Government Corruption Media Articles

Excerpts of Key Government Corruption Media Articles in Major Media

Below are key excerpts of revealing news articles on government corruption from reliable news media sources. If any link fails to function, a paywall blocks full access, or the article is no longer available, try these digital tools.

Note: Explore our full index to key excerpts of revealing major media news articles on several dozen engaging topics. And don't miss amazing excerpts from 20 of the most revealing news articles ever published.

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), fresh off a fight over the Patriot Act, has turned his attention to another national security battle: declassifying 28 pages of a 2002 Senate inquiry into the cause of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. Paul is sponsoring the "Transparency for the Families of 9/11 Victims and Survivors Act," which would require President Obama to declassify and make public the pages. The issue is a politically charged one, with some claiming the pages will show that Saudi Arabia financed the attacks. Paul appeared at a Capitol Hill press conference with a bipartisan group of House sponsors, including Reps. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), Walter Jones (R-N.C.) and Stephen Lynch (D-Mass.), and Former Sen. Bob Graham (D-Fla.). The group were flanked by members of the group 9/11 Families United for Justice Against Terrorism. Paul pointed out that 15 of the 19 hijackers were from Saudi Arabia, saying that information that has been reported over the years "does raise question about their (the government's) support" and if it was provided to the hijackers. "We cannot let page after page of blanked out documents to be obscured by a veil, leaving these family members to wonder if there is additional information surrounding these horrible acts," Paul said. "The 28 pages in the report of over 800 pages go to the question of who financed 9/11and they point a strong finger at Saudi Arabia," Graham said.

Note: Rand Paul joins several prominent current and former US politicians that are working to expose the Saudi government money behind terrorism by declassifying this material. Explore the statements of over 3,000 respected government officials, professors, military officers, architects, engineers who have gone on the record raising serious questions about the 9/11 official story. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing 9/11 investigation news articles from reliable major media sources.

Former Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert was paying a former student to keep quiet about allegations of sexual abuse from the time when Hastert was a teacher and wrestling coach in Illinois, two sources with knowledge of the federal government investigation told CNN on Friday afternoon. Hastert was a teacher and wrestling coach in Yorkville, Illinois between 1965 and 1981 before entering politics. Federal prosecutors indicted Hastert on Thursday for lying to the FBI about $3.5 million he agreed to pay to an undisclosed person to "cover up past misconduct." A federal law enforcement official confirmed to CNN early Friday evening that the former student was a male and a minor when the alleged abuse took place. Federal law enforcement officials also said that investigators decided not to pursue a possible extortion case in the matter. Much remains unclear in the seven-page indictment federal officials lodged against the former Republican House speaker. The indictment lists relevant facts as including Hastert's time working as a teacher and coach in Yorkville for 16 years. But Hastert was not approached by "Individual A" until 2010. From 2010 until 2014, Hastert first negotiated with and then made secret payments to the unknown subject. Charges were not filed against Hastert until Thursday, a half century after the first relevant date listed in the indictment.

Note: Watch powerful evidence in a suppressed Discovery Channel documentary showing that child sexual abuse scandals reach to the highest levels of government. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing sex abuse scandal news articles from reliable major media sources.

The US government does not keep a comprehensive record of people killed by law enforcement, often leaving families, politicians and advocates powerless to quantify and analyse the size of the issue at hand. The lack of data has been glaring amid the protests, riots and the national debate set in motion by the fatal police shooting of Michael Brown last summer in Ferguson, Missouri. “We lack the ability right now to comprehensively track the number of incidents,” the outgoing US attorney general Eric Holder said before stepping down earlier this year. “Fixing this is an idea that we should all be able to unite behind.” The Guardian has begun an investigative project, The Counted, to record the deaths of people at the hands of US police. When informed of the comprehensive reporting project, which will also be crowdsourced, the families of those whose deaths led to international attention called The Counted a breakthrough. [Many] relatives, campaign groups, activists and authorities ... argue that a national standard of mandatory accounting is a prerequisite for an informed public discussion about the use of force by police. Erica Garner-Snipes, daughter of Eric Garner: "Giving this kind of data to the public is a big thing. Other incidents like murders and robberies are collected, so why not police-involved killings? With better records, we can look at what is happening and what might need to change."

Note: Another recent Guardian article, titled The Uncounted, describes why the U.S. government claims it is unable to keep track of killings by police, but does not mention that police shootings rise as crime falls.

