Government Corruption News Articles

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A man who filmed a New York City police officer use a choke hold on a suspect who later died has been arrested on weapons charges, law enforcement officials said on [August 3]. Ramsey Orta, 22, and a 17-year-old female were spotted on [August 2] outside a known drug location on Staten Island by narcotics officers who saw Orta put a handgun in his companion's waistband, the New York Police Department said. Orta, who has a previous criminal conviction, faces two charges of criminal possession of a weapon. At some point during his arrest, Orta told officers, "You're just mad because I filmed your boy," an NYPD spokeswoman said. The comment was apparently in reference to the July 17 cellphone video shot by Orta during the arrest of Eric Garner, who was placed in a choke hold by a police officer while being detained for peddling illegal cigarettes. Garner later died, and the New York City medical examiner ruled the his death a homicide. Footage of the incident circulated widely on the Internet, triggering outrage and raising questions about police tactics and use of force. The choke hold is banned by the NYPD, which says it is investigating why the maneuver was used.

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

Back in December, 60 Minutes broadcast a now-notorious segment of pure access journalism in which they gullibly disseminated one false NSA claim after the next. The program claimed that Snowden “is believed to still have access to 1.5 million classified documents he has not leaked”. Ever since then, that Snowden “stole” 1.7 or 1.8 million documents from the NSA has been repeated over and over again by US media outlets as verified fact. The Washington Post‘s Walter Pincus, citing an anonymous official source, purported to tell readers that “among the roughly 1.7 million documents he walked away with — the vast majority of which have not been made public — are highly sensitive, specific intelligence reports”. Reuters frequently includes in its reports the unchallenged assertion that “Snowden was believed to have taken 1.7 million computerized documents.” In fact, that number is and always has been a pure fabrication, as even Keith Alexander admits. The claimed number has changed more times than one can count: always magically morphing into randomly chosen higher and scarier numbers. The reality, in the words of the General, is that the US Government ”really [doesn't know] what he actually took with him” and they ”don’t have an accurate way of counting”. All they know is how many documents he accessed in his entire career at NSA, which is a radically different question from how many documents he took. But that hasn’t stopped American media outlets from repeatedly affirming the inflammatory evidence-free claim that Snowden took 1.7 million documents.

Note: For more on the realities of intelligence agency operations, see the deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources available here.

[U.S. Senator] Elizabeth Warren is emerging as a kind of spokeswoman for the new economic populism that many Democratic activists want the party to embrace heading into 2014 and 2016. [A] speech that Warren [delivered] on the floor of the Senate suggests [that] the push to expand Social Security could become a key issue in the argument over the Democratic Party of the future. She strongly endorsed the push to boost Social Security benefits — in keeping with Senator Tom Harkin’s proposal to do the same: “Social Security isn’t the answer to all of our retirement problems. We need to find ways to tackle the financial squeeze that is crushing our families. We need to help families start saving again. We need to make sure that more workers have access to better pensions. The absolute last thing we should be doing is talking about cutting back on Social Security. The absolute last thing we should do in 2013 – at the very moment that Social Security has become the principal lifeline for millions of our seniors — is allow the program to begin to be dismantled inch by inch. Right now, more people than ever are on the edge of financial disaster once they retire — and the numbers continue to get worse. That is why we should be talking about expanding Social Security benefits — not cutting them. Senator Harkin from Iowa, Senator Begich from Alaska, Senator Sanders from Vermont, and others have been pushing hard in that direction. Social Security is incredibly effective, it is incredibly popular, and the calls for strengthening it are growing louder every day.”

Note: For more on government corruption, see the deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources available here.

