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.

More than 60,000 arrested in ‘chilling curb of free speech’ as damning report exposes zealous policing of social media as ‘Orwellian mess’

A major free speech row erupted last night after it was revealed that more than 60,000 people have been arrested over the past five years for ‘communications offences’ – some as trivial as viewing disparaging TikTok videos.

The astonishing figure has been described as ‘Orwellian’, and having a ‘chilling effect’ in stifling opinions online.

The statistics – to be published in a hard-hitting report this week – also highlight the chaotic implementation of rules on ‘malicious’ messaging, with some police forces making 14 times more arrests under the powers than others. 

The report, by campaign group Big Brother Watch, discloses that at least 62,199 people in the UK have been arrested for such offences over the past half-decade, with 18,510 being charged and 12,292 convicted.

Campaigners say that although a proportion of the arrests will be justifiable – such as intervention to stop threatening messages from abusive partners in domestic violence cases – the scope of the laws has spawned a rash of over-zealous policing of everyday communications.

The report cites the case of West Midlands Police visiting the home of a vulnerable teenage girl to accuse her over a TikTok post containing a teacher’s image with negative comments. 

They demanded that the girl hand over all her devices and either attend a voluntary interview or face arrest – even though she had not created, shared or commented on the video.

The investigation later concluded with the child formally told that no further action was taken. The force defended their actions on the grounds that they were ‘investigating alleged malicious communications offences’.

Writing in today’s Mail On Sunday, Toby Young, director of the Free Speech Union, said: ‘Why are the authorities spending so much time policing our tweets when they could be policing our streets?

‘Shoplifting, mobile phone theft and sexual offences are all on the rise, yet the police seem increasingly obsessed with catching thought criminals.

‘The sheer number of people being arrested for online offences, even though only one in five end up being convicted, cannot help but have a chilling effect on free speech. 

‘People up and down the country daren’t say what they think about a whole range of issues for fear they’ll get a knock on their door at four in the morning by a couple of plainclothes officers wearing rainbow lanyards.’

Last year, a Hertfordshire couple were arrested after they made complaints about their daughter’s primary school on a WhatsApp group chat.

Rosalind Levine and Maxie Allen were held for 11 hours on suspicion of harassment and malicious communications. 

They later received £20,000 in damages following a public outcry. 

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When Socialists Start Talking About ‘War in the Streets,’ Believe Your Ears

Nothing says “workers of the world, unite” quite like gathering at a Chicago Hyatt to discuss revolution while actual hotel workers picket outside.

Socialism 2026 attracted thousands of activists over Labor Day weekend for four days of panels on Marxism, abolition, anti-ICE organizing, “collective liberation,” and other subjects unlikely to appear on the agenda at your local Rotary Club.

Then Butch Ware took the rhetoric somewhere darker.

Ware, an associate professor of history at UC Santa Barbara and former Green Party write-in candidate for California governor, told attendees Democrats “cannot be reasoned with” and “must be destroyed.”

He warned that America was approaching “gunfights” and “war in the streets.”

Those aren’t phrases requiring a decoder ring.

From Jonathan Turley:

“You better get ready for … war.” Across the country, radicals are openly planning for the next stage of their movement, and notably, the Democratic establishment is not part of their plans. Despite the talk of a “Big Tent Party,” socialists are riding high on a surge of support and talking purges and revolution.

In Chicago, radicals gathered for a conference on Marxism during what many view as the heyday of socialism in the United States. The Democratic Socialists of America is now larger and more powerful than at any time in our history. Socialist candidates are winning elections across the country as Democratic establishment figures from Sen. Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) to Gov. Gavin Newsom pander to the movement.

Speakers in Chicago used the conference to push supporters to the next stage in the movement, including some openly calling for violence and the end to capitalism.

University of California Santa Barbara History Professor Butch Ware said Democrats “must be destroyed” and urged attendees to be ready for “war in the streets.” Notably, in postings on X, Ware has said that candidates such as New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed are too restrained and are being pushed by the establishment “to contain radicalism.”

The professor “of Africa and Islam” whose faculty page is appropriately found under “bware” is the latest radical to dismiss the “Big Tent Party” rhetoric of establishment figures like Schumer. He declared, “The Democrats cannot be reasoned with. They must be destroyed.” There is little subtlety in the message, Ware has explained: “You cannot call yourself a revolutionary and not be talking about training with weapons.”

It is another example of the delusion that establishment Democrats have that they will be able to use these radicals to destroy their political enemies but not themselves.

Ware doesn’t speak for the Democratic Socialists of America. California DSA has criticized him, and its Los Angeles chapter explicitly urged voters not to support his gubernatorial write-in campaign.

Good. Accuracy requires saying so.

It also makes what Ware said more interesting.

