“Etymological Curiosities” by Sydney Williams

https://swtotd.blogspot.com/

Each year, lexicographers at Merriam-Webster, Britain-based Collins Dictionary, the Oxford English Dictionary, and others, select a “word of the year,” often a neologism, but not always. Gaslighting[1] (a form of psychological abuse) was the choice at M-W, while Collins chose permacrisis. The former was chosen because of the increase in lookups (up 1,740%), while the latter was selected, as it was applicable to a year that saw the first war in Europe in seventy-seven years, China’s increased aggression, and world-wide inflation. The OED selected three words, including my favorite – more a phrase than a word – goblin mode, which was also cited by Ben Zimmer in a recent op-ed in The Wall Street Journal. It refers to behavior that is “unapologetically lazy, slovenly, greedy, typically in a way that rejects social norms.” It is often assigned to those who spend inordinate amounts of time on social media, as in my grandchild is in goblin mode.

I have been thinking of words and phrases – their origins, meanings, and appropriation by political opportunists, often leaving their opponents with the etymological dregs. Over the past few years, we have created a political alphabet soup: CRT, DEI, ESG, and BLM, reminding one of Roosevelt’s “alphabet soup agencies’ from the 1930s. But, unlike FDR’s agencies which actually put people to work, today’s alphabet soups have more in common with Humpty Dumpty: “When I use a word it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less.”

Words have assumed new meanings. Yesterday’s environmentalists have become today’s climate warriors. Information to some is misinformation to others. Should it be the state that decides what is accurate and what is not? Is it too much to ask Twitter users to be personally wary of conspiracy theories and to look out for offensive language – offensive to some but not to others? And what, for example, does the European Union means when it tells Twitter that it must apply “content moderation” to the posts it allows?

When I read of Larry Fink pontificating as to being socially responsible, I picture a greedy John Bull with a smirk on his face and a halo above his head. And the scam artist Samuel Bankman-Fried, a promoter of progressive fads, bills himself as an effective altruist. Is not an altruist already effective? Certainly, his investors and depositors who lost millions of dollars do not see him as altruistic.

Theodor Herzl diaries republished in ambitious new undertaking “He’s our George Washington and our Thomas Jefferson all wrapped in one,” says historian and author Gil Troy of Zionism’s founding father. David Isaac

https://www.jns.org/theodor-herzl-diaries-republished-in-ambitious-new-undertaking/

“Today, Theodor Herzl is best known for his beard, not his books,” laments Gil Troy, editor of “The Zionist Writings of Theodor Herzl,” in his introductory essay to a new edition of Herzl’s diaries.

Troy, a professor of history at Canada’s McGill University now living in Israel, wants to make Zionism’s founders come alive for the next generation. His latest effort is a three-volume collection of Herzl’s writings.

The brainchild behind the series is Matthew Miller, owner of Koren Publishers, a Jerusalem publishing house producing mainly religious texts. Drawing inspiration from the Library of America, a publisher of notable American classics and historical works, Miller decided to create a Library of the Jewish People to bring together the best writings from Jewish history in the fields of religion, the arts and politics.

“The Zionist Writings” are the first titles in that ambitious effort. They include a fairly comprehensive collection of Herzl’s diaries and other works, including his play “The New Ghetto” (1894), of which Herzl biographer Alex Bein said, “Herzl completed his inner return to his people”; Herzl’s 1896 manifesto “The Jewish State“; and important essays, like “The Menorah“ (1897), showing how, through Zionism, Herzl reconnected with his Judaism.

The series uses translations from the original German made by historian Harry Zohn in the 1960s. Other works, like “The New Ghetto,” are newly translated by Uri Bollag.

Lapid’s call to disobey next government puts civil society at risk, legal analysts say. David Isaac

https://www.jns.org/lapids-call-to-disobey-next-government-puts-civil-society-at-risk-legal-analysts-say/ 

Even before taking power, Benjamin Netanyahu has found himself on the defensive over his prospective coalition’s “fringe elements.” During an NBC interview on Sunday, Netanyahu felt obliged to declare, “I’m going to safeguard Israeli democracy.”

