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.

HOW ONE SPOOK-RUN LONDON COLLEGE DEPARTMENT IS TRAINING THE WORLD’S SOCIAL MEDIA MANAGERS

Staffed by NATO military officers and former government ministers and notorious for training the West’s top spies, the Department of War Studies at King’s College London is also providing the workforce for many of the largest social media companies. This includes Facebook, TikTok, Google, and Twitter.

A MintPress study of professional databases and employment websites reveals a wide network of War Studies alumni holding many of the most influential jobs in media, constituting a silent army of individuals who influence what the world sees (and does not see) in its social media feeds.

Set in an imposing building near the banks of the River Thames in Central London, the Department of War Studies is at the heart of the British establishment. Current staff includes the former Secretary General of NATO, former U.K. Minister of Defense, and a host of military officers from NATO and NATO-aligned countries.

It is also a favored training ground for the secret services. A 2009 report published by the CIA described how beneficial it is to “use universities as a means of intelligence training,” writing that “exposure to an academic environment, such as the Department of War Studies at King’s College London, can add several elements that may be harder to provide within the government system,” also mentioning that the department’s faculty have “extensive and well-rounded intelligence experience.”

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CIA Paying Agents Who Suffer From A Likely Fake Illness

America’s spy agency is making compensation payments to agents who claim they suffer from “Havana Syndrome.” The alleged condition was first reported by government employees in Cuba who reported suffering various symptoms, including dizziness, headaches and memory loss.

The New York Times reports that “About a dozen people suffering from debilitating symptoms that have become known as Havana syndrome have either received the payments or been approved to receive them, the people familiar with the program said.”

“Several of the recipients are former C.I.A. officers who were injured while serving in Havana in 2016 and 2017,” the Times detailed further. “However, payments are also being processed for current and former officers whose injuries occurred elsewhere.”

The CIA has studied over 1,000 potential cases of the mysterious ailment and has been unable to prove it exists. 

Havana Syndrome was brought into the spotlight during the early Trump administration. In 2017, US officials stationed in Havana reported a vague set of symptoms. The White House responded by rolling back President Barak Obama’s policy of normalizing the US relationship with Cuba. 

At the time, people who asserted they were suffering from Havana Syndrome claimed it was caused by a foreign power using sonic or microwave weapons. The official recorded the sound generated by the alleged weapon, which was later determined to be crickets.

Multiple government agencies have examined 1,000 cases of people claiming to be Havana Syndrome victims. Natural causes have explained nearly all cases; many of the people were experiencing psychosomatic symptoms. There are a few cases where an alternative cause that cannot explain the symptoms. 

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Laser manipulation turns white blood cells into medicinal microrobots

White blood cells can be harnessed as natural, biocompatible microrobots through the use of lasers, researchers from China have reported. The finding, which the team demonstrated in living zebrafish, could pave the way towards a new method of targeted drug delivery for precision treatment of diseases.

Medical microrobots have attracted considerable attention for their potential to deliver drugs to particular sites in the body and to help clear pathogens from the circulatory system.

In most medical microrobot concepts, the tiny tools are fabricated outside of the body and then either injected into the patient or packaged up in capsules and then swallowed. Trials in small animals, however, have revealed a problem – namely that these foreign objects have a tendency to trigger an immune response in their host body, with the result that the microrobots end up being removed from the body before they can fulfil their intended purpose.

To get around this, an alternative approach lies in taking cells that are already present in the body – and are therefore not at risk of setting off an immune response – and press ganging them into service as natural microrobots.

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When Billionaires And The Government Work Together To Control Information

Facebook restricted visibility of the New York Post’s Hunter Biden laptop story in the lead-up to the 2020 election after receiving counsel from the FBI, according to Facebook/Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

“So we took a different path than Twitter,” Zuckerberg said during a Thursday appearance on The Joe Rogan Experience. “Basically the background here is the FBI, I think basically came to us — some folks on our team and was like, ‘Hey, um, just so you know, like, you should be on high alert. There was the — we thought that there was a lot of Russian propaganda in the 2016 election. We have it on notice that basically there’s about to be some kind of dump of — that’s similar to that. So just be vigilant.’”

