In the Belly of the Beast

Animal rights activists uncover the dark underbelly of factory farming:

Carlson’s secretly recorded footage, compiled over more than a month, triggered a cruelty indictment and cost the dairy a major buyer. The takedown, in 2008, was Carlson’s first assignment. Hired out of college by Kroll Advisory Solutions to gather business data, he left to find work at a nonprofit firm devoted to social justice. Neither the Polaris Project nor the Environmental Investigation Agency called back, but Mercy for Animals did. After several weeks of training, he hired on at Willet, a giant dairy in Locke, New York, that churned out 40,000 gallons of milk a day. So damning was his footage of standard factory-farming practice – chopping the tails off calves without anesthesia; gouging the horns off their heads with hot branding irons, also without anesthesia; punching cows, kicking calves, beating desperately sick downers – that Nightline ran it on national TV, confronting Willet’s CEO on camera. “Our animals are critically important to our well-being, so we work hard to treat them well,” droned Lyndon Odell of the 5,000 cows standing in lagoons of their own shit. Shown tape of the tortured calves, and pressed on whether a cow feels pain, he rolled his shoulders and mumbled, “I guess I can’t speak for the cow.” It bears saying here that nothing would have come from the tape if left to the whims of Jon Budelmann, the Cayuga County DA. “We approached him with our evidence and he told us to fuck off – he wasn’t going to take on Big Dairy,” says Carlson. “It was only after we went to the media with the tape that he got off his ass and brought charges.” (Budelmann later cleared Willet of any wrongdoing, telling the Syracuse Post-Standard that while Willet’s practices might seem harsh to consumers, they’re “not currently illegal in New York state.”)

Source: Rolling Stone
Published: Dec 10, 2013
Length: 29 minutes (7,298 words)

The A-Team Killings

Did U.S. Special Forces commit war crimes in Afghanistan? Matthieu Aikins investigates the discovery of 10 missing Afghan villagers who had been buried outside a U.S. base. Officials say a translator was solely responsible, but he and other witnesses say there’s more to the story:

I tell Kandahari that multiple witnesses claim to have seen him participate in abusive interrogations, and that another had seen him execute Gul Rahim, but he flatly denies ever killing anyone. He says that he had left Nerkh soon after Batson was injured, after quarreling with Kaiser. The Americans were trying to frame him for their own crimes, he says. “They knew what was happening,” he says. “Of course they knew. If someone does something on the base, everyone sees it. Everyone knows everything that’s going on inside the team.”

Source: Rolling Stone
Published: Nov 6, 2013
Length: 33 minutes (8,309 words)

Ginger Baker Hates Everything

Awkward, grumpy interview with the legendary Cream drummer:

Are you living in England now? 


Yes. That’s where I am right now. You just phoned me so you know that this is an English phone number.

I know, I just wanted to ask.
Well why ask me questions if you know the answer?”

Source: Rolling Stone
Published: Oct 12, 2013
Length: 7 minutes (1,800 words)

The Hidden War Against Gay Teens

Gay teens in Georgia are being expelled from private Christian schools that are using a local law to raise money in a way that is so shrouded in mystery that the Society of Professional Journalists has awarded the law the Black Hole Award, for “the most heinous violations of the public’s right to know”:

“Now a sweet-faced sophomore with big blue eyes and a wry sense of humor, Tristan, who asks that we not use his real name, tells me this over fried cheese and Buffalo wings at a Chili’s 20 minutes from the midsize Georgia town where he lives. He’s here with two friends, a junior who asks to go by Emily and a senior who lets me use his real name, Jason, because he’ll have graduated before anyone will read this. Though there’s a Chili’s closer to their homes, they’ve requested to meet here because if authorities at their school learned they were gay, they would not just be punished, they would be expelled.

