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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.


Guinea Pig Kids
2004-11-19, BBC News
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/this_world/4035345.stm

During a nine month investigation, the BBC has uncovered the disturbing truth about the way authorities in New York City are conducting the fight against Aids. HIV positive children - some only a few months old - are enrolled in toxic experiments without the consent of guardians or relatives. In some cases where parents have refused to give children their medication, they have been placed in care. The city's Administration of Children's Services (ACS) does not even require a court order to place HIV kids with foster parents or in children's homes, where they can continue to give them experimental drugs. In 2002, the Incarnation Children's Center - a children's home in Harlem - was at the hub of controversy over secretive drugs trials. [Reporter Jamie Doran] speaks to a boy who spent most of his life at Incaranation. Medical records, obtained by the This World team, prove the boy had been enrolled in these trials. "I did not want to take my medication," said the boy, "but if you want to get out of there, you have to do what they say." He also conveys a horrifying account of what happened to the children at Incarnation who refused to obey the rules. "My friend Daniel didn't like to take his medicine and he got a tube in his stomach," he said. For months, the BBC tried to get information from the people responsible for the trials, but none would comment. The companies that supply drugs for the trials are among the world's largest, including Britain's own Glaxo SmithKline (GSK).

Note: Read a long list of examples of humans being treated as guinea pigs by corporate and governmental programs. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corruption in government and in Big Pharma from reliable major media sources.


Whistleblower wins ruling in UN Bosnia case
2002-08-09, New York Times
https://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/09/news/whistleblower-wins-ruling-in-un-bosni...

A British tribunal has ruled that a former member of the UN police force in Bosnia was unfairly fired after she reported to her superiors that colleagues in the police force used women and children as sex slaves in connivance with Balkan traffickers. It was at least the third scandal this year involving international aid workers and vulnerable local populations. The UN officially has not commented on the latest case, in which the whistleblower, Kathryn Bolkovac, an American citizen living in the Netherlands, charged she was fired in 2000 for sending e-mails to her employer, the U.S. recruitment agency DynCorp, stating that other UN police officers from several countries were linked with prostitution rings. Bolkovac was posted to Sarajevo in 1999 to investigate sex trafficking but soon began filing reports that UN officials and international aid workers themselves were involved in it. She said UN workers frequented bars where girls as young as 15 were forced to dance naked on tables and engage in sexual acts with clients. UN peacekeepers stood by while girls who refused to take part in sex acts were beaten and raped by pimps. One police officer paid $1,000 for a girl he kept captive in his apartment. Earlier this year, a joint report by Save the Children and the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees said that about 70 workers from aid organizations and UN agencies were suspected of extorting sexual favors from children and young women among refugees in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia in exchange for food.

Note: The case of this courageous whistleblower was turned into a movie. For lots more, see this article from the UK's Independent. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing sexual abuse scandal news articles from reliable major media sources.


In pardon of narco trafficker, Trump destroys his own case for war
2025-11-29, Quincy Center for Responsible Statecraft
https://responsiblestatecraft.org/trump-pardon-drug-trafficker/

The Trump administration has literally killed more than 80 suspected drug smugglers by blowing their small boats out of the water since September, but this week the president has reportedly decided to pardon one of the biggest cocaine traffickers of them all. The news that Trump is going to pardon Juan Orlando Hernández, the former president of Honduras who was sentenced to 45 years in U.S. prison just last year came as a shocker. The White House has said repeatedly that drug traffickers are narcoterrorists who are waging war on America, justifying their killing the boats every time. Yet Hernandez was convicted of conspiring to import 500,000 kilos of cocaine into the United States. While president, Hernández received millions of dollars from trafficking organizations in Honduras, Mexico, and from notorious drug lords like Joaquín Guzmán Loera, a.k.a. El Chapo, who was the former leader of the Sinaloa Cartel and is responsible for the murder of some 34,000 people. In return, according to prosecutors, President Hernández allowed vast amounts of cocaine to pass through Honduras on its way to the United States. Hernandez was tolerated if not preferred by previous U.S. administrations from Obama through the first Trump White House, because he and his National Party were business friendly, anti-communist, and supported by the neoconservatives now gunning against Maduro.

