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.

Ukraine’s Corruption Scandal Might Pave The Way For Peace If It Takes Yermak Down

He’s Zelensky’s powerbroker so his downfall could undo the already shaky alliance between the armed forces, the oligarchs, the secret police, and parliament that keeps Zelensky in power, thus pressuring him into peace, especially if his warmongering grey cardinal is no longer pushing him to keep fighting.

It was earlier assessed here that Ukraine’s $100 million energy graft scandal might only result in a cabinet reshuffle at most, the sentiment of which RT chief Margarita Simonyan shared when writing on X “But we all know it won’t” in response to The Spectator predicting that it might bring Zelensky down. The events of the past week warrant a re-evaluation after members of the ruling party demanded the resignation of his powerful Chief of Staff Andrey Yermak on the grounds that he knew about this racket.

This coincided with Axios’ report that the US and Russia have been secretly working on a framework agreement for ending the Ukrainian Conflict, which Politico then reported could be agreed to “by the end of this month — and possibly ‘as soon as this week.’” The latter’s source also allegedly told them that “We don’t really care about the Europeans. It’s about Ukraine accepting”, which they said it might very well do since the plan will essentially “be presented to Zelensky as a fait accompli.”

Politico’s reporter elaborated that “They feel that Ukraine is in the position right now, given the corruption scandals that have been plaguing Zelenskyy, given where the battle lines are at this moment, that Ukraine is in a position where … they feel they can get them to accept this deal.” Accordingly, it can be reassessed that this corruption scandal championed by the US-backed “National Anti-Corruption Bureau” might facilitate an end an end to the conflict, especially if Yermak goes down as a result.

He’s considered to be Zelensky’s powerbroker so his downfall could undo the already shaky alliance between the armed forces, the oligarchs, the secret police, and parliament that keeps Zelensky in power.

Zelensky’s imprisoned former ally Igor Kolomoysky claimed that Timur Mindich, Zelensky’s longtime business partner at the center of this scandal who fled the country to avoid imminent arrest after being tipped off, is “a classic fall guy.”

This suggests that Yermak might be the one who managed everything.

Extrapolating upon this hypothesis, that would explain why the EU is downplaying this corruption scandal, spinning it as supposed proof that Ukraine’s state institutions are working properly, and actively trying to counter the spread of facts in relation to it. Yermak is Zelensky’s grey cardinal and suspected of being the reason why the Ukrainian leader continually rejects peace. If he goes down as a result of this scandal, then peace might finally be possible. He could also take down his European partners too.

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The Trump Administration has Not Kidnapped Children Neither Are They Missing

Reports on social media and in some news outlets claim that the Trump administration is stealing children, kidnapping children, or has lost thousands of children as a result of immigration enforcement. These claims imply that the United States should have open borders and stop deporting illegal aliens because liberals believe this would make children safer. The reality is that no children have been stolen, kidnapped, or lost by the Trump administration. In most instances, the adult accompanying the child is arrested or deported, and the child enters the system until a legal guardian can be found.

In many cases, this becomes complicated because the guardian is also an illegal alien who refuses to come forward and collect the child. Far from stealing children, the Trump administration is taking an active stance against child trafficking, which is closely tied to illegal immigration, with parents even renting their children to other migrants to expedite their entry into the United States.

In April through September 2018, the Trump administration reported that it could not determine the whereabouts of roughly 1,475 to 1,500 unaccompanied immigrant children. HHS made follow-up calls to 7,635 children from October to December 2017 and could not account for about 1,475 of them, roughly 19 percent. From April 1 to June 30, 2018, HHS contacted 11,254 immigrant children and could not determine where about 1,488 of them were, or roughly 13 percent.

The Trump White House explained that these children were not lost. About 90 percent of the children’s sponsors are parents or close relatives already living in the United States. Because the 30-day follow-up calls are voluntary, many sponsors do not respond. Some avoid speaking to federal authorities because they are illegal aliens. Others simply do not answer unknown numbers, have moved without updating contact information, or have disconnected or incorrect phone numbers. None of these situations means the children are missing.

Between July and November 2018, ICE arrested 170 potential sponsors and placed them in deportation proceedings after they stepped forward to sponsor unaccompanied children. ICE estimated that about 80 percent of active UAC sponsors and accompanying family members were residing in the country illegally. These children arrived in the United States without their parents, so federal officials did not separate them from their families.

