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.

Why We Must Stand with Major Jason Watson

For almost two months, an Air Force officer has been sitting alone in a cell, twenty-four hours a day. When they let him out to eat or exercise, he’s still alone, according to his attorney.

His name is Major Jason Watson. He hasn’t been convicted of anything. Under military law he is presumed innocent, yet he’s still in that cell.

I know something about solitary confinement. I also know what it feels like when a government would rather silence you than answer for its transgressions. That’s why I can’t stay quiet about Major Watson. And it’s why I think we need to talk about the kind of courage this country says it admires, right up until someone actually shows it.

What Major Watson Did

On July 1, Major Watson walked up the House steps of the U.S. Capitol in uniform and stood there holding a sign that read “Impeach. Convict. Remove.” He was calling for the removal of President Trump and Vice President Vance. Capitol Police arrested him. The D.C. charges were dropped, but he was taken from the courthouse straight into Air Force custody and restricted to base. In August he went on CNN and said it again. The next day, the Air Force ordered him into pretrial confinement.

He now faces ten charges under three articles of the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ): three under Article 88 for allegedly using “contemptuous words” against the president, five under Article 92 for failing to obey orders or regulations, and two under Article 133 for “conduct unbecoming an officer,” as his lawyers confirmed in a public statement.

I’m not here to argue about uniform regulations. What bothers me, and what should bother anyone paying attention, is what the Article 88 charges and that solitary cell tell us about how power handles real dissent.

Watson didn’t hide behind a fake name. He didn’t retain or leak anything classified. He put his own name and face on what he believed, in public, knowing what it would cost.

Before he took that stand, he asked himself, “What’s the highest price that I’m willing to pay?” His answer was, more or less, whatever it takes. That’s what bravery looks like. You’re still afraid. You go anyway, knowing hell is coming.

Punished Before He Is Tried

Here is what troubles me most. The military is punishing Major Watson while claiming to follow the very rules that forbid it. Article 13 of the UCMJ says no one being held for trial may be punished, and that pretrial confinement may be no “more rigorous than the circumstances require to insure his presence.” The idea is straight-forward. Someone waiting for a court-martial is presumed innocent, and the military isn’t allowed to treat him as guilty.

Locking a person alone in a cell for months is punishment by any ordinary meaning of the word. Watson’s attorney has said solitary is usually reserved for people who are violent or disobedient, and even then only for a few days or a week. At Watson’s Article 32 hearing, the hearing officer said the isolation was required because he can’t be housed with civilian inmates.

Even if you accept that explanation, it doesn’t undo what isolation does to a person’s mind. And it doesn’t answer the bigger question: why is a peaceful man whose only “offense” was speaking locked up at all? You can’t even argue that the punishment doesn’t fit the crime, because officially it isn’t punishment. When the people offended by your words also get to decide what counts as a crime, and what counts as punishment, the law stops being fair or predictable.

I can tell you from experience that solitary is built to grind you down. I was thrown into solitary in prison because I wouldn’t let a guard on a power trip treat me as anything less than a human being. My punishment for standing up for my dignity was a cell less than half the size of my usual cage. No window. No sunlight. Nothing to remind me there was a world outside. No contact with anyone, including my family, who went days without hearing from me and had no idea what was happening.

That kind of isolation isn’t about safety or order or paperwork. It’s about breaking someone, and about sending a message to everyone else. Major Watson stood up against an administration he believes is trampling the Constitution. For that act of conscience, they’re trying to make him disappear.

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DHS Blasts Minnesota Officials After Serial Sex Assault Suspect is Released Despite ICE Detainer, Then Tries to Drag Woman Out of Her Apartment Window

Department of Homeland Security officials are blasting Minnesota authorities after a Mexican illegal alien with a long record of sexual assaults and violence was released after ICE lodged a detainer against him in May.

Eduart Gomez Ochoa, 28, who first entered the United States illegally in November 2000, was arrested on October 24 after a two-day manhunt.

Ochoa is now charged with first-degree burglary and attempted kidnapping for allegedly reaching through a ground-level apartment window in St. Paul last Thursday, grabbing a 21-year-old woman who was cooking near the window, and trying to pull her outside before she kicked and screamed until he fled.

Police recovered a hat and headband at the scene that the victim said belonged to him.

