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.

UN Security Council Won’t Probe Nord Stream Bombing

The UN Security Council voted Monday against a Russian effort to get an independent investigation into the bombings of the Nord Stream natural gas pipelines that connect Russia to Germany.

The only members of the Council that voted in favor of the resolution were Russia, China, and Brazil. The remaining 12 members abstained from the vote, including the US, the likely culprit of the attacks.

The resolution had little chance of passing since it needed at least nine votes in favor and no veto from any of the five permanent members of the Security Council: the US, China, Russia, Britain, and France.

Russia has been pushing for an international inquiry into the Nord Stream sabotage since investigative journalist Seymour Hersh published a bombshell report in February that alleged President Biden ordered the bombings.

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Critics Warn of ‘a Dragnet of Surveillance’ as U.S. Pushes Ahead With Plans for More ‘Smart’ Cities

U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg last week announced $94 million in grant awards to fund 59 smart city technology projects across the country.

Despite widespread and mounting pushback against biometric surveillance and control systems associated with smart city technologies and the failure of the U.S. Department of Transportation’s (DOT) previous attempt to grant-fund smart city transformation in Columbus, Ohio, Buttigieg told The Verge he thinks “smart city technologies matter more than ever.”

Cities just need to take a different approach — experimenting with and testing out different technologies first, rather than implementing a “grand unified system” all at once, Buttigieg said.

The new grants, part of the Strengthening Mobility and Revolutionizing Transportation (SMART) Grants Program, are the first round of $500 million in funding that will be awarded for smaller smart mobility projects over the next five years, authorized under the 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.

In this funding round, DOT awarded smart grants for a range of projects, including drone surveillance or delivery, smart traffic signals, connected vehicles, autonomous vehicles, smart grid development, intelligent sensors and other Internet of Things (IoT) infrastructure. Some cities, including Los Angeles (LA), received multiple grants.

Smart city development typically focuses on the implementation of technologies like the IoT, 5G, cloud and edge computing, and biometric surveillance to track, manage, control and extract profit from an array of urban processes.

Whitney Webb, an investigative journalist and smart cities critic, said the smart city infrastructure is meant to facilitate the development of cities “micromanaged by technocrats via an all-encompassing system of mass surveillance and a vast array of ‘internet of things’ devices that provide a constant and massive stream of data that is analyzed by artificial intelligence (AI).”

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California reparations hearing descends into chaos as activist blares out James Brown, another tells absent reparations tsar to ‘stay in Africa’ with Kamala Harris – and a third screams ‘we’re not asking for money, it’s ours!’

California‘s reparations task force has descended into chaos as activists blasted music and aired wild accusations – a day after it was revealed they want $800billion.

Among the first people to speak was Reggie Romain who blared James Brown’s I’m Black & I’m Proud through his phone and down the microphone.

Romain, as well as members of the audience, danced to the 1968 track and after cutting the song short promoted his social media channels before sitting down.

Later, a San Francisco-based activist at the podium described the US as a country ‘born in the name of evil’ and said: ‘Evil cannot give justice.’ She went on scream at the committee members: ‘We ask you for nothing. It’s ours!’

The second-day began amid controversy over the absence of senior committee member Rev. Amos Brown, who is in West Africa, as part of Kamala Harris’ official trip to the continent. On Thursday, one activist demanded that Brown ‘should stay in Africa.’

Unlike at Wednesday’s meeting, Rev. Brown did not Zoom in to make remarks on the meeting. 

Brown Zoomed into Wednesday’s meeting in Sacramento in which he complained that the reports that $5 million would be given to black residents in reparations in the Bay Area were part of a ‘smear campaign.’ 

Brown, 82, said that the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, of which he is a member, gave ‘lip service’ to reparations and noted that the city is facing a massive deficit. 

A member of the public who called into the meeting to offer comment addressed Brown’s absence saying: ‘Shame on you.’ 

The reverend’s absence came on the same day that it emerged that the bill for California’s reparations bill has skyrocketed to at least $800 billion.

During the vice president’s historic visit to Africa, Harris promised billions of investment to the continent as she toured historic sites associated with slavery.

It later emerged that while in West Africa, Brown attended a lavish state banquet in Ghana this week as part of the VP’s delegation. 

‘Dr. Brown, shame on you… absolutely shame on you. You give us these fiery speeches only to turn around as Judas did Jesus and betray us…. Him being in Ghana with Kamala Harris, whose administration has done nothing to help black folks is a symbolic gesture,’ a member of the public said at Wednesday’s meeting.

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Covering (Up) Antiwar Protest in US Media

In the early morning of March 20, 2003, US Navy bombers on aircraft carriers and Tomahawk missile-launching vessels in the Persian Gulf and the Mediterranean, along with Air Force B-52s in Britain and B-2s in Diego Garcia, struck Baghdad and other parts of Iraq in a “Shock and Awe” blitzkrieg to oust Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein and occupy that oil-rich country.

Twenty years on, the US news media, as is their habit with America’s wars, published stories looking back at that war and its history (FAIR.org, 3/22/23), most of them treading lightly around the rank illegality of the US attack, a war crime that was not approved by the UN Security Council, and was not a response to any imminent Iraqi threat to the US, as required by the UN Charter.

Oddly, none of those national media organizations’ editors saw as relevant or remotely newsworthy a groundbreaking protest rally and march outside the White House of at least 2,500–3,000 people on Saturday, March 18, 2023, called by a coalition of over 200 peace and anti-militarism organizations to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the Iraq invasion.

