Tag: oppression

China creates company to build mega-satellite constellation

9:12 am

The new colonial movement: Late last month China officially created a company to build its own mega-satellite constellation, consisting of 13,000 satellites to provide internet access globally, to compete with the commercial constellations being built by SpaceX, OneWeb, and (someday) Amazon.

Spectrum allocation filings submitted to the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) by China in September last year revealed plans to construct two similarly named “GW” [Guowang] low Earth orbit constellations totaling 12,992 satellites. The filings indicate plans for GW to consist of sub-constellations ranging from 500-1,145 kilometers in altitude with inclinations between 30-85 degrees. The satellites would operate across a range of frequency bands.

Currently no details have been released on the contractors to be involved in the constellation. Notably the China Satellite Network Group will exist independent from and parallel to China’s main space contractors, the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corp. (CASC), and the China Aerospace Science and Industry Corporation (CASIC).

The apparent independence of China Satellite Network Group from CASC and CASIC indicates that other actors, such as other state-owned enterprises and commercial sector space companies could be involved in the construction of the constellation.

Not only does the creation of this company suggest a power-struggle within China’s government, it illustrates the intensifying competition internationally over space. While commercial satellite constellations like SpaceX and OneWeb will be able to provide their services to China, they will also be outside the control of that nation’s dictatorship. If their citizens use them they will have free access to information, something that China’s leaders refuse to allow.

Thus, the political decision in China to build their own constellation. It will also give China the ability to exert its influence worldwide by offering an alternative to the commercial western constellations, one that other dictators can control as well.

Expect more whining from astronomers about how this constellation of satellites will add to their woes. Instead of whining, might they finally decide to at last consider building in-space telescopes, where there is no atmosphere to fog their view and no satellites blocking their vision?

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Today’s blacklisted Americans: Biden administration working to blackball fossil fuel companies from obtaining financial services

12:38 pm

Disagree with John Kerry? No more bank services for you!
Disagree with John Kerry?
No more bank services for you!

They’re coming for you next: The Biden administration, under the leadership of its “climate envoy” John Kerry, is apparently working behind the scenes to force banks to blackball fossil fuel companies from obtaining financial services.

Not surprisingly, the initial news stories from the mainstream press in mid-March describing this effort were written to hide the Biden administration’s goals. For example, Politico described a number of meetings arranged by Kerry and the Biden administration both with climate activist groups as well as financial institutes aimed at making those financial institutions “put your money behind your climate PR,” but the article only hinted at what the goals were.

Kerry has pitched banks on creating a U.S. net-zero banking alliance following the climate commitments from six major Wall Street banks, according to two people familiar with the discussions. Citi, Wells Fargo, Bank of America, Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs all set 2050 net-zero goals and JPMorgan Chase has said its lending would be aligned with the Paris agreement although Kerry and his team are pushing for more specific financial commitments as part of this effort.

Kerry also wants clear near-term actions from banks by 2030, which would align with the Biden administration’s timeline for the new emissions target it intends to submit as part of the Paris Climate Agreement process. [emphasis mine]

Doesn’t meeting “net-zero” goals for climate change sound wonderful? But what does it mean?
» Read more

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Viasat asks FCC to block further launches of SpaceX’s Starlink satellites

9:33 am

Capitalism in space? The geosynchronous communications satellite company Viasat has demanded the FCC freeze any further launches of SpaceX’s quickly growing constellation of Starlink satellites.

The company claims a recent modification of SpaceX’s FCC license should not have been granted without a new environmental review of the 4,000+ satellite constellation’s impact.

Viasat is asking the FCC to hit pause on further launches until federal courts can review the legality of the license modification.

Carlsbad, California-based Viasat, which provides broadband services from geostationary orbit (GEO), had petitioned the FCC to conduct an environmental review before granting the license modification as part of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), which currently categorically exempts satellite systems, but says this did not happen despite megaconstellations bringing new considerations for regulators.

Some astronomers had also requested an environmental assessment, worried about how the constellation’s reflectivity affects ground-based telescope observations.

What is really happening here is that Viasat, having discovered its market share is seriously threatened by a competitor, is trying to use the government to squelch that competition. Viasat doesn’t really give a twit about the environmental issues. It is launching its own new three-satellite geosynchronous constellation next year to provide broadband services globally, and Starlink’s success threatens to cut into its profits.

The article also reveals one interesting tidbit about former NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine. During his short three-year tenure heading NASA he aggressively moved to encourage provide competition and private enterprise by transferring the design, construction, and ownership of rockets and spaceships from NASA to the commercial sector.

