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Government Corruption News Stories

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Pipeline Company Spent Big On Police Gear To Use Against Standing Rock Protesters
2023-05-22, The Intercept
Posted: 2023-06-04 18:53:24
https://theintercept.com/2023/05/22/standing-rock-energy-transfer-tigerswan/

By March 2017, the fight over the construction of the Dakota Access pipeline had been underway for months. Law enforcement was ... discussing plans with Energy Transfer, the parent company of the Dakota Access pipeline. Throughout much of the uprising against the pipeline, the National Sheriffs’ Association talked routinely with TigerSwan, Energy Transfer’s lead security firm on the project, working hand in hand to craft pro-pipeline messaging. Documents, released by the North Dakota Private Investigation and Security Board, reveal how TigerSwan and the sheriffs’ group worked together to twist the story in the media so that it aligned with the oil company’s interests, seeking to pollute the public’s perception of the water protectors. The private security firm pushed for the purchase, by Energy Transfer, of hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of radios for the cops. TigerSwan also placed an order for a catalog of so-called less-lethal weapons for police use, including tear gas. Off the Record Strategies, the public relations firm working for the National Sheriffs' Association, coordinated with the opposition research firm Delve to track activists' social media pages, arrest records, and funding sources. The companies sought to paint the protesters as violent, professional, billionaire-funded, out-of-state agitators whose camps represented the true ecological disaster, as well as to identify movement infighting that might be exploited.

Note: Read how TigerSwan treated water protectors as terrorists. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corporate corruption and the erosion of civil liberties from reliable major media sources.


How the Juvenile System Forces Minors Into Unsafe Institutions
2023-04-15, The Marshall Project
Posted: 2023-06-04 18:49:38
https://www.themarshallproject.org/2023/04/15/texas-california-children-juven...

A 2020 reform law was supposed to remake the way the California juvenile justice system looks. “De-escalation rooms” stocked with essential oils and weighted blankets are among the changes some county youth facilities have been pushed to install. It was all part of an effort to make the system less punitive and more therapeutic. But this air of change might be news to young people held in Los Angeles County, where this week, California Attorney General Rob Bonta asked a state judge to sanction local officials for what he called “illegal and unsafe conditions.” County officials across the state pushed back against the 2020 law — which phased out state-run juvenile facilities in favor of county-run ones. Tasked with rolling out the changes, local officials formed a multi-county non-profit organization — not subject to public information laws — to share resources and data. Some local advocates worry that this approach is creating a “shadow jury and justice system that operates outside of the public,” reports the Sacramento Bee. The way this has played out in California may be instructive to Texas, where some lawmakers are seeking a similar overhaul for a juvenile system long-plagued by abusive conditions and mismanagement. As in California, county juvenile justice officials in Texas oppose the changes. A recent report from the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics found 1,762 confirmed incidents of young people being sexually harassed, abused, or assaulted in juvenile facilities between 2013 and 2018.

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


‘The forever prisoner’: Abu Zubaydah’s drawings expose the US’s depraved torture policy
2023-05-11, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2023-05-28 20:56:28
https://www.theguardian.com/law/2023/may/11/abu-zubaydah-drawings-guantanamo-...

A detainee held in the US prison camp at Guantánamo Bay who was used as a human guinea pig in the CIA’s post-9/11 torture program has produced the most comprehensive and detailed account yet seen of the brutal techniques to which he was subjected. Abu Zubaydah has created a series of 40 drawings that chronicle the torture he endured in a number of CIA dark sites between 2002 and 2006 and at Guantánamo Bay. In the absence of a full official accounting of the torture program, which the CIA and the FBI have labored for years to keep secret, the images give a unique and searing insight into a grisly period in US history. The drawings, which Zubaydah has annotated with his own words, depict gruesome acts of violence, sexual and religious humiliation, and prolonged psychological terror committed against him and other detainees. Zubaydah’s sketches provide a unique visual record of the US government’s use of torture in the wake of 9/11. Videotapes of Zubaydah being tortured were filmed by the CIA but then destroyed in violation of a court order, while a 6,700-page torture report by the Senate intelligence committee remains secret almost a decade after it was completed. Though the full Senate report has never been made public, its conclusion is known: that the abuse of Zubaydah and other detainees failed to elicit any new intelligence. In other words, torture does not work. The US initially claimed [Zubaydah] was a top al-Qaida operative but was forced to concede he was not even a member of the terror group.

