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.

LA awards $106M to nonprofit whose lawyers hinder city’s ability to clean up streets — and bill $1,025 an hour

Los Angeles just cut a whopping $106.6 million taxpayer check to a nonprofit law firm whose lawyers have spent years hindering the city’s ability to dismantle homeless camps and clean up city streets — with one attorney billing as much as $1,025 an hour for work tied to its activism.

The Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles (LAFLA) was awarded the largest share of an eye-popping $177 million tenant rights funding package approved at City Hall this week, despite opposition from the City Attorney.

Under the deal, Los Angeles will funnel $106,572,543.69 over the next three years to LAFLA for eviction defense services, even as attorneys connected to the organization have repeatedly filed lawsuits that blocked the city from enforcing municipal codes aimed at keeping sidewalks clear of encampments and neighborhoods safe.

But the money flowing to the group is far larger than that. City records show the Stay Housed LA eviction defense program, a city initiative administered by LAFLA through a network of partner organizations, had already grown to a maximum contract value of about $90.8 million through a series of amendments approved by the City Council.

Put together, the contracts push the pipeline of taxpayer funding tied to the nonprofit to about $197 million. That number jumps off the page when compared to the organization’s own finances.

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Senate Republicans On Iran War Ending: Sooner The Better

The ongoing U.S. military operation against Iran, which began February 28th with strikes aimed at destroying Iran’s nuclear program, ballistic missile capabilities, navy, and other strategic assets, has prompted a range of reactions from Republican senators. While most GOP lawmakers initially supported President Trump’s actions – evidenced by the Senate’s largely party-line vote on March 4th to block a bipartisan war powers resolution that would have curtailed or required congressional approval for the conflict – several prominent voices have emphasized the need for a swift conclusion rather than a prolonged engagement.

Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO), a key Trump ally, became one of the most vocal advocates for an early exit during his appearance on Jesse Watters Primetime on Tuesday. Hawley urged the president to “declare victory” and withdraw U.S. forces, arguing that core objectives have already been met.

Watters: Do you think the President is going to look for an off-ramp or keep going?

Hawley: I think he [Trump] has achieved his objectives the way that he’s laid them out… What is there, really, that’s left to do that we haven’t already done?

…

We have totally destroyed, forever, their nuclear program. We have destroyed their ballistic missiles. We have destroyed their navy. This has been a total success… I think we ought to say to our heroes, ‘Thank you for a job well done.’ This has been absolutely amazing. It’s been amazing. It’s been historic. And now it’s time to declare victory.

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Report: Michigan Synagogue Attacker a Lebanese National

The West Bloomfield Township, Michigan, Temple Israel attacker is identified as a Lebanese national, according to reporting by FOX News’s Bill Melugin.

Breitbart News reported that the attacker drove into the Temple Israel building Thursday and was engaged by security and killed. The attacker’s vehicle was registered to a Dearborn, Michigan, resident from Lebanon.

Melugin is now reporting that “DHS confirms to FOX News that the Michigan synagogue attacker has been ID’d as Ayman Mohamad Ghazali, a Lebanese national who first entered the U.S. in 2011 on an IR1 immigrant visa as the spouse of a U.S. citizen.”

He noted that Ghazali “was naturalized into a U.S. citizen in 2016 during the Obama administration.”

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UN Security Council Passes Iran War Resolution, Yet With No Mention Of US Or Israel

Many independent pundits have long complained of the emptiness of the United Nations as some kind of ‘moral authority’ – given it often claims to be just this. The vacuous nature of UN statements connected to war is on display once again as the Security Council (UNSC) issued a formal condemnation of the Iran war on Wednesday, but without mentioning either the United States or Israel at all.

For this reason, Iran quickly slammed the vote, also as Russia and China abstained. The passed resolution demands an end to Iranian attacks across the Gulf, and notably made zero reference to US or Israeli strikes on Iran.

It was tabled Bahrain and backed by 135 countries, and calls for “the immediate cessation of all attacks by the Islamic Republic of Iran against Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Jordan.”

It further condemns actions or threats by Iran “aimed at closing, obstructing, or otherwise interfering with international navigation through the Strait of Hormuz.”

The measure passed 13-0, and a second draft resolution was proposed by Moscow, which called on all sides to cease hostilities, however it failed to pass.

