Corruption

12 slain in Mexico identified as federal officers | CNN
1,000 people have died in drug-related violence in 2009 in Ciudad Juarez alone

Twelve bodies with signs of torture found on the side of a remote highway in the Mexican state of Michoacan were federal police officers, Monte Alejandro Rubido Garcia, technical secretary for Mexico's national security council, said at a news conference Tuesday.

The officers, 11 men and one woman, were "ambushed while they were off duty by an armed group," Rubido said.

The slayings come on the heels of an unprecedented wave of violence washing over Mexico. Since President Felipe Calderon declared war on the drug cartels shortly after coming into office in December 2006, more than 10,000 people have died, about 1,000 of them police.

In the border city of Ciudad Juarez alone, the toll of drug-related deaths for the year topped 1,000, a distinction the Mexican city did not reach last year until September.Read more.

By Dave Lindorff

Of course I could be wrong. Congress could turn around and pass some cockamamie scheme to kick the issue of health care reform down the road, offering some kind of minimal insurance coverage to a few million more people, and cracking down on this or that particularly egregious health provider rip-off, and then staging a “mission accomplished” photo op.

But real health care reform of the kind that Democratic candidates were promising during last year’s presidential campaign is dead, killed by the timidity of the promiser-in-chief, President Barack Obama (and by the massive corruption of the Democrats in Congress, who hav e accepted the tainted coin of the health care industry).

Should Senator Jeff Sessions Serve On the Senate Judiciary Committee?
By Jill Simpson

Today is a big day for Sonia Sotomayor as they start determining whether she should be approved to be on the Supreme Court. It has recently become apparent that Senator Jeff Sessions will be a one-man bandwagon trying to play the tune that she is a racist. Truly this is ironic considering that is probably why he was not approved or confirmed to be on the Federal bench. However that is not why I am writing ya'll tonight.

I want to tell you a story about something that happened to me and why I question whether Mr. Sessions should even be allowed to sit on this important committee.

Veronza Bowers, Jr. - Another Victim of America's Criminal Justice System
by Stephen Lendman

On September 15, 1973, Veronza Bowers, Jr. was arrested in Mill Valley, California and charged with robbery and possession of stolen property. After state charges were dropped for lack of probable cause to obtain a search warrant, the FBI arrested Bowers and charged him with the first-degree murder of National Park Service ranger Kenneth Patrick on August 5, 1973 at Point Reyes National Seashore near San Francisco.

At trial, testimonies from two government informants, Alan Veale and Jonathan Shoher, proved crucial. Both were also charged with the killing. Yet there were no independent eye-witnesses, and no evidence incriminated Bowers besides the word of these two men who had every incentive to cooperate with the Department of Justice.

The Mega-Lie Called the "War on Terror": A Masterpiece of Propaganda
By Richard W. Behan | AlterNet | Posted September 27, 2007
The fraudulence of the "War on Terror" is clearly revealed by looking at the pattern of actions that preceded and followed its launch.

"If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the state can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie ... The truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the state." --Joseph Goebbels, minister of propaganda in Nazi Germany, 1933-1945

Since Sept. 11, 2001, the administration of George W. Bush has told and repeated a lie that is "big enough" to confirm Joseph Goebbels' testimony. It is a mega-lie, and the American people have come to believe it. It is the "War on Terror."

The Bush administration endlessly recites its mantra of deceit:

The War on Terror was launched in response to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. It is intended to enhance our national security at home and to spread democracy in the Middle East.

This is the struggle of our lifetime; we are defending our way of life from an enemy intent on destroying our freedoms. We must fight the enemy in the Middle East, or we will fight him in our cities.

This is classic propaganda. In Goebbels' terms, it is the "state" speaking its lie, but the political, economic, and military consequences of the Bush administration lie are coming into view, and they are all catastrophic. If truth is the enemy of both the lie and George Bush's "state," then the American people need to know the truth.