Child sex abuse is so rife in Britain that there is not enough land in the country to build the number of prisons needed to house the perpetrators, the Deputy Childrenfs Commissioner for England has warned. Sue Berelowitz, who is currently chairing the governmentfs inquiry into the problem said the public would be shocked by the sheer scale of the problem when she reports in November. "I want us to keep in mind that people who sexually abuse children ... are here and in our midst. If the CPS were to prosecute everyone we would need a rolling prison programme. I would say there probably isn't the land to build enough prisons." Mrs Berelowitzfs report comes in the wake of abuse scandals in areas including Rotherham, where it was reported that 1,400 children were abused between 1997 and 2013. A previous inquiry into sex abuse by gangs revealed that from August 2010 to October 2011 at least 2,409 children were sexually exploited by gangs and groups across England. Scotland Yard is also being investigated by the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) over claims that it covered up child sex abuse because of the involvement of influential MPs and police officers between the 1970 and 2000s. Mrs Berelowitz claimed that there were still cover ups happening in local authorities and police stations.

Note: Watch an excellent segment by Australia's "60-Minutes" team "Spies, Lords and Predators" on a pedophile ring in the UK which leads directly to the highest levels of government. A second suppressed documentary, "Conspiracy of Silence," goes even deeper into this topic in the US. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing sexual abuse scandal news articles from reliable major media sources.

Federal law designates the secretary of state as “responsible for the continuous supervision and general direction of sales” of arms, military hardware and services to foreign countries. In practice, that meant that [Hillary] Clinton was charged with rejecting or approving weapons deals — and when it came to Clinton Foundation donors, Hillary Clinton’s State Department did a whole lot of approving. While Clinton was secretary of state, her department approved $165 billion worth of commercial arms sales to Clinton Foundation donors. That figure ... is almost double the value of arms sales to those countries during the same period of President George W. Bush’s second term. The Clinton-led State Department also authorized $151 billion of separate Pentagon-brokered deals for 16 of the countries that gave to the Clinton Foundation. That was a 143 percent increase in completed sales to those nations over the same time frame during the Bush administration. The 143 percent increase in U.S. arms sales to Clinton Foundation donors compares to an 80 percent increase in such sales to all countries over the same time period. American military contractors and their affiliates that donated to the Clinton Foundation — and in some cases, helped finance speaking fees to Bill Clinton — also got in on the action. Those firms and their subsidiaries were listed as contractors in $163 billion worth of arms deals authorized by the Clinton State Department.

Note: If you can not access this article at the link above, it is also available here. If you look at war and global politics from the point of view of war profiteering, you can see why despite popular opposition to war, it never stops. Read an excellent essay by a top US general exposing how war is a racket.

The controversial Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is reaching its climax and as Congress hotly debates the biggest trade deal in a generation, its backers have turned on the cash spigot in the hopes of getting it passed. TPP passed another crucial vote ... to give Barack Obama the authority to speed the bill through Congress. The president’s own supporters, senior economists and a host of activists have lobbied against a pact they argue will favor big business but harm US jobs, fail to secure better conditions for workers overseas and undermine free speech. Fast-tracking the TPP, meaning its passage through Congress without having its contents available for debate or amendments, was only possible after lots of corporate money exchanged hands with senators. This chart shows all donations that corporate members of the US Business Coalition for TPP made to US Senate campaigns between January and March 2015, when fast-tracking the TPP was being debated in the Senate. Out of the total $1,148,971 given, an average of $17,676.48 was donated to each of the 65 “yea” votes. The average Republican member received $19,673.28 from corporate TPP supporters. The average Democrat received $9,689.23 from those same donors. Almost 100% of the Republicans in the US Senate voted for fast-track.

Note: The above article shows how much it costs to purchase the favor of corrupt politicians in the U.S.. For legislation like the Trans-Pacific Partnership, it costs about $1,148,971.

