#new york whistleblower attorney

[brownllc]

whistle blower law firm

How can an experienced #whistleblowerlawfirm, such as Brown, LLC, #protectwhistleblowers from retaliation from their employer? https://ifightforyourrights.com/contact-us/

[nationallawreview]

Whistleblower Tax Fraud Lawsuit Against Bitcoin Billionaire Settles for $40 Million

MicroStrategy’s founder is alleged to have falsified tax documents for ten years. The settlement resolves the first whistleblower lawsuit filed under 2021 amendments to the DC False Claims Act. Key Takeaways On June 3, the District of Columbia Office of the Attorney General announced the $40 million settlement with Michael Saylor It is the largest income tax recovery in D.C. history The…

[odinsblog]

NEW YORK (AP) — Peter Buxtun, the whistleblower who revealed that the U.S. government allowed hundreds of Black men in rural Alabama to go untreated for syphilis in what became known as the Tuskegee study, has died. He was 86.

Buxtun died May 18 of Alzheimer’s disease in Rocklin, California, according to his attorney, Minna Fernan.

Buxtun is revered as a hero to public health scholars and ethicists for his role in bringing to light the most notorious medical research scandal in U.S. history. Documents that Buxtun provided to The Associated Press, and its subsequent investigation and reporting, led to a public outcry that ended the study in 1972.

Forty years earlier, in 1932, federal scientists began studying 400 Black men in Tuskegee, Alabama, who were infected with syphilis. When antibiotics became available in the 1940s that could treat the disease, federal health officials ordered that the drugs be withheld. The study became an observation of how the disease ravaged the body over time.

In the mid-1960s, Buxtun was a federal public health employee working in San Francisco when he overheard a co-worker talking about the study. The research wasn’t exactly a secret — about a dozen medical journal articles about it had been published in the previous 20 years. But hardly anyone had raised any concerns about how the experiment was being conducted.

“This study was completely accepted by the American medical community,” said Ted Pestorius of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, speaking at a 2022 program marking the 50th anniversary of the end of the study.

Buxtun had a different reaction. After learning more about the study, he raised ethical concerns in a 1966 letter to officials at the CDC. In 1967, he was summoned to a meeting in Atlanta, where he was chewed out by agency officials for what they deemed to be impertinence. Repeatedly, agency leaders rejected his complaints and his call for the men in Tuskegee to be treated.

He left the U.S. Public Health Service and attended law school, but the study ate at him. In 1972, he provided documents about the research to Edith Lederer, an AP reporter he had met in San Francisco. Lederer passed the documents to AP investigative reporter Jean Heller, telling her colleague, “I think there might be something here.”

Heller’s story was published on July 25, 1972, leading to Congressional hearings, a class-action lawsuit that resulted in a $10 million settlement and the study’s termination about four months later. In 1997, President Bill Clinton formally apologized for the study, calling it “shameful.”

The leader of a group dedicated to the memory of the study participants said Monday they are grateful to Buxtun for exposing the experiment.

“We are thankful for his honesty and his courage,” said Lille Tyson Head, whose father was in the study.

(continue reading)

[youthkenworld]

Everything Republican

Posted by 

Matthias S. Regen1y

“I Was Driving Completed Ballots from NY to Pennsylvania – So I Decided to Speak Up” — UPDATE: USPS Contract Truck Driver Who Transferred 288,000 FRAUDULENT BALLOTS from NY to PA Speaks at Presser

As reported earlier by Cassandra Fairbanks new election fraud whistleblowers came forward on Tuesday, including one who witnessed the shipping of an estimated 144,000-288,000 completed ballots across three state lines on October 21.

The new information was made public at a press conference by the Amistad Project of the Thomas More Society, a national constitutional litigation organization.

The Amistad Project said that they have sworn declarations that state over 300,000 ballots are at issue in Arizona, 548,000 in Michigan, 204,000 in Georgia, and over 121,000 in Pennsylvania. They claim that their evidence reveals multi-state illegal efforts by USPS workers to influence the election in at least three of six swing states.

The whistleblower statements include potentially hundreds of thousands of completed absentee ballots being transported across three state lines, and a trailer filled with ballots disappearing in Pennsylvania.

Attorney Phil Kline said, “130,000 to 280,000 completed ballots for the 2020 general election were shipped from Bethpage, NY, to Lancaster, PA, where those ballots and the trailer in which they were shipped disappeared.”

Truck driver Jesse Morgan was present at the press conference and spoke for 9 minutes about his unbelievable ordeal. Morgan was tasked with delivering completed ballots to Pennsylvania from New York state.

This was explosive testimony.

Jesse Morgan: In total I saw 24 gaylords, or large cardboard containers of ballots, loaded into my trailer. These gaylords contained plastic trays, I call them totes or trays of ballots stacked on top of each other. All the envelopes were the same size. I saw the envelopes had return addresses… They were complete ballots.”

Jesse went on to say that he sat in Harrisburg for hours and when he was told to leave the supervisor at the post office would not give him a slip or an overtime slip so he could get paid. Jesse said the manager-supervisor was “kinda rude.”

Jesse’s testimony today revealed that employees at the United States Post Office were in on the conspiracy to steal the votes.

The video ALREADY has 1 million views!

Jesse Morgan, a truck driver with USPS subcontractor says he was suspicious of his cargo load of 288,000 COMPLETED ballots: “I was driving completed ballots from New York to Pennsylvania. I didn’t know, so I decided to speak up.” pic.twitter.com/YYIiZL1V55 — Team Trump (@TeamTrump) December 1, 2020

UPDATE from reader Brian: Please pass this info along. I am a professional driver, and all companies have onboard computers in the trucks. They record miles, location, departure, and arrival times. This electronic log book will be a valuable resource to verify any movement of illegal ballots. This is more unbelievable at every turn. Contact me if more info is needed. Give info to all your other staff writers please.