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Portland Women’s Sports Bar Boots Patrons over ‘Pro-Women’ Shirts

A group of patrons was ejected from The Sports Bra, a Portland bar that shows only women’s sports, on Sunday for wearing XX-XY Athletics apparel, according to video the group posted online.

Five patrons were removed from the Northeast Portland establishment after a server said other customers had complained about the shirts, according to footage that passed 6 million views on X. Amy Sousa, one of the women in the group, posted the clip.

A server told the group to leave, citing complaints from other customers.

“There are people that are in here that are uncomfortable with those shirts, and so I’m asking y’all to leave,” the server said in the video. “If I have to call authorities to get y’all removed, I will, but I don’t want to do that.”

One patron pushed back. “There is nothing wrong with these shirts! What is wrong with these shirts?” the patron said. The server replied that she had already fielded complaints.

The bar defended the ejection in an Instagram post Monday. It said the group entered wearing “apparel with messages advocating for the exclusion of trans women from sports” and was given the choice to cover the messaging or leave. “To be clear: trans girls are girls, and trans women are women,” the bar said.

XX-XY Athletics is a sportswear brand founded by former gymnast Jennifer Sey that says sports should be separated on the basis of biological sex. The name references the chromosomes of women and men.

Hours earlier, the same group was removed from the Portland Thorns’ NWSL match against the Washington Spirit at Providence Park. A Thorns spokesperson told OutKick the fans were removed for “distributing unapproved materials,” a claim Sousa disputes.

“We did not distribute any materials,” Sousa said. “They are lying about us.”

The confrontation follows a similar incident last month, when the WNBA and the Atlanta Dream admitted security was wrong to make a mother and daughter cover XX-XY shirts worn in support of Indiana Fever guard Sophie Cunningham, whose ESPN comments opposing “biological men” in women’s sports touched off the debate.

The video drew a split reaction online.

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Israel Orders UK Jerusalem Consulate Closed And Expels British Diplomats Over West Bank Sanctions

Israel began to take action against Britain on Tuesday after twelve Western countries including Britain imposed trade restrictions on Israeli settlements in the West Bank. Israel ordered the closure of the British consulate in Jerusalem within 30 days and expelled British representatives from two international coordination centers in the country, including the International Support Center for Gaza in Kiryat Gat.

Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar announced the retaliatory package after UK Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband confirmed that Britain — joined by France, Canada, and nine other countries — would ban imports of all goods originating from Israeli settlements in the West Bank, along with certain services including financing, construction, infrastructure, and real estate related to those settlements.

Sa’ar said the UK representatives at the Gaza coordination centers would be expelled within a month, British training operations for Palestinian Authority security forces in the West Bank would be terminated, and more than a dozen British politicians would be barred from entering Israel.

The UK had briefed the Trump administration before the announcement. U.S. officials confirmed Trump was briefed but that the White House did not ask London to hold off — signaling Washington’s ambivalence. American Ambassador Mike Huckabee said the U.S. “takes a different approach to the settlements” but expressed concern and said the intent could be achieved by other means.

Israel’s government called the sanctions “a political attempt to impair our sovereignty and prevent us from defending our citizens and interests.” A statement from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office added: “These measures will not succeed in deterring us.”

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49ers’ Dre Greenlaw Asks if Antarctica is a ‘Lie’ During Team’s Australia Trip

Trips to far-away lands can expand one’s horizons – literally and figuratively. The 49ers’ trip to Australia seems to have expanded linebacker Dre Greenlaw’s mind in an unexpected way.

On Tuesday morning, reporters asked Greenlaw whether he had any questions for Australians. His answer did not disappoint.

“Do you have any questions you’d want to ask Australians?” asked ESPN’s Nick Wagoner.

“I mean, how far are we from Antarctica? That’s what I got. We’re right on top of it, huh? Does it snow probably pretty bad here? So, Antarctica, is it a lie?”

Reporters confirmed the continent’s existence, but that didn’t seem to satisfy Greenlaw.

“Y’all been there before?” he asked.

After receiving this challenge, the reporter said he had never been to Antarctica, which sent Greenlaw right into his well-prepared trap.

“Never been there. So how do you know if it’s cold or not?”

Of course, the reporters could have asked Greenlaw why a player with such curiosities and a high bar for proof had not invested any of the $7.5 million he signed for this year in making the trip to the mysterious continent to see it for himself.

After Tuesday’s exchange, perhaps he will.

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Whoopi Goldberg of ‘The View’ Campaigns for Democrats in the Midterms: ‘Our Lives Literally Depend on This’

The View came back from a summer hiatus this week and dove head first into campaigning for the Democrats in the 2026 midterms.

Among the conversations on the show today were, invoking the 25th Amendment on President Trump, and voting for the Democrats because, according to host Whoopi Goldberg, ‘our lives literally depend on this.’

