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.

‘I find QAnon total nonsense’: Michael Flynn DISAVOWS conspiracy movement he once  pledged allegiance to by saying its a ‘disinformation campaign created by the CIA or the left’ in audio released by lawyer Lin Wood

Former White House national security adviser and ardent supporter of QAnon, Michael Flynn, allegedly suggested the far-right political conspiracy theory movement is in fact a disinformation campaign orchestrated by the CIA.

Flynn publicly pledged allegiance to the right-wing conspiracy group last summer, which first originated on internet message boards. 

But in a telephone call that has not yet been independently verified, Flynn, a former adviser to Trump appeared to completely disavow the group as he spoke with pro-Trump election conspiracy theorist and attorney Lin Wood. The man Wood says is Flynn was even heard dismissing QAnon’s claims as ‘total nonsense.’ 

Wood recorded and posted it to his Telegram channel on Saturday.   

‘I think it’s a disinformation campaign. I think it’s a disinformation campaign that the CIA created. That’s what I believe. Now, I don’t know that for a fact, but that’s what I think it is,’ The man said to be Flynn could be heard saying on the recording. 

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The DOT’s Twitter Meme Doesn’t Just Offend Comedy… It May Also Be Illegal

It’s a well-known fact that liberalism and comedy aren’t a good mix. Witness Hannah Gadsby. Or most of Saturday Night Live‘s recent output. Or any of the current crop of late-night show hosts.

The same goes for the various departments of the Biden administration. Case in point: this doozy of a meme that the Department of Transportation recently tweeted.

If you don’t get it, it’s okay. There’s nothing to get other than the leftist talking point.

I’m not sure what we’re supposed to call the diametric opposite of comedy gold, but this is it. This meme is an affront to comedy. It’s neither cute nor funny, and it’s certainly not clever. There’s no original thought to it whatsoever, and the only thing revelatory about it is how slavishly devoted the left always is to The Narrative™.

In other words, this in no way resembles comedy.

Whoever developed this meme and posted it on the Department of Transportation’s Twitter account should have his or her password privileges revoked. I almost picture Pete Buttigieg himself sitting in front of his copy of Photoshop smiling smugly and saying to himself, “All my friends are gonna love this!”

As my PJ Media colleague Stacey Lennox so wisely put it, “The left can’t meme. We all know this.”

And don’t get me started on the ridiculous claim that the infrastructure bill and Build Back Better will combine like the Wonder Twins to “create millions of new jobs.” (Besides, one of the Wonder Twins always turned into a bucket of water, which definitely won’t help.)

No government program has lived up to that promise — other than maybe some New Deal stuff — so why would we expect these two legislative winners to do the same?

But it gets better. Or worse, if you’re part of the Biden administration’s DOT.

Some people are accusing the DOT of improperly lobbying with a lame Twitter post. The Twittersphere and others are concerned that the meme may violate the Hatch Act.

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Twitter’s new CEO Parag Agrawal previously rejected free speech in favor of “healthy public conversation”

In a far-reaching November 2020 interview, Twitter’s new CEO Parag Agrawal, who was the company’s Chief Technology Officer (CTO) at the time, rejected free speech protections that are enshrined in the First Amendment of the US Constitution, wished the company had censored QAnon sooner, and touted the company’s approach of censoring content based on “potential for harm.”

“Our role is not to be bound by the First Amendment, but our role is to serve a healthy public conversation and our moves are reflective of things that we believe lead to a healthier public conversation,” Agrawal said in response to a question about protecting free speech as a core value and the role of the First Amendment.

He added that the company now focuses “less on thinking about free speech, but thinking about how the times have changed.” In this context, Agrawal said the role of Twitter is increasingly moving toward recommendations and “how we direct people’s attention is leading to a healthy public conversation that is most participatory.”

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Minnesota Public School District Tried To Charge Concerned Parents More Than $900,000 For Records

A public school district in Minnesota told a law firm representing concerned parents that it could cost upwards of $901,121.15 to complete a government records request, according to communications obtained by the Daily Caller.

An attorney at Mohrman, Kaardal, & Erickson in Minneapolis sent a Government Data Practices Act Request to the interim superintendent at Rochester Public School District in Minnesota on Sept. 20. The request was made on behalf of “Equality in Education,” a concerned parents association.

The request asked the Rochester Public School District to release information on the development of curriculum, conferences, or seminars for teachers and students related to “equity and social justice topics often referred to as Critical Race Theory.”

The request called for records dating back to Jan. 2020 in elementary, middle, and high school, according to the Mohrman, Kaardal, & Erickson letter. Specific words that the group was concerned about included “equity, social justice, cultural competency, race, intersectionality, or CRT.” Many of these concepts are linked to the core tenets of Critical Race Theory.

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Crazed Off Duty Cop Attacks Mother & Daughter for ‘Walking Too Slow’ in a Parking Lot

When Michelle Aloisi, a 62-year-old registered, nurse went to lunch with her two daughters to celebrate her birthday earlier this month, they never expected their brief reunion to turn into a nightmare. However, thanks to a seemingly power tripping off duty cop, Robert Szelewski, as Aloisi and her two daughters walked from the restaurant back to their car that day, that is exactly what happened. According to the mother and her two daughters, Szelewski became upset at the pace at which they walked back to their car and he proceeded to attack them for it.

