Tag: corruption

ADL pushed BMG to drop Roger Waters by threatening to weaponize company’s Nazi past

The Grayzone has obtained a private letter authored by ADL director Jonathan Greenblatt threatening to weaponize the Nazi past of the BMG music company unless executives terminated a major deal with Roger Waters. BMG has publicly denied Israel lobby influence on its decision to nix Waters’ contract.

When the Berlin-based BMG music company terminated its business relationship with Roger Waters, the Pink Floyd co-founder claimed the decision was spurred by a concerted Israel lobby-directed campaign to financially retaliate against his outspoken support for Palestine. The Grayzone has obtained a threatening private letter sent by Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt to BMG executives which confirms the musician’s accusation.

“Given the fact that your parent company, Bertelsmann Group, has made laudable and necessary efforts to repair its Nazi past,” the ADL director warned in his June 16, 2023 letter, “it would be deeply unfortunate to have those efforts continue to be tarnished by such hurtful and injurious conduct.”

In an interview with The Grayzone, Waters described the ADL’s menacing missive as the culmination of a months-long intimidation campaign which began well before the October 7 attacks in Israel. The ADL’s push resulted not only in the termination of the company’s deal to release the new 50th anniversary recording of “The Dark Side of the Moon,” he said, but in the departure of BMG’s CEO as well.

“As far as attacks on me by the ADL and and all the rest of the lobby are concerned, the jury has been out for a long time, but it’s not out anymore,” Waters commented to The Grayzone. “The contention that I’m an antisemite because I’ve stood up against the attempted genocide of the indigenous people of Palestine is dead in the water. The people of the world have seen through the wall of hatred and tissue of lies.”

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US Officials Concede No Active Surveillance On Long-Term Effects Of COVID-19 Vaccines

In a Feb. 15 hearing by the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, U.S. health officials side-stepped a question when asked whether the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is actively conducting extended safety surveillance on those who received early COVID-19 vaccines.

Rep. Nicole Malliotakis (R-N.Y.) asked Dr. Peter Marks, director of the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, whether the FDA is conducting active surveillance and if there are any specific health markers they’re studying that may signal trends requiring further inquiry.

“Every time we go through and do the safety surveillance, we start back, and it goes back to 2020. In some cases where we’re looking for certain things, we might use a different window, but indeed, we have to look from the beginning of the period of surveillance. I can turn it over to Dr. Jernigan because he can speak for CDC [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] in that regard,” Dr. Marks said.

“So with regard to myocarditis, we certainly have been monitoring the issue with various different data systems. I think the most recent data really demonstrates that you’re about eight times less likely to get myocarditis if you’re vaccinated compared to those that are unvaccinated,” Dr. Daniel Jernigan, director of the National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases at the CDC responded.

Rep. Malliotakis told Jernigan she wanted to know about “everything,” not just myocarditis.

Dr. Jerrigan asked her to repeat the question, and she asked again whether the FDA was conducting extended safety surveillance on early recipients of COVID-19 vaccines.

“Most of the reports that we get of adverse events are in the few weeks following the vaccination,” Jernigan said. In terms of monitoring these over time, Jernigan said the agency has “vaccine effectiveness” systems in place at the CDC.

Neither Jernigan nor Marks referenced any active surveillance initiatives being undertaken by their agencies to monitor people who received the original COVID-19 vaccines for long-term health effects.

“There is no system in place for long-term vaccine safety surveillance in this country,” Ms. Liz Willner, founder of OpenVAERS, told The Epoch Times.

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Leading Scientific Journal Humiliated After Publishing Fake AI-Generated Paper About Rat With Giant Penis

A leading scientific journal faces humiliation after it published a completely fake paper, purportedly written by Chinese researchers, which contained AI generated images of a rat with a penis bigger than its own body.

The Telegraph reports that the journal Frontiers in Cell and Development Biology published a paper that claimed to show the signalling pathway of sperm stem cells, but depicted a rat sitting upright with a massive dick and four giant testicles.

The illustration was reportedly created by using Midjourney, the AI imaging tool, which added labels to the ridiculous diagram using terms that don’t exist, including “dissilced”, “testtomcels” and “senctolic”.

Another ludicrous image to the right of the rat displays “sterrn cells” in a Petri dish being spooned out.