For months, the U.N.'s top human rights officials knew about allegations of child sexual abuse by French soldiers in Central African Republic. But they didn't follow up because they assumed French authorities were handling it ... even as France pressed the U.N. for more information about the case. The deputy high commissioner for human rights also says that her colleague who first informed French authorities last July did it because he didn't think the recently created U.N. peacekeeping mission in Central African Republic would act on the allegations. A year after the U.N. first heard allegations from children as young as 9 that French soldiers had sexually abused them, sometimes in exchange for food, it seems that the only person who has been punished is the U.N. staffer who told French authorities. The Paris prosecutor's office this month, however, blamed the U.N. "hierarchy" for taking more than six months to supply answers to its questions. The U.N. finally handed over written answers on April 29, the Paris prosecutor's office said — the same day that the Guardian newspaper first made the French and U.N. inquiries public. French soldiers had been tasked with protecting civilians in Central African Republic from vicious violence between Christians and Muslims. Thousands of scared people had crammed into a camp for displaced people. Residents have told the AP that soldiers offered cookies, other food or bottles of water in exchange for sodomy or oral sex. It is still not clear where the accused soldiers are now.

Note: Explore powerful evidence from a suppressed Discovery Channel documentary showing that child sexual abuse scandals reach to the highest levels of government. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles about sexual abuse scandals and government corruption from reliable major media sources.

The May 20 settlement between the Justice Department and five giant banks reveals the appalling weakness of modern antitrust. The banks had engaged in the biggest price-fixing conspiracy in modern history. It was a "brazen display of collusion" that went on for years, said Attorney General Loretta Lynch. But there will be no trial [and] no executive will go to jail. The fines ... will be treated by the banks as costs of doing business. America used to have antitrust laws that permanently stopped corporations from monopolizing markets. No longer. The result has been higher prices for the many, and higher profits for the few. It's a hidden upward redistribution from the majority of Americans to corporate executives and wealthy shareholders. Similar upward distributions are occurring elsewhere in the economy. The four largest food companies control 82 percent of beef packing, 85 percent of soybean processing, 63 percent of pork packing, and 53 percent of chicken processing. Monsanto alone owns the key genetic traits to more than 90 percent of the soybeans planted by farmers in the United States, and 80 percent of the corn. Big Agribusiness wants to keep it this way. The list goes on, industry after industry, across the economy. Antitrust has been ambushed by the giant companies it was designed to contain. The market is rigged. And unless government unrigs it through bold antitrust action to restore competition, the upward distributions hidden inside the "free market" will become even larger.

Note: The above article was written by former US Secretary of Labor and current professor of public policy at UC Berkeley Robert Reich. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles about the systemically corrupt financial industry and the income inequality that this contributes to.

Since the 2008 banking crisis led to multibillion-pound bailouts, some bankers have ended up behind bars. However, to many, the list seems short when compared with the $235bn of fines that Reuters calculates have been imposed on 20 major banks in the past seven years for market rigging, sanctions busting, money laundering and mis-selling mortgage bonds in the runup to the 2008 crisis. Robert Jenkins, a former Bank of England policymaker [says] one reason regulators backed away from proceedings against individuals is fear. This dates back to 2002, when accountancy firm Arthur Andersen was convicted of destroying documents related to its audits of Enron. The prosecution was overturned in 2005, too late to save what had been one of the world’s biggest accountants from collapse. There was, Jenkins said, “fear by the US authorities of a banking version of Arthur Andersen at a time of financial fragility”. But he lists other problems, [such as] lobbying by bankers and the naivete of regulators. Jenkins added the banks should ... face the threat of being broken up: “When it comes to the systematic wrongdoing on their watch, either the senior executives knew, did not know or cannot be expected to know. If they knew they are complicit. If they did not know they are incompetent. And if the banks are so large and complex that they cannot be expected to know, then they are a walking argument for breaking up the banks.”

Note: After the bailout in 2008, the percentage of US banking assets held by the big banks has almost doubled. Could this possibly have been planned? For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles about corruption in government and in the financial industry.

The National Security Agency and its closest allies planned to hijack data links to Google and Samsung app stores to infect smartphones with spyware, a top-secret document reveals. The surveillance project was launched by a joint electronic eavesdropping unit called the Network Tradecraft Advancement Team, which includes spies from each of the countries in the “Five Eyes” alliance — the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, New Zealand and Australia. The top-secret document, obtained from NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden ... outlines a series of tactics that the NSA and its counterparts in the Five Eyes were [using, which included] a method to hack and hijack phone users’ connections to app stores so that they would be able to send malicious “implants” to targeted devices. The implants could then be used to collect data from the phones without their users noticing. The agencies ... were also keen to find ways to hijack [app stores] as a way of sending “selective misinformation to the targets’ handsets” as part of so-called “effects” operations that are used to spread propaganda or confuse adversaries. Moreover, the agencies wanted to gain access to companies’ app store servers so they could secretly use them for “harvesting” information about phone users. The revelations are the latest to highlight tactics adopted by the Five Eyes agencies. Last year, The Intercept reported that the NSA ... was shown to have masqueraded as a Facebook server in order to hack into computers.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles about corruption in the intelligence community and the manipulation of public perception.