Source:"I Was Driving Completed Ballots from NY to Pennsylvania - So I Decided to Speak Up" -- UPDATE: USPS Contract Truck Driver Who Transferred 288,000 FRAUDULENT BALLOTS from NY to PA Speaks at Presser (VIDEO)As reported earlier by Cassandra Fairbanks new election fraud whistleblowers came forward on Tuesday, including one who witnessed the shipping of an estimated 144,000-288,000 completed ballots across three state lines on October 21. The new information was made public at a press conference by the Amistad Project of the Thomas More Society, a national constitutional…https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2020/12/driving-completed-ballots-ny-pennsylvania-decided-speak-update-usps-contract-truck-driver-transferred-288000-fraudulent-ballots-ny-pa-speaks-presser/

[darkmaga-retard]

A damning affidavit by an alleged whistleblower regarding the ABC News presidential debate has emerged on social media.

The six-page affidavit was reportedly filed in New York on Monday, Sept. 9 – one day before Donald Trump and Kamala Harris’ televised debate. The anonymous whistleblower, who said they did not endorse the former president, claims to have been an employee for over ten years.

It alleges that “many employees” of ABC questioned the fairness of the debate given the “common knowledge” that both moderators “are well known not to support Donald Trump,” adding that assurances were given to ensure a balanced broadcast.

Section four, pertaining to debate fairness, is the most damning. The affidavit claims the Harris campaign “received particular accommodations” such as a smaller podium for the shorter candidate as well as “assurances regarding split-screen television views” to favorably impact the Vice President.

The document also claims that Trump would be subjected to fact-checking throughout the debate while “Harris would not face comparable scrutiny.” It also alleges that the Democrat’s campaign was provided with sample questions after it imposed restrictions on questions relating to President Joe Biden’s health and Harris’ tenure as San Francisco Attorney General.

[foreverlogical]

NEW YORK (AP) — The National Rifle Association and its former longtime leader were found liable Friday in a lawsuit centered on the organization’s lavish spending.

The New York jury found that Wayne LaPierre, who was the NRA’s CEO for three decades, misspent millions of dollars of the group’s money on pricey perks, and it ordered him to repay the group $4,351,231. Jurors also found that the NRA omitted or misrepresented information in its tax filings and violated New York law by failing to adopt a whistleblower policy.

LaPierre, 74, sat stone-faced in the front row of the courtroom as the verdict was read aloud. The jury actually found him liable for $5.4 million, but it determined he’d already paid back a little over a million.

The verdict is a win for New York Attorney General Letitia James, a Democrat who campaigned on investigating the NRA’s not-for-profit status. It is the latest blow to the powerful group, which in recent years has been beset by financial troubles and dwindling membership. LaPierre, its longtime face, announced his resignation on the eve of the trial.

NRA general counsel John Frazer and retired finance chief Wilson Phillips were also defendants in the case. Phillips was ordered to pay $2 million in damages to the NRA. Frazer, meanwhile, was found to have violated his duties, but was not ordered to pay any money.

The penalties paid by LaPierre and Phillips will go back to the NRA, which was portrayed in the case both as a defendant that lacked internal controls to prevent misspending and as a victim of that same misconduct.

James also wants the three men to be banned from serving in leadership positions at any charitable organizations that conduct business in New York. A judge will decide that question during the next phase of the state Supreme Court trial.

Another former NRA executive turned whistleblower, Joshua Powell, settled with the state last month, agreeing to testify at the trial, pay the NRA $100,000 and forgo further involvement with nonprofits.

James sued the NRA and its executives in 2020 under her authority to investigate not-for-profits registered in the state.

She originally sought to have the entire organization dissolved, but Manhattan Judge Joel M. Cohen ruled in 2022 that the allegations did not warrant a “corporate death penalty.”

The trial, which began last month, cast a spotlight on the leadership, organizational culture and finances of the powerful lobbying group, which was founded more than 150 years ago in New York City to promote rifle skills and grew into a political juggernaut that influenced federal law and presidential elections.

Before he stepped down, LaPierre, had led the NRA’s day-to-day operations since 1991, acting as its face and becoming one of the country’s most influential figures in shaping gun policy.

During the trial, state lawyers argued that he dodged financial disclosure requirements while treating the NRA as his personal piggy bank, liberally dipping into its coffers for African safaris and other questionable expenditures.

His lawyer cast the trial as a political witch hunt by James.

LaPierre billed the NRA more than $11 million for private jet flights and spent more than $500,000 on eight trips to the Bahamas over a three-year span, state lawyers said.

He also authorized $135 million in NRA contracts for a vendor whose owners showered him with free trips to the Bahamas, Greece, Dubai and India, as well as access to a 108-foot (33-meter) yacht.

LaPierre claimed he hadn’t realized the travel tickets, hotel stays, meals, yacht access and other luxury perks counted as gifts, and that the private jet flights were necessary for his safety.

But he conceded that he had wrongly expensed private flights for his family and accepted vacations from vendors doing business with the NRA without disclosing them.

Among those who testified at the trial was Oliver North, a one-time NRA president and former National Security Council military aide best known for his central role in the Iran-Contra scandal of the 1980s. North, who resigned from the NRA in 2019, said he was pushed out after raising allegations of financial irregularities.

