CANBERRA, ACT – Australia’s leading university, the ANU, has discouraged staff from using ‘force-exclusive’ language such as ‘gravity’ to describe objective scientific realities.
Vice-Chancellor of the ANU, Professor Brian Schmidt, described the reasoning behind the decision.
“The ANU has come to realise that many of our scientific terms actually discriminate against certain sections of students.”
“We recognise that the concept of gravity brings with it hateful attitudes around individual’s weight, balance and personal physical world beliefs.”
“I am ashamed to say that I am as culpable as anyone in this regard, as in all my Nobel Prize and astrophysics work I never realised the damage I was doing to people’s feelings by basing my supernovae studies on these harmful terms.”
“We hope these changes will uplift transweight and minority post-scientific students so they can be free to fly!”
There has however been strong criticism of the move from several distinguished physicists.
Associate Professor Stoot Frankman has told the Damascus Dropbear that he sees the move as ‘unhinged from reality’.
“When I look at the world I see a set of incredible and profound physical laws designed for human flourishing.”
“I’m just not sure they have fully thought through the unintended consequences of removing the notion of gravity for the sake of avoiding offence.”
“People, and universities, can believe what they want – but as for me my feet are going to stay firmly planted on this solid rock.”
It is further reported that the ANU is looking to turn their ‘University inclusiveness audit’ towards medical treatments, mathematical calculations and engineering structures next.
Ben Davis: Cancel Culture Is About Control, The Grammys Just Proved It
Just days after it was announced that Looney Toons character, Pepé Le Pew, had been officially cancelled for encouraging “rape culture,” the woke Grammys hosted a performance so vulgar, that the National Center on Sexual Exploitation said it “could have been cut from a hardcore pornographic film.”
NCOSE’s slammed the CBS broadcast of Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion’s performance of the song “WAP,” saying it “contributed to the sexual exploitation of women by glamorizing prostitution and stripping.”Fight Censorship! Join Our Mailing List Today
“CBS allowed a glamorization of stripping and prostitution to be broadcast in front of a national audience – a portion of which were children – for no other reason than for TV ratings,” Dawn Hawkins, NCOSE’s senior vice president and executive director said in a statement.Advertisement
Hawkins continued, “Prostitution and stripping are never empowering for women, as they set up systems that exploit and oppress women. CBS has contributed to furthering the sexual exploitation of women and contributed to the ‘normalization’ of porn culture.”
While many have rightly highlighted the progressive Left’s double-standards, especially after recently taking the axe to 60-year-old children’s books, gendered potatoes, and cartoon skunks, it’s important to understand that these things are not really being “cancelled” because they are phobic, sexist, or racist.
“Cancel Culture” is not about censoring offensive content. If it were, we wouldn’t have Cardi B, or half of what passes as “entertainment” today. It’s about control. It’s about silencing the opponent. It always has been. That’s why the double-standards are so evident and the hypocrisy, so blatant.
Does anyone really believe these people are convinced that a cartoon love-drunk skunk is worse for kids than watching Cardi B swinging on a stripper pole near-naked while singing about “whores in the house” and “wet-a** p***y”? Of course not. They know exactly what they’re doing, and protecting the innocence of children and advancing social justice causes is not it.
That’s why they rage against Christmas carols like “Baby It’s Cold Outside,” while vulgar figures with greater influence on the culture are entirely overlooked, or even celebrated and promoted as icons.Advertisement
Their double-standards don’t merely prove they’re hypocrites. They prove they have another agenda. They want to desensitize us to their unsolicited intrusion into our lives. Before long, telling us what books we cannot read to our children will become telling us what books we must read to our children.
Make no mistake, “Cancel Culture” is nothing short of a political power flex. The language of social justice is simply employed to justify tyrannical demands for dominance while silencing objectors as phobic, sexist, racists.
The Grammys, and the deafening silence from the progressive Left, is proof that these sorts only exploit social justice causes when there’s political power to be gained in the process.Advertisement
So, while we’re busy debating the morality of Pepé Le Pew’s romantic exploits, and whether it’s ethical to assign a gender identity to a vegetable, these people are preparing for something far more sinister than deleting our children’s bedtime stories and daytime cartoons.
It starts with cancelling fictional characters we can live without. It’ll move to cancelling political parties, ideologies, and religious beliefs. It’ll end with cancelling people.
