Tuesday, August 3
Braodway Theaters To Require Vaccinations
The Broadway League made the announcement in a Friday press release. "[T]he owners and operators of all 41 Broadway theatres in New York City will require vaccinations for audience members, as well as performers, backstage crew, and theatre staff, for all performances through October 2021," the release said.
"Masks will also be required for audiences inside the theatre, except while eating or drinking in designated locations," the announcement continued.
League President Charlotte St. Claire said the new pan-Broadway policy "makes it simple for our audiences and should give even more confidence to our guests about how seriously Broadway is taking audience safety."
Exceptions will be made "for children under 12 and people with a medical condition or closely held religious belief that prevents vaccination," the release noted, stating that in those cases a negative COVID test would have to be presented at the time of admission.
"Masks will also be required for audiences inside the theatre, except while eating or drinking in designated locations," the announcement continued.
League President Charlotte St. Claire said the new pan-Broadway policy "makes it simple for our audiences and should give even more confidence to our guests about how seriously Broadway is taking audience safety."
Exceptions will be made "for children under 12 and people with a medical condition or closely held religious belief that prevents vaccination," the release noted, stating that in those cases a negative COVID test would have to be presented at the time of admission.
China's New US Ambassador
On Wednesday, a communication from Qin’s office demanded that China be treated with “equality” as a fellow influential power:
Both China and the United States are major countries with important influence in the world. Since we established diplomatic relations over 40 years ago, China-U.S. relations have gone through an extraordinary journey amidst twists and turns.
At this new historical juncture, our two countries need to follow the trend of the times and the general expectation of the international community, treat each other with mutual respect and equality, and pursue peaceful coexistence and win-win cooperation, as this will be the blessing of our two peoples and the whole world.
The Chinese people will never stop their quest for a better life.
The Communist Party of China and the Chinese government will never stop the endeavor to pursue happiness for the people.
The Communist Party of China and the Chinese government will never stop the endeavor to pursue happiness for the people.
China is firmly committed to the path of peaceful development, and will continue to advance world peace, contribute to global development, and uphold international order.
It will work with other countries to build a community with a shared future for mankind.
The New York Times likewise reported that the appointment signals a counter to the Biden administration’s efforts to parry rising Chinese influence across the globe: READ MORE
The New York Times likewise reported that the appointment signals a counter to the Biden administration’s efforts to parry rising Chinese influence across the globe: READ MORE
Church Sex Crimes
FROM BRIETBART...
Former cardinal Theodore McCarrick has been criminally charged with three counts of indecent assault and battery, for allegedly sexually assaulting a 16-year-old boy in 1974.
In 2018, the Vatican opened an investigation into the serial homosexual abuse of the former U.S. cardinal leading to a guilty verdict and laicization or “dismissal from the clerical state.”
Prior to his canonical trial, Pope Francis had accepted McCarrick’s resignation from the college of cardinals after revelations of sexual impropriety and abuse spanning decades.
The 91-year-old McCarrick was never tried until now of sexual abuse in a criminal court because his alleged crimes took place outside state statutes of limitation.
By Massachusetts law, however, where McCarrick has been charged, the process was allowed to go forward because McCarrick was not a state resident and by leaving the state, the statute of limitations was effectively suspended.
McCarrick is charged with having sexually assaulted a 16-year-old-boy during a 1974 wedding reception at Wellesley College in Massachusetts. The wedding reception in question was the alleged victim’s brother’s.
The alleged victim claims that McCarrick was a family friend, asserting that McCarrick molested him on numerous occasions on family trips to several states.
“We will look forward to addressing this case in the courtroom,” Barry Coburn, a lawyer for Mr. McCarrick, said in a statement.
In 2020, a lawsuit was brought against the former cardinal, alleging he ran a sex abuse ring of underage boys at his New Jersey shore house in the 1980s.
The unidentified man who filed the lawsuit claimed that in 1982 and 1983, when he was a 14-year-old, he and other victims would go on overnight trips to McCarrick’s beach house in Sea Girt.
In 2018, the Vatican opened an investigation into the serial homosexual abuse of the former U.S. cardinal leading to a guilty verdict and laicization or “dismissal from the clerical state.”
Prior to his canonical trial, Pope Francis had accepted McCarrick’s resignation from the college of cardinals after revelations of sexual impropriety and abuse spanning decades.
The 91-year-old McCarrick was never tried until now of sexual abuse in a criminal court because his alleged crimes took place outside state statutes of limitation.
By Massachusetts law, however, where McCarrick has been charged, the process was allowed to go forward because McCarrick was not a state resident and by leaving the state, the statute of limitations was effectively suspended.
