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Government Corruption Media Articles
Excerpts of Key Government Corruption Media Articles in Major Media


Below are key excerpts of revealing news articles on government corruption from reliable news media sources. If any link fails to function, a paywall blocks full access, or the article is no longer available, try these digital tools.


Note: Explore our full index to key excerpts of revealing major media news articles on several dozen engaging topics. And don't miss amazing excerpts from 20 of the most revealing news articles ever published.


The Crisis of Election Security
2018-09-26, New York Times
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/26/magazine/election-security-crisis-midterms...

As the 2018 elections approach, the American intelligence community is issuing increasingly dire warnings about potential interference from Russia and other countries. D.H.S. has now conducted remote-scanning and on-site assessments of state and county election systems. These [measures] don't address core vulnerabilities in voting machines or the systems used to program them. And they ignore the fact that many voting machines that elections officials insist are disconnected from the internet – and therefore beyond the reach of hackers – are in fact accessible by way of the modems they use to transmit vote totals on election night. Add to this the fact that states don't conduct robust postelection audits ... and there's a good chance we simply won't know if someone has altered the digital votes in the next election. How did our election system get so vulnerable, and why haven't officials tried harder to fix it? The answer, ultimately, comes down to politics and money: The voting machines are made by well-connected private companies that wield immense control over their proprietary software, often fighting vigorously in court to prevent anyone from examining it when things go awry. The stakes are high. But the focus on Russia, or any would-be election manipulators, ignores the underlying issue – the myriad vulnerabilities that riddle the system and the ill-considered decisions that got us here.

Note: Why is it that the U.S. government is not allowed to have oversight over the companies that build and maintain voting machines and databases? What if one or more of them is bought off by a foreign or event domestic interest? Isn't this crazy? The major media have severely neglected reporting on elections manipulations that have been going on for many decades. For undeniable evidence of this, see our Elections Information Center.


How the Koch brothers built the most powerful rightwing group you've never heard of
2018-09-26, The Guardian (One of the UK's leading newspapers)
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/sep/26/koch-brothers-americans-for-p...

A little-known, billionaire-funded organization, called Americans for Prosperity (AFP), has tilted American politics to the right. [It] is at the center of the political network created and directed by the billionaire conservative industrialists, Charles and David Koch. AFP has quietly pushed behind the scenes for many of the most important conservative victories across the nation, including the anti-union bills that passed in former union strongholds such as Wisconsin, Michigan, and Ohio. AFP’s laser-like focus on anti-union legislation ... reflects strategic calculations. AFP has recognized that to make lasting change in US politics, the Koch network would need to permanently weaken the organizations that support liberal candidates and causes – and above all, the labor movement. In constructing AFP, the Kochs have created a vehicle that is perfectly positioned to reshape American politics. AFP focuses on both elections and policy battles at all levels of government. Its activities are mostly centrally directed. And even though grassroots participants do not have much say in the direction of the group, AFP has nearly 3 million citizen activists signed up to mobilize for candidates and policy causes. Taken together, AFP’s grassroots volunteers and staffing rival those of the Republican party itself. By providing resources to support GOP candidates and officials, and exerting leverage on them once elected, AFP has been able to pull the Republican party to the far right on economic, tax and regulatory issues.

Note: The Koch brothers' secretive empire spent nearly $1 billion on US elections in 2016. Along with opposing organized labor, this empire has been killing public transit projects across the country. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and the manipulation of public perception.


Short-Term Superhuman: If We Create Augmented Soldiers, Can We Turn Them Back?
2018-09-25, Popular Mechanics
https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/research/a23457329/augmented-super-...