Note: Read the "10 Craziest Things in the Senate Report on Torture." For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on intelligence agency corruption from reliable major media sources.


When a prison sentence becomes a death sentence
2023-04-27, NPR
Posted: 2023-05-28 20:54:36
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2023/04/27/1172320844/when-a-prison...

At least 6,182 people died in state and federal prisons in 2020, a 46% jump from the previous year, according to data recently released by researchers from the UCLA Law Behind Bars Data Project. "During the pandemic, a lot of prison sentences became death sentences," says Wanda Bertram, a spokesperson for the Prison Policy Initiative. A Senate report last year found the U.S. Department of Justice failed to identify more than 900 deaths in prisons and local jails in fiscal year 2021. The report said the DOJ's poor data collection and reporting undermined transparency and congressional oversight of deaths in custody. A major reason the U.S. trails other developed countries in life expectancy is because it has more people behind bars and keeps them there far longer, says Chris Wildeman, a Duke University sociology professor who has researched the link between criminal justice and life expectancy. "It's a health strain on the population," Wildeman says. "The worse the prison conditions, the more likely it is incarceration can be tied to excess mortality." Over a 40-year span starting in the 1980s, the number of people in the nation's prisons and jails more than quadrupled, fueled by tough-on-crime policies and the war on drugs. The federal government can't definitively say how many people have died in prisons and jails since the covid-19 pandemic began, researchers say. "Without data, we are operating in the dark," says Andrea Armstrong, a professor ... who has testified before Congress on the issue.

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


FBI broke own rules in January 6 and BLM intelligence search, court finds
2023-05-19, The Guardian/Associated Press
Posted: 2023-05-28 20:52:20
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/may/19/fbi-intelligence-surveillance...

FBI officials repeatedly violated their own standards when they searched a vast repository of foreign intelligence for information related to the January 6 insurrection and racial justice protests in 2020, according court order released Friday. The violations were detailed in a secret court order issued last year by the foreign intelligence surveillance (Fisa) court, which has legal oversight of the US government’s spy powers. At issue are improper queries of foreign intelligence information collected under section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which enables the government to gather the communications of targeted foreigners outside the US. That program, which is set to expire at the end of the year, creates a database of intelligence that US agencies can search. FBI searches must have a foreign intelligence purpose or be aimed at finding evidence of a crime. But congressional critics of the program have long raised alarm about what they say are unjustified searches of the database for information about Americans, along with more general concerns about surveillance abuses. In repeated episodes disclosed on Friday, the FBI’s own standards were not followed. The April 2022 order, for instances, details how the FBI queried the section 702 repository using the name of someone who was believed to have been at the Capitol during the January 6 riot. Officials obtained the information despite it not having any “analytical, investigative or evidentiary purpose”, the order said.

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


Trump-era special counsel's final report criticizes FBI's Russia probe
2023-05-15, NPR
Posted: 2023-05-28 20:50:45
https://www.npr.org/2023/05/15/1176219884/trump-russia-investigation-durham