Note: Beginning with the backing of an illegal and brutal military coup that egregiously violated human rights in 2009, the US government–under both Democratic and Republican administrations–supported Hernández for years, funneling aid to his military and police forces while turning a blind eye to his deep involvement in drug trafficking, election fraud, and human rights abuses. For more, read our Substack investigation into the dark truths behind the US War on Drugs.


The Privacy Battle in Our Brains
2025-11-20, New York Times
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/20/world/privacy-battle-in-brains-technology-...

During the Cold War, the first implants showing that we could control animal minds sparked panic. The C.I.A. had its own clandestine experimental mind-control program. People warned of brain warfare. Those fears [are] back, along with a conversation about what it means to have freedom of thought at a time when technology is literally being implanted in our brains. Brain computer interface, or B.C.I. ... are very small devices that go right on the surface of your brain, where they can pick up neural activity. The data is transmitted via Bluetooth to a computer program, which decodes the information. In a sense, they're hooked up to an artificial intelligence. So the neural network inside your mind communicates with a neural network outside. And through that, we are able to reconstruct people's intentions. For people with degenerative diseases, or who are paralyzed, or who otherwise have lost important abilities, these implants have been totally revolutionary. These patients can move their hands, type and in some cases, speak again. Optogenetics, a technique for turning isolated neurons on and off, has been used to implant false memories in mice, raising the possibility that, in the distant future, something similar could be done in humans. Neuroprivacy is the idea that we should have to give consent to anyone who wants access to our innermost selves. But there's a question: Does neuroprivacy apply only to my unspoken thoughts? Or does it apply to the electrical activity in my brain?

Note: Read about the Pentagon's plans to use our brains as warfare, describing how the human body is war's next domain. Learn more about biotech dangers. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on Big Tech and microchip implants.


Documents reveal Gerald Ford's effort to block report on CIA assassination plots
2025-11-20, The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/nov/20/senate-report-cia-assassinati...

The White House under Gerald Ford tried to block a landmark Senate report that disclosed the CIA's role in assassination attempts against foreign leaders and ultimately led to a radical overhaul in how the agency was held to account, documents released to mark the 50th anniversary of the report's publication reveal. The documents, dating from 1975, were posted on Thursday by the National Security Archive, an independent research group, as it sought to highlight the report's significance amid conjecture that Donald Trump may have authorized the agency to assassinate Venezuela's president, Nicolás Maduro, amid a massive US military build-up against the country. Among the documents posted by the National Security Archive is a "secret/sensitive" options paper addressed to Dick Cheney, then chief of staff to Ford, that included a recommendation of outright opposition to publication of the report. Peter Kornbluh, senior analyst with the National Security Archive, said highlighting the Church report's historical significance had become more urgent. "Fifty years after the scandal of the revelations of the Church committee report, we've come a long way in the wrong direction, where we have US presidents who now seem to feel they can openly discuss assassination plots against foreign leaders," he said. At least 83 people have been killed in 21 US drone strikes against alleged drug-trafficking boats in the Caribbean and Pacific since early September.

Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on assassinations and intelligence agency corruption.


CIA Assassination Plots: The Church Committee Report 50 Years Later
2025-11-20, NSA Archive
https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/intelligence/2025-11-20/cia-assassina...

Fifty years ago today, a special Senate Committee led by Idaho Senator Frank Church lifted the veil of secrecy on the clandestine efforts of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to target specific foreign leaders for assassination. The Church Committee overcame intense pressure from the Gerald Ford White House to withhold publication of the report, which exposed CIA operations to "neutralize" leaders such as Fidel Castro in Cuba, Patrice Lumumba in Congo, and General Rene Schneider in Chile. "The evidence establishes that the United States was implicated in several assassination plots," states the introduction of the 285-page report, officially titled Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders. "The Committee believes that, short of war, assassination is incompatible with American principles, international order, and morality. It should be rejected as a tool of foreign policy." To commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Church Committee report, the National Security Archive is posting a small selection of documents on efforts by the Ford Administration to keep the report secret. Public outrage forced the CIA and the White House to retreat on the use of assassination as a tool of covert operations. In response to the report, on February 18, 1976, President Ford signed Executive Order 11905, which stated: "No employee of the United States Government shall engage in, or conspire to engage in, political assassination."

Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on assassinations and intelligence agency corruption.


How Cops Are Using Flock Safety's ALPR Network to Surveil Protesters and Activists
2025-11-20, Electronic Freedom Foundation
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/11/how-cops-are-using-flock-safetys-alpr-n...

2025 has given Americans plenty to protest about. But as news cameras showed protesters filling streets of cities across the country, law enforcement officers–including U.S. Border Patrol agents–were quietly watching those same streets through different lenses: Flock Safety automated license plate readers (ALPRs) that tracked every passing car. Through an analysis of 10 months of nationwide searches on Flock Safety's servers, we discovered that more than 50 federal, state, and local agencies ran hundreds of searches through Flock's national network of surveillance data in connection with protest activity. In some cases, law enforcement specifically targeted known activist groups, demonstrating how mass surveillance technology increasingly threatens our freedom to demonstrate. Via public records requests, EFF obtained datasets representing more than 12 million searches logged by more than 3,900 agencies between December 2024 and October 2025. The data shows that agencies logged hundreds of searches related to the 50501 protests in February, the Hands Off protests in April, the No Kings protests in June and October, and other protests in between. Some agencies have adopted policies that prohibit using ALPRs for monitoring activities protected by the First Amendment. Yet many officers probed the nationwide network with terms like "protest" without articulating an actual crime under investigation.

Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on police corruption and the erosion of civil liberties.


An Obscure Military Program Helps Local Cops Buy Armored Cars and Spyware. It Might Balloon Under Trump.
2025-10-30, The Intercept
https://theintercept.com/2025/10/30/military-gear-police-trump-1122/

Local cops have gotten tens of millions of dollars' worth of discounted military gear under a secretive federal program that is poised to grow under recent executive action. The 1122 program ... presents a danger to people facing off against militarized cops, according to Women for Weapons Trade Transparency. "All of these things combined serve as a threat to free speech, an intimidation tactic to protest," said Lillian Mauldin, the co-founder of the nonprofit group, which produced the report released this week. The federal government's 1033 program ... has long sent surplus gear like mine-resistant vehicles and bayonets to local police. Since 1994, however, the even more obscure 1122 program has allowed local cops to purchase everything from uniforms to riot shields at federal government rates. The program turns the feds into purchasing agents for local police. Local cops have used the program to pick up 16 Lenco BearCats, fearsome-looking armored police vehicles. Those vehicles represented 4.8 percent of the total spending identified in the ... report. Surveillance gear and software represented another 6.4 percent, and weapons or riot gear represented 5 percent. One agency bought a $428,000 Star Safire thermal imaging system, the kind used in military helicopters. The Texas Department of Public Safety's intelligence and counterterrorism unit purchased a $1.5 million surveillance software license. Another agency bought an $89,000 covert camera system.

Note: Read more about the Pentagon's 1033 program. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on police corruption and the erosion of civil liberties.


The Many Crimes of CIA Covert Actions
2025-10-20, CounterPunch
https://www.counterpunch.org/2025/10/20/the-many-crimes-of-cia-covert-actions/

Covert action refers to secret operations to influence governments, organizations, or persons in support of a foreign policy in a manner that is not attributable to the United States. Donald Trump has gone a step further than all other presidents by ignoring plausible denial; he announced the "secret" authorization to allow the CIA to conduct covert action in Venezuela against President Nicolas Maduro. This represents the latest attempt to apply pressure on Venezuela. It follows authorization for the U.S. military to target boats that may or may not be carrying drugs. Thus far, five boats have been destroyed and 29 Venezuelans (and some Colombians) have been killed. U.S. covert action, which began under the Eisenhower administration, has been marked by incredible and often predictable failure. The worst failures were in Iran (1953), Guatemala (1954), the Congo 1959, and Chile (1973), where leftist leaders were overthrown only to be followed by the accession to power of authoritarians and tyrants such as the Shah, Julio Alpirez, Mobutu, and Pinochet. These authoritarians introduced brutal regimes and repressive military forces, many of whom received military training from the CIA. When U.S. ambassadors in Central America protested this activity, they were ordered to stop reporting on such criminal activity. The CIA also trained and supported abusive internal security organizations throughout Central America, particularly in Nicaragua, Honduras, and El Salvador.

