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.

New York Counties Sue Governor to Protect Cooperation with ICE

Two New York counties are suing Democrat Governor Kathy Hochul to stop a new state law that bars them from working with federal immigration officers.

Officials of Rensselaer County and Broome County have announced that they intend to join a federal lawsuit challenging the new state law sponsored by state Democrats, according to PIX 11.

The federal lawsuit seeks to void a New York state law that bars police departments and other state law enforcement agencies from entering into the federal 287(g) program which formalizes a working relationship between the departments and federal immigration law enforcement branches.

Officials of Nassau County have also expressed interest in the lawsuit, but have not yet committed to joining the other two counties in the filing.

The law, called the Local Crimes, Local Cop Act, went into effect on August 25, and would summarily nullify agreements with ICE that are already in place for 13 New York counties.

“Local police will assist ICE only if a real crime has been committed,” Gov. Hochul said. “But on civil immigration matters, ICE is on their own.”

The New York Attorney General’s Office has also issued subpoenas to the counties that have not yet officially confirmed that they have terminated any agreements with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or will abide by newly implemented state law.

Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman, who is running for Gov. against Hochul, strenuously opposed the Local Crimes, Local Cop Act and says that his county has taken a serious bite out of crime by working with ICE.

“We got rid of 2,000 illegal migrants with criminal records in Nassau County without raiding a church, a school, a daycare center, a hospital, because we cooperated with ICE,” Blakeman recently said.

Blakeman also railed against Hochul and said her law will make New Yorkers less safe.

“Kathy Hochul, where do you want those guns? What neighborhood do you want to destroy? Where do you want those drugs? What community do you want to destroy? Where do you want those illegal migrants with criminal records to live? You want them back in New York? We say no!” he said at a recent rally.

Hochul, though, is warning the counties to knuckle under to the new law and said of any lawsuit filed to stop her law: “Bring it on.”

“No county executive should think that they are above the law in the state of New York,” the Gov. said. “The attorney general will be fully responsible for enforcement.”

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WHAT? Hillary Clinton Calls the Sudden Rise of Socialism in the Democrat Party ‘Healthy’

While speaking at a recent event, Hillary Clinton commented on the sudden rise of radical socialism in the Democrat Party, calling the development ‘healthy.’

Hillary is known for wanting to be in sync with any new development in among Democrats. Lots of Democrats have tried to tie themselves to this new movement within the party to make themselves seem ‘with it’ but Ms. Clinton’s analysis seems bizarre.

How is it healthy to embrace a failed ideology?

FOX News reports:

Clinton’s eyebrow-raising socialism take sparks brutal mockery: ‘Definition of insanity’

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called the Democratic Party’s current “experiment” amid the rise of democratic socialist candidates “healthy,” drawing swift conservative backlash from critics who accused her of embracing the party’s socialist wing.

“The Democratic Party right now is, I think, going through a kind of experiment, like who can actually respond particularly to young people’s very real concerns about where they are at this point in their lives and what kind of future do they have for themselves? I think that is healthy,” said Clinton.

Clinton, a matriarch of the Democratic Party, defeated democratic socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders in the 2016 presidential primary. Her remarks come as socialist candidates increasingly challenge establishment-backed Democrats in races across the country.

Clinton spoke Monday in conversation with the Hamptons Institute, weighing in on the Democratic Party’s ideological direction as it searches for ways to connect with younger voters while democratic socialist candidates have increasingly notched wins during the primary season.

The moderator asked Clinton where she sees the future of the Democratic Party as it undergoes a “major upheaval between center-left and democratic socialists” during their conversation on diplomacy, national security and global leadership.

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Is ICE Investigating Ilhan Omar? Trump ‘Truths’ Report On Withheld Fraud-Probe Records

President Donald Trump drew fresh attention to a long-running controversy on Sunday when he reposted a Just the News article on Truth Social headlined “ICE refuses to disclose records on Ilhan Omar fraud probe, cites ongoing ‘enforcement proceedings.'” His decision to amplify the report, without comment, renewed scrutiny of allegations that have dogged Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) for years – though ICE’s response stops short of confirming she is personally the target of any active proceeding.

