News ArticlesExcerpts of Key News Articles in Major Media
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[Nyla] Rodgers discovered that her mother had lifted an entire village by giving $1,500 to 10 women to start an entrepreneurial collective. Rodgers knew right then that she would dedicate her life to picking up where her mother left off. Rodgers spent hours talking with Kenyan elders about the needs of Kisumu, and came back to the United States determined to get them the running water, health clinics and schools they asked for. She wrote a letter to everyone she knew, and collected $30,000 to build a clinic in her mother's name. Two years later, in 2009, she started a nonprofit, Mama Hope, with the motto "Stop the Pity." She structured Mama Hope along a "Batman model," where the hero is unknown. Once she finds out what a certain neighborhood needs, she flies home, gets on the computer, puts on the gala cocktail dress and drums up the money. Then she sends it to an African nonprofit that manages the project, using all locally supplied materials and labor. She shows up with Mama Hope members and helps build the hospital, school or poultry farm. "People think we are just really nice volunteers," she said. "And that's how it should be. It's not about us; we are catalysts, we don't need applause and cheers." Since then, Mama Hope (www.mamahope.org) has completed 34 projects in Ghana, Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania that benefit 150,000 people, everything from installing drip irrigation to building schools and bringing water into people's homes that they can access with faucets.
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Fifty years ago, ... more than 42 percent of U.S. adults smoked, and there was a good chance your doctor was among them. The turning point came on Jan. 11, 1964 [when] U.S. Surgeon General Luther Terry released an emphatic and authoritative report that said smoking causes illness and death — and the government should do something about it. The report’s bottom-line message was hardly revolutionary. Since 1950, head-turning studies that found higher rates of lung cancer in heavy smokers had been appearing in medical journals. A widely read article in Reader’s Digest in 1952, “Cancer by the Carton,” contributed to the largest drop in cigarette consumption since the Depression. In 1954, the American Cancer Society announced that smokers had a higher cancer risk. But the tobacco industry fought back. Manufacturers came out with cigarettes with filters that they claimed would trap toxins before they settled into smokers’ lungs. And in 1954, they placed a full-page ad in hundreds of newspapers in which they argued that research linking their products and cancer was inconclusive. It was a brilliant counter-offensive that left physicians and the public unsure how dangerous smoking really was. Cigarette sales rebounded. In the decades that followed, warning labels were put on cigarette packs, cigarette commercials were banned, taxes were raised and new restrictions were placed on where people could light up. While the U.S. smoking rate has fallen by more than half to 18 percent, that still translates to more than 43 million smokers. Smoking is still far and away the leading preventable cause of death in the U.S.
Note: For more on corporate corruption, see the deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources available here.
France's constitutional council has given President Francois Hollande the green light to introduce a 75 per cent tax rate taking aim at the super rich. Under the new plan, which the French council found constitutional, companies will have to pay 50 per cent tax on all salaries exceeding one million euros, or the equivalent of approximately Ł833, 000. Including social contributions, the rate will effectively stand at 75 per cent, although the total amount will be capped at 5 per cent of a company's turnover. The levy is set to affect income earned this year and in 2014. The 'millionaire tax' could affect more than 450 companies and several football clubs, and could raise more than 200 million euros on an annual basis. The super tax, a flagship pledge in Hollande's political manifesto, has infuriated business leaders, high earners and celebrities. President Hollande, who once admitted that he dislikes the rich and has been accused of taking an anti-business stance, has fired back at critics insisting that high earners should do more to boost the country's public finances. But the super tax has sparked fears of a mass exodus of businesses, bankers and celebrities. Last year, Prime Minister David Cameron said he would "roll out the red carpet" and "welcome more French businesses to Britain" if Hollande raised taxes on the wealthy.
Note: A New York Times article shows that the tax rate for those earning over $8 million per year in the U.S. dropped from 41% in 1995 to 31.5% in 2005. For more on income inequality, see the deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources available here.
