruption from reliable major media sources.


From yoga to punk, notorious occultist Aleister Crowley has had a profound influence on modern culture
2004-07-09, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2022-09-26 22:00:01
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2004/jul/10/society

The Book of the Law [is] an obscure prose poem written 100 years ago by Aleister Crowley, often described as the key to the notorious Magus's vast pantheon of writings. A multi-layered template of a magickal system ... The Book of the Law made Crowley one of the 20th century's hidden prophets. Hysterical press accounts of sex, drugs and sacrifice at his Abbey of Thelema, in Sicily in the early 1920s, remain the core of the myth of Crowley as evil incarnate. It was also Crowley who gave Churchill his famous victory sign, a magickal gesture to counteract the Nazi's use of the swastika. Indeed, his hand appears in many unexpected places ... but his hidden influence was not restricted to the British war effort. In the 1940s, one of his closest followers was a young Californian adept, Jack Parsons, one of the founding fathers of the American space programme. His work at the fledgling Jet Propulsion Laboratories lay the groundwork for the Apollo moon missions. Rocket fuel, space exploration and Crowley's brand of ceremonial sex magick was a powerful mix. Working with Parsons was none other than L Ron Hubbard, who later founded the cult of Scientology, which now attracts so many Hollywood stars. Hubbard would also abscond with Parsons' money and wife, but not before Parsons had written a fourth "chapter" of The Book of the Law. His immediate following may have been small, but his influence on modern culture is as pervasive as that of Freud or Jung.

Note: Read more about Jack Parsons in this LA Times article titled, "Life as Satanist Propelled Rocketeer." For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on secret societies from reliable major media sources.


New York woman loses job, leads pantry feeding thousands
2021-02-25, Associated Press
Posted: 2022-09-26 21:57:29
https://apnews.com/article/ny-woman-loses-job-feeds-others-ce69e9893fcb464f2a...

While dozens of New Yorkers lined up outside in the rain, shopping carts at the ready as they waited for free food, Sofia Moncayo led her team in prayer. During the coronavirus pandemic, Moncayo has led the food distribution program through Mosaic West Queens Church in the Sunnyside neighborhood. The initiative began in March; Moncayo took charge a month later, as it expanded to serve hundreds of people. Since then, Moncayo has had her own struggles. She was furloughed from her job at a construction company and remains unemployed. And she also owes five months of rent for the martial arts studio that she owns with her husband in the neighborhood. But she has continued to lead fundraisers and coordinate dozens of volunteers who distribute more than 1,000 boxes of food to families twice a week. “I think helping others has to do something to your brain chemically because if we had not being doing everything that we’re doing, I think this would have been a much scarier time,” she said. “Being able to dig in and help others, it really gives you perspective and helps you believe that you’re going to be OK too. One of the things that we wanted to make sure is that we don’t look at people on the pantry line as people that need food, and really focus on, ‘hey, these are our neighbors.’” Carol Sullivan lost her stage manager job when Broadway theaters closed because of the virus. She was hesitant at first about receiving food from a pantry, but she said that Moncayo and the other volunteers made her feel welcome.

Note: Enjoy a wonderful compilation of inspiring stories from the pandemic times on this webpage. Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.


Patagonia founder just donated the entire company, worth $3 billion, to fight climate change
2022-09-14, CNBC News
Posted: 2022-09-26 21:56:01
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/09/14/patagonia-founder-donates-entire-company-to-f...

Patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard, his spouse and two adult children are giving away their ownership in the apparel maker he started some 50 years ago, dedicating all profits from the company to projects and organizations that will protect wild land and biodiversity and fight the climate crisis. The company is worth about $3 billion. In a letter about the decision, published on the Patagonia website on Wednesday, Choiunard wrote of “reimagining capitalism,” and said: “While we’re doing our best to address the environmental crisis, it’s not enough. We needed to find a way to put more money into fighting the crisis while keeping the company’s values intact. One option was to sell Patagonia and donate all the money. But we couldn’t be sure a new owner would maintain our values or keep our team of people around the world employed. Another path was to take the company public. What a disaster that would have been. Even public companies with good intentions are under too much pressure to create short-term gain at the expense of long-term vitality and responsibility. Truth be told, there were no good options available. So, we created our own.” The privately held company’s stock will now be owned by a climate-focused trust and group of nonprofit organizations, called the Patagonia Purpose Trust and the Holdfast Collective respectively, the company said in a statement, noting “every dollar that is not reinvested back into Patagonia will be distributed as dividends to protect the planet.”

Note: Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.


The inspirational story of how a single mum has toured the world carrying her disabled son on her back - after vowing to give him a life of adventure when she gave birth at 17
2022-01-01, Daily Mail (One of the UK's popular newspapers)
Posted: 2022-09-26 21:54:36
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-10294493/Meet-inspirational-mother...

From Hawaii to Bali and the ski-slopes of Perisher, 26-year-old Jimmy Antram has seen plenty of the world. But it has all been from the vantage point of his mother's back. Fulfilling a promise she made to herself as a 17-year-old first-time mum to give her disabled son the best life she possibly could, Niki Antram has spent years travelling the globe with Jimmy clinging to her shoulders. Jimmy was born with physical and mental disabilities, including blindness, and requires round the clock care from Ms Antram and his support workers. He has a wheelchair, but Ms Antram has never enjoyed using it. She's content to carry him while she's physically able and helps him walk short distances on his own. Incredible photographs taken around the globe show him clinging on as they hike through mountains and rainforests. 'Planning big holidays, I always make sure I have plenty of nappies, clothes, and even bed pads, sheets and pillowcases,' she [said]. Ms Antram plans a meticulous itinerary and calls ahead for every venue she wants to visit - whether it be a restaurant, hotel or daredevil adventure. 'Even if I know we will be okay I like to inform the companies to give them a heads up about us to make sure they understand and are okay with having us there,' she says. Sometimes, they can't accommodate. This is usually because of risks associated with Jimmy's condition or logistical difficulties. Ms Antram said the exception to this was in Hawaii, where 'everyone wanted [Jimmy] to join'.

