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Texas Tries To Rein in False Accusations of Child Abuse

A bill designed to limit false accusations of child abuse is now heading to Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott’s desk—one of several attempts to reform the state’s Department of Family and Protective Services (DFPS).

The bill was introduced last November by Texas state Rep. Valoree Swanson (R–Spring). The bill—which has largely gained support along partisan lines—will ban anonymous reports to the state’s child abuse hotline—instead requiring all callers to provide their name, phone number, and address. The bill also requires reporters of abuse to include “the facts that caused the individual to believe the child has been abused or neglected and the source of the information.”

While anonymous reports of abuse and neglect to the state’s hotline are prohibited under the legislation, the identity of those reporting abuse will remain confidential, except to DFPS and law enforcement officials. These measures, according to the bill’s supporters, are specifically designed to limit false accusations of child abuse. 

“As Texans, we need to ensure the safety of our children in any situation. HB 63 will allow for more accountability and protections for those involved in potential CPS and DFPS investigations relating to neglect and abuse,” state Rep. Kevin Sparks (R–Midland) told The Texan.”Without this necessary reform, both agencies will struggle to verify reports and can complicate the issue with hours of wasted time on false accusations.”

Opponents have argued that the bill would deter reports of actual child abuse. Kate Murphy, director of child protection policy with the nonpartisan nonprofit Texans Care for Children, told the Texas Tribune that, in 2022, about 1,000 reports of the 12,473 total anonymous calls were found to be substantiated. 

“Unfortunately, if this bill were to pass, those 1,000 children would be left to continue experiencing abuse and neglect or worse,” said Murphy.

But there’s little reason to think that the bill will prevent factual reports of child abuse or neglect from being made. Not only is it a fairly large leap to assume that genuine abuse will go unreported if callers have to give their name and contact information, but the bill still allows individuals to make anonymous reports to 911 or any other local or state law enforcement agency. If these reports are referred to DFPS, the agency is directed to undertake a preliminary investigation to determine whether there is any corroborating evidence for the claims, which can include home visits and interviews—hardly an abdication of responsibility.

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REVEALED: How America’s CIA Merged With Nazi Intelligence

“Honest and idealist….enjoys good food and wine.…unprejudiced mind…”

That’s how a 1952 Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) assessment described Nazi ideologue Emil Augsburg, an officer at the infamous Wannsee Institute, the SS think tank involved in planning the Final Solution. Augsburg’s SS unit performed “special duties,” a euphemism for exterminating Jews and other “undesirables” during the Second World War. Although he was wanted in Poland for war crimes, Augsburg managed to ingratiate himself with the U.S. CIA, which employed him in the late 1940s as an expert on Soviet affairs. Recently released CIA records indicate that Augsburg was among a rogue’s gallery of Nazi war criminals recruited by U.S. intelligence agencies shortly after Germany surrendered to the Allies. Pried loose by Congress, which passed the Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act three years ago, a long-hidden trove of once-classified CIA documents confirms one of the worst-kept secrets of the cold war–the CIA’s use of an extensive Nazi spy network to wage a clandestine campaign against the Soviet Union.

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Titanic sinking mystery ‘finally solved’ by fatal design flaw in unsinkable ship

The mystery surrounding why the “unsinkable luxury liner” The Titanic sank back in 1912 has long been subject to speculation, but was it simply a design flaw that caused the downfall of such a majestic ship on its maiden voyage.

Scientists previously believed the fate of the Titanic wasn’t down to the course chosen by Captain Edward Smith or a faulty rudder – but now it’s thought it could simply be down to poorly designed rivets holding the ship together.

The rather mundane reason was proposed by Jennifer Hooper McCarty and Timothy Foecke in their book What Really Sank the Titanic.

McCarty and Foecke are a pair of scientists and academics who have studied the downing of the cruise liner for decades.

Their work analysed 48 rivets found in the wreck of the Titanic and they believe the shipbuilders used cheaper iron to make them than was originally planned.

Speaking on the Early Show, an early morning news show in the US, Ms McCarty, who started researching the Titanic’s rivets while working on her PhD at Johns Hopkins University in 1999, explained why they were so vital.

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More than 90% of Calif. pot farms infected with ‘severe’ pathogen

An infectious pathogen inside California’s pot farms is attacking cannabis plants and growing invisibly for months only to spoil a crop just as a farmer is ready to harvest. Scientists believe that it’s in nearly every pot farm in the state and could be causing billions of dollars in damages to the national weed economy.

Hop-latent viroid, or HLVd, shrivels pot plants and reduce how much weight they produce by as much as 30%. It also destroys the amount of THC, pot’s most common active compound, that a plant produces, greatly reducing the value of affected plants. 

HLVd was first documented in cannabis in a pair of scientific studies published in 2019, including a study that confirmed the viroid’s presence in samples from a Santa Barbara pot farm. It’s now infected at least 90% of California’s cannabis grows, according to a 2021 estimate. It’s spreading globally, and a recent scientific paper declared the pathogen was the “biggest concern for cannabis” growers worldwide.

