Tag: corruption

Thai police arrest two Israeli citizens on suspicion of business and real estate crimes

Thai authorities arrested two Israeli citizens on suspicion of business and real estate crimes as part of a wider crackdown on foreigners circumventing the country’s laws.

On Tuesday, police in Thailand arrested an Israeli citizen at Koh Samui airport on suspicion of being involved in the purchase of land through Thai frontmen, in an attempt to circumvent the restrictions on foreigners purchasing real estate.

The Thai government is increasing enforcement of these laws following complaints from its citizens that foreigners are stealing their livelihoods in the city’s tourist areas.

According to local media, Surat Thani immigration police, in collaboration with Koh Phangan Police Station, arrested Eden Elisa, a 30 year old Israeli citizen who was one of the owners of “Elisa Paradise” in Thailand. He is suspected of having, along with others, provided false information to the land registry in order to gain control of a plot of land through the company allegedly established by Thai citizens.

Elisa reportedly left the country before authorities carried out a search warrant and was arrested at the airport upon re-entering Thailand.

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Washington Post Slapped with Class Action Over Secret ‘Surveillance Pricing’ Scheme That Charged Readers Different Rates

The Washington Post has been hit with a class action lawsuit alleging the newspaper secretly used readers’ personal data to charge different subscription prices.

CourtHouse News reports that the lawsuit accuses the Bezos-owned outlet of creating “pricing profiles” based on subscribers’ reading habits, demographics, browsing activity, and other personal information.

The lawsuit, which was filed in the Superior Court of Washington, D.C., states:

The Post has been monitoring usage and implementing this pricing practice, often referred to as ‘surveillance pricing’ since at least December 2024, at which point not a single subscriber was aware of The Post’s surveillance pricing or secret harvesting of subscriber data.

The law does not allow this conduct. State attorneys general across the country along with the Federal Trade Commission have begun investigating companies that engage in ‘surveillance pricing’ (also referred to as ‘algorithmic pricing’) using consumer personal information instead of market forces to set individualized prices.

According to the plaintiffs, the practice only became public after New York required companies to disclose when algorithms use consumer data to set individualized prices.

Subscribers reportedly discovered they were being offered dramatically different rates for the same product.

One reader claimed a renewal jumped from $170 to $260, while another obtained a subscription for just $60.

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America the Unfree—Home of the Policed, Surveilled and Occupied

“I love the inflation.”—Donald Trump (June 2026)

“I don’t think about Americans’ financial situation. I don’t think about anybody.”—Donald Trump (May 2026)

America has become an occupied nation.

Not by one invading army, but by many occupying powers: the police state, the surveillance state, the war state, the corporate state, the foreign influence machine, and a ruling class that treats the American people as little more than collateral damage in its pursuit of power, profit and control.

We have been policed, surveilled, taxed, indebted, manipulated, censored, tracked, searched, silenced and sold out.

Foreign powers are buying up our farmland, buying favor with the Trump family, weaseling their way into the White House, dictating national policy, and now—with the backing of the Trump administration and bipartisan support in Congress—one of America’s closest partners-in-crime may soon gain even greater access to U.S. intelligence and surveillance capabilities.

This is what we have come to.

The swamp under President Trump has taken on a decidedly foreign flavor: any nation with enough money, leverage or strategic value to enrich the Trump family can now get its hands on a piece of the American pie—all the while, the American people continue to struggle to survive Trump’s self-enrichment schemes, broken promises, endless wars, militarized streets and vanity projects.

We’re being sold to the highest bidders, and still nothing is being done to protect us.

Ordinary Americans are told there is not enough money to honor the government’s promises to them. Social Security’s retirement trust fund is now projected to run short in late 2032, at which point retirees could face an automatic 22 percent cut in scheduled benefits if Congress fails to act. Medicare’s hospital insurance fund is projected to run short the following year. Seniors, the disabled, working families and the poor are told to brace for sacrifice.

But there is always money for war.

There is always money for surveillance.

There is always money for police-state crackdowns, border militarization, private contractors, foreign aid, weapons systems, tax breaks for the wealthy, slush funds for political allies, and spectacles of imperial excess.

While Americans worry about groceries, rent, medical bills, job security, retirement and whether their children will inherit anything resembling freedom, the White House is being turned into a playground for power and celebrity. Trump’s June 14 birthday celebration is reportedly set to include a UFC fight on the White House lawn, with weigh-ins at the Lincoln Memorial, transforming public symbols of sacrifice, liberty and national memory into props for one man’s vanity show.

This, too, is occupation.

Not merely the occupation of land, but the occupation of the public imagination. The occupation of the people’s institutions. The occupation of the Constitution itself.

The contrast could not be more obscene.

