Category: Uncategorized

By  Ben Shapiro

This week, the Burning Man festival – a convocation of large groups of men and women seeking sex, drugs, rock and roll, and other forms of hedonistic bliss – was flooded. It seems that a half inch of rain swamped the event, which takes place in the Black Rock Desert in Nevada, turning the dust to deep and sticky mud. The images of barely-clad neo-hippies struggling to walk through the muck spread like wildfire across the internet; even the White House was forced to acknowledge that it was monitoring the situation.

For a huge swath of Americans, all of this was simply amusing. But the rise and mainstreaming of Burning Man is a far more interesting story than its pathetic possible demise. Burning Man was founded in 1986, when some hippie types gathered at the beach in San Francisco to burn a nine-foot-tall wooden man. Over time, the bonfire became larger and larger, until eventually it moved to Nevada, where it has been located ever since. Each year, 100,000 people head out to the middle of the desert to participate in events ranging from impromptu art exhibits to orgies and mass drug use.

The fundamental principles of Burning Man are spelled out in co-founder Larry Harvey’s 10 Principles, written in 2004. These principles – 10 in number – construct a paganistic morality built around a bevy of mutually exclusive notions. For example, Burning Man is about “radical inclusion … No prerequisites exist for participation in our community.” But Burning Man is also “devoted to acts of gift giving.” Unfortunately, without some form of mutuality, giving alone cannot for the basis of a functioning society, even temporarily. All of which means that Burning Man features social pressure to ostracize free-riders – a tragic violation of the radical inclusion principle.

Burning Man values “radical self-expression,” which cannot be defined by anyone other “than the individual or a collaborating group.” But such radical self-expression quickly comes into conflict with Burning Man’s call for “civic responsibility,” which surely encroaches on the unlimited right to self-expression. Burning Man also values “immediacy,” which it calls “the most important touchstone of value in our culture.” But Burning Man also calls for the community to “clean up after ourselves,” which runs directly counter to the promise of immediacy.

All of this would be sheer countercultural nonsense, except for one perverse fact: the counterculture has now become the culture. This accounts for the fact that Burning Man now seems tired and played out, less transgressive than wearied. The age of Burning Man attendees has increased over the past decade (average age in 2013 was 32, compared to 37 just nine years later); so has the average income (in 2006, 14% of Burners listed their personal income at above $100,000, compared to 27.4% by 2016). Influencers now show up at Burning Man to sell Popeye’s Spicy Chicken; Elon Musk and Paris Hilton and Mark Zuckerberg have shown up.

And herein lies the problem for the broader American culture. Our elite class used to be inculcated in the same set of baseline values as “normal” Americans: John D. Rockefeller was a regular churchgoer; so was Cornelius Vanderbilt. Today, our elites participate in drug-fueled binges in the desert – or at least wish to appear as though they do. Throughout the 1930s, even the poorest Americans aspired to dress well, wearing suits even on the breadlines. Today, even the richest Americans dress as though they shop at Salvation Army.

Read more at: dailywire.com

A supermarket chain issued a recall for Paw Patrol snacks sold at British stores after it was discovered that a website on the packaging leads to content “not suitable for child consumption.”

Store chain Lidl said the five-packs of Paw Patrol All Butter Mini Biscotti Biscuits, Paw Patrol Chocolate Chip Mini Biscotti Biscuits, Paw Patrol Yummy Bake Bars Raspberry Flavor and Paw Patrol Yummy Bake Bars Apple Flavor bore the address of a website that no longer shows the intended content.

“We have been made aware that the URL of the supplier which is featured on the back of the packaging has been compromised and is being directed to a site that is not suitable for child consumption,” the recall notice states. “We recommend that customers refrain from viewing the URL and return this product to the nearest store where a full refund will be given.”

The website, when viewed from a desktop browser, shows a message in Chinese stating that the site is “temporarily unavailable.”

When viewed from a mobile browser, the URL leads to a holding page with numerous advertisements with sexually explicit imagery.

