RealClearInvestigations' Picks of the Week
December 17 to December 23, 2023 In addition to slaughtering some 1,200 people in Israel on Oct. 7, Hamas abducted hundreds of Israelis, Americans, Thais and others as bargaining chips. This article reports that such hostage-takings by rival nations is so widespread that the Biden administration has declared it a national emergency. Not since the height of the Cold War, this article reports, have so many Americans been held as bargaining chips by hostile states – including Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich and former U.S. Marine Paul Whelan, who are both being held by Russia on espionage charges that they and the U.S. government strongly deny. Such detentions, in turn, have empowered a handful of nations, often with sketchy records on human rights, to act as go-betweens for hostage exchanges: If it was once Zurich, Vienna and the so-called Bridge of Spies connecting East and West Berlin that provided the trading floor for spy swaps and hostage deals, that mantle has shifted decidedly east. … Instead, Turkey – a NATO member which still supplies military-linked goods to Russia and sells Ukraine combat drones developed by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s son-in-law – is at the center of a group of Middle East power brokers that are amassing diplomatic clout by hosting prisoner swaps, peace talks and backchannel negotiations. Qatar, a U.S. ally which also hosts the political office of Hamas, helped mediate September’s swap of five jailed Americans for several Iranian prisoners and access to $6 billion in frozen oil revenue. The United Arab Emirates, one of America’s closest military partners in the Middle East—and now a hub for Russian oil trading—hosted last year’s exchange of American basketball gold medalist Brittney Griner and convicted Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout. This article reports that Saudi Arabia – which has worked with Turkey to help free U.S. and British citizens taken as prisoners of war while fighting Russian forces in eastern Ukraine – has also jailed American citizens for long sentences for criticizing the regime of Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman. Washington nonetheless has thanked Saudi Arabia for its role facilitating prisoner exchanges with Russia: The diplomatic shift also throws into stark relief the limits of a central foreign-policy plank of the Biden administration, which broadly views the U.S. in a contest between democracies against authoritarian governments. In reality, America’s dependence on Turkey, Saudi Arabia, or the U.A.E. to help resolve hostage crises and other disputes have put those countries’ human-rights records or their booming trade with Russia on the back burner. Before the war, Biden pointedly excluded Turkey from its 2021 Summit for Democracy, and had warned that its relationship with the U.S. would depend on its freedoms it extended at home. The next year – after Turkey started mediating between the U.S., Ukraine, and Moscow – Biden praised Erdogan at a summit of leaders from all NATO members. “I mean, you’re doing a great job,” he said. Waste of the Day
by Adam Andrzejewski, Open the Books Holes in Roof Parity at Florida Prisons, RCI
Oklahoma Spends $83 Million on DEI, RCI
Another Defense Audit, Another F Grade, RCI
Futility of Rehabbing Unneeded Buildings, RCI
Commissions Squander $287M Annually, RCI Biden, Trump and the Beltway FBI Secretly Recorded James Biden in Bribery Probe, Washington Post
Fair Share? Biden Family's Long History of Tax Avoidance, Fox News
How Leftist Appeals Panel Is Rigging Trump's J6 Case, Federalist
Top Russiagate Lawyer Joins Jack Smith's Team, Federalist
Democrat Claims NJ Gov's Wife Mishandled Rape Claim, New York Post=
Millions of Student Loan Borrowers Still Not Repaying, Fox Business Other Noteworthy Articles and Series Neo Lu, a 28-year-old Chinese office worker, had been promised a generous salary and a better work-life balance all while living in the vibrant metropolis of Bangkok. So in June of last year, this article reports, he said his goodbyes, flew to Thailand and headed for his new job: But when he arrived, his head was spinning from the scorching sun – and the feeling that something was very wrong. Instead of an office building in a city, Mr. Lu had been dumped at what looked like a labor camp haphazardly built on a patch of jungle and muddy fields. Within the compound were spartan, low-rise concrete buildings with barred windows and doors. Two men in combat fatigues, carrying rifles, guarded the main entrance. High walls and fences topped with razor wire surrounded the compound, clearly meant to keep not only outsiders at bay, but also those inside from leaving. Before long, he was led on a trek that ended with him being handed over to a Chinese gang that had paid for him: Mr. Lu had essentially been abducted and sold into a criminal enterprise, far away from everything he knew. … That was how he became one of hundreds of thousands of people who have been trafficked into criminal gangs and trapped in what one research group has called a “criminal cancer” of exploitation, violence and fraud that has taken root in Southeast Asia’s poorest nations. Lu spoke with the Times, which says it “verified the details of his travel, captivity and eventual rescue by interviewing his parents and two friends, as well as by reviewing text messages, copies of travel documents and letters issued by Chinese authorities.” In a separate article, the Washington Post reports that the “Chinese military is ramping up its ability to disrupt key American infrastructure, including power and water utilities as well as communications and transportation system. … The intrusions are part of a broader effort to develop ways to sow panic and chaos or snarl logistics in the event of a U.S.