‘I believe this is probably the record, you know, Border Patrol-wide, since ever, of agents calling in sick’
By Adan Zalazar
More agents than ever before are calling in sick to work or showing up sick, says a Border Patrol union representative who worries too many agents are succumbing to illnesses brought by illegal aliens.
Carlos Favela, president of the National Border Patrol Council Local 1929, says the number of agents affected by illnesses has reached alarming levels in recent years, with an estimated 20 to 25 agents from the El Paso sector calling in sick each day, while others come in to work sick because they’ve used up their sick days.
“I believe this is probably the record, you know, Border Patrol-wide, since ever, of agents calling in sick,” Favela told ABC-7.
According to Favela, numerous agents are filing union reports claiming they’ve contracted everything from the H1N1 virus to chicken pox to Legionnaires’ disease after coming in contact with sick illegals encountered at the border.
Favela says agents are concerned they could infect their family members with infectious diseases such as tuberculosis.
“The nightmare for the agent out in the field,” said Favela, “is that they contract tuberculosis or some kind of bacterial disease and they unknowingly take that home to their families and then their whole family is sick.”
To the border union president, the increase in sick agents coincides with the number of illegals arriving at the border.
KVIA reports, “Newly-released figures from the Department of Homeland Security reveal Border Patrol agents encountered 109,144 migrants in April 2019, the highest since 2007.”
Favela argues it’s hard to get the evidence needed to quantify the issue and prove a correlation, but he pushes back against Border Patrol officials who say they haven’t noticed the trend.
“That’s false,” he said. “Ever since the big surge of the immigrants started coming in, even as far back as September, we started seeing those numbers slightly increase – of agents calling in sick.”
The border rep is urging the CDC to implement changes to better protect agents’ health, including providing more screenings from doctors instead of nurses and new quarantine facilities for sick illegals.
Thousands of MS-13 gang members imprisoned in El Salvador for rape and murder have a message for President Trump: we are reformed criminals who deserve entry into the United States because we are taking “bakery and culture classes.”
Over 1,700 gang members, according to the Daily Mail, are inmates at the high-security Chalatenango prison, and are “taking classes in bakery, tailoring, carpentry, woodwork and even art and culture, in a bid to prepare for life after incarceration” through a rehabilitation program called “Yo Cambio” (I’m Changing).
“We’re people like everyone else: human beings. We’ve changed and we’re showing that those gang members deprived of liberty can contribute something positive to society,”said the program’s coordinator Alexis Castro, a 33-year-old MS-13 gang member serving a 10-year sentence.
Despite being accused of a range of crimes including murder, extortion, and child trafficking for a transnational gang whose motto is “Rape, control, kill,” Castro insists he and his fellow MS-13 comrades are “normal and ordinary people.”
“We’re labeled terrorists but we’ve never been terrorists at any point,” said Castro. “We say to Donald Trump, we’re not terrorists, we’re human, normal and ordinary people.”
Unfortunately for them, given they are in a socialist third world hellhole, “the classes are mostly theoretical as the inmates lack the necessary materials to take part in practical training,” the Mail reports.
Facebook has unpublished the page of Ecuador’s former president, Rafael Correa, the social media giant confirmed on Thursday, claiming that the popular leftist leader violated the company’s security policies.
In a statement republished by Ecuadorean newspaper El Comercio, a company spokesperson said:
“Protecting the privacy and security of people is central to Facebook [and] we have clear policies that do not allow the disclosure of personal information such as phone numbers, addresses, bank account data, cards, or any record or data that could compromise the integrity physical or financial of the people in our community.”
The move comes on the same day that Ecuador’s government allowed British security personnel to enter their embassy in London to arrest journalist and WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who has been sought by U.S. officials for years due to his role in releasing scandalous information implicating Washington in a range of crimes, including war crimes.
Assange, 47, had been living at the Embassy of Ecuador in London since 2012, when then-President Correa granted political asylum to the Australian amid the British government’s attempts to detain him. At the time, Correa called Eduador’s actions an act of sovereign “duty.”