Note: Learn more about the rise of the CIA in our comprehensive Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center. For more, read our concise summaries of news articles on intelligence agency corruption.


Trump Calls Cartel Members "Terrorists." They're Armed With Bullets From a U.S. Army Factory.
2025-10-02, The Intercept
https://theintercept.com/2025/10/02/trump-mexico-drug-war-cartels-bullets/

Nearly the entire population of El Guayabo, approximately 400 to 500 dirt-poor lime pickers living on communal land in the west Mexican state of Michoacán, fled hastily in mid-July to escape combat between the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, known as CJNG, and the Caballeros Templarios. Every house were shattered by gunfire, roofs were blown open by bombs dropped from internet-bought drones, and everyone walked nervously, scanning the ground for landmines. Scattered everywhere were thousands of dull bronze shell-casings: .50 caliber rounds for sniper rifles and machine guns, 5.56 rounds for AR-15s and similar rifles, and 7.62×39 shells used for AK-47-style rifles. Putting a stop "to every terrorist thug smuggling poisonous drugs into the United States," as President Donald Trump put it to the United Nations last week, has become his self-proclaimed mission. If the U.S. military does confront the cartels in Mexico, it will find itself facing battle with its own weapons. An investigation by The Intercept traced the bullets that littered the ground in El Guayabo to at least two U.S. firearms manufacturers, one of which operates a massive factory owned by the U.S. military. Experts estimate that around 200,000 military-grade assault weapons and machine guns are trafficked every year from U.S. gunshops to Mexican criminal groups, moving south across the border. Between 2009 and 2011 ... ATF agents in Arizona allowed cartel straw buyers to purchase nearly 2,000 assault weapons.

Note: The US is effectively providing the means for the cartels to wage their dirty war. Read more about how the US arms Mexican drug cartels. Also, don't miss our in-depth investigation into the dark truths behind the War on Drugs including the long history of the US government arming and financing drug cartels for years. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on the War on Drugs.


FOIA records reveal EPA leaders frequent meetings with industry lobbyists
2025-09-18, The New Lede
https://www.thenewlede.org/2025/09/epa-industry-influence/

Top regulatory officials met with agricultural and chemical industry representatives dozens of times in the first few months after President Donald Trump took office. [The meetings] were followed by a series of regulatory rollbacks and a downplaying of pesticide concerns by the administration's "Make America Healthy Again" (MAHA) Commission. From February to mid-May, Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) leaders accepted meetings with representatives from at least 50 industry associations and companies, including agricultural and chemical giants such as Bayer, Corteva, BASF, Dow and the agrichemical lobbying group CropLife America, as well as the American Soybean Association, the National Cotton Council and others. Critics of the agrichemical industry said corporate influence in regulatory matters was underscored earlier this month when the Trump administration's "Make America Healthy Again" (MAHA) Commission released its long-anticipated report on how to address chronic disease and clean up the food supply. The final version was significantly more friendly to the agricultural industry than a May MAHA report that cited the health risks posed by the widely used farm chemicals glyphosate and atrazine. The September report took aim at synthetic dyes and junk food, among other things, but deleted references to glyphosate and atrazine and made no mention of pesticide exposure routes or risks.

Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on government corruption and toxic chemicals.


