Category: government corruption

Emmanuel Macron has opted to organize a type of forum dear to his predecessor, but for which he has had little taste, until now. During the long discussions with political party leaders and the presidents of the chambers of Parliament on Wednesday, August 30, the president committed to holding a “social conference.” The notion is reminiscent of several conclaves held during François Hollande’s presidency (2012-2017). The goal is to provide new solutions for workers whose cost of living has increased…

The DOJ charged JPMorgan Chase with engaging in “tens of thousands of instances of unlawful trading in gold, silver, platinum, and palladium…as well as thousands of instances of unlawful trading in U.S. Treasury futures contracts and in U.S. Treasury notes and bonds…”

The U.S. Treasury market is essential to the United States being able to pay its bills; raise money efficiently; and maintain the trust of our allies in our sovereign debt instruments. Rigging the Treasury market is about as close to financial treason as a Wall Street firm can get; especially when JPMorgan Chase’s securities unit is one of the Fed’s primary dealers and is contractually bound to bid in Treasury auctions.

But instead of prosecuting the bank, the DOJ handed JPMorgan a deferred-prosecution agreement (its third in six years) and put it on probation.

This film, produced by Wikileaks itself, documents the organization’s attempts at obtaining the collaboration of media outlets around the world as they plan the responsible publication of their cables. Contrary to the depiction of Wikileaks’ actions in the Hollywood film released the same year (a box office failure), Mediastan provideds a concrete, transparent look at the mechanism of control that Washington exerts over seemingly unrelated media outlets. The team of Wikileaks volunteers travel to Central Asia and document their numerous…

Saudi Crown Prince Mohamed bin Salman in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, July 19, 2023. SAUDI PRESS AGENCY / VIA REUTERS Among the various grotesque punishments that have become a trademark of Saudi Arabia under Crown Prince Mohamed bin Salman, this one has reached a new level. In July, a 54-year-old retired teacher named Mohammed al-Ghamdi was sentenced to death for sending messages on social media denouncing human rights violations in the kingdom. The verdict, so harsh you would be forgiven for…

Russia on Thursday, August 24, extended the detention of US reporter Evan Gershkovich, arrested in March on spying charges that he denies and held in a Moscow prison since, by three months. Gershkovich, a Moscow correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, had continued to report from Russia during Moscow’s offensive in Ukraine. “The time of detention has been extended by three months… Until November 30, 2023,” a spokesperson for Moscow’s Lefortovsky court said. The hearing was held behind closed doors,…

Russian mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin was believed dead after a private jet on which he was listed as a passenger crashed north of Moscow with no survivors. Prigozhin, 62, spearheaded a mutiny against Russia’s top army brass on June 23-24, which President Vladimir Putin said could have tipped Russia into civil war. Others who have opposed Putin or his interests have also died under unclear circumstances or come close to death. Here are some details about these mysterious incidents: ANNA…

The two founders behind Tornado Cash, a Russian cryptocurrency mixing service, have been charged by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York, according to a statement on Wednesday. Roman Storm and Roman Semenov were officially charged with conspiracy to commit money laundering, conspiracy to commit sanctions violations and conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money transmitting business, according to a newly unsealed indictment. Storm was arrested in Washington on Wednesday but Semenov still remains at large, the…

Former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani found himself a local lawyer in time to turn himself in to Georgia authorities on Wednesday, two days before the deadline imposed by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis. The once-respected federal prosecutor-turned-Trump lackey arrived at the Fulton County Jail to be photographed, fingerprinted, and booked on a raft of felony charges over his alleged role in Donald Trump’s push to overturn the state’s 2020 presidential election results. He stands 5’ 11” and…

(AP) — A private jet crashed in Russia on Wednesday, killing all 10 people aboard, emergency officials said. Mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin was on the passenger list, but it wasn’t immediately clear if he was on board. Prigozhin’s fate has been the subject of intense speculation ever since he mounted a short-lived mutiny against Russia’s military leadership in late June. The Kremlin said the founder of the Wagner private military company, which fought alongside Russia’s regular army in Ukraine, would…

Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin, who was widely reported to have led a “coup” attempt in Russia two months ago, was killed on Wednesday after his plane “crashed” in Russia’s Tver region, according to RT. A private jet traveling from Moscow to St. Petersburg crashed on Wednesday in Russia’s Tver Region. The Russian Emergencies Ministry said all 10 people on board had died. Rosaviation has since said that Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of the Wagner Private Military Company, was listed among…

In an age where digital platforms are primary sources of real-time information, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s clash with Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta, formerly Facebook, has become more poignant than ever. With wildfires raging across the country, the stakes are high. Earlier this summer, Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, made a controversial move. In response to the Online News Act introduced by Trudeau’s administration — legislation that forced tech companies to pay failing legacy news publishers — Facebook…

from the pick-a-lane,-guys dept This is just so painfully obnoxious. The legacy news media, spurred on by a welfare system that pretend free market supporter Rupert Murdoch dreamed up and convinced governments to implement, whereby the government would force internet companies, which had innovated and created new business models that worked, to suddenly be required to pay for sending traffic to legacy news media organizations which failed to innovate. It’s extreme corporate welfare, egged on by a guy who pretends…

WASHINGTON (AP) — The generic drug maker Teva Pharmaceuticals agreed Monday to pay $225 million to settle price-fixing charges related to sales of a major cholesterol-lowering drug. The U.S. Department of Justice said the agreement also requires Teva to divest its business making and selling the drug, pravastatin, a generic version of the brand-name medicine Pravachol. Another generic drug maker, Glenmark Pharmaceuticals, agreed to pay a $30 million criminal penalty and to divest its pravastatin business as well. In a…

Google has partnered with the United Nations, World Health Organisation and others in a new global censorship tool that was introduced last Monday, according to LaToya Drake, head of Google News Lab. Below are the short descriptions from GNI’s ‘About’ page.  The titles are misleading.  For example, following the ‘Our partners’ hyperlink contained in the words “learn more” does not lead to a list or overview of its partners.  It leads to ‘Case Studies’: Some “stories” about “how news organisations around the…