The military incursions into Afghanistan and Iraq were not done in retaliation for 9/11. The Bush administration had them clearly in mind upon taking office, and they were set in motion as early as Feb. 3, 2001. That was seven months prior to the attacks on the Trade Towers and the Pentagon, and the objectives of the wars had nothing to do with terrorism.

This is beyond dispute. The mainstream press has ignored the story, but the administration's congenital belligerence is fully documented in book-length treatments and in the limitless information pool of the internet. (See my earlier work, for example.) Read more.

Dick Cheney - The Professional
By Michael Parenti

So the Cheney assasination squad story is getting more traction these days with added evidence and insider muttering, eh?

Well, Jean Luc Besson made a film in the 90's called "LEON - THE PROFESSIONAL" with Jean Reno. It's a story of a professional assassin who trains a young girl, whose family was murdered in New York, how to be a professional killer.

Lawmaker won’t deny secret CIA program was ‘Cheney assassination ring’
By David Edwards and Ron Brynaert | Raw Story

Early Friday morning, MSNBC followed up on a theory posted Thursday on the Huffington Post which alleged that a secret CIA program shut down in June by director Leon Panetta could have been related to a purported effort led by Vice President Dick Cheney to assassinate intelligence targets abroad.

This past March, as RAW STORY reported, investigative reporter Seymour Hersh dropped a bombshell when he told an audience at the University of Minnesota that the Bush Administration was running an “executive assassination ring” which reported directly to former Vice President Dick Cheney.

“It’s an executive assassination ring essentially, and it’s been going on and on and on,” Hersh stated. “Under President Bush’s authority, they’ve been going into countries, not talking to the ambassador or the CIA station chief, and finding people on a list and executing them and leaving. That’s been going on, in the name of all of us.”

“The revelation from seven Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee that they were misled about a critical CIA program has sparked a debate that touches on the most sensitive areas of national security policy,” Huffington Post’s Sam Stein wondered Thursday. “What program, exactly, was being kept secret?” Read more.

Cemetery Workers Made $300K in Gravedigging Scheme
Authorities: 4 former workers at historic Ill. cemetery made $300K in gravedigging scheme
By Don Babwin, Associated Press Writer | ABCNews.com

Four former employees accused of digging up bodies and reselling plots at a historic black cemetery near Chicago made about $300,000 in a scheme believed to have stretched back at least four years, authorities said Friday.

Three gravediggers and a manager at the Burr Oak Cemetery in Alsip are accused of unearthing hundreds of corpses and either dumping some in a weeded, desolate area near the cemetery or double-stacking others in graves. The cemetery is the burial place of civil rights-era lynching victim Emmett Till and blues singers Willie Dixon and Dinah Washington.

While Till's grave site was not disturbed, Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart said investigators found his original iconic glass-topped casket rusting in a shack at the cemetery.Read more.

By Jeremy Scahill, AlterNet

On Thursday, June 25, 2009, a spirited rally was held in John Marshall Park, in Washington, D.C. Its purpose: To demand that U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder appoint a “Special Prosecutor for Torture,” who will hold accountable to the supremacy of the Law, certain members of the Bush-Cheney Gang, including ex-President George W. Bush, Jr. and his Vice-President, Dick Cheney. They are suspected of authorizing torture on numerous detainees, in violation of the Geneva Convention, International Law, the Nuremberg Principles and the U.S. Constitution. Featured in this video is Constitutional Rights attorney, cofounder of the Partnership for Civil Justice and spokesperson for IndictBushNow.org, Mara Verheyden-Hilliard. She is also the co-chair of the National Lawyers Guild. Ms. Verheyden-Hilliard was introduced at the rally by David Swanson, who moderated the event. He is an essayist, author and also the cofounder of afterdowningstreet.org web site.

For background on the event, see: IndictBushNow.org and JusticeOnline and TortureAccountability and AfterDowningStreet.org.

For a brief overview of the Law concerning the subject matter of Torture, go to: U.S. Law Prohibits Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment.

