RealClearInvestigations'
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February 4 to February 10, 2024 In RealClearInvestigations, Ben Weingarten examines Qatar's multi-billion-dollar campaign to buy influence at the Pentagon and other American institutions while supporting some of America’s deadliest foes -- notably Hamas, which carried out the Oct. 7 rampage of killing, rape and hostage-taking in Israel. Weingarten reports: Qatar’s ruling House of Thani has leveraged the Pentagon’s regional basing needs and policymakers’ desire to negotiate with adversaries to become “indispensable” to Washington. The Biden administration has elevated Qatar to major non-NATO ally status -- on par with Israel. Al Udeid, U.S. Central Command’s headquarters, is situated in Qatar and is considered the Pentagon’s key asset in the Middle East. The emirate has lavished lucrative contracts on over a dozen former high-ranking U.S. defense officials -- notably Marine Gen. John Allen, who came under scrutiny for alleged illegal foreign lobbying and stepped down as president of the prestigious Brookings Institution. Another recipient of Qatari largesse, the Richardson Center for Global Engagement, reportedly told families of Israeli hostages held by Hamas in Gaza not to criticize the Gulf state in efforts to free the captives. The emirate has been the largest foreign donor to American universities since 9/11. A critical report ties that funding to “the erosion of free speech norms” and “increased levels of campus antisemitism.” The Connecticut-sized state punches above its weight with a war chest built on vast liquefied natural gas reserves. Its revenues could improve with the Biden administration’s recent bow to its domestic anti-fossil-fuel base in curbing U.S. LNG exports. Critic: “Qatar should not be allowed to infiltrate our universities or buy up half of the lobbyists and PR firms in Washington, let alone to purchase 5% of the NBA and NHL teams in Washington, D.C. … Nor should Qatar be able to covertly fund – and thus exert control over – the think tanks that Congress and the Administration rely on so heavily to set policies.” In RealClearInvestigations, Lee Fang reports on the first known case of the Department of Homeland Security attempting to silence a social media account associated with a national newspaper – and the outlet, the New York Times, doing little to push back, even though nothing has emerged to invalidate its reporting: Details from the Twitter Files revealed by RCI for the first time show that a tweet by Timesman Reid Epstein during 2020 vote-counting in Green Bay, Wisconsin, prompted speech suppression efforts by DHS and others intent on undermining anything that might challenge the integrity of the vote. Epstein tweeted that results were delayed because “one of the vote-counting machines ran out of ink.” Officials pounced on the tweet in the belief that none of the machines used ink, in a cascade of errors from the local level on up to high reaches of national security. "There's no ink involved" ... "This is false" ... "We will escalate." Those are some of the instantaneous reactions that resulted in the “shadow-banning” of the offending tweet, which still today carries a misinformation warning label. The problem was, some of Green Bay’s voting machines did in fact use ink, having been pressed into service to supplement the primary vote-counting machine relying on thermal tape. The Times, which has long professed to cover the news “without fear or favor,” did not respond to repeated requests for comment on its acquiescence to censorship. Epstein declined to comment as well – though he could help resolve the matter by identifying the source for his tweet. This article's author, Lee Fang, testified on censorship on Tuesday (Feb. 6) before Rep. Jim Jordan’s Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government. Read his opening statement here. Waste of the Day
by Adam Andrzejewski, Open the Books Texans Getting Railroaded at High Speed, RCI
Refugee Aid Up by Billions, RCI
$1 Billion+ in Weapons AWOL In Ukraine, RCI
A Texas Water Slide to Teach Reading, RCI
Chicago Schools Lost $23M in Computers, RCI Biden, Trump and the Beltway Special Counsel: Biden 'Willfully' Bared Secrets, Had 'Poor Memory', AP
Biden Rips Probe: I'm Elderly and 'Know What the Hell I’m Doing', NY Post
DOJ Prosecutors Who Misled Court Get Slap on Wrist, Intercept
White House Pressed Amazon to Suppress Vax-Skeptical Books, Signal
How Mark Meadows Became DC's Least Trusted Man, NY Times Mag
The Watchdog Group Behind the Ballot Challenge to Trump, NY Times
Trump Undercuts Right, Urges End to Bud Light Boycott, Federalist Other Noteworthy Articles and Series Unethical funeral homes have exploited grieving customers for decades, this article reports, tacking on substantial hidden fees and surcharges. One man featured in this article, expected to pay about $8,000 for a no-frills funeral for his dad; instead he was given a bill closer to $17,000. This article’s main focus, however, is not the chicanery but the “sweetheart deal” struck between the industry and the Federal Trade Commission 25 years ago that keeps bad actors hidden from the public. That deal, unlike any known to exist between the FTC and any other industry, the names of funeral homes that violate rules requiring price transparency and fair practices aren’t made public to consumers, as long as they complete a virtual remedial program run by the funeral industry’s own lobbying group. The Wall Street Journal found that more than 500 funeral homes participated in the program from 1996 to 2018 for failing to comply with rules against customer exploitation, according to federal documents obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests. Data from 2018 were the most recent provided. More than 90% of all funeral homes cited for violations participated in the program, the FTC said. FTC “secret shoppers” who visit funeral homes to test their interactions with customers found that 19% of the 90 funeral homes inspected were violating the price transparency rule in 2018, the most recent year for which the data is publicly available. At the end of January, the FTC said it had carried out a phone-only secret shopper sweep in 2023. It said 39 out of more than 250 homes contacted failed to provide accurate or complete pricing information. In 2010, the giant German company Siemens promised Jackson, Mississippi, that it could turn its crumbling water system into a moneymaking enterprise that would enable the city to afford to fix its crumbling infrastructure. By the winter of 2021, this article reports, more than 150,000 people living in Jackson were left without running water. Faucets were dry or dribbling a muddy brown. Jackson is not alone, this