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.

Meet the British intelligence-linked firm that warped MH17 news coverage

In November of 2022, a final judgment arrived in the trial of alleged perpetrators of the attack on Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 (MH17). Russian nationals Igor Girkin and Sergey Dubinskiy, and Donbas separatist Leonid Kharchenko, were convicted in absentia for the murder of MH17’s 283 passengers and 15 crew members. They were ruled to have arranged the transfer of the Buk surface-to-air missile system that reportedly struck the plane.

Oleg Pulatov, the only defendant to seek legal representation during the trial, was conversely acquitted on all charges, which prosecutors will not appeal.

The Malaysian airliner had been purportedly shot down by a missile on July 17th 2014, killing all 283 passengers and 15 crew aboard.

Heavily dependent on information supplied by the Ukrainian Security Service (SBU) and the Western government-funded “open source” investigations organization known as Bellingcat, the guilty verdicts appeared to vindicate an established narrative in which Russia and its Donbas allies were solely culpable. 

But as this investigation will reveal, much of the news coverage of MH17 was heavily influenced by a shadowy entity called Pilgrims Group, which is closely tied to British intelligence. 

Staffed and led by British Special Forces veterans, Pilgrims Group is a private security company offering elite security services to London’s embassies, diplomats, spies, and business interests abroad, particularly in high-risk environments. It also trains foreign militaries and paramilitary groups, and provides protection to reporters and their employers. 

It was in the latter context that Pilgrims Group shaped media coverage – and by extension, official investigations – of MH17. The company had maintained a presence in Kiev since the early days of the US-orchestrated Maidan “revolution” in late 2013, shepherding journalists to and from the scenes of major events in Ukraine. In the process, it maintained control over what the reporters under its watch saw and how they understood the situations they encountered.

As such, Pilgrims Group played a pivotal role in the effort by the Ukrainian Security Service (SBU) and British intelligence to convict Russia and the Donbas separatists for MH17’s downing. The operation began while the plane’s wreckage remained smoldering on the ground of rebel-controlled territory, and ultimately prevented the initiation of any genuinely independent investigations.

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Surprise: A California County Went Full-Eliott Ness to Spy on a Church During COVID

In the criminal justice system, people who tend to disagree with the government are aggressively investigated by the elite members of the Santa Clara County COVID-19 Business Compliance Unit. These are their stories.

And cue the “Law & Order” sound effect.

Yes, it’s Law & Order: BCU

Yesterday, I told you about a Chinese app designed to track people who wanted to attend religious services in the Henan province. At the time I opined that governors like Gavin Newsom would salivate over that kind of technology and that something like that was probably headed our way soon. But as it turns out, Santa Clara County in California was already taking a boots-on-the-ground approach when it came to spying on and harassing an area church. Writing on his Substack, Silent Lunch, journalist David Zweig tells the tale of how between November 2020 and January 2021, the Santa Clara County COVID-19 Business Compliance Unit (you thought I made that name up, didn’t you?) went all-in to spy on a church that bucked the ham-handed and unevenly applied lockdown mandates.*

Calvary Chapel San Jose attracted the attention of county snoops on On May 24, 2020. That day, pastor Mike McClure said that he would reopen the church despite the COVID-19 restrictions. And for that matter, the church would stay open. Such a move was bound not to be well-received in California, and even less so in Santa Clara County, which had been particularly aggressive in enforcing lockdown rules. But McClure had seen the devastating effects that enforced isolation had on his congregation. For example, one man said his church attendance kept him from entertaining thoughts of suicide as the quarantine merged with other difficult life events. Another found that church attendance gave him the strength to stave off his urges for alcohol and drugs as the crushing isolation took its toll. A woman said that the fellowship at Calvary Chapel San Jose helped save her son, who struggled with substance abuse after the lockdown cost him an apprenticeship in plumbing. A pastor was able to tie the woman in with a program that she credits with saving her son’s life.

