Government Corruption News Articles

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No one could have known that when a Tunisian fruit vendor set himself on fire in a public square in a town barely on a map, he would spark protests that would bring down dictators in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya and rattle regimes in Syria, Yemen and Bahrain. Or that that spirit of dissent would spur Mexicans to rise up against the terror of drug cartels, Greeks to march against unaccountable leaders, Americans to occupy public spaces to protest income inequality, and Russians to marshal themselves against a corrupt autocracy. Protests have now occurred in countries whose populations total at least 3 billion people, and the word protest has appeared in newspapers and online exponentially more this past year than at any other time in history. Everywhere, it seems, people said they'd had enough. They dissented; they demanded; they did not despair, even when the answers came back in a cloud of tear gas or a hail of bullets. The root of the word democracy is demos, "the people," and the meaning of democracy is "the people rule." And they did, if not at the ballot box, then in the streets. Protest is in some ways the source code for democracy — and evidence of the lack of it. For steering the planet on a more democratic though sometimes more dangerous path for the 21st century, the Protester is TIME's 2011 Person of the Year.

Note: For a treasure trove of reports from major media sources that explain why protestors worldwide have been occupying their cities, click here.

Just after 6 a.m. on Dec. 5, under cover of darkness, nine Greenpeace activists cut through a fence at the Nogent-sur-Seine atomic plant 95 kilometers (59 miles) southeast of Paris and headed for a domed reactor building. They scaled the roof and unfurled a “Safe Nuclear Doesn’t Exist” banner before attracting the attention of security guards. Two remained at large for four hours. On the same day, two more campaigners breached the perimeter of the Cruas-Meysse plant on the Rhone, escaping detection for more than 14 hours while posting videos of their sit-in on the Internet. The security lapses ... come at a time when debate has intensified on France’s reliance on atomic power for three-quarters of its energy needs in the run-up to next year’s presidential elections. They also preempt next month’s release of the results of safety checks at France’s 58 reactors, commissioned in the aftermath of the Fukushima tragedy. Greenpeace said its activists exposed the biggest security lapse to date at the reactors that are operated by Electricite de France SA.

Note: For lots more on corporate and government corruption, click here and here.

Three days before the Dec. 7, 1941 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, President Roosevelt was warned in a memo from naval intelligence that Tokyo's military and spy network was focused on Hawaii. In the newly revealed 20-page memo from FDR's declassified FBI file, the Office of Naval Intelligence on December 4 warned, "In anticipation of open conflict with this country, Japan is vigorously utilizing every available agency to secure military, naval and commercial information, paying particular attention to the West Coast, the Panama Canal and the Territory of Hawaii." The memo, published in the new book December 1941: 31 Days that Changed America and Saved the World went on to say that the Japanese were collecting "detailed technical information" that would be specifically used by its navy. To collect and analyze information, they were building a network of spies through their U.S. embassies and consulates. Historian and acclaimed Reagan biographer Craig Shirley, author of the just released December 1941, doesn't blame FDR for blowing it, but instead [said] that it "does suggest that there were more pieces to the puzzle" that the administration missed. He compares the missed signals leading up to Japan's attack to 9/11, which government investigations also show that the Clinton and Bush administrations missed clear signals that an attack was coming. "So many mistakes through so many levels of Washington," said Shirley. "Some things never change."

Note: Explore powerful evidence that US president Franklin Roosevelt was baiting Japan into an attack on Pearl Harbor. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing war news articles from reliable major media sources.

The European Commission adopted new rules Nov. 14 regarding X-ray, or backscatter, body scanners at all airports in Europe. A press release ordered members of the European Union to remove X-ray scanners from its airports to avoid risking “citizens’ health and safety.” The news [brings] into question the continued use of the very same X-ray scanners in U.S. airports. While the Transportation Security Administration also employs millimeter-wave scanners in U.S. airports, X-ray scanners are the ones that have received more criticism from public-safety advocates. While ... the amount of radiation exposure from X-ray machines is very low, several studies have shown that a small number of cancer cases could result from scanning millions of passengers every year. Some critics of the scanners say that any small amount of cancer is too much to tolerate. Although the TSA doesn’t show signs of budging on the use of X-ray scanners, Europe will instead use machines that rely on radio frequency waves, which have not been linked to cancer.

Note: For key reports from reliable sources on government and corporate threats to privacy, click here.

