AP Exclusive: 629 Pakistani girls sold as brides to China

LAHORE, Pakistan (AP) — Page after page, the names stack up: 629 girls and women from across Pakistan who were sold as brides to Chinese men and taken to China. The list, obtained by The Associated Press, was compiled by Pakistani investigators determined to break up trafficking networks exploiting the country’s poor and vulnerable.

The list gives the most concrete figure yet for the number of women caught up in the trafficking schemes since 2018.

But since the time it was put together in June, investigators’ aggressive drive against the networks has largely ground to a halt. Officials with knowledge of the investigations say that is because of pressure from government officials fearful of hurting Pakistan’s lucrative ties to Beijing.

The biggest case against traffickers has fallen apart. In October, a court in Faisalabad acquitted 31 Chinese nationals charged in connection with trafficking. Several of the women who had initially been interviewed by police refused to testify because they were either threatened or bribed into silence, according to a court official and a police investigator familiar with the case. The two spoke on condition of anonymity because they feared retribution for speaking out.

https://apnews.com/c586d0f73fe249718ec06f6867b0244e

Funds contributed to the Peter’s Pence collection have been used to the ease Vatican’s budget deficit, the Wall Street Journal reports.

The Peter’s Pence collection is taken up worldwide each year to support the work of the Holy Father. Although the appeal traditionally emphasizes the Pontiff’s charitable works, the Journal finds that as little as 10% of the funds collected go to charitable projects.

In a detailed investigation of the collection’s results, the Journal concludes that “about two-thirds of the money has been used to help cover the budget deficit of the Holy See.” Last year that deficit was €70 million, or more than 20% of the total Vatican budget.

Much of the money collected each year is invested, and the accumulated wealth of the Peter’s Pence fund soared to around €700 million ($780 million) under Pope Benedict XVI. But that figure has now dropped to €600 million, the Journal reports.

Although Vatican officials attribute the decline in the assets to weak returns on investments, the annual collections have also sagged markedly. In 2017 the appeal brought in €60 million; last year it produced €50 million: a plunge of 17%.

The use of the Peter’s Pence collection has been a focal point of criticism in recent weeks, with the revelation that funds from the appeal were used to prop up a failing Italian hospital, against the advice of both the Vatican bank and the Secretariat for the Economy.

https://www.catholicculture.org/news/headlines/index.cfm?storyid=44447

>>7485610

Dear Mr. President:

I am in sympathy with the Soviet form of government as that best suited

for the Russian people…

Letter to President Woodrow Wilson (October 17, 1918) from William

Lawrence Saunders, chairman, Ingersoll-Rand Corp.; director, American

International Corp.; and deputy chairman, Federal Reserve Bank of New York

On the other hand, it may be observed that both the extreme right and the extreme left of the

conventional political spectrum are absolutely collectivist. The national socialist (for example,

the fascist) and the international socialist (for example, the Communist) both recommend

totalitarian politico-economic systems based on naked, unfettered political power and

individual coercion. Both systems require monopoly control of society. While monopoly control of industries was once the objective of J. P. Morgan and J. D. Rockefeller, by the late

nineteenth century the inner sanctums of Wall Street understood that the most efficient way to

gain an unchallenged monopoly was to "go political" and make society go to work for the

monopolists — under the name of the public good and the public interest. This strategy was

detailed in 1906 by Frederick C. Howe in his

Confessions of a Monopolist.

Howe, by the way,

is also a figure in the story of the Bolshevik Revolution.

Therefore, an alternative conceptual packaging of political ideas and politico-economic

systems would be that of ranking the degree of individual freedom versus the degree of

centralized political control. Under such an ordering the corporate welfare state and socialism

are at the same end of the spectrum. Hence we see that attempts at monopoly control of society

can have different labels while owning common features.

TO

those unknown Russian libertarians, also

known as Greens, who in 1919 fought both

the Reds and the Whites in their attempt to

gain a free and voluntary Russia

FREE TO READ

https://www.voltairenet.org/IMG/pdf/Sutton_Wall_Street_and_the_bolshevik_revolution-5.pdf

>>7485419