Now that he is out of the government however he — like most Washington swamp creatures — has discovered his true calling: using his influence to squelch private competition:

In April, former NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine joined Viasat’s board of directors. Bridenstine told SpaceNews in an interview at the time that the threat of megaconstellations to space safety, and the overall space access environment, were among issues on his radar.

Like a ventriloquist’s dummy, Bridenstine upon leaving NASA immediately began mouthing the manufactured concerns of his new patrons at Viasat. To hell with allowing real competition and freedom. It is much more important to manipulate the power of the government to prevent Viasat’s competitors from succeeding. And earn a nice big salary at the same time.

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Today’s blacklisted American: All conservatives on Facebook

12:59 pm

The Bill of Rights cancelled at Facebook and Instagram
No first amendment on Facebook.

The new dark age of silencing: It isn’t really news to post an article describing the effort at Facebook to silence and squelch conservative thought. I along with many others have already done so repeatedly, with the worst and most blatant banning beginning with the wave of censorship that these big social media sites initiated just after January 6th. Nor has Facebook eased up in subsequent months. For example, in April Facebook blackballed a mother for daring to criticize the radical Marxist and racist policies of her school board.

Since then, Facebook has shut down a pro-Israel Christian site with 77 million followers and blocked the viewing of reviews of a climate book by former Obama science advisor Steve Koonin that raised doubts about the theory of human-caused climate change.

In the former case, it appears that Facebook allowed itself to be influenced by a orchestrated attack by radical Islamic organizations, which posted more than a million comments of complaint to the site in an effort to get it canceled. Facebook of course complied.

In the latter case Facebook took on faith the complaints made by pro-global warming websites, which claimed that the book was false simply because it disagreed with those pro-global warming sites. None of them actually cited any incorrect facts put forth by the reviewed book. And even if they had found errors and falsehoods, the right answer to bad speech is never censorship, but an educated response.

Facebook claims that this censorship campaign is not really aimed at any particular political point of view, but is instead designed to reduce the overall political content on Facebook. And yet, their own description of their effort illustrates its partisan nature:
» Read more

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Bernie Sanders throws a wrench into Senate bill forcing NASA to award two lunar lander contracts

9:18 am

Capitalism in space? Senator Bernie Sanders (Socialist/Democrat-Vermont) has submitted a new amendment to the new NASA authorization bill, now being debated in the Senate, that eliminates the earlier changes added by senator Maria Cantwell (D-Washington) that required NASA to award a contract to a second company for building its manned lunar lander.

This earlier amendment, submitted by Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), modified NASA’s Artemis Program. Cantwell’s amendment, in part, called for $10.03 billion in additional funding for NASA to carry out the Human Landing System program. This legislation was filed as Blue Origin and Jeff Bezos were urging Congress to add $10 billion to NASA’s budget—enough money to fully fund the development of a second Human Landing System. It was passed 11 days ago without any debate by the US Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation.

Sanders’ terse amendment seeks to excise the Cantwell language that provides additional funding for a Human Landing System.

While Sanders’ amendment probably makes more sense based on the money that Congress has actually appropriated for this task, he didn’t do it for that reason. More likely he did it as a petty attack on Jeff Bezos, whose company Blue Origin was likely expected to win that second contract.

Nothing is settled yet of course. The bill still has to pass the Senate and also be approved by the House, then signed by the president. Much will change before then.

Regardless, isn’t nice how NASA’s modern space effort is so well designed by our senators and congressmen? What would we do without them?

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Folded ballots caused many (but not all) of the tabulator errors in New Hampshire vote

3:31 pm

The auditors of the Windham, New Hampshire, local vote have determined that folded ballots caused many of the false totals produced by the computer tabulators.

Auditors said they found “experimental confirmation that if the contest is undervoted, a fold through a vote target can create a vote.”

“Something we strongly suspect at this juncture, based on various evidence, is that in some cases, fold lines are being interpreted by the scanners as valid votes,” Mark Lindeman, who is part of the audit team, told WMUR.

Harri Hursti, another auditor, wrote on Twitter that testing proved folded ballots were misinterpreted by machines. “Test decks proved that foldings across a vote targets is misinterpreted as additional phantom votes or subtracts votes due to false overvotes,” he wrote in a post.

Their testing however has shown that folded ballots are not the only cause of the untrustworthy tabulations.