Taken together, the [Edward Snowden] revelations have brought to light a global surveillance system that cast off many of its historical restraints after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Secret legal authorities empowered the NSA to sweep in the telephone, Internet and location records of whole populations. Six months after the first revelations ... Snowden agreed to reflect at length on the roots and repercussions of his choice. He was relaxed and animated over two days of nearly unbroken conversation. Snowden offered vignettes from his intelligence career and from his recent life as “an indoor cat” in Russia. But he consistently steered the conversation back to surveillance, democracy and the meaning of the documents he exposed. “For me, in terms of personal satisfaction, the mission’s already accomplished,” he said. “I already won. As soon as the journalists were able to work, everything that I had been trying to do was validated. Because, remember, I didn’t want to change society. I wanted to give society a chance to determine if it should change itself. All I wanted was for the public to be able to have a say in how they are governed,” he said. Snowden ... had come to believe that a dangerous machine of mass surveillance was growing unchecked. Closed-door oversight by Congress and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court was a “graveyard of judgment,” he said, manipulated by the agency it was supposed to keep in check. The NSA’s business is “information dominance,” the use of other people’s secrets to shape events. At 29, Snowden upended the agency on its own turf.
Note: For more on the realities of intelligence agency activities, see the deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources available here.
A Lismore [Australia] Catholic priest who sexually abused children was ordered by the Vatican to “live a life of prayer and penance” and offer a Mass every Friday for his victims, the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse has been told. But the “overwhelming majority” of clerical sex abuse cases are not reported to Rome because the Vatican wants to know only about incidents which occurred within the past 10 years, the Commission heard. The Bishop of Lismore, Geoffrey Jarrett, did not pass on any complaints for five years, probably because a directive from the Pope to do so was filed in a drawer and forgotten, he told the Commission. In a day of astonishing revelations about the Australian Catholic church’s lackadaisical attitude to child sex abuse allegations, Bishop Jarrett admitted he did not pass on a 2002 complaint in which a woman alleged she “walked in on Father [Paul Rex] Brown in the act of sexually abusing a child in the sacristy of the cathedral” in 1959. That alleged incident preceded Father Brown’s abuse of Mrs Jennifer Ingham in the late 1970s by two decades. In 2001 [a] Holy See directive ordered bishops to refer to it every case with a “semblance of truth” involving sexual abuse of children by clerics who were still living. The revised rule that bishops should refer only allegations concerning incidents from the past 10 years came into effect in 2002 after the Holy See was “unable to deal with the vast number of referrals” from all over the world.
Note: For more on sexual abuse of children, see the deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources available here.
A major U.S. bank has agreed to a settlement for transferring funds on the behalf of financiers for the militant group Hezbollah, the Treasury Department announced on Tuesday. Concluding that HSBC's actions "were not the result of willful or reckless conduct," Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control accepted a $32,400 settlement from the bank. Everett Stern, a former HSBC compliance officer who complained to his supervisors about the Hezbollah-linked transactions, told HuffPost he was ... satisfied that the government was taking action. But, he added, "Where I am upset was those were a handful of transactions, and I saw hundreds of millions of dollars" being transferred. Stern said he hopes the government's enforcement actions against HSBC have not come to an end with the latest settlement. "They admit to financing terrorism and they get fined $32,000. Where if I were to do that, I would go to jail for life," he said. HSBC's fine is less than the $40,165.07 covered in the settlement agreement that the bank transferred between December 2010 and April 2011 on behalf of a development company that Treasury says serves as a front for some of Hezbollah's biggest financiers in Africa. In December 2012, the bank agreed to pay a $1.9 billion settlement for moving money that a 2012 Senate report found had likely helped drug cartels and a Saudi Arabian bank the CIA has linked to al Qaeda. No one at HSBC was criminally charged.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles about corruption in government and in the financial industry.
Money is flooding into federal elections in the post-Citizens United era. And yet the agency tasked with monitoring and regulating all of that activity is close to crippled due to staff cuts and partisan bickering. That’s according to Dave Levinthal of the Center for Public Integrity, which released a massive analysis on the Federal Election Commission and its problems earlier this week. Among the problems with the agency Levinthal identified include: * The commission over the past year has reached a paralyzing all-time low in its ability to reach consensus, stalling action on dozens of rulemaking, audit and enforcement matters, some of which are years old. * Despite an explosion in political spending hastened by key Supreme Court decisions, the agency’s funding has remained flat for five years and staffing levels have fallen to a 15-year low. * Analysts charged with scouring disclosure reports to ensure candidates and political committees are complying with laws have a nearly quarter-million-page backlog. This is the rule-making and rule-enforcing entity for all federal money in politics. We live in an age in which public financing of presidential elections is a thing of the past — 2012 is the first election since Watergate where neither major party nominee accepted public funds for the general election – and, thanks to super PACs, wealthy individuals have more power than ever. The price tag for the 2012 election topped $6 billion, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. As Levinthal puts it: “As the nation heads into what will undoubtedly be the most expensive midterm election in history and a 2016 presidential election that, in no small way, has already begun, the FEC is rotting from the inside out.”
