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.

Israel To Conduct COVID “Genetic Scanning” For All Inbound Air Passengers

The world’s most “ultra-vaxxed nation” Israel is continuing to struggle to keep its coronavirus infections down, despite enacting some of the most stringent rules and requirements on its population, including rolling out one of the earliest versions of a vaccine passport to visit public venues, which has to be “updated” each six months or so based on a booster shot timeline. 

Now Israel will go so far as to conduct “genetic scanning” for travelers arriving in the country. It’s considered a huge and experimental high tech step in screening inbound passengers for coronavirus infections at Ben Gurion International Airport in Tel Aviv.

Prime Minister Naftali Bennett made the announcement at a meeting of his cabinet on Sunday, confirming plans to eventually deploy it at Ben Gurion. “We are working on a scanning system for everyone who comes into Israel,” Bennett said. The statements were reportedly not intended to be made public, but were leaked to local Israeli media.

“Israel will thus become the radar for the virus,” he added. However, no further details on how the ‘genetic scanning’ will work were given, nor whether there might be an opt-out mechanism. Thus a Covid passport, which Israel calls its “green pass” – may be linked to an eventual regimen of forced genetic testing at international travel points.

The technology, which will no doubt be hugely controversial given privacy concerns, is being discussed as part of Israeli efforts to keep further Covid variants from entering the country, as The Times of Israel describes:

Bennett expressed support for Social Equality Minister Meirav Cohen, who had warned that “the next variant will come to Israel through Ben Gurion,” saying the proposed genetic testing would help prevent that from happening.

Conventionally since the start of the pandemic airports have often monitored passengers’ temperatures with a quick and simple thermometer scan of their foreheads, but Israeli health officials are now seeking a method which might given greater certitude over whether someone has the virus or not, and especially whether they are carrying a variant.

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Maryland Judge Dies of Apparent Suicide Before He Could Be Arrested on Charges of Child Sexual Exploitation

A Maryland state judge died by apparent suicide on Sept. 10 shortly before he was set to be arrested at his home on federal charges of sexual exploitation of a child, officials said.

Caroline County Circuit Judge Jonathan Newell, 50, was pronounced dead at 6:43 a.m. Friday morning, the Department of Justice said in a statement.

FBI agents had visited Newell’s residence to arrest him on a federal criminal complaint filed on Sept. 9, 2021. When they arrived, they found him “suffering from an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound,” the statement said.

Maryland State Police will lead the investigation into the apparent suicide.

Newell was facing one federal charge of sexual exploitation of a child, according to court records unsealed Friday (pdf).

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Israel Unveils New Armed Robot Amid Outcry Over “Death Machines”

Israel unveiled a new remote-controlled killer robot Monday at a major weapons fair in the U.K. that human rights advocates are criticizing as an event to sell “death machines” and tools of abuse.

Developed by Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI), the Rex MK II is a four-wheeled vehicle mounted with two machine guns to carry out remote attacks. According to a press statement from the state-owned company announcing the release, the robot has already been sold to global customers.

The weapon was unveiled Monday at Defence & Security Equipment International (DSEI) in London, an event that occurs every two years and is one of the world’s biggest arms fairs. The weapons expo has faced sustained condemnation from anti-war campaigners who say it’s a venue “where those who profit from war, repression, and injustice do business.”

IAI describes the robot as an unmanned land vehicle that can carry a load of 1.3 tons and execute operations including intelligence gathering using “electro-optical sensors and radar.” It can also be used to launch attacks with “remotely controlled weapons systems including a 7.62mm machine gun” and “a cal 0.50 heavy machine gun,” the company says, and serve “as a multi-mission multi-purpose platform to support additional missions based on troops needs.”

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As vaccinated COVID hospitalizations soar, government blocks the one option that works

Any thinking person should be asking why our government is not doing more to make the monoclonal antibodies more available as people get sick with this virus at record levels. Over the past few weeks, I’ve been inundated with emails from people who say the testing requirements and limited hours of operations made them lose critical days in the battle against the illness. When you know the answer to this riddle, you will then comprehend why the same players are vociferously against any form of preventive and early outpatient treatment.

