BOOKS Comments turned off

CHAPTER 27: Pronouns and Pantheism Space Is No Longer the Final Frontier—Reality Is (forthcoming release August 2024) by Linda Goudsmit

Posted By on July 14th, 2024

https://goudsmit.pundicity.com/27902/chapter-27-pronouns-and-pantheism

The weaponization of language is not a new phenomenon. The politics of pronouns has dimensions in both form and content. Gender-neutral plural pronouns, the grammatical form for linguistic deconstruction, were introduced in America almost fifty years ago. The pro-pedophile advocacy group Child Sexuality Circle advocated passage of a Child’s Sexual Bill of Rights that included use of “the new unisexual pronoun…co for he/she/him/her and cos for his/hers” in January 1977.

Gender-neutral language that blurs male/female identity with plural pronouns derives its ideological content from the unifying sexual ideal of androgyny. The new sexuality that deconstructs traditional Judeo-Christian sexuality and replaces it with total sexual liberation and freedom from all sexual boundaries is an ideological return to ancient pantheism—the belief that God and the universe are one and the same.

Pantheism predates monotheistic Abrahamic religions by thousands of years, but the word pantheism was not used until the early 18th century. The word is derived from Greek (pan = everything, theos = God), and means “All is God, and God is all.” There is no distinction between the two; all things are connected and are ultimately of one substance. Pantheism is a belief system rather than a religion, comparable to the terms monotheism (belief in a single God) and polytheism (belief in multiple gods).

Pantheism revered the androgyne as the archetype of human beings before the Judeo-Christian recognition of man and woman as two sexes. The globalist wrecking ball is attempting to shatter Judeo-Christian religions with the narrative that they are not “true” religions, that before Judaism and Christianity, the true religions were monistic (the doctrine of oneness that denies duality between man and God, or matter and mind) and revered androgyny.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

In France, It’s Left vs. Left By Gary Gindler

Posted By on July 14th, 2024

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2024/07/in_france_it_s_left_vs_left.html

The right-leaning media and pundits are excited: Marine Le Pen’s party gained twice as many seats in recent French elections.  The left-leaning media and commentariat are thrilled, too: Le Pen’s right-wing party won the popular vote but landed only third place in the French National Assembly.  If both sides of the political spectrum are so enthusiastic, it could mean only one thing: something is missing here.

The answer lies most likely in conflating two different political spectra: absolute and relative.  Since Stalin proposed the modern relative political spectrum, it garnered popularity, and members of the Frankfurt School of socialism brought it to American soil.

As it is known, in the 1930s, Joseph Stalin altered the game’s rules: he decided to utilize the pre-existing left-right conceptual dichotomy (in a pretty narrow setting) to crush any opposition to his dictatorial rule.  Any aberration from the orthodox communist party line — no matter how small — had to be labeled.  Thus, the “Right-deviationists” and “Left-deviationists” were born.

The “Left-deviationists” were deemed “too orthodox,” “too revolutionary,” as strange as it may seem, for the taste of bloodthirsty revolutionary Bolsheviks.  In contrast, the “Right-deviationists” were considered traitors to the idea of the planet-wide socialist revolution because they dared to consider building a workers’ paradise by cleverly exploiting the mechanisms of state capitalism.  Unquestionably, the word “capitalism” was anathema to communists.  The “Left-deviationists” were to the left of Stalin, and the “Right-deviationists” were to his right.

MEDICINE AND HEALTH Comments turned off

The untold story of the Human Genome Project: How one man’s DNA became a pillar of genetics By Ashley Smart —

Posted By on July 14th, 2024

https://www.statnews.com/2024/07/09/human-genome-project-untold-story-how-single-volunteer-became-genetics-foundation/?utm_source=pocket-newtab-en-us

STAT is co-publishing this investigation by Undark.

They numbered 20 in all — 10 men and 10 women who came to a sprawling medical campus in downtown Buffalo, N.Y., to volunteer for what a news report had billed as “the world’s biggest science project.”

It was the spring of 1997, and the Human Genome Project, an ambitious attempt to read and map a human genetic code in its entirety, was building momentum. The project’s scientists had refined techniques to read out the chemical sequences — the series of As, Cs, Ts, and Gs — that encode the building blocks of life. Now, the researchers just needed suitable human DNA to work with. More exactly, they needed DNA from ordinary people willing to have their genetic information published for the world to see. The volunteers who showed up at Buffalo’s Roswell Park Cancer Institute had come to answer the call.

To take part in the study was to assume risks that were hard to calculate or predict. If the volunteers were publicly outed, project scientists told them, they might be contacted by the media or by critics of genetic research — of whom there were many. If the published sequences revealed a worrisome genetic condition that could be tied back to the volunteers, they might face discrimination from potential employers or insurers. And it was impossible to know how future scientists might use or abuse genetic information. No one’s genome had ever been sequenced before.

