Free Republic

@RupertLowe10 It looks like Starmer is seriously considering a ban on X. I will protest against this on the streets of London. I hope you will all join me.

The Government has urged online watchdog Ofcom to use its powers to block access to X, formerly Twitter, in a dramatic escalation in tensions with the tech billionaire Elon Musk. Technology Secretary Liz Kendall issued a statement telling the regulator that it had the “full support” of ministers to use its powers to block UK users from gaining access to the social media site.

A Paris court found Monday 10 people guilty of cyberbullying France's first lady, Brigitte Macron, by spreading false online claims about her gender and sexuality, including allegations she was born a man. One defendant was sentenced to six months in prison, while eight were handed suspended sentences between two and eight months. All 10 were mandated to attend cyberbullying awareness training. The court pointed to "particularly degrading, insulting, and malicious" comments referring to false claims regarding alleged trans identity and alleged pedo criminality targeting Brigitte Macron. "Repeated publications have had cumulative harmful effects," the court said. The defendants, eight men...

An award-winning NHS nurse has been struck off after sharing anti-immigrant posts online saying that 'foreigners' who come to Britain will end up 'being your rulers'. Roberta Batchelor was stripped of her licence after a disciplinary panel concluded a series of her social media posts 'sought to cause offence to immigrants...and those of Muslim faith'. She bizarrely claimed to have been acting out of anger over the Labour government's cuts to winter fuel allowance and was 'caught up in all the unrest in the country'. It proved an ignominious end to a career spanning 40 years at University Hospitals Birmingham...

One Australian politician has said the quiet part out loud It’s not often the Premier of New South Wales says something that changes the political debate in the UK and elsewhere, but so it is this week. Following the awful carnage on Bondi Beach, NSW Premier Chris Minns gave a press conference about new legal restrictions on speech, and said this: “I acknowledge that we don’t have the same free speech rules that they have in the United States and I make no apologies for that, we have got a responsibility to knit together our community, that comes from different...

Police abandon investigations into almost four crimes every minute. There were 2,040,976 offences reported in England and Wales in the year to June where no suspect was identified – equivalent to 5,592 every single day, or 3.8 per minute. Out of the 5.3 million crimes logged by police in England and Wales in the year, 38.6 per cent were closed as 'investigation complete – no suspect identified'. The figures showed only 3 per cent of rapes reported to police led to a suspect being charged. The respective number for 'violence against the person' was 6.3 per cent, robbery 8.1 per...

List of personae non gratae from UK and EU for their role in state-sanctioned extra-territorial censorship. Some are even in the US and are getting deported! Transcript linked below video

The Trump administration has barred five Europeans from entering the U.S., accusing them of pressuring American tech companies to censor or suppress American speech online. The individuals—Thierry Breton, Imran Ahmed, Josephine Ballon, Anna-Lena von Hodenberg, and Clare Melford—are all leading figures in European efforts to regulate harmful or illegal content on social media platforms. The five were barred under a May policy targeting foreign nationals deemed responsible for suppressing speech protected under U.S. law.

The State Department announced Tuesday it was barring five Europeans it accused of leading efforts to pressure US tech firms to censor or suppress American viewpoints. The Europeans, described by Secretary of State Marco Rubio as “radical” activists and “weaponized” nongovernmental organizations, fell afoul of a new visa policy announced in May that restricts the entry of foreigners deemed responsible for the censorship of protected speech in the United States. “For far too long, ideologues in Europe have led organized efforts to coerce American platforms to punish American viewpoints they oppose,” Rubio posted on X. “The Trump administration will no...

The State Department is taking decisive action against five individuals who have led organized efforts to coerce American platforms to censor, demonetize, and suppress American viewpoints they oppose. These radical activists and weaponized NGOs have advanced censorship crackdowns by foreign states—in each case targeting American speakers and American companies. As such, I have determined that their entry, presence, or activities in the United States have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States. Based on these determinations, the Department has taken steps to impose visa restrictions on agents of the global censorship-industrial complex who, as a result, will...

The prosecution of a British pro-life advocate for praying violates ‘fundamental freedoms’ and ‘the shared values that ought to underpin US-UK relations,’ a State Department official said.(LifeSiteNews) — The U.K.’s prosecuting of a British pro-life activist for standing silently within an abortion center’s buffer zone is not only “concerning” as it violates “common sense” but is an “unwelcome departure” from shared transatlantic values, said a Trump administration official. According to a Saturday report in The Telegraph, the spokesman for the U.S. State Department was addressing the case of Isabel Vaughan-Spruce, a Catholic pro-life activist who was charged last Wednesday for...

