Transparency

The Big Lie: 102 Years Ago, Leaders Downplayed The Devastation Of The Spanish Flu

April 13, 2020 Mark Washburn, The Charlotte Observer. Educate! Media, Pandemic, Spanish Flu, Transparency

For 102 years, that lie has gone unchallenged. But now, spurred by curiosity amid a new pandemic, an examination of archived Mecklenburg County death certificates by The Charlotte Observer and a parsing of century-old news accounts reveal that Charlotte leaders — enabled by an acquiescent press and accepting public — systematically under-reported the 1918 death toll by half. In fact, at the height of the epidemic, when citizens were dying at the rate of more than 10 a week, they under-reported the scope of the crisis by two-thirds. To research the issue, the Observer examined official Mecklenburg County death certificates, held in an archive managed by Ancestry.com and accessed through the Charlotte Mecklenburg Library system, from September 1918 through January 1919 and compared the results to public statements about the scope of the crisis made by officials during the same time.

Pentagon Asks To Keep Future Spending Secret

April 1, 2020 Steven Aftergood, Federation of American Scientists. Educate! Budget, Congress, Pentagon, Transparency

The Department of Defense is quietly asking Congress to rescind the requirement to produce an unclassified version of the Future Years Defense Program (FYDP) database. Preparation of the unclassified FYDP, which provides estimates of defense spending for the next five years, has been required by law since 1989 (10 USC 221) and has become an integral part of the defense budget process. But the Pentagon said that it should no longer have to offer such information in an unclassified format, according to a DoD legislative proposal for the pending FY 2021 national defense authorization act. “The Department is concerned that attempting publication of unclassified FYDP data might inadvertently reveal sensitive information,” the Pentagon said in its March 6, 2020 proposal.

Court Upholds Landmark Berkeley Cell Phone Radiation Right To Know Ordinance

July 5, 2019 By, Staff, Environmental Health Trust Create! Cell Phones, Transparency

A landmark 9th U.S. Circuit Court panel has upheld the City of Berkeley’s cell phone right to know ordinance. That ordinance requires retailers to inform consumers that cell phones emit radiation that can exceed federal cell phone radiation limits when close to the body. In upholding this decision, the panel concluded that the public health issues at hand were “substantial” and that the “text of the Berkeley notice was literally true,” and “uncontroversial.” The panel held that Berkeley’s required disclosure simply alerted consumers to the safety disclosures that the Federal Communications Commission required, and directed consumers to federally compelled instructions in their user manuals providing specific information about how to avoid excessive exposure.

GM Crops, Pesticides, Corporate Duplicity

January 13, 2019 Colin Todhunter, Global Research. Educate! Bayer, Corporatism, Monsanto, Transparency

Tireless campaigner and environmentalist Dr Rosemary Mason has just written an open letter to Werner Baumann, the chief executive of Bayer CropScience. It is in direct response to Bayer CropScience’s advertisement that was placed in Politico and the Farmers’ Guardian on 19/12/2018 which reads: “Transparency creates trust. At Bayer, we embrace our responsibility to communicate how we assess our products’ safety — and we recognize that people around the world want more information around glyphosate. This month, we published more than 300 study summaries on the safety of glyphosate on our dedicated transparency website. “

A Battle For Transparency: Putting Names And Numbers To The US Drone War

April 20, 2018 By Jack Serle, Thebureauinvestigates.com Educate! Drones, Transparency, Wars and Militarism

The phenomenal assassination tool that is the attack drone was born of frustration – the inability of the US to kill Osama bin Laden. The CIA and its Afghan militia allies were pretty sure they knew where he was, training would-be suicide bombers in his Afghan hideout. Whenever they did get a read on his location, albeit briefly, it was thanks to the CIA’s small fleet of surveillance Predator drones. They could fly high and for more than 12 hours on end, constantly filming the scene below them and sending the footage back to the US. But the CIA could never pin down his location long enough for bombers or cruise missiles to be called in to do anything about it. The solution? Add anti-tank missiles to the remotely piloted drones. By arming its drones, the US could get a fix on a target, show the video feed to lawyers in real time so they could assess if it was lawful, and wait to take the shot when there were no bystanders around to get hurt.