-China conflict in the Pacific, they said.” Jeffrey Epstein’s sexual exploitation of young women didn’t end with his 2008 conviction – as many of his famous associates later said they believed – but continued until his second arrest in 2019. Even after he was required to register as a sex offender, Epstein lured dozens of women by promising to use his connections to powerful people to get them jobs or other opportunities. He then groomed most of the women for his personal sexual exploitation, and passed a select group to other men for sex: Separate interviews with more than half a dozen women, most of whom don’t know each other, reveal eerily similar experiences: Intermediaries, including other female models, pitched Epstein as a wealthy philanthropist who helped struggling models with their careers. After they met him, he gave them money and dangled career opportunities, then coerced them to perform sex acts. Brad Edwards, a lawyer representing women suing Epstein’s estate and financial institutions that provided banking services to him, said a total of more than 20 men have been named as participants in sexual exploitation or abuse by women who were trafficked by Epstein. Epstein often instructed women to report back their encounters with other men, Edwards said. “He would make the women describe the details of the abuse, and if they were upset, it would get him excited,” he said. In a separate article, the Daily Mail reports that the names of 177 Epstein's friends, recruiters, workers and others may be revealed shortly after the New Year after a federal judge approved the release of court documents related to his crimes. Those whose identities have been protected until now have until the end of the year to raise objections. Patients with Alzheimer’s disease and other cognitive problems walk away from assisted-living facilities just about every day in America, a pattern of neglect by an industry that charges families an average of $6,000 a month for the explicit promise of safeguarding their loved ones, a Washington Post investigation has found: Since 2018, more than 2,000 people have wandered away from assisted-living and dementia-care units or been left unattended outside, according to The Post’s exhaustive search of inspection results, incident reports and media accounts nationwide. Nearly 100 people died – though the exact number is unknowable because no one is counting. For many, the difference between life and death was simply the weather. In cases where a cause of death could be determined, The Post found that 61 percent died after exposure to extreme heat or cold. This article reports that the federal government does not regulate the nation’s roughly 30,000 assisted-care facilities, as it does nursing homes. Instead, regulation falls to individual states, few of which have adopted strong staffing and training requirements even as the industry estimates residents nationwide have climbed to more than 1 million, approaching the nursing home population of 1.2 million. The voyage from the Senegalese fishing town of Fass Boye to Spain’s Canary Islands, a gateway to the European Union and work, was supposed to take a week. But more than a month later, the wooden boat carrying 101 men and boys was getting blown further and further away from its intended destination. Massive cargo ships passed them by almost every day, destabilizing the shaky wooden boat in their wake. Yet no one came to their rescue. That’s when the first of dozens of men started jumping into the ocean, in the vain hopes of swimming to an invisible shore. Based on interviews with survivors, this well-written, beautifully illustrated article reports on the perilous journey undertaken by many migrants: Their boat, like so many that left Senegal this year, had taken a longer and more dangerous route in an attempt to evade authorities patrolling the West African coast. That risky strategy has proved successful for many: Migrant arrivals to the Canaries hit a record 36,000 people this year, more than double the previous year. For others, the migration journey has ended in tragedy. While accurate figures on the number of deaths do not exist, entire boats have gone missing in the Atlantic, becoming what are known as “invisible shipwrecks.” When bodies do wash ashore, they are often buried in unmarked graves. The article reports that Spanish authorities routinely fly over a massive area of the Atlantic between West Africa and the Canary Islands looking for lost migrants. But the vast distances, volatile weather conditions and relatively small boats mean they are easily missed. “Imagine looking for a car in an area that's 1.5 times the size of mainland Spain,” says Manuel Barroso, who heads the national coordination center of Spain's Maritime Rescue Service. “We may even fly right over one, but because of the clouds, we cannot see it.” Tens of thousands of customers told Tesla about a host of part failures on low-mileage cars: wheels falling off; suspensions collapsing; axles breaking under acceleration. The automaker sought to blame drivers for vehicle "abuse," but, this article reports, Tesla documents show it had tracked the chronic "flaws" and "failures" for years: Tesla’s handling of suspension and steering complaints reflects a pattern across Musk’s corporate empire of dismissing concerns about safety or other harms raised ... as he rushes to roll out new products or expand sales, Reuters has found. A Reuters investigation in November documented at least 600 injuries at rocket-builder SpaceX, where employees described a culture of rushing dangerous projects with little regard for workers’ safety worries. In July, the news agency revealed how Tesla had created a secret team to suppress thousands of customer complaints about poor driving range. The report, which found that Tesla rigged an algorithm to inflate its cars’ in-dash range estimates, sparked a federal investigation. Late last year, Reuters exposed how hurried experiments at Musk’s brain-chip startup, Neuralink, resulted in the unnecessary suffering and deaths of laboratory animals, despite objections from workers seeking to protect them. |