Autism Research Is a Chance for RFK Jr. to Take Pesticides Seriously
2025-09-16, The Atlantic
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/2025/09/autism-pesticides-rfk-jr/684227/

Pesticides once appeared to be a clear target for Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s desire to "make America healthy again." Before becoming the health secretary, he described Monsanto, the maker of the glyphosate-based herbicide Roundup, as "enemy of every admirable American value," and vowed to "ban the worst agricultural chemicals already banned in other countries." Since he came to power, many of Kennedy's fans have waited eagerly for him to do just that. Kennedy has yet to satisfy them: In the latest MAHA action plan on children's health, released last week, pesticides appear only briefly on a laundry list of vague ideas. The plan says that the government should fund research on how farmers could use less of them, and that the government "will work to ensure that the public has awareness and confidence" in the EPA's existing pesticide-review process, which it called "robust." Several studies have found neurological impacts associated with pesticides. UC Davis's MIND Institute put out a study in 2014 that found autism risk was much higher among children whose mothers had lived near agricultural-pesticide areas while pregnant. A 2017 paper found that zip codes that conducted aerial spraying for mosquitoes–a pesticide–had comparatively higher rates of autism than zip codes that didn't. Others have linked pesticides to a range of behavioral and cognitive impairment in children.

Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on government corruption and toxic chemicals.


Digital Driver's Licenses Could Make "Surveillance Pricing" Much Easier for Companies
2025-09-15, American Civil Liberties Union
https://www.aclu.org/news/privacy-technology/surveillance-pricing-and-ids

There has been a surge of concern and interest in the threat of "surveillance pricing," in which companies leverage the enormous amount of detailed data they increasingly hold on their customers to set individualized prices for each of them – likely in ways that benefit the companies and hurt their customers. The central battle in such efforts will be around identity: do the companies whose prices you are checking or negotiating know who you are? Can you stop them from knowing who you are? Unfortunately, one day not too far in the future, you may lose the ability to do so. Many states around the country are creating digital versions of their state driver's licenses. Digital versions of IDs allow people to be tracked in ways that are not possible or practical with physical IDs – especially since they are being designed to work ... online. It will be much easier for companies to request – and eventually demand – that people share their IDs in order to engage in all manner of transactions. It will make it easier for companies to collect data about us, merge it with other data, and analyze it, all with high confidence that it pertains to the same person – and then recognize us ... and execute their price-maximizing strategy against us. Not only would digital IDs prevent people from escaping surveillance pricing, but surveillance pricing would simultaneously incentivize companies to force the presentation of digital IDs by people who want to shop.

Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on corporate corruption and the disappearance of privacy.


The Pesticide Industry's Fingerprints Are All Over the MAHA Commission's Strategy Report
2025-09-10, Common Dreams
https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/maha-report-pesticides

When it comes to pesticides, the Trump administration's Make America Healthy Again, or MAHA, Commission has a serious problem: The Commission's newly released strategy for addressing childhood chronic disease is better for the pesticide industry than for people. The US currently uses over a billion pounds of pesticides annually on our crops, about one-third of which is chemicals that have been banned in other countries. Many have been linked to serious health problems from cancer to infertility to birth defects. Those pesticides contaminate our air, our water, and our bodies. One cancer-linked pesticide, glyphosate, is now found in 80% of adults and 87% of children. [The Commission] barely mentions organic farming, despite the fact that organic is the clearest pathway to transforming our food system into one that is healthy and nontoxic. The US Department of Agriculture organic seal prohibits more than 900 synthetic pesticides allowed in conventional agriculture. Just one week on an organic diet can reduce pesticide levels in our bodies up to 95%. Synthetic food dyes–a key issue for the MAHA movement–are all prohibited by the organic seal, along with hundreds of other food additives and drugs. The Commission's strategy ignores organic. Instead, it leans into promoting industry-friendly "precision agriculture"–the use of AI, machine learning, and digital tools on farms to optimize inputs–which primarily benefits corporate giants like Bayer.

Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on government corruption and toxic chemicals.


UK free speech crackdown sees up to 30 people a day arrested for petty offenses such as retweets and cartoons
2025-08-19, New York Post
https://nypost.com/2025/08/19/world-news/uk-free-speech-struggle-30-arrests-a...