Another machine was found to have “an even more dramatic problem” by the auditors, who said that only 28 percent of the votes for Republican candidates were counted.

The machines were apparently provided by a company called AccuVote, but the “machines’ intellectual property is owned by Dominion Voting Systems.”

The results here prove that these tabulator machines are totally untrustworthy, and should be junked entirely, with the state having a legitimate case for suing the companies involved for failure to deliver.

At the least. The research so far has found that the bulk of the errors routinely seem to penalize Republicans. If further research reveals that this partisan slant is not an accident, then criminal charges might very well be in order.

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Today’s blacklisted American: Tenured professor objects to segregated-by-race training classes at university; school investigates and punishes her

11:55 am

Today's modern witch hunt
Burning witches: What the Lake Washington Institute of
Technology wants to do to anyone who expresses an
original and independent thought

They’re coming for you next: Because a tenured professor, Elisa Parrett, made a four minute statement objecting to the segregated-by-race training class the Lake Washington Institute of Technology was mandating for its teachers, the school instigated a nine month investigation resulting in a reprimand and rules forbidding her to speak on such topics again.

The investigation included the hiring of a private investigator, numerous interviews, public humiliation, and wild unsubstantiated claims that her remarks caused widespread trauma. The school removed her from her teaching duties, and worse, doubled down on its insistence that future sessions will be segregated by race. From the university’s president Amy Morrison:
» Read more

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Election audit in New Hampshire confirms unreliability of machine tabulators

3:49 pm

Auditors today completed a hand recount of the votes in the town of Windham, New Hampshire and concluded that the count proves the machine tabulators are unreliable and do not produce trustworthy totals.

Hand recount finished & #’s very closely match the hand recount #’s done on Nov 12. Windham voting machine election results are confirmed to be unreliable. @WAuditors still investigating causes & contributing factors.

None of the local results are changed because of these new results, but the audit was done because a hand recount done in November showed serious discrepancies, with the hand count consistently finding more votes for Republicans compared to what was tabulated by the machines.

On Election Night, Republicans swept all four of Windham’s state representative seats. One Democrat, Kristi St. Laurent, fell short by just 24 votes and requested a recount.

But during the recount, the margin between St. Laurent and the Republican candidates changed significantly. The vote totals for all of the Republican candidates in the race increased by about 300, while St. Laurent’s vote count decreased by nearly 100.

While the outcome of the race didn’t change — the four Republican victories from Election Day were upheld at the recount — the change in vote totals raised serious questions for many from both parties.

The audit has now confirmed what the hand count has suggested. Both matched closely, but differed significantly from the machine totals, the numbers of which apparently penalized Republican candidates consistently.

They are now beginning an investigation into what caused the discrepancies. I would say above all the town should dump these machines and replace them with something that can be trusted, even if it means we go back to primitive times and hand count all elections.

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Today’s blacklisted American: Professor fired for reading anti-slavery novel to students

12:36 pm

Today's modern witch hunt
Burning witches: What St. John’s university wished it could do
to a Jewish professor.

They’re coming for you next: Hannah Berliner Fischthal, a professor at St. John’s University in New York and the daughter of Holocaust survivors, was immediately fired because she read aloud in her literature class a selection from Mark Twain’s anti-slavery book, Pudd’nhead Wilson, that included the “N-word”.

On March 3 she was called into a meeting with HR about her use of the N-word in class, the subsequent discussion of it and a comment she allegedly made about a Black student’s hair. Fischthal said she only made a remark about a student’s head being wrapped up during class and it had nothing to do with her hair.

She said she was also criticized for mentioning her family’s experience in the Holocaust during class.

On March 5 she was suspended pending an investigation she had violated the university’s policy against bias. On April 29 she was fired.

The school had been alerted to her terrible crime of reading accurately from an accurate book portraying the actual culture of the pre-Civil War south by at least one of her students, who apparently was so weak-minded that even hearing this word that-shall-not-be-named was ““unnecessary and very painful.” It didn’t matter to this brainless student that the book was written to condemn slavery and bigotry. All that mattered is that a word of six letters was spoken aloud and she or he was forced to hear it.
» Read more

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Moranbong Band – Csardas & Gypsy Airs

6:01 pm

An evening pause: Hat tip Jim Mallamace, who notes,

Talk about an eclectic Evening Pause. “Csardas” was written by Italian, Vittorio Monti, in the early 20th century. “Gypsy Airs” was composed by Spaniard, Pablo de Sarasate, in the late 19th century. Both compositions are inspired by Hungarian music. And the orchestra is North Korean.