Rove deposed in U.S. attorney probe
By John Bresnahan & Josh Gerstein | Politico

Former White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove was deposed Tuesday by attorneys for the House Judiciary Committee, according to Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.), the panel’s chairman.

Rove’s deposition began at 10 a.m. and ended around 6:30 p.m, with several breaks, Conyers said.

Conyers would not comment on what Rove told congressional investigators, what the next step in the long-running Judiciary Committee investigation would be or whether Rove would face additional questioning.

“He was deposed today,” Conyers said in an interview. “That’s all I can tell you.”

Rove's attorney, Robert Luskin, declined to confirm or deny that his client had appeared before the committee. Luskin said there was an agreement that the depositions would remain confidential until they were completed. However, in a court filing Monday, the Justice Department indicated that the deposition set for this week would be the committee's last. Read more.

Regulators aim to curb speculators' influence on oil prices
By Kevin G. Hall | McClatchy Newspapers

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission on Tuesday will announce that it'll begin publishing how much hedge funds and other big financial firms are trading in oil and other commodities, with an eye toward curbing what critics say is speculation that pushes prices up.

The CFTC currently publishes weekly data that lumps some of the big financial firms' transactions in with those done by so-called commercial users — airlines, refiners and others who actually use the oil. Critics argue that leaves regulators and the public unaware of how much oil prices are being influenced by speculation.

"Enhancing the quality of information in these weekly reports will better inform market participants and the public about the positions of the various types of traders," CFTC Chairman Gary Gensler said in a statement that was to be made public early Tuesday.

Since oil prices hit their all-time record of $147 a barrel a year ago, there's been growing pressure on regulators to curb excessive speculation in energy trading, and commodities markets more generally. The issue resurfaced in recent months as oil prices climbed from $40 to $70 with little obvious change in oil consumption patterns. Read more.

Binyam Mohamed launches legal fight to stop US destroying torture images
British resident says photographs are evidence of abuse at Guantánamo
Richard Norton-Taylor | Guardian.co.UK

Former Guantánamo detainee Binyam Mohamed has launched an urgent legal attempt to prevent the US courts from destroying crucial evidence that he says proves he was abused while being held at the detention camp, the Guardian has learned. The evidence is said to consist of a photograph of Mohamed, a British resident, taken after he was severely beaten by guards at the US navy base in Cuba.

The image, now held by the Pentagon, had been put on his cell door, he says.

Mohamed claims he was told later that this was done because he had been beaten so badly that it was difficult for the guards to identify him.

In a sworn statement seen by the Guardian, Mohamed has appealed to the federal district court in Washington not to destroy the photograph, which neither he nor his lawyers have a copy of, and which is classified under US law.

The US government considered the case closed once Mohamed was released and returned to Britain in February. The photograph will be destroyed within 30 days of his case being dismissed by the American courts – a decision on which is due to be taken by a judge imminently, Clive Stafford Smith, Mohamed's British lawyer and director of Reprieve, the legal charity, said today .

Under US law, evidence relating to dismissed cases must be automatically destroyed. The only way to preserve the photograph is to have it accepted as a court document. Read more.

Bioweapons, Dangerous Vaccines, and Threats of a Global Pandemic
By Stephen Lendman

Although international law prohibits the use of chemical and bacteriological weapons, America has had an active biological warfare program since at least the 1940s. In 1941, it began secret developmental efforts using controversial testing methods. During WW II, mustard gas was tested on about 4000 servicemen. Biological weapons research was also conducted. Human subjects were used as guinea pigs in various other experiments, and numerous illegal practices continued to the present, including secretly releasing toxic biological agents in US cities to test the effects of germ warfare.

Kelly's Book of Secrets | Daily Express

Weapons inspector David Kelly was writing a book exposing highly damaging government secrets before his ­mysterious death.

He was intending to reveal that he warned Prime Minister Tony Blair there were no weapons of mass destruction anywhere in Iraq weeks before the ­British and American invasion.