But the volunteers were also informed that measures had been put in place to protect them: They would remain anonymous, and to minimize the chances that any one of them could be identified based on their unique genetic sequence, the published genome would be a patchwork, derived not from one person but stitched together from the DNA of a large number of volunteers. “If we use the blood you donate” to prepare DNA samples, the consent form read, “we expect that no more than 10% of the eventual DNA sequence will have been obtained from your DNA.”

Soon, however, those assurances began to wither. When a much-celebrated working draft of the human genome was published in 2001, the vast majority of it — nearly 75 percent — came from just one Roswell Park volunteer, an anonymous male donor known as RP11.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

A New Offensive: Trump, the GOP, and the Battle for America’s Future Like the German army as the end loomed, the Democrats have been driven to desperate expedients. By Roger Kimball

Posted By on July 14th, 2024

https://amgreatness.com/2024/07/14/a-new-offensive-trump-the-gop-and-the-battle-for-americas-future/

Having just spent a week padding about battle sites around Verdun and the Somme,  I could not help but register the historical vibration of certain dates. Was it entirely coincidental that on July 18, 1918, Ferdinand Foch, the Allied Supreme Commander, launched a major counteroffensive against the Germans in the Second Battle of the Marne? That operation  was the beginning of the end for the Boche.  They sued for peace in November after American General John Pershing crushed the German forces near Montfaucon, northwest of Verdun.

This Thursday, July 18, 2024, Donald Trump will deliver his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee. I like to think that Trump’s address will mark the beginning of a potent counteroffensive against the soul-blighting, woke forces of the Democratic juggernaut.

Like the German army in the summer of 1918, the Democrats are in rabid disarray.  On paper, they still command impressive force.  They continue to jail their political  opponents and shower Donald Trump with potentially lethal legal shrapnel. [UPDATE: I wrote this column  before the assassination attempt on Donald  Trump at his rally in Pennsylvania yesterday.  I will have more to say about that in due course.]

But though their guns may continue their periodic eructations, morale among the troops teeters on despair. Their leaders are panicking.

Of the Kaiser, Winston Churchill once remarked that “in every crisis he crumbled.  In defeat, he fled; in revolution, he abdicated; in exile, he remarried.” What would Churchill say about Joe Biden and Kamala Harris? Addressing NATO a few days ago, the leader of the free world introduced the President of Ukraine as “President Putin.” Asked whether he really thought Kamala Harris was up to the top job, Biden said, “I would not have picked Vice President Trump to be vice president if I did not think she is qualified to be president. Let’s start there.”

Shall we start there? Harris, the half-Indian, half-Jamaican scion of slave owners,  may be a certified “person of color.” But she is also living proof that senility is not the only form of cognitive-rhetorical incapacity.

Like the Germans in the summer of 1918, the Democrats and their media poodles are full of sound and fury.  The New York Times, for example, is regularly on the battlements, delivering anguished rhetorical air-raid sirens. They understand that “Biden’s Path to Re-election Has All But Vanished.” Hence, the Times, along with other besieged media battalions, are engaged in a desperate pantomime to diffuse the biggest threat to their franchise. Donald Trump is “unfit to lead,” they skirl; Republicans will rue the day Trump is reelected, they insist. He’s a dictator in waiting, a bully, and a man of bad character who tramples upon the rule of law.

This signal-jamming wall of static is impervious to fact—including the fact that almost every item of the Democrats’ bill of indictment is a morsel in the giant feast of projection that Trump’s opponents have laid on.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Our Brezhnev, Our Pravda, Our Soviet Union. . . Victor Davis Hanson

Posted By on July 14th, 2024

https://victorhanson.com/our-brezhnev-our-pravda-our-soviet-union/

Leonid Brezhnev led the former Soviet Union as General Secretary of the Communist Party until 1982. But like most Russian apparatchiks who excessively smoked, drank, and gained weight, he aged prematurely. Also like them, his disabilities never led to his abdication.

By Brezhnev’s late sixties and early seventies, he was too ill to travel abroad or make public appearances. Indeed, his debility left the Soviet Union without a real leader for the final six or seven years of his tenure.

Brezhnev got away with it because the Soviet state-controlled media doctored photos and videos to attest to his supposedly vigorous health and constant hands-on involvement.

“Journalists” sent out false communiques. They spun narratives that Brezhnev was robust, hale, and working long hours on behalf of the Russian people. Any dissenting journalists who sought to report the true, sad state of affairs were in danger of losing their jobs, freedom—or even their lives.

