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.

Biden Administration Announces Additional Security Assistance for Ukraine

Today, the Department of Defense (DoD) announces critical new security assistance for Ukraine. This includes the authorization of a Presidential Drawdown of security assistance with more ammunition for U.S.-provided HIMARS, air defense interceptors, and artillery rounds that Ukraine is using to defend itself, as well as anti-armor systems, small arms, heavy equipment transport vehicles, and maintenance support essential to strengthening Ukraine’s defenders on the battlefield valued at up to $500 million. 

In addition, we are announcing a significant package of air defense capabilities, as well as artillery and tank ammunition, mortar systems, rockets, and anti-armor systems using $2.1 billion in Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative (USAI) funds.

The Presidential Drawdown is the thirty-fifth such drawdown of equipment from DoD inventories for Ukraine that the Biden Administration has authorized since August 2021. 

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Family Granted $26 Million After Body Cam Showed Cop Execute Innocent Unarmed Child

On a Saturday night in a North Texas town in 2017, 15-year-old Jordan Edwards was murdered by a Balch Springs police officer. Jordan was a passenger in a car that had merely driven away from a party. Immediately after police killed him, the chief parrotted his officer’s false claim of fearing for his life as the vehicle drove “aggressively toward him.”

After watching the body-camera footage, however, the chief realized he’d spread a lie. So, he did the right thing and told the public the truth — the car was not a threat and was driving away.

Police Chief Jonathan Haber admitted that the car full of innocent teenagers was driving away from the officer when he raised his AR-15 and shot Jordan Edwards in the head.

“It did not meet our core values,” Haber said of the officer’s actions.

Based on the extensive reporting the Free Thought Project has done on officers shooting into vehicles, we predicted the original story would probably not be backed up by the body-camera footage, and we were correct.

The shooting was so egregious that Oliver was found guilty of murder in 2018 and was sentenced to 15 years in state prison.

Now, six years after Balch Springs Police officer Roy Oliver raised his AR-15 and dumped multiple rounds into a car full of innocent children — executing one of them — Jordan’s family has the rest of their closure. The family’s federal civil rights trial began last week and concluded on Monday with a $26.1 million settlement: $8.5 million to Edwards’ father, Odell, for damages; $2.1 million in estate for damages such as mental anguish and funeral expenses; and $11 million in punitive damages.

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In Push To Dismiss Lawsuit, CIA Says Americans Who Visited Assange Had No Privacy Rights

The Central Intelligence Agency and former CIA director Mike Pompeo contend that attorneys and journalists, who visited WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, had no “legitimate expectation of privacy” when it came to conversations with a “notorious wanted fugitive in a foreign embassy.”

“There is no plausible argument that it would be unreasonable or indiscriminate for the government to surveil Assange, who oversaw WikiLeaks’ publication of large amounts of U.S. national security information,” the CIA and Pompeo additionally contend. “Thus, any alleged surveillance of Assange that incidentally captured his conversations with U.S. citizens such as plaintiffs would not violate the Fourth Amendment [right to privacy] as a matter of law.”

The statements are part of a motion to dismiss [PDF] a lawsuit that was brought by a group of Americans, who allege that they were spied on by the CIA when they met with Assange while he was living under political asylum in the Ecuador embassy.

When one considers that Assange has been held in detention at Belmarsh prison and faces Espionage Act charges for publishing classified documents, the government is essentially arguing that it may spy on any journalist who publishes such documents and “incidentally capture” the communications of anyone communicating with that particular journalist.

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Fauci quietly begins advising mysterious overseas ‘anti-pandemic’ bio lab

In news that has somehow remained entirely unreported in the United States, Dr Anthony Fauci seems to have inked his first gig outside of U.S. Government Health, where he is reportedly still taking a salary.

According to several Italian press reports, Fauci has agreed to serve in a consulting capacity to a newly created “anti-pandemic” bio lab, which is being run by a high-level Italian scientist and longtime pharmaceutical executive.

