In March, the non-partisan Australian Strategic Policy Institute, in a report titled "Uyghurs for Sale," accused Beijing of forcing more than 80,000 Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities to produce products for Nike and 82 other brands.

The report's accusations against Nike are damning. "A factory in eastern China that manufacturers shoes for U.S. company Nike is equipped with watchtowers, barbed-wire fences, and police guard boxes," it noted.... There, people have been kept against their will in inhumane conditions. This facility, a Nike supplier for more than three decades, produces approximately eight million pairs of shoes each year.

U.S. law provides that products made with forced labor can be seized, but those made in horrific conditions in China and elsewhere routinely are cleared through Customs and end up on the shelves of American retailers.

Some U.S. media and politicians have been expressing their indignation of late over Russia's alleged offers of bounty money to the Taliban for every American soldier it kills in Afghanistan.... These same journalists and political figures, however, never raise a similar accusation against the Islamic Republic of Iran, which has been offering the Taliban bounty money to kill American servicemen for years.

One of Iran's motivations in extending help to its erstwhile enemy, the Taliban, is probably to foil any U.S. effort to exercise influence in Afghanistan.

Iran also may be hoping to frustrate progress in armistice talks between U.S. and Taliban representatives currently being conducted in Qatar. Iran might wish to maintain its own historical influence in the Afghan provinces adjacent to Iran. Iran seems to have allied itself with those Taliban cells opposed to the talks and has hosted these radical Taliban groups in its eastern provinces bordering Afghanistan.

The real issue here is why the U.S. media, journalists, and politicians remain silent about it.