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A whistleblower who viewed first-hand what she testified is a "sophisticated network" of child migrant smuggling into forced labor and other forms of slavery is calling on Congress to act to crack down on the U.S. role in that network. The hearing, "The Biden Border Crisis: Exploitation of Unaccompanied Alien Children," was held by the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration Integrity, Security and Enforcement and included Health and Human Services (HHS) whistleblower Tara Lee Rodas as a witness. Rodas, who was detailed with HHS at an Emergency Intake Site in Pomona, California, ... told lawmakers about what she experienced on the ground. "I thought I was going to help place children in loving homes. Instead, I discovered that children are being trafficked through a sophisticated network that begins with recruiting in their home country, smuggled to the U.S. border, and ends when [Office of Refugee Resettlement] delivers a child to a sponsor — some sponsors are ... members of Transnational Criminal Organizations. Some sponsors view children as commodities," Rodas said. The number of unaccompanied alien children (UACs) who arrive at the border has swelled from 33,239 in fiscal year 2020 to more than ... 152,000 in fiscal year 2022. "The U.S. government has become the middleman in a large scale, multibillion-dollar child trafficking operation that is run by bad actors seeking to profit off of the lives of children," Rodas said.
Note: Why is this horrific issue not being discussed on a significant mainstream level? According to a report by The Center for Public Integrity, thousands have disappeared from sponsors' homes after the federal government placed them there. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and sexual abuse scandals from reliable major media sources.
When 23-year-old Mari walked out of the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention in 2022, she felt invisible. Her time inside ICE’s Stewart Detention Center in Lumpkin, Georgia, between December 2021 and January 2022, left a deep mark on her self-worth. A year and a half later, it continues to wake her up in the middle of the night, shivering and in tears. Mari is not her real name. We’re using it to protect her identity. She is one of five women who complained of being sexually assaulted by a male nurse who worked at Stewart. There is a pattern of sexual abuse complaints in ICE detention. Official records and testimonies obtained by Futuro Investigates ... show disturbing details of 308 sexual assault and sexual abuse complaints filed by immigrants detained in ICE facilities nationwide between 2015 and 2021. The data obtained by Futuro Investigates reveals a systemic pattern of abuse by detention officers, contractual guards, and ICE employees, accused of sexually assaulting the individuals they are meant to protect. According to the obtained data, more than half of all abuse allegations made in the past six years were directed against staff. At least five complaints in the records allege that ICE employees threatened them with deportation. Over the past two years, Futuro Investigates interviewed at least a dozen immigrants about their time in detention across the country. Read the original investigation here.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and sexual abuse scandals from reliable major media sources.
Dr. Phil called the migrant crisis at the southern border “out of control” during on appearance on Joe Rogan’s podcast — blasting the Biden administration for “paying money to take these children and sell them into sex slavery.” Phil McGraw, the former TV host, shared video footage of a conversation that he had with Brandon Judd, president of the National Border Patrol Council, during Tuesday’s episode of “The Joe Rogan Experience.” Judd told McGraw that US border authorities no longer had rapid DNA testing kits due to the massive influx of migrants that have poured into the country from Mexico. McGraw speculated that the lack of DNA testing could lead to minors being linked up with traffickers. “They come in with these addresses written on their bodies, written on their arm and we call up there and say, ‘Do you know so and so?’ ‘Yes, we’re waiting for them.’ ‘Okay, they’ll be on a plane or a bus’.” McGraw lashed out at President Biden and his administration for what he perceives as lax enforcement of immigration laws. “This is a weird thing they are doing. They’re just letting people come in, and the Red Cross and different groups are giving people maps, showing them how to do it, and encouraging it,” McGraw said. McGraw praised Texas for deploying agents to the border with Mexico. He said state law enforcement is a greater deterrent of illegal immigration than Customs and Border Protection.
