RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2022/11/vaclav-havel-on-defying-a-system-of-lies/
“The Soviet bloc fell apart rapidly and unexpectedly, in large measure collapsing under the weight of its own dysfunction. Any system built on lies will eventually collapse, but it will cause great harm before this collapse and what replaces it may not be any better. Throughout, decent people will need to protect their own humanness by developing virtue and bravely living in truth.”

Written fifty years ago, Czech writer—later Czech president—Vaclav Havel’s The Power of the Powerless reads as if it was published yesterday to caution Australia today. I read and then re-read it during the Covid lockdowns when pervasive surveillance via QR codes, restrictions on association and movement, and—in most states—intolerance of even peaceful protests against official policies gave an alarming taste of the punishing control that government plus technology plus coercive policing and propaganda can achieve. Even without the Covid experience, it’s evident the social policies of state and federal governments—for example on gender equality, gay rights, the environment, indigenous matters and abortion—are broadly shared by domineering corporations, leading to a new type of societal levelling and mass-formation.

Fortunately for those who want to maintain some semblance of independent thought and some commitment to truth, Havel’s valuable book is compact (154 pages) and easy to read. It’s shrewd in its examination of politics and any society unfortunately soaked—and darkly stained—by stubborn, heavily-bureaucratised politics.

Havel, a poet and playwright, wrote The Power of the Powerless after the Soviet-instigated repression of the 1968 Prague Spring—an attempt to form a native Czechoslovakian socialism that worked for people rather than against them. A leader of Charter 77—a group associated with this gentler aspiration—Havel was harassed for years afterwards by the communists: his Prague apartment bugged, his movements followed, his plays banned. To survive, he worked in a brewery. 

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/washington-secrets/ron-desantis-signals-2024-bid-with-new-book

Following a well-worn path into presidential politics, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signaled his bid Wednesday by announcing the publication of his autobiography and political blueprint.

HarperCollins Publishers said its imprint, Broadside, will publish The Courage to Be Free: Florida’s Blueprint for America’s Revival in late February.

“In The Courage to Be Free, Governor Ron DeSantis chronicles the most consequential decisions of his life and public service, including turning the Sunshine State into the promised land for millions of Americans. He has become one of America’s most closely watched officeholders, having delivered a historic, record-setting 2022 gubernatorial victory, winning by nearly 20 points and more than 1.5 million votes,” said the publishing giant.

https://issuesinsights.com/2022/11/28/stand-a-little-less-between-me-and-the-sun/

“Henry Hazlitt recognized liberty as the only moral system and economic liberty, or capitalism, as the only means of organizing society that can benefit all. And he defended that position powerfully against many attacks. As Ludwig von Mises described him, “in this age of great struggle in favor of freedom and the social system in which men can live as free men, you … are the economic conscience of our country.” During his life, Hazlitt saw America taking the opposite course, with ever more resources forcibly taken from some for whatever and whoever the government decides. Now, much farther down that path, his understanding is even more important.”

Today marks the 1894 birth of one of American history’s most prolific public intellectuals – Henry Hazlitt. According to Lew Rockwell, he “was familiar with the work of every important thinker in nearly every field,” and “wrote in every important public forum of his day.” His published work as a journalist, literary critic, philosopher and economist ran to roughly 10 million words before his death in 1993, including perhaps the most popular economics book ever written – “Economics in One Lesson” (though looking back on that book later, he concluded that “So far as the politicians are concerned … the lesson … does not seem to have been learned anywhere”). 

https://issuesinsights.com/2022/11/29/american-injustice-the-shockingly-true-story-of-the-hunter-laptop-coverup/

The other day, I received the newly published “American Injustice” by J. P. MacIsaac. He is the computer repairman who received a laptop from an intoxicated crackhead scumbag that turned out to be Hunter Biden and who later neglected to pick it up. The book details what transpired after that.

As is my usual habit with the unending line of books I order, I read a few pages just to get a taste of it, intending to put it down and read it days, weeks, months, or years later.

You’ve heard the hackneyed phrase, “I couldn’t put it down.” I’m sorry, but I couldn’t put it down, even though I had a long list of chores to do that weekend.

Well, actually, I did put it down. That is, for five minutes to start one of the tasks only to go back and pick up reading where I left off.

I had seen the awful movie “My Son Hunter” (why can’t conservatives make decent movies?) and although the movie had a bad screenplay, on viewing it I learned a few things regarding Hunter’s crimes.

