// Geo Quiz — country-scoped truth/inversion calls.
// Mirrors the discernment engine but with per-country pools.
//
// Country list is data-driven so future additions need only:
//   1. Add a country to COUNTRIES
//   2. Add a flag SVG to flags/<code>.svg
//   3. Add ~15 statements under the country's prefix (e.g. us_t1..us_f15)
//   4. Add i18n keys for stmt + why
//
// Personal best is tracked per country (key: wuys-geo-best-<code>).

(function () {
  const root = document.getElementById("geo-discern");
  if (!root) return;

  const stmtEl  = document.getElementById("geo-statement");
  const truthBtn = document.getElementById("geo-truth");
  const invBtn   = document.getElementById("geo-inv");
  const fbEl     = document.getElementById("geo-feedback");
  const nextBtn  = document.getElementById("geo-next");
  const scoreEl  = document.getElementById("geo-score");
  const replayEl = document.getElementById("geo-replay");

  const hubEl = document.getElementById("geo-hub");
  const stageEl = document.getElementById("geo-stage");
  const stageCountryEl = document.getElementById("geo-stage-country");
  const backBtn = document.getElementById("geo-back");

  // Country list. Add new countries here + a flag SVG + 15 statements.
  const COUNTRIES = [
    { code: "all", flag: null },
    { code: "us",  flag: "flags/us.svg" },
    { code: "gb",  flag: "flags/gb.svg" },
    { code: "de",  flag: "flags/de.svg" },
    { code: "cn",  flag: "flags/cn.svg" },
    { code: "sa",  flag: "flags/sa.svg" },
    { code: "il",  flag: "flags/il.svg" },
    { code: "dk",  flag: "flags/dk.svg" },
    { code: "ru",  flag: "flags/ru.svg" },
    { code: "fr",  flag: "flags/fr.svg" },
    { code: "it",  flag: "flags/it.svg" },
    { code: "es",  flag: "flags/es.svg" },
    { code: "be",  flag: "flags/be.svg" },
    { code: "ch",  flag: "flags/ch.svg" },
    { code: "br",  flag: "flags/br.svg" },
    { code: "mx",  flag: "flags/mx.svg" },
    { code: "in",  flag: "flags/in.svg" },
    { code: "jp",  flag: "flags/jp.svg" },
    { code: "za",  flag: "flags/za.svg" },
    { code: "ua",  flag: "flags/ua.svg" },
    { code: "by",  flag: "flags/by.svg" },
    { code: "ge",  flag: "flags/ge.svg" },
    { code: "md",  flag: "flags/md.svg" },
    { code: "rs",  flag: "flags/rs.svg" },
    { code: "hu",  flag: "flags/hu.svg" },
    { code: "ir",  flag: "flags/ir.svg" },
    { code: "sy",  flag: "flags/sy.svg" },
    { code: "ve",  flag: "flags/ve.svg" },
    { code: "kp",  flag: "flags/kp.svg" },
    { code: "ml",  flag: "flags/ml.svg" },
    { code: "iq",  flag: "flags/iq.svg" },
    { code: "af",  flag: "flags/af.svg" },
    { code: "ye",  flag: "flags/ye.svg" },
    { code: "ly",  flag: "flags/ly.svg" },
    { code: "lb",  flag: "flags/lb.svg" },
    { code: "tr",  flag: "flags/tr.svg" },
    { code: "eg",  flag: "flags/eg.svg" },
    { code: "kr",  flag: "flags/kr.svg" },
    { code: "ph",  flag: "flags/ph.svg" },
    { code: "ng",  flag: "flags/ng.svg" },
    { code: "ar",  flag: "flags/ar.svg" },
    { code: "co",  flag: "flags/co.svg" },
    { code: "ca",  flag: "flags/ca.svg" },
    { code: "cu",  flag: "flags/cu.svg" },
    { code: "cl",  flag: "flags/cl.svg" },
    { code: "pl",  flag: "flags/pl.svg" },
    { code: "gr",  flag: "flags/gr.svg" },
    { code: "cz",  flag: "flags/cz.svg" },
    { code: "sk",  flag: "flags/sk.svg" },
    { code: "bg",  flag: "flags/bg.svg" },
    { code: "cy",  flag: "flags/cy.svg" },
    { code: "ie",  flag: "flags/ie.svg" },
    { code: "nl",  flag: "flags/nl.svg" },
    { code: "at",  flag: "flags/at.svg" },
    { code: "se",  flag: "flags/se.svg" },
    { code: "pk",  flag: "flags/pk.svg" },
    { code: "id",  flag: "flags/id.svg" },
    { code: "th",  flag: "flags/th.svg" },
    { code: "my",  flag: "flags/my.svg" },
    { code: "sg",  flag: "flags/sg.svg" },
    { code: "mm",  flag: "flags/mm.svg" },
    { code: "lk",  flag: "flags/lk.svg" },
    { code: "kh",  flag: "flags/kh.svg" },
    { code: "cd",  flag: "flags/cd.svg" },
    { code: "ke",  flag: "flags/ke.svg" },
    { code: "sd",  flag: "flags/sd.svg" },
    { code: "zw",  flag: "flags/zw.svg" },
    { code: "ma",  flag: "flags/ma.svg" },
    { code: "et",  flag: "flags/et.svg" },
    { code: "rw",  flag: "flags/rw.svg" },
    { code: "au",  flag: "flags/au.svg" },
    { code: "nz",  flag: "flags/nz.svg" },
    { code: "ad",  flag: "flags/ad.svg" },
    { code: "sm",  flag: "flags/sm.svg" },
    { code: "ae",  flag: "flags/ae.svg" },
    { code: "ag",  flag: "flags/ag.svg" },
    { code: "am",  flag: "flags/am.svg" },
    { code: "ao",  flag: "flags/ao.svg" },
    { code: "az",  flag: "flags/az.svg" },
    { code: "bb",  flag: "flags/bb.svg" },
    { code: "bd",  flag: "flags/bd.svg" },
    { code: "bf",  flag: "flags/bf.svg" },
    { code: "bh",  flag: "flags/bh.svg" },
    { code: "bi",  flag: "flags/bi.svg" },
    { code: "bj",  flag: "flags/bj.svg" },
    { code: "bn",  flag: "flags/bn.svg" },
    { code: "bo",  flag: "flags/bo.svg" },
    { code: "bs",  flag: "flags/bs.svg" },
    { code: "bt",  flag: "flags/bt.svg" },
    { code: "bw",  flag: "flags/bw.svg" },
    { code: "bz",  flag: "flags/bz.svg" },
    { code: "cf",  flag: "flags/cf.svg" },
    { code: "cg",  flag: "flags/cg.svg" },
    { code: "ci",  flag: "flags/ci.svg" },
    { code: "cm",  flag: "flags/cm.svg" },
    { code: "cr",  flag: "flags/cr.svg" },
    { code: "cv",  flag: "flags/cv.svg" },
    { code: "dj",  flag: "flags/dj.svg" },
    { code: "dm",  flag: "flags/dm.svg" },
    { code: "do",  flag: "flags/do.svg" },
    { code: "dz",  flag: "flags/dz.svg" },
    { code: "ec",  flag: "flags/ec.svg" },
    { code: "er",  flag: "flags/er.svg" },
    { code: "fj",  flag: "flags/fj.svg" },
    { code: "fm",  flag: "flags/fm.svg" },
    { code: "ga",  flag: "flags/ga.svg" },
    { code: "gd",  flag: "flags/gd.svg" },
    { code: "gh",  flag: "flags/gh.svg" },
    { code: "gm",  flag: "flags/gm.svg" },
    { code: "gn",  flag: "flags/gn.svg" },
    { code: "gq",  flag: "flags/gq.svg" },
    { code: "gt",  flag: "flags/gt.svg" },
    { code: "gw",  flag: "flags/gw.svg" },
    { code: "gy",  flag: "flags/gy.svg" },
    { code: "hk",  flag: "flags/hk.svg" },
    { code: "hn",  flag: "flags/hn.svg" },
    { code: "ht",  flag: "flags/ht.svg" },
    { code: "jm",  flag: "flags/jm.svg" },
    { code: "jo",  flag: "flags/jo.svg" },
    { code: "kg",  flag: "flags/kg.svg" },
    { code: "ki",  flag: "flags/ki.svg" },
    { code: "km",  flag: "flags/km.svg" },
    { code: "kn",  flag: "flags/kn.svg" },
    { code: "kw",  flag: "flags/kw.svg" },
    { code: "kz",  flag: "flags/kz.svg" },
    { code: "la",  flag: "flags/la.svg" },
    { code: "lc",  flag: "flags/lc.svg" },
    { code: "lr",  flag: "flags/lr.svg" },
    { code: "ls",  flag: "flags/ls.svg" },
    { code: "mg",  flag: "flags/mg.svg" },
    { code: "mh",  flag: "flags/mh.svg" },
    { code: "mn",  flag: "flags/mn.svg" },
    { code: "mr",  flag: "flags/mr.svg" },
    { code: "mu",  flag: "flags/mu.svg" },
    { code: "mv",  flag: "flags/mv.svg" },
    { code: "mw",  flag: "flags/mw.svg" },
    { code: "mz",  flag: "flags/mz.svg" },
    { code: "na",  flag: "flags/na.svg" },
    { code: "ne",  flag: "flags/ne.svg" },
    { code: "ni",  flag: "flags/ni.svg" },
    { code: "np",  flag: "flags/np.svg" },
    { code: "nr",  flag: "flags/nr.svg" },
    { code: "om",  flag: "flags/om.svg" },
    { code: "pa",  flag: "flags/pa.svg" },
    { code: "pe",  flag: "flags/pe.svg" },
    { code: "pg",  flag: "flags/pg.svg" },
    { code: "ps",  flag: "flags/ps.svg" },
    { code: "pw",  flag: "flags/pw.svg" },
    { code: "py",  flag: "flags/py.svg" },
    { code: "qa",  flag: "flags/qa.svg" },
    { code: "sb",  flag: "flags/sb.svg" },
    { code: "sc",  flag: "flags/sc.svg" },
    { code: "sl",  flag: "flags/sl.svg" },
    { code: "sn",  flag: "flags/sn.svg" },
    { code: "so",  flag: "flags/so.svg" },
    { code: "sr",  flag: "flags/sr.svg" },
    { code: "ss",  flag: "flags/ss.svg" },
    { code: "st",  flag: "flags/st.svg" },
    { code: "sv",  flag: "flags/sv.svg" },
    { code: "sz",  flag: "flags/sz.svg" },
    { code: "td",  flag: "flags/td.svg" },
    { code: "tg",  flag: "flags/tg.svg" },
    { code: "tj",  flag: "flags/tj.svg" },
    { code: "tl",  flag: "flags/tl.svg" },
    { code: "tm",  flag: "flags/tm.svg" },
    { code: "tn",  flag: "flags/tn.svg" },
    { code: "to",  flag: "flags/to.svg" },
    { code: "tt",  flag: "flags/tt.svg" },
    { code: "tv",  flag: "flags/tv.svg" },
    { code: "tw",  flag: "flags/tw.svg" },
    { code: "tz",  flag: "flags/tz.svg" },
    { code: "ug",  flag: "flags/ug.svg" },
    { code: "uy",  flag: "flags/uy.svg" },
    { code: "uz",  flag: "flags/uz.svg" },
    { code: "vc",  flag: "flags/vc.svg" },
    { code: "vn",  flag: "flags/vn.svg" },
    { code: "vu",  flag: "flags/vu.svg" },
    { code: "ws",  flag: "flags/ws.svg" },
    { code: "zm",  flag: "flags/zm.svg" },
    { code: "pt",  flag: "flags/pt.svg" },
    { code: "no",  flag: "flags/no.svg" },
    { code: "fi",  flag: "flags/fi.svg" },
    { code: "is",  flag: "flags/is.svg" },
    { code: "ro",  flag: "flags/ro.svg" },
    { code: "hr",  flag: "flags/hr.svg" },
    { code: "si",  flag: "flags/si.svg" },
    { code: "ba",  flag: "flags/ba.svg" },
    { code: "mk",  flag: "flags/mk.svg" },
    { code: "al",  flag: "flags/al.svg" },
    { code: "me",  flag: "flags/me.svg" },
    { code: "xk",  flag: "flags/xk.svg" },
    { code: "ee",  flag: "flags/ee.svg" },
    { code: "lv",  flag: "flags/lv.svg" },
    { code: "lt",  flag: "flags/lt.svg" },
    { code: "lu",  flag: "flags/lu.svg" },
    { code: "mt",  flag: "flags/mt.svg" },
    { code: "va",  flag: "flags/va.svg" },
    { code: "mc",  flag: "flags/mc.svg" },
    { code: "li",  flag: "flags/li.svg" },
    { code: "mo",  flag: "flags/mo.svg" },

  ];

  // Statement pool. Each: { id, isTruth, fallback, whyFallback }
  // ID format: <countryCode>_t<n> or <countryCode>_f<n>
  const POOL = [
    // ============== USA — 8 truths + 7 inversions ==============
    { id: "us_t1", isTruth: true,  country: "us", fallback: "The CIA admitted to overthrowing democratically elected governments in Iran (1953) and Chile (1973), among others.",
      whyFallback: "Iran: Mosaddegh, restoring the Shah. Chile: Allende, installing Pinochet. Documents declassified by the CIA itself. The phrase \"banana republic\" describes the pattern." },
    { id: "us_t2", isTruth: true,  country: "us", fallback: "The Pentagon failed every full audit it has ever undergone — trillions of dollars unaccounted for.",
      whyFallback: "First DoD-wide audit completed in 2018 — failed. Repeated since. Donald Rumsfeld announced $2.3 trillion missing on September 10, 2001. The next day's news cycle made the story disappear." },
    { id: "us_t3", isTruth: true,  country: "us", fallback: "The Patriot Act was rushed through Congress weeks after 9/11 with most legislators admitting they had not read it.",
      whyFallback: "342 pages, voted into law in 45 days. Mass surveillance powers were already on the shelf, drafted earlier. The crisis provided the political window, not the design." },
    { id: "us_t4", isTruth: true,  country: "us", fallback: "Edward Snowden's 2013 disclosures revealed that the NSA was collecting telecommunications metadata on virtually every American.",
      whyFallback: "PRISM, Stellar Wind, XKeyscore. Confirmed by FOIA, court rulings (ACLU v. Clapper 2015), and the agency itself. Snowden remains in exile." },
    { id: "us_t5", isTruth: true,  country: "us", fallback: "Jeffrey Epstein's client list, flight logs, and intelligence ties have never been fully released; he died in federal custody with broken cameras and sleeping guards.",
      whyFallback: "Multiple jurisdictions, two failed suicide watches, a coroner's classification contested by the family-hired pathologist. The pattern is the unwillingness to look." },
    { id: "us_t6", isTruth: true,  country: "us", fallback: "Lobbyists outnumber members of Congress roughly 20 to 1, and former officials routinely move into industries they regulated.",
      whyFallback: "OpenSecrets tracking. The \"revolving door\" is the documented norm for FDA, FCC, USDA, Treasury, and Defense officials. Public service as career staging." },
    { id: "us_t7", isTruth: true,  country: "us", fallback: "Citizens United v. FEC (2010) allowed unlimited corporate political spending under the framing of \"corporate personhood\" and free speech.",
      whyFallback: "5-4 Supreme Court ruling. Super PACs followed within months. The dollar amount of political spending has compounded since; small-donor influence has not." },
    { id: "us_t8", isTruth: true,  country: "us", fallback: "Civil asset forfeiture allows US police to seize cash and property without charging the owner with any crime — and the burden of proof is on the owner to recover it.",
      whyFallback: "Annual police seizures regularly exceed annual burglary losses nationwide. \"Innocent until proven guilty\" is suspended at the property level. Reform efforts in some states; the federal program continues." },
    { id: "us_f1", isTruth: false, country: "us", fallback: "American elections are competitive contests between fundamentally different governing philosophies.",
      whyFallback: "Both major parties agree on roughly 90% of foreign policy, financial regulation, surveillance posture, and corporate-state alignment. The disagreements are aesthetic. Princeton 2014 (Gilens & Page) describes the structure." },
    { id: "us_f2", isTruth: false, country: "us", fallback: "Whistleblowers in the US are protected.",
      whyFallback: "Snowden, Manning, Reality Winner, Drake, Kiriakou — prosecuted under the Espionage Act, a WWI law designed to silence dissent. The whistleblower protection statutes have a narrow on-paper scope and a much narrower in-practice one." },
    { id: "us_f3", isTruth: false, country: "us", fallback: "The US has the highest standard of living in the developed world.",
      whyFallback: "OECD data: highest GDP per capita, lowest life expectancy in the developed bracket. Highest healthcare spend, worst maternal mortality among rich countries. Two different scoreboards." },
    { id: "us_f4", isTruth: false, country: "us", fallback: "The Federal Bureau of Investigation primarily investigates organized crime and terrorism.",
      whyFallback: "Substantial documented resources go into surveillance of activist movements, journalists, religious organizations, and political dissenters. COINTELPRO is the historical name; the staffing has changed, the function continues." },
    { id: "us_f5", isTruth: false, country: "us", fallback: "Wars are decided by elected representatives after public debate.",
      whyFallback: "AUMFs (Authorizations for Use of Military Force) — open-ended congressional approvals — replace declarations of war. Strikes happen across more than a dozen countries continuously without specific votes." },
    { id: "us_f6", isTruth: false, country: "us", fallback: "The CIA, FBI, NSA, and DHS work to keep Americans safe.",
      whyFallback: "Their charters say so. Their conduct — domestic surveillance, regime-change operations, drug-trafficking-adjacent funding (Iran-Contra), constitutional violations litigated and lost — is the public record. \"Safe\" depends on whose safety." },
    { id: "us_f7", isTruth: false, country: "us", fallback: "American media represents diverse independent voices.",
      whyFallback: "Six conglomerates own 90% of US media. Editorial independence at the writer level is bounded by ownership at the structural level. \"Diverse voices\" is a product description." },

    // ============== UK — 8 truths + 7 inversions ==============
    { id: "gb_t1", isTruth: true,  country: "gb", fallback: "The City of London is a separate jurisdiction within London with its own laws, police, and elections weighted by corporate vote.",
      whyFallback: "One square mile, technically a corporation older than the modern UK. The Lord Mayor of the City is not the Mayor of London. Most votes in City elections are cast by businesses, not residents." },
    { id: "gb_t2", isTruth: true,  country: "gb", fallback: "The 2003 Iraq war was sold to the British public on the \"45-minute\" claim about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, which the government knew was unreliable.",
      whyFallback: "Chilcot Inquiry, 2016: military action was \"not a last resort\", intelligence was \"presented with a certainty that was not justified\", and there were \"no imminent threats\". Tony Blair was never prosecuted." },
    { id: "gb_t3", isTruth: true,  country: "gb", fallback: "The British Empire's colonial atrocities — Bengal famines, Boer War concentration camps, Mau Mau torture — were systematically removed from school curricula.",
      whyFallback: "Bengal 1943: ~3 million dead while grain was exported to Britain. Boer camps invented the modern concentration-camp model. Mau Mau (Kenya 1950s): records destroyed in Operation Legacy, partial admission only in 2013." },
    { id: "gb_t4", isTruth: true,  country: "gb", fallback: "The British government tracked, photographed, and infiltrated environmental, peace, and trade-union groups for decades — including officers fathering children with activists under false identities.",
      whyFallback: "Undercover Policing Inquiry, ongoing since 2015. Mark Kennedy and others. Long-term deception authorized internally; the inquiry continues because the record is not yet complete." },
    { id: "gb_t5", isTruth: true,  country: "gb", fallback: "Jimmy Savile abused hundreds of people across decades while moving freely through BBC, hospitals, and royal circles. Multiple complaints were ignored or quietly buried.",
      whyFallback: "Operation Yewtree confirmed industrial-scale abuse. Friendships with Margaret Thatcher and Prince Charles documented. The structural question — who knew and protected him — was answered in fragments, not in full." },
    { id: "gb_t6", isTruth: true,  country: "gb", fallback: "The British Royal Family is exempt from many Freedom of Information requests by specific carve-outs in the law.",
      whyFallback: "Constitutional Reform and Governance Act 2010 sealed many royal communications. The royal household is exempt from full FOI scrutiny. The Queen's Consent procedure quietly shapes legislation before it reaches Parliament." },
    { id: "gb_t7", isTruth: true,  country: "gb", fallback: "London is one of the world's largest hubs for laundering money from corrupt regimes — sometimes called the \"London Laundromat\".",
      whyFallback: "Property purchases via shell companies, the City's professional services industry, the British Overseas Territories' role as tax shelters. Repeatedly documented by Transparency International and Parliament's own committees." },
    { id: "gb_t8", isTruth: true,  country: "gb", fallback: "GCHQ (UK signals intelligence) and the NSA share virtually all signals data via the Five Eyes alliance, allowing each to surveil the other's citizens without domestic-law restrictions.",
      whyFallback: "UKUSA Agreement (1946), expanded through the decades. Snowden disclosures detailed Tempora, Edgehill. The \"don't spy on our own\" rule is technically followed; the workaround is friends." },
    { id: "gb_f1", isTruth: false, country: "gb", fallback: "British democracy includes meaningful checks on executive power.",
      whyFallback: "The Royal Prerogative still allows war-making, treaty-signing, and senior appointments without parliamentary vote. The unwritten constitution gives the Prime Minister powers a US President does not have." },
    { id: "gb_f2", isTruth: false, country: "gb", fallback: "The BBC is editorially independent of government.",
      whyFallback: "Funded by a license fee set by government, with board appointees nominated through government channels. Independence in some controversies (Iraq dossier coverage led to Hutton); structural dependence is the architecture." },
    { id: "gb_f3", isTruth: false, country: "gb", fallback: "The Commonwealth is a voluntary association of equal nations.",
      whyFallback: "It's the remnant administrative wrapper of the British Empire. The monarch is head of state in 14 of the 56 members. Equal in framing; structurally asymmetric." },
    { id: "gb_f4", isTruth: false, country: "gb", fallback: "The UK got over its imperial mindset after WWII.",
      whyFallback: "Suez 1956 was the formal end; Iraq 2003 was the same operation in newer clothes. The military and intelligence postures remain those of a former imperial power, not those of a mid-sized European state." },
    { id: "gb_f5", isTruth: false, country: "gb", fallback: "The British Overseas Territories are quaint colonial leftovers with little impact.",
      whyFallback: "The Cayman Islands, BVI, Jersey, Guernsey, and the Isle of Man together host more offshore finance than any other jurisdiction on Earth. The UK's overseas territories are the world's largest tax-haven network." },
    { id: "gb_f6", isTruth: false, country: "gb", fallback: "MI5 and MI6 only investigate genuine threats to national security.",
      whyFallback: "Documented files on environmental activists, journalists, politicians considered \"subversive\", and at points entire trade unions. \"National security\" is a category whose boundaries the agencies write themselves." },
    { id: "gb_f7", isTruth: false, country: "gb", fallback: "Brexit was decided by an independent public choice.",
      whyFallback: "Cambridge Analytica scandal, Vote Leave's campaign finance breaches, foreign-source funding investigated by the National Crime Agency. The result was real; the framing of it as a clean public referendum is partial." },

    // ============== Germany — 8 truths + 7 inversions ==============
    { id: "de_t1", isTruth: true,  country: "de", fallback: "Many German industrialists who profited from slave labor during the Third Reich kept their fortunes and rebuilt their companies after the war.",
      whyFallback: "Krupp, IG Farben (broken into Bayer, BASF, Hoechst), Volkswagen, Siemens, Deutsche Bank. Survivor compensation only began in earnest in the 1990s — half a century late, with token sums." },
    { id: "de_t2", isTruth: true,  country: "de", fallback: "Bayer absorbed Monsanto in 2018, taking on its glyphosate (Roundup) legal liability — and tens of thousands of cancer-related lawsuits.",
      whyFallback: "Bayer originally part of IG Farben (a name some refuse to forget). The merger inherited the entire legacy of Monsanto's Agent Orange, PCBs, GMO patents, and Roundup litigation." },
    { id: "de_t3", isTruth: true,  country: "de", fallback: "The Volkswagen \"Dieselgate\" scandal (2015) exposed deliberate software fraud across millions of cars worldwide to evade emissions tests.",
      whyFallback: "Engineered cheating, knowingly approved at executive level. Settlements over $30 billion. Two senior VW executives went to prison; many implicated did not." },
    { id: "de_t4", isTruth: true,  country: "de", fallback: "Wirecard was a fintech \"unicorn\" valued at €24 billion; its 2020 collapse exposed €1.9 billion of fictional cash on its balance sheet.",
      whyFallback: "BaFin (German financial regulator) attacked the journalists exposing it rather than investigating the company. CEO Markus Braun arrested; COO Jan Marsalek fled and is rumored to be in Moscow." },
    { id: "de_t5", isTruth: true,  country: "de", fallback: "Germany imported huge volumes of cheap Russian gas via Nord Stream for decades, against repeated US warnings, then watched the pipelines sabotaged in 2022.",
      whyFallback: "Energy dependence shaped foreign policy through the Schröder, Merkel, and Scholz governments. The September 2022 sabotage remains officially unattributed; Seymour Hersh's account was dismissed; the German investigation went quiet." },
    { id: "de_t6", isTruth: true,  country: "de", fallback: "The German constitution (Basic Law) was originally drafted as a temporary measure for the post-war occupation period. It was never replaced.",
      whyFallback: "Grundgesetz 1949, intended to last until reunification. After 1990 the original article promising a new constitution was simply removed. The post-war structure became the permanent structure." },
    { id: "de_t7", isTruth: true,  country: "de", fallback: "German intelligence (BND) was effectively rebooted after WWII using former Wehrmacht officers — including Reinhard Gehlen and his entire intelligence network on the Eastern Front.",
      whyFallback: "Gehlen Organization absorbed by the CIA, then handed back to West Germany as the BND in 1956. Wehrmacht and SS personnel transitioned with their files intact." },
    { id: "de_t8", isTruth: true,  country: "de", fallback: "The Federal Constitutional Court of Germany ruled in 2021 that the government's failure to adequately address climate change violated the constitutional rights of future generations.",
      whyFallback: "Bundesverfassungsgericht, 24 March 2021. The court treated environmental obligations as enforceable constitutional duties. The ruling has not been overturned, even as policy bows to industry pressure." },
    { id: "de_f1", isTruth: false, country: "de", fallback: "Germany has fully reckoned with its 20th-century history.",
      whyFallback: "Reckoning with Nazi crimes is genuine and ongoing. Reckoning with colonial atrocities in Namibia (the Herero/Nama genocide), the post-war preservation of industrialist wealth, and Cold War East German intelligence is much less complete." },
    { id: "de_f2", isTruth: false, country: "de", fallback: "Germany's green energy transition (Energiewende) has been a clear environmental success.",
      whyFallback: "Coal use rose after the nuclear phaseout. Lignite mining displaces villages. Per-kWh emissions remain higher than nuclear-heavy France. \"Green\" has multiple definitions; the German one favors politics over carbon accounting." },
    { id: "de_f3", isTruth: false, country: "de", fallback: "The EU is a partnership among equal states.",
      whyFallback: "Decisions about the Euro, ECB policy, and migration responses track German economic interests with high reliability. Smaller economies (Greece, Portugal, Ireland) discovered the asymmetry during the 2010s debt crisis." },
    { id: "de_f4", isTruth: false, country: "de", fallback: "Germany leads on free speech and press freedom.",
      whyFallback: "Hate-speech laws (§ 130 StGB) are interpreted broadly and applied to political opinions that fall outside acceptable bounds. Pre-dawn police raids over social-media posts are not theoretical. The exact rules shift; the practice is real." },
    { id: "de_f5", isTruth: false, country: "de", fallback: "German automobiles meet the highest engineering and ethical standards.",
      whyFallback: "Dieselgate showed deliberate, coordinated fraud across the industry — not a single bad actor. BMW, Daimler, and Audi all subsequently implicated. \"German engineering\" is a marketing inheritance, not a current guarantee." },
    { id: "de_f6", isTruth: false, country: "de", fallback: "Germany's banking system is sober and well-regulated.",
      whyFallback: "Deutsche Bank: Russian mirror trades ($10B laundering), LIBOR rigging, Epstein banking, multi-billion-dollar settlements across multiple jurisdictions. \"Sober\" is the brand; the rap sheet is the institution." },
    { id: "de_f7", isTruth: false, country: "de", fallback: "Post-war denazification was thorough.",
      whyFallback: "Operation Paperclip imported Nazi scientists to the US. The Gehlen Organization recycled Wehrmacht intelligence into the BND. The judicial and educational systems retained large numbers of former Nazi Party members into the 1960s. Denazification ended quickly when the Cold War prioritized stability." },

    // ============== China — 8 truths + 7 inversions ==============
    { id: "cn_t1", isTruth: true,  country: "cn", fallback: "On June 4, 1989, the Chinese government used the People's Liberation Army to crush protests at Tiananmen Square. The death toll remains classified.",
      whyFallback: "Estimates range from hundreds to thousands. Internal British diplomatic cables (declassified 2017) suggested ~10,000. The topic is censored across the Chinese internet; the anniversary date returns no results." },
    { id: "cn_t2", isTruth: true,  country: "cn", fallback: "The Chinese Communist Party operates a Social Credit System that scores citizens on behavior and can restrict their travel, employment, and access to credit.",
      whyFallback: "Rolled out in phases since 2014. Travel blacklists with millions of people; the technical capacity is real and operating. The cleaner-than-Western-narrative version frames it as creditworthiness; the practice extends beyond." },
    { id: "cn_t3", isTruth: true,  country: "cn", fallback: "Forced organ harvesting from prisoners of conscience — particularly Falun Gong practitioners and Uyghurs — has been documented by independent tribunals.",
      whyFallback: "China Tribunal, London 2019: \"forced organ harvesting from prisoners of conscience\" found beyond reasonable doubt. China's astonishingly short transplant wait times relative to its donor system tell the same story numerically." },
    { id: "cn_t4", isTruth: true,  country: "cn", fallback: "Over a million Uyghur Muslims have been detained in \"re-education\" facilities in Xinjiang, with extensive documentation of forced sterilization and family separation.",
      whyFallback: "Xinjiang Police Files (2022), Uyghur Tribunal (2021), Australian Strategic Policy Institute satellite analysis of camp infrastructure. The Chinese government's official line: vocational training centers. The structural reality is camps." },
    { id: "cn_t5", isTruth: true,  country: "cn", fallback: "China's Great Firewall censors the open internet, including search results, social media, foreign news, and any content critical of the Party.",
      whyFallback: "Google, Facebook, Twitter, Wikipedia all blocked. VPNs technically illegal for ordinary use. The censorship is not invisible — it is structural and openly maintained." },
    { id: "cn_t6", isTruth: true,  country: "cn", fallback: "The Belt and Road Initiative has loaded debt onto recipient countries that has, in several cases, resulted in strategic-asset transfer to China.",
      whyFallback: "Hambantota port in Sri Lanka (99-year lease, 2017) is the often-cited example. Dozens of other infrastructure-for-debt arrangements across Africa, Central Asia, and Southeast Asia, with mixed records." },
    { id: "cn_t7", isTruth: true,  country: "cn", fallback: "Chinese tech companies are legally required to share data with state security on request.",
      whyFallback: "National Intelligence Law 2017, Articles 7 and 14. ByteDance, Tencent, Huawei — same legal regime. The Western framing of \"private\" Chinese tech companies misses the structural reality." },
    { id: "cn_t8", isTruth: true,  country: "cn", fallback: "Mao Zedong's Great Leap Forward (1958–62) caused the deaths of an estimated 30 to 55 million people, primarily through famine.",
      whyFallback: "Frank Dikötter, *Mao's Great Famine* (using Chinese archival records). The scale is mostly absent from Western discussions of communist atrocities; the figure dwarfs most others." },
    { id: "cn_f1", isTruth: false, country: "cn", fallback: "China is a peaceful nation that has never invaded its neighbors.",
      whyFallback: "Tibet (1950), Korea (1950), India (1962), Vietnam (1979), and ongoing pressure on Taiwan, the South China Sea, and Indian border claims. \"Peaceful rise\" is the diplomatic frame; the boundary lines tell a different story." },
    { id: "cn_f2", isTruth: false, country: "cn", fallback: "The Chinese model has lifted hundreds of millions out of poverty under Communist Party leadership alone.",
      whyFallback: "The lifting happened after Deng Xiaoping's market reforms (1978+) and accelerated when WTO entry (2001) integrated China into global trade. The Party deserves credit for not blocking it; it is not the same as having designed it." },
    { id: "cn_f3", isTruth: false, country: "cn", fallback: "China's COVID response was a model of competence.",
      whyFallback: "The Wuhan disclosure delay, the suppression of Dr. Li Wenliang and others, the WHO mission's restricted access, and the absence of an independent origins investigation are the documented record. Competence in some axes; opacity in others." },
    { id: "cn_f4", isTruth: false, country: "cn", fallback: "Hong Kong's autonomy was respected under \"one country, two systems\".",
      whyFallback: "The 2020 National Security Law functionally ended the legal autonomy promised under the Sino-British Joint Declaration. Pro-democracy candidates jailed, media outlets closed, electoral system rewritten. Two systems → one." },
    { id: "cn_f5", isTruth: false, country: "cn", fallback: "Western media coverage of China is exaggerated and biased.",
      whyFallback: "Some coverage is. Much of it is corroborated by satellite imagery, leaked documents (Xinjiang Police Files, China Cables), and Chinese government statements themselves. The bias dismissal is convenient; the documentary record is not." },
    { id: "cn_f6", isTruth: false, country: "cn", fallback: "Chinese citizens have meaningful voting power.",
      whyFallback: "There is one legal party. Other parties exist as decorative satellites. Local-level village votes happen; national leadership is selected within the Party. \"Vote\" describes the form, not the substance." },
    { id: "cn_f7", isTruth: false, country: "cn", fallback: "The Chinese government is fundamentally communist.",
      whyFallback: "China has more billionaires than any country except the US. The economic structure is state-directed corporatism: private enterprise allowed under Party oversight. \"Communist\" is the brand name. The structure is closer to a corporate-state hybrid." },

    // ============== Saudi Arabia — 8 truths + 7 inversions ==============
    { id: "sa_t1", isTruth: true,  country: "sa", fallback: "Saudi Arabia funded the global export of Wahhabi/Salafi religious extremism for decades, with state-aligned charities seeding radical mosques and madrasas worldwide.",
      whyFallback: "Documented by Western intelligence agencies and Saudi defectors. The 28 redacted pages of the 9/11 Joint Inquiry — finally released 2016 — detailed Saudi financial connections to several hijackers." },
    { id: "sa_t2", isTruth: true,  country: "sa", fallback: "15 of the 19 hijackers on September 11, 2001 were Saudi citizens. No Iraqis were involved. The US invaded Iraq.",
      whyFallback: "FBI confirmed nationalities. Bush administration's Iraq pivot was based on the now-discredited \"yellowcake\" and \"45-minute\" intelligence. The Saudi-9/11 connections were classified far longer than the war preparation took." },
    { id: "sa_t3", isTruth: true,  country: "sa", fallback: "Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi was murdered and dismembered inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in 2018. The CIA concluded Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman approved the operation.",
      whyFallback: "Turkish intelligence audio. US Office of the Director of National Intelligence assessment (2021): \"approved an operation in Istanbul, Turkey to capture or kill Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi.\" MBS suffered no consequences." },
    { id: "sa_t4", isTruth: true,  country: "sa", fallback: "Saudi Arabia and the UAE-led coalition's war in Yemen has produced one of the worst humanitarian crises of the 21st century — bombed hospitals, school buses, and weddings using mostly Western-supplied weapons.",
      whyFallback: "UN classifications. Repeated documentation by HRW, Amnesty, MSF. US and UK arms sales continued through the worst of it. \"Largest humanitarian crisis\" became the operating description." },
    { id: "sa_t5", isTruth: true,  country: "sa", fallback: "Saudi Arabia and the petrodollar system: in 1974, Saudi Arabia agreed to price oil exclusively in US dollars in exchange for US military protection. This deal underpinned the dollar's global reserve status.",
      whyFallback: "Henry Kissinger negotiated the framework. The arrangement is now strained as Saudi Arabia diversifies (yuan oil trades with China, BRICS+ membership). The shift in 2023–24 mattered more than its coverage suggests." },
    { id: "sa_t6", isTruth: true,  country: "sa", fallback: "Saudi Arabia carried out a mass executions of 81 people in a single day in March 2022.",
      whyFallback: "Confirmed by the Saudi Press Agency itself. Charges ranged from terrorism to political opposition. Many were minorities (Shi'a) or had been convicted in proceedings that did not meet international standards." },
    { id: "sa_t7", isTruth: true,  country: "sa", fallback: "Women in Saudi Arabia have lived under a male-guardianship system controlling marriage, work, travel, and medical decisions for most of the country's modern history.",
      whyFallback: "Mahram system. Partial reforms since 2019. Activists who fought for those reforms (including Loujain al-Hathloul) were imprisoned and reportedly tortured at the same time the reforms were announced." },
    { id: "sa_t8", isTruth: true,  country: "sa", fallback: "The Saudi royal family numbers in the thousands and consumes a vast portion of state oil revenue through stipends, palaces, and private spending.",
      whyFallback: "Estimates: ~15,000 princes and princesses. The state and the dynasty are not fully separable in accounting. Sovereign wealth and family wealth blur in ways no Western state would tolerate." },
    { id: "sa_f1", isTruth: false, country: "sa", fallback: "Saudi Arabia's recent reforms (Vision 2030) make it a modernizing, opening society.",
      whyFallback: "Cosmetic changes (cinemas, women driving) coexist with continued mass executions, imprisonment of dissidents, surveillance of citizens abroad, and the war in Yemen. \"Reform\" is real in some axes; not in others. Western coverage tends to emphasize the cosmetic." },
    { id: "sa_f2", isTruth: false, country: "sa", fallback: "Saudi Arabia is a reliable Western ally and partner in stability.",
      whyFallback: "The same kingdom funded the ideology that fueled Al-Qaeda, ISIS, and most modern Sunni jihadism. \"Ally\" describes the diplomatic frame; the ideological export tells the other half of the story." },
    { id: "sa_f3", isTruth: false, country: "sa", fallback: "Press freedom exists in Saudi Arabia under the new leadership.",
      whyFallback: "Saudi Arabia ranks near the bottom of every press-freedom index. The Khashoggi murder is the loudest case, not the only one. Journalists, bloggers, and human-rights advocates regularly receive long prison sentences." },
    { id: "sa_f4", isTruth: false, country: "sa", fallback: "Saudi Arabia is a constitutional monarchy.",
      whyFallback: "The Quran serves as the constitution per official framing; in practice the king and crown prince hold near-absolute authority. There is no elected legislature. \"Constitutional\" is the marketing; the structure is absolute." },
    { id: "sa_f5", isTruth: false, country: "sa", fallback: "Western sanctions on Saudi Arabia for human-rights violations are similar in severity to those imposed on other regimes.",
      whyFallback: "Comparable behavior by Iran, Russia, or North Korea has produced comprehensive sanctions regimes. Saudi behavior has produced statements, mild and selective measures, and continued multi-billion-dollar arms sales." },
    { id: "sa_f6", isTruth: false, country: "sa", fallback: "Hajj pilgrimage management has nothing to do with politics.",
      whyFallback: "Saudi Arabia controls Mecca and Medina. Pilgrimage quotas, visa policies, and political pressure on other Muslim states have all been wielded through the Hajj apparatus. Custodianship is religious; control is geopolitical." },
    { id: "sa_f7", isTruth: false, country: "sa", fallback: "The Saudi-funded mosque in your country is theologically neutral.",
      whyFallback: "Saudi-funded mosques and Islamic centers worldwide have tended to disseminate Wahhabi/Salafi interpretations specifically, displacing local theological traditions (Sufi, Hanafi, others). The funding is not free." },

    // ============== Israel — 8 truths + 7 inversions ==============
    { id: "il_t1", isTruth: true,  country: "il", fallback: "The Lavon Affair (1954) was an Israeli intelligence false-flag operation: bombs planted in Egyptian and US targets in Cairo and Alexandria, designed to be blamed on Egyptians or communists.",
      whyFallback: "Operation Susannah. Acknowledged by Israel decades later. Defense Minister Pinhas Lavon resigned over it; the surviving operatives were quietly honored by the state in 2005." },
    { id: "il_t2", isTruth: true,  country: "il", fallback: "On June 8, 1967, Israeli forces deliberately attacked the USS Liberty — a US intelligence ship in international waters — killing 34 American servicemen and wounding 171.",
      whyFallback: "Survivors testified to a sustained two-hour attack by Israeli jets and torpedo boats with markings clearly identifiable. Israel claimed misidentification. The US Navy court of inquiry was constrained from a full investigation; survivors have fought for decades for an honest hearing." },
    { id: "il_t3", isTruth: true,  country: "il", fallback: "Israel possesses an undeclared nuclear arsenal — estimated at 80–200 warheads — and has never signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty.",
      whyFallback: "Mordechai Vanunu disclosed the program in 1986; he was abducted by Mossad, imprisoned for 18 years, and remains restricted today. The arsenal is acknowledged by US, French, and Russian intelligence; not by Israel itself." },
    { id: "il_t4", isTruth: true,  country: "il", fallback: "Spyware made by Israel's NSO Group (Pegasus) has been used by dozens of governments to surveil journalists, activists, and political opponents — including in cases linked to Khashoggi's murder.",
      whyFallback: "Citizen Lab and Forbidden Stories investigations. NSO licenses are export-controlled by the Israeli Ministry of Defense, which has approved sales to regimes including Saudi Arabia, UAE, and Mexico. State export, not rogue company." },
    { id: "il_t5", isTruth: true,  country: "il", fallback: "AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee) is one of the most effective lobbying organizations in Washington, with documented influence over both major US parties.",
      whyFallback: "Walt and Mearsheimer, *The Israel Lobby* (2007), traced the structural influence. The lobby itself is open about its work; what is sometimes considered taboo is naming it analytically. The pattern is documented in primary sources, not whispered." },
    { id: "il_t6", isTruth: true,  country: "il", fallback: "Israeli settlements in the West Bank are considered illegal under international law by the UN, the ICJ, and virtually all major bodies — yet they continue to expand.",
      whyFallback: "Fourth Geneva Convention, Article 49. UN Security Council Resolution 2334 (2016). The settler population in the West Bank passed 700,000 around 2022. \"Disputed\" is the diplomatic framing; \"illegal\" is the legal one." },
    { id: "il_t7", isTruth: true,  country: "il", fallback: "Israel's Mossad has carried out targeted assassinations across multiple countries for decades — including in NATO member states without their cooperation.",
      whyFallback: "Operation Wrath of God, targeted nuclear-scientist killings in Iran, the Dubai hotel killing of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh (2010) using forged passports of Western citizens. The agency's record is partly a matter of public reporting, partly of leaked dossiers, occasionally acknowledged." },
    { id: "il_t8", isTruth: true,  country: "il", fallback: "Jeffrey Epstein had documented ties to Israeli intelligence figures, including former PM Ehud Barak, who was photographed visiting Epstein at his Manhattan home and his island.",
      whyFallback: "Photographs published in Israeli press. Barak invested in an Epstein-linked AI company. Ari Ben-Menashe and others have alleged operational links — claims contested by Israel. The contacts are not contested; the operational interpretation is." },
    { id: "il_f1", isTruth: false, country: "il", fallback: "Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East.",
      whyFallback: "Roughly five million Palestinians live under Israeli military rule in the West Bank and Gaza without voting rights in Israeli elections. \"Democracy\" within the Green Line is real; outside it, military administration is the structure." },
    { id: "il_f2", isTruth: false, country: "il", fallback: "Criticism of Israeli government policy is the same as antisemitism.",
      whyFallback: "Conflating the two is a political strategy; it is also a serious analytical error. The Israeli left, peace movements, and human-rights groups (B'Tselem, Btselem, Peace Now) routinely make the criticisms in question. They are not antisemites." },
    { id: "il_f3", isTruth: false, country: "il", fallback: "US support for Israel has nothing to do with US domestic politics.",
      whyFallback: "Christian Zionism, AIPAC, evangelical voter mobilization, military-industrial export licensing — the structural alignment is well-documented and operates regardless of party. \"Just shared values\" is the diplomatic version of a more complex picture." },
    { id: "il_f4", isTruth: false, country: "il", fallback: "Israel does not interfere in Western politics.",
      whyFallback: "Lobbying is interference by another name. \"The Lobby and the Movement\" (Al Jazeera, 2017, suppressed and leaked) documented operational interference in UK politics. The pattern is reported, contested, then ignored." },
    { id: "il_f5", isTruth: false, country: "il", fallback: "Israeli intelligence is uniquely ethical compared to other agencies.",
      whyFallback: "Mossad assassinations on foreign soil, NSO Group's spyware exports to authoritarian regimes, Unit 8200's surveillance practices. The agency is competent; the ethics framing is marketing." },
    { id: "il_f6", isTruth: false, country: "il", fallback: "The West Bank wall is a security barrier with no impact on Palestinian civilian life.",
      whyFallback: "The wall annexes large amounts of Palestinian land, separates farmers from their fields, students from their schools, families from each other. The International Court of Justice ruled it illegal in 2004. \"Security\" is one function; demographic land-grab is the other." },
    { id: "il_f7", isTruth: false, country: "il", fallback: "All discussion of Israeli policy in American media is balanced.",
      whyFallback: "Multiple journalists (Peter Beinart, Mehdi Hasan, others) have documented the editorial bias and the career costs of crossing it. Recent strikes and resignations at the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and BBC over Gaza coverage are recent data points." },

    // ============== Denmark — 8 truths + 7 inversions ==============
    { id: "dk_t1", isTruth: true,  country: "dk", fallback: "The Danish tax authority (SKAT) paid out roughly 12.7 billion DKK in fraudulent dividend tax refunds between 2012 and 2015 — the largest fraud in Danish history.",
      whyFallback: "Cum-ex / cum-cum scheme exploited Denmark's automated refund process. Internal warnings ignored. Sanjay Shah was extradited to Denmark in 2023. SKAT was broken into multiple agencies in response." },
    { id: "dk_t2", isTruth: true,  country: "dk", fallback: "In November 2020, PM Mette Frederiksen ordered the slaughter of Denmark's entire mink population — 17 million animals — without legal basis.",
      whyFallback: "The Mink Commission (2022) found no legal authority existed at the time of the order. Frederiksen admitted it publicly. The industry was destroyed; she remained in office." },
    { id: "dk_t3", isTruth: true,  country: "dk", fallback: "Danske Bank's Estonia branch processed approximately €200 billion in suspicious transactions between 2007 and 2015 — the largest money-laundering scandal in European banking history.",
      whyFallback: "Whistleblower Howard Wilkinson reported it internally; ignored. US Treasury and Danish FSA eventually confirmed. Settlement: $2 billion to US authorities (2022)." },
    { id: "dk_t4", isTruth: true,  country: "dk", fallback: "Danish military intelligence (FE) allowed the NSA to use Danish underwater internet cables to spy on European political leaders, including Angela Merkel.",
      whyFallback: "Operation Dunhammer, exposed by DR (Danish public broadcaster) in 2021. Intelligence sharing happened during PM Helle Thorning-Schmidt's tenure. The fallout reshaped the FE leadership, but accountability stayed mostly internal." },
    { id: "dk_t5", isTruth: true,  country: "dk", fallback: "Former immigration minister Inger Støjberg was convicted by Denmark's special impeachment court (Rigsret) in 2021 for illegally separating asylum-seeker couples where one party was a minor.",
      whyFallback: "First Danish minister convicted by impeachment since 1910. Sentenced to 60 days in prison. A written ministerial instruction violated Denmark's administrative law and international obligations." },
    { id: "dk_t6", isTruth: true,  country: "dk", fallback: "From the 1960s into the 1970s, Danish authorities inserted IUDs into thousands of Greenlandic Inuit women and girls — many under 18 — without informed consent.",
      whyFallback: "The 'Spiral Case' (Spiralsagen), documented by DR in 2022. Estimated 4,500 women affected, including girls as young as 12. Many discovered the device only decades later. Investigation ongoing." },
    { id: "dk_t7", isTruth: true,  country: "dk", fallback: "Danish police were found to have unlawfully suppressed Tibetan and Falun Gong protesters during Chinese state visits to avoid offending Beijing.",
      whyFallback: "Tibet Commission I (2017) and II (2019). Systematic violations of demonstrators' constitutional rights, traceable to fear of damaging Sino-Danish relations. Police orders documented and confirmed." },
    { id: "dk_t8", isTruth: true,  country: "dk", fallback: "The Danish defence intelligence service (FE) was found to have illegally collected and stored data on Danish citizens and shared it with foreign partners.",
      whyFallback: "Danish Intelligence Oversight Board (TET) report 2020. Mass data sharing outside legal authority. The agency's leadership was removed; the Lars Findsen prosecution later collapsed amid concerns about scapegoating." },
    { id: "dk_f1", isTruth: false, country: "dk", fallback: "Denmark is the world's least corrupt country — there is essentially no corruption here.",
      whyFallback: "Transparency International's index measures *perceived* corruption, not actual prevalence. SKAT (12.7 billion DKK fraud), Danske Bank (€200B laundered), FE illegal data sharing, the Tibet Commission, and Inger Støjberg's conviction all happened in the same country topping that index." },
    { id: "dk_f2", isTruth: false, country: "dk", fallback: "The Danish welfare model is universally generous and applies equally to all residents.",
      whyFallback: "The 'ghetto laws' (2018) explicitly target neighborhoods defined by ethnic composition. Welfare schemes like 'selvforsørgelses- og hjemrejseydelse' pay lower rates to non-Western immigrants. Universal in the brand; segmented in the design." },
    { id: "dk_f3", isTruth: false, country: "dk", fallback: "Danmarks Radio (DR) is editorially independent of government.",
      whyFallback: "DR's board is appointed by the Minister of Culture in consultation with parties in parliament. The licence fee was replaced by direct state funding. 'Public service' describes the mission; the funding and governance describe the dependency." },
    { id: "dk_f4", isTruth: false, country: "dk", fallback: "Greenland is fully autonomous — Denmark no longer exercises real control there.",
      whyFallback: "Greenland's economy depends on a Danish block grant (~3.5 billion DKK annually). Foreign policy and defence remain decided in Copenhagen. The colonial relationship was renamed in 2009; the structural dependence continues." },
    { id: "dk_f5", isTruth: false, country: "dk", fallback: "Denmark stayed cleanly out of post-9/11 surveillance and rendition arrangements.",
      whyFallback: "The Tibet Commission found Danish police suppressing demonstrators to please Beijing. FE was found to have shared mass data with the NSA (Operation Dunhammer). The 'Denmark stayed clean' framing is comfortable; the documentary record disagrees." },
    { id: "dk_f6", isTruth: false, country: "dk", fallback: "The Mink Commission's findings closed the question of accountability for the 2020 mink cull.",
      whyFallback: "The Commission found a serious breach of administrative law. Mette Frederiksen apologized but kept her position; the parliamentary majority that backed her survived. Accountability in name; no political consequence in fact. The mink industry was destroyed permanently." },
    { id: "dk_f7", isTruth: false, country: "dk", fallback: "Danish journalism is uniquely independent and diverse compared to other countries.",
      whyFallback: "Three media groups (JP/Politikens Hus, Berlingske Media, DR/TV2) dominate the landscape. Editorial board appointments concentrate political influence. Independence is meaningfully greater than in some peer countries; uniqueness is marketing, not structure." },

    // ============== Russia — 8 truths + 7 inversions ==============
    { id: "ru_t1", isTruth: true,  country: "ru", fallback: "Former FSB officer Alexander Litvinenko was poisoned with polonium-210 in London in 2006. A UK public inquiry concluded that Vladimir Putin had \"probably approved\" the operation.",
      whyFallback: "Inquiry by Sir Robert Owen (2016). FSB-linked Andrei Lugovoi was identified as one of two perpetrators; he later became a Russian MP and was never extradited. Polonium-210 is essentially a state-only material." },
    { id: "ru_t2", isTruth: true,  country: "ru", fallback: "Sergei Magnitsky, the lawyer who exposed a $230 million tax fraud by Russian officials, was arrested, beaten, denied medical care, and died in custody in 2009.",
      whyFallback: "His investigation led to the Magnitsky Act (2012) in the US, then in multiple other countries. The Russian state posthumously tried Magnitsky himself for tax evasion. None of the officials he named were punished." },
    { id: "ru_t3", isTruth: true,  country: "ru", fallback: "Mikhail Khodorkovsky, once Russia's wealthiest man, was jailed in 2003 after his Yukos oil company challenged the Kremlin. Yukos was dismantled and its assets transferred to state-owned Rosneft.",
      whyFallback: "The pattern: oligarchs who stay out of politics keep their fortunes; those who challenge the Kremlin lose them. Khodorkovsky spent ten years in prison and lives in exile. Yukos shareholders won an arbitration award later reversed in Russian-friendly courts." },
    { id: "ru_t4", isTruth: true,  country: "ru", fallback: "Investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya, who chronicled human-rights abuses in Chechnya, was shot dead in her Moscow apartment on Vladimir Putin's birthday in 2006.",
      whyFallback: "Five Chechens were convicted; the person who ordered the killing was never officially identified. Politkovskaya was one of more than a dozen Russian journalists murdered in the Putin era. The killings cluster around Chechnya, corruption, and the FSB." },
    { id: "ru_t5", isTruth: true,  country: "ru", fallback: "Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, carrying 298 civilians, was shot down over Ukraine in July 2014 by a Russian Buk missile launched from the 53rd Anti-Aircraft Missile Brigade of the Russian Armed Forces.",
      whyFallback: "Joint Investigation Team (Netherlands-led), 2016 and 2018 reports. Three Russian nationals and one Ukrainian were convicted in absentia by a Dutch court in 2022. Russia denied involvement and refused extradition." },
    { id: "ru_t6", isTruth: true,  country: "ru", fallback: "Former Russian intelligence officer Sergei Skripal and his daughter were poisoned with the Novichok nerve agent in Salisbury, England, in 2018.",
      whyFallback: "Bellingcat identified the two GRU officers as Anatoliy Chepiga and Alexander Mishkin. A British civilian, Dawn Sturgess, died of secondary exposure. Putin publicly called Skripal \"a traitor\" and \"scum\" before the attack." },
    { id: "ru_t7", isTruth: true,  country: "ru", fallback: "Opposition leader Alexei Navalny was poisoned with a Novichok-class nerve agent in 2020, jailed upon returning to Russia, and died in an Arctic penal colony in 2024.",
      whyFallback: "Bellingcat and CNN identified the FSB team; one operative confirmed details on a recorded phone call. The German hospital that treated Navalny confirmed Novichok. The Russian state denied everything." },
    { id: "ru_t8", isTruth: true,  country: "ru", fallback: "The Wagner Group operated as a Kremlin-deniable private military force for years in Syria, Africa, and Ukraine. Two months after his abortive mutiny against the Russian military, Wagner founder Yevgeny Prigozhin died in a plane crash.",
      whyFallback: "Wagner's existence violated Russian law against private armies — until its founder threatened Putin. The plane carrying Prigozhin and his senior commanders crashed in August 2023 with no surviving Wagner leadership." },
    { id: "ru_f1", isTruth: false, country: "ru", fallback: "Russia holds genuinely competitive elections.",
      whyFallback: "United Russia controls the legislature; opposition figures are jailed, killed, or exiled before they can stand. Independent observers are blocked. Putin's 2024 \"victory\" (87.3%) was announced before the polls had even closed in eastern Russia." },
    { id: "ru_f2", isTruth: false, country: "ru", fallback: "Russia is purely a victim of unprovoked Western aggression.",
      whyFallback: "Chechnya (1994, 1999), Georgia (2008), Crimea (2014), Donbas (2014), full-scale Ukraine invasion (2022) — none were responses to NATO actions. Russia launched its own wars across the same period." },
    { id: "ru_f3", isTruth: false, country: "ru", fallback: "Russian media offers diverse, free reporting.",
      whyFallback: "State-owned or Kremlin-aligned channels (Channel One, Rossiya 1, NTV) dominate broadcast. Independent outlets (Novaya Gazeta, TV Rain, Echo of Moscow) have been suspended, exiled, or shut down — especially since 2022. The \"foreign agent\" law brands almost any critical outlet." },
    { id: "ru_f4", isTruth: false, country: "ru", fallback: "Putin enjoys overwhelming genuine popular support — the alternative is unimaginable.",
      whyFallback: "Polling in an environment with no free press, criminalized dissent, and disappeared opponents is not a measure of genuine support. The alternative is unimaginable because the regime has spent two decades systematically removing alternatives." },
    { id: "ru_f5", isTruth: false, country: "ru", fallback: "The Russian Orthodox Church is independent of the Russian state.",
      whyFallback: "Patriarch Kirill has openly endorsed the war in Ukraine as a \"holy\" cause. The Church receives state property, tax exemptions, and political backing in exchange for ideological support. The Soviet pattern of state-aligned religion did not end; it changed brands." },
    { id: "ru_f6", isTruth: false, country: "ru", fallback: "Russia has not invaded its neighbors in modern times.",
      whyFallback: "Chechnya 1994, Chechnya 1999, Georgia 2008, Crimea 2014, Eastern Ukraine 2014, Ukraine 2022. \"Special military operation\" is a euphemism; the troop movements, casualties, and territory changes are not." },
    { id: "ru_f7", isTruth: false, country: "ru", fallback: "Wagner was a genuinely private military company, unrelated to the Kremlin.",
      whyFallback: "Wagner operated alongside Russian regular forces in Syria, used Russian military equipment, recruited from Russian prisons under apparent state authorization, and was funded through Concord Catering — a Prigozhin company also handling Kremlin food contracts. \"Private\" was the legal fiction." },

    // ============== France — 8 truths + 7 inversions ==============
    { id: "fr_t1", isTruth: true,  country: "fr", fallback: "France maintained a covert post-colonial network in Africa — \"Françafrique\" — using cash, intelligence, mercenaries, and the CFA franc to keep former colonies aligned with French interests.",
      whyFallback: "Documented by Jean-Pierre Bat, Robert Bourgi (public confession 2011), and decades of investigative reporting. Suitcases of cash from African presidents to French politicians. The CFA franc was administered from Paris until partial reform in 2020." },
    { id: "fr_t2", isTruth: true,  country: "fr", fallback: "Nicolas Sarkozy is under judicial proceedings for allegedly receiving roughly €50 million in illicit campaign funding from Muammar Gaddafi's Libyan regime in 2007.",
      whyFallback: "Mediapart investigation, ongoing French judicial proceedings. Sarkozy has already been convicted in separate corruption cases (Bismuth affair, Bygmalion). The Libya case includes Bashir Saleh's testimony and Ziad Takieddine's photographed cash deliveries." },
    { id: "fr_t3", isTruth: true,  country: "fr", fallback: "In 1985, French intelligence (DGSE) bombed the Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior in New Zealand harbor, killing photographer Fernando Pereira.",
      whyFallback: "Operation Satanique. France initially denied, then confirmed. President Mitterrand later admitted personal authorization. New Zealand prosecuted two agents who received 10-year sentences — released after 2 years under French diplomatic pressure." },
    { id: "fr_t4", isTruth: true,  country: "fr", fallback: "Sarkozy's 2012 presidential campaign was found to have used the Bygmalion shell company to hide spending nearly double the legal limit.",
      whyFallback: "Bygmalion affair. Convictions of Sarkozy and 13 co-defendants in 2021. Combined with the Bismuth tap-recording case, Sarkozy is the first former French president convicted of multiple corruption crimes." },
    { id: "fr_t5", isTruth: true,  country: "fr", fallback: "EDF, France's state-owned nuclear utility, has paid billions in fines for cartel behavior, price-fixing, and forged inspection records.",
      whyFallback: "Multiple EU and French regulatory actions. ASN (nuclear safety) routinely identifies forged inspection records — Le Creusot Forge scandal (2016) being the most public. Opacity around plant aging and waste storage is structural to the public-private hybrid." },
    { id: "fr_t6", isTruth: true,  country: "fr", fallback: "Crédit Lyonnais collapsed in 1993 in one of the largest banking scandals in European history — losses absorbed by French taxpayers exceeded €30 billion.",
      whyFallback: "State-backed bank, politically directed lending, fraudulent acquisitions including the MGM studio takeover. Multiple convictions of senior executives. The bailout structure shielded the responsible political class from full accountability." },
    { id: "fr_t7", isTruth: true,  country: "fr", fallback: "President Emmanuel Macron and senior French officials were themselves targeted by Pegasus spyware in 2021, apparently by Morocco.",
      whyFallback: "Citizen Lab and Forbidden Stories investigations. France protested diplomatically. The same investigations showed French intelligence had separately purchased and used Pegasus-style tools, raising questions about Macron's selective outrage." },
    { id: "fr_t8", isTruth: true,  country: "fr", fallback: "Dominique Strauss-Kahn, then head of the IMF and frontrunner for French president, was arrested in 2011 for alleged sexual assault — and the French press had treated his pattern as an open secret for years.",
      whyFallback: "Criminal charges dropped; civil settlement paid. The 2012 'Carlton de Lille' affair, in which DSK was prosecuted for aggravated procuring, ended in acquittal but exposed the network. Pattern protected by political and journalistic class until the New York case forced disclosure." },
    { id: "fr_f1", isTruth: false, country: "fr", fallback: "French laïcité (secularism) treats all religions equally.",
      whyFallback: "In practice the laws target visible Islamic dress and practice far more than Catholic, Jewish, or other expressions. The 2004 headscarf ban, 2010 burqa ban, and 2021 \"separatism\" law are directly named for or focused on Muslim practice." },
    { id: "fr_f2", isTruth: false, country: "fr", fallback: "France is no longer a colonial power.",
      whyFallback: "Overseas departments (DOM-TOM), military bases in Africa (operations in Mali, Niger, CAR, Burkina Faso), CFA franc until 2020, ongoing influence in West and Central Africa. The colonies were rebranded; the operational footprint continues." },
    { id: "fr_f3", isTruth: false, country: "fr", fallback: "France has fully reckoned with the Algerian War.",
      whyFallback: "Macron acknowledged certain torture cases (Audin, 2018) and some massacres. The systematic use of torture, the \"disappearance\" policies, and the post-independence economic asymmetry remain mostly unaddressed. Civil-war-era state archives are still partly closed." },
    { id: "fr_f4", isTruth: false, country: "fr", fallback: "The French press is editorially free of business and political pressure.",
      whyFallback: "Bolloré, Arnault, Niel, Drahi, Bouygues — a handful of billionaires own most major French outlets. Editorial direction tracks ownership in documented patterns. Le Monde and Mediapart are exceptions, not the structural norm." },
    { id: "fr_f5", isTruth: false, country: "fr", fallback: "Emmanuel Macron is a moderate centrist with no extreme positions.",
      whyFallback: "Police violence against Gilets Jaunes documented by UN. Pension reform pushed through with 49.3 constitutional override. Immigration laws moving steadily rightward. Centrism is the brand; the legislative record reads differently." },
    { id: "fr_f6", isTruth: false, country: "fr", fallback: "The Vichy collaboration with Nazi Germany was an isolated wartime aberration.",
      whyFallback: "Vichy's antisemitic legislation, deportations of Jews, and police roundups (Vél' d'Hiv') were carried out by the French state apparatus, not just occupiers. Pétain and Laval were tried; the broader administrative collaboration was forgotten faster than the resistance was remembered." },
    { id: "fr_f7", isTruth: false, country: "fr", fallback: "France maintains its African military presence because African governments welcome it.",
      whyFallback: "Recent expulsions of French forces from Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, and Chad suggest otherwise. Local protests and coups have specifically named French military presence as a grievance. Welcome was the diplomatic word; coercion was often the operational reality." },

    // ============== Italy — 8 truths + 7 inversions ==============
    { id: "it_t1", isTruth: true,  country: "it", fallback: "The Propaganda Due (P2) Masonic lodge, exposed in 1981, was a parallel state — its members included senior military officers, intelligence chiefs, judges, journalists, bankers, and future PM Silvio Berlusconi.",
      whyFallback: "Investigation by Carlo Casalegno and Mino Pecorelli (both murdered). Tina Anselmi's parliamentary commission concluded P2 had penetrated the Italian state and aimed at authoritarian transformation. Most members faced no consequences." },
    { id: "it_t2", isTruth: true,  country: "it", fallback: "The Tangentopoli (\"Bribesville\") scandal of 1992-94 collapsed Italy's First Republic and revealed systematic bribery as the operating system of Italian politics.",
      whyFallback: "Mani Pulite (Clean Hands) investigations. Over 5,000 politicians, businessmen, and civil servants investigated. Christian Democrats and Socialists effectively destroyed. The system did not become honest; it reorganized under new names." },
    { id: "it_t3", isTruth: true,  country: "it", fallback: "The Italian state has documented operational ties between national institutions and Cosa Nostra, 'Ndrangheta, and Camorra organized crime.",
      whyFallback: "The 'state-mafia negotiations' trial (Trattativa Stato-Mafia), Marcello Dell'Utri's mafia convictions, the murders of Falcone and Borsellino. The 'Ndrangheta now has reach across Europe; magistrates who pursued them have repeatedly been killed." },
    { id: "it_t4", isTruth: true,  country: "it", fallback: "Silvio Berlusconi, four-time prime minister, owned three of Italy's main commercial TV channels while in government and was convicted of tax fraud, bribery, and patronizing a minor for prostitution.",
      whyFallback: "Mediaset empire built during his Socialist Party ally Bettino Craxi's era. Conflict-of-interest law never applied to him. Convictions absorbed politically; he sat in the European Parliament until his death." },
    { id: "it_t5", isTruth: true,  country: "it", fallback: "Banco Ambrosiano collapsed in 1982, exposing money laundering for the Vatican Bank, P2 Lodge, and the Italian mafia. Its president Roberto Calvi (\"God's Banker\") was found hanged under Blackfriars Bridge in London.",
      whyFallback: "Vatican Bank acknowledged \"moral responsibility\" and paid $241M to creditors. Calvi's death ruled suicide, then murder, then unresolved. Archbishop Marcinkus was indicted but protected by Vatican diplomatic immunity." },
    { id: "it_t6", isTruth: true,  country: "it", fallback: "Operation Gladio, NATO's \"stay-behind\" network in Italy, ran covert anti-communist operations from the 1950s through 1990 — including documented involvement in false-flag terrorism.",
      whyFallback: "PM Giulio Andreotti's 1990 admission. Strategy of Tension period (1969-80): bombings at Piazza Fontana, Bologna station, Ustica. Magistrates linked these to Gladio operatives and far-right networks under intelligence service protection." },
    { id: "it_t7", isTruth: true,  country: "it", fallback: "Christian Democrat leader Aldo Moro was kidnapped and murdered by the Red Brigades in 1978 while his rescue was reportedly obstructed by political and intelligence interests opposed to his planned compromise with the Italian Communist Party.",
      whyFallback: "Multiple parliamentary inquiries. Steve Pieczenik (US State Department crisis manager) later acknowledged the US opposed concessions. Henry Kissinger had publicly threatened Moro for his political opening. The case remains officially closed and historically contested." },
    { id: "it_t8", isTruth: true,  country: "it", fallback: "The 'Ndrangheta — Calabrian organized crime — controls a significant share of European cocaine import and operates as a major global criminal organization.",
      whyFallback: "Europol, DNA (Italian anti-mafia directorate), and German BKA rank it among the largest international crime groups. Its decentralized family structure makes prosecution slow; its profits exceed many corporations." },
    { id: "it_f1", isTruth: false, country: "it", fallback: "Italy is a stable, transparent democracy with regular peaceful transitions of power.",
      whyFallback: "Italy has had ~70 governments since WWII. The Tangentopoli period destroyed the existing party system; the post-1994 era produced the Berlusconi conflict-of-interest regime. \"Stable\" describes the constitution; the operating reality is structural turbulence." },
    { id: "it_f2", isTruth: false, country: "it", fallback: "The Vatican Bank has been fully cleaned up and reformed.",
      whyFallback: "Reforms under Pope Francis ousted some figures; structural opacity remained. Repeated money-laundering investigations through the 2010s and 2020s. The bank still operates without normal banking oversight." },
    { id: "it_f3", isTruth: false, country: "it", fallback: "Italian media is free and pluralistic.",
      whyFallback: "RAI (state broadcaster) is divided up by political party. Mediaset (Berlusconi family) dominates commercial. The \"lottizzazione\" (carving up by party) is openly named in Italian; the practice never stopped." },
    { id: "it_f4", isTruth: false, country: "it", fallback: "The \"Strategy of Tension\" bombings of the 1970s have been fully resolved and explained.",
      whyFallback: "Piazza Fontana (1969), Bologna station (1980, 85 dead) — convictions of far-right operatives, but the higher-level direction was never officially named. Multiple parliamentary commissions, partial declassifications, and unresolved threads remain." },
    { id: "it_f5", isTruth: false, country: "it", fallback: "Italian organized crime is a southern Italian problem, not a national or European one.",
      whyFallback: "'Ndrangheta now operates significantly in northern Italy, Germany (Duisburg massacre 2007), Australia, Canada, and across the EU. The \"southern problem\" framing is convenient for the north; the operational reality crossed those lines decades ago." },
    { id: "it_f6", isTruth: false, country: "it", fallback: "Italy was a minor and short-lived colonial power with limited atrocity record.",
      whyFallback: "Libya, Eritrea, Somalia, Ethiopia. Concentration camps in Libya (1930s) killed tens of thousands. Mustard gas used in Ethiopia despite the Geneva Protocol. \"Italiani brava gente\" is the cultural self-image; the documentary record disagrees." },
    { id: "it_f7", isTruth: false, country: "it", fallback: "The Italian state has largely defeated the mafia.",
      whyFallback: "Cosa Nostra is weakened; 'Ndrangheta has not been. Camorra continues. The state's anti-mafia apparatus is real and impressive; the framing of victory underestimates a network that has adapted operationally and geographically." },

    // ============== Spain — 8 truths + 7 inversions ==============
    { id: "es_t1", isTruth: true,  country: "es", fallback: "Spain's 1977 amnesty law shielded Franco-era officials from prosecution for political crimes including mass killings, torture, and forced disappearances.",
      whyFallback: "The \"Pact of Forgetting\" was the political settlement that enabled the transition. Forensic exhumations of unmarked graves (200,000+ victims) only began in earnest in the 2000s. The 2022 Democratic Memory Law was contested fiercely; the structural amnesia remains." },
    { id: "es_t2", isTruth: true,  country: "es", fallback: "BBVA, one of Spain's largest banks, hired former police commissioner José Manuel Villarejo to spy on competitors, journalists, judges, and politicians.",
      whyFallback: "Tandem operation, prosecuted in Spain's National Court. BBVA admitted contracting Villarejo. The pattern of state-police-private-corporate intelligence overlap was confirmed by leaked recordings (\"Villarejo audios\")." },
    { id: "es_t3", isTruth: true,  country: "es", fallback: "Hidden accounting books kept by Popular Party treasurer Luis Bárcenas documented years of illegal cash payments to senior party figures, including PM Mariano Rajoy.",
      whyFallback: "Confirmed by handwriting analysis. The Gürtel case, Spain's largest corruption trial, resulted in convictions for the party itself. Rajoy testified at trial; the no-confidence vote that followed in 2018 removed him from office." },
    { id: "es_t4", isTruth: true,  country: "es", fallback: "Former King Juan Carlos I went into self-exile in 2020 after revelations of a $100 million Saudi gift, offshore accounts, and a mistress paid via Swiss banks.",
      whyFallback: "Multiple investigations: Swiss prosecutors, Spanish Supreme Court, UK courts (sued by Corinna Larsen). His departure was framed as voluntary; the Spanish royal household had clearly become a political liability." },
    { id: "es_t5", isTruth: true,  country: "es", fallback: "Spanish state-backed death squads (GAL) conducted an illegal \"dirty war\" against ETA members in the 1980s, including kidnappings and assassinations in French territory.",
      whyFallback: "Felipe González government era. Senior officials (Barrionuevo, Vera) convicted. 27 confirmed murders. The \"fight terror with terror\" approach mirrored Latin American military regimes more than European democratic norms." },
    { id: "es_t6", isTruth: true,  country: "es", fallback: "Spanish police violently raided polling stations during the 2017 Catalan independence referendum, injuring hundreds — and the Spanish state has refused to negotiate the underlying constitutional question.",
      whyFallback: "International observers and journalists documented the violence. Subsequent prosecution of Catalan leaders for \"sedition\" was viewed by EU institutions as politically charged. The dispute is unresolved; the policy is suppression." },
    { id: "es_t7", isTruth: true,  country: "es", fallback: "Spanish authorities used Pegasus spyware against dozens of Catalan independence figures, and the cellphones of PM Pedro Sánchez and his ministers were themselves later found infected.",
      whyFallback: "Citizen Lab (CatalanGate, 2022). 65+ targets identified. Spanish government acknowledged some surveillance; the broader pattern of Pegasus use against domestic political opponents was confirmed." },
    { id: "es_t8", isTruth: true,  country: "es", fallback: "Banco Madrid collapsed in 2015 after the US Treasury accused it of laundering money for Venezuelan, Russian, and Chinese clients.",
      whyFallback: "FinCEN designation, March 2015. The Spanish branch of Andorran BPA was similarly implicated. Spain's role as a Mediterranean money-laundering corridor through real estate (\"Marbella laundromat\") is well documented." },
    { id: "es_f1", isTruth: false, country: "es", fallback: "Spain decisively broke with Franco's regime in the transition to democracy.",
      whyFallback: "The judiciary, police, civil service, and military retained largely the same personnel. The 1977 amnesty protected perpetrators. Streets, statues, and the Valley of the Fallen continued to honor Francoists into the 21st century. Transition was negotiated, not completed." },
    { id: "es_f2", isTruth: false, country: "es", fallback: "The Spanish monarchy enjoys broad popular support.",
      whyFallback: "Polling under Juan Carlos's later years showed sharp decline. Felipe VI faces lower trust than his father did. Multiple regional polls show majority support for republican alternatives, but the post-Franco constitutional design makes change very difficult." },
    { id: "es_f3", isTruth: false, country: "es", fallback: "The Spanish press is editorially free of business and political pressure.",
      whyFallback: "PRISA, Atresmedia, Mediaset España — concentration at the top. State advertising spending is a significant editorial pressure. Catalan and Basque regional media operate under different political pressures of their own." },
    { id: "es_f4", isTruth: false, country: "es", fallback: "The Spanish judiciary is independent of political control.",
      whyFallback: "The General Council of the Judiciary is appointed by parliament with party-based quotas. Major prosecutorial decisions are visibly politicized. The Constitutional Court has split along party lines on contentious cases." },
    { id: "es_f5", isTruth: false, country: "es", fallback: "Catalan independence is simply illegal under the Spanish constitution and that resolves the matter.",
      whyFallback: "The legality is one question; the legitimacy of force against a peaceful vote is another. Most multinational states have negotiated similar disputes politically (Scotland, Quebec). The legal frame doesn't dissolve the underlying political problem." },
    { id: "es_f6", isTruth: false, country: "es", fallback: "Spanish colonization brought civilization to indigenous peoples in the Americas.",
      whyFallback: "Estimated 80-95% indigenous population loss in the century after contact. Encomienda system, forced labor in silver mines (Potosí), Inquisition. The \"civilizing\" frame survives in school curricula; the archaeological and demographic record disagrees." },
    { id: "es_f7", isTruth: false, country: "es", fallback: "Both sides in the Spanish Civil War were equally responsible for atrocities.",
      whyFallback: "Both sides committed atrocities; the scale and post-war policies were not equivalent. Republican violence largely ended in 1939; Franco's repression continued through the 1970s. False equivalence is politically convenient; the body count is asymmetric." },

    // ============== Belgium — 8 truths + 7 inversions ==============
    { id: "be_t1", isTruth: true,  country: "be", fallback: "Belgium was directly involved in the 1961 assassination of Patrice Lumumba, the democratically elected first prime minister of independent Congo.",
      whyFallback: "2001 Belgian parliamentary inquiry. Belgium formally apologized in 2002. Belgian officers were present at the killing. Lumumba was Pan-Africanist and resistant to continued Belgian influence over Congolese resources." },
    { id: "be_t2", isTruth: true,  country: "be", fallback: "The 1996 Marc Dutroux case revealed that the Belgian police, judiciary, and political system repeatedly failed to investigate evidence pointing to a wider pedophile network.",
      whyFallback: "White March (350,000 in Brussels). Parliamentary commission. Specific witnesses described high-level networks; the cases were systematically narrowed to Dutroux as a lone actor. The \"X-files\" testimonies remain officially unaddressed." },
    { id: "be_t3", isTruth: true,  country: "be", fallback: "Belgian police arrested European Parliament Vice-President Eva Kaili in 2022 with bags of cash linked to Qatari and Moroccan influence operations.",
      whyFallback: "€1.5 million seized. Multiple MEPs and staffers implicated. Belgian magistrates have continued widening the Qatargate probe. Brussels' status as EU capital with minimal lobbying regulation has been openly criticized for years." },
    { id: "be_t4", isTruth: true,  country: "be", fallback: "Belgian nuclear reactors at Tihange and Doel have shown thousands of cracks in their reactor pressure vessels, with operating extensions granted despite safety concerns from German and Dutch authorities.",
      whyFallback: "Federal Agency for Nuclear Control (FANC) approved extensions in 2015 and 2022. Independent reviews from KIT (Germany) raised concerns. Cross-border populations have no voice in Belgian decisions affecting their fallout zone." },
    { id: "be_t5", isTruth: true,  country: "be", fallback: "Belgium's banking system has been repeatedly implicated in money laundering and tax evasion infrastructure for European elites.",
      whyFallback: "Major scandals: KBC, Fortis, Dexia. The Belgian-Luxembourg axis enabled tax avoidance schemes used by multinationals. Belgian financial secrecy was historically among the most opaque in Europe before EU reforms." },
    { id: "be_t6", isTruth: true,  country: "be", fallback: "Brussels hosts the EU and is one of the world's largest lobbying capitals, with minimal regulation compared to Washington.",
      whyFallback: "30,000+ lobbyists in Brussels (Transparency International). The EU transparency register is voluntary. Revolving doors between Commission officials and lobbying firms are routine." },
    { id: "be_t7", isTruth: true,  country: "be", fallback: "Belgian and Brussels-listed mining majors have faced repeated regulatory action for environmental damage, human-rights violations, and corruption in African operations.",
      whyFallback: "Umicore, Solvay, and Brussels-traded mining majors. Patterns of pollution, displacement, and corruption traced back to colonial-era Belgian extraction in the Great Lakes region. Some reformed; the broader extraction architecture continues." },
    { id: "be_t8", isTruth: true,  country: "be", fallback: "The wealth Belgium extracted from the Congo built much of modern Belgium's infrastructure — including the royal family's personal fortune.",
      whyFallback: "Leopold II's personal Congo holdings funded palaces, parks, and royal investments. The Belgian state took over in 1908 but the personal wealth was already booked. Restitution and reparations remain mostly aspirational; royal apology in 2020 was \"regrets,\" not apology." },
    { id: "be_f1", isTruth: false, country: "be", fallback: "The European institutions in Brussels are largely free of corruption.",
      whyFallback: "Qatargate (2022), Selmayrgate (2018), Eurostat scandal (2003), regular European Court of Justice cases against officials. The institutions are not uniquely corrupt; the lobbying density and regulatory thinness make them especially vulnerable." },
    { id: "be_f2", isTruth: false, country: "be", fallback: "Belgium is too small to matter geopolitically.",
      whyFallback: "Hosts the EU and NATO headquarters. Major financial-services and tax-arbitrage flows. Tervuren Museum once held the largest collection of Congolese material in the world. The footprint is much larger than the population." },
    { id: "be_f3", isTruth: false, country: "be", fallback: "Belgium has been a neutral, peaceful nation since WWII.",
      whyFallback: "Belgian arms exports (FN Herstal) reach conflict zones globally. Belgium hosts US nuclear weapons under NATO sharing. Belgian troops have participated in missions in Afghanistan, Libya, Iraq. \"Neutrality\" is the postcard; the reality is alignment." },
    { id: "be_f4", isTruth: false, country: "be", fallback: "Belgium has reconciled with its Congolese past.",
      whyFallback: "King Philippe expressed \"regrets\" in 2020 — not an apology. The vast personal wealth of the Belgian crown remains untraced to Congolese origins. Reparations and full restitution of looted artifacts remain mostly aspirational." },
    { id: "be_f5", isTruth: false, country: "be", fallback: "The Belgian justice system delivers timely and fair outcomes.",
      whyFallback: "Famously slow. Statute-of-limitations failures (Dutroux network's higher-level investigation). Multiple cases of political-figure prosecutions ending in technicalities. The structural delays often function as protection." },
    { id: "be_f6", isTruth: false, country: "be", fallback: "Belgium's federal system has produced strong, stable governance.",
      whyFallback: "Multiple recent records for longest period without a government (541 days in 2010-11, 652 in 2020). Linguistic-federal complexity has made decision-making slow on every major issue. The system holds; it is not \"strong.\"" },
    { id: "be_f7", isTruth: false, country: "be", fallback: "The European Union is structurally democratic.",
      whyFallback: "The Commission is not directly elected. Parliament has limited initiative. Major decisions are negotiated at intergovernmental councils. Democratic legitimacy is heavily debated even by supporters of the EU project." },

    // ============== Switzerland — 8 truths + 7 inversions ==============
    { id: "ch_t1", isTruth: true,  country: "ch", fallback: "Swiss banks knowingly accepted and laundered hundreds of millions of dollars in gold looted by Nazi Germany during WWII, including gold extracted from Holocaust victims.",
      whyFallback: "Bergier Commission report (2002). Swiss National Bank and major banks accepted Reichsbank gold. Some bars contained dental gold from concentration camps. Restitution payments to victims came decades later under US legal pressure." },
    { id: "ch_t2", isTruth: true,  country: "ch", fallback: "Credit Suisse, one of Switzerland's two largest banks, collapsed in 2023 after decades of scandals: drug-money laundering, helping dictators hide wealth, spying on executives, tax evasion services.",
      whyFallback: "FATCA settlements, Suisse Secrets leak (2022), Mozambique tuna bonds, Iqbal Khan spy scandal. Acquired by UBS in emergency rescue (March 2023). The model survived; one brand died." },
    { id: "ch_t3", isTruth: true,  country: "ch", fallback: "Swiss banking secrecy laws (1934) enabled tax evasion and money laundering for European elites, dictators, and organized crime for decades.",
      whyFallback: "Originally framed as protecting Jewish depositors from Nazi Germany — partial truth, but the law mainly served European clients evading their own democratic tax systems. UBS and Credit Suisse paid multi-billion-dollar US settlements (2009, 2014, 2022)." },
    { id: "ch_t4", isTruth: true,  country: "ch", fallback: "FIFA, headquartered in Zurich, was found to be a global corruption hub — multiple senior officials indicted by US prosecutors in 2015.",
      whyFallback: "$150M+ in bribes. Swiss authorities had monitored the activities for years before US Justice Department forced action. The Swiss legal framework had effectively protected the headquarters from local prosecution." },
    { id: "ch_t5", isTruth: true,  country: "ch", fallback: "UBS pled guilty in 2009 to enabling US tax fraud, paid $780 million in penalties, and turned over 4,700 American client names — breaking centuries of Swiss banking secrecy under US duress.",
      whyFallback: "Bradley Birkenfeld whistleblower case. The US DOJ effectively forced an end to absolute Swiss banking secrecy for US citizens. Other countries did not pursue equivalent leverage; the secrecy continued for them." },
    { id: "ch_t6", isTruth: true,  country: "ch", fallback: "Glencore, headquartered in Switzerland, has paid more than $1.5 billion in fines for bribery, market manipulation, and corrupt extraction practices across Africa and Latin America.",
      whyFallback: "2022 US, UK, and Brazil settlements. The company effectively admitted decades of corruption in commodity-trading and mining operations. Swiss legal environment makes Glencore's headquarters location convenient for global operations." },
    { id: "ch_t7", isTruth: true,  country: "ch", fallback: "Swiss banks and intermediaries have repeatedly been documented as conduits for sanctions evasion by Iran, Russia, Venezuela, and other sanctioned regimes.",
      whyFallback: "Multiple US FinCEN and OFAC enforcement actions. Switzerland's nominal neutrality is operationalized as \"we don't ask too many questions.\" The country adopted EU sanctions on Russia in 2022 — partly, reluctantly." },
    { id: "ch_t8", isTruth: true,  country: "ch", fallback: "Swiss private banks like Pictet, Lombard Odier, and Mirabaud manage trillions of dollars in offshore wealth for global elites with minimal transparency.",
      whyFallback: "Combined $5T+ in assets under management. Many are partnerships, immune from public-disclosure requirements. The \"family office\" model concentrates extreme wealth outside public scrutiny by design." },
    { id: "ch_f1", isTruth: false, country: "ch", fallback: "Switzerland is genuinely neutral and refuses to take sides in global conflicts.",
      whyFallback: "Swiss banks financed both sides in WWI and WWII. Swiss arms industry exports widely. Swiss sanctions enforcement is selective and politically calibrated. Neutrality is the brand; commercial alignment is the reality." },
    { id: "ch_f2", isTruth: false, country: "ch", fallback: "Swiss direct democracy gives citizens unmatched control over policy.",
      whyFallback: "Direct democracy is real on cantonal and federal questions. It coexists with extreme concentration of corporate and financial power. Critical issues (banking, multinationals, arms exports) are protected from referendum scrutiny by structural design." },
    { id: "ch_f3", isTruth: false, country: "ch", fallback: "Swiss companies are uniquely ethical.",
      whyFallback: "Nestlé's history of formula marketing, water-resource controversies, child-labor cocoa sourcing. Roche and Novartis pricing scandals. Glencore extraction. The \"Swiss quality\" marketing reflects technical excellence; the ethics narrative is brand work." },
    { id: "ch_f4", isTruth: false, country: "ch", fallback: "Swiss banking secrecy has effectively ended.",
      whyFallback: "Automatic Exchange of Information applies to most cross-border accounts since 2017. Significant secrecy remains for trusts, foundations, and non-OECD-resident clients. The brand has shifted from secrecy to \"discretion\"; the underlying infrastructure has adapted, not vanished." },
    { id: "ch_f5", isTruth: false, country: "ch", fallback: "Switzerland was a passive bystander during WWII.",
      whyFallback: "Active commercial partner with Nazi Germany. Closed border to fleeing Jews (the \"J-stamp\" on passports was Swiss-requested). Profited from gold transactions. The \"passive\" framing was constructed retrospectively; wartime conduct was active alignment with the dominant continental power." },
    { id: "ch_f6", isTruth: false, country: "ch", fallback: "Switzerland has a fair tax system that doesn't undermine other countries.",
      whyFallback: "Multinational headquarters relocate to Swiss cantons for tax purposes. Cantonal tax competition produces a race to the bottom. Estimated $20-30B annual tax revenue lost by other countries due to Swiss arrangements (Tax Justice Network)." },
    { id: "ch_f7", isTruth: false, country: "ch", fallback: "Switzerland is the global capital of humanitarian neutrality, embodied by the Red Cross.",
      whyFallback: "The ICRC's record includes silence during the Holocaust about concentration camps it visited. Swiss humanitarian branding is real and earned in some contexts; in others, it serves to obscure commercial behavior. Both can be true." },

    // ============== Brazil — 8 truths + 7 inversions ==============
    { id: "br_t1", isTruth: true,  country: "br", fallback: "Operação Lava Jato (Car Wash) revealed systematic bribery in Petrobras, Brazil's state oil company, totaling billions of reais and implicating presidents, party leaders, and major construction firms.",
      whyFallback: "Started 2014. Convictions of business executives, politicians from multiple parties. Odebrecht (later Novonor) paid the largest corruption settlement in history globally. Lula's convictions later overturned; Sergio Moro's role contested." },
    { id: "br_t2", isTruth: true,  country: "br", fallback: "Jair Bolsonaro and senior officials are under investigation for planning a coup to overturn the 2022 election results, including the January 8, 2023 attempted insurrection.",
      whyFallback: "Federal Police investigations have produced indictments. The Brazilian Supreme Court (STF) has detained dozens. Bolsonaro himself is barred from running for office until 2030. The investigations are ongoing." },
    { id: "br_t3", isTruth: true,  country: "br", fallback: "Petrobras's pre-Lava Jato corruption was concealed for years by elected officials, regulators, and audit firms — until federal prosecutors and a single judge broke through.",
      whyFallback: "PT (Workers' Party) government era. PMDB, PP, PSDB, others all implicated. The cross-party reach of the scheme suggests structural, not partisan, capture of the contracting system." },
    { id: "br_t4", isTruth: true,  country: "br", fallback: "Amazon deforestation accelerated dramatically under Jair Bolsonaro, with documented state defunding of environmental enforcement and active hostility to indigenous protection.",
      whyFallback: "IBAMA, INPE budgets cut. Indigenous land demarcation frozen. Mining and agribusiness incursions encouraged. 2019-2022 deforestation rates were highest in decades. Lula's administration partly reversed; structural pressure from agribusiness remains." },
    { id: "br_t5", isTruth: true,  country: "br", fallback: "Rio de Janeiro councilwoman Marielle Franco was murdered in 2018 after challenging police militia ties to elected officials. The mastermind was finally identified in 2024.",
      whyFallback: "Initial cover-up extended over years. Federal Police 2024 indictment named state legislator Domingos Brazão. Connections to the Bolsonaro family circle have been repeatedly documented but officially not pursued at higher levels." },
    { id: "br_t6", isTruth: true,  country: "br", fallback: "The 1964 Brazilian military coup was supported by the US government (Operation Brother Sam) and produced 21 years of dictatorship with documented torture, disappearances, and assassinations.",
      whyFallback: "Declassified US documents confirm a naval task force pre-positioned to support the coup. Truth Commission (2014) documented 434 deaths/disappearances officially; the real number is higher. Many perpetrators never tried." },
    { id: "br_t7", isTruth: true,  country: "br", fallback: "Brazilian elites pay among the world's lowest effective tax rates on capital and inheritance, while the country's poor pay heavy consumption taxes.",
      whyFallback: "Tax structure inverted compared to most developed countries. Wealth tax exists in law but is rarely collected. Land concentration (Brazil has one of the most unequal land distributions globally) is preserved by legal infrastructure." },
    { id: "br_t8", isTruth: true,  country: "br", fallback: "Brazil's cattle industry has been repeatedly implicated in deforestation, slave labor, and incursion into indigenous and conservation lands.",
      whyFallback: "JBS (world's largest meat company) faces ongoing legal cases. Federal Public Ministry has identified hundreds of farms with slave-labor conditions. The supply chains reach major European and Chinese markets." },
    { id: "br_f1", isTruth: false, country: "br", fallback: "Brazilian democracy is stable and consolidated.",
      whyFallback: "21 years of dictatorship within living memory. January 8, 2023 attempted insurrection. Multiple impeachments (Collor 1992, Rousseff 2016 — the second contested). Stability is the brand; the underlying patterns are turbulent." },
    { id: "br_f2", isTruth: false, country: "br", fallback: "Brazil is a \"racial democracy\" where ethnic background doesn't determine life outcomes.",
      whyFallback: "Black Brazilians are massively over-represented in poverty, prison, and police killings. White Brazilians dominate corporate leadership, judiciary, and political class. The \"racial democracy\" frame (Gilberto Freyre) is the cultural self-image; the statistics disagree." },
    { id: "br_f3", isTruth: false, country: "br", fallback: "Lava Jato was an unambiguous success against corruption.",
      whyFallback: "The investigation produced real convictions. It also produced documented prosecutorial overreach and politically targeted enforcement. Many findings later annulled. The same prosecutors became visible political actors. Mixed legacy is the honest accounting." },
    { id: "br_f4", isTruth: false, country: "br", fallback: "Brazil's indigenous peoples are constitutionally protected.",
      whyFallback: "The 1988 constitution provides strong rights. Enforcement varies dramatically by government and locality. Land demarcation has been politically frozen for long periods. Mining incursions on indigenous lands documented routinely; convictions rare." },
    { id: "br_f5", isTruth: false, country: "br", fallback: "The Brazilian justice system applies equally to rich and poor.",
      whyFallback: "Wealthy defendants regularly receive plea deals, reduced sentences, and house arrest. Poor defendants face overcrowded prisons and long pre-trial detentions. The two-tier system is documented; the equal-justice rhetoric is constitutional." },
    { id: "br_f6", isTruth: false, country: "br", fallback: "The Brazilian press is free of significant influence by oligarchic families.",
      whyFallback: "Globo (Marinho family), Bandeirantes, Record — concentrated family control. Cross-state media ownership is structurally limited but workarounds are common. Editorial direction tracks ownership in documented patterns." },
    { id: "br_f7", isTruth: false, country: "br", fallback: "Brazil's economy is well-diversified beyond raw commodity exports.",
      whyFallback: "Brazil remains heavily dependent on iron ore, soy, beef, and oil. Industrial diversification has stalled or reversed in some sectors. The \"BRIC\" framing was aspirational; the underlying commodity-export structure persisted." },

    // ============== Mexico — 8 truths + 7 inversions ==============
    { id: "mx_t1", isTruth: true,  country: "mx", fallback: "In 2014, 43 student teachers from Ayotzinapa were forcibly disappeared in Iguala, Guerrero — with documented involvement of local police, military intelligence, and organized crime.",
      whyFallback: "Independent expert group (GIEI, 2015-2024) found the official \"historical truth\" was false. Military intelligence had real-time information that was withheld. The case remains officially unresolved despite multiple federal administrations promising answers." },
    { id: "mx_t2", isTruth: true,  country: "mx", fallback: "Mexican government agencies under multiple administrations have used Pegasus spyware against journalists, human-rights defenders, opposition politicians, and even officials investigating government crimes.",
      whyFallback: "Citizen Lab investigations. Mexico is among the largest known Pegasus users. The Ayotzinapa investigators (GIEI) were themselves surveilled. AMLO administration claimed it stopped; subsequent leaks contradicted this." },
    { id: "mx_t3", isTruth: true,  country: "mx", fallback: "President Felipe Calderón's \"war on drugs\" (2006-2012) caused tens of thousands of deaths while corruption deepened — and his security secretary Genaro García Luna was later convicted in US federal court for cartel collaboration.",
      whyFallback: "García Luna convicted in 2023 for taking bribes from the Sinaloa Cartel while leading Mexican federal police. The architect of the war was working for one side of it. Calderón's role remains unresolved; investigations sealed." },
    { id: "mx_t4", isTruth: true,  country: "mx", fallback: "Mexico averages roughly 10 femicides per day with conviction rates around 5-10% — among the worst impunity rates in the developed world for gender violence.",
      whyFallback: "INEGI, official statistics. Ciudad Juárez femicides (1990s-present) remain mostly unsolved. State and federal responses have been mostly symbolic. The pattern is documented; the institutional response does not match it." },
    { id: "mx_t5", isTruth: true,  country: "mx", fallback: "PEMEX, Mexico's state oil company, has been a chronic source of corruption scandals — and Emilio Lozoya, its former director, has implicated multiple ex-presidents.",
      whyFallback: "Lozoya plea deal (2020) named Peña Nieto, Calderón, and Salinas in bribery operations. Investigations continue; convictions of high-level political figures rare. The pattern of state-enterprise as patronage machine is structural." },
    { id: "mx_t6", isTruth: true,  country: "mx", fallback: "On October 2, 1968, days before the Mexico City Olympics, Mexican government forces massacred student protesters at Tlatelolco — with death-toll estimates ranging from 30 (official) to 300+ (independent).",
      whyFallback: "Documents declassified by US and Mexico over decades confirm a planned operation. The \"Olive Branch\" operation involved provocateurs firing on troops to justify the response. Almost no perpetrators were prosecuted. The \"official truth\" remained narrow for decades." },
    { id: "mx_t7", isTruth: true,  country: "mx", fallback: "Mexican state and federal officials have repeatedly been documented as operationally aligned with specific cartels — choosing which organizations to enforce against and which to allow.",
      whyFallback: "García Luna case (federal). Multiple state governors convicted on cartel-tied corruption. The \"fight against drugs\" is structurally selective; the choice of targets reveals the underlying alignment." },
    { id: "mx_t8", isTruth: true,  country: "mx", fallback: "NAFTA's agricultural provisions devastated Mexican corn-farming communities, accelerating migration to the US — exactly when the US-Mexico border was militarized.",
      whyFallback: "Cheap subsidized US corn flooded Mexican markets post-1994. ~2 million Mexican agricultural jobs lost. The simultaneous border militarization channeled the displaced workers into clandestine migration routes. Both effects predicted and accepted by policymakers." },
    { id: "mx_f1", isTruth: false, country: "mx", fallback: "Mexico has a strong, consolidated democracy.",
      whyFallback: "PRI ruled for 71 consecutive years (1929-2000) before alternation began. Local-level capture by cartels in multiple states. Journalists murdered at rates exceeded only by active war zones. \"Democracy\" describes the constitutional form; reality varies by region and topic." },
    { id: "mx_f2", isTruth: false, country: "mx", fallback: "AMLO's \"4T\" transformation has fundamentally ended corruption in Mexico.",
      whyFallback: "Corruption indicators changed modestly. Patronage and clientelism patterns continued under new branding. Military empowerment under AMLO has its own opacity. Honest assessment requires distinguishing rhetoric from measurement." },
    { id: "mx_f3", isTruth: false, country: "mx", fallback: "Mexico's drug war reduced violence and weakened cartels.",
      whyFallback: "Death toll continued to rise after the 2006 launch. Cartels fragmented but didn't weaken in total power. Each fragmentation produced new conflict zones. The war metric has yet to show net positive on any major indicator." },
    { id: "mx_f4", isTruth: false, country: "mx", fallback: "Mexico is a safe country for journalists.",
      whyFallback: "Mexico ranks as one of the world's deadliest for journalists, often topping the list. Dozens killed per year. State protection mechanisms exist but are widely viewed as ineffective. The pattern is structural across multiple administrations." },
    { id: "mx_f5", isTruth: false, country: "mx", fallback: "The Mexican judiciary operates independently of political and criminal influence.",
      whyFallback: "Multiple states have documented judicial capture by cartels. AMLO's 2024 judicial reform (electing judges) was contested as introducing its own political vulnerabilities. The pre-reform system was already heavily critiqued; the path forward is contested." },
    { id: "mx_f6", isTruth: false, country: "mx", fallback: "The Mexican military is a neutral, professional force.",
      whyFallback: "Increasing role in civilian functions under AMLO (airports, customs, infrastructure). Multiple human-rights cases. The \"Mexico used the army because police were corrupt\" framing pushed the corruption problem into a less accountable institution." },
    { id: "mx_f7", isTruth: false, country: "mx", fallback: "Mexico's policy toward Central American migrants is humane.",
      whyFallback: "Detention centers run by INM (National Migration Institute) have produced multiple deaths (Ciudad Juárez fire 2023, 39 dead). Mexico effectively serves as US immigration enforcement proxy under multiple administrations. The migrant deaths happen on Mexican soil under Mexican authority." },

    // ============== India — 8 truths + 7 inversions ==============
    { id: "in_t1", isTruth: true,  country: "in", fallback: "Gautam Adani's industrial empire grew rapidly alongside Narendra Modi's political rise — and Hindenburg Research (2023) documented apparent stock manipulation and offshore shell-company use.",
      whyFallback: "Adani Group lost roughly $150B in market value following the report. SEBI (Indian regulator) investigation widely seen as inadequate. The pattern of state contracts, regulatory favorability, and political alignment is documented across multiple Adani sectors." },
    { id: "in_t2", isTruth: true,  country: "in", fallback: "Modi's surprise 2016 demonetization invalidated 86% of India's currency overnight, causing widespread economic disruption — and failed to achieve its stated goal of catching black money.",
      whyFallback: "RBI later confirmed 99%+ of demonetized notes returned. Small businesses, daily-wage workers devastated. The wealthy converted holdings ahead of the announcement; the poor stood in lines. The policy succeeded politically; the stated economic rationale was disproved." },
    { id: "in_t3", isTruth: true,  country: "in", fallback: "Modi's government revoked Kashmir's constitutional autonomy (Article 370) in 2019, accompanied by mass detentions, an internet shutdown lasting over a year, and curbs on political activity.",
      whyFallback: "Longest internet shutdown ever in a democracy. Hundreds of political detentions including democratically-elected leaders. International human-rights bodies criticized; Indian Supreme Court upheld the revocation." },
    { id: "in_t4", isTruth: true,  country: "in", fallback: "The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), founded in 1925 and inspired in part by European fascist movements, is the parent organization of the ruling BJP and operates as India's largest right-wing paramilitary.",
      whyFallback: "Gandhi's assassin Nathuram Godse was RSS-trained. RSS banned three times in Indian history. Modi joined as a child and rose through RSS ranks. The relationship between religious nationalism and state power has tightened markedly since 2014." },
    { id: "in_t5", isTruth: true,  country: "in", fallback: "Caste discrimination remains structural in modern India despite constitutional prohibition — affecting marriage, employment, education, and political representation.",
      whyFallback: "Manual scavenging continues despite being illegal. Caste-based violence routinely under-prosecuted. Dalit and tribal communities over-represented in poverty, prison, and police killings. The constitutional provisions are real; the enforcement gap is structural." },
    { id: "in_t6", isTruth: true,  country: "in", fallback: "The 2020-2021 farmer protests against Modi's agricultural laws drew millions and ended with the government withdrawing the laws — but only after deaths, mass arrests, and internet shutdowns at protest sites.",
      whyFallback: "Largest protests in history by some counts. Hundreds of farmers died at protest sites. The laws were intended to deregulate agricultural marketing, which farmers feared would expose them to corporate buyers. The withdrawal was rare; the underlying pressures continued." },
    { id: "in_t7", isTruth: true,  country: "in", fallback: "Major Indian media outlets have been acquired by business groups aligned with the ruling party — Adani's purchase of NDTV (2022) being the most visible example.",
      whyFallback: "Reliance/Network18, Adani/NDTV. Critical journalism increasingly concentrated in independent outlets (The Wire, Caravan, Newsclick), which face raids and prosecutions. The structural shift in ownership matches the editorial shift in coverage." },
    { id: "in_t8", isTruth: true,  country: "in", fallback: "India's Electoral Bonds system (2018-2024) allowed anonymous corporate political donations — and Supreme Court ordered disclosures in 2024 revealed massive donations from companies under regulatory pressure to the ruling party.",
      whyFallback: "Supreme Court ruled the scheme unconstitutional. Disclosure showed donations correlating with regulatory cases, government contracts, and law-enforcement actions against the donors. The pattern of pay-to-protect was documented." },
    { id: "in_f1", isTruth: false, country: "in", fallback: "India is the world's largest democracy and a model of pluralism.",
      whyFallback: "By population, yes — largest. By press freedom (V-Dem, Freedom House) declining sharply since 2014. Internet shutdowns now most-frequent globally. Religious minorities increasingly excluded from political and economic life. Democracy by some metrics; declining on others." },
    { id: "in_f2", isTruth: false, country: "in", fallback: "India maintains a genuinely non-aligned, neutral foreign policy.",
      whyFallback: "Buys Russian oil and weapons at scale. Hosts QUAD summits with US/Japan/Australia. Border conflicts with China shape strategic posture. \"Non-aligned\" was the Cold War frame; current posture is transactional alignment with multiple powers simultaneously." },
    { id: "in_f3", isTruth: false, country: "in", fallback: "Modi's policies have produced an Indian economic miracle benefiting all classes.",
      whyFallback: "Growth rates real, but unevenly distributed. Unemployment among youth at record highs. Inequality has widened sharply. The \"miracle\" frame conceals significant distributional and demographic concerns." },
    { id: "in_f4", isTruth: false, country: "in", fallback: "Indian secularism is constitutionally robust and politically protected.",
      whyFallback: "Constitutionally yes. The Citizenship Amendment Act (2019), National Register of Citizens debates, and Babri Masjid/Ram Mandir rulings all moved decisively away from religion-blind state. The constitutional principle persists; the political practice has shifted." },
    { id: "in_f5", isTruth: false, country: "in", fallback: "The Kashmir issue has been resolved by the 2019 constitutional changes.",
      whyFallback: "Local elections have not been restored to pre-2019 patterns. Detentions, internet restrictions, and demographic change pressures continue. The \"resolved\" framing is unilateral; the underlying political question remains." },
    { id: "in_f6", isTruth: false, country: "in", fallback: "Hindus are an oppressed majority in India under threat from minorities.",
      whyFallback: "Hindus are 80% of the population and dominate political, economic, and cultural life. The framing of Hindu victimhood is politically mobilized; demographic and institutional data don't support it. The narrative serves political purposes regardless." },
    { id: "in_f7", isTruth: false, country: "in", fallback: "Indian women have full legal and social protection equal to other developed countries.",
      whyFallback: "Documented gender violence rates, dowry deaths, sex-selective abortion (skewed sex ratio), low female labor-force participation. Legal protection exists; enforcement and social practice lag dramatically. Outcomes don't match guarantees." },

    // ============== Japan — 8 truths + 7 inversions ==============
    { id: "jp_t1", isTruth: true,  country: "jp", fallback: "Japan's wartime Unit 731 conducted some of WWII's worst biological-warfare experiments — and most of its personnel were granted immunity by the US in exchange for their data and continued careers.",
      whyFallback: "MacArthur deal documented. Many returned to senior positions in Japanese medicine and pharmaceutical industry post-war. Japanese textbook coverage was minimal until the 1990s; partial only since. The Yasukuni Shrine continues to honor convicted war criminals." },
    { id: "jp_t2", isTruth: true,  country: "jp", fallback: "TEPCO, the operator of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, was found to have falsified inspection records for decades and ignored tsunami warnings before the 2011 disaster.",
      whyFallback: "Multiple Japanese parliamentary commissions. The accident was \"man-made\" per the Diet inquiry. No senior executives went to prison; the company continued operating other plants. The current contaminated water release continues without full international agreement." },
    { id: "jp_t3", isTruth: true,  country: "jp", fallback: "Japanese organized crime (yakuza) historically operated with semi-public visibility and documented ties to senior political and corporate figures.",
      whyFallback: "LDP-yakuza connections (Kishi era, Tanaka era). Sōkaiya (corporate extortionists) until 1990s reforms. The 2011 anti-yakuza laws have reduced visibility but documented connections re-emerge in periodic scandals." },
    { id: "jp_t4", isTruth: true,  country: "jp", fallback: "Japan's colonization of Korea (1910-1945) included forced labor, forced cultural assimilation, and the comfort-women system of military sexual slavery.",
      whyFallback: "Hundreds of thousands enslaved across Asia. Japanese textbook coverage minimal. Compensation/apology questions repeatedly reopened in Korean-Japanese relations. The 2015 \"final and irreversible\" settlement was rejected by the next Korean government." },
    { id: "jp_t5", isTruth: true,  country: "jp", fallback: "Former PM Kakuei Tanaka was convicted in 1983 for taking $2 million in bribes from Lockheed during fighter-jet procurement — and his political faction continued to dominate Japanese politics for decades.",
      whyFallback: "Lockheed bribery scandals also implicated Italian, Dutch, and Saudi officials globally. Tanaka's faction system became the operating logic of LDP rule. Conviction came; the system continued." },
    { id: "jp_t6", isTruth: true,  country: "jp", fallback: "Former PM Shinzo Abe was assassinated in 2022 by a man whose mother had been financially ruined by the Unification Church — exposing deep LDP-Unification Church ties going back to the Cold War.",
      whyFallback: "Subsequent investigations revealed hundreds of LDP Diet members with Unification Church connections. The Church was banned by Japanese courts in 2024. The relationship had been an open secret for decades; the assassination forced it into public view." },
    { id: "jp_t7", isTruth: true,  country: "jp", fallback: "Senior figures involved in Tokyo 2020 Olympics were convicted in 2022-2023 for bid-rigging and bribery.",
      whyFallback: "Haruyuki Takahashi (Dentsu) at center. Multiple corporate sponsors implicated. The 2020 Games were repeatedly mired in budget overruns, cancellations, and ethics controversies — separate from but compounded by COVID." },
    { id: "jp_t8", isTruth: true,  country: "jp", fallback: "Olympus Corporation hid $1.7 billion in losses for over 13 years using accounting fraud — exposed only when British CEO Michael Woodford refused to participate and was fired.",
      whyFallback: "Senior executives convicted. The board-level cover-up exemplified problems with Japanese corporate governance. Woodford had documented the scheme to the FBI; Japanese authorities only acted after international media coverage." },
    { id: "jp_f1", isTruth: false, country: "jp", fallback: "Japan has fully reckoned with its wartime conduct.",
      whyFallback: "Apologies issued multiple times by different governments. School-curriculum coverage of Nanjing, Korean comfort women, and Unit 731 remains contested. Yasukuni visits by senior politicians continue. The reckoning is partial and contested by Japanese conservatives themselves." },
    { id: "jp_f2", isTruth: false, country: "jp", fallback: "Japanese politics is famously clean and consensual.",
      whyFallback: "LDP factional politics, Tanaka era, Recruit scandal (1989), construction industry-political ties, Olympic bribery, Unification Church entanglement. The framing of clean consensus politics is a Western projection; the local reality is patron-client networks within stability." },
    { id: "jp_f3", isTruth: false, country: "jp", fallback: "Japan is a racially homogeneous society where ethnic discrimination doesn't exist.",
      whyFallback: "Ainu (Hokkaido indigenous), Okinawans, ethnic Koreans (Zainichi), Chinese, Burakumin — all face documented discrimination. The \"homogeneity\" frame serves political purposes; the demographic and historical reality is more complex." },
    { id: "jp_f4", isTruth: false, country: "jp", fallback: "Japanese women have legal and social equality comparable to peer developed nations.",
      whyFallback: "Japan ranks consistently low on the World Economic Forum gender-gap index (~120th globally). Workplace participation high; senior management vanishingly female. Maternity-related career penalties documented. Legal frameworks improved; cultural and corporate practice has not." },
    { id: "jp_f5", isTruth: false, country: "jp", fallback: "Japan is a pacifist nation per Article 9 of its constitution.",
      whyFallback: "Japan operates one of the world's largest defense budgets. Self-Defense Forces are a substantial military by any objective measure. The Article 9 reinterpretation under Abe permitted overseas deployment. Pacifism is the constitutional brand; the operational footprint is conventional." },
    { id: "jp_f6", isTruth: false, country: "jp", fallback: "Japanese mainstream media is editorially independent.",
      whyFallback: "The kisha-club system structurally privileges relationships with government and corporate sources, suppressing critical reporting. Foreign correspondents repeatedly report easier access to certain stories than Japanese journalists. The independence framing is technical; access is conditional." },
    { id: "jp_f7", isTruth: false, country: "jp", fallback: "Japan operates the world's safest nuclear power program.",
      whyFallback: "Fukushima. Monju fast-breeder reactor failures. The cumulative record shows Japan's nuclear-safety culture was conventional, not exemplary. The \"unique technical excellence\" framing is part of the post-Fukushima public-relations recovery." },

    // ============== South Africa — 8 truths + 7 inversions ==============
    { id: "za_t1", isTruth: true,  country: "za", fallback: "South African apartheid (1948-1994) included documented torture, assassinations, biological-warfare programs, and the killing of children — and most perpetrators escaped meaningful prosecution.",
      whyFallback: "Truth and Reconciliation Commission (1996-1998) documented 22,000+ victims. Amnesty granted to most who confessed. Project Coast (chemical-biological warfare against ANC and anti-apartheid figures) only partially documented. Wouter Basson, its head, evaded conviction." },
    { id: "za_t2", isTruth: true,  country: "za", fallback: "Former president Jacob Zuma was found by the Zondo Commission (2018-2022) to have facilitated systematic state capture by the Gupta family across multiple ministries and state enterprises.",
      whyFallback: "Zondo Commission report (~5,500 pages). Eskom, Transnet, SAA, SAPS all documented. Zuma served brief prison sentence for contempt; the substantive corruption charges proceed slowly through compromised courts." },
    { id: "za_t3", isTruth: true,  country: "za", fallback: "British PR firm Bell Pottinger orchestrated a racial propaganda campaign in South Africa on behalf of the Gupta family — fueling racial division to distract from corruption.",
      whyFallback: "Firm collapsed in 2017 after exposure. Used fake social-media accounts, planted articles, manipulated racial narratives (\"white monopoly capital\"). The campaign damaged South African political discourse for years." },
    { id: "za_t4", isTruth: true,  country: "za", fallback: "In 2012, South African police killed 34 striking miners at Marikana platinum mine in the worst state violence against workers since apartheid.",
      whyFallback: "Farlam Commission documented police actions. ANC senior figures (including Cyril Ramaphosa, then on the Lonmin board) emailed urging strong action. No senior official prosecuted. The structural relationship between mining capital and ANC state was exposed." },
    { id: "za_t5", isTruth: true,  country: "za", fallback: "Eskom, South Africa's state electricity utility, has been hollowed out by decades of corruption, mismanagement, and sabotage — producing rolling blackouts (load shedding) that are now structural.",
      whyFallback: "Multiple Eskom CEOs have testified about coordinated theft, fraud, and operational sabotage. André de Ruyter alleged senior politicians and organized-crime networks profited from the dysfunction. He was poisoned shortly after his testimony." },
    { id: "za_t6", isTruth: true,  country: "za", fallback: "The post-apartheid \"rainbow nation\" settlement preserved white economic dominance even as political power transferred — a structural compromise Mandela and the ANC accepted in 1994 negotiations.",
      whyFallback: "Sunset clauses protected white civil servants and economic interests. The 1996 GEAR economic policy adopted a neoliberal framework. Land redistribution stalled at low single-digit percentages. The political transition was real; the economic transition was bounded." },
    { id: "za_t7", isTruth: true,  country: "za", fallback: "South Africa has among the world's highest violent crime rates, with documented police failures and politicization of enforcement.",
      whyFallback: "Murder rates among the world's highest. Police force has multiple corruption convictions of senior officials. SAPS resources unevenly distributed; gated communities and private security have effectively privatized policing for those who can afford it." },
    { id: "za_t8", isTruth: true,  country: "za", fallback: "Steinhoff International, once one of South Africa's largest companies, collapsed in 2017 after revealing €6.5 billion in accounting fraud — one of the largest corporate scandals in African history.",
      whyFallback: "Markus Jooste, CEO, faced multiple prosecutions before his suicide in 2024. The fraud spanned years; audit firms (Deloitte) failed to detect it. Pension funds across South Africa absorbed major losses. Senior executives largely escaped serious consequences." },
    { id: "za_f1", isTruth: false, country: "za", fallback: "Apartheid has been fully dismantled and its effects largely overcome.",
      whyFallback: "Land ownership patterns largely unchanged (white population 8%, owns ~70% of farmland). Wealth inequality among the world's highest, race-correlated. Township infrastructure underdeveloped. Apartheid as law ended in 1994; as economic structure, much of it continues." },
    { id: "za_f2", isTruth: false, country: "za", fallback: "South African democracy is stable and consolidated.",
      whyFallback: "Decreasing voter turnout, declining institutional trust, sustained political violence in KwaZulu-Natal, 2021 riots. ANC factional warfare. The constitutional framework is impressive; the operational reality is fragile." },
    { id: "za_f3", isTruth: false, country: "za", fallback: "The ANC has cleaned house since the Zuma era.",
      whyFallback: "Cyril Ramaphosa was on the Lonmin board during Marikana. State-capture investigations proceed slowly. Cadre-deployment policy continues. The factions that benefited from Zuma-era arrangements retain significant influence." },
    { id: "za_f4", isTruth: false, country: "za", fallback: "South African media is free and unconstrained.",
      whyFallback: "Concentration in Independent News Group, Naspers/Multichoice. The SABC has cycled through political interference. Investigative journalism (amaBhungane, Daily Maverick) does important work; the structural pressures on it are significant." },
    { id: "za_f5", isTruth: false, country: "za", fallback: "The Truth and Reconciliation Commission was a complete success.",
      whyFallback: "Many victims never received economic reparations. Many perpetrators received amnesty without full disclosure. Senior apartheid officials avoided the process entirely. The TRC was a remarkable, partial process; presenting it as fully successful obscures unfinished work." },
    { id: "za_f6", isTruth: false, country: "za", fallback: "South Africa has substantially redistributed land since 1994.",
      whyFallback: "Statistics vary but agreement: redistribution targets repeatedly missed. The constitutional amendments around expropriation have been politically gridlocked. The land question is the most explosive unresolved issue in South African politics." },
    { id: "za_f7", isTruth: false, country: "za", fallback: "South Africa is safe for tourism with no special precautions needed.",
      whyFallback: "Tourists are often shielded from the security reality experienced by local population. Tourist precincts heavily policed; surrounding areas not. Local crime rates very real; the tourist experience is structurally separated from underlying conditions." },

    // ============== Ukraine — 8 truths + 7 inversions ==============
    { id: "ua_t1", isTruth: true,  country: "ua", fallback: "Viktor Yanukovych's Mezhyhirya residence — a 137-hectare estate funded by stolen public money — was discovered when Maidan protesters walked into it in February 2014.",
      whyFallback: "Documents recovered from a pond outside the palace listed cash payments. Gold-plated bathrooms, private zoo, galleon restaurant. Total looted estimates range from $40 to over $100 billion. Yanukovych fled to Russia; little has been recovered." },
    { id: "ua_t2", isTruth: true,  country: "ua", fallback: "PrivatBank, Ukraine's largest bank, owned by Ihor Kolomoisky, had a $5.5 billion hole when nationalized in 2016 — most of the missing money traced to loans to companies controlled by Kolomoisky himself.",
      whyFallback: "Kroll forensic audit. Loans to ~190 connected shell companies. The bank had been used as a personal piggy bank. Kolomoisky was Zelensky's main media backer pre-presidency; later sanctioned and prosecuted in Ukraine." },
    { id: "ua_t3", isTruth: true,  country: "ua", fallback: "Before the 2022 invasion, Ukraine consistently ranked near the bottom of Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index for Europe — alongside Russia and below most African states.",
      whyFallback: "Ukraine scored 32-33 (out of 100) through 2020-2021, ranking around 120 globally. Eastern European peers (Poland, Czechia, Baltics) all scored significantly higher. The ranking is weaponized politically; the underlying audit data is real." },
    { id: "ua_t4", isTruth: true,  country: "ua", fallback: "Burisma Holdings, owned by oligarch Mykola Zlochevsky, hired Hunter Biden to its board in 2014 — paying him roughly $50,000/month while he had no relevant industry experience.",
      whyFallback: "Position coincided with his father's role as US point-person on Ukraine. Joe Biden later publicly took credit for getting prosecutor Viktor Shokin fired — the prosecutor whose office had been investigating Burisma. The optics are documented; the legal questions remain contested." },
    { id: "ua_t5", isTruth: true,  country: "ua", fallback: "Post-1991 Ukrainian politics has been structurally shaped by a handful of oligarchs — Akhmetov, Pinchuk, Kolomoisky, Firtash, Medvedchuk — who own most media, sponsor parties, and finance candidates.",
      whyFallback: "Even Zelensky's 2019 campaign was financially backed by 1+1 channel owner Kolomoisky. The 2021 \"de-oligarchization\" law was pushed by Zelensky himself; its implementation has been uneven. The structural problem predates the war and has not been solved by it." },
    { id: "ua_t6", isTruth: true,  country: "ua", fallback: "In 1954, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev transferred Crimea from the Russian SFSR to the Ukrainian SSR — an administrative decision within the USSR that became an international border after 1991.",
      whyFallback: "Khrushchev's motivations are debated. The transfer was internal to the Soviet Union. After 1991 it became a contested international question, which the 2014 annexation invoked. International law generally rejects unilateral border changes regardless of historical claims." },
    { id: "ua_t7", isTruth: true,  country: "ua", fallback: "The identity of the snipers who killed dozens of Maidan protesters and police in February 2014 remains officially unresolved — and Ukrainian investigations have produced contradictory findings over a decade.",
      whyFallback: "Estonian foreign minister Urmas Paet's leaked call with Catherine Ashton raised the possibility the snipers were \"somebody from the new coalition.\" Multiple Ukrainian trials have produced partial convictions, never a coherent picture. The political incentive to blame Yanukovych alone is strong; the forensic record is more ambiguous." },
    { id: "ua_t8", isTruth: true,  country: "ua", fallback: "The Azov Battalion, integrated into Ukraine's National Guard in 2014, was founded by far-right nationalist Andriy Biletsky with documented neo-Nazi imagery — though it has since been formally rebranded under wartime conditions.",
      whyFallback: "Biletsky's pre-2014 Patriot of Ukraine group. Wolfsangel insignia, originally used then officially dropped. US Congress restricted military aid from going to Azov specifically (until 2015 lifted). The unit's wartime evolution is debated; the documentary record of its origins is not." },
    { id: "ua_f1", isTruth: false, country: "ua", fallback: "Ukraine has always been a clean European democracy fighting external corruption.",
      whyFallback: "Pre-war Ukraine ranked among Europe's most corrupt. Oligarch capture, judicial corruption, prosecutor-general firings. The war has not eliminated these patterns; international aid agencies have documented continued issues. The \"clean democracy\" frame is wartime PR; the structural reality is more complex." },
    { id: "ua_f2", isTruth: false, country: "ua", fallback: "The 2014 Maidan revolution was a purely organic popular uprising with no foreign involvement.",
      whyFallback: "Documented US State Department engagement (Nuland's \"fuck the EU\" phone call with Ambassador Pyatt). NED grants. EU pressure on Yanukovych over the trade agreement. Popular pressure was real and substantial; foreign engagement was also documented. Honest analysis acknowledges both." },
    { id: "ua_f3", isTruth: false, country: "ua", fallback: "Pre-2014 polling showed Crimea was firmly attached to Kyiv and had zero interest in autonomy.",
      whyFallback: "The 2014 referendum, held under Russian military presence, was internationally rejected and not a free vote. AND — pre-2014 polls consistently showed majorities in Crimea (largely ethnic Russian) favoring autonomy from Kyiv. The forced referendum was illegitimate; the underlying preference data is uncomfortable for any clean narrative." },
    { id: "ua_f4", isTruth: false, country: "ua", fallback: "Western military and financial aid to Ukraine since 2022 has been transparently tracked and free of corruption concerns.",
      whyFallback: "Pentagon Inspector General reports have flagged tracking gaps. Multiple aid-related corruption cases have been prosecuted within Ukraine itself. The scale of aid and wartime conditions make absolute accountability impossible. Acknowledging the gap is not pro-Russia; it is basic accounting." },
    { id: "ua_f5", isTruth: false, country: "ua", fallback: "Zelensky's administration is free of the corruption that plagued his predecessors.",
      whyFallback: "Pandora Papers (2021) documented Zelensky offshore companies. Defense ministry corruption scandals during wartime (procurement at inflated prices). Multiple senior officials dismissed for corruption. The administration has done genuine reform work; presenting it as fully clean is propaganda." },
    { id: "ua_f6", isTruth: false, country: "ua", fallback: "NATO never made any commitment, formal or informal, about limiting eastward expansion.",
      whyFallback: "Declassified documents (US National Security Archive) include James Baker's \"not one inch eastward\" assurance to Gorbachev (1990) — echoed by multiple Western officials. Whether such assurances were binding is contested; that they were said is not. The \"never promised\" framing simplifies a more complex documentary record." },
    { id: "ua_f7", isTruth: false, country: "ua", fallback: "The Minsk agreements (2014-2015) were a genuine attempt by all parties to resolve the Donbas conflict peacefully.",
      whyFallback: "Angela Merkel (2022) and François Hollande publicly admitted Minsk was used to buy time for Ukraine to rearm. Petro Poroshenko similarly. Western parties did not implement the agreements they signed; Russia used them as cover for continued involvement. The agreements were performative for all sides, in different ways." },

    // ============== Belarus — 8 truths + 7 inversions ==============
    { id: "by_t1", isTruth: true,  country: "by", fallback: "The 2020 Belarusian presidential election, in which Lukashenko claimed 80% to challenger Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya's 10%, was rejected as fraudulent by independent observers and triggered the largest protests in Belarusian history.",
      whyFallback: "OSCE excluded by Lukashenko. Independent ballot counts contradicted official results. Hundreds of thousands protested. State response: mass arrests, documented torture in Akrestsina detention centre." },
    { id: "by_t2", isTruth: true,  country: "by", fallback: "In May 2021, Belarus forced a Ryanair flight to land in Minsk under a false bomb threat in order to arrest journalist Roman Protasevich on board.",
      whyFallback: "ICAO investigation. Multiple Western governments classified it as state piracy. Protasevich was paraded on Belarusian state TV with visible signs of duress." },
    { id: "by_t3", isTruth: true,  country: "by", fallback: "Belarus deliberately funnelled Middle Eastern migrants to its EU borders (Poland, Lithuania, Latvia) in 2021 as a hybrid attack against the EU.",
      whyFallback: "State-organized travel from Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan via Belarusian visa offices. Migrants pushed across borders by Belarusian guards. Multiple deaths in border forests. EU sanctions; Belarus continued the campaign for months." },
    { id: "by_t4", isTruth: true,  country: "by", fallback: "Belarus is the only post-Soviet state whose security service kept the name KGB — and its operational continuity with the Soviet original is direct.",
      whyFallback: "Other states rebranded (FSB in Russia, SBU in Ukraine). The Belarusian KGB retained Soviet-era files, personnel, and methods. The choice of name was deliberate — a signal of continuity, not an oversight." },
    { id: "by_t5", isTruth: true,  country: "by", fallback: "Belarus and Russia signed a Union State treaty in 1999 that has progressively integrated the two countries militarily, economically, and politically — accelerating sharply under Lukashenko's post-2020 dependence.",
      whyFallback: "Russian military deployment in Belarus, joint nuclear deployment announced 2023, currency integration discussions. The Union State has been mostly ceremonial; the post-2020 period turned it into operational reality. Belarusian sovereignty is increasingly nominal." },
    { id: "by_t6", isTruth: true,  country: "by", fallback: "Lukashenko personally negotiated the truce with Wagner founder Yevgeny Prigozhin during the June 2023 mutiny — and offered Wagner forces refuge in Belarus.",
      whyFallback: "Wagner camps established in Belarus near Asipovichy. Prigozhin's death two months later left the arrangement unresolved. The Belarusian state effectively hosted a Russian-deniable military force for the period of the deal." },
    { id: "by_t7", isTruth: true,  country: "by", fallback: "Belarus holds approximately 1,400 documented political prisoners — among the highest per-capita rates in Europe.",
      whyFallback: "Viasna Human Rights Centre tracking. The list includes journalists, lawyers, religious figures, and former presidential candidates. Many are held in conditions classified as torture by international observers." },
    { id: "by_t8", isTruth: true,  country: "by", fallback: "Belarus is one of the world's largest potash exporters — and a major node in sanctions-evasion infrastructure for Russia since 2022.",
      whyFallback: "Belaruskali was sanctioned by the US and EU; trade routes shifted to Russian ports, Chinese markets, and offshore intermediaries. The same infrastructure helps Russian oil and arms move around sanctions." },
    { id: "by_f1", isTruth: false, country: "by", fallback: "Belarus has a stable, well-managed Soviet-style economy.",
      whyFallback: "Heavy state subsidies from Russia have masked structural weakness. Currency crises in 2011, 2015, 2020, 2022. Brain drain accelerating since 2020. \"Stable\" describes the political stagnation; the economic data shows structural fragility." },
    { id: "by_f2", isTruth: false, country: "by", fallback: "Belarusian elections produce results that reflect genuine popular will.",
      whyFallback: "Every Belarusian election since 1994 has been classified as not free or fair by OSCE/ODIHR. Independent opposition candidates routinely jailed before voting. 2020 was the most documented case of fraud; the structural problem predates it." },
    { id: "by_f3", isTruth: false, country: "by", fallback: "Lukashenko maintains genuine independence from Moscow.",
      whyFallback: "Pre-2020 he played a limited independent game with the West. Post-2020 his political survival depends on Putin. Russian troops in Belarus, hosting of the February 2022 invasion routes, nuclear weapons deployment — the independence is rhetorical, not operational." },
    { id: "by_f4", isTruth: false, country: "by", fallback: "Western sanctions on Belarus are designed to hurt ordinary citizens rather than the regime.",
      whyFallback: "Personal and sectoral sanctions target Lukashenko's family, security officials, and state enterprises. Belarusian dissidents have generally supported sanctions. The \"hurting civilians\" framing is regime propaganda." },
    { id: "by_f5", isTruth: false, country: "by", fallback: "Belarus played no significant role in Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine.",
      whyFallback: "The northern invasion route to Kyiv started from Belarusian territory. Belarus hosted Russian forces, missile launches, and logistics. The \"didn't fight\" framing is technically narrow; the operational role was substantial." },
    { id: "by_f6", isTruth: false, country: "by", fallback: "Belarusian media is free of government control.",
      whyFallback: "All major outlets are state-controlled or aligned. Independent journalism operates almost exclusively in exile (Belsat, Nasha Niva, etc.). Foreign reporters are routinely denied entry or expelled. Press-freedom rankings place Belarus near the bottom globally." },
    { id: "by_f7", isTruth: false, country: "by", fallback: "Lukashenko is an authentic peasant outsider, not part of the Soviet nomenklatura.",
      whyFallback: "Lukashenko was a Soviet collective-farm director and entered politics on an anti-corruption platform. He has held power since 1994 by classic post-Soviet methods. The \"outsider\" framing is genuine biography turned PR; the rule itself is conventional authoritarian." },

    // ============== Georgia — 8 truths + 7 inversions ==============
    { id: "ge_t1", isTruth: true,  country: "ge", fallback: "In August 2008, Russia invaded Georgia in a five-day war that left South Ossetia and Abkhazia under Russian military control — and the EU-commissioned Tagliavini Report found both sides triggered escalation.",
      whyFallback: "Georgian shelling of Tskhinvali on August 7 began the open conflict. Russian forces had been pre-positioned and crossed into Georgia proper. Russia recognized both breakaway republics; only a handful of states followed. The two territories remain frozen, occupied, and unrecognized." },
    { id: "ge_t2", isTruth: true,  country: "ge", fallback: "Approximately 20% of Georgian territory (South Ossetia and Abkhazia) has been occupied by Russian forces since 2008 — with ongoing \"borderization\" moving the de facto line into Georgian-controlled territory year by year.",
      whyFallback: "Border fences advance meter by meter. Internally displaced persons from 1990s and 2008 wars number 250,000+. EU Monitoring Mission documents the borderization but cannot stop it. The territorial conflict is unresolved and structurally Russian-controlled." },
    { id: "ge_t3", isTruth: true,  country: "ge", fallback: "Georgia's ruling Georgian Dream party passed a Russian-style \"foreign agent\" law in 2024, triggering massive protests and EU candidacy freezing.",
      whyFallback: "Replicates almost word-for-word the Russian law used since 2012 to crush civil society. Mass protests, police violence. Georgian Dream pushed it through despite presidential veto. The EU candidacy frozen partly in response." },
    { id: "ge_t4", isTruth: true,  country: "ge", fallback: "Bidzina Ivanishvili, Georgia's richest man with a fortune made in 1990s Russia, has informally run the country since 2012 — even when officially out of government.",
      whyFallback: "Founded Georgian Dream party. Personal wealth estimated 25-30% of Georgia's GDP. His operational influence persists across ministries regardless of formal office. The pattern of one-man political-economic capture mirrors patterns common across the former Soviet space." },
    { id: "ge_t5", isTruth: true,  country: "ge", fallback: "Former president Mikheil Saakashvili, who led the 2003 Rose Revolution, is imprisoned in Georgia on charges critics characterize as politically motivated.",
      whyFallback: "Returned to Georgia in 2021 after exile in Ukraine. Multiple cases against him. Multiple international medical observers raised concerns about his treatment. The prosecution has political dimensions even if some charges have substance." },
    { id: "ge_t6", isTruth: true,  country: "ge", fallback: "Georgia hosts a large population of Russian migrants who fled mobilization in 2022 — creating tensions with the local population and complicating Georgian foreign policy.",
      whyFallback: "100,000+ Russians moved to Georgia in 2022. Some are political dissidents; others are economic migrants. Property prices rose sharply. Georgian governance has been ambivalent: not closing the border, not joining Russia sanctions." },
    { id: "ge_t7", isTruth: true,  country: "ge", fallback: "Georgia's economy retains heavy structural dependence on Russia — particularly wine, mineral water, and remittance flows.",
      whyFallback: "Russia repeatedly weaponizes trade access (wine bans 2006, 2013-2014). Despite the 2008 war, Russian markets remain crucial for Georgian agricultural exports. The economic vulnerability shapes political latitude on sanctions and EU integration." },
    { id: "ge_t8", isTruth: true,  country: "ge", fallback: "At the 2008 Bucharest NATO summit — months before the Russia-Georgia war — NATO declared Georgia and Ukraine \"will become members\" but provided no Membership Action Plan.",
      whyFallback: "The declaration was a compromise: too provocative for Russia, too thin for Tbilisi/Kyiv. Russia later cited it as triggering. The pattern of partial commitments without follow-through has shaped the entire post-Soviet space's security architecture." },
    { id: "ge_f1", isTruth: false, country: "ge", fallback: "Georgia has been firmly on the Western trajectory since the 2003 Rose Revolution.",
      whyFallback: "The current Georgian Dream government has tilted toward Russia, passed the foreign-agent law, frozen EU candidacy progress. The Western trajectory is real but no longer guaranteed; the country has been politically split for years." },
    { id: "ge_f2", isTruth: false, country: "ge", fallback: "South Ossetia and Abkhazia are genuinely independent of Russia.",
      whyFallback: "Both depend on Russian financial subsidies, security forces, and population. Russian passports issued to most residents. Neither has functioning independent statehood; both are de facto Russian protectorates with the form of independence." },
    { id: "ge_f3", isTruth: false, country: "ge", fallback: "Saakashvili's UNM government was uniformly clean and democratic.",
      whyFallback: "Real reforms (corruption reduction in police, business climate). Also documented abuses: prison torture videos that contributed to UNM's electoral defeat, harsh political prosecutions. The reform record is mixed; the clean framing is partisan." },
    { id: "ge_f4", isTruth: false, country: "ge", fallback: "Georgian Dream's continued rule represents stable democratic preference.",
      whyFallback: "Allegations of fraud in 2024 elections. President's refusal to confirm results. Documented Russian-style methods (foreign-agent law, protest suppression). The continued rule may reflect preference, may reflect manipulation, may reflect both. Honest assessment requires acknowledging the question." },
    { id: "ge_f5", isTruth: false, country: "ge", fallback: "Russia was reluctantly drawn into the 2008 Georgia war by Georgian provocation.",
      whyFallback: "Russian forces had been pre-positioned. The Russian response had clearly been prepared. Georgian shelling of Tskhinvali provided the trigger, but the response architecture was already in place. \"Reluctant\" is incomplete." },
    { id: "ge_f6", isTruth: false, country: "ge", fallback: "Georgia's path to EU membership is automatic and progressing on schedule.",
      whyFallback: "Candidacy granted in 2023 was suspended/frozen in 2024 over foreign-agent law and human-rights concerns. EU has formally paused the process. \"Automatic\" was never accurate; the current state is reversal, not progress." },
    { id: "ge_f7", isTruth: false, country: "ge", fallback: "Tbilisi remains a neutral, safe transit point with no Russian intelligence presence.",
      whyFallback: "Significant Russian intelligence operations documented in Tbilisi. Multiple incidents involving Russian-speakers and security services. Many Western embassies issue cautious advisories specifically around Russian intelligence activity." },

    // ============== Moldova — 8 truths + 7 inversions ==============
    { id: "md_t1", isTruth: true,  country: "md", fallback: "Transnistria, a sliver of Moldovan territory east of the Dniester river, has been a Russian-backed unrecognized \"republic\" since the 1992 war — with Russian troops still stationed there as \"peacekeepers\".",
      whyFallback: "The 14th Russian Army supplied weapons to the separatists. The conflict froze with ~1,500 Russian troops remaining. Cobasna ammunition depot holds an estimated 20,000 tons of Soviet munitions. No international force has been able to verify or remove them." },
    { id: "md_t2", isTruth: true,  country: "md", fallback: "In 2014, three Moldovan banks lost approximately $1 billion — equivalent to about 12% of Moldova's GDP — in a coordinated fraud that brought down successive governments.",
      whyFallback: "Kroll forensic reports. Funds funnelled through shell companies to UK and Russian banks. Ilan Shor sentenced; fled to Israel. Vladimir Plahotniuc named as ultimate beneficiary. Most money never recovered." },
    { id: "md_t3", isTruth: true,  country: "md", fallback: "Vladimir Plahotniuc, leader of Moldova's Democratic Party, was for years the country's most powerful figure — controlling parliament, courts, and major media, before fleeing prosecution in 2019.",
      whyFallback: "US State Department blacklisted him 2020. Allegedly behind the $1B bank heist. Multiple jurisdictions issued arrest warrants. He resurfaced in different locations; full accountability remains incomplete." },
    { id: "md_t4", isTruth: true,  country: "md", fallback: "Russia repeatedly cut gas supplies to Moldova in the winters of 2022-23 and 2023-24 to pressure the EU-aligned government.",
      whyFallback: "Gazprom debt disputes used as pressure. Moldova's energy infrastructure depends on Russian gas via Ukraine. Transnistria's Cuciurgan power plant supplies most of Moldova's electricity — and is gas-dependent." },
    { id: "md_t5", isTruth: true,  country: "md", fallback: "Moldova's October 2024 EU membership referendum narrowly passed amid documented massive Russian-linked vote-buying operations.",
      whyFallback: "Moldovan authorities alleged paid-vote operations directed at hundreds of thousands of citizens. The referendum passed with ~50.4% — much narrower than pre-vote polls predicted. The pattern of foreign-funded vote manipulation was extensively documented." },
    { id: "md_t6", isTruth: true,  country: "md", fallback: "Moldova remains one of the poorest countries in Europe — with mass emigration of working-age citizens to the EU and Russia.",
      whyFallback: "Roughly one-third of working-age Moldovans abroad. Remittances ~15% of GDP. Population has declined from 4.3M to under 2.6M (excluding Transnistria). The structural underdevelopment shapes geopolitical vulnerability." },
    { id: "md_t7", isTruth: true,  country: "md", fallback: "Gagauzia, Moldova's autonomous Turkic Christian region, has been a focus of Russian influence operations — including in the 2023 election of an Ilan Shor-aligned governor.",
      whyFallback: "Direct Russian funding documented for political parties operating there. Pro-Russia messaging in local media. The autonomy is genuine; the foreign-influence layer is also genuine. The pattern parallels Russian operations in other post-Soviet regions." },
    { id: "md_t8", isTruth: true,  country: "md", fallback: "Moldova's judiciary was for years considered captured — and multiple major reform pushes have made progress but the structural change remains incomplete.",
      whyFallback: "EU integration requirements have driven changes. Multiple judges removed for corruption or links to organized crime. The constitutional court has ruled on high-stakes political cases with documented external pressure. Reform is real but contested." },
    { id: "md_f1", isTruth: false, country: "md", fallback: "Transnistria is a self-governing self-sufficient state.",
      whyFallback: "Recognized by no UN members. Dependent on Russian gas, Russian troops, Russian passport documents for residents. The \"state\" is an arrangement that exists because Russia maintains it; remove the support and it would not function." },
    { id: "md_f2", isTruth: false, country: "md", fallback: "Moldovan elections are entirely free of foreign manipulation.",
      whyFallback: "Russian-linked operations documented in 2020, 2024 elections. Network of paid voters reportedly operated by Ilan Shor's organization. Moldovan authorities have pursued cases. The elections are real democratic events; they are also targets of documented manipulation." },
    { id: "md_f3", isTruth: false, country: "md", fallback: "Moldova has full ethnic balance and reconciliation between its Romanian-speaking majority and Russian-speaking minorities.",
      whyFallback: "The Transnistria question is partly about ethnic Russian/Ukrainian populations; Gagauzia is about Turkic Christians; pre-1991 the country was part of Romania. Tensions are managed, not resolved. The structural ethnic geography of Moldova is more complex than the unified narrative suggests." },
    { id: "md_f4", isTruth: false, country: "md", fallback: "Under Maia Sandu, Moldova has fully overcome the corruption that plagued earlier governments.",
      whyFallback: "Sandu's reform agenda is genuine and unprecedented in scope. Implementation is partial. Major banking cases ongoing. The Sandu government is significantly cleaner than its predecessors; presenting it as fully clean overstates progress." },
    { id: "md_f5", isTruth: false, country: "md", fallback: "Moldova would be better off rejoining Romania — and the question is just political will.",
      whyFallback: "Romanian and Moldovan constitutions, EU regulations, Transnistria's status, language and identity questions, the population's own preferences (split). Some Moldovans want it; many do not. The \"just political will\" framing is a Romanian nationalist position, not an analytic one." },
    { id: "md_f6", isTruth: false, country: "md", fallback: "Russia has no significant strategic interest in Moldova.",
      whyFallback: "Russia maintains military forces there. Funds political operations. Weaponizes energy. Hosts Ilan Shor and other fugitives. The \"no interest\" framing is contradicted by every concrete Russian action. Strategic interest in Moldova is one of the few constants of Russian post-Soviet policy." },
    { id: "md_f7", isTruth: false, country: "md", fallback: "Moldova's EU integration is now automatic and irreversible.",
      whyFallback: "The October 2024 referendum passed by 0.7%. The European Council's enlargement process has multiple bottlenecks. Domestic Moldovan politics has multiple Russia-aligned actors with significant support. Integration is the current path; \"automatic\" and \"irreversible\" overstate." },

    // ============== Serbia — 8 truths + 7 inversions ==============
    { id: "rs_t1", isTruth: true,  country: "rs", fallback: "Serbia is Russia's most reliable European ally — refusing to sanction Russia after the 2022 invasion despite EU candidate status.",
      whyFallback: "Vučić government has maintained gas import contracts, kept airlines running, hosted Russian dissidents fleeing mobilization, and refused EU pressure for sanctions. The political-cultural-religious ties go deep; the strategic calculation under Vučić is to balance East and West." },
    { id: "rs_t2", isTruth: true,  country: "rs", fallback: "Serbia continues to claim Kosovo despite the 1999 NATO intervention and Kosovo's 2008 declaration of independence — and the dispute remains a flashpoint for regional violence.",
      whyFallback: "Recognized by ~115 UN members. Not by Russia, China, India, several EU states (Spain, Greece, Cyprus, Slovakia, Romania). Periodic incidents in northern Kosovo (2023 Banjska attack). The status is unresolved; the violence cycle persists." },
    { id: "rs_t3", isTruth: true,  country: "rs", fallback: "Aleksandar Vučić, Serbia's current president, was information minister under Slobodan Milošević in the late 1990s — including during the war crimes period.",
      whyFallback: "Milošević was indicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) for genocide, crimes against humanity. Vučić served his government. He rebranded as pro-European in the 2010s; the rebrand has been partial and is contested." },
    { id: "rs_t4", isTruth: true,  country: "rs", fallback: "In September 2023, an armed group of ethnic Serbs attacked Kosovo police at the Banjska monastery — and Kosovo's investigation traced weapons and training back to Serbian state involvement.",
      whyFallback: "Investigation produced documents and weapons caches. Milan Radoičić (Serb List vice president) admitted leading the operation. Belgrade's response was to honor him; the investigation has not produced extraditions." },
    { id: "rs_t5", isTruth: true,  country: "rs", fallback: "Serbia is among Europe's largest arms exporters and has been documented as a major supplier to conflict zones across Africa, the Middle East, and Eastern Europe.",
      whyFallback: "Multiple investigative reports. Serbian Zastava-produced ammunition has appeared on the Ukrainian front (some from intermediaries selling to NATO partners who then re-export). The neutral posture is rhetorically simple; the supply chain is operationally messy." },
    { id: "rs_t6", isTruth: true,  country: "rs", fallback: "Serbia took years — sometimes a decade or more — to extradite Bosnian Serb war crimes suspects Radovan Karadžić and Ratko Mladić to The Hague.",
      whyFallback: "Karadžić arrested 2008 after 13 years on the run. Mladić arrested 2011 after 16 years. Both lived in Serbia under apparent state-aware protection. ICTY convicted both for genocide. The extradition delays were political choices." },
    { id: "rs_t7", isTruth: true,  country: "rs", fallback: "Serbian mainstream media is highly concentrated and aligned with the ruling party, with documented patterns of tabloid-style attacks on opposition figures and journalists.",
      whyFallback: "Reporters Without Borders ranks Serbia low for press freedom. Pro-government tabloids (Informer, Srpski Telegraf) routinely target critics. The N1 and KRIK independent outlets are exceptions; the broader ecosystem has been captured." },
    { id: "rs_t8", isTruth: true,  country: "rs", fallback: "Vučić has consolidated power across parliament, government, party, and informal networks — operating as the dominant decision-maker regardless of his formal title.",
      whyFallback: "Has cycled through PM and presidential roles. Controls Serbian Progressive Party (SNS). Pattern of political-business networks aligned around him. Opposition political space has narrowed measurably." },
    { id: "rs_f1", isTruth: false, country: "rs", fallback: "Serbia maintains genuine balance between Russia, the EU, and China.",
      whyFallback: "Trade with EU vastly larger than with Russia. Energy dependency on Russia. Chinese infrastructure investment significant. The balance is real in the sense of multiple partners; the rhetoric tilts heavily pro-Russia when convenient and pro-EU when funds are needed." },
    { id: "rs_f2", isTruth: false, country: "rs", fallback: "Kosovo's independence has no legitimacy under international law.",
      whyFallback: "ICJ advisory opinion 2010: Kosovo's declaration did not violate international law. Recognition divided. The \"no legitimacy\" framing is a Serbian position; the legal picture is more complex." },
    { id: "rs_f3", isTruth: false, country: "rs", fallback: "NATO's 1999 bombing of Yugoslavia was a clean illegal aggression without justification.",
      whyFallback: "The bombing was conducted without UN Security Council authorization (Russia/China blocked). It followed massive ethnic cleansing in Kosovo, hundreds of thousands displaced. The \"no justification\" framing erases the ethnic-cleansing context; the \"fully legal\" framing erases the procedural irregularity. Both extremes are partisan." },
    { id: "rs_f4", isTruth: false, country: "rs", fallback: "Serbs were purely victims in the Yugoslav wars.",
      whyFallback: "ICTY convictions for Srebrenica genocide, Sarajevo siege, Croatian campaigns. Also documented Serbian victims (Operation Storm 1995, Kosovo Albanian forces). The conflict produced atrocities on multiple sides; the magnitude and command-level responsibility was asymmetric." },
    { id: "rs_f5", isTruth: false, country: "rs", fallback: "Serbia is a clean European-style democracy.",
      whyFallback: "Documented electoral concerns. Press capture. Vučić's consolidated power. Banjska attack response. Hosting of Russian propaganda figures. The constitutional democracy is real; the operational democracy has narrowed." },
    { id: "rs_f6", isTruth: false, country: "rs", fallback: "The Serbian Orthodox Church is apolitical.",
      whyFallback: "The Church has openly supported nationalist positions on Kosovo, Republika Srpska, and Russia. Patriarch Porfirije has met with Russian Patriarch Kirill on aligned political stances. The Church-state-nationalism nexus is documented." },
    { id: "rs_f7", isTruth: false, country: "rs", fallback: "Republika Srpska is independent of Serbia and Russia.",
      whyFallback: "Milorad Dodik openly aligned with both Moscow and Belgrade. Receives political-economic support from both. Threatens secession from Bosnia-Herzegovina periodically with explicit Russian backing. The \"independent\" framing is constitutional; the operational reality is foreign-aligned." },

    // ============== Hungary — 8 truths + 7 inversions ==============
    { id: "hu_t1", isTruth: true,  country: "hu", fallback: "Hungary under Viktor Orbán has been Russia's most reliable EU partner — repeatedly blocking, delaying, or watering down sanctions and Russian asset freezes.",
      whyFallback: "Hungary held veto on Russian oil import sanctions, EU aid to Ukraine, individual sanctions. Visits to Moscow continued through the war. Energy contracts maintained or expanded. The pattern is consistent across multiple votes." },
    { id: "hu_t2", isTruth: true,  country: "hu", fallback: "Hungary contracted Russia's Rosatom to build Paks II nuclear power plant — with Russian financing — and continued the project despite the 2022 invasion and EU concerns.",
      whyFallback: "Original deal signed 2014. Estimated cost 12+ billion euros, mostly Russian credit. Energy dependence on Russia structurally extended into the 2030s+. EU sanctions on Rosatom contested; Hungary worked around them." },
    { id: "hu_t3", isTruth: true,  country: "hu", fallback: "Hungarian media has been systematically captured by Orbán-aligned business interests, with the Central European Press and Media Foundation (KESMA) consolidating most regional outlets under government-aligned ownership.",
      whyFallback: "476+ outlets aggregated into KESMA in 2018. Owners donated holdings to a foundation aligned with the ruling party. Critical journalism largely confined to Telex, 444, HVG, and a few others. EU repeatedly raised concerns; Hungarian government dismissed them." },
    { id: "hu_t4", isTruth: true,  country: "hu", fallback: "Orbán's Fidesz used its 2010 supermajority to rewrite Hungary's constitution and restructure courts, electoral law, and oversight institutions in its favor — repeatedly using emergency powers since.",
      whyFallback: "New constitution (Fundamental Law) 2011. Electoral district redistricting. Constitutional Court packed. NGO law (\"foreign agent\"-style). COVID-era rule by decree extended. EU Article 7 procedure activated; no operational consequence to date." },
    { id: "hu_t5", isTruth: true,  country: "hu", fallback: "Hungary operated a \"golden visa\" program that issued EU residency to wealthy Russian, Chinese, and other non-EU buyers — with multiple criminal cases linked to the program.",
      whyFallback: "2013-2018 program. Investigations linked recipients to organized crime, Russian intelligence, and money laundering. Program paused under EU pressure; Hungary announced a relaunch in 2024 amid renewed concern." },
    { id: "hu_t6", isTruth: true,  country: "hu", fallback: "The EU has withheld tens of billions of euros from Hungary over rule-of-law concerns — and the funds have been a major lever in Hungarian politics.",
      whyFallback: "Conditionality regulation 2022. Multiple Hungarian veto threats deployed in exchange for partial unfreezing. The financial pressure is real; Orbán's ability to use vetoes as bargaining tools has been remarkably effective." },
    { id: "hu_t7", isTruth: true,  country: "hu", fallback: "Orbán's government has waged a years-long political campaign against Hungarian-American philanthropist George Soros — drawing on themes critics describe as antisemitic.",
      whyFallback: "Government-funded billboard campaigns 2017+. Soros portrayed as orchestrating mass migration. Central European University (Soros-founded) forced out of Hungary 2018. The campaign's iconography and framing were widely critiqued as drawing on classic antisemitic tropes." },
    { id: "hu_t8", isTruth: true,  country: "hu", fallback: "Orbán openly described his political project as \"illiberal democracy\" in a 2014 speech — and political-science assessments of Hungary now classify it as a hybrid regime rather than a full democracy.",
      whyFallback: "Tusnádfürdő speech, July 2014. V-Dem Institute, Freedom House, and others have downgraded Hungary's classification. The country remains a member of the EU and NATO; its internal political system has visibly drifted from EU democratic norms." },
    { id: "hu_f1", isTruth: false, country: "hu", fallback: "Hungary is a normal European democracy with strong checks and balances.",
      whyFallback: "Constitutional court packed by ruling party. Electoral districts redrawn for Fidesz advantage. Media capture documented. Judicial independence eroded. The country holds elections; the structural underpinnings of liberal democracy have been hollowed in documented ways." },
    { id: "hu_f2", isTruth: false, country: "hu", fallback: "Orbán represents Hungarian national interests with no foreign alignment.",
      whyFallback: "Open coordination with Russia on energy, sanctions, asset freezes. Open alignment with China on Belt and Road. Open alignment with US Republican Party in foreign policy positions. \"Pro-Hungarian only\" describes the rhetoric; the diplomatic record is more aligned." },
    { id: "hu_f3", isTruth: false, country: "hu", fallback: "The EU bullies Hungary unfairly for political reasons.",
      whyFallback: "EU Article 7 was activated over rule-of-law concerns. Hungarian government has flouted multiple EU court rulings. EU funds were withheld based on documented criteria, not arbitrary punishment. The \"bullying\" framing is internal Hungarian political rhetoric; the EU's concerns have substantive basis." },
    { id: "hu_f4", isTruth: false, country: "hu", fallback: "Hungarian media is diverse and free.",
      whyFallback: "KESMA aggregation. Pro-government dominance of regional press. RTL Klub, Telex, 444, HVG remain critical voices; the structural ecosystem has narrowed. International press-freedom indices have downgraded Hungary consistently." },
    { id: "hu_f5", isTruth: false, country: "hu", fallback: "Orbán has delivered an economic miracle for Hungary.",
      whyFallback: "Hungarian growth has been mixed. Currency volatility. EU funds have been a major contributor to investment. The \"miracle\" framing is government PR; the data shows convergence with regional peers, not extraordinary outperformance." },
    { id: "hu_f6", isTruth: false, country: "hu", fallback: "Hungary's migration policy has prevented an immigration crisis.",
      whyFallback: "Hungary is a transit country; few migrants want to stay. Border barriers and refoulement policies have been criticized by ECHR. The \"success\" is partly geographic and partly produced by hostile reception. The framing serves political purposes regardless of substance." },
    { id: "hu_f7", isTruth: false, country: "hu", fallback: "Orbán himself is personally incorruptible.",
      whyFallback: "OLAF investigations into family-linked companies. Lőrinc Mészáros's rise from local gas-fitter to one of Hungary's richest men, tied to political proximity. Documented patterns of family-linked enrichment. Personal probity is a complicated metric; the family-network analysis is well documented." },

    // ============== Iran — 8 truths + 7 inversions ==============
    { id: "ir_t1", isTruth: true,  country: "ir", fallback: "Iran has supplied Russia with thousands of Shahed drones used in attacks on Ukrainian civilian infrastructure since 2022.",
      whyFallback: "Documented by Ukrainian air-defense recoveries, Western intelligence. Iran initially denied; later partially admitted. Drone production facility built in Tatarstan. The strategic alignment between Tehran and Moscow has deepened markedly since 2022." },
    { id: "ir_t2", isTruth: true,  country: "ir", fallback: "Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) operates a massive business empire — controlling significant portions of Iran's economy through holding companies, foundations (bonyads), and front operations.",
      whyFallback: "Khatam al-Anbiya construction conglomerate alone is the country's largest contractor. Bonyads (charitable foundations) hold trillions of rials in assets and are exempt from normal accountability. The IRGC is simultaneously a military force, intelligence agency, and economic conglomerate." },
    { id: "ir_t3", isTruth: true,  country: "ir", fallback: "Iran exited the JCPOA nuclear deal compliance after the US withdrew under Trump in 2018, and has since enriched uranium to 60% — a step toward weapons-grade.",
      whyFallback: "JCPOA was signed 2015. Iran complied until US withdrawal. Subsequent gradual escalation: 5%, 20%, 60% enrichment. IAEA monitoring restricted. The proliferation timeline has compressed; the political situation has correspondingly worsened." },
    { id: "ir_t4", isTruth: true,  country: "ir", fallback: "The Iranian state has carried out targeted assassinations and abductions of dissidents abroad — including in Europe, North America, and Turkey.",
      whyFallback: "Multiple documented cases. Plot to abduct Iranian-American journalist Masih Alinejad in New York (2021) admitted in US court. Belgian diplomat Asadollah Asadi convicted for 2018 Paris bomb plot. The pattern parallels Russian and Saudi extraterritorial operations." },
    { id: "ir_t5", isTruth: true,  country: "ir", fallback: "Iran funds and directs a regional proxy network — Hezbollah, Houthis, Iraqi militias, Hamas — known as the \"Axis of Resistance\".",
      whyFallback: "Open Iranian state acknowledgment. Hezbollah's military arm operates with Iranian funding and direction. Houthis received missile and drone technology. Iraqi PMF receives Iranian advisors. The proxy strategy is the IRGC Quds Force's core operational model." },
    { id: "ir_t6", isTruth: true,  country: "ir", fallback: "Mahsa Amini's death in morality-police custody in 2022 triggered the largest protest wave in Iran's modern history — met with mass arrests, public executions, and persistent repression.",
      whyFallback: "Amnesty International, HRANA documented thousands of arrests, hundreds of deaths in the protest crackdown. Multiple protesters executed after short trials. The protest movement was suppressed; the underlying social tensions remain." },
    { id: "ir_t7", isTruth: true,  country: "ir", fallback: "Iran operates a sophisticated sanctions-evasion infrastructure — including ghost tankers, intermediary banks, cryptocurrency operations, and front companies across the Gulf and Asia.",
      whyFallback: "Multi-jurisdiction enforcement actions. The \"dark fleet\" of unregistered tankers ships Iranian oil to China and elsewhere. Designed in part with North Korean precedent in mind. The infrastructure is operational regardless of sanctions intensity." },
    { id: "ir_t8", isTruth: true,  country: "ir", fallback: "The 1953 Iranian coup that overthrew democratically-elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh and reinstated the Shah was orchestrated by the CIA and British MI6.",
      whyFallback: "Operation Ajax / Operation Boot. CIA declassified key documents in 2013. UK MI6's role was acknowledged later. The coup's motivation was oil nationalization. The 1979 Islamic Revolution's anti-Western charge drew partly on this history." },
    { id: "ir_f1", isTruth: false, country: "ir", fallback: "Iran is a functioning democracy with elections that determine policy.",
      whyFallback: "The Guardian Council vets all candidates. Major decisions made by Supreme Leader Khamenei, not parliament. Reformist candidates routinely barred. Elections exist; structural power is concentrated outside electoral institutions." },
    { id: "ir_f2", isTruth: false, country: "ir", fallback: "The IRGC is a purely defensive force.",
      whyFallback: "Operates regional proxy networks (Hezbollah, Houthis, Iraqi militias). Conducts targeted killings abroad. Runs business empire. Functions as a parallel military, intelligence agency, and economic actor. Defensive framing is constitutional; operational role is offensive and economic." },
    { id: "ir_f3", isTruth: false, country: "ir", fallback: "Iran does not sponsor terrorism.",
      whyFallback: "Designated by US and EU as terrorism sponsor for documented support of Hezbollah, Hamas, and other organizations. The \"no terrorism\" framing depends on definitional fight over what counts. The documentary record of material support is extensive." },
    { id: "ir_f4", isTruth: false, country: "ir", fallback: "Iran's nuclear program is entirely peaceful.",
      whyFallback: "60% enrichment far exceeds civilian needs. IAEA repeatedly flagged undeclared activities and sites. Weaponization research documented in Mossad's 2018 archive seizure (authenticity contested but partly confirmed). \"Peaceful\" is the official position; the technical trajectory points elsewhere." },
    { id: "ir_f5", isTruth: false, country: "ir", fallback: "Women's rights in Iran are gradually improving under the current regime.",
      whyFallback: "Mahsa Amini protests (2022) triggered by mandatory hijab enforcement. Continuing executions of women protesters. Legal framework remains heavily restrictive. Some informal social changes; the legal-political framework has tightened, not loosened." },
    { id: "ir_f6", isTruth: false, country: "ir", fallback: "Iran is isolated and irrelevant in global politics.",
      whyFallback: "Active in Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Yemen, Afghanistan. Supplies Russia. Trades with China at scale. SCO and BRICS membership. The \"isolated\" framing reflects Western sanctions; the operational reach is significant." },
    { id: "ir_f7", isTruth: false, country: "ir", fallback: "Western military intervention has consistently produced good outcomes in the region around Iran.",
      whyFallback: "Iraq 2003: destabilization, sectarian war, ISIS rise, expansion of Iranian influence into Iraq. Afghanistan 2001-2021: Taliban returned. Libya 2011: failed state. The track record is consistent enough to be a pattern, not a series of accidents." },

    // ============== Syria — 8 truths + 7 inversions ==============
    { id: "sy_t1", isTruth: true,  country: "sy", fallback: "Russia's 2015 military intervention saved the Assad regime from collapse and kept it in power for almost a decade more — until the December 2024 fall.",
      whyFallback: "Russian air force, mercenaries, and political support. Hmeimim airbase in Latakia. Wagner deployments. The intervention's tactical success (Aleppo 2016) extended the war and the regime. Russian leverage shaped the entire Syrian outcome." },
    { id: "sy_t2", isTruth: true,  country: "sy", fallback: "OPCW investigations found the Syrian government used chemical weapons against its own population multiple times during the civil war.",
      whyFallback: "Multiple confirmed attacks: Ghouta 2013 (sarin), Khan Shaykhun 2017 (sarin), Douma 2018 (chlorine). OPCW Fact-Finding Mission and Investigation and Identification Team. Russia and Syria contested attribution; the technical evidence is detailed and replicated." },
    { id: "sy_t3", isTruth: true,  country: "sy", fallback: "The 2016 siege of Eastern Aleppo by Syrian regime and Russian forces involved targeted bombing of hospitals, water infrastructure, and bakeries — documented by UN and multiple independent investigations.",
      whyFallback: "UN Commission of Inquiry on Syria reports. Physicians for Human Rights tracked deliberate hospital strikes. The pattern of attacking civilian infrastructure to break resistance was documented across multiple sieges." },
    { id: "sy_t4", isTruth: true,  country: "sy", fallback: "The Assad family controlled significant portions of Syria's economy through a web of front companies and family-linked enterprises — even as the country descended into mass poverty.",
      whyFallback: "Rami Makhlouf (Bashar's cousin) controlled ~60% of the economy at peak. Asma al-Assad's family in textile and pharmaceutical sectors. War economy generated new oligarch networks aligned with the regime. Personal wealth amid mass displacement was the structural pattern." },
    { id: "sy_t5", isTruth: true,  country: "sy", fallback: "Syria became one of the world's largest producers of the amphetamine Captagon — with the trade reportedly run by people connected to the Assad regime.",
      whyFallback: "Multi-billion-dollar export trade. Maher al-Assad (Bashar's brother) heading the 4th Armored Division, repeatedly implicated. Saudi, Jordanian, EU drug seizures linked back. The trade became a structural revenue source after sanctions cut conventional exports." },
    { id: "sy_t6", isTruth: true,  country: "sy", fallback: "The Syrian war displaced approximately half of Syria's pre-war population — including ~6.8 million refugees and ~6.7 million internally displaced.",
      whyFallback: "UNHCR data. Largest displacement crisis since WWII. Major flows to Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan, EU. The post-2024 transition has produced limited returns; the diaspora structure persists." },
    { id: "sy_t7", isTruth: true,  country: "sy", fallback: "The Sednaya military prison became known as \"the human slaughterhouse\" — and tens of thousands of prisoners were tortured, executed, or disappeared there during the Assad era.",
      whyFallback: "Caesar photographs (2014): 28,000+ images of bodies of detained prisoners. Amnesty International estimated 13,000+ executed at Sednaya by 2015. The December 2024 prison opening revealed remaining detainees and confirmed the scale." },
    { id: "sy_t8", isTruth: true,  country: "sy", fallback: "The Assad dynasty came to power in a 1970 coup and reinforced itself in 1982 with the brutal suppression of an uprising in Hama — killing tens of thousands.",
      whyFallback: "Robert Fisk's reporting, extensive subsequent documentation. Hafez al-Assad's brother Rifaat led the operation. Hama remained an example of how the regime would respond to challenge. Bashar inherited the apparatus in 2000 with the same operating logic." },
    { id: "sy_f1", isTruth: false, country: "sy", fallback: "The Assad regime represented legitimate Syrian governance.",
      whyFallback: "Hereditary autocracy. Single-party rule. Decades of repression. Mass disappearance and torture. Documented chemical-weapons use against own population. Legitimacy was conferred by force, not by any meaningful consent." },
    { id: "sy_f2", isTruth: false, country: "sy", fallback: "The Syrian civil war was purely a Western proxy war against a legitimate government.",
      whyFallback: "Initial protests (2011) followed regime torture of teenage boys for graffiti. Mass civilian protests met with live ammunition. Western support to opposition was real, often clumsy and shifting. The framing of \"purely Western proxy war\" erases the indigenous causes of the uprising." },
    { id: "sy_f3", isTruth: false, country: "sy", fallback: "Russia played no significant role in Syria.",
      whyFallback: "Russian airbases at Hmeimim and Tartus. Air campaigns 2015-2024. Wagner mercenaries. Diplomatic shielding at the UN Security Council. Russia's intervention is the reason Assad survived 2015 onward. \"No significant role\" is propaganda." },
    { id: "sy_f4", isTruth: false, country: "sy", fallback: "OPCW reports on Syrian chemical weapons use were entirely corrupted by Western interference.",
      whyFallback: "Some internal OPCW dissent (Henderson, Douma). The institution conducted multiple independent investigations with replicated technical findings. The \"corrupted\" framing is partly real (institutional politics) and partly disinformation. Honest assessment requires distinguishing the two." },
    { id: "sy_f5", isTruth: false, country: "sy", fallback: "Syrian refugees can safely return now that the war has ended.",
      whyFallback: "Post-2024 transition is unstable. Multiple armed factions. Ongoing violence, ethnic and sectarian tensions. Property records destroyed; many refugees would face hostility from those who took over their homes. \"Safe return\" is the political talking point of host countries; reality is more complex." },
    { id: "sy_f6", isTruth: false, country: "sy", fallback: "Foreign powers were uniformly destructive in Syria with no positive outcomes.",
      whyFallback: "Russia preserved the regime — outcome contested. Iran built proxy networks — outcome contested. US/Turkey supported rebels — outcome contested. SDF/Kurdish areas reached relatively functional autonomy — outcome positive by some measures. The picture is varied; uniformly negative is simplification." },
    { id: "sy_f7", isTruth: false, country: "sy", fallback: "The post-Assad transition has fully reformed Syria's security and political institutions.",
      whyFallback: "HTS-led transition, complex. Multiple armed factions remain. Sectarian tensions ongoing. Old security apparatus partly reabsorbed. The transition is real and significant; presenting it as fully reformed is premature." },

