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.

WHO Says Even Vaccinated People Should “Play it Safe” and Continue to Wear Masks

The World Health Organization says that even those who have been vaccinated against COVID-19 should “play it safe” by continuing to wear face masks.

According to Dr. Mariangela Simao, WHO’s assistant director-general for access to medicines and health products, “Vaccine alone won’t stop community transmission” of the virus.

This leaves the tens of millions of Americans who took the shot expecting that it would equate with them getting back to normal life sorely disappointed.

According to Simao, the delta (Indian) variant of COVID circulating the globe means that mask mandates and social distancing should continue indefinitely.

“People need to continue to use masks consistently, be in ventilated spaces, hand hygiene … the physical distance, avoid crowding. This still continues to be extremely important, even if you’re vaccinated when you have a community transmission ongoing,” she said.

Given that there are likely to be new variants of COVID for years to come, this essentially means that facial coverings and social distancing rules will not fully end at any point in the near future, despite many European governments slowly beginning to lift restrictions.

The WHO issued the guidance despite a British study finding that vaccines were “highly effective” against the delta variant.

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Professors say proper grammar is racist, perpetuates whiteness

Towson University recently hosted a virtual “Antiracist Pedagogy Symposium,” according to Campus Reform, which “criticized university writing curriculum and programs for being racist and perpetuating whiteness.”

What’s the background here?

The program, which featured an array of speakers, was sponsored by the school’s Office of the Provost, the College of Liberal Arts, the Faculty Academic Center of Excellence, Center for Student Diversity, the school’s department of English, and more.

In addition to educating attendees about first-year writing and graduate school writing, the forum also addressed “linguistic justice.”

“As the country begins its long-awaited reckoning with institutional racism, colleges and universities have been engaging deeply in the ethical dilemma of our time: How do our institutional structures and practices contribute to the problem of silencing, marginalizing, minoritizing, and otherwise harming black and indigenous students of color?” the event page reads. “What do we need to change to create not just a passively inclusive atmosphere for student, but an actively anti-racist one?”

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Assange Prosecution Relied On False Testimony From A Diagnosed Sociopath And Convicted Pedophile

The Icelandic newspaper Stundin reports that a key witness in the US prosecution of Julian Assange has admitted in an interview with the outlet that he fabricated critical accusations in the indictment against the WikiLeaks founder.

“A major witness in the United States’ Department of Justice case against Julian Assange has admitted to fabricating key accusations in the indictment against the Wikileaks founder,” Stundin reports. “The witness, who has a documented history with sociopathy and has received several convictions for sexual abuse of minors and wide-ranging financial fraud, made the admission in a newly published interview in Stundin where he also confessed to having continued his crime spree whilst working with the Department of Justice and FBI and receiving a promise of immunity from prosecution.”

BREAKING: Lead witness in US case against Julian Assange admits to fabricating evidence against him in exchange for a deal with the FBI #Assange https://t.co/kZxsTi62q0

— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) June 26, 2021

This major witness would be Iceland’s Sigurdur “Sigi” Thordarson, a paid FBI informant who after his short-lived association with WikiLeaks has been found guilty of sexually abusing nine boys as well as embezzlement, fraud, and theft in his home country. A court-appointed psychologist has found him to be a sociopath.

“The court found that Sigurður is by all definitions a sociopath, suffering from a severe anti-social personality disorder. However, the court found that he did know the difference between right and wrong and could not be considered insane and could therefore stand trial,” Iceland Magazine reported in 2015 during Thordarson’s child abuse case.

This was all public knowledge when the US government was building its case to extradite Julian Assange to America and try him under the Patriot Act for journalistic activity which exposed US war crimes, a prosecution for which Assange is still locked up in Belmarsh Prison pending Washington’s appeal of a UK court’s denial of the extradition request. And now we know for a fact that the odious person whose testimony formed the basis for much of that prosecution was lying.

“US officials presented an updated version of an indictment against him to a Magistrate court in London last summer,” Stundin says. “The veracity of the information contained therein is now directly contradicted by the main witness, whose testimony it is based on.”

