If the USA can survive as a nation another ten years I would be surprised. Why, would I say that? Well, ‘After Kyle Rittenhouse was acquitted of all charges from the Kenosha shooting, Best Buy and Levi Strauss reportedly offered their employees counseling to those distressed over the verdict. Levi’s offered a session with a “racial trauma specialist” for workers distraught over the acquittal of Rittenhouse — who is white — shooting three white men who assailed him.
Elizabeth Morrison — Levi’s chief diversity, equity, and inclusion officer — sent an email to employees of the San Francisco-based clothing company following the Rittenhouse verdict in Wisconsin.
“With the news that Kyle Rittenhouse was not convicted in the shooting of three individuals — two of whom lost their lives — during racial justice protests last year, this is a difficult day for many,” the email read.
Is America savable? Not if the following is allowed. ‘President Joe Biden’s nominee to regulate banks stole hundreds of dollars of merchandise from a discount retail store, according to a police report revealed Wednesday.
Saule Omarova, whom Biden tapped to serve as Comptroller of the Currency, was arrested after she was caught stuffing $214 worth of clothes, shoes, cologne, and belts in her purse at a T.J. Maxx in Madison, Wis., in May 1995. Omarova was 28 years old at the time and studying for her doctorate at the University of Wisconsin.
Omarova is slated to appear before the Senate Banking Committee for her confirmation hearing Thursday. If confirmed, Omarova will oversee regulation of the country’s banking system. The police report, published by the American Accountability Foundation, could get her into further hot water with Senate Republicans who say she supports radical economic policies.
Sen. Pat Toomey (R., Pa.), the ranking member of the Senate Banking Committee, has pressed Omarova to turn over a copy of a thesis she wrote on Karl Marx while studying at Moscow State University in the late 1980s. Omarova, who attended the school on a Lenin scholarship, scrubbed her résumé of a reference to the Marx thesis at some point over the last few years.
Omarova, a professor at the Cornell Law School, has said she wants to “end banking as we know it” by requiring bank deposits to be held with the Federal Reserve, rather than private banks. Omarova has also proposed the creation of a federal agency, the National Investment Authority, that would fulfill the goals of the Green New Deal by investing in infrastructure projects. Omarova said one goal of the National Investment Authority would be for oil and gas companies to go “bankrupt” in order to fight climate change.
Omarova will likely need unanimous Democratic support in order to be confirmed, but some moderates have expressed concern about her views. Sen. Jon Tester (D., Mont.), a member of the Senate Banking Committee, said he has not decided whether he will vote to confirm Omarova. Sens. Joe Manchin (D., W.Va.) and Kyrsten Sinema (D., Ariz.) are reportedly on the fence about her nomination.
The White House downplayed the theft allegations against Omarova in a statement to Fox News prior to the release of the police report. A White House spokesperson said Omarova has been “fully transparent” about the incident by disclosing it to the Senate Banking Committee, and that her arrest was the result “of a misunderstanding and confusing situation.”
The police report contradicts that claim. According to the report, Omarova “admitted to have stolen the items,” which consisted of four pairs of shoes, two bottles of cologne, two belts, and a pair of socks.
The following is part of an email from Australia’s THE SPECTATOR.
‘The irony of debating voluntary assisted dying in the age of Covid
This week the NSW parliament will start considering a bill to legalise medically-assisted death at the instigation of the person dying.
Morning Double Shot has discontinued daily editorials, so you’re spared from getting the editor’s tortured views on this fraught moral issue.
Instead, reflect on the irony of such legislation being enacted, now in NSW and recently in Queensland, while the Covid-19 pandemic continues to rage.
For coming up to two years, our federation has been ripped apart, our society gutted, and our economy filleted, to prevent deaths from a virus whose pact with the Grim Reaper mostly is confined to harvesting the souls of the elderly and people with other health risk factors who could easily have been taken by old age, or other natural causes, rather than Covid-19.
Yet, at the same time, majorities in our parliaments are determined to make medically-assisted dying for people in extremis lawful.
Our political representatives both fear and embrace death in making laws profoundly affecting our social fabric. Verily, it’s a strange world we now live in.’