Read more at: upi.com

More bad news for Darwinism arrived after my last article about Cambrian Explosion. I showed there that taphonomic conditions should have produced Precambrian animal fossils had they existed. Now, some of the other props for Darwin’s House of Cards have been removed. Tom Bethell had said in that book, “The near-instant explosion of body plans is the opposite of what Darwin’s theory predicts” (p 134).

Oxygen Theory Deflated

“No, oxygen didn’t catalyze the swift blossoming of Earth’s first multicellular organisms,” begins some news from the University of Copenhagen. “Life on Earth didn’t arise as described in textbooks.” What? Textbooks wrong? Shocking!

“The fact that we now know, with a high degree of certainty, that oxygen didn’t control the development of life on Earth provides us with an entirely new story about how life arose and what factors controlled this success,” says the researcher, adding:

“Specifically, it means that we need to rethink a lot of the things that we believed to be true from our childhood learning. And textbooks need to be revised and rewritten.” [Emphasis added.]

Textbooks had been saying, “increased oxygen levels triggered the evolutionary arrival of more advanced marine organisms.” Scientists at the university, with international peers, claim that the oxygen theory “is being disproved” by measurements of oxygen levels in rocks dating from “the Avalon explosion, a forerunner era of the more famed Cambrian explosion.” The Avalon Explosion they date at “between 685 and 800 million years ago.”

Defying expectations, the result shows that Earth’s oxygen concentrations had not increased. Indeed, levels remained 5-10 times lower than today, which is roughly how much oxygen there is at twice the height of Mount Everest.

Evolutionists have a strained relationship with oxygen. They don’t want it at the origin of life, but they were relying on it to power the Avalon and Cambrian Explosions. And in modern times, they struggle with the complexity of molecular machines that protect life from Reactive Oxygen Species (ROS). Current atmospheric oxygen levels appear finely tuned for complex life, as biologist Michael Denton argues in Fire-Maker. We have a Goldilocks value that balances the advantages of oxygen for metabolism against the disadvantages of too much or too little.

Read more at: evolutionnews.org

Biometric iris scanners being set up throughout Southern Europe; precursor to a global digital ID system being ushered in for citizens around the world whether they ‘like it or not‘ says technocrat CEO of new company that plans to scan the eyeballs of every human on the planet.

I’ve

been saying for nearly three years now that the beast system is based on the world’s people accepting two technological components offered up by the Luciferian globalist elites: A globally recognized digital ID to replace the cards in your wallet and a globally recognized digital money to replace the cash in your wallet. The two together will comprise the foundation of the punitive global beast system.

From an article in Slay News, we learned today that the CEO of an outfit called Worldcoin has warned that a global digital ID system will be ushered in for citizens around the world whether they “like it or not.”

Worldcoin has developed a system that it pitches as “the world’s largest identity and financial public network.”

The company has created a database that links central bank digital currencies in the form of digital tokens (the eventual replacement for cash), with a digital identity system.

The company has created its own form of digital money called the Worldcoin token (WLD).

Linked to Worldcoin tokens is another of Worldcoin’s products – World ID.

World ID is a digital identity system that collects biometric data for individuals and holds it in a database that links to Worldcoin token transactions.

Worldcoin tokens and World ID are connected and accessed via the company’s World App.

When it’s all in place and no longer “voluntary,” these technologies will be used to create and enforce 15-minute cities, says Christine Anderson, a member of the E.U. Parliament from Germany. Watch her describe how it will work below.

World App is “an app that enables payment, purchases, and transfers globally using digital assets and traditional currencies,” according to Worldcoin.

People who voluntarily surrender their biometric data receive “small sums” in Worldcoin’s tokens in return for signing up for the World ID scheme.

Worldcoin is co-founded by Sam Altman, the head of the company Open AI, which is behind the AI-powered chatbot ChapGPT.

According to Worldcoin’s executives, World ID, or “something like” it, will soon be mandatory for anyone who wishes to partake in the day-to-day functions of society.

World ID uses iris scanners that require a person to have their eyeballs scanned to prove their identity.

And while that idea may sound like a dystopian nightmare to some, people in several European countries, notably Spain and Portugal, can’t wait to give away their iris biometrics as proof of identity and the right to use a digital-wallet transfer scheme.

