With the kerfuffle in Washington, where the international elites are busy with their propaganda war against Trumpieboy. it's hard to know what is going on.
As the Chinese proverb goes: May you live in interesting times.
The censorship over covid suggests a deeper problem: Especially when Dr Blix admits she essentially lied about the shutdown, knowing the lie about two weeks to flatten the curve was about a longer shut down of society. And the way Lancet and other medical journals censored the origin of the virus to protect ecohealth and it's involvment with gain of function research has undermined my trust in medical journals...
The Gell-Mann amnesia effect is a cognitive bias describing the tendency of individuals to critically assess media reports in a domain they are knowledgeable about, yet continue to trust reporting in other areas despite recognizing similar potential inaccuracies.
the opening of Twitter files showing the extent of how the government ordered social media to do this was the tipping point for many of us.
A discussion of why freedom of speech is discussed here, by one of the reporters who examined the twitter censorship problem.
this is from 3 years ago and explains why Nunes and Patel are feared.
Nunes was the point man in Congress, but congress investigates but can't get the evidence or do anything about bad stuff?
here is a follow up from two months ago:
Nunes got destroyed with a bimbo eruption problem, but presumably Patel will also be threatened.
this spying must be going on today because one other of Trump's proposed selections is getting a full court press trying to destroy him that includes a private email from his mother from eight years ago telling him to calm down.
On Wednesday, Pete Hegseth’s mother accused the Times of making “threats” by calling about its story on an email she had sent to her son six years earlier that criticized his treatment of women.
Penelope Hegseth sought and received an interview on Fox News Channel to support her son, whose confirmation chances are threatened by a series of damaging stories about his personal conduct. At one point, she said she wanted to directly tell President-elect Trump that her son “is not that man he was seven years ago.”
and who released this email to the mainstream media? If an anonymous person tried this, the reporter would ignore it. So one suspects the one who leaked the email had known connections either to the government or to a large organization who felt they were above the law.
Alas even while these illegal misuse of government power for political reasons is being brought to light, the manipulations continue.
and it's not just email: You might find you can't open a bank account or find that your bank account is canceled.
An increasing number of Christian and conservative organizations say they're being 'de-banked.' Accounts are closed, payment processors are turned off, or some are placed on a donor 'blacklist.'
Banking and financial services have become weaponized. Christian and conservative groups labeled 'high risk' can be denied financial services, and it's happening under the cover of federal banking laws.
the article sites several small organizations, but this one, the National foundation for religious freedom, I am familiar with because they fight for religious freedom.
But abuses to stop freedom of speech and freedom of religion go beyond banks worried about these organizations laundering money etc. which of course happens (faith based organizations are naive and tend to be targets for fraudsters. Heck, the infiltration of the Mafia into the Vatican banks has been an ongoing story for 100 years.)
But it goes beyond banks: Catholic newspaper NCRegister, article from last week on the Biden's push against religious organizations and individual people of faith.
So where do you get the news? A lot has been published about Trumpieboy going to Joe Rogan and how the takeback of Twitter to make it open to free speech has changed things. But religiously linked news organizations have followed the story too: CBN and NCRegister are Christian and Epoch news was started as a way to get out the news of China's persecution of the FalunGong and grew into a major source of news.
WAPO law article notes that in NYC you can be fined a quarter million dollars if you use the wrong pronoun. And notes:
Feel uncomfortable about being forced to use terms that express social status views (“Milord”) or religious views (“Your Holiness”) that you may not endorse? Well, you should feel uncomfortable about people being forced to use “ze,” which expresses a view about gender that they might not endorse. And, more broadly, I think we should all feel uncomfortable about government regulators forcing people to say things that convey and support the government’s ideology about gender.
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thhere are so many absurd items about the bathroom laws that I moved the rant to my rant blog.
Children, youth, and parents in these difficult situations deserve compassion, sensitivity, and respect. All of these can be expressed without infringing on legitimate concerns about privacy and security on the part of the other young students and parents. The federal regulatory guidance issued on May 13 does not even attempt to achieve this balance. It unfortunately does not respect the ongoing political discussion at the state and local levels and in Congress, or the broader cultural discussion, about how best to address these sensitive issues. Rather, the guidance short-circuits those discussions entirely.
this is ignored by the press, as are Muslim opinions that mandate modesty in bathrooms.
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Related item:
Obama has just lost a big Supreme court case unanimously against the Little Sisters of the Poor because the SC noted the government went out of their way to prosecute instead of finding a compromise. From the WSJ:
the aim in religious-liberty cases is not accommodation but submission.