Note: Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring disabled persons news articles.


FDA expected to authorize new Covid boosters without data from tests in people
2022-08-30, NBC News
Posted: 2022-09-19 22:43:16
https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/fda-authorize-new-covid-boosters-d...

The updated Covid vaccine boosters, a reformulated version targeting the BA.5 omicron subvariant [will] be the first Covid shots distributed without results from human trials. Because the Biden administration has pushed for a fall booster campaign to begin in September, the mRNA vaccine-makers Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna have only had time to test the reformulated shots in mice, not people. That means the Food and Drug Administration is relying on the mice trial data — plus human trial results from a similar vaccine that targets the original omicron strain, called BA.1 — to evaluate the new shots. Federal health officials hope that the new vaccines will provide stronger protection over the existing booster shots, which still target the original coronavirus strain. But the lack of data in humans means officials likely won’t know how much better the new shots are — if at all — until the fall booster campaign is well underway. The FDA’s decision to move forward without data from human trials is a gamble, experts say, threatening to further lower public trust in the vaccines should the new boosters not work as intended. The U.S. is still on its first iteration of the Covid vaccines, and the mRNA technology has only been in widespread use since late 2020. The agency is making “huge assumptions” in its consideration of the new Covid boosters, [Dr. Paul] Offit said, adding that it’s possible the new shots may not be any more effective than the existing vaccines.

Note: Read a revealing article with critical information about the new mRNA boosters. To further inquire into this complex topic, explore concise summaries of news articles on coronavirus vaccines and Big Pharma corruption from reliable major media sources.


The U.S. diet is deadly. Here are 7 ideas to get Americans eating healthier
2022-08-31, NPR (Mississippi affiliate)
Posted: 2022-09-19 22:42:09
https://www.wprl.org/npr-news/npr-news/2022-08-31/the-u-s-diet-is-deadly-here...

Diet-related deaths outrank deaths from smoking, and about half of U.S. deaths from heart disease – nearly 900 deaths a day – are linked to poor diet. The pandemic highlighted the problem, with much worse outcomes for people with obesity and other diet-related diseases. Providing prescriptions for fruit and vegetables can spur people to eat better and manage weight and blood sugar. The idea is for health care systems or insurers to provide or pay for healthy groceries, combined with nutrition education, to help patients change their eating habits. [Nancy] Brown says federal food assistance programs have helped to address hunger. "However, many U.S. food policies and programs focus on improving access to sufficient quantities of food," she says. Instead, it's time to modernize these policies and focus on the quality of food. The Affordable Care Act mandates that diet counseling be covered by insurers as a preventive care benefit for those at higher risk of chronic disease. Too often ... doctors prescribe drugs for conditions before recommending or trying lifestyle changes. The task force recommends that Congress create a Farmer Corps to support new farmers, building on the Beginning Farmers and Ranchers Development Program. "What we need to sustain agriculture is to incentivize restoring healthy soils and train more farmers to be successful doing that," [David Montgomery at University of Washington] says.

Note: For more information on general health and well-being, check out our Health Information Center. To further explore diet-related concerns, consider reading news articles on food corruption to understand how unhealthy diets may also be impacted by the politics of industrial agriculture, leading to contaminants and loss of nutrients in our food.


C.D.C. Virus Tests Were Contaminated and Poorly Designed, Agency Says
2021-12-15, New York Times
Posted: 2022-09-19 22:40:23
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/15/health/cdc-covid-tests-contaminated.html

The faulty coronavirus testing kits developed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the early weeks of the pandemic were not only contaminated but had a basic design flaw, according to an internal review by the agency. Health officials had already acknowledged that the test kits were contaminated, but the internal report ... also documented a design error that caused false positives. In January 2020, the C.D.C. developed a polymerase chain reaction, or P.C.R., test for the virus. P.C.R. tests, which are performed in laboratories, can detect the virus at very low levels. Problems emerged soon after the C.D.C. had begun shipping its test kits out to public health laboratories in early February. Within days, many labs were reporting that the tests were generating inconclusive results. In mid-February, the agency acknowledged that the kits were flawed, and in April, officials at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration said that poor manufacturing practices had resulted in contamination of the test kits. Test kits had been contaminated with synthetic fragments of the virus’s genetic material. These synthetic sequences ... were manufactured at the same C.D.C. lab where the test kits were undergoing a quality analysis. It is “likely” that the test kits were contaminated there, the agency concluded. The contamination suggests that the agency violated standard manufacturing protocols. Rather than relying on the C.D.C. to be the sole test developer, officials could also enlist clinical and commercial labs to create and deploy tests.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of news articles on the coronavirus from reliable major media sources and visit our Coronavirus Information Center.


Facebook Tells Moderators to Allow Graphic Images of Russian Airstrikes But Censors Israeli Attacks
2022-08-27, The Intercept
Posted: 2022-09-19 22:38:33
https://theintercept.com/2022/08/27/facebook-instagram-meta-russia-ukraine-war/

Internal memos show Meta [the parent company of Facebook and Instagram] deemed attacks on Ukrainian civilians “newsworthy." No such carveouts were ever made for Palestinian victims of Israeli state violence. During the recent Israeli attacks on Gaza, between August 5 and August 15, [civil society group] 7amleh tallied nearly 90 deletions of content or account suspensions relating to bombings. In an expanded, internal version of the Community Standards guide obtained by The Intercept, the section dealing with graphic content includes a series of policy memos directing moderators to deviate from the standard rules or bring added scrutiny to bear on specific breaking news events. Meta directed moderators to make sure that graphic imagery of Ukrainian civilians killed in Russian attacks was not deleted on seven different occasions. At the outset of the invasion, the company took the rare step of lifting speech restrictions around the Azov Battalion, a neo-Nazi unit of the Ukrainian military previously banned under the company’s Dangerous Individuals and Organizations policy. Reuters reported that Meta temporarily permitted users to explicitly call for the death of Russian soldiers. Critics charge that the company’s censorship policies ... tidily align with U.S. foreign policy interests. [Omar] Shakir of Human Rights Watch [states that] "by silencing many people arbitrarily and without explanation, Meta is replicating online some of the same power imbalances and rights abuses we see in the real world."

