News ArticlesExcerpts of Key News Articles in Major Media
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Caught in the act, Dr. Earl Bradley needed to think fast. “What the hell are you doing, you bastard?” his patient’s mother had screamed when she found Bradley with his hand in her daughter’s diaper. Now the police were coming. Bradley would say the mother - poor, young, unwed - must have been trying to extort money from him. It worked. A detective wrote that, compared to the doctor, the mother was “not credible.” A medical board investigator found that Bradley “specialized in welfare ... patients,” so a shakedown was “a distinct possibility.” The case was closed. And the doctor who would become one of the nation’s most prolific sexual predators moved on. For 15 more years, Earl Bradley raped, molested and sodomized a generation of his pediatric patients along the Delaware seashore. He recorded 13 hours of the assaults on video. Before he finally went to jail in 2009, he victimized 1,200 children, maybe more. Reported cases of doctors sexually assaulting children are unusual; vulnerable victims are not. Most are adult women, especially those who are poor or dependent on narcotic painkillers or lacking the credibility or social standing to pursue legal action. Still ... Bradley’s case underscores how American medicine so often puts doctors’ interests ahead of patient protection. The AJC documented eight instances in which Bradley was the subject of accusations between 1994 and 2008. Each time, in ways that echo through hundreds of other cases the newspaper examined, Bradley avoided punishment.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on sexual abuse by medical professionals.
An Australian study has found that about one in five corporate executives are psychopaths – roughly the same rate as among prisoners. The study of 261 senior professionals in the United States found that 21 per cent had clinically significant levels of psychopathic traits. The rate of psychopathy in the general population is about one in a hundred. Nathan Brooks, a forensic psychologist who conducted the study, said the findings suggested that businesses should improve their recruitment screening. He said recruiters tend to focus on skills rather than personality features and this has led to firms hiring "successful psychopaths" who may engage in unethical and illegal practices or have a toxic impact on colleagues. "Typically psychopaths create a lot of chaos and generally tend to play people off against each other," he said. "Psychopaths ... don't mind if they violate morals. It is about getting where they want in the company and having dominance over others." The global financial crisis in 2008 has prompted researchers to study workplace traits that may have allowed a corporate culture in which unethical behaviour was able to flourish. Mr Brooks's research ... was based on a study of corporate professionals in the supply chain management industry across the US. The researchers have been examining ways to help employers screen for potential psychopaths. "We hope to implement our screening tool in businesses ... to hopefully identify this problem," Mr Brooks said.
Note: This study was retracted in 2018 following allegations of plagiarism. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corporate corruption from reliable major media sources.
I wonder how many of the readers remember the WHO’s pandemic alert on swine ‘flu some years ago? When the WHO was proactive to announce a pandemic then without any scientific justifications I was the one who wrote that that was a business stunt! People did not believe and the British Medical Journal rejected my paper. After one long year what I had predicted came true. Council of Europe Health Committee Chairman Dr. Wolfgang Wodarg said that the declaration of a swine flu pandemic was a false alarm. “There are many signs that there is close cooperation between the WHO and pharmaceutical companies. We have to find out whether there was pressure or whether there was money given as an incentive to the WHO to have this pandemic declared,” Dr. Wolfgang Wodarg adds. To give a simple example of the swine flu drug Tamiflu when given to a million people, 45,000 will experience vomiting, 31,000 will experience headache and 11,000 will have psychiatric side-effects. These figures might be insignificant if Tamiflu cures swine flu. That is not the case. Raising the fear levels in society is the surest way of depressing their immune system! This is good for business. With people’s immune system depressed they are prone to all kinds of infections. What follows next is the usual history. Greedy drug companies will now vie with each other to produce a vaccine. Vaccination is big business. This pattern goes on and on as long as money and medicine are related.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on Big Pharma corruption from reliable major media sources.