On November 14, Aloisi’s daughters, Nicole Whitted, 40, and Brittany Aloisi-Wiles, 39, travelled from Yuma to visit their mother for her birthday. Lunch was a success and as they walked from the restaurant back to the car, Aloisi was slow to get moving thanks to a condition she has that makes it hard to walk after sitting for long periods.

As the girls slowly walked their mother back to the car, Szelewski, who was just arriving at the restaurant, allegedly became enraged that these women would impede his swift entry into a parking space.

“He zoomed into that back parking spot, jumped out of his car, threw his hands up in the air and screamed ‘Just f—ing walk’ at us,” Nicole Whitted said.

In an interview with Tuscon.com, the family described what happened next.

“He starts to advance toward me. My sister (Brittany) saw it. She kind of cut it off in between. He’s advancing toward the end of his car. He’s screaming at us and she’s going ‘What are you going to do?’ or something along those lines. Then he starts to go ‘What are you going to do, what are you going to do?’ then chest-bumps Brittany,” Whitted told Tuscon.com.

“Then he took her down. He grabs her by the back of the neck. Took her down violently to the ground.”

Through his police union-appointed attorney, Szelewski disputed this chain of events and while we don’t have video of the initial confrontation, we do have a grueling five-minute clip showing what happened after they met.

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FBI Document Says the Feds Can Get Your WhatsApp Data — in Real Time

As Apple and WhatsApp have built themselves into multibillion-dollar behemoths, they’ve done it while preaching the importance of privacy, especially when it comes to secure messaging.

But in a previously unreported FBI document obtained by Rolling Stone, the bureau claims that it’s particularly easy to harvest data from Facebook’s WhatsApp and Apple’s iMessage services, as long as the FBI has a warrant or subpoena. Judging by this document, “the most popular encrypted messaging apps iMessage and WhatsApp are also the most permissive,” according to Mallory Knodel, the chief technology officer at the Center for Democracy and Technology.

Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg has articulated a “​​privacy-focused vision” built around WhatsApp, the most popular messaging service in the world. Apple CEO Tim Cook says privacy is a “basic human right” and that Apple believes in “giving the user transparency and control,” a philosophy that extends to the company’s wildly popular iMessage app. For journalists, activists, and government critics who worry about government mass surveillance and political retribution, secure messaging tools can mean the difference between doing their work safely or facing imminent danger.

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Australia declares war on ‘trolls’

The Australian government will introduce new legislation forcing social media companies to “unmask” anonymous users who post offensive comments, or make them pay defamation fines if they are unable or refuse to do so.

The new initiative seeks to define social media giants as publishers, making them responsible for the user-generated content on their platforms, as well as to introduce special mechanisms through which anyone can file a complaint and demand a post takedown if they think they are being defamed, bullied or harassed, Prime Minister Scott Morrison announced during a televised press briefing on Sunday.

The online world should not be a wild west where bots and bigots and trolls and others are anonymously going around and can harm people. 

If a platform refuses to delete offensive content, a court may order it to reveal the identity of the anonymous commenter. In case the company again refuses or is unable to identify the troll – then it will be held ultimately liable and will have to pay any resulting fines.

“Free speech is not being allowed to cowardly hide in your basement and sledge and slur and harass people anonymously and seek to destroy their lives,” Morrison stated. “In a free society such as Australia where we value our free speech, it is only free when that is balanced with the responsibility for what you say.”

Morrison offered little insight into details of the proposed legislation, or if it will be up for public debate, but said he expects strong support from parliament. He previously hinted at an imminent crackdown on online anonymity during a G20 summit last month, where he said “the rules that apply in the real world should apply in the digital world.” However, it remains unclear how exactly the Australian government expects social media companies to verify the identities of their users.

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Your Default Assumption Should Be That Everything Corporate Media Says Is A Lie

As far as corporate media are concerned, the massacre in Waukesha, Wis., on Sunday was a “Christmas parade crash.”

That’s how the attack that killed six people and injured more than 60 others is being described by ABC News, CBS News, CNN, Newsweek and others. Not an intentional attack, not a massacre allegedly committed by a violent career criminal already facing multiple felony charges, but merely a crash. The New York Times is calling it a “tragedy.”

Not to be outdone by major news outlets, The Daily Beast rushed to remind its readers that “there are no indications of any additional motive for the Waukesha killings, or any reasons to label it domestic terrorism. That didn’t stop these right-wing trolls.”

Oh no we wouldn’t want to assign ideological motives to a case too soon. But these damn right-wing trolls sure will! No mention from the Beast, of course, of the worst possible example of that in the Kyle Rittenhouse case, which every major news organization gladly went along with.

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Four times as many troops and vets have died by suicide as in combat, study finds

The suicide rate among active-duty troops and veterans has outpaced the also-rising rate in the general population in recent years, but with so many risk factors inherent to military life, it’s difficult to pin down why.

There’s no one reason for it, according to a study released Monday by the Costs of War Project, and the way the Defense Department and VA track suicides might mean even their growing numbers are incomplete.

“The report notes that the increasing rates of suicide for both veterans and active duty personnel are outpacing those of the general population ― an alarming shift, as suicide rates among service members have historically been lower than suicide rates among the general population,” according to a news release.

Per researchers’ estimates, 30,177 Global War on Terror veterans have died by suicide, compared to 7,057 who have died while deployed in support of the Global War on Terror.

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