Italy’s ANSA news wire service reports:

“American immunologist Anthony Fauci has agreed to act in an informal capacity as a strategic advisor to Rino Rappuoli, scientific director of the Biotecnopolo biotech hub in Siena, an institution founded by the Ministries of the University, Health, Economy and Industry with the aim of focusing on applied research in biotechnologies and life sciences, the Fondazione Biotecnopolo announced this week.”

The news was also reported by Italy’s L’Eco di Bergamo and others, but there seems to be no reports on the matter outside of the country.

Biotecnopolo, the newfound bio lab that is funded by the Italian government, is self-described as “an anti-pandemic hub with a particular focus on the development and production of vaccines and monoclonal antibodies for the treatment of emerging epidemic-pandemic pathologies.”

Rome has already committed hundreds of millions of Euros to the noticeably below the radar state-backed project.

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Anti-Hillary Election ‘Meme’ Case Could Open The Floodgates To More Gov’t Censorship, Legal Experts Warn

Douglass Mackey’s Friday conviction for an election “meme” he posted on his account with over 58,000 followers has legal experts raising alarm bells about its impact on free speech.

A jury convicted Mackey for conspiring to deprive others of their right to vote through a meme he posted during the 2016 election, which advertised a way to vote for Hilary Clinton via text message. First Amendment experts say Mackey’s conviction is based on an expansive interpretation of a Conspiracy Against Rights law that could impact other forms of speech, from satire to lies in election campaigns.

While the First Amendment allows for punishing fraud, “it’s not clear Mackey’s actions qualify as fraud in a legal sense,” Aaron Terr, director of Public Advocacy for the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

“Fraud generally requires a speaker to make a false statement to obtain money or something of material value from the injured party, who relies on the false statement to their detriment,” he said. Even if Mackey’s actions did qualify, Terr also noted that the Justice Department indicted him using a statute that goes beyond fraudulent speech.

“It criminalizes conspiring to ‘injure’ or ‘oppress’ someone in the exercise of any constitutional right,” he said. “If that vague language covers speech that deceives people into voting improperly, it raises the troubling possibility of the government also applying it to allegedly false statements about political issues or candidates that discourage people from voting, not just misrepresentations about the logistics of exercising the franchise. Anyone who cares about free speech should be concerned about how the government might abuse this vague and broadly worded law to chill the spirited public discourse on which our democracy depends.”

After being charged with Conspiracy Against Rights, Mackey faces up to ten years in prison. Eugene Volokh, Gary T. Schwartz Distinguished Professor of Law at UCLA, told the DCNF there are two primary routes he could take for an appeal.

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Half of ‘Long Covid’ Sufferers Have Never Had Covid, Says New Study

The battle of ideas around Covid has few clashes as hotly contested as Long Covid. Alarmists have hyped the frequency and severity with which infection causes long-term damage. Sceptics see no reason for panic. A new study helps to settle at least part of this debate.

The paper in the Journal of the American Medical Association’s (JAMA) Network Open looked at “post–COVID-19 condition (PCC) in young people after mild acute infection” to find how common it was and to find risk factors. Participants were aged between 12 and 25.

The authors offer this straightforward conclusion: “PCC was not associated with biological markers specific to viral infection.” That is, participants were equally likely to suffer from ‘Long Covid’, whether or not they had suffered from acute COVID-19.

The researchers concluded that Long Covid is predicted by “initial symptom severity” and, intriguingly, “psychosocial factors”.

The full article is available on JAMA Network Open.

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The cost to rename 9 Confederacy-honoring Army bases has doubled

The cost of renaming the nine Army bases that honored the Confederacy has nearly doubled, an Army official told lawmakers Thursday.

The Army expects to pay $39 million, said Lt. Gen. Kevin Vereen, Army deputy chief of staff for installations. In 2022, the congressionally-mandated Naming Commission estimated it would cost $21 million to rename the nine Army installations.

The Defense Department initially gave the Army $1 million to change the names, but “that’s not anywhere close to what we need,” Vereen told members of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Military Construction, Veterans Affairs and Related Agencies.

The renaming involves replacing names not only at the installation gates, but on facilities, streets, numerous smaller signs, and technology, he said.

Service officials have until the end of the year to remove the names, symbols, displays, monuments, and paraphernalia that honor or commemorate the Confederacy or any person who served voluntarily with the Confederacy.