    // ============== Venezuela — 8 truths + 7 inversions ==============
    { id: "ve_t1", isTruth: true,  country: "ve", fallback: "The July 2024 Venezuelan presidential election was widely viewed as stolen — with opposition candidate Edmundo González presenting voting tallies showing he won decisively, while Maduro claimed victory without releasing detailed results.",
      whyFallback: "Opposition published precinct-level tally records. International observers (Carter Center, UN panel) refused to certify Maduro's claimed result. The Maduro government acknowledged no detailed result tabulation. Protests met with mass arrests; estimated 25 killed." },
    { id: "ve_t2", isTruth: true,  country: "ve", fallback: "Venezuela's state oil company PDVSA, once a major global producer, collapsed under Chávez and Maduro from approximately 3.2 million barrels/day to under 700,000 — through political purges, asset stripping, and mismanagement.",
      whyFallback: "Engineering staff purged for political loyalty 2003+. Infrastructure deterioration. Multiple bribery cases. Hyperinflation collapsed maintenance budgets. The collapse predates US sanctions but was accelerated by them; the original cause was political-managerial." },
    { id: "ve_t3", isTruth: true,  country: "ve", fallback: "Venezuela experienced one of the worst peacetime economic collapses in modern history — with cumulative inflation exceeding one million percent at peak and approximately 7.7 million people leaving the country since 2014.",
      whyFallback: "IMF projections, UNHCR migrant figures. Multiple currency reformations. De facto dollarization. Real wages collapsed. The crisis was a result of policy choices (Chávez-era price controls, expropriations) combined with sanctions and oil-price collapse." },
    { id: "ve_t4", isTruth: true,  country: "ve", fallback: "Venezuela has been a critical node in Russian and Iranian sanctions evasion — providing flagged tankers, ports, and intermediary arrangements.",
      whyFallback: "Multiple US Treasury enforcement actions. Russian Rosneft operations until 2020 withdrawal. Iranian fuel cargoes 2020+. The triangular sanctions-evasion network has been documented across multiple agencies and investigative outlets." },
    { id: "ve_t5", isTruth: true,  country: "ve", fallback: "The Venezuelan migration crisis (7+ million leaving since 2014) is one of the largest in modern history — comparable in scale to Syria's, but with much less international response.",
      whyFallback: "Largely overland migration to Colombia, Peru, Ecuador, Chile. More recent flows to US via Darien Gap. UNHCR designation of refugee status late and partial. The asymmetric international response compared to other displacement crises is documented." },
    { id: "ve_t6", isTruth: true,  country: "ve", fallback: "Wagner Group operatives were deployed to Venezuela to provide personal security to Nicolás Maduro and train regime-aligned militias.",
      whyFallback: "Multiple Reuters reports 2019-2020. Russian denials; operational presence documented. The pattern of Wagner deployment to protect aligned regimes (Syria, CAR, Mali, Venezuela) was consistent through the Prigozhin era." },
    { id: "ve_t7", isTruth: true,  country: "ve", fallback: "Despite broad US sanctions, Chevron operates in Venezuela under specific license arrangements — generating tax and royalty payments to the Maduro government.",
      whyFallback: "Specific license issued 2022, renewed since. Chevron operations produce billions in revenue annually; portions flow to the Venezuelan state. The \"sanctions\" framing is partial; major US oil interests have continuous operational access." },
    { id: "ve_t8", isTruth: true,  country: "ve", fallback: "The Venezuelan Supreme Court has been progressively packed and reorganized to align with Chavismo / Madurismo — including the 2017 abrogation of the National Assembly's powers.",
      whyFallback: "Stacked TSJ under Maduro. Multiple regime-aligned rulings. Refused to certify National Assembly opposition victories. Subsequently abrogated NA powers entirely. The judicial branch is an arm of the executive in operational terms." },
    { id: "ve_f1", isTruth: false, country: "ve", fallback: "Maduro represents legitimate democratic governance of Venezuela.",
      whyFallback: "Multiple disputed elections (2018, 2024). Opposition candidates barred. International observers withdrew or refused to certify. Hyperinflation, mass migration, security collapse. The legitimacy framing is the regime's; multiple independent metrics disagree." },
    { id: "ve_f2", isTruth: false, country: "ve", fallback: "The Chávez/Maduro project has been a clear success for the Venezuelan poor.",
      whyFallback: "Initial poverty reduction (2003-2012) was real. Post-2014 collapse erased and exceeded those gains. Mass migration is mostly working-class. Health outcomes deteriorated dramatically. The narrative of success requires ignoring the second half of the data." },
    { id: "ve_f3", isTruth: false, country: "ve", fallback: "Venezuelan economic problems are entirely caused by Western sanctions.",
      whyFallback: "PDVSA's collapse predated significant sanctions. Expropriations of foreign assets started in early Chávez era. Price controls created shortages well before 2017. Sanctions worsened the crisis; they did not cause it. Both are honest framings; sole-cause is propaganda." },
    { id: "ve_f4", isTruth: false, country: "ve", fallback: "Venezuela maintains genuinely non-aligned foreign policy.",
      whyFallback: "Aligned with Russia (military equipment, sanctions evasion). Aligned with China (oil-for-loans, surveillance technology). Aligned with Iran (fuel imports). Aligned with Cuba (security advisors). The non-aligned framing is rhetorical; the operational alignment is multi-vectored." },
    { id: "ve_f5", isTruth: false, country: "ve", fallback: "The Venezuelan opposition is purely a Western puppet.",
      whyFallback: "Significant domestic political support (María Corina Machado, others). Mass mobilization independent of foreign funding. Western support is real and clumsy. The \"pure puppet\" framing erases the domestic political dynamics." },
    { id: "ve_f6", isTruth: false, country: "ve", fallback: "Venezuelan elections meet international democratic standards.",
      whyFallback: "No major independent international observer mission has certified recent elections. Multiple opposition candidates barred. Electoral authority TSJ aligned with the regime. The 2024 election produced direct evidence of fraud (precinct tallies not matching reported results)." },
    { id: "ve_f7", isTruth: false, country: "ve", fallback: "The US is actively planning military intervention in Venezuela.",
      whyFallback: "US has applied sanctions, recognized opposition figures, and used coercive diplomacy. Direct military intervention has been repeatedly considered and repeatedly not adopted. The \"planning intervention\" framing serves regime propaganda; the actual posture has been economic and diplomatic." },

    // ============== North Korea — 8 truths + 7 inversions ==============
    { id: "kp_t1", isTruth: true,  country: "kp", fallback: "North Korea has supplied Russia with millions of artillery shells, missiles, and military personnel for the war in Ukraine since 2023.",
      whyFallback: "Satellite imagery of weapons transfers from Najin. South Korean and US intelligence assessments. Kim Jong Un's October 2023 visit. Confirmed deployment of approximately 10,000+ KPA personnel to Russia. The transfer scale is the largest of any single bilateral wartime arms flow." },
    { id: "kp_t2", isTruth: true,  country: "kp", fallback: "North Korea conducted six nuclear tests between 2006 and 2017 and has continued to develop missile delivery systems despite UN sanctions.",
      whyFallback: "Confirmed seismic data, US/Japan/SK monitoring. Hwasong-class ICBM tests. Estimated 40-50 nuclear warheads. UN Security Council Resolution 2371 and others have not slowed development. The regime's nuclear program is its primary national priority." },
    { id: "kp_t3", isTruth: true,  country: "kp", fallback: "Approximately 34,000+ North Koreans have escaped to South Korea since the 1990s — and many describe systematic torture, public executions, and family-punishment policies (yeon-jwa-je).",
      whyFallback: "ROK Ministry of Unification statistics. UN Commission of Inquiry (2014) found human-rights abuses \"without parallel in the contemporary world.\" The defector testimony is consistent across decades and multiple political contexts." },
    { id: "kp_t4", isTruth: true,  country: "kp", fallback: "The 1994-1998 \"Arduous March\" famine killed an estimated 600,000 to 2.5 million North Koreans — and the regime continued military and nuclear spending throughout.",
      whyFallback: "Andrew Natsios, USAID; Stephan Haggard and Marcus Noland scholarship. Aid was repeatedly diverted to military and elite. The famine's structural causes — collapse of Soviet aid, agricultural mismanagement — were exacerbated by political choices." },
    { id: "kp_t5", isTruth: true,  country: "kp", fallback: "North Korea has stolen billions of dollars in cryptocurrency through state-sponsored cyber operations — particularly through groups like Lazarus.",
      whyFallback: "Chainalysis reports. Multiple major heists: Axie Infinity ($625M, 2022), various exchange hacks. Funds estimated to support nuclear/missile development. The cyber program is among the world's most active state-sponsored operations." },
    { id: "kp_t6", isTruth: true,  country: "kp", fallback: "North Korea maintains a small Pyongyang elite that lives in conditions vastly better than the rest of the population — with imported luxury goods, foreign education, and private healthcare.",
      whyFallback: "Senior cadre receive imported food, foreign-made goods despite sanctions. Kim family attended Swiss schools. The country's hereditary class structure (songbun) is documented and operates through three generations." },
    { id: "kp_t7", isTruth: true,  country: "kp", fallback: "North Korea was attributed by the US government as the source of the 2014 Sony Pictures hack — in retaliation for the film \"The Interview.\"",
      whyFallback: "FBI attribution. The hack leaked employee emails and personal data, attempted to cancel film distribution. The pattern of asymmetric retaliation against perceived insults to the Kim dynasty has been consistent." },
    { id: "kp_t8", isTruth: true,  country: "kp", fallback: "Kim Jong Un's half-brother Kim Jong Nam was assassinated with VX nerve agent at Kuala Lumpur airport in 2017.",
      whyFallback: "Two women carried out the actual attack; both were subsequently released after Malaysian and Vietnamese diplomatic interventions. North Korea denied involvement. The use of VX (a UN-classified chemical weapon) against a family rival in a foreign country was unprecedented." },
    { id: "kp_f1", isTruth: false, country: "kp", fallback: "North Korea is completely isolated with no significant foreign engagement.",
      whyFallback: "Active trade with China (~90% of NK trade). Active sanctions evasion with Russia, sanctioned arms transfers post-2022. Cyber operations globally. Embassies in dozens of countries. The \"closed off\" framing serves regime mystique; the operational engagement is significant." },
    { id: "kp_f2", isTruth: false, country: "kp", fallback: "North Korea is a socialist paradise for its citizens.",
      whyFallback: "Mass starvation in the 1990s. Concentration camp system (kwanliso). Hereditary class system. Defector testimony of systematic abuses. The \"paradise\" framing is regime propaganda; the documentary record is the opposite." },
    { id: "kp_f3", isTruth: false, country: "kp", fallback: "North Korea's nuclear program is defensive and not destabilizing.",
      whyFallback: "The country has openly threatened nuclear use. Tests of ICBMs designed to reach US territory. Withdrawal from NPT in 2003. The \"defensive\" framing is the regime's; the technology trajectory and explicit threats describe a posture beyond defense." },
    { id: "kp_f4", isTruth: false, country: "kp", fallback: "Western sanctions are the sole cause of North Korean poverty.",
      whyFallback: "Sanctions are real and have effects. The economic system is the primary cause: command economy with no functional market, military priority over civilian, no agricultural productivity reform. Without sanctions, the same political-economic choices would produce poverty." },
    { id: "kp_f5", isTruth: false, country: "kp", fallback: "China fully controls North Korea and could end its nuclear program if it wanted to.",
      whyFallback: "China has significant leverage and uses some of it. North Korea has historically resisted Chinese pressure. Kim Jong Un's purges of pro-China figures in his early rule. The \"fully controls\" framing exaggerates Chinese willingness and capacity to override regime priorities." },
    { id: "kp_f6", isTruth: false, country: "kp", fallback: "North Korean political succession has been smooth and uncontested.",
      whyFallback: "Kim Jong Un's rise involved multiple high-profile purges: uncle Jang Song Thaek (executed 2013), half-brother Kim Jong Nam (assassinated 2017). The succession was managed by violence; presenting it as smooth obscures the operational reality." },
    { id: "kp_f7", isTruth: false, country: "kp", fallback: "North Korea's political system is just a cultural difference that should be respected.",
      whyFallback: "Pre-1945 Korea was not divided. North-South split was geopolitical. South Korea developed into a democracy; the \"cultural\" framing for North Korean political structure conflates Korean culture with the Kim dynasty's specific autocratic apparatus. The dynasty is not Korean culture." },

    // ============== Mali — 8 truths + 7 inversions ==============
    { id: "ml_t1", isTruth: true,  country: "ml", fallback: "After the 2020-2021 military coups, Mali's junta expelled French forces and brought in Wagner Group / \"Africa Corps\" Russian mercenaries.",
      whyFallback: "Russian presence confirmed by Western intelligence, satellite imagery, and Wagner's own social media. The transition mirrored similar Russia-aligned shifts in Burkina Faso, Niger, and CAR. The post-Prigozhin reorganization rebranded Wagner as \"Africa Corps\" but maintained operational continuity." },
    { id: "ml_t2", isTruth: true,  country: "ml", fallback: "In March 2022, Malian forces and Russian-aligned operatives killed approximately 500 civilians in Moura over five days — the worst massacre in Mali's recent history.",
      whyFallback: "UN MINUSMA report. Witnesses described systematic executions of non-combatants. Russian mercenaries identified by survivors. The Malian government characterized the operation as counter-terrorism; the UN classification was atrocity." },
    { id: "ml_t3", isTruth: true,  country: "ml", fallback: "Mali experienced two military coups in nine months (August 2020 and May 2021), led by Colonel Assimi Goïta — and the junta has repeatedly postponed promised elections.",
      whyFallback: "ECOWAS sanctions and pressure. Junta argued security needs required postponement. Civilian transition timelines extended multiple times. The pattern of \"temporary\" military rule extending indefinitely has parallels across the Sahel since 2020." },
    { id: "ml_t4", isTruth: true,  country: "ml", fallback: "Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger have all expelled French forces and pivoted toward Russia since 2022 — forming the \"Alliance of Sahel States\" and leaving ECOWAS.",
      whyFallback: "Coordinated diplomatic moves. Joint announcements. Russian flags at protests. The pivot reflects both genuine local grievances against French neocolonial influence AND deliberate Russian information operations and military penetration." },
    { id: "ml_t5", isTruth: true,  country: "ml", fallback: "Wagner / Africa Corps operations in Mali are reportedly financed in part through gold mining concessions — replicating the model used in CAR and Sudan.",
      whyFallback: "Multiple investigative reports (All Eyes on Wagner, Africa Eye). Gold mines under nominal Malian control with Russian operational presence. The pattern of mercenary force funded through extracted resources is consistent across multiple African theaters." },
    { id: "ml_t6", isTruth: true,  country: "ml", fallback: "Northern Mali (Azawad) hosts a long-running Tuareg insurgency — and the 2023-2024 Malian/Russian campaigns broke prior peace agreements with Tuareg factions.",
      whyFallback: "Algiers Accord (2015) effectively voided. Renewed combat. CMA (Coordination of Movements of Azawad) reorganized as rebel coalition. The instability accelerates as outside powers escalate; the underlying political problem (Tuareg autonomy) remains unresolved." },
    { id: "ml_t7", isTruth: true,  country: "ml", fallback: "Mali's modern history is shaped by French colonial extraction (Soudan français, 1892-1960) — and post-independence economic structures continued French influence through the CFA franc and infrastructure ties.",
      whyFallback: "Mali was a French colony for ~70 years. CFA franc monetary arrangements until 2020+ reforms. French military bases until expulsion 2022. The colonial legacy is real; the post-colonial \"Françafrique\" relationship was operationally continuous." },
    { id: "ml_t8", isTruth: true,  country: "ml", fallback: "Mali faces parallel insurgencies from Islamic State-Sahel (ISGS) and Al-Qaeda-affiliated JNIM — which have expanded significantly since the French departure and Russian arrival.",
      whyFallback: "ACLED conflict data. Multiple analytical reports show insurgent control of territory has grown post-2022. The Russian-Malian campaign has been kinetic against suspected jihadists and civilians; the territorial outcome has worsened." },
    { id: "ml_f1", isTruth: false, country: "ml", fallback: "Mali's pivot to Russia represents true sovereignty restoration.",
      whyFallback: "One foreign military presence replaced by another. Russian operational dependency now significant. Wagner / Africa Corps operates with limited Malian oversight. \"Sovereignty\" is the rhetoric; the practical dependency simply shifted source." },
    { id: "ml_f2", isTruth: false, country: "ml", fallback: "Wagner / Russian operations protect civilians in Mali.",
      whyFallback: "Moura massacre. Multiple human-rights documented atrocities. Wagner's stated mission is counter-terror; the operational record includes systematic civilian harm. The \"protector\" framing is regime/Russian information; the documentary record contradicts it." },
    { id: "ml_f3", isTruth: false, country: "ml", fallback: "Mali under the Goïta junta is democratic.",
      whyFallback: "Military rule. Elections postponed multiple times. Press restrictions tightened. Political parties suspended (2024). The constitutional democracy has been suspended in practice; the junta's framing of \"transition\" has extended indefinitely." },
    { id: "ml_f4", isTruth: false, country: "ml", fallback: "France's withdrawal from Mali was an unambiguously positive outcome for Mali and the region.",
      whyFallback: "Outcomes mixed. Security situation has worsened by major metrics. Russian-led operations include atrocities. Anti-French sentiment was real and justified by colonial legacy. But \"positive outcome\" is a separate question from \"desire to be free of French influence\" — both can be honest, the outcomes data is sobering." },
    { id: "ml_f5", isTruth: false, country: "ml", fallback: "Russia is a true partner of Mali, treating it as an equal.",
      whyFallback: "Mali pays Russian operators in gold mining concessions and cash. Russian military makes operational decisions. The partnership has the structure of patron-client more than equals. The \"true partner\" framing serves both Russian and Malian junta political needs." },
    { id: "ml_f6", isTruth: false, country: "ml", fallback: "Mali has eliminated foreign military presence on its soil.",
      whyFallback: "French and EU forces have left. Russian/Wagner forces have arrived. UN MINUSMA expelled. Foreign presence has shifted, not been eliminated. The \"eliminated\" framing is rhetoric; the operational reality is substitution." },
    { id: "ml_f7", isTruth: false, country: "ml", fallback: "The Sahel coups represent overwhelming popular support.",
      whyFallback: "Coups had real popular support against perceived foreign domination and security failure. They also produced political-party suspensions, jailing of opposition, civil-society repression. Popular support and authoritarian outcome are not mutually exclusive — the picture is more complex than either celebratory or dismissive framings suggest." },

    // ============== Iraq — 8 truths + 7 inversions ==============
    { id: "iq_t1", isTruth: true,  country: "iq", fallback: "The United States supplied weapons, intelligence, and chemical-precursor materials to Saddam Hussein's Iraq during the 1980s Iran-Iraq war.",
      whyFallback: "Donald Rumsfeld's December 1983 Baghdad meeting with Saddam. US Commerce Department exports of dual-use materials. NSC memos detailed the policy of supporting Iraq against Iran. The same Saddam was later prosecuted partly for chemical weapons use the US had helped enable." },
    { id: "iq_t2", isTruth: true,  country: "iq", fallback: "L. Paul Bremer's Coalition Provisional Authority distributed approximately $9 billion in cash in Iraq with virtually no documentation — most of it never accounted for.",
      whyFallback: "US Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR) reports. Pallets of $100 bills flown into Baghdad airport. Multiple subsequent audits unable to trace recipients. The largest cash transfer in US government history vanished into the post-invasion vacuum." },
    { id: "iq_t3", isTruth: true,  country: "iq", fallback: "The 2003 US invasion of Iraq was justified by claims of weapons of mass destruction that were never found — and intelligence agencies internally had significant doubts before the war.",
      whyFallback: "Curveball informant, Niger uranium forgeries, aluminum tubes. UK Butler Review, US Senate Intelligence Committee, Chilcot Inquiry. The intelligence was politically pressured. The deliberate misuse of intelligence has been documented in multiple government inquiries." },
    { id: "iq_t4", isTruth: true,  country: "iq", fallback: "The Islamic State (ISIS) emerged directly from US-led decisions in post-invasion Iraq — particularly the disbanding of the Iraqi Army and de-Ba'athification.",
      whyFallback: "CPA Orders 1 and 2 (May 2003). ~400,000 trained soldiers dismissed. Senior Sunni officers excluded from new state. Many later joined Al-Qaeda in Iraq and its successor ISIS. The intelligence community had warned against both decisions." },
    { id: "iq_t5", isTruth: true,  country: "iq", fallback: "US forces used white phosphorus munitions in densely populated areas during the 2004 battles of Fallujah.",
      whyFallback: "Initial US denials. Later official confirmation (Pentagon, 2005). Italian RAI documentary \"Fallujah: The Hidden Massacre\". White phosphorus is a chemical weapon when used against personnel; the use of it in civilian-occupied areas was contested across multiple inquiries." },
    { id: "iq_t6", isTruth: true,  country: "iq", fallback: "Iraq's Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) — formally part of the Iraqi state — include multiple militias directly funded and directed by Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).",
      whyFallback: "Kata'ib Hezbollah, Asa'ib Ahl al-Haq, Badr Organization. Operated as Iran's proxy network. Multiple commanders openly aligned with Tehran. The \"Iraqi state forces\" framing technically applies; the operational reality is divided." },
    { id: "iq_t7", isTruth: true,  country: "iq", fallback: "The major post-invasion contracts for Iraqi oilfield development went disproportionately to Western and Chinese majors — not to Iraqi domestic firms — under terms widely criticized as unfavorable to Iraq.",
      whyFallback: "Production-sharing agreements, multiple amendments. ExxonMobil, BP, Shell, CNPC, Lukoil. Iraqi oil-sector unionized critics like Hassan Juma'a have detailed the structure. The \"liberation\" produced ownership patterns resembling pre-1958 colonial-era arrangements." },
    { id: "iq_t8", isTruth: true,  country: "iq", fallback: "CPA Order 39 (2003) allowed full foreign ownership of Iraqi businesses, repatriation of all profits, and 40-year property leases — radical economic restructuring imposed by occupation authority.",
      whyFallback: "Naomi Klein, *The Shock Doctrine* documented the scope. Subsequent Iraqi governments have selectively reversed some provisions. The unilateral imposition of a neoliberal economic order on a country under military occupation was unprecedented in recent memory." },
    { id: "iq_f1", isTruth: false, country: "iq", fallback: "Post-2003 Iraq is a functioning democracy success story.",
      whyFallback: "Multiple sectarian crises, periodic political violence, ISIS occupation of Mosul (2014-2017), continued Iranian-aligned militia operations. Elections held; functioning democracy requires more than elections." },
    { id: "iq_f2", isTruth: false, country: "iq", fallback: "The 2003 US invasion of Iraq was justified by intelligence available at the time.",
      whyFallback: "Multiple inquiries (US, UK) found intelligence was misused or fabricated. Curveball informant later confessed lying. UN inspectors' findings ignored. The \"justified by intelligence\" framing was a post-hoc reconstruction." },
    { id: "iq_f3", isTruth: false, country: "iq", fallback: "Civilian casualties in the Iraq War were modest given the scale.",
      whyFallback: "Iraq Body Count: 200,000+ documented violent civilian deaths. Lancet study estimated 600,000-1M+ total excess deaths. The \"modest\" framing depends on which methodology; even the most conservative count exceeds \"modest\"." },
    { id: "iq_f4", isTruth: false, country: "iq", fallback: "L. Paul Bremer's Coalition Provisional Authority was a competent governance body.",
      whyFallback: "Disbanded Iraqi army. Issued sweeping economic restructuring. Lost track of $9 billion. Failed to prevent looting of museums and arsenals. Created the conditions for ISIS. The competence framing has no defenders outside the CPA itself." },
    { id: "iq_f5", isTruth: false, country: "iq", fallback: "Iraq's problems are entirely the fault of Saddam Hussein's pre-war regime.",
      whyFallback: "Saddam was brutal — that part is true. The post-2003 sectarian violence, Iranian-aligned militias, ISIS rise, and corruption are products of the occupation period. Attributing everything to Saddam serves political purposes." },
    { id: "iq_f6", isTruth: false, country: "iq", fallback: "The $60 billion US Iraq reconstruction was effective and well-tracked.",
      whyFallback: "SIGIR repeatedly found mismanagement, fraud, and disappearance of funds. Power generation, water, education all underdelivered. The \"effective\" framing is contradicted by the inspector general's own audits." },
    { id: "iq_f7", isTruth: false, country: "iq", fallback: "Modern Iraq is fully sovereign and free of foreign interference.",
      whyFallback: "US military presence continues. Iranian-aligned militias operate freely. Turkish military operations in northern Iraq. Multiple competing patron states. Sovereignty exists constitutionally; the operational reality is multi-polar." },

    // ============== Afghanistan — 8 truths + 7 inversions ==============
    { id: "af_t1", isTruth: true,  country: "af", fallback: "The US spent approximately $2.3 trillion on the Afghanistan war over 20 years — with the Special Inspector General concluding that no major reconstruction objective was achieved.",
      whyFallback: "SIGAR final report. Lies, inflated metrics, ghost soldiers, projects that didn't function. The \"we lied about everything\" admission came in successive SIGAR reports. The trillion-dollar figure is comprehensive (including veterans' care, interest on borrowing)." },
    { id: "af_t2", isTruth: true,  country: "af", fallback: "The Afghan National Army was significantly smaller than its official numbers suggested — with \"ghost soldiers\" on payrolls whose pay was collected by commanders.",
      whyFallback: "SIGAR audits. Estimates ranged 25-50% ghost personnel in some units. The army's collapse in 2021 was partly explained by the gap between paper strength and operational strength. Built on a fictional foundation by US training command." },
    { id: "af_t3", isTruth: true,  country: "af", fallback: "After 20 years of US-led counter-narcotics efforts, Afghanistan was producing approximately 80%+ of the world's opium when the Taliban returned in 2021.",
      whyFallback: "UNODC data. Multiple US counter-narcotics programs spent billions. CIA-aligned warlords were major opium players throughout. The drug economy was integrated into the foreign-aided governance structure." },
    { id: "af_t4", isTruth: true,  country: "af", fallback: "The CIA has been documented as facilitating heroin trafficking from the Golden Triangle in the 1960s-70s and from Afghanistan-Pakistan in the 1980s — as part of anti-communist operations.",
      whyFallback: "Alfred McCoy, *The Politics of Heroin*. Subsequent declassified material. Iran-Contra parallels in Latin America. The \"agency knowledge of trafficking\" was admitted in multiple historical cases; the structural pattern is documented." },
    { id: "af_t5", isTruth: true,  country: "af", fallback: "Bagram Airfield housed a US detention facility where torture, including deaths in custody, was documented across multiple investigations.",
      whyFallback: "Senate Intelligence Committee CIA torture report (2014). Multiple ICRC visits documented mistreatment. Two Afghan detainees beaten to death in 2002; subsequent court martials produced partial accountability. The facility operated in a legal grey zone for nearly 20 years." },
    { id: "af_t6", isTruth: true,  country: "af", fallback: "The 2020 Doha Agreement between Trump and the Taliban excluded the Afghan government from negotiations — and committed the US to withdrawal without effective conditions on the Taliban.",
      whyFallback: "Negotiations in Doha, February 2020. Afghan government not a party. Conditions on Taliban behavior were vague and unenforced. The Biden withdrawal in August 2021 followed the framework Trump had signed. Joint blame across both administrations." },
    { id: "af_t7", isTruth: true,  country: "af", fallback: "Afghanistan holds approximately $1 trillion in identified mineral resources — including lithium, copper, and rare earths — which the Taliban now controls and is negotiating with China.",
      whyFallback: "US Geological Survey 2010+ assessments. Chinese investments under Taliban government 2022+. Mes Aynak copper deal. The resource wealth that motivated some foreign engagement is now flowing toward Chinese partners." },
    { id: "af_t8", isTruth: true,  country: "af", fallback: "Afghanistan's borders were drawn by the 1893 Durand Line between British India and Afghanistan — splitting the Pashtun population across what is now the Afghan-Pakistani border.",
      whyFallback: "Mortimer Durand's negotiation. Pakistan inherited the border at 1947 independence; Afghanistan has never formally accepted it. The Pashtun cross-border population provides the operational base for the Taliban movement (whose name means \"students\")." },
    { id: "af_f1", isTruth: false, country: "af", fallback: "The 20-year US mission in Afghanistan accomplished its core objectives.",
      whyFallback: "Bin Laden killed (in Pakistan, not Afghanistan). Al-Qaeda dispersed (not eliminated). Taliban returned to power. Afghan women's rights collapsed. Trillion-dollar cost. The \"accomplished\" framing is rejected by every major audit and post-mortem." },
    { id: "af_f2", isTruth: false, country: "af", fallback: "The post-2021 Taliban return reflects what most Afghans wanted.",
      whyFallback: "The Taliban entered Kabul amid army collapse, mass displacement, and elite flight. Polling under Taliban conditions is meaningless. The \"wanted\" framing serves both Taliban legitimacy and Western withdrawal narratives; the documentary record is more complex." },
    { id: "af_f3", isTruth: false, country: "af", fallback: "US and allied aid to Afghanistan effectively built Afghan institutions.",
      whyFallback: "Institutions built on foreign funding and foreign trainers collapsed within days of foreign departure. The structural fragility was documented for years by SIGAR. The \"institution building\" was largely capacity-renting, not capacity-creation." },
    { id: "af_f4", isTruth: false, country: "af", fallback: "The Karzai and Ghani governments were clean.",
      whyFallback: "Massive corruption documented. Family-linked enterprises. Kabul Bank scandal (2010) revealed $1 billion missing. Ahmad Karzai (presidential brother) on CIA payroll while also involved in drug-related operations. The \"clean\" framing was always wartime PR." },
    { id: "af_f5", isTruth: false, country: "af", fallback: "The current Taliban have moderated from the 1990s version.",
      whyFallback: "Restored ban on female education. Public executions. Suppression of media. Targeting of former government workers. The PR has moderated; the operational reality is largely continuous with the 1996-2001 government." },
    { id: "af_f6", isTruth: false, country: "af", fallback: "The Afghanistan war kept Western countries safe from terrorism.",
      whyFallback: "Terror attacks in Europe and the US continued throughout and after the Afghan war. Many attackers had no Afghan connection. The \"Afghan war prevents Western terrorism\" causal chain was always weak; the policy benefits are difficult to identify." },
    { id: "af_f7", isTruth: false, country: "af", fallback: "Civilian casualties during the Afghan war were minimized.",
      whyFallback: "Brown University Costs of War project: 70,000+ Afghan civilian deaths over 20 years. Wedding bombings, drone-strike civilian incidents. The \"minimized\" framing is from official sources; independent counts diverge substantially upward." },

    // ============== Yemen — 8 truths + 7 inversions ==============
    { id: "ye_t1", isTruth: true,  country: "ye", fallback: "The Saudi-UAE-led coalition's war in Yemen, launched in 2015, has produced one of the worst humanitarian crises of the 21st century — bombed hospitals, school buses, weddings, and funerals.",
      whyFallback: "UN classifications. Documented strikes by HRW, Amnesty. Multiple confirmed strikes hit civilian targets. The targeting protocols used were repeatedly flagged as inadequate to international humanitarian law." },
    { id: "ye_t2", isTruth: true,  country: "ye", fallback: "US, UK, French, and other Western arms sales enabled the Saudi-led campaign — with documented use of those weapons in attacks on civilian targets.",
      whyFallback: "Multiple aid investigations. US PGMs used in Dahyan school-bus strike (40 children killed, 2018). UK Storm Shadow missiles. French Caesar artillery. The arms-export licensing systems repeatedly approved sales the recipients used against civilians." },
    { id: "ye_t3", isTruth: true,  country: "ye", fallback: "The Houthi movement (Ansar Allah) originated as a Zaydi Shi'a revival in northern Yemen — receiving Iranian support that has expanded significantly since the war began.",
      whyFallback: "Hussein al-Houthi's early-2000s religious movement. Six wars with Saleh's government before 2014. Iranian support — initially modest — grew dramatically as the war created strategic opportunity. The \"Iranian proxy from day one\" framing simplifies." },
    { id: "ye_t4", isTruth: true,  country: "ye", fallback: "The Saudi-led coalition imposed a sea and air blockade on Yemen — blocking food, fuel, and medicine, contributing directly to mass starvation.",
      whyFallback: "UN, Oxfam, Save the Children documentation. Hodeidah port restrictions. Aerial denial of commercial flights. The blockade was the operational cause of much of the famine; the \"aiding the people\" narrative coexists with the blockade reality." },
    { id: "ye_t5", isTruth: true,  country: "ye", fallback: "Former president Ali Abdullah Saleh — who had ruled Yemen for 33 years — was killed by his Houthi allies in 2017 after switching sides.",
      whyFallback: "Saleh had aligned with Houthis 2015; turned to Saudi side late 2017. Houthi forces killed him near Sanaa. The shifting alliances of Yemeni politics make \"sides\" a partial framework; the personalist nature of the conflict has been continuous." },
    { id: "ye_t6", isTruth: true,  country: "ye", fallback: "Saleh's pre-2011 government received hundreds of millions of dollars in US security cooperation — even as documented corruption and human-rights abuses continued.",
      whyFallback: "Counter-terror cooperation post-2001 expanded. Joint Yemen-US operations against AQAP. Multiple US drone strikes in Yemen pre-2011. The \"partner\" status was bought, not earned by governance metrics." },
    { id: "ye_t7", isTruth: true,  country: "ye", fallback: "The Yemen war is partly a regional proxy conflict between Saudi Arabia (Sunni) and Iran (Shi'a) — using Yemeni sectarian divisions as the operational frame.",
      whyFallback: "Multiple analytical sources. The pre-war Yemeni Zaydi-Shafi'i identity was less sharply sectarian. The conflict has accelerated sectarianization. The regional powers' framing has reshaped local identities." },
    { id: "ye_t8", isTruth: true,  country: "ye", fallback: "Yemen's coastline borders the Bab el-Mandeb strait — one of the world's most critical maritime chokepoints — and Houthi attacks on Red Sea shipping (2023+) demonstrated the strategic geography.",
      whyFallback: "Suez Canal access through Bab el-Mandeb. Multiple think tanks have analyzed the strategic dimension. The Houthi naval campaign added a new layer to a war already shaped by maritime geography. The Yemeni position is structural." },
    { id: "ye_f1", isTruth: false, country: "ye", fallback: "The Saudi-led intervention in Yemen was a humanitarian operation.",
      whyFallback: "The intervention has produced the worst humanitarian crisis of the 21st century. Hospitals, schools, weddings hit. Famine documented. The \"humanitarian\" framing was the diplomatic cover; the operational record contradicts it." },
    { id: "ye_f2", isTruth: false, country: "ye", fallback: "The Houthis are purely an Iranian proxy with no domestic legitimacy.",
      whyFallback: "Houthis have significant indigenous Zaydi base. The Iranian relationship deepened over the war but didn't create the movement. \"Pure Iranian proxy\" is convenient framing for the Saudi-led coalition; the local political dimensions are more complex." },
    { id: "ye_f3", isTruth: false, country: "ye", fallback: "Western governments have effectively restricted arms sales to the Saudi-led coalition.",
      whyFallback: "Multiple court cases (UK High Court 2019) found UK government failed to assess civilian harm. US sales continued through Trump and Biden. The \"restrictions\" have been partial, periodic, and reversible. Documented sales have far exceeded any restrictions." },
    { id: "ye_f4", isTruth: false, country: "ye", fallback: "Yemen will recover quickly once the war ends.",
      whyFallback: "Cholera epidemic. Infrastructure destruction. Generation of children with stunted growth. The recovery time from major modern conflicts (Lebanon, Iraq, Syria) is measured in decades. \"Quickly\" is the political talking point; reality is generational." },
    { id: "ye_f5", isTruth: false, country: "ye", fallback: "Houthi Red Sea attacks (2023+) on shipping are purely defensive responses to the Israel-Gaza war.",
      whyFallback: "The Houthis frame attacks as Gaza-related. The targeting is broader than Israel-linked vessels. The pre-2023 pattern of asymmetric warfare predates the current Gaza phase. \"Purely defensive\" is the political frame; the operational pattern is regional power projection." },
    { id: "ye_f6", isTruth: false, country: "ye", fallback: "Saleh's 2012 transition to Hadi was a clean, GCC-managed handoff.",
      whyFallback: "Hadi was the sole candidate in the \"transitional election\". Saleh retained significant influence. The 2014 Houthi takeover happened against this fragile transitional structure. \"Clean handoff\" is GCC PR; the political continuity was extensive." },
    { id: "ye_f7", isTruth: false, country: "ye", fallback: "The Yemen war is nearly over.",
      whyFallback: "Various ceasefire announcements. Underlying issues unresolved. Houthi political project expanding. Saudi exit attempts. The war has had multiple \"ending soon\" moments; structural causes remain." },

    // ============== Libya — 8 truths + 7 inversions ==============
    { id: "ly_t1", isTruth: true,  country: "ly", fallback: "The 2011 NATO intervention in Libya, justified as preventing civilian deaths in Benghazi, expanded into regime change and ended with Gaddafi's killing — and the country has been in chaos since.",
      whyFallback: "UN Security Council Resolution 1973 authorized civilian protection. Mission scope expanded to support rebel forces. Gaddafi sodomized with bayonet then killed in October 2011. Hillary Clinton's \"we came, we saw, he died\" captured the political moment." },
    { id: "ly_t2", isTruth: true,  country: "ly", fallback: "Post-Gaddafi Libya hosts documented open-air slave markets where sub-Saharan African migrants are sold.",
      whyFallback: "CNN reporting November 2017. UN confirmation. Multiple subsequent investigations. The collapse of central authority created conditions for organized human trafficking. African Union response was furious but ineffectual." },
    { id: "ly_t3", isTruth: true,  country: "ly", fallback: "Libya has had two competing governments since 2014 — the GNA/GNU in Tripoli and the HoR/LNA based in Tobruk/eastern Libya — each backed by different foreign powers.",
      whyFallback: "Tripoli backed by Turkey, Qatar, UN-recognized. Eastern government backed by Egypt, UAE, Russia. Various ceasefires, none lasting. The political settlement remains elusive over a decade after Gaddafi's fall." },
    { id: "ly_t4", isTruth: true,  country: "ly", fallback: "Wagner Group / Africa Corps has operated in Libya since at least 2019, supporting General Khalifa Haftar's forces.",
      whyFallback: "Multiple intelligence assessments. Wagner ground operations. Recent reports of Russian airbases in eastern Libya. The Russian footprint represents return of great-power competition to North Africa via mercenary forces." },
    { id: "ly_t5", isTruth: true,  country: "ly", fallback: "Libya has Africa's largest proven oil reserves — and the chaos since 2011 has been characterized by competing claims to oil revenues.",
      whyFallback: "Libya's pre-war production ~1.6M b/d. Post-war volatility. Both governments claim oil revenue. Foreign-aligned militia control of facilities. The resource wealth is the structural prize; the political fragmentation is partly produced by competing access to it." },
    { id: "ly_t6", isTruth: true,  country: "ly", fallback: "Libya was held responsible for the 1988 Lockerbie bombing (270 dead) — though the conviction of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi has been increasingly contested.",
      whyFallback: "Megrahi convicted 2001. Released 2009 on compassionate grounds. Subsequent reviews (Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission) raised significant doubts. Some Lockerbie families argue Iran/Syria were more likely perpetrators. The official narrative remains the conviction; the underlying question is contested." },
    { id: "ly_t7", isTruth: true,  country: "ly", fallback: "Gaddafi's regime, while authoritarian, ran significant social programs — universal healthcare, free higher education, oil-funded subsidies — that collapsed after the 2011 intervention.",
      whyFallback: "Pre-2011 Libya had the highest Human Development Index in Africa. Post-2011 metrics collapsed across multiple dimensions. The \"authoritarian but socially functional\" phase was real; the intervention's price was paid in this collapse." },
    { id: "ly_t8", isTruth: true,  country: "ly", fallback: "Post-Gaddafi Libya has become the primary departure point for migrants attempting to cross to Europe — with tens of thousands of deaths in the Mediterranean since 2011.",
      whyFallback: "IOM Missing Migrants Project. Libyan coast-guard cooperation with Italian authorities funds detention centers where abuses are documented. EU paid for Libyan capacity that includes systematic mistreatment. The \"externalization of borders\" is recent European policy with deadly consequences." },
    { id: "ly_f1", isTruth: false, country: "ly", fallback: "The 2011 NATO intervention in Libya was a humanitarian success.",
      whyFallback: "Chaos since 2011. Slave markets. Two competing governments. Russian and other foreign militia presence. Migrant deaths. The \"success\" framing was retired in some quarters within a year of the intervention; it persists in others." },
    { id: "ly_f2", isTruth: false, country: "ly", fallback: "Gaddafi was unambiguously a monster with no defenders.",
      whyFallback: "Authoritarian, brutal in some cases. Also leader of multi-decade national development. Multiple African leaders (Mandela, Sankara before him) had complex relationships with him. The \"pure monster\" framing collapses for sub-Saharan African political memory." },
    { id: "ly_f3", isTruth: false, country: "ly", fallback: "Post-Gaddafi Libya is genuinely independent.",
      whyFallback: "Turkish troops, Russian mercenaries, Egyptian-backed militias, UAE-funded operations, French and Italian competing interests. Independence is the constitutional position; the operational reality is fragmentation under competing foreign patrons." },
    { id: "ly_f4", isTruth: false, country: "ly", fallback: "The 2011 intervention was not about Libyan oil.",
      whyFallback: "Hillary Clinton's emails (declassified) included direct discussion of energy-resource strategic concerns. French defense minister Bernard-Henri Lévy's involvement included oil interests. The \"no oil\" framing is the diplomatic position; the documentary record disagrees." },
    { id: "ly_f5", isTruth: false, country: "ly", fallback: "Libya is on a clear path to stabilization.",
      whyFallback: "Multiple failed UN processes. Multiple postponed elections. Two competing governments. Increased foreign mercenary involvement. Each \"stabilization\" moment has produced new fragmentation." },
    { id: "ly_f6", isTruth: false, country: "ly", fallback: "EU policy on Libyan migration is humane and rights-based.",
      whyFallback: "EU funding of Libyan coast guard with documented abuses. Externalization of detention to facilities where rape, torture, slavery have been documented. The \"humane\" framing is the talking point; the operational reality is what survivors describe." },
    { id: "ly_f7", isTruth: false, country: "ly", fallback: "Pre-2011 international engagement with Gaddafi was unjustified normalization of a monster.",
      whyFallback: "Western leaders met with Gaddafi from 2003-2011. UK university degree to Saif al-Islam. Italian colonial-era apologies and reconciliation. The normalization was deliberate Western policy; the rebranding as \"unjustified\" came after the intervention." },

    // ============== Lebanon — 8 truths + 7 inversions ==============
    { id: "lb_t1", isTruth: true,  country: "lb", fallback: "On August 4, 2020, approximately 2,750 tons of ammonium nitrate ignited in the port of Beirut — killing 200+, injuring 7,000, and displacing 300,000.",
      whyFallback: "Stored for ~7 years despite repeated warnings. Multiple officials had been notified. No senior official has been criminally prosecuted as of 2024. The political class blocked the investigation. Among the worst non-nuclear explosions in modern history." },
    { id: "lb_t2", isTruth: true,  country: "lb", fallback: "Riad Salameh, Lebanon's central bank governor for 30 years (1993-2023), is under indictment in multiple European jurisdictions for embezzlement and money laundering of approximately $300 million.",
      whyFallback: "Switzerland, France, Germany, Luxembourg investigations. Lebanon's currency collapsed under his watch. The \"Lebanese miracle\" he architected was effectively a Ponzi scheme. Domestic accountability has been slow." },
    { id: "lb_t3", isTruth: true,  country: "lb", fallback: "Lebanon's banking system collapsed in 2019-2020 — depositors locked out of their savings, currency lost 95%+ of value, and most of the country fell into poverty.",
      whyFallback: "Multiple analyses (IMF, ECB, World Bank). The crisis was a result of Ponzi-style central bank operations under Salameh, fiscal mismanagement, and political class capture. ~80% of Lebanese now live below the poverty line." },
    { id: "lb_t4", isTruth: true,  country: "lb", fallback: "Hezbollah operates a state-within-the-state — running its own military, telecommunications, social services, and intelligence operations, often more functional than the formal Lebanese government.",
      whyFallback: "Documented military strength rivaling the Lebanese Armed Forces. Telecommunications infrastructure (Al-Manar TV, separate fiber-optic network). Health and education social services. The \"state\" frame is partly metaphorical, partly operational; the dual sovereignty is real." },
    { id: "lb_t5", isTruth: true,  country: "lb", fallback: "Lebanon's 1975-1990 civil war was never followed by full accountability — most warlords transitioned directly into political leadership.",
      whyFallback: "Amal, Phalange, Lebanese Forces, Druze leadership — all continued as political parties. General amnesty law (1991) blocked prosecution. The current political class includes the warlords' children and political heirs. The unresolved past structures the present." },
    { id: "lb_t6", isTruth: true,  country: "lb", fallback: "Former PM Rafic Hariri was assassinated by truck bomb in 2005 — and the UN Special Tribunal convicted Hezbollah members of the operation.",
      whyFallback: "STL tribunal verdict 2020. Salim Ayyash convicted in absentia. Hezbollah denied involvement. The assassination triggered the \"Cedar Revolution\" and Syrian troop withdrawal. The tribunal's verdict was not enforced inside Lebanon." },
    { id: "lb_t7", isTruth: true,  country: "lb", fallback: "Syria militarily occupied parts of Lebanon from 1976 to 2005 — only withdrawing after the Hariri assassination triggered mass protests.",
      whyFallback: "Various phases of Syrian involvement — invited during the civil war, expanded into occupation. Cedar Revolution. Withdrawal April 2005. Lebanese political alignment continues to track Syrian (and Iranian) influence in ways that the formal withdrawal didn't end." },
    { id: "lb_t8", isTruth: true,  country: "lb", fallback: "Israel has invaded Lebanon multiple times since 1978 — including the 1982 war that left southern Lebanon under Israeli occupation for 22 years.",
      whyFallback: "Operation Litani (1978). 1982 invasion → Sabra and Shatila massacre. Occupation of South Lebanon until 2000. 2006 Lebanon War. October 2023+ escalation. The pattern of intervention is consistent across decades and Israeli governments." },
    { id: "lb_f1", isTruth: false, country: "lb", fallback: "Lebanon is a functioning multi-confessional democracy.",
      whyFallback: "Constitutional democracy operates above operational chaos. Warlord-derived political class. Hezbollah parallel state. Banking system collapse. Multi-year presidential vacancies. The constitutional design is sophisticated; the operational reality is fragile." },
    { id: "lb_f2", isTruth: false, country: "lb", fallback: "Lebanon's banking system was sound until external pressures destroyed it.",
      whyFallback: "Ponzi-style central bank operations under Salameh. Massive lira-denominated debt funded by foreign-currency deposits. The crisis was structural and predicted. External pressures aggravated; they didn't cause." },
    { id: "lb_f3", isTruth: false, country: "lb", fallback: "The 2020 Beirut port explosion was an unfortunate accident.",
      whyFallback: "Multiple officials had been notified about the ammonium nitrate. Multiple warnings ignored. The political class repeatedly blocked the investigation. \"Accident\" minimizes the institutional negligence that made it possible." },
    { id: "lb_f4", isTruth: false, country: "lb", fallback: "Hezbollah is just a normal Lebanese political party.",
      whyFallback: "Operates own military, separate from Lebanese state. Receives Iranian funding and direction. Conducts military operations across borders. The \"normal political party\" framing is one frame; the operational structure is distinct from all other Lebanese parties." },
    { id: "lb_f5", isTruth: false, country: "lb", fallback: "The 2005 Cedar Revolution successfully restored Lebanese sovereignty.",
      whyFallback: "Syrian troops withdrew. Operational Syrian and Iranian influence continued through Hezbollah and political alignments. The \"restored sovereignty\" framing was one moment of optimism; the underlying patron-client dynamics remained." },
    { id: "lb_f6", isTruth: false, country: "lb", fallback: "The Lebanese diaspora will rebuild Lebanon.",
      whyFallback: "Diaspora remittances are significant but cannot substitute for governance. Multiple generations of diaspora have failed to remake Lebanese political structures. The \"diaspora rescue\" framing absolves the Lebanese political class of responsibility." },
    { id: "lb_f7", isTruth: false, country: "lb", fallback: "Lebanon is gradually stabilizing after recent crises.",
      whyFallback: "Currency depreciation continues. Political vacuum continues. Israeli-Hezbollah conflict (2024) added new dimension. \"Stabilizing\" is the talking point; the trend lines remain negative." },

    // ============== Turkey — 8 truths + 7 inversions ==============
    { id: "tr_t1", isTruth: true,  country: "tr", fallback: "After the 2016 attempted coup, Turkey purged approximately 150,000 people from government, military, judiciary, education, and media — including roughly 75,000 arrests.",
      whyFallback: "Erdoğan blamed the Gülen movement. The scope vastly exceeded any reasonable definition of coup participants. The purge produced political consolidation under Erdoğan. The \"cleanup\" framing was used to dismiss systematic political repression." },
    { id: "tr_t2", isTruth: true,  country: "tr", fallback: "Turkey routinely ranks among the world's top jailers of journalists.",
      whyFallback: "Reporters Without Borders, CPJ tracking. The 2016+ wave produced mass arrests in journalism. Cumhuriyet trials. Multiple foreign-correspondent visa denials. The pattern persists across multiple election cycles." },
    { id: "tr_t3", isTruth: true,  country: "tr", fallback: "The Turkish lira lost approximately 90% of its value against the dollar between 2018 and 2023 — driven partly by Erdoğan's unorthodox monetary policy of cutting rates during inflation.",
      whyFallback: "Erdoğan replaced central bank governors multiple times for refusing to cut rates. Standard economic theory inverted. Currency collapse imposed mass poverty. The policy reflected Erdoğan's religious/political views on interest rates as much as monetary judgment." },
    { id: "tr_t4", isTruth: true,  country: "tr", fallback: "Turkey has waged decades of military operations against Kurdish communities — including the 1990s burning of villages and the post-2015 destruction of urban Kurdish neighborhoods (Sur, Cizre).",
      whyFallback: "Multiple human-rights reports. ECHR rulings against Turkey. 1990s scorched-earth campaigns documented. Post-2015 urban operations leveled neighborhoods in the Diyarbakır region. The \"PKK terrorism\" framing has produced collective punishment of Kurdish civilians." },
    { id: "tr_t5", isTruth: true,  country: "tr", fallback: "The Gülen movement, once a key Erdoğan ally that helped purge the secular military and judiciary, was suddenly designated a terror organization in 2016 after a falling-out with Erdoğan.",
      whyFallback: "Pre-2013 Gülen alliance crucial to Erdoğan's consolidation. December 2013 corruption investigations triggered the rupture. Erdoğan blamed Gülen for the 2016 coup attempt. The two were partners in dismantling Kemalist institutions before becoming enemies." },
    { id: "tr_t6", isTruth: true,  country: "tr", fallback: "Erdoğan and his family have been documented to control significant business interests — and his son Bilal's name has appeared in multiple corruption investigations.",
      whyFallback: "December 2013 corruption recordings (later contested as authentic by Erdoğan, who attributed them to Gülen). Bilal Erdoğan's offshore companies in Panama Papers. The pattern of family-linked enrichment is documented." },
    { id: "tr_t7", isTruth: true,  country: "tr", fallback: "Erdoğan converted Hagia Sophia from a museum back to a mosque in 2020 — reversing Atatürk's 1934 secularization.",
      whyFallback: "Decree signed July 2020. Symbolic of broader Erdoğan reversal of Kemalist secularism. International criticism (Russia, UNESCO, Greek Orthodox Church). The architectural conversion is reversible; the symbolic statement was clear." },
    { id: "tr_t8", isTruth: true,  country: "tr", fallback: "Turkey has militarily occupied northern Cyprus since the 1974 invasion — and the unrecognized \"Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus\" continues to be recognized only by Turkey itself.",
      whyFallback: "Operation Attila. Settlement of mainland Turks. Property restitution failures. EU accession of Cyprus (2004) without resolution. The frozen conflict remains operationally and legally unresolved 50 years later." },
    { id: "tr_f1", isTruth: false, country: "tr", fallback: "Turkey is a functioning democracy.",
      whyFallback: "Erdoğan's consolidation of executive power. Purges. Press-freedom collapses. Judicial independence eroded. Constitutional referendum (2017) gave the president sweeping powers. Elections remain competitive in some respects but operate inside a narrowed political space." },
    { id: "tr_f2", isTruth: false, country: "tr", fallback: "Erdoğan represents authentic Turkish religious values against secular elite.",
      whyFallback: "His family-linked business empire, foreign offshore holdings, lifestyle. The \"man of the people\" framing is real political identity but coexists with structural elite status. The framing has worked politically; it's not a complete description." },
    { id: "tr_f3", isTruth: false, country: "tr", fallback: "The Gülen movement was always a hostile parallel state.",
      whyFallback: "Pre-2013 Erdoğan-Gülen alliance was operational and explicit. Gülen schools, business networks, Hizmet movement were promoted by Erdoğan's government. The \"always hostile\" reframe was politically necessary post-2013; it doesn't match the documentary record." },
    { id: "tr_f4", isTruth: false, country: "tr", fallback: "Erdoğan has delivered economic strength.",
      whyFallback: "First decade (2002-2012) of Erdoğan rule did produce real growth. The post-2018 period produced currency collapse, inflation, mass impoverishment. The \"economic strength\" framing requires selective windowing." },
    { id: "tr_f5", isTruth: false, country: "tr", fallback: "Turkey has maintained genuine neutrality between Russia and Ukraine.",
      whyFallback: "NATO member. Sold Bayraktar drones to Ukraine. Also maintained gas and trade with Russia. Hosts Russian tourists. Mediated grain deal. The neutrality is genuine in some respects, opportunistic in others. The pattern is multi-aligned, not neutral." },
    { id: "tr_f6", isTruth: false, country: "tr", fallback: "Kurdish citizens enjoy full equality in modern Turkey.",
      whyFallback: "Decades of military operations in the Kurdish southeast. HDP party prosecutions. Pro-Kurdish elected mayors removed and replaced with state trustees. Kurdish-language education restrictions. The constitutional equality is one frame; the operational reality is different." },
    { id: "tr_f7", isTruth: false, country: "tr", fallback: "Turkey has fully reckoned with Armenian historical questions.",
      whyFallback: "Turkish state position remains that the 1915 events were not genocide. Multiple international parliaments have recognized the genocide; Turkey has maintained denial. Domestic Turkish historians who diverge have faced prosecution. Reckoning has not happened." },

    // ============== Egypt — 8 truths + 7 inversions ==============
    { id: "eg_t1", isTruth: true,  country: "eg", fallback: "General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi led a military coup in 2013 that removed democratically elected Mohamed Morsi — followed by the Rabaa massacre in which security forces killed approximately 800 protesters.",
      whyFallback: "Human Rights Watch documented the Rabaa massacre. International condemnation muted. Morsi died in custody 2019 after years of detention. Sisi consolidated power; the transition from 2011 Tahrir Square hopes to military-state was complete by 2014." },
    { id: "eg_t2", isTruth: true,  country: "eg", fallback: "The US provides approximately $1.5 billion per year in aid to Egypt — most of it military — making Egypt one of the largest recipients of US military assistance.",
      whyFallback: "Camp David framework. The aid continued through democratic-coup-military transitions. The \"aid to Egypt\" is mostly a transfer to US defense contractors via military equipment sales. The political leverage is real and rarely exercised." },
    { id: "eg_t3", isTruth: true,  country: "eg", fallback: "Hosni Mubarak's family was found to have hidden billions in assets across Europe — though most was never recovered by the post-revolution Egyptian state.",
      whyFallback: "Mubarak family wealth estimated $40-70 billion at peak. Swiss and UK courts unfroze most assets over time. The 2011 revolution's accountability promises were largely unrealized; Mubarak died in 2020 without serving meaningful time." },
    { id: "eg_t4", isTruth: true,  country: "eg", fallback: "Egypt has carried out mass executions of political opponents under Sisi — with hundreds sentenced to death in single trials.",
      whyFallback: "529 sentenced to death in single trial (March 2014). Multiple subsequent mass-death-penalty cases. Most subsequently reduced; some carried out. The judicial process is widely characterized as not meeting minimal due-process standards." },
    { id: "eg_t5", isTruth: true,  country: "eg", fallback: "Multiple Egyptian dissidents abroad have been killed or attacked in operations attributed to Egyptian intelligence — including Giulio Regeni, the Italian PhD student tortured to death in Cairo in 2016.",
      whyFallback: "Regeni case unsolved despite Italian prosecution of Egyptian security officers. Multiple other disappearances and deaths of dissidents abroad. The pattern of extraterritorial enforcement is documented though never officially acknowledged." },
    { id: "eg_t6", isTruth: true,  country: "eg", fallback: "Egypt has been waging a counter-insurgency in Sinai since 2014 — with documented civilian casualties, restrictions on press access, and a complete information blackout.",
      whyFallback: "ISIS-Sinai Province. Multiple human-rights reports of village destruction, displacement. Sinai effectively closed to independent journalism. The official narrative is counter-terror; the operational reality includes documented harm to non-combatants." },
    { id: "eg_t7", isTruth: true,  country: "eg", fallback: "Egypt's economic situation has deteriorated dramatically under Sisi — with currency devaluation, IMF dependency, and mass infrastructure projects that have not produced promised returns.",
      whyFallback: "Multiple devaluations 2016-2024. New Administrative Capital project costs ballooning. IMF loans with austerity terms. The \"security and development\" framing of Sisi's regime has not produced the economic outcomes promised; the security side has." },
    { id: "eg_t8", isTruth: true,  country: "eg", fallback: "The Muslim Brotherhood, one of Egypt's largest social-political organizations, was banned as a terror organization in 2013 and tens of thousands of members imprisoned or exiled.",
      whyFallback: "Brotherhood was a legal political party until 2013. Mass arrests, asset seizures, exile. The political space that had briefly opened in 2011-2013 was closed comprehensively. The \"terror organization\" designation served political purposes regardless of substance." },
    { id: "eg_f1", isTruth: false, country: "eg", fallback: "Egypt under Sisi is a functioning democracy.",
      whyFallback: "No competitive elections at the executive level since 2013. Press freedom collapsed. Opposition parties banned or constrained. The constitutional structure exists; the operational democracy was eliminated." },
    { id: "eg_f2", isTruth: false, country: "eg", fallback: "Egyptian stability under Sisi is worth the political costs.",
      whyFallback: "Mass executions. Disappearances. Sinai conflict. Economic deterioration. The \"stability\" is internal repression that has not produced economic or security outcomes. Whether worth it is a normative question; the costs are clear." },
    { id: "eg_f3", isTruth: false, country: "eg", fallback: "The 2011 Tahrir Square revolution successfully democratized Egypt.",
      whyFallback: "Mubarak fell. Brotherhood briefly governed. Sisi coup. Current authoritarian consolidation harsher than the Mubarak era. The \"success\" framing requires specific framing of what counted; structurally, the revolution did not produce its stated aims." },
    { id: "eg_f4", isTruth: false, country: "eg", fallback: "US aid to Egypt provides meaningful political leverage.",
      whyFallback: "The aid has continued through coups, mass killings, and human-rights crises with no operational consequences. The \"leverage\" framing is bureaucratic; the actual relationship is largely transactional with little conditioning on Egyptian behavior." },
    { id: "eg_f5", isTruth: false, country: "eg", fallback: "The Morsi government's failure justified the 2013 coup.",
      whyFallback: "Morsi's government had real problems. Coup is rarely a constitutional response. The framing of \"failure justifies coup\" generalizes badly — most governments have problems; coups produce worse outcomes. The Egyptian case is no exception." },
    { id: "eg_f6", isTruth: false, country: "eg", fallback: "Sinai operations are purely counter-terror.",
      whyFallback: "Documented civilian harm. Press blackout. Multiple deportations. The \"pure counter-terror\" framing is military rhetoric; the operational pattern is broader and harsher than that framing implies." },
    { id: "eg_f7", isTruth: false, country: "eg", fallback: "Egyptian media is editorially free.",
      whyFallback: "Pro-government dominance documented. Journalist arrests routine. International press visa restrictions. The press-freedom rankings place Egypt near the bottom globally." },

    // ============== South Korea — 8 truths + 7 inversions ==============
    { id: "kr_t1", isTruth: true,  country: "kr", fallback: "Park Geun-hye, South Korea's first woman president, was impeached and imprisoned in 2017 for corruption involving her confidante Choi Soon-sil — who effectively co-ruled the country through her access.",
      whyFallback: "Mass protests (candlelight revolution). National Assembly impeachment. Constitutional Court upheld. Park served four years before pardon. Choi convicted separately. The chaebol-presidential corruption network was exposed across multiple companies." },
    { id: "kr_t2", isTruth: true,  country: "kr", fallback: "The Samsung Lee family — controlling South Korea's largest chaebol — has multiple senior figures convicted of bribery, tax evasion, and embezzlement — and the Korean state has repeatedly pardoned them.",
      whyFallback: "Lee Kun-hee: convicted of breach of trust 1996, pardoned. Convicted of tax evasion 2008, pardoned 2009. Son Jay Y. Lee: convicted of bribery 2017, paroled, pardoned 2022. The pattern of conviction-and-pardon is structural." },
    { id: "kr_t3", isTruth: true,  country: "kr", fallback: "The 2014 sinking of the MV Sewol ferry killed 304 people — mostly high-school students — and revealed systematic regulatory corruption, captain negligence, and government cover-up that fueled the eventual impeachment of Park.",
      whyFallback: "Captain Lee Jun-seok abandoned ship before passengers. Coast Guard delayed action. Ferry was illegally overloaded due to regulatory bribery. Park's 7-hour disappearance during the disaster became symbolic. The disaster transformed Korean politics." },
    { id: "kr_t4", isTruth: true,  country: "kr", fallback: "South Korea's economy is dominated by ~10 chaebols (family conglomerates) — Samsung, Hyundai, LG, SK, and others — that together account for roughly 60-70% of the country's GDP.",
      whyFallback: "Park Chung-hee era (1960s-70s) industrial policy created the structure. Subsequent reform attempts have repeatedly stalled. The \"tunneling\" problem (transferring resources within chaebols away from minority shareholders) is documented. Concentration parallels Italian or Russian patterns." },
    { id: "kr_t5", isTruth: true,  country: "kr", fallback: "In December 2024, President Yoon Suk Yeol briefly declared martial law — which was then revoked by the National Assembly within hours — leading to his impeachment.",
      whyFallback: "Yoon claimed martial law was needed against \"anti-state forces\" (opposition party). National Assembly overrode within six hours. Yoon impeached December 2024. The episode revealed how recently authoritarian impulses can return in established democracies." },
    { id: "kr_t6", isTruth: true,  country: "kr", fallback: "The wartime Japanese \"comfort women\" system enslaved tens of thousands of Korean women in military brothels during 1932-1945 — and the diplomatic settlement attempts have repeatedly broken down.",
      whyFallback: "Up to 200,000 women across Asia. Japanese state coordination documented. 1965 Korea-Japan normalization treaty did not address. 2015 \"final and irreversible\" agreement repudiated by next Korean government. The unresolved historical question continues to shape Korea-Japan relations." },
    { id: "kr_t7", isTruth: true,  country: "kr", fallback: "South Korea's National Intelligence Service (formerly KCIA, NIS) has a documented history of interference in domestic politics — including campaign-period social media operations in 2012.",
      whyFallback: "KCIA created 1961 under Park Chung-hee. Multiple presidents (including Roh, Lee Myung-bak, Park) have faced cases related to NIS political activities. The pattern of intelligence services interfering in democratic politics is structural, not incidental." },
    { id: "kr_t8", isTruth: true,  country: "kr", fallback: "In May 1980, South Korean military forces killed hundreds (some estimates 1,000+) of pro-democracy demonstrators in Gwangju — under President Chun Doo-hwan's military government.",
      whyFallback: "Chun Doo-hwan tried for sedition decades later. Pardoned. The \"official\" death toll (200) is widely viewed as undercount. The democratization Korea now enjoys was paid for partly by Gwangju victims; their full accounting is ongoing." },
    { id: "kr_f1", isTruth: false, country: "kr", fallback: "South Korea is a clean meritocracy where success is determined by talent.",
      whyFallback: "Chaebol family succession is dynastic. Elite university admissions correlate heavily with family wealth and connections. Multiple ministers and presidents from extended elite networks. The meritocratic frame is real for some sectors and not for others." },
    { id: "kr_f2", isTruth: false, country: "kr", fallback: "The chaebols have been reformed and operate as normal corporations.",
      whyFallback: "Cross-shareholding structures still complex. Family succession continues. Multiple presidential pardons of chaebol leaders. The structural reform program of the 1997-98 crisis was partial. \"Reformed\" is the rhetorical position; the operational structure is largely intact." },
    { id: "kr_f3", isTruth: false, country: "kr", fallback: "Japan has fully apologized for wartime conduct, and Korean grievances are political theater.",
      whyFallback: "Multiple Japanese apologies; multiple Japanese conservative retractions and minimizations. Yasukuni visits continue. Textbook coverage contested. The \"fully apologized\" framing reflects Japanese government view at moments; the substantive reckoning remains contested." },
    { id: "kr_f4", isTruth: false, country: "kr", fallback: "South Korean media is fully editorially free.",
      whyFallback: "Major outlets aligned with conservative chaebol-linked ownership (Chosun, Joongang, Dong-A). Public broadcasters (KBS, MBC) face cyclical political pressure. Reporters Without Borders ranks Korea well but with concerns. Free is more accurate than fully free." },
    { id: "kr_f5", isTruth: false, country: "kr", fallback: "Park Chung-hee's development model was unambiguously good for Korea.",
      whyFallback: "Industrial growth real. Also: torture of dissidents, suppression of labor, KCIA's pervasive role, suspension of constitution. The development is part of his record; the authoritarianism is another part. Both were operational." },
    { id: "kr_f6", isTruth: false, country: "kr", fallback: "Western fears about North Korea are exaggerated and naïve.",
      whyFallback: "ROK lives next door to NK. ROK military and intelligence assessments aligned with Western. The \"Western naïveté\" framing is one view; the operational reality is regional countries take the threat seriously based on direct evidence." },
    { id: "kr_f7", isTruth: false, country: "kr", fallback: "K-pop and Korean entertainment are clean industries free of structural abuse.",
      whyFallback: "Multiple documented patterns of trainee abuse, exploitative contracts, mental-health crisis among performers. Industry-acknowledged but partly addressed. The \"clean\" framing is for export markets; the local industry knowledge is more critical." },

    // ============== Philippines — 8 truths + 7 inversions ==============
    { id: "ph_t1", isTruth: true,  country: "ph", fallback: "Ferdinand \"Bongbong\" Marcos Jr., son of dictator Ferdinand Marcos Sr., was elected president in 2022 — 36 years after his family was driven from power by the People Power Revolution.",
      whyFallback: "Marcos Sr.'s 1986 ouster followed years of dictatorship, $5-10B+ stolen, declarations of martial law. Bongbong's victory followed years of social media campaigns rewriting that history. The family's restoration to the presidency without full accountability is unprecedented." },
    { id: "ph_t2", isTruth: true,  country: "ph", fallback: "Rodrigo Duterte's drug war (2016-2022) killed an estimated 30,000+ Filipinos — many in extrajudicial executions — and is now under International Criminal Court investigation.",
      whyFallback: "Official PNP toll (~6,000) vs. independent estimates 25,000-30,000+. ICC opened formal investigation 2023. Duterte's public statements explicitly authorized killings. The drug-war architecture made the killings a state policy, not aberration." },
    { id: "ph_t3", isTruth: true,  country: "ph", fallback: "Nobel Prize-winning journalist Maria Ressa has been prosecuted multiple times under Duterte and Marcos Jr. administrations — for tax cases, cyberlibel, and other charges critics describe as politically motivated.",
      whyFallback: "Rappler harassed continuously. Cyber libel conviction (2020) using law applied retroactively. Multiple cases proceed in parallel. Ressa awarded Nobel Peace Prize 2021 for press freedom. The prosecutions continue regardless of international attention." },
    { id: "ph_t4", isTruth: true,  country: "ph", fallback: "Ferdinand Marcos Sr.'s family is estimated to have looted $5-10 billion from the Philippines during the 1965-1986 dictatorship — most of which has never been recovered.",
      whyFallback: "PCGG (Presidential Commission on Good Government) recovered ~$3.6B; estimates of remaining hidden wealth ~$5B+. Imelda Marcos's shoe collection became iconic. Swiss courts ordered some asset returns. The recovery process spanned decades and is incomplete." },
    { id: "ph_t5", isTruth: true,  country: "ph", fallback: "President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo was caught on phone tape (\"Hello Garci\") apparently rigging the 2004 election — and was later charged with electoral fraud and plunder.",
      whyFallback: "Tapes of conversations with COMELEC commissioner Virgilio Garcillano. Confirmed authenticity. Plunder case eventually dismissed for technical reasons. The pattern of post-Marcos presidents facing corruption cases is structural to Filipino politics." },
    { id: "ph_t6", isTruth: true,  country: "ph", fallback: "The Catholic Church remains a major political force in the Philippines — with documented engagement in legislation including the long-delayed reproductive health law.",
      whyFallback: "~80% Catholic. Multiple political conflicts: divorce (still not legal), reproductive health, EDSA-era political activity. Church capacity to mobilize street protests against presidents. The Church-state separation exists constitutionally; the political influence is structural." },
    { id: "ph_t7", isTruth: true,  country: "ph", fallback: "Marcos Jr.'s administration has pardoned and rehabilitated multiple figures from his father's era — and Imelda Marcos herself has never served a day in prison.",
      whyFallback: "Imelda Marcos convicted 2018 for graft (7 counts); released on bail pending appeal; never imprisoned. Continued attendance at family events. The pattern of accountability-free political restoration." },
    { id: "ph_t8", isTruth: true,  country: "ph", fallback: "The Philippines won a 2016 UNCLOS tribunal ruling against China's South China Sea claims — but the ruling has not been enforced, and Chinese military pressure continues.",
      whyFallback: "PCA tribunal at The Hague ruled in favor of the Philippines. China refused to acknowledge. Continued Chinese coast-guard pressure on Filipino fishing boats. The \"legal victory\" is real but operationally limited." },
    { id: "ph_f1", isTruth: false, country: "ph", fallback: "The Marcos Sr. era was a golden age for the Philippines.",
      whyFallback: "Infrastructure projects (some impressive). Also: martial law 1972-1981, 70,000+ imprisoned, 34,000 tortured, 3,200+ extrajudicially killed (Amnesty International estimates), $5-10B stolen. The \"golden age\" framing emerged via systematic social-media campaigns 2010s+; the documentary record is different." },
    { id: "ph_f2", isTruth: false, country: "ph", fallback: "Duterte's drug war effectively addressed the drug problem.",
      whyFallback: "The drug problem was not eliminated. Drug use continues. The cost was mass extrajudicial killings. The \"effective\" framing measures success by activity (killings) rather than outcomes (drug use). No major outcome metric supports the framing." },
    { id: "ph_f3", isTruth: false, country: "ph", fallback: "Philippine democracy is strong and stable.",
      whyFallback: "Marcos dictatorship within living memory. Duterte's authoritarian tendencies. Marcos Jr.'s restoration without accountability. Press freedom under continuous pressure. The constitutional democracy operates; the underlying patterns are fragile." },
    { id: "ph_f4", isTruth: false, country: "ph", fallback: "The Catholic Church is a moderating force in Philippine politics.",
      whyFallback: "Church can mobilize against presidents (Marcos Sr., Estrada, Arroyo). Can also align with conservative positions. The \"moderating\" framing depends on which moderation; the Church's political role is significant either way." },
    { id: "ph_f5", isTruth: false, country: "ph", fallback: "The Philippines maintains genuine balance between US and China.",
      whyFallback: "Recent re-alignment toward US (defense cooperation, basing). Continued Chinese pressure. The \"balance\" is a rhetorical position; the operational alignment shifts with administrations." },
    { id: "ph_f6", isTruth: false, country: "ph", fallback: "The Marcos family wealth has been fully recovered.",
      whyFallback: "Estimates of unrecovered wealth $5B+. Multiple jurisdictions still hold cases. The family lives openly with multiple properties globally. The \"recovered\" framing is contradicted by the Marcos family's continued wealth and lifestyle." },
    { id: "ph_f7", isTruth: false, country: "ph", fallback: "Filipino press is fully free and unconstrained.",
      whyFallback: "Rappler harassment. Multiple journalist killings (highest in a democracy). Cyber-libel laws used against critics. The freedom exists in some respects and not in others." },

    // ============== Nigeria — 8 truths + 7 inversions ==============
    { id: "ng_t1", isTruth: true,  country: "ng", fallback: "General Sani Abacha, Nigerian dictator 1993-1998, looted approximately $4-5 billion from the country — most of which has been gradually recovered over 25 years of international litigation.",
      whyFallback: "Swiss, UK, US, Liechtenstein, Jersey investigations. Multiple jurisdictions returned funds. Some Nigerian recipients of returned funds were themselves corrupt. The \"recovered\" amount represents fraction of what was stolen and the recovery process took decades." },
    { id: "ng_t2", isTruth: true,  country: "ng", fallback: "Decades of oil extraction in the Niger Delta have polluted thousands of square kilometers — and Shell paid $84 million to Ogoni communities in 2024 after a 13-year UK legal battle.",
      whyFallback: "UNEP Ogoniland assessment (2011): cleanup would take 25-30 years. Multiple oil-spill cases. Shell, Chevron, Eni, and other majors. The pollution has health, agricultural, fishing impacts on millions of people. Accountability has been partial and slow." },
    { id: "ng_t3", isTruth: true,  country: "ng", fallback: "Halliburton — through KBR — paid $400+ million in bribes to Nigerian officials over a decade for LNG construction contracts.",
      whyFallback: "DOJ settlement 2009. Halliburton paid $579M in penalties. KBR's general counsel pleaded guilty. The bribes spanned multiple Nigerian administrations. The \"foreign corrupt practices\" enforcement was US-initiated; Nigerian accountability for recipients was limited." },
    { id: "ng_t4", isTruth: true,  country: "ng", fallback: "Boko Haram and ISWAP have killed approximately 35,000+ Nigerians and displaced 2.5 million since 2009 — and military response has been characterized by atrocities of its own.",
      whyFallback: "Boko Haram founded 2002. Major escalation 2009+. 2014 Chibok kidnapping (276 schoolgirls). Multiple human-rights reports on Nigerian military abuses. The state response has at times mirrored insurgent tactics; civilians caught between." },
    { id: "ng_t5", isTruth: true,  country: "ng", fallback: "In October 2020, Nigerian soldiers fired on peaceful #EndSARS protesters at the Lekki tollgate in Lagos — killing protesters and triggering a national reckoning that the government largely ignored.",
      whyFallback: "Lekki Massacre. Amnesty International, multiple independent investigations. Nigerian government denied initially. Judicial panel later confirmed killings. Federal government rejected the report. Senior officials never prosecuted." },
    { id: "ng_t6", isTruth: true,  country: "ng", fallback: "Bola Tinubu, who became president in 2023, has been linked to multiple offshore financial cases including a US drug-related forfeiture in 1993.",
      whyFallback: "$460,000 forfeited from a US bank account linked to Tinubu in 1993 in connection with heroin trafficking investigation. Tinubu denied direct involvement; case settled via forfeiture. Subsequent Nigerian political prominence; no domestic investigation." },
    { id: "ng_t7", isTruth: true,  country: "ng", fallback: "Nigerian wealth is heavily concentrated in a small political-business class — including Aliko Dangote (Africa's richest man), the Babangida family, and politically-aligned business networks.",
      whyFallback: "Multiple analyses (Transparency International, Oxfam). Wealth concentration patterns parallel post-Soviet kleptocracies. Political-business overlap is structural. The \"African economic powerhouse\" framing coexists with extreme poverty for most Nigerians." },
    { id: "ng_t8", isTruth: true,  country: "ng", fallback: "President Muhammadu Buhari's 2022 currency redesign caused massive economic disruption — and was widely seen as a political maneuver to disadvantage the Tinubu campaign.",
      whyFallback: "Old notes withdrawn before sufficient new notes printed. Mass cash shortages. Multiple court cases. The \"anti-corruption\" framing of the policy was widely viewed as cover for electoral manipulation. Tinubu won regardless." },
    { id: "ng_f1", isTruth: false, country: "ng", fallback: "Nigerian democracy is stable and consolidated.",
      whyFallback: "Returns to civilian rule 1999 after decades of military rule. Multiple disputed elections. Persistent ethnic tensions. State of emergency periods in northern states. The democracy exists; stability is more contested." },
    { id: "ng_f2", isTruth: false, country: "ng", fallback: "Nigerian anti-corruption efforts have been effective.",
      whyFallback: "EFCC established 2003. Multiple high-profile cases. Conviction rates of senior officials low. Whistleblower programs cycling. The \"effective\" framing is rhetorical; the systemic corruption metrics show persistent problems." },
    { id: "ng_f3", isTruth: false, country: "ng", fallback: "Nigerian security operations are professional and effective.",
      whyFallback: "Multiple atrocities documented. Lekki massacre. Northern Nigeria insecurity. Banditry crisis. The \"professional\" framing is government rhetoric; the operational record includes systematic problems." },
    { id: "ng_f4", isTruth: false, country: "ng", fallback: "Boko Haram is just a tribal/regional conflict, not a national security issue.",
      whyFallback: "Affects multiple regions. International dimensions (Chad Basin states). State response involves all Nigerian regions. The \"tribal\" framing minimizes a multi-state security crisis." },
    { id: "ng_f5", isTruth: false, country: "ng", fallback: "Nigerian oil wealth is broadly shared with the population.",
      whyFallback: "Nigerian poverty among world's highest absolute numbers. Oil wealth concentrated in elite networks. Delta communities producing the oil show worst poverty and pollution. The \"shared\" framing is the constitutional promise; the operational reality is the opposite." },
    { id: "ng_f6", isTruth: false, country: "ng", fallback: "Shell has been a responsible corporate citizen in Nigeria.",
      whyFallback: "Documented oil spills. Repeated litigation losses. Funding allegations linked to Ogoni-9 execution (1995). Multiple settlements without admission. The \"responsible\" framing is corporate communications; the operational record is repeatedly contested." },
    { id: "ng_f7", isTruth: false, country: "ng", fallback: "Nigerian elections are peaceful and orderly.",
      whyFallback: "Multiple election cycles produced violence. Electoral commission contested. 2023 election widely viewed as marred by violence and irregularities. The \"peaceful\" framing is the official line; observers document otherwise." },

    // ============== Argentina — 8T + 7F ==============
    { id: "ar_t1", isTruth: true, country: "ar", fallback: "The 1976-1983 Argentine military dictatorship disappeared an estimated 30,000 people in the \"Dirty War\" against leftists, journalists, students, and trade unionists.",
      whyFallback: "CONADEP report (Nunca Más, 1984). Babies of pregnant detainees stolen and given to military families. Operation Condor coordinated with neighboring dictatorships. Many perpetrators only prosecuted decades later, some never." },
    { id: "ar_t2", isTruth: true, country: "ar", fallback: "The 1994 AMIA Jewish community center bombing in Buenos Aires killed 85 — and the investigation has been obstructed for three decades, with prosecutor Alberto Nisman found dead the day before he was to testify.",
      whyFallback: "Iran and Hezbollah suspected. Nisman accused President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner of covering up Iranian involvement. He was found dead January 18, 2015. Officially ruled suicide; many investigators rejected that conclusion." },
    { id: "ar_t3", isTruth: true, country: "ar", fallback: "Former president Mauricio Macri's name appeared in the Panama Papers as a director of offshore companies — which he had failed to declare in his asset filings.",
      whyFallback: "Panama Papers leak 2016. Fleg Trading Ltd. and Kagemusha SA. Macri claimed they were family companies he didn't actively manage. Argentine prosecution opened and closed without conviction. The pattern of presidential offshore wealth was confirmed for multiple administrations." },
    { id: "ar_t4", isTruth: true, country: "ar", fallback: "Argentina has been one of the IMF's largest debtors for decades — with cyclical hyperinflation, peso devaluations, and bailout dependency since the 1980s.",
      whyFallback: "1989, 2001, 2018, 2023 currency crises. 2018 IMF program ($57B, the largest in IMF history) collapsed within a year. The structural dependence has spanned Peronist, Radical, and PRO governments alike." },
    { id: "ar_t5", isTruth: true, country: "ar", fallback: "Javier Milei's 2023 election produced \"chainsaw\" austerity — mass public-sector layoffs, subsidy cuts, and a poverty rate that surged past 50%.",
      whyFallback: "Milei (libertarian-anarcho-capitalist) campaigned with a literal chainsaw symbolizing budget cuts. INDEC Q1 2024: 52.9% poverty. Currency stabilization came at extreme social cost. The economic experiment is ongoing." },
    { id: "ar_t6", isTruth: true, country: "ar", fallback: "The 1982 Falklands/Malvinas War was launched by the junta partly to distract from domestic economic and political collapse.",
      whyFallback: "Galtieri government invaded April 2. UK forces retook islands by June. Argentine military defeated. The defeat accelerated the junta's collapse and the 1983 democratic transition. The sovereignty dispute remains unresolved." },
    { id: "ar_t7", isTruth: true, country: "ar", fallback: "Argentina's central bank reserves have been chronically negative or near-zero — meaning the country has been operating without functional dollar reserves through multiple administrations.",
      whyFallback: "BCRA data. Net reserves repeatedly negative. Multiple administrations have used currency swaps with China to mask the position. The 'reserves' figure on paper diverges from the operational reality routinely." },
    { id: "ar_t8", isTruth: true, country: "ar", fallback: "The 1990s Menem-era amnesty laws (Punto Final, Obediencia Debida) protected most Dirty War perpetrators from prosecution — and were only declared unconstitutional in 2005.",
      whyFallback: "Annulled by Néstor Kirchner's Supreme Court. Prosecutions then began in earnest 20+ years after the events. Many perpetrators died before facing court. The structural impunity of the 1990s was deliberate political settlement." },
    { id: "ar_f1", isTruth: false, country: "ar", fallback: "Argentina has Latin America's strongest democratic tradition.",
      whyFallback: "Six military coups in the 20th century. The Dirty War. Repeated economic collapses. Recurring institutional fragility. The constitutional democracy returned in 1983 and held; the framing of long democratic tradition is selective." },
    { id: "ar_f2", isTruth: false, country: "ar", fallback: "The Dirty War was simply fighting communist terrorism.",
      whyFallback: "Victims included unionists, journalists, students, and bystanders. Many had no connection to armed organizations. Pregnant women were tortured and their babies stolen. \"Fighting terrorism\" was the regime's framing; the operational reality was state terrorism." },
    { id: "ar_f3", isTruth: false, country: "ar", fallback: "Argentina's economic collapses are entirely caused by external pressures.",
      whyFallback: "Internal policy choices have produced the cycles: price controls, capital controls, currency overvaluation, fiscal deficits, money printing. External pressures real; internal causes substantial." },
    { id: "ar_f4", isTruth: false, country: "ar", fallback: "The IMF saved Argentina.",
      whyFallback: "Multiple IMF programs have ended in default or new crisis. The 2018 program was the largest in IMF history and collapsed within a year. The 'saving' framing is contradicted by the cyclical pattern." },
    { id: "ar_f5", isTruth: false, country: "ar", fallback: "Argentina is essentially a European country in Latin America.",
      whyFallback: "Cultural narrative pushed by European-descent elites. The country has significant Indigenous and mestizo populations historically marginalized. The 'European' framing has served social hierarchies; the demographic reality is more complex." },
    { id: "ar_f6", isTruth: false, country: "ar", fallback: "The Falklands/Malvinas sovereignty question is clear-cut.",
      whyFallback: "British settlement 1833. Argentine claim of inheritance from Spain. UN resolutions calling for negotiation. The 1982 referendum (UK-organized) supported British rule. The dispute is genuinely contested under multiple frames; \"clear-cut\" suits whichever side claims it." },
    { id: "ar_f7", isTruth: false, country: "ar", fallback: "Milei's libertarian reform will solve Argentina's structural problems.",
      whyFallback: "Currency stabilization at the cost of mass poverty. Long-term structural issues (dollar reserves, productivity, fiscal balance) require multi-year work. Short-term claims of solving generational problems should be evaluated against the data, not the rhetoric." },

    // ============== Colombia — 8T + 7F ==============
    { id: "co_t1", isTruth: true, country: "co", fallback: "Colombia's right-wing paramilitaries (AUC) — emerging from the 1980s as anti-FARC private armies — killed tens of thousands of civilians and were tied to senior politicians.",
      whyFallback: "Parapolítica scandal documented links between AUC and dozens of senators. AUC formally demobilized 2003-2006 under Uribe-era settlement, but many fighters reorganized. Carlos Castaño confessed to drug trafficking before disappearing in 2004." },
    { id: "co_t2", isTruth: true, country: "co", fallback: "Colombian army soldiers killed approximately 6,400 civilians during 2002-2008 — dressing the corpses as guerrillas to inflate combat statistics — in the \"false positives\" scandal.",
      whyFallback: "JEP transitional justice tribunal documented 6,402 cases. Under Uribe-era policies of body count incentives. Multiple generals and senior officers under prosecution. The scandal is now one of the largest documented military atrocities in modern Latin America." },
    { id: "co_t3", isTruth: true, country: "co", fallback: "The US-backed \"War on Drugs\" in Colombia spent more than $10 billion on Plan Colombia (2000+) — yet cocaine production has reached record highs since.",
      whyFallback: "UNODC data: 2022-2023 coca cultivation at historic peaks. Plan Colombia reduced violence but did not reduce drug supply. The 'war on drugs' framing measured the wrong outcome; supply increased throughout the policy lifespan." },
    { id: "co_t4", isTruth: true, country: "co", fallback: "Pablo Escobar's Medellín Cartel killed more than 4,000 people in the 1980s-90s — including presidential candidates, judges, journalists, and the bombing of Avianca Flight 203 (110 dead).",
      whyFallback: "DEA and Colombian National Police investigations. Escobar killed 1993. Successor Cali Cartel and Norte del Valle continued. The Colombian state's response involved both legitimate police work and shadow-collaboration through Los Pepes." },
    { id: "co_t5", isTruth: true, country: "co", fallback: "The 2016 peace agreement with FARC was rejected in a referendum by 50.2% of voters — and partially implemented since under multiple administrations.",
      whyFallback: "Plebiscite October 2016. Implementation has been partial. Multiple FARC ex-combatants assassinated (~400 since 2016). Social leaders also targeted at scale. The peace is structurally fragile." },
    { id: "co_t6", isTruth: true, country: "co", fallback: "Colombia is one of the world's most dangerous countries for environmental and human rights defenders — with hundreds of social leaders killed annually since the peace agreement.",
      whyFallback: "Indepaz, Frontline Defenders annual reports. Multiple regions (Cauca, Antioquia, Norte de Santander) account for most deaths. The pattern continues across administrations of different ideologies. Land disputes drive most cases." },
    { id: "co_t7", isTruth: true, country: "co", fallback: "Multiple Colombian presidents and their families have faced major corruption investigations — including Uribe-era extradition links and the Odebrecht scandal across the political spectrum.",
      whyFallback: "Odebrecht Colombia payments documented. Multiple senior officials prosecuted. The pattern crosses party lines. Uribe himself under multiple investigations; cases have moved slowly through courts." },
    { id: "co_t8", isTruth: true, country: "co", fallback: "Colombia hosts the world's largest population of internally displaced persons — approximately 8.5 million people, second only to Syria in absolute terms.",
      whyFallback: "UNHCR and government statistics. Decades of conflict between guerrillas, paramilitaries, military, and cartels. Displacement particularly concentrated in Afro-Colombian and Indigenous regions. The peace agreement did not reverse the displacement." },
    { id: "co_f1", isTruth: false, country: "co", fallback: "Colombia's war was simple: democracy versus narco-terrorists.",
      whyFallback: "The conflict involved cartels, FARC, ELN, AUC paramilitaries, military, US-backed special operations, and political-business networks. State-aligned actors committed the majority of documented atrocities. The 'democracy vs narco' framing was wartime PR for one side." },
    { id: "co_f2", isTruth: false, country: "co", fallback: "The US War on Drugs in Colombia succeeded.",
      whyFallback: "Cocaine production at record highs. The supply chain reorganized but did not decrease. Multiple administrations confirmed the policy failed in its stated goals. Continued spending reflects political momentum, not measured success." },
    { id: "co_f3", isTruth: false, country: "co", fallback: "Uribe's hard-line policy was clean and effective.",
      whyFallback: "Multiple investigations: parapolítica scandal, false positives, illegal wiretaps. Uribe's 'security' produced gains and atrocities in parallel. Honest assessment requires both. The 'clean' framing is partisan." },
    { id: "co_f4", isTruth: false, country: "co", fallback: "Petro's leftist government will fundamentally change Colombia.",
      whyFallback: "Constrained by Colombian congress, deep state, and economic structure. The 'total peace' policy has produced mixed results. Several anti-corruption initiatives stalled. Honest assessment requires distinguishing intentions from outcomes." },
    { id: "co_f5", isTruth: false, country: "co", fallback: "FARC was purely a terrorist organization with no political legitimacy.",
      whyFallback: "FARC had political wing, governance of territory in some regions, and emerged from real political grievances (land inequality, peasant displacement). Their tactics included terrorism; the organization was not exhausted by that frame." },
    { id: "co_f6", isTruth: false, country: "co", fallback: "Coca farming is purely a criminal enterprise.",
      whyFallback: "Hundreds of thousands of Colombian farmers depend on coca for survival. Crop substitution programs have repeatedly failed due to inadequate state presence in rural areas. The 'criminal' framing erases the economic reality of marginalized communities." },
    { id: "co_f7", isTruth: false, country: "co", fallback: "The peace process has been completed.",
      whyFallback: "Hundreds of ex-combatants murdered. Social leaders killed at high rates. ELN remains active. Multiple FARC dissident groups operating. Peace agreement implementation has been partial and contested. The 'completed' framing is rhetoric." },

    // ============== Canada — 8T + 7F ==============
    { id: "ca_t1", isTruth: true, country: "ca", fallback: "Canadian residential schools forcibly assimilated approximately 150,000 Indigenous children from the 1880s to 1996 — with thousands dying in school custody and physical/sexual abuse documented.",
      whyFallback: "Truth and Reconciliation Commission report (2015). Approximately 4,100 deaths confirmed; estimates suggest higher. Unmarked graves discovered 2021+ at multiple former school sites. Run jointly by Canadian government and churches (Catholic, Anglican, United, Presbyterian)." },
    { id: "ca_t2", isTruth: true, country: "ca", fallback: "Justin Trudeau's government pressured the Attorney General to intervene in the SNC-Lavalin prosecution — leading to her resignation and a parliamentary ethics inquiry that found Trudeau violated the Conflict of Interest Act.",
      whyFallback: "Jody Wilson-Raybould testimony 2019. Ethics Commissioner report. Trudeau apologized but kept office. SNC-Lavalin Quebec engineering giant; case involved bribery in Libya. The pressure-on-AG pattern was unprecedented and admitted." },
    { id: "ca_t3", isTruth: true, country: "ca", fallback: "Canadian intelligence services (CSIS) and the RCMP have a documented history of surveillance and operations against Indigenous land defenders — particularly during pipeline disputes.",
      whyFallback: "Wet'suwet'en, Standing Rock-adjacent operations. Documents released via Freedom of Information showed surveillance of Indigenous-rights groups classified alongside national-security threats. The pattern persisted across Liberal and Conservative governments." },
    { id: "ca_t4", isTruth: true, country: "ca", fallback: "Canada hosts massive offshore tax structures — particularly through Cayman Islands and Caribbean intermediaries — used by Canadian corporations and wealthy individuals to reduce tax burdens.",
      whyFallback: "Multiple investigations: Panama Papers, Paradise Papers, Pandora Papers. Canadian banks (TD, RBC, Scotiabank) major facilitators in Caribbean offshore architecture. The 'fair tax' framing of Canadian corporate culture obscures the offshore practices." },
    { id: "ca_t5", isTruth: true, country: "ca", fallback: "The Trudeau family's relationship with the Aga Khan included a 2016 private island vacation that violated federal ethics rules.",
      whyFallback: "Ethics Commissioner report 2017. The vacation involved private jet to the Aga Khan's private island in the Bahamas. The Aga Khan Foundation had received Canadian government funding. Trudeau apologized; no consequence beyond the report." },
    { id: "ca_t6", isTruth: true, country: "ca", fallback: "Canadian mining companies — the world's largest concentration of mining headquarters — have been documented for environmental damage and human rights abuses globally, with weak Canadian accountability mechanisms.",
      whyFallback: "Justice and Corporate Accountability Project research. Canadian-listed mining firms operate across Latin America, Africa, Asia with documented patterns of community displacement, environmental damage, and security violations. The Toronto Stock Exchange is the world's largest mining-finance center." },
    { id: "ca_t7", isTruth: true, country: "ca", fallback: "Canada quietly hosts the world's largest network of offshore corporate registrations through provincial structures — and \"snow washing\" of foreign capital is documented.",
      whyFallback: "Multiple investigations (Cullen Commission BC 2022, Transparency International Canada). British Columbia in particular has been identified as a money-laundering hub. The provincial corporate structures, with limited beneficial ownership requirements, are the vehicle." },
    { id: "ca_t8", isTruth: true, country: "ca", fallback: "Canada's 2022 invocation of the Emergencies Act against the trucker convoy protest was found by a federal commission to have NOT met the legal threshold required.",
      whyFallback: "Public Order Emergency Commission (Rouleau Commission) found in February 2023 that the Emergencies Act invocation was legally questionable. The first-ever invocation of the Act. Frozen bank accounts of protesters without court orders. The legal precedent is now contested." },
    { id: "ca_f1", isTruth: false, country: "ca", fallback: "Canada has fully reckoned with its Indigenous history.",
      whyFallback: "Truth and Reconciliation Commission's 94 Calls to Action: a minority fully implemented. Drinking water advisories in Indigenous communities continue. Pipeline disputes ongoing. Reconciliation is process, not completion; current state is partial." },
    { id: "ca_f2", isTruth: false, country: "ca", fallback: "Canada is the world's most polite country with no political controversy.",
      whyFallback: "Trucker convoy. Residential schools. Pipeline disputes with Indigenous nations. SNC-Lavalin. Multiple ethics investigations. Quebec-Canada constitutional questions. The 'polite' framing is international PR; the domestic political reality is contested." },
    { id: "ca_f3", isTruth: false, country: "ca", fallback: "Canadian media is fully editorially independent.",
      whyFallback: "Postmedia (controlled by US hedge fund Chatham Asset Management). Bell Media, Rogers, Shaw concentrated. CBC funded by government. Canadian Heritage subsidies create dependencies. Independent in legal status; concentrated in operation." },
    { id: "ca_f4", isTruth: false, country: "ca", fallback: "Canadian peacekeeping has been uniformly positive globally.",
      whyFallback: "Somalia Affair (1993): Airborne Regiment torture and killing of Somali teenager Shidane Arone. Disbanded. Multiple peacekeeping missions had problems. The 'peacekeeper' identity is real and selective; the operational record is more mixed than the brand." },
    { id: "ca_f5", isTruth: false, country: "ca", fallback: "Canada's oil sands development is environmentally responsible.",
      whyFallback: "Highest per-barrel emissions in major oil production. Tailings ponds contamination documented. Indigenous treaty rights disputes. Federal climate policy contradicts provincial development pace. 'Responsible' is industry framing; the metrics tell a different story." },
    { id: "ca_f6", isTruth: false, country: "ca", fallback: "Canadian banking regulation makes scandals impossible.",
      whyFallback: "TD Bank fined $3 billion US (2024) for money-laundering failures. Cullen Commission found BC banking facilitating laundering. The 'sound banking' framing is brand work; the recent enforcement actions show structural problems." },
    { id: "ca_f7", isTruth: false, country: "ca", fallback: "Canada and the US are essentially the same country with the same values.",
      whyFallback: "Multiple political-economic divergences (healthcare, gun policy, foreign policy nuances). Canadian identity has distinct historical foundations. The 'same country' framing is US-perspective convenience; Canadians and Indigenous nations within Canada describe a different reality." },

    // ============== Cuba — 8T + 7F ==============
    { id: "cu_t1", isTruth: true, country: "cu", fallback: "The Castro brothers ruled Cuba consecutively from 1959 to 2018 (Fidel) and 2008-2018 (Raúl) — making it one of the longest single-family rules in modern history.",
      whyFallback: "Fidel Castro 1959-2008 (formal). Raúl Castro 2006-2018 (formal). Then Miguel Díaz-Canel, hand-picked. The Communist Party of Cuba is constitutionally the only legal party. Hereditary-style consolidation of power within a stated socialist framework." },
    { id: "cu_t2", isTruth: true, country: "cu", fallback: "Cuba operates a state-controlled economy with chronic shortages — and the dollarization through state-owned hard-currency stores (\"MLC\") has created a two-tier system favoring those with foreign remittances.",
      whyFallback: "MLC stores accept only dollars/euros. Regular Cuban-peso stores have empty shelves. Remittances from diaspora are the key access route. The official 'socialist' framing coexists with hard-currency stratification." },
    { id: "cu_t3", isTruth: true, country: "cu", fallback: "Cuba has imprisoned thousands of political prisoners since the revolution — and the 2021 mass protests (\"11J\") produced 700+ arrests with harsh sentences.",
      whyFallback: "Amnesty International, Cuban Prisoners Defenders tracking. The 11J protests of July 11, 2021 were the largest in 30 years. Many protesters sentenced 5-25 years. The pattern of political imprisonment is structural across decades." },
    { id: "cu_t4", isTruth: true, country: "cu", fallback: "The 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion was a CIA-organized operation using Cuban exiles — and its failure embedded Cuban-US hostility for decades.",
      whyFallback: "Operation Zapata. 1,400 exile commandos. Defeated within 72 hours. Kennedy refused air cover at the last moment. The CIA's role was acknowledged in subsequent declassifications. The 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis followed within 18 months." },
    { id: "cu_t5", isTruth: true, country: "cu", fallback: "Cuba sent military forces to multiple African conflicts during the Cold War — Angola most prominently — with up to 40,000 troops at peak deployment.",
      whyFallback: "Operation Carlota (1975-1991) in Angola. Defended Angolan government against South African apartheid forces. The Cuban military intervention is widely credited with helping end apartheid by defeating South African expansion. The intervention was real, the moral framing contested." },
    { id: "cu_t6", isTruth: true, country: "cu", fallback: "The US has maintained an economic embargo on Cuba since 1962 — voted against annually by overwhelming majorities of UN member states.",
      whyFallback: "Annual UN General Assembly vote: typically 184-3 or similar against the embargo. The embargo has been a Cuban regime political asset. Whether it should remain is debated; the international isolation it produces for the US is documented." },
    { id: "cu_t7", isTruth: true, country: "cu", fallback: "Cuba has one of the world's highest physician-per-capita ratios — and has built a substantial \"medical diplomacy\" program sending doctors to 60+ countries.",
      whyFallback: "Cuban medical brigades documented. Real public health achievements (low infant mortality, high vaccination rates). Also documented: doctors' wages mostly captured by the Cuban state, limited freedom for the doctors themselves. Both can be true." },
    { id: "cu_t8", isTruth: true, country: "cu", fallback: "Massive Cuban emigration — to the US, Spain, and elsewhere — has been a constant since 1959, with multiple major waves (1959, 1980 Mariel, 1994 Balsero crisis, 2022+ post-COVID).",
      whyFallback: "An estimated 2+ million Cuban-origin people in the US. ~10% of Cuba's population has emigrated. Wet-foot-dry-foot policy ended 2017. Current Cuban migration to US via overland routes through Mexico continues. The voting-with-feet pattern is consistent across decades." },
    { id: "cu_f1", isTruth: false, country: "cu", fallback: "Cuba is a workers' paradise with full equality.",
      whyFallback: "Hard-currency stratification. Tourism industry workers (who get tips) form distinct class. Political loyalty determines housing, employment access. Equality is the constitutional framing; the operational reality includes multiple stratifications." },
    { id: "cu_f2", isTruth: false, country: "cu", fallback: "Cuba's problems are entirely caused by the US embargo.",
      whyFallback: "Internal command-economy choices have produced significant problems independently. Other socialist countries (Vietnam) have grown despite different international situations. The embargo aggravates real problems; sole-cause framing is regime propaganda." },
    { id: "cu_f3", isTruth: false, country: "cu", fallback: "The Cuban opposition is entirely a CIA invention.",
      whyFallback: "Substantial Cuban opposition is genuine and domestic. US support exists and is sometimes clumsy. The 'CIA invention' framing minimizes domestic dissent and erases Cuban political agency on both sides." },
    { id: "cu_f4", isTruth: false, country: "cu", fallback: "Cuba has no significant racial inequality.",
      whyFallback: "Afro-Cuban population shows worse outcomes by multiple metrics. Tourism-economy jobs concentrated in lighter-skinned Cubans. The revolution's claim of solving the race question was partial; the operational stratification continues." },
    { id: "cu_f5", isTruth: false, country: "cu", fallback: "Press freedom is fine in Cuba.",
      whyFallback: "All major media state-controlled or party-aligned. Independent journalists routinely imprisoned. Internet access restricted. The press-freedom rankings place Cuba near the bottom globally." },
    { id: "cu_f6", isTruth: false, country: "cu", fallback: "Cuban Americans are uniformly right-wing.",
      whyFallback: "Significant diversity in Cuban diaspora politics. Older waves more conservative; newer waves more diverse. The 'uniformly right-wing' framing is convenient for both Cuban regime and US political analysis; the demographic reality is more varied." },
    { id: "cu_f7", isTruth: false, country: "cu", fallback: "Post-Castro reform will quickly transform Cuba.",
      whyFallback: "Post-Castro succession to Díaz-Canel maintained the structural status quo. Economic reforms partial. Political system largely unchanged. 'Reform will transform quickly' has been said repeatedly; the operational change has been slow." },

    // ============== Chile — 8T + 7F ==============
    { id: "cl_t1", isTruth: true, country: "cl", fallback: "The 1973 coup that overthrew democratically elected Salvador Allende and installed General Augusto Pinochet was supported by the CIA — with documented US economic destabilization of the prior Allende government.",
      whyFallback: "Nixon: \"make the economy scream.\" Henry Kissinger's role documented in declassified materials. Allende died in the presidential palace September 11, 1973. Pinochet ruled 1973-1990. The US role was acknowledged in successive declassifications." },
    { id: "cl_t2", isTruth: true, country: "cl", fallback: "Pinochet's dictatorship killed approximately 3,200 people and tortured tens of thousands — with the Caravan of Death tour and operations in detention centers (Villa Grimaldi, Estadio Nacional) documented.",
      whyFallback: "Rettig Report (1991) and Valech Report (2004). DINA secret police. Operation Condor coordination with neighboring dictatorships. Pinochet himself escaped trial in Chile but faced multiple prosecutions abroad before his 2006 death." },
    { id: "cl_t3", isTruth: true, country: "cl", fallback: "The Chilean Constitution still in force was written under Pinochet (1980) — and the 2022 attempt to replace it via constitutional referendum was rejected.",
      whyFallback: "Constitutional reform attempt followed 2019 protests. New draft constitution defeated 62-38% in September 2022 referendum. Second attempt in 2023 also rejected. The Pinochet-era constitutional structure persists despite multiple challenges." },
    { id: "cl_t4", isTruth: true, country: "cl", fallback: "Chile produces approximately 30% of the world's copper and is part of the \"lithium triangle\" — with state and private mining operations historically benefiting foreign capital more than Chilean workers.",
      whyFallback: "Codelco (state copper) and private (SQM, Albemarle for lithium). Pinochet-era privatizations. Significant wealth concentration. Multiple efforts to expand state share have been politically contested." },
    { id: "cl_t5", isTruth: true, country: "cl", fallback: "Augusto Pinochet was indicted in the UK in 1998 on charges of crimes against humanity — under the principle of universal jurisdiction — though he was eventually released on medical grounds.",
      whyFallback: "Spanish Judge Baltasar Garzón issued the arrest warrant. UK House of Lords ruled Pinochet did not have head-of-state immunity for these crimes. He was returned to Chile and faced (limited) prosecution before his 2006 death without conviction." },
    { id: "cl_t6", isTruth: true, country: "cl", fallback: "The 2019 Chilean uprising began with a small public transport fare hike — and escalated into mass protests revealing decades of accumulated grievances about inequality, education, and pensions.",
      whyFallback: "1.2 million marched in Santiago. Constitutional process triggered. Multiple human-rights cases for police violence. The 'fare hike protest' frame quickly became 'systemic inequality protest'. The structural causes remain unresolved." },
    { id: "cl_t7", isTruth: true, country: "cl", fallback: "Chile's pension system — fully privatized under Pinochet — was supposed to be a global model but has produced widespread retirement poverty.",
      whyFallback: "AFP system (1981). Multiple Chilean Nobel laureates in economics involved. Pension outcomes for typical retirees below subsistence level. Multiple reform attempts. The 'global model' framing dominated 1990s-2010s; the outcomes data has shifted the international discussion." },
    { id: "cl_t8", isTruth: true, country: "cl", fallback: "Chile's transition from Pinochet's dictatorship was negotiated — meaning many institutions, judges, and economic structures continued largely unchanged into the democratic era.",
      whyFallback: "Concertación-era governments preserved much of the Pinochet framework. The 'binominal' electoral system (designed to favor right-wing parties) lasted until 2015. The negotiated transition produced stability but limited accountability and structural change." },
    { id: "cl_f1", isTruth: false, country: "cl", fallback: "Chile is Latin America's most successful free-market democracy.",
      whyFallback: "Pinochet-era inequality persists. Multiple recent constitutional crises. Lithium dispute. Pension poverty. The 'success' framing reflects macroeconomic stability; the social outcomes are more contested." },
    { id: "cl_f2", isTruth: false, country: "cl", fallback: "Pinochet saved Chile from communism.",
      whyFallback: "Allende was constitutionally elected. The economic crisis that preceded the coup was substantially CIA-engineered. The 'saved from communism' framing was junta PR; the historical scholarship is more complex." },
    { id: "cl_f3", isTruth: false, country: "cl", fallback: "Chile's economic miracle is the work of the Chicago Boys.",
      whyFallback: "Multiple decades of mixed results. Pension failures. Inequality. The 'Chicago Boys' policies operated alongside dictatorship's coercion; separating policy effects from coercion is methodologically difficult. The 'miracle' framing is partisan." },
    { id: "cl_f4", isTruth: false, country: "cl", fallback: "Pinochet's death meant accountability.",
      whyFallback: "Pinochet died December 2006 with multiple ongoing prosecutions but no convictions. The pattern of dictators escaping trial alive while their generation dies off is structural across Latin American dictatorships." },
    { id: "cl_f5", isTruth: false, country: "cl", fallback: "Chile's democracy is fully consolidated.",
      whyFallback: "Multiple recent political crises. Constitution still Pinochet-era. Two constitutional reform attempts rejected. Police and military human-rights issues continue. Constitutional democracy operates; consolidation is contested." },
    { id: "cl_f6", isTruth: false, country: "cl", fallback: "Allende was a Soviet puppet.",
      whyFallback: "Allende was democratically elected leader of Chile's Socialist Party. His policies were domestic socialist, not Moscow-directed. The 'Soviet puppet' framing was Cold War US rhetoric; the historical record describes a domestic political figure with Cold War context." },
    { id: "cl_f7", isTruth: false, country: "cl", fallback: "Foreign lithium investment helps Chile.",
      whyFallback: "Profit flows largely to foreign-listed multinationals (Albemarle, SQM has international partnerships). Indigenous Atacameño communities affected by water depletion. The 'helps Chile' framing oversimplifies who benefits. Multiple Chilean governments have proposed reforms." },

    // ============== Poland — 8T + 7F ==============
    { id: "pl_t1", isTruth: true, country: "pl", fallback: "Poland's PiS government (2015-2023) systematically captured the judiciary — including the Constitutional Tribunal — triggering multiple EU Article 7 procedures and rule-of-law sanctions.",
      whyFallback: "Judicial reforms 2015+. ECJ multiple rulings against. EU frozen €30B+ in funds. The pattern was open and deliberate; the EU response was real but slow." },
    { id: "pl_t2", isTruth: true, country: "pl", fallback: "Polish authorities used Pegasus spyware against opposition politicians, lawyers, and journalists — including senator Krzysztof Brejza during the 2019 election campaign.",
      whyFallback: "Citizen Lab investigation. Brejza was the opposition campaign coordinator. Polish parliamentary committee 2024 confirmed broad use. Multiple Pegasus operators identified. The state surveillance of political opponents was extensive and documented." },
    { id: "pl_t3", isTruth: true, country: "pl", fallback: "The 2010 Smolensk plane crash killed Polish President Lech Kaczyński and 95 others — and the subsequent investigation has been politicized for over a decade.",
      whyFallback: "Russia held the wreckage and refused to return it. Multiple Polish investigations. PiS used 'Smolensk truth' as central political narrative. Official cause was pilot error and weather; political contestation continues." },
    { id: "pl_t4", isTruth: true, country: "pl", fallback: "PiS-era media reform turned public broadcaster TVP into an aggressive state propaganda outlet — and the Tusk government's 2023+ effort to reverse this triggered constitutional crisis.",
      whyFallback: "TVP under PiS became openly partisan. Tusk government replaced leadership immediately on taking office. President Duda (PiS) refused funding bills. The pattern of media-as-political-weapon was open across the period." },
    { id: "pl_t5", isTruth: true, country: "pl", fallback: "Poland passed a 2018 law making it illegal to ascribe Holocaust responsibility to the Polish nation — triggering international diplomatic crisis with Israel and the US.",
      whyFallback: "Article 55a, Act on the Institute of National Remembrance. Initially included criminal penalties (later reduced). Tensions with Yad Vashem and others. The historical reckoning question with Polish wartime conduct remains politically charged." },
    { id: "pl_t6", isTruth: true, country: "pl", fallback: "Poland's near-total abortion ban (2020 Constitutional Tribunal ruling, since further restricted) produced mass protests and documented deaths of women denied life-saving terminations.",
      whyFallback: "Multiple confirmed cases of women dying when doctors refused to perform terminations on non-viable pregnancies. Tusk's coalition promised reform but constitutional barriers remain. The 'protection of life' framing has produced multiple maternal deaths." },
    { id: "pl_t7", isTruth: true, country: "pl", fallback: "Poland sits on top of Europe's largest coal reserves — and the energy transition has been politically delayed by mining union and PiS political alliance.",
      whyFallback: "Roughly 70% of Polish electricity still from coal in 2023. EU emissions deadlines repeatedly contested. Mining communities politically powerful. The transition path is technically clear; the political path is contested." },
    { id: "pl_t8", isTruth: true, country: "pl", fallback: "Polish migration policy at the Belarusian border has produced documented deaths of asylum seekers — pushed back into the forest by Polish guards.",
      whyFallback: "Multiple confirmed deaths from exposure. Human rights organizations documented forced returns. The 2021+ pushback policy continued under both PiS and current government. The Belarusian-orchestrated migrant crisis was real; the Polish response has its own documentation." },
    { id: "pl_f1", isTruth: false, country: "pl", fallback: "Poland is fully European democratic and rule-of-law compliant.",
      whyFallback: "EU Article 7 still active. Constitutional Tribunal disputes ongoing. Multiple Pegasus surveillance cases. The constitutional democracy operates; rule-of-law compliance is significantly contested." },
    { id: "pl_f2", isTruth: false, country: "pl", fallback: "PiS represented authentic Polish Catholic values.",
      whyFallback: "Significant Polish Catholic opposition to PiS. Church-PiS alignment partly transactional. Younger Polish Catholics increasingly secular. The 'authentic Polish Catholic' framing was PiS political identity; not all Polish Catholics agreed." },
    { id: "pl_f3", isTruth: false, country: "pl", fallback: "Poland has fully reckoned with WWII history.",
      whyFallback: "Multiple Polish actions during WWII included violence against Jews (Jedwabne 1941). Polish underground state often resisted Nazis admirably. Both can be true; the legal restrictions on historical research are documented." },
    { id: "pl_f4", isTruth: false, country: "pl", fallback: "The Tusk government has fully reversed PiS damage.",
      whyFallback: "Tusk took office December 2023. Constitutional Tribunal disputes ongoing. President Duda (PiS) vetoes. Many structural changes will take years or constitutional change to reverse. 'Fully reversed' overstates progress." },
    { id: "pl_f5", isTruth: false, country: "pl", fallback: "Polish economy is fully capitalist with no state-owned bureaucratic dysfunction.",
      whyFallback: "Multiple major state-owned enterprises (PGE, Orlen, PKN). PiS-era political appointments. State capture concerns. The economy is mixed; the 'fully capitalist' framing is rhetorical." },
    { id: "pl_f6", isTruth: false, country: "pl", fallback: "Polish-Ukrainian relations are uniformly warm.",
      whyFallback: "Volhynia massacre of 1943-1944 (~100K Polish victims) remains contested. Grain dispute 2023+. Historical and contemporary tensions coexist with substantial wartime cooperation. The relationship is significant and complex, not uniform." },
    { id: "pl_f7", isTruth: false, country: "pl", fallback: "Polish migration at the Belarusian border is purely Belarusian aggression.",
      whyFallback: "Belarusian hybrid attack is real. Polish response has produced documented deaths in the forest. Both can be true; the asylum-law violations on the Polish side are also documented." },

    // ============== Greece — 8T + 7F ==============
    { id: "gr_t1", isTruth: true, country: "gr", fallback: "Greece used Goldman Sachs swaps in 2001-2002 to hide debt levels from the EU — enabling Eurozone membership the country's true finances would have blocked.",
      whyFallback: "Currency swaps disguised debt as off-balance-sheet operations. Greek deficit numbers later revealed to be far worse than reported. Goldman Sachs profited from both the swaps and (allegedly) shorting Greece during the subsequent crisis." },
    { id: "gr_t2", isTruth: true, country: "gr", fallback: "Siemens admitted paying ~€1 billion in bribes to Greek officials over a decade — for telecom, defense, and Olympic 2004 contracts.",
      whyFallback: "Settlement 2008. Multiple Greek politicians prosecuted (some convicted). The pattern of multinational corruption with Greek state cooperation was structural to the 1990s-2000s. Most Greek recipients of bribes faced limited consequences." },
    { id: "gr_t3", isTruth: true, country: "gr", fallback: "The 2010-2015 Greek debt crisis was managed largely to protect European banks — and the structural adjustment imposed on Greece produced suicides, mass emigration, and humanitarian crisis.",
      whyFallback: "Multiple IMF retrospective acknowledgments. German-French banks had major exposure. Greek suicide rate rose 35%. Mass youth emigration. The 'rescue' was structurally a bank bailout via Greek balance sheet." },
    { id: "gr_t4", isTruth: true, country: "gr", fallback: "The 2015 Greek referendum (OXI/NO) — in which 61% rejected EU bailout terms — was followed within days by PM Tsipras accepting essentially the same terms.",
      whyFallback: "July 5, 2015 referendum. July 13 Eurogroup agreement. Tsipras Syriza government complied with the very terms voters rejected. The disconnect between democratic vote and EU economic enforcement was unprecedented." },
    { id: "gr_t5", isTruth: true, country: "gr", fallback: "Greek Golden Dawn — a neo-Nazi party — held parliamentary seats from 2012 and its leadership was eventually convicted in 2020 as a criminal organization.",
      whyFallback: "Murder of Pavlos Fyssas (2013) triggered investigation. Court ruling: Golden Dawn operated as criminal organization. Significant Greek voter share early 2010s (~7%) reflected economic crisis politics. The convictions came years after the crimes." },
    { id: "gr_t6", isTruth: true, country: "gr", fallback: "Greek authorities used Predator spyware (related to Pegasus) against opposition politicians, journalists, and businesspeople — in operations linked to PM Mitsotakis's office.",
      whyFallback: "Predator gate scandal 2022+. Multiple targets confirmed. National Intelligence Service (EYP) involvement. PM denied direct knowledge. Resignations of EYP chief and secretary general. The pattern of state surveillance of political opponents was extensive." },
    { id: "gr_t7", isTruth: true, country: "gr", fallback: "Greek Aegean refugee policy has been criticized for pushbacks — illegal expulsions of asylum seekers back to Turkish waters — documented by NGOs and EU agencies.",
      whyFallback: "Multiple Frontex reports. ECHR cases. Confirmed instances of Greek coast guard returning boats. The 'pushback' policy is technically illegal under non-refoulement principles but operationally widespread. The asylum system collapsed in Aegean islands repeatedly." },
    { id: "gr_t8", isTruth: true, country: "gr", fallback: "The 2023 Tempi train collision killed 57 — most students returning from carnival break — and revealed decades of rail-safety neglect under successive governments.",
      whyFallback: "Greek railways privatization 2017. Multiple safety system failures. ETCS (European Train Control System) not implemented despite EU funding. Multiple ministers and officials implicated. The accident triggered the largest protests since 2015." },
    { id: "gr_f1", isTruth: false, country: "gr", fallback: "Greece's economic problems are purely Greek fault.",
      whyFallback: "German and French bank exposure shaped European policy responses. The Eurozone structural design (single monetary policy, separate fiscal) made adjustment harder. Sovereign mistakes real; structural EU contribution also real. 'Purely Greek fault' was the German political framing; the analysis is more complex." },
    { id: "gr_f2", isTruth: false, country: "gr", fallback: "EU bailouts were genuinely about helping Greece.",
      whyFallback: "Most funds passed through Greece to European bank creditors. IMF later acknowledged 'Greek tragedy' in its own debt analysis. The 'helping Greece' framing was diplomatic; the operational result was bank bailouts via Greek austerity." },
    { id: "gr_f3", isTruth: false, country: "gr", fallback: "Greek tax compliance was the main cause of the crisis.",
      whyFallback: "Real tax evasion existed. Also: capital flight, structural Eurozone imbalances, German export-led growth dependent on European deficits. The 'tax evasion' framing concentrated blame in one direction. The 2010s policy response did improve tax compliance; the crisis cause was multi-factor." },
    { id: "gr_f4", isTruth: false, country: "gr", fallback: "Greek pensioners were too generous and brought on the crisis.",
      whyFallback: "Greek pension system had real problems but was a small fraction of the debt situation. Pensions were a politically convenient target for German voters. Senior Greek pension cuts produced documented hardship. The 'too generous pensions' framing was scapegoating." },
    { id: "gr_f5", isTruth: false, country: "gr", fallback: "Syriza's electoral defeat in 2019 represented voter rejection of austerity politics.",
      whyFallback: "Syriza had already implemented austerity it once opposed. New Democracy's victory followed exhaustion with Syriza, not endorsement of austerity. The framing of '2019 as referendum on austerity' is partial; the political dynamics were more about Syriza's contradictions." },
    { id: "gr_f6", isTruth: false, country: "gr", fallback: "Greek immigration policy is humanitarian and EU-compliant.",
      whyFallback: "Multiple documented pushbacks. Aegean detention conditions criticized by UN agencies. EU's own Frontex involved. The 'humanitarian' framing is talking point; the operational reality has produced deaths." },
    { id: "gr_f7", isTruth: false, country: "gr", fallback: "The Tempi disaster was an isolated accident with no systemic implications.",
      whyFallback: "Decades of underinvestment. EU safety funds undeployed. Multiple safety system failures simultaneously. Political-administrative accountability cycle. The 'isolated accident' framing was government response; the structural causes were systemic." },

    // ============== Czech Republic — 8T + 7F ==============
    { id: "cz_t1", isTruth: true, country: "cz", fallback: "Andrej Babiš — Czech billionaire and former PM — was found by EU OLAF to have illegitimately received EU subsidies for his Agrofert agricultural conglomerate while heading the government.",
      whyFallback: "Stork's Nest (Čapí hnízdo) case. €2 million EU subsidy fraud. Babiš stepped down briefly as PM during prosecution. ECJ rulings against him. The conflict between his business empire and political role was systemic." },
    { id: "cz_t2", isTruth: true, country: "cz", fallback: "Babiš appeared in the Pandora Papers (2021) as the owner of offshore companies that bought a €15 million French Riviera property.",
      whyFallback: "Pandora Papers leak. Offshore companies in Monaco and British Virgin Islands. Babiš denied wrongdoing. His ANO party lost the 2021 election partly due to the revelation. The pattern of political-business overlap was definitive." },
    { id: "cz_t3", isTruth: true, country: "cz", fallback: "Czech Republic, despite Western alignment, has been documented to host significant Russian intelligence operations — including the 2014 Vrbětice arms depot explosion attributed to Russian GRU.",
      whyFallback: "Czech investigation 2021 attributed Vrbětice to GRU Unit 29155 (same unit as Skripal poisoning). Two Russian agents identified (Petrov/Boshirov). Czech expelled Russian diplomats; Russia retaliated. The Russian operations on NATO territory pattern." },
    { id: "cz_t4", isTruth: true, country: "cz", fallback: "Czech privatization in the 1990s — voucher privatization — was widely criticized for enabling rapid wealth concentration through opaque practices.",
      whyFallback: "Multiple insider scandals (\"tunneling\"). Vít Bárta, Petr Kellner empires. Klaus government's voucher model became case study in problematic transition economics. Several major scandals never produced senior convictions." },
    { id: "cz_t5", isTruth: true, country: "cz", fallback: "Czech billionaire Petr Kellner — until his 2021 death the country's wealthiest person — built PPF Group through emerging-market consumer credit (including Russia and China) that critics characterized as predatory.",
      whyFallback: "Home Credit lending in Russia, China, Vietnam, Philippines. Estimated net worth $17B+ at peak. PPF Group operations now under new leadership; Russian operations divested post-2022 invasion. The wealth accumulation pattern was substantial." },
    { id: "cz_t6", isTruth: true, country: "cz", fallback: "Czech Republic was the source of Czech-made Semtex plastic explosive — used in IRA, Libyan-backed terrorism (Lockerbie), and other operations through the 1970s-1990s.",
      whyFallback: "Semtex manufactured by Czechoslovak company Synthesia. Significant export to Libya during the Cold War. Used in Lockerbie bombing (1988). Czech government slowly restricted exports post-1989. The Cold War-era explosives trade was structural." },
    { id: "cz_t7", isTruth: true, country: "cz", fallback: "Czech-Slovak political separation (1993) was negotiated by political elites — many Slovaks and Czechs preferred continued unity, but neither population had a referendum.",
      whyFallback: "Václav Klaus (Czech) and Vladimír Mečiar (Slovak) negotiated. Multiple polls showed preference for federation. No referendum held in either republic. The 'Velvet Divorce' was politically clean but democratically thin." },
    { id: "cz_t8", isTruth: true, country: "cz", fallback: "Czech Republic was a significant source of arms exports to multiple conflict zones — including Iraq pre-2003, multiple African conflicts, and continuing operations today.",
      whyFallback: "Czech arms industry roots in WWII-era weapons production. Modern Czech firms (CZ, Aero Vodochody) major exporters. Documented sales to Saudi Arabia, multiple African states. The 'peaceful Central Europe' framing coexists with substantial arms-export business." },
    { id: "cz_f1", isTruth: false, country: "cz", fallback: "Czech democracy is uniformly stable.",
      whyFallback: "Babiš-era conflict of interest. Multiple presidents with questionable Russia/China ties (Zeman). The Communist Party's transition. The democracy operates; uniform stability overstates." },
    { id: "cz_f2", isTruth: false, country: "cz", fallback: "Czech privatization was a clean success.",
      whyFallback: "Multiple tunneling scandals. Major banking failures (Komerční banka, IPB). Voucher privatization concentrated wealth in opaque ways. The 'success' framing reflects macroeconomic transition; the social and corporate governance outcomes were mixed." },
    { id: "cz_f3", isTruth: false, country: "cz", fallback: "Czech Republic is fully pro-Western.",
      whyFallback: "Multi-vector foreign policy. President Zeman's China and Russia engagement. Babiš's mixed signals on Russia. The 'fully pro-Western' framing is recent (post-2022); the pre-war positioning was more multi-directional." },
    { id: "cz_f4", isTruth: false, country: "cz", fallback: "Czech press is fully independent.",
      whyFallback: "Babiš-era Mafra (major newspapers) under his ownership. Concentration in remaining outlets. Reporters Without Borders rankings: high overall but with concerns. The independence is meaningful but not absolute." },
    { id: "cz_f5", isTruth: false, country: "cz", fallback: "The Czech economy fully benefits Czechs.",
      whyFallback: "Heavy German-owned manufacturing (Škoda/VW, etc.). Profits flow to foreign owners. Czech workers' wages structurally below German equivalents for similar work. The 'benefits Czechs' framing is partial." },
    { id: "cz_f6", isTruth: false, country: "cz", fallback: "Czech Roma face no significant discrimination.",
      whyFallback: "Multiple documented patterns of housing, employment, education discrimination against Roma. Forced sterilization of Roma women (1970s-1990s) documented. The 'no discrimination' framing is contradicted by multiple inquiries." },
    { id: "cz_f7", isTruth: false, country: "cz", fallback: "Velvet Revolution accomplished its goals.",
      whyFallback: "Real political transition. Also: economic transition produced multiple inequality and corruption problems. Post-Communist elites retained significant power. The 'accomplished goals' framing is selective; structural critique of the transition is legitimate." },

    // ============== Slovakia — 8T + 7F ==============
    { id: "sk_t1", isTruth: true, country: "sk", fallback: "Slovak journalist Ján Kuciak was murdered in 2018 along with his fiancée Martina Kušnírová — for investigating links between politicians and the 'Ndrangheta mafia.",
      whyFallback: "Marian Kočner (businessman/oligarch) was charged with ordering the murder. Multiple convictions. Triggered mass protests and the resignation of PM Robert Fico's first government. Kuciak was 27 years old. The case became Europe's most high-profile journalist murder of recent years." },
    { id: "sk_t2", isTruth: true, country: "sk", fallback: "Slovak businessman Marian Kočner was convicted in the murders and was the central figure in a network of corruption involving police, prosecutors, judges, and politicians.",
      whyFallback: "Kočner's Threema messaging app communications revealed extensive corruption networks. Multiple judges and prosecutors prosecuted in subsequent cases. The depth of state capture was unprecedented in EU member state context." },
    { id: "sk_t3", isTruth: true, country: "sk", fallback: "Slovak PM Robert Fico, returned to power in 2023, has openly aligned Slovakia with Hungary on Russia policy — stopping military aid to Ukraine and adopting Russia-friendly rhetoric.",
      whyFallback: "Fico's October 2023 victory. Subsequent policy shifts. Assassination attempt against Fico in May 2024 produced no policy change. Russian propaganda outlets celebrated his return. The pattern of EU dissent on Russia from Fico parallels Orbán's positioning." },
    { id: "sk_t4", isTruth: true, country: "sk", fallback: "Slovak Vladimír Mečiar (PM 1990s) ran what was effectively a hybrid democratic-authoritarian state — including the documented kidnapping of the president's son in 1995.",
      whyFallback: "SIS intelligence services involved in Michal Kováč Jr. kidnapping. Mečiar's 1998 electoral defeat enabled EU accession. The 'Mečiarism' era is the structural precedent for current Fico-era concerns." },
    { id: "sk_t5", isTruth: true, country: "sk", fallback: "Slovakia has been documented to issue 'golden passports' and used by various foreign individuals seeking EU access through investment programs.",
      whyFallback: "Multiple investigations. Some recipients had organized crime or corruption ties. The patterns parallel similar issues in other small EU states. The Slovak program has been partially reformed under EU pressure." },
    { id: "sk_t6", isTruth: true, country: "sk", fallback: "Slovakia hosts a major automotive industry — among Europe's highest per-capita car production — but the wages structurally remain significantly below Western European levels.",
      whyFallback: "VW, KIA, PSA Peugeot Citroën, Jaguar Land Rover plants. Profit flows to foreign owners. Slovak worker wages structurally compressed. The 'industrial success' framing reflects production volume; the distributional question is different." },
    { id: "sk_t7", isTruth: true, country: "sk", fallback: "Slovak Roma — approximately 8-10% of population — face systematic discrimination in housing, education, and policing.",
      whyFallback: "Multiple ECHR rulings against Slovakia. Roma settlements isolated. Education segregation documented. Forced sterilizations historically. The 'EU member state' status coexists with structural exclusion of largest minority." },
    { id: "sk_t8", isTruth: true, country: "sk", fallback: "The 2024 assassination attempt against PM Fico — survived after multiple surgeries — has been used by his government to suppress political opposition and media criticism.",
      whyFallback: "Cintula attempt May 15, 2024. Subsequent legislation against 'spreading false information' and other restrictions. Multiple journalists targeted. The attack was real; the political response went well beyond security." },
    { id: "sk_f1", isTruth: false, country: "sk", fallback: "Slovak democracy is fully consolidated.",
      whyFallback: "Kuciak murder. Multiple corruption scandals. Mečiar-era to current concerns. Fico's authoritarian tendencies. Constitutional democracy operates; consolidation contested." },
    { id: "sk_f2", isTruth: false, country: "sk", fallback: "Slovakia's EU membership reformed everything.",
      whyFallback: "EU membership 2004. Multiple subsequent corruption issues, captured judiciary. EU accountability has been slow. Membership produced gains; transformative reform overstated." },
    { id: "sk_f3", isTruth: false, country: "sk", fallback: "Fico represents traditional Slovak values.",
      whyFallback: "Fico's third term mixes nationalism with Russia alignment and accusations of conspiracy. The 'traditional values' framing is rhetorical; the policy mix is contested." },
    { id: "sk_f4", isTruth: false, country: "sk", fallback: "Kuciak murder was an isolated incident.",
      whyFallback: "Kuciak was investigating systemic corruption networks. The murder revealed the depth of those networks. Multiple subsequent prosecutions. The 'isolated' framing is government response; the substantive findings show systemic problems." },
    { id: "sk_f5", isTruth: false, country: "sk", fallback: "Slovak Roma issues are cultural problems requiring no state action.",
      whyFallback: "Multiple international tribunals (ECHR) have found Slovak state responsible for discrimination. The 'cultural' framing serves political purposes; the legal record describes state action and failure to act." },
    { id: "sk_f6", isTruth: false, country: "sk", fallback: "Slovak press is fully free.",
      whyFallback: "Kuciak murder. Subsequent Fico government media pressure. Public broadcaster RTVS under political pressure. The freedom exists but has been actively threatened, including with violence." },
    { id: "sk_f7", isTruth: false, country: "sk", fallback: "Fico's economic policies improved Slovakia.",
      whyFallback: "Fico-era welfare expansion real. Also: deepening corruption, captured institutions, Mafia ties. Mixed economic results. 'Improved Slovakia' is partisan framing; honest analysis requires multiple metrics." },

    // ============== Bulgaria — 8T + 7F ==============
    { id: "bg_t1", isTruth: true, country: "bg", fallback: "Bulgaria's transition from communism has been marked by deep oligarch capture — and US Treasury (2021) sanctioned Bulgarian businessman Delyan Peevski under the Magnitsky Act for corruption.",
      whyFallback: "Peevski controls significant Bulgarian media and politics. US Magnitsky designation was extraordinary for an EU member state. Bulgarian state response was limited. Multiple subsequent investigations." },
    { id: "bg_t2", isTruth: true, country: "bg", fallback: "Bulgaria consistently ranks lowest on EU rule-of-law and corruption indices — and 2023 elections produced multiple recounts and instability.",
      whyFallback: "Transparency International, World Bank governance indicators. Multiple consecutive caretaker governments. Inability to form stable coalitions reflects underlying institutional capture." },
    { id: "bg_t3", isTruth: true, country: "bg", fallback: "Bulgarian energy infrastructure was historically dependent on Russian gas — and the 2022 cut-off (after refusing to pay in rubles) revealed the strategic vulnerability.",
      whyFallback: "Gazprom cut supplies April 2022. Bulgaria found alternative supplies via Greece and LNG. Multiple Bulgarian politicians had close pre-war Russia ties. The energy dependence shaped policy across decades." },
    { id: "bg_t4", isTruth: true, country: "bg", fallback: "Bulgarian post-communist privatizations transferred significant state wealth to a small circle of politically-connected oligarchs — many tied to former DS (state security) personnel.",
      whyFallback: "Multiple investigations. The pattern of 'mutri' (post-communist organized crime) intersecting with former state security personnel. EU accession (2007) did not resolve. The oligarchic structure persisted." },
    { id: "bg_t5", isTruth: true, country: "bg", fallback: "Bulgaria has Europe's lowest birth rate and highest emigration rate — losing approximately 12% of population since 1990.",
      whyFallback: "Population fell from ~9M (1990) to ~6.5M (2024). Working-age emigration to Western EU. Aging population. The demographic crisis reflects structural economic and governance failures." },
    { id: "bg_t6", isTruth: true, country: "bg", fallback: "Boyko Borissov — multiple-term PM — was secretly recorded sleeping with stacks of cash in a bedside drawer, which Bulgarian prosecutors characterized as photos.",
      whyFallback: "Photos released 2020 showing alleged cash and gold ingots. Prosecutorial investigation hasn't produced conviction. The pattern of Borissov-era corruption claims spans GERB party's multiple government periods." },
    { id: "bg_t7", isTruth: true, country: "bg", fallback: "Bulgaria's chief prosecutor Ivan Geshev was widely viewed as politicized — and the Sotirov Affair (2023) showed prosecutors fabricating evidence.",
      whyFallback: "Geshev removed 2023. Multiple cases of prosecutorial misconduct exposed. The institution's independence and integrity are repeatedly contested. EU concerns expressed but actions limited." },
    { id: "bg_t8", isTruth: true, country: "bg", fallback: "Bulgarian Roma — approximately 10% of population — face severe discrimination in housing, education, and employment.",
      whyFallback: "Multiple ECHR rulings. Roma settlements demolished by municipal authorities. Education segregation. The pattern parallels Slovakia and other Central European cases." },
    { id: "bg_f1", isTruth: false, country: "bg", fallback: "Bulgaria's EU membership has fundamentally transformed governance.",
      whyFallback: "Multiple consecutive caretaker governments. Persistent rule-of-law concerns. US Magnitsky sanctions on Bulgarian politicians. Transformation overstated; some improvements but structural capture continues." },
    { id: "bg_f2", isTruth: false, country: "bg", fallback: "Bulgaria is fully aligned with NATO and EU on Russia.",
      whyFallback: "Multiple Russian-aligned politicians. Bulgarian Orthodox Church Russian alignment. Significant population pro-Russia sentiment historically. Official policy aligns; underlying politics divided." },
    { id: "bg_f3", isTruth: false, country: "bg", fallback: "Bulgarian elections produce stable governance.",
      whyFallback: "Five elections in three years (2021-2023). Multiple caretaker governments. Coalition formation failures. 'Stable governance' has been notably absent." },
    { id: "bg_f4", isTruth: false, country: "bg", fallback: "Peevski is just a businessman.",
      whyFallback: "US Magnitsky designation. Significant media ownership. Documented political-business overlap. The 'just a businessman' framing is contradicted by US sanctions and Bulgarian investigative journalism." },
    { id: "bg_f5", isTruth: false, country: "bg", fallback: "Bulgarian organized crime ended after 1990s.",
      whyFallback: "Multiple post-2000 cases. Mutri networks documented. Drug trafficking through Bulgarian routes. The 'ended in 1990s' framing is wishful; investigations continue across decades." },
    { id: "bg_f6", isTruth: false, country: "bg", fallback: "Bulgarian press is fully free.",
      whyFallback: "Reporters Without Borders consistently ranks Bulgaria lowest in EU for press freedom. Peevski-aligned media dominance. Journalists harassed. Free is overstating." },
    { id: "bg_f7", isTruth: false, country: "bg", fallback: "Bulgaria has reckoned with its communist past.",
      whyFallback: "Lustration limited. Former state security personnel transitioned to business and politics. Holocaust history (Jewish community largely saved by Bulgarian state, but also forced labor camps) contested. Reckoning partial." },

    // ============== Cyprus — 8T + 7F ==============
    { id: "cy_t1", isTruth: true, country: "cy", fallback: "Cyprus operated a 'golden passport' program (2007-2020) that issued EU citizenship to wealthy investors — including Russian oligarchs, Saudi figures, and convicted fraudsters.",
      whyFallback: "Al Jazeera 'Cyprus Papers' (2020) leaked beneficiary lists. EU pressure forced suspension. Multiple beneficiaries with criminal records, sanctions exposure, or political-corruption links. Cypriot officials faced limited consequences." },
    { id: "cy_t2", isTruth: true, country: "cy", fallback: "Cyprus banking sector was a major hub for Russian capital — and the 2013 banking crisis included a unique 'bail-in' that haircut depositors with over €100K.",
      whyFallback: "Eurogroup bail-in agreement March 2013. Mostly affected Russian deposits and wealthy locals. First major sovereign bail-in in Eurozone. Set precedent that depositor wealth above insurance threshold is at risk in bank failure." },
    { id: "cy_t3", isTruth: true, country: "cy", fallback: "Northern Cyprus has been under Turkish military occupation since 1974 — and the 'Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus' is recognized only by Turkey.",
      whyFallback: "Operation Atilla 1974. Property restitution disputes. UN buffer zone. EU accession of Republic of Cyprus (2004) without resolution. The frozen conflict has structural human-rights and economic implications." },
    { id: "cy_t4", isTruth: true, country: "cy", fallback: "Cyprus offshore financial services have been documented to facilitate sanctions evasion and tax structuring for Russian oligarchs — with continued operations even after 2022.",
      whyFallback: "Cyprus Papers leaks. Multiple post-2022 cases of Cypriot-registered companies appearing in sanctions-evasion networks. EU pressure for reform ongoing. The 'reformed' status is partial." },
    { id: "cy_t5", isTruth: true, country: "cy", fallback: "Cyprus hosts significant British sovereign military bases (Akrotiri and Dhekelia) — covering approximately 3% of the island and used for UK Middle East operations.",
      whyFallback: "1960 Treaty of Establishment retained UK base areas. Used in Iraq, Libya, Yemen operations. Effectively a 'last UK colony' in EU territory. The base presence remains politically sensitive but legally entrenched." },
    { id: "cy_t6", isTruth: true, country: "cy", fallback: "Cypriot offshore industry serves multiple foreign-power interests — and revelations show layers of complexity involving Russian, Israeli, Saudi, and Western capital.",
      whyFallback: "Multiple leak investigations (Cyprus Papers, Panama Papers, Pandora Papers). The Mediterranean tax-haven function attracts multiple political-economic networks simultaneously. The 'just Russian' framing is too narrow." },
    { id: "cy_t7", isTruth: true, country: "cy", fallback: "The 2004 Annan Plan referendum on Cyprus reunification was rejected 76% by Greek Cypriots — despite Turkish Cypriot 65% approval.",
      whyFallback: "UN-proposed reunification framework. Greek Cypriot rejection followed by EU accession five days later (Cypriot government rejected the deal then immediately benefited from membership). The asymmetric outcome shaped subsequent politics." },
    { id: "cy_t8", isTruth: true, country: "cy", fallback: "Cyprus's economy is structured around tourism, banking, and shipping — making it particularly vulnerable to specific external shocks.",
      whyFallback: "2013 banking crisis. COVID tourism collapse. Russia sanctions impact on banking. The structural concentration creates predictable vulnerabilities; the political response has been slow." },
    { id: "cy_f1", isTruth: false, country: "cy", fallback: "Cyprus banking secrecy ended after 2013.",
      whyFallback: "Significant reforms. Also: continued use as offshore intermediary. Multiple post-2022 cases. The 'ended' framing is partial; the reduction is real but the function continues." },
    { id: "cy_f2", isTruth: false, country: "cy", fallback: "Northern Cyprus problem is unsolvable.",
      whyFallback: "Multiple plans have been close to resolution. Annan Plan would have unified the island. Political will, not technical feasibility, is the blocker. 'Unsolvable' is convenient framing for both sides." },
    { id: "cy_f3", isTruth: false, country: "cy", fallback: "Golden passport program was a normal business policy.",
      whyFallback: "EU pressure forced cancellation. Multiple criminal recipients. The program was distinctly problematic compared to peer EU member-state practices. Normal it was not." },
    { id: "cy_f4", isTruth: false, country: "cy", fallback: "UK bases serve mutual interests.",
      whyFallback: "Cyprus has limited say over operations from the bases. UK uses them for operations Cyprus would not necessarily approve. The 'mutual' framing is diplomatic; the operational reality is asymmetric." },
    { id: "cy_f5", isTruth: false, country: "cy", fallback: "Cyprus is fully European and Western-aligned.",
      whyFallback: "Russia-friendly business networks. Russian Orthodox Church ties. Significant Russian-resident community. The 'fully Western' framing is recent (post-2022 alignment); the structural relationship with Russian capital was substantial." },
    { id: "cy_f6", isTruth: false, country: "cy", fallback: "Northern Cyprus is a thriving Turkish state.",
      whyFallback: "Economic dependence on Turkey. International isolation. Property restitution disputes unresolved. The 'thriving' framing is Turkish PR; the operational reality is structural fragility." },
    { id: "cy_f7", isTruth: false, country: "cy", fallback: "Cyprus tax structure benefits Cypriots.",
      whyFallback: "Tax services largely benefit foreign-resident capital. Cypriot citizens face higher tax burdens. The 'benefits Cypriots' framing reverses who actually benefits from the tax-haven function." },

    // ============== Ireland — 8T + 7F ==============
    { id: "ie_t1", isTruth: true, country: "ie", fallback: "Magdalene Laundries — institutions run by the Catholic Church with Irish state cooperation — incarcerated approximately 10,000 women and girls in unpaid labor from the 1920s into the 1990s.",
      whyFallback: "McAleese Report 2013. Multiple Religious Sister orders involved. State referrals to the institutions documented. The last Magdalene Laundry closed in 1996. Survivors received limited compensation; the religious orders kept their wealth." },
    { id: "ie_t2", isTruth: true, country: "ie", fallback: "Ireland's Mother and Baby Homes confined unmarried mothers and their children in conditions producing high infant mortality — and at least one site (Tuam) found 796 children's remains in a septic tank.",
      whyFallback: "Tuam discovery 2014 by Catherine Corless. Commission of Investigation report 2021. Cumulative deaths estimated 9,000+. The Catholic Church and Irish state shared responsibility. Limited prosecutions of religious figures." },
    { id: "ie_t3", isTruth: true, country: "ie", fallback: "The 2008 Irish banking crisis was triggered by a property bubble — and the state's blanket bank guarantee transferred €64 billion of private banking losses to taxpayers.",
      whyFallback: "Brian Cowen government's overnight guarantee of all major Irish banks (September 2008). Subsequent troika bailout (€85B). Decade of austerity. The 'rescue' shifted private losses to public balance sheet." },
    { id: "ie_t4", isTruth: true, country: "ie", fallback: "Ireland's corporate tax structure has made it Europe's primary US-corporation tax haven — with Apple, Google, Microsoft, and others using \"Double Irish\" and other structures.",
      whyFallback: "EU ruled Apple's Irish tax structure illegal in 2016 (€13B recovery, contested). Multiple subsequent reforms. Ireland's effective corporate tax rate vastly below nominal. The structure was deliberate Irish policy, not accidental." },
    { id: "ie_t5", isTruth: true, country: "ie", fallback: "Roman Catholic clerical sexual abuse scandals in Ireland involved thousands of victims — and Vatican-Irish state collaboration in shielding perpetrators was documented.",
      whyFallback: "Ferns Report 2005, Murphy Report 2009, Cloyne Report 2011. Multiple bishops resigned. Vatican apologies followed by limited substantive reform. The protection of perpetrators was systematic, not exceptional." },
    { id: "ie_t6", isTruth: true, country: "ie", fallback: "Britain's centuries of colonial rule in Ireland included the Great Famine (1845-1849), in which 1+ million died — partly because grain exports continued throughout.",
      whyFallback: "British government grain exports from Ireland continued despite famine. Workhouse policy. Ulster plantation. Population fell from ~8.5M (1845) to ~4.4M (1925). The 'natural disaster' framing of the famine erases the policy choices." },
    { id: "ie_t7", isTruth: true, country: "ie", fallback: "Ireland's neutrality is a constitutional construct — but the Shannon airport facilitated US military transit to Iraq and Afghanistan with limited Irish oversight.",
      whyFallback: "Multiple US military stopovers at Shannon documented. Irish state has not inspected most transit aircraft for cargo. The 'neutrality' is on paper; the operational cooperation has been continuous." },
    { id: "ie_t8", isTruth: true, country: "ie", fallback: "The Northern Ireland Troubles (1968-1998) involved British state collusion with Loyalist paramilitaries — including the Glenanne Gang murders documented by inquiries.",
      whyFallback: "De Silva Review 2012 (Pat Finucane). Glenanne Gang documented in academic and journalistic work. RUC, UDR, British Army intelligence personnel implicated. Multiple cases lacking accountability." },
    { id: "ie_f1", isTruth: false, country: "ie", fallback: "Ireland has fully reckoned with the Church scandals.",
      whyFallback: "Religious orders retain substantial wealth. Survivor compensation limited. Multiple cases without prosecution. Reckoning is process, not completion." },
    { id: "ie_f2", isTruth: false, country: "ie", fallback: "Ireland's economic miracle was self-generated.",
      whyFallback: "EU funding, US corporate tax avoidance, EU single-market access were structural. Internal Irish policy real but contextual. The 'self-generated' framing is selective." },
    { id: "ie_f3", isTruth: false, country: "ie", fallback: "Irish neutrality is genuine.",
      whyFallback: "Shannon stopovers. NATO partnership programs. EU defense cooperation. The neutrality is constitutional but partial; the operational reality includes Western military cooperation." },
    { id: "ie_f4", isTruth: false, country: "ie", fallback: "The Good Friday Agreement fully solved Northern Ireland.",
      whyFallback: "Brexit reopened multiple issues. Stormont power-sharing repeatedly collapsed. Sectarian divisions persist. The Agreement was a major achievement; framing it as 'fully solved' overstates." },
    { id: "ie_f5", isTruth: false, country: "ie", fallback: "Irish people are uniformly nice.",
      whyFallback: "Stereotype that obscures real political conflicts, historical traumas, and structural problems. The 'uniformly nice' framing is for export tourism; the internal reality is more textured." },
    { id: "ie_f6", isTruth: false, country: "ie", fallback: "Famine was a natural disaster.",
      whyFallback: "Potato blight was natural. The mass death was policy choice. Grain exports continued. The British government had multiple intervention options it did not take. 'Natural disaster' framing erases choices." },
    { id: "ie_f7", isTruth: false, country: "ie", fallback: "Ireland's corporate tax policies are normal.",
      whyFallback: "Multiple international investigations have characterized them as deliberately constructed tax avoidance facilitation. The 'normal' framing is Irish government position; the international consensus is different." },

    // ============== Netherlands — 8T + 7F ==============
    { id: "nl_t1", isTruth: true, country: "nl", fallback: "The Netherlands' colonial empire — including 350+ years in Indonesia — included systematic violence: the 1740 Batavia massacre, multiple wars of pacification, and the post-WWII war (1945-1949) with documented atrocities.",
      whyFallback: "Dutch state apology 2022 for slavery legacy. 2016 ruling on 1947 Rawagede massacre. The Dutch East Indies operations included documented mass killings. Limited prosecutions of perpetrators; structural reckoning recent." },
    { id: "nl_t2", isTruth: true, country: "nl", fallback: "Dutch banking system was heavily implicated in the 2008-2010 financial crisis — and ABN Amro was effectively nationalized after multiple scandals including helping clients evade US sanctions.",
      whyFallback: "ABN Amro 2010 settlement: $500M+ in fines. Multiple sanctions evasion cases. ING Bank Russian money laundering ($775M fine 2018). The pattern of Dutch banking implicated in international financial crimes was structural." },
    { id: "nl_t3", isTruth: true, country: "nl", fallback: "The Netherlands is one of the world's largest tax havens — with multinational \"letterbox\" companies that pay minimal tax while using Dutch tax-treaty network.",
      whyFallback: "Multiple Tax Justice Network reports. The Dutch 'sandwich' tax structure. Multiple Dutch reforms but the structure continues. The Netherlands' tax-haven function affects developing countries particularly." },
    { id: "nl_t4", isTruth: true, country: "nl", fallback: "Dutch agriculture is one of Europe's most intensive — with nitrogen pollution from livestock causing measurable ecological damage and triggering recent farmer protests.",
      whyFallback: "EU rulings forcing nitrogen reduction. Dutch farmers' protests 2019+. Multiple court cases on Natura 2000 areas. The structural problem (intensive agriculture / small geography) requires major change resistance has slowed." },
    { id: "nl_t5", isTruth: true, country: "nl", fallback: "Royal Dutch Shell — now headquartered in UK — has faced multiple major scandals: Niger Delta pollution, Sakhalin Russian operations, Brent Spar disposal, oil sands.",
      whyFallback: "Multiple Niger Delta cases (settled UK High Court 2024). Russian operations divested post-2022. Multiple international environmental cases. The Dutch corporate giant's record was repeatedly contested." },
    { id: "nl_t6", isTruth: true, country: "nl", fallback: "Dutch slavery trade involvement was substantial — and the Netherlands was a major colonizer in West Africa, Brazil, Suriname, and the Antilles.",
      whyFallback: "Dutch West India Company. Estimated 500,000+ enslaved people transported. Dutch state apology 2022 (Prime Minister Rutte). Reparations and substantive reckoning recent and contested." },
    { id: "nl_t7", isTruth: true, country: "nl", fallback: "Indonesian troops trained and equipped by the Dutch carried out 1965-66 anti-communist massacre (500,000-1,000,000 dead) with documented Dutch knowledge and limited objection.",
      whyFallback: "1965 Indonesia anti-communist purges. Dutch diplomats reported back to Hague. Trade relationships with Suharto government developed without conditioning on human-rights issues. The 'no involvement' framing was always partial." },
    { id: "nl_t8", isTruth: true, country: "nl", fallback: "The Dutch government collapsed in 2021 over the toeslagenaffaire — childcare benefits fraud scandal — in which the tax authority falsely accused 26,000+ families, mostly with immigrant backgrounds, of fraud.",
      whyFallback: "Documented systematic discrimination by Dutch tax authority. Families bankrupted, children taken into state care. Rutte cabinet collapsed January 2021. Multiple subsequent investigations confirmed the discrimination pattern." },
    { id: "nl_f1", isTruth: false, country: "nl", fallback: "Dutch tolerance is uniform and applies equally to all.",
      whyFallback: "Geert Wilders' PVV emergence. Dutch Caribbean (Antilles) status concerns. Pim Fortuyn legacy. The 'tolerance' has limits and is contested across decades. The 2023 Wilders election showed major social divisions." },
    { id: "nl_f2", isTruth: false, country: "nl", fallback: "The Netherlands is one of the most equal societies.",
      whyFallback: "Significant inequality measures. Dutch Caribbean significantly worse outcomes. Multiple inequality dimensions. The 'equal' framing is comparative and partial." },
    { id: "nl_f3", isTruth: false, country: "nl", fallback: "Dutch tax policy doesn't harm other countries.",
      whyFallback: "EU multiple criticisms. Developing-country losses from Dutch-mediated tax avoidance documented. The 'no harm' framing is Dutch position; the international consensus is different." },
    { id: "nl_f4", isTruth: false, country: "nl", fallback: "Dutch colonial reckoning has been completed.",
      whyFallback: "Apologies in some areas (Indonesia, slavery). Other dimensions (Caribbean, restitution) less developed. Statues debates ongoing. Reckoning is process, not completion." },
    { id: "nl_f5", isTruth: false, country: "nl", fallback: "Dutch corporations operate to highest ethical standards.",
      whyFallback: "Shell environmental cases. ING money laundering. Multiple banking sanctions evasion. The 'highest standards' framing is corporate communications; the operational record diverges." },
    { id: "nl_f6", isTruth: false, country: "nl", fallback: "Dutch immigration system is fully fair.",
      whyFallback: "Toeslagenaffaire. Multiple discrimination cases. Restrictive policy debates. Immigration system has documented systemic problems. The 'fair' framing is rhetorical." },
    { id: "nl_f7", isTruth: false, country: "nl", fallback: "The Netherlands is among the smallest countries with no significant geopolitical role.",
      whyFallback: "Major Western European trade and energy hub. NATO and EU founding member. Royal Dutch Shell. ASML semiconductor lithography. Significant influence in EU policy. 'No significant geopolitical role' understates." },

    // ============== Austria — 8T + 7F ==============
    { id: "at_t1", isTruth: true, country: "at", fallback: "Austria's relationship with Russian gas was structurally deep — OMV bought 95%+ Russian gas through 2022 — and the Russian energy ties shaped political decisions.",
      whyFallback: "Austria's Gazprom contract through 2040 (cancelled 2024). Multiple political-business ties. Sebastian Kurz's Russia-aligned positions. The Austrian-Russian energy relationship was strategic, not just commercial." },
    { id: "at_t2", isTruth: true, country: "at", fallback: "The 2019 Ibiza Affair — secretly recorded video showing then-vice chancellor Heinz-Christian Strache discussing corrupt deals with someone he believed was a Russian oligarch's niece — collapsed the FPÖ-ÖVP government.",
      whyFallback: "Strache and Johann Gudenus on tape. Government fell within days. Strache convicted on corruption charges. The FPÖ has since regained electoral strength under new leadership. Pattern of FPÖ-Russia engagement continued in different forms." },
    { id: "at_t3", isTruth: true, country: "at", fallback: "Austria has a documented history of harboring fugitive figures — including Soviet intelligence defectors, financial criminals, and individuals fleeing sanctions enforcement.",
      whyFallback: "Vienna's Cold War-era espionage prominence. Multiple sanctions-evasion cases involving Austrian banks. Russian agent presence documented post-2022 EU expulsions. The 'neutral hub' status has had complex implications." },
    { id: "at_t4", isTruth: true, country: "at", fallback: "Austrian banks have repeatedly been implicated in money laundering — including Raiffeisen Bank International's Russia operations that continued after 2022.",
      whyFallback: "Multiple US FinCEN concerns. Raiffeisen's Russia exposure ~25% of profits 2023. EU repeatedly pushed exit; Raiffeisen has delayed. The pattern of Austrian bank involvement in Russia-linked finance was structural." },
    { id: "at_t5", isTruth: true, country: "at", fallback: "Austria's post-WWII denazification was widely viewed as incomplete — and Kurt Waldheim (UN Secretary-General 1972-1981, Austrian President 1986-1992) was found to have hidden his Wehrmacht service in regions where war crimes occurred.",
      whyFallback: "International commission 1988 documented Waldheim's omissions and presence at war crimes locations (though not direct participation). The Austrian state's 'victim of Nazism' framing was challenged. The Waldheim case opened broader Austrian historical reckoning." },
    { id: "at_t6", isTruth: true, country: "at", fallback: "Austrian banks Hypo Alpe-Adria collapse (2014) revealed regional banking corruption — including loans to Balkan oligarchs and political-business networks.",
      whyFallback: "€18B+ bailout. Multiple criminal cases. Carinthia state government implicated. The pattern of southeastern European banking corruption operating through Austrian institutions was significant." },
    { id: "at_t7", isTruth: true, country: "at", fallback: "Sebastian Kurz — youngest chancellor in Austrian history — resigned in 2021 after corruption investigation involving alleged bribery for favorable polling and media coverage.",
      whyFallback: "Multiple charges including corruption and false testimony. ÖVP party deeply implicated. Kurz appealed; was convicted (suspended sentence) in 2024 on false-testimony charges. The 'wunderkind' image collapsed under documented investigations." },
    { id: "at_t8", isTruth: true, country: "at", fallback: "Austria voted in 2024 to extend ÖBB-Postbus operations that include hosting Russian gas infrastructure — and continues using Russian gas reserves and OMV's Russia-linked operations.",
      whyFallback: "Despite official EU sanctions, multiple Russian-related arrangements continued. Multiple post-2022 Russian assets in Austria. The 'firmly with EU' framing has had operational complexity." },
    { id: "at_f1", isTruth: false, country: "at", fallback: "Austria was a victim of Nazi annexation.",
      whyFallback: "1938 Anschluss: large Austrian crowds welcomed Hitler. Austrian Nazis disproportionately represented in SS officer corps. Austrian Holocaust complicity documented. The 'victim' framing was post-war diplomatic construct; the historical record is more complex." },
    { id: "at_f2", isTruth: false, country: "at", fallback: "Austrian neutrality is genuine.",
      whyFallback: "EU member with deep integration. NATO partnership programs. The 'neutrality' has been increasingly nominal. Post-2022 debate on changing constitutional neutrality opened." },
    { id: "at_f3", isTruth: false, country: "at", fallback: "FPÖ is just a normal conservative party.",
      whyFallback: "Founded by former Nazis. Multiple antisemitism and nazism-related scandals over decades. The 'normal conservative' framing has been used periodically but contradicted by the party's own positions and personnel." },
    { id: "at_f4", isTruth: false, country: "at", fallback: "Austria's Russian gas dependence was unavoidable.",
      whyFallback: "Multiple alternatives existed. Austrian government chose the Russian-dependent strategy. The 'unavoidable' framing was political; alternative strategies were technically feasible." },
    { id: "at_f5", isTruth: false, country: "at", fallback: "Sebastian Kurz was a victim of political persecution.",
      whyFallback: "Multiple substantive investigations. ÖVP party deep implication. Convictions on lesser charges. The 'persecution' framing is partisan; the documentation is substantial." },
    { id: "at_f6", isTruth: false, country: "at", fallback: "Austria is fully WWII-reckoned.",
      whyFallback: "Multiple stages of partial reckoning (1980s-2010s). Some aspects (Anschluss complicity, displaced Jewish property, deceased restitution) less complete. The 'fully reckoned' framing overstates progress." },
    { id: "at_f7", isTruth: false, country: "at", fallback: "Austrian banking is uniformly transparent.",
      whyFallback: "Multiple scandals. Raiffeisen Russia exposure. Hypo Alpe-Adria. The 'transparent' framing has been contradicted by repeated international actions. Austria has improved but not uniformly." },

    // ============== Sweden — 8T + 7F ==============
    { id: "se_t1", isTruth: true, country: "se", fallback: "Sweden's Bofors arms scandal (1980s) involved bribes paid to Indian officials for artillery contracts — and damaged Swedish-Indian relations for decades.",
      whyFallback: "Howitzer FH-77 contract 1986. Indian investigation revealed kickbacks. Multiple Swedish prosecutions stalled. Rajiv Gandhi-era India politicians implicated. The 'Swedish neutrality and ethics' framing was challenged by the documentary record." },
    { id: "se_t2", isTruth: true, country: "se", fallback: "Sweden's arms industry — Saab and BAE Systems Sweden — is one of Europe's largest and has been documented exporting to conflict zones throughout the world.",
      whyFallback: "Multiple recent investigations: Saudi Arabia, Yemen connections through UAE. The 'neutral peaceful Sweden' narrative coexists with substantial weapons trade. The exports continued through Social Democratic and conservative governments alike." },
    { id: "se_t3", isTruth: true, country: "se", fallback: "The 1994 MS Estonia ferry sinking — 852 deaths in 50 minutes — has been investigated multiple times with persistent questions about military cargo, the sinking cause, and dive ban over the wreck.",
      whyFallback: "Multiple investigations. Joint Accident Investigation Commission (JAIC) findings disputed. Wreck protected by 1995 Estonia Agreement (Sweden, Finland, Estonia) — outlawing diving. Underwater documentaries by Henrik Evertsson 2020. Multiple unresolved questions." },
    { id: "se_t4", isTruth: true, country: "se", fallback: "Sweden's forced sterilization program (1934-1976) sterilized approximately 63,000 people — most without informed consent and disproportionately targeting women, Roma, and the institutionalized.",
      whyFallback: "Eugenics program lasted decades after Nazi Germany's defeat. Government apology 1999. Compensation limited. The 'progressive Swedish democracy' framing operated parallel to systematic eugenics policy." },
    { id: "se_t5", isTruth: true, country: "se", fallback: "Sweden's 'million programme' housing of the 1960s-70s — and subsequent immigration policies — produced concentrated, ethnically segregated housing that complicated Swedish integration.",
      whyFallback: "Multiple analyses of Swedish urban segregation. Crime concentration in specific suburbs. Multiple government commissions. The 'successful Swedish integration' framing is partial; the structural housing policy created segregation problems." },
    { id: "se_t6", isTruth: true, country: "se", fallback: "Swedish-Saudi arms cooperation, despite documented Saudi human-rights abuses including Yemen, has been a strategic Swedish industrial-policy choice across multiple governments.",
      whyFallback: "Margot Wallström's 2015 Saudi diplomatic standoff produced limited operational change. Saudi arms exports continued. The pattern of Swedish neutrality / Saudi cooperation has been structural." },
    { id: "se_t7", isTruth: true, country: "se", fallback: "Sweden's NATO accession (2023) ended 200+ years of neutrality — and was driven primarily by elite political decision, not extensive public deliberation.",
      whyFallback: "Russia invasion of Ukraine triggered rapid policy shift. Quick decision process. Some Swedish opinion polls show divided population. The 'fully unified Swedish support for NATO' framing is partial; the political process was top-down." },
    { id: "se_t8", isTruth: true, country: "se", fallback: "Swedish industrial chemical pollution and military waste have been documented across multiple sites — and the 'pristine Sweden' image has obscured significant historical contamination.",
      whyFallback: "Multiple Swedish environmental cases. Naval base contamination. Mining sector environmental issues. The 'pristine' framing serves tourist and political purposes; the environmental record is more complex." },
    { id: "se_f1", isTruth: false, country: "se", fallback: "Sweden's neutrality was always genuine.",
      whyFallback: "WWII: continued iron-ore sales to Nazi Germany. Cold War: secret NATO contingency planning. Multiple intelligence-sharing arrangements. The 'genuine neutrality' framing was Cold War PR; the operational reality was complex alignment." },
    { id: "se_f2", isTruth: false, country: "se", fallback: "Sweden is the world's most equal society.",
      whyFallback: "Increasing inequality since 1990s. Suburban ethnic segregation. Multiple immigration-integration issues. The 'most equal' framing is partial and dated. Sweden remains comparatively equal but the trend has been negative." },
    { id: "se_f3", isTruth: false, country: "se", fallback: "Sweden has never had race or ethnic problems.",
      whyFallback: "Forced sterilization disproportionately targeted Roma. Sami indigenous people's historical mistreatment. Recent housing segregation. The 'no race problems' framing is wishful." },
    { id: "se_f4", isTruth: false, country: "se", fallback: "Swedish women's equality is fully achieved.",
      whyFallback: "Significant remaining wage gaps. Sexual harassment cases. The 'fully achieved' framing is partial; multiple metrics show remaining gaps." },
    { id: "se_f5", isTruth: false, country: "se", fallback: "Swedish arms exports are heavily restricted.",
      whyFallback: "Multiple ongoing major arms exports. Saudi Arabia, UAE, multiple Asian states. The 'restricted' framing is partial; significant exports continue across governments." },
    { id: "se_f6", isTruth: false, country: "se", fallback: "Estonia ferry case is fully solved.",
      whyFallback: "Multiple unresolved questions. Dive ban. Recent documentaries raised new issues. The 'fully solved' framing is government position; investigative reporting continues to find anomalies." },
    { id: "se_f7", isTruth: false, country: "se", fallback: "Swedish integration of immigrants is fully successful.",
      whyFallback: "Documented concentration in specific suburbs. Multiple government inquiries on integration challenges. Multiple electoral cycles reflecting these tensions. The 'fully successful' framing is partial." },