Even the Left leaning THE CONVERSATION carried an article concerning the new law here in Australia, that seems to me, takes away even more of our freedoms and privacy. All this is occurring under a supposed CONSERVATIVE Federal government! Is this law truly meant to catch REAL criminals or is it to actually meant to spy on those citizens that may not swallow all the Kool Aid handed out by government? Personally, laws such as this only provides more reasons why many do not trust the government! With that said ‘A new law gives Australian police unprecedented powers for online surveillance, data interception and altering data. These powers, outlined in the Surveillance Legislation Amendment (Identify and Disrupt) Bill, raise concerns over potential misuse, privacy and security.
The bill updates the Surveillance Devices Act 2004 and Telecommunications (Interception and Access) Act 1979. In essence, it allows law-enforcement agencies or authorities (such as the Australian Federal Police and the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission) to modify, add, copy or delete data when investigating serious online crimes.
What’s more, legal hacking by law enforcement may make it easier for criminal hackers to illegally access computer systems via the same vulnerabilities used by the government.
What’s in the law?
The bill introduces three new powers for law-enforcement agencies:
“data disruption warrants” allow authorities to “disrupt data” by copying, deleting or modifying data as they see fit
“network activity warrants” permit the collection of intelligence from devices or networks that are used, or likely to be used, by subject of the warrant
“account takeover warrants” let agencies take control of an online account (such as a social media account) to gather information for an investigation.
There is also an “emergency authorisation” procedure that allows these activities without a warrant under certain circumstances.
However, the new bill gives agencies unprecedented interception or “hacking” powers. It also allows “assistance orders”, which could require selected individuals to assist government hacking or face up to ten years in prison.
Why do police argue this bill is required?
According to the Department of Home Affairs, more and more criminal activity makes use of the “dark web” and “anonymising technologies”. Previous powers are not enough to keep up with these new technologies.
In our view, specific and targeted access to users’ information and activities may be needed to identify possible criminals or terrorists. In some cases, law enforcement agencies may need to modify, delete, copy or add content of users to prevent things like the distribution of child exploitation material. Lawful interception is key to protecting public and national security in the fight of global community against cybercrimes.
How does lawful data interception work?
“Lawful interception” is a network technology that allows electronic surveillance of communications, as authorised by judicial or administrative order. There are standards (which means regulations and rules) for telecommunication and internet service providers to achieve this, such as those recommended by the European Telecommunications Standards Institute.
Law-enforcement agencies may require service providers to hand over copies of communications data, decrypted data, or intercepted data without notifying users. Service providers may also have to make available analytical tools such as graphs or charts of target behaviours.
What are the privacy concerns?
The Office of the Australian Information Commissioner and others have also raised privacy concerns. The bill may impact third parties who are not suspected in the investigation of criminal activities. In particular, the bill can authorise access to third party computers, communication and data.
The Human Rights Law Centre argues the proposed broad powers can potentially compel any individual with relevant knowledge of the targeted computer or network to conduct hacking activities. In some cases this may clash with an individual’s right to freedom from self-incrimination.
Enabling law enforcement agencies to modify potential evidence in a criminal proceeding is also a major issue of concern. The detection and prevention of inappropriate data disruption will be a key issue.
The implementation of the new warrants needs to be in line with Privacy Act 1988 which was introduced to promote and protect the privacy of individuals and to regulate Australian government agencies and organisations. Where some agencies may have exemption against the Privacy Act, it is important to balance between public safety and privacy impacts.
What are the security issues and impacts?
The Identify and Disrupt Bill is a part of an extensive set of Australian digital surveillance laws, including the Telecommunications and Other Legislation Amendment (Assistance and Access) Act 2018 (TOLA), and the Telecommunications (Interception and Access) Amendment (Data Retention) Act 2015 (the Mandatory Metadata Retention Scheme).
Under the Identify and Disrupt Bill, access can be gained to encrypted data which could be copied, deleted, modified, and analysed even before its relevance can be determined. This significantly compromises users’ privacy and digital rights.
Modern encryption can be very hard to crack, so hackers often exploit other vulnerabilities in a system to gain access to unencrypted data. Governments too are reportedly using these vulnerabilities for their own lawful hacking.
Specifically, they depend on “zero-day exploits”, which use software vulnerabilities that are unknown to software vendors or developers, to hack into a system. These vulnerabilities could be exploited for months or even years before they are patched.
