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.

Western Dissent from US/NATO Policy on Ukraine is Small, Yet the Censorship Campaign is Extreme

If one wishes to be exposed to news, information or perspective that contravenes the prevailing US/NATO view on the war in Ukraine, a rigorous search is required. And there is no guarantee that search will succeed. That is because the state/corporate censorship regime that has been imposed in the West with regard to this war is stunningly aggressive, rapid and comprehensive.

On a virtually daily basis, any off-key news agency, independent platform or individual citizen is liable to be banished from the internet. In early March, barely a week after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the twenty-seven nation European Union — citing “disinformation” and “public order and security” — officially banned the Russian state-news outlets RT and Sputnik from being heard anywhere in Europe. In what Reuters called “an unprecedented move,” all television and online platforms were barred by force of law from airing content from those two outlets. Even prior to that censorship order from the state, Facebook and Google were already banning those outlets, and Twitter immediately announced they would as well, in compliance with the new EU law.

But what was “unprecedented” just six weeks ago has now become commonplace, even normalized. Any platform devoted to offering inconvenient-to-NATO news or alternative perspectives is guaranteed a very short lifespan. Less than two weeks after the EU’s decree, Google announced that it was voluntarily banning all Russian-affiliated media worldwide, meaning Americans and all other non-Europeans were now blocked from viewing those channels on YouTube if they wished to. As so often happens with Big Tech censorship, much of the pressure on Google to more aggressively censor content about the war in Ukraine came from its own workforce: “Workers across Google had been urging YouTube to take additional punitive measures against Russian channels.”

So prolific and fast-moving is this censorship regime that it is virtually impossible to count how many platforms, agencies and individuals have been banished for the crime of expressing views deemed “pro-Russian.” On Tuesday, Twitter, with no explanation as usual, suddenly banned one of the most informative, reliable and careful dissident accounts, named “Russians With Attitude.” Created in late 2020 by two English-speaking Russians, the account exploded in popularity since the start of the war, from roughly 20,000 followers before the invasion to more than 125,000 followers at the time Twitter banned it. An accompanying podcast with the same name also exploded in popularity and, at least as of now, can still be heard on Patreon.

Keep reading

The Pimps of War

The same cabal of warmongering pundits, foreign policy specialists and government officials, year after year, debacle after debacle, smugly dodge responsibility for the military fiascos they orchestrate. They are protean, shifting adroitly with the political winds, moving from the Republican Party to the Democratic Party and then back again, mutating from cold warriors to neocons to liberal interventionists. Pseudo intellectuals, they exude a cloying Ivy League snobbery as they sell perpetual fear, perpetual war and a racist worldview, where the lesser breeds of the earth only understand violence.

They are pimps of war, puppets of the Pentagon, a state within a state, and the defense contractors who lavishly fund their think tanks — Project for the New American Century, American Enterprise Institute, Foreign Policy Initiative, Institute for the Study of War, Atlantic Council and Brookings Institute. Like some mutant strain of an antibiotic-resistant bacteria, they cannot be vanquished. It does not matter how wrong they are, how absurd their theories, how many times they lie or denigrate other cultures and societies as uncivilized or how many murderous military interventions go bad. They are immovable props, the parasitic mandarins of power that are vomited up in the dying days of any empire, including that of the U.S., leaping from one self-defeating catastrophe to the next.

Keep reading

NYC subway shooter’s Philly-rented U-Haul is found abandoned on Brooklyn highway five miles from where he shot ten straphangers: Gunman was on FBI’s terrorist radar until 2019

The suspect in the Brooklyn subway shooting was on the FBI’s terrorist radar in New Mexico until 2019, according to a report – and was cleared after ‘multiple interviews’. 

The shooter has not yet been publicly identified and he remains on the loose hours after opening fire on a busy northbound N train as it approached 36th Street in Sunset Park.

Investigators believe they know who he is, having identified the suspect after finding a credit card at the scene that was also used to rent the U-Haul cargo van, two law enforcement sources told CNN.  

A federal law enforcement source told Newsweek the suspect was the previously known to the FBI, having been entered into the Guardian Lead system in New Mexico.

The system is the FBI’s way of coordinating information from other law enforcement partners about potential terrorism-related threats and suspicious activity reports. 

He was cleared after multiple interviews in 2019. 

The federal law enforcement source said that he is believed to have driven to New York from New Mexico. 

The FBI has now joined the hunt for him and armed police units are patrolling Brooklyn for any clue of his whereabouts. 

NYPD has located the U-Haul believed to have been used in Tuesday morning’s subway shooting abandoned in the street in Brooklyn, five miles from the scene of the crime. 