    // ────────── PAKISTAN (pk) ──────────
    { id: "pk_t1", isTruth: true, country: "pk", fallback: "Pakistan's ISI (Inter-Services Intelligence) runs a vast business empire and has documented intervention in politics across multiple decades.",
      whyFallback: "ISI commercial holdings include real estate, banking, manufacturing. Documented role in installing, removing, and pressuring civilian governments. Multiple academic and journalist accounts (Ayesha Siddiqa's 'Military Inc.', etc.)." },
    { id: "pk_t2", isTruth: true, country: "pk", fallback: "The Bhutto and Sharif political dynasties have alternated in power across decades with repeated corruption allegations and convictions.",
      whyFallback: "Asif Ali Zardari ('Mr. Ten Percent'), Nawaz Sharif (Panama Papers, disqualified 2017, convicted Avenfield). Multiple anti-corruption cases. The dynastic-corruption pattern is documented across both major parties." },
    { id: "pk_t3", isTruth: true, country: "pk", fallback: "Pakistan's military operates large commercial enterprises (Fauji Foundation, Army Welfare Trust) constituting a state within a state economically.",
      whyFallback: "Multi-billion-dollar military business empire across sectors. Documented in 'Military Inc.' Land, banking, cement, fertilizer, food. The economic dimension of military power is large and well-documented." },
    { id: "pk_t4", isTruth: true, country: "pk", fallback: "Pakistan harbored Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad for years near the Pakistan Military Academy until the 2011 US raid.",
      whyFallback: "Geographic proximity to military academy made claims of ignorance implausible to many analysts. Multiple investigations questioned Pakistani knowledge. The harboring near military facility is documented; the level of state knowledge debated but the basic fact established." },
    { id: "pk_t5", isTruth: true, country: "pk", fallback: "The A.Q. Khan nuclear proliferation network sold nuclear technology to North Korea, Iran, and Libya with at least implicit state acquiescence.",
      whyFallback: "Khan publicly confessed 2004 then later retracted. IAEA documented transfers. North Korean, Iranian, Libyan nuclear programs traced to network. The proliferation is documented; state knowledge debated but the network operated openly for years." },
    { id: "pk_t6", isTruth: true, country: "pk", fallback: "Pakistan accepted massive US military aid while simultaneously supporting Taliban factions fighting US forces in Afghanistan.",
      whyFallback: "$33B+ US aid 2002-2020. Documented ISI links to Haqqani network and Taliban. Multiple US officials publicly accused Pakistan of double game. The dual role is documented across multiple US administrations." },
    { id: "pk_t7", isTruth: true, country: "pk", fallback: "Religious minorities (Christians, Hindus, Ahmadis, Shias) face documented persecution including blasphemy law abuse and targeted violence.",
      whyFallback: "Asia Bibi case. Multiple anti-Ahmadi laws. Documented forced conversions of Hindu/Christian girls. Targeted Shia killings. The persecution is documented by HRW, USCIRF, Pakistani civil society." },
    { id: "pk_t8", isTruth: true, country: "pk", fallback: "Imran Khan's 2022 removal and subsequent imprisonment shows recurring military-judicial intervention in civilian politics.",
      whyFallback: "Khan removed by no-confidence vote with documented military pressure shifts. Subsequent multiple convictions on rapid timelines. Election interference allegations. The pattern of military shaping political outcomes is documented across decades, regardless of who is currently favored." },
    { id: "pk_f1", isTruth: false, country: "pk", fallback: "Pakistan is fully governed by elected civilians.",
      whyFallback: "Multiple military coups (1958, 1977, 1999). Even in civilian periods, documented military influence over key portfolios. The 'fully civilian' framing is contradicted by structural reality." },
    { id: "pk_f2", isTruth: false, country: "pk", fallback: "Pakistan never supported the Taliban after 9/11.",
      whyFallback: "Documented ISI links to Taliban factions throughout 2001-2021. Multiple US officials accused Pakistan publicly. The 'never supported' framing is contradicted by extensive documentation." },
    { id: "pk_f3", isTruth: false, country: "pk", fallback: "The A.Q. Khan network operated without any state knowledge.",
      whyFallback: "Network operated openly for years. Khan was national hero. Implausible that this scale operated without state acquiescence. The 'no state knowledge' framing is the official position; analysts widely dispute it." },
    { id: "pk_f4", isTruth: false, country: "pk", fallback: "Pakistani elections are fully free and fair.",
      whyFallback: "Multiple documented military-judicial interventions, disqualifications, candidate pressure. The 'fully free and fair' framing is partial; multiple electoral cycles show structural interference." },
    { id: "pk_f5", isTruth: false, country: "pk", fallback: "Religious minorities have full equality in Pakistan.",
      whyFallback: "Constitutional restrictions on Ahmadis. Blasphemy laws disproportionately applied. Documented forced conversions. The 'full equality' framing is contradicted by law and practice." },
    { id: "pk_f6", isTruth: false, country: "pk", fallback: "Imran Khan was removed through purely democratic process.",
      whyFallback: "Documented military stance shift preceded removal. Subsequent rapid convictions. The 'purely democratic' framing is contested; military role in political shifts is documented across multiple cycles." },
    { id: "pk_f7", isTruth: false, country: "pk", fallback: "Balochistan has no human rights concerns.",
      whyFallback: "Documented enforced disappearances, missing persons cases, military operations. Multiple UN concerns. The 'no concerns' framing is contradicted by extensive documentation." },

    // ────────── INDONESIA (id) ──────────
    { id: "id_t1", isTruth: true, country: "id", fallback: "Suharto's 32-year rule (1967-1998) is estimated to have looted $15-35 billion from Indonesian state coffers, ranking him among history's most corrupt leaders.",
      whyFallback: "Transparency International estimate $15-35B. Multiple investigations. Suharto family business empire (cendana group). Documented across academic literature and Indonesian post-Suharto inquiries." },
    { id: "id_t2", isTruth: true, country: "id", fallback: "The 1965-66 anti-communist massacre killed 500,000 to 1 million+ Indonesians with documented US/UK intelligence support for the army-led campaign.",
      whyFallback: "Multiple historical estimates 500K-1M+. Declassified US/UK documents show support and target lists provided to Indonesian army. The Act of Killing documentary. The mass killing and Western support are documented." },
    { id: "id_t3", isTruth: true, country: "id", fallback: "The Freeport McMoRan Grasberg mine in Papua has been linked to environmental destruction, military payments, and human rights abuses for decades.",
      whyFallback: "Documented military payments by Freeport. Multiple environmental disasters (tailings dumping). Papuan independence movement repression. The combination of corporate, military, and human rights issues is extensively documented." },
    { id: "id_t4", isTruth: true, country: "id", fallback: "Indonesian special forces (Kopassus) have documented histories of human rights abuses including in East Timor, Papua, and Aceh.",
      whyFallback: "East Timor invasion 1975, occupation killed 100K-180K+. Kopassus role documented. Papua and Aceh insurgencies. Multiple HRW reports. The abuse pattern across operations is documented." },
    { id: "id_t5", isTruth: true, country: "id", fallback: "The East Timor invasion and occupation (1975-1999) killed approximately 100,000-180,000 Timorese, with documented US/Australian acquiescence.",
      whyFallback: "Ford-Kissinger green light documented (declassified docs). Australian recognition. Truth and Reconciliation Commission documented scale. The mass killing and Western complicity are documented." },
    { id: "id_t6", isTruth: true, country: "id", fallback: "Indonesia's palm oil expansion has driven massive deforestation and orangutan habitat loss, with documented illegal land clearing and burning.",
      whyFallback: "Multiple satellite-documented illegal clearing operations. 2015 fire crisis $16B damage. Orangutan population decline. The environmental damage is extensively documented despite government denials." },
    { id: "id_t7", isTruth: true, country: "id", fallback: "Indonesia has documented ongoing repression in West Papua, including restrictions on foreign journalists and observers.",
      whyFallback: "Foreign journalists routinely denied access. Multiple killing incidents. Internet shutdowns during unrest. UN human rights concerns. The Papua repression is documented despite access restrictions." },
    { id: "id_t8", isTruth: true, country: "id", fallback: "Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) weakening under Jokowi reflects documented elite resistance to anti-corruption reform.",
      whyFallback: "2019 law changes substantially weakened KPK. Multiple anti-corruption activists displaced. Civil society criticism widespread. The weakening trajectory is documented; debate is over motivation." },
    { id: "id_f1", isTruth: false, country: "id", fallback: "Suharto's wealth was earned through legitimate means.",
      whyFallback: "Multiple investigations document state looting. Family business empire built through state contracts. The 'legitimate means' framing contradicts extensive documentation." },
    { id: "id_f2", isTruth: false, country: "id", fallback: "The 1965-66 massacre is a Western invention.",
      whyFallback: "Multiple Indonesian sources, including military records, document the killings. The Act of Killing features Indonesian perpetrators describing their actions. The 'Western invention' framing is unsupported." },
    { id: "id_f3", isTruth: false, country: "id", fallback: "East Timor was always part of Indonesia.",
      whyFallback: "East Timor was Portuguese territory until 1975, then independent briefly before Indonesian invasion. UN never recognized annexation. 1999 referendum showed overwhelming independence support. The 'always part' framing is historically false." },
    { id: "id_f4", isTruth: false, country: "id", fallback: "Papua independence movement has no legitimate grievances.",
      whyFallback: "1969 'Act of Free Choice' widely criticized as coerced (1,025 hand-picked voters). Documented ongoing repression. Multiple international observers question integration legitimacy. The 'no grievances' framing is contradicted." },
    { id: "id_f5", isTruth: false, country: "id", fallback: "Indonesia has fully addressed its past human rights abuses.",
      whyFallback: "No trials for 1965-66. East Timor accountability minimal. Papua issues ongoing. The 'fully addressed' framing is contradicted; major historical accountability remains pending." },
    { id: "id_f6", isTruth: false, country: "id", fallback: "Palm oil expansion has not caused environmental damage.",
      whyFallback: "Multiple peer-reviewed studies document deforestation. Satellite data shows clearing. 2015 fire crisis. The 'no damage' framing contradicts extensive scientific documentation." },
    { id: "id_f7", isTruth: false, country: "id", fallback: "KPK weakening was purely technical.",
      whyFallback: "Multiple substantive changes weakened independence and authority. Anti-corruption activists publicly opposed. The 'purely technical' framing is the official position; substantive analysis disputes it." },

    // ────────── THAILAND (th) ──────────
    { id: "th_t1", isTruth: true, country: "th", fallback: "Thailand's lèse-majesté law (Section 112) carries up to 15 years per count and has been used to imprison hundreds, including for social media posts and historical academic work.",
      whyFallback: "Multiple convictions with sentences exceeding 30 years for multiple counts. Documented use against political opponents. UN and HRW concerns. The law's scope and application are documented." },
    { id: "th_t2", isTruth: true, country: "th", fallback: "Thailand has had 12+ successful military coups and multiple attempted coups since 1932, making it among the most coup-prone modern states.",
      whyFallback: "Multiple successful and attempted coups including 1947, 1957, 1971, 1976, 1991, 2006, 2014. The pattern is well-documented; Thailand is consistently cited in coup-frequency studies." },
    { id: "th_t3", isTruth: true, country: "th", fallback: "The 2014 Prayuth coup overthrew an elected government and the resulting junta restructured politics through new constitution favoring military influence.",
      whyFallback: "Coup against Yingluck Shinawatra government. New constitution allowed appointed Senate. Junta-favored party Palang Pracharath won 2019. The military restructuring is documented." },
    { id: "th_t4", isTruth: true, country: "th", fallback: "The 2010 'red shirt' protest crackdown killed 90+ civilians in central Bangkok with documented military operations.",
      whyFallback: "Multiple Thai inquiries documented military role. Sniper killings of unarmed civilians documented. Subsequent accountability minimal. The killings are documented though official accountability remained limited." },
    { id: "th_t5", isTruth: true, country: "th", fallback: "Thailand's southern provinces have a documented Muslim Malay insurgency with thousands killed and ongoing security restrictions.",
      whyFallback: "2004-present insurgency killed 7,000+. Multiple reports document abuses by security forces and insurgents. The conflict and rights concerns are documented." },
    { id: "th_t6", isTruth: true, country: "th", fallback: "The Shinawatra political dynasty (Thaksin, Yingluck) has alternated with military-aligned forces in repeated cycles of election-then-coup.",
      whyFallback: "Thaksin won 2001, removed in 2006 coup. Yingluck won 2011, removed in 2014 coup. The pattern of military undoing elections is documented." },
    { id: "th_t7", isTruth: true, country: "th", fallback: "Thailand's military commercial holdings and royal wealth (CPB managed) are among the largest non-transparent fortunes in Asia.",
      whyFallback: "Crown Property Bureau estimated $40-70B+, largely opaque. Military business operations documented. The scale and opacity are documented. Recent reforms moved some assets directly to king but transparency remains limited." },
    { id: "th_t8", isTruth: true, country: "th", fallback: "Thailand has documented trafficking issues including in fishing industry and tourism sectors, leading to US TIP report downgrades.",
      whyFallback: "Multiple Guardian and AP investigations documented forced labor on fishing boats. US TIP downgrade to Tier 3. Sex trafficking documented despite tourism promotion. The trafficking issues are extensively documented." },
    { id: "th_f1", isTruth: false, country: "th", fallback: "Lèse-majesté law is rarely used.",
      whyFallback: "Hundreds of prosecutions documented. Major escalation since 2020 youth protests. The 'rarely used' framing contradicts extensive documentation." },
    { id: "th_f2", isTruth: false, country: "th", fallback: "Thai coups always restore stability.",
      whyFallback: "Recurring coup cycle itself is evidence of instability. Each coup creates new conflict cycles. The 'restore stability' framing ignores the cyclical pattern." },
    { id: "th_f3", isTruth: false, country: "th", fallback: "The 2010 red shirt crackdown was justified police action.",
      whyFallback: "Multiple Thai inquiries documented military operations and unarmed civilian deaths. The 'justified police action' framing is contradicted by documentation." },
    { id: "th_f4", isTruth: false, country: "th", fallback: "Thai elections are fully accepted by all parties.",
      whyFallback: "Multiple elections overturned by court or coup. Constitutional structures favor junta-aligned parties. The 'fully accepted' framing is contradicted." },
    { id: "th_f5", isTruth: false, country: "th", fallback: "Southern Thai insurgency has no underlying grievances.",
      whyFallback: "Documented economic, cultural, and language grievances of Malay Muslims. Multiple reports document security force abuses. The 'no grievances' framing is contradicted." },
    { id: "th_f6", isTruth: false, country: "th", fallback: "Thai royal wealth is fully transparent.",
      whyFallback: "Crown Property Bureau historically opaque. Recent changes maintain limited disclosure. The 'fully transparent' framing is contradicted." },
    { id: "th_f7", isTruth: false, country: "th", fallback: "Thailand has no human trafficking problem.",
      whyFallback: "Multiple US TIP downgrades. Documented fishing industry forced labor. Documented sex trafficking. The 'no problem' framing is contradicted." },

    // ────────── MALAYSIA (my) ──────────
    { id: "my_t1", isTruth: true, country: "my", fallback: "The 1MDB scandal involved approximately $4.5 billion siphoned from Malaysia's sovereign wealth fund, with PM Najib Razak convicted and sentenced to 12 years.",
      whyFallback: "US DOJ characterized as largest kleptocracy case in DOJ history. Najib convicted 2020, sentence upheld. Funds traced to luxury real estate, art, Hollywood film financing (Wolf of Wall Street). Multiple convictions globally." },
    { id: "my_t2", isTruth: true, country: "my", fallback: "Goldman Sachs paid $2.9 billion in penalties for its role in 1MDB, including in Malaysia, US, UK, and other jurisdictions.",
      whyFallback: "DOJ FCPA case. Tim Leissner pled guilty. Multiple bond issuances at inflated fees. The Goldman role is documented across regulatory actions in multiple countries." },
    { id: "my_t3", isTruth: true, country: "my", fallback: "Najib Razak's wife Rosmah Mansor was separately convicted of corruption involving solar project kickbacks.",
      whyFallback: "2022 conviction. 10-year sentence. Multiple other pending cases. The conviction is documented despite political appeal complications." },
    { id: "my_t4", isTruth: true, country: "my", fallback: "Malaysia has documented racial preference policies (Bumiputera) favoring ethnic Malays in education, business, and government contracts.",
      whyFallback: "New Economic Policy 1971-, continued under various names. Documented in multiple economic studies. Political consensus around basic framework while details debated. The policy structure is documented." },
    { id: "my_t5", isTruth: true, country: "my", fallback: "The Anwar Ibrahim sodomy prosecutions (1998, 2008-2014) were widely viewed as politically motivated by international observers and HRW.",
      whyFallback: "Multiple convictions and acquittals. International observers including HRW characterized as politically motivated. UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention found violations. The political motivation interpretation is documented." },
    { id: "my_t6", isTruth: true, country: "my", fallback: "Malaysia restricts religious freedom, including for ethnic Malays who cannot legally convert from Islam.",
      whyFallback: "Federal Constitution Article 121(1A) gives Sharia courts exclusive jurisdiction over Muslim conversion. Lina Joy case 2007 denied conversion. The restriction is documented in law and practice." },
    { id: "my_t7", isTruth: true, country: "my", fallback: "Malaysia has documented migrant labor abuses, particularly involving Indonesian and Bangladeshi workers in plantation and construction sectors.",
      whyFallback: "Multiple US TIP report concerns. Documented passport confiscation, debt bondage. Glove manufacturer Top Glove labor abuse cases. The migrant labor issues are documented." },
    { id: "my_t8", isTruth: true, country: "my", fallback: "Malaysia's political system has documented patronage networks linking UMNO and other parties to business interests.",
      whyFallback: "Multiple academic studies (Edmund Terence Gomez, etc.). Documented privatization patterns favoring connected interests. The patronage structure is academically documented." },
    { id: "my_f1", isTruth: false, country: "my", fallback: "1MDB was a legitimate sovereign wealth fund.",
      whyFallback: "Established 2009, $4.5B traced as stolen by 2018. US DOJ characterized as largest kleptocracy. The 'legitimate' framing is contradicted by extensive documentation." },
    { id: "my_f2", isTruth: false, country: "my", fallback: "Najib Razak is innocent of all charges.",
      whyFallback: "Convicted 2020. Conviction upheld on appeal. Sentence served from 2022. The 'innocent' framing is contradicted by court rulings." },
    { id: "my_f3", isTruth: false, country: "my", fallback: "Goldman Sachs had no role in 1MDB fraud.",
      whyFallback: "$2.9B in penalties paid. DOJ FCPA conviction. Multiple Goldman executives prosecuted. The 'no role' framing is contradicted by regulatory actions globally." },
    { id: "my_f4", isTruth: false, country: "my", fallback: "Bumiputera policies do not affect non-Malay citizens.",
      whyFallback: "Documented effects on Chinese and Indian Malaysians in education, business, and contracts. The 'do not affect' framing is contradicted by extensive economic documentation." },
    { id: "my_f5", isTruth: false, country: "my", fallback: "Anwar Ibrahim cases had no political dimension.",
      whyFallback: "Multiple international observers found political motivation. UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention finding. The 'no political dimension' framing is contradicted." },
    { id: "my_f6", isTruth: false, country: "my", fallback: "All Malaysians have full religious freedom.",
      whyFallback: "Ethnic Malays cannot legally leave Islam. Multiple Sharia court cases blocking conversion. The 'full religious freedom' framing is contradicted by law and practice." },
    { id: "my_f7", isTruth: false, country: "my", fallback: "Migrant worker abuses are isolated incidents.",
      whyFallback: "US TIP repeated concerns. Multiple sector-wide reports. Glove manufacturer cases. The 'isolated incidents' framing contradicts documented sectoral pattern." },

    // ────────── SINGAPORE (sg) ──────────
    { id: "sg_t1", isTruth: true, country: "sg", fallback: "Singapore was a primary banking hub for 1MDB fund flows, leading to multiple bank penalties (BSI, Falcon, UBS) and over a dozen prosecutions.",
      whyFallback: "MAS revoked BSI banking license 2016. Multiple convictions of bankers. The 1MDB money flow through Singapore is extensively documented in regulatory and court actions." },
    { id: "sg_t2", isTruth: true, country: "sg", fallback: "Singapore's banking secrecy and aggressive private banking growth made it a magnet for global illicit financial flows.",
      whyFallback: "Multiple US, UK and EU investigations involving Singapore-routed funds. FATF concerns periodically. 1MDB exposed structural issues. The role in illicit finance is documented despite reforms." },
    { id: "sg_t3", isTruth: true, country: "sg", fallback: "Singapore restricts political opposition through defamation suits, with multiple PAP leaders winning large judgments against opposition figures.",
      whyFallback: "Multiple Lee family defamation suits. J.B. Jeyaretnam bankruptcies. Roy Ngerng case. The pattern of defamation as political tool is documented." },
    { id: "sg_t4", isTruth: true, country: "sg", fallback: "Singapore has restrictive laws on assembly, foreign media reporting, and online speech (POFMA), regularly criticized by RSF and HRW.",
      whyFallback: "Multiple POFMA orders. Public Order Act assembly restrictions. Foreign press accreditation issues. The legal framework's restrictiveness is documented." },
    { id: "sg_t5", isTruth: true, country: "sg", fallback: "Singapore retains capital punishment with documented use against drug couriers including foreign nationals despite international concerns.",
      whyFallback: "Multiple executions including Yong Vui Kong appeals, Nagaenthran K. Dharmalingam 2022 (intellectual disability concerns). UN human rights criticism. The continued use is documented." },
    { id: "sg_t6", isTruth: true, country: "sg", fallback: "Singapore's electoral system uses Group Representation Constituencies (GRCs) and electoral district drawing methods that have been academically criticized as favoring the ruling PAP.",
      whyFallback: "GRC system makes opposition entry harder. Boundary redrawing before elections documented. Multiple academic critiques (Cherian George, Garry Rodan). The structural advantage is documented though debated in magnitude." },
    { id: "sg_t7", isTruth: true, country: "sg", fallback: "Singapore's migrant worker conditions, particularly in dormitories, became major issue during COVID-19 with documented outbreak patterns reflecting poor conditions.",
      whyFallback: "2020 COVID outbreak concentrated in dormitories. Multiple investigations documented overcrowding. Local NGOs (HOME, TWC2) had documented issues pre-COVID. The conditions are documented." },
    { id: "sg_t8", isTruth: true, country: "sg", fallback: "Singapore's media is dominated by state-linked companies (SPH, Mediacorp) with documented self-censorship patterns.",
      whyFallback: "Multiple academic studies on Singapore media (Cherian George, etc.). Government holdings in major media. The structure and effects are academically documented." },
    { id: "sg_f1", isTruth: false, country: "sg", fallback: "Singapore had no role in the 1MDB scandal.",
      whyFallback: "Multiple banks penalized, license revoked. Multiple prosecutions. The 'no role' framing contradicts extensive regulatory documentation." },
    { id: "sg_f2", isTruth: false, country: "sg", fallback: "Singapore has full press freedom.",
      whyFallback: "RSF Press Freedom Index typically ranks Singapore 130s-150s. Multiple POFMA orders. Foreign press accreditation issues. The 'full press freedom' framing is contradicted by international rankings." },
    { id: "sg_f3", isTruth: false, country: "sg", fallback: "Singapore's defamation suits have no political purpose.",
      whyFallback: "Multiple decades of suits against opposition leaders specifically. Pattern documented academically. The 'no political purpose' framing is contradicted." },
    { id: "sg_f4", isTruth: false, country: "sg", fallback: "Singapore's electoral system has no structural bias.",
      whyFallback: "GRC system, boundary redrawing, electoral calendar control documented. Multiple academic critiques. The 'no structural bias' framing is contradicted by academic literature." },
    { id: "sg_f5", isTruth: false, country: "sg", fallback: "Singapore migrant workers have full equal protection.",
      whyFallback: "Different legal regimes for citizens vs. work permit holders. Documented dormitory conditions. Employment Act exclusions. The 'full equal protection' framing is contradicted." },
    { id: "sg_f6", isTruth: false, country: "sg", fallback: "Singapore media operates with full independence.",
      whyFallback: "State-linked ownership structure. Documented self-censorship. The 'full independence' framing is contradicted by media studies." },
    { id: "sg_f7", isTruth: false, country: "sg", fallback: "Singapore's death penalty cases involve no controversy.",
      whyFallback: "Multiple UN human rights criticisms. Intellectual disability concerns in specific cases. Foreign government appeals (Malaysia, etc.). The 'no controversy' framing is contradicted." },

    // ────────── MYANMAR (mm) ──────────
    { id: "mm_t1", isTruth: true, country: "mm", fallback: "The Myanmar military's 2017 operations against Rohingya in Rakhine State are subject to an ICJ genocide case brought by The Gambia with substantial international support.",
      whyFallback: "ICJ provisional measures 2020. UN Independent International Fact-Finding Mission report 2018. 740,000+ Rohingya fled to Bangladesh. Multiple mass killing sites documented. The case and supporting documentation are extensive." },
    { id: "mm_t2", isTruth: true, country: "mm", fallback: "The February 2021 military coup overthrew the elected NLD government and resulted in armed conflict across multiple regions and thousands of civilian deaths.",
      whyFallback: "Coup against Aung San Suu Kyi government. NUG and PDF resistance formed. Multiple ethnic armed organizations involved. Documented civilian deaths now in tens of thousands per multiple monitoring groups." },
    { id: "mm_t3", isTruth: true, country: "mm", fallback: "Myanmar's military (Tatmadaw) maintains massive business conglomerates (MEHL, MEC) creating institutional financial interests in continued military power.",
      whyFallback: "Multiple Amnesty International reports. UN Fact-Finding Mission documented military business empire. Conglomerates span multiple sectors. The military-business fusion is documented." },
    { id: "mm_t4", isTruth: true, country: "mm", fallback: "Myanmar is a major narcotics producer (heroin, methamphetamine) with documented military and ethnic armed group involvement.",
      whyFallback: "UNODC reports document Myanmar as world's second-largest heroin producer and major meth source. Documented Tatmadaw and armed group involvement in production zones. The narco-state dimension is documented." },
    { id: "mm_t5", isTruth: true, country: "mm", fallback: "Aung San Suu Kyi defended Myanmar against genocide charges at the ICJ in 2019, undermining her international human rights reputation.",
      whyFallback: "December 2019 ICJ hearing. Defended military operations. Multiple international NGOs revoked honors. The defense and reaction are documented." },
    { id: "mm_t6", isTruth: true, country: "mm", fallback: "Myanmar's 2008 constitution reserved 25% of parliamentary seats for military appointees, structurally entrenching military power.",
      whyFallback: "Constitutional structure documented. Required 75%+ supermajority for changes made reform impossible without military assent. The structural design is documented." },
    { id: "mm_t7", isTruth: true, country: "mm", fallback: "China and Russia have been principal arms suppliers and diplomatic shields for the Myanmar military despite international sanctions.",
      whyFallback: "SIPRI arms transfer data. UN Security Council vetoes blocking action. Documented Chinese investment continuation post-coup. The shielding role is documented." },
    { id: "mm_t8", isTruth: true, country: "mm", fallback: "Multiple ethnic minority conflicts (Karen, Kachin, Shan, Rohingya) have continued for decades with documented Tatmadaw abuses across all theaters.",
      whyFallback: "Multiple decades of civil war. UN reports across multiple ethnic regions. The pan-ethnic conflict pattern with documented military abuses is extensively documented." },
    { id: "mm_f1", isTruth: false, country: "mm", fallback: "Rohingya issue is purely about illegal immigration.",
      whyFallback: "Rohingya present in region for centuries. 1982 citizenship law specifically excluded them. ICJ genocide case proceeding. The 'illegal immigration' framing is contradicted by historical and legal record." },
    { id: "mm_f2", isTruth: false, country: "mm", fallback: "The 2021 coup was constitutional.",
      whyFallback: "Constitution required civilian-led process. Military used disputed fraud claims rejected by Election Commission. UN, most states characterized as coup. The 'constitutional' framing is contradicted." },
    { id: "mm_f3", isTruth: false, country: "mm", fallback: "Aung San Suu Kyi opposed all military actions.",
      whyFallback: "Defended at ICJ. Government enabled military Rakhine operations. Tatmadaw clearance operations occurred during her tenure. The 'opposed all' framing is contradicted." },
    { id: "mm_f4", isTruth: false, country: "mm", fallback: "Myanmar military business operations are normal.",
      whyFallback: "Scale and political role documented by UN and Amnesty as exceptional. Multi-sector conglomerates with documented funding to military operations. The 'normal' framing is contradicted." },
    { id: "mm_f5", isTruth: false, country: "mm", fallback: "China has no role in supporting the Myanmar military.",
      whyFallback: "Documented arms transfers. UN Security Council vetoes. Continued investment post-coup. The 'no role' framing is contradicted." },
    { id: "mm_f6", isTruth: false, country: "mm", fallback: "Ethnic conflicts in Myanmar have no underlying grievances.",
      whyFallback: "Documented federal demands by multiple ethnic groups. Decades-long armed struggles. Multiple ceasefire breakdowns. The 'no grievances' framing is contradicted." },
    { id: "mm_f7", isTruth: false, country: "mm", fallback: "Myanmar narcotics production has no military involvement.",
      whyFallback: "Multiple UNODC reports document complex armed-actor involvement including Tatmadaw-aligned militias. The 'no military involvement' framing is contradicted." },

    // ────────── SRI LANKA (lk) ──────────
    { id: "lk_t1", isTruth: true, country: "lk", fallback: "The Rajapaksa family controlled Sri Lankan politics for nearly two decades with multiple brothers holding key positions (president, PM, finance minister, defense secretary).",
      whyFallback: "Mahinda Rajapaksa president 2005-2015, PM 2018, 2019-2022. Gotabaya president 2019-2022. Basil finance minister. Multiple other family in key roles. The dynastic concentration is documented." },
    { id: "lk_t2", isTruth: true, country: "lk", fallback: "The final months of Sri Lanka's civil war (early 2009) included documented mass civilian casualties with UN estimates of 40,000-70,000+ killed.",
      whyFallback: "UN Panel of Experts report 2011. Multiple investigations documented shelling of no-fire zones and civilian targets. The mass casualty scale is documented despite government denials." },
    { id: "lk_t3", isTruth: true, country: "lk", fallback: "Sri Lanka's 2022 economic collapse and default reflected documented Rajapaksa family economic mismanagement, vanity projects, and tax cuts that destroyed fiscal balance.",
      whyFallback: "2019 large tax cuts. Multiple loss-making infrastructure projects (Hambantota, Mattala airport). Foreign currency crisis. Default 2022. The trajectory is documented in IMF and economic analyses." },
    { id: "lk_t4", isTruth: true, country: "lk", fallback: "Sri Lanka's Hambantota Port was leased to China for 99 years in 2017 after debt difficulties, becoming a textbook example of debt-trap concerns.",
      whyFallback: "China Merchants Port lease 2017. Initial loans from Chinese state banks. Multiple analyses of debt sustainability. The lease and its circumstances are documented." },
    { id: "lk_t5", isTruth: true, country: "lk", fallback: "The 2019 Easter bombings killed 250+ and intelligence warnings prior were documented to have been ignored or mishandled by political authorities.",
      whyFallback: "Parliamentary Select Committee documented intelligence warnings. Multiple inquiries. The intelligence failure is documented." },
    { id: "lk_t6", isTruth: true, country: "lk", fallback: "Post-war Sri Lanka has documented ongoing repression of Tamil minority including land seizures, surveillance, and disappearance cases.",
      whyFallback: "Multiple HRW, Amnesty, ICG reports. Office on Missing Persons cases. Northern province military presence. The post-war Tamil situation is documented." },
    { id: "lk_t7", isTruth: true, country: "lk", fallback: "The 2022 Aragalaya protest movement successfully forced Gotabaya Rajapaksa to flee the country and resign, becoming a regional example of mass political mobilization.",
      whyFallback: "July 2022 storming of presidential palace. Gotabaya fled to Maldives then Singapore. Resigned via email. The events are documented in real-time global coverage." },
    { id: "lk_t8", isTruth: true, country: "lk", fallback: "Sri Lanka has documented Sinhala Buddhist nationalist movements with episodes of violence against Muslim and Christian minorities.",
      whyFallback: "2018 anti-Muslim riots Kandy. 2019 post-Easter violence. BBS (Bodu Bala Sena) documented activities. The communalism issues are documented across decades." },
    { id: "lk_f1", isTruth: false, country: "lk", fallback: "The Rajapaksa family won fair political competition.",
      whyFallback: "Multiple positions concentrated in family. Documented intimidation of opposition and media. The 'fair political competition' framing is partial; family dynamics structured outcomes." },
    { id: "lk_f2", isTruth: false, country: "lk", fallback: "The 2009 war ended without civilian casualties.",
      whyFallback: "UN Panel of Experts documented 40,000-70,000+ deaths. Multiple investigations. Government denial unsupported by evidence. The 'no civilian casualties' framing is contradicted." },
    { id: "lk_f3", isTruth: false, country: "lk", fallback: "Sri Lanka's 2022 collapse was purely due to COVID and global factors.",
      whyFallback: "Multiple pre-COVID indicators showed fiscal stress. Major Rajapaksa policy choices (tax cuts, organic farming mandate) contributed. The 'purely external' framing is contradicted." },
    { id: "lk_f4", isTruth: false, country: "lk", fallback: "Hambantota port lease was not connected to debt issues.",
      whyFallback: "Multiple analyses link lease to debt service difficulties. Timing followed debt restructuring. The 'not connected' framing is contradicted." },
    { id: "lk_f5", isTruth: false, country: "lk", fallback: "Easter 2019 attacks could not have been prevented.",
      whyFallback: "Multiple specific intelligence warnings documented. Parliamentary inquiry concluded preventable. The 'could not be prevented' framing is contradicted." },
    { id: "lk_f6", isTruth: false, country: "lk", fallback: "Post-war reconciliation is complete in Sri Lanka.",
      whyFallback: "Multiple international and domestic reports document ongoing issues. Missing persons cases unresolved. Military presence in Tamil areas. The 'complete reconciliation' framing is contradicted." },
    { id: "lk_f7", isTruth: false, country: "lk", fallback: "Religious minority violence in Sri Lanka is rare.",
      whyFallback: "Multiple documented episodes. BBS organized activities. The 'rare' framing is contradicted by documented incidents." },

    // ────────── CAMBODIA (kh) ──────────
    { id: "kh_t1", isTruth: true, country: "kh", fallback: "The Khmer Rouge genocide (1975-1979) killed approximately 1.5-2 million Cambodians (~20-25% of population) and remains one of the worst per-capita genocides.",
      whyFallback: "Multiple academic estimates 1.5-2M. Tuol Sleng documentation. ECCC tribunal documentation. The scale and brutality are extensively documented." },
    { id: "kh_t2", isTruth: true, country: "kh", fallback: "Hun Sen's 38-year rule (1985-2023) was characterized by documented suppression of opposition parties, including dissolution of the CNRP in 2017.",
      whyFallback: "Multiple opposition leaders imprisoned or exiled. CNRP dissolved by Supreme Court 2017. Sam Rainsy exile. Kem Sokha trial. The pattern of opposition suppression is documented." },
    { id: "kh_t3", isTruth: true, country: "kh", fallback: "Cambodia's transition from Vietnamese-installed government (1979-1989) shaped subsequent Hun Sen government, which evolved from Vietnamese-aligned to CPP single-party dominance.",
      whyFallback: "Vietnamese intervention 1978-79 installed PRK. Hun Sen prime minister from 1985. CPP evolved from communist origins. The transition history is documented." },
    { id: "kh_t4", isTruth: true, country: "kh", fallback: "Cambodian elections have documented irregularities including the 2018 election where the main opposition was banned, with Hun Sen's CPP winning all 125 seats.",
      whyFallback: "2018 election occurred after CNRP dissolution. International observers refused to monitor. EU withdrew trade preferences over democratic backsliding. The 2018 unanimous CPP result and circumstances are documented." },
    { id: "kh_t5", isTruth: true, country: "kh", fallback: "Cambodia has documented Chinese influence including major infrastructure investment, Ream naval base concerns, and growing economic dependence.",
      whyFallback: "Multiple BRI projects. Sihanoukville casino expansion. US concerns over Ream naval base access. The China dependence trajectory is documented." },
    { id: "kh_t6", isTruth: true, country: "kh", fallback: "Cambodia has documented land-grabbing issues with rural populations displaced for economic concessions, frequently linked to politically connected interests.",
      whyFallback: "Multiple HRW and LICADHO reports. Documented economic land concessions. The land-grabbing pattern is documented across multiple provinces and concession types." },
    { id: "kh_t7", isTruth: true, country: "kh", fallback: "Cambodia's media environment is severely restricted with Cambodia Daily closure (2017), Phnom Penh Post sale to government-linked owners, and multiple journalist prosecutions.",
      whyFallback: "Cambodia Daily closed over alleged tax bill 2017. Phnom Penh Post sale documented. RSF rankings document deterioration. The media restriction trajectory is documented." },
    { id: "kh_t8", isTruth: true, country: "kh", fallback: "Hun Sen's son Hun Manet's succession to PM in 2023 reflected documented dynastic transition concerns.",
      whyFallback: "Father-son political transition August 2023. Multiple analyses on dynastic politics. The succession is documented." },
    { id: "kh_f1", isTruth: false, country: "kh", fallback: "Khmer Rouge was a Western invention or fully external imposition.",
      whyFallback: "Multiple Cambodian, Vietnamese, and Western academic sources document indigenous Khmer Rouge organization. ECCC tribunal documented in Cambodia. The 'Western invention' framing is unsupported." },
    { id: "kh_f2", isTruth: false, country: "kh", fallback: "Hun Sen's elections were fully free and fair.",
      whyFallback: "Multiple elections with opposition harassment. 2018 with opposition banned entirely. International monitors withdrew. The 'fully free and fair' framing is contradicted." },
    { id: "kh_f3", isTruth: false, country: "kh", fallback: "CNRP dissolution was a routine legal matter.",
      whyFallback: "Dissolved 4 months before election. Based on disputed treason claim. EU withdrew trade preferences in response. The 'routine legal' framing is contradicted." },
    { id: "kh_f4", isTruth: false, country: "kh", fallback: "Cambodia has full press freedom.",
      whyFallback: "RSF rankings near bottom globally. Multiple outlet closures. Journalist prosecutions. The 'full press freedom' framing is contradicted." },
    { id: "kh_f5", isTruth: false, country: "kh", fallback: "Cambodia has no Chinese influence concerns.",
      whyFallback: "Multiple analyses of debt and infrastructure dependence. Ream naval base specific concerns. EU and US specific concerns. The 'no concerns' framing is contradicted." },
    { id: "kh_f6", isTruth: false, country: "kh", fallback: "Land concessions in Cambodia follow proper consultation.",
      whyFallback: "Multiple documented displacement cases. LICADHO and HRW reports. The 'proper consultation' framing is contradicted by documented forced displacement." },
    { id: "kh_f7", isTruth: false, country: "kh", fallback: "Hun Manet's succession was based purely on merit.",
      whyFallback: "Multiple analyses of dynastic transition planning. Father-son nature inherently raises questions. The 'purely on merit' framing is contradicted." },

    // ────────── DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO (cd) ──────────
    { id: "cd_t1", isTruth: true, country: "cd", fallback: "Belgian King Leopold II's personal rule (1885-1908) of the Congo Free State killed an estimated 5-10 million Congolese through forced labor, mutilation, and atrocities tied to rubber extraction.",
      whyFallback: "Multiple historical estimates (Hochschild, etc.). Roger Casement and E.D. Morel investigations contemporaneous. Belgian Parliament eventually wrested control from Leopold 1908. The atrocities and scale are extensively documented." },
    { id: "cd_t2", isTruth: true, country: "cd", fallback: "Patrice Lumumba's assassination in 1961 involved documented Belgian and US (CIA) complicity in conjunction with Congolese rivals.",
      whyFallback: "Belgian parliamentary inquiry 2001 acknowledged Belgian moral responsibility. CIA documents released show Eisenhower-era plotting. Multiple historical works (Kalb, De Witte). The complicity is documented." },
    { id: "cd_t3", isTruth: true, country: "cd", fallback: "Mobutu Sese Seko's 32-year US-backed kleptocracy (1965-1997) is estimated to have looted $4-5+ billion from DRC, ranking among Africa's worst examples.",
      whyFallback: "Multiple Transparency International and IMF assessments. US support documented throughout Cold War as anti-Soviet anchor. Personal villa in France (Roquebrune-Cap-Martin). The kleptocracy is documented." },
    { id: "cd_t4", isTruth: true, country: "cd", fallback: "The Congo Wars (1996-2003) killed an estimated 5+ million people, the deadliest conflict since WWII, involving multiple African states and proxy forces.",
      whyFallback: "International Rescue Committee studies. Multiple ethnic and resource dimensions. Rwanda, Uganda, Angola, Zimbabwe involvement. The scale and complexity are documented." },
    { id: "cd_t5", isTruth: true, country: "cd", fallback: "DRC's mineral wealth (cobalt, coltan, gold, diamonds) has fueled documented conflict financing, child labor in mining, and corporate complicity.",
      whyFallback: "Multiple UN Panel of Experts reports on conflict minerals. Cobalt-for-EV-batteries child labor documented (Amnesty 2016). Coltan-conflict link documented. The resource-conflict nexus is documented." },
    { id: "cd_t6", isTruth: true, country: "cd", fallback: "Rwanda has documented military involvement in eastern DRC, including support for M23 rebel group with UN confirmation.",
      whyFallback: "Multiple UN Group of Experts reports document Rwandan support. M23 resurgence 2022 with documented backing. US sanctions against specific Rwandan officials. The Rwandan involvement is documented despite denials." },
    { id: "cd_t7", isTruth: true, country: "cd", fallback: "DRC elections have documented irregularities including the 2018 Tshisekedi result widely viewed as a negotiated outcome rather than reflecting actual vote tally.",
      whyFallback: "Multiple analyses (including leaked CENCO data) suggested Fayulu won actual count. Tshisekedi declared winner in disputed result. The 2018 election controversy is documented." },
    { id: "cd_t8", isTruth: true, country: "cd", fallback: "DRC has documented widespread sexual violence in conflict, with eastern DRC sometimes called 'rape capital of the world' due to systematic use by multiple armed groups.",
      whyFallback: "Multiple UN reports. Dr. Denis Mukwege's Nobel Prize 2018 for work with survivors. Documented use by both rebel groups and elements of state forces. The scale and pattern are extensively documented." },
    { id: "cd_f1", isTruth: false, country: "cd", fallback: "Belgian colonization of Congo brought net benefits.",
      whyFallback: "5-10M deaths under Leopold. Continued forced labor under Belgian Congo. Minimal education infrastructure (~16 university graduates by 1960). The 'net benefits' framing contradicts documented history." },
    { id: "cd_f2", isTruth: false, country: "cd", fallback: "Lumumba's death was purely an internal Congolese matter.",
      whyFallback: "Belgian parliamentary inquiry acknowledged Belgian role. CIA documents show US plotting. The 'purely internal' framing is contradicted by official acknowledgments and declassified records." },
    { id: "cd_f3", isTruth: false, country: "cd", fallback: "Mobutu's wealth was legitimate state compensation.",
      whyFallback: "Estimated $4-5B+. State coffers separately depleted. Personal foreign properties documented. The 'legitimate compensation' framing is contradicted by scale and method." },
    { id: "cd_f4", isTruth: false, country: "cd", fallback: "Congo Wars had no significant foreign involvement.",
      whyFallback: "Rwanda, Uganda, Angola, Zimbabwe, Burundi, Chad, Namibia all documented involvement. The 'no significant foreign involvement' framing is contradicted by extensive documentation." },
    { id: "cd_f5", isTruth: false, country: "cd", fallback: "Cobalt mining in DRC has no child labor or corporate complicity.",
      whyFallback: "Amnesty International 2016 report. Multiple subsequent investigations. EV battery supply chain implications. The 'no child labor' framing is contradicted by repeated documentation." },
    { id: "cd_f6", isTruth: false, country: "cd", fallback: "Rwanda has no role in eastern DRC conflicts.",
      whyFallback: "Multiple UN Group of Experts reports. US sanctions. M23 backing documented. The 'no role' framing is contradicted by repeated UN documentation." },
    { id: "cd_f7", isTruth: false, country: "cd", fallback: "2018 DRC elections produced fully accepted results.",
      whyFallback: "Multiple analyses dispute official tally. Leaked observer data. The 'fully accepted' framing is contradicted." },

    // ────────── KENYA (ke) ──────────
    { id: "ke_t1", isTruth: true, country: "ke", fallback: "Kenya's 2007-2008 post-election violence killed 1,200+ and displaced 600,000+ with documented ethnic dimensions and political organization.",
      whyFallback: "Multiple UN and Kenyan inquiries. ICC indictments of Uhuru Kenyatta and William Ruto subsequently. Kofi Annan-mediated power-sharing agreement. The events and findings are documented." },
    { id: "ke_t2", isTruth: true, country: "ke", fallback: "The Goldenberg scandal (1990s) involved approximately $600 million in fictitious gold/jewelry export rebates with documented links to senior government figures.",
      whyFallback: "Multiple Kenyan investigations. Bosire Commission report. Documented Moi-era corruption case. The scandal and political links are documented." },
    { id: "ke_t3", isTruth: true, country: "ke", fallback: "Kenya's 2017 Supreme Court annulled a presidential election for the first time in African history, citing electoral irregularities.",
      whyFallback: "Supreme Court ruling September 2017. Election rerun followed. Multiple international observers had documented concerns. The annulment is a documented legal first." },
    { id: "ke_t4", isTruth: true, country: "ke", fallback: "Kenya's intelligence and police have documented histories of extrajudicial killings, particularly in counter-terrorism operations and against Somali populations.",
      whyFallback: "Multiple HRW and Amnesty reports. KNCHR reports. Missing-Kenyans documentation. The pattern of extrajudicial killings is documented." },
    { id: "ke_t5", isTruth: true, country: "ke", fallback: "Kenyan colonial Mau Mau detention camps (1950s) involved documented British torture and abuse with UK government eventually paying compensation to survivors (2013).",
      whyFallback: "UK Hanslope Park archive disclosure 2011-13. £19.9M settlement 2013. Multiple academic histories. The colonial abuses and compensation are documented." },
    { id: "ke_t6", isTruth: true, country: "ke", fallback: "Kenya has documented land-grabbing issues including by political elites with much arable land concentrated among connected interests.",
      whyFallback: "Multiple Kenyan investigations. Ndung'u Land Commission report. Documented family/political holdings. The land concentration issues are documented." },
    { id: "ke_t7", isTruth: true, country: "ke", fallback: "Kenya's Anglo Leasing scandal (2000s) involved approximately $700 million in fictitious security contracts, exposed in part by John Githongo's anti-corruption work.",
      whyFallback: "John Githongo evidence and exile. Multiple investigations. Documented Kibaki-era corruption. The scandal is documented." },
    { id: "ke_t8", isTruth: true, country: "ke", fallback: "Kenya has documented Eurobond and SGR (Standard Gauge Railway) debt sustainability concerns with substantial unaccounted spending allegations.",
      whyFallback: "Multiple parliamentary and Auditor General reports. SGR cost overruns documented. The fiscal opacity issues are documented." },
    { id: "ke_f1", isTruth: false, country: "ke", fallback: "2007-2008 violence was spontaneous tribal conflict.",
      whyFallback: "Multiple investigations document political organization. ICC indictments specifically alleged organized crimes against humanity. The 'spontaneous tribal' framing is contradicted." },
    { id: "ke_f2", isTruth: false, country: "ke", fallback: "Kenya's anti-corruption efforts have eliminated grand corruption.",
      whyFallback: "Multiple ongoing scandals (NYS, KEMSA, etc.). Recurring patterns across administrations. The 'eliminated' framing is contradicted." },
    { id: "ke_f3", isTruth: false, country: "ke", fallback: "Kenyan police always operate within the law.",
      whyFallback: "Multiple HRW, Amnesty, and KNCHR reports document extrajudicial killings. IPOA investigations. The 'always within law' framing is contradicted." },
    { id: "ke_f4", isTruth: false, country: "ke", fallback: "British colonial rule in Kenya involved no abuses.",
      whyFallback: "UK government settlement 2013 acknowledged abuses. Multiple academic histories document detention camp abuses. The 'no abuses' framing is contradicted by official acknowledgment." },
    { id: "ke_f5", isTruth: false, country: "ke", fallback: "Kenyan land is fairly distributed.",
      whyFallback: "Multiple commission reports document concentration. The 'fairly distributed' framing is contradicted by documented investigations." },
    { id: "ke_f6", isTruth: false, country: "ke", fallback: "SGR represents a transparent project.",
      whyFallback: "Multiple cost overrun and procurement concerns. Parliamentary inquiries. The 'transparent project' framing is contradicted." },
    { id: "ke_f7", isTruth: false, country: "ke", fallback: "Kenyan elections are universally accepted.",
      whyFallback: "2017 annulled by Supreme Court. Multiple disputed cycles. The 'universally accepted' framing is contradicted." },

    // ────────── SUDAN (sd) ──────────
    { id: "sd_t1", isTruth: true, country: "sd", fallback: "The Darfur conflict (2003-) involved documented mass atrocities with ICC indicting then-president Omar al-Bashir for genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity (2009-10).",
      whyFallback: "ICC arrest warrants 2009 and 2010. UN estimates 300,000+ deaths. Janjaweed militia operations documented. Bashir eventually transferred to ICC custody after 2019 ouster (transferred 2024). The atrocities are extensively documented." },
    { id: "sd_t2", isTruth: true, country: "sd", fallback: "Omar al-Bashir's 30-year rule (1989-2019) involved documented mass atrocities, Islamist policies, and harboring of Osama bin Laden (1991-1996).",
      whyFallback: "Bashir came to power via 1989 coup. Hosted bin Laden until US pressure forced expulsion 1996. Multiple regional conflicts. Removed by 2019 popular uprising. The pattern is documented." },
    { id: "sd_t3", isTruth: true, country: "sd", fallback: "Sudan's 2019 revolution successfully removed Bashir but the subsequent transition was derailed by the 2021 military coup and 2023 RSF-Army war.",
      whyFallback: "April 2019 Bashir ousted by military. Hamdok civilian government. October 2021 coup by Burhan. April 2023 war between Burhan's army and Hemedti's RSF. The trajectory is documented." },
    { id: "sd_t4", isTruth: true, country: "sd", fallback: "The Rapid Support Forces (RSF) under Hemedti evolved from the Janjaweed militia accused of Darfur atrocities and now controls vast commercial interests.",
      whyFallback: "Janjaweed lineage documented in multiple reports. RSF gold mining and other commercial holdings documented. UAE and other links to RSF documented. The institutional evolution is documented." },
    { id: "sd_t5", isTruth: true, country: "sd", fallback: "The 2023-present Sudan war has caused the world's largest displacement crisis with 10+ million displaced and documented famine conditions in multiple regions.",
      whyFallback: "Multiple UN OCHA reports. IPC famine classifications. 10M+ displaced figures. The scale of the humanitarian crisis is documented." },
    { id: "sd_t6", isTruth: true, country: "sd", fallback: "Sudan has documented foreign involvement in current war including UAE arms supplies to RSF and Egyptian support for Army.",
      whyFallback: "Multiple UN Panel of Experts reports. Documented arms flows. Multiple investigative reports (NYT, Reuters). The foreign involvement is documented despite denials." },
    { id: "sd_t7", isTruth: true, country: "sd", fallback: "Sudanese oil and gold extraction historically funded conflict economies including under Bashir and now under RSF/Army factions.",
      whyFallback: "Multiple resource-conflict analyses. Gold smuggling through UAE documented. Oil revenue patterns documented. The resource-conflict link is documented." },
    { id: "sd_t8", isTruth: true, country: "sd", fallback: "South Sudan's 2011 secession followed decades of civil war that killed 1.5-2.5 million Sudanese, primarily in the south.",
      whyFallback: "Second Sudanese Civil War 1983-2005. Multiple academic estimates. 2005 CPA. 2011 independence referendum. The conflict and casualties are documented." },
    { id: "sd_f1", isTruth: false, country: "sd", fallback: "Darfur was not genocide.",
      whyFallback: "ICC indictments specifically charged genocide. UN findings extensive. US and other governments characterized as genocide. The 'not genocide' framing contradicts formal international determinations." },
    { id: "sd_f2", isTruth: false, country: "sd", fallback: "Bashir's policies were purely religious in motivation.",
      whyFallback: "Multiple ethnic and political dimensions documented. Economic dimensions in Darfur and South. The 'purely religious' framing is contradicted." },
    { id: "sd_f3", isTruth: false, country: "sd", fallback: "RSF has no link to Janjaweed.",
      whyFallback: "Multiple UN and academic sources document institutional and personnel continuity. The 'no link' framing is contradicted." },
    { id: "sd_f4", isTruth: false, country: "sd", fallback: "Current Sudan war is purely internal.",
      whyFallback: "Multiple documented foreign arms suppliers and political backers. The 'purely internal' framing is contradicted." },
    { id: "sd_f5", isTruth: false, country: "sd", fallback: "Sudan never harbored international terrorists.",
      whyFallback: "Bin Laden documented residence 1991-1996. Multiple other documented hosting. The 'never harbored' framing is contradicted." },
    { id: "sd_f6", isTruth: false, country: "sd", fallback: "South Sudan independence solved Sudan's conflicts.",
      whyFallback: "Darfur continued. Other regional conflicts continued. New civil war 2023. The 'solved conflicts' framing is contradicted." },
    { id: "sd_f7", isTruth: false, country: "sd", fallback: "Sudan's resources are transparently managed.",
      whyFallback: "Multiple gold smuggling investigations. Oil revenue opacity documented. The 'transparently managed' framing is contradicted." },

    // ────────── ZIMBABWE (zw) ──────────
    { id: "zw_t1", isTruth: true, country: "zw", fallback: "Robert Mugabe's 37-year rule (1980-2017) involved documented mass atrocities including Gukurahundi massacres (1983-87) killing 10,000-20,000+ Ndebele.",
      whyFallback: "Multiple academic and human rights documentation. 5th Brigade operations. Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace report. Mugabe later acknowledged as 'moment of madness'. The atrocities are documented despite long political denial." },
    { id: "zw_t2", isTruth: true, country: "zw", fallback: "Zimbabwe's economy collapsed in the 2000s with hyperinflation reaching 89.7 sextillion percent (November 2008), among history's worst hyperinflations.",
      whyFallback: "IMF and economic literature document. Cato Institute Steve Hanke calculations. Multiple currency redenominations. The hyperinflation scale is documented." },
    { id: "zw_t3", isTruth: true, country: "zw", fallback: "The 2000-2010 'fast-track land reform' involved violent seizures of white-owned commercial farms with documented agricultural and economic destruction.",
      whyFallback: "Multiple academic studies (Scarnecchia, Pilossof, etc.). UN and HRW documentation of violence. Agricultural output collapse documented. The reform and consequences are documented while underlying historical land grievances also documented." },
    { id: "zw_t4", isTruth: true, country: "zw", fallback: "Zimbabwe's diamond fields (Marange) have documented military involvement, smuggling, and worker abuses since their discovery in 2006.",
      whyFallback: "Multiple HRW reports. Partnership Africa Canada investigations. Kimberley Process controversies. The military-diamond complex is documented." },
    { id: "zw_t5", isTruth: true, country: "zw", fallback: "Zimbabwe's 2008 election violence and the 2017 'soft coup' that ousted Mugabe show patterns of political-military intertwining.",
      whyFallback: "2008 ZANU-PF orchestrated violence documented. November 2017 military intervention against Mugabe. The political-military patterns are documented." },
    { id: "zw_t6", isTruth: true, country: "zw", fallback: "Post-Mugabe Mnangagwa government has continued documented patterns of corruption, electoral manipulation, and human rights concerns.",
      whyFallback: "Multiple human rights reports. 2018 and 2023 contested elections. Ongoing economic problems. The continuity of patterns is documented." },
    { id: "zw_t7", isTruth: true, country: "zw", fallback: "Zimbabwe's military and ruling ZANU-PF have documented business empires across mining, agriculture, and state contracts.",
      whyFallback: "Multiple academic studies. Military involvement in Marange and DRC. The economic dimension is documented." },
    { id: "zw_t8", isTruth: true, country: "zw", fallback: "Rhodesia's white minority rule (UDI 1965-1979) involved documented racial segregation and conflict killing 30,000+ in the Bush War.",
      whyFallback: "Multiple academic histories. UN sanctions during UDI. Lancaster House Agreement 1979. The colonial history and Bush War are documented." },
    { id: "zw_f1", isTruth: false, country: "zw", fallback: "Gukurahundi was simple counter-insurgency.",
      whyFallback: "Multiple investigations document ethnic targeting beyond any insurgency. Mugabe himself eventually acknowledged. The 'simple counter-insurgency' framing is contradicted." },
    { id: "zw_f2", isTruth: false, country: "zw", fallback: "Zimbabwe's economic collapse was purely caused by Western sanctions.",
      whyFallback: "Hyperinflation predates major sanctions. Internal policy choices (land reform method, monetary policy) documented as primary drivers. The 'purely sanctions' framing is contradicted." },
    { id: "zw_f3", isTruth: false, country: "zw", fallback: "Land reform was peaceful and orderly.",
      whyFallback: "Multiple documented violent seizures. Farmer killings documented. The 'peaceful and orderly' framing contradicts extensive documentation." },
    { id: "zw_f4", isTruth: false, country: "zw", fallback: "2017 removal of Mugabe was constitutional.",
      whyFallback: "Military intervention, house arrest, forced retirement. Most analysts characterize as soft coup despite procedural framing. The 'constitutional' framing is widely disputed." },
    { id: "zw_f5", isTruth: false, country: "zw", fallback: "Mnangagwa government represents clean break from past.",
      whyFallback: "Mnangagwa was Mugabe's security chief during Gukurahundi. Continued ZANU-PF patterns. The 'clean break' framing is contradicted." },
    { id: "zw_f6", isTruth: false, country: "zw", fallback: "Zimbabwean elections are fully free and fair.",
      whyFallback: "Multiple disputed cycles. International observer concerns. The 'fully free and fair' framing is contradicted." },
    { id: "zw_f7", isTruth: false, country: "zw", fallback: "Marange diamonds are managed with full transparency.",
      whyFallback: "Multiple HRW reports. Kimberley Process tensions. The 'full transparency' framing is contradicted." },

    // ────────── MOROCCO (ma) ──────────
    { id: "ma_t1", isTruth: true, country: "ma", fallback: "Morocco's monarchy maintains documented control over economic life through ownership of major holding companies (Al Mada/SNI) with documented royal commercial interests.",
      whyFallback: "Multiple academic and journalist accounts. Forbes-ranked royal wealth. Al Mada/SNI holdings across banking, telecom, mining, agriculture. The royal commercial concentration is documented." },
    { id: "ma_t2", isTruth: true, country: "ma", fallback: "Morocco occupies Western Sahara with the UN treating it as a non-self-governing territory and Polisario Front seeking independence since 1975.",
      whyFallback: "UN Resolution 1514 status. Multiple Security Council resolutions on self-determination. ICJ 1975 advisory opinion against Moroccan claim. The legal status is documented." },
    { id: "ma_t3", isTruth: true, country: "ma", fallback: "Morocco's 'Years of Lead' (1956-1999) under Hassan II involved documented mass political imprisonment, torture, and disappearances.",
      whyFallback: "Equity and Reconciliation Commission (IER) 2004-2006 acknowledged abuses. Tazmamart secret prison documented. Multiple memoirs and investigations. The repression period is officially acknowledged." },
    { id: "ma_t4", isTruth: true, country: "ma", fallback: "Morocco purchased Pegasus spyware from NSO Group and was identified targeting French president Macron's phone and multiple journalists.",
      whyFallback: "2021 Pegasus Project investigation. Multiple specific targets identified. Diplomatic incident with France. The deployment is documented." },
    { id: "ma_t5", isTruth: true, country: "ma", fallback: "Morocco's monarchy retains constitutional powers including command of armed forces, religious authority (Commander of the Faithful), and ability to dismiss government.",
      whyFallback: "Constitutional articles document monarchical powers. 2011 reforms reduced but did not eliminate. The constitutional structure is documented." },
    { id: "ma_t6", isTruth: true, country: "ma", fallback: "Morocco's press freedom is restricted with multiple journalists imprisoned, criminal defamation laws used against critics, and lèse-majesté restrictions.",
      whyFallback: "Multiple RSF and HRW reports. Specific journalist cases (Bouachrine, Raissouni, Radi). The press restrictions are documented." },
    { id: "ma_t7", isTruth: true, country: "ma", fallback: "Morocco has documented Hirak Rif protest movement repression (2016-17) with hundreds imprisoned including Nasser Zefzafi sentenced to 20 years.",
      whyFallback: "Multiple HRW and Amnesty reports. Specific sentence documentation. The repression is documented despite government framing." },
    { id: "ma_t8", isTruth: true, country: "ma", fallback: "The 2020 normalization with Israel (Abraham Accords) was tied to US recognition of Moroccan claims to Western Sahara, drawing international criticism.",
      whyFallback: "December 2020 Trump announcement. Multiple legal analyses on US position. The linkage is documented." },
    { id: "ma_f1", isTruth: false, country: "ma", fallback: "Western Sahara is undisputedly Moroccan.",
      whyFallback: "UN non-self-governing territory status. ICJ 1975 opinion. Polisario armed struggle and political claim. The 'undisputed' framing is contradicted." },
    { id: "ma_f2", isTruth: false, country: "ma", fallback: "Royal commercial holdings do not affect competition.",
      whyFallback: "Multiple sectoral concentration analyses. Documented advantages. The 'no effect on competition' framing is contradicted." },
    { id: "ma_f3", isTruth: false, country: "ma", fallback: "Morocco has no political prisoners.",
      whyFallback: "Hirak Rif sentences. Journalist sentences. Multiple cases documented by Amnesty. The 'no political prisoners' framing is contradicted." },
    { id: "ma_f4", isTruth: false, country: "ma", fallback: "Morocco has never used Pegasus spyware.",
      whyFallback: "Multiple specific targets documented in 2021 investigation. Diplomatic incident with France. The 'never used' framing is contradicted." },
    { id: "ma_f5", isTruth: false, country: "ma", fallback: "Years of Lead are fully resolved.",
      whyFallback: "IER report acknowledged abuses but no individual accountability. Survivor compensation limited. The 'fully resolved' framing is contradicted." },
    { id: "ma_f6", isTruth: false, country: "ma", fallback: "Morocco's monarchy is purely ceremonial.",
      whyFallback: "Constitutional powers documented. Active political role documented. The 'purely ceremonial' framing is contradicted." },
    { id: "ma_f7", isTruth: false, country: "ma", fallback: "Hirak Rif protests had no legitimate grievances.",
      whyFallback: "Documented economic marginalization of Rif region. The 'no grievances' framing is contradicted." },

    // ────────── ETHIOPIA (et) ──────────
    { id: "et_t1", isTruth: true, country: "et", fallback: "The 2020-2022 Tigray War involved documented atrocities by multiple parties including Ethiopian Federal Forces, Eritrean troops, and Tigrayan forces, with 500,000+ estimated deaths.",
      whyFallback: "Multiple UN, AU, and academic studies. Belgian study estimates 500K+. Multiple atrocity sites documented. The conflict and casualties are documented though specific allegations remain contested across parties." },
    { id: "et_t2", isTruth: true, country: "et", fallback: "Abiy Ahmed received the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize for Eritrea peace deal but subsequently led the country into devastating war in Tigray and other regions.",
      whyFallback: "Nobel Peace Prize October 2019. Tigray war began November 2020. Multiple analyses on the contradiction. The trajectory is documented." },
    { id: "et_t3", isTruth: true, country: "et", fallback: "Eritrean forces were documented to have entered Ethiopia and committed atrocities in Tigray, despite initial denials by both governments.",
      whyFallback: "Multiple HRW, Amnesty, and AP investigations. Eventually acknowledged by Ethiopian government. The Eritrean military role is documented." },
    { id: "et_t4", isTruth: true, country: "et", fallback: "Ethiopia has documented history of famine including 1983-85 famine killing 400,000-1 million, with role of government policies under Mengistu documented.",
      whyFallback: "Multiple academic studies (de Waal, etc.). Government grain procurement and military operations contributed beyond drought. Live Aid era documentation. The famine and policy dimensions are documented." },
    { id: "et_t5", isTruth: true, country: "et", fallback: "Ethiopia's EPRDF era (1991-2018) involved documented Tigrayan ethnic dominance of security and political structures despite formal federalism.",
      whyFallback: "Multiple academic studies. Senior security and political positions concentrated in TPLF. The pattern is documented; it was a primary grievance leading to Abiy's rise." },
    { id: "et_t6", isTruth: true, country: "et", fallback: "Ethiopia has documented ongoing conflicts in Amhara and Oromia regions in addition to Tigray, with multiple armed groups and ongoing violence.",
      whyFallback: "Fano militia conflict in Amhara. OLA in Oromia. Multiple ongoing displacement. UN OCHA documentation. The multiple-region conflict pattern is documented." },
    { id: "et_t7", isTruth: true, country: "et", fallback: "The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) has created documented diplomatic tensions with Egypt and Sudan over Nile water rights.",
      whyFallback: "Multiple diplomatic incidents. Failed negotiations. AU mediation attempts. The dispute is documented though Ethiopia's domestic-development framing is also documented." },
    { id: "et_t8", isTruth: true, country: "et", fallback: "Ethiopia's 1937 Italian Yekatit 12 massacre killed an estimated 19,000-30,000 Ethiopians in Addis Ababa following an assassination attempt on Italian Viceroy Graziani.",
      whyFallback: "Italian Fascist colonial history. Multiple academic studies. Italian apology partial. The massacre is historically documented." },
    { id: "et_f1", isTruth: false, country: "et", fallback: "Tigray War had no foreign involvement.",
      whyFallback: "Eritrean troops documented. Initial denials proven false. The 'no foreign involvement' framing is contradicted." },
    { id: "et_f2", isTruth: false, country: "et", fallback: "Abiy Ahmed's Nobel Prize was uncomplicated.",
      whyFallback: "Subsequent Tigray war. Multiple analyses on the contradiction. Nobel Committee has been criticized for the timing. The 'uncomplicated' framing is contradicted." },
    { id: "et_f3", isTruth: false, country: "et", fallback: "Ethiopia's federal system always operated as designed.",
      whyFallback: "Documented Tigrayan dominance under EPRDF. Multiple ethnic federalism critiques. Recent conflicts show stress. The 'always operated as designed' framing is contradicted." },
    { id: "et_f4", isTruth: false, country: "et", fallback: "1980s famine was solely a natural disaster.",
      whyFallback: "Multiple academic studies document policy contributions. Mengistu government grain procurement, military operations, denial. The 'solely natural' framing is contradicted." },
    { id: "et_f5", isTruth: false, country: "et", fallback: "GERD has no impact on downstream countries.",
      whyFallback: "Egypt and Sudan have documented specific water security concerns. The 'no impact' framing is the Ethiopian negotiating position; reality is contested." },
    { id: "et_f6", isTruth: false, country: "et", fallback: "Ethiopia has only had one ongoing conflict.",
      whyFallback: "Multiple simultaneous conflicts in Amhara, Oromia documented in addition to Tigray. The 'only one' framing is contradicted." },
    { id: "et_f7", isTruth: false, country: "et", fallback: "All Tigray War abuse allegations are propaganda.",
      whyFallback: "Multiple credible investigations by HRW, Amnesty, UN, AP. The 'propaganda' framing is contradicted." },

    // ────────── RWANDA (rw) ──────────
    { id: "rw_t1", isTruth: true, country: "rw", fallback: "The 1994 Rwandan genocide killed approximately 800,000-1 million Tutsi and moderate Hutu in roughly 100 days, with documented Hutu Power organization.",
      whyFallback: "ICTR documentation. Multiple academic histories (Des Forges, Prunier). UN failures documented (Dallaire account). The genocide is extensively documented." },
    { id: "rw_t2", isTruth: true, country: "rw", fallback: "The international community, particularly the UN, US, and France, failed to prevent the 1994 genocide with documented warnings ignored.",
      whyFallback: "Dallaire cable warning ignored. Clinton later apologized. France's Opération Turquoise role debated. UN Security Council reduction of force documented. The international failure is documented." },
    { id: "rw_t3", isTruth: true, country: "rw", fallback: "Paul Kagame's 23+ year rule has involved documented suppression of opposition with multiple political opponents killed, imprisoned, or exiled.",
      whyFallback: "Multiple HRW and Amnesty reports. Specific cases: Patrick Karegeya (killed in South Africa 2014), Kayumba Nyamwasa (multiple attempts), Diane Rwigara (prosecution). The pattern is documented." },
    { id: "rw_t4", isTruth: true, country: "rw", fallback: "Rwanda has documented military involvement in eastern DRC, including UN-documented support for M23 rebel group, despite official denials.",
      whyFallback: "Multiple UN Group of Experts reports. US sanctions against specific Rwandan officials. The DRC involvement is documented despite denials." },
    { id: "rw_t5", isTruth: true, country: "rw", fallback: "Rwanda's 2010, 2017, and 2024 elections returned Kagame with 93%+, 99%, and 99% margins, with major opposition figures excluded or prosecuted.",
      whyFallback: "Election results documented. Multiple opposition exclusions documented (Victoire Ingabire, Diane Rwigara, etc.). The electoral patterns are documented." },
    { id: "rw_t6", isTruth: true, country: "rw", fallback: "RPF forces are documented to have committed mass atrocities during 1994 advance and post-genocide period including Kibeho massacre (1995) and DRC operations.",
      whyFallback: "UN Mapping Report 2010 documented possible genocidal acts by RPF in DRC. Kibeho documented. Multiple academic studies (Reyntjens, etc.). The RPF atrocities are documented despite genocide-victim framing." },
    { id: "rw_t7", isTruth: true, country: "rw", fallback: "France's Operation Turquoise (June-August 1994) is documented to have protected fleeing genocide perpetrators and complicated subsequent justice.",
      whyFallback: "Multiple French parliamentary inquiries. Macron 2021 acknowledgment of French responsibility. Multiple academic histories. The role is documented." },
    { id: "rw_t8", isTruth: true, country: "rw", fallback: "Rwanda has been involved in documented transnational repression including the Karegeya assassination in South Africa (2014).",
      whyFallback: "South African murder investigation. Multiple specific incidents documented. The transnational repression is documented." },
    { id: "rw_f1", isTruth: false, country: "rw", fallback: "Genocide killing estimates are inflated.",
      whyFallback: "Multiple independent academic studies converge 800K-1M. ICTR documentation. The 'inflated' framing is contradicted." },
    { id: "rw_f2", isTruth: false, country: "rw", fallback: "The international community responded appropriately to the genocide.",
      whyFallback: "Documented warnings ignored, force reductions, slow response. Multiple subsequent acknowledgments and apologies. The 'appropriate response' framing is contradicted." },
    { id: "rw_f3", isTruth: false, country: "rw", fallback: "RPF committed no atrocities.",
      whyFallback: "UN Mapping Report documentation. Kibeho. DRC operations. The 'no RPF atrocities' framing is contradicted." },
    { id: "rw_f4", isTruth: false, country: "rw", fallback: "Rwanda has no involvement in DRC conflicts.",
      whyFallback: "Multiple UN Group of Experts reports. US sanctions. M23 support. The 'no involvement' framing is contradicted by repeated documentation." },
    { id: "rw_f5", isTruth: false, country: "rw", fallback: "Rwandan elections are competitive.",
      whyFallback: "Multiple 90%+ Kagame margins. Major opposition figures excluded or prosecuted. The 'competitive' framing is contradicted." },
    { id: "rw_f6", isTruth: false, country: "rw", fallback: "All Rwandan diaspora deaths are coincidental.",
      whyFallback: "South African investigation in Karegeya case. Multiple other specific incidents. The 'coincidental' framing is contradicted." },
    { id: "rw_f7", isTruth: false, country: "rw", fallback: "Critics of Kagame are always genocide deniers.",
      whyFallback: "Many critics (HRW, Reyntjens, etc.) are documented anti-genocide voices. The framing is propaganda. The 'always deniers' framing is contradicted." },

    // ────────── AUSTRALIA (au) ──────────
    { id: "au_t1", isTruth: true, country: "au", fallback: "The Stolen Generations policy (1910-1970) forcibly removed an estimated 100,000+ Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families, with PM Kevin Rudd's 2008 national apology officially acknowledging the harm.",
      whyFallback: "Bringing Them Home report 1997 documented scale. Rudd National Apology February 2008. Multiple academic and survivor accounts. The policy and its acknowledgment are documented." },
    { id: "au_t2", isTruth: true, country: "au", fallback: "Australia's offshore detention regime (Manus Island, Nauru) has been documented to involve abuse, mental health crises, and deaths, with UN finding multiple human rights violations.",
      whyFallback: "Multiple UN findings. Manus deaths (Reza Berati 2014). Multiple HRW and Amnesty reports. Behrouz Boochani's documentation. The conditions and violations are documented." },
    { id: "au_t3", isTruth: true, country: "au", fallback: "Australian special forces (SAS) committed documented war crimes in Afghanistan, including 39 alleged unlawful killings according to the Brereton Report (2020).",
      whyFallback: "Brereton Report November 2020. Multiple subsequent investigations. Officer prosecutions launched. The findings are documented." },
    { id: "au_t4", isTruth: true, country: "au", fallback: "Australia's mining industry has documented patterns of Indigenous land destruction, including Rio Tinto's 2020 destruction of 46,000-year-old Juukan Gorge rock shelters.",
      whyFallback: "Multiple parliamentary inquiries. Rio Tinto CEO resigned. Multiple ongoing similar cases. The destruction and pattern are documented." },
    { id: "au_t5", isTruth: true, country: "au", fallback: "The 2023 Voice to Parliament referendum failed (60% No) reflecting documented patterns of Indigenous political marginalization.",
      whyFallback: "Referendum results October 2023. Multiple analyses on Indigenous representation. The failed referendum and its context are documented." },
    { id: "au_t6", isTruth: true, country: "au", fallback: "Australia has documented climate denial influence with major fossil fuel industry political contributions and policy outcomes despite scientific consensus.",
      whyFallback: "Multiple analyses of coal industry political influence. Climate Council documentation. Australian coal export policies. The pattern is documented." },
    { id: "au_t7", isTruth: true, country: "au", fallback: "Australia's media landscape is heavily concentrated with Murdoch's News Corp controlling approximately 60% of newspaper circulation.",
      whyFallback: "Multiple academic studies on media concentration. Kevin Rudd-launched Royal Commission petition. Press freedom rankings. The concentration is documented." },
    { id: "au_t8", isTruth: true, country: "au", fallback: "Indigenous Australians have documented incarceration rates approximately 13× non-Indigenous rates, with deaths in custody continuing despite the 1991 Royal Commission.",
      whyFallback: "Australian Bureau of Statistics data. 530+ deaths in custody since 1991 Royal Commission. Multiple specific cases documented. The disparity and continued deaths are documented." },
    { id: "au_f1", isTruth: false, country: "au", fallback: "Australian colonization was peaceful and benign for Indigenous people.",
      whyFallback: "Multiple documented massacres (Myall Creek, Coniston, Forrest River, etc.). Population decline. Stolen Generations. The 'peaceful' framing is contradicted by extensive documentation." },
    { id: "au_f2", isTruth: false, country: "au", fallback: "Australia's offshore detention has not violated human rights.",
      whyFallback: "Multiple UN findings of violations. Documented deaths and abuse. The 'no violations' framing is contradicted by official international findings." },
    { id: "au_f3", isTruth: false, country: "au", fallback: "Australian SAS conduct in Afghanistan was uniformly proper.",
      whyFallback: "Brereton Report found 39 alleged unlawful killings. The 'uniformly proper' framing is contradicted by official inquiry findings." },
    { id: "au_f4", isTruth: false, country: "au", fallback: "Stolen Generations affected only a small number.",
      whyFallback: "Bringing Them Home documented 100,000+. Multiple regional sub-estimates. The 'small number' framing is contradicted." },
    { id: "au_f5", isTruth: false, country: "au", fallback: "Indigenous Australians have full equality before the law.",
      whyFallback: "13× incarceration disparity. Continuing deaths in custody. Multiple legal and policy frameworks creating different treatment. The 'full equality' framing is contradicted." },
    { id: "au_f6", isTruth: false, country: "au", fallback: "Australian media represents diverse ownership.",
      whyFallback: "News Corp ~60% concentration documented. The 'diverse ownership' framing is contradicted by structural analyses." },
    { id: "au_f7", isTruth: false, country: "au", fallback: "Australia's climate policy follows the science.",
      whyFallback: "Multiple climate change performance index low rankings. Continued coal expansion. The 'follows science' framing is contradicted." },

    // ────────── NEW ZEALAND (nz) ──────────
    { id: "nz_t1", isTruth: true, country: "nz", fallback: "New Zealand violated the Treaty of Waitangi (1840) through documented land confiscations of Māori land totaling approximately 3.5 million acres after the New Zealand Wars.",
      whyFallback: "Multiple Waitangi Tribunal findings. Multiple academic histories. Confiscations primarily 1863-1864 New Zealand Settlements Act. The breaches are formally acknowledged." },
    { id: "nz_t2", isTruth: true, country: "nz", fallback: "The 1881 invasion of Parihaka by 1,500+ armed constabulary against the peaceful Māori community is acknowledged as a foundational injustice with official 2017 apology.",
      whyFallback: "Te Whiti and Tohu's nonviolent resistance. Government 2017 reconciliation. Multiple historical accounts. The events and apology are documented." },
    { id: "nz_t3", isTruth: true, country: "nz", fallback: "New Zealand's 1953-1960s 'tangiwai' and other forced cultural assimilation policies in schools punished children for speaking te reo Māori, contributing to language endangerment.",
      whyFallback: "Multiple Waitangi Tribunal findings. Survivor accounts. Te reo Māori revitalization context. The policies and impacts are documented." },
    { id: "nz_t4", isTruth: true, country: "nz", fallback: "The Mt. Erebus 1979 air disaster (257 deaths) involved documented Air New Zealand attempts to deflect responsibility, with the Mahon inquiry famously finding 'an orchestrated litany of lies'.",
      whyFallback: "Mahon Royal Commission report 1981. Multiple subsequent accounts. The corporate misconduct findings are documented." },
    { id: "nz_t5", isTruth: true, country: "nz", fallback: "The 1985 Rainbow Warrior bombing by French DGSE agents on New Zealand soil killed photographer Fernando Pereira, with France eventually paying compensation.",
      whyFallback: "Multiple French government acknowledgments. Trial in NZ. Subsequent French apology. The state terrorism incident is documented." },
    { id: "nz_t6", isTruth: true, country: "nz", fallback: "New Zealand's Five Eyes intelligence cooperation involves documented mass surveillance through the GCSB and revelations from Snowden documents.",
      whyFallback: "Snowden documents 2013. Multiple specific operations documented. Domestic surveillance scandals. The intelligence cooperation and surveillance are documented." },
    { id: "nz_t7", isTruth: true, country: "nz", fallback: "New Zealand has documented dairy industry environmental impact including freshwater pollution despite international clean-green branding.",
      whyFallback: "Multiple government and academic studies. River water quality declines. The dairy intensification and environmental impact are documented." },
    { id: "nz_t8", isTruth: true, country: "nz", fallback: "Māori statistically experience documented disparities in incarceration (~50% prison population vs 17% population), health, and education outcomes.",
      whyFallback: "Stats NZ data. Multiple government and academic reports. The disparities are documented despite ongoing reform efforts." },
    { id: "nz_f1", isTruth: false, country: "nz", fallback: "Treaty of Waitangi was fully honored.",
      whyFallback: "Multiple Waitangi Tribunal findings of breaches. Multiple historical confiscations. The 'fully honored' framing is contradicted by official tribunal findings." },
    { id: "nz_f2", isTruth: false, country: "nz", fallback: "New Zealand colonization was uniformly peaceful.",
      whyFallback: "New Zealand Wars 1845-1872. Parihaka invasion. Multiple documented military operations. The 'uniformly peaceful' framing is contradicted." },
    { id: "nz_f3", isTruth: false, country: "nz", fallback: "Rainbow Warrior bombing had no state actor.",
      whyFallback: "French DGSE acknowledged. Multiple French apologies. The 'no state actor' framing is contradicted by official acknowledgment." },
    { id: "nz_f4", isTruth: false, country: "nz", fallback: "New Zealand has no surveillance concerns.",
      whyFallback: "GCSB scandals. Snowden documents. Domestic targeting incidents documented. The 'no concerns' framing is contradicted." },
    { id: "nz_f5", isTruth: false, country: "nz", fallback: "Māori experience full equality of outcomes.",
      whyFallback: "Multiple documented disparities. The 'full equality of outcomes' framing is contradicted by extensive statistics." },
    { id: "nz_f6", isTruth: false, country: "nz", fallback: "New Zealand's clean-green image fully reflects reality.",
      whyFallback: "Multiple environmental concerns documented including freshwater quality and dairy impact. The 'fully reflects reality' framing is contradicted." },
    { id: "nz_f7", isTruth: false, country: "nz", fallback: "Parihaka events have no contemporary relevance.",
      whyFallback: "Government 2017 reconciliation. Ongoing land claims. The 'no contemporary relevance' framing is contradicted by ongoing reckoning." },

    // ============== Portugal — 8T + 7F ==============
    { id: "pt_t1", isTruth: true , country: "pt", fallback: "Former PM José Sócrates was indicted in 2017 on 31 charges including corruption, money laundering, and tax fraud in Operation Marquês — the largest corruption case in Portuguese history.",
      whyFallback: "Investigation began in 2014 when Sócrates was detained at Lisbon airport. The case stalled for years through procedural appeals; most corruption charges were dropped in 2021 by a preliminary judge, restored on appeal in 2024. The trial finally opened in 2024 — a decade after the arrest. Slow justice is the system, not a glitch." },
    { id: "pt_t2", isTruth: true , country: "pt", fallback: "Banco Espírito Santo collapsed in August 2014, wiping out shareholders and small bondholders while the Espírito Santo family had moved fortunes offshore in the preceding months.",
      whyFallback: "Bank of Portugal split BES into Novo Banco (good bank) and a bad bank. Retail investors lost savings sold to them as safe products. Ricardo Salgado — \"DDT\", o Dono Disto Tudo (\"the owner of all this\") — was convicted in 2024 of trust abuse; the broader prosecution drags on. Cost to taxpayers: billions." },
    { id: "pt_t3", isTruth: true , country: "pt", fallback: "Salazar's Estado Novo (1933–1974) was one of the longest-running authoritarian regimes in 20th-century Europe, enforced by the PIDE secret police and the Tarrafal concentration camp in Cape Verde.",
      whyFallback: "PIDE (later DGS) used informants, torture, and indefinite detention. Tarrafal — \"the camp of slow death\" — held political prisoners from 1936 until 1954, then reopened for African nationalists. The regime fell only when its own colonial wars exhausted the army into the Carnation Revolution of 25 April 1974." },
    { id: "pt_t4", isTruth: true , country: "pt", fallback: "Portugal fought colonial wars in Angola, Mozambique, and Guinea-Bissau from 1961 to 1974, killing tens of thousands and conscripting roughly a million Portuguese men — a war the Estado Novo refused to end.",
      whyFallback: "Approximately 9,000 Portuguese soldiers dead, far higher African casualties (estimates vary, often 100,000+). One in four Portuguese men of the conscription generation served. The army's revolt — MFA, Movimento das Forças Armadas — ended both the wars and the dictatorship on 25 April 1974. The bill was paid by the people, not the regime." },
    { id: "pt_t5", isTruth: true , country: "pt", fallback: "Portugal's \"Golden Visa\" program (2012–2023) granted EU residency to foreign nationals investing roughly €500,000 in Portuguese real estate, fueling property speculation in Lisbon and Porto.",
      whyFallback: "Created during the troika austerity to attract capital; became an EU residency-for-sale gateway used heavily by Chinese, Russian, Brazilian, and South African buyers. Linked to Operation Hurricane (2014), which indicted former SEF director Manuel Palos and others. Real-estate version closed in 2023 after years of housing crisis pressure. The wealth came, the housing didn't." },
    { id: "pt_t6", isTruth: true , country: "pt", fallback: "Joe Berardo, one of Portugal's best-known financiers, owed roughly €1 billion to state-backed banks (CGD, BCP, Novo Banco) that he refused to pay — and a parliamentary inquiry in 2019 found he had been treated as untouchable for years.",
      whyFallback: "Berardo testified to the parliamentary commission that he was not personally responsible for the debts of his holding companies — while living in a mansion housing his art collection. Arrested in 2021 on fraud and money-laundering charges. The art collection had been used as collateral; its real ownership remains contested." },
    { id: "pt_t7", isTruth: true , country: "pt", fallback: "Operação Lex and the Football Leaks disclosures exposed match-fixing suspicions, tax fraud, and influence-peddling reaching Benfica, Porto, and senior Portuguese judges.",
      whyFallback: "Rui Pinto, the Portuguese hacker behind Football Leaks (70+ million documents, 2015–2019), was prosecuted in Portugal while his disclosures fueled investigations across Europe (including the EPPO and Cristiano Ronaldo's Spanish tax case). The state went harder at the source than at the conduct exposed." },
    { id: "pt_t8", isTruth: true , country: "pt", fallback: "PM António Costa resigned in November 2023 after the Public Prosecutor's Office announced an investigation into lithium, hydrogen, and data-center contracts involving members of his government.",
      whyFallback: "Operation Influencer. Costa was named only as the subject of a separate inquiry by the Supreme Court (later dropped); the original announcement conflated him with the criminal suspects, prompting the resignation. The Supreme Court eventually shelved the case against him in 2024 — after the government had already fallen. Public Prosecutor's communication, not just the conduct, became part of the scandal." },
    { id: "pt_f1", isTruth: false, country: "pt", fallback: "Portugal's transition to democracy in 1974 was a clean break from the Estado Novo's institutions.",
      whyFallback: "PIDE files were partly destroyed in the chaos of April 1974. Many mid-level officials of the dictatorship continued in the bureaucracy, judiciary, and business. The Comissão do Livro Negro sobre o Regime Fascista produced volumes; criminal accountability for PIDE torturers was minimal. The Revolution changed the constitution; it did not fully purge the personnel." },
    { id: "pt_f2", isTruth: false, country: "pt", fallback: "The 2011–2014 troika bailout was a technical rescue that put Portugal back on its feet.",
      whyFallback: "€78 billion loan from IMF/ECB/European Commission in exchange for austerity: wage cuts, pension freezes, privatization of EDP, REN, ANA Aeroportos, TAP, CTT. Emigration of young Portuguese spiked; public services hollowed out. \"Rescued\" describes the bond market; the social cost is the part the framing omits." },
    { id: "pt_f3", isTruth: false, country: "pt", fallback: "Portuguese justice is independent and works at a reasonable pace.",
      whyFallback: "Operation Marquês: ten years from arrest to trial opening. BES prosecutions: a decade of procedural delay. Football corruption files dating to 2017 still unresolved. The Portuguese expression \"a justiça tarda mas não falha\" — \"justice is slow but does not fail\" — is increasingly questioned at the first half." },
    { id: "pt_f4", isTruth: false, country: "pt", fallback: "TAP Portugal's repeated bailouts and management scandals are routine state-airline turbulence.",
      whyFallback: "TAP was renationalized in 2020 with €3.2 billion in state aid. Severance package for departing CEO Alexandra Reis (€500,000) triggered a parliamentary inquiry in 2023 that brought down two ministers and contributed to the political climate leading to Costa's resignation. \"Routine\" describes the frequency, not the scale." },
    { id: "pt_f5", isTruth: false, country: "pt", fallback: "Portugal has no significant problem with white-collar or political crime — it's a quiet country.",
      whyFallback: "Sócrates (Operation Marquês), Salgado (BES), Berardo (banking debts), Football Leaks, Operation Influencer, BPN bank collapse (€7 billion taxpayer rescue), BPP failure, SCAM tax fraud, Golden Visa Hurricane. \"Quiet\" is the international image; the docket tells the other story." },
    { id: "pt_f6", isTruth: false, country: "pt", fallback: "Portugal's housing crisis was caused by remote workers and Airbnb — not by policy choices.",
      whyFallback: "Golden Visa real-estate channel (2012–2023), Non-Habitual Resident tax regime (2009–2024) offering 10-year tax holidays to foreign retirees and professionals, and post-troika fire-sale privatizations were deliberate policy. Remote work and short-term rentals amplified an architecture the state had built. \"Blame the foreigners\" is more palatable than \"the program worked as designed\"." },
    { id: "pt_f7", isTruth: false, country: "pt", fallback: "The Catholic Church's land and tax position in Portugal is purely a religious matter.",
      whyFallback: "The 2004 Concordata with the Vatican exempts Church property from most taxes (IMI) and grants special legal status. The Church is among the largest landowners in the country. A 2023 independent commission (Comissão Independente) documented 4,815 reported child abuse victims by Portuguese clergy since 1950 — a number the Episcopal Conference initially disputed and later partly accepted." },

    // ============== Norway — 8T + 7F ==============
    { id: "no_t1", isTruth: true , country: "no", fallback: "Telenor's subsidiary VimpelCom paid $795 million in a 2016 FCPA settlement for bribes routed to Gulnara Karimova, daughter of Uzbekistan's dictator, in exchange for telecom licenses.",
      whyFallback: "US Department of Justice and SEC settlement, February 2016 — at the time one of the largest FCPA cases ever. Telenor, majority state-owned, held a one-third stake in VimpelCom and had board representation. The Norwegian government's response: the CEO kept his seat for years before stepping aside; no Norwegian prosecutions of senior figures followed." },
    { id: "no_t2", isTruth: true , country: "no", fallback: "Yara International — the world's largest fertilizer company, majority Norwegian state-owned — paid 295 million NOK in 2014 to settle bribery charges involving payments to officials in Libya, India, and Russia.",
      whyFallback: "Økokrim case, settled January 2014. Four former senior executives were charged; convictions were partially overturned on appeal in 2015. The bribery ran through the 2000s under Gaddafi-era Libya among others. The state as majority shareholder kept its position; the share price barely moved." },
    { id: "no_t3", isTruth: true , country: "no", fallback: "Statoil (now Equinor) paid a $21 million US settlement in 2006 for bribing Iranian officials to secure South Pars gas-field contracts. The state oil company's pattern of opaque \"consultancy\" payments has recurred in Angola and Algeria.",
      whyFallback: "Horton Investments / Mehdi Hashemi case — SEC and DOJ FCPA settlement, October 2006. The Norwegian state owns roughly two-thirds of Equinor. Angola: $50 million paid into an opaque social fund in 2011 around the Kwanza basin licenses. The ethics frame is the Oil Fund; the operations side is older." },
    { id: "no_t4", isTruth: true , country: "no", fallback: "The Norwegian state pursued an explicit \"Norwegianization\" (fornorsking) policy against the Sami and Kven peoples from the 1850s to the 1980s — banning their languages in schools, seizing land, and in some cases forcibly sterilizing them.",
      whyFallback: "Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Norway, final report June 2023, presented to the Storting. Documented coerced sterilizations, residential schools, language bans lasting into living memory. The Sami parliament was only established in 1989. Apologies have been issued; structural redress is partial." },
    { id: "no_t5", isTruth: true , country: "no", fallback: "The police response to the Utøya / Oslo attacks of 22 July 2011 was catastrophically delayed: Anders Behring Breivik shot 69 people on the island over more than an hour while the police's rubber boat sank and the helicopter crew was on leave.",
      whyFallback: "Gjørv Commission report, August 2012, found systemic failure: warnings ignored, communication broken, response time vastly slower than capability. No senior officials were prosecuted. National police chief Øystein Mæland resigned the day the report came out; the structural reforms have been slow." },
    { id: "no_t6", isTruth: true , country: "no", fallback: "After WWII the Norwegian state ran \"Operation Asphalt\" (1951) — secretly exhuming and re-burying thousands of Soviet POWs who died on Norwegian soil, to obstruct Soviet intelligence visits to the original graves.",
      whyFallback: "Around 8,000 Soviet prisoners died in Nazi camps on Norwegian territory during the war. Operation Asphalt moved roughly 8,000 bodies from coastal cemeteries to Tjøtta in central secrecy. Local protests at the time were suppressed. The decision was Cold-War driven; the disclosure took decades." },
    { id: "no_t7", isTruth: true , country: "no", fallback: "Norway's Government Pension Fund Global — the world's largest sovereign wealth fund at over $1.5 trillion — holds extensive positions in fossil-fuel majors, arms manufacturers, and companies linked to human-rights abuses, despite its public \"ethics council\" exclusions.",
      whyFallback: "Council on Ethics has excluded specific firms (e.g. Walmart 2006, Elbit Systems components, various tobacco and coal producers), but the fund's structural exposure to the carbon and arms economies remains very large. The fund is itself capitalized by Norwegian oil and gas extraction — the moral arithmetic is built in." },
    { id: "no_t8", isTruth: true , country: "no", fallback: "Norwegian salmon farming — a national export pillar — has caused documented environmental damage: sea-lice outbreaks, mass escapes contaminating wild stocks, and high mortality rates inside the pens.",
      whyFallback: "Norwegian Food Safety Authority and Institute of Marine Research data: farmed-fish mortality reached roughly 17% in 2023 (over 60 million fish). Wild Atlantic salmon populations in many Norwegian rivers have collapsed in parallel. The industry continues to expand; the regulator's instruments lag the production scale." },
    { id: "no_f1", isTruth: false, country: "no", fallback: "Norway is a neutral peace nation that stays out of foreign wars.",
      whyFallback: "Norway is a founding NATO member (1949). Norwegian F-16s flew bombing missions in the 2011 Libya intervention — at one point dropping a disproportionate share of the coalition's ordnance. Norwegian special forces and trainers have operated in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Mali. The \"peace nation\" branding is curated; the deployment record is conventional NATO." },
    { id: "no_f2", isTruth: false, country: "no", fallback: "The Oil Fund's ethics rules mean Norway's wealth is cleanly invested.",
      whyFallback: "The exclusion list is narrow relative to a $1.5 trillion portfolio. Companies are routinely re-included after surface-level remediation; the fund holds shares in many firms it formally criticizes via shareholder voting. The ethics frame functions, but mostly as public-facing decoration on a near-index-fund global equity book." },
    { id: "no_f3", isTruth: false, country: "no", fallback: "Norway fully reckoned with WWII collaboration after the war.",
      whyFallback: "The Quisling regime's senior figures were tried; many lower-level collaborators in business, civil service, and the church were quietly reabsorbed. The children of Norwegian women and German soldiers (\"krigsbarn\", tyskerunger) were stigmatized and in some cases institutionalized for decades; formal apology came only in 2018." },
    { id: "no_f4", isTruth: false, country: "no", fallback: "Norway's press is independent and free of state pressure.",
      whyFallback: "Roughly half of Norwegian newspapers receive state press subsidies; NRK is state-funded. Press freedom indices rank Norway highly, and the editorial floor is real. The structural dependence on state funding is also real — and rarely a topic in the press it funds." },
    { id: "no_f5", isTruth: false, country: "no", fallback: "Norway's wealth comes from prudent management, not the same fossil economy it criticizes.",
      whyFallback: "Petroleum revenue has funded the Norwegian welfare state and the Oil Fund itself. Equinor continues to open new fields (Johan Sverdrup, Wisting). Norway is one of Europe's largest gas exporters, with exports rising after the Nord Stream sabotage. The climate posture and the export book are running on different tracks." },
    { id: "no_f6", isTruth: false, country: "no", fallback: "Norway's Nobel Peace Prize selections reflect a purely independent moral judgment.",
      whyFallback: "The Nobel Committee is appointed by the Norwegian Storting and has tracked Norwegian foreign-policy alignment in several controversial selections — Kissinger 1973, Obama 2009 before any record, the EU 2012. The decisions are formally independent; the pattern overlaps with state interests more often than coincidence would predict." },
    { id: "no_f7", isTruth: false, country: "no", fallback: "Norway's salmon, hydropower, and Arctic stewardship make it an environmental leader.",
      whyFallback: "Salmon farming damage is documented above. Hydropower flooded large tracts of Sami reindeer-grazing land (Alta dam, 1979–82, fought by Sami activists). The state granted onshore wind licenses on Sami pastures (Fosen case), then the Supreme Court ruled them a human-rights violation in 2021 — and the turbines kept spinning for years after." },

    // ============== Finland — 8T + 7F ==============
    { id: "fi_t1", isTruth: true , country: "fi", fallback: "The MS Estonia ferry sank in 1994 with 852 dead — Finnish authorities sealed the wreck, banned diving, and classified key documents until 2055.",
      whyFallback: "September 28, 1994, Baltic Sea — second-worst peacetime maritime disaster in European waters. The 1995 Finland-Sweden-Estonia treaty criminalized diving the site. A 2020 Discovery documentary filmed an undisclosed four-metre hole in the hull, contradicting the official Joint Accident Investigation Commission report. Files remain sealed for 61 years." },
    { id: "fi_t2", isTruth: true , country: "fi", fallback: "Finland's 1948-1991 \"Finlandization\" arrangement with the Soviet Union normalized self-censorship of Soviet topics in press, publishing, and politics.",
      whyFallback: "The 1948 YYA Treaty bound Finland to consult Moscow on security. Books critical of the USSR were quietly withdrawn — Solzhenitsyn's *Gulag Archipelago* delayed, Pentti Linkola censored. The word \"Finlandisierung\" entered German political vocabulary as a warning. Internal — Finns called it \"the art of bowing eastward while facing west\"." },
    { id: "fi_t3", isTruth: true , country: "fi", fallback: "Finnish troops participated in the Siege of Leningrad (1941-44), holding the northern ring while ~1 million civilians died of starvation inside.",
      whyFallback: "Continuation War, allied with Nazi Germany. Mannerheim stopped at the old 1939 border but the blockade ring required the Finnish-held north to hold. Postwar Finland negotiated a separate peace (1944) and the story was softened for decades into \"the war we fought alone\". The siege role is in the operational record." },
    { id: "fi_t4", isTruth: true , country: "fi", fallback: "Nokia's mobile phone division was sold to Microsoft in 2014 for €5.4 billion — three years after CEO Stephen Elop's \"burning platform\" memo collapsed its market value.",
      whyFallback: "Elop arrived from Microsoft in 2010, killed Symbian and MeeGo, bet the company on Windows Phone, then sold the wreckage back to his former employer. The \"Trojan horse\" allegation was never legally tested. ~25,000 Finnish jobs disappeared. Microsoft wrote the acquisition down within two years." },
    { id: "fi_t5", isTruth: true , country: "fi", fallback: "Finland's Sami minority were forcibly assimilated through state residential schools where children were beaten for speaking Sami well into the 1970s.",
      whyFallback: "Boarding-school system (asuntola) separated Sami children from family and language. A Truth and Reconciliation Commission was finally established in 2021. Land rights remain unresolved — Finland has still not ratified ILO Convention 169 on indigenous peoples, alone among the Nordic countries." },
    { id: "fi_t6", isTruth: true , country: "fi", fallback: "The Talvivaara nickel mine, later TerraFame, became one of Europe's worst environmental scandals — repeated uranium-laced wastewater leaks, two PM Sipilä family conflicts of interest, and a state bailout.",
      whyFallback: "Gypsum pond leaks 2012 and 2013 contaminated lakes Kivijärvi and Salminen. PM Juha Sipilä's relatives held stakes in suppliers; the 2016 Katternö affair forced his apology mid-broadcast. The state took it over via TerraFame after the company collapsed. Costs to taxpayers exceed €1 billion." },
    { id: "fi_t7", isTruth: true , country: "fi", fallback: "Finland's 2024 NATO accession reversed nearly eight decades of formal neutrality without a referendum — decided by parliament and the Niinistö-Marin government in months.",
      whyFallback: "Applied April 2022, ratified April 2023, full member April 2024. Pre-2022 polling showed roughly 20-25% support for NATO membership; the war flipped it. No referendum was held, unlike Finland's 1994 EU vote. The constitutional consultation procedure was followed; the deeper democratic question was not." },
    { id: "fi_t8", isTruth: true , country: "fi", fallback: "Finland prosecuted MP and former Interior Minister Päivi Räsänen for quoting the Bible (2021-23) — twice acquitted, but the prosecution itself ran for years.",
      whyFallback: "Charges under \"ethnic agitation\" for a 2019 pamphlet and a 2004 booklet quoting Romans 1. District Court acquittal 2022, Court of Appeal acquittal 2023, prosecutor appealed to Supreme Court. The legal harassment — not the verdict — was the message. International religious-freedom monitors flagged the case." },
    { id: "fi_f1", isTruth: false, country: "fi", fallback: "Finland is the world's least corrupt country.",
      whyFallback: "Finland tops Transparency International's CPI most years — but the CPI measures perception, not corruption. Danske Bank's Helsinki branches processed laundered Russian money; the Talvivaara state-rescue, Nokia executive payouts, and the SKAT-style refund design vulnerabilities are real. \"Least corrupt\" is the ranking; \"opaque-in-different-ways\" is closer to the structure." },
    { id: "fi_f2", isTruth: false, country: "fi", fallback: "Finland fought World War II alone against the Soviet Union as a neutral defender.",
      whyFallback: "The Winter War (1939-40) was a defensive war. The Continuation War (1941-44) was fought as a co-belligerent of Nazi Germany — German troops in Lapland, Finnish forces participating in the Leningrad blockade, Jewish refugees handed over in eight documented cases. The two wars are routinely merged into one heroic narrative. They are not the same war." },
    { id: "fi_f3", isTruth: false, country: "fi", fallback: "The Finnish press is free and independent.",
      whyFallback: "Helsingin Sanomat and Yle are structurally close to government and traditional party networks. During Finlandization, Soviet-critical reporting was self-suppressed for forty years — the muscle memory does not disappear in a generation. Coverage of NATO accession, Ukraine, and immigration tracks elite consensus with striking uniformity. Press-freedom indexes measure legal freedom, not editorial range." },
    { id: "fi_f4", isTruth: false, country: "fi", fallback: "Finland's welfare state is funded by exceptional civic virtue.",
      whyFallback: "It is funded by some of the highest tax rates in the OECD, a small homogeneous population, and Nokia-era export wealth that is no longer arriving. The model is now strained — healthcare wait times, deindustrialization in Kainuu and Lapland, public-debt rise post-2020. \"Virtue\" is the brand; demography and a one-company tax base were the engine." },
    { id: "fi_f5", isTruth: false, country: "fi", fallback: "Finland was energy-independent of Russia before 2022.",
      whyFallback: "Roughly two-thirds of Finland's gas and a third of its electricity imports came from Russia before the war. Fortum (state-majority-owned) operated Uniper in Germany, a major Gazprom counterparty; the 2022 collapse cost Finnish taxpayers billions. Loviisa nuclear plant ran on Russian fuel rods. \"Independence\" was a policy aspiration, not the meter reading." },
    { id: "fi_f6", isTruth: false, country: "fi", fallback: "Finland's state-owned companies operate transparently and at arm's length from politics.",
      whyFallback: "Posti, Finnair, Fortum, VR — board appointments flow through party patronage. Privatization rounds (Sonera 1998-2002, Fortum's Uniper exposure) repeatedly transferred risk to taxpayers while gains were privatized. The Sipilä-Talvivaara conflict-of-interest pattern is the rule rather than the exception in state-adjacent procurement." },
    { id: "fi_f7", isTruth: false, country: "fi", fallback: "Finland has fully reckoned with its wartime cooperation with Nazi Germany.",
      whyFallback: "SS-Bataillon Nordost — ~1,400 Finnish volunteers in the Waffen-SS, 1941-43 — was studied seriously only in 2019 (Finnish National Archives report, under US pressure following the Simon Wiesenthal Center inquiry). Eight Jewish refugees handed to the Gestapo in 1942 (Hanna Pylkkänen case). The narrative remained \"separate war\" for decades. Reckoning began late and remains partial." },

    // ============== Iceland — 8T + 7F ==============
    { id: "is_t1", isTruth: true , country: "is", fallback: "Iceland's three main banks — Kaupthing, Landsbanki, and Glitnir — collapsed in October 2008 with combined liabilities of roughly $85 billion against a population of 320,000.",
      whyFallback: "The largest banking failure relative to GDP in history. The Special Investigation Commission's 2010 report (nine volumes, ordered by parliament) detailed reckless lending, related-party loans, and regulatory capture at the Financial Supervisory Authority. The collapse wiped out savings across the UK and Netherlands via the Icesave online deposits." },
    { id: "is_t2", isTruth: true , country: "is", fallback: "Prime Minister Sigmundur Davíð Gunnlaugsson resigned in April 2016, days after the Panama Papers revealed his family's undisclosed offshore company Wintris held claims against the collapsed Icelandic banks he was supposed to be restructuring.",
      whyFallback: "Wintris was registered in the British Virgin Islands, held by his wife after a 2009 transfer, and held bonds in all three failed banks. The conflict of interest was never disclosed to parliament. Mass pots-and-pans protests outside the Alþingi forced the resignation within 72 hours of publication." },
    { id: "is_t3", isTruth: true , country: "is", fallback: "Geir Haarde, prime minister during the 2008 collapse, is the only G-bracket leader ever convicted by a court over the financial crisis — and received no penalty.",
      whyFallback: "The Landsdómur (special impeachment court, convened for the first time since 1905) convicted him in April 2012 on one of four charges: failing to hold cabinet meetings on critical matters. Acquitted on the substantive charges. No fine, no sentence. The verdict was the maximum reckoning Iceland's elite was willing to deliver." },
    { id: "is_t4", isTruth: true , country: "is", fallback: "Special Prosecutor Ólafur Hauksson convicted dozens of Icelandic bankers between 2011 and 2018, including the CEOs of all three failed banks — most sentences ran four to six years, served partly in open prisons.",
      whyFallback: "Kaupthing CEO Hreiðar Már Sigurðsson, Landsbanki chair Sigurjón Árnason, Glitnir CEO Lárus Welding all jailed. Iceland became the headline case for actually prosecuting bankers. The unstated detail: the office was nearly shut down for lack of funding several times, and sentences were lighter than equivalent fraud cases against ordinary citizens." },
    { id: "is_t5", isTruth: true , country: "is", fallback: "Bjarni Benediktsson served as finance minister, then prime minister, then finance minister again — through Panama Papers exposure, a sex-offender pardon scandal, and a Glitnir-era share-sale controversy — without ever facing prosecution.",
      whyFallback: "Named in the 2016 Panama Papers via a Seychelles company (Falson & Co). His government collapsed in 2017 after his father signed a letter of recommendation restoring the civil rights of a convicted child sex offender. Returned to cabinet repeatedly. Independence Party leader since 2009." },
    { id: "is_t6", isTruth: true , country: "is", fallback: "Iceland's 2010-2012 citizen-drafted constitution — written by a randomly selected council of 25 ordinary Icelanders and approved 67% in a 2012 referendum — was quietly shelved by parliament and never enacted.",
      whyFallback: "The Stjórnlagaráð process was hailed internationally as a model of participatory democracy. The Alþingi, dominated by the Independence and Progressive parties, declined to ratify the draft and let it die in committee. The 1944 constitution — itself a lightly edited Danish royal text — remains in force." },
    { id: "is_t7", isTruth: true , country: "is", fallback: "Iceland hosts a major US-NATO presence at Keflavík despite officially having no standing army — the base was reactivated in 2017 after a brief 2006 closure.",
      whyFallback: "Keflavík Air Base operated by US forces 1951-2006 under the 1951 defense agreement. NATO maritime patrol aircraft (P-8 Poseidons) rotate through continuously since 2017 to monitor Russian submarine traffic in the GIUK gap. The \"no army\" framing is technically true and operationally misleading." },
    { id: "is_t8", isTruth: true , country: "is", fallback: "Alcoa's Fjarðaál aluminium smelter at Reyðarfjörður was approved in 2003 with subsidized geothermal power and tax breaks, after the Kárahnjúkar hydroelectric dam flooded one of Europe's largest remaining wildernesses.",
      whyFallback: "The Kárahnjúkar dam (completed 2007) submerged 57 km² of highland habitat to power a single foreign-owned smelter. Environmental impact assessments were overruled politically. Electricity sold to Alcoa at rates kept confidential by Landsvirkjun for over a decade. The deal model was repeated for Century Aluminum and Rio Tinto." },
    { id: "is_f1", isTruth: false, country: "is", fallback: "Iceland is the world's most peaceful country and has no military entanglements.",
      whyFallback: "Iceland tops the Global Peace Index annually — and is a founding NATO member (1949), hosts a major US/NATO airbase, and joined the 2003 \"Coalition of the Willing\" for Iraq under PM Davíð Oddsson. The peacefulness is real domestically; the foreign posture is a standard small-NATO-state alignment dressed in different language." },
    { id: "is_f2", isTruth: false, country: "is", fallback: "Iceland jailed its bankers and reformed its financial system — unlike the rest of the world.",
      whyFallback: "Convictions happened and were unusual. But the same banking families and political networks regrouped — the new banks (Arion, Íslandsbanki, Landsbankinn) were built from the wreckage of the old, and the Independence Party that oversaw the deregulation returned to power within years. The cultural mythology of the \"Iceland did it right\" narrative outruns the structural reality." },
    { id: "is_f3", isTruth: false, country: "is", fallback: "Iceland's tiny population means corruption is impossible — everyone knows everyone.",
      whyFallback: "The opposite is closer to true: a country of 380,000 with intertwined family, business, and political networks is structurally vulnerable to mutual back-scratching. The 2010 SIC report described \"the small size of Icelandic society\" as a specific risk factor — not a safeguard — for banking oversight." },
    { id: "is_f4", isTruth: false, country: "is", fallback: "Iceland is a global leader in press freedom because it passed the Icelandic Modern Media Initiative in 2010.",
      whyFallback: "The IMMI parliamentary resolution (June 2010) committed Iceland to becoming a haven for investigative journalism after Iceland helped publish WikiLeaks' Collateral Murder footage. Most of its 13 legislative components were never enacted. Whistleblower protections, source shielding, and intermediary liability reform remain partial or absent more than a decade later." },
    { id: "is_f5", isTruth: false, country: "is", fallback: "Iceland's geothermal energy is a clean win for the environment.",
      whyFallback: "Geothermal itself is low-carbon, but roughly 80% of Iceland's electricity is consumed by aluminium smelters and data centers owned by foreign corporations, not by Icelanders. The pristine highlands were dammed (Kárahnjúkar) to power the smelters. \"Green energy\" here is largely an export commodity wearing a domestic label." },
    { id: "is_f6", isTruth: false, country: "is", fallback: "The Pots-and-Pans Revolution of 2009 fundamentally changed Icelandic politics.",
      whyFallback: "The protests toppled the Haarde government and brought in a left-green coalition under Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir (2009-2013). The Independence Party — the party most associated with the deregulation that caused the collapse — was back in government by 2013 and has dominated coalitions since. The revolution changed the cast for one term; the script returned." },
    { id: "is_f7", isTruth: false, country: "is", fallback: "Iceland abolished whaling in line with the international moratorium.",
      whyFallback: "Iceland formally objected to the 1986 International Whaling Commission moratorium and resumed commercial whaling in 2006. Fin whales and minkes are still hunted under quotas set by the fisheries ministry, largely for export to Japan. Annual licenses have been renewed by successive governments including those branded environmentally progressive." },

    // ============== Romania — 8T + 7F ==============
    { id: "ro_t1", isTruth: true , country: "ro", fallback: "On the night of January 31, 2017, PSD's Emergency Ordinance 13 attempted to decriminalize abuse of office below a 200,000 RON threshold — protecting party leader Liviu Dragnea from prosecution.",
      whyFallback: "Passed in secret after 10 PM. The next day brought ~500,000 people into the streets — the largest protests since 1989. OUG 13 was withdrawn within five days; Justice Minister Florin Iordache resigned. The protests continued for weeks." },
    { id: "ro_t2", isTruth: true , country: "ro", fallback: "DNA chief prosecutor Laura Codruța Kövesi convicted hundreds of mayors, MPs, ministers, and a former PM — and was fired in July 2018 after the ruling PSD changed the law to enable her removal.",
      whyFallback: "President Iohannis initially refused to sign the dismissal; the Constitutional Court forced him to. The EU then made Kövesi the first European Chief Prosecutor in 2019. The lesson Bucharest took: prosecute too many of us and we will rewrite the procedure." },
    { id: "ro_t3", isTruth: true , country: "ro", fallback: "Liviu Dragnea — president of PSD and de facto ruler of Romania 2017–2019 — was sentenced to 3.5 years in prison in May 2019 for instigating abuse of office over fictional party-employee salaries paid from the state.",
      whyFallback: "He had already received a suspended sentence in 2016 for electoral fraud, which barred him from becoming PM but not from ruling through proxies. ICCJ final ruling 27 May 2019. He served roughly two years before parole." },
    { id: "ro_t4", isTruth: true , country: "ro", fallback: "The Colectiv nightclub fire (30 October 2015) killed 64 — most after the fire, in hospitals, from infections caused by diluted disinfectants sold by Hexi Pharma to nearly every Romanian state hospital.",
      whyFallback: "Journalists Cătălin Tolontan and team at Gazeta Sporturilor broke the story. Hexi Pharma owner Dan Condrea died in a car crash days after being named — officially ruled suicide. PM Victor Ponta resigned amid the \"Corruption Kills\" protests. The documentary *Collective* (2019) traced the cover-up." },
    { id: "ro_t5", isTruth: true , country: "ro", fallback: "Former PM Adrian Năstase was convicted twice — in 2012 for illegally financing his 2004 presidential campaign, and in 2014 for taking bribes — and staged a suicide attempt at the moment of his arrest.",
      whyFallback: "First sentence: 2 years for the \"Trofeul Calității\" scheme that channelled construction-inspector training fees to his campaign. Second: 4 years for receiving customs-fee \"gifts\" from China. The neck-wound during his 2012 arrest was widely interpreted as theatrical; he served roughly half of each sentence." },
    { id: "ro_t6", isTruth: true , country: "ro", fallback: "Romania paid Bechtel roughly €1.4 billion for the Transylvania motorway between 2004 and 2013, and received about 52 km of finished road before the contract was terminated.",
      whyFallback: "Awarded by Năstase's government in 2003 without a public tender. Repeatedly renegotiated upward. Court of Accounts and EU investigators flagged it for years. The road that did get built cost roughly four times standard European motorway prices per kilometer." },
    { id: "ro_t7", isTruth: true , country: "ro", fallback: "In June 1990, President Ion Iliescu summoned thousands of Jiu Valley miners to Bucharest to violently disperse anti-government protesters in Piața Universității — the Mineriadă.",
      whyFallback: "Six confirmed dead, hundreds injured, opposition headquarters and the university ransacked. Iliescu publicly thanked the miners on television. A criminal case against him for crimes against humanity dragged through the courts for three decades and was effectively closed by his death in 2024." },
    { id: "ro_t8", isTruth: true , country: "ro", fallback: "After the 1989 revolution, the Securitate's archives were partially opened by the CNSAS — and repeatedly showed that judges, journalists, politicians, and bishops had been informants. Many remained in office.",
      whyFallback: "Patriarch Teoctist and several Orthodox bishops had documented Securitate codenames. So did senators across multiple parties and prominent television figures. Disclosures rarely produced resignations; the institutional class largely stayed intact, with rebranded affiliations." },
    { id: "ro_f1", isTruth: false, country: "ro", fallback: "The 1989 revolution was a spontaneous popular uprising that cleanly broke with the Ceaușescu regime.",
      whyFallback: "The Timișoara protests were real and popular. What followed — the show trial and Christmas Day execution, the seizure of state television by a \"National Salvation Front\" already organized, the smooth transition of second-tier Communist Party figures into the new government — looked less like a clean break and more like a managed succession. Iliescu, FSN's leader, had been a senior PCR figure under Ceaușescu." },
    { id: "ro_f2", isTruth: false, country: "ro", fallback: "The Securitate was disbanded after 1989 and Romania's intelligence services started fresh.",
      whyFallback: "SRI and SIE were stood up in 1990 with substantial continuity of personnel from the old Securitate, including officers who had run domestic surveillance against dissidents. CNSAS access to the files was deliberately partial. \"New service\" was the brand; staffing was the institution." },
    { id: "ro_f3", isTruth: false, country: "ro", fallback: "EU accession in 2007 ended Romanian corruption.",
      whyFallback: "The Cooperation and Verification Mechanism — established because the EU itself did not believe accession had ended it — monitored Romania's justice system for sixteen years. It was finally closed in 2023 not because the problems were solved but because Schengen pressure required closing the file. Schengen entry then arrived in stages through 2024." },
    { id: "ro_f4", isTruth: false, country: "ro", fallback: "Press freedom in Romania is strong because the country is in the EU.",
      whyFallback: "Most major outlets are owned by businessmen with active political interests — the Năstase/Voiculescu/Vântu/Patriciu fusion of moguls and politicians defined the 2000s and the structure persists. Journalists who broke Colectiv, RISE Project, and PressOne operate alongside captured outlets, not in a uniformly free landscape. RSF rankings have fallen steadily." },
    { id: "ro_f5", isTruth: false, country: "ro", fallback: "Roșia Montană was stopped because Romanian institutions worked.",
      whyFallback: "The cyanide gold-mining mega-project was stopped by sustained street protests in 2013, not by parliamentary process — Parliament was preparing to pass enabling legislation when the protests forced a withdrawal. Gabriel Resources then sued Romania at ICSID for $4.4 billion; Romania won in 2024. Citizens did the work; institutions were the obstacle, then the inheritors of the win." },
    { id: "ro_f6", isTruth: false, country: "ro", fallback: "Romanian elites do not hide assets offshore the way Western European ones do.",
      whyFallback: "Pandora Papers, Panama Papers, and OffshoreLeaks named Romanian politicians, oligarchs, and judges using Cyprus, BVI, and Panama shells. Cyprus in particular was the standard channel through the 2000s and 2010s — same toolkit, smaller league." },
    { id: "ro_f7", isTruth: false, country: "ro", fallback: "The rise of AUR and similar parties is just a normal swing in European politics.",
      whyFallback: "AUR drew on Legionary-movement iconography, anti-vaccine and anti-Hungarian-minority mobilization, and an organized presence in Orthodox parish networks. The 9 January 2024 counter-protests in Bucharest treated it as a continuity question, not a left-right one. The 2024 presidential first round, won by Călin Georgescu before annulment, made the structural concern explicit." },

    // ============== Croatia — 8T + 7F ==============
    { id: "hr_t1", isTruth: true , country: "hr", fallback: "Former Prime Minister Ivo Sanader (HDZ) was convicted in multiple corruption cases — Hypo Bank kickbacks, the INA-MOL bribery affair, and the Planinska real-estate deal — cycling in and out of prison through the 2010s and 2020s.",
      whyFallback: "Sanader fled Croatia in 2010, was extradited from Austria, and convicted in 2012. The Constitutional Court annulled the first verdict in 2015; retrials followed. Final INA-MOL conviction 2019, six years. He is the first Croatian PM imprisoned for corruption — and the template against which every USKOK case is measured." },
    { id: "hr_t2", isTruth: true , country: "hr", fallback: "The 2017 Agrokor collapse — Ivica Todorić's retail empire with €6 billion in debt and 60,000 jobs at risk — forced parliament to pass the emergency Lex Agrokor in six days to nationalize the takeover.",
      whyFallback: "Agrokor was 15% of Croatian GDP-linked activity. Todorić fled to London, fought extradition for years, returned 2018. Lex Agrokor (April 2017) was drafted by consultants paid by creditors — a conflict of interest later acknowledged. The restructured entity became Fortenova, Russian Sberbank as a major shareholder until 2022 sanctions." },
    { id: "hr_t3", isTruth: true , country: "hr", fallback: "Hungary's MOL paid Sanader a €10 million bribe for management control of INA, Croatia's national oil company — but Hungary refused to extradite MOL CEO Zsolt Hernádi.",
      whyFallback: "Zagreb County Court convicted Sanader in absentia of the INA-MOL deal 2014; Hernádi was indicted in Croatia, INTERPOL red notice 2013. Hungary's Constitutional Court blocked extradition citing \"national interest\". The Orbán government keeps Hernádi free; the €10 million bribe was confirmed by a Swiss intermediary's testimony." },
    { id: "hr_t4", isTruth: true , country: "hr", fallback: "Operation Storm (August 1995) retook Krajina in four days — and roughly 200,000 Serbs fled or were expelled, with documented killings of civilians and elderly stay-behinds.",
      whyFallback: "General Ante Gotovina was convicted of crimes against humanity by the ICTY in 2011 (24 years), then acquitted on appeal in 2012 — a 3-2 split decision that legal scholars across the spectrum called politically driven. The flight remains the largest single ethnic displacement in Europe between 1945 and the Ukraine war. Return rates stayed below 30%." },
    { id: "hr_t5", isTruth: true , country: "hr", fallback: "HDZ politician Branimir Glavaš was convicted of war crimes against Serb civilians in Osijek (1991) — including torture and execution by acid and gunshot.",
      whyFallback: "Convicted 2009 (10 years), fled to Bosnia and Herzegovina using his dual citizenship to evade Croatian custody. Retried 2015 after constitutional appeal, convicted again. Glavaš served partial time; he was elected to parliament during the trial. The \"taping victims' mouths and forcing them to drink battery acid\" detail is in the verdict." },
    { id: "hr_t6", isTruth: true , country: "hr", fallback: "Croatian football boss Zdravko Mamić was convicted of embezzling tens of millions from Dinamo Zagreb transfers — and fled to Bosnia where, as a dual citizen, he runs the club by phone.",
      whyFallback: "Convicted 2018 (six and a half years) for siphoning Luka Modrić, Dejan Lovren, and other transfer fees. Final verdict 2021. Bosnia refuses extradition under its no-extradite-citizens rule. Mamić openly conducts Dinamo affairs from Međugorje; recorded phone calls implicate judges, prosecutors, and HDZ ministers." },
    { id: "hr_t7", isTruth: true , country: "hr", fallback: "Migrant pushbacks at the Bosnian border have been documented for years — beatings, dog attacks, theft, and forced river crossings — by independent monitors and Croatian whistleblower police.",
      whyFallback: "Border Violence Monitoring Network has filed hundreds of testimonies since 2017. The Guardian, Lighthouse Reports, and Der Spiegel published video of masked Croatian officers beating asylum seekers (2021). Ombudswoman Lora Vidović was denied access to police records. The Interior Ministry's response: deny, deflect, deny." },
    { id: "hr_t8", isTruth: true , country: "hr", fallback: "Andrej Plenković's government has churned through more than 30 ministers resignations or firings — most over corruption, conflict of interest, or links to the Mamić-style patronage network.",
      whyFallback: "Tomislav Tolušić, Lovro Kuščević, Darko Horvat, Josip Aladrović, Boris Milošević, Vili Beroš (arrested live on TV 2024), and others. The Beroš arrest — health minister taken in handcuffs over hospital-equipment kickbacks — broke the pattern of orderly resignations. USKOK investigations accelerated 2023-24; the underlying network did not." },
    { id: "hr_f1", isTruth: false, country: "hr", fallback: "Croatia's 2013 EU accession marked its passage from post-war state to consolidated rule-of-law democracy.",
      whyFallback: "EU progress reports between 2017 and 2024 repeatedly flagged judicial backlogs, USKOK independence concerns, and political capture of state companies. Croatia entered the Schengen Area (2023) and the Eurozone (2023) while ranking near the bottom of EU members on Transparency International's CPI. \"Consolidated\" is the accession label; the structural problems are unchanged." },
    { id: "hr_f2", isTruth: false, country: "hr", fallback: "USKOK, Croatia's anti-corruption agency, operates independently of political pressure.",
      whyFallback: "Founded 2001 under EU accession pressure, USKOK reports to the State Attorney's Office — whose chief is selected by parliament, dominated by HDZ since 2016. Cases against opposition figures move; cases inside HDZ tend to stall or settle. The Beroš live-TV arrest 2024 was the exception. The Sanader cycle — convict, annul, retry, partial sentence — is the structural pattern." },
    { id: "hr_f3", isTruth: false, country: "hr", fallback: "The Homeland War (1991-1995) is a closed chapter — Croatia defended itself and the case is settled.",
      whyFallback: "Vukovar 1991 (the 87-day siege, the Ovčara farm massacre of 200+ wounded patients), Operation Storm's civilian killings, Glavaš's Osijek torture cell, and the still-uninvestigated cases on both sides remain active legal and political terrain. Serbian convictions (Šešelj, Stanišić, Simatović) at the ICTY are real; so are Gotovina's acquittal politics. \"Closed\" is the official position; the courts disagree." },
    { id: "hr_f4", isTruth: false, country: "hr", fallback: "Croatia has confronted its WWII Ustaše past as squarely as Germany confronted Nazism.",
      whyFallback: "Jasenovac — the Ustaše concentration camp where ~80,000-100,000 Serbs, Roma, Jews, and dissidents were murdered — has been the subject of revisionist literature published by HDZ-adjacent historians (Igor Vukić, Stipo Pilić). The \"Za dom spremni\" salute appears on monuments and football terraces; courts have ruled it constitutional in specific contexts. The Catholic Church's role under Cardinal Stepinac is still framed as exonerated, not examined." },
    { id: "hr_f5", isTruth: false, country: "hr", fallback: "Croatian Telecom (HT) operates as a competitive market player like any other European telecom.",
      whyFallback: "Deutsche Telekom owns 51% via T-Hrvatski Telekom; the Croatian state retains the rest. 5G spectrum allocations, frequency renewals, and rural-coverage subsidies are awarded through processes the EU Commission has repeatedly queried. Former regulators move to HT executive roles; HT lobbyists move to ministry advisory boards. The market is competitive on paper." },
    { id: "hr_f6", isTruth: false, country: "hr", fallback: "Croatian state-owned enterprise privatizations (INA, HEP, Croatia Osiguranje, Ina-Tifon) returned fair value to taxpayers.",
      whyFallback: "INA's management was handed to MOL via the Sanader bribe; HEP's tariff structure subsidizes large industrial users; Croatia Osiguranje was sold to Adris Group 2014 in a tender criticized by the Competition Agency. The 1990s tycoon privatizations under Tuđman produced roughly 200 millionaires from formerly worker-owned enterprises. The pattern was set; later sales followed." },
    { id: "hr_f7", isTruth: false, country: "hr", fallback: "Croatian media is editorially independent and politically balanced.",
      whyFallback: "HRT (public broadcaster) management is parliament-appointed — HDZ has held the majority since 2016. Privately, the Hanza Media-Styria-Adris cluster owns the major dailies (Jutarnji, Slobodna Dalmacija, Večernji). Investigative outlets (Index.hr, Telegram.hr, H-Alter) face SLAPP suits — including dozens filed by HDZ politicians and Mamić. Reporters Without Borders ranked Croatia 42nd in 2024, down from 28th in 2018." },

    // ============== Slovenia — 8T + 7F ==============
    { id: "si_t1", isTruth: true , country: "si", fallback: "Janez Janša — three-time prime minister and SDS leader — was convicted in 2013 in the Patria armored-vehicles bribery case, only to have the verdict overturned in 2015 on a technicality.",
      whyFallback: "First-instance verdict June 2013, two years prison. Constitutional Court annulled it April 2015 on the grounds that the indictment did not specify the time and place of the offer. The substance of the Finnish Patria-AMV procurement bribery allegations was never adjudicated on the merits." },
    { id: "si_t2", isTruth: true , country: "si", fallback: "The 2013 banking crisis required a €4.8 billion taxpayer bailout of NLB, NKBM, and Abanka — roughly 13% of Slovenian GDP — after an ECB stress test exposed the hole.",
      whyFallback: "Asset Quality Review and stress test, December 2013. Bad loans transferred to the Bank Asset Management Company (DUTB, \"bad bank\"). Subordinated bondholders were wiped out by emergency decree; the Constitutional Court later ruled their compensation rights had been violated (2016)." },
    { id: "si_t3", isTruth: true , country: "si", fallback: "The TEŠ 6 lignite power plant — a single coal block in Šoštanj — ballooned from an estimated €600 million to €1.43 billion, becoming the largest single investment scandal in Slovenian history.",
      whyFallback: "Construction 2007–2014. Court of Audit reports flagged systematic cost-overruns, kickback suspicions, and state-guaranteed loans. Several executives of HSE and TEŠ were investigated; convictions limited despite a documented €830 million overrun on public money." },
    { id: "si_t4", isTruth: true , country: "si", fallback: "Igor Bavčar — former interior minister and Istrabenz chairman — was convicted of abuse of office and money laundering in 2014 over the Istrabenz–Pivovarna Laško affair.",
      whyFallback: "Bavčar received a five-year prison sentence (later reduced) for orchestrating a Mercator-share manipulation scheme that enriched insiders. He had been one of the architects of Slovenian independence in 1991; the case showed continuity between the founding generation and the privatization elite." },
    { id: "si_t5", isTruth: true , country: "si", fallback: "Under Janša's third government (2020–22), state funding for the Slovenian Press Agency (STA) was withheld for over 300 days in a deliberate financial strangulation of the public newswire.",
      whyFallback: "Director Bojan Veselinovič resigned. EU Commission, IPI, and RSF formally condemned the move. Janša publicly attacked journalists as \"presstitutes\" and \"prostitutes\" on Twitter. Funding was restored only after his electoral defeat in April 2022." },
    { id: "si_t6", isTruth: true , country: "si", fallback: "The Slovenian Sovereign Holding (SDH), which manages roughly €10 billion of state-owned enterprise assets, has cycled through politically appointed management with repeated insider-dealing allegations.",
      whyFallback: "SDH formed in 2014 by merging SOD and KAD. Successive supervisory boards purged after each change of government. Court of Audit (Računsko sodišče) has issued repeated negative opinions on disposal procedures for stakes in Telekom Slovenije, NLB, and Abanka." },
    { id: "si_t7", isTruth: true , country: "si", fallback: "The Commission for the Prevention of Corruption (KPK), established in 2010, has documented systemic conflicts of interest reaching into prime ministers, party leaders, and the judiciary itself.",
      whyFallback: "KPK's January 2013 report named both Janez Janša and Ljubljana mayor Zoran Janković for failing to declare assets and income origins. The report triggered the fall of Janša's second government. Both men remained in politics; the commission's own budget and independence have been squeezed since." },
    { id: "si_t8", isTruth: true , country: "si", fallback: "The 2015 razor-wire fence along Slovenia's border with Croatia — erected during the migrant route crisis — has remained in place for years despite repeated government promises to remove it.",
      whyFallback: "Concertina wire deployed November 2015 under PM Miro Cerar. Wildlife deaths (deer, bears) documented along the line. Successive governments (Šarec, Janša, Golob) pledged removal; only partial dismantling occurred. The \"temporary\" infrastructure became architecture." },
    { id: "si_f1", isTruth: false, country: "si", fallback: "Slovenia's transition from Yugoslavia to EU membership was a clean break with the secret-police apparatus.",
      whyFallback: "Personnel from UDBA/SDV (Yugoslav-era state security) transitioned into SOVA and the police after 1991 with files largely intact. Lustration legislation was repeatedly proposed and repeatedly buried. The continuity is documented; the official narrative is rupture." },
    { id: "si_f2", isTruth: false, country: "si", fallback: "Slovenia has the cleanest governance and freest press in the former Yugoslavia.",
      whyFallback: "Slovenia's RSF press-freedom ranking collapsed from 32nd (2020) to 54th (2022) under Janša's third government. STA funding cut-off, POP TV intimidation campaigns, and prosecutor purges are in the EU Commission's own Rule of Law reports. The regional comparison flatters; the trajectory does not." },
    { id: "si_f3", isTruth: false, country: "si", fallback: "The €4.8 billion bank bailout saved ordinary depositors from losses.",
      whyFallback: "Ordinary depositors were never at risk under EU deposit-guarantee rules. The bailout protected bondholders, shareholders, and politically connected borrowers whose bad loans were transferred to DUTB at favorable valuations. \"Saving depositors\" was the marketing; recapitalizing politically allocated credit was the substance." },
    { id: "si_f4", isTruth: false, country: "si", fallback: "Privatization of Slovenian state enterprises in the 1990s and 2000s created a competitive market economy.",
      whyFallback: "\"Tycoon loans\" — credit extended by state-owned banks (NLB, NKBM) to management-buyout vehicles owned by politically connected insiders — became the standard model. Mercator, Pivovarna Laško, Istrabenz, Merkur all followed the pattern. The result was concentrated ownership underwritten by public money, not market competition." },
    { id: "si_f5", isTruth: false, country: "si", fallback: "The Slovenian judiciary is fully independent of political pressure.",
      whyFallback: "Janša's third government attempted to block the appointment of Slovenian European Delegated Prosecutors in 2021, drawing formal EU Commission infringement procedures. The Patria-case Constitutional Court annulment, the SDH-management revolving door, and repeated state prosecutor appointment battles point to structural pressure, not isolated incidents." },
    { id: "si_f6", isTruth: false, country: "si", fallback: "Slovenia's intelligence service SOVA is a normal, accountable agency.",
      whyFallback: "SOVA directors have repeatedly resigned amid scandals — surveillance of journalists and opposition politicians, missing operational funds, opaque cooperation with foreign services. Parliamentary oversight (the KNOVS commission) is partisan and routinely deadlocked. The agency operates with much less scrutiny than its size implies." },
    { id: "si_f7", isTruth: false, country: "si", fallback: "EU membership has insulated Slovenia from the corruption patterns of the Western Balkans.",
      whyFallback: "TEŠ 6, the Patria case, the cum-ex-adjacent VAT carousels, Danske-Bank-style suspicious flows through Slovenian banks, and SDH disposals all share the same architecture documented in non-EU neighbors. EU accession changed reporting requirements; it did not change the underlying political-economic structure." },

    // ============== Bosnia and Herzegovina — 8T + 7F ==============
    { id: "ba_t1", isTruth: true , country: "ba", fallback: "The 1995 Dayton Accords ended the war by freezing the country into a tripartite presidency, two entities, ten cantons, three official languages, and a constitution annexed to a peace treaty — paralysis engineered as architecture.",
      whyFallback: "Negotiated at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, signed in Paris December 1995. Annex 4 — the constitution — was never voted on by Bosnian citizens. The Office of the High Representative (OHR) was created as a supervisory body \"for six months to a year\". It is still in operation thirty years later, with Christian Schmidt (since 2021) the eighth occupant." },
    { id: "ba_t2", isTruth: true , country: "ba", fallback: "Republika Srpska president Milorad Dodik has openly threatened secession for over a decade, while drawing US Treasury sanctions in 2017 and again in 2022 for corruption and obstructing Dayton.",
      whyFallback: "OFAC designation January 2017 (\"actively obstructing\" the peace agreement); expanded 2022 with family and business network; UK sanctions April 2022. Dodik calls Republika Srpska \"indestructible\" and has pushed laws criminalizing the work of state-level courts on RS territory. The OHR annulled his 2023 laws using Bonn Powers; he ignored the annulment." },
    { id: "ba_t3", isTruth: true , country: "ba", fallback: "High Representative Valentin Inzko's final act in July 2021 was an imposed law criminalizing denial of the Srebrenica genocide — which Dodik has repeatedly disputed in office.",
      whyFallback: "Inzko used Bonn Powers (the OHR's authority to impose legislation) July 23, 2021. Penalty: up to five years prison. Republika Srpska's National Assembly rejected the law within weeks and announced it would not apply on RS territory. The ICTY convicted Radovan Karadžić (40 years, life on appeal 2019) and Ratko Mladić (life, upheld 2021) for the genocide the law forbids denying." },
    { id: "ba_t4", isTruth: true , country: "ba", fallback: "The 2014 collapse of Bobar Bank cost Republika Srpska's state deposit-guarantee fund roughly 220 million convertible marks — and the bank's politically connected owners faced limited consequences.",
      whyFallback: "Bobar Bank was tied to the SNSD ruling party's funding circles. Owner Gavrilo Bobar died 2014; criminal proceedings against managers dragged into the 2020s with mostly suspended sentences. RS state companies and the deposit fund absorbed the losses. Auditors flagged years of fictitious loans to insider firms — the regulator (Banking Agency of RS) had signed off through every cycle." },
    { id: "ba_t5", isTruth: true , country: "ba", fallback: "The Mostar Old Bridge — a 16th-century Ottoman icon — was deliberately shelled and destroyed by Croatian Defence Council (HVO) artillery on November 9, 1993, then rebuilt with UNESCO funds and reopened in 2004.",
      whyFallback: "ICTY convictions: Slobodan Praljak (HVO commander) drank cyanide on camera November 29, 2017 after his 20-year sentence was upheld; Jadranko Prlić sentenced to 25 years. The reconstruction used original Tenelija stone and Ottoman techniques. The verdict named the destruction as a war crime — a deliberate strike on a non-military, world-heritage target." },
    { id: "ba_t6", isTruth: true , country: "ba", fallback: "Hundreds of thousands of citizens hold \"Ljubljanska banka\" foreign-currency savings frozen since the 1991 Yugoslav dissolution — and Slovenia spent two decades fighting at the European Court of Human Rights to avoid paying.",
      whyFallback: "ECtHR Ališić and Others v. Slovenia (2014, Grand Chamber): Slovenia ordered to repay Bosnian and Croatian depositors. Slovenia complied partially through a 2015 verification scheme that excluded many claimants on documentation grounds. The original deposits were transferred during Yugoslav-era banking; the savings vanished into the succession dispute. Hundreds of millions of euros never returned to the families." },
    { id: "ba_t7", isTruth: true , country: "ba", fallback: "Bosnia and Herzegovina is a major route for migrant pushbacks — asylum seekers are violently returned from Croatia into the Una-Sana Canton, often after entering EU territory.",
      whyFallback: "Border Violence Monitoring Network, Danish Refugee Council, and Human Rights Watch documented thousands of pushbacks 2018-2024. Lipa camp (near Bihać) burned down December 2020 leaving thousands in freezing conditions. Croatian officers — confirmed on video by Lighthouse Reports 2021 — beat, robbed, and drove asylum seekers back across the Glina river. Bosnia absorbs the externalized EU border, with no operational return mechanism." },
    { id: "ba_t8", isTruth: true , country: "ba", fallback: "OSCE and Council of Europe observer missions have repeatedly flagged election irregularities — vote-buying, ghost voters, falsified ballot counts — and in 2022 the High Representative imposed last-minute electoral changes hours after polls closed.",
      whyFallback: "Christian Schmidt used Bonn Powers October 2, 2022 to amend the Federation's seat-allocation rules while votes were still being counted. The change shifted parliamentary arithmetic in favor of HDZ BiH's Dragan Čović. ODIHR's 2022 final report noted lack of transparency, pressure on voters, and procedural breaches. The 2018 elections produced similar findings; the structural changes never followed the recommendations." },
    { id: "ba_f1", isTruth: false, country: "ba", fallback: "Bosnia and Herzegovina is a sovereign state functioning under its own constitution.",
      whyFallback: "The constitution is Annex 4 of a treaty Bosnians did not vote on. The Office of the High Representative can impose and annul laws, sack elected officials, and amend electoral rules — and has done so dozens of times. Three parallel ethnic governments (Bosniak-led Federation, Republika Srpska, the de facto Croat third entity inside the Federation) operate as separate fiefdoms. \"Sovereign\" is the diplomatic word; the structural reality is supervised partition." },
    { id: "ba_f2", isTruth: false, country: "ba", fallback: "Republika Srpska is a legitimate constituent entity equal to the Federation under Dayton.",
      whyFallback: "Republika Srpska's borders were drawn on the ground in 1992-1995 through the campaigns that produced the Srebrenica genocide, the Prijedor camps, and the ethnic cleansing of roughly 800,000 non-Serbs. Dayton recognized those borders as the price of stopping the war. Naser Orić, Sefer Halilović, and others were tried for crimes on the Bosniak side; the wholesale demographic engineering that created RS as a unit was not undone. Equality of entities is a legal formula laid over an ethnically cleansed map." },
    { id: "ba_f3", isTruth: false, country: "ba", fallback: "The international community's continued presence (IFOR, SFOR, EUFOR, OHR) is a neutral stabilizing force.",
      whyFallback: "EUFOR Althea has been on the ground since 2004; OHR since 1995. Bonn Powers — invented at the 1997 Bonn conference — let an unelected foreign official rewrite Bosnian law. The instruments are useful when used; they are also the architecture of a permanent protectorate. The eighth High Representative, Christian Schmidt, was installed in 2021 over Russian and Serbian objections; the UN Security Council never voted on his appointment." },
    { id: "ba_f4", isTruth: false, country: "ba", fallback: "Bosnia's energy and infrastructure tenders are awarded by transparent market processes.",
      whyFallback: "Elektroprivreda BiH and Elektroprivreda RS run as patronage machines for SDA and SNSD respectively. The Stanari coal plant (Chinese-financed, completed 2016) and the Tuzla 7 block (Chinese-financed, indefinitely stalled) were awarded without competitive EU-standard tendering. Construction permits in Sarajevo and Banja Luka track ethnic-party affiliation; the EU's annual reports have flagged the pattern since 2013. \"Market\" is the description; ethnic-patronage allocation is the practice." },
    { id: "ba_f5", isTruth: false, country: "ba", fallback: "The Bosnian war's perpetrators have been brought to justice through the ICTY.",
      whyFallback: "Karadžić, Mladić, Krajišnik, Praljak, Prlić, Stanišić, Šešelj, and others were convicted — real verdicts, real evidence, real sentences. Slobodan Milošević died in custody at The Hague March 2006 before his verdict, and the chain of command above him was never tried. Mid-level commanders, paramilitary leaders (Arkan assassinated 2000), and the political-financial networks that funded the war faced no equivalent accountability. The trials are real; \"brought to justice\" overstates what was done." },
    { id: "ba_f6", isTruth: false, country: "ba", fallback: "Bosnia's public sector pays its workers reliably — it is a functioning state by that minimum standard.",
      whyFallback: "Teachers, hospital staff, and miners in both entities have staged strikes for unpaid wages running months in arrears through the 2010s and 2020s. The country is sometimes called \"the land of the unpaid\" in domestic press. Bakir Izetbegović's business interests, the Dodik family's network (sanctioned by OFAC), and HDZ BiH's procurement channels run on time; the public payroll does not. The state is functional for the patronage layer." },
    { id: "ba_f7", isTruth: false, country: "ba", fallback: "Bosnia is on a clear EU-accession path and reforms are progressing.",
      whyFallback: "Bosnia applied for EU membership in February 2016; candidate status granted December 2022 — seven years later, conditional on fourteen unmet priorities. Accession negotiations opened formally March 2024 with the same priorities still unmet. The European Commission's annual reports through 2024 list the same problems each year: politicized judiciary, election law, public-administration capture, war-crime denial. \"Progressing\" is the diplomatic word; the indicators are flat." },

    // ============== North Macedonia — 8T + 7F ==============
    { id: "mk_t1", isTruth: true , country: "mk", fallback: "The Skopje 2014 project plastered neoclassical facades onto Brutalist buildings and filled the capital with kitsch monuments, at a reported cost of roughly €700 million.",
      whyFallback: "Launched under Nikola Gruevski (VMRO-DPMNE) and rolled out 2010-2014. Investigative outlets BIRN and Prizma documented the cost from contract data. Most awards went to a narrow pool of politically connected contractors without competitive tender." },
    { id: "mk_t2", isTruth: true , country: "mk", fallback: "Former prime minister Nikola Gruevski was sentenced to two years in prison in 2018 for corruption, then fled to Hungary and was granted political asylum by Viktor Orbán.",
      whyFallback: "The Tank case — illegal purchase of a luxury Mercedes for state use. Gruevski escaped via Albania and Montenegro using Hungarian embassy transport. Budapest's asylum grant in November 2018 effectively shielded him from multiple other open prosecutions." },
    { id: "mk_t3", isTruth: true , country: "mk", fallback: "In 2015 the opposition SDSM released the \"Bombs\" — recordings of tens of thousands of wiretapped conversations exposing election rigging, judicial control, and cover-ups of beatings and a 2011 murder.",
      whyFallback: "Released in batches by Zoran Zaev from February 2015 onward. The recordings implicated cabinet ministers, judges, and intelligence chief Sašo Mijalkov (Gruevski's cousin). The scandal triggered the Pržino Agreement and eventually toppled VMRO-DPMNE." },
    { id: "mk_t4", isTruth: true , country: "mk", fallback: "Katica Janeva, the Special Prosecutor appointed to investigate the wiretap scandal itself, was convicted in 2019 of extorting a businessman in a multi-million-euro bribery scheme.",
      whyFallback: "Sentenced to seven years in 2020 in the Racket case alongside TV personality Bojan Jovanovski (Boki 13). The institution created to prosecute Gruevski-era corruption was consumed by it. Janeva's office was shut down in 2019." },
    { id: "mk_t5", isTruth: true , country: "mk", fallback: "Under the 2018 Prespa Agreement the country renamed itself from \"Macedonia\" to \"North Macedonia\" to unblock Greek vetoes on EU and NATO accession.",
      whyFallback: "Signed by Zoran Zaev and Alexis Tsipras on June 17, 2018. A constitutional change was pushed through after a referendum that failed the turnout threshold but was treated as advisory. NATO accession followed in March 2020; the EU path then ran into a fresh Bulgarian veto." },
    { id: "mk_t6", isTruth: true , country: "mk", fallback: "Bulgaria has used its EU veto since 2020 to block North Macedonia's accession talks over disputes about language, history, and the identity of the Macedonian minority in Bulgaria.",
      whyFallback: "Sofia demands constitutional recognition of a Bulgarian minority and rejection of the \"Macedonian language\" as a separate language. The 2022 French proposal partially unfroze talks but the constitutional change remains blocked in Skopje. EU membership is now hostage to a bilateral identity dispute." },
    { id: "mk_t7", isTruth: true , country: "mk", fallback: "The 2001 Ohrid Framework Agreement ended an armed insurgency by ethnic Albanian fighters and entrenched the ~25% Albanian minority's representation in government, police, and language rights.",
      whyFallback: "Signed August 13, 2001, after months of conflict with the NLA. The agreement required decentralization, proportional public-sector hiring, and recognition of Albanian as an official language in municipalities above 20% Albanian. The deal stabilized the state and froze its ethnic balance into the political architecture." },
    { id: "mk_t8", isTruth: true , country: "mk", fallback: "President Boris Trajkovski died in a 2004 plane crash en route to a Bosnia investment conference, in circumstances that remain contested in the country's political memory.",
      whyFallback: "The government Beechcraft King Air crashed near Mostar on February 26, 2004. Official Bosnian and ICAO investigations cited pilot error and weather. Trajkovski had been a moderate brake on factional power struggles; questions about the crash recur whenever those struggles reopen." },
    { id: "mk_f1", isTruth: false, country: "mk", fallback: "The Skopje 2014 monuments restored national pride and put the capital on the tourist map.",
      whyFallback: "The project was a domestic political branding exercise — bronze warriors, fountains, and triumphal arches built largely by uncontested contractors. Architects and urbanists called it kitsch; the EU's anti-corruption monitors called it a vehicle for procurement abuse. The pride was downstream of the patronage." },
    { id: "mk_f2", isTruth: false, country: "mk", fallback: "The name change to North Macedonia was a fair compromise freely chosen by the people.",
      whyFallback: "The September 2018 referendum drew 36.9% turnout — well below the 50% required threshold — and parliament pushed the constitutional change through anyway under EU and NATO pressure. The deal was a geopolitical price tag, not a free choice; framing it otherwise is convenient diplomacy." },
    { id: "mk_f3", isTruth: false, country: "mk", fallback: "NATO membership in 2020 anchored North Macedonia in Western democratic norms.",
      whyFallback: "Accession was the reward for the name change, not for institutional reform. Within a year the Special Prosecutor created to clean up corruption was herself convicted of extortion. Alliance membership is a security guarantee, not a rule-of-law audit." },
    { id: "mk_f4", isTruth: false, country: "mk", fallback: "The 2015 wiretap recordings were a foreign-backed plot to destabilize a successful government.",
      whyFallback: "The framing pushed by VMRO-DPMNE and its allied media. The recordings' authenticity was confirmed by the Special Prosecutor's Office and independent forensic review; convictions followed, including Gruevski's own. \"Foreign plot\" was a domestic-audience cover for documented illegal surveillance by the state itself." },
    { id: "mk_f5", isTruth: false, country: "mk", fallback: "The Ohrid Framework Agreement solved the country's ethnic question.",
      whyFallback: "It contained the 2001 conflict and built durable power-sharing, but the underlying segregation persists in schools, neighborhoods, and parallel media. Albanian parties are kingmakers in every coalition; Macedonian-Albanian disputes over census results, language laws, and symbols recur on schedule. Managed, not solved." },
    { id: "mk_f6", isTruth: false, country: "mk", fallback: "Hungary's asylum for Gruevski was a routine humanitarian decision.",
      whyFallback: "Granted weeks after a Skopje court sentence, with Hungarian embassy vehicles reportedly used in the escape route through Albania and Montenegro. Orbán and Gruevski share a political network and party family (EPP at the time, then further right). The decision was political solidarity dressed as asylum law." },
    { id: "mk_f7", isTruth: false, country: "mk", fallback: "Judicial reform after 2017 cleaned up the courts that the wiretap recordings had exposed.",
      whyFallback: "The vetting law for judges was struck down and reform stalled in parliament. The Special Prosecutor's Office that drove early prosecutions was shut down in 2019 after Janeva's arrest. The same judges named in the Bombs largely kept their robes; the institutional reset never arrived." },

    // ============== Albania — 8T + 7F ==============
    { id: "al_t1", isTruth: true , country: "al", fallback: "Enver Hoxha ran Albania as a Stalinist closed state from 1944 to 1985, with the Sigurimi secret police executing roughly 6,000 people and sending hundreds of thousands to labor camps.",
      whyFallback: "Spaç, Burrel, Tepelenë — the camp network was extensive and multi-generational. Hoxha broke with Yugoslavia (1948), the USSR (1961), and finally China (1978). The bunkerization program left around 170,000 concrete bunkers across the country." },
    { id: "al_t2", isTruth: true , country: "al", fallback: "The 1997 pyramid scheme collapse wiped out roughly half of Albania's GDP and triggered a civil war that killed around 2,000 people.",
      whyFallback: "Sali Berisha's Democratic Party government endorsed the schemes during the 1996 election. When VEFA, Sude, Xhafferi and others collapsed in January 1997, army depots were looted, ~650,000 weapons taken, and an Italian-led multinational force (Operation Alba) deployed. Berisha resigned that July." },
    { id: "al_t3", isTruth: true , country: "al", fallback: "In 2014 Albanian police needed armored vehicles and helicopters to retake the village of Lazarat, which had become an open cannabis plantation producing an estimated 900 tons per year.",
      whyFallback: "Lazarat was the Pablo Escobar village of the Balkans — police did not enter for years. The June 2014 operation involved over 800 officers and was met with rocket-propelled grenades. Cannabis production then spread across the country rather than ending; Italian Guardia di Finanza tracking confirmed Albania as Europe's largest outdoor producer through the late 2010s." },
    { id: "al_t4", isTruth: true , country: "al", fallback: "Former FBI counterintelligence chief Charles McGonigal pleaded guilty in 2023 to taking $225,000 from an Albanian intelligence-linked figure while still in office.",
      whyFallback: "McGonigal ran FBI counterintel in New York — the office that surveilled foreign agents. Payments came from Agron Neza, tied to Prime Minister Edi Rama's circle. Sentenced to 50 months in December 2023. The case exposed how thin the wall between Tirana politics and Washington intelligence had become." },
    { id: "al_t5", isTruth: true , country: "al", fallback: "Albania's vetting reform, launched in 2016 under international monitoring, dismissed more than half of all judges and prosecutors evaluated for unexplained wealth or organized-crime ties.",
      whyFallback: "The International Monitoring Operation (EU + US) supervised the process. By 2023 around 62% of vetted magistrates had been removed or had resigned. SPAK (Special Anti-Corruption Structure), created in 2019, is the prosecutorial half of the same reform. The depth of the purge is itself the evidence of how compromised the bench was." },
    { id: "al_t6", isTruth: true , country: "al", fallback: "Saimir Tahiri, Edi Rama's Interior Minister from 2013 to 2017, was convicted in 2020 of abuse of office tied to the Habilaj drug-trafficking clan.",
      whyFallback: "Italian wiretaps caught the Habilaj cousins discussing protection from \"the minister\". Tahiri admitted selling them a personal Audi but denied the larger relationship. Initial three-year sentence reduced to a fine on appeal — a result widely read as the system protecting itself. He served no prison time." },
    { id: "al_t7", isTruth: true , country: "al", fallback: "Italy and Albania signed a 2023 protocol allowing Italy to process migrants in two camps built on Albanian soil — the first EU-state offshoring of asylum processing to a non-EU country.",
      whyFallback: "Meloni-Rama deal, signed November 2023, opened in October 2024. Camps at Shëngjin (intake) and Gjadër (detention). Italian courts repeatedly blocked transfers as incompatible with EU law; the political agreement continued anyway. Rama framed it as European solidarity; critics noted Albania received no migrants but received political cover." },
    { id: "al_t8", isTruth: true , country: "al", fallback: "Around 3,000 members of the Iranian opposition group MEK live in a closed compound near Manëz, west of Tirana, under arrangements brokered with the US State Department.",
      whyFallback: "Camp Ashraf 3, opened 2016 after the group was relocated from Iraq. The US paid Albania to host them. Iranian cyber-attacks on Albanian government systems in 2022 led Tirana to cut diplomatic relations with Tehran — the first NATO country ever to do so over a cyber incident. The MEK presence is a load-bearing piece of US-Iran posture using Albanian territory." },
    { id: "al_f1", isTruth: false, country: "al", fallback: "Albania has cleanly broken with its communist past.",
      whyFallback: "The Sigurimi archives were never fully opened — successive governments delayed lustration for thirty years. The 2015 law that finally allowed access carved out exceptions for sitting officials. Many of the families that ran the regime simply renamed themselves and kept the property." },
    { id: "al_f2", isTruth: false, country: "al", fallback: "Edi Rama's long rule reflects genuine democratic preference.",
      whyFallback: "ODIHR reports on the 2017 and 2021 elections cited vote-buying, misuse of state resources, and pressure on public-sector employees. The opposition burned its parliamentary mandates in 2019 in protest. Three consecutive terms with the same ruling party in a country this fluid is the result of machinery, not landslide enthusiasm." },
    { id: "al_f3", isTruth: false, country: "al", fallback: "Albania's EU accession path proves the country has met European standards.",
      whyFallback: "Negotiations opened in 2022 after a decade of waiting; the open question is whether the standards or the patience moved more. The EU's own rule-of-law reports continue to flag judicial vetting backlogs, organized crime, and money laundering. Accession is a political process; the conditions are negotiable." },
    { id: "al_f4", isTruth: false, country: "al", fallback: "The cannabis economy was eradicated after the 2014 Lazarat raid.",
      whyFallback: "Satellite imagery and Guardia di Finanza interceptions showed production decentralizing rather than stopping. By 2016 Italian authorities estimated Albanian cannabis exports at €4-5 billion annually. The political claim that the trade ended was useful for Rama internationally; the seizures kept happening." },
    { id: "al_f5", isTruth: false, country: "al", fallback: "Albania is a model of inter-religious harmony.",
      whyFallback: "The tolerance is real and worth respecting — Sunni Muslim majority, Bektashi, Orthodox, and Catholic communities coexist with notably little conflict. The framing becomes propaganda when used to deflect from corruption, organized crime, and emigration. \"Religious harmony\" answers a different question than the one usually being asked." },
    { id: "al_f6", isTruth: false, country: "al", fallback: "Diaspora remittances are a sign of Albanian economic dynamism.",
      whyFallback: "Remittances run around 9-10% of GDP because roughly a third of Albanians live outside the country. Population dropped from ~3.2 million in 1990 to under 2.4 million by the 2023 census. The remittance economy is a measure of how many people had to leave for the country to function." },
    { id: "al_f7", isTruth: false, country: "al", fallback: "Albanian citizenship-for-investment and port concessions are normal foreign-investment tools.",
      whyFallback: "Vlora port, Durrës waterfront, the Porto Romano concessions — repeated awards to politically connected consortia with opaque ultimate beneficiaries. Citizenship schemes attached to real-estate thresholds attracted Russian, Turkish, and Gulf money during the 2014-2022 window. \"Investment\" is the legal category; the function is often passport laundering." },

    // ============== Montenegro — 8T + 7F ==============
    { id: "me_t1", isTruth: true , country: "me", fallback: "Milo Đukanović dominated Montenegrin politics for roughly three decades — alternating between Prime Minister and President from 1991 until 2023.",
      whyFallback: "Six terms as PM, two as President. Italian anti-mafia prosecutors in Bari named him in cigarette-smuggling investigations from 2003 onward and reportedly referred to him as \"il padrino\" — the godfather. He held immunity through office, dropped it only when convenient." },
    { id: "me_t2", isTruth: true , country: "me", fallback: "Italian anti-mafia investigators documented Montenegro as a key transit hub for cigarette smuggling into the EU during the late 1990s and early 2000s — with senior state officials implicated.",
      whyFallback: "Bari and Naples prosecutions traced shipments through the port of Bar to Italy. Montenegrin state structures earned transit fees; Italian mafia clans (Sacra Corona Unita, Camorra) handled distribution. The Italian case against Đukanović was dropped in 2009 on jurisdictional grounds, not on the facts." },
    { id: "me_t3", isTruth: true , country: "me", fallback: "Montenegro ran a citizenship-by-investment program — a passport for roughly €350,000 plus fees — that the EU repeatedly warned was a security risk before it was finally suspended in 2022.",
      whyFallback: "Launched 2019, marketed to wealthy buyers from Russia, China, the Middle East. EU accession process required wind-down. The list of who received passports remains partial public record; due-diligence reviews flagged several recipients later sanctioned elsewhere." },
    { id: "me_t4", isTruth: true , country: "me", fallback: "Kotor and Škaljari — two organized crime clans originating from a single Adriatic town — have left dozens of corpses across European cities since 2014, in a war over a single missing cocaine shipment.",
      whyFallback: "Split during a 2014 cocaine theft in Valencia. Murders documented in Vienna, Athens, Belgrade, Cape Town, Istanbul, and Montenegro itself. European police treat both clans as transnational organizations; Montenegrin courts have convicted a small fraction of the operatives." },
    { id: "me_t5", isTruth: true , country: "me", fallback: "KAP — Kombinat aluminija Podgorica, once the country's largest industrial employer — was privatized to Oleg Deripaska's Rusal in 2005 and bankrupted by 2013, with the state left holding the debt.",
      whyFallback: "Sale price well below independent valuations. Deripaska's En+ structure extracted value while accumulating obligations to the state. The 2013 default left Montenegro paying off guaranteed loans for years. Arbitration cases dragged on into the 2020s." },
    { id: "me_t6", isTruth: true , country: "me", fallback: "Porto Montenegro and the Boka Kotorska coast became one of the Mediterranean's largest hubs for Russian-owned property and superyachts during the 2010s.",
      whyFallback: "Porto Montenegro built on the former Tivat naval base, sold off in 2006 to a consortium including the Rothschilds and Bernard Arnault. Russian buyers acquired large shares of coastal real estate; Boka's marina infrastructure was specifically designed for vessels too large for most other Adriatic ports." },
    { id: "me_t7", isTruth: true , country: "me", fallback: "Montenegro adopted the euro unilaterally in 2002 — without joining the eurozone, without ECB permission, and without the legal authority to issue or backstop it.",
      whyFallback: "Replaced the Deutsche Mark, which had itself replaced the Yugoslav dinar in 1999. Brussels has tolerated the arrangement while making clear it would not be repeated. Montenegro carries the euro's discipline without the membership benefits — no ECB lifeline, no seat at the table." },
    { id: "me_t8", isTruth: true , country: "me", fallback: "The 2016 \"coup attempt\" trial ended with convictions of Russian and Serbian nationals for plotting to disrupt elections and prevent NATO accession — though several convictions were later overturned on appeal.",
      whyFallback: "Trial concluded 2019. Two alleged GRU officers (Eduard Shishmakov, Vladimir Popov) tried in absentia. The Constitutional Court overturned the verdicts in 2021 on procedural grounds. Whatever happened that night, the official narrative served Đukanović's NATO push — accession completed June 2017." },
    { id: "me_f1", isTruth: false, country: "me", fallback: "The 2006 independence referendum was a clean democratic expression of national will.",
      whyFallback: "55.5% Yes — exactly above the EU-imposed 55% threshold, which was itself designed to make the vote close. Turnout structures, diaspora voting rules, and the threshold itself were all subjects of dispute. Independence was real; the framing as uncomplicated democratic consensus is the inversion." },
    { id: "me_f2", isTruth: false, country: "me", fallback: "NATO accession in 2017 reflected the settled will of the Montenegrin people.",
      whyFallback: "No referendum was held — a deliberate choice by the Đukanović government, which polled internally showing the vote could be lost. Accession was pushed through parliament against significant public opposition, particularly among the country's Serbian Orthodox population." },
    { id: "me_f3", isTruth: false, country: "me", fallback: "The 2020 change of government ended three decades of single-party rule through democratic alternation.",
      whyFallback: "The trigger was the 2019 religious property law that threatened Serbian Orthodox Church holdings — months of processions, not policy debate, brought down the DPS. The coalition that replaced Đukanović's party then fractured within two years. The pattern resembled controlled rotation more than a clean break." },
    { id: "me_f4", isTruth: false, country: "me", fallback: "Montenegro is a successful small Mediterranean economy built on tourism and clean foreign investment.",
      whyFallback: "Coastal real estate is heavily Russian-owned; the citizenship program courted exactly the buyers the EU warned about; KAP's aluminium privatization ended in state-debt absorption. \"Clean\" foreign investment is the brochure; due-diligence-light foreign investment is the record." },
    { id: "me_f5", isTruth: false, country: "me", fallback: "Montenegrin organized crime is a local nuisance, contained to the Adriatic coast.",
      whyFallback: "Kotor and Škaljari clan murders span Vienna, Athens, Belgrade, Cape Town, Istanbul. European cocaine flows through Balkan routes the clans operate. Europol treats them as Tier 1 transnational threats; the \"local\" framing is for tourist brochures, not police reports." },
    { id: "me_f6", isTruth: false, country: "me", fallback: "Montenegrin media offers diverse independent voices across the political spectrum.",
      whyFallback: "Ownership of major outlets concentrates around figures tied to the previous and current ruling networks. Critical journalists have been physically attacked — Olivera Lakić shot in 2018, Duško Jovanović killed in 2004 — with most cases unresolved. \"Diverse voices\" describes the format, not the structure." },
    { id: "me_f7", isTruth: false, country: "me", fallback: "Montenegro treats its Bosniak, Albanian, and northern Muslim minorities on equal terms with the Orthodox majority.",
      whyFallback: "Plav, Berane, Rožaje, Ulcinj — northeast and southeast minority regions — show persistent underinvestment in infrastructure and public-sector employment. Census categories around national identity (Montenegrin vs. Serb vs. Bosniak) are themselves contested. Formal equality on paper, structural asymmetry on the ground." },

    // ============== Kosovo — 8T + 7F ==============
    { id: "xk_t1", isTruth: true , country: "xk", fallback: "Kosovo's 2008 unilateral declaration of independence was never recognized by the UN — Russia, China, Serbia, and five EU members (Spain, Romania, Greece, Slovakia, Cyprus) still refuse it.",
      whyFallback: "Declared 17 February 2008. Recognized by roughly 100 of 193 UN states. The ICJ's 2010 advisory opinion called the declaration itself \"not illegal\" — a narrower finding than recognition. Statehood is partial; the framing of \"international community\" is selective." },
    { id: "xk_t2", isTruth: true , country: "xk", fallback: "The KLA (UÇK — Kosovo Liberation Army) was designated a terrorist organization by the US State Department in the 1990s, then rebranded as a NATO partner before the 1999 bombing campaign.",
      whyFallback: "1998: Special Envoy Robert Gelbard called the KLA \"without any question, a terrorist group\". 1999: same KLA coordinated with NATO targeting in the 78-day bombing. The reclassification was political, not factual — the leadership and tactics did not change." },
    { id: "xk_t3", isTruth: true , country: "xk", fallback: "The 1999 NATO bombing of Yugoslavia ran 78 days without UN Security Council authorization and included the bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade.",
      whyFallback: "24 March – 10 June 1999. Russia and China would have vetoed any UN resolution, so NATO acted without one. The 7 May embassy strike killed three Chinese journalists; NATO called it a map error. The precedent — bombing without UN mandate — was used again in Libya 2011." },
    { id: "xk_t4", isTruth: true , country: "xk", fallback: "The Council of Europe's 2010 Marty Report documented KLA prisoner murders and organ trafficking during and after the 1998–99 war.",
      whyFallback: "Dick Marty, Swiss senator and CoE rapporteur. Report adopted by the Parliamentary Assembly January 2011. Named senior KLA figures, described a \"yellow house\" in Albania where prisoners were killed for organs. The report was the basis for the later Specialist Chambers." },
    { id: "xk_t5", isTruth: true , country: "xk", fallback: "The Kosovo Specialist Chambers had to be located in The Hague — not Kosovo — because witnesses inside Kosovo kept dying or recanting.",
      whyFallback: "Established by Kosovo's own parliament in 2015 under heavy EU pressure. Seated in The Hague for witness protection. Indictments against former president Hashim Thaçi, Kadri Veseli, Jakup Krasniqi, and Rexhep Selimi filed in 2020; trials ongoing." },
    { id: "xk_t6", isTruth: true , country: "xk", fallback: "Former KLA commander and prime minister Ramush Haradinaj was tried twice at the ICTY for war crimes and acquitted both times — after witnesses repeatedly died or refused to testify.",
      whyFallback: "ICTY 2008 acquittal, partial retrial ordered, second acquittal 2012. The court itself noted a \"climate of fear\" affecting witnesses. Chief prosecutor Carla Del Ponte later wrote that witness intimidation in Kosovo was the worst she had encountered." },
    { id: "xk_t7", isTruth: true , country: "xk", fallback: "EULEX, the EU's flagship rule-of-law mission in Kosovo, was itself accused of corruption — exposed in 2014 by its own British prosecutor, Maria Bamieh.",
      whyFallback: "Bamieh alleged bribery inside the mission, including a EULEX judge accepting payments to drop cases. She was dismissed. Subsequent reviews confirmed mismanagement. The mission deployed to fight corruption became a case study in it." },
    { id: "xk_t8", isTruth: true , country: "xk", fallback: "Camp Bondsteel, built by the US Army Corps of Engineers in 1999, is one of the largest American overseas bases — constructed on Kosovar land within months of the bombing's end.",
      whyFallback: "Halliburton subsidiary KBR built it. Council of Europe rapporteur Alvaro Gil-Robles in 2005 called it a \"smaller version of Guantánamo\". Its scale and permanence indicate the bombing campaign's strategic outcome was not only humanitarian." },
    { id: "xk_f1", isTruth: false, country: "xk", fallback: "The 1999 NATO intervention was a humanitarian rescue without other motives.",
      whyFallback: "The Rambouillet Accords included Appendix B — allowing NATO forces unrestricted access across all of Yugoslavia. Belgrade refused; the war followed. Camp Bondsteel was operational within months. \"Humanitarian\" was the framing; the strategic geometry was older." },
    { id: "xk_f2", isTruth: false, country: "xk", fallback: "Kosovo is a fully sovereign independent state.",
      whyFallback: "Not a UN member. Cannot join most major international bodies. EULEX still operates inside it; KFOR (NATO) still provides security. Constitution institutionalizes EU/US alignment. \"Independence\" describes the flag, not the decision-making chain." },
    { id: "xk_f3", isTruth: false, country: "xk", fallback: "The KLA was a grassroots civilian resistance movement.",
      whyFallback: "Funded substantially through the Albanian diaspora and — by multiple intelligence accounts — connected to heroin trafficking routes through the Balkans. Marty Report documented its post-war criminal structures. Resistance and organized crime overlapped, not in spite of the cause but through it." },
    { id: "xk_f4", isTruth: false, country: "xk", fallback: "The Hague tribunals delivered impartial justice for all sides of the Yugoslav wars.",
      whyFallback: "Serbian leaders convicted in bulk; KLA leaders mostly acquitted (Haradinaj, Limaj). The Specialist Chambers had to be created later, separately, precisely because the ICTY record on KLA crimes was thin. \"Impartial\" in framing; asymmetric in outcomes." },
    { id: "xk_f5", isTruth: false, country: "xk", fallback: "Kosovo's privatization process distributed former state assets fairly to citizens.",
      whyFallback: "The Privatization Agency of Kosovo (PAK) oversaw sales of socially-owned enterprises through the 2000s–2010s amid persistent allegations of insider deals, undervaluation, and politically connected buyers. The Trepča mining complex remains a particular dispute. Procedural; not equitable." },
    { id: "xk_f6", isTruth: false, country: "xk", fallback: "Northern Kosovo's tensions are simply about ethnic intransigence by local Serbs.",
      whyFallback: "Serb-majority municipalities north of the Ibar were promised an Association of Serb Municipalities under the 2013 Brussels Agreement — never delivered by Pristina. License-plate disputes, barricades, and the 2023 Banjska incident sit on top of a decade of unimplemented commitments. \"Intransigence\" hides the broken paperwork." },
    { id: "xk_f7", isTruth: false, country: "xk", fallback: "Western media coverage of Kosovo accurately reflects the historical record.",
      whyFallback: "Serbian war crimes were extensively covered; KLA crimes documented in the Marty Report received a fraction of the attention. The framing \"genocide narrowly averted\" persisted even after death-toll revisions downward. Same events; different volume knobs depending on which side committed them." },