What this means is that the US decided to add more accusations to its previous indictment because charging a journalist for standard journalistic practices was too weak on its own, and now this decision has bitten them in the ass.

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As variant rises, vaccine plan targets ‘movable middle’

Thrown off-stride to reach its COVID-19 vaccination goal, the Biden administration is sending A-list officials across the country, devising ads for niche markets and enlisting community organizers to persuade unvaccinated people to get a shot.

The strategy has the trappings of a political campaign, complete with data crunching to identify groups that can be won over.

But the message is about public health, not ideology. The focus is a group health officials term the “movable middle” — some 55 million unvaccinated adults seen as persuadable, many of them under 30.

“We’re not just going to do the mass vaccination sites,” said Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra. “It’s door to door. It’s mobile clinics. We’re doing vaccinations at church, the PTA meeting, the barber shop, the grocery store.”

Officials have seized on a compelling new talking point, courtesy of the coronavirus. The potent delta variant that has ravaged India is spreading here. Now accounting for about 1 in 5 virus samples genetically decoded in the U.S., the more transmissible mutation has gained a foothold in Mountain West and heartland states. Many of those infected are young and unvaccinated.

The White House has lent its top names to the vaccine push.

President Joe Biden visited a mobile vaccination site in Raleigh, North Carolina, on Thursday. Earlier in the day, first lady Jill Biden held the hand of a woman at a drive-thru vaccination site in Kissimmee, Florida.

Doug Emhoff, the husband of Vice President Kamala Harris, has racked up thousands of frequent flyer miles, visiting at least 18 or 19 states by his count.

The administration also has recruited celebrities and athletes, including country music star Brad Paisley and the Tampa Bay Lightning hockey team. It has teamed up with Twitch and Riot Games to reach online gamers and with Panera and Chipotle to offer free food to those getting a shot.

The message, as Surgeon General Vivek Murthy put it: “If you are vaccinated, you are protected. If you are not, the threat of variants is real and growing.”

It’s unclear how well the levers of persuasion are functioning. Vaccination rates have dropped below 1 million a day, and there’s no sign yet of a turnaround. The administration has acknowledged that it will fall short of its goal of having 70% of adults vaccinated by July Fourth.

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Israel Is Sending Robots With Machine Guns to the Gaza Border

Gaza is often described as the world’s largest open-air prison. Over two million people inhabit the tiny coastal strip, and they must endure a 70 percent unemployment rate; frequent shortages of medical supplies, fuel and clean water; constant power outages; and the fundamentalist governance of the extremist group Hamas. Add to that the Israeli air strikes that knocked down multiple high-rise residential buildings in a war last May—the third war since Hamas seized control of Gaza in 2007.

Gazans who’ve had enough will find it difficult to leave. There’s both a naval blockade and a 40-mile-long border fence barring entry into Israel, complemented by an additional nine miles of steel and concrete walls on the Gaza-Egyptian border. Only a lucky minority are granted permits to pass through checkpoints into Israel or Egypt for work or medical care. But the checkpoints are frequently closed at times of high tension.

And now, in a new dystopian twist out of RoboCop, people defying the border barrier may be confronted by a robotic six-wheeled car blaring warnings from a built-in public address system. And if non-compliant, the robot can address the infraction with a turret-mounted machine gun.

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Former ‘Smallville’ Actress Speaks Out Before Sentencing For Role In Sex Cult: ‘Biggest Mistake And Regret Of My Life’

Allison Mack, best known for playing Chloe Sullivan on “Smallville,” is about to be sentenced for her role in recruiting and blackmailing women into joining the NXIVM sex cult.

In a letter to the court, obtained by The Hollywood Reporter, Mack addressed “those who have been harmed by my actions,” apologizing for what she had done.

“It is now of paramount importance for me to say, from the bottom of my heart, I am so sorry,” she wrote.

“I threw myself into the teachings of Keith Raniere with everything I had,” she added. “I believed, whole-heartedly, that his mentorship was leading me to a better, more enlightened version of myself. I devoted my loyalty, my resources, and, ultimately, my life to him. This was the biggest mistake and regret of my life.”

Mack added that she would dedicate the rest of her life to undoing the harm her actions have caused.

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