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.

Justice Department Failed to Report Nearly 1,000 Deaths in State and Local Prisons: Senate Committee

A probe by the Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations and the Government Accountability Office has found that the Department of Justice (DOJ) is failing to adequately and efficiently collect data about deaths in state prisons and local jails and that the true number of deaths is likely much higher.

The report (pdf), a culmination of a 10-month investigation, focused on whether the DOJ has complied with the Death in Custody Reporting Act (DCRA) of 2013.

That act requires that state and federal law enforcement report to the U.S. Attorney General any deaths of individuals that occur while the individuals are detained, under arrest, in the process of being arrested, en route to prison, or incarcerated at any correctional facility, including contract facilities.

The Attorney General must then study the information and report on ways in which it can be used to reduce the number of such deaths. Under DCRA, states that fail to submit the necessary data may be subject to penalties.

Approximately 1.5 million people are incarcerated in state and local correctional facilities throughout the United States, according to the Government Accountability Office.

The Senate report alleges that the DOJ is “failing to effectively implement” DCRA and that the “DOJ’s failed implementation” of the law “undermined the effective, comprehensive, and accurate collection of custodial death data.”

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Danielle Anderson, ‘Expert’ Who Helped ‘Fact-Check’ Lab-Leak Theory, Was Secretly Part Of Dangerous Coronavirus Research

Danielle Anderson, a virologist often cited as a “biosafety expert” by journalists seeking to debunk the lab-leak theory, never disclosed she had worked on dangerous coronavirus research while fact-checking COVID-19 origin theories, resurfaced documents reveal.

Anderson played a key role in suppressing a New York Post story which posited that COVID-19 may have leaked from a lab in Wuhan, China, published in Feb. 2020, according to The Disinformation Chronicle. While she conducted that, and other, work, she failed to disclose she was involved in a grant for manipulating coronaviruses from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to Peter Daszak of EcoHealth Alliance.

A 2020 grant awarded to Daszak and EcoHealth, a group which funneled NIH money to the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) to conduct gain-of-function (GOF) research, lists Anderson as a researcher. The Chinese Academy of Sciences is listed as another funding source for Anderson — an institution directly controlled by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), according to The Disinformation Chronicle.

Anderson was also listed on a 2018 grant application by Daszak to DARPA, which proposed creating and studying genetically altered coronaviruses. DARPA denied the application, stating Daszak would need a GOF “risk-mitigation plan.”

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Five Years Since the Route 91 Massacre No One Knows a Damn Thing

WES PERRY WAS in his Las Vegas hotel room on the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay Resort & Casino when a gunman, a few rooms away, smashed his own room’s window and opened fire. Fans were gathered across the Las Vegas Strip at a country-music festival. It was Oct. 1, 2017, the final night of the Route 91 Harvest festival, and headliner Jason Aldean had just started singing his hit “When She Says Baby.” The rampage went on for 10 minutes, killing 58 people and injuring more than 850. It is considered the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history. 

“I was near the end of the hallway and he was at the very end of the hallway,” Perry tells Rolling Stone. “I looked out the window and I could see very clearly down at the festival site — which is actually why I loved that room — and it was all dark. I had the same view as the shooter.”

When the gunfire erupted at 10:05 p.m. Pacific time, Perry was startled out of the humming silence of his hotel room, where he’d gone to rest and charge his phone after spending Sunday at the festival. To this day, the Nashville resident still needs a white-noise machine to fall asleep. 

“You have to stop and realize how much it’s changed you,” says Perry, who is the director of country sponsorships at Live Nation, the promoters behind Route 91. “You may not realize day to day, in the moment, what it’s done to you, but then you look back and say, ‘Wow, my life changed because of that.’ ”

Yet five years since the massacre at Route 91, little else has, when it comes to mass shootings in the U.S. The suspect, a 64-year-old white man who took his own life by the time authorities entered his room, was identified, yet no motive was ever determined. A ban on bump stocks, the device the shooter used to transform his weapons from semi-automatic to automatic, was enacted via executive order by President Trump in 2018, but seemingly did little to curb future mass shootings using assault rifles. And the survivors, traumatized and struggling to heal — an estimated 22,000 people attended the festival’s third day — find it hard to agree upon anything. Even the official death toll is a point of fierce debate.

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Pentagon’s Information Warfare Review Should Cover the Domestic Side, Too

The US Department of Defense has ordered “a sweeping audit of how it conducts clandestine information warfare,” the Washington Post reports. The apparent reason for the review is an August disclosure, by Graphika and the Stanford Internet Observatory, that Twitter and Facebook, of social media accounts opened under fake identities and used to feed disinformation to “audiences overseas.”

That’s all well and good, but while they’re at it I wish the Pentagon would also review — and cease — its information warfare campaigns against the American public.