This type of open electioneering for one side is why The View has come under a microscope with the FCC. ABC News is not supposed to do this, but they allow The View to do it all the time.

Transcript via NewsBusters:

BEHAR: Let me ask you, you say the emperor had no clothes what if he took all his clothes off?

FARAH GRIFFIN: People would tell him he looks great and he’s in great shape.

BEHAR: If he took all his clothes off and started running around the pool. Would they get him out then?

HOSTIN: 25th Amendment!

WHOOPI GOLDBERG: All of these things, all of these things are in our hands.

BEHAR: Vote, vote.

GOLDBERG: This is what we can tell you, if you want to see change, you got to make the change. It doesn’t matter your color. It doesn’t matter if your a Democrat or Republican, if you want change, you got to get out there and make it happen.

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Abdul El-Sayed’s Imam Rails Against Homosexuality and Jews Teaching Islam: ‘Against Human Nature’

Michigan Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed frequently attends a mosque led by an imam who has railed against homosexuality and complained that all too often, Jews are teaching Islam in American universities, I report alongside my Free Beacon colleague Alana Goodman.

Abdelhamid Algizawi serves as the imam at the Muslim Community Association of Ann Arbor, where El-Sayed typically prays, according to a source with knowledge of the situation. Algizawi celebrated El-Sayed’s one-point Democratic primary victory over Haley Stevens in an August 7 sermon, calling it a “very big victory for the Muslims, Hamdillah, and for the Ummah, and for the Islamic nation” and noting that it is incumbent on Muslims to vote for El-Sayed in November. He also lamented that his own daughter said she wouldn’t vote for a Muslim “running for Senate” because “he’s working against women.”

Algizawi has also made inflammatory remarks about homosexuality, arguing Muslims must reject it because it is “against human nature” and “cannot bring stability to life.” El-Sayed, by contrast, has championed the “LGBTQ+ community,” saying he’ll “always fight for an America where all of us can live and thrive as we are.” Last month, in a primetime Fox News appearance, El-Sayed defended gender transition surgery for minors, likening the procedure to circumcision. In 2022, meanwhile, Algizawi, a graduate of Cairo’s Al-Azhar University, criticized the number of Jewish scholars teaching Islam in America, describing it as “a problem” and accusing them of introducing “confusion” to students.

“Though El-Sayed usually prays at the MCA of Ann Arbor, he also attends the Islamic Center of Detroit and the Wayne State University Islamic Center of Detroit, the source told the Washington Free Beacon. Imam Imran Salha of the Islamic Center of Detroit has justified Hezbollah’s attacks on Israel, posting to social media in September 2024 that ‘We can condemn Hezbollah atrocities in Syria while also recognizing that they *are* making sacrifices for the sake of Palestine and frustrating the illegal zionist regime in unprecedented ways esp with recent hits.’” Salha was also caught on video three days after Hamas’s Oct. 7 attacks saying Israel “has left a fire in our hearts that will burn that state until its demise.”

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Italian Police in Schools: Hunt for Lists of Unvaccinated Kids

Starting on the first day of school, carabinieri will enter preschools and elementary schools in northern Palermo to identify pupils who are not up to date with mandatory vaccinations. Officers will obtain enrollment lists and, together with the schools and the ASP (Azienda Sanitaria Provinciale, or Provincial Health Authority), verify the children’s health status. The intervention, described as “extremely urgent,” was ordered by the minors’ prosecutor Claudia Caramanna following the death of Anna Rosa Bartolotta, the four-year-old unvaccinated child who was given a diagnosis of diphtheria. Before all aspects of the case have been clarified, the tragedy has become the pretext for launching an emergency operation.

The operation will begin on September 15, the date set by the Sicilian Region for the start of classes. Enrolled students are registered on the ministerial Sidi portal; schools transmit the lists to the ASP, and the health authority cross-checks them against the vaccination registry, returning the names of those not in compliance. Attention will initially focus on northern Palermo, but the ASP holds data for the entire metropolitan area. Also under scrutiny by the prosecutor’s office is a system used by some families to delay compliance: submitting an appointment booking, not having the child vaccinated, and then repeating the procedure later. “It may work at preschool, but in first grade the checks are strict,” explained Giusto Catania, principal of the Giuliana Saladino comprehensive institute. The Lorenzin law stipulates that compliance with vaccination requirements is a condition for access to nurseries and preschools; from age six onward, the pupil may attend classes, while parents face administrative fines ranging from €100 to €500 (approximately $110 to $550). If forms of “serious negligence” are established, such as failure to undergo pediatric check-ups, the consequences could extend as far as loss of parental custody. The checks, therefore, will not concern only the regularity of vaccination certificates but will also serve to identify possible situations of “health abandonment.”

