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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.


Undercover FBI Agents Helped Autistic Teen Plan Trip to Join ISIS
2024-01-10, The Intercept
https://theintercept.com/2024/01/10/fbi-sting-isis-autistic-teen/

Humzah Mashkoor had just cleared security at Denver International Airport when the FBI showed up. The agents had come to arrest the 18-year-old, who is diagnosed with a developmental disability, and charge him with terror-related crimes. Mashkoor had gone to the airport ... as part of his alleged plot to join the Islamic State. The trip had been spurred by over a year of online exchanges starting when Mashkoor was 16 years old with four people he believed were members of ISIS. According to the Justice Department's criminal complaint, the four were actually undercover FBI agents. As a result of his conversations with the FBI, Mashkoor could face a lengthy sentence for attempting to provide material support to a terrorist organization. Law enforcement agents first became aware of Mashkoor's online activities in support of ISIS in November 2021. But instead of alerting his family ... FBI agents posing as ISIS members befriended him a year later and strung him along until he became a legal adult. Almost all of the conduct he is alleged to have committed took place when he was a juvenile. "This case appears consistent with a common fact pattern seen in tens, if not hundreds, of terrorism-related cases in which the FBI has effectively manufactured terrorist prosecutions," said Sahar Aziz, a national security expert. "If there was a serious terrorist threat in America, the FBI would not be spending its time entrapping a mentally ill minor."

Note: Read more about the FBI's manufacture of terrorist plots. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on law enforcement corruption and terrorism from reliable major media sources.


Science Has a Major Fraud Problem. Here's Why Government Funding Is the Likely Culprit
2024-01-09, Foundation for Economic Education
https://fee.org/articles/science-has-a-major-fraud-problem-here-s-why-governm...

Although seemingly noble, the billions pumped into the US government's National Science Foundation don't always translate into finding cures for debilitating diseases, or developing groundbreaking technologies. In recent years, although technology and peer-review techniques have become more widespread, fraud has remained a consistent issue. As [J.B.] Carlisle analyzed dozens of government-funded control trials, he found a staggering 44% contained false data. These findings are swept under the rug by most mainstream news outlets. There are several ways the government introduces bias into research. For one, the state often ignores certain scientific queries, forcing researchers to adopt different hypotheses or study different questions to gain any funding. Without any market forces guiding research and development, study objectives start aligning more with the interests of bureaucrats and less with the interests of patients. Government agencies also don't want to fund proposals that contradict the agency's political ideas. If the research's outcome even slightly threatens the government's power, funding is likely to be cut off, often for extended periods. These outcomes are clearest when it comes to funding regarding the social sciences and economics. 34% percent of scientists receiving federal funding have acknowledged engaging in research misconduct to align research with their funder's political and economic agenda.

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


Epstein documents allege sex tapes of Bill Clinton, Prince Andrew and Richard Branson
2024-01-09, The Independent (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/epstein-sex-tapes-richard-b...

Newly unsealed Jeffrey Epstein documents have described bombshell allegations about sex tapes involving Bill Clinton, Prince Andrew and Richard Branson. In emails sent by Epstein victim Sarah Ransome – sections of which were included as exhibits in one of the filings unsealed on Monday – she said that an unnamed friend "had sexual intercourse with Clinton, Prince Andrew and Richard Branson" and that these encounters had been filmed by Epstein and that she herself had later seen the sex tapes. In the messages, Ms Ransome said that her friend later came forward to report what happened "with Epstein, Clinton, Branson and Prince Andrew" to the police in 2008 but said that "nothing was done" and "she was made to feel like a dirty whore and a liar". A couple of months later, her friend was allegedly "approached by Special Agents Forces Men sent directly by Hilary [sic] Clinton herself, in order to protect her presidential campaign in 2008", Ms Ransome claimed. Ms Ransome went on to allege that the friend was given a "substantial" payout directly from the Clinton Foundation "to keep her quiet". She alleged that if her friend was to break the agreement to stay quiet, "she is dead". The woman also allegedly tried to sue Epstein for damages but was "severely bullied and threatened" by his attorney, Mr Dershowitz – a man who she claimed "she also had sexual relations with and who was also heavily involved in Epstein's paedophile ring".

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on Jeffrey Epstein's child sex ring from reliable major media sources.


