RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://quillette.com/2022/12/08/how-do-they-know-this/

“If you take one point away from Bad Data it should be that the vast majority of statistics are estimates, some of them are very rough estimates, and statisticians are constrained by limited resources and bounded knowledge. It is not a crisis. Outright fraud is rare, but when confronted with an impressive statistic, especially when it seems surprising, it is worth asking, “How do they know this?” Very often the answer will be that they don’t really know it at all.”

A review of Bad Data by Georgina Sturge, 288 pages, The Bridge Street Press (November 2022)

H.G. Wells once predicted that “statistical thinking will one day be as necessary for efficient citizenship as the ability to read and write.” It was a slight exaggeration, but in an age of big data in which governments pride themselves on being “evidence-based” and “guided by the science,” an understanding of where facts and figures come from is important if you want to think clearly.

Georgina Sturge works in the House of Commons Library where she furnishes UK MPs with statistics. If Bad Data is any guide, she also provides them with caveats and other words of caution, which are ignored. This informative, reasoned, and apolitical book offers a string of examples to show that statistics are not always what they seem. Some statistics are rigged for political reasons. Others are inherently flawed. Some are close to guesswork. Even crucial variables such as Gross National Income and life expectancy are shrouded in more uncertainty than you might think. We don’t really know how many people live in Britain legally, let alone illegally. The number of people who are living in poverty varies enormously depending on how you measure it.

Crime and unemployment are hugely important to voters and therefore susceptible to manipulation by the authorities. England and Wales have data on recorded crime stretching back to 1857, but most crimes are not reported to the police and even when they are reported they are not necessarily recorded by police officers. Setting the police targets to reduce crime creates incentives for the police to allow possible crimes to go unrecorded. This has happened so much in Britain since the 1990s that the UK Statistics Agency stripped the recorded crime figures of their “national statistics” status in 2014.

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.

“Not since Ian Fleming and John le Carré has a spy writer so captivated readers.”—The Hollywood Reporter

In this gripping narrative, Ben Macintyre tackles one of the most famous prison stories in history and makes it utterly his own. During World War II, the German army used the towering Colditz Castle to hold the most defiant Allied prisoners. For four years, these prisoners of the castle tested its walls and its guards with ingenious escape attempts that would become legend.

But as Macintyre shows, the story of Colditz was about much more than escape. Its population represented a society in miniature, full of heroes and traitors, class conflicts and secret alliances, and the full range of human joy and despair. In Macintyre’s telling, Colditz’s most famous names—like the indomitable Pat Reid—share glory with lesser known but equally remarkable characters like Indian doctor Birendranath Mazumdar whose ill treatment, hunger strike, and eventual escape read like fiction; Florimond Duke, America’s oldest paratrooper and least successful secret agent; and Christopher Clayton Hutton, the brilliant inventor employed by British intelligence to manufacture covert escape aids for POWs.

Prisoners of the Castle traces the war’s arc from within Colditz’s stone walls, where the stakes rose as Hitler’s war machine faltered and the men feared that liberation would not come soon enough to spare them a grisly fate at the hands of the Nazis. Bringing together the wartime intrigue of his acclaimed Operation Mincemeat and keen psychological portraits of his bestselling true-life spy stories, Macintyre has breathed new life into one of the greatest war stories ever told.

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.