The Trump administration has said for months it possesses evidence that Omar committed immigration fraud. What has remained unclear is whether that evidence translates into an indictment, a denaturalization proceeding, or nothing at all.

Just the News filed a Freedom of Information Act request in January 2026 for records related to Omar’s marriage to Ahmed Nur Said Elmi, a man whose identity, evidence suggests, is that of her brother. ICE’s response cited a specific legal exemption rather than denying or providing a timeline. “ICE has determined that the information you requested is being withheld in full pursuant to Title 5 U.S.C. § 552(b)(7)(A),” the agency wrote. “Disclosure of any responsive records at this time could reasonably be expected to interfere with enforcement proceedings.”

Department of Justice guidance requires a two-step showing before an agency can invoke it. “First, there must be a ‘reasonable likelihood’ of a pending or contemplated law enforcement proceeding,” the guidance states. “Second, release of the information must be reasonably expected to cause some articulable harm to that proceeding.” ICE cleared both hurdles by its own estimation; whether that estimation holds up matters more now that the president has amplified it himself.

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Russia’s Bank Run — When Confidence Begins to Crack

A bank does not actually have everyone’s money sitting in a vault waiting to be returned. The entire system functions because everyone assumes they will not demand their money at the same time. Once that confidence begins to crack, the numbers on a balance sheet become secondary because people want CASH.

That is what we must now watch in Russia. Russians have been pulling billions out of the banking system, with demand for physical cash accelerating dramatically this summer. According to Russian Central Bank data cited in the press, nearly $3.4 billion was withdrawn during just the first two weeks of August after approximately $7.3 billion in July and more than $4.5 billion in June. The Central Bank itself reported that cash in circulation increased by roughly 700 billion rubles during July, compared with about 500 billion in June.

This does not mean the Russian banking system is collapsing tomorrow. Nevertheless, something much more important is taking place beneath the surface. Russians are becoming nervous about leaving their money inside the financial system. Rumors have circulated that the government could eventually freeze or commandeer private deposits to help finance the war, and once people begin questioning whether they will retain unrestricted access to their own savings, government assurances become increasingly meaningless. Fear of possible seizure has become one factor driving the movement into cash, alongside drone attacks, economic uncertainty, and disruptions to electronic payments.

This is always the danger with capital controls. Russia has already demonstrated that it will restrict access to money when the state believes national interests require it. Foreign-currency withdrawals remain restricted, and accounts belonging to various foreigners from so-called “unfriendly” nations have faced controls since the war began. Putin recently relaxed some restrictions affecting foreign depositors.

People forget that money is ultimately a question of confidence in government. You can raise interest rates to 20%, offer attractive deposits, and tell everyone that the banking system is perfectly safe, but none of that matters if people begin fearing that the state itself may change the rules. The greatest threat to a banking system is not necessarily bad loans. It is the realization among depositors that their money exists inside a political system whose rules can change overnight.

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The rape gang trial the UK establishment doesn’t want you to know about

The trial of six members of a Pakistani ‘grooming gang’ has quietly restarted in Manchester. The retrial hasn’t made the headlines, and looking at the sordid details of the case, it’s clear the British establishment wants to keep it that way.

The six suspects were alleged members of the Rochdale grooming gang – a group of Muslim men, predominantly Pakistani, who trafficked, sexually abused, and raped underage white British girls in the northern English town between the 1980s and 2010s. More than 75 men have been charged and 53 convicted since Greater Manchester Police began investigating the gang in 2010.

What are the men accused of?

The suspects have been charged with 46 counts of rape, sexual assault, and ‘assault by penetration’, with two of the men facing more than a dozen charges each.

  • Tahrir Rashid, 53, 12 counts of rape, 3 counts of indecent assault, 1 count of assault by penetration
  • Mohammed Saleem, 46, 8 counts of rape
  • Sucklane Shah, 46, 2 counts of rape
  • Itfaq Hussain, 45, 3 counts of rape
  • Arshad Mohammed, 55, 5 counts of rape
  • Amjad Mahmood, 53, 12 counts of rape, 2 counts of indecency with a child, 1 count of indecent assault, 2 counts of assault by penetration

All of the suspects’ alleged offenses took place between 2003 and 2008, and involved two girls who were as young as 13 when they were “passed around” between the gang, according to prosecutors. Rashid, the alleged ringleader, is also accused of raping a 12-year-old girl in the 1980s.

