A second-year medical student in Nepal is at the center of an international research network churning out everything from systematic reviews and meta-analyses to case reports and database studies, Retraction Watch has learned.
The student, Raghabendra Kumar Mahato, leverages this network, which includes nearly 1,000 members connected through the WhatsApp messaging platform, to produce large numbers of conference abstracts and journal papers at breakneck speed, according to posts and messages we have reviewed. The work has been presented or accepted for presentation at conferences organized by the American Heart Association (AHA), the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) and many other medical societies and has appeared in journals from major publishers.
But a review of dozens of WhatsApp messages we obtained and an interview with a disillusioned member of the community, called the “Global Clinical Research Consortium,” suggests the network produces fast-churn science, includes a known paper miller and treats authorship as a tradable commodity.
Ex-Dem lawmaker slapped with federal child porn charges for disturbing trove of pics organized by age
A former Pennsylvania lawmaker is facing federal child pornography charges after FBI agents discovered more than 100 files of sexually explicit content on his personal electronic devices – including nude photos of minors as young as 7 years old, new court documents stunningly allege.
Ex-Democratic state Rep. Jesse White was taken into federal custody after authorities found the twisted content – which he sorted by age and category – on numerous laptops and hard drives inside his Upper Allen Township home Tuesday, according to a criminal complaint filed in the Middle District of Pennsylvania.
White allegedly admitted to investigators that he collected the sickening pictures and videos while scouring the “dark” web using accounts on encrypted applications including Qbittorrent – a peer-to-peer file sharing program – Telegram and the Tor browser, the doc states.
Ex-Democratic state Rep. Jesse White was taken into federal custody and slapped with possession of child pornography and receipt and distribution of child pornography charges Tuesday. Facebook / Jesse White
The repulsive content included videos of minors between 7 and 15 years old engaged in sexually explicit activities and naked photos of girls between the ages of 8 and 14, according to the complaint.
The FBI probe kicked off after the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children received an anonymous cyber tip alleging homemade child porn on Sunday, along with an image of a boy between 5 and 6 years old naked in the shower, the doc states.
Metadata taken from the photo – in which a white man wearing a wedding band was also visible – revealed it was snapped on a phone registered to White in January 2019, according to investigators.
Another cyber tip submitted during the White investigation showed a second nude image of a boy who was about 9 to 11 years old when it was taken in August 2021, the documents state.
“Jesse White has two minor male children,” an FBI investigator noted in the complaint.
The disgraced pol previously represented Pennsylvania’s 46th District – which covers parts of Allegheny, Beaver and Washington counties – from 2007 to 2015. PA House of Representatives
The disgraced pol was hit with possession of child pornography and receipt and distribution of child pornography charges.
He was assigned a federal public defender after stating he was unable to afford a private attorney, according to court documents.
He is expected to appear in the Harrisburg federal courthouse for a detention hearing on Wednesday afternoon.
White previously represented Pennsylvania’s 46th District – which covers parts of Allegheny, Beaver and Washington counties – from 2007 to 2015.
The father of two, who was married to wife Eileen while serving in the House of Representatives, was disbarred as an attorney in 2017 after he was found to have misused $100,000 in client funds to support an out-of-control gambling addiction, according to reports.
Congressman exposed true foolishness of Smithsonian — and America’s woke ‘reckoning’ — with one hilarious question
During a Capitol Hill hearing Tuesday, Rep. Brandon Gill and his Republican colleagues skillfully exposed much of the institutional woke rot embedded in the nooks and crannies of the Smithsonian.
In a particularly revelatory exchange with National Museum of American History Director Anthea Hartig — there to defend what the White House Domestic Policy Council called the Smithsonian’s “radical, activist ideology” — Gill posed a simple question that could be answered by kindergarten students everywhere.
Anthea Hartig, the Director of the National Museum of American History was grilled by Republicans, including Rep. Brandon Gill, this week over her institution’s “radical, activist ideology.” Brandon Gill / X
“Yes, sir,” she answered.
Then, in deadpan style, Gill went in for the kill.
“It’s also interesting because the same MASS Action Toolkit that your organization has been promoting references politeness as a defining characteristic of ‘White Supremacy Culture,'” Gill said. “Ma’am, are you a white supremacist?”
Hartig declared that she was not.
“Can you help me square why your organization says that being polite is part of being a white supremacist?” Gill continued.
The MASS — or “Museums as Site for Social Action” — Toolkit was created by museum professionals around 2017 to turn their workplaces into hubs of activism. The Smithsonian staff promoted it as part of their DEI initiatives.
Hartig tried to deflect by noting that her staff didn’t write it. But the damage was done. She had allowed it.
Unlike many colleagues on both sides of the aisle, Gill isn’t high on theatrics. The 32-year-old politician simply reminds far lefties of their own words or the policies their organizations have promoted.
Maher squirmed in her seat, insisting that “much of my thinking has evolved over the last half decade.”
All of these moments travel far and wide on the internet because they are so absurd. But they become far less funny once you realize that the left tried to rewire our entire society to adhere to such cockamamie ideas. They sold them as a racial reckoning and told everyone to get on board or get out of the way.
