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.

Exposed: Covert Pro-Western Info Op

A covert online propaganda operation said to be the world’s largest promoting “pro-Western narratives” has been found to be operating primarily out of the United States, targeting Russia, China and Iran.

“We believe this activity represents the most extensive case of covert pro-Western IO [Information Operation] on social media to be reviewed and analysed by open-source researchers to date,” say the researchers from Stanford University and internet research firm, Graphika.

The researchers found most of the Information Operation “likely originated in the United States.” From there it ran a massive, interconnected web of automated “bot” accounts on Twitter, Facebook and other social media platforms.

The covert operation to influence online audiences has been using “deceptive tactics to promote pro-Western narratives,” while “opposing countries including Russia, China and Iran.”

“The accounts heavily criticized Russia in particular for the deaths of innocent civilians and other atrocities its soldiers committed in pursuit of the Kremlin’s ‘imperial ambitions’ following its invasion of Ukraine in February this year,” the report says.

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CIA launches a podcast, hoping to ‘demystify’ the agency and boost recruitment

There is no shortage of podcasts out there exploring the mechanics of espionage, celebrating fictionalized spies and detailing the real-world exploits of the country’s premiere intelligence agency. But only one, as of today, is officially unclassified.

The CIA launched ‘The Langley Files’ podcast on Thursday, attempting to step out from its own shadows to share stories from the agency’s 75-year history — and provide a little insight into what it takes to work there.

The goal of the podcast, according to a CIA spokesperson, is to provide a bit more transparency into an agency premised on secrecy.

‘“The Langley Files’ is a major milestone for CIA as the agency marks its 75th anniversary,” said CIA press secretary Susan Miller. “It is the latest in CIA’s ongoing efforts to be as open as possible with the public, sharing what we can about our mission, people, and history.”

And in telling stories on the history of the CIA — featuring senior CIA officials, agency historians and CIA museum experts as guests — the agency hopes to attract new interest from a young generation of potential recruits.

“We want to reach a wider and more diverse audience than ever before, so that people who might not have thought of joining CIA — or might not have known that there could be a place for their talents here — consider CIA in their career plans,” a CIA spokesperson said.

“The podcast supports the agency’s efforts to connect with talent from all backgrounds and walks of life,” the spokesperson continued. “To be successful in its national security mission, CIA needs to build the diverse, skilled workforce of tomorrow, and we hope ‘The Langley Files’ can serve as a way to reach those candidates.”

The podcast will be hosted by two agency officers, exploring new topics with special guests in each episode.

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USPS spied on ‘MAGA’ protesters, right-wing groups, gun rights activists, documents show

The U.S Postal Service spied on ‘MAGA’ protesters, gun rights activists and other right-wing groups between late 2020 and early 2021, according to records obtained by The Washington Times. ‘MAGA’ is former President Donald Trump’s slogan meaning “Make America Great Again.”

Patrick Eddington, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, obtained heavily redacted files detailing the USPS’ surveillance activities from September 2020 to April 2021, which included a secret effort to surveil social media known as the Internet Covert Operations Program (iCOP).

The USPS monitored the activities of gun rights activists, protesters planning to demonstrate against police in Louisville, Kentucky after the shooting of Breonna Taylor, and right-wing groups traveling to Washington, D.C. after the 2020 election. 

Eddington said the documents demonstrate the USPS’ surveillance capabilities.

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Air Force tells ‘cisgender men’ not to apply for new internship

The United States Air Force Academy (USAFA) announced a fellowship via email on September 14 that excludes “cisgender” men and instead is explicitly open to “undergraduate women and gender minorities interested in aerospace.”

As Fox News reports, the Brooke Owens Fellowship is only available to candidates from the Air Force who are “a cisgender woman, a transgender woman, non-binary, agender, bigender, two-spirit, demigender, genderfluid, genderqueer, or another form of gender minority.” The application adds, “If you are a cisgender man, this program isn’t for you.”

The academy, which is located in Colorado, said the 2023 Brooke Owens Fellowship application deadline was October 10 and that it is a “nine-week paid internship at a leading aerospace company.”

There are two “spinoff programs” for “cisgender men,”  the Patti Grace Smith Fellowship and the Matthew Isakowitz Fellowship Program. Of those two the Patti Grace Smith Fellowship is only for black men.

Fox News was alerted to the program from a cadet who wrote, “It’s a little worrying that we have more briefs about D&I (diversity and inclusion) than briefs about foreign adversaries, emerging technologies or current events across the world.”

The cadet’s revelation comes after reports that the Air Force Academy has implemented diversity trainings that include telling cadets to use gender-neutral language and drop the word “colorblind.”

In a slideshow titled, “Diversity & Inclusion: What it is, why we care, & what we can do,” the school tells its Air Force cadets to use “person-centered” and gender-neutral language when describing people.

