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.

The richest and most war-mongering nation on Earth is still addicted to bombing poor, defenseless nations

A nation-state version of a psychopath, the US refuses to give up its addiction to bombing innocent people. In just over a month, it’s bombed Syria, Iraq, Somalia and Afghanistan – and shows no signs of developing a conscience. 

Kill anything that moves

March 15, 1968 was a normal day in America. The sun was shining. The birds were chirping. Race riots in Mississippi were entering their fifth day or so. And at the other end of the globe, in Vietnam, soldiers of the Americal Division’s Charlie Company, 1st Battalion, 20th Infantry Regiment, were being briefed by their commanding officer, Captain Ernest Medina, about the exploits of the next day, which would later be dubbed the “My Lai massacre” – where 500 unarmed Vietnamese civilians were systematically butchered in over four hours, not counting a lunch break the soldiers took in the middle of the carnage. The orders were clear and explicit: the soldiers were to kill every single human being, burn all houses, kill all animals, destroy all food supplies and poison all wells. 

As the briefing progressed, one incident stuck in the mind of artillery forward observer James Flynn, which he would recall years later. A soldier, whose name has been lost to history, expressed some apprehension about the wide-ranging nature of the orders. “Are we supposed to kill women and children?” he asked naively. 

“Kill everything that moves,” came the reply.

Kill everything that moves. This same phrase would be repeated almost verbatim two years later by none other than Henry Kissinger himself while relaying US leader Richard Nixon’s orders: “A massive bombing campaign in Cambodia. Anything that flies on anything that moves.”

Keep reading

America’s Generals Lied, Lost Wars, And Looted The People They Claimed To Serve

Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told Congress in June that he wanted to understand “white rage,” why “thousands of people” tried “to assault this building and … overturn the Constitution of the United States of America.”

If Milley really wants to understand the “rage” of the American people he should start by asking why he and his fellow generals can’t win any wars. As a Marine Corps officer who served at the tail end of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, I saw firsthand the rapid ideological transformation pervading the military in the wake of these disasters in the Middle East.

Unable to win wars overseas, the military’s leaders went “woke.” Currying ideological favor is easier than trying to end insurgencies. It is also necessary if military leaders want to keep the gravy train of taxpayer funding. Donald Trump’s America First foreign policy and his devastating critique of George Bush and Barack Obama in the run-up to the 2016 election put the military-industrial complex on high alert. Trump was pushing the American right-wing away from the expensive and unending foreign interventions the military-industrial complex needed in order to justify its existence.

For too long, America’s generals have relied on a “stab in the back” thesis to justify their failure on the battlefield. The narrative set in after Vietnam and has calcified today. Former national security adviser and Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster tweeted on July 8 in regards to the sweeping march of the Taliban that the “US media is finally reporting on the transformation of Afghanistan after their disinterest and defeatism helped set conditions for capitulation and a humanitarian catastrophe.”

McMaster’s attempt to deflect blame for military failure on an insufficiently obsequious media is unacceptable. He and his fellow generals knew full well that Afghanistan was unstable and that our strategy wasn’t working. Instead of speaking up, they lied to the public and then jumped into the private sector to reap the reward of misbegotten trust.

Milley and his fellow generals deserve, richly, to feel the full weight of the American people’s anger. For 20 years, these leaders lied consistently to the American people and their political masters about the wars in the Middle East. In December 2019, Craig Whitlock of the Washington Post published a devastating series of articles on America’s failure in Afghanistan. Using 600 “lessons learned” interviews with top military staff and diplomatic personnel collected by the Special Inspector General of Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR), Whitlock illustrated just how pervasive the gut rot in America’s military really was.

Keep reading

Ike and Leahy Were Right: The Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki Were Wrong

In the summer of 1945, President Harry Truman found himself searching for a decisive blow against the Empire of Japan. Despite the many Allied victories during 1944 and 1945, Truman believed Emperor Hirohito would urge his generals to fight on. America suffered 76,000 casualties at the battles of Iwo Jima and Okinawa, and the Truman administration anticipated that a prolonged invasion of mainland Japan would result in even more devastating numbers. Even so, plans were drawn up to invade Japan under the name Operation Downfall.

The estimates for the potential carnage were sobering; the Joint Chiefs of Staff pegged the expected casualties at 1.2 million. Staff for Admiral Chester Nimitz and General Douglas MacArthur both expected over 1,000 casualties per day, while the personnel at the Department of the Navy thought the totals would run as high as four million, with the Japanese incurring up to 10 million of their own. The Los Angeles Times was a bit more optimistic, projecting one million casualties.

With those numbers, it’s no wonder the US opted to (literally) take the nuclear option by dropping Little Boy on Hiroshima on August 6, and then Fat Man on Nagasaki on August 9. Japan formally surrendered 24 days later, sparing potentially millions of US servicemen and vindicating the horrifying-yet-necessary bombings.