    // ============== Estonia — 8T + 7F ==============
    { id: "ee_t1", isTruth: true , country: "ee", fallback: "Danske Bank's Tallinn branch processed roughly €200 billion in suspicious non-resident flows from 2007 to 2015 — one of the largest money-laundering episodes in European history.",
      whyFallback: "Danske's own 2018 report confirmed the scale. Whistleblower Howard Wilkinson raised the alarm internally in 2014. Estonia's Financial Supervision Authority (Finantsinspektsioon) had inspected the branch repeatedly and missed — or chose not to act on — the pattern." },
    { id: "ee_t2", isTruth: true , country: "ee", fallback: "Prime Minister Kaja Kallas remained in office in 2023 after her husband's logistics firm was revealed to be shipping goods to Russia months after the invasion of Ukraine.",
      whyFallback: "Stark Logistics, part-owned by Arvo Hallik, continued deliveries to Russia after February 2022. Kallas — who had built her public profile on the hardest anti-Russia line in the EU — said she did not know. She did not resign; the political cost was paid in polling, not office." },
    { id: "ee_t3", isTruth: true , country: "ee", fallback: "Around 70,000 long-term residents of Estonia — mostly ethnic Russians — still hold \"grey passport\" non-citizen status more than three decades after independence.",
      whyFallback: "Citizenship law since 1992 requires Estonian-language proficiency, which excluded most Soviet-era arrivals and their descendants from the post-independence franchise. The category was supposed to be transitional; it became structural." },
    { id: "ee_t4", isTruth: true , country: "ee", fallback: "Estonia's much-marketed digital ID system suffered a 2017 cryptographic flaw that compromised roughly 750,000 cards — about half the population.",
      whyFallback: "The ROCA vulnerability in Infineon chips made the private keys factorable. The government suspended certificates and rolled out emergency renewals. The episode was contained competently — and quietly absent from \"e-Estonia\" marketing materials abroad." },
    { id: "ee_t5", isTruth: true , country: "ee", fallback: "The 2007 removal of the Bronze Soldier statue from central Tallinn triggered street riots and a wave of cyber attacks now considered the first major state-on-state cyber operation.",
      whyFallback: "DDoS floods hit ministries, banks, and media for weeks in April–May 2007. Attribution to Russian-state-aligned actors was widely accepted but never proven in court. NATO's Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence was established in Tallinn the following year, partly in response." },
    { id: "ee_t6", isTruth: true , country: "ee", fallback: "Long-running corruption proceedings against former Tallinn mayor and Center Party leader Edgar Savisaar dragged on for years before being terminated on health grounds in 2020.",
      whyFallback: "Charged in 2015 with accepting bribes and embezzlement. Trial repeatedly suspended; he died in 2022. The political consequences for the Center Party — long the main vehicle for Russian-speaking voters — outlasted any verdict." },
    { id: "ee_t7", isTruth: true , country: "ee", fallback: "The Kohtla-Järve region in the northeast has been heavily polluted by decades of oil shale mining and combustion, which still supplies a major share of Estonia's electricity.",
      whyFallback: "Oil shale is among the most carbon-intensive fuels in use anywhere in the OECD. Spoil heaps, groundwater contamination, and air-quality data are well documented. The \"digital green leader\" framing rarely names where the power comes from." },
    { id: "ee_t8", isTruth: true , country: "ee", fallback: "Estonia maintained substantial Russian gas and energy imports right up to 2022, despite a decade of public rhetoric framing Moscow as the primary security threat.",
      whyFallback: "Russian pipeline gas flowed via the Baltic interconnector network through the 2010s. The pivot to LNG and Finnish supply happened in 2022, not earlier. The strategic posture and the procurement reality were running on two different clocks." },
    { id: "ee_f1", isTruth: false, country: "ee", fallback: "Estonia is the world's most advanced digital democracy.",
      whyFallback: "The branding is real; the qualifiers are absent. X-Road and e-Residency are genuine engineering achievements. The 2017 ID-card crisis, repeated election-software disputes, and the absence of a paper trail for internet voting are the parts the brochures omit." },
    { id: "ee_f2", isTruth: false, country: "ee", fallback: "The Danske Bank scandal was a Danish failure that happened to use an Estonian branch.",
      whyFallback: "The €200 billion flowed through Estonia for nearly a decade under the eyes of the Estonian Financial Supervision Authority. Treating it as someone else's regulatory failure is convenient for both Tallinn and Copenhagen — and historically wrong." },
    { id: "ee_f3", isTruth: false, country: "ee", fallback: "Estonia's language and citizenship laws are neutral civic requirements with no ethnic dimension.",
      whyFallback: "The 1992 framework was designed knowing exactly who would be excluded: Soviet-era arrivals who never had reason to learn Estonian. Three decades of grey-passport statelessness is the predictable output of a rule whose authors understood its effects." },
    { id: "ee_f4", isTruth: false, country: "ee", fallback: "The Internal Security Service (KaPo) is a politically neutral counter-intelligence agency.",
      whyFallback: "KaPo's annual reports name domestic political figures and journalists alongside foreign threats. Defendants in several high-profile cases — including Center Party figures — have argued the prosecutions tracked political alignment. The arguments are not all wrong." },
    { id: "ee_f5", isTruth: false, country: "ee", fallback: "Kaja Kallas's anti-corruption credentials were untouched by the Stark Logistics affair.",
      whyFallback: "A prime minister whose family business was shipping to Russia after sanctions, while she demanded harder lines from every EU partner, is a credibility problem on its face. The defense — that she personally did not know — was accepted at home and abroad more readily than the same defense from any opponent would have been." },
    { id: "ee_f6", isTruth: false, country: "ee", fallback: "The 2007 cyber attacks proved Estonia could not be touched again.",
      whyFallback: "They proved the opposite — that a small, hyper-digital state is permanently exposed. NATO's Tallinn cyber centre is a research hub, not a shield. The defensive posture has improved; the attack surface has grown faster." },
    { id: "ee_f7", isTruth: false, country: "ee", fallback: "Estonia's transition out of Soviet-era institutions was clean and complete by the 1990s.",
      whyFallback: "Property restitution, language law, citizenship rules, and the status of the Orthodox Church are still live political questions in the 2020s. The 2024 Russian-language schools transition law is the latest chapter, not the closing one. \"Post-Soviet\" remains a present tense in Estonia." },

    // ============== Latvia — 8T + 7F ==============
    { id: "lv_t1", isTruth: true , country: "lv", fallback: "In February 2018 the US Treasury's FinCEN designated Latvia's third-largest bank, ABLV, for \"institutionalized money laundering\" — the bank was liquidated within weeks.",
      whyFallback: "FinCEN section 311 notice, 13 February 2018. ECB ordered liquidation; €4.9 billion in assets wound down. ABLV had built its business on non-resident — overwhelmingly post-Soviet — deposits. The designation surprised no one in Riga's financial sector." },
    { id: "lv_t2", isTruth: true , country: "lv", fallback: "Ilmārs Rimšēvičs — governor of the Bank of Latvia and an ECB Governing Council member — was arrested for bribery in February 2018 and later indicted.",
      whyFallback: "Detained by KNAB (anti-corruption bureau) days after the ABLV designation. ECB suspended him; the European Court of Justice later ruled the suspension unlawful in form, not in substance. Trial dragged through the Riga courts for years. He served two terms before charges landed." },
    { id: "lv_t3", isTruth: true , country: "lv", fallback: "The 2008-09 bailout of Parex Banka cost the Latvian state roughly €1.7 billion — paid for with austerity that cut public-sector wages by up to 30%.",
      whyFallback: "Parex was nationalized in November 2008 after a run on deposits. IMF and EU rescue package conditioned on internal devaluation. Wages, pensions, and hospitals absorbed the cost; the bank's owners walked away with personal compensation." },
    { id: "lv_t4", isTruth: true , country: "lv", fallback: "Aivars Lembergs ran the port city of Ventspils for roughly 30 years and was placed on the US Treasury's Magnitsky sanctions list in December 2019 for corruption.",
      whyFallback: "OFAC SDN listing 9 December 2019. Latvian courts convicted him in 2021 on bribery and money-laundering counts; appeals continued for years. Estimated wealth above $200 million in a town of 35,000. The political vehicle ZZS protected him through cycle after cycle." },
    { id: "lv_t5", isTruth: true , country: "lv", fallback: "More than 200,000 people in Latvia — mostly ethnic Russians born in the country — still hold \"alien's passports\" rather than citizenship more than three decades after independence.",
      whyFallback: "Down from roughly 700,000 in 1991, when Latvia restored citizenship only to pre-1940 citizens and their descendants. Naturalization requires a language exam. The category was created as temporary; it is now generational." },
    { id: "lv_t6", isTruth: true , country: "lv", fallback: "Riga's mayor Nils Ušakovs was dismissed in April 2019 by the central government after KNAB raids on city hall over procurement and transport-company kickbacks.",
      whyFallback: "First Latvian mayor removed under the 2018 law allowing central dismissal. Rīgas Satiksme (the transport company) was the center of the bribery file. Ušakovs led Saskaņa (Harmony) — the main party of Latvia's Russian-speaking voters — and moved on to the European Parliament." },
    { id: "lv_t7", isTruth: true , country: "lv", fallback: "The partial release of KGB Latvia files — the \"cheka bags\" — in December 2018 named roughly 4,300 agents and informants, but the index cards alone, with operational files missing.",
      whyFallback: "Held back for 27 years after independence. The files released were fragmentary — name cards, no case content — which let those named claim provocation and let those unnamed remain unnamed. The full archive was removed to Russia in 1991." },
    { id: "lv_t8", isTruth: true , country: "lv", fallback: "Latvia's Inčukalns underground gas storage facility — the largest in the Baltic region — was operated for decades in close commercial entanglement with Gazprom-linked structures.",
      whyFallback: "Capacity around 2.3 billion cubic metres; used as the regional buffer for Russian gas flows. Latvijas Gāze ownership long included Gazprom and E.ON Ruhrgas; unbundling came late, under EU Third Energy Package pressure. The infrastructure outlived the political romance." },
    { id: "lv_f1", isTruth: false, country: "lv", fallback: "Latvia is a small clean state with little exposure to the post-Soviet money-laundering economy.",
      whyFallback: "Riga was for two decades the preferred Western-facing banking hub for non-resident — mostly Russian and Ukrainian — money. ABLV, Trasta Komercbanka, PrivatBank Latvia, Rietumu — a long list of designations, fines, and closures. Cleaning the sector began only after the 2018 FinCEN action made the alternative impossible." },
    { id: "lv_f2", isTruth: false, country: "lv", fallback: "Latvia's transition out of the rouble zone and into the euro was a clean technocratic success story.",
      whyFallback: "The hard peg of the lats to the euro held — at the cost of a 25% GDP contraction in 2008-09, mass emigration of working-age Latvians, and the Parex bailout passed onto taxpayers. Euro adoption in 2014 was the destination; the route through internal devaluation is what the postcard leaves out." },
    { id: "lv_f3", isTruth: false, country: "lv", fallback: "Lustration in Latvia thoroughly cleared former KGB collaborators out of public life.",
      whyFallback: "The cheka-bag index cards stayed sealed until 2018; operational files never returned from Moscow. Several presidents and ministers spent careers under accusations they could neither confirm nor disprove. Lustration in the Czech or East German sense never happened — the documents were not there to do it with." },
    { id: "lv_f4", isTruth: false, country: "lv", fallback: "Latvian politics is a contest between independent national parties.",
      whyFallback: "For two decades, three oligarch networks — Šķēle, Šlesers, Lembergs — were treated by KNAB and by journalists as the operating system behind formal party labels. The \"Garage Auction\" recordings (2010-11) caught coalition-building as commercial arrangement. Parties dissolve and reform; the networks persist." },
    { id: "lv_f5", isTruth: false, country: "lv", fallback: "The 2011 referendum on Russian as a second state language settled the language question democratically.",
      whyFallback: "75% voted No; turnout was high. But the question reached the ballot only after years in which a third of residents lived in a language not recognized by the state, and a sixth without citizenship at all. A vote answered by the citizenry on the status of the non-citizenry is a particular kind of democratic settlement." },
    { id: "lv_f6", isTruth: false, country: "lv", fallback: "Removing the Soviet WWII monument in Pārdaugava in August 2022 was a purely symbolic decommunization act.",
      whyFallback: "The Victory Monument was demolished within months of the Ukraine invasion, after standing for 37 years post-independence. The timing was geopolitical, not historical. The Russian-speaking residents who had used the site for May 9 gatherings were the unstated audience, not the Soviet Union." },
    { id: "lv_f7", isTruth: false, country: "lv", fallback: "Latvia's anti-corruption bureau KNAB is an unambiguous good-governance success.",
      whyFallback: "KNAB has produced real cases — Lembergs, Rimšēvičs, Ušakovs. It has also been repeatedly paralyzed by internal turf wars, leadership purges, and document leaks timed to elections. The institution does the work; it is also a political weapon. Both are true at once." },

    // ============== Lithuania — 8T + 7F ==============
    { id: "lt_t1", isTruth: true , country: "lt", fallback: "The 2011 collapse of Snoras Bank — Lithuania's third-largest — left a roughly €2 billion hole tied to owners Vladimir Antonov and Raimondas Baranauskas.",
      whyFallback: "Bank of Lithuania moved on Snoras in November 2011 after asset-stripping was uncovered. Antonov and Baranauskas fled to the UK; extradition fights dragged on for years. Antonov was later convicted in absentia in Lithuania in 2017." },
    { id: "lt_t2", isTruth: true , country: "lt", fallback: "Ūkio Bankas, controlled by Russian businessman Vladimir Romanov, was shut down in February 2013 after parallel asset-stripping into Romanov-linked entities including Scotland's Hearts FC.",
      whyFallback: "Bank of Lithuania revoked the licence on 12 February 2013. Hearts of Midlothian, owned through Romanov's UBIG, entered administration the same year. Romanov fled to Russia, which declined extradition." },
    { id: "lt_t3", isTruth: true , country: "lt", fallback: "President Rolandas Paksas was impeached on 6 April 2004 — the first head of state removed by impeachment anywhere in Europe — over secret ties to Russian businessman Yuri Borisov.",
      whyFallback: "Constitutional Court found Paksas had granted citizenship to Borisov, his campaign financier, in exchange for support, and had leaked classified information. The European Court of Human Rights later (2011) ruled the lifetime ban on him standing for office disproportionate, but the impeachment itself held." },
    { id: "lt_t4", isTruth: true , country: "lt", fallback: "The 2006 sale of the Mažeikių Nafta refinery to Poland's PKN Orlen was followed within weeks by Russia cutting off the Druzhba pipeline supply — officially for \"repairs\" that never ended.",
      whyFallback: "Transneft shut the Druzhba branch to Mažeikiai in July 2006 after the deal beat out Russian bidders. The pipeline was never reopened; the refinery has run on tankered crude via Būtingė ever since. The European Commission flagged it as politically motivated." },
    { id: "lt_t5", isTruth: true , country: "lt", fallback: "The Klaipėda LNG terminal \"Independence\", commissioned in late 2014, ended Gazprom's monopoly on Lithuanian gas — and Gazprom was fined €36 million the same year for overcharging.",
      whyFallback: "The floating storage and regasification unit was leased from Norway's Höegh LNG and went live 3 December 2014. Lithuania bought the vessel outright in 2024. The Lithuanian competition council had ordered Gazprom in 2014 to pay damages for years of price discrimination against Lithuanian customers." },
    { id: "lt_t6", isTruth: true , country: "lt", fallback: "Lithuania renamed Taiwan's de facto embassy the \"Taiwanese Representative Office\" in November 2021 — and was hit with an unofficial Chinese trade embargo affecting the entire EU supply chain.",
      whyFallback: "Beijing downgraded diplomatic relations and instructed multinationals to drop Lithuanian components. The EU filed a WTO case in January 2022. Internal political fallout was severe — Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis defended the move, the President distanced himself." },
    { id: "lt_t7", isTruth: true , country: "lt", fallback: "Belarus engineered a migration crisis on the Lithuanian border in summer 2021, flying in thousands of Middle Eastern and African nationals and pushing them across — to which Lithuania responded with a 550-kilometre fence.",
      whyFallback: "Lukashenko openly framed it as retaliation for Lithuania hosting opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya after the 2020 election. The Lithuanian parliament declared a state of emergency. Human rights monitors documented pushbacks that EU institutions later criticised." },
    { id: "lt_t8", isTruth: true , country: "lt", fallback: "On 13 January 1991, Soviet troops attacked the Vilnius TV Tower and Radio and Television Committee, killing 14 unarmed civilians defending Lithuanian independence.",
      whyFallback: "Tanks moved on the night of 12–13 January, weeks after Lithuania's March 1990 independence declaration. A long-running trial concluded in 2019 with 67 former Soviet officials convicted in absentia, including ex-defence minister Dmitry Yazov. Russia denounced the verdicts and opened criminal cases against the Lithuanian judges." },
    { id: "lt_f1", isTruth: false, country: "lt", fallback: "Lithuania's transition from Soviet rule produced a clean break with the old nomenklatura.",
      whyFallback: "Algirdas Brazauskas — last First Secretary of the Lithuanian Communist Party — was elected President in 1993 and Prime Minister in 2001. The Lustration Commission (Liustracijos komisija) operated narrowly and largely on a voluntary self-declaration basis. Many security-service files remained classified or were destroyed." },
    { id: "lt_f2", isTruth: false, country: "lt", fallback: "Lithuania's wartime history has been examined with the same rigour as that of its neighbours.",
      whyFallback: "The Genocide and Resistance Research Centre (LGGRTC) has been repeatedly criticised — by Yad Vashem, Efraim Zuroff, and Lithuanian historians like Rūta Vanagaitė — for understating local collaboration in the 1941 Holocaust, when over 90% of Lithuania's Jews were killed, often before German units arrived." },
    { id: "lt_f3", isTruth: false, country: "lt", fallback: "Lithuanian banking supervision learned its lesson after Snoras and Ūkio.",
      whyFallback: "The 2016 collapse of credit union Centro Taupomoji Kasa and a string of smaller credit-union failures showed the same supervisory blind spots. The European Central Bank's 2020 review still flagged governance weaknesses. \"Lesson learned\" is a press-release phrase; the audits keep producing the same findings." },
    { id: "lt_f4", isTruth: false, country: "lt", fallback: "Public procurement in Lithuania is competitive and transparent.",
      whyFallback: "Lithuania's Special Investigation Service (STT) corruption maps repeatedly flag healthcare, municipal construction, and Vilnius Old Town renovation contracts. The 2020 \"MG Baltic\" political-corruption verdict tied one of the country's largest business groups to systemic influence-buying across the Liberal Movement and Labour parties." },
    { id: "lt_f5", isTruth: false, country: "lt", fallback: "Lithuania's main political parties offer voters genuinely distinct policy choices.",
      whyFallback: "TS-LKD (Conservatives), the Social Democrats, the Liberal Movement, and the Peasants and Greens converge on NATO posture, EU alignment, fiscal orthodoxy, and oligarch-friendly procurement rules. Disputes are largely about cultural framing and patronage networks, not direction. Voter turnout has fallen accordingly." },
    { id: "lt_f6", isTruth: false, country: "lt", fallback: "Lithuania's anti-corruption institutions operate independently of politics.",
      whyFallback: "STT leadership appointments, prosecutorial discretion in MG Baltic-adjacent cases, and the selective application of the Lustration Commission's findings all track political alignment. Major-party figures rarely face the consequences applied to outsiders. The institutional shell is real; the selectivity is also real." },
    { id: "lt_f7", isTruth: false, country: "lt", fallback: "Lithuania broke its energy dependence on Russia at the moment it mattered.",
      whyFallback: "Lithuania paid above-market Gazprom prices for two decades and signed long-term contracts that the 2014 Klaipėda terminal only partially undid. Electricity imports from the Astravets nuclear plant in Belarus — built with Russian financing and opposed by Vilnius — continued to enter the Baltic grid via third countries until full BRELL desynchronisation in February 2025." },

    // ============== Luxembourg — 8T + 7F ==============
    { id: "lu_t1", isTruth: true , country: "lu", fallback: "The 2014 LuxLeaks disclosures revealed that more than 340 multinationals had secured secret tax rulings in Luxembourg cutting their effective rates to near zero.",
      whyFallback: "Files leaked by PwC auditor Antoine Deltour and clerk Raphaël Halet — published November 2014 by the ICIJ. Apple, IKEA, Pepsi, AIG, FedEx among the names. The rulings were legal under Luxembourg law and devastating to every other country's tax base." },
    { id: "lu_t2", isTruth: true , country: "lu", fallback: "Jean-Claude Juncker was Luxembourg's prime minister from 1995 to 2013 — the entire period the LuxLeaks tax-ruling apparatus operated — and went on to become President of the European Commission.",
      whyFallback: "Finance minister from 1989, PM from 1995. Denied detailed knowledge of the rulings; the EU Parliament's TAXE committee found the framework was built under his governments. He kept the Commission job until 2019." },
    { id: "lu_t3", isTruth: true , country: "lu", fallback: "The two LuxLeaks whistleblowers — Antoine Deltour and Raphaël Halet — were criminally prosecuted in Luxembourg while the companies and officials they exposed faced none.",
      whyFallback: "Convicted 2016, partial acquittal on appeal 2017; Deltour finally cleared by the Court of Cassation in 2018. The European Court of Human Rights ruled against Luxembourg in Halet v. Luxembourg (2023). Asymmetric justice, formally documented." },
    { id: "lu_t4", isTruth: true , country: "lu", fallback: "Luxembourg administers over €5 trillion in investment-fund assets — second only to the United States — on a population of roughly 660,000.",
      whyFallback: "ALFI industry figures. Per-capita GDP routinely ranks first in the world, inflated by the financial-services share. The real economy of 660,000 residents could not generate those numbers; the legal-domicile economy can." },
    { id: "lu_t5", isTruth: true , country: "lu", fallback: "Luxembourg banks — including KBL European Private Bankers and Deutsche Bank's Luxembourg unit — were implicated in the €150 billion Cum-Ex tax-fraud scheme across the EU.",
      whyFallback: "Cum-Ex / Cum-Cum dividend-stripping trades exploited withholding-tax refunds claimed multiple times on the same shares. German prosecutors in Cologne and Frankfurt traced the structures through Luxembourg subsidiaries. Convictions in Germany; far fewer in Luxembourg." },
    { id: "lu_t6", isTruth: true , country: "lu", fallback: "The 2021 OpenLux investigation found that more than half of Luxembourg's 140,000 holding companies had no identifiable ultimate beneficial owner in the public register.",
      whyFallback: "Le Monde, Süddeutsche Zeitung, OCCRP — published February 2021. Despite the 2018 EU anti-money-laundering directive requiring a beneficial-ownership register, Luxembourg's was riddled with blanks, dummies and shell layers. The country's compliance was nominal." },
    { id: "lu_t7", isTruth: true , country: "lu", fallback: "Amazon, Skype, PayPal, ArcelorMittal and large parts of the Kering and LVMH groups route corporate structures through Luxembourg for tax reasons.",
      whyFallback: "Amazon EU S.à r.l. (Luxembourg) booked European sales across the continent for years. The European Commission ordered Amazon to repay €250 million in 2017 (annulled by the EU General Court in 2021). ArcelorMittal has its statutory seat in Luxembourg City. The pattern is structural, not anecdotal." },
    { id: "lu_t8", isTruth: true , country: "lu", fallback: "The Bommeleeër bombings of the 1980s — a string of attacks on Luxembourg infrastructure — were finally brought to trial in 2013, with allegations that members of the state's own paramilitary unit were involved.",
      whyFallback: "Two former Brigade Mobile gendarmes stood trial; no convictions, the proceedings repeatedly stalled. The affair contributed to the resignation of PM Juncker in 2013 over the SREL intelligence-service scandal. Records remain partially classified." },
    { id: "lu_f1", isTruth: false, country: "lu", fallback: "Luxembourg's wealth reflects its citizens' productivity.",
      whyFallback: "GDP-per-capita figures count fund assets and corporate profits booked in Luxembourg by entities with no employees there. Roughly 46% of the workforce commutes daily from France, Belgium and Germany. The headline number measures legal domicile, not labour." },
    { id: "lu_f2", isTruth: false, country: "lu", fallback: "Luxembourg is a sovereign nation exercising its legitimate right to set its own tax policy.",
      whyFallback: "\"Fiscal sovereignty\" is the official framing; the practical effect is hosting profit-shifting structures whose entire purpose is to drain tax revenue from neighbouring sovereigns. The EU's State Aid cases against Fiat, Amazon and Engie all started in Luxembourg rulings." },
    { id: "lu_f3", isTruth: false, country: "lu", fallback: "After LuxLeaks, Luxembourg cleaned up its tax-ruling system.",
      whyFallback: "The 2021 LuxLetters investigation showed the practice continued via informal \"information letters\" sent to tax advisers — not registered as formal rulings, therefore not subject to the EU automatic-exchange rules introduced after 2014. The paperwork moved; the substance did not." },
    { id: "lu_f4", isTruth: false, country: "lu", fallback: "Luxembourg is one of the most democratic states in Europe.",
      whyFallback: "Until 2008 a fraction of the Council of State seats were effectively reserved for the Grand-Ducal family and its appointees. The Grand Duke retained a formal legislative-signing veto until the Lambert crisis of 2008 forced its removal. The democratic apparatus is real; the aristocratic substrate is more recent than it advertises." },
    { id: "lu_f5", isTruth: false, country: "lu", fallback: "Hosting the European Court of Justice and the European Stability Mechanism shows Luxembourg's commitment to European law.",
      whyFallback: "The ECJ and ESM are headquartered in Luxembourg City; so is the financial-engineering industry whose practices repeatedly arrive before those same courts. Hosting the referee and the player at the same address is a fact pattern, not a contradiction the country acknowledges." },
    { id: "lu_f6", isTruth: false, country: "lu", fallback: "Luxembourg is consistently rated one of the best places to live in the world.",
      whyFallback: "Rankings measure GDP, safety and infrastructure — all real. They rarely measure cross-border worker conditions, housing costs that have pushed median earners out of the country, or the dependence of the welfare state on a tax-base sourced from foreign treasuries. \"Best to live in\" assumes a particular resident." },
    { id: "lu_f7", isTruth: false, country: "lu", fallback: "Luxembourg's banking secrecy ended when it signed the 2014 EU automatic-exchange agreements.",
      whyFallback: "Formal banking secrecy for EU residents was lifted in 2015 and the Common Reporting Standard adopted. OpenLux 2021 and the Pandora Papers 2021 showed that beneficial-ownership opacity, trust structures and nominee directors continued to do the work that secrecy clauses used to. The label changed; the function persisted." },

    // ============== Malta — 8T + 7F ==============
    { id: "mt_t1", isTruth: true , country: "mt", fallback: "Investigative journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia was killed by a car bomb outside her home in Bidnija on October 16, 2017, while pursuing Panama Papers leads inside the Maltese government.",
      whyFallback: "She had named Konrad Mizzi, Keith Schembri, and the Prime Minister's wife in connection with offshore structures. The Public Inquiry (2021) concluded the state created a \"culture of impunity\" that enabled her assassination. Three bombers convicted; one alleged mastermind, Yorgen Fenech, still on trial in 2024." },
    { id: "mt_t2", isTruth: true , country: "mt", fallback: "Yorgen Fenech, magnate of the Tumas Group and co-owner of the Electrogas LNG power plant, was arrested in November 2019 on his yacht trying to leave Malta and charged with masterminding the Caruana Galizia assassination.",
      whyFallback: "He was identified as the owner of 17 Black, the Dubai shell named in Caruana Galizia's reporting as a vehicle to pay Schembri and Mizzi. Trial began in earnest after middleman Melvin Theuma's pardoned testimony. Proceedings continued through 2024." },
    { id: "mt_t3", isTruth: true , country: "mt", fallback: "Prime Minister Joseph Muscat (Labour, 2013-2020) resigned in January 2020 over his government's handling of the Caruana Galizia case and was formally charged in 2024 with corruption and money-laundering tied to the Vitals hospitals deal.",
      whyFallback: "His Chief of Staff Keith Schembri was arrested on money-laundering charges in 2021. Energy Minister Konrad Mizzi appeared in the Panama Papers (2016) via Hearnville Inc. The pattern was the inner circle, not isolated figures." },
    { id: "mt_t4", isTruth: true , country: "mt", fallback: "Maltese courts in 2023 declared the Vitals Global Healthcare / Steward concession over three state hospitals to be fraudulent and ordered the hospitals returned to public ownership.",
      whyFallback: "Civil Court ruling, February 2023, upheld on appeal. The €4 billion concession was awarded in 2015 to a consortium with no hospital-operating experience. Magisterial inquiry led directly to the 2024 charges against Muscat, Mizzi, and Schembri." },
    { id: "mt_t5", isTruth: true , country: "mt", fallback: "Pilatus Bank, an Iranian-owned Maltese institution at the heart of Caruana Galizia's reporting, had its license stripped by the ECB in 2018; its founder Ali Sadr Hashemi Nejad was convicted in a US court for sanctions evasion.",
      whyFallback: "His US conviction was later vacated on a Brady-disclosure technicality, not on the merits. The Maltese Financial Intelligence Analysis Unit was found to have buried adverse findings. The bank had been Caruana Galizia's last major story." },
    { id: "mt_t6", isTruth: true , country: "mt", fallback: "Malta's \"golden passport\" citizenship-by-investment scheme — €1.15 million minimum — was suspended for Russian and Belarusian applicants in 2022 after EU pressure, and the program itself remains under EU Court of Justice scrutiny.",
      whyFallback: "EU citizenship sold via a sovereign state on the periphery becomes an EU-wide problem. Buyers included sanctioned oligarchs, Saudi royals, and figures wanted by other jurisdictions. The European Commission referred Malta to the Court of Justice in 2022." },
    { id: "mt_t7", isTruth: true , country: "mt", fallback: "Malta was placed on the Financial Action Task Force \"grey list\" in June 2021 for inadequate enforcement against money laundering — the first EU member state to receive that designation.",
      whyFallback: "Removed in June 2022 after rushed legislative reforms. The grey-listing followed years of warnings from Moneyval and the European Banking Authority. Critics noted the reforms changed paperwork faster than enforcement culture." },
    { id: "mt_t8", isTruth: true , country: "mt", fallback: "The 17 Black shell company in Dubai, linked to Yorgen Fenech, was set up to channel payments to Panama companies owned by Joseph Muscat's Chief of Staff Keith Schembri and Minister Konrad Mizzi.",
      whyFallback: "Reuters and Times of Malta confirmed the ownership in 2018, a year after Caruana Galizia's murder — she had reported the structure before being killed. The Panama vehicles (Tillgate Inc., Hearnville Inc.) were registered within weeks of Labour's 2013 election win." },
    { id: "mt_f1", isTruth: false, country: "mt", fallback: "Malta is the safest country in the EU, with the lowest crime rate on the continent.",
      whyFallback: "Eurostat petty-crime statistics are genuinely low. The framing omits that an EU journalist was assassinated by car bomb on Maltese soil for her reporting — a category of violence absent from the rest of the bloc. \"Safe\" depends on who you are and what you write." },
    { id: "mt_f2", isTruth: false, country: "mt", fallback: "The citizenship-by-investment program is a legitimate way to attract talent and investment to a small island economy.",
      whyFallback: "The official framing. In practice the buyers were screened by private agents paid by the buyers, residency requirements were waived through rental contracts on properties applicants never visited, and EU passports were the actual product. Henley & Partners structured the scheme; Malta collected the fee." },
    { id: "mt_f3", isTruth: false, country: "mt", fallback: "Malta's online gambling industry is a clean, well-regulated pillar of the economy worth €1.3 billion a year.",
      whyFallback: "The Malta Gaming Authority is the licensing regime for most of the EU online-gambling market. Italian anti-mafia investigations have repeatedly traced 'Ndrangheta money-laundering through Malta-licensed operators. The Daphne Project and successive Europol reports documented the pattern." },
    { id: "mt_f4", isTruth: false, country: "mt", fallback: "Joseph Muscat resigned because of personal exhaustion and a desire for change, not because of the Caruana Galizia case.",
      whyFallback: "His own framing at the December 2019 announcement. The timing — days after Yorgen Fenech's arrest implicated Schembri, and after weeks of protests outside the Auberge de Castille — placed the resignation inside the murder investigation, not outside it." },
    { id: "mt_f5", isTruth: false, country: "mt", fallback: "The Electrogas LNG power plant deal was an open, competitive procurement that lowered electricity prices for ordinary Maltese.",
      whyFallback: "The 2013 tender was structured to favor the winning consortium, which included Yorgen Fenech's Tumas Group. Caruana Galizia's reporting and subsequent magisterial inquiries traced kickback flows through 17 Black to Panama. The reduced tariffs were partly subsidized by the state." },
    { id: "mt_f6", isTruth: false, country: "mt", fallback: "Malta's Catholic moral framework — divorce ban until 2011, total abortion ban — reflects timeless national values shared across the population.",
      whyFallback: "The 2011 divorce referendum passed against the open opposition of the Church and most of the political establishment. Abortion polling shows generational and gender splits the official \"national consensus\" hides. \"Timeless values\" is the framing of who currently controls the institutions." },
    { id: "mt_f7", isTruth: false, country: "mt", fallback: "Malta's removal from the FATF grey list in 2022 means its money-laundering problem has been solved.",
      whyFallback: "The delisting reflected legislative compliance, not enforcement outcomes. Major prosecutions — Vitals, Electrogas, 17 Black flows — remained pending or partial. FATF assesses paperwork; convictions are the harder metric, and the conviction rate stayed thin." },

    // ============== Vatican City — 8T + 7F ==============
    { id: "va_t1", isTruth: true , country: "va", fallback: "Banco Ambrosiano collapsed in 1982 owing $1.3 billion; its chairman Roberto Calvi — \"God's Banker\" — was found hanged under Blackfriars Bridge in London that June. The Vatican Bank was Ambrosiano's largest shareholder.",
      whyFallback: "Calvi's death was first ruled suicide, later reopened as murder; Italian courts tried multiple suspects (acquittals in 2007). The IOR paid $244 million to creditors in 1984 as a \"goodwill\" gesture while admitting no liability. Michele Sindona, a linked Mafia banker, died of cyanide-laced coffee in an Italian prison in 1986." },
    { id: "va_t2", isTruth: true , country: "va", fallback: "Cardinal Paul Marcinkus ran the Vatican Bank from 1971 to 1989 and was indicted in Italy over the Ambrosiano collapse — but Vatican sovereign immunity meant he was never tried.",
      whyFallback: "Italian magistrates issued an arrest warrant in 1987; the Vatican refused extradition under the Lateran Treaty. Marcinkus retired to Sun City, Arizona, and died in 2006 having faced no court. Sovereign-state status as a shield for institutional officers — by design." },
    { id: "va_t3", isTruth: true , country: "va", fallback: "Cardinal Theodore McCarrick — former Archbishop of Washington — was defrocked in February 2019 after sexual abuse findings. The 2020 McCarrick Report showed he had been promoted for decades despite warnings reaching three popes.",
      whyFallback: "461-page Vatican-released document, November 2020. John Paul II elevated him to cardinal in 2001 despite documented reports. Benedict XVI imposed informal restrictions that McCarrick ignored without consequence. The system saw, recorded, and promoted anyway." },
    { id: "va_t4", isTruth: true , country: "va", fallback: "Cardinal Angelo Becciu was convicted by a Vatican court in December 2023 for embezzlement and fraud over a $400 million London property deal and intelligence payments to Cecilia Marogna.",
      whyFallback: "First cardinal ever tried by a Vatican criminal court for financial crimes. Sentenced to 5 years 6 months. The London property at 60 Sloane Avenue lost the Vatican an estimated €140 million. Becciu denies wrongdoing and is appealing." },
    { id: "va_t5", isTruth: true , country: "va", fallback: "Father Marcial Maciel Degollado founded the Legionaries of Christ, abused seminarians and fathered children across decades, and forged finances on an industrial scale — while John Paul II protected him into the 2000s.",
      whyFallback: "Allegations reached Rome in the 1940s. Cardinal Ratzinger (later Benedict XVI) finally moved against him in 2006 — a year after Maciel's protector John Paul II died. At least one daughter and several other children confirmed. Personal favor outranked the record." },
    { id: "va_t6", isTruth: true , country: "va", fallback: "The 2002 Boston Globe Spotlight investigation broke open systemic sexual abuse and cover-up in the Catholic Church — beginning a 20-year cascade of grand jury reports, settlements, and bankruptcies.",
      whyFallback: "Pulitzer Prize 2003. Pennsylvania grand jury 2018 identified 300+ priests and 1,000+ victims in that state alone. Cardinal Bernard Law was moved from Boston to a comfortable post in Rome rather than tried. The pattern was promotion, not prosecution." },
    { id: "va_t7", isTruth: true , country: "va", fallback: "Vatileaks (2012) saw Pope Benedict XVI's butler Paolo Gabriele convicted of leaking internal documents exposing Vatican corruption, infighting, and financial irregularities.",
      whyFallback: "Gabriele sentenced to 18 months October 2012, pardoned by Benedict that December. The documents detailed Curia power struggles and IOR concerns. Vatileaks II (2015-16) tried journalists Gianluigi Nuzzi and Emiliano Fittipaldi alongside Francesca Chaouqui and Lucio Vallejo Balda — a Vatican prosecuting reporters." },
    { id: "va_t8", isTruth: true , country: "va", fallback: "The Lateran Treaty of 1929 — signed with Mussolini's fascist government — created the modern Vatican City state and paid the Holy See the equivalent of roughly €1.75 billion in compensation for the lost Papal States.",
      whyFallback: "11 February 1929, Pope Pius XI and Benito Mussolini. 750 million lire cash plus 1 billion in state bonds. Sovereignty over 44 hectares, diplomatic immunity, tax exemption on Italian holdings. The deal that financed the modern Vatican's wealth was struck with a dictator." },
    { id: "va_f1", isTruth: false, country: "va", fallback: "The Vatican is a purely spiritual institution.",
      whyFallback: "It is also a sovereign state, the largest landowner in many countries by some estimates, a multi-billion-euro real-estate and investment portfolio, an intelligence service, and a diplomatic corps with nuncios in over 180 countries. \"Spiritual\" is one of several simultaneous functions." },
    { id: "va_f2", isTruth: false, country: "va", fallback: "The Vatican Bank reforms since 2013 have ended its history of money laundering.",
      whyFallback: "Francis-era reforms closed thousands of suspicious accounts and brought in Moneyval reviews. The Becciu conviction (2023) was a Vatican court prosecuting Vatican leadership. Direction of travel is real; \"ended\" overstates a reform process still finding new cases." },
    { id: "va_f3", isTruth: false, country: "va", fallback: "The Church handles abuse cases internally because canon law is sufficient.",
      whyFallback: "\"Pontifical secret\" was the formal classification governing abuse files until Francis lifted it in December 2019. For decades the doctrine of confessional and institutional secrecy was used to keep records from civil authorities. Internal handling produced the cover-up; external pressure produced the reform." },
    { id: "va_f4", isTruth: false, country: "va", fallback: "Pope John Paul I's death in 1978 after 33 days as pope was a natural tragedy with no unresolved questions.",
      whyFallback: "No autopsy was performed — Vatican law at the time forbade it. David Yallop's \"In God's Name\" (1984) and John Cornwell's \"A Thief in the Night\" (1989) reach different conclusions from the same uncomfortable gaps. The institutional response was opacity, which is the source of the questions." },
    { id: "va_f5", isTruth: false, country: "va", fallback: "Cardinal George Pell's 2020 acquittal in Australia closed the question of Vatican finance reform's enemies.",
      whyFallback: "Pell's conviction was overturned by the High Court of Australia on reasonable doubt — not exoneration. As Vatican finance chief he had antagonized the Curia faction later prosecuted in the Becciu case. The financial reform fights he started continued after his 2023 death; the Curia resistance he described was real." },
    { id: "va_f6", isTruth: false, country: "va", fallback: "Liberation theology was rejected on purely theological grounds.",
      whyFallback: "John Paul II's CDF, under Cardinal Ratzinger, suppressed liberation theology through the 1980s — the same decade Latin American military regimes were killing the priests preaching it. Archbishop Óscar Romero was assassinated at the altar in 1980. \"Theological\" and \"convenient to anti-communist alignment\" coincided." },
    { id: "va_f7", isTruth: false, country: "va", fallback: "The full size of Vatican wealth is publicly known.",
      whyFallback: "Real estate alone spans thousands of properties across Italy, the UK, France, Switzerland, and beyond — many held through opaque structures. Art collections, gold reserves, equity holdings, and historical assets sit outside any single audited figure. The reform-era disclosures are partial, not complete." },

    // ============== Monaco — 8T + 7F ==============
    { id: "mc_t1", isTruth: true , country: "mc", fallback: "In 1962 Charles de Gaulle ordered a customs blockade of Monaco to force Prince Rainier III to accept that French citizens resident in the principality would pay French income tax.",
      whyFallback: "The Franco-Monégasque Convention of 18 May 1963 codified the result — French nationals lost the tax exemption, everyone else kept it. The blockade lasted six months; the leverage has never been formally renounced. Monaco's fiscal independence operates inside French permission." },
    { id: "mc_t2", isTruth: true , country: "mc", fallback: "Monaco levies no personal income tax, no wealth tax and no inheritance tax in the direct line on its residents — a regime explicitly designed to attract foreign capital.",
      whyFallback: "The rule dates to an 1869 ordinance of Prince Charles III and was preserved through every subsequent reform. The principality's ~38,000 residents include the world's densest concentration of millionaires; the welfare state is funded chiefly by VAT shared with France and SBM gambling revenue, not by taxing its wealthy." },
    { id: "mc_t3", isTruth: true , country: "mc", fallback: "Russian oligarchs — Dmitry Rybolovlev, Andrey Melnichenko, Suleyman Kerimov, Mikhail Fridman and others — built a parallel community in Monaco through the 2000s and 2010s, buying real estate, football clubs and political access.",
      whyFallback: "Rybolovlev acquired AS Monaco football club in 2011 and the duplex at La Belle Époque for €240 million. The 2023 \"Monaco Secrets\" leaks to Le Monde and OCCRP showed how residency permits were quietly maintained even after EU sanctions. Enforcement was slower than the announcements." },
    { id: "mc_t4", isTruth: true , country: "mc", fallback: "The 2021–2022 \"Monacogate\" / \"Dossiers du Rocher\" leaks exposed payments, favours and police interference around Prince Albert II's inner circle, including former chief of staff Claude Palmero.",
      whyFallback: "Documents published by Le Monde and Mediapart from 2023 onward detailed off-book accounts, real-estate dealings and pressure on judicial files. Palmero was dismissed in 2023 after 22 years managing the prince's private finances; he is suing for wrongful termination. The palace's response has been to attack the leaks, not the underlying records." },
    { id: "mc_t5", isTruth: true , country: "mc", fallback: "Moneyval's 2022–2023 evaluation downgraded Monaco for serious gaps in anti-money-laundering supervision and beneficial-ownership transparency, leading to the principality's grey-listing by the FATF in June 2024.",
      whyFallback: "The Council of Europe's Moneyval report (January 2023) found the Monégasque system \"partially compliant\" on the bulk of FATF recommendations. The Financial Action Task Force added Monaco to its grey list on 28 June 2024 — a first for a Western European microstate. Reform laws followed; effectiveness is still being measured." },
    { id: "mc_t6", isTruth: true , country: "mc", fallback: "Société des Bains de Mer (SBM) — the casino, hotel and real-estate conglomerate that built modern Monaco — is 69% owned by the Monégasque state, with the ruling Grimaldi family as its dominant beneficiary.",
      whyFallback: "SBM was founded in 1863 under a state monopoly granted to François Blanc. Its Casino de Monte-Carlo subsidises the state budget; Monégasque nationals are still legally barred from gambling there. \"Public ownership\" and \"sovereign monopoly\" describe the same balance sheet." },
    { id: "mc_t7", isTruth: true , country: "mc", fallback: "The Bouvier Affair — a feud between Russian fertiliser billionaire Dmitry Rybolovlev and Swiss art dealer Yves Bouvier — saw Monaco's chief of police, justice minister and prosecutor general all forced from office over allegations they sided with one party.",
      whyFallback: "The \"Dossier Bouvier\" SMS leaks of 2017 showed coordination between Rybolovlev's lawyer Tetiana Bersheda and senior Monégasque officials. Director of Public Security Régis Asso, Justice Minister Philippe Narmino and Attorney General Jean-Pierre Dréno all departed between 2017 and 2019. A sovereign state's judiciary captured by a private dispute — on the record." },
    { id: "mc_t8", isTruth: true , country: "mc", fallback: "The 2016 Panama Papers and 2021 Pandora Papers identified Monaco residents and Monaco-domiciled structures as heavy users of Mossack Fonseca and successor offshore providers.",
      whyFallback: "ICIJ database searches return hundreds of Monaco-linked entities. The 2015 HSBC Suisse \"SwissLeaks\" had already flagged Monaco addresses as disproportionately represented among private-banking accounts. The principality's small population produces a global footprint in every leak." },
    { id: "mc_f1", isTruth: false, country: "mc", fallback: "Monaco is a sovereign nation freely exercising its right to set its own fiscal policy.",
      whyFallback: "Sovereignty is constitutional; the practical terms are defined by France. The 1918 and 1962 treaties require French approval of the heir to the throne, French citizens pay French tax inside Monaco, and a French civil servant is traditionally seconded as Minister of State. Monaco's \"independence\" is a real but bounded category." },
    { id: "mc_f2", isTruth: false, country: "mc", fallback: "Monaco's wealth reflects the productivity and enterprise of its residents.",
      whyFallback: "The world's highest GDP per capita (~$240,000) is generated by foreign capital booked in a 2 km² jurisdiction, not by domestic output. About 49,000 cross-border workers commute daily from France and Italy to staff the economy that the residents own. The headline number measures domicile, not labour." },
    { id: "mc_f3", isTruth: false, country: "mc", fallback: "Monaco is no longer a tax haven — the OECD removed it from its blacklist years ago.",
      whyFallback: "Monaco left the OECD's \"uncooperative tax haven\" list in 2009 after signing TIEAs, and exited the EU's Annex I blacklist in 2019. It then landed on the FATF grey list in June 2024 for AML failings, and tax-justice NGOs still rate it a high-risk jurisdiction. The labels rotate faster than the underlying business model." },
    { id: "mc_f4", isTruth: false, country: "mc", fallback: "Monaco is an apolitical principality focused on culture, sport and tourism.",
      whyFallback: "It is a hereditary constitutional monarchy in which the Prince retains executive power, appoints the Minister of State, and can dissolve the 24-seat National Council. Political parties exist; meaningful opposition to the Grimaldi family does not. \"Apolitical\" is the brand of a very specific politics." },
    { id: "mc_f5", isTruth: false, country: "mc", fallback: "Monégasque citizenship rewards integration and contribution to the principality.",
      whyFallback: "Naturalisation is granted by personal discretion of the Prince, typically after ten years of residence, and is overwhelmingly refused. Monégasques are only about 21% of the population and enjoy benefits — housing priority, gambling ban exemption from taxes — closed to the 79% who actually finance the place. Membership is hereditary, not earned." },
    { id: "mc_f6", isTruth: false, country: "mc", fallback: "Monaco's housing market simply reflects free-market demand for a desirable location.",
      whyFallback: "Average prices above €50,000 per square metre — the world's highest — are produced by a deliberate policy mix: no property tax, residency cards requiring a six-figure bank deposit, and a state-owned developer (SBM and the Société Anonyme Monégasque) controlling premium supply. The market is engineered upward, not discovered." },
    { id: "mc_f7", isTruth: false, country: "mc", fallback: "The 2002 constitutional reform modernised Monaco into a contemporary parliamentary state.",
      whyFallback: "The reform secured the dynasty's continuity — allowing succession through the female line and through Albert II's collateral relatives — far more than it democratised power. The National Council still cannot initiate legislation against the Prince's wishes, and ministers remain answerable to the Palace, not to voters. Constitutional, yes; parliamentary in the European sense, no." },

    // ============== Liechtenstein — 8T + 7F ==============
    { id: "li_t1", isTruth: true , country: "li", fallback: "In 2008 a former LGT Bank employee, Heinrich Kieber, sold customer data to Germany's BND for roughly €5 million — exposing thousands of foreign clients using Liechtenstein structures to evade tax.",
      whyFallback: "The leak triggered investigations in Germany, the US, the UK, France, Spain, and Italy. LGT is owned by the princely family itself. The whistleblower received a new identity; the system that hid the money received OECD pressure and a slow rewrite." },
    { id: "li_t2", isTruth: true , country: "li", fallback: "Liechtenstein's signature legal vehicles — the Stiftung (foundation), the Anstalt (establishment), and the Treuhand — were designed for asset opacity, with no shareholders and no public beneficial owner.",
      whyFallback: "The Anstalt in particular has no equivalent in most legal systems: a company with no owners, controlled by a founder's letter. Codified 1926. For most of the 20th century, beneficial-owner registers did not exist. \"Discretion\" was a product, not an accident." },
    { id: "li_t3", isTruth: true , country: "li", fallback: "Prince Hans-Adam II is both head of state and ultimate owner of LGT Group — the same family bank whose client data was leaked in 2008.",
      whyFallback: "The princely family's wealth is estimated near $8 billion, much of it held through LGT and the Prince of Liechtenstein Foundation. Sovereign authority and private banking sit in the same hands; that overlap is constitutional, not hidden." },
    { id: "li_t4", isTruth: true , country: "li", fallback: "Liechtenstein was the last country in Europe to grant women the vote — by referendum, in 1984.",
      whyFallback: "Earlier national votes (1971, 1973) failed. Some communes did not extend communal suffrage until 1986. Switzerland (1971) and Portugal (1976) preceded it; Liechtenstein closed the European list." },
    { id: "li_t5", isTruth: true , country: "li", fallback: "The 2003 constitutional referendum gave the prince a veto over judicial appointments, the power to dismiss the government, and the right to reject any law — after Hans-Adam II threatened to relocate the family to Vienna if it failed.",
      whyFallback: "Council of Europe's Venice Commission criticised the package as a \"serious step backwards\" in democratic terms. The referendum passed with 64% under explicit pressure from the head of state. The Landtag's powers contracted; the prince's expanded." },
    { id: "li_t6", isTruth: true , country: "li", fallback: "Liechtenstein-owned factories used forced labor during the Second World War, and the princely family's Czech and Moravian estates were confiscated in 1945 under the Beneš decrees.",
      whyFallback: "An independent historians' commission (2001-2005), commissioned by the government itself, documented forced labor at firms tied to the principality. The family's pre-1945 holdings in Czechoslovakia — larger than the country itself — were never restored; the legal dispute continued into the 2020s." },
    { id: "li_t7", isTruth: true , country: "li", fallback: "Around 70% of Liechtenstein's resident workforce commutes daily across the border from Austria and Switzerland — the principality runs on people it does not have to house, school, or pension.",
      whyFallback: "Statistics Office Liechtenstein: cross-border commuters number roughly 25,000 against a resident workforce of around 40,000. Residency permits are tightly rationed; labor is imported by the day. The model exports its social costs." },
    { id: "li_t8", isTruth: true , country: "li", fallback: "Under OECD pressure, Liechtenstein signed tax-information agreements from 2009 onward and rolled out the UK \"Liechtenstein Disclosure Facility\" — letting historic evaders settle with HMRC at reduced penalties.",
      whyFallback: "The LDF ran 2009-2016 and recovered roughly £1.3 billion for the UK. The framing — voluntary disclosure with lighter penalties — let both governments declare victory while sparing named clients prosecution. The structures themselves remained legal." },
    { id: "li_f1", isTruth: false, country: "li", fallback: "Liechtenstein is a constitutional monarchy with normal European checks and balances.",
      whyFallback: "Since 2003, the prince can veto any law, dismiss the elected government, and refuse to appoint judges proposed by parliament. The Venice Commission flagged the concentration of power; the principality kept it. \"Constitutional\" in name; pre-modern in distribution." },
    { id: "li_f2", isTruth: false, country: "li", fallback: "Liechtenstein is no longer a tax haven — it has fully reformed since 2009.",
      whyFallback: "Banking secrecy was loosened; the Stiftung, Anstalt and Treuhand were not abolished. The Tax Justice Network's Financial Secrecy Index still ranks Liechtenstein among the world's secrecy jurisdictions. The headline reformed; the plumbing was preserved." },
    { id: "li_f3", isTruth: false, country: "li", fallback: "The princely family's wealth comes from the principality itself.",
      whyFallback: "The bulk of the family's fortune comes from LGT Group — a global private bank with offices in Zurich, London, Singapore, Hong Kong, and the Cayman Islands — and from historic Central European estates. The principality is the brand; the balance sheet is offshore." },
    { id: "li_f4", isTruth: false, country: "li", fallback: "Liechtenstein's neutrality during World War II meant clean hands.",
      whyFallback: "Forced labor at Liechtenstein-tied factories is documented by the country's own historians' commission. The principality recognised Anschluss Austria and maintained quiet trade with the Reich. Neutrality was a status; complicity was a practice." },
    { id: "li_f5", isTruth: false, country: "li", fallback: "The 40,000-person population democratically governs the country.",
      whyFallback: "Only Liechtenstein citizens vote — roughly two-thirds of residents. The other third (long-term foreign residents) cannot. Of the workforce, the majority commute in from abroad and have no political voice at all. The electorate is a fraction of the people the state runs on." },
    { id: "li_f6", isTruth: false, country: "li", fallback: "Heinrich Kieber was a criminal who stole data for personal gain.",
      whyFallback: "He was paid by a foreign state (Germany's BND), prosecuted in absentia by Liechtenstein, and forced into witness protection with a changed identity. The clients he exposed mostly settled quietly. The pattern — punish the messenger, regularise the message — is the structure." },
    { id: "li_f7", isTruth: false, country: "li", fallback: "Liechtenstein is too small to matter in global finance.",
      whyFallback: "Assets under management in the principality's banking sector exceed CHF 400 billion — roughly 10,000 times GDP per capita's worth, per resident. LGT alone manages over CHF 300 billion globally. Size of territory is not size of footprint." },

    // ============== United Arab Emirates — 8T + 7F ==============
    { id: "ae_t1", isTruth: true , country: "ae", fallback: "The CIA's 2021 assessment of Jamal Khashoggi's murder named the UAE's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed (MBZ) as a close strategic partner of MBS — and Emirati operatives were tied to surveillance of Khashoggi before the killing.",
      whyFallback: "Pegasus infections on Khashoggi's fiancée Hatice Cengiz and his inner circle were traced by Citizen Lab to UAE-linked operators. The Khashoggi operation in Istanbul (October 2018) was a Saudi job; the surveillance infrastructure around him was a joint Gulf project. MBZ and MBS coordinated the regional crackdown on dissidents through the late 2010s." },
    { id: "ae_t2", isTruth: true , country: "ae", fallback: "The UAE is the junior partner of the Saudi-led coalition that has bombed Yemen since 2015 — running its own ground operations, secret prisons, and torture sites in the south of the country.",
      whyFallback: "Associated Press investigation (June 2017): UAE operated a network of clandestine detention sites across southern Yemen with credible torture allegations. AP also documented UAE recruitment of Al-Qaeda-linked militias as proxy forces. The humanitarian toll of the wider war runs to hundreds of thousands of deaths from violence, hunger, and disease." },
    { id: "ae_t3", isTruth: true , country: "ae", fallback: "DarkMatter, an Abu Dhabi cyber firm staffed by former NSA operatives, ran the UAE's offensive hacking program (Project Raven) — targeting journalists, dissidents, and rival royals.",
      whyFallback: "Reuters investigation (January 2019) by Christopher Bing and Joel Schectman exposed the operation; ex-NSA contractors admitted hacking American citizens on UAE's behalf. The US DOJ later (September 2021) fined three former US intelligence personnel for the work. NSO Pegasus licenses to the UAE — approved by Israel's MoD — were used against UK dissidents, the wife of Dubai's ruler, and others." },
    { id: "ae_t4", isTruth: true , country: "ae", fallback: "Manchester City — owned since 2008 by Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed via Abu Dhabi United Group — is the textbook case study for sportswashing the UAE's image abroad.",
      whyFallback: "Mansour is the brother of MBZ and deputy prime minister of the UAE. Der Spiegel's Football Leaks (2018) documented years of disguised state funding routed through fake sponsorship deals to circumvent UEFA Financial Fair Play. The club received a two-year European ban in 2020, overturned on appeal at CAS on procedural grounds — not on the substance of the disguised funding." },
    { id: "ae_t5", isTruth: true , country: "ae", fallback: "The UAE's kafala labor system ties millions of migrant workers' visas to their employers — meaning quitting a job, or fleeing abuse, can be prosecuted as the criminal offense of \"absconding\".",
      whyFallback: "Roughly 88% of the UAE's population is non-citizen migrant labor (World Bank, ILO estimates). Human Rights Watch and Migrant-Rights.org have documented wage theft, passport confiscation, and crushing recruitment debts across the construction and domestic-work sectors. Reforms announced periodically; the structural dependence persists." },
    { id: "ae_t6", isTruth: true , country: "ae", fallback: "COP28 — the 2023 UN climate summit — was hosted by the UAE and chaired by Sultan Al Jaber, who simultaneously ran the state oil company ADNOC. Leaked briefing notes showed plans to use the summit to pitch oil and gas deals.",
      whyFallback: "BBC/Centre for Climate Reporting investigation (November 2023) published leaked COP28 team briefings prepared for meetings with 15 countries, including talking points on ADNOC commercial opportunities. Al Jaber publicly disputed the framing while ADNOC announced new production expansion plans. The summit closed with a \"transition away from fossil fuels\" text — the weakest formulation that could still be called progress." },
    { id: "ae_t7", isTruth: true , country: "ae", fallback: "Dubai has functioned as a gold-and-cash laundromat for Russian sanctions evasion since 2022 — and earlier for African conflict gold, Iranian sanctions-busting trade, and Afghan opium proceeds.",
      whyFallback: "C4ADS, Global Witness, and the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) grey-listed the UAE in March 2022 over money-laundering controls; it was removed in February 2024 after reforms on paper. Russian oligarch yacht arrivals in Dubai marinas, cash-for-gold trade with conflict zones, and the Halkbank Iran-sanctions case (US v. Hakan Atilla, 2018) all traced product through Dubai." },
    { id: "ae_t8", isTruth: true , country: "ae", fallback: "Human rights lawyer and blogger Ahmed Mansoor — one of the UAE's last independent voices — has been imprisoned since March 2017, mostly in solitary confinement, on charges of insulting the state on social media.",
      whyFallback: "Sentenced to 10 years in 2018. Mansoor was the first known target of NSO's Pegasus iOS exploit (Citizen Lab, August 2016), which alerted the world to the spyware. Amnesty International, the UN Special Rapporteurs, and the EU Parliament have repeatedly called for his release. The UAE's response has been silence and continued detention." },
    { id: "ae_f1", isTruth: false, country: "ae", fallback: "The UAE is the Middle East's most tolerant, modern, and progressive society.",
      whyFallback: "The marketing is Dubai's skyline; the structure is an absolute hereditary monarchy with no elected legislature, no political parties, no independent press, and prison sentences for criticism of the rulers. \"Tolerance\" applies to visiting foreigners spending money; it does not extend to citizens or workers organizing politically. Two scoreboards." },
    { id: "ae_f2", isTruth: false, country: "ae", fallback: "The Abraham Accords (2020) brought peace between Israel and the Arab world.",
      whyFallback: "The Accords normalized Israel-UAE relations without resolving — or even addressing — the Palestinian question that had been the prior precondition for Arab recognition. The deal coincided with US F-35 sale approvals to the UAE and major arms packages. \"Peace\" between two states that were not at war; the actual war on Palestinians continued and intensified." },
    { id: "ae_f3", isTruth: false, country: "ae", fallback: "Dubai's glittering skyscrapers were built by a world-class construction industry.",
      whyFallback: "They were built by indentured South Asian and African labor under the kafala system — passports confiscated, wages withheld, dormitory conditions documented by HRW and the Guardian's \"Modern-day slavery\" series. Migrant worker deaths on Gulf construction projects (UAE, Qatar) run into the thousands across the 2010s. The skyline is the product; the labor regime is the supply chain." },
    { id: "ae_f4", isTruth: false, country: "ae", fallback: "Sovereign wealth funds like Mubadala and ADQ are passive long-term investors.",
      whyFallback: "Mubadala, ADQ, ADIA, and the Royal Group are instruments of UAE foreign policy — buying influence in football clubs, ports (DP World), African farmland, Western media stakes, and tech equity from SoftBank to G42. The line between sovereign investment and state geopolitical projection does not exist in the UAE structure. \"Passive\" is the disclosure form, not the operating mode." },
    { id: "ae_f5", isTruth: false, country: "ae", fallback: "The UAE has a modern rule-of-law system equivalent to Western jurisdictions.",
      whyFallback: "A dual system runs: DIFC and ADGM commercial courts apply English common law for foreign business; the local courts apply Sharia-influenced personal-status and criminal law to residents and citizens. Women's testimony has historically counted as half a man's in inheritance and several other matters. Floggings and death sentences are still issued; executions occur. The Western-facing layer is real; it is not the whole system." },
    { id: "ae_f6", isTruth: false, country: "ae", fallback: "The UAE supports stability and counter-extremism across the region.",
      whyFallback: "The UAE armed and funded the Libyan warlord Khalifa Haftar against the UN-recognized government (UN Panel of Experts reports, 2020+). It backed Sudan's Rapid Support Forces (the Janjaweed successor) through the 2023 civil war via gold purchases and arms shipments through Chad. \"Stability\" describes the preferred outcome — regimes friendly to Abu Dhabi — not a generic regional good." },
    { id: "ae_f7", isTruth: false, country: "ae", fallback: "Power transition in the UAE is institutional and transparent.",
      whyFallback: "When President Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan died in May 2022 after years of incapacitation, MBZ — who had ruled in practice since Khalifa's 2014 stroke — was simply confirmed by the Federal Supreme Council of the seven emirate rulers. No elections, no public process, no debate. The transition was an internal family announcement broadcast outward as news." },

    // ============== Antigua and Barbuda — 8T + 7F ==============
    { id: "ag_t1", isTruth: true , country: "ag", fallback: "Allen Stanford ran a $7 billion Ponzi scheme out of Antigua via Stanford International Bank, with regulators and politicians on his payroll for years before the 2009 collapse.",
      whyFallback: "SEC charges February 2009, federal conviction 2012, 110-year sentence. Stanford was knighted by Antigua, sat on national financial advisory boards, and dominated the local economy. The Antiguan regulator was found to have shared confidential examination material with him — collusion, not oversight." },
    { id: "ag_t2", isTruth: true , country: "ag", fallback: "Antigua and Barbuda has sold citizenship to wealthy foreigners through its Citizenship-by-Investment Programme since 2013, including to individuals later charged with major fraud abroad.",
      whyFallback: "CIP launched 2013 under the Browne and Spencer governments. Mehul Choksi — wanted in India for the $1.8 billion Punjab National Bank fraud — obtained Antiguan citizenship in 2017 and used it to evade Indian extradition. The programme remains a core revenue stream." },
    { id: "ag_t3", isTruth: true , country: "ag", fallback: "Mehul Choksi, wanted by India for the 2018 Punjab National Bank scam, fled to Antigua on a CIP passport and has spent years fighting extradition from there.",
      whyFallback: "PNB fraud disclosed January 2018, ~$1.8 billion via fraudulent Letters of Undertaking. Choksi naturalized Antiguan November 2017. May 2021 disappearance to Dominica, alleged abduction by Indian agents, returned to Antigua. Cases continue." },
    { id: "ag_t4", isTruth: true , country: "ag", fallback: "Antigua won a World Trade Organization ruling against the United States in 2004 over US restrictions on Antigua-licensed online gambling — and the US has effectively ignored compliance for two decades.",
      whyFallback: "WTO Appellate Body confirmed 2005 that US bans on cross-border gambling violated GATS commitments. Antigua authorized to suspend US intellectual-property protections as countermeasure (2007). Online gambling licensing was a major Antiguan industry before the US crackdown gutted it." },
    { id: "ag_t5", isTruth: true , country: "ag", fallback: "Government minister Asot Michael was dismissed in 2017 after being questioned by UK police investigating bribery allegations linked to British businessman Peter Virdee.",
      whyFallback: "Michael, ABLP MP and close ally of PM Gaston Browne, detained at Heathrow October 2017 under the Bribery Act. Browne sacked him as Tourism Minister the same week. Internal ABLP feud followed; Michael remained politically active and contested subsequent elections." },
    { id: "ag_t6", isTruth: true , country: "ag", fallback: "The Half Moon Bay land dispute pitted the Antiguan state against a Barbudan-leaning resident community and US developer interests for decades, with shifting expropriation and compensation rulings.",
      whyFallback: "Resort property expropriated by the Bird government in 1995, repeated court battles through the Privy Council. Tied to broader patterns of beachfront alienation to foreign developers across Antigua. Sand-mining on Barbuda — particularly post-Hurricane Irma 2017 — drew parallel criticism." },
    { id: "ag_t7", isTruth: true , country: "ag", fallback: "Antigua and Barbuda has made slavery reparations from former colonial powers an explicit state policy, through CARICOM's ten-point reparations plan led by PM Gaston Browne.",
      whyFallback: "CARICOM Reparations Commission established 2013. Browne repeatedly raised the issue at the UN General Assembly and directly with British institutions, including a 2023 demand to Cambridge University. Reparations framed as state policy, not protest." },
    { id: "ag_t8", isTruth: true , country: "ag", fallback: "The 1995 Yulimar / Vandover oil-storage scandal revealed Antigua had been used as a transshipment cover for sanctions-busting oil deals during the Yugoslav wars, with senior Bird-government figures implicated.",
      whyFallback: "Vere Bird Jr. and ministers linked to arms-and-oil flows in the late 1980s and 1990s — the Israeli arms trans-shipment scandal (1990) was an earlier chapter of the same pattern. Antigua's offshore registry and weak enforcement made the country a documented hub for grey-zone trades through the Bird era." },
    { id: "ag_f1", isTruth: false, country: "ag", fallback: "The Citizenship-by-Investment Programme is a routine economic-development tool with strict due diligence.",
      whyFallback: "The programme has accepted applicants later indicted or convicted abroad — Choksi is the most-cited but not the only case. The EU has repeatedly threatened visa-free travel revocation over CIP standards. \"Strict due diligence\" is the marketing brochure; the audit trail is thinner." },
    { id: "ag_f2", isTruth: false, country: "ag", fallback: "Allen Stanford's fraud was a foreign crime that Antigua merely hosted.",
      whyFallback: "Stanford was knighted, advised the Antiguan government on financial regulation, and effectively co-designed the regulatory regime that failed to stop him. The 2009 collapse exposed a captured regulator, not a fooled one — the Financial Services Regulatory Commission was an institutional partner, not a watchdog." },
    { id: "ag_f3", isTruth: false, country: "ag", fallback: "Antigua's online gambling industry was destroyed by its own bad actors.",
      whyFallback: "The industry was deliberately strangled by US enforcement actions — the 2006 Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act, prosecutions of payment processors, indictments of executives transiting US airports. Antigua won at the WTO and was never paid; the framing of \"bad actors\" displaces the documented coercion." },
    { id: "ag_f4", isTruth: false, country: "ag", fallback: "Antiguan politics is a clean two-party democracy with peaceful transitions of power.",
      whyFallback: "Transitions are peaceful; the substance is closer to dynastic. The Bird family — Vere Sr., Lester, Vere Jr. — dominated ABLP and government for decades, layered through patronage networks. The 2004 UPP win was the first non-Bird government since independence; ABLP power returned in 2014 under Browne." },
    { id: "ag_f5", isTruth: false, country: "ag", fallback: "Barbuda and Antigua are equal partners in the unitary state.",
      whyFallback: "Barbuda's traditional communal land system was effectively dismantled by Antigua-government legislation in 2018, against local opposition, opening land to private development. Post-Irma reconstruction was used as the political window. Barbudan complaints — sand mining, airport expansion, land tenure — are structurally outvoted." },
    { id: "ag_f6", isTruth: false, country: "ag", fallback: "Antigua's reparations advocacy is purely a moral campaign with no domestic political function.",
      whyFallback: "The moral case is real; the domestic political function is also real. Reparations rhetoric is a routine deflection tool for ABLP leadership when CIP, Stanford-legacy, or governance critiques arise. Both true at once — the cause is just, the timing is often instrumental." },
    { id: "ag_f7", isTruth: false, country: "ag", fallback: "Small-island states like Antigua are too minor to matter in global financial corruption.",
      whyFallback: "Antigua's offshore banking sector, online gambling licensing, and CIP passports have repeatedly been load-bearing in international fraud, sanctions evasion, and extradition shielding. The \"too small to matter\" framing is the exact comparative advantage tax-haven jurisdictions are built to sell." },

    // ============== Armenia — 8T + 7F ==============
    { id: "am_t1", isTruth: true , country: "am", fallback: "On October 27, 1999, gunmen stormed the Armenian National Assembly and shot dead Prime Minister Vazgen Sargsyan, Speaker Karen Demirchyan, and six others — a political decapitation whose ultimate sponsors were never established.",
      whyFallback: "Five attackers entered the parliament during a Q&A session and opened fire. Convicted in 2003, the gunmen claimed solo motives; investigators and journalists have pointed at factions around then-President Robert Kocharyan and the security services. The case is reopened periodically and quietly closed again." },
    { id: "am_t2", isTruth: true , country: "am", fallback: "The 1998–2018 Kocharyan–Sargsyan era was structured around a small set of oligarchs — Gagik Tsarukyan, Samvel Karapetyan's Tashir Group, Mikael Minasyan — who controlled large sectors of the economy in parallel with the ruling Republican Party.",
      whyFallback: "Customs, energy, sugar, fuel imports, and construction were effectively monopolized. Tsarukyan's Multi Group and Tashir's holdings ran across borders into Russia. The pattern was documented by Transparency International Armenia and Hetq investigative reports throughout the 2010s." },
    { id: "am_t3", isTruth: true , country: "am", fallback: "On March 1, 2008, security forces opened fire on post-election protesters in Yerevan, killing ten people; nobody in the chain of command was ever convicted for the deaths.",
      whyFallback: "The crackdown followed Serzh Sargsyan's disputed victory over Levon Ter-Petrosyan. A state of emergency was declared. Robert Kocharyan, who ordered the army onto the streets in his final days as president, was charged in 2018 for \"overthrowing the constitutional order\" — the case stalled in the courts and was effectively shelved." },
    { id: "am_t4", isTruth: true , country: "am", fallback: "The 2018 Velvet Revolution swept Nikol Pashinyan into power on an anti-corruption mandate after weeks of peaceful street protests forced Serzh Sargsyan's resignation.",
      whyFallback: "Sargsyan had served two presidential terms and then engineered a constitutional shift to become Prime Minister with expanded powers. The protests April–May 2018 broke the move. Pashinyan, then a marginal opposition MP, walked from Gyumri to Yerevan and ended up running the country." },
    { id: "am_t5", isTruth: true , country: "am", fallback: "In the 44-day Second Nagorno-Karabakh War (September–November 2020), Armenia lost most of the territory it had held since the 1990s — including Shusha — to an Azerbaijani offensive backed by Turkish drones and Syrian mercenaries.",
      whyFallback: "Bayraktar TB2 strikes shredded Armenian armor and air defenses. The November 9 ceasefire signed by Pashinyan, Aliyev, and Putin handed over Aghdam, Kalbajar, and Lachin districts. Russian peacekeepers deployed to a much-reduced enclave for what turned out to be three years." },
    { id: "am_t6", isTruth: true , country: "am", fallback: "In September 2023, over 100,000 ethnic Armenians — virtually the entire population of Nagorno-Karabakh — fled to Armenia within a week after Azerbaijan's one-day military operation collapsed the unrecognized republic.",
      whyFallback: "Azerbaijan had blockaded the Lachin corridor for nine months before the assault on September 19, 2023. Russian peacekeepers stood aside. By October 1 the exodus was effectively complete; centuries of Armenian presence in Artsakh ended in days. The international response was statements." },
    { id: "am_t7", isTruth: true , country: "am", fallback: "Armenia's relationship with the Russia-led CSTO collective-security bloc collapsed publicly after 2020, with Yerevan freezing participation in 2024 and Pashinyan accusing the alliance of failing to defend Armenian territory.",
      whyFallback: "Russian troops did not intervene during Azerbaijani incursions into sovereign Armenian territory in 2021 and 2022. Pashinyan suspended CSTO participation in February 2024 and stopped funding it. Armenia has since deepened defense ties with France, India, and the EU monitoring mission." },
    { id: "am_t8", isTruth: true , country: "am", fallback: "Armenia has been losing population for three decades — emigration plus low births dropped the country from roughly 3.6 million in 1990 to under 3 million today, with brain drain concentrated among young professionals.",
      whyFallback: "Russia, the US, and the EU absorb most of the outflow. The 2020 war and the 2023 Karabakh exodus produced new waves on top of the steady economic emigration. Census figures, World Bank data, and the Armenian Statistical Committee all track the same downward curve." },
    { id: "am_f1", isTruth: false, country: "am", fallback: "The Velvet Revolution ended oligarchic control of the Armenian economy.",
      whyFallback: "Several pre-2018 oligarchs lost political cover, faced tax cases, or repositioned — but the underlying concentration of customs, energy, and import sectors persists with partially rotated names. Tashir Group's footprint in Armenia is undiminished. \"Velvet\" described the method, not the depth of the change." },
    { id: "am_f2", isTruth: false, country: "am", fallback: "Russia is Armenia's reliable security guarantor in the Caucasus.",
      whyFallback: "The 102nd Military Base at Gyumri and the CSTO framing dominated official rhetoric for decades. In 2020, 2022, and 2023 — when guarantees mattered — Russian forces did not act. The \"reliable guarantor\" line was a Cold War inheritance that the wars in Karabakh dismantled in public." },
    { id: "am_f3", isTruth: false, country: "am", fallback: "Armenian media offers a pluralist landscape of independent outlets.",
      whyFallback: "Most major TV channels are owned by figures tied to political factions — Tsarukyan, Karapetyan, government-aligned holdings, and diaspora-linked groups. Investigative outlets like Hetq and CivilNet survive on grants and donor money. Independence exists at the margins, not at the broadcasters." },
    { id: "am_f4", isTruth: false, country: "am", fallback: "The 2020 Karabakh defeat was caused purely by Azerbaijani military superiority.",
      whyFallback: "Drones and mercenaries mattered, but a decade of corruption inside Armenian defense procurement — overpriced contracts, missing equipment, decayed fortifications — was documented in post-war parliamentary inquiries. The defeat had a budget trail, not only a battlefield one." },
    { id: "am_f5", isTruth: false, country: "am", fallback: "Civil society in Armenia is purely a grassroots phenomenon untouched by foreign funding.",
      whyFallback: "The Open Society Foundations–Armenia (Soros), USAID, the EU's instruments, and various European political foundations have funded NGOs, journalism, and judicial reform programs since the 1990s. The work is often genuine; the framing that it is purely domestic is not." },
    { id: "am_f6", isTruth: false, country: "am", fallback: "Post-2018 Armenia has full freedom of assembly and press.",
      whyFallback: "The 2022 Tavush \"movement for the homeland\" and 2024 Yerevan protests against border concessions to Azerbaijan saw mass arrests, journalists detained, and opposition figures charged. Some cases were dropped under international pressure; the pattern of using public-order law against political dissent continues." },
    { id: "am_f7", isTruth: false, country: "am", fallback: "Memory politics in Armenia is settled — everyone agrees on what March 1, the 1999 parliament shooting, and the Karabakh wars mean.",
      whyFallback: "Each anniversary becomes a contested commemoration. The Kocharyan camp, the Ter-Petrosyan camp, the ARF Dashnaktsutyun, and the Pashinyan government tell incompatible stories about who killed whom and why. The disagreement is the point — controlling the past controls the next election." },

    // ============== Angola — 8T + 7F ==============
    { id: "ao_t1", isTruth: true , country: "ao", fallback: "José Eduardo dos Santos ruled Angola for 38 years (1979-2017) — one of Africa's longest tenures — while his family accumulated a personal fortune from state oil and diamond enterprises.",
      whyFallback: "MPLA chairman through civil war and peacetime. Daughter Isabel became Africa's richest woman; son José Filomeno ran the sovereign wealth fund. Dos Santos died in Barcelona in 2022 while under investigation back home." },
    { id: "ao_t2", isTruth: true , country: "ao", fallback: "The 2020 Luanda Leaks exposed how Isabel dos Santos allegedly siphoned over $2 billion from Sonangol and the state diamond firm Sodiam through a web of offshore companies.",
      whyFallback: "ICIJ published 700,000+ leaked documents showing contracts steered to family-linked consultants. Angolan courts froze her assets; Portugal, the Netherlands, and the UK followed. She denies wrongdoing from Dubai." },
    { id: "ao_t3", isTruth: true , country: "ao", fallback: "Sonangol — the state oil company — was for decades a parallel treasury, handling oil revenue with so little transparency that the IMF could not reconcile billions of dollars.",
      whyFallback: "IMF 2011 review: $32 billion of oil revenue \"unaccounted for\" between 2007 and 2010. Sonangol funded ministries, foreign embassies, and the presidency directly. The audit trail ran through the company, not the state budget." },
    { id: "ao_t4", isTruth: true , country: "ao", fallback: "Angola's civil war (1975-2002) was a Cold War proxy in which the US and apartheid South Africa backed UNITA while Cuba sent troops to back the MPLA government.",
      whyFallback: "Cuban deployment peaked above 50,000 soldiers; the USSR supplied MPLA weapons. CIA support for Jonas Savimbi's UNITA continued into the 1990s. Estimated half a million dead, four million displaced." },
    { id: "ao_t5", isTruth: true , country: "ao", fallback: "China extended over $42 billion in loans to Angola backed by future oil deliveries, making Beijing the largest single creditor and locking decades of crude to Eximbank.",
      whyFallback: "China Eximbank and the China Development Bank financed infrastructure post-2002; repayment in barrels. When oil collapsed in 2014-16, Angola had to renegotiate; the debt-for-oil model is the template for African resource finance." },
    { id: "ao_t6", isTruth: true , country: "ao", fallback: "The mausoleum for first president Agostinho Neto cost an estimated $40 million in a country where most citizens lacked clean water and electricity.",
      whyFallback: "North Korean Mansudae Overseas designed and built the rocket-shaped tower in Luanda. Inaugurated 2012. The same studio built monuments across Africa as soft-power barter for resources." },
    { id: "ao_t7", isTruth: true , country: "ao", fallback: "Manuel Vicente — former Sonangol CEO and dos Santos's vice-president — was charged in Portugal with corruption and money laundering, and Angola refused to extradite him.",
      whyFallback: "Portuguese prosecutors alleged €760,000 in bribes to a Lisbon magistrate. Angola declared the case a sovereignty violation in 2018 and transferred proceedings home, where they quietly stalled. Vicente was never tried." },
    { id: "ao_t8", isTruth: true , country: "ao", fallback: "The oil-rich enclave of Cabinda — physically separated from Angola by a strip of DR Congo — provides roughly half the country's crude while its population sees little of the revenue.",
      whyFallback: "FLEC (Front for the Liberation of the Enclave of Cabinda) has waged a low-intensity separatist war since 1975. The 2010 attack on the Togo football team brought brief attention. The province's poverty rates remain among Angola's highest." },
    { id: "ao_f1", isTruth: false, country: "ao", fallback: "João Lourenço's anti-corruption drive after 2017 dismantled the kleptocratic structures of the dos Santos era.",
      whyFallback: "Selective rather than systemic — Isabel and José Filomeno were pursued, but the MPLA patronage network around Lourenço himself was not. Critics call it a settling of factional scores dressed as reform. The party that built the system still runs it." },
    { id: "ao_f2", isTruth: false, country: "ao", fallback: "Angola's oil wealth has lifted its population out of poverty.",
      whyFallback: "Angola is among the world's top crude exporters yet ranks in the bottom quintile of the UN Human Development Index. Roughly half the population lives below the national poverty line. The wealth exists; the distribution does not." },
    { id: "ao_f3", isTruth: false, country: "ao", fallback: "The 27-year civil war was a tribal conflict the West tried to mediate.",
      whyFallback: "It was a Cold War proxy fought with US, Cuban, Soviet, and South African weapons, troops, and money. The \"tribal\" framing erases the geopolitics. Mediators became combatants; Savimbi was a CIA asset until he wasn't useful." },
    { id: "ao_f4", isTruth: false, country: "ao", fallback: "The kwanza is a stable currency reflecting Angola's resource strength.",
      whyFallback: "When oil prices collapsed in 2014-16, the kwanza lost more than half its value; the central bank exhausted reserves defending the peg before abandoning it in 2018. Inflation peaked above 40%. Resource currencies inherit resource volatility." },
    { id: "ao_f5", isTruth: false, country: "ao", fallback: "Sodiam and DiaMonde run Angola's diamond sector on market terms.",
      whyFallback: "Concessions and marketing contracts were repeatedly steered to companies linked to the presidential family — the Luanda Leaks documented the Sodiam-De Grisogono deal as a textbook case. The \"market\" was a list of names." },
    { id: "ao_f6", isTruth: false, country: "ao", fallback: "Chinese infrastructure loans came without political strings.",
      whyFallback: "The strings were collateral, not ideology: future oil cargoes pledged for decades, Chinese state firms awarded the construction contracts, Chinese labor often imported. \"No political conditions\" meant the economic conditions did the work." },
    { id: "ao_f7", isTruth: false, country: "ao", fallback: "Press and civil society operate freely in post-war Angola.",
      whyFallback: "Rafael Marques de Morais — the investigator who first documented \"blood diamonds\" and presidential corruption — has been jailed and harassed for decades. Independent outlets are throttled by libel suits, license denial, and advertising blacklists. The framework is on paper; the practice is on Marques's court docket." },

    // ============== Azerbaijan — 8T + 7F ==============
    { id: "az_t1", isTruth: true , country: "az", fallback: "Azerbaijan has been ruled by one family for more than thirty years — Heydar Aliyev from 1993 to 2003, his son Ilham Aliyev since, with Ilham's wife Mehriban installed as First Vice President in 2017.",
      whyFallback: "Heydar was a Soviet-era KGB general and Politburo member before returning to power in independent Azerbaijan. Ilham took over on his father's death, has won every election since with 80–92% margins, and shortened the term cycle by calling snap votes. Daughters Leyla and Arzu hold media and business empires. The succession is the system." },
    { id: "az_t2", isTruth: true , country: "az", fallback: "The 2017 OCCRP \"Azerbaijani Laundromat\" investigation traced $2.9 billion moved through four UK shell companies between 2012 and 2014 — paying European politicians, journalists, and lobbyists to soften criticism of the Aliyev regime.",
      whyFallback: "Leaked banking records from Estonia's Danske Bank branch exposed the structure. Recipients included sitting members of European parliaments and PACE delegates. Some payments were laundered hospitality; some were direct transfers. Several European politicians lost positions; the Azerbaijani end faced no consequences." },
    { id: "az_t3", isTruth: true , country: "az", fallback: "\"Caviar diplomacy\" — gifts, all-expenses-paid trips, and direct payments to Council of Europe delegates — bought Azerbaijan favorable PACE votes for over a decade.",
      whyFallback: "The European Stability Initiative documented the pattern in two 2012 and 2017 reports. The Council of Europe's own 2018 independent investigation found multiple PACE members had been corrupted. Italian rapporteur Luca Volontè was convicted of taking €2.4 million; several others were sanctioned or expelled." },
    { id: "az_t4", isTruth: true , country: "az", fallback: "In September 2023 Azerbaijan's one-day military operation in Nagorno-Karabakh triggered the exodus of roughly 100,000 ethnic Armenians within a week — the near-total emptying of a population that had lived there for centuries.",
      whyFallback: "A nine-month blockade of the Lachin corridor preceded the September 19 assault. Russian peacekeepers stood aside. The International Court of Justice ordered Azerbaijan to allow returns; none meaningful occurred. ICC and ICJ proceedings on possible ethnic cleansing remain open. The state framing is \"voluntary departure\"." },
    { id: "az_t5", isTruth: true , country: "az", fallback: "Investigative journalist Khadija Ismayilova — who exposed Aliyev family business holdings — was jailed for 7.5 years in 2014 on fabricated tax-evasion and \"incitement to suicide\" charges.",
      whyFallback: "Her reporting traced Ilham Aliyev's daughters to airline, telecom, and gold-mining holdings via offshore shells. Before her arrest, hidden cameras filmed her in her own bedroom and the footage was released to humiliate her. She received the UNESCO Press Freedom Prize from prison and was later released; the surveillance pattern was confirmed independently by Pegasus forensics in 2021." },
    { id: "az_t6", isTruth: true , country: "az", fallback: "Pegasus spyware (Israel's NSO Group) was deployed by Azerbaijani operators against at least 245 phone numbers — journalists, activists, lawyers, and opposition figures — between 2019 and 2021.",
      whyFallback: "The Pegasus Project consortium (Forbidden Stories, Amnesty Security Lab) confirmed the targeting. Khadija Ismayilova, Sevinj Vaqifqizi of Meydan TV, and clergy critical of the government were on the list. Israel was simultaneously a major arms supplier to Baku — the deal was reciprocal." },
    { id: "az_t7", isTruth: true , country: "az", fallback: "The Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline carries Caspian oil to the Mediterranean and is the financial backbone of the regime — SOCAR, the state oil company, operates with almost no public disclosure of its revenues.",
      whyFallback: "BTC opened in 2006 as a US- and UK-backed bypass of Russia and Iran. BP holds the operating stake; SOCAR is the Azerbaijani partner. The Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative suspended Azerbaijan in 2017 over restrictions on civil society — Baku withdrew rather than reform. The oil pays for the dynasty's stability." },
    { id: "az_t8", isTruth: true , country: "az", fallback: "Azerbaijan hosted COP29 in Baku in November 2024, with COP president Mukhtar Babayev — a former 26-year SOCAR executive and the country's ecology minister — chairing the global climate summit.",
      whyFallback: "An undercover Global Witness recording captured COP29 CEO Elnur Soltanov discussing oil and gas deals with a fake investor in the run-up. Ilham Aliyev called fossil fuels a \"gift from God\" in his opening speech. Three petrostates in a row — UAE, Azerbaijan, and the next in line — chairing climate diplomacy. The conflict of interest is the design." },
    { id: "az_f1", isTruth: false, country: "az", fallback: "Azerbaijani presidential elections are competitive contests with credible opposition.",
      whyFallback: "Ilham Aliyev's official results: 76% (2003), 89% (2008), 85% (2013), 86% (2018), 92% (2024). The OSCE/ODIHR has called every vote since 2003 short of democratic standards — restricted media, intimidated observers, leading opposition parties boycotting because participation legitimizes the result. In 2013 the Central Election Commission accidentally released results the day before voting opened." },
    { id: "az_f2", isTruth: false, country: "az", fallback: "The 2020 Karabakh victory was a clean military triumph achieved by Azerbaijani forces alone.",
      whyFallback: "Turkish Bayraktar TB2 drones, Israeli Harop loitering munitions, and — according to French, Russian, and Syrian Observatory sources — Syrian mercenary fighters recruited through Turkish channels were central to the 44-day campaign. The official narrative of national heroism without external dependence is a managed memory; the procurement trail is documented." },
    { id: "az_f3", isTruth: false, country: "az", fallback: "Azerbaijan is a multi-ethnic, multi-faith society where all groups enjoy equal rights.",
      whyFallback: "The official line of \"tolerance and multiculturalism\" coexists with the systematic erasure of Armenian cultural heritage in reconquered Karabakh — Caucasus Heritage Watch satellite analysis has documented destruction of churches, cemeteries, and khachkars since 2020. Talysh, Lezgin, and Avar minority activists face arrest. The framing is for tourists and diplomats." },
    { id: "az_f4", isTruth: false, country: "az", fallback: "Azerbaijan's oil wealth has been distributed broadly to develop the country.",
      whyFallback: "Baku's skyline shows the spend; the regions show what didn't reach them. Pandora Papers, Panama Papers, and OCCRP investigations have traced billions in Aliyev-family offshore holdings — London property, Dubai hotels, Czech apartments registered to Aliyev daughters as preteens. The State Oil Fund (SOFAZ) exists; so does the parallel private accumulation." },
    { id: "az_f5", isTruth: false, country: "az", fallback: "Azerbaijani media represents a diverse range of political voices.",
      whyFallback: "Reporters Without Borders ranks Azerbaijan in the bottom ten globally — typically around 164th of 180. Major TV channels are state-owned or owned by figures aligned with the presidential apparatus. Meydan TV, Abzas Media, and Toplum TV operate from exile or under constant raids; their staff face prison on fabricated currency-smuggling charges." },
    { id: "az_f6", isTruth: false, country: "az", fallback: "Mehriban Aliyeva became First Vice President in 2017 on her own political merits.",
      whyFallback: "The constitutional amendment creating the First Vice Presidency was passed in a 2016 referendum that the OSCE called marred by serious irregularities. Mehriban was appointed by her husband five months later. The position has no electoral mandate, places her next in succession, and consolidates the family's grip across the executive." },
    { id: "az_f7", isTruth: false, country: "az", fallback: "The 1992 Khojaly killings are remembered, while no comparable Azerbaijani actions are commemorated.",
      whyFallback: "Khojaly — where hundreds of Azerbaijani civilians were killed by Armenian forces during the First Karabakh War — is a legitimate atrocity that Azerbaijan rightly memorializes. But the Maraga massacre (April 1992), the 2020 strikes on Armenian civilian areas of Stepanakert and Shusha, and the 2023 depopulation of Karabakh have no place in the national memory frame. Selective remembrance is policy, not coincidence." },

    // ============== Barbados — 8T + 7F ==============
    { id: "bb_t1", isTruth: true , country: "bb", fallback: "Barbados became a republic on 30 November 2021 — removing Queen Elizabeth II as head of state — but kept the same Westminster parliament, the same Privy Council-shaped legal lineage, and the same Commonwealth membership.",
      whyFallback: "Sandra Mason sworn in as first president, ceremonial role. Mia Mottley's government framed it as the final break from colonialism. The structures the monarchy ran through — courts, civil service, two-party rotation — were untouched. A flag change at the top of a colonial skeleton." },
    { id: "bb_t2", isTruth: true , country: "bb", fallback: "The CLICO insurance collapse in 2009 wiped out the savings of thousands of Barbadian retirees and policyholders — losses across the Caribbean estimated at US$4-5 billion.",
      whyFallback: "Trinidad-headquartered CL Financial empire, regulated across CARICOM. Bajan policyholders were paid out in fractions over a decade, often only after public protest. Regulators in multiple territories had warning signs and did not act. Retirement money treated as an acceptable casualty." },
    { id: "bb_t3", isTruth: true , country: "bb", fallback: "Barbados spent decades marketing itself as a low-tax International Business Company (IBC) jurisdiction — no withholding tax, minimal disclosure — until OECD and EU pressure forced reforms after 2018.",
      whyFallback: "Canadian banks and multinationals routed billions through Bridgetown. The \"convergence\" reforms harmonised onshore/offshore rates but kept the financial-services architecture. The island's second economy was, and partly still is, other countries' tax avoidance." },
    { id: "bb_t4", isTruth: true , country: "bb", fallback: "Successive governments have handed multi-decade tax concessions and duty waivers to foreign hotel chains — Sandals, Hyatt, Sam Lord's redevelopers — while raising VAT and fees on ordinary Bajans.",
      whyFallback: "Sandals' entry under Butch Stewart secured exemptions worth tens of millions. The Hyatt Centric approval in 2017 bypassed the Town and Country Planning process and triggered public protest. \"Investment incentive\" is the official word; the household word is subsidy." },
    { id: "bb_t5", isTruth: true , country: "bb", fallback: "Sam Lord's Castle — promised as a flagship hotel redevelopment for decades — burned in 2010 and has cycled through Chinese state-backed financing, missed deadlines, and quiet write-downs ever since.",
      whyFallback: "Successive Owen Arthur, Freundel Stuart, and Mottley governments staked political capital on the project. China EXIM Bank loans, Wyndham branding, repeated reopening dates missed. A national flagship that has, in practice, been a slow public absorption of risk." },
    { id: "bb_t6", isTruth: true , country: "bb", fallback: "Prime Minister Mia Mottley has become the international face of Caribbean reparations and climate-finance advocacy while her BLP government dominates a parliament where the opposition holds zero seats.",
      whyFallback: "30-0 sweep in 2018, 30-0 again in 2022. The CARICOM Reparations Commission and the Bridgetown Initiative are real and consequential. A one-party legislature is also real. Two truths the international press carries one of." },
    { id: "bb_t7", isTruth: true , country: "bb", fallback: "The Owen Arthur BLP era (1994-2008) saw repeated procurement and land-deal scandals — Hardwood Housing, Greenland landfill, GEMS hotel programme — most of which ended in commissions of enquiry rather than convictions.",
      whyFallback: "GEMS poured public money into government-owned hotels later sold below cost. Greenland landfill was built on geologically unstable ground and never opened. The Hardwood Housing scheme over-ran by orders of magnitude. The accountability pattern is enquiry, report, archive." },
    { id: "bb_t8", isTruth: true , country: "bb", fallback: "Barbados's economy is hostage to two foreign-controlled levers — cruise/stayover tourism and offshore financial services — and a debt restructuring in 2018-19 wrote down domestic bondholders, including local pension funds, by roughly a third.",
      whyFallback: "IMF Extended Fund Facility from 2018. Domestic creditors took the haircut; external bondholders were treated more gently. Pensioners' savings absorbed a sovereign correction. The \"home-grown\" label on the programme was political branding for an IMF template." },
    { id: "bb_f1", isTruth: false, country: "bb", fallback: "Becoming a republic in 2021 ended Barbados's colonial dependencies.",
      whyFallback: "The Privy Council was already replaced by the CCJ in 2005; the monarchy was the last cosmetic tie. The deeper dependencies — tourism revenue from former colonisers, offshore finance for them, Commonwealth membership, sterling-era legal architecture — were not on the ballot." },
    { id: "bb_f2", isTruth: false, country: "bb", fallback: "Barbados has one of the cleanest governments in the Caribbean.",
      whyFallback: "It scores well on Transparency International relative to neighbours — a low bar. Integrity legislation has been drafted, watered down, and delayed across multiple governments. The Prevention of Corruption Act sat unproclaimed for years. Clean by comparison, not by audit." },
    { id: "bb_f3", isTruth: false, country: "bb", fallback: "The two main parties — BLP and DLP — represent fundamentally different visions for Barbados.",
      whyFallback: "Both have run IMF programmes, both have courted the same hotel chains, both have signed off on the same offshore framework, both have rotated the same civil-service heads. The colour of the rosette changes; the macroeconomic posture does not." },
    { id: "bb_f4", isTruth: false, country: "bb", fallback: "Tourism is a national resource that benefits Barbadians broadly.",
      whyFallback: "Most large hotels are foreign-owned. Profits repatriate; wages are low-end service; concessions reduce the tax take. The coastline — historically common access — is increasingly fenced behind resort properties. Visitors enjoy what residents subsidise." },
    { id: "bb_f5", isTruth: false, country: "bb", fallback: "Barbados's offshore financial sector is just back-office paperwork with no real impact on global corruption.",
      whyFallback: "ICIJ Panama Papers, Paradise Papers, and Pandora Papers all named Barbadian structures. Sagicor's redomiciling and the Trinidadian acquisitions, the Canadian bank treaties, the IBC vehicles — these route real flows. Paperwork is what the laundering looks like from the inside." },
    { id: "bb_f6", isTruth: false, country: "bb", fallback: "Rihanna's ambassadorial role reflects a meritocratic, modern Barbados.",
      whyFallback: "Cultural soft power, real and effective. Also a polished distraction: while Robyn Fenty stood beside Mottley at independence ceremonies, the offshore reforms, the Sam Lord's losses, and the pension haircut received a fraction of the same coverage. Celebrity diplomacy as message-management." },
    { id: "bb_f7", isTruth: false, country: "bb", fallback: "Reparations advocacy abroad means reparations-style accountability at home.",
      whyFallback: "Barbados leads the CARICOM Reparations Commission case against European powers — substantively right. Domestically, the descendants of the 1937 riots' demands — land reform, plantation-era estate breakup, real wealth redistribution — remain largely unanswered. Justice claimed outward, deferred inward." },

    // ============== Bangladesh — 8T + 7F ==============
    { id: "bd_t1", isTruth: true , country: "bd", fallback: "The Rana Plaza factory collapse on 24 April 2013 killed 1,134 garment workers — the deadliest factory disaster in modern history — after cracks were reported and workers were ordered inside anyway.",
      whyFallback: "Eight-storey building outside Dhaka, illegally extended, housing brands stitched for Walmart, Mango, Primark, Benetton. The owner Sohel Rana fled and was caught at the Indian border. Compensation negotiations with Western buyers dragged for years — fast fashion's true price, paid in Bangladeshi bodies." },
    { id: "bd_t2", isTruth: true , country: "bd", fallback: "Sheikh Hasina ruled for 15 unbroken years through three elections widely judged neither free nor fair, then fled to India by helicopter in August 2024 as student protests overran her residence.",
      whyFallback: "Awami League dominance enforced via election boycotts (2014), pre-rigged voting (2018 \"midnight election\"), and opposition jailings (2024). The Quota Reform protests turned into a full uprising in July-August 2024 — hundreds killed by police and party cadres before she ran." },
    { id: "bd_t3", isTruth: true , country: "bd", fallback: "The Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) — Bangladesh's elite paramilitary force — was sanctioned by the US Treasury in 2021 for hundreds of extrajudicial killings and forced disappearances.",
      whyFallback: "Founded 2004, recruited from army and police. Human Rights Watch and Odhikar documented \"crossfire\" killings as a routine method of disposal. Sanctions named the unit and seven officers; the killings continued under different labels." },
    { id: "bd_t4", isTruth: true , country: "bd", fallback: "The Padma Bridge — Bangladesh's largest infrastructure project — lost World Bank funding in 2012 after credible evidence of a kickback conspiracy involving senior officials.",
      whyFallback: "World Bank withdrew $1.2 billion. Canadian engineering firm SNC-Lavalin tied to the scheme. Hasina's government denied everything and accused the Bank of conspiracy; the bridge was eventually built with Chinese funding and Bangladeshi state money, with the corruption questions buried under nationalist framing." },
    { id: "bd_t5", isTruth: true , country: "bd", fallback: "Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus — the microfinance pioneer — was prosecuted on dozens of cases under Hasina's government in what critics called a campaign of harassment against a political threat.",
      whyFallback: "Convicted on labour-law charges in January 2024. More than 170 cases opened against him collectively. Hasina publicly accused him of \"sucking blood from the poor\". After her fall in August 2024, Yunus was sworn in as head of the interim government — the prosecutions vanished." },
    { id: "bd_t6", isTruth: true , country: "bd", fallback: "The Digital Security Act 2018 turned online criticism of the government into a criminal offence and was used to arrest hundreds of journalists, cartoonists, and activists.",
      whyFallback: "Cartoonist Ahmed Kabir Kishore beaten and detained for memes mocking Hasina. Writer Mushtaq Ahmed died in custody under the same law in 2021. Replaced in 2023 by the cosmetically renamed Cyber Security Act — same architecture, lighter wording." },
    { id: "bd_t7", isTruth: true , country: "bd", fallback: "Cox's Bazar hosts the world's largest refugee camp — over a million Rohingya driven out of Myanmar since 2017, kept in legal limbo with no path to citizenship or return.",
      whyFallback: "Burmese military's 2017 \"clearance operations\" — UN called it textbook ethnic cleansing. Bangladesh absorbed the influx but refuses naturalisation; aid funding has been falling for years; relocations to the silt island Bhasan Char raised safety concerns. Held in place by everyone's preference for stalemate." },
    { id: "bd_t8", isTruth: true , country: "bd", fallback: "Bangladesh's largest business conglomerates — Bashundhura, Beximco, S. Alam — grew in lockstep with whichever party held power, blurring the line between corporate empire and political patronage.",
      whyFallback: "Beximco's Salman F. Rahman served as Hasina's private-sector adviser while his group expanded into media, pharma, energy, and finance. S. Alam Group dominated banking under Awami rule. After August 2024 several of these empires were placed under investigation — the empires built under the patron rarely outlive the patron cleanly." },
    { id: "bd_f1", isTruth: false, country: "bd", fallback: "Bangladesh is a functioning two-party democracy alternating between the Awami League and BNP.",
      whyFallback: "The alternation stopped in 2009. By 2014 the BNP was boycotting elections it couldn't contest fairly; by 2024 the main opposition leader Khaleda Zia was effectively under house arrest and most BNP candidates had cases pending against them. \"Two-party\" was the historical label, not the recent reality." },
    { id: "bd_f2", isTruth: false, country: "bd", fallback: "Western fashion brands sourcing from Bangladesh ensure safe working conditions through their supply-chain audits.",
      whyFallback: "Rana Plaza had been audited. Tazreen Fashions (2012 fire, 117 dead) had been audited. The Accord on Fire and Building Safety after 2013 forced real change — but only because workers died on camera in numbers too large to PR away. Audits are theatre when the buyer's price demands the factory cut corners." },
    { id: "bd_f3", isTruth: false, country: "bd", fallback: "The 1971 Liberation War's atrocities are universally acknowledged.",
      whyFallback: "Pakistan has never officially recognised the genocide — estimates range from 200,000 to 3 million killed, with 200,000-400,000 women raped in a systematic campaign. The Hamoodur Rahman Commission report inside Pakistan was suppressed for decades. The Western press of the era largely looked away; Bangladesh's recognition fight continues." },
    { id: "bd_f4", isTruth: false, country: "bd", fallback: "Bangladesh's security forces operate under normal legal accountability.",
      whyFallback: "The Aynaghar (\"House of Mirrors\") secret detention site — revealed after Hasina's fall in 2024 — held disappeared activists, journalists, and military officers for years without charge. RAB, DGFI, NSI operated with court-untouchable impunity. The legal architecture existed; the practical override was the rule." },
    { id: "bd_f5", isTruth: false, country: "bd", fallback: "The 2004 grenade attack on Sheikh Hasina's rally was thoroughly investigated to find the real perpetrators.",
      whyFallback: "24 killed in the Awami League rally bombing. The BNP-era investigation produced \"Joj Mia\" — a fisherman tortured into a false confession in a manufactured scapegoat operation. The actual culprits, tied to Harkat-ul-Jihad and elements inside the BNP-era security state, were only convicted years later. The original investigation was the cover-up." },
    { id: "bd_f6", isTruth: false, country: "bd", fallback: "Bangladesh's secular constitution keeps religion and politics firmly separate.",
      whyFallback: "Islam was added as the state religion in 1988 and kept through every subsequent government, secular framing notwithstanding. Successive ruling parties cut deals with Hefazat-e-Islam over school textbooks, women's rights provisions, and blasphemy enforcement. Secular on the cover page, negotiated everywhere else." },
    { id: "bd_f7", isTruth: false, country: "bd", fallback: "The garment industry lifted Bangladesh out of poverty through honest market competition.",
      whyFallback: "It lifted GDP. The workers — overwhelmingly women — earn some of the lowest wages in the global supply chain, with strikes broken by police, union organisers blacklisted or killed (Aminul Islam, 2012), and the political class personally invested in keeping wages low. \"Lifted out of poverty\" describes the country average; the floor stayed exactly where the buyers needed it." },

    // ============== Burkina Faso — 8T + 7F ==============
    { id: "bf_t1", isTruth: true , country: "bf", fallback: "Thomas Sankara — president from 1983 to 1987 — repudiated colonial debt, vaccinated 2.5 million children in a week, and renamed Upper Volta to Burkina Faso (\"land of upright people\").",
      whyFallback: "Mass literacy drives, women in cabinet posts, sold off the government Mercedes fleet, took the salary of a junior clerk. The four-year program is the reference point every Sahelien anti-imperialist movement still cites. Killed before it could be tested at scale." },
    { id: "bf_t2", isTruth: true , country: "bf", fallback: "Sankara was assassinated on 15 October 1987 in a coup led by his closest comrade Blaise Compaoré — a 2022 trial convicted Compaoré in absentia of the killing, along with named accomplices.",
      whyFallback: "Ouagadougou military tribunal handed Compaoré a life sentence. Gilbert Diendéré and Hyacinthe Kafando convicted alongside him. The verdict named the crime by name — \"attack on state security\" and complicity in murder — 35 years after the bullets." },
    { id: "bf_t3", isTruth: true , country: "bf", fallback: "Blaise Compaoré ruled for 27 years (1987–2014) and was driven out only by a popular uprising when he tried to amend the constitution to extend his term — he fled to Ivory Coast, which still shelters him.",
      whyFallback: "Parliament was burned on 30 October 2014. Compaoré flew out the next day under French military protection. Ivorian citizenship granted in 2016; extradition requests for the Sankara trial declined." },
    { id: "bf_t4", isTruth: true , country: "bf", fallback: "Compaoré's Burkina Faso was a documented hub for Charles Taylor's arms-and-diamonds network — channelling weapons to the Liberian and Sierra Leonean civil wars throughout the 1990s.",
      whyFallback: "UN Panel of Experts reports (2000, 2001) named Burkina Faso as transit territory for sanctioned arms shipments. End-user certificates issued in Ouagadougou turned up in conflict zones across West Africa. The diamonds came back the other way." },
    { id: "bf_t5", isTruth: true , country: "bf", fallback: "Burkina Faso has had two coups in 2022 alone — Lieutenant-Colonel Damiba in January, Captain Ibrahim Traoré in September at age 34 — both driven by army anger over jihadist territorial losses.",
      whyFallback: "JNIM and ISGS now operate across an estimated 60% of the territory. Damiba lasted eight months; Traoré removed him with a junior-officer mutiny in the capital. Neither coup faced significant domestic resistance — the institutional state had already evaporated in the countryside." },
    { id: "bf_t6", isTruth: true , country: "bf", fallback: "The Traoré junta expelled French troops in February 2023 and brought in Russian Wagner Group / Africa Corps operators — the same trade Mali and Niger have made.",
      whyFallback: "Operation Sabre ended; French ambassador expelled; French-language broadcasters RFI and France 24 suspended. Wagner footprint confirmed by satellite imagery and the deaths of identified Russian operators in jihadist ambushes. The colonizer changed; the structural dependency did not." },
    { id: "bf_t7", isTruth: true , country: "bf", fallback: "Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger formed the Alliance of Sahel States (AES) in 2023 and announced their joint withdrawal from ECOWAS — the regional bloc seen as a French proxy.",
      whyFallback: "Confederation treaty signed in Niamey, July 2024. ECOWAS sanctions and threatened military intervention against the Niger junta accelerated the split. The three juntas now share a defense pact, a planned common currency, and a common patron in Moscow." },
    { id: "bf_t8", isTruth: true , country: "bf", fallback: "Burkina Faso is one of Africa's largest gold producers — yet the state's share of the revenue is opaque, and most artisanal mines now operate under jihadist or militia protection.",
      whyFallback: "Roughly 60 tonnes of gold produced annually on paper; informal output likely matches it. IAMGOLD, Endeavour, Nordgold, Orezone hold the industrial concessions. Tax exemptions and security carve-outs negotiated under Compaoré still apply. Where the artisanal gold leaves — usually via Dubai — is the question no audit answers." },
    { id: "bf_f1", isTruth: false, country: "bf", fallback: "Sankara's assassination was an internal military dispute that France had nothing to do with.",
      whyFallback: "Compaoré's coup had Houphouët-Boigny (Ivory Coast) and French backing — the declassified record of the 2022 trial named foreign hands without naming all of them. Sankara had become an embarrassment to Françafrique: debt repudiation, IMF refusal, public criticism of Mitterrand. The convenient comrade did the work." },
    { id: "bf_f2", isTruth: false, country: "bf", fallback: "The 27 years of Compaoré rule were a period of stability that benefited Burkina Faso.",
      whyFallback: "Stability for whom. The Sankara-era cooperatives, vaccination drives, and literacy programs collapsed. Norbert Zongo — investigative journalist looking into the president's brother — was murdered in 1998; case unresolved until the 2014 uprising forced it open. \"Stable\" describes the regime's grip, not the country's condition." },
    { id: "bf_f3", isTruth: false, country: "bf", fallback: "French military presence in the Sahel was protecting Burkinabè civilians from jihadists.",
      whyFallback: "Operations Serval and Barkhane ran for a decade — the jihadist controlled territory grew throughout. French bases co-located with uranium and gold logistics routes. When the juntas asked what the troops had actually secured, the answer was hard to produce. Hence the expulsions." },
    { id: "bf_f4", isTruth: false, country: "bf", fallback: "Wagner Group / Africa Corps offers Burkina Faso a sovereign alternative to Western military partnership.",
      whyFallback: "The contract is paid in gold concessions and mining rights — the same currency the French were extracting in. Russian operators have been documented in civilian massacres in Mali; the same pattern is now emerging in Burkina. \"Sovereign\" describes the rhetoric; the structure is a different patron with the same invoice." },
    { id: "bf_f5", isTruth: false, country: "bf", fallback: "The 2022 verdict against Compaoré means justice has been done for Sankara.",
      whyFallback: "Compaoré sits comfortably in Abidjan as an Ivorian citizen; Ivory Coast has refused extradition. The French intelligence files on the killing remain classified. A conviction without a body in a cell is a verdict, not justice. The trial named the crime — and stopped there." },
    { id: "bf_f6", isTruth: false, country: "bf", fallback: "Captain Ibrahim Traoré's junta represents a clean break from the Compaoré-era patronage networks.",
      whyFallback: "The army that produced Compaoré, Diendéré, Damiba, and Traoré is the same army. Mining concessions signed in the 1990s remain in force. The pan-African rhetoric is genuinely popular and the structural arrangement is largely unchanged — gold out, weapons in, foreign patron rotated." },
    { id: "bf_f7", isTruth: false, country: "bf", fallback: "The Alliance of Sahel States is a free choice by three independent governments to pool their sovereignty.",
      whyFallback: "Three military juntas that took power by coup, facing ECOWAS sanctions and possible intervention, formed a mutual-defense bloc with Russian backing. \"Free choice\" describes the framing. The strategic substrate is three regimes that need each other to survive — and a patron in Moscow that needs all three to stay in." },

    // ============== Bahrain — 8T + 7F ==============
    { id: "bh_t1", isTruth: true , country: "bh", fallback: "Bahrain is ruled by the Sunni Al Khalifa family over a population that is roughly 60-70% Shia — a minority dynasty governing a majority it treats as a security problem.",
      whyFallback: "The Al Khalifa conquered Bahrain in 1783 and have ruled since. Demographic figures are politically sensitive — the regime does not publish sect breakdowns — but academic estimates (Justin Gengler, Bahrain Center for Human Rights) consistently put the Shia share between 60% and 70% of citizens. The structural asymmetry between ruler and ruled is the country's central political fact, even when it is named as something else." },
    { id: "bh_t2", isTruth: true , country: "bh", fallback: "In March 2011, Saudi Arabia and the UAE sent the GCC Peninsula Shield Force across the King Fahd Causeway to crush the Pearl Roundabout uprising — tanks, live fire, and the demolition of the Pearl Monument itself.",
      whyFallback: "Roughly 30 protesters killed, thousands detained, doctors who treated the wounded prosecuted at Salmaniya hospital. The Pearl Monument was bulldozed in March 2011 because it had become the symbol of the protests — the regime erased its own national landmark rather than let an image of dissent stand. The Arab Spring uprising that Western media stopped covering." },
    { id: "bh_t3", isTruth: true , country: "bh", fallback: "The Bassiouni Independent Commission of Inquiry (2011), commissioned by King Hamad himself, confirmed systematic torture, deaths in custody, and unlawful killings by Bahraini security forces — and almost no senior figure was prosecuted.",
      whyFallback: "Cherif Bassiouni's 500-page report (November 2011) documented torture as a deliberate practice, sectarian discrimination in dismissals, and the use of force against unarmed civilians. The King accepted the findings publicly. Implementation tracked by Americans for Democracy and Human Rights in Bahrain (ADHRB) has been partial at best — low-level officers prosecuted, the command chain insulated, the structural reforms diluted." },
    { id: "bh_t4", isTruth: true , country: "bh", fallback: "The US Navy's 5th Fleet has been headquartered at Naval Support Activity Bahrain since 1995 — which is why Washington's response to the 2011 crackdown was muted statements and continued arms sales.",
      whyFallback: "The base houses Central Command's naval component covering the Persian Gulf, Red Sea, and Arabian Sea. Major Non-NATO Ally status granted 2002. The Obama administration paused some arms transfers after 2011 then quietly resumed them; the Trump and Biden administrations continued. Strategic real estate purchases political silence — the same equation that runs the entire Gulf." },
    { id: "bh_t5", isTruth: true , country: "bh", fallback: "The 2011 Bahrain Grand Prix was cancelled because of the uprising; the 2012 race went ahead under heavy security while protests and tear gas continued in nearby villages. Formula One has raced there every year since.",
      whyFallback: "The textbook sportswashing case: an event used to broadcast a normalized image while the underlying repression continues offscreen. Drivers including Lewis Hamilton have made public statements about human rights; the calendar has not changed. Nabeel Rajab and others were imprisoned partly for tweets criticizing the race. The cars run, the cameras follow them, the country off-camera continues." },
    { id: "bh_t6", isTruth: true , country: "bh", fallback: "Bahrain has revoked the citizenship of over 1,000 people since 2012 — activists, journalists, clerics, and lawyers — leaving many stateless inside their own country or in exile.",
      whyFallback: "Mass citizenship revocations under the 1963 Citizenship Act and 2014 anti-terrorism amendments. Tracking by ADHRB, Salam for Democracy and Human Rights, and the Institute on Statelessness and Inclusion. Ayatollah Isa Qassim — the country's most senior Shia cleric — was stripped of citizenship in 2016. Statelessness as a political tool, applied at scale." },
    { id: "bh_t7", isTruth: true , country: "bh", fallback: "Abdulhadi al-Khawaja — co-founder of the Bahrain Center for Human Rights and the Gulf Centre for Human Rights — has been serving a life sentence since 2011 for organizing protests, after being tortured in custody.",
      whyFallback: "Convicted by a military court in June 2011 alongside the \"Bahrain 13\". His daughter Maryam al-Khawaja has campaigned for his release internationally; his daughter Zainab al-Khawaja was also repeatedly imprisoned. Danish citizenship has not produced a release; UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention has ruled the imprisonment arbitrary. Life sentences for activism are the regime's standard answer." },
    { id: "bh_t8", isTruth: true , country: "bh", fallback: "Bahrain dissolved Al Wefaq — the country's largest opposition party, which won most Shia votes in the 2010 election — in 2016, and jailed its leader Sheikh Ali Salman on charges including \"insulting\" Saudi Arabia.",
      whyFallback: "Al Wefaq held 18 of 40 elected seats before its MPs resigned in protest in 2011. Court-ordered dissolution in July 2016. Sheikh Ali Salman sentenced to life in 2018 on espionage-with-Qatar charges widely seen as politically constructed. Waad — the main secular opposition party — was dissolved the following year. The legal opposition was abolished from the legal map." },
    { id: "bh_f1", isTruth: false, country: "bh", fallback: "The 2011 Bahraini protests were a sectarian Shia uprising driven by Iran.",
      whyFallback: "This is the regime's preferred frame and the one most Western coverage adopted. The Bassiouni Commission — appointed by the King himself — found no evidence of Iranian involvement in the 2011 events. The protests began with broad demands shared by Sunnis and Shia: constitutional monarchy, an elected prime minister, an end to discrimination. Sectarianizing legitimate political demands is how minority rule survives them." },
    { id: "bh_f2", isTruth: false, country: "bh", fallback: "Bahrain is a constitutional monarchy with a functioning elected parliament.",
      whyFallback: "The 2002 \"constitution\" granted by King Hamad created a bicameral parliament where the elected Council of Representatives is matched by an equal-size Shura Council appointed entirely by the King — giving the monarch a structural veto. The Prime Minister is appointed by the King, not the parliament, and was Khalifa bin Salman Al Khalifa (the King's uncle) from 1971 to 2020, making him the longest-serving unelected PM in the world. The architecture is monarchy in a parliamentary costume." },
    { id: "bh_f3", isTruth: false, country: "bh", fallback: "Nabeel Rajab was imprisoned for genuine security offenses, not for his activism.",
      whyFallback: "The president of the Bahrain Center for Human Rights and founder of the Gulf Centre for Human Rights has been imprisoned repeatedly since 2012. Charges across his multiple sentences: tweets about the Yemen war, an op-ed in the New York Times, \"insulting state institutions\". The UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention has ruled his imprisonment arbitrary; the EU Parliament and successive UN Special Rapporteurs have called for his release. \"Security\" is the wrapper around \"speech\"." },
    { id: "bh_f4", isTruth: false, country: "bh", fallback: "The Abraham Accords brought peace to Bahrain and the region.",
      whyFallback: "Bahrain normalized relations with Israel in September 2020 — the second Arab state after the UAE — without addressing the Palestinian question. Polling consistently shows the Bahraini public, like most Arab publics, opposed normalization. The deal was a top-down royal decision, signed in Washington, presented as inevitable. \"Peace\" between governments whose populations remain at odds with the outcome." },
    { id: "bh_f5", isTruth: false, country: "bh", fallback: "Sheikh Salman bin Ebrahim Al Khalifa's leadership of the Asian Football Confederation and FIFA vice presidency is a clean sporting matter.",
      whyFallback: "A member of the Bahraini royal family who chaired the country's football association during the 2011 crackdown, when national-team players were arrested, beaten, and barred from the sport for joining the protests (Hakeem al-Araibi's later refugee case publicized the pattern). His 2016 run for the FIFA presidency drew formal human-rights objections. Sport-governance roles as soft power for the family that runs the state." },
    { id: "bh_f6", isTruth: false, country: "bh", fallback: "Bahrain has a free press where journalists can report without fear.",
      whyFallback: "Al Wasat — the only independent daily — was permanently shut down by government order in June 2017. Reporters Without Borders places Bahrain near the bottom of its World Press Freedom Index every year. Foreign journalists are routinely denied entry around the F1 weekend and anniversaries of the 2011 uprising. The press that exists is the press the palace permits." },
    { id: "bh_f7", isTruth: false, country: "bh", fallback: "Crown Prince and Prime Minister Salman bin Hamad represents a reformist generation moving Bahrain forward.",
      whyFallback: "Salman has been Crown Prince since 1999 and Prime Minister since November 2020 — succeeding his great-uncle Khalifa, not breaking with him. He was the lead negotiator who proposed dialogue in 2011 and was then overruled by hardliners who called in the Saudis; the post-2011 trajectory has been continued repression, not reform. \"Reformist\" is a Western-facing label that has survived a decade and a half without producing the reforms it advertises." },

    // ============== Burundi — 8T + 7F ==============
    { id: "bi_t1", isTruth: true , country: "bi", fallback: "In 1972, the Tutsi-dominated Burundian military killed an estimated 100,000 to 300,000 Hutus in what is now known as the Ikiza — \"the catastrophe\" — a campaign that targeted educated Hutus systematically.",
      whyFallback: "Teachers, civil servants, students, clergy — anyone Hutu with a record of schooling. The killings ran for months under President Michel Micombero. Some historians use the word \"genocide\"; the Burundian state has never formally accepted that label." },
    { id: "bi_t2", isTruth: true , country: "bi", fallback: "Melchior Ndadaye — the first democratically elected Hutu president — was assassinated by Tutsi paratroopers in October 1993, three months into his term, triggering a civil war that would last twelve years.",
      whyFallback: "His election in June 1993 ended decades of Tutsi minority rule. The coup-killing reset the country into ethnic civil war: roughly 300,000 dead between 1993 and 2005. The Arusha Accords (2000) eventually carved out an ethnic power-sharing formula." },
    { id: "bi_t3", isTruth: true , country: "bi", fallback: "Pierre Nkurunziza's 2015 bid for a third presidential term — widely read as unconstitutional — triggered a failed coup attempt, mass protests, and a crackdown that killed roughly 1,200 people and drove hundreds of thousands into exile.",
      whyFallback: "The constitution capped presidents at two terms; Nkurunziza's court ruled his first term didn't count because parliament, not voters, had chosen him. Generals attempted a coup in May 2015 while he was abroad. It failed; the purges that followed did not." },
    { id: "bi_t4", isTruth: true , country: "bi", fallback: "Burundi became the first country to formally withdraw from the International Criminal Court, in 2017, days before the ICC was set to open a preliminary investigation into the 2015 crackdown.",
      whyFallback: "Withdrawal took effect October 2017. The ICC proceeded anyway under jurisdiction predating the exit. Burundian officials called the court a \"political instrument of powerful states\" — the standard formulation used by governments under investigation." },
    { id: "bi_t5", isTruth: true , country: "bi", fallback: "The Imbonerakure — the youth wing of the ruling CNDD-FDD party — function as a parallel security force, conducting patrols, arrests, and reported killings while operating without formal legal status.",
      whyFallback: "Their name means \"those who see far\". UN reports document beatings, disappearances, and forced recruitment. The state's position is that they're a youth association; their conduct is that of an irregular militia answerable to the ruling party." },
    { id: "bi_t6", isTruth: true , country: "bi", fallback: "Burundi has among the world's worst rates of chronic child malnutrition — over half of children under five are stunted — while coffee export revenues flow through state-controlled channels.",
      whyFallback: "Stunting rate ~54% per UNICEF and WHO data. Coffee is the country's main export; pricing, washing-station ownership, and export licensing have repeatedly concentrated upstream while smallholder farmers absorb the shocks." },
    { id: "bi_t7", isTruth: true , country: "bi", fallback: "In 2019, four journalists from the independent outlet Iwacu were arrested while reporting on clashes in Bubanza province and sentenced to two and a half years on charges of \"undermining state security\".",
      whyFallback: "They were doing their jobs — covering a security incident. The arrest pattern under Nkurunziza closed nearly every independent media voice; survivors operate from exile or self-censor. The reporters were finally pardoned in late 2020." },
    { id: "bi_t8", isTruth: true , country: "bi", fallback: "Pierre Nkurunziza died suddenly in June 2020 — officially of cardiac arrest, widely suspected to be COVID-19 — weeks after his government had dismissed the pandemic as God's protection and expelled the WHO country team.",
      whyFallback: "He was 55. His wife had been flown to Nairobi for COVID treatment days earlier. The state never permitted an independent autopsy. Évariste Ndayishimiye, the chosen successor, was inaugurated ahead of schedule." },
    { id: "bi_f1", isTruth: false, country: "bi", fallback: "The Arusha Accords resolved Burundi's ethnic conflict by creating a stable power-sharing democracy.",
      whyFallback: "They wrote ethnic quotas into the constitution and ended the open civil war — real achievements. They did not dismantle the security architecture, the patronage economy, or the impunity that produced the 1972 and 1993 killings. Stability and resolution are different words." },
    { id: "bi_f2", isTruth: false, country: "bi", fallback: "Burundi's elections under the CNDD-FDD have been competitive multi-party contests.",
      whyFallback: "Opposition leaders arrested, exiled, or killed. Independent observers expelled or denied accreditation. The 2015, 2020, and 2025 elections all delivered the ruling party's preferred outcome by margins that election-monitoring bodies refused to certify." },
    { id: "bi_f3", isTruth: false, country: "bi", fallback: "Hutu-Tutsi violence in Burundi has always been spontaneous communal hatred rather than state-organized.",
      whyFallback: "1972, 1988, 1993, 2015 — the major killings were planned, coordinated, and executed by state security forces or party militias. Spontaneous communal violence existed; the catastrophic events were operations. The framing of \"ancient hatreds\" lets the planners disappear." },
    { id: "bi_f4", isTruth: false, country: "bi", fallback: "Refugees who returned from Tanzania after 2015 came home voluntarily.",
      whyFallback: "UNHCR documented pressure campaigns, ration cuts, and tripartite arrangements that pushed returns before conditions were safe. Some returns were genuine; the framing of all of them as voluntary papers over the coercion built into the process." },
    { id: "bi_f5", isTruth: false, country: "bi", fallback: "Burundi's withdrawal from the ICC was a sovereign legal step unconnected to specific investigations.",
      whyFallback: "The timing — days before the ICC's preliminary examination opened — is the answer. Sovereignty was the framing; jurisdictional escape was the function. The investigation continued under the Rome Statute's retained authority anyway." },
    { id: "bi_f6", isTruth: false, country: "bi", fallback: "The Imbonerakure are a civic youth association engaged in community development.",
      whyFallback: "The official description; the UN, Human Rights Watch, and exiled Burundian observers describe armed patrols, extortion at roadblocks, and participation in disappearances. Two job descriptions, one organization." },
    { id: "bi_f7", isTruth: false, country: "bi", fallback: "Évariste Ndayishimiye's 2020 succession marked a clean democratic transition and a break from Nkurunziza's repression.",
      whyFallback: "He was the CNDD-FDD's chosen heir, a former general from the same military-party apparatus. Some prisoners released, some media licenses restored — real but limited gestures. The Imbonerakure, the security services, and the impunity architecture all remained." },

    // ============== Benin — 8T + 7F ==============
    { id: "bj_t1", isTruth: true , country: "bj", fallback: "Patrice Talon — Benin's president since 2016 — is a cotton magnate known as the \"Cotton King\" before he was head of state.",
      whyFallback: "Talon built his fortune on cotton ginning and inputs supply, then bankrolled Boni Yayi's campaigns, fell out with him, was accused of an assassination plot, fled to Paris, was pardoned — and then ran for president and won. Tycoon to ruler in a straight line." },
    { id: "bj_t2", isTruth: true , country: "bj", fallback: "Benin's 2019 parliamentary elections were held with no opposition party on the ballot — every seat went to parties aligned with President Talon.",
      whyFallback: "New electoral rules quietly excluded opposition formations. Turnout collapsed to roughly 27%. Soldiers were deployed in Cotonou; the internet was throttled. The first single-bloc legislature since the democratic transition." },
    { id: "bj_t3", isTruth: true , country: "bj", fallback: "Reckya Madougou — a leading opposition figure barred from the 2021 presidential race — was sentenced to 20 years in prison for \"terrorism\" weeks after her candidacy was blocked.",
      whyFallback: "Former justice minister, would-be candidate against Talon, arrested March 2021, sentenced December 2021 by the special economic-crimes and terrorism court CRIET. Amnesty International, the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, and the ECOWAS Court called the prosecution political." },
    { id: "bj_t4", isTruth: true , country: "bj", fallback: "The 2021 presidential election that returned Talon to a second term ran with no significant opposition candidate on the ballot.",
      whyFallback: "A new \"sponsorship\" system required candidates to collect signatures from mayors and parliamentarians — overwhelmingly Talon allies. Multiple opposition figures were arrested, exiled, or disqualified. Talon \"won\" 86%." },
    { id: "bj_t5", isTruth: true , country: "bj", fallback: "Sébastien Ajavon — a businessman who came third in the 2016 election against Talon — was convicted in absentia and forced into exile after his refrigerated container was found to contain cocaine.",
      whyFallback: "Ajavon was initially acquitted by a normal court. Then the special CRIET court reopened the case and sentenced him to 20 years. He fled to France. The African Court on Human and Peoples' Rights ruled the trial violated his rights — Benin then withdrew from the court's individual-complaint mechanism." },
    { id: "bj_t6", isTruth: true , country: "bj", fallback: "Ouidah — a small Benin coastal town — was one of the largest slave-trading ports in history, shipping more than a million enslaved Africans across the Atlantic.",
      whyFallback: "The \"Slave Route\" walk from the auction tree to the \"Door of No Return\" is preserved. The Kingdom of Dahomey — based in present-day Benin — was both seller and broker in the trade, in partnership with Portuguese, French, and British buyers. The history is acknowledged on the ground in a way many other former trade nodes still avoid." },
    { id: "bj_t7", isTruth: true , country: "bj", fallback: "In 2021 France returned 26 looted artworks of the Kingdom of Dahomey — the Abomey treasures seized during the 1892 colonial invasion — to Benin.",
      whyFallback: "Among the largest restitutions of African colonial loot to date. Most other looted Beninese artifacts — and the British-held Benin Bronzes (from neighboring Nigeria's Benin Kingdom, a separate matter) — remain in European museum vaults. The 26 returned are a fraction of what is still abroad." },
    { id: "bj_t8", isTruth: true , country: "bj", fallback: "Vodun (\"Voodoo\") is recognized as an official religion in Benin, with a national holiday on 10 January.",
      whyFallback: "Roughly 17% of the population practices Vodun openly; far more incorporate it alongside Christianity or Islam. The misrepresentation of Vodun as villainous superstition is largely a Hollywood and colonial export — in Benin it is a structured spiritual tradition with priesthoods, festivals, and state recognition." },
    { id: "bj_f1", isTruth: false, country: "bj", fallback: "Benin is a stable West African democracy that survived the regional democratic rollback intact.",
      whyFallback: "Once held up as a model — peaceful 1991 transition from Kérékou's military rule, multiple alternations of power. Since 2016 the trajectory is the opposite direction: opposition jailed or exiled, special anti-terror court repurposed, single-bloc parliament, candidate filters. Freedom House moved Benin from \"Free\" to \"Partly Free\"." },
    { id: "bj_f2", isTruth: false, country: "bj", fallback: "The CRIET court was created to fight economic crime and terrorism.",
      whyFallback: "On paper, yes. In practice its most internationally noted cases are against politicians who ran against Talon — Madougou, Ajavon, journalists, activists. A specialized court whose docket looks suspiciously like a political opponent list." },
    { id: "bj_f3", isTruth: false, country: "bj", fallback: "Patrice Talon's business empire is separate from his presidency.",
      whyFallback: "Talon's group has long dominated cotton ginning and inputs supply — the country's main export crop. The presidency oversees the regulators, the customs, and the contracts. \"Separate\" is a paperwork distinction; the cotton sector consolidated further during his rule, not less." },
    { id: "bj_f4", isTruth: false, country: "bj", fallback: "Benin's industrial growth from the Glo-Djigbé Industrial Zone is a sovereign development story.",
      whyFallback: "Glo-Djigbé is built and operated as a joint venture with Arise IIP — a Singapore-headquartered, India- and Africa-connected vehicle — with major Chinese tenants and supply lines. The zone is real and creating jobs; the framing of it as Beninese-driven is the polished version." },
    { id: "bj_f5", isTruth: false, country: "bj", fallback: "Benin's northern border insecurity is a local jihadi problem.",
      whyFallback: "Pendjari and W parks in the north have seen JNIM and ISGS attacks spilling out of Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger — the same Sahel insurgency that grew after the 2011 NATO destruction of Libya pushed weapons and fighters south. The map of who armed what reaches well beyond Benin's borders." },
    { id: "bj_f6", isTruth: false, country: "bj", fallback: "Vodun is a primitive folk superstition.",
      whyFallback: "It is a structured religion with cosmology, ethics, priestly hierarchies, and centuries of unbroken practice — exported through the slave trade to Haiti, Cuba, Brazil, and New Orleans. The \"primitive\" framing is colonial-era PR that survived the empire that produced it." },
    { id: "bj_f7", isTruth: false, country: "bj", fallback: "Benin's transition from Kérékou's Marxist-Leninist military regime to multiparty democracy in 1990–91 was a clean democratic awakening.",
      whyFallback: "Mathieu Kérékou — who took power in a 1972 coup and ran a one-party Marxist state until economic collapse forced the 1990 National Conference — lost the 1991 election to Nicéphore Soglo, then came back and won in 1996 and 2001 as a born-again democrat. The same man ran the country for most of two consecutive eras. Continuity in democratic clothing." },

    // ============== Brunei — 8T + 7F ==============
    { id: "bn_t1", isTruth: true , country: "bn", fallback: "Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah has ruled Brunei since 1967 — making him the world's longest-reigning current monarch and the sole locus of state power.",
      whyFallback: "Acceded October 1967 on his father's abdication. Simultaneously Prime Minister, Defence Minister, Finance Minister, and Foreign Affairs Minister at various points. No succession of authority; the throne is the executive branch." },
    { id: "bn_t2", isTruth: true , country: "bn", fallback: "Brunei is an absolute monarchy — the Legislative Council exists on paper but has met only intermittently and holds no power to override the Sultan.",
      whyFallback: "Suspended after the 1962 revolt, reinstated in 2004 as an appointed body. The 1959 constitution vests \"supreme executive authority\" in the Sultan. Emergency powers, declared in 1962, have never been lifted." },
    { id: "bn_t3", isTruth: true , country: "bn", fallback: "Prince Jefri Bolkiah — the Sultan's brother and former finance minister — is alleged to have siphoned roughly $14–15 billion from the Brunei Investment Agency between 1986 and 1998.",
      whyFallback: "Civil case filed by the BIA in 2000. Asprey jewellers acquired and looted, fleets of yachts and cars, custom-built parties. Settled with partial asset return; criminal accountability inside Brunei: none." },
    { id: "bn_t4", isTruth: true , country: "bn", fallback: "Brunei phased in a full Shariah penal code between 2014 and 2019 — including stoning for adultery and gay sex, amputation for theft, and public flogging.",
      whyFallback: "Phase three implemented April 2019. International boycotts of Sultan-owned hotels (Dorchester, Beverly Hills Hotel) followed. The Sultan announced a moratorium on the death penalty under pressure; the code itself remains law." },
    { id: "bn_t5", isTruth: true , country: "bn", fallback: "Brunei Shell Petroleum — a 50/50 joint venture between the state and Royal Dutch Shell — is the engine of the entire national economy and the source of the royal family's wealth.",
      whyFallback: "Oil and gas account for the majority of GDP and roughly 90% of export revenue. The arrangement dates to colonial-era concessions and was carried into independence unchanged. Diversification has been announced for decades; the dependency remains." },
    { id: "bn_t6", isTruth: true , country: "bn", fallback: "The Internal Security Act allows detention without trial for renewable two-year periods — inherited from British colonial-era emergency law and never repealed.",
      whyFallback: "Originally used against the 1962 Parti Rakyat Brunei revolt. Retained as a standing instrument. Critics, dissident clerics, and political organizers have been detained without charge into the 21st century." },
    { id: "bn_t7", isTruth: true , country: "bn", fallback: "Limbang — a strip of land that splits Brunei into two non-contiguous halves — was annexed by the British North Borneo Company in 1890 and remains Malaysian territory despite Brunei's long-standing claim.",
      whyFallback: "The Sultan formally relinquished the claim in 2009 in a quiet exchange of letters with Malaysia. Some Bruneians still consider it unresolved. The geography of the country is a colonial artifact, not a national choice." },
    { id: "bn_t8", isTruth: true , country: "bn", fallback: "The Brunei Investment Agency manages the country's sovereign wealth — estimated at $40–60 billion — with no published accounts and no public oversight.",
      whyFallback: "Established 1983. Reports directly to the Sultan as Finance Minister. The Jefri scandal is the only window the public ever got into BIA operations, and that window opened only because the family sued the family." },
    { id: "bn_f1", isTruth: false, country: "bn", fallback: "Brunei's cradle-to-grave welfare state — free healthcare, free education, no income tax — proves that absolute monarchy can deliver for its people.",
      whyFallback: "The welfare is real and funded entirely by oil rents shared from the top. It is patronage, not entitlement; it can be withdrawn, and political loyalty is the unstated price. \"No income tax\" reads differently when there is also no vote." },
    { id: "bn_f2", isTruth: false, country: "bn", fallback: "The 2019 Shariah penal code was a sovereign religious choice expressing the will of the Bruneian people.",
      whyFallback: "It was decreed by the Sultan. There was no referendum, no parliamentary debate that mattered, no public consultation with any binding force. \"The will of the people\" in an absolute monarchy is whatever the monarch declares it to be." },
    { id: "bn_f3", isTruth: false, country: "bn", fallback: "Brunei's wealth comes from prudent economic management by the royal family.",
      whyFallback: "It comes from a geological accident — the Seria oil field, discovered 1929 — and a colonial-era concession to Shell carried forward. The royal family inherited the geology and the contract. Management is the framing; rent is the mechanism." },
    { id: "bn_f4", isTruth: false, country: "bn", fallback: "Prince Jefri's spending scandal was an aberration — a single bad apple in an otherwise well-run royal household.",
      whyFallback: "$14–15 billion does not move from a sovereign agency to private accounts over twelve years without structural permission. The aberration framing protects the structure; the structure produced the aberration." },
    { id: "bn_f5", isTruth: false, country: "bn", fallback: "Brunei is a modern, open society that happens to be ruled by a monarch.",
      whyFallback: "No opposition parties function, no independent press operates, public criticism of the Sultan is criminal, and emergency law has been continuous since 1962. \"Modern\" describes the airport and the shopping malls; the political architecture is pre-modern by design." },
    { id: "bn_f6", isTruth: false, country: "bn", fallback: "Educating the Bruneian elite abroad — Oxford, Sandhurst, US universities — produces a worldly, reform-minded ruling class.",
      whyFallback: "It produces a ruling class fluent in the language of international institutions and skilled at managing their perceptions. The Sultan attended Sandhurst. The Shariah code arrived after, not before." },
    { id: "bn_f7", isTruth: false, country: "bn", fallback: "Brunei's 2021 ASEAN chairmanship demonstrated its role as a constructive regional partner on issues like the Myanmar crisis.",
      whyFallback: "The \"Five-Point Consensus\" agreed during Brunei's chairmanship has been ignored by the Myanmar junta from the day it was signed. ASEAN's consensus rule turns the chair into a referee with no whistle. Constructive in tone; inert in outcome." },

    // ============== Bolivia — 8T + 7F ==============
    { id: "bo_t1", isTruth: true , country: "bo", fallback: "Evo Morales — Bolivia's first indigenous president, elected 2006 — was ousted in November 2019 after an OAS audit alleged election irregularities, then fled to Mexico and later Argentina.",
      whyFallback: "The OAS audit's methodology was later disputed by independent researchers (MIT, CEPR). \"Resignation\" came after the military's public suggestion that he step down. Whether you call it a coup or a constitutional correction depends on which side of the audit you trust." },
    { id: "bo_t2", isTruth: true , country: "bo", fallback: "The Sacaba and Senkata massacres of November 2019 killed roughly 30 Morales supporters as the Bolivian Army repressed protests against the interim Áñez government.",
      whyFallback: "Decree 4078 granted the armed forces immunity for operations during the unrest — issued before the killings, repealed after international outcry. The IACHR documented the events; convictions have been partial and contested." },
    { id: "bo_t3", isTruth: true , country: "bo", fallback: "Interim president Jeanine Áñez, who took office after Morales fled in 2019, was later imprisoned for her role in what courts ruled was an unconstitutional seizure of power.",
      whyFallback: "Sentenced to 10 years in 2022 for the \"coup d'état\" case. Her supporters call it political revenge; the court ruled she bypassed constitutional succession. Both framings appear in the same record." },
    { id: "bo_t4", isTruth: true , country: "bo", fallback: "The 2003 Gas Wars killed dozens of protesters in El Alto, and President Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada fled to the United States — which has never extradited him despite a Bolivian conviction.",
      whyFallback: "Around 60 dead, hundreds wounded, mostly indigenous Aymara protesters opposed to gas exports through Chile. Sánchez de Lozada lives in suburban Maryland. The extradition request has sat unanswered for two decades." },
    { id: "bo_t5", isTruth: true , country: "bo", fallback: "General Hugo Banzer's 1971–1978 dictatorship ran death squads and cooperated with Plan Condor — the cross-border kidnap-and-kill network of South American military regimes.",
      whyFallback: "Hundreds disappeared, thousands tortured or exiled. Banzer later returned as elected president (1997–2001), the dictatorship era never fully prosecuted. Plan Condor archives in Asunción confirmed the coordination." },
    { id: "bo_t6", isTruth: true , country: "bo", fallback: "Bolivia expelled the US DEA in 2008 and USAID in 2013, accusing both of interfering in domestic politics under the cover of anti-drug and development work.",
      whyFallback: "Morales-era policy. The DEA had operated for decades; USAID funded programs Morales said targeted MAS-aligned movements. The accusations were political; they were also not invented." },
    { id: "bo_t7", isTruth: true , country: "bo", fallback: "The Salar de Uyuni holds among the largest known lithium reserves on Earth, and every major foreign extraction contract since 2018 has been suspended, renegotiated, or politically contested.",
      whyFallback: "German ACI Systems deal cancelled 2019 after Potosí protests. Chinese and Russian agreements signed under Arce, opposed by both Morales-MAS and the right. \"Lithium for whom\" is the live question." },
    { id: "bo_t8", isTruth: true , country: "bo", fallback: "In June 2024, General Juan José Zúñiga drove an armored vehicle into the presidential palace door — then was arrested within hours, with President Arce and his critics offering opposite stories about what actually happened.",
      whyFallback: "Arce called it an attempted coup. The opposition and Morales faction called it a staged \"self-coup\" to rescue Arce's collapsing popularity. Zúñiga claimed Arce ordered the show. The truth remains officially undecided." },
    { id: "bo_f1", isTruth: false, country: "bo", fallback: "The MAS party speaks with one voice for Bolivia's indigenous and working-class majority.",
      whyFallback: "By 2024 MAS had split into open warfare between Evo Morales and his former finance minister Luis Arce. Rival congresses, rival candidates, rival claims to the party name. The movement that won three landslides is now eating itself." },
    { id: "bo_f2", isTruth: false, country: "bo", fallback: "The 2006 hydrocarbon nationalization put Bolivia's gas back in Bolivian hands.",
      whyFallback: "It renegotiated terms with Petrobras, Repsol, Total, and others — the foreign majors stayed, the state took a larger share. \"Nationalization\" was a contract restructuring, not an expulsion. The headline and the fine print disagreed." },
    { id: "bo_f3", isTruth: false, country: "bo", fallback: "Santa Cruz's autonomy movement is purely about regional cultural identity.",
      whyFallback: "The Camba autonomy push tracks closely with the lowland agribusiness, hydrocarbon, and elite economic interests that lost power to the highland indigenous MAS base. Identity is the framing; resource control is the structure." },
    { id: "bo_f4", isTruth: false, country: "bo", fallback: "Coca leaf production in Bolivia is the same problem as cocaine trafficking.",
      whyFallback: "Coca leaf has been chewed and brewed in the Andes for thousands of years; it is legal in Bolivia and central to Aymara and Quechua life. The narcotic refinement is a separate industrial process. The US War on Drugs has spent decades blurring the two." },
    { id: "bo_f5", isTruth: false, country: "bo", fallback: "What happened to Morales in 2019 was simply democracy correcting an authoritarian overreach.",
      whyFallback: "Morales had won three elections and a Constitutional Court ruling allowing a fourth run. The OAS audit's statistical claims were later contested by MIT researchers. The military's public \"suggestion\" that he resign is what coups have looked like in Latin America for a century." },
    { id: "bo_f6", isTruth: false, country: "bo", fallback: "Bolivia's lithium will lift the country out of poverty.",
      whyFallback: "Extraction is technically difficult (high magnesium content), politically contested at every level (Potosí, central government, indigenous communities), and shaped by foreign buyers writing the terms. The \"Saudi Arabia of lithium\" headline has been recycled for 15 years with little extracted." },
    { id: "bo_f7", isTruth: false, country: "bo", fallback: "The 1971 Banzer coup was an internal Bolivian matter.",
      whyFallback: "Declassified US documents show Nixon-administration backing. Banzer's regime joined Plan Condor — coordinated with Pinochet's Chile, Videla's Argentina, Stroessner's Paraguay, with US intelligence facilitation. \"Internal\" was the cover story." },

    // ============== The Bahamas — 8T + 7F ==============
    { id: "bs_t1", isTruth: true , country: "bs", fallback: "Sam Bankman-Fried ran the FTX crypto exchange from a Nassau penthouse at the Albany Resort while $8 billion of customer funds quietly disappeared into Alameda Research.",
      whyFallback: "FTX moved its headquarters to The Bahamas in 2021 after the regulator courted it. November 2022 collapse. SBF was convicted on seven fraud counts in New York (2023) and sentenced to 25 years (2024). The Bahamian regulator's role in licensing the exchange remains contested." },
    { id: "bs_t2", isTruth: true , country: "bs", fallback: "The Bahamas Securities Commission rushed to claim custody of FTX assets within days of the collapse — while questions about how the exchange was licensed in the first place went largely unanswered.",
      whyFallback: "The Commission filed for provisional liquidation in Bahamian courts and seized digital assets, creating a jurisdictional fight with the US bankruptcy process. The licensing regime that brought FTX to Nassau was the same one supposed to oversee it." },
    { id: "bs_t3", isTruth: true , country: "bs", fallback: "The Bahamas remains one of the world's offshore banking and corporate-secrecy centres, despite waves of post-2000 \"reform\" announcements.",
      whyFallback: "Shell-company formation, trust structures, and minimal-disclosure banking continue. Each round of OECD or FATF pressure produces new legislation; the underlying business model — selling secrecy and zero income tax — survives intact." },
    { id: "bs_t4", isTruth: true , country: "bs", fallback: "Sir Lynden Pindling — founding Prime Minister, in office 1967 to 1992 — was named in US drug-trafficking investigations over the Norman's Cay operation run by Colombian trafficker Carlos Lehder.",
      whyFallback: "A Bahamian Royal Commission of Inquiry (1984) found Pindling had received unexplained payments; he was never charged. Norman's Cay became a Medellín Cartel transshipment hub in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The international airport still carries his name." },
    { id: "bs_t5", isTruth: true , country: "bs", fallback: "Hurricane Dorian (September 2019) sat over Grand Bahama and Abaco for nearly two days, killing at least 70 people — with the true toll concealed inside destroyed Haitian migrant shantytowns like The Mudd and Pigeon Peas.",
      whyFallback: "Category 5 winds, days of stalling. Official counts capped low; hundreds remained \"missing\" for years. Undocumented Haitian residents had every incentive not to register with authorities — alive or dead." },
    { id: "bs_t6", isTruth: true , country: "bs", fallback: "The Bahamian government runs periodic mass deportations of Haitian migrants and their Bahamas-born children — including round-ups after Hurricane Dorian devastated the very settlements where they lived.",
      whyFallback: "Citizenship by birth is not automatic in The Bahamas; children of Haitian parents must apply between 18 and 19, often unsuccessfully. Deportation flights resumed within months of Dorian. Statelessness is the structural outcome." },
    { id: "bs_t7", isTruth: true , country: "bs", fallback: "Foreign luxury enclaves — Albany, Lyford Cay, Baker's Bay — operate as gated parallel economies where billionaires, hedge-fund families, and athletes hold property tax breaks unavailable to ordinary Bahamians.",
      whyFallback: "Lyford Cay's residents have included Sean Connery and Peter Nygård. Albany was co-founded by Tiger Woods and Justin Timberlake. Heads-of-Agreement deals with the government grant concessions on duties, stamp tax, and real-property tax." },
    { id: "bs_t8", isTruth: true , country: "bs", fallback: "The Davis government's 2022 VAT hike on imports — in a country that imports almost everything — triggered cost-of-living protests while resort developers continued to negotiate their own tax exemptions.",
      whyFallback: "VAT raised back to 10% on a wider base; food inflation followed. The same period saw fresh Heads-of-Agreement concessions to Sandals and other resort operators. The two scoreboards do not meet." },
    { id: "bs_f1", isTruth: false, country: "bs", fallback: "The PLP–FNM two-party system gives Bahamians a real choice between competing visions.",
      whyFallback: "Pindling, Ingraham, Christie, Minnis, Davis — same political class, same families, same resort-tourism-and-offshore-finance growth model rotated through. The differences are stylistic. The economic architecture is bipartisan." },
    { id: "bs_f2", isTruth: false, country: "bs", fallback: "The Bahamas vetted FTX carefully before granting it a licence.",
      whyFallback: "The Digital Assets and Registered Exchanges Act (DARE 2020) was specifically positioned to attract crypto firms. FTX was the trophy catch. The post-collapse review found that the licensing process had been a competitive sales pitch, not a stress test." },
    { id: "bs_f3", isTruth: false, country: "bs", fallback: "The Bahamas is a wealthy country because of independence and good governance.",
      whyFallback: "GDP per capita is high; that figure averages billionaires on Paradise Island with families on Cat Island and Inagua. Family Islands have decades-old infrastructure gaps — water, electricity, healthcare, schools — while Nassau's resort strip is rebuilt every cycle." },
    { id: "bs_f4", isTruth: false, country: "bs", fallback: "Sandals and the big resort chains pay their fair share into the Bahamian economy.",
      whyFallback: "Concessions on customs duties, VAT, real-property tax, and business-licence fees — written into Heads-of-Agreement contracts negotiated behind closed doors. The headline employment numbers are real; the net fiscal contribution is much smaller than the brochure suggests." },
    { id: "bs_f5", isTruth: false, country: "bs", fallback: "The Bahamas cleaned up its act after the Pindling-era drug scandals.",
      whyFallback: "The cocaine pipeline of Norman's Cay was specific to one era; the broader pattern — a small jurisdiction selling secrecy, residence, and access to powerful foreigners — was never the target of reform. Different cargo, same architecture." },
    { id: "bs_f6", isTruth: false, country: "bs", fallback: "Haitian migrants in The Bahamas are treated under standard international refugee norms.",
      whyFallback: "Mass round-ups, raids on shantytowns, deportation of Bahamas-born children of Haitian parents, and the structural denial of citizenship until age 18 — none of which fits the UNHCR framework The Bahamas has formally signed onto." },
    { id: "bs_f7", isTruth: false, country: "bs", fallback: "The Bahamas Telecommunications Company privatisation was a competitive process that served the public.",
      whyFallback: "BTC was sold to Cable & Wireless Communications in 2011 under Ingraham (FNM); the deal was renegotiated under Christie (PLP); the promised consumer benefits arrived slowly and partially. The sale price, the buyer, and the terms were all politically contested at the time and unresolved since." },

    // ============== Bhutan — 8T + 7F ==============
    { id: "bt_t1", isTruth: true , country: "bt", fallback: "Between 1989 and the early 1990s Bhutan expelled roughly 100,000 Lhotshampa — Nepali-speaking Bhutanese Hindus — under the \"One Nation One People\" policy, driving them into refugee camps in eastern Nepal.",
      whyFallback: "The Citizenship Acts of 1985 retroactively stripped status from families who had lived in southern Bhutan for generations. Driglam Namzha dress and language codes were enforced on a Buddhist Ngalop template. The expulsion is one of the largest per-capita ethnic cleansings of the late 20th century — and the one the international branding never mentions." },
    { id: "bt_t2", isTruth: true , country: "bt", fallback: "Bhutan has been ruled by the Wangchuck dynasty since 1907 — a single family on the throne for over a century, now under the 5th King Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck.",
      whyFallback: "Ugyen Wangchuck installed as hereditary monarch in 1907 with British backing. Jigme Singye Wangchuck (4th King) ruled 1972–2006; his son Jigme Khesar acceded in 2006. The \"Druk Gyalpo\" title is hereditary, not earned, and constitutional reform has never threatened the lineage." },
    { id: "bt_t3", isTruth: true , country: "bt", fallback: "Bhutan's 2008 transition from absolute to constitutional monarchy was granted top-down by the 4th King — not won by popular movement.",
      whyFallback: "Jigme Singye Wangchuck announced abdication and democratization on his own timetable. No protest forced it, no opposition campaigned for it, the draft constitution was royally drafted. Democracy as a gift from the throne retains the throne's veto over its meaning." },
    { id: "bt_t4", isTruth: true , country: "bt", fallback: "Bhutan's hydroelectric sector — the backbone of its economy — runs almost entirely on Indian financing, Indian construction, and Indian power purchases.",
      whyFallback: "Hydropower accounts for a large share of GDP and exports; nearly all of it flows to India under long-term tariff agreements. External debt to India runs around half of GDP and is mostly hydro-linked. \"Energy independence\" describes the source; the customer and the creditor are the same neighbour." },
    { id: "bt_t5", isTruth: true , country: "bt", fallback: "Television and the internet were banned in Bhutan until 1999 — the last country on Earth to legalize TV.",
      whyFallback: "Lifted by royal decree of the 4th King in June 1999 as part of a controlled modernization. The state framed it as cultural preservation; in practice it kept information flow under the throne's pace. The same control logic now shapes the social-media era." },
    { id: "bt_t6", isTruth: true , country: "bt", fallback: "Bhutan does not have full diplomatic relations with any of the five permanent UN Security Council members — its foreign policy is conducted largely through India under a 1949 treaty later revised in 2007.",
      whyFallback: "The 1949 Treaty of Friendship gave India a guiding role in Bhutan's external affairs; the 2007 revision softened the language but the dependence remained structural. No embassies with the US, UK, France, Russia, or China. The most landlocked diplomacy on Earth." },
    { id: "bt_t7", isTruth: true , country: "bt", fallback: "The 2017 Doklam standoff — a 73-day military confrontation between India and China — happened on territory Bhutan claims, with Bhutan a near-silent third party in its own border dispute.",
      whyFallback: "Chinese road construction on the Doklam plateau, Indian troops crossing in to block it, Bhutanese sovereignty invoked by Delhi rather than by Thimphu. Bhutan's statement was brief and managed through Indian channels. Sovereignty exercised by proxy is sovereignty negotiated away." },
    { id: "bt_t8", isTruth: true , country: "bt", fallback: "The Gelephu Mindfulness City — a 1,000 km² special administrative zone announced in 2023 and formalized in 2024 — is a Wangchuck-led project to attract foreign capital under a separate legal regime inside Bhutan.",
      whyFallback: "Pitched as a spiritually themed economic hub on the southern border with India. Its own legal framework, its own governance, its own tax rules. The land it sits on is partly the same southern belt the Lhotshampa were cleared from a generation earlier. The branding is mindfulness; the mechanism is a charter city." },
    { id: "bt_f1", isTruth: false, country: "bt", fallback: "Gross National Happiness proves that Bhutan has found a more humane alternative to GDP-driven development.",
      whyFallback: "GNH is a real survey instrument and a real piece of soft-power branding. It is also the international face of a state that expelled a sixth of its population on ethnic-religious grounds within living memory. Happiness measured by the regime that defines who counts as Bhutanese is a category with footnotes." },
    { id: "bt_f2", isTruth: false, country: "bt", fallback: "Bhutan is a peaceful Buddhist kingdom that has avoided the human-rights problems of its neighbours.",
      whyFallback: "Roughly 100,000 Lhotshampa in Nepali camps for over three decades, many resettled to the US and elsewhere from 2007 onward, almost none allowed to return. State religion is Drukpa Kagyu Buddhism; non-Buddhist proselytizing is restricted. \"Peaceful\" is the tourist-facing layer." },
    { id: "bt_f3", isTruth: false, country: "bt", fallback: "The 2008 constitution made Bhutan a functioning multi-party democracy.",
      whyFallback: "Parties must be approved by the Election Commission, candidates must hold a university degree (excluding most of the rural population), and the King retains powers to dissolve parliament, appoint senior judges, and shape policy through the National Council. Elected government operates inside a perimeter the palace drew." },
    { id: "bt_f4", isTruth: false, country: "bt", fallback: "Bhutan chose isolation freely to preserve its unique culture.",
      whyFallback: "Tourism is capped by a high daily Sustainable Development Fee — set by the state, collected by the state. Internet, TV, and foreign press arrived on the throne's schedule, not the public's demand. The \"unique culture\" being preserved is specifically the Ngalop-Drukpa template, codified through Driglam Namzha, enforced against minorities." },
    { id: "bt_f5", isTruth: false, country: "bt", fallback: "Bhutan's small size and Buddhist character make it strategically irrelevant.",
      whyFallback: "It sits on the Himalayan watershed between India and China, hosts the Doklam tri-junction, and is the only country to share a long undemarcated border with China outside formal diplomatic recognition. India treats Bhutanese defence as an extension of its own. Small does not mean unimportant — it means leveraged." },
    { id: "bt_f6", isTruth: false, country: "bt", fallback: "The 5th King is a modernizing reformer breaking with the conservative palace tradition.",
      whyFallback: "He has not reopened the Lhotshampa question, has not lifted the citizenship laws of 1985/1988, and has personally led the Gelephu Mindfulness City project that monetizes the cleared southern belt. Oxford education and a young royal couple are presentation; the structural settlement of the 4th King's era is intact." },
    { id: "bt_f7", isTruth: false, country: "bt", fallback: "Bhutan's hydro-export model is a clean-energy success story.",
      whyFallback: "It is also a single-customer dependency on India, financed by Indian debt, built by Indian contractors, priced under bilateral tariffs Bhutan does not set alone. Glacial melt and monsoon variability are now hitting output. Clean at the turbine; brittle at the balance sheet." },

    // ============== Botswana — 8T + 7F ==============
    { id: "bw_t1", isTruth: true , country: "bw", fallback: "The Botswana Democratic Party (BDP) ruled uninterrupted for 58 years — from independence in 1966 until losing to the UDC's Duma Boko in October 2024.",
      whyFallback: "Founded by Seretse Khama. Africa's longest continuously ruling party until the 2024 historic loss. \"Africa's model democracy\" was a single-party state with regular elections — the two are not the same thing." },
    { id: "bw_t2", isTruth: true , country: "bw", fallback: "Debswana — the De Beers/government 50/50 joint venture founded in 1969 — controls Botswana's diamond mines, which generate roughly 80% of the country's exports.",
      whyFallback: "A single bilateral arrangement with one foreign corporation underwrites the national budget. \"Resource-rich African success story\" describes a country whose prosperity depends on the goodwill of a London-based cartel." },
    { id: "bw_t3", isTruth: true , country: "bw", fallback: "The government forcibly evicted San (Bushmen) communities from the Central Kalahari Game Reserve in 1997, 2002, and 2005 — including sealing the only borehole to deprive them of water.",
      whyFallback: "Survival International litigated; Botswana's High Court ruled the eviction unconstitutional in 2006. The government simply made return conditional on permits. Diamond concessions inside the reserve followed the eviction — officially unrelated." },
    { id: "bw_t4", isTruth: true , country: "bw", fallback: "Former president Ian Khama — son of founding president Seretse Khama — fled Botswana to South Africa in 2021 to escape corruption charges filed by his own former party.",
      whyFallback: "Charged in absentia by the DPP under successor Mokgweetsi Masisi. Three years of exile. The Khama–Masisi split (2019) turned the BDP into a vehicle for prosecuting its own former leader — proving the institutions worked, or that the faction in power had simply changed." },
    { id: "bw_t5", isTruth: true , country: "bw", fallback: "The National Petroleum Fund scandal saw hundreds of millions of pula allegedly diverted through DPP director Tymon Katlholo's office and into politically connected hands — including ties to South African businesswoman Bridgette Motsepe-Radebe.",
      whyFallback: "The P92 million Lewanika Ramatsha case is one strand. Cross-border money flows, presidential-family connections, prosecutorial paralysis. The fund was meant to subsidize fuel; it subsidized something else." },
    { id: "bw_t6", isTruth: true , country: "bw", fallback: "During COVID-19 Botswana used emergency powers to detain critics and restrict movement under public-health framing — including detentions targeting Khama-aligned figures during \"Operation Tholo\".",
      whyFallback: "State-of-emergency declarations extended beyond medical necessity. The intelligence service (DISS) was repeatedly accused of political deployment against the Khama faction. \"Stable democracy\" and \"emergency surveillance state\" can be the same country in the same year." },
    { id: "bw_t7", isTruth: true , country: "bw", fallback: "Botswana has one of the world's highest HIV/AIDS prevalence rates — and access to government treatment was historically conditioned on citizenship, leaving non-citizen residents to die for lack of documentation.",
      whyFallback: "Constitutional litigation forced partial reform. The framing as a public-health triumph rests on the citizens counted; the non-citizens excluded from the program are a separate ledger that rarely appears in the IMF charts." },
    { id: "bw_t8", isTruth: true , country: "bw", fallback: "State-owned enterprises like Lobatse Clay Works were repeatedly recapitalized and looted across decades before being quietly written off — a pattern repeated across multiple BDP-era parastatals.",
      whyFallback: "Auditor-General reports flagged mismanagement annually; political will to prosecute arrived only after the 2024 election. The \"clean Botswana\" reputation was built on what was not investigated, not on what was not happening." },
    { id: "bw_f1", isTruth: false, country: "bw", fallback: "Botswana is Africa's uncontested model of stable, corruption-free democracy.",
      whyFallback: "Transparency International rankings are high relative to the region — but the metric measures perception of corruption, not its absence. 58 years of one-party rule, forced indigenous evictions, intelligence-service political deployment, and parastatal looting are the parts of the story the brochure leaves out." },
    { id: "bw_f2", isTruth: false, country: "bw", fallback: "Diamond wealth was managed for the benefit of all Batswana.",
      whyFallback: "Per-capita growth statistics are real; the distribution beneath them is not flat. Gini coefficient places Botswana among the world's most unequal countries. The diamonds funded a state; the state funded a class." },
    { id: "bw_f3", isTruth: false, country: "bw", fallback: "The relationship with De Beers is a partnership of equals.",
      whyFallback: "50/50 on paper. De Beers sets the cutting, sorting, marketing, and global price discipline; Botswana provides the geology. Renegotiations in 2011 and 2023 were framed as wins; the underlying dependency on a single foreign buyer remains the architecture." },
    { id: "bw_f4", isTruth: false, country: "bw", fallback: "The San (Bushmen) live in protected ancestral lands by their own choice.",
      whyFallback: "The Central Kalahari evictions happened in three waves. Water access was used as leverage. The reserve where they had lived for tens of thousands of years became a place they could enter only with government permits — a permission slip for their own home." },
    { id: "bw_f5", isTruth: false, country: "bw", fallback: "The Khama family's long influence reflects ordinary democratic continuity.",
      whyFallback: "Founding president Seretse Khama (1966–80). His son Ian Khama president (2008–18). The intervening presidents — Masire, Mogae — were BDP loyalists in the same dispensation. \"Democratic continuity\" and \"family-led party state\" describe the same arrangement from different angles." },
    { id: "bw_f6", isTruth: false, country: "bw", fallback: "The 2024 election proved Botswana's democracy was working correctly all along.",
      whyFallback: "58 years of one-party rule ending peacefully is genuinely rare in the region — and worth noting. It is also the first real alternation, not the hundredth. The institutions held this once; whether they hold under a UDC government facing the same temptations is the unanswered question, not the answered one." },
    { id: "bw_f7", isTruth: false, country: "bw", fallback: "Botswana's intelligence service exists to protect citizens from external threats.",
      whyFallback: "The Directorate of Intelligence and Security Services (DISS) was repeatedly accused — by opposition figures, journalists, and eventually members of its own former ruling party — of surveillance, harassment, and detention targeting domestic political rivals. The Khama–Masisi split made the targeting visible in both directions." },