The question in the background of Noam Scheiber's exploration of whether Elizabeth Warren could challenge Hillary Clinton in 2016 is whether, come 2015, Democrats will care very much about cracking down harder on Wall Street. An issue-based challenger needs two things to pose a serious threat to a front-runner. One is an issue that differentiates them from the front-runner. The other is for that issue to be foremost in the minds of voters. Scheiber points out that Warren's background isn't just Wall Street reform. It's protecting the middle class. The Two-Income Trap was a seminal book in defining the mounting pressures on working Americans. And Warren has long tried to protect that dimension of her work from being eclipsed by her unexpected turn as a finreg rockstar. But concern for the middle class doesn't, by and large, differentiate her from Clinton. Clinton, like Warren, believes in higher taxes on the rich and universal health care and higher-education costs and universal pre-k and so on. The danger for Clinton is if Warren is able to persuade Democrats that cracking down on Wall Street reform is the key to helping the middle class or -- perhaps more plausibly -- opposing inequality. On a policy level, that's a harder case to make. But on an emotional, who's-on-your-side level, it might work.

Note: For an excellent video showing the courage and forthrightness of Elizabeth Warren, click here. For more on government corruption, see the deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources available here.

The Senate on Tuesday rejected an effort to strip divisive provisions from a defense bill that deal with the capture and handling of suspected terrorists. “The provisions would dramatically change broad counterterrorism efforts by requiring law enforcement officials to step aside and ask the Department of Defense to take on a new role they are not fully equipped for and do not want,’’ said Sen. Mark Udall, D-Colo., who added that the legislation would make the military “police, judge and jailer.’’ His amendment would have taken out the sections on detainees and instead called for congressional hearings with Pentagon and administration officials on the issue. The bill would require military custody of a suspect deemed to be a member of al-Qaida or its affiliates. The vote came shortly after the weekly Republican and Democratic policy luncheons. A guest at the Republican session was former Vice President Dick Cheney, an advocate for harsh interrogation tactics against suspected U.S. enemies during his two terms in office. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and FBI Director Robert Mueller have spelled out their opposition in letters to lawmakers. Mueller said Monday that because the legislation applies to people detained in the United States, it could disrupt ongoing international terrorism investigations.

Note: The implications of the Senate's vote to authorize the US military to carry out domestic arrest and imprisonment of US citizens have hardly been reported on by the major media. The defense authorization bill passed by the Senate undermines protections established by the Bill of Rights and the Posse Comitatus Act against use of US military forces in domestic control and arrest. The ACLU has issued an analysis; for further analysis of the implications of this legislation, click here and here.

Lazy people on social services, a spree of borrowed money. That's how the Greek people are being portrayed. But like Wall Street, the streets of Athens are like a crime scene. The Greek people [are] victims of a fraud and cover-up. Greg Palast is a renowned investigative reporter and author of the new book Vultures' Picnic: In Pursuit of Petroleum Pigs, Power Pirates, and High-Finance Carnivores. Greg, how is it that a bank can lend money to a country that has an economy smaller than Dallas, at a level that is this big? Palast: Greece is a crime scene. Goldman Sachs, beginning in 2001 [or] 2002 ... cut a deal to secretly take euros out of the Greek treasury, convert them to yen, convert them back to euros. This is through some fancy derivative action. Goldman takes a multi-billion dollar loss. The Greek government gets a gain. There's no deficit in the Greek treasury. It's only 3%. The Greek economy looks good. Goldman doesn't take billions of dollars in losses. It's a fraud. They've cut a secret deal to get that money back and then some. Goldman charged about $300, $400 million to pull off this scam.

Note: For lots more from reliable sources on the chicaneries of central banks and financial corporations, click here. For other powerful reporting by journalist Greg Palast, click here.