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US Media Held Murdered Russian Journalist to a Dangerous Standard

After the August 20 car-bomb assassination of Darya Dugina, the daughter of a Russian ultranationalist political philosopher, US media outlets quickly branded the 29-year-old as an agent in Russia’s “disinformation war.” Rather than treating her as a member of the civilian press, they seemed to downplay her death as a casualty of war.

CNN (8/27/22) ran an article to this effect, failing to characterize her murder as an assassination, instead stating Dugina was “on the front lines” of Russia’s war effort, linking her to “Russia’s vast disinformation machine.” NPR (8/24/22) reported that  Dugina was a “Russian propagandist” whose killing signaled the war was coming to Russian elites in their own territory. Foreign Policy (8/26/22) called Dugina a “dead propagandist” whose “martyrdom” did more to achieve her goals in death than she could have hoped for in life.

It is certainly true that during her life, Dugina, who espoused the philosophy of Russian Eurasianism, an expansionist political doctrine veiled as an objective analysis of Russian interests, had very little impact on Western audiences. This is true of most Russian journalists, despite the frequent warnings in US corporate media about the threat posed by Russian media messages. For instance, RT, often considered the foremost Russian outlet in the West, accounted for only 0.04% of Britain’s total viewing audience in 2017 (New Statesman, 2/25/22), and reached about 0.6% of the UK’s online population from February 2021 to the start of 2022—and this was before Western media platforms sharply restricted access to RT and other pro-Moscow outlets in the wake of the invasion of Ukraine.

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Ex-CIA Ray McGovern: Conditioned For War With Russia

Thanks to Establishment media, the sorcerer apprentices advising President Joe Biden — I refer to Secretary of State Antony Blinken, National Security Advisor Jacob Sullivan and China specialist Kurt Campbell – will have no trouble rallying Americans for the widest war in 77 years, starting in Ukraine, and maybe spreading to China. And, shockingly, under false pretenses.

Most Americans are oblivious to the reality that Western media are owned and operated by the same corporations that make massive profits by helping to stoke small wars and then peddling the necessary weapons. Corporate leaders and Ivy-mantled elites, educated to believe in U.S. “exceptionalism,” find the lucre and the luster too lucrative to be able to think straight. They deceive themselves into thinking that (a) the U.S. cannot lose a war; (b) escalation can be calibrated and wider war can be limited to Europe; and (c) China can be expected to just sit on the sidelines. The attitude, consciously or unconsciously, “Not to worry. And, in any case, the lucre and luster are worth the risk.”

The media also know they can always trot out died-in-the-wool Russophobes to “explain,” for example, why the Russians are “almost genetically driven” to do evil (James Clapper, former national intelligence director and now hired savant on CNN); or Fiona Hill (former national intelligence officer for Russia), who insists “Putin wants to evict the United States from Europe … As he might put it: “Goodbye, America. Don’t let the door hit you on the way out.” 

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HOW COVERT BRITISH INFORMATION WARS TARGET RUSSIA, THREATENING CIVILIANS AND JOURNALISTS 

In late July, a shocking interview with a captured Azov Battalion fighter began circulating online.

In the clip, the prisoner-of-war claimed that Oleksiy Arestovych, once a key advisor to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, had, prior to the war, ordered his Neo-Nazi regiment (among other military units) to carry out and film “brutal murders” of captured Russian soldiers in service of an “information campaign.”

The purpose of this effort, the Azov fighter claimed, was to transmit the grisly footage to Russia in order to stoke anti-war sentiment among the population, and thus protests and upheaval.

Incendiary confessions and allegations emanating from prisoners-of-war should always be treated with intense skepticism. The likelihood they will be made under significant duress, and/or result from extensive coaching, is invariably high. Nonetheless, there are sound reasons not to reflexively discount the nameless combatant’s testimony.

While you would barely know it from Western media reporting, countless Russian soldiers have been tortured and killed in the most savage ways imaginable post-capture, each and every horrifying incident representing a grave war crime. There are numerous reports of prisoners being burnt with blowtorches and/or having their eyes gouged out before execution, and even those kept alive are frequently shot in their kneecaps to cripple them for life. Accompanying clips are voluminous, and have traveled widely.

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FBI Police officer charged with felony soliciting minor via computer by Bridgeport, West Virginia, detective

A member of the FBI Police has been charged with soliciting a minor via computer by Bridgeport Police.

Dale Edward Cheuvront Jr. was charged by Bridgeport Police Detective Lt. Gary Weaver, who has prosecuted scores of similar cases.

Cheuvront Jr., 52, of Fairmont, used the profile name “Don Marco” to contact a female Aug. 19 on a social media site who “stated she was 13,” Weaver alleged.

Despite the age reference, Cheuvront continued to communicate with the female, and a day later “stated that he wanted to meet with the female and the conversation turned sexual,” Weaver alleged.

Cheuvront described a sex act, set up a meeting location and was to “sneak into the house to have sex with her,” Weaver alleged.

The FBI Police work to protect the FBI, its employees and U.S. facilities and also identify potential threats and prevent and investigate crimes, the agency said in a job description brochure posted to the internet.

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