A soldier wears a skullcap that stimulates his brain to make him learn skills faster, or reads his thoughts as a way to control a drone. Another is plugged into a Tron-like “active cyber defense system,” in which she mentally teams up with computer systems “to successfully multitask during complex military missions.” The Pentagon is already researching these seemingly sci-fi concepts. The basics of brain-machine interfaces are being developed—just watch the videos of patients moving prosthetic limbs with their minds. The Defense Department is examining newly scientific tools, like genetic engineering, brain chemistry, and shrinking robotics, for even more dramatic enhancements. But the real trick may not be granting superpowers, but rather making sure those effects are temporary. Last year, three Canadian defense researchers published a paper that explored the intersection of human enhancement and ethics. They found that the permanence of the enhancement could have impacts on troops in the field ... as well as a return to civilian life. They also note that “many soldier resilience human enhancement technologies raised health and safety questions.” The Canadian researchers wrote: “Are there unknown side effects or long term effects that could lead to unanticipated health problems during deployment or after discharge? Moreover, is it ethical to force a soldier to use the technology in question, or should he/she be allowed to consent to its use? Can consent be fully free from coercion in the military?”

Note: Read an excellent article detailing the risks of biosensors implanted under the skin which have already been developed. Some smaller than a grain of rice can be injected with a needle. Watch a slick video promoting this brave new world. Learn how this is already planned for use on soldiers. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on military corruption from reliable major media sources.


'Treating protest as terrorism': US plans crackdown on Keystone XL activists
2018-09-20, The Guardian (One of the UK's leading newspapers)
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/sep/20/keystone-pipeline-protest...

Angeline Cheek is preparing for disaster. The indigenous organizer from the Fort Peck reservation in Montana fears that the proposed Keystone XL pipeline could break and spill. But environmental catastrophe is not the most immediate threat. The government has characterized pipeline opponents like her as “extremists” and violent criminals and warned of potential “terrorism”. Recently released records [suggest] that police were organizing to launch an aggressive response to possible Keystone protests, echoing the actions against the Standing Rock movement in North Dakota. There, officers engaged in intense surveillance and faced widespread accusations of excessive force. Documents obtained by the ACLU ... have renewed concerns from civil rights advocates about the government’s treatment of indigenous activists known as water protectors. Notably, one record revealed that authorities hosted a recent “anti-terrorism” training session in Montana. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Federal Emergency Management Agency also organized a “field force operations” training to teach “mass-arrest procedures”, “riot-control formations” and other “crowd-control methods”.

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


How Golf Digest and College Students Helped Free a Man Wrongly Convicted of Murder
2018-09-20, New York Times
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/20/nyregion/Valentino-Dixon-golf-digest-exone...

There were dozens of witnesses when a gunfight broke out on a street corner in Buffalo on Aug. 10, 1991. Torriano Jackson, 17, was killed. Valentino Dixon, then 21, was at the scene. Hours later, he was arrested. And in 1992, he was convicted of murder and sentenced to almost 40 years to life in prison. For years, Mr. Dixon fought that conviction from behind bars, insisting on his innocence. No physical evidence had ever connected him to the murder, and another man had confessed to it more than once. His murder conviction was vacated on Wednesday, and Mr. Dixon, 48, walked free. As he struggled to get his conviction overturned, Mr. Dixon got help from ... Martin Tankleff, who was imprisoned for 17 years after being wrongly convicted of murdering his parents. In prison, [Dixon] liked to draw detailed landscapes in colored pencil. Golf courses were a frequent subject. That caught the interest of journalists at Golf Digest, and the magazine profiled Mr. Dixon. In 2017, a new district attorney, John Flynn, took office in Erie County. And in 2018, a course called the Prison Reform Project was offered for the first time at Georgetown University ... with Mr. Tankleff [serving] as an adjunct professor. Three students chose Mr. Dixon’s case and gathered evidence. Their work helped Donald M. Thompson, a lawyer for Mr. Dixon, make his case to the district attorney’s office. Mr. Flynn, the district attorney, said the newly discovered evidence from various witnesses attesting to Mr. Dixon’s innocence was deemed credible.

Note: Read the Golf Digest profile featuring Mr. Dixon's artwork which brought much-needed attention to his wrongful incarceration. Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.