The band was organized by North Korea’s Supreme Leader, Kim Jong Un. This performance was from 2012. From the link this interesting tidbit:

In December 2015, Kim Jong-un sent the band to perform in a series of shows in Beijing to improve relations between China and North Korea; these would have been the band’s first performances outside of North Korea. However, the band left Beijing on a scheduled flight to Pyongyang only a few hours before their performance was scheduled. China’s Xinhua news agency stated that all of the band’s performances had been cancelled due to “communication issues at the working level.” The Korea Herald reported that North Korea had cancelled the tour because China had requested that North Korea’s missiles should not be shown during performances.

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Today’s blacklisted American: Former Trump official Sebastian Gorka

11:42 am

The Bill of Rights cancelled at Facebook and Instagram
Does not exist at Google or YouTube.

They’re coming for you next: Along with all other former Trump officials being blackballed by today’s dominant leftist culture, former Trump deputy assistant Sebastian Gorka has found himself banished, first from Fox News, and then from Google’s YouTube.

While Gorka’s problems at YouTube were in the past related to copyright disputes, the final ban last month was simply part of that site’s effort to censor any legitimate discussion of election fraud during the November 2020 election. From their own spokesman:

“In accordance with our long standing strikes system, we terminated the channel America First with Sebastian Gorka, for repeated violations of our presidential election integrity policy,” Ivy Choi, a YouTube spokesperson, wrote in an email to The Hill. … “As we’ve publicly shared, our presidential election integrity policy prohibits content uploaded after last year’s safe harbor deadline that alleges widespread fraud or errors changed the outcome of the 2020 U.S. presidential election,” Choi wrote. “Any channel that violates this policy will receive a strike and channels that receive three strikes in the same 90-day period are permanently removed from YouTube, as in the case of America First with Sebastian Gorka.”

» Read more

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Today’s blacklisted American: Long-time scholar banned for questioning gender fluidity

11:54 am

Lysenko with Stalin
Trofim Lysenko, the APA’s new hero, preaching to Stalin as he
destroyed Soviet plant research, persecuted anyone
who disagreed with him, and caused famines that killed millions.

They’re coming for you next: John Staddon, a retired and well-published scholar and researcher, was banned from an email discussion group run by the American Psychological Association (APA) for daring to question the modern leftist concept that one can chose one’s sex.

Staddon was deleted from the listserv for allegedly violating the division’s code of conduct. “The division leadership has received complaints about some of the posts that you have sent to the division listserv,” wrote Jonathon Crystal, an Indiana University Bloomington provost and professor of psychological and brain sciences, on behalf of the division’s executive committee.

“I do not want to get into the particulars of the range of complaints over the years, but I will note that a number of members of the executive committee and others have voiced concerns publicly on the listserv in an attempt to make you aware of how readers of the list might view some of the posts,” Crystal wrote. “The executive committee views the use of the division listserv as a privilege and has voted to remove you from the listserv. I am writing to inform you that your email address has been removed from the listserv,” Crystal wrote, adding Staddon can use “other outlets to share your views.”

And what was Staddon’s evil conduct? This is what he had written:
» Read more

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Pennsylvania votes to severely limit governor’s emergency powers

10:48 am

Good news: Pennsylvania voters yesterday soundly approved constitutional amendments that severely limit the emergency powers of their governor, thus preventing the present and future governors from endlessly renewing such powers.

One would give the General Assembly the ability to end or extend a declared emergency without the involvement of the governor, and the other would end a declared emergency after 21 days unless extended by the General Assembly.

Previously, once the governor’s emergency powers were granted they would last for 90 days, and the governor himself could automatically renew them endlessly. This is what Democrat governor Tom Wolf has been doing for the past year. His last renewal however expires tomorrow. It is unclear whether this vote will forbid him from renewing those dictatorial powers again.

The vote however signals to all Pennsylvania politicians the hostility the voters have to these endless emergency powers and the abuse of power that has resulted.

This vote in Pennsylvania also shows us the way to freedom. Reform must come from the states, the cities, and the local school boards, not at the federal level. If enough states make changes to their laws to strengthen their voting systems to prevent what has become almost routine Democratic Party fraud, that party will lose power at all levels. If enough parents get involved in school board activities, the politicization of education for the purpose of leftist indoctrination will end.

Once these things happen, reform at the federal level might finally have a chance.

Good people have got to stop doing nothing. Time is running out. Soon it will be too late for them to do anything.

