Category: Uncategorized

Based Uganda

More sovereign states should follow Uganda’s example and completely ban the seditious big social media companies from operating inside their borders:

The government of Uganda has disabled Twitter within its borders for election interference, days after oligarch Jack Dorsey took initiative to suspend accounts supportive of President Yoweri Museveni.

President Museveni is known as a devout Christian, and has been the target of animosity from western governments and global corporations his his staunch opposition to homosexualism. Uganda’s election is scheduled for Thursday, and the state has suspended Facebook and Twitter’s services for systemic bias against his National Resistance Movement.

“That social channel you are talking about, if it is going to operate in Uganda, it should be used equitably by everybody who wants to use it,” Museveni said of Twitter and Facebook. “If you want to take sides against the National Resistance Movement, then that group will not operate in Uganda.”

The Big Tech platform commenced to whine up a storm after facing consequences for censorship, conveniently dismissing the reality that they were engaged in a wide-ranging campaign to censor figures associated with President Museveni, just days before a national election.

What a pity President Trump hasn’t yet shown himself to be as courageous a leader as President Museveni. Twitter really has no grounds for complaint. Uganda is a sovereign nation and a foreign corporation like Twitter has no right to operate there if the Ugandan government doesn’t wish to permit it to do so.

Avoid like the plague

The Dark Herald reviews the BBC’s sadistic assassination of Terry Pratchett’s finest literary legacy, 

This show hates me.  And it feels quite personal.

I mean, ran over your dog, backed up and did it again, burned down your house, then sent your wife and children to the gas chambers personal. That is the level of individual hatred I felt directed at me while I was viewing The Watch. I am quite serious when I say that this show is the product of extreme mental illness.  

Absolute, abject hatred of its source material is evident in every aspect of this production.

The Watch’s art style is a discordant series of nightmare images meant to evoke disgust.  It’s walking into Wonderland and finding Alice’s bloody severed head as the center piece of the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party. It’s a Middle-Earth where Sauron prevailed, and Frodo is now one of Nazgul….

It starts with Nobby Knobs meeting with Death. Or at least that is what any fan of the series who was Blissfully unaware of the horrors he was about to endure would assume. They didn’t really get Death right. in the book’s Death is more traditionally a grim Reaper figure consisting of cloak, skeleton and scythe. Here he was more of a giant robot with clawed hands and glowing eyes in the hood. So, they missed the mark there, but they got Nobby Nobs completely right. Nobby is the only person on Discworld that has to carry a certificate that reads: “I, after hearing evidence from a number of experts, including Mrs. Slipdry the midwife, certify that the balance of probability is that the bearer of this document, C.W. St John Nobbs, is a human being. Signed, Lord Vetinari.”  They did brilliantly there.

Except that it turns out Nobby isn’t in this series at all.  Neither is Fred Colon come to that.

No, the guy you thought was Nobby is actually Captain Sam Vimes. This wasn’t trying to meet the mark and missed, this wasn’t even an attempt to try something “a little more modern.”  They would have just race swapped Vimes if that was what these talentless clods were trying to do.  This was the deliberate character assassination of the character of “Sam Vimes, White Patriarchal Male.”

There is a difference between deconstruction and total ablation.

Actually, Frodo as The Tenth Nazgul sounds vastly more interesting than this unmitigated abomination. At this point, I’m beginning to think that Arkhaven isn’t so much one of the little mammals skittering around the feet of the entertainment industry dinosaurs as the proverbial asteroid.

YouTube bans the President

The most spectacular deplatforming cascade in the history of social media cyberpurges continues with YouTube:

YouTube has announced that it pulled new content from US President Donald Trump’s verified channel and blocked it from uploading new videos for at least a week, citing violations of its policy against inciting violence.

In a statement late on Tuesday, YouTube said that the Trump channel was issued a strike over unspecified “new content,” and pursuant to its long-standing policy, “is now prevented from uploading new videos or live streams for a minimum of seven days.”

The video-sharing platform, which was the only major social medium still carrying Trump’s message after the president was purged from both Twitter and Facebook, did not rule out the possibility of the week-long ban being extended further.