The special counsel-led investigation looking into the FBI's probe of Russian interference in the 2016 Trump campaign has ended, the Department of Justice announced Monday, and in a 306-page final report, concludes the FBI did not have enough intelligence to merit a full Trump-Russia investigation. The report says that investigation — which was originally called the "Crossfire Hurricane" — was treated different from how cases related to Donald Trump's then-opponent, Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton, had been handled. "The speed and manner in which the FBI opened and investigated Crossfire Hurricane during the presidential election season based on raw, unanalyzed and uncorroborated intelligence also reflected a noticeable departure from how it approached prior matters involving possible attempted foreign election interference plans aimed at the Clinton campaign," the report says. The report concludes that the DOJ and FBI "failed to uphold their important mission of strict fidelity to the law." "Our investigation also revealed that senior FBI personnel displayed a serious lack of analytical rigor towards the information they they received, especially information received from politically affiliated persons and entities," the report says. In particular, there was a significant reliance on investigative leads provided by, or funded by, political opponents of Trump. "The Department did not adequately examine or question thee materials and the motivations of those providing them," the report says.

Note: Explore a much more in-depth analysis of this important news by crack reporter Matt Taibbi. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on intelligence agency corruption from reliable major media sources.


US Sold Weapons to Nearly 60 Percent of World’s Authoritarian Nations in 2022
2023-05-14, Truthout
Posted: 2023-05-28 20:47:59
https://truthout.org/articles/us-sold-weapons-to-nearly-60-percent-of-worlds-...

President Joe Biden claims that the United States is leading “democracies” in a fight against “autocracies” to establish a peaceful international order, but his administration approved weapons sales to nearly three-fifths of the world’s authoritarian countries in 2022. That’s according to a new analysis conducted by Security Policy Reform Institute co-founder Stephen Semler. The U.S. has been the world’s largest arms dealer since the end of the Cold War. Data released in March showed that the U.S. accounted for 40% of global weapons exports from 2018 to 2022. Semler relied on data from the Varieties of Democracy project at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden, which uses a classification system called Regimes of the World. “Of the 84 countries codified as autocracies under the Regimes of the World system in 2022, the United States sold weapons to at least 48, or 57%, of them,” Semler wrote. “These findings fly in the face of Biden’s preferred framing of international politics as a “battle between democracies and autocracies.” The president’s narrative “lends itself more to a self-righteous foreign policy than an honest or productive one,” Semler argued. “Dividing the world between democratic and autocratic countries — in the spirit of ‘with us or against us’ — makes conflict more likely and has had a chilling effect on calls for diplomacy and détente. It’s also harder to cooperate with the international community while insisting you’re locked in an existential fight with roughly half of them.”

Note: Beyond arms sales, the US loses track of huge quantities of weapons in combat zones. Read an in-depth article on how the Ukraine war is shaking up the arms industry in unprecedented ways. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on military corruption from reliable major media sources.


Confessions of a CIA Terrorist
2023-05-20, LA Progressive
Posted: 2023-05-28 20:45:55
https://www.laprogressive.com/foreign-policy/confessions-of-a-cia-terrorist

In 1979 the Sandinista revolution overthrew the Somoza dictatorship in Nicaragua. As a Spanish speaking Latino, [Enrique] Prado ... was recruited as a CIA officer responsible for overseeing the development of the Contra army based in Honduras and conducting cross border attacks on communities in Nicaragua. Prado believes they [were] the "good guys". The International Court of Justice thought otherwise. In 1986 the court ruled the US attacks on Nicaragua were violations of international law. The Reagan administration and media largely ignored the ruling. Later, journalist Gary Webb documented the catastrophic social damage inside the US caused by the cheap cocaine flooding some US cities. Webb was attacked by establishment media. In 1998 the CIA Inspector General acknowledged, "There are instances where C.I.A. did not, in an expeditious or consistent fashion, cut off relationships with individuals supporting the contra program who were alleged to have engaged in drug-trafficking activity, or take action to resolve the allegations." The US deployed Nicaraguans, Afghans and extremist Arab recruits in proxy wars across the globe. "The attacks of September 11 descend in a direct line from events in 1979, the year in which the CIA, with full presidential authority, began carrying out its largest ever clandestine operation - the secret arming of Afghan freedom fighters (mujaheddin) to wage a proxy war against the Soviet Union," [said author Chalmers Johnston].

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


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)
Posted: 2023-05-22 01:14:09
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.


