Government Corruption News Articles

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Note: Explore our full index to revealing excerpts of key major media news articles on dozens of engaging topics. And read excerpts from 20 of the most revealing news articles ever published.

Twenty-three years to the day after he went to work with vinyl chloride and other toxic chemicals at a plant in Lake Charles, Louisiana, Dan Ross died of a rare brain cancer. He was 46 years old, convinced that his job had killed him. His wife, Elaine, sued her husband's former employer and, over the next decade, the process of legal discovery led deeper and deeper into the inner chambers of the chemical industry and its Washington trade association. Hundreds of thousands of pages of documents were unearthed. In TRADE SECRETS: A MOYERS REPORT, journalist Bill Moyers and producer Sherry Jones investigated the Ross archive – secrets the chemical industry never intended the public to see – and discovered a shocking story. The confidential papers reveal the industry's early knowledge of vinyl chloride's dangerous effects, as well as the industry's long silence on the subject. The program also reports a much larger story. Buried in the thousands of pages of documents – minutes from board meetings, reports from industry scientists, internal memoranda – is a never-before-told account of a campaign to limit the regulation of toxic chemicals and any liability for their effects, at the same that the companies work to withhold vital information about risks from workers, the government – and the public. Over the last five decades, more than 75,000 chemicals have been produced, turned into consumer products or released into the environment. Today, every man, woman and child has synthetic chemicals in their bodies. No child is born free of them. Are they safe? Does anyone know?

Note: This article also mentions that even though Moyers never lived near a chemical plant, tests showed that his body contained a chemical soup of 84 industrial chemicals, including 31 different types of PCBs, 13 different dioxins, and pesticides such as DDT. Why are these chemicals so poorly studied and the dangerous effects hidden from us? For lots more from reliable sources on corporate corruption, click here.

A.B. "Buzzy" Krongard, a ... former investment banker ... was named yesterday executive director of the CIA, bringing a fast-paced management style to the agency's No. 3 job. Central Intelligence Agency Director George J. Tenet announced the appointment, saying he treasures Krongard's "wise counsel and 'no-nonsense' business-like views." Krongard, 64, former head of Alex. Brown & Co., an investment bank based in Baltimore, joined the agency three years ago as a counselor to Tenet. He switched careers shortly after helping engineer the $2.5 billion merger of Alex. Brown and Bankers Trust New York Corp., gaining $71 million in Bankers Trust stock. Few of his former colleagues were surprised by his decision to trade a $4 million salary and stock options for the far less remunerative job of Tenet's consigliere. A graduate of Princeton and the University of Maryland Law School, Krongard has a fondness for extreme military-style activities. Even as a banking executive, he trained with police SWAT teams for recreation and worked out with a kung fu master. He maintained a shooting range on the park-like grounds of his home on the northern edge of Baltimore. In an interview yesterday, Krongard described his past duties as those of a "minister without portfolio" whom senior managers felt comfortable talking to about "sticky subjects." But Krongard exhibited the requisite secretiveness when asked to explain his interest in intelligence and how he came to land a job in Tenet's inner circle. If you go back to the CIA's origins during World War II in the Office of Strategic Services, he explained, "the whole OSS was really nothing but Wall Street bankers and lawyers."

Note: Buzzy Krongard was the executive director of the CIA on 9/11. His past ties to the investment firm which placed most of the extraordinarily high volume of "put options" on United and American Airlines stocks the week before the attacks is one of many strange "coincidences" unexplained by the official story of what happened on that horrific day. For more on this, click here. To read the entire article free of charge, click here.