The New Space Race Is Causing New Pollution Problems
2024-01-09, New York Times
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/09/science/rocket-pollution-spacex-satellites...

In the past few years, the number of rocket launches has spiked as commercial companies – especially SpaceX, founded by Elon Musk – and government agencies have lofted thousands of satellites into low-Earth orbit. And it is only the beginning. Satellites could eventually total one million, requiring an even greater number of space launches that could yield escalating levels of emissions. Scientists worry that more launches will scatter more pollutants in pristine layers of Earth's atmosphere. And regulators across the globe, who assess some risks of space launches, do not set rules related to pollution. Experts say they do not want to limit the booming space economy. But they fear that ... we may understand the consequences of pollution from rockets and spacecraft only when it is too late. Already, studies show that the higher reaches of the atmosphere are laced with metals from spacecraft that disintegrate as they fall back to Earth. In a paper published in 2022, soot from rockets was shown to be nearly 500 times as efficient at heating the atmosphere as soot released from sources like airplanes closer to the surface. A separate study also published in 2022 found that if the rate of rocket launches increased by a factor of 10, their emissions could cause temperatures in parts of the stratosphere to rise as much as 2 degrees Celsius. This could begin to degrade the ozone over most of North America, all of Europe and a chunk of Asia.

Note: The risks posed by satellites expand beyond emissions. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on climate change from reliable major media sources.


Who's funding DC's pro-war think tanks? 'Independent' experts push defence-contractor agendas
2024-01-08, UnHerd
https://unherd.com/2025/01/whos-funding-dcs-pro-war-think-tanks/?emci=eb084a3...

Last year, the US Commission on National Defense Strategy published its final report, creating intense buzz in Washington. "The threats the United States faces are the most serious and most challenging the nation has encountered since 1945," the report warned. To meet the challenge, "the US government needs to harness all elements of national power," starting with a 5% boost to the Pentagon budget, currently at $886 billion. Congress created the bipartisan commission as "an independent body." Yet some of the members of the commission are connected to think tanks and the defence contractors that fund them: from Boeing to General Electric, Northrop Grumman to Lockheed Martin. If taxpayers go along with the military buildup advocated by the report, these and other firms stand to profit handsomely. The Atlantic Council recently published its own nuclear report, which called for boosting funding for missile-defense technologies. The Atlantic Council has received at least $10 million from major Pentagon contractors that manufacture nuclear weapons and missile-defense systems. There are so many reports paid for by vested interests, commissions on which they sit, and governments getting their piece, it's hard to keep track. Consider Michèle Flournoy, a former Pentagon official who founded the Center for New American Security and sits on its board. CNAS published a report in September titled "Integration for Innovation" as part of its "defense technology task force." Executives from RTX (which contributed at least $450,000 to CNAS), Lockheed Martin ($600,000), Palantir ($175,000), Leidos ($300,000), and Booz Allen ($250,000) all directly contributed as members of the task force, even as they benefit from every single proposal in it.

Note: Learn more about arms industry corruption in our comprehensive Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center. For more, read our concise summaries of news articles on military corruption.


Scientists at the center of the ‘lab leak' controversy met with NIH, Fauci
2024-01-06, U.S. Right to Know
https://usrtk.org/covid-19-origins/daszak-shi-visits-nih-fauci/

Scientists at the center of the "lab leak" controversy visited Anthony Fauci's institute at the National Institutes of Health in 2017 to discuss their research – just months before NIH lifted a pause on high-risk virology. Wuhan Institute of Virology Senior Scientist Shi Zhengli [visited] National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases staffers in June 2017, where she gave a presentation about novel coronaviruses. Shi is known internationally as the "Bat Lady" for her work with bats and their coronaviruses. Though ostensibly a civilian lab, the Wuhan Institute of Virology has conducted research projects "for defensive and biosecurity needs of the military" since at least 2017, according to U.S. intelligence. EcoHealth Alliance, a U.S. research organization, partnered closely with the Wuhan Institute of Virology, subcontracting NIAID funding to Shi's lab, and arranged the meeting. Fauci himself met with [EcoHealth Alliance President Peter] Daszak four months later, in October 2017. By December 2017, NIH had resumed funding for gain-of-function research that generates new viruses in the lab following a three year pause and debate about the possibility that such research could cause a pandemic. A 2021 State Department fact sheet stated that "despite the WIV presenting itself as a civilian institution," it has conducted classified research on behalf of the Chinese military "since at least 2017."