Zuckerberg said a decision was made to restrict that information on Facebook’s multibillion-user platform. He said that unlike Twitter, which banned the sharing of the article entirely, Facebook opted for the somewhat subtler option of censorship by algorithm.

“The distribution on Facebook was decreased,” he said, adding when pressed by Rogan that the decreased visibility of the article happened to a “meaningful” extent.

As we’ve discussed previously, censorship by algorithm is becoming the preferred censorship method on large Silicon Valley platforms because it can be done to far more people with far less objection than outright de-platforming and bans.

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The US Has Conducted 3 Consecutive Days Of Airstrikes In Syria

The US launched more airstrikes in Syria on Thursday, marking the third day of violence since President Biden ordered the bombing of facilities in Deir ez-Zor, Syria, on Tuesday night. A US official told CNN that Thursday’s strikes were launched from an AC-130 gunship and killed a number of “enemy combatants” in Deir ez-Zor. The official said the strike was in response to rocket attacks that hit US bases in eastern Syria on Wednesday, which injured three US troops.

But Washington had already launched helicopter strikes in response to the earlier rocket attacks. US Central Command (CENTCOM) said in a press release Thursday that over the past 24 hours, CENTCOM forces had struck “Iran-affiliated” fighters with “AH-64 Apache attack helicopters, AC-130 gunships, and M777 artillery.”

CENTCOM said that the strikes resulted “in four enemy fighters killed and seven enemy rocket launchers destroyed.”

CENTCOM announced the initial airstrikes that started the escalation on Tuesday night and said they targeted “infrastructure facilities used by groups affiliated with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps,” but Iran denied having links to the groups.

According to the UK-based Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), the facilities targeted in Tuesday’s strikes were used by Fatimiyoun, an Afghan Shia militia. The SOHR said six militants were killed, while Deir ez-Zor 24, another monitoring group, said 10 people were killed.

While Iran has denied links to the groups the US targeted, the Pentagon said that these strikes are a message to Tehran. The bombings come as the US and Iran appear close to reviving the nuclear deal. Colin Kahl, the undersecretary of defense for policy, said that the escalation shows that US attacks on such groups “are not linked to wherever we end up on the nuclear deal.”

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Top Staffer for Major Anti-Abortion Group Arrested for Soliciting a Minor

A man who worked as a political director for Texas Right to Life, the premier anti-abortion group in the state, has been arrested for the online solicitation of a minor. 

Lucas “Luke” Bowen, 33, was charged with the second-degree felony on August 3. A minor, under that statute, refers to anyone who’s younger than 17 or who the arrested person believes to be younger than 17.

Bowen allegedly “knowingly” solicited a minor online “with the intent” of engaging “in sexual contact or sexual intercourse or deviate sexual intercourse,” according to a complaint filed by Montgomery County prosecutors obtained by The Courier of Montgomery County.

The news of Bowen’s charge was previously reported by Jessica Valenti, an independent feminist journalist.

Texas Right to Life is one of the most powerful anti-abortion groups in a state known for setting the anti-abortion agenda for the rest of the nation. As part of his work for the organization, Bowen had appeared on stage representing Texas Right to Life at a 2020 Texas Youth Summit panel, spoke to Politico in 2018, and served as its campaign treasurer, according to a Texas campaign finance report filed last month.

Now, it appears that Bowen’s name has been removed from some pages on Texas Right to Life’s website and other pages mentioning him have been removed entirely (Valenti also reported on this). In one press release from February 2020, a quote attributed to Bowen as of September last year now appears without his name but still has the quote, a cached version of the page obtained from the Internet Archive showed. The quote originally read: 

Texas Right to Life has never endorsed Kay Granger, including for this cycle,” Luke Bowen, Political Director of Texas Right to Life, said. “Republican Chris Putnam is the only Pro-Life candidate in the race. We proudly endorsed Putnam after our interview in December, and are excited for the people of Congressional District 12 to finally have Pro-Life representation in Washington.

Another press release, claiming a Texas Right to Life employee named Kim Schwartz “saved” a woman from getting an abortion, mentioned that Bowen stayed behind with Schwartz to ensure she “wasn’t left alone in the office.” That release is now erased from the website. 

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