Salt Lake City, Utah – A far-left Utah parent is demanding the Davis County School District remove the Bible from schools, calling it “one of the most sex-ridden books around.”
The parent claims that the Bible violates a Utah law passed in 2022 to ban any books containing “pornographic or indecent” content from Utah school. The leftist filed the compliant in anger over actual pornographic books with cartoon depictions of sex acts being removed for Utah schools.
District spokesperson Chris Williams told ABC4 they will consider the complaint.
We don’t jump to conclusions, we go through the entire process. We don’t blow off one request because we think it’s silly
The Salt Lake City Tribune obtained a copy of the parent’s request to ban the Bible last Tuesday.
Incest, onanism, bestiality, prostitution, genital mutilation, fellatio, dildos, rape, and even infanticide. You’ll no doubt find that the Bible, under Utah Code Ann. § 76-10-1227, has ‘no serious values for minors’ because it’s pornographic by our new definition.
The parent then issues the demand to remove the Bible from shelves at Davis High School, calling the it “porn.”
Get this PORN out of our schools. If the books that have been banned so far are any indication for way lesser offenses, this should be a slam dunk.
The anti-Christian parent also took a shot at parental rights group Utah Parents United, calling it a “white supremacist hate group” for trying to protect children from being exposed to sexually explicit material in schools.
Now we can all ban books and you don’t even need to read them or be accurate about it. Heck, you don’t even need to see the book!
Ceding our children’s education, First Amendment Rights, and library access to a white supremacist hate group like Utah Parents United seems like a wonderful idea for a school district literally under investigation for being racist.
The Public Relations Director of Utah Parents United, Corinne Johnson, blasted the false equivalency in an interview with the Daily Caller on Friday. She called it a “political stunt” and said the parent does not understand the law.
It is clear from the petition that this is a political stunt and the parent does not understand the law or the seriousness of the challenge process. None of the passages from the Bible meet the Bright Line Standard for pornographic content. Not every reference to sexual activity meets the criteria for removal from a school library.
Johnson went on to explain that the 2022 law provides clear guidelines regarding explicit sexual content.
If there are descriptions or depictions of human genitals in a state of sexual stimulation or arousal; acts of human masturbation, sexual intercourse, or sodomy; or fondling or other erotic touching of human genitals or pubic region, then it should not be allowed anywhere on the school grounds.
The Bible does not contain this material. A vile book like GenderQueer, which has been banned is some Utah School district, does however.
Facts do not matter to the woke left, though. They just look for any angle to target traditional values.
The man seen urging people inside the Capitol Building on multiple videos on Jan. 5 and Jan. 6 in 2021, Ray Epps, wasn’t really urging people inside the Capitol, lawyers tell Fox News’ Tucker Carlson. Instead, you’re believing your own lying eyes. And if you don’t hep-to and apologize for stating what’s on video that was captured on those days, then we’ll sue you.
So goes the gist of the letter sent to Tucker Carlson and Fox News from Epps’ new attorney.
The letter from Epps’s lawfare lawyer, formerly of Perkins Coie, to Carlson claims, “the fanciful notions that Mr. Carlson advances on his show regarding Mr. Epps’s involvement in the January 6th insurrection are demonstrably (and already proven to be) false.”
The “proof” suggesting that Epps didn’t do what he was seen doing was not provided. We’d all love to see that. The January 6 Committee’s private meeting with Epps, during which Adam Kinzinger fluffed him and granted him absolution, isn’t proof, actually. And his then-former FBI agent-attorney doesn’t absolve Epps of suspicions that he may have been a government informant of some kind on January 6, either.
This legal howler isn’t meant just for Carlson; it’s a narrative directive to a compliant media from the man who brought you Media Matters. And now David Brock’s other group, Facts First, has a stable of lawyers willing to tie people up in court for years in a legal war of attrition. They don’t call it lawfare for nothing.
And it’s working.
The question is, what would one have to disavow about Ray Epps to comply with the Democrats’ “shut up or we’ll sue you” demand?
For one, that Ray Epps didn’t encourage a breach of the Capitol Building the night before the Trump speech and was immediately outed as a “Fed! Fed! Fed! Fed!”
One must ignore the fact that Epps told everyone that he traveled across the country to see President Trump’s speech, but he didn’t. He later claimed he was also concerned about his son’s welfare in coming to the Capitol and thought Antifa would start something. Instead, Epps was at the West entrance to the Capitol Building grounds, seemingly starting something. He is seen on video whispering into the ear of a person who then took down barricades.
