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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.


EPA accused of failing to regulate use of toxic herbicides despite court order
2023-04-24, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/apr/24/epa-monsanto-toxic-herbic...

The US Environmental Protection Agency has in effect ignored a 2020 federal court order prohibiting the use of Monsanto and other producers' toxic dicamba-based herbicides that are destroying millions of acres of cropland, harming endangered species and increasing cancer risks for farmers, new fillings in the lawsuit charge. Instead of permanently yanking the products from the market after the 2020 order, the EPA only required industry to add further application instructions to the herbicides' labels before reapproving the products. A late 2021 EPA investigation found the same problems persist even with new directions added to the label, but the agency still allows Monsanto, BASF and other producers to continue using dicamba. The EPA's pesticide office is included in allegations that career managers are influenced by or have colluded with industry, and in some cases falsified science to make dangerous substances appear less toxic. About one-third of the pesticide office's funding comes from industry fees. The agency in 2016 approved the dicamba-based herbicide developed by Monsanto, which was to be used on genetically modified soybean and cotton crops. The herbicide can damage or kill neighboring crops and plants that are not engineered to be dicamba-resistant. The results are "devastating" and destroying millions of acres as "as never before seen in the history of US agriculture", the plaintiffs said. In some cases, direct dicamba exposure can kill insects, mammals and other animals.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corruption in government and in the food system from reliable major media sources.


Neoliberalism as the U.S. Empire Declines
2023-04-18, LA Progressive (A popular Los Angeles Newspaper)
https://www.laprogressive.com/democracy/neoliberal-u-s-empire-declines

The neoliberal globalizing paradigm is now the old. Economic nationalism is the new. Neoliberal globalization ... celebrated the profits and growth brought to both private and state-owned/operated enterprises around the world. It downplayed or ignored the other sides of globalization: (1) growing income and wealth inequalities; (2) the shift of production from old to new centers of capitalism; and (3) faster growth of output and markets in new centers than old centers. Instead of a mostly private capitalist system (like that of the U.S. or UK) or a mostly state capitalist system (like that of the USSR), places like China and India produced hybrids. Strong national governments presided over coexisting large private and state sectors to maximize economic growth. The days of the U.S. dollar as the supreme global currency are numbered. U.S. supremacy in high-tech industries must already be shared with China's high-tech industries. The U.S. empire's decline raises the question of what comes next. The most interesting possibility and perhaps the likeliest is that China and the entire BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) grouping of nations will undertake the construction and maintenance of a new world economy. The war in Ukraine has already enhanced the prospects of such an outcome by strengthening the BRICS alliance. They have the population, resources, productive capacity, connections, and accumulated solidarity to be a new pole for world economic development.  

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on income inequality from reliable major media sources.


Billionaire Space Flight Isn't About Colonization. It's Stoking a New Cold War.
2023-04-16, Truthout
https://truthout.org/articles/billionaire-space-flight-isnt-about-colonizatio...

The U.S. has not engaged in a defensive war for nearly 80 years, instead destabilizing governments worldwide in Vietnam, the Korean Peninsula, Iraq, Afghanistan, throughout Africa and across Latin America. Although all weapons of mass destruction in space are technically prohibited by the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, it isn't without precedent for major military powers to withdraw from such treaties. In 2019, President Donald Trump diverged from President Barack Obama's promise he would "not weaponize space," and created an official Space Force. Countersurveillance and counter-communications have been central goals of U.S. military space operations since the 1990s, alongside attaining U.S. "full spectrum dominance" of all potential conflict sites – including space. Space infrastructure ... increases the risk of global nuclear war by presenting new opportunities for armament and hostility. The government's ability to militarize this technology is strongly related to investment and development in the private sector through companies such as Boeing, SpaceX and Blue Origin. The commercial arm of the military-industrial complex is extending into space. Along with Blue Origin, SpaceX has collaborated with DOD in developing rapid global military cargo delivery systems, which the DOD hopes will make for global military logistics – delivery of supplies, weapons and even human soldiers anywhere on earth – in under 60 minutes.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on military corruption from reliable major media sources.