Comments under all videos on Trump’s channel have been suspended “indefinitely,” YouTube said, noting that this was a standard practice for the cases “involving safety concerns.”

The ban did not quite come out of the blue. Earlier on Tuesday, an umbrella group of civil rights organizations vowed to pressure YouTube advertisers to drop the platform if it fails to follow Twitter and Facebook’s suit in blocking Trump’s accounts.

That’s a bold move, Cotton. We’ll see how it turns out for them. 

Evil doesn’t care about hypocrisy

If you don’t understand that yet, perhaps Twitter’s brave and stunning stance against election-related censorship will suffice to make it clear to you.

Twitter is openly condemning internet service providers blocking social media apps in the run-up to an election in Uganda as it takes criticism for alleged censorship on its own platform.

“Ahead of the Ugandan election, we’re hearing reports that Internet service providers are being ordered to block social media and messaging apps,” the social media giant posted in a statement on Tuesday.

“We strongly condemn internet shutdowns – they are hugely harmful, violate basic human rights and the principles of the #OpenInternet,” the statement continued.

The company argued that “access to information and freedom of expression, including the public conversation on Twitter, is never more important than during democratic processes, particularly elections.”

Every country should simply ban Twitter. And if you’re on Twitter, get off it now. The Big Tech companies are exactly like Freddie Krueger. They have no power over you if you refuse to acknowledge their existence.

I was talking yesterday to someone about the idiocy of the Cult of Free. It’s astonishing that so many people are still reluctant to give up Twitter, Facebook, and other free social media, when they now know, beyond any shadow of the doubt, that the cost of using their “free” applications can very easily be your job and even your career. 

President Trump in Texas

I have to admit, I have absolutely no idea what President Trump is attempting to accomplish here with this speech, rambling as he is about immigration and welfare and taxpayers and protecting American workers at this point in time. It’s rather like Pompeo’s speech yesterday, which completely and obviously ignored the herd of elephants in the room.

UPDATE: Michael Yon is reporting that it’s all over but for the arrests.

INSURRECTION ACT has NOT been invoked. State of emergency invoked here in DC. Have been with Rudy Giuliani past two days. I would know if Insurrection Act invoked, and so would you.

Trump will leave office. Biden is in. This is a fact. I don’t make the facts but I do report them. I would not be surprised at all if Trump, Don Junior, and Rudy Giuliani are charged and arrested soon.

I am seeing many things that you are not seeing. All the above is true, and more.

Perhaps. Or, perhaps not. Remember what I’ve said about these not being ordinary times. Disinformation is the order of the day and here are no points or cash prizes for being the first to surrender or despair.

The Olde Speech

 The Forge of Tolkien episode 19, THE OLDE SPEECH, is now available on #UATV.

In December 1954, Hugh Brogan wrote to Tolkien to complain about the “archaizing” style of parts of The Lord of the Rings, particularly the chapter “The King of the Golden Hall.” Tolkien drafted his response but never sent it, deferring a proper discussion to a time when they could meet in person. When is archaizing “tushery,” and when is it necessary? What is the difference between a bogus and a genuinely “antique” turn of phrase? 

In this episode Professor Rachel Fulton Brown reads the “linking” passage in The Book of Lost Tales taking Eriol from the hall of the Tale-fire to Rumil’s garden to illustrate Tolkien’s process in discovering his proper style. What did Tolkien mean when he told Brogan he found it easier to think in an archaic mode, and why did he chide Brogan for his “parochialism of time”? Hint: The distance is as great as that between Globe Earth and Flat Earth! 

You are part of the problem

Larry Correia admits, on Facebook, that he is part of the problem:

Most of us who stay here do it because this is where we built an audience/community before the bait and switch. We feel stuck, and thus, we are part of the problem. I personally, am part of the problem. I stay here making content they profit off of, because this is where I’ve got the audience. I’ve been trying to move my audience elsewhere… only to discover that the company that runs my blog server and the company that processes my mailing list are willing to engage in the exact same behavior.

The Monster Hunter is right. And the only solution is to bite the bullet and take decisive action. Reject Satan in ALL his pomps. There is no better time to rip off the bandage. Because it’s not going to get any easier as time goes on. 

