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Want Slavery Reparations? Go Ask Muslim Countries, Says Scholar

It’s arguable that the people who complain about slavery most actually may love it, in a perverse way. After all, it provides so many with excuses for failure, anti-Western talking points, and opportunities to extract hand-outs. Just consider “reparations,” which are now continually demanded (by people enslaved only by their own indoctrination). Why, California Governor Gavin Newsom, panderer-in-chief, just signed a bill Friday to create a reparations-administration agency. Never mind that California was never a slave state.

But to African-descent people who want reparations, a British-Bangladeshi scholar has a message: You’re barking up the wrong tree.

You need to seek your booty elsewhere — from Muslim countries.

Dr. Rakib Ehsan, a commentator and author of the book Beyond Grievance, mentions the Ottoman Empire in particular. Now the nation of Turkey, chattel slavery was a major part of its economy and society for more than six centuries, Ehsan points out. He elaborates at The Telegraph:

Millions were enslaved — including Slavs, Eastern Europeans, Africans, and people in the western Mediterranean.

The Ottoman Empire captured and utilised “white slaves” — primarily European Christians — through various methods such as raids into European territories and the Black Sea slave trade originating from the Balkans and Caucasus.

Under the “Devshirme” system, Christian boys were conscripted and forced to convert to Islam, trained to serve as slave soldiers (the Janissaries). The gradual rolling back of Ottoman imperial slavery was ultimately the result of Western pressure.

Note here that white slavery, in a de facto sense, wasn’t unknown in the early United States, either. According to the 2007 book White Cargo, in fact, more than 300,000 white de facto slaves were sent from Europe to the United States over two centuries. And among some groups within this number, the mortality rate was 25-50 percent.

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100+ unqualified immigrants were hired as corrections officers in Washington jails, whistleblower claims

An anonymous whistleblower claimed that a Washington corrections department illegally hired unqualified immigrants as corrections officers.

According to Fox News Digital, the individual wrote to the Criminal Justice Training Commission in August, stating that the King County Department of Adult and Juvenile Detention violated a state statute that requires all peace officers and corrections officers to be United States citizens, lawful permanent residents, or recipients of deferred action for childhood arrivals.

“It has come to my attention, that, over the past several years, the King County DAJD has knowingly hired individuals as corrections officers who do not meet these legal requirements,” the letter to the commission read.

The whistleblower claimed that in some instances, individuals with temporary work visas or expired work authorization were hired to guard detention centers.

“This practice not only undermines the integrity of Washington’s criminal justice system but also presents significant legal and security concerns,” the whistleblower remarked, urging the commission to investigate the claims promptly.

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State Department Employee Steals Thousands of Pages of “Top Secret” Classified Documents, Meets with Chinese Officials

A State Department contractor stole thousands of pages of “TOP SECRET” classified documents and met with Beijing officials.

Ashley Tellis, an expert on India and South Asian affairs, removed the top secret documents from secure locations and met with Chinese officials.

The classified documents were located in Tellis’s Virginia home during a raid.

“On Sept. 25, he allegedly printed U.S. Air Force documents concerning military aircraft capabilities. Federal prosecutors allege that he met with Chinese government officials multiple times over the past several years,” Fox News reported.

Prosecutors said in September 2022 that Tellis brought a manila envelope with him when he met with Chinese officials in a Virginia restaurant.

Fox News reported:

A State Department employee is accused of removing classified documents from secure locations and meeting with Chinese officials dating back to 2023.

The Justice Department said Ashley Tellis was an unpaid senior adviser to the State Department and also a contractor with the Office of Net Assessment at the Department of Defense, recently renamed the Department of War. He is considered a subject-matter expert on India and South Asian affairs in his role at the Office of Net Assessment.

Tellis began working for the State Department in 2001, court documents state. He is accused of unlawful retention of national defense information, according to an affidavit.

He held a top-secret clearance and had access to sensitive information, federal prosecutors said in court documents. He was also employed as a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

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Secret Israeli military bunker located under Tel Aviv tower struck by Iran, analysis shows

The Grayzone has geolocated the underground bunker of an important military command and control center nestled within a densely populated Tel Aviv neighborhood. Known as ‘Site 81,’ the U.S.-built facility houses a hyper-secretive intelligence base.

