As many of you are looking forward to a favorite social event of the year—the Super Bowl—the Washington Post of all places published a long and detailed investigation into the man, a Nigerian doctor, who claims to be the father of what he describes as a massive medical crisis—CTE (chronic traumatic encephalopathy).
Reader Cristina sent this story because she knows of ‘Frauds and Crooks’ interest in Nigerian fraudsters and criminals. I’m not saying his work is completely baseless, but it is interesting to see that the Washington Post is dancing around that theme.
Anyone raising kids involved in sports these days is thinking about this subject, so read it all. I’ve only snipped the opening paragraphs:
From scientist to salesman
How Bennet Omalu, doctor of ‘Concussion’ fame, built a career on distorted science
In 2017, Bennet Omalu traveled the globe to accept a series of honors and promote his autobiography, “Truth Doesn’t Have A Side.”
In a visit to an Irish medical school, he told students he was a “nobody” who “discovered a disease in America’s most popular sport.”
In an appearance on a religious cable TV show, he said he named the disease chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE, because “it sounded intellectually sophisticated, with a very good acronym.”
And since his discovery, Omalu told Sports Illustrated, researchers have uncovered evidence that shows adolescents who participate in football, hockey, wrestling and mixed martial arts are more likely to drop out of school, become addicted to drugs, struggle with mental illness, commit violent crimes and kill themselves.
A Nigerian American pathologist portrayed by Will Smith in the 2015 film, “Concussion,” Omalu is partly responsible for the most important sports story of the 21st century. Since 2005, when Omalu first reported finding widespread brain damage in a former NFL player, concerns about CTE have inspired a global revolution in concussion safety and fueled an ongoing existential crisis for America’s most popular sport. Omalu’s discovery — initially ignored and then attacked by NFL-allied doctors — inspired an avalanche of scientific research that forced the league to acknowledge a link between football and brain disease.
Nearly 15 years later, Omalu has withdrawn from the CTE research community and remade himself as an evangelist, traveling the world selling his frightening version of what scientists know about CTE and contact sports. In paid speaking engagements, expert witness testimony and in several books he has authored, Omalu portrays CTE as an epidemic and himself as a crusader, fighting against not just the NFL but also the medical science community, which he claims is too corrupted to acknowledge clear-cut evidence that contact sports destroy lives.
After more than a decade of intensive research by scientists from around the globe, the state of scientific knowledge of CTE remains one of uncertainty. Among CTE experts, many important aspects of the disease — from what symptoms it causes, to how prevalent or rare it is — remain the subject of research and debate.
But across the brain science community, there is wide consensus on one thing: Omalu, the man considered by many the public face of CTE research, routinely exaggerates his accomplishments and dramatically overstates the known risks of CTE and contact sports, fueling misconceptions about the disease, according to interviews with more than 50 experts in neurodegenerative disease and brain injuries, and a review of more than 100 papers from peer-reviewed medical journals.
Omalu did not discover CTE, nor did he name the disease.The alarming statistics he recites about contact sports are distorted, according to the author of the studies that produced those figures. And while Omalu cultivates a reputation as the global authority on CTE, it’s unclear whether he is diagnosing it correctly, according to several experts on the disease.
Read more here, apparently the jury is out, but if you have young athletes at home, definitely read it all.
See today at RRW that the President has added Nigeria to the list of countries facing travel restrictions to the US.
The story is seeping out into the media even though it’s hard for any news to break through with the impeachment show going on in the Senate at the moment.
Another news story captivating the public is the Coronavirus newscoming out of China and what a funny coincidence that the virus and the Harvard professor’s alleged secretive dealings both involve Wuhan, China. I am not implying a connection!
I’ll bet the vast majority of Americans (including me) never heard of Wuhan before this past week.