Note: Read about the increasing issue of censorship that undermines democracy in our Mass Media Information Center. Furthermore, watch a 14-minute interview with a Facebook whistleblower that exposes Facebook censorship techniques.


US asked British spy agency to stop Guardian publishing Snowden revelations
2022-08-31, The Guardian (One of the UK's leading newspapers)
Posted: 2022-09-19 22:36:23
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/aug/31/edward-snowden-nsa-gchq-guard...

The US National Security Agency (NSA) tried to persuade its British counterpart to stop the Guardian publishing revelations about secret mass data collection from the NSA contractor, Edward Snowden. Sir Iain Lobban, the head of Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) ... rebuffed the suggestion that his agency should act as a censor on behalf of its US partner in electronic spying. British refusal to shut down publication of the leaks ... caused rifts within the Five Eyes signals intelligence coalition [according to] a new book ... by Richard Kerbaj. Kerbaj reports that the US-UK intelligence relationship was further strained when the head of the NSA, Gen Keith Alexander, failed to inform Lobban that the Americans had identified Snowden ... leaving the British agency investigating its own ranks in the search for the leaker. The Five Eyes allies were outraged that a contractor like Snowden, working as a computer systems administrator, could get access to their secrets, and that because of US government outsourcing, there were 1.5 million Americans with top security clearance like Snowden. Allies were not prepared to challenge the Americans out of anxiety that they could be cut off from the flow of intelligence. British officials also decided to bite their tongues ... because of the value of the intelligence and funding provided by the NSA. Sir Kim Darroch, the former UK national security adviser, is quoted ... saying: “The US give us more than we give them so we just have to basically get on with it.”

Note: Read more on how US and UK spy agencies undermine privacy and security in this news article reported by The Guardian. For a guide from The Guardian on how to remain secure against NSA surveillance, click here.


Wall Street Giants Set to Smash Profit Records Off Global Hunger, Energy Crisis
2022-09-09, Common Dreams
Posted: 2022-09-19 22:34:02
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2022/09/09/wall-street-giants-set-smash-pro...

Russia's war on Ukraine has wreaked havoc on global commodity markets, driving up energy and food prices and exacerbating hunger emergencies around the world. But while disastrous for the global poor ... the chaos has been a major boon for Wall Street giants. "The 100 biggest banks by revenue are set to make $18 billion from commodities trading in 2022," Bloomberg reported Friday. "The prediction is the latest evidence that the wild swings in energy prices triggered by the war in Ukraine are delivering a boon to commodity traders, even as they push European nations into crisis," Bloomberg added. "Vali, an analytics firm that tracks trading business, compiled data that includes the leading five banks in commodity trading: Macquarie Group Ltd., Goldman Sachs Group Inc., JPMorgan Chase & Co., Citigroup Inc., and Morgan Stanley." "People's misery makes capitalists' superprofit," Salvatore De Rosa, a researcher at the Lund University Center for Sustainability Studies. The World Food Program estimates that "as many as 828 million people go to bed hungry every night" and ... "those facing acute food insecurity has soared—from 135 million to 345 million—since 2019." "It's too easy to say the war in Ukraine has unbalanced all these markets, [or that] supply chains and the ports are shot, and that there's a supply and demand reason for these prices going up," [Michael] Greenberger added. "My own best guess is anywhere from 10% to 25% of the price, at least, is dictated by deregulated speculative activity."

Note: For more along these lines, see concise news summaries revealing banking corruption from reliable major media sources. You can also visit our Banking Information Center to further explore corruption in the financial industry.


The super-rich ‘preppers’ planning to save themselves from the apocalypse
2022-09-04, The Guardian (One of the UK's leading newspapers)
Posted: 2022-09-19 22:32:31
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2022/sep/04/super-rich-prepper-bunkers-apoca...

Tech billionaires are buying up luxurious bunkers and hiring military security to survive a societal collapse they helped create, but like everything they do, it has unintended consequences. Their extreme wealth and privilege ... make them obsessed with insulating themselves from the very real and present danger of climate change, rising sea levels, mass migrations, global pandemics, nativist panic and resource depletion. For them, the future of technology is about only one thing: escape from the rest of us. What, if anything, could we do to resist it? A former president of the American chamber of commerce in Latvia ... JC Cole had witnessed the fall of the Soviet empire, as well as what it took to rebuild a working society almost from scratch. He believed the best way to cope with the impending disaster was to change the way we treat one another, the economy, and the planet right now. JC’s real passion wasn’t just to build a few isolated, militarised retreat facilities for millionaires, but to prototype locally owned sustainable farms that can be modelled by others and ultimately help restore regional food security in America. Investors not only get a maximum security compound in which to ride out the coming plague, solar storm, or electric grid collapse. They also get a stake in a potentially profitable network of local farm franchises that could reduce the probability of a catastrophic event. His business would do its best to ensure there are as few hungry children at the gate as possible when the time comes to lock down.

Note: Read about a Cold War U.S. government missile silo that was transformed into a luxury bunker to prepare for the apocalypse in this previously reported news article. You might also consider exploring revealing news articles on food system corruption impacting our economy and environment.


Experimental electromagnetic weaponry may soon see combat use
2003-01-30, The Economist
Posted: 2022-09-19 22:29:45
https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2003/01/30/come-fry-with-me

The recent use of armed, unmanned drones in Afghanistan and Yemen has shown that America's armed forces have become good at applying new weapons technology in the field. [Electromagnetic] weapons are able to destroy electronic systems and temporarily incapacitate people, all without the mess of explosions and gunfire. Using different types of electromagnetic energy (the same stuff as radio waves, X-rays and light) ... they could disrupt a variety of enemy systems, from missile targeting and launch electronics, to command-and-control systems. So-called “active denial” technology (which earns its moniker by actively herding people out of its path) works by using a beam of millimetre-length microwaves to heat up a person's skin. The marines are planning to put a version of the weapon on to a jeep. Range and properties are classified, but military newspapers say it can heat a person's skin to 55°C (130°F) at distances of up to 750 metres. David Fidler, a law professor at Indiana University, says that, because these weapons are most likely to be used on civilians, it is not clear that using them is legal under the international rules governing armed conflict. Steve Goose of Human Rights Watch ... says that too much secrecy still surrounds them. Weapons such as the active denial system could cause severe trauma, or even death, if fired at close range or held on a target for too long. Is it acceptable to shoot or bomb somebody if you have the option only to disable them?