Much of the public confusion came from conflating unaccompanied children who could not be reached by phone with the Trump administration’s zero-tolerance policy. The 1,475 children in question crossed the border alone. Children who were separated from adults who were not legitimate guardians, such as suspected traffickers or smugglers using children for easier entry, were placed in HHS custody. Confirming family relationships can take time, particularly when documents are missing or fraudulent. And even when legitimate relatives come forward, locating a child within the system requires navigating bureaucratic processes.

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Democrat Plaskett Digs Deeper Grave On Epstein Ties

Democrat Stacey Plaskett has doubled down on her Epstein collusion in a cringe inducing CNN interview, shrugging off his known sex offender status and sparking outrage as the Epstein files bill clears the Senate for Trump’s signature, exposing the left’s sudden “transparency” push as a desperate backfire.

Plaskett defended her Epstein texts, stating  “I believed Epstein had information. I was gonna get that information to seek truth.” 

The CNN anchor pressed, “At the time, he was a known sex offender…” prompting Plaskett to respond “A lot of people have done a lot of crimes!” 

In an earlier House floor speech, Plaskett admitted, “I got a text from Jeffrey Epstein, who at the time was my constituent… who was sharing information with me.”

She added, “I have been a lawyer for thirty years… I know how to question individuals. I know how to seek information. I have sought information from confidential informants, from murderers, from other individuals because I want the truth.”

Plaskett claimed Republicans have “taken a text exchange which shows no participation, no assistance, no involvement in any illegal activity and weaponized it for political theater.”

She added that Epstein “As a constituent, as an individual who gave donations to me, when I learned of the extents of his actions after his investigation, I gave that money to women organizations in my community…That’s what I think should have been done and that’s what I did.”

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EU’s Weakened “Chat Control” Bill Still Poses Major Privacy and Surveillance Risks, Academics Warn

On November 19, the European Union stands poised to vote on one of the most consequential surveillance proposals in its digital history.

The legislation, framed as a measure to protect children online, has drawn fierce criticism from a bloc of senior European academics who argue that the proposal, even in its revised form, walks a perilous line. It invites mass surveillance under a veil of voluntarism and does so with little evidence that it will improve safety.

This latest draft of the so-called “Chat Control” law has already been softened from its original form. The Council of the European Union, facing mounting public backlash, stripped out provisions for mandatory on-device scanning of encrypted communications.

But for researchers closely following the legislation, the revised proposal is anything but a retreat.

“The proposal reinstates the option to analyze content beyond images and URLs – including text and video – and to detect newly generated CSAM,” reads the open letter, signed by 18 prominent academics from institutions such as ETH Zurich, KU Leuven, and the Max Planck Institute.

We obtained a copy of the letter for you here.

The argument, in essence, is that the Council’s latest version doesn’t eliminate the risk. It only rebrands it.

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Rep. Jasmine Crockett’s Effort to Smear Republicans Over Epstein Donations Blows Up in Her Face When Conservative Journalist Unearths the Damning Truth

Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-TX) provided some unintentional comic relief right before the House decided to give her fellow Democrat, Stacey Plaskett, a pass regarding her dealings with Jeffrey Epstein.

As The Gateway Pundit reported, the House of Representatives on Tuesday evening voted against censuring Rep. Stacey Plaskett (D-V.I.) over her collusion with Epstein during a 2019 congressional hearing.

The House voted 214 -209 against censuring Plaskett. Every Democrat voted against the censure, while three Republicans voted present, and three other GOP lawmakers joined the Democrats.

It was later exposed by Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL) that House leadership in both parties cut a dirty deal to ensure Plaskett would not face accountability.

Before the censure vote, Crockett took to the House floor and accused the GOP of a double standard by asserting without evidence that the likes of Mitt Romney, Lee Zeldin, John McCain, and George W. Bush had once taken money from Epstein.

But in a development that will surprise no one, Crockett got her ‘facts’ wrong. The Washington Free Beacon’s Chuck Ross took her advice and dug up the FEC filings and discovered that a completely DIFFERENT Epstein made these donations, not the deceased p*dophile.