US Ambassador to the UN Mike Walz stated: “Iran’s strategy of sowing chaos, of trying to hold their neighbours hostage, trying to shake the resolve of the region, has clearly backfired, as shown by this vote today.”

China’s UN envoy Fu Cong said the text “does not fully reflect the root cause and overall picture of the conflict in a balanced manner.”

The US and Israel attacked Iran on February 28, without warning, and while Iran was engaged in several rounds of nuclear talks with Trump envoys. 

Like the June war, the assault appears to have caught Tehran completely by surprise, and Iranians have condemned the unprovoked nature of the assault. 

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Does the 47-Year War with Iran Make Allowance for 2001 and 2002?

I’ve been reading many people on many sites claiming that we have been at war with Iran for 47 years. I found that odd because I thought I distinctly remembered good relations between the Iran and U.S. governments after 9/11. So I asked ChatGPT, “What did the Iranian government do in 2001 to help the U.S. government after the 9/11 attacks?”

I got a long answer that fit what I had vaguely remembered. Here it is:

After the September 11, 2001 attacks, the Iranian government actually provided several forms of practical assistance to the United States and the emerging Afghan government in the campaign against the Taliban and al-Qaeda. This cooperation was limited and short-lived, but it was real and fairly significant in late 2001.

1. Intelligence sharing and operational cooperation

Iran quietly cooperated with the United States during the early phase of the war in Afghanistan.

  • Iranian officials met with U.S. diplomats in Geneva in late 2001 to coordinate efforts against the Taliban.
  • Iran helped identify Taliban targets and provided intelligence that assisted U.S. bombing campaigns.
  • Iranian Revolutionary Guard elements working with anti-Taliban forces helped organize operations against Taliban positions.

Iran had strong reasons for this: the Taliban were a bitter enemy of Iran, especially after Taliban forces killed Iranian diplomats in Afghanistan in 1998.

2. Support for the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance

Before and after 9/11, Iran backed the Northern Alliance, the main Afghan force fighting the Taliban.

  • Iran supplied the alliance with money, weapons, and training.
  • When the U.S. began military operations in October 2001, the Northern Alliance served as the main ground force against the Taliban.
  • Iranian networks helped facilitate cooperation between Northern Alliance commanders and U.S. forces.

This assistance indirectly strengthened the U.S.-led campaign because Northern Alliance offensives, combined with U.S. airpower, rapidly toppled the Taliban government.

3. Direct assistance in the fall of Herat

Iranian special-operations forces (the Quds Force) reportedly worked with anti-Taliban fighters in western Afghanistan.

  • They helped organize an uprising in the city of Herat in November 2001, which helped drive out Taliban forces before U.S. troops arrived.

4. Diplomatic help creating the new Afghan government

Iran also played a constructive role in the Bonn Conference (December 2001), which created the interim Afghan government after the Taliban collapsed.

  • Iranian diplomats pressured Afghan factions they influenced to accept compromises.
  • They helped secure support for Hamid Karzai as the head of the new Afghan interim government.

Several U.S. officials later said Iran’s role was instrumental in reaching the final agreement.

5. Safety assurances and humanitarian cooperation

Through back channels (mainly via Switzerland):

  • Iran signaled it would help U.S. personnel who accidentally crossed into Iranian territory during operations near the Afghan border.
  • It also cooperated on refugee and humanitarian issues involving Afghanistan.

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Missing retired US Air Force general has ‘UFO community’ ties, his wife says amid kidnapping speculation

Missing retired US Air Force General William “Neil” McCasland had a “brief association with the UFO community” – but doesn’t have inside intel on “ET bodies” that would be worth kidnapping him over, his wife has said.

Susan McCasland Wilkerson attempted to clear up what she called “misinformation” around her husband’s nearly two-week disappearance after he was last spotted in Albuquerque on Feb. 27.

McCasland, 68, led the Air Force Research Laboratory at Wright-Patterson base in Ohio, which is long rumored to hold extraterrestrial debris tied to the 1947 Roswell crash.

“Neil does not have any special knowledge about the ET bodies and debris from the Roswell crash stored at Wright-Patt,” Wilkerson wrote on Facebook on March 6.