Governments Can Spy on Journalists in the U.S. Using Invasive Foreign Intelligence Process
2018-09-17, The Intercept
https://theintercept.com/2018/09/17/journalists-fisa-court-spying/

The U.S. government can monitor journalists under a foreign intelligence law that allows invasive spying and operates outside the traditional court system, according to newly released documents. Targeting members of the press under the law, known as the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, requires approval from the Justice Department’s highest-ranking officials. Prior to the release of these documents, little was known about the use of FISA court orders against journalists. Previous attention had been focused on the use of National Security Letters against members of the press; the letters are administrative orders with which the FBI can obtain certain ... records without a judge’s oversight. FISA court orders can authorize much more invasive searches and collection, including the content of communications, and do so through hearings conducted in secret and outside the sort of ... judicial process that allows journalists and other targets of regular criminal warrants to eventually challenge their validity. The rules apply to media entities or journalists who are thought to be agents of a foreign government, or ... possess foreign intelligence information. “There’s a lack of clarity on the circumstances when the government might consider a journalist an agent of a foreign power,” said [Knight Institute staff attorney Ramya] Krishnan. “Think about WikiLeaks; the government has said they are an intelligence operation.”

Note: In its latest instruction manual for federal prosecutors, the US Justice Department removed a subsection titled “Need for Free Press and Public Trial”. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on judicial system corruption and the erosion of civil liberties.


Ten Years After The Financial Crisis, The Contagion Has Spread To Democracy Itself
2018-09-15, Huffington Post
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/financial-crisis-10-years-later-ben-bern...

By the time Lehman Brothers filed for the largest bankruptcy in American history on Sept. 15, 2008, the country had been navigating stormy global financial waters for more than a year. Throughout the mess, the Federal Reserve and the U.S. Treasury had been permitting the largest banks in the country to funnel as much cash as they wanted to their shareholders ― even as it became clear those same banks could not pay their debts. Ben Bernanke, Hank Paulson and Timothy Geithner ... didn’t really rescue the banking system. They transformed it into an unaccountable criminal syndicate. Since the crash, the biggest Wall Street banks have been caught laundering drug money, violating U.S. sanctions against Iran and Cuba, bribing foreign government officials, making illegal campaign contributions to a state regulator and manipulating the market for U.S. government debt. Citibank, JPMorgan, Royal Bank of Scotland, Barclays and UBS even pleaded guilty to felonies for manipulating currency markets. Not a single human being has served a day in jail for any of it. As a percentage of each family’s overall wealth, the poorer you were, the more you lost in the crash. The top 1 percent of U.S. households ultimately captured more than half of the economic gains over the course of the Obama years, while the bottom 99 percent never recovered their losses from the crash. The result has been a predictable and terrifying resurgence of authoritarian politics unseen since the Second World War.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on financial industry corruption and income inequality.


Solar observatory closed due to
2018-09-15, CBS/Associated Press
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/sunspot-solar-observatory-closed-new-mexico-ongo...

An observatory in the mountains of southern New Mexico that is dedicated to unlocking the mysteries of the sun has found itself at the center of a mystery that is creating a buzz here on earth. Authorities [say] only that an undisclosed security concern was behind the decision to abruptly vacate and lock up the remote facility on Sept 6. The Sunspot Solar Observatory has been closed for more than a week. The FBI referred all questions to the group that manages the site, the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy. The vagueness continued to fuel speculation. The telescope at Sunspot was originally built by the U.S. Air Force. After several years of operation, it was transferred to the National Solar Observatory, which is part of the National Science Foundation. Sunspot's one-of-a-kind telescope produces some of the sharpest images of the sun available in the world, officials said.

Note: Watch NASA footage showing very strange objects occluding the sun at exactly the time this solar observatory was closed and evacuated. What did someone not want us to know for "security" reasons? The official explanation leaves many questions unanswered.


Manafort’s guilty plea exposes hardball tactics he used to thrive in Washington swamp
2018-09-14, Washington Post
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/manaforts-guilty-plea-exposes-hardbal...

