News StoriesExcerpts of Key News Stories in Major Media
Note: This comprehensive list of news stories is usually updated once a week. Explore our full index to revealing excerpts of key major media news stories on several dozen engaging topics. And don't miss amazing excerpts from 20 of the most revealing news articles ever published.
Reducing stress and softening the sharper edges of anxiety in this way are beginners' steps when it comes to the practice of meditation. Put in the hours, though, and you may well reach the deep end: a place where radical, long-lasting upgrades to how you feel and what you experience are possible. Now, these mental transformations are being examined and understood by neuroscientists at world-leading institutions. Matthew Sacchet [is the] director of the Meditation Research Program at Harvard Medical School. His team works hand in hand with advanced meditators, such as Buddhist monks, exploring how the material brain changes because of subjective experiences that are often considered spiritual in nature. Using state-of-the-art brain scanners, his team pinpoints the neural changes that occur across a variety of deep meditative practices. Beyond mindfulness-related stress reduction, advanced practitioners report experiences of ecstatic bliss, deep insights into their own minds, radical compassionate states and prosocial ways of being, and even shifts in their fundamental sense of self. Advanced meditators sometimes report states of consciousness that are described as deeply peaceful, mentally clear or subjectively non-dual – meaning there is no perceived distinction between self and other. These aren't just subjective reports: we observe changes in the brain that support their existence.
Note: Explore more positive stories like this on the mysterious nature of reality.
Dr. Ian Stevenson [was the] director of the Division of Perceptual Studies, or DOPS, a parapsychology research unit he founded in 1967 within the University of Virginia's school of medicine. The survival of consciousness after death continues to be at the forefront of the division's research. The team has logged hundreds of cases of children who claim to remember past lives. DOPS is a curious institution. There are only a few other labs in the world undertaking similar lines of research. The only other major parapsychology unit in the United States was Princeton's Engineering Anomalies Research Laboratory, or PEAR, which focused on telekinesis and extrasensory perception. That unit was shuttered in 2007. Common features in children who claim to have led a previous life include a verbal precocity and mannerisms at odds with that of the rest of the family. Unexplained phobias or aversions have also been thought to have been transferred over from a past existence. In some cases, extreme clarity besets the remembrances: the names, professions and quirks of a different set of relatives, or the particularities of the streets they used to live on and sometimes even recalling obscure historical events – details the child couldn't possibly have known. The strongest cases, according to the DOPS researchers, have been found in children under the age of 10, and the majority of remembrances tend to occur between the ages of 2 and 6, after which they appear to fade.
Note: Explore more positive stories like this on near-death experiences and the mysterious nature of reality.
Gangsters from MS-13, a Trump-designated Foreign Terrorist Organization, intimidated Hondurans not to vote for the left-leaning presidential candidate... in most cases urging them to instead cast their ballots in last Sunday's election for the right-wing National Party candidate [Nasry "Tito" Asfura, known as Papi a la Ă“rden or "Daddy at your service] – the same candidate endorsed by U.S. President Donald Trump. Gang members drove voters to the polls ... and threatened to kill street-level activists for the left-leaning Liberty and Refoundation, or LIBRE, party if they were seen bringing supporters to the polls. "A lot of people for LIBRE didn't go to vote because the gangsters had threatened to kill them," a resident of San Pedro Sula, the second-largest city in Honduras, told The Intercept. The MS-13 interference took place as the U.S. president, who has obsessed over the gang since his first term, extended an interventionist hand over the elections. On November 28, Trump threatened to cut off aid to Honduras if voters didn't elect Asfura while simultaneously announcing a pardon for Asfura's ally and fellow party member Juan Orlando Hernández, the former president of Honduras convicted in the U.S. on drug trafficking and weapons charges last year. Testimony at Hernández's trial indicated that members of MS-13 were subcontracted as early as 2004 through the corrupt, U.S.-allied police commander Juan Carlos "El Tigre" Bonilla to provide security for caravans of cocaine alongside soldiers. "The people in Honduras are afraid," [leader of the Honduran national emergency call system Miroslava Cerpas] said, "because organized crime has been emboldened by the pardon of Juan Orlando Hernández."
Note: As chief of the Honduran National Police, convicted drug trafficker Juan Carlos Bonilla ("El Tigre") oversaw TIGRES, a special unit within the National Police trained by US special forces and operating alongside Honduran officials trained at Fort Moore, Georgia (formerly known as The School of Americas) which graduated more than 500 individuals later implicated in widespread human rights abuses across Latin America including the killing, torture, and suppression of political activists. Read about the narco-state that the all US presidential administrations supported in Honduras.