Here is one of many stories, this one at The Economistwith this intriguing photo and the headline:
An American chemist is suspected of illegal dealings with China
Here are the opening paragraphs, but alas a subscription is required to read more. We can fix that because all the news you need to know is in a press release from the US Justice Department(h/t: Cathy):
In 2013 Charles Lieber, a pioneer of nanoscience who is now the chairman of Harvard University’s chemistry department, visited the Wuhan University of Technology (WUT), in China, to celebrate the founding of a lab he was credited by that university with helping to establish and oversee: the WUT-Harvard Joint Nano Key Laboratory. It was a remarkable coup. WUT is an institution of little renown. Harvard is generally regarded as the top of the academic tree. And Dr Lieber, whose research has since become part of Elon Musk’s ambitious scheme to supercharge the human brain with nanotechnology, has been seen as a potential Nobel laureate.
Harvard’s officials had not, however, approved the laboratory and did not know about it until early 2015, according to the us Department of Justice. Nor did they know that while conducting his research with grants from the Department of Defense and the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Dr Lieber was, according to federal authorities, also being paid up to $50,000 a month by WUT, plus at least $150,000 in “living expenses”, as a prized recruit in China’s Thousand Talents programme to bring foreign scientists, and return Chinese expatriates, to that country’s research laboratories.
See the releasefor more details and to learn about the Chinese nationals also charged with various crimes. The DOJ says the three cases involve China, but are unrelated. However, they were all conducted as part of President Trump’s Department of Justice China Initiative described in the release.
Zaosong Zheng
Yanqing Ye, 29, a Chinese national, was charged in an indictment today with one count each of visa fraud, making false statements, acting as an agent of a foreign government and conspiracy. Ye is currently in China.
Zaosong Zheng, 30, a Chinese national, was arrested on Dec. 10, 2019, at Boston’s Logan International Airport and charged by criminal complaint with attempting to smuggle 21 vials of biological research to China. On Jan. 21, 2020, Zheng was indicted on one count of smuggling goods from the United States and one count of making false, fictitious or fraudulent statements. He has been detained since Dec. 30, 2019.
[….]
These case are part of the Department of Justice’s China Initiative, which reflects the strategic priority of countering Chinese national security threats and reinforces the President’s overall national security strategy. In addition to identifying and prosecuting those engaged in trade secret theft, hacking and economic espionage, the initiative will increase efforts to protect our critical infrastructure against external threats including foreign direct investment, supply chain threats and the foreign agents seeking to influence the American public and policymakers without proper registration.
Stephen Dinan writing at the Washington Timeshas done a masterful job of pulling together horror stories about how children are exploited to benefit illegal aliens breaking into the US.
Have you heard a peep out of the US Catholic Bishops, or the Lutherans, the mainstream protestants at Church World Service or the Jews at HIAS say a word about this on-going tragedy? I haven’t!
EXCLUSIVE: Children forced into fake families to exploit border loopholes
Walfrie Eliseo Camposeco-Montejo’s pitch to the Guatemalan woman was simple: Let me use your son to get into the U.S., and I promise I’ll send him to American schools.
The ailing woman liked the idea. She gave her 12-year-old to Camposeco-Montejo, and they struck off for the U.S. in late 2016 just as another border crisis was developing. Arrested by Border Patrol agents, Camposeco-Montejo used a bogus birth certificate to claim he was the father of the boy and was given the catch-and-release treatment under the “family loophole” in U.S. policy.
The boy never made it to school.
Instead, court documents say, Camposeco-Montejo forced him into work, 10 hours a day, six days a week, picking peppers or flowers at Florida farms. He was also pressed into the overnight cleaning shift at a movie theater. He got three hours of sleep a day, and Camposeco-Montejo confiscated most of his paycheck. He said the money was to pay off the $5,000 fee they had paid the cartels to be smuggled into the U.S.
The boy, who was identified in court documents only as Minor Victim 1, or MV1, eventually managed to escape and tell his story.
Camposeco-Montejo was arrested and was sentenced to eight years in prison this month.
Dinan goes on with one horror story after another.