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Joe Biden, Unlike Trump, Didn’t Take Cognitive Test in Annual Exam, Sanjay Gupta Says

President Joe Biden is considered perfectly fit for duty after a physical exam Friday, according to a report from the president’s doctor, Kevin O’Connor.

Additionally, the president, unlike his immediate predecessor, did not undergo a test of his cognitive abilities, CNN Chief Medical Correspondent Sanjay Gupta said.

During an interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper on Anderson Cooper 360, Gupta was asked if Biden had taken any type of exam to measure his mental state.

“There’s been a lot of focus on his cognitive abilities, questions raised by opponents and others, and in 2018 the former president [Donald Trump] had a test that measured mental acuity, was that part of today’s test?” Cooper asked Gupta.

“It doesn’t seem like it,” Gupta replied. “I read pretty carefully through the doctor’s report and they mention neurological exam, but that was more in terms of testing motor strength and sensation and things like that.”

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Crooked FBI Special Agent Who Investigated Trump-Russia Hoax Faces Additional Prison Time — Sentenced to Over 2 Years for Concealing Payment from Albanian Businessman

Charles F. McGonigal, a former high-ranking FBI official who once played a pivotal role in the controversial Trump-Russia collusion investigation, was sentenced on Friday to an additional 28 months in federal prison.

McGonigal, 55, faced the judicial consequences for failing to disclose a substantial sum of $225,000 he received from an Albanian businessman connected to the Albanian government.

The sentencing was made public by U.S. Attorney Matthew M. Graves, alongside FBI Assistant Directors Donald Alway of the Los Angeles Field Office and David Sundberg of the Washington Field Office.

U.S. District Court Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly handed down the sentence, which also includes a three-year term of supervised release after McGonigal’s imprisonment.

McGonigal was previously the Special Agent in Charge of the FBI’s New York Field Office, a role in which he was responsible for, among other duties, counterintelligence investigations.

In September, McGonigal admitted that he received at least $225,000 in cash from a person with whom he also traveled internationally, during which they met with foreign citizens. This person later became an informant for the FBI in a criminal case concerning foreign political lobbying, a case over which McGonigal had supervisory authority.

The court recognized that his actions significantly obstructed the administration of justice.

As the Special Agent in Charge for the FBI’s New York Field Office, McGonigal had a significant role in overseeing matters of national security and counterintelligence from August 2017 until his retirement in September 2018.

“During this time, McGonigal concealed from the FBI the nature of his relationship with a former foreign security officer and businessperson who had ongoing business interests in foreign countries and before foreign governments. Specifically, McGonigal hid from the FBI that he received at least $225,000 in cash from the individual and traveled abroad with him and met with foreign nationals, in-part to advance their private business interests,” according to the DOJ.

This sentence follows his prior conviction for charges unrelated to the current case.

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“What Are They, the 51st State?”: Congressman Questions Why Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin Has Ukraine Flag Alongside US Flag in His Office

In a post on X Twitter on Thursday, Rep. Wesley Hunt (R-TX) questioned why Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin had a Ukraine flag alongside the United States flag in his office, as seen on video of a teleconference from Wednesday, “Why does Sec. Def have a Ukrainian flag in his office? What are they, the 51st State?”

Former trump National Security Advisor Gen. Mike Flynn (USA, Ret.) concurred, “.@DeptofDefense spokesperson, this is a great question. WTH!?”

Austin was speaking from his home office in Northern Virginia to a meeting in Brussels of the Ukraine Defense Contract Group. Austin was scheduled to attend the meeting in person but a recent re-hospitalization for complications from treatment for prostate cancer forced him to change plans. Austin returned to the Pentagon on Thursday.

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Biden Ghostwriter Faces Scrutiny Over Deleted Recordings In House Judiciary Probe

The House Judiciary Committee on Feb. 14 demanded that the ghostwriter of President Joe Biden’s memoir hand over any recordings and notes from his conversations during their collaboration.

In a letter sent via email, Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) formally asked Mark Zwonitzer to provide the committee with any remaining audio recordings and transcripts he has of conversations with President Biden.

Mr. Zwonitzer, the ghostwriter who helped President Biden write “Promise Me, Dad” and “Promises to Keep,” deleted some recordings and materials from his computer once he learned of the probe but was ultimately not charged.