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Serbia’s current president is accused of involvement in Sarajevo ‘human safaris’ where foreign tourists paid to be snipers and kill civilians

The scandal surrounding alleged ‘human safaris’ during the siege of Sarajevo has escalated, with the fresh allegation that Serbia’s current president participated in the hunting trips of unarmed civilians.

Aleksandar Vučić, who took office in 2017, has been accused of taking part in grotesque expeditions where wealthy foreign tourists would shoot at people with snipers during the four-year Bosnian Serb siege of the city in the 1990s.

Between 1992 and 1996, more than 10,000 people were killed in Sarajevo by shelling and sniper fire in the longest siege of a capital city in the history of modern warfare. 

Prosecutors in Milan have opened an investigation into Italian tourists who allegedly paid between £70,000 and £88,000 to take part in the violence and shoot at innocent civilians for fun, paying more to target children. 

Croatian investigative journalist Domagoj Margetic has written to the prosecutor’s office in Milan alleging that Mr Vučić participated in and facilitated sniper tourism in Sarajevo, claims the politician has previously denied.

The allegation against the Serbian President has been echoed by Serbian lawyer Čedomir Stojković, who is putting pressure on magistrates in Belgrade to launch an investigation. 

In his letter to prosecutors in Milan, Mr Margetic cites a video from 1993 which he claims showed Mr Vučić carrying a sniper rifle alongside other armed men.

The group, Mr Margetic claims, was stationed at a Jewish cemetery located on a hillside overlooking Sarajevo that was utilised as a frontline position for Serbian snipers.

In his letter, Mr Margetic claims the Serbian President was a ‘war volunteer’ in the besieged city in 1992 and 1993, and a member of the New Sarajevo Chetnik Detachment of the Army of Republika Srpska (VRS), led by commander Slavko Aleksić.

As evidence of this claim, he cites a snippet from a purported interview Mr Vučić did with the Serbian magazine Duga in 1994, where he appears to have said: 

‘When the war in Bosnia began, I went to Serbian Sarajevo and signed up as a volunteer. I was not a member of the party, I simply went. I knew some friends and that’s why I went to defend [the Serbians].’

Mr Vučić goes on to say he spent time at the Jewish cemetery – the same graveyard which supposedly features in the footage of him with armed men.

The journalist also cites evidence given by Vojislav Seselj, the founder of the hard-right Serbian Radical Party, testifying in The Hague during the defence of former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic in 2013.

During his testimony, Mr Seselj said Mr Vučić was part of the military detachment in Sarajevo, according to court summaries published by the SENSE Transitional Justice Centre.

Hague prosecutors during the United Nations-led ad hoc international criminal tribunal for the former Yugoslavia found that there was ‘ample evidence’ to show that Aleksić commanded a unit of Serbian Radical Party (SRS) volunteers based at the Sarajevo Jewish cemetery from April 1992 until at least September 1993.

In the letter to Milan magistrates, the journalist also cites the claims of Zukan Helez, Bosnia’s minister of defence, who has said that members of the VRS told him they witnessed Mr Vučić firing on Sarajevo residents from the Jewish cemetery.

Mr Vučić has previously denied that he ever shot at anyone in Sarajevo, and that he was working in the Pale, 11 miles east of the city, as a journalist in the early 1990s.

‘I can’t listen to nonsense and lies,’ he said to Bosnian news channel Face TV in 2021.

‘I didn’t shoot, but I was at Pale, doing my job.’

He also claims the object he carried in the video was an umbrella, not a rifle. 

Mr Helez has dismissed the Serbian President’s denials. ‘His excuse that in the footage taken on the frontlines above besieged Sarajevo he was holding an umbrella and not a rifle is a blatant lie,’ he told The Sarajevo Times.

‘Recently, I spoke with three members of the VRS who admitted to me that they were at the Jewish cemetery at the same time as Vučić and that the current President of Serbia was firing on Sarajevo residents with a sniper rifle,’ he said in December last year.

In his letter, Mr Margetic alleges that not only did Mr Vučić participate in the ‘safaris’ personally, he also provided logistical support for the trips, including acting as a translator between the foreign hunters and the Serbian forces.

‘There is more and more evidence that Aleksandar Vucic was part of the “Sniper safari” during the siege of Sarajevo,’ Mr Stojković, a Serbian lawyer wrote on Facebook.

‘Vučić absolutely certainly knew what was going on, and he was a part of it, one way or another.’