Note: You can read the full article free of charge on this webpage. Did you know that non-lethal weapons have already been developed and used on people, as evidenced in these news articles from the mainstream media? Investigate the series of mysterious attacks on US diplomats in recent years which are likely electromagnetic in nature. To explore even further, read about the history and scope of non-lethal weapons, along with a revealing study of the US Intelligence's use and abuse of these weapons.


Fights erupted at a high school in Louisiana. So these dads took matters in their own hands
2021-11-08, CNN
Posted: 2022-09-19 22:26:38
https://www.cnn.com/2021/10/29/us/dads-on-duty-louisiana-school-cec/index.html

A violent week of fistfights at a Louisiana high school led to the arrests of at least 22 students last month. So a group of concerned fathers decided enough was enough. They formed a volunteer group, Dads on Duty, and began roaming the halls of Southwood High School in Shreveport to calm students, spread positivity and keep the peace. So far it's working. The group of about 40 fathers, wearing Dads on Duty T-shirts, patrol the campus every weekday on different shifts, working as community leaders and liaisons. Since they started the initiative, there's been no fighting at the school. "I immediately knew that [this violence] ... isn't the community that we're raising our babies in," said Michael LaFitte, [one] of the dads. The dads showed up at the school at 7:40 a.m., balancing their work schedules to patrol the campus in the morning, during lunch and after school. Shreveport has seen an uptick in violence and crime in recent months [as a consequence of] socioeconomic issues made worse by the lingering pandemic. The city's mayor, Adrian Perkins, credits the fathers with helping to combat violence involving local youth. He turned up at the school for a Dads on Duty shift when the fathers first started, and said he was impressed by their commitment. Dads on Duty has been working closely with the Caddo Parish School Board and local law enforcement, LaFitte said. The dads say their focus is not criminal justice - they let sheriff's deputies handle that - but an additional layer of parenting. "We are armed with love," LaFitte said.

Note: To further explore stories that help create the world we want to live in, check out our inspiring news articles collection and our Inspiration Center.


California graduate honors immigrant parents with senior photo shoot in strawberry fields
2021-06-18, USA Today
Posted: 2022-09-19 22:24:41
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2021/06/18/california-graduate-far...

Throughout high school and college, Jennifer Rocha would plant strawberries with her parents from 6 p.m. to 3 a.m. Then she'd sleep a few hours and get ready for school. On June 13, Rocha graduated from the University of California, San Diego, and she wanted to honor her parents' hard work. So she coordinated a photo shoot in the strawberry fields they worked night after night. "Through drops of sweat, tears, back aches, they were able to get their three daughters through college. They deserve all the recognition in the world and for them to be an inspiration to other immigrant parents ... that it is not impossible for their kids to chase their dreams," Rocha [said]. In her college career, when she felt like quitting Rocha said she'd think back to her work in the fields and what her degree would mean to her family. Rocha hopes her photos bring awareness to the farmworker community and the impact of their work. She said it's easy for Americans to pick up vegetables and fruits from the grocery store without appreciation for the workers who made it possible. "Farmworkers do not deserve to be paid minimum wage. They worked throughout the whole pandemic risking their health and risking the health of their families not knowing if they would come home with something," Rocha said. "No matter if your parents work in domestic labor jobs where the pay is minimum wage, with hard work, sacrifice, discipline, and dedication it can be done."

Note: To further explore stories that help create the world we want to live in, check out our inspiring news articles collection and our Inspiration Center.


MIT researchers develop cost-effective battery made of common materials
2022-09-12, Optimist Daily
Posted: 2022-09-19 22:23:15
https://www.optimistdaily.com/2022/09/mit-researchers-develop-cost-effective-...

The environmental benefits of using electricity rather than fossil fuels to power our world goes without saying— however, the process of electrifying everything has its obstacles. Many in the tech world are excited about the new A1-S battery ... declaring that “MIT has produced yet another breakthrough technology that is set to change the world for the better.” Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) recently innovated batteries that are made of cost-effective and abundant materials. Instead of using lithium, [MIT Professor Donald] Sadoway and the team ... selected aluminum for one electrode, which he asserted is “the most abundant metal on Earth… no different from the foil at the supermarket.” He combined the aluminum with ... sulfur, which he said is “often a waste product from processes such as petroleum refining.” Both the charging and discharging cycles generate enough heat that the battery can heat itself and doesn’t require an external source. On top of being a fraction of the price of conventional batteries, they can also be charged very quickly with no risk of forming dendrites. It’s important to note that this new battery isn’t without problems. For instance, the process of extracting alumina out of bauxite is not the easiest or cleanest, and ... researchers are concerned that we may one day run out of [sulfur]. That said, Sadoway made it clear that these issues don’t compare to the problems that come with sourcing ingredients for lithium-ion batteries.

Note: Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles.


The Pandemic Erased Two Decades of Progress in Math and Reading
2022-09-01, New York Times
Posted: 2022-09-13 03:04:02
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/01/us/national-test-scores-math-reading-pande...