Note: Watch a concerning interview with an investigative journalist exposing who's behind the large government-funded facilities housing thousands of undocumented children. A Department of Homeland Security whistleblower Aaron Stevenson is trying to stop the facilitation of child trafficking at the US border. Watch a 23-min video of his experience with this deeply concerning issue, including his investigation into a common pattern of criminals (many of them sex traffickers) across the world who become sponsors for unaccompanied children. Worst off, when he tried to track down who was monitoring and vetting the sponsors, he couldn't find any information about it. According to a report by The Center for Public Integrity, thousands have disappeared from sponsors' homes after the federal government placed them there. Why is this not being talked about on a mainstream level?
Florida’s statewide prosecutor Thursday explicitly accused federal immigration authorities of “human trafficking” in their oversight of unaccompanied migrant children in the state. The Statewide Prosecutors’ Office released an acerbic, 46-page grand jury report that denounces the federal Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), for leaving vulnerable migrant children with unvetted caregivers, or “sponsors” — and then abdicating all oversight of their welfare. The report suggests the policy amounts to criminal child neglect. The Statewide Grand Jury, which is an arm of Attorney General Ashley Moody’s office, also accuses the federal government of covering up its alleged misdeeds. [Gov. Ron] DeSantis asked the state Supreme Court to empanel a statewide grand jury to investigate undocumented migrants last June. “The purpose of the grand jury will be to investigate individuals and organizations that are actively working with foreign nationals, drug cartels and coyotes to illegally smuggle minors, some as young as 2 years old, across the border,” DeSantis said. By “incentivizing” illegal migration, the grand jury wrote, the Biden administration has encouraged children “to undertake and/or be subjected to a harrowing trek to our border. “This process exposes children to horrifying health conditions, constant criminal threat, labor and sex trafficking, robbery, rape, and other experiences not done justice by mere words,” grand jurors added.
Note: A Department of Homeland Security whistleblower Aaron Stevenson is trying to stop the facilitation of child trafficking at the US border. Watch a 23-min video of his experience with this deeply concerning issue, including his investigation into a common pattern of criminals (many of them sex traffickers) across the world who become sponsors for unaccompanied children. Worst off, when he tried to track down who was monitoring and vetting the sponsors, he couldn't find any information about it. According to a report by The Center for Public Integrity, thousands have disappeared from sponsors' homes after the federal government placed them there. Why is this not being talked about on a mainstream level? For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and sexual abuse scandals from reliable major media sources.
As Army pain doctor Maj. Michael Stockin prepares to be arraigned Friday on charges that he sexually abused dozens of patients at Madigan Army Medical Center, near Tacoma, Washington, two of those former patients described to CBS News what they say was conduct that betrayed their trust. "Myself and Dr. Stockin were left alone in the room. He first checked my shoulders and then he asked me to stand up and to pull down my pants and lift up my gown," said one of the soldiers, who had consulted the Army physician for shoulder pain. "Dr. Stockin, he was face level with my groin, and he started touching my genitals." Both men, now retired after more than 20 years in the Army including three combat tours each, spoke exclusively to CBS News, describing alleged misconduct hidden under the guise of medical care. They described visits to a doctor who was supposed to treat their pain, but they say instead inflicted even worse. The Army has charged Stockin with 48 counts of abusive sexual contact and five counts of indecent viewing under the military code of justice. The Army has confirmed that all of the 42 alleged victims who were treated at the clinic at Joint Base Lewis-McChord are men. The case is being prosecuted by the Army's Office of Special Trial Counsel (OSTC). Ryan Guilds, a civilian attorney representing seven of Stockin's accusers ... says he believes there could be hundreds of victims, making the scope of this case "historic."
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on sexual abuse by healthcare providers from reliable major media sources.
Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, as of this writing, faces a final attempt to appeal his extradition from the U.K. to the U.S. If he fails, he faces Espionage Act charges that could lead to living out the remainder of his life in federal prison. If Assange is extradited and successfully prosecuted for espionage, it would create a dangerous precedent for the government to suppress future reporting. The New York Times has a long and storied record of publishing classified materials going back to the 1971 Pentagon Papers, which showed the true history of the Vietnam War. More recently, the Washington Post and other outlets reported on the Discord intelligence leaks, revealing that Pentagon officials had suspected that the Ukrainian counter-offensive against Russia would fail ... among many other revelations. In 2013, DOJ officials noted that the legal theory used to prosecute Assange would apply almost equally to most major newspapers with a history of reporting on government secrets, such as the many news outlets that covered Edward Snowden’s disclosures about warrantless NSA mass surveillance of Americans. It’s not hard to see how the U.S. views Assange as an enemy of the state. He has exposed secrets and hypocrisy of American policymakers on the highest level. Diplomatic cables show the extent to which the State Department often acts as an extension of narrow multinational corporate interests. Wikileaks has published many documents that go well beyond the diplomatic cables and Democratic emails. The Afghanistan war documents disclosed by Wikileaks show extensive civilian deaths and Taliban militancy, far beyond what the Pentagon had previously acknowledged.
Note: The US prosecution of Assange undermines press freedom. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and media manipulation from reliable sources.
There are three basic problems with the CIA: its objectives, methods, and unaccountability. In effect, the CIA is a secret army of the U.S., capable of creating mayhem across the world with no accountability whatsoever. When President Dwight Eisenhower decided that Africa’s rising political star, democratically elected Patrice Lumumba of Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of Congo), was the “enemy,” the CIA conspired in his 1961 assassination, thus undermining the democratic hopes for Africa. The CIA has been held to serious public account just once, in 1975. In that year, Idaho Senator Frank Church led a Senate investigation that exposed the CIA’s shocking rampage of assassinations, coups, destabilization, surveillance, and Mengele-style torture and medical “experiments.” Since 1975, the CIA has run secretive operations backing Islamic jihadists in Afghanistan that utterly wrecked Afghanistan while giving rise to al-Qaeda. The CIA has likely run secretive operations in the Balkans against Serbia, in the Caucuses against Russia, and in Central Asia targeting China, all deploying CIA-backed jihadists. In the 2010s, the CIA ran deadly operations to topple Syria’s Bashir al-Assad, again with Islamic jihadists. For at least 20 years, the CIA has been deeply involved in fomenting the growing catastrophe in Ukraine, including the violent overthrow of Ukraine’s President Viktor Yanukovych in February 2014 that triggered the devastating war now engulfing Ukraine.
Note: Learn more about the rise of the CIA in our comprehensive Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center. For more, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on intelligence agency corruption from reliable major media sources.
The disastrous situation at the US-Mexico border is, and has been, intentionally produced. Illegal crossings have risen to unprecedented levels. There is a bipartisan consensus about what must be done. Tellingly, the same “solution” is also being quietly rolled out at all American ports of entry that are not currently being “overrun”, such as airports. That solution, of course, is biometric surveillance, enabled by AI, facial recognition/biometrics and autonomous devices. This “solution” is not just being implemented throughout the United States as an alleged means of thwarting migrants, it is also being rapidly implemented throughout the world in apparent lockstep. Global policy agendas, ratified by nearly every country in the world ... seek both to restrict the extent of people’s freedom of movement and to surveil people’s movements ... through the global implementation of digital identity. The defense tech firm Anduril ... is one of the main beneficiaries of government contracts to build autonomous surveillance towers along the US-Mexico border, which are now also being rolled out along the US-Canada border. Anduril will create “a digital wall that is not a barrier so much as a web of all-seeing eyes, with intelligence to know what it sees.” While Anduril is one of the main companies building the “virtual wall,” they are not alone. General Dynamics, a defense firm deeply connected to organized crime, espionage scandals and corruption, has developed several hundred remote video surveillance systems (RVSS) towers for CBP while Google, another Big Tech firm with CIA connections, has been tapped by CBP to have its AI used in conjunction with Anduril’s towers, which also utilize Anduril’s own AI operating system known as Lattice.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and the disappearance of privacy from reliable major media sources.
