In case you missed it, the U.S. Government responded to Elon Musk buying Twitter by establishing an office to control “disinformation” aka “The Ministry of Truth.”
Very disturbing.
freedom
That’s a Wrap!
From: https://afipn.com.au/thats-a-wrap/
Peter Chris February 19, 2022 3 min read
You know you are living in strange times when a British Rapper makes more sense than groups of “experts” such as Ozsage and politicians when it comes to managing and understanding humanity during a pandemic.
Nzube Olisaebuka Udezue, better known by his stage name Zuby, is a British rapper. Born in Luton, Udezue was raised in Saudi Arabia and England and graduated from St Edmund Hall, Oxford, in 2007. In 2006, he started his rapping career and pursued it full-time in 2011 and has released numerous albums.
Here is a list of the twenty things he observed about humanity during the Covid Pandemic.
- Most people would rather be in the majority than be right.
- At least 20% of the population has strong authoritarian tendencies, which will emerge under the right conditions.
- Fear of death is only rivalled by the fear of social disapproval. The latter could be stronger.
- Propaganda is just as effective in the modern day as it was 100 years ago. Access to limitless information has not made the average person any wiser.
- Anything and everything can and will be politicised by the media, government, and those who trust them.
- Many politicians and large corporations will gladly sacrifice human lives if it is conducive to their political and financial aspirations.
- Most people believe the government acts in the best interests of the people. Even many who are vocal critics of the government.
- Once they have made up their mind, most people would rather to commit to being wrong than admit they were wrong.
- Humans can be trained and conditioned quickly and relatively easily to significantly alter their behaviours – for better or worse.
- When sufficiently frightened, most people will not only accept authoritarianism, but demand it.
- People who are dismissed as ‘conspiracy theorists’ are often well researched and simply ahead of the mainstream narrative.
- Most people value safety and security more than freedom and liberty, even if said ‘safety’ is merely an illusion.
- Hedonic adaptation occurs in both directions, and once inertia sets in, it is difficult to get people back to ‘normal’.
- A significant percentage of people thoroughly enjoy being subjugated.
- ‘The Science’ has evolved into a secular pseudo-religion for millions of people in the West. This religion has little to do with science itself.
- Most people care more about looking like they are doing the right thing, rather than actually doing the right thing.
- Politics, the media, science, and the healthcare industries are all corrupt, to varying degrees. Scientists and doctors can be bought as easily as politicians.
- If you make people comfortable enough, they will not revolt. You can keep millions docile as you strip their rights by giving them money, food, and entertainment.
- Modern people are overly complacent and lack vigilance when it comes to defending their own freedoms from government overreach.
- It’s easier to fool a person than to convince them that they have been fooled.
Imagine if the politicians had this amount of common sense and courage so they could challenge and say no to some of the ridiculous and outright moronic Covid rules demanded by the experts to keep us all safe instead of shaming people’s concerns and calling them conspiracy theorists which is nothing more than a derogatory title used to dismiss critical thinking.
I, like most of you reading this article long for the day when the final scene of this pandemic horror movie is finished, and we hear the words “that’s a wrap” but for now we have to be content with a Rapper making more sense than so-called experts who have never missed a day off work or a cent of their pay.
No Religious Liberty in Australia
There is no religious liberty in Australia.
The Citipointe Controversy – Christians Are Second-Class Citizens
The Citipointe debacle is a sobering revelation of where conservative Australian Christians stand in terms of our ability to forthrightly express our basic beliefs within our own institutions.
Religious freedom is now a second-tier right in Australia. This is the obvious conclusion from the controversy surrounding Brisbane’s Citipointe Christian College.
If religious people cannot join together and publicly form schools to educate their children without first paying homage to LGBTQIA+ sensitivities, then religious freedom is no longer a fundamental principle.
Religious liberty — a once cherished freedom — is now a disfavoured right, seen by many as a licence for bigotry and hatred. And so religious freedom cannot be tolerated, even when there is no evidence that anyone has been harmed.
A Christian Education
Citipointe Christian College began February by advertising their Christian principles to prospective students and their families.
They believed homosexuality was a sin and they required students to enrol according to their biological sex.
None of this was remarkable. The clue was in the name – Citipointe Christian College.
For 2,000 years Christians have believed sex is a gift from God to be enjoyed within the bounds of marriage. And the Bible defines marriage as a lifelong, exclusive union between a man and a woman. Any sex outside of that — whether premarital, extramarital, or homosexual — is a sin. Oh, and sex is binary. God created us male and female.
So you have to be okay with a Christian worldview to enrol at Citipointe Christian College. Again, the clue to all of this is in the name.