article reports: A yearlong New York Times investigation, drawing on thousands of pages of government records and interviews with city officials across the state [Mississippi], reveals how Siemens and other corporations went from one small, cash-strapped town to the next making grand promises to modernize water systems and boost revenues. It also sheds new light on the involvement of a state agency that was supposed to vet the deals. In town after town, salesmen lured city officials who had little expertise in water meters with gee-whiz technology and complicated cost-saving algorithms. They said the meters could be installed at no cost to taxpayers and offered cash-back guarantees. Even when meters started failing in large numbers and cities complained they were on the verge of financial disaster, the companies kept selling their services. This article reports that Siemens returned the $90 million it had been paid for the Jackson project. But the damage was done. Jackson was out more than $450 million in fees and lost revenue. It had no way to repair failing equipment and aging pipes that left city water unsafe to drink and ultimately led to a federal takeover of the water system in December 2022. Despite sanctions that have banned imports of Russian oil into Europe, the black gold Putin is relying on to help finance his war in the Ukraine is being smuggled into the EU through Libya. A Bloomberg News investigation based on shipping records and interviews with Libyan officials, people familiar with Libya’s oil business, and members of the crew found: As much as 40% of the fuel refined domestically and being imported into the country under a government subsidy program – or about $5 billion a year – is leaking out through illicit trade. Much of that imported fuel is coming from Russia. … “The closure of European markets following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the ensuing Western sanctions drove a sharp uptick in exports for Russian refined petroleum to North Africa, a region with a scarcity of refineries,” said Charles Cater, director of investigations at the Sentry, a Washington-based nonprofit that recently reported on a surge in corruption and illicit activities in Libya and provided research assistance for this story. “This flood of petroleum imports is directly linked to Libya’s thriving fuel-smuggling operations.” Many Libyans are paying a steep price for the illegal diversion of fuel. This article reports that so much fuel is being smuggled that in some southern and border areas, Libyans stand for hours in long lines to gas up their cars or buy fuel on the black market – at inflated prices. As Texas and the federal government spar over security at the southern border, this article reports that several Russian leaders are urging the Lone Star State to secede: Dmitry Medvedev, who is currently deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council, wrote on X that “Establishing a People’s Republic of Texas is getting more and more real,” and could lead to “a bloody civil war which cost thousands upon thousands of lives.” … “It’s high time the American president, following in his predecessor Obama’s footsteps, declares ‘Texas must go’ and assembles an international coalition to liberate its residents in the name of democracy,” Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova wrote on Telegram. This article reports that their comments are part of a coordinated Russian effort on Telegram and X (formerly Twitter) to sow discord by pushing the narrative that the US is heading for civil war. Over the past two weeks, state-run media outlets like Sputnik and RT have called the dispute between the Texas governor and the Biden administration a “constitutional crisis” and an “unmitigated disaster,” while “influencers and bloggers” have amplified the message. Russian lawmaker Sergey Mironov even offered to help Texas cut the cord: “If necessary, we are ready to help with the independence referendum. And of course, we will recognize the People’s Republic of Texas if there is one,” Mironov wrote on X. Dozens of British wind farms run by some of Europe’s largest energy companies have routinely overestimated how much power they’ll produce, adding millions of pounds a year to consumers’ electricity bills, according to a Bloomberg analysis of 30 million records from 2018 through June 2023: These extra costs are linked to a growing problem with Britain’s outdated electricity network: On blustery days, too much wind power risks overloading the system, and the grid operator must respond by paying some firms not to generate. This “curtailment” costs consumers hundreds of millions of pounds each year. Adding to that expense, some wind farm operators exaggerate how much energy they say they intend to produce, which boosts the payments they receive for turning off, according to nine people — traders, academics and market experts — most of whom agreed to discuss this controversial behavior only on condition of anonymity. In effect, they said, the grid has paid some wind farms not to generate power that they wouldn’t have produced anyway. Of 121 wind farms in the Bloomberg analysis, 40 overstated their output by 10% or more on average, and 27 of those overestimated by at least 20% This article reports that after socialist strongman Nicolas Maduro retained power Venezuela in what was widely seen as a sham election in 2018, fears grew in the U.S. that he would turn the country into a hub for drug dealers. In response – according to a secret memo obtained by the AP – the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration sent undercover operatives into Venezuela to surreptitiously record and build drug-trafficking cases against the country’s leadership. The memo shows, however, that the U.S. acknowledged from the start that “Operation Money Badger,” an investigation that authorities say targeted dozens of people, including President Maduro, might violate international law: Some of Maduro’s closest allies were ensnared in the investigation, including Alex Saab, the businessman recently freed in a prisoner swap for 10 Americans and a fugitive defense contractor. But until now, it was not clear that U.S. probes targeting Venezuela involved legally questionable tactics. “We don’t like to say it publicly but we are, in fact, the police of the world,” said Wes Tabor, a former DEA official who served as the agency’s country attaché in Venezuela well before the investigation described in the memo was launched. …“We’re not in the business of abiding by other countries’ laws when these countries are rogue regimes and the lives of American children are at stake,” he said. “And in the case of Venezuela, where they’re flooding us with dope, it’s worth the risk.” | 