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


Jeffrey Epstein Ran Sex Blackmail Operation For Intelligence Agencies, New Evidence Suggests
2024-01-04, Public on Substack
https://public.substack.com/p/jeffrey-epstein-ran-sex-blackmail

While nobody has offered hard evidence that intelligence agencies, and in particular the CIA or Mossad, were directly involved in Epstein and [Ghislaine] Maxwell's blackmailing of public figures, many of the journalists who investigated the Epstein case have concluded that they were running what is known in the intelligence community as a "honeypot" or "honeytrap" aimed at using sex to blackmail people. The current director of the Central Intelligence Agency, William Burns, had scheduled three meetings with Epstein in 2014. Epstein's private calendar showed that he had dozens of meetings with Kathryn Ruemmler, a former White House counsel under President Barack Obama. Meetings with many other wealthy, well-connected individuals occurred years after Epstein became a convicted sex offender. Reporter Vicky Ward ... wrote a story about the Justice Department's 2007 "non-prosecution agreement" with Epstein. Alexander Acosta was the U.S. Attorney for South Florida who arranged the lenient sentence. "I was told Epstein 'belonged to intelligence' and to leave it alone," Acosta said. In addition to his possible ties to American intelligence, Epstein may have also been connected to the Israeli Mossad. A former Israeli spy, Ari Ben-Menashe, said he was Robert Maxwell's "handler" and claimed to have introduced Epstein to Mossad. "They were agents of the Israeli Intelligence Services," said Ben-Menashe. The CIA has a long record of using sexual blackmail. In 1975, the Washington Post reported that for years, the CIA had "operated love traps in New York City and San Francisco, where foreign diplomats were lured by prostitutes in the pay of the CIA ...Through hidden one-way mirrors, CIA agents filmed the sexual adventures and later tried to blackmail the victims into becoming informants."

Note: Read more about former Israeli spy Ari Ben-Menashe's claims that Epstein was running a sexual blackmail operation on behalf of Israeli military intelligence. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on Jeffrey Epstein and intelligence agency corruption from reliable major media sources.


There is little scrutiny of 'natural' deaths behind bars
2024-01-02, NPR
https://www.npr.org/2024/01/02/1219667393/there-is-little-scrutiny-of-natural...

Kesha Jackson was preparing for her husband, John, to be home in a few weeks. But then Jackson got a concerning call from other inmates. Her husband, in the special housing unit, was going in and out of consciousness. He died soon after. And as she waited for some explanation, Jackson was surprised to learn what prison officials pronounced as the manner of death: "natural." By deeming the death natural, prison authorities were not required to conduct an autopsy for Jackson's death. It's how they characterize at least three-quarters of all federal prison deaths since 2009. "When his medical records came home after he passed away, I saw that it was MRSA," Jackson said. "Saying that it's a natural death can sometimes be misleading because I believe that having the proper medical treatment could have possibly saved his life," Jackson said. The CDC says natural deaths happen either solely or almost entirely because of disease or old age. Yet 70% of the inmates who died in federal prison the last 13 years were under the age of 65. NPR found that potential issues such as medical neglect, poor prison conditions and a lack of health care resources were left unexplained once a "natural" death designation ended hopes of an investigation. Meanwhile, family members were left with little information about their loved one's death. Homer Venters, a federal court monitor of jail and prison health care, calls deaths like Jackson's "jail attributable."

Note: Private companies like Corizon are often responsible for inmate medical care. In 2015, investigations in Arizona, Florida, Maine, Minnesota, and New York uncovered escalating inmate deaths related to Corizon's for-profit medical services. A New York Times article about this was published but it quickly disappeared. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on prison system corruption from reliable major media sources.