The chief of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said [on Sep. 2] that Republican-sponsored proposals moving in the House would threaten the agency's ability to regulate toxic air emissions. Administrator Lisa Jackson told a panel of lawmakers that the legislation, coupled with two GOP-offered amendments, "would weaken or destroy our ability to address those toxic pollutants," putting thousands of lives at risk every year. The legislation would delay an EPA rule for reducing mercury pollution and the upcoming agency rule limiting cross-state air pollution from power plants. The bill would also require a new interagency committee to analyze the financial impact of several EPA rules next year. The House also will consider two floor amendments to the bill. One, sponsored by Rep. Ed Whitfield, R-Ky., would delay the mercury and cross-state rules by several additional years at least and loosen the minimum standards for new emissions rules. The other, sponsored by Rep. Bob Latta, R-Ohio, would require the EPA to draw up air-quality rules with regard to "cost and feasibility." Currently, the rules must be based solely on evidence regarding public health and environmental impacts. Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Los Angeles, a top Democrat on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, has said the amendments would roll back 40 years of EPA regulatory authority under the Clean Air Act.

Note: Agreeing with Rep. Waxman, the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental advocacy group, calls the bill "one of the most significant votes on air pollution in two decades."

The CIA is reported to have used unmanned drones to target ... Somalia for the first time, attacks coinciding with the unveiling of a new US counterterrorism strategy shifting the war on terror away from costly battlefields and toward expanded covert operations. The strikes in Somalia ... bring to six the number of countries where the missile-armed drones have been deployed: Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Libya and Iraq, and now [Somalia]. US officials quoted by The Washington Post yesterday claimed the two individuals targeted had "direct ties" to Anwar al-Awlaki, the US-born cleric now based in Yemen. In May, al-Alwaki himself was targeted by a drone attack, but managed to escape. If confirmed, the strikes in Somalia would fit the new approach set out in the 19-page "National Strategy for Counterterrorism" released this week by the White House, and presented by John Brennan, President Barack Obama's top anti-terrorism adviser. There is no mention of the Bush era "global war on terror". In this campaign, America's main tools would be intelligence and Special Operations forces, backed up by the rapid deployment of what he called "unique assets", a reference to the drones that are becoming smaller and deadlier.

Note: Could it be that high-level members of the Obama administration believe that if they do not use the "global war on terror" slogan, the public will not perceive the continuation of the Bush administration's policies and methods by Pres. Obama? For critical reports from major media sources on the illegal and unjustified "global war on terror", click here.

More than 100 days after the United States and NATO allies launched what was supposed to be a quick air campaign in Libya, Pentagon officials concede that the effort has little strategic value for the U.S., and the alliance’s desired outcome there remains unclear. What’s become an open-ended conflict, military officers and experts say, illustrates ill-defined U.S. objectives, the limits of relying solely on air power and the lack of diplomatic tools to broker an end to Moammar Gadhafi’s regime. The NATO effort is almost exclusively an air campaign, which is designed to ground Gadhafi’s warplanes and strike at his weapons sites. But at times it appears that NATO has tried to topple Gadhafi, which experts said demands ground forces, a larger air campaign and a clear plan for who will lead Libya in the aftermath of the regime. The hope was that by only using air power, NATO would reduce the costs and risk to troops. But experts say that air power only rarely leads to regime change and isn’t always cheaper. NATO believed that without Gadhafi’s air power, the rebels could claim control of the country within weeks — as quickly as the regimes fell in neighboring Egypt and Tunisia. But instead, the rebels now control less ground than they did when the NATO intervention began.

Note: For lots more from reliable sources on the US/NATO wars of aggression, click here.

Federal officials and leaders of the nation’s largest wireless telephone companies are set to announce ... that they’re launching a new mobile telephone emergency alert system by the end of the year in Washington and New York. The Personal Localized Alerting Network, or PLAN, won’t be available across the rest of the country until April, but top executives from AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile and Verizon are scheduled to join Federal Communications Commission. Authorities plan to continue broadcasting messages across the Emergency Alert System on radio and television. Mobile users who currently own or plan to buy newer smart phones and cell phones sold by the four wireless companies would be able to receive the free, text-like messages that would flash across a telephone’s screen and trigger a special vibration. Once operational, participating federal, state and local agencies would be able to send information regarding only the most serious alerts — including warnings about natural disasters, terrorist attacks or AMBER Alerts.