Note: For more on deep problems in the US electoral system, see the deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources available here.
As the tax year draws to a close, the charitable tax deduction beckons. America’s wealthy are its largest beneficiaries. According to the Congressional Budget Office, $33 billion of last year’s $39 billion in total charitable deductions went to the richest 20 percent of Americans, of whom the richest 1 percent reaped the lion’s share. The generosity of the super-rich is sometimes proffered as evidence they’re contributing as much to the nation’s well-being as they did decades ago when they paid a much larger share of their earnings in taxes. Think again. A large portion of the charitable deductions now claimed by America’s wealthy are for donations to culture palaces – operas, art museums, symphonies, and theaters – where they spend their leisure time hobnobbing with other wealthy benefactors. Another portion is for contributions to the elite prep schools and universities they once attended or want their children to attend. These aren’t really charities as most people understand the term. They’re often investments in the life-styles the wealthy already enjoy and want their children to have as well. Increasingly, being rich in America means not having to come across anyone who’s not. As with all tax deductions, the government has to match the charitable deduction with additional tax revenues or spending cuts; otherwise, the budget deficit widens. In economic terms, a tax deduction is exactly the same as government spending. Which means the government will, in effect, hand out $40 billion this year for “charity” that’s going largely to wealthy people who use much of it to enhance their lifestyles.
Note: For more on government corruption, see the deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources available here.
Lord Patten, the chairman of the BBC Trust, has warned a Conservative MP that he risks legal action if he publishes evidence calling into question the corporation's handling of the Jimmy Savile scandal. Robert Wilson, Tory MP for Reading East, has obtained an audio recording in which the author of an independent inquiry into the scandal at the BBC reportedly undermines his own findings. [Wilson] is planning to publish the audio recording today but Lord Patten has written to him warning that he should be "weighing up the legal liabilities that might arise". Nick Pollard, the former head of Sky News, last year [led] an independent inquiry into the BBC's decision to drop a Newsnight investigation into allegations of sex abuse by Savile. Mr Pollard's final report found that while the decision was "flawed", it was not driven by a desire to avoid a clash with tribute programmes. However, it did not include testimony from Helen Boaden, the BBC's former Head of News. She alleged that Mark Thompson, the corporation's former director-general, was aware of the content of the Newsnight investigation. Despite her testimony Mr Pollard's inquiry found that there was "no evidence to doubt" Mr Thompson's version of events. In the audio recording obtained by Mr Wilson, Mr Pollard reportedly privately admits that he was wrong to overlook Miss Boaden's evidence. The report disclosed that BBC executives were warned that Jimmy Savile had a “darker side” but pressed on regardless with tribute programmes to the child abuser.
Note: The evidence was released in full. To read or listen to the tape, click here. For more on sexual abuse scandals involving respected institutions, see the deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources available here.
Only 12 of the hundreds of staff members accused of child abuse in Ireland's Christian Brothers order since the mid-1970s have been convicted, the watchdog of the country's Catholic Church said [on December 10]. The report from the National Board for Safeguarding Children in the Catholic Church looked into how the Christian Brothers, a Catholic order set up to run schools, handled abuse allegations. It said although abuse claims were made against 325 of the order's officials since 1975, only a dozen were convicted of crimes. It was the latest setback for the Christian Brothers, whose history of running schools for boys across Ireland dates back to the early 1800s. The order's reputation has been damaged in recent years by the revelation of widespread child abuse in Irish Catholic institutions. Cardinal Sean Brady, the leader of Ireland's 4 million Catholics who himself was widely criticized for being implicated in covering up the abuse of children, said he is "truly sorry". The report was released along with a series of others on dioceses around Ireland. In the Armagh Archdiocese, run by Brady, the watchdog reported that there was a lack of records on allegations made before 1995. It said the situation has improved since then and praised Brady for the improved safeguarding of children.
Note: For more on sexual abuse scandals involving respected institutions, see the deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources available here.