The military showers universities with hundreds of millions of dollars
2024-01-01, Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft
https://responsiblestatecraft.org/pentagon-divestment/

Pentagon-funded research is once again on the rise. In 2022, the most recent year for which full data is available, 14 universities received at least – and brace yourself for this – $100 million in Pentagon funding, from Johns Hopkins's astonishing $1.4 billion (no, that is not a typo!) to Colorado State's impressive $100 million. The social sciences also have a long, conflicted history of ties to the Pentagon and the military services. Two prominent examples from earlier in this century were the Pentagon's Human Terrain Program (HTS) and the role of psychologists in crafting torture programs associated with the Global War on Terror. The HTS was initially intended to reduce the "cultural knowledge gap" suffered by U.S. troops involved in counterinsurgency operations in Afghanistan and Iraq early in this century. The program sparked intense protests in the academic community, with a particularly acrimonious debate within the American Anthropological Association. An even more controversial use of social scientists in the service of the war machine was the role of psychologists as advisors to the CIA's torture programs at Abu Ghraib in Iraq, the Guantánamo Bay detention center in Cuba, and other of that agency's "black sites." James E. Mitchell, a psychologist under contract to U.S. intelligence, helped develop the "enhanced interrogation techniques" used by the U.S during its post-9/11 "war on terror," even sitting in on a session in which a prisoner was waterboarded.

Note: Read more about the the American Psychological Association's complicity in US government torture. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on military corruption from reliable major media sources.


Confronting Illusions Can Help Heal Trauma
2024-01-01, Scientific American
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/confronting-illusions-can-help-hea...

Physician and author Gabor MatĂ© is known for his insights into the imprints that trauma leaves on the mind and body–and for his compassionate guidance on healing. In MatĂ©'s most recent work, The Myth of Normal, written with his son, Daniel MatĂ©, he postulates that trauma–by which he means "wound," as in the original Greek–is woven into the fabric of Western society. It is so pervasive that it is the norm. "Take the politics of neoliberalism, [bestowed by] its patron saints of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan and continued under different governments of all sorts: under neoliberalism, you've had more social isolation, elimination of social programs, insecurity and loneliness," [said MatĂ©]. "And each of these factors contributes to illness. In the U.S. last year [nearly] twice as many people died of drug overdoses than Americans who died in the Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq wars put together–in one year. This is strictly a result of social and economic factors. Politics has a lot to do with traumatizing people. And the other way [politics spreads trauma], which is a bit more subtle, is that very often we elect traumatized people to be our leaders, who then implement traumatizing policies." Once people realize that they were traumatized, they see there's nothing wrong with them fundamentally. They're not flawed, they're not damaged goods, but something happened that made them behave in ways that were self-harming or harmful to others.

Note: The Wisdom of Trauma is a powerful film that travels alongside Dr. Gabor Maté in his quest to discover the connection between illness, addiction, trauma, and society. Deeply touching and captivating in its diverse portrayal of real human stories, the film also provides a new vision of a trauma-informed society that seeks to "understand the sources from which troubling behaviors and diseases spring in the wounded human soul." Anyone can watch this donation-optional film at the above link.


The Military Industrial Complex Scam
2023-12-30, LA Progressive
https://www.laprogressive.com/foreign-policy/military-industrial-complex-scam

In the past 20 years, every major US foreign policy objective has failed. The Taliban returned to power after 20 years of US occupation of Afghanistan. Post-Saddam Iraq became dependent on Iran. Syria's President Bashar al-Assad stayed in power despite a CIA effort to overthrow him. Libya fell into a protracted civil war after a US-led NATO mission overthrew Muammar Gaddafi. Ukraine was bludgeoned on the battlefield by Russia in 2023 after the US secretly scuttled a peace agreement between Russia and Ukraine in 2022. Despite these remarkable and costly debacles ... the same cast of characters has remained at the helm of US foreign policy for decades. American foreign policy is not at all about the interests of the American people. It is about the interests of the Washington insiders, as they chase campaign contributions and lucrative jobs. In short, US foreign policy has been hacked by big money. To understand the foreign-policy scam, think of today's federal government as a multi-division racket controlled by the highest bidders. The Wall Street division is run out of the Treasury. The Health Industry division is run out of the Department of Health and Human Services. The Big Oil and Coal division is run out of the Departments of Energy and Interior. And the Foreign Policy division is run out of the White House, Pentagon and CIA. Each division uses public power for private gain through insider dealing, greased by corporate campaign contributions and lobbying outlays.

Note: War profiteering is an old game. General Smedley Butler wrote War is a Racket in 1935. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on war and government corruption from reliable major media sources. Then explore the excellent, reliable resources provided in our Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center.