The Man Who Knew Exactly What the F.B.I. Was Doing to Martin Luther King Jr.
2023-04-12, New York Times
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/12/opinion/lyndon-johnson-martin-luther-king-...

We have long known about the F.B.I. director J. Edgar Hoover's animus toward the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Hoover built an extensive apparatus of surveillance and disruption designed to destroy King. It's time to ... recognize the power structure that supported the F.B.I.'s campaign. Many Americans – starting with the president – thought movement activists like King posed threats to the established order and needed to be watched and controlled. Members of the press could have exposed the bureau's campaign. And many government officials who could have stopped, curtailed or exposed the F.B.I.'s attack on King instead enabled or encouraged it. F.B.I. records declassified in the past several years and documents from the Johnson archives released in 2022 force us to reconsider the nature of Johnson's involvement in the F.B.I.'s campaign against King. White House documents ... suggest that Johnson, from the beginning of his presidency in 1963 to King's assassination in 1968, was apprised almost weekly by Hoover himself on the F.B.I.'s surveillance of King. Johnson did nothing to stop or rein in the F.B.I., even after at least one top administration official expressed concern. In addition to the president and the media, other officials at the F.B.I. ... worked to ruin King. Scores of ranking officials and agents at the F.B.I., dozens of elected officials and several informants embedded in King's inner circles knew what was going on, and none, as far as the public records indicate, blew a whistle on the campaign.

Note: Few people know about the 1999 King Family civil trial in Memphis, where it took a jury only one hour to find the U.S. government guilty for the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and the erosion of civil liberties from reliable major media sources.


Revealed: the terrorist hired by the CIA to catch Carlos the Jackal
2023-04-09, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/apr/09/revealed-the-terrorist-hired-by...

The story of Bruno Bréguet, one the most enigmatic figures of the shadowy battle between western security services and international violent extremists during the so-called "golden age of terrorism" in the 1970s and 1980s, has been given a new twist. A new book has revealed that in his later years Bréguet served not only the infamous Illich Ramírez Sánchez, better known as Carlos the Jackal, but the US government too. Bréguet's spying for the CIA earned him tens of thousands of dollars, and contributed to the capture of his erstwhile boss by French secret services in 1994. The news that the CIA was prepared to hire as an agent a man like Bréguet, who had been twice convicted by Israel and France for his terrorist activities and is believed to have bombed a pro-democracy radio station in Munich funded by the US government, underlines the moral and ethical questions facing intelligence services when it comes to recruiting such individuals. If anyone in the CIA balked at employing Bréguet as an agent, there is no record of their concerns. For the next four years, Bréguet appears to have supplied information to the CIA, possibly indirectly contributing key elements to the French intelligence operation that successfully grabbed Carlos from a clinic in Khartoum in 1994. Breguet's final mystery remains unresolved however. In 1995, the veteran extremist turned CIA agent disappeared definitively after boarding a ferry from a Greece to Italy. Was he murdered? Or did he commence a new life under a false identity?

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on intelligence agency corruption and terrorism from reliable major media sources.


'Bees are sentient': inside the stunning brains of nature's hardest workers
2023-04-02, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/apr/02/bees-intelligence-minds-p...

When Stephen Buchmann finds a wayward bee on a window inside his Tucson, Arizona, home, he goes to great lengths to capture and release it unharmed. This March, Buchmann released a book that unpacks just how varied and powerful a bee's mind really is. The book, What a Bee Knows: Exploring the Thoughts, Memories and Personalities of Bees, draws from his own research and dozens of other studies to paint a remarkable picture of bee behavior and psychology. It argues that bees can demonstrate sophisticated emotions resembling optimism, frustration, playfulness and fear, traits more commonly associated with mammals. Experiments have shown bees can experience PTSD-like symptoms, recognize different human faces, process long-term memories while sleeping, and maybe even dream. Approximately one-third of the American diet, including many fruits, vegetables and nuts, relies on bees for pollination. In the past, bee research has focused on their role in crop pollination, but the work being pioneered by Buchmann and his contemporaries could force an ethical reckoning with how the animals are treated. Can large-scale agriculture and scientific research continue without causing bees to suffer, and is the dominant western culture even capable of accepting that the tiniest of creatures have feelings, too? Buchmann hopes an ethical shift will happen as details about the emotional lives of invertebrates – especially bees – are shared with the public.

