Chuck Palahniuk Reacts to FIGHT CLUB Being Censored

From Patrick Brzeski's 1-26-22 HOLLYWOOD REPORTER article entitled "‘Fight Club’ Author Chuck Palahniuk Says China’s Censored Ending Is Actually Truer to His Vision":

The author also said that he saw the irony in many Americans’ angry response to China’s actions, given that his books are banned in many locations across the U.S.

“What I find really interesting is that my books are heavily banned throughout the U.S.,” he said. “The Texas prison system refuses to carry my books in their libraries. A lot of public schools and most private schools refuse to carry my books. But it’s only an issue once China changes the end of a movie? I’ve been putting up with book banning for a long time.”

He also said that having his work revised in ways he can’t control is nothing new to him.

“A lot of my overseas publishers have edited the novel so the novel ends the way the movie ends,” he said. “So I’ve been dealing with this kind of revision for like 25 years.”

To read the entire article, click HERE.

Mysterious Drone Incursions

From Brett Tingley's 1-15-22 TheDrive article entitled "Mysterious Drone Incursions Confirmed Over Sweden's Nuclear Facilities":

Swedish law enforcement officials have confirmed that unidentified drones have been seen in the airspace over multiple nuclear power facilities early in the evening of Friday, January 14. An investigation has been launched by Sweden’s National Operations Department (NOA), but so far no suspects have been identified.

The Swedish Police Authority say the drones were seen over two separate nuclear facilities: one in the city of Forsmark and another over Oskarshamn. There are reports that a third nuclear facility at Ringhals had similar incursions, but Swedish police have yet to confirm that drones were in fact seen there. According to Reuters, the facility at Forsmark is the nation’s largest producer of energy.

According to the official website of Sweden’s Swedish Police Authority, Polisen.se, the NOA oversees national-level investigations and operations and is the “national point of contact for the Swedish Security Service, the Swedish Armed Forces, and the National Defence Radio Establishment, and is responsible for managing sensitive information relating to terrorism and signals intelligence.”

Swedish TV station TV2 reports the drone seen at Forsmark was thought to be “a larger model that can withstand wind as it blew hard in the area.” The drone was first seen by a guard as it hovered over the facility before heading away east towards the island of Gräsö. Authorities reportedly used helicopters to try to locate the alleged drone, but were unsuccessful. Swedish national public television broadcaster SVT posted a video filmed by a motorist reportedly showing a drone over the Ringhals nuclear power plant, but that alleged incursion remains unconfirmed by Swedish authorities. The 27-second video appears to show a bright single point of light in the sky, but little can be made of it [...].

The United States has seen its share of unidentified drone incursions lately. We previously reported on an absolutely bizarre drone incursion above the Palo Verde nuclear power plant in Arizona which remains unexplained to this day. U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) documents show that Palo Verde is far from the only nuclear facility to have had such incursions and that as many as 60 different drone sightings took place at 24 nuclear power facilities between 2015 and 2019. The NRC and National Nuclear Security Administration appear to be finally taking the situation seriously by making moves to deploy anti-drone systems at sensitive sites.

A more widespread series of unidentified drone sightings occurred above wide swaths of the American west in late 2019 and 2020, similarly ending without conclusive evidence about the drones’ operators revealed to the public. The Navy has also experienced mysterious drone swarms in some of its most sensitive training areas near home waters. Extremely peculiar drone incursions that have occurred near or over highly surveilled U.S. military bases in urban areas remain unsolved. Even America's most critical missile defense sites have not been immune to highly suspicious drone incursions. 

To read the entire article, click HERE.

"'UFO' and 'Shadow People' Seen Near US Air Force Base"

From John Bett and Michael Moran's 1-13-22 MIRROR article entitled "Man Saw 'UFO' and 'Shadow People' Near Nuclear Weapons at US Air Force Base":

An airman has witnessed a ' UFO ' while he was guarding nuclear weapons at a US Air Force base - adding that he's seen 'shadow people' at similar installations.

Former USAF nuclear weapons technician Adrian Reister said that between 2003 and 2007 he was stationed at Whiteman Air Force Base, Missouri, where he would guard, maintain, and move nuclear weapons.

He said that while performing his duties, he saw a glowing 'orb' hovering above a nearby treeline before flying off, as the Daily Star reports.

Adrian, 37, said that it couldn't have been one of their planes as he knew them all extensively, and he added that while he was training at a similar station he came face-to-face with a terrifying 6ft 'shadow person' [...].

He said: 'I saw what I can’t really describe as other than a black mass in the shape of a person standing at 6ft. Not really a shadow but something that was slightly blurry and didn’t reflect any light.'

To read the entire article, click HERE.

Robert Welch & the John Birch Society

From Edward H. Miller's 1-9-22 LOS ANGELES TIMES Op-Ed piece entitled "Today’s Right-wing Conspiracy Theory Mentality Can Be Traced Back to the John Birch Society":

As the years passed, [Robert] Welch’s theories grew wilder. He eventually concluded that communism was just another name for the conspiracy begun by the Bavarian Illuminati in 1776. He also said that the Trilateral Commission, the Council on Foreign Relations and the Bilderbergers (a group that sought to foster dialogue between Europe and North America) were the puppet masters of U.S. foreign and economic interests. The [John Birch Society] also called for the U.S. to withdraw from the United Nations and for the impeachment of Chief Justice Earl Warren.

In the 1970s, the John Birch Society became even more influential. Despite a widespread belief that the “responsible” right of William F. Buckley had purged the conservative movement of the Birchers, Welch was never excommunicated. His style of American conservatism remained potent.

In those years, Welch broadened the society’s focus by opposing abortion, high taxation and sex education — issues that propelled the Reagan revolution. Bircher Lewis Uhler was instrumental in passing Proposition 13 to reduce California’s property taxes in 1978.