Read more at: leohohmann.com

Wow, I am SO happy I did not take my kids to see the Barbie movie.

Call it intuition, but I knew the movie would likely not be good for them.

But I didn’t know exactly WHY until I saw this from Jonathan Cahn.

As usual, Cahn takes what is hidden in plain sight and connects the dots and explains it so clearly that we can all see it.

Then once you see it you can’t UNSEE it.

Watch here: 100percentfedup.com

Porsche elicited outrage over the weekend after keen observers recognized the company had edited a historic Christian landmark out of its new advertisement. Although the German company has issued an apology and taken down the video, questions persist about the motivations behind the company’s virtual iconoclasm.

The German company, owned by the Volkswagen Group, recently put out a video celebrating 60 “very fast years” of its signature two-door sports cars, the latest of which goes for over $290,000.

In the original iconoclastic version of the video — which has been rendered private on YouTube by the company but saved by one Twitter user — the car whizzes through the decades, years, and various locales, interrupted by the captions, “No matter how fast you move forward … never forget where you come from.”

Despite this plea to remember the past, viewers noticed that the company saw fit to erase one key piece of history from memory.

As the 911 speeds past the 25th Abril Bridge, which connects the Portuguese capital city of Lisbon to the municipality Almada, a pedestal can be seen in the background without its historic statue.

That 269-foot base has been holding up the iconic Cristo Rei (“Christ the King”) statue since before the first Porsche 911 took to European asphalt.

After World War II — and the conclusion of Porsche’s days manufacturing war machines for the Nazi Reich, likely with forced labor — Cardinal Patriarch of Lisbon Don Manuel Gonçalves Cerejeira ordered this monument be made, taking inspiration from the Christ the Redeemer statue in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

The statue of Jesus Christ was intended as thanks to God for sparing Portugal from the ravages of the war, according to Lonely Planet.

Reas more at: www.theblaze.com

The combination of “warp speed” advances in neurotechnology, such as brain implants or scans that can increasingly peek inside minds, and artificial intelligence poses a threat to mental privacy, UNESCO warned on Thursday.

The UN’s agency for science and culture has started developing a global “ethical framework” to address human rights concerns posed by neurotechnology, it said at a conference in Paris.

Neurotechnology is a growing field seeking to connect electronic devices to the nervous system, mostly so far to treat neurological disorders and restore movement, communication, vision or hearing.

Recently neurotechnology has been supercharged by artificial intelligence algorithms which can process and learn from data in ways never before possible, said Mariagrazia Squicciarini, a UNESCO economist specialising in AI.

“It’s like putting neurotech on steroids,” she told AFP.

Gabriela Ramos, UNESCO’s assistant director-general for social and human sciences, said that this convergence of neurotechnology and AI was “far-reaching and potentially harmful”.

“We are on a path to a world in which algorithms will enable us to decode people’s mental processes and directly manipulate the brain mechanisms underlying their intentions, emotions and decisions,” she told the conference.

In May, scientists in the United States revealed they had used brain scans and AI to turn “the gist” of what people were thinking into written words — as long as they had spent long hours inside a large fMRI machine.

Later that month, billionaire Elon Musk’s firm Neuralink received approval to test its coin-sized brain implants on humans in the United States.

Read more at: www.barrons.com

With child marriage still legal in California, advocates are mounting a campaign to push the state to enact a ban, but their effort is facing surprising opposition from progressive groups like Planned Parenthood.

Dozens of survivors of forced or child marriages traveled to California’s state Capitol in Sacramento last month to protest the state’s existing laws. Dressed in wedding dresses with their wrists tied and mouths taped shut, they called on state lawmakers to finally outlaw the practice.

California, a solidly Democratic state, was on track to be the first to pass an absolute ban on marriages for children under 18. But the legislative proposal was met with opposition from liberal organizations like Planned Parenthood, the Children’s Law Center and the American Civil Liberties Union.

The pushback comes out of concerns that imposing an age requirement could set the stage for a slippery slope when it comes to constitutional rights or reproductive choices, specifically that an age requirement could impede a minor’s ability to seek an abortion.