However, legal analysts told JNS the danger to democracy may come from another corner, namely the actions of outgoing Prime Minister Yair Lapid, who called on local authorities to flout the incoming government’s directives.

In a Dec. 1 open letter, Lapid urged Israeli municipalities not to cooperate with an educational department to be headed by far-right Knesset member Avi Maoz. Maoz is the sole representative in Israel’s parliament of the Noam Party, which focuses on social issues, on which it takes a traditional (its detractors would say archaic) religious stance. It’s criticized mainly for opposing LGBTQ rights.

The opposition coalition set to establish the next government has “abandoned the education of our children and handed them over to the most extreme and darkest elements in Israeli society,” Lapid wrote to the municipalities, labeling Noam “racist, homophobic and dangerous.

“I urge you not to cooperate with the unit for external programs and partnerships in the Ministry of Education as long as it is under the control of Maoz. The heavy responsibility for the educational content that our children will learn in the schools now passes to you,” he wrote.

How Corrupt is a Corrupt Media? The media has ceased to exist, and the public plods on by assuming as true whatever the media suppresses and as false whatever the media covers. By Victor Davis Hanson

https://amgreatness.com/2022/12/04/how-corrupt-is-a-corrupt-media/

The current “media”—loosely defined as the old major newspapers like the New York Times and Washington Post, the network news channels, MSNBC and CNN, PBS and NPR, the online news aggregators like Google, Apple, and Yahoo, and the social media giants like the old Twitter and Facebook—are corrupt. 

They have adopted in their news coverage a utilitarian view that noble progressive ends justify almost any unethical means to obtain them. The media is unapologetically fused with the Democratic Party, the bicoastal liberal elite, and the progressive agenda. 

The result is that the public cannot trust that the news it hears or reads is either accurate or true. The news as presented by these outlets has been carefully filtered to suppress narratives deemed inconvenient or antithetical to the political objectives of these entities, while inflating themes deemed useful. 

This bias now accompanies increasing (and increasingly obvious) journalistic incompetence. Lax standards reflect weaponized journalism schools and woke ideology that short prior basic requisites of writing and ethical protocols of quoting and sourcing. In sum, a corrupt media that is ignorant, arrogant, and ideological explains why few now trust what it delivers.

Suppression

Once a story is deemed antithetical to left-wing agendas, there arises a collective effort to smother it. Suppression is achieved both by neglect, and by demonizing others who report an inconvenient truth as racists, conspiracist “right-wingers,” and otherwise irredeemable. 

The Hunter Biden laptop story is the locus classicus. Social media branded the authentic laptop as Russian disinformation. That was a lie. But the deception did not stop them from censoring and squashing those who reported the truth. 

Video: Watch a ‘trans demi-boy non-binary’ explain her pronoun lesson for 5th graders By Andrea Widburg

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/12/video_watch_a_trans_demiboy_nonbinary_explain_her_pronoun_lesson_for_5th_graders.html

You know a video is alarming when you receive texts and emails from several people, all pointing to it as the perfect example of what leftists are doing to America’s school children. In this case, a self-identified “trans demi-boy non-binary” speaks matter-of-factly about how she uses classroom time when she has complete control over the children to teach them about imaginary “gender identities” and pronouns. Parents need to get outraged, and there’s at least one group that exists to help parents channel that outrage into successful political action.

At Saturn Street Elementary School, which is part of the Los Angeles Unified School District, one of the fifth-grade teachers is a woman named Skye Tooley. Her home page at the school’s website has a small picture of a young, green-haired person wearing a t-shirt saying “trans resistance.” That’s the first hint to parents that their child is going to be indoctrinated, rather than educated. Tooley also signs her introductory statement as “Mx. Tooley” (which I always read as meaning “mixed up”) and adds “Pronouns: they/them.”

Sacrificing Academic Excellence on the Altar of ‘Equity’ By Janet Levy

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2022/12/sacrificing_academic_excellence_on_the_altar_of_equity.html

One of the four dissenting judges in the 2003 Grutter v. Bollinger case, which resulted in the allowance of race quotas in student admissions, was Justice Clarence Thomas, a descendant of slaves and himself a beneficiary of affirmative action. Outraged by the patronizing attitude of teachers and classmates, and driven by the values of hard work, merit, and pride instilled in him by his grandfather, he had come to believe, over the course of his inspiring life, that quotas are demeaning.

