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Revealing News For a Better World

News Articles
Excerpts of Key News Articles in Major Media


Below are key excerpts of little-known, yet highly revealing news articles from the media. Links are provided to the full news articles for verification. If any link fails to function, read this webpage. These articles are listed by order of importance. You can also explore these articles listed by order of the date of the news article or by the date posted. By choosing to educate ourselves, we can build a brighter future.

Note: Explore our full index to revealing excerpts of key major media news articles on dozens of engaging topics. And read excerpts from 20 of the most revealing news articles ever published.


Come for the Free Meals, Stay for the Company
2023-11-24, Reasons to be Cheerful
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.


Natural Disasters are Not All Natural
2023-11-10, Journal of Geography, Environment and Earth Science International
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.


Is Biden Willing to Damage Relations With a Staunch Ally Like Australia in His Headlong Prosecution of Julian Assange?
2023-10-22, LA Progressive
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.


Across Israel, Jews and Arabs Join Forces to Help War Victims and Prevent Riots
2023-10-12, Haaretz (One of Israel's Leading Newspapers)
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.


Innocent Lives in the Balance: The Real Risk of Executing the Innocent
2023-10-10, ScheerPost
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.


Over 80 percent of four-star retirees are employed in defense industry
2023-10-04, Washington Post
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.


The growing case for doing less: How harmless cancers are being overdiagnosed in America
2023-10-02, Fortune
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.


What Would Real "National Defense" Look Like?
2023-09-24, TomDispatch
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.


That jet the Marines lost? Taxpayers will pay $1.7 trillion for the F-35 program
2023-09-18, CNN News
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.


J&J unit, P&G, Walgreens misled consumers about decongestants, lawsuits say
2023-09-15, Reuters
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.


How NASA Got a 'UFO Czar'–And Why it Matters
2023-09-15, Time Magazine
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.


Study finds yet another potential use for aloe plants–Natural insecticide
2023-08-24, Optimist Daily
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.


Cluster Bombs Are as Outdated as War
2023-08-18, Yes! Magazine
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.


What progressives get wrong when it comes to crypto
2023-08-12, Fortune
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.


World's 722 biggest companies 'making $1tn in windfall profits'
2023-07-05, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
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.


The Google employee who helped Edward Snowden in Hong Kong
2023-06-18, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
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.


The Taliban Is Fighting Iran With American Weapons
2023-06-01, Vice
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.


Dangerous lab leaks happen far more often than the public is aware
2023-05-30, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
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.


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)
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.


"Independent" Ukrainian "Kill List" Actually Run By Kiev, Backed By Washington
2023-05-12, MintPress News
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."


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