Don’t be distracted with debates about whether or not Dr Suess is a White Supremacist, or whether Pepé Le Pew is a rapist. They already know they’re not, and more than that, they don’t care either way. It’s all just a cover for tyranny because feigned virtue is merely the mask and cloak of those striving for total control and absolute dominance over our lives.
From Steve Kates. another reminder that every politician and nearly every economist is wrong:
A reminder that an economic stimulus has never ever led to a recovery
Since we are about to indulge in yet another “stimulus” I thought I would remind you of the last time this was tried with absolutely classical pre-Keynesian results. I will add that there has never been a single occasion when a stimulus returned an economy to full employment and strong rates of growth.
The stimulus actually led to a worse outcome than the predicted outcome if nothing at all was done. That is what any classical economist would have said would happen, but other than one or two here or there, no classical economists remain. So the entire profession just looked on, saw the manifest failure of the theories they all believed were true, and just blacked it out. Just as they have done on every occasion a Keynesian stimulus has been tried and inevitably failed.
NewsThe Christian head of the social media platform encourages conservatives to boycott leftist companies.
Shutterstock
February 5, 2021 (LifeSiteNews) – Andrew Torba, CEO of alt-tech social media platform Gab, called for a “silent secession” of Christians in a blog post earlier this week, urging conservatives to boycott Big Tech and other leftist companies.
“Over the course of the past week Gab has been deplatformed by one of our banks, a business we were working with to source new server hardware, third-party infrastructure analysis software, and even our accountant,” Torba announced. He also noted that Gab has been deplatformed by more than 25 service providers, including Apple and Google.
However, “I rejoice and praise God because I know that He is working to separate the wheat from the chaff,” the Christian tech founder said.
Despite being blacklisted, Gab has gained millions of new users since Twitter permanently banned President Donald Trump last month and unleashed a wide-ranging purge of conservative voices, according to Torba. Trump himself may have joined Gab, with the first new post from a dedicated Gab account made for him appearing Friday.
“At this point we have no choice but to ‘build our own’ everything. That starts by supporting those who are already building and share our values. It’s not about simply building our own social networking platforms anymore, it’s about building our own Christian economy,” Torba said.
“I am in the process of transitioning every part of my financial expenses to support Christian businesses, Christian media companies, Christian content creators, and Christian people,” he added. “I am done giving my money to The Enemy and funding the destruction of our country and values,” he said, encouraging “everyone else to do the same.”
“Deeply examine the businesses, brands, and media companies you currently support both financially and with your time,” Torba continued. “If they are not serving God, they are serving Satan.”
Along with Twitter and other Big Tech companies, multiple banks, email services, and at least one payment processor have cut ties with President Trump and fellow Republicans in recent weeks. More than a dozen companies, some of which excused Black Lives Matters riots, have halted donations to Republicans who objected to the certification of the 2020 election. — Article continues below Petition —PETITION: Dump Twitter and Big Tech for threatening our democracy and freedom of speech
64,578 have signed the petition.Thank you for signing this petition!
PETITION UPDATE (1/26/20) –
Twitter has again locked LifeSiteNews out of two of our accounts on the platform for displaying a message noting that President Joe Biden’s newly named Assistant Secretary of Health “Rachel” Levine is a man.
Both accounts displayed a simple message which read: “Biden names transgender ‘woman’ as Assistant Secretary of Health. ‘Rachel’ Levine is a father of two who divorced his wife in 2013 after 30 years of marriage.” The tweets also included a link to LifeSite’s article Biden names transgender ‘woman’ as Assistant Secretary of Health, and contained part of the opening sentence of that article, “Joe Biden has announced his intention to appoint a gender-confused man” as Assistant Secretary of Health.
For stating biological or Biblical truths, Twitter and Big Tech are trying to shut down conservative voices.
Therefore, it is now more important than ever to consider dumping Twitter, Google (who own YouTube) and Facebook. To be clear: LifeSite is still using Twitter and Big Tech to encourage others to migrate away from these illiberal platforms.
This is not the first time that LifeSiteNews has been censored by Twitter. In December 2019, Twitter indefinitely suspended our account for a tweet that linked to an article on transgender activist Jonathan “Jessica” Yaniv.
