Tag: media

Detroit Police Raid Psilocybin Church After Newspaper Feature

A church that purportedly uses entheogenic plants like psilocybin mushrooms as a holy sacrament was raided by officers with the Detroit Police Department Friday just two days after having a newspaper article about them published in the Detroit Metro Times.

According to a follow up article by the Detroit Metro Times, officers confiscated about $700,000 Friday in psilocybin mushroom products as well as ayahuasca and iboga from Soul Tribes International Ministries at 15000 Southfield Freeway in Detroit. Officers with the Detroit Police Department confirmed the raid took place to the Metro Times but would not comment on what was taken or any other details about what happened there.

Owner of Soul Tribes, ‘Shaman Shu’ (formerly named Robert Shumake) said 15 officers from DPD showed up armed and masked, seized the mushroom products and ordered a closure of the church. Shu told the outlet he believes the actions taken by police were in violation of Proposal E, a 2021 city initiative that decriminalized the use of psychedelic plants and fungi like psilocybin.

“They stole ancient sacrament. It was prayed over and meditated over. It’s a healing sacrament… They blocked my property down without due process. You can’t do that,” Shu said to the Metro Times. “They think we’re not a church. But that’s why the federal government was created, to separate church and state so that cities do not opine on what churches are [and] what ministries are. We’re a ministry and a religious organization.”

The original article said Soul Tribes was operating a “sacrament center” within the church where they sold dried psilocybin fruits, capsules and gummies to church members based on language in Proposal E that included using psilocybin therapeutically under the supervision of religious leaders, though they remain illegal under Michigan state law.

Regardless, Proposal E did not allow for the sale of entheogenic plants and fungi, which is likely where Soul Tribes ran into trouble with the police. The Metro Times asked for comment from the Mayor of Detroit’s office regarding the raid and whether or not DPD’s actions were sanctioned by the City, to which they received the following comment from Doug Baker, the city’s assistant corporation counsel:

“The Detroit Police Department worked in close coordination with the city’s law department and building safety, engineering and environmental department in preparing this enforcement action,” Baker said. “It is the law department’s position that this local ordinance, despite its intent, does not override state law, which considers psilocybin to be a controlled substance. Most importantly, the city ordinance itself does not allow for the sale or distribution of psilocybin.”

DPD Sgt. for media relations, Jordan Hall, told the outlet, “My understanding was that [the raid] was due to a lack of licensing and the amount of substances that were distributed.”

Keep reading

False, Misleading Information About COVID-19 Vaccines And Myocarditis Spreads Widely

False and misleading information about COVID-19 vaccines and heart inflammation is being spread widely, including by doctors.

That includes claims that data clearly show myocarditis, or heart inflammation, is more prevalent after COVID-19 infection when compared to COVID-19 vaccination.

“Teen boys have been up to five times as likely to have heart inflammation after having a COVID infection than after getting vaccinated,” Dr. Mandy Cohen, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), said in a video encouraging nearly all Americans to get one of the new COVID-19 vaccines.

A similar claim was made by Dr. Scott Rivkees, Florida’s former surgeon general, to ABC.

The claims are largely based on a non-peer reviewed study from the CDC from April 2022.

“At this point it does not seem like an intellectually honest attempt to conduct a risk-benefit analysis,” Allison Krug, an epidemiologist, told The Epoch Times. “I’m just dismayed that they don’t seem genuinely interested in repairing the credibility with parents lost over the last two-and-a-half years.”

The CDC did not respond to a request for comment.

Dr. Rivkees, presented with studies that have found people in at least some populations are at a higher risk of myocarditis after vaccination when compared to after a positive test, doubled down on his claim.

“In articles that compare risks of myocarditis from COVID vs. following vaccination … the risk of myocarditis is greater after COVID than after vaccination,” Dr. Rivkees, professor of the practice of health services, policy, and practice at Brown University, told The Epoch Times via email.

In one of the papers, English researchers found a higher risk for men under 40 who were vaccinated with Moderna’s shot.

Nordic researchers also identified a higher risk for men under 40, as well as some females.

German researchers found 655 cases related to a COVID-19 vaccine, versus 77 related to COVID-19.

The CDC researchers found a higher rate of cardiac complications after a positive COVID-19 test than after COVID-19 vaccination in 40 U.S. health care systems. They did not include all COVID-19 infections.

Dr. Rivkees later sent meta-analyses that confirm the COVID-19 vaccines increase the risk of myocarditis, with no tabulations for the risk following COVID-19.

Dr. Rivkees was quoted by ABC as countering recommendations from Florida to people under 65 to avoid new COVID-19 vaccines, which have virtually no clinical trial data behind them.