On November 4, Abigail Spanberger, a CIA case officer in the Middle East from 2006 to 2014, was elected as Virginia's 75th governor. Spanberger's CIA background raises concern that she will appoint people who will advance the CIA's interests and ... enable greater CIA penetration of higher education. The latter is already a big problem, with the CIA planting professors, setting up journals and carrying out recruitment on many campuses, and even running covert operations through them. She also voted for massive military aid appropriations to Ukraine; pushed to have Russia designated as a state sponsor of terrorism; supported the U.S. strikes on Iranian nuclear sites; supported sanctions against Russia, Syria, Venezuela and other countries that took a devastating humanitarian toll; and expressed vocal support for Israel as it was carrying out genocide in Gaza and bombed Syria, Iran and Lebanon. While the CIA may not have directly assisted her campaign, which would be illegal, her election can still be considered a violation of constitutional principles mandating a separation of powers given her presumed loyalty to an Executive Branch agency–the CIA. John Kiriakou, a CIA whistleblower who lives in Virginia, stated that "Spanberger's election as governor of Virginia is a real positive for the CIA, in that the CIA has countless facilities across the state and will be assured of continued cooperation with the Governor's Office. With that said, every Virginia governor, of both parties, has kowtowed to the CIA over the years, so don't expect any changes."
Note: As governor-elect, Spanberger appointed senior transition and security officials drawn from the national security apparatus and major Wall Street investment firms. Read the full article to learn more. Learn more about the dark history of the CIA in our comprehensive Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center.
An FBI investigation into an alleged terror plot in Southern California bears the familiar hallmarks of the bureau's long-running use of informants and undercover agents to advance plots that might not otherwise have materialized. The limited details available suggest an investigation that leaned heavily on a paid informant and at least one undercover FBI agent [who] were involved in nearly every stage of the case, including discussions of operational security and transporting members of the group to the site in the Mojave Desert where federal agents ultimately made the arrests. It is still unclear how the FBI first identified the group or how long the informant had been embedded before the bomb plot emerged – a period defense attorneys say is central to any serious examination of entrapment, whereby defendants are coerced into crimes they would not otherwise commit, a frequent criticism of stings involving paid informants and undercover agents. Despite comments from Attorney General Pam Bondi, Patel, and others characterizing the Turtle Island Liberation Front as a coherent group ... there's little evidence that any group by that name exists beyond a small digital footprint and a handful of attempts at organizing community events, including a self-defense workshop and a punk rock benefit show. A previous sting operation [involved] the so-called Newburgh Four, in which an aggressive and prolific FBI informant steered four poor Black men into a scheme to bomb synagogues and attack an Air Force base. Years later, a federal judge granted the men compassionate release, describing the case as an "FBI-orchestrated conspiracy."
Note: The FBI has had a notorious history of manufacturing terrorist plots, often targeting vulnerable minors who have significant cognitive and intellectual disabilities yet no history of harming anyone. Read more about terrorism plots hatched by the US government, including cases in which alleged terrorists were acting on behalf of the CIA. This process not only pads arrest and prosecution statistics but also helps justify big budgets by misrepresenting the threat of terrorism.
The public is now well aware of the Central Intelligent Agency's misadventures in mind control throughout the 1950s and 1960s. MKUltra–the agency's top-secret and wide-ranging human experimentation program–involved 149 subprojects that made test subjects out of thousands of unsuspecting Americans, jolting them with high-voltage shocks, zapping them with radio waves, and dosing them with psychedelic drugs in a bid to develop brainwashing techniques. But humans weren't MKUltra's only non-consenting participants. Animal subjects also played a starring role. Surgeons implanted microphones into cats' ears. An elephant was allegedly injected with a massive amount of LSD. And ... scientists implanted electrodes into the brains of six dogs in an attempt to control their movement and turn them into remote-controlled assassins. The goal of that last initiative, Subproject 94 ... "was to examine the feasibility of controlling the behavior of a dog, in an open field, by means of remotely triggered electrical stimulation of the brain," according to heavily redacted documents declassified in 2002. During Operation Fantasia, in an effort to scare the Japanese into surrender, OSS scientists painted foxes with radioactive paint that glowed in the dark, hoping to recreate a Shinto portent of doom: the kitsune, a shapeshifting, supernatural fox spirit. The plan was eventually scrapped, but not before a trial run in which the OSS released 30 glowing foxes into Washington D.C.