Garrisons won’t have to foot the bill, Vereen said, nor will they have to pay the costs upfront and then request reimbursement.

“The Army is trying to solve the funding piece, and we’re trying to solve it internally,” he said. “We’ll take the funds from the department.”

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Wyoming Democrat lawmaker shares Antifa posts suggesting murder against ‘transphobic’ targets after Nashville massacre

Wyoming Democratic House representative Karlee Provenza has been vocal on social media about her far-left beliefs, however, Provenza’s TikTok and Instagram accounts shared videos and memes that appear to call for violence against political opponents, namely those who oppose the left’s radical gender ideology.

Provenza shared a meme to her Instagram story in the wake of the Nashville shooting last week from an account called @offcolordecals.

In the meme, a person wearing a jacket colored like the transgender flag is holding a semiautomatic gun with a finger on the trigger. “Auntie Fa says protect trans folks against fascists & bigots,” the text reads.

The account, which refers to itself as a defender of equality and “purveyor of fine leftist merch” has over a hundred posts, each depicting a particular product or slogan, most of which include firearms. 

On TikTok, while her official account is rather tame, Provenza has a second on which she posts more of her day-to-day life and hot takes.

In one post from June 2022, a sea creature can be seen sitting innocuously in an aquarium. Listening to the voiceover, however, one quickly learns that the little guy is, as the caption suggests, an “extremist eel.”

“Could you give us some of your political beliefs?” the voiceover asks, to which another responds, “Kill everyone now, condone first-degree murder…”

The audio is from a 1972 cult-classic film called “Pink Flamingos,” which centers around the life of a drag queen as they try to be crowned “The Filthiest Person Alive.”

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Academic Journal Supresses Expose of Murderous CIA ‘Maidan’ Coup in Ukraine

A peer-reviewed paper initially approved and praised by a prestigious academic journal was suddenly rescinded without explanation. Its author, one of the world’s top scholars on Ukraine-related issues, had marshaled overwhelming evidence to conclude Maidan protesters were killed by pro-coup snipers.

The massacre by snipers of anti-government activists and police officers in Kiev’s Maidan Square in late February 2014 was a defining moment in the US-orchestrated overthrow of Ukraine’s elected government. The death of 70 protesters triggered an avalanche of international outrage that made President Viktor Yanukovych’s downfall a fait accompli. Yet today these killings remain unsolved.

Enter Ivan Katchanovski, a Ukrainian-Canadian political scientist at the University of Ottawa. For years, he marshaled overwhelming evidence demonstrating that the snipers were not affiliated with Yanukovych’s government, but pro-Maidan operatives firing from protester-occupied buildings.

Though Katchanovski’s groundbreaking work has been studiously ignored by the mainstream media, a scrupulous study he presented on the slaughter in September 2015 and August 2021 and published in 2016 and in 2020 has been cited on over 100 occasions by scholars and experts. As a result of this paper and other pieces of research, he was among the world’s most-referenced political scientists specializing in Ukrainian matters.

In the final months of 2022, Katchanovski submitted a new investigation on the Maidan massacre to a prominent social sciences journal. Initially accepted with minor revisions after extensive peer review, the publication’s editor effusively praised the work in a lengthy private note. They said the paper was “exceptional in many ways,” and offered “solid” evidence in support of its conclusions. The reviewers concurred with this judgment.

However, the paper was not published, a decision Katchanovski firmly believes to have been “political.” He filed an appeal, but to no avail.

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Central Inclusive Agency! Fury as CIA lists ‘equal employment opportunity specialist’ role for up to $184,000 per year (almost TRIPLE the $67,000 per year starting salary for field agents)

The CIA has sparked fury by advertising for an equal opportunities officer at up to triple the pay of a foreign intelligence job.

An Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) Specialist position at the agency is being offered at an eye-watering starting salary of between $154,428 and $183,500.

The job description includes pushing outreach and education initiatives to help raise awareness of equity issues within the CIA.

In stark contrast, a Collection Management Officer role – which involves the collection of foreign intelligence – starts at between $67,122 and $102,166.

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