At the time, Twitter gave LifeSite the option to delete the tweet and reactivate our account right away. LifeSite remained steadfast that the tweet did not violate any of the company’s “rules and policies,” and sought several appeals with Twitter, while looking into legal action against the company.
And, while LifeSite’s account was eventually restored, we must now consider what course of action we will pursue in this case, over and above appealing the ban.
Meanwhile, since taking office on Wednesday last week, Joe Biden has already signed an executive order which will force women’s athletic programs, restrooms, and locker rooms to be open to men. He has also turned back the Trump administration’s policy protecting women’s sports programs in schools.
Last week, LifeSite was banned for two weeks from our YouTube channel, after the site determined that one of our videos about vaccines violated YouTube’s “community guidelines.” We are also in the middle of appealing this ban.
Please considering SIGNING and SHARING this petition. Thank you!
Twitter just deplatformed President Trump premanently! And, other conservatives, including General Flynn and Sidney Powell, were also summarily deplatformed.
Conservatives, Christians and freedom-loving Americans of all political persuasions must now take a decision to preserve their free speech AND their ability to peaceably assemble by dumping Twitter and Big Tech, and by finding other good alternatives to communicate with each other and share their opinions.
Please SIGN our petition-pledge to Dump Twitter and Big Tech, and take back your freedom of speech and privacy. [CLICK HERE for our “Goodbye Google” resources page to find good alternatives to Twitter, Facebook, Amazon, and Google!]
When you use Twitter or Facebook to communicate, and, or, Google and Amazon to search for something online, these companies can stifle your ability to share your thoughts and opinions and manipulate your search results, threatening your privacy, your freedom of speech, and even our democracy.
Evidence suggests that Twitter and Facebook’s ‘community guidelines’ are selectively enforced against conservatives and Christians, while Google rigs their search algorithms to direct traffic away from conservative and Christian websites, effectively choking traffic to those sites.
Simply put, Twitter, Facebook, Google (who owns YouTube) and Amazon appear to be actively suppressing access to pro-freedom, pro-family and pro-life news and opinion.
Don’t contribute to this assault on democracy: Stop using Twitter, Facebook, Google and Amazon as your default social media platforms and search engine! [CLICK HERE to find a good alternative to Google.]
To repeat: a few liberal and completely unaccountable computer programmers in Silicon Valley are dictating what we do and do not see in our Twitter and Facebook feeds, and in our Google searches.
We, here, at LifeSite, also recently had our Twitter account suspended by the company over “misgendering” a man who claims to be a woman.
And, since the November election, Twitter and Big Tech appear to have dramatically INCREASED their censorship of conservatives and Christians as the President Trump disputed the results of the election and when evidence of election fraud began to mount.
Now, it seems likely that they are trying to cut-off conservative leaders (like President Trump) from conservatives on the ground, and effectively exclude us from the national conversation.
But, this tactic will not work. Because Twitter, Facebook, Google and Amazon are not the only game in town! There are a good number of excellent alternatives which we list in our ‘Goodbye Google’ Resources page.
The great irony is that, while Twitter, Facebook, Google and Amazon executives talk a lot about maintaining freedom of speech and diversity, in fact, these hypocrites are ATTACKING free speech point-blank!
This kind of manipulation poses a lethal threat to our democracy, but as we see so clearly now, Twitter and Big Tech have shown no hesitation in excluding conservatives and Christians from the public square.
So, at this point, the only way to stop Twitter, Facebook, Google and Amazon is to quit using their platform.
Germany Weighs Electricity Rationing Scheme To Stabilise Its Now Shaky Green Power Grid
Putting matches in charge of fighting gasoline fires?
Even more interference appears to be the German government’s approach to solving the power grid mess that its earlier meddling created in the first place.
Germany struggles to keep the lights on, looks for a law to prevent its power grid from crashing.
Before the days of climate alarmism and hysteria, the job of deciding how to best produce electricity was left to power generation engineers and experts – people who actually understood it. The result: Germany had one of the most stable and reliable power grids worldwide.
Green energies destabilized the German power grid
Then in the 1990s, environmental activists, politicians, climate alarmists and pseudo-experts decided they could do a better job at generating power in Germany and eventually passed the outlandish EEG green energy feed-in act and rules. They insisted that wildly fluctuating, intermittent power supplies could be managed easily, and done so at a low cost.