New Spin on a Revolving Door: Pentagon Officials Turned Venture Capitalists
2023-12-30, New York Times
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/30/us/politics/pentagon-venture-capitalists.html

The high-stakes world of Pentagon lobbying is being altered by the rise of defense technology startups. Retiring generals and departing top Pentagon officials once migrated regularly to the big established weapons makers like Lockheed Martin and Boeing. Now they are increasingly flocking to venture capital firms that have collectively pumped billions of dollars into Silicon Valley-style startups offering the Pentagon new war-fighting tools like autonomous killer drones, hypersonic jets and space surveillance equipment. The New York Times has identified at least 50 former Pentagon and national security officials, most of whom left the federal government in the last five years, who are now working in defense-related venture capital or private equity as executives or advisers. In many cases, The Times confirmed that they continued to interact regularly with Pentagon officials or members of Congress to push for policy changes or increases in military spending that could benefit firms they have invested in. Pentagon procurement officials confirmed that they had repeatedly met with former Defense Department officials who are now venture capitalists. They said recommendations pushed by the venture capitalists had played a role in changes they are making in the way they acquire technology. In the last four years, at least $125 billion of venture capital has flooded into startups that build defense technology ... compared with $43 billion in the prior four years.

Note: If you can't access the above article, here's an alternate link. Learn more about arms industry corruption in our comprehensive Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on military corruption from reliable major media sources.


Ukraine Needs a Ceasefire, Not Biden's $50 Billion Escalation of Failing War
2023-12-30, LA Progressive
https://www.laprogressive.com/war-and-peace/ukraine-needs-a-ceasefire

The latest White House spending package includes $50 billion in additional military funding, which is more than Ukraine has received from the United States since the war began in early 2022. There's a better way. The United States can take an active role in organizing a ceasefire, to be followed by negotiations toward a permanent settlement. Unfortunately, so far Biden has made little effort to end the slaughter. In fact, there is serious evidence that Great Britain and the US played a decisive role in blocking a 2022 peace deal between Ukraine and Russia. The State Department reports that the United States has given Ukraine $44.2 billion in military aid since Russia invaded at the end of February, 2022. At the current pace of spending, the additional military aid requested by the White House would keep the Ukraine war going until sometime in mid-2026 – that is, unless there is a plan to intensify the attacks, which would increase the risk of a nuclear conflict. The US has reportedly spent a total of $111 billion on Ukraine since Russia's invasion. If the supplemental spending package is approved ... military-only spending for Ukraine will be greater than the annual budget of the National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Disease Control, and the Food and Drug Administration – combined. The US has already spent ten times as much on Ukraine as we spend on the Centers for Disease Control. That does not mean Ukraine doesn't deserve to be defended, but it does raise serious questions about the direction of the war and our government's priorities.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on war and government corruption from reliable major media sources. Then explore the excellent, reliable resources provided in our Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center.


CIA accused of hiding records that analysts took ‘monetary incentives' to bury COVID lab leak finding
2023-12-26, New York Post
https://nypost.com/2023/12/26/news/cia-accused-of-hiding-payments-to-bury-cov...

An offshoot of the conservative Heritage Foundation is suing the Central Intelligence Agency, accusing it of withholding records detailing payoffs to analysts to bury findings that a lab leak was the most likely explanation for the COVID-19 pandemic. The think tank's Oversight Project filed a federal lawsuit against the CIA Dec. 22, alleging the agency did not comply with its Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request about analysts who allegedly "received monetary incentives to change their position on the origins of the virus," according to a copy of the complaint. A senior-level CIA agent told House Republican committee chairmen in September that the agency offered payments to six analysts tasked with determining the origins of SARS-CoV-2 if they said that the virus jumped from animals to humans. The Sept. 12 letter from Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic Chairman Brad Wenstrup (R-Ohio) and Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence Chairman Mike Turner (R-Ohio) to CIA Director William Burns also demanded documentation ... about the payments. "According to the whistleblower, at the end of its review, six of the seven members of the Team believed the intelligence and science were sufficient to make a low confidence assessment that COVID-19 originated from a laboratory in Wuhan, China," the House panel chairmen wrote. In February, the FBI became the first US intelligence agency to conclude the coronavirus pandemic most likely began with a lab leak.

Note: Former chief White House medical adviser Anthony Fauci will testify before Congress on COVID origins in early 2024. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on COVID and intelligence agency corruption from reliable major media sources. Then explore the excellent, reliable resources provided in our COVID Information Center.