“Many Christian schools in Georgia and across the nation have similar policies, sometimes explicitly written into a pledge that students or their parents must sign when they enroll. At certain schools, a student need not even engage in acts of sexual ‘impurity’; simply identifying as gay or acting in support of a gay friend can lead to dismissal. ‘The Academy reserves the right, within its sole discretion, to refuse admission of an applicant and/or to discontinue enrollment of a student . . . participating in, promoting, supporting or condoning pornography, sexual­ immorality, homosexual activity or bisexual activity; or displaying an inability or resistance to support . . . the qualities and characteristics required of a Biblically based and Christ-like lifestyle,’ reads the ‘Academy/Home Partnering Agreement’ at Providence Christian in Lilburn, Georgia, a school with religious underpinnings very similar to those at the school Tristan attends. ‘No ‘immoral act’ or ‘identifying statements’ concerning fornication, adultery, homosexuality, lesbianism, bisexuality or pornography will be tolerated,’ warns the Cherokee Christian Schools in Woodstock, Georgia. ‘Such behavior will constitute grounds for expulsion.'”

Source: Rolling Stone
Published: Oct 10, 2013
Length: 21 minutes (5,263 words)

Sexting, Shame and Suicide

Fifteen-year-old Audrie Pott took her own life after nude photos of her were circulated around school by high school classmates. Three boys were later arrested and charged. It’s “a shocking tale of sexual assault in the Digital Age” that’s becoming less uncommon as a number of high-profile cases similar to Pott’s makes headlines while many others go unreported:

“‘It’s a perfect storm of technology and hormones,’ says lawyer Lori Andrews, director of the Institute for Science, Law and Technology in Chicago. ‘Teen sexting is all a way of magnifying girls’ fantasies of being a star of their own movies, and boys locked in a room bragging about sexual conquest.’

‘But as of yet the law provides little protection to the rights of those violated. Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act effectively means that no Internet provider can be forced to take down content for invading a person’s privacy or even defaming them. ‘I could sue The New York Times for invading my privacy or Rolling Stone for defaming me,’ Andrews says. ‘But I couldn’t sue and get my picture off a website called sluttyseventhgraders.com.’

“The flip side of this ugly trend is that when gang-rape participants and bystanders record and disseminate pictures of an assault, public outrage is inflamed and cops and prosecutors have evidence they can take to court. This can mean rape victims get more justice than in years past. Arguably, the Steubenville rape would never have been prosecuted without the video. However, since so many of the incidents involve juveniles, punishment is neither swift nor certain.”

Source: Rolling Stone
Published: Sep 17, 2013
Length: 24 minutes (6,029 words)

The Geeks on the Front Lines

The U.S. government is increasingly facing cyber threats that could affect our national security and economy. As a result, the government is courting hackers for cyber security jobs, but needs to overhaul its image to lure young talent, who can easily find well paid jobs in Silicon Valley and private security firms:

“To get a sense of just how weak our cyberdefenses are, I take a trip with Jayson Street, Chief Chaos Coordinator for another firm, Krypton Security, into the basement of a hotel in South Beach. We breeze past an open door with a taped sign that reads, ‘Doors must be closed at all times!!!’ This is where the brains of the building live – the computer network, the alarm system, the hard drives of credit-card numbers – but, as Street tells a brawny security guard, he’s here on the job, ‘doing a Wi-Fi assessment.’ Street, a paunchy, 45-year-old Oklahoman in a black T-shirt and jeans, flashes the hulk some indecipherable graphs on his tablet and says, ‘We’re good,’ as he continues into another restricted room.

“The doors aren’t locked. No one seems to be monitoring the security cameras. The wires for the burglar-alarm system are exposed, ready for an intruder to snip. We make our way to the unmanned computer room, where, in seconds, Street could install malware to swipe every credit-card number coming through the system if he wanted to. ‘They’re like every other hotel I’ve tried to go into,’ he tells me. ‘They fail.'”

