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.

That Time the U.S. Army Sprayed Millions of Americans With Zinc Cadmium Sulfide

In the early 1950s, the U.S. Army Chemical Corps prepared a series of biological weapons tests in multiple cities across the United States and Canada. These experiments were executed in the mid-1950s through the late 1960s—not before a law was passed to shield private military contractors from all liability for public injury.

As Professor Lisa Martino-Taylor writes, this, in effect: “created a sanction-free military human test zone across North America and blocked legal recourse for victims.”

In short, the Army was ostensibly concerned that the Russians would expose American and Canadian civilians to dangerous agents, so the Army did it themselves in the name of mitigation.

As a part of the tests, the U.S. Army Chemical Corps released zinc cadmium sulfide “from airplanes, rooftops, and moving vehicles in 33 locations, mostly cities and towns, in the United States and Canada.” These cities included St. Louis, MO, Minneapolis, MN, Corpus Christi, TX, Fort Wayne, IN, Biltmore Beach, FL, and Winnepig, MB. The cities were chosen because of their similarity to cities in the USSR.

In St. Louis, the Army’s dispersion methods were insidious. “The Army used motorized blowers atop a low-income housing high-rise, at schools and from the backs of station wagons” to disperse the chemical agent. Local officials were told that the “government was testing a smoke screen that could shield St. Louis from aerial observation in case the Russians attacked.”

Zinc cadmium sulfide itself is a fine powder “that is formed by heating zinc sulfide and cadmium sulfide together under very high temperature so that they fuse…Zinc cadmium sulfide is not a biologic weapon; it was a tracer used by the Army to imitate or simulate the dispersion of biologic weapons.” At the time, the compound was not believed to be dangerous to humans.

Keep reading

NEW AMAZON WORKER CHAT APP WOULD BAN WORDS LIKE “UNION,” “RESTROOMS,” “PAY RAISE,” AND “PLANTATION”

AMAZON WILL BLOCK and flag employee posts on a planned internal messaging app that contain keywords pertaining to labor unions, according to internal company documents reviewed by The Intercept. An automatic word monitor would also block a variety of terms that could represent potential critiques of Amazon’s working conditions, like “slave labor,” “prison,” and “plantation,” as well as “restrooms” — presumably related to reports of Amazon employees relieving themselves in bottles to meet punishing quotas.

“Our teams are always thinking about new ways to help employees engage with each other,” said Amazon spokesperson Barbara M. Agrait. “This particular program has not been approved yet and may change significantly or even never launch at all.”

In November 2021, Amazon convened a high-level meeting in which top executives discussed plans to create an internal social media program that would let employees recognize co-workers’ performance with posts called “Shout-Outs,” according to a source with direct knowledge.

Keep reading

The FBI is spending millions on social media tracking software

Social media users seemed to foreshadow the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol — and the FBI apparently missed it. 

Now, the FBI is doubling down on tracking social media posts, spending millions of dollars on thousands of licenses to powerful social media monitoring technology that privacy and civil liberties advocates say raise serious concerns.

The FBI has contracted for 5,000 licenses to use Babel X, a software made by Babel Street that lets users search social media sites within a geographic area and use other parameters.

The contract began March 30 and is worth as much as $27 million. The FBI has already agreed to pay an IT vendor around $5 million for the first year of the contract, procurement records indicate. The contract has not previously been reported.

The Justice Department has previously had Babel X in its arsenal, contracting records show. But the new contract appears to be by far the most the agency has ever shelled out for the software, and is one of the largest contracts for the software by a civilian agency, experts said.

Keep reading

Washington State Is BANNING Non-Electric Cars by 2030

As 1984 gains a firmer grasp on the modern world, one recent bill has caused it to spread its reach even further: a bill inserted within Washington state’s $16.9 billion “Move Aside Ahead Washington” package. This new piece of paper, signed by Washington governor Jay Inslee on March 25, now makes it so that police will enforce all vehicles sold, purchased, or registered within the state to be electric vehicles by 2030.

Sec. 415. (1) A target is established for the state that all publicly owned and privately owned passenger and light-duty vehicles of model year 2030 or later that are sold, purchased, or registered in Washington state be electric vehicles.

(2) On or before December 31, 2023, the interagency electric vehicle coordinating council created in section 428 of this act shall complete a scoping plan for achieving the 2030 target.

According to Inslee, this bill will “create more efficient transportation options,” as he says that “Transportation is our state’s largest source of greenhouse gas emissions. There is no way to talk about climate change without talking about transportation.”

Inslee went on to add, “This package will move us away from the transportation system our grandparents imagined and towards the transportation system our grandchildren dream of.”

Keep reading

Ukrainian Civilians Being Used as Human Shields Continues

As the humanitarian situation in Ukraine declined, UN officials briefed the Security Council on 7 March.  Vasily Nebenzya, the Russian Federation Permanent Representative, argued that safety for civilians in Ukraine is not a problem for Russia, because “we are not bombarding them,” but rather it is the Ukrainian radicals and neo-Nazis who were holding civilians hostage in cities and using them as human shields, not allowing them to leave, despite the fact that there were humanitarian corridors.

As it has been in the past, “we think that UNICEF’s views should be based on reliable tried and tested information,” Nebenzya began, and asked the council to consider the dangers of the proliferation of “small arms and light weapons many of which have fallen into the hands of radical elements including those who have been deliberately freed from prison.”  An irresponsible step by Volodymyr Zelenskyy and the number of civilian victims at the hands of the radicals was increasing day by day, he noted.

“There is an information war going on, more likely a disinformation war, and we would say that in the West – in the free world – where Russian information resources are being turned off and where any information which contradicts your version of events is not allowed to be broadcast.”

He emphasised that safety for civilians in Ukraine was not a problem for Russians because Russians were not bombarding them but rather it was Ukrainian radicals and neo-Nazis who were holding hostage whole towns and cities and were making use of citizens as human shields.  They were not allowing civilians to leave cities despite the fact that there were humanitarian corridors and that Russian units had declared a ceasefire.

Nebenzya explained that an agreement was reached that on 5 March a humanitarian corridor would be opened from Mariupol but the radicals in Mariupol violated this agreement.

“A radio conversation that was intercepted between two commanders of the nationalist battalion Azov … the radicals there were told to shoot at the legs of those who were heading for the humanitarian corridors. Those who risked life and limb to try and leave Mariupol, when they reached the checkpoints to exit the city, were shot on site by Ukrainian Nazis. There’s a great deal of video evidence of this. In Mariupol alone there were some 200 000 civilians who are in the crosshairs of the of the forces there,” he said.

The Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk called the proposal to open humanitarian corridors towards Russia “absurd and unacceptable,” Nebenzya told the council, “it is clear to us that the Kiev regime is making use of all available and unavailable methods to wholeheartedly stop the exit of those citizens who wish to leave, and also foreigners who wish to go to Russia, because they’re scared that once these people are free they will tell the truth about the actions of Ukrainian radicals.”

He quoted a statement made that day by the Mayor of Sumy, Alexander Lysenko, together with the commander of the national battalion: “There will not be any green corridors. No civilians will leave to Russia and those who try to will be shot dead.”

“We are also particularly concerned that the Ukrainian radicals are continuing to hold hostage, as human shields, more than 1500 foreigners in a range of cities … we are shocked by news of the inhumane attacks by nationalists on student accommodation which has among other things caused the death of Indian students.”

Nebenzya pointed out that the cowardly practice of using the civilian population as hostages is “not just deeply immoral but also violates the norms of international humanitarian law including articles 57 and 58 of the first additional protocol to the Geneva Convention of 1949.”

Keep reading