When Iran struck a series of targets in the heart of north Tel Aviv with ballistic missiles on June 13, Israeli authorities immediately cordoned off the area to prevent journalists from filming the damage. “The building on this compound was just hit,” Trey Yingst of Fox News reported as he arrived that evening at the site of HaKirya, Israel’s Defense Ministry headquarters, and the nearby Azrieli Center. But within seconds, Israeli police officers arrived to aggressively shunt Yingst away from where he was standing, just north of the HaKirya Bridge on the west side of Menachem Begin Road. 

That day, Iranian missiles struck the north tower of the Da Vinci apartment complex roughly 550 meters southwest of Yingst’s location. The Grayzone has determined that the building sits immediately south of the “Canarit” / “Kannarit” Israeli Air Force towers and above an underground military intelligence bunker jointly administered by the US and Israeli militaries. According to an analysis of leaked emails, public documents, and Israeli news reports, the location is host to a highly secretive, electromagnetically shielded intelligence facility known as “Site 81.”

Israel aggressively censors information relating to its urban military and intelligence facilities while simultaneously accusing its adversaries of engaging in ‘human shielding’ – a practice of protecting military targets with civilian populations that is prohibited by international humanitarian law. While the existence of a U.S. Army project to expand Site 81 to a 6,000 square-meter facility was widely reported from government records circa 2013, the specific location remained unknown.

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UN, Gates Foundation push for digital ID across 50 nations by 2028

The 50-in-5 campaign to accelerate digital ID, fast payment systems, and data exchanges in 50 countries by 2028 reaches a 30 country milestone.

Launched in November 2023, the 50-in-5 campaign is a joint effort of the United Nations, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and their partners to rollout out at least one component of Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) in 50 nations within five years.

DPI is a civic technology stack consisting of three major components: digital ID, fast payment systems, and massive data sharing between public and private entities.

50-in-5 started with 11 first-mover countries, and with the count now at 30 the participating countries include:

Bangladesh, Brazil, Cambodia, Dominican Republic, Estonia, Ethiopia, France, Guatemala, Jamaica, Kazakhstan, Lesotho, Malawi, Mexico, Moldova, Nigeria, Norway, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Singapore, Sri Lanka, South Africa, South Sudan, Somalia, Togo, Trinidad and Tobago, Uganda, Ukraine, Uruguay, Uzbekistan, and Zambia.

The 50-in-5 campaign celebrated its 30-country milestone during a sideline event at the U.N. General Assembly in New York on September 22.

There, government officials, like Ukraine’s deputy prime minister, praised the work of 50-in-5 while the ministers of digital economy from Nigeria and Togo called for an interoperable digital identity system for the entire African continent.

Nigeria’s Minister of Communications, Innovation and Digital Economy Bosun Tijani said that each country could build their own digital identity scheme, but that they should all be interoperable with one another – demonstrating both the digital ID and data sharing as good potential use cases for DPI.

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The Net Zero, extreme weather, climate science consensus is breaking apart as COP30 nears

The 30th Conference of the Parties on climate change (“COP30”) will promote its climate, energy and economic fantasies and demands from 10 to 21 November in Belém, Brazil. Some 70,000 grifter scientists, activists, politicians and journalists (plus observers) will attend.

Despite pre-summit hype and proclamations of hope, the summiteers are nervous.

Increasing evidence demonstrates that claims of a planetary crisis are rooted in meaningless computer models and fearmongering, not in actual science, data or fact.

More voters worldwide are rejecting and rebelling against Net Zero/anti-fossil fuel policies that have raised energy costs, destroyed jobs and industries, and crushed hopes and living standards.

Even the poorest US state (Mississippi) now boasts a higher GDP per capita than climate-obsessed Britain, where the average household price of electricity is US$0.35 per kilowatt hour (likely to rise to $0.55/kWh by 2027) compared to a 17.5¢ US average and 13.5¢ in Mississippi.

UK industries now pay the world’s highest electricity prices – 27% more than equally obsessed Germany – and conservative or alternative political parties in both countries are surging in popularity against the entrenched interests that imposed these destructive, job-killing, unsustainable policies.