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Senate revises NASA authorization to protect lunar lander award to SpaceX’s Starship

9:47 am

Even as the full Senate today begins its review of NASA’s newest authorization, the bill has been modified to grandfather in the contract award that NASA gave to SpaceX to build its manned lunar lander using Starship.

An earlier version of the bill had included language inserted by Senator Maria Cantwell (D-Washington) demanding NASA award within 30 days a contract for a second lunar lander. The modified bill extends that timeline to 60 days, but also specifically protects SpaceX’s contract award:

The Administrator shall not, in order to comply with the obligations referred to in paragraph (1), modify, terminate or rescind any selection decisions or awards made under the human landing system program that were announced prior to the date of enactment of this division.

The revised bill still puts NASA in a ridiculous position. Combined with Cantwell’s amendment, the agency will now be forced to name a second lunar lander contract within sixty days. Though it recommends doubling the money for this program ($10 billion over five years instead of ten), it does not actually appropriate it. Moreover, that new budget recommendation is still about one half of what NASA had originally requested in order to fund the construction of two lunar landers.

Not surprisingly, the entire bill [pdf] has become a pork-laden collection of spending put together without any concern for the needs for the nation. Instead, ithe 1,445-page long bill “is the proverbial ‘Christmas tree’ with a Table of Contents that alone is 15 pages” that different senators keep adding items to, making it a hodge-podge of incoherence.

The bill itself however still has to be approved by both the Senate and the House. While this should act as a corrective to make it more sane, don’t expect that. Instead, the more likely result will be that the two houses of Congress will combine together their own personal earmarks into one humongous bill.

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Today’s blacklisted American: New Apple hire fired immediately because other Apple employees considered his writings “unsafe.”

12:28 pm

The Bill of Rights cancelled at Facebook and Instagram
Doesn’t exist at Apple.

They’re coming for you next: Though Apple had actively recruited Antonio García Martínez and had reviewed his past work thoroughly before hiring him, the company fired him almost as soon as he started working for them because some of its other workers had put together a letter calling for his blacklisting because his published writings made them feel “unsafe.”

“Given Mr. García Martínez’s history of publishing overtly racist and sexist remarks,” the letter read, “we are concerned that his presence at Apple will contribute to an unsafe working environment for our colleagues who are at risk of public harassment and private bullying.”

All of this without even a hint that there’s ever been anything like such a problem at any of his workplaces.

The letter above, like the campaign against Martinez by hack press outlets like The Verge, includes a number of slanders and purposely false interpretations of what Martinez had written in his one published book, Chaos Monkeys, available on line from all ebook vendors and described on its Amazon page as
» Read more

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Texas: No masks, no restrictions, now no COVID deaths!

3:24 pm

Surprise! Surprise! Two months after lifting business restrictions and mask mandates, Texas reported yesterday no deaths linked to COVID.

Once again the fear-mongers were wrong. Biden called the officials in both Texas and Mississippi “neanderthals” for their decisions to end lockdowns and mask requirements. Others predicted a wave of deaths that would boggle the mind.

Instead, cases of COVID dropped quickly, to actually reach zero for the first time in fourteen months. Though I am sure there will be new coronavirus cases and deaths, that the numbers dropped after removing the stupid lockdowns and mask mandates is just another illustration of how failed a policy those lockdowns and mask mandates were.

Nor is any of this a surprise to anyone who has read this website for the past year. I have been saying from day one that the lockdowns were a terrible mistake, and that the mask mandates were not only useless but possibly very counter-productive. As another writer noted today, “The Neanderthals were right.”
» Read more

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Today’s blacklisted American: Space Force officer fired for criticizing Marxism and condemning bigotry

11:12 am

Twitter's idea of debate
Show trials: What America’s Space Force apparently wants.

Blacklists are back and the military’s got ’em: Lt. Col. Matthew Lohmeier, a fourteen year veteran of the Air Force who became one of the first officers in the Space Force, has been fired by his superiors because he wrote a book criticizing Marxism and compounded that sin by repeating the criticisms, along with criticisms of the undeniable bigotry of critical race theory, on a public podcast.

From a military pr officer:

“This decision was based on public comments made by Lt. Col. Lohmeier in a recent podcast,” a Space Force spokesperson said in an email. “Lt. Gen. Whiting has initiated a Command Directed Investigation on whether these comments constituted prohibited partisan political activity.”

Lohmeier’s temporary assignment in the wake of his removal was not immediately clear. [emphasis mine]

In addition, Amazon has decided to shadow ban Lohmeier’s book, Irresistible Revolution.