After reporting a $36 million deficit in 2018 fueled largely by misspending, the NRA cut back on longstanding programs that had been core to its mission, including training and education, recreational shooting and law enforcement initiatives. In 2021, it filed for bankruptcy and sought to incorporate in Texas instead of New York, but a judge rejected the move, saying it was an attempt to duck James’ lawsuit.

Despite its recent woes, the NRA remains a political force. Republican presidential hopefuls flocked to its annual convention last year and former President Donald Trump spoke at an NRA event earlier this month — his eighth speech to the association, it said.

[beardedmrbean]

Federal and local authorities arrested dozens of employees of New York City's public housing agency in a series of morning raids Tuesday linked to a massive bribery and extortion plot, according to prosecutors.

The raids, coordinated by Homeland Security Investigations and the city's Department of Investigation, netted the most single-day bribery arrests in the history of the Justice Department, according to Damian Williams, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York.

In all, 70 people were arrested in six states.

ILLEGAL MASTERMINDS OF NYC ROBBERY RING HACKED BANK APPS, RESOLD STOLEN PHONES OVERSEAS

"As we allege, the 70 defendants charged today allegedly demanded over $2 million in bribe money from contractors in exchange for giving out over $13 million of work," he said at a news briefing. "And if the contractors didn't pay up, the defendants wouldn't give them the work."

According to court documents, an unnamed co-conspirator allegedly texted another asking how much of a bribe she should demand: "1k per cool?"

NYPD RELEASES MIGRANT RAID PHOTOS AS SOFT-ON-CRIME LEADERS FACE NATIONAL OUTRAGE

"No problem babe, as long as your are being blessed," Angela Williams, a 64-year-old suspect who is not related to the U.S. attorney, allegedly replied.

The New York City Housing Authority, or NYCHA, is the country's largest public housing system and takes in more than $1.5 billion in federal funding every year, according to the DOJ. 

As a public entity, it is required to bid contracts for most repairs or construction work and go with the lowest bidder. But there is an exemption for essential projects, such as plumbing emergencies or broken windows, that cost under $10,000.

Management at each building was allowed to make "no-bid" deals for those jobs.

All of the suspects were NYCHA superintendents or assistant superintendents when prosecutors say they demanded cuts of between $500 to $2,000 or more per job, ultimately collecting $2 million of taxpayers' money since it came out of the funds contractors received from city and federal agencies.

"That's classic pay-to-play, and this culture of corruption at NYCHA ends today," Williams said.

The kickback scheme was so pervasive it took place in almost a third of NYCHA's properties, he said.

Investigators are asking contractors who may have been victimized by similar demands for pay-to-play bribes to contact the DOJ's whistleblower program at USANYS.WBP@usdoj.gov or the city's inspector general.

Most of the suspects have been charged with taking bribes and extortion, which carry 10- and 20-year maximum sentences in federal prison, respectively. Several face more charges.

[chimaeraonwards]

Decided to make my additions to @storiesfromgaza's post about the Israeli skin banks into a separate post. See the original post here.

Whatever you're thinking about this, it's actually 100 times worse. I highly encourage people to read this journal article from 2011 by anthropologist Nancy Scheper-Hughes to get the whole picture. It describes in detail how and why this happened.

More under cut and reader discretion is advised.

Ok so I've read through this article and here are some screenshots of the article itself if people don't want to read the whole thing. A lot of parts are too graphic for Tumblr so I'll share the "tamer" ones (spoiler: they're still terrible)

The article mentioned below is from Donald Boström, a Swedish journalist, from a Swedish tabloid, Aftonbladet, on August 17, 2009.

I couldn't get a good screenshot but here is an expert I wanted to share:

We know that Israel has a great need for organs, that there is a vast and illegal trade of organs which has been running for many years now, that the authorities are aware of it and that doctors in managing positions at the big hospitals participate, as well as civil servants at various levels. We also know that young Palestinian men disappeared, that they were brought back after five days, at night, under tremendous secrecy, stitched back together after having been cut from abdomen to chin. It is time to bring clarity to this macabre business, to shed light on what is going on and what has taken place in the territories occupied by Israel since the intifada began (Boström2009).

Boström's story was faced by so much backlash by the Israeli government and people. Want to know who came to their defence? The New York Times of course.

But what about patient/donor consent? Well according to these people, it's already presumed. In fact, you're a national hero for harvesting these organs.

If you think that they only harvest (what a terrifying concept) from Palestinians, think again.

Remember the story of Rachel Corrie? Yeah, her too.

Most of this article is about the atrocities done by Professor Jehuda Hiss, a Polish immigrant to Israel. Here is an excerpt on an investigation against him.

Can't get a good screenshot but here is an excerpt on how he has paid for these crimes:

In 2005 new allegations of organs trafficking at Abu Kabir surfaced and Hiss admitted to having removed body parts from 125 bodies without authorization. In exchange for a guilty plea, Hiss was not pressed with criminal charges by the attorney general. He was removed as director but given the title of chief pathologist at Abu Kabir, and to this day he remains the state of Israel's highest-ranking state pathologist.

The author of this article, Scheper-Hughes, had an interview with Hiss and here is how he describes himself.

There's so much more in this article that I'm 90% sure violates Tumblr's policies if I share them.

This article also covers many things like (but not limited to) the medical abuses faced by Palestinian prisoners at a special detention facility, at Nes Ziyyona which is near Tel Aviv), how the organs would be harvested to avoid suspicion and detection by the families of the deceased, and how people have been whistleblowing on this issue for ages while institutions like the Israeli government and The New York Times chose to sweep it under the rug.