So this is how it works. A tiny, shoe-string central office in Holland decides each year which country will host the next meeting. Each country has two steering committee members. They call up Bilderberg-friendly global corporations, such as Xerox or Heinz or Fiat or Barclays or Nokia, which donate the hundreds of thousands of pounds needed. They do not accept unsolicited donations from non-Bilderberg corporations. Nobody can buy their way into a Bilderberg meeting, although many corporations have tried. Then they decide who to invite - who seems to be a "Bilderberg person". The notion of a Bilderberg person hasn't changed since the earliest days, back in 1954. The guests are expressly asked not to give interviews to journalists. There are two morning sessions and two afternoon sessions. While furiously denying that they secretly ruled the world, my Bilderberg interviewees did admit to me that international affairs had, from time to time, been influenced by these sessions. This is how Denis Healey described a Bilderberg person to me: "To say we were striving for a one-world government is exaggerated, but not wholly unfair. Bilderberg is a way of bringing together politicians, industrialists, financiers and journalists. Politics should involve people who aren't politicians."

Note: For lots more on the highly secretive Bilderberg meeting from two later BBC News article, click here. For many other revealing articles from major media reports on secret societies and secret meetings of the most rich and powerful people in our world, click here.

They have received little attention in the United States, but a set of WikiLeaks disclosures of confidential documents has caused an uproar in Europe by showing that U.S. officials pressured Germany and Spain to derail criminal investigations of Americans. More than 2,500 State Department cables ... include accounts of three cases that shed new light on U.S. responses to allegations of wrongdoing: -- The case of Khaled el-Masri, a German citizen seized in Macedonia in 2003 by officers who mistook him for an al Qaeda agent with a similar name. He said they turned him over to U.S. authorities, who flew him in shackles, a blindfold and a diaper to a prison in Afghanistan, where they beat him, injected him with drugs and interrogated him. The CIA analyst who advocated el-Masri's abduction and argued against releasing him even after colleagues reported the mistaken identity has been promoted to run the agency's al Qaeda unit and regularly briefs CIA Director Leon Panetta. -- The case of four Spanish residents who said they were tortured by U.S. interrogators at Guantanamo Bay before being released without charges. -- The case of Jose Couso, a Spanish cameraman who was one of two journalists killed in April 2003 by a U.S. artillery shell at a hotel in Baghdad. A U.S. military investigation concluded that troops were responding to reports of rocket attacks from the building, but journalists on the scene have said the hotel was a well-known media headquarters and was not the source of any hostile fire. A May 2007 WikiLeaks cable quoted then-U.S. Ambassador Eduardo Aguirre as saying that "behind the scenes we have fought tooth and nail to make the charges disappear." The Obama administration has refused to discuss the content of the State Department documents or of previous WikiLeaks disclosures about Iraq and Afghanistan.

Note: As mentioned in the full article, all three of these cases were dismissed or derailed due to intense pressure by the US on the legal systems of the countries involved. For many other reliable reports of manipulation around the war on terrorism, click here.

Welcome to the macabre world of California's Three Strikes Law, where 25 to life for the theft of a disposable camera is not an aberration. The Department of Corrections projects that by 2002, 1 out of every 4 California prisoners will be a "second or third striker." CDC statistics show that as of March 31 [1998], there were 4,076 prisoners serving third-strike sentences, but fewer than half were imprisoned for convictions for "crimes against persons." According to the Legislative Analyst's Office, almost half of the "third strike" offenses were nonviolent or nonserious felonies, and the most common "second strikes" were drug possession, petty theft and burglary. Prosecutors use the law viciously, frequently against petty, nonviolent offenders. It does not matter that the conviction was from another state, or even another country. Perhaps most significantly, the third strike can be any felony; it does not need to be a "violent" or "serious" one. Thus, offenses such as petty theft can bring a life sentence. While many states have three strikes, only California's is so uncompromising. Moreover, it is not working. According to the Justice Policy Institute, between 1994 and 1995, violent crime in states without three strikes fell three times faster than in states with such laws. RAND, a respected policy analysis institution, found that a graduation incentive program is five times more effective at reducing crime than three strikes.

Note: Remember that the prison-industrial complex is a huge money-making machine for certain connected individuals and corporations. For key reports on government corruption from reliable sources, click here.