Note: Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.


The Most Dangerous International Treaty Ever Proposed
2023-03-29, Brownstone Institute
https://brownstone.org/articles/most-dangerous-international-treaty-ever-prop...

Two international legal agreements [are] currently working their way through the World Health Organisation: a new pandemic treaty, and amendments to the 2005 International Health Regulations, both due to be put before the governing body of the WHO, the World Health Assembly, in May next year. As concerned scholars and jurists have detailed, these agreements threaten to fundamentally reshape the relationship between the WHO, national governments, and individuals. They would hardwire into international law a top-down supranational approach to public health in which the WHO, acting in some cases via the sole discretion of one individual, its Director General (DG), would be empowered to impose sweeping, legally binding directions on member states and their citizens. A global system for digital ‘health certificates' for verification of vaccine status or test results would be routinised, and a bio-surveillance network ... would be embedded and expanded. The WHO has fallen largely under the control of private capital and other vested interests. Over 80 percent of the WHO's budget is now ‘specified' funding by way of voluntary contributions typically earmarked for specific projects or diseases in a way that the funder specifies. The WHO [is] ordaining itself as the exclusive global controller not just of the identification of pandemics and potential pandemics but of the design and execution of pandemic responses, while also granting itself a vast health surveillance network and a global workforce.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and health from reliable major media sources.


A Four-Decade Secret: One Man's Story of Sabotaging Carter's Re-election
2023-03-18, New York Times
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/18/us/politics/jimmy-carter-october-surprise-...

It has been more than four decades, but Ben Barnes said he remembers it vividly. His longtime political mentor invited him on a mission to the Middle East. What Mr. Barnes said he did not realize until later was the real purpose of the mission: to sabotage the re-election campaign of the president of the United States. It was 1980 and Jimmy Carter was in the White House, bedeviled by a hostage crisis in Iran that had paralyzed his presidency and hampered his effort to win a second term. Mr. Carter's best chance for victory was to free the 52 Americans held captive before Election Day. That was something that Mr. Barnes said his mentor was determined to prevent. His mentor was John B. Connally Jr., a titan of American politics. Now Mr. Connally resolved to help Mr. Reagan beat Mr. Carter. What happened next Mr. Barnes has largely kept secret for nearly 43 years. Mr. Connally, he said, took him to one Middle Eastern capital after another that summer, meeting with a host of regional leaders to deliver a blunt message to be passed to Iran: Don't release the hostages before the election. Mr. Reagan will win and give you a better deal. Mr. Connally's files indicated that he did, in fact, leave Houston on July 18, 1980, for a trip that would take him to Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Israel before returning to Houston on Aug. 11. Iran did hold the hostages until after the election, which Mr. Reagan won, and did not release them until minutes after noon on Jan. 20, 1981, when Mr. Carter left office.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on elections corruption from reliable major media sources.


The FBI Just Admitted It Bought US Location Data
2023-03-08, Wired
https://www.wired.com/story/fbi-purchase-location-data-wray-senate/

The United States Federal Bureau of Investigation has acknowledged for the first time that it purchased US location data rather than obtaining a warrant. The disclosure came today during a US Senate hearing. Senator Ron Wyden ... put the question of the bureau's use of commercial data to its director, Christopher Wray: "Does the FBI purchase US phone-geolocation information?" Wray said his agency was not currently doing so. "To my knowledge, we do not currently purchase commercial database information that includes location data derived from internet advertising," Wray said. "I understand that we previously–as in the past–purchased some such information for a specific national security pilot project. But that's not been active for some time." In its landmark Carpenter v. United States decision, the Supreme Court held that government agencies accessing historical location data without a warrant were violating the Fourth Amendment's guarantee against unreasonable searches. The decision left open a glaring loophole that allows the government to simply purchase whatever it cannot otherwise legally obtain. US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and the Defense Intelligence Agency are among the list of federal agencies known to have taken advantage of this loophole. The Department of Homeland Security ... purchased the geolocations of millions of Americans from private marketing firms. The data were derived from ... benign sources, such as mobile games and weather apps.