The United States economy is outpacing Europe’s largely because the Trump Administration has re-embraced abundant, reliable, affordable fuels, petrochemicals and electricity, while Britain, Germany and most of Europe refuse to drill or frack for oil and gas or retreat from their unattainable climate pledges.

Trump agencies have slashed subsidies, favouritism and environmental fast-tracks for wind and solar projects – and clawed back billions of dollars that the Biden Administration had given to “green energy” and “climate justice” groups during its last weeks in office.

President Trump again withdrew the United States from the Paris climate agreement, may not let US representatives participate in COP30 and is unlikely to allow US taxpayer money to flow into UN slush funds for climate “reparations,” “resilience” or “losses and damages.”

Mr. Trump also excoriated Net Zero policies before the UN General Assembly, calling them a “green scam” concocted by “stupid people that have cost their countries fortunes and given those same countries no chance for success.” UN member states chastened by the Russia-Ukraine war, growing dependence on Russian gas and Chinese minerals and wind turbines, and their own economic demise were hard-pressed to disagree. Developing countries also paid attention.

Meanwhile, the Net-Zero Banking Alliance – beloved by eco-imperialists for opposing and preventing financing for fossil fuel projects in Africa and around the world – has ceased all operations, following a mass exodus by its US, Canadian, British and Swiss bank members.

“The 2.1 billion humans who suffer in abject energy poverty” and families of “the 16.5 million loved ones” who died from “indoor air pollution during the 5-1/2 years the Alliance was working” can now breathe sighs of relief, said energy realist and human rights campaigner Ryan Zorn.

The EU Parliament agreed to roll back multiple environmentalist mandates and regulations on businesses, in what Politico calls an “emerging rightward rupture that is reshaping European policymaking.”

Criticism of junk climate and energy science in the UN, US and other government and academic institutions has become frequent and furious since President Trump was re-elected in November 2024, and the shackles of government, media, social media and search-engine censorship have been loosened.

The world is rapidly learning about wind and solar power shortcomings; their decimation of raptors and other wildlife; the massive mining and pollution involved in manufacturing these “clean, green” energy systems; the millions of acres of farm, habitat and scenic lands impacted by them; the trillion-dollar costs of battery and gas backup systems for windless and sunless periods; and the economic devastation that climate-centric policies are inflicting worldwide.

Developed and developing nations alike are beginning to realise they have been asked to destroy the world with wind-solar-battery systems that can never meet growing electricity demands – to save it from climate crises that exist only in computer models and fevered imaginations.

The Net Zero, extreme weather, climate science consensus is breaking apart as COP30 nears. 

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The Rise and Fall of Scientific Journals and a Way Forward

Scientific journals have had enormous positive impact on the development of science, but in some ways, they are now hampering rather than enhancing open scientific discourse. After reviewing the history and current problems with journals, a new academic publishing model is proposed. It embraces open access and open rigorous peer review, it rewards reviewers for their important work with honoraria and public acknowledgement, and it allows scientists to publish their research in a timely and efficient manner without wasting valuable scientists’ time and resources.

The Birth of Scientific Journals

The printing press revolutionized scientific communication in the 16th century. After a few years of thinking and pondering, or maybe a decade or two, scientists published a book with their new thoughts, ideas, and discoveries. This gave us classics that laid the foundation for modern science, such as De Nova Stella by Tycho Brahe (1573), Astronomia Nova by Johannes Kepler (1609), Discours de la Methode by René Descartes (1637), Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica by Isaac Newton (1686), and Systema Naturae by Carl Linnaeus (1735). For more rapid communication, scientists relied on handwritten letters to each other.

Until they published a book, which took considerable effort and resources, scientists could only communicate with a few close friends and colleagues. That was not efficient. This gave rise to the scientific journal, an invention with profound impact on the development of science. The first one, Journal des Sçavans (Journal of the Learned), appeared in France in 1665. A decade later, this journal published the calculation of the speed of light by Ole Romer. The fastest thing in nature was communicated at a speed previously unavailable to scientists.

Over the next few hundred years, scientific journals became increasingly important, overtaking books as the primary means of scientific communication. As scientists became more specialized, so did the journals, with subject matter periodicals such as Medical Essays and Observations (1733), Chemisches Journal (1778), Annalen der Physik (1799), and Public Health Reports (1878). Printed journals were sent to scientists and university libraries around the world, and a truly international scientific community was created.