In her tidy trailer, the widow dabs at her eyes. She loved [Walter S. Kasza] for more than four decades ... and Stella Kasza wants you to know that, damn it, he existed. He died in April 1995, a wraith, 73 years old. Bill Clinton did not kill Wally Kasza, but he has been forced to deal with his widow. The administration maintains an abiding interest in the lawsuit Stella Kasza has brought against the federal government. Under a "presidential determination" that he must renew annually, Clinton has decreed that potential evidence related to Kasza's death is classified, top-secret, a matter of national security. Why should Wally Kasza matter? He was a sheet-metal worker. For seven years he put up buildings and installed cooling systems for a defense contractor at an Air Force base. Stella Kasza and the rest of America know [that base] as Area 51. What's being covered up there, according to lawsuits filed by Kasza's widow, another worker's widow and five former Area 51 employees, are brazen environmental crimes. For several years, the workers say, they labored in thick, choking clouds of poisonous smoke as hazardous wastes were burned in huge open trenches on the base. Another sheet-metal worker at Area 51, Robert Frost, died at age 57. Biopsies showed that his tissues were filled with industrial toxins rarely seen in humans. What is the government's response to these stories? Nothing. The policy is that nothing illegal occurred at Area 51 because, officially, nothing occurs at Area 51.

Note: After decades of total denial, the US government finally admitted in 2013 that Area 51 exists. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing military corruption news articles from reliable major media sources.

An internal Justice Department investigation into the F.B.I. crime laboratory has uncovered numerous complaints by laboratory employees about the handling of forensic evidence in one of the Government's most important criminal cases, against two men charged with the bombing of the Oklahoma City Federal Building in April 1995. The criticism of the F.B.I.'s conduct emerged in a series of interviews conducted by investigators from the inspector general's office. Laboratory examiners in Oklahoma shipped critical items to the laboratory, like the faded black jeans worn by Timothy J. McVeigh ... in a brown paper sack instead of a sealed plastic evidence bags, one employee said. At one point, visitors to the laboratory placed travel cases that were potentially contaminated with residue of the explosion in an area where bomb debris had been stored awaiting testing, another employee said. As a result, none of the material could be tested. Mr. Williams, the chief laboratory examiner in Oklahoma City, was transferred from his job and was withdrawn as a prosecution witness in Oklahoma City. Mr. Williams had been responsible for conclusions about several major issues in the case, like the size of the bomb that tore the front off the Federal Building. His opinion that the bomb contained 4,000 pounds of ammonium nitrate was an estimate based not on scientific studies but in part on searches of the defendants' houses. Two laboratory workers said Mr. Williams had changed their dictated reports, in violation of F.B.I. policy.

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

Why has the United States decided to crack down on suspected Japanese war criminals 50 years after granting them immunity from prosecution? Japanese scratched their heads last week at the unexpected announcement that the U.S. Justice Department had included former members of an infamous bacterial warfare research unit on a "watch list" of 16 suspected Japanese World War II war criminals prohibited from entering the United States. The United States has been aware of the identities of the Unit 731 leaders and of their gruesome experiments on human subjects since the end of the war. Details of Unit 731 atrocities have appeared in the Western and Japanese media for more than a decade. In secret laboratories in occupied China, Unit 731 researchers tested poison gas and biological weapons on prisoners; froze and defrosted victims' limbs to study frostbite; and vivisected humans without anesthetic. After the war, the United States concluded that the results of these experiments were "of the highest intelligence value." Fearful that those results would fall into Soviet hands, the U.S. occupation authorities gave the head of Japan's bacterial warfare program, Dr. Shiro Ishii, and his colleagues immunity from prosecution ... in exchange for their secret data. Many of Ishii's colleagues went on to distinguished careers in postwar Japan, holding posts in the National Institute of Health, serving as medical school deans and laboratory heads.