Note: Though clearly with some benefit in the case of mobilizing people during disasters, this system also has the potential for manipulation by spreading fear messages and mobilizing the public when it might not be necessary.

The gold price has risen above $1,500 an ounce for the first time after concerns about global economic recovery lifted the metal's appeal as a haven. In Hong Kong trade, gold hit a record $1,500.70 an ounce, which traders said was mainly due to Standard & Poor's downgrade of its outlook on US debt. Silver also touched a 31-year high of $44.34 an ounce. But analysts were divided about whether the price could go higher and are waiting to see if trading in Europe and the US continues the momentum seen in Asia. Some market watchers see gold consolidating at its current level as it waits for the next reason to push higher. Silver continued to soar, rising to a 31-year high for the fifth consecutive session. Not only is silver increasingly seen as a haven, but there is also rising demand for industrial consumption.

Note: Gold is one of the most highly manipulated of all commodities. As a glaring example, when gold first broke the $1,000 mark in Feb. 2009, just over two years before this article was published, almost no media reported on this major news. In 2004, gold was around $400 an ounce and has been soaring ever since. For reliable charts showing this, see the bottom of the webpage at this link. Key individuals with inside information on precious metal manipulations, like whistleblower Catherine Austin Fitts (Assistant Secretary of Housing and Urban Development under George H. W. Bush), have been predicting this rise for years.

"The facts in the report speak for themselves, but the principles it describes could apply to funds throughout the United States and overseas." That's attorney Philip Khinda, talking about the 75-page report he delivered last week to the California Public Employees' Retirement System on dealings involving former senior executives and board members with so-called placement agents, and how the latter got tens of millions of dollars in questionable fees for their services. The report is the culmination of a 17-month investigation headed by Khinda, a partner at the Washington law firm Steptoe & Johnson, which was hired by CalPERS for the job. Citing the $800 million a year CalPERS was paying out in fees, the report concludes that "the excessive nature created an environment in which external managers were willing and able to pay fees at a level that bore little or no relationship to the services apparently provided by the placement agents ... Many of the abuses relating to placement agent arrangements were, in a sense, a symptom of a larger problem." That larger problem applies, in part, to funds throughout the United States and overseas, ranging from other public pension funds to sovereign wealth funds investing in the United States. With the amount of money at stake, the fat fees involved, and the various middlemen looking for a piece, events similar to what transpired at CalPERS could just as easily appear elsewhere.

Note: For a treasure trove of reports by major media sources on the collusion between government and financial corporations against the public interest, click here.

Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder, today pledged to make public the confidential tax details of 2,000 wealthy and prominent individuals, after being passed the data by a Swiss banker who claims the information potentially reveals instances of money-laundering and large-scale illegal tax evasion. Rudolf Elmer, formerly a senior executive at the Swiss bank Julius Baer, based in the Cayman islands, said he was handing the data to WikiLeaks as part of an attempt "to educate society" about the amount of potential tax revenues lost thanks to offshore schemes and money-laundering. "As [a] banker, I have the right to stand up if something is wrong," he said. "I am against the system. I know how the system works and I know the day-to-day business. I want to let society know how this system works because it's damaging our society," he said. Elmer will appear in a Swiss court on Wednesday charged with breaking Swiss banking secrecy laws, forging documents and sending threatening messages to two officials at his former employer. He denies the charges. Assange ... said he would pass the information to the Serious Fraud Office(SFO), examine it to ensure sources were protected, and then release it on the WikiLeaks site, potentially within "a couple of weeks".

Note: For lots more from reliable sources on how the rich cheat the rest with help from lax regulations, click here.