Among supposed American constitutional values are separation of the military from politics, and its subservience to civilian government. While those values have always proven more noticeable in the breach than in the observance in wartime, the post-World-War-Two national security state has turned that breach into a well-funded, 24/7/365, campaign of political influence.

Senior military officials routinely attempt to affect policy (and politicians, and voter sentiment) with public statements designating the next Enemy of the Week and begging for more money and more operational authority to fight the wars it chooses rather than the wars Congress declares (the last time Congress was willing to take that kind of responsibility was  in 1942, when it added Bulgaria, Hungary, and Romania to its list of World War Two opponents).

The Department of Defense maintains an “Entertainment Media Office” to support filmmakers with military resources. Needless to say, only productions which glorify the US armed forces need apply. The most recent prominent example (involving no fewer than two US Navy aircraft carriers, multiple aircraft and military pilots, etc.) is mega-hit Top Gun: Maverick.

In 2015, the public learned that the National Football League’s apparently heartfelt love of military pageantry —  color guards, tributes to veterans, even aircraft flyovers and parachute jumps — was actually just a bought and paid for (with millions of taxpayer dollars) DOD marketing scheme.

And yes, they’re constantly coming for our children. I was recruited into the US Marine Corps in high school myself in the 1980s, but even I was surprised at the sheer volume of mail my own kids received from armed forces recruiters from about the time they hit the age of 16 a few years ago. They’re all over the public schools, not just to fill their recruitment quotas but to make positive impressions on future voters.

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FBI Whistleblower Alleges Bureau Took Agents Off Child Sex Abuse Cases To Pursue Political Probes

The House Judiciary Committee Republicans released a letter this week that they sent to FBI Director Christopher Wray that featured claims from a whistleblower from the Bureau who claims that FBI agents were moved off child sex abuse cases to work on political investigations.

“We continue to hear from brave whistleblowers about disturbing conduct at the Federal Bureau of Investigation, including politicization within the Washington Field Office (WFO),” said Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), Ranking Member on the Committee, at the start of the letter. “On July 27, 2022, we wrote to you about protected whistleblower disclosures that FBI officials including an Assistant Special Agent in Charge from the WFO-were pressuring agents to reclassify cases as ‘domestic violent extremism’ (DVEs) even if the cases do not meet the criteria for such a classification.”

The letter stated that since then, the Committee has learned of new whistleblowers who allege that the Bureau is “deliberately manipulating the way case files related to January 6 investigations are maintained in order to create a false and misleading narrative that domestic violent extremism is increasing around the country.”

The letter goes on to state how the FBI allegedly overstates the domestic violent extremism threats in the U.S. and how the Bureau has allegedly “not followed regular procedure” with respect to January 6 cases.

“The manipulative casefile practice creates false and misleading crime statistics,” the whistleblower stated. “Instead of hundreds of investigations stemming from a single, black swan incident at the Capitol, FBI and DOJ officials point to significant increases in domestic violent extremism and terrorism around the United States.”

“In other words, the FBI’s case categorization creates the illusion that threats from DVE are present in jurisdictions across the nation, when in reality they all stem from the same related investigation concerning the actions at the Capitol on January 6,” Jordan’s letter stated. “Such an artificial case categorization scheme allows FBI leadership to misleadingly point to ‘significant’ increases in DVE threats nationwide. These allegations are consistent with disclosures we have received from other whistleblowers that high-ranking FBI officials–including a senior WFO official–are pressing front-line agents to categorize cases as DVE matters to fit a political narrative.”

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NTSB Calls for All New Vehicles to Be Fitted With ‘Alcohol Impairment Detection Systems’

The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has recommended that “alcohol impairment detection systems” be fitted into all new vehicles in the United States to prevent an intoxicated person from getting behind the wheel.

The recommendation comes following an investigation into a crash near Avenal, California on Jan. 1, 2021, that killed nine people, including seven children.

Investigators found that the driver of the vehicle lost control because of a “high level of alcohol impairment,” with NTSB noting that his blood alcohol concentration was more than double California’s limit of 0.08 grams per deciliter.

In a press release on Sept. 20, NTSB said that as a result of the investigation into that crash, the agency is recommending a string of new in-vehicle technologies that “can limit or prohibit impaired drivers from operating their vehicles” as well as technologies aimed at preventing drivers from speeding.

“Technology could’ve prevented this heartbreaking crash — just as it can prevent the tens of thousands of fatalities from impaired-driving and speeding-related crashes we see in the U.S. annually,” said NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy. “We need to implement the technologies we have right here, right now to save lives.”

Such technologies include “passive vehicle-integrated alcohol impairment detection systems,” as well as “advanced driver monitoring systems” or a combination of both that would prevent or limit vehicle operation if a driver is over the legal alcohol limit.

The NTSB, which has no regulatory authority and can only ask other agencies to act, is recommending that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) require all new vehicles to be equipped with such systems.

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