Without journals, science would not have developed as it did, and those early journal editors and printers are unsung heroes of scientific progress.

Commercial Publishers

In the mid-20th century, academic publishing took a turn for the worse. Starting with Robert Maxwell and his Pergamon Press, commercial publishers understood that the monopoly situation in scientific publishing could be very profitable. When a paper is only published in one journal, major university libraries must subscribe to that journal no matter how expensive it is, to ensure that their scientists can access the whole scientific literature.

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The Death of Informed Consent

Through an open-records request, The New American has obtained documents that shed fresh light on the gravity of the decision in a landmark medical malpractice case — the only wrongful death jury trial in the country for a death officially declared to be caused by Covid. The decision in favor of the defense, handed down in June, should serve as a warning to us all.

Readers of The New American are already familiar with the story of Grace Schara, a Wisconsin teen with Down syndrome who lost her life in a Covid hospital in October, 2021. (Those new to the story can read about it here and can also access recordings of our livestream of the proceedings here.)

In short, the plaintiffs alleged that Grace died from intentional overdoses of sedative, benzodiazepine, and opioid medications, while the defense insisted that a SARS-CoV-2 infection ended her life.

Just days after the lawsuit ended, The New American interviewed Scott Schara, Grace’s dad, who said the outcome proves that informed consent, enshrined in the Nuremberg Code of 1947, is finished.

“Just by being in a hospital, you are giving implied consent,” he warned of the precedent this case sets. He said that the defense claimed, and the jury endorsed the idea, that the drugs in question were normal in an ICU, so no informed consent was necessary, nor did providers need bother to inform the family when Grace survived two drug overdoses early during her hospital stay. He also pointed out that the jury upheld defense witnesses who claimed that a “Do Not Intubate” order (DNI) is equivalent to a “Do Not Resuscitate” order (DNR), and that a doctor may unilaterally place either on a patient, also without informed consent.

Prior Complaints

However, before suing, Scott Schara filed a complaint with Wisconsin’s Department of Safety and Professional Services (DSPS), the state agency which oversees licensed professionals. It accused the physician who took care of Grace during the last two days of her life, Dr. Gavin Shokar, of “label[ing] the patient as DNR and overdos[ing] her on morphine.”

In order to obtain Shokar’s response to these charges, The New American requested the complete file pertaining to Grace’s DSPS case. We received some documents in late August, with only the patient’s name and certain private contact information redacted. However, the file merely included a reference to Scott’s complaint, a case which the agency closed on January 18, 2022 without investigation. We double-checked with DSPS, but the agency said it had nothing to add. (Interestingly, a second, unrelated complaint, filed in May 2023 against Shokar for “negligence/incompetence” and “unprofessional conduct” is listed among the documents received. DSPS reports the case as still open but offers no further details.)

Instead, the remainder of the 170 pages pertains to a complaint filed in July 2023, by Lorna Speid, Ph.D., a clinical pharmacist and president of the California-based drug development consultant, Speid & Associates.

In her initial letter to DSPS, she said she spent “many hours reviewing the medical notes and consulting with other experts in specialized fields” about Grace’s case.

Based on that collaborative analysis, she charged Shokar with “gross incompetence, gross negligence, medical malpractice, dishonesty and deliberate cause of death.” She called his actions deliberate “because the probability that one physician could make all these mistakes and errors, accidentally, is low. All reasonable physicians would know that the actions Dr. Shokar took would lead to the death of the patient.”

She also noted that “the degree and level of cruelty that Ms. [redacted] was subjected to was extraordinary, and repugnant.” According to Speid, part of that cruel treatment involved “recklessly falsif[ying] the medical records to insert a DO NOT RESCUSITATE [DNR] for a vulnerable patient, without the written and unequivocable consent of her parents/guardians,” and refusing to “administer NARCAN to reverse the Morphine overdose.” (Morphine is an opioid that Shokar ordered for Grace, and NARCAN is a brand name for the generic naloxone, an opioid reversal drug.)

