Tag: politics

Today’s blacklisted American: Journalist Andy Ngo blackballed again, this time by SoundCloud

12:31 pm

Journalist Andy Ngo, blacklisted
Journalist Andy Ngo: blacklisted and banned by Soundcloud

Persecution is now cool! Journalist Andy Ngo has been blackballed again, this time by the podcast and music website SoundCloud.

[Ngo’s] podcast, ‘Things You Should Ngo’ was banned “on grounds of being dedicated to violating” Soundcloud’s rules. Unsurprisingly, as Ngo’s publication The Post Millennial reports, there’s a problem with the explanation.

The latest episode of the podcast was uploaded more than one year ago and there was no option in the notification email for Ngo to appeal or even seek further information. Over the weekend, SoundCloud’s Trust & Safety Team informed Ngo via email of the permanent ban for “violating” the site’s Terms of Use and Community Guidelines, which state that users must not use the platform to create content “that is abusive, libellous, defamatory, pornographic or obscene, that promotes or incites violence, terrorism, illegal acts, or hatred on the grounds of race, ethnicity, cultural identity, religious belief, disability, gender, identity or sexual orientation, or is otherwise objectionable in SoundCloud’s reasonable discretion.”

Of course, Ngo’s podcast did none of those things. His podcast simply interviewed politicians and public figures, a perfectly legitimate thing for a reporter to do in a free society. That such reporting according to SoundCloud must now be censored because some of those interviewed expressed conservative values just shows us the close-minded and oppressive attitude of that company’s management.

I say “again” in the headline because this censorship by SoundCloud follows a long string of blackballing of Ngo by many different outlets and totalitarian organizations.
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Paypal lowering fees charged to sellers

11:21 am

Isn’t competition great? Paypal announced today that as of August 2, 2021 it is lowering the fees it deducts from the payments made by buyers to sellers.

The fee reduction is about 15% to 20%, depending on the fee, which means I have just gotten a pay raise from those who donate or subscribe to Behind the Black using PayPal. This does not mean I want everyone to use PayPay. Right now I actually prefer new subscribers use Patreon, simply because it makes me less dependent on PayPay should it decide my commentary is “evil” and must be blacklisted.

The reductions make these fees lower than Paypal’s new competitors, such as Patreon, or from the conservative right, such as David Rubin’s Locals.com and Dan Bongino’s AlignPay. However, I expect them all to quickly drop their fees as well to match PayPal. And as long as PayPal continues to treat its conservative customers like dirt, expect this competition to continue to heat up.

Lowering its price won’t help if PayPal doesn’t stop playing partisan politics. It really has only two options for maintaining its market dominance. Either it can stop acting like a petty authoritarian dictator and canceling conservative vendors, or it can team up with the government to get its competitors banned or shut down. Which do you think it will eventually choose?

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SpaceX launch scrubbed because airplane strayed into what Musk calls “an unreasonably gigantic” launch zone.

9:33 am

Capitalism in space: Yesterday a SpaceX Falcon 9 launch was scrubbed mere seconds before launch because an airplane had been detected inside the government’s keep-out zone.

The scrub was called by the range officer at T-11 seconds. SpaceX will attempt the launch again today.

Musk immediately blasted the size of that keep-out zone, which was established decades ago at the very beginnings of the space race and has not been adjusted as launch technology has improved.

“Unfortunately, launch is called off for today, as an aircraft entered the ‘keep out zone,’ which is unreasonably gigantic,” Musk tweeted Tuesday afternoon. “There is simply no way that humanity can become a spacefaring civilization without major regulatory reform. The current regulatory system is broken.”

Musk has successfully forced the range to accept new technology that simplifies launches, makes it possible for them to occur faster with less time in-between, and requires fewer range officials monitoring the launch. He is now pushing them to rethink the size of the range, which is likely much larger than now necessary, as Musk claims, because not only are rockets more reliable, their programming is more precise.

The article at the link also notes as an aside at the end another Musk tweet, that SpaceX’s Starlink network now has 70,000 customers and hopes to have 500,000 within a year. More on that story here.

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Russians launch Progress freighter; Virgin Orbit launches seven commercial satellites

9:04 am

This morning two launches occurred. First the Russians successfully launched a Progress freighter to ISS, using their Soyuz-2 rocket.