So yeah, free Palestine. 🇵🇸 🇵🇸 🇵🇸 🇵🇸

Source: Scheper-Hughes, N. (2011). The Body of the Terrorist: Blood Libels, Bio-Piracy, and the Spoils of War at the Israeli Forensic Institute. Social Research, 78(3), 849–886. http://www.jstor.org/stable/23347019

[follow-up-news]

A New York judge on Mondaytemporarilybanned Wayne LaPierre from returning to lead the National Rifle Association but said he would not appoint an independent monitor to oversee the gun rights group. State Supreme Court Judge Joel Cohen denied one of the most significant remedies proposed by New York Attorney General Letitia James after a jury found the NRA and its executives liable in a civil corruption trial.  In February, jurors determined that LaPierre, 74, had diverted millions of dollars from the NRA to live luxuriously, while the organization failed to properly manage its finances and adopt a whistleblower policy. 

[brownllc]

Whistleblower Lawyer | Protecting Whistleblowers Across the USA

Connect with an award-winning whistleblower law firm with tens of millions recovered. Free consultation with the top whistleblower lawyers.

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

The “missing” witness long-touted by Republicans in Congress as the missing link to their probe into alleged Biden family corruption was accused of being an unregistered foreign agent for China and an international arms trafficker while violating U.S. sanctions on Iran and lying to investigators, among a laundry list of other federal charges unsealed Monday.

Dual U.S.-Israeli citizen Gal Luft was originally charged on Nov. 1, 2022 and arrested in February, according to a statement from the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Southern District of New York.

Luft had already skipped out on his bail while in Cyprus awaiting extradition to the U.S. for the case in March—though he alleges that the sprawling case against him represents political persecution and retaliation by the Biden administration against a potential witness.

The House Oversight Committee has for months touted a secret “informant” who could provide evidence of an alleged “quid pro quo” deal for foreign aid between an Obama-era Biden and an unnamed country—though details of the arrangement remain murky and unverified at best.

Those claims partially unraveled when Rep. James Comer (R-KY) in May held a much-hyped press conference in which he promised to expose the preliminary findings of four months’ worth of scrutiny into the Biden family’s business dealings—while failing to air any real evidence of corruption. He then offered a partial excuse for the failure: their star witness had up and disappeared.

The situation was memorialized in a much-publicized Fox News interview, in which a credulous Maria Bartiromo appeared shocked by the revelations.

“Well, unfortunately, we can’t track down the informant,” the Kentucky representative said. “We’re hopeful that the informant is still there. The whistleblower knows the informant. The whistleblower is very credible.”

“We’re hopeful that we can find the informant,” Comer added. “Remember, these informants are kind of in the spy business, so they don’t make a habit of being seen a lot or being high-profile or anything like that.”

Luft then came forward days later in an interview with New York Post opinion columnist Miranda Devine, alleging that he was hiding out in an undisclosed location after being arrested on charges including international arms dealing, as well as a violation of the Foreign Agents Registration Act, among other charges.

“The chances of me getting a fair trial in Washington are virtually zero,” he told Devine as the reason he skipped out on his bail. “I had to do what I had to do.”

Despite the allegations, Comer doubled down on Friday, tweeting that Luft is a “very credible witness on Biden family corruption,” who “provided incriminating evidence to six officials from the FBI and the DOJ in a meeting in Brussels in March 2019.”

“We have no reason to believe the FBI & DOJ acted on this info,” he continued.

On Sunday, Republican Senator Ron Johnson (WI) added Luft should be granted immunity.

“Now, he’s literally fleeing for his life right now,” Johnson told Fox News’ Maria Bartiromo. “He’s on the run. He’s an important witness. He needs to be granted immunity to be able to testify and tell his story.”

Monday’s unsealed charges add some clarity to the laundry list of alleged crimes Luft is accused of—including a 2016 scheme to “recruit and pay” a White House adviser to support China-friendly policies without first filing as a foreign agent.

According to a release from the Justice Department, Luft is also accused of brokering arms deals with Chinese businesses to sell their wares in places such as the United Arab Emirates, Kenya and Libya—all without a valid U.S. license. Federal authorities allege that they have proof Luft hawked anti-tank launchers, grenade launchers, mortar rounds, aerial bombs, rockets and even drones.

To make matters worse, Justice Department prosecutors say he lied to them during interviews about the alleged scheme.

“During a voluntary interview with U.S. law enforcement in which he was asked questions about his involvement in arms trafficking, LUFT made multiple false statements, including that he had not sought to engage in or profit from arms deals,” the department’s statement reads.

Luft is also accused of brokering deals for Iranian oil—which he falsely labeled “Brazilian”—in violation of U.S. sanctions.

In all, Luft faces 36 counts that carry a maximum of 100 years in prison, according to the Justice Department.

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Leor Sapir

Published: Aug 25, 2023

The New York Times has published a new investigative report on the pediatric gender clinic at Washington University in St. Louis, home of case-manager-turned-whistleblower Jamie Reed. Last February, Reed alleged in The Free Press that her former clinic was harming adolescents with invasive and unnecessary treatments. “What’s happening to children,” she said, “is medically and morally appalling.”

Reed tried to raise her concerns with her superiors at Washington University but was shut down. She decided to file a sworn affidavit about the medical abuses she witnessed with the Missouri attorney general, an action that triggered a multiagency investigation that remains ongoing.

The Times’s article represents the first attempt by a major left-of-center newspaper to corroborate Reed’s claims. The author, Azeen Ghorayshi, says that “some of Ms. Reed’s claims could not be confirmed” and that “at least one of her claims included factual inaccuracies.” On the whole, however, Ghorayshi corroborates much of what Reed has said about her former clinic. Most important is the clinic’s disregard for clear “red flags.” Adolescents with serious mental health problems were prescribed puberty blockers or cross-sex hormones when they should have received mental health support.