The pharmaceutical industry finances about 75 percent of the [FDA]'s drug division
2022-09-15, New York Times
Posted: 2023-05-22 01:09:34
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/15/health/fda-drug-industry-fees.html

Every five years, top officials of the Food and Drug Administration go behind closed doors to negotiate the terms of its core budget – about $3 billion this year. But the F.D.A. is not at the table with members of Congress or with White House officials. Instead, it's in dozens of meetings with representatives of the giant pharmaceutical companies whose products the agency regulates. The negotiations are a piece of the "user fee" program in which drug, device and biotech companies make payments to the agency partly to seek product approvals. The fees ... make up nearly half of the F.D.A.'s budget, financing 6,500 jobs at the agency. The pharmaceutical industry funding alone has become so dominant that last year it accounted for three-quarters – or $1.1 billion – of the agency's drug division budget. Advocates for patients and doctors say the agreements have enabled the industry to weaken the approval process meant to ensure that drugs are safe and effective. "It's kind of like a devil's bargain," said Dr. Joseph Ross, a professor at the Yale School of Medicine who has studied F.D.A. policies, "that I think is not in the best interest of the agency, because it turns this every-five-year cycle into the F.D.A. essentially asking industry, 'What can we do to secure this money?'" Senator Bernie Sanders ... suggested that the pharmaceutical companies' tendency to charge "outrageous" prices was related to their significant role in funding and advancing policy goals of the F.D.A.'s drug division.

Note: A revealing interview of a top cardiologist illuminates the history of how Big Pharma has corrupted science and greatly damaged public health. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of news articles on big Pharma corruption from reliable major media sources.


The FCC Is Supposed to Protect the Environment. It Doesn’t.
2023-05-02, ProPublica
Posted: 2023-05-22 01:00:03
https://www.propublica.org/article/fcc-environment-cell-towers-failures

Few people think of the FCC as an environmental cop. It’s known for regulating television and radio and overseeing the deployment of communications technology. But the agency also has a broad mandate to ensure that technology doesn’t damage the environment. This role is particularly critical now, as the FCC presides over a nationwide buildout for 5G service, which will require 800,000 new “small cell” transmitters, those perched on street poles and rooftops, often near schools, apartments and homes. But even with this massive effort underway, as ProPublica previously reported, the FCC has refused to revise its radiation-exposure limits, which date back to the era of flip phones. In addition, the agency has cut back on the environmental reviews that it requires while also restricting local governments’ control over wireless sites. The agency operates on the honor system, delegating much of its responsibility to the industries that it regulates. It allows companies to decide for themselves whether their projects require environmental study. And if the companies break the rules, they’re expected to report their own transgression. Few do. In the rare instances in which the FCC investigates, even brazen illegality is often met with a minor fine, a scolding “admonishment” or no action at all. Just 10% of FCC enforcement cases between 2014 and 2016 resulted in a monetary penalty, while 40% ended with a warning and the rest resulted in no action.

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


How a Human Rights Lawyer Went From Hero to House Arrest
2020-03-31, The Nation
Posted: 2023-05-22 00:57:23
https://www.thenation.com/article/activism/steven-donziger-chevron/

More than a quarter-century ago, Steven Donziger, a young American human rights lawyer, joined the legal effort to force Texaco to clean up the Ecuadoran headwaters of the Amazon rain forest. Between 1972 and 1992, the company dumped toxic waste and spilled billions of gallons of oil-exposed water across 1,700 square miles, an area larger than Rhode Island. In response, a coalition of rural Ecuadorans in the Lago Agrio region sued the US oil giant, and Donziger signed on to help and soon became the lead attorney on the case. In 2013, after a legal campaign that stretched across two continents, the 30,000 indigenous people and small farmers whom Donziger represented in a class-action lawsuit won a $9.5 billion judgment in Ecuadoran courts against Chevron, which acquired Texaco in 2001. It was one of the largest financial judgments ever against an oil company. Fast-forward to today, and Don­ziger is under house arrest in New York City, forced to wear an ankle monitor. The lawyer, now 59, is fighting contempt charges. Meanwhile, his clients in Ecuador have received nothing from Chevron. Without that funding, they have no way to cleanse the poisoned soil or treat what they say is an elevated number of cancer cases. In 2010 ... Chevron launched a countersuit in a New York federal court, alleging that Donziger and his allies had committed bribery and fraud in Ecuador to win the case. Meanwhile, residents in the Amazon rain forest live and work on poisoned land.