Israel has refused to reassure President Barack Obama that it would warn him in advance of any pre-emptive strike on Iran's nuclear capabilities, raising fears that it may be planning a go-it-alone attack as early as next summer. The US leader was rebuffed last month when he demanded private guarantees that no strike would go ahead without White House notification, suggesting Israel no longer plans to "seek Washington's permission", sources said. The disclosure [was] made by insiders briefed on a top-secret meeting between America's most senior defence chief and Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel's hawkish prime minister. Leon Panetta, the US defence secretary, flew into Israel last month on what was ostensibly a routine trip. Mr Panetta conveyed an urgent message from Barack Obama. The president, Mr Panetta said, wanted an unshakable guarantee that Israel would not carry out a unilateral military strike against Iran's nuclear installations without first seeking Washington's clearance. The two Israelis were notably evasive in their response, according to sources both in Israel and the United States. Alarmed by Mr Netanyahu's noncommittal response, Mr Obama reportedly ordered the US intelligence services to step up monitoring of Israel to glean clues of its intentions. What those intentions might be remains distinctly murky. Over the past fortnight, Israel's press has given every impression that the country is on a war footing, with numerous claims that Mr Netanyahu and Mr Barak are lobbying the cabinet to support the military option.

Note: For veteran geopolitical analyst Michel Chossudovsky's view that the "intelligence" on Iran's nuclear program is being "cooked" to justify an upcoming war, click here. For an investigative report showing that the IAEA's November 8 report on the "Iranian nuclear threat" falsely claimed that a Russian advisor to Iran is a nuclear scientist, click here. On the preparations for this war by the US and UK, which go far beyond the usual contingency planning for future possibilities, click here.

Yes, there are a wide array of complaints, demands, and goals from the Wall Street protesters: the collapsing environment, labor standards, housing policy, government corruption, ... and so on. Different people have been affected by different aspects of the same system -- and they believe they are symptoms of the same core problem. I witnessed [many cogent conversations] as I strolled by Occupy Wall Street's many teach-ins this morning. There were young people teaching one another about, among other things, how the economy works, ... the history of centralized interest-bearing currency, the creation and growth of the derivatives industry, and about the Obama administration deciding to settle with, rather than investigate and prosecute the investment banking industry for housing fraud. Anyone who says he has no idea what these folks are protesting is not being truthful. We all know that there are investment bankers working on Wall Street getting richer while things for most of the rest of us are getting tougher. Occupy Wall Street is meant more as a way of life that spreads through contagion, creates as many questions as it answers, aims to force a reconsideration of the way the nation does business and offers hope to those of us who previously felt alone in our belief that the current economic system is broken.

Note: For insights into the reasons why people have decided they must occupy their cities in protest of the predations of financial corporations, check out our extensive "Banking Bailout" news articles.

An explosion wrecked two homes, a business and several cars early [September 26], killing a woman and injuring nine people on the outskirts of Argentina’s capital. Early reports by some witnesses that they had seen a ball of fire fall from the sky around the time of the 2 a.m. explosion caused a sensation, but authorities said later that evidence pointed to an explosion of leaking gas. After the reports of a fireball coming down, the government dispatched [a] large number of searchers to check for radioactivity and any material that might have come from outer space. Provincial justice and security minister Ricardo Casal said experts were “evaluating all theories, from an explosion to something strange that came from the sky.” But the experts found no evidence of a crater, and NASA said its satellite that fell to Earth sometime Saturday landed well clear of South America. A young man who had claimed he photographed a space object and gave authorities a picture showing a streak of red light through the night sky was detained for providing false testimony, the Argentine news agency Diarios y Noticias said. The man changed his story under questioning, the report said.

Note: How interesting that this occurred at the same time as the NASA satellite was supposed to crash to Earth. Do you think there could be a cover-up in order to avoid bad publicity? For more evidence along these lines, click here.

The federal government pays out millions of dollars to dead people each year — including deceased retired federal workers, according to a new report. In the past five years, the Office of Personnel Management has made more than $601 million in benefits payments to deceased federal annuitants, according to the agency’s inspector general. Total annual payouts range between $100 million and $150 million. Improper payments to dead retirees increased 70 percent in the past five years, far higher than the 19 percent climb in overall annuity payments, the report said. In one case, a deceased annuitant’s son continued receiving federal benefits until 2008 — 37 years after his father’s death. OPM learned about the improper payments — which exceeded $515,000 — only after the son died. The agency never recovered the money. Overall, the government’s improper payments totaled about $125 billion in fiscal 2010 — a $15 billion year-to-year increase. Last October, an investigation by the office of Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) concluded that the government had paid nearly $1 billion to at least 250,000 dead people since 2000.