Below is my column in The Hill on how Democrats in some blue states are moving from censoring speech to compelling speech in renewed attacks on free speech. They are facing resistance in the courts despite determined efforts to force others to mouth approved viewpoints. Here is the column: More than five years ago, I wrote in these pages of a growing trend on the left toward compelled speech — the forcing of citizens to repeat approved views and values. It is an all-too-familiar pattern. Once a faction assumes power, it will often first seek to censor opposing views and...

A pro-life activist was arrested while distributing pregnancy resource pamphlets on a public sidewalk outside a Planned Parenthood abortion center in San Francisco. The arrested is being called a violation of First Amendment rights of pro-life Americans to protest abortion or help women find alternatives. Anastasia Rogers, an organizer with the pro-life group Survivors San Francisco, was handcuffed and taken into custody Thursday after a security guard at the abortion giant alleged “threatening language” in an Instagram post she made about her sidewalk outreach, Pro-Life San Francisco said in a statement. Officers also cited a prior warrant related to the...

Throughout 2015 Alex Jones detailed how Chinese-style net censorship is the stepping stone for the technocracy takeover and the depopulation endgame. Summary The speaker warns of an impending global shift toward Chinese-style internet censorship and social control systems, which he claims will be phased in worldwide starting in 2025. He asserts that major tech companies like Facebook, Google, and Microsoft are already cooperating with China to implement integrated surveillance systems that track online activity, social media posts, purchases, and credit scores via algorithms. Criticism of the government in China, he says, results in restrictions on travel, hotel stays, and buying/selling....

A woman arrested twice for silently praying outside an abortion clinic, who received a £13,000 payout in acknowledgement of her unjust treatment, has become the first person in Britain to be charged under new buffer zone laws. Abortion buffer zones came into force in October 2024 outside abortion clinics in England and Wales, criminalising offering vital support to women, and amid confusion about precisely what activities are prohibited outside abortion clinics. Director of the March For Life UK, Isabel Vaughan-Spruce, had previously been arrested twice for silently praying outside an abortion clinic in Birmingham, but West Midlands Police subsequently apologised...

As the Euro-Globalist failing leaders try to whip their countries into an anti-Russia Frenzy, Germany is trying to come out of this process as the country with the largest military and – it appears – the meanest intelligence services. (snip) “Spies will also be allowed to install spyware on computers belonging to enemy suspects and secretly enter their homes. When operating overseas, spies will be allowed to install tracking devices on enemy technology or weaponry – or destroy it altogether.”

I was there in an Ottawa courtroom when Tamara Lich, the leader of the trucker convoy, was sentenced to a year under house arrest. She's only allowed to leave her home for medical appointments and church, and a few hours a week to buy groceries. She's not allowed to go out for dinner or visit friends or even go for a walk. It's atrocious. But there is another exception: she can leave her home for work. That got me thinking. Tamara has worked with Rebel News before — speaking at our events across Canada, coming on our TV shows, and...

If Europe’s elites want war, they should pick up a rifle and fight. After the European Commission levied a several-hundred-million-dollar fine on Elon Musk and his social media platform X earlier this month, journalist Michael Shellenberger wrote a damning post in which he excoriated Europe’s rank censorship and state-sponsored propaganda. He accused the commission of engaging “in a deception campaign aimed at confusing” Europeans and Americans into thinking that European elites’ “goal” is anything other than “to censor the American people.” Shellenberger pointed out that Musk’s fine came while European governments are demanding backdoor access to all private text messages...

The question is not whether the EU collapses but whenIf I were a bookie, I would be making odds now about when the European Union will finally unravel and die. Unless there is an imminent and drastic course correction, the blessed event cannot be far off. I might need a Doomsday Clock akin to the one publicized by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. Their clock hovers near midnight, which signifies nuclear Armageddon, the minute hand pushed closer or farther away from the blast depending on minatory world events. My clock would measure the EU’s proximity to implosion. Its recent...

A Minnesota high school has threatneed to suspend students who talk positively about Immigration and Customers Enforcement (ICE) agents. Paul Paetzel, the principal at Edina High School in Minnesota, has warned that making reference to the work of ICE agents and President Trump’s policy of mass deportations goes against the “culture” that his school is trying to foster. He wrote in a letter parents: I want to speak directly and proactively about the culture we are committed to creating at Edina High School. As we continue to grow as a community, it is essential that we are clear about the...