We have all been part of the problem. That’s exactly why I left Mailchimp last week.

The silence of the boards

Everything is quiet. Very quiet. Could it be… the calm before The Storm?

Or perhaps everyone is just conspiracied out for the time being. At this point, I think I’d greet the announcement that a Sino-Pakistani alliance has declared war on India and Japan has announced in response that it is now a full-scale nuclear power with secret missile bases on the Moon with a yawn and a shrug.

Don’t worry about it. Read a book. Learn your culture. Go for a walk. Work out. Get some rest, because it looks like we’re going to be in for an exciting week that begins tomorrow, one way or another.

Clay Travis goes after Big Tech

The head of Outkick the Coverage hammers Amazon, Google, and the rest of the corpocratic tech elite:

Amazon, a company founded to sell books and promote the free exchange of ideas more efficiently, effectively enacted the largest modern-day book burning in world history by shutting down Parler. Amazon’s message was clear: if we don’t like your political perspective, you have no right to reach an audience on the Internet.

This should terrify every American.

And how about Google here? Google’s pledge upon its founding was to organize all the information in the world and to do no harm. That was literally written into their corporate charter. And now they are selectively removing information they don’t like from the marketplace of ideas, which makes the information they cite less reliable. It’s a total refutation of their founders’ aims.

Apple may be even worse. Apple has specifically censored its own content to avoid offending China. The company literally said it would produce no content that upsets China. Now, they are selectively eliminating political opinions from the public discourse that they don’t like .

Honest question: how do Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, Apple’s Tim Cook, and Google’s Sundar Pichal, the three leaders of these companies, sleep at night? The same is true of Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and Twitter’s Jack Dorsey. Are they aware of what their companies are doing, or are they just sleepwalking our country into a Chinese-like Internet state? Are they really this afraid of people saying bad things about them online? How is there no billionaire tech champion for free speech in the country?

It’s not courageous to do what everyone else does in times of tumult and tempest. It’s courageous to stand up for the marketplace of ideas when everyone is screaming for censorship. That’s true courage. Is there no one out there in Big Tech who will stand up and say, “I disagree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it?” Or are they all cowards?

As a result of monopolistic collusion on the part of Big Tech, Parler can no longer be downloaded, and it may soon be removed from the Internet entirely. Again, this is a modern-day technological book-burning lit afire by three of the biggest American tech companies in the world.

Instead of the government restricting speech, you have three “different” trillion dollar companies — Amazon, Google, and Apple — colluding to reach the same exact view at the same exact time. They are using their monopolistic market clout to effectively tell Parler it can’t exist. They are using their marketplace dominance not only to destroy the marketplace of ideas but to destroy the marketplace, period.

American Big Tech has become our own Frankenstein version of China.

Those who claim these deplatformings and bannings are not censorship “because private corporations” are being disingenuous. A corporation is not an actual person, it is a government entity that is deemed “a juristic person” by the government. Corporations are not people, they have no unalienable rights, and it is long past time for the people to begin reining them in.

Emergency in Washington DC

It’s official. President Trump has declared an emergency exists in Washington DC:

President Donald J. Trump Approves District of Columbia Emergency Declaration

Issued on: January 11, 2021

Today, President Donald J. Trump declared that an emergency exists in the District of Columbia and ordered Federal assistance to supplement the District’s response efforts due to the emergency conditions resulting from the 59th Presidential Inauguration from January 11 to January 24, 2021.

The President’s action authorizes the Department of Homeland Security, Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), to coordinate all disaster relief efforts which have the purpose of alleviating the hardship and suffering caused by the emergency on the local population, and to provide appropriate assistance for required emergency measures, authorized under Title V of the Stafford Act, to save lives and to protect property and public health and safety, and to lessen or avert the threat of a catastrophe in the District of Columbia.

Specifically, FEMA is authorized to identify, mobilize, and provide at its discretion, equipment and resources necessary to alleviate the impacts of the emergency. Emergency protective measures, limited to direct Federal assistance, will be provided at 100 percent Federal funding.

Now isn’t THAT interesting? I don’t recall any hurricanes or tornados hitting the District. Perhaps the defeat of the Washington Football Team by the Buccaneers has the restless natives acting out?