Before he was Donald Trump’s campaign chairman, Paul Manafort embraced extreme tactics in his lobbying efforts. He enlisted a foreign politician who was secretly on his payroll to deliver a message to President Barack Obama in the Oval Office. And he gleefully fueled allegations that an Obama Cabinet member who had spoken out against his Ukrainian client was an anti-Semite. With his guilty plea Friday, Manafort admitted the lengths to which he went to manipulate the American political system and the media for massive profit, exposing how he thrived in the Washington swamp that Trump railed against during his campaign. By pleading guilty, Manafort agreed that he knew he was required by law to publicly report that a pro-Russia Ukrainian political party was paying him and his stable of lobbyists, which included former leaders of Austria, Poland and Italy. Instead, he operated in the dark, working diligently to keep his lobbying for Ukrainian politician Viktor Yanukovych a secret and pocketing millions routed through offshore bank accounts to hide his work and avoid paying taxes. Trump has downplayed Manafort’s wrongdoing. “What he did, some of the charges they threw against him, every consultant, every lobbyist in Washington probably does,” the president told Fox News. Paul Miller, who runs the Institute for Lobbying and Ethics ... acknowledged that there is a “widespread problem” of lobbyists failing to register their activities. But Manafort went far beyond that, Miller said.

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


Ten Years After the Crash, We’ve Learned Nothing
2018-09-13, Rolling Stone
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/financial-crisis-ten-...

On Saturday, September 13th, 2008, the world was about to end. The New York Federal Reserve was a zoo. The crowd included future Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, then-Treasury Secretary (and former Goldman Sachs CEO) Hank Paulson, the representatives of multiple regulatory offices, and the CEOs of virtually every major bank in New York. In the twin collapses of top-five investment bank Lehman Brothers and insurance giant AIG, Wall Street saw a civilization-imperiling ball of debt hurtling its way. The legend of that meeting ... is that the tough-minded bank honchos found a way to scrape up just enough cash to steer the debt-comet off course. The plan included a federal bailout of incompetent AIG, along with key mergers – Bank of America buying Merrill, Barclays swallowing the sinking hull of Lehman, etc. The legend is bull. Accurate chronicles of the crisis period [include] the just-released Financial Exposure by Elise Bean of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. The crisis response dramatically accelerated two huge problems. First, we made Too Big To Fail worse by making the companies even bigger and more dangerous through ... state-aided mergers. In the next crisis, letting losers lose will be even more unimaginable. Secondly, an already-serious economic inequality issue became formalized. The people responsible for the crisis weren’t just saved, but made beneficiaries of another decade of massive unearned profits.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on financial industry corruption and income inequality.


September 11: nearly 10,000 people affected by 'cesspool of cancer'
2018-09-11, The Guardian (One of the UK's leading newspapers)
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/sep/10/911-attack-ground-zero-manhat...

John Mormando was in the best shape of his life – a marathon runner and triathlete training for an Ironman competition – when he noticed a small bump on his chest. He ... soon received the shocking diagnosis: breast cancer. Mormando, 51, was at a loss to explain his rare diagnosis. Then colleagues reminded him of the months he worked close to the site of the 9/11 terrorist attack on New York’s World Trade Center. Tens of thousands of people who lived or worked in the neighborhood at the time found themselves breathing in air thick with toxic fumes and particles. Many have since become sick, many have died and new cases are still occurring. The latest example is a cluster of men who have developed breast cancer, including Mormando. The new cluster of male breast cancer diagnoses is just one face of a health crisis that is only getting worse 17 years after the terrorist attacks. New York is nearing a grim milestone: 10,000 people diagnosed with cancer linked to 9/11. Last week, FBI director Christopher Wray said he had lost three colleagues who responded to the 2001 attacks in the last six months alone. There were 9,375 members of the World Trade Center Health Program certified as having a related cancer as of the end of June. An additional 420 members who had cancer have died. In all, more than 43,000 people have been certified with a 9/11 related health condition. The head of the EPA at the time has admitted she was wrong to assure the public that the air around Ground Zero was safe.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing 9/11 news articles from reliable major media sources. Then explore the excellent, reliable resources provided in our 9/11 Information Center.


The White House’s new attack on the international system
2018-09-11, Washington Post
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2018/09/11/white-houses-new-attack-inter...