He had several discussions with a publisher in Oxford and was seeking advice on how far he could go without breaking the law on secrets.

Following his death, his computers were seized and it is still not known if any rough draft was discovered by investigators and, if so, what happened to the material.

Dr Kelly was also intending to lift the lid on a potentially bigger scandal, his own secret dealings in germ warfare with the apartheid regime in South Africa.

US television investigators have spent four years preparing a 90-minute documentary, Anthrax War, suggesting there is a global black market in anthrax and exposing the mystery “suicides” of five government germ warfare scientists from around the world.

Director Bob Coen said: ‘‘The deeper you look into the murky world of governments and germ warfare, the more worrying it becomes...." Read more.

Medicare Fraud Strike Force Operations Lead to Charges Against 53 Doctors, Health Care Executives and Beneficiaries for More Than $50 Million in Alleged False Billing in Detroit | Press Release
Early Morning Takedown Leads to Arrests in Detroit, Miami and Denver

Fifty-three people have been indicted for schemes to submit more than $50 million in false Medicare claims in the continuing operation of the Medicare Fraud Strike Force in Detroit, Attorney General Eric Holder, Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and FBI Director Robert Mueller announced today. The Strike Force in Detroit is the third phase of a targeted criminal, civil and administrative effort against individuals and health care companies that fraudulently bill the Medicare program.

Stop Health Care Industry Fraud | Press Release | By Senator Bernie Sanders

Sen. Bernie Sanders, a member of the Senate health committee, said today that real health care reform must address the billions of dollars in fraud and abuse that comes from the major corporations in the health care industry.

“What we have seen for many years is the systemic fraud perpetrated by private insurance companies, private drug companies, and private for-profit hospitals ripping off the American people and the taxpayers of this country to the tune of many billions of dollars,” Sanders (I-Vt.) said at a committee markup session.

Sanders cited example after example indicating that virtually all of the major hospital chains, private insurance companies, and pharmaceutical companies have been involved in massive health care fraud over the past decade.

Color Revolutions, Old and New
By Stephen Lendman

In his new book, "Full Spectrum Dominance: Totalitarian Democracy in the New World Order," F. William Engdahl explained a new form of US covert warfare - first played out in Belgrade, Serbia in 2000. What appeared to be "a spontaneous and genuine political 'movement,' (in fact) was the product of techniques" developed in America over decades.

In the 1990s, RAND Corporation strategists developed the concept of "swarming" to explain "communication patterns and movement of" bees and other insects which they applied to military conflict by other means. More on this below.

CIA has Distributed 400 Million Dollars Inside Iran to Evoke a Revolution | PakAlert

Former Pakistani Army General Mirza Aslam Beig claims the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has distributed 400 million dollars inside Iran to evoke a revolution.

In a phone interview with the Pashto Radio on Monday, General Beig said that there is undisputed intelligence proving the US interference in Iran.

“The documents prove that the CIA spent 400 million dollars inside Iran to prop up a colorful-hollow revolution following the election,” he added. Read more.

Mexico Under Siege - The Drug War at Our Doorstep

9,728 - The estimated number of people who have died in drug-related violence in Mexico since the start of 2007, shortly after Mexican president Felipe Calderon declared war on drug traffickers. That's more than the fatalities in the Iraq war.

See the LATimes' complete series, including interactive map, multimedia gallery, video Q&A, chronology and more.

Financial Reform, Words and Deeds
By Ralph Nader | Common Dreams

It's good that Barack Obama is an agile basketball player because on financial regulatory reform he's having to straddle an ever widening chasm between his words and his deeds.

Obama said: "Millions of Americans who have worked hard and behaved responsibility have seen their life dreams eroded by the irresponsibility of others and by the failure of their government to provide adequate oversight. Our entire economy has been undermined by that failure."

"Over the past two decades, we have seen, time and again, cycles of precipitous booms and busts. In each case, millions of people have had their lives profoundly disrupted by developments in the financial system, most severely in our recent crisis."

