Category: Ledger of Shame

washington —  Civil liberties declined globally for the 18th consecutive year in 2023, with conflict and flawed elections the biggest factors, a new report has found. Political rights and civil liberties deteriorated for more than one-fifth of the population, the non-profit group Freedom House found. And only one-fifth of the 210 countries and territories the research group analyzed was found to be “free.” Released on Thursday, the Freedom in the World report assesses political rights and civil liberties, then ranks…

Barclays (BARC.L), opens new tab has agreed to sell about $1.1 billion of credit card debt in the United States to Blackstone. Banks globally have been making greater use of credit risk transfers to shed risk from loan portfolios, Reuters has reported, with investors sharing the risk of losses. (See Corporate home buyouts: homelessness, mortgage & rent crisis rising) Barclays’ investment bank acted as an advisor to Blackstone on the transaction. (Reuters)  Blackstone’s investment has been made through insurance accounts managed…

The Pentagon’s inspector general said its criminal investigators have opened more than 50 cases related to aid provided to Ukraine, including some involving contractors, but have yet to firm up any allegations. The investigations, which are at different stages, are looking at issues including “procurement fraud, product substitution, theft, fraud or corruption, and diversion,” the inspector general, Robert Storch, said in a briefing Thursday. “We have not substantiated any such allegations, though that may well change in the future,” he…

Under a repressive new act, British nationals could face prison for undermining London’s national security line. Intended to destroy WikiLeaks and others exposing war crimes, the law is a direct threat to critical national security journalism. It was the afternoon of May 17 2023 and I had just arrived at London’s Luton Airport. I was on my way to the city of birth to visit my family. Before landing, the pilot instructed all passengers to have their passports ready for…

JERUSALEM: Israel has imposed financial restrictions on the main UN agency providing aid in the Gaza Strip, a measure which prevented a shipment of food for 1.1 million Palestinians from reaching the war-battered enclave, the agency’s director said Friday. The restrictions deepened a crisis between Israel and UNRWA, whose operations have been threatened following Israeli accusations that some of its workers participated in the October 7 attack that triggered Israel’s war in Gaza. Those accusations have led major donor nations,…

A leaked recording obtained by investigator and writer Sasha Latypova features an executive at the pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca stating the following: It wasn’t a surprise to me when I got a call on February 4th from the Defense Department here in the US saying that the newly discovered Sars-2 virus posed a national security threat. This is an astonishing, major-newspaper headline-worthy revelation. But here’s what was happening on February 4, 2020: Virus Activity in the US According to CNN, on…

A former CIA software engineer was sentenced to 40 years in prison on Thursday after his convictions for what the government described as the biggest theft of classified information in CIA history and for possession of child sexual abuse images and videos. The bulk of the sentence imposed on Joshua Schulte, 35, in Manhattan federal court came for an embarrassing public release of a trove of CIA secrets by WikiLeaks in 2017. He has been jailed since 2018. “We will…

Morgan Stanley will pay $249 million to settle a criminal investigation, as well as a related Securities and Exchange Commission probe. The SEC said the bank generated more than $100 million in illicit profits as a result of misconduct by Pawan Passi, the bank’s former head of its US equity syndicate desk, and another employee.  Morgan Stanley has been under investigation by the SEC since 2019 over its handling of block trades (a business that the bank dominates), and the…

Gonzalo Lira, a prominent commentator on the Russia-Ukraine war imprisoned in Ukraine for speech critical of the country’s government, has died after weeks of medical neglect by Ukrainian authorities. Chilean-American war commentator Gonzalo Lira died shortly before noon on January, 11, 2024 at a hospital in Kharkiv, where he had been imprisoned for eight months since he was accused of justifying Russian war efforts in Ukraine. Lira came to prominence in 2022 when he emerged as a critical voice in…

Earth last year shattered global annual heat records, flirted with the world’s agreed-upon warming threshold and showed more signs of a feverish planet, the European climate agency said Tuesday. In one of the first of several teams of science agencies to calculate how off-the-charts warm 2023 was, the European climate agency Copernicus said the year was 1.48 degrees Celsius (2.66 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial times.That’s barely below the 1.5 degrees Celsius limit that the world hoped to stay within in…

A mid-air blowout aboard a Boeing 737-9 MAX passenger plane has led to dozens of aircraft worldwide being grounded while engineers try to establish what went wrong. Six people aboard Alaska Airlines flight 1282 from Portland to California were injured after a window and chunk of fuselage blew out of the plane in mid-air shortly after takeoff on 5 January. Questions around the safety of the jets are swirling and various airlines have come out with statements saying what actions…

Attorneys for the Securities and Exchange Commission apologized to a judge on Thursday for misrepresenting facts used to secure a restraining order and asset freeze against a crypto firm. In a filing submitted to the U.S. District Court of Utah, in response to the judge’s order to show cause for its misstep, the SEC attorneys wrote that the commission “deeply regrets these orders” and promised to conduct mandatory training for staff members involved in the investigation. “I fully appreciate the…

In a significant development for US military space operations, the secretive X-37B robot spaceplane was launched from Florida on Thursday night. This marks its seventh mission and the first to be launched atop a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket, potentially reaching higher orbits than ever before. Driving the news The Falcon Heavy, the most powerful operational rocket in the world, lifted off from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida in a dazzling display of fire and smoke. The launch was delayed…

SEOUL – South Korea’s financial watchdog has recommended imposing a fine of at least 10 billion won (S$10.24 million) each on HSBC Holdings and BNP Paribas for so-called naked short selling, which is considered illegal in the country, according to two people familiar with the matter.  The nation’s Financial Supervisory Service (FSS) made the recommendation to the Securities and Futures Commission under regulator Financial Services Commission (FSC), said the people, who requested anonymity discussing private matters.  Naked short selling is…

Negotiators are convening this week in Nairobi for the latest round of talks aimed at creating a new scientific panel to advise the world’s governments on how to tackle chemical waste. But as the talks get underway, concerns have been voiced about potential conflicts of interest that could undermine the panel. The warning comes as efforts to agree a global treaty on plastic pollution appear to have been delayed by vested interests. The UN wants its new panel on chemical…

There has been an unexpected validation of the title of Our Enemy, the Government (Brownstone, 2023). In a stunning indictment of the state of governance in the Australian state of Victoria, an unidentified senior bureaucrat classified citizens according to their compliance with the government’s Covid diktats. This is the state whose capital Melbourne suffered through the world’s longest lockdown (267 days!). Yet, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics Victoria had the worst overall Covid mortality outcome between March 2020…