Laura Talmus felt helpless when her then-11-year-old daughter Lili kept calling her from school in tears. After her daughter passed away from medical complications in her sleep at age 15 in 2009, Talmus put together a video celebrating her life. When she showed the video, Lili’s classmates were shocked to realize how isolated Lili had felt. The next year, Talmus ... and her husband channeled their grief into forming Beyond Differences, a nonprofit that focuses on raising awareness about social isolation in youth and providing solutions. Talmus believes the social isolation her daughter experienced is affecting students all over the country and contributing to serious health issues, mental health problems, suicide and school violence. Beyond Differences ... has now grown to reach over one million students in all 50 states. On February 16, 2,500 schools [participated] in No One Eats Alone Day, a day of action ... that encourages fifth through eighth graders to mingle, make new friends and become more aware and proactive about social isolation, especially at lunch. “No One Eats Alone is completely rooted in the experience Lili had,” Talmus explains. “For many children, the lunch break or recess are the worst parts, so we started with that.” Beyond Differences sends backpacks or “Belonging Boxes” with a lesson plan, games, toys, art projects, stickers and conversation starters to participating educators, at no cost to the schools.
Note: Explore more positive stories like this in our comprehensive inspiring news articles archive focused on solutions and bridging divides.
Our moms and dads used to tell us about their mile-long walk to school. But if we’re talking about peda-powered travel to school, this man has set a new standard. Leaving his home in Conakry, Guinea, on a bike, Mamadou Safayou Barry traveled across the whole of West Africa and the Sahara Desert’s road network—2,500 miles—and across 5 countries in the mere hopes he’d be accepted into an Egyptian university. Along the way, the husband and father of one crossed Benin, southern Mali, Togo, and Chad, as well as some of the most bandit-filled areas on Earth, including parts of Burkina Faso and Niger. He was detained without cause or charge on three separate occasions, twice in Burkina Faso and once in Togo. It was in Chad, nearly four months after he left home, that he caught an auspicious wind. A local journalist reported on his efforts which led to a local philanthropist getting the man a flight to Cairo. Once there, the prestigious Al-Azhar University offered him a full scholarship, first for Islamic studies, then for engineering. Will Smith heard about Barry’s successful voyage, and gave a surprise congratulations to the man. He video-called the Guinean in Cairo to gift him a new bicycle and a laptop for his studies. “When I saw him, I was confused in my head, because I had seen that man before,” Barry told the BBC from Cairo. “Then I remember—it’s Will Smith! Wow ... I used to watch his films. I was sat on a chair in front of Will Smith!”
Note: Don't miss the deeply inspiring video of Mamadou Safayou Barry's interview with Will Smith about his fascinating journey across Africa. Explore more positive stories like this in our comprehensive inspiring news articles archive focused on solutions and bridging divides.
They say it takes a village to raise a child. Centered on that concept of communal flourishing, a dementia care village in England has incorporated a day nursery for small children—bringing together young and old for learning and sharing. Stimulation, learning, and fun—these are all activities that are known to delay the progression of dementia, and what better way to add these critical elements of life to a daily regimen than to let a flock of preschoolers do it? Belong is a nonprofit operator of senior homes, specializing in dementia care. This is the first to integrate children. The pioneering facility supports older people to live their lives independently, with access to several shops and services on site. The UK charity Ready Generations partnered with Belong to run the village’s day nursery. Children feature in the daily life of residents and tenants, enjoying experiences together including shared mealtimes, stories, arts and crafts, and exercise. Centered around a vibrant hub of amenities, including a bistro, hair salon, and specialist exercise studio, the site is open to the public, creating a bustling environment with customers from the local community. Similar projects have been pioneered in America as well. The Intergenerational Learning Center at Mount St. Vincent nursing home in Seattle opened its doors to the oldest—and the youngest—in 2015. The 400 adults in that assisted-living center join the kids in daily activities from music and dancing to storytelling and just plain visiting.