Note: Learn more about the MKUltra Program in our comprehensive Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center. For more, read our concise summaries of news articles on mind control and microchip implants.
"Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat" ... centers on the January 1961 assassination of Patrice Lumumba, less than a year after he was elected leader of the newly formed Democratic Republic of the Congo, at last independent from Belgium's colonial rule. America's CIA spearheaded the assassination plot, but this Cold War drama revolves like a kaleidoscope through a far-flung cast of characters, all of them intersecting at a pivotal moment in the 1960s. Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev famously banged his shoe at the United Nations, which had welcomed 16 new African states to its ranks. Meanwhile, a host of American jazz greats were serving as cultural ambassadors – Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington and Dizzy Gillespie among them – ostensibly to promote Yankee goodwill and democratic values. Instead, they acted as unknowing decoys for CIA operations. Belgium's history is so tied to the Congo. All of Brussels is built with rubber money. Music and politics collide head-on near the end of the film, when [musician Abbey] Lincoln helps lead a group of 60 protesters – including Roach, Maya Angelou and Paul Robeson – as they loudly disrupt a meeting of the U.N. Security Council in the wake of Lumumba's assassination. "It's as James Baldwin says," [Belgian filmmaker Johan] Grimonprez suggests, offering a paraphrase of the author. "History is not the past. History is what we are made of. It's the present. It's what seeps into our skin and into our body and our bones."
Note: Read more about CIA manipulation of the DRC. For more, learn about the CIA's longstanding propaganda network.
On Thursday, lawmakers in the House approved a "pilot program" in the pending Pentagon budget bill that could eventually open the door to sending billions to big contractors, while providing what critics say would be little benefit to the military. The provision, which appeared in the budget bill after a closed-door session overseen by top lawmakers, would allow contractors to claim reimbursement for the interest they pay on debt they take on to build weapons and other gadgets for the armed services. One big defense contractor alone, Lockheed Martin, reported having more than $17.8 billion in outstanding interest payments last year, said Julia Gledhill, an analyst at the nonprofit Stimson Center. "The fact that we are even exploring this question is a little crazy in terms of financial risk for the government," Gledhill said. Gledhill said even some Capitol Hill staffers were "scandalized" to see the provision in the final bill, which will likely be approved by the Senate. The switch to covering financing costs seems to be in line with a larger push this year to shake up the defense industry. The Pentagon itself was dubious in a 2023 study conducted by the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment. The Pentagon found that policy change might even supercharge the phenomenon of big defense contractors using taxpayer dollars for stock buybacks instead of research and development.
Note: Read our concise summaries of news articles on government corruption.
The American weapons maker Anduril ... is partnering with EDGE Group, a weapons conglomerate controlled by the United Arab Emirates, a nation run entirely by the royal families of its seven emirates that permits virtually none of the activities typically associated with democratic societies. In the UAE, free expression and association are outlawed, and dissident speech is routinely and brutally punished without due process. A 2024 assessment of political rights and civil liberties by Freedom House, a U.S. State Department-backed think tank, gave the UAE a score of 18 out of 100. The EDGE–Anduril Production Alliance, as it will be known, will focus on autonomous weapons systems, including the production of Anduril's "Omen" drone. The UAE has agreed to purchase the first 50 Omen drones built through the partnership. EDGE Chair Faisal Al Bannai explained in a 2019 interview that EDGE was working to develop weapons systems tailored to defeating low-tech "militia-style" militant groups. Nathaniel Raymonds, who leads the Humanitarian Research Lab at the Yale School of Public Health ... argued that "not since Operation Cyclone," the CIA effort to arm the Afghan mujahideen, "has there been a covert action by any nation state to arm a paramilitary proxy group at this scale and sophistication and try to write it off as just a series of happy coincidences."
Note: For more, read our concise summaries of news articles on war.
