Tag: corruption

NYT op-ed page obscures author’s Saudi funding

The New York Times picked September 11th as an opportune day to publish an essay praising “President Joe Biden and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia exchang[ing] a warm handshake” at last week’s G20 summit, and celebrating the possibility of the U.S. giving formal security guarantees to Riyadh in exchange for Saudi Arabia establishing diplomatic ties with Israel.

Plenty is missing from the essay, including any discussion of how a security commitment might compel U.S. soldiers to fight on behalf of Saudi Arabia, a country whose de facto leader, Mohammed bin Salman, was responsible for ordering the operation that killed Washington Post columnist Jamal Khahoshoggi and has overseen a brutal war in Yemen. The U.S. government also continues to withhold an unredacted memo detailing ties between 9/11 hijackers and Saudi Arabia.

But perhaps even more noticeably, the Times failed to acknowledge the potential financial conflicts of interest between the essay writer’s employer and the essay’s arguments for security guarantees that would be highly beneficial to Saudi Arabia.

Keep reading

CIA whistleblower claims agency ‘BRIBED’ their own analysts to say COVID did NOT come from Wuhan: Bombshell Republican report exposes alleged virus origins cover-up

A CIA whistleblower has told Congress the agency bribed its own analysts to say Covid-19 did not originate in a Wuhan lab.

According to a veteran ‘senior-level’ serving agency officer, the CIA assigned seven officers to a Covid Discovery Team.

At the end of their investigation six of the seven believed the intelligence pointed to a low-confidence assessment that Covid-19 originated in a lab in Wuhan, China. 

The seventh member, the most senior on the team, believed it evolved naturally. The other six were then given a ‘significant monetary incentive to change their position,’ according to the whistleblower. 

The CIA ultimately refused to make an assessment even with low confidence.

‘Both hypotheses rely on significant assumptions or face challenges with conflicting reporting,’ according to the agency. 

The CIA denied engaging in bribery and said it would investigate the allegations. 

‘At CIA we are committed to the highest standards of analytic rigor, integrity, and objectivity. We do not pay analysts to reach specific conclusions. We take these allegations extremely seriously and are looking into them. We will keep our Congressional oversight committees appropriately informed,’ CIA director of public affairs Tammy Kupperman Thorp said in a statement. 

Republican congressmen Mike Turner and Brad Wenstrup, both from Ohio, who lead the Intelligence and Covid committees respectively, wrote a letter to CIA Director William Burns on Tuesday demanding all documents on the matter.

The lawmakers set a September 26 deadline for the CIA to turn over all records involving the COVID Discovery Team and all communications with the FBI, State Department, Health and Human Services and Energy Department about the matter.

They threatened to slap the agencies with subpoenas if they do not comply. 

Keep reading

JPMorgan allegedly notified the government of $1 billion in suspicious transactions by Epstein

JPMorgan Chase allegedly informed the government of over $1 billion in transactions related to “human trafficking” by the late financier Jeffrey Epstein dating to 2003, a lawyer for the U.S. Virgin Islands said. 

The Wall Street giant reported the financial activity — which took place over 16 years — as “suspicious” to the Treasury Department in 2019 after Epstein died by suicide, Mimi Liu, a lawyer for the U.S. Virgin Islands, said at a recent hearing in its lawsuit against the bank, according to a transcript of the public proceeding.

“Epstein’s entire business with JPMorgan and JPMorgan’s entire business with Jeffrey Epstein was human trafficking,” Liu said. “The only reason that JPMorgan finally after 16 years reported the billion dollars in suspicious transactions for Jeffrey Epstein is because he was arrested, and then he was dead.” 

Keep reading

GOP Guv Spent Millions in Tax Dollars on Governor’s Mansion Upgrades

After Republican Tate Reeves was elected governor of Mississippi in 2019, he sold his home and moved his family, naturally, into the governor’s mansion.

But that new home, a national historic landmark, was far from perfect for Reeves. And over the last three and a half years, while not having to pay personal property taxes on his new state-owned mansion, Reeves plowed more than $2.4 million in taxpayer dollars into renovations and upkeep for his temporary home, according to public records obtained by The Daily Beast.

During Reeves’ brief stay, the governor’s mansion has also seen what appears to be an additional $900,000 in renovations, restoration, and refurbishments. Those investments, however, came courtesy of anonymous donors, and appear in federal tax records filed by the Governors Mansion Foundation—a nonprofit whose board features Reeves’ campaign treasurer and a top campaign donor who runs a controversial installment loan business.

That would mean that, in the years since he stopped paying property taxes on his old home, Reeves has put a total of $3.3 million into updating the mansion. His former home, which Reeves sold in July 2020, was last listed for $629,000, according to several real estate websites. In the time since Reeves was first elected lieutenant governor—2012—Mississippi property taxes have increased by about 7.2 percent, according to state data.

Keep reading

American Lung Association Demands the FDA Mislead the Public About Vaping

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) should abandon any efforts to inform the public that vaping is safer than smoking, says the American Lung Association (ALA).  