National test results showed ... the pandemic’s devastating effects on American schoolchildren, with the performance of 9-year-olds in math and reading dropping to the levels from two decades ago. Since the National Assessment of Educational Progress tests began tracking student achievement in the 1970s ... scores in reading fell by the largest margin in more than 30 years. The declines spanned almost all races and income levels and were markedly worse for the lowest-performing students. While top performers in the 90th percentile showed a modest drop — three points in math — students in the bottom 10th percentile dropped by 12 points in math, four times the impact. The setbacks could have powerful consequences for a generation of children who must move beyond basics in elementary school to thrive later on. “The biggest reason to be concerned is the lower achievement of the lower-achieving kids,” [said Susanna Loeb at Brown University]. Being so far behind, she said, could lead to disengagement in school, making it less likely that they graduate from high school or attend college. The federal government has budgeted $122 billion to help students recover, the largest single investment in American schools, and at least 20 percent of that money must be spent on academic catch-up. Yet some schools have had difficulty hiring teachers, let alone tutors, and others may need to spend far more than 20 percent of their money to close big gaps.

Note: This article fails to mention that it was not the pandemic, but rather the lockdown policies that caused this debacle. Sweden, which never closed it’s elementary schools, did not have this problem. Read more about the challenging impacts of lockdown policies in an essay written by a caring school teacher who presents solid evidence that the lockdowns in the U.S. and worldwide had tragic effects not only on low-income and homeless children, but on huge numbers of people around the world.


Ending Big Tech's Laissez-Faire Approach to Child Sexual Abuse Material
2022-02-16, Newsweek
Posted: 2022-09-13 03:01:25
https://www.newsweek.com/ending-big-techs-laissez-faire-approach-child-sexual...

The EARN IT Act [is] a bill designed to confront the explosion of child sexual abuse material (CSAM) online. EARN IT would help address what is, disturbingly, a common experience for young users: routine exposure to predatory targeting, grooming, sexual violence, prostitution/sex trafficking, hardcore pornography and more. A New York Times investigation revealed that 70 million CSAM images were reported to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) in 2019–up from 600,000 in 2008–an "almost unfathomable" increase in criminality. The EARN IT Act restores privacy to victims of child sexual abuse material and allows them to sueâ€those who cause them harm online, under federal civil law and state criminal and civil law. It also creates a new commission to issue guidelines to limit sex trafficking, grooming and sexual exploitationâ€online. CSAM still exists because tech platforms have no incentive to prevent or eliminate it, because Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (passed in 1996, before social media existed) gives them near-blanket immunity from liability. While some in the technology sector [are] claiming EARN IT is a threat to encryption and user privacy, the reality is that encryption can coexist with better business practices for online child safety. We can increase security and privacy while refraining from a privacy-absolutism that unintentionally allows sexual predators to run rampant online.

Note: To understand the scope of child sex abuse worldwide, learn about other major cover-ups in revealing news articles on sexual abuse scandals from reliable major media sources.


Seven Years of Sex Abuse: How Mormon Officials Let It Happen
2022-08-04, U.S. News & World Report/Associated Press
Posted: 2022-09-13 02:59:59
https://www.usnews.com/news/politics/articles/2022-08-04/seven-years-of-sex-a...

MJ was just 5 years old, when her father admitted to his bishop that he was sexually abusing her. The father, a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints [of the Bisbee, Arizona ward], was in counseling with his bishop when he revealed the abuse. The bishop ... followed church policy and called what church officials have dubbed the “help line” for guidance. Lawyers for the church, who staff the help line ... told Bishop John Herrod not to call police or child welfare officials. Instead he kept the abuse secret. The Associated Press has obtained nearly 12,000 pages of sealed records from an unrelated child sex abuse lawsuit against the Mormon church in West Virginia. Families of survivors who filed the lawsuit said ... church leaders divert abuse accusations away from law enforcement and instead to church attorneys who may bury the problem, leaving victims in harm’s way. “Child abuse festers and grows in secrecy,” said [lawyer] Lynne Cadigan. Laws in more than 20 states [assert] that clergy who receive information about child neglect or sexual abuse during spiritual confessions “may withhold” that information from authorities ... under church doctrine. [Survivors and their families are trying to] change church policy so that any instance of child sexual abuse is immediately reported to civil authorities. Inaction by the church have raised ethical issues. “What aspect of your religious practice are you advancing if you don’t report something like this?” [investigator Gerard Moretz] asked.

Note: To understand the scope of child sex abuse worldwide, learn about other major cover-ups in revealing news articles on sexual abuse scandals from reliable major media sources. Furthermore, watch powerful evidence in a suppressed Discovery Channel documentary showing that child sexual abuse rings reach to the highest levels of government. Then watch an excellent segment by Australia's "60-Minutes" team "Spies, Lords and Predators" on a pedophile ring in the UK which also leads directly to the highest levels of government. 


The Troubling Story Behind Hulu's New Documentary Victoria's Secret: Angels and Demons
2022-07-19, Time Magazine
Posted: 2022-09-13 02:58:18
https://time.com/6197975/victorias-secret-angels-and-demons-hulu-true-story/

While Epstein’s ties to former presidents Bill Clinton and Donald Trump, as well as Prince Andrew and Bill Gates, have been well publicized, his connection with [Les] Wexner flew under the radar until Epstein’s 2019 arrest on sex trafficking and conspiracy charges. For nearly two decades, Epstein was Wexner’s personal money manager, but few people understood just how close the two were. The Ohio-born Leslie “Les” Wexner is the billionaire founder of L Brands Inc., the one-time parent company of The Limited, Bath & Body Works, Abercrombie & Fitch, and Victoria’s Secret, the crown jewel of his retail holdings. Epstein was named the billionaire’s power of attorney in 1991, which gave Epstein “unmitigated control over all of [Wexner’s] assets,” according to Washington Post reporter Sarah Ellison. He could sign checks, buy and sell property, and borrow money on Wexner’s behalf. “There wasn’t a part of Wexner’s empire that Epstein didn’t have access to and didn’t have some ability to control,” Ellison says in the docuseries. Anti-trafficking advocate Conchita Sarnoff makes the case that Epstein was able to “legally bring girls from all over the world into the United States under the guise of modeling thanks to his position as Wexner’s financial advisor. The documentary details a culture of complicity at Victoria’s Secret, which allowed Epstein to hide in plain sight with Wexner's help. For years, Wexner managed to keep his relationship with Epstein hidden from public view, but now people are looking for answers.