The CIA can keep secret a nearly 7,000-page Senate report on harsh interrogation methods, as well as an internal agency review. The complete 6,963-page report compiled by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence [is] exempt from the dictates of the Freedom of Information Act, U.S. District Judge James E. Boasberg concluded. The Senate committee report, he reasoned, remained a document under congressional control, and Congress made sure to exempt itself from FOIA. “Congress has undoubted authority to keep its records secret, authority rooted in the Constitution, longstanding practice, and current congressional rules,” Boasberg stated. Hina Shamsi, director of the ACLU National Security Project, voiced disappointment in the ruling. The Senate committee released a summary of the $40 million report last December, following years of back-and-forth.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles about corruption in government and in the intelligence community.

Colonel Ian Henderson was a British official dubbed “the Butcher of Bahrain” because of atrocities he repeatedly committed during the 30 years he served as chief security official of that Middle Eastern country. A 2002 Guardian article reported that “during this time his men allegedly detained and tortured thousands of anti-government activists”; his official acts “included the ransacking of villages, sadistic sexual abuse and using power drills to maim prisoners”. Col. Henderson was never punished in any way. For years, human rights groups have fought to obtain ... a 37-year-old diplomatic cable, relating to British responsibility for Henderson’s brutality in Bahrain. Ordinarily, documents more than 30 years old are disclosable. Now, a governmental tribunal ruled ... that most of the diplomatic cable shall remain suppressed. The tribunal’s ruling was at least partially based on “secret evidence ... that the release of such information could jeopardise Britain’s new military base in the country.” This is the core mindset now prevalent in both the U.S. and U.K. for hiding their crimes from their own populations and the rest of the world: disclosure of what we did will embarrass and shame us, cause anger toward us, and thus harm our “national security.” This is exactly the same mentality driving the Obama administration’s years-long effort to suppress photographs showing torture of detainees by the U.S.. Obama insisted that to release the photos “would be to further inflame anti-American opinion and to put our troops in danger.”

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles about corruption in government and in the intelligence community.

Five of the world’s largest banks have agreed to pay more than $5 billion in fines to settle charges made by regulatory agencies and the Justice Department that the banks had acted in concert to manipulate international interest and foreign currency exchange rates. Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch said the banks had engaged in “brazenly illegal behavior on a near-daily basis.” The scale of the price-fixing scandal is hard to grasp. It touched ... almost every company and individual in the financial markets. By tweaking global benchmarks used to set foreign exchange and interest rates for a staggering number of transactions a day, the banks — over several years — bilked billions of dollars of extra profits by altering rates in their favor. Critics complained that the Justice Department had failed to prosecute any additional individuals. Wall Street watchdog group Better Markets called it a “slap on the wrist,” and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) said in an e-mail: “That’s not accountability for Wall Street. It’s business as usual, and it stinks.” Barclays, along with JPMorgan Chase, Royal Bank of Scotland Group and Citigroup, will plead guilty to conspiring to manipulate the price of U.S. currency and euros, authorities said. JPMorgan Chase said it had agreed to plead guilty to a single antitrust violation and pay a fine of $550 million. Under the resolution with the Fed, the firm will pay a fine of $342 million. The bank said it had previously set aside reserves for these settlements.

Note: When it comes to international banking, it appears that almost everything is rigged. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles about the systemically corrupt financial industry.

British police investigating allegations of historical child sex abuse said more than 1,400 people had been named as suspects including 261 described as "people of public prominence" including dozens of politicians and TV stars. Child abuse scandals over the last few years have prompted the government to launch a major public inquiry. Chief Constable Simon Bailey, the officer leading that inquiry named "Operation Hydrant", said 1,433 people were being investigated of whom 216 were now dead. The suspects included 135 figures from TV, film or radio, 76 politicians involved in both local and national politics, 43 from the music industry and seven from the sporting world. "This investigation is massive and a testimony to how the attitude to victims is changing," said Sheila Taylor, chief executive of the National Working Group Network, a charity which tackles child sexual exploitation. The issue of child abuse came to widespread prominence in 2012 when the late BBC TV presenter Jimmy Savile was shown to have abused hundreds of victims for decades. Since then, other household names have been convicted, allegations have been made against a number of former or deceased politicians, while detectives are also looking into claims powerful figures forced police to drop inquiries into paedophile rings involving high-profile people. Bailey said that 666 of the offenders being investigated were alleged to have carried out abuse at institutions including schools, children's homes and religious institutions.

