Author: HP McLovincraft

Seeker of rabbit holes. Pessimist. Libertine. Contrarian. Your huckleberry. Possibly true tales of sanity-blasting horror also known as abject reality. Prepare yourself. Veteran of a thousand psychic wars. I have seen the fnords. Deplatformed on Tumblr and Twitter.

Former Southern Poverty Law Center executive arrested over alleged secret payments to informants

ormer Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) Chief Financial Officer Heidi Beirich was arrested on Wednesday, with authorities alleging that she made secret payments to informants in white supremacist groups.

The Department of Justice brought charges against the SPLC earlier this year over fraudulent payments. Attorney General Todd Blanche confirmed the arrest in a press conference.

“I believe she was part of the effort to open bank accounts in completely fictitious companies’ names and make payments to individuals for reasons that were not accurate as described,” Blanche told reporters. 

Beirich has also been accused of cohabitating with and dating one of the informants whom she allegedly paid.

In June, the DOJ announced charges against the organization on 11 counts of wire fraud, bank fraud, and conspiracy to commit money laundering.

The agency alleged that the SPLC paid people to remain in neo-Nazi and white supremacist groups to become informants.

Beirich’s arrest followed a superseding indictment that added her as an individual defendant, CNN reported.

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“Human Error”?? Inside Milwaukee County’s Voting System and Why Milwaukee’s USB Explanation Raises Questions

Last night in the Wisconsin Democrat primary, David Crowley defeated Francesca Hong by a little more than 3,200 votes.  This was after late-night drama unfolded in Milwaukee County just before midnight, as reported by The Gateway Pundit.

According to a post from Urban Milwaukee co-founder, Jeramey Jannene on X:

“5 of 9 USB drives had audit logs, not actual results, copied to them.  Bipartisan commission will go back to election warehouse, redownload, drive back again.  15k ballots believe to be impacted.  One hour delay.  “Human error” says Paulina Guiterrez.

Wisconsin’s WISN 12 covered the press conference and the remarks from Milwaukee Election Commission Executive Director, Paulina Guiterrez.

“As part of the download process, there are two things: there’s the audit log and the results.  What we uncovered was that five of the sticks had the audit log downloaded and not the results.  It’s a human error.  These things can happen.

So basically what we need to do is go back to the operations center and we’re going to download, out of those five machines, the results and make sure that its not the audit log.

We have the reports printed from the first download.  We’re going to reprint and start the process so that we can compare those results.  We invite you to come join us.  Milwaukee Police Department will come with us too.

We’ll re-download those results and then send them back here to be uploaded.

When asked if it was five machines that were an issue, Guiterrez clarified that it was the “sticks” that had the audit logs downloaded, not the results, on 5 out of 9 “sticks.”

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Defunding police and prisons: Radical DSA platform grabs spotlight as candidates surge in primaries

s they experience newfound success across the United States in Democratic primaries, the Democratic Socialists of America have gone on a media blitz to share their vision for America. That vision includes radical changes to the American political system, like abolishing the senate, heavily restricting private markets, and abolishing police and prisons. 

The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) rode a wave of dissatisfaction with the status quo to unprecedented electoral success this year. DSA affiliated candidates and fellow travelers lead New York City and are poised to dominate its congressional delegation. In other areas of the country, DSA candidates are campaigning on a radical platform once unthinkable.

Beyond New York, DSA candidates have won in Colorado, Michigan, and in down-ballot races in Oregon, California, Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Vermont, Utah and Maryland. 

Dismantling the entire American system of government

On Tuesday, a DSA member is leading in the polls for the Democratic Party nomination for governor in Wisconsin, testing the viability of the far-left political and economic messaging in a state that President Donald Trump won in 2024. Controversy has followed Francesca Hong. Like many other DSA affiliates, her past social media posts, including arguing to defund the police and calling to cancel Thanksgiving, are at the center of it. 

In an interview last month on Fox News, DSA’s national co-chair, Megan Romer, answered that, “yes,” the DSA’s platform includes “abolishing the Senate,” “[replacing] the presidency and Supreme Court as we now know them,” and “absolutely” abolishing immigration enforcement, defunding the military, and, eventually, abolishing police and prisons. 

“Yes,” “true,” and “yep,” said Romer in response to the host’s questions. 

The relentless media tour by senior DSA leaders focused scrutiny on the organization’s official platform. Republicans sensed an opening and traditional Democrats are worried the group’s radical proposals might sink the party’s midterm chances. 

Indeed, many of the Democratic Socialist leaders are self-professed communists, Just the News previously reported. Many of the DSA’s leaders belong to internal party caucuses that explicitly define themselves as Marxist and advocate for achieving communism. This includes Romer, who is a member of the Red Star caucus of the DSA, which explicitly pronounces its ultimate aim: the overthrow of capitalism in the U.S. and, eventually, communism. 