Blackouts threaten
Fast forward to today: The result of all the government meddling is becoming glaringly clear: the country now finds itself on the verge of blackouts due to grid instability, has the highest electricity prices in the world, relies more on imports and is not even close to meeting its emissions targets.
Germany’s rickety and moody power grid now threatens the entire European power grid stability, as we recently witnessed.
The need for “smoothing out” demand peaks
So what solution does Berlin propose today? You guessed it: more meddling and interference, more outlandish bureaucrat solutions. Included among them are shutting down the remaining baseload coal-fired and nuclear power plants, and relying even more on the power sources that got the country into its current mess in the first place.
And new are restrictions as to when power can be consumed by consumers and industry! Energy rationing and targeted blackouts.
Cutting off e-vehicle battery chargers and industry
To deal with the power grid problems, Germany’s Economics Minister Peter Altmaier presented a draft law that would allow electric utilities “to temporarily cut off charging power for e-cars when there is once again too little electricity available”, an idea known as “peak smoothing”.
“Shutdowns due to power shortages have been practiced for some time. Aluminum smelters, for example, have to put up with having their power cut off for limited periods of time,” reports Tichys Einblick. “These, like refrigerated storage facilities, consume great amounts. It’s a dangerous game because after three hours the molten metal has solidified and the factory is ruined.”
Situation now “too critical”
The situation in the German power grid has deteriorated so much that Tichys Einblick also comments: “The situation in the power grids has become too critical. The only thing that helps are abstruse ideas like: ‘You are not allowed to refuel your car from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. every day!’”
A law that would allow for “peak smoothing” has been demanded by power utilities for some time now as they struggle to keep the increasingly wind and solar powered grid from careening out of control and into blackness. In other words: targeted blackouts.
And as Tichy Einblick mentions, the increasing number of cars on the market will only serve to cause more extreme power demand peaks. Currently Germany is set to make a major push into electric mobility this year.
No electricity for up to 2 hours a day
In the proposed draft law, which has since been recalled because it was deemed so embarrassing, it was written that “controllable consumption facilities” would be able to receive no electricity for up to two hours per day if there was a threat of overloading the grid.
“This includes charging stations for e-cars as well as heat pumps, which can already be temporarily disconnected from the power supply,” reports Tichy.
More burden on power grid
Currently there are only 33,000 electric car charging points in Germany, a country with over 50 million cars, and the government plans a vast expansion in the future, yet isn’t sure what that infrastructure should look like. It’s a policy of going full speed in total blackness and hoping there won’t be a brick wall in the way.
Government admits it’s not going to function
Tichy comments further: “The German government has recognized that in the future electricity system, it will no longer be possible to satisfy every demand at all times. Therefore, the control of the consumer side should be put on legal feet.” […] “Controllable consumers such as heat pumps, electric heaters and wall-boxes, i.e. charging stations for e-mobiles, would then be switched off variably at times.”
This is the sorry state of Germany’s once highly regarded power grid.
I pressed the “Delete” button on Facebook yesterday.
The last straw for me was the suspension of President Trump’s account. I put up with the claims of political censorship, the manipulation of algorithms, the massive privacy breaches, the ever-increasing ads….
When an American platform deletes the current President of the United States, it seems to me that there is a line of political contempt and arrogance that has been crossed.
I am sad to be missing out on the opportunities for sharing with people and for the huge platform that Facebook offers. On the other hand, I did live most of my life without Facebook.
I am sure there will be another better, more free medium that emerges, and when it does I will be there. In the meantime I will be blogging more and I am also on mewe.com and xapit.com
“Tyranny in democratic republics does not proceed in the same way, however. It ignores the body and goes straight for the soul. The master no longer says: You will think as I do or die. He says: You are free not to think as I do. You may keep your life, your property, and everything else. But from this day forth you shall be as a stranger among us.” – Alexis De Tocqueville, Democracy in America
Imagine a future where a benevolent all-seeing and all-powerful censor quietly manipulates everything you see, hear and watch; tracks and limits everyone you communicate with and determines what information is spread, and what is suppressed. No form of communication exists which does not pass through the filters of the censors.
So powerful are these censors that they can suppress not only information, but people too. No one is immune from this gentle yet persistent form of persecution, and even the most senior in government are routinely ‘non-personed’; though they still live, they are rendered voiceless. This is not the theme of some 20th century dystopian novel, but the world we inhabit in 2021.