This “blame whitey” handbook may not have been crafted by Hartig or the Smithsonian, but it does represent much of the great awokening — when leadership in corporations, universities and other institutions allowed anti-liberal principles to become the bedrock of their foundations.
For example, in 2021 Duke Medical school put out a plan called “Dismantling Racism and Advancing Equity, Diversity and Inclusion in the School of Medicine.” The report deemed punctuality part of “white supremacy culture.” (Good luck trying to get in for a timely appointment with one of those doctors.)
Many in leadership thought they were being good-intentioned. After all, the words “inclusion and equity” seem nice enough.
Brandon Gill shared the revelatory exchange with Hartig on X, where it was widely viewed. Brandon Gill / X
But subscribing to the anti-racism, pro-BLM and other radical-left ideals also meant survival. Many organizations across industries — Vogue springs to mind — publicly apologized for perceived harmful behavior of the past. As part of their penance, they allowed the cast of “Portlandia” to make the rules.
There was no intellectual honesty to any of these initiatives or bizarre claims — fringe beliefs that belonged in the dark corners of academia, not welcomed into mainstream society.
Dissenters did not fare well. Twitter under its old management banned people for speech, especially the grave sin of misgendering someone.
Author Robin DiAngelo said any objection to the idea that America is an inherently racist and terrible place symbolized one’s white fragility.
These gourmet struggle sessions achieved only one thing: inflating the bank balances of two nervy and entrepreneurial women of color.
What a brilliant scam.
That was a fevered and wild time. The goal wasn’t to achieve equality or help smart, capable people get ahead, regardless of their race. It was to seize power and gut our meritocracy.
Gill’s questioning of Hartig this week was a sliding-doors moment for America. What if we hadn’t rejected wokeness during the last election and instead continued down this path of lunacy?
Thankfully, we don’t have to ponder the thought. We just have to keep calling it out.
Fury as Dems unleash ‘rigging’ plot to kill voter ID in California: ‘Blatant manipulation’
California’s Democrat Attorney-General has been accused of making a dishonest, last minute attempt to thwart a state voter ID proposal going to voters in the fall, leading to allegations of election rigging.
The backers of Proposition 39, which would require voters to provide government ID at the polls or the last four digits of a ID number if voting by mail, claim that Attorney General Rob Bonta changed the ballot measure’s description in a malicious attempt to ensure the proposal didn’t have a chance on election day.
“This is blatant manipulation and rigging right in the middle of the election season,” fumed Republican Assemblyman David Tangipa, one of the first to spot the changes.
Bonta’s office is required to write a title and summary for ballot measures, and his office took steps in September of last year to describe the measure ahead of signatures being gathered to help the measure qualify for November’s election.
Republicans are accusing Bonta of trying to “rig” the election by portraying the ballot measure negatively.
In the attorney general’s original description, Prop 39 is a measure that “establishes additional voter identification and citizenship verification requirements.”
However, the description revealed Tuesday in the voter information guide is vastly different. Bonta now describes Prop 39 as a measure that “prohibits citizens from voting unless they present government-issued identification.”
Supporters of the voter ID ballot measure were furious after they spotted the changes in the description of their proposal in the newly released voter information guide for the November election that will be mailed to all voters.
The new summary of the voter ID proposal is also different and framed more negatively. It states the measure can “prohibit” voting and “invalidate” mail ballots without proper identification, whereas the original summary simply listed IDs as requirements.
“California politicians know that a super-majority of California voters support Prop 39’s bipartisan solution for Voter ID – so now they are corruptly trying to rig the election by putting a biased and dishonest title on this common-sense measure,” said Republican Assemblyman Carl DeMaio, the chief backer of the ballot measure.
The new summary also omits the requirement for the state to provide voter ID cards on request.
The voter ID measure qualified for the November ballot in April with more than 962,000 signatures and will become law if California voters approve it. In addition to the ID requirements, it would require election officials to report how much citizenship statuses are verified and require audits for compliance.
Critics are warn Bonta’s changes put the voter ID in peril.
“Rob Bonta couldn’t stop 1.3 million Californians from putting Prop 39 on the ballot,” Rep. James Gallagher (R-Yuba City).
“So what does he do? He changes the ballot title to manipulate how voters see voter ID, sabotaging it before Californians ever get a fair vote.”
The California Secretary of State deferred on commenting and referred The Post to Bonta’s office, which had not publicly addressed the changes prior to this story.
After multiple attempts for comment, the attorney general’s office pointed The Post to a state law that says “the ballot title and summary may differ from the legislative, circulating, or other title and summary of the measure.”
“It is not uncommon for the ballot title and summary to change from the circulating version — and this year, all nine voter-proposed initiatives had changes,” Bonta’s office told The Post.
“Our office properly exercised its discretion to provide further clarity to voters about Prop 39’s chief purpose and points for the ballot stage.”
This isn’t the first time the attorney general’s power over ballot descriptions have caused controversy.
State Sen. Roger Niello (R-Fair Oaks) has tried for years to push legislation to shift the ballot-writing authority from the attorney general to the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office.
