Blog

Anthony ‘Tony’ Mitchell froze to death after guards put him in walk-in freezer at Alabama jail

An Alabama man froze to death inside a county jail after he was placed inside a walk-in freezer or another cold area by guards, a recently filed lawsuit alleges.

The family of Anthony “Tony” Mitchell says that more than a dozen jail officials in Walker County abused him and then schemed to cover up the alleged mistreatment.

Mitchell dealt with “hellish” conditions inside the jail for roughly two weeks before his death following his arrest in mid-January, his grieving mother, Margaret Mitchell, argues in the suit.

“While Tony languished naked and dying of hypothermia in the early morning hours of Jan. 26 and his chances for survival trickled away, numerous corrections officers and medical staff wandered over to his open cell door to spectate and be entertained by his condition,” the bombshell complaint claims.

A Walker County sheriff’s official told a relative that Mitchell, 33, would receive help while inside the jail after his arrest, but instead he was tased by guards and housed in the jail naked, due to the facility’s suicide watch policy, the lawsuit speculates.

Mitchell suffered from drug addiction and faced both mental and physical health woes, according to his family.

Keep reading

Australia’s Drug Regulator Hid Child Vaccine Deaths to “Maintain Public Confidence”

Australia’s drug regulator hid vaccine deaths from the public, concerned that “disclosure could undermine public confidence”, it has been revealed.

The hidden deaths include two children, seven and nine years old, who both suffered fatal cardiac arrests which the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) assessed as causally linked to Covid vaccination,

The revelations come in documents obtained under Freedom of Information (FOI) request by Dr. Melissa McCann. Dr McCann shared the shocking revelation in her address at the Covid Vaccine Conference, hosted by Clive Palmer’s United Australia Party over the weekend in Brisbane, Melbourne and Sydney. The event featured leading ICU physician Dr. Pierre Kory, cardiologist and epidemiologist Dr. Peter McCullough, and McCullough’s collaborator, author John Leake.

Addressing sold-out crowds, Dr. McCann shared the extraordinary lengths she had to go to to extract causality assessment documents relating to the TGA’s investigation of reported deaths after Covid vaccination, which were obtained under FOI request in a process that took six months. Dr McCann lodged the request after seeing an unexpectedly high number of patients coming through her clinic experiencing adverse events after immunisation (AEFIs). She also noticed a high number of serious AEFI reports in the in the DAEN database, including the reported death of a 14 year-old in October 2021.

In her original FOI request, Dr. McCann requested causality assessments for all of the reported deaths in the DAEN database. This request was denied due to the large scope, and in negotiation with the TGA, Dr. McCann agreed to revise down the request to the 11 documents that were eventually handed over, of which 10 related to DAEN death reports.

When the documents were finally provided to Dr. McCann in July 2022, she was dismayed to find that there were multiple reports that the TGA had assessed as causally linked to Covid vaccination, but, with the exception of one death, had not been reported in the TGA’s regular Safety Reports.

Keep reading

US Space Command Says Unidentified Aerial Objects Outside Its ‘Astrographic Area of Responsibility’

The U.S. Space Command (USSPACECOM) explained why it has not been at the forefront of dealing with the Chinese spy balloon, and other unidentified flying objects shot down in North American airspace recently.

The North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) and United States Northern Command (NORTHCOM), both headed by Gen. Glen D. VanHerck, have been leading the effort to share information about the objects, since the balloon was shot down off the South Carolina Coast on Feb. 4.

In a statement to Fox News on Feb. 14, a spokesperson for the Space Command explained that it is not taking a lead role because the objects operated outside the command’s “astrographic area of responsibility.”

“U.S. Space Command operates the most exquisite and extensive sensor network in the world,” the spokesperson said, adding that NORAD, NORTHCOM, and the Pentagon are three bodies that are the “focal point” in identifying the objects.

“While the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena are below USSPACECOM’s astrographic area of responsibility (100km+), we continue to monitor these events and provide supporting data to U.S. Northern Command,” the spokesperson added.

The Space Command declined to elaborate on what it meant about providing “supporting data,” according to the outlet.

Keep reading

The UK will treat online images of immigrants crossing the Channel as a criminal offence

On 17 January, the United Kingdom (UK) government announced that online platforms will have to proactively remove images of immigrants crossing the Channel in small boats under a new amendment to be tabled to the Online Safety Bill. The announcement, intended to bolster the UK’s hostile immigration policy, has been met with concern among the British public and charities working with people on the move . However, it does helpfully confirm the way that this Bill could be manoeuvred to political ends.

How will the new amendment be enforced?

In fact, the proposed amendment says nothing about small boats crossing the Channel. It supports an existing provision in the Bill under the heading of “Assisting Illegal Immigration” Schedule 7 (22). It relies on the interpretation of an obscure text from a 1971 law, and on an opaque requirement for online platforms to “prevent users encountering” this content.