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


U.S. Special Forces Want to Use Deepfakes for Psy-Ops
2023-03-06, The Intercept
https://theintercept.com/2023/03/06/pentagon-socom-deepfake-propaganda/

U.S. Special Operations Command, responsible for some of the country's most secretive military endeavors, is gearing up to conduct internet propaganda and deception campaigns online using deepfake videos, according to federal contracting documents. SOCOM's next generation propaganda aspirations are outlined in a procurement document that lists capabilities it's seeking for the near future and soliciting pitches from outside parties that believe they're able to build them. Last October, SOCOM quietly released an updated version of its wish list with a new section: "Advanced technologies for use in Military Information Support Operations (MISO)," a Pentagon euphemism for its global propaganda and deception efforts. Perhaps as provocative as the mention of deepfakes is the section that follows, which notes SOCOM wishes to finely tune its offensive propaganda seemingly by spying on the intended audience through their internet-connected devices. Described as a "next generation capability to ‘takeover' Internet of Things (loT) devices for collect [sic] data and information from local populaces to enable breakdown of what messaging might be popular and accepted through sifting of data once received," the document says that the ability to eavesdrop on propaganda targets "would enable MISO to craft and promote messages that may be more readily received by local populace." In 2017, WikiLeaks published pilfered CIA files that revealed a roughly similar capability to hijack into household devices.

Note: Read more about the potential pitfalls of deepfake technologies. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on military corruption and the disappearance of privacy from reliable major media sources.


At least 13 mayors arrested on child sex crimes since 2021
2023-03-03, Fox News
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/at-least-13-mayors-arrested-child-sex-crimes...

The now-former mayor of College Park, Maryland, was arrested on child pornography charges Thursday morning, adding to a long list of mayors accused of preying on young children. Patrick Wojahn, 47, is charged with 40 counts of possession of child exploitative material and 16 counts of distribution of child exploitative material. Wojahn's case isn't an unusual one. At least 12 additional then-current and former mayors have been accused of child sex crimes since 2021, ranging from child pornography to sexual assault. Phil Briggs, the mayor of Spencerville, Ohio, resigned last month after he was arrested for allegedly secretly recording his girlfriend's teenage daughters while they undressed. Ted Tomaszewski, the former mayor of Mansfield Township, New Jersey, was charged in January with sexual assault, luring and child endangerment. He is accused of engaging in multiple sex acts with a 15-year-old. Carl Johnson, the former mayor of West Bountiful, Utah, and a former bishop for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, was charged in September 2022 with sexually abusing three girls under the age of 13. He pleaded not guilty to seven counts of aggravated abuse of a child. An earlier Fox News Digital analysis found that at least 349 public school educators were arrested on child sex-related crimes spanning nearly every state in the country last year, averaging to almost an arrest every day on crimes ranging from grooming to child porn to raping students.

Note: Why is Fox News the only major media outlet covering this shocking issue? For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and sexual abuse scandals from reliable major media sources.


Congress Suddenly Wants to Know If US Taxpayers Were Helping El Chapo
2023-03-02, Vice
https://www.vice.com/en/article/m7gmzn/garcia-luna-trial-dea-fbi

After flying under the radar for years, the case of Genaro GarcĂ­a Luna is finally raising alarms in Congress, with one of the Senate's top Republicans demanding answers about how Mexico's highest-ranking cop was able to partner with DEA and FBI, "at the time that he funneled roughly 103,000 pounds of cocaine into the United States" for the Sinaloa Cartel. GarcĂ­a Luna became the most senior Mexican law enforcement official ever convicted of narco-corruption when a Brooklyn federal jury delivered a unanimous guilty verdict on a five-count indictment that charged him with taking massive bribes to enable cartel drug smuggling, kidnappings, and murders while he was in office from 2001 to 2012. GarcĂ­a Luna's position involved close collaboration with U.S. anti-narcotics agencies that operate in Mexico, and it gave him discretion over the spending of hundreds of millions in American tax dollars delivered as security aid. That money was supposed to go toward fighting the cartels, but his trial showed he was leaking sensitive intelligence, protecting drug shipments, and disrupting efforts to capture ... cartel leaders. On Feb. 22, a day after the guilty verdict, Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley sent a letter to the heads of the DEA and FBI asking what the agencies knew about GarcĂ­a Luna and when, and demanding evidence ... that could shed new light on the relationship. In short, Grassley wants to know if American tax dollars were being sent to Mexico while the DEA and FBI were tolerating GarcĂ­a Luna's corruption.

