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.

The Mass Media Will Never Regain The Public’s Trust

This year has marked the first time ever that trust in news media dropped below fifty percent in the United States, continuing a trend of decline that’s been ongoing for years.

Mass media punditry is divided on where to assign the blame for the plummet in public opinion of their work, with some blaming it on Russia and others blaming it on Donald Trump. Others, like a recent Forbes article titled “Restoring Public Trust In Technology And Media Is Infrastructure Investment” blame it on the internet. Still others, like a Washington Post article earlier this month titled “Bad news for journalists: The public doesn’t share our values” blame it on the people themselves.

The one thing they all seem to agree on is that it’s definitely not because the billionaire-controlled media are propaganda outlets which manipulate us constantly in conjunction with sociopathic government agencies to protect the oligarchic, imperialist status quo upon which the members of the billionaire class have built their respective kingdoms. It cannot possibly be because people sense that they are being lied to and are fed up with it.

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Innocent Man Falsely Jailed for a Year Only to Be Released and Forced to Pay for His Stay Behind Bars

When David Allen Jones was accused of trafficking in child pornography in 2013, his life came crumbling down. Lexington police allegedly linked Jones’ IP address to a child sex video downloaded from the web. The Clark County Sheriff’s office subsequently raided his home and Jones was thrown in jail before police found any evidence.

Despite repeated searches of his property, including digital devices seized by authorities like his cell phone, computer tablet, Xbox, server, modem, printer and DVDs — police found absolutely nothing incriminating. The alleged IP address link was a fluke that led to the incarceration of an innocent man.

Nevertheless, Jones was thrown in a cage and his bail was set to $15,000 which was too high for him to afford, so he had to wait for his day in court. Knowing he was entirely innocent, Jones waived his right to counsel thinking that it would help speed up his release. He was mistaken.

Despite prosecutors acknowledging that someone else in Jones’ apartment complex was the likely child predator, Jones spent the next 14 months locked in a cage — completely innocent.

In December of 2014, Jones was finally released. His life was in shambles, his name had been dragged through the mud over false accusations, forcing him to have to  move out of Winchester.

“My reputation, it’s shot. I mean, I’ve got people that I’ve known for years won’t have anything to do with me anymore because they believe the law,” Jones said.

After ruining the man’s life over false accusations, just how does the state attempt to repay him? They send him a bill for his stay in their cage.

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ACLU Again Cowardly Abstains From an Online Censorship Controversy: This Time Over BLM

Whatever one’s views are on this particular censorship controversy, there is no doubt that it is part of the highly consequential debate over online free speech and the ability of monopolies like Facebook to control the dissemination of news and the boundaries of political discourse and debate. That is why Smith devoted his weekly column to it. And yet, when Smith approached the standard free speech advocacy groups for comment on this story, virtually none was willing to speak up. “Facebook’s usual critics have been strikingly silent as the company has extended its purview over speech into day-to-day editorial calls,” he wrote.

Among those groups which insisted that it would not comment on Facebook’s censorship of the Post‘s BLM story was the vaunted, brave and deeply principled free speech organization, the American Civil Liberties Union. “We don’t have anyone who is closely plugged into that situation right now so we don’t have anything to say at this point in time,” emailed Aaron Madrid Aksoz, an ACLU spokesman. Smith said “the only criticism he could obtain came from the News Media Alliance, the old newspaper lobby, whose chief executive, David Chavern, called blocking The Post’s link ‘completely arbitrary’ and noted that ‘Facebook and Google stand between publishers and their audiences and determine how and whether news content is seen.’”

How is it possible that the ACLU is all but invisible on one of the central free speech debates of our time: namely, how much censorship should Silicon Valley tech monopolists be imposing on our political speech? As someone who intensively reports on these controversies, I can barely remember any time when the ACLU spoke up loudly on any of these censorship debates, let alone assumed the central role that any civil liberties group with any integrity would, by definition, assume on this growing controversy.

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New blood disorder warnings appear on Covid-19 vaccine made by Johnson & Johnson

New blood disorder warnings appear on the Johnson and Johnson (Janssen) Covid-19 vaccine label, now that the federal “pause” on administering the vaccine has ended.

The warnings flag an increased risk of thrombosis, clotting of the blood in the circulatory system. This disorder can be combined with thrombocytopenia, or low blood platelet count, which can lead to dangerous internal bleeding, according to the new warnings. The warnings say the symptoms can appear approximately one to two weeks after vaccination.

A 56-year old Miami Beach doctor, Gregory Michael, died of the rare blood disorder two weeks after his Dec. 18 vaccination with a different brand: Pfizer/BioNTech’s Covid-19 vaccine. However, his official cause of death was ruled to be “natural.” Dr. Michael was described as “very healthy” before his Covid-19 vaccine and sudden onset of “immune thrombocytopenia,” or low blood platelet count. There is no word as to whether officials have reclassified or reinvestigated his death.

One reason why relatively rare reports of a serious adverse event are cause for such concern and added warnings is that scientists have documented that they only capture a small percentage of actual illnesses that occur.

Each recognized case is presumed to represent many more that are not correctly diagnosed or reported to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System or VAERS. Patients and doctors are encouraged to report all illnesses after vaccination to VAERS, whether they are proven to be linked to the inoculation or not. As professionals comb through the data, they are able to identify previously unknown side effects.

Several European countries report similar blood clot complications after use of AstraZeneca’s Covid-19 vaccine.

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