Ecuador’s current leader, Lenin Moreno, was openly opposed to Assange, whom he referred to on various occasions as a “miserable hacker,” an “irritant,” and a “stone in the shoe” of his government. Moreno’s distancing from the asylee came following a 2017 meeting with Trump campaign confidant and political “fixer” Paul Manafort, where the two discussed Ecuador’s handover of Assange to U.K. and U.S. authorities.
In March, WikiLeaks published a tranche of documents dubbed the INA Papers linking President Lenin Moreno to the INA Investment Corporation, an offshore shell company used by Moreno to procure furniture, property, and various luxury items.
The account number for the offshore account allegedly used by the president to launder money was shared across Ecuadorean social networks by netizens of all political stripes, including by Correa – who had about 1.5 million followers and whose Facebook page enjoyed more interactions and attention than that of President Moreno himself.
The account number was also shared alongside personal photos of President Moreno enjoying lavish breakfasts and dinners of lobster—imagery considered especially damning for the people of Ecuador given Moreno’s previous boasting of an austere poverty diet consisting of eggs and white rice.
It also came amid attempts by the neoliberal Ecuadorean government to curry favor with financiers in Europe and the United States amid the continuing debt crisis. In March, the IMF finally bailed out Moreno’s government to the tune of $4.2 billion.
Prior to the removal of the page, Correa lambasted his successor in a series of posts that still remain on Twitter at the time of this writing.
Rafael Correa
✔@MashiRafael
Christine:
I do not know what to tell you. I only ask forgiveness from me and my people. A traitor and corrupt like Moreno does not represent us. I promise not to rest until I see him in jail, where he deserves to be.
Mrs. Christine Assange@AssangeMrs
Shame on you @Lenin#Moreno!
May the Ecuadorean people seek vengeance upon you, you dirty, deceitful, rotten traitor!
May the face of my suffering son haunt your sleepless nights..
And may your soul writhe forever in torturous Purgatory as you have tortured my beloved son! https://twitter.com/SkyNews/status/1116283158943666176 …
Since 2015, Correa—who lives with his family in Brussels, Belgium—had used the social platform to great effect, using strongly-worded posts, video interviews, and live-streams as a platform amid the Ecuadorean media’s de facto blackout of the former leader, who remains reviled by the center-right former opposition and sections of the country’s left.
Former President Correa minced no words in his assessment of Moreno, denouncing him in an English-language tweet as “the greatest traitor in Ecuadorian and Latin American history … Moreno is a corrupt man, but what he has done is a crime that humanity will never forget.”
Rafael Correa
✔@MashiRafael
The greatest traitor in Ecuadorian and Latin American history, Lenin Moreno, allowed the British police to enter our embassy in London to arrest Assange.
Moreno is a corrupt man, but what he has done is a crime that humanity will never forget.
Barnaby Nerberka@barnabynerberka
BREAK: Full @Ruptly video of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange’s arrest by British police this morning
In a separate tweet responding to Moreno’s announcement of the handover, Correa further tore into what he called “one of the most atrocious acts [and the] fruit of servility, villainy and revenge.”
“From now on worldwide, the scoundrel and betrayal can be summarized in two words: Lenin Moreno,” the popular former president added.
The removal of Correa’s page for violating Facebook’s “community standards” is an unprecedented move, and the former statesman is the most high-profile public political figure to ever be removed from the social platform–placing the economist and icon of Latin American “socialism of the 21st century” in the same unlikely category as right-wing conspiracy theorist and broadcaster Alex Jones.
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has been taken to Westminster Magistrates Court after his arrest at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London. Photos of the whistleblower defiantly gesturing in a police van have emerged in the media.
Journalist flocked to the white police van carrying the whistleblower into the courthouse. With his hair tied back and sporting a full-length white beard, Assange offered cameras a hardy thumbs up with a wink.
Assange stepped into the courtroom wearing a dark polo shirt and quietly read his Gore Vidal book while he waited for his lawyers to arrive.
