BoingBoing:
"Defense lawyers: the FBI made us use a copy-shop that made secret copies for the government. Attorneys for Dr Salo Schapiro, on trial in Miami for Medicare fraud, says that the FBI and the US Attorney have engaged in a decade-long conspiracy to improperly gain access to confidential defense documents, in a scheme that used a crooked Ft Lauderdale copy shop that slipped CDs containing scanned confidential defense documents that had been entrusted to it to the FBI and the DA.
The US government has admitted that it obtained the CDs from the copy-shop, but says that they never asked for them and weren't aware that the material on them was confidential defense material.
The documents, which had been turned over through the discovery process, were stored in an FBI facility. The defense says that the FBI required them to use the implicated copy-shop to make copies for their own use. They allege that the copy shop then improperly provided the FBI with information about which documents had been pulled for use in the case."
-->Is this happening all over the country? CD's of confidential defense documents given to the FBI? The NYT didn't cover this story.
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Mintpressnews:
"WASHINGTON — Global investments in the manufacture of cluster bombs and related munitions rose over the past year, despite the existence of an international convention against the use or production of these weapons. More than half of the institutions involved in those investments are based in the United States.
From 2011 to 2014, an estimated 151 financial institutions invested at least $27 billion in companies that produce weapons considered by rights groups to be prohibited by the Convention on Cluster Munitions, which entered into effect in 2010. This new estimate, from PAX, a Dutch watchdog group, constitutes a $3 billion increase from just last year. ...
These involve some of the biggest names in global finance, including JPMorgan Chase & Co., Bank of America Corp., Wells Fargo & Co. and others. JPMorgan’s investment is pegged at more than $670 billion, while Bank of America’s is nearly $380 billion."
-->A Wall Street boom in financing cluster bomb manufactures. Our newspaper of record didn't think this story of US financial firms investing in war crimes was worthy of printing.
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Common Dreams:
"In what supporters described as 'a victory for accountability for corporate crimes,' a U.S. judge ruled in favor of allowing Colombians to sue former Chiquita Brand International executives for the company's funding of a paramilitary group that murdered plaintiffs' family members.
'Chiquita poured $1.7 million between 1997 and 2004 into the outlawed far-right paramilitary group AUC,' observed TeleSur, 'which operated as a death squad in Colombia.'
The ruling from Judge Kenneth Marra of the Southern District of Florida stated that 'profits took priority over basic human welfare in the banana company executives' decision to finance the illegal death squads, despite knowing that this would advance the paramilitaries' murderous campaign,' as the human rights and conservation group EarthRights International (ERI) wrote on Thursday when it announced the judgment."
-->Do large US corporations fund their own death squads? Hard to believe, especially if you read the the NYT for your information. I didn't print this story.