The request comes in the wake of the release of special counsel Robert Hur’s 388-page report into President Biden’s alleged unlawful removal, willful retention, and disclosure of classified documents.

The materials include “notebooks containing Mr. Biden’s handwritten entries about issues of national security and foreign policy implicating sensitive intelligence sources and methods.” These were used to help Mr. Zwonitzer put together the memoir.

President Biden condemned statements in the report about his poor memory and mental faculties, while also denying parts related to sharing classified information with his ghostwriter.

“I’ve seen the headlines since the report was released about my willful retention of documents. These assertions are not only misleading, they’re just plain wrong,” President Biden said at a press briefing following the release of the report.

“I did not share classified information. I did not share it,” the president said at the time, regarding his collaboration with Mr. Zwonitzer.

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Former Puerto Rico Mayor Gets 5 Years After Being Caught In “High Profile Bribery Case”

A former Puerto Rico mayor faces 5 years in prison after he was caught on tape in a “high-profile bribery case”. 

Ángel Pérez Otero was sentenced on Monday as part of a wider federal crackdown on government corruption in Puerto Rico, ABC News reported this week. 

Otero had previously been found guilty of conspiracy, bribery back in March, charged with awarding contract and expediting invoice payments while getting kickbacks of thousands of dollars.

Federal authorities said the scheme ran from late 2019 to May 2021. 

Back in March, the Department of Justice wrote about the scheme: “According to court documents and evidence presented at trial, Ángel Pérez-Otero, 52, was involved in a bribery conspiracy in which, from approximately late 2019 through May 2021, he accepted thousands of dollars in cash bribes on a regular basis from the owner of a construction company.”

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Epstein Victims File Lawsuit Against the US Government, Claim FBI Enabled His Sex Trafficking

A dozen victims of dead pedophile Jeffrey Epstein have filed a lawsuit against the US government, alleging that the FBI enabled his sex trafficking operation to continue for over two decades.

The victims, whose names are not public, allege the FBI had received tips about Epstein’s behavior as far back as 1996 but did nothing with the information.

The Hill reports, “A probe finally began in 2006, the suit says, but ended once Epstein pleaded guilty to a soliciting prostitution charge in Florida and was sentenced to 18 months in prison. The suit claims the FBI continued to ignore tips until Epstein was arrested on sex trafficking charges in 2019. He killed himself in prison months later.”

“As a direct and proximate cause of the FBI’s negligence, plaintiffs would not have been continued to be sex trafficked, abused, raped, tortured and threatened,” the complaint states, according to the report. “Jane Does 1-12 bring this lawsuit to get to the bottom — once and for all — of the FBI’s role in Epstein’s criminal sex trafficking ring.”

The lawsuit additionally claims the FBI had evidence of his continued crimes but refused to investigate further.

“During the FBI investigation, the FBI was complicit in permitting Epstein and co-conspirators to continue to victimize Jane Does 1-12 and other young women,” the lawsuit alleges. “The FBI had photographs, videos and interviews and hard evidence of child prostitution and failed to timely investigate and arrest Epstein in deviation from the FBI protocols.”

“The FBI had a non-discretionary obligation, governed by established policies, procedures, rules, and protocols, to handle and investigate tips concerning potential and ongoing underage child erotica, rape, sex with minors, and sex trafficking in a reasonable manner and to act against Epstein and to prevent him from committing repeated crimes,” the complaint continued.

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Inside the plan to diagnose Alzheimer’s in people with no memory problems — and who stands to benefit

In a darkened Amsterdam conference hall this summer, a panel of industry and academic scientists took the stage to announce a plan to radically expand the definition of Alzheimer’s disease to include millions of people with no memory complaints.

Those with normal cognition who test positive for elevated levels of certain proteins that have been tied to Alzheimer’s — but not proven to cause the disease — would be diagnosed as having Alzheimer’s Stage 1, the panel members explained.

Even before the presentation ended, attendees in the packed hall were lining up behind microphones to ask questions, according to video of the event.

“I’m troubled by this,” Dr. Andrea Bozoki, a University of North Carolina neurologist, told the panel. “You are taking a bunch of people who may never develop dementia or even cognitive impairment and you’re calling them Stage 1. That doesn’t seem to fit.”

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