Note: This case adds to the evidence that the War on Drugs is a trillion dollar failure. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption from reliable major media sources.


‘This feels more like spin-the-bottle than science': my mission to find a proper diagnosis – and treatment – for my son's psychosis
2023-02-25, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/feb/25/this-feels-more-like-spin-the...

Psychosis is often thought to be genetic, or a symptom of brain chemistry gone awry, which is what I was led to believe for much of my journey through the traditional mental health system. [My son] Zach's first diagnosis was psychosis NOS (Not Otherwise Specified). Later ... he was classified with either schizophrenia, paranoid schizophrenia, depression with psychotic symptoms or, more recently, schizoaffective disorder. I craved solutions, and the more I searched the more confused I became. First, I discovered that no disease markers show up in brain scans or blood tests for any of these so-called disorders. Nobody seems to know for sure what is really going on, which feels more like a spin-the-bottle game than science. The effects of the antipsychotic drugs were intolerable for Zach, far worse than the symptoms that they were meant to alleviate. In Finland, a more radical understanding of extreme distress led to a programme called Open Dialogue which aims to avoid hospitalisation and medication with therapy that revolves around families and other networks, and involves contact, preferably in the person's home. It has contributed to lowering the suicide rate in Finland; one of the highest in the world in the 1990s, it has dropped by 50% since Open Dialogue began. Despite a quarter of a trillion pounds spent on mental health in Britain since the 1980s, it is the only area of medicine where outcomes have stalled, and by some measures are even going backwards.

Note: Explore more positive stories like this in our comprehensive inspiring news articles archive focused on solutions and bridging divides.


Trial of Mexico's Former Top Cop Neglected U.S. Role in War on Drugs
2023-02-21, The Intercept
https://theintercept.com/2023/02/21/garcia-luna-verdict/

Genaro GarcĂ­a Luna, Mexico's former top law enforcement official known as the "architect" of the Mexican side of the drug war, was found guilty in New York federal court of collaborating with the Sinaloa cartel, the biggest organized crime group in North America. For years, GarcĂ­a Luna was the U.S. government's most trusted ally in the war on drugs. As public security secretary, he wielded incredible power, overseeing Mexico's Federal Police, the prison network, and a vast intelligence-gathering infrastructure, while working with the Drug Enforcement Administration, FBI, CIA, and Department of Homeland Security in the fight against Mexican cartels. The case portrayed GarcĂ­a Luna and his network of corrupt officials as a handful of bad apples, and what U.S. officials knew about GarcĂ­a Luna's illicit activities went mostly unexplored, despite the government's role in providing funding, equipment, and training that has fueled drug-related violence. GarcĂ­a Luna was found guilty of all five charges, including drug trafficking and continuing a criminal enterprise. Prosecutors alleged that he received around $274 million in bribes from the cartel from 2001 to 2012, first as head of the Federal Investigative Agency, the Mexican equivalent of the FBI, and then as secretary of public security. GarcĂ­a Luna left public office in 2012 following a change in presidency and moved to Miami where he started a security consulting company and lived a lavish lifestyle.

Note: The War on Drugs has been described as a trillion dollar failure. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corruption in government and in intelligence agencies from reliable major media sources.


Now for sale: Data on your mental health
2023-02-13, Washington Post
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/02/13/mental-health-data-brokers/