    // ============== Belize — 8T + 7F ==============
    { id: "bz_t1", isTruth: true , country: "bz", fallback: "Lord Michael Ashcroft — a British Conservative peer — built a fortune of roughly $1.6 billion largely out of Belize, owning the dominant telecom (BTL), bank, media outlets, and political access for decades.",
      whyFallback: "A House of Lords seat in London, a commercial empire in Belmopan. Ashcroft denied UK domicile for tax purposes for years while sitting in the British legislature. Belize was the operating base; Westminster was the title." },
    { id: "bz_t2", isTruth: true , country: "bz", fallback: "The 2009 nationalization of Belize Telemedia (BTL) by the Dean Barrow government triggered a decade of London arbitration battles and compensation disputes running well over $100 million.",
      whyFallback: "Privy Council rulings, CCJ rulings, repeated re-nationalizations. The British colonial-era court chain (Privy Council in London) still adjudicated who owned Belize's phone lines forty years after independence." },
    { id: "bz_t3", isTruth: true , country: "bz", fallback: "John Saldivar — a senior UDP minister and party leader candidate — was named in 2020 US federal court filings as a recipient of payments from American fraudster \"Lev Dexter\" Bart Hester in the Crown Caribbean ranch scheme.",
      whyFallback: "Court documents in Mississippi described cash deliveries, photographs, and a ranch deal that didn't exist. Saldivar denied wrongdoing; the party stood him down from leadership; no Belizean prosecution followed." },
    { id: "bz_t4", isTruth: true , country: "bz", fallback: "Guatemala formally claimed all or most of Belizean territory until 1991 and still maintains a partial claim — Guatemalan school maps showed Belize as a Guatemalan province for generations.",
      whyFallback: "The 1859 Anglo-Guatemalan Treaty dispute, the 1991 partial recognition, the 2018 referendum sending the claim to the ICJ at The Hague. A border that the neighbour spent 150 years saying didn't exist." },
    { id: "bz_t5", isTruth: true , country: "bz", fallback: "Belize has functioned for decades as a transit corridor for cocaine moving from South America to Mexico and the United States, with periodic seizures of multi-ton loads from clandestine airstrips.",
      whyFallback: "DEA reporting, US State Department INCSR annual designations, repeated discoveries of jungle airstrips in Orange Walk and Toledo. A country of 400,000 people on the busiest narcotics highway in the hemisphere." },
    { id: "bz_t6", isTruth: true , country: "bz", fallback: "The Belize Supreme Court ruled in 2007 and 2010 that the Maya communities of Toledo District held customary land rights the government was bound to respect — rulings the government then spent years failing to implement.",
      whyFallback: "Cal v. Attorney General (2007), Maya Leaders Alliance v. Belize (2010), CCJ affirmation 2015. The judgments were clear; the demarcation, consultation, and protection on the ground arrived in fragments, when it arrived." },
    { id: "bz_t7", isTruth: true , country: "bz", fallback: "Belize's \"economic citizenship\" and offshore registry programs have repeatedly issued passports and shell-company papers to figures later named in international fraud, sanctions, and money-laundering cases.",
      whyFallback: "Mossack Fonseca, Panama Papers, Pandora Papers, Mosquito Cay-type shell addresses. The volume of Belizean IBCs (International Business Companies) historically outran the country's actual population many times over." },
    { id: "bz_t8", isTruth: true , country: "bz", fallback: "The Mennonite agricultural communities — concentrated in Spanish Lookout, Blue Creek, and Shipyard — operate under negotiated exemptions covering military service, certain taxes, and education, and produce a disproportionate share of the country's food.",
      whyFallback: "Agreements dating to 1958. Roughly 3-4% of the population producing a substantial share of dairy, poultry, grain, and construction output. A parallel economy by treaty, not by accident." },
    { id: "bz_f1", isTruth: false, country: "bz", fallback: "Belize's independence in 1981 ended foreign control over the country's economy.",
      whyFallback: "Independence transferred the flag; the commanding heights — telecom, banking, media, sugar exports, citrus — continued to be held by a small number of foreign and dual-national magnates. Ashcroft's empire is the textbook case, not the only one." },
    { id: "bz_f2", isTruth: false, country: "bz", fallback: "The PUP and UDP represent fundamentally different visions for Belize.",
      whyFallback: "Both parties accepted the offshore-finance model, both negotiated with the same magnates, both ran governments where BTL, Belize Bank, and the sugar industry kept the same beneficiaries. The colours alternate; the structure persists." },
    { id: "bz_f3", isTruth: false, country: "bz", fallback: "Belize is too small to matter on the international stage.",
      whyFallback: "A country with 400,000 people hosts a globally significant offshore registry, a Guatemalan border claim at the ICJ, and a Caribbean cocaine corridor. \"Too small to matter\" is the cover story; the leverage points are precisely why it's used." },
    { id: "bz_f4", isTruth: false, country: "bz", fallback: "Maya land rights in Belize were settled by the 2015 CCJ ruling.",
      whyFallback: "The ruling was binding. The implementation — demarcation, free prior and informed consent, halting unauthorized logging and oil concessions on Maya land — has been partial at best, with the communities returning to court repeatedly to enforce what was already decided." },
    { id: "bz_f5", isTruth: false, country: "bz", fallback: "Belize's offshore sector is just normal financial services for international clients.",
      whyFallback: "Every major leak — Panama, Paradise, Pandora — surfaced Belizean entities used to hold assets for sanctioned figures, politically exposed persons, and tax-evaded fortunes. \"Normal financial services\" is the brochure; the leaks are the audit." },
    { id: "bz_f6", isTruth: false, country: "bz", fallback: "Being the only English-speaking country in Central America gives Belize special advantages.",
      whyFallback: "It gives Belize special exposure — to British and American financial systems, to Caribbean banking pressure, to US drug policy, to UK political donors with operations in Belmopan. The language tie is also a transmission belt for influence the country can't push back on." },
    { id: "bz_f7", isTruth: false, country: "bz", fallback: "Belize's parliamentary system insulates it from the influence of a single wealthy individual.",
      whyFallback: "One man — Ashcroft — has been the documented backdrop of telecom policy, bank policy, libel-suit pressure on local media, and political-party financing across both PUP and UDP governments. The Westminster model didn't dilute the concentration; it formalized it." },

    // ============== Central African Republic — 8T + 7F ==============
    { id: "cf_t1", isTruth: true , country: "cf", fallback: "Russian Wagner Group mercenaries have operated openly in the Central African Republic since 2018 — as presidential bodyguards, trainers, and concession-holders over gold and diamonds.",
      whyFallback: "Front companies Lobaye Invest, Diamville, Midas Resources trace to Yevgeny Prigozhin. UN panels, The Sentry, and CAR's own mining ministry documented the structure. After Prigozhin's 2023 death, the operation was rebranded \"Africa Corps\" — same officers, same concessions." },
    { id: "cf_t2", isTruth: true , country: "cf", fallback: "Three Russian journalists — Orkhan Dzhemal, Alexander Rastorguev, and Kirill Radchenko — were murdered in CAR in July 2018 while investigating Wagner's operations there.",
      whyFallback: "Ambushed near Sibut. The official \"random robbery\" line collapsed when investigators showed coordinated tracking. Russian and CAR authorities closed the case without identifying suspects; independent investigators (Dossier Center) named local handlers tied to Wagner's security perimeter." },
    { id: "cf_t3", isTruth: true , country: "cf", fallback: "Jean-Bédel Bokassa crowned himself \"Emperor\" in 1977 in a ceremony costing roughly $20 million — about a quarter of the country's annual budget — while citizens starved.",
      whyFallback: "Diamond-encrusted throne, Napoleon-styled coronation, French champagne flown in. France bankrolled the spectacle, then overthrew Bokassa in 1979 (Operation Barracuda) after schoolchildren were massacred for protesting compulsory uniforms sold by his family." },
    { id: "cf_t4", isTruth: true , country: "cf", fallback: "President Faustin-Archange Touadéra pivoted from France to Russia after 2018, granting Wagner mining concessions, security contracts, and the country's highest civilian honors.",
      whyFallback: "Touadéra in office since 2016. French troops (Operation Sangaris, then Barkhane support) withdrew in 2022 after his government accused Paris of backing rebels. Russian flags now fly at rallies; a statue commemorating Russian \"instructors\" was erected in Bangui." },
    { id: "cf_t5", isTruth: true , country: "cf", fallback: "The 2013 Séléka coup — when Michel Djotodia's mostly-Muslim rebel coalition overthrew François Bozizé — triggered Anti-balaka Christian militia reprisals that killed thousands and displaced roughly a quarter of the population.",
      whyFallback: "UN and HRW documented intercommunal violence on the scale of ethnic cleansing in 2013–14. Mosques and churches both targeted depending on the village. The country has not had a single year of full territorial control by its government since." },
    { id: "cf_t6", isTruth: true , country: "cf", fallback: "Former president François Bozizé — overthrown in 2013 — has been the subject of UN sanctions and an Interpol notice for crimes against humanity committed during his 2003–2013 rule.",
      whyFallback: "Sanctioned by the UN Security Council in 2014. Accused of backing the Anti-balaka militias from exile. Returned to CAR in 2019, ran for president in 2020 (barred), then allegedly orchestrated the CPC rebel coalition's march on Bangui." },
    { id: "cf_t7", isTruth: true , country: "cf", fallback: "CAR's diamond and gold wealth is smuggled out through Cameroon, Chad, and Sudan in volumes the state never taxes — while Bangui residents have intermittent electricity and most roads outside the capital are dirt.",
      whyFallback: "The Kimberley Process suspended CAR diamonds in 2013, then partially reinstated them — smuggling routes adapted faster than certification. Wagner-linked operators ship via Khartoum and Port Sudan; profits route through Dubai and St. Petersburg, not Bangui." },
    { id: "cf_t8", isTruth: true , country: "cf", fallback: "The Special Criminal Court — a hybrid CAR–UN tribunal established in 2015 to prosecute war crimes since 2003 — has handed down only a handful of convictions while most warlords remain free or in government.",
      whyFallback: "Operational since 2018, the SCC suffers chronic underfunding and witness-intimidation. The ICC opened a parallel investigation in 2014. Two CAR situations are before the ICC; impunity for the politically connected remains the working norm." },
    { id: "cf_f1", isTruth: false, country: "cf", fallback: "Russian \"instructors\" in CAR are there to train the national army at the government's invitation.",
      whyFallback: "The contracts cover army training on paper. In practice the same personnel run gold and diamond concessions (Lobaye Invest, Midas Resources), guard the president personally, and conduct combat operations against rebels. \"Instructor\" is a category written to fit the visa." },
    { id: "cf_f2", isTruth: false, country: "cf", fallback: "France left CAR in 2022 because its mission was complete.",
      whyFallback: "France withdrew after Touadéra's government openly accused Paris of supporting rebels and pivoted to Moscow. Operation Sangaris (2013–16) and the follow-on advisory presence ended in mutual hostility, not mission success. The vacuum was already filled before Paris packed up." },
    { id: "cf_f3", isTruth: false, country: "cf", fallback: "Bokassa was an aberration — a single mad emperor, unrelated to how CAR has been governed since.",
      whyFallback: "Bokassa was installed by a coup, propped up by France, and overthrown by France when he became inconvenient. The pattern — external sponsor, capital-only authority, mineral extraction routed offshore — outlived him. The hat changed; the equation did not." },
    { id: "cf_f4", isTruth: false, country: "cf", fallback: "MINUSCA, the UN peacekeeping mission, has stabilized the country since 2014.",
      whyFallback: "More than a decade in, armed groups still control most of the territory. MINUSCA has faced repeated allegations of sexual abuse by its own personnel — investigated, partially confirmed, rarely prosecuted. \"Stabilized\" describes Bangui's airport, not the country." },
    { id: "cf_f5", isTruth: false, country: "cf", fallback: "CAR's mineral wealth funds its development.",
      whyFallback: "Diamonds, gold, uranium, and timber leave the country through informal networks and foreign-held concessions. CAR ranks near the bottom of every human development index. The resources are real; the beneficiaries are elsewhere." },
    { id: "cf_f6", isTruth: false, country: "cf", fallback: "The 2020 and 2023 elections under Touadéra reflected a genuine democratic mandate.",
      whyFallback: "2020: Bozizé barred from running, two-thirds of the country under armed-group control on voting day, turnout figures contested. 2023 constitutional referendum removed the two-term limit. The mechanics of an election happened; the conditions for one did not." },
    { id: "cf_f7", isTruth: false, country: "cf", fallback: "The international community's interest in CAR is humanitarian.",
      whyFallback: "France's interest was uranium and francophone alignment. Russia's is gold, diamonds, and a foothold on the African continent. China's is timber and infrastructure-for-resources deals. The humanitarian envelope is real; it is not what brought any of them through the door." },

    // ============== Republic of the Congo — 8T + 7F ==============
    { id: "cg_t1", isTruth: true , country: "cg", fallback: "Denis Sassou Nguesso has ruled the Republic of the Congo for roughly 40 of the last 45 years — first from 1979 to 1992, then from 1997 to the present.",
      whyFallback: "Lost power in the 1992 multi-party elections to Pascal Lissouba; took it back by force in 1997 with his Cobra militia. The interruption was the anomaly; the rule is the constant." },
    { id: "cg_t2", isTruth: true , country: "cg", fallback: "The 1997 civil war — in which Sassou's Cobra militia overthrew elected president Pascal Lissouba — killed an estimated 10,000 people and was backed by French oil interests via Elf-Aquitaine.",
      whyFallback: "Lissouba had tried to renegotiate oil contracts away from Elf. Sassou returned with Angolan troops and French acquiescence. The election that brought Lissouba in was the last one Congo-Brazzaville won fairly." },
    { id: "cg_t3", isTruth: true , country: "cg", fallback: "A 2015 constitutional referendum abolished presidential term limits and age limits — clearing the path for Sassou's third (and fourth) terms.",
      whyFallback: "The previous constitution capped presidents at two terms and 70 years of age. Both inconvenient. Both removed in a single referendum the opposition boycotted. Sassou was reelected in 2016 and again in 2021 with an official 88%." },
    { id: "cg_t4", isTruth: true , country: "cg", fallback: "The Elf-Aquitaine scandal of the 1990s exposed systematic bribery of African leaders, including the Sassou regime, by France's state oil company.",
      whyFallback: "Loïk Le Floch-Prigent, Alfred Sirven, and others convicted in French courts. Elf functioned as a parallel French foreign ministry in Francafrique. The Congo file was one of many; the pattern was the architecture." },
    { id: "cg_t5", isTruth: true , country: "cg", fallback: "French courts have repeatedly investigated the Sassou family's \"biens mal acquis\" — Paris properties, luxury cars, and assets allegedly purchased with stolen Congolese state money.",
      whyFallback: "The biens mal acquis (\"ill-gotten gains\") cases run for over a decade against the Sassou, Bongo (Gabon), and Obiang (Equatorial Guinea) families. Transparency International is the named plaintiff. Convictions trickle in; assets rarely return." },
    { id: "cg_t6", isTruth: true , country: "cg", fallback: "Société Nationale des Pétroles du Congo (SNPC) — the state oil company — has been repeatedly flagged by the IMF and watchdogs for opacity, with oil revenues disappearing between Pointe-Noire wellheads and the national budget.",
      whyFallback: "Swiss traders Vitol, Trafigura, and Glencore handled much of the export flow. IMF debt restructurings in 2019-2023 were explicitly conditioned on SNPC transparency. The condition keeps being set; the transparency keeps not arriving." },
    { id: "cg_t7", isTruth: true , country: "cg", fallback: "Denis-Christel Sassou Nguesso — the president's son, nicknamed \"Kiki\" — has been positioned through ministerial posts and SNPC roles as the heir apparent.",
      whyFallback: "Former SNPC director, current minister, named in leaked offshore documents for property holdings far exceeding any official salary. The dynastic transfer is being staged in plain sight — same playbook as Gabon's Bongo succession, which the region just watched collapse." },
    { id: "cg_t8", isTruth: true , country: "cg", fallback: "The Congo-Ocean railway, built under French colonial rule between 1921 and 1934, killed an estimated 17,000+ African forced laborers — a death toll France has barely acknowledged.",
      whyFallback: "Brazzaville to Pointe-Noire, 511 kilometers, through swamp and forest. Conscripted labor, disease, beatings. André Gide documented it in 1927 (Voyage au Congo) and was largely ignored. The railway still runs; the memorial does not exist." },
    { id: "cg_f1", isTruth: false, country: "cg", fallback: "The Republic of the Congo is a stable multi-party democracy.",
      whyFallback: "One man has been president for roughly 40 of the last 45 years. The single multi-party interlude (1992-1997) ended in a civil war that restored him. The constitution was rewritten to remove the limits that would have stopped him." },
    { id: "cg_f2", isTruth: false, country: "cg", fallback: "Congolese oil wealth funds Congolese development.",
      whyFallback: "Congo-Brazzaville is one of sub-Saharan Africa's larger oil producers per capita. Pointe-Noire's slums and Brazzaville's potholes are the visible answer. The grandeur of presidential statues and the Paris property portfolios are the other answer." },
    { id: "cg_f3", isTruth: false, country: "cg", fallback: "France's relationship with Brazzaville is a partnership between equals.",
      whyFallback: "Francafrique is the term the French themselves use. Elf-Aquitaine bribery, military backing of the 1997 coup outcome, CFA franc monetary control, ongoing biens mal acquis cases. The partnership has a senior partner." },
    { id: "cg_f4", isTruth: false, country: "cg", fallback: "Chinese loans to Congo are simple commercial transactions.",
      whyFallback: "Roughly $3 billion in debt to China by 2020, largely collateralized against future oil deliveries. IMF restructuring efforts stalled for years because the Chinese terms were opaque. \"Resource-backed lending\" is the polite phrase for mortgaging the wells." },
    { id: "cg_f5", isTruth: false, country: "cg", fallback: "The 2021 presidential election (88% for Sassou) reflected genuine popular endorsement.",
      whyFallback: "Main opposition candidate Guy-Brice Parfait Kolélas died of COVID-19 the day after voting, having reportedly been denied medical evacuation. Internet was cut on election day. International observation was minimal. 88% is not a number democracies produce." },
    { id: "cg_f6", isTruth: false, country: "cg", fallback: "Ethnic balance in government reflects fair representation across Congolese regions.",
      whyFallback: "Key security, oil, and finance posts cluster heavily around the president's Mbochi community from the north (Cuvette region). Lari, Kongo, and southern communities have been systematically under-represented since 1997. \"Balance\" is a word used about the framing, not the spreadsheet." },
    { id: "cg_f7", isTruth: false, country: "cg", fallback: "IMF debt restructurings have forced real transparency on Congolese oil revenues.",
      whyFallback: "Multiple programs since 2019, each conditional on SNPC disclosure, each followed by a quiet relaxation when disclosure didn't arrive. The conditionality is real on paper. The enforcement is the part that keeps not happening." },

    // ============== Ivory Coast — 8T + 7F ==============
    { id: "ci_t1", isTruth: true , country: "ci", fallback: "Félix Houphouët-Boigny ruled Côte d'Ivoire for 33 years (1960–1993) as the sole legal party's sole legal candidate — styled \"Father of the Nation\", buried as a demigod.",
      whyFallback: "PDCI as the only permitted party until 1990. Opposition criminalized, exiled, or absorbed. France's preferred African strongman of the Cold War — the entire \"Françafrique\" model was tested and refined in Abidjan first." },
    { id: "ci_t2", isTruth: true , country: "ci", fallback: "Houphouët-Boigny built the Basilica of Our Lady of Peace in Yamoussoukro — the largest church in the world by area — at a cost of roughly $300 million, while the country slid into debt and poverty.",
      whyFallback: "Consecrated 1990. Modeled on St. Peter's in Rome, slightly taller. Marble shipped from Italy, stained glass from France. Built in his home village. The Vatican accepted the gift on condition a hospital be built alongside — the hospital arrived two decades later, half-finished." },
    { id: "ci_t3", isTruth: true , country: "ci", fallback: "Henri Konan Bédié, who succeeded Houphouët-Boigny in 1993, promoted the doctrine of \"Ivoirité\" — a citizenship test designed to disqualify Alassane Ouattara from running against him.",
      whyFallback: "Ouattara's father's birthplace (Burkina Faso vs. Côte d'Ivoire) became the legal hinge. \"Ivoirité\" hardened ethnic lines between the Muslim/north and Christian/south, planting the seeds of the 2002 civil war. The concept was a political tool that became an identity." },
    { id: "ci_t4", isTruth: true , country: "ci", fallback: "The 2010–11 post-election crisis killed roughly 3,000 people after Laurent Gbagbo refused to accept Ouattara's certified win — and ended with French Licorne forces and UN helicopters bombing Gbagbo's residence to remove him.",
      whyFallback: "Gbagbo's Constitutional Council overturned the election commission's result; the international community recognized Ouattara. Four months of urban combat in Abidjan followed. April 2011: French Tigre helicopters struck the presidential bunker; Gbagbo was extracted and flown to The Hague." },
    { id: "ci_t5", isTruth: true , country: "ci", fallback: "Laurent Gbagbo spent eight years at the ICC on charges of crimes against humanity, was acquitted in 2019, and returned to Côte d'Ivoire — where Ouattara pardoned his domestic convictions and restored his pension.",
      whyFallback: "ICC's first head-of-state trial — prosecution case ruled insufficient at half-time. Charles Blé Goudé acquitted alongside him. Simone Gbagbo (his wife) tried domestically, sentenced, then amnestied. The justice the war produced was reabsorbed by the politics that followed." },
    { id: "ci_t6", isTruth: true , country: "ci", fallback: "Côte d'Ivoire produces around 40% of the world's cocoa — and Ivorian farmers earn an estimated 6% of the final retail value of a chocolate bar.",
      whyFallback: "Pricing set on the London and New York futures markets, not the farm gate. Nestlé, Mars, Hershey, Mondelez, Cargill, Barry Callebaut — six buyers shape the floor. ICI and Fairtrade audits document the gap; the gap persists." },
    { id: "ci_t7", isTruth: true , country: "ci", fallback: "A 2021 US Supreme Court case (Nestlé USA v. Doe) saw former child slaves on Ivorian cocoa farms sue Nestlé and Cargill — and lose, on the technicality that the abuse happened on foreign soil.",
      whyFallback: "Six Malian plaintiffs trafficked as children to Côte d'Ivoire. The court did not deny the trafficking — it ruled the Alien Tort Statute didn't reach overseas corporate conduct. The chocolate companies' own audits acknowledge child labor across roughly 1.5 million farms in Côte d'Ivoire and Ghana." },
    { id: "ci_t8", isTruth: true , country: "ci", fallback: "Alassane Ouattara ran for a third term in 2020 — after his designated successor Amadou Gon Coulibaly died of a heart attack — arguing that a 2016 constitutional rewrite reset his term count to zero.",
      whyFallback: "Two-term limit on paper; the new constitution reset the counter, in the president's reading. Boycott by the main opposition. Roughly 85 deaths in pre- and post-election clashes. He won a third term with 94% in a contest most of the opposition refused to enter. Then ran again in 2025." },
    { id: "ci_f1", isTruth: false, country: "ci", fallback: "Côte d'Ivoire is West Africa's economic miracle and a model of stability.",
      whyFallback: "The \"Ivorian miracle\" framing was a Cold War French export. Two coups (1999, 2002), a decade-long civil war, ~3,000 dead in a 2010–11 election dispute, a 2002–2007 country split in half, and serial third-term constitutional rewrites. GDP grows; the model is harder to find." },
    { id: "ci_f2", isTruth: false, country: "ci", fallback: "France's military intervention in 2011 was a neutral UN-sanctioned operation to enforce the election result.",
      whyFallback: "Operation Licorne had been in country since 2002 — the Élysée chose when it became combat. French helicopters destroyed Gbagbo's defense before UN forces moved in. Sarkozy phoned Ouattara directly. \"Neutral\" describes the resolution's text, not the cockpit." },
    { id: "ci_f3", isTruth: false, country: "ci", fallback: "The cocoa industry has cleaned up child labor since the 2001 Harkin-Engel Protocol.",
      whyFallback: "Harkin-Engel pledged to eliminate the worst forms of child labor by 2005. The deadline was pushed to 2008, then 2010, then 2020 — each time quietly. NORC University of Chicago's 2020 study found roughly 1.56 million children in hazardous cocoa labor across Côte d'Ivoire and Ghana, up from prior surveys." },
    { id: "ci_f4", isTruth: false, country: "ci", fallback: "The CFA franc gives former French colonies monetary stability.",
      whyFallback: "Pegged to the euro, with reserves historically held at the French Treasury. Côte d'Ivoire (the WAEMU anchor) is the largest member economy. The 2019 Eco rebrand was announced; the structure (peg, French guarantee) survived under a new name. Stability of price; capture of sovereignty." },
    { id: "ci_f5", isTruth: false, country: "ci", fallback: "Houphouët-Boigny's long rule was a benign one-party consensus chosen by the people.",
      whyFallback: "33 years, one legal party, no contested presidential election until 1990 (and that one disputed). Opposition organizers — Laurent Gbagbo among them — were arrested or exiled. The consensus was manufactured by criminalizing its absence. The cocoa price did the rest." },
    { id: "ci_f6", isTruth: false, country: "ci", fallback: "Côte d'Ivoire's cocoa wealth funds Ivorian development.",
      whyFallback: "Most processing — grinding, refining, branding — happens in Europe and North America. Côte d'Ivoire ships beans; others ship chocolate. Successive governments have pledged to push local processing past 30%; the figure stalls around half that. The value chain bends north." },
    { id: "ci_f7", isTruth: false, country: "ci", fallback: "The reconciliation after the 2010–11 war was even-handed across factions.",
      whyFallback: "Gbagbo's camp prosecuted at the ICC and domestically; Forces Nouvelles commanders who fought for Ouattara — Guillaume Soro, Ibrahim \"IB\" Coulibaly, Wattao — were promoted, integrated into the army, or quietly amnestied. Soro later fell out, was sentenced in absentia, exiled. Justice tracked the politics, not the conduct." },

    // ============== Cameroon — 8T + 7F ==============
    { id: "cm_t1", isTruth: true , country: "cm", fallback: "Paul Biya has ruled Cameroon since 1982 — over four decades, making him one of the world's longest-serving non-royal heads of state.",
      whyFallback: "Took over from Ahmadou Ahidjo (1960–82) in a managed succession. Constitutional term limits removed in 2008 to keep the runway open. Re-elected at every cycle by margins that no functioning opposition would produce." },
    { id: "cm_t2", isTruth: true , country: "cm", fallback: "Biya spends large stretches of each year at the Intercontinental Geneva in Switzerland — Cameroon governed by remote control from a hotel suite.",
      whyFallback: "OCCRP and Swiss press have tracked the visits for years. Entourage costs run into millions per trip. The country's day-to-day administration runs through a small palace circle while the president is abroad." },
    { id: "cm_t3", isTruth: true , country: "cm", fallback: "The Anglophone Crisis in the Northwest and Southwest regions has killed over 6,000 people and displaced more than 765,000 since 2017.",
      whyFallback: "English-speaking minority (roughly 20% of the country) protested marginalisation of common-law courts and schools; the response was a military crackdown that birthed Ambazonian separatism. Schools burned by both sides. Reporting suppressed inside Cameroon." },
    { id: "cm_t4", isTruth: true , country: "cm", fallback: "Operation Épervier — Cameroon's official anti-corruption campaign — has primarily jailed Biya's potential rivals, not the loyalists doing the looting.",
      whyFallback: "Marafa Hamidou Yaya (former interior minister, seen as a presidential contender) jailed 2012. Ephraim Inoni (former PM) convicted. Senior CPDM figures untouched. Selective prosecution as succession management." },
    { id: "cm_t5", isTruth: true , country: "cm", fallback: "After the 2018 election, opposition leader Maurice Kamto was detained for nine months for contesting the result.",
      whyFallback: "CRM (Cameroon Renaissance Movement) supporters arrested en masse. Military tribunal charged civilians with insurrection. International pressure secured release in October 2019; the structural message — challenge the count and you lose your liberty — stood." },
    { id: "cm_t6", isTruth: true , country: "cm", fallback: "The 2022 Africa Cup of Nations opener at Olembé Stadium ended with a stampede that killed eight spectators — the safety failures were political, not accidental.",
      whyFallback: "Stadium opened incomplete under presidential pressure to host. Gate management collapsed. Inquiry produced soft conclusions; the contractors and ministers responsible faced no meaningful consequences. The Indomitable Lions kept playing." },
    { id: "cm_t7", isTruth: true , country: "cm", fallback: "SNH (Société Nationale des Hydrocarbures), Cameroon's state oil company, operates with revenue flows that are not fully reported to parliament or the public.",
      whyFallback: "EITI repeatedly flagged opacity in oil receipts. Funds routed through accounts under direct presidential control. The classic resource-curse architecture: extraction visible, distribution invisible." },
    { id: "cm_t8", isTruth: true , country: "cm", fallback: "The 2019 SONARA refinery fire in Limbé destroyed the country's only oil refinery — Cameroon has imported refined fuel ever since while the rebuild stalls.",
      whyFallback: "State-owned refinery, insurance disputes, contested rebuild contracts. Fuel imports became a permanent line item. The fire was the event; the failure to rebuild in six years is the governance story." },
    { id: "cm_f1", isTruth: false, country: "cm", fallback: "Cameroon is a functioning multi-party democracy.",
      whyFallback: "On paper since 1990. In practice, the CPDM controls the electoral commission (ELECAM), the constitutional council, the state media (CRTV), and the security services. \"Multi-party\" describes the ballot, not the outcome." },
    { id: "cm_f2", isTruth: false, country: "cm", fallback: "The Anglophone Crisis is a security problem the government is solving.",
      whyFallback: "Eight years in, hundreds of villages burned, hundreds of thousands displaced, schools still empty across two regions. The Major National Dialogue (2019) excluded the leaders who could end it. The crisis is being managed, not resolved." },
    { id: "cm_f3", isTruth: false, country: "cm", fallback: "CRTV provides balanced national broadcasting.",
      whyFallback: "State monopoly in practice. Coverage of opposition rallies suppressed, Biya's foreign trips narrated as statesmanship, Anglophone regions framed exclusively through the security lens. Private outlets that push too hard get licences pulled or journalists arrested." },
    { id: "cm_f4", isTruth: false, country: "cm", fallback: "The fight against Boko Haram in the Far North shows the army at its best.",
      whyFallback: "MNJTF contributions are real; so are documented extrajudicial killings by elite units like the BIR. Amnesty International and an Al Jazeera investigation produced video evidence of executions. \"Counter-terror\" became the cover for impunity in Lake Chad basin operations." },
    { id: "cm_f5", isTruth: false, country: "cm", fallback: "Cameroon's oil wealth has been invested for the next generation.",
      whyFallback: "Decades of pumping, no sovereign wealth fund anyone can audit, infrastructure that decays faster than it's built. SNH revenues feed a presidential discretionary system, not a national one. \"Generation Biya\" is the elite name; the actual generation got the bill." },
    { id: "cm_f6", isTruth: false, country: "cm", fallback: "Chinese hydro and infrastructure projects are gifts to Cameroon's development.",
      whyFallback: "Memve'ele dam, Kribi deep-sea port, Yaoundé–Douala highway — all financed by Chinese loans against future resource revenues. Cost overruns absorbed by the Cameroonian state; contracts awarded without competitive tender; debt servicing now a structural budget line." },
    { id: "cm_f7", isTruth: false, country: "cm", fallback: "The Bakassi Peninsula handover to Nigeria in 2008 was a clean diplomatic victory.",
      whyFallback: "ICJ ruled for Cameroon in 2002; the 2008 transfer happened. What followed: displaced populations with unclear citizenship, militant groups in the creeks, oil claims still contested in practice. The map changed; the people on it were not consulted." },

    // ============== Costa Rica — 8T + 7F ==============
    { id: "cr_t1", isTruth: true , country: "cr", fallback: "Former president Rafael Ángel Calderón Fournier was convicted in 2011 for taking kickbacks on a $39.5 million Finnish medical equipment loan to the Caja (CCSS) social security system.",
      whyFallback: "Finlandia case: medical equipment purchased at inflated prices, commissions funneled to Calderón and intermediaries. Sentenced to five years, later reduced. The Caja — the institution Costa Ricans rely on for healthcare — was the victim." },
    { id: "cr_t2", isTruth: true , country: "cr", fallback: "The 2017 \"Cementazo\" scandal implicated supreme court justices, congressmen, and figures inside the Luis Guillermo Solís government in steering public contracts to a single Chinese-cement importer, Juan Carlos Bolaños.",
      whyFallback: "State bank credit, customs treatment, and regulatory cover all aligned around one businessman. A judicial commission and a legislative commission both confirmed institutional capture. Magistrate Celso Gamboa was removed; the broader network largely walked." },
    { id: "cr_t3", isTruth: true , country: "cr", fallback: "President Rodrigo Chaves Robles resigned from a senior World Bank position in 2019 after an internal investigation into sexual-harassment complaints — then ran for and won the Costa Rican presidency in 2022.",
      whyFallback: "World Bank ethics tribunal substantiated misconduct; he was demoted before resigning. The Costa Rican electorate, told the story explicitly during the campaign, elected him anyway. The presidency as a route around prior accountability." },
    { id: "cr_t4", isTruth: true , country: "cr", fallback: "The Crucitas open-pit gold mining concession to Canadian-owned Industrias Infinito was pushed through under presidential decree in 2008 declaring it of \"national interest\" — and later annulled by the courts.",
      whyFallback: "Decree signed by President Óscar Arias. Environmental and legal challenges culminated in a 2010 ruling against the project, upheld in 2013. The site since became a hub for illegal mining the state has not been able to clear." },
    { id: "cr_t5", isTruth: true , country: "cr", fallback: "Nobel Peace Prize laureate Óscar Arias faced multiple sexual-misconduct accusations from 2019 onward — eight women came forward publicly.",
      whyFallback: "Accusations spanned decades and included a physician, an activist, and a former Miss Costa Rica. Cases were eventually shelved on statute-of-limitations or evidentiary grounds. The 1987 Nobel and the later record sit on the same shelf." },
    { id: "cr_t6", isTruth: true , country: "cr", fallback: "Costa Rica switched its diplomatic recognition from Taiwan to the People's Republic of China in 2007 — and several of the public works that followed became corruption cases.",
      whyFallback: "The Route 32 expansion (San José–Limón) financed by Chinese loans ran years over schedule with cost overruns and contractor disputes. The pivot was strategic; the implementation was the usual contracting playbook." },
    { id: "cr_t7", isTruth: true , country: "cr", fallback: "The state telecommunications monopoly ICE was forced open only in 2008 as a condition of CAFTA-DR — and the referendum on CAFTA itself passed by less than 52%.",
      whyFallback: "Decades of ICE monopoly created a political constituency around it. The 2007 referendum, the only one in Costa Rican history on a trade deal, narrowly approved the treaty after heavy government and US-embassy campaigning." },
    { id: "cr_t8", isTruth: true , country: "cr", fallback: "Banco Crédito Agrícola de Cartago — one of the country's state banks — was liquidated in 2017 after years of insolvency, bad loans, and political appointments to its board.",
      whyFallback: "Founded 1918, closed 2017 by SUGEF order. Politically directed lending and a string of fraud cases eroded the capital base. The state absorbed the losses; depositors were paid out under the deposit-guarantee framework." },
    { id: "cr_f1", isTruth: false, country: "cr", fallback: "Costa Rica abolished its army in 1948 because the country had outgrown the need for one.",
      whyFallback: "The abolition followed a civil war. José Figueres Ferrer — who had just won that war by force — disbanded the standing army partly so no future losing faction could use it against him. A principled outcome with a political origin." },
    { id: "cr_f2", isTruth: false, country: "cr", fallback: "Costa Rica's clean, green, eco-tourism image reflects an environmentally clean state.",
      whyFallback: "Among the highest per-capita pesticide use in the world. Pineapple and banana monocultures, agrochemical runoff, and contested mining concessions sit beneath the brand. The brochure and the watershed reports disagree." },
    { id: "cr_f3", isTruth: false, country: "cr", fallback: "Costa Rican democracy is uniquely incorruptible in Latin America.",
      whyFallback: "Three former presidents have been criminally charged for corruption: Calderón Fournier (convicted), Miguel Ángel Rodríguez (Alcatel-ICE kickbacks), José María Figueres (Alcatel consultancy payments). The pattern is not the absence of corruption — it is that prosecutions sometimes proceed." },
    { id: "cr_f4", isTruth: false, country: "cr", fallback: "The CCSS social security system delivers reliable universal healthcare.",
      whyFallback: "Waiting lists for specialist care and surgery routinely stretch into years. The Caja has been hollowed by procurement scandals (Finlandia, Fischel) and chronic underfunding. Universal on paper, queued in practice." },
    { id: "cr_f5", isTruth: false, country: "cr", fallback: "Costa Rica's neutrality keeps it out of regional conflicts.",
      whyFallback: "Hosted Contra logistics on its northern border in the 1980s under tacit US arrangement. The 2010 Isla Calero / Río San Juan dispute with Nicaragua went to the ICJ. Neutrality as a foreign-policy posture, not as an operational reality." },
    { id: "cr_f6", isTruth: false, country: "cr", fallback: "Hosting the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in San José makes Costa Rica a human-rights leader.",
      whyFallback: "Real institutional contribution — and a useful image. Indigenous land restitution under Law 6172 has stalled for over forty years; Bribri and Térraba activists have been killed (Sergio Rojas 2019, Jehry Rivera 2020) with prosecutions inconclusive. The host country is not the model country." },
    { id: "cr_f7", isTruth: false, country: "cr", fallback: "Costa Rica's two-party system was replaced by genuine pluralism with the rise of PAC and PSD.",
      whyFallback: "The PLN/PUSC duopoly broke, but the replacements — PAC under Solís and Alvarado, PSD under Chaves — inherited the same procurement, judicial-appointment, and lobbying networks. New parties, same plumbing." },

    // ============== Cabo Verde — 8T + 7F ==============
    { id: "cv_t1", isTruth: true , country: "cv", fallback: "Cabo Verde sits on the West African cocaine corridor — Latin American product moves through Praia, Sal, and Mindelo ports en route to Europe, with multi-ton seizures recurring since 2015.",
      whyFallback: "UNODC and Europol reports document the archipelago as a transshipment node. Multiple multi-ton cocaine busts at sea and dockside since 2015. The geography — mid-Atlantic, low patrol density, EU-facing — is the asset that traffickers price in." },
    { id: "cv_t2", isTruth: true , country: "cv", fallback: "Alex Saab — Venezuelan financier and Maduro envoy — was arrested on Sal Island in June 2020 during a fuel stop, then extradited to the US in 2021 after a 16-month diplomatic tug-of-war.",
      whyFallback: "Saab was indicted on US money-laundering charges tied to Venezuela's CLAP food program. Caracas claimed diplomatic immunity; Praia held him anyway. The case exposed how a small archipelago becomes the chokepoint for a continental sanctions battle." },
    { id: "cv_t3", isTruth: true , country: "cv", fallback: "TACV — the national airline — was driven into insolvency by political appointments, ghost routes, and unpayable debt before being privatized in stages from 2017.",
      whyFallback: "Decades of patronage hiring, fleet decisions made for political optics, and accumulated losses well past the airline's revenue base. Icelandair stepped in as strategic partner; the carrier was rebranded; the state absorbed the debt the public had already paid for once." },
    { id: "cv_t4", isTruth: true , country: "cv", fallback: "Banking and the cedi-pegged escudo lean heavily on diaspora remittances — roughly 12% of GDP — making the economy structurally dependent on people who left.",
      whyFallback: "More Cabo Verdeans live abroad than on the islands. Remittances from Portugal, the US, France, the Netherlands prop the current account. The peg to the euro (via Portugal's pre-euro escudo) trades monetary sovereignty for credibility — a deliberate exchange." },
    { id: "cv_t5", isTruth: true , country: "cv", fallback: "Power has alternated cleanly between PAICV and MpD since 1991, but both parties draw from the same Praia-Mindelo elite circuit — the rotation is real, the bench is small.",
      whyFallback: "Pedro Pires (PAICV) 2001-2011, Jorge Carlos Fonseca (MpD) 2011-2021, José Maria Neves (PAICV) 2021-. Ulisses Correia e Silva (MpD) PM since 2016. The democratic credentials are genuine; the recruitment pool is one university generation wide." },
    { id: "cv_t6", isTruth: true , country: "cv", fallback: "The 2024 ASA airports concession handed Vinci a 40-year operating contract over Cabo Verde's four international airports — a privatization the public was largely told about, not consulted on.",
      whyFallback: "Vinci Airports (French) took over Sal, Praia, Boa Vista, São Vicente. Justified as infrastructure modernization; structurally a long-tail revenue stream leaving the state's hands. The pattern matches Vinci's Portuguese ANA acquisition — same playbook." },
    { id: "cv_t7", isTruth: true , country: "cv", fallback: "Sotavento and Barlavento — the leeward and windward island groups — have measurably different development levels, with Santiago concentrating power and Brava, Maio, and the smaller islands left behind.",
      whyFallback: "Praia (Santiago) holds government, finance, and roughly a third of the population. Brava, struck by Hurricane Fred in 2015, never received the post-disaster investment promised. Inter-island ferry service is unreliable by design — air travel routes through the capital." },
    { id: "cv_t8", isTruth: true , country: "cv", fallback: "EU fishing agreements let European fleets — primarily Spanish and Portuguese — work Cabo Verdean waters in exchange for modest sectoral payments, while local artisanal fishers compete with industrial vessels they cannot match.",
      whyFallback: "Sustainable Fisheries Partnership Agreement renewed in cycles since 1990. Tuna and small pelagics are the catch. The compensation lands in fisheries-ministry budgets; the depletion lands in coastal villages. EU calls it partnership; the asymmetry is in the boat tonnage." },
    { id: "cv_f1", isTruth: false, country: "cv", fallback: "Cabo Verde is the African democracy success story — clean, stable, free of the corruption that troubles its neighbors.",
      whyFallback: "The image is real and earned in part. The drug-transit role, the Alex Saab episode, the TACV looting, the airports concession, and a tight elite circuit are also real. \"African Switzerland\" is a marketing line, not an audit." },
    { id: "cv_f2", isTruth: false, country: "cv", fallback: "Independence from Portugal in 1975 was a clean break — Cabo Verde simply walked away.",
      whyFallback: "PAIGC won independence as a binational party with Guinea-Bissau; the 1980 coup in Bissau split the project. The Portuguese language, the escudo's anchoring, the diaspora's pull, the EU's outermost-region adjacency — the colonial scaffolding was reshaped, not removed." },
    { id: "cv_f3", isTruth: false, country: "cv", fallback: "The drug-transit problem is an external imposition — traffickers exploit Cabo Verde against its will.",
      whyFallback: "Geography is external; institutional capacity is a choice. Customs, port surveillance, banking due-diligence, and political-financing transparency are all instruments a state controls. Repeated multi-ton seizures imply throughput far larger than what's caught." },
    { id: "cv_f4", isTruth: false, country: "cv", fallback: "Tax incentives under the Cabo Verde Investment Initiative bring jobs and growth that justify the foregone revenue.",
      whyFallback: "The standard offshore-light playbook: holding-company regimes, reduced corporate rates, special economic zones. Jobs created tend to be in tourism construction and security. The tax base shrinks faster than the multiplier grows." },
    { id: "cv_f5", isTruth: false, country: "cv", fallback: "The Macaronesia framing — grouping Cabo Verde with Madeira, the Azores, and the Canaries — is just geography.",
      whyFallback: "It's geography with a budget. EU outermost-region status flows to Madeira, Azores, Canaries; Cabo Verde gets adjacency rhetoric without the structural funds. The framing implies inclusion; the cohesion policy implements exclusion." },
    { id: "cv_f6", isTruth: false, country: "cv", fallback: "Tourism on Sal and Boa Vista develops the islands and lifts local communities.",
      whyFallback: "All-inclusive resorts — primarily UK and continental European operators — repatriate most of the spend. Local employment is concentrated in low-wage service roles. Water and land pressure on small islands is borne by residents, not by package-holiday operators." },
    { id: "cv_f7", isTruth: false, country: "cv", fallback: "The EU mobility partnership opens doors for Cabo Verdean citizens to work and live in Europe.",
      whyFallback: "It mainly opens doors for European border data on Cabo Verdean travelers. Readmission obligations — including for third-country nationals transiting the islands — are the operative clauses. Mobility framing on the public side; migration-control architecture on the legal side." },

    // ============== Djibouti — 8T + 7F ==============
    { id: "dj_t1", isTruth: true , country: "dj", fallback: "Ismaïl Omar Guelleh has ruled Djibouti since 1999 — and he succeeded his own uncle, Hassan Gouled Aptidon, who ruled from independence in 1977. The same clan family has held the presidency for 47+ years.",
      whyFallback: "RPP, rebranded as UMP. Term limits were removed by constitutional amendment in 2010 specifically so Guelleh could run for a third term in 2011 — then a fourth in 2016, a fifth in 2021. \"Republic\" with a hereditary feel." },
    { id: "dj_t2", isTruth: true , country: "dj", fallback: "Djibouti hosts the largest US military base in Africa — Camp Lemonnier — along with French, Japanese, Italian, German, Saudi, and Chinese bases on the same small territory.",
      whyFallback: "Camp Lemonnier: ~4,000 personnel, ~$63 million/year rent, drone strikes into Yemen and Somalia. China's PLA Support Base (2017) sits ~6km away. The country's main export is sovereign real estate at Bab-el-Mandeb." },
    { id: "dj_t3", isTruth: true , country: "dj", fallback: "In 2018 Djibouti seized the Doraleh container terminal from DP World — and ignored the $385 million London arbitration ruling ordering it returned.",
      whyFallback: "LCIA arbitration in 2018 and again in 2019 ruled the expropriation unlawful. Djibouti's response: ignore the awards, transfer the terminal to a state-owned entity. The legal record exists; the enforcement does not." },
    { id: "dj_t4", isTruth: true , country: "dj", fallback: "Djibouti is Ethiopia's only sea access — and roughly 95% of Ethiopian trade passes through Djiboutian ports, giving Guelleh's family a chokehold on a country of 120 million next door.",
      whyFallback: "Eritrea's 1993 independence landlocked Ethiopia. Djibouti became the funnel. Port fees, transit charges, and contracts run through state entities tied to the presidency. A small country with leverage far above its size." },
    { id: "dj_t5", isTruth: true , country: "dj", fallback: "Journalist Mohamed Ibrahim Waiss and others have been detained, beaten, and prosecuted for reporting critically on the Guelleh government.",
      whyFallback: "Reporters Without Borders ranks Djibouti near the bottom of its press-freedom index every year. There is one state broadcaster. Independent outlets operate from exile or do not operate." },
    { id: "dj_t6", isTruth: true , country: "dj", fallback: "France's military presence in Djibouti dates to colonial rule — and the Foreign Legion's historic 13th Demi-Brigade was headquartered there until 2011.",
      whyFallback: "Djibouti was French Somaliland until 1977. France still maintains ~1,500 troops, a defense cooperation treaty, and the strategic posture of a former colonial power that never quite left. The base contracts pay the regime." },
    { id: "dj_t7", isTruth: true , country: "dj", fallback: "Japan's Self-Defense Forces base in Djibouti (opened 2011) was Japan's first overseas military installation since World War II — and it has been quietly expanded since.",
      whyFallback: "Framed as anti-piracy support for EUNAVFOR Atalanta. The base sits beside Camp Lemonnier. The constitutional question Japan avoided at home was answered in Djibouti by lease agreement." },
    { id: "dj_t8", isTruth: true , country: "dj", fallback: "The Doumeira Islands dispute with Eritrea, repeated detention of Eritrean refugees, and reported facilitation of returns to a regime they fled are part of the public Horn-of-Africa record.",
      whyFallback: "2008 border clash with Eritrea over Doumeira. Qatar mediated, withdrew its peacekeepers in 2017. Human Rights Watch has documented Eritrean refugees in Djibouti returned or detained outside refugee-law standards." },
    { id: "dj_f1", isTruth: false, country: "dj", fallback: "Djibouti is a stable democracy in a volatile region.",
      whyFallback: "Stable, yes — because one family has held power since independence and removed term limits to keep holding it. The volatility of the Horn of Africa stops at the base perimeters. \"Stability\" here means \"no rotation\"." },
    { id: "dj_f2", isTruth: false, country: "dj", fallback: "Hosting foreign military bases brings prosperity to the Djiboutian people.",
      whyFallback: "Base rents flow to the state — meaning the presidency. Djibouti remains one of the poorest countries on Earth by household measures, with ~21% unemployment and food insecurity widespread. The rent goes somewhere; it is not the village." },
    { id: "dj_f3", isTruth: false, country: "dj", fallback: "Djibouti's elections reflect the will of its citizens.",
      whyFallback: "Guelleh's 2021 \"victory\": 97.4%. Main opposition parties boycotted or were excluded. International observers were not present in any meaningful capacity. The numbers are theatrical; the outcome is decided in advance." },
    { id: "dj_f4", isTruth: false, country: "dj", fallback: "The US presence in Djibouti is about counter-terrorism only.",
      whyFallback: "Camp Lemonnier is the operations hub for drone strikes across Yemen, Somalia, and beyond. \"Counter-terrorism\" is the public framing; the function is forward-deployed American power in a strategic chokepoint. Two different missions, one base." },
    { id: "dj_f5", isTruth: false, country: "dj", fallback: "China's PLA base in Djibouti is just a logistics facility.",
      whyFallback: "Beijing's first overseas military base, ~$590 million, with helipads, ammunition storage, and berths for warships. 6 kilometers from the largest US base in Africa. \"Logistics\" is a polite description of a strategic foothold." },
    { id: "dj_f6", isTruth: false, country: "dj", fallback: "Djibouti is a neutral hub balancing US, French, and Chinese interests.",
      whyFallback: "Hosting every major power's base is not neutrality — it is rent extraction with no leverage on any tenant. When the US and China have personnel on the same flight from Doraleh, the only sovereign decision left is who pays more." },
    { id: "dj_f7", isTruth: false, country: "dj", fallback: "DP World's Doraleh seizure was a routine commercial dispute.",
      whyFallback: "Two binding LCIA arbitration awards ruled the expropriation unlawful. Djibouti ignored both, transferred the terminal to a state entity, and continues to operate it. \"Commercial dispute\" describes the wrapper; the substance is sovereign seizure." },

    // ============== Dominica — 8T + 7F ==============
    { id: "dm_t1", isTruth: true , country: "dm", fallback: "Roosevelt Skerrit has been Prime Minister of Dominica since January 2004 — more than two decades — winning five consecutive elections under the Dominica Labour Party banner against an opposition that has cycled through leaders and boycotts.",
      whyFallback: "Took office at 31, the world's youngest sitting PM at the time. 2005, 2009, 2014, 2019, 2022 — each margin wider than the last, the 2022 vote boycotted by the United Workers Party over electoral-reform demands. Twenty years of one office is not democracy's bug; in Dominica it is the system's normal output." },
    { id: "dm_t2", isTruth: true , country: "dm", fallback: "Dominica runs one of the world's oldest Citizenship-by-Investment programmes — launched in 1993 — selling passports from roughly US$100,000, and CBI revenue has at points exceeded the entire rest of the government's tax take.",
      whyFallback: "Two routes: a non-refundable contribution to the Economic Diversification Fund, or a real-estate investment. IMF reports flagged CBI as the largest single revenue line for multiple years. A small island's fiscal base is, in practice, the international market for second passports." },
    { id: "dm_t3", isTruth: true , country: "dm", fallback: "Hurricane Maria — a Category 5 storm that hit Dominica on 18 September 2017 — killed roughly 65 people and caused damage estimated at US$1.4 billion, around 2.7 times the country's GDP.",
      whyFallback: "PM Skerrit's UN General Assembly speech days later — \"we are shouldering the consequences of the actions of others\" — became a global climate-justice line. The reconstruction money that followed flowed through CBI partners, Chinese state contractors, and discretionary government channels with thin public auditing." },
    { id: "dm_t4", isTruth: true , country: "dm", fallback: "The Wotten Waven geothermal project — promoted for over a decade as Dominica's path to energy independence — has run on Chinese state loans, repeated delays, and complaints from residents displaced or under-compensated.",
      whyFallback: "China Development Bank financing, French and New Zealand technical partners cycled in and out. Original commissioning dates were 2014, then 2018, then 2024. Kalinago and Wotten Waven valley residents raised land-rights and compensation issues largely absent from the international green-financing coverage." },
    { id: "dm_t5", isTruth: true , country: "dm", fallback: "Multiple Dominican CBI passports have been found in the hands of internationally wanted fugitives — most prominently Indian diamond merchant Mehul Choksi, granted Dominican citizenship while facing fraud charges in India.",
      whyFallback: "Choksi's 2021 disappearance from Antigua and re-emergence in Dominican custody became a regional scandal. Iranian, Russian, and US-sanctioned individuals have surfaced holding Dominican passports across investigative reports. \"Enhanced due diligence\" is the official phrase; the recurring discoveries are the actual record." },
    { id: "dm_t6", isTruth: true , country: "dm", fallback: "The Kalinago Territory — a 3,700-acre reserve on Dominica's east coast — holds the last surviving indigenous Carib community in the Caribbean, governed under a separate Kalinago Council and a land-tenure system distinct from the rest of the country.",
      whyFallback: "Carib Reserve Act 1978, renamed Kalinago Territory in 2015. Communal land ownership, no individual freehold. Tourism revenue, geothermal land use, and CBI-funded development have repeatedly tested the boundary between recognition and absorption. The last remnant of pre-Columbian Caribbean sovereignty, on six square miles." },
    { id: "dm_t7", isTruth: true , country: "dm", fallback: "Dominica's banana industry — the backbone of the rural economy for most of the 20th century — was effectively dismantled after the WTO ruled against EU preferential access to Caribbean producers in the 1990s.",
      whyFallback: "Chiquita and Dole, backed by the US government, won the \"banana wars\" at the WTO. Dominica's smallholder farms could not compete with Central American plantation pricing. Tens of thousands of acres reverted to bush; rural depopulation followed. A trade ruling 6,000 km away rewrote what an island grew." },
    { id: "dm_t8", isTruth: true , country: "dm", fallback: "Dominica switched recognition from Taiwan to the People's Republic of China in March 2004 — two months after Skerrit took office — in a deal Beijing accompanied with roughly US$112 million in aid commitments.",
      whyFallback: "New stadium, school renovations, Ministry of Foreign Affairs building, hospital expansions — all Chinese-built. Subsequent Belt and Road alignment, Confucius Institute presence, vaccine diplomacy during COVID. A small island's foreign policy is, in part, the price of the infrastructure it could not otherwise build." },
    { id: "dm_f1", isTruth: false, country: "dm", fallback: "Dominica's Citizenship-by-Investment programme is rigorously vetted and reserved for high-quality investors.",
      whyFallback: "Mehul Choksi, sanctioned Iranians, and figures on Interpol notices have all surfaced with Dominican passports. The OECS and EU have repeatedly demanded vetting reforms; the programme has cycled through agents and PR firms more readily than through structural change. The marketing is rigorous; the screening is the line that keeps moving." },
    { id: "dm_f2", isTruth: false, country: "dm", fallback: "Hurricane Maria recovery was a clean, transparent reconstruction effort.",
      whyFallback: "Billions in CBI funds, donor pledges, and Chinese loans flowed in. Procurement was often single-sourced under emergency provisions extended for years. The opposition and the Public Accounts Committee raised repeated red flags about housing contracts and road tenders. The catastrophe was real; so was the discretion it licensed." },
    { id: "dm_f3", isTruth: false, country: "dm", fallback: "Twenty years of one Prime Minister reflects strong democratic mandate.",
      whyFallback: "Skerrit's DLP has won every election since 2004, but on a constituency map the opposition has long called gerrymandered, with no campaign-finance limits, state media tilt, and electoral-list reforms repeatedly promised and shelved. A mandate that the losing side has stopped contesting is also a mandate that has stopped being contested." },
    { id: "dm_f4", isTruth: false, country: "dm", fallback: "The Kalinago Territory is a celebrated example of indigenous self-governance.",
      whyFallback: "It is celebrated in tourism brochures. Inside, the territory has among the highest poverty rates in the country, limited say over geothermal and infrastructure projects affecting its land, and a Kalinago Council whose budget is set by the national government. Recognition without resourcing is the older colonial pattern in a newer frame." },
    { id: "dm_f5", isTruth: false, country: "dm", fallback: "Dominica is the \"Nature Island\" untouched by the offshore-finance economy that shaped its neighbours.",
      whyFallback: "CBI passport sales, an International Business Company framework, and a network of agents in Dubai, Hong Kong, and London put Dominica firmly inside the offshore architecture. The rainforest branding is real and so is the second economy behind it. Two truths sold to two different audiences." },
    { id: "dm_f6", isTruth: false, country: "dm", fallback: "Chinese aid to Dominica comes without strings.",
      whyFallback: "Stadium, hospital, ministry building, housing schemes — all delivered, all visible. Also: the 2004 Taiwan switch, the Belt and Road signing, vaccine-diplomacy alignment, the Wotten Waven loan terms not publicly disclosed in full. \"No political conditions\" is the official line; the alignment is the observable record." },
    { id: "dm_f7", isTruth: false, country: "dm", fallback: "Dominica's small size insulates it from the corruption pressures that shape larger states.",
      whyFallback: "Smallness amplifies it. A Cabinet of a dozen handles billion-dollar reconstruction flows and passport sales worth more than the tax base. Investigative journalism is concentrated in a handful of outlets; the diaspora carries much of the scrutiny. Scale does not protect a small island; it removes the friction that slows a larger one." },

    // ============== Dominican Republic — 8T + 7F ==============
    { id: "do_t1", isTruth: true , country: "do", fallback: "Rafael Trujillo ran the Dominican Republic as a personal fiefdom from 1930 to 1961 — renaming the capital after himself, owning much of the national economy, and murdering tens of thousands.",
      whyFallback: "Ciudad Trujillo (1936–1961) was Santo Domingo's official name. El Jefe / El Chivo owned sugar, salt, meat, tobacco monopolies — roughly 60% of the country's assets and labor force ran through his family. Assassinated May 30, 1961 with weapons reportedly supplied by the CIA after Washington decided he was no longer useful." },
    { id: "do_t2", isTruth: true , country: "do", fallback: "In October 1937, Trujillo ordered the Parsley Massacre — soldiers killed an estimated 20,000–30,000 Haitians near the border using the Spanish word \"perejil\" as a linguistic death test.",
      whyFallback: "Those who couldn't trill the R were marked Haitian and killed by machete (to make it look like a peasant uprising rather than a state operation). Trujillo eventually paid Haiti $525,000 in reparations — about $30 per dead person — most of which was pocketed by Haitian officials before it reached families." },
    { id: "do_t3", isTruth: true , country: "do", fallback: "Joaquín Balaguer — Trujillo's puppet president during the final months of the regime — ruled the Dominican Republic for 22 of the next 36 years through repeatedly fraudulent elections.",
      whyFallback: "Three non-consecutive runs (1960–62, 1966–78, 1986–96). The 1994 election was so transparently rigged that international pressure forced him to cut his term short. Blind, in his 80s, and still pulling the strings. Continuity, not transition." },
    { id: "do_t4", isTruth: true , country: "do", fallback: "Brazilian construction giant Odebrecht admitted paying $92 million in bribes to Dominican officials between 2001 and 2014 — one of the largest per-capita bribery scandals in Latin America.",
      whyFallback: "Punta Catalina coal plant, highways, aqueducts. Senator Andrés Bautista and other PLD figures charged; most walked. The Lava Jato fallout that toppled presidents in Brazil and Peru barely scratched the Dominican political class." },
    { id: "do_t5", isTruth: true , country: "do", fallback: "Sentencia 168-13 (2013) retroactively stripped Dominican citizenship from over 200,000 people of Haitian descent — including those born in the country going back to 1929.",
      whyFallback: "The Constitutional Court reclassified the children and grandchildren of Haitian migrants as \"in transit\", retroactively, for four generations. Statelessness manufactured by judicial decree. Periodic mass deportations followed; a border wall began going up in 2022." },
    { id: "do_t6", isTruth: true , country: "do", fallback: "The 2003 collapse of Banco Intercontinental (BANINTER) cost the Dominican state roughly two-thirds of its annual budget — bailed out by the public after off-book accounts hid the rot for years.",
      whyFallback: "Around $2.2 billion in losses on a $9 billion economy. CEO Ramón Báez Figueroa convicted of fraud. The IMF demanded austerity; ordinary Dominicans paid through inflation and currency collapse while the depositor class was made whole." },
    { id: "do_t7", isTruth: true , country: "do", fallback: "Haitian \"braceros\" cut cane on Dominican sugar plantations for generations under conditions repeatedly described by human-rights bodies as forced or near-forced labor.",
      whyFallback: "Bateyes — company-town camps — with confiscated documents, debt bondage, no schools, no clinics. State Sugar Council (CEA) and private mills (Vicini, Central Romana) implicated. The sugar in your coffee has a paper trail most consumers never see." },
    { id: "do_t8", isTruth: true , country: "do", fallback: "Punta Cana's all-inclusive resort enclaves are walled off from the country around them — guests fly in, ride sealed buses to the gates, and never see the poverty 20 minutes inland.",
      whyFallback: "Tourism is roughly 15% of GDP and the country's largest foreign-currency earner. The enclave model — Bávaro, Cap Cana, Casa de Campo — concentrates the revenue in foreign chains and a handful of Dominican family conglomerates. Sun Land Resort / Cap Cana itself was the center of a major land-deal corruption case." },
    { id: "do_f1", isTruth: false, country: "do", fallback: "Trujillo was a Cold War aberration finally ended by Dominican democracy.",
      whyFallback: "Trujillo was installed with US Marine support during the 1916–1924 occupation, sustained for 31 years while Washington found him useful, and removed only when his usefulness ran out. The same political families and intelligence apparatus rebranded and continued. Aberration is the wrong word for a system." },
    { id: "do_f2", isTruth: false, country: "do", fallback: "The 1937 Parsley Massacre was a spasm of border violence, not state policy.",
      whyFallback: "It was an ordered military operation across roughly a week, executed by army units with machetes (specifically chosen so the killings could be blamed on Dominican peasants rather than the state). Trujillo's own correspondence documents the planning. \"Spasm\" is the polite word for ethnic cleansing." },
    { id: "do_f3", isTruth: false, country: "do", fallback: "PLD and PRD have been competing visions for the country since the 1990s.",
      whyFallback: "Both parties' senior figures have been named in BANINTER, Odebrecht, Sun Land, Tucanos, and Punta Catalina cases. The convergence on patronage, no-bid contracts, and impunity is the structure; the rotation between parties is the performance." },
    { id: "do_f4", isTruth: false, country: "do", fallback: "Dominican deportations of Haitians are routine immigration enforcement.",
      whyFallback: "Mass roundups have repeatedly swept up Dominican-born citizens of Haitian descent — including people with valid cédulas — based on appearance. The 2013 court ruling made the legal architecture explicit. Calling it \"immigration\" is the framing the policy needs." },
    { id: "do_f5", isTruth: false, country: "do", fallback: "Major Dominican corruption cases end in convictions.",
      whyFallback: "Odebrecht: most senior names walked or got minor sentences despite $92M in admitted bribes. Tucanos (Embraer): the deal stood. Sun Land: dissolved without consequence. BANINTER produced one conviction and many escapees. The conviction rate for the politically connected is statistical noise." },
    { id: "do_f6", isTruth: false, country: "do", fallback: "Punta Cana's tourism boom lifts the country.",
      whyFallback: "All-inclusive economics route most spending through foreign-owned chains; local supply chains stay shallow. The wages at the gate are low; the GDP figure is high. Two different scoreboards measuring the same beach." },
    { id: "do_f7", isTruth: false, country: "do", fallback: "The Dominican Republic has put its dictatorial past behind it.",
      whyFallback: "Balaguer — Trujillo's last puppet president — ran the country into the 1990s. His party (PRSC) still sits in congress. Streets, statues, and pensions for regime figures persisted for decades. Past tense is generous." },

    // ============== Algeria — 8T + 7F ==============
    { id: "dz_t1", isTruth: true , country: "dz", fallback: "France colonized Algeria for 132 years (1830–1962), settling roughly a million pieds-noirs on land seized from Algerians and treating the territory legally as part of France.",
      whyFallback: "Not a protectorate, not a mandate — départements. Algerians were colonial subjects in their own country. Land laws (Sénatus-consulte 1863, Loi Warnier 1873) systematically transferred farmland to settlers. The asymmetry was the design." },
    { id: "dz_t2", isTruth: true , country: "dz", fallback: "The Algerian War of Independence (1954–1962) killed somewhere between 300,000 and 1.5 million Algerians; French military torture was systematic and documented by its own officers.",
      whyFallback: "Raphaëlle Branche, Marnia Lazreg, Benjamin Stora. The Battle of Algiers (1957) institutionalized waterboarding, electric shock, and disappearances. Paul Aussaresses admitted it on the record in 2000. France only formally acknowledged torture as state policy decades later." },
    { id: "dz_t3", isTruth: true , country: "dz", fallback: "On 17 October 1961, Paris police under Maurice Papon attacked Algerian demonstrators and drowned an unknown number — estimates run to 200+ — in the Seine.",
      whyFallback: "Papon, the same official who had deported Jews from Bordeaux under Vichy, ordered the crackdown. French archives sealed for decades. The official death toll was \"3\" for years. The Seine massacre was barely in French textbooks until the 2000s." },
    { id: "dz_t4", isTruth: true , country: "dz", fallback: "France conducted 17 nuclear tests in the Algerian Sahara between 1960 and 1966 — four atmospheric, thirteen underground — with fallout reaching across Africa and the Mediterranean.",
      whyFallback: "Reggane and In Ekker test sites. Veterans (French and Algerian) developed cancers; declassification has been partial. Contaminated equipment and waste remain buried in the desert. Compensation for Algerian victims is still a diplomatic dispute." },
    { id: "dz_t5", isTruth: true , country: "dz", fallback: "The Algerian Civil War (1992–2002) killed 100,000–200,000 people after the army cancelled an election the Islamic Salvation Front was winning.",
      whyFallback: "January 1992 coup, FIS banned, GIA insurgency, village massacres at Bentalha and Raïs. The qui-tue-qui (\"who is killing whom\") question — how many massacres were army false-flags — was never officially answered. The Décennie Noire ended with amnesty, not accountability." },
    { id: "dz_t6", isTruth: true , country: "dz", fallback: "Abdelaziz Bouteflika ruled for 20 years (1999–2019), winning a fourth term after a 2013 stroke left him unable to walk or speak publicly.",
      whyFallback: "He was sworn in via televised photograph in some appearances. Decisions ran through his brother Saïd Bouteflika and a small clan around the presidency. The Hirak movement in February 2019 — millions in the streets weekly — finally forced his resignation." },
    { id: "dz_t7", isTruth: true , country: "dz", fallback: "Le Pouvoir — \"the power\" — describes the unspoken governing alliance of the FLN party, the army general staff, and the DRS intelligence service that has run Algeria since 1962.",
      whyFallback: "Presidents are the visible layer. Mohamed Mediène (\"Toufik\"), DRS chief 1990–2015, was widely considered the most powerful man in the country for a quarter century. Hirak removed a president; the structure underneath survived." },
    { id: "dz_t8", isTruth: true , country: "dz", fallback: "The Sonatrach corruption scandals (Sonatrach 1 in 2010 and Sonatrach 2) implicated former energy minister Chakib Khelil and Italian oil major Eni/Saipem in hundreds of millions in hydrocarbon kickbacks.",
      whyFallback: "Khelil fled to the US in 2013 with an Interpol notice that quietly disappeared; he returned to Algeria a free man in 2016. The Italian side produced convictions; the Algerian side produced reshuffles. The gas keeps flowing." },
    { id: "dz_f1", isTruth: false, country: "dz", fallback: "The 2019 Hirak protests successfully overthrew Algeria's authoritarian system.",
      whyFallback: "Bouteflika fell. Le Pouvoir did not. Said Bouteflika, Ali Haddad (ETRHB conglomerate), and assorted oligarchs were tried — by the same military-intelligence apparatus they had served. Abdelmadjid Tebboune's 2019 election ran at around 40% turnout, the lowest in Algerian history. The system absorbed the protest." },
    { id: "dz_f2", isTruth: false, country: "dz", fallback: "Algeria is a multi-party democracy with free and competitive elections.",
      whyFallback: "Multi-party on paper since 1989. In practice the FLN and its satellite RND have held the presidency continuously, and the only election a true opposition was about to win — December 1991 — was cancelled by the army. Hogra (humiliation by the state) is the word Algerians use for the gap between text and reality." },
    { id: "dz_f3", isTruth: false, country: "dz", fallback: "France has fully reckoned with its colonial crimes in Algeria.",
      whyFallback: "Macron commissioned the Stora report in 2021 and rejected its central recommendation: a formal apology. Torture, the Seine massacre, the Sétif and Guelma massacres of 8 May 1945, the nuclear tests — acknowledged piecewise, never as a whole. The archives are still partly sealed." },
    { id: "dz_f4", isTruth: false, country: "dz", fallback: "Algeria's enormous gas reserves have made ordinary Algerians wealthy.",
      whyFallback: "Hydrocarbons are around 95% of export earnings and most of the state budget. Youth unemployment runs above 30%. Housing waitlists span decades. The harraga — young Algerians who burn their papers and cross to Europe in boats — are the demographic verdict. The rent goes somewhere; it does not go there." },
    { id: "dz_f5", isTruth: false, country: "dz", fallback: "The Algerian press is free to criticize the government.",
      whyFallback: "Journalist Khaled Drareni was jailed for covering Hirak; RSF and CPJ documented the pattern. Independent outlets (Maghreb Emergent, Radio M, Casbah Tribune) have been blocked or shuttered. Defamation, \"endangering national unity\", and terrorism laws do the work that direct censorship used to do." },
    { id: "dz_f6", isTruth: false, country: "dz", fallback: "The Algerian army exists to defend Algeria from external threats.",
      whyFallback: "Military spending runs around 6% of GDP — among the highest ratios on the continent — with no active interstate conflict. The army's actual role is internal: it cancelled the 1992 election, ran the Décennie Noire counterinsurgency, eased out Bouteflika in 2019, and selects which civilian fronts the presidency." },
    { id: "dz_f7", isTruth: false, country: "dz", fallback: "Algeria and France maintain a normal post-colonial relationship today.",
      whyFallback: "Five million Algerians and people of Algerian descent live in France — the largest diaspora from any former colony. Visa rows, memory rows, harki rows, and the Western Sahara question (Algeria backs Polisario; France tilted toward Morocco in 2024) keep the relationship in permanent crisis. The wound is structural, not historical." },

    // ============== Ecuador — 8T + 7F ==============
    { id: "ec_t1", isTruth: true , country: "ec", fallback: "Rafael Correa's Alianza PAIS government (2007–2017) expelled the US military from its Manta airbase in 2009, refusing to renew the lease — and Correa was later convicted in absentia (2020) in the Sobornos case and now lives in exile in Belgium.",
      whyFallback: "Manta was Washington's main forward-operating base for South American counter-narcotics flights. Correa called it incompatible with sovereignty. The Sobornos verdict — bribes-for-contracts during the Citizens' Revolution — was real; the political timing, after he had become the opposition's threat, is the part the official record does not narrate." },
    { id: "ec_t2", isTruth: true , country: "ec", fallback: "The INA Papers leaks (2019) showed roughly $18 million flowing through offshore shells tied to President Lenín Moreno's family, including his brother Edwin — Moreno had been Correa's vice president before turning on him.",
      whyFallback: "INA Investment Corp, Panama, Belize. The leaks landed weeks before Moreno revoked Julian Assange's asylum at the London embassy. Cause and effect were never officially linked; the sequence is in the public record." },
    { id: "ec_t3", isTruth: true , country: "ec", fallback: "President Guillermo Lasso (CREO, 2021–2023) invoked Muerte Cruzada in May 2023 — dissolving Congress and ruling by decree — while facing impeachment over alleged ties to oil-contract corruption.",
      whyFallback: "\"Mutual death\" — a constitutional clause letting the president dissolve the legislature in exchange for new elections that also end his own term. Lasso's name also appeared in the Pandora Papers (2021) with offshore structures predating his presidency. He left office without a verdict." },
    { id: "ec_t4", isTruth: true , country: "ec", fallback: "Texaco's operations in the Lago Agrio region (1964–1992) dumped an estimated 16 billion gallons of oil-production waste into Amazonian rivers and soil; Chevron, which absorbed Texaco, has spent decades fighting the $18 billion Aguinda judgment instead of paying it.",
      whyFallback: "Ecuadorian courts ruled against Chevron in 2011. Chevron then sued the plaintiffs' US attorney Steven Donziger under RICO in 2014, won a fraud finding from a single judge with no jury, and saw Donziger disbarred and jailed on contempt. The pollution remains; the cleanup does not." },
    { id: "ec_t5", isTruth: true , country: "ec", fallback: "In August 2023, Ecuadorians voted 59% \"No\" in a binding referendum to halt oil drilling in the Yasuní ITT block — one of the most biodiverse places on Earth — and the government has continued partial extraction anyway.",
      whyFallback: "The vote was constitutionally binding. Petroecuador was given a year to wind down Block 43. Production targets quietly slipped; environmental groups document ongoing extraction. A direct-democracy result treated as a suggestion." },
    { id: "ec_t6", isTruth: true , country: "ec", fallback: "Adolfo Macías — \"Fito\", leader of Los Choneros — vanished from a Guayaquil maximum-security prison in January 2024, triggering President Daniel Noboa's declaration of \"internal armed conflict\" and the televised hostage-taking at TC Televisión.",
      whyFallback: "Fito's cell was found empty during a routine transfer. Within hours, prison riots, kidnapped guards, and armed men seizing a live news broadcast. He was eventually recaptured in 2025. The unanswered question is how a man under 24/7 surveillance simply walked out." },
    { id: "ec_t7", isTruth: true , country: "ec", fallback: "Ecuador abandoned the sucre and adopted the US dollar in 2000 after a banking-sector collapse — a decision made under IMF pressure that eliminated monetary policy as a tool of sovereignty.",
      whyFallback: "The 1999 freeze of bank deposits (feriado bancario) wiped out the savings of ordinary Ecuadorians while bank owners moved capital abroad. Dollarization stabilized prices and tied the country permanently to Federal Reserve decisions made in Washington for American conditions." },
    { id: "ec_t8", isTruth: true , country: "ec", fallback: "Ecuador's Pacific coast — Manabí, Esmeraldas, Guayas — became the primary transit corridor for Colombian and Peruvian cocaine to Europe, with local gangs forming documented alliances with Albanian and Balkan trafficking networks.",
      whyFallback: "Container shipping out of Guayaquil and Esmeraldas, banana exports as cover, port worker recruitment. Albanian clans in Antwerp and Rotterdam negotiate directly with Los Choneros and Los Lobos. The route is the reason for the violence, not a consequence of it." },
    { id: "ec_f1", isTruth: false, country: "ec", fallback: "Daniel Noboa is a self-made political outsider with no establishment ties.",
      whyFallback: "Son of Álvaro Noboa, the banana magnate who ran for president five times and is one of the richest men in Ecuador. The Noboa Corporation controls a substantial share of banana exports — the country's second-largest legal export. \"Outsider\" is the campaign description; the family balance sheet is the structure." },
    { id: "ec_f2", isTruth: false, country: "ec", fallback: "The \"internal armed conflict\" declared in January 2024 is primarily a security operation against gangs.",
      whyFallback: "Decree 111 designated 22 criminal groups as \"terrorist organizations\" and \"belligerent non-state actors\" — legal language that unlocks military powers domestically and aligns with US drug-war frameworks. Civil-liberty suspensions, expanded military jurisdiction, and a US security cooperation agreement followed within months." },
    { id: "ec_f3", isTruth: false, country: "ec", fallback: "Dollarization protects Ecuador from corruption by removing the temptation to print money.",
      whyFallback: "Corruption simply moved to USD-denominated channels — offshore shells, contract overbilling, oil-revenue diversion. Sobornos, INA Papers, Pandora Papers, BIESS pension mismanagement: all of it happened under dollarization. The currency is not the immune system." },
    { id: "ec_f4", isTruth: false, country: "ec", fallback: "The Chevron–Texaco case in Lago Agrio shows that international courts protect indigenous communities from corporate harm.",
      whyFallback: "Ecuador won the judgment. Chevron sold every asset in Ecuador to make collection impossible, then used US courts to criminalize the plaintiffs' lawyer. The Amazon plaintiffs have not received a dollar. The international legal system protected the polluter, not the polluted." },
    { id: "ec_f5", isTruth: false, country: "ec", fallback: "The BIESS pension fund is a secure savings vehicle for Ecuadorian workers.",
      whyFallback: "The state social-security investment bank has been repeatedly used as a captive lender for government deficits and politically directed projects. Returns have lagged inflation; transparency on its loan book is partial. Workers fund the pool; the political class decides where it goes." },
    { id: "ec_f6", isTruth: false, country: "ec", fallback: "Ecuador's Catholic hierarchy stays out of financial controversy.",
      whyFallback: "Diocesan and archdiocesan financial scandals — Pichincha and others — have surfaced repeatedly: opaque property dealings, missing donations, internal audits suppressed. The Church's tax-exempt status and minimal disclosure obligations make full accounting impossible by design." },
    { id: "ec_f7", isTruth: false, country: "ec", fallback: "Ecuador's violence crisis emerged suddenly under recent governments.",
      whyFallback: "The trafficking corridors were built across two decades — port containerization, weakened oversight after dollarization, Colombian post-FARC fragmentation, and the slow capture of prisons by gangs documented since the 2000s. The explosion in homicides was the visible phase of a structural process the political class watched happen." },

    // ============== Eritrea — 8T + 7F ==============
    { id: "er_t1", isTruth: true , country: "er", fallback: "Eritrea has held no national elections since independence in 1991 — Isaias Afwerki and the PFDJ have ruled unopposed for more than three decades.",
      whyFallback: "The constitution was ratified in 1997 and never implemented. No legislature sits. No competing parties exist. The promise was \"after we fix the foundations\" — the foundations are still being fixed in year 33." },
    { id: "er_t2", isTruth: true , country: "er", fallback: "Eritrea's \"Indefinite National Service\" conscripts citizens — often for a decade or more — at near-zero pay, with assignments ranging from military duty to forced civilian labor.",
      whyFallback: "The legal limit is 18 months. The actual practice is open-ended. The UN Commission of Inquiry (2015–2016) found this system met the threshold of crimes against humanity, including enslavement." },
    { id: "er_t3", isTruth: true , country: "er", fallback: "In September 2001, eleven senior officials known as the G-15 publicly criticized Isaias Afwerki — they were arrested and have not been seen or charged in court for over two decades.",
      whyFallback: "Their families have received no information about their fate. Independent journalists arrested alongside them disappeared the same week. Eritrea's prison system contains thousands held without trial, without visitors, without records." },
    { id: "er_t4", isTruth: true , country: "er", fallback: "Eritrea ranks among the three worst countries in the world on Reporters Without Borders' Press Freedom Index — year after year — with zero independent media permitted to operate.",
      whyFallback: "All outlets are state-owned. Private newspapers were shut down in 2001. The country is often described as the only African nation with no privately owned media of any kind. Foreign correspondents are not accredited." },
    { id: "er_t5", isTruth: true , country: "er", fallback: "Eritrean Defense Forces participated in the Tigray War (2020–2022) and have been documented committing mass rapes, killings, and systematic looting in Western Tigray and at Mahibere Dego.",
      whyFallback: "Reports by UN human rights experts, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission. The 2018 \"peace\" with Abiy Ahmed — for which he received the Nobel — became the staging ground for a different war." },
    { id: "er_t6", isTruth: true , country: "er", fallback: "Roughly half a million Eritreans — out of a population of about 3.5 million — have fled the country, making it one of the world's largest refugee outflows per capita.",
      whyFallback: "Conscription is the leading driver. Crossing the border without permission is officially shoot-on-sight. The Mediterranean and the Sinai trafficking routes are populated heavily by Eritreans escaping the service that has no end." },
    { id: "er_t7", isTruth: true , country: "er", fallback: "The Eritrean–Ethiopian border war (1998–2000) killed an estimated 70,000 to 100,000 people in a conflict largely over barren territory — and ended with a ruling neither side initially honored.",
      whyFallback: "Trench warfare reminiscent of WWI. The Algiers Agreement awarded the disputed town of Badme to Eritrea; Ethiopia refused to implement it until 2018. Two decades of \"no war, no peace\" followed — and conscription expanded to fill the gap." },
    { id: "er_t8", isTruth: true , country: "er", fallback: "Eritrea is often called \"Africa's North Korea\" — single-party rule, no internet for most citizens, a dual-currency system, and a leader cult built around the founding generation.",
      whyFallback: "The comparison is structural, not rhetorical. Internet penetration is among the world's lowest. The nakfa is non-convertible. State media speaks in one voice. Foreign visitors require permits to leave the capital." },
    { id: "er_f1", isTruth: false, country: "er", fallback: "Eritrea is a young democracy still finding its footing after independence.",
      whyFallback: "Independence was 1991. \"Still finding its footing\" is now older than most Eritreans. There has been no election, no opposition party, no free press, and no implemented constitution in that entire window. \"Young democracy\" is what regimes call themselves when they want the word without the substance." },
    { id: "er_f2", isTruth: false, country: "er", fallback: "National Service in Eritrea is a normal civic duty comparable to conscription in other countries.",
      whyFallback: "Normal conscription has an endpoint. Eritrea's does not. Conscripts can be held for ten or twenty years, assigned to work for state-linked companies, paid below subsistence, and prosecuted for desertion if they try to leave. The UN called it enslavement; the government calls it nation-building." },
    { id: "er_f3", isTruth: false, country: "er", fallback: "The 2018 peace deal with Ethiopia ended Eritrea's military posture and opened the country.",
      whyFallback: "The peace deal opened the border briefly, then it closed again. Within two years Eritrean forces were inside Tigray fighting alongside Abiy Ahmed's federal army. The Nobel Prize awarded for the deal aged poorly within 18 months." },
    { id: "er_f4", isTruth: false, country: "er", fallback: "Eritrea's prisons hold ordinary criminals processed through ordinary courts.",
      whyFallback: "The country holds an estimated tens of thousands of political prisoners — including the G-15 ministers (since 2001), journalists, Pentecostal Christians, Catholic priests, Jehovah's Witnesses, and conscription deserters. Many are held in shipping containers in the desert. \"Processed through courts\" is not how the system works." },
    { id: "er_f5", isTruth: false, country: "er", fallback: "Eritrea is isolated from the great powers and operates outside global geopolitics.",
      whyFallback: "Eritrea hosts Wagner-linked Russian military trainers, maintains long-running intelligence ties with Israel, sells gold from the Bisha mine to international markets, and is courted by Gulf states for Red Sea port access. \"Isolated\" describes its citizens; the regime has no shortage of partners." },
    { id: "er_f6", isTruth: false, country: "er", fallback: "The 1997 constitution governs the rights of Eritrean citizens.",
      whyFallback: "It was drafted, ratified, printed — and never implemented. There is no constitutional court, no enforceable rights document, no separation of powers. Eritrea is governed by presidential decree and PFDJ party discipline. The constitution exists as a document, not as law." },
    { id: "er_f7", isTruth: false, country: "er", fallback: "Eritrea's mineral wealth — Bisha gold, Colluli potash — funds development for ordinary Eritreans.",
      whyFallback: "The mines operate as joint ventures between foreign companies and state-linked entities, with conscript labor used at multiple sites. Revenue flows to the state and party structure; ordinary Eritreans see neither royalties nor the public services such revenue funds elsewhere. The wealth is real; its destination is not the population." },

    // ============== Fiji — 8T + 7F ==============
    { id: "fj_t1", isTruth: true , country: "fj", fallback: "Frank Bainimarama, commander of the Republic of Fiji Military Forces, seized power in December 2006 in Fiji's fourth coup — ousting elected Prime Minister Laisenia Qarase and ruling by decree for eight years before legitimizing himself via a 2014 election.",
      whyFallback: "The \"clean-up campaign\" framing was the script; military government was the reality. The 1997 constitution was abrogated in 2009 by Bainimarama's hand-picked President Iloilo. The 2014 vote — under a constitution Bainimarama himself imposed in 2013 — was the laundering ceremony." },
    { id: "fj_t2", isTruth: true , country: "fj", fallback: "Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum served simultaneously as Attorney-General, Minister for Economy, Minister for Civil Service, Minister for Communications, and Minister for Public Enterprises — making him the most concentrated post-coup civilian power in the Pacific.",
      whyFallback: "Bainimarama's deputy and principal architect of the 2013 constitution, the Media Industry Development Decree, and the FijiFirst legal scaffolding. One man holding the law portfolio, the money portfolio, the press portfolio, and the hiring portfolio at once is not an oversight — it is the design." },
    { id: "fj_t3", isTruth: true , country: "fj", fallback: "Fiji has had four military coups since independence — 1987 (twice, Rabuka), 2000 (Speight), and 2006 (Bainimarama) — making coups the country's most reliable mode of government transition.",
      whyFallback: "Sitiveni Rabuka's two 1987 coups ousted the Bavadra coalition on explicit anti-Indo-Fijian grounds. George Speight's 2000 hostage-taking against Mahendra Chaudhry's government used the same ethnic-nationalist script. Independence was 1970; peaceful handover via election has happened, but every decade has produced a man with a rifle." },
    { id: "fj_t4", isTruth: true , country: "fj", fallback: "The 2013 Constitution — imposed by the Bainimarama government without referendum — abolished the indigenous Senate, the Great Council of Chiefs' constitutional role, and the reserved iTaukei communal seats that had existed since independence.",
      whyFallback: "Sold as ending ethnic politics; functioned as concentrating power in Suva. The Yash Ghai draft, produced by a Bainimarama-appointed commission, was burned in front of journalists when it did not deliver the wanted result. The replacement was written inside the AG's office." },
    { id: "fj_t5", isTruth: true , country: "fj", fallback: "Indo-Fijians — descendants of indentured labourers brought by the British in 1879–1916 — were around 50% of the population at independence; coup-driven emigration has reduced them to roughly a third today.",
      whyFallback: "1987 and 2000 were explicitly anti-Indo-Fijian. Each coup produced an exodus to Australia, New Zealand, Canada, the US. Land tenure (83% iTaukei communal under the NLTA), citizenship rhetoric, and periodic violence made the choice. Demographic engineering by coup is still demographic engineering." },
    { id: "fj_t6", isTruth: true , country: "fj", fallback: "Sitiveni Rabuka — the colonel who executed Fiji's first two coups in 1987 — returned to power as Prime Minister in 2022 via the ballot box, defeating Bainimarama's FijiFirst by a three-party coalition.",
      whyFallback: "PA (Rabuka's People's Alliance) + NFP + SODELPA, by a single seat after a chaotic count and a near-standoff with the RFMF. The man who broke Fiji's constitutional government in 1987 came back as the elected restorer in 2022. Pacific politics absorbs its coup leaders rather than removing them." },
    { id: "fj_t7", isTruth: true , country: "fj", fallback: "The Fiji Sun and the state broadcaster were the cleared channels during the 2006–2022 Bainimarama years, while the Fiji Times faced sedition prosecutions and the 2010 Media Industry Development Decree imposed criminal penalties on journalists for \"irresponsible\" reporting.",
      whyFallback: "MIDA, the regulator created by the decree, was chaired by FijiFirst-friendly appointees. Foreign ownership of the Fiji Times was forced to divest in 2010. \"Self-censorship\" became the default newsroom posture — which is the cheapest form of censorship for the censoring side." },
    { id: "fj_t8", isTruth: true , country: "fj", fallback: "The EU's removal of preferential sugar prices in 2017, after a decade-long phase-out, gutted Fiji's sugar industry — once a quarter of GDP — and the Fiji Sugar Corporation has been kept afloat by repeated government bailouts.",
      whyFallback: "Sugar Protocol expired 2009, transitional prices ended 2017. Cane area collapsed from over 70,000 hectares to under 40,000. The industry built by indentured Indo-Fijian labour and run as a state monopoly is now a subsidised relic. The bailouts are political, not economic." },
    { id: "fj_f1", isTruth: false, country: "fj", fallback: "Fiji's 2006 coup was a one-off crisis that the country has since put behind it.",
      whyFallback: "Four coups in 19 years (1987, 1987, 2000, 2006) is a pattern, not an incident. The RFMF retains a constitutional self-appointed role as guardian of the nation under the 2013 charter. Every elected Prime Minister knows the barracks at Nabua is the real second chamber." },
    { id: "fj_f2", isTruth: false, country: "fj", fallback: "The 2014 and 2018 elections under Bainimarama were free and fair as international observers certified.",
      whyFallback: "MOG (Multinational Observer Group) endorsed the process. The conditions — a constitution Bainimarama wrote, a media decree he wrote, an electoral office his AG appointed, restrictions on opposition movement and assembly — produced the wins. \"Free and fair on polling day\" is a narrow definition of free and fair." },
    { id: "fj_f3", isTruth: false, country: "fj", fallback: "Indigenous iTaukei interests are now protected by communal land tenure and cultural institutions that no government can touch.",
      whyFallback: "The 2010 Land Use Decree created a state-controlled leasing scheme that bypassed the iTaukei Land Trust Board's traditional consent process. The Great Council of Chiefs was disestablished by decree in 2012 and re-established with curtailed powers in 2023. Communal tenure exists; political weight does not." },
    { id: "fj_f4", isTruth: false, country: "fj", fallback: "Fiji is a neutral Pacific democracy that picks its partners freely.",
      whyFallback: "The Pacific Step-up (Australia, New Zealand), Pacific Partnership (US), and Belt-and-Road (China) all run parallel infrastructure, security, and aid tracks through Suva. Chinese fishing fleets, Australian police training, US Coast Guard berths, Indian vaccine diplomacy — the choice is which patrons, not whether." },
    { id: "fj_f5", isTruth: false, country: "fj", fallback: "FijiFirst was a normal political party that lost a normal election in 2022 and accepted the result.",
      whyFallback: "The party was deregistered in 2024 after refusing to pay an audit fine — a self-immolation rather than reform. The 2022 transfer happened only after the RFMF commander publicly said the military would not intervene, with Bainimarama and Sayed-Khaiyum then prosecuted on a string of charges. \"Peaceful handover\" required the army's permission slip." },
    { id: "fj_f6", isTruth: false, country: "fj", fallback: "Fiji's economy is diversified across tourism, sugar, fisheries, and remittances.",
      whyFallback: "Tourism is roughly 40% of GDP and the dominant employer. Sugar is a propped-up legacy. Fisheries licences increasingly run to Chinese and Taiwanese fleets. Remittances from the RFMF's UN peacekeeping deployments and overseas labour mobility schemes are a foreign-exchange lifeline. Diversified on paper, monoculture in practice." },
    { id: "fj_f7", isTruth: false, country: "fj", fallback: "The Methodist Church and other religious institutions stayed out of Fiji's political crises.",
      whyFallback: "The Methodist Church of Fiji — to which most iTaukei belong — backed Rabuka's 1987 coups openly, and senior clergy were repeatedly named in the 2000 Speight crisis. Bainimarama's government banned the church's annual conference for years. \"Church and state\" in Fiji is a single conversation in two rooms." },

    // ============== Micronesia — 8T + 7F ==============
    { id: "fm_t1", isTruth: true , country: "fm", fallback: "The Compact of Free Association binds FSM to the United States — Washington guarantees defense, controls all military access, and bars FSM from any military arrangement with another power.",
      whyFallback: "Signed 1986, renegotiated 2003 and 2023. The 2023 renewal locks in roughly $7.1 billion over 20 years. \"Free association\" is the legal phrase; the strategic-denial clause is the substance — the US gets veto power over the Pacific approaches in exchange for the cheque." },
    { id: "fm_t2", isTruth: true , country: "fm", fallback: "Outgoing President David Panuelo's 2023 farewell letter accused China of \"political warfare\" inside FSM — bribery of senior officials, envelopes handed out during a Xi Jinping meeting, surveillance of his own movements.",
      whyFallback: "13-page letter, addressed to Congress and state governors, published openly. Named officials, named incidents. China denied; the document is on the public record and has not been retracted." },
    { id: "fm_t3", isTruth: true , country: "fm", fallback: "The 2023 COFA renewal — the financial lifeline of the country — sat stalled in the US Congress for months while FSM's budget timeline ran out.",
      whyFallback: "Negotiated by both governments, then held hostage by unrelated US legislative fights. Signed into law in March 2024, after the deadline. A sovereign nation's annual budget was a footnote in someone else's spending bill." },
    { id: "fm_t4", isTruth: true , country: "fm", fallback: "Roughly a third of FSM's population now lives abroad — mostly in the US, under the visa-free movement clause of the Compact.",
      whyFallback: "COFA citizens can live, work, and study in the US without a visa. The result is a multi-decade brain drain — nurses, teachers, soldiers, and graduates leaving. The remittances return; the people often do not." },
    { id: "fm_t5", isTruth: true , country: "fm", fallback: "Chuuk State — the most populous of the four states — has held multiple independence referendum pushes, repeatedly postponed under federal pressure.",
      whyFallback: "Chuuk holds nearly half of FSM's population. Independence votes scheduled in 2015 and 2019 were deferred. The economic case is shaky, the political case has not disappeared. The federation is younger than many of its critics." },
    { id: "fm_t6", isTruth: true , country: "fm", fallback: "FSM's atolls were affected by Pacific nuclear testing fallout, even though the main detonations happened over the neighbouring Marshall Islands.",
      whyFallback: "67 US nuclear tests in the Marshalls between 1946 and 1958. Wind and current carried fallout across the region. The compensation framework was built around the Marshallese; FSM communities were largely written out of it." },
    { id: "fm_t7", isTruth: true , country: "fm", fallback: "The FSM Trust Fund — the country's long-term financial backstop after the Compact transfers eventually taper — has limited public reporting on management and fee structure.",
      whyFallback: "Jointly administered with the US, designed to replace direct grants over time. Disclosure of fund managers, allocation, and performance has historically been thin. The fund is meant to outlive the Compact; the public scrutiny of it does not match the stake." },
    { id: "fm_t8", isTruth: true , country: "fm", fallback: "Sea-level rise of 1 to 2 metres — within the projection range for this century — would erase most of FSM's inhabited atolls.",
      whyFallback: "Average elevation in many of the outer islands is under 2 metres. The country has standing at every climate summit because the existential clock is literal. \"Climate refugees\" is an abstract policy term elsewhere; here it's a population planning document." },
    { id: "fm_f1", isTruth: false, country: "fm", fallback: "FSM is a fully sovereign nation with the ordinary attributes of independence.",
      whyFallback: "Defense outsourced to the US by treaty. Military relations with any other state require US consent. Currency is the US dollar. Mail moves at US Postal Service domestic rates. Sovereign on paper; layered inside US strategic architecture in practice." },
    { id: "fm_f2", isTruth: false, country: "fm", fallback: "The Compact of Free Association is a partnership between equals.",
      whyFallback: "One side controls the cheque, the defense, the visa regime, and the strategic-denial clause. The other side negotiates the size of the cheque. \"Partnership\" is the diplomatic register; the asymmetry is the structure." },
    { id: "fm_f3", isTruth: false, country: "fm", fallback: "Chinese engagement in the Pacific is just normal commercial diplomacy.",
      whyFallback: "Panuelo's 2023 letter named direct bribery attempts, envelopes for officials, and intimidation. The US-China rivalry runs through FSM's domestic politics — infrastructure offers, scholarship programs, fisheries deals — none of it is neutral." },
    { id: "fm_f4", isTruth: false, country: "fm", fallback: "The four states — Pohnpei, Chuuk, Yap, Kosrae — form a naturally unified nation.",
      whyFallback: "Different languages, different cultures, different colonial histories, bundled together by the US Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands arrangement in 1947. The federation is an inherited container, not an organic one. Independence pushes from Chuuk are a reminder." },
    { id: "fm_f5", isTruth: false, country: "fm", fallback: "FSM's food and health systems are locally grounded.",
      whyFallback: "Heavy reliance on USDA food assistance and imported processed food. Diabetes and obesity rates among the highest in the world. The traditional diet was displaced by Compact-era logistics; the public-health bill is the long tail of that displacement." },
    { id: "fm_f6", isTruth: false, country: "fm", fallback: "Western fisheries management protects FSM's main natural resource.",
      whyFallback: "FSM sits in one of the world's richest tuna zones. The Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission framework lets distant-water fleets — US, Japanese, Chinese, EU — extract most of the value, with licence fees as the local share. The fish leave; the management meetings stay." },
    { id: "fm_f7", isTruth: false, country: "fm", fallback: "Pacific micro-states have no leverage in great-power competition.",
      whyFallback: "FSM sits between Guam, Hawaii, and the South China Sea — exactly on the strategic-denial line the US and China both care about. The 2023 Compact renewal, Panuelo's letter, the courting on both sides — the leverage is real. It's just rarely used in the country's own interest." },

    // ============== Gabon — 8T + 7F ==============
    { id: "ga_t1", isTruth: true , country: "ga", fallback: "The Bongo family ruled Gabon for 56 consecutive years — Omar Bongo Ondimba from 1967 to 2009, followed by his son Ali Bongo Ondimba until August 2023.",
      whyFallback: "Omar's ~42-year tenure was one of the longest in African history. The transition to Ali in 2009 was dynastic, not democratic. The PDG (Parti Démocratique Gabonais) was the vehicle; the family was the state." },
    { id: "ga_t2", isTruth: true , country: "ga", fallback: "General Brice Oligui Nguema — head of the Republican Guard and a cousin of the Bongo family — seized power on August 30, 2023, hours after Ali Bongo was declared reelected.",
      whyFallback: "The coup was carried out by the regime's own praetorian guard, not an outside force. Oligui had been promoted by Omar Bongo personally. The dynasty was ended by one of its own protectors — a palace transition framed as liberation." },
    { id: "ga_t3", isTruth: true , country: "ga", fallback: "French \"biens mal acquis\" (ill-gotten gains) investigations documented dozens of luxury properties on the French Riviera and in Paris owned by the Bongo family.",
      whyFallback: "Fifteen-plus properties traced to Omar Bongo alone, plus Mercedes fleets, Parisian apartments, and bank accounts. The cases dragged through French courts for decades. The properties remained; the prosecutions did not." },
    { id: "ga_t4", isTruth: true , country: "ga", fallback: "Gabon's oil revenues over the Bongo decades totaled tens of billions of dollars — while roughly a third of the population lived below the poverty line.",
      whyFallback: "One of the highest per-capita GDPs in sub-Saharan Africa on paper. Persistent slums in Libreville and Port-Gentil in practice. The arithmetic of extraction: wealth on the balance sheet, poverty on the street." },
    { id: "ga_t5", isTruth: true , country: "ga", fallback: "The 2016 presidential election between Ali Bongo and Jean Ping was decided by a single province — Haut-Ogooué, the Bongo stronghold — reporting 99.93% turnout and 95% for Bongo.",
      whyFallback: "Statistically implausible numbers from the family's home province pushed Ali Bongo over the line. The Constitutional Court — appointed by Bongo — ratified the result. International observers documented anomalies; the verdict stood." },
    { id: "ga_t6", isTruth: true , country: "ga", fallback: "After the 2023 coup, the new junta arrested Ali Bongo's son Noureddin Bongo Valentin and several inner-circle figures on charges of corruption and treason.",
      whyFallback: "Noureddin had run a \"Junior Cabinet\" of Geostrategic Affairs — an unofficial parallel government. Cash, gold, and foreign-currency seizures were paraded on state television. The dynasty's tools became the junta's exhibits." },
    { id: "ga_t7", isTruth: true , country: "ga", fallback: "Gabon's manganese — among the world's richest reserves — has been mined for decades by Comilog, a subsidiary of the French group Eramet.",
      whyFallback: "Moanda is one of the largest manganese mines on Earth. Profits route through Paris; royalties through Libreville. The arrangement long predates independence and survived every regime change, including the 2023 one." },
    { id: "ga_t8", isTruth: true , country: "ga", fallback: "Roughly 88% of Gabon is forest — part of the Congo Basin, the world's second-largest tropical carbon sink — and concession opacity, logging permits, and conservation NGOs have all been entangled with the ruling family.",
      whyFallback: "Chinese and European logging concessions, US-based conservation groups, and presidential foundations overlapped on the same maps. Forest cover became a diplomatic asset; oversight of who cut what stayed thin." },
    { id: "ga_f1", isTruth: false, country: "ga", fallback: "Gabon's high per-capita GDP makes it one of the wealthiest countries in Africa.",
      whyFallback: "GDP per capita is an average across a population of around two million, dominated by oil rents captured at the top. The median Gabonese household never saw the figure that the World Bank tables suggested." },
    { id: "ga_f2", isTruth: false, country: "ga", fallback: "The August 2023 coup was a popular revolution that ended the Bongo era.",
      whyFallback: "It was a palace coup by the Republican Guard, led by a Bongo cousin, replacing one branch of the regime with another. Public celebrations were real; the structural change was personnel, not system. The same security architecture remained in place." },
    { id: "ga_f3", isTruth: false, country: "ga", fallback: "France's role in Gabon ended with independence in 1960.",
      whyFallback: "French troops remained stationed in Gabon for decades. Operation Sparrow Hawk and successor deployments treated Libreville as a forward base. Elf-Aquitaine (later Total) financed Bongo, and Bongo financed French political campaigns — the \"Françafrique\" feedback loop." },
    { id: "ga_f4", isTruth: false, country: "ga", fallback: "Ali Bongo's 2018 stroke and recovery were transparently handled by the Gabonese state.",
      whyFallback: "He was hospitalized in Saudi Arabia, then Morocco, for months. Public appearances were stage-managed. Doubts about his physical capacity ran through the 2023 campaign. The family — Sylvia Bongo and Noureddin — were widely reported to be running the state in his name." },
    { id: "ga_f5", isTruth: false, country: "ga", fallback: "Opposition figures in Gabon have died of natural causes or accidents.",
      whyFallback: "Pierre Mamboundou, Joseph Rendjambé, and other prominent opposition figures died in circumstances opposition movements considered suspicious. Investigations were either not opened or not concluded. The political weather around each death was treated as coincidence." },
    { id: "ga_f6", isTruth: false, country: "ga", fallback: "Bongo-era oil and mining contracts were standard commercial agreements.",
      whyFallback: "Total (now TotalEnergies), Comilog/Eramet, CGGB, SUCAF, and others operated through layered corporate structures, offshore intermediaries, and presidential intermediaries. Beneficial ownership was rarely disclosed. \"Standard\" describes the form; the function was rent extraction." },
    { id: "ga_f7", isTruth: false, country: "ga", fallback: "Gabon's forests are protected by world-class conservation governance.",
      whyFallback: "Communities — including Baka and other forest peoples — have been displaced from concessions and national parks created in partnership with international NGOs. Conservation maps and logging maps were drawn by the same offices. Protection on the brochure; clearance on the ground." },

    // ============== Grenada — 8T + 7F ==============
    { id: "gd_t1", isTruth: true , country: "gd", fallback: "Maurice Bishop's New Jewel Movement overthrew Eric Gairy in a near-bloodless coup on March 13, 1979, establishing the People's Revolutionary Government — the first and only armed revolution in the English-speaking Caribbean.",
      whyFallback: "Gairy was at the UN lobbying for a UFO investigation when NJM cadres seized the radio station, the main police barracks, and Pearls airport. PRG ruled by decree for 4.5 years — literacy programs, free secondary education, healthcare expansion alongside detention without trial and a suspended constitution. The Westminster framing of \"stable democracy\" in the region has one large asterisk." },
    { id: "gd_t2", isTruth: true , country: "gd", fallback: "Maurice Bishop and several ministers were executed at Fort Rupert on October 19, 1983, after a factional split within his own party led by Deputy PM Bernard Coard and Army Commander Hudson Austin.",
      whyFallback: "Bishop placed under house arrest October 13. Freed by a crowd on October 19, marched to Fort Rupert (now Fort George). Armoured personnel carriers from the People's Revolutionary Army opened fire; Bishop, Jacqueline Creft, Unison Whiteman, Norris Bain and others were lined up against a wall and shot. Bodies were never returned to families. The site is still called Fort George today; the name change is part of the silence." },
    { id: "gd_t3", isTruth: true , country: "gd", fallback: "Six days after Bishop's execution, the United States invaded Grenada with about 7,000 troops in Operation Urgent Fury — Reagan's first major military action, launched while Beirut barracks bombing dominated the news.",
      whyFallback: "October 25, 1983. 19 US dead, ~45 Grenadian soldiers and civilians dead, ~25 Cuban construction workers killed at Point Salines. The Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States \"request\" was drafted with US assistance to provide legal cover. UN General Assembly condemned the invasion 108-9. Reagan called the condemnation \"didn't upset my breakfast at all\"." },
    { id: "gd_t4", isTruth: true , country: "gd", fallback: "Bernard Coard and the \"Grenada 17\" served 26 years in prison for the Bishop killings before their release in 2009 — while the question of who else gave the order at the Fort was never fully answered.",
      whyFallback: "Original 1986 death sentences commuted to life. Truth and Reconciliation Commission 2001-06 produced a report that pleased no faction fully. Coard's own multi-volume memoir disputes the official account. Bishop's body has never been recovered — the most-cited theory is that US forces removed remains during the invasion, classified file still sealed." },
    { id: "gd_t5", isTruth: true , country: "gd", fallback: "Sir Eric Gairy ran Grenada from independence in 1974 until the 1979 coup using a paramilitary thug squad — the \"Mongoose Gang\" — to intimidate opponents while he pursued his UFO research at the United Nations.",
      whyFallback: "Gairy genuinely advocated at the UN General Assembly for a global body to study unidentified flying objects (1977, 1978). At home the Mongoose Gang beat and killed dissidents — Rupert Bishop, Maurice's father, was killed by Gairy supporters in January 1974. Eccentricity abroad, violence at home — the same person." },
    { id: "gd_t6", isTruth: true , country: "gd", fallback: "Grenada switched diplomatic recognition from Taiwan to the People's Republic of China in 2005 — and Beijing then built Grenada a new parliament building and national stadium as part of the package.",
      whyFallback: "Recognition switched January 2005 under Keith Mitchell. Mainland China built the new St George's stadium (2007 Cricket World Cup venue) and contributed to the new Houses of Parliament after Hurricane Ivan damaged the old one. Taiwan had previously funded earlier infrastructure. Both sides are documented; the chequebook diplomacy is bipartisan in Beijing-Taipei terms." },
    { id: "gd_t7", isTruth: true , country: "gd", fallback: "Hurricane Ivan hit Grenada in September 2004 as a Category 3 storm and destroyed roughly 85% of the island's buildings, with damages estimated at twice the country's annual GDP.",
      whyFallback: "Estimated damage ~$900 million against a GDP near $500 million. Nutmeg trees — Grenada's iconic export crop — were largely wiped out, with full recovery taking nearly a decade. International aid flowed; so did opportunistic land deals and reconstruction contracts. Disaster as a window for restructuring is a recurring Caribbean pattern." },
    { id: "gd_t8", isTruth: true , country: "gd", fallback: "Grenada has run a Citizenship-by-Investment Programme since 2013 — a real-estate-or-donation route that grants visa-free access to over 140 countries and, uniquely in the Caribbean, treaty access to the US E-2 investor visa.",
      whyFallback: "Relaunched 2013 under Keith Mitchell's NNP. The US E-2 treaty hook is the global selling point — buy a Grenadian passport, then use it to apply for US business residency. Repeated due-diligence concerns from the EU and US. CIP revenue is a structural part of the budget; criticising it is criticising the fiscal floor." },
    { id: "gd_f1", isTruth: false, country: "gd", fallback: "The 1983 US invasion of Grenada was a humanitarian rescue mission to protect American medical students.",
      whyFallback: "St George's University students were used as the public justification, but the medical school's chancellor stated publicly that students were not in danger and had not requested evacuation. The invasion plan predated the Bishop crisis — contingency files for Grenada existed in the Pentagon from the PRG's early years. \"Rescue\" was the press release; rollback of a Cuban-aligned government was the operation." },
    { id: "gd_f2", isTruth: false, country: "gd", fallback: "The Point Salines airport runway was a Cuban-Soviet military project, as Reagan claimed in 1983.",
      whyFallback: "The runway was designed by British firm Plessey, contracted to Cuban construction workers, and explicitly built for tourism — to allow long-haul jets to reach the south coast. Several Western governments knew this from the start. After the invasion the US completed the same runway and renamed it Maurice Bishop International Airport in 2009. The geometry didn't change; the framing did." },
    { id: "gd_f3", isTruth: false, country: "gd", fallback: "The People's Revolutionary Government was a Soviet puppet imposed from outside.",
      whyFallback: "The NJM was a locally grown movement with roots in Black Power, Caribbean New Left, and the failures of Gairy's rule. Cuba and the USSR provided aid, training, and arms; the project itself was Grenadian. The \"puppet\" framing erases the domestic appeal that made the 1979 coup popular in the first place — and erases why Bishop's killing by his own party was such a shock." },
    { id: "gd_f4", isTruth: false, country: "gd", fallback: "Bishop and Coard simply disagreed on policy details.",
      whyFallback: "The dispute was over joint leadership and party discipline. Coard's faction within the Central Committee voted in October 1983 to demote Bishop to co-leader; Bishop refused and was placed under house arrest. The execution at Fort Rupert was the endpoint of a Leninist internal struggle, not a policy debate. The official Grenadian historical record still avoids naming what it was." },
    { id: "gd_f5", isTruth: false, country: "gd", fallback: "Sir Eric Gairy was a folkloric eccentric and otherwise harmless.",
      whyFallback: "The UFO speeches are remembered; the Mongoose Gang is quietly forgotten. Gairy used election rigging, paramilitary violence, and patronage networks for fifteen years before independence and five after. The eccentric framing is a kindness the historical record doesn't owe him." },
    { id: "gd_f6", isTruth: false, country: "gd", fallback: "Post-invasion Grenada is a clean democracy with normal alternation of power.",
      whyFallback: "Alternation does happen — NNP and NDC have traded office repeatedly. Keith Mitchell ran the country across two long stretches (1995-2008, 2013-2022) with recurring scandals around contracts, CIP, and party finance that never produced senior convictions. Dickon Mitchell's NDC won in 2022 partly on anti-corruption framing; the test is whether that framing survives one full term." },
    { id: "gd_f7", isTruth: false, country: "gd", fallback: "Small Caribbean islands like Grenada are bystanders in global geopolitics.",
      whyFallback: "Grenada was the first Cold War hot-war battlefield in the English-speaking Caribbean, the test case for the Reagan Doctrine, an early CBI-passport gateway to the US E-2 visa, and a recognition pawn in the Beijing-Taipei contest. The island has 110,000 people and a documented role in four separate global storylines. \"Bystander\" describes the press coverage, not the position." },

    // ============== Ghana — 8T + 7F ==============
    { id: "gh_t1", isTruth: true , country: "gh", fallback: "Kwame Nkrumah led Ghana to independence in 1957 — the first sub-Saharan African colony to break from Europe — and was overthrown in 1966 by a CIA-backed coup while abroad in Beijing.",
      whyFallback: "Declassified US documents confirm CIA involvement in the National Liberation Council coup. Nkrumah's pan-African project, non-aligned posture, and turn toward the Soviet bloc made him a Cold War target. He died in exile in Guinea, 1972, never returning home." },
    { id: "gh_t2", isTruth: true , country: "gh", fallback: "Jerry Rawlings staged two coups (1979 and 1981), executed three former heads of state and several judges by firing squad, then ruled for two decades and won two civilian elections.",
      whyFallback: "The June 4, 1979 \"house cleaning\" executed Generals Acheampong and Akuffo; the 1982 murder of three High Court judges was tied to PNDC officials. Rawlings transitioned the same regime into the NDC and won 1992 and 1996. The historical record and the official narrative coexist uneasily." },
    { id: "gh_t3", isTruth: true , country: "gh", fallback: "Galamsey — illegal small-scale gold mining — has turned major Ghanaian rivers brown and toxic, with Chinese-Ghanaian networks operating openly under the protection of local political patrons.",
      whyFallback: "The Pra, Ankobra, and Birim rivers carry mercury and cyanide loads that have forced Ghana Water Company shutdowns. Successive governments declare crackdowns; the operations resume within months. The protectors are named in reports that go nowhere." },
    { id: "gh_t4", isTruth: true , country: "gh", fallback: "Investigative journalist Anas Aremeyaw Anas's 2018 \"Number 12\" exposé caught more than 100 Ghanaian football officials and referees on hidden camera taking bribes — including the GFA president.",
      whyFallback: "Kwesi Nyantakyi resigned, FIFA banned him for life, the Ghana Football Association was dissolved. Anas works masked; a colleague, Ahmed Hussein-Suale, named on air by a sitting MP, was shot dead in 2019. The killing remains unsolved." },
    { id: "gh_t5", isTruth: true , country: "gh", fallback: "Ghana's 2017–2019 \"banking sector cleanup\" cost taxpayers more than 25 billion cedis after years of regulator-approved fraud, insider lending, and politically connected bank failures.",
      whyFallback: "Nine banks collapsed or were merged. UT Bank, Capital Bank, uniBank, Heritage — most had political ties across both NPP and NDC. Bank of Ghana supervision had been signing off on the same balance sheets for years. The cleanup punished depositors and shareholders; few executives saw prison." },
    { id: "gh_t6", isTruth: true , country: "gh", fallback: "President Nana Akufo-Addo announced a $400 million National Cathedral as his personal vow to God; construction stalled as a foundation pit in central Accra while consultants collected fees.",
      whyFallback: "Announced 2017, ground broken 2020. By 2022 the project had absorbed tens of millions in state funds with no building above ground. Sir David Adjaye, the lead architect, became enmeshed in unrelated controversies. The hole in Accra became the symbol of the second term." },
    { id: "gh_t7", isTruth: true , country: "gh", fallback: "Ghana entered its seventeenth IMF program in 2023 — more than any other African country — after the cedi lost roughly half its value and inflation passed 50 percent.",
      whyFallback: "$3 billion Extended Credit Facility, December 2022 default on most external debt. Bondholders took a haircut; domestic pensioners took a larger one. The recurring cycle: borrow during commodity highs, default in the lows, return to the Fund. \"Senchi consensus\" promised this was the last time. It was not." },
    { id: "gh_t8", isTruth: true , country: "gh", fallback: "The Asantehene and other traditional chiefs hold parallel authority over land, custom, and chieftaincy disputes that the formal state cannot fully override.",
      whyFallback: "The 1992 Constitution recognizes the National House of Chiefs. Most of the country's land is held under customary tenure, not state title. Politicians who lose the chiefs' favor lose constituencies; Otumfuo Osei Tutu II's mediations carry more weight than many ministerial directives." },
    { id: "gh_f1", isTruth: false, country: "gh", fallback: "Ghana is the model African democracy — clean elections, peaceful transitions, no serious corruption.",
      whyFallback: "Three peaceful NPP–NDC transitions are real, and rare. But Auditor-General reports flag billions in unrecovered state funds every year; the Special Prosecutor's office has secured almost no high-level convictions since its 2018 creation. \"Best in the region\" is a low bar quietly accepted as the ceiling." },
    { id: "gh_f2", isTruth: false, country: "gh", fallback: "The cocoa farmer is the backbone of the Ghanaian economy and is treated accordingly.",
      whyFallback: "COCOBOD sets the producer price; farmers receive a fraction of world market value. Chocolate manufacturing happens overseas; the value-add is captured elsewhere. Smuggling to Côte d'Ivoire is a price-signal the system refuses to read. Ghana grows the bean and exports the margin." },
    { id: "gh_f3", isTruth: false, country: "gh", fallback: "Galamsey is being shut down by the government.",
      whyFallback: "Operation Vanguard, Operation Halt, Galamstop — each rebrand follows the last. Ministers' relatives, sitting MPs, and party financiers appear in the same investigations that go nowhere. The rivers keep turning brown. The political class keeps mining the issue, not solving it." },
    { id: "gh_f4", isTruth: false, country: "gh", fallback: "The cedi's collapses are caused only by external shocks — Covid, Ukraine, oil prices.",
      whyFallback: "Every Ghanaian government inherits the last one's deficit and blames the world. Domestic borrowing, unfunded campaign promises (Free SHS without its tax base), and central bank financing of fiscal gaps are recurring patterns. External shocks expose the structure; they do not cause it." },
    { id: "gh_f5", isTruth: false, country: "gh", fallback: "Ghanaian journalists work freely — there is no press persecution here.",
      whyFallback: "Ahmed Hussein-Suale was murdered after being named in parliament. Journalists Manasseh Azure, Ablakwa critics, and the Multimedia stable face surveillance, intimidation, and SLAPP suits. The MP who outed Anas's colleague faced no consequences for the naming. \"Free press\" has a narrower definition than the rankings suggest." },
    { id: "gh_f6", isTruth: false, country: "gh", fallback: "Both major parties offer fundamentally different visions for Ghana.",
      whyFallback: "NPP and NDC differ on rhetoric, on regional base, on who holds the contracts. They agree on IMF dependence, on extractive concession economics, on protecting party patrons from prosecution, and on never auditing the previous administration to a conclusion. The alternation is real; the structural alignment is also real." },
    { id: "gh_f7", isTruth: false, country: "gh", fallback: "Ghana's oil wealth, discovered offshore in 2007, will lift the country out of dependency.",
      whyFallback: "Jubilee, TEN, Sankofa fields came online. The Petroleum Revenue Management Act was hailed as best-practice. A decade later, the Heritage Fund is small, the Stabilisation Fund gets raided, and Ghana defaulted on its debt anyway. The oil came; the dependency stayed." },

    // ============== The Gambia — 8T + 7F ==============
    { id: "gm_t1", isTruth: true , country: "gm", fallback: "Yahya Jammeh seized power in a bloodless 1994 coup and ruled The Gambia for roughly 22 years through the APRC, until he lost the 2016 election and finally fled into exile in January 2017.",
      whyFallback: "Lieutenant Jammeh was 29 when he overthrew Sir Dawda Jawara (in office since 1965). What began as a young officers' takeover hardened into one of West Africa's most personalised dictatorships. The exit was not a reform — it took an ECOWAS military column to make it happen." },
    { id: "gm_t2", isTruth: true , country: "gm", fallback: "Jammeh's \"Junglers\" — a death squad drawn from his presidential bodyguard — carried out killings, disappearances, and torture on his direct orders for over two decades.",
      whyFallback: "TRRC testimony, 2019–2021: named operations, named victims, named commanders. The November 2005 killing of NIA director Daba Marenah and four co-detainees was one of dozens. The Junglers were trained as paramilitary; their chain of command ran to the State House." },
    { id: "gm_t3", isTruth: true , country: "gm", fallback: "In 2009 Jammeh ordered a nationwide \"witch hunt\" — hundreds of villagers were rounded up by self-styled witch-doctors and security forces and force-fed hallucinogenic potions; dozens died.",
      whyFallback: "Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch documented the campaign in real time. Villages in Foni and elsewhere were targeted by busloads of marabouts under armed escort. Survivors described kidney failure, paralysis, and the deaths of neighbours who simply disappeared after drinking." },
    { id: "gm_t4", isTruth: true , country: "gm", fallback: "Jammeh personally claimed to \"cure\" HIV/AIDS with a herbal mixture and Quranic recitations, and ordered patients off their antiretroviral drugs to receive his treatment.",
      whyFallback: "The programme began in 2007 and ran for years on state television. The UN's resident representative was expelled for objecting. Patients who stopped ARVs deteriorated and died on schedule; the \"cure\" was a public health catastrophe wrapped in presidential vanity." },
    { id: "gm_t5", isTruth: true , country: "gm", fallback: "Adama Barrow's UDP-led coalition defeated Jammeh in the December 2016 election; Jammeh first conceded on live radio, then reversed himself a week later and refused to step down.",
      whyFallback: "The Independent Electoral Commission published results from each polling station. The concession call became famous before it became inconvenient. ECOWAS gave Jammeh a deadline; when it passed, Senegalese troops crossed the border on January 19, 2017, and he flew to Equatorial Guinea." },
    { id: "gm_t6", isTruth: true , country: "gm", fallback: "The Truth, Reconciliation and Reparations Commission (2018–2021) heard around 390 witnesses across 13 thematic hearings and recommended prosecution of Jammeh and dozens of his associates.",
      whyFallback: "The TRRC's final report ran to thousands of pages and 393 recommendations. The government's 2022 White Paper formally accepted most of them. As of writing, Jammeh remains in Malabo and the special prosecutor's tribunal is still being assembled — accepted on paper, deferred in time." },
    { id: "gm_t7", isTruth: true , country: "gm", fallback: "The 1995 \"coup plot\" against Jammeh — and several subsequent alleged plots — were used to justify arrests, torture, and executions of soldiers and civilians, many of whom denied any involvement.",
      whyFallback: "Sadibou Hydara died in detention; Sana Sabally was tortured. The pattern repeated through 2006, 2013, and 2014: a \"plot\" announced on state radio, mass arrests, then a long silence in the cells of Mile 2 prison. TRRC testimony reconstructed the practice in detail." },
    { id: "gm_t8", isTruth: true , country: "gm", fallback: "In 2024 Gambian lawmakers came within one vote of repealing the 2015 Anti-FGM Act — which would have made The Gambia the first country in the world to roll back a ban on female genital mutilation.",
      whyFallback: "Supreme Islamic Council backing, parliamentary momentum, and presidential ambiguity nearly produced the reversal. The bill was rejected in July 2024 only after sustained domestic and international pressure. The ban survived; the political coalition pushing to undo it did not dissolve." },
    { id: "gm_f1", isTruth: false, country: "gm", fallback: "Jammeh's 22-year rule was a stable, mildly authoritarian phase that simply ended at the ballot box.",
      whyFallback: "The TRRC documented systematic killings, sexual violence by the president himself, forced disappearances, and a death squad reporting to the State House. \"Mildly authoritarian\" is the diplomatic register; the evidentiary record is industrial-scale abuse." },
    { id: "gm_f2", isTruth: false, country: "gm", fallback: "ECOWAS troops left Gambian soil shortly after Jammeh's 2017 departure.",
      whyFallback: "ECOMIG — the ECOWAS Mission in The Gambia — has remained deployed in rotating mandates ever since, primarily Senegalese and Nigerian forces. The transitional security guarantee became permanent. Sovereignty on the flag; security on subscription." },
    { id: "gm_f3", isTruth: false, country: "gm", fallback: "Adama Barrow honoured his pledge to serve a single three-year transitional term.",
      whyFallback: "The \"Three Years Jotna\" movement formed in 2019 to hold him to that promise; it was met with police violence and a ban. Barrow founded his own party (NPP), broke with the UDP coalition that brought him to power, and won a full term in 2021. The transition consumed the transitional promise." },
    { id: "gm_f4", isTruth: false, country: "gm", fallback: "The Gambia's \"Smiling Coast\" tourism brand reflects a clean, rights-respecting state.",
      whyFallback: "The same coastline that markets beach resorts to European charter flights hosted Jammeh's offshore bank accounts, his torture sites, and a documented child-sex-tourism problem that successive governments have under-policed. The smile is in the brochure; the audit is elsewhere." },
    { id: "gm_f5", isTruth: false, country: "gm", fallback: "The Gambia's peanut economy made it independent of foreign patrons.",
      whyFallback: "Groundnuts were a colonial monoculture that locked the country into price-takers' status from the 1830s onward. Remittances from Gambians abroad now exceed export earnings. \"Independent\" in 1965; structurally dependent on diaspora and donor flows ever since." },
    { id: "gm_f6", isTruth: false, country: "gm", fallback: "The Senegambia Confederation (1982–1989) was a natural merger of two sister states.",
      whyFallback: "It was a defensive arrangement after a 1981 attempted coup against Jawara — Senegalese troops intervened, and the price was an integration project Banjul never really wanted. The smaller state read it as absorption; the confederation dissolved as soon as the immediate threat faded." },
    { id: "gm_f7", isTruth: false, country: "gm", fallback: "Imam Baba Leigh and other clerics who spoke against Jammeh did so freely.",
      whyFallback: "Imam Baba Leigh was detained and tortured in 2012 for denouncing the executions of nine death-row prisoners. Imam Touba Sila and others were jailed, exiled, or surveilled for sermons that crossed presidential red lines. Religious authority was tolerated only when it endorsed the State House." },

    // ============== Guinea — 8T + 7F ==============
    { id: "gn_t1", isTruth: true , country: "gn", fallback: "On September 28, 2009, Guinean military opened fire on a peaceful opposition rally at the Conakry stadium — at least 150 killed, scores of women publicly raped, bodies disappeared.",
      whyFallback: "Junta leader Moussa \"Dadis\" Camara's presidential guard executed the massacre. UN inquiry called it a crime against humanity. Trial finally began in 2022, thirteen years later — the bodies had been concealed in mass graves while the men responsible held power." },
    { id: "gn_t2", isTruth: true , country: "gn", fallback: "Camp Boiro, Sékou Touré's prison-and-torture complex near Conakry, killed thousands between the 1960s and 1984 — purges driven by the regime's doctrine of the \"permanent plot\".",
      whyFallback: "Detainees were interrogated under torture and forced to confess to imaginary conspiracies. Former ministers, generals, ambassadors. Estimates range 5,000 to 50,000 dead. The camp closed only when Touré died in 1984." },
    { id: "gn_t3", isTruth: true , country: "gn", fallback: "Guinea sits on roughly a quarter of the world's known bauxite reserves and the world's largest untapped iron ore deposit at Simandou — yet remains among the poorest countries on Earth.",
      whyFallback: "Rio Tinto, Vale, Chinalco, and a rotating cast of intermediaries have fought over Simandou for two decades. The rock is rich, the Guinean population is not. The resource curse described as a textbook case." },
    { id: "gn_t4", isTruth: true , country: "gn", fallback: "The BSGR-Simandou affair — Beny Steinmetz's group paid bribes to obtain mining rights worth billions — was settled in 2023 for around $700 million, with no admission of liability.",
      whyFallback: "Mamadie Touré (widow of former president Lansana Conté) testified to receiving cash and diamonds. Steinmetz convicted in Switzerland 2021, conviction later reversed on appeal. The mineral rights changed hands several times while Guineans saw none of the value." },
    { id: "gn_t5", isTruth: true , country: "gn", fallback: "Alpha Condé — Guinea's first democratically elected president — pushed through a 2020 constitutional referendum that reset his term limits, then won a contested third term months later.",
      whyFallback: "Protests against the constitutional change were met with live fire; dozens killed in 2019-2020. The \"new constitution\" framing reset the clock to zero. Condé was overthrown by Colonel Doumbouya in September 2021, ending the experiment." },
    { id: "gn_t6", isTruth: true , country: "gn", fallback: "Colonel Mamady Doumbouya — a former French Foreign Legion soldier commanding Guinea's Special Forces — seized power on September 5, 2021 and has ruled by junta ever since.",
      whyFallback: "The CNRD transition was promised to end in elections \"soon\". Years later the junta still rules; the 2022 referendum boycotts and political-party bans tell the timeline. Doumbouya was trained by the very actor — France — that Sékou Touré broke with in 1958." },
    { id: "gn_t7", isTruth: true , country: "gn", fallback: "Guinea was the only French African colony to vote \"No\" to de Gaulle's 1958 community referendum — and France retaliated by stripping every piece of removable infrastructure on its way out.",
      whyFallback: "Phones ripped from walls, files burned, medicines destroyed, livestock killed. Sékou Touré's \"we prefer poverty in freedom to wealth in slavery\" was answered with engineered poverty. The lesson was not lost on neighboring colonies considering the same vote." },
    { id: "gn_t8", isTruth: true , country: "gn", fallback: "In the 1990s, Guinea served as a rear base for Charles Taylor's rivals in Liberia and Sierra Leone — and absorbed waves of refugees and cross-border raids from both wars.",
      whyFallback: "Lansana Conté's government backed LURD against Taylor; the Sierra Leone RUF retaliated with incursions into Guinea's forest region. Several hundred thousand refugees, villages burned. Guinea was a regional player in West Africa's wars, not a spectator." },
    { id: "gn_f1", isTruth: false, country: "gn", fallback: "Guinea's independence under Sékou Touré was a clean break with colonial domination.",
      whyFallback: "The break with France was real. The internal regime that followed — one-party PDG rule, Camp Boiro, the \"permanent plot\" purges, forced exile of around a million Guineans — replaced one form of unfreedom with another. Independence from France was not independence for Guineans." },
    { id: "gn_f2", isTruth: false, country: "gn", fallback: "Coups in Guinea have always been driven by domestic political grievance alone.",
      whyFallback: "Conté 1984, Camara 2008, Doumbouya 2021 — each transition involved military commanders with foreign training, foreign mineral interests watching closely, and timing that lined up with international diplomatic conditions. \"Domestic only\" leaves out half the picture." },
    { id: "gn_f3", isTruth: false, country: "gn", fallback: "Guinea's bauxite riches translate into national wealth.",
      whyFallback: "The mineral leaves the country as ore; the refining, smelting, and value-added margin happen elsewhere. Royalty rates renegotiated repeatedly downward. Roads from mine to port are excellent; roads inland are not." },
    { id: "gn_f4", isTruth: false, country: "gn", fallback: "The 2009 Conakry stadium massacre was an isolated incident by rogue soldiers.",
      whyFallback: "The UN inquiry traced the violence up the chain to junta leadership. Camara himself was shot months later by his own aide, fled to Burkina Faso then Morocco, and only returned for trial in 2022. \"Rogue\" was the cover story." },
    { id: "gn_f5", isTruth: false, country: "gn", fallback: "Doumbouya's 2021 coup was a popular liberation from Condé's third-term grab.",
      whyFallback: "There were celebrations in Conakry; there were also closed-out parties, jailed activists, banned protests, and a transition timeline that keeps slipping. \"Liberation\" tested over years, not over hours. The Special Forces did not arrive to hand power back." },
    { id: "gn_f6", isTruth: false, country: "gn", fallback: "The international community pressed Guinea hard for democratic transition.",
      whyFallback: "ECOWAS, the EU, the US issued statements and floated sanctions. Mining contracts continued. Bauxite shipments continued. Strategic pressure scaled with mineral interests, not with human-rights records." },
    { id: "gn_f7", isTruth: false, country: "gn", fallback: "Guinea's Ebola outbreak (2014-16) was contained because the world rallied to help.",
      whyFallback: "The epidemic began in Guinea's forest region in December 2013 — and the international response arrived months late, after the virus had crossed into Liberia and Sierra Leone. More than 2,500 Guineans died. The lesson learned was about delay, not about solidarity." },

    // ============== Equatorial Guinea — 8T + 7F ==============
    { id: "gq_t1", isTruth: true , country: "gq", fallback: "Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo has ruled Equatorial Guinea since 1979 — the world's longest-serving current non-monarch head of state.",
      whyFallback: "Took power in an August 1979 coup against his uncle, Francisco Macías Nguema. Over 45 years in office under the PDGE (Democratic Party of Equatorial Guinea). Re-elected with officially reported margins exceeding 94% every cycle." },
    { id: "gq_t2", isTruth: true , country: "gq", fallback: "Francisco Macías Nguema, the country's first president after Spanish independence in 1968, killed or exiled roughly a third of the population between 1968 and 1979.",
      whyFallback: "Declared president for life in 1972. Catholic Church suppressed, education shuttered, intellectuals murdered. Black Beach prison became the regime's signature. The killing only stopped when his own nephew — the current president — overthrew him." },
    { id: "gq_t3", isTruth: true , country: "gq", fallback: "Teodoro Nguema Obiang Mangue — \"Teodorín\", the president's son — was appointed Vice President in 2016 and is the heir apparent.",
      whyFallback: "From Minister of Agriculture to VP via family decree. The constitutional structure was adjusted to create the second vice-presidency for him. Succession by bloodline, formally framed as appointment." },
    { id: "gq_t4", isTruth: true , country: "gq", fallback: "A French court convicted Teodorín in 2017 of laundering biens mal acquis (ill-gotten gains) and ordered seizure of his €150 million Avenue Foch mansion in Paris.",
      whyFallback: "Conviction confirmed by France's highest court in 2021. €30 million in additional assets seized. The mansion, the supercars, the Yves Saint Laurent collection — all bought on a public-servant salary of a few thousand a month." },
    { id: "gq_t5", isTruth: true , country: "gq", fallback: "The US Department of Justice forced Teodorín to forfeit roughly $30 million in 2014 — a Malibu mansion, a Ferrari, and Michael Jackson memorabilia bought with looted state money.",
      whyFallback: "DOJ Kleptocracy Asset Recovery Initiative case. The crystal-encrusted glove alone cost $275,000. A Gulfstream jet and seven Rolls-Royces were named in associated filings. The settlement did not require admission of guilt." },
    { id: "gq_t6", isTruth: true , country: "gq", fallback: "A 2004 US Senate report exposed Riggs Bank in Washington holding roughly $700 million in Equatorial Guinea oil-revenue accounts controlled personally by the Obiang family.",
      whyFallback: "Riggs collapsed under the scandal and was absorbed by PNC. The accounts paid Obiang's children's tuition and shopping in cash. The oil majors paying in — ExxonMobil, Marathon, Hess — kept operating in-country with no interruption." },
    { id: "gq_t7", isTruth: true , country: "gq", fallback: "Oil makes up roughly 85% of Equatorial Guinea's GDP, yet most of its 1.5 million people live in poverty while the country posts one of Africa's highest per-capita incomes on paper.",
      whyFallback: "Marathon Oil's Punta Europa LNG complex, ExxonMobil's Zafiro field — billions extracted since the mid-1990s. UN Human Development Index ranks the country well below where its oil-per-head numbers would predict. Enclave economy, ruler's enclave wealth." },
    { id: "gq_t8", isTruth: true , country: "gq", fallback: "In late 2024, leaked sex tapes of Baltasar Engonga — head of the National Financial Investigation Agency — exposed roughly 400 videos with wives of senior officials, judges, and ministers.",
      whyFallback: "The \"Bello scandal\" detonated the regime's internal hierarchy on social media. Engonga's office was the one supposed to be investigating money laundering. The cover-up moved quickly; the names did not all stay private." },
    { id: "gq_f1", isTruth: false, country: "gq", fallback: "Equatorial Guinea is a young democracy still developing its institutions.",
      whyFallback: "One family — the Nguema clan from Mongomo — has held power continuously since 1968. The 1979 coup swapped uncle for nephew within the same lineage. There is no opposition party with meaningful access to media, courts, or ballots." },
    { id: "gq_f2", isTruth: false, country: "gq", fallback: "Oil revenues are being invested in the country's future through public infrastructure.",
      whyFallback: "Sipopo, Malabo II, the showcase resort districts — built for African Union summits, then mothballed. Meanwhile, large parts of Bata and the rural interior lack reliable water and electricity. The infrastructure exists to be photographed, not used." },
    { id: "gq_f3", isTruth: false, country: "gq", fallback: "Western oil companies operating in Equatorial Guinea uphold strict anti-corruption standards.",
      whyFallback: "ExxonMobil, Marathon, Hess, Total all paid \"signing bonuses\" and rents directly into Riggs accounts controlled by the Obiangs. The US Senate documented it. The companies kept their concessions. \"Standards\" applies to PR, not to the wire transfers." },
    { id: "gq_f4", isTruth: false, country: "gq", fallback: "The 2017 coup attempt against Obiang was an isolated security incident with no broader meaning.",
      whyFallback: "Cyril Ndong and a handful of others arrested with $2 million in cash; reports of Chadian and Central African mercenary involvement. Every \"isolated incident\" arrives in a country where the same family has ruled for 56 years. Pattern, not anomaly." },
    { id: "gq_f5", isTruth: false, country: "gq", fallback: "Teodorín earned his fortune through legitimate business activity.",
      whyFallback: "Convicted in France for biens mal acquis. Settled with the US DOJ over forfeitures totaling $30 million. The official salary as a minister could not buy one wing of the Avenue Foch mansion. Two Western judiciaries documented the same finding independently." },
    { id: "gq_f6", isTruth: false, country: "gq", fallback: "Catholic Church and international community held Macías Nguema accountable in real time during the 1970s genocide.",
      whyFallback: "The Church was suppressed in-country and quiet abroad. Spain, the former colonial power, looked away. The UN response was minimal. Recognition of the killings as genocide came decades after the bodies were buried — and only partially." },
    { id: "gq_f7", isTruth: false, country: "gq", fallback: "Equatorial Guinea's elections reflect the will of its citizens.",
      whyFallback: "Obiang's reported vote shares — 95%, 97%, 99% — are not numbers any free electorate produces. Opposition figures are jailed, exiled, or disappeared before polling day. Observers from the AU and ECOWAS file reports; nothing in the result changes." },

    // ============== Guatemala — 8T + 7F ==============
    { id: "gt_t1", isTruth: true , country: "gt", fallback: "In 1954 the CIA's Operation PBSUCCESS overthrew democratically elected President Jacobo Árbenz to protect the United Fruit Company's banana plantations.",
      whyFallback: "Árbenz's land reform threatened uncultivated United Fruit estates. The Dulles brothers — Allen at CIA, John Foster at State — both had ties to United Fruit. The phrase \"banana republic\" was coined for this exact arrangement." },
    { id: "gt_t2", isTruth: true , country: "gt", fallback: "The Guatemalan Civil War (1960–1996) killed roughly 200,000 people, with around 80% of the victims indigenous Maya and about 45,000 forcibly disappeared.",
      whyFallback: "UN-backed Commission for Historical Clarification (CEH, 1999) classified the army's campaigns as \"acts of genocide\". The figures are conservative; many remote villages were never fully counted." },
    { id: "gt_t3", isTruth: true , country: "gt", fallback: "General Efraín Ríos Montt was convicted of genocide in 2013 and sentenced to 80 years — the verdict was overturned 10 days later. He died in 2018 still awaiting retrial.",
      whyFallback: "First time a former head of state was convicted of genocide by his own country's courts. The Constitutional Court annulled the ruling on procedural grounds after intense pressure from the business sector (CACIF) and former officers. Justice deferred until the defendant outlived it." },
    { id: "gt_t4", isTruth: true , country: "gt", fallback: "The Spanish embassy massacre of 1980 killed about 37 people — mostly indigenous Maya protestors — when security forces firebombed the embassy they had taken refuge in.",
      whyFallback: "Under General Lucas García. Spain broke diplomatic relations. Only one survivor — Ambassador Máximo Cajal — and one of the protestors, Vicente Menchú, father of Nobel laureate Rigoberta Menchú, died inside. Conviction of former police chief Pedro García Arredondo came 35 years later." },
    { id: "gt_t5", isTruth: true , country: "gt", fallback: "Bishop Juan Gerardi was beaten to death in his garage two days after publishing the REMHI \"Guatemala: Never Again\" report in 1998, which named the army as responsible for most civil-war atrocities.",
      whyFallback: "Recuperación de la Memoria Histórica — the Church's parallel truth project. Three military officers and a priest convicted in 2001; appeals dragged on for years. Killing the bishop two days after the report was the message, not a coincidence." },
    { id: "gt_t6", isTruth: true , country: "gt", fallback: "The Kaibiles — Guatemala's elite counterinsurgency unit trained partly by the US — carried out massacres including Dos Erres (1982), where over 200 villagers, many children, were killed by hand.",
      whyFallback: "Trainees were reportedly required to bite the heads off live chickens and raise puppies before killing them. Several Kaibiles later resurfaced as enforcers for Mexican cartels, including Los Zetas. The training graduated; the war ended on paper only." },
    { id: "gt_t7", isTruth: true , country: "gt", fallback: "The UN-backed CICIG anti-impunity commission (2007–2019) brought down a sitting president — and was then expelled by the next one when it began investigating him.",
      whyFallback: "CICIG + Public Ministry exposed Otto Pérez Molina's \"La Línea\" customs fraud ring in 2015 (he resigned, was jailed in 2022). When CICIG turned to Jimmy Morales's family and campaign financing, Morales refused to renew its mandate. The reform window closed by design." },
    { id: "gt_t8", isTruth: true , country: "gt", fallback: "Attorney General Consuelo Porras attempted to overturn the 2023 election after anti-corruption candidate Bernardo Arévalo of the Semilla party won — raids on the electoral tribunal, attempts to suspend the party, criminal cases against election officials.",
      whyFallback: "Porras is sanctioned by the US and EU as a corruption enabler. The \"Pacto de Corruptos\" — the informal alliance of business, military, and political elites — treated Arévalo's win as an emergency. International pressure forced his eventual inauguration in January 2024; the obstruction continues from inside the state." },
    { id: "gt_f1", isTruth: false, country: "gt", fallback: "The 1954 coup was a Guatemalan affair — local anti-communists overthrowing a leftist government.",
      whyFallback: "Declassified CIA documents — PBSUCCESS, PBHISTORY — show the agency planned, financed, armed, and directed the operation. Carlos Castillo Armas was selected, trained, and installed by Washington. The local face was costume; the script was foreign." },
    { id: "gt_f2", isTruth: false, country: "gt", fallback: "Guatemala's military rulers fought communism to protect the country.",
      whyFallback: "Lucas García, Ríos Montt, Mejía Víctores — the people killed were overwhelmingly unarmed indigenous farmers, catechists, students, and union organizers, not guerrillas. CEH found state forces responsible for 93% of documented violations. \"Anti-communism\" was the export label." },
    { id: "gt_f3", isTruth: false, country: "gt", fallback: "The 1996 Peace Accords ended the war and the impunity that came with it.",
      whyFallback: "The war ended; the structures didn't. Military officers responsible for massacres entered politics, business, and organized crime. The amnesty law shielded most perpetrators. Justice arrived case by case, decades late, and was reversed when it landed too close to power." },
    { id: "gt_f4", isTruth: false, country: "gt", fallback: "Guatemala recognizes and protects its indigenous Maya majority.",
      whyFallback: "22+ Mayan languages plus Xinka and Garífuna — Spanish remains the sole official language for most state functions. Maya communities resisting mining and hydroelectric projects face criminalization, killings of leaders, and \"states of siege\". The Constitution names multiculturalism; the budget doesn't." },
    { id: "gt_f5", isTruth: false, country: "gt", fallback: "Foreign mining companies in Guatemala operate with full community consent.",
      whyFallback: "ILO Convention 169 requires Free, Prior and Informed Consent for indigenous lands — routinely bypassed. Mayaniquel (Russian-linked through the Solway Group) and others have faced years of Maya Q'eqchi' protests, killings of community leaders, and US Treasury sanctions on Solway in 2022 for bribery." },
    { id: "gt_f6", isTruth: false, country: "gt", fallback: "Otto Pérez Molina's 2015 fall meant Guatemala turned the corner on corruption.",
      whyFallback: "He was replaced by Jimmy Morales — a TV comedian who ran as an outsider and proceeded to expel the very commission that had brought down his predecessor. The corner kept turning back. The Pacto de Corruptos restructured around the new map." },
    { id: "gt_f7", isTruth: false, country: "gt", fallback: "The US has spent the post-Cold-War decades helping Guatemala build democratic institutions.",
      whyFallback: "The same Washington that backed Ríos Montt — Reagan called him a man of \"great personal integrity\" while the highland massacres were underway — has alternated between sanctioning corrupt officials and propping up the security forces that produce them. The accounts have never been settled, only updated." },

    // ============== Guinea-Bissau — 8T + 7F ==============
    { id: "gw_t1", isTruth: true , country: "gw", fallback: "Amílcar Cabral — PAIGC founder and the intellectual architect of Guinea-Bissau's liberation — was assassinated in Conakry on January 20, 1973, months before independence he had spent his life fighting for.",
      whyFallback: "Killed by Portuguese-trained agents from within PAIGC's own ranks, the operation widely understood as a PIDE/Lisbon-directed decapitation. Cabral's writings on culture and revolution outlived the bullet; Guinea-Bissau declared independence September 24, 1973 without him." },
    { id: "gw_t2", isTruth: true , country: "gw", fallback: "Between 2005 and 2013, Guinea-Bissau was openly described in UN and US reports as Africa's first \"narco-state\" — Latin American cocaine transiting via the Bijagós archipelago straight to Europe.",
      whyFallback: "Uninhabited islands with hidden coves, an air force with no radar, a navy with no fuel. Tonnes of cocaine landed by Colombian and Venezuelan crews. The military hierarchy was not bypassed by the traffic — it was the infrastructure." },
    { id: "gw_t3", isTruth: true , country: "gw", fallback: "In April 2013, US DEA agents arrested navy chief Rear Admiral Bubo Na Tchuto in a sting operation in international waters off West Africa, posing as Colombian buyers.",
      whyFallback: "Months later, army chief of staff General Antonio Indjai was indicted by the US on narco-terrorism conspiracy charges — accused of agreeing to store cocaine and FARC-linked weapons. Indjai never faced trial; Guinea-Bissau refused extradition." },
    { id: "gw_t4", isTruth: true , country: "gw", fallback: "President João Bernardo \"Nino\" Vieira was hacked to death by soldiers in his presidential residence on March 2, 2009 — hours after a bomb killed armed forces chief Tagme Na Waie.",
      whyFallback: "The two men had been rivals for decades; each death was framed as revenge for the other. No senior officer was ever convicted. Vieira had ruled by coup since 1980, lost an election, returned in 2005 — the bullet decided the term limit the ballot never did." },
    { id: "gw_t5", isTruth: true , country: "gw", fallback: "Guinea-Bissau has had at least four successful coups and a dozen attempted ones since independence — including the April 2012 coup that interrupted a presidential runoff and the alleged February 2022 attack on the government palace.",
      whyFallback: "1980 Vieira, 1998-99 civil war, 2003 Yalá ousted, 2012 Gomes Júnior runoff blocked, 2022 \"failed coup\" Embaló survived. Each transition arrived through the barracks before it arrived through the ballot. The pattern is the system." },
    { id: "gw_t6", isTruth: true , country: "gw", fallback: "Roughly two-thirds of Guinea-Bissau's people live below the poverty line, and cashew nuts — a single cash crop — account for around 90% of exports.",
      whyFallback: "Cashew prices set in Vietnam and India; farmers in Bafatá and Gabú take whatever the season brings. Almost no domestic processing; the value-added margin is captured abroad. One bad harvest and the national budget cracks." },
    { id: "gw_t7", isTruth: true , country: "gw", fallback: "The 1998-99 civil war began as a feud between President Vieira and armed forces chief Ansumane Mané over weapons trafficking allegations to Senegal's Casamance rebels — and ended with foreign troops fighting on Bissau's streets.",
      whyFallback: "Senegal and Guinea-Conakry sent troops to defend Vieira; ECOMOG intervened; thousands died, hundreds of thousands displaced, the capital wrecked. Mané won, briefly. Then he too was killed in 2000. The trafficking allegation that started it was never resolved." },
    { id: "gw_t8", isTruth: true , country: "gw", fallback: "Guinea-Bissau uses the CFA franc — pegged first to the French franc, now to the euro, with monetary policy set in Dakar and Paris rather than Bissau.",
      whyFallback: "Joined the West African CFA zone in 1997. The peg buys nominal stability; the price is that Bissau cannot devalue, cannot print, cannot set rates. Sovereignty over the currency belongs to the BCEAO and ultimately to the French Treasury's historical guarantee." },
    { id: "gw_f1", isTruth: false, country: "gw", fallback: "Amílcar Cabral was killed by internal PAIGC dissidents in a purely African political dispute.",
      whyFallback: "The trigger-pullers were PAIGC; the planning trail ran back to Portuguese colonial intelligence (PIDE/DGS) in Lisbon. Documents declassified since point to coordination, not coincidence. \"Internal feud\" was the cover story most convenient for the colonial power that paid for it." },
    { id: "gw_f2", isTruth: false, country: "gw", fallback: "The cocaine that passed through Guinea-Bissau in the 2000s did so without the state's knowledge.",
      whyFallback: "Planes landed on military airstrips. Boats unloaded under navy escort. Senior officers named in DEA indictments. The state did not fail to notice the cocaine — the state moved it. \"Without the state's knowledge\" is what failed states are never accused of." },
    { id: "gw_f3", isTruth: false, country: "gw", fallback: "Cashew dependence is a natural feature of Guinea-Bissau's climate and soil.",
      whyFallback: "Cashew monoculture was imposed by colonial-era and post-independence agricultural policy, not by geography. Rice, fish, peanuts, palm oil all grow there. The country exports raw nuts and imports the processed kernels back. That is structure, not nature." },
    { id: "gw_f4", isTruth: false, country: "gw", fallback: "Guinea-Bissau's military intervenes in politics only when civilian government collapses.",
      whyFallback: "The army has been the senior partner in every transition since 1980. Civilian presidents serve at the army's tolerance. The 2012 coup blocked a runoff that polling showed the army's preferred candidate would lose. Intervention is the rule, not the exception." },
    { id: "gw_f5", isTruth: false, country: "gw", fallback: "The split of PAIGC into PAIGC and MADEM-G15 was a healthy sign of democratic maturation.",
      whyFallback: "MADEM (Movement for Democratic Alternation) broke away in 2018 around personalities and patronage networks, not policy. Both descend from the same liberation-movement DNA; both have been led by men with military-era loyalties. \"Two-party democracy\" requires more than one party with two names." },
    { id: "gw_f6", isTruth: false, country: "gw", fallback: "Portugal made amends for colonial atrocities in Guinea-Bissau after the 1974 Carnation Revolution.",
      whyFallback: "Lisbon recognized independence; reparations, archival access, and acknowledgment of specific massacres in the liberation war (1963-74) remain partial at best. The PAIGC fighters Portugal recruited as auxiliaries were largely abandoned in 1974; thousands were executed after independence. The aftermath cleaned up neither side's record." },
    { id: "gw_f7", isTruth: false, country: "gw", fallback: "The international community has worked seriously to break Guinea-Bissau's narco-state grip.",
      whyFallback: "DEA stings caught two senior officers in 2013; the cocaine routes shifted, did not close. EU policing missions came and went. Major seizures — like the 1.8-tonne haul in March 2019 — produced headlines, not convictions. The traffic continues because the demand continues; West Africa is the corridor, not the cause." },

    // ============== Guyana — 8T + 7F ==============
    { id: "gy_t1", isTruth: true , country: "gy", fallback: "ExxonMobil's 2015 Liza-1 discovery in the Stabroek Block turned Guyana — population under 800,000 — into one of the fastest-growing petrostates on Earth, with more than 11 billion barrels of recoverable oil booked.",
      whyFallback: "Exxon operates with Hess and CNOOC on terms negotiated under the APNU-AFC government in 2016. First oil flowed in December 2019. The contract's 2% royalty and 50/50 profit-split after cost-recovery are widely held to be among the most operator-friendly in the modern industry. Renegotiation has been ruled out by every government that has held the file." },
    { id: "gy_t2", isTruth: true , country: "gy", fallback: "In 2018 it emerged that ExxonMobil had paid the Granger government a $US 18 million signing bonus — kept off-budget in a Bank of Guyana account — that ministers initially denied existed.",
      whyFallback: "The payment, made in 2016, surfaced in January 2018 after persistent press questioning. The original public denials by ministers were not retracted so much as overtaken by the document. The episode set the template: the resource is real, the disclosure regime around it is selective." },
    { id: "gy_t3", isTruth: true , country: "gy", fallback: "The March 2020 general election took five months to resolve — with the incumbent APNU-AFC coalition attempting to declare itself the winner over rejected tallies before international observers and a CCJ ruling forced a recount.",
      whyFallback: "OAS, Commonwealth, EU, and Carter Center observers refused to validate the initial Region Four declaration. The Caribbean Court of Justice ultimately ordered the recount. Irfaan Ali and the PPP/C were inaugurated on August 2, 2020. The episode is officially closed; the GECOM officials charged with electoral fraud remain in slow-moving proceedings." },
    { id: "gy_t4", isTruth: true , country: "gy", fallback: "Venezuela formally claims roughly two-thirds of Guyana — the Essequibo region — and held a December 2023 referendum announcing 99% support for annexation, after troop movements along the border.",
      whyFallback: "The dispute predates oil — the 1899 Paris arbitration set the line Venezuela now rejects — but Stabroek changed the temperature. The case is before the International Court of Justice, which Caracas refuses to recognize. Brazilian military reinforcement along its northern border and a US carrier visit followed the referendum." },
    { id: "gy_t5", isTruth: true , country: "gy", fallback: "Forbes Burnham — Guyana's PNC leader from 1964 to 1985 — granted the American cult leader Jim Jones nearly 4,000 acres in the interior, where the November 1978 Jonestown massacre killed 918 people.",
      whyFallback: "Jones cultivated Burnham and his deputy through cash, political alliance, and shared anti-imperialist rhetoric. The Peoples Temple was given near-total autonomy in a remote zone Georgetown could not police. Most of the dead were American citizens; the killings of US Congressman Leo Ryan and the journalists with him triggered the mass deaths. Guyana's role as host has never been fully reckoned with domestically." },
    { id: "gy_t6", isTruth: true , country: "gy", fallback: "Walter Rodney — the Marxist historian who wrote \"How Europe Underdeveloped Africa\" — was killed in Georgetown in June 1980 by a bomb hidden in a walkie-talkie supplied by a sergeant in the Guyana Defence Force.",
      whyFallback: "Rodney led the Working People's Alliance against the Burnham government. The 2014 Commission of Inquiry concluded the state was responsible for his assassination. The PNC, still a major party, rejected the findings. No one has been prosecuted." },
    { id: "gy_t7", isTruth: true , country: "gy", fallback: "Roger Khan — a businessman who openly armed and ran a \"Phantom Squad\" death squad in the 2000s — boasted of helping the PPP government fight crime before being arrested in Suriname, deported to the US, and convicted on drug trafficking charges in 2009.",
      whyFallback: "Khan placed full-page newspaper ads claiming credit for security work. The Phantom Squad is credibly linked to dozens of extrajudicial killings of suspected criminals and political enemies during the Jagdeo years. The US case prosecuted the drug operation. The Guyanese state has never prosecuted the killings." },
    { id: "gy_t8", isTruth: true , country: "gy", fallback: "Guyanese politics has run for sixty years on an Indo-Guyanese versus Afro-Guyanese ethnic-electoral split — the PPP drawing on the roughly 40% Indo-Guyanese base, the PNC on the roughly 30% Afro-Guyanese base — with most elections decided by which side mobilizes harder.",
      whyFallback: "The 1960s split between Cheddi Jagan and Forbes Burnham hardened the lines that British administrators had already exploited. \"Apan jaat\" — vote your race — is the open-secret instruction of every election cycle. Coalition attempts (the AFC, ANUG, third forces) repeatedly collapse back into the binary. The structure outlasts the personalities." },
    { id: "gy_f1", isTruth: false, country: "gy", fallback: "The ExxonMobil contract is the best deal Guyana could realistically have gotten.",
      whyFallback: "Comparable deepwater contracts in Brazil, Ghana, and Senegal carry royalties of 5-12% and government takes well north of 60%. Stabroek's 2% royalty and stability clauses protecting Exxon from future tax changes are an outlier even among new producers. The argument from \"we had no choice\" elides who was at the table in 2016 and what they signed." },
    { id: "gy_f2", isTruth: false, country: "gy", fallback: "Oil revenue will lift ordinary Guyanese out of poverty.",
      whyFallback: "The Natural Resource Fund exists. So did Ghana's. So did Venezuela's. The pattern in extractive economies — Dutch disease, real-exchange-rate appreciation, public-sector wage bubbles funded by volatile receipts — is well documented. Georgetown's property prices have already separated from the wage base. The new wealth is real; the distribution is the open question, and the historical answer is not encouraging." },
    { id: "gy_f3", isTruth: false, country: "gy", fallback: "The 2020 election crisis was a stress test that Guyanese institutions passed.",
      whyFallback: "They held — but only after foreign observers, the CCJ, and sustained external pressure. GECOM, the electoral commission, contained officials who actively attempted to alter the result. Most of those officials are still being prosecuted at glacial pace. \"Passed the test\" is true at the level of the final inauguration and untrue at the level of the institutions involved." },
    { id: "gy_f4", isTruth: false, country: "gy", fallback: "The Venezuela claim is a manufactured crisis with no real military risk.",
      whyFallback: "Maduro's regime is domestically fragile and uses Essequibo for the same reason Argentina uses the Malvinas — but the troop movements were real, the airstrip-extension imagery was real, and the international response (Brazilian deployment, US patrols, UK warship visit) was sized to a real possibility. Calling it pure theatre underestimates how cheaply a desperate regime can decide to act." },
    { id: "gy_f5", isTruth: false, country: "gy", fallback: "Guyana has moved past the racial politics of the Burnham-Jagan era.",
      whyFallback: "Voter registers, constituency maps, and electoral results still cleave along the same lines. Housing development by district, hiring patterns in the security forces, and the distribution of state contracts all track ethnicity to a degree most public discourse refuses to name. The rhetoric of \"One Guyana\" has been deployed by every administration; the underlying arithmetic has not changed." },
    { id: "gy_f6", isTruth: false, country: "gy", fallback: "The Jonestown massacre was an American event that happened to occur on Guyanese soil.",
      whyFallback: "Burnham personally received Jones, granted the land, and shielded the operation from inquiries by visiting journalists and US officials. Cooperative Republic ministers attended Peoples Temple events in Georgetown. The Guyanese state was a partner in providing the conditions, not a passive landlord. This part of the story is mostly missing from local curricula." },
    { id: "gy_f7", isTruth: false, country: "gy", fallback: "The PPP and the PNC offer fundamentally different visions for Guyana's future.",
      whyFallback: "They differ on patronage networks, ethnic base, and which families collect the contracts. They have agreed across decades on the Exxon contract's broad shape, on the security forces' impunity, on the slow-walking of corruption prosecutions when their own people are involved, and on the privatization-then-decay arc of bauxite (Linmine) and sugar (GuySuCo). The alternation is real; the continuity beneath it is also real." },

    // ============== Hong Kong — 8T + 7F ==============
    { id: "hk_t1", isTruth: true , country: "hk", fallback: "The 1997 handover from Britain to China came with a treaty promise — \"One Country, Two Systems\" until 2047 — that has been progressively hollowed out, well ahead of schedule.",
      whyFallback: "Sino-British Joint Declaration 1984, Basic Law 1990. Beijing now calls the Declaration a \"historical document\" with no binding force. The 50-year clock had 23 years left when the architecture was effectively dismantled." },
    { id: "hk_t2", isTruth: true , country: "hk", fallback: "The National Security Law was imposed on Hong Kong by Beijing's National People's Congress on June 30, 2020 — bypassing the local Legislative Council entirely.",
      whyFallback: "The text was not published until after it was enacted. Criminalises secession, subversion, terrorism, and \"collusion with foreign forces\" in deliberately broad terms. Claims extraterritorial jurisdiction over non-residents — anywhere in the world." },
    { id: "hk_t3", isTruth: true , country: "hk", fallback: "Apple Daily and its parent Next Digital were forced to close in June 2021 after asset freezes and arrests of senior staff; founder Jimmy Lai remains on trial under the NSL, facing possible life imprisonment.",
      whyFallback: "Stand News closed December 2021. Citizen News closed January 2022. The independent Chinese-language press in Hong Kong was effectively erased in eighteen months. Lai's trial began in late 2023 and continues." },
    { id: "hk_t4", isTruth: true , country: "hk", fallback: "In 2019 between one and two million Hong Kongers — out of a population of around 7.4 million — marched against a proposed extradition bill to mainland China.",
      whyFallback: "Peak march estimated near 2 million on June 16, 2019. Amnesty International documented police use of tear gas, rubber bullets, and beatings of subdued protesters. The bill was withdrawn; the response was the National Security Law." },
    { id: "hk_t5", isTruth: true , country: "hk", fallback: "In 2024, 47 democrats were tried as a single group for organising a primary election — most were convicted of \"subversion\" and sentenced to between 4 and 10 years.",
      whyFallback: "Their crime: holding an unofficial primary in 2020 to coordinate pro-democracy LegCo candidates. The trial took years; the longest sentence (Benny Tai, 10 years) was handed down for legal-scholarship work on civil disobedience." },
    { id: "hk_t6", isTruth: true , country: "hk", fallback: "Article 23 domestic security legislation — shelved in 2003 after a 500,000-person march — was accelerated through LegCo in March 2024 with no comparable opposition allowed.",
      whyFallback: "The Safeguarding National Security Ordinance passed in 11 days. The 2003 version had been killed by a half-million-strong street response; by 2024 the LegCo had been \"patriots only\" vetted and street protest was effectively criminalised." },
    { id: "hk_t7", isTruth: true , country: "hk", fallback: "The annual Tiananmen vigil at Victoria Park — the largest June 4 commemoration anywhere on Earth for three decades — has been banned every year since 2020.",
      whyFallback: "The Hong Kong Alliance that organised it was dissolved. Its leaders were arrested. June 4 statues — including Jens Galschiøt's Pillar of Shame — were removed from university campuses in 2021-22. The memory itself was made illegal to publicly hold." },
    { id: "hk_t8", isTruth: true , country: "hk", fallback: "In 2015, five Hong Kong booksellers selling titles critical of Beijing's leadership disappeared — one (Gui Minhai) was abducted from his holiday home in Thailand and reappeared in mainland Chinese custody.",
      whyFallback: "Causeway Bay Books case. Lam Wing-kee later went public with his account before fleeing to Taiwan. The case predated the NSL by five years — evidence that the cross-border reach was already operational, only the legal cover was missing." },
    { id: "hk_f1", isTruth: false, country: "hk", fallback: "Hong Kong's high degree of autonomy under \"One Country, Two Systems\" is intact and functioning as promised.",
      whyFallback: "The Sino-British Joint Declaration was lodged at the UN as a binding treaty. Beijing now calls it a historical document. The autonomy clause had 27 years to run when the NSL was imposed without LegCo consent — a step the Basic Law did not contemplate." },
    { id: "hk_f2", isTruth: false, country: "hk", fallback: "The 2019 protests were violent riots driven by foreign agitators.",
      whyFallback: "This was the official framing. The reality documented by Amnesty, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, and independent journalists: overwhelmingly peaceful marches of historic scale, with documented police violence against subdued protesters, journalists, and medics." },
    { id: "hk_f3", isTruth: false, country: "hk", fallback: "The National Security Law is narrowly drawn and only targets a small number of serious offenders.",
      whyFallback: "Drafted in deliberately broad terms. Used against journalists for editorial choices, students for slogans, organisers for a primary election, a 90-year-old cardinal for trustee duties on a humanitarian fund. The vagueness is the feature." },
    { id: "hk_f4", isTruth: false, country: "hk", fallback: "Hong Kong's Legislative Council is a directly elected body representing the city's voters.",
      whyFallback: "After the 2021 \"electoral overhaul\" the number of directly elected seats was cut from 35 to 20 (of 90). A vetting committee screens candidates for \"patriotism\". Most pro-democracy figures are either in prison, in exile, or barred from standing." },
    { id: "hk_f5", isTruth: false, country: "hk", fallback: "Hong Kong's Chief Executive is chosen by the people of Hong Kong.",
      whyFallback: "Selected by a 1,500-member Election Committee dominated by Beijing-loyal sectors. Carrie Lam (2017-22) was sanctioned by the US in 2020. John Lee (2022-) was the city's former security chief and ran effectively unopposed. Universal suffrage was promised in the Basic Law and never delivered." },
    { id: "hk_f6", isTruth: false, country: "hk", fallback: "Hong Kong remains a free press city because it has many newspapers.",
      whyFallback: "Number of titles is not the same as editorial independence. Apple Daily closed under asset freeze. Stand News and Citizen News closed under raid pressure. Self-censorship in the surviving outlets is openly discussed by the journalists still inside them." },
    { id: "hk_f7", isTruth: false, country: "hk", fallback: "Hong Kong is a fully independent global financial centre.",
      whyFallback: "The HK dollar has been pegged to the US dollar since 1983 — meaning monetary policy is effectively imported. Roughly 10 families control a hugely disproportionate share of property and listed equity. \"Free market\" applies to the floor; the ceiling is dynastic." },

    // ============== Honduras — 8T + 7F ==============
    { id: "hn_t1", isTruth: true , country: "hn", fallback: "Juan Orlando Hernández — president of Honduras 2014-2022 — was extradited to the United States the day after he left office and convicted in New York in March 2024 of drug trafficking and weapons charges. He was sentenced to 45 years.",
      whyFallback: "DEA testimony placed him at the center of a state-protected cocaine pipeline. He campaigned on \"war on drugs\" while moving tonnage. His brother Tony Hernández got life in 2019 on the same evidence trail. The sitting president was a cartel operative — confirmed in a US federal court, not alleged." },
    { id: "hn_t2", isTruth: true , country: "hn", fallback: "In June 2009 the Honduran army arrested President Manuel Zelaya at gunpoint, flew him to Costa Rica still in his pajamas, and installed Roberto Micheletti — while the US State Department under Hillary Clinton refused to call it a coup.",
      whyFallback: "OAS suspended Honduras. Almost every Latin American government called it a coup. The US designation would have triggered automatic aid cutoffs under American law — so the designation was avoided. Clinton later wrote in her memoir that she worked to \"render the question of Zelaya moot\"." },
    { id: "hn_t3", isTruth: true , country: "hn", fallback: "Berta Cáceres — Lenca indigenous leader and COPINH co-founder — was assassinated in her home on March 3, 2016, for organizing against the Agua Zarca hydroelectric dam.",
      whyFallback: "Executives of DESA, the company building the dam, were convicted in 2018 of ordering the killing. She had won the Goldman Environmental Prize the year before. The intellectual authors above DESA were never seriously pursued. Honduras is one of the deadliest countries on Earth for environmental defenders." },
    { id: "hn_t4", isTruth: true , country: "hn", fallback: "After the November 2017 election the electoral tribunal's vote-counting system mysteriously went offline while opposition candidate Salvador Nasralla was leading, then came back with Juan Orlando Hernández ahead.",
      whyFallback: "OAS Secretary General Luis Almagro called for a new election. The military and police shot protesters in the streets — roughly 30 dead in the weeks that followed. Hernández was inaugurated anyway. The United States recognized the result." },
    { id: "hn_t5", isTruth: true , country: "hn", fallback: "San Pedro Sula was ranked the most violent city on Earth — measured by homicide rate — multiple years running in the mid-2010s.",
      whyFallback: "MS-13 and Barrio 18 controlled neighborhoods. The police were often indistinguishable from the gangs. The migration waves toward the US border in 2014 and after were the predictable downstream effect of a state that had stopped functioning at street level." },
    { id: "hn_t6", isTruth: true , country: "hn", fallback: "ZEDE \"charter cities\" — autonomous private enclaves with their own laws, courts, and tax regimes — were written into Honduran law under Hernández, with Próspera on Roatán as the showcase libertarian project.",
      whyFallback: "Investor-state arbitration carved out of national sovereignty. Land contested with Garífuna communities. When the Castro government moved to repeal the ZEDE framework in 2022, Próspera filed a $10.7 billion claim against Honduras. A country sued for trying to govern its own territory." },
    { id: "hn_t7", isTruth: true , country: "hn", fallback: "The phrase \"banana republic\" was coined for Honduras — describing a country whose government was effectively run by the United Fruit Company and its rivals during the early 20th century.",
      whyFallback: "United Fruit (later Chiquita), Standard Fruit (later Dole), Cuyamel — they owned the railways, the ports, the largest landholdings, and the politicians. The 1954 CIA coup in neighboring Guatemala was run on behalf of the same company. Honduras is where the template was built." },
    { id: "hn_t8", isTruth: true , country: "hn", fallback: "Soto Cano Air Base at Palmerola has hosted US military forces continuously since 1981, despite Honduras having no formal basing treaty granting the United States that presence.",
      whyFallback: "Originally built up to support the Contra war against Sandinista Nicaragua. Joint Task Force-Bravo still operates there. Officially a Honduran base \"hosting\" US personnel; functionally a US installation. The arrangement survives every change of government." },
    { id: "hn_f1", isTruth: false, country: "hn", fallback: "The 2009 removal of Manuel Zelaya was a constitutional succession, not a coup.",
      whyFallback: "Soldiers entering a president's bedroom at dawn and flying him to another country in his pajamas is not a constitutional procedure in any legal tradition. The OAS, the UN General Assembly, and nearly every Latin American government called it a coup. The framing as \"succession\" was a US State Department invention to avoid triggering aid cutoffs." },
    { id: "hn_f2", isTruth: false, country: "hn", fallback: "Juan Orlando Hernández was a US ally in the war on drugs.",
      whyFallback: "He was a US partner in the public-relations war on drugs while running the supply side. DEA witnesses testified he took millions from traffickers including El Chapo. The US embassy gave him cover for a decade — then the same US justice system convicted him to 45 years. Two scoreboards, same agency network." },
    { id: "hn_f3", isTruth: false, country: "hn", fallback: "Honduran ZEDE charter cities are voluntary economic zones that respect local communities.",
      whyFallback: "Próspera was carved out of Roatán with minimal local consent. Garífuna and other coastal communities have contested the land claims. The investor-state arbitration clauses mean the Honduran public pays billions if a future government tries to undo the deal. \"Voluntary\" describes the investors' side; not the residents'." },
    { id: "hn_f4", isTruth: false, country: "hn", fallback: "Berta Cáceres was killed in an isolated incident by lone gunmen.",
      whyFallback: "DESA executives were convicted of planning the assassination. Internal company messages discussed her removal. The hit team had military training. \"Lone gunmen\" was the early framing; the verdict was \"corporate-ordered political murder\". The chain stops at DESA on paper; the financiers above continue uninvestigated." },
    { id: "hn_f5", isTruth: false, country: "hn", fallback: "The Honduran military is a defensive institution that protects democracy.",
      whyFallback: "It overthrew Zelaya in 2009. It shot protesters in 2017. It guards ZEDE territory and dam projects against the communities affected. The institution that arrested a sitting president in his pajamas is not a guarantor of democracy — it is the unaccountable end of the chain." },
    { id: "hn_f6", isTruth: false, country: "hn", fallback: "Honduras is a sovereign nation that sets its own economic policy.",
      whyFallback: "Major decisions are shaped by the IMF, the US embassy, multinational fruit and mining companies, the maquila garment sector, and now ZEDE investor-state arbitration. The formal sovereignty exists; the operating sovereignty is partial. The \"banana republic\" framing was never just an insult — it described the structure." },
    { id: "hn_f7", isTruth: false, country: "hn", fallback: "Honduras's migration crisis is caused by lazy people who don't want to work.",
      whyFallback: "The migration follows directly from gang violence, climate-collapsed agriculture, a post-2009-coup political settlement that hollowed institutions, and a drug-trafficking presidency that ran the country as a cartel franchise. People walking 3,000 kilometers north with children are not avoiding work — they are fleeing the consequences of decisions made far above their pay grade." },