The victim later identified him from a photo lineup.

In a post on X about the case, DHS wrote, “This criminal alien should have NEVER been released. Eduart Gomez Ochoa, a Mexican national with a rap sheet a mile long, was recently RELEASED by local officials in Minnesota. Shortly after his release, he reoffended and has been apprehended again.”

“ICE first lodged a detainer for Gomez Ochoa in May. Minnesota officials should honor this detainer so that this serial sexual assaulter can be finally be deported,” the post continued.

In May, Ochoa was charged with second-degree criminal sexual conduct, first-degree burglary, and third-degree assault after allegedly entering another apartment in St. Paul through a window and sexually assaulting a girl by sucking on her foot while holding her down.

Ochoa was arrested about ten days later and admitted to assaulting the girl but claimed he had met her at a gas station.

Within days of that arrest, he was also accused of two additional sexual assaults in Maplewood in which he allegedly approached women, groped them, and in one case bit a victim’s face.

Court records and local reporting show he has prior arrests for domestic abuse in violation of a protection order, multiple domestic assaults, felony threats of violence, felony fleeing a police officer, felony burglary, providing a false name, leaving the scene of a collision, dangerous weapons, theft, obstruction, and third-degree assault.

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Massachusetts Senate Brags About Blocking ICE and Providing Financial Aid to Illegal Aliens

The state Senate of Massachusetts is openly boasting about how it ensured financial aid and in-state tuition for illegal aliens, along with anti-ICE legislation and programs to import more foreign healthcare workers.

Naturally, the state Senate’s Facebook account did not refer to any individuals as illegal aliens, but it did emphasize that it was including immigrants of any status in its special privileges for Massachusetts community college students. This means that the state Senate, which Democrats control, is explicitly affirming that it violates federal laws not only by protecting illegal aliens from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), but also by granting them taxpayer-funded privileges that are supposed to be exclusive to in-state citizen residents.

The Facebook post on Wednesday said, “In Massachusetts, we know that our immigrant community makes us stronger.  On National Immigrants Day, we celebrate their contributions, ingenuity, and bravery. We also reaffirm our commitment to equity and ensuring our state is a safe and welcoming place to live for everyone.  #NationalImmigrantsDay #OpportunityForAll.”

If you look at the screenshot below that Libs of TikTok put on X, you can see that the Massachusetts state Senate claimed ICE is not allowed to go to so-called sensitive places, which would include churches and schools. Of course, Massachusetts Democrats do not have the power to ban ICE. In fact, federal law explicitly criminalizes interference with federal immigration officers’ operations (see 18 U.S. Code § 118 and 8 U.S. Code § 1324). So, technically speaking, the state Senate’s majority has just confirmed that its members are all complicit in illegal activities.

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A Surveilled Country Is Not a Free Country

f you currently live in the United States, I regret to inform you that you no longer live in a free country. You are no longer a free person. Actually, you haven’t been for quite some time.

This may sound harsh with this being the year America celebrated her big Two-Five-Oh. But think about it. Think back to the last time you drove from your home to the grocery store. How many automatic license plate readers did you pass along the way? How many apps logged your route? What information did your car collect about you and anyone who may have accompanied you?

When you finally arrived at the store, surely there were cameras, but were they simply there to help catch and deter shoplifters — maybe help police investigate a more serious crime on the off chance one were to occur? Or were those cameras serving other purposes? Was the grocery store implementing facial recognition to deliver you targeted ads when you checked out? Did those cameras automatically link to some local real-time crime center, enabling law enforcement to track you from one location to the next, even if you traveled on foot?

Although your routine trip to pick up eggs and milk may not have been recorded for posterity by all of these technologies, it was by no means a private affair. Nor was your most recent trip to church, a political rally, a protest, or your doctor’s office. And this doesn’t even touch any of the many items in your home that have come to serve as data collection devices.

Now, reflect on this for a moment, then ask yourself: “How much of this did I really consent to?”

Yes, you chose to drive a car. You chose to have a cell phone. You chose to buy food. But did you choose to have countless government and corporate bodies monitor your every move? Do you really feel like you consented to an arrangement in which any entity with the financial and technological means to record and analyze every detail of your life, from the trivially mundane to the deeply intimate, holds the right to do so? If not, how much do you feel you could demand that they stop?