California and Mississippi are the only two states where there is no minimum age requirement to get married. Most states have a minimum marriage age of 16 with parental consent, although it can range from as low as 14 to as high as 18, according to voting rights organization Wisevoter.

Newsweek reached out to Planned Parenthood via email for comment.

Minors seeking to wed in California need approval from a guardian and a court order. But those calling for a ban on child marriages point out that when it comes to issues like statutory rape, California’s definition of unlawful sexual activity between a child and an adult does not apply if the two parties are married.

Planned Parenthood Affiliates of California spokesperson Jennifer Wonnacott told the Los Angeles Times that it “strongly supports protecting youth from abuse of all kinds” but said those protections should “not impede on the reproductive rights of minors and their ability to decide what is best for them, their health and their lives.”

An analysis from Unchained At Last, a nonprofit dedicated to ending forced and child marriages in the U.S., found that between 2000 and 2018, 23,588 minors were married in California, making it the state with the second-highest number of child marriages behind Texas.

Read more at: www.msn.com

By Ben Shapiro

There’s a group of people who control what you are allowed to see — the news you read, the videos you watch, the posts you engage with.

You haven’t heard of them. You don’t know their names, but they determine, through methods both direct and indirect, whether you are allowed to be exposed to particular messages. Their decisions can bankrupt companies, silence voices and fundamentally shift cultural norms. Who are these people and how do they do this?

Well, at the top level you have a network of global elites who have created a universal framework full of guidelines and ratings designed to enforce “approved” narratives and punish disapproved ones. It sounds like a conspiracy theory, except it isn’t a secret and we’re not guessing.

First, you have the World Economic Forum, the WEF, and their platform for shaping the future of media, entertainment and culture. Second, you have the World Federation of Advertisers, the WFA, who represent mega-corporations that control 90% of global advertising dollars. WFA members are a who’s who of global business and include some of our recent wokeified favorites like Bud Light’s parent company Anheuser-Busch InBev, Hershey, Procter & Gamble, Lego and Disney.

There is barely a billionaire Fortune 500 CEO, heavyweight philanthropist, government or woke nonprofit that isn’t associated with the WEF or the WFA.

In 2019, the WFA established the Global Alliance for Responsible Media, or GARM. Within months, the WEF adopted GARM as part of its platform for shaping the future of media, entertainment and culture. GARM is a cross-industry alliance that brings these mega-corporations — the advertisers — together with Big Tech companies like Meta, who owns Facebook and Instagram; Google-owned YouTube; the CCP’s TikTok; and even Snapchat and Pinterest.

This unholy alliance created something they call the Brand Safety Floor & Suitability Framework. Think of Brand Safety as a dog whistle for censorship. They say it themselves: The Brand Safety Floor means, “Content not appropriate for any advertising support.” In other words, if you publish content that violates these guidelines, you will be blacklisted from 90% of the advertising revenue in the marketplace.

So, what have these global elites decided to put in their censorship framework? They started with things we can all universally agree on, like preventing the distribution of child pornography or the advocacy of graphic terrorist activity. But they don’t draw the line at what is objectively criminal, abusive or dangerous. They continue expanding the guidelines to include far more subjective parameters.

For example, the framework lists subjective terms like “hate speech” as a problem. It says that anything surrounding transgenderism that they decide is dehumanizing or discussing what they deem to be a debated social issue in an insensitive way is off limits.

The framework is deliberately vague, allowing those in control to pick and choose how they enforce it and against whom.

So, how exactly do the approved narratives set by these global entities get enforced all the way down to the daily content you consume?

Well, here’s how. We’ll start with NewsGuard. NewsGuard is an organization that formulates ratings for American media. They rank news sites on a 0-to-100 scale based on nine supposedly apolitical criteria. These criteria are anything but apolitical. They often align with left-wing positions.

During the height of COVID-19, NewsGuard falsely labeled and downgraded 21 news sites, only well after the fact admitting that they either “mischaracterized the site’s claims” about the lab leak theory — referring to the lab leak theory as a “conspiracy theory” — or “wrongly grouped together unproven claims” about the lab leak with the “separate, false claim” that the “COVID-19 virus was man-made” without explaining that one claim was unsubstantiated and the other was false.

