A US citizen has been detained and tortured in Saudi Arabia and may be on his last leg, sources tell the New York Times. Walid Fitaihi was apparently held against his will in November 2017 at the Ritz Carlton in Riyadh, where guards blindfolded, stripped, slapped, and bound him, then shocked him with electricity for about an hour. A friend says the Harvard-trained doctor was whipped so badly he couldn’t sleep on his wounded back for days. “It is believed that Dr. Fitaihi has been and is tortured at least psychologically during his imprisonment,” his attorney Howard Cooper wrote the State Department in January, per CNN. Cooper described his client as “physically deteriorated” and “emotionally broken.” Now American friends of Fitaihi, 54, are pressing Washington to address his case and criticizing President Trump’s inaction.
Category Archives: Profiteering
Trump tweet about Scottish golf course an ‘invitation to graft’ | US news | The Guardian
The president sent the tweet in the early hours of Saturday. He later went on to deliver a rambling, controversial and sometimes obscene speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference, or CPAC, near Washington. “Very proud of perhaps the greatest golf course anywhere in the world,” Trump wrote, embedding a Trump Organization tweet in praise of Trump International Scotland, the Aberdeenshire course he opened in 2012. “Also, furthers UK relationship!” In response Walter Shaub, a former head of the independent US Office of Government Ethics, wrote: “This is Trump’s most explicit commingling of personal interests and public office to date. This is the tone from the top that leads his appointees to violate ethics rules. This is shameless, corrupt and repugnant presidential profiteering. This is an invitation to graft.”
Source: Trump tweet about Scottish golf course an ‘invitation to graft’ | US news | The Guardian
Avian Flu Diary: Nature: Bat Influenza Receptors In Other Mammals (Including Humans) Bats flourish and overpopulate when humans overproduce fruits that bats feed on! Game on! and who knows when we strike out!
#13,894 Exactly 7 years ago today ( Feb 27, 2012 ) we looked at an announcement from scientists from the U.S. CDC and the Universid…
Source: Avian Flu Diary: Nature: Bat Influenza Receptors In Other Mammals (Including Humans)
The U.S.-Venezuela Aid Convoy Story Is Clearly Bogus, but No One Wants to Say It
In fact, no neutral observer of international aid thinks Bolton and Abrams’ convoy is anything but a mechanism to foment civil war and regime change. We know this because high-level administration officials and their allies on the right keep telling us that’s the case. As the New York Post recently proclaimed, “U.S. delivers aid to town bordering Venezuela to undermine President Nicolas Maduro.” Donald Trump delivered a long and rambling speech in Miami last week and didn’t once mention human rights, instead railing against the evils of socialism. Former acting FBI director Andrew McCabe reflects in his new book that Trump has openly fantasized about overthrowing Maduro, something he has discussed in White House meetings. “That’s the country we should be going to war with,” Trump said, according to McCabe. “They have all that oil, and they’re right on our back door.” Determined to maintain U.S. hegemony and control over the world’s largest-known oil reserves, the Trump officials plotting this latest coup aren’t even bothering to take its humanitarian pretext seriously. Why, then, are purportedly centrist and liberal media outlets?
Source: The U.S.-Venezuela Aid Convoy Story Is Clearly Bogus, but No One Wants to Say It
‘Venezuelan blood is being spilled’: tension flares near border with Brazil | World news | The Guardian – How many Venezuelan lives have been lost due to US and European Sanctions over past several years?
While the world watches supporters of Guaidó and Maduro at the Colombian frontier, a remote region sees days of drama and fear
‘The Monsters Are the Men’: Inside a Thriving Sex Trafficking Trade in Florida – The New York Times
First, a health inspector spotted several suitcases. Then she noticed an unusual stash of clothing, food and bedding. A young woman who was supposed to be a massage therapist spoke little English and seemed unusually nervous. The inspector reported her findings to police. They would eventually learn that her suspicions were right: The women were not just employees: They were living in the day spa, sleeping on massage tables and cooking meals on hot plates in the back. Some of them had had their passports confiscated. The inspector’s suspicions prompted a sprawling investigation across four Florida counties and two states — Florida and New York — over nearly eight months, resulting in the disruption of what authorities say was a multimillion-dollar human-trafficking and prostitution operation.
Waleed Shahid of the Justice Democrats is a Lying S@#$&%rd! – Balloon Juice
These fanatics aren’t interested in making things better, they are interested in promoting themselves, fleecing their donors, and ultimately tearing down the people that have the only real chance of ending the current President’s reelection chances and then beginning the long, hard, slow, and frustrating work of fixing all of the messes that the President, his administration, and his Republican Party and conservative movement enablers have created. I’m all for opening up the debate and pulling the center back somewhere closer to where it should be from where the Republicans and the conservative movement have pulled it for over the past 40 years. Waleed Shahid, the Justice Democrats, his fellow travelers, and their attempt to create an ideological inflexible Tea Party and Breitbart of the left is not the solution to any of these problems. As I’ve been writing here for almost three years, we were attacked and are still being attacked by a hostile foreign power! We are at war! But rather than everyone that isn’t supporting the domestic beneficiaries of the ongoing attacks – the President, the Republican Party, and the conservative movement that supports them – pulling together to fi
Source: Waleed Shahid of the Justice Democrats is a Lying Shitbird! – Balloon Juice
Italian MPs demand answers over claims Salvini’s League sought Kremlin funding | World news | The Guardian
The League has been developing ties with Russia since 2013. Salvini has long admired Putin, posting a photo on social media of their first encounter in 2014. In 2017, the League signed a co-operation agreement with the ruling United Russia party. In June of last year, Salvini reacted angrily to a suggestion by billionaire financier George Soros that the League was receiving money from the Kremlin. “I have never received a lira, a euro or a rouble from Russia,” Salvini said at the time. Massimiliano Panarari, a politics professor at Luiss university in Rome, said that while the League was very careful when it came to the party’s finances, there was a clear “common vision and tactical convergence” with the Kremlin. “Their interests are the same: national sovereignty and attacking the EU,” Panarari said.
China Uses DNA to Track Its People, With the Help of American Expertise – The New York Times “If you believe they did not know how they were helping Chinese inhumane rights – I have a bridge, I can sell you cheap!”
To bolster their DNA capabilities, scientists affiliated with China’s police used equipment made by Thermo Fisher, a Massachusetts company. For comparison with Uighur DNA, they also relied on genetic material from people around the world that was provided by Kenneth Kidd, a prominent Yale University geneticist.
4 Ways ICE Doesn’t Hold Immigration Detention Facilities Accountable : Immigration Impact
ICE fails to penalize contractors that don’t meet key detention standards. All facilities with an ICE contract are supposed to follow national detention standards. The standards generally define the facility’s responsibilities, services, and safety and security requirements. ICE’s own inspection process—which the OIG previously found to be inadequate—uncovered more than 14,000 instances of deficient standards at the contract facilities between October 2015 and June 2018. Despite identifying deficiencies, such as failing to notify ICE of sexual assaults or allegations of staff misconduct, ICE imposed a financial penalty on bad contractors only twice. That’s 0.014 percent of identified deficiencies.
Source: 4 Ways ICE Doesn’t Hold Immigration Detention Facilities Accountable : Immigration Impact
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