Left Doesn’t Just Want to Censor You on Social Media. It Also Wants to Close Your Bank Accounts
When White House press secretary Jen Psaki said that people who spread “misinformation” “shouldn’t be banned from one platform and not others,” she revealed the left’s chilling plan for censoring content that goes against the left’s narrative.
It is becoming increasingly clear that political leaders on the left and Big Tech are joining arms to not just deplatform dissident voices from social media, but to bar them from the digital space entirely, including from having the ability to make and receive payments online.
In the latest example, Chase Bank reportedly planned to close the credit card account of former national security adviser Michael Flynn on Sept. 18, stating that “continuing the relationship creates possible reputational risk to our company.” While as of Aug. 31, a Chase spokesperson said that they had “made an error and apologized for any inconvenience caused,” the initial gesture can’t be ignored.
This comes just a couple months after Wells Fargo made the “business decision” to close 2020 Republican Delaware Senate candidate Lauren Witzke’s account. Two of the more prominent digital payment services, PayPal and Stripe, have also become active cancel culture participants.
PayPal has admitted to closing accounts flagged by the Southern Poverty Law Center in 2019, now, PayPal has announced a partnership with the left-leaning Anti-Defamation League to focus on “further uncovering and disrupting the financial pipelines that support extremist and hate movements.”
In their joint statement, neither PayPal nor the Anti-Defamation League explicitly define what they mean by extremist and hate movements, but it would be naïve to think that mainstream conservatives will escape the crosshairs of this new partnership.
Following the Jan. 6 Capitol disturbance, Stripe stopped payment processing services for the Trump campaign’s website and online fundraising efforts, as well as for individuals who had been present at the protest-turned-riot.
Conservative organizations and individuals have been censored by these digital payment and financial service companies not because of what they say on these platforms, but because of who they are. These woke institutions are replacing financial credit with social credit.
In a tweet from July, author and business owner J.D. Vance states, “The next stage of deplatforming will be denying people access to the financial system. Second Amendment will mean little if Visa won’t let you buy ammunition.”
Vance is making an important point: If a person has the “wrong viewpoint,” the left will be coming for “your speech, your wallet, your ability to be a citizen in a digital environment.”
It hasn’t only been conservatives that have been censored, shadow banned, and suspended from online platforms. Certain content by any user that opposes or questions the left has been stifled, regardless of political or ideological view. Facebook and Twitter have especially taken part in this cancel culture behavior, most notably by kicking off former President Donald Trump.
The direction in which these tech companies are headed necessitates alternative digital payment services that will not deplatform users for their political views. Fortunately, conservative commentator Dan Bongino has stepped up to address this issue in the digital payment space.
Bongino recently announced the creation of AlignPay, a new platform that pledges to process the digital payments of organizations, regardless of their political beliefs. The launch of AlignPay highlights an important point: One of the most effective ways for conservatives to counter censorship is to develop, support, and promote alternative platforms, thereby providing users with greater choice.
Bongino openly admits that the creation of his newest anti-cancel culture payment process platform is in direct opposition to Stripe and PayPal after their cancelation of organizations and individuals. It is initiatives like Bongino’s that will address gaps in the technology marketplace for those who are not satisfied with their current options—choices that cancel users not only for what they say on the platform, but for what they say and believe off the platform.
AlignPay’s website states that the platform is “built for freedom,” and will be free from “cancel culture,” as it specializes in processing debit, credit, and other forms of mobile transactions. It also aims to provide its services at lower costs than competitors.
AlignPay also will prioritize user security and privacy by fully encrypting all transactions and not selling or monetizing users’ personal data. The platform’s services will be available to political campaigns, nonprofits, e-commerce sites, businesses, activist groups on both the left and right, and any organization, as long as they are not engaged in unlawful or criminal activity.
Other conservatives have also taken initiative to counter Big Tech censorship by developing alternative platforms. Locals was created by conservative commentator Dave Rubin to allow content creators to run their own subscription-based pages and communities.
RightForge was developed in part as a response to the deplatforming of Parler by Amazon Web Services, Apple, and Google to provide a range of IT services free from censorship and interference, including cloud and website hosting, website and application development, among others.