Note: Read more about this troubling case. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corporate corruption from reliable major media sources.


How
2022-10-14, Salon
Posted: 2023-05-15 15:46:06
https://www.salon.com/2022/10/14/media-literacy-has-become-the-new-fake-news-...

Tessa Jolls, president of the Center for Media Literacy, published a report last month entitled "Building Resiliency: Media Literacy as a Strategic Defense Strategy for the Transatlantic." It reads like a blueprint for indoctrinating students in corporatism and militarism under the auspices of media literacy education. The standard definition of media literacy used in American education is "the ability to access, analyze, evaluate, create and act using all forms of communication." In response to the post-2016 panic over fake news, there was a demand for more media literacy education in schools. This provided a window of opportunity for major media companies — which had long sought to enter the classroom to advertise their products and collect student data — to move rapidly toward indoctrinate students with corporate propaganda under the "media literacy" umbrella. The same military and intelligence communities now calling for "media literacy" have been producing and spreading fake news, at home and abroad, for at least 70 years. Jolla' report ignores that members of the same military and intelligence communities that she lauds have produced and spread fake news to U.S. citizens, from the time of Operation Mockingbird in the mid-20th century up through the present on various social media platforms. She also never discusses public efforts to disempower the military-industrial complex's ability to dictate truth. Real media literacy education empowers students to ... ask their own questions.

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


Army Info War Division Wants Social Media Surveillance to Protect 'NATO Brand'
2023-04-07, The Intercept
Posted: 2023-05-15 15:43:40
https://theintercept.com/2023/04/27/army-cyber-command-nato-social-media/

The U.S. Army Cyber Command told defense contractors it planned to surveil global social media use to defend the "NATO brand," according to a 2022 webinar recording reviewed by The Intercept. "NATO is one of our key brands that we are pushing, as far as our national security alliance," [Lt. Col. David Beskow] explained. The mass social media surveillance appears to be just one component of a broader initiative to use private-sector data mining to advance the Army's information warfare efforts. Beskow expressed an interest in purchasing access to nonpublic commercial web data, corporate ownership records, supply chain data, and more. While the U.S. national security establishment frequently warns against other countries' "weaponization" of social media and the broader internet, recent reporting has shown the Pentagon engages in some of the very same conduct. Researchers from Graphika and the Stanford Internet Observatory uncovered a network of pro-U.S. Twitter and Facebook accounts covertly operated by U.S. Central Command, an embarrassing revelation that led to a “sweeping audit of how it conducts clandestine information warfare." Despite years of alarm in Washington over the threat posed by deepfake video fabrications to democratic societies, The Intercept reported last month that U.S. Special Operations Command is seeking vendors to help them make their own deepfakes to deceive foreign internet users.

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


Schools Are Pouring Millions Into AI-Powered Weapon Detection Systems. Do They Work?
2023-05-07, The Intercept
Posted: 2023-05-15 15:40:38
https://theintercept.com/2023/05/07/ai-gun-weapons-detection-schools-evolv/