Note: In 1984, UK security services raided major newspapers to prevent the publication of articles on paedophile rings run by prominent politicians. Watch an excellent segment by Australia's "60-Minutes" team "Spies, Lords and Predators" on a pedophile ring in the UK which leads directly to the highest levels of government. A second suppressed documentary, "Conspiracy of Silence," goes even deeper into this topic in the US. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing sexual abuse scandal news articles from reliable major media sources.

The Twins Plus Go-Go Lounge ... had an unusual distinction: David Polos, an official with the Drug Enforcement Administration in New York City, and Glen Glover, a civilian D.E.A. employee, each had ownership interests and actively participated in its management. That secret connection was revealed when the two men were charged with lying during national security background checks about their ownership interests and their work in the strip club. Mr. Polos, 51, had been with the agency for more than 20 years. He helped supervise the New York Organized Crime and Drug Enforcement Strike Force, a multiagency group that targets large narcotics traffickers. Polos ... resigned from the agency last month. Glen Glover, 45, of Lyndhurst, N.J., also a longtime agency employee, worked as a telecommunications specialist. Each man was charged with one count of making false statements. The men had claimed that they had no employment outside the agency, when in fact they had ownership interests in the lounge, and actively managed it while working for the D.E.A.. The two men had worked regular shifts running the club, hiring and firing dancers, bouncers and other employees, arranging for advertising and using a video surveillance system to remotely monitor activities inside the club by smartphone or computer. Mr. Polos used his status as a law enforcement officer to facilitate the club’s operations. At times, he told people in the club that he was working for the F.B.I.

Note: Award-winning journalists have presented powerful evidence of direct DEA and CIA involvement in and support of drug running and drug cartels. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles about corruption in government and in the intelligence community.

Fossil fuel companies are benefitting from global subsidies of $5.3tn (Ł3.4tn) a year, equivalent to $10m a minute every day, according to a startling new estimate by the International Monetary Fund. The IMF ... says the figure is an “extremely robust” estimate of the true cost of fossil fuels. The $5.3tn subsidy estimated for 2015 is greater than the total health spending of all the world’s governments. The vast sum is largely due to polluters not paying the costs imposed on governments by the burning of coal, oil and gas. The biggest single source of air pollution is coal-fired power stations and China, with its large population and heavy reliance on coal power, provides $2.3tn of the annual subsidies. The next biggest fossil fuel subsidies are in the US ($700bn), Russia ($335bn), India ($277bn) and Japan ($157bn), with the European Union collectively allowing $330bn in subsidies to fossil fuels. Subsidy reforms are beginning in dozens of countries including Egypt, Indonesia, Mexico, Morocco and Thailand. In India, subsidies for diesel ended in October 2014. Coal use has also begun to fall in China for the first time this century. Shelagh Whitley, a subsidies expert at the Overseas Development Institute, said: “Our research shows that many of the energy subsidies highlighted by the IMF go toward finding new reserves of oil, gas and coal, which we know must be left in the ground if we are to avoid catastrophic, irreversible climate change.”

Note: The additional cost of suppressing new energy technologies does not appear to have been included in these IMF estimates.

1971: A group of ordinary citizens broke into an FBI office in Media, Pennsylvania. What they discovered shocked them. Long before Edward Snowden’s revelations about NSA surveillance, these activist-burglars exposed COINTELPRO, the FBI’s illegal surveillance program that involved the intimidation of law-abiding Americans. For forty years the burglars kept their identities secret, but in Johanna Hamilton’s new film 1971, these previously anonymous Americans publicly tell their story for the first time. Hamilton took the time to talk to us about how she approached telling this story: "To me, every aspect of the story was compelling. A group of ordinary people who put everything on the line to protect freedom of speech and hold their government accountable. They were total outsiders who trained themselves for one night of amateur burglary in order to break into an FBI office — on a hunch! They manage to evade capture. The revelations from the break-in helped lead to the Church Committee hearings in Congress, which ended up establishing the first ever set of guidelines governing the FBI’s investigative powers. The Citizens’ Commission risked everything because they suspected the government was conducting illegal surveillance. And they were right. We are in the midst of the same discussion today. Post 9/11 we lost many of the checks and balances that the government normally operates under. Governments should not spy on law-abiding citizens — whether it’s Hoover’s FBI or today’s NSA."