On August 21, 2020, the church was hit with a cease-and-desist letter from the county. At issue were the crimes of meeting indoors, failure of members to mask and social distance, and, of course, singing. Two days later, a pair of officers from the COVID-19 Business Compliance Unit were at the church and saw at least 100 people doing all of those things. As Zweig writes:

So began a series of issuances of fines for violations every single day, beginning in August, and running through the spring of 2021. The fines began at $1,000 each. Per the terms of the public health order, there was no grace period, and the amounts doubled each day that the violations were not corrected until a maximum of $5,000 per day was reached. By October 27, 2020, the county had already fined Calvary $350,000.

By the time September rolled around, churches in the county still could not meet indoors. But shopping malls could operate at fifty percent capacity. In October, churches could have either 100 people or twenty-five percent of their capacity on campus. Museums could accommodate fifty percent of their capacities, and stores had no limits. But at this point, Santa Clara County was determined to bring the hammer down on Calvary Chapel San Jose. To do that, they needed evidence.

And cue the “Law & Order” sound effect, again.

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Biden DOJ Crusade to Jail Young Man for Anti-Hillary Memes Just Got Much Uglier

Last month, Revolver profiled the Biden Administration’s persecution of former Twitter anon Doug Mackey, who was a famous pro-Trump voice back in 2016 under the moniker of Ricky Vaughn.

For those whose memory is foggy, a quick review: In the late stages of the 2016 race, Mackey posted several memes, designed to resemble Hillary Clinton campaign images, claiming that supporters could vote by simply texting a phone number.

The memes were a Twitter-generation version of the common joke about telling one’s political opponents to turn out for the election next Wednesday. But, in an unprecedented move, the Biden Administration says Mackey violated the Ku Klux Klan Act by systematically acting to strip Americans of their civil rights. The KKK Act was passed to prevent literal assaults and terrorism that prevented black Americans from voting, but now the DOJ’s prosecutors say it applies to satirical online speech — they say Mackey broke the law, even though they can’t produce a single person who failed to vote due to Mackey’s stunt.

(By the way, you can donate to Mackey’s legal defense here or here or here).

All of that is bad enough, but newly-unsealed documents released on Wednesday reveal new, sinister depths to the DOJ’s agenda.

Last fall, we warned about a new tool in the arsenal of weapons used by the regime to justify censorship and rolling back the basic rights of Americans. With this new tool, corrupt journalists like Taylor Lorenz can dox, harass, and lie about anyone they want and enjoy total immunity from criticism. Why? Well, if you dare to criticize a journalist like Lorenz, someone, somewhere, might become outraged and decide to commit an act of violence. With this remarkable censorship tool, the media’s attack dog journalists are magically absolved from any criticism because some nut job, somewhere, maybe, at sometime, might act violently upon this criticism.

The tool goes by the name “stochastic terrorism.”

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‘Geofence’ Warrants Threaten Every Phone User’s Privacy

The last time your phone asked you to allow this or that app access to your location data, you may have had some trepidation about how much Apple or Google know about you. You may have worried about what might come of that, or read about China’s use of the data to track anti-lockdown protesters. What you probably didn’t realize is Google has already searched your data on behalf of the federal government to see if you were involved with January 6th.

But last month, the federal district court in DC issued an opinion in the case of  one of the many defendants who stands accused of sacking the Capitol in the wake of the 2020 election.

And with it, Judge Rudolph Contreras became the first federal district judge to approve a “Geofence” warrant, endorsing a recent police innovation: searching the cell phone history of every American to check who happened to be in the area of some potential crime.

The “Geofence” in this context refers to cell phone location data collected by Google from users of its Android operating system, as well as iPhone users who use apps such as Google Maps. Location tracking can be turned off, but most users allow it for the convenience of getting directions, tracking their daily jog, or finding the nearest Chipotle. The Government’s warrant demanded location history for every Google account holder within a range of longitude and latitude roughly corresponding to the Capitol building on the afternoon of January 6, 2021, along with similar data from that morning and evening (to filter out Hill staff and security guards).