A dossier compiled by an MP detailing allegations of a 1980s Westminster paedophile ring is one of more than 100 potentially relevant Home Office files destroyed, lost or missing, it has emerged. The government faced fresh calls for an overarching inquiry into historical cases of paedophilia as it was revealed that a total of 114 Home Office files relevant to allegations of a child abuse network have disappeared from government records. David Cameron has already ordered the Home Office permanent secretary to look into what happened to a lost dossier given earlier in the 1980s to Leon Brittan, then home secretary, by the campaigning Tory MP Geoffrey Dickens. Dickens, who died in 1995, had told his family that the information he handed to the home secretary in 1983 and 1984 would "blow the lid off" the lives of powerful and famous child abusers, including eight well-known figures. In a letter to Dickens at the time, Brittan suggested his information would be passed to the police, but Scotland Yard says it has no record of any investigation into the allegations. The Home Office's permanent secretary, Mark Sedwill, admitted, however, that a further 114 documents relevant to allegations of child abuse were missing from the department's records. That discovery was made last year by an independent review into information received about organized child sex abuse but was not published in its report. Sedwill [said] the missing documents were some of the 36,000 records which officials presumed were lost, destroyed or missing.
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.
Henry Dryer, 92, is one of seven patients profiled in the documentary Alive Inside, a look at the power of music to help those with Alzheimer's. A clip of Dryer, who suffers from dementia, appears in an extraordinarily moving rough cut of the documentary that went up online this week. In the clip, which has been viewed 3 million times already, Dryer is largely mute and slumped over. He does not recognize his own daughter. But when a caregiver places a pair [of] headphones on him, he undergoes an astonishing transformation. His face, formerly slack and inert, lights up. His eyes beam, and he sways in his chair, keening along to the music of his youth. The effect lasts even after the headphones are removed. "I'm crazy about music," Dryer says. "I guess Cab Calloway was my number one band guy." Music "gives me the feeling of love", Dryer says. Author and neurologist Oliver Sacks, who has written extensively about the effects of music on the human brain, watches Dryer. "In some sense, Henry is restored to himself. He remembers who he is. He has reaquired his identity for a while through the power of music," Sacks says in the Alive Inside clip. "There are a million and a half people in nursing homes in this country," Alive Inside director Michael Rossato-Bennett told ABC News. "When I saw what happened to Henry, whenever you see a human being awaken like that, it touches something deep inside you."
Note: Don't miss this profoundly touching and inspiring documentary available here. Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.
For the past decade, 15-year-old Finnish students have consistently been at or near the top of all the nations tested in reading, mathematics, and science. And just as consistently, the variance in quality among Finnish schools is the least of all nations tested, meaning that Finnish students can get a good education in virtually any school in the nation. That's equality of educational opportunity, a good public school in every neighborhood. What makes the Finnish school system so amazing is that Finnish students never take a standardized test until their last year of high school, when they take a matriculation examination for college admission. There is a national curriculum – broad guidelines to assure that all students have a full education – but it is not prescriptive. Teachers have extensive responsibility for designing curriculum and pedagogy in their school. Teachers are prepared for all eventualities, including students with disabilities, students with language difficulties, and students with other kinds of learning issues. The schools I visited reminded me of our best private progressive schools. They are rich in the arts, in play, and in activity. Finland has one other significant advantage over the United States. The child-poverty rate in Finland is under 4 percent. Here it is 22 percent and rising. It's a well-known fact that family income is the most reliable predictor of academic performance. Finland has a strong social welfare system; we don't. It is not a "Socialist" nation, by the way. It is egalitarian and capitalist.
Note: Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.
Perhaps you saw Ray Suarez’s three-part series on poverty and AIDS in Mozambique on the PBS NewsHour. Or listened to Public Radio International’s piece on the rationing of kidney dialysis in South Africa. These reports ... were all bankrolled by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Better-known for its battles against global disease, the giant philanthropy has also become a force in journalism. The foundation’s grants to media organizations such as ABC and The Guardian, one of Britain’s leading newspapers, raise obvious conflict-of-interest questions: How can reporting be unbiased when a major player holds the purse strings? The foundation has invested millions in training programs for journalists. It funds research on the most effective ways to craft media messages. Gates-backed think tanks turn out media fact sheets and newspaper opinion pieces. Magazines and scientific journals get Gates money to publish research and articles. Experts coached in Gates-funded programs write columns that appear in media outlets from The New York Times to The Huffington Post, while digital portals blur the line between journalism and spin. Over the past decade, Gates has devoted $1 billion to these programs. Beyond direct links to media, the foundation also supports a dizzying mix of organizations whose goals include influencing media coverage. An interested citizen might think she’s getting news and information from a variety of sources, but many of them might be funded by Gates.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corporate corruption and media manipulation from reliable major media sources.