The Trump Administration has begun to bring the scam under control reports Dinan, but more needs to be done by Congress (which is too busy trying to get rid of Trump than to protect Americans and our borders).
This is pretty outrageous—how did this whole gang of international crooks even gain entry to the US in the first place? And, why are we never given any information about which of our many ways of gaining entry was exploited?
From Chile, not the usual Mexican or Central American gang either!
Police: 3 members of Chilean burglary crew strike homes in Nassau
(Don’t miss the news clip where authorities suggest they may have taken advantage of new bond laws.)
Three people were arrested Tuesday in connection to numerous home burglaries in Nassau County.
Police say the suspects arrested were part of a burglary organization from Chile.
Police arrested Boneek Alexander Quintero-Baeza, 32, Alexandra Ivonne Pizarro-Blanche, 23, and Levy Frank Maury Brugman, 23, at a residence in College Point, Queens. Police say all three are from Chile and were taken into custody after authorities received tips about a burglary in Hewlett Harbor.
According to police, Quintero-Baeza broke into the Hewlett Harbor home in September and stole $25,000 in cash, designer bags and jewelry. Quintero-Baeza and Brugman also committed a burglary in New Jersey and had been released without bond. [Imagine that, an arrest of foreign nationals for burglary and they were released!—ed]
Prosecutors said in court that Quintero-Baeza has a long criminal record of burglaries in Spain and Argentina. [And, we let him in!—ed]
[….]
Authorities say they recovered jewelry, hand bags, electronic devices and clothing believed to have been taken from homes. Police say multiple identifications were recovered and are believed to be aliases for the defendants allowing them to operate within the United States.
Police say a fourth suspect, Bryan Maldonado, is still at large. Police believe Maldonado is the ring leader and say he is also from Chile.
Nassau police believe the Chileans may be part of a larger criminal operation that stretches across the U.S. They say detectives are now working with federal authorities.
US fines Delta $50,000 for booting off 3 Muslim passengers
Delta Air Lines is being fined $50,000 for ordering three Muslim passengers off planes even after the airline’s own security officials cleared them to travel.
Elaine Chow, Senator Mitch McConnell’s wife runs the DOT (in case you didn’t know)!
Delta denied that it discriminated against the passengers in two separate incidents but agreed it could have handled the situations differently, according to a consent order released Friday by the U.S. Transportation Department.
The department alleged that Delta violated anti-bias laws by removing the passengers, and ordered the airline to provide cultural-sensitivity training to pilots, flight attendants and customer-service agents involved in the incidents.
Be sure to read the descriptions of the incidents. And see that CAIR is not completely happy, they wanted the fine to be bigger.
Were these incidents probes, test runs? They could be!
The Council on American-Islamic Relations, which represented the Alis, questioned the size of the penalty.
Delta earned nearly $4.8 billion last year, and for a company that profitable, “$50,000 is basically a slap on the wrist,” said Karen Dabdoub, executive director of CAIR’s Cincinnati chapter.
It’s only a slap on the wrist says CAIR spox Dabdoub.
“But it’s a good sign that DOT is taking this seriously,” she added. “I’m glad to see that Delta received some sort of a sanction.”
The government did not explain how the size of the fine was determined but said that it “establishes a strong deterrent against future similar unlawful practices by Delta and other carriers.”
[….]
Delta said that in both cases, it acted based on the passengers’ behavior, not their identity, and its employees acted reasonably. In the case of the Alis, one of the complaining customers identified herself as a retired safety inspector for the Federal Aviation Administration, the airline said.
The Atlanta-based airline said that after the 2016 incidents it improved its procedures for investigating suspicious behavior to make it “more collaborative and objective.”
The moral of the story is that if you see something, you have to be very very nervous about saying something!
Are you steamed enough to speak up?
Then contact the White House and tell President Trump that he needs to look into this, if airlines are being hamstrung like this we aren’t safe!
Tell him this DOT-ordered sensitivity training is B*** S***!
See