To return to the initial assertion, if the government and an endless number of corporations can treat the details of your life as some natural resource to be mined, assessed, and sold, and you have no meaningful way to opt out, can you really say you’re a free person? I mean, no, you’re not a slave or a prisoner. But you’re not exactly free either.

There’s no great analogy, but, at best, maybe you’re like a wild animal, chipped by some field ethologists, looking to study your natural behavior, or a teenager, whose parents gave you a fair amount of freedom after school and on weekends but insist you have the family tracking app turned on. At worst, maybe you’re more like a citizen of some alternate version of the erstwhile DDR if the Stasi were a little more hands-off and had way better tech. But again, you’re not exactly free.

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Their Town Has No High School, but Vermont Won’t Fund Their Catholic Choice

The Bishop family lives in a Vermont school district without a high school. Their daughter still needs an education, so they chose Mount St. Joseph Academy, a Catholic high school. Now they’re challenging the government’s refusal to help pay her tuition through a program designed for families whose districts lack a school.

The family filed a federal lawsuit on October 27 challenging its exclusion from Vermont’s Town Tuition and Dual Enrollment programs. Their attorneys also contend that their daughter qualified for a grandfather provision, but the district refused to honor it. Those allegations put a practical question before the court: What educational help can a family actually use?

From Alliance Defending Freedom:

The Bishop family, represented by ADF attorneys, lives in the Barstow Unified Union School District, which doesn’t have a high school, so they chose to send their daughter to a Catholic school, Mount St. Joseph Academy. Government officials, however, denied the family’s request for Town Tuition funding because Act 73 eliminates all religious schools from the Town Tuition Program. Plus, the Barstow Unified School District refused to grandfather the Bishops’ daughter into the tuition program even though she met the requirements of the law.

Additionally, Vermont’s Dual Enrollment Program allows high school students to take college courses at no cost to them, which the Bishops’ daughter wanted to participate in. Eligibility for the program, however, is contingent on Town Tuition—a student must either be enrolled in a public school or receive Town Tuition funding at a private school to be eligible. Since the government denied giving their daughter Town Tuition funding because she attends an ineligible school, she is also excluded from participating in the Dual Enrollment Program.

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Trump Supporter STABBED Outside Ohio Rally While President Trump Was Speaking, Shocking Videos Captured Attack and Knife Still in Victim’s Back

A Trump supporter was stabbed in the back outside President Donald Trump’s midterm rally in Chillicothe, Ohio, on Wednesday night while the president was on stage speaking to the crowd at the Shoemaker Center on the Ohio University Chillicothe campus.

Video posted by Derek Myers shows the victim with a knife still protruding from the left side of his lower back as police officers rush to detain a person nearby.

The stabbing is not shown in this video, which is of the immediate aftermath.

Another witness video captured the fight and stabbing, which appears to have happened as police were attempting to break it up.

It is unclear how the fight began.

The Scioto Valley Guardian confirmed that police detained one individual.

Officials had not released the victim’s condition, the identity of the person detained, any charges, or confirmed any details about the incident as of late Wednesday evening.

The report notes that police had removed protesters from inside the venue earlier in the evening.

Tyler Bowyer of Turning Point Action, whose founder Charlie Kirk was assassinated on a Utah college campus, shared the video and wrote that “some crazy anti-Trump lunatic stabbed a Trump supporter.”

“This is more of the insane political violence stoked by the Left,” Bowyer added. “Pray for the person who was stabbed.”

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Social (In)Security

“We will always protect Social Security, Medicare!” says President Donald Trump.

That would be nice.

But when I look at these programs’ balance sheets, I don’t see how he’s protected anything. Both Social Security and Medicare are on track to run out of money.

Politicians mostly ignore the problem. Worse, progressives like Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez say, “We’re going to expand Social Security benefits!”

That’s just irresponsible.

My new video points out what we’ve known for years: these programs are unsustainable.

The problem is that people like me live longer. We like getting monthly Social Security checks and medical care that appears free.

Since we vote more consistently than others, politicians don’t want to make us mad by cutting our handouts.

My fellow geezers say, “Social Security is not a handout! I contributed to the ‘trust fund’ every year. I’m just getting back what I paid in!”

