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Indymedia Ireland is a volunteer-run non-commercial open publishing website for local and international news, opinion & analysis, press releases and events. Its main objective is to enable the public to participate in reporting and analysis of the news and other important events and aspects of our daily lives and thereby give a voice to people.
Fraud and mismanagement at University College Cork Thu Aug 28, 2025 18:30 | Calli Morganite UCC has paid huge sums to a criminal professor
This story is not for republication. I bear responsibility for the things I write. I have read the guidelines and understand that I must not write anything untrue, and I won't.
This is a public interest story about a complete failure of governance and management at UCC.
Deliberate Design Flaw In ChatGPT-5 Sun Aug 17, 2025 08:04 | Mind Agent Socratic Dialog Between ChatGPT-5 and Mind Agent Reveals Fatal and Deliberate 'Design by Construction' Flaw
This design flaw in ChatGPT-5's default epistemic mode subverts what the much touted ChatGPT-5 can do... so long as the flaw is not tickled, any usage should be fine---The epistemological question is: how would anyone in the public, includes you reading this (since no one is all knowing), in an unfamiliar domain know whether or not the flaw has been tickled when seeking information or understanding of a domain without prior knowledge of that domain???!
This analysis is a pretty unique and significant contribution to the space of empirical evaluation of LLMs that exist in AI public world... at least thus far, as far as I am aware! For what it's worth--as if anyone in the ChatGPT universe cares as they pile up on using the "PhD level scholar in your pocket".
According to GPT-5, and according to my tests, this flaw exists in all LLMs... What is revealing is the deduction GPT-5 made: Why ?design choice? starts looking like ?deliberate flaw?.
People are paying $200 a month to not just ChatGPT, but all major LLMs have similar Pro pricing! I bet they, like the normal user of free ChatGPT, stay in LLM's default mode where the flaw manifests itself. As it did in this evaluation.
AI Reach: Gemini Reasoning Question of God Sat Aug 02, 2025 20:00 | Mind Agent Evaluating Semantic Reasoning Capability of AI Chatbot on Ontologically Deep Abstract (bias neutral) Thought
I have been evaluating AI Chatbot agents for their epistemic limits over the past two months, and have tested all major AI Agents, ChatGPT, Grok, Claude, Perplexity, and DeepSeek, for their epistemic limits and their negative impact as information gate-keepers.... Today I decided to test for how AI could be the boon for humanity in other positive areas, such as in completely abstract realms, such as metaphysical thought. Meaning, I wanted to test the LLMs for Positives beyond what most researchers benchmark these for, or have expressed in the approx. 2500 Turing tests in Humanity?s Last Exam.. And I chose as my first candidate, Google DeepMind's Gemini as I had not evaluated it before on anything.
Israeli Human Rights Group B'Tselem finally Admits It is Genocide releasing Our Genocide report Fri Aug 01, 2025 23:54 | 1 of indy We have all known it for over 2 years that it is a genocide in Gaza
Israeli human rights group B'Tselem has finally admitted what everyone else outside Israel has known for two years is that the Israeli state is carrying out a genocide in Gaza
Western governments like the USA are complicit in it as they have been supplying the huge bombs and missiles used by Israel and dropped on innocent civilians in Gaza. One phone call from the USA regime could have ended it at any point. However many other countries are complicity with their tacit approval and neighboring Arab countries have been pretty spinless too in their support
With the release of this report titled: Our Genocide -there is a good chance this will make it okay for more people within Israel itself to speak out and do something about it despite the fact that many there are actually in support of the Gaza
China?s CITY WIDE CASH SEIZURES Begin ? ATMs Frozen, Digital Yuan FORCED Overnight Wed Jul 30, 2025 21:40 | 1 of indy This story is unverified but it is very instructive of what will happen when cash is removed
THIS STORY IS UNVERIFIED BUT PLEASE WATCH THE VIDEO OR READ THE TRANSCRIPT AS IT GIVES AN VERY GOOD IDEA OF WHAT A CASHLESS SOCIETY WILL LOOK LIKE. And it ain't pretty
A single video report has come out of China claiming China's biggest cities are now cashless, not by choice, but by force. The report goes on to claim ATMs have gone dark, vaults are being emptied. And overnight (July 20 into 21), the digital yuan is the only currency allowed. The Saker >>
Lord Brooke and the Malthusian Mind Virus in Our Time Mon Sep 29, 2025 07:00 | Tilak Doshi Lord Brooke's wild House of Lords speech about abortion, gays and climate change wasn't just odd ? Tilak Doshi shows it's the same old Malthusian doom-mongering that elites have been peddling for centuries.
The post Lord Brooke and the Malthusian Mind Virus in Our Time appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.
News Round-Up Mon Sep 29, 2025 01:10 | Richard Eldred A summary of the most interesting stories in the past 24 hours that challenge the prevailing orthodoxy about the ?climate emergency?, public health ?crises? and the supposed moral defects of Western civilisation.
The post News Round-Up appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.
Farage?s Mass Deportation Plan Is Racist, Says Starmer Sun Sep 28, 2025 19:00 | Richard Eldred Sir Keir Starmer has slammed Reform UK's mass deportation plan as "racist", warning that Nigel Farage's idea of kicking out hundreds of thousands of legal immigrants would "tear Britain apart".
The post Farage?s Mass Deportation Plan Is Racist, Says Starmer appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.
