Basic

https://ericzuesse.substack.com/p/corruption-is-rampant-throughout  

https://theduran.com/corruption-is-rampant-throughout-the-u-s-empire/  

Corruption is rampant throughout the U.S. empire.

15 February 2026, by Eric Zuesse. (All of my recent articles can be seen here.)

On February 14th, Douglas Arthur Johnson headlined “Epstein in Norway”, and opened:

Norway’s elites are no longer above scrutiny. Diplomatic prestige turned hot scandal this week as revelations from the U.S. government’s release of Jeffrey Epstein’s internal files triggered a cascade of investigations, resignations, and formal inquiries in Oslo.

Former Prime Minister Thorbjørn Jagland has gone from Nobel Committee chair to corruption suspect. Norway’s economic crimes unit Økokrim has raided his homes and accused him of aggravated corruption tied to Epstein-era benefits and travel and he will soon be formally questioned.

Mona Juul, a top Norwegian diplomat and former ambassador to Jordan and Iraq, has resigned and faces a corruption probe alongside her husband, ex-minister Terje Rød-Larsen, after files showed deep personal and financial links with Epstein.

Norway’s Parliament has launched a rare external inquiry into the Foreign Ministry’s ties to Epstein as public pressure mounts for accountability.

Even the Crown Princess’ past contacts with Epstein have forced public apologies and paused collaborations with Norwegian institutions as the scandal continues to reverberate.

What started as revelations from documents published by the U.S. Department of Justice has become a full-blown domestic crisis. Political reputations, diplomatic careers, and Norway’s blue-chip global image are all under fire. Across Oslo, the rule of law is colliding with elite networks once thought untouchable and the fallout is still expanding.

These ‘elites’ are operatives of their country’s billionaires who over-50% fund the political campaigns in their ‘democracy’ or more aptly called aristocracy since it is ultimately rule-by-only-the-richest who are doing the hiring in this operation: they choose the ‘leaders’.

On 15 April 2021, James Halliday headlined “The Fish Rots From the Head: How culture is driven from the very top”, and opened:

The proverb ‘a fish rots from the head’ has its origins shrouded in mystery. Many countries and cultures lay claim to it, including the English, the Turks and the Chinese, but the actual source is lost in antiquity.

It’s a metaphor for leadership, be it in business, religion or a country. It’s not biologically true, of course, as fish actually rot from the gut first, but it’s a good analogy and makes a lot of sense.

It means the direction, strategy, culture and behaviour of an organisation are mandated by the leadership, not the minions.

As a general rule, people follow and copy their leader. They may not agree with him or her, of course, but we humans have a natural tendency to follow.

You’ll see it in organisations with strong leaders; their team will imitate their mannerisms and personality traits. Maybe not as an exact carbon copy, but there will be similarities, just as your accent will begin to change when you move to a new area. Of course, the younger the team, the more malleable they tend to be and thus more likely to emulate the person in charge.

To an outsider, this will be obvious, to people entrenched within the culture, not so much. But if you stand back and observe, you’ll notice similarities. If a leader’s inclined to make snide, passive-aggressive remarks, other team members will do the same. If the leader has explosive, aggressive outbursts, so too will others.

If he’s racist, sexist, bigoted and so on, this gives the green light for other people to behave in the same way. We’ve seen recent examples of this with national leadership in the US and UK.

People also copy management styles. If your CEO, MD or even departmental head is a “Theory X” type, one who uses aggression, bullying and other brutal tactics, people lower down the chain will tend to do the same.

 

But are these people necessarily aping principals, or aping merely agents that are hirees of some billionaire, who REALLY sets the tone, offstage, and who thus isn’t publicly known to be the model, not even by the individuals who are copying that billionaire?

On 10 December 2022, I headlined “Russia’s Constitution is among the world’s most democratic”, and compared its Constitution with those of: Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Hungary, Netherlands, Poland, Slovakia, and Norway. 

Here’s part of what I quoted from Norway’s Constitution:

Article 4

The King shall at all times profess the Evangelical-Lutheran religion.

Article 5

The King's person is sacred; he cannot be censured or accused. The responsibility rests with his Council.

