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.

NY Times Moves to ‘Ensure Alignment’ Between News and Opinion Divisions

Well before Trump ran for president, the New York Times was making overtures to critics to improve their tattered reputation. They added a public editor in 2003 who would be a conduit of sorts between readers and reporters. This was in the aftermath of the Jayson Blair scandal and also at a time when more people were pointing out how it was becoming increasingly difficult to tell the difference between the op/ed departments and the various news divisions (local, national, international, etc).

But in mid-2017, they eliminated the position. Publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. justified it at the time by saying the situation had become outdated and that social media users had effectively become their “watchdogs” instead:

Mr. Sulzberger, in a newsroom memo, said the public editor’s role had become outdated.

“Our followers on social media and our readers across the internet have come together to collectively serve as a modern watchdog, more vigilant and forceful than one person could ever be,” he wrote. “Our responsibility is to empower all of those watchdogs, and to listen to them, rather than to channel their voice through a single office.”

Four years later, and the Twitterization of the New York Times newsroom and its emphasis on catering to “woke” reporters and left-wing social media mobs with an angle to push has proved disastrous, as we’ve documented here on many occasions.

With all of that in mind, you would think that the paper would maybe put on some pretense of trying to make sure the various opinions that get churned out on the op/ed side do not bleed over to the straight news side.

But that’s not happening at all. Instead, the paper is now actively seeking a director of opinion strategy, where one of the key responsibilities will be “connecting and ensuring alignment between efforts in Opinion and around the wider newsroom and company”:

Your job, in brief, will be to:

-Collaborate with The Times’s Opinion Editor, Managing Editor and the wider Opinion leadership team in setting and executing coverage targets and operational strategy
-Help Opinion leaders shape and implement our priorities, goals and plans
-Serve as one of the key conduits connecting and ensuring alignment between efforts in Opinion and around the wider newsroom and company
-Partner closely with Opinion leadership, audience, design, video, audio, newsroom leadership and technology teams to develop and execute on the vision, strategy, and product roadmap for Opinion
-Partner with the Audience team to conduct and present analytics deep dives aimed at helping broaden the audience of Times Opinion
-As a member of the broader Newsroom Strategy and company Strategy & Development team, participate in a wide range of projects in News and across the company

The ad was the equivalent of the New York Times saying the quiet part out loud about the direction in which they were determined to go.

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Only One Percent of Vaccine Reactions Reported to VAERS

A 2011 report by Harvard Pilgrim Health Care, Inc. for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) stated that fewer than one percent of all vaccine adverse events are reported to the government:4

Although 25% of ambulatory patients experience an adverse drug event, less than 0.3% of all adverse drug events and 1-13% of serious events are reported to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Likewise, fewer than 1% of vaccine adverse events are reported. Low reporting rates preclude or slow the identification of “problem” drugs and vaccines that endanger public health. New surveillance methods for drug and vaccine adverse effects are needed.

There have been 8,087 vaccine-related deaths reported to VAERS, but that number likely represents only one percent of the total number of deaths that have actually occurred and the real number may be 808,700 vaccine–related deaths. Similarly, 17,394 reports of permanent disabilities have been reported to VAERS, but that number likely is closer to 1,739,400 vaccine-related disabilities.

Although the 1986 Act legally requires doctors and other medical workers who administer vaccines in the U.S. to report vaccine reactions, Congress did not include legal penalties in the law for those who refuse to comply with the reporting requirement.5 Therefore, VAERS is really a “passive” reporting system because there is no mechanism to compel compliance and hold vaccine administrators accountable for failing to report serious health problems, hospitalizations, injuries and deaths that occur after vaccination to the government.

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France finally outlaws sex with children under 15 after Duhamel-Kouchner incest scandal reignites age-of-consent debate

French lawmakers have adopted a law cracking down on sex with children and incest, following a social media firestorm touched off by allegations of incestuous abuse against a prominent intellectual earlier this year.