McCarrick is charged with having sexually assaulted a 16-year-old-boy during a 1974 wedding reception at Wellesley College in Massachusetts. The wedding reception in question was the alleged victim’s brother’s.
The alleged victim claims that McCarrick was a family friend, asserting that McCarrick molested him on numerous occasions on family trips to several states.
“We will look forward to addressing this case in the courtroom,” Barry Coburn, a lawyer for Mr. McCarrick, said in a statement.
In 2020, a lawsuit was brought against the former cardinal, alleging he ran a sex abuse ring of underage boys at his New Jersey shore house in the 1980s.
The unidentified man who filed the lawsuit claimed that in 1982 and 1983, when he was a 14-year-old, he and other victims would go on overnight trips to McCarrick’s beach house in Sea Girt.
Monday, August 2
China & Wuhan Labs Released Virus
The report runs contrary to early efforts to stifle the so-called “lab leak theory” by the New York Times, which dismissed the theory by tying the hypothesis to racism and xenophobia. Its most vocal proponent, Republican Sen. Tom Cotton, was widely denounced as a conspiracy theorist.
The report, authored by the minority staff on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, says that the Wuhan lab was engaged in “dangerous genetic modification research on coronaviruses at unsafe biosafety levels.” The report also reveals unsafe working conditions at the lab and new information which shows the Chinese government sought to mislead the world about the experiments taking place, the Washington Free Beacon reports.
Congressional investigators say researchers at the lab “had the ability to genetically modify coronaviruses as early as 2016 without leaving any trace of that modification.”
According to the report, evidence suggests that the COVID-19 pandemic “was accidentally released from a Wuhan Institute of Virology laboratory sometime prior to September 12, 2019.”
“It is incumbent upon the United States and like-minded countries around the world to ensure accountability and implement the reforms necessary to prevent the CCP's malfeasance from giving rise to a third pandemic during the 21st century.”
The findings by congressional Republicans led by Texas Rep. Michael McCaul, the House Foreign Affairs Committee's ranking member, may increase the mounting pressure the U.S. government is receiving to sanction China and hold the Chinese government accountable for the pandemic. READ MORE
The God of Spinoza
Do you believe in God?
And he always answered:
I believe in the God of Spinoza.
The ones who hadn't read Spinoza didn't understand...
Baruch de Spinoza was a Dutch philosopher considered one of the three great rationalists of 17th-century philosophy, along with René Descartes in France, and Gottfried Leibniz in Germany.
Here's some of his wisdom:
God would have said:
Stop praying and punching yourself in the chest!
What I want you to do is go out into the world and enjoy your life. I want you to enjoy, sing, have fun and enjoy everything I've made for you.
Stop going to those dark, cold temples that you built yourself and say they are my house! My house is in the mountains, in the woods, rivers, lakes, beaches. That's where I live and there I express my love for you.
Stop blaming me for your miserable life; I never told you there was anything wrong with you or that you were a sinner, or that your sexuality was a bad thing!
Sex is a gift I have given you and with which you can express your love, your ecstasy, your joy.
So don't blame me for everything they made you believe.
Stop reading alleged sacred scriptures that have nothing to do with me. If you can't read me in a sunrise, in a landscape, in the look of your friends, in your son's eyes... you will find me in no book!
Trust me and stop asking me.
Would you tell me how to do my job?
Stop being so scared of me. I do not judge you or criticize you, nor get angry, or seek to punish you. I am pure love.
Stop asking for forgiveness, there's nothing to forgive.
If I made you... I filled you with passions, limitations, pleasures, feelings, needs, inconsistencies... free will.
How can I blame you if you respond to something I put in you?
How can I punish you for being the way you are, if I'm the one who made you?
Do you think I could create a place to burn all my children who behave badly for the rest of eternity?
What kind of God would do that?
Forget any kind of commandments, any kind of laws; those are wiles to manipulate you, to control you, that only create guilt in you.
Respect your peers and don't do what you don't want for yourself. All I ask is that you pay attention in your life, that your consciousness is your guide.
My beloved, this life is not a test, not a step, not a rehearsal, nor a prelude to paradise. This life is the only thing that exists here and now, and it is all you need.
I have set you absolutely free, no prizes or punishments, no sins or virtues... no one carries a marker, no one keeps a record.
You are absolutely free to create in your life heaven or hell.
I could tell you if there's anything after this life, but I won't... but I can give you a tip. Live as if there is nothing after... as if this is your only chance to enjoy, to love, to exist.