Fury After Woke NHS Supports First-Cousin Marriages Despite Risk of Birth Defects ? and Oppression A... Sun Sep 28, 2025 17:00 | Richard Eldred The NHS is under fire for defending cousin marriage as a cultural "benefit" despite the serious health risks, claiming it brings "stronger extended family support systems and economic advantages".
The post Fury After Woke NHS Supports First-Cousin Marriages Despite Risk of Birth Defects ? and Oppression Against Women appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.
Is the Tech Giant Who Gave Blair ?257 Million in Line for Huge ID Card Contract? Sun Sep 28, 2025 15:00 | Richard Eldred A cronyism row has hit the Government after it emerged Tony Blair secretly lobbied for his tech billionaire backer, who gave him ?257 million and could rake in millions from Labour's digital ID cards.
The post Is the Tech Giant Who Gave Blair ?257 Million in Line for Huge ID Card Contract? appeared first on The Daily Sceptic. Lockdown Skeptics >>
Voltaire, international edition
Will intergovernmental institutions withstand the end of the "American Empire"?,... Sat Apr 05, 2025 07:15 | en
Voltaire, International Newsletter N?127 Sat Apr 05, 2025 06:38 | en
Disintegration of Western democracy begins in France Sat Apr 05, 2025 06:00 | en
Voltaire, International Newsletter N?126 Fri Mar 28, 2025 11:39 | en
The International Conference on Combating Anti-Semitism by Amichai Chikli and Na... Fri Mar 28, 2025 11:31 | en Voltaire Network >>
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Cholera outbreak in Haiti: Nobody's fault?
international |
miscellaneous |
opinion/analysis
Wednesday November 17, 2010 18:43 by Diarmuid Breatnach - Haiti Solidarity Ireland

The West have bled the Haitian until she collapsed and now cannot even give her clean water.
It is so sad to read of a cholera outbreak among the survivors of the Haitian earthquake disaster -- .according to news reports, over 14,600 people are hospitalised through this outbreak and it has killed around. And recently floods in some areas too. One wonders what more suffering those people can endure.
But if we ask why these people are having to suffer like this, our sorrow must surely turn to anger. Transmission of cholera is primarily through the ingestion of contaminated drinking water or food and reports from doctors at the scene blame the water. Indeed, even the water bags marked "purified" being distributed may be contaminated, according to Gabriel Thimote, the director general of Haiti's health department. "May be"? Can he not have the water tested? Can he not ensure that properly-treated water, a fundamental necessity, is given to the people of his country?
According to Al Jazeera news service, there are also fears that the disease will break out "in the temporary camps where about 1.3 million of the survicors of January's devastating earthquake live, with no municipal services, health clinics or schools.” The Guardian comments that "Haiti's cholera epidemic may last for years. Zimbabwe had a major outbreak in 2008 that is still not over and has spread to neighbouring countries. By the beginning of this year, there had been nearly 99,000 cases and more than 4,000 deaths"
How is it that the Haitian people who had so many teams of medical and rescue experts attend and who were reportedly sent so much aid still live in these conditions many months after the disaster?
Some statistics may help to provide the answer to that question. Only 1.9% of the $5,300,000,000 pledged to reconstruction at the March UN conference has been paid. The US, the richest state in the world, pledged €1 for every two pledged by Venezuela. However the private prison group GEO got a contract from the US Government in the month after the earthquake worth $260,589.
The French government pledged, through UN agencies, NGOs and the Red Cross, $180 million but not one dollar of this has been delivered. Through other channels, French humanitarian assistance to Haiti since the earthquake is just over $35,956,400. That looks good until we learn that over the years Haiti has been paying France compensation for having freed its slaves in rebellion and declared independence, for “liberté, egalité et fraternité”, an estimated $40,000,000,000.
Not all of Haiti’s ills come from Europe and the US: 0.5 % of Haiti's population, the ruling oligarchy, own 98% of Haiti's wealth while the vast majority lived in dire poverty long before any earthquake. But even then, the rich make that wealth through foreign monopoly subsidiaries or corporations supported by Western government. They maintain themselves in power through corruption, repression and intimidation including systematic rape. Those who try to escape to the US, for example, are treated as illegal immigrants (in contrast to those escaping Cuba, a country with vastly superior general standard of living, healthcare and education: they are granted political asylum). And when, incredibly, the Haitans defy all this to vote for a change, their legally-elected government is overthrown in a military coup supported by the West (especially France and the US).
But Haitans were capable of at least feeding themselves on rice and in 1985 were consuming 22 sacks of home-grown rice for every one imported from the US. However, by 2000, five years after the IMF restructured their economy to reduce tariffs on imported rice, they were consuming 2 bags of US rice for every one of their own. This of course led to huge rural unemployment. And where did all those agricultural workers go – to the slums of the cities and towns, of course, to add to the poverty, drug addiction and prostitution there. However, it’s not bad news for American Rice Inc., which currently has a contract with USAID to the value of $126,000,000.
Perhaps the NGOs can at least make a difference? Apparently not, although Haiti has more of them per capita than any other nation on earth.
While Venezuela’s offer of help was initally refused, as was Cuba’s offer to set up a public health service and train the medical staff (their doctors were first on the scene after the earthquake), the regime continues to be ineffectual in assistance and the international aid provision and teams are incapable of providing uncontaminated drinking water and adequate shelter. Meanwhile, a million and-a-half Haitians are estimated still homeless after the earthquake and 232,130 are without even tents or tarpaulins for shelter.
The West have bled the Haitian until she collapsed and now cannot even give her clean water.
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