But that’s not true. Today, most of us get back much more than we paid in.

In 1935, politicians created the handout, saying, even if you don’t save for retirement, government will save for you.

But that was another political lie. They didn’t create individual retirement accounts. They didn’t save our Social Security payments. They spend every penny as it comes in.

It’s why Social Security is like a Ponzi scheme.

Bernard Madoff went to jail because he used new investors’ money to pay old investors. That’s exactly what our government does.

Few Americans realize it.

“What happens to the money?” I ask people on the street.

“It’s held in trust,” said one woman.

It isn’t.

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Alaska Governor Orders CRIMINAL INVESTIGATION Into Mary Peltola Campaign Over Alleged Democrat Scheme to DECEIVE VOTERS With Fake Dan Sullivan Candidate

Alaska Republican Governor Mike Dunleavy has ordered a state investigation into Democrat Mary Peltola’s U.S. Senate campaign following explosive new reporting that aides and national Democrat operatives worked to recruit a candidate sharing the name of incumbent Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan in an apparent bid to siphon votes and confuse Alaskans.

In a statement posted early Thursday, Dunleavy cited the New York Times report published Wednesday, writing that it “reveals disturbing new evidence of an organized effort to manipulate Alaska’s elections by recruiting candidates, including one with the same name as an incumbent U.S. Senator, to deliberately confuse voters and misdirect their votes.”

He noted that the Alaska Division of Elections had already examined related concerns in June and that the new reporting “substantially supports the Division’s findings.”

Dunleavy directed the Department of Public Safety to investigate whether the alleged scheme violated state laws and whether criminal charges or civil action are warranted.

Dunleavy wrote on X:

“Today’s New York Times reporting reveals disturbing new evidence of an organized effort to manipulate Alaska’s elections by recruiting candidates—including one with the same name as an incumbent U.S. Senator—to deliberately confuse voters and misdirect their votes. The Alaska Division of Elections investigated these very concerns in June of this year. The new reporting substantially supports the Division’s findings.

I am therefore directing the Department of Public Safety to investigate whether this scheme violated Alaska’s laws and whether criminal charges or civil action are warranted. The evidence will determine what happens next.

Alaskans have a fundamental right to vote for the candidate they actually intend to support. Deliberately tricking voters into casting their ballots for someone else strikes at the integrity of our elections.

Anyone or any organization found to have broken the law must be held accountable.”

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France’s Senate Approves Bill Expanding Police Powers Over Online Speech

France’s Senate has approved a bill that was originally tabled as a means to make rioters pay for the damages they cause – but ended up with provisions that are meant to allow for faster removal of online content at the police’s behest, ban people from social media for committing protest-related offenses, allow the police to fly as many drones as they want equipped with cameras, and use AI to analyze footage from those drones, as well as from CCTV cameras.

All this was added to the “casseurs-payeurs” (rioters-pay) bill in the form of amendments, which senators approved on October 27 by 229 votes to 105. The bill was first submitted on September 16, and it had only five articles that made no mention of any of these issues.

The government’s use of the accelerated procedure means that after one reading in the National Assembly, the bill can go to a joint committee of both chambers.

All the quotes below are from the Senate’s record of the debate, translated from French.

“Social networks can contribute decisively to violence and damage, in particular through the dissemination of content calling for these offenses to be committed,” is how the government justified its amendment that was adopted with 219 votes to 115.

The amendment allows the administrative authority, rather than a judge, to order platforms and hosts to remove content that is seen as provoking crimes such as attacks on life, theft and destruction, where it is likely to cause a serious disturbance of public order.

If a host fails to remove such content within 24 hours, it will face six months in prison and a 150,000 euro fine, or up to two percent of its worldwide turnover for a company. The authority will also be able to have the site blocked and removed from search results.

The request goes to a designated reviewer, rather than a judge, before the content is removed.

The original filing of the amendment had a one-hour emergency procedure for content that calls for “an attack, for insurrection or for arming against the State” – but Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez pulled it in the chamber, saying, “I have just rectified my amendment so that we can secure the emergency procedure during the shuttle [between chambers], in view of risks regarding [EU-law] conformity and constitutionality.”

So this provision is expected to be back later in the legislative process.

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