Hollee McInnis was the registered nurse charged with Grace’s care on the last two days of the teen’s life, and about whom Speid filed a separate complaint with DSPS. Her report gives a play-by-play timeline of McInnis increasing a continuous infusion of Precedex (a sedative) throughout Grace’s last day on earth; Grace had survived two overdoses of this drug during the same hospital stay. The incidents are clearly documented in her medical record.

On top of that, McInnis piled three doses of the benzodiazepine lorazepam (two of which were given only three minutes apart), though this med is “contraindicated in patients in respiratory distress” (which McInnis recorded as Grace’s condition at the time). She then added a rapid intravenous (IV) push of morphine, which is also warned against for patients having difficulty breathing.

“There is no other explanation for a nurse with 20 years of experience, administering this cocktail of drugs.” Speid explained that it was instead McInnis’ duty to report Shokar for “inappropriate prescribing” and to “refuse to administer the drugs prescribed.”

Unfortunately, the doctor ordered, and the nurse delivered. Grace died a short time later.

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Instagram says it’s safeguarding teens by limiting them to PG-13 content

Meta says teenagers on Instagram will be restricted to seeing PG-13 content by default and won’t be able to change their settings without a parent’s permission

Instagram says it’s safeguarding teens by limiting them to PG-13 contentBy BARBARA ORTUTAYAP Technology WriterThe Associated Press

Teenagers on Instagram will be restricted to seeing PG-13 content by default and won’t be able to change their settings without a parent’s permission, Meta announced on Tuesday.

This means kids using teen-specific accounts will see photos and videos on Instagram that are similar to what they would see in a PG-13 movie — no sex, drugs or dangerous stunts, among others.

“This includes hiding or not recommending posts with strong language, certain risky stunts, and additional content that could encourage potentially harmful behaviors, such as posts showing marijuana paraphernalia,” Meta said in a blog post Tuesday, calling the update the most significant since it introduced teen accounts last year.

Anyone under 18 who signs up for Instagram is automatically placed into restrictive teen accounts unless a parent or guardian gives them permission to opt out. The teen accounts are private by default, have usage restrictions on them and already filter out more “sensitive” content — such as those promoting cosmetic procedures. But kids often lie about their ages when they sign up for social media, and while Meta has began using artificial intelligence to find such accounts, the company declined to say how many adult accounts it has determined to be minors since rolling out the feature earlier this year.

The company is also adding an even stricter setting that parents can set up for their children.

The changes come as the social media giant faces relentless criticism over harms to children. As it seeks to add safeguards for younger users, Meta has already promised it wouldn’t show inappropriate content to teens, such as posts about self-harm, eating disorders or suicide.

But this does not always work. A recent report, for instance, found that teen accounts researchers created were recommended age-inappropriate sexual content, including “graphic sexual descriptions, the use of cartoons to describe demeaning sexual acts, and brief displays of nudity.”

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Samantha Power secretly colluded with Israel to enhance UN role, leaked emails show

Behind closed doors, the noted ‘humanitarian interventionist’ successfully lobbied for Israel’s inclusion on important UN committees even after the Human Rights Council accused it of targeting civilians in Gaza.

The leaked emails also reveal that Israel furnished Power with a dodgy dossier on Syrian chemical weapons as she pushed regime change in Damascus.

Former US ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power secretly coordinated with a top Israeli diplomat to secure Israel’s access to multiple prestigious UN committees, leaked files show.

Several unsolicited emails sent by Power to the then ambassador of Israel to the UN, Ron Prosor, show the diplomat celebrating her role in polishing Israel’s image on the global stage.

The emails between the two diplomats reveal how the US-Israeli special relationship operates at a granular level, and help map out the personal interactions which ensure Israel enjoys constant diplomatic cover at an international level. They are among the latest batch of hacked files belonging to Israeli government officials which were leaked by the Handala hacking collective.

A November 2013 email exchange between Power and Prosor reveals how the US ambassador helped secure Israel entry to the UN’s Western European and Others Group (WEOG). Three days before the vote succeeded, Prosor predicted “a Hanukkah miracle,” telling Power, “I know what [a] crucial role you played in making this happen. This success will last way beyond our time and will always carry your figure [sic] print on it.”

Power replied by thanking him for sending “such a nice note,” and agreed that Israel’s ascension to WEOG was “so overdue and so ridiculous that it has taken this long.”

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