A conflict of interest may arise if law enforcement agencies are using zero-day exploits for lawful hacking. To protect citizens, we would expect these agencies to report or disclose any software vulnerabilities they discover to the software manufacturers so the weakness can be patched.
However, they may instead choose not to report them and use the vulnerabilities for their own hacking. This puts users at risk, as any third party, including criminal organisations, could exploit these so-called zero day vulnerabilities.
It’s not an abstract concern. In 2016, the CIA’s secret stash of hacking tools itself was stolen and published, highlighting the risk of these activities. The Chinese government has claimed the CIA was hacking targets in China for more than a decade using these and similar tools.
Government use of hacking tools may result in worse cyber security overall. The warrant powers given to Australian law enforcement agencies may protect public safety and national interests, but they may also provide powerful means for adversaries to access government data.
This includes the data and online accounts of targeted individuals like state officials, which may significantly impact national security. This possibility needs to be considered in light of the passing of the new bill.
Yes, legalizing so-called same sex marriage has opened a BIG CAN of WORMS! Now, ‘A Christian wedding photographer has filed a complaint against New York over a state law that requires her to service same-sex wedding ceremonies despite her religious objections.
Emilee Carpenter of Emilee Carpenter Photography sued multiple state officials, with the lawsuit being filed Tuesday in the United States District Court for the Western District of New York.
Named defendants include New York Attorney General Letitia James; Jonathan J. Smith, interim commissioner of the New York State Division of Human Rights; and Weeden Wetmore, district attorney of Chemung County.
At issue, according to the litigation, are provisions in state law that require businesses like Carpenter’s to provide services. This included New York Executive Law § 296.2(a), which “unlawful discriminatory practices … because of” sexual orientation in “any place of public accommodation.”
Their latest attack against Christians is the fact that many of us refuse to get jabbed with an experimental vaccine for a virus with a 99% survival rate among the vast majority of the population.
Risks aside, Christians also face a moral dilemma with regard to the fact that “fetal-cell lines played a vital role in the development of all three vaccines.” Perhaps this is why the vaccine, like abortion, has become a de facto religious ceremony for the followers of the demonic critical theory religion that is sweeping Western society.
Do you remember anyone ever virtue signaling online about getting a flu shot in the past? I sure don’t. Suddenly it’s “cool” and “hip” to let the entire world know about your medical history as a sign of your commitment to the “cause” of oligarchic tyranny.
How utterly stupid and foolish.
In other news: half of Americans support a “vaccine passport,” which means our society is rapidly fragmenting into two distinct economies: the economy of sane and rational people who do not want an experimental vaccine injected into their body and those who handed over their bodily autonomy as a science experiment so things could “go back to normal.” Newsflash: things are never going back to normal, just like they didn’t after 9/11.
This is one of the many reasons I have been pushing Christians to start building our own economy separate from all of this madness. Soon enough, we won’t have any other choice.
Ultimately the Oligarchs in power want us all worshipping the State, “stuff,” and “science” as god. God Almighty gets in the way of that. They want us enslaved to sin to become even more spineless, docile, complacent, and obedient pigs. Christians and God stand in their way of total and complete control. The experimental vaccine isn’t about health and it isn’t about politics.
It’s about power.
Power over your body. Power over your mind. Power over your soul. Resist. Keep the faith. We are children of God.
If cheating will win a Presidential election why will it not allow you to play football? This will make you proud to be an American!
‘The United States Military Academy, commonly known as West Point, cited a number of athletes, including football players, for cheating on a spring 2020 calculus exam.
But university officials suspended its own rules to allow football players to play in games this season, including a bowl game.
The public military university has a rule against violators of its honor code from representing the university.
“We delayed it [the rule] until final adjudication,” Christopher Ophardt, West Point spokesperson, told USA Today. The newspaper reported that some athletes were found in violation of the honor code on November 30, a month before the New Year’s Eve bowl game against Liberty University. The university decided in October to suspend the rule.
‘I grew up in Sri Lanka during a time of civil war. Anyone who criticised the Sinhalese-dominated government disappeared. And anyone who criticised the Tamil rebels was assassinated. So we all learned to keep our mouths shut.