Those barricades served an important purpose; they denoted the no-go zone outside the Capitol. When Trump’s speech was over and hundreds of people went into the area, they were suddenly and officially “trespassing.” Ray Epps and the barricade removers helped that happen.
Ray Epps was included on an FBI BOLO announcement and then removed six months later.
Later, the January 6 Committee spoke to Epps and assured Americans he was an ally. So, did we not see what we saw Ray Epps do? Is there another explanation for his activities?
Why did Epps keep urging people to go inside the Capitol when he did not go inside the building himself? If this was such a moral imperative, why didn’t he do it?
There was more evidence to suggest wrongdoing by Ray Epps than many people who were arrested following January 6. Enrique Tarrio, the leader of the Proud Boys, wasn’t even in Washington, D.C., that day and was still arrested.
This week in the Proud Boy trial, we found out that an FBI informant was advising the defense lawyer’s team. The prosecution — the feds — finally told the defense at the last moment before the person was to testify. This was on top of indications that they’d destroyed evidence, but the judge just took their word for it.
There’s bad faith all around by the feds.
The man known as Baked Alaska, who is heard on video calling Epps a “fed,” told Revolver News that he’d been called by the FBI the day before he left to go to Washington. He told them he wouldn’t talk to them without a warrant. But when he got to D.C., Epps followed him. “I then was weirded out by Epps and told him to go away as I walked away from him,” he wrote to the news website. “But Epps kept following me around!!”
His attorney thinks Epps might have been a plant for the feds.
My attorney thinks it’s possible Epps was monitoring me via the feds.” He then says “Epps showed up in a previous video I streamed at the Phoenix Stop the Steal event, walked by, and said something which I don’t remember the interaction at all.”
But the letter sent to Carlson et. al. demanded that Carlson in effect deny what’s in the video and stop asking if Epps is a fed. If he doesn’t, they’ll sue Carlson and Fox News for defamation and invasion of privacy.
Globalists are trying to brainwash citizens with their environmental and nutritional propaganda to control citizens’ food choices.
Hungary has enacted stricter rules against the clandestine insectification of foods. The Minister of Agriculture István Nagy announced on his social media site that they are now requiring foods containing insect proteins to carry the label “Warning! Food containing insect proteins” and must be displayed separately from other products,
The minister stressed that the government wants to protect Hungarian consumers from foods containing insect protein authorized by Brussels in the European Union (EU) through strict product labeling and segregation rules.
Hungary was the only member state not to support the EU’s intention to allow insects to be marketed as food and food ingredients in the EU.
He added that the European Commission is risking our gastronomic traditions and eating habits. That is why the Ministry of Agriculture has amended the food-labeling regulation to provide accurate information to consumers.
Products containing insect proteins will be clearly distinguishable and segregated on store shelves. Non-compliant packaging and labels may continue to be used for three months, and products with such packaging or labels may remain on the market for a maximum of three months. István Nagy also pointed out that no fines for non-compliance with the amended Regulation for 90 days will be imposed.
He pointed out that representative surveys by the National Food Chain Safety Office clearly show that since 2016, the proportion of people in Hungary who will not eat insects has increased by 2.4 percent.
Those who prefer buying food of Hungarian origin do not want to eat insects. In addition, he underlined that Hungarian farmers always provide the Hungarian population with high-quality foodstuff, fresh and good quality food, so there is no need to fear either food shortages or protein shortages.
He also said that the regulation does not affect insect-derived additives, which have been widely used by the food industry but apply to insects as ingredients.
Italy bans insect flour from its pasta
Italy has banned insect flour from its pasta, reports The Times. “The growing use in cooking of flour made from crickets, locusts, and insect larvae has met fierce opposition in Italy, where the government is to ban its use in pizza and pasta and segregate it on supermarket shelves.’
A chef makes a special pasta with insects flour made with locusts or crickets
In a sign of fear that insects might be associated with Italian cuisine, three government ministers called a press conference in Rome to announce four decrees aimed at a crackdown. “Fundamentally, these flours are not confused with food made in Italy,” said agriculture minister Francesco Lollobrigida
As previously reported at RAIR Foundation USA, unelected self-anointed globalists have fought for years for westerners to eat bugs. They hope to brainwash citizens with environmental and nutritional narratives in order to control their food choices. “Packed with vitamins, proteins, and minerals, flour made from crickets is increasingly seen as an ecological way to obtain nutrients, and the market is forecast to reach $3.5 billion by 2029.” The EU has already authorized foods made from crickets, locusts, and the darkling beetle larva. In January, mealworm larvae were added to the list.”