The Washington Post, like the rest of the national news media, failed to mention or even run a photo of the rally in Lafayette Park. It didn’t even cover the peaceful and spirited march from the front of the White House along Pennsylvania and New York avenues to the K Street Washington Post building to deliver several black coffins as a local story—despite the paper’s having a reporter whose beat is actually described by Post as being to “to cover protests and general assignments for the metro desk.” An email request to this reporter, Ellie Silverman, asking why this local protest in DC went unreported did not get a response.

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US spy found dead in Pentagon parking lot

The US military has identified the serviceman found dead in a vehicle near the Pentagon earlier this month, revealing he was a senior intelligence specialist working in the office of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. 

The army officer was named as Master Sgt. Juan Paulo Ferrer Bordador, 42, who was discovered in his car in the Pentagon’s north parking lot following a welfare check on March 14, Army officials said on Wednesday. While an emergency crew responded soon after the officer was spotted, he was already dead by the time they arrived.

Since 2021, Bordador served as the noncommissioned officer leading the Joint Chiefs’ Technical Surveillance Countermeasure program – a team which works to identify and thwart attempted espionage by foreign states

The cause of Bordador’s death is not yet known and few other details have been released, but the Army said it would continue to investigate.

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New Analysis Shows How The CDC Spread False Information That Exaggerated The Severity of COVID-19

Academics from the University of California, San Francisco have published a new paper titled “Statistical and Numerical Errors Made by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) During the COVID-19 Pandemic.”

The paper outlines 25 instances when the CDC reported statistical or numerical errors. Twenty (80%) of these instances, according to the researchers, “exaggerated the severity of the COVID-19 situation.”

They also explain how the CDC was notified about the errors in 16 (64%) instances and later corrected the errors, at least partially, in 13 (52%) instances.

As the paper points out, it’s quite ironic that “inaccurate and misleading information” labels were put on various scientific papers, posts made by experts in the field, and more throughout the pandemic yet the CDC themselves have been outed multiple times for spreading misinformation.

In fact, the Biden administration collaborated with Big Tech to actively censor and put labels on content they knew, admittedly, was “true content” with an army of federal censors.

The researchers explain,

“Many entities rely on the CDC for trusted information, as does the lay public. For instance, YouTube links to the CDC website on all videos discussing COVID-19, supporting CDC policy positions. Spotify links select podcast episodes to the CDC website as well. Many universities, healthcare facilities, daycares, churches, businesses, schools, sports programs, and camps defer to CDC guidance for COVID-19 precautions. For this reason, it is imperative the CDC avoids errors in their statements, or, if errors are made, that they are rapidly corrected. We set out to identify numerical errors or objectively false statements made by the CDC.”

As you can imagine, this was a daunting task. US federal agencies put out a plethora of information on their websites, social media accounts, scientific publications, press releases, emails, and more. The authors sought to compile errors they previously identified, or errors brought to their attention by other observers.

All errors were presented at a meeting with all authors present. The errors were discussed, reviewed and accepted only if three authors all felt the errors were clearly false. A fourth author, not involved in the collection, made the final determination whether the included errors were false.

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Transgender Shooter’s Manifesto Will Be Released Publicly

The transgender shooter’s manifesto will be released publicly, but only after the FBI has combed through it to build a psychological profile of the killer.

28-year-old Audrey Hale was shot dead by police after killing three children and three adults at The Covenant School, a private Christian school for students aged three to 11.

Authorities say Hale deliberately targeted the school after considering but then rejecting two other public school targets because they had better security.

Police initially said Hale’s transgender identity was a factor in motivating her rampage, but it seemed the manifesto she left might remain secret after lobbying from LGBT groups.

However, Nashville Council Member Robert Swope told the New York Post that the manifesto will be released publicly after all.

“The manifesto is going to be released. It’s just a matter of when. There are some incredibly brilliant psychological minds and psychological analysts combing through her entire life,” said Swope.

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Germany uses AI to target online content for removal, send data to police

Germany has a “porn police” – regulators, that is, who are using an “AI” tool called KIVI to find adult content across the internet – on sites and apps like Twitter, YouTube, Telegram, and TikTok.

And when they do, those creating and/or posting this content could wind up in prison or pay fines, and they are notified of their transgression by the actual police.

Porn is not KIVI’s only target – the tool also scans for “political extremism, Holocaust denial, and violence.”

Reports mention a couple, dabbling in amateur porn, who received one such letter from the police in Berlin, that said they had posted pornography online unlawfully. However, the letter was not big on detail, neither when it comes to where the content in question was shared, nor why the action was illegal.

In this case, it eventually turned out that the system found the content while scanning Twitter, providing the police with screenshots.

The policy of suppressing porn seems to be picking up speed recently in Germany, as over a hundred people were sent the same type of letter and could now stand accused in criminal cases.

Even though pornography itself is not illegal to access in Germany for those over 18, there has been a push to introduce age verification using this particular industry as the obvious choice to promote the implementation of the technology.

As ever, age verification is touted as a way to protect those under 18 from inappropriate content, but in reality, to try to achieve that, every internet user is exposed to the age verification process (typically involving presenting government-issued IDs to sites or third parties).

And the authorities seem determined to have their way, since they are now ordering Twitter to block contentious accounts and have even tried imposing a blanket ban on a major porn site that would affect every user in Germany, Wired writes.

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