No Pedo Bashing is the new 4am talking point apparently.

We're all bound and gagged by a new boss — social media mobs

By Meghan Daum

Jul 29, 2018 | 4:05 AM

I spend a lot of time these days trying to tell myself that the “speech wars” are a manufactured problem, or at least not the most pressing issue we’re dealing with at the moment. When children and parents are being ripped from each other at the border and we have a president whose incompetence runs about even with his malevolence, stories about the silencing power of social media mobs shouldn’t rank high on the concern-o-meter.

But the last few weeks have brought us two high-profile Twitter pile-ons that I see as emblematic of how the social media mess, manufactured or not, hobbles public discourse and makes it harder to deal with those more pressing issues. One of the pile-ons involves “Guardians of the Galaxy” director James Gunn, targeted by an online mob after alt-right conspiracy theorist Mike Cernovich dug up some incriminating tweets and blog posts that Gunn generated many years ago.

The remarks, some of them dating back more than a decade and most of them reflecting the ethos of Troma, the legendary kitsch-schlock-horror B-movie outfit where Gunn got his start, included jokes about rape and pedophilia. They were meant to be satirical, but they were also flat-footed, unfunny and just generally awful. Gunn apologized for them six years ago, which seemed to meet the 2012 standard of atonement. Last week, Cernovich, a Trump defender who routinely mobilizes his followers to go after ideological opponents with baseless smear campaigns, put mindless Twitter users to work tarring Gunn as a pedophile.

More:

https://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-daum-james-gunn-social-media-mobs-20180729-story.html

"God Help Us" - British Army Readied In Case Of Hard Brexit

Just as was extremely evident prior to the actual vote in 2016, scaremongering around Brexit (deal or no deal) is escalating among the cognoscenti or desperate Remain 'told you so'-ers.

Britain's Sunday Times reports that UK ministers have drawn up plans to send in the army to deliver food, medicines and fuel in the event of shortages if Britain crashes out of the EU without a deal.

Blueprints for the armed forces to assist the civilian authorities, usually used only in civil emergencies, have been dusted down as part of the "no deal" planning, with helicopters and army trucks used to ferry supplies to vulnerable people outside the southeast who were struggling to obtain the medicines they needed.

However, as ominous as this sounds, The Sunday Times admits - a number of paragraphs into their "Army on standby for no-deal Brexit emergency" story - that a source inside the Ministry of Defense said they have not yet received "a formal request" to assist the civilian authorities.

And while desperate not to have this positioned as the work of "Project Fear', pro-EU opposition MP David Lammy took aim at the news on Twitter saying: "God, help us. This is not coming from Remainers. This is not project fear. Pro-Brexit Ministers are drawing up blueprints for the army to deliver food, fuel and medicine if we leave the EU with no deal," adding his own touch of hysteria… "We have a duty to prevent this self-immolation."

God, help us. This is not coming from Remainers. This is not project fear. Pro-Brexit Ministers are drawing up blueprints for the army to deliver food, fuel and medicine if we leave the EU with no deal. We have a duty to prevent this self-immolation.https://t.co/ipWppDQIny

— David Lammy (@DavidLammy) July 29, 2018

However, as RT notes, the former Brexit secretary David Davis, who resigned from the position earlier this month over his dissatisfaction with a possible soft Brexit deal, dismissed the story as an attempt to scare people in order to secure a Free Trade Agreement “which will tank the economy.”

The plan of scaring the crap out of people with no deal horror stories in order to make an FTA which will tank the economy look like a good deal is beginning to work.https://t.co/gDpv2CQ0BF

— David Davis (@David_Davis_UK) July 29, 2018

Talk of shortages of food and medicines in the wake of a possible no-deal has come to the fore recently, with NHS bosses planning to stockpile key drugs and blood supplies in the event the service has to go on a permanent winter-crisis footing.

Supermarkets, meanwhile have told suppliers to make plans for a no-deal which could see them stockpile goods such a tea and coffee for periods much longer than normal.

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-07-29/god-help-us-british-army-readied-case-hard-brexit