As school shootings proliferate across the country — there were 46 school shootings in 2022, more than in any year since at least 1999 — educators are increasingly turning to dodgy vendors who market misleading and ineffective technology. Utica City is one of dozens of school districts nationwide that have spent millions on gun detection technology with little to no track record of preventing or stopping violence. Evolv’s scanners keep popping up in schools across the country. Over 65 school districts have bought or tested artificial intelligence gun detection from a variety of companies since 2018, spending a total of over $45 million, much of it coming from public coffers. “Private companies are preying on school districts’ worst fears and proposing the use of technology that’s not going to work,” said Stefanie Coyle ... at the New York Civil Liberties Union. In December, it came out that Evolv, a publicly traded company since 2021, had doctored the results of their software testing. In 2022, the National Center for Spectator Sports Safety and Security, a government body, completed a confidential report showing that previous field tests on the scanners failed to detect knives and a handgun. Five law firms recently announced investigations of Evolv Technology — a partner of Motorola Solutions whose investors include Bill Gates — looking into possible violations of securities law, including claims that Evolv misrepresented its technology and its capabilities to it.

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


Julian Assange at Vanguard for World Press Freedom
2023-05-07, LA Progressive
Posted: 2023-05-15 15:38:55
https://www.laprogressive.com/the-media-in-the-united-states/julian-assange-a...

We celebrate World Press Freedom Day in May as a reminder that the role of news organizations is to speak truth to power. It’s an occasion to remember three people who exemplify the need to speak the truth: Daniel Ellsberg of Pentagon Papers fame and Julian Assange of WikiLeaks; and also of Chelsea Manning, without whom we would not have the proof of what the United States was doing, not only in Iraq and Afghanistan but all across the globe. Ellsberg’s Pentagon Papers were a mere 7,000 pages, and he photocopied them by hand. Chelsea Manning’s “papers”, which Assange outed, earning the U.S. government’s enmity, consisted of about 750,000 documents. Assange and WikiLeaks that made possible for Manning’s information to reach people across the globe. And even when he and Manning have been arrested, jailed and isolated, the information on Wikileaks still continues to be accessible to all of us. Even today the Baghdad video of Collateral Murder, posted on WikiLeaks, was seen across the world and brought home that the United States was lying and involved in a massive cover-up of its war crimes. The Diplomatic Cables on Wikileaks informed the Tunisian people about the kleptocratic rule of the Ben Ali family and started what was later named as Arab Spring. Just as the surveillance state has invaded every nook and corner of our lives, the pathological need of the surveillance state to access and store all this information also makes the state porous and vulnerable.

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


How the Murder of a CIA Officer Was Used to Silence the Agency's Greatest Critic
2023-05-09, The Intercept
Posted: 2023-05-15 15:36:31
https://theintercept.com/2023/05/09/cia-frank-church-richard-welch-book/

[CIA station chief Richard] Welch's assassination was huge news and struck a painful political nerve in Washington, coming at the end of a year of stunning disclosures about the CIA and the rest of the U.S. intelligence community by the Senate's Church Committee ... throughout 1975. The Church Committee's unprecedented investigation marked the first effort by Congress to unearth decades of abusive and illegal acts secretly committed by the CIA. [The Church Committee] is responsible for bringing the CIA, the FBI, the National Security Agency, and the rest of the government's intelligence apparatus under the rule of law. The White House and CIA quickly realized that the Welch killing, which occurred just as the Church Committee was finishing its investigations and preparing its final report ... could be used as a political weapon. President Gerald Ford's White House and the agency falsely sought to blame the Church Committee for Welch's murder, claiming, without any evidence, that its investigations had somehow exposed Welch's identity and left him vulnerable to assassination. There was absolutely no truth to the claims. Welch had been murdered by Greek terrorists. The false narrative that Welch had been murdered because of reckless disclosures in Washington remained powerful for years afterward, ultimately leading to legislation that made it illegal to publish the names of covert CIA officers, a law that has since often been abused by the government to crack down on whistleblowers and dissent.

Note: Read more on how US intelligence agencies are intentionally designed to not have oversight over the blatant human rights violations they take a part of. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on intelligence agency corruption from reliable major media sources.


Saudi Arabia Owns Stake in Firm that Bought Democratic Party’s Campaign Tech
2023-04-23, The Intercept
Posted: 2023-05-15 15:34:54
https://theintercept.com/2023/04/23/saudi-arabia-democratic-party-campaign-ng...