In his first major policy address since joining the White House in April, national security adviser John Bolton offered a particularly aggressive demonstration of President Trump's "America First" agenda. He threatened the International Criminal Court, a U.N.-mandated body based in The Hague, with punitive measures should it pursue an investigation into alleged U.S. war crimes in Afghanistan. He warned that the United States would ban ICC judges and prosecutors from entering the country, sanction their funds in the U.S. financial system and punish any company or government that complies with an ICC investigation into Americans. The ICC's chief prosecutor announced last November that she had "reasonable evidence" to investigate allegations regarding the abuse, torture and even rape of at least 88 Afghan detainees, allegedly carried out by U.S. armed forces in Afghanistan and at clandestine CIA interrogation centers in Europe. The ICC is far from a perfect institution. But it still represents a key cog in the international system, and one that could yet provide justice for the hideous crimes of those like ... Myanmar's generals. Instead, it may yet become another casualty of Trump's wider war on liberal internationalism. "It is an all-out bid by Donald Trump to end the ICC, the world’s foremost criminal tribunal, and with it, the very concept of international justice," wrote the Guardian's Simon Tisdall. "Bolton is the man wielding the knife. And there is a strong possibility they will succeed."

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


Trump Administration Discussed Coup Plans With Rebel Venezuelan Officers
2018-09-08, New York Times
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/08/world/americas/donald-trump-venezuela-mili...

The Trump administration held secret meetings with rebellious military officers from Venezuela over the last year to discuss their plans to overthrow President Nicolás Maduro. One of the Venezuelan military commanders involved in the secret talks ... is on the American government’s own sanctions list of corrupt officials in Venezuela. He and other members of the Venezuelan security apparatus have been accused by Washington of a wide range of serious crimes, including torturing critics, jailing hundreds of political prisoners, wounding thousands of civilians, trafficking drugs and collaborating with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, which is considered a terrorist organization by the United States. In a series of covert meetings ... the military officers told the American government that they represented a few hundred members of the armed forces who had soured on Mr. Maduro’s authoritarianism. The officers asked the United States to supply them with encrypted radios, citing the need to communicate securely, as they developed a plan to install a transitional government. American officials did not provide material support, and the plans unraveled after a recent crackdown that led to the arrest of dozens of the plotters. On Feb. 1, Rex W. Tillerson ... delivered a speech in which he said the United States had not “advocated for regime change or removal of President Maduro.” Yet, responding to a question afterward, Mr. Tillerson raised the potential for a military coup.

Note: The US has a long history of supporting coups and human rights abuses in Latin America. The Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, formerly known as the School of the Americas, graduated more than 500 human rights abusers. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing government corruption news articles from reliable major media sources.


Federal Judge expedites GA paper ballot lawsuit
2018-09-07, NBC News (Georgia affiliate)
https://www.wsav.com/news/your-local-election-hq/georgia-voters-watch-their-b...

Georgia and four other states do not use paper ballots as a backup for electronic voting machines. In Washington, a group of bi-partisan lawmakers are banding to mandate the extra security measure across the nation. But right now, the Secretary of State, Brian Kemp is facing a federal lawsuit because he's reluctant to make the change before the upcoming November 6 election. In 2017, an investigation into the current system which uses 15 year old voting kiosks, was determined in serious jeopardy. But nothing was done. Instead, several databases with vital information was missing that could've assisted in the remedy. Democrat candidate Lisa Ring says voters are complaining they've been expunged from the rolls, that their designated and confirmed polling place was closed when they arrived for the Primary election, even worse, some saw their vote changing in front of their eyes. Candidate Lisa Ring/(D) Georgia 1st District: "We've heard reports all over the state of these old machines often not taking a person's vote. It'll change. Change the vote. And, sometimes, if people don't catch it, we don't know if the vote is being recorded accurately." Georgia is facing other election concerns as well. There is controversy over the boundary line drawn for at least one voting district, several polls were almost closed in a majority black district and the lawsuit looming in federal court. Georgia voters head to the polls November 6 to elect a new governor.

Note: How strange that the article was initially titled "Georgia Voters Watch Their Ballots Mysteriously Switch," as you can tell by looking at the URL, yet then it was changed. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing elections corruption news articles from reliable major media sources.


US voter suppression: why this Texas woman is facing five years' prison
2018-08-28, The Guardian (One of the UK's leading newspapers)
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/aug/27/crime-of-voting-texas-woman-c...