By leveraging the dual-use nature of many of their products, where defense technologies can be integrated into the commercial sector and vice versa, Pentagon contractors like Palantir, Skydio, and General Atomics have gained ground at home for surveillance technologies – especially drones – proliferating war-tested military tech within the domestic sphere. Palantir's Gotham platform was initially promoted as intelligence software for defense and counter-terrorism purposes. Now adopted among U.S. law enforcement, hundreds of police departments can use Gotham to analyze data on civilians' whereabouts. Palantir has gone on to sell similar software to other government agencies, obtaining a $30 million ICE contract this spring to help the agency track undocumented immigrants. L3Harris Stingrays, or cell site simulators, are sophisticated phone trackers originally designed for military use. Police departments subsequently adopted these systems to track and collect information on crime suspects. Defense contractors are similarly leveraging their battle-tested drones to capitalize on a booming domestic market. The broader public safety drone market is expected to nearly triple within the next 10 years. The DRONE Act, meanwhile, included in the FY2026 National Defense Authorization Act, would let police purchase and operate the systems with federal grants, thus flooding drone procurement processes with more federal funds.
Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on Big Tech and police corruption.
The chapel of San Quentin prison was abuzz as more than 100 incarcerated men and their friends and families took their seats. A banner with large orange lettering hanging at the front read "Arms Down: Teaching there are options between the first and second amendment", and the mood was festive, with the men hugging their spouses, parents and siblings. Arms Down is a "mutual help group for firearm offenders", meant to help incarcerated people understand the reasons that they carried and used guns. Understanding will lead to healing, the program's creators hope, and insights the men gain in the program will travel beyond the prison's walls and help reduce violence in the free world. "This is an opportunity you have to give back to your community. We're the untapped resource," said Jemain Hunter, the program's founder. "People are scared because they don't understand what we're doing as gun offenders – as far as rehabilitation goes – to come out and not commit these sorts of crimes again." "I'm just trying to make sure people don't end up like me," he continued. The sessions, many of the participants said, allowed them to talk about the shame and regret they feel over their offenses, and connect the dots between the violence they witnessed in their youth and the harm they have caused others. Word about Arms Down has spread to other California prisons, which Hunter hopes can introduce other incarcerated people to a new way of thinking about their crimes.
Note: Explore more positive stories like this on repairing criminal justice.
Young people have become powerless against the multibillion-dollar tech companies whose apps exploit adolescents' need for social acceptance. This is the backdrop against which my book, "The Anxious Generation," was published in 2024. The book helped fuel the movement to reclaim childhood from tech companies – a movement that has since spread, driven in part by the protective passions of parents. Already, a majority of states have enacted laws to limit phone use in school. Eighteen states and Washington, D.C., have gone all the way and enacted "bell-to-bell" phone restriction policies, which liberate students from the distraction of their phones for the entire school day. Outside of the United States, Brazil has made every school phone-free, and new school phone policies have passed in the Netherlands, Finland and South Korea, among other countries. We are just beginning to see some of the impacts: Children are more attentive in class and are reading more books; teachers have told me they hear more laughter in the halls and at lunch. Heavy social media use doubles the risk of depression for adolescents. Just as we have age limits in the real world for porn, gambling, alcohol, tobacco and many other products, countries have begun enacting policies to add age restrictions to social media. These things may seem small, but in terms of children's development ... they're enormous.
Note: Explore more positive stories like this on reimagining education.
In 2019, Ostbelgien, a town in Belgium with about 80,000 residents, took a gamble on a new approach to governing: The city's parliament voted to establish a permanent Citizens' Council and Assembly, giving randomly-selected citizens the power to make decisions. They called it, aptly, the Ostbelgien Model. "Its main objectives are providing citizens not only a permanent voice in the process of decision making but also a systematic monitoring system to ensure they are heard," the International Observatory on Participatory Democracy writes. "Ultimately, the project seeks to increase accountability and reinvigorate the agenda-setting power of common citizens." Now, about six years into the experiment, which was created with the express purpose of increasing trust in government, participants say it's working. Once a year, about 1,500 letters are sent to randomly chosen residents in Ostbelgien. Recipients indicate their interest. Of those who express interest, about 30 are chosen to become members of the citizens' assembly. The newly formed assembly meets once a week for about two months, with each participant receiving a stipend of 155 euros (or $133) per day. They are assigned a topic of concern and have in-depth discussions about how the government should proceed, with an appointed moderator present to help move things along. Their recommendations to the parliament are not binding, but lawmakers are required to consider them.
Note: Explore more positive stories like this on healing social division.