On June 8, 1789, James Madison rose in the House of Representatives to introduce amendments to the Constitution that would become the Bill of Rights. Madison and the founding generation fought to bind the government down. They understood that written limits on government power were not optional. They were essential.

Today’s rulers are fighting to free the government from those restraints.

They want fewer limits on surveillance, police power, presidential immunity, war-making, foreign entanglements, secrecy, corruption, and the ability of the rich and powerful to buy their way into the machinery of government.

That is how far we have fallen.

From a Bill of Rights, we have descended into a bill of sale.

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China’s Biological Warfare Threat to the United States

On June 2, 2026, the Department of Justice charged two NIH researchers, Vincent Munster, 53, a Dutch national and Chief of the Virus Ecology Section at NIH’s Rocky Mountain Laboratory in Hamilton, Montana, and Claude Kwe, 38, a Cameroonian research fellow, with conspiracy to smuggle monkeypox virus into the United States and making false statements to federal law enforcement.

While Munster is Dutch and Kwe Cameroonian, neither is a Chinese national. However, the case’s connection to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) biological threat framework is well documented.

Sen. Rand Paul’s April 2024 letters revealed that Munster was a named partner in the DEFUSE proposal. The EcoHealth Alliance-DARPA grant application proposed engineering chimeric bat coronaviruses and listed the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) as a partner. Paul said the disclosure “appears to contradict” Dr. Fauci’s prior testimony that the NIH was unaware of the proposal.

The WIV operates under the Chinese Academy of Sciences, a State Council institution. A House Foreign Affairs Committee report found that local CCP leaders, including Director General Wang Yanyi and BSL-4 laboratory manager Yuan Zhiming, directly oversaw the WIV and its highest-containment laboratory.

The State Department further determined that the WIV has conducted classified research for the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) since at least 2017. Cables obtained by U.S. Right to Know cited the existence of “PLA shadow labs at WIV.”

The House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence also linked the WIV to the Fifth Institute of the Academy of Military Medical Sciences (AMMS), which is part of China’s acknowledged biological weapons program. The committee concluded that SARS-CoV-2 may have links to that program.

This case is the latest in a documented series of biological-smuggling incidents involving China-linked research networks operating in the United States. Most of these cases have been intercepted at Detroit Metropolitan Airport. Several examples are detailed in the section below.

China’s asymmetric warfare toolkit includes numerous vectors designed to pressure the United States, including biological warfare. These components work together as part of a broader strategy.

For example, the cyber component, led by Chinese state-sponsored hacking groups Volt Typhoon and Salt Typhoon, has been confirmed to have penetrated U.S. power grids, water systems, and telecommunications networks.

On the economic and demographic front, Chinese chemical manufacturers supply fentanyl precursors that flow through Mexican cartels into American communities.

The State Department has assessed that China operated an offensive biological warfare program from the early 1950s until at least the late 1980s. During that period, China weaponized ricin, botulinum toxins, and the causative agents of anthrax, cholera, plague, and tularemia.

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 FBI Raids Ohio Democrat Ballot Harvesting Group’s Headquarters — This Follows Thousands of Suspect Registrations in 2024 Election

The FBI raided the Cleveland headquarters of the Ohio Organizing Collaborative (OOC) on Thursday, as part of an ongoing federal investigation into suspected ballot harvesting and voter fraud operations in the key swing state of Ohio.

Agents also fanned out across the state, showing up at the homes of OOC leaders, staff members, volunteers, and connected community organizers in places like Columbus, Dayton, and Cincinnati. They served subpoenas, seized electronic devices, and questioned people directly about voter fraud.

The Ohio Organizing Collaborative presents itself as a “pro-democracy” voter registration nonprofit focused on underrepresented communities. In reality, it functions as a Democrat-aligned operation deeply embedded in progressive get-out-the-vote efforts across Ohio’s major cities.

Amuse reported:

Here is more information on the FBI raids. The FBI hit the main office and several homes of the Democrat operatives.

Via the Statehouse News Bureau:

The Ohio Organizing Collaborative, a group that organizes political activities for Democratic and progressive causes, has been raided by the FBI.

Ohio Organizing Collaborative Board Member Prentiss Haney said FBI agents came to the organization’s Cleveland office yesterday. He said agents have fanned out and questioned people who work with his organization. Haney said agents have searched and sometimes taken laptops and electronic devices as well as interviewed people who work with the organization.

“This is not normal business. I mean there’s no reason for over 100 agents to be knocking on the doors of everyday Ohioans,” Haney said. “Demanding and accusing people of voter fraud as if it was a witch hunt and, and scaring them with the children, following them in their cars to school and to work. I mean this was a full-out assault. I mean, we haven’t seen anything like this since Selma. And so this was completely um politically motivated.”