Irresistible Revolution has debuted in a strong position and as of this writing, it is #2 and #3 in military policy on Amazon, despite the fact that within hours of Lohmeier being relieved of his command, the book was no longer searchable on the publishing giant’s website. Only a direct link to the book’s page works at this time. It is available at Barnes & Nobles and other online booksellers such as Hudson and AbeBooks.

Lohmeier notes that he wrote the book entirely on his own time. He also informed the military of its existence and offered to have them review it before publication. The Pentagon said such a review was not required.

So what exactly did Lohmeier say that made his superior, Lt. Gen. Steven Whiting, believe he was participating in “partisan political activity”? From the Military.com come article:
» Read more

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Today’s blacklisted American: The Spectator magazine, by Google’s YouTube and Vimeo

12:11 pm

The Bill of Rights cancelled at Facebook and Instagram
Doesn’t exist at Google, YouTube, or Vimeo.

They’re coming for you next: Simply because an interview by The Spectator with Trump lawyer John Eastman discussed the many indications of election fraud and vote tampering in the November election, both Vimeo and Google’s YouTube decided that the video needed to be banned, forever.

YouTube said that the video violated its policy on misinformation. When the Steamboat Institute attempted to post the video under a different title, YouTube removed it again and revoked Steamboat’s ability to post videos for a full week. Vimeo also removed the video, saying that they ‘do not permit content that seeks to spread false or misleading information about voting.’

Steamboat was finally able to upload the interview to the Canadian video platform Rumble. You can watch it here and decide for yourself if this video is as dangerous as Big Tech claims.

As usual for these big tech censors, they cite no specific examples of “false or misleading information” expressed during the interview. They just claimed it existed, and banned everything.

It is important to also understand that the interviewer, Amber Athey, repeatedly pressed Eastman about his statements and position. The goal was not to allow him to simply sell his position, but to provide the viewer a legitimate discussion of the facts, pro and con, and thus allow that viewer the ability to decide for themselves whether Eastman’s concerns about the election have some merit.

This however is not good enough for YouTube or Vimeo. And they banned this Spectator interview at the same time they allowed with no complaints far more egregious lying and misinformation being spread by Democrats and leftists on their platforms:
» Read more

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Tampering and serious discrepancies found in Arizona election audit

4:00 pm

The audit of the more than two million votes cast in Maricopa County, Arizona, in November 2020 is not yet complete, but auditors in the past week have revealed that they have already uncovered significant evidence of tampering and major discrepancies that throw great doubt on the victory given to Joe Biden.

First, the auditors forced the county election board to admit that the voting machines were not protected by a password at the administrative level, thus allowing anyone to change anything on every machine, during the vote count.

That doesn’t prove fraud or election tampering, it only proves that it was amazingly easy for it to happen.

Second, it appears from further work that something very fishy was going on. The auditors for example have discovered that Maricopa County officials illegally tampered with the voter database records before turning them over to the auditors, including the deletion of an entire database.
» Read more

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Today’s blacklisted American: Conservative commencement speakers at all American universities

11:24 am

Today's modern witch hunt
Burning witches: What most colleges want to do to conservatives.

Blacklists are back and academia’s got ’em: Though for years universities have routinely favored leftist or Democratic Party politicians in picking their annual graduation commencement speakers, 2021 is turning out to be a record year in academia’s effort to blackball conservatives.

In its annual survey, Young America’s Foundation [YAF] said that of the 100 top schools that have identified their speaker, 37 are featuring notable and national liberals and one a conservative. By comparison to other years, the group said that 2021 may be the worst-ever showing for conservatives.

You can see the full list here [pdf]. As noted at the YAF announcement,
» Read more

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Senate committee mandates NASA award 2nd lunar lander contract

9:25 am

More crap from Congress: A Senate committee has approved a new NASA authorization that requires the agency to award a second lunar lander contract — in addition to the one given to SpaceX — even though that authorization gives NASA no additional money to pay for that second contract.

This provision was inserted by senator Maria Cantwell (D-Washington). Washington state also happens to be the state where one of the rejected companies, Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin, is located. I wonder how much cash Bezos’ has deposited in Cantwell’s bank account.

This provision not only does not give NASA any cash to build two lunar landers, what NASA dubs the Human Landing System (HLS), it forces NASA to violate other laws.
» Read more

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Today’s blacklisted American: Mom criticizes school board, gets blacklisted by Facebook & Instagram, fights back and wins

11:49 am

The Bill of Rights cancelled at Facebook and Instagram
Doesn’t exist at Facebook or Instagram.