Until now, any discussion of treatment methods was dismissed by the trite argument, “Just get vaccinated and you will be fine.” That canard never properly addressed those who can’t get the vaccine, nor did it explain why there was a complete blackout on treatment even before the vaccines were widely available in January. However, now, with surging hospitalization rates among the vaccinated population, especially those most at risk of dying from this virus, the entire argument — and indeed strategy behind a vaccine-centric focus — is obsolete and needlessly killing thousands of people.

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Google as the Orwellian ‘Ministry of Truth’: Tech giant admits it’s preventing Australians from seeing certain videos that veer from accepted ‘facts’

If visionary writer George Orwell, author of “1984,” which gives a dystopian vision of the future, were alive today, he would be amazed at how utterly correct many of his predictions were about all-powerful central governments.

Such as the existence of a “Ministry of Truth,” whereby bureaucrats decide what the public can and cannot know in terms of ‘established facts’ — namely, no truths are permitted that run afoul of the central government’s narratives, even if they’re false.

Take what’s happening in newly authoritarian Australia as an example.

According to reports, Google officials have admitted preventing Australians from seeing certain videos because the platform’s engineers have adjusted algorithms to prevent those videos from showing up in searches.

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Senator Elizabeth Warren questions Amazon on why books that contain “misinformation” are listed as bestsellers

Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) has joined the call in asking Amazon to provide more details on its content moderation policies over what they see as the retailer’s failure to address what she says is the spread of COVID-19 misinformation in books.

Warren accused the tech giant of promoting books and other material containing COVID-19 misinformation.

“During the week of August 22, 2021, my staff conducted sample searches on Amazon.com of pandemic-related terms such as ‘COVID-19,’ ‘COVID,’ ‘vaccine,’ ‘COVID 19 vaccine,’ and ‘pandemic,’” Sen. Warren wrote in a letter addressed to Amazon’s CEO Andy Jassy. “The top results consistently included highly-ranked and favorably-tagged books based on falsehoods about COVID-19 vaccines and cures.”

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Syracuse professor is accused of defending 9/11 with claim it was ‘an attack on heteropatriarchal capitalistic systems’ that ‘many white Americans fight to protect’

A professor at Syracuse University has drawn strong reactions for a tweet calling the attacks on September 11, 2001 a strike against ‘heteropatriarchal capitalistic systems’.

Jenn M. Jackson, an assistant professor of political science, made the remarks in a series of tweets on Friday, a day before the 20th anniversary of the attacks that killed 2,977 people. 

‘We have to be more honest about what 9/11 was and what it wasn’t. It was an attack on the heteropatriarchal capitalistic systems that America relies upon to wrangle other countries into passivity,’ wrote Jackson, who uses they/them pronouns.

‘It was an attack on the systems many white Americans fight to protect,’ they added.

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Amish Farm Fined $250,000, Facing Jail Time For Humanely Raising & Selling Food To Willing Customers

Amos Miller and his family has been running Miller’s Organic Farm for over a century, providing willing and highly satisfied customers with milk, chicken, beef, and eggs. All of the food coming from Miller’s farm is beyond organic, humanely raised in a non-factory setting and the animals treated with dignity as they spend their entire lives naturally and stress-free out on pasture. By any moral standard, Miller’s farm is the leading example of what farming in America should look like.

Unfortunately, because Miller uses humane techniques and treats his animals well, this has put a government target on his back. Recently, federal Judge Edward G. Smith, imposed sanctions on his farm, ordering the family farm to pay over $250,000 in fines or go to jail. Because the Millers don’t use the USDA factory farm methods, this makes them non-compliant and thus an enemy of the state.

“In order to effect defendants’ future compliance, by making them aware of the seriousness of their violations and the consequences for future violations, defendants are ordered to pay to the United States, within 30 days of the date of entry of this Order — and pursuant to written instructions that the United States will provide to defendants—a fine of $250,000, or face further monetary and other penalties, possibly including imprisonment of Amos Miller,” the order says.

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