‘Despite the increasingly intense evidence – the public prosecutor’s office in Belgrade does not launch an investigation,’ he wrote in another post, condemning Serbian authorities for not probing the allegations.

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Corporate Media Parrot Dubious Drug Claims That Justify War on Venezuela

Since August, the US has been amassing military assets in the Caribbean. Warships, bombers and thousands of troops have been joined by the USS Gerald R. Ford, the world’s largest aircraft carrier, in the largest regional deployment in decades. Extrajudicial strikes against small vessels, which UN experts have decried as violations of international law, have killed at least 80 civilians (CNN, 11/14/25).

Many foreign policy analysts believe that regime change in Venezuela is the ultimate goal (Al Jazeera, 10/24/25; Left Chapter, 10/21/25), but the Trump administration instead claims it is fighting “narcoterrorism,” accusing Caracas of flooding the US with drugs via the Cartel of the Suns and Tren de Aragua, both designated as foreign terrorist organizations.

Over the years, Western media have endorsed Washington’s Venezuela regime-change efforts at every turn, from cheerleading coup attempts to whitewashing deadly sanctions (FAIR.org, 6/13/22, 6/4/21, 1/22/20). Now, with a possible military operation that could have disastrous consequences, corporate outlets are making little effort to hold the US government accountable. Rather, they are unsurprisingly ceding the floor to the warmongers.

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Nancy Mace Circulates Bill To Block Hemp THC Ban That Trump Signed Into Law

A GOP congresswoman is circulating a bill that would stop the implementation of a federal hemp THC product ban that’s part of spending legislation signed by President Donald Trump last week. And she’s pledging to spend the next year fighting to prevent the implementation of the ban.

The draft bill from Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC)—who has also separately championed legislation to legalize marijuana—seeks to strike a section of the recently enacted appropriations package that hemp stakeholders say would effective eradicate the market by imposing severe restrictions on the types of consumable cannabinoid products that could be legally sold.

Hemp businesses and industry groups have warned about the potential ramifications of the ban, but despite his support for states’ rights for cannabis and a recent social media post touting the benefits of CBD, Trump signed the underlying spending measure into law without acknowledging the hemp provisions.

Mace’s bill, titled “The American Hemp Protection Act of 2025,” would prevent that ban from taking effect, which would happen around this time next year, but it wouldn’t on its own accomplish what many advocates have pled for: Regulations.

Rather than outright prohibit consumable hemp products with small amounts of THC, the industry has generally pushed for a regulatory model that addresses issues with intoxicating cannabinoids that have become widely available since the crop and its derivatives were federally legalized under the 2018 Farm Bill that Trump signed during his first term.

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France’s Censors Release Their Favorite Captive

French authorities have lifted the travel ban that had confined Telegram founder Pavel Durov to France for more than a year.

The restriction, imposed after his arrest in Paris last August, had prevented him from leaving the country while prosecutors pursued charges tied not to his own actions but to what users on his platform were allegedly doing.

The order, signed on Monday, and reported by Bloomberg, also cancels the obligation for Durov to report regularly to a local police station.

The decision restores his freedom of movement, though the investigation into Telegram itself continues.

Prosecutors have not clarified why the head of a communications service is being held legally responsible for user activity, an approach that raises questions about how far governments are willing to go in policing online speech.

According to France’s Prosecutor’s Office, Durov faces preliminary charges for “facilitating a platform that enables illicit transactions.”

If convicted, he could face up to ten years in prison and a fine of roughly $550,000.

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US House Committee Summons Australian Censor Julie Inman Grant Over Global Takedown Demands

Australia’s eSafety Commissioner, Julie Inman Grant, is now facing transnational political clash after the US House Judiciary Committee demanded she appear before Congress to explain her office’s global content takedown efforts.

The committee, chaired by Republican Jim Jordan, argues that Australia’s Online Safety Act (OSA) has evolved into what he called a “foreign censorship regime” with implications for American speech.

In a letter sent Tuesday, Jordan described Inman Grant as a “zealot” and accused her of pushing an “expansive interpretation” of the OSA that “directly threatens American speech.”

We obtained a copy of the letter for you here.

He warned that her efforts to enforce content removals beyond Australia’s borders amount to an assertion of jurisdiction over foreign citizens and platforms.

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