However, all four insects are cited in the Italian decrees, requiring any products containing them to be labeled with large lettering and displayed separately from other foods.
“Whoever wants to eat these products can, but those who don’t, and I imagine that will be most Italians, will be able to choose,” Lollobrigida said.
Orazio Schillaci, the health minister, said the legislation would also ban the use of insect flours in “typical” Italian products like pizza and pasta.
In a further attempt to promote Italian food, the government announced on Thursday that it would propose the inclusion of Italy’s cuisine on Unesco’s world heritage list.
Radio Free Asia (RFA) on Thursday reported on the sad state of affairs for the Hui Muslims, the “other Muslims” of China whose more comfortable existence was often presented by the Chinese tyranny as a defense against allegations of human rights abuses perpetrated on the Uyghur Muslims.
The Hui were supposedly a model of how Islam could be observed in harmony with Chinese Communism, but now Beijing is destroying Hui religion and culture with its merciless campaign of “Sinicization.”
In 2016, for example, as outrage over the Uyghur genocide was mounting around the world, China comically “investigated” itself and pronounced itself a model of religious tolerance because the Hui were allowed to make the pilgrimage to Mecca and observe the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. This sham religious freedom report used the Hui to argue that the Uyghurs were only treated poorly because they were a separatist security threat.
A report released by the Network of Chinese Human Rights Defenders (CHRD) on Wednesday noted that the Uyghurs still aren’t allowed to observe Ramadan – their villages are actually monitored with a system of informers and spot home inspections to ensure none of them are fasting, as required by the traditional Ramadan observance – and the centuries-old Hui community has not fared much better over the past few years.
According to the report, Chinese dictator Xi Jinping soured on the Hui, and grew more hostile to religion in general, during the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic. The Hui are now targeted by a “Sinicization” program that co-opts their religion, turns mosques into dispensaries of Chinese Communist propaganda, keeps them under extensive surveillance, and restricts their behavior to eliminate “signs of extremism.”
“Will the Hui Be Silently Erased?” the report asked in its title. Some of the erasure is quite noisy indeed. For example, Chinese provincial governments have decided the Hui have too many mosques, so dozens of these houses of worship have been “consolidated”, i.e. bulldozed. The mosques that don’t get “consolidated” are “rectified,” which means distinctive Arabic features like domes and minarets are demolished.
The Hui are also getting a taste of China’s “ethnic unity” program, which basically forces Han Chinese people into minority households to pressure them into abandoning their cultural and religious practices. Uyghur women have been forced to accept Han Chinese men into their households while their husbands are imprisoned in re-education camps.
The “ethnic unity” agenda includes a “poverty alleviation” program – a euphemism for shipping members of oppressed minorities off to distant regions of China, where they will be isolated from those who share their faith and culture, and forcibly assimilated into Han Chinese cities.
“Hui throughout China have also faced discrimination in education, the job market and the workplace, and this discrimination has worsened because of the stigmatizing effect of the government campaigns marginalizing and criminalizing Hui religious and cultural practices,” CHRD said.
Speaking of the Uyghurs, the report said they are once again suffering heavy oppression after a few months of relative peace, with mass arrests of religious figures picking up and strong measures taken to discourage Ramadan celebrations. Chinese officials confirmed that fasting during Ramadan has been prohibited for government employees and school children.
The Congressional Executive Commission on China (CECC) noted in March 2021 that restrictions on the Hui Muslims were “increasingly similar to restrictions experienced by Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities,” including Kazakhs and Kyrgyz. CECC noted that until now, the Hui have been permitted to engage in acts of Islamic worship and culture that were “severely restricted and even criminalized for Uyghurs.”
The Diplomatquoted a Muslim activist around the same time who used the time-honored “frog sitting in warm water that will eventually boil” metaphor to describe the slow-boil repression of the Hui.
The Hui are a large (10 million-plus) and relatively prosperous group, they have a high proportion of Mandarin Chinese speakers, and not all of them are Muslims, so the Chinese government was content to tighten the screws on them slowly, especially when the Hui were politically useful as cover for the Uyghur genocide. Also, Beijing saw the Hui as much less of a security threat because they had no tradition of longing for a separate homeland, as the Uyghurs do.
