Many watched Tom Brady lead the Tampa Bay Buccaneers Super Bowl victory over the Kansas City Chiefs. The game marked the franchise’s second Super Bowl victory and Tom Brady’s seventh. Brady’s epic accomplishment has earned him the title of the greatest quarterback of all time, but many on Twitter appeared to have been triggered by Brady’s victory.
Author: Blazingcatfur
Mature democracies should shun political personality cults, says pope selected by exclusive club
VATICAN CITY (Reuters) – Mature democracies must shun the temptation to glorify an individual political personality and make sure that the rule of law prevails over partisan interests, Pope Francis said on Monday.
Without naming any country or specific incident in his speech to diplomats, he spoke of events in the past year “in countries with a long democratic tradition” that had shown the need for “inclusive, peaceful, constructive and respectful dialogue”.
“The development of a democratic consciousness demands that emphasis on individual personalities be overcome and that respect for the rule of law prevail,” he said, without naming any individual politician.
Iran ‘hides spyware in wallpaper, restaurant and games apps’
Iran is running two surveillance operations in cyber-space, targeting more than 1,000 dissidents, according to a leading cyber-security company.
The efforts were directed against individuals in Iran and 12 other countries, including the UK and US, Check Point said.
It said the two groups involved were using new techniques to install spyware on targets’ PCs and mobile devices.
And this was then being used to steal call recordings and media files.
If You Thought the 2020 Elections Were Chaotic, Just Wait
H.R.1 packs into one 791-page bill every bad idea about how to run elections and mandates that the states must adopt — the very things that made the election of 2020 such a mess. It includes all of the greatest hits of 2020: Mandatory mail ballots, ballots without postmarks, late ballots and voting in precincts where you don’t live. It includes so many bad ideas that no publication has satisfactory space to cover all of them. The Senate companion bill, S.1, might be even worse.
These bills rearrange the relationship between the states and the federal government. The Constitution presumes that states regulate their own elections, but the Constitution has a big “but” in what is called the Elections Clause. The Constitution says, “but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations.” For over 200 years, Congress rarely used this power. After all, the power was put in the Constitution only to prevent the states from suffocating the federal government out of existence by never holding federal elections.
Lockdown extended for 2 weeks till Feb 22 in Toronto, Peel and York as COVID-19 restrictions lifted in eastern Ontario
Ontario is starting to ease COVID-19 restrictions, lifting stay-at-home orders Wednesday for three eastern regions that have low infection rates, but keeping the rest of the province in lockdown another week with Toronto, Peel Region and York Region not slated to emerge until Feb. 22.
The plan to be outlined by Premier Doug Ford this afternoon lets a four-week state of emergency imposed on Jan. 12 expire Tuesday, but comes with an “emergency brake” to allow a quick return to regional shutdowns if cases flare, particularly from new variants of the virus that are more contagious.
Communist China blocks access to US social media Clubhouse app after surge in user numbers
Chinese authorities have blocked domestic access to the audio-only social media app Clubhouse after it attracted untold numbers of Chinese people to uncensored, cross-border discussions on political and human rights subjects.
The invitation-only US app, which only works on iPhones and was released in April 2020, allows users to listen in to discussions and interviews in quasi conference-call style online rooms. It suddenly became popular last week – particularly in China, where people seized the opportunity to discuss taboo topics including Taiwan, Hong Kong, and the persecution of Uighurs.
On Monday evening Chinese users reported the platform was no longer available, ending a short-lived period of free political expression in a country where the government goes to extraordinary lengths to suppress it.
U.S. Set to Reverse Trump Move and Rejoin “Alleged” U.N. Human Rights Council
Self-anointed guardians of human freedom China, Russia, Cuba, Eritrea, and Venezuela may soon have the company of the U.S. at the U.N. Human Rights Council (UNHRC) if the Biden administration’s rush to rejoin the globalist body is a success.
Worst Cooks in America star who beat her three-year-old adopted daughter to death tweeted about her adopted kids’ white privilege a week earlier
Worst Cooks in America winner Ariel Robinson, who has been charged with beating her adopted white daughter to death, tweeted about her three white children’s privilege a week before allegedly killing her.
Robinson, 29, and her husband Jerry, 34, are both in jail on suspicion of beating their adopted three-year-old daughter Victoria to death on January 14 at their home in Simpsonville, South Carolina.