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Limits On Border Patrol Arrests In California Lifted By Federal Appeals Court

A federal appeals court on Aug. 24 rescinded a preliminary injunction that limited U.S. Border Patrol stops and arrests in California’s Central Valley.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit found that a federal district court failed to properly analyze whether the plaintiffs had standing to seek forward-looking relief based on alleged harms in the past.

Standing refers to the right of someone to sue in court. The parties must show, among other things, a strong enough connection to the dispute to justify their participation in a lawsuit.

The Ninth Circuit sent the lawsuit challenging immigration detentions back to the district court to allow it to revisit its legal analysis after that court issued a preliminary injunction limiting U.S. Border Patrol’s ability to stop and arrest people.

The new ruling, which does not dismiss the lawsuit itself, is a tactical win for the Trump administration because it eliminates – for now – a preliminary injunction that limited Border Patrol’s ability to stop and detain people. The appeals court sent the case back to the federal district court for a limited do-over on the question of standing.

The lawsuit concerns Section 1357(a)(2) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, which allows Border Patrol agents to make warrantless arrests only if they have reason to believe two things: that the person is in the country unlawfully, and that the person is likely to escape before a warrant can be obtained. The plaintiffs in the case took the position that the agents made arrests without properly assessing whether people were actually flight risks.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) sued on behalf of the plaintiffs, the United Farm Workers of America and several farm workers, arguing that over a three-day period in Kern County, California, in January 2025, Border Patrol unlawfully detained individuals – including day laborers – without having a reason to believe they were likely to escape before a warrant could be issued. The enforcement project was known as Operation Return to Sender.

Residents of Bakersfield and the vicinity “started disappearing” in “the middle of citrus harvesting season,” and this alarmed local residents who contacted the ACLU, the group said in a summary.

In a federal class action, the ACLU argued the Border Patrol was using “a cruel tactic to strip people of their right to an immigration hearing and coerce them instead into agreeing to “voluntary departure,” which carries with it a ban on returning to the United States for up to 10 years.

In April 2025, U.S. District Judge Jennifer Thurston granted a preliminary injunction covering the Eastern District, which is California’s Central Valley.

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Trump slams Canada as ‘most difficult and unreasonable’ nation as trade talks collapse

Tensions flared between Washington and Ottawa after President Donald Trump took to Truth Social to challenge Canadian leadership. Calling out Ottawa as the “most difficult and unreasonable” government to negotiate with — despite its ongoing reliance on the U.S. defense umbrella — Trump doubled down on his firm stance to hold Canada accountable.

The rhetoric exemplifies an escalation in an intensifying trade conflict, coming directly on the heels of collapsed negotiations and mounting cross-border economic retaliation.

In his social media posts, President Trump called out Canada for its exploitation, spanning decades, arguing that high Canadian tariffs on American agricultural products have damaged U.S. farming operations.

Highlighting long-standing grievances, Trump also cited steep dairy import duties and a ten-year regulatory delay in certifying U.S.-made Gulfstream jets — a move he said was designed to shield Canadian aviation competitors.

Trump asserted that the U.S. has sustained an average annual trade deficit of $60 billion with its northern neighbor, declaring that Washington would no longer tolerate the unfair dynamic.

The president’s public posts follow a sudden breakdown in formal trade talks.

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney ordered Ottawa’s negotiating team to return home after Washington introduced terms that Canadian officials deemed “unfair and economically unviable.”

In response to the stalemate, Trump threatened to slap a 50% tariff on all Canadian cars, trucks, automotive components, and steel starting January 1, 2027. The economic threat directly targets one of the most deeply integrated manufacturing supply chains in North America, raising concerns among Canadians about rising consumer costs and disruption to regional assembly lines.

Canada responded by preparing dollar-for-dollar retaliatory tariffs on hundreds of American products. Dominic LeBlanc, the minister responsible for Canada–U.S. trade, stated that while Ottawa had hoped for a mutually beneficial agreement, the government felt that it should act to protect domestic industries from unilateral U.S. penalties.

Trump also further provoked Canadian leadership by declaring on Truth Social that the U.S. might rename Lake Ontario to “Lake America,” referencing how the nation no longer expected to conduct business with the region.