Note: The military has repeatedly condoned horrendous research on live subjects. For a revealing list of highly unethical experimentation on human over the past 75 years, click here. For a concise summary of the government's secret quest to control the mind and human behavior no matter what the cost, click here.

In 2025, US aerospace forces can “own the weather” by capitalizing on emerging technologies and focusing development of those technologies to war-fighting applications. Such a capability offers the war fighter tools to shape the battlespace in ways never before possible. Weather-modification is a force multiplier with tremendous power that could be exploited across the full spectrum of war-fighting environments. From enhancing friendly operations or disrupting those of the enemy via small-scale tailoring of natural weather patterns complete dominance of global communications and counter-space control, weather-modification offers war fighter a wide-range of possible options to defeat or coerce an adversary. But, while offensive weather modification efforts would certainly be undertaken by US forces with great caution and trepidation, it is clear that we cannot afford to allow an adversary to obtain an exclusive weather-modification capability.

Note: The above quote is taken from pages 6 and 35, the executive summary and conclusion of the above US Air Force study. For a highly revealing article suggesting elements within government have much more control over the weather than is thought, click here.

The existence of the influenza vaccine ... may give us a sense of false security when it comes to the possibility of a pandemic outbreak of influenza. In fact, the flu vaccine must be reformulated each year to keep pace with the newest variants of this fast-mutating virus. The recipe for making the flu vaccine is simple. Take the current year's variant of the influenza virus, throw it into a stew with a strain of virus that leads to rapid proliferation. Incorporate the fast-growing strain into its own genes and start replicating it. From there, it's an easy matter to take those plentiful viruses and attenuate them for a flu vaccine. But the scientists who must determine what virus will cause the next year's illness run a high chance of being wrong. Some observers have put the odds of success at no better than 50-50. Even when they are right, the vaccine lasts only as long as that year's strain. Experts thought they saw big-league trouble coming in February 1976, when a few cases of severe swine flu broke out among young military recruits in Fort Dix, N.J. One of them, Pvt. David Lewis, 19, died. Lewis and four others were shown to be infected with the same H1N1 influenza virus as was responsible for the 1918 pandemic. But the swine-flu pandemic never materialized. In retrospect, some critics now say 40 million Americans were vaccinated for nothing. In fact, the only real illness to result from the swine flu adventure was caused by the vaccine: about one thousand people developed Guillain-Barre syndrome, a serious paralytic disease that could be traced directly to an immunological response to the inoculation.

Note: This article also discusses how new, intensified farming techniques for chickens, pigs, and ducks are the prime breeding ground for viruses which spread around the world. A powerful CBS 60 Minutes clip on the 1976 swine flu scare is available here. The intrepid 60 Minutes team shows how greed and blatant corruption led to the death of hundreds and paralysis of thousands as a direct result of the vaccine developed that year, while only one person died from the flu. For lots more, click here.

A clandestine operation code-named Gladio [was] created decades ago to arm and train resistance fighters in case the Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact allies invaded. There have been disclosures of similar organizations in virtually all Western European countries. Gladio ... was originally an Italian creation [that] evolved into a branch of an extensive network, operated within NATO and abetted by a 1956 agreement between the United States and Italian secret services. 622 Italians belonged to the operation - civilians who were trained by intelligence operatives. Germany, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Greece and Luxembourg have all acknowledged that they maintained Gladio-style networks to prepare guerrilla fighters to leap into action. Similar programs have also existed in Britain, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Austria, Turkey and Denmark, and even in neutral countries like Switzerland and Sweden. These would-be fighters had stockpiles of weapons and explosives. In [Italy], secret arms deposits were dismantled as far back as 1972 but ... the secret services could not find 12 of them. Their disappearance has fueled speculation here that the weapons ended up in terrorist hands. Some of the underground "gladiators," as they have been dubbed, had close links to neo-Fascist groups and to intelligence organizations. New "gladiators" are still recruited. The major unsolved acts of terrorism that rocked Italy in the 1970's are all presumed to be the work of people on the far right. Left-wing terrorists like the moribund Red Brigades somehow were caught and imprisoned.