The Diplomat suggested the fortunes of the Hui shifted because Beijing felt less need to rely on them as a diversion from its abuse of the Uyghurs, and because the Chinese Communist Party is increasingly inclined to see Islam as an inherent threat to security and the authority of the Chinese government.
According to CHRD, the slow-boil repression of the Hui has landed more than 100,000 of them in re-education centers, and the crackdown is intensifying as the Hui push back against Sinicization.
It’s the 16th annual “Earth Hour” tonight. Wherever you are on this planet between the hours of 8:30 p.m. and 9:30 p.m. (local time) you’re supposed to turn off all your electric lights to “do something good for the planet.”
I suspect that the greens want us to get used to living in darkness. Whatever the reason, you will never see such an outpouring of preening, self-congratulatory chest-thumping on the part of insufferable green nincompoops for the rest of the year.
Turning off the Empire State Building lights or the lights on the Eiffel Tower will not, ever, in a million years, do anything to draw awareness to the cause of — what, exactly?
The reason for all this hullaballoo is a little fuzzy. Battling climate change is most often mentioned but also we’re preserving scarce resources and becoming more aware of the environment.
The lights-out moment is expected to stretch to dozens of countries, including major landmarks. Past participants and those expected to be involved this year include the Empire State Building, the Eiffel Tower and Sydney Opera House, according to the WWF.
Organizers are also encouraging people around the globe to “switch off” themselves and take a break from daily distractions to think about ways to help the environment.
Earth Hour is the moment when greens can indulge themselves and drown in self-congratulatory twaddle. “We’re saving the planet, man. How cool is that?”
And to help you immerse yourself in the celebration, you can go to the Earth Hour website and find ways to be even more ostentatiously conscientious about the planet.
Don’t know where to start? The website offers some suggestions to get you in the mood.
1. Read any two articles about biodiversity, nature loss, or climate change.
2. Watch an educational video from the WWF.
3. Listen to an approved nature podcast.
This is very serious business. We’re not only expected to turn off our lights, but also “give an hour” to the earth.
Over 410,374 people in 182 countries & territories are pledging to give:
34,794 hours Reconnecting with our planet
32,554 hours Restoring our planet
327,782 hours Learning more about our planet
9,660 hours Inspiring others to take care for our planet
I would give an hour to hunt baby seals or start drilling an oil well but I don’t think that’s what they had in mind.
Seriously, I am not totally anti-green. I am opposed to my fellow humans believing themselves to be better than me because they turn off their fricking lights. Sheesh! Enough already.
“Earth Hour has always been powered by the people – and you don’t need to be a Greta Thunberg or David Attenborough to inspire others to act,” the website enthuses.
The article points out that “As of Friday evening, more than 380,000 people from 173 countries and territories around the world had signed up.” When you consider there are nearly 8 billion people on planet earth, that’s kind of pathetic, don’t you think?
Contemporary cinema is overwhelmingly schlock that caters to the ideological and commercial whims of the day. Not ‘Casablanca.’Spoilers for a nearly 100-year-old movie.
In the ninth season of “The Simpsons,” Bart and Lisa uncover an old 35mm film reel containing an alternate ending to Michael Curtiz’s classic 1942 film “Casablanca.” In this version, Rick Blaine and Ilsa Lund — the characters portrayed by Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman in the actual movie — get married after Lund skydives out of a plane to kill Adolf Hitler.
“The Simpsons,” and pop culture in general, is replete with hat tips, homages, references, and spoofs of Bogart and Bergman’s performances in one of the most influential pieces of American culture ever created. Woody Allen’s “Play It Again Sam,” albeit a neurotic’s therapeutic exercise in self-expression and public effacement in which Allen’s self-insert character is haunted by Bogart’s ghost, is another such example.
This past week I had the opportunity to see “Casablanca” on the big screen for the first time. And (perhaps unsurprisingly in hindsight) other than “Top Gun: Maverick,” this was the most crowded movie screening I have attended since 2019. Why?
What makes this movie so unique that at 9:00 p.m. on a weeknight, people of all ages and backgrounds come out to see it? Why is it that an 80-year-old movie still holds audiences when Hollywood, in general, has received a precipitous drop in support?