In this case for example, when the justices asked the Obama administration if there were any ways to provide women contraceptives other than hijacking the Little Sisters’ health plan against their will, the administration hemmed and hawed, first answering “no” until it conceded that maybe it could be done.
In short, the Obama administration’s goal was not just getting contraceptives to women. It was also to do so in a way designed to force religious groups such as the Little Sisters to cry “uncle.”
(italics mine).
this last part is important, because without you being told, Obama's officials have decided that hospitals will have to allow sex change operations and abortions if they receive "federal funding". Again, this was not in the law: It is a bureaucratic interpretation of a regulation in the huge Obamacare law that no body read.
This is aimed a coercing hospitals associated tihe Catholics and SeventhDay Adventists, of course.
and in the future, if this is allowed to stand, will force all hospitals and doctors to euthanize patients.
all of this sounds like culture war redux: But even if you agree with Obama's opinions, from a constitutional viewpoint, you should worry.
It is bad enough when the Supreme court over and over agains discards legal history and the common law tradition to impose the viewpoint of a small elite. But at least most Americans will obey, because they respect the constitution and see the court as part of the constitution.
But unelected bureaucratic lawmaking is not constitutional. And deciding to interpret obscure regulations to include things that were never imagined by the Congress who passed the law is now being done at many levels.
report HERE about banning one troublemaker from the Chinese equivalent of facebook:
the recent suppression of property mogul Ren Zhiqiang has caught many by surprise as Ren is “a second generation red”, whose father was a recognised communist, and is considered both a patriot and a Chinese Communist Party (CCP) loyalist.Ren had earned the nickname “the Cannon” or “China’s Donald Trump” for his provocative opinions and blunt criticism of government policies.His Weibo account, which had more than 37 million followers, was shut down at the end of February after he dared to comment on Xi's media policy that demanded party loyaltyfrom all state media.The case has thus become a political thermometer on Xi's attitudes towards internal ideological differences inside the party, with the silencing of Ren raising the question of whether anyone can truly be deemed safe from future political purges.
weibo is the Chinese "microblogging" site, similar to facebook or twitter, and is one way that netcitizens get around the "great firewall" of China, since kids use their cellphones for sharing messages.
Something to remember when you read all the happy happy propaganda plants in the media about China.
For the first time religious extremists, such as Taliban, are being
vehemently criticised in the public. During an address to a public rally
in Karachi, MQM's head, Mr. Altaf Hussain, described Taliban as ‘inhumane, stone age people'.
and they discuss the "disinformation" campaign spreading conspiracy theories to confuse people.
"A 25 Bahman (14 February) Facebook page was recently launched, and already more than 18,000 people have joined. On this page there is information for protesters to print and distribute, and videos including newscasts about the Egyptian protest movement.
The poster below invites people to demonstrate in Tehran on February 14 and also mention Article 27 of the Iranian Constitution which provides for freedom of assembly without arms, and as long as the assemblies “are not detrimental to the fundamental principles of Islam.”
----------------------------- The most humane way to kill a lobster is to...boil it alive?
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The P2P police are alive and well and coming for college students downloading Blackeyedpeas songs on Limewire. Bad news: Schools across the country ...have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to install anti-file-sharing systems on their network.
Even worse news: It can't tell legal downloads from illegal ones.
---------------------------------------- Here's something to be grateful about: The Beatles wanted to film Lord of the Rings, but JRRT who owned film rights stopped them.
------------------------------------ and finally: Puppy Chic: see more Must Have Cute
Chris O'Donnell: Not only supports traditional morality, but is a (GASP!) Tolkien fan... the horror...the horror...
Best comment:Perfect! Now we will have someone who knows how to handle the orcs in Washington!
-------------------------- FYI: from a medical standpoint, given the increase in STD's since 2000, including an internet fueled HIV and syphillis epidemic in MSM, there is much to be said about speaking negatively about behavior that contributes to the epidemic of STD's (costing the public $18 billion since 1994) and stopping the epidemics of chlamydia in women and congenital syphillis in kids.
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when courts order crosses put up by private groups commemorating deaths to be taken down... this one is to commemorate State troopers, but private shrines/crosses by families where their loved ones die are also being ordered removed by various government officials...
The bill requires all citizens to stand at attention and sing “with fervor” the national anthem when being played...Citizen’s arrest or arrest aided by security personnel or ushers in movie houses may be done on violators, it added.
Here's the national Anthem, for your enjoyment. Turn up speakers and sing along!