Control
If you just can’t survive without waving a rainbow flag, or if you just can’t resist the urge to change pronouns and start using bathrooms for which you are anatomically unsuited, then Citipointe is not the school for you. And, sadly, your choice of schools is reduced by one to literally hundreds.
But activists didn’t want to send their children to an ‘enlightened’ school where their views on sexuality would be celebrated. They demanded the Christian school change its ethos to accommodate them.
Bizarrely, they even argued that the Christian thing for the Christian college to do would be to change their Christian ethic to something other than Christian and, in so doing, show themselves to be true Christians.
Such an absurd proposition could only be reasonable to people whose ‘Pride’ has now ripened into full-blown narcissism, wherein they now believe the entire world — including Jesus Himself — should orbit around them.
The school’s enrolment contract drew widespread outrage, with a petition calling for its recall gaining more than 155,800 signatures in a matter of days. This was highly significant in the eyes of journalists who seemed to think biblical truth, like politics, was almost entirely a matter of polling.
Read the rest of the article here
Freedom Day!
Today is Freedom Day in New South Wales.
The masks are gone.
The QR codes are gone
Vaccinated people can share the same space with the unvaxxed.
I felt quite naughty going to the Crossing Theatre with no mask and not even pretending to check in.
Let’s pray that these liberties are not quickly given up again.
We also had 1360 new cases today, which makes me wonder why we did all of that llockdown and masking stuff.
Despite the high case number,s hospitalisations remain low (166) showing that the vaccine is working and the pandemic is progressing normally with the initial high fatality strains giving way to low fatality but quickly transmitted strains.
“It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.” Galatians 5:1
The End Is Nigh
The End Is Nigh!
After months of lockdowns, restrictions, and unprecedented attacks on freedom, the Covid pandemic is nearly done. I am so looking forward to ditching the masks for ever – as soon as I put one on, I feel my whole body tense up.
I am thankful to be living in New South Wales which has generally gone through the panic with a lighter touch than other States. We have kept open borders and minimal lockdowns. Other States have scorned this lighter touch, but we are coming out earlier than those states.
So, God willing, by December there will be very few restrictions in force. We can get back to life as normal.
Covid has been a great disruptor over the last two years. Many have died, others have become extremely ill.
For christians, the Good News is that even in this messy tme, God has been with us and contrinues to be with us.Of all people, we have the right to be hopeful.
As we move towards summer, Christmas, and freedom, remember that our God is greater – greater than the virus, greater than the Government, greater even than death.
The Infectious Diseases Hall of Fame
JD Morecambe: Each time you pick up your mobile you forge another chain in your manacles.
JD Morecambe writes:
“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?
Read the full article here
Bill Muehlenberg: We all should be alarmed
The Rise of Statism and the Reduction of the Individual
We all should be alarmed at government overreach in the corona crisis:
“Gathering outdoors is the next freedom to be restored,” said a front-page article from the Daily Telegraph. Um, am I the only one who was shocked by that sentence – and others like it? Gosh, isn’t that swell of the State to allow us to go outside a bit. So very kind of them.
Um, since when was it the right of governments to simply take away our right to freely assemble as we decide in the first place? Am I now supposed to grovel before the State and thank them profusely if they take away my right to eat or breathe and then ever so graciously give it back – if I behave?
I have said it before and I will keep saying it (no matter how much the alarmists dislike me for doing so): The two most shocking things about the corona crisis are these: one, the absolute speed and ease in which governments have shut down and locked down entire nations; and two, the ready, eager and unquestioning acceptance of all this by the masses.
BTW, I have been saying this for several months now. However, just moments ago I saw a brand-new article by Dennis Prager in which he says this: “But the ease with which police state tactics have been employed and the equal ease with which most Americans have accepted them have been breathtaking.” Hmm, we sure seem to be on the same page here.
And all this has utterly shocked me and saddened me. Yes it really has. Worse yet, I fully realise that the only thing so many folks are worried about is when their beloved footy team will be playing again. But there actually are some things that matter a whole lot more. Like freedom. Like the individual. Like democracy. Like the rule of law. Like the ability to think for oneself and ask questions.
But far too many folks really do not seem to give a rip that so much of this is being taken away from us. The masses just do not seem to care. The sheeple could not be bothered with even raising an eyebrow here. Too many simply trust the government implicitly. ‘My country right or wrong’ has now morphed into ‘My State right or wrong.’
And even more shocking is how many Christians have fallen into line here. ‘Well the government said it, so it must be right. Who am I to question?’ And, ‘Why are you so worried about technology? What could ever go wrong?’ Hmm, why do I suspect that far too many of these naïve, apathetic and undiscerning believers would just as happily intone, ‘The State is my shepherd’?