But one Bay Area startup has a new tool that they think will stop the pathogen’s spread in its tracks.

Oakland’s Purple City Labs released a new HLVd test earlier this year that can be conducted on site and deliver results to pot farmers in just a few hours. That’s much faster than the current methods for finding HLVd infections, which are predominantly done by farmers mailing samples to labs and waiting days or even weeks to get a result.

The company said this new at-farm testing could be pivotal in slowing the spread of this global pathogen, as it allows farmers to quickly identify infected plants.

“We didn’t just identify a great test that is accurate, but it’s [also] easy to use and it doesn’t require a high level of expertise,” said Luke Horst, director of business development for Purple City Genetics. “You can take microbiology to the public and put it in their hands. … It’s important for people to have this type of testing.”

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Elon Musk’s Neuralink Gets FDA Approval to Study Brain Implants in Humans

Elon Musks’s neurotechnology company Neuralink announced on Thursday it has obtained approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to carry out a clinical study of brain implants in humans.

It marks the first in-human clinical study for the company.

“This is the result of incredible work by the Neuralink team in close collaboration with the FDA and represents an important first step that will one day allow our technology to help many people,” the company said in a statement.

“Recruitment is not yet open for our clinical trial. We’ll announce more information on this soon!” it added, without providing further details about the trial.

Musk, in response, wrote on Twitter: “Congratulations Neuralink team!”

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The Strangest Aspect of the Men in Black & Women in Black: They Don’t Know How to Eat or Drink

Hollywood did a very good job of creating a series of MIB movies that entertained and excited audiences the world over – and made those same audiences laugh loud and hard, too. But, there is nothing to laugh about when it comes to the real Men in Black. In the movies, the MIB are in the employ of an agency more powerful, and far more secretive, than even Edward Snowden’s old “friends” at the National Security Agency.  But, we should not forget that the Men in Black movies are fiction. As is so unfortunately often the case, the real world often outdoes the domain of fiction – and seldom in a positive fashion. The so-called “modern era” of UFOs began in the summer of 1947, specifically on June 24. That was the date upon which a pilot named Kenneth Arnold encountered a squadron of strange-looking aircraft flying near Mount Rainier, Washington State – as the man himself noted in his 1952 book with Ray Palmer, The Coming of the Saucers. As an experienced pilot, Arnold was deeply puzzled that he was unable to identify the things ahead of him. As he got closer, Arnold realized exactly why he was unable to figure out what the objects were: they were not regular airplanes, but futuristic-looking half-moon shaped vehicles that resembled absolutely nothing in the United States’ arsenal at that time. And that was surely the case for the Russians, too. It was not long before word of Arnold’s encounter reached the eyes and ears of the media – in fact, less than a day. The terms “flying saucer” and “flying disk” all-but-immediately became the talk of 1947. Today, the term “UFO” is far more popular than the now largely antiquated flying saucer.

Although the latter part of the 1940s proved to be a period in which sightings of apparent unearthly craft abounded, it wasn’t until the early 1950s that the Men in Black stepped out of the shadows – in force –and set about snaring us, manipulating us, and ultimately digesting us. And, no, the “digesting” term is not an exaggeration. Over the years there have been numerous investigators of the Men in Black phenomenon, such as UFO researchers Gray Barker, Jim Keith, and Harold Fulton – all of whom are now long gone. None of them, however, came anywhere close to Albert K. Bender – the man without whom our knowledge of the MIB and their agenda would be sorely lacking, and who created the International Flying Saucer Bureau (IFSB). Born in 1922, Bender was someone who served his country during the Second World War in the United States Army Air Corps. Post-World War Two, Bender lived in Bridgeport, Connecticut, in a somewhat creepy-looking old house that stood at what was, at the time, the junction of Broad Street and North Frontage Road. Today, the house is no more, the secrets it once held now being just memories and stories in books.

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AP Called Out For Claim That Target Staff Were Subject To “Violent Confrontations” Over Trans/Pride Products

The Associated Press has been forced into quietly editing an article that repeated a statement from Target claiming that the company’s staff have been threatened, with the newswire adding a baseless claim that there have been “violent confrontations” over huge collections of ‘Pride’ and transgender themed apparel in stores, including some with Satanist imagery.

It’s been the story of the week. Here’s the backdrop…

Target Becomes The Latest Target Of Anti-Woke Boycott As It Sells ‘Satanist Pride’ LGBTQ+ Products For Kids

Cotton Blasts “Target’s Partnership With Satanist To Push Trans Agenda On Children”

Target To Remove Satan ‘Pride’ Products; Democrat Accuses CEO Of “Selling Out LGBTQ+ Community”

As we highlighted yesterday, Target was clear in pointing out that it isn’t removing the stuff because it’s Satanist and pushing sexualisation and gender ideology on kids, but rather because they have “experienced threats impacting our team members’ sense of safety and well-being.”