Note: Watch this incredible documentary free on this webpage. For more along these lines, read about COINTELPRO and many other intrusive manipulations by corrupt intelligence agencies.

President Obama chose Nike headquarters ... to deliver a defense last week of his proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership. It was an odd choice of venue. While Nike still makes some shoe components in the United States, it hasn’t assembled shoes here since 1984. Last year, a third of Nike’s remaining 13,922 American production workers were laid off. Most of Nike’s products are made by 990,000 workers in low-wage countries whose abysmal working conditions have made Nike a symbol of global sweatshop labor. America has a huge and growing problem of inequality. Most Americans are earning no more than the typical American earned 30 years ago, adjusted for inflation — even though the U.S. economy is almost twice as big. Since then, almost all the economic gains have gone to the top. The so-called economic recovery that began in 2009 has ... had no effect on the wages of most Americans. Jobs are coming back, but wages are still stuck in the mud. Here’s where Nike comes in. Congressional Republicans — and the president — want a giant trade deal that protects corporate investors but will lead to even more offshoring of lower-skilled American jobs. We know that when Americans displaced from manufacturing jobs join the glut of Americans competing for personal service jobs ... their wages decline. It’s not Nike’s fault. Nike is simply playing by the rules. But the rules are tilted against the interests of most American workers.

Note: The above article further clarifies why the Trans-Pacific Partnership is a pending disaster. The article was written by former US Secretary of Labor and current professor of public policy at UC Berkeley Robert Reich, who also released a two minute video to educate the public about the dangers of the TPP. For more, see concise summaries of deeply revealing income inequality news articles from reliable major media sources.

Grant David Gillham, former legislative staffer ... knows how to work the system. Three major manufacturers of fire retardants went to the right person in 2007 when they enlisted him to help defeat legislation that would ban two classes of retardants believed to cause cancer. Their instructions to him: Don’t worry about the science. Run a political campaign. Oh, and by the way, he was not to reveal his association with the industry. Now Gillham is speaking out in a big way, and his story ... illustrates the extent to which the legislative process can be manipulated. The chemical industry’s main trade group, the American Chemistry Council, denied any connection with Gillham after a 2012 Chicago Tribune series exposed that the advocacy group he created, Citizens for Fire Safety, was not as it claimed, “a coalition of fire professionals, educators, community activists, burn centers, doctors, fire departments and industry leaders,” [but] was funded by three manufacturers who controlled 40 percent of the global market for the targeted chemicals. The strategy worked in California — Leno’s bill to ban chlorinated and brominated fire retardants died on the Senate floor on Aug. 26, 2008 — and Citizens for Fire Safety went on to help defeat similar bills in other states. The manufacturers’ claims of the lifesaving benefits of fire retardants have been contradicted by scientific studies that suggests their flame-resisting properties are minimal, and are more than offset by their negative effect in making fires more toxic.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing stories about manipulation of mass media and corporate corruption from reliable sources.

Edward Snowden is in exile in Moscow. He's still hard at work. Whatever he's working on, the former NSA contractor who exposed controversial US surveillance practices, says it's much tougher than his last gig. "The fact is I was getting paid an extraordinary amount of money for very little work with very little in the way of qualifications. That's changed significantly," Snowden said in an event at Stanford University on Friday, via teleconference from Moscow. Last week, a federal appeals court ruled that the NSA's massive collection of Americans' phone records is illegal — a victory for Snowden, who revealed the existence of the surveillance program in the documents he leaked to the press. Snowden said in the teleconference that he worked with reporters so that there could be a system of checks and balances, and noted that he did not publish a single document himself. Still, he couldn't leak his secrets anonymously to the reporters because his colleagues' livelihoods would have been at risk as well if the NSA conducted a witch-hunt, Snowden said. "Whistleblowers are elected by circumstance. Nobody self nominates to be a whistleblower because it’s so painful," Snowden said, [and] emphasized that he doesn't see himself as a hero or a traitor, but he had just reached the tipping point where he needed to do something.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles about government corruption and the erosion of privacy rights from reliable major media sources.

Important Note: Explore our full index to key excerpts of revealing major media news articles on several dozen engaging topics. And don't miss amazing excerpts from 20 of the most revealing news articles ever published.