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Report: Trump Admin Requests Ukraine Refrain From Striking Russia During Meetings

The Trump administration reportedly requested that Ukraine refrain from striking parts of Russia with missiles while the United States engaged in meetings with Russian officials.

Christopher Miller, the Chief Ukraine Correspondent for the Financial Times, shared in a post on X that officials in the Trump administration had “requested that Kyiv not strike Moscow, St. Petersburg, and northern regions of Russia with its long range missiles and drones on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday when the U.S. would send a plane carrying a senior-level official to the Russian capital,” citing “people familiar with the request.”

“Ukraine agreed, they said,” Miller added. “Today we see that a U.S. Air Force C-17 plane has landed in Moscow.”

Breitbart News’s Oliver JJ Lane reported that a U.S. Air Force C-17 Globemaster III was reported to have flown “from the capital of NATO-member Latvia to an airport near Moscow, Russia on Tuesday morning”:

A U.S. Air Force C-17 Globemaster III flew from the capital of NATO-member Latvia to an airport near Moscow, Russia on Tuesday morning. The military jet first flew on Sunday from Andrews Air Force Base near Washington, D.C., reports France’s Le Figaro, citing the open source transponder data which is collected by hobbyist ground-based receivers and aggregated through services such as the Flight Radar app.

Military flights are not obliged to keep their transponders on, but it is best practice to do so for the sake of other flights in the area and air traffic control for the sake of safety. The decision to keep the transponders broadcasting over Russian airspace betrays a desire to make the flight as visible and easily identifiable as possible.

CBS News’s Senior White House reporter Jennifer Jacobs reported in a post on X that Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Director John Ratcliffe was reported to have “traveled to Russia aboard a C-17 for meetings in Moscow today.”

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A Law That the People It Targets Can Defeat With a Felt-Tip Pen

The Online Safety (Minimum Age and Child Safety Risk Assessment) Bill was introduced on 24 August 2026 – the very day I arrived back in New Zealand after nearly a month away.

Readers of “A Halflings View” will be well aware of my views about bans or restrictions on access to social media platform by the young. Although the news media have trumpeted the present proposals as a “ban” it is not. It actually constitutes a form of limited restriction.

This article is very much a “first impression” view of the Bill. Much of the material and commentary is gathered from earlier writings I have produced on the subject as well as from other sources among them Ani O’Brien, “Thought Crimes” (Substack) — “Hear me out: Ban the hardware not the software”; the New Zealand Initiative; Privacy Commissioner Michael Webster; UNICEF Aotearoa (Susan Glasgow); Australia’s eSafety Commissioner three-month evaluation (July 2026); UK Ofcom/House of Lords material and reporting on the Online Safety Act; and US litigation (NetChoice; the Louisiana and Arkansas decisions).

Furthermore, this article (and indeed the Bill itself) will not be the final word.

The Bill has not yet had its First Reading and that is unlikely before Parliament rises. But Prime Minister Luxon and Erica Stanford were determined to push this ill-advised proposal ahead at pace, even although what it really amounts to is an announcement until the Bill has its First Reading. And it may even fall at that fence. If it makes it, Select Committee submissions and further commentary will accumulate quickly.

Hence the critique reflects the position as at the time of publication of this article.

What the Bill actually does

The Online Safety (Minimum Age and Child Safety Risk Assessment) Bill, introduced to Parliament on 24 August 2026 by Education Minister Erica Stanford, is a stand-alone statute built on two load-bearing duties.

The first (clause 11) requires operators of “age-restricted platforms” to take reasonable steps to stop New Zealanders under 16 from holding an account. The second (clause 14) requires those operators to produce an annual, written child safety risk assessment covering all under-18s who use the platform.

Behind these sit an enforcement apparatus of warnings, enforceable undertakings, corrective notices, tiered pecuniary penalties (up to the greater of NZ$40 million or 10% of global turnover), and, as a last resort, service restriction orders and access restriction orders that would conscript ISPs, app stores and ancillary providers into preventing access to the platform from New Zealand.

The regulator is the Secretary of Internal Affairs — the chief executive of the Department of Internal Affairs (DIA). More on this disturbing aspect later.