Bernadette Spofforth [was] detained for 36 hours in July 2024. Three girls had just been murdered in Southport, England, at a Taylor Swift-themed dance party. But Spofforth was not under suspicion for the crime. Instead, horrified, and in the fog of a developing tragedy, she'd reposted on X another user's content blaming newly arrived migrants for the ghastly crime – clarifying in her retweet, "If this is true." Hours later she realized she may have received bad information and deleted the post – but it had already been seen thousands of times. The murders resulted in widespread civil unrest in the UK, where mass migration is a central issue for citizens. Four police vehicles arrived at her home days later. Spofforth, 56, a successful businesswoman from Chester, was placed under arrest. Her story is one repeated almost hourly in the UK, where data suggests over 30 people a day are arrested for speech crimes, about 12,000 a year, under laws written well before the age of social media that make crimes of sending "grossly offensive" messages or sharing content of an "indecent, obscene or menacing character." Social media continues to be flooded with videos of British cops banging on doors in the middle of the night and hauling parents off to jail–all over mean Facebook posts. On Tuesday, the US State Department's annual Human Rights Report slammed British authorities' "serious restrictions on freedom of expression."

Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on government corruption and censorship.


New evidence of chlorpyrifos harm to kids' brains amid regulatory retreat
2025-08-18, The New Lede
https://www.thenewlede.org/2025/08/chlorpyrifos-harms-kids-brains-epa/

Children highly exposed to an insecticide prior to birth showed signs of impaired brain development and motor function, according to a new study of chlorpyrifos – a pesticide still used on US crops despite decades of warnings about its impact on children's health. The study ... is the first to tie prenatal exposure to the pesticide to "enduring and widespread molecular, cellular, and metabolic effects in the brain," the authors wrote. The study ... comes months after the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced its plans to partially ban chlorpyrifos but allow continued use on 11 crops. The EPA ... banned chlorpyrifos in 2021 after a federal court ordered the agency to take action amid litigation and a wealth of evidence of the risks it poses to children. But the agency reversed course again after a different federal court sided with farm groups in opposition. MRI scans showed that kids with the highest levels of exposure were more likely to have reduced blood flow to the brain, thickening of the brain cortex, abnormal brain pathways, impaired nerve insulation and other problems. Chlorpyrifos was the 11th most frequently found pesticide in food samples in the most recent Food and Drug Administration (FDA) pesticide residue monitoring report, and a 2023 US Department of Agriculture pesticide residue report found traces of the chemical in baby food made with pears, as well as in samples of blackberries, celery and tomatoes.

Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on government corruption and toxic chemicals.


Pentagon plan would create military ‘reaction force' for civil unrest
2025-08-12, Washington Post
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2025/08/12/national-guard-ci...

The Trump administration is evaluating plans that would establish a "Domestic Civil Disturbance Quick Reaction Force" composed of hundreds of National Guard troops tasked with rapidly deploying into American cities facing protests or other unrest, according to internal Pentagon documents reviewed by The Washington Post. The plan calls for 600 troops to be on standby at all times so they can deploy in as little as one hour, the documents say. They would be split into two groups of 300 and be stationed at military bases in Alabama and Arizona, with purview of regions east and west of the Mississippi River, respectively. Cost projections outlined in the documents indicate that such a mission, if the proposal is adopted, could stretch into the hundreds of millions of dollars. Trump has summoned the military for domestic purposes like few of his predecessors have. He did so most recently Monday, authorizing the mobilization of 800 D.C. National Guard troops to bolster enhanced law enforcement activity in Washington. The proposal represents a major departure in how the National Guard traditionally has been used, said Lindsay P. Cohn, an associate professor of national security affairs at the U.S. Naval War College. While it is not unusual for National Guard units to be deployed for domestic emergencies within their states, including for civil disturbances, this "is really strange because essentially nothing is happening," she said.

Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on military corruption and the erosion of civil liberties.


80 years after Hiroshima, why are we still pretending nuclear weapons keep us safe?
2025-08-06, USA Today
https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2025/08/06/hiroshima-nagasaki-bombing-...