Switzerland announced [on July 12] that it would not extradite [Roman] Polanski, a famous film director, to the United States in part because of fresh doubts over the conduct of the judge in his original trial. “He’s a free man,” the Swiss justice minister, Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf, said at a news conference on Monday. The French foreign minister, Bernard Kouchner, said he was “delighted” and deeply relieved by the ruling. Samantha Geimer, who at 13 was Mr. Polanski’s victim in the original sex case, has long disclosed her identity and called to end the prosecution. The decision to free Mr. Polanski was a sharp defeat for prosecutors in Los Angeles. Steve Cooley, the Los Angeles County district attorney, is the Republican candidate for state attorney general. The turning point in the case occurred in mid-March, when Mr. Polanski’s lawyers disclosed in an appeals brief that Roger Gunson, a now-retired lawyer who originally prosecuted the case, had given sealed testimony describing a plan by Judge Laurence J. Rittenband, the original judge, to limit Mr. Polanski’s sentence to a 90-day psychiatric evaluation, a portion of which Mr. Polanski had served during his 42 days in Chino State Prison. Mr. Gunson, who gave the testimony in January, also described his own reservations about the handling of the case by Judge Rittenband, who is now deceased.

Note: For an analysis of this decision by the Swiss government, click here.

Our federal and state governments have dragged their feet in addressing the risks of BPA exposure - due mainly to relentless lobbying by the chemical industry. The chemical industry has used every weapon at its disposal - including lawsuits, in the case of San Francisco - to keep BPA on the shelves and in our bodies. So the Food and Drug Administration deserves mild applause for reversing its position on BPA, calling it a "concern" and offering ways in which the public can reduce its exposure to the chemical. It would have been far better for the FDA to ban the chemical, or at least require manufacturers to label products that contain it. Instead, it offered the familiar "more study is needed" defense and said that it doesn't have enough data to support a legal crackdown.

Note: The Department of Health and Human Services has released a list of ways to reduce your exposure. It can be found at www.hhs.gov/safety/bpa.

A Pentagon project to perfect a projectile capable of delivering an electric shock to incapacitate a person tens of metres away [is now in its final stages]. It will be fired from a standard 40-millimetre grenade launcher. The projectile, being developed by Taser International under a $2.5 million contract, is known as a Human Electro-Muscular Incapacitation or HEMI device. Taser will deliver the first prototypes for testing and evaluation early next year. The ... cartridges should be able to hit targets 60 metres [200 feet] away. However, the impact force of the projectile remains a worry. "There is a known risk of severe injury from impact projectiles, either from blunt force at short ranges or from hitting a sensitive part of the body," says security researcher Neil Davison, who has recently written a book on non-lethal weapons. The duration of the shock which the HEMI will deliver to its target has also raised concerns. Marksmen will need time to reach the incapacitated target, and because the weapon is designed for long-range use this could be considerable. "We should be worried about undesirable effects if people are going to be subjected to bouts of prolonged incapacitation," says Steve Wright, a specialist in non-lethal weapons at Leeds Metropolitan University in the UK.

Note: For lots more on "non-lethal weapons" from major media sources, click here.

Though more than 4,000 Louisiana homeowners have received rebuilding money only in the last six months, or are struggling with inadequate grants or no money at all, FEMA is intent on taking away their trailers by the end of May. The deadline, which ends temporary housing before permanent housing has replaced it, has become a stark example of recovery programs that seem almost to be working against one another. Thousands of rental units have yet to be restored, and not a single one of 500 planned “Katrina cottages” has been completed and occupied. The Road Home program for single-family homeowners, which has cost federal taxpayers $7.9 billion, has a new contractor who is struggling to review a host of appeals, and workers who assist the homeless are finding more elderly people squatting in abandoned buildings. Nonetheless, FEMA wants its trailers back, even though it plans to scrap or sell them for a fraction of what it paid for them. As of last week, there were two groups still in the agency’s temporary housing program: more than 3,000 in trailers and nearly 80 who have been in hotels paid for by FEMA since last May, when it shut down group trailer sites. Most are elderly, disabled or both, including double amputees, diabetes patients, the mentally ill, people prone to seizures and others dependent on oxygen tanks. Of those in trailers, more than 2,000 are homeowners who fear that the progress they are making in rebuilding will come to a halt if their trailers are taken. Progress on renovations has been slow for many reasons: contractors who did shoddy work or simply absconded with money, baffling red tape and rule changes, and inadequate grants.