Much of the drafting is careful.

It regulates the account, not the child, so no penalty falls on minors or parents.

It explicitly forbids treating manual date-of-birth entry as a “reasonable step”.

It goes beyond the Privacy Act by requiring destruction of age-assurance data.

The Bill is also more sophisticated than the “ban” it is marketed as. As I have argued on earlier occasions about similar proposals, this is a set of managed restrictions on account-holding, not a prohibition on children seeing content. Publicly available material remains reachable.

But the care in the drafting cannot rescue the concept.

The Bill imports a policy model that has already been trialled next door in Australia and in Britain, and the trials are in.

What follows is the case against it — a case now supported by a striking amount of hard evidence rather than speculation — followed by the specific problem of handing the whole scheme to the DIA.

The central flaw: a “targeted” measure that touches everyone

The Bill’s rhetorical appeal rests on the idea that it targets under-16s. Its mechanism does not.

To reliably prevent a 15-year-old from holding an account, a platform must satisfy itself about the age of every account-holder — which in practice means age-assuring the entire adult population as well.

Privacy Commissioner Michael Webster made the point bluntly when the policy was first floated. Keeping under-16s out means everyone over 16 has to prove they are over 16. The New Zealand Initiative put it the same way — everyone will have to demonstrate they are not under sixteen, including you.

This is the paradox the Bill never resolves, and it is not a drafting quibble but the whole problem.

Clause 11 forbids the “cheap check” (a manual date of birth entry) and forbids relying solely on formal ID or a digital identity service, which forces platforms toward either document upload, facial age-estimation, or “age inference” from behavioural and device signals.

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Why Iran Ruffles the Feathers of the United States

Strip away the diplomatic briefings, Congressional hearings and the endless cable news loops about centrifuges, regional proxies and cyber attacks, and you hit a raw unvarnished nerve.

What truly disturbs the United States about the Islamic Republic is not its policies, its rhetoric or even its nuclear ambitions.  It is Iran’s audacity to exist completely outside the American orbit; and make it work.

When diplomatic pretenses are scrapped, we see that a major power does not spend billions of dollars, conduct regional wars and upend global markets out of pure legalistic devotion to global rules or nonproliferation treaties.

The conflict with the United States, is not about what Iran has in its centrifuges.  Rather, it is about what Tehran represents to a hegemon that refuses to accept  “no” and cannot tolerate a world not under its control.

If the mere possession of enriched uranium or atomic warheads was the ultimate redline, the outline of America’s animosities would look entirely different.

The “crossing the nuclear threshold” explanation collapses under the weight of obvious global contradictions.  Washington, for example, has found ways to coexist, cooperate or outright partner with other nuclear-armed nations; from historical accommodations with Pakistan and India, to winking at Israel’s undeclared arsenal, and managing a pragmatic, albeit tense, approach to China and North Korea.

In the vocabulary of global superpowers, compliance is currency.  Washington tolerates fierce enemies if they eventually capitulate; and it accommodates brutal allies if they submit to American domination.  What empire dreads most is an uncooperative self-reliant country that refuses to bend the knee, yet stubbornly survives after decades of total economic siege.

The real reason Iran gets under the skin of the American foreign policy establishment, and why it has become its main target, has little to do with atoms, and everything to do with sovereignty, geography and the architecture of U.S. hegemony.

For decades, the unwritten rule of the post-Cold War order was simple: align with the U.S.-led global order, or be excluded and isolated.  Most nations that initially balked had little choice but to integrate, bound by the weight of a dollar-dominated global economy.   Difficult states were either absorbed or efforts were made to bring them into client-state relationships, or they are heavily monitored.

In 1979, Iran did the unforgivable.  It rebelled and institutionalized a successful, unapologetic ideological revolution that expressly rejected U.S.-Israeli hegemony, and built an enduring political structure explicitly rooted in anti-imperialism and anti-Zionism. It proudly declared that a Middle Eastern state could chart its own destiny outside the Western framework.

Since then, generations of U.S. policymakers have convinced themselves that crushing economic sanctions, diplomatic excommunication, assassinations and covert sabotage would inevitably lead to a popular implosion or “regime” collapse.

Washington’s frustration has only deepened because its strategy has not worked.

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