Florida’s recommendations contradict the CDC, which advises nearly all Americans receive one of the new shots, but align with or are close to the recommendations from much of the rest of the world, including many European countries and Israel.

Keep reading

The “Trusted News Initiative” Is a Tool to Brainwash the World

If you follow mainstream media, it’s possible that you are the target of a brainwashing tool developed to get everyone on the same page regarding specific events. You may have seen this video, where members of the media parrot, word for word, a message that “someone” wants to get out.

Appalling, isn’t it?

It would be nice to think that this is a one-off, but really, it’s not. It’s propaganda 101. Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi granddaddy of propaganda, was credited with the following statement:

“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.”

Gee. Sound familiar?

Keep reading

New York Times Admits Kiev’s Counteroffensive Has Failed

According to a recent report in the New York Times, the Pentagon are no longer pushing the idea that Ukraine’s much vaunted counteroffensive is succeeding. In fact, their tacit admissions are a damning indictment of the entire ‘counteroffensive’ narrative. 

Things are so bad now that Ukrainian armed forces have admitted that they will need to ‘pause’ for weeks, or even months, in order to ‘restock and recover’ from a disastrous  summer military campaign, according to sources cited.

Their capitulation, combined with the ambiguous statements coming out of Washington and NATO top brass, demonstrate a real schism between the regime in Kiev and its American paymasters who believe Ukraine should be focusing more on the southern regions. According to sources, American officials believe that “the fight in Bakhmut has become something of an obsession for Mr. Zelensky and his military leaders.”

Incredibly, President Volodymyr Zelensky has declared during his latest fundraising tour of Washington – that his Armed Forces would somehow liberate the town of Bakhmut ‘by the end of the year’ – a specious idea which seems directly at odds with US war planners.

Moreover, officials in Washington believe that Ukrainian forces won’t be able to sever Russia’s land bridge from Donbas to Crimea by reaching the Sea of Azov in Russia’s Zaporozhye Region – a reality which alternative media have been reporting since last spring.

Keep reading

Media Critics Agree: Stop Interviewing the Bad People!

On Sunday, NBC’s Meet the Press, which has been interviewing notable politicians for the past 75 years, brought in for questioning the runaway favorite for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination: Donald Trump.

Media critics were—predictably by now—livid. Not just at new MTP host Kristin Welker’s inability to corral Washington’s most slippery fish, but at the very notion that a politician-interviewing show should even interview this particular politician, after all that he has done.

“It’s arguable that, at this juncture, there is really no need to interview Trump,” posited CNN media writer Oliver Darcy. “Just a colossal mistake to showcase this sociopath,” tweeted American Enterprise Institute emeritus scholar and Atlantic contributing editor Norman Ornstein. “Downright dangerous journalism to legitimize this guy—in the name of having a ‘talked about’ premiere,” charged former New York Times media reporter Bill Carter. “Is it possible,” an exasperated former Chicago Tribune editor Mark Jacob wondered, “that journalists who platform lying fascists don’t know they’re undermining democracy?”

It may seem counterintuitive that protecting democracy requires refusing to talk with a primary-frontrunning former president who more than 74 million Americans voted for in 2020. But not if you think that Trump is uniquely awful and dangerous, that his fact-tethered interlocutors are helpless against his firehose of lies, and that there are no meaningfully compensatory benefits to be gleaned from the traditional journalistic practice of interrogating a candidate for high office.

Keep reading

Fentanyl-Laced Coke and Meth Is Not Fuelling America’s Overdose Crisis

“Overdose deaths from fentanyl-laced cocaine and meth have risen 50-fold,” screamed the Daily Mail about a new study into the US opioid crisis.

The Mail, reporting on the study published last week in the scientific journal Addiction, warned that “many users unwittingly consume fentanyl, as it is frequently used as a cutting agent in cocaine and other illicit drugs to extend the supply and the high”.

Reporting on the same study, carried out by researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), ABC News told its readers: “Many people who use drugs like cocaine recreationally may not be aware these drugs are laced with fentanyl… this could be fueling unintentional overdoses, according to experts.”

But is this really happening?

Keep reading

The Mass-Media Memory Hole – Blair, Ukraine and Libya

A key function of state-corporate media is to keep the public pacified, ignorant and ill-equipped to disrupt establishment power.

Knowledge that sheds light on how the world operates politically and economically is kept to a minimum by the ‘mainstream’ media. George Orwell’s famous ‘memory hole’ from ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four’ signifies the phenomenon brilliantly. Winston Smith’s work for the Ministry of Truth requires that he destroys documents that contradict state propaganda:

‘When one knew that any document was due for destruction, or even when one saw a scrap of waste paper lying about, it was an automatic action to lift the flap of the nearest memory hole and drop it in, whereupon it would be whirled away on a current of warm air to the enormous furnaces which were hidden somewhere in the recesses of the building’.