The Ohio Organizing Collaborative has a documented history of voter registration fraud. In 2017, paid canvasser Rebecca A. Hammonds, who worked directly for the group, pleaded guilty to multiple counts of falsely registering people to vote and forging signatures on voter registration forms. She was sentenced to six months in jail. Some of the fraudulent registrations were even submitted for dead people.

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How US Media Gaslights Everyone Without You Even Knowing It

The most useful aspect of US media propaganda is how it acts like even recent history doesn’t exist. It’s a wonderful form of gaslighting. Even the slightly less pro-war, less pro-death-spiral articles vomited forth by Western media act like history started yesterday.

They run with headlines like “US Strikes Iran In Response To Downing of Apache Helicopter” or “Iran, US Exchange Fire As Ceasefire Seems To Be Breaking Down.” Those types of headlines. It’s nearly every article in the US media about Iran. For examples just look here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here. And that’s just the past TWO DAYS.

None of the articles acknowledge that the US war machine went thousands of miles around the fucking world to fucking attack Iran in the first place despite Iran attacking no one. Despite the US and Israel having nuclear weapons and Iran having none. Despite the US and Israel committing genocide in Gaza while Iran commits none. Despite the US surrounding Iran with dozens of military bases while Iran has none outside their own country.

Leaving any and all of this out (or putting some of it in the last sentence that 95% of readers don’t get to), means that even a seemingly, somewhat, possibly, kinda“unbiased” article still serves US imperial propaganda.

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Former U.S. Marine Who Advised VP JD Vance on Myanmar Detained by Myanmar Authorities

A former U.S. Marine officer and former head of the American Chamber of Commerce in Myanmar has been detained by Myanmar authorities.

Adam Castillo, who was traveling to Myanmar to promote his new book, “Finding Our Voice,” which critiques Myanmar’s Junta for human rights abuses, was detained as he re-entered the Southeast Asian nation.

The U.S. State Department has since been briefed on Castillo’s arrest but has not released a comment due to “privacy concerns.”

Per Reuters:

An American businessman who wrote a book about living through a military coup ‌in Myanmar was detained on his return to the Southeast Asian ‌nation on Thursday, according to two people briefed on the matter.

Adam Castillo, a former head ​of the American Chamber of Commerce in Myanmar who is based in Yangon where he runs a security firm, was stopped at an airport after traveling to the country, one of the people said.

A U.S. State Department spokesperson said it was ‌aware of reports of ⁠the detention of an American in Myanmar but had no further comment “due to privacy concerns”.

A spokesperson for the military-backed government ⁠did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

In July of last year, Castillo attended a meeting at Vice President JD Vance’s office to discuss U.S. relations with Myanmar.

In the meeting, Castillo suggested the United States “could play a peace-broker role in Myanmar and urged Washington to take a page out of China’s playbook by first brokering a bilateral self-governance deal between the Myanmar military and the Kachin Independence Army (KIA).

Castillo has been among several voices urging Washington to adopt strategic policies toward Myanmar, given the country’s status as the third-largest producer of rare earth minerals/metals.

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Senate wants to force US to share sensitive intel with Israel

Buried deep inside a 192-page intelligence authorization bill is Section 622, titled “United States-Israel Intelligence Sharing Enhancement.” It would require the president, acting through the director of national intelligence and as necessary the secretary of defense, to “expand and enhance intelligence sharing with the Government of Israel” on a list of subjects that encompasses almost every topic of intelligence interest in the Middle East.

The bill, put forward by Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, would prohibit any suspension, reduction, or limitation of such sharing “except on the basis of a specific and identifiable national security concern determined by the President.” Any such exception would require a report to Congress within fifteen days detailing not only the reason for the change but also the categories of information involved. The same report would require an assessment of the anticipated impact on regional security and various other matters.

This proposal is one of several recent moves by those in Washington who carry the Israeli government’s water to keep the United States tied to Israel despite plummeting support for the country among the American public. The most salient form of U.S. support to Israel has been more than $300 billion in economic and especially military assistance. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has tried to get ahead of the declining public support and avoid embarrassing losses by suggesting it would be fine with him to phase out the military aid.

Israel’s strategy and that of its U.S. supporters is now to rely on ties with, and support from, the United States that are not as salient as the military aid with its prominent price tag. The strategy includes forms of military integration that are less visible than congressionally appropriated grant aid and therefore less publicly accountable. Section 224 of a defense authorization bill currently in the House of Representatives embodies this form of integration.

The mandating of intelligence sharing carries this strategy further by moving it into the shadowy world of relations between intelligence agencies. That world is even farther removed from public visibility and accountability than the defense integration, and even less likely to stimulate thoughts about American taxpayers’ money going to a foreign country. So far, Section 622 of the intelligence bill has received less attention than Section 224 of the defense bill.