Meet the Companies Profiting From Israel's War on Gaza
2023-12-21, ScheerPost
https://scheerpost.com/2023/12/21/meet-the-companies-profiting-from-israels-w...

As of Wednesday, a U.S.-based Quaker group's online database listed over two dozen companies profiting from the bloodshed in the Gaza Strip, where Israeli forces have spent the last 10 weeks waging what experts call a "genocidal" war that sent defense stocks soaring. Backed by $3.8 billion in annual military aid from the United States, Israel declared war on October 7 in retaliation for a Hamas-led attack that killed over 1,100 people. Since then, Israeli forces have killed over 20,000 Palestinians in Gaza. "The scale of destruction and war crimes in Gaza would not be possible without massive weapon transfers from the U.S.," said Noam Perry of the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC). Boeing, the world's fifth-largest weapon manufacturer, makes F-15 fighter jets and Apache AH-64 attack helicopters used by the Israeli forces, as well as "multiple types of unguided small diameter bombs (SDBs) and Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM) kits" that have been used "extensively" during the war. Caterpillar's armored D9 bulldozers ... have been crucial in the Israeli military's ground invasion. Other companies on the list include weapons giants such as General Dynamics, General Electric, L3Harris Technologies, Leonardo, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and RTX–formerly Raytheon–as well as vehicle companies AM General, Ford, Oshkosh, Toyota, and drone manufacturers AeroVironment, Skydio, and XTEND.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on war and corporate corruption from reliable major media sources. Then explore the excellent, reliable resources provided in our Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center.


Who is 'Fat Leonard' and how did he end up as part of the Venezuelan prisoner swap?
2023-12-20, NPR
https://www.npr.org/2023/12/20/1220816420/who-is-fat-leonard-and-how-did-he-e...

The notorious and once portly defense contractor known as "Fat Leonard," who scammed the U.S. Navy out of millions of dollars for more than a decade, is being extradited to the U.S. as part of a prisoner swap deal with Venezuela, the White House announced. Leonard Glenn Francis, now 59, escaped from house arrest in San Diego in September 2022 after cutting off an ankle tracking bracelet shortly before a sentencing trial for his role behind one of the largest corruption scandals in the country's military history that ensnared more than two dozen U.S. Navy officials. But his life on the run was short lived. Francis was captured weeks later by authorities in Venezuela where he has remained in custody until now. In 2015 Francis pleaded guilty to plying more than 30 officials, including more than two dozen naval officers, with a slew of bribes to gain lucrative contracts for his Singapore-based company Glenn Defense Marine Asia Ltd. According to the Department of Justice, officers were lavished with a criminal potpourri of cash, prostitutes, parties and luxury travel and items such as "Cuban cigars, Kobe beef and Spanish suckling pig." Francis also admitted to overcharging the Pentagon for made up services. In all, the Department of Justice said he bilked the Navy out of $35 million, leading officials to call it "one of the most brazen bribery conspiracies in the U.S. Navy's history." In exchange, officers handed over classified and other sensitive material to Francis' company.

Note: This massive conspiracy at one point redirected an aircraft carrier. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on military corruption from reliable major media sources.


Boom, bang! Tales from a cell below the ‘crazy unit' of a US prison
2023-12-20, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/dec/20/inside-new-jersey-state-priso...

I was moved on to unit 1EE on the south compound inside New Jersey State Prison a year ago. On the floor just above me is 2EE, which is known as "the crazy unit". This unit is where incarcerated men throughout the state are sent when they experience mental health difficulties. Men are stripped down and given "turtle suits", thin vests that barely keep them covered. There are no pillows, blankets or sheets. In the United States, roughly 40% of people in state prisons and local jails have a history of mental illness, but less than half of those folks receive treatment. Individuals with signs of mental health issues can face additional risks and discipline while inside, including prison misconduct charges, longer solitary confinement periods and barriers to accessing medication. As a juvenile, a kid might try to get out of being locked up by saying they were going to kill themselves, so they could get sent to a psych unit where they might be treated better. They don't realize that it will put them on the special needs list forever. As an adult, at least in New Jersey State Prison, a person can get labeled special needs for complaining that they can't sleep. A special needs designation means that you'll be at the mercy of the mental health department. It can land you in a bad spot. The side-effects of medication they might give you could be crippling. Some guys get hooked on the drugs and never wake up again.