Blacklists are back and Facebook’s got ’em: When Gordana Schifanelli, a mother in a Maryland school district who is also an immigrant from communist Yugoslavia, created webpages criticizing the pro-Black Lives Matter indoctrination being introduced in the schools by school superintendent Andrea M. Kane, both Facebook and Instagram moved quickly to censor her, while others attempted to destroy her career.

The response from Big Tech and leftists in her community would have made Tito proud, Mrs. Schifanelli said referring to Josip Broz, the late dictator of Yugoslavia.

First they shut down her personal Facebook page.

“So I said, ‘OK, I’ll create my own,” she said. Facebook and Instagram shut down the “Kent Island Patriots” and “Maryland Eastern Shore Patriots” pages, too. When her 17-year-old son tried to start a Facebook page, he was blocked, she said.

The people seeking to censor Mrs. Schifanelli’s opposition to left-wing politics, many of whom did not have children in the public school system, attacked her as a racist. They leveled their accusations with the Maryland Bar Association and at the U.S. Naval Academy, where she teaches economics and law twice a week.

Another target of theirs did lose his job, and he is a plaintiff in a separate lawsuit.

Unlike many of the other stories I have chronicled in this daily column, this one has ended with what looks like a total victory for Mrs. Schifanelli.
» Read more

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Today’s blacklisted American: The Catholic Church

12:24 pm

Cancelled Bill of Rights
No longer applies to the Catholic Church.

They’re coming for you next: In the past year the schools and churches of Catholic church nationwide have experienced numerous repeated acts of vandalism, violence, and arson, all expressing hate and a desire to deny it and its practitioners the right to express their religious beliefs.

At least 67 incidents occurred across 25 states since May 2020. … Incidents include arson, statues beheaded, limbs cut, smashed, and painted, gravestones defaced with swastikas and anti-Catholic language and American flags next to them burned, and other destruction and vandalism.

The article at the link provides a detailed list of the sixteen attacks from January to April 2021 alone. For a list of the attacks in 2020, go here, which also provides an update adding four more attacks in just the first week of May.

This is all reminiscent again of Kristallnacht in Nazi Germany, when Jewish businesses and synagogues were targeted in much the same way. » Read more

19 comments

Today’s blacklisted American: Anyone in Hollywood who is white

11:36 am

A banned race in Hollywood
A banned race in Hollywood.

Blacklists are back and Hollywood’s got ’em: Warner Brothers has decided its next Superman will be super-woke and must star a black Superman.

More important, the studio has decided that in order to make the film the “super-woke” concept they envision it must only hire blacks to make it. Not only has the studio hired a black writer to write the script, it is insisting that the director and crew must be black also.

The Hollywood Reporter proudly makes note of the fact that they are looking for only black people to do it all, and are looking for a black director. The piece unabashedly excludes the film’s producer J.J. Abrams as a candidate purely because it would be “tone-deaf.”

Nor is that all. Hollywood also wants the focus for all its future superhero films to be “diversity” and racial oppression rather those evil and quaint old concepts of “truth, justice, and the American way.”
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NASA officially increases prices for commercial use of ISS by 700%

11:07 pm

Capitalism in space: Though there were some revisions to the price list that NASA released in March, the revised price list for use of ISS by private companies and released at the end of April did not change significantly, and now officially increases prices for commercial tourist flights to ISS by about 700%.

The price list can be found here.

The result of the new policy is a much higher price charged by NASA to companies conducting private astronaut missions. Under the old policy, the life support and crew supplies for a hypothetical four-person, one-week mission to the ISS would cost $945,000, a figure that doesn’t include stowage, data or power. Under the new policy, the cargo, food and supplies charges for the same mission would be more than $2.5 million at the low end of the quoted cost ranges, plus $10 million in per-mission fees.

These prices will not apply to the Axiom commercial tourist flight scheduled for early ’22 because that contract was signed beforehand. Nor do they apparently apply to any visits to the private module that Axiom is building to attach to ISS.

Nonetheless, these prices will almost certainly drive business away from ISS and NASA, especially because many of these costs, such as the upmass and downmass cost of passive cargo, should really be charged by the private commercial companies, SpaceX and Boeing, that are providing the transportation. NASA has nothing to do with that and is merely skimming some money off the top of other people’s achievement.

