[Justice]
Jeffrey Epstein’s Death Adds to the JPMorgan Body Count
By Pam Martens and Russ Martens
Posted August 14, 2019

JPMorgan Chase has had an uncomfortably cozy relationship with law enforcement through the years. As we reported in 2012, an employee of JPMorgan Chase (along with several other Wall Street bank employees) was allowed to sit elbow to elbow with New York City Police officers in a high-tech surveillance center dubbed the Lower Manhattan Security Coordination Center watching thousands of street-level surveillance cameras as they spied on the comings and goings of pedestrians.

As we wrote at the time, “Not only is it unprecedented for corporations under serial and ongoing corruption probes to be allowed to spy on law abiding citizens under the imprimatur of the largest police force in the country, but the legality of the operation by the NYPD itself is highly questionable.” (See 60 Minutes Takes a Pass on Wall Street’s Secret Spy Center.)

JPMorgan Chase has also through the years maintained a steady roster of former CIA and Secret Service officials. More…

[Justice]
The Warden Tried to Cover Up a Crisis at His Freezing Brooklyn Jail — Then He Got Promoted
by Nick Pinto
Posted August 13, 2019

It’s been five months since a crisis of freezing and inhumane conditions at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, New York, when a power failure brought darkness to a detention center already inundated by the January cold. The Bureau of Prisons and the Office of the Inspector General for the Department of Justice both pledged to investigate conditions at the federal jail but have yet to release their reports.

Even as those inquiries remain open, and blame for the crisis remains officially unassigned, Herman Quay, who as warden presided over the jail, has been promoted. As of June 9, Quay has a new job as complex warden overseeing three federal prisons in Allenwood, Pennsylvania, where he is responsible for some 3,400 incarcerated people — roughly twice as many as he was charged with in Brooklyn.

Quay didn’t just preside over the crisis, he attempted to conceal it. He told the press that reports of inadequate heat in the cells were “inaccurate” and that incarcerated people had been “out all week” in common areas, rather than locked down in their cells. His staff initially tried to blame the power outage on Con Edison. More…

[Justice]
Revealed: how Monsanto’s ‘intelligence center’ targeted journalists and activists
by Sam Levin
Posted August 12, 2019

Monsanto operated a “fusion center” to monitor and discredit journalists and activists, and targeted a reporter who wrote a critical book on the company, documents reveal. The agrochemical corporation also investigated the singer Neil Young and wrote an internal memo on his social media activity and music.

The records reviewed by the Guardian show Monsanto adopted a multi-pronged strategy to target Carey Gillam, a Reuters journalist who investigated the company’s weedkiller and its links to cancer. Monsanto, now owned by the German pharmaceutical corporation Bayer, also monitored a not-for-profit food research organization through its “intelligence fusion center”, a term that the FBI and other law enforcement agencies use for operations focused on surveillance and terrorism. More…

The Facts:
Monsanto has repeatedly targeted journalists, writers, farmers, scientists and others who exposed the true nature of the corporation.

Reflect On:
How can a corporation get away with spying, surveilling, and smearing people? Why are none of the top executives not sitting in prison?