It’s not clear this information was even needed: This defendant was apprehended within the building that day, carrying knives and pepper spray, and features on various security cameras — his whereabouts are not in question. Many of his coreligionists were considerate enough to live stream their antics themselves. While tracking down every participant in what was dubbed the Beer Belly Putsch is impractical, prosecutors have not lacked for defendants, or for evidence against them. But the government nonetheless decided to resort to a level of mass surveillance without precedent in history or criminal law. This is only the second federal district judge to rule on such a warrant, and the first, in the Eastern District of Virginia, found it “invalid for lack of particularized probable cause” (though that judge declined to suppress the evidence on the basis of other Fourth Amendment loopholes created by the Supreme Court).

That particular requirement comes from the Fourth Amendment itself, which calls for every warrant to “particularly describ[e] the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.” This means that, for instance, the warrant issued last year for former President Trump’s Florida residence did not simply say “search the house,” but detailed specific rooms to be searched for specific things (boxes of documents). The cops can’t — or at least are not supposed to — dump out your underwear drawer based on a tip that you’re hiding cocaine in your basement.

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The Censorship Complex Isn’t A ‘Tinfoil Hat’ Conspiracy, And The ‘Twitter Files’ Just Dropped More Proof

“It may be possible — if we can take off the tinfoil hat — that there is not a vast conspiracy,” Democrat Colin Allred of Texas scoffed at independent journalist Matt Taibbi during Thursday’s House Judiciary subcommittee hearing. But while Allred was busy deriding Taibbi and fellow witness, journalist Michael Shellenberger, the public was digesting the latest installment of the “Twitter Files” — which contained yet further proof that the government funds and leads a sprawling Censorship Complex.

Taibbi dropped the Twitter thread about an hour before the House Judiciary’s Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government hearing began. And notwithstanding the breadth and depth of the players revealed in the 17-or-so earlier installments of the “Twitter Files,” Thursday’s reporting exposed even more government-funded organizations pushing Twitter to censor speech. 

But yesterday’s thread, titled “The Censorship-Industrial Complex,” did more than merely expand the knowledge base of the various actors: It revealed that government-funded organizations sought the censorship of truthful speech by ordinary Americans. 

In his prepared testimony for the subcommittee, Shellenberger spoke of the censorship slide he saw in reviewing the internal Twitter communications. “The bar for bringing in military-grade government monitoring and speech-countering techniques has moved from ‘countering terrorism’ to ‘countering extremism’ to ‘countering simple misinformation.’ Otherwise known as being wrong on the internet,” Shellenberger testified. 

“The government no longer needs the predicate of calling you a terrorist or an extremist to deploy government resources to counter your political activity,” Shellenberger continued. “The only predicate it needs is the assertion that the opinion you expressed on social media is wrong.”

Being “wrong” isn’t even a prerequisite for censorship requests, however, with the Virality Project headed out of the Stanford Internet Observatory reportedly pushing “multiple platforms” to censor “true content which might promote vaccine hesitancy.” 

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‘Disturbing’: FBI’s Alleged Altering of Evidence in Jan. 6 Proud Boys Case, Trial Paused: Defense Lawyer

The trial of Dominic Pezzola, one of the defendants of the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol breach, was paused on Thursday due to classified FBI messages revealed in court, which the defense attorneys say show FBI agents discussing the altering of evidence.

Pezzola is one of the Proud Boys members on trial for obstruction and conspiracy charges related to the Jan. 6 Capitol breach. He was arrested on Jan. 15, 2021, and indicted the same month. Pezzola’s trial began in January of this year.