Ghorayshi and the Times deserve credit for a well-researched article. Ghorayshi does a good job allowing different sides in the controversy to be heard. Her discussion of the medical research, though not the focus of her article, is refreshingly honest and accurate. Considering the pressure exerted on the Times and its reporters by transgender advocacy organizations like GLAAD to toe the ideological line, it takes courage to write a piece as rigorous and as thoughtful as this one.

And yet, the article has problems. Two in particular stand out. The first concerns the question of satisfaction and regret, and the second involves the role of mental-health interventions in pediatric gender medicine.

If the reader comes away from the Times piece feeling ambivalent about the St. Louis clinic, that is because Ghorayshi contrasts Reed’s allegations of wrongdoing with stories of families who say they are satisfied with the treatment their children received there. “It’s clear the St. Louis clinic benefited many adolescents,” says Ghorayshi.

But is it?

As a matter of principle, it is wrong to use satisfaction and regret as the benchmark for judging whether pediatric sex trait modification (PSTM) is a medically necessary and ethical practice. If medicine is to retain its authoritative role in human affairs, patient satisfaction alone cannot determine when interventions are medically necessary. Self-reported satisfaction is how we judge cosmetic procedures, not medically necessary ones. The role of the doctor is to heal, not please. Pleasing, though not unimportant, is secondary and subordinate to healing. Bitter pills are coated with sugar to make pleasing to patients, but it doesn’t follow that sugar is good for you or that doctors should encourage patients to eat it to their heart’s desire. Failure to distinguish the pleasant from the good can result in serious iatrogenic harm. More broadly, it can corrupt medicine and reduce it to mere consumerism.

Ghorayshi is right to take interest in the satisfaction of patients and families who attended the St. Louis clinic. But to leave it at that and to imply that patient satisfaction is a valid counterargument to Reed’s allegations is to miss the far deeper and more significant ethical issues involved. Worse, it’s to take a side in that ethical debate without presenting the competing arguments in a serious way.

I’ve written in the past about the vital importance of providing readers with context about the satisfaction/regret question, especially when it comes to how we think about the St. Louis clinic. If journalists contribute to the public’s (misguided) belief that short-term satisfaction of distressed teenagers with drugs and surgeries is ultimately what matters, they should at least mention that the validity of this framing is itself a key part, if not the heart, of the scientific and medical debate over PSTM.  

Research in gender medicine has found no necessary relationship between subjective satisfaction and more objective measurements of mental health and psychosocial functioning. One of the first follow-up papers on gender medicine published by Dutch clinicians in 1988, right around the time they began experimenting with hormonal interventions in adolescents, reflected on the question of subjective versus objective measurements of improvement. The paper acknowledged “a trend” in existing research on adult transsexuals at the time: “the subjective well-being of the transsexuals has increased, whereas an ‘improvement’ in their actual life situation is not always observed.”

A 2020 study by Finnish gender clinicians in the Nordic Journal of Psychiatry did look at more objective outcome measures. To assess whether hormonal interventions are beneficial, the authors used “proxies for adolescent development” including “age-appropriate living arrangements, peer relationships, school/work participation, romantic involvement, competence in managing everyday matters and need for psychiatric treatment.” The researchers found that patients “who did well in terms of psychiatric symptoms and functioning before cross-sex hormones mainly did well during real-life. Those who had psychiatric treatment needs or problems in school, peer relationships and managing everyday matters outside of home continued to have problems during real-life.” Thus, “Medical gender reassignment is not enough to improve functioning and relieve psychiatric comorbidities among adolescents with gender dysphoria.” Presumably, most of the patients were satisfied with their treatment.

The pivot in PSTM research from objective to subjective metrics may reflect an exasperation of the field with trying to find good, causal evidence of improvement in mental health and psychosocial functioning. It may also reflect the true but rarely acknowledged purpose of sex-trait modification, which is to achieve “embodiment goals,” i.e., desired cosmetic outcomes.

Let’s assume, however, that satisfaction/regret is the appropriate benchmark for evaluating the ethics of PSTM. What does the empirical literature tell us about satisfaction and regret from hormonal or surgical interventions? “The number of people who detransition or discontinue gender treatments is not precisely known,” Ghorayshi observes. “Small studies with differing definitions and methodologies have found rates ranging from 2 to 30 percent.”

Ghorayshi is correct. Given the poor quality of research in this field, we do not currently know the true rates of satisfaction and regret among adults who transitioned as adults. Still less do we know about regret and satisfaction in those who transitioned as adolescents. Another problem with relying on satisfaction—especially when, as is often the case in this field of research, follow-up happens mere months after procedures—is that it may be confounded by placebo and Hawthorne effects. (The latter term refers to “the phenomenon where clinical trial patients’ improvements may occur because they are being observed and given special attention.”)  Rigorous long-term data, which is more important than short-term data when it comes to adolescent decisions, will take at least another decade to collect and analyze.

Also missing from the Times piece is any serious treatment of the question of harms. Ghorayshi implies that detransitioners were harmed, but in her sworn affidavit Reed documents several instances of harm suffered by patients receiving gender-transitioning care that go unmentioned in the Times piece. These include a teenage girl who experienced bleeding vaginal lacerations following testosterone injections (a known side-effect) and another girl whose clitoris got so large from taking the androgenizing hormone that it painfully chafed against her underwear when she walked.

After conducting an internal investigation, in which it never bothered to interview Reed, Washington University reported that it did not find evidence of any “adverse physical reactions” among those treated at the gender clinic. Not a single case.

