CVS Pharmacy: on the edge of a highway, so people would cruise in, get their drugs, and be out in no time at all. ibid.
I know they’re sick like me. Gotta be number one. ibid.
These changes are good to one way of thinking in the sense that they make it harder to buy and abuse pharmaceutical opioids. But what that does is it drives all these people who are already addicted on to the black market. ibid.
International drug cartels catered to those who had become addicted to prescription pills. As their need for narcotics increased and doctors were more reluctant to prescribe an increasing dose, users turned to heroin, and a synthetic opioid fifty times more powerful: Fentanyl. ibid.
Since 2015 Fentanyl overdoses have been rising dramatically. Rates have soared by 2000% in San Diego. ibid.
The company told me nothing ever. ibid. whistleblower
Late in 2020 the Trump administration rushed to make an announcement for the presidential election. Pleading guilty to three felony counts. The Sackler family would pay a $225 million fine. Purdue Pharma would plead guilt to kickbacks and fraud. And promise to pay fines totalling $8.3 billion. ibid.
Purdue is in bankruptcy and only has about $1 billion which a whole bunch of creditors are already fighting over. That money is never going to be paid by the company or anybody else. ibid.
A cruel irony: the only way the company could pay damages was to increase its sales of drugs, including Oxycontin. ibid.
It was the scoop of the century. These were cables that showed a superpower’s secret thoughts. A quarter of a million US diplomatic messages apparently stolen by one of their own soldiers. Richard Bilton, Wikileaks: The Secret Life of a Superpower I, BBC 2012
Bradley Manning ... had access to a world of secrets. ibid.
The cables show a real tension in US diplomacy. ibid.
Failed efforts to spread democracy and cosy alliances with dictators are recurring themes in the cables. ibid.
The cables reveal a kind of moral ambivalence in US diplomacy. ibid.
When key American interests are at stake justice counts for very little. ibid.
Because of the Wikileaks’ reports we can all read their private thoughts. Richard Bilton, Wikileaks: The Secret Life of a Superpower II
It’s the detail that’s extraordinary. ibid.
Julian Assange, Bradley Manning, over half a million leaked documents. Tonight the whole story: Wikisecrets. Frontline: Wikisecrets, PBS 2011
Video of massacre: Assange edited the material into a short presentation with a provocative title: Collateral Murder Baghdad 12th of July 2007. ibid.
Manning had become an analyst at a time of increased intelligence sharing. ibid.
Was Assange a passive recipient or was he more involved? ibid.
In the weeks before Manning was arrested, Julian Assange was on the road promoting Wikileaks. ibid.
The release exposed candid, often embarrassing assessments. ibid.
25 February 2004, Katharine Theresa Gunn: You are charged with an offence contrary to section 1, subsection 1, of the Official Secret Acts of 1989. Official Secrets 2019 starring Keira Knightley & Matt Smith & Matthew Goode & Rhys Ifans & Adam Bakri & Indira Varma & Ralph Fiennes & Conleth Hill & Tamsin Greig & Hattie Morahan et al, director Gavin Hood, opening scene in court
What we know is that he has this material. ibid. Blair on tele
Are the Yanks really asking us to dig up personal shit on US Security Council delegate? Christ, they want to fix the vote. ibid.
If I could get you a copy of the memo then maybe you could get somebody to look it over. ibid. Katharine to friend
Revealed: US dirty tricks to win vote on Iraq war. ibid. Observer headline
In light of recent developments, the Prosecution will offer no evidence against the defendant on this indictment. ibid.
In 2010 Lord Goldsmith’s advice to Tony Blair at the time Katharine leaked the memo was made public. Goldsmith had clearly advised war would be illegal without a new UN Security Council resolution. Estimates of Iraqis killed during the first four years of the Iraq War range from 151,000 to over 1 million. Countless more were wounded. Over 4,600 US and British soldiers died. ibid. captions
In the late 1940s George Orwell imagined a dystopian future where a global surveillance system was used to monitor and control all citizens, independent thinking was censored, and holding unorthodox or controversial thoughts opposing or questioning those in power was considered a criminal act: a Thoughtcrime.
The classified information leaked by former CIA employee Edward Snowden in 2013 not only shocked the public opinion but also showed the disturbing and frightening similarities between the world we live in today and that of Orwell’s fiction. Thoughtcrime, captions, Amazon 2017
The United States only uses signals intelligence for legitimate national security purposes. ibid. Obama
Mass surveillance has never been established as effective for counter-terrorism … They are about power. ibid. Snowden
The absence of privacy is not the presence of security; and the presence of security is not the absence of privacy. ibid.
Privacy is what makes you an individual; privacy is what makes society open. ibid.
Whistleblowers are society’s safeguard of last resort. ibid.
The UN sent the police here because I am a whistleblower. But I’m not the only one. There are many whistleblowers at the UN. There’s nothing unique about my treatment. This World: The Whistleblowers: Inside the UN, BBC 2022
This is the story of whistleblowers who reported abuse and wrong-doing within the United Nations. Their evidence points to a culture of untouchability reaching the highest levels of the organisation. ibid. caption
The UN is made up of 37 organisations including UNICEF, UNAIDS and the World Food Programme. It has a total budget of more than £50 billion. ibid.
These UN soldiers felt so above the law. This is the United Nations. ibid. whistleblower
2015: The UN knew of multiple abuse allegations against troops from various nations. ibid.
I believe that the organisation is riddled with corruption from bottom to top. ibid. Peter Gallo, UN investigator
This is Yuliya Stepanova and Vitaliy Stepanov and their small son Robert. In their native Russia they don’t feel safe any more. Because they’ve given away a secret. The Secrets of Doping: How Russia Makes Its Winners, ARD 2015
Vitaliy Stepanov loves his job at the Russian Anti-Doping Agency. ibid.
‘You must dope. That’s how it’s done in Russia.’ ibid. Vitaliy
The fairytale of clean sport will be refuted for all time. ibid.
I even receive audio files of conversations between top coaches and athletes. ibid.
‘The athlete has no choice.’ ibid. coach
It looks increasingly like a system. ibid.
RUSADA is part of the fraud scheme which he experienced as an employee. ibid.
I now receive growing evidence from Russian informants. ibid.
Fear and intimidation appear to belong to the system. ibid.
Attacks by poisoning are possibly even more common in Russia than assassinations by gunfire. Most famously, Alexander Litvinenko, a secret-police whistleblower, was killed by polonium in London, in 2006. Last week, British newspapers reported that a Russian businessman who dropped dead while jogging in a London suburb in 2012 had been killed by a rare plant poison. He had been a key witness in a money-laundering case that had originally been exposed by the Moscow accountant Sergei Magnitsky, who was tortured to death in 2009 in a Russian jail. Masha Gessen
A former investment manager alleges in a whistleblower complaint to the Internal Revenue Service that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has amassed about $100 billion in accounts intended for charitable purposes, according to a copy of the complaint obtained by The Washington Post.
The confidential document, received by the IRS on November 21, accuses church leaders of misleading members – and possibly breaching federal tax rules – by stockpiling their surplus donations instead of using them for charitable works. It also accuses church leaders of using the tax-exempt donations to prop up a pair of businesses.