Note: Watch an eye-opening video on the top 10 shocking reveals of this Hulu documentary. For more along these lines, see the timeline of Epstein's case. You can also explore major cover-ups in high places in deeply revealing news articles on sexual abuse scandals from reliable major media sources.


'Victoria's Secret: Angels and Demons' weaves together Jeffrey Epstein and corporate culture
2022-07-14, CNN
Posted: 2022-09-13 02:56:25
https://www.cnn.com/2022/07/14/entertainment/victorias-secret-angels-and-demo...

"Victoria's Secret: Angels and Demons" [is a] fairly standard look at Wexner's business acumen in acquiring the lingerie outfit and transforming it into a multi-billion-dollar enterprise, inspiring cultish devotion among employees while facing ever-escalating pressure to make the marketing more provocative. Yet Wexner's success also brought Epstein into his orbit, eventually leading to allegations that the latter leveraged his affiliation with the company as part of his predatory behavior. As for what Wexner might have known, the executive (who declined to be interviewed for the docuseries) and his representatives staunchly denied any awareness. The hardest-to-explain aspect of the story involve Wexner granting Epstein power of attorney over his assets. With so many projects devoted to the Epstein scandal, including docuseries from Investigation Discovery and Netflix, the emphasis on his role, while understandable, feels like well-trodden territory. Indeed, it tends to obscure insights having to do with Wexner's retail strategy and its broader implications -- turning something as mundane as underwear into a premium item, manufacturing in China to slash costs and from a cultural perspective, feeding unrealistic expectations about women's bodies with heavily photoshopped catalogue spreads. In the final chapter, however, director Matt Tyrnauer deftly weaves the pieces together, conveying how the key men behind Victoria's Secret were blind to the changes sweeping over society while allegedly engaging in their own questionable behavior.

Note: Watch an eye-opening video on the top 10 shocking reveals of this Hulu documentary. For more along these lines, see the timeline of Epstein's case. You can also explore major cover-ups in high places in deeply revealing news articles on sexual abuse scandals from reliable major media sources.


Just 2% of the richest Americans had their taxes audited in 2019, down from 16% in 2010
2022-05-17, CNBC News
Posted: 2022-09-13 02:53:19
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/05/17/super-wealthy-irs-tax-audits-plunge-over-deca...

The audit rate for Americans earning more than $5 million a year plunged to just over 2% in 2019 from over 16% in 2010, according to a recent report from the Government Accountability Office, a federal watchdog. The report estimated that taxpayers underreported their income tax by a combined $245 billion a year between 2011 and 2013, and said that "taxpayers are more likely to voluntarily comply with the tax laws if they believe their return may be audited." The main reason for the decline, according to the report, is a lack of IRS funding. In fiscal year 2021, the agency's budget was $11.9 billion – $200 million less than its 2010 budget. The IRS also has seen its staffing levels fall to the same levels as 1973. The decline in funding and auditors means that taxpayers, and especially the top earners, are far less likely to get caught underpaying their taxes than a decade ago. Overall audit rates for American taxpayers fell to 0.2% in 2019 from 0.9% in 2010. The wealthy are still audited at a higher rate than the general taxpayer population. Yet their audit rates have declined at a much higher rate. The audit rate for taxpayers earning between $5 million and $10 million fell to 1.4% from 13.5%. Those earning more than $10 million saw their audit rate fall to 3.9% in 2019 from 21.2% in 2010, while audit rates for $10 million-plus earners ticked up slightly for the 2017 and 2018 tax years due to a Treasury Department mandate to impose audit rates of at least 8% on those making $10 million or more.

Note: For more along these lines, see key news articles on the financial industry from reliable major media sources.


America used to regulate business. Now government subsidises it
2022-08-21, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2022-09-13 02:51:11
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/aug/21/america-used-to-regulat...

The biggest thing the federal government now does with businesses is subsidize them. The Clean Air Act of 1970 authorized the government to regulate air pollution. The Inflation Reduction Act, which Joe Biden signed into law ... allocates more than $300bn to energy and climate reform, including $30bn in subsidies for manufacturers of solar panels and wind turbines. Notice the difference? This shift from regulation to subsidy has characterized every recent administration. Today it’s politically difficult, if not impossible, for government to demand that corporations (and their shareholders) bear the costs of public goods. Spending by corporations on lobbying increased from $1.44bn in 1999 to $3.77bn in 2021 and is on track to exceed $4bn this year. This tidal wave of corporate money has occurred at the same time large American corporations have globalized ... demanding government subsidies in return for creating jobs and doing their cutting-edge research in America. The question [is] whether the government should subsidize certain industries that generate large social benefits in the form of new technologies. I argued that the government was already engaged in a hidden industrial policy, disguised, for example, as grants to the aerospace and telecom industries by the Department of Defense and to the pharmaceutical industry by the National Institutes of Health. It would be far better to do industrial policy in the open, so that the public could assess what it was paying for and what it was getting in return.

Note: This article was written by former U.S. Secretary of Labor Robert Reich. For more revealing information on the government sponsoring corporate, financial interests without public input, see concise summaries of news articles on corporate corruption, and corruption in government and the financial industry.


Students lose access to books amid 'state-sponsored purging of ideas'
2022-08-17, Washington Post
Posted: 2022-09-13 02:49:06
https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/08/17/book-ban-restriction-acce...