The spotty tech-geeks of Silicon valley have accrued, along with their billions and our indifference, an overwhelming monopoly over communications during the past decade. They have now matured from adolescent cyber-nerds tinkering with their early IT systems into greying and sinister tyrants who mouth slogans like “Don’t Be Evil” as they continue to consolidate their domination over the most advanced tool of social control ever built; the centralised internet.
We have been sacrificing our privacy and free expression in return for centralised convenience online for some time, but 2021 is already proving to be the year when the libertarian pretensions that typified the early internet are finally falling away like dross, leaving behind the glistening ore of raw power. While the rest of us spent 2020 largely muzzled, in 2021 their mask has slipped.
So complete is their monopoly that they can now silence even the most powerful man in the world; the President of the United States. Since protestors broke into the US Capitol Building, Facebook and Instagram have blamed the President Trump with inciting an ‘insurrection’ and banned the President from communicating with the public indefinitely. Twitter has permanently banned the President from their platform. YouTube have introduced a removal policy for accounts that question the US election results, and regularly bans dissenting content.
Tiktok have cancelled Trump-related hashtags, claiming that ‘Hateful behavior and violence have no place’ on the Chinese-owned platform. Reddit has removed Trump-related Subreddits. Shopify has cancelled Trump’s online stores. Google and Apple have removed alternative social media competitors from their app-stores, and Amazon, claiming that they “pose a very real risk to public safety” has ceased web-hosting such rival platforms as Parler, effectively removing it from the internet until it can rebuild the site, as Parler’s CEO John Matze said, “from scratch” with another host. Why is this happening?
Visitors to our web-site, and indeed to other web sites, may have noticed this ReCaptcha logo on its pages.
Like just about every web site on the planet, we have at times been inundated by spam where automated computer scripts known as bots try to automatically fill in forms to send marketing messages to web site owners, for whatever nefarious purpose they think it might achieve.
For some time, web site operators have used various methods to try to filter out the bots and ensure that only humans fill in the forms. Some of these methods include distorted letters, questions easily answered by humans but less so by computers (e.g. “what is the third word in this list?”), or my favourite: “tick this box if you are not a robot.”
The latest version is v. 3 which requires no human interaction at all. It sits in the background analysing the page clicks and interactions with the page to try to work out whether the user is likely to be a person. Bots are rejected and people are allowed through. If there is a grey area, a challenge screen is opened to try to confirm the identity of the user.
No doubt, a v. 4 will be needed soon as the arms race between web sites and invasive bots continues.
U.S.—Across the country, there is general consensus that 2020 has been the “worst year ever.” According to studies, 82% of Americans agree that 2020 has been a terrible year of unprecedented suffering and misery. Experts confirmed that 2020 was indeed the worst year, provided you have never lived in virtually any other time period in all of human history.
“We noticed that most of the respondents who called 2020 the worst year also enjoyed delicious food being delivered to them for 8 months while they sat on their couches with the air conditioning on and binge-watched shows the whole time,” said one researcher.
“While we understand it hasn’t been easy, we also found very few instances of Viking raids, Black Plague, famine, world war, using rotary telephones, needing to look things up in a physical dictionary, slavery, people being burned at the stake, walking miles to school, living in caves, sleeping on the ground, ice ages, Nazi holocausts, civil war, infant mortality, global floods, ethnic cleansing, using leaves as toilet paper, using leeches as medicine, using wooden mallets as an anesthetic, fighting wild saber-tooth tigers, cannibalism, occupation by the Persian Empire… what was I talking about again? Oh yeah– most people in 2020 never experienced any of those things, so comparatively speaking it’s been a pretty decent year!”
“Worst. Year. Ever.” Tweeted one local man who has been making more money than most Zambians make in a lifetime — all from the comfort of his computer.
“Can 2020 be over yet??” Tweeted a New York fashion executive whose preferred candidate just won the presidential election.
“I just can’t anymore. Ugh!” exclaimed another after Uber got his dinner order wrong.
The only exception was one oddball who walked out of his front door and took a deep breath of the morning air. “Thank you, God, for this amazing air!” he said. The oddball has been detained for further scientific study to figure out what the heck is wrong with him.
New Life Narrabri 