“NewsGuard apologizes for these errors,” they said. “We have made the appropriate correction on each of the 21 labels.”

And when you compare their ratings of Left-leaning news organizations to Right-leaning news organizations, you see the same bias appear.

The Media Research Center, a free-speech nonprofit, studied NewsGuards’ ratings. The study found glaring examples of bias by NewsGuard.

The Left’s BuzzFeed managed a 100 out of 100 perfect score, despite its reporting on the Steele dossier and alleging collusion between former President Donald Trump and Russia.

The study found that The Global Times, a Chinese propaganda government outlet, scored a 39.5 — that is 27 points higher than the U.S.-based conservative outlet The Federalist. Despite a scandal at USA Today revealing the publication of multiple fabricated sources in their stories and their own fact-checking operation misleading readers on the history of the Democratic Party and the KKK, USA Today maintained the 100 out of 100 rating by NewsGuard.

NewsGuard is also working with others to use AI technology to enforce Brand Safety standards at scale, by identifying scalable hoaxes and misinformation in order to streamline blanket removal. This means that the news that you read, news that is supposed to be fair and objective or at least diverse, must adhere to GARM, the WEF, the WFA and their subjective and biased standards in order to be deemed monetizable.

Read more at: pjmedia.com

The preacher said in an interview with The Sentinel that the incident has encouraged him and his fellow church members toward “further boldness.”

Police arrested and detained several young people in Watertown, Wisconsin, on Saturday while they were preaching the gospel at a public drag queen event targeted toward children.

Video circulated on social media showing multiple police officers arresting Marcus Schroeder as he was reading from the Bible. One officer was recorded aggressively pulling a microphone out of his hands and walking him away in handcuffs. Nick Proell, another young Christian, was detained and removed from the venue but later released with a warning.

Jason Storms, who recorded the viral video, said in remarks provided to The Sentinel that the young people, who attend Mercy Seat Christian Church in Brookfield, Wisconsin, were some of more than 200 individuals from various groups assembled to protest the drag show.

“The police, per orders from city leaders, arrested several young people. Three were arrested earlier in the day while inside the park praying and talking to attendees, and then released with warnings,” said Storms, who serves as minister of evangelism at Mercy Seat Christian Church. “It was open to the public, thus the public’s right to free speech carries with them. One was arrested later in the day for preaching on the public sidewalk outside the venue and is being charged with unlawful use of sound amplification and resisting arrest.”

Schroeder said in an interview with The Sentinel that the incident has encouraged him and his fellow church members toward “further boldness,” noting that “the fight’s not just going to go away.”

“It was worth it. It’s actually an honor to be counted worthy to stand with the cloud of witnesses who have gone before us and been arrested for the sake of spreading Christ and his kingdom,” he said. “If the police wanted to try and set an example for others or anything like that, the only thing I’ve seen is actually the exact opposite, where more and more people are seeing the severity of what’s going on and being called to more action.”

Proell likewise told The Sentinel that he “absolutely” does not regret his detainment. “I’d do it all over again if it gives me an opportunity to share the good news and rescue innocent children being sexualized by their parents,” he said. “God will use it for good. We will stand for truth even if we stand alone.”

Storms added that there were several dozen police officers assembled to protect the drag queen event, during which performers dressed in lingerie were seen “dancing and gyrating in front of little children, who were invited to give them one dollar bills.” Wisconsin law forbids individuals from causing a minor to view or listen to “sexually explicit conduct.”

News of the drag event made national headlines as Nazi sympathizers, who were unaffiliated with the Christians preaching the gospel and the secular groups protesting the event, appeared at the performance. Wisconsin Democratic Governor Tony Evers denounced the Nazi presence but defended the occurrence of the show.

“LGBTQ Wisconsinites deserve to be treated with dignity, decency, kindness, and respect just like every other Wisconsinite,” he said. “They deserve to be safe being who they are without fear or threat of shame, harassment, intimidation, or violence.”

Read more at: www.republicsentinel.com