However, Wilkerson revealed that McCasland had a “brief association” after his retirement with former Blink-182 front man Tom DeLonge, who co-founded a company that studies information about unidentified aerial phenomena, according to CNN.

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Pro-War Republican Senator Apologizes For Iran Girls’ School Massacre After Trump Blames Tehran

A Republican senator apologized this week for what US military investigators have reportedly determined was an American missile strike on a girls’ school in southern Iran that killed around 175 people—mostly children—amid continued sidestepping by President Donald Trump, who has blamed Tehran for the massacre.

Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.)—who supports the US-Israeli war on Iran—first apologized for the attack on the Shajareh Tayyebeh girls’ elementary school in Minab during a Monday interview with NBC News senior national political reporter Sahil Kapur. “It was terrible,” Kennedy said. “We made a mistake… I’m just so sorry it happened.”

Kennedy repeated his apology Tuesday on CNN, telling political correspondent Kasie Hunt: “The investigation may prove me wrong. I hope so. The kids are still dead, but I think it was a horrible, horrible mistake. I wish it hadn’t happened. I’m sorry it happened.”

Reuters first reported last week that US military investigators believe American forces carried out the school strike, a preliminary conclusion that came on the heels of a New York Times analysis that found the US was “most likely to have carried out the strike” due to its near-simultaneous bombing of a nearby Iranian naval base.

This week, Iranian officials displayed fragments from what is believed to be the Tomahawk missile used in the school bombing. The remnants were marked with the names of two US arms companies, a Pentagon contract number, and the words “Made in USA”.

On Wednesday, the New York Times reported that the ongoing military probe has determined that the US launched the Tomahawk strike, which paramedics and victims’ relatives said was a so-called “double-tap,” in which the attacker bombs a target and then follows up with a second strike meant to kill survivors and first responders. Investigators attribute the strike to a “targeting error,” according to the Times.

This, as Trump—who warned as his illegal war started that “bombs will be dropping everywhere”—continued sidestepping blame for the attack. On Saturday, Trump said aboard Air Force One that “based on what I’ve seen, that was done by Iran.“

Two days later, the president falsely claimed that Iran has “some” Tomahawk missiles and may have used one of them to bomb the school. Iran has no Tomahawks—which are highly restricted and sold only to a handful of close allies—and the US does not sell weapons to the Iranian government, with the notable exception of the Iran-Contra Affair, when the Reagan administration secretly sold arms to Tehran in order to fund anti-communist Contra terrorists in Nicaragua.

Other senior Trump administration officials including Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and US Ambassador to the United Nations Michael Waltz have declined to back the president’s claims and have instead deferred to the ongoing military investigation. Kennedy told NBC News and CNN that the school bombing was unintentional.

“Other countries do that sort of thing intentionally, like Russia,” he told Kapur. “We would never do that intentionally.”

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New Bill Puts U.S. State Department in Charge of Organizing Foreign Governments for Next Pandemic Vaccines and Drugs: H.R. 7879

A new bill introduced earlier this week in Congress would require the United States Department of State to organize foreign governments and international institutions behind the development and commercialization of medical countermeasures for future pandemics.

Pandemic preparedness is normally managed by domestic health agencies, not the State Department, meaning the bill would place the United States Department of State at the center of organizing foreign governments around vaccines, drugs, and other countermeasures for the next pandemic.

The current Secretary of State is Marco Rubio, a former republican senator from Florida (funding).

The Secretary would have the highest level of authority over the international coordination described in the bill.

The new federal legislation, H.R. 7879, was introduced March 9 by California Representatives Mike Levin (D) (funding) and David G. Valadao (R) (funding) and referred to the House Committee on Foreign Affairs.

Officials within the U.S. government are constructing the worldwide system for distributing pandemic vaccines and treatments before the next pandemic has even begun.

You can contact Levin here and Valadao here, as well as the rest of the representatives here, to express your opposition to pandemic orchestration and to oppose granting the State Department the authority to organize future pandemic responses with foreign governments and unelected global institutions.

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New Government of the Netherlands Is a Poster Boy for Europe’s Thirst for War

Warfare seems to be top of mind not only for the Trump administration, but also for the new government of the Netherlands. The coalition agreement of the Jetten I cabinet, installed in late February, presents an unprecedented push towards militarism that includes a doubling of the defense budget, a tax on freedom, royals in fullcamo gear and clear steps towards the reintroduction of forced conscription.