Or as Ben Davis has recently put it:
Our Government in Canberra,
Hallowed be thy name,
Give us this day our daily support payments,
And increase our debts.
Lead us not into temptation to violate your stay at home orders,
But deliver us from COVID-19.
For the power and glory are yours,
Amen
Yes, there is a place for taking sensible precautions, for some government intervention, and for some limited restrictions on our liberties. I have been saying this from day one as well. But we seem to have gone far beyond this. If the State tells us to download a questionable app, most folks will do it. If the State tells us to snitch on our neighbours, most folks will do it. If the State tells us that we cannot leave our homes unless the State allows us to, most folks will do it.
And when Big Tech and the Big State get into bed together and fully support each other in this draconian overreach and abuse of power, then you know we really are getting to the end of freedom as we know it. I have been documenting this for quite a while now, but for too many folks it simply goes in one ear and out the next.
Let me offer just one scary case in point of what we are up against. For a few days now I – and millions of others – have shared a very important, fact-filled video of two California doctors sharing informed, balanced and evidence-filled concerns about the accepted narrative on corona.
They have dared to ask how a nation-wide lockdown makes any sense, based on all that we now know about COVID-19, how it spreads, who is really at risk, and so on. It was seen over 5.5 million times. But then YouTube decided that you – the people – are too stupid and it is too dangerous to have a video like this being seen.
So they pulled it. The head honcho said that only points of view that go along with groups like WHO will be allowed. Um, if anyone thinks that WHO has handled this whole crisis well, they need to go to the back of the class. Here is just one of many pieces on the appallingly bad way that WHO has dealt with this: thefederalist.com/2020/04/09/why-the-who-is-a-danger-to-public-health/
And see this damning expose of the head of WHO: www.breitbart.com/politics/2020/04/10/5-shocking-facts-about-who-chief-tedros-adhanom-ghebreyesus/
But the censors and mind-controllers at YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, and so on have all decided that certain ideas and points of view are now verboten. The people will NOT be allowed to get a differing point of view. You will only be allowed to hear what the State thinks you should hear. But I refuse to submit, and the full 68-minute video can be seen here: newtube.app/user/anthony/GlkxUvo
Please watch it and share it. One article explains the situation with this pulled video:
Drs. Dan Erickson and Artin Massihi … decried California’s COVID-19 related lockdown in particular on medical and economic grounds. Part 1 carried the heart of the doctors’ remarks in about 50 minutes…. They focused on their own experience and widened the discussion to take in California generally. They made many of the same points we have been making here over the past month, but tied the discussion to their experience as physicians and owners in the business of treating patients in need of urgent care.
Laura Ingraham invited Dr. Erickson on for a segment of her FOX News show last night, and she got action! As events transpired, she was able to report in real time that YouTube had removed the viral part 1 video following the segment — for violating YouTube’s terms of service, of course. www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2020/04/was-it-something-he-said-4.php
Another Fox News host who has constantly been trying to sound the alarm on all this is Tucker Carlson. This short video clip is also must-viewing and must-sharing: video.foxnews.com/v/6152742822001
In it examines the collusion of Big Tech and Big Government, discusses the censored video, and then says this: “Of all the many ironies of this moment, so many of them bitter, the hardest to swallow is this one: As we fight this virus, we are becoming far more like the country that spawned it – we are becoming more like China. It’s horrifying.”
I mentioned just above a new piece by Dennis Prager. Let me speak to it a bit further. In it he offers these 4 signs of a police state:
No. 1: Draconian laws depriving citizens of elementary civil rights.
No. 2: A mass media supportive of the state’s messaging and deprivation of rights.
No. 3: Use of police.
No. 4: Snitches.
He concludes the article this way:
It is said that about 1 in every 100 East German citizens were informers for the Stasi, the East German secret police, as superbly portrayed in the film “The Lives of Others.” It would be interesting, and, I think, important, to know what percentage of New Yorkers informed on their fellow citizens. Now, again, you may think such a comparison is not morally valid, that de Blasio’s call to New Yorkers to serve a Stasi-like role was morally justified given the coronavirus pandemic. But you cannot deny it is Stasi-like or that, other than identifying spies during World War II, this is unprecedented in American history at anywhere near this level.