Note: For key reports on government corruption from major media sources, click here.

The political tempest created by Rick Perry's response to questions about his 2007 executive order requiring immunization of young girls is the wrong debate at the wrong time for the Texas governor's front-running presidential campaign. The heated political exchange over Perry's program to vaccinate all Texas school girls to protect them from cervical cancer caused by a sexually transmitted disease opens the door for critics to declare it an example of intrusive, big government to require such immunization, particularly for a sexually transmitted virus, even if, as Perry says, there was an opt-out provision for parents. The fact that Perry tried to implement the policy with an executive order, rather than proposing legislation mandating the vaccinations, spooks libertarians who don't want to see another president implementing policy through executive orders, as George W. Bush and Barack Obama have done on a wide range of social and security issues. The issue also highlights what [has been] dubbed "crony capitalism" - how big contributors and longtime friends of the Texas governor have been named to key state positions and won important policy victories in Rick Perry's Texas. Perry's former chief of staff, Mike Toomey, was a lobbyist for Merck, the manufacturer of the drug Gardasil, the vaccine that Perry sought to require for girls.

Note: Another media article points out that Perry grossly underestimated the amount of political contributions he received from Merck, the manufacturer of the drug Gardasil, the vaccine that Perry required for young girls.

Tony Blair is godfather to one of Rupert Murdoch’s young children, it has emerged in an interview with the media tycoon’s wife Wendi. The former prime minister was reportedly present in March last year when Murdoch’s two daughters by his third wife were baptised on the banks of the Jordan. The information was not made public and its disclosure in an interview with Mrs Murdoch in Vogue will prove highly embarrassing for Mr Blair. His close ties to the Murdochs could explain his reluctance to condemn the News International phone hacking scandal. In July, it was reported that he asked Gordon Brown to put pressure on Tom Watson, the Labour MP who helped expose the scandal, to drop his investigation. Last night, Mr Blair’s spokesman refused to comment, but a News Corp source confirmed that Mr Blair was godfather to Grace, as was Lachlan Murdoch, Rupert Murdoch’s eldest son. While Mrs Murdoch does not comment on Mr Blair directly, the article states that Miss Kidman, Mr Jackman and Mr Blair are godparents. It claims that Mr Blair attended the Jordanian ceremony “garbed in white” and describes him as one of Mrs Murdoch’s “closest friends”. They have a mutual friend in Queen Rania of Jordan, who hosted the baptism. Both women were recently on the judging panel for a film prize organised by the Tony Blair Faith Foundation.

Note: For more on corporate corruption from reliable sources, click here.

Details of shadowy CIA [rendition flights] have emerged in a ... New York courthouse in a billing dispute between contractors. The court documents offer a rare glimpse of the costs and operations of the controversial rendition program. For all the secrecy that once surrounded the CIA program, a significant part of its operation was entrusted to very small aviation companies whose previous experience involved flying sports teams across the country. In the process, the costs and itineraries of numerous CIA flights became part of the court record. The more than 1,500 pages from the trial and appeals court files appear to include sensitive material, such as logs of air-to-ground phone calls made from the plane. These logs show multiple calls to CIA headquarters; to the cell- and home phones of a senior CIA official involved in the rendition program; and to a government contractor, Falls Church-based DynCorp, that worked for the CIA. Attorneys for a London-based legal charity, Reprieve, which has been investigating the CIA program, discovered the Columbia County case and brought the court records to the attention of The Washington Post. “This new evidence tells a chilling story, from the CIA’s efforts to disguise its illegal activities to the price it paid to ferry prisoners to torture chambers across the world,” said Cori Crider, Reprieve’s legal director.

Note: For lots more from reliable sources on the hidden realities behind the "Global War on Terror", click here.

What if we stood up for Main Street? Corporations and elected officials are making decisions that are impacting our lives, and we are at their mercy. Americans, many [of] whose lives have been destroyed by the 2008 subprime mortgage market disaster, resent the lack of accountability on the part of Wall Street for its role in this scandal. Few have been indicted for the market collapse and resulting meltdown of the global economy. After the federal government bailed out the financial institutions, it is back to business as usual. Corporate profits are accumulating and bonuses are raining down on the very players who created the bubble and crash in the first place. On the other hand, the taxpayers who bailed out Wall Street aren't doing so well. Instead of bonuses, we are suffering from unemployment and underemployment of epic proportions. Homeowners continue to lose their homes to foreclosure, and homelessness is on the rise. Public services, public safety and public welfare funding is being cut back or cut out. Public education has been decimated. American corporations have lost all sense of responsibility for U.S. citizens. While the U.S. economy fights to survive, corporations have turned their backs on those whose tax dollars kept our ship of state from sinking. Sending jobs overseas might improve corporate profit margins, but at what expense to the workforce and U.S. economy? These decisions have devastated American workers' lives. So, what needs to be done? What if we begin to stand up for Main Street?