Article 6

The order of succession is lineal, so that only a child born in lawful wedlock of the Queen or King, or of one who is herself or himself entitled to the succession may succeed, and so that the nearest line shall take precedence over the more remote and the elder in the line over the younger.

Article 12

The King himself chooses a Council from among Norwegian citizens who are entitled to vote. This Council shall consist of a Prime Minister and at least seven other Members.

The King apportions the business among the Members of the Council of State, as he deems appropriate. Under extraordinary circumstances, besides the ordinary Members of the Council of State, the King may summon other Norwegian citizens, although no Members of the Storting, to take a seat in the Council of State.

Husband and wife, parent and child or two siblings may never sit at the same time in the Council of State.

Article 13

During his travels within the Realm, the King may delegate the administration of the Realm to the Council of State. The Council of State shall conduct the government in the King's name and on his behalf. It shall scrupulously observe the provisions of this Constitution, as well as such particular directives in conformity therewith as the King may instruct.

The matters of business shall be decided by voting, where in the event of the votes being equal, the Prime Minister, or in his absence the highest-ranking Member of the Council of State who is present, shall have two votes.

The Council of State shall make a report to the King on matters of business which it thus decides.

Article 14

The King may appoint State Secretaries to assist Members of the Council of State with their duties outside the Council of State. Each State Secretary shall act on behalf of the Member of the Council of State to whom he is attached to the extent determined by that Member.

Article 15

Any person who holds a seat in the Council of State has the duty to submit his application to resign once the Storting has passed a vote of no confidence against that Member of the Council of State or against the Council of State as a whole.

The King is bound to grant such an application to resign.

Once the Storting has passed a vote of no confidence, only such business may be conducted as is required for the proper discharge of duties.

Article 16

All inhabitants of the Realm shall have the right to free exercise of their religion.

The Norwegian church, an Evangelical-Lutheran church, shall remain the Norwegian National Church and will as such be supported by the State. Detailed provisions as to its system shall be laid down by law. All religious and philosophical communities were to be supported on an equal footing.

Article 17

The King may issue and repeal ordinances relating to commerce, customs, all livelihoods and the police, although these must not conflict with the Constitution or with the laws passed by the Storting (as hereinafter prescribed in Articles 76, 77, 78 and 79). They shall remain in force provisionally until the next Storting.

Article 21

The King shall choose and appoint, after consultation with his Council of State all senior civil and military officials. Before the appointment is made, such officials shall swear or, if by law exempted from taking the oath, solemnly declare obedience and allegiance to the Constitution and the King, although senior officials who are not Norwegian nationals may by law be exempted from this duty. The Royal Princes must not hold senior civil offices.

Article 22

The Prime Minister and the other Members of the Council of State, together with the State Secretaries, may be dismissed by the King without any prior court judgment, after he has heard the opinion of the Council of State on the subject. The same applies to senior officials employed in the Council of State offices or in the diplomatic or consular service, the highest-ranking civil officials, commanders of regiments and other military formations, commandants of forts and commanders-in-chief warships. Whether pensions should be granted to senior officials thus dismissed shall be determined by the next Storting. In the interval they shall receive two thirds of their previous pay.

Other senior officials may only be suspended by the King, and must then without delay be charged before the Courts, but they may not, except by court judgment, be dismissed nor, against their will, transferred.

All senior officials may, without a prior court judgment, be discharged from office upon attaining the statutory age limit.

Article 25

The King is Commander-in-Chief of the land and naval forces of the Realm. These forces may not be increased or reduced without the consent of the Storting. They may not be transferred to the service of foreign powers, nor may the military forces of any foreign power, except auxiliary forces assisting against hostile attack, be brought into the Realm without the consent of the Storting.

The territorial army and the other troops which cannot be classed as troops of the line must never, without the consent of the Storting, be employed outside the borders of the Realm.

Article 26

The King has the right to call up troops, to engage in hostilities in defence of the Realm and to make peace, to conclude and denounce conventions, to send and to receive diplomatic envoys.

Treaties on matters of special importance, and, in all cases, treaties whose implementation, according to the Constitution, necessitates a new law or a decision by the Storting, are not binding until the Storting has given its consent thereto.