Note: Following WWII, the US government actively recruited and protected former nazis. For an abundance of excellent, reliable information on Operation Gladio and its ongoing operations, read the excellent chapter on this in Lifting the Veil. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles about corruption in government and throughout intelligence agencies.

The Supreme Court today gave the Central Intelligence Agency broad discretion to withhold the identities of its sources of intelligence information from public disclosure. The exemption applies regardless of whether the information is shown to have a bearing on national security and regardless of whether the source of the information is a newspaper or magazine in general circulation. The decision, written by Chief Justice Warren E. Burger, overturned a ruling by the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. That court, in ordering the release of the names of researchers who participated in a long-running C.I.A. study of the control of human behavior, had adopted a considerably narrower definition of the ''intelligence sources'' entitled to exemption. The C.I.A. project, code-named MKULTRA, was in existence from 1953 to 1966 and was designed to develop techniques for controlling human behavior. At least 185 private researchers and 80 institutions participated in the research. Officials of two organizations ... filed requests under the Freedom of Information Act in 1977 for the names of the researchers. Last fall Congress partly excluded from the Freedom of Information Act the C.I.A.'s ''operational files,'' which involve intelligence methods and sources.

Note: The official story is that all of the experiments to control human behavior failed. Yet if this is true, why did they spend so much money and so many years on it? And why is it necessary to keep secret who the researchers were? For reliable, verifiable information suggesting not only that the experiments were quite successful, but that they may be ongoing to this day, click here.

The United States said today that Soviet authorities in recent months had sharply reduced the level of microwave radiation beamed at the American Embassy in Moscow. But in its first detailed public account of the situation the State Department nonetheless rebuked the Russians for continuing the radiation even at the current insignificant level. It said this showed “a lack of concern for living and working conditions of our people in Moscow.” Robert L. Funseth, the department spokesman ... refused to comment on why the Soviet Union was beaming the rays, a practice that officials have said began about 16 years ago. Soviet officials have justified the beams as necessary to curtail American electronic listening devices on the roof of upper floors of the embassy building. American officials have privately conceded that these devices exist to monitor Soviet radio and telephone transmissions. They have also said that the monitoring effort was being impaired by the jamming waves. What has irritated American officials was that the Soviet Embassy [in] Washington also carries out similar interceptions ... has not been subject to the countermeasures because of concern for Americans working in the area. The beaming of radiation against the embassy in Moscow was known only to a few American officials until last February when Ambassador Walter J. Stoessel Jr. briefed his staff on the situation ... because State Department medical officers feared that the radiation might pose a health hazard.

Note: Our investigations have indicated that there is a hidden war going on using microwaves which can damage health. The microwaves can target places as well as individuals. Learn more about this hidden war in this excellent, well documented essay. For more, see excerpts from major media news articles on nonlethal weapons and the dangers of microwave cell phone technology.

A U.S. senator is pressing the FBI for more information after a whistleblower alleged that an internal review found 665 FBI personnel have resigned or retired to avoid accountability in misconduct probes over the past two decades. The whistleblower told the office of Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley ... that the Justice Department launched the review of the FBI's disciplinary database in 2020 following an Associated Press investigation into sexual misconduct allegations involving at least six senior FBI officials. The follow-up review found 665 FBI employees, including 45 senior-level officials, resigned or retired between 2004 and 2020 following a misconduct probe but before a final disciplinary letter could be issued, according to a letter this week from Grassley to FBI Director Christopher Wray and Attorney General Merrick Garland. It was not clear how many of those cases involved sexual misconduct. Grassley's office, which declined to make the whistleblower or underlying documents available to protect the person's identify, said that was the kind of information it was still seeking but estimated the number could be in the "hundreds." The AP investigation in December 2020 identified at least six sexual misconduct allegations involving senior FBI officials over the prior five years ranging from unwanted touching and advances to coercion. It found that several senior FBI officials have avoided discipline – quietly transferring or retiring with full benefits – even after claims of sexual misconduct against them were substantiated.