Second, Virgin Orbit successfully completed its second orbital launch with its air-launched LauncherOne rocket, which was its first operational commercial launch, placing seven smallsats into orbit for three customers. This was also its second launch in 2021.

If all goes as planned, SpaceX will complete a third launch today also, placing more than 80 smallsats in orbit with its Falcon 9 rocket. Until then, however, the leaders in the 2021 launch race are as follows:

19 SpaceX
18 China
10 Russia
3 Northrop Grumman

The U.S. now leads China 28-18 in the national rankings.

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Today’s blacklisted American: Mayor in Colorado bans pledge of allegiance and anyone who dares recite it during public comments

12:37 pm

The Bill of Rights cancelled in Colorado
Doesn’t exist in Silverton, Colorado.

The mayor of Silverton, Colorado, Shane Fuhrman, unilaterally decided during a public trustee meeting that the pledge of allegiance was now banned, saying he did so because of some “direct and indirect threats, inappropriate comments in and out of public meetings and general divisiveness and issues created in our community.”

One trustee immediately challenged Fuhrman’s ruling, noting that the trustees had voted in favor of reciting the pledge at an earlier meeting, and that the mayor had no right to rescind that vote unilaterally. Fuhrman shrugged and demanded a citation of some law saying he couldn’t do it.

When someone insisted on using their comment period to recite the pledge anyway (with the rest of the audience and some officials joining in), Fuhrman, who wa elected by a margin of only 10 votes, threatened to have them removed for daring to exercise their first amendment rights by doing so.

A video of these events is embedded below.
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Today’s blacklisted American: Rudy Giuliani loses law license for daring to represent Donald Trump

12:11 pm

Rudy Giuliani-Blacklisted from practicing law in New York
Rudy Giuliani-Blacklisted from practicing law in New York because
he worked to defend his client, Donald Trump.

Today’s blacklisted American: Last week a panel of New York state judges, all Democrats, suspended the law license of Rudy Giuliani, claiming that he had “communicated demonstrably false and misleading statements to courts, lawmakers and the public at large in his capacity as lawyer for former President Donald J. Trump and the Trump campaign.”

A review of the judges’ actual ruling [pdf] reveals the real truth. Giuliani was representing his client by citing actual affidavits (made under penalty of imprisonment if proven false) and other disturbing facts that raised questions about the security and legitimacy of the election results in November 2020.

The judges, being partisan Democrats and supporters of Joe Biden, dispute those facts. In their ruling they itemized many of Giuliani’s claims and then listed why they think they are false. Based on their interpretation of the facts they then decided that Giuliani must lose his law license, essentially because he took a position they disagreed with.

The problem however is that these facts remain disputed.
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China releases more images & videos from Zhurong

10:33 am

Zhurong panorama looking north, June 27, 2021
Click for full image.

Overview map
Click for full image.

China today released a new panorama as well as several videos taken by its Mars rover Zhurong.

The videos show the rover’s landing as well as two short videos taken from the remote camera it had dropped off shortly after deployment from its lander, the first showing the rover moving away and the second showing it turning in place.. China also released sound recorded during that deployment, as the rover rolled down the ramps. The sound was of course enhanced, but it does allow scientists to learn something about the atmosphere of Mars.

The image above is a cropped section from the panorama. The map to the right, taken on June 11th by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), has been annotated by me to show the area I think is seen by this section of that panorama, looking due north. (For a higher resolution version that clearly shows the rover’s tracks since leaving the lander, go here.)

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Today’s blacklisted American: Attendees at conservative event attacked by Antifa thugs

11:43 am

Antifa leaflet in Denver, June 2021
Click for original.

They’re coming for you next: Attendees attempting to go to the Western Conservatives Conference in Denver, Colorado last week were routinely harassed and attacked by leftist thugs.

The streets of Denver saw violence Friday as Antifa and Denver Communists attempted to shut down traffic and proceeded to assault individuals outside of the Western Conservative Conference. One woman was seen getting out of her car to confront Antifa who threw projectiles at her vehicle and was subsequently threatened with a mob-style beatdown if she proceeded.