Considering how hard this is to believe, it would have been appropriate for Ghorayshi to probe deeper into this matter. Medical treatment decisions by their very nature require balancing benefits against harms. At a time when Americans need to hear the truth about what is known and not yet sufficiently studied about the side effects of these powerful drugs, Ghorayshi’s piece comes across as somewhat sanitized. Ghorayshi mentions 18 patients and families who say that they had “overwhelmingly positive” experiences at the St. Louis clinic, one patient—Alex—who discontinued testosterone after “realiz[ing] she was nonbinary,” and a file compiled by Reed and her coworker that documented 16 instances of detransition. What do these numbers tell us? The answer: close to nothing. The St. Louis clinic apparently had 613 patients who were medicalized during the relevant timeframe (Ghorayshi mentions 598, a number she takes from Washington University’s internal investigation, but Reed’s documents show otherwise). Since we don’t know the fate of the other patients, it’s impossible to draw any conclusions about the overall rates of regret or satisfaction. But again, whether most patients at the St. Louis clinic are satisfied or not is no rebuttal to Reed’s allegations. Using subjective satisfaction as the sole metric is reasonable for cosmetic procedures, but not for “medically necessary” ones.

This brings us to the second problem in the article. “The turmoil in St. Louis,” Ghorayshi writes, “underscores one of the most challenging questions in gender care for young people today: How much psychological screening should adolescents receive before they begin gender treatments?”

The key word here is “before.”

Ghorayshi’s question seems to suggest that the debate between Europe and the U.S. is over how much mental-health screening and counseling to offer adolescents before putting them on a medical track. In truth, the European countries have adopted an approach that emphasizes, for most gender dysphoric adolescents, mental health support instead of hormones.

Though she notes the divergence in medical policy in Europe versus the U.S., Ghorayshi doesn’t fully explain the nature of this divergence and understates its extent. True, Europe hasn’t banned hormonal interventions altogether. But if the restrictions now in place in Finland, Sweden, and Denmark (the situation in the U.K. is more complicated) were implemented in U.S. clinics, the majority of American teenagers now being put on the medical track would receive only mental-health support. In Denmark, for instance, the rate of intake-to-medicalization at the country’s centralized gender clinic was 65 percent in 2018. After restrictions were imposed, the rate fell to 6 percent in 2022.

Ghorayshi mentions a Washington Post op-ed from 2021 by two psychologists, Laura Edwards-Leeper and Erica Anderson, who support the early medical-intervention model albeit with guardrails. According to Ghorayshi, Edwards-Leeper and Anderson “warned that American gender clinics were prescribing hormones to some children who needed mental health support first” (my emphasis). But what Edwards-Leeper and Anderson actually argue in their op-ed is that comprehensive mental-health assessment is needed to figure out whether medicalization is appropriate—a subtle but crucial difference. Such assessment is necessary for differential diagnosis and avoidance of unnecessary and potentially harmful medicalization.

Thus, it’s not just that patients referred to the St. Louis clinic were not receiving “mental health support first.” If judged by Scandinavian standards, which are far more in line with the principles of evidence-based medicine, many or most patients at the St. Louis clinics were likely being given drugs they should not have been prescribed at all. While some may believe that current restrictions in Europe are about “trying everything again from scratch,” an equally plausible explanation is that this is the first step in a bigger retrenchment that will result in firm age restrictions. Time will tell.

Ghorayshi calls Republican laws “draconian,” but the truth is that these laws reflect a view of the underlying medical research and a policy stance much closer to those of European health authorities than those held by Democrats and U.S. medical associations. Condemning Republican laws while implying that the European changes are consistent with evidence-based medicine is, to put it mildly, puzzling.

Related to this is an impression Ghorayshi gives that a root cause (or even the root cause) of dysfunction at the St. Louis clinic was the sharp surge in the number of teenagers, many with serious psychological problems. The subtitle of the article itself says that the clinic “was overwhelmed by new patients and struggled to provide them with mental health care.” The article’s first sentence describes a clinic “buckling under an unrelenting surge in demand.” Ghorayshi later mentions the U.K.’s Tavistock clinic, where long wait times created pressures on clinicians to “affirm” and refer for hormonal treatments rather than do careful mental-health assessments.

But long wait times were only one of the problems identified by physician Hilary Cass in her investigation of the U.K. Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS). The other, and arguably more important problem, was the existence of “an affirmative approach” that “originated in the USA.” GIDS clinicians, Cass wrote, “feel under pressure to adopt an unquestioning affirmative approach [that is] at odds with the standard process of clinical assessment and diagnosis that they have been trained to undertake in all other clinical encounters.” Ghorayshi mentions this pressure on the clinicians but makes it seem as though it were somehow caused by the growing waitlists.

While Ghorayshi acknowledges the “affirming” model as part of the problem, she does not grapple with the true nature of that problem: the infiltration into medicine of a novel set of ideas, including that children have an innate and infallibly knowable “gender identity” and that “a child’s sense of reality” is the “navigational beacon to orient treatment around.” Ghorayshi’s use of terms like “transgender children” and “8-year-old transgender daughter,” though probably intended as a show of respect, implies that kids can know that they have a permanent transgender identity. Current research does not support this belief. Common sense and millennia of experience contradict it. The U.S. Endocrine Society itself says: “With current knowledge, we cannot predict the psychosexual outcome for any specific child.”

It is odd that in the short section of Ghorayshi’s article where she directly discusses the affirmative approach, the patients’ stories she tells all have happy endings. Indeed, she writes: “It’s clear the St. Louis clinic benefited many adolescents.” European health authorities have said the opposite: the current affirmative approach is a major cause of unsafe practices.