    // ============== Haiti — 8T + 7F ==============
    { id: "ht_t1", isTruth: true , country: "ht", fallback: "France charged Haiti a \"reparations\" debt in 1825 — 90 million gold francs to compensate the former slaveholders — which Haiti finished paying in 1947.",
      whyFallback: "The price of independence was buying out the people who had owned you. NY Times \"Ransom\" series 2022 traced the modern dollar figure into the tens of billions. The economy started life already mortgaged to its former colonizer." },
    { id: "ht_t2", isTruth: true , country: "ht", fallback: "François \"Papa Doc\" Duvalier (1957-71) and his son Jean-Claude \"Baby Doc\" (1971-86) ran Haiti for nearly thirty years using the Tonton Macoute death squads — an estimated 30,000 killed.",
      whyFallback: "Father declared president-for-life, son inherited the title at nineteen. The Macoutes operated outside the army, answerable only to the family. Baby Doc fled to France in 1986 with much of the treasury; was never seriously prosecuted." },
    { id: "ht_t3", isTruth: true , country: "ht", fallback: "Jean-Bertrand Aristide, Haiti's first elected president (1990), was overthrown by US-trained military officers within months and overthrown a second time in February 2004 — flown out of the country on a US plane.",
      whyFallback: "1991 coup led by Raoul Cédras. 2004: Aristide called it a \"kidnapping\", delivered to the Central African Republic. The Lavalas movement he led was systematically broken in the years after. \"Restoration of democracy\" was the framing both times." },
    { id: "ht_t4", isTruth: true , country: "ht", fallback: "UN peacekeepers (MINUSTAH) introduced cholera to Haiti in October 2010 via a Nepalese contingent's sewage leak into the Artibonite River — roughly 10,000 dead and 800,000 sickened.",
      whyFallback: "The UN denied responsibility for six years, then issued a partial apology in 2016. No troop-contributing country paid compensation. The disease had not been present in Haiti before the deployment; the genetic match was undisputed." },
    { id: "ht_t5", isTruth: true , country: "ht", fallback: "After the 2010 earthquake killed over 200,000 people, around $13.5 billion was pledged for reconstruction — and the American Red Cross, having raised nearly half a billion dollars, built six permanent homes.",
      whyFallback: "ProPublica/NPR investigation 2015. The Clinton-led Interim Haiti Recovery Commission directed contracts to foreign firms. \"Build back better\" became the slogan; the rubble stayed for years. Most pledged money never reached Haitian hands." },
    { id: "ht_t6", isTruth: true , country: "ht", fallback: "Roughly $2 billion in Venezuelan Petrocaribe oil-aid funds were diverted by Haitian officials between 2008 and 2016 — including projects tied to Jovenel Moïse before his presidency.",
      whyFallback: "Petrocaribe was meant to finance schools, roads, hospitals. Senate audits traced contracts to ghost companies and the political class. \"Kòt Kòb Petwo Karibe a?\" (\"Where is the Petrocaribe money?\") became the protest slogan of 2018-19." },
    { id: "ht_t7", isTruth: true , country: "ht", fallback: "President Jovenel Moïse was assassinated in his bedroom on July 7, 2021, by roughly 26 Colombian mercenaries — with a Florida-based Haitian pastor, Christian Sanon, implicated as the would-be replacement.",
      whyFallback: "The hit team included former Colombian special forces, recruited through a US-registered security company. Investigators have been killed or driven into hiding (Pierre Espérance and others targeted). The chain of command above the mercenaries has never been published." },
    { id: "ht_t8", isTruth: true , country: "ht", fallback: "By 2024, gangs controlled roughly 80% of Port-au-Prince — the largest federation, G9, led by former police officer Jimmy \"Barbecue\" Chérizier, openly negotiating with politicians.",
      whyFallback: "Ariel Henry governed as de facto prime minister with no electoral mandate until forced out in 2024. The Kenyan-led Multinational Security Support mission arrived in June 2024 under a Ruto-Henry deal. The gangs were armed largely from US firearms exports through Florida." },
    { id: "ht_f1", isTruth: false, country: "ht", fallback: "Haiti is poor because it lacks resources and capacity.",
      whyFallback: "Haiti is poor because it was charged for its own freedom in 1825, occupied by the US 1915-34, ruled by US-backed dictators for thirty years, looted via Petrocaribe, and structurally prevented from keeping its own reconstruction money. The poverty is engineered, not original." },
    { id: "ht_f2", isTruth: false, country: "ht", fallback: "The international community has tried to help Haiti for decades with little to show for it.",
      whyFallback: "\"Help\" is the wrong frame. France extracted the indemnity. The US occupied, trained the army that staged coups, removed two elected presidents. The UN brought cholera. The NGOs took the donor money. \"Little to show\" describes what reached Haitians, not what was spent." },
    { id: "ht_f3", isTruth: false, country: "ht", fallback: "The Clinton Foundation's earthquake reconstruction work was a humanitarian effort above politics.",
      whyFallback: "Bill Clinton co-chaired the Interim Haiti Recovery Commission; Hillary Clinton ran the State Department directing US aid. Contracts went disproportionately to Clinton-affiliated firms and US contractors. The pattern was documented; the accountability was not." },
    { id: "ht_f4", isTruth: false, country: "ht", fallback: "UN peacekeeping missions are accountable for their actions.",
      whyFallback: "MINUSTAH killed thousands via cholera, generated abuse complaints across thirteen years, and was wound down in 2017 without any troop-contributing country paying restitution. UN immunity is the legal architecture; \"accountability\" is the press-release vocabulary." },
    { id: "ht_f5", isTruth: false, country: "ht", fallback: "Moïse's assassination was solved and the perpetrators brought to justice.",
      whyFallback: "Some of the Colombian mercenaries were killed at the scene or imprisoned. A handful of mid-level organizers face US charges in Miami. The people who paid, the people who unlocked the gate, the political beneficiaries — that layer remains officially unknown five years later." },
    { id: "ht_f6", isTruth: false, country: "ht", fallback: "Haitian migrants are deported humanely from neighboring countries.",
      whyFallback: "The Dominican Republic, Bahamas, Jamaica, Turks and Caicos, and the US run cyclical mass deportations to a country with no functioning state. The 2021 Del Rio whip images were one frame; the policy continues in quieter form. \"Hub\" describes the regional logistics." },
    { id: "ht_f7", isTruth: false, country: "ht", fallback: "Voodoo (Vodou) is a primitive folk superstition that holds Haiti back.",
      whyFallback: "Vodou was the spiritual infrastructure of the 1791 revolution — the only successful slave revolt to found a nation. The Haitian state finally recognized it as an official religion in 2003. The \"primitive superstition\" framing was the colonizer's propaganda; it survived because the framing is useful." },

    // ============== Jamaica — 8T + 7F ==============
    { id: "jm_t1", isTruth: true , country: "jm", fallback: "The May 2010 Tivoli Gardens incursion — Operation Garden Parish — left at least 73 civilians dead while Jamaican security forces hunted one man: Christopher \"Dudus\" Coke.",
      whyFallback: "Public Defender's 2014 report documented extrajudicial killings, evidence of summary executions, and bodies dumped without identification. PM Bruce Golding had spent nine months refusing the US extradition request before launching the assault on his own constituency." },
    { id: "jm_t2", isTruth: true , country: "jm", fallback: "Before the Tivoli operation, Bruce Golding's JLP government hired the US lobbying firm Manatt, Phelps & Phillips to fight the extradition of a drug lord — then lied to Parliament about who authorized it.",
      whyFallback: "The Manatt-Dudus scandal exposed a sitting prime minister using state resources to protect a Shower Posse boss whose territory delivered JLP votes. Golding eventually admitted the party hired Manatt; he resigned in 2011." },
    { id: "jm_t3", isTruth: true , country: "jm", fallback: "Jamaica's \"garrison constituencies\" are politically aligned ghettos run by armed enforcers known as \"dons\" — a system both major parties built and still rely on.",
      whyFallback: "Tivoli Gardens (JLP, built by Edward Seaga) and parts of South St. Andrew (PNP) are the canonical examples. The dons deliver votes, distribute resources, and enforce loyalty with violence. The 1980 election killed roughly 800 people in this system." },
    { id: "jm_t4", isTruth: true , country: "jm", fallback: "The CIA ran a documented destabilization campaign against Michael Manley's PNP government in the 1970s over its socialism, Cuba ties, and bauxite levy.",
      whyFallback: "Declassified material, contemporaneous reporting by Penny Lernoux and others, and Manley's own account describe arms flows to JLP-aligned gunmen, economic pressure, and media operations. The 1980 election that ousted Manley arrived on roughly 800 corpses." },
    { id: "jm_t5", isTruth: true , country: "jm", fallback: "Jamaica has signed roughly 16 IMF programs since 1977 — a near-permanent state of structural adjustment that has shaped every government's room to maneuver.",
      whyFallback: "Manley's 1977 program was the first surrender of policy autonomy; Seaga deepened it; every PM since has negotiated within the same fence. Public sector wage caps, currency devaluations, austerity — the menu is set in Washington." },
    { id: "jm_t6", isTruth: true , country: "jm", fallback: "The 2006 Trafigura scandal exposed a Dutch oil trader funnelling roughly J$31 million into the PNP via Hugh Hart and Colin Campbell while the party held office.",
      whyFallback: "The money arrived through an account linked to a public official; Trafigura's own emails described it as a political donation. PM Portia Simpson-Miller's government denied it was a donation, called it a \"commercial transaction\", and the case crawled through the courts for over a decade." },
    { id: "jm_t7", isTruth: true , country: "jm", fallback: "Jamaica's murder rate sits among the world's highest — roughly 44 per 100,000 in 2023, with over 1,500 killings a year on an island of 2.8 million people.",
      whyFallback: "The structure that produces it — garrison politics, deported gang networks, an under-resourced JCF with its own extrajudicial record, and a guns-for-drugs corridor from Haiti and the US — has been documented for forty years. Every government promises a strategy; the body count compounds." },
    { id: "jm_t8", isTruth: true , country: "jm", fallback: "The National Housing Trust's 2013 purchase of the Outameni Experience attraction for J$180 million — quietly approved by Cabinet — became a textbook case of insider land deals.",
      whyFallback: "The PNP government bought a failing cultural-tourism site from a politically connected owner using money workers had paid into housing contributions. The Auditor General's report described it as outside the NHT's mandate. Nobody went to prison." },
    { id: "jm_f1", isTruth: false, country: "jm", fallback: "The JLP and PNP represent fundamentally different visions for Jamaica.",
      whyFallback: "Since 1962 the two parties have traded power roughly every two terms while agreeing on the IMF framework, the bauxite-tourism dependence, the garrison system that delivers them seats, and the don network that polices those seats. The colors differ; the architecture is shared." },
    { id: "jm_f2", isTruth: false, country: "jm", fallback: "Marijuana decriminalization in 2015 was a victory for Rastafari sacramental use.",
      whyFallback: "The 2015 amendment carved out ganja for Rastafari worship and personal possession, but the licensing structure for commercial cultivation rewards capital-heavy investors — many foreign — while small traditional growers are still raided. The sacrament got a paragraph; the industry got the law." },
    { id: "jm_f3", isTruth: false, country: "jm", fallback: "The extradition of Christopher \"Dudus\" Coke to the US in 2010 marked the end of the don system.",
      whyFallback: "Coke got 23 years in a New York federal prison. Tivoli got a new don within years. The garrison structure that produced him is still delivering votes to both parties. Extradition removed an individual; it did not touch the system." },
    { id: "jm_f4", isTruth: false, country: "jm", fallback: "Bauxite-aluminum revenue built Jamaica's middle class.",
      whyFallback: "Alcan, Alpart, and the other multinationals paid royalties that were repeatedly renegotiated downward, then sold their stakes to Russian and Chinese buyers as the mines aged. The middle class such as it is was built more by remittances from Jamaicans abroad than by the bauxite that left the island as ore." },
    { id: "jm_f5", isTruth: false, country: "jm", fallback: "Petrocaribe gave Jamaica cheap Venezuelan oil with no strings.",
      whyFallback: "The deferred-payment scheme built up roughly US$3 billion in Jamaican debt to Caracas before the program imploded with Venezuela. Jamaica bought back its Petrocaribe debt at a discount in 2015 with bonds — the cheap oil was a loan with a long fuse." },
    { id: "jm_f6", isTruth: false, country: "jm", fallback: "Air Jamaica's 2011 sale to Caribbean Airlines was a clean commercial decision.",
      whyFallback: "The national carrier had been losing money for decades inside a political patronage culture; the Trinidad-led merger that absorbed it was driven by IMF pressure to stop the bleeding, not by market logic. Jamaicans lost their flag carrier and the routes shrank." },
    { id: "jm_f7", isTruth: false, country: "jm", fallback: "Andrew Holness's JLP represents a clean break from the Tivoli era.",
      whyFallback: "Holness rose through the same JLP that Golding ran during the Manatt-Dudus scandal, inherited the leadership in 2011 directly from Golding's resignation, and has governed since 2016 inside the same garrison structure that produced Tivoli. The faces rotate; the constituencies do not." },

    // ============== Jordan — 8T + 7F ==============
    { id: "jo_t1", isTruth: true , country: "jo", fallback: "The Pandora Papers (October 2021) revealed King Abdullah II as the secret owner of more than $100 million in luxury properties in Malibu, Washington DC, and London — purchased via offshore shells while the palace denied for years.",
      whyFallback: "ICIJ disclosures named fourteen properties, including a Malibu beachfront cluster, a Georgetown townhouse, and central-London real estate, held through anonymous companies in the British Virgin Islands and elsewhere. The denial pattern collapsed the day the documents went public." },
    { id: "jo_t2", isTruth: true , country: "jo", fallback: "In April 2021 former Crown Prince Hamzah bin Hussein — Abdullah II's half-brother — was placed under house arrest, accused of a \"sedition\" plot; he was later restored to royal duties and then renounced his princely title in 2022.",
      whyFallback: "The official narrative shifted between coup, conspiracy, and family quarrel within days. Hamzah's video statement smuggled out via the BBC contradicted the palace timeline. By 2022 he had walked away from the title — an outcome the monarchy presented as voluntary." },
    { id: "jo_t3", isTruth: true , country: "jo", fallback: "During Black September (1970) King Hussein's forces crushed the PLO presence in Jordan, with casualty estimates running from three thousand to twenty-five thousand Palestinian fedayeen and civilians.",
      whyFallback: "Yasser Arafat fled to Lebanon; the PLO's Jordan-based armed structure was destroyed. The event named an entire militant faction. Successor narratives in Amman frame it as restoring order; the casualty range alone is the disagreement." },
    { id: "jo_t4", isTruth: true , country: "jo", fallback: "Roughly seventy percent of Jordanians are of Palestinian origin, yet the country's political, military, and intelligence leadership is drawn overwhelmingly from East Bank tribal families.",
      whyFallback: "The demographic majority is structurally underrepresented in the apparatus that governs it. Citizenship was extended in 1949–1954; political weight was not. Persistent identity tensions trace directly to this asymmetry." },
    { id: "jo_t5", isTruth: true , country: "jo", fallback: "Jordan receives more than one billion dollars per year in US military and economic aid, making the monarchy one of Washington's most reliably funded Arab clients.",
      whyFallback: "Memorandum of Understanding 2022–2029 locked in $1.45B annually. The aid covers budget support, training, F-16s, border surveillance. \"Moderate Arab kingdom\" is the political framing the funding buys." },
    { id: "jo_t6", isTruth: true , country: "jo", fallback: "Jordan signed the 1994 Wadi Araba peace treaty with Israel, then watched Israeli water-sharing and gas-import arrangements become deeply unpopular with its own population — particularly its Palestinian majority.",
      whyFallback: "The treaty was a state-to-state deal between two governments; it was never a peace between two publics. The 2016 gas deal with Israel's Leviathan field passed despite parliamentary opposition. Protests in Amman during the 2023–2024 Gaza war forced the monarchy to denounce policies it remained legally tied to." },
    { id: "jo_t7", isTruth: true , country: "jo", fallback: "Jordan hosts roughly 670,000 registered Syrian refugees alongside long-standing Palestinian and Iraqi waves — a population that has reshaped labour markets, water consumption, and aid dependence.",
      whyFallback: "UNHCR registrations only; the unregistered figure is significantly higher. Za'atari and Azraq camps became permanent cities. International aid flows tied to refugee hosting became a structural revenue stream for the state." },
    { id: "jo_t8", isTruth: true , country: "jo", fallback: "Jordan's press freedom is constrained by gag orders, broad defamation statutes, and a 2023 cybercrime law that journalists and lawyers describe as the most restrictive in the region.",
      whyFallback: "Journalists like Jamal Haddadin have faced charges for reporting on official corruption. The 2023 cybercrime law criminalises \"spreading false news\" and \"undermining national unity\" — terms defined at the prosecutor's discretion. Self-censorship is the daily output." },
    { id: "jo_f1", isTruth: false, country: "jo", fallback: "Jordan is a constitutional monarchy where the king reigns but does not rule.",
      whyFallback: "The king appoints the prime minister, dissolves parliament, commands the army, and chairs the intelligence apparatus. Bisher Al-Khasawneh and his predecessors serve at royal pleasure. \"Constitutional\" describes the document; the practice is executive monarchy." },
    { id: "jo_f2", isTruth: false, country: "jo", fallback: "The Hashemite monarchy is a model of \"decent\" governance compared to its neighbours.",
      whyFallback: "The \"decent corruption\" framing — small daily payments, mid-tier patronage, no mass graves — is the comparison Amman invites. The Pandora Papers, the Hamzah arrest, and the 2023 cybercrime law are the comparison the documents force." },
    { id: "jo_f3", isTruth: false, country: "jo", fallback: "Palestinian-Jordanians are full citizens with equal political rights.",
      whyFallback: "On paper yes, in practice the gerrymandered electoral map systematically over-weights East Bank rural districts. West Bank-origin Jordanians have had citizenship withdrawn in waves since 1988. \"Equal\" is the framing; the seat math is the structure." },
    { id: "jo_f4", isTruth: false, country: "jo", fallback: "The General Intelligence Directorate (Mukhabarat) focuses on external threats and counter-terrorism.",
      whyFallback: "GID's domestic remit covers journalists, opposition figures, professional syndicates, and Islamist movements. Travel bans, summons, and quiet career destruction are the routine tools. External counter-terrorism is the public-facing portfolio." },
    { id: "jo_f5", isTruth: false, country: "jo", fallback: "Jordan's economy is built on its own resources — phosphates, potash, and tourism revenue from Petra.",
      whyFallback: "Jordan Phosphate Mines and Arab Potash exist, Petra exists, but the budget runs on US aid, Gulf grants, IMF loans, and remittances. Roughly half of state spending is externally underwritten. \"Self-reliant economy\" is the brochure." },
    { id: "jo_f6", isTruth: false, country: "jo", fallback: "Jordan rode out the Arab Spring because Jordanians were genuinely content with their government.",
      whyFallback: "The 2010–2011 protests were muted because the monarchy spent Gulf cash on subsidies, rotated prime ministers as theatre, and arrested the harder organisers quietly. Contentment was purchased; the underlying demands — electoral reform, corruption accountability — were never met." },
    { id: "jo_f7", isTruth: false, country: "jo", fallback: "Toujan al-Faisal's election as Jordan's first female MP in 1993 signalled steady progress for women in Jordanian politics.",
      whyFallback: "Al-Faisal was later jailed for criticising the government, stripped of her seat, and saw her hunger strike ignored by the same monarchy that paraded her debut. Quotas for women in parliament were added later — as ceiling, not as floor." },

    // ============== Kyrgyzstan — 8T + 7F ==============
    { id: "kg_t1", isTruth: true , country: "kg", fallback: "Kyrgyzstan has overthrown three presidents in fifteen years — the Tulip Revolution (2005) ousted Askar Akayev, April 2010 ousted Kurmanbek Bakiyev, and October 2020 ousted Sooronbay Jeenbekov.",
      whyFallback: "Akayev ran the country from independence in 1991 until protesters stormed the White House in Bishkek in March 2005; he fled to Moscow. Bakiyev replaced him, was driven out five years later after security forces killed roughly 85 demonstrators in Bishkek, and escaped to Belarus. Jeenbekov resigned within days of contested parliamentary elections in 2020. The cycle is the system." },
    { id: "kg_t2", isTruth: true , country: "kg", fallback: "Sadyr Japarov was serving a prison sentence on hostage-taking charges when 2020 protesters broke him out — months later he was president, and within a year had rewritten the constitution to expand his own powers.",
      whyFallback: "Freed from a Bishkek detention facility on October 5–6, 2020. Sworn in as acting president by November, won the January 2021 election with around 79%, then put a presidential-system referendum to a vote in April 2021. The new constitution concentrated executive power, shrank parliament, and weakened the Constitutional Court. Prison to presidency in roughly 100 days." },
    { id: "kg_t3", isTruth: true , country: "kg", fallback: "The June 2010 ethnic violence in Osh and Jalal-Abad killed an estimated 470 people — overwhelmingly ethnic Uzbeks — and displaced around 400,000 in less than a week.",
      whyFallback: "Followed the April 2010 ouster of Bakiyev, in the south where his clan base was strongest. The Kyrgyzstan Inquiry Commission (KIC), led by Kimmo Kiljunen, found Uzbek neighborhoods deliberately targeted and security-force complicity in several incidents. Human Rights Watch documented forced confessions and torture of Uzbek detainees afterward. The government later declared the KIC report persona non grata." },
    { id: "kg_t4", isTruth: true , country: "kg", fallback: "The United States operated the Manas Transit Center at Bishkek's main airport from 2001 to 2014 — the principal supply hub for the Afghanistan war — and paid rent that flowed through opaque fuel-contract chains tied to the ruling families.",
      whyFallback: "A 2010 US congressional investigation (Tierney Report) traced jet-fuel contracts at Manas to companies linked to associates of both the Akayev and Bakiyev families. Maxim Bakiyev — the president's son — was at the center of the fuel-supply network. Russia pressured Bishkek to close the base; Almazbek Atambayev's government did so in 2014. The same airport now hosts other arrangements." },
    { id: "kg_t5", isTruth: true , country: "kg", fallback: "The Kumtor gold mine — Kyrgyzstan's largest single asset — has been a quarter-century battleground between Canadian operator Centerra Gold and successive Kyrgyz governments over revenues, taxes, and glacier damage.",
      whyFallback: "Open-pit operation in the Tien Shan, dumping waste rock on the Davydov and Lysyi glaciers. Renegotiated under every president. In May 2021 the Japarov government seized operational control via a parliamentary vote and external-management law, citing environmental and tax claims. Centerra settled in 2022 — Kyrgyzstan got the mine, Centerra walked away with cash. The mine's revenue is roughly a tenth of national output." },
    { id: "kg_t6", isTruth: true , country: "kg", fallback: "Former president Almazbek Atambayev was stormed in his own compound by special forces in 2019 — a serving president (his hand-picked successor) sending troops against the man who installed him — and jailed on corruption charges.",
      whyFallback: "Atambayev ruled 2011–2017, anointed Jeenbekov as his successor, then fell out with him within a year. Lost parliamentary immunity in June 2019; the August raid on Koy-Tash left at least one officer dead and dozens wounded. Convicted of corruption and later of organizing mass disorder during the 2020 unrest. Released after Japarov took power, then re-prosecuted. The presidency is not a retirement plan in Bishkek." },
    { id: "kg_t7", isTruth: true , country: "kg", fallback: "After the February 2022 invasion of Ukraine and the Western sanctions wave, Kyrgyzstan became a major hub for Russian cryptocurrency mining and gray-import logistics — sanctioned goods and capital routing through Bishkek.",
      whyFallback: "Hundreds of thousands of Russians arrived in 2022–2023, many bringing mining rigs and capital. Kyrgyz electronics and machinery re-exports to Russia jumped multiples in 2022. US and EU sanctions agencies named Kyrgyz firms as sanctions-evasion conduits; the government responded with selective compliance designed to preserve the trade. The country's role is to be useful to whoever pays." },
    { id: "kg_t8", isTruth: true , country: "kg", fallback: "Russia operates the Kant Air Base outside Bishkek under a 49-year lease, and Kyrgyzstan is a member of the CSTO — the Moscow-led military alliance — committing it to mutual-defense obligations.",
      whyFallback: "Kant established 2003 as the Russian counterweight to Manas; lease renewed and extended under Atambayev to 2032 and beyond. CSTO membership obliges Bishkek in any Russian-led collective response, though Kyrgyzstan declined to send troops to Kazakhstan in January 2022 and skipped the 2022 CSTO summit drills over a border dispute with Tajikistan. Alliance on paper, transactional in practice." },
    { id: "kg_f1", isTruth: false, country: "kg", fallback: "Kyrgyzstan is Central Asia's island of democracy.",
      whyFallback: "The label was earned in the 1990s by being relatively less authoritarian than its neighbors — a low bar. Since the 2021 constitutional rewrite, Japarov has consolidated executive power, jailed opposition figures (Kanybek Imanaliyev, the Kempir-Abad detainees), pressured independent media (Kloop, Azattyk, 24.kg raided or shut down), and pushed a Russian-style \"foreign representatives\" law in 2024. The island has been steadily reclaimed by the mainland." },
    { id: "kg_f2", isTruth: false, country: "kg", fallback: "Each revolution swept away the old corrupt elite and brought in genuinely new leadership.",
      whyFallback: "Bakiyev — who replaced Akayev in 2005 — had been Akayev's prime minister. The figures around each transition recycle: defense, security, customs, and energy positions rotate through a small clan-bound network. The presidents change; the families managing the state assets, the fuel contracts, and the gold-mine arrangements substantially overlap. Revolution as reshuffle." },
    { id: "kg_f3", isTruth: false, country: "kg", fallback: "The Bakiyev family fortune was recovered after the 2010 uprising.",
      whyFallback: "Kurmanbek Bakiyev received political asylum in Belarus under Lukashenko and remains there. Son Maxim Bakiyev — who ran the country's development agency and is alleged to have controlled hundreds of millions through the Manas fuel network and other contracts — fled to the UK, was arrested in 2012, and was never extradited. Kyrgyz prosecutors won convictions in absentia; the money stayed offshore. The framing of justice done is partial." },
    { id: "kg_f4", isTruth: false, country: "kg", fallback: "Kyrgyz politics is organized around national parties competing on policy.",
      whyFallback: "The operational unit is the regional clan and the family alliance. North–south cleavage (Chuy/Talas vs. Osh/Jalal-Abad) shapes who can win the presidency, which sub-clans staff which ministries, and how patronage flows. Parties form, dissolve, and rebrand each election; the underlying network of obligation does not. Voter registration data and parliamentary seat distributions show the same families across decades." },
    { id: "kg_f5", isTruth: false, country: "kg", fallback: "Closing the Manas base ended foreign military presence in Kyrgyzstan.",
      whyFallback: "Manas formally closed in 2014; the Russian Kant air base remained and was reinforced. China operates security cooperation through the SCO and bilateral channels, with Kyrgyz security services trained in both Moscow and Beijing. The country sits between three great powers and rents out access to each in different forms — military, intelligence, logistics, energy. Sovereignty as auction." },
    { id: "kg_f6", isTruth: false, country: "kg", fallback: "The 2020 protests were a spontaneous democratic uprising against election fraud.",
      whyFallback: "The October 4 parliamentary election was widely seen as bought — vote-buying allegations against pro-Jeenbekov parties triggered the demonstrations. But the storming of the White House, the prison break that freed Japarov, and the speed with which a previously marginal politician consolidated control suggest coordination on the inside as much as outrage in the street. The narrative of pure popular will rarely survives the parking-lot view." },
    { id: "kg_f7", isTruth: false, country: "kg", fallback: "Kyrgyzstan's natural wealth — gold, water, hydropower, rare earths — is being developed for the benefit of its people.",
      whyFallback: "Kumtor's three-decade history is the case study: foreign operator, opaque revenue split, environmental damage to glaciers feeding the country's rivers, repeated renegotiations that enriched the negotiators more than the budget. The Khan Tengri and Inylchek concessions follow similar arcs. The wealth exists; the question of who collects it is older than independence and has survived every revolution intact." },

    // ============== Kiribati — 8T + 7F ==============
    { id: "ki_t1", isTruth: true , country: "ki", fallback: "The British Phosphate Commissioners — a joint UK/Australia/New Zealand cartel — stripped roughly 22 million tons of phosphate from Banaba (Ocean Island) between 1900 and 1979, paying the Banabans trifling royalties while three governments split the profits.",
      whyFallback: "Banaba was mined down to bare coral pinnacles — locals call it the Naked Island. The royalties were calculated against landowner consent that was, in practice, manufactured. The fertiliser that built Australian and New Zealand agriculture came out of one Micronesian rock at the price of that rock's habitability." },
    { id: "ki_t2", isTruth: true , country: "ki", fallback: "The entire Banaban population was relocated to Rabi Island in Fiji in 1945 — 2,000 kilometres from their homeland — by the colonial administration that had already extracted most of the phosphate.",
      whyFallback: "Sold as wartime humanitarianism after the Japanese occupation; functioned as clearing the island for continued mining. The Banabans remain on Rabi today as Fijian citizens with a separate council, and their legal claims against the UK government (Tito v Waddell, 1976–1977) won moral acknowledgment without restitution." },
    { id: "ki_t3", isTruth: true , country: "ki", fallback: "Kiritimati (Christmas Island) and Malden Island were used by the UK (Operation Grapple, 1957–1958) and the US (Operation Dominic, 1962) for atmospheric nuclear weapons tests — with i-Kiribati and British servicemen present without protective equipment.",
      whyFallback: "Over 30 detonations, including the first British thermonuclear devices. Veterans' compensation claims have run for sixty years through UK courts; the radiological dose records were variously \"lost\" or never taken. The local population was moved within the islands rather than off them." },
    { id: "ki_t4", isTruth: true , country: "ki", fallback: "President Taneti Maamau switched Kiribati's diplomatic recognition from Taiwan to the People's Republic of China in September 2019 — days after Solomon Islands made the same switch — ending a 16-year Taipei relationship.",
      whyFallback: "Maamau, Tobwaan Kiribati Party. The pitch was development financing and fisheries cooperation; the geopolitical context was Beijing's South Pacific recognition campaign. Former president Anote Tong called it a betrayal. Taiwan had built hospitals; China promised airfields, ports, and an upgraded Kanton Island runway." },
    { id: "ki_t5", isTruth: true , country: "ki", fallback: "The Maamau government dismantled the Phoenix Islands Protected Area (PIPA) — 408,250 km² of ocean and one of the world's largest marine reserves — in 2022 to reopen it to commercial fishing.",
      whyFallback: "PIPA was created under Anote Tong in 2008, UNESCO World Heritage in 2010, no-take from 2015. The reversal was framed as economic sovereignty against \"foreign conservation imposition\". Licence fees from purse-seine tuna fleets — largely Chinese, Taiwanese, Korean, Japanese — account for over half of government revenue." },
    { id: "ki_t6", isTruth: true , country: "ki", fallback: "Kiribati's Court of Appeal foreign judges were removed in 2022 after they ruled against the government in a deportation case involving a High Court judge — leaving the country with effectively no functioning appeals court for over a year.",
      whyFallback: "The Maamau administration suspended Chief Justice Bill Hastings and three Court of Appeal judges (all Australian and New Zealand jurists). The Pacific Islands Forum, the UN, the International Commission of Jurists all warned of constitutional collapse. The judicial vacancy was the point — pending cases stopped advancing." },
    { id: "ki_t7", isTruth: true , country: "ki", fallback: "The Kiribati government's national budget depends on three external streams — fisheries licence fees, the Revenue Equalisation Reserve Fund (the residual of phosphate royalties), and donor aid from Australia, New Zealand, Taiwan/China, and the EU — with domestic tax revenue a minor share.",
      whyFallback: "RERF was meant to be the sovereign wealth fund of post-phosphate Kiribati; multiple governments have drawn it down. Australian DFAT/MFAT aid is the visible architecture; Chinese project finance is the new layer. Fiscal sovereignty in a small island state is a phrase, not a balance sheet." },
    { id: "ki_t8", isTruth: true , country: "ki", fallback: "Former president Anote Tong bought roughly 20 km² of land on Vanua Levu in Fiji in 2014 — explicitly framed as a relocation insurance policy for the i-Kiribati population against sea level rise.",
      whyFallback: "Natoavatu Estate, purchased from the Church of England for ~AUD 8.7 million. Officially for food security and \"migration with dignity\". Mostly unused for resettlement a decade later; the symbolism — a sovereign state buying its own future graveyard — did the international advocacy work the land itself never had to." },
    { id: "ki_f1", isTruth: false, country: "ki", fallback: "Kiribati's phosphate wealth was fairly compensated by the colonial powers who mined it.",
      whyFallback: "The Banabans received a few pence per ton for material that built Australian and New Zealand agriculture. Tito v Waddell (UK High Court, 1976) ran for over 200 sitting days and found moral wrongs but no enforceable trust. The Revenue Equalisation Reserve Fund is what's left — a fraction of what was taken, managed by the successor state of the people who lost the island." },
    { id: "ki_f2", isTruth: false, country: "ki", fallback: "The 2019 switch from Taiwan to Beijing was a sovereign choice made on Kiribati's own terms.",
      whyFallback: "It was made in concert with Solomon Islands within a single week — a coordinated Beijing recognition push, not parallel coincidence. The decision bypassed parliament, split the cabinet, and led to defections from Maamau's party. \"Sovereign choice\" describes who signs; it does not describe who drafted." },
    { id: "ki_f3", isTruth: false, country: "ki", fallback: "The Phoenix Islands Protected Area was scrapped because conservation had failed economically.",
      whyFallback: "PIPA had been generating compensation payments and international funding; the academic case for spillover benefits to surrounding tuna fisheries was building. The reversal aligned with new fisheries access agreements signed shortly after recognition switched to Beijing. \"Failed economically\" was the framing; \"more valuable to a different buyer\" was the arithmetic." },
    { id: "ki_f4", isTruth: false, country: "ki", fallback: "Kiribati's judicial independence is protected by its constitution.",
      whyFallback: "The 2022 removal of the entire Court of Appeal and the suspension of the Chief Justice — by the executive, with the local Public Service Commission as the procedural cover — went through despite explicit constitutional protections. \"Protected by constitution\" assumes someone with the will to enforce the protection. In Tarawa in 2022, no one did." },
    { id: "ki_f5", isTruth: false, country: "ki", fallback: "\"We are not drowning\" — Kiribati's leadership has consistently rejected the climate refugee framing.",
      whyFallback: "Maamau's rhetoric, yes. Anote Tong's decade before him said the opposite — buying the Fiji land, addressing the UN General Assembly, pioneering the \"migration with dignity\" concept. The official Kiribati position on climate displacement has flipped 180 degrees with each government. There is no consistent line; there are two governments using the same atolls for opposite arguments." },
    { id: "ki_f6", isTruth: false, country: "ki", fallback: "Kiribati's nuclear testing sites on Kiritimati have been cleaned up and the affected populations compensated.",
      whyFallback: "The UK Ministry of Defence has resisted compensation claims from its own veterans for sixty years. I-Kiribati workers and bystanders from the Grapple and Dominic tests have received nothing comparable. Residual contamination surveys have been partial, classified, or both. \"Cleaned up\" in nuclear-test parlance means \"the test ended\"." },
    { id: "ki_f7", isTruth: false, country: "ki", fallback: "Kiribati's elections produce stable, decisive mandates because of its small population.",
      whyFallback: "Maamau's 2020 re-election was won by under 3,500 votes against Banuera Berina, with the opposition coalition immediately disputing the count. The Maneaba ni Maungatabu (parliament) operates with shifting independent blocs that the Beretitenti must reassemble after each session. 120,000 voters does not produce a clean mandate; it produces a more visible bargaining table." },

    // ============== Comoros — 8T + 7F ==============
    { id: "km_t1", isTruth: true , country: "km", fallback: "French mercenary Bob Denard staged or unstaged four coups in the Comoros — 1975, 1978, 1989, 1995 — installing and removing presidents as if the islands were a private estate.",
      whyFallback: "Denard ran the presidential guard for years under Ahmed Abdallah. He was convicted in France in 2006 over the 1995 coup. The Comoros holds the unofficial record for coups per capita; the architect was European." },
    { id: "km_t2", isTruth: true , country: "km", fallback: "President Ahmed Abdallah was killed in 1989 while Bob Denard's mercenaries controlled his presidential guard — Denard left the country under French military escort, not in handcuffs.",
      whyFallback: "Abdallah had ruled since 1978, returned to power by Denard himself. The circumstances of his death remain officially \"unclear\"; the guard was at the scene. French paratroopers extracted Denard to South Africa." },
    { id: "km_t3", isTruth: true , country: "km", fallback: "Former president Ahmed Abdallah Sambi was sentenced to life in prison in 2022 for selling Comorian citizenship to stateless Gulf Arabs — a scheme worth an estimated $200 million that the state never saw.",
      whyFallback: "The Economic Citizenship Programme issued passports to bedoun stateless populations in Kuwait and the UAE. Sambi was president 2006-2011. The money moved through intermediaries; the state treasury did not." },
    { id: "km_t4", isTruth: true , country: "km", fallback: "Azali Assoumani first seized power in a 1999 military coup, served as president, left office, and then returned via election — and via a 2018 referendum that abolished the single-term limit standing in his way.",
      whyFallback: "1999 coup, 2002-2006 presidency, 2016 return, 2018 constitutional rewrite, 2019 and 2023 re-elections. The opposition boycotted the 2018 referendum. The rules that constrained him were edited, not respected." },
    { id: "km_t5", isTruth: true , country: "km", fallback: "The 2023 presidential election returned Azali Assoumani with 63% of the vote on an official turnout of around 16% — a result the opposition rejected and international observers questioned.",
      whyFallback: "Mass abstention, opposition challenges, post-result unrest in Moroni. \"Won by a landslide\" and \"almost nobody voted\" describe the same result. The legitimacy claim rests on the first sentence." },
    { id: "km_t6", isTruth: true , country: "km", fallback: "Mayotte — geographically and culturally one of the four Comoros islands — was kept by France after the 1974 independence referendum and is still administered as a French overseas department.",
      whyFallback: "Independence vote counted island-by-island rather than as one archipelago, against the African Union's position. Mayotte's status was upgraded to French département in 2011. The Comoros still claims the island; the UN formally agrees." },
    { id: "km_t7", isTruth: true , country: "km", fallback: "The Comoros is one of the world's largest producers of ylang-ylang — the flower oil that anchors Chanel No. 5 and most luxury perfume — yet remains among the poorest countries on Earth.",
      whyFallback: "Vanilla, cloves, ylang-ylang: the colonial cash-crop trio. Distilled locally, exported cheaply, marked up beyond recognition in Paris. The perfume on the duty-free counter contains more value than the farmer sees in a year." },
    { id: "km_t8", isTruth: true , country: "km", fallback: "The island of Anjouan tried to secede from the Comoros in 1997, was retaken in 2008 by a Comoran-African Union force — and the figure leading the breakaway side had himself once worked with the mercenary networks of the 1990s.",
      whyFallback: "Secession declared in 1997, parallel government for over a decade, Operation Democracy in Comoros in 2008 restored federal control. The pattern — outside hands, local fronts — repeats across the archipelago's modern history." },
    { id: "km_f1", isTruth: false, country: "km", fallback: "The Comoros is a sovereign state whose internal politics have been shaped primarily by its own citizens.",
      whyFallback: "Four Denard coups, repeated French military involvement, mercenary-led secessions, citizenship-for-sale to Gulf intermediaries. The pattern of the last fifty years is foreign hands moving local pieces." },
    { id: "km_f2", isTruth: false, country: "km", fallback: "France withdrew from the Comoros cleanly at independence in 1975.",
      whyFallback: "France kept Mayotte, ran the island-by-island referendum that allowed it, and continued operating through mercenary proxies — Denard most famously — for the next two decades. Withdrawal in name, presence in fact." },
    { id: "km_f3", isTruth: false, country: "km", fallback: "Bob Denard was a rogue adventurer acting against the wishes of the French state.",
      whyFallback: "Denard's coups consistently aligned with French strategic interests of the moment, and he was repeatedly extracted by French forces rather than arrested. A 2006 French court conviction came decades after the operations; the protection during them was the louder fact." },
    { id: "km_f4", isTruth: false, country: "km", fallback: "Comorian elections are competitive contests between fully independent candidates.",
      whyFallback: "2018 referendum rewrote the term limits standing in the incumbent's way; opposition boycotted. 2023 election returned the incumbent with 16% turnout. \"Competitive\" describes the framing, not the result." },
    { id: "km_f5", isTruth: false, country: "km", fallback: "Mayotte chose France freely and the matter is settled.",
      whyFallback: "The 1974 referendum was structured island-by-island to produce that result; the UN General Assembly has repeatedly affirmed Comorian territorial integrity over the island; Mayotte's department upgrade in 2011 was a French domestic decision, not a regional one." },
    { id: "km_f6", isTruth: false, country: "km", fallback: "The Comorian Economic Citizenship Programme was a normal investor-visa scheme.",
      whyFallback: "Passports sold by the tens of thousands to stateless Gulf bedoun, with the bulk of the proceeds — estimated around $200 million — never reaching the Comoran state. The former president got a life sentence; the buyers got the documents." },
    { id: "km_f7", isTruth: false, country: "km", fallback: "The Comoros is too small and too poor to matter geopolitically.",
      whyFallback: "Position in the Mozambique Channel, a key Indian Ocean shipping lane. French military base on neighbouring Mayotte. Listening posts, refuelling, ylang-ylang for European perfume, passports for Gulf statelessness. Small islands, large uses." },

    // ============== Saint Kitts and Nevis — 8T + 7F ==============
    { id: "kn_t1", isTruth: true , country: "kn", fallback: "Saint Kitts and Nevis runs the world's oldest Citizenship-by-Investment programme — launched in 1984 — selling passports from roughly US$150,000 to US$400,000, with cumulative inflows estimated above US$1 billion since inception.",
      whyFallback: "Two routes: a non-refundable Sustainable Growth Fund contribution, or an approved real-estate investment. For multiple years CBI receipts have exceeded ordinary tax revenue. The Federation invented the model the rest of the Caribbean later copied — and inherited the longest reputational tail with it." },
    { id: "kn_t2", isTruth: true , country: "kn", fallback: "Denzil Douglas served as Prime Minister of Saint Kitts and Nevis for 20 consecutive years — 1995 to 2015 — under the Saint Kitts–Nevis Labour Party, four straight elections without a transfer of power.",
      whyFallback: "1995, 2000, 2004, 2010 — each win, each Cabinet, each CBI policy revision under one PM. Constitutional motion of no-confidence in 2013 went unheard in Parliament for over a year, ruled improper by the Privy Council. Twenty years of one office on a 50,000-person federation is not democracy's bug; it is the system's default output." },
    { id: "kn_t3", isTruth: true , country: "kn", fallback: "In 2014 the US Treasury's FinCEN issued an advisory warning that Saint Kitts and Nevis passports were being used by Iranian nationals to evade sanctions — and the EU briefly suspended Schengen visa-free access for SKN passport holders in response.",
      whyFallback: "FinCEN Advisory FIN-2014-A005, May 2014. The Federation responded by recalling certain passports and rebranding the programme. OCCRP reporting has since traced SKN passports to Russian, Iranian, and Chinese sanctioned individuals. \"Enhanced due diligence\" is the phrase; the recurring discoveries are the record." },
    { id: "kn_t4", isTruth: true , country: "kn", fallback: "The Federation's 300-year sugar-cane industry was shut down in 2005 — the state-owned Sugar Manufacturing Corporation closed, ending what had been the entire economic logic of the colony since the 1640s.",
      whyFallback: "WTO rulings against EU preferential pricing, mounting losses, an unsustainable wage bill. Roughly 1,400 workers laid off in a country of 50,000. The cane fields reverted to bush; tourism, financial services, and CBI replaced what cane had been. Three centuries of plantation economy ended in one fiscal year." },
    { id: "kn_t5", isTruth: true , country: "kn", fallback: "In August 1998 Nevis held a referendum on seceding from the Federation — 62% voted yes, but the constitutional threshold of two-thirds was missed by roughly five percentage points.",
      whyFallback: "Nevis Reformation Party under Vance Amory drove the vote, citing under-investment from Basseterre. Concordat Constitution of 1983 set the 2/3 bar deliberately high. Nevis still has its own Premier, Assembly, and tax regime under the Concordat — a federation that is one constitutional vote away from dissolution at any time." },
    { id: "kn_t6", isTruth: true , country: "kn", fallback: "Saint Kitts and Nevis markets itself globally as offering the \"cheapest passport for visa-free travel\" — a tagline used in CBI agent brochures across Dubai, Shanghai, and Moscow.",
      whyFallback: "Visa-free or visa-on-arrival to roughly 150+ jurisdictions, including the Schengen Area and the United Kingdom. The pricing has been periodically cut — most controversially the 2017–2018 \"Hurricane Relief Fund\" discount to US$150,000 for a family of four — to defend market share against Dominica, Grenada, and Antigua. A sovereign passport sold as a consumer-electronics product, priced against competitors." },
    { id: "kn_t7", isTruth: true , country: "kn", fallback: "The 2022 general election delivered a 6–5 seat margin for Terrance Drew's reconstituted Saint Kitts–Nevis Labour Party against Timothy Harris's Team Unity coalition — one of the narrowest mandates in the Federation's history.",
      whyFallback: "Harris had himself broken from the SKNLP in 2013 to form Team Unity, then governed 2015–2022. Drew, a doctor and political newcomer at the top of the ticket, formed government with a single-seat working majority. CBI reform, sugar-land reparations, and Marriott-area development have all been negotiated under that thin margin." },
    { id: "kn_t8", isTruth: true , country: "kn", fallback: "Saint Kitts and Nevis is a member of the Eastern Caribbean Currency Union — sharing the EC dollar (XCD) and monetary policy with seven other OECS states under a single central bank in Basseterre's neighbour, Saint Kitts hosts the regional ECCB headquarters.",
      whyFallback: "EC dollar pegged to the US dollar at 2.70:1 since 1976 — the longest-running currency peg in the Western Hemisphere. ECCB headquartered in Basseterre. The Federation has no independent monetary policy, no exchange-rate tool, and no ability to set its own interest rates — sovereignty on the flag, monetary union in the wallet." },
    { id: "kn_f1", isTruth: false, country: "kn", fallback: "The Saint Kitts and Nevis CBI programme is rigorously vetted and reserved for high-quality investors.",
      whyFallback: "Iranian sanctions evaders, the 2014 FinCEN advisory, OCCRP-documented Russian holders, recurring batches of passports recalled and reissued. Due-diligence agents have been changed; PR firms have been changed; the structural conflict — sellers paid per applicant approved — has not. The marketing is rigorous; the screening is the line that keeps moving." },
    { id: "kn_f2", isTruth: false, country: "kn", fallback: "Nevis's separate Premier and Island Assembly mean the Federation is a model of balanced internal autonomy.",
      whyFallback: "Nevis pays into the Federation; the share it receives back has been the standing complaint of every Nevisian Premier from Amory through Parry to Brantley. The 1998 referendum hit 62% for secession. Autonomy on paper, fiscal asymmetry on the ledger, and a constitutional exit clause that has been used once and could be used again." },
    { id: "kn_f3", isTruth: false, country: "kn", fallback: "Twenty years of Denzil Douglas reflected the strength of Saint Kitts–Nevis democracy.",
      whyFallback: "Boundary-commission disputes, a constitutional motion of no-confidence sat on for over a year, Privy Council rulings against the Speaker's procedural rulings, opposition election-petition cases that dragged out past their political relevance. A mandate that the institutions cannot challenge is also a mandate that has stopped being tested." },
    { id: "kn_f4", isTruth: false, country: "kn", fallback: "The closure of the sugar industry was a clean modernisation success.",
      whyFallback: "Roughly 1,400 cane workers off the payroll, severance disputes that ran for years, former estate lands quietly transferred into tourism and CBI-linked real-estate deals — Frigate Bay, Christophe Harbour, the Salt Plage zone. The cane field's death is documented; the redistribution of what the cane field used to be is the part that was not." },
    { id: "kn_f5", isTruth: false, country: "kn", fallback: "Saint Kitts and Nevis is a quiet tax-neutral jurisdiction, not part of the offshore-finance story.",
      whyFallback: "Nevis LLC and Multiform Foundation structures are taught in offshore-planning courses worldwide for their asset-protection statutes — short statutes of limitation on creditor claims, US$100,000 bond requirements to even file a case. The Federation sits on multiple grey-list and watch-list reviews. Tax-neutral in framing; opaque by design." },
    { id: "kn_f6", isTruth: false, country: "kn", fallback: "Cabinet ministers in a country this small are too visible to be corrupt.",
      whyFallback: "Christopher Sheridan oil-storage allegations, Glenn Phillip / Lindsay Grant Marriott-era land-deal complaints, Patrice Nisbett, Eugene Hamilton — multiple ministers across multiple administrations have faced inquiry or court proceedings over land, contracts, or CBI agency licences. Smallness does not protect a federation; it removes the friction that slows a larger state." },
    { id: "kn_f7", isTruth: false, country: "kn", fallback: "Selling passports for a fixed price is a clean, transparent revenue model.",
      whyFallback: "The Sustainable Growth Fund replaces the older Sugar Industry Diversification Foundation, which replaced earlier funds — each restructured after audit gaps, agent-commission disputes, or external pressure. The headline price is public; the agent commissions, developer kickbacks, and discretionary fee waivers are not. A passport has a sticker; its full price tag does not." },

    // ============== Kuwait — 8T + 7F ==============
    { id: "kw_t1", isTruth: true , country: "kw", fallback: "The Al-Sabah family has ruled Kuwait continuously since 1752 — every Emir for over 270 years has come from a single household.",
      whyFallback: "Sheikh Sabah I bin Jaber chosen by merchant families in 1752. Current Emir Sheikh Meshal Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah took the throne December 2023 after Sheikh Nawaf (2020-23) and Sheikh Sabah (2006-20). The constitution requires the Emir to come from the descendants of Mubarak the Great — by design." },
    { id: "kw_t2", isTruth: true , country: "kw", fallback: "The 1990 \"incubator babies\" testimony that helped sell the US public on the Gulf War was a PR fabrication — the witness was the daughter of Kuwait's ambassador to Washington.",
      whyFallback: "Nayirah al-Sabah testified to Congress in October 1990 that she saw Iraqi soldiers throwing babies out of incubators. The story drove war authorization. She was later identified as the ambassador's daughter; the testimony was coached by PR firm Hill & Knowlton, hired by the Kuwaiti government. No babies were found." },
    { id: "kw_t3", isTruth: true , country: "kw", fallback: "The Kuwait Investment Authority is one of the world's largest sovereign wealth funds — managing roughly $1 trillion with almost no public disclosure of holdings.",
      whyFallback: "Founded 1953, predates the country's independence. Funds the state when oil dips. The Future Generations Fund receives 10% of state revenue annually. The Kuwaiti public — whose oil it is — sees aggregate numbers, not portfolios." },
    { id: "kw_t4", isTruth: true , country: "kw", fallback: "Roughly 100,000 \"Bidoon\" stateless residents — many born in Kuwait across generations — are denied nationality, work permits, healthcare, and schooling.",
      whyFallback: "Bidoon means \"without\" — short for bidoon jinsiyya, \"without nationality\". Many descend from tribes who simply didn't register in 1959. Treated as illegal aliens in the country they were born in. Periodic promises of resolution; the population remains in legal limbo decades later." },
    { id: "kw_t5", isTruth: true , country: "kw", fallback: "The Emir has dissolved Kuwait's National Assembly more than a dozen times since 1976 — the most recent dissolution in 2024 also suspended parts of the constitution for four years.",
      whyFallback: "Dissolutions in 1976, 1986, 1999, 2006, 2008, 2009, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2016, and 2024. Emir Meshal's May 2024 decree suspended parliamentary articles of the constitution for up to four years. Parliament exists at the pleasure of the throne — and the throne uses the option." },
    { id: "kw_t6", isTruth: true , country: "kw", fallback: "Kuwaiti women only got the vote in 2005 — and only after sustained foreign pressure and a vote rammed through a divided parliament.",
      whyFallback: "Constitution since 1962 said \"all citizens\" — interpreted as men only for 43 years. Emir's 1999 decree on women's suffrage rejected by parliament. Finally passed May 2005, 35-23. The first female minister appointed within weeks." },
    { id: "kw_t7", isTruth: true , country: "kw", fallback: "Roughly 70% of Kuwait's population are foreign workers under the kafala (sponsorship) system — their legal status tied to a single employer who can cancel it at will.",
      whyFallback: "Domestic workers, construction, service sector — overwhelmingly from South and Southeast Asia. Passport confiscation widespread despite being illegal on paper. Mass deportation campaigns periodically reduce the count; the structural arrangement remains." },
    { id: "kw_t8", isTruth: true , country: "kw", fallback: "Sheikh Ahmad al-Fahad al-Sabah — former OPEC president, IOC heavyweight, and FIFA executive — was convicted of forgery by a Swiss court in 2021.",
      whyFallback: "Convicted September 2021 in Geneva of falsifying evidence in a case involving alleged Kuwaiti coup plots. Suspended sentence. He stepped back from FIFA and the IOC, retaining significant sporting influence. The Al-Sabah name was the firewall." },
    { id: "kw_f1", isTruth: false, country: "kw", fallback: "Kuwait is a constitutional monarchy with a meaningful elected parliament.",
      whyFallback: "Constitution exists; parliament exists; elections happen. The Emir can also dissolve the assembly, suspend the constitution, and rule by decree — and has, repeatedly, most recently 2024. The hardware of democracy without the load-bearing wiring." },
    { id: "kw_f2", isTruth: false, country: "kw", fallback: "The 1991 liberation of Kuwait was a moral war fought to defend a small free nation.",
      whyFallback: "Saddam invaded August 2, 1990 — that part is real. The selling of the war involved fabricated incubator testimony, PR firms, and a coalition whose other interests in Gulf oil security were not mentioned in the public framing. Both can be true at once." },
    { id: "kw_f3", isTruth: false, country: "kw", fallback: "Kuwait's oil wealth benefits all its residents.",
      whyFallback: "Citizens — about 30% of the population — receive subsidized housing, healthcare, education, and no personal income tax. The other 70% — foreign workers and Bidoon — pay the costs and receive almost none of the welfare." },
    { id: "kw_f4", isTruth: false, country: "kw", fallback: "The Kuwait Investment Authority operates with sovereign-fund-standard transparency.",
      whyFallback: "Linaburg-Maduell transparency index has placed KIA among the more opaque of major sovereign wealth funds. By statute, disclosing KIA holdings is a criminal offence under Kuwaiti law. Roughly a trillion dollars; near-zero public visibility." },
    { id: "kw_f5", isTruth: false, country: "kw", fallback: "The Bidoon question is being resolved through gradual reform.",
      whyFallback: "Promised since the 1980s. Successive committees, periodic announcements of pathways to citizenship, occasional bulk deportations to Comoros (which Kuwait paid to issue \"economic citizenships\"). The unresolved status is the policy, not a delay in the policy." },
    { id: "kw_f6", isTruth: false, country: "kw", fallback: "Kuwait's foreign worker system is governed by ordinary labor law.",
      whyFallback: "Kafala ties legal residency to a specific sponsor — leaving the employer means leaving the country. Worker abuse, wage theft, and passport confiscation are routinely documented by HRW and the ILO. Reforms announced; the binding link between visa and employer remains." },
    { id: "kw_f7", isTruth: false, country: "kw", fallback: "The ruling Al-Sabah family avoids the corruption seen elsewhere in the Gulf.",
      whyFallback: "Wikileaks 2010 cables described internal family disputes, allegations of drug and HIV cover-ups within royal households, and laundered favors. Sheikh Ahmad al-Fahad's Swiss conviction. The framing of Kuwait as the \"clean\" Gulf monarchy survives mostly because the comparison set is Saudi and the UAE." },

    // ============== Kazakhstan — 8T + 7F ==============
    { id: "kz_t1", isTruth: true , country: "kz", fallback: "Nursultan Nazarbayev ruled Kazakhstan from 1989 to 2019 — first as Soviet First Secretary, then as president of the independent republic — and on his retirement the capital Astana was renamed Nur-Sultan in his honor.",
      whyFallback: "Thirty years of single-man rule, dressed in the language of \"father of the nation\" (Elbasy). The capital itself was rebranded as personal property. He retained the chair of the Security Council and the title Elbasy after stepping down — formal retirement, informal continuity." },
    { id: "kz_t2", isTruth: true , country: "kz", fallback: "In January 2022 — the \"Qantar\" or Bloody January protests — at least 227 people were killed and roughly 10,000 detained after an LPG price hike sparked nationwide unrest.",
      whyFallback: "President Tokayev issued a \"shoot to kill without warning\" order. CSTO troops led by Russia were deployed to Kazakhstan for the first time in the alliance's history at his request. Karim Massimov, head of the KNB national security committee, was arrested for treason in the aftermath — purge or coup, depending on who tells it." },
    { id: "kz_t3", isTruth: true , country: "kz", fallback: "The Nazarbayev family is estimated to have accumulated around $8 billion in wealth during his rule — much of it surfaced in the Pandora Papers.",
      whyFallback: "Eldest daughter Dariga and her late husband Rakhat Aliyev, son-in-law Timur Kulibayev, grandson Aisultan, the Bota Foundation, offshore structures in BVI and Liechtenstein. The OCCRP and Pandora Papers documented the trust network. The Tokayev government quietly began clawing some of it back after 2022." },
    { id: "kz_t4", isTruth: true , country: "kz", fallback: "In September 2022, eight months after Bloody January, Tokayev renamed the capital back from Nur-Sultan to Astana — the cleanest signal of de-Nazarbayevization on the map.",
      whyFallback: "The Elbasy law was repealed, family members lost state posts, the constitution was amended to limit presidential terms. The personality cult had a literal address; removing it was symbolic and structural at once. Whether the system itself changed is the harder question." },
    { id: "kz_t5", isTruth: true , country: "kz", fallback: "The Kashagan oilfield — the largest discovery in 30 years — ran more than $50 billion over budget and produces revenue under a production-sharing agreement that gives Kazakhstan a small share of the upside.",
      whyFallback: "Signed in the 1990s with Eni, Shell, ExxonMobil, Total, CNPC, and Inpex when the country had no leverage. Kazakhstan has tried to renegotiate for two decades. The Tengiz field (Chevron-led) and Karachaganak (Eni-Shell-led) sit under similar foreign-favorable contracts." },
    { id: "kz_t6", isTruth: true , country: "kz", fallback: "Between 1949 and 1989, the Soviet Union conducted roughly 450 nuclear tests at the Semipalatinsk Polygon in northeast Kazakhstan — affecting an estimated 200,000 people downwind.",
      whyFallback: "Atmospheric, underground, surface — including the Lake Chagan crater, deliberately created by a 140-kiloton blast in 1965 to study \"peaceful\" nuclear excavation. Cancer rates, birth defects, and contamination persist. Kazakhstan inherited the closed site, and Moscow inherited none of the medical bill." },
    { id: "kz_t7", isTruth: true , country: "kz", fallback: "Eurasian Resources Group (ENRC) — Kazakh mining giant once listed in London — has been investigated by the UK Serious Fraud Office and named in Magnitsky Act sanctions linked to Operation Roman Tagh.",
      whyFallback: "Founders Patokh Chodiev, Alijan Ibragimov, and Alexander Machkevitch — the \"Trio\". Delisted from the LSE in 2013 after bribery and corruption allegations. The SFO case spans more than a decade and continues to expose how Kazakh resource money was laundered through London advisers, lawyers, and banks." },
    { id: "kz_t8", isTruth: true , country: "kz", fallback: "The Aral Sea — once the world's fourth-largest lake — collapsed to roughly a tenth of its volume because Soviet planners diverted its feeder rivers to grow cotton in the desert.",
      whyFallback: "Independence inherited the ruin. The exposed seabed (Aralkum desert) is now a source of toxic dust storms carrying pesticide residues. The northern \"Small Aral\" has been partially restored with a World Bank dam; the southern basin is gone. A planned ecocide, fifty years in the making." },
    { id: "kz_f1", isTruth: false, country: "kz", fallback: "Kazakhstan's transition from Nazarbayev to Tokayev was a normal democratic succession.",
      whyFallback: "Tokayev was hand-picked, took office after a managed resignation in 2019, and Nazarbayev retained the Security Council chair and Elbasy status. The real rupture came in January 2022 — through riot, fire, and Russian troops — not at the ballot box." },
    { id: "kz_f2", isTruth: false, country: "kz", fallback: "January 2022's CSTO deployment was a routine collective-security operation.",
      whyFallback: "It was the first ever CSTO Article 4 activation, requested by a president whose grip was uncertain, with Russian paratroopers landing within 48 hours. Tokayev declared the situation stable and the troops left within ten days — speed that suggests the mission was political signaling, not a real peacekeeping operation." },
    { id: "kz_f3", isTruth: false, country: "kz", fallback: "Kazakhstan's oil wealth has been broadly shared with its citizens.",
      whyFallback: "Astana has the architecture of a Gulf petro-capital; rural Kazakhstan does not. The National Fund (Samruk-Kazyna) holds the assets; the family-and-friends network around Nazarbayev held the keys for thirty years. Per-capita oil wealth on paper; visible wealth concentrated in a few districts." },
    { id: "kz_f4", isTruth: false, country: "kz", fallback: "Kazakhstan is a fully sovereign actor balanced between Russia, China, and the West.",
      whyFallback: "It is the multivector doctrine on paper — pipelines to China, military ties to Russia, oil contracts to the West. In practice CSTO troops landed when asked, the Belt and Road Khorgos dry port routes Chinese goods through Kazakh territory, and Western majors set the terms on the major fields. Sovereignty rented in three directions." },
    { id: "kz_f5", isTruth: false, country: "kz", fallback: "The 2024 referendum approving a Rosatom-built nuclear plant was a clean democratic choice.",
      whyFallback: "Officially 71% in favor on 64% turnout. Independent observers were limited; opposition voices on the question were muted. Choosing Russia's state nuclear monopoly as the builder — when France, Korea, and China were also on the shortlist — is the kind of \"choice\" that is decided before the ballot is printed." },
    { id: "kz_f6", isTruth: false, country: "kz", fallback: "Russian-Kazakh relations are based on equal partnership and mutual respect.",
      whyFallback: "Putin has publicly mused about northern Kazakhstan's \"Russian-speaking\" regions in the language used before Crimea. Kazakhstan refuses to recognize the annexation of Crimea or the four Ukrainian oblasts, refuses to send troops, and quietly takes in tens of thousands of Russians fleeing mobilization — partnership performed, sovereignty quietly defended." },
    { id: "kz_f7", isTruth: false, country: "kz", fallback: "The trial of former security chief Karim Massimov for treason cleared up what happened in Bloody January.",
      whyFallback: "Massimov was convicted in a closed-door 2023 trial and sentenced to 18 years. The verdict was the official story — an attempted coup by Nazarbayev loyalists — but the evidence was sealed, the defense restricted, and the question of who actually fired on protesters in the streets was left without a public answer. A trial as ending, not as inquiry." },

    // ============== Laos — 8T + 7F ==============
    { id: "la_t1", isTruth: true , country: "la", fallback: "The Lao People's Revolutionary Party (LPRP) has been the only legal political party since 1975 — a one-party communist state with no opposition permitted.",
      whyFallback: "Pathet Lao took power December 1975, ended the monarchy, sent King Savang Vatthana to a re-education camp where he died. Kaysone Phomvihane founded the party; Choummaly Sayasone, Bounnhang Vorachith, and Thongloun Sisoulith have rotated the top seat ever since. Elections exist; alternatives do not." },
    { id: "la_t2", isTruth: true , country: "la", fallback: "Laos is the most heavily bombed country per capita in history — the US dropped roughly 2 million tons of ordnance during the \"Secret War\" (1964-1973), more than fell on all of Europe in WWII.",
      whyFallback: "Over 580,000 bombing missions flown by the CIA-run operation, never declared, never voted on by Congress. The Plain of Jars in Xieng Khouang was hit hardest. The war was \"secret\" to Americans, not to the Laotians underneath it." },
    { id: "la_t3", isTruth: true , country: "la", fallback: "An estimated 80 million unexploded cluster bomblets still litter Laotian soil; more than 20,000 people have been killed or maimed by them since the war ended in 1975.",
      whyFallback: "UXO clearance proceeds at a pace measured in centuries at current funding. Farmers, children, scrap collectors are the modern casualties of a war their grandparents didn't start. US clearance contributions remain a small fraction of what was spent dropping the ordnance." },
    { id: "la_t4", isTruth: true , country: "la", fallback: "The CIA recruited roughly 30,000 Hmong fighters under General Vang Pao as a \"Secret Army\" — then largely abandoned them when the US withdrew, leaving survivors to flee or face persecution.",
      whyFallback: "Hmong communities that had fought for the US were targeted by the post-1975 government. UNPO and refugee testimony documented attacks in the highlands into the 2000s. The recruitment was covert; the consequences were borne in public, by the recruited." },
    { id: "la_t5", isTruth: true , country: "la", fallback: "Civil society leader Sombath Somphone was abducted at a police checkpoint near Patuxai monument in Vientiane on December 15, 2012 — caught on CCTV, never seen since.",
      whyFallback: "Magsaysay Award recipient, worked on rural development. The footage shows police stopping him, then unknown men driving his vehicle away. The Lao government has denied involvement and produced no investigation. \"Disappeared\" is the formal status." },
    { id: "la_t6", isTruth: true , country: "la", fallback: "The Laos-China Railway opened in 2021 on roughly $6 billion of Chinese loans — pushing Lao public debt past 100% of GDP and into open distress by 2022.",
      whyFallback: "Beijing rescheduled payments rather than allow default-on-paper. The railway runs; the balance sheet runs against the country that built it. Sri Lanka's Hambantota is the comparison Lao economists make in private and not in public." },
    { id: "la_t7", isTruth: true , country: "la", fallback: "Roughly 75% of Lao GDP comes from natural-resource extraction — mining, hydropower, timber — much of it exported to China and Vietnam under long-term concession terms.",
      whyFallback: "Sepon copper-gold mine operated by Chinese-owned MMG. Nam Theun 2 dam (~$1.4B, World Bank-backed) displaced ethnic Brou communities. Xayaburi on the Mekong drew protest from downstream Cambodia and Vietnam. The country sells what it stands on." },
    { id: "la_t8", isTruth: true , country: "la", fallback: "The Golden Triangle Special Economic Zone in Bokeo Province — run by Chinese businessman Zhao Wei — was sanctioned by the US Treasury in 2018 for drug trafficking, human trafficking, and wildlife trafficking.",
      whyFallback: "Kings Romans Casino at its center. OFAC designated Zhao Wei's network as a Transnational Criminal Organization. The SEZ continues to operate inside Lao territory under a 99-year lease; the host government has not moved against it." },
    { id: "la_f1", isTruth: false, country: "la", fallback: "Laos chose communism freely in 1975 after open democratic deliberation.",
      whyFallback: "The Pathet Lao took power through a civil war fought during and after the US bombing campaign — not via election. The monarchy was abolished by decree, the king died in a re-education camp, dissent was criminalized. \"Chose\" is doing all the work in that sentence." },
    { id: "la_f2", isTruth: false, country: "la", fallback: "The US Secret War in Laos was a minor sideshow to Vietnam.",
      whyFallback: "It was the largest covert operation in CIA history at the time and remains, per capita, the heaviest aerial bombardment ever conducted. \"Sideshow\" describes its position in American memory, not its position in Lao soil." },
    { id: "la_f3", isTruth: false, country: "la", fallback: "Laos has a free press that holds the government accountable.",
      whyFallback: "All major outlets are state-owned or state-aligned. RFA Lao is jammed and restricted. Online critic Anousa Luangsuphom was shot in Vientiane in 2023 and survived; others did not. The constitution promises press freedom; the criminal code revokes it." },
    { id: "la_f4", isTruth: false, country: "la", fallback: "Chinese-financed mega-projects in Laos are a fair exchange between equal partners.",
      whyFallback: "The railway, the dams, the SEZs, the mines — concessions run for decades, debt service runs for longer, the leverage runs one way. When Vientiane couldn't pay in 2022, the rescheduling terms were dictated, not negotiated." },
    { id: "la_f5", isTruth: false, country: "la", fallback: "The unexploded ordnance problem in Laos is being cleared at a reasonable pace.",
      whyFallback: "At current rates the work runs into the next century. Annual US clearance funding is dwarfed by the original bombing budget by orders of magnitude. \"Reasonable\" depends on whether your field is the one still being farmed by hand around buried bomblets." },
    { id: "la_f6", isTruth: false, country: "la", fallback: "Mekong dam-building is a clean energy strategy with shared regional benefits.",
      whyFallback: "Xayaburi, Don Sahong, and the cascade above them have measurably altered sediment flow, fish migration, and downstream livelihoods in Cambodia and Vietnam. The electricity is mostly exported to Thailand and China; the ecological cost is paid by everyone living on the river." },
    { id: "la_f7", isTruth: false, country: "la", fallback: "The Lao government has no role in the drug trade flowing out of the Golden Triangle.",
      whyFallback: "The Bokeo SEZ where Treasury-sanctioned Zhao Wei operates the Kings Romans casino sits on Lao territory under a 99-year lease the government granted and the government renews. \"No role\" is technically true only if leasing the land doesn't count as a role." },

    // ============== Saint Lucia — 8T + 7F ==============
    { id: "lc_t1", isTruth: true , country: "lc", fallback: "Between 2010 and 2011 the Royal Saint Lucia Police Force killed at least twelve men in a campaign branded \"Operation Restore Confidence\" — and the 2013 IMPACS inquiry concluded the killings had been staged as shootouts.",
      whyFallback: "Caribbean Community IMPACS report, commissioned under the Kenny Anthony SLP government 2013, delivered 2015. Findings: planted weapons, fabricated reports, a death-squad pattern inside the RSLPF. The US invoked Leahy Law in 2013 and cut police training assistance to Saint Lucia. The report was received, summarised, and quietly shelved. No officer has been convicted." },
    { id: "lc_t2", isTruth: true , country: "lc", fallback: "The Allen Chastanet UWP government signed a 2017 framework agreement with China's Desert Star Holdings for a US$2.6 billion \"DSH Saint Lucia\" horseracing-and-casino mega-resort at Vieux Fort — covering some 700 acres of public land at a peppercorn lease.",
      whyFallback: "Lease terms reported as roughly EC$0.05 per square foot per year for 99 years. The project bundled a racetrack, marina, casino, free zone, and CBI-linked real estate. Construction stalled by 2019; the Pearl of the Caribbean branding evaporated. The land remained allocated, the public consultation never happened, and the deal sat under the next administration as unfinished business." },
    { id: "lc_t3", isTruth: true , country: "lc", fallback: "Saint Lucia launched its Citizenship-by-Investment Programme in 2015 under the Kenny Anthony government — the last of the OECS states to enter the passport-sales market it had previously criticised.",
      whyFallback: "Anthony had publicly opposed CBI as recently as 2013, then introduced it under fiscal pressure from declining banana revenues. Routes include a National Economic Fund contribution from US$100,000, approved real estate, government bonds, and an enterprise project. Receipts are now a recurring line in the budget; the policy reversal is the part the campaign rhetoric does not cover." },
    { id: "lc_t4", isTruth: true , country: "lc", fallback: "Saint Lucia's banana industry — once 70% of export earnings — collapsed after the 1997 WTO ruling against EU Lome Convention preferences. Roughly 90% of banana farms ceased operating within two decades.",
      whyFallback: "Geest, then Fyffes, then nothing. WTO Case DS27, brought by the United States on behalf of Chiquita, Dole, and Del Monte. Saint Lucia, Dominica, Saint Vincent, and Grenada lost their guaranteed European market. Farms abandoned, rural unemployment up, migration to Castries and Vieux Fort sharpened. A trade case in Geneva rewrote the economic geography of a country half a world away." },
    { id: "lc_t5", isTruth: true , country: "lc", fallback: "Allen Chastanet was the country's Tourism Minister 2006-11 under the UWP and a former Sandals Resorts executive — then returned as Prime Minister 2016-21 negotiating tourism contracts with the industry he came from.",
      whyFallback: "Hewanorra International Airport expansion contracts, Sandals concessions, Royalton arrangements, the DSH framework — all negotiated under a PM whose pre-political career was in the resort sector. Conflict-of-interest disclosure in Saint Lucia is a press question, not a statutory machine. A revolving door this short does not need a corridor." },
    { id: "lc_t6", isTruth: true , country: "lc", fallback: "Saint Lucia switched diplomatic recognition from Taiwan to China in 1997, then back to Taiwan in 2007 under UWP Prime Minister John Compton — and Taiwan has financed the Owen King EU Hospital, scholarships, and infrastructure projects ever since.",
      whyFallback: "Compton's 2007 reversal made Saint Lucia one of the few states ever to switch twice. Taiwanese aid then funded Castries hospital construction, agricultural projects, and student programmes — the kind of cheque-book development that the One-China policy is supposed to make impossible. Saint Lucia kept the cheque book and the recognition that came with it." },
    { id: "lc_t7", isTruth: true , country: "lc", fallback: "Saint Lucia is one of the Caribbean states still using the UK Privy Council as its court of final appeal — declining to fully join the Caribbean Court of Justice's appellate jurisdiction despite repeated official intentions to do so.",
      whyFallback: "CARICOM founding state of the CCJ, signatory to the Agreement, but appellate jurisdiction never adopted by referendum. Final appeals from the Saint Lucia Court of Appeal still travel to London. A regional court was built; the country that helped build it sends its hardest cases to its former imperial capital. Sovereignty in the constitution, the Privy Council on the letterhead." },
    { id: "lc_t8", isTruth: true , country: "lc", fallback: "The Rochamel Beach Resort project — built with public guarantees during the Kenny Anthony government in the early 2000s — overran its budget by tens of millions and left the state holding the loan after the developer defaulted.",
      whyFallback: "Public Accounts Committee findings, a Commission of Inquiry under the succeeding Stephenson King UWP administration. Rochamel became the standing example of a Saint Lucian state guarantee made for a tourism project whose private sponsor walked away. The hotel exists; the original financial logic does not. The taxpayer pays the residue." },
    { id: "lc_f1", isTruth: false, country: "lc", fallback: "The IMPACS report into the 2010-11 police killings led to accountability inside the Royal Saint Lucia Police Force.",
      whyFallback: "No prosecutions. No convictions. The DPP cited evidentiary problems; the witnesses were either dead or unwilling. The Leahy Law restrictions on US police aid were lifted after diplomatic engagement, not after trials. Accountability happened in the document; the document was kept on a shelf. The officers named are still serving or retired with full pensions." },
    { id: "lc_f2", isTruth: false, country: "lc", fallback: "The Pitons UNESCO World Heritage designation guarantees that Soufriere's environment is protected from development.",
      whyFallback: "UNESCO has formally warned Saint Lucia multiple times about construction encroachment within the Pitons Management Area — luxury villa lots, road cuttings, hotel additions. The designation is a tourism brand the government uses in marketing; the management plan is a separate document that is treated less seriously than the logo. Heritage on the brochure, development inside the boundary." },
    { id: "lc_f3", isTruth: false, country: "lc", fallback: "Saint Lucia's two-party SLP-UWP system means voters have a genuine choice between competing economic visions.",
      whyFallback: "Both parties have run CBI programmes, both have negotiated big tourism concessions, both have inherited and shelved the IMPACS report, both have kept the Privy Council, both have managed the same World Bank and IMF macro-framework. The personalities rotate; the policy substrate does not. The choice is between governing teams that have already agreed on the operating system." },
    { id: "lc_f4", isTruth: false, country: "lc", fallback: "The DSH Saint Lucia mega-project collapsed because of bad luck and global economic conditions.",
      whyFallback: "The framework agreement was signed without competitive tender, without published feasibility, without parliamentary debate. The Vieux Fort community held protest marches that the government described as misinformed. The developer's prior track record in Hong Kong gambling and Mainland real estate was not interrogated in due diligence. Bad luck is the post-hoc framing; bad process is what is in the documents." },
    { id: "lc_f5", isTruth: false, country: "lc", fallback: "Saint Lucia's tourism boom has lifted the broader population out of dependence on the old banana economy.",
      whyFallback: "Resort-sector jobs are seasonal, low-wage, and concentrated on the north-west coast. The banana belt — the rural south and east — has not been replaced; it has been hollowed out. Migration to Castries, to Vieux Fort, to the UK and Canada absorbs what the resorts do not employ. The headline GDP figure rises; the rural household budget does not." },
    { id: "lc_f6", isTruth: false, country: "lc", fallback: "Selling passports through the CBI programme is just another export — like bananas or hotel rooms.",
      whyFallback: "Bananas do not carry visa-free access to the Schengen Area. Hotel rooms do not let the holder evade sanctions or restructure tax residency. A Saint Lucian passport is a sovereign legal instrument, sold at a unit price set by competition with Dominica, Grenada, and Saint Kitts. Comparing it to bananas is the marketing line; the legal and reputational risk is what governments inherit when the headline price drops." },
    { id: "lc_f7", isTruth: false, country: "lc", fallback: "Saint Lucia is too small to attract serious financial or political scandal.",
      whyFallback: "Stanford International Bank Antigua-fallout exposure, M&C Marketing and Communications inquiry-era contracts, Rochamel guarantee, Hess Oil Saint Lucia transhipment terminal liabilities, the DSH framework, the IMPACS file. The scandals are catalogued; the response is the same in each — a Commission of Inquiry, a report, a press conference, a shelf. Smallness does not prevent scandal; it removes the institutions that would otherwise resolve it." },

    // ============== Liberia — 8T + 7F ==============
    { id: "lr_t1", isTruth: true , country: "lr", fallback: "Liberia was founded in 1822 by the American Colonization Society as a resettlement project for freed US slaves — and the resettled minority then ruled the indigenous majority for the next 133 years.",
      whyFallback: "Independence declared 1847. The Americo-Liberian elite — roughly 5% of the population — dominated the 95% indigenous through the True Whig Party until 1980. A colonial project staffed by the descendants of the colonized, structurally identical to what they fled." },
    { id: "lr_t2", isTruth: true , country: "lr", fallback: "The True Whig Party held uninterrupted one-party rule from 1878 to 1980 — one of the longest single-party reigns in modern history.",
      whyFallback: "William Tubman (1944–71) and William Tolbert (1971–80) closed the run. Indigenous Liberians could not vote until the 1940s, could not hold high office in practice until much later. \"Republic\" in name; oligarchy in structure." },
    { id: "lr_t3", isTruth: true , country: "lr", fallback: "Samuel Doe's 1980 coup ended with thirteen of Tolbert's cabinet ministers tied to telephone poles on a Monrovia beach and executed by firing squad — on camera.",
      whyFallback: "The footage circulated globally. Doe, a master sergeant, framed it as \"redemption\" for the indigenous majority. The Reagan administration kept funding him through the 1980s anyway — Cold War alignment trumped the beach." },
    { id: "lr_t4", isTruth: true , country: "lr", fallback: "Charles Taylor's 1989 invasion from Côte d'Ivoire triggered a civil war that killed roughly 250,000 people — and Doe himself was tortured to death in 1990 with the entire session filmed.",
      whyFallback: "Prince Yormie Johnson's INPFL captured Doe, cut off his ears on video, killed him over hours. The tape sold in Monrovia markets. First Liberian Civil War 1989–1997. Johnson later became a senator and kingmaker." },
    { id: "lr_t5", isTruth: true , country: "lr", fallback: "Charles Taylor won the 1997 election under the campaign slogan \"He killed my ma, he killed my pa, but I'll vote for him\" — voters openly admitting fear was the ballot.",
      whyFallback: "The slogan was not invented by critics — supporters chanted it. The calculation was explicit: elect him or he resumes the war. He resumed the war anyway. Second Liberian Civil War 1999–2003." },
    { id: "lr_t6", isTruth: true , country: "lr", fallback: "Charles Taylor was convicted in 2012 by the Special Court for Sierra Leone and sentenced to 50 years for arming the RUF in exchange for blood diamonds — the first head of state convicted by an international tribunal since Nuremberg.",
      whyFallback: "The conviction was for Sierra Leone's war, not Liberia's. Liberia's own atrocities remain almost entirely unprosecuted. Taylor serves his sentence in a UK prison; the Liberian victims got the symbol, not the docket." },
    { id: "lr_t7", isTruth: true , country: "lr", fallback: "The Firestone rubber plantation — leased from Liberia in 1926 for 99 years at six cents an acre — became the largest rubber plantation in the world, with documented child labor still surfacing in the 21st century.",
      whyFallback: "Now Bridgestone-owned. One million acres. The 1926 deal also came with a forced loan that put Liberia's customs revenue under American receivership for decades. \"Independent republic\" with foreign hands on the till." },
    { id: "lr_t8", isTruth: true , country: "lr", fallback: "Liberia's Truth and Reconciliation Commission (2006–2009) named more than fifty individuals for prosecution as war criminals — and almost none have been tried, with several serving in government instead.",
      whyFallback: "The TRC report named warlords by name across factions. Prince Johnson sat in the Senate. Boakai's 2024 \"Operation Justice\" promise of a war crimes court is the first serious movement in fifteen years. The list outlived the will to use it." },
    { id: "lr_f1", isTruth: false, country: "lr", fallback: "Liberia was Africa's first independent republic and therefore escaped the colonial pattern.",
      whyFallback: "It was an internal colony. The Americo-Liberian settler class imposed indigenous taxation, forced labor exports to Spanish Fernando Po (the 1930 League of Nations Christy Commission scandal forced President King's resignation), and excluded the native majority from citizenship for nearly a century. Different flag, same shape." },
    { id: "lr_f2", isTruth: false, country: "lr", fallback: "Ellen Johnson Sirleaf's Nobel Peace Prize confirmed she was a clean break from the war years.",
      whyFallback: "The TRC's own report named Sirleaf among those who had financially supported Taylor's NPFL in its early invasion phase. She apologized, was never barred from office, won the Nobel in 2011 anyway. \"Iron Lady\" branding abroad; mixed file at home." },
    { id: "lr_f3", isTruth: false, country: "lr", fallback: "The Liberian flag fleet — one of the world's largest — reflects a thriving domestic maritime industry.",
      whyFallback: "It's a flag of convenience. Roughly 3,500+ ships are registered in Liberia and almost none have ever touched a Liberian port. The registry is administered out of Virginia, USA. The flag is rented; the country sees a sliver of the fees." },
    { id: "lr_f4", isTruth: false, country: "lr", fallback: "George Weah's election in 2018 — football legend turned president — was the clean outsider moment Liberia needed.",
      whyFallback: "His term ended in 2024 with the largest private mansion under construction in Monrovia, fuel and concession scandals, and the country still ranked near the bottom of every human-development index. The CDC delivered celebrity, not reform. He lost re-election to Boakai." },
    { id: "lr_f5", isTruth: false, country: "lr", fallback: "The civil wars ended cleanly in 2003 with the warlords removed from public life.",
      whyFallback: "Prince Johnson — the man who filmed himself executing Doe — sat in the Liberian Senate for nearly two decades and was a kingmaker in presidential elections through 2017. Multiple ex-faction leaders held office. \"Removed from public life\" is the version told abroad." },
    { id: "lr_f6", isTruth: false, country: "lr", fallback: "Liberia's iron ore, rubber, and timber wealth lifts ordinary Liberians.",
      whyFallback: "Concessions to ArcelorMittal, Firestone-Bridgestone, Western Cluster, and successive logging contracts move resources outward at rates set largely in foreign capitals. Liberia remains one of the poorest countries on Earth despite the export volumes. The wealth has an address; it isn't here." },
    { id: "lr_f7", isTruth: false, country: "lr", fallback: "The Liberia Petroleum Refining Corporation and other state enterprises serve the public interest.",
      whyFallback: "LPRC has surfaced in audit after audit — fuel theft, missing inventories, politically allocated contracts. State-owned enterprises across Liberia have functioned as patronage machines for whichever faction holds the presidency. \"Public\" in name; private in flow." },

    // ============== Lesotho — 8T + 7F ==============
    { id: "ls_t1", isTruth: true , country: "ls", fallback: "South African troops invaded Lesotho in September 1998 under SADC's \"Operation Boleas\" — restoring order after a disputed election at the cost of roughly 17 SANDF soldiers killed and parts of Maseru burned.",
      whyFallback: "Officially a regional peacekeeping mission; in practice a neighbour walking in to settle Lesotho's politics. The mountain kingdom's sovereignty has a border that ends at Pretoria's patience." },
    { id: "ls_t2", isTruth: true , country: "ls", fallback: "In August 2014 the Lesotho army surrounded Prime Minister Tom Thabane's residence in what he called a coup attempt — Thabane fled to South Africa and SADC mediation walked him back into office.",
      whyFallback: "Army chief Lt Gen Tlali Kamoli vs Thabane vs rival commander Maaparankoe Mahao. The dispute was framed as a security matter; it was a power dispute between factions of the security forces themselves." },
    { id: "ls_t3", isTruth: true , country: "ls", fallback: "Lt Gen Maaparankoe Mahao — the army chief Thabane had appointed to replace Kamoli — was shot dead by soldiers outside Maseru in June 2015, days after Kamoli's faction returned to power.",
      whyFallback: "Official account: he resisted arrest. SADC's Phumaphi Commission found the killing required full investigation. Years later, prosecutions stalled, the chain of command was never publicly mapped. The army polices its own murders." },
    { id: "ls_t4", isTruth: true , country: "ls", fallback: "Tom Thabane's estranged wife Lipolelo Thabane was assassinated outside Maseru on 14 June 2017 — two days before her husband's inauguration as Prime Minister. Thabane himself was later charged with her murder.",
      whyFallback: "Charges filed 2020 against the sitting Prime Minister and his new wife Maesaiah. Prosecution dragged through immunity disputes, Constitutional Court challenges, and Thabane's resignation. A head of government charged with murdering his predecessor wife is not a small institutional event." },
    { id: "ls_t5", isTruth: true , country: "ls", fallback: "The Lesotho Highlands Water Project sells water from Lesotho's mountains to South Africa's Gauteng province — a more than $20-billion programme since 1986 — and Lesotho Highlands Development Authority officials were convicted of taking bribes from Acres International, ABB, and Lahmeyer.",
      whyFallback: "Masupha Sole, the LHDA chief executive, jailed for accepting kickbacks from multinational engineering firms. Acres (Canada), ABB (Swiss-Swedish), Lahmeyer (Germany) — convicted in Lesotho's own courts. The water flows to Johannesburg; the bribes flowed to Maseru. Both directions documented." },
    { id: "ls_t6", isTruth: true , country: "ls", fallback: "Roughly a quarter of Lesotho's adult workforce has historically migrated to South Africa — primarily into the gold mines around Johannesburg — making remittances a structural pillar of the national economy.",
      whyFallback: "Estimates of 250,000–400,000 Basotho mineworkers at the peak. As South African mining contracted, the remittance economy contracted with it. The kingdom's economic geography is shaped less by Maseru than by the labour demands of another country's industry." },
    { id: "ls_t7", isTruth: true , country: "ls", fallback: "Lesotho's textile industry — roughly 30,000 jobs at its peak — depends almost entirely on the US African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), a trade preference Congress can withdraw at will.",
      whyFallback: "AGOA reviews are annual; eligibility is political. Lesotho's largest formal-sector employer is contingent on a US statute Lesotho has no vote on. \"Sovereign trade policy\" with one hand on a switch in Washington." },
    { id: "ls_t8", isTruth: true , country: "ls", fallback: "Prime Minister Sam Matekane took office in October 2022 as a mining-tycoon-turned-politician — founder of the Matekane Group of Companies, with diamond and construction interests across the country he now governs.",
      whyFallback: "RFP (Revolution for Prosperity) party founded months before the election. The richest man in Lesotho became Prime Minister of Lesotho. Conflicts of interest are managed by declaration, not by structural separation — the same arrangement that has not worked elsewhere." },
    { id: "ls_f1", isTruth: false, country: "ls", fallback: "Lesotho is a stable constitutional monarchy with peaceful transfers of power.",
      whyFallback: "1986 coup, 1991 coup, 1994 royal palace standoff, 1998 SADC invasion, 2014 attempted coup, 2015 army-chief assassination, 2017 first-lady murder, 2020 prime-ministerial murder charge. \"Stable\" is a brochure word; the timeline is a different document." },
    { id: "ls_f2", isTruth: false, country: "ls", fallback: "The Lesotho Highlands Water Project is a fair commercial arrangement between two sovereign neighbours.",
      whyFallback: "South Africa needs the water for Gauteng's industry and 15 million people; Lesotho needs the royalties for its budget. The pricing, infrastructure financing, and engineering contracts were shaped in Pretoria and the World Bank, not in Maseru. \"Fair\" between unequal parties is a description of the outcome's framing, not its terms." },
    { id: "ls_f3", isTruth: false, country: "ls", fallback: "The Lesotho Defence Force exists to defend Lesotho from external threats.",
      whyFallback: "Lesotho is entirely surrounded by South Africa, has no air force capable of contesting SANDF, and could not resist invasion for a day. The LDF's actual operational record is internal: against governments, against rival officers, against its own former chiefs. \"Defence\" has been a domestic activity." },
    { id: "ls_f4", isTruth: false, country: "ls", fallback: "Diamond wealth from Letseng-la-Terai — the world's highest-altitude diamond mine — translates into broad national prosperity.",
      whyFallback: "Letseng produces some of the world's most valuable large stones; the mine's operator (Gem Diamonds, UK-listed) pays royalties and taxes. The mine sits at 3,100 metres in Lesotho; the share registry sits in London. \"Resource wealth\" and \"national wealth\" are separated by a stock exchange." },
    { id: "ls_f5", isTruth: false, country: "ls", fallback: "Lesotho's proportional MMP electoral system produces broadly representative coalitions.",
      whyFallback: "Mixed Member Proportional in theory; in practice a generator of fragile coalitions that collapse mid-term — Mosisili to Thabane to Mosisili to Thabane to Majoro to Matekane in roughly a decade. Representativeness is achieved; governability is not. The 2018 Constitution Commission reform process was repeatedly delayed." },
    { id: "ls_f6", isTruth: false, country: "ls", fallback: "King Letsie III is a ceremonial figure with no role in real politics.",
      whyFallback: "Constitutional monarchy on paper. His father Moshoeshoe II was deposed (1990), restored (1994), and died in a car accident (1996) under circumstances some still question. The throne's symbolic authority is what coalitions appeal to when parliamentary politics break — which has been often." },
    { id: "ls_f7", isTruth: false, country: "ls", fallback: "Lesotho's HIV/AIDS response is one of the world's success stories.",
      whyFallback: "Adult HIV prevalence above 20% — one of the highest on Earth. Treatment coverage has improved; the underlying epidemic is a function of migrant-labour separation, poverty, and a generation of mineworker mobility into and out of South Africa. \"Response\" is real; the structural conditions producing the epidemic have not been addressed." },

    // ============== Madagascar — 8T + 7F ==============
    { id: "mg_t1", isTruth: true , country: "mg", fallback: "Andry Rajoelina took power in 2009 not by election but by street protest backed by the army — as the 34-year-old mayor of Antananarivo ousting an elected president and running a four-year \"Transition\" no neighbour recognised.",
      whyFallback: "Marc Ravalomanana was forced out in March 2009 after weeks of unrest and a mutinous army unit. The African Union suspended Madagascar. The Transition lasted until 2013 elections from which both Ravalomanana and Rajoelina were formally barred — a deal that let the system reset around the man who had taken it." },
    { id: "mg_t2", isTruth: true , country: "mg", fallback: "The 2009 crisis was triggered in part by a leaked deal in which South Korea's Daewoo Logistics sought a 99-year lease on 1.3 million hectares — roughly half of Madagascar's arable land — to grow maize and palm oil for export.",
      whyFallback: "The Financial Times broke the story in November 2008. Free land, food exported, hungry country. Public outrage gave the Rajoelina protests their fuel. The deal was cancelled when the government that signed it fell — and the country was rewarded with a coup." },
    { id: "mg_t3", isTruth: true , country: "mg", fallback: "Rajoelina was re-elected in 2023 on an official turnout of around 46% after ten of the eleven opposition candidates called a boycott — and after the courts let him run despite his French citizenship.",
      whyFallback: "Rajoelina quietly took French nationality in 2014. Madagascar's constitution strips citizenship from anyone who acquires another — which should have ended his eligibility in 2018 and again in 2023. The Constitutional Court ruled the question moot. Boycott plus ruling plus low turnout: the same man, the third time." },
    { id: "mg_t4", isTruth: true , country: "mg", fallback: "Madagascar produces around 80% of the world's natural vanilla — and vanilla farmers in the Sava region remain among the poorest people in one of the poorest countries, with documented child labour through the entire boom-and-bust cycle.",
      whyFallback: "Price spiked to over $600/kg around 2018, then collapsed by 2022. The volatility was absorbed by farmers, not by the European and American buyers. The product on the supermarket shelf carries a markup the village never sees." },
    { id: "mg_t5", isTruth: true , country: "mg", fallback: "Madagascar's rosewood — protected under CITES — has been logged out of national parks since 2009 to feed Chinese furniture demand, with shipping containers leaving the country under successive governments that promised crackdowns.",
      whyFallback: "The trade exploded in the security vacuum of the Rajoelina Transition and never really stopped. \"Blood timber\" from Masoala and Marojejy. Stockpiles legalised, then re-banned, then quietly moved. Each presidency has its own laundering procedure for the same trees." },
    { id: "mg_t6", isTruth: true , country: "mg", fallback: "Marc Ravalomanana — the president overthrown in 2009 — was a dairy magnate whose TIKO conglomerate had grown into the country's largest food group during the years he ran the state.",
      whyFallback: "Yoghurt, milk, oil, construction, media. TIKO factories were attacked during the 2009 unrest; Ravalomanana fled to South Africa and stayed in exile until 2014. The complaint against him — using office to grow a business empire — was real. So was the complaint against the man who replaced him." },
    { id: "mg_t7", isTruth: true , country: "mg", fallback: "Madagascar has lost roughly 90% of its original forest cover — and the lemurs, chameleons, and endemic species the country is famous for are being marketed to tourists while their habitat is being shipped abroad.",
      whyFallback: "Slash-and-burn for charcoal at the household end, illegal logging at the export end, mining concessions in the middle. The conservation budget runs on foreign NGOs; the deforestation runs on weak enforcement and overlapping concessions." },
    { id: "mg_t8", isTruth: true , country: "mg", fallback: "The $170 million Antananarivo cable car — built by France's Colas and RATP under Rajoelina — was launched as a flagship of the \"Sarobakitra\" development corridor in a city where most residents cannot reliably afford rice.",
      whyFallback: "Two lines, French operator, French contractor, French president-of-Madagascar. \"Modernisation\" as photo op. The same budgets that built urban gondolas did not build provincial roads, water, or electricity. The corridor goes where the cameras go." },
    { id: "mg_f1", isTruth: false, country: "mg", fallback: "Madagascar's 2009 transition was a legitimate democratic correction.",
      whyFallback: "An elected president was removed by a mayor with army backing, then the new authority ran the country for four years without an election. The African Union and SADC suspended Madagascar precisely because they refused to call it democratic. The eventual 2013 vote was a managed exit, not a vindication." },
    { id: "mg_f2", isTruth: false, country: "mg", fallback: "Andry Rajoelina is constitutionally Malagasy.",
      whyFallback: "Article 42 of the constitution strips Malagasy nationality from any citizen who voluntarily acquires another. Rajoelina took French citizenship in 2014. The Constitutional Court has declined to apply its own constitution to its own president — twice, in 2018 and 2023." },
    { id: "mg_f3", isTruth: false, country: "mg", fallback: "Madagascar's mining code protects the national interest.",
      whyFallback: "The 2005 code was written under World Bank guidance with generous terms for foreign operators. Rio Tinto's QMM ilmenite mine at Fort Dauphin operates under a regime that critics — including Malagasy parliamentarians — call a tax holiday with extra steps. The reform has been \"in progress\" for a decade." },
    { id: "mg_f4", isTruth: false, country: "mg", fallback: "The Ilakaka sapphire boom enriched southern Madagascar.",
      whyFallback: "Since 1998, billions of dollars of sapphires have left Ilakaka — through Thai, Sri Lankan, and Chinese buyers — while the town itself remains a frontier settlement of plastic sheeting and dust. The value is captured downstream in Bangkok and Geneva, not at the pit." },
    { id: "mg_f5", isTruth: false, country: "mg", fallback: "The Daewoo land deal was an isolated misstep.",
      whyFallback: "The 1.3-million-hectare lease was simply the largest example of a pattern — Chinese, Indian, Gulf, and European investors quietly negotiating long leases over Malagasy farmland through the 2000s and 2010s. Daewoo got caught. Most did not." },
    { id: "mg_f6", isTruth: false, country: "mg", fallback: "Madagascar's elections are competitive contests between independent candidates.",
      whyFallback: "Ravalomanana barred from 2013, Rajoelina barred from 2013, both back by 2018, ten of eleven opposition candidates boycotting 2023, around 46% official turnout. The candidates' eligibility, the courts' rulings, and the turnout are all negotiated in advance — not on election day." },
    { id: "mg_f7", isTruth: false, country: "mg", fallback: "Madagascar's biodiversity is being protected for future generations.",
      whyFallback: "About 90% of original forest gone, rosewood being shipped to China through every transition, mining concessions inside protected areas, and presidents launching cable cars while park rangers go unpaid. The brochure markets the lemurs; the policy ships the forest." },

    // ============== Marshall Islands — 8T + 7F ==============
    { id: "mh_t1", isTruth: true , country: "mh", fallback: "The United States detonated 67 nuclear weapons in the Marshall Islands between 1946 and 1958 — the equivalent of 1.6 Hiroshima bombs every day for twelve years.",
      whyFallback: "Bikini Atoll and Enewetak Atoll were the primary test sites. Operation Crossroads, Castle, Hardtack — the total yield exceeded all atmospheric tests anywhere else on the planet. The arithmetic is the US Department of Energy's own." },
    { id: "mh_t2", isTruth: true , country: "mh", fallback: "Castle Bravo (March 1, 1954) was the largest US nuclear test ever — 15 megatons, two-and-a-half times the yield the scientists predicted — and it fell as ash on Rongelap and Utirik islanders downwind.",
      whyFallback: "The miscalculation was acknowledged in declassified records released in the 2010s. The Japanese fishing boat Lucky Dragon No. 5 was also dusted; its crew sickened, one died. Bravo Crater is still visible from orbit." },
    { id: "mh_t3", isTruth: true , country: "mh", fallback: "The Runit Dome — \"The Tomb\" — is a concrete cap on Enewetak's Runit Island sealing 73,000 cubic metres of irradiated soil and plutonium, and a 2020 Department of Energy study found it leaking.",
      whyFallback: "Built in the late 1970s as a temporary fix. Sea-level rise threatens the structure directly. The plutonium inside includes material flown in from the Nevada Test Site — Marshallese soil now holds American waste it never produced." },
    { id: "mh_t4", isTruth: true , country: "mh", fallback: "The people of Bikini Atoll, displaced in 1946 \"for the good of mankind\", have never been able to return permanently — King Juda's community was moved to Rongerik, then Kili, where food and water remain inadequate.",
      whyFallback: "Rongerik nearly starved them. Kili is a single small island with no lagoon, no fishing grounds, no agriculture worth the name. Eighty years of exile from a homeland still too radioactive for human habitation." },
    { id: "mh_t5", isTruth: true , country: "mh", fallback: "Rongelap islanders dosed by Castle Bravo fallout were secretly studied by the US Atomic Energy Commission as a \"control group\" under Project 4.1.",
      whyFallback: "Documented in declassified AEC records. The population was returned to contaminated land in 1957 specifically to gather data on long-term exposure. Thyroid cancers and leukemia followed. The study was the point." },
    { id: "mh_t6", isTruth: true , country: "mh", fallback: "The Nuclear Claims Tribunal awarded Marshallese victims $2.3 billion in 1988 — the US deposited only $150 million, and Congress rejected the \"changed circumstances\" petition for the rest in 2010.",
      whyFallback: "The tribunal's final award stood: roughly $750 million for personal injury, $1.5 billion for property damage. The Compact of Free Association capped the US contribution. Two billion dollars of acknowledged debt remain unpaid." },
    { id: "mh_t7", isTruth: true , country: "mh", fallback: "The Compact of Free Association (1986) gives the US full military control over Marshall Islands waters and airspace in exchange for visa-free US residence for Marshallese and ongoing food aid dependency.",
      whyFallback: "The Reagan Test Site at Kwajalein — a US Army garrison used for ICBM and missile-defence testing — sits at the centre of the arrangement. Sovereignty on paper; strategic exclusivity in fact." },
    { id: "mh_t8", isTruth: true , country: "mh", fallback: "The Marshall Islands ship registry is the world's second-largest flag of convenience, with roughly 6,800 vessels — most of them owned nowhere near the Pacific.",
      whyFallback: "The registry is administered from Reston, Virginia by a private US company under contract. Tax, labour, and inspection regimes attached to the flag are why shipowners choose it. The country's name is a brand on a hull." },
    { id: "mh_f1", isTruth: false, country: "mh", fallback: "The Marshall Islands chose to host US nuclear testing as a contribution to global security.",
      whyFallback: "Bikini's people were told the tests were \"for the good of mankind\" and would be temporary. Eighty years later they cannot go home. \"Chose\" describes a relationship the Marshallese never had the standing to refuse." },
    { id: "mh_f2", isTruth: false, country: "mh", fallback: "The Runit Dome safely contains the radioactive waste from US testing.",
      whyFallback: "It was built as a temporary measure with no liner underneath — the bottom is the same coral the lagoon sits on. The 2020 DOE report documents leakage. Sea-level rise will finish what poor engineering started." },
    { id: "mh_f3", isTruth: false, country: "mh", fallback: "The United States fully compensated Marshallese victims of nuclear testing.",
      whyFallback: "Of the $2.3 billion the Nuclear Claims Tribunal awarded, the US paid $150 million. The 2010 \"changed circumstances\" petition asking Congress to honour the remainder was rejected. Compensation in framing; default in arithmetic." },
    { id: "mh_f4", isTruth: false, country: "mh", fallback: "The Compact of Free Association is a partnership between equal sovereign states.",
      whyFallback: "One party controls the other's military access, hosts a missile-defence garrison on its territory, sets the funding caps, and issues the visas. \"Free association\" is the diplomatic term for the structure that exists." },
    { id: "mh_f5", isTruth: false, country: "mh", fallback: "Castle Bravo's fallout on Rongelap was an unforeseeable accident.",
      whyFallback: "Weather data on the day showed winds shifting toward inhabited atolls; the test went ahead anyway. The yield miscalculation was real; the decision to detonate over a known wind pattern was a choice. Declassified records carry both." },
    { id: "mh_f6", isTruth: false, country: "mh", fallback: "The Marshallese ship registry reflects a thriving local maritime industry.",
      whyFallback: "It's a flag-of-convenience operation run from Virginia. The vessels are owned in Greece, Singapore, China, the United States. The Marshall Islands sell the right to fly their colours; the ships have no other connection to them." },
    { id: "mh_f7", isTruth: false, country: "mh", fallback: "The radiation legacy in the Marshall Islands has been resolved.",
      whyFallback: "Bikini remains uninhabitable. Rongelap residents who returned in 1957 developed cancers at rates the AEC was studying them for. Runit leaks. The legacy is not a chapter that closed — it's the present tense, in a country of 42,000 people." },

    // ============== Mongolia — 8T + 7F ==============
    { id: "mn_t1", isTruth: true , country: "mn", fallback: "From 1937 to 1939, communist leader Khorloogiin Choibalsan carried out Stalinist purges that killed an estimated 30,000 to 100,000 Mongolians — wiping out most of the Buddhist clergy and the old aristocratic class.",
      whyFallback: "Conducted under direct Soviet supervision, mirroring Moscow's Great Terror. Nearly every monastery in the country — over 700 — was destroyed. The mass graves at Moron and elsewhere were only exhumed decades later. A country of barely 700,000 people lost a tenth of its population." },
    { id: "mn_t2", isTruth: true , country: "mn", fallback: "Mongolia spent 1924 to 1992 as the world's second communist state — a Soviet satellite in everything but the map, with policy, alphabet, and economy dictated from Moscow.",
      whyFallback: "The Mongolian People's Republic was the USSR's longest-running client. Cyrillic replaced the traditional Mongolian script in 1946. The 1990 Democratic Revolution — a peaceful \"Mongolian Spring\" — ended one-party rule, but the post-communist Mongolian People's Party simply rebranded and kept governing." },
    { id: "mn_t3", isTruth: true , country: "mn", fallback: "The Oyu Tolgoi copper-gold mine — one of the largest on Earth — is operated by Rio Tinto under terms that give the Mongolian state only a 34% share, after a decade of contract disputes the government largely lost.",
      whyFallback: "The 2009 investment agreement, repeated renegotiations in 2013, 2015, and 2022, and arbitration in London. A $7 billion-plus project on Mongolian soil, structured so the host country is the minority partner. \"Resource curse\" is the technical term; the colloquial one is more direct." },
    { id: "mn_t4", isTruth: true , country: "mn", fallback: "The 2019 Erdenes Tavan Tolgoi coal scandal revealed roughly $200 million in funds disbursed as \"loans\" to politicians and their families from the state mining company.",
      whyFallback: "Public anger over the SME Fund leak (\"60 billion tugrik scandal\") brought thousands into Sükhbaatar Square. Members of every major party were named. Prosecutions were selective; the structural pattern — state-resource cash flowing through political channels — was not addressed." },
    { id: "mn_t5", isTruth: true , country: "mn", fallback: "Mongolia was the only Asian-Pacific country to send substantial troops to the 2003 Iraq War as part of the US-led \"Coalition of the Willing\".",
      whyFallback: "Roughly 180 soldiers rotated through Iraq from 2003 to 2008 — a token force, but a deliberate political signal. The reward was strategic: status as a US \"third neighbor\" balancing Russia and China, and the diplomatic cover that comes with being on the right list." },
    { id: "mn_t6", isTruth: true , country: "mn", fallback: "When Mongolia hosted the Dalai Lama in 2016, China responded with border slowdowns, tariff retaliation, and pressure that forced Ulaanbaatar to publicly pledge not to invite him again.",
      whyFallback: "Mongolia is historically Tibetan Buddhist; the Dalai Lama is a spiritual figure for most Mongolians. Beijing classifies the visit as political. The 2016 episode showed exactly how much sovereignty a landlocked country with two neighbors actually has." },
    { id: "mn_t7", isTruth: true , country: "mn", fallback: "Mongolia exports more than half of everything it digs — coal, copper, gold — to a single buyer: China. The 2022 Sangmu Bond crisis and recurring fiscal squeezes track this dependency.",
      whyFallback: "Roughly 80–90% of exports flow south. When Chinese demand softens, the Mongolian tugrik falls; when border crossings close (COVID, political friction), the economy contracts. \"Third neighbor\" diplomacy with the US, Japan, and EU is the verbal counterweight to a structural one-customer market." },
    { id: "mn_t8", isTruth: true , country: "mn", fallback: "Roughly 80% of Mongolia's land is now affected by desertification, and the dzud — winter livestock disasters — repeatedly kill millions of animals and push herders into Ulaanbaatar's ger-district slums.",
      whyFallback: "The 2009–10 dzud killed an estimated 10 million livestock. The 2023–24 dzud killed over 7 million. Climate stress plus overgrazing plus mining water draw. Half the population now lives in one city; a third of that city lives in unplanned ger districts ringing the capital." },
    { id: "mn_f1", isTruth: false, country: "mn", fallback: "The 1990 Democratic Revolution swept out the old communist elite and built a new political class.",
      whyFallback: "The Mongolian People's Revolutionary Party simply renamed itself the Mongolian People's Party and kept most of its cadre, networks, and assets. The Democratic Party that rose against it became the same kind of organism — patronage, mining contracts, family blocs. The labels changed; the architecture did not." },
    { id: "mn_f2", isTruth: false, country: "mn", fallback: "Mongolia's mineral wealth has made it a prosperous country.",
      whyFallback: "GDP grew at 17% in 2011 on the back of mining; a decade later, the median Mongolian is poorer in real terms, public debt is among the highest per capita in Asia, and the country has needed repeated IMF rescues. The wealth left; the holes stayed." },
    { id: "mn_f3", isTruth: false, country: "mn", fallback: "Mongolia is a fully independent country balancing freely between Russia and China.",
      whyFallback: "Landlocked, with all rail and pipeline access running through one of the two. The \"third neighbor\" doctrine is real diplomacy, but it does not change the physical map. Every major mining contract, transit deal, and currency swap is negotiated under that geometry." },
    { id: "mn_f4", isTruth: false, country: "mn", fallback: "Mongolia's anti-corruption agency holds the powerful accountable.",
      whyFallback: "The Independent Authority Against Corruption has investigated thousands of cases and prosecuted very few of the politically connected. Former presidents and prime ministers have been charged, acquitted, charged again, released — the cycle is the system, not a malfunction." },
    { id: "mn_f5", isTruth: false, country: "mn", fallback: "Mongolian herders benefit from the mining boom on their land.",
      whyFallback: "Water tables drop, grazing routes are cut by haul roads, and the cash compensation — when paid — does not rebuild a pastoral economy. Herder protests at Oyu Tolgoi, Tavan Tolgoi, and across the South Gobi are a recurring feature, not an early-stage adjustment." },
    { id: "mn_f6", isTruth: false, country: "mn", fallback: "Mongolia's elections are clean competitions between rival parties offering different futures.",
      whyFallback: "The MPP and DP rotate power and trade allegations of vote-buying, coal-cash, and constituency carving. Coalition shuffles inside parliament unseat prime ministers more often than voters do. The 2024 election proceeded under an electoral system the ruling party had just redrawn." },
    { id: "mn_f7", isTruth: false, country: "mn", fallback: "Genghis Khan's legacy in modern Mongolia is a matter of historical scholarship.",
      whyFallback: "His image is a political weapon — placed on currency, airports, statues, vodka labels, and the central square. Battles over the Choijin Lama temple precinct, the Sükhbaatar/Chinggis statue swaps, and school curriculum are fights over who gets to claim the founder. National myth is one of the few resources the political class hasn't yet sold." },

    // ============== Mauritania — 8T + 7F ==============
    { id: "mr_t1", isTruth: true , country: "mr", fallback: "Mauritania was the last country in the world to officially abolish slavery — in 1981 — and did not criminalize it until 2007.",
      whyFallback: "Abolition by presidential decree, 1981. Criminal penalty, 2007. The 26-year gap is the legal record. The Global Slavery Index repeatedly ranks Mauritania the highest country on Earth per capita for modern slavery — estimates of 10-20% of the population still in hereditary bondage." },
    { id: "mr_t2", isTruth: true , country: "mr", fallback: "Hereditary slavery in Mauritania is racial: Black Haratin are born into bondage to Arab-Berber Bidan masters, generation after generation, with status passed through the mother.",
      whyFallback: "Caste structure documented by SOS Esclaves, Anti-Slavery International, and UN special rapporteurs. \"Abolition\" did not free anyone — it removed the legal category without dismantling the social one. Most Haratin born into a master's household remain there as adults." },
    { id: "mr_t3", isTruth: true , country: "mr", fallback: "Biram Dah Abeid, founder of the anti-slavery IRA-Mauritanie, has been imprisoned multiple times — including for publicly burning legal texts used to justify slavery.",
      whyFallback: "Arrested 2012, 2014, 2018. Sakharov Prize finalist, UN Human Rights Prize laureate. Ran for president from prison. The state's preferred response to anti-slavery activism is to prosecute the activists, not the slaveholders." },
    { id: "mr_t4", isTruth: true , country: "mr", fallback: "Between 1989 and 1991, the Mauritanian state killed thousands of Black Mauritanians and expelled roughly 70,000 Afro-Mauritanians across the Senegal border.",
      whyFallback: "Estimates of dead range from 5,000 to 30,000 — the gap itself a measure of how undocumented the killings were. Soldiers and civil servants of Pulaar, Wolof, and Soninke origin were singled out. The expelled were stripped of citizenship and property; full restitution has never happened." },
    { id: "mr_t5", isTruth: true , country: "mr", fallback: "Former president Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz — who took power in a 2008 coup and ruled until 2019 — was convicted in 2023 of corruption and sentenced to five years in prison.",
      whyFallback: "The \"Aziz Affair\", domestically nicknamed the Decade of Corruption trial. Charges around illicit enrichment of roughly $4M traced through family networks. His successor Mohamed Ould Ghazouani — Aziz's own former defense minister — presided over the prosecution. Africa rarely tries its retired generals; the trial happened anyway." },
    { id: "mr_t6", isTruth: true , country: "mr", fallback: "The Tasiast gold mine — owned by Canadian multinational Kinross — is one of the largest gold operations in Africa, and the bulk of the value leaves the country.",
      whyFallback: "Kinross Gold Corporation, Toronto-listed. Mauritanian royalties and taxes are a fraction of revenue. Phosphate, iron ore, copper, and gold extraction by foreign multinationals follow the same pattern — the country sits on resources its citizens do not benefit from." },
    { id: "mr_t7", isTruth: true , country: "mr", fallback: "Mauritania has been a key Sahel security partner for US AFRICOM, French Barkhane, and EU border-control operations — receiving training, funding, and equipment in exchange for cooperation.",
      whyFallback: "Counter-terrorism partnership against AQIM and JNIM in the northern desert. Frontex contracts to intercept migrants on the Atlantic route to the Canary Islands. The security-aid pipeline reinforces whichever regime is in office; democratic conditionality is rhetorical." },
    { id: "mr_t8", isTruth: true , country: "mr", fallback: "Arabization policies since the 1960s have systematically displaced French and African languages from schools and administration — pushing Black Mauritanians out of public life.",
      whyFallback: "Pulaar, Soninke, and Wolof speakers found their languages demoted and their access to civil-service exams narrowed. The 1989-91 expulsions accelerated what the language laws had already begun. Identity engineering through curriculum." },
    { id: "mr_f1", isTruth: false, country: "mr", fallback: "Slavery in Mauritania is a historical issue that ended in 1981.",
      whyFallback: "The 1981 decree was the legal abolition. Criminalization waited until 2007. Prosecutions since then number in the single digits. The Global Slavery Index continues to rank Mauritania first or near-first per capita. The past tense is a press-release convenience." },
    { id: "mr_f2", isTruth: false, country: "mr", fallback: "The 2019 election of Mohamed Ould Ghazouani marked Mauritania's first genuine democratic transition.",
      whyFallback: "Ghazouani is Aziz's longtime ally, former intelligence chief, and former defense minister — the regime's own continuity candidate. \"First peaceful handover\" is technically true; the handover was between two members of the same security apparatus. Opposition contested both 2019 and 2024 results; protests followed each." },
    { id: "mr_f3", isTruth: false, country: "mr", fallback: "Mauritania's military-coup era ended in 2008.",
      whyFallback: "The 2008 coup was itself the most recent in a chain — Taya 1984, Vall 2005, Aziz 2008. The army is the political class. Civilian rule means generals who took off the uniform. Ghazouani is the latest example, not the exception." },
    { id: "mr_f4", isTruth: false, country: "mr", fallback: "Mauritania's mineral wealth funds national development.",
      whyFallback: "Iron ore (SNIM), gold (Kinross Tasiast), copper, phosphates, and offshore gas. Mauritania remains one of the poorest countries on Earth by HDI. The extraction is real; the development pipeline runs to Toronto, Paris, and Beijing rather than Nouakchott." },
    { id: "mr_f5", isTruth: false, country: "mr", fallback: "Mauritania is a tolerant Islamic republic.",
      whyFallback: "Apostasy carries the death penalty on the books. Saudi-funded Wahhabi influence has hardened religious practice over decades. Blogger Mohamed Cheikh Ould Mkheitir spent years on death row for an article about caste and Islam — released in 2019 after international pressure, not domestic reform." },
    { id: "mr_f6", isTruth: false, country: "mr", fallback: "The 1989 violence against Black Mauritanians was a border incident with Senegal.",
      whyFallback: "The framing as a Senegal-Mauritania dispute obscured what happened inside Mauritania: state killings of Afro-Mauritanian soldiers and civil servants, mass expulsions stripping citizenship, villages emptied. The border story was the cover; the ethnic cleansing was the content." },
    { id: "mr_f7", isTruth: false, country: "mr", fallback: "Mauritania's caste system is a vestige that modernization is gradually erasing.",
      whyFallback: "Bidan (Arab-Berber) on top, Haratin (Black freed-slave descendants) below, and the formerly enslaved Black African ethnic groups (Pulaar, Soninke, Wolof) in a separate stratum altogether. Inter-marriage is rare. Land, capital, military rank, and political office track the caste line. Modernization has rearranged the surface, not the structure." },

    // ============== Mauritius — 8T + 7F ==============
    { id: "mu_t1", isTruth: true , country: "mu", fallback: "The 2019 Mauritius Leaks — ~200,000 documents from law firm Conyers Dill & Pearman — exposed Mauritius as a conduit routing investment from India and Africa through offshore structures to avoid tax in the source countries.",
      whyFallback: "ICIJ-led investigation. Multinationals and wealthy investors used Mauritian shell companies to exploit double-taxation treaties — particularly the India-Mauritius treaty that for years let capital gains on Indian investments escape tax in both jurisdictions. \"African Singapore\" is the brand; tax arbitrage is the function." },
    { id: "mu_t2", isTruth: true , country: "mu", fallback: "Between 1968 and 1973 the entire Chagossian population — roughly 1,500 people — was forcibly removed from the Chagos Archipelago so the United States could build a military base on Diego Garcia.",
      whyFallback: "Dogs gassed, families given hours, deportation by cargo ship to Mauritius and Seychelles. The UK kept the archipelago by carving it out of Mauritius at independence in 1965 — itself a breach of UN decolonization rules. Generations of Chagossians have never been allowed home." },
    { id: "mu_t3", isTruth: true , country: "mu", fallback: "The International Court of Justice ruled in 2019 that the UK's retention of the Chagos Archipelago is illegal, and the UN General Assembly voted 116-6 demanding withdrawal.",
      whyFallback: "Advisory opinion February 2019. UNGA resolution May 2019. The UK ignored both for over five years. The October 2024 sovereignty-transfer agreement preserves a 99-year US lease on Diego Garcia — the base stays, the flag changes." },
    { id: "mu_t4", isTruth: true , country: "mu", fallback: "Mauritian politics has been dominated for over half a century by two family dynasties — the Ramgoolams (Labour) and the Jugnauths (MSM) — passing the premiership between fathers and sons.",
      whyFallback: "Seewoosagur Ramgoolam: first PM 1968-82. Son Navin Ramgoolam: PM 1995-2000, 2005-14, 2024-. Anerood Jugnauth: PM 1982-95 and 2000-2003 and 2014-2017. Son Pravind Jugnauth: PM 2017-2024, taking office by inheritance rather than election. Two surnames, six decades." },
    { id: "mu_t5", isTruth: true , country: "mu", fallback: "In July 2020 the Japanese-owned bulk carrier Wakashio ran aground on a coral reef off southeast Mauritius and spilled ~1,000 tons of fuel oil — devastating one of the country's most protected lagoons.",
      whyFallback: "The ship had been off course for hours; communications were down because the crew wanted Wi-Fi signal from shore. The captain was eventually prosecuted in Mauritius; the corporate owners (Nagashiki Shipping, Mitsui OSK) faced limited consequences. Volunteers used their own hair to soak up oil because the official response was too slow." },
    { id: "mu_t6", isTruth: true , country: "mu", fallback: "The Aapravasi Ghat — a UNESCO World Heritage site in Port Louis — is the port where roughly 450,000 indentured Indian labourers were processed between 1834 and 1923 to replace abolished slave labour on sugar plantations.",
      whyFallback: "\"Coolie trade\" — debt-bonded labour designed to look like a free contract while functioning like its predecessor. The system spread from Mauritius to Fiji, the Caribbean, South Africa. The British abolitionist narrative is incomplete without it." },
    { id: "mu_t7", isTruth: true , country: "mu", fallback: "Mauritius has suffered repeated banking collapses — Bramer Bank (2015), the BAI insurance group's implosion, and the long-running problems at SBM and Maubank — with politically connected losses absorbed by depositors and taxpayers.",
      whyFallback: "Bramer/BAI was effectively wound up by the Jugnauth government in 2015; depositors lost access, pensioners lost savings, and the political fight over who benefited from the restructuring continues. Small-island banking concentrates risk; political proximity decides who is rescued and who is not." },
    { id: "mu_t8", isTruth: true , country: "mu", fallback: "Roughly $24 billion of foreign direct investment into India was reported as coming \"from Mauritius\" in peak years — a country of 1.3 million people acting as the largest single source of capital into India.",
      whyFallback: "Pure tax-treaty arbitrage. The capital wasn't Mauritian — it was American, European, Indian-domestic round-tripping, and offshore wealth using the India-Mauritius DTAA loophole. The treaty was finally renegotiated in 2016; the architecture that produced the number was the point." },
    { id: "mu_f1", isTruth: false, country: "mu", fallback: "Mauritius is an African success story built on honest finance and good governance.",
      whyFallback: "The \"African Singapore\" branding is real; so is the Mauritius Leaks file showing the financial-services sector's core product was helping multinationals avoid African and Indian tax. The success is real — its source is the part the brand omits." },
    { id: "mu_f2", isTruth: false, country: "mu", fallback: "Mauritius gained full sovereignty at independence in 1968.",
      whyFallback: "The UK detached the Chagos Archipelago three years earlier (1965), kept it, leased Diego Garcia to the US, and emptied the islands of their inhabitants. Independence with a piece carved out is the formal definition of incomplete sovereignty." },
    { id: "mu_f3", isTruth: false, country: "mu", fallback: "The Best Loser System and ethnic-community electoral protections produce balanced representation.",
      whyFallback: "The system allocates additional seats by declared community (Hindu, Muslim, Sino-Mauritian, \"General Population\") based on a 1972 census. Half a century later the categories are frozen, the demographics aren't, and the UN Human Rights Committee has ruled the requirement to declare community discriminatory." },
    { id: "mu_f4", isTruth: false, country: "mu", fallback: "Mauritian democracy alternates power between genuinely opposing parties.",
      whyFallback: "Power alternates between two family dynasties (Ramgoolam and Jugnauth) running parties whose economic models — sugar elite, financial services, tourism, offshore — are functionally identical. The alternation is real; the choice is bounded." },
    { id: "mu_f5", isTruth: false, country: "mu", fallback: "Mauritius is racially harmonious — the \"rainbow nation\" of the Indian Ocean.",
      whyFallback: "The Creole population (~27%, descended from enslaved Africans) is documentably overrepresented in poverty, underrepresented in capital, and largely absent from the political dynasties. Sega — the music born from slavery — was the cultural emblem before the state took an interest in it. Harmony at the brochure level; le malaise créole at the lived level." },
    { id: "mu_f6", isTruth: false, country: "mu", fallback: "The Chagos sovereignty deal of October 2024 returns the islands to Mauritius.",
      whyFallback: "It returns the title. Diego Garcia — the only one that matters strategically — stays under a 99-year US military lease. The Chagossians themselves, the actual displaced people, were not the negotiating party and have no automatic right of return. Sovereignty on paper; base in practice." },
    { id: "mu_f7", isTruth: false, country: "mu", fallback: "Mauritian financial regulation cleaned up the offshore industry after Mauritius Leaks.",
      whyFallback: "Mauritius was placed on the EU tax-haven blacklist and the FATF grey list after the leaks, then removed once cosmetic reforms were passed. The Pandora Papers (2021) showed Mauritian structures still in heavy use. Removal from a list and removal of the practice are different events." },

    // ============== Maldives — 8T + 7F ==============
    { id: "mv_t1", isTruth: true , country: "mv", fallback: "Maumoon Abdul Gayoom ruled the Maldives for 30 consecutive years (1978–2008), winning a series of single-candidate referendums with reported yes-votes above 90%.",
      whyFallback: "Six successive presidential 'elections' with no opposition candidate permitted. Political parties were not legalized until 2005. The longevity was structural — the framework allowed only one name on the ballot." },
    { id: "mv_t2", isTruth: true , country: "mv", fallback: "Mohamed Nasheed — the country's first democratically elected president (2008) — was forced to resign in February 2012 under threat from mutinying police and military units, an event he called a coup.",
      whyFallback: "The Commonwealth and successive inquiries split on the framing; Nasheed and the MDP maintained the resignation was coerced at gunpoint. He was subsequently jailed under terrorism charges (2015) before being granted medical leave to the UK." },
    { id: "mv_t3", isTruth: true , country: "mv", fallback: "The MMPRC scandal (2014–2017) saw more than $1 billion in state tourism revenue diverted through a state-owned marketing company — the largest corruption case in Maldivian history.",
      whyFallback: "Maldives Marketing & Public Relations Corporation funneled island-lease payments into private accounts and political slush funds. President Abdulla Yameen was sentenced to 11 years in November 2022, with additional 11+8-year sentences in 2024." },
    { id: "mv_t4", isTruth: true , country: "mv", fallback: "The Maldivian constitution requires every citizen to be a Sunni Muslim — non-Muslims cannot legally hold citizenship, and public conversion away from Islam is a criminal offense.",
      whyFallback: "Article 9(d) of the 2008 Constitution. The 1965 framework already banned other religions on inhabited islands. The country is signatory to the ICCPR and ICESCR; the Sharia carve-out is held to override." },
    { id: "mv_t5", isTruth: true , country: "mv", fallback: "Mohamed Nasheed survived an IED bomb attack outside his Malé home in May 2021 — an assassination attempt tied to extremist networks his government had pushed back against.",
      whyFallback: "Improvised device detonated as he entered his vehicle; severe shrapnel injuries requiring months of overseas surgery. Multiple suspects later convicted. Nasheed had spent years warning about the convergence of organized crime, political patronage, and Islamist radicalization." },
    { id: "mv_t6", isTruth: true , country: "mv", fallback: "In 2009 Nasheed held a cabinet meeting underwater, in scuba gear, to dramatize the existential threat rising seas pose to a country whose land averages 1.5m above sea level.",
      whyFallback: "Roughly 80% of Maldivian land sits less than one meter above sea level. The stunt was theater; the underlying physics is not. Successor governments shifted from climate advocacy to land-reclamation and Chinese-financed seawall projects." },
    { id: "mv_t7", isTruth: true , country: "mv", fallback: "The US Treasury sanctioned former president Abdulla Yameen in 2024 under the Global Magnitsky framework for significant corruption.",
      whyFallback: "OFAC designation cited the MMPRC diversion and obstruction of investigations. His PPM/PNC successor Mohamed Muizzu took office in November 2023 and has pursued pardons and procedural relief for Yameen domestically." },
    { id: "mv_t8", isTruth: true , country: "mv", fallback: "President Mohamed Muizzu (November 2023) campaigned on an 'India Out' platform, secured the withdrawal of Indian military personnel by May 2024, and signed a defense cooperation agreement with Beijing the same year.",
      whyFallback: "Roughly 80 Indian troops operating helicopters and a Dornier aircraft were replaced by civilian contractors. The China pivot reopens the geopolitical seesaw last visible under Yameen's $1.4 billion Belt-and-Road borrowing." },
    { id: "mv_f1", isTruth: false, country: "mv", fallback: "The Maldives is a tropical paradise — sunshine, white sand, no politics worth mentioning.",
      whyFallback: "Tourism branding is one product; the documented record — 30-year autocracy, a coup, a billion-dollar state-tourism corruption case, a presidential assassination attempt, US Treasury sanctions on a former head of state — is another." },
    { id: "mv_f2", isTruth: false, country: "mv", fallback: "Tourism revenue lifts ordinary Maldivians out of poverty.",
      whyFallback: "The resort model is enclave economics — one island, one operator, foreign staff, profit repatriation. Tourism is around 30% of GDP; Malé remains overcrowded with documented housing and youth-unemployment pressure. The dollars and the people meet rarely." },
    { id: "mv_f3", isTruth: false, country: "mv", fallback: "Maldivian democracy has been consolidating steadily since 2008.",
      whyFallback: "First multi-party election 2008, coup 2012, opposition jailings 2015–18, MMPRC plunder 2014–17, peaceful transitions 2018 and 2023 — but the underlying patronage networks, judicial dependency on the executive, and assassination risk for reformers remain. Consolidation describes one decade; reversal describes another." },
    { id: "mv_f4", isTruth: false, country: "mv", fallback: "Sharia and international human-rights treaties coexist comfortably in Maldivian law.",
      whyFallback: "The Maldives signed ICCPR and ICESCR with reservations carving Sharia above their provisions. Apostasy, blasphemy, and non-Muslim citizenship sit on one side; the treaty texts sit on the other. 'Coexist' is the official description; 'override' is the operative one." },
    { id: "mv_f5", isTruth: false, country: "mv", fallback: "Foreign powers leave the Maldives alone — it's too small to matter.",
      whyFallback: "India, China, Saudi Arabia, and the US have each contested influence in Malé via loans, basing, infrastructure, and religious funding. A country of 540,000 people sits across the Indian Ocean's primary shipping lane. Smallness is a description of population, not of strategic value." },
    { id: "mv_f6", isTruth: false, country: "mv", fallback: "Press freedom in the Maldives is normal for a small democracy.",
      whyFallback: "Yameen-era prosecutions of investigative outlets, the 2017 murder of blogger Yameen Rasheed, and 2014 disappearance of journalist Ahmed Rilwan — neither case closed with full accountability. Reporters Without Borders ranks the country in the lower half of its index across most years." },
    { id: "mv_f7", isTruth: false, country: "mv", fallback: "Climate is the Maldives' only real problem — fix the seas and the country thrives.",
      whyFallback: "Rising seas are the existential threat. Authoritarian backsliding, billion-dollar corruption, extremist recruitment, and great-power competition for basing rights are the present-tense ones. The water rises slowly; the politics in real time." },

    // ============== Malawi — 8T + 7F ==============
    { id: "mw_t1", isTruth: true , country: "mw", fallback: "Hastings Kamuzu Banda ruled Malawi for thirty years as a one-party state, declared himself \"Life President\" in 1971, and ran the country through the Malawi Congress Party and a paramilitary youth wing answerable only to him.",
      whyFallback: "Independence 1964, single party by 1966, Life President 1971. The MCP Young Pioneers operated parallel to the police and army with the authority to detain, beat, and disappear. Opponents were jailed, exiled, or killed. Three decades of \"father of the nation\" framing on a structure most countries would call a dictatorship." },
    { id: "mw_t2", isTruth: true , country: "mw", fallback: "In May 1983 four senior Banda cabinet ministers — Dick Matenje, Aaron Gadama, Twaibu Sangala, and David Chiwanga — were killed in what the regime called a \"car accident\" near Mwanza. The Mwanza inquest two decades later found they had been murdered.",
      whyFallback: "The four had pushed back against Banda and his confidante Cecilia Kadzamira's nephew John Tembo. Their bodies were found at the bottom of a ravine; the cars had been arranged afterwards. A 1995 inquest confirmed the murders. Banda was charged, then acquitted on a technicality at 96. The killings were public knowledge for twelve years before they could be named." },
    { id: "mw_t3", isTruth: true , country: "mw", fallback: "Cashgate, exposed in September 2013 after the shooting of budget director Paul Mphwiyo, revealed roughly $240 million in public funds siphoned from Capital Hill ministries in Lilongwe through fake invoices and an exploited payments system.",
      whyFallback: "Mphwiyo was shot outside his home; the investigation that followed surfaced the scheme he had reportedly been pushing back against. Junior civil servants writing cheques to themselves and to politically connected suppliers, processed through IFMIS. Donors froze around $150 million in aid. Convictions followed for the small fish; most of the political layer above never stood trial." },
    { id: "mw_t4", isTruth: true , country: "mw", fallback: "In February 2020 the Malawi Constitutional Court annulled the 2019 presidential election that had returned Peter Mutharika — making it the first African court to overturn an incumbent's victory and order a rerun.",
      whyFallback: "Tipp-Ex on result sheets, duplicated tally forms, MEC chair Jane Ansah's \"the irregularities are not material\" rejected by five judges. Mutharika appealed; the Supreme Court upheld the annulment. The rerun in June 2020 was won by Lazarus Chakwera. A rare case where the institutions did the job the constitution describes." },
    { id: "mw_t5", isTruth: true , country: "mw", fallback: "Vice-President Saulos Chilima died in a military aircraft crash in June 2024 while under active corruption charges relating to a UK businessman's procurement contracts.",
      whyFallback: "Chilima had been charged in late 2022 over allegedly receiving cash from Zuneth Sattar in exchange for influencing government contracts. He kept the vice presidency but lost his delegated duties. The Karonga crash killed all nine on board including a former first lady. The investigation continues; the political timing was its own commentary." },
    { id: "mw_t6", isTruth: true , country: "mw", fallback: "Tobacco accounts for around half of Malawi's export earnings — and the plantations that produce it have been documented for decades to rely on child labour, including children as young as five working full days in green leaf.",
      whyFallback: "Burley tobacco for Philip Morris, BAT, Imperial. Green tobacco sickness from nicotine absorption through skin. Reports by the ILO, Human Rights Watch, and the US Department of Labor across multiple administrations. The dependence on one crop is structural; the dependence on cheap child hands is the part the auctions don't print." },
    { id: "mw_t7", isTruth: true , country: "mw", fallback: "Joyce Banda, president during the Cashgate scandal, spent years in self-imposed exile after leaving office in 2014, returning to Malawi in 2018 only after an arrest warrant connected to the scandal was issued — and then quashed.",
      whyFallback: "Banda was abroad from 2014 to 2018, citing security concerns. The Director of Public Prosecutions issued the warrant in 2017; on her return it was dropped. She has consistently denied personal involvement in Cashgate. The pattern — flee, wait, return on cleared terms — is a regional standard." },
    { id: "mw_t8", isTruth: true , country: "mw", fallback: "In November 2023 the Reserve Bank of Malawi devalued the kwacha by 44% in a single day under pressure from an IMF programme — wiping out savings, salaries, and pensions overnight while the political class held dollar accounts.",
      whyFallback: "The Extended Credit Facility required the devaluation as a condition. Fuel queues, bread doubling in price within weeks, importers unable to settle invoices. The Malawians who absorbed the loss were the salaried ones; the families who had moved into dollars years earlier were untouched. \"Stabilisation\" landed on the people the programme was supposed to help." },
    { id: "mw_f1", isTruth: false, country: "mw", fallback: "Banda's thirty-year rule kept Malawi stable and prosperous.",
      whyFallback: "Stability through detention without trial, censorship of the press, dress codes enforced by youth militia, exile or death for organised opposition, and an economy that left Malawi one of the poorest countries on earth at the end of his rule. \"Stable\" is what a one-party state looks like from the outside; from the inside it has a different name." },
    { id: "mw_f2", isTruth: false, country: "mw", fallback: "The 1994 transition to multiparty democracy ended the politics of the Banda era.",
      whyFallback: "Bakili Muluzi (UDF, 1994-2004), Bingu wa Mutharika (DPP, 2004-2012), then his brother Peter Mutharika (DPP, 2014-2020). The MCP returned under Chakwera in 2020. The parties rotated; the patronage networks, the public-procurement carve-outs, and the elite continuity did not." },
    { id: "mw_f3", isTruth: false, country: "mw", fallback: "The Mutharika brothers were two separate political careers.",
      whyFallback: "Bingu wa Mutharika as president 2004-2012; Peter Mutharika in his cabinet, then president 2014-2020. The presidency moved within the family with the DPP machine intact between them. Bingu's death in office in April 2012 was briefly concealed by Peter's faction while they tried to block Vice-President Joyce Banda's constitutional succession. The succession held; the dynastic instinct was on the record." },
    { id: "mw_f4", isTruth: false, country: "mw", fallback: "Cashgate was a one-off scandal that the system corrected.",
      whyFallback: "Cashgate was the scandal that got named. The fertiliser subsidy programme (AIP / FISP) has been hollowed out by ghost suppliers and inflated contracts through successive governments. The same payments architecture that enabled Cashgate continues to process the same kinds of invoices; the auditors flag, the prosecutions stall." },
    { id: "mw_f5", isTruth: false, country: "mw", fallback: "Malawi's tobacco economy is a development success story.",
      whyFallback: "Half the country's exports tied to a crop that the World Health Organization, USDA buyers, and EU regulators are actively trying to reduce demand for, grown by smallholders paid below the cost of production in years when the auction floor sets the price low, with child labour built into the harvest. Dependence on the leaf is the headline; the buyers controlling the price is the structure." },
    { id: "mw_f6", isTruth: false, country: "mw", fallback: "The 2020 court annulment proves Malawi's institutions are now independent.",
      whyFallback: "The Constitutional Court's ruling was a real act of judicial courage — and it was the exception, not the rule. The Electoral Commission that had certified the rigged result, the police that detained protestors, the prosecutors who never charged the architects: same institutions, same week. One ruling does not undo the surrounding apparatus." },
    { id: "mw_f7", isTruth: false, country: "mw", fallback: "Donor aid to Malawi reaches the citizens it is meant to help.",
      whyFallback: "Cashgate was discovered inside a country running primarily on budget support. After the 2013 freeze, donors moved to project-by-project funding routed through NGOs — which carries its own overhead and its own brokers. The kwacha devaluation, the AIP scandals, and the IMF conditionalities all land on the same households; the convoys, the per diems, and the consultancies land elsewhere." },

    // ============== Mozambique — 8T + 7F ==============
    { id: "mz_t1", isTruth: true , country: "mz", fallback: "FRELIMO has ruled Mozambique continuously since independence in 1975 — no losing election in fifty years, across five successive presidents and a dozen disputed vote counts.",
      whyFallback: "Samora Machel 1975–86, Chissano 1986–2005, Guebuza 2005–15, Nyusi 2015–24, Daniel Chapo from 2024. Every count has produced a FRELIMO majority; every opposition rejection — RENAMO, MDM, PODEMOS — has been filed and shelved. \"Liberation movement as permanent government\" is the model, not the exception." },
    { id: "mz_t2", isTruth: true , country: "mz", fallback: "FRELIMO's founder Eduardo Mondlane was assassinated in 1969 by a parcel bomb sent to his office in Dar es Salaam — an operation traced to the Portuguese colonial secret police PIDE.",
      whyFallback: "Mondlane opened a book that exploded. Portuguese PIDE/DGS was the operational hand; internal FRELIMO rivalries delivered the package. The independence movement absorbed both wounds and continued — under Samora Machel, then under the men who outlived him." },
    { id: "mz_t3", isTruth: true , country: "mz", fallback: "President Samora Machel died in 1986 when his Tupolev jet crashed into a South African hillside in suspicious circumstances — apartheid involvement long suspected, never officially proven.",
      whyFallback: "Margo Commission (South African, 1987) blamed pilot error. A Soviet dissent attached to the report blamed a false navigation beacon on South African soil. Mozambique was at war with apartheid-backed RENAMO at the time; Pretoria had motive, means, and the radio equipment. The inquiry the family asked for has never happened." },
    { id: "mz_t4", isTruth: true , country: "mz", fallback: "The \"Tuna Bond\" hidden-debt scandal saw $2 billion secretly borrowed from Credit Suisse and Russia's VTB between 2013 and 2016 by three shell state companies — money that bypassed parliament and never reached its stated purpose.",
      whyFallback: "ProIndicus, EMATUM, MAM — nominally for a tuna fleet, coastal security, and shipyards. Privinvest of Lebanese tycoon Iskandar Safa supplied the boats and the kickbacks. Finance minister Manuel Chang signed the guarantees; the IMF discovered the loans by accident in 2016 and froze aid; the country defaulted on its own sovereign debt." },
    { id: "mz_t5", isTruth: true , country: "mz", fallback: "Manuel Chang — the finance minister who signed the secret guarantees — was arrested in South Africa in 2018, fought extradition for five years, and was finally tried in New York and Maputo while the politicians above him remained untouched.",
      whyFallback: "US Department of Justice prosecuted in 2024; Mozambique's own trial convicted middle-rank officials. President Guebuza's son Ndambi Guebuza was jailed; the president himself was not. Credit Suisse paid $475 million to US and UK regulators in 2021. The lender settled; the country still owes." },
    { id: "mz_t6", isTruth: true , country: "mz", fallback: "The October 2024 election handing power to FRELIMO's Daniel Chapo was rejected by opposition leader Venâncio Mondlane and triggered nationwide protests that left more than 300 dead by early 2025.",
      whyFallback: "PODEMOS-backed Mondlane (no relation to the founder) claimed victory; the Constitutional Council certified Chapo. Live ammunition used against demonstrators in Maputo, Nampula, Quelimane. Election observers from the EU and Commonwealth flagged irregularities; the inauguration went ahead anyway. The pattern from 1999, 2004, 2009, 2014, 2019 repeated with a higher body count." },
    { id: "mz_t7", isTruth: true , country: "mz", fallback: "An ISIS-affiliated insurgency in Cabo Delgado province has killed more than 4,500 people and displaced over a million since 2017 — and forced TotalEnergies to suspend its $20 billion liquefied-gas project after the 2021 attack on Palma.",
      whyFallback: "Ahlu Sunnah Wa-Jama'a (locally al-Shabaab, no relation to Somalia) pledged to ISIS in 2019. Rwandan troops and a SADC mission intervened in 2021; the gas fields sit on some of Africa's richest offshore reserves while the population around them lives without water or electricity. The insurgency is fuelled by exclusion as much as ideology." },
    { id: "mz_t8", isTruth: true , country: "mz", fallback: "The 1977–1992 civil war between FRELIMO and RENAMO killed roughly a million people — a Cold War proxy fight funded by apartheid South Africa and Rhodesia against a Marxist government, dressed up as a Mozambican domestic conflict.",
      whyFallback: "RENAMO was created by Rhodesian intelligence in the late 1970s and inherited by South African military intelligence after Zimbabwe's independence. Pretoria's destabilisation doctrine; Maputo's price. The 1992 Rome General Peace Accords ended the war on paper; the 2019 Maputo accord between Nyusi and Ossufo Momade tried to end it again, because the first ending was incomplete." },
    { id: "mz_f1", isTruth: false, country: "mz", fallback: "Mozambique is a competitive multi-party democracy.",
      whyFallback: "Fifty years of FRELIMO rule, every opposition victory in any province met with recounts that reverse it, civil-society monitors expelled or harassed before each cycle, and the 2024 protests met with live fire. The framework is multi-party; the outcomes are not." },
    { id: "mz_f2", isTruth: false, country: "mz", fallback: "The $2 billion Tuna Bond debt was an honest investment that simply failed.",
      whyFallback: "US prosecutors documented $200 million in kickbacks to Privinvest, Credit Suisse bankers, and Mozambican officials. The tuna fleet was a cover; the actual cargo was the bribery. Credit Suisse and VTB knew the loans bypassed parliament — they lent anyway, because the sovereign guarantee was the product." },
    { id: "mz_f3", isTruth: false, country: "mz", fallback: "Cabo Delgado's insurgency is purely a religious export from Somalia and Syria.",
      whyFallback: "The trigger was local: a Muslim-majority northern province excluded from gas revenue, ruby revenue, and basic services while foreign companies extracted wealth from its coast. ISIS branding came later. The insurgents are mostly young Mozambicans without jobs; the ideology is the wrapper, not the engine." },
    { id: "mz_f4", isTruth: false, country: "mz", fallback: "TotalEnergies' Mozambique LNG project will lift Cabo Delgado out of poverty.",
      whyFallback: "Construction camps imported workers; communities were displaced from fishing grounds with disputed compensation; the project was suspended in 2021 after the Palma attack killed dozens including Total contractors. The revenue model sends royalties to Maputo and dividends to Paris; the province around the wells gets the security perimeter." },
    { id: "mz_f5", isTruth: false, country: "mz", fallback: "Samora Machel's death in 1986 was a straightforward aviation accident.",
      whyFallback: "A president actively fighting an apartheid-backed insurgency dies on apartheid soil in a crash blamed on his Soviet pilots, with the wreckage and black box held in Pretoria for the inquiry. The Margo Commission's pilot-error finding was contested at the time and remains contested. \"Never proven\" is not the same as \"investigated honestly\"." },
    { id: "mz_f6", isTruth: false, country: "mz", fallback: "Mozambique's natural-resource wealth — gas, rubies, graphite, coal, hardwoods — belongs to Mozambicans.",
      whyFallback: "Gemfields' ruby mines, Vale's Moatize coal, Syrah's graphite, Total's LNG, Chinese hardwood concessions, Indian gas stakes. Royalty rates are negotiated in capitals far from the deposits; the resource flows out, the dividends flow further out, and the local share is a CSR brochure." },
    { id: "mz_f7", isTruth: false, country: "mz", fallback: "FRELIMO's veterans of the liberation war earned the privileges they hold today.",
      whyFallback: "The liberation generation is gone; what remains is a class of well-connected children and in-laws holding ministries, state-company boards, and the import licences. The Tuna Bond convictions reached one of them — Ndambi Guebuza, the former president's son. The structure he sat inside was untouched." },

    // ============== Namibia — 8T + 7F ==============
    { id: "na_t1", isTruth: true , country: "na", fallback: "Imperial Germany committed the twentieth century's first genocide in what is now Namibia — General Lothar von Trotha's 1904 \"Vernichtungsbefehl\" extermination order killed roughly 65,000 Herero and 10,000 Nama, around 80% of the Herero people and half the Nama.",
      whyFallback: "Survivors driven into the Omaheke desert with poisoned wells behind them; Shark Island concentration camp at Lüderitz; skulls shipped to Berlin for race-science laboratories that became the intellectual scaffolding of the next German genocide forty years later. Germany officially acknowledged the genocide only in May 2021." },
    { id: "na_t2", isTruth: true , country: "na", fallback: "Germany's May 2021 \"reconciliation agreement\" offered €1.1 billion over thirty years — and Herero and Nama traditional authorities rejected it as insufficient and negotiated over their heads.",
      whyFallback: "Berlin negotiated bilaterally with the Namibian state, not with the descendant communities. The Ovaherero Traditional Authority and Nama Traditional Leaders Association were excluded from the table; the word \"reparations\" was avoided in the final text; the sum, spread across thirty years of \"development aid\", works out at less than the cost of a single Berlin tram line per year. Recognition without redress." },
    { id: "na_t3", isTruth: true , country: "na", fallback: "SWAPO has governed Namibia continuously since independence on 21 March 1990 — across five presidents and zero alternations in power.",
      whyFallback: "Sam Nujoma 1990–2005, Hifikepunye Pohamba 2005–2015, Hage Geingob 2015 until his death in February 2024, Nangolo Mbumba as caretaker, Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah from November 2024 — the first woman to lead the party and the country. Liberation movement as permanent administration; the model is shared with FRELIMO next door, the ANC to the south, ZANU-PF to the east." },
    { id: "na_t4", isTruth: true , country: "na", fallback: "The 2019 \"Fishrot\" scandal exposed Iceland's Samherji paying roughly $10 million in bribes to Namibian ministers for horse mackerel quotas — one of Africa's clearest documented foreign-corporate corruption cases of the decade.",
      whyFallback: "Whistleblower Jóhannes Stefánsson handed Wikileaks and Al Jazeera the \"Anchor\" leak. Fisheries minister Bernhard Esau and justice minister Sacky Shanghala resigned and were arrested; Fishcor chairman James Hatuikulipi — Geingob's in-law — joined them in pre-trial detention that has now run for years without verdict. Samherji executives in Iceland faced no comparable consequence." },
    { id: "na_t5", isTruth: true , country: "na", fallback: "South Africa held on to the deep-water port of Walvis Bay and the offshore Penguin Islands for four years after Namibian independence, returning them only in 1994 — the same year apartheid ended at home.",
      whyFallback: "Pretoria kept Namibia's only commercial port as leverage through the early independence years; the handover came with the end of National Party rule. Independence in 1990 with a foreign-held port is the kind of detail that disappears from anniversary speeches." },
    { id: "na_t6", isTruth: true , country: "na", fallback: "In 1978 South African paratroopers attacked the Cassinga refugee camp inside Angola during Operation Reindeer, killing more than 600 Namibians — most of them civilians and children.",
      whyFallback: "Pretoria called it a SWAPO military base; UN investigators, survivors, and photographic evidence documented schools, clinics, mass graves of women and children. Cassinga Day, 4 May, is a national holiday in Namibia. Few of the South African officers responsible faced prosecution; the Truth and Reconciliation Commission across the border touched the operation only lightly." },
    { id: "na_t7", isTruth: true , country: "na", fallback: "Andimba Toivo ya Toivo — SWAPO co-founder — spent sixteen years on Robben Island in the same prison block as Nelson Mandela, convicted of \"terrorism\" by South Africa for organising Namibian independence.",
      whyFallback: "Arrested 1966, sentenced 1968 under apartheid's Terrorism Act, released 1984. His courtroom statement — \"We are Namibians and not South Africans\" — circulated underground for two decades. The liberation networks of Namibia, South Africa, Angola, and Mozambique shared the same cells and the same enemies." },
    { id: "na_t8", isTruth: true , country: "na", fallback: "The San and Khoekhoe — Africa's oldest continuous human cultures — were displaced from ancestral lands by German colonists, then by South African apartheid, then by post-independence conservation policies, and remain among the poorest people on the continent.",
      whyFallback: "Tens of thousands of years of habitation; cattle ranches, diamond concessions, and game reserves drawn across hunting grounds without consent. Independence in 1990 did not return the land; the constitution recognises traditional authorities, the title deeds remain elsewhere. Marginalisation as policy continuity across three regimes." },
    { id: "na_f1", isTruth: false, country: "na", fallback: "Germany has fully atoned for the Herero and Nama genocide.",
      whyFallback: "Recognition came 117 years after the killings, in 2021. The settlement labelled aid not reparations, excluded the descendant communities from the negotiation, and pays roughly €36 million a year — for a population whose ancestors lost their land, cattle, and 80% of their numbers. Skulls taken for race science were returned in small batches starting in 2011; many remain in German collections." },
    { id: "na_f2", isTruth: false, country: "na", fallback: "Namibia's natural-resource wealth — diamonds, uranium, gold, rare earths, offshore oil — belongs to Namibians.",
      whyFallback: "De Beers' Namdeb joint venture, China General Nuclear's Husab uranium mine, Rössing's long Rio Tinto era, Shell and TotalEnergies' Orange Basin oil discoveries from 2022. Royalty rates are negotiated in Gaborone, Beijing, London, Paris; the deposits sit under villages that still queue for water." },
    { id: "na_f3", isTruth: false, country: "na", fallback: "The Fishrot prosecutions show Namibia's institutions worked.",
      whyFallback: "The accused have spent more than five years in pre-trial detention with no verdict; Samherji's Icelandic executives were not extradited; the bribery flowed through Mauritius, Dubai, and Cyprus shell companies still operating; the horse mackerel quota system that enabled it remains structurally unchanged. Slow trial of a few; impunity for the architecture." },
    { id: "na_f4", isTruth: false, country: "na", fallback: "SWAPO is a liberation movement, not a ruling party with patronage networks.",
      whyFallback: "Thirty-five years of unbroken rule, ministries distributed among veterans' children and in-laws, state enterprises — Fishcor, NamPower, TransNamib, Air Namibia until its 2021 liquidation — run as cadre employment schemes. The liberation generation is mostly gone; what stays is the structure they built around themselves." },
    { id: "na_f5", isTruth: false, country: "na", fallback: "Apartheid ended in Namibia in 1990 and the land question was resolved.",
      whyFallback: "Roughly 70% of commercial farmland in Namibia remained in white ownership a generation after independence, on a willing-buyer–willing-seller policy that moves at the pace the sellers choose. Ancestral Land Commission reports from 2020 documented the gap; implementation has been minimal. Political independence with land tenure intact is the South African pattern repeated." },
    { id: "na_f6", isTruth: false, country: "na", fallback: "The Trans-Kalahari and Trans-Caprivi corridors are neutral infrastructure investments.",
      whyFallback: "Highways and rail corridors funded by Chinese loans, Russian engineering contracts, and European development banks — repaid through mining royalties and port concessions. Walvis Bay's expansion was financed against future cargo revenue. The bill on the asset is one document; the bill on the country is another." },
    { id: "na_f7", isTruth: false, country: "na", fallback: "Cassinga 1978 was a legitimate military strike on a SWAPO base.",
      whyFallback: "Pretoria's framing; the bodies were children. UN Resolution 428 condemned the attack; photographs of mass graves circulated in the European press; defectors from the South African Defence Force later described the briefing — \"a camp, not a base\". The framing survives in some South African military histories; the demographic of the dead does not support it." },

    // ============== Niger — 8T + 7F ==============
    { id: "ne_t1", isTruth: true , country: "ne", fallback: "On July 26, 2023, the presidential guard arrested Mohamed Bazoum — Niger's first democratically transferred head of state — and Brigadier-General Abdourahamane Tchiani declared himself head of the CNSP junta.",
      whyFallback: "Bazoum had been elected April 2021, succeeding Mahamadou Issoufou in the first peaceful transfer of power in Niger's history. The guard meant to protect him removed him. He remains under house arrest; the junta refused ECOWAS mediation." },
    { id: "ne_t2", isTruth: true , country: "ne", fallback: "For decades roughly a third of France's nuclear electricity came from Nigerien uranium — at prices set by France's Areva/Orano, while Niger ranked near the bottom of the UN Human Development Index.",
      whyFallback: "Akouta and Arlit mines fed French reactors from 1971 onward. Touareg communities displaced; tailings left uncovered. Niger received single-digit percentages of revenue. In 2024 the junta revoked Orano's licenses — the lever the colonial relationship had always rested on." },
    { id: "ne_t3", isTruth: true , country: "ne", fallback: "After the July 2023 coup, French troops were ordered out of Niger and Operation Barkhane was expelled by December — ending a decade of French military presence in the Sahel.",
      whyFallback: "Daily protests at the French base in Niamey. Macron initially refused to recognize the junta or withdraw; he folded. Mali expelled France in 2022, Burkina Faso in 2023, Niger closed the sequence. The Sahel coup belt is also a French-exit belt." },
    { id: "ne_t4", isTruth: true , country: "ne", fallback: "The United States built a $110-million drone base — Air Base 201 in Agadez — and operated Air Base 101 in Niamey, then was expelled in 2024 after the junta tore up the status-of-forces agreement.",
      whyFallback: "Air Base 201 was AFRICOM's largest construction project in Africa. Tongo-Tongo, October 2017: four US Green Berets killed in an ISGS ambush the public learned about only because of the casualties. Withdrawal completed September 2024." },
    { id: "ne_t5", isTruth: true , country: "ne", fallback: "Niger, Mali, and Burkina Faso — all post-coup juntas — formed the Alliance of Sahel States (AES) in 2024 and announced their withdrawal from ECOWAS.",
      whyFallback: "ECOWAS, viewed by the juntas as a French proxy, had threatened military intervention to restore Bazoum. The threat collapsed; the AES bloc replaced it. Russian Africa Corps (post-Wagner) instructors now train Nigerien forces where French ones did." },
    { id: "ne_t6", isTruth: true , country: "ne", fallback: "Mamadou Tandja was overthrown in 2010 after dissolving Niger's constitutional court and pushing a referendum to extend his presidency beyond term limits.",
      whyFallback: "General Salou Djibo's transitional junta ran the country for a year, then handed power to civilians under Mahamadou Issoufou — one of the few African coups that delivered on a return-to-civilians promise. The pattern repeats; the outcomes differ." },
    { id: "ne_t7", isTruth: true , country: "ne", fallback: "France conducted its first atmospheric nuclear tests at Reggane in the Algerian Sahara — and Niger's uranium powered the program — without compensating either population for downwind contamination.",
      whyFallback: "Reggane 1960-1966; Polynesia after that. The fuel chain ran from Arlit miners (no protective equipment for years) to Areva to French reactors and bombs. The colony paid the upstream and downstream costs; the metropole banked the electricity." },
    { id: "ne_t8", isTruth: true , country: "ne", fallback: "Niger faces simultaneous jihadist insurgencies on multiple borders — ISGS and JNIM in the west, Boko Haram and ISWAP in the Lake Chad basin — while remaining one of the poorest countries on Earth.",
      whyFallback: "Tillabéri, Tahoua, Diffa regions are the front lines. Drought, food insecurity, and a fertility rate near the world's highest compound the pressure. The security justification for foreign bases never lacked source material; the bases never solved it either." },
    { id: "ne_f1", isTruth: false, country: "ne", fallback: "French military presence in the Sahel was about protecting Africans from terrorism.",
      whyFallback: "Barkhane ran for nearly a decade; the jihadist footprint expanded throughout. What the operation reliably did protect was uranium logistics and French strategic influence. When those interests were no longer welcome, the counter-terror mission ended overnight." },
    { id: "ne_f2", isTruth: false, country: "ne", fallback: "Niger's uranium wealth funded its development.",
      whyFallback: "Niger consistently ranks 187th or 189th on the Human Development Index — at the bottom — despite supplying the fuel for a nuclear superpower's grid. Resource curse mediated by colonial contract pricing. The wealth went north." },
    { id: "ne_f3", isTruth: false, country: "ne", fallback: "ECOWAS is a neutral regional body acting on shared African values.",
      whyFallback: "From the AES juntas' perspective — and a substantial share of the publics in Bamako, Ouagadougou, and Niamey — ECOWAS functions as the political arm of French Africa policy. The 2023 threat to invade Niger to restore Bazoum confirmed the reading for many." },
    { id: "ne_f4", isTruth: false, country: "ne", fallback: "The 2023 coup against Bazoum was driven by foreign interference.",
      whyFallback: "Tchiani had specific institutional grievances — Bazoum was reportedly about to dismiss him. The coup was internal. The geopolitical realignment that followed (French out, Russian in) was downstream of the coup, not its cause — even if the narrative is now told backwards." },
    { id: "ne_f5", isTruth: false, country: "ne", fallback: "The Touareg rebellions of the 1990s and 2007 were simple banditry.",
      whyFallback: "Touareg communities had been displaced by uranium mining, excluded from its revenues, and exposed to its tailings for decades. The rebellions were rooted in unresolved post-colonial bargains. Framing them as banditry was the standard counter-insurgency move." },
    { id: "ne_f6", isTruth: false, country: "ne", fallback: "Replacing French troops with Russian instructors was a step toward sovereignty.",
      whyFallback: "It's a swap of patrons, not the end of patronage. Africa Corps (the rebranded Wagner) operates on extractive contracts familiar from Central African Republic and Mali. Sovereignty would mean no foreign military presence; the AES bloc has not chosen that." },
    { id: "ne_f7", isTruth: false, country: "ne", fallback: "Western media coverage of Sahel coups reflects African voices.",
      whyFallback: "The coups are typically framed as democratic regression and Russian-influenced — the framing that justifies the lost Western position. The local view — that the previous order was a managed dependency dressed as democracy — is rarely the lead. Both readings exist in the record; only one travels." },

    // ============== Nicaragua — 8T + 7F ==============
    { id: "ni_t1", isTruth: true , country: "ni", fallback: "Daniel Ortega — who helped overthrow the Somoza dynasty in 1979 — returned to power in 2007 and has stayed there ever since, rewriting the constitution to allow indefinite re-election.",
      whyFallback: "First run as Sandinista leader 1979–1990, lost the 1990 election to Violeta Chamorro, returned in January 2007 and has held the presidency for 17+ consecutive years. Term limits scrapped in 2014. The revolutionary became the dynasty he overthrew." },
    { id: "ni_t2", isTruth: true , country: "ni", fallback: "Ortega's wife Rosario Murillo was made vice president in 2017 — a co-presidency in everything but name, with daily televised addresses and family members placed across the state apparatus.",
      whyFallback: "Murillo controls communications, party messaging, and ministerial appointments. Their children run media outlets, gas stations, and party structures. The Somozas ran Nicaragua as a family business for 43 years — the Ortegas inherited the template." },
    { id: "ni_t3", isTruth: true , country: "ni", fallback: "The 2018 protests were crushed by Sandinista police and paramilitaries — roughly 300+ killed in months, mostly students, with snipers documented by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.",
      whyFallback: "Trigger was a pension-reform cut in April 2018. Response was live fire, masked paramilitaries on motorbikes, and a \"clean-up operation\" through September. IACHR, OHCHR, and Amnesty documented the killings; the government called the dead \"coup-plotters\"." },
    { id: "ni_t4", isTruth: true , country: "ni", fallback: "Ahead of the 2021 election Ortega jailed every serious opposition candidate — seven presidential contenders and dozens of opposition figures — then declared himself winner with 75% of the vote.",
      whyFallback: "Cristiana Chamorro, Félix Maradiaga, Juan Sebastián Chamorro, Arturo Cruz, Miguel Mora, Medardo Mairena, Noel Vidaurre — all arrested between June and October 2021. The EU, OAS, and most democracies refused to recognize the result. There was no election; there was a coronation." },
    { id: "ni_t5", isTruth: true , country: "ni", fallback: "In February 2023 the regime stripped 222 political prisoners of their Nicaraguan citizenship and deported them to the United States on a single flight — including priests, journalists, and former Sandinista allies.",
      whyFallback: "Ortega declared them \"traitors to the homeland\", confiscated their property, and revoked their nationality by decree. The Vienna Convention prohibits creating stateless persons; the regime did it anyway. A second wave hit 94 more dissidents weeks later." },
    { id: "ni_t6", isTruth: true , country: "ni", fallback: "Bishop Rolando Álvarez of Matagalpa was sentenced to 26 years in prison in 2023 for refusing exile — part of a systematic crackdown on the Catholic Church, including expelled nuns, closed seminaries, and monitored Masses.",
      whyFallback: "Álvarez was eventually deported to the Vatican in January 2024. Mother Teresa's Missionaries of Charity expelled 2022. Caritas shut down. Processions banned. The same church that helped legitimize the Sandinista revolution in 1979 became enemy of the state by 2018." },
    { id: "ni_t7", isTruth: true , country: "ni", fallback: "The International Court of Justice ruled in 1986 that the United States had violated international law by arming and financing the Contras — and ordered $370 million in reparations that were never paid.",
      whyFallback: "Nicaragua v. United States, judgment of 27 June 1986. Mining of Nicaraguan harbors, training of paramilitary forces, breach of the prohibition on use of force. Washington vetoed enforcement at the UN Security Council. The ruling stands; the money does not." },
    { id: "ni_t8", isTruth: true , country: "ni", fallback: "Between 2007 and 2018, an estimated $4+ billion in Venezuelan oil aid flowed through ALBANISA — a private Sandinista company, not the Nicaraguan state — and was never properly accounted for.",
      whyFallback: "Caracas sent subsidized oil under the ALBA agreement; the Ortega family channeled the proceeds through party-owned holdings into gas stations, hotels, ranches, and media. A parallel treasury, off the public books. The collapse of Venezuelan exports in 2018 ended the scheme." },
    { id: "ni_f1", isTruth: false, country: "ni", fallback: "Daniel Ortega is still the revolutionary leader who fought the Somoza dictatorship.",
      whyFallback: "He was, in 1979. The current Ortega has ruled longer than Anastasio Somoza Debayle did, jailed more opposition figures than the Somozas in their last decade, and built a family business empire of the kind the Sandinistas were founded to dismantle. The label outlived the substance." },
    { id: "ni_f2", isTruth: false, country: "ni", fallback: "Nicaragua is a democratic republic with regular elections.",
      whyFallback: "Elections continue on schedule. Opposition candidates are imprisoned before vote day. Opposition parties have been deregistered. International observers were barred from 2021. The form is preserved; the content is gone." },
    { id: "ni_f3", isTruth: false, country: "ni", fallback: "The 2018 unrest was a foreign-backed coup attempt against a sovereign government.",
      whyFallback: "The regime's framing. The IACHR, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, and Amnesty documented unarmed civilians shot, students killed in churches, doctors fired for treating the wounded. Calling it a coup retroactively justifies the body count." },
    { id: "ni_f4", isTruth: false, country: "ni", fallback: "Rosario Murillo is simply the vice president, performing a normal constitutional role.",
      whyFallback: "She is co-ruler in practice — running daily messaging, controlling ministerial portfolios, positioned as successor. The 2021 reforms named her \"co-president\" formally in 2025. Nicaragua is the only country in the hemisphere with a husband-wife dual presidency." },
    { id: "ni_f5", isTruth: false, country: "ni", fallback: "Independent Nicaraguan journalism continues to operate freely inside the country.",
      whyFallback: "La Prensa raided and seized 2021. Confidencial offices confiscated. 100% Noticias shut down. Most working Nicaraguan journalists — including Carlos Fernando Chamorro and Wilfredo Miranda — operate from exile in Costa Rica, Miami, or Madrid. The country reports on itself from outside its borders." },
    { id: "ni_f6", isTruth: false, country: "ni", fallback: "The Nicaragua Canal was a serious infrastructure project that simply didn't pan out.",
      whyFallback: "$50 billion scheme handed to Chinese billionaire Wang Jing in 2014 — with a 100-year concession, sovereignty waivers, and expropriation powers — that broke ground for cameras and was quietly abandoned by 2018. The contract terms were the real product; the canal was the cover story." },
    { id: "ni_f7", isTruth: false, country: "ni", fallback: "The Sandinistas remain a left-wing movement opposed to capitalism and oligarchy.",
      whyFallback: "The FSLN governs alongside Nicaragua's traditional business council COSEP (until 2018), holds family stakes in oil, media, hotels, and ranching, and crushed the 2018 protests with the same paramilitary playbook the Somozas used. The flag is red and black; the structure is dynastic." },