At least this is the common narrative we’re all taught in grade school. But like so many historical narratives, it’s an oversimplification and historically obtuse.

Keep reading

Dem Senator Navarrete arrested

A Democratic state senator charged with multiple counts of sexual conduct with a minor will make his first court appearance Friday at 2 p.m. 

Sen. Otoniel “Tony” Navarrete was arrested Thursday evening and booked into jail. Police received a report that Navarrete had engaged in sexual conduct with a minor, a felony described as knowingly engaging in intercourse or oral sex with a minor. 

It’s a class 6 felony, punishable by one year in prison, if that minor is at least 15, and a class 2 felony, with a presumptive prison sentence of five years, if the child is younger than 15 or if the person charged was in a position of trust, such as a teacher or parent.  

Phoenix police said the alleged crime occurred in 2019, and they received a report on Aug. 4. After interviewing a young victim and witnesses, they arrested Navarrete near his home on Thursday.  

Keep reading

Heart disorders after Covid-19 vaccines more common than CDC reported

The potentially serious heart disorders of pericarditis, inflammation of the heart’s surrounding membrane; and myocarditis, inflammation of the heart muscle, are happening after Covid-19 vaccination substantially more often than previously reported.

That’s according to new research led by Dr. George Diaz, Section of Infectious Diseases, Providence Regional Medical Center Everett, Everett, Washington; published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA).

Diaz and his co-authors reviewed electronic medical hospital records of more than 2 million people who received at least one Covid-19 vaccination. They found 37 cases of vaccine-related pericarditis and 20 cases of vaccine-related myocarditis. That’s still “rare,” but far more than what was expected had Centers for Disease Control’s (CDC’s) numbers from the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) been accurate.

According to CDC, myocarditis was reported to the VAERSS at a rate of about 4.8 cases per million, or less than 1/2 per 100,000 (.48 per 100,000). The disorder was reportedly lumped in together with pericarditis in the VAERS reporting analyzed by CDC.

But the new analysis unearthed a rate of 1.8 per 100,000 people for pericarditis and 1 in 100,000 for myocarditis. That’s a combined rate that’s more five times higher than thought: 2.8 people per 100,000 rather than 1/2 per 100,000.

The information seems to confirm what scientists have long said has long been well-established: there is a significant underreporting of adverse event reports to the federal VAERS system. Therefore, each report of an illness is presumed to be more prevalent than what’s documented through VAERS.

Keep reading

Fauci Oversaw Dangerous, Torturous Experiments On Dogs

In addition to overseeing funding of gain of function coronavirus experiments in Wuhan, and then lying about it, it has now emerged that Dr Fauci was in charge of funding horrid experimental research on dogs, including purposefully infecting the animals with parasites known to be contagious to humans.

The report from the White Coat Waste Project draws on information gleaned from a FOIA request which revealed that $400,000 was pumped into National Institutes of Allergy & Infectious Disease experiments to infect beagles with parasites from biting flies.

The report outlines how the dogs “endured months of pain, and once researchers were done with them, they were killed.”

The NIAID task order states that “28 beagles were to be allowed to develop infections for three months before being euthanized for blood collection.”

The records obtained under the FOIA request show the dogs “vocalized pain” during the experiments.

Keep reading

Apple’s Plan to “Think Different” About Encryption Opens a Backdoor to Your Private Life

Apple has announced impending changes to its operating systems that include new “protections for children” features in iCloud and iMessage. If you’ve spent any time following the Crypto Wars, you know what this means: Apple is planning to build a backdoor into its data storage system and its messaging system.

Child exploitation is a serious problem, and Apple isn’t the first tech company to bend its privacy-protective stance in an attempt to combat it. But that choice will come at a high price for overall user privacy. Apple can explain at length how its technical implementation will preserve privacy and security in its proposed backdoor, but at the end of the day, even a thoroughly documented, carefully thought-out, and narrowly-scoped backdoor is still a backdoor.

To say that we are disappointed by Apple’s plans is an understatement. Apple has historically been a champion of end-to-end encryption, for all of the same reasons that EFF has articulated time and time again. Apple’s compromise on end-to-end encryption may appease government agencies in the U.S. and abroad, but it is a shocking about-face for users who have relied on the company’s leadership in privacy and security.

Keep reading

9/11 families to President Biden: Don’t come to our memorial events

Nearly 1,800 Americans directly affected by the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks are opposing President Joe Biden’s participation in any memorial events this year unless he upholds his pledge to declassify U.S. government evidence that they believe may show a link between Saudi Arabian leaders and the attacks.

The victims’ family members, first responders and survivors will release a statement Friday calling on Biden to skip 20th-anniversary events in New York and Shanksville, Pennsylvania, and at the Pentagon unless he releases the documents, which they believe implicate Saudi officials in supporting the acts of terrorism. The group says that as a candidate Biden pledged to be more transparent and release as much information as possible but that his administration has since then ignored their letters and requests.

Keep reading