Anyway, MacIsaac relates how, on repairing the laptop he uncovered a tremendous amount of selfie videos of pornography, using drugs and, more importantly, a treasure trove of illegal activities that Biden’s son took part in. the latter included documents of multimillion dollar embezzlements and bribes received by the Bidens, as well as evidence of collusion with Ukrainian and Chinese thuggish oligarchs.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2022/11/how_chinas_covert_operations_fooled_the_world.html

The biggest deception China has successfully perpetuated in the West is that it would rise peacefully, gradually liberalize and present enormous business opportunities. Behind that veneer of reform, Beijing has played a masterful influence game, ensnaring governments, academia, think tanks, cultural groups, and businesses in the West to further its goal of global preeminence.

Analyst Alex Joske’s revealing book, Spies and Lies: How China’s Greatest Covert Operations Fooled the World, explains how China’s intelligence apparatus, the Ministry of State Security (MSS), revamped espionage from cloak-and-dagger ops alone to a sophisticated collection of innocent-seeming front groups. He shows how these groups, speaking the language of transparency, globalism, and cultural, academic, and business exchanges, influenced key persons in every sphere of endeavor in the West, masking China’s quest for world dominance, its military build-up, its stealing of technology, its human rights violations, and its territorial expansionism. Appearing eager for cultural and business reciprocity, China presented intelligence operatives as journalists, scholars, and trade and tourism representatives. The U.S. – and other western governments – engaged with China, mistaking it for a useful partner, and often acting under pressure from businesses that sought lucrative deals with Beijing.

According to the book, billionaire George Soros, who is still in quixotic and dangerous pursuit of his flawed notion of an ‘open society,’ was one of China’s earliest dupes. Chinese intelligence and its numerous fronts used Soros and his funds as an entrée to the West, creating what has grown into a omnipresent cloud of influence, ubiquitous yet impossible to pinpoint and hence combat or dislodge. But more on Soros later.

The focus of MSS’s elite influence operations is on inveigling targets into promoting narratives of China’s choice, often making them believe they are being welcomed into the inner sanctum of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) – a route to proprietary access and mutually beneficial networks. In this the MSS draws on the party’s united front work tradition, which harks to the revolution. At that time, the party’s United Front Work Department (UFWD) sought to gain influence beyond party members, using networks to suppress dissent, indoctrinate those sympathetic to the cause, find and train leaders, and so on. Later, the same methods were deployed abroad, providing networks, covers, and institutions for furthering the party’s purposes.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/thanksgiving-the-seminal-story-of-america/
Scott Powell is senior fellow at Discovery Institute. This article is a vignette out of his latest acclaimed book, Rediscovering America.

The Thanksgiving holiday, which commemorates one part of the Pilgrim story, remains the favorite holiday for many Americans. And for good reasons beyond enjoying a feast. With our country passing through troubled times, it is worth revisiting the Pilgrim’s five significant achievements, which created the seminal story of America, and reveal remarkable insight into who we are and the qualities of character we need to overcome our present challenges.

First, of the many groups of settlers who came to America, only the Pilgrims were singularly motivated by a spiritual quest for religious freedom—one that had its origin with the Protestant Reformation a century before. They repeatedly spoke about their voyage to the New World in terms of a flight from tyranny to freedom, comparing themselves to God’s chosen people—the Israelites—who overcame slavery and abuse in Egypt to get to the Promised Land. Similar to the Israelite’s exodus, the Pilgrims had left what they saw as oppressive and morally corrupt authorities in Great Britain and Europe to create a new life in America. Thus, both Christians and Jews find profound meaning in the Pilgrim’s Thanksgiving story.

Thanksgiving could be thought of as the holiday that made the other American holidays possible. Without the Pilgrims having courage; absolute faith in their cause and calling; and a willingness to sacrifice and risk everything, they never would have embarked on the 94-foot Mayflower—a ship of questionable seaworthiness. Were it not for their faith and determination to find freedom of conscience and live according to their Biblical beliefs there may never have been a July 4th Independence Day or other subsequent American holidays we take for granted and celebrate each year.

After a harrowing passage across the Atlantic—one that included wild pitching and broadside batterings by gale force winds and ferocious seas that caused the splitting of the ship’s main beam—the Mayflower was blown off course from the intended destination of the established Virginia Colony territory to wilds of Cape Cod. The Pilgrims knew not where they were nor how to proceed, so they beseeched the Almighty for favor in a making landfall in a suitable place with fresh water and fertile soil to establish a new and independent settlement.

