Every crisis becomes a religion if it lasts long enough.

One factor in that transformation is the Beautiful Theory phenomenon: the power elite insists its remedies are logical and politically correct so they MUST work, even if the actual evidence shows they obviously don't.

In the space of half a year, a new class division was ripped through American society: those who can live normally through pandemic lockdowns and restrictions versus those who can't. The two sides have a great deal of difficulty communicating across that chasm.

Of course, media and political elites are, at worst, inconvenienced by lockdowns, so news coverage is heavily slanted against the people who are really suffering from these policies. They're already as forgotten as the designated losers of globalist trade policy.

Spend a day watching mainstream media pandemic coverage, then spend the evening with people whose livelihoods have been utterly ruined by pandemic restrictions. It's like traveling from the Earth to Mars. Completely different worlds, totally different outlooks.

It's exactly like the divide between "free trade" winners and losers, people living in comfortable financial and media bubbles vs. people living in hollowed-out ghost towns with skyrocketing mortality rates. The Wuhan virus gave us a new, even bigger class of Designated Losers.

The new class divide cracked open along some economic and social fault lines that were already present and deepening, such as the growing number of people who preferred minimizing human contact while socializing online. It really is the social schism of the new century.

Xi Jinping's speech at Davos boiled down to: The world has no choice but to do business with China, and if you want to do business with China, you need to stop criticizing our tyranny and questioning our lies about the

Xi's address to the World Economic Forum will serve as well as any other moment for historians to mark the beginning of the Authoritarian Era. He said nothing new, but he restated the narratives and demands of Chinese fascism from a post-pandemic position of aggressive strength.

For the first time, Xi spoke to a world that is beginning to accept the tenets of authoritarianism, thanks to the incredible political and economic damage from China's coronavirus. China's ideals have become as viral as Covid-19.

Thanks to the pandemic, the political elites of the world now universally see their citizens as dangerous mobs that must be tightly controlled for their own good. Most of them always thought that way, but now they can say it openly and act aggressively on their prejudices.

Xi clearly stated that China will not be contained, censured, or judged for its actions. He denounced Western ideals of human rights as "arrogance" and imperialism. After Covid and Biden's inauguration, he sees no nation with the strength or will to thwart China's ambitions.

Every modern effort to crush free speech begins as a crusade against "disinformation." China's massive Internet censorship apparatus was initially justified as an effort to control the spread of false information, and the Chinese state still describes it that way.

Censors begin by claiming that they only want to control the spread of deliberate falsehoods and push back against propaganda campaigns. They always begin by saying their primary concern is disinformation spread by hostile foreign powers. China constantly says that to this day.

The definition of "disinformation" begins to expand as the censors seek more power. Soon they aren't just going after DELIBERATE falsehoods pushed by malevolent conspiracies - they're suppressing everything from honest mistakes to predictions and "wrong" opinions.

It soon becomes clear that the censorship rules - like all other rules in totalitarian societies - are not applied evenly. The ruling party and its friends are judged much less harshly than dissidents. They get far more latitude to make unfounded statements or outright lies.

The censors move on, suppressing not just "disinformation" or demonstrably false statements, but even completely true statements that lack some vital "context." The censors declare that even pure truth is deceptive when it's not packaged and delivered "correctly."

Around the world, very much including the Western world, real power is measured by the ability to silence criticism.

The highest reaches of power are measured by the ability to force people to speak in politically-approved ways.

The ability to silence criticism is a signifier of power. It's how truly powerful groups and regimes recognize each other. If free people can challenge your ideals or mock you without fear, you aren't TRULY powerful, no matter how much authority you might nominally possess.

And if you can force people to speak, force them to use your preferred language, penalize them socially or legally for failing to signal their support for your agenda, then you've entered the winner's circle. Your government or movement has taken a seat at the highest table.

This is one of the reasons people with authoritarian or totalitarian inclinations are constantly screaming that opponents are trying to silence them, even when it's manifestly untrue. It's a means of signaling their contempt for the opposition, of diminishing its stature.

These people would cheerfully allow themselves to be silenced by a regime or movement they truly respected. They pretend to be victims of oppression as a means of signaling the illegitimacy of leaders they despise.

Time once again to demonstrate that "presidents have no mandate to wield power after close elections" is a scam directed solely and entirely at Republicans. By any objective standard, Biden has less of a "mandate" than anyone in memory, but no one in the media will say that.

The "mandate" narrative is silly as a matter of constitutional law. Nowhere is it written that a president's authority is diminished if the election was close, or people who didn't vote for him think his victory was illegitimate. But that's all we heard for years after Trump won.

Of course, not a single such complaint will be leveled at Biden. No one in the political/media class will insist he has an asterisk after his name and should be prevented from exercising the full powers of office, and then some.

Biden won't have to worry about "resistance" bureaucrats sabotaging his administration from Minute One or crazy Hawaiian judges stalling his policy agenda. If anyone tries it, the media will absolutely savage them, instead of cheering them on. Their very lives would be in danger.

As a matter of politics, it's fair enough to suggest that policies should be crafted with due recognition for the feelings of the opposition, and if the election was razor-close, extra care should be taken to recognize the divided electorate.

I have been working on pandemic outbreaks for 15 years.