“There are a couple of emails between FBI agents casually discussing altering a document and destroying hundreds of pieces of evidence. It’s very disturbing and right now we have more questions than answers,” Roger Roots, an attorney at John Pierce Law, wrote. Roots confirmed that Washington District Court Judge Timothy J. Kelly, a Trump appointee, paused the trial on Thursday due to the leaked messages.

The exchange Roots referred to came into light on Wednesday during the testimony of FBI special agent Nicole Miller, who was involved in the agency’s investigations of the Jan. 6 defendants.

When cross-examining Miller, Nick Smith, an attorney representing Proud Boys member Ethan Nordean (listed as co-defendant on Pezzola’s case), revealed classified FBI emails that were hidden in a tab in an Excel spreadsheet. Roots, in Pezzola’s case, used this evidence to support a motion to dismiss (pdf) the charges against Pezzola, which Roots’s team filed on Wednesday.

In the motion, Pezzola’s team said the emails showed that the FBI was monitoring communications between Nordean and his lawyer, violating the Sixth Amendment, which prohibits invasions of the right to counsel (Matter of Fusco v. Moses).

“In the Nordean case, confidential attorneys-client trial/defense strategy and position was wrongfully obtained by the government, about which was overheard, shared, utilized, where potentially ‘338 items of evidence’ were ordered to be ‘destroyed,’ said Pezzola’s legal team in the motion to dismiss.

According to a separate filing by Nordean’s lawyers, Miller said in one correspondence that “[her] boss assigned [her] 338 items of evidence [she has] to destroy”; Nordean’s lawyers allege that another email show an agent requesting Miller to “go into [a] CHS [informant] report” that Miller “just put [together] and edit out that [the agent] was present.”

The emails show Miller “admitted fabricating evidence and following orders to destroy hundreds of items of evidence,” Pezzola’s lawyers wrote in its motion to dismiss, and that the government obtained information that benefitted itself in the trial, causing substantial prejudice to each of the defendants, including Pezzola.

“If justice means anything, it requires this case to be dismissed,” Pezzola’s lawyer said.

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Republican Lt. Gov. Vows to Keep Thirsting Over Queer Instagram Nudes

A PERSON IS always wise to remember that Instagram likes and comments are public. But a 79-year-old man who likes what he sees is not always disposed to restrain himself, and it looks as though Tennessee Lt. Governor Randy McNally is one such fellow.

As the Tennessee Holler first reported on Wednesday, McNally has for some time been a devoted fan of Franklyn McClur, a 20-year-old gay man who grew up in Knoxville and aspires to move to Los Angeles to make it in show business. McClur’s Instagram photos and captions are often suggestive in nature; he shows off his body, sometimes posing fully nude, and wears makeup. All pretty standard as far as the app goes. What’s unusual is that McNally has for months used his own verified account to unabashedly compliment McClur’s thirst traps — this while his state moves to criminalize drag shows and gender-affirming care for transgender children as part of the nationwide Republican push for laws targeting the LGBTQ community.

“Finn, you can turn a rainy day into rainbows and sunshine!” McNally wrote, using McClur’s nickname, on a January photo in which the younger man shows off his butt in tight-fitting underwear. In a follow-up comment, he appended heart and flame emojis. Elsewhere, McNally has complimented McClur’s skimpy outfits and told him, “You need to be on dancing with the stars.” On a nude photo which McClur captioned “I Love being naked.. the Garden of Eden, is My Vibe. I Understand God,” McNally replied, “Great picture, Finn! Best wishes for continued health and happiness.”

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Massachusetts’ Tobacco Ban Went as Badly as You’d Expect

In November 2019, Massachusetts became the first state in the U.S. to ban the sale of all flavored tobacco and nicotine products, including flavored electronic cigarettes and menthol cigarettes. Four additional states have since imposed flavor bans on some products and similar policies are under consideration in many other jurisdictions. Such bans are popular among legislators and anti-smoking groups, but the latest data from Massachusetts highlight the ban’s unintended consequences. The state’s experiment in prohibition has led to thriving illicit markets, challenges for law enforcement, and prosecution of sellers.