“The Constitution abhors classifications based on race,” he wrote in his dissenting opinion, “not only because these classifications can harm favored races, or are based in illegitimate motives, but also because every time the government places citizens on racial registers and makes race relevant to the provisions of burdens or benefits, it demeans us all.”

Against such eminent good sense, a deranged ‘woke’ agenda of diversity, inclusion, and equity (DIE) is sweeping the country. This obsession with victimhood, with its unending demand for compensatory benefits, erodes self-respect and self-reliance, and perpetuates a culture of expecting and making do with government handouts and hand-me-downs. It is the antithesis of the pursuit of excellence.

DIE policies are also threatening to destroy America — traditionally a powerhouse of innovation — by destroying top public schools that nurture the talent, merit, and persistence of the gifted and inspire creativity and imagination. The race-blind admission requirements of these schools — standardized entrance exams, high GPAs, and a record of rigorous coursework — are under attack from the false narrative that they are designed to exclude racial minorities and that merit per se is racist.

Institutions of Lower Learning In our top universities, Dead White Males are out; Black Queer BDSM is in. by Mark Tapson

https://www.frontpagemag.com/institutions-of-lower-learning/

As if you needed any further evidence that even our most prestigious institutions of higher learning have degenerated into woke indoctrination mills aimed at deconstructing the moral, intellectual, and cultural underpinnings of our civilization, a new course catalog for Princeton University reveals that the Ivy League school will begin offering its students courses on BDSM and fetishism next year.

As colleges and universities all over the Western world hasten to “decolonize” their curricula in order to erase the magnificent legacy of no-longer-relevant Dead White Males™ such as Will Shakespeare and Isaac Newton, they offer, as alternatives, courses like Princeton’s “Black + Queer in Leather: Black Leather/BDSM Material Culture” and “Anthropology of Religion: Fetishism and Decolonization,” both of which students (or their parents) paying $57,000 in tuition can look forward to in 2023.

“Black Queer BDSM material culture resists contextualization in relationship to biographical narratives because of the underground elements of the community,” reads the jargon-bloated course description. What will students be doing in the course? Why, they will “consider the fragility of archival engagement with these communities by surveying existing BDSM archives in research libraries, community groups, and individuals and their personal ephemera,” of course.

US Funds Arabs Who Want to Destroy Israel by Bassam Tawil

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19183/us-funds-destroy-israel

What is disturbing is that a large portion of this incitement is coming from Arabs whose governments signed peace treaties or other agreements with Israel: Egypt, Jordan and the Palestinians.

What is even more disturbing is that the hate against Israel is coming from Arabs who continue to benefit from unconditional US financial aid.

The Palestinian Authority, headed by Mahmoud Abbas, continues to spearhead the Arab campaign of incitement and delegitimization against Israel. In addition to the incendiary rhetoric, the Palestinian Authority does not hide its vehement opposition to any kind of peace with Israel.

In its latest tirade against Israel, Abbas’s ruling Fatah faction claimed that the Israeli counter-terrorism measures, designed to save the lives of Jews and Arabs alike, are acts of “terrorism and war crimes.” According to the logic of the Palestinian Authority, a terror attack against Israel is legitimate and the perpetrator is a hero and martyr, but an Israeli action to stop terrorism is illegitimate.

This is the same Palestinian Authority that maintains good relations with the Biden administration, which recently decided to upgrade US relations with Abbas and his associates….

[T]he allegation that Israel is committing “war crimes” can be seen as a direct call to Palestinians to engage in violence against Israelis. The “war crimes” libel is also intended for Western audiences as part of the campaign to delegitimize Israel and pave the way for prosecuting its leaders before international courts.

It is worth noting that since April 2021, the US has provided more than half a billion dollars in assistance for the Palestinians.

If the US thinks that showering money and concessions on the Palestinian leaders will lessen the tension, you heard it here first: this approach definitely will not work. All that will happen is that the hostilities will increase so that the bribes will increase. Giving hard, concrete gifts in exchange for soft promises is inevitably doomed from the start.