Moreover, the surface similarities between the St. Louis clinic and the Tavistock clinic obscure the more significant differences. As Hannah Barnes discusses in her book on Tavistock, GIDS was founded on a strong ethos of psychotherapy rather than medicalization. The story of Tavistock’s collapse is largely one of institutional mission creep: the founding ethos of 1989 was gradually replaced with a new understanding of the role of mental-health clinicians as rubber-stampers for experimental drugs.

In contrast, U.S. pediatric gender clinics were founded well after the Dutch started their experiment with puberty blockers and, it can reasonably be argued, for the purpose of offering these drugs. Endocrinologist Norman Spack, the founder of the first clinic in Boston, would later recall “salivating” at the prospect of using puberty blockers for children entering adolescence. In contrast with the Tavistock clinic, which referred patients to nearby hospitals for endocrine consultations, American gender clinics regularly employ endocrinologists like St. Louis’s Christopher Lewis, who, Ghorayshi notes, has prescribed hormones to patients after only a single visit. As the old saying goes, if you’re a hammer, every problem is a nail.

Given these important differences in the founding purpose, personnel composition, and sense of mission in American versus English clinics, it makes little sense to imply that the rush to medicalize at St. Louis was due to inadequate staffing of mental-health professionals. The surge in referrals may have been an aggravating factor, but it is not the root cause. The true root cause is the new ideology of gender and the mountain of subpar research that has been created to justify early intervention.

Ghorayshi and the Times deserve much credit for a report that is more thorough and balanced than many that we’ve seen from the newspaper of record in recent years on this issue. They are operating in a political environment in which even mere skepticism of PSTM is seen by some as complicity in “genocide.” They are challenging the received wisdom of their own political tribe, which is never easy.

On the other hand, the Times itself has promoted the narrative that PSTM is “medically necessary” and “life-saving,” and that criticism of it reeks of ignorance and bigotry. The trek back to impartiality and devotion to truth-telling will be long and arduous, but it begins with articles like Ghorayshi’s on Reed and the St. Louis clinic.

[dialogue-queered]

Comment: An update on the issues in a context where the US and Australia are now officially in diplomatic conflict over this matter.

Prem Thakkur

14 August 2023

The United States is considering a plea deal that would allow WikiLeaks founder and whistleblower Julian Assange to return to Australia, the Sydney Morning Herald reported Monday.

U.S. Ambassador to Australia Caroline Kennedy told the Morning Herald that there could be a “resolution” to Assange’s now-four-year detention in Britain. Assange, an Australian citizen, has been held in a London prison since 2019 while combating U.S. extradition efforts. He faces 18 criminal charges in the U.S., 17 of which allege violations of the Espionage Act.

Kennedy’s comments come weeks after U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken rebuffed Australia’s calls to end the prosecution against Assange. After a July meeting with Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong in Brisbane, Blinken said the whistleblower was “charged with very serious criminal conduct” for his role in publishing classified American government materials. The files Assange shared in 2010 included footage of a U.S. airstrike in Baghdad that killed 18 civilians — including journalists — and hundreds of thousands of field reports from the Iraq War.

“There is a way to resolve it,” Kennedy said on Assange’s detention, adding that a plea deal would be “up to the Justice Department.” The Department of Justice declined to comment. The State Department did not respond to The Intercept’s request for comment.

“The administration appears to be searching for an off-ramp ahead of [the Australian prime minister’s] first state visit to DC in October,” Gabriel Shipton, Assange’s brother, told The Intercept. “If one isn’t found we could see a repeat of a very public rebuff delivered by Tony Blinken to the Australian Foreign Minister two weeks ago in Brisbane.”

Dan Rothwell, an international law expert at Australian National University, told the Morning Herald that he believes a likely outcome would involve American authorities downgrading the charges against Assange in exchange for a guilty plea, while taking into account the four years he has already spent in prison.

In May, Kennedy met with a cross-party delegation of parliamentary supporters of Assange. “The U.S. and Australia have a very important and close relationship, and it’s time to demonstrate that,” Independent MP Andrew Wilkie said at the time.

Assange’s case has raised major press freedom concerns around the globe.“The United States is applying extra-territorial reach by charging Assange, who is not a US citizen and did not commit alleged crimes in the US, under its Espionage Act,” a group of former Australian attorneys general wrote to Prime Minister Anthony Albanese last week. “We believe that this sets a very dangerous precedent and has the potential to put at risk anyone, anywhere in the world, who publishes information that the US unilaterally deems to be classified for security reasons.”

As part of WikiLeaks’ release of documents, Assange coordinated with outlets like Spain’s El País, France’s Le Monde, the U.K.’s The Guardian, and the New York Times to release classified cables revealing the inner-workings of bargaining, diplomacy, and threat-making around the world. 

Assange has faced legal pressure since his mass documents leak in 2010; he sought asylum in Ecuador in 2012 and lost it before being imprisoned in London. In June, the Morning Herald reported that the FBI was seeking new information about Assange, disturbing the sense of optimism in Australia that had come from Kennedy’s meeting with lawmakers.

The ambassador’s latest comments have renewed hope from Assange’s family for a solution to the 13-year-long limbo he has faced.

“This is a sign that they don’t want this playing out in American courts, particularly during an election cycle,” Shipton told Sky News on Monday, “so the U.S. administration is really looking for an off-ramp here for what is an extremely, extremely controversial press freedom prosecution.”

[xtruss]

Boeing Whistleblower Found Dead In 'Midst Of' Retaliation Case; Attorney Says He’s Shocked

John Barnett, 62, was found dead of "self-inflicted" gunshot wound, police said.