The digital platform GETTR is another recently created free speech alternative that was launched on Independence Day by former Trump campaign adviser Jason Miller.
These are just a few examples of companies that have responded to tech censorship, which ultimately poses a threat to the health of our democracy. As the French statesman Alexis de Tocqueville once noted:
Tyranny in democratic republics does not proceed in the same way, however. It ignores the body and goes straight for the soul. The master no longer says: You will think as I do or die. He says: You are free not to think as I do. You may keep your life, your property, and everything else. But from this day forth you shall be as a stranger among us.
To help restore balance between tech companies, their users, and the body politic, it is crucial that innovations and free market alternatives, such as Bongino’s AlignPay, are amplified and that innovations such as this continue to be created.
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America the Faithful
On Aug. 23, 1984, at an ecumenical prayer breakfast in Dallas, then-President Ronald Reagan said (pdf), “Without God, there is no virtue because there is no prompting of the conscience. … Without God, there is a coarsening of the society. And without God, democracy will not and cannot long endure. If we ever forget that we are one nation under God, then we will be a nation gone under.”
For decades, secularists have been eagerly waiting for the day when America no longer acknowledges God and becomes a country that has lost its founding ideals and collective soul. They trot out polls showing diminishing church attendance, growing disinterest from youth, and increased rejection of moral absolutes as evidence that America is turning its back on God.
Yes, you can see the manifestations of a culture that no longer takes God seriously all around us—the decline of the family, the taking of innocent human life, and continued attacks on religious freedom. But, despite these celebrations of these tragic manifestations by certain members of our society, a substantial number of Americans still put their trust in God, strive to live in accordance with the teachings of Scripture, and participate in faith communities.
John DiIulio, in a recent article in The Claremont Review of Books, writes that in their book, “Secular Surge: A New Fault Line in American Politics,” authors David Campbell, Geoffrey Layman, and John Green assert that the faith of Americans is not withering. Instead, it’s the gap between those who believe and those who don’t believe that’s expanding.
They report that while 28 percent of Americans claim they’re “secularists,” only a third of that number are openly hostile to religious faith. But that third has gained control of many of America’s institutions—such as our universities and media organizations—and thus have an outsized influence over our nation’s culture and politics.
But, regardless of their determination to demonize, silence, and eventually stamp out faith, these secularists will discover what the communists learned when Pope John Paul II visited Poland in 1979. Those people, whose spirits the Soviet atheists thought they had crushed, started to chant “We want God” repeatedly—and that longing shook the Kremlin to its core.
Unfortunately, the secularist elite in America haven’t learned from the lesson that “those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” In their relentless drive to strip our nation of its spiritual foundations, they’re doing the church a favor: they’re helping to separate the wheat from the chaff (those who say they’re religious but really aren’t) while strengthening the faith of those who believe God plays a significant role in every aspect of their life.
Statistics document this. A recent Pew Research poll found that the percentage of Americans who identify as Christians has fallen to 63 percent compared to 78 percent in 2007, while the number of Americans who say they have no religion has risen by 13 percentage points in roughly the same period. However, a Pew survey earlier this year found that almost one-third of Americans said their faith had grown stronger over the past year and a half (coinciding with COVID-19)—the largest share of any developed country.
So, it’s true religious faith that is expanding. Those committed to faith realize that their faith comes with a price they’re willing to pay to stand for God and for freedom, while those who were content with a “in name only” faith are the ones falling away. I would assert that is a good thing for America.
In a September 1982 speech, then-President Reagan said, “We can’t expect God to protect us in a crisis and just leave Him over there on a shelf in our day-to-day living. I wonder if sometimes He isn’t waiting for us to wake up.”
As a country, we don’t need more people who put God on a shelf and only turn to Him in a crisis. We need people who turn to Him daily for guidance, comfort, and strength.