Note: Explore more positive stories like this in our comprehensive inspiring news articles archive focused on solutions and bridging divides.
An industrial estate in Yorkshire is an unlikely location for ... an artificial intelligence (AI) company used by the Government to monitor people’s posts on social media. Logically has been paid more than £1.2 million of taxpayers’ money to analyse what the Government terms “disinformation” – false information deliberately seeded online – and “misinformation”, which is false information that has been spread inadvertently. It does this by “ingesting” material from more than hundreds of thousands of media sources and “all public posts on major social media platforms”, using AI to identify those that are potentially problematic. It has a £1.2 million deal with the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS), as well as another worth up to £1.4 million with the Department of Health and Social Care to monitor threats to high-profile individuals within the vaccine service. It also has a “partnership” with Facebook, which appears to grant Logically’s fact-checkers huge influence over the content other people see. A joint press release issued in July 2021 suggests that Facebook will limit the reach of certain posts if Logically says they are untrue. “When Logically rates a piece of content as false, Facebook will significantly reduce its distribution so that fewer people see it, apply a warning label to let people know that the content has been rated false, and notify people who try to share it,” states the press release.
Note: Read more about how NewsGuard, a for-profit company, works closely with government agencies and major corporate advertisers to suppress dissenting views online. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and media manipulation from reliable sources.
Vaccines that protect against severe illness, death and lingering long Covid symptoms from a coronavirus infection were linked to small increases in neurological, blood, and heart-related conditions in the largest global vaccine safety study to date. The rare events — identified early in the pandemic — included a higher risk of heart-related inflammation from mRNA shots made by Pfizer Inc., BioNTech SE, and Moderna Inc., and an increased risk of a type of blood clot in the brain after immunization with viral-vector vaccines such as the one developed by the University of Oxford and made by AstraZeneca Plc. The viral-vector jabs were also tied to an increased risk of Guillain-Barre syndrome, a neurological disorder in which the immune system mistakenly attacks the peripheral nervous system. More than 13.5 billion doses of Covid vaccines have been administered globally over the past three years. Still, a small proportion of people immunized were injured by the shots, stoking debate about their benefits versus harms. The new research, by the Global Vaccine Data Network, was published in the journal Vaccine last week. Exercise intolerance, excessive fatigue, numbness and “brain fog” were among common symptoms identified in more than 240 adults experiencing chronic post-vaccination syndrome in a separate study conducted by the Yale School of Medicine. The cause of the syndrome isn’t yet known, and it has no diagnostic tests or proven remedies.
Note: Vaccine adverse event numbers are made publically available, and currently show 2,579,111 COVID vaccine injury reports and 37,100 COVID Vaccine Reported Deaths (out of 47,290 Total Reported Deaths from all vaccines). Read our in-depth report about this concerning trend that is often discussed by mainstream media as a rare occurrence. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on COVID vaccines from reliable major media sources.
Plastic producers have known for more than 30 years that recycling is not an economically or technically feasible plastic waste management solution. That has not stopped them from promoting it, according to a new report. “The companies lied,” said Richard Wiles, president of fossil-fuel accountability advocacy group the Center for Climate Integrity (CCI), which published the report. “It’s time to hold them accountable for the damage they’ve caused.” Plastic, which is made from oil and gas, is notoriously difficult to recycle. Doing so requires meticulous sorting, since most of the thousands of chemically distinct varieties of plastic cannot be recycled together. That renders an already pricey process even more expensive. Another challenge: the material degrades each time it is reused, meaning it can generally only be reused once or twice. The industry has known for decades about these existential challenges, but obscured that information in its marketing campaigns. The report does not allege that the companies broke specific laws. But Alyssa Johl, report co-author and attorney, said she suspects they violated public-nuisance, racketeering and consumer-fraud protections. The industry’s misconduct continues today. Over the past several years, industry lobbying groups have promoted so-called chemical recycling, which breaks plastic polymers down into tiny molecules. But the process creates pollution and is even more energy intensive than traditional plastic recycling.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corporate corruption from reliable major media sources.