In 1945, the horrors unleashed in Hiroshima and Nagasaki were largely hidden from the outside world. Eighty years later, thanks to the testimonies shared by those who survived the atomic bombings of my country, we have a window into the truth of what happened on those dark August days when weapons of previously unimaginable power destroyed our cities. We also know what happened over the torturous months and years that followed, as those who weren't immediately burned alive succumbed to radiation poisoning and cancer. Nuclear bombing survivors have helped ... fuel public demand for post-Cold War arms-control treaties that resulted in significant stockpile reductions in the United States and Russia. They helped persuade nuclear-armed countries to stop explosive weapons tests that caused grave harm to the environment and to the servicemembers and civilians involved. They worked to establish the "nuclear taboo" that has spared the use of nuclear weapons in warfare for eight decades. They delivered millions of petition signatures to the United Nations that helped ... reduce nuclear risks. Again and again, they have proved that progress is possible, and for their decades of work to ensure that ... no country ever again face the unthinkable, the survivors in 2024 were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Demanding a nuclear-free world isn't naive. True naivete is believing that weapons designed to annihilate cities will keep us safe.

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


Pentagon: U.S. Counterterrorism Efforts Have Failed Africans
2025-08-05, The Intercept
https://theintercept.com/2025/08/05/pentagon-africa-counterterrorism-failure/

A new Pentagon report offers the grimmest assessment yet of the results of the last 10 years of U.S. military efforts [in Africa]. It corroborates years of reporting on catastrophes that U.S. Africa Command has long attempted to ignore or cover up. Fatalities from militant Islamist violence spiked over the years of America's most vigorous counterterrorism efforts on the continent, with the areas of greatest U.S. involvement – Somalia and the West African Sahel – suffering the worst outcomes. "Africa has experienced roughly 155,000 militant Islamist group-linked deaths over the past decade," reads a new report by the Africa Center for Strategic Studies. "What many people don't know is that the United States' post-9/11 counterterrorism operations actually contributed to and intensified the present-day crisis," [said] Stephanie Savell, director of the Costs of War Project at Brown University. The U.S. provided tens of millions of dollars in weapons and training to the governments of countries like Burkina Faso and Niger, which are experiencing the worst spikes in violent deaths today, she said. In 2002 and 2003 ... the State Department counted a total of just nine terrorist attacks, resulting in a combined 23 casualties across the entire continent. Last year, there were 22,307 fatalities from militant Islamist violence in Africa. At least 15 officers who benefited from U.S. security assistance were key leaders in a dozen coups in West Africa and the greater Sahel.

Note: Read more about the Pentagon's recent military failures in Africa. Learn more about how war is a tool for hidden agendas in our comprehensive Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center. For more, read our concise summaries of news articles on military corruption.


The Government's Growing Trove of Social Media Data
2025-07-21, Brennan Center for Justice
https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/governments-growing-t...

Reviewing individuals' social media to conduct ideological vetting has been a defining initiative of President Trump's second term. As part of that effort, the administration has proposed expanding the mandatory collection of social media identifiers. By linking individuals' online presence to government databases, officials could more easily identify, monitor, and penalize people based on their online self-expression, raising the risk of self-censorship. Most recently, the State Department issued a cable directing consular officers to review the social media of all student visa applicants for "any indications of hostility towards the citizens, culture, government, institutions or founding principles of the United States," as well as for any "history of political activism." This builds on earlier efforts this term, including the State Department's "Catch and Revoke" program, which promised to leverage artificial intelligence to screen visa holders' social media for ostensible "pro-Hamas" activity, and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services' April announcement that it would begin looking for "antisemitic activity" in the social media of scores of foreign nationals. At the border, any traveler, regardless of citizenship status, may face additional scrutiny. U.S. border agents are authorized to ... examine phones, computers, and other devices to review posts and private messages on social media, even if they do not suspect any involvement in criminal activity or have immigration-related concerns.

Note: Our news archives on censorship and the disappearance of privacy reveal how government surveillance of social media has long been conducted by all presidential administrations and all levels of government.


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