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

We are keeping many people in prison even though they are no danger to the public, a jaw-dropping new statistic shows. That serves as proof that it's time to rethink our incarceration policies for those with a low risk of reoffending. To protect those most vulnerable to covid-19 during the pandemic, the Cares Act allowed the Justice Department to order the release of people in federal prisons and place them on home confinement. More than 11,000 people were eventually released. Of those, the Bureau of Prisons (BOP) reported that only 17 of them committed new crimes. That's not a typo. Seventeen. That's a 0.15 percent recidivism rate in a country where it's normal for 30 to 65 percent of people coming home from prison to reoffend within three years of release. Of those 17 people, most new offenses were for possessing or selling drugs or other minor offenses. Of the 17 new crimes, only one was violent (an aggravated assault), and none were sex offenses. This extremely low recidivism rate shows there are many, many people in prison we can safely release to the community. These 11,000 releases were not random. People in low- and minimum-security prisons or at high risk of complications from covid were prioritized for consideration for release. The federal Cares Act home confinement program should inspire similar programs across the country. Virtually all states have programs available to release elderly or very sick people from prison, but they are hardly used and should be expanded.

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

The more details that emerge about how police responded to the massacre in an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, on Tuesday, the clearer it is that the already well-funded, heavily armed and amply trained law enforcement officers on the scene failed to save the lives of 19 children and two of their teachers. Salvador Ramos murdered 21 people. Despite earlier, misleading claims from law enforcement officials, it appears that no police officers engaged with the shooter before he entered the school. Instead of rushing in to protect the children and staff when reports of a gunman approaching the school were made at 11:30 a.m., police instead waited outside and aggressively confronted parents who were begging them to enter. The parents were threatened with arrest – one cop brandished a Taser – as they attempted to access the school to save their kids themselves. The police failed at protecting the schoolchildren, yes, but we should not be under the illusion that this is an example of the cops failing at their jobs. As far we can tell from reports, police at the scene acted as they usually do, in accordance with standard policing practice: Rather than risk a hail of gunfire to stop the killer, they kept themselves safe. It is disgusting, not shocking, that police officers would sooner harass and handcuff parents – parents begging them to save their children from a massacre – than they would run in and put themselves in the line of fire.

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

Suffering from U.S. and EU sanctions, Russia made a surprise move–its central bank fixed the price of 5,000 rubles to a gram of gold. Few Western investors or executives noticed. Then, Russia ... announced that it would require payment for oil, natural gas and other of its significant exports in rubles. "What the Russians did was a genius," explains Jack Bouroudjian, former president of Commerce Bank in Chicago. "It forces people to go to the Russian central bank and pay gold to get rubles to make the transactions." The ruble had been trading in the range of 70 to 80 for a U.S. dollar. After the sanctions, it plummeted to 120. "Now the ruble basically recovered, trading 80 rubles to the dollar. And it's because of the way they pegged the ruble to gold." U.S. companies that have either international suppliers or customers could be jolted by Russia's golden move. Overseas business partners may need to barter gold for rubles to pay for inputs, like energy, minerals or fertilizers, and therefore demand that their U.S. counterparts pay in rubles or bullion. Additionally, American firms may need to acquire a stack of rubles to pay for their own inputs for foreign-based factories, warehouses or raw materials. Russia isn't alone in its desire. "China has been explicit" in its desire to displace the dollar and make the yuan more central. China is taking preliminary measures to defend their state-owned assets against financial sanctions similar to those the U.S. launched against Russia.