Expect therefore more free-flying tourist missions that do not dock with ISS, such as SpaceX’s Inspiration4 flight scheduled for launch in September. We should also expect an acceleration in the construction of private stations that will compete with NASA and likely charge less.

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Long March 5B core stage falls to Earth

5:44 pm

Around 10:15 pm (Eastern) the Long March 5B core stage reentered the atmosphere over the Arabian Peninsula, with pieces landing in the Indian Ocean north of the Maldives to the southwest of India.

China has attempted to minimize its behavior here, claiming that most of the rocket burned up and that the chance of any damage was low. Big deal! If you are a responsible spacefaring nation you don’t build rockets that are designed to do this.

Remember, at least three more Long March 5B launches are scheduled in the next the years. As presently designed all will dump that core stage somewhere on Earth in an entirely uncontrolled manner.

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Today’s blacklisted American: You are supporting the blacklisting of someone, no matter what you do

12:10 pm

Rick, stating the truth in Casablanca
Click for video.

Today’s column on blacklisting won’t point out any particular person or group being blacklisted. Instead, I want to make it clear to my readers how completely dominate the intolerant culture of blackballing and censorship has become in America.

This intolerance has been well documented for years in the political, academic, and artistic communities. If you dare to be an outspoken conservative or Republican you will quickly find yourself an outcast, your job threatened and your future squashed. I know. I have been both a filmmaker and a film teacher, and am now a journalist writing often about political matters, and have had to face blacklisting myself more than a few times.

It is only in the last year that it has become evident that the the business community wishes to join in.

To fight this, many open-minded and tolerant Americans try to avoid companies that oppress people for their political views or ethnicity, in the hope that the loss of income will force these companies to change their behavior. In fact, there is now even a webpage, Cancel This Company, that tries to provide a complete list of the worst and most oppressive companies, while also carefully documenting that bad behavior so you know your decision is based on fact.

Sounds good, doesn’t it? Well it ain’t that easy.
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Long March 5B booster reentry prediction narrows again

9:30 am

Long March 5B landing prediction, May 7, 2021
Click for original.

The Aerospace Corporation has once again narrowed the reentry window for the 21-ton core stage of China’s Long March 5B rocket, launched on April 29th, as shown by the map above. The window is now only eleven hours long, centered over a point in the Indian Ocean at just before midnight on May 8th. The yellow tracks indicate its path after that centerpoint, while the blue lines show its path prior to it. Tick marks show five minute intervals.

The last orbit as shown by this prediction puts it over the following land areas. If the core stage crashes 5 to 20 minutes early, it would land anywhere from Spain to Africa. Another fifteen minutes earlier and Florida and Mexico would be in the landing zone. If it lands 45 to 50 minutes later, it will land somewhere on the continental United States.

China however might be lucky with this booster. The centerpoint of the prediction has definitely begun to stabilize around the Indian Ocean.

With future boosters, who knows? China plans at least three more Long March 5B launches, two in ’22 to launch modules for its space station, and one in ’24 to launch a Hubble-class space telescope to fly in formation with that space station. We shall see this same Keystone cop charade on all three flights, with the core stage tumbling out-of-control and falling back to Earth to crash somewhere that cannot be predicted.

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China Long March 2C rocket launches military satellite

8:55 am

China today used its Long March 2C rocket to put in orbit what it calls a “remote-sensing” satellite that is likely for use by its military.

Launched from an interior spaceport, this rocket’s first stage (using very toxic hypergolic fuels) will fall to Earth somewhere in China’s Guizhou Province. This has been China’s standard operating procedure for decades, sometimes resulting in such stages landing near residential areas.

The leaders in the 2021 launch race:

13 SpaceX
12 China
7 Russia
2 Rocket Lab

The U.S. still leads China 18 to 12 in the national rankings.

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No plans to shoot down Long March 5B booster; revised prediction

5:34 pm

The Biden administration will make no attempt to shoot down the 21-ton core stage of China’s Long March 5B rocket, according to the Defense secretary Lloyd Austin:

At this point we don’t have a plan to shoot the rocket down. We’re hopeful it will land in a place where it won’t harm anyone. Hopefully in the ocean or someplace like that. I think this speaks to the fact that for those of us who operate in the space domain that there should be a requirement to operate in a safe and thoughtful mode and make sure that we take those kinds of things into consideration as we plan and conduct operations.

Meanwhile, the predicted reentry window has shrunk again, to 16 hours, and shifted so that its centerpoint is now over Egypt, as shown on this map by the Aerospace Corporation:
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