The Assemblee Nationale voted unanimously on Thursday to set the age of consent at 15, classifying sex with children under that age – as well as incestuous sex with anyone under 18 – as rape, punishable by up to 20 years in prison.

“This is a historic law for our children and our society,” Justice Minister Eric Dupond-Moretti told lawmakers, adding that it sends a clear message that “children are off-limits.”

The law also includes tougher penalties on internet pedophilia, with anyone caught grooming children under 15 online facing 10 years in prison and a €150,000 (approximately $180,000) fine. Previously, French prosecutors could only bring charges of rape or sexual assault if they could prove an adult forced, threatened or tricked a minor into sex.  

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Biden DOJ Wins Lawsuit to Seize 260-Year-Old Texas Ranch Along Border

The Biden Administration took control of a Texas rancher’s border land on Wednesday. The action followed a victory by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Texas against the family which has owned the land since 1760.

Texas rancher Fred Cavazon has been fighting to keep control of his 6.584 acre ranch along the Texas-Mexico border since the administration of then-President George W. Bush. The fight continued during the Trump administration, Law & Crime reported.

That fight came to an abrupt conclusion on April 12 with U.S. District Court Judge Micaela Alvarez awarded the federal government control of the land. Two days later, the Biden Administration took possession of the acreage.

In August 2020, then-candidate Joe Biden told reporters he would end all lawsuits seeking control of land along the Mexican border to be used to build border walls, the legal blog reported.

“End it,” Biden said in an interview with NPR’s Lula Garcia-Navarro. “End it. End. End. Stop. Done. Over. Not gonna do it. Withdraw the lawsuits. We’re out. We’re not gonna confiscate the land.”

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93 Israeli doctors: Do not use Covid-19 vaccine on children

The doctors addressed the letter “to the chiefs of the Ministry of Health, to our fellow doctors around the country, and to the entire public.”

They noted that “the increasingly prevalent opinion within the scientific community is that the vaccine cannot lead to herd immunity, therefore there is currently no ‘altruistic’ justification for vaccinating children to protect at-risk populations.”

They added that even today it is unclear whether the vaccine prevents the spread of the virus and for how long it confers protection, and noted that new variants “that may be more resistant to vaccination are popping up all the time.”

“We believe that not even a handful of children should be endangered through mass vaccination against a disease that is not dangerous to them,” they wrote. “Furthermore, it cannot be ruled out that the vaccine will have long-term adverse effects that have not yet been discovered at this time, including on growth, reproductive system or fertility. Children should be allowed a quick return to routine; the many tests and broad isolation cycles should be stopped, and no separation between the vaccinated and unvaccinated should be created in the public sphere. Vaccination of at-risk populations should be allowed, and under the almost complete vaccination of this population – it is possible to return to full routine (with periodic adjustments) even in the presence of COVID-19 virus.”

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Republican Utah Governor Defends Utah Jazz Basketball Team Excluding White Students From Scholarship

This evening on his call-in radio show, the establishment Republican Governor of Utah, Spencer J. Cox, defended the Utah Jazz basketball team in response to a constituent’s question regarding whether or not he thought that it was racist for the team’s scholarship opportunity to exclude white children…

The move by the Utah Jazz to exclude white children is in line with other recent actions taken by the NBA to support radical ‘Black Lives Matter’ Activism, such as Dallas Maverick’s owner Mark Cuban trying and failing to end the tradition of standing for the National Anthem, and the organization as a whole pledging to donate over $300 million dollars to ‘black empowerment.’

Nor is the announcement from Gov. Cox particularly surprising. Gov. Cox vowed he would not support President Trump back in 2016, chastised Christians who oppose gay marriage, when he flagellated himself by saying “I recognize fully that I am a balding, youngish, middle-aged straight, white, male, Republican, politician… with all of the expectations and privileges that come with those labels.” He also made a video pledging a ‘commitment to civility and the peaceful transition of power’ with his democrat opponent during the 2020 election, a subtle slight, once again, towards President Trump.

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