Article 27

All Members of the Council of State shall, unless lawfully absent, attend the Council of State and no decision may be adopted there unless more than half the number of members are present.

Article 30

All the proceedings of the Council of State shall be entered in its records. Diplomatic matters which the Council of State decides to keep secret shall be entered in a special record. The same applies to military command matters which the Council of State decides to keep secret.

Everyone who has a seat in the Council of State has the duty frankly to express his opinion, to which the King is bound to listen. But it rests with the King to make a decision according to his own judgment.

On 13 December 2021, I headlined “Politcal Corruption in U.S., Germany, and Russia”, and reported the financial regulations of political contributions in each of the three countries, and that,

The U.S. Government shaped the Governments of Germany and of Russia; and, therefore, the campaign-finance laws in these three countries will be compared here.

The U.S. Government shaped the German Government not only because the U.S. Government (with the cooperation of its WW II allies) shaped post-War West Germany, but because that West German Government then ruled also the former East Germany after 3 October 1990; so, the present German Government is an extension from what U.S. President Truman’s Administration had produced as being West Germany’s Government.

The U.S. Government also shaped the Russian Government because the CIA and U.S. economists were in control over Russia’s Government during Russian President Boris Yeltsin’s Presidency from 30 May 1990 to 31 December 1999, as has been well documented by many articles, such as “How Harvard lost Russia”, “Boris Yeltsin had entourage of ‘hundreds’ of CIA agents who instructed him how to run Russia, claims former parliamentary speaker”, “The plot to kill off the Soviet Union”, and, most recently, “Putin says Russian government was swarming with CIA officers”. (This was the result of decisions that were made by U.S. President G.H.W. Bush.)

So, how do these three Governments today compare regarding campaign finance, which is an extremely important determinant of how corrupt a country is? After all: only if billionaires’ (&/or their corporations and nonprofits or “NGOs”) buying a nation’s head-of-state and its legislators is legally very hard to do, can the given nation even possibly be an authentic democracy. For example: one American billionaire, George Soros, commissioned a study to examine the voting-records of the 751 members of the European Parliament to come up with a list of all who were (as the study became titled) “Reliable allies in the European Parliament (2014 – 2019)”, and exactly 30%, 226 of them, were listed as being such. So: the likelihood of the EU’s actually representing the peoples of Europe would seem to be quite small.

Following here will be answers that are solidly grounded in the written laws of each of these three countries (though not necessarily reflecting how those laws are enforced — or not), regarding the 12 most clearly important questions that were studied. [I then presented that:] …

U.S. shows 0 clear “No”s (or equivalents, such as “No information found in sources”). 

Russia shows 5.

Germany shows 11.

Although this is a very incomplete indicator of a country’s corruptness, it does present the U.S. in a very favorable light, and present Germany (11 out of 12 “No”s) as being rather astoundingly corrupt. Russia is midway between those two, perhaps because after Yeltsin’s abominable rule, Putin cleaned up Russia’s Government, but a lot of that job still remains undone, even after 21 years.

Germany’s Government was more shaped by Truman than perhaps any in the world except America’s own Government. But, from the present indicator, America’s vassal nations would appear to be even more corrupt than the imperial center, the U.S., itself. …

As regards the U.S. Government, it is the ONLY Government that has been scientifically analyzed in sufficient depth to be able to conclude scientifically whether or not it is corrupt, and the conclusion of each one of these scientific studies is that its Government DEFINITELY does NOT represent its citizenry but ONLY its billionaires; it represents ESPECIALLY its ten biggest political donors (all of whom are billionaires). So: under no circumstances can the U.S. reasonably be called a “democracy.” It is (at least ever since 1980) an aristocracy — a nation that is ruled by its super-rich.

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Investigative historian Eric Zuesse’s latest book, AMERICA’S EMPIRE OF EVIL: Hitler’s Posthumous Victory, and Why the Social Sciences Need to Change, is about how America took over the world after World War II in order to enslave it to U.S.-and-allied billionaires. Their cartels extract the world’s wealth by control of not only their ‘news’ media but the social ‘sciences’ — duping the public.