Instead, the “reporters” of Pravda (“Truth”), the official print megaphone of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, wrote lies about Brezhnev’s busy workdays. Pravda’s handlers spun fables about the respect (and fear) the rest of the world held for such a dynamic leader—even as Brezhnev became an ill virtual recluse.

The cynical Russian people shrugged because they had long been accustomed to their lying media and the falsehoods they peddled. And besides, Brezhnev was a doctrinaire Stalinist communist. So his job was not to rock the boat or upset the Russian communist hierarchy.

Instead, he reigned over the penultimate Soviet “era of stagnation,” while an ossified communism increasingly destroyed all incentives and hope, leaving the Russian people poor, cynical, and helpless.

Something similar has happened to a calcified America under President Joe Biden. Like the late-stage Leonid Brezhnev, Biden is now a president in name only. He has outsourced his administration to a vestigial hard-left apparat from the Obama years.

ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

The Anti-Semitism Money and Power Network—and How to Smash It by Danielle Pletka

Posted By on July 14th, 2024

https://www.commentary.org/articles/danielle-pletka/anti-semitism-money-power-network/

The mushrooming of anti-Semitic violence and activism on campuses across the United States is not an organic or spontaneous development. Money is flowing from the Arab world to universities, nongovernmental organizations, and professional terrorist sympathizers across the country. That money is paying for, organizing, educating, publicizing, and fanning the flames not simply of Israel-bashing, but of eliminationist Jew-hatred.

It demands a major response. Congress has begun investigating. Hearings in which university presidents have been unable to articulate any kind of standard that would protect Jewish students are driving headlines and major changes in leadership at elite educational institutions. Now key committees are digging into offshore efforts to direct and support campus anti-Semitism and anti-Israel activity. But things are a bit chaotic on Capitol Hill. Congress is moving in scattershot fashion, with multiple bills sponsored by a myriad of members. Little that is lasting can be accomplished in this way.

What is needed now is a systematic survey of the problem, backed by the federal investigative power of agencies like the FBI, followed by a careful legislative response. That, in turn, will raise a host of complex issues that must be addressed if we are to change the game and rip out the anti-Semitism in our institutions at the root.

In our democracy, regulating or even getting to the bottom of financial flows, particularly to nongovernmental nonprofit organizations (NGOs) and educational institutions, is not easy. The constitutional guarantee of free speech rightly colors all inquiries into the nature of foreign support for any group or school.

Questions are raised that are not easily dismissed. For example: Is money from France or Australia the same as money from China or Qatar? Can foreign funding of a university department or chair that has the effect of influencing the curriculum or the nature of study be regulated? What about NGO activity on campus: Does allowing NGOs that support terrorist organizations and their aims on campus constitute material support for terrorism, which is illegal under federal law? Is there a constitutional means of regulating or banning foreign-government-sponsored hate speech? Can Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, which bars discrimination on the grounds of race, color, or national origin, be reasonably applied to donated dollars that seem to tilt the scales in favor of the causes of foreign actors?

First, we need to address the scope of the problem and determine its sources—apart from the frailties of human character that have driven anti-Semitic hatred for as long as there have been Jews. Where has this new anti-Semitism come from? What are the best tools to fight it? What are the roots of this 21st-century version of the world’s oldest hatred?

ISRAEL Comments turned off

A Two State Solution — But on Both Sides of the River Jordan Victor Sharpe

Posted By on July 14th, 2024

https://drrichswier.com/2024/07/10/a-two-state-solution-but-on-both-sides-of-the-river-jordan/

The phrase “Two State Solution” has been embraced by politicians and journalists alike, repeated endlessly, and touted as the panacea for a “just and equitable” solution to the Israel-Palestinian conflict.

It has assumed the repetitious role of a muezzin’s call to Islamic prayer. But it is based on erroneous geography and history, on a mixture of wishful thinking, naiveté and a brilliant Arab propaganda campaign of disinformation and falsehood. To understand why, it is necessary to learn a small but vital chapter of Middle Eastern history.

Shortly after the conclusion of the First World War and the total defeat of the Turkish Ottoman Empire, which had ruled most of the Middle East from 1517 to 1917, Britain was made trustee by the League of Nations for the whole of the geographical and non-state territory known as Mandatory Palestine. Incorporated within the Mandate was the 1917 Balfour Declaration, which specifically referred to the historical connections of the Jewish people with Palestine and to the moral validity of reconstituting within it the Jewish National Home.

The British Mandatory power, however, arbitrarily tore away 80% of the Palestine Mandate which lay east of the River Jordan in 1921 giving it to the Hashemites, a Bedouin tribe with links to Mecca. Only the land west of the River Jordan remained from the original Mandate