Note: For a treasure trove of reports detailing the criminal collusion between the federal government and Wall Street financial corporations, click here.

An Indian government attempt to head off a political crisis by arresting a key anti-corruption activist appeared to backfire ... when parliament walked out and demonstrations broke out across the country. Approximately 20 plainclothes police surrounded activist Anna Hazare, 73, ... as he left his house to begin a hunger strike against alleged widespread corruption, reportedly forbidding him from leaving the premises. When he defied them, they took him into custody on peremptory charges of "breach of peace." In April, Hazare held a five-day fast that garnered enormous national support and helped make him the public face of a grassroots anti-graft fight. It also put the ruling Congress party under pressure to pass a controversial "Lokpal Bill" that, among other things, would establish an independent ombudsman able to probe senior officials. When the cabinet passed a version that exempted the prime minister's office and top judges from close scrutiny, Hazare announced a second hunger-strike. India has seen a spate of corruption scandals in recent months, many allegedly involving senior Congress Party officials or their close allies, involving telecommunications, defense and sporting events allegedly amounting to tens of billions of dollars.

Note: For key reports from major media sources on government corruption, click here.

Ending a six-year legal battle, the Army Corps of Engineers has agreed to pay nearly $1 million to a former top contracting official who charged that she was demoted after she objected to a $7 billion no-bid contract granted to a Halliburton subsidiary to repair oil fields in Iraq. In a settlement agreement signed this month and made final by a federal judge this week, the Army Corps of Engineers agreed to pay the former official, Bunnatine H. Greenhouse, $970,000 to cover lost wages, legal fees and compensatory damages, including for harm to her reputation and her mental health. The payment for damages is unusually large for a lawsuit by a federal employee. In early 2003, the Army, in secret and without competitive bidding, put KBR, then a subsidiary of Halliburton, in charge of restoring Iraqi oil production, in a contract potentially worth $7 billion over five years. Ms. Greenhouse, a career civil servant who was the chief contracts monitor at the Army Corps of Engineers at the time, objected that the contract was based on repair plans and cost estimates that KBR itself had been hired by the corps to prepare, and that the emergency conditions did not justify a multiyear no-bid contract. After internal clashes and threats of demotion, she went public with her concerns in 2004. Ms. Greenhouse was demoted from the Senior Executive Service and given a poor performance rating, prompting her to bring the lawsuit. As part of the settlement, Ms. Greenhouse, 67, formally retired this week with full benefits.

Note: The press has reported little on this most important case. For a much better description of all that went on and the intense corruption revealed, click here.

Scientists say they have bred a dog that glows under ultraviolet light when an antibiotic is added to its food. Scientists started cloning glow-in-the-dark puppies two years ago by inserting genes from other species that produce fluorescent proteins, such as jellyfish and coral. In the journal Genesis, researchers from Seoul National University report that they produced a dog that expresses the green fluorescent protein gene when it eats food containing a doxycycline antibiotic. When the drug is no longer added to the food, the glow-in-the-dark effect fades away. The technique could be used to help find cures for human diseases such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's, South Korea's Yonhap news agency reported. The genetically modified female beagle, named Tegon, was born in 2009. Other methods can produce dogs that glow, but "the uncontrollable expression often results in unwanted outcomes," they said.

Note: Though this may have some beneficial applications, why doesn't the article raise any of the serious ethical considerations?

The Justice Department has called into question a key pillar of the FBI's case against Bruce Ivins, the Army scientist accused of mailing the anthrax-laced letters that killed five people and terrorized Congress a decade ago. Shortly after Ivins committed suicide in 2008, federal investigators announced that they had identified him as the mass murderer who sent the letters to members of Congress and the media. The case was circumstantial, with federal officials arguing that the scientist had the means, motive and opportunity to make the deadly powder at a U.S. Army research facility at Fort Detrick, in Frederick, Md. On July 15, however, Justice Department lawyers acknowledged in court papers that the sealed area in Ivins' lab -- the so-called hot suite -- did not contain the equipment needed to turn liquid anthrax into the refined powder that floated through congressional buildings and post offices in the fall of 2001. The government's statements deepen the questions about the case against Ivins. Searches of his car and home in 2007 found no anthrax spores, and the FBI's eight-year, $100 million investigation never proved he mailed the letters or identified another location where he might have secretly dried the anthrax into an easily inhaled powder.