A study published Monday ... outlines how expansive the market for people's health data has become. After contacting data brokers to ask what kinds of mental health information she could buy, researcher Joanne Kim reported that she ultimately found 11 companies willing to sell bundles of data that included information on what antidepressants people were taking, whether they struggled with insomnia or attention issues, and details on other medical ailments, including Alzheimer's disease or bladder-control difficulties. Some of the data was offered in an aggregate form that would have allowed a buyer to know, for instance, a rough estimate of how many people in an individual Zip code might be depressed. But other brokers offered personally identifiable data featuring names, addresses and incomes, with one data-broker sales representative pointing to lists named "Anxiety Sufferers" and "Consumers With Clinical Depression in the United States." Some even offered a sample spreadsheet. The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, known as HIPAA, restricts how hospitals, doctors' offices and other "covered health entities" share Americans' health data. But the law doesn't protect the same information when it's sent anywhere else, allowing app makers and other companies to legally share or sell the data. Some of the data brokers offered ... opt-out forms. But ... many people probably didn't realize the brokers had collected their information in the first place. Privacy advocates have for years warned about the unregulated data trade, saying the information could be exploited by advertisers or misused for predatory means. The health-data issue has in some ways gotten worse, in large part because of the increasing sophistication with which companies can collect and share people's personal information – including not just in defined lists, but through regularly updated search tools and machine-learning analyses.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corporate corruption and the disappearance of privacy from reliable major media sources.


BOOK REVIEW: ‘The Truth About Wuhan: How I Uncovered the Biggest Lie in History'
2023-01-26, Washington Times
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2023/jan/26/book-review-the-truth-about-...

The origin of SARS-CoV-2, the agent that causes the disease COVID-19, remains a mystery. But there are purportedly a few high up in government and scientific communities well aware of its genesis. In "The Truth About Wuhan: How I Uncovered the Biggest Lie in History," Andrew G. Huff, former EcoHealth Alliance vice president and senior scientist, details his coming forward "as a material witness and whistleblower related to SARS-CoV-2." "The Truth About Wuhan" [contains] an insider's view of working for EcoHealth Alliance; a damning critique of models and techniques used to hunt coronaviruses; a reasoned aversion to "gain of function" research; the real COVID-19 timeline; China and U.S. culpability in the virus mayhem; and the multifarious, direct attacks used by the federal government to harass and discredit Mr. Huff. According to the author, "SARS-CoV-2 leaked from the [Wuhan Institute of Virology] laboratory as early as August 2019. The probable cases detected in Italy in 2019 make sense as Italy is one of the most popular tourist destinations of the Chinese. By mid-October 2019 the disease was likely already on every continent except Antarctica. The DoD, along with militaries globally, detected the disease in their countries' service members that attended the Military World Games in Wuhan. Trying to avoid global panic, governments began to implement response plans, which included the U.S. government's mobilization of the mRNA SARS-CoV-2 gene therapy."

Note: Before buying this book, you might read this review and the reviews on Amazon. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on the coronavirus from reliable major media sources.


How George Soros funds ‘fact checkers' to silence dissent
2023-01-25, New York Post
https://nypost.com/2023/01/25/how-george-soros-funds-fact-checkers-to-silence...

It's not enough for George Soros to fund the media and encourage stories that back up his point of view – he has to make sure no one disagrees with it. Last year, Soros partnered with ... billionaire Reid Hoffman (the co-founder of LinkedIn) to financially back a project to fight so-called disinformation. The name they chose: Good Information Inc. Major fact-checking organizations such as PolitiFact, Snopes, and others have long faced allegations of left-wing political bias – allegations a series of studies over the years have confirmed. One of the more recent studies of bias on PolitiFact found sources six times more likely to defend Biden in their "fact-checks" than check his facts. Major funding for PolitiFact's parent company, The Poynter Institute, includes the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, Ford Foundation, Soros-backed Tides Foundation ... among many others. One project of the Poynter Institute specifically, the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN), was launched in 2015 with its initial funding coming from the National Endowment for Democracy (backed by the US State Department), the Omidyar Network, Google, Facebook, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and George Soros' Open Society Foundations. The problem, of course, is that these "fact checks" are anything but impartial. Facebook and other social-media companies censored any articles that suggested the COVID-19 virus leaked from a Wuhan lab, based on denials of scientists who had a conflict of interest.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on mass media manipulation from reliable sources.


Look at how the 1% are doing right now, and tell me the system isn't rigged
2023-01-23, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/jan/23/system-rigged-inequalit...

