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.

Twitter blocked links to Daily Mail article that questioned Covid death stats

Twitter has put a warning on an article from the UK’s Daily Mail, one of the biggest news outlets in the country, that describes the article as potentially being “unsafe.”

The article is written by the newspaper’s deputy health editor, Eve Simmons, and discusses how official government figures vastly overstated the COVID-19 death rate due to bad reporting.

“Warning: this link may be unsafe,” Twitter displays when users  go to click the link to the article.

“The link you are trying to access has been identified by Twitter or our partners as being potentially spammy or unsafe, in accordance with Twitter’s URL Policy,” it says at the time of writing.

It’s unclear who these “partners” are that have called for the censorship of the article.

“Health chiefs admitted, embarrassingly, that the numbers they’d been feeding the Government were only an approximation – provoking fury from Ministers,” the article reads.

“More recently it was revealed that a quarter of Omicron deaths included in the daily figures did not, in fact, list Covid as a primary cause.

“More than two years since Covid-19 emerged, many feel they want a simple answer: how many were killed by this virus?

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From Iraq to Ukraine, the American Press Loves a War

On this day in 2003, the United States launched its air invasion of Iraq, with the ground component beginning one day later. It was the first stage of a war that would ultimately drag on for over eight years, killing thousands of American soldiers and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians as the U.S. and its allies sought to overthrow Saddam Hussein’s government.

Nineteen years on, Americans watch as a conflict embroils Eastern Europe. Russian President Vladimir Putin’s large-scale invasion of Ukraine beginning last month has brought frequent reports of deaths of innocents and strikes on civilian spaces.

Horrific scenes from the conflict in Ukraine have fetched headlines much like those published during the Iraq War. But there is a difference between journalistic reporting on a conflict and coverage that trends more toward activism. Reporters operating under the guise of objectivity repeatedly trended toward the latter approach during the Iraq War. Now, as establishment journalists not-so-subtly agitate for a more interventionist U.S. policy in Ukraine, it’s worth keeping an eye on these tried-and-trued hawkish tendencies.

In a press conference on March 15, reporters pelted White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki with questions regarding the Biden administration’s opposition to certain military support for Ukraine. There were over one dozen questions mentioning military assistance—including five distinct mentions of a no-fly zone—and only one question about the potential American role in facilitating negotiations between Russia and Ukraine.

Neither were the numerous questions about military assistance purely fact-based. “Zelenskyy and other Ukrainian officials have made so clear that what they believe they need the most is more warplanes and fighter jets. So why is the U.S. assessing something different?” asked a reporter. “Why does the U.S. believe they know better what Ukraine needs than what Ukrainian officials are saying they need the most?”

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MSNBC Regular Elie Mystal: Josh Hawley Is Trying to Get SCOTUS Nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson ‘Killed’

Saturday on MSNBC’s “Cross Connection,” The Nation’s Elie Mystal, a regular on MSNBC, accused Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) of trying to get Biden-appointed Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson “killed.”

He argued that Hawley’s opposition to Jackson, based on alleged leniency on sex offenders, was a ploy to put her in harm’s way.

“[S]he is going to be confirmed, and she is going to be well-liked while she’s confirmed,” he said. “So them going to the mattresses against her is kind of a waste of their time. But I don’t want to let the Josh Hawley thing lie, because here’s, you know, like — here’s where I need the Democrats to step up — because when they try to smear her, I need the Democrats to get up there and defend her just as vociferously as Lindsey Graham defended alleged attempted rapist Brett Kavanaugh.”

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Science papers now subject to extreme censorship if they question the “official” narrative on anything: COVID, AIDS, vaccines, climate, virology and more

The “moderators” at Cornell University‘s arXiv server, an open-access archive and free distribution service for scientific material, have been censoring scientific studies that they claim contain “inflammatory content and unprofessional language.”

A “preprint server” for preliminary versions of scientific studies that are moderated but not yet peer-reviewed or published, arXiv is supposed to be neutral when it comes to what gets published. The reality, however, is that arXiv is selectively censoring studies and even banning scientists for publishing work with “controversial” viewpoints.

In one instance, researchers tried to publish a study presenting an opposing viewpoint to another study about room temperature superconductivity. Those researchers aligned with the opposing point of view study are reportedly now “in hot water” on arXiv for daring to buck the “consensus.”

The server also proceeded to ban University of California San Diego (UCSD) theoretical physicist Jorge Hirsch from posting anything on the platform for six months as punishment for his conflicting viewpoints.

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Top Global Agency Calls for ‘Lockdowns’ to Curb Oil Use

As gasoline prices rise to record levels, the International Energy Agency is calling for energy lockdowns, such as banning the use of private cars in cities on Sundays.

Other measures proposed in the agency’s “A 10-Point Plan to Cut Oil Use” include reducing speed limits, working from home, cutting business air travel and imposing an SUV “tax,” reports Climate Depot, the website run by former Capitol Hill staffer Marc Morano.

“Governments have all the necessary tools at their disposal to put oil demand into decline in the coming years, which would support efforts to both strengthen energy security and achieve vital climate goals,” the report states.

Among the proposals: “Reducing highway speed limits by about 6 miles per hour; more working from home; street changes to encourage walking and cycling; car-free Sundays in cities and restrictions on other days; cutting transit fares; policies that encourage more carpooling; cutting business air travel.”

Another idea is “restricting private cars’ use of roads in large cities to those with even number-plates some weekdays and to those with odd-numbered plates on other weekdays.”

Morano, who managed GOP communications for the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Work, called the plan “COVID 2.0.”

He said the report “sounds an awful lot like an energy version of COVID lockdowns.”

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