This past Friday night, I gathered with six others for a Shabbat dinner with friends in Santa Monica, California. On my Friday radio show, I announced I would be doing that, and if I was arrested, it would be worth it. In my most pessimistic dreams, I never imagined that in America, having dinner at a friend’s house would be an act of civil disobedience, perhaps even a criminal act. But that is precisely what happens in a police state. townhall.com/columnists/dennisprager/2020/04/28/our-dress-rehearsal-for-a-police-state-n2567744
Lastly, let me take that final point about snitching and share what another writer has said about it:
That is not America. In East Germany, the Communists built a collective of informants. In the Soviet Union, informing on your neighbors and even your parents proved your loyalty to the state. This behavior has no place here. We’re Americans. Our first allegiance is not to the state, but to each other. In America, treason is not a betrayal of the state, but of the rights of the individual to be free of the state. Socialists betray the individual to the state and their pandemic response reinforces that first betrayal of the individual. It is no coincidence that the 1-800-INFORM phenomenon has taken root in the blue parts of the country. The culture of informants values the collective and suppresses the individual.
To the socialist, governments never fail. The experts are always wise and the public officials all-knowing. Government only fails because individuals subvert, sabotage, and undermine its well-meaning efforts. The informant helps the authorities redirect the blame for their failures by locating individual scapegoats. A nation of informants can only arise in a socialist system where people put the state first. They scowl and plot against their neighbors, spying and informing on them for the freedom they feel in their souls. The pandemic is a threat to the body of the nation, but 1-800-INFORM threatens the soul. thewashingtonstandard.com/1-800-inform-report-your-neighbors-to-authorities-its-the-un-american-way/
There are so many things happening right now that should concern every single one of us. And what concerns me so very much is that so few people seem concerned at all!
Lessons From The Lock Down
The so-called lock down in Australia has not been as draconian as in other places, at least not in law. The nightly scolding by politicians, though, keeps people in their place. And if they stray, then the police are always ready to hand out $1000+ fines.
I have learned some things about people and about myself during this time that I would not have expected.
- People give up their hard earned rights and freedoms with very little care. Who would have though a few months ago that we would willingly embrace the closing down of churches, pubs and restaurants? Freedom of association is a basic human right, yet we have surrendered that without any debate.
- Who would have thought that police would roam the streets, stopping people to ask them where they are going, and to send them back if they don’t have a reasonable excuse?
- I have seen disturbing signs of the contempt of the young towards the old that has come from the fact that many victims of the corona virus are elderly.
- No surprise, but I thought I wouldn’t see it in Australia. Politicians who take your rights away will not readily let go of their power. The “crisis” must go on longer than first expected. People will have to agitate to get their freedom back.
I have also learned some things about myself in this time. The chief thing among them is that I am not so nearly introverted as I thought.
Extroverts are people who find energy from being with other people, while introverts find energy in being alone. Extroverts like to party when they are down to help them forget, while introverts like to spend time alone to work things out and find energy to face life.
I have discovered that I love people, physically present people, people that you can touch and see their body language. Yes too much of that and I tire easily, but they are people that God loves and Jesus died for, and I love them too. I miss them.
Although I am a bit of a tech fan, and have always seen ways for computers and other devices to make life simpler, looking at people on a screen is no substitute for being in the room together. I love small groups partly because you can talk seriously with one another. But the camera and the screen put up a wall between people.
I miss worship. Yes I can worship God however and wherever I like. But corporate worship is something else. People have been live streaming their services, but that seems to me to be to worship what porn is to marriage. You can have all the same bits present but it misses the point. Worship is never about a good band and a preacher performing, while the rest of us watch on. Worship is about the gathered people of God, together expressing praise and adoration to the Lord. I don’t care what anybody says, you can’t do that by way of a screen, and whatever a live stream is it isn’t worship.
I don’t know how long this lock down will last, but I suspect that with declining deaths and declining new cases the pressure will be growing for politicians to wind back the restrictions.
As they do that we need to make sure that we end up with the full restorations of freedom and human rights.
Corona Will Steal Your Freedom
In Italy, a priest who was celebrating Mass in an empty church, streamed to people keeping a safe distance outside, was raided by local police and told he had to stop- despite following the regulations. He finished the Mass.
I’m not going to promote any conspiracy theories, but we do need to be wary of Governments seizing this opportunity to further restrict our rights, and to keep those restrictions long after the threat is over. These are gifts not just freedom of religious observance, but freedom of association, freedom of speech, freedom to move.
Because that is what Governments do. They “protect” us by restricting us, using fear to get us to acquiesce to things we normally would never accept.
Don’t believe me? How many people thought church services would be shut down in Australia two weeks ago?
How long will these restrictions be here for? Well we’ve gone from “a few weeks” to “up to six months.”
We must keep pushing back against these restrictions, demanding that normal freedoms be returned to us as soon as the crisis is over.
New Life Narrabri 