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Trump Admin Ends Federal Medicaid Funding for ‘Sex-Rejecting’ Drugs and Surgeries for Children

The Trump administration announced Tuesday that it is banning Medicaid and Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) funding from being used for “sex-rejecting” drugs and surgeries for children.

“Today, we are ending federal taxpayer funding for sex-rejecting procedures on children,” U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. said in a statement.

“These interventions carry serious risks and can cause irreversible harm. The federal government will no longer use Medicaid and CHIP dollars to fund procedures that fail to meet the evidentiary standard our children deserve,” he continued.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) said it is implementing the final rule “consistent with its commitment to protect children from experimental and life-altering sex-rejecting procedures that carry serious long-term health risks and lack sufficiently reliable evidence of clinical benefit.” The agency said the funding ban applies to puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgical interventions for minors, which “can result in irreversible damage, including infertility, impaired sexual function, diminished bone density, altered brain development, and other lasting physiological effects.” 

“Children deserve our protection, not experimental interventions that pose serious risks and convey no proven benefits,” CMS Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz said in a statement. “By cutting off federal funds for these sex-rejecting procedures, we’re following the science, saving taxpayer dollars, and, most importantly, protecting children from potentially irreversible harm so they can truly flourish.”

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A WORLD OF SPOOKS: Germany Approves New Sweeping Powers for Intelligence Services, Leading to Fears of Mass Surveillance

Can Germany beef up its intel game without treading on constitutional protections?

We have been reporting since late last year on TGP about how Germany, besides being engaged in an overhaul of its armed forces, is also working to upgrade its intelligence capabilities to face the dangerous new world that we’re living in.

So, today (12), the German cabinet approved new powers for its intelligence services to ‘hack communications and disrupt foreign adversaries’ ​operations’.

Reuters reported:

“The measures, which ‌have been under discussion for months, would allow both the BND, the foreign intelligence service, and the BfV, the domestic security service, broader authority to access digital communications, collect data and carry out active operations to thwart attacks.

Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt said the measures, which would ​incorporate artificial intelligence tools, would ‘revolutionize Germany’s security architecture’.

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Democrat Agriculture Secretary Nominee Says Farming ‘Isn’t That Hard,’ Farmers Work ‘Only a Few Weeks’ a Year

Democrat Chris Jones, who is running for Iowa secretary of agriculture, was rebuked by Iowa Republicans after saying farmers are “wealthy,” grain farming is “not that hard,” and farmers are “only working a few weeks out of the year.”

The remarks were highlighted Tuesday by Iowa Field Report, which posted video from a 2021 interview Jones gave at the Iowa Ideas Conference, hosted by the Cedar Rapids Gazette.

“And a lot of this grain farming now, it’s not that hard. They’re only working a few weeks out of the year,” Jones said.

“These farmers might be industrious and they might be ingenious and you know all these other adjectives you want to say about it, but the truth is, you know, a lot of them are millionaires,” Jones continued. “They’re really wealthy guys. They’re making three times as much as the average Iowan, and a lot of this grain farming now-it’s not that hard. They’re only working a few weeks out of the year.”

Iowa Field Report said that earlier in the same interview, Jones claimed Iowa farmers are all “wealthy, older white guys.”

Incumbent Iowa Secretary of Agriculture Mike Naig, whom Jones is seeking to unseat, denounced the remarks.

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Meta Faces Criminal Complaint in Germany for Its AI-Glasses, Accused of Violating Privacy Laws

Who wants to be filmed all the time?

The struggle between new, useful tech gadgets and the objections that these new capabilities raise is a field expected to grow in the next few years, and make many lawyers very wealthy.

One such example is the Meta AI-Glasses.

In principle, it seems a great idea to pack so much computing power in a pair of glasses for our benefit.

But once you start to compute the legal and ethical objections that this gadget raises, it becomes a much less clear question.

Today (12), a German advocacy group took matters into their own hands, and filed a criminal complaint against Meta and other companies, ‘arguing the devices violate privacy laws’.

Reuters reported:

“Digital rights group HateAid said in a statement on Wednesday that the launch of the devices, the Ray-Ban Meta Wayfarer in particular, broke German digital privacy laws, in the latest sign of legal scrutiny in a nation where the right to privacy is highly valued.

‘There’s no place to escape from smart glasses. You have to expect at any moment to be filmed and then exposed on the internet’, said HateAid managing director Josephine Ballon.

The organization reported the management of Meta, units of spectacles maker EssilorLuxottica including Ray-Ban, as well as retailers Fielmann, Apollo-Optik, Mister Spex and MediaMarkt to the Frankfurt-based digital crime prosecution unit ZIT.”

The complaint is based on Germany’s federal digital data protection law, which prohibits the sale of communication devices designed to film people without them noticing.

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Pro-Amnesty Groups Fund Wall of 20,000 Lawsuits to Block Migrant Deportations

Pro-migration activists have funded some 20,000 lawsuits to release roughly 17,300 illegal migrants — including many criminals — mostly with the aid of judges nominated by President Joe Biden.