U.S. Media Suffered Most Humiliating Debacle In Ages

December 11, 2017 Glenn Greenwald, theintercept.com Educate! Corporate Media, Journalism, Propaganda, Transparency

Friday was one of the most embarrassing days for the U.S. media in quite a long time. The humiliation orgy was kicked off by CNN, with MSNBC and CBS close behind, with countless pundits, commentators and operatives joining the party throughout the day. By the end of the day, it was clear that several of the nation’s largest and most influential news outlets had spread an explosive but completely false news story to millions of people, while refusing to provide any explanation of how it happened. The spectacle began on Friday morning at 11 a.m. EST, when the Most Trusted Name in News™ spent 12 straight minutes on air flamboyantly hyping an exclusive bombshell report that seemed to prove that WikiLeaks, last September, had secretly offered the Trump campaign, even Donald Trump himself, special access to the DNC emails before they were published on the internet. As CNN sees the world, this would prove collusion between the Trump family and WikiLeaks and, more importantly, between Trump and Russia, since the U.S. intelligence community regards WikiLeaks as an “arm of Russian intelligence,” and therefore, so does the U.S. media.

Supreme Court Rules Against Private Prisons

October 11, 2017 Staff, www.ccrjustice.org Resist! Corporations, Private Prisons, Supreme Court, Transparency

By Staff of CCRJustice - October 10, 2017, New York, NY – Today, the Supreme Court denied a petition by private prison corporations seeking to block the release of government documents about their immigration detention practices. In a case brought by the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) and Detention Watch Network (DWN), under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), a federal district court ruled in July 2016, that the government must release details of its contracts with private prison corporations. The government chose not to appeal; instead, the country’s two largest private prison corporations, GEO Group and Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), recently rebranded as “CoreCivic,” intervened to appeal the decision to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, which dismissed their petition in February. GEO then petitioned the Supreme Court for a full review of the case, asking for the right to prevent the government from releasing information under the FOIA. The Supreme Court’s decision lets stand the February ruling by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, which rejected the private contractors’ unusual attempt to fight for government secrecy when the government itself had acceded to the court’s ruling.

Chelsea Manning Defends Her Conduct

September 17, 2017 Staff, www.Ap.org Uncategorized Chelsea Manning, CIA, Secrecy, Secuity State, Transparency, Wikileaks

By Staff for Associated Press. Manning's second public appearance since being released from a military prison in May. "I believe I did the best I could in my circumstances to make an ethical decision," she told the crowd when they asked if she was a traitor. The 29-year-old Manning is a transgender woman who was released from a military prison in May after serving seven years of a 35-year sentence, which was commuted by President Barack Obama in his final days in office. Several audience members said they were intrigued to hear from Manning. Sara O'Reilly, a Nantucket resident who has attended several past conferences, said the speakers are typically a "little edgy." She said she doesn't judge Manning and other people have done "far worse" things. Manning said Harvard's decision signaled to her that it's a "police state" and it's not possible to engage in political discourse in academic institutions. "I'm not ashamed of being disinvited," she said. "I view that just as much of an honored distinction as the fellowship itself."

Former CIA Intelligence Analyst Says Whistleblowers Are Vital To A Transparent Democracy

July 24, 2017 Mark Karlin, www.truth-out.org Resist! CIA, Democracy, Intelligence, Transparency, Whistleblowers

By Mark Karlin for Truthout - Melvin A. Goodman: I spent 24 years at the CIA as a Soviet analyst in the directorate of intelligence. I was not drawn to the agency by idealism, but by a fascination with the incredible repository of intelligence that is held within the entire community. I received an early introduction to this collection as a US Army cryptographer in the 1950s. There have been many intelligence failures over the past 70 years since the creation of the CIA, but virtually all of them have been due to analytical failures, either politicization of intelligence from above (e.g., missing the decline of the Soviet Union; Iraqi weapons of mass destruction) or simply poor analytic tradecraft (e.g., October War of 1973; 9/11 attacks; Soviet invasions of Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968). These failures were not due to inadequate collection. In fact, the collection of intelligence was sufficient to prevent every one of these failures, including 9/11. If I had been more idealistic then, perhaps I would have paid more attention to the CIA's role in the conduct of covert action, particularly the illegal and immoral activities prior to my entry into the CIA, including the overthrow of the Mossadegh government in Iran, the attempt to assassinate Lumumba in the Congo, and the efforts to overthrow Castro in the late 1950s and early 1960s.