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


Big tech and geopolitics are reshaping the internet's plumbing
2023-12-20, The Economist
https://www.economist.com/business/2023/12/20/big-tech-and-geopolitics-are-re...

Submarine cables used to be seen as the internet's dull plumbing. Now giants of the data economy, such as Amazon, Google, Meta and Microsoft, are asserting more control over the flow of data, even as tensions between China and America risk splintering the world's digital infrastructure. The result is to turn undersea cables into prized economic and strategic assets. Subsea data pipes carry almost 99% of intercontinental internet traffic. By 2010 the rise in data traffic led internet and cloud-computing giants–Amazon, Google, Meta and Microsoft–to start leasing capacity on these lines. The data-cable business is ... being entangled in the tech contest between America and China. Take the Pacific Light Cable Network (PLCN). The 13,000km data pipeline was announced in 2016, with the backing of Google and Meta. It aimed to link the west coast of America with Hong Kong. By 2020 it had reached the Philippines and Taiwan. But last year America's government denied approval for the final leg to Hong Kong, worried that this would give Chinese authorities easy access to Americans' data. Hundreds of kilometres of cable that would link Hong Kong to the network are languishing unused on the ocean floor. China is responding by charting its own course. PEACE, a 21,500km undersea cable linking Kenya to France via Pakistan, was built entirely by Chinese firms as part of China's "digital silk road", a scheme to increase its global influence.

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


American scientists misled Pentagon on research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology
2023-12-18, US Right to Know
https://usrtk.org/covid-19-origins/american-scientists-misled-pentagon-on-wuh...

American researchers concealed their intention to conduct high-risk coronavirus research in Wuhan under lax safety standards from the Pentagon the year before the COVID-19 pandemic, according to documents obtained by U.S. Right to Know. A 2018 grant proposal called Project DEFUSE, coauthored by the Wuhan Institute of Virology and American scientists, has stoked concern that the pandemic resulted from a lab accident. It proposed engineering high-risk coronaviruses of the same species as SARS and SARS-CoV-2. The proposal involved synthesizing spike proteins with furin cleavage sites – the same feature that supercharged SARS-CoV-2 into the most infectious pandemic pathogen in a century. These experiments were proposed to occur in part in Wuhan with fewer safety precautions than required in the U.S. – apparently to save on costs. American scientists at the center of the "lab leak theory" controversy appear to have concealed this from their desired funder – the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency – in order to evade any national security concerns about doing high-level biosecurity work in China. The documents call into question the credibility of these scientists' assurances that the pandemic could not have sprung out of their collaboration ... with the lab in Wuhan. Conducting coronavirus engineering and testing work in Wuhan entailed greater biosafety risks, the American researchers privately acknowledged.

Note: Anthony Fauci lied to Congress about funding this risky research. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on COVID from reliable major media sources. Then explore the excellent, reliable resources provided in our COVID Information Center.


Fauci's ‘Perjury of Striking Audacity': Excerpt From RFK Jr.'s New Book, ‘The Wuhan Cover-Up'
2023-12-18, The Defender
https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/anthony-fauci-perjury-excerpt-rfk...

During the entirety of the ongoing two-and-a-half-year public health emergency, while he was acting as the president's top COVID-19 advisor, Dr. Fauci made no effort to genuinely investigate COVID-19's origins. On May 11, 2021, Senator Rand Paul finally asked: "Dr. Fauci, do you still support NIH funding of the lab in Wuhan?" Dr. Fauci angrily denounced the question: "Senator Paul, with all due respect, you are entirely, entirely, and completely incorrect. That the NIH has not ever and does not now fund gain-of-function research in the Wuhan Institute of Virology." Dr. Fauci was then under oath, so his blanket denial was a perjury of striking audacity: [The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases'] decade-long funding of gain-of-function experiments at the Wuhan lab had left a public record abundantly and unambiguously documented on PubMed, the official NIH archives of the world's peer-reviewed published research. The authors of myriad gain-of-function studies openly thank NIAID and NIH for funding their research at the Wuhan lab. The ease of finding these incontrovertible proofs of his deception makes Dr. Fauci's lie seem reckless. But the savvy NIAID chief evidently calculated that the issue was now so politicized and the media so committed to fortifying official government orthodoxies that truth was irrelevant. The nation's leading journalistic outlets abetted Dr. Fauci's public deception by shielding him from difficult questions.

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