    // ============== Nepal — 8T + 7F ==============
    { id: "np_t1", isTruth: true , country: "np", fallback: "The Royal Massacre at Narayanhity Palace on June 1, 2001 killed King Birendra, Queen Aishwarya, and eight other family members — the official inquiry blamed Crown Prince Dipendra and was contested by the surviving Birendra family.",
      whyFallback: "Two-man commission led by Keshav Prasad Upadhyaya ruled Dipendra shot ten relatives then himself over a marriage dispute. No independent forensic review. Gyanendra — absent that night, surviving brother — inherited the throne within days. The questions that were not asked remain not asked." },
    { id: "np_t2", isTruth: true , country: "np", fallback: "The People's War (1996–2006) led by the CPN-Maoist under Pushpa Kamal Dahal \"Prachanda\" killed roughly 17,000 Nepalese — and ICRC documented torture, disappearances, and extrajudicial killings on both the Maoist and Royal Nepal Army sides.",
      whyFallback: "Truth and Reconciliation Commission set up 2014, structurally underpowered, complaints filed by the tens of thousands, prosecutions near zero. The war ended at a negotiating table; accountability never began." },
    { id: "np_t3", isTruth: true , country: "np", fallback: "King Gyanendra's 2005 direct-rule coup triggered the 19-day Loktantra Andolan that restored parliament in April 2006 — the monarchy was formally abolished by the Constituent Assembly in 2008.",
      whyFallback: "Mass street mobilization across Kathmandu Valley and the districts, several dead, curfews ignored. Within two years a 240-year Shah dynasty ended by a show of hands. The street wrote the constitutional outcome the elites then formalized." },
    { id: "np_t4", isTruth: true , country: "np", fallback: "The 2015 constitution was promulgated days after the Gorkha earthquake — and the Madhesi protests that followed in the southern Terai killed more than fifty people, with an unofficial India border blockade choking Nepal of fuel and medicine for around four months.",
      whyFallback: "Disaster window used to push a long-contested federal map. Madhesi and Tharu communities argued the new provincial boundaries were drawn to dilute their representation. India denied a blockade; the trucks did not move." },
    { id: "np_t5", isTruth: true , country: "np", fallback: "The 2015 Gorkha earthquake killed roughly 9,000 people and triggered $7 billion in pledged reconstruction — disbursement was slow enough for the Asian Development Bank to publicly cite it, and embezzlement scandals followed.",
      whyFallback: "National Reconstruction Authority spent years between pledge and shelter. Households in Sindhupalchok and Dolakha still in tin years later. Aid flowed through political channels; the political channels are where it slowed." },
    { id: "np_t6", isTruth: true , country: "np", fallback: "The Lalita Niwas land scam transferred public land in central Kathmandu to private owners through forged paperwork — multiple sitting and former ministers were implicated, including links to the Bhattarai-era cabinet.",
      whyFallback: "Government-owned plots near Baluwatar quietly retitled, resold to politically connected buyers. CIAA filed cases against dozens; the chain of approvals went through offices that knew. The pattern repeats with Lainchaur and other elite-quarter plots." },
    { id: "np_t7", isTruth: true , country: "np", fallback: "Yeti Holdings chair Binod Chaudhary — Nepal's first billionaire and a sitting MP — was named in the Pandora Papers for offshore structures in the British Virgin Islands.",
      whyFallback: "ICIJ leak 2021. Chaudhary denied wrongdoing, kept his seat. The CIAA opened no case. \"Legal under Nepalese law\" is a phrasing that does the work of an answer without being one." },
    { id: "np_t8", isTruth: true , country: "np", fallback: "Roughly one in ten working-age Nepalese is abroad on labor contracts — and Nepalese workers were a documented share of the construction deaths building Qatar's 2022 World Cup infrastructure.",
      whyFallback: "EPS (South Korea), Malaysia, Gulf states under kafala-style sponsorship. Remittances are around a quarter of GDP — the economy's largest single line. The Guardian's investigation logged Nepalese deaths in the hundreds; Doha and Kathmandu both shrugged." },
    { id: "np_f1", isTruth: false, country: "np", fallback: "Nepal's transition from monarchy to federal democratic republic was a clean democratic settlement.",
      whyFallback: "It was a settlement between armed Maoists, palace remnants, and the legacy parties — none of whom were prosecuted for war-era conduct. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission and Commission on Disappearances are still pending real cases more than fifteen years later." },
    { id: "np_f2", isTruth: false, country: "np", fallback: "Nepal's three big parties — Nepali Congress, CPN-UML, and CPN-Maoist Centre — represent fundamentally different political visions.",
      whyFallback: "Sher Bahadur Deuba (NC) has been PM five times, KP Sharma Oli (UML) repeatedly, Prachanda (Maoist Centre) three times — usually by swapping coalitions with each other. The ideology is the marketing; the rotation is the structure." },
    { id: "np_f3", isTruth: false, country: "np", fallback: "The Commission for the Investigation of Abuse of Authority (CIAA) effectively prosecutes high-level corruption.",
      whyFallback: "Convictions cluster among mid-ranking officials; the largest cases — Lalita Niwas, the wide-body aircraft procurement, the refugee scandal — stall, fragment, or end in acquittals on technical grounds. The pattern is selective vigor." },
    { id: "np_f4", isTruth: false, country: "np", fallback: "Nepal is a neutral buffer between India and China, free to set its own foreign policy.",
      whyFallback: "The 2015 unofficial Indian border blockade and the recurring Chinese pressure over Tribhuvan Airport contracts, Pokhara Airport financing, and the BRI framework agreement show otherwise. \"Neutral\" describes the wish, not the leverage." },
    { id: "np_f5", isTruth: false, country: "np", fallback: "Nepal Oil Corporation supplies clean fuel at fair prices.",
      whyFallback: "Periodic adulteration scandals, opaque procurement, chronic losses absorbed by the state. The NOC is a state monopoly that has functioned as a political patronage instrument across every government that has held it." },
    { id: "np_f6", isTruth: false, country: "np", fallback: "Labor migration is a personal choice that gives Nepalese workers freedom and opportunity.",
      whyFallback: "It is the country's de facto trafficking pipeline — recruitment fees in the thousands of dollars, contract substitution on arrival, passports held by employers under kafala. The remittance economy depends on it; the law pretends it does not." },
    { id: "np_f7", isTruth: false, country: "np", fallback: "The 33% women's quota and the federal constitution have delivered substantive gender equity in Nepalese politics.",
      whyFallback: "Quota seats are real; decisive portfolios — finance, home affairs, foreign affairs — almost never go to women. The 2015 citizenship clauses still make it harder for Nepalese women than Nepalese men to pass citizenship to their children. Headline parity, structural asymmetry." },

    // ============== Nauru — 8T + 7F ==============
    { id: "nr_t1", isTruth: true , country: "nr", fallback: "Nauru was strip-mined for phosphate for almost a century — by Germany, then by Britain, Australia, and New Zealand jointly, then by Nauru itself — until roughly 80% of the island was left as a wasteland of jagged limestone pinnacles uninhabitable by anything.",
      whyFallback: "Mining began in 1906 under the German Pacific Phosphate Company; the British Phosphate Commissioners ran it from 1919 as a joint Australia–New Zealand–UK operation; the Nauru Phosphate Corporation took over after independence. The phosphate was bird-guano fossilised over millennia into the richest agricultural fertiliser on Earth. It went onto Australian and New Zealand farms. What it left behind is a moonscape ringed by a thin coastal strip where everyone now lives." },
    { id: "nr_t2", isTruth: true , country: "nr", fallback: "In the 1970s Nauru had — by some measures — the highest GDP per capita on the planet, briefly out-earning Saudi Arabia and Kuwait.",
      whyFallback: "Twelve thousand people sitting on one of the densest fertiliser deposits in the world, with the colonial framework removed and the royalty rate finally going to them. Free housing, free healthcare, free education abroad, no income tax, government-paid utilities. The wealth was real for a generation; the timeframe was set by the geology, not by policy." },
    { id: "nr_t3", isTruth: true , country: "nr", fallback: "The Nauru Phosphate Royalties Trust peaked above A$1 billion and was almost entirely lost — drained by failed London musicals, vanished Hawaiian hotels, fraudulent advisers, and the 1999 collapse of the Bank of Nauru.",
      whyFallback: "\"Leonardo the Musical: A Portrait of Love\" — a 1993 West End flop financed by Nauru — became the polite shorthand for the broader pattern. Real estate in Melbourne, Honolulu, Houston, London bought at peak prices and sold at distress; investment managers in Australia and the US who walked away with fees while the fund evaporated. By 2004 the trust was effectively gone; the country was, on paper, bankrupt." },
    { id: "nr_t4", isTruth: true , country: "nr", fallback: "Australia pays Nauru hundreds of millions of dollars to host an offshore detention centre where asylum seekers — including children — are held indefinitely without ever setting foot on Australian soil.",
      whyFallback: "The \"Pacific Solution\" began in 2001 after the Tampa affair; it was suspended 2008–2012, then reopened under Operation Sovereign Borders. Roughly 3,127 people — men, women, children — were transferred to Nauru between 2013 and 2019. Australian payments to the Nauruan government have at times exceeded the country's own phosphate revenue. A small Pacific state turned into a containment facility for the asylum policy of a continent." },
    { id: "nr_t5", isTruth: true , country: "nr", fallback: "The 2016 \"Nauru files\" — more than 2,000 incident reports leaked to The Guardian — documented routine sexual assault, self-harm by children as young as seven, guards trading favours for cigarettes, and a regime designed to be psychologically unliveable.",
      whyFallback: "Eight years of internal reports written by the Australian-contracted guards themselves. Children sewing their lips shut, swallowing washing powder, attempting hanging. Doctors silenced under the Border Force Act, which made it a criminal offence for medical staff to publicly describe what they had seen. Journalists were charged $8,000 for a single-entry visa to visit, and routinely refused. Behrouz Boochani, the Kurdish-Iranian journalist held on Manus, wrote an entire book by WhatsApp." },
    { id: "nr_t6", isTruth: true , country: "nr", fallback: "In 2009 Nauru became one of only four states to recognise Abkhazia and South Ossetia after Russia's invasion of Georgia — in exchange for roughly $50 million in Russian aid.",
      whyFallback: "The other three were Russia itself, Nicaragua, and Venezuela; Vanuatu and Tuvalu briefly joined and then withdrew. The Nauruan vote at the UN was openly bought; the foreign ministry did not particularly hide it. A microstate's General Assembly seat as a commodity, priced by whoever wants the recognition." },
    { id: "nr_t7", isTruth: true , country: "nr", fallback: "In January 2024 Nauru switched recognition from Taiwan to the People's Republic of China within days of Taiwan's DPP winning a third consecutive presidential term — reportedly for a Chinese package worth around $200 million.",
      whyFallback: "The timing was diplomatic theatre: Lai Ching-te's victory on 13 January, Nauru's switch announced 15 January. Beijing routinely cycles the world's smallest states between recognition camps; Nauru had switched the other direction in 2002, then back in 2005, now back again. The number of UN states recognising Taiwan dropped to twelve. A vote in New York, harvested in Yaren." },
    { id: "nr_t8", isTruth: true , country: "nr", fallback: "Nauru ran a passport-sale and offshore-banking scheme in the 1990s that the US Treasury later identified as one of the world's leading conduits for Russian organised-crime money — roughly $70 billion in a single year.",
      whyFallback: "Four hundred shell banks chartered from a single Nauruan PO box, no on-island operations required, no questions asked. FinCEN named Nauru a \"primary money-laundering concern\" in 2002. The passport programme — a Nauruan document for anyone with the cash — was used by, among others, the al-Qaeda operatives behind the 2002 Bali bombing. International pressure shut both schemes formally; the underlying business model later resurfaced under newer brands, including the current Citizenship-by-Investment Programme." },
    { id: "nr_f1", isTruth: false, country: "nr", fallback: "Nauru is a small country with a small history.",
      whyFallback: "Twenty-one square kilometres; twelve thousand people; and a record that includes the twentieth century's most concentrated environmental destruction, the highest per-capita wealth on Earth followed by national bankruptcy inside a generation, two cycles of offshore detention for an entire continent's asylum policy, recognition deals priced in tens of millions for Russian-occupied Georgian territories, and a Beijing–Taipei recognition switch worth nine figures. Coverage is not proportional to landmass." },
    { id: "nr_f2", isTruth: false, country: "nr", fallback: "The British Phosphate Commissioners were a fair extraction partnership with the Nauruan people.",
      whyFallback: "Established 1919, dissolved 1981. Australia, New Zealand, and the UK split the phosphate; Nauruan landowners received royalties calibrated decades below the resource's actual value. The same model devoured Banaba (Ocean Island) in what is now Kiribati — its population permanently relocated to Rabi in Fiji, the island left uninhabitable. Two islands worth of guano shipped to Australasian farms; two populations left with the holes." },
    { id: "nr_f3", isTruth: false, country: "nr", fallback: "Nauru's environmental collapse was an accident no one foresaw.",
      whyFallback: "Geologists understood the deposit's extent and depletion curve before independence; the projection that 80% of the surface would be destroyed was on file by the 1960s. Mining accelerated anyway, under colonial management and then under post-independence management both incentivised by short-term royalty flows. The 1989 International Court of Justice case Nauru brought against Australia ended in a confidential settlement; the rehabilitation it was supposed to fund has barely begun." },
    { id: "nr_f4", isTruth: false, country: "nr", fallback: "Offshore detention on Nauru is a humane alternative to dangerous boat voyages.",
      whyFallback: "The Nauru files documented industrial-scale self-harm by children. Médecins Sans Frontières was expelled in 2018 after eleven months and called the mental-health situation \"among the worst we have ever encountered\". The UN Special Rapporteur on Torture concluded the policy constituted torture under international law. The framing as humane is the marketing; the structure is deterrence by suffering, applied to people the High Court of Australia has acknowledged are owed a protection obligation." },
    { id: "nr_f5", isTruth: false, country: "nr", fallback: "Nauru is a sovereign state making its own foreign-policy choices.",
      whyFallback: "Roughly half the national budget for much of the 2010s came from Australian detention-centre payments; the other major revenue streams come from Beijing or Taipei depending on the year, and from Russian, US, or other recognition deals depending on the issue. The Australian dollar is legal tender. The diplomatic service has at times had fewer staff than a medium-sized law firm. Sovereignty in the chair at the UN; clientelism in the cashflow." },
    { id: "nr_f6", isTruth: false, country: "nr", fallback: "Nauru's COVID-zero record showed exceptional public-health competence.",
      whyFallback: "Twelve thousand people on an isolated island with one airport closed itself off in March 2020 and recorded its first community case only in mid-2022. The same isolation that delivered zero cases also delivered the world's highest measured obesity and diabetes rates — outcomes of a generation eating imported processed food from Australian supply chains because the topsoil was strip-mined into Australian fertiliser. One scoreboard says success; the other says the long bill." },
    { id: "nr_f7", isTruth: false, country: "nr", fallback: "Nauru is a curiosity — an interesting footnote with no wider lessons.",
      whyFallback: "It is the case study, compressed into a single decade-by-decade timeline, of resource extraction stripped of pretence: colonial powers digging up a Pacific island for fertiliser, the post-independence elite continuing the same dig until the geology ran out, the trust fund built to outlast the deposit lost to Western advisers, and the country renting itself out for whatever a larger state needs next — asylum containment, UN votes, banking secrecy, passports. The lessons are not local. The smallest republic by area holds the clearest version of the pattern." },

    // ============== Oman — 8T + 7F ==============
    { id: "om_t1", isTruth: true , country: "om", fallback: "Sultan Qaboos bin Said came to power in July 1970 by overthrowing his own father, Said bin Taimur, in a palace coup quietly backed by the British.",
      whyFallback: "British officers and the SAS were on the ground; the old sultan was flown to London and died in the Dorchester. The new sultan then ruled for fifty years. The transition is described in Oman as modernization — the mechanism was a coup." },
    { id: "om_t2", isTruth: true , country: "om", fallback: "The Dhofar Rebellion (1965-1976) was crushed by Omani forces with direct British SAS, Iranian, and Jordanian military assistance — roughly 10,000 dead in a war most outsiders never heard of.",
      whyFallback: "PFLOAG was a leftist insurgency in the south. The Shah's troops, British special forces, and RAF aircraft were the spine of the counter-insurgency. Officially an Omani victory; operationally a coalition war fought to keep oil corridors aligned with the West." },
    { id: "om_t3", isTruth: true , country: "om", fallback: "Oman has no political parties — they are illegal — and the Sultan rules by decree, with the elected Majlis al-Shura holding only consultative power.",
      whyFallback: "Royal decrees make law. The 1996 Basic Statute and its 2021 update formalize the structure without changing the substance. \"Consultation\" is the word used; final authority rests with the throne." },
    { id: "om_t4", isTruth: true , country: "om", fallback: "Around 45% of Oman's population are non-citizen migrant workers — mostly Indian, Pakistani, and Bangladeshi — tied to employers under the kafala sponsorship system.",
      whyFallback: "Passport confiscation, wage theft, and inability to change jobs without sponsor permission are repeatedly documented by Human Rights Watch and Migrant-Rights.org. Reforms announced; the structural dependence on a bonded labor pool continues." },
    { id: "om_t5", isTruth: true , country: "om", fallback: "Omani journalists and bloggers who criticize the government — including Wadhah al-Bahri and Muawiya al-Rawahi in 2018 — have been detained, prosecuted, and silenced by the Internal Security Service.",
      whyFallback: "Cybercrime laws and \"insulting the Sultan\" statutes are the standard charges. The ISS operates with minimal external oversight. Self-censorship is the working assumption inside Omani newsrooms." },
    { id: "om_t6", isTruth: true , country: "om", fallback: "Oman hosts US military access at airbases including Al Buraimi and access arrangements connecting to Al Dhafra — a quiet pillar of CENTCOM's Gulf posture.",
      whyFallback: "The 1980 Facilities Access Agreement, renewed and expanded since, gives the US use of Omani ports and airfields. Officially neutral, operationally embedded. The trade-off: regime stability backed by Washington." },
    { id: "om_t7", isTruth: true , country: "om", fallback: "Petroleum Development Oman, the country's main oil producer, is a joint venture in which Shell and other foreign majors hold the operating know-how and a long-standing 40% private stake.",
      whyFallback: "The state owns 60%, Shell 34%, Total 4%, Partex 2%. The original concession dates to the colonial era; the structure outlived independence. Oman's oil wealth is real; the foreign hand on the tap is also real." },
    { id: "om_t8", isTruth: true , country: "om", fallback: "Oman's sovereign wealth — now consolidated under the Oman Investment Authority — operates with minimal public disclosure of its holdings, returns, or counterparties.",
      whyFallback: "The old SGRF and State General Reserve Fund were merged into OIA in 2020. Sovereign Wealth Fund Institute ranks Oman's funds among the least transparent in the Gulf — and the Gulf is not a transparent neighborhood." },
    { id: "om_f1", isTruth: false, country: "om", fallback: "Sultan Qaboos was a self-made reformer who modernized Oman through his own vision.",
      whyFallback: "The vision was real; the throne was installed by a British-backed coup against his father, and the early modernization was funded by oil revenue and protected by British and Iranian troops fighting the Dhofar war. The reformer biography starts at chapter two." },
    { id: "om_f2", isTruth: false, country: "om", fallback: "Oman's neutrality and mediation role mean it stands outside great-power blocs.",
      whyFallback: "Oman hosts US bases, runs a Shell-co-owned oil sector, and is plugged into Chinese investment at Sohar and Duqm. The mediator role — Iran nuclear backchannel 2013, Yemen talks — is real and useful; \"outside the blocs\" is a brand, not a balance sheet." },
    { id: "om_f3", isTruth: false, country: "om", fallback: "The 2011 Sohar protests showed Oman handling Arab Spring grievances peacefully.",
      whyFallback: "Live ammunition was used; one to two protesters were killed in Sohar. Reformers were pardoned, but the activists who organized the protests were tracked, prosecuted, and in several cases imprisoned in the years that followed. \"Peaceful\" describes the regime's PR, not the bullet count." },
    { id: "om_f4", isTruth: false, country: "om", fallback: "Succession in Oman is a settled constitutional procedure.",
      whyFallback: "Sultan Qaboos had no children and named no public heir for fifty years. The Said family council picked Haitham within hours of Qaboos's 2020 death — by opening a sealed envelope. The 2021 Basic Statute amendment formalized the heir afterward, not before." },
    { id: "om_f5", isTruth: false, country: "om", fallback: "Omani citizens and migrant workers share the same legal protections.",
      whyFallback: "Welfare, subsidized fuel, education, healthcare, and labor protections are tiered. Citizens-only social benefits sit on top of a kafala-bound migrant workforce that does most of the construction, domestic work, and service labor. Two legal classes, one country." },
    { id: "om_f6", isTruth: false, country: "om", fallback: "Press freedom in Oman is normal by regional standards.",
      whyFallback: "Reporters Without Borders ranks Oman near the bottom of the global press-freedom index — alongside or below Saudi Arabia in several years. The Internal Security Service monitors journalists; \"insulting the Sultan\" is a criminal offense. The regional baseline is the floor, not the bar." },
    { id: "om_f7", isTruth: false, country: "om", fallback: "Oman's oil wealth flows transparently to its citizens.",
      whyFallback: "Headline social programs are real; the sovereign wealth machinery (OIA, the former SGRF, the Petroleum Reserve Fund) operates without public audits comparable to Norway's. Oman's first VAT arrived in 2021 — quietly, on citizens, while the upstream side stayed opaque." },

    // ============== Panama — 8T + 7F ==============
    { id: "pa_t1", isTruth: true , country: "pa", fallback: "Manuel Noriega was a paid CIA asset for decades while running Panama as a dictator — until the US invaded in December 1989 to arrest him.",
      whyFallback: "On the agency's books from the late 1950s through the 1980s, with George H.W. Bush as DCI during part of that arc. When Noriega outlived his usefulness, Operation Just Cause flattened the El Chorrillo neighborhood and killed an estimated 500-plus Panamanian civilians. He was convicted on drug-trafficking charges in Miami and sentenced to 40 years." },
    { id: "pa_t2", isTruth: true , country: "pa", fallback: "The 2016 Panama Papers — 11.5 million documents leaked from the law firm Mossack Fonseca — exposed how dozens of world leaders, oligarchs, and celebrities used Panamanian shell companies to hide wealth.",
      whyFallback: "Largest journalistic leak in history at the time. ICIJ and OCCRP coordination across 400+ reporters. 214,000 offshore entities mapped to real owners. Heads of state implicated from Iceland to Pakistan to Russia. The leak named the firm; the system that enabled it kept operating." },
    { id: "pa_t3", isTruth: true , country: "pa", fallback: "In 2024 a Panamanian court acquitted Mossack Fonseca founders Jürgen Mossack and Ramón Fonseca on money-laundering charges tied to the Panama Papers.",
      whyFallback: "Eight years after the leak, the home jurisdiction returned a not-guilty verdict citing chain-of-custody problems with the leaked evidence. Fonseca died shortly afterward. The acquittal in Panama coexists with convictions and asset seizures in other jurisdictions worldwide." },
    { id: "pa_t4", isTruth: true , country: "pa", fallback: "Former president Ricardo Martinelli (2009-2014) was convicted in 2023 to 10.5 years for money laundering and fled into the Nicaraguan embassy in Panama City to claim asylum.",
      whyFallback: "New Business case: state funds funneled through a media-company purchase. Martinelli's Realizing Goals (CD) party also tied to Odebrecht bribes. After conviction he took refuge in the Nicaraguan embassy in 2024 — and was nonetheless able to anoint his running mate José Raúl Mulino as the winning presidential candidate that same year." },
    { id: "pa_t5", isTruth: true , country: "pa", fallback: "Brazilian construction giant Odebrecht admitted to paying around $59 million in bribes in Panama between 2010 and 2014 — implicating successive administrations.",
      whyFallback: "US DOJ plea agreement (2016) listed Panama as one of 12 countries. Investigations touched Martinelli (CD) and Varela (Panameñista) and the families around both. Several plea deals, partial recoveries, and a long tail of cases that quietly stalled. Same playbook documented across Latin America." },
    { id: "pa_t6", isTruth: true , country: "pa", fallback: "In November 2023 Panama's Supreme Court ruled the contract for the Cobre Panamá copper mine — a roughly $5 billion First Quantum Minerals project — unconstitutional, after weeks of nationwide protests shut the country down.",
      whyFallback: "The renegotiated contract had been rammed through the National Assembly in October 2023. Protests blocked highways for nearly a month. The court's ruling forced the mine — about 1% of global copper supply and 5% of Panama's GDP — into closure. The political class signed the deal; the streets unsigned it." },
    { id: "pa_t7", isTruth: true , country: "pa", fallback: "Panama's banking, free-zone, and shipping-registry sectors have operated for decades as one of the world's primary laundromats for drug money and sanctioned capital.",
      whyFallback: "Colón Free Zone (largest in the Western Hemisphere), the open ship registry (largest fleet by tonnage), and dollar-denominated banking with thin disclosure. US Treasury, FATF, and EU lists have parked Panama on grey/black lists repeatedly. Each delisting follows cosmetic reform, not structural change." },
    { id: "pa_t8", isTruth: true , country: "pa", fallback: "General Omar Torrijos — the leader who negotiated the 1977 Carter-Torrijos canal treaties — died in a 1981 plane crash that has never been satisfactorily explained.",
      whyFallback: "Small aircraft, bad weather, no survivors, no definitive technical finding. His son Martín Torrijos later became president (2004-2009). The treaties Torrijos won transferred the canal in stages until full Panamanian control in December 1999 — the one piece of Cold War-era sovereignty that actually held." },
    { id: "pa_f1", isTruth: false, country: "pa", fallback: "The 1989 US invasion of Panama was a clean operation to remove a dictator and restore democracy.",
      whyFallback: "Operation Just Cause was launched against a former CIA asset the US had armed and paid for decades. The El Chorrillo neighborhood of Panama City was bombed and burned; civilian death estimates run from 500 to several thousand depending on the source. \"Restoration\" came with a freshly installed government and an extradition." },
    { id: "pa_f2", isTruth: false, country: "pa", fallback: "The Panama Papers were a one-off scandal that the country cleaned up.",
      whyFallback: "The 2021 Pandora Papers — another ICIJ leak — showed the same offshore architecture continuing, with Panamanian providers among the active players. The headline firm changed; the jurisdiction's structural role as a shell-company factory did not." },
    { id: "pa_f3", isTruth: false, country: "pa", fallback: "The Panama Canal has been a purely Panamanian asset since the 1999 handover.",
      whyFallback: "Operationally yes, sovereignly yes. Strategically the canal sits inside a US security perimeter, with periodic public reminders — including a 2024-2025 round of US political statements about \"taking back\" the canal. Sovereignty written into a treaty; leverage written into geography." },
    { id: "pa_f4", isTruth: false, country: "pa", fallback: "Panama's elections produce genuine alternation between distinct political projects.",
      whyFallback: "Martinelli (CD), Varela (Panameñista), Cortizo (PRD), Mulino (CD again, as Martinelli's stand-in after his constitutional bar). Different banners over the same business networks, the same Odebrecht-era contractors, the same banking and free-zone interests. Alternation as branding, continuity as practice." },
    { id: "pa_f5", isTruth: false, country: "pa", fallback: "The Cobre Panamá ruling proved that Panamanian institutions can rein in extractive capital.",
      whyFallback: "The Supreme Court only ruled after the streets had already shut the country down. The contract had passed the National Assembly with executive backing. \"Institutional check\" was, in this case, the population blocking the Pan-American Highway for weeks. The institution followed the protest, not the other way around." },
    { id: "pa_f6", isTruth: false, country: "pa", fallback: "Panama's banking secrecy is gone after a decade of post-Panama-Papers reforms.",
      whyFallback: "On-paper beneficial-ownership registries, FATF-driven AML laws, and information-exchange agreements were enacted. In practice, enforcement is light, registries are not public, and Panama has cycled on and off grey/black lists since 2014. Compliance theatre is now a domestic industry." },
    { id: "pa_f7", isTruth: false, country: "pa", fallback: "Convicted ex-president Martinelli holed up in the Nicaraguan embassy is the system holding him accountable.",
      whyFallback: "Accountable enough to convict, not accountable enough to hold. Martinelli walked into a friendly embassy in 2024 and from there — under asylum — successfully ran his hand-picked vice-presidential pick Mulino into the presidency. The conviction sits on paper; the political machine kept its grip on the Palacio de las Garzas." },

    // ============== Peru — 8T + 7F ==============
    { id: "pe_t1", isTruth: true , country: "pe", fallback: "Alberto Fujimori's April 1992 autogolpe dissolved Congress, suspended the constitution, and purged the judiciary — with tanks in the streets and broad public approval at the time.",
      whyFallback: "The \"self-coup\" was sold as the only way to defeat Sendero Luminoso and break a paralyzed Congress. Approval polls spiked above 70%. The precedent — that a sitting president can dissolve the state to save it — has shadowed every Peruvian government since." },
    { id: "pe_t2", isTruth: true , country: "pe", fallback: "Between 1996 and 2000, the Fujimori government's Voluntary Surgical Contraception programme sterilized roughly 272,000 indigenous Quechua- and Aymara-speaking women — many without informed consent.",
      whyFallback: "Programme targets set by region, quotas enforced on doctors, food aid conditioned on procedures in some districts. Truth Commission and later prosecutorial files document the pattern. Convictions have been partial; many of the women never received justice." },
    { id: "pe_t3", isTruth: true , country: "pe", fallback: "The Grupo Colina death squad — operating under the Fujimori-Montesinos intelligence apparatus — carried out the Barrios Altos massacre (1991) and the La Cantuta killings (1992) of students and a professor.",
      whyFallback: "Fujimori convicted 2009, sentenced to 25 years. Pardoned 2017 on \"humanitarian\" grounds, returned to prison after public outcry, released definitively in 2023 by the Constitutional Court. He died in 2024 a free man, owing 57 million soles in civil reparations he never paid." },
    { id: "pe_t4", isTruth: true , country: "pe", fallback: "Vladimiro Montesinos — Fujimori's intelligence chief — was caught on his own hidden cameras bribing congressmen, judges, and media owners, hundreds of tapes that ended the regime in 2000.",
      whyFallback: "The \"Vladivideos\" remain the most complete inventory of how a Latin American captured state actually operates: cash on tables, signatures on receipts, names on camera. Montesinos fled, was captured in Venezuela in 2001, has been imprisoned ever since. Most of the bribed walked free." },
    { id: "pe_t5", isTruth: true , country: "pe", fallback: "Every elected Peruvian president from 2001 to 2018 — Toledo, García, Humala, Kuczynski — was implicated in the Odebrecht bribery scandal.",
      whyFallback: "Toledo extradited from the US in 2023. García shot himself in 2019 as police arrived to arrest him. Humala tried and convicted 2024. Kuczynski resigned in 2018 to avoid impeachment. The Brazilian construction giant's confession named four Peruvian presidents in a single document." },
    { id: "pe_t6", isTruth: true , country: "pe", fallback: "President Dina Boluarte's security forces killed roughly 70 protesters — mostly indigenous, mostly in Apurímac, Puno, and Ayacucho — during the December 2022 to early 2023 unrest after Pedro Castillo's arrest.",
      whyFallback: "Live ammunition used against demonstrators in Juliaca and Ayacucho. IACHR, Amnesty International, and Human Rights Watch documented the killings. Boluarte called them \"sacrifices for democracy\". No senior official has been convicted." },
    { id: "pe_t7", isTruth: true , country: "pe", fallback: "The Sendero Luminoso conflict (1980–2000) killed roughly 70,000 people — and the Truth Commission found that around three-quarters of the victims were Quechua-speaking indigenous Peruvians, killed by both the insurgency and the state.",
      whyFallback: "Comisión de la Verdad y Reconciliación, 2003 report. Sendero's Maoist millenarianism and the military's counter-insurgency converged on the same rural communities. The death toll's ethnic distribution is what makes the conflict an internal armed conflict and a partial ethnocide at once." },
    { id: "pe_t8", isTruth: true , country: "pe", fallback: "In March 2024, raids on President Boluarte's home uncovered undeclared Rolex watches and luxury jewelry — \"Rolexgate\" — that her declared salary could not explain.",
      whyFallback: "Watches valued in the tens of thousands of dollars. Boluarte first denied, then said they were lent by a regional governor (also under investigation). Constitutional complaints filed; she remained in office because Congress preferred her to the alternative." },
    { id: "pe_f1", isTruth: false, country: "pe", fallback: "Pedro Castillo's December 2022 attempt to dissolve Congress was a unique authoritarian event with no precedent.",
      whyFallback: "Fujimori did exactly that in 1992 and was rewarded with a constitutional rewrite and a decade in power. Castillo tried it in 2022 with no military backing, no popular mobilization, and was arrested within hours. The act was identical; the outcome depended on who held the guns." },
    { id: "pe_f2", isTruth: false, country: "pe", fallback: "Peru's Congress acts as a democratic check on presidential overreach.",
      whyFallback: "Five presidents in five years (2016–2022): Kuczynski, Vizcarra, Merino, Sagasti, Castillo. \"Vacancia por incapacidad moral permanente\" — moral incapacity — became a routine impeachment lever wielded by Congresses with single-digit approval ratings." },
    { id: "pe_f3", isTruth: false, country: "pe", fallback: "The Fujimori-era defeat of Sendero Luminoso was clean counter-terrorism.",
      whyFallback: "Abimael Guzmán was captured in 1992 by GEIN, a police intelligence unit that operated largely independent of the military. The Grupo Colina death-squad killings, the Accomarca-style massacres, the disappearances — were a parallel war on civilians. Two operations, one credit list." },
    { id: "pe_f4", isTruth: false, country: "pe", fallback: "Manuel Merino's five-day presidency in November 2020 was a normal constitutional succession.",
      whyFallback: "Vizcarra impeached by a Congress facing its own corruption cases. Merino — head of Congress — sworn in, faced mass protests in days, his police killed two students (Inti Sotelo and Bryan Pintado), he resigned. \"Constitutional\" on paper, parliamentary coup in the street." },
    { id: "pe_f5", isTruth: false, country: "pe", fallback: "Foreign mining operations in Peru bring development without harm.",
      whyFallback: "Yanacocha (Newmont) gold mine: Choropampa mercury spill 2000, decades of water disputes in Cajamarca. Camisea gas (Pluspetrol) in the Amazon: repeated spills on Achuar and Matsigenka territory. \"Development\" lands in Lima; the externalities land upstream." },
    { id: "pe_f6", isTruth: false, country: "pe", fallback: "Dina Boluarte is governing as the left-wing vice president Castillo's voters elected.",
      whyFallback: "Within weeks of taking power in December 2022 she aligned with the right-wing congressional bloc — the Pacto del Norte — that had spent the previous year trying to remove her ticket. The voters who elected her were the ones being shot in Puno and Ayacucho." },
    { id: "pe_f7", isTruth: false, country: "pe", fallback: "The 1995 Cenepa War with Ecuador was a brief border skirmish with little lasting effect.",
      whyFallback: "Roughly a month of jungle combat in the Cordillera del Cóndor, dozens killed on each side, both governments using the conflict to rally domestic support during corruption pressure. Fujimori's approval lifted at home; the 1998 peace finally settled a border dispute open since 1941." },

    // ============== Papua New Guinea — 8T + 7F ==============
    { id: "pg_t1", isTruth: true , country: "pg", fallback: "The Bougainville Civil War (1988–1998) killed an estimated 15,000–20,000 people — roughly 10% of Bougainville's pre-war population — and was sparked by landowner grievances against the Panguna copper mine operated by Rio Tinto's subsidiary Bougainville Copper Limited.",
      whyFallback: "Francis Ona and the Bougainville Revolutionary Army took up arms in 1989 against royalties they never saw and a river system they could no longer drink from. PNG's blockade — backed by Australia — sealed the island for years; medical supplies were among the embargoed goods. The dead-by-percentage figure puts this war in the same demographic register as Cambodia." },
    { id: "pg_t2", isTruth: true , country: "pg", fallback: "In 1997 Prime Minister Julius Chan hired the British mercenary firm Sandline International — fronted by Tim Spicer and staffed by Executive Outcomes veterans — for around US$36 million to crush the Bougainville Revolutionary Army, before PNG Defence Force commander Jerry Singirok mutinied and forced the contract's cancellation.",
      whyFallback: "The Sandline Affair brought down Chan's government. A sovereign state outsourcing its counter-insurgency to ex-South-African-special-forces contractors was the public reveal of how the Panguna war was actually being fought. The general who refused the order is one of the few cases in the region where the army was the constitutional brake." },
    { id: "pg_t3", isTruth: true , country: "pg", fallback: "Rio Tinto's Panguna copper mine ran from 1972 to 1989 as one of the largest open-pit copper operations on Earth — extracting over US$1 billion in profits while filling the Jaba River with tailings and rendering it biologically dead.",
      whyFallback: "Rio Tinto divested from Bougainville Copper Limited in 2016 without remediation, walking away from a mine pit, waste dumps, and a poisoned river system. A 2020 Human Rights Law Centre class action and a 2021 independent impact assessment finally forced Rio Tinto to fund a partial remediation study. \"Divest and disappear\" is the standard exit." },
    { id: "pg_t4", isTruth: true , country: "pg", fallback: "In November 2019 Bougainville voted 98% for independence from PNG in a non-binding referendum — and as of 2026 the PNG parliament has still not ratified the result, with the target date repeatedly pushed back.",
      whyFallback: "The Bougainville Peace Agreement (2001) promised this vote; the vote happened; the implementation is structural slow-walk. \"Non-binding\" is doing the load-bearing work in Port Moresby. Ratification was meant for 2027; the precedent of Pacific micro-states succeeding from larger ones is exactly what PNG and its neighbours wish to avoid." },
    { id: "pg_t5", isTruth: true , country: "pg", fallback: "ExxonMobil's PNG LNG project — a US$19 billion liquefied natural gas operation in Hela Province launched in 2014 — has produced ongoing landowner royalty disputes, environmental damage around the Hides gas conditioning plant, and tribal violence over who counts as a beneficiary.",
      whyFallback: "One of the world's largest LNG projects, sold to PNG as the development miracle that would double GDP. Landowner clans in Hela still wait on royalty payments a decade in. The 2018 earthquake exposed how the project's roads and infrastructure had reorganised the social geography of the Highlands before the money arrived." },
    { id: "pg_t6", isTruth: true , country: "pg", fallback: "Former Prime Minister Peter O'Neill (2011–2019) was at the centre of the UBS loan scandal — a US$1.2 billion borrowing in 2014 to acquire Oil Search shares that ultimately cost PNG over a billion dollars when the shares collapsed.",
      whyFallback: "Cabinet was bypassed, parliament was bypassed, the Solicitor-General's advice was overruled. An Ombudsman Commission report and a 2020 Commission of Inquiry detailed the procedural breaches. O'Neill lost the 2019 prime-ministership to his own Treasurer, James Marape, who walked across the floor citing exactly this affair." },
    { id: "pg_t7", isTruth: true , country: "pg", fallback: "Australia's offshore detention facility on Manus Island (2012–2017) held around 2,000 asylum seekers in conditions a PNG Supreme Court ruled unconstitutional in 2016 — and at least six men died there, including Reza Barati, beaten to death by guards during the February 2014 riot.",
      whyFallback: "Two PNG nationals were convicted for Barati's murder; the Australian and Wilson Security staff present were never charged. PNG closed the centre on constitutional grounds; Australia kept paying to warehouse the survivors in alternative Port Moresby accommodation. Sovereignty was the legal frame; outsourcing was the operating model." },
    { id: "pg_t8", isTruth: true , country: "pg", fallback: "PNG's 2022 general election produced an officially recorded death toll in the hundreds — from tribal clashes, hijackings of ballot boxes, and revenge violence — making it one of the deadliest elections any democracy held that year.",
      whyFallback: "Enga, Hela, and Southern Highlands saw running gunfights between supporters of rival candidates. Polling stretched over weeks because results triggered fresh fighting in the next valley. The Electoral Commission's own count was incomplete; police and military deployments were stretched past the breaking point. \"Free elections\" as a category does not capture this." },
    { id: "pg_f1", isTruth: false, country: "pg", fallback: "The Bougainville referendum settled the independence question and the rest is paperwork.",
      whyFallback: "98% Yes was the easy part. PNG parliament's ratification was scheduled, postponed, rescheduled, and re-postponed. The mining royalties of a re-opened Panguna are the real subject of negotiation; the constitutional vote is the surface. Pacific independence questions that produce mineral consequences move at the speed of the holding side, not the voting one." },
    { id: "pg_f2", isTruth: false, country: "pg", fallback: "James Marape's \"Take Back PNG\" platform restored sovereignty over the country's resources.",
      whyFallback: "The slogan, since 2019, has been the brand. The Porgera gold mine reopened with Barrick on largely the same terms after a posturing pause. Wafi-Golpu and the Papua LNG expansion proceed under the same multinational architecture. Rhetorical resource nationalism with continued foreign-operator dependence is the standard Pacific posture, not the Marape exception." },
    { id: "pg_f3", isTruth: false, country: "pg", fallback: "Sorcery-related violence in PNG is a fading rural superstition that modernisation will solve.",
      whyFallback: "Sorcery accusation–related violence is concentrated in the Highlands — Enga, Chimbu, Jiwaka — and has, by police and church count, killed and tortured hundreds of women in the past decade. Mobile phones, video circulation, and Pentecostal demonology have intensified, not diluted, the practice. The 2013 repeal of the Sorcery Act was meant to help; the killings continued." },
    { id: "pg_f4", isTruth: false, country: "pg", fallback: "PNG's 97% customary land tenure protects communities from dispossession.",
      whyFallback: "Special Agricultural and Business Leases (SABLs) handed 5.5 million hectares — roughly 12% of PNG's land mass — to mostly Malaysian and other foreign logging interests between 2003 and 2011, with a 2013 Commission of Inquiry confirming most were fraudulent. Customary tenure exists on paper; the SABL pipeline was the workaround. The state never fully revoked them." },
    { id: "pg_f5", isTruth: false, country: "pg", fallback: "PNG's independence in 1975 under Michael Somare was a clean break from Australian administration.",
      whyFallback: "Australia kept budget support, defence cooperation, federal-police training, and the kina's external arrangements deeply intertwined. Somare himself signed the Joint Declaration of Principles that committed PNG to consultation with Canberra. Independence as constitutional status, dependence as fiscal and security reality — the standard decolonisation compromise." },
    { id: "pg_f6", isTruth: false, country: "pg", fallback: "Deep-sea mining is the next frontier that will modernise PNG's economy.",
      whyFallback: "Nautilus Minerals' Solwara 1 project off New Ireland — the world's first commercial deep-sea mining venture — collapsed in 2019, leaving PNG with around US$120 million of equity write-off and no mine. The seabed precedent was the lesson: a frontier sold to a small economy, the loss carried by the small economy, the technology never proven. The next pitch is already being made." },
    { id: "pg_f7", isTruth: false, country: "pg", fallback: "Tribal warfare in the Highlands is a traditional cultural practice now in slow decline.",
      whyFallback: "Hela, Enga, and Southern Highlands have seen escalating conflicts through 2024 with M16s and AK-pattern rifles replacing the bows and spears the anthropology textbooks describe. The arms come through the same logistics corridors as the LNG project. \"Tribal\" is the framing; small-arms proliferation linked to extraction is the mechanism." },

    // ============== Palestine — 8T + 7F ==============
    { id: "ps_t1", isTruth: true , country: "ps", fallback: "The Nakba of 1948 saw roughly 700,000-750,000 Palestinians displaced or driven from their homes, with around 530 villages destroyed and an estimated 15,000 killed.",
      whyFallback: "Plan Dalet, Deir Yassin, Lydda and Ramle expulsions — documented by Israeli historians Benny Morris and Ilan Pappe from declassified IDF archives. The word \"Nakba\" — catastrophe — was banned from Israeli school textbooks. The right of return promised in UN Resolution 194 was never honored." },
    { id: "ps_t2", isTruth: true , country: "ps", fallback: "Mahmoud Abbas was last elected in 2005 for a four-year term; he has remained Palestinian Authority president for over 19 years by repeatedly postponing elections.",
      whyFallback: "His mandate expired in 2009. Parliamentary elections scheduled for May 2021 were cancelled days before the vote — officially over Jerusalem voting rights, in practice because Fatah polling showed it would lose to Hamas and to Marwan Barghouti's list. The PA governs without a democratic mandate." },
    { id: "ps_t3", isTruth: true , country: "ps", fallback: "Yasser Arafat died in a Paris hospital in November 2004; Swiss forensic analysis in 2012 found Polonium-210 in his remains at levels suggesting poisoning.",
      whyFallback: "Lausanne University Institute of Radiation Physics report. Polonium-210 is a state-actor isotope — the same substance used to kill Alexander Litvinenko in London 2006. French and Russian investigations reached softer conclusions. No one has ever been charged." },
    { id: "ps_t4", isTruth: true , country: "ps", fallback: "The Oslo Accords of 1993 divided the West Bank into Areas A, B, and C as a \"five-year interim\" arrangement — still in force more than three decades later.",
      whyFallback: "Area C — 60% of the West Bank — remains under full Israeli military and civil control. The \"final status\" negotiations that were supposed to follow never happened. The interim became the permanent. Settlements in Area C have tripled in population since Oslo." },
    { id: "ps_t5", isTruth: true , country: "ps", fallback: "Marwan Barghouti has been imprisoned in Israel since 2002 on five life sentences; polls consistently show he would defeat both Abbas and any Hamas figure in a Palestinian presidential election.",
      whyFallback: "Fatah figure, popular across factions, considered the closest thing to a unifying candidate. The PA has not pushed for his release. Israel will not release him. The two sides agree on the one thing — keeping him out of politics." },
    { id: "ps_t6", isTruth: true , country: "ps", fallback: "The Palestinian Authority depends on Israel collecting and transferring its VAT and customs revenue — money Israel has repeatedly withheld as political leverage.",
      whyFallback: "Paris Protocol 1994 hardwired the dependency. Israel deducts amounts it claims correspond to PA payments to families of prisoners and \"martyrs\"; salaries to PA employees, including security forces coordinating with Israel, are paid late or partially. The architecture is leverage." },
    { id: "ps_t7", isTruth: true , country: "ps", fallback: "By late 2024 the Gaza Health Ministry recorded over 45,000 Palestinians killed since October 2023, including more than 17,000 children — figures broadly accepted by UN agencies and Lancet analyses.",
      whyFallback: "The Lancet July 2024 letter estimated the true toll, including indirect deaths, could exceed 186,000. South Africa's ICJ case (January 2024) found a \"plausible\" risk of genocide. ICC arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant issued November 2024. The numbers were challenged; the bodies were not." },
    { id: "ps_t8", isTruth: true , country: "ps", fallback: "Palestinian human rights NGOs Al-Haq, Addameer, and four others were found in 2021 to have been targeted with NSO Group's Pegasus spyware — then designated \"terrorist organizations\" by Israel.",
      whyFallback: "Front Line Defenders and Citizen Lab confirmed the infections. The \"terror\" designations came weeks after. Donor governments — including EU members — quietly continued funding the NGOs after reviewing the Israeli evidence and finding it thin. Surveil first, label after." },
    { id: "ps_f1", isTruth: false, country: "ps", fallback: "The Palestinian Authority represents a unified Palestinian people.",
      whyFallback: "Since Hamas won the 2006 legislative elections and took Gaza in 2007, there have been two governments — Fatah in Ramallah, Hamas in Gaza. Reconciliation agreements signed in 2011, 2014, 2017, 2024 — none implemented. The split is the structure, not the exception." },
    { id: "ps_f2", isTruth: false, country: "ps", fallback: "Palestinian elections were postponed in 2021 because of disputes over voting in East Jerusalem.",
      whyFallback: "That was the public reason. Internal Fatah polling — reported by multiple Palestinian and Israeli outlets — showed Abbas's list losing badly to Hamas and to Barghouti's breakaway list. The Jerusalem issue had been navigable in 1996, 2005, and 2006. It became insurmountable when Fatah was going to lose." },
    { id: "ps_f3", isTruth: false, country: "ps", fallback: "The Palestinian Authority is an independent government.",
      whyFallback: "It cannot collect its own taxes, control its own borders, issue its own currency, or move troops between cities without Israeli permission. Its security services coordinate daily with the IDF and Shin Bet — a relationship critics within Palestinian society call subcontracted occupation." },
    { id: "ps_f4", isTruth: false, country: "ps", fallback: "Hamas and Fatah differ mainly on religious questions.",
      whyFallback: "The deeper split is over patronage, control of security forces, and who gets the foreign aid. Both have governed without elections for nearly two decades. Both have suppressed internal dissent — Hamas in Gaza, Fatah-led PA in the West Bank, documented by Human Rights Watch and Amnesty." },
    { id: "ps_f5", isTruth: false, country: "ps", fallback: "Settler violence in the West Bank is the work of a few extremists outside state policy.",
      whyFallback: "UN OCHA recorded 600+ settler attacks in 2023 alone, dozens of Palestinian deaths. Israeli soldiers regularly accompany or stand by during attacks. Settlements are funded, electrified, and defended by the state. The \"hilltop youth\" framing obscures the budget line." },
    { id: "ps_f6", isTruth: false, country: "ps", fallback: "Gaza was \"free\" after Israel's 2005 disengagement.",
      whyFallback: "Israel and Egypt have controlled Gaza's borders, airspace, territorial waters, electricity, water, telecommunications, and population registry continuously since. The UN, ICRC, and Israeli human rights groups like Gisha describe the territory as still occupied under international law. Withdrawal of settlers is not withdrawal of control." },
    { id: "ps_f7", isTruth: false, country: "ps", fallback: "International aid to Palestinians reaches its intended recipients.",
      whyFallback: "Substantial portions return to Israel via PA purchases of Israeli utilities, fuel, and goods under Paris Protocol terms. PA bureaucratic capture, family-network patronage, and donor conditionality have all been documented by the EU's own Court of Auditors. The aid sustains the architecture more than it changes it." },

    // ============== Palau — 8T + 7F ==============
    { id: "pw_t1", isTruth: true , country: "pw", fallback: "Palau's Compact of Free Association with the United States — renewed in 2024 for roughly $890 million over 20 years — gives Washington control over military access to the archipelago and the surrounding waters.",
      whyFallback: "Original Compact came into force 1994 after a 15-year negotiation. The strategic-denial clause is the substance: the US can use the islands for defense purposes and bars any third-power military presence. The cheque is the visible part; the veto is the load-bearing one." },
    { id: "pw_t2", isTruth: true , country: "pw", fallback: "Palau is one of only 12 sovereign states that still diplomatically recognize the Republic of China (Taiwan) — and Beijing has spent the last decade actively pressuring it to switch.",
      whyFallback: "Tour-group bans imposed in 2017 collapsed Palau's Chinese tourism boom almost overnight. Infrastructure offers, scholarships, and quiet diplomacy run in parallel. Recognition is held; the cost of holding it is paid in real visitor numbers." },
    { id: "pw_t3", isTruth: true , country: "pw", fallback: "Palau's 1981 constitution made it the world's first nuclear-free country by law — and the US then spent 13 years and seven failed referendums forcing a workaround before the Compact could be ratified.",
      whyFallback: "The constitution required a 75% supermajority to permit nuclear-armed or nuclear-powered vessels. Eight referendums between 1983 and 1993 — most failed the threshold. The eighth lowered the bar to a simple majority specifically for the Compact. A sovereign anti-nuclear principle was outlasted by negotiating pressure." },
    { id: "pw_t4", isTruth: true , country: "pw", fallback: "Palau's first president, Haruo Remeliik, was assassinated outside his home in June 1985 — shot dead during the Compact-ratification struggle, with conspiracy theories around his anti-nuclear stance never fully laid to rest.",
      whyFallback: "Three men were convicted; the convictions were later overturned. Remeliik was a defender of the nuclear-free constitution at the moment the US wanted it amended. The case was closed before the political questions were answered." },
    { id: "pw_t5", isTruth: true , country: "pw", fallback: "Palau's third president, Lazarus Salii, was found dead of a gunshot wound in his office in November 1988 — ruled a suicide while he was under congressional corruption investigation tied to Compact negotiations.",
      whyFallback: "Two presidents dead in three years, both during the same Compact fight, both with the official account contested by parts of the public. The pattern was never investigated as a pattern. The negotiations continued." },
    { id: "pw_t6", isTruth: true , country: "pw", fallback: "Roughly a quarter of all Palauans now live in the United States — moving freely under the Compact's visa-free residence and work clause.",
      whyFallback: "COFA citizens can live, work, study, and serve in the US military without a visa. Result: a multi-decade brain drain from a country of about 18,000 residents. Remittances flow back; the doctors, nurses, teachers, and graduates often do not." },
    { id: "pw_t7", isTruth: true , country: "pw", fallback: "Palau designated 80% of its exclusive economic zone as a no-fishing marine sanctuary in 2020 — and illegal Chinese fishing fleets routinely poach it anyway, with little Palauan capacity to enforce.",
      whyFallback: "Palau National Marine Sanctuary covers 500,000 square kilometres. A country with no navy is policing an ocean the size of France with a handful of patrol boats. IUU (illegal, unreported, unregulated) fishing incursions are documented; the enforcement gap is the structural feature." },
    { id: "pw_t8", isTruth: true , country: "pw", fallback: "The Compact Road around Babeldaob — Palau's main island — was built almost entirely with Japanese aid, not US Compact funds, despite being named for the US treaty.",
      whyFallback: "53 miles of paved road, completed 2007, financed by Japan as part of its own Pacific influence strategy. The name is American; the asphalt is Japanese. Pacific micro-states are courted by everyone; the labels rarely match the cheques." },
    { id: "pw_f1", isTruth: false, country: "pw", fallback: "Palau is a fully sovereign nation with the ordinary attributes of independence.",
      whyFallback: "Defense outsourced to the US by treaty. Military relations with any other state require US consent. Currency is the US dollar. Postage moves at US domestic rates. Sovereign on paper; layered inside US strategic architecture in practice." },
    { id: "pw_f2", isTruth: false, country: "pw", fallback: "The Compact of Free Association is a partnership between equals.",
      whyFallback: "One side controls the cheque, the defense, the visa regime, and the strategic-denial clause. The other side negotiates the size of the cheque every 20 years. \"Free association\" is the legal phrase; the asymmetry is the structure." },
    { id: "pw_f3", isTruth: false, country: "pw", fallback: "Palau's nuclear-free constitution still stands as written.",
      whyFallback: "It exists on paper. In practice, the Compact ratification required amending it down to a simple-majority threshold for US military exemption. The first president who defended it was assassinated; the third died under investigation. The principle was preserved in form and gutted in function." },
    { id: "pw_f4", isTruth: false, country: "pw", fallback: "Chinese engagement in the Pacific is just normal commercial diplomacy.",
      whyFallback: "Beijing collapsed Palau's tourist economy in 2017 specifically as pressure to drop Taiwan recognition. Infrastructure offers, scholarship programs, and fisheries deals run alongside the coercion. Commercial is the framing; statecraft is the content." },
    { id: "pw_f5", isTruth: false, country: "pw", fallback: "Palau's food and health systems are locally grounded.",
      whyFallback: "Heavy reliance on US-imported processed food. Diabetes, obesity, and related chronic-disease rates among the highest in the world. The traditional reef-and-taro diet was displaced by Compact-era supply chains; the public-health bill is the long tail of that displacement." },
    { id: "pw_f6", isTruth: false, country: "pw", fallback: "The Compact Trust Fund will keep Palau financially independent after the grants taper.",
      whyFallback: "Jointly managed with the US, designed to replace direct sector grants over time. Public reporting on managers, fees, and allocation has historically been thin. The fund is meant to outlive the Compact; the public scrutiny of it does not match the stake — and a quarter of the population it would serve already lives in the US." },
    { id: "pw_f7", isTruth: false, country: "pw", fallback: "Pacific micro-states have no leverage in great-power competition.",
      whyFallback: "Palau sits between Guam, the Philippines, and the South China Sea — exactly on the line the US and China both care about. The 2024 Compact renewal, the Taiwan recognition, the marine sanctuary, the courting from both sides — the leverage is real. It's just rarely used in the country's own interest." },

    // ============== Paraguay — 8T + 7F ==============
    { id: "py_t1", isTruth: true , country: "py", fallback: "Alfredo Stroessner ruled Paraguay for 35 years (1954-1989) — one of the longest dictatorships in Latin American history, built on the Colorado Party machine and US Cold War backing.",
      whyFallback: "Took power by coup in 1954; held it through eight rigged \"elections\" and a permanent state of siege. The Colorado Party (ANR), the military, and a Stroessner personality cult fused into a single apparatus. Washington called him an anti-communist ally; the model was textbook personalist tyranny." },
    { id: "py_t2", isTruth: true , country: "py", fallback: "Paraguay was a co-architect of Operation Condor — the cross-border assassination and disappearance network coordinated with Pinochet's Chile and the Argentine junta in the 1970s.",
      whyFallback: "Around 423 confirmed disappeared in Paraguay and 3,000-19,000 imprisoned and tortured under Stroessner. The \"Archives of Terror\" — discovered in 1992 in a police station on the outskirts of Asunción — contain the most complete surviving documentary record of Condor as a system." },
    { id: "py_t3", isTruth: true , country: "py", fallback: "The Colorado Party (ANR) has held the Paraguayan presidency almost continuously since 1947 — one of the longest single-party runs anywhere in the world.",
      whyFallback: "Founded 1887, in power as the governing machine from 1947 onward. The only break was Fernando Lugo (2008-2012), and even that ended in an express impeachment. Dictatorship, transition, and \"democracy\" all wore the same party colours." },
    { id: "py_t4", isTruth: true , country: "py", fallback: "President Fernando Lugo — a former Catholic bishop and the only non-Colorado leader in seven decades — was impeached in roughly 24 hours in June 2012, using the Curuguaty massacre as pretext.",
      whyFallback: "On June 15, 2012, an eviction near Marina Kue left about 17 dead — 11 peasants and 6 police — under suspicious circumstances later collapsed in court. Within a week the Senate removed Lugo by 39-4 with almost no defence time. Observers across the region called it a parliamentary coup." },
    { id: "py_t5", isTruth: true , country: "py", fallback: "Former president Horacio Cartes (2013-2018) was sanctioned by the US Treasury in December 2023 for \"significantly corrupt acts\" — including tobacco smuggling through his Tabacalera del Este empire and reported links to Hezbollah financing.",
      whyFallback: "Tabesa's cigarettes are estimated to make up around 60% of the black-market flow into Brazil. Cartes remains head of the Colorado Party — sanctioned by Washington, untouched at home. His protégé Santiago Peña took the presidency in 2023." },
    { id: "py_t6", isTruth: true , country: "py", fallback: "The Itaipú hydroelectric treaty (1973) locked Paraguay into selling half of one of the world's largest dams' output to Brazil at well below market rates for fifty years.",
      whyFallback: "Paraguay owns 50% of Itaipú but consumes a fraction of its share; the surplus was contractually sold cheap to Eletrobras. The Annex C renegotiation in 2023 ended the original price formula — but the new terms remain contested, and decades of value already flowed north." },
    { id: "py_t7", isTruth: true , country: "py", fallback: "The Triple Frontier — where Paraguay, Brazil, and Argentina meet near the Friendship Bridge — is one of the world's busiest contraband corridors for cigarettes, drugs, weapons, and laundered cash.",
      whyFallback: "Ciudad del Este on the Paraguayan side moves staggering volumes through informal channels. US, Brazilian, and Argentine agencies have repeatedly named it a financing node for transnational organised crime; the political class on all three sides benefits from the friction." },
    { id: "py_t8", isTruth: true , country: "py", fallback: "Indigenous Ayoreo communities in the Paraguayan Chaco are still being pushed off ancestral land by cattle ranching and soy expansion — including some of the last uncontacted peoples outside Amazonia.",
      whyFallback: "Chaco deforestation rates are among the highest on Earth. Land titles overlap with Ayoreo-Totobiegosode territory; clearance permits keep being issued. Survival International and the Inter-American Commission have flagged it for years. The frontier logic of the Stroessner era never really ended." },
    { id: "py_f1", isTruth: false, country: "py", fallback: "Paraguay's transition to democracy in 1989 broke cleanly with the Stroessner regime.",
      whyFallback: "The general who overthrew Stroessner — Andrés Rodríguez — was his own in-law and a Colorado insider. The party, the military structure, the landholding elite, and the security apparatus mostly stayed in place. New label, same machine." },
    { id: "py_f2", isTruth: false, country: "py", fallback: "The Curuguaty massacre was a straightforward clash that justified Lugo's removal.",
      whyFallback: "The investigation was riddled with planted evidence, missing ballistics, and a one-sided prosecution; the peasant convictions were eventually overturned. The political function — providing 24-hour cover for an impeachment — outlived the legal case." },
    { id: "py_f3", isTruth: false, country: "py", fallback: "Paraguay's wealth from soy, beef, and hydroelectricity has lifted the country out of dependency.",
      whyFallback: "Soy and cattle are dominated by a small landed elite — Paraguay has one of the most unequal land distributions on the planet. Itaipú and Yacyretá's surpluses largely cross borders. Growth happens; broad-based development does not." },
    { id: "py_f4", isTruth: false, country: "py", fallback: "The Colorado Party's longevity reflects genuine popular support across generations.",
      whyFallback: "State employment, rural patronage, identity-card networks, and control of the electoral apparatus built a machine that long predates and outlasts any single leader. Stroessner taught the party how to fuse with the state; the merger was never reversed." },
    { id: "py_f5", isTruth: false, country: "py", fallback: "Paraguay is a quiet, peripheral country with little geopolitical weight.",
      whyFallback: "It sits on the Guarani Aquifer — one of the largest freshwater reserves on Earth — at the heart of South American contraband routes, and inside the Triple Frontier intelligence theatre. Quiet is a framing choice, not a structural fact." },
    { id: "py_f6", isTruth: false, country: "py", fallback: "Journalists in Paraguay can report on organised crime and political corruption without serious risk.",
      whyFallback: "Pablo Medina, an ABC Color reporter covering drug trafficking on the Brazilian border, was murdered in 2014 — one of several killed for the same beat. The Amambay region near Pedro Juan Caballero is among the most dangerous in the Americas for the press." },
    { id: "py_f7", isTruth: false, country: "py", fallback: "Stroessner's archives were destroyed and the truth about Condor will never be known.",
      whyFallback: "On December 22, 1992 a judge and human-rights lawyer Martín Almada found roughly four tons of records — the \"Archives of Terror\" — in a police station in Lambaré. Detainee files, torture logs, and inter-agency Condor correspondence. The receipts survived because someone forgot to burn them." },

    // ============== Qatar — 8T + 7F ==============
    { id: "qa_t1", isTruth: true , country: "qa", fallback: "Qatar has been ruled by the Al Thani family since the 1850s — an absolute monarchy with no elected national parliament holding real power.",
      whyFallback: "Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani has ruled since 2013, taking over from his father Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani. Hamad himself took power in a 1995 bloodless palace coup against his own father. Succession by family arrangement, not vote." },
    { id: "qa_t2", isTruth: true , country: "qa", fallback: "The Guardian reported in February 2021 that more than 6,500 migrant workers from South Asia had died in Qatar since it was awarded the 2022 World Cup.",
      whyFallback: "Workers from India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka — building stadiums, metro, hotels, infrastructure for a tournament. Heat, falls, \"cardiac arrest\" classifications that bypassed compensation. FIFA awarded the bid under Sepp Blatter in 2010, later convicted in Switzerland 2022 (sentence suspended)." },
    { id: "qa_t3", isTruth: true , country: "qa", fallback: "Qatar's kafala labor sponsorship system tied migrant workers to a single employer — they could not change jobs or leave the country without that employer's written permission.",
      whyFallback: "Pre-2017 the system was structurally indenture. Nominal reforms 2017-2022 abolished the \"no-objection certificate\" requirement on paper and added a QAR 1,000 minimum wage. Enforcement remains the unsolved part." },
    { id: "qa_t4", isTruth: true , country: "qa", fallback: "Al Jazeera — funded by the Qatari royal family — has been banned, blocked, or restricted across most of the Arab world.",
      whyFallback: "Arabic channel launched 1996, English 2006. Closure of Al Jazeera was one of the explicit 13 demands Saudi Arabia, UAE, Bahrain, and Egypt made on Qatar during the June 2017 blockade. A media outlet treated as a foreign-policy weapon by neighbors and by its owner alike." },
    { id: "qa_t5", isTruth: true , country: "qa", fallback: "Qatar hosts the political bureau of Hamas in Doha — including officials who direct Gaza negotiations and, until July 2024, Ismail Haniyeh.",
      whyFallback: "Haniyeh was assassinated in Tehran in July 2024. Doha has simultaneously been the negotiating venue for ceasefire talks between Hamas and Israel — Qatar plays host and broker in the same conflict. Doha also houses the Taliban's political office (since 2013), used for the US withdrawal talks." },
    { id: "qa_t6", isTruth: true , country: "qa", fallback: "The Qatar Investment Authority (QIA) — a sovereign wealth fund of roughly $300 billion+ — owns trophy assets across the Western world: Harrods, Paris Saint-Germain, large stakes in Volkswagen and Tiffany & Co., the London Shard.",
      whyFallback: "Oil-and-gas revenue recycled through global luxury, sport, real estate, and equity holdings. A small Gulf monarchy with stakes in nearly every European capital's flagship properties. Influence purchased at retail." },
    { id: "qa_t7", isTruth: true , country: "qa", fallback: "The \"Qatargate\" EU corruption scandal of December 2022 saw Belgian MEP Eva Kaili arrested with €1.5 million in cash linked to alleged Qatari payments to EU officials.",
      whyFallback: "Pier Antonio Panzeri, Marc Tarabella, and others charged. Brussels — the supposed regulatory capital of Europe — found to have its own market for parliamentary opinions on Qatar's human-rights record. Most defendants remain in legal limbo years later." },
    { id: "qa_t8", isTruth: true , country: "qa", fallback: "Qatar funds Western university branch campuses — Texas A&M, Carnegie Mellon, Cornell, Georgetown — clustered in Doha's \"Education City\".",
      whyFallback: "Hundreds of millions of dollars to host American academic prestige inside a Gulf monarchy. The contracts include arrangements about what topics can be researched, taught, or published. Soft power purchased by the campus." },
    { id: "qa_f1", isTruth: false, country: "qa", fallback: "Qatar's 2017-2022 labor reforms ended the abuse of migrant workers.",
      whyFallback: "The QAR 1,000 minimum wage and the partial abolition of the \"no-objection certificate\" exist on paper. Wage theft, passport confiscation, recruitment-fee debt bondage, and \"natural cause\" death classifications continue to be documented by Amnesty, Human Rights Watch, and the ILO." },
    { id: "qa_f2", isTruth: false, country: "qa", fallback: "Al Jazeera is an independent journalistic outlet free of state direction.",
      whyFallback: "Owned by the Qatari royal family. Coverage of Qatari domestic affairs, the Al Thani family, and Qatar's foreign-policy allies (Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, Turkey) differs sharply from its coverage of Qatar's rivals (Saudi Arabia, UAE, Egypt, Bahrain). Editorial line follows ownership." },
    { id: "qa_f3", isTruth: false, country: "qa", fallback: "Hosting the 2022 World Cup was a celebration of Qatar's modernity and openness.",
      whyFallback: "The tournament was built on a workforce of roughly 2 million migrants — most South Asian, most working under kafala-era conditions. LGBT visitors were warned to be discreet; alcohol was restricted at the last minute; journalist Diaa Hadid and others reported harassment. Modernity as stage set." },
    { id: "qa_f4", isTruth: false, country: "qa", fallback: "Qatar is a neutral mediator in regional conflicts.",
      whyFallback: "Qatar simultaneously hosts Hamas's political bureau, the Taliban's Doha office, US Central Command's largest forward base (Al Udeid), and brokers prisoner swaps and ceasefires. Neutrality, here, means relationships with every side — and dependency on each side's tolerance of the others." },
    { id: "qa_f5", isTruth: false, country: "qa", fallback: "The 2017-2021 Gulf blockade of Qatar was a principled regional response to terrorism financing.",
      whyFallback: "Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain, and Egypt cut ties with Qatar in June 2017, demanding the closure of Al Jazeera, expulsion of the Muslim Brotherhood, and shutdown of the Turkish military base. The framing was \"terrorism\"; the substance was suppression of an inconvenient regional media voice and a rival foreign policy. Lifted January 2021." },
    { id: "qa_f6", isTruth: false, country: "qa", fallback: "Qatar's enormous foreign property and equity holdings are simply prudent investment.",
      whyFallback: "QIA stakes in Harrods, PSG, Tiffany & Co., Volkswagen, the Shard, plus reported donations to Trump organizations and political networks — purchases that buy diplomatic access, friendly press, and silence on labor and human-rights issues. The portfolio is also a lobbying instrument." },
    { id: "qa_f7", isTruth: false, country: "qa", fallback: "Qatar's surveillance and security apparatus is targeted only at genuine threats.",
      whyFallback: "Reporting from 2018 onward documented Qatari use of NSO Group's Pegasus spyware against dissidents, journalists, and rival royals. LGBT individuals such as Diaa Hadid faced prosecution. \"Genuine threats\" is a category whose boundaries the monarchy writes itself." },

    // ============== Solomon Islands — 8T + 7F ==============
    { id: "sb_t1", isTruth: true , country: "sb", fallback: "The Tensions of 1998–2003 — an ethnic conflict between the Isatabu Freedom Movement (Guadalcanal) and the Malaita Eagle Force — killed around 200 people, displaced roughly 35,000, and collapsed the economy of the capital Honiara.",
      whyFallback: "Guadalcanal militants targeted Malaitan settlers; Malaitan militants seized police armouries and effectively ran Honiara. Prime Minister Bart Ulufa'alu was held at gunpoint in June 2000 and forced to resign. The dead-by-percentage figure is small in absolute numbers and structural in effect — a state of 500,000 cannot afford even a small civil war." },
    { id: "sb_t2", isTruth: true , country: "sb", fallback: "RAMSI — the Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands (2003–2017) — was an Australian-led intervention of around 2,200 troops and police at peak, costing Australia more than A$2.6 billion over fourteen years.",
      whyFallback: "Invited in by Sir Allan Kemakeza's government under the Pacific Islands Forum's Biketawa Declaration, RAMSI restored order, disarmed militants, and rebuilt finance and policing institutions — and embedded Canberra inside the machinery of state for over a decade. The longest, largest regional intervention in modern Pacific history; the cost-to-population ratio rivals UN missions in much larger theatres." },
    { id: "sb_t3", isTruth: true , country: "sb", fallback: "Manasseh Sogavare served four separate terms as Prime Minister (2000–2001, 2006–2007, 2014–2017, 2019–2024) — building each return on a different coalition while the underlying political class remained largely the same.",
      whyFallback: "No party-machine democracy: every Solomon Islands government is assembled after the election through coalition negotiation in Honiara hotels. Sogavare mastered the assembly process. His fourth term ended in May 2024 when he stepped down and his deputy Jeremiah Manele took over under the OUR Party banner — continuity inside a leadership change." },
    { id: "sb_t4", isTruth: true , country: "sb", fallback: "In September 2019 Sogavare switched diplomatic recognition from Taiwan to the People's Republic of China — ending 36 years of ties with Taipei and triggering a cash-incentive scramble that landed in MP discretionary funds.",
      whyFallback: "A bipartisan task force recommended the switch; cash payments to MPs in the weeks around the vote were reported by local media and confirmed in court filings later. Beijing's diplomatic playbook in the Pacific runs on MP-level constituency funds and infrastructure carrots. Six Pacific states recognise Taiwan; the Solomons crossing the line was the regional inflection point." },
    { id: "sb_t5", isTruth: true , country: "sb", fallback: "The November 2021 Honiara riots killed at least three people and burned much of Chinatown, after Malaita Province delegates protesting Sogavare's China pivot were refused entry to parliament.",
      whyFallback: "Anti-Sogavare protests metastasised into anti-Chinese property destruction over three days. Australia, New Zealand, Fiji, and PNG deployed police under existing bilateral arrangements. The grievance stack — Malaita's alienation from Honiara, the unresolved China question, COVID-era economic distress — was older than the riot; the riot only revealed which fault lines still ran live." },
    { id: "sb_t6", isTruth: true , country: "sb", fallback: "In April 2022 a leaked draft of a security pact between Sogavare's government and Beijing showed Chinese police, military, and naval vessels could be deployed to Solomon Islands at Honiara's request — alarming Canberra and Washington.",
      whyFallback: "Sogavare denied any intention to host a Chinese base; the draft text said what it said. The final signed text was never published in full. The pact unblocked an Australian and US diplomatic blitz across the Pacific — Wendy Sherman, Daniel Kritenbrink, Penny Wong all flew through Honiara — that had not happened in twenty years of neglect. Strategic competition restored the Pacific to maps it had been missing from." },
    { id: "sb_t7", isTruth: true , country: "sb", fallback: "Daniel Suidani, the pro-Taiwan Premier of Malaita Province (2019–2023), was removed in February 2023 by a no-confidence vote in the provincial assembly that he and his supporters insisted had been engineered from Honiara with central-government and Chinese-linked money.",
      whyFallback: "Suidani had banned PRC businesses from Malaita, refused central-government funds tied to the China switch, and continued receiving Taiwan-linked development assistance. The no-confidence vote came after his absence for medical treatment in Taiwan. \"Local democracy decided\" was the official Honiara line; the Malaitan reading was constitutional defenestration of a politically inconvenient sub-national leader." },
    { id: "sb_t8", isTruth: true , country: "sb", fallback: "The Gold Ridge mine on Guadalcanal — Solomon Islands' only large-scale gold operation — was abandoned by Allied Gold's St Barbara Limited after the 2014 cyclone-induced flooding overtopped its tailings dam, leaving the state with the cleanup and the toxic legacy.",
      whyFallback: "St Barbara walked away in 2015 by selling the mine to a landowner-controlled company for A$100. The tailings dam still holds millions of cubic metres of cyanide-bearing waste above the Tinahula River. \"Sell to a local entity for a token sum\" is the modern divestment template — the same exit Rio Tinto used at Panguna. The downstream villages live with the consequence." },
    { id: "sb_f1", isTruth: false, country: "sb", fallback: "RAMSI was a model peacekeeping mission that left Solomon Islands stable and self-sufficient.",
      whyFallback: "Eight years after RAMSI's 2017 withdrawal, Honiara needed an Australian-led police deployment again in November 2021 to suppress riots — the same architecture under a different acronym. RAMSI restored institutions; it did not resolve the Guadalcanal–Malaita grievance, the urban-rural divide, or the patronage economy. Stability under occupation is not stability after it." },
    { id: "sb_f2", isTruth: false, country: "sb", fallback: "The 2019 switch from Taiwan to China was a sovereign foreign-policy choice made on the merits.",
      whyFallback: "Reported cash transfers to MPs around the recognition vote, a bipartisan task-force process that was rushed, and a Malaita Province leadership that opposed the switch loudly enough to be removed — all sit inside the \"sovereign choice\" frame. Beijing's chequebook is not a conspiracy theory; it is the documented Pacific recognition strategy. Calling the transaction sovereignty does not change what was transacted." },
    { id: "sb_f3", isTruth: false, country: "sb", fallback: "Australia is the Solomon Islands' \"family\" partner of choice, distinct from China's transactional approach.",
      whyFallback: "The \"Pacific family\" rhetoric is Canberra's branding; the substance is RAMSI-era institutional capture, the offshore-processing arrangements PNG and Nauru hosted next door, and a aid budget that pays Australian consultants more than it pays Solomon Islanders. Beijing is more transactional in style; the architecture of dependence on either capital is the same shape." },
    { id: "sb_f4", isTruth: false, country: "sb", fallback: "The November 2021 Honiara riots were spontaneous unrest with no underlying political driver.",
      whyFallback: "The Malaita Province delegation that triggered the standoff carried specific demands: reversal of the China switch, restoration of provincial autonomy, and an audit of National Development Fund allocations. The crowd around parliament had organised transport, leaders, and lists of targets. \"Spontaneous\" is the framing officials use when they would rather not name the political driver." },
    { id: "sb_f5", isTruth: false, country: "sb", fallback: "The 2022 China security pact contains no provision for Chinese forces to be deployed in Solomon Islands.",
      whyFallback: "The leaked draft explicitly allowed Chinese police, armed police, and military personnel to be deployed at Honiara's request, and Chinese naval vessels to make port calls and replenish. Sogavare's public denials of \"base\" intentions did not address deployment provisions. Calling something not-a-base while preserving the mechanism is the standard pre-base posture." },
    { id: "sb_f6", isTruth: false, country: "sb", fallback: "Solomon Islands' logging industry is sustainably managed under national forest law.",
      whyFallback: "Logging — dominated by Malaysian operators including Asia Pacific Resources and Solomon Island Wood Processing affiliates — extracts more than fifteen times the official sustainable yield each year, with Global Witness and the World Bank both documenting the gap. Royalty under-reporting, transfer pricing, and political donations have kept the regime in place across multiple governments. The forest law exists; enforcement is the variable." },
    { id: "sb_f7", isTruth: false, country: "sb", fallback: "The Western and Central Pacific tuna fishery delivers fair value to Pacific island states that own the waters.",
      whyFallback: "Solomon Islands, Kiribati, Tuvalu, PNG, and the rest of the Parties to the Nauru Agreement together own the world's largest tuna fishery — and capture, by their own Forum Fisheries Agency analyses, roughly 10–15% of the landed value, with the remainder taken by distant-water fleets and offshore processors. The Vessel Day Scheme improved the take; \"fair\" is still a generous adjective for the split." },

    // ============== Seychelles — 8T + 7F ==============
    { id: "sc_t1", isTruth: true , country: "sc", fallback: "Seychelles' first president James Mancham was overthrown on June 5, 1977 — while he was at a Commonwealth meeting in London — by his own prime minister France-Albert René, backed by Tanzanian troops.",
      whyFallback: "Independence from Britain came in June 1976; the coup came one year later. René ruled for the next 27 years. The country's democratic experiment ended before its second birthday." },
    { id: "sc_t2", isTruth: true , country: "sc", fallback: "France-Albert René governed Seychelles as a one-party socialist state from 1977 to 2004 — 27 years — under the Seychelles People's Progressive Front.",
      whyFallback: "Multi-party politics was abolished after the 1977 coup and only formally restored in 1993 under international pressure. René stayed in power through every \"restored\" election until handing the office to his vice-president James Michel." },
    { id: "sc_t3", isTruth: true , country: "sc", fallback: "In November 1981 a group of roughly 80 South African mercenaries — led by \"Mad\" Mike Hoare and disguised as a beer-drinking tourist club called the \"Ancient Order of Froth Blowers\" — tried to overthrow the René government and ended up hijacking an Air India 707 back to South Africa.",
      whyFallback: "Weapons were hidden in the false bottoms of toy suitcases; one was found at Pointe Larue airport customs. The South African government's role was initially denied, later partially acknowledged. Some mercenaries were tried in South Africa under air-piracy law, not mercenary law." },
    { id: "sc_t4", isTruth: true , country: "sc", fallback: "The 2020 election of Wavel Ramkalawan was the first democratic transfer of power in Seychelles in 43 years — the same party (SPPF / People's Party / United Seychelles) had held the presidency continuously from 1977 to 2020.",
      whyFallback: "Mancham → René (coup) → Michel (handover) → Faure (handover) — all from the same lineage. Ramkalawan, an Anglican priest, had lost five previous presidential elections before winning. The system finally moved when the system finally let it." },
    { id: "sc_t5", isTruth: true , country: "sc", fallback: "Seychelles was one of the world's busiest offshore secrecy jurisdictions through the 1990s and 2000s — its International Business Companies, registered under the 1994 IBC Act, appeared in the Panama Papers, Paradise Papers, and Pandora Papers.",
      whyFallback: "Mossack Fonseca alone incorporated tens of thousands of Seychelles shell companies. Anonymous ownership, no public registry, minimal substance requirements. EU and FATF pressure since 2018 tightened the regime on paper; the legacy stock of structures persists." },
    { id: "sc_t6", isTruth: true , country: "sc", fallback: "Seychelles was placed on the FATF \"grey list\" for money-laundering deficiencies from 2020 to 2022 and on the EU tax-haven blacklist as recently as 2021.",
      whyFallback: "Greylisting means a country is under \"increased monitoring\" — bureaucratic language for: your financial system is leaking. The fix was procedural reforms, not a structural rethink of the offshore model the economy depends on." },
    { id: "sc_t7", isTruth: true , country: "sc", fallback: "The EU-Seychelles Sustainable Fisheries Partnership Agreement pays roughly €58 million for the 2020-2026 period in exchange for European tuna boats fishing inside Seychelles' Exclusive Economic Zone.",
      whyFallback: "Spanish and French purse-seiners take the bulk of the catch; the Indian Ocean Tuna cannery in Victoria processes the lower-margin part. The country sells access to its waters to fleets that come from somewhere else — the standard small-island arrangement." },
    { id: "sc_t8", isTruth: true , country: "sc", fallback: "Air Seychelles went into administration in 2022 after its strategic-partnership with Etihad Airways unwound, leaving the state to absorb roughly $200 million in losses and bondholder defaults.",
      whyFallback: "The 2012 Etihad equity deal was sold as a regional aviation rescue; it loaded the airline with debt against unrealistic growth assumptions. When Etihad pulled back, the government was the residual guarantor — as is almost always the case." },
    { id: "sc_f1", isTruth: false, country: "sc", fallback: "Seychelles is a peaceful island democracy that quietly skipped the coup era most of Africa went through.",
      whyFallback: "One coup in 1977, one mercenary invasion attempt in 1981, 27 years of one-party rule, and the first peaceful transfer of power only in 2020. The \"peaceful island paradise\" framing is the tourism brochure, not the political record." },
    { id: "sc_f2", isTruth: false, country: "sc", fallback: "Seychelles' offshore sector is just legitimate international business — like any modern financial center.",
      whyFallback: "Pandora Papers, Panama Papers, Paradise Papers all featured Seychelles-registered IBCs prominently. Greylisted by FATF 2020-22, EU-blacklisted as recently as 2021. \"Legitimate international business\" describes the marketing tier, not the laundromat tier." },
    { id: "sc_f3", isTruth: false, country: "sc", fallback: "The luxury tourism on Praslin and Mahé benefits ordinary Seychellois.",
      whyFallback: "Banyan Tree, Four Seasons, Six Senses, North Island — most luxury resorts are foreign-owned, repatriate profits, and rely on imported management. Workers see service wages; the land value, the brand value, and the room rate go elsewhere. The same pattern as every island economy." },
    { id: "sc_f4", isTruth: false, country: "sc", fallback: "Multi-party democracy was restored in 1993 and has functioned normally since.",
      whyFallback: "Restored on paper in 1993 — but the ruling SPPF / People's Party / United Seychelles kept the presidency until 2020. Restored institutions inside a captured state are different from a working democracy. Twenty-seven uninterrupted years of one party should not be described as \"normal multi-party functioning\"." },
    { id: "sc_f5", isTruth: false, country: "sc", fallback: "Eden Island and similar high-end developments are normal real-estate investments.",
      whyFallback: "Eden Island has been a known landing pad for Russian, Indian, and Gulf money looking for a residence-by-investment passport and a low-question jurisdiction. Real estate in Seychelles, as in Cyprus or Malta, doubles as a citizenship and asset-hiding instrument." },
    { id: "sc_f6", isTruth: false, country: "sc", fallback: "Seychelles controls its own Exclusive Economic Zone and the fish in it.",
      whyFallback: "1.3 million square kilometers of ocean, fished primarily by European industrial fleets under EU agreements, with the value of the catch landing in Spain and France. The country owns the water column; the catch monetizes elsewhere. Sovereignty on the map, dependency on the spreadsheet." },
    { id: "sc_f7", isTruth: false, country: "sc", fallback: "Being a small island nation means Seychelles is geopolitically irrelevant.",
      whyFallback: "Mid-Indian-Ocean position — between East Africa, India, and the Diego Garcia US base — makes it permanently interesting to Indian, Chinese, French, and American navies. India's Assumption Island base proposal in 2018 was killed by domestic protest; the pressure for an outside power's military foothold there is permanent." },

    // ============== Sierra Leone — 8T + 7F ==============
    { id: "sl_t1", isTruth: true , country: "sl", fallback: "The 1991–2002 civil war killed an estimated 50,000–70,000 Sierra Leoneans and displaced more than two million — with mass amputation used deliberately as a terror tactic.",
      whyFallback: "RUF (Revolutionary United Front) signature: hands, arms, legs hacked off civilians — including children — to send a message. \"Long sleeve or short sleeve\" was the phrase the perpetrators used. The scale of survivors with missing limbs made Sierra Leone's amputee population one of the largest war-injury cohorts on the continent." },
    { id: "sl_t2", isTruth: true , country: "sl", fallback: "The RUF abducted and drugged children into \"small boys units\" — Sierra Leone became the textbook case for child-soldier recruitment in modern war.",
      whyFallback: "Tens of thousands of children conscripted, often after being forced to kill family members so they could not return home. Cocaine and \"brown-brown\" (cocaine cut with gunpowder) used to deaden them. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission (2002–2004) documented the practice in detail." },
    { id: "sl_t3", isTruth: true , country: "sl", fallback: "Charles Taylor, then president of Liberia, armed and directed the RUF in exchange for diamonds smuggled out of Sierra Leone's Kono district — and was convicted at The Hague in 2012, 50 years.",
      whyFallback: "Special Court for Sierra Leone (UN–Sierra Leone hybrid tribunal). Taylor's April 2012 conviction was the first head-of-state war-crimes verdict since Nuremberg. The diamond chain — Kono → RUF → Taylor → Antwerp/Tel Aviv buyers — was reconstructed in court testimony, including Naomi Campbell's." },
    { id: "sl_t4", isTruth: true , country: "sl", fallback: "\"Blood diamonds\" from Sierra Leone funded the war on both sides — and the Kimberley Process certification scheme (2003) was the international response that critics call largely cosmetic.",
      whyFallback: "Kono district fields drove the RUF's revenue. The Kimberley Process certifies \"conflict-free\" diamonds on paper; Global Witness, the NGO that helped create it, resigned from it in 2011 calling it a failure. Smuggling routes through Liberia and Guinea were never closed." },
    { id: "sl_t5", isTruth: true , country: "sl", fallback: "Operation No Living Thing (January 1999) was the RUF's assault on Freetown — roughly 5,000 people killed in days, with deliberate targeting of civilians, hospitals, and churches.",
      whyFallback: "The operation's name was its instruction. House-by-house killing, mass rape, mutilation, children burned in homes. ECOMOG (Nigerian-led West African force) eventually repelled the assault but at enormous civilian cost. The TRC documented it as the war's worst single episode." },
    { id: "sl_t6", isTruth: true , country: "sl", fallback: "The Lomé Peace Accord (1999) gave RUF leader Foday Sankoh a vice-presidency and a blanket amnesty — terms now widely regarded as a moral and strategic failure.",
      whyFallback: "Brokered under international pressure to end the killing. Sankoh was made chairman of the mineral resources commission — handing the diamond fields back to the man who had run them as war chests. The accord collapsed within a year; the war resumed. The UN added a footnote refusing to recognize amnesty for international crimes." },
    { id: "sl_t7", isTruth: true , country: "sl", fallback: "Foday Sankoh — RUF founder and architect of the amputation campaign — died in custody in 2003 before his Special Court trial reached a verdict.",
      whyFallback: "Captured by an angry crowd in Freetown in May 2000 after his bodyguards opened fire on protesters at his residence. Indicted by the Special Court in 2003. Died of natural causes in detention in July 2003 — never sentenced. Sam \"Mosquito\" Bockarie, his field commander, was killed in Liberia in 2003 under circumstances Taylor's regime never explained." },
    { id: "sl_t8", isTruth: true , country: "sl", fallback: "The 2014–2016 Ebola epidemic killed roughly 4,000 Sierra Leoneans and exposed how thin the post-war health system remained — with WHO funding gaps and international response delays well documented.",
      whyFallback: "Around 14,000 cases recorded in Sierra Leone alone. The WHO was criticized internally and externally for a slow declaration of emergency. The 2017 Freetown mudslide — over 1,000 dead — hit the same weakened infrastructure two years later. Reconstruction money flowed; accountability for where it went was patchier." },
    { id: "sl_f1", isTruth: false, country: "sl", fallback: "The Sierra Leone civil war was a tribal conflict between ancient ethnic rivals.",
      whyFallback: "It was a resource war fought over diamonds, funded across borders by Charles Taylor's Liberia, and enabled by a collapsed state. The TRC's final report named diamonds, Cold War weapons surplus, and regional patron networks as the structural drivers — not ethnicity. The \"tribal\" framing is the export version." },
    { id: "sl_f2", isTruth: false, country: "sl", fallback: "The international community responded quickly and decisively when the killing started in 1991.",
      whyFallback: "The war ran for eleven years. The UN mission (UNAMSIL) arrived seriously only in 1999 — after Operation No Living Thing. Britain's Operation Palliser in 2000 was decisive when it came but was framed as evacuating its own nationals first. Eight years of unanswered warnings preceded any serious intervention." },
    { id: "sl_f3", isTruth: false, country: "sl", fallback: "The Kimberley Process ended the global trade in conflict diamonds.",
      whyFallback: "It certified a category called \"conflict-free\" with a narrow government-vs-rebel definition. State-sponsored violence around mines (Zimbabwe's Marange, for example) was certified through. Global Witness, a founding NGO, walked out in 2011. The scheme exists; the trade adapted." },
    { id: "sl_f4", isTruth: false, country: "sl", fallback: "ECOMOG, the Nigerian-led intervention force, was a clean humanitarian operation.",
      whyFallback: "ECOMOG restored President Kabbah after the 1997 coup and helped break the 1999 Freetown assault — and its troops were also documented committing extrajudicial killings, looting, and abuses of civilians and detainees. \"Better than the RUF\" is not the same as \"clean\". The TRC catalogued ECOMOG abuses alongside everyone else's." },
    { id: "sl_f5", isTruth: false, country: "sl", fallback: "The Special Court for Sierra Leone delivered full justice for the war's crimes.",
      whyFallback: "Nine convictions over a decade — including Taylor. Foday Sankoh died before verdict. Sam Bockarie was killed before extradition. Lower-level commanders mostly walked. The amputators in the villages mostly walked. Hybrid tribunals get the top tier; the middle and bottom tiers became neighbours again under the TRC's reconciliation framing." },
    { id: "sl_f6", isTruth: false, country: "sl", fallback: "Sierra Leone's post-war elections have been clean transfers of power free of military interference.",
      whyFallback: "The 2007 transfer (Kabbah's SLPP to Koroma's APC) was genuinely peaceful and praised internationally — and Julius Maada Bio, current president since 2018, was himself the leader of the 1996 military junta (NPRC) that briefly ran the country before handing over to Kabbah. The military lineage in civilian office is not foreign — it is domestic." },
    { id: "sl_f7", isTruth: false, country: "sl", fallback: "Foreign aid and reconstruction funding rebuilt Sierra Leone's institutions transparently after the war.",
      whyFallback: "Audit-General reports through the 2010s flagged hundreds of millions in unaccounted public spending — including Ebola response funds. British American Tobacco was named in 2021 reporting for bribery operations across West Africa including Sierra Leone. Reconstruction money arrived; reconstruction-grade institutions to track it did not arrive at the same speed." },

    // ============== Senegal — 8T + 7F ==============
    { id: "sn_t1", isTruth: true , country: "sn", fallback: "Karim Wade — son of former president Abdoulaye Wade — was sentenced in 2015 to six years in prison for illicit enrichment of roughly $250 million, then quietly pardoned and exiled to Qatar.",
      whyFallback: "CREI special anti-corruption court, conviction upheld 2015. Pandora Papers later linked Karim Wade to offshore structures. The prosecution was real; the exile was the political settlement." },
    { id: "sn_t2", isTruth: true , country: "sn", fallback: "President Macky Sall attempted to postpone the February 2024 election just weeks before voting — Senegal's Constitutional Council struck it down as unconstitutional.",
      whyFallback: "Decree of February 3, 2024, postponed the vote indefinitely. The Council ruled February 15 that no president may extend his own mandate. Without that ruling, Senegal's 60-year electoral tradition would have ended on a technicality." },
    { id: "sn_t3", isTruth: true , country: "sn", fallback: "Bassirou Diomaye Faye was released from prison on March 14, 2024 and won the presidency ten days later — opposition candidate to head of state in a fortnight.",
      whyFallback: "PASTEF leadership held without trial under the Sall government's 2023 crackdown. Amnesty law passed days before the vote. Faye took 54% in the first round at age 44, with Ousmane Sonko — still legally barred — as prime minister." },
    { id: "sn_t4", isTruth: true , country: "sn", fallback: "Protests against the prosecution of opposition leader Ousmane Sonko killed at least 14 people in March 2021 and roughly 30 in June 2023 — security forces using live ammunition against demonstrators.",
      whyFallback: "Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch documented both waves. The charges against Sonko — initially rape, later \"corrupting youth\" — were widely read as political. His conviction barred him from the 2024 ballot." },
    { id: "sn_t5", isTruth: true , country: "sn", fallback: "The Casamance separatist conflict — fought by the MFDC since 1982 — has displaced over 60,000 people and killed roughly 5,000, yet barely appears in international coverage.",
      whyFallback: "Africa's longest-running civil conflict, sustained at low intensity by geography (the Gambia splits Casamance from the rest of Senegal) and by silence. Landmines, refugee camps in Guinea-Bissau, intermittent ceasefires that never hold." },
    { id: "sn_t6", isTruth: true , country: "sn", fallback: "French troops remained stationed in Senegal until 2025 — sixty-five years after independence — and the CFA franc tied Senegalese monetary policy to the French Treasury for the same period.",
      whyFallback: "Last French base closed mid-2025 under President Faye, the final colonial garrison removed only in this generation. The franc CFA still operates with reserves historically held in Paris. Independence on paper, monetary sovereignty pending." },
    { id: "sn_t7", isTruth: true , country: "sn", fallback: "Mamadou Dia — Senegal's first prime minister and Senghor's co-founder of the independence movement — was imprisoned by Senghor in 1962 and held for twelve years on coup charges he always denied.",
      whyFallback: "December 1962 standoff between Dia's social-democratic vision and Senghor's pro-French alignment. Senghor took the presidency, sole power, and the historical narrative. Dia was rehabilitated only decades later, after Senghor had retired." },
    { id: "sn_t8", isTruth: true , country: "sn", fallback: "Gorée Island's Maison des Esclaves — long presented as the departure point for millions of enslaved Africans — has been quietly downgraded by historians, who estimate the actual number passing through at tens of thousands at most.",
      whyFallback: "Symbol versus throughput: the building's role as a memorial is real, the specific number is inflated. The honest version (the broader Senegambian coast moved hundreds of thousands) is harder to put on a tourist plaque." },
    { id: "sn_f1", isTruth: false, country: "sn", fallback: "Senegal's reputation as West Africa's model democracy means power has always changed hands cleanly.",
      whyFallback: "Senghor jailed his own prime minister in 1962. Wade tried to force an unconstitutional third term in 2012. Sall jailed the opposition and attempted to postpone the 2024 vote. The peaceful transitions happened — between the crises, not instead of them." },
    { id: "sn_f2", isTruth: false, country: "sn", fallback: "Léopold Sédar Senghor's voluntary retirement in 1980 proves Senegalese leaders willingly cede power.",
      whyFallback: "Senghor was the exception, not the template. He also held French citizenship throughout his presidency, ran a single-party system for most of his rule, and chose his own successor (Diouf) without a contested vote. The handoff was orderly because it was managed." },
    { id: "sn_f3", isTruth: false, country: "sn", fallback: "The CFA franc was a neutral monetary arrangement that benefited West African states.",
      whyFallback: "Pegged to the French franc then the euro, with reserves historically held at the French Treasury, with French representatives on the central bank board. \"Cooperation\" in the framing, fiscal containment in the architecture. Renamed Eco in 2019; the reform is still partial." },
    { id: "sn_f4", isTruth: false, country: "sn", fallback: "Casamance is a minor border dispute that the international community can safely ignore.",
      whyFallback: "Forty-three years, thousands dead, tens of thousands displaced. The conflict's invisibility is the result of Senegal's stable reputation needing protection, not the conflict's actual scale. Low-intensity is not low-cost — it's slow." },
    { id: "sn_f5", isTruth: false, country: "sn", fallback: "The 2024 election proves Senegalese institutions function smoothly under stress.",
      whyFallback: "They functioned at the last possible moment, after a sitting president tried to cancel the vote, the opposition front-runner was barred, and protests had killed dozens. The Constitutional Council's intervention was the system catching itself mid-fall — not the system working as designed." },
    { id: "sn_f6", isTruth: false, country: "sn", fallback: "Industries Chimiques du Sénégal (ICS) and the phosphates industry are an engine of Senegalese prosperity.",
      whyFallback: "Repeated bankruptcies, restructuring under Indian and Indonesian ownership, environmental damage around Taïba and Tobène, persistent labor disputes. A strategic resource captured by foreign capital with the state holding a minority stake — extraction, not development." },
    { id: "sn_f7", isTruth: false, country: "sn", fallback: "Ousmane Sonko's prosecutions were ordinary criminal matters that happened to involve a politician.",
      whyFallback: "Rape charge in 2021 followed by \"corrupting youth\" conviction in 2023, neatly timed to disqualify him from the 2024 ballot. Two waves of protest dead, an opposition party dissolved, a prime ministership six months later when the same movement won the presidency. Ordinary criminal matters don't usually arc like that." },

    // ============== Somalia — 8T + 7F ==============
    { id: "so_t1", isTruth: true , country: "so", fallback: "Siad Barre's military dictatorship (1969-1991) ran a Soviet-then-American client state — and ended Somalia as a functioning country when he fled Mogadishu in January 1991.",
      whyFallback: "Barre seized power in a coup, swapped Cold War sponsors mid-stride (Soviet ally until the 1977-78 Ogaden War, then US ally), and left behind a state apparatus so hollowed out that no central government has fully reassembled in the 30+ years since." },
    { id: "so_t2", isTruth: true , country: "so", fallback: "The Isaaq Genocide (1987-89) — Barre's regime killing 50,000-100,000 Isaaq civilians in northern Somalia — is why Somaliland declared independence in 1991 and still refuses to rejoin.",
      whyFallback: "Aerial bombing of Hargeisa flattened the city. UN-commissioned report (2001) concluded genocide. Somaliland has held cleaner elections than the south for three decades and is still unrecognized by every UN state." },
    { id: "so_t3", isTruth: true , country: "so", fallback: "The October 1993 Battle of Mogadishu — \"Black Hawk Down\" — killed 18 US Rangers and an estimated 500-1,000 Somalis, and quietly redrew US foreign policy for a decade.",
      whyFallback: "Operation Gothic Serpent targeted warlord Mohamed Farrah Aidid. The American withdrawal that followed is widely cited inside the US national-security establishment as the reason Washington declined to intervene in Rwanda the following year." },
    { id: "so_t4", isTruth: true , country: "so", fallback: "Al-Shabaab emerged directly from the US-backed Ethiopian invasion of December 2006, which crushed the Islamic Courts Union that had briefly stabilized Mogadishu.",
      whyFallback: "The ICU had imposed order on the capital for the first time since 1991. Washington greenlit Addis Ababa's invasion; the ICU's youth wing — al-Shabaab — radicalized, declared allegiance to Al-Qaeda by 2012, and is still fighting." },
    { id: "so_t5", isTruth: true , country: "so", fallback: "The October 14, 2017 Mogadishu truck bombing killed roughly 600 people in a single attack — one of the deadliest terrorist incidents anywhere this century — and was barely covered in Western media.",
      whyFallback: "Al-Shabaab attribution. The Westgate Mall attack in Nairobi (2013) and DusitD2 attack (2019) got far more coverage with far fewer dead. The visibility of a tragedy in the Western press is not proportional to the body count." },
    { id: "so_t6", isTruth: true , country: "so", fallback: "Somali piracy in the Indian Ocean (2008-2012) cost global shipping an estimated $7 billion-plus — and was a direct consequence of foreign trawlers and waste-dumpers exploiting the absence of a coast guard.",
      whyFallback: "European and Asian fleets had been illegally fishing Somali waters for years; toxic-waste dumping was documented by the UN Environment Programme. The pirates were the symptom; the unpoliced coast was the structure." },
    { id: "so_t7", isTruth: true , country: "so", fallback: "Somalia's federal politicians routinely hold dual citizenship — US, UK, Canadian, Kenyan — and keep their families safely abroad while governing a country they can leave at any time.",
      whyFallback: "Both Mohamed Abdullahi \"Farmajo\" (US passport) and Hassan Sheikh Mohamud have held foreign citizenship while serving as president. Skin in the game is geographically optional at the top of Somali politics." },
    { id: "so_t8", isTruth: true , country: "so", fallback: "The UN declared famine in Somalia in 2011, 2017, and 2022 — and the 2011 famine alone killed roughly 260,000 people, half of them children under five.",
      whyFallback: "The 2011 declaration came months after aid agencies were already warning. Al-Shabaab's blocking of food aid in territories it controlled, combined with donor delays, produced the death toll. The cycle has not been broken — it has been repeated." },
    { id: "so_f1", isTruth: false, country: "so", fallback: "Somalia has been ungoverned chaos for 30 years.",
      whyFallback: "Somaliland has held peaceful multi-party elections and operated stable institutions in Hargeisa since 1991. Puntland runs an autonomous government. Jubaland functions. The \"failed state\" frame describes the south and the diplomatic recognition — not the whole territory." },
    { id: "so_f2", isTruth: false, country: "so", fallback: "The US intervention in Somalia in the 1990s was a humanitarian mission that simply went wrong.",
      whyFallback: "Operation Restore Hope began as famine relief; UNOSOM II shifted to nation-building and warlord-hunting. The mission scope expanded without congressional debate, and the same expansion logic — humanitarian framing, military escalation — has been repeated in Iraq, Libya, and Syria." },
    { id: "so_f3", isTruth: false, country: "so", fallback: "Al-Shabaab is a domestic Somali insurgency disconnected from foreign actors.",
      whyFallback: "Declared Al-Qaeda affiliate in 2012. Recruits, finances, and trains across the Horn of Africa. Hits Kenyan and Ugandan targets in retaliation for AMISOM/ATMIS troop contributions. \"Domestic\" is the smallest accurate frame." },
    { id: "so_f4", isTruth: false, country: "so", fallback: "Somaliland is just a breakaway region that should be reabsorbed.",
      whyFallback: "Somaliland was a separate British protectorate that voluntarily united with Italian Somaliland in 1960. After the Isaaq Genocide, the union dissolved. Three decades of self-government, cleaner elections than Mogadishu, and a different currency. The unrecognition is diplomatic, not factual." },
    { id: "so_f5", isTruth: false, country: "so", fallback: "AMISOM and ATMIS pacified Somalia.",
      whyFallback: "The African Union mission (2007-2022, then ATMIS) held Mogadishu and key towns at significant cost — thousands of African peacekeepers dead — but al-Shabaab still controls large rural areas. \"Pacified\" describes the press release, not the map." },
    { id: "so_f6", isTruth: false, country: "so", fallback: "Somalia's problems are purely internal — clan rivalries and bad governance.",
      whyFallback: "Cold War arms deliveries (Soviet then US), Ethiopian and Kenyan military interventions, Gulf state proxy funding, illegal fishing by European and Asian fleets, toxic-waste dumping, drone strikes by multiple foreign powers. The internal frame is convenient because it lets outsiders skip the bill." },
    { id: "so_f7", isTruth: false, country: "so", fallback: "Khat is just a mild local stimulant with no political dimension.",
      whyFallback: "The khat trade is a multi-hundred-million-dollar economy across the Horn of Africa, finances militias, structures daily male labor in much of Somali society, and is regulated as a controlled substance in most of the West. The \"just a leaf\" framing is what gets exported." },

    // ============== Suriname — 8T + 7F ==============
    { id: "sr_t1", isTruth: true , country: "sr", fallback: "Dési Bouterse led the 1980 \"Sergeants' Coup\" that overthrew Suriname's civilian government, then ruled the country directly or indirectly for most of the next four decades.",
      whyFallback: "Military rule 1980–87. NDP founded 1987 to extend his reach through electoral politics. Elected president 2010–2020. The uniform changed; the figure did not." },
    { id: "sr_t2", isTruth: true , country: "sr", fallback: "On 8 December 1982, Bouterse and the military rounded up 15 prominent opponents — journalists, lawyers, academics, union leaders — at Fort Zeelandia in Paramaribo and killed them.",
      whyFallback: "The December Murders. Bouterse eventually convicted in absentia in November 2019 and sentenced to 20 years. He fled in December 2023 to avoid jail. The convictions came nearly four decades after the bodies." },
    { id: "sr_t3", isTruth: true , country: "sr", fallback: "On 29 November 1986 the Surinamese military massacred roughly 35 Maroon villagers — many women and children — at Moiwana, the home village of rebel leader Ronnie Brunswijk.",
      whyFallback: "Surinamese Interior War 1986–92. Approximately 10,000 Maroons displaced. Inter-American Court of Human Rights judgment against Suriname in 2005. The state's own findings remained partial for years." },
    { id: "sr_t4", isTruth: true , country: "sr", fallback: "Bouterse was convicted in absentia by a Dutch court in 1999 for cocaine trafficking and sentenced to 11 years; the conviction stood while he later sat as elected president of Suriname.",
      whyFallback: "A sitting head of state with an outstanding international drug conviction. The Netherlands could not extradite him while he held office. Diplomatic theatre around a documented file." },
    { id: "sr_t5", isTruth: true , country: "sr", fallback: "Ronnie Brunswijk — former Jungle Commando guerrilla leader during the Interior War — became Vice President of Suriname in 2020, despite cocaine-trafficking convictions in the Netherlands and France.",
      whyFallback: "Convicted in absentia in the Netherlands (1999) and France (1999). Now constitutionally second in line. \"Former rebel\" is the polite framing; \"convicted trafficker in office\" is the legal one." },
    { id: "sr_t6", isTruth: true , country: "sr", fallback: "TotalEnergies and APA announced a major oil discovery in Suriname's offshore Block 58 in 2020 — roughly 1.4 billion barrels — positioning Suriname as the \"next Guyana\" of South American crude.",
      whyFallback: "Final investment decisions taken with Western majors. The pattern is familiar: small population, foreign-operated extraction, sovereign wealth fund promises, debt-service realities. Guyana is the recent template." },
    { id: "sr_t7", isTruth: true , country: "sr", fallback: "At independence from the Netherlands in 1975, roughly a third of Suriname's population — over 80,000 people — emigrated to the Netherlands, fearing what was coming.",
      whyFallback: "A demographic vote of no confidence in the new state, taken with suitcases. The Surinamese-Dutch diaspora became larger and economically heavier than many of the home country's institutions." },
    { id: "sr_t8", isTruth: true , country: "sr", fallback: "Illegal gold mining — much of it in Maroon and Indigenous territories — has driven mercury contamination, deforestation, and armed land conflicts across Suriname's interior.",
      whyFallback: "Brazilian garimpeiros, local operators, and connected interests. Rivers poisoned, customary land overridden. The state's enforcement capacity in the interior is, by design or by neglect, thin." },
    { id: "sr_f1", isTruth: false, country: "sr", fallback: "Suriname's December 1982 killings were the chaotic actions of rogue soldiers, not state policy.",
      whyFallback: "The 15 victims were arrested by name, taken to Fort Zeelandia, and executed by people at the top of the chain of command. A targeted decapitation of civil society. Bouterse's own conviction names the structure." },
    { id: "sr_f2", isTruth: false, country: "sr", fallback: "Bouterse paid for his crimes during his lifetime.",
      whyFallback: "Convicted in absentia in the Netherlands (cocaine, 1999) and in Suriname (December Murders, 2019). Served not one day. Fled in December 2023, reportedly died in Suriname December 2024. Conviction without consequence is a documented genre." },
    { id: "sr_f3", isTruth: false, country: "sr", fallback: "Suriname's 2020 election was a clean break from the Bouterse era.",
      whyFallback: "Chan Santokhi (VHP, former police chief) became president — and chose Ronnie Brunswijk, a man with foreign drug convictions and a militia past, as Vice President. The faces changed; the cast list overlaps." },
    { id: "sr_f4", isTruth: false, country: "sr", fallback: "Suriname's offshore oil discoveries will make ordinary Surinamese citizens wealthy.",
      whyFallback: "Block 58, 1.4 billion barrels, operated by TotalEnergies and APA. Royalty structures, debt servicing to the IMF, and the political economy of small extractive states say otherwise. \"Next Guyana\" is a banker's compliment, not a citizen's promise." },
    { id: "sr_f5", isTruth: false, country: "sr", fallback: "The Surinamese Air Force is a normal national defense institution.",
      whyFallback: "Surinamese Air Force pilots have been repeatedly named in cocaine-smuggling cases moving product north. A military service used as a transport network is not unique to Suriname — but it is the local pattern." },
    { id: "sr_f6", isTruth: false, country: "sr", fallback: "Independence in 1975 was a confident new beginning chosen by the Surinamese people.",
      whyFallback: "Roughly a third of the population left for the Netherlands within months. Within five years a sergeants' coup had ended civilian rule. \"Confidence\" is not what one third of a country boarding planes to the former metropole communicates." },
    { id: "sr_f7", isTruth: false, country: "sr", fallback: "Suriname's debt restructuring with the IMF in 2021 was a technical exercise without political cost.",
      whyFallback: "Currency devaluation, subsidy cuts, social spending squeezed. The standard package, delivered to a small country whose oil wealth is still offshore. The technocratic frame obscures who pays in the interim." },

    // ============== South Sudan — 8T + 7F ==============
    { id: "ss_t1", isTruth: true , country: "ss", fallback: "South Sudan became the world's youngest country on July 9, 2011 — and slid into civil war 29 months later, in December 2013.",
      whyFallback: "The independence referendum passed with 99% in favor after decades of war with Khartoum (~2.5 million dead across the two Sudanese civil wars). The new flag was barely two years old when Salva Kiir accused Riek Machar of plotting a coup and the army split along Dinka-Nuer lines." },
    { id: "ss_t2", isTruth: true , country: "ss", fallback: "The South Sudanese Civil War (2013-2018) killed an estimated 400,000 people and displaced roughly 4 million — about a third of the entire population.",
      whyFallback: "LSHTM mortality study (2018) put excess deaths at ~383,000. Bentiu massacres, Bor massacres, ethnically targeted killings, and mass rapes documented by the UN Commission on Human Rights in South Sudan. The displaced figure equals the entire population of Wales." },
    { id: "ss_t3", isTruth: true , country: "ss", fallback: "The Sentry's investigations documented over $4 billion siphoned from South Sudanese oil revenues between 2005 and 2014 — most of it before the country was three years old.",
      whyFallback: "George Clooney and John Prendergast's Sentry/Enough Project mapped the money to luxury homes for Kiir's and Machar's families in Nairobi, Kampala, Melbourne, and Addis Ababa. Both warring camps were business partners on the back end while their kinsmen killed each other on the front end." },
    { id: "ss_t4", isTruth: true , country: "ss", fallback: "Salva Kiir's government bought roughly $7 billion in weapons during years when international donors were airlifting food to prevent famine in his own country.",
      whyFallback: "Reuters and Sentry reporting on arms purchases from Ukraine, Bulgaria, Israel, and China. The cowboy hat (a 2006 gift from George W. Bush) became a fixture as USAID kept the famine line from breaking. Two different budgets, two different priorities, one government." },
    { id: "ss_t5", isTruth: true , country: "ss", fallback: "The 2018 R-ARCSS \"revitalized\" peace agreement signed in Khartoum was brokered by Omar al-Bashir — a man wanted by the International Criminal Court for genocide.",
      whyFallback: "Bashir was the very leader South Sudan had fought 22 years to escape. Eight months later he was overthrown in Sudan. The transitional government R-ARCSS produced is still \"transitional\" eight years on; the election it was meant to deliver has been postponed three times." },
    { id: "ss_t6", isTruth: true , country: "ss", fallback: "South Sudan's national elections — originally scheduled for 2015 — have been postponed again to December 2026, the fourth delay in a row.",
      whyFallback: "2015 → 2018 → 2022 → 2024 → 2026. Each postponement extends the transitional period and the salaries that come with it. The country has never held a national election as an independent state; the politicians explaining why are the same names from 2011." },
    { id: "ss_t7", isTruth: true , country: "ss", fallback: "Roughly 98% of South Sudan's government revenue comes from oil — and that oil only reaches market via a pipeline running through Sudan, the country it seceded from.",
      whyFallback: "Geography did not negotiate the split fairly. When Sudan's own civil war shut the pipeline in early 2024, Juba's revenue collapsed overnight. CNPC (China) is the dominant operating partner; the leverage map is drawn in Beijing and Khartoum, not Juba." },
    { id: "ss_t8", isTruth: true , country: "ss", fallback: "Riek Machar, the country's First Vice President under the peace deal, has been placed under house arrest in Juba since March 2025 — and the agreement that supposedly holds the country together survives mostly on paper.",
      whyFallback: "Machar's SPLM-IO is the formal opposition wing of the unity government. Arresting him while pretending the R-ARCSS structure is intact is the South Sudanese specialty: the form of power-sharing without the substance of it. The international guarantors issued statements." },
    { id: "ss_f1", isTruth: false, country: "ss", fallback: "The 2013 civil war was a tribal conflict between Dinka and Nuer.",
      whyFallback: "It was an elite power struggle inside the SPLM — Kiir versus Machar — that mobilized ethnicity as ammunition. Dinka and Nuer have intermarried and traded for centuries. The Bor massacre of 1991, replayed in 2013, was political entrepreneurship wearing tribal clothes." },
    { id: "ss_f2", isTruth: false, country: "ss", fallback: "Independence in 2011 gave South Sudanese people self-determination.",
      whyFallback: "It gave the SPLM leadership a state to capture. The referendum vote was real; the institutions to translate it into citizen-level self-rule were never built. Liberation movement became ruling party became extractive elite — the standard post-colonial arc, compressed into a decade." },
    { id: "ss_f3", isTruth: false, country: "ss", fallback: "China's oil deals in South Sudan are purely commercial.",
      whyFallback: "CNPC inherited the Sudanese-era concessions and stayed through both wars. Chinese peacekeepers serve in UNMISS specifically to protect oil infrastructure. Beijing's commercial position is the country's only continuous foreign-policy reality; both Kiir and Machar court it." },
    { id: "ss_f4", isTruth: false, country: "ss", fallback: "International aid has rebuilt South Sudan.",
      whyFallback: "Over $20 billion in humanitarian aid since 2011 has kept people alive — not built a country. Donors fund parallel health, education, and food systems that let the government skip its own responsibilities and spend the oil money elsewhere. \"Aid dependency\" is the polite name for the arrangement." },
    { id: "ss_f5", isTruth: false, country: "ss", fallback: "Salva Kiir is a transitional figure leading the country toward elections.",
      whyFallback: "He has been president continuously since independence in 2011 — 15 years and counting, four postponed elections. The transitional framing is structural: each transition extends the same presidency. The cowboy hat outlasted Bush, Obama, Trump, Biden, and Bashir." },
    { id: "ss_f6", isTruth: false, country: "ss", fallback: "The peace process is moving forward.",
      whyFallback: "R-ARCSS implementation indicators — unified army, constitution-making, election preparation — are years behind schedule on every measure. \"Moving forward\" is the diplomatic phrase used because admitting the process is stalled would require the guarantors to do something." },
    { id: "ss_f7", isTruth: false, country: "ss", fallback: "South Sudan's poverty is the result of its newness.",
      whyFallback: "It is the result of capture. The country sits on East Africa's largest proven oil reserves and the most fertile land in the Nile basin. Newness is the alibi; the elite's offshore property portfolios from Nairobi to Melbourne are the evidence." },

    // ============== São Tomé and Príncipe — 8T + 7F ==============
    { id: "st_t1", isTruth: true , country: "st", fallback: "Manuel Pinto da Costa ran São Tomé and Príncipe as a one-party Marxist-Leninist state from independence in 1975 until multiparty politics arrived in 1990 — then returned as elected president from 2011 to 2016.",
      whyFallback: "MLSTP held a monopoly on power for fifteen years before the 1990 constitutional opening. Pinto da Costa's second-act electoral comeback two decades later showed how thin the bench of post-independence elites really was. The same names recur because the recruitment circle is one generation wide." },
    { id: "st_t2", isTruth: true , country: "st", fallback: "On 16 July 2003 a group of soldiers led by Major Fernando Pereira — \"Cobó\" — overthrew President Fradique de Menezes while he was abroad; the junta lasted eight days before international pressure forced restoration.",
      whyFallback: "The coup landed months after the Joint Development Zone with Nigeria announced credible Gulf of Guinea oil potential. The mediators — Nigeria, the US, Portugal, the AU — negotiated Menezes back into office with an amnesty for the plotters. The timing told the story the press release didn't." },
    { id: "st_t3", isTruth: true , country: "st", fallback: "The 2001 Joint Development Zone treaty with Nigeria — 60/40 in Abuja's favor — handed away most of the upside of any oil found in São Toméan waters before a single commercial barrel was confirmed.",
      whyFallback: "Signed under Miguel Trovoada; the split reflected the asymmetry of the two states, not the geology of the seabed. The JDZ became the legal scaffolding for every subsequent licensing round. A small archipelago negotiating with a regional giant on hydrocarbon terms is not a fair table." },
    { id: "st_t4", isTruth: true , country: "st", fallback: "The 2003-2004 OPL 246 bidding round inside the JDZ — won by a ChevronTexaco-led consortium — produced bribery allegations and a paper trail of signature bonuses that never matched the country's audited receipts.",
      whyFallback: "Civil society groups and external auditors flagged irregularities in how blocks were awarded and how proceeds were booked. The geology disappointed; the governance damage stayed. EITI candidacy followed, partly to launder the reputational cost of the first round." },
    { id: "st_t5", isTruth: true , country: "st", fallback: "Patrice Trovoada — son of former president Miguel Trovoada — has cycled through the prime-ministership four separate times since 2008, returning most recently in 2022 under President Carlos Vila Nova.",
      whyFallback: "ADI built around him as a vehicle. The repeated comebacks track less with policy shifts than with parliamentary arithmetic and patronage networks. Dynastic continuity in a country of barely 230,000 people is structural, not coincidental." },
    { id: "st_t6", isTruth: true , country: "st", fallback: "São Tomé switched diplomatic recognition from Beijing to Taipei in 1997, then switched back to Beijing in 2016 — the second small state in two years to make that round trip.",
      whyFallback: "Each switch carried envelopes — development packages, infrastructure pledges, scholarships. Taipei's checkbook diplomacy worked until Beijing's grew larger. Sovereignty exercised as auction lot is still sovereignty exercised, but the auction is the policy." },
    { id: "st_t7", isTruth: true , country: "st", fallback: "The Roça plantation system — Portuguese cocoa and coffee estates worked by contracted Angolan, Mozambican, and Cabo Verdean laborers — continued slavery in everything but name well into the twentieth century.",
      whyFallback: "Portugal abolished slavery in 1875; the roças relabeled it as serviçal contract labor and kept the substance. Cadbury's 1909 boycott of São Toméan cocoa over slave-labor conditions documented what Lisbon denied. The architecture of the plantations still shapes land tenure on the islands today." },
    { id: "st_t8", isTruth: true , country: "st", fallback: "Príncipe — the smaller island and an autonomous region since 1995 — has spent three decades negotiating with São Tomé over revenue shares, transport links, and a permanent sense of being the appendix to the appendix.",
      whyFallback: "Population around 7,000 against São Tomé's 220,000-plus. Ferry and flight schedules favor the capital. Autonomy on paper; fiscal dependence in practice. The pattern is familiar to every small island grouped with a slightly larger one." },
    { id: "st_f1", isTruth: false, country: "st", fallback: "Independence in 1975 ended Portuguese economic control of the islands.",
      whyFallback: "The roças were nationalized, then collapsed, then partially returned or leased back to former operators. Portuguese remains the working language, the dobra has been anchored to the euro since 2010, and the largest cocoa exporters still route through Lisbon. Sovereignty in flag terms; continuity in commercial ones." },
    { id: "st_f2", isTruth: false, country: "st", fallback: "The oil-revenue framework — JDZ with Nigeria, EITI candidacy, the National Oil Account — guarantees future windfalls are managed transparently for the people.",
      whyFallback: "The framework exists; commercial oil has not yet been confirmed. The transparency apparatus was built to handle money that hasn't arrived. Once it does, the gap between the law on the page and the politics around it is the real test, and Equatorial Guinea next door is the cautionary template." },
    { id: "st_f3", isTruth: false, country: "st", fallback: "The 2003 coup was an isolated military adventure with no connection to the offshore oil bidding underway at the same moment.",
      whyFallback: "Major Cobó's grievances were framed as veterans' pay and conditions. The timing — weeks after JDZ licensing rounds and signature-bonus disputes — is what mediators worked around rather than through. \"Unrelated\" is a useful framing when the relation is awkward to name." },
    { id: "st_f4", isTruth: false, country: "st", fallback: "São Tomé is too small to attract the kind of foreign manipulation larger African states face.",
      whyFallback: "Size is the attraction. Two switches between Beijing and Taipei. Salzgitter airport-bribery investigations. ChevronTexaco-era OPL 246 questions. EU fishing access deals renewed on terms Brussels wrote. Small states are not ignored — they are inexpensively bought." },
    { id: "st_f5", isTruth: false, country: "st", fallback: "The Forros, Angolares, Tongas, and Cabo Verdean-descended communities live as a single São Toméan nation with no meaningful internal hierarchy.",
      whyFallback: "Forros — descendants of freed creole landowners — hold most political and commercial positions. Angolares — descendants of shipwrecked Angolans, traditionally fisherfolk — sit lower. Tongas and Cabo Verdean caboclos descend from the roça labor force and remain economically downstream. The plantation order didn't end; it stratified." },
    { id: "st_f6", isTruth: false, country: "st", fallback: "EU fishing partnership agreements compensate São Tomé fairly for European fleets working its waters.",
      whyFallback: "Renewed in cycles since the 1980s, most recently in 2014 and after. Tuna access for Spanish and French vessels; sectoral payments that land in ministry budgets, not in coastal economies. The compensation per ton extracted is a fraction of the catch's landed value in European ports." },
    { id: "st_f7", isTruth: false, country: "st", fallback: "Príncipe's autonomy since 1995 has produced meaningful self-government independent of São Tomé.",
      whyFallback: "The Regional Government exists; the fiscal allocations come from the capital; the major transport, customs, and security decisions still route through São Tomé. Biosphere reserve status brought conservation funding and conservation conditionality. Autonomy bounded by what the larger island is willing to delegate is a different category of self-rule." },

    // ============== El Salvador — 8T + 7F ==============
    { id: "sv_t1", isTruth: true , country: "sv", fallback: "The Salvadoran Civil War (1980-1992) killed roughly 75,000 people — overwhelmingly civilians — and was fought by a US-backed military junta and death squads against the FMLN guerrilla coalition.",
      whyFallback: "More than $4 billion in Reagan-era military aid. The UN Truth Commission attributed roughly 85% of the killings to state forces and their allied death squads, 5% to the FMLN. The numbers are not contested by serious researchers; the political memory of them is." },
    { id: "sv_t2", isTruth: true , country: "sv", fallback: "Archbishop Óscar Romero was assassinated at the altar on March 24, 1980, the day after he publicly ordered Salvadoran soldiers to stop killing civilians.",
      whyFallback: "A UN Truth Commission later named Roberto D'Aubuisson — founder of the ARENA party — as the intellectual author. D'Aubuisson never faced trial. Romero was canonized by the Vatican in 2018. The institution that protected the killers became a separate question from the one that recognized the saint." },
    { id: "sv_t3", isTruth: true , country: "sv", fallback: "In December 1981 the Atlacatl Battalion massacred roughly 1,000 villagers — mostly women, children, and the elderly — at El Mozote, then the US State Department spent years calling the reports exaggerated.",
      whyFallback: "The battalion was trained at the US School of the Americas (SOA, now WHINSEC). Journalists Raymond Bonner and Alma Guillermoprieto were attacked as unreliable when they reported it. The mass graves were finally exhumed in 1992. The official story changed; the careers built on denying it mostly did not." },
    { id: "sv_t4", isTruth: true , country: "sv", fallback: "On November 16, 1989 the same Atlacatl Battalion executed six Jesuit priests, their housekeeper, and her daughter at the UCA university in San Salvador.",
      whyFallback: "The priests were academics and liberation-theology voices critical of the war. Spanish courts eventually tried and convicted Salvadoran officers in absentia decades later. The massacre is what forced the negotiations that produced the 1992 Chapultepec Peace Accords — the war ended because the killings became impossible to deny." },
    { id: "sv_t5", isTruth: true , country: "sv", fallback: "MS-13 and Barrio 18 — the gangs that came to define Salvadoran violence — did not originate in El Salvador. They were formed in Los Angeles by refugees from the civil war, then exported back by US deportation policy in the 1990s.",
      whyFallback: "Pico-Union neighborhood, 1980s. The Clinton-era 1996 immigration law deported tens of thousands of gang-affiliated youth to a country still recovering from war and with no capacity to absorb them. The gangs that today justify mass incarceration were a US export, then a US deportation. The loop closes on itself." },
    { id: "sv_t6", isTruth: true , country: "sv", fallback: "Former President Antonio Saca (ARENA, 2004-2009) was convicted in 2018 of embezzling more than $300 million in public funds. Former President Mauricio Funes (FMLN, 2009-2014) was also convicted of corruption and fled to Nicaragua for asylum.",
      whyFallback: "Two presidents from the two opposing post-war parties, both jailed or fugitive on theft charges. The thirty-year ARENA-FMLN alternation produced symmetrical outcomes at the top. The peace accords ended the war; they did not end the looting." },
    { id: "sv_t7", isTruth: true , country: "sv", fallback: "Under Nayib Bukele's State of Exception — declared March 2022 and continually renewed — roughly 76,000 people were arrested in the first two years, giving El Salvador the highest incarceration rate in the world: about 1.6% of the entire population behind bars.",
      whyFallback: "Constitutional due process was suspended: no warrant required, no charges within the normal window, defense access curtailed. Human Rights Watch and the Salvadoran NGO Cristosal documented thousands of cases of people with no gang ties arrested, beaten, and held for months. The homicide rate did drop dramatically; the cost of the drop is on a separate ledger." },
    { id: "sv_t8", isTruth: true , country: "sv", fallback: "In 2024 Nayib Bukele won reelection with roughly 85% of the vote, after the Constitution's explicit ban on consecutive presidential terms was reinterpreted by a Supreme Court he had packed three years earlier.",
      whyFallback: "In May 2021 the new Legislative Assembly fired the five Constitutional Chamber judges and the Attorney General in a single night. The replacement court ruled in September 2021 that consecutive reelection was permissible — overturning multiple prior rulings. The vote was real; the question of whether it was constitutional was answered by judges chosen for that answer." },
    { id: "sv_f1", isTruth: false, country: "sv", fallback: "The Salvadoran Civil War was a Cold War proxy fight where both sides committed roughly equal atrocities.",
      whyFallback: "The UN Truth Commission's own count: ~85% of killings by the state and allied death squads, ~5% by the FMLN. \"Both sides\" is the framing that allowed the architects of the larger share to retire comfortably. Atrocities existed on both sides; the symmetry did not." },
    { id: "sv_f2", isTruth: false, country: "sv", fallback: "Nayib Bukele defeated the gangs through bold leadership and political will.",
      whyFallback: "Leaked Salvadoran intelligence files and US Treasury sanctions documents describe an unofficial pact between the Bukele government and MS-13 leadership in 2019-2021 — concessions inside the prison system in exchange for lower homicide counts and electoral support. The crackdown began after the pact broke down in March 2022. The clean-hands version is the campaign poster, not the file cabinet." },
    { id: "sv_f3", isTruth: false, country: "sv", fallback: "CECOT — the 40,000-capacity Terrorism Confinement Center — is a normal modern prison.",
      whyFallback: "No visits, no outdoor time, no privacy, no individualized sentences for many held there, no functional access to lawyers. Several detainees have died inside; bodies returned with signs of beating. International rights bodies have been denied independent access. \"Mega-prison\" is the marketing word; \"indefinite-detention camp\" is the operating description." },
    { id: "sv_f4", isTruth: false, country: "sv", fallback: "El Salvador's adoption of Bitcoin as legal tender in September 2021 was a popular success.",
      whyFallback: "Polling consistently showed majority opposition. The Chivo wallet rollout produced identity-theft incidents and technical failures. The IMF flagged risks repeatedly; the state bought Bitcoin near peaks and held through deep drawdowns. The PR framing — \"first country in the world\" — outran the user experience by a wide margin." },
    { id: "sv_f5", isTruth: false, country: "sv", fallback: "El Salvador has a sovereign currency.",
      whyFallback: "The US dollar replaced the colón in 2001. Monetary policy is set by the US Federal Reserve. Adding Bitcoin in 2021 did not restore monetary sovereignty — it added a second foreign instrument on top of the first. The country's economic levers run through two currencies it does not issue." },
    { id: "sv_f6", isTruth: false, country: "sv", fallback: "The Bukele government respects press freedom.",
      whyFallback: "Citizen Lab and Access Now documented Pegasus spyware deployed against journalists at El Faro and other outlets between 2020 and 2022 — one of the most concentrated state-sponsored journalist-surveillance operations on record. Reporters covering corruption have faced prosecution and exile. Self-styled \"world's coolest dictator\" was a Twitter handle, not a slip of the tongue." },
    { id: "sv_f7", isTruth: false, country: "sv", fallback: "The 2024 reelection of Nayib Bukele showed a healthy democratic process.",
      whyFallback: "The candidate ran in violation of the plain text of the Constitution, after replacing the judges who would otherwise have blocked him, after years of governing under emergency powers, with the opposition fragmented and the press under surveillance. 85% is a real number. The conditions under which it was produced are the part the number does not describe." },

    // ============== Eswatini — 8T + 7F ==============
    { id: "sz_t1", isTruth: true , country: "sz", fallback: "King Mswati III has ruled Eswatini as an absolute monarch since 1986 — making the country Africa's last absolute monarchy.",
      whyFallback: "Crowned at 18, in power 38+ years. His father Sobhuza II ruled 82 years (1921–1982) — the longest verified reign in modern history. Parliament exists; final authority does not sit there." },
    { id: "sz_t2", isTruth: true , country: "sz", fallback: "In April 2018 the country was renamed from Swaziland to Eswatini by royal decree — announced by Mswati III at the 50th independence anniversary, without referendum.",
      whyFallback: "No parliamentary vote, no public consultation. The king announced the new name at his own birthday celebration. \"Eswatini\" means \"land of the Swazis\" — the framing was decolonial; the procedure was monarchical." },
    { id: "sz_t3", isTruth: true , country: "sz", fallback: "Tibiyo Taka Ngwane — the \"Wealth of the Nation\" trust — holds billions in assets across sugar, banking, and mining, controlled by the king \"in trust for the nation\" with no public audit.",
      whyFallback: "Founded 1968 by Sobhuza II. Holds large stakes in Royal Eswatini Sugar Corporation, MTN Eswatini, and dozens of subsidiaries. Files no public accounts. The line between royal wealth and national wealth is administrative, not legal." },
    { id: "sz_t4", isTruth: true , country: "sz", fallback: "King Mswati III's personal fortune has been estimated by Forbes at over $200 million while roughly two-thirds of his subjects live below the poverty line.",
      whyFallback: "Fleet of luxury cars (Maybachs, Rolls-Royces), a private jet, palaces for each of his 16+ wives. GDP per capita around $4,000; rural subsistence the norm. The disparity is structural, not incidental." },
    { id: "sz_t5", isTruth: true , country: "sz", fallback: "The 2021 pro-democracy protests were crushed by security forces — roughly 80 people killed, hundreds wounded, and Mswati briefly fled the country.",
      whyFallback: "June–July 2021. Live ammunition used against demonstrators. Leaked communications showed coordination between army and royal household. Internet shut down for weeks. The king's brief absence in South Africa was officially denied." },
    { id: "sz_t6", isTruth: true , country: "sz", fallback: "Thulani Maseko — Eswatini's most prominent human rights lawyer — was shot dead in his own home in January 2023, hours after the king publicly warned activists.",
      whyFallback: "Killed in front of his wife and children. EU, UN, US condemned. No arrests. Maseko had defended pro-democracy MPs and challenged the 1973 ban on political parties. The investigation has produced no suspects." },
    { id: "sz_t7", isTruth: true , country: "sz", fallback: "Political parties have been banned in Eswatini since the 1973 King's Proclamation — replaced by the \"Tinkhundla\" system, in which candidates run as individuals through traditional structures the monarchy controls.",
      whyFallback: "Sobhuza II suspended the independence constitution and ruled by decree. The 2005 constitution kept the party ban intact. Candidates are filtered through chiefdoms loyal to the throne. \"Non-partisan\" in name; pre-selected in practice." },
    { id: "sz_t8", isTruth: true , country: "sz", fallback: "Eswatini has the world's highest HIV prevalence — around 27% of adults — and life expectancy collapsed from roughly 60 years in 1990 to the high 40s before partial recovery.",
      whyFallback: "UNAIDS data. A generation of working-age adults lost. ARV rollout eventually slowed the collapse; the demographic and economic damage is permanent. Royal expenditure on the crisis is a fraction of expenditure on the royal household." },
    { id: "sz_f1", isTruth: false, country: "sz", fallback: "Eswatini is a constitutional monarchy where the king reigns but does not rule.",
      whyFallback: "The 2005 constitution names him Head of State, appoints the Prime Minister, names two-thirds of the Senate, controls the army, and can dissolve parliament. \"Constitutional\" in label; absolute in operation. The constitution itself was drafted under his supervision." },
    { id: "sz_f2", isTruth: false, country: "sz", fallback: "Tibiyo Taka Ngwane is a national development fund benefiting all Swazis.",
      whyFallback: "The trust files no public accounts, pays no tax, and is administered by trustees the king appoints. Dividends flow to the royal household. \"Wealth of the Nation\" is the name; wealth of one family is the structure." },
    { id: "sz_f3", isTruth: false, country: "sz", fallback: "The renaming from Swaziland to Eswatini was a democratic act of post-colonial identity.",
      whyFallback: "Announced by the king at his own birthday party, without referendum, parliamentary vote, or public consultation. The decolonial framing is real; the procedure is the same procedure that has bypassed Swazis for fifty years." },
    { id: "sz_f4", isTruth: false, country: "sz", fallback: "Eswatini's judiciary is independent of the royal household.",
      whyFallback: "The king appoints the Chief Justice and senior judges. A majority of the country's highest court has at points been demonstrably loyal to the throne. Cases challenging royal authority routinely fail on procedural grounds." },
    { id: "sz_f5", isTruth: false, country: "sz", fallback: "The annual Reed Dance is purely a cultural celebration of Swazi tradition.",
      whyFallback: "Tens of thousands of unmarried young women dance bare-breasted before the king, who selects his next wife from among them. Cultural roots are real; the contemporary function — a head of state picking new spouses from a national parade — is also real." },
    { id: "sz_f6", isTruth: false, country: "sz", fallback: "The 2021 protest deaths were the result of isolated clashes, not state policy.",
      whyFallback: "Leaked communications showed military and royal-household coordination. Live ammunition deployed in residential areas. The internet was cut nationally for weeks. The pattern is the policy; \"isolated\" is the press release." },
    { id: "sz_f7", isTruth: false, country: "sz", fallback: "The Tinkhundla system gives ordinary Swazis a meaningful voice in government.",
      whyFallback: "Candidates run as individuals filtered through chiefdoms answerable to the king; parties are banned; the king names the Prime Minister regardless of who is elected; two-thirds of the Senate is royally appointed. Participation is permitted; outcomes are pre-shaped." },

    // ============== Chad — 8T + 7F ==============
    { id: "td_t1", isTruth: true , country: "td", fallback: "Hissène Habré ruled Chad 1982–1990 with open US and French backing as a counterweight to Gaddafi's Libya — while his DDS secret police killed roughly 40,000 people and tortured around 200,000.",
      whyFallback: "Truth Commission report 1992. DDS (Direction de la Documentation et de la Sécurité) archives discovered in 2001 by Human Rights Watch in an abandoned building in N'Djamena. Reagan-era CIA training and weapons documented in declassified records released from 2005 onward." },
    { id: "td_t2", isTruth: true , country: "td", fallback: "Habré was convicted of crimes against humanity in Senegal in 2016 by a hybrid African Union court — the first former head of state ever convicted in another country's courts under universal jurisdiction.",
      whyFallback: "Extraordinary African Chambers, Dakar. Life sentence. Habré died in custody in 2021 of COVID-19. The case took 25 years from first complaint to verdict — pushed by Chadian survivors and Reed Brody, not by Western governments who had armed him." },
    { id: "td_t3", isTruth: true , country: "td", fallback: "Idriss Déby Itno took power by coup in December 1990, ruled for 30 years across six rigged elections, and was killed on April 20, 2021 by FACT rebels — the day after his sixth \"victory\" was announced.",
      whyFallback: "Front for Change and Concord in Chad (FACT) crossed from Libya. Déby was reportedly shot while visiting troops near the front line in Mao. His death was kept quiet until the announcement choreographed his son's takeover the same day." },
    { id: "td_t4", isTruth: true , country: "td", fallback: "Within hours of Idriss Déby's death, his son Mahamat \"Kaka\" Déby — a 37-year-old four-star general — dissolved parliament and installed himself at the head of a Transitional Military Council, in violation of Chad's own constitution.",
      whyFallback: "Constitution required the National Assembly speaker to take over. Instead the army declared an 18-month transition that stretched past two years. France's President Macron flew in for Idriss's funeral and effectively blessed the succession — a dynasty in fatigues." },
    { id: "td_t5", isTruth: true , country: "td", fallback: "Mahamat Déby won the May 2024 presidential election with an official 61% — after his main rival was killed in a shootout with state forces months earlier, and the transitional charter was rewritten to let him run.",
      whyFallback: "Yaya Dillo Djérou, opposition leader and Mahamat's cousin, killed in a February 2024 raid on his party HQ. The transition's promise that TMC members would not run was quietly dropped. Turnout and tallies disputed; observers limited; \"election\" technically held." },
    { id: "td_t6", isTruth: true , country: "td", fallback: "Glencore admitted in 2022 to paying roughly $28.5 million in bribes across five African countries including Chad — part of a $1.5 billion global guilty plea on bribery and market manipulation.",
      whyFallback: "US DOJ and UK Serious Fraud Office settlements. The Chad payments routed through intermediaries to government officials in exchange for oil contract terms. Glencore paid the fine and kept the contracts; no Chadian official was named or prosecuted." },
    { id: "td_t7", isTruth: true , country: "td", fallback: "The Chad–Cameroon pipeline (2003) was marketed by the World Bank as the global model for converting oil wealth into development — within five years Chad had broken every revenue-allocation rule and the Bank quietly walked away.",
      whyFallback: "$3.7 billion ExxonMobil-Chevron-Petronas project. \"Future Generations Fund\" raided by Déby in 2006 to buy weapons during a rebel push on N'Djamena. World Bank pulled out 2008. The pipeline still pumps; the development model became the cautionary tale." },
    { id: "td_t8", isTruth: true , country: "td", fallback: "Chad hosts roughly 600,000 Sudanese refugees from Darfur — one of the largest refugee populations per capita on Earth — while the Déby government quietly backs the Sudanese RSF on the other side of the border.",
      whyFallback: "UNHCR figures from the 2023–24 Sudan war. Mahamat Déby is Zaghawa; the RSF's enemies are too. Reports of UAE-funded weapons transiting Chadian airfields to RSF were documented by UN panels of experts and major outlets through 2024. Hospitality and arms pipeline run on the same road." },
    { id: "td_f1", isTruth: false, country: "td", fallback: "Chad is a stable French ally in a region of coups.",
      whyFallback: "Chad has had coups in 1975, 1979, 1982, 1990, and 2021 — the last one a hereditary military takeover the French government openly endorsed. \"Stable\" here means the same family stays in power. The Sahel coup belt didn't skip Chad; Chad's coup was just dressed in a suit." },
    { id: "td_f2", isTruth: false, country: "td", fallback: "France kept troops in N'Djamena to fight terrorism.",
      whyFallback: "Operation Barkhane's HQ was in N'Djamena because Chad's army was the most reliable French proxy in the region — used in Mali, CAR, and across the Sahel. The counter-terror frame was real; the regime-protection function was the load-bearing one. Chad asked French troops out in 2024 after Niger, Burkina, and Mali had already done so." },
    { id: "td_f3", isTruth: false, country: "td", fallback: "The Déby succession was a temporary military transition that ended with the 2024 election.",
      whyFallback: "The \"transition\" was the mechanism that converted a hereditary takeover into a presidential term. The constitution was rewritten, the term limit clock reset, the cousin-rival killed, observers restricted. The election ratified the coup; it did not undo it." },
    { id: "td_f4", isTruth: false, country: "td", fallback: "Habré was a Western mistake the West has reckoned with.",
      whyFallback: "The conviction was driven by Chadian survivors and African civil society, prosecuted by an African court in Senegal. The US declassified some records in 2005, around the time of the Hybrid Court push — and stopped there. No CIA officer, no Reagan official, no French minister was ever held to account. The \"reckoning\" was offshored." },
    { id: "td_f5", isTruth: false, country: "td", fallback: "Chad's oil revenues fund Chadian development.",
      whyFallback: "Doba basin pumps via ExxonMobil-led consortium; revenues route through the treasury into security spending and elite consumption. Chad ranks near the bottom of the UN Human Development Index. The Future Generations Fund — designed to bank a share for after the oil runs out — was emptied within years of opening." },
    { id: "td_f6", isTruth: false, country: "td", fallback: "Chad's army is one of Africa's most capable counter-terror forces.",
      whyFallback: "Capability framing comes from Paris and Washington, who needed a willing partner against Boko Haram and AQIM. The same army has rotated through every neighboring conflict — CAR, Mali, Lake Chad basin — while its commander-in-chief keeps the family in the palace. \"Capable\" describes its usefulness to outside militaries, not its accountability at home." },
    { id: "td_f7", isTruth: false, country: "td", fallback: "Chad rejected Russian influence and stayed in the Western camp.",
      whyFallback: "Mahamat Déby visited Moscow in January 2024 and met Putin — months before pushing French troops out. Wagner / Africa Corps operates in two of Chad's three biggest neighbors (CAR, Libya). N'Djamena hedges; it has not picked a side, it has positioned to take payment from whichever side offers more. The Western camp framing is a press-release artifact." },

    // ============== Togo — 8T + 7F ==============
    { id: "tg_t1", isTruth: true , country: "tg", fallback: "Togo has been ruled by the Gnassingbé family — first Eyadéma, then his son Faure — continuously since 1967, the longest single-family rule in modern African history.",
      whyFallback: "Gnassingbé Eyadéma seized power in a 1967 coup and ran the country for 38 years until his death in February 2005. His son Faure Gnassingbé has held power since April 2005. Two surnames, one family, nearly six decades — longer than Togo has existed as an independent state by any other governance." },
    { id: "tg_t2", isTruth: true , country: "tg", fallback: "Sylvanus Olympio — Togo's first president and a leader of African independence — was assassinated in a January 1963 army coup, the first president-killing in postcolonial Africa, with Eyadéma personally implicated in the shooting.",
      whyFallback: "Olympio was shot at the gates of the US embassy in Lomé on 13 January 1963 while trying to seek refuge. Eyadéma — then a sergeant recently demobilized from the French army — publicly claimed he had fired the fatal shots. The man who killed the founding president went on to rule the country for nearly four decades." },
    { id: "tg_t3", isTruth: true , country: "tg", fallback: "When Eyadéma died in 2005 the army installed his son Faure as president within hours — bypassing the constitution, which named the speaker of parliament as interim head of state.",
      whyFallback: "The constitution required the speaker — Fambaré Ouattara Natchaba — to become acting president and organize elections within 60 days. The army instead closed the borders to keep Natchaba abroad, summoned a rushed parliamentary session to amend the constitution, and made Faure president the same day. ECOWAS and the African Union called it a coup; international pressure forced a face-saving election weeks later." },
    { id: "tg_t4", isTruth: true , country: "tg", fallback: "The April 2005 election that confirmed Faure Gnassingbé's succession was followed by protests in which security forces killed an estimated 400 to 500 people, mostly in Lomé.",
      whyFallback: "A UN human-rights mission documented 400-500 deaths and tens of thousands of refugees who fled to Ghana and Benin. Faure was declared winner with around 60% over Emmanuel Bob-Akitani; opposition demands for a re-run were rejected. The blood price of the succession was paid by the streets, not the family." },
    { id: "tg_t5", isTruth: true , country: "tg", fallback: "In March 2024 Togo's parliament rewrote the constitution to eliminate direct presidential elections — replacing them with a parliamentary system in which the legislature picks the head of government.",
      whyFallback: "The reform was passed without a referendum, days before scheduled legislative elections, by a parliament dominated by Faure's UNIR party. The new \"President of the Council of Ministers\" — effectively head of state — is chosen by the majority party in parliament, with no term limits that bind in practice. Faure took the new role in 2025; the elected presidency that he could no longer easily win was simply abolished." },
    { id: "tg_t6", isTruth: true , country: "tg", fallback: "The 2017-2018 mass protests demanding a two-term presidential limit and a return to the 1992 constitution were met with live fire — at least 16 protesters killed, hundreds detained.",
      whyFallback: "A broad opposition coalition, the C14, brought hundreds of thousands into the streets of Lomé and Sokodé from August 2017 into 2018 demanding term limits and electoral reform. The government cut the internet repeatedly, banned demonstrations, and used live ammunition. Imam Tchassona Traoré's PNP and Jean-Pierre Fabre's ANC anchored a movement that the regime outlasted by waiting it out and breaking it up." },
    { id: "tg_t7", isTruth: true , country: "tg", fallback: "Togo's currency, the West African CFA franc, is printed in France, pegged to the euro, and was — until very recent reforms — backed by French Treasury reserves held in Paris.",
      whyFallback: "Shared with seven other West African states through the BCEAO in Dakar. The 2019-2020 reform package promised a rename to the \"eco\" and the end of the French Treasury reserve requirement; the peg to the euro and the French oversight architecture remain. Monetary sovereignty in Togo is partial by design, set in Paris and Frankfurt." },
    { id: "tg_t8", isTruth: true , country: "tg", fallback: "The Port of Lomé — the only deepwater port on the West African coast between Abidjan and Lagos — was operated for years under a concession to French logistics group Bolloré, the same Bolloré later convicted in France of corruption over African port deals.",
      whyFallback: "Vincent Bolloré's group ran the container terminal via Lomé Container Terminal from 2014. In 2021 Bolloré SE accepted a French plea-bargain over corruption tied to securing port concessions in Togo and Guinea — the company admitted facts, paid a fine, executives faced charges. Bolloré later sold its African ports business to MSC for €5.7 billion. The infrastructure stays; the family fortunes move on." },
    { id: "tg_f1", isTruth: false, country: "tg", fallback: "Togo is a multi-party democracy in which the Gnassingbé family has simply kept winning fair elections.",
      whyFallback: "Every Eyadéma-era election was a single-party RPT ritual; every Faure-era election since 2005 has been preceded by opposition arrests, intimidation, disqualification, or — in 2024 — outright abolition of the direct presidential vote. Multi-party in name, single-family in outcome. EU and ECOWAS observer missions have repeatedly noted irregularities; the result has never changed." },
    { id: "tg_f2", isTruth: false, country: "tg", fallback: "The 2024 constitutional reform that switched Togo to a parliamentary system was a modernizing democratic step.",
      whyFallback: "It removed the only mechanism — direct election — that gave the Togolese voter a single binding say on the head of state. With UNIR controlling parliament and the rules for choosing the council president, Faure can be re-selected indefinitely without ever facing the country directly again. A constitutional engineering trick dressed as reform." },
    { id: "tg_f3", isTruth: false, country: "tg", fallback: "Eyadéma's 38-year rule was a period of stability that Togo benefited from.",
      whyFallback: "Stability for the regime, not for the country. One-party RPT rule, banned opposition for most of the 1970s-80s, Amnesty International reports of torture and disappearances, mass exile waves in the early 1990s after the National Conference was crushed. The \"Father of the Nation\" cult of personality — including the official line that he miraculously survived a 1974 plane crash — was state-mandated, not earned." },
    { id: "tg_f4", isTruth: false, country: "tg", fallback: "The 1963 assassination of Sylvanus Olympio was an isolated tragedy unrelated to the regime that followed.",
      whyFallback: "The men who killed the founding president built the state that has ruled Togo ever since. Eyadéma openly took credit for the shooting; the 1967 coup that put him in charge for life was the same network completing the project. Olympio's killing was not a detour from Togo's political history — it was the founding act of it." },
    { id: "tg_f5", isTruth: false, country: "tg", fallback: "The Togolese opposition has had real chances to win and simply keeps failing.",
      whyFallback: "Gilchrist Olympio — son of the assassinated president — was barred from running for decades on a residency technicality. Jean-Pierre Fabre was the official runner-up in 2010 and 2015 and went to jail after 2009 protests. Agbéyomé Kodjo, who claimed to have actually won 2020, was charged, harassed, and died in exile. The losing isn't a coincidence; the rules are written to produce it." },
    { id: "tg_f6", isTruth: false, country: "tg", fallback: "Togo's relationship with France is a normal bilateral partnership between equal states.",
      whyFallback: "Currency printed in France, military cooperation agreements signed in Paris, the country's flagship port concession held for years by a Paris-based group later convicted of corruption over that very concession, presidential family ties cultivated through Élysée channels under every French government from de Gaulle to Macron. The vocabulary is \"partnership\"; the architecture is post-colonial Françafrique." },
    { id: "tg_f7", isTruth: false, country: "tg", fallback: "Faure Gnassingbé inherited his father's seat through a normal constitutional process.",
      whyFallback: "The actual constitutional process named the speaker of parliament as interim head of state, with elections in 60 days. What happened instead: borders closed to lock out the speaker, parliament rushed to amend the constitution within hours, the army declared Faure president the same day his father's death was announced. ECOWAS and the AU named it a coup before international pressure forced the cosmetic April 2005 vote." },

    // ============== Tajikistan — 8T + 7F ==============
    { id: "tj_t1", isTruth: true , country: "tj", fallback: "Emomali Rahmon has ruled Tajikistan since 1994 — over thirty years — winning his 2020 election with a reported 91% against no real opposition.",
      whyFallback: "Came up through the People's Democratic Party from a minor faction during the civil war. Each election cycle delivers landslide totals; the opposition that might contest them has been banned, exiled, or imprisoned." },
    { id: "tj_t2", isTruth: true , country: "tj", fallback: "In 2015 Rahmon was granted the title \"Leader of the Nation\", and in 2016 \"Founder of Peace and National Unity\" — packaged with lifetime immunity from prosecution for him and his family.",
      whyFallback: "Constitutional amendments rewrote term limits and personal liability simultaneously. The honorific is the legal instrument: titles in the preamble, immunity in the articles." },
    { id: "tj_t3", isTruth: true , country: "tj", fallback: "Rahmon's son Rustam Emomali was made Mayor of Dushanbe in 2017 and Chairman of the National Assembly in 2020 — the constitutional successor if the presidency falls vacant.",
      whyFallback: "Two posts, one bloodline, one sequence. Dynastic succession written into the procedural rules rather than declared. The republic in name, the family in line." },
    { id: "tj_t4", isTruth: true , country: "tj", fallback: "The Islamic Renaissance Party of Tajikistan (IRPT) — the only legal Islamic party in Central Asia for 25 years — was banned in 2015 as a \"terrorist organisation\".",
      whyFallback: "A coalition partner under the 1997 peace agreement. Once it became a real electoral threat, the terrorist label arrived. Leader Muhiddin Kabiri lives in exile; members were jailed." },
    { id: "tj_t5", isTruth: true , country: "tj", fallback: "The Tajikistani Civil War (1992-1997) killed an estimated 50,000-150,000 people; the Russian 201st Division remained on Tajik soil throughout and afterwards.",
      whyFallback: "Tajik-Uzbek versus Pamiri-Kulobi-Gharmi factional war ending in the 1997 General Agreement. The 201st never left — it became the largest Russian military base outside Russia, with roughly 7,000 troops." },
    { id: "tj_t6", isTruth: true , country: "tj", fallback: "Gorno-Badakhshan (GBAO), home to the Ismaili Pamiri minority, has been hit by repeated security crackdowns — 2012, 2018, and a May 2022 operation that left more than 40 dead.",
      whyFallback: "The Pamiris are religiously and culturally distinct, with strong Aga Khan ties. The official frame is \"counter-terrorism\"; what's being put down is a region that doesn't fit the centralised model." },
    { id: "tj_t7", isTruth: true , country: "tj", fallback: "Roughly one million Tajik labour migrants work in Russia; their remittances accounted for around 30% of Tajik GDP before the Ukraine war disrupted the flow.",
      whyFallback: "World Bank tracking made Tajikistan one of the world's most remittance-dependent economies. After 2022 the flow contracted; after the March 2024 Crocus City Hall attack, where four Tajiks were arrested, the backlash against Tajiks inside Russia accelerated the squeeze." },
    { id: "tj_t8", isTruth: true , country: "tj", fallback: "TALCO, the state aluminium smelter, consumes roughly 75% of Tajikistan's electricity — and its trading has long been routed through opaque offshore entities like Talco Management Ltd.",
      whyFallback: "A national grid effectively built around a single plant whose profits leave through Caribbean and Channel Islands shell companies. The Magnitsky-Lugar Operation (2014) and a London commercial trial mapped some of the structure; most of it remains uncharted." },
    { id: "tj_f1", isTruth: false, country: "tj", fallback: "Tajikistan is a functioning multi-party democracy.",
      whyFallback: "One ruling party (PDPT), a banned Islamic opposition, exiled critics, jailed members, and presidential results in the 90s percentile. The forms of democracy persist; the substance was hollowed out years ago." },
    { id: "tj_f2", isTruth: false, country: "tj", fallback: "The 1997 peace agreement ended the war and produced a power-sharing settlement that has held.",
      whyFallback: "It ended the shooting. The 30% opposition quota it promised was eroded year by year; the IRPT — the agreement's main opposition signatory — was banned in 2015. The peace held; the deal did not." },
    { id: "tj_f3", isTruth: false, country: "tj", fallback: "The Roghun Dam is a straightforward national development project.",
      whyFallback: "A roughly $5 billion hydroelectric mega-project on the Vakhsh River, decades in construction, built with Russian and Italian contractors, financed partly through forced share purchases by ordinary Tajiks. The dam is real; \"straightforward\" is not." },
    { id: "tj_f4", isTruth: false, country: "tj", fallback: "Tajikistan is independent of Russian security infrastructure.",
      whyFallback: "The Russian 201st Base in Dushanbe is the largest Russian military presence abroad. Wagner-style PMC requests have been floated. The CSTO obligations sit on top. Sovereignty in form, dependency in practice." },
    { id: "tj_f5", isTruth: false, country: "tj", fallback: "GBAO unrest is purely a security and terrorism issue.",
      whyFallback: "The Pamiris are an ethnic and religious minority demanding a degree of autonomy guaranteed on paper. Each cycle of \"counter-terror operations\" has followed civic protest, not armed insurrection. The label justifies the response." },
    { id: "tj_f6", isTruth: false, country: "tj", fallback: "The state aluminium industry benefits ordinary Tajiks.",
      whyFallback: "TALCO eats three quarters of the national power supply while households face winter electricity rationing. Profits routed offshore. The smelter benefits a circle; the bill is paid in cold apartments." },
    { id: "tj_f7", isTruth: false, country: "tj", fallback: "Rahmon's longevity in power reflects genuine popular support.",
      whyFallback: "It reflects banned parties, exiled opponents, controlled media, a state title declaring him the nation's founder, and a son positioned as constitutional successor. Popularity in a system where alternatives are illegal is a measurement of the system, not of the man." },

    // ============== Timor-Leste — 8T + 7F ==============
    { id: "tl_t1", isTruth: true , country: "tl", fallback: "Indonesia invaded East Timor on December 7, 1975 — days after Portugal's withdrawal — with tacit approval from the US, Australia, and the UK.",
      whyFallback: "Declassified cables show Kissinger and Ford met Suharto in Jakarta the day before the invasion and signaled approval. The green light was given in person, then denied in public for decades." },
    { id: "tl_t2", isTruth: true , country: "tl", fallback: "The 24-year Indonesian occupation (1975–1999) killed an estimated 102,000 to 180,000 East Timorese — roughly one-third of the 1975 population.",
      whyFallback: "CAVR (Commission for Reception, Truth and Reconciliation) documented systematic violence and a deliberate starvation policy in the late 1970s. Genocide by any working definition; rarely named as such in Western press." },
    { id: "tl_t3", isTruth: true , country: "tl", fallback: "On November 12, 1991, Indonesian troops opened fire on a peaceful procession at Dili's Santa Cruz cemetery, killing roughly 270 East Timorese — the massacre was filmed by Max Stahl and smuggled out.",
      whyFallback: "The footage made what had been a deniable occupation visible. International opinion shifted; arms deals continued anyway. Stahl's tape is the reason Santa Cruz is a name and not a footnote." },
    { id: "tl_t4", isTruth: true , country: "tl", fallback: "In the August 30, 1999 UN-supervised referendum, 78.5% of East Timorese voted for independence — Indonesian-backed militias then destroyed roughly 70% of the country's buildings and killed around 1,400 people in the following weeks.",
      whyFallback: "Aitarak and Besi Merah Putih militias armed and coordinated by Indonesian military. The scorched-earth response was the price of the Yes vote. INTERFET (Australian-led) intervention finally landed in September." },
    { id: "tl_t5", isTruth: true , country: "tl", fallback: "Australia spied on Timor-Leste's cabinet in 2004 during oil-and-gas treaty negotiations — bugging the government's offices in Dili while sitting across the table.",
      whyFallback: "Witness K (ASIS officer) and his lawyer Bernard Collaery were prosecuted by Australia for revealing it. The 2006 CMATS treaty was eventually invalidated; the 2018 maritime boundary redrew the lines. The bugging happened during aid-cover renovations." },
    { id: "tl_t6", isTruth: true , country: "tl", fallback: "The Greater Sunrise oil and gas field — worth over $50 billion — sits in disputed waters Australia tilted in its favor for decades before the 2018 treaty.",
      whyFallback: "Until 2018 Australia drew the maritime boundary against UNCLOS norms to claim a greater share. The new treaty redrew it; the pipeline route (Darwin vs. Timor-Leste) remains unresolved. The wealth gap between the two parties shaped the negotiation." },
    { id: "tl_t7", isTruth: true , country: "tl", fallback: "Xanana Gusmão — Falintil guerrilla commander from 1981, captured and held in Jakarta's Cipinang prison 1992–1999 — went on to serve as Timor-Leste's first president (2002–2007) and later prime minister.",
      whyFallback: "Captured by Indonesian forces, kept alive as a hostage-symbol, freed by the 1999 transition. The resistance leader becoming head of state is the rare case where the line from jungle to palace is documented in full." },
    { id: "tl_t8", isTruth: true , country: "tl", fallback: "No senior Indonesian general has ever been tried for the East Timor occupation — including Suharto and Wiranto, who oversaw the 1999 militia campaign.",
      whyFallback: "Indonesia's own Ad Hoc Human Rights Court acquitted nearly everyone. Wiranto later ran for Indonesian vice-president. The impunity is the architecture; the prosecutions were the cover story." },
    { id: "tl_f1", isTruth: false, country: "tl", fallback: "The Indonesian invasion of 1975 was a regional matter that the West only learned about after the fact.",
      whyFallback: "Kissinger and Ford met Suharto in Jakarta on December 6, 1975 — the day before. US-made weapons did most of the killing. Australian intercepts had warned of the invasion plan months in advance. \"Only learned after\" is the diplomatic line, not the record." },
    { id: "tl_f2", isTruth: false, country: "tl", fallback: "Australia has always been Timor-Leste's reliable partner.",
      whyFallback: "Australia recognized Indonesian sovereignty over East Timor in 1979, signed oil treaties with Jakarta over the bodies of the occupation, spied on the new nation's cabinet in 2004, and prosecuted the whistleblower who revealed it. Partnership of a particular kind." },
    { id: "tl_f3", isTruth: false, country: "tl", fallback: "The 1999 referendum violence was spontaneous communal unrest.",
      whyFallback: "Aitarak and Besi Merah Putih militias were armed, paid, and coordinated by the Indonesian military — TNI documents, UN investigations, and CAVR all confirm the chain of command. \"Spontaneous\" was the press release; \"organized\" was the operation." },
    { id: "tl_f4", isTruth: false, country: "tl", fallback: "Independence in 2002 ended the country's exposure to outside interference.",
      whyFallback: "Australia's 2004 bugging of the Timor-Leste cabinet happened two years after independence. Greater Sunrise negotiations, ASEAN membership delays, donor-driven budget pressures — sovereignty on paper, dependency in the line items." },
    { id: "tl_f5", isTruth: false, country: "tl", fallback: "The CAVR truth commission delivered justice for victims of the occupation.",
      whyFallback: "CAVR documented the violence in extraordinary detail — the 2005 \"Chega!\" report is one of the most thorough genocide records ever compiled. Recommendations for reparations and prosecutions were quietly shelved. Truth without consequence is archive, not justice." },
    { id: "tl_f6", isTruth: false, country: "tl", fallback: "Western coverage of East Timor reflected the scale of what happened there.",
      whyFallback: "During the worst years (1975–1979), with up to a third of the population dying, mainstream Western coverage was sparse. Cambodia under Khmer Rouge — geopolitically convenient to cover — received the headlines. East Timor under a US-armed ally did not." },
    { id: "tl_f7", isTruth: false, country: "tl", fallback: "Timor-Leste's oil wealth has secured the country's long-term future.",
      whyFallback: "The Petroleum Fund peaked and is drawing down faster than it accumulates; non-oil revenue remains thin; Greater Sunrise pipeline routing is still unresolved. Resource curse with extra steps — the wealth exists, the structure to make it last does not yet." },