The notion of legislating an intelligence liaison relationship in this way, with any foreign country, is bizarre. Liaison with counterpart foreign services, including exchanges of information, is an important but complex part of the intelligence business. The nature of a liaison relationship depends partly on the temperature of the overall political relationship with the country in question but also on other factors known mostly to intelligence officers.

These include the collection requirements levied on them, their ability or inability to meet those requirements with national resources, their assessment of the foreign service’s ability and willingness to fill collection gaps, the role that any trading of information plays as quid pro quos in operational cooperation, and the risks of compromising intelligence sources and methods.

Moreover, no single liaison relationship exists in isolation. The U.S. intelligence services need to consider possible implications for their other foreign relationships. For example, one generally does not share with country A information about country B if the United States has a relationship with B that is about at the same level as it has with A.

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New UFO files dump reveals CIA destroyed a ‘message from space’

The Pentagon released a third batch of UFO files today, including documents that claim the CIA destroyed a ‘message from space.’

Among the tranche is a 1958 CIA memorandum discussing a phone conversation with a scientist regarding concerns about a destroyed ‘space message and its transmitter.’

The scientist, Dr. Leon Davidson, was a chemical engineer who worked on the Manhattan Project and at Los Alamos, and studied UFOs.

The memo stated that Davidson was told by the CIA that the agency ‘cannot resolve his problem concerning the space message and its transmitter because records on the matter have been destroyed by the evaluating agency.’

The third set of documents was quietly uploaded to the Department of War’s website on Friday morning.

According to the Pentagon, there have been ‘unprecedented levels of interest’ in the UFO files, and the Department of War’s website has received over 1.7 billion hits worldwide since its launch in May.

The latest trove of files includes dozens of new documents, photographs and videos to the government’s rapidly expanding archive of unexplained sightings.

A one-page memo in the third tranche of UFO files released on Friday revealed a 1958 phone conversation between the CIA and a scientist about an alleged ‘space message’ which had been destroyed after its reception on Earth.

The scientist, Dr Leon Davidson, was a chemical engineer and UFO researcher who worked on the Manhattan Project, the mission to create the world’s first atomic bomb in World War II.

The memo stated that Davidson was told by the CIA that the agency ‘cannot resolve his problem concerning the space message and its transmitter because records on the matter have been destroyed by the evaluating agency.’

The memo then acknowledged that two agents from the CIA had been in contact with Davidson before the scientist reached out to the agency regarding the mysterious transmission.

The memo admitted that agents ‘Walker and Skakich’ attempted to conceal their identity from Davidson while speaking to him about the message from space.

‘Referenced telephone conversation disclosed that there is nothing in the record to show that Davidson knew he was dealing with the Agency in his contacts with Walker and Skakich, that in fact, an effort had been made to to conceal their CIA identity from him.’

‘But the answer was hardly fair to Davidson, and one not likely to be fully accepted by him,’ the memo continued, noting that Davidson was given no answers on how or why the transmission was destroyed.

It is unclear when and where Davidson allegedly received his message from space.

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US Investigating Iran War Critic Trita Parsi, Co-Founder Of Non-Interventionist Think Tank

The Trump administration has launched an investigation into prominent Iran war critic Trita Parsi, according to a report in the Free Press.

According to US officials and documents reviewed by the pro-Trump outlet, officials are looking into the possibility of deporting Parsi, who holds both Iranian and Swedish citizenship.

Parsi, who is co-founder and executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft and co-founded the National Iranian-American Council (NIAC), has been a vocal opponent of the ongoing US attacks on Iran.

A Trump official told the Free Press that US Secretary of State Marco Rubio had been “very clear” in his intentions to tackle “people who support adversaries of ours and whose work furthers their agenda and undermines our security.

“Anyone who seeks to undermine the US, we’re taking a hard look at,” the official said.

Since the beginning of the US-Israeli attack on Iran in February, the Trump administration has increasingly targeted figures of Iranian descent in the US.

In April, Hamideh Soleimani Afshar and her daughter Sarina were detained and had their residency permits rescinded after they were – incorrectly – identified as relatives of former Iranian military commander Qassem Soleimani by far-right influencer Laura Loomer.

Despite denying their links to Soleimani, the pair remain in custody in Texas.

The US also detained and revoked the green cards of relatives of former Iranian minister Masoumeh Ebtekar in April.

Parsi is a critic of the Islamic Republic whose family fled to Sweden to escape persecution in Iran. He has faced attacks from Iranian monarchists and pro-Trump figures over his opposition to the conflict.

He has also been highly critical of US backing for what many call Israel’s genocide in Gaza and its attacks on Lebanon.

Speaking to Middle East Eye in May, Parsi warned that the US’s ability to secure a deal with Iran would ultimately come down to its ability to restrain Israeli attacks in the region.

“If Trump either cannot or will not do so, then the value of any agreement with Washington comes sharply into question,” he said.

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