According to Oxfam's annual inequality report, released to coincide with the World Economic Forum meetings in Davos, the richest 1% of people have captured nearly twice as much new wealth as the rest of the world combined since the pandemic. Their fortune soared by $26tn, increasing their share of new wealth from 50% to two-thirds. The breakdown of these figures exposes how on a global basis, extreme wealth is accumulated not by innovating or increasing production, but by taking advantage of rising prices and exploiting labour. This has been happening for a while, but the pandemic accelerated the trend. Rich people benefited from everything – every positive intervention from the state and negative impact of the crisis somehow still ended up increasing their wealth. They benefited from rising costs by using them as an alibi to charge higher-than-inflation prices, then distributing the rewards as dividends instead of higher wages. Food and energy corporations made a killing, making $306bn in windfall profits in 2022, then distributing 84% to shareholders. Wealthy people have used their wealth to purchase democracy, to warp democracy in their own interests. They've done that through a global template that involves lowering taxes, privatising formerly public attempts to deal with common problems, liquidating the spending that went into things like social services, and then putting that money into their own pockets. The system ... is rigged.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on the coronavirus and income inequality from reliable major media sources.


How the 'Romeo and Juliet' lawsuit could force Hollywood to reckon with its history of child abuse
2023-01-15, Business Insider
https://www.businessinsider.com/hollywood-history-of-child-abuse-romeo-and-ju...

In the 1960s, 15-year-old Olivia Hussey and 16-year-old Leonard Whiting secured career-making roles in a film that retells the iconic love story of "Romeo and Juliet," the first film to use actors that were similar in age to the characters in the play. They were legally children when they were filmed in the nude together; the performance can now be found on sites meant for pornography. Fifty-five years later, Hussey, now 71, and Whiting, now 72, are suing Paramount Pictures for child abuse. They claim that "Romeo and Juliet" director Franco Zefirelli assured the actors that they would be wearing flesh colored garments and would not be physically nude in the scene. This allegedly changed in the last days of filming when Zefirelli asked the actors to do the scene fully nude with makeup, according to the lawsuit. [Judy] Garland was forced to take barbiturates and other drugs and live on a death-defying diet while working with the studio. Garland wrote in an unpublished autobiography that she was constantly molested behind the scenes by older men, including Louis B. Mayer, the producer and cofounder of MGM. Alyson Stoner was made to act out a rape scene when she was only 6 years old. "At 6 years old, I enter a sterile white room where a stranger stands apathetically behind a camcorder on a tripod. On cue, I perform the scene. This morning, I'm being kidnapped and raped," Stoner wrote. She developed eating disorders – among other health problems – due to stress.

Note: Read more about the disturbing history of child sex abuse in Hollywood from the courageous voices of actor Corey Feldman and Lord of the Rings star Elijah Wood. Explore our archive of revealing reports from reliable media sources on high-level pedophilia and sexual abuse.


Call for new taxes on super-rich after 1% pocket two-thirds of all new wealth
2023-01-15, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
https://www.theguardian.com/inequality/2023/jan/16/oxfam-calls-for-new-taxes-...

Oxfam has called for immediate action to tackle a post-Covid widening in global inequality after revealing that almost two-thirds of the new wealth amassed since the start of the pandemic has gone to the richest 1%. In [a] report to coincide with the annual gathering of the global elite at the World Economic Forum in Davos, the charity said the best-off had pocketed $26tn (Ł21tn) in new wealth up to the end of 2021. That represented 63% of the total new wealth, with the rest going to the remaining 99% of people. Oxfam said extreme concentrations of wealth led to weaker growth, corrupted politics and the media, corroded democracy and led to political polarisation. The report called on governments to introduce immediate one-off wealth levies on the richest 1%, together with windfall taxes to clamp down on profiteering during the global cost of living crisis. Subsequently, there should be a permanent increase in taxes on rich. In support of its call for redistribution of wealth, Oxfam said: Food and energy companies had more than doubled their profits in 2022, paying out $257bn to wealthy shareholders at a time when more than 800 million people were going hungry. Only 4 cents in every dollar of tax revenue came from wealth taxes, and half the world's billionaires lived in countries with no inheritance tax. A tax of up to 5% on the world's multimillionaires and billionaires could raise $1.7tn a year, enough to lift 2 billion people out of poverty, and fund a global plan to end hunger.

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