Another onlooker offered to help the one woman find the culprit who damaged her car, to which someone in the crowd yells: “If you touch one, you’re gonna get touched by every last one of these mother-—s!” The crowd implied that she was at risk for a brutal beating if she proceeded.

More details here.
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Today’s blacklisted American: Christian nonprofit denied tax exempt status by IRS because such teachings are “partisan Republican”

12:35 pm

Moses: A Republican Party lobbyist, according to the IRS
Moses: A Republican Party lobbyist, according to the IRS.

Blacklists are back and the IRS has got ’em! The IRS has denied a Christian nonprofit tax exempt status because it has deemed such “Bible teachings are typically affiliated with the [Republican Party]” and are therefore partisan.

From the IRS denial letter:

“Specifically, you educate Christians on what the Bible says in areas where they can be instrumental including the areas of sanctity of life, the definition of marriage, biblical justice, freedom of speech, defense, and borders and immigration, U.S. and Israel relations,” read a letter from IRS Exempt Organizations Director Stephen Martin to Christians Engaged, a nonprofit group seeking tax-exempt status. “The Bible teachings are typically affiliated with the [Republican Party] and candidates. This disqualifies you from exemption under IRC Section 501(c)(3).”

Heh. Well, at least the IRS has now admitted the satanic nature of the Democratic Party. According to this IRS official, only the Republican Party supports such biblical teachings as the ten commandments. The Democratic Party is opposed to this, which makes being Christian or Jewish a partisan political position.

Of course, the IRS itself is very partisan, as the article at the link notes:
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Chinese official outlines that country’s Mars exploration plan

10:02 am

The new colonial movement: According to an official from China’s prime rocket manufacturer, China is now beginning to plan for the manned exploration of Mars.

Wang Xiaojun, head of the state-owned China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology (CALT), outlined the plans in his speech themed “The Space Transportation System of Human Mars Exploration” at the Global Space Exploration Conference (GLEX 2021) via a virtual link, the academy told the Global Times on Wednesday.

After reviewing the successful mission of the Tianwen-1 probe mission, the country’s first interplanetary exploration that achieved a successful orbiting, landing and roving the Red Planet all in one go, Wang introduced the three-step plan for future Mars expedition.

At the primary stage, or the technology preparation phase, androids will be launched whose mission include a Mars sample return mission and the exploration of a Mars base site. Next will be a manned Mars mission, and the building of a Mars base will be carried out. The third stage will be attempting shuttling large scale Earth-Mars cargo fleet and large scale development of the Red Planet.

The timetable for such mission launches will be 2033, 2035, 2037, 2041 and 2043, among others, the academy said.

While this is very far in the future, you can’t make it happen if you don’t get started early. China’s government is clearly looking at getting started, and appears to be following the same timetable approach it did for its space station. They began planning it about a decade ago, and are now launching and assembling it.

China’s decision to aim for Mars proves that the competition to get there is heating up considerably, and is likely their response to Elon Musk’s determined effort to make it possible.

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ULA to temporarily stop using new engine nozzle because of vibration issue

9:31 am

Capitalism in space: Because of an unexpected vibration issue seen during its first launches, ULA engineers have decided to temporarily stop using a new engine nozzle developed for the upper stage of both its Atlas 5 and new Vulcan rocket.

ULA’s CEO Tory Bruno said June 23 that the company is studying the data from the flight and has not yet decided what corrective action, if any, it might take. In the meantime, the new version of the RL10 [engine] with the carbon nozzle extension will not be used in upcoming Atlas 5 missions, Bruno said during a talk at the Secure World Foundation’s Summit for Space Sustainability.

Concerns about vibrations in the engine led ULA to delay the launch of the Space Force STP-3 mission that had been scheduled for June 23 and was planned to fly with the enhanced RL10. The company has not announced a new launch date for STP-3. ULA first plans to launch Boeing’s Starliner Orbital Flight Test 2 mission to the International Space Station scheduled for July 30. “It’ll be several missions, probably next year” before ULA decides whether to fly the RL10 configuration with the nozzle extension, said Bruno. The company wants to be “fully satisfied that we understand it.”

Below the fold is the live stream from that May launch, cued to show that vibration. It is their intention to go back to the older nozzle configuration for the next few launches.
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