Labor unions and a Democrat-controlled Legislature have opposed and stopped such efforts. They argue the current structure is better because the attorney general’s office is democratically elected, and the office has the resources and experience to do such work.
“The legal team at the attorney general’s office is well-equipped to do this and has done a fine job,” Terry Brennan, of SEIU California, said at a legislative hearing in April.
“When a ballot language is prepared within a partisan office, it becomes vulnerable to politicization,” Niello countered.
“This can result in wording that can be misleading, or perhaps incomplete, perhaps creating confusion, but if particularly slanted, creating mistrust in the system.”
Keep these in mind as you contemplate the direction of the American government over the past 50 years and especially since the Obama election.
The Goals of Communism
(as read into the congressional record January 10, 1963, from "The Naked Communist" by Cleon Skousen)
1. U.S. acceptance of coexistence as the only alternative to atomic war.
2. U.S. willingness to capitulate in preference to engaging in atomic war.
3. Develop the illusion that total disarmament of the United States would be a demonstration of moral strength.
4. Permit free trade between all nations regardless of Communist affiliation and regardless of whether or not items could be used for war.
5. Extension of long-term loans to Russia and Soviet satellites.
6. Provide American aid to all nations regardless of Communist domination.
7. Grant recognition of Red China. Admission of Red China to the U.N.
8. Set up East and West Germany as separate states in spite of Khrushchev's promise in 1955 to settle the German question by free elections under supervision of the U.N.
9. Prolong the conferences to ban atomic tests because the United States has agreed to suspend tests as long as negotiations are in progress.
10. Allow all Soviet satellites individual representation in the U.N.
11. Promote the U.N. as the only hope for mankind. If its charter is rewritten, demand that it be set up as a one-world government with its own independent armed forces. (Some Communist leaders believe the world can be taken over as easily by the U.N. as by Moscow. Sometimes these two centers compete with each other as they are now doing in the Congo.)
12. Resist any attempt to outlaw the Communist Party.
13. Do away with all loyalty oaths.
14. Continue giving Russia access to the U.S. Patent Office.
15. Capture one or both of the political parties in the United States.
16. Use technical decisions of the courts to weaken basic American institutions by claiming their activities violate civil rights.
17. Get control of the schools. Use them as transmission belts for socialism and current Communist propaganda. Soften the curriculum. Get control of teachers' associations. Put the party line in textbooks.
18. Gain control of all student newspapers.
19. Use student riots to foment public protests against programs or organizations which are under Communist attack.
20. Infiltrate the press. Get control of book-review assignments, editorial writing, policymaking positions.
21. Gain control of key positions in radio, TV, and motion pictures.
22. Continue discrediting American culture by degrading all forms of artistic expression. An American Communist cell was told to "eliminate all good sculpture from parks and buildings, substitute shapeless, awkward and meaningless forms."
23. Control art critics and directors of art museums. "Our plan is to promote ugliness, repulsive, meaningless art."
24. Eliminate all laws governing obscenity by calling them "censorship" and a violation of free speech and free press.
25. Break down cultural standards of morality by promoting pornography and obscenity in books, magazines, motion pictures, radio, and TV.
26. Present homosexuality, degeneracy and promiscuity as "normal, natural, healthy."
27. Infiltrate the churches and replace revealed religion with "social" religion. Discredit the Bible and emphasize the need for intellectual maturity which does not need a "religious crutch."
28. Eliminate prayer or any phase of religious expression in the schools on the ground that it violates the principle of "separation of church and state."
29. Discredit the American Constitution by calling it inadequate, old-fashioned, out of step with modern needs, a hindrance to cooperation between nations on a worldwide basis.
30. Discredit the American Founding Fathers. Present them as selfish aristocrats who had no concern for the "common man."
31. Belittle all forms of American culture and discourage the teaching of American history on the ground that it was only a minor part of the "big picture." Give more emphasis to Russian history since the Communists took over.
32. Support any socialist movement to give centralized control over any part of the culture--education, social agencies, welfare programs, mental health clinics, etc.
33. Eliminate all laws or procedures which interfere with the operation of the Communist apparatus.
34. Eliminate the House Committee on Un-American Activities.
35. Discredit and eventually dismantle the FBI.
36. Infiltrate and gain control of more unions.
37. Infiltrate and gain control of big business.
38. Transfer some of the powers of arrest from the police to social agencies. Treat all behavioral problems as psychiatric disorders which no one but psychiatrists can understand.
39. Dominate the psychiatric profession and use mental health laws as a means of gaining coercive control over those who oppose Communist goals.
40. Discredit the family as an institution. Encourage promiscuity and easy divorce.
41. Emphasize the need to raise children away from the negative influence of parents. Attribute prejudices, mental blocks and retarding of children to suppressive influence of parents.
42. Create the impression that violence and insurrection are legitimate aspects of the American tradition; that students and special-interest groups should rise up and use united force to solve economic, political or social problems.
43. Overthrow all colonial governments before native populations are ready for self-government.
44. Internationalize the Panama Canal.
45. Repeal the Connally reservation so the United States cannot prevent the World Court from seizing jurisdiction over nations and individuals alike.
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