In September 1991, I changed nationalities. I swore allegiance to Australia at a citizenship ceremony in Parramatta Park. During that ceremony, I delivered a speech where I committed myself, as one of those who come from “beyond the seas”, to “advance Australia fair”.
Migrants like me love Australia because “we are young and free”. And many of us come from countries which are not free – where deviating from the approved political opinion is punished, therefore there’s no free speech. Public speech, in countries like the Sri Lanka of my childhood, was costly. It could cost you your life.
And it’s precisely that love of freedom, and my desire to advance Australia fair, that makes me worried about the Victorian government’s Change or Suppression Bill 2020.
The bill aims “to ensure that all” LGBT+ people “are able to live authentically and with pride” and “to denounce and give statutory recognition to the serious harm caused” by practices which suggest that “a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity” is in any way “broken”.
Nobody who opposes this bill is seeking to harm people who identify as LGBT+. The problem with this bill is the its definitions and prohibitions are so broad, it potentially criminalises any suggestion that sexuality has an objective order and that discovering and conforming to that order could be healthy for individuals, families, and society as a whole.
Most of human civilisation has, throughout history, believed that human sexuality is not a matter of personal preference, but possesses an objective order. Not all cultures agree on what that healthy pattern is. And not everyone within that society lives according to that healthy pattern. But they agree that it exists. And that talking about it, trying to discover it, and helping each other live according to it, is good.
This bill denounces that kind of belief, and prohibits and suppresses talking about it. This bill is on the wrong side of history. It seeks to criminalise something that has historically made human civilisation civil and humane.
Therefore, this bill is not actually progressive. It takes us backwards, into a dark age where public speech is costly and deviating from the approved political opinion gets punished.
LGBT+ activists often speak about “authenticity” and “pride”, and often accuse people who hold conservative values – especially religious people, and within that, especially Christians – as “harming” them. They’re welcome to do that. That’s an application of free speech.
And under conditions of free speech, social conservatives, religious people – including Christians – can talk back. We’re allowed to defend ourselves against those accusations of harm. And explain why we think healthy sexuality is not a matter of personal preference but possesses an objective order. And invite all people – including LGBT+ people – to willingly join us in living that sexuality because they’ve been persuaded that it’s right and good.
But by being an instrument of law, this bill takes away the right to talk back. If this bill becomes law, any assertion that healthy sexuality is ordered, not a matter of personal preference, could cost money or land you in jail. This threat of formal, legal punishment would intimidate people to self-censor. And that amounts to a stifling, in practice, of free speech.
That’s why this bill is dangerous. Not just for Christians, religious people, or social conservatives. This bill wrecks the social environment which has underpinned what we take for granted as a free, open, tolerant society – the kind of Australia I migrated to, love, and vowed to advance.
Mainstream media tend to caricature those who oppose this bill – especially religious people – as using public freedoms, like freedoms of speech and assembly, to protect themselves in a selfish, self-interested way. Is the mainstream media broad-minded enough to consider that we oppose this bill out of love? Love of freedom and tolerance? And love of country? And even – shock, horror – love of LGBT+ people?
A Christian or conservative opinion is not wanted in many circles and there is often a price to pay.
‘Mary Douglas had served as a Conservative councillor in Salisbury for nearly 15 years before being removed from her portfolio role for skills and social mobility in November 2019 as a result of the stance she took against the use of public money to fund a Pride event.
Supported by the Christian Legal Centre, Mary challenged the council’s decision to bring code of conduct proceedings against her on the allegation that she acted in a manner which ‘contravened the public sector equality duty’. Following the hearing, the council concluded that Mary did have the right under Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights to express her opposition.
Mary commented: “I am relieved and thankful for this outcome. If the council had found against me, it would have set a precedent that I and other public officials are not allowed to disagree with groups of people, events or political messages with which we disagree. Such a verdict would effectively end conversation, debate and the ability to express a belief and opinion.
“To disagree is not to disrespect. In fact, to take the trouble to express disagreement with someone is a mark of respect. Across UK society, we must be able to disagree with each other while also holding each other in the highest esteem. To be able to say what we think and believe is vital for democracy, community cohesion and good decision making.”‘https://christianconcern.com/cccases/mary-douglas/
whatyareckon 