The massive resistance to President Donald Trump’s 2024 deportation mandate has been outlined by Politico:

POLITICO is tracking the surge in litigation triggered by the administration’s novel policy that began in July, and releasing our database, below, of the 20,000-plus cases in which federal district courts reached a ruling on Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s detention practices.

“Millions and millions of dollars are wrapped up in that lobby,” Michael Howell, president of the  Heritage Foundation’s Oversight Project, told Breitbart News. He added:

Some of it’s government money. Some of it is obviously the [universities’] legal clinics. Some of it is large donors — [such as the] ACLU, everyone else. We’re talking about a multi-billion-dollar industry in support of the invasion of the United States.

Trump’s Department of Justice is pushing back on the campaign, partly because it reduces the rising number of monthly deportations. The administration has also asked the U.S. Supreme Court to decide the rules for “habeas corpus” lawsuits that ask ICE to release migrants.

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Fauci Privately Flagged Miscarriage Risk Before Telling Pregnant Women There Were ‘No Red Flags’

Newly disclosed text messages show Dr. Anthony Fauci privately entertained the possibility that the COVID-19 vaccine could trigger first-trimester miscarriages, months before he told the public there was no risk.

The messages come from a trove that Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) released, containing more than 34,000 texts and 522 voicemails the Senate Homeland Security Committee pulled from Fauci’s government-issued phone. Among the trove is a January 2021 text chain between Fauci, Dr. Vivek Murthy and Dr. Rochelle Walensky, who went on to serve as the Biden administration’s surgeon general and CDC director, in which the three officials worked through how the vaccine’s risks might interact with pregnancy.

On Jan. 25, Murthy opened the thread with a question. “For pregnant women considering getting the vaccine, are you aware of any data or theoretical reason why vaccinating early vs late in pregnancy would be preferred? And any sense of when there will be more robust data on vaccine risk in pregnant women?”

Walensky noted that more than 15,000 pregnant women had already enrolled in the CDC’s V-safe vaccine safety monitoring system. Fauci wrote there “are no data or theoretical reason to believe that vaccinating early versus later in pregnancy would be preferred.” He also flagged a caveat that would later look prescient. “Yet, some people (even female health care professionals) feel concerned about injecting a ‘genetic’ vaccine very early in pregnancy,” he wrote.

Nearly two hours passed before Fauci circled back with something he had not mentioned the first time. “I asked around a bit more and another issue came up that you need to be aware of,” he wrote. “Since many people have significant cytokines storm and fever after the 2nd dose, this theoretically could be associated with miscarriage in the 1st trimester.”

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South Africa Wants Reimbursement for Migrant Repatriations

The South African Foreign Ministry said on Wednesday it has written to the governments of Malawi, Ethiopia, and Nigeria to request reimbursement for the $18 million cost of repatriating thousands of illegal migrants.

The $18 million total bill was estimated by the South African Home Affairs department in a briefing to Parliament on Tuesday.

Home Affairs Director-General Tommy Makhode said the hefty costs – which covered transportation, temporary shelter, staffing, and other expenses – were “unforeseen and unavoidable,” thanks to the unprecedented exodus of migrants from South Africa over the past few months.

Makhode said that much of this cost has been shouldered by local governments, which are now demanding compensation from Home Affairs, but there is no money to pay them in the department’s budget.

South Africa’s request for the home countries of migrants to cover the tab was not well-received. The Nyasa Times of Malawi said the “explosive” request touched off a “diplomatic storm,” including angry counter-accusations that South Africa did not do enough to protect migrants on its soil, and mis-managed their hasty repatriation.

The Nigerian Foreign Ministry told the BBC it “never received any request” from South Africa for reimbursement, but was prepared to discuss the matter “at the highest levels.”

Malawi did not immediately respond to South Africa’s request, but on Wednesday announced the end of its own government-assisted program to bring its citizens home from South Africa.

Malawi’s Department of Disaster Management Affairs (DoDMA) said the final group of returnees will be processed at the Mwanza Stadium reception center, which will be decommissioned afterward. The government will continue offering consular services to Malawians who want to return home, including emergency travel documents, but will no longer assist them with transportation.

DoDMA said it has repatriated over 56,000 migrants from South Africa since the program began in June, including 4,000 children, at a total cost of about $7 million.

The reason for these repatriations was a surge of anti-migrant violence among South Africans, who said the migrants were taking jobs and spreading crime in their country. Several “vigilante” groups began threatening to use violence to purge South Africa of illegals, if their government did not act.

The South African government estimated a total of some 82,000 deportations and voluntary repatriations this year, although the combined estimates from neighboring countries are more than twice that high.

In late July, Ghana asked a summit of the African Union (AU) to condemn anti-migrant violence and xenophobia in South Africa, but South Africa blocked the motion and instead called for a continental debate on migration.

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