U.S. immigration authorities locked thousands of people in solitary confinement in 2023. A new report by Harvard University-affiliated researchers ... found the dangerous confinements have not only persisted over the past decade, but also increased in frequency and duration under the Biden administration. The adverse effects of solitary confinement — generally defined as isolation without meaningful human interaction for 22 hours a day or more — are well documented. One of ICE’s directives acknowledges that isolating detainees — who aren’t considered prisoners and aren’t held for punitive reasons under federal law — is “a serious step that requires careful consideration of alternatives.” And yet the new report found the agency recorded more than 14,000 solitary confinement cases from 2018 to 2023. Researchers said the number is likely an undercount due to ICE’s poor recordkeeping. The average length of the recorded confinements was 27 days, researchers found, stretching well beyond the 15-day period that meets the threshold for “inhuman and degrading treatment” defined by the U.N. special rapporteur on torture. The data revealed dozens of examples of facilities holding people in solitary confinement for over a year. Researchers also gathered accounts of the grueling conditions inside isolation cells. Interviewees described cells that were freezing cold; constantly lit, causing sleep deprivation; or had toilets only guards could flush.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on prison system corruption from reliable major media sources.
When the U.S. Government entered into its Covid vaccine agreement with Pfizer, which was acting on behalf of the BioNTech/Pfizer partnership, in July 2020, the agreement encompassed a minimum of 100 million doses of a “vaccine to prevent COVID-19” and a payment of at least $1.95 billion. The Government declared that we were “at war” with a catastrophically dangerous virus. In keeping with the declaration of war, it was a military framework that was used for acquiring the aspirational products that became known as Covid mRNA vaccines. The Government side to the agreement with Pfizer was the Department of Defence (DoD), represented by a convoluted chain of parties, each operating as a subcontractor, or co-contractor, for the next. In fact, agencies governing civilian and public health, like the NIH, NIAID and HHS, do not have the authority to grant certain types of special acquisition contracts, which is why the Covid vaccine contracts had to be overseen by the Department of Defence. Emergency Use Authorisation (EUA) ... is a very special way to authorise a medical countermeasure in very specific types of emergencies. EUA was meant for dire situations of warfare or terrorism, not to protect the entire population from naturally occurring pathogens. For this reason, EUA products do not require the type of legal safety oversight that is applied in civilian contexts by the FDA.
Note: Read how the Department of Defense and the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority allowed vaccine makers to bypass standard safety testing of their products. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on COVID vaccines from reliable major media sources.
At least 33 U.S. state prison systems and the majority of federal medium-, high- and maximum-security prisons have placed general population (“gen pop”) adults under nondisciplinary lockdown at least once (but more often repeatedly or for a prolonged period) from 2016-2023. While most lockdowns are intermittent (lasting from a few days to several weeks), an increasing number of state and federal prisons keep prisoners locked down for most or even all of the year. In addition, many prisons make people suffer through constant lockdown “cycles,” where prisoners get a very brief return to normal “gen pop” status before they are once again subject to several days or weeks of lockdown. Prisoners have no routines or any real rights whatsoever under lockdown. There is no guarantee of exercise, showers are irregular at best, and access to phone, email or visitation are nonexistent. Education, religious activities, rehabilitative programs, psychiatric intervention to crises, access to commissary ... are typically denied or are nearly impossible to get. Meetings with attorneys come to a halt or are hard to obtain. People under lockdown are often not even given basic hygiene materials such as soap or toothpaste. Modern prison lockdowns can ... be traced back to 2016, in a decidedly repressive, politicized reaction to nationwide prison strikes. Entire prisons were and are still punished for the relatively minor actions of a few, including ... something as simple as a shouting match.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on prison system corruption from reliable major media sources.