Now in sight of land after a frightening voyage and facing hunger from spoiled and depleted provisions and anxious about settling outside the purview of Virginia Company charter territory, the secular Mayflower passengers were restless and insolent. And this is when the Pilgrims made their second major achievement that would shape the future of America.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/how-the-world-went-woke/

Note: My book The Victims’ Revolution was first published by Broadside Books, a HarperCollins imprint, in 2012. In February, Post Hill Press will issue the paperback edition, which includes a new foreword by Douglas Murray and a new introduction by me. Here is the latter.

Disney, which brought you Bambi and the Little Mermaid, creates a female Muslim superhero named “Ms. Marvel” and a robot who asks a transgender man for advice on female sanitary product. Larry Elder, a black GOP candidate for governor of California, is smeared by the Los Angeles Times as “the black face of white supremacy” for preaching a message essentially identical to that of Martin Luther King, Jr. When an 80-year-old woman complains to her local YMCA about a biological male lurking in the women’s locker room, she’s banned for being a transphobe. The Hachette publishing group cancels the memoirs of our most acclaimed living movie director because of discredited, decades-old molestation charges. The Biden Administration sets down strict vaccination rules for those entering the country with legitimate visas, but exempts people crossing the southern border illegally.

All this insanity didn’t come out of nowhere. Since the 1960s, as I describe in Chapter One of this book, the study of literature and other fields in the humanities and social sciences has been gradually transformed into something very different – and extremely distressing. An increasing focus on group identity – and on the strict division of humankind into oppressor groups and victim groups – fed the growth of such disciplines as Women’s Studies, Black Studies, Queer Studies, and Chicano Studies. I’m not alone in calling them “grievance studies,” and in considering them to be inimical to the serious study of human beings as complex individuals with a variety of virtues and defects.

This book is about those “grievance studies.” In preparing it, I read voluminously in these fields, attended conferences, sat in on classes, and performed interviews. I knew that I was taking on not just the entire American higher-education establishment but also the elite media that are its ideological allies. So it shouldn’t have come as a surprise when the New York Times Book Review ran – on its front page, no less – a loftily dismissive account of my book by a purported education expert who, calling it “out of date,” claimed that identity studies represented “a shrinking sector of academic life” and that his “younger colleagues” at a certain Ivy League college were “returning to close readings of literary classics.”

Those familiar with – and critical of – the actual situation in academia recognized this as a lie, and praised The Victims’ Revolution as truth-telling, plain and simple. Calling it “indispensable,” Peter Wood, president of the National Association of Scholars, theorized that the Times had judged the book “too important to ignore,” hence the dishonest review. George Leef of the James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal agreed. “It’s revealing,” Leef wrote, “that the NYT editor realized that the book couldn’t be ignored, but had to be panned.” And Hoover Institution fellow Bruce Thornton called the Times review “a textbook illustration of how the academic establishment goes after anyone who exposes the corruption of a reactionary, failing institution.”

Some people I know, upset by Biden, keep floating the possibility of a run for the White House by former FLOTUS Michelle Obama. So I was interested in the fact that she has a new book.

Is it a stab at foreign policy, or national economics, or education, or homeland security and defense, or national culture, or race relations?

Nah! It’s about her mighty and inspirational struggles with menopause! Yikes!

Read all about! It gave me a hot flash!…..rsk

“Michelle Obama has never been one to hold back.

Ahead of the Nov. 15 release of her book The Light We Carry, the former first lady, 58, opened up to People about the ins and outs of aging, body image and how she’s dealing with menopause — including her experience with hormone replacement therapy.

“There is not a lot of conversation about menopause,” Obama explained. “I’m going through it, and I know all of my friends are going through it. And the information is sparse.”

“I’ve had to work with hormones, and that’s new information that we’re learning,” she added. “Before there were studies that said that hormones were bad. That’s all we heard. Now we’re finding out research is showing that those studies weren’t fully complete and that there are benefits to hormone replacement therapy. You’re trying to sort through the information and the studies and the misinformation. So I’m right there.”

Obama admits that she’s been spared from having major mood swings, a common side effect of menopause, and that her new fitness routine focuses more on flexibility than building muscle. And she’s OK with that.

“I find that I cannot push myself as hard as I used to. That doesn’t work out for me; that when I tear a muscle or pull something and then I’m out. The recovery time is not the same,” she said. “You wind up balancing between staying fit enough and being kind enough on your body to stay in the game.”