Note: For more doubts on the FBI's case against Ivins, click here. For a detailed analysis of the anthrax attacks by Prof. Graeme MacQueen of McMaster University, showing that it was an integral part, with the 9/11 attacks, of a larger operation to launch two wars, click here.

A few days ago, the United Nations chose North Korea ... as the new president of the U.N.'s Conference on Disarmament, which describes itself as "the single multilateral disarmament negotiating forum of the international community." Most of the conference's 65-nation membership publicly welcomed the new president, and U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon endorsed his ascension. Well, not to worry. The new Disarmament Conference president, North Korean So Se Pyong, promised to become "very engaged in moving the conference forward" so that it can "achieve concrete results." How reassuring. Perhaps his country would like to set an example for the world? Actually, North Korea is ... the only state that stubbornly holds on to a nuclear-weapons arsenal even though its leaders know full well that millions of their people are starving to death as a result. Right now, North Korea is facing a famine, and not for the first time. A calamitous food shortage in the late 1990s killed an estimated 2 million people. That time, once the world learned of the problem, months too late, it provided copious aid. This time, almost no one seems willing to help.

A NATO security report about "Anonymous" —- the mysterious "hacktivist" group responsible for attacks on MasterCard, Visa, PayPal, Amazon and, most recently, Sony -— has led the underground group to respond by cautioning NATO, "This is no longer your world. It is our world - the people's world." NATO's report, issued last month, warned about the rising tide of politically-motivated cyberattacks, singling out Anonymous as the most sophisticated and high-profile of the known hacktivist groups. In response, Anonymous issued a lengthy statement ... that says, in part: "We merely wish to remove power from vested interests and return it to the people - who, in a democracy, it should never have been taken from in the first place. Our message is simple: Do not lie to the people and you won't have to worry about your lies being exposed. Do not make corrupt deals and you won't have to worry about your corruption being laid bare. Do not break the rules and you won't have to worry about getting in trouble for it." It goes on to warn, "do not make the mistake of challenging Anonymous. Do not make the mistake of believing you can behead a headless snake. If you slice off one head of Hydra, ten more heads will grow in its place. If you cut down one Anon, ten more will join us purely out of anger at your trampling of dissent."

A French writer who claims Dominique Strauss-Kahn sexually assaulted her nine years ago is to file an official complaint, her lawyer has announced. Tristane Banon previously described the attack, which happened when she was in her early 20s, in a television programme in 2007. The 62-year-old head of the International Monetary Fund – who was widely tipped to be France's next president – was refused bail by the judge, Melissa Jackson, who ruled he might attempt to flee the US. Across France, after the shock of Strauss-Kahn's arrest, came speculation ... and conspiracy theories. For some ... the story was so extraordinary it smacked of a set-up. Only three weeks ago, Strauss-Kahn evoked such a possibility in an interview with French newspaper Libération when he said he thought he was under surveillance and named the three principal difficulties he foresaw if he was to stand for the presidential elections. "Money, women and the fact I am Jewish." He said he could see himself becoming the victim of a honey trap: "a woman raped in a car park and who's been promised 500,000 or a million euros to invent such a story ...".

Note: For further reasons to suspect that the charges against Strauss-Kahn are politically-motivated, whether true or not, click here.

The first time President Obama was publicly asked about Bradley Manning, the soldier accused of disclosing government secrets to WikiLeaks, his answer was reminiscent of George W. Bush. The second time - when he declared Manning guilty without a trial - it was more like Richard Nixon. The issue landed in Obama's lap via P.J. Crowley, the State Department's chief media spokesman and the only member of the administration known to have protested Manning's treatment. Crowley called the conditions of Manning's confinement "ridiculous and counterproductive and stupid." Two days later, the State Department announced Crowley's "resignation," government-speak for signing a farewell note while being pushed out the window. [When] asked ... about Manning ... the president first replied that military secrecy laws apply to everyone. "If I was to release stuff, information that I'm not authorized to release, I'm breaking the law," Obama said. "We don't individually make our own decisions about how the laws operate. He (Manning) broke the law." It's the first time a U.S. president has made such a public comment since 1971, when Nixon declared that cult leader Charles Manson, then on trial, "was guilty, directly or indirectly, of eight murders." Obama's comments also raise the question of whether he looks at all criminal cases through the same lens or uses different standards depending on whether the government is alleged to be the victim or the victimizer.

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.