The reason for referring Zaidan to be investigated was because had announced that he was willing to lecture at an Israeli university. He is also suspected of having expressed support for establishing relations between Egyptian and Israeli intellectuals.

Egypt has enjoyed the benefit of more than $51 billion in US taxpayer-funded military aid since the signing of the Egypt-Israel peace treaty in 1979.

Again, it is worth noting that this incitement against Israel is being spread despite the ongoing massive US financial aid to Jordan.

One way to counter this campaign of hate and to encourage peace is for the US to make its aid conditional on ending (or at least reducing) the rhetoric of hate. So far, however, it is clear that the US has no intention of demanding anything in return for its money.

For the time being, then, many Arabs will continue to receive hundreds of millions of dollars from the US while continuing actively to seek the destruction of Israel and being financially rewarded for it.

Some Israeli journalists who travelled to Qatar to report on the soccer World Cup were harassed and verbally abused by Arabs from several countries. The journalists were told that Israel has no right to exist and that most Arabs are opposed to any form of normalization with Israelis.

A Conversation With a Doctor By David Solway

https://pjmedia.com/columns/david-solway-2/2022/12/04/a-conversation-with-a-doctor-n1650850

A recent conversation with my (now former) GP did not go well. After insisting on the virulent consequences of COVID-19 and extolling the efficacy of the jabs, he did not respond kindly to my demurrals. He simply dismissed as the illiteracy of a layman my recital of the results provided by our best, independent virologists on the 99% recovery rate from the virus (the profusion of contrary fact-checks by the usual suspects is obviously meant to uphold the ritual narrative), the adverse and often lethal nature of the genomic injections, and the grand collusion and bulldozing approach of the major operators promoting the greatest scam of the modern age, perhaps the greatest scam in human history — referred to as a “plandemic.”

He obviously did not know the clinical findings of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. or of mRNA inventor Robert Malone, whose exposure of what we may call the “Corona conspiracy” was definitive. The work of such sober and world-class researchers in the field as Peter Breggin, Sucharit Bhakdi, Jeffrey Tucker, Joseph Mercola, Colleen Huber, Alex Berenson, Julius Ruechel, Christopher Shaw, Aaron Kheriaty and Aseem Malhotra — indispensable reading for anyone, not only medical people, interested in real learning — was a closed book. He clearly had never consulted the Great Barrington Declaration or the Canadian Covid Care Alliance. Brave Canadian doctors who risked career and reputation to speak truth to medical power, like Roger Hodkinson, Charles Hoffe, Francis Christian, Byram Bridle, Mark Trozzi, and others, were either virtual strangers or objects of contempt to him.

I must admit I was taken aback. Could he still believe that the vaccines were safe, effective, and harmless in the face of mountains of non-aligned specialist documentation and evidence that they are decidedly not?

U.S. Arms Sent to Ukraine Make Their Way to Boko Haram By Athena Thorne

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/athena-thorne/2022/12/04/u-s-arms-sent-to-ukraine-make-their-way-to-boko-haram-n1650836

When the U.S. sends nearly unlimited arms willy-nilly to Ukraine with little or no oversight, no one should be surprised when some of that weaponry enters the black market and makes its way to various bad guys and scumbags around the world.

Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari discussed the ongoing threat posed by terrorist groups at a Lake Chad Basin regional conference on Tuesday, according to a statement released by his office:

At the 16th Summit of Heads of State and Government of the Lake Chad Basin Commission (LCBC), the President, who is Chairman of the Summit of Heads of State and Government, said the threat by terrorists in the region had been relatively brought under control, while the influx of weapons poses fresh challenges.

“It must however be stated that despite the successes recorded by the gallant troops of the [Multinational Joint Task Force] MNJTF and the various ongoing national operations in the region, terrorist threats still lurk in the region,” said Buhari.

“Regrettably, the situation in the Sahel and the raging war in Ukraine serve as major sources of weapons and fighters that bolster the ranks of the terrorists in the Lake Chad Region,” lamented the Nigerian president. He decried that “the arms and ammunition procured to execute the war in Libya continues to find its way to the Lake Chad Region and other parts of the Sahel,” then continued, “Weapons being used for the war in Ukraine and Russia are equally beginning to filter to the region.”