Source: Rolling Stone
Published: Sep 10, 2013
Length: 19 minutes (4,808 words)

The Poorest Rich Kids in the World

Georgia and Patterson are teenage heirs to the $1 billion Duke family fortune—the same Dukes who controlled the American tobacco market and established Duke University. But they were also raised by drug addicts who neglected and abused them for years:

“Georgia and Patterson survived a gilded childhood that was also a horror story of Dickensian neglect and abuse. They were globe-trotting trust-fund babies who snorkeled in Fiji, owned a pet lion cub and considered it normal to bring loose diamonds to elementary school for show and tell. And yet they also spent their childhoods inhaling freebase fumes, locked in cellars and deadbolted into their bedrooms at night in the secluded Wyoming mountains and on their ancestral South Carolina plantation. While their father spent millions on drug binges and extravagances, the children lived like terrified prisoners, kept at bay by a revolving door of some four dozen nannies and caregivers, underfed, undereducated, scarcely noticed except as objects of wrath.”

Source: Rolling Stone
Published: Aug 12, 2013
Length: 38 minutes (9,653 words)

Jahar’s World

An investigation into Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s troubled past:

“Yet he ‘never raised any red flags,’ says one of his history teachers, who, like many, requested anonymity, given the sensitivity of the case. Her class, a perennial favorite among Rindge students, fosters heated debates about contemporary political issues like globalization and the crises in the Middle East, but Jahar, she says, never gave her any sense of his personal politics, ‘even when he was asked to weigh in.’ Alyssa, who loved the class, agrees: ‘One of the questions we looked at was ‘What is terrorism? How do we define it culturally as Americans? What is the motivation for it – can we ever justify it?’ And I can say that Jahar never expressed to us that he was pro-terrorism at all, ever.’

“Except for once.

“‘He kind of did, one time to me, express that he thought acts of terrorism were justified,’ says Will. It was around their jun­ior year; the boys had been eating at a neighborhood joint called Izzy’s and talking about religion. With certain friends – Will and Sam among them – Jahar opened up about Islam, confiding his hatred of people whose ‘ignorance’ equated Islam with terrorism, defending it as a religion of peace and describing jihad as a personal struggle, nothing more. This time, says Will, ‘I remember telling him I thought certain aspects of religion were harmful, and I brought up the 9/11 attacks.’

“At which point Jahar, Will says, told him he didn’t want to talk about it anymore.”

Source: Rolling Stone
Published: Jul 17, 2013
Length: 45 minutes (11,415 words)

The Last Mystery of the Financial Crisis

How corruption inside the ratings agencies played a critical role in the financial crisis:

“In incriminating e-mail after incriminating e-mail, executives and analysts from these companies are caught admitting their entire business model is crooked.

“‘Lord help our fucking scam . . . this has to be the stupidest place I have worked at,’ writes one Standard & Poor’s executive. ‘As you know, I had difficulties explaining “HOW” we got to those numbers since there is no science behind it,’ confesses a high-ranking S&P analyst. ‘If we are just going to make it up in order to rate deals, then quants [quantitative analysts] are of precious little value,’ complains another senior S&P man. ‘Let’s hope we are all wealthy and retired by the time this house of card[s] falters,’ ruminates one more.”

Source: Rolling Stone
Published: Jun 24, 2013
Length: 19 minutes (4,949 words)

Knights of Soft Rock

Meet The Section—session players whose work in the studio fueled some of the biggest hits of the 1970s, from James Taylor, Jackson Browne, Carole King, and more:

“To critics, Taylor, Browne, and Crosby, Stills and Nash personified everything tame about Seventies rock, and the musicians who accompanied them were inevitably guilty by association. ‘We were the “Mellow Mafia,”‘ says Kortchmar. He recalls a particularly nasty write-up of Taylor from the time: ‘We had [writer] Lester Bangs threatening to stab a bottle of Ripple into James. What the fuck is he talking about? James is doing “Fire and Rain,” “Country Road,” about Jesus and questions and deep shit.'”

Source: Rolling Stone
Published: May 2, 2013
Length: 25 minutes (6,402 words)