The government of Saudi Arabia is an investor in the private company that owns a virtual monopoly on software that powers Democratic candidates — including management of the Democratic National Committee’s all-important voter list. Sanabil Investments, the company that manages Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, recently published its first list of investments. The list includes two private equity firms involved two years ago in the sale and acquisition of EveryAction and NGP VAN, the companies that make up the Democratic Party’s campaign tech apparatus. Federal regulations are designed to stop sovereign wealth funds from interfering in domestic politics. If a particular investment includes a national security risk, federal regulators can force the transaction to be undone through the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States under the Department of the Treasury. Most of that risk is typically mitigated because sovereign wealth funds tend to be invested in companies through intermediaries. Investment in a company that deals with data related to voting and politics could be of potential concern to the Committee on Foreign Investment, even if the investor has no real influence over relevant data. The Sanabil investment doesn’t mean the Saudi government has an interest in the functions of the companies. Instead, said progressive strategist Gabe Tobias, the disclosure is a further indication that the fate of EveryAction and NGP VAN is not a priority for their owners.

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


Big Tech Companies Are Becoming More Powerful Than Nation-States
2023-04-25, Common Dreams
Posted: 2023-05-15 15:33:27
https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/big-tech-companies-more-powerful-than-na...

U.S. citizens are being subjected to a relentless onslaught from intrusive technologies that have become embedded in the everyday fabric of our lives, creating unprecedented levels of social and political upheaval. These widely used technologies ... include social media and what Harvard professor Shoshanna Zuboff calls "surveillance capitalism"—the buying and selling of our personal info and even our DNA in the corporate marketplace. But powerful new ones are poised to create another wave of radical change. Under the mantle of the "Fourth Industrial Revolution," these include artificial intelligence or AI, the metaverse, the Internet of Things, the Internet of Bodies (in which our physical and health data is added into the mix to be processed by AI), and my personal favorite, police robots. This is a two-pronged effort involving both powerful corporations and government initiatives. These tech-based systems are operating "below the radar" and rarely discussed in the mainstream media. The world's biggest tech companies are now richer and more powerful than most countries. According to an article in PC Week in 2021 discussing Apple's dominance: "By taking the current valuation of Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, and others, then comparing them to the GDP of countries on a map, we can see just how crazy things have become… Valued at $2.2 trillion, the Cupertino company is richer than 96% of the world. In fact, only seven countries currently outrank the maker of the iPhone financially."

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.


Australian government is hit with class action lawsuit over Covid vaccines
2023-04-26, MSN News
Posted: 2023-05-08 12:09:51
https://www.msn.com/en-au/news/australia/australian-government-is-hit-with-cl...

A landmark Covid-19 vaccine injury class action lawsuit has been filed against the Australian government and the medicines regulator. The nation-wide suit, which reportedly has 500 members including three named applicants, seeks redress for those allegedly left injured or bereaved by the Covid-19 vaccines. One of the applicants who suffered a severe heart condition after getting the Pfizer jab is even claiming there was 'cover-up' during the vaccine rollout which hid the potential risks. The federal government, the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) and the Department of Health - in addition to a number of senior public servants - are all named as parties to the class action, which was filed in the New South Wales Federal Court. The named parties are accused of negligence in their approval and monitoring of Covid-19 vaccines, breach of statutory duty and misfeasance in public office. Instructing solicitor Natalie Strijland, of Brisbane law firm NR Barbi, said the action would argue the TGA caused considerable harm and damage by failing to regulate the COVID-19 vaccinations properly. The class action names three applicants, one of whom is 41-year old father-of-two Gareth O'Gradie. Mr O'Gradie, a teacher from Melbourne, was left with a 20-centimetre scar down his chest after developing severe pericarditis — inflammation of the lining around the heart — following his first Pfizer vaccination in July 2021. In February 2022 doctors performed open heart surgery to remove his the pericardial sac lining his heart.

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