The amendment is to be tabled by the government in the House of Lords. in response to a politically-motivated amendment proposed by 24 Conservative Party members of Parliament (MPs), and led by the MP for Dover, Nathalie Elphicke.

Mrs Elphicke’s amendment called for the removal of “content that may result in serious harm or death to a child while crossing the English Channel with the aim of entering the United Kingdom in a vessel unsuited or unsafe for those purposes.”

It was positioned within a provision about content harmful to children. Despite the clumsy drafting, the intention was clear and it won sufficient support to force the government to re-draft it.

As a result, the government’s proposal will amend the illegal content provisions in the Bill.

The content to be removed under these provisions is defined by a list of 33 criminal offences. The government wants to add a new offence under Section 24 of the 1971 Immigration Act, which is about unlawful entry to the UK. The amendment will support the reference to Section 25 of the 1971 Act that is already in the Bill.

The 1971 provisions have been updated in Sections 40 and 41 of the Nationality and Borders Act 2022, the government’s most recent change to immigration law.

In order to force providers to remove the content, the government is relying on “Inchoate offences”. These include aiding and abetting those offences. The government argues that aiding and abetting would include posting videos of people crossing the Channel from France to the UK in small, over-crowded boats. It would also include videos of people trying to enter the UK by climbing aboard lorries.

Keep reading

American Federal ‘Policy Advisor’ Posts Pic in Ukrainian Nazi Badge on Twitter

Paul Massaro, a Senior Policy Advisor at the federally-run US Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, posted and then deleted a photo on Twitter of himself donning a Ukrainian military badge depicting infamous Nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera.

Paul Massaro runs one of the most aggressively pro-Ukraine accounts on Twitter while using his federal foreign policy position to advocate for expanding the Russo-Ukrainian War. Recently, he posted a photograph of himself wearing a Ukrainian badge that depicts Stepan Bandera, a highly controversial figure in Ukrainian politics who collaborated with Hitler’s Nazis and was considered a war criminal by the United States and other allied nations.

“Hey, look what I’ve got,” Massaro tweeted, attaching a photograph of himself wearing his Nazi Bandera badge while sitting in front of a Ukrainian flag hanging from his wall.

Keep reading

Defense Department DEI Chief Made Disparaging Remarks About White People on Twitter

Kelisa Wing is the chief diversity officer in the education wing at the Department of Defense. She is herself, currently on defense, over some things she wrote on Twitter about white people.

This story is an excellent reminder of just how embedded the ideology behind diversity, equity and inclusion is at every level of our government.

FOX News reports:

Defense Department DEI education official claims past racially-charged tweets were ‘private speech’

The chief diversity, equity and inclusion officer at the Department of Defense’s education wing defended herself against claims from lawmakers that she made “racially disparaging” statements, according to reports.

Fox News Digital reported in September 2022 that Kalisa Wing, the DEI chief at the Department of Defense Education Activity, or DODEA, which provides K-12 education to the DoD community in the U.S. and all over the world, wrote a series of disparaging posts about White people on Twitter.

In an interview with the Military Times, Wing said when she made the statements, she was not speaking on behalf of the DoDEA, but instead as an educator and private citizen.

“No, I did not make disparaging comments against White people,” she said. “I would never categorize an entire group of people to disparage them. I’m speaking now as a private individual, about my private free speech from July of 2022.”

Wing wrote in a series of tweets in June 2020, that have since been taken down, “I’m exhausted with these white folx in the [professional development] sessions.”

“[T]his lady actually had the CAUdacity to say that black people can be racist too… I had to stop the session and give Karen the BUSINESS… [W]e are not the majority, we don’t have power,” she continued.

Keep reading

FOIA emails may be ‘breadcrumbs’ leading to government-Twitter election censorship collusion

Summer 2022 emails between participants in a federal misinformation subcommittee, recently turned over in response to public records requests, are prompting renewed calls for Congress to investigate the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency’s role in shaping what Americans can see.

They apparently show a Twitter executive fired by Elon Musk last fall strategizing with a leader in the CISA-blessed Election Integrity Partnership on how to overcome internal objections to their plans for the Protecting Critical Infrastructure from Misinformation and Disinformation Subcommittee, part of CISA’s Cybersecurity Advisory Committee.

An agency under the Department of Homeland Security that touts itself as the “quarterback for the federal cybersecurity team,” CISA has become a lightning rod for public anger as it has sought to carve itself a role as stealth arbiter of domestic political debate about election security through a network of corporate and nonprofit information control surrogates.

“We may have discovered breadcrumbs showing the close relationship between one of the government’s ordained censorship captains and her Big Tech ally who, as we’ve learned from the Twitter Files, executed government-ordered censorship,” the Functional Government Initiative, which made the initial public records request, told Just the News.

Keep reading

Cop Arrested After He Was Caught Dumping Naked Body of 16yo Girl in the Woods

The residents of Norcross have been searching for 16-year-old Susana Morales since she went missing on July 26, 2022. She was last seen walking home on surveillance footage but tragically would never arrive. Her disappearance had been a mystery until last week when her body was discovered 20 miles away. According to an arrest warrant, she was dumped there by disgraced Doraville police officer Miles Bryant.