Transparency Needed, But Fought, Over NYPD Spying

June 23, 2017 Josmar Trujillo, www.fair.org Resist! NYPD, spying, Transparency

By Josmar Trujillo for FAIR - Last week, the New York City Council held hearings on proposed legislation calling on the New York Police Department to be more transparent with how they surveil and spy on the public. Police officials, as they often do, proceeded to tell local lawmakers to get lost. Requests for more information and possibly a public comment period on NYPD spying tactics, which have reached sci-fi levels, were called “insane” and met with suggestions that ISIS terrorists would be given a “roadmap” to attacking the city. Conservative media outlets, predictably, came out shrieking in defense of the police and of surveillance. The New York Post (6/18/17) published the department’s testimony from the hearing and called it an op-ed, literally regurgitating the police line word for word for its readers. Not to be left behind by their fellow Rupert Murdoch employees, editorialists at the Wall Street Journal (“A Terrorist’s Guide to New York City: The Left Would Show Jihadists How the Cops Prevent Attacks,” 6/19/17) chimed in with admiration for police and full-throated disgust at those pushing the legislation

To Federal Employees: If You See Something, Leak Something

January 14, 2017 Staff, www.theintercept.com Resist! Corruption, Media, Transparency, Whistleblowers

By The Intercept. IF YOU’RE A public servant in Washington, you may be worried about what your job will look like after January 20 — who you’ll be working for, what you’ll be asked to do. You might be concerned that the programs you’ve developed will be killed or misused. Or that you’ll be ordered to do things that are illegal or immoral. You may be thinking you have no choice — or that your only alternative is to quit. But there is another option. If you become aware of behavior that you believe is unethical, illegal, or damaging to the public interest, consider sharing your information securely with us. History shows the enormous value of government workers who discover abuses of power collaborating with journalists to expose them.

How To Leak To ProPublica

January 8, 2017 Staff, www.propublica.org Resist! Accountability, Media, Transparency, Whistleblowers

By ProPublica. We are a team of investigative journalists devoted to exposing abuse of power. If you’ve got evidence showing powerful people doing the wrong thing, here’s how to let us know while protecting your identity. Our job is to hold people and institutions accountable. And it requires evidence. Documents are a crucial part of that. We are always on the lookout for them — especially, now. Have you seen something that troubles you or that you think should be a story? Do you have a tip about something we should be investigating? Do you have documents or other materials that we should see? We want to hear from you. Here are a few ways to contact us or send us documents and other materials, safely, securely and anonymously as possible.

Open Data Projects Fuel Fight Against Police Misconduct

October 30, 2016 Alice Speri, www.theintercept.com Create! Criminal Justice System, Police abuse, Racism, Transparency

By Alice Speri for The Intercept. SAMANTHA SEDA’S CLIENT, a 16-year-old foster child from Far Rockaway, New York, had no criminal history when he was arrested in September, accused of having pulled out a gun and fired one shot in the air. Even though he had no priors and no relatives who could post bail, a judge set the amount at $100,000, and as he sat in jail for over a month, the boy lost his spot at the foster home where he had been living. Seda, a Legal Aid attorney representing adolescents charged as adults in Queens, thought the allegations against her client were dubious and was looking for a way to get him out on bail. That’s when she decided to look into the officers named in the complaint against him. What she discovered stunned her.

Newsletter – On 9/11, Facing The Truth

September 11, 2016 Margaret Flowers and Kevin Zeese, www.popularresistance.org Newsletter #NoDAPL, 9/11, Criminal Justice and Prisons, Government, Open Debates, Pipelines, Prison Labor, TPP, Transparency

By Margaret Flowers and Kevin Zeese. Today is the fifteenth anniversary of the attack on the World Trade Centers in New York where 3,000 people died. The immediate responses to the attack were panic, grief and ultra-nationalism, followed by illegal attacks on Afghanistan and then Iraq. Perhaps now that 15 years has passed, we should look back at the events and review decisions that were made in hopes of avoiding mistakes in the future. The leading presidential candidates, Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, seem stuck on the same path we have been on for 15 years -- is more militarism the right path? Have war and military attacks made the region more stable, the United States more secure, reduced terrorism, prevented instability in Europe due to the refuege crisis? Or, has the path of militarism made all of this worse?

Auditor: U.S. Military Fudged Accounts By Trillions

August 21, 2016 Scot J. Paltrow, www.reuters.com Educate! Budget, Department of Defense, Transparency, Wars and Militarism

By Scot J. Paltrow for Reuters. The United States Army’s finances are so jumbled it had to make trillions of dollars of improper accounting adjustments to create an illusion that its books are balanced. The Defense Department’s Inspector General, in a June report, said the Army made $2.8 trillion in wrongful adjustments to accounting entries in one quarter alone in 2015, and $6.5 trillion for the year. Yet the Army lacked receipts and invoices to support those numbers or simply made them up. As a result, the Army’s financial statements for 2015 were “materially misstated,” the report concluded. The “forced” adjustments rendered the statements useless because “DoD and Army managers could not rely on the data in their accounting systems when making management and resource decisions.”

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