So, if there's nothing, then you will have enjoyed the opportunity I gave you. And if there is, rest assured that I won't ask if you behaved right or wrong, I'll ask. Did you like it? Did you have fun? What did you enjoy the most? What did you learn?...
Stop believing in me; believing is assuming, guessing, imagining. I don't want you to believe in me...
I want you to feel me in you when you kiss your beloved, when you tuck in your little girl, when you caress your dog, when you bathe in the sea.
Stop praising me, what kind of egomaniac God do you think I am?
I'm bored being praised, I'm tired of being thanked. Feeling grateful?
Prove it by taking care of yourself, your health, your relationships, the world. Express your joy!... that's the way to praise me.
Stop complicating things and repeating as a parakeet what you've been taught about me.
The only thing for sure is that you are here, that you are alive, and that this world is full of wonders.
What do you need more miracles for? Why so many explanations?
Look for me outside... you won't find me. Find me inside... there I am beating within you.
Spinoza.
FOUCI Says...
Fauci: US Likely Won’t Go Into Lockdown Over
COVID-19 Delta Variant
The United States is unlikely to be sent back into lockdown despite a surge in COVID-19 cases stemming from the delta variant, top U.S. scientist Anthony Fauci said Sunday.
America is in for "some pain and suffering in the future," but enough people have now been vaccinated to prevent a repeat of last winter's deadly surge, the infectious disease expert who advises President Joe Biden told ABC's "This Week."
"I don't think we're going to see lockdowns," Fauci said after Biden's announcement this week that the United States was probably headed for new restrictions because of the delta variant surge.
Elsewhere in the world, countries including China and Australia have, in fact, put some of their people back under lockdown as the highly contagious variant spreads, not long after it seemed life was beginning to return to normal.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention changed course this week and said fully vaccinated people should mask up again indoors in higher-risk areas of the country.
The top U.S. health authority says the delta variant is as contagious as chickenpox and, critically, that breakthrough cases in vaccinated individuals, though still rare, may be as transmissible as unvaccinated cases. READ MORE
College Campuses: Freedom of Speech
Everywhere I look, professors, administrators and peers all fervently parrot the same beliefs.
I have sat through orientation events that were highly politicized, assuming “community values” of radical progressivism — values I don’t share.
On the first day of the semester, a professor blatantly disparaged conservative politicians and their supporters as uneducated and ignorant.
I have sat through orientation events that were highly politicized, assuming “community values” of radical progressivism — values I don’t share.
On the first day of the semester, a professor blatantly disparaged conservative politicians and their supporters as uneducated and ignorant.
Even Mayor de Blasio intervened in October of 2018 to prevent right-wing provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos from speaking to a class of about 25 freshmen about political correctness after the campus erupted in outrage and Antifa threatened to shut down the event.
My experience is not unique. Across the nation, professors are espousing their own views at the lectern and thrusting politicized curricula upon students, teaching them what to think rather than how to think.
My experience is not unique. Across the nation, professors are espousing their own views at the lectern and thrusting politicized curricula upon students, teaching them what to think rather than how to think.
Meanwhile, speech codes, safe spaces, trigger warnings and the conflation of speech with violence have all had a discernibly chilling effect on campus discourse. NYU identification cards even prominently display a bias report hotline to report any instances of offense.
The resulting fear of saying the wrong thing or being behind on the latest political lingo is palpable. READ MORE
Surviving A Global Collapse of Society
The researchers said human civilisation was “in a perilous state” due to the highly interconnected and energy-intensive society that had developed and the environmental damage this had caused.
A collapse could arise from shocks, such as a severe financial crisis, the impacts of the climate crisis, destruction of nature, an even worse pandemic than Covid-19 or a combination of these, the scientists said.
To assess which nations would be most resilient to such a collapse, countries were ranked according to their ability to grow food for their population, protect their borders from unwanted mass migration, and maintain an electrical grid and some manufacturing ability. Islands in temperate regions and mostly with low population densities came out on top.
The researchers said their study highlighted the factors that nations must improve to increase resilience. They said that a globalised society that prized economic efficiency damaged resilience, and that spare capacity needed to exist in food and other vital sectors.
Billionaires have been reported to be buying land for bunkers in New Zealand in preparation for an apocalypse. “We weren’t surprised New Zealand was on our list,” said Prof Aled Jones, at the Global Sustainability Institute, at Anglia Ruskin University, in the UK.
Jones added: “We chose that you had to be able to protect borders and places had to be temperate. So with hindsight it’s quite obvious that large islands with complex societies on them already [make up the list]. READ MORE
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)