A proposal to require labeling of genetically engineered foods and seeds in Washington state enjoyed broad public support in polls this summer. That was before some of the largest food companies swooped in to spend more so consumers would know less about what they are eating. The Grocery Manufacturers Association, a Washington-based trade group that represents companies such as ConAgra Foods and Kraft Foods, was responsible for $11 million of the $22 million campaign against the initiative, compared with about $9 million by pro-labeling advocates. The GMA's campaign made the difference. The initiative, which had 66 percent support in a September survey, was defeated by 51 percent to 49 percent. The grocers, who opposed the proposal as arbitrary and costly for businesses, raised more than $2.3 million from PepsiCo Inc. and about $1.5 million each from Coca-Cola Co., [and] Nestle USA. Those groups also were part of a $45 million campaign that defeated a labeling initiative in California last year. "Spending is not a problem" for organizations opposed to labeling requirements, said Colin O'Neil, director of government affairs for the Center for Food Safety, which backed the Washington state initiative. "These companies will spend whatever it takes to defeat labeling at the state level." If that's the case, the trade associations and their members will be issuing a lot more checks as fights over labeling food are breaking out in other states and advocates are pressing the matter in Congress with proposed legislation from both sides awaiting action.
Note: For more on the risks from genetically-modified organisms in food and the environment, see the deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources available here.
After losing a close friend to liver failure, Candy Chang spent a lot of time thinking about how she wanted to live out her days. Contemplating death brought clarity to her life, but she struggled to maintain perspective amid the daily grind. She wondered whether other people went through the same struggle, and what mattered to them. She decided to invite others to share those thoughts by painting a chalkboard on the side of an abandoned house in New Orleans stenciled with the sentence "Before I die I want to ________." What began as an experiment in making a public space into a shared space has become a global art project, with more than 400 "Before I die" walls in 60 countries and 25 languages. It's been quite the journey for Chang, who did not launch the project with plans to expand beyond New Orleans. But it resonated among pockets of passionate people around the globe. "Our public spaces are our shared spaces, and they have a lot of potential to offer us a more valuable and meaningful kind of life. I think about why we came together in the first place. Some of the earliest gathering places were graves and sacred groves. We gathered so we could grieve together and worship together and console one another and be alone together." We asked Chang to [share] the most common themes expressed in the walls. "Abandon all insecurities" "Come to terms with who I am" "Slow down for a moment and maybe even stop" "Find serenity" "Stop being afraid".
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[Thirteen] days before that dark day in Dallas, [police informant Willie Augustus] Somersett elicited a chilling, police tape-recorded threat from a right-wing racist who talked of how the President would soon be shot “from an office building with a high-powered rifle” and how “they’ll pick up somebody within hours after…just to throw the public off.” Extremist Joseph A. Milteer, of Quitman, Ga., made the threat against Kennedy in the kitchen of Somersett’s small apartment in downtown Miami. In the late 1970s, the House Assassinations Committee had experts analyze a photograph taken in Dealey Plaza moments before the first shot of an unidentified motorcade spectator “who bears a strong resemblance” to Milteer. The experts, however, concluded the man was not Milteer, who died in 1974. But now, a retired FBI agent who says that within hours of the assassination he was assigned to locate Milteer has [said] the man in the photograph is indeed Milteer. “I stood next to the man. I interviewed him and spent hours with him,” said Don Adams, who spent 20 years with the FBI before working as a police chief in Ohio. “There is no question in my mind. As soon as I saw that picture I almost fell off of my feet.” Congressional investigators never contacted Adams. Adams, now 82, says he saw the Dealey Plaza photograph for the first time a decade after his 1982 retirement from the FBI. The photograph renewed his interest in the case and ultimately led him to write the book, From an Office Building with a High-Powered Rifle. His insider’s account raises disturbing questions about the FBI’s investigation of Kennedy’s death.
Note: To watch a five-minute video of 20-year FBI agent Don Adams stating he has no doubt there was a major cover-up of the JFK assassination, click here. For more excellent, revealing videos on the assassination, click here and here. For more on the JFK assassination, see the deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources available here.