“It’s unbelievable honestly, there is no words that I can say to explain it,” said Jasmine Morales, Susana’s sister. “It sucks that it took so long but I guess with him being an officer has something to do with that.”

On Monday, Bryant was charged with concealing Susana’s death — her body was discovered five days earlier. Bryant has only been charged with one count of concealing the death of another and one count of falsely reporting a crime.

According to the arrest warrant, police say Bryant dumped Susana’s naked body in a patch of woods in Dacula. Medical examiners are still trying to determine the teen’s cause of death. The warrant states that police suspect Bryant of rape, murder, and other offenses, although he’s yet to be charged with those crimes.

According to court records, Bryant lived near Susana. Local news, 11 Alive interviewed neighbors who said Bryant was normal.

One of those neighbors shared cell phone videos, showing what they described as investigators collecting a bed sheet from Bryant’s personal car. In one of the videos, his police car was being towed away.

“It’s hard to put my mind around it right now, that’s this person who lived in this complex did that,” said another resident who asked not to disclose her identity out of fear of retaliation. That neighbor says while she didn’t know Bryant personally he has introduced himself several times as a police officer who also moonlights as security at the complex.

Neighbors said Byrant’s demeanor during the past six months wasn’t alarming.

“He was very normal, just smiling laughing, living his life,” the neighbor said. “Poor baby laid out in a field somewhere. Are you serious, how can you be that cold-hearted? How is somebody that cold-hearted?”

Though much of the media is referring to Bryant as a “former officer,” he was a cop until Monday. He was only fired after being charged with dumping the naked body of a teenager in the woods.

Keep reading

The Argument That ‘America Has Gone Too Far in Legalizing Vice’ Ignores the Cost of Prohibition

In a recent Atlantic essay, physician Matthew Loftus argues that “America has gone too far in legalizing vice.” Because people do not always make rational decisions and sometimes develop self-destructive habits, Loftus argues, the government should make it harder, not easier, to engage in pleasurable activities such as gambling and cannabis consumption. “Just as highways have guardrails for the moments when a driver isn’t exercising perfect self-control,” he writes, “so we also need guardrails to help people from driving off cliffs of vice.”

To his credit, Loftus does not draw arbitrary distinctions between potentially harmful habits based on their current legal status. He argues that alcohol prohibition was successful in reducing the harm caused by excessive drinking, for example, and seems to understand that any pleasure-providing or stress-relieving activity can be the focus of an addiction—a point that psychologists such as Stanton Peele and Jeffrey Schaler have been making for many years.

But Loftus exaggerates how often that happens, obscuring the implication that the government should impose restrictions on everyone based on the mistakes of a minority. He cherry-picks data to support his argument that liberalization of marijuana policies has been harmful. And while he emphasizes human fallibility as it relates to “vice” itself, he ignores its perils in formulating laws and regulations aimed at curtailing “vice.”

The term that Loftus uses to describe things that people enjoy is telling. The “vice” label implies that even occasional or moderate gambling, drinking, or cannabis consumption is morally suspect and provides no value that is worth considering. That is convenient for the argument in favor of paternalistic policies like the ones that Loftus supports. But it ignores the reality that people who engage in such activities typically do not develop life-disrupting habits they ultimately regret. By and large, these activities are life-enhancing rather than life-disrupting.

Loftus implies otherwise. “Our hearts and minds are shaped not only by reason but also by our experiences, affections, and, most important, our habits, which are just as often inexplicably self-destructive as they are reasonable,” he writes.

That is an empirical claim, implying that roughly half of the people who gamble, drink, or use marijuana develop “self-destructive” habits. The evidence does not support that claim.

Keep reading

US Officials Now Say Chinese “Spy Balloon” Flew Over The US Accidentally

The Washington Post has a weird new article out citing multiple anonymous US officials saying that the Chinese “spy balloon” we’ve been hearing about for the last two weeks was never intended for a surveillance mission over North America at all.

The article is titled “U.S. tracked China spy balloon from launch on Hainan Island along unusual path,” and throughout it alternates between the objective journalistic terms “suspected spy balloon” and “suspected Chinese surveillance balloon” and the US government’s terms “spy balloon” and “airborne surveillance device”. There is at this time no publicly available evidence that the balloon which was famously shot down on February 4th was in fact an instrument of Chinese espionage; the Chinese government has said that the balloon was a civilian meteorological airship that got blown off course, and the Pentagon’s own assessment is that a Chinese spy balloon would not “create significant value added over and above what the PRC is likely able to collect through things like satellites in Low Earth Orbit.”

What makes the article so weird is that it actually contains claims which substantiate Beijing’s assertion that this was in fact a balloon that got blown off course, yet it keeps repeating the unevidenced claim that it was a “spy balloon”.

Keep reading