All the while, Welch continued to press his extreme theories.

In the 1970s, Americans began receiving some confirmation that perhaps conspiracies weren’t really as rare and nutty as they seemed. In 1973 and 1974, Watergate demonstrated that a president could secretly abuse his constitutional authority. Americans learned that more government officials had spied for the Soviet Union and had worked with mobsters in an unsuccessful effort to kill a foreign head of state. The CIA turned out to have conducted LSD experiments on Americans. After a while, anything seemed plausible. Over the years that followed, the number of people who said they trusted the government plummeted.

Welch is important today because, beginning in the 1980s and continuing on, his world has become ours. The depth of his influence on the transformation of the Republican Party — and therefore on America — has never been fully appreciated. His style of politics remained extremely potent after his death in 1985.

Reagan espoused conspiracy theories, such as his claim that Gerald Ford staged assassination attempts against himself to win sympathy votes. In the 1990s, partisanship became more central, ideology more crucial. On the radical fringe of the far right, private militia members armed themselves to the teeth. Both major parties, they claimed, wanted to end American sovereignty.

To read the entire article, click HERE.

Injectable Nanosensors

From Ian Taylor's 7-24-21 SCIENCE FOCUS article entitled "The Injectable Nanosensor That Will One Day Read Your Thoughts":

A new kind of injectable biosensor might one day be able to read your thoughts or let you communicate with nothing but your mind. Researchers behind NeuroSWARM3 say its gold-plated nanosensors, which are the size of a single viral particle, could travel through the bloodstream and cross the blood-brain barrier. Once inside the brain they would act like a kind of antenna, turning neural activity into optical signals that could be wirelessly sent to an external device.

Researchers at the University of California, Santa Cruz, believe that in the shorter term it could help scientists better understand the mysteries of human cognition. Longer term, potential applications sound like the stuff of science fiction: composing messages with your thoughts, controlling exoskeletons with your mind, the ability to monitor neurological disease with no invasive procedures.

“NeuroSWARM3 can convert the signals that accompany thoughts to remotely measurable signals for high precision brain-machine interfacing,” said A Ali Yanik, co-author of the study.

The technology works by tapping into the electrical signals that neurons use to send information to each other. This happens when humans do just about anything, including moving and thinking. NeuroSWARM3 is a new way to monitor that electrical activity. In fact, Yanik’s latest research shows that it’s sensitive enough to pick up the activity of individual brain cells.

To read the entire article, click HERE.

Sheriff Bianco & the Oath Keepers

From Scott Neuman's 10-6-21 NPR article entitled "California Sheriff Defends His Past Membership in the Extremist Oath Keepers Militia":

The sheriff of California's Riverside County, outside Los Angeles, has acknowledged that he once briefly belonged to the extremist Oath Keepers militia in 2014 after emails from the group were leaked online.

In an interview, Sheriff Chad Bianco sought to downplay his past affiliation with the organization, while also insisting that the aims of the Oath Keepers — which has emerged as one of the largest groups in the far-right patriot militia movement — have been misunderstood. In August, 17 Oath Keepers members were indicted in connection with the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.

"I don't even remember joining," Bianco, who was elected in 2018, told member station KPCC in excerpts from an interview published on the LAist website.

He maintained that "what happened at the Capitol was completely wrong," but that the Oath Keepers — which the Southern Poverty Law Center says has "trained for a revolution against the state" — are not anti-government. He blamed the Jan. 6 violence on "a few fringe people."

To read the entire article, click HERE.

From Frank Stoltze's 10-21-21 LAIST article entitled "California Attorney General Says Riverside Sheriff's Defense Of Extremist Oath Keepers Is 'Disturbing'":

Erroll Southers, a former FBI agent and expert in homegrown violent extremism, said an investigation by the state’s attorney general is in order to examine how Bianco’s defense of the Oath Keepers is affecting his department — the fourth largest sheriff’s agency in the country.

“Is it a problem, how deep does it go, is it affecting policies, is it affecting behaviors?” he said.

“Organizations mirror their leadership,” said Southers, who teaches at USC’s Price School of Public Policy.

Bianco’s defense of the group “overtly sends a message to the people that are under his command” that it’s okay to be a member, Southers said. “We already know we have a challenge of law enforcement being recruited by Oath Keepers in particular.”

To read the entire article, click HERE.

MOTHER JONES: "'Seditious Conspiracy' Charges Against Oath Keepers Mark a Major Advance in January 6 Investigation"

From Dan Friedman and Mark Follman's 1-13-22 MOTHER JONES article entitled "'Seditious Conspiracy' Charges Against Oath Keepers Mark a Major Advance in January 6 Investigation":

FBI agents on Thursday arrested Stewart Rhodes, the founder of far-right Oath Keepers, and charged him with seditious conspiracy, the Justice Department announced. The sedition charge marks a major and largely unexpected advancement in the federal investigation into the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol.

Rhodes was taken into custody in Granbury, Texas, according to his lawyer, Jon Moseley, who was on the phone with Rhodes about plans for him to be interviewed by the House select committee investigating January 6, when the FBI called. “The FBI special agent said they were outside and he needed to come out with his hands up and be arrested,” Moseley said.

The DOJ also charged 11 other Oath Keepers with seditious conspiracy. Most of those group members already faced other charges related to storming the Capitol on January 6, including conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding—the congressional counting and certification of electoral votes. The sedition charges, which carry a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison, were new and represent the first use of such laws against alleged January 6 participants or planners.

The allegations suggest that the DOJ may be expanding its prosecutions to focus on people who helped plan but did not directly take part in the attack.

To read the entire article, click HERE.