WikiLeaks has released the draft text of a chapter of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement, a multilateral free-trade treaty currently being negotiated in secret by 12 Pacific Rim nations. Negotiations for the TPP have ... been conducted behind closed doors. Even members of the US Congress were only allowed to view selected portions of the documents under supervision. The 30,000 word intellectual property chapter contains proposals to increase the term of patents, including medical patents, beyond 20 years, and lower global standards for patentability. It also pushes for aggressive measures to prevent hackers breaking copyright protection, although that comes with some exceptions: protection can be broken in the course of "lawfully authorised activities carried out by government employees, agents, or contractors for the purpose of law enforcement, intelligence, essential security, or similar governmental purposes". WikiLeaks claims that the text shows America attempting to enforce its highly restrictive vision of intellectual property on the world – and on itself. "The US administration is aggressively pushing the TPP through the US legislative process on the sly," says Julian Assange, the founder and editor-in-chief of WikiLeaks. "If instituted," Assange continues, "the TPP’s intellectual property regime would trample over individual rights and free expression, as well as ride roughshod over the intellectual and creative commons. If you read, write, publish, think, listen, dance, sing or invent; if you farm or consume food; if you’re ill now or might one day be ill, the TPP has you in its crosshairs."
Note: To read the Wikileaks release of the secret agreements from the TPP, click here. For further critical analysis of the TPP text, click here.
This summer, I was selected for jury duty in Los Angeles. I took my civic duty seriously and kept an open mind. Although our criminal justice system is imperfect, I believed that it was one of the fairest in the world. But the longer I spent in that dingy wood paneled courtroom, the more disillusioned I became with our justice system. Jurors were treated like convicted criminals. The judge quizzed us on legal principles without giving us any information beforehand and yelled at us for our poor legal knowledge. Then, he threatened to charge us with contempt of court if we were a minute late from lunch or spoke in the courtroom. As bad as all of this was, I was most appalled by the ineffective way the trial was conducted. At one point, a reluctant witness mumbled through his testimony. It was impossible to hear him over the clerk talking on the phone and bailiffs gossiping. Yet, jurors couldn't say anything for fear of being charged with contempt. Later, a key video was presented, but the AV was antiquated, the screen was as small as a washcloth and the people depicted were but blurry figures. How could we decipher anything useful from this footage? Several people could be sent to jail based on this evidence. If the government wants to guarantee fair trials, it should take the money it wastes on conscripting jurors and buy decent projectors and cell phones for clerks so their administrative duties don't interrupt trials.
Note: For more on government corruption, see the deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources available here.
Between classes, they schemed and conspired. For weeks, the football players at Olivet Middle School in Olivet, Mich., secretly planned their remarkable play. "Everyone was in on it," says Nick Jungel. "But the coaches didn't know anything about it," Parker Smith says. "We were, like, going behind their back." We've never heard of a team coming up with a plan to not score. "It's just like to make someone's day, make someone's week, just make them happy," Justice Miller says. The play -- which was two plays, actually -- happened at a home game earlier this month. The first part of their plan was to try to get as close to the goal line as possible without scoring, even if it meant taking a dive on the one-yard-line, which it did. The crowd was not happy. "But us kids knew, hey, we got this, this is our time, this is Keith's time," Parker, the quarterback, says. Keith Orr is the little kid in the brown jacket. He's learning disabled, struggles with boundaries -- but in the sweetest possible way. Because of his special nature, it's no surprise that Keith embraces his fellow football players. What is surprising is how they have embraced him. "We thought it would be cool to do something for him," Parker says. "Because we really wanted to prove that he was part of our team and he meant a lot to us," adds Nick. "Nothing can really explain getting a touchdown when you've never had one before," says Justice. Which brings us to part two of their play. If you didn't see Keith, it's because they were so protective of him, but he was in the middle of the rush. When they crossed the goal line, Keith says it was "awesome."
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The Transportation Security Administration is expanding its screening of passengers before they arrive at the airport by searching a wide array of government and private databases that can include records like car registrations and employment information. It is unclear precisely what information the agency is relying upon to make these risk assessments, given the extensive range of records it can access, including tax identification number, past travel itineraries, property records, physical characteristics, and law enforcement or intelligence information. The measures go beyond the background check the government has conducted for years, called Secure Flight, in which a passenger’s name, gender and date of birth are compared with terrorist watch lists. Now, the search includes using a traveler’s passport number, which is already used to screen people at the border, and other identifiers to access a system of databases maintained by the Department of Homeland Security. “I think the best way to look at it is as a pre-crime assessment every time you fly,” said Edward Hasbrouck, a consultant to the Identity Project, one of the groups that oppose the prescreening initiatives. “The default will be the highest, most intrusive level of search, and anything less will be conditioned on providing some additional information in some fashion.” Critics argue that the problem with what the agency calls an “intelligence-driven, risk-based analysis” of passenger data is that secret computer rules, not humans, make these determinations. Civil liberties groups have questioned whether the agency has the legal authority to make these assessments.