Numerous public surveys show a consistent, widespread misperception that vaping nicotine is just as or more dangerous than smoking cigarettes. The problem is so extensive that correcting these false beliefs forms part of the FDA’s Center for Tobacco Products (CTP) 5-year strategic plan. 

Writing in the journal Addiction, Brian King, the head of CTP, stated: “Opportunities exist to educate adults who smoke cigarettes about the relative risks of tobacco products.” To that end, among the five goals listed as part of CTP’s plan is a commitment to inform the public that not all tobacco products are created equally, with cigarettes being the most dangerous and others, such as e-cigarettes, being far less harmful. 

The pledge to provide accurate information about the risks of different nicotine products is long overdue and in line with the public health communications of peer countries such as Canada, New Zealand, and the U.K. (The U.K. even has vape shops in hospitals, and some smokers are offered free vapes to help them quit.)

But in their comments on CTP’s strategic plan, the ALA, which proclaims its commitment to a world free of lung disease, demands the FDA “remove language from the description for this goal that references informing adults about the relative risk of tobacco products” and that “CTP should have no part in the industry’s efforts to sustain addiction through the failed and flawed notion that adult smokers should switch to e-cigarettes.”

Despite ALA’s protestations, the idea that e-cigarettes are effective for smoking cessation is not a tobacco industry notion. According to the prestigious Cochrane Review, e-cigarettes are more effective than nicotine patches or gums in helping smokers quit. In essence, the ALA is asking the FDA to withhold accurate information from the public that could save lives. The recommendations sparked strong reactions from those who believe safer alternatives to cigarettes are a no-brainer from a public health perspective.

“This is highly ironic, given the extent to which the Lung Association and other tobacco control organizations went to punish the tobacco industry for lying to the public and hiding critical health information,” writes Michael Siegel, a visiting professor at the Tufts University School of Medicine. “It is also unethical because it violates the public health code of ethics, which calls for honesty and transparency in public health communications. We do not hide critical health information from the public.”

Keep reading

Biden Officials Likely Violated First Amendment On Social Media: 5th Circuit Court

The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled on Friday that several Biden administration officials had likely breached the First Amendment by pressuring social media companies to moderate or take down content they deemed problematic.

And here is Exhibit A of that First Amendment-crushing coercion and collusion… which obviously began in the Trump-era under Anthony Fauci. ZeroHedge was banned from Twitter one day after this email.

Keep reading

FDA Refuses to Provide COVID-19 Vaccine Safety Data to US Senator

U.S. officials are refusing to provide COVID-19 vaccine safety data to a U.S. senator.

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) asked the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for the results of analyses on data from the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System in January. The request came after the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said none of the safety signals it identified for the COVID-19 vaccines were “unexpected.”

The two agencies have run different types of analyses on the system’s reports, which are primarily made by health care professionals.

The first time the agency ran analyses using the method for the COVID-19 vaccines, in 2022, hundreds of signals were triggered, files obtained by The Epoch Times show.

The FDA in 2021 started a different type of analysis, called Empirical Bayesian (EB) data mining.

Keep reading

Prison officer Joanne Hunter who sent X-rated photos to inmate she was having affair with and smuggled cannabis and mobile phone into his cell is jailed for three years

A former prison officer has been jailed for three years for having an inappropriate relationship with an inmate.

Joanne Hunter, 28, conducted the relationship with Connor Willis while working at HMP Forest Bank in Salford.

Hunter – described as ‘naive’ and ‘vulnerable’ in court – believed Willis was ‘in love’ with her and agreed to smuggle packages, including cannabis, into the prison for him. She also sent him explicit photographs, which were later found on her phone.

Manchester Crown Court heard how Hunter, who has a master’s degree in Childhood and Youth studies, began working at the prison in December 2018.

In December 2020, prison authorities received information that she was taking items inside and when she was interviewed by security managers she admitted having a relationship with Willis.

Rachel Widdicombe, prosecuting, told the court how Hunter had agreed smuggle packages into the prison for Willis, one containing a juice carton and another coating a Red Bull can.

Hunter received the packages from an unnamed woman after meeting her at a Tesco supermarket, the court heard. She then smuggled them inside the prison before passing them on to another prisoner – whom she knew as a ‘big player’ and member of crime gang – for Willis. Willis offered to pay her £200-300 for each package, but she refused to take the money.

Keep reading

Prominent Scientist Admits To Pushing “Preapproved” Climate Change Narrative To Get Papers Published

A climate scientist has admitted that he pushed a “preapproved” narrative on climate change in order to get papers published in leading journals.

Patrick T. Brown told The Free Press “I knew not to try to quantify key aspects other than climate change in my research because it would dilute the story that prestigious journals like Nature and its rival, Science, want to tell.”

He continued, “editors of these journals have made it abundantly clear, both by what they publish and what they reject, that they want climate papers that support certain preapproved narratives—even when those narratives come at the expense of broader knowledge for society.”

Brown, who also lectures at Johns Hopkins, added that the biases of the editors and reviewers of journals are well known among aspiring scientists who will often omit inconvenient truths to please them, a process he says “distorts a great deal of climate science research, misinforms the public and most importantly, makes practical solutions more difficult to achieve.”

Keep reading