Earlier, Metropolitan Police said in a statement that they arrested Assange on a warrant issued by the Westminster Magistrates’ Court in June 2012, for failing to surrender to the court. The police were“invited into the embassy by the Ambassador,” it said.
Julian Assange is a pioneering whistleblower in the digital-age, speaking truth to power like no one before him managed on such a significant scale. As he sits in a London jail cell, here’s why we should be grateful for his work.
By setting up the international non-profit organization WikiLeaksin Iceland in 2006, Assange irrevocably shifted the balance of power in the online era.
From humble beginnings as a master coder and hacker, caught by Australian authorities in 1995 but escaping a prison term, to the foremost publisher of sensitive, embarrassing and potentially dangerous material for the world to see, Assange’s storied career as a publisher and whistleblower has captured headlines, and the global public’s attention for years.
RT takes a look back at the key moments in Assange’s career that remind us why the world owes him such a debt of gratitude.
In 2007, WikiLeaks published emails exposing the manuals for Camp Delta, a controversial US detention center in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba which was the focal point for the US war on terror and the final destination for those captured as part of its extraordinary rendition campaign.
The following year the whistleblowing site posted emails from vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin’s private Yahoo email account, again exposing the newfound weakness of the political class in the digital age.
‘Collateral murder’
In a move that would reverberate online and across the world for years, in April 2010 WikiLeaks published footage of US forces summarily executing 18 civilians from an Apache attack helicopter in Iraq. It was an almost unheard of revelation of the brutality of war and the low price of human life in modern conflict.
2010 was a very busy year for Assange as in July WikiLeaks published more than 90,000 classified documents and diplomatic cables relating to the Afghanistan war.
Later, in October 2010, the organization published a raft of classified documents from the Iraq War. The logs were referred to as “the largest leak of classified documents in its history” by the US Department of Defense, according to the BBC. WikiLeaks followed that up in November by publishing diplomatic cables from US embassies around the world.
The Guantánamo Files and Spy Files
In April 2011, WikiLeaks published classified US military documents detailing the behavior and treatment of detainees held at Guantanamo Bay. This leak would be followed, once again, by a vast trove (250 million) of US diplomatic cables.
Throughout this sequence of widely-praised leaks, Assange invited a global audience behind the curtain of international diplomacy and warfare to expose the hidden truths of global power dynamics in a way which would forever change the power structure and landscape, affording a platform to analysts like Chelsea Manning to expose potential war crimes and misdeeds by the US military at large.
Assange and WikiLeaks would also help fellow whistleblowers like Edward Snowden to seek refuge from predatory US authorities, providing aid and comfort to those who risked everything in the pursuit of truth, exposing some of the most egregious mass surveillance programs the world has ever known.
DNC leak
As the 2016 US presidential election loomed, WikiLeaks published nearly 20,000 emails from the Democratic National Committee, which exposed the preferential treatment shown to then-candidate for president Hillary Clinton over her competitor Bernie Sandersin the Democratic primary. Assange boldly informed CNN’s Anderson Cooper that the release was indeed timed to coincide with the Democratic National Convention.
In October that same year, WikiLeaks began publishing emails from Clinton’s campaign manager John Podesta, which shed light on the inner workings of the Democratic nominee’s political machine.
These included excerpts from Clinton’s speeches to Wall Street, politically-motivated payments made to the Clinton Foundation, her consideration of choosing Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates or his wife as a potential running mate, her desire to covertly intervene in Syria, her intention to ring-fence China with missile defense batteries if it did not curtail North Korea’s nuclear ambitions.
Legacy
Following his arrest on the morning of April 11, 2019, Assange’s future remains unclear. He likely faces extradition to the US where it was inadvertently revealed that he has been charged under seal in a US federal court. Former Assange collaborator Chelsea Manning has been imprisoned for refusing to cooperate with the court in relation to the case.
Assange’s legal battle is only just beginning, it seems, but the international following he has forged will undoubtedly grant him a place in the pantheon of history’s champions of truth.