That’s why I’m encouraged that more Americans are realizing that they can’t just leave God on a shelf in their day-to-day living. While secularists point to the so-called “numbers” and claim that our faith is waning, they’re missing that the truly faithful, like the people in Poland, “want God.” And, if that’s the case, it will be those who are truly committed to the faith who will restore our nation’s virtue, conscience, and collective soul—and will remain one nation under God.
https://www.theepochtimes.com/mkt_morningbrief/america-the-faithful_4182073.html
**********************************************The Trump Economic Record Looks Better Every Day
When running against Donald Trump for president, Joe Biden often made the now-ironic charge that any president who has allowed so many deaths from COVID-19 should never be in the White House. Today, there are more deaths from COVID under Biden than under Trump—and that is even with the vaccine.
But it isn’t just on health issues that Trump’s presidency is looking so much better and competent in hindsight.
Everywhere I go these days, people come up to me and say something like this: “I didn’t like some of the things Trump said or the way he acted, but I have to admit I like what he did for the economy.”
No one has vindicated Trump’s “Make America Great Again” policies more persuasively than Biden. High gas prices, the highest inflation rate in four decades, a plan to double the national debt in 12 years, and falling paychecks for workers are waking Americans up to the real broad-based prosperity under Trump.
Trump’s strategy was to reduce taxes, slash regulation, massively increase domestic energy production, and overhaul trade deals to get tough with China.
No one in the progressive movement thought it could possibly work. The Washington Post famously claimed before the 2016 election that “Trump could destroy the world economy.” Did that turn out to be true?
Here are just the facts, ma’am. Over his first three years in office before COVID hit, the unemployment rate fell below 4 percent, which was near the lowest in half a century. The inflation rate fell to 1 percent, which was even below the target level set from the Federal Reserve. This kept the interest rates on mortgages and many other loans down to the lowest level in modern times.
Poverty rates fell to their lowest levels ever recorded. This was true for women, children, blacks, whites, Hispanics, and Asians. Median household income rose to nearly $68,000, and the $5,000 gain in three years was more than over the second term of George W. Bush and the eight years of Barack Obama.
Here was another remarkable feat: Under Trump, the United States became energy-independent. The month that Trump left office, one year ago, America was importing zero oil from Saudi Arabia, largely because U.S. oil and gas production had surged. Now we have a president who has to beg the Saudis and Iranians to produce more oil. How humiliating.
The bumper stickers are starting to appear everywhere: “Miss Trump Yet?” Not many Americans miss some of his antics. But every day that inflation surges, the border remains in chaos, COVID runs amok, and government spending and debt surges to new multitrillion-dollar highs, Trumponomics sounds like a better idea.
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Chinese couple are sentenced to death after father killed his two toddlers by throwing them off a 15th-floor balcony because new girlfriend did not want to raise another woman's children
Sometimes Chinese justice is appropriate
A father and his girlfriend have been sentenced to death in China after he threw his two children from his apartment building because his new girlfriend did not want another woman's kids.
The two young children fell from the tower block in the municipality of Chongqing, China, on November 2 last year.
Zhang Bo's daughter Zhang Ruixue, 2, died instantly, while his son Zhang Yangrui, 1, died shortly after from his injuries.
The 27-year-old had met Ye Chengchen, who he wanted to marry, but she refused to accept him while he already had children and so did her parents.
His girlfriend pressured him into getting rid of them, even cutting her wrists on the day in question to show her frustration at not being able to start a new family with him.
The man then threw both children out of the window before running downstairs to appear grief-stricken at what had just happened.
He was filmed banging his head on the wall and crying uncontrollably, which prosecutors said was all a sham.
He claimed at the time that he was asleep when the children fell out of the window and said he was woken up by people shouting downstairs after discovering the bodies on a grass lawn.
Zhang's ex-wife, named Chen Meilin, told local media that his new girlfriend Chengchen 'didn't want Zhang to have children of his own blood' to another woman.
Zhang started a relationship with Chengchen while he was still married, and he divorced Meilin later. Custody of the children was shared, so the daughter would remain with her mother and the son would remain with his father until he was six-years-old.
However, he asked to look after his daughter on the day that he killed both of them after seeing his girlfriend cut her wrists during a live video chat.
The dead children's mother Chen said: 'At that time, Zhang was on a video phone call with Ye. She slit her wrists and then Zhang got scared. The phone was dropped, he picked up the two children, and threw them from the balcony.'
According to local media, the father admitted he and Ye had plotted to kill the children so that they could start a new family without any children from his former marriage.
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My other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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