Racist Reverend’s Captain Tom Remarks Sparks Racist Backlash Says Church Of England
‘Appalling racist & homophobic abuse’: Church of England defends reverend who branded Captain Tom fans ‘white nationalist cult’
The Church of England has defended one of its clergymen after he posted a scathing tweet about iconic British veteran Captain Tom Moore a day after his death, condemning the “racist and homophobic” abuse he received.
The Revd. Jarel Robinson-Brown sparked outrage after he called fans of the late veteran a “cult of White British nationalism,” and said that he would not join an organized ‘National Clap’ in celebration of Moore, who raised over £30 million for NHS services before his death.
What exactly were they expecting?
Football fans blast historian’s woke op-ed which claims Tampa Bay Buccaneers’ name is problematic for ‘romanticizing’ cutthroat pirates
Football fans have blasted a historian’s woke op-ed which claims that the Tampa Bay Buccaneers’ name is problematic for ‘romanticizing’ cutthroat pirates.
Jamie L.H. Goodall, a staff historian at the U.S. Army Center of Military History, published her Washington Post op-ed on Friday ahead of Super Bowl LV, in which the Buccaneers faced off against the Kansas City Chiefs for the NFL championship.
‘While this celebration of piracy seems like innocent fun and pride in a local culture, there is danger in romanticizing ruthless cutthroats who created a crisis in world trade when they captured and plundered thousands of ships on Atlantic trade routes,’ Goodall wrote.
Ontario reports 1,265 new Covid cases … Say … are hotel quarantines legal?
Ontario reports 1,265 new COVID-19 cases; testing down 45 per cent
Ontario is reporting 1,265 new COVID-19 cases on Monday along with 33 more deaths, as testing rates fell more than 45 per cent as is often observed after a weekend.
Toronto reported 421 new cases as it exits a week-long period where it was transitioning to the province’s main COVID-19 data management system.
Civil liberties group warns mandatory hotel quarantines may harm low income Canadians
The Canadian Civil Liberties Association is questioning Ottawa’s move to require hotel quarantines for international travellers, saying it may harm lower-income Canadians and infringe on citizens’ mobility rights.
Cara Zwibel, a lawyer who heads the organization’s fundamental freedoms program, is calling on the federal government to produce any evidence that returning passengers are breaching the current requirement to self-isolate at home, which she suggests is the only fair basis to toughen the rules.
Canada’s visa application centre in Beijing run by Chinese police
Chinese police own a company that collects details of people applying for visas to Canada and numerous other countries, giving Beijing security services a direct stake in the processing of private information provided by people planning travel outside China.
Beijing Shuangxiong Foreign Service Company, which operates the Canadian visa-application centre in the Chinese capital, is owned by the Beijing Municipal Public Security Bureau, a Globe and Mail investigation has found. And at least some of the people working inside the centre are members of the Communist Party, recruited from a school that trains the next generation of party elite.
(Use Incognito)
Canadian health agency manager who blogged about trip to Caribbean resigns to become social media influencer
A federal public servant who was caught up in the international travel controversy that swept through Canadian politics following Christmas has given up her career with the government to pursue her career as a social media “influencer,” saying that after she resigned, it felt like “a thousand pounds have been lifted off my shoulders.”
New tell-all book by network TV news producer exposes disgusting private behavior of many lefty ‘talented TV a–holes’
It turns out that lots of AT readers and I despise a number of lefty TV news readers for excellent reasons beyond their bias. Mike and Chris Wallace, Diane Sawyer, Chris Cuomo, Katie Couric, and others are exposed for being miserable human beings in the new memoir by former 60 Minutes and ABC News producer Ira Rosen, titled, Ticking Clock: Behind the Scenes at 60 Minutes. Mary Kay Linge, writing in the New York Post, dishes a lot of gossip taken from the book, which is due out on February 16.
Robert Spencer’s Ordeal in Iceland – A disturbing glance at Dr. Hjalti Már Björnsson’s emergency “treatment”.
“Robert Spencer and I experienced several troubling instances in Iceland, but the worst was after the talk, when a group of us went to for a few drinks at a local restaurant-bar. Someone slipped a brew of amphetamines, Ritalin and Ecstasy into Mr. Spencer’s drink. He was hospitalized that night and took the rest of the time in Iceland recovering, but making efforts to continue meetings and to be a good sport about a little sightseeing. No doubt his enemies and detractors celebrated his injury; but they injured an innocent man. They also injured a symbol of freedom and a fighter for the safety that Western democracy provides. His injury represented only a fraction of the injury with which Islamic supremacists and jihadists have already afflicted Western nations.” ~Christine Douglass Williams