The AP took it further, however, claiming that Target has seen “intense backlash from some customers including violent confrontations with its workers.”

The report was altered without notification after it was challenged by Katrina Trinko, the editor-in-chief of the Daily Signal. While the confrontations claim remains, the word “violent” has been removed.

It now reads “Target said that customers knocked down Pride displays at some stores, angrily approached workers and posted threatening videos on social media from inside the stores.”

Pointing out the deception, Trinko writes “Again, what are the specifics? What is a threatening video?” further demanding to know “What constitutes angrily approaching a worker? How many customers at how many stores knocked down Pride displays?”

It appears that one video surfaced of one person taking a part of a pride display and throwing it on the ground, which prompted gay Democratic California State Senator Scott Wiener to label it “terrorism”.

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What are open-source seeds? Why are open-source seeds important?

Perhaps you have heard the term open-source. Maybe you heard about it within the context of software and technology as the open-source movement originated within the software development community as a means to encourage innovation and knowledge sharing. As such, the open-source concept is best-known within the technological paradigm. However, the essence of open-source can be applicable across practically all fields and sectors. 

At the most basic level, open-source means that a technology or process is made freely available for modification and redistribution. It is common practice for one or more individuals or groups to work together to develop and refine the technology. Such distribution and organizational structures are in contrast to presently common economic models where a single entity works to create a product or process and retains exclusive ownership of the output (although the right to use the product or process can be sold). 

The characteristic of allowing participants to edit and change open-source products is also contrary to conventional production practices. In a sense, this suggests that open-source products belong not to one single entity or person but to the wider community that has contributed to the realization of that product. This organizational structure contrasts common economic standards where property rights are clearly defined (which helps to clarify the principal-agent dilemma). 

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Harvard Researchers Expose Google Targeting and Manipulating the Minds of Children

With the curtain pulled back on the Twitter files this year, the gears of the debate machine have been grinding relentlessly on the topic of censorship and perceived liberal establishment bias within social-media behemoths like Twitter and Facebook. And while they’ve undoubtedly earned their place in the critical spotlight, the focus on them has allowed a far more devious predator to lurk largely unchecked in the shadows: Google. Recent revelations cast a disturbing light on the truth — it’s not just invading our privacy and appropriating our data — it’s aggressively targeting the impressionable minds of children.

Enter stage left, Harvard Ph.D., Californian Democrat, and research psychologist Dr. Robert Epstein, who has dedicated the better part of a decade to illuminating the murky underbelly of Google’s Machiavellian manipulation strategies, sweeping up everything from newsfeeds to search results, and even YouTube suggestions. The insights gleaned from his pioneering research, which he recently shared with The NY Post, provide an unnerving look at the disturbing degree to which Google wields its power to manipulate the collective mindset and steer election results in a direction that conveniently aligns with its liberal corporate agenda.

Despite its continued denials before Congress, this trillion-dollar tech titan exploits its unparalleled monopoly in the search engine domain to inflate liberal ideologies, stifle conservative voices, and most alarmingly, manipulate the malleable minds of our children.

When we consider the facts, the grim reality of manipulation packs a powerful punch. Remember the controversial suppression of The Post’s Hunter Biden laptop stories by Twitter and Facebook? Well, that’s just the iceberg’s tip. Consider this: what about the jaw-dropping 6 million votes covertly swayed in Joe Biden’s favor during the 2020 election by Google via its calculated online content manipulation? Epstein points an accusing finger at Google, alleging it used biased algorithms to shape search results and slanted Get Out The Vote messages primarily to court Democrat voters.

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The FBI Knows What Car Was Used In J6 DNC Pipe Bomb, But Refuses To Identify Prime Suspect

The FBI is continuing to stonewall congressional oversight of the agency’s investigation into a pair of pipe bombs found at the Democrat National Committee and Republican National Committee headquarters on Jan. 6, 2021.

On Wednesday, House Republicans on the Judiciary Committee re-upped demands for a comprehensive briefing on the two-year-old case over which the FBI has refused transparency.

“Your failure to comply with our request is particularly concerning given recent media reports regarding the pipe bomb investigation,” lawmakers wrote.

Earlier this month, an FBI whistleblower told the Washington Times the FBI identified the vehicle the suspect entered shortly after planting the bombs but has not pursued the individual.

“The FBI had surveillance video that showed the person entering a car with a visible license plate after exiting a Metro stop in Northern Virginia,” the Times reported.

Kyle Seraphin, a former FBI agent who worked on the case, told the paper that the agency “tied whoever the person was that dropped the bombs with [surveillance] cameras all the way through the train and getting into a car with that license plate.” Seraphin also told the Washington Times that the two bombs were inoperable.

“One former FBI assistant director observed, ‘[i]t just doesn’t add up … there’s just too much to work with to not know who this guy is,’” the Judiciary Republicans wrote.

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