Note: For more on the realities of intelligence agency operations, see the deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources available here.
Howard G. Buffett has seen the face of hunger up close. He has the pictures, taken from his own camera, and a new book, 40 Chances: Finding Hope in a Hungry World, to prove that hunger is as abundant in some places on Earth as food is plentiful in a suburban American ShopRite. Buffett, the 58-year-old son of billionaire investor and fellow philanthropist Warren Buffett, knows the haunting stare of the undernourished. He has seen the look in the long lines snaking around a soup kitchen in Decatur, Ill. In the "hollow and tortured" eyes of a mom holding her emaciated and dying 12-year-old son in drought-stricken Ethiopia. In Totonicapan, Guatemala, where an 11-year-old girl named Maria was draping freshly picked corn over the rafters of her metal roof to keep it away from rodents. [Buffett] spends a lot of his time in poor, inhospitable places around the globe armed with seeds and hope in a quest to help people who have little or nothing to eat. 40 Chances ... chronicles his first steps on this long journey in 40 essays that feature the hungry, those like him helping the hungry, and the places where people fight for their survival one morsel at a time. He is fighting a 40-year war against hunger. But he carries a camera instead of a gun. Seeds instead of bullets. He also comes armed with money, $3 billion [from] the Howard G. Buffett Foundation, the organization funded by his famous dad back in 2006.
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Nearly two dozen current and former members of the Arizona Air National Guard responsible for remotely operating drones to support troops in Iraq and Afghanistan have been indicted on charges including theft and money laundering in a $1.4 million scam to defraud the federal government. The eight officers and 13 enlisted men and women, including the colonel and former commander of the 214 Reconnaissance Group, falsified their records and used fake home addresses in order to receive money meant for those traveling outside of their home regions for duty assignments, Arizona Attorney General Tom Horne said. Between November 2007 and September 2010, authorities said some of the defendants took home salaries that were up to five times the amount they should have been receiving. Some of the suspects defrauded the government of more than $100,000 each, Horne said. "In this case, all of these people lived in Tucson and put down fraudulent homes of record in other states" to qualify for the extra pay, Horne added. The suspects worked out of Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Tucson and were part of an elite military unit tasked with flying drones over Iraq and Afghanistan aimed at providing vital information to troops on the ground. The charges include conspiracy, conducting an illegal enterprise, fraud, theft and money laundering. Authorities said, if convicted, some of the defendants could be sentenced to up to 12.5 years in prison with the commander facing more serious charges for using his position of power to help facilitate the scam.
Note: For more on military corruption, see the deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources available here.
Although he’s known for successful comedies, '80s child actor Corey Feldman’s own story reads like a tragedy. In [his] new memoir, Coreyography, Feldman weaves a harrowing Hollywood tale of sex, drugs and profound loneliness on his road to stardom. Feldman’s book covers parental abuse, twisted friendships and devastating drug abuse. As his star began to rise in hit movies like “Stand By Me,” “The Lost Boys,” “Gremlins” and “The Goonies” — Feldman had no guidance or support from his parents. His mother -- a former Playboy model who suffered from depression and drug problems -- tortured her son about his weight and, at one point, force-fed him diet pills. He says his father was a musician who routinely encouraged Feldman to get high with him. By age 7, Feldman was a successful commercial actor and the main breadwinner of the family. Feldman found refuge on Hollywood sets and yearned for adult role models and supporters. While director Steven Spielberg became a trusted friend, many adults let him down. His father hired an assistant in his early 20s who Feldman calls “Ron.” The two became inseparable, with Ron providing Feldman with various drugs and eventually coercing him into sex. Feldman says he was “petrified,” and “revolted” the first time Ron abused him, but their twisted friendship lasted for years. Ron wasn’t the only pedophile Feldman encountered in his search for stable adult relationships. “Slowly, over a period of many years,” he writes, “I would begin to realize that many of the people I had surrounded myself with were monsters.” One person he felt safe with was Michael Jackson. He calls the singer's world his “happy place” and said Jackson brought him back to his innocence.
Note: For more on sexual abuse of children, see the deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources available here.
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