Powerful tools that collect and aggregate data, enable facial recognition, and increase surveillance have become a bedrock of American policing over the past two decades. In collaboration with private technology companies, law enforcement agencies at all levels have experimented with how to implement these tools and created a large consumer market for them. Against this backdrop, it is essential to understand the role of the tech industry in both increasing the reach of local law enforcement and enabling mass deportations by the Trump administration. ICE is, for example, one of the largest customers for Clearview AI, a facial recognition company that has scraped more than 30 billion faces from internet sources. Data brokers, including one owned jointly by several airline companies, are actively selling data to ICE and other federal agencies. One of the most troubling recent developments in police data is that it captures information about all people. This "dragnet" approach to data collection is designed to give law enforcement maximum access to the entire population, transforming all personal information into potential evidence. Increasingly, law enforcement agencies are opting to purchase this data rather than collect it themselves, exploiting a loophole in Fourth Amendment legal protections. Some police departments have begun pressuring people into providing DNA samples at routine traffic stops, an attempt to expand their databases.
Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on Big Tech and the disappearance of privacy.
The Trump administration has literally killed more than 80 suspected drug smugglers by blowing their small boats out of the water since September, but this week the president has reportedly decided to pardon one of the biggest cocaine traffickers of them all. The news that Trump is going to pardon Juan Orlando Hernández, the former president of Honduras who was sentenced to 45 years in U.S. prison just last year came as a shocker. The White House has said repeatedly that drug traffickers are narcoterrorists who are waging war on America, justifying their killing the boats every time. Yet Hernandez was convicted of conspiring to import 500,000 kilos of cocaine into the United States. While president, Hernández received millions of dollars from trafficking organizations in Honduras, Mexico, and from notorious drug lords like JoaquĂn Guzmán Loera, a.k.a. El Chapo, who was the former leader of the Sinaloa Cartel and is responsible for the murder of some 34,000 people. In return, according to prosecutors, President Hernández allowed vast amounts of cocaine to pass through Honduras on its way to the United States. Hernandez was tolerated if not preferred by previous U.S. administrations from Obama through the first Trump White House, because he and his National Party were business friendly, anti-communist, and supported by the neoconservatives now gunning against Maduro.
Note: Beginning with the backing of an illegal and brutal military coup that egregiously violated human rights in 2009, the US government–under both Democratic and Republican administrations–supported Hernández for years, funneling aid to his military and police forces while turning a blind eye to his deep involvement in drug trafficking, election fraud, and human rights abuses. For more, read our Substack investigation into the dark truths behind the US War on Drugs.
The United States is the world leader in regime change, toppling 35 foreign heads over the past 120 years, by one reckoning. Overthrowing another country's leader is a routine enough tactic that it has its own acronym among academics: FIRC, or foreign-imposed regime change. According to a tally by Alexander Downes, an associate professor and political scientist at George Washington University ... the United States carried out nearly a third of all of about 120 forced ousters of foreign leaders around the world between 1816 and 2011. About 20 of those 35 U.S.-backed regime changes were in Central and South America or the Caribbean. In some of those countries, the United States removed and replaced leaders again and again, with the concentration of someone kicking a vending machine to get the right candy bar to drop. In 1954 alone, for example, Washington ousted three Guatemalan leaders in succession. Globally, a third of all forced regime changes by all countries led to civil wars in the targeted nation within 10 years. Experts see warning signs for any attempt at regime change in Venezuela, a petrostate where misgovernment by socialist autocrat Maduro and his predecessor Hugo Chavez, coupled with international sanctions, have trashed the economy and created millions of refugees. The Trump administration has accused Maduro of being in league with drug traffickers, although the United States overstates Venezuela's role in drug smuggling.
Note: Learn about the 35 countries where the US has supported fascists, drug lords and terrorists.
Trump loyalist and CIA contractor Larry Ellison's purchase of CNN appears imminent, and marks the latest venture into media for the world's second-richest individual. The world's seven richest individuals are all now powerful media barons, controlling what the world sees, reads, and hears, marking a new chapter in oligarchical control over society and striking another blow at a free, independent press and diversity of opinion. In September, President Trump signed an executive order approving a proposal to force through the sale of social media platform TikTok to an American consortium led by Ellison-owned tech company, Oracle. Under the planned arrangement, Oracle will oversee the platform's security and operations, giving the world's second-richest man effective control over the platform that more than 60% of Americans under thirty years of age use for news and entertainment. No other period in history has seen such a rapid and overwhelming buy up of our means of communications by the billionaire class – a fact that raises tough questions about freedom of speech and diversity of opinion. Today, the world's seven richest individuals are all major media barons, giving them extraordinary control over our media and public square, allowing them to set agendas, and suppress forms of speech they do not approve of. This includes criticisms of them and their holdings, the economic system we live under, and the actions of ... governments.
Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on financial inequality and media manipulation.
The first thing Lana Ponting remembers about the Allan Memorial Institute, a former psychiatric hospital in Montreal, Canada, is the smell. That hospital ... would be her home for a month in April 1958, after a judge ordered the then-16-year-old to undergo treatment for "disobedient" behaviour. Ms Ponting became one of thousands of people experimented on as part of the CIA's top-secret research into mind control. Now, she is one of two named plaintiffs in a class-action lawsuit for Canadian victims of the experiments. She became an unwitting participant in covert CIA experiments known as MK-Ultra. The Cold War project tested the effects of psychedelic drugs like LSD, electroshock treatments and brainwashing techniques on human beings without their consent. Over 100 institutions – hospitals, prisons and schools – in the US and Canada were involved. At the Allan, McGill University researcher Dr Ewen Cameron drugged patients and made them listen to recordings, sometimes thousands of times. The technique was a form of "psychic driving," says doctoral student Jordan Torbay. "Essentially the minds of patients were manipulated using verbal cues," she says, adding he also looked at the effects of sleep drugs, forced sensory deprivation, and induced coma. Medical records show Ms Ponting was given LSD, as well as drugs like sodium amytal, a barbiturate, desoxyn, a stimulant, as well as nitrous oxide gas, a sedative known as laughing gas.
Note: Learn more about the MKUltra Program in our comprehensive Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center. For more, read our concise summaries of news articles on intelligence agency corruption and mind control.
LSD has had a colourful history. But there's a lesser-known part of this history: A quest by Nazi Germany to use psychedelics as a truth serum, with the CIA picking up where the Third Reich left off. "LSD, in a way, had a really bad start, because first it was the SS and then the CIA," German author Norman Ohler [said]. In 1938, chemist Albert Hofmann was working at the Swiss pharmaceutical company Sandoz, where he first synthesised lysergic acid diethylamide or LSD. Ohler dug around the Sandoz company archives. He says that the then-CEO Arthur Stoll, a "chemist maverick", had notable correspondences with a German man named Richard Kuhn. "[Kuhn was] a Nobel Prize winner for chemistry, but unfortunately, he was also Hitler's leading biochemist," Ohler says. At the time, the Nazis were increasingly paranoid about opponents within the regime. And they were finding that old-fashioned techniques like physical torture were not all that effective for extracting truth, so were looking at other means, including psychedelics. "These [LSD] samples were used by the Nazis for their experiments ... with [other] psychedelics in order to find new interrogation techniques," Ohler says. The Nazis "were looking for what they called the 'truth drug'". The Americans "basically continued the Nazi experiments in America on unwitting American citizens", Ohler says. The CIA examined the effects of psychoactive drugs like LSD on human subjects – often without their consent.
Note: Learn more about the MKUltra Program in our comprehensive Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center. For more, read our concise summaries of news articles on intelligence agency corruption and mind control.
The roots of Southeast Asia's billion-dollar drug trade [are] hidden in the picturesque place in northern Thailand, home to only a few hundred people and high up in the hills of the Golden Triangle, which also straddles Myanmar and Laos. This surge in Southeast Asia's narcotics trade was also achieved with at least some input from America's Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Keen to prevent Mao's Communist message from spreading into Burma, and from there mainland Southeast Asia, the CIA offered support to ... exiled Chinese nationalists, including transportation assistance through Civil Air Transport – the CIA-owned airline that would later become the notorious Air America, which transported U.S. supplies and forces into Vietnam, and the secret war in Laos. Burmese military intelligence reports at the time also noted that the nationalist troops were sporting brand-new American arms in the form of machine guns, bazookas, mortars, and anti-aircraft artillery. A declassified CIA cable from the era said the troops who settled in Mae Salong became the "dominant opium traffickers in the region", and that the move to the hilltop village had proven a "boon" for their activities, by allowing them to develop networks in Thailand. A series of brutal campaigns throughout the 1970s brought the Communist threat in the area to an end, and Mae Salong's residents shifted from producing opium to tea and mushrooms.
Note: Read our Substack investigation into the dark truths behind the US War on Drugs. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on the War on Drugs.
Important Note: Explore our full index to revealing excerpts of key major media news stories on several dozen engaging topics. And don't miss amazing excerpts from 20 of the most revealing news articles ever published.