Why Does It Hold Up?
During an interview for “Casablanca’s” 50th-anniversary re-release, Murray Burnett, co-author of the play the movie is adapted from, said the story is “true yesterday, true today, [and] true tomorrow.”
Whereas contemporary cinema relies on overly elaborate, mind-numbing visual effects and ideological messaging to engage audiences, “Casablanca” employs a nuanced approach to storytelling, relaying observations about humanity that have resonated with people for millennia. It’s a story about man’s eternal struggle between gratifying his personal desires and fulfilling his obligations to those dependent upon him.
The Moroccan city of Casablanca is established as an intermediary junction through which people can find reprieve from the seemingly inescapable tide of Nazism sweeping across Europe and Northern Africa. But the movie didn’t survive this long and maintain such an impactful legacy because it’s a decent war flick.
The backdrop of the war does serve to elevate the film’s stakes, however. Being set in 1941, prior to America’s involvement in the war, nobody really knows how it will play out. This uncertainty adds a heightened level of tension to the characters’ interactions.
From the film’s first moments, we are introduced to the nominal city as an aesthetically charming town where people from across the world flock as they try to squeeze something more out of life. Sometimes what they’re looking for is just out of reach, and other times, they serendipitously succeed. These phenomena are reflected by the rigged casino managed by Rick, the film’s protagonist.
Human nature compels man to yearn for more out of life, which is reflected in man’s search for meaning. Curtiz’s film captures this by depicting Casablanca as a cosmopolitan purgatory and human beings as complex individuals without over-intellectualizing the role they play in the war or trivializing the struggles they’re experiencing. Bar patrons pawn family heirlooms for safe passage to a better life, young soldiers come to blows over the slightest offense to their nation’s glory, and mostly everyone else just wants to get drunk as they try to escape the crushing weight of nihilistic authoritarianism.
The individuals depicted in the film are caught between doing what is best for them as individuals and what is right. Often the two constructs overlap, as when escaping with one’s family from Nazism aligns with an individual’s monetary appetites and what is good. In some instances, they are parallel decisions, as is the case with the bar patrons at Rick’s, who choose to spend their evenings inebriated and gambling. Their whims are gratified, and presumably, no one is harmed long-term. In others, as with Rick, they are directly at odds with the world around, thus setting the film’s plot in motion.
Rick’s Cynicism
Rick is presented as a thoroughly cynical individual. Throughout the film, whenever solicited, his go-to answer is: “I stick my neck out for nobody.” But we quickly find out he is actually an idealist who previously risked his life fighting alongside the Ethiopian resistance and the Spanish Republicans despite having no personal stake in the trajectory of either nation.
Despite being deeply moved by sentiment, Rick has grown weary. His disillusionment is the result of being abandoned by his former lover, Ilsa. Her reemergence into Rick’s life with her resistance leader husband, Victor Laszlo, forces Rick to reacquaint himself with long-dormant feelings of vulnerability that were suppressed in favor of a tight-fisted and defensive cynicism.
As the plot progresses, Rick and Ilsa fluctuate between vindictiveness as Rick refuses to assist Ilsa and Laszlo to escape Nazi persecution and heartfelt collusion as the two rediscover their feelings for each other and make plans to run away together, leaving Ilsa’s husband to continue rallying European resistance groups as an unencumbered bachelor.
Ultimately, as Rick and Ilsa have their final opportunity to abscond, the barkeep sacrifices his own happiness for the “greater good.” Realizing that Ilsa’s companionship is crucial to Laszlso’s role in the resistance, Rick chooses to abandon their plans and insists that she remain faithful and committed to her husband and his fight against Nazi tyranny in Europe, knowing that Ilsa’s love is what kept Laszlo fighting.
In one of the film’s final scenes, where Rick is explaining this to Ilsa, he says: “I’m no good at being noble, but it doesn’t take much to see that the problems of three little people don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world.”
So What?
Rick lost the girl again, and some people in northern Africa got drunk. Why does this matter? How is this story particularly “true”?
The late English philosopher Roger Scruton articulated a belief that art should aim to offer a unique and accessible perspective on the world that challenges viewers’ prior convictions. To be fair, a good deal of contemporary cinema is entertaining, but it is overwhelmingly schlock that caters to the ideological and commercial whims of the day. “Casablanca,” however, exists at the rare intersection of popular culture and art, encouraging people to ponder deeper truths.