    // ============== Turkmenistan — 8T + 7F ==============
    { id: "tm_t1", isTruth: true , country: "tm", fallback: "Saparmurat Niyazov — \"Turkmenbashi\", father of all Turkmen — ruled from 1985 to his death in 2006 with one of the most extreme personality cults of the modern era.",
      whyFallback: "Soviet First Secretary turned president of independent Turkmenistan in 1991. A gold-plated statue of him in Ashgabat rotated to always face the sun. His face was on the currency, on bread, on vodka, on the airport, on the city of Turkmenbashi itself. Cult-of-personality is a phrase that exists for this." },
    { id: "tm_t2", isTruth: true , country: "tm", fallback: "Niyazov renamed the months and days of the week after himself and his family — January became \"Turkmenbashi\", April became his mother's name.",
      whyFallback: "Bread was also renamed after his mother (\"Gurbansoltan\"). Schools taught his spiritual book the \"Ruhnama\" alongside the Quran; failing to memorize passages could mean losing a driving licence. The successor government quietly restored the original month names in 2008." },
    { id: "tm_t3", isTruth: true , country: "tm", fallback: "Niyazov closed access to the internet, banned ballet, opera, the circus, and lip-syncing — declaring them \"unnecessary\" or \"alien to Turkmen culture\".",
      whyFallback: "Hospitals outside Ashgabat were ordered closed in 2005 — \"if people are sick they can come to the capital\". Libraries outside Ashgabat closed the same year — \"villagers don't read\". One man's preferences encoded as national policy for a decade." },
    { id: "tm_t4", isTruth: true , country: "tm", fallback: "After Niyazov died in December 2006, his deputy dentist Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov took power — and in 2022 handed it to his son Serdar in a smooth dynastic succession.",
      whyFallback: "Gurbanguly declared himself \"Arkadag\" (the Protector) in 2018. Serdar, age 40, was inaugurated in March 2022 after a stage-managed election. A trained dentist and his son now rule a country of seven million — the family business model of post-Soviet Central Asia." },
    { id: "tm_t5", isTruth: true , country: "tm", fallback: "Turkmenistan sits on the world's fourth-largest natural gas reserves, yet roughly 80% of its gas exports flow to a single buyer — China — under debt-equity swap terms.",
      whyFallback: "The Central Asia-China Pipeline locked in the dependency after 2009, when Russia's Gazprom cut purchases. TAPI (Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India) has been \"about to start\" for over a decade. Resource wealth without diversified buyers is not sovereignty — it's a single landlord." },
    { id: "tm_t6", isTruth: true , country: "tm", fallback: "The Darvaza \"Gates of Hell\" gas crater has burned continuously since a 1971 Soviet drilling accident — Berdimuhamedov ordered it closed in 2022, and it is still burning.",
      whyFallback: "Soviet engineers set the methane on fire expecting it to burn out in weeks. Half a century later it remains lit. The closure order was a press-release event; the geology did not cooperate. A useful metaphor for the country's broader relationship between official decrees and physical reality." },
    { id: "tm_t7", isTruth: true , country: "tm", fallback: "Independent journalism inside Turkmenistan is functionally impossible — reporters who try are imprisoned, beaten, or forced into exile.",
      whyFallback: "Saparmamed Nepeskuliev (jailed 2015 on planted-drug charges), Khudaiberdy Allashov, and others. Hronika Turkmenistana operates from exile because operating from inside the country gets you disappeared. Reporters Without Borders ranks Turkmenistan among the three worst countries on earth for press freedom." },
    { id: "tm_t8", isTruth: true , country: "tm", fallback: "Ovadan Tepe prison, in the desert outside Ashgabat, holds political prisoners whose families are not told whether they are alive or dead — sometimes for decades.",
      whyFallback: "Survivors of the 2002 alleged coup attempt vanished into Ovadan Tepe and were never seen again by relatives. The UN Human Rights Committee has repeatedly demanded information; the government does not respond. Disappearance as policy, not as exception." },
    { id: "tm_f1", isTruth: false, country: "tm", fallback: "Turkmenistan's \"Permanent Neutrality\" — recognized by the UN in 1995 — reflects a principled refusal to take sides in world affairs.",
      whyFallback: "Neutrality is the cover, not the principle. It exempts Ashgabat from joining collective bodies that would require human rights reporting, election observation, or alliance commitments. It is the only formally UN-recognized permanent neutrality in the world, and it is used as a moat against scrutiny." },
    { id: "tm_f2", isTruth: false, country: "tm", fallback: "The Berdimuhamedov succession from father to son in 2022 was a normal democratic election.",
      whyFallback: "Serdar's opponents were placeholder candidates from the same ruling apparatus. No opposition party is legal. Independent observers were not permitted. \"Election\" describes the choreography, not the choice — a hereditary handover dressed in a ballot box." },
    { id: "tm_f3", isTruth: false, country: "tm", fallback: "Turkmen citizens enjoy free access to information through modern telecommunications.",
      whyFallback: "Most international websites are blocked — Wikipedia, Facebook, YouTube, X, VPN providers, the BBC. Buying a SIM card requires showing ID tied to a government database. Satellite dishes have been periodically forcibly removed. The internet that exists inside Turkmenistan is a curated room, not a network." },
    { id: "tm_f4", isTruth: false, country: "tm", fallback: "Turkmenistan's gas wealth has been spent on developing the population.",
      whyFallback: "Spent instead on white-marble Ashgabat — a capital with more Guinness Records for marble cladding, gold statues, and fountain density than any other city. Spent on a $2.3 billion airport shaped like a falcon. Spent on the Arkadag city built from scratch as a monument to the former president. Population health and rural infrastructure: not the priority." },
    { id: "tm_f5", isTruth: false, country: "tm", fallback: "The Ruhnama and the cult of Turkmenbashi were dismantled after Niyazov's death.",
      whyFallback: "The forms changed; the architecture did not. Gurbanguly published his own books (on horses, on tea, on medicinal plants) which became required reading. Statues of Gurbanguly went up on horseback in gold. The personality cult was rebranded, not abolished — and now extends to a third generation." },
    { id: "tm_f6", isTruth: false, country: "tm", fallback: "Turkmenistan's neutrality means it stays out of regional power games.",
      whyFallback: "Borders Iran (Caspian gas-field disputes ongoing), Afghanistan (TAPI pipeline politics, Taliban dealings), Russia (former overlord still buying gas selectively), and China (now the dominant buyer and creditor). \"Neutral\" landlocked countries with the fourth-largest gas reserves on earth are pieces on the board, not observers of it." },
    { id: "tm_f7", isTruth: false, country: "tm", fallback: "Turkmenistan's stability proves that strong-man rule works for small nations.",
      whyFallback: "The stability is the stability of a sealed room. No free press to report on it, no elections to test it, no courts to challenge it, no exiled media without their own pressures. \"It works\" is what every closed system says about itself when no one inside is permitted to disagree on the record." },

    // ============== Tunisia — 8T + 7F ==============
    { id: "tn_t1", isTruth: true , country: "tn", fallback: "Zine El Abidine Ben Ali ruled Tunisia for 24 years (1987-2011) through the RCD party, running a police state from Carthage Palace while his in-laws — the Trabelsi family — looted the economy.",
      whyFallback: "Ben Ali married Leila Trabelsi in 1992. Her brothers and cousins acquired banks, airlines, supermarkets, and media through coerced sales and presidential favor. WikiLeaks cables called the family \"The Family\" — a quasi-mafia inside the state." },
    { id: "tn_t2", isTruth: true , country: "tn", fallback: "On December 17, 2010, street vendor Mohamed Bouazizi set himself on fire in Sidi Bouzid after police confiscated his cart and a municipal officer slapped him — and his death sparked the Arab Spring across the region.",
      whyFallback: "He died January 4, 2011. Ten days later Ben Ali fled to Saudi Arabia. The chain reaction toppled Mubarak in Egypt, Gaddafi in Libya, Saleh in Yemen. One vendor, one match, one cascade." },
    { id: "tn_t3", isTruth: true , country: "tn", fallback: "Ben Ali fled to Saudi Arabia on January 14, 2011 and was sheltered there until his death in 2019 — despite Tunisian courts convicting him in absentia of corruption, torture, and murder.",
      whyFallback: "Multiple in-absentia sentences, including life imprisonment for ordering protester killings. Saudi Arabia refused all extradition requests. He died in Jeddah exile, never serving a day." },
    { id: "tn_t4", isTruth: true , country: "tn", fallback: "On July 25, 2021, President Kais Saied — a former constitutional law professor elected as an outsider — invoked Article 80, dismissed the prime minister, suspended parliament, and ruled by decree for over a year.",
      whyFallback: "Hichem Mechichi removed. Parliament frozen, then dissolved. Article 80 was designed for \"imminent danger\" emergencies; Saied stretched it into permanent rule. Critics named it a self-coup. The constitutional law professor rewrote the constitution." },
    { id: "tn_t5", isTruth: true , country: "tn", fallback: "Saied's 2022 constitution was approved in a referendum with 30.5% turnout and 94% Yes — after every major opposition party boycotted.",
      whyFallback: "The new text concentrated executive power, stripped parliament, and ended the semi-presidential system the 2011 revolution had built. \"94% Yes\" of \"30.5% who voted\" is not a mandate; it is a measurement of who showed up to ratify what they couldn't stop." },
    { id: "tn_t6", isTruth: true , country: "tn", fallback: "In the October 2024 presidential election, Saied won 90% — after most major opponents were jailed, including Ayachi Zammel sentenced to 12 years just weeks before voting.",
      whyFallback: "The electoral commission cleared most challengers off the ballot. Ennahda leader Rached Ghannouchi already imprisoned since 2023. \"Won by 90%\" when there is no one to vote against is a coronation in election clothing." },
    { id: "tn_t7", isTruth: true , country: "tn", fallback: "The 2015 Nobel Peace Prize went to the Tunisian National Dialogue Quartet — UGTT, UTICA, the Human Rights League, and the Bar Association — for steering the country away from civil war after the 2013 political assassinations.",
      whyFallback: "Chokri Belaid (February 2013) and Mohamed Brahmi (July 2013), both leftist opposition figures, killed by Ansar al-Sharia gunmen. The Quartet brokered a compromise that produced the 2014 constitution. The institution it built lasted seven years before Saied dismantled it." },
    { id: "tn_t8", isTruth: true , country: "tn", fallback: "In February 2023 Saied delivered a televised speech blaming sub-Saharan African migrants for a \"criminal plot\" to change Tunisia's demographics — triggering mass expulsions, mob violence, and evictions.",
      whyFallback: "The \"great replacement\" framing imported wholesale. Within weeks, thousands of African students and workers were stranded, beaten, or dumped at the Libyan and Algerian borders. The EU then paid €255 million in a migration deal — buying Tunisia's border services with full knowledge of what they were funding." },
    { id: "tn_f1", isTruth: false, country: "tn", fallback: "The 2011 Jasmine Revolution delivered lasting democracy to Tunisia.",
      whyFallback: "It delivered ten years of democratic experiment, then Saied dissolved the result. Free elections 2011-2019, a Nobel-winning compromise constitution, then July 25, 2021 — and the structure that took a decade to build was unwound in eighteen months." },
    { id: "tn_f2", isTruth: false, country: "tn", fallback: "Kais Saied is an outsider untouched by the corruption that defined Ben Ali's era.",
      whyFallback: "He campaigned as the clean technocrat against the party machines. In office he jailed opposition, rewrote the constitution to remove checks on himself, ruled by decree, and won a 90% election after disqualifying his challengers. The methods are Ben Ali's; the branding is anti-corruption." },
    { id: "tn_f3", isTruth: false, country: "tn", fallback: "Tunisia's IMF program is helping it recover from dictatorship.",
      whyFallback: "The $1.9 billion 2016 program imposed subsidy cuts, public-sector wage freezes, and currency devaluation onto a population already living the aftermath of Ben Ali's looting. Subsequent talks stalled because Saied refused the next round of austerity. The pattern: external creditors restructure post-revolution economies on terms the revolution did not vote on." },
    { id: "tn_f4", isTruth: false, country: "tn", fallback: "Habib Bourguiba's 1957-1987 rule was a benevolent founding-father presidency.",
      whyFallback: "Bourguiba banned opposition parties, declared himself president for life in 1975, suppressed Islamists, and was eventually pushed out by his own prime minister — Ben Ali — in a 1987 \"medical coup\" framed as constitutional. Independence hero and one-party autocrat were the same man." },
    { id: "tn_f5", isTruth: false, country: "tn", fallback: "The EU's 2023 migration deal with Tunisia is a humanitarian partnership.",
      whyFallback: "€255 million in EU funds (roughly $785 million total package) signed weeks after Saied's anti-African-migrant speech. The money buys Tunisian coast-guard interceptions and desert deportations. Brussels outsourced its border to a regime expelling African students at gunpoint and called it cooperation." },
    { id: "tn_f6", isTruth: false, country: "tn", fallback: "Press freedom in post-2011 Tunisia survived the Saied era.",
      whyFallback: "Journalists Ghassen Ben Khelifa, Noureddine Boutar, Mohamed Bargouhti, Zied Dahmane and others jailed or charged 2023-2024 under Decree 54 — a 2022 cybercrime law criminalizing \"false information\". The decade of relative press openness ended quietly." },
    { id: "tn_f7", isTruth: false, country: "tn", fallback: "The Truth and Dignity Commission delivered accountability for the Ben Ali era.",
      whyFallback: "The IVD commission operated 2014-2019, collecting 62,000 testimonies on torture, disappearances, and economic crimes. Its final report was published; the specialized chambers meant to prosecute the named perpetrators were starved of cooperation. Most files closed without trials. Truth was documented; dignity was budgeted." },

    // ============== Tonga — 8T + 7F ==============
    { id: "to_t1", isTruth: true , country: "to", fallback: "Tonga is the only Pacific nation never formally colonized — the Tupou Dynasty has held the throne continuously since King George Tupou I unified the islands in 1845, making it the oldest unbroken monarchy in the region.",
      whyFallback: "Treaty of Friendship with Britain 1900 made Tonga a protected state, never a colony — internal sovereignty was retained. Tupou I (1845–93), Tupou II, Sālote Tupou III (1918–65), Tupou IV (1965–2006), Tupou V (2006–12), Tupou VI (2012–). The Dynasty is the spine the rest of Tongan politics is wrapped around." },
    { id: "to_t2", isTruth: true , country: "to", fallback: "On November 16, 2006, riots in Nuku'alofa burned roughly 80% of the central business district, killed around nine people, and required Australian and New Zealand troops to restore order — after Parliament adjourned without approving long-promised democratic reforms.",
      whyFallback: "Chinese-owned shops were specifically targeted in the looting; insurance claims topped TOP 290 million. The Joint Task Force (ANZAC) deployment was the first foreign military intervention in independent Tonga's history. The 2010 constitutional reform that followed was the direct concession extracted from the crown by the smoke." },
    { id: "to_t3", isTruth: true , country: "to", fallback: "'Akilisi Pohiva spent over thirty years jailed, sued, and barred from office by the monarchy before becoming Tonga's first commoner Prime Minister in 2014 — and died in office in 2019 still pushing reforms the nobility had blocked for decades.",
      whyFallback: "Founded the Tonga Democratic Movement (later People's Democratic Party) in the 1980s. Convicted of sedition, contempt of Parliament, and impeachment-related charges across multiple decades; each conviction made him more popular. The 2014 PM appointment was Tonga's first peaceful transfer of executive power to an elected commoner — 169 years after Tupou I took the throne." },
    { id: "to_t4", isTruth: true , country: "to", fallback: "Of Tonga's 26 parliamentary seats, 9 are reserved exclusively for the country's 33 hereditary nobles, who vote among themselves to fill them — meaning roughly a third of the legislature represents under 0.1% of the population.",
      whyFallback: "Reform 2010 reduced the noble bloc from a majority to a third; it did not abolish it. The remaining 17 \"People's Representatives\" are elected, but the nobles plus a handful of swing commoners can still combine to choose the PM. Hereditary seats in a 21st-century legislature are not a remnant — they are the negotiated price of the 2010 transition." },
    { id: "to_t5", isTruth: true , country: "to", fallback: "Tonga owes China roughly $108 million — about 40% of GDP from a single creditor — through Export-Import Bank of China loans that were originally taken to rebuild Nuku'alofa after the 2006 riots.",
      whyFallback: "The post-riot reconstruction loans were repeatedly restructured and rolled forward; the principal has not meaningfully shrunk. Tonga's total external debt sits near two-thirds of GDP, with Beijing as the dominant single lender. \"Debt diplomacy\" is the polite phrase; \"the riots paid for the runway and the runway pays for the bill\" is the cleaner one." },
    { id: "to_t6", isTruth: true , country: "to", fallback: "The January 15, 2022 eruption of Hunga Tonga–Hunga Ha'apai was the largest atmospheric explosion since Krakatoa 1883 — and it severed Tonga's only undersea internet cable, leaving the country digitally cut off from the world for over five weeks.",
      whyFallback: "VEI 5–6 underwater volcano, plume into the mesosphere, sonic boom registered globally. The Tonga Cable Ltd link to Fiji snapped in two places; satellite backup capacity was nominal. Tonga discovered, in real time, that \"one cable to one neighbour\" is not a national communications strategy — it is a single point of failure." },
    { id: "to_t7", isTruth: true , country: "to", fallback: "Princess Pilolevu, sister of King Tupou V, controlled Tongasat — a company that leased Tonga's sovereign satellite orbital slots, mostly to foreign operators, for decades of opaque revenue that the public never fully saw accounted for.",
      whyFallback: "Tonga claimed valuable geostationary slots in the 1980s using its sovereign ITU rights; Tongasat (majority Pilolevu) was the vehicle that monetised them. A 2012 parliamentary inquiry queried the missing accounts; the royal household's reply was that royal commercial arrangements are not parliamentary business. Sovereign rights, private revenue — Tongan governance in one company." },
    { id: "to_t8", isTruth: true , country: "to", fallback: "King Tāufa'āhau Tupou IV — who ruled 1965–2006 — was at one point listed in the Guinness Book of Records as the world's heaviest monarch at over 200 kg, then launched a nationwide royal slimming programme driving the country in a tracksuit in the late 1990s.",
      whyFallback: "The personality cult around fitness was a top-down public health campaign that doubled as a loyalty exercise — schoolchildren weighed, the King personally photographed jogging, a National Diet Day declared. The reform 'Akilisi Pohiva was pushing in those same years was structural; the King's chosen response was aerobic." },
    { id: "to_f1", isTruth: false, country: "to", fallback: "Tonga's 2010 constitutional reform turned the country into a normal parliamentary democracy.",
      whyFallback: "The King retained power to appoint and dismiss the PM, dissolve Parliament, and reject legislation under specified circumstances. Tupou VI used these powers in 2017 to dissolve Pohiva's government early. A parliamentary democracy where the head of state can fire the cabinet on his own authority is a constitutional monarchy with adjectives, not a clean separation." },
    { id: "to_f2", isTruth: false, country: "to", fallback: "Tonga's escape from formal colonization means it is a model of indigenous Pacific sovereignty.",
      whyFallback: "The 1900 Treaty of Friendship traded foreign-policy independence to Britain for internal autonomy; until 1970 a British Consul in Nuku'alofa had veto over external relations. The Tupou Dynasty preserved itself by playing London off Berlin and Washington off London — a survival strategy, not a sovereignty doctrine. \"Never colonized\" is a useful flag; \"selectively client\" is the lived record." },
    { id: "to_f3", isTruth: false, country: "to", fallback: "Tongan land tenure protects ordinary Tongans through hereditary allotments guaranteed by the constitution.",
      whyFallback: "Every male Tongan is constitutionally entitled to an 8.25-acre tax allotment and a town allotment — in theory. In practice the nobles' estates absorbed the best land long before independence, the allotment register is chronically out of date, and most younger Tongans now lease from a noble or emigrate. The constitution's promise has outrun the country's geography." },
    { id: "to_f4", isTruth: false, country: "to", fallback: "Tonga's economy is a self-sustaining mix of agriculture, fisheries, and tourism.",
      whyFallback: "Remittances from the Tongan diaspora — mainly Auckland, Sydney, Salt Lake City — are roughly 40% of GDP, among the highest dependency ratios on Earth. Aid from Australia, New Zealand, China, Japan adds another major slice. Squash exports to Japan have collapsed since the 1990s; tourism is small and easily blown over by a cyclone or a volcano. Self-sustaining is the brochure word." },
    { id: "to_f5", isTruth: false, country: "to", fallback: "The Pacific Islands Forum gives Tonga an equal voice in regional decisions alongside Australia and New Zealand.",
      whyFallback: "Forum funding, secretariat staffing, and the dominant security frameworks (Boe Declaration, Pacific Step-up, AUKUS-adjacent posture) are set in Canberra and Wellington with Tongan consent stamped at the end. The 2021 walkout by the Micronesian states showed where the actual leverage sits. Equal voice in the communique; structurally asymmetric in the room." },
    { id: "to_f6", isTruth: false, country: "to", fallback: "The Tongan diaspora in New Zealand and Australia is treated as a model migrant community by host governments.",
      whyFallback: "Auckland's Pasifika overstayer raids in the 1970s (\"dawn raids\") were specifically aimed at Tongans and Samoans; the New Zealand government formally apologised only in 2021 — five decades late. Seasonal worker schemes (RSE in NZ, PALM in Australia) tie Tongan labour to single employers under conditions repeatedly criticised by unions. Model in the speeches; conditional in the visa." },
    { id: "to_f7", isTruth: false, country: "to", fallback: "Tonga's traditional kava culture is an unbroken indigenous practice untouched by commerce.",
      whyFallback: "Kava (kava-Tonga / 'awa) is now a major export crop into a global wellness market, with prices set in Suva, Port Vila, and Honolulu rather than in the village. The faikava (kava circle) remains socially central; the plant itself has become a commodity subject to crop diseases, export bans, and supplement-industry quality scandals. \"Traditional\" is the marketing; \"globalised\" is the supply chain." },

    // ============== Trinidad and Tobago — 8T + 7F ==============
    { id: "tt_t1", isTruth: true , country: "tt", fallback: "In July 1990 the Jamaat al-Muslimeen, led by Yasin Abu Bakr, stormed Parliament and the state television station, held the Prime Minister and Cabinet hostage for six days, and were granted an amnesty that the Privy Council later voided — yet none were retried.",
      whyFallback: "Roughly 24 people died. Abu Bakr signed an amnesty under duress with the acting government; the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council ruled it invalid in 1994; the state never restarted the prosecution. The only successful coup attempt in the English-speaking Caribbean produced zero coup convictions." },
    { id: "tt_t2", isTruth: true , country: "tt", fallback: "The 2018 closure of Petrotrin — the state oil company — by Keith Rowley's PNM government eliminated roughly 5,000 jobs overnight and shut the Pointe-à-Pierre refinery that had operated for over a century.",
      whyFallback: "Decades of accumulated debt, allegations of fake oil-lift contracts, and politically distributed hiring had hollowed the company. The shutdown protected the bondholders and the IMF metrics; the refinery town of Pointe-à-Pierre absorbed the social cost. The refinery has sat largely idle since." },
    { id: "tt_t3", isTruth: true , country: "tt", fallback: "The 2014 LifeSport scandal saw roughly TT$400 million in a sports-for-at-risk-youth programme channelled through ghost participants, inflated invoices, and contractors linked to gang figures while Anil Roberts served as Sports Minister.",
      whyFallback: "Auditor General's report documented payments for ghost attendees, no-bid contracts, and supervisors with criminal records on the payroll. Roberts resigned; criminal accountability for the bulk of the money never arrived. The UNC-led People's Partnership government wore it through the 2015 election." },
    { id: "tt_t4", isTruth: true , country: "tt", fallback: "Atlantic LNG and BPTT — the BP-led offshore gas operation — together drive roughly half of the country's exports, and the production-sharing terms with the state have been repeatedly criticised as too favourable to the operators.",
      whyFallback: "Trinidad and Tobago is the Caribbean's only major hydrocarbon economy; the gas it ships sustains the public budget. Successive renegotiations of the Atlantic LNG trains have left the state's share lower than producer states elsewhere routinely secure. The Heritage and Stabilisation Fund was the cushion; the gas ran down faster than the cushion grew." },
    { id: "tt_t5", isTruth: true , country: "tt", fallback: "The country's politics has been organised along an Indo-Trinidadian / Afro-Trinidadian axis since independence — roughly 35% each of the population, with the UNC drawing Indo-Trinidadian support and the PNM drawing Afro-Trinidadian support.",
      whyFallback: "Eric Williams's PNM built the post-1956 state on an Afro-Trinidadian urban base; Basdeo Panday's UNC consolidated the Indo-Trinidadian rural base in the 1990s. Election maps still track ancestry more reliably than policy. Both parties insist they are non-racial; both are read ethnically by the electorate that votes them in." },
    { id: "tt_t6", isTruth: true , country: "tt", fallback: "The 2011 Reshmi Ramnarine affair saw a junior worker with no qualifications appointed to head the Security Intelligence Agency by Kamla Persad-Bissessar's government, before being quietly withdrawn after public uproar.",
      whyFallback: "Ramnarine was reportedly a UNC party worker; the SIA is the country's domestic intelligence body. The Prime Minister initially defended the appointment, then reversed it. The episode exposed how senior security posts could be filled by patronage rather than vetting in a state with an active jihadist-coup memory." },
    { id: "tt_t7", isTruth: true , country: "tt", fallback: "Eric Williams — the Oxford-trained historian whose Capitalism and Slavery (1944) argued that British abolition followed economic decline rather than moral awakening — governed Trinidad and Tobago continuously from independence in 1962 until his death in 1981.",
      whyFallback: "Williams's PNM was the only party of government for the country's first nineteen years. His scholarship reframed the abolition narrative globally; his rule entrenched a state-led, party-led model whose patronage architecture every successor has inherited. Sovereign intellect at the top, captive politics underneath." },
    { id: "tt_t8", isTruth: true , country: "tt", fallback: "Trinidad and Tobago's murder rate is regularly among the highest in the Caribbean — periodically over 40 per 100,000 — driven by gang networks fed by a guns-for-drugs corridor between Venezuela and the wider Americas.",
      whyFallback: "Roughly 600 to 700 killings a year on a population of about 1.4 million. The Venezuelan border is a porous arms route; the deported-gang feedback loop from US and UK prisons compounds it; the police service has its own use-of-force record. Every administration declares a plan; the body count compounds." },
    { id: "tt_f1", isTruth: false, country: "tt", fallback: "The PNM and UNC offer fundamentally different economic models.",
      whyFallback: "Both parties have governed within the same Atlantic-LNG / BPTT royalty framework, the same IMF-adjacent fiscal posture, the same patronage hiring at state enterprises, and the same closure or rescue logic for Caroni 1975 and Petrotrin. The ethnic base differs; the macro is shared." },
    { id: "tt_f2", isTruth: false, country: "tt", fallback: "The 1990 Muslimeen coup attempt was a one-off act of extremism with no lessons for the state.",
      whyFallback: "Six days of hostage-holding inside Parliament and the state broadcaster exposed how thin the security apparatus was — and the unprosecuted amnesty afterwards exposed how thin the appetite for accountability was. Successive commissions of enquiry produced reports; the structural recommendations were largely shelved." },
    { id: "tt_f3", isTruth: false, country: "tt", fallback: "The Heritage and Stabilisation Fund means Trinidad and Tobago has prudently saved its oil and gas wealth.",
      whyFallback: "The HSF holds a fraction of what comparable hydrocarbon producers have banked over similar periods. Successive governments drew from it during downturns rather than allowing it to compound. The gas reserves declined faster than the fund grew; the cushion is real but small relative to what could have been." },
    { id: "tt_f4", isTruth: false, country: "tt", fallback: "Caroni 1975 Limited was closed in 2003 because the state could no longer subsidise an uncompetitive sugar industry.",
      whyFallback: "Closure ended a sugar economy that had employed roughly 9,000 mostly Indo-Trinidadian workers under the UNC's electoral base. The land was promised in two-acre lots to displaced workers; much of it sat undeveloped or quietly reassigned for years. The accounting case was real; the political timing was not innocent." },
    { id: "tt_f5", isTruth: false, country: "tt", fallback: "The Petrotrin closure was a clean technocratic decision.",
      whyFallback: "The shutdown happened under a PNM government that had previously campaigned on protecting state enterprises; the refinery sat in a UNC-leaning belt; the workers were dismissed and selectively rehired through a successor entity. The financial case was defensible; the social and political design around it was not neutral." },
    { id: "tt_f6", isTruth: false, country: "tt", fallback: "Trinidad and Tobago's anti-corruption institutions function effectively.",
      whyFallback: "The country has cycled on and off the FATF grey list, the Integrity Commission has spent years on cases that quietly expire, and the Director of Public Prosecutions's office has watched high-profile files — LifeSport, Section 34, alleged kickbacks across administrations — produce headlines without convictions. The architecture exists; the throughput does not." },
    { id: "tt_f7", isTruth: false, country: "tt", fallback: "Property tax and other recent fiscal reforms are simply modernising the state.",
      whyFallback: "The property tax — passed under the PNM, suspended, revived, contested through the courts — arrived alongside fuel-subsidy cuts and public-sector wage compression while the gas-royalty terms with the majors were not reopened with the same urgency. The tax base widened downward before it widened upward." },

    // ============== Tuvalu — 8T + 7F ==============
    { id: "tv_t1", isTruth: true , country: "tv", fallback: "Tuvalu's largest non-aid revenue stream is the lease of its \".tv\" internet domain — sold off in the late 1990s to a foreign company for a fraction of its eventual value, then renegotiated repeatedly as Twitch and the global streaming economy made the suffix iconic.",
      whyFallback: "The original 1998 deal with DotTV (later acquired by VeriSign) paid Tuvalu roughly $50 million over twelve years — a windfall in 2000, a rounding error by 2020 once \".tv\" had become the de-facto domain of livestreaming. A 2021 renegotiation with GoDaddy Registry reportedly lifted annual payments above $10 million, around a tenth of the national budget. A two-letter accident of ISO-3166 turned into one of the country's load-bearing exports — and the rent was set when the asset was worth almost nothing." },
    { id: "tv_t2", isTruth: true , country: "tv", fallback: "In November 2023 Tuvalu signed the Falepili Union with Australia — the world's first bilateral climate-mobility treaty — which lets up to 280 Tuvaluans a year settle permanently in Australia in exchange for Australia gaining a veto over Tuvalu's security and defence agreements with any other state.",
      whyFallback: "Signed by Prime Minister Kausea Natano and Anthony Albanese on 9 November 2023 in Cook Islands. Article 4 obliges Tuvalu to \"mutually agree\" any new security or defence partnership — in practice giving Canberra a Beijing-shaped lock on the country's foreign policy. Critics across the Pacific called it climate-rights-for-sovereignty: a habitable future for some Tuvaluans, traded for a structural cap on the state's room to manoeuvre. The first treaty of its kind, written while the tide gauges keep climbing." },
    { id: "tv_t3", isTruth: true , country: "tv", fallback: "Tuvalu is one of only around twelve states still recognising Taiwan (Republic of China) rather than Beijing — and the development aid flowing through that recognition is critical enough that the alignment has survived multiple changes of government.",
      whyFallback: "Taipei funds health, education, and infrastructure projects across the islands; Beijing periodically tests the line with offers reportedly in the high tens of millions. After the 2024 election Prime Minister Feleti Teo publicly reaffirmed recognition of Taiwan within weeks of taking office — even as Nauru, Honduras, and others were peeled away the same year. A nine-atoll state functioning as one of the last anchor points of Taiwan's UN-side diplomatic map." },
    { id: "tv_t4", isTruth: true , country: "tv", fallback: "At COP26 in Glasgow in 2021, Foreign Minister Simon Kofe delivered Tuvalu's national statement standing knee-deep in seawater on what used to be dry land — a single image that did more than any government white paper to put \"loss and damage\" on the negotiating table.",
      whyFallback: "The lectern, the suit, the flag, the trousers rolled up to the knee, the ocean behind him. The video went round the world inside twenty-four hours. By COP27 in Sharm el-Sheikh the following year, Tuvalu and the small-island bloc had forced \"loss and damage\" — direct compensation for climate harm from the countries that caused it — into the conference's formal text for the first time in three decades of negotiation. A microstate without a standing army shifting the multilateral vocabulary by walking into the sea on camera." },
    { id: "tv_t5", isTruth: true , country: "tv", fallback: "Tuvalu's highest point is 4.6 metres above sea level — and the central IPCC scenarios for this century put two to three metres of that under water.",
      whyFallback: "Nine atolls totalling 26 square kilometres of land, most of it less than two metres above the lagoon. King tides already flood Funafuti's runway several times a year; the seawater rises through the coral itself, not over the seawall. The Tuvalu government has begun building a digital twin of the country — a 3D scan of every island in Funafuti as a hedge against the physical original becoming uninhabitable inside a human lifetime. The first nation budgeting for its own posthumous existence." },
    { id: "tv_t6", isTruth: true , country: "tv", fallback: "The Tuvalu Trust Fund — set up in 1987 with seed contributions from Australia, New Zealand, and the UK — is the country's main fiscal shock absorber, now worth more than A$200 million and structured so that only the real returns can be spent.",
      whyFallback: "Designed as an explicit anti-Nauru: no drawdown of principal, conservative offshore management, distributions calibrated to long-run inflation. The capital base has grown roughly tenfold since inception in real terms; the annual distribution is the line between budget and crisis in years when fishing licences or \".tv\" royalties dip. A working answer to the question of how a microstate keeps a sovereign wealth fund alive — written after watching a neighbour lose theirs." },
    { id: "tv_t7", isTruth: true , country: "tv", fallback: "Tuvalu separated from the Gilbert Islands (now Kiribati) in 1975 after an internal ethnic referendum, then became independent from the UK in 1978 — one of the few peaceful colonial divorces of the late twentieth century.",
      whyFallback: "The Ellice Islanders (Polynesian) voted by roughly 92% to split from the Gilbertese (Micronesian) under the colonial Gilbert and Ellice Islands Colony. London accepted the result, redrew the administrative line, and granted independence three years later. King Charles III remains head of state through the Commonwealth realm structure. No army, no border dispute, no exit war — a quiet template the literature on decolonisation rarely cites because nothing went wrong." },
    { id: "tv_t8", isTruth: true , country: "tv", fallback: "Industrial-scale illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing inside Tuvalu's exclusive economic zone — by Chinese, Taiwanese, Korean, and other distant-water fleets — costs the country tens of millions of dollars a year in lost licence revenue and stock collapse.",
      whyFallback: "Tuvalu's EEZ is around 750,000 square kilometres — one of the largest in the world relative to land area — and is patrolled by a single donated patrol boat. Fishing licence sales (largely through the regional Parties to the Nauru Agreement) are the second pillar of the budget after \".tv\" and the trust fund; IUU fishing eats directly into that pillar. The owners of the deepwater tuna fleet are not the people paying for the policing of it." },
    { id: "tv_f1", isTruth: false, country: "tv", fallback: "Tuvalu is too small to matter geopolitically.",
      whyFallback: "Eleven thousand people, twenty-six square kilometres of land, and a UN vote that has anchored Taiwan's last diplomatic perimeter, forced loss-and-damage onto every COP agenda since 2021, signed the first bilateral climate-mobility treaty in history with Australia, and rents the second-most-recognisable two-letter suffix on the global internet. A microstate's leverage scales with what the larger states want from it; in Tuvalu's case the list is long." },
    { id: "tv_f2", isTruth: false, country: "tv", fallback: "The Falepili Union is a humanitarian gift from Australia.",
      whyFallback: "Article 4 hands Canberra a structural veto on Tuvalu's security and defence relationships with any third country — written at exactly the moment Beijing was offering security pacts across the Pacific. The 280 annual visas are real; so is the strategic price. Australia gets what successive defence whitepapers said it needed: a no-Beijing guarantee in the Tuvaluan EEZ. Tuvalu gets a queue for the lifeboat. Calling the trade humanitarian is the framing; the trade itself is symmetric in a way no Pacific Islander missed." },
    { id: "tv_f3", isTruth: false, country: "tv", fallback: "The \".tv\" deal made Tuvalu rich.",
      whyFallback: "The first DotTV contract paid roughly the equivalent of one good year of fishing licences spread across a decade. By the time streaming made the suffix iconic, the rent had been locked in at pre-Twitch valuations. Subsequent renegotiations clawed some of the value back, but the foundational deal — signed in 1998 by a state with limited domain-name lawyers and a buyer with very specific ones — is a case study in microstate asset sales priced before the asset exists. Visible enough as a budget line; nothing like the upside a sovereign-equity stake in the same business would have produced." },
    { id: "tv_f4", isTruth: false, country: "tv", fallback: "Tuvalu can fix its climate vulnerability by mitigating its own emissions.",
      whyFallback: "Eleven thousand people on a postage-stamp landmass emit less CO₂ in a year than a medium-sized US suburb. The atmospheric forcing that puts Funafuti underwater is being produced in coal terminals in Newcastle, gas fields in Qatar, and motorway traffic in California. The mitigation question is a courtesy framing; the actual question is whether the high-emitting states will fund adaptation, relocation, and loss-and-damage at scale. Sovereignty over the cause is not in Tuvaluan hands." },
    { id: "tv_f5", isTruth: false, country: "tv", fallback: "Tuvalu will simply disappear and that will be the end of it.",
      whyFallback: "The government is explicitly building digital sovereignty — a 3D scan of every island, online cabinet meetings, citizenship and legal personality detached from physical territory — as a hedge against statelessness. The Falepili treaty creates a precedent under which a state's recognition survives the loss of its land. International law has no settled doctrine on a nation whose territory is underwater; Tuvalu is writing the test case in real time. Disappearance is the geological forecast; legal disappearance is something the country is actively refusing to sign onto." },
    { id: "tv_f6", isTruth: false, country: "tv", fallback: "Tuvalu's recognition of Taiwan is a stable ideological alignment.",
      whyFallback: "It is a price relationship with periodic renegotiation. Beijing makes recurring offers; Taipei matches or exceeds with development packages calibrated to whatever Tuvalu has just asked for — submarine cables, scholarships, fishing-fleet support, COVID-era vaccine donations. Nauru flipped in January 2024 within days of Taiwan's election; Tuvalu held, then publicly reaffirmed. The alignment is real, the price is recurring, and the day the price stops being met is the day the alignment is for sale." },
    { id: "tv_f7", isTruth: false, country: "tv", fallback: "Tuvalu is an isolated curiosity with no wider lessons.",
      whyFallback: "It is the early-warning instrument of the twenty-first century compressed onto one atoll chain: a fully democratic state losing its territory not to invasion but to atmospheric chemistry written elsewhere, signing the first treaty in history that trades sovereignty for mobility, anchoring Taiwan's diplomatic survival in exchange for clinics and roads, and selling a two-letter suffix to keep the lights on. The lessons are not local; they are the rough draft of what climate-era statehood looks like when run at sea level." },

    // ============== Taiwan — 8T + 7F ==============
    { id: "tw_t1", isTruth: true , country: "tw", fallback: "The 228 Massacre of February 28, 1947 began as a crackdown by Chinese Nationalist (KMT) troops on Taiwanese protests against the post-WWII administration — and escalated into the killing of an estimated 10,000 to 28,000 people, including much of the island's educated class.",
      whyFallback: "The trigger was a Taipei dispute over confiscated black-market cigarettes; the response was island-wide. The event was a state taboo for nearly five decades — public discussion was effectively forbidden under martial law. President Lee Teng-hui issued the first official apology in 1995." },
    { id: "tw_t2", isTruth: true , country: "tw", fallback: "Taiwan lived under martial law for 38 years (1949-1987) — one of the longest continuous martial-law periods in modern world history.",
      whyFallback: "Imposed by the KMT after retreating from mainland China in 1949. The era is now called the White Terror: roughly 140,000 imprisoned, 3,000-4,000 executed for political opposition. Green Island prison and the Taiwan Garrison Command were its architecture." },
    { id: "tw_t3", isTruth: true , country: "tw", fallback: "When the KMT lost the Chinese Civil War in 1949, around 1.2 million Republic of China mainlanders — government, army, and civilians — relocated to Taiwan and ruled an existing population of 6 million as an outside elite for decades.",
      whyFallback: "Chiang Kai-shek brought the ROC government, the gold reserves, and the museum collection. \"Native Taiwanese\" (Hoklo, Hakka, Indigenous) were locked out of senior office until Lee Teng-hui — the first native-born president — took power in 1988." },
    { id: "tw_t4", isTruth: true , country: "tw", fallback: "Taiwan's TSMC produces roughly 90% of the world's most advanced semiconductors — and that concentration is openly discussed in defence circles as the island's \"Silicon Shield\".",
      whyFallback: "Nodes at 5nm, 3nm, and below are functionally a TSMC monopoly. The theory: any cross-strait invasion that destroyed or captured the fabs would crater the global economy, so the world has a stake in Taiwan's continued existence. The shield is also a target." },
    { id: "tw_t5", isTruth: true , country: "tw", fallback: "Former president Chen Shui-bian — the first opposition (DPP) president, 2000-2008 — was convicted of corruption in 2009 and originally sentenced to life, later reduced to 19 years.",
      whyFallback: "The first peaceful transfer of power to a non-KMT party ended with its leader in prison. Charges included embezzlement and money laundering. Supporters argued the prosecution was politically driven; the convictions stood. He was released on medical parole in 2015." },
    { id: "tw_t6", isTruth: true , country: "tw", fallback: "The Sunflower Movement of March-April 2014 saw students occupy Taiwan's Legislative Yuan for 24 days against a cross-strait services trade pact with Beijing — and effectively killed the deal.",
      whyFallback: "The Cross-Strait Service Trade Agreement was being pushed through the Ma Ying-jeou KMT government without clause-by-clause review. Hundreds of thousands rallied outside; the occupation held. The agreement was shelved. The movement reshaped a political generation." },
    { id: "tw_t7", isTruth: true , country: "tw", fallback: "In 2019 Taiwan became the first country in Asia to legalise same-sex marriage — a year after a 2018 referendum that had voted against it.",
      whyFallback: "The Constitutional Court had already ruled in 2017 that denying same-sex marriage was unconstitutional. The 2018 referendum tried to block it; the legislature passed the law anyway in May 2019. Asia's first; still the only one on the mainland for years afterward." },
    { id: "tw_t8", isTruth: true , country: "tw", fallback: "The US Taiwan Relations Act of 1979 commits Washington to supplying defensive arms — without formal diplomatic recognition. Taiwan operates under a deliberate ambiguity Beijing never accepts and Washington never resolves.",
      whyFallback: "Signed after the US switched recognition to the PRC. Allows arms sales, unofficial relations via the American Institute in Taiwan, and the \"strategic ambiguity\" doctrine on whether the US would intervene militarily. The intentional vagueness is the policy." },
    { id: "tw_f1", isTruth: false, country: "tw", fallback: "Taiwan has always been a democracy.",
      whyFallback: "Taiwan was a one-party dictatorship under the KMT for nearly four decades. The first direct presidential election was 1996. The transition from White Terror to functioning democracy happened inside one lifetime — and the institutions that ran the dictatorship were not abolished, they were repurposed." },
    { id: "tw_f2", isTruth: false, country: "tw", fallback: "The \"One China\" framing is a neutral diplomatic convention.",
      whyFallback: "Beijing's \"One China principle\" claims Taiwan is a province of the PRC. Washington's \"One China policy\" merely acknowledges Beijing's position without endorsing it. Taipei's own ROC framing predates the PRC by decades. Three incompatible claims share one phrase — and most foreign reporting flattens them." },
    { id: "tw_f3", isTruth: false, country: "tw", fallback: "Taiwan's political divide is mainly about economics.",
      whyFallback: "It is largely about identity and relationship to China. The KMT (Pan-Blue) historically frames itself as Chinese; the DPP (Pan-Green) frames Taiwan as a separate nation. Polls show under 3% of the population now self-identifies as solely Chinese. The electorate moved while the parties argued." },
    { id: "tw_f4", isTruth: false, country: "tw", fallback: "TSMC's dominance is just a business success story.",
      whyFallback: "It is also a geopolitical chokepoint deliberately maintained. US pressure pushed TSMC to build fabs in Arizona; Beijing wants the capability inside its borders; Taipei treats fab concentration as deterrence. The chips are commercial; the politics around them are not." },
    { id: "tw_f5", isTruth: false, country: "tw", fallback: "Chinese pressure on Taiwan only began under recent DPP governments.",
      whyFallback: "The cross-strait standoff has been continuous since 1949. Missile crises in 1995-96 happened under KMT President Lee Teng-hui. PRC military exercises, diplomatic isolation campaigns, and grey-zone harassment predate the DPP by decades. The recent escalation is a phase, not a beginning." },
    { id: "tw_f6", isTruth: false, country: "tw", fallback: "The KMT and the Chinese Communist Party are natural enemies.",
      whyFallback: "The KMT and CCP fought a civil war — and then quietly normalised. The 2015 Xi-Ma meeting in Singapore was the first PRC-ROC leaders' summit since 1945. ECFA (2010) and the shelved trade pact (2014) were KMT-driven. Today the KMT's cross-strait posture is closer to Beijing's than to the DPP's." },
    { id: "tw_f7", isTruth: false, country: "tw", fallback: "Taiwan is recognised as a country by most of the world.",
      whyFallback: "Roughly a dozen states maintain formal diplomatic relations — and the list shrinks as Beijing peels them off with aid packages. Taiwan is not a UN member; was removed in 1971 when the seat went to the PRC. It functions as a state, is treated as one in practice by most major economies, and is officially recognised by almost none." },

    // ============== Tanzania — 8T + 7F ==============
    { id: "tz_t1", isTruth: true , country: "tz", fallback: "CCM and its predecessor TANU have ruled Tanzania continuously since independence in 1961 — more than sixty years without ever losing a national election.",
      whyFallback: "Chama Cha Mapinduzi (\"Party of the Revolution\") was forged in 1977 by merging mainland TANU with Zanzibar's ASP. Nyerere 1961–85, Mwinyi 1985–95, Mkapa 1995–2005, Kikwete 2005–15, Magufuli 2015–21, Samia Suluhu Hassan 2021–. Multi-party reforms in 1992 changed the ballot paper, not the result. \"Liberation movement as permanent government\" is the East African default; Tanzania is the textbook case." },
    { id: "tz_t2", isTruth: true , country: "tz", fallback: "Julius Nyerere's Ujamaa villagization programme (1967–1975) forcibly relocated more than five million peasants into collective villages — and collapsed the country's food production for a generation.",
      whyFallback: "Operation Vijiji used the army and police to move smallholders off ancestral land into planned settlements. Crops failed because the new sites were chosen for administrative reach, not soil. Tanzania went from grain exporter to grain importer by the late 1970s. Nyerere quietly abandoned the policy by 1985 and admitted in retirement that \"we failed\". The teacher's reputation survived; the peasants did not get their land back." },
    { id: "tz_t3", isTruth: true , country: "tz", fallback: "Opposition leader Tundu Lissu was shot sixteen times outside his home in Dodoma in September 2017 — and survived only after twenty-two surgeries in Belgium.",
      whyFallback: "Lissu was CHADEMA's chief whip and Magufuli's most persistent critic in parliament. Gunmen sprayed his car in broad daylight inside a government housing compound where security was constant. No one was ever arrested. He returned to contest the 2020 presidential election from a hospital chair, lost officially, fled again, and came back under Samia. The message of the bullets was delivered; the prosecution was not." },
    { id: "tz_t4", isTruth: true , country: "tz", fallback: "President John Magufuli denied that COVID-19 existed in Tanzania, refused to order tests or vaccines, and died on 17 March 2021 after disappearing from public view for nearly three weeks.",
      whyFallback: "Officially: heart failure linked to a long-standing condition. Unofficially, and widely: COVID-19, the disease he had told Tanzanians \"God will protect us\" from. He had ordered the national statistics office to stop reporting cases in May 2020, expelled the WHO country representative, and promoted herbal steam inhalation. The vice-president Samia Suluhu Hassan reversed the policy within weeks of taking office and began vaccinations. The number of Tanzanians who died in the silence is unknown by design." },
    { id: "tz_t5", isTruth: true , country: "tz", fallback: "The 1964 Zanzibar Revolution — which produced the union that created modern Tanzania — killed between five thousand and twenty thousand Arabs and South Asians in a few weeks of organised massacre.",
      whyFallback: "The Afro-Shirazi Party overthrew the Sultan in January 1964; the violence that followed targeted Omani Arab landowners and Indian traders. John Okello, the Ugandan field marshal who led the uprising, was quietly removed from the archipelago weeks later by Nyerere. The mainland TANU absorbed Zanzibar into a Union in April 1964 — partly to contain the killing, partly to claim the islands before Cuba or East Germany could. The number of dead remains contested because no count was permitted." },
    { id: "tz_t6", isTruth: true , country: "tz", fallback: "Magufuli's government accused Acacia Mining (a Barrick gold subsidiary) of evading $190 billion in taxes — a figure larger than Tanzania's entire GDP — and used it to extract a $300 million settlement.",
      whyFallback: "The 2017 dispute centred on Bulyanhulu, Buzwagi, and North Mara gold mines. The $190 billion claim was a negotiating instrument, not an audit finding; nobody believed the underlying number. Acacia eventually folded into Barrick's joint-venture Twiga Minerals, gave Tanzania a 16% free-carry stake, and paid the lump sum. The shakedown worked; the shareholders absorbed it; the gold kept leaving." },
    { id: "tz_t7", isTruth: true , country: "tz", fallback: "Tanzania evicted Maasai pastoralists from Loliondo in 2022 to make way for a luxury hunting concession owned by Otterlo Business Corporation, a UAE Emirati company.",
      whyFallback: "OBC has held the Loliondo concession near Serengeti since 1992, hosting hunts for Dubai's ruling family. The 2022 demarcation took 1,500 square kilometres of Maasai grazing land; rangers shot pastoralists, burned bomas, and confiscated cattle. The High Court of the East African Community ruled the eviction unlawful in 2025 — long after the fences went up. The Emirati hunts continued." },
    { id: "tz_t8", isTruth: true , country: "tz", fallback: "Magufuli's government shut down or suspended every major independent newspaper that criticised him — Mawio, Mwananchi, The Citizen, Tanzania Daima — and jailed bloggers under the 2015 Cybercrimes Act.",
      whyFallback: "Mawio was banned for two years in 2017 for naming retired presidents Mkapa and Kikwete in a mining investigation. Mwananchi was suspended for misreporting his salary. The 2018 Electronic and Postal Communications regulations required every Tanzanian blogger to pay roughly $900 a year for a licence. Samia restored some titles in 2023; the legal framework that closed them was not repealed." },
    { id: "tz_f1", isTruth: false, country: "tz", fallback: "Tanzania is the peaceful, stable democracy of East Africa.",
      whyFallback: "Stable, yes — because one party has held power without interruption since 1961, the largest opposition leader was shot sixteen times in 2017, the second-largest was disqualified from the 2025 ballot, and Zanzibar's elections routinely produce live ammunition. \"Peaceful\" reads differently from inside CHADEMA than from inside a UN country brief." },
    { id: "tz_f2", isTruth: false, country: "tz", fallback: "Julius Nyerere's Ujamaa was a noble experiment that simply did not work in practice.",
      whyFallback: "Five million people were moved at gunpoint, food production collapsed, and famine relief from the IMF arrived in the 1980s on conditions Nyerere had spent twenty years denouncing. Calling it a \"noble experiment\" is the favour history pays the founder. The peasants who buried children during the relocations were not consulted on the framing." },
    { id: "tz_f3", isTruth: false, country: "tz", fallback: "President Magufuli's death in March 2021 was unconnected to his COVID-19 denial.",
      whyFallback: "He vanished from public events on 27 February 2021, was rumoured in Nairobi and Mumbai hospitals, and was pronounced dead of \"heart complications\" three weeks later — having spent the previous year telling Tanzanians the virus did not exist. The official cause was technically possible. The timing was suggestive. The autopsy was not released." },
    { id: "tz_f4", isTruth: false, country: "tz", fallback: "The Union of Tanganyika and Zanzibar in 1964 was a voluntary merger of equals.",
      whyFallback: "Zanzibar had been independent for three months and was in the middle of a revolutionary massacre; Nyerere and Karume signed the Articles of Union in a closed-door meeting with no parliamentary debate on either side. The agreement has never been published in full. Zanzibar elections since have repeatedly produced disputed results that mainland security forces enforce. \"Union\" is the legal word; \"absorption\" is the practical one." },
    { id: "tz_f5", isTruth: false, country: "tz", fallback: "Tanzania's mineral wealth — gold, tanzanite, graphite, nickel, helium — funds Tanzanian development.",
      whyFallback: "Barrick (Canada), AngloGold Ashanti (South Africa), Petra Diamonds, Chinese state firms, and Indian conglomerates hold the major concessions. Tanzanite — found only in one corner of Manyara region — was placed under a state monopoly in 2017 that mostly enriched the army units guarding the mine wall. Royalties go to Dodoma; dividends go further. The Loliondo Maasai live next to ruby and gold deposits and walk for water." },
    { id: "tz_f6", isTruth: false, country: "tz", fallback: "Tundu Lissu's 2017 shooting was an isolated act of unknown criminals.",
      whyFallback: "Sixteen rounds, inside a guarded government compound, in daylight, with no arrests in eight years. The opposition figures shot, abducted, or disappeared during the Magufuli era — Ben Saanane, Azory Gwanda, Roma Mkatoliki, Lissu — share a pattern that \"unknown criminals\" describes only on paper. The investigators were the institution being criticised." },
    { id: "tz_f7", isTruth: false, country: "tz", fallback: "Samia Suluhu Hassan's presidency represents a clean break from Magufuli-era authoritarianism.",
      whyFallback: "She restored some newspapers, lifted the ban on opposition rallies briefly, and reopened the country to vaccines and the WHO — real reforms that supporters cite. She also presided over the 2024 local-election sweep where CHADEMA was disqualified from 99% of seats, the 2025 arrest of opposition leader Tundu Lissu on treason charges, and the killings of protesters after the October 2025 vote that returned her with 98% officially. The \"4 Rs\" — reconciliation, resilience, reforms, rebuilding — described the first eighteen months. The fifth R, re-election, restored the previous architecture." },

    // ============== Uganda — 8T + 7F ==============
    { id: "ug_t1", isTruth: true , country: "ug", fallback: "Yoweri Museveni has ruled Uganda since 1986 — nearly four decades — after taking power through a guerrilla \"Bush War\" against Milton Obote's second government.",
      whyFallback: "National Resistance Army marched into Kampala in January 1986. Museveni's early speeches mocked African leaders who clung to power past their welcome. He has now outlasted every regional peer he once criticized." },
    { id: "ug_t2", isTruth: true , country: "ug", fallback: "Uganda's constitution originally capped presidential terms at two and barred candidates over 75 — both limits were removed by parliament to allow Museveni to keep running.",
      whyFallback: "Term limits scrapped in 2005. The age cap removed in 2017 after brawls on the parliament floor and soldiers entering the chamber. The constitution was edited around the incumbent, not the other way around." },
    { id: "ug_t3", isTruth: true , country: "ug", fallback: "Idi Amin's 1971-79 dictatorship killed an estimated 300,000 to 500,000 Ugandans and expelled roughly 80,000 Asian-Ugandans in 1972, gutting the country's commercial backbone overnight.",
      whyFallback: "Soldiers given 90 days to leave with what they could carry. Businesses handed to regime loyalists. Amin was overthrown in 1979 by Tanzanian forces — not by any Western intervention, despite his global notoriety." },
    { id: "ug_t4", isTruth: true , country: "ug", fallback: "Joseph Kony's Lord's Resistance Army terrorised northern Uganda for two decades, abducting more than 60,000 children as soldiers and \"wives\" while ~100,000 people died.",
      whyFallback: "ICC arrest warrants issued in 2005. \"Kony 2012\" went viral with 100 million views, then evaporated. Kony has never been captured. The northern displacement camps were Uganda's, not the world's, problem to live with." },
    { id: "ug_t5", isTruth: true , country: "ug", fallback: "The 2021 election saw opposition leader Bobi Wine arrested, beaten, and placed under military house arrest while his supporters were killed in the streets — about 54 dead in the November 2020 protests alone.",
      whyFallback: "Robert Kyagulanyi, musician turned MP turned presidential candidate. Official result: Museveni 59%, Wine 35%. Internet shut down for five days around the vote. Hundreds of NUP supporters arrested; many still unaccounted for." },
    { id: "ug_t6", isTruth: true , country: "ug", fallback: "Museveni's son, Muhoozi Kainerugaba, has been promoted to head of the army and openly positioned as successor — the \"Muhoozi Project\" the family denies exists.",
      whyFallback: "Promotions through the military faster than any peer. A Twitter account threatening to invade Kenya, praising Putin, joking about the presidency. The 2026 election shapes up as Wine versus Kainerugaba — a dynasty audition." },
    { id: "ug_t7", isTruth: true , country: "ug", fallback: "The 2023 Anti-Homosexuality Act introduced the death penalty for \"aggravated homosexuality\" and up to 20 years for \"promotion\" — one of the harshest such laws on Earth.",
      whyFallback: "Signed May 2023. World Bank suspended new lending; US imposed visa and trade sanctions. Museveni framed the foreign pushback as proof of sovereignty, despite the law's evident American-evangelical drafting fingerprints." },
    { id: "ug_t8", isTruth: true , country: "ug", fallback: "TotalEnergies and CNOOC's East African Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP) will run 1,443 km from Lake Albert through Tanzania, displacing roughly 100,000 people across both countries.",
      whyFallback: "Albertine Graben holds an estimated 6 billion barrels. European Parliament condemned the project in 2022; banks and insurers withdrew under pressure. Construction continues. Uganda's oil future was sold before its first barrel shipped." },
    { id: "ug_f1", isTruth: false, country: "ug", fallback: "Uganda is one of Africa's stable multi-party democracies.",
      whyFallback: "One man, one party, four decades. Opposition rallies tear-gassed, candidates jailed mid-campaign, results announced under internet blackout. \"Stability\" here means the absence of transitions, not the presence of democracy." },
    { id: "ug_f2", isTruth: false, country: "ug", fallback: "Museveni was the African leader who broke the cycle of dictators-for-life.",
      whyFallback: "His own 1986 inaugural said \"the problem of Africa in general and Uganda in particular is not the people but leaders who want to overstay in power\". The quote is now used against him in every opposition pamphlet." },
    { id: "ug_f3", isTruth: false, country: "ug", fallback: "The Ugandan army serves the constitution, not the president.",
      whyFallback: "The UPDF has reserved seats in parliament, the president's son commands it, and soldiers have entered the chamber to enforce constitutional amendments. The army is the regime's spine, not its servant." },
    { id: "ug_f4", isTruth: false, country: "ug", fallback: "The Anti-Homosexuality Act is purely a Ugandan moral initiative.",
      whyFallback: "Lou Engle, Scott Lively, and a network of American evangelical missionaries spent years lobbying Ugandan pastors and MPs. The 2009 \"Kill the Gays\" bill traced directly to a March 2009 conference in Kampala. Imported moral panic, local enforcement." },
    { id: "ug_f5", isTruth: false, country: "ug", fallback: "Uganda's oil wealth will lift its citizens out of poverty.",
      whyFallback: "Oil contracts kept secret. Production-sharing agreements favour the foreign operators. Uganda's neighbours — South Sudan, DRC, even Nigeria across the continent — show the \"resource curse\" template. Citizens get the pipeline; the pipeline serves elsewhere." },
    { id: "ug_f6", isTruth: false, country: "ug", fallback: "Bobi Wine lost the 2021 election fairly.",
      whyFallback: "Internet blackout, military deployment around polling stations, expelled EU and US observers, no independent tally. Wine's team filed a Supreme Court challenge then withdrew citing the court's compromise. \"Fair\" requires an observer; none were allowed." },
    { id: "ug_f7", isTruth: false, country: "ug", fallback: "Western governments oppose Museveni's authoritarianism.",
      whyFallback: "Uganda is a key US counterterrorism partner in Somalia (AMISOM/ATMIS), a host of 1.5 million refugees from South Sudan and DRC, and a useful regional power against Sudan. The sanctions over the anti-gay law were narrow; the military aid continued." },

    // ============== Uruguay — 8T + 7F ==============
    { id: "uy_t1", isTruth: true , country: "uy", fallback: "Uruguay's civic-military dictatorship (1973-1985) jailed roughly 5,000 political prisoners and forced around 30,000 citizens into exile — proportionally one of the highest political-prisoner rates of any modern dictatorship.",
      whyFallback: "For a country of under three million, the per-capita scale was staggering. Around 200 people were disappeared; thousands more passed through torture sessions. The military called it the \"national reorganisation\"; the prison population told a different story." },
    { id: "uy_t2", isTruth: true , country: "uy", fallback: "President Juan María Bordaberry dissolved parliament with the military on June 27, 1973 — a self-coup that handed civilian cover to a military takeover already underway.",
      whyFallback: "Bordaberry stayed in the presidential chair; the armed forces ruled through him and then dispensed with him in 1976. Decades later he was convicted in 2010 for attacks on the constitution and homicides under his watch. He died under house arrest." },
    { id: "uy_t3", isTruth: true , country: "uy", fallback: "The Libertad men's prison and Punta de Rieles women's prison became laboratories of long-term psychological torture — including years of solitary confinement, sensory deprivation, and ritualised humiliation.",
      whyFallback: "Survivor testimony, the SERPAJ \"Nunca Más\" report (1989), and later truth-commission work documented systematic methods. José Mujica spent roughly two of his thirteen years at the bottom of a dry well. The architecture was designed to break minds slowly, not bodies quickly." },
    { id: "uy_t4", isTruth: true , country: "uy", fallback: "Uruguay was a founding member of Operation Condor — the cross-border assassination and disappearance network coordinated with the Argentine, Chilean, Paraguayan, Bolivian, and Brazilian dictatorships in the 1970s.",
      whyFallback: "Uruguayan officers operated out of Automotores Orletti in Buenos Aires alongside Argentine task forces; Uruguayan exiles were hunted across the region. The Vidal documents and Paraguay's \"Archives of Terror\" preserve the inter-agency paper trail." },
    { id: "uy_t5", isTruth: true , country: "uy", fallback: "Uruguay became the first country in the world to legalise the production, sale, and consumption of marijuana under a state-regulated framework — Law 19.172, signed by José Mujica in December 2013.",
      whyFallback: "Pharmacy sales, state-licensed growers, and home-cultivation registers were all written into the same statute. Implementation has been imperfect — banking pressure from US correspondent banks bottlenecked pharmacy supply for years — but the policy precedent was real and unmatched at the time." },
    { id: "uy_t6", isTruth: true , country: "uy", fallback: "Raúl Sendic Jr. — vice president under Mujica — resigned in 2017 over the misuse of a state corporate credit card at ANCAP, the state oil company he had previously chaired.",
      whyFallback: "Personal expenses charged to the company AmEx, undeclared assets, a fabricated university degree exposed by journalists. The Frente Amplio's ethics tribunal sanctioned him; he resigned the vice presidency in September 2017. The case became a marker that even the \"clean\" left could not claim total immunity." },
    { id: "uy_t7", isTruth: true , country: "uy", fallback: "President Luis Lacalle Pou's personal bodyguard, Alejandro Astesiano, was arrested in 2022 running a passport-fraud ring from inside the presidential residence — selling Uruguayan documents to foreign nationals, including Russians.",
      whyFallback: "Astesiano had a long prior criminal record that vetting somehow missed. He was placed inside the president's daily security envelope. The case exposed how shallow the screening was at the very top of the state and how the \"clean institutions\" framing leaked at the seams." },
    { id: "uy_t8", isTruth: true , country: "uy", fallback: "Punta del Este and Uruguay's offshore-banking regime have functioned for decades as a discreet wealth-parking jurisdiction for Argentine capital fleeing pesos, taxes, and political risk.",
      whyFallback: "Bank secrecy was a selling point until international pressure forced gradual reform in the 2010s. Real estate, fiduciary structures, and resident-status programmes still channel large flows. The country's quiet prosperity rests in part on being the safe-deposit box next door." },
    { id: "uy_f1", isTruth: false, country: "uy", fallback: "Uruguay's reputation as South America's most stable democracy means it escaped the dirty-war pattern that engulfed its neighbours.",
      whyFallback: "The 1973-1985 dictatorship was, by per-capita measures of political imprisonment, among the harshest on the continent. The reputation reflects what came before and after — not the twelve years in the middle, which the school curriculum understates." },
    { id: "uy_f2", isTruth: false, country: "uy", fallback: "The 1986 Ley de Caducidad was a fair compromise that allowed Uruguay to move on from the dictatorship.",
      whyFallback: "The law granted blanket impunity to military and police personnel for crimes committed under the regime. Two referendums — 1989 and 2009 — failed to overturn it. The Inter-American Court of Human Rights ruled it incompatible with international law in 2011. Justice came late, partial, and against the legislative grain." },
    { id: "uy_f3", isTruth: false, country: "uy", fallback: "José Mujica's \"world's poorest president\" image fully captured how Frente Amplio governed.",
      whyFallback: "Mujica donated around 90% of his salary and lived on a small farm — true, and unusual. But the same administration ran the Sendic-ANCAP arc, signed pulp-mill and forestry deals with multinationals, and left the broader patronage architecture of the Uruguayan state largely intact. The man and the machine were not the same." },
    { id: "uy_f4", isTruth: false, country: "uy", fallback: "Uruguay's progressive social laws — abortion (2012), same-sex marriage (2013), cannabis (2013) — reflect a uniform liberal consensus.",
      whyFallback: "Each passed by narrow margins against organised opposition, much of it from the conservative wings of the Partido Nacional and Partido Colorado plus Catholic and evangelical networks. The international postcard flattens a contested domestic politics that did not, and does not, all agree." },
    { id: "uy_f5", isTruth: false, country: "uy", fallback: "The Tupamaros (MLN-T) were romantic Robin Hood revolutionaries whose campaign justified the military's response.",
      whyFallback: "The MLN-T (1962-72) carried out bank robberies, kidnappings, and the killings of police and the CIA-linked adviser Dan Mitrione. Their actions provided pretext; they did not invent the repressive apparatus, which the military had been preparing under National Security Doctrine training already. Both framings — heroes and excuse — flatten the record." },
    { id: "uy_f6", isTruth: false, country: "uy", fallback: "PLUNA's 2012 collapse was a clean commercial failure.",
      whyFallback: "The national airline went bankrupt under a Spanish-Uruguayan partnership with state guarantees; aircraft were auctioned at suspicious valuations, and a parliamentary investigation flagged conflicts of interest in the disposal of the fleet. The losses landed on the public balance sheet; the upside, where any existed, did not." },
    { id: "uy_f7", isTruth: false, country: "uy", fallback: "Uruguay's institutions are too clean for the kind of state-capture stories that define the rest of the region.",
      whyFallback: "Astesiano inside Lacalle Pou's residence, Sendic Jr.'s AmEx and fake diploma, the Botnia/UPM pulp-mill negotiations that bypassed environmental scrutiny, ANCAP fuel-pricing politics, and the Ley de Caducidad's decades of impunity all sit on the same record. The image is real; so is the underside." },

    // ============== Uzbekistan — 8T + 7F ==============
    { id: "uz_t1", isTruth: true , country: "uz", fallback: "Islam Karimov ruled Uzbekistan for 25 years — Soviet Communist Party First Secretary, then independent president from 1991 until his death in 2016.",
      whyFallback: "The chair did not change; the letterhead did. Same building, same security service, same man. Independence was a rebrand of the leadership, not a transition." },
    { id: "uz_t2", isTruth: true , country: "uz", fallback: "On May 13, 2005, Karimov's troops opened fire on protesters in Andijan's Bobur Square — estimates of the dead range from several hundred to over 1,500.",
      whyFallback: "Witnesses described automatic fire into crowds. Uzbekistan refused an independent international investigation. The official number remains low; the survivors' number remains buried." },
    { id: "uz_t3", isTruth: true , country: "uz", fallback: "Forensic analysis at Liverpool University concluded that prisoner Muzaffar Avazov was boiled alive in an Uzbek jail in 2002.",
      whyFallback: "Photographs of the body reached British ambassador Craig Murray, who sent them for independent examination. The Karimov regime's torture infrastructure was not figurative." },
    { id: "uz_t4", isTruth: true , country: "uz", fallback: "For over two decades, the Uzbek state forced millions of citizens — including children and public-sector workers — into the annual cotton harvest.",
      whyFallback: "Soviet-legacy quotas kept under independence. Teachers, nurses, students mobilized each autumn. Adidas, H&M, Walmart banned Uzbek cotton from 2010. ILO declared the systemic forced labor ended only in 2022." },
    { id: "uz_t5", isTruth: true , country: "uz", fallback: "Karimov's eldest daughter Gulnara — pop star \"Googoosha\" and would-be successor — was convicted in Uzbekistan after telecom giants paid her over $1 billion in bribes.",
      whyFallback: "MTS, TeliaSonera, VimpelCom paid for market access between 2007 and 2013. Her assets — estimated above $2 billion — were frozen across Europe. She fell from heir-apparent to detained citizen between 2014 and 2017." },
    { id: "uz_t6", isTruth: true , country: "uz", fallback: "The Aral Sea — once the world's fourth-largest lake — lost roughly 90% of its volume to Soviet cotton irrigation, leaving Karakalpakstan a salt desert.",
      whyFallback: "Diverted rivers Amu Darya and Syr Darya bled out into the fields. Independence inherited the catastrophe and the cotton quotas that caused it. The dust now carries pesticide residue across the region." },
    { id: "uz_t7", isTruth: true , country: "uz", fallback: "When Karakalpakstan protested a 2022 constitutional amendment reducing its autonomy, security forces killed at least 21 people and arrested dozens.",
      whyFallback: "July 2022, Nukus. Mirziyoyev declared a state of emergency, then withdrew the offending clauses — but the prosecutions of protesters continued. The autonomy on paper survived; the lesson about asking for it did not." },
    { id: "uz_t8", isTruth: true , country: "uz", fallback: "Mirziyoyev's 2023 referendum reset his term clock — extending presidential terms to seven years and allowing him to stay in power until 2040.",
      whyFallback: "Same constitutional trick used across the post-Soviet space: rewrite the rules, declare past terms null, run again. Reform-flavored on the press release; identical mechanism underneath." },
    { id: "uz_f1", isTruth: false, country: "uz", fallback: "Mirziyoyev's reforms since 2016 transformed Uzbekistan from dictatorship into open society.",
      whyFallback: "Some websites unblocked, some political prisoners freed, foreign press readmitted. The SNB (renamed SGB) security service intact, opposition parties still barred, Karakalpakstan crackdown live. Cosmetic above, structural below." },
    { id: "uz_f2", isTruth: false, country: "uz", fallback: "The Andijan massacre was a legitimate counter-terrorism operation against armed Islamists.",
      whyFallback: "Karimov's framing, repeated by Russia and China at the UN. Witnesses, refugees, and the few foreign journalists who reached the square described unarmed protesters fired on indiscriminately. The refusal of independent investigation tells which version the regime feared." },
    { id: "uz_f3", isTruth: false, country: "uz", fallback: "Uzbekistan's cotton economy lifted millions out of rural poverty.",
      whyFallback: "Cotton revenue flowed up; pickers earned cents per kilo under coercion. The water cost — the Aral Sea — was paid by Karakalpakstan, who did not see the export earnings. Two ledgers, one country." },
    { id: "uz_f4", isTruth: false, country: "uz", fallback: "Gulnara Karimova's prosecution proves Uzbekistan now holds the elite accountable.",
      whyFallback: "She fell because she lost the succession war to Mirziyoyev's faction, not because corruption became unacceptable. The $1 billion in telecom bribes was visible for years while she was a presidential daughter. Power changed hands; the system did not." },
    { id: "uz_f5", isTruth: false, country: "uz", fallback: "Independence in 1991 ended Soviet-style repression in Uzbekistan.",
      whyFallback: "The Communist Party First Secretary became the President of the Republic without changing offices. The KGB became the SNB. The cotton quotas, the censored press, and the political prisoners persisted under a new flag." },
    { id: "uz_f6", isTruth: false, country: "uz", fallback: "Uzbekistan's crackdown on Hizb ut-Tahrir and similar groups was strictly about violent extremism.",
      whyFallback: "Roughly 7,000+ political prisoners by mid-2000s estimates included peaceful Muslims, journalists like Muhammad Salih's associates, and ordinary citizens caught praying outside state-approved mosques. \"Extremism\" became the legal category for everything inconvenient." },
    { id: "uz_f7", isTruth: false, country: "uz", fallback: "Uzbekistan plays great powers off each other from a position of genuine neutrality.",
      whyFallback: "The Termez air base hosted US forces from 2001 until Karimov evicted them after Andijan; the pivot toward Russia and the CSTO followed the West's mild criticism. Multi-vector means whoever pays the highest tribute today." },

    // ============== Saint Vincent and the Grenadines — 8T + 7F ==============
    { id: "vc_t1", isTruth: true , country: "vc", fallback: "Ralph Gonsalves — \"Comrade Ralph\" — has been Prime Minister of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines continuously since March 2001, making him one of the longest-serving heads of government in the Western Hemisphere.",
      whyFallback: "Six consecutive ULP general-election wins: 2001, 2005, 2010, 2015, 2020, 2025. Twenty-five years in the same chair, a son installed as Finance Minister, a brother as ambassador to the UN and the OAS. The man who came in as a leftist constitutional lawyer ran a family administration longer than most of his voters have been alive. Length of tenure is not corruption by itself; it is the soil in which it grows." },
    { id: "vc_t2", isTruth: true , country: "vc", fallback: "In January 2008 a female police constable formally accused Prime Minister Gonsalves of rape — the matter was investigated by the same police force he led as Minister of National Security, and no charges were ever filed.",
      whyFallback: "A separate sexual-assault allegation followed from a second woman. The DPP cited insufficient evidence; the complainant said she was pressured, transferred, and threatened. The Caribbean human-rights community asked for an independent investigation outside the chain of command. It did not happen. The constable left the force. The Prime Minister continued. The case is closed administratively and open in the public record." },
    { id: "vc_t3", isTruth: true , country: "vc", fallback: "Argyle International Airport — declared a national priority in 2005, originally budgeted around EC$480 million — opened in February 2017 roughly a decade late and with final costs widely reported above US$700 million for a country of about 110,000 people.",
      whyFallback: "Built by a \"Coalition of the Willing\" — Cuba, Venezuela, Taiwan, Iran, Mexico, Trinidad, Libya at one point — using volunteer-priced engineering, ALBA petro-dollar credits, and Chinese contractors. The runway crosses what was Argyle village, relocated wholesale. The airport opened with a tiny handful of scheduled routes and has been chasing carriers ever since. A monument built with borrowed money, framed as sovereignty, sustained by tourism that has not arrived at the projected volume." },
    { id: "vc_t4", isTruth: true , country: "vc", fallback: "Mustique — a private island within Saint Vincent and the Grenadines — operates under a 1968 Mustique Company arrangement giving it special status, its own security, and a private clientele paying upwards of US$30,000 a week for villas Princess Margaret once kept on the island.",
      whyFallback: "Mick Jagger, David Bowie, the British royal family. The Mustique Company structure dates from Colin Tennant's original purchase and the deal with the Saint Vincent government of the day. Local labour staffs villas owned by foreign nationals; the island's contribution to national tax revenue is a matter the company prefers not to itemise in public. A second country inside the country, accessed by private jet to a separate strip." },
    { id: "vc_t5", isTruth: true , country: "vc", fallback: "Camillo Gonsalves — son of Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves — has served as Minister of Finance since 2017, after a UN ambassadorship and a Senate seat. The country's economic policy has been run by the Prime Minister's family for nearly a decade.",
      whyFallback: "Education at American University and Michigan Law, return to public service, fast-track to Cabinet. Father remains Minister of Legal Affairs and National Security on top of the premiership. The bench of senior ULP figures is wide; the inner circle is family. In a parliament of fifteen elected seats, the concentration of power inside one household is not metaphor, it is roll-call arithmetic." },
    { id: "vc_t6", isTruth: true , country: "vc", fallback: "Saint Vincent's banana industry — once the country's largest export earner — collapsed after the 1997 WTO ruling against EU Lome Convention preferences. Tens of thousands of small farmers lost the guaranteed European market that had underwritten the rural economy.",
      whyFallback: "Geest, then Fyffes, then nothing. WTO Case DS27, brought by the United States on behalf of Chiquita, Dole, and Del Monte. Saint Vincent, Saint Lucia, Dominica, and Grenada lost the trade arrangement their colonial successor states had been built around. Farms abandoned, marijuana cultivation expanded into the vacuum on the Leeward side, migration to Kingstown and abroad sharpened. A trade tribunal in Geneva rewrote a village economy in the Grenadines." },
    { id: "vc_t7", isTruth: true , country: "vc", fallback: "On 9 April 2021 La Soufriere erupted explosively — the largest Caribbean eruption since 1979 — and roughly 20,000 people in the northern red zone were evacuated, with hundreds of homes destroyed or buried by ash.",
      whyFallback: "VEI 4. The Argyle airport — the same airport whose cost overruns had been the political wound of the previous decade — became the operational hub for the airlift, taking in regional and international aid flights. The infrastructure case for Argyle was made in the worst possible way. Reconstruction continues; some northern communities have not returned in full." },
    { id: "vc_t8", isTruth: true , country: "vc", fallback: "In a November 2009 referendum, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines rejected a proposed new constitution that would have replaced the British monarch with a domestic president — with about 55% voting No despite a ULP government campaign in favour.",
      whyFallback: "Drafted by a constitutional review process Ralph Gonsalves himself chaired, the package bundled republican status with broader reforms — and the opposition NDP successfully campaigned against the bundle rather than the principle. A government with a parliamentary supermajority lost the popular vote on its own constitution. Sovereignty as branding turned out to be harder than sovereignty as ballot. The Governor-General remained, and remains." },
    { id: "vc_f1", isTruth: false, country: "vc", fallback: "Saint Vincent's two-party ULP-NDP system means voters get a genuine choice between competing economic and foreign-policy visions.",
      whyFallback: "Both parties have governed under the same Eastern Caribbean Central Bank framework, the same CARICOM trade rules, the same IMF macro-supervision, the same dependence on tourism, remittances, and CBI-adjacent revenue lines. The ULP campaigns left, the NDP campaigns right; the policy substrate is shared. Mitchell's NDP held office 1984-2000, Gonsalves's ULP has held it since 2001 — two factions of the same governing class trading the keys to the same office." },
    { id: "vc_f2", isTruth: false, country: "vc", fallback: "The 2008 rape allegation against Prime Minister Gonsalves was investigated independently and resolved on the evidence.",
      whyFallback: "The investigation was conducted by the Royal Saint Vincent and the Grenadines Police Force — reporting up a chain that ended at the Minister of National Security, who was the accused. The DPP at the time was not insulated from political pressure by any structural separation. Caribbean and international human-rights bodies asked for an independent inquiry. None was held. \"Resolved on the evidence\" is the framing that retains the office; the constable's account was never tested in open court." },
    { id: "vc_f3", isTruth: false, country: "vc", fallback: "Argyle International Airport has paid for itself by delivering a tourism boom to the mainland of Saint Vincent.",
      whyFallback: "Direct scheduled service from major North American and European hubs has remained thin since opening; many tourist arrivals still route through Barbados or Saint Lucia. The Grenadines absorb the high-end traffic, and they have private strips. The headline arrivals figure for Saint Vincent mainland — the place Argyle was supposed to lift — has not justified the debt curve. The airport works; the business case behind it is still being written in retrospect." },
    { id: "vc_f4", isTruth: false, country: "vc", fallback: "Mustique and Canouan are simply private islands operating under normal Vincentian law like any other property.",
      whyFallback: "Mustique runs on a 1968-era arrangement with its own management company, its own security, its own labour regime, its own implicit tax treatment. Canouan's resort-villa complex operates on similar lines — gated, helicoptered, separated. Local Vincentians work in these enclaves; they do not vacation in them. Normal Vincentian law applies in the way that normal British law applies to the offshore islands of Sark and Alderney — formally yes, practically a different country." },
    { id: "vc_f5", isTruth: false, country: "vc", fallback: "Saint Vincent's diplomatic recognition of Taiwan is a principled stand against authoritarian China.",
      whyFallback: "Taiwan provides hospital construction, scholarships, agricultural projects, and infrastructure financing on terms Beijing's One-China policy specifically forbids. Several Caribbean states have switched to Beijing — Dominica 2004, Grenada 2005, Costa Rica 2007 — and seen their own aid flows redirected. Principle is the rhetoric; the cheque book is the structure. The principled stand is renewed each time Taipei updates its assistance package." },
    { id: "vc_f6", isTruth: false, country: "vc", fallback: "Camillo Gonsalves being appointed Finance Minister by his father, the Prime Minister, is just a normal political-family career path that happens in many democracies.",
      whyFallback: "It happens in many democracies; in a parliament of fifteen elected seats and a Cabinet of single digits, it is a structural concentration of fiscal authority inside a single household. The Finance Minister sets budgets, signs guarantees, negotiates with the IMF and the ECCB, and oversees the CBI-adjacent revenue lines — under a Prime Minister who is also the Minister of Legal Affairs and National Security. The job title is normal; the org chart inside a microstate is not." },
    { id: "vc_f7", isTruth: false, country: "vc", fallback: "Saint Vincent and the Grenadines is too small to be a serious vector for offshore finance, transit drug-trafficking, or regional money-laundering risk.",
      whyFallback: "Eastern Caribbean Central Bank monetary union, CBI-adjacent jurisdictions next door, hundreds of small craft moving between Grenadine cays and the Venezuelan coast, ports and airstrips that the US State Department and the Caribbean Financial Action Task Force have flagged repeatedly in their annual reports. Smallness is not a defence; it is the operational profile. The volume is modest by global scale and meaningful at the country's own." },

    // ============== Vietnam — 8T + 7F ==============
    { id: "vn_t1", isTruth: true , country: "vn", fallback: "The Communist Party of Vietnam has been the sole legal political party since reunification in 1976 — no opposition party is permitted to exist.",
      whyFallback: "One-party state, codified. Article 4 of the constitution names the CPV as \"the leading force of state and society\". Elections happen; candidates are vetted by the Fatherland Front. \"Vote\" without \"choose\" is the design." },
    { id: "vn_t2", isTruth: true , country: "vn", fallback: "The US sprayed roughly 21 million gallons of Agent Orange across Vietnam between 1961 and 1971 — birth defects continue across generations sixty years later.",
      whyFallback: "Operation Ranch Hand. The Vietnamese Association for Victims of Agent Orange (VAVA) counts roughly 3 million Vietnamese still affected. US veterans were compensated; Vietnamese victims received apologies and partial cleanup funding decades later." },
    { id: "vn_t3", isTruth: true , country: "vn", fallback: "The My Lai massacre (March 16, 1968) saw US Army Charlie Company kill roughly 504 unarmed Vietnamese civilians — and only Lieutenant William Calley was convicted, paroled after three years.",
      whyFallback: "Women, children, infants, elderly. Calley convicted 1971, paroled 1974. The chain of command above him was never prosecuted. One lone soldier's sentence — for a company-scale crime — is the architecture of accountability theater." },
    { id: "vn_t4", isTruth: true , country: "vn", fallback: "The CIA's Operation Phoenix (1965-72) carried out an estimated 26,000+ assassinations of suspected Viet Cong cadre under the bureaucratic euphemism \"neutralization\".",
      whyFallback: "Quotas, torture, summary executions of villagers identified by informants. The program's own internal review acknowledged most \"neutralized\" were civilians. \"Counter-insurgency\" was the export label." },
    { id: "vn_t5", isTruth: true , country: "vn", fallback: "The CPV's \"Blazing Furnace\" (Đốt lò) anti-corruption campaign disciplined roughly 200,000 party members between 2016 and 2024 — including two state presidents and two National Assembly chairs forced to resign.",
      whyFallback: "Nguyễn Phú Trọng's signature project. Vo Van Thuong resigned March 2024, Vương Đình Huệ resigned April 2024. 47 of 200 Central Committee members investigated 2022-24. Genuine cleanup — or factional purge under cleanup branding — depending on who counts." },
    { id: "vn_t6", isTruth: true , country: "vn", fallback: "Truong My Lan was sentenced to death in 2024 for embezzling over $12.5 billion through SCB (Saigon Joint Stock Bank) — one of the largest single-person financial frauds in modern history.",
      whyFallback: "Roughly 3% of Vietnam's GDP. Years of capture of SCB through proxies, fictional borrowers, and bribed regulators. Death sentence — commutable if 75% of stolen funds returned. Punishment as recovery mechanism." },
    { id: "vn_t7", isTruth: true , country: "vn", fallback: "Vietnamese state security kidnapped former PetroVietnam executive Trinh Xuan Thanh from a Berlin park in 2017 — Germany expelled diplomats; Thanh was tried in Hanoi and given multiple life sentences.",
      whyFallback: "Daylight abduction on EU soil. Germany called it a \"flagrant violation\" of international law. Thanh \"voluntarily turned himself in\" according to Hanoi. The script and the surveillance footage disagreed." },
    { id: "vn_t8", isTruth: true , country: "vn", fallback: "The Dong Tam land dispute (January 2020) saw roughly 3,000 police raid a village over a contested military land grab — killing 84-year-old village elder Le Dinh Kinh in his home.",
      whyFallback: "Years of villager petitions about the seizure of communal farmland for a Viettel telecom project. Pre-dawn raid, three police also killed. Two of Kinh's sons sentenced to death, others to life. Land confiscation by force; resistance criminalized as terrorism." },
    { id: "vn_f1", isTruth: false, country: "vn", fallback: "Vietnam's one-party system delivers stability without the need for opposition.",
      whyFallback: "\"Stability\" is the framing every one-party state uses — China, Cuba, Belarus, the old USSR. Without opposition, corruption is policed only when factions decide to police each other. The Blazing Furnace campaign is the proof, not the counterexample." },
    { id: "vn_f2", isTruth: false, country: "vn", fallback: "The Vietnam War ended in 1975 and its consequences are behind us.",
      whyFallback: "Unexploded ordnance still kills Vietnamese annually — over 100,000 casualties since 1975. Agent Orange birth defects are now in the fourth generation. \"Ended\" is a calendar fact; the half-life of the chemistry and the metal is not." },
    { id: "vn_f3", isTruth: false, country: "vn", fallback: "Đổi Mới (1986) was a clean shift from socialism to market economy that lifted Vietnam out of poverty.",
      whyFallback: "Real growth happened. So did a politically connected oligarchy taking ownership of newly privatized state assets, state banks lending to party-linked tycoons, and the Truong My Lan / SCB scale of fraud the system bred. \"Market socialism\" — the contradiction is the feature." },
    { id: "vn_f4", isTruth: false, country: "vn", fallback: "Vietnam has free press and open civic space.",
      whyFallback: "All licensed media are state-owned or party-aligned. Bloggers and journalists routinely prosecuted under Article 117 (\"anti-state propaganda\") and Article 331 (\"abusing democratic freedoms\"). Reporters Without Borders ranks Vietnam in the bottom ten globally." },
    { id: "vn_f5", isTruth: false, country: "vn", fallback: "The Blazing Furnace campaign is purely about fighting corruption, not about consolidating power.",
      whyFallback: "Genuine cases were prosecuted. So were Trọng's rivals. Tô Lâm — head of Public Security through the purge years — became General Secretary in July 2024 when Trọng died. The campaign cleared the path that the campaign's manager then walked." },
    { id: "vn_f6", isTruth: false, country: "vn", fallback: "Vietnam's free trade agreements with the EU and CPTPP signal a transition toward Western-style governance.",
      whyFallback: "EVFTA (2020) and CPTPP gave Vietnam market access; labor and human-rights conditions were softened or deferred in negotiations. Independent unions remained banned. Trade integration without political convergence — the China model in a smaller frame." },
    { id: "vn_f7", isTruth: false, country: "vn", fallback: "Religious freedom is fully protected in Vietnam.",
      whyFallback: "The Unified Buddhist Church of Vietnam has been effectively suppressed since 1981 — replaced by a state-sanctioned Buddhist body. Independent Hoa Hao, Cao Đài, Protestant house churches, and Khmer Krom communities face surveillance, registration demands, and detentions. The state recognizes the religions it has captured." },

    // ============== Vanuatu — 8T + 7F ==============
    { id: "vu_t1", isTruth: true , country: "vu", fallback: "Vanuatu's \"Honorary Citizenship\" Citizenship-by-Investment program — launched 2017 at $130,000-$150,000 — processed thousands of passports with minimal vetting, including for crypto fugitives and US-sanctioned individuals.",
      whyFallback: "OCCRP investigations from 2020 onward documented buyers who included criminals, sanctioned oligarchs, and people wanted in multiple jurisdictions. The program became one of Vanuatu's largest revenue streams." },
    { id: "vu_t2", isTruth: true , country: "vu", fallback: "The EU revoked Vanuatu's visa-free Schengen access in March 2022 — citing systemic abuse of the citizenship-by-investment scheme.",
      whyFallback: "A first-of-its-kind suspension. Brussels concluded the passport sales created an EU security risk. Vanuatu lost the access; the program continued." },
    { id: "vu_t3", isTruth: true , country: "vu", fallback: "The \"Coconut War\" of June 1980 — Jimmy Stevens' Nagriamel movement declaring Espiritu Santo independent — was suppressed by Papua New Guinea troops just weeks before Vanuatu's formal independence from the UK-France condominium on July 30.",
      whyFallback: "Stevens jailed for 12 years. The secession was backed by Phoenix Foundation libertarians and foreign interests. The new state's first act was crushing a province with foreign troops." },
    { id: "vu_t4", isTruth: true , country: "vu", fallback: "Australia's \"blackbirding\" trade kidnapped or coerced an estimated 62,000+ Pacific Islanders — many from what is now Vanuatu — to work the Queensland sugar plantations between the 1860s and early 1900s.",
      whyFallback: "The South Sea Islander labor trade. Death rates on the voyages and plantations were extraordinary. Australia deported survivors en masse after Federation under the White Australia Policy." },
    { id: "vu_t5", isTruth: true , country: "vu", fallback: "Vanuatu has cycled through Prime Ministers at extraordinary speed — Korman, Natapei, Kilman, Natuman, Salwai, Loughman, Kalsakau, Kilman again, Salwai again, then Napat by October 2024 — driven by floor-crossings rather than elections.",
      whyFallback: "MPs switching coalitions mid-term collapse governments. The 2024 cycle saw three PMs in months. A 2024 constitutional amendment attempted to lock in party loyalty; the instability predates and outlives it." },
    { id: "vu_t6", isTruth: true , country: "vu", fallback: "China's Belt and Road financed the Luganville wharf expansion on Espiritu Santo — a dual-use facility large enough to dock naval vessels, in a country with no navy.",
      whyFallback: "Australian and US officials voiced public alarm about potential Chinese military access. Vanuatu denied any naval-base arrangement. The wharf's commercial traffic does not match its build capacity." },
    { id: "vu_t7", isTruth: true , country: "vu", fallback: "Vanuatu was one of a handful of states to recognize Abkhazia and South Ossetia after Russia's 2008 invasion of Georgia — and the recognition came with Russian aid packages.",
      whyFallback: "Recognition extended in 2011, then partially reversed, then re-clarified. The pattern — tiny Pacific states selling diplomatic recognition — repeated with Taiwan-vs-PRC and with Kosovo. Sovereignty as a tradeable asset." },
    { id: "vu_t8", isTruth: true , country: "vu", fallback: "Cyclone Pam (March 2015, Category 5) damaged or destroyed 70%+ of structures across Vanuatu and caused ~$600 million in losses — in an economy whose annual GDP was under $900 million.",
      whyFallback: "One of the strongest storms ever recorded in the South Pacific. Cyclone Harold followed in April 2020. Climate exposure for an archipelago that contributed nothing to the emissions causing it." },
    { id: "vu_f1", isTruth: false, country: "vu", fallback: "Vanuatu's citizenship-by-investment program is a careful vetting process for high-net-worth investors.",
      whyFallback: "OCCRP and Al Jazeera's \"Passports for Sale\" documented buyers including a Syrian businessman on US sanctions lists, fugitive crypto operators, and individuals wanted by Interpol. \"Vetting\" was a marketing word." },
    { id: "vu_f2", isTruth: false, country: "vu", fallback: "Independence from the Anglo-French condominium in 1980 was a clean handover.",
      whyFallback: "The \"Coconut War\" — Jimmy Stevens' armed Espiritu Santo secession backed by foreign libertarian financiers — was crushed by foreign troops the same year. Independence began with a suppressed province." },
    { id: "vu_f3", isTruth: false, country: "vu", fallback: "Vanuatu is a stable parliamentary democracy.",
      whyFallback: "Prime ministers change via floor-crossings rather than elections. Confidence votes triggered by handfuls of MPs collapse governments routinely — Kilman, Salwai, Loughman, Kalsakau, Kilman, Salwai, Napat across a single recent cycle." },
    { id: "vu_f4", isTruth: false, country: "vu", fallback: "Vanuatu's foreign-policy positions reflect independent democratic deliberation.",
      whyFallback: "Recognition of Abkhazia/South Ossetia tracked Russian aid. Diplomatic alignment with Taiwan or the PRC has shifted with cheque size. The Luganville wharf followed Chinese financing. Small-state diplomacy as auctioned asset." },
    { id: "vu_f5", isTruth: false, country: "vu", fallback: "Air Vanuatu is a viable national carrier.",
      whyFallback: "The state-owned airline collapsed into liquidation in 2024, stranding passengers and exposing chronic mismanagement. National carriers as patronage vehicles is a regional pattern; the bankruptcy made it explicit." },
    { id: "vu_f6", isTruth: false, country: "vu", fallback: "The Australian sugar industry was built by free labor.",
      whyFallback: "Queensland's 19th-century sugar industry ran on roughly 62,000 Pacific Islanders — many from the New Hebrides — taken via the \"blackbirding\" trade. Coercion, kidnapping, and contract fraud. Survivors deported under White Australia." },
    { id: "vu_f7", isTruth: false, country: "vu", fallback: "Climate vulnerability for Pacific microstates is a future problem.",
      whyFallback: "Cyclone Pam (2015) wrecked 70%+ of Vanuatu's structures. Cyclone Harold (2020) followed. The annual damage already exceeds annual GDP in bad years. The future arrived; the financing for it did not." },

    // ============== Samoa — 8T + 7F ==============
    { id: "ws_t1", isTruth: true , country: "ws", fallback: "The Human Rights Protection Party (HRPP) dominated Samoan politics for roughly forty years of near-continuous rule from 1982 to 2021 — one of the longest single-party runs anywhere in the democratic Pacific.",
      whyFallback: "Founded 1979, governing from 1982 with only a brief 1985–88 interruption. By the late 2010s the HRPP held over 90% of parliamentary seats; the opposition benches were literally a single member. \"Multi-party democracy\" on paper; one-party state in operating terms. The 2021 election was the first time in four decades the machine actually had to hand something over." },
    { id: "ws_t2", isTruth: true , country: "ws", fallback: "Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi served as Prime Minister continuously for nearly twenty-three years (1998–2021) — and when he lost the 2021 election by a single seat, he refused to leave office for almost three months.",
      whyFallback: "Fiame Naomi Mata'afa's FAST party won 26 seats to HRPP's 25 in April 2021. Tuilaepa rejected the result, the Head of State tried to suspend Parliament, and on May 24 Parliament's doors were physically locked against the incoming government. Mata'afa was sworn in under a tent on the lawn. The Court of Appeal eventually ordered the handover in July. The \"Tongatongo\" stalemate is now the textbook case of a Pacific leader nearly refusing to leave." },
    { id: "ws_t3", isTruth: true , country: "ws", fallback: "On December 28, 1929 — \"Black Saturday\" — New Zealand colonial police opened fire on a peaceful Mau independence march in Apia, killing around eleven Samoans including paramount chief Tupua Tamasese Lealofi III.",
      whyFallback: "The Mau (\"opinion\" / \"strong testimony\") movement had been demanding self-rule from New Zealand's League of Nations mandate since 1908. Tamasese, mortally wounded, told his followers: \"My blood has been spilt for Samoa. I am proud to give it. Do not dream of avenging it, as it was spilt in maintaining peace.\" New Zealand formally apologised in 2002 — seventy-three years late. The colonial violence is not a footnote to Samoan independence; it is the founding event." },
    { id: "ws_t4", isTruth: true , country: "ws", fallback: "The 2019 measles epidemic killed roughly 83 Samoans — most of them children under five — after an anti-vaccination scare triggered by two infant deaths from a botched MMR injection in 2018 collapsed national vaccination coverage.",
      whyFallback: "Two nurses had mixed the MMR vaccine with expired muscle relaxant instead of water; they were jailed. Vaccination rate fell from around 74% to 31% — and into that gap walked imported anti-vaccine campaigners, including Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who visited in mid-2019. The outbreak hit weeks later. The state had to declare emergency, shut schools, and conduct door-to-door vaccinations with red flags marking unvaccinated households. A regulatory accident plus an imported ideological campaign — and small children paid the bill." },
    { id: "ws_t5", isTruth: true , country: "ws", fallback: "Fiame Naomi Mata'afa, sworn in in 2021 as Samoa's first woman Prime Minister, is also the daughter of Fiame Mata'afa Faumuina Mulinu'u II — the country's first Prime Minister at independence in 1962.",
      whyFallback: "She served as Tuilaepa's deputy inside the HRPP for years, then split from him in late 2020 over a constitutional amendment package and joined FAST. The 2021 transfer was framed externally as \"Samoa's first female PM\" — internally it was also the daughter of the founding PM ending the party that displaced her father's lineage. Pacific politics in one biography." },
    { id: "ws_t6", isTruth: true , country: "ws", fallback: "China financed and built a roughly $32 million national hospital in Apia under the Belt and Road Initiative — over public objections from Australia and New Zealand, who had previously been Samoa's dominant aid partners.",
      whyFallback: "The Tupua Tamasese Meaole Hospital extension and other PRC infrastructure (roads, police academy, government office complex) accelerated through the 2010s under Tuilaepa. Mata'afa's FAST government in 2021 immediately cancelled a separately proposed $100 million Chinese-funded port at Vaiusu — citing debt-trap and feasibility concerns — but the broader Chinese position in Samoan infrastructure is now baked in. The Pacific is not a chessboard with empty squares; Samoa has been moved on it." },
    { id: "ws_t7", isTruth: true , country: "ws", fallback: "The Samoa Observer and its founder Savea Sano Malifa spent decades being sued, defamation-prosecuted, and physically intimidated by HRPP-aligned figures for reporting on government corruption.",
      whyFallback: "Malifa won the 2012 RSF Press Freedom Prize; the newspaper's offices were arson-attacked in 1994, the family's car firebombed. Tuilaepa publicly attacked the paper at press conferences for years. Press freedom in Samoa is in the brave-individual category — one family-owned paper holding the floor while the legal threats keep coming — not the structural-protection category. Without the Malifas, 23 years of HRPP rule would have left a much thinner record." },
    { id: "ws_t8", isTruth: true , country: "ws", fallback: "Samoa Air, the world's first \"pay-by-weight\" airline, charged passengers by total body weight including baggage when it operated 2012–2015 — a pricing model widely criticized but defended by the airline on small-plane safety grounds.",
      whyFallback: "Domestic and short international hops with Cessnas and similar light aircraft. Passengers stood on a scale with their bag. The airline went bust in 2015 after losing Samoa–American Samoa rights to Polynesian Airlines. The episode is small; what it shows is real — Samoan domestic aviation runs on margins so thin that weight literally is the unit of account, and a country of under 220,000 people cannot easily sustain its own carrier against regional competitors." },
    { id: "ws_f1", isTruth: false, country: "ws", fallback: "Samoa's 2021 transition of power was a smooth democratic handover.",
      whyFallback: "It involved the sitting PM refusing to concede for three months, the Head of State attempting to suspend Parliament, the locking of Parliament's doors against the incoming government, an open-air swearing-in under a tent on the lawn, and a Court of Appeal order to force the transfer. \"Smooth\" is what diplomats said on the way out; \"survived\" is the more honest verb." },
    { id: "ws_f2", isTruth: false, country: "ws", fallback: "The fa'amatai (chiefly title) system gives every Samoan an equal voice in village governance.",
      whyFallback: "Only matai (chiefly title holders) hold formal authority in the village fono; until 1990, only matai could vote in national elections. Universal suffrage exists since 1990, but candidacy for most parliamentary seats still requires a matai title. The system is genuinely indigenous, genuinely participatory at the matai level, and genuinely exclusionary of women, the young, and the untitled at the village level. \"Equal voice\" is the brochure; \"hierarchical consensus\" is the reality." },
    { id: "ws_f3", isTruth: false, country: "ws", fallback: "Samoa and American Samoa are essentially the same country separated by an arbitrary line.",
      whyFallback: "Independent Samoa is a sovereign state; American Samoa has been a US territory since 1900, whose people are US nationals but not US citizens by birth, cannot vote for president, and have no voting representation in Congress. The 1899 Tripartite Convention split the archipelago between Germany (later New Zealand, now independent Samoa) and the US. Same people, same language, same culture; two completely different political statuses for 125 years." },
    { id: "ws_f4", isTruth: false, country: "ws", fallback: "Samoa's economy is built on tourism and exports.",
      whyFallback: "Remittances from the Samoan diaspora — Auckland, Sydney, Honolulu, California — run around 25–30% of GDP, year in and year out. Foreign aid from New Zealand, Australia, China, Japan, and the EU adds another major slice. Tourism is real but small and cyclone-exposed; exports (fish, copra, nonu juice, coconut products, automotive wiring harnesses from the Yazaki plant before its 2017 closure) have been chronically underweight. The economy runs on money sent home, not money earned at home." },
    { id: "ws_f5", isTruth: false, country: "ws", fallback: "Samoa's environmental policy is led by independent local decision-making.",
      whyFallback: "Major climate and conservation funding flows through the Green Climate Fund, the World Bank, and bilateral donors with their own terms attached. Cyclone Evan (2012) caused damage equivalent to roughly 30% of GDP and effectively reset the national capital budget around donor priorities. Samoa is on the front line of sea-level rise rhetorically; on the back foot of donor conditionality structurally." },
    { id: "ws_f6", isTruth: false, country: "ws", fallback: "Samoa is a secular state where church and government are separate.",
      whyFallback: "The 2017 constitutional amendment under Tuilaepa explicitly declared Samoa a Christian nation in the Constitution itself. The Congregational Christian Church, Methodist, Catholic, and LDS churches together command the social authority that political parties only borrow. Village fa'alavelave (life-event obligations) routinely run into thousands of tala routed through church channels. \"Secular\" is not the constitutional word; the constitution chose differently and said so out loud." },
    { id: "ws_f7", isTruth: false, country: "ws", fallback: "The traditional Samoan tatau (tattoo) is a cultural curiosity preserved for ceremonial display.",
      whyFallback: "The pe'a (male, thigh-to-knee) and malu (female, thigh) are received over weeks of painful hand-tapping with bone combs, by hereditary tufuga ta tatau (master tattooists) whose lineages predate European contact by centuries. The practice was suppressed by missionaries in the 1830s, survived underground, and is now actively revived. The global tattoo industry's word \"tattoo\" comes from Samoan/Polynesian tatau — \"curiosity\" is the precise wrong frame. It is a living institution that outlasted the missionaries who tried to bury it." },

    // ============== Zambia — 8T + 7F ==============
    { id: "zm_t1", isTruth: true , country: "zm", fallback: "Frederick Chiluba, Zambia's second president, was convicted in a London civil court in 2007 of siphoning roughly $46 million in state funds — and never paid back a cent.",
      whyFallback: "The High Court of England registered the judgment; Zambia's own High Court did the same. Then the Zambian Supreme Court overturned domestic enforcement in 2008. Chiluba died in 2011, fortune intact, never imprisoned." },
    { id: "zm_t2", isTruth: true , country: "zm", fallback: "Zambia became the first African country to default in the COVID era — November 2020, on more than $17 billion of external debt — with China holding roughly $6 billion of it.",
      whyFallback: "PF-era borrowing under Lungu funded roads, airports, and consultants of dubious value. The IMF restructuring deal in 2022 confirmed the scale. The contracts on the Chinese tranches remain partly confidential." },
    { id: "zm_t3", isTruth: true , country: "zm", fallback: "Kenneth Kaunda's UNIP ran Zambia as a one-party state from 1972 to 1990 — 18 years where opposition parties were simply illegal.",
      whyFallback: "The founding-father aura softens the record. The 1972 Choma Declaration banned rivals; multipartyism only returned in 1991 after mass protests and IMF pressure. Independence hero and one-party autocrat are the same biography." },
    { id: "zm_t4", isTruth: true , country: "zm", fallback: "President Edgar Lungu had opposition leader Hakainde Hichilema imprisoned in 2017 on treason charges — for his motorcade allegedly failing to give way to Lungu's on a rural road.",
      whyFallback: "Hichilema spent 127 days in maximum security, much of it in solitary. Charges were dropped in 2018 under Commonwealth pressure. In 2021 he beat Lungu at the ballot box. Few African incumbents have lost peacefully — Zambia 2021 is one of the exceptions." },
    { id: "zm_t5", isTruth: true , country: "zm", fallback: "Vedanta's Konkola Copper Mines was placed in provisional liquidation by the PF government in 2019 — and the resulting legal war with Indian billionaire Anil Agarwal stalled the Copperbelt for years.",
      whyFallback: "Vedanta accused Zambia of expropriation; Zambia accused Vedanta of stripping the mine and underpaying tax. Hichilema's government negotiated Vedanta's return in 2024. The miners and the smelter town carried the cost throughout." },
    { id: "zm_t6", isTruth: true , country: "zm", fallback: "Roughly 70% of Zambia's export earnings come from copper — making the entire national budget hostage to a single commodity priced in London and Shanghai.",
      whyFallback: "Independence in 1964 inherited the colonial mono-economy; sixty years of diversification rhetoric have not changed the structure. When copper falls, schools, hospitals, and the kwacha fall with it." },
    { id: "zm_t7", isTruth: true , country: "zm", fallback: "COVID-19 emergency procurement under the PF in 2020-2021 produced a parade of inflated contracts and missing supplies — health-ministry officials charged, most cases stalled.",
      whyFallback: "Honey-bee Pharmacy, the Ministry of Health PPE deals, and ambulance contracts all surfaced. Auditor-General reports flagged the irregularities. Conviction rates a few years later: close to the floor." },
    { id: "zm_t8", isTruth: true , country: "zm", fallback: "Michael Sata's death in office in October 2014 triggered a succession fight inside the PF that produced the 2016 Lungu re-election — challenged by the opposition and never fully accepted as clean.",
      whyFallback: "Constitutional Court refused to hear the petition on the merits, citing a 14-day deadline. The PF entered a decade of factional knife-fighting. Sata's family and the Mwambas (GBM, Kambwili) ended up in different parties." },
    { id: "zm_f1", isTruth: false, country: "zm", fallback: "The 2021 peaceful transfer of power proves Zambian democracy is consolidated.",
      whyFallback: "It proves the 2021 election was clean enough that the result could not be denied. The same institutions that delivered Hichilema's victory had earlier delivered Lungu's disputed 2016 win, and jailed Hichilema himself in 2017. Democracy held; it is not yet a habit." },
    { id: "zm_f2", isTruth: false, country: "zm", fallback: "Chinese investment in Zambian copper is a partnership between equals.",
      whyFallback: "China is the single largest bilateral creditor, the buyer of much of the copper, and the operator of growing chunks of the mining sector (Mopani's 2021 Chinese-influenced restructuring, NFCA at Chambishi). The leverage is not symmetric." },
    { id: "zm_f3", isTruth: false, country: "zm", fallback: "Zambia's anti-corruption agencies operate independently of the ruling party.",
      whyFallback: "Each new president fires the previous appointees and installs his own. Cases against ex-officials of the outgoing party flourish; cases against current officials wither. The Anti-Corruption Commission has had a different mandate under each administration." },
    { id: "zm_f4", isTruth: false, country: "zm", fallback: "Kenneth Kaunda's legacy is unblemished African statesmanship.",
      whyFallback: "Founding father, frontline-state leader against apartheid — and also detention without trial of political opponents, a collapsing economy by 1990, and the one-party clamp from 1972. The pan-African halo and the domestic record are both real." },
    { id: "zm_f5", isTruth: false, country: "zm", fallback: "Mining royalties from the Copperbelt enrich the Zambian people.",
      whyFallback: "Transfer pricing, stability agreements, and decades of capital-allowance write-offs mean the headline copper boom rarely matches the treasury receipts. Glencore, Vedanta, First Quantum, and the Chinese operators all run the same accounting playbook." },
    { id: "zm_f6", isTruth: false, country: "zm", fallback: "The 2007 London judgment against Chiluba was honoured by the Zambian state.",
      whyFallback: "It was registered, then unregistered. The Zambian Supreme Court declined enforcement; Chiluba's domestic acquittal stood. He kept the properties, the suits, and the platform-soled shoes until his death in 2011." },
    { id: "zm_f7", isTruth: false, country: "zm", fallback: "Zambia's debt crisis was caused by external shocks beyond its control.",
      whyFallback: "COVID and copper prices were the trigger; the loaded gun was eight years of PF-era Eurobonds and bilateral loans for projects whose audits never quite arrived. The Auditor-General's reports across 2015-2020 named the pattern in advance." },

    // ============== Andorra — 8T + 7F ==============
    { id: "ad_t1", isTruth: true , country: "ad", fallback: "In March 2015 the US Treasury's FinCEN designated Banca Privada d'Andorra (BPA) as a \"primary money laundering concern\" — accusing it of handling proceeds for Venezuelan PDVSA officials, Chinese organized crime networks, and Russian and Eastern European laundering rings.",
      whyFallback: "BPA managed roughly €2.5B in assets before the FinCEN notice triggered an immediate run. The Andorran government intervened within days, broke up the bank, and sold the clean assets as Vall Banc to JC Flowers in 2016. The case forced a long-delayed reckoning with what Andorran private banking had been quietly doing for decades — and exposed how an 80,000-person principality had become a discreet plumbing layer for global dirty money." },
    { id: "ad_t2", isTruth: true , country: "ad", fallback: "Andorra is the only diarchy on Earth — its two co-princes are the President of France and the Catholic Bishop of Urgell in Catalonia, an arrangement carved into the 1278 medieval Paréage and never replaced.",
      whyFallback: "The arrangement means a Spanish bishop and a French president jointly serve as Andorra's heads of state — and the bishop's role gives the Vatican an ongoing constitutional foothold inside a 21st-century EU-adjacent micro-tax-haven. Charles de Gaulle, François Mitterrand, and Emmanuel Macron have all held the title alongside successive bishops of Urgell. No other country routes sovereignty through a foreign head of state and a foreign cleric simultaneously." },
    { id: "ad_t3", isTruth: true , country: "ad", fallback: "Andorra had no personal income tax until 2015 — and only adopted one under direct OECD and EU pressure after the 2008 financial crisis exposed how tax havens drained public revenue from neighboring states.",
      whyFallback: "The OECD's 2009 grey-list designation, followed by EU-driven automatic information exchange agreements (signed 2016, effective 2018), forced Andorra to introduce IRPF (income tax), corporate tax, and end formal banking secrecy. The shift was not internal reform — it was external pressure from larger powers that could no longer tolerate the leakage. The principality's economic model still leans on the residue: low rates, residence-by-investment, and proximity-banking for Spanish and French wealth." },
    { id: "ad_t4", isTruth: true , country: "ad", fallback: "Andorran nationality requires 20+ years of continuous residence — one of the longest naturalization waits in the world — and dual citizenship is forbidden, meaning applicants must renounce their original passport.",
      whyFallback: "The result: only around a third of Andorra's ~80,000 residents are actually Andorran citizens. Roughly half hold Spanish passports, the rest are largely Portuguese and French. The structure keeps political voting rights concentrated in a small native population while the economy depends entirely on the labor and consumption of non-citizens who cannot vote in national elections no matter how long they have lived there." },
    { id: "ad_t5", isTruth: true , country: "ad", fallback: "Andorra's €400,000 \"passive residence\" program sells residency rights — and the associated low-tax status — to wealthy foreigners willing to park capital in the country, with no requirement to live there full-time.",
      whyFallback: "The program is one of several residence-by-investment schemes that proliferated across micro-states after 2008. The €400K threshold (real estate, government bonds, or local investment) buys access to Andorra's sub-10% effective tax rates without buying citizenship or voting rights. Spanish YouTubers and influencers relocating to Andorra to escape Spain's higher tax brackets became a public scandal across 2020-2022 — the country branded as a tax-arbitrage product." },
    { id: "ad_t6", isTruth: true , country: "ad", fallback: "Andorra was not a UN member until 1993 — joining only after a new constitution that year finally made it a parliamentary democracy rather than a feudal co-principality administered jointly from Paris and Urgell.",
      whyFallback: "Before 1993 there was no formal constitution, no separation of powers, and no full citizenship rights as understood internationally — the General Council had existed since 1419 but operated under the co-princes' suzerainty. The 1993 constitution was a precondition for international recognition. Andorra has since also declined NATO and full EU membership — preserving a status that lets it benefit from European integration without accepting its tax-harmonization demands." },
    { id: "ad_t7", isTruth: true , country: "ad", fallback: "Cross-border smuggling of tobacco, alcohol, and fuel from Andorra into Spain and France has been a structural part of the principality's economy for a century — and remains a recurring subject of Guardia Civil and Gendarmerie operations to this day.",
      whyFallback: "The duty-free differential between Andorran prices and Spanish/French excise rates makes smuggling perpetually profitable on small volumes carried by tourists and on organized networks running larger loads. Tobacco production is one of Andorra's few traditional industries — and a disproportionate share has historically left the country through informal channels rather than legal export. The ~12 million tourists per year that flood Grandvalira and Vallnord ski resorts also function as a moving cover for the trade." },
    { id: "ad_t8", isTruth: true , country: "ad", fallback: "Andorra's ski-resort and hospitality economy consumes roughly 12% of national water supply — and the country's groundwater and Pyrenean snowpack are increasingly stressed by climate change while resort expansion continues.",
      whyFallback: "Grandvalira and Vallnord drive the tourist economy on which the principality's GDP depends, and snowmaking systems use water at industrial scale during low-snow winters that are becoming the new normal. The General Council has debated water-rationing rules while simultaneously approving resort capacity increases. The contradiction — a tourism model built on a climate-vulnerable resource — is unresolved and structurally awkward to discuss in a country where ski revenue funds the state." },
    { id: "ad_f1", isTruth: false, country: "ad", fallback: "Andorra is a quaint mountain democracy with no real geopolitical or financial significance.",
      whyFallback: "The BPA designation, the OECD grey-listing, the residence-by-investment scheme, and the 20-year naturalization wall describe a micro-state engineered as a financial-and-residency arbitrage product wedged between France and Spain. \"Quaint\" is the postcard; \"discreet plumbing for European wealth that does not want to be taxed at home\" is the function. Small population, outsized role." },
    { id: "ad_f2", isTruth: false, country: "ad", fallback: "Andorra is a fully sovereign nation like any other UN member state.",
      whyFallback: "Its heads of state are foreign — the French president and a Spanish-Catalan bishop — by a 1278 treaty that has never been replaced. It has no army of its own (defense is delegated to France and Spain). It only joined the UN in 1993, declined NATO, declined full EU membership, and remains constitutionally constrained by the co-principality structure. \"Sovereign\" in international-law form; deeply tethered in practice." },
    { id: "ad_f3", isTruth: false, country: "ad", fallback: "Andorra reformed its banking sector voluntarily once it recognized the harm tax havens cause.",
      whyFallback: "The reforms — income tax (2015), automatic information exchange (2018), BPA wind-down (2015-2016) — were forced by external pressure: OECD grey-listing, EU agreements, and the US Treasury FinCEN action against BPA. Without those external levers there is no documented internal push for change. The narrative of voluntary reform is post-hoc PR over a sequence of coerced compliance steps." },
    { id: "ad_f4", isTruth: false, country: "ad", fallback: "Andorra's democracy is representative because anyone living there can participate in the political system.",
      whyFallback: "Roughly two-thirds of Andorra's residents — including the Spanish, Portuguese, and French majority of the population — cannot vote in national elections regardless of how long they have lived in the country. The General Council's 28 seats are elected by a tiny native citizen base. The country's labor force, taxpayers, and consumers are mostly disenfranchised by design through a 20-year residence requirement and a ban on dual citizenship." },
    { id: "ad_f5", isTruth: false, country: "ad", fallback: "Andorra's tax model harms no one — it just offers a more efficient alternative to high-tax neighbors.",
      whyFallback: "Every euro routed through Andorran residence schemes or banking structures to avoid Spanish or French taxation is a euro of public revenue not collected by the country where the wealth was actually generated. The €400K passive-residence program and the influencer-relocation wave of 2020-2022 made the mechanism visible. \"Efficient alternative\" is the marketing; \"externalized cost onto larger neighbors\" is the accounting." },
    { id: "ad_f6", isTruth: false, country: "ad", fallback: "The co-princes are purely ceremonial — French presidents and the Bishop of Urgell do not actually exercise power.",
      whyFallback: "The 1993 constitution reduced — but did not eliminate — the co-princes' role. They retain signing authority on legislation, joint authority over treaties and judicial appointments, and constitutional standing as heads of state. The bishop's position gives the Catholic Church a permanent seat at the head of a 21st-century European state. \"Ceremonial\" understates a structurally embedded foreign role." },
    { id: "ad_f7", isTruth: false, country: "ad", fallback: "Andorra's ski-tourism boom is sustainable indefinitely.",
      whyFallback: "Pyrenean snowpack is shrinking, snowmaking is water-intensive, and Andorra's water supply is already strained by a resort economy that consumes ~12% of it. Resort capacity continues to expand while the underlying climate trend points the other way. The economic dependency runs deeper than any current rationing or efficiency measure can offset — the sustainability claim depends on weather behaving against the trend." },

    // ============== San Marino — 8T + 7F ==============
    { id: "sm_t1", isTruth: true , country: "sm", fallback: "San Marino — a 24-square-mile enclave entirely surrounded by Italy with ~33,000 residents — spent decades operating as a discreet banking back room for Italian undeclared cash, and the Guardia di Finanza investigations after 2009 made that explicit.",
      whyFallback: "Italian residents parked \"fondi neri\" (off-the-books cash) in San Marinese accounts under a long-standing informal understanding traceable to the 1939 Friendship Treaty era. The 2009 and 2015 Italian voluntary-disclosure programs (\"scudo fiscale\" and \"voluntary disclosure\") triggered an estimated €6 billion-plus wave of repatriations out of San Marinese banks. The numbers were the receipts." },
    { id: "sm_t2", isTruth: true , country: "sm", fallback: "Cassa di Risparmio della Repubblica di San Marino (CRSM) — the country's largest bank — was at the center of the 2009-2011 crisis after Italian prosecutors named it in money-laundering and tax-evasion probes, and the state had to inject capital to keep it standing.",
      whyFallback: "Guardia di Finanza investigations from Rimini and Forli targeted CRSM transactions; the bank's Delta SpA consumer-credit subsidiary collapsed and was placed under Italian special administration. CRSM required repeated state-backed recapitalizations through the 2010s. A bank \"too big to fail\" inside a republic of 33,000 people is a structural problem, not a market accident." },
    { id: "sm_t3", isTruth: true , country: "sm", fallback: "Banca Centrale della Repubblica di San Marino (BCSM) was created only in 2005 — meaning that for most of the period the offshore industry was being built, San Marino had no central bank supervising it.",
      whyFallback: "BCSM replaced the older Istituto di Credito Sammarinese. The supervisory and AML reform package was largely pushed through 2009-2013 under OECD and Moneyval pressure, not domestic initiative. \"We have a central bank now\" is a thing you say about a country that did not have one while the laundering pipeline was being installed." },
    { id: "sm_t4", isTruth: true , country: "sm", fallback: "The 1939 Italian-Sanmarinese Treaty of Friendship and Good Neighbourly Relations — signed under Mussolini — became the legal scaffolding for an informal cross-border banking-secrecy arrangement that survived the fall of fascism by eighty years.",
      whyFallback: "The treaty (and its subsequent annexes) governs customs union, monetary cooperation, and cross-border legal matters. The informal practice it enabled — Italian capital sheltered in San Marinese accounts with limited bilateral information exchange — was finally cracked open only by Italian voluntary-disclosure programs and the post-2009 reforms. Bilateral architecture from a dictatorship still loading the boat decades later." },
    { id: "sm_t5", isTruth: true , country: "sm", fallback: "IMF Article IV reports through the 2017-2023 cycle have repeatedly flagged unresolved anti-money-laundering weaknesses, non-performing loans on bank balance sheets, and the structural risks of an oversized financial sector inside a micro-state.",
      whyFallback: "Non-performing loan ratios in the Sanmarinese banking system reached among the highest in Europe after the CRSM-Delta collapse — the IMF and Moneyval have tracked the slow workout for over a decade. The phrase \"progress, but vulnerabilities remain\" recurs across reports. The cleanup is not done; it is ongoing." },
    { id: "sm_t6", isTruth: true , country: "sm", fallback: "San Marino's EU Association Agreement — negotiated jointly with Andorra and Monaco from 2015 — has been pending for over a decade, partly because Brussels keeps asking AML and financial-supervision questions San Marino has not fully answered.",
      whyFallback: "Negotiations launched in 2015; the agreement remained unsigned through the 2020s, with concerns about banking-sector supervision, state-aid rules, and financial transparency among the sticking points. The Captains Regent give pro-EU speeches; the technical files keep stalling. The two clocks do not align." },
    { id: "sm_t7", isTruth: true , country: "sm", fallback: "San Marino was moved from the OECD \"grey list\" to the \"white list\" in 2013 after signing a wave of Tax Information Exchange Agreements — a paperwork upgrade that did not require the underlying business model to disappear.",
      whyFallback: "TIEAs with Italy (2012) and dozens of other jurisdictions were signed under direct OECD and EU pressure. The \"white list\" status is awarded for treaty coverage, not for behavior. The same pattern as every \"reformed\" tax haven: sign the agreements, keep the architecture, manage the optics." },
    { id: "sm_t8", isTruth: true , country: "sm", fallback: "The 2017 referendum on whether to liberalize banking-secrecy laws and open San Marino further to international financial integration failed to reach the participation quorum — meaning the status quo persisted by default, not by decision.",
      whyFallback: "Sanmarinese referendums require a turnout threshold to be binding. The quorum-failure outcome is a structural feature of the system: low-turnout questions die without producing a recorded majority either way. The country keeps its old rules and gets to say the voters chose them — even when fewer than half showed up." },
    { id: "sm_f1", isTruth: false, country: "sm", fallback: "As the world's oldest republic — founded by Saint Marinus in 301 AD with a written constitution from 1600 — San Marino represents an unbroken democratic tradition.",
      whyFallback: "The 301 AD founding is tradition, not documented history; the 1600 \"Statuti\" are a city-state legal code, not a constitution in the modern sense. San Marino lived under fascist-aligned governance through World War II and saw a left-wing coalition forcibly removed in the 1957 \"Fatti di Rovereta\" crisis with Italian and US backing. Continuity of name is not continuity of free political life." },
    { id: "sm_f2", isTruth: false, country: "sm", fallback: "The Captains Regent — two heads of state rotated every six months — make San Marino structurally resistant to entrenched power.",
      whyFallback: "The rotating diarchy is genuinely unusual and dates to the medieval period. It is also a ceremonial system: actual executive power runs through the Congresso di Stato (cabinet) and the 60-member Grand and General Council, where the same political families and party blocs recur for generations. Six-month figureheads do not break the grip of permanent elites — they decorate it." },
    { id: "sm_f3", isTruth: false, country: "sm", fallback: "San Marino's wealth comes from tourism, ceramics, and stamp sales to collectors.",
      whyFallback: "The official brochure list. The real economic engine through the 1980s-2000s was the banking and financial-services sector — at peak, financial-sector assets ran at multiples of GDP, and the sector's collapse after 2009 dragged the entire national budget into deficit. Tourism and stamps are the postcard; the bank vault was the business." },
    { id: "sm_f4", isTruth: false, country: "sm", fallback: "San Marino is too small to matter in European financial-crime conversations.",
      whyFallback: "Size is the feature, not a defense. A jurisdiction of 33,000 people running a banking sector designed to absorb Italian capital is exactly the kind of structure that matters disproportionately in cross-border laundering analysis — which is why Moneyval, the IMF, the OECD, and the European Commission have all spent two decades writing reports about it. \"Too small to matter\" is what the brochures say; the inspectors disagree." },
    { id: "sm_f5", isTruth: false, country: "sm", fallback: "The Italian-Sanmarinese relationship is one of friendly equals — a tiny independent republic and a large neighbour respecting each other's sovereignty.",
      whyFallback: "Customs union, monetary dependence (the euro through the Italian framework), telecommunications integration, postal and judicial cooperation — the practical relationship is one of an enclave operating under Italian economic gravity. The asymmetry is the architecture; the \"friendship\" framing is what makes it negotiable." },
    { id: "sm_f6", isTruth: false, country: "sm", fallback: "Pope Francis's 2017 visit and the country's deep Catholic identity guarantee a moral compass in public life.",
      whyFallback: "Catholic identity is real; it is also the same identity Italy claims, and it did not prevent either country from building decades of grey banking practice between them. Papal visits to micro-states are pastoral gestures, not audits. The CRSM scandal and the Moneyval reports overlap entirely with the high-Catholic period." },
    { id: "sm_f7", isTruth: false, country: "sm", fallback: "Post-2013 reforms have brought San Marino into full alignment with EU and international financial standards.",
      whyFallback: "Treaties signed, laws passed, central bank empowered — and yet Moneyval follow-up reports through the 2020s still document partially compliant or non-compliant ratings across multiple FATF recommendations, the EU Association Agreement remains unsigned, and non-performing loans on the banking books remain elevated. \"Full alignment\" is the press-release line; the technical scorecards say something else." },
  ];

  // STATEMENT_CAT-equivalent — derive country from id.
  function countryOf(id) {
    const m = /^([a-z]{2})_/.exec(id);
    return m ? m[1] : null;
  }

  const COUNTRY_BEST_KEY = (code) => "wuys-geo-best-" + code;
  function loadBest(code) {
    try {
      const raw = localStorage.getItem(COUNTRY_BEST_KEY(code));
      if (!raw) return null;
      const parsed = JSON.parse(raw);
      if (typeof parsed.ratio === "number") return parsed;
    } catch (e) {}
    return null;
  }
  function saveBest(code, ratio, size) {
    try { localStorage.setItem(COUNTRY_BEST_KEY(code), JSON.stringify({ ratio, size })); } catch (e) {}
  }
  function maybeUpdateBest(code, ratio, size) {
    const prev = loadBest(code);
    if (!prev || ratio > prev.ratio) saveBest(code, ratio, size);
  }

  function poolForCountry(code) {
    if (!code || code === "all") return POOL.slice();
    return POOL.filter(p => p.country === code);
  }
  function countForCountry(code) {
    return code === "all" ? POOL.length : poolForCountry(code).length;
  }

  // Size persistence (separate from discernment's).
  const SIZE_KEY = "wuys-geo-size";
  function loadSize() {
    try {
      const raw = localStorage.getItem(SIZE_KEY);
      if (raw === "all") return "all";
      const n = parseInt(raw, 10);
      if (n === 6 || n === 12 || n === 15) return n;
    } catch (e) {}
    return 6;
  }
  function saveSize(v) { try { localStorage.setItem(SIZE_KEY, String(v)); } catch (e) {} }
  let roundSize = loadSize();

  // Country selection persistence.
  const COUNTRY_KEY = "wuys-geo-country";
  function loadCountry() {
    try {
      const v = localStorage.getItem(COUNTRY_KEY);
      if (v && COUNTRIES.some(c => c.code === v)) return v;
    } catch (e) {}
    return null;
  }
  function saveCountry(v) {
    try {
      if (v) localStorage.setItem(COUNTRY_KEY, v); else localStorage.removeItem(COUNTRY_KEY);
    } catch (e) {}
  }

  let activeCountry = null;
  function effectiveSize() {
    const cap = activeCountry ? countForCountry(activeCountry) : POOL.length;
    return roundSize === "all" ? cap : Math.min(roundSize, cap);
  }

  let queue = [], cur = null, correct = 0, answered = 0, awaiting = true;
  let activeSize = effectiveSize();

  function t(key, fallback) {
    return (window.i18n && window.i18n.t) ? window.i18n.t(key, fallback) : fallback;
  }
  function shuffle(arr) {
    for (let i = arr.length - 1; i > 0; i--) {
      const j = Math.floor(Math.random() * (i + 1));
      [arr[i], arr[j]] = [arr[j], arr[i]];
    }
    return arr;
  }

  // Tier system reuses discernment's keys for consistency.
  const TIERS = [
    { min: 0.96, key: "witness",    nameKey: "page.discernment.tier_witness_name",   descKey: "page.discernment.tier_witness_desc" },
    { min: 0.86, key: "sovereign",  nameKey: "page.discernment.tier_sovereign_name", descKey: "page.discernment.tier_sovereign_desc" },
    { min: 0.71, key: "discerning", nameKey: "page.discernment.tier_discerning_name",descKey: "page.discernment.tier_discerning_desc" },
    { min: 0.51, key: "awakening",  nameKey: "page.discernment.tier_awakening_name", descKey: "page.discernment.tier_awakening_desc" },
    { min: 0.31, key: "stirring",   nameKey: "page.discernment.tier_stirring_name",  descKey: "page.discernment.tier_stirring_desc" },
    { min: 0.00, key: "asleep",     nameKey: "page.discernment.tier_asleep_name",    descKey: "page.discernment.tier_asleep_desc" },
  ];
  function tierFor(r) { for (const t of TIERS) if (r >= t.min) return t; return TIERS[TIERS.length - 1]; }

  function renderTier(correct, total) {
    const tierEl = document.getElementById("geo-tier");
    if (!tierEl) return;
    const ratio = total > 0 ? correct / total : 0;
    const tier = tierFor(ratio);
    document.getElementById("geo-tier-label").textContent = t("page.discernment.tier_label", "Your reading");
    const nameEl = document.getElementById("geo-tier-name");
    nameEl.textContent = t(tier.nameKey, "");
    nameEl.dataset.tier = tier.key;
    document.getElementById("geo-tier-desc").textContent = t(tier.descKey, "");

    const code = activeCountry || "all";
    maybeUpdateBest(code, ratio, total);
    const best = loadBest(code);
    const bestEl = document.getElementById("geo-tier-best");
    if (bestEl && best) {
      bestEl.textContent = t("page.discernment.tier_best_prefix", "Best so far: ") + Math.round(best.ratio * 100) + "%";
    } else if (bestEl) {
      bestEl.textContent = "";
    }
    tierEl.hidden = false;
  }
  function hideTier() {
    const el = document.getElementById("geo-tier"); if (el) el.hidden = true;
  }
  function updateProgress(done) {
    const fill = document.getElementById("geo-progress-fill");
    if (!fill) return;
    const pct = activeSize > 0 ? Math.round((done / activeSize) * 100) : 0;
    fill.style.width = pct + "%";
  }

  function nextRound() {
    activeSize = effectiveSize();
    const pool = poolForCountry(activeCountry);
    queue = shuffle(pool).slice(0, activeSize);
    correct = 0;
    answered = 0;
    replayEl.classList.remove("visible");
    hideTier();
    updateProgress(0);
    pickNext();
  }
  function pickNext() {
    if (queue.length === 0) {
      const total = activeSize;
      const passT = Math.ceil(total * 0.83);
      const okT = Math.ceil(total * 0.5);
      stmtEl.textContent = t("page.discernment.dc_round_done", "Round complete.");
      fbEl.textContent = correct + " / " + total + " " + t("page.discernment.dc_correct_n", "correct");
      fbEl.className = "dc-feedback show " + (correct >= passT ? "good" : (correct >= okT ? "ok" : "bad"));
      truthBtn.disabled = invBtn.disabled = true;
      nextBtn.classList.remove("visible");
      replayEl.classList.add("visible");
      updateScore(true);
      renderTier(correct, total);
      return;
    }
    cur = queue.shift();
    awaiting = true;
    stmtEl.textContent = t("page.geo." + cur.id + "_stmt", cur.fallback);
    fbEl.textContent = "";
    fbEl.className = "dc-feedback";
    truthBtn.disabled = invBtn.disabled = false;
    nextBtn.classList.remove("visible");
    truthBtn.classList.remove("right", "wrong");
    invBtn.classList.remove("right", "wrong");
    updateScore(false);
  }
  function updateScore(final) {
    const idx = activeSize - queue.length;
    if (final) { scoreEl.textContent = ""; updateProgress(activeSize); }
    else { scoreEl.textContent = idx + " / " + activeSize + "   ·   " + correct + " " + t("page.discernment.dc_right", "right"); updateProgress(answered); }
  }
  function answer(pickedTruth) {
    if (!awaiting || !cur) return;
    awaiting = false;
    answered++;
    const isCorrect = pickedTruth === cur.isTruth;
    if (isCorrect) correct++;
    const pickedBtn = pickedTruth ? truthBtn : invBtn;
    pickedBtn.classList.add(isCorrect ? "right" : "wrong");
    if (!isCorrect) (cur.isTruth ? truthBtn : invBtn).classList.add("right");
    truthBtn.disabled = invBtn.disabled = true;
    const why = t("page.geo." + cur.id + "_why", cur.whyFallback);
    const verdict = isCorrect
      ? t("page.discernment.dc_correct", "Correct.")
      : (cur.isTruth ? t("page.discernment.dc_was_truth", "That one was truth.") : t("page.discernment.dc_was_inversion", "That one was an inversion."));
    fbEl.innerHTML = '<strong>' + verdict + '</strong> ' + why;
    fbEl.className = "dc-feedback show " + (isCorrect ? "good" : "bad");
    nextBtn.classList.add("visible");
  }

  // ============== Hub & Stage ==============

  // View mode: "flat" (Equal Earth, pan+zoom) or "globe" (orthographic, drag-rotate).
  // Default to globe — the cosmic galaxy backdrop is most visible there, and
  // the page feels premium from the first glance. Restored from URL hash if set.
  let viewMode = "globe";
  // Globe rendering state — DERIVED from nav each frame, never written directly.

  // ───── Navigation controller: SINGLE SOURCE OF TRUTH for view position/zoom ─────
  // Both flat and globe views derive their internal state from `nav` each frame.
  // No state transfer needed on view toggle — both read from the same place.
  //
  //   nav.lon  — view center longitude in degrees, [-180, 180]
  //   nav.lat  — view center latitude  in degrees, [-89.9, 89.9]
  //   nav.zoom — unified zoom factor, [1, 60] (1 = world view; flat & globe both interpret)
  //   nav.tLon/tLat/tZoom — targets; the animation loop interpolates current → target.
  const nav = { lon: 0, lat: 0, zoom: 1, tLon: 0, tLat: 0, tZoom: 1 };
  const NAV_ZOOM_MIN = 1;
  const NAV_ZOOM_MAX = 8;   // Same range used by both views (avoids globe dead-zone past 8)
  const NAV_LAT_MAX  = 89.9;

  function navClampTarget() {
    nav.tZoom = Math.max(NAV_ZOOM_MIN, Math.min(NAV_ZOOM_MAX, nav.tZoom));
    nav.tLat  = Math.max(-NAV_LAT_MAX, Math.min(NAV_LAT_MAX, nav.tLat));
    // Wrap longitude to [-180, 180]
    while (nav.tLon >  180) nav.tLon -= 360;
    while (nav.tLon < -180) nav.tLon += 360;
  }
  function navNormalizeLon() {
    while (nav.lon >  180) nav.lon -= 360;
    while (nav.lon < -180) nav.lon += 360;
  }

  // URL hash sync — encode the nav state into the URL so a view is shareable.
  // Format: #geo/view=flat,lon=12.34,lat=-5.67,z=4.2
  let _hashWriteTimer = 0;
  function navWriteHash() {
    if (_hashWriteTimer) clearTimeout(_hashWriteTimer);
    _hashWriteTimer = setTimeout(() => {
      _hashWriteTimer = 0;
      try {
        if (document.body.dataset.view !== "geo") return;
        const parts = [
          "view=" + viewMode,
          "lon=" + nav.lon.toFixed(2),
          "lat=" + nav.lat.toFixed(2),
          "z="   + nav.zoom.toFixed(2),
        ];
        const newHash = "#geo/" + parts.join(",");
        if (location.hash !== newHash) history.replaceState(null, "", newHash);
      } catch (e) {}
    }, 250);
  }
  function navReadHash() {
    try {
      const h = location.hash || "";
      if (!h.startsWith("#geo/")) return false;
      const opts = {};
      h.slice(5).split(",").forEach((p) => {
        const [k, v] = p.split("=");
        opts[k] = v;
      });
      let changed = false;
      if (opts.view === "flat" || opts.view === "globe") {
        // Don't switch view here — let the user open the right one first.
      }
      const lon = parseFloat(opts.lon), lat = parseFloat(opts.lat), z = parseFloat(opts.z);
      if (isFinite(lon)) { nav.lon = nav.tLon = lon; changed = true; }
      if (isFinite(lat)) { nav.lat = nav.tLat = lat; changed = true; }
      if (isFinite(z))   { nav.zoom = nav.tZoom = Math.max(NAV_ZOOM_MIN, Math.min(NAV_ZOOM_MAX, z)); changed = true; }
      return changed;
    } catch (e) { return false; }
  }

  // ───── Map display preferences — three INDEPENDENT toggles ─────
  // Antique is the default base theme. The picker offers alternative skins
  // (vector / toon / pixel) that replace it. Flags + labels are separate
  // toggles that work on top of whatever theme is active.
  const MAP_THEMES = ["vector", "toon", "pixel"];
  const MAP_THEME_LABELS = { vector: "Vector", toon: "Toon", pixel: "Pixel" };
  // "antique" is the unselected/default state; not stored in MAP_THEMES.
  let mapTheme = "antique";
  try {
    const saved = localStorage.getItem("wuys-map-theme");
    if (saved === "antique" || MAP_THEMES.includes(saved)) mapTheme = saved;
  } catch (e) {}

  let mapFlagsVisible = true;
  try {
    if (localStorage.getItem("wuys-map-flags") === "0") mapFlagsVisible = false;
  } catch (e) {}

  let mapLabelsVisible = false;
  try {
    if (localStorage.getItem("wuys-map-labels") === "1") mapLabelsVisible = true;
  } catch (e) {}

  let grid_ref = null;

  function renderHub() {
    const grid = document.getElementById("geo-hub-grid");
    if (!grid) return;
    // Render the sidebar list first — independent of map data load.
    renderSidebarList();
    // Restore any view encoded in the URL hash before first render
    navReadHash();
    // Premium loading state: compass sigil + multi-line status.
    grid.innerHTML =
      '<div class="geo-map-loading">'
      +   '<div class="geo-map-loading-aura"></div>'
      +   '<div class="geo-map-loading-sigil">'
      +     '<svg viewBox="0 0 32 32" width="56" height="56">'
      +       '<defs>'
      +         '<linearGradient id="geo-load-grad" x1="0" y1="0" x2="1" y2="1">'
      +           '<stop offset="0%" stop-color="#ece5f7"/>'
      +           '<stop offset="55%" stop-color="#b768ff"/>'
      +           '<stop offset="100%" stop-color="#ff6b9d"/>'
      +         '</linearGradient>'
      +       '</defs>'
      +       '<g fill="none" stroke="url(#geo-load-grad)" stroke-width="1.2" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round">'
      +         '<circle cx="16" cy="16" r="11.5"/>'
      +         '<circle cx="16" cy="16" r="6.5"/>'
      +         '<path d="M16 1.5 L18 14 L16 30.5 L14 14 Z"/>'
      +         '<path d="M1.5 16 L14 14 L30.5 16 L14 18 Z"/>'
      +         '<circle cx="16" cy="16" r="1.6" fill="url(#geo-load-grad)" stroke="none"/>'
      +       '</g>'
      +     '</svg>'
      +   '</div>'
      +   '<div class="geo-map-loading-text">' + t("page.geo.loading", "Charting the world…") + '</div>'
      +   '<div class="geo-map-loading-hint">' + t("page.geo.loading_hint", "First open downloads the atlas — only takes a moment.") + '</div>'
      + '</div>';
    actuallyRenderHub(grid);
  }

  // Mounts the new @wuys/map module into the geo tab. The module is bundled
  // into `map.bundle.js` as a classic IIFE that exposes `window.WuysMap`, so
  // it works without a server (file://) and without dynamic imports.
  //
  // Render token guards against the race where renderHub() is called twice in
  // quick succession (e.g. once from showHub() at init, then again from a
  // langchange event fired during i18n bootstrap). The mountMap call is async,
  // so without the token both renders would complete in parallel and produce
  // TWO maps + TWO controls bars in the same grid — every click would fire
  // both handlers and toggles would cancel out.
  let _renderToken = 0;
  async function actuallyRenderHub(grid) {
    const myToken = ++_renderToken;
    grid.innerHTML = "";
    let map;
    try {
      if (!window.WuysMap || !window.WuysMap.mountMap) {
        throw new Error("WuysMap bundle not loaded (expected window.WuysMap.mountMap from map.bundle.js)");
      }
      map = await window.WuysMap.mountMap(grid, {
        view: viewMode,
        theme: mapTheme,                       // user's theme choice (always)
        position: { lon: nav.lon, lat: nav.lat, zoom: nav.zoom },
        flagsVisible:  mapFlagsVisible,
        labelsVisible: mapLabelsVisible,
        getCountryName: (iso, fallback) => t("page.geo.country." + iso + ".name", fallback),
        overlays: false,                       // we keep the existing geo-tab control bar
      });
    } catch (err) {
      console.error("[geo] new map module failed to mount", err);
      grid.innerHTML = '<div class="geo-map-loading"><div class="geo-map-loading-text">'
        + t("page.geo.load_error", "Could not load world map.")
        + ' ' + (err && err.message || '')
        + '</div></div>';
      return;
    }

    // A newer renderHub() started while we were awaiting mountMap — bail out
    // and let the newer one own the grid. Otherwise we'd append a duplicate
    // SVG + controls bar (every click fires twice = toggles cancel out).
    if (myToken !== _renderToken) {
      if (map && map.destroy) map.destroy();
      return;
    }

    grid_ref = grid;
    window._geoMap = map;          // for devtools poking
    if (viewMode === "globe") grid.classList.add("geo-map-globe");
    else                       grid.classList.remove("geo-map-globe");

    // Galaxy backdrop: the map's theme normally paints the target with its own
    // background; we force it transparent so the global canvas#galaxy starfield
    // shows through. Re-apply on every theme change since theme.set() also
    // touches grid.style.background.
    const clearBg = () => { grid.style.background = "transparent"; };
    clearBg();
    map.on("theme:change", clearBg);
    map.on("theme:flags",  clearBg);

    // Apply COUNTRIES coverage classes + tooltips + aria to the new module's paths.
    // The existing event delegation at the hubEl level (path[data-iso] click → tryOpenCountry)
    // picks up clicks here without further wiring.
    applyCoverageStyling(map);

    // Append the existing controls bar (CSS is in style.css).
    grid.insertAdjacentHTML("beforeend",
      '<div class="geo-map-controls" data-no-drag aria-label="Map controls">'
      +   '<button type="button" class="geo-map-btn" data-zoom="in" aria-label="Zoom in">+</button>'
      +   '<button type="button" class="geo-map-btn" data-zoom="out" aria-label="Zoom out">−</button>'
      +   '<button type="button" class="geo-map-btn geo-map-btn-reset" data-zoom="reset" aria-label="Reset view">⌂</button>'
      +   '<button type="button" class="geo-map-btn geo-map-btn-globe" data-view-toggle aria-label="Toggle globe / flat view">🌐</button>'
      +   '<button type="button" class="geo-map-btn geo-map-btn-flags" data-flags-toggle aria-label="Toggle flags / antique view">' + (mapFlagsVisible ? '🏴' : '📜') + '</button>'
      +   '<button type="button" class="geo-map-btn geo-map-btn-labels" data-labels-toggle aria-label="Toggle country labels">' + (map.theme.labelsVisible ? '🅰' : 'ⓐ') + '</button>'
      +   '<button type="button" class="geo-map-btn geo-map-btn-edit" data-label-edit aria-label="Label editor (dev tool)">✎</button>'
      +   '<div class="geo-theme-picker">'
      +     '<button type="button" class="geo-map-btn geo-map-btn-theme" data-theme-toggle aria-haspopup="true" aria-expanded="false" aria-label="Map theme">🎨</button>'
      +     '<div class="geo-theme-menu" data-theme-menu hidden role="menu">'
      +       MAP_THEMES.map((t) =>
              '<button type="button" class="geo-theme-option' + (t === mapTheme ? ' active' : '') + '" data-theme="' + t + '" role="menuitemradio" aria-checked="' + (t === mapTheme) + '">' + MAP_THEME_LABELS[t] + '</button>'
            ).join('')
      +     '</div>'
      +   '</div>'
      + '</div>'
      + '<div class="geo-label-editor-panel" data-no-drag hidden>'
      +   '<div class="geo-label-editor-help">Label editor — drag to move, wheel to resize, shift+wheel to rotate</div>'
      +   '<div class="geo-label-editor-actions">'
      +     '<button type="button" data-editor-action="copy">📋 Copy JSON</button>'
      +     '<button type="button" data-editor-action="clear">⌫ Reset all</button>'
      +     '<button type="button" data-editor-action="close">✕ Close</button>'
      +   '</div>'
      + '</div>'

      // Status bar (bottom): live coords + zoom + share/import buttons.
      + '<div class="geo-map-statusbar" data-no-drag aria-label="Map status">'
      +   '<span class="geo-stat-coord" data-stat-coord>'
      +     '<span class="geo-stat-mark" aria-hidden="true">◎</span>'
      +     '<span class="geo-stat-num" data-stat="lat">0.00°</span>'
      +     '<span class="geo-stat-sep">,</span>'
      +     '<span class="geo-stat-num" data-stat="lon">0.00°</span>'
      +   '</span>'
      +   '<span class="geo-stat-divider" aria-hidden="true"></span>'
      +   '<span class="geo-stat-zoom">'
      +     '<span class="geo-stat-mark" aria-hidden="true">⌖</span>'
      +     '<span class="geo-stat-num" data-stat="zoom">1.00×</span>'
      +   '</span>'
      +   '<span class="geo-stat-divider" aria-hidden="true"></span>'
      +   '<button type="button" class="geo-stat-btn" data-stat-action="share" title="Copy shareable link to this view">⤴</button>'
      +   '<button type="button" class="geo-stat-btn" data-stat-action="paste" title="Paste shared view from clipboard">⤵</button>'
      + '</div>'
      + '<div class="geo-map-toast" data-no-drag aria-live="polite"></div>'
    );
    // Wire the existing controls bar to the new map API.
    grid.querySelectorAll(".geo-map-btn").forEach((btn) => {
      btn.addEventListener("click", (ev) => {
        ev.stopPropagation();
        if (btn.hasAttribute("data-view-toggle")) {
          map.view.toggle();
          viewMode = map.view.get();
          if (viewMode === "globe") grid.classList.add("geo-map-globe");
          else                       grid.classList.remove("geo-map-globe");
          btn.textContent = viewMode === "globe" ? "🗺" : "🌐";
          navWriteHash();
          return;
        }
        if (btn.hasAttribute("data-labels-toggle")) {
          // INDEPENDENT toggle — flips label visibility, nothing else.
          map.theme.toggleLabels();
          mapLabelsVisible = map.theme.labelsVisible;
          try { localStorage.setItem("wuys-map-labels", mapLabelsVisible ? "1" : "0"); } catch (e) {}
          btn.textContent = mapLabelsVisible ? "🅰" : "ⓐ";
          return;
        }
        if (btn.hasAttribute("data-flags-toggle")) {
          // INDEPENDENT toggle — flips flag visibility only. Does NOT swap theme.
          map.theme.toggleFlags();
          mapFlagsVisible = map.theme.flagsVisible;
          try { localStorage.setItem("wuys-map-flags", mapFlagsVisible ? "1" : "0"); } catch (e) {}
          btn.textContent = mapFlagsVisible ? "🏴" : "📜";
          return;
        }
        if (btn.hasAttribute("data-label-edit")) {
          // Legacy in-page label editor was tied to the legacy SVG structure.
          // The new module bakes positions; live editing returns in a later pass.
          return;
        }
        if (btn.hasAttribute("data-theme-toggle")) {
          const menu = grid.querySelector("[data-theme-menu]");
          if (menu) {
            const open = !menu.hidden;
            menu.hidden = open;
            btn.setAttribute("aria-expanded", String(!open));
          }
          return;
        }
        const op = btn.dataset.zoom;
        if (op === "in")        map.nav.zoomBy(1.5);
        else if (op === "out")  map.nav.zoomBy(1 / 1.5);
        else if (op === "reset") map.nav.reset();
      });
    });

    // Theme picker option clicks.
    grid.querySelectorAll(".geo-theme-option").forEach((opt) => {
      opt.addEventListener("click", (ev) => {
        ev.stopPropagation();
        const clickedTheme = opt.dataset.theme;
        // Click the already-active option to deselect → revert to antique default.
        const nextTheme = (clickedTheme === mapTheme) ? "antique" : clickedTheme;
        mapTheme = nextTheme;
        try { localStorage.setItem("wuys-map-theme", nextTheme); } catch (e) {}
        // Pure visual change — flags/labels stay where the user put them.
        map.theme.set(nextTheme);
        const menu = grid.querySelector("[data-theme-menu]");
        if (menu) menu.hidden = true;
        const tBtn = grid.querySelector("[data-theme-toggle]");
        if (tBtn) tBtn.setAttribute("aria-expanded", "false");
        grid.querySelectorAll(".geo-theme-option").forEach((o) => {
          const isActive = o.dataset.theme === nextTheme;
          o.classList.toggle("active", isActive);
          o.setAttribute("aria-checked", String(isActive));
        });
      });
    });

    // Outside-click dismiss for the theme menu.
    if (!grid._geoOutsideClickBound) {
      grid._geoOutsideClickBound = true;
      document.addEventListener("click", (ev) => {
        const menu = grid.querySelector("[data-theme-menu]");
        if (!menu || menu.hidden) return;
        if (ev.target.closest(".geo-theme-picker")) return;
        menu.hidden = true;
        const tBtn = grid.querySelector("[data-theme-toggle]");
        if (tBtn) tBtn.setAttribute("aria-expanded", "false");
      });
    }

    // ───── Status bar wiring ─────
    const statLat  = grid.querySelector('[data-stat="lat"]');
    const statLon  = grid.querySelector('[data-stat="lon"]');
    const statZoom = grid.querySelector('[data-stat="zoom"]');
    const toastEl  = grid.querySelector(".geo-map-toast");
    function fmtCoord(deg, posLabel, negLabel) {
      const v = Math.abs(deg).toFixed(2);
      return v + "° " + (deg >= 0 ? posLabel : negLabel);
    }
    function updateStats() {
      const c = map.nav.getCenter();
      if (statLat)  statLat.textContent  = fmtCoord(c.lat, "N", "S");
      if (statLon)  statLon.textContent  = fmtCoord(c.lon, "E", "W");
      if (statZoom) statZoom.textContent = c.zoom.toFixed(2) + "×";
    }
    function showToast(msg) {
      if (!toastEl) return;
      toastEl.textContent = msg;
      toastEl.classList.add("show");
      clearTimeout(toastEl._t);
      toastEl._t = setTimeout(() => toastEl.classList.remove("show"), 1800);
    }
    function buildShareUrl() {
      const c = map.nav.getCenter();
      const view = map.view.get();
      const hash = "#geo/view=" + view
        + ",lon=" + c.lon.toFixed(2)
        + ",lat=" + c.lat.toFixed(2)
        + ",z="   + c.zoom.toFixed(2);
      return location.origin + location.pathname + hash;
    }
    function parseShareString(text) {
      const trimmed = (text || "").trim();
      // Accept full URL, just the hash, or bare `lon,lat,z` triple.
      const hashIdx = trimmed.indexOf("#geo/");
      let payload = hashIdx >= 0 ? trimmed.slice(hashIdx + 5) : trimmed.replace(/^#?geo\//, "");
      const opts = {};
      payload.split(",").forEach((p) => {
        const eq = p.indexOf("=");
        if (eq < 0) return;
        opts[p.slice(0, eq).trim()] = p.slice(eq + 1).trim();
      });
      return opts;
    }
    function applyShared(opts) {
      const lon = parseFloat(opts.lon);
      const lat = parseFloat(opts.lat);
      const z   = parseFloat(opts.z);
      if (!isFinite(lon) || !isFinite(lat) || !isFinite(z)) return false;
      if (opts.view === "flat" || opts.view === "globe") {
        if (map.view.get() !== opts.view) {
          map.view.set(opts.view);
          viewMode = opts.view;
          const vbtn = grid.querySelector("[data-view-toggle]");
          if (vbtn) vbtn.textContent = viewMode === "globe" ? "🗺" : "🌐";
        }
      }
      map.nav.flyTo({ lon, lat, zoom: z, duration: 900 });
      return true;
    }
    grid.querySelectorAll("[data-stat-action]").forEach((btn) => {
      btn.addEventListener("click", async (ev) => {
        ev.stopPropagation();
        const op = btn.dataset.statAction;
        if (op === "share") {
          const url = buildShareUrl();
          try {
            await navigator.clipboard.writeText(url);
            showToast("Link copied — share to send this view");
          } catch (e) {
            prompt("Copy this share link:", url);
          }
        } else if (op === "paste") {
          let text = "";
          try { text = await navigator.clipboard.readText(); }
          catch (e) { text = prompt("Paste share link or coordinates (lon,lat,z):", "") || ""; }
          const opts = parseShareString(text);
          if (applyShared(opts)) showToast("Loaded shared view");
          else showToast("Couldn't read a view from that text");
        }
      });
    });

    // Mirror map nav into the legacy `nav` object so the URL hash + back-compat
    // code keeps working without further changes. Also updates the status bar.
    updateStats();
    map.on("nav:change", () => {
      const c = map.nav.getCenter();
      nav.lon = c.lon; nav.lat = c.lat; nav.zoom = c.zoom;
      nav.tLon = c.lon; nav.tLat = c.lat; nav.tZoom = c.zoom;
      navWriteHash();
      updateStats();
    });

    // Country path clicks bubble naturally to the hubEl event delegation
    // (which already handles path[data-iso] → tryOpenCountry). Spotlight clicks
    // stop-propagate inside the new module so they need an explicit forward.
    map.on("spotlight:click", (s) => {
      if (s.iso && s.iso.charAt(0) !== "_") tryOpenCountry(s.iso);
    });
  }

  // Apply the COUNTRIES coverage table (covered vs pending) to the new map's
  // <path data-iso> nodes after the new map mounts.
  function applyCoverageStyling(map) {
    const svg = map.renderer && map.renderer.getSvg ? map.renderer.getSvg() : null;
    if (!svg) return;
    const covMap = new Map(COUNTRIES.map((c) => [c.code, c]));
    svg.querySelectorAll("path[data-iso]").forEach((p) => {
      const iso = p.getAttribute("data-iso");
      const country = covMap.get(iso);
      if (country) {
        p.classList.add("geo-map-covered");
        p.setAttribute("tabindex", "0");
        p.setAttribute("role", "button");
        const name = t("page.geo.country." + iso + ".name", iso);
        const best = loadBest(iso);
        const bestStr = best
          ? t("quiz.hub.best_pct", "Best: ") + Math.round(best.ratio * 100) + "%"
          : t("quiz.hub.best_none", "Best: —");
        p.setAttribute("aria-label", name + " — " + bestStr);
        const title = document.createElementNS("http://www.w3.org/2000/svg", "title");
        title.textContent = name + " — " + bestStr;
        p.appendChild(title);
      } else {
        p.classList.add("geo-map-pending");
        const name = p.getAttribute("data-name") || iso;
        const title = document.createElementNS("http://www.w3.org/2000/svg", "title");
        title.textContent = name + " — coming soon";
        p.appendChild(title);
      }
    });
  }

  // Legacy view-toggle path — kept as a thin redirect in case anything still
  // calls it. The new map API drives the actual switch via the controls bar.
  function toggleViewMode(grid /* , svg */) {
    if (window._geoMap) {
      window._geoMap.view.toggle();
      viewMode = window._geoMap.view.get();
      if (viewMode === "globe") grid.classList.add("geo-map-globe");
      else                       grid.classList.remove("geo-map-globe");
      const btn = grid.querySelector("[data-view-toggle]");
      if (btn) btn.textContent = viewMode === "globe" ? "🗺" : "🌐";
      navWriteHash();
    }
  }

  function showHub() {
    activeCountry = null;
    saveCountry(null);
    if (hubEl) hubEl.hidden = false;
    if (stageEl) stageEl.hidden = true;
    renderHub();
    highlightSidebarActive();
  }
  function showStage(code) {
    activeCountry = code;
    saveCountry(code);
    // Keep the map visible — the quiz floats over it via .geo-stage-overlay.
    if (hubEl) hubEl.hidden = false;
    if (stageEl) stageEl.hidden = false;
    highlightSidebarActive();
    const c = COUNTRIES.find(c => c.code === code);
    if (stageCountryEl) {
      const flagInner = c && c.flag
        ? '<img class="geo-stage-flag" src="' + c.flag + '" alt="" aria-hidden="true"/>'
        : '<span class="quiz-stage-icon">✦</span>';
      const name = t("page.geo.country." + code + ".name", code);
      stageCountryEl.innerHTML = flagInner + '<span>' + name + '</span>';
    }
    // Update the All size button to reflect this country's count.
    const allBtn = root.querySelector('.dc-size-btn[data-size="all"]');
    if (allBtn) {
      const count = countForCountry(code);
      allBtn.textContent = t("page.discernment.dc_size_all_prefix", "All · ") + count;
    }
    nextRound();
  }

  // Bind country path clicks/keyboard on the world map.
  function tryOpenCountry(iso) {
    if (!iso) return;
    if (!COUNTRIES.some((c) => c.code === iso)) return;
    // Fly the map to the chosen country, zoomed in enough to feel like we
    // entered it (not just centred). Compute centroid + span directly from
    // WUYS_FLAG_POSITIONS — fitCountry()'s lookup table only populates after
    // the lazy world-topo load, and its 60/span formula is too gentle.
    if (window._geoMap && window._geoMap.nav && iso !== "all") {
      const pos = window.WUYS_FLAG_POSITIONS && window.WUYS_FLAG_POSITIONS[iso];
      let lon = 0, lat = 0, zoom = 4;
      if (pos && pos.length) {
        const lons = pos.map((p) => p.lon);
        const lats = pos.map((p) => p.lat);
        lon = lons.reduce((s, v) => s + v, 0) / lons.length;
        lat = lats.reduce((s, v) => s + v, 0) / lats.length;
        // Span across all anchor points. Single-anchor countries get a default
        // 4° span (treat as small). Floor at 2° so micro-states don't blow up.
        const spanLon = lons.length > 1 ? Math.max(...lons) - Math.min(...lons) : 4;
        const spanLat = lats.length > 1 ? Math.max(...lats) - Math.min(...lats) : 4;
        const span = Math.max(spanLon, spanLat, 2);
        // 90/span gives: 2° → 45 (clamped), 10° → 9, 30° → 3, 60° → 1.5.
        // Then floor at 4 so big countries (US, RU, CN) still feel zoomed-in,
        // and cap at 20 so tiny countries don't push past the renderer's edge.
        zoom = Math.max(4, Math.min(20, 90 / span));
      } else {
        // Fallback: no anchor data — let the map's own fitCountry try, then
        // bump current zoom. (Most countries have anchors, so this is rare.)
        try { window._geoMap.nav.fitCountry(iso); } catch (e) {}
        const c = window._geoMap.nav.getCenter();
        lon = c.lon; lat = c.lat;
        zoom = Math.max(c.zoom, 4);
      }
      try {
        window._geoMap.nav.flyTo({ lon: lon, lat: lat, zoom: zoom });
      } catch (e) {}
    }
    showStage(iso);
  }

  // ───── Sidebar country list ─────
  // Builds the left-rail picker from the COUNTRIES table. Each item carries the
  // flag + country name + best-score badge; clicking flies the map there and
  // opens the quiz overlay.
  function renderSidebarList() {
    const list = document.getElementById("geo-country-list");
    if (!list) return;
    list.innerHTML = "";
    let idx = 0;
    for (const c of COUNTRIES) {
      const btn = document.createElement("button");
      btn.type = "button";
      btn.className = "geo-side-item";
      btn.dataset.iso = c.code;
      btn.style.setProperty("--i", String(idx++));
      const nameEN = c.code === "all" ? "All countries" : c.code.toUpperCase();
      const name = c.code === "all"
        ? t("page.geo.all", "All countries")
        : t("page.geo.country." + c.code + ".name", nameEN);
      const best = c.code === "all" ? null : loadBest(c.code);
      const bestStr = best ? Math.round(best.ratio * 100) + "%" : "";
      const flagHTML = c.flag
        ? '<img class="geo-side-flag" src="' + c.flag + '" alt="" aria-hidden="true"/>'
        : '<span class="geo-side-flag geo-side-flag-all" aria-hidden="true">✦</span>';
      btn.innerHTML =
        flagHTML
        + '<span class="geo-side-name">' + name + '</span>'
        + (bestStr ? '<span class="geo-side-best">' + bestStr + '</span>' : '');
      btn.addEventListener("click", () => {
        if (c.code === "all") {
          // "All" = aggregate quiz from every country pool; no fly-to.
          showStage("all");
        } else {
          tryOpenCountry(c.code);
        }
      });
      list.appendChild(btn);
    }
    highlightSidebarActive();
  }

  function highlightSidebarActive() {
    const list = document.getElementById("geo-country-list");
    if (!list) return;
    list.querySelectorAll(".geo-side-item").forEach((b) => {
      b.classList.toggle("active", b.dataset.iso === (activeCountry || ""));
    });
  }
  if (hubEl) {
    hubEl.addEventListener("click", (ev) => {
      // Spotlight button clicked
      const sp = ev.target.closest(".geo-map-spotlight");
      if (sp) {
        const iso = sp.dataset.iso;
        if (iso && iso.charAt(0) !== "_") tryOpenCountry(iso);
        // special entities (City of London, DC) — no quiz yet; tooltip already shows
        return;
      }
      const p = ev.target.closest("path[data-iso]");
      if (!p) return;
      tryOpenCountry(p.getAttribute("data-iso"));
    });
    hubEl.addEventListener("keydown", (ev) => {
      if (ev.key !== "Enter" && ev.key !== " ") return;
      const p = ev.target.closest && ev.target.closest("path[data-iso]");
      if (!p) return;
      ev.preventDefault();
      tryOpenCountry(p.getAttribute("data-iso"));
    });
  }
  if (backBtn) backBtn.addEventListener("click", showHub);

  // Wire quiz controls.
  truthBtn.addEventListener("click", () => answer(true));
  invBtn.addEventListener("click", () => answer(false));
  nextBtn.addEventListener("click", pickNext);
  replayEl.addEventListener("click", nextRound);

  // Round size buttons.
  const sizeBtns = root.querySelectorAll(".geo-size-btn");
  function paintSizeButtons() {
    sizeBtns.forEach(btn => {
      const v = btn.dataset.size === "all" ? "all" : parseInt(btn.dataset.size, 10);
      btn.classList.toggle("active", v === roundSize);
    });
  }
  paintSizeButtons();
  sizeBtns.forEach(btn => {
    btn.addEventListener("click", () => {
      const v = btn.dataset.size === "all" ? "all" : parseInt(btn.dataset.size, 10);
      if (v === roundSize) return;
      roundSize = v;
      saveSize(v);
      paintSizeButtons();
      nextRound();
    });
  });

  // ============== Audio (mirrors discernment's setup, separate state) ==============
  (function setupAudio() {
    const audio = document.getElementById("geo-audio");
    const toggle = document.getElementById("geo-audio-toggle");
    const slider = document.getElementById("geo-audio-volume");
    if (!audio || !toggle || !slider) return;
    const VOL_KEY = "wuys-geo-music-vol";
    const ON_KEY = "wuys-geo-music-on";
    function loadVol() { try { const v = parseInt(localStorage.getItem(VOL_KEY), 10); if (v >= 0 && v <= 100) return v; } catch (e) {} return 50; }
    function loadOn() { try { return localStorage.getItem(ON_KEY) === "1"; } catch (e) {} return false; }
    function saveVol(v) { try { localStorage.setItem(VOL_KEY, String(v)); } catch (e) {} }
    function saveOn(on) { try { localStorage.setItem(ON_KEY, on ? "1" : "0"); } catch (e) {} }
    let vol = loadVol();
    let on = loadOn();
    slider.value = vol;
    audio.volume = vol / 100;
    slider.disabled = !on;
    toggle.classList.toggle("active", on);
    toggle.setAttribute("aria-pressed", on ? "true" : "false");
    function isGeoActive() {
      const v = document.querySelector('[data-view="geo"]');
      return v && v.classList.contains("active");
    }
    function play() { if (audio.paused) { const p = audio.play(); if (p && typeof p.catch === "function") p.catch(() => {}); } }
    function pause() { if (!audio.paused) audio.pause(); }
    toggle.addEventListener("click", () => {
      on = !on;
      saveOn(on);
      toggle.classList.toggle("active", on);
      toggle.setAttribute("aria-pressed", on ? "true" : "false");
      slider.disabled = !on;
      if (on) play(); else pause();
    });
    slider.addEventListener("input", () => { vol = parseInt(slider.value, 10) || 0; audio.volume = vol / 100; saveVol(vol); });
    window.addEventListener("hashchange", () => {
      if (!isGeoActive()) pause();
      else if (on) play();
    });
    document.body.addEventListener("click", (ev) => {
      if (ev.target.closest('[data-view]')) {
        setTimeout(() => { if (!isGeoActive()) pause(); else if (on) play(); }, 50);
      }
    });
  })();

  // Token substitution for the All button.
  function substituteTokens(str) {
    if (!str) return str;
    return String(str).replace(/\{n\}/g, POOL.length);
  }
  function applyGeoTokens() {
    document.querySelectorAll(".dc-tokens").forEach(el => {
      el.textContent = substituteTokens(el.textContent);
    });
  }

  window.addEventListener("langchange", () => {
    if (cur && awaiting) {
      stmtEl.textContent = t("page.geo." + cur.id + "_stmt", cur.fallback);
    }
    if (hubEl && !hubEl.hidden) renderHub();
    if (stageEl && !stageEl.hidden && activeCountry && stageCountryEl) {
      const c = COUNTRIES.find(c => c.code === activeCountry);
      const flagInner = c && c.flag
        ? '<img class="geo-stage-flag" src="' + c.flag + '" alt="" aria-hidden="true"/>'
        : '<span class="quiz-stage-icon">✦</span>';
      const name = t("page.geo.country." + activeCountry + ".name", activeCountry);
      stageCountryEl.innerHTML = flagInner + '<span>' + name + '</span>';
    }
    applyGeoTokens();
  });

  showHub();
  applyGeoTokens();
})();