Keep reading

‘Not Operational’: Camera Watching Doomed New York Subway Train Not Working — As Video Emerges Of Panicked Commuters Fleeing ‘Smoke Grenade’ Explosion

The camera overlooking the bloody scene of the Brooklyn subway shooting was “not operational,” meaning it did not capture the terrifying ordeal that 16 injured.

The incident happened at the 36th Street station in the Sunset Park neighborhood on Tuesday around 8:30 AM.

Video shows panicked commuters pushing their way out of the subway and running for their lives down the platform. Those injured emerged from the train bleeding profusely while collapsing on the cement.

During the press conference, it was confirmed of those 16 victims, 10 are suffering from gunshot wounds. Five are in critical but stable condition.

As of this post, the suspect is not in custody.

Keep reading

White House, IRS, CDC, and many other US government websites sending data to Big Tech via Google tracking code

Most of the major US federal government websites and numerous state and local government websites are sending real-time surveillance data back to Google as users browse their websites. Even websites where users are submitting sensitive or personal information, such as the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI’s) tips page and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) website, contain tracking code that sends real-time visitor data back to Google.

Most of these government websites contain tracking code from the web traffic analytics tool Google Analytics. This code collects detailed user data which is sent to Google’s servers, analyzed, and presented to website owners via an online dashboard.

Google Analytics automatically collects data on the pages visited, the time and duration of each visit, and other visitor data (such as the device, browser, operating system, and screen resolution of visitors). It can also be configured to collect data on more specific actions such as when users click or tap specific links, download content, or fill out forms.

Some government websites also have code from other Google services (such as DoubleClick, Google Adsense, Google Maps, Google Play, and YouTube) and other tech giants (such as Facebook, Microsoft, and Twitter) embedded on some of their pages.

The US government openly admits to using Google Analytics tracking code on 400 executive branch domains and 5,700 total websites. It even displays this surveillance data publicly via a real-time online dashboard which also tracks visitors with Google Analytics.

Keep reading

Americans Are “In Charge” of the War Says French Journalist Who Returned From Ukraine

A French journalist who returned from Ukraine after arriving with volunteer fighters told broadcaster CNews that Americans are directly “in charge” of the war on the ground.

The assertion was made by Le Figaro senior international correspondent Georges Malbrunot.

Malbrunot said he had accompanied French volunteer fighters, two of whom had previously fought against ISIS.

“I had the surprise, and so did they, to discover that to be able to enter the Ukrainian army, well it’s the Americans who are in charge,” said Malbrunot.

Adding that he and the volunteers “almost got arrested” by the Americans, who asserted they were in charge, the journalist then revealed that they were forced to sign a contract “until the end of the war.”

“And who is in charge? It’s the Americans, I saw it with my own eyes,” said Malbrunot, adding, “I thought I was with the international brigades, and I found myself facing the Pentagon.”

Malbrunot also mentioned America providing Ukraine with switchblade suicide drones, something highlighted by Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin in a tweet that revealed Ukrainian soldiers were being trained to use the devices in Biloxi, Mississippi.

Keep reading

US Suddenly Pretends To Care About Rights Abuses In India

The United States is suddenly very concerned about human rights violations in India, with Secretary of State Antony Blinken telling the press on Monday that “we are monitoring some recent concerning developments in India including a rise in human rights abuses by some government, police and prison officials.”

While it is true that India’s right-wing government is guilty of human rights abuses and has been for years, it is also true that the US State Department does not actually care about human rights abuses.

A leaked State Department memo from the early days of the Trump administration showed neoconservative empire manager Brian Hook teaching a previously uninitiated Secretary of State Rex Tillerson that for the US government, “human rights” are only a weapon to be used for keeping other nations in line. In a remarkable insight into the cynical nature of imperial narrative management, Hook told Tillerson that it is US policy to overlook human rights abuses committed by nations aligned with US interests while exploiting and weaponizing them against nations who aren’t.

“In the case of US allies such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the Philippines, the Administration is fully justified in emphasizing good relations for a variety of important reasons, including counter-terrorism, and in honestly facing up to the difficult tradeoffs with regard to human rights,” Hook explained in the memo.

“One useful guideline for a realistic and successful foreign policy is that allies should be treated differently — and better — than adversaries,” Hook wrote. “We do not look to bolster America’s adversaries overseas; we look to pressure, compete with, and outmaneuver them. For this reason, we should consider human rights as an important issue in regard to US relations with China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran. And this is not only because of moral concern for practices inside those countries. It is also because pressing those regimes on human rights is one way to impose costs, apply counter-pressure, and regain the initiative from them strategically.”

No, the US State Department does not care about human rights abuses. Blinken’s remarks are just the latest in a series of shots across the bow that the US empire has been firing at New Delhi to warn it against moving into alignment with Moscow.

Keep reading