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

Jeff Smith, a partner with the influential consulting firm McKinsey & Company, accepted a highly sensitive assignment in December 2017. The opioid manufacturer Purdue Pharma ... sought out Dr. Smith. His team reviewed business plans and evaluated new drugs that Purdue hoped would help move the company beyond the turmoil associated with OxyContin, its addictive painkiller that medical experts say helped to spark the opioid epidemic. But the corporate reorganization was not Dr. Smith's only assignment. He was also helping the Food and Drug Administration overhaul its office that approves new drugs – the same office that would determine the regulatory fate of Purdue's new line of proposed products. A review ... of internal McKinsey documents found that the firm repeatedly allowed employees who served pharmaceutical companies, including opioid makers, to also consult for the F.D.A., the drug industry's primary government regulator. And, the documents show, McKinsey touted that inside access in pitches to private clients. In an email in 2014 to Purdue's chief executive, a McKinsey consultant highlighted the firm's work for the F.D.A. and stressed "who we know and what we know." McKinsey also allowed employees advising Purdue to help shape materials that were intended for government officials and agencies, including a memo in 2018 prepared for Alex M. Azar II. References to the severity of the opioid crisis in a draft version of the memo ... were cut before it was sent to Mr. Azar.

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

The military, technological, security and political classes in this country appear united in their desire to make robot dogs part of our future, and we should all be worried. On 1 February ... the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) issued a press release titled "Robot Dogs Take Another Step Towards Deployment at the Border". DHS dressed up their statement with the kind of adorable language made to warm the hearts of dog lovers everywhere. A picture of the "four-legged ground drone" accompanied the release. These particular robot dogs are made by Ghost Robotics, which claims that its 100lb machine was "bred" to scale "all types of natural terrain including sand, rocks and hills, as well as human-built environments, like stairs". Each robot dog is outfitted with a bevy of sensors and able to transmit real-time video and information feeds. A testing and evaluation program is under way in El Paso, Texas. As the Electronic Frontier Foundation notes, "people who live along the border are some of the most heavily surveilled people in the United States. A massive amalgamation of federal, state and local law enforcement and national security agencies are flying drones, putting up cameras and just generally attempting to negate civil liberties – capturing the general goings-on of people who live and work in proximity to the border." Then there's the question of lethal force. These specific ground drones may not be armed, but Ghost Robotics is already infamous for the combination of robot dog and robot rifle.

Note: Singapore used robot dogs to enforce pandemic distancing measures. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and the disappearance from reliable major media sources.

In criminal trials, judges routinely rule that certain evidence or testimony does not get presented to the jury. By and large, these rulings to exclude evidence benefit the defendant. In ... cases against animal rights activists, who face hefty charges for removing ailing animals from farms, the typical logic behind keeping evidence from a jury is flipped on its head. The prosecutors, rather than defendants, have sought ... to suppress all mention during trial of animal cruelty. Next month, a Utah judge will hear pretrial motions on the exclusion of evidence in a case against two members of the animal liberation group Direct Action Everywhere. The activists face charges of burglary and theft for removing two suffering piglets from a hog farm in 2017, for which they could be sentenced to more than a decade in prison. The Utah attorney general is seeking to exclude all evidence and testimony relating to the torturous treatment of animals. The activists filmed themselves entering the pork facility; they turned the camera onto the pigs – mother pigs with bloody nipples, pigs with huge open sores, dead and dying piglets on the floor – and filmed themselves removing the piglets. The prosecution argues that ... the activists' commentary on the grim factory conditions and any mention of the company's mistreatment of its animals would be unfairly prejudicial. That a prosecutor would move to preclude real-time footage of the alleged crime speaks to a frantic desire to foreclose any reckoning with the case's crucial context.

Note: Read more about how video evidence of animal cruelty is suppressed to protect factory farms. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on food system corruption from reliable major media sources.

Important Note: Explore our full index to revealing excerpts of key 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.