School librarians [will] have less freedom to choose books and schoolchildren [will have] less ability to read books they find intriguing, experts say. In the past two years, six states have passed laws that mandate parental involvement in reviewing books, making it easier for parents to remove books or restrict the texts available at school, according to a tally kept by nonprofit EveryLibrary. Policies are proliferating at the district level, too. A Texas system will divide its library into "juvenile," "young adult" and "adult" sections, with parents choosing the "level" their child can access. "This is a state-sponsored purging of ideas and identities that has no precedent in the United States of America," said John Chrastka, EveryLibrary's executive director. "We're witnessing the silencing of stories and the suppressing of information [that will make] the next generation less able to function in society." A flurry of parent-staffed websites reviewing books for inappropriate content have appeared – including "Between the Book Covers," whose website says "professional review sites cannot be entrusted," and BookLook.info, "a place for taking a closer look at the books in our children's hands." There are also Facebook groups like Utah's "LaVerna in the Library," which "collects naughty children's books." As states and districts adjust their reading rules, parents and students are working to change things, too. Teens in Texas, for example, have formed "banned book clubs" – while in Missouri, students are suing their district to restore eight pulled books.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of the disappearance of privacy in our society. Whether in our schools, on social media, or in our news, read about the increasing issue of censorship that undermines democracy in our Mass Media Information Center.


California to install solar panels over canals to fight drought, a first in the U.S.
2022-08-30, CBS News
Posted: 2022-09-13 02:46:21
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/california-solar-panels-canals-drought/

In an effort to combat the devastating drought conditions hitting California, the Golden State will become the first in the nation to install solar panel canopies over canals. It will consist of an estimated 8,500 feet of solar panels installed over three sections of Turlock Irrigation District (TID) canals in Central California. According to TID, the project aims to use water and energy management hand-in-hand. The project is designed to increase renewable power generation, while reducing water evaporation and vegetative growth in canals. A 2021 University of California, Merced study [revealed] that covering all of the approximately 4,000 miles of public water delivery system infrastructure in the state with solar panels could save an estimated 63 billion gallons of water annually, as well as  result in significant energy and cost savings. "According to the study, the 13 gigawatts of solar power the panels would generate each year would equal about one-sixth of the state's current installed capacity," TID wrote on its website. TID also says the project will also support California Gov. Gavin Newsom's call for 60% of the state's electricity to come from renewable sources by 2030. California has taken multiple steps to combat drought conditions and climate change impacting the state [including moving] forward with a plan to ban the sale of new gas-powered vehicles by 2035. Officials [also] announced that California would receive $310 million in federal funding to address the drought.

Note: To further explore stories that help create the world we want to live in, check out our inspiring news articles collection and our Inspiration Center.


Work begins to turn 99,000 hectares in England into 'nature recovery' projects
2022-05-26, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2022-09-13 02:44:11
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/may/26/work-begins-to-turn-99000...

Up to 99,000 hectares of land in England, from city fringes to wetlands, will be focused on supporting wildlife in five major "nature recovery" projects, the government has said. The five landscape-scale projects in the West Midlands, Cambridgeshire, the Peak District, Norfolk and Somerset aim to help tackle wildlife loss and the climate crisis, and improve public access to nature. They will share an initial 2.4m pot from the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and Natural England, for work to create new habitats, manage land for nature and carbon storage and increase footpaths and connect with communities, with further funding expected from other sources and partners. Work in the projects will range from converting farmland into chalk grassland to restoring "dewponds" and managing wetlands and other land sustainably. Projects will also develop plans to work with communities in cities and deprived areas to improve their access to nature, including creating new green areas and improved footpaths and bridleways. The environment minister Rebecca Pow said: "These five projects across England are superb examples of exciting, large-scale restoration that is critically needed to bring about a step-change in the recovery of nature in this country. "They will significantly contribute to achieving our target to halt the decline in species abundance by 2030 and our commitment to protect 30% of our land by 2030, enabling us to leave the environment in a better state than we found it."

Note: To further explore stories that help create the world we want to live in, check out our inspiring news articles collection and our Inspiration Center.


S.C. Gives Highest Civilian Honor To Principal Who Got A Walmart Job To Help Students
2021-02-09, NPR
Posted: 2022-09-13 02:42:28
https://www.npr.org/2021/02/09/965887446/s-c-gives-highest-civilian-honor-to-...

It was supposed to be a secret. But word got out about what North Charleston High School Principal Henry Darby was doing – and the state has now presented him with its highest civilian honor. Darby took on a part-time job at Walmart, stocking shelves from 10 p.m. to 7 a.m., three nights every week. He's been using the paychecks from that work to help make sure kids from his school have food and basic supplies, or help their families pay their bills. Some money has also gone to former students who need help, or to teachers at his school who need a boost. "Principal Darby personifies the best of South Carolina, a selfless person who goes above and beyond for others," Gov. Henry McMaster said on Tuesday. "It was an honor to present him with the Order of the Palmetto yesterday," the governor added. In addition to being a principal, he serves on the Charleston County Council. "I decided to get another job because the kids, they really need help," Darby told the paper, which noted that despite Darby's efforts to stay under the radar, one of his students recognized him on the first night he worked at Walmart. His shifts ended just in time for him to drive to North Charleston High before morning classes started. In the weeks since people realized how much Darby was doing to help others, many have stepped forward both to praise him and to help him raise money for families who need it. Walmart gave his school a $50,000 check. Together, two crowdfunding pages devoted to his cause have raised more than $195,000.

Note: Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles.


Companies use inflation to hike prices and generate huge profits, report says
2022-05-27, CBS News
Posted: 2022-09-06 14:14:27
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/retail-price-gouging-lowes-amazon-target-account...

Some of the nation's largest retailers have been using soaring inflation rates as an excuse to raise prices and rake in billions of dollars in additional profit, a corporate watchdog group charged. The new figures comes as companies enjoy their most profitable year since the 1950s. Pre-tax profits last year soared 25% from 2020, far outpacing the increase in consumer prices. The report highlights an ongoing debate about the causes of inflation, with some consumer advocates arguing that corporations are using inflation as a justification for passing on even higher price hikes to consumers. Accountable.US said it examined the financial statements of the nation's top 10 retailers over the past two years — including Lowe's and Target — and found that they collectively increased their profits by $24.6 million for a grand total of $99 billion. The report notes, among other examples, that Lowe's recorded $8.4 billion in profit in its most recent quarter as it touted its "new pricing strategies." TJX, parent company of TJ Maxx, Marshalls and Home Goods, saw last year's profits soar to $3.3 billion as the CEO spoke about the company's "aggressive" price increases. "It's time corporations finally help shoulder the burden average Americans have taken on throughout the health crisis," [Accountable.US President Kyle] Herrig said. "Corporations can start by stabilizing prices for consumers instead of pursuing even higher profits — on top of finally paying their fair share in taxes."