When Crystal Mason appears in federal court in Fort Worth, Texas, this week she has been warned by her lawyers to be prepared for the worst. Mason, a 43-year-old mother of three, has been sentenced to five years in Texas state penitentiary. All because she committed the crime of voting. On 8 November 2016 ... she walked to her local Fort Worth polling station to perform her civic duty as a US citizen. To her surprise, her name wasn’t registered on the voting rolls, so she cast a provisional ballot. She didn’t ... know that under Texas’s strict electoral laws, she was ineligible to vote. By dint of a previous conviction for tax fraud, for which she had served five years in prison ... she was one of 500,000 Texans barred from the electoral process. After Trump’s victory she was called to a Fort Worth courthouse [and] received her five-year sentence for illegal voting. There is a cruel irony to Crystal Mason’s predicament. While it is true that Fort Worth has a major problem with democracy ... the crisis is not that people are voting illegally, but that they are not voting at all. In 2016, researchers at Portland State University compared the turnout in mayoral ballots in 50 US cities. Fort Worth ... had a turnout of just 6%. With participation rates at such dire levels, politicians might be expected to try with equal urgency to boost voting. But at both national and Texas state level, the response from Republicans has been quite the opposite – they have embarked on a rash of efforts that tend to suppress turnout.

Note: A commission formed by President Trump to investigate supposed voter fraud found no evidence to support Trump's claims that 3 to 5 million people voted illegally in 2016. Maine Secretary of State Matthew Dunlap said the commission was, "the most bizarre thing I’ve ever been a part of." For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing elections corruption news articles from reliable major media sources.


Police accused over raids on activist's family
2018-08-26, The Independent (One of the UK's leading newspapers)
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/aug/26/memphis-police-raids-activist...

Was it coincidence that a mass raid on two Memphis homes occurred on the first day of a trial in which police face claims of illegal surveillance of Black Lives Matter campaigners? More than two dozen police cars, most unmarked, blocked off the street before officers raided two homes. Witnesses described more than 50 heavily armed officers: local police, sheriff’s deputies, some from other agencies. Many shielded their identity with black ski masks. Minutes away, at a downtown courthouse, the police department was entering its first day on trial. The case, brought by activists and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), alleges the Memphis police department (MPD) engaged in illegal surveillance of activists involved with Black Lives Matter and Fight for 15, including “catfishing” them with fake social media accounts. The homes raided belonged to the uncle and grandmother of ... one of the targets of the alleged police spying. Following the raids, activists reported police searching a community garden, tailing activists in unmarked cars, and ... pulling over a vehicle in which one passenger was an ACLU lawyer representing the activists. The lawyer was briefly detained, in handcuffs. A federal judge is currently considering his verdict on the ACLU lawsuit. He has already ruled that the city violated a federal consent decree barring the city from engaging in political surveillance.

Note: Memphis police were recently reported to have systematically spied on community activists. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on police corruption and the erosion of civil liberties.


DHS Asks For 'Positive Gems' About War-Torn Countries To Justify Returning Immigrants
2018-08-25, NPR
https://www.npr.org/2018/08/25/641652912/dhs-asks-for-positive-gems-about-war...

The American Civil Liberties Union sued the Trump administration in an attempt to restore protected status to immigrants from Sudan, Nicaragua, Haiti, and El Salvador. Thousands from those four countries were given safe haven in the U.S. following crippling natural disasters and civil conflict, but earlier this year the Trump administration officially ended their protected status. Lawyers for the ACLU and the National Day Laborer Organizing Network convinced the court to order the federal government to disclose communication between DHS officials and other federal agencies. The messages reveal that DHS asked staffers to find "positive gems" about war-torn countries to justify sending more than 300,000 people back to their homelands. The internal back-and-forths also demonstrate more subtle ways DHS sought to downplay the severity of conditions in volatile countries, like using the word "challenges," instead of "disasters" in talking points to the public. That guidance raised alarms with seasoned State Department officials. To ACLU lawyer Ahilan Arulanantham ... the emails show that DHS is more concerned with carrying out Trump's hardline stance on immigration than it is with following the law. "They cut diplomats out of the decision-making process. They rewrote their reports, downplayed sometimes really horrific problems in countries and basically did everything they could to justify the result that the Trump administration wanted," Arulanantham said

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and the erosion of civil liberties.