Massachusetts’ Multi-Agency Illegal Tobacco Task Force publishes an annual report providing insight into how the state’s high taxes and flavor prohibitions affect the illicit market. As opponents of the flavor ban predicted, the law has incentivized black market sales of menthol cigarettes and flavored e-cigarettes (“ENDS,” or “electronic nicotine delivery systems,” in the parlance of regulators). “The Task Force identifies the cross-border smuggling of untaxed flavored ENDS products, cigars, and menthol cigarettes as the primary challenge for tobacco enforcement in the Commonwealth,” according to the report. “Inspectors and investigators are routinely encountering or seizing menthol cigarettes, originally purchased in surrounding states, and flavored ENDS products and cigars purchased from unlicensed distributors operating both within and outside the Commonwealth.”

The Massachusetts Department of Revenue reports conducting more than 300 seizures in FY 2022, compared to 170 in 2021 and just 10 in 2020. Many of these involve substantial amounts of products and missed tax revenue. For example, a single search warrant yielded “a large quantity of untaxed ENDS products, [other tobacco products], and Newport Menthol cigarettes affixed with New Hampshire excise tax stamps” representing an estimated $940,000 in unpaid excise taxes.

Revenue officials are seizing so many illicit products, in fact, that they are running out of room to store them. The “Task Force’s increased investigative and enforcement activities during the past year have led to the seizure of large quantities of illegal tobacco products, resulting in a strain on the Task Force’s storage capacity,” says the report. But fear not, they are working on leasing additional space “that will significantly increase storage capacity and allow for continued increased enforcement.”

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Biden’s Executive Order Nightmare: Government Will Track Every Dime You Spend

When I was a sparring partner for professional boxers many, many years ago, I was taught to be wary of the jab. It is a tactic used to distract an opponent while setting him up for a devastating power punch that takes him down for the count.

Biden is throwing jabs.

The power punch is a little noticed Executive Order with the innocuous number 14067 and its title, “Ensuring Responsible Development of Digital Assets.”

In a 21st Century world where cryptocurrency and cybercrime are now embedded threats to our collective financial security, this Executive Order would seem to address these issues. That is the jab.

In fact, this order includes language that allows the Federal Reserve System to “explore” the possibility of introducing digital currency into the United States. This means that your cash becomes so much colored paper. That would not be the only catastrophic impact on our society and the nation’s economy. 

Under this new digital currency, any transfer of funds to family, friends, charities, or clients would be able to be tracked by the nation’s central bank that issued this virtual money. Big Brother will be in your wallet every hour or every day. 

You will not be able to buy a stick of gum without a Federal Reserve computer knowing where, when, and to whom you just put down a buck.

Like any jab, its starts with a feint.

“At this stage, the Fed is just introducing the subject into the public debate and is weighing the options,” according to Eswar Prasad, a Cornell University economics professor who was interviewed by the Associated Press in an Aug. 24 story.

Apologists for the White House insist that the Executive Order does not implement digital currency or give Washington the power to control it.

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The US military plans to use deep fakes and take over appliances for propaganda

Can you create cutting edge “deep fake” videos, spy on people using household appliances, and make massive data dragnets? If so, the Pentagon wants to hear from you so it can amp up its manipulation efforts. 

US Special Operations Command (US SOCOM) has issued proposal requests for a whole host of dodgy services, according to new documents obtained by The Intercept. 

Specifically, the Pentagon is looking for “next generation capability to ‘takeover’ Internet of Things (IoT) devices in order to collect data and information from local populaces to enable a breakdown of what messaging might be popular and accepted through sifting of data once received.” 

For what purpose? “This would enable MISO [Military Information Support Operations] to craft and promote messages that may be more readily received by the local populace in relevant peer/near peer environments,” according to the document.  

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