Since 9/11, the government has been building a huge anti-terror apparatus. In the first few days, the entire blueprint for what would happen over the next decade was written, all in secret. The public didn't know. The media didn't know. And it would take us years to find out. In secret, the administration had authorized the CIA to use what they called "enhanced interrogation techniques." They can do a lot of things that used to be considered torture. Waterboarding, for example. By any definition, it's torture. The Justice Department called it "enhanced interrogation methods" and it approved seven of them, including waterboarding. It took reporter Dana Priest years to piece together where prisoners like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed were. They had been hidden in a secret network of CIA prisons known as "black sites." For the first time, the White House had approved the building of an international prison system entirely in secret. The Terrorist Surveillance Program authorized the NSA to intercept certain telephone calls and emails of American citizens without a warrant. The NSA created a global electronic dragnet capable of reaching into America's communication networks, capturing 1.7 billion intercepts every day. The NSA turned to a new force in the covert war, private contractors. You had this boom in the corporate intelligence world, as well, companies like CACI, Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics. The NSA spent billions of dollars on more than 480 private companies.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on intelligence agency corruption and 9/11 from reliable major media sources.
U.S. District Judge Kenneth Marra on Friday sentenced butler Alfredo Rodriguez to 18 months in prison for trying to sell an incriminating piece of evidence against his boss. Mr. Rodriguez was the butler for Jeffrey Epstein, the New York/Palm Beach billionaire who pleaded guilty in 2007 to two sex-related charges after more than a dozen women - many underage - claimed Mr. Epstein sexually abused them. Mr. Rodriguez tried to sell a journal that documented his boss’s sexual exploits and refused to turn it over to investigators when they first asked for it. His aim was to sell it for $50,000 to lawyers representing the women who had filed civil lawsuits against Mr. Epstein. Here is the puzzling part: Mr. Rodriguez may end up spending more time in prison than Mr. Epstein. Judge Marra gave Mr. Rodriguez an 18-month sentence - the same sentence given to Mr. Epstein. Mr. Epstein served only 13 months in prison and was released. Even under house arrest, he is free to leave is Palm Beach, Fla., mansion. The judge conceded that the equal sentences didn’t make much sense. the identical sentences seem like a strange administration of justice given the different crimes. Lesson learned: even if the butler didn’t do it, he still can go to prison for the cover-up.
Note: Epstein's butler feared for his life and ended up dead before he could reveal his secrets. Read a collection of major media reports on billionaire Jeffrey Epstein's child sex ring which directly implicate Donald Trump, Bill Clinton, and other world leaders. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing sexual abuse scandal news articles from reliable major media sources.
A group of people who believe in UFOs held a press conference this morning that established beyond the shadow of a doubt - that reached levels of credibility so high as to constitute actual proof - that there really do exist people who believe in UFOs. This was the big day for the Disclosure Project, an attempt to incite the government to admit that UFOs are piloted by creatures from another world. The organizer, a Virginia emergency room physician and UFOlogist named Steven Greer, announced that this was a moment of historic, indeed planetary, significance: "This is the end of the childhood of the human race. It is time for us to become mature adults among the cosmic civilizations that are out there." He had arranged an impressive venue, the main ballroom of the National Press Club. Upwards of a hundred people filled the room, and a phalanx of more than a dozen TV cameras documented the proceedings. At the front of the room, in a line, sat the 20 witnesses, most of them gray-haired men who had retired years ago from the military. At one point a witness flashed two black-and-white photos of a saucer-shaped craft. The tales were set, for the most part, in the Forties, Fifties and Sixties; there was no talk of alien abductions, or ... any of the extremely intimate Close Encounters of the Fifth Kind that have dominated the UFO mythology in recent years. Greer says he has conducted interviews with 400 people with intimate knowledge of the cover-up of the alien phenomenon. Many are afraid to come forward.
Note: The best UFO documentary available with great UFO video footage is the astounding Sci-Fi Channel UFO documentary Out of the Blue, available for free viewing on this webpage. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on UFOs from reliable major media sources.
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.
"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.
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.
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.
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, â€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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Important Note: Explore our full index to revealing excerpts of key 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.