For Female Candidates, Harassment and Threats Come Every Day
2018-08-24, New York Times
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/24/us/politics/women-harassment-elections.html

Four days before the 2016 congressional primary in her Northern California district, Erin Schrode woke up to tens of thousands of messages. They were ... in her email, on her cellphone, on her Facebook and her Twitter and her Instagram. “All would laugh with glee as they gang raped her and then bashed her bagel eating brains in,” one said. It has been two years since Ms. Schrode ... lost her Democratic primary and moved on. But the abuse - a toxic sludge of online trolling steeped in misogyny and anti-Semitism that also included photoshopped images of her face stretched into a Nazi lampshade and references to “preheating the ovens” - never stopped. The 2018 election cycle has brought a surge of female candidates. A record number of women ran or are running for the Senate, the House and governorships. And in the process, they are finding that harassment and threats, already common for women, can be amplified in political races - especially if the candidate is a member of a minority group. Last year, sexist and anti-Semitic abuse helped drive Kim Weaver, an Iowa Democrat, out of her race against Representative Steve King. The neo-Nazi website The Daily Stormer published an article ... titled, as Ms. Weaver recalled it, “Meet the Whore Who’s Running Against Steve King,” increasing what was already an onslaught of threats. When she withdrew from the race, Mr. King suggested she had made up the threats. No independent organization appears to formally track incidents of harassment.

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


Elizabeth Warren introduces sweeping ethics bill
2018-08-21, CBS News
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/elizabeth-warren-unveils-anti-corruption-legisla...

Sen. Elizabeth Warren on Tuesday introduced what she describes as the most ambitious anti-corruption legislation since Watergate. Warren's Anti-Corruption and Public Integrity Act ... aims to nix the influence of big money in politics. The legislation would "padlock" the revolving door in Washington by placing a lifetime ban on lobbying by former members of Congress, presidents and agency heads. The legislation would also expand the definition of who is a lobbyist to anyone who spends any time attempting to influence government. The proposal would also prohibit the world's largest companies, something defined by a company's annual revenue or market capitalization, from hiring or paying any former senior government official for four years after they leave government. Former senior officials would also have to file income disclosures for four years after federal employment. Warren's legislation would also ban members of Congress, cabinet secretaries, federal judges and other top government officials from owning and trading stocks. Currently, members simply need to disclose their stocks and trades. The bill would also create an entirely new office designed to police public corruption, called the Office of the Public Integrity, to strengthen enforcement and investigate possible violations.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corruption in government and in the corporate world.


More Than 4,000 New MKULTRA Documents Requested from CIA After Crowdfunding Campaign
2018-08-15, Newsweek
https://www.newsweek.com/project-mkultra-documents-cia-brainwashing-technique...

Thousands of new documents from Project MKUltra, the Central Intelligence Agency’s mid-century mind control program, will soon be released. The new records include 4,358 undisclosed pages regarding MKUltra’s “behavior modification” efforts. John Greenewald, founder of The Black Vault, a site specializing in declassified government records obtained via Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, first uploaded MKUltra documents in 2004 - tens of thousands of pages, spread over four CD-ROMs. Still, the trove of MKUltra material available on The Black Vault represent only a small fraction of the material from the sprawling, multi-decade program, with the majority lost to history after CIA Director Richard Helms ordered all MKUltra files destroyed in 1973. This makes the new documents crucial to expanding our narrow perspective on the CIA’s actions from the operation’s beginnings in 1953 through the cover-up twenty years later. Project MKUltra was an illegal program of human experimentation undertaken by the CIA to discover methods, both pharmacological and psychological, for controlling the human mind. More than 80 colleges, prisons, pharma companies and hospitals collaborated in the program, including renowned psychiatrist Donald Ewen Cameron, who served president of the American Psychiatric Association and the World Psychiatric Association. The existence of the previously unknown MKUltra pages was discovered in 2016, when a Black Vault user, Oscar Diggs, discovered irregularities in the collection the CIA disclosed to Greenewald.

Note: Read details of the CIA's bizarre efforts to keep these missing documents away from the public on this page. While Black Vault makes the MKUltra archive available for bulk download, you can view individual MKUltra files from this archive on this WantToKnow.info page. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing mind control news articles from reliable major media sources.


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