There is a misunderstanding of the difference between the response in much of the West, versus successful countries (including New Zealand and Australia).

Summarizing:

1.Reactive versus proactive and goal oriented.

1/-

2.Mitigation (slowing transmission) versus elimination (stopping transmission)

3.Gradually responding to increasing levels of infection by imposing greater restrictions which enables the infection rate to grow (red zone strategy), …

2/

versus starting with high restrictions to arrest transmission and relaxing restrictions only when the number of new cases is so low that contact tracing or localized short term action can stop community transmission (green zone strategy, including localized "fire fighting").

3/

4.Trying to keep economic activity and travel as open as possible but perpetuating the economic harm and imposing yoyo restrictions, versus making an initial sacrifice of economic activity and travel in order to benefit from the rapid restoration of normal economic activity.

4/

5.Focusing attention on few individuals resistant to social action because of shortsightedness or selfishness, versus recognizing the vast majority do the right thing if given clear guidance and support, which is what matters for success, as elimination is a robust strategy.

5/

I think the UK trans debate has teased out the sticking points for feminists, and it might be useful to lay them out given that the battle in the US, with a very different legislative environment, is just starting.

The GRA of 2004 gave trans people the ability to change legal sex via a GRC, but only if they had a psychiatric diagnosis of dysphoria and only after having lived in role for 2 years. The spousal veto gave spouses a chance to annul or obtain a favourable divorce.

While this ultimately created the loophole in women's rights that we've been fighting against in the last few years, it catered for a tiny number of dysphoric transsexuals and so did not have an enormous impact.

Discussions with trans friends and allies make it clear that, although surgery wasn't a requirement for a GRC, the diagnostic procedures were expected to trap and exclude males who did not want surgery, thereby preventing fetishists and opportunists from exploiting a GRC.

The Equality Act of 2010 defined the various protected characteristics, including both sex and 'gender reassignment', and provided for sex-based exemptions, under the auspices of which it is legal to exclude trans people from some single-sex spaces and services.

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|| Geography and Astronomy ||

of “EARTH” according to Indian ancient scriptures

I repeat “Untold Unsung now Unearthed”

RT and spread the knowledge.

Slightly long thread but you’d be amaze. Go through entire thread carefully.

It is hoped that you have not forgotten that Svayambhuva Manu had a son named Priyavrata. Priyavrata had ten sons. Their names were Agnidhra, Agnivahu, Vapushmana, Dyutimana, Medha, Medhatithi, Bhavya, Savana, Putra and Jyotishmana.

Medha, Agnivahu and Putra had no desire to rule. They were not interested in material pursuits and became hermits.

Priyavrata divided the earth amongst the remaining seven sons. Thus it was that the earth came to be divided into seven regions or dvipas.

Agnidhra ruled over Jambudvip, Medhatithi over Plakshadvip, Vapushman over Shalmalidvip, Jyotishman over Kushadvip, Dyutimana over Krounchadvip, Bhavya over Shakadvip & Savan over Pushkaradvip

Agnidhra, the ruler of Jambudvipa, had nine sons. Their names were Nabhi Kimpurusha, Hari, Ilavrita, Ramya, Hiranyavana, Kuru, Bhadrashva and Ketumala.

Agnidhra divided Jambudvipa into nine regions (varshas) and gave each of his sons a region to rule over.

The reason that so many conservative evangelicals these days appear to be moral relativists is that they *are* moral relativists.

They would deny this, of course. But that doesn’t make it any less true. Here's why.

They’ve bought into the premise that all statements are either fact or opinion: facts are objective and verifiable; and everything else is opinion—subjective and unverifiable. In other words, they've bought into full-fledged modernism.

From there, the secular path to moral relativism places all moral statements in the “opinion” category. On this view, morality is subjective—dependent on cultural context, historical background and the like.

Conservative evangelicals recoil from this approach, as they should.

So instead, they place morality in the “fact” category, claiming that moral truth is objective and empirically verifiable.

And how is moral truth empirically verified? The Bible, of course. Problem solved.

This is tempting, for two reasons. First, Scripture is entirely true; and much of that truth pertains to morality.

Second, apart from special revelation, it’s difficult to imagine where we might go to find empirical verification of moral truth—you can't *see* moral properties.

Southerners wrote songs about Warrington, formed peace movements because of IRA violence - but I can’t point to any mainstream effort to oppose/understand who the glenane gang, or Shankill butchers were, care about Loughinisland, state violence, &collusion.
V selective interest

They were and are revolted by SF glorifying murder but dont know or care about the deaths of catholics here. As I’ve seen the apathy to the life my parents lived, and the fear I grew up with, I always make it understood I’m Irish but from the north. Because it’s important

Showing absolutely no interest in the murder of the people in the areas SF are elected to represent is really selectively deciding whose lives you think are worth anything. I doubt anyone south of Louth Monaghan or Cavan could tell you or care about the Reavey brothers

There was and is no hand wringing about children being shot in the fields by soldiers in front of their parents or hunted down in their own house and killed in front of their families- where were the marches, the songs, the movements?

“But Sinn Fein said this”- is of zero comfort to victims of state or loyalist violence and you are actually framing their loved ones murders in such a way that you’re almost making them partially culpable for their own fate or excusing it somehow when it’s nothing to do with SF