The climate that developed during the pandemic thus seems to be reemerging, this time in school classrooms, through procedures that also find full support from part of the press. La Repubblica, for example, presents the initiative using a formula that closely echoes the language of the Covid emergency: “A virtuous machine has been set in motion to counter no-vax conspiracy theories in the protection of public health.” Giovanna Perricone, the regional ombudsman for children and adolescents, speaks of a “comprehensive and strategic operation”: from the checks, she explains, may follow reports on parents, fines, and the taking into care of families. Since “we cannot close social media,” she adds, it would also be necessary to counter their influence by disseminating messages on vaccines in a widespread manner, even through videos projected in supermarkets. The goal, in short, goes beyond verifying compliance with the law: it is about policing public space, re-educating parents so as to crack “conspiracy ideas.”

The Palermo case thus reproduces the polarization mechanism already tested during the pandemic. Diverse situations are folded into the undifferentiated category of “no-vax conspiracy theories.” Beyond the specific incident, the label allows attention to shift from the merits of individual cases to the alleged irresponsibility of families and to present as necessary an operation involving schools, the ASP, the prosecutor’s office, and law enforcement. Anna Rosa’s death has become the starting point for blanket checks and a cultural campaign extended even to supermarkets. The entry of carabinieri into schools is thus normalized as a tool of health protection, while the invocation of “conspiracy theories” once again serves to preemptively neutralize doubts and possible objections regarding the proportionality of the measures adopted.

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HUGE BLOW TO HOCHUL: Obama-Appointed Federal Judge Strikes Down New York’s $75B “Superfund” Climate Law Fining Fossil Fuel Companies

New York Democrats’ scheme to extract a staggering $75 billion from energy producers has been struck down by a federal judge.

Chief U.S. District Judge Brenda K. Sannes, an Obama appointee, ruled that New York’s so-called Climate Change Superfund Act was preempted by federal law and could not be enforced.

The sweeping law, signed by Democrat Governor Kathy Hochul in December 2024, sought to force oil, natural gas, and coal companies to pay $3 billion annually for 25 years into a state-controlled climate fund.

“With nearly every record rainfall, heatwave, and coastal storm, New Yorkers are increasingly burdened with billions of dollars in health, safety, and environmental consequences due to polluters that have historically harmed our environment,” Governor Hochul said.

“Establishing the Climate Superfund is the latest example of my administration taking action to hold polluters responsible for the damage done to our environment and requiring major investments in infrastructure and other projects critical to protecting our communities and economy,” she added.

Under the law, companies determined by New York regulators to be responsible for more than one billion tons of greenhouse-gas emissions between 2000 and 2024 would have faced strict liability, regardless of whether they violated any law.

The scheme was not limited to activity inside New York. It attempted to calculate emissions connected to fossil-fuel extraction and refining around the world and then send massive “cost recovery demands” to the targeted companies.

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Thomas Jefferson Warned Us About the Media

We all know that the American “mainstream,” “corporate” media cannot be trusted. Well, they can be trusted to always Polly-parrot the Democratic Party’s talking points, thus they can be trusted to lie, be dishonest, corrupt, and always wrong. They are the propaganda arm of the Democratic Party, just as Joseph Goebbels’ media was the propaganda wing of the Nazi Party of Adolf Hitler. It is unfailingly the case that today’s media never supports the conservative, Christian, godly, pro-traditional American perspective. They are as evil as Democrats, because they are Democrats, and religiously so.

Apparently, in American history, media bias has always been a problem. Thomas Jefferson wrote that, in his day:

“Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle.” (Letter to John Norvell on June 11, 1807)

Nothing the media says can be trusted. Even on the rare occasions when they tell the truth, Jefferson said, we can’t trust that they are speaking the truth because they lie so much that anything they say must be viewed with suspicion. The best approach, and the one most conservatives and patriotic Americans take, is just to assume that anything the media reports is wrong, or incomplete in its reporting (especially if the event has an element contrary to their left-wing narrative, like any murder not committed by a white, male, MAGA Christian).

Jefferson also wrote:

“I will add, that the man who never looks into a newspaper is better informed than he who reads them.” (Works of Thomas Jefferson)

Best thing to do is not bother watching ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, et al., or reading The New York Times or any other liberal rag. Truth can be found, but you’ve got to dig a little to find it now. Townhall is a good source, of course, as is X. But to most Americans, I would simply advise not wasting time watching or reading any of the “corporate” media outlets. As Jefferson implies, you’ll be dumber if you do.

Now we do need some good, courageous, well-grounded conservatives scouring the mainstream media sites to expose their errors. Many Townhall writers do this, and we appreciate them. But for most Americans, the mainstream media is nothing but a lying, dangerous nuisance. No sense in getting close to a cobra and slapping it in the face.

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