Look at the case of Lucas Bellamy. He had been arrested in Minnesota. Immediately before the arrest, he ate a bag of drugs in an effort to fool police into thinking that he didn’t have any. But he immediately began feeling sick. Jail officers took him to a local hospital, where he was treated. The doctors there told the jailers to return him to the hospital if he became ill again. He began vomiting as soon as he got back to his cell. By evening he was refusing food and crawling around his cell as a guard and nurse stood and watched him. By noon the next day, he was dead on the floor. The case of Brandon Clay Dodson is even worse. Dodson was arrested on a burglary charge and was being held in the local jail in Clayton, Alabama. He told a guard that several other prisoners had been beating him, and he asked to be moved into segregated housing for his own protection. He later told the guards in solitary that he wasn’t feeling well, but they ignored him. And a day after that, the 43-year-old was found dead in his bed. In a 104-page ruling, a federal judge in Louisiana ruled against the administrators of the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola, [highlighting] just a few of the untold number of medical horrors that prisoners suffer all the time there, including “a man denied medical attention four times during a stroke, leaving him blind and paralyzed; a man denied access to a specialist for four years while his throat cancer advanced; even a blind man denied a cane for 16 years.”
Note: John Kiriakou is a former CIA counter-terrorism officer and former senior investigator on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. In 2015, investigations in Arizona, Florida, Maine, Minnesota, and New York uncovered escalating inmate deaths related to the use of for-profit medical services in prisons. A New York Times article about this was published but it quickly disappeared. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on prison system corruption from reliable major media sources.
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation ... said last month it was “not right” for the charity to take on such a big role in funding the World Health Organization (WHO). Over the years, the billionaire philanthropists have become the WHO’s second biggest donor, making the health agency heavily dependent on their support to keep functioning. Global health experts say that while this money is welcome, it gives the Gates an outsized influence and underscores the chronic funding problem WHO faces even as it contends with more and more health crises. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation alone is responsible for over 88 per cent of the total amount donated by philanthropic foundations to the WHO. Other contributors include the Bloomberg Family Foundation (3.5 per cent), the Wellcome Trust (1.1 per cent) and the Rockefeller Foundation (0.8 per cent). In 2018-2019, the United States was the largest donor at $893 million, accounting for around 15 per cent of WHO’s budget. The Gates Foundation came only second, with $531 million. Most of these voluntary contributions are “specified” - meaning they are tied to a specific programme or health campaign in a specific part of the world and are given a detailed time frame during which to be spent. Polio eradication, for instance, has long been WHO’s best-funded program, mainly because much of the Gates Foundation’s contributions have been directed to that cause.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on health from reliable major media sources.
When Covid-19 struck ... four organizations took on roles often played by governments — but without the accountability of governments. While nations were still debating the seriousness of the pandemic, the groups identified potential vaccine makers and targeted investments in the development of tests, treatments and shots. And they used their clout with the World Health Organization to help create an ambitious worldwide distribution plan. The largest and most powerful was the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, one of the largest philanthropies in the world. Then there was Gavi, the global vaccine organization that Gates helped to found to inoculate people in low-income nations, and the Wellcome Trust, a British research foundation with a multibillion dollar endowment that had worked with the Gates Foundation in previous years. Finally, there was the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, or CEPI, the international vaccine research and development group that Gates and Wellcome both helped to create in 2017. The organizations spent at least $8.3 million lobbying the U.S. and E.U., according to an analysis of lobbying disclosures. Now, critics are raising significant questions about the equity and effectiveness of the group’s response to the pandemic — and the serious limitations of outsourcing the pandemic response to unelected, privately-funded groups.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on COVID from reliable major media sources.
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