Note: Just like big Pharma with COVID, the major corporations are profiting hugely from our misery. Here's another revealing report shows major food producing corporations marking up prices while raking in huge profits. You might also explore key excerpts of news articles on corporate corruption from reliable media sources.


Bad news: COVID-19 numbers are pretty meaningless
2022-07-19, The Hill
Posted: 2022-09-06 14:12:03
https://thehill.com/opinion/healthcare/3565529-bad-news-covid-19-numbers-are-...

In general, we rely on organizations like the CDC to conduct surveillance and monitoring of diseases in the United States. Unfortunately, case reporting, which we are relying on now to understand COVID-19 in the United States is the weakest type of surveillance for an ongoing pandemic. Case counts meant something very early on in the epidemic when each case reliably was associated with a certain risk of severe disease, hospitalization or death. Once there was a substantial number of people with immunity to severe outcomes due to recovery or vaccination those case counts became disconnected from expected outcomes. Test positivity also used to be a reliable measure of the community burden of infection with increased positivity correlating with increased spread of infection and hospitalization. But because now many only seek medical testing to confirm a home-based positive test for employment sick-leave or other purposes, the frequency of those testing positive through medical testing is artificially high. Remember the days of “flatten the curve,” the idea that we had to preserve hospital capacity through efforts to reduce the spread of infection? That curve was the number of hospital admissions due to COVID-19 and reasonably reflected the number of people admitted to hospitals severely ill with COVID-19. Now, however, due to the continued universal screening of all hospital admissions, a majority of reported COVID-19 hospitalizations are not hospitalized “for” COVID-19 but “with” COVID-19.

Note: The author of this article, Jeffrey D. Klausner, MD, MPH, is a clinical professor of Medicine and Infectious Diseases at the the University of Southern California. He is a also a former U.S. Centers for Disease Prevention and Control medical officer. For more along these lines, visit our coronavirus news articles collection from reliable major media sources. Then explore the resources provided in our Coronavirus Information Center.


EPA Whistleblowers Provide New Evidence of Ongoing Failure To Assess Dangerous Chemicals
2022-08-01, The Intercept
Posted: 2022-09-06 14:10:35
https://theintercept.com/2022/08/01/epa-chemical-assessments-health-risks-can...

A group of whistleblowers has provided evidence that the Environmental Protection Agency has not adequately assessed the health risks posed by several new chemicals on the grounds that they are corrosive. Those harms include cancer, miscarriage, and neurotoxicity, according to the whistleblowers, who work as health assessors in the division. In some cases … the risks were calculated, found to be significant, and later deleted from official documents. In March 2020, Gallagher, the human health assessor, found that another chemical presented risks to workers. Information [about the hazards] was included in a version of the assessment. But a month later, a manager in the New Chemicals Division created a new assessment [that] explained: "Risks were not evaluated for workers via repeated dermal exposures because dermal exposures are not considered likely due to the corrosivity of the new chemical substance." According to the whistleblowers, this statement is false. "It is intentionally misleading for EPA to put into a report that we did not calculate risk when we did," said Martin Phillips, a chemist and human health assessor who works in the EPA's Office of Pollution Prevention and Toxics. "It's lying about what we did. It's not just that we did the calculations. We did the calculations and found risks, and then they got rid of them and said that we didn't calculate them. It's fundamentally inaccurate."

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of news articles on pharmaceutical corruption and science corruption from reliable major media sources.


'The level of sneakiness with Americans hiding money abroad is staggering'
2022-07-22, Yahoo News
Posted: 2022-09-06 14:07:57
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/patrick-radden-keefe-americans-hiding-money-ab...

Whether dodging taxes or legal peril, wealthy Americans often succeed in concealing assets from the government by hiding their money in offshore bank accounts. Research from the IRS and a group of economists last year found that the top 1% of earners in the U.S. neglect to report 20% of their income — and that random audits almost never detect offshore accounts. Tax havens like Switzerland or the Cayman Islands have traditionally offered Americans a place to hide their assets because they fiercely guard financial privacy and have minimal to no taxes. Often, they also have laws that inhibit scrutiny from foreign tax officials. Prior to his latest book, [author Patrick Radden] Keefe published "Empire of Pain," which chronicled the billionaire Sackler family's connection to the nation's opioid epidemic. The Sacklers, the notorious family that owned the now bankrupt Purdue Pharma, reportedly have much of their wealth hidden in offshore accounts. An audit commissioned by Purdue showed the family withdrew more than $10 billion from their company during the opioid crisis, CNN reported in October 2020. They began drawing especially large amounts of money from the firm after paying $600 million in a 2007 plea deal with the Justice Department for misleading physicians and consumers about the opioid OxyContin, CNN reported. “The kind of sophistication of the whole industry of financial dissimulation ... such that nobody can put their hands on the money, is really interesting.” Keefe told Yahoo Finance.

Note: A 2015 Guardian newspaper article further describes how the US helps the super-rich hide assets. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of financial industry corruption news articles from reliable major media sources.


Cognitive decline linked to ultraprocessed food, study finds
2022-08-01, CNN
Posted: 2022-09-06 14:02:39
https://www.cnn.com/2022/08/01/health/ultraprocessed-food-dementia-study-well...

Eating ultraprocessed foods for more than 20% of your daily calorie intake every day could set you on the road to cognitive decline, a new study revealed. "Fifty-eight percent of the calories consumed by United States citizens ... come from ultraprocessed foods," [Dr. Claudia] Suemoto said. Studies have found they can raise our risk of obesity, heart and circulation problems, diabetes and cancer. In fact, men and women who ate the most ultraprocessed foods had a 28% faster rate of global cognitive decline and a 25% faster rate of executive function decline compared with people who ate the least amount of overly processed food, the study found. "The new results are quite compelling and emphasize