Note: For further reports on the amazingly unhelpful government response to hurricanes Katrina and Rita, click here.

An internal Justice Department inquiry has concluded that Bush administration lawyers committed serious lapses of judgment in writing secret memorandums authorizing brutal interrogations but that they should not be prosecuted, according to government officials briefed on its findings. The report by the Office of Professional Responsibility, an internal ethics unit within the Justice Department, is also likely to ask state bar associations to consider possible disciplinary action, which could include reprimands or even disbarment, for some of the lawyers involved in writing the legal opinions, the officials said. The findings, growing out of an inquiry that started in 2004, would represent a stinging rebuke of the lawyers and their legal arguments. But they would stop short of the criminal referral sought by some human rights advocates, who have suggested that the lawyers could be prosecuted as part of a criminal conspiracy to violate the anti-torture statute. President Obama has said the Justice Department would have to decide whether the lawyers who authorized the interrogation methods should face charges, while pledging that interrogators would not be investigated or prosecuted for using techniques that the lawyers said were legal. The draft report is described as very detailed, tracing e-mail messages between the Justice Department lawyers and officials at the White House and the Central Intelligence Agency. Among the questions it is expected to consider is whether the memos were an independent judgment of the limits of the federal anti-torture statute or were deliberately skewed to justify the use of techniques proposed by the C.I.A.

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

Of the many ways that the Bush administration sought to evade accountability for its violations of the law and the Constitution under the cover of battling terrorism, one of the most appalling was its attempt to use inflated claims of state secrecy to slam shut the doors of the nation’s courthouses. Sadly, the Obama administration also embraced this tactic, even though President Obama criticized the cult of secrecy while running for office, leaving it to the courts to stand up for transparency and accountability. And that is just what a panel of the federal appeals court in San Francisco did on Tuesday by firmly rejecting the claim that the government can prevent a judge from even hearing those who say they were hurt by federal policies and actions. The unanimous ruling by a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit reinstated a civil lawsuit brought against a government contractor by five victims of the extraordinary rendition program, under which foreigners were kidnapped and flown to other countries for interrogation and torture. The panel said the government can ask a judge to decide on a case-by-case basis whether disclosing particular evidence would jeopardize national security. But it recognized the affront to civil liberties and the constitutional separation of powers in the Justice Department’s argument that the executive branch is entitled to have lawsuits shut down whenever an official makes a blanket claim of national security.

Note: For lots more on government secrecy from reliable sources, click here.

The Justice Department has proposed a new domestic spying measure that would make it easier for state and local police to collect intelligence about Americans, share the sensitive data with federal agencies and retain it for at least 10 years. Law enforcement agencies would be allowed to target groups as well as individuals, and to launch a criminal intelligence investigation based on the suspicion that a target is engaged in terrorism or providing material support to terrorists. They also could share results with a constellation of federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies, and others in many cases. Michael German, policy counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union, said the proposed rule may [permit] police to collect intelligence even when no underlying crime is suspected. German, an FBI agent for 16 years, said easing established limits on intelligence-gathering would lead to abuses against peaceful political dissenters. He pointed to reports in the past six years that undercover New York police officers infiltrated protest groups before the 2004 Republican National Convention; that California state agents eavesdropped on peace, animal rights and labor activists; and that Denver police spied on Amnesty International and others before being discovered. "If police officers no longer see themselves as engaged in protecting their communities from criminals and instead as domestic intelligence agents working on behalf of the CIA, they will be encouraged to collect more information," German said. "It turns police officers into spies on behalf of the federal government."

Note: For many disturbing reports on increasing threats to civil liberties from reliable sources, click here.

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.