— By Victor Ordonez and Amanda Maile | March 12, 2024

John Barnett. Netlix Photo

A former Boeing employee who raised numerous concerns about the company's production standards died from a "self-inflicted" gunshot wound Saturday, per a coroner's report. The former employee was actively engaged in a whistleblower complaint against the company prior to his death, the employee's attorney confirmed.

John Barnett, 62, was found by police officers on the morning of March 9 in a vehicle parked at a Holiday Inn along Savannah Highway "holding a silver hand gun in his right hand," according to the Charleston Police Department.

Police said they were responding to a hotel worker's call after the worker heard a "pop" from Barnett's vehicle about 30 minutes prior to officers arriving, per the police report. Barnett had checked into the hotel on March 2 and was due to check out on March 8.

A plane overflight the Boeing sign on the wall of the Boeing Distribution Services Inc. HQ in Hialeah, Fla., March 12, 2024.

Responding officers discovered a male inside a vehicle "suffering from a gunshot wound to the head," the incident report reads. "He was pronounced deceased at the scene."

The Charleston Police Department said the investigation is still active.

Barnett worked for Boeing for 32 years until his retirement in 2017. He had been actively involved in litigation against the company -- he was deposed before Boeing lawyers last week, according to his lawyer.

Barnett, 62, filed his whistleblower complaint shortly after his retirement from Boeing in 2017. He came forward publicly in 2019 when he and other former Boeing employees partook in interviews with The New York Times. Barnett and others accused Boeing of prioritizing profits over safety.

"John was in the midst of a deposition in his whistleblower retaliation case, which finally was nearing the end," Barnett's attorneys, Robert Turkewitz and Brian Knowles, said in a statement Tuesday. "He was in very good spirits and really looking forward to putting this phase of his life behind him and moving on. We didn't see any indication he would take his own life. No one can believe it."

“Nope! He Didn’t Commit Suicide. He Was Murdered”

Boeing has moved to dismiss the case on several occasions and has denied all of Barnett's allegations – including claims the company put profits over safety. “Safety issues are immediately investigated, and changes are made wherever necessary,” said a Boeing spokesperson at the time of his lawsuit.

Upon learning of Barnett's passing, Boeing released a statement: "We are saddened by Mr. Barnett's passing, and our thoughts are with his family and friends."

The news follows the completion of the Federal Aviation Administration's (FAA) audit of Boeing's production lines after a Boeing 737 MAX 9 plane lost its door plug mid-flight earlier this year.

Local authorities found Boeing whistleblower John Barnett dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound in the state of South Carolina over the weekend, the Charleston County Coroner's Office said in a press release.

The New York Times reported Monday that Boeing failed 33 of 89 audits. Spirit Aerosystems -- a supplier for Boeing that manufactures the fuselage for the 737 -- failed 7 of 13 audits from the FAA.

In response to the results, Boeing said it will "continue to implement immediate changes and develop a comprehensive action plan to strengthen safety and quality, and build the confidence of our customers and their passengers."

[blogparanormalexpresso2stuff]

UFO BOMBSHELL & LIVE REACTION RICHARD DOLAN, DANNY SHEEHAN, LINDA MOULTON HOWE

On June 5, 2023, a major new breaking story occurred in the UFO/UAP field concerning the allegations of a significant new whistleblower, David Grusch. This is covered in an article from the Debrief by Leslie Kean and Ralph Blumenthal, who previously wrote important UFO pieces for the New York Times. Grusch has stated that there is definitely a UFO crash retrieval program in existence and has been around for many decades. Moreover, it is subject to international rivalries. There is much more in the article, which is linked below. Richard Dolan was at the Contact in the Desert UFO conference when the story broke and incorporated the news into his final lecture there. This video includes an introduction to the news by Richard, along with clips from his lecture, then the breaking news story, then discussion with attorney Danny Sheehan, and finally comments by researcher Linda Moulton Howe. Historical events and reactions.

Read the Debrief article here:

https://thedebrief.org/intelligence-o...

[darkmaga-retard]

Introducing the top ten news stories they chose not to tell you this week.

The Vigilant Fox

Aug 18, 2024

#10 - Attorney reveals global plan to push monkeypox into PLANdemic territory.

• Watch our exclusive interview with attorney Tom Renz

#9 - Tucker Carlson declares the COVID vax is POISON and says that refusing it is one of his greatest achievements.

#8 - The “real story” behind the Nord Stream Pipeline explosion finally is being told.

#7 - Robert Kennedy Jr. drops massive truth bombs about free speech.

#6 - Rob Schneider reveals TV doctor’s shocking ‘anti-vax’ admission.

#5 - Ten teens gave up their smartphones for a month, and something remarkable happened.

#4 - A New York Times report unveils disturbing insights into who is really running America.

#3 - Trump shooter’s body GONE, FBI cleaned up Butler crime scene just one day after assassination attempt.

#2 - Medical whistleblower blows the lid on just how sick America really is.

#1 - Kamala Harris’ campaign BUSTED spoofing news outlets in headline-altering ad scheme.

• Watch our exclusive interview with cyber expert Mike Benz

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BONUS #1 - Audience Erupts in Laughter When Stephen Colbert Says CNN “Just Reports the News as It Is”

BONUS #2 - What Trump’s Near-Assassination Reveals

BONUS #3 - The Elon/Trump Interview: Must-See Moments

BONUS #4 - Kamala Harris Has a New COVID Vax Mandate for All Campaign Employees

BONUS #5 - How to Get Ivermectin, Z-Pak, and More