Cabinet Jetten I
“Aan de slag,” which roughly translates to “Let’s get to work,” is the title of the coalition agreement of the new Jetten I government, comprised of the progressive liberals of D66, led by Prime Minister Rob Jetten, the conservative liberals of VVD and the Christian Democrats, CDA. As a rare minority government – the second in the country’s history – it has only 66 out of 150 mandates in Parliament and a mere 22 out of 75 in the Senate and will therefore be completely reliant on opposition support for its various proposals. Nonetheless, it did not shy away from presenting far-reaching objectives in nearly all policy areas, first and foremost defense.

Never mind that “getting to work” might be a bit late for a cabinet comprised of three parties of which at least one or more were part of every single cabinet since 1971 (not counting various predecessors of current parties, which would bring the count back to 1918). Indeed, although D66 is currently the largest party in Parliament with 26 mandates, it was the VVD under current NATO Secretary General, then Prime Minister, Mark Rutte, that led the Netherlands from 2010 until 2024, when he left to take on his current role at NATO.

Hawks lead the way
The echo of Mark Rutte is clearly heard through the new cabinet’s choice of Minister of Defense: none other than his own successor, VVD party leader Dilan Yeşilgöz, now holds the post. Other remarkable choices include the new Minister for Foreign Affairs, CDA-member Tom Berendsen, who was previously an MP in the European Parliament and, with a background in industrial policy, ran his own election campaign (in the 2024 European elections) mainly on stressing the importance of the European defense industry in relation to the war in Ukraine. Moreover, he is known for his hawkish stance on China. This pair is completed by the new Minister for Foreign Trade and Development Cooperation, D66-member Sjoerd Sjoerdsma, who will have to navigate promoting Dutch trade whilst being on both Russian and Chinese sanctions lists simultaneously. Notably, in 2022, Sjoerdsma was also the initiator of an adopted parliamentary motion to increase the Netherlands’ defense spending to NATO’s then 2% of GDP standard (a goal that the country had thus far failed to meet), underlining his forward leaning position in terms of defense.

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Western Leaders Pivot To Blaming “Putin’s Hidden Hand” As Iran War Not Going To Plan

Western intelligence officials believe Russia’s role in supporting Iran amid the US-Israeli military campaign is deepening, alongside potential expanding involvement by China.

Bloomberg, citing officials, writes in a fresh Thursday report: “Moscow is currently providing Iran with various forms of intelligence, including satellite imagery and drone targeting tactics, in an effort to help Iran hit back at US forces in the region, according to people familiar with US and Western intelligence.”

Within the first week of Trump’s Operation Epic Fury it was widely alleged that Russia was giving Iran targeting information concerning US bases and assets in the region. 

While there’s nothing in the way of smoking gun proof, all are in agreement that American bases have been hit hard, with US installations as far away as Jordan having suffered severe missile impact damage.

Western political leaders are now seizing on these allegations, to do more ‘Putin is a global menace’ hype. As a case in point:

“No one will be surprised to believe that Putin’s hidden hand is behind some of the Iranian tactics and potentially some of their capabilities as well,” UK Defence Secretary John Healey said at a military briefing in London on Thursday.

“Patterns of Iranian attack have the hallmarks of the way Russia is attacking Ukraine,” he said, adding that was to be expected “knowing how closely that alliance of aggression has been growing over the last few years.”

And they are also quickly saying the same of the ‘China menace’ – according to more from Bloomberg:

Following an intelligence briefing on Iran earlier this week, Senator Richard Blumenthal, Democrat of Connecticut, said Russia seems to be aiding Tehran “actively and intensively, with intelligence and perhaps with other means” and added that “China may also be assisting Iran.”

Trump’s Iran gambit is certainly not going to plan, and may drag Washington into another (predictable) Middle East quagmire. 

These flurry of recent reports accusing Russia and China of rushing to to aid the Islamic Republic’s military machine seem motivated at least in part by a Washington political class who is completely unwilling to admit their own mistakes and stupidity. 

So now, each misstep and disastrous US action in the Persian Gulf region can be chalked up to “but Putin did this” or “Xi did that…” 

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