(Orwell, ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four’, 1949, Penguin edition, 1982, p. 34)

The interests of power, hinging on the domination of an ignorant population, are robustly maintained:

‘In this way every prediction made by the Party could be shown by documentary evidence to have been correct, nor was any item of news, or any expression of opinion, which conflicted with the needs of the moment, ever allowed to remain on record. All history was a palimpsest, scraped clean and reinscribed exactly as often as was necessary. In no case would it have been possible, once the deed was done, to prove that any falsification had taken place.’

(Ibid., p. 36)

As the Party slogan puts it:

‘Who controls the past, controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.’

(Ibid., p. 31)

In today’s fictional ‘democracies’, the workings of propaganda are more subtle. Notably, there is a yawning chasm between the rhetoric of leaders’ professed concern for human rights, peace and democracy, and the realpolitik of empire, exploitation and control.

Keep reading

Evidence suggests errant Ukrainian missile hit busy market

Evidence suggests a deadly explosion at a busy market in the eastern Ukrainian city of Kostiantynivka this month was caused by an errant missile fired by Ukraine, the New York Times reported on Tuesday.

Ukraine has said the Sept. 6 blast, which killed at least 16 people, was caused by a Russian missile.

“Evidence collected and analyzed by The New York Times, including missile fragments, satellite imagery, witness accounts and social media posts, strongly suggests the catastrophic strike was the result of an errant Ukrainian air defense missile fired by a Buk launch system,” the newspaper reported.

Reuters could not independently verify the report.

The press service of Ukraine’s SBU security service, asked about the report, said that according to an investigation still underway, the Russians were responsible for the strike, which it said had involved a Russian S-300 missile system.

“This is evidenced, in particular, by the identified missile fragments recovered at the scene of the tragedy,” it said, adding that the investigation was also examining other materials that pointed to Russian involvement in the shelling.

Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak said the circumstances were being studied by law enforcement agencies and that “the legal truth will be established”.

Keep reading

NBC’s Moderator Told Trump ‘No One’ Is Calling For Late-Term Abortions. Here’s Why She’s Wrong.

NBC’s Kristen Welker claimed “no one” is arguing for legal abortion up to birth in her new interview with former President Donald Trump, but that claim is demonstrably false.

The new “Meet the Press” moderator sparred with Trump for over an hour on abortion and other issues in an interview released Sunday.

“The radical people on this are really the Democrats that say after five months, six months, seven months, eight months, nine months, and even after birth, you’re allowed to terminate the baby,” Trump told Welker during the interview.

“Mr. President, Democrats aren’t saying that,” Welker responded.

Moments later Trump said, “I said with Hillary Clinton when we had the debate, I made a statement, ‘rip the baby out of the womb’ in the ninth month. You’re allowed to do that, and you shouldn’t be allowed to do that.”

“Again, no one is arguing for that. That’s not a part of anyone’s platform, Mr. President,” Welker said.

Besides the untold number of abortion activists who advocate for abortion on demand up to birth, a slew of states currently allow abortion at any point in the pregnancy.

Alaska, Colorado, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, Vermont, and Washington, D.C. all allow abortion with no gestational limits.

While high-profile Democrats often hedge on whether they support any gestational limits on abortion, some have come right out and admitted they support abortion up to the moment of birth.

Keep reading

What Does “Far-Right” Even Mean Anymore?

“Far right” is basically anything that contests the Establishment narrative.

Anybody taking the legacy, corporate media at face value these days is likely under the impression that the entire world is being overrun with “far-right” extremists, after all, anything orthogonal to the current WEF-inspired world order seems to be, by definition, far right.

If it wasn’t apparent already, it became obvious during the pandemic how establishment narratives are promulgated by corporate media cartels to enshrine elite-approved canon.  For that to work, it was key to neutralize non-conforming impulses, and the way to do that, it seemed, was to label it all as “far right”.

The term has now been so misplaced and over-used that it becomes impossible to differentiate between fast rising maverick politicians from skinheads with swastika tattoos. Make no mistake, this is deliberate.

The standard playbook is to cast anything gaining momentum as “populist” – which is always implicated as being  wrong-headed and retrograde, even though a literal definition of the word simply connotes that large swaths of the population are feeling strongly about something (usually some manner of getting screwed by the elites).

In an era where confidence and credibility of our incumbent institutions is in secular decline – given their stunning incompetence, not to mention self-serving hypocrisy and corruption, the public is becoming increasingly fed up with their betters. That means whatever appeals to them has to be repackaged as “far-right”, lest the movement gain momentum.

Keep reading