He remains a true digital pioneer, paving the way for so many to follow in his footsteps and expose the untold misdeeds of the powerful, be they political figures or entire militaries. Assange has defiantly shown what a powerful tool digital technology can be and how easily the dynamics of power can be shifted in the 21st century by those brave enough. Unfortunately, he also showed the consequences of wielding such power in the face of such overwhelming international and political opposition.
The apparently fabricated report by The Guardian linking Russiagate and Manafort to WikiLeaks is laying the case to arrest and extradite Julian Assange to the US, investigative journalist Max Blumenthal told RT.
WikiLeaks is ready to sue Britain’s Guardian newspaper for a“fabricated Manafort story” that accused Julian Assange of secretly meeting President Donald Trump‘s former election campaign chairman Paul Manafort.
Manafort agreed to take part in the Mueller probe over Russia’s alleged meddling into the 2016 US election but he denies co-operating with Russia or ever meeting Assange.
The author of the report, Luke Harding, based his claim on “sources” and a document “written by Ecuador’s Senain intelligence agency and seen by the Guardian,”which the newspaper didn’t publish.
Investigative journalist Max Blumenthal asks why they didn’t provide actual “evidence from the visitor logs of the Ecuadorian Embassy which are closely watched.”
“Why not show CCTV? London is the most heavily surveilled places on Earth. Why not show that? Why rely on a single Ecuadorian source who appears to be an Ecuadorian intelligence source with the MI6 on the other hand of the line and the US on the other?” he said in a comment to RT.
He believes that it is a fabrication of a story to lay the case for the arrest and extradition of Julian Assange “by tying him to a figure who is hatching out a plea deal with Robert Mueller, by tying him to the Russiagate scandal in the US.”
Blumenthal noted that this story was being met with more skepticism than usual – “even in official circles in Washington” – and that “it might have failed.”
However, he added, “once the allegation is made, the damage is done.”
“Many people might have read this story and seen some commentary about it and news on CNN and judge that Assange did meet with Paul Manafort,” he pointed out.
‘Guardian has become bulletin board for fabricated national security state propaganda’
Although WikiLeaks is going to sue over this story and both WikiLeaks and Paul Manafort deny the allegations, the article is still on The Guardian’s website.
“It is a sad commentary on what The Guardian has become – basically a bulletin board for fabricated national security state propaganda,”Blumenthal said.
According to the journalist, this story brings together the Russiagate scandal in Washington with the plot to extradite Assange.
“We know that there is an indictment of Julian Assange, it may be made public tomorrow,” he said. US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo met with the Ecuadorian foreign minister earlier in the week, which might be a sign that it could be made public, Blumenthal explained.
Recalling that Paul Manafort is working out a plea deal with Robert Mueller, Blumenthal argued that the report may have been “an attempt to put the squeeze on Manafort because he is not providing enough information.”
“This apparently fabricated story was planted through Luke Harding… in order to lay the case for the arrest and extradition of Julian Assange,”he said.
If arrested and extradited, Blumenthal explains, Assange would be the first journalist who published classified information in the US to be tried under the Espionage Act. That, he noted, would basically deprive the WikiLeaks founder of “any real legal defense or an ability to mount a defense and would see him put on trial in a district court in Northern Virginia where the conviction rate on national security prosecutions is close to 100 percent.”
Former MI5 intelligence officer Annie Machon thinks the US will go to any lengths to fix charges against Assange.
“It has been an open secret for many years that there has been a secret grand jury convened in Virginia trying to find any charge or probably make up a new law just to prosecute Julian Assange as a revenge for the fact that he shone a very bright light on some very murky and dark details of what the American state was doing,” she explained.
According to Machon, it is useful for the American establishment and the Democrats “to conflate everything with one big mess: Paul Manafort, the Mueller probe, Donald Trump, WikiLeaks as all part of big Russiagate-type thing.” She added that when you actually “pick the details, none of that hangs together whatsoever.”
In her opinion, Julian Assange is becoming a pawn in “a very high stakes game within American Washington politics.”
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