Strong words, even though he didn't include "corporate crime, fraud and abuse" to replace the euphemism "irresponsibility." One would think that his 88 page reform proposal to Congress would be up to his words. Instead he provides Washington aspirins for Wall Street brain cancer.

The anemic nature of these reforms ostensibly designed to prevent or deter another big bust on Wall Street and its hostage grip on the nation's savings and investments immediately drew the ire of well-regarded business columnists. Read more.

Reporters find Northrop Grumman data in Ghana market
By Robert McMillan | IT World

A team of journalists investigating the global electronic waste business has unearthed a security problem too. In a Ghana market, they bought a computer hard drive containing sensitive documents belonging to U.S. government contractor Northrop Grumman.

The drive had belonged to a Fairfax, Virginia, employee who still works for the company and contained "hundreds and hundreds of documents about government contracts," said Peter Klein, an associate professor with the University of British Columbia, who led the investigation for the Public Broadcasting Service show Frontline. He would not disclose details of the documents, but he said that they were marked "competitive sensitive" and covered company contracts with the Defense Intelligence Agency, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the Transportation Security Agency.

The data was unencrypted, Klein said in an interview. The cost? US$40.

Northrop Grumman is not sure how the drive ended up in a Ghana market, but apparently the company had hired an outside vendor to dispose of the PC. "Based on the documents we were shown, we believe this hard drive may have been stolen after one of our asset-disposal vendors took possession of the unit," the Northrop Grumman said in a statement. "Despite sophisticated safeguards, no company can inoculate itself completely against crime." Read more.

Investigating Khobar Towers: How a Saudi Deception Protected bin Laden
A five part series on Inter Press Service

Part 1: Al Qaeda Excluded from the Suspects List
By Gareth Porter*

WASHINGTON, Jun 22 (IPS) - On Jun. 25, 1996, a massive truck bomb exploded at a building in the Khobar Towers complex in Khobar, Saudi Arabia, which housed U.S. Air Force personnel, killing 19 U.S. airmen and wounding 372.

Immediately after the blast, more than 125 agents from the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) were ordered to the site to sift for clues and begin the investigation of who was responsible. But when two U.S. embassy officers arrived at the scene of the devastation early the next morning, they found a bulldozer beginning to dig up the entire crime scene.

Hi Doug, Doug and Tom of "Wake Up Daytona" on WELE 1380 AM,

I've been listening in and am glad to hear you guys talking about the U.S. Constitution, the Founding Fathers, and "the Rule Of Law" on your program. Hopefully you will take the time to watch the following short YouTube videos from the recent gathering in Tampa of the Florida Oathkeepers and the speeches given by the national commander of The Patriots, Lt. Col. Robert M. Bowman, and the coordinator for the Orlando chapter of We Are Change Florida, Joshua Parrish.

U.S. House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers, Jr. (D-MI) is scheduled to keynote an unprecedented conference June 26 about misconduct allegations against the U.S. Department of Justice. The 8 to 11 a.m. forum is at the National Press Club in Washington, DC.

Military Officials Plead Guilty to Felony Charges Over Afghanistan Defense Contracts Military Officials Plead Guilty to Felony Charges Over Afghanistan Defense Contracts
Written By The Public Record

Two U.S. military officials pleaded guilty to various bribery, fraud and conspiracy charges relating to Department of Defense (DOD) contracts in Afghanistan. A third military official pleaded guilty to receiving stolen property, which was obtained through the bribery conspiracy. In addition, four DOD contractors and four affiliated contracting companies were indicted for their roles in paying bribes to the military officials and otherwise defrauding the United States.

The pleas of the military officials were filed today in U.S. District Court in Chicago. A superseding indictment of the contractors and companies was filed yesterday in U.S. District Court in Chicago.

"As the United States continues to expend resources in Afghanistan, the Antitrust Division will remain vigilant in prosecuting individuals and companies who divert funds for their personal gain," said Christine A. Varney, Assistant Attorney General in charge of the Department’s Antitrust Division. Read more.