90 Miles From Tyranny

Sunday, December 20, 2020

Chinese Royalty Claims 5 Million Counterfeit Ballots Were Printed In China – Shares Phone Call And Pictures

A video was released on Friday in Mandarin Chinese of a phone call request for fake ballots customized by Chinese factory.

The manufacturer is reportedly in Kwangtung, China.

In the video a caller is heard requesting a bulk order of ballots to ship to the United States.

Here is a screenshot with the translation, and the video is included below:

Our Mandarin speaker confirmed the translation is accurate...

In the latest in a long line of ridiculous such controversies, an adaptation of Stephen King’s ‘The Stand’ has angered the deaf community and social justice warriors over the casting of a non-deaf actor as a deaf-mute character.

CBS All Access recently unveiled one of its most ambitious projects to date: an adaptation of Stephen King’s epic novel ‘The Stand.’ While one might have predicted controversy around unleashing a story about a flu epidemic practically wiping out civilization during the ongoing Covid-19 crisis, the real issue critics have found is with a casting decision.

Actor Henry Zaga portrays the deaf-mute character of Nick Andros in the limited series, and it’s not his performance that is triggering criticism, but rather the fact he has no hearing impairment.

More than 70 signatories put their name to a statement issued this week that called for a boycott of the series over this casting choice.
“We will not endorse, watch, or support your miniseries on CBS All Access. We will share our displeasure of the casting decision and airing of the miniseries on CBS All Access with our Deaf community, signing community, friends, and family of Deaf individuals; together we make up 466 million worldwide,” the letter reads.

Those protesting the series include Hollywood professionals such as Antoinette Abbamonte, director Jules Dameron, and actor James Caverly.

And, of course, social justice warriors have jumped at the chance to snowball the controversy on social media.

Not everyone has jumped on the bandwagon, though, with some pushing back at the idea that an actor shouldn’t work in a role that requires them to, you know, act.

One of the protest letter’s understandable gripes with CBS is that “not one deaf professional actor was called in to audition for the role.” The company is reportedly now meeting with the artists who released the statement.

‘The Stand’ controversy is just the latest casting debacle of 2020, which has seen actors criticized for portraying characters with different sexual orientations and others losing roles for not sharing characters’ identified gender. The worst and most inexplicable flash-in-the-pan firestorm came with the release of ‘The Tax Collector’, with critics claiming accusing white actor Shia Labeouf of “brownface” for playing a Latino character. The trouble is he was actually playing a white character based on multiple real people, so those gripes simply didn’t stack up.

While the pushback against ‘The Stand’ is more understandable than these other instances of outrage, much of the anger comes from the same knee-jerk feelings that have little nuance and even less care for context. Zaga is a fine actor who is capable of portraying a deaf-mute character, one that was and remains an incredibly important step forward for inclusion in storytelling. Andros is not treated, either in the novel and in the television adaptations, as less capable, but rather as someone who overcomes setbacks to...

Democratic memo declares 'rise of white Christian nationalism is a national security threat'

A Political Action Committee and a group of Democratic lawmakers want Joe Biden to pursue a 'secular agenda' that pushes back religious liberty gains made under Trump.

he Secular Democrats of America PAC prepared a report for Joe Biden and his transition team that outlines a roadmap to "boldly restore a vision of constitutional secularism and respect in the land for religious and intellectual pluralism."

The federal political action committee "represents secular Democratic individuals and organizations" and advocates for "secular governance, promote respect and inclusion of nonreligious Americans, and mobilize nonreligious voters."

The proposal was formally presented by Democratic Reps. Jamie Raskin and Jared Huffman, co-chairs of the Congressional Freethought Caucus, and endorsed by Democratic Rep. Jerry McNerney.

“We’ve offered the new administration a roadmap to restore our basic constitutional values and protect science, reason and public health in American government,” Raskin and Huffman said in a joint statement.

The proposal calls for Biden's team to work with Congress and governors to "advance a secular agenda at all levels of government, taking into account the current makeup of the federal courts and new, unfavorable precedents that your administration will have to contend with."

In the document, the group argues that Trump has "empowered the religious right in ways no other administration has before, making significant advances in enacting their Christian nationalist agenda."

The proposal outlines recommendations for reversing certain policies and "proactively" implementing new rules that would "restore secularism to federal governance and disentangle entrenched religious interests from federal policy."

Some of the recommendations in the document are related to Homeland Security policy.

"The rise of white Christian nationalism is a national security threat," read the document. "We recommend you: encourage the Department of Homeland Security and Department of Justice to dedicate resources to de-radicalization programs aimed at hate groups, including, but not limited to, white nationalists; increase monitoring of such groups, including the online environment, and take action to address increased hate crimes toward minority faith communities; and shift rhetoric to label violent white nationalist extremists as terrorists."...

Pennsylvania Rhymes With Transylvania, But Instead of Vampires They Have Where The Vote Wolf...

3 Things I Found On Ancipient.com

What is Ancipient.com? It Is A Pro-American (Nationalist), Pro-Trump, Pro-American Exceptionalism, And Pro-Western Values automated news aggregation website.

Ancipient.com is an automated, curated, rules based news aggregation website. If I wanted it to sound sexy, I could say it uses artificial intelligence to select news articles. It does not. It uses negative and positive keywords, data rules and curation to select news articles. When other news aggregaters have not updated any new news in hours, you can always depend on my trusty robot ancipient to work 24/7 to keep you updated.

Ancipient is a new word, it means:

an·cip·i·ent

/anˈsipēənt/

adjective

in an initial stage of understanding; beginning to understand or learn. "he could feel ancipient knowledge growing"
(of a person) learning, and improving their understanding on a topic or topics.

Oh Yeah, The Links I Promised:

Christmas Shoppers Beware: Chinese Slave Labor Is on the Rise

DOJ charges Zoom employee for helping Chinese government shut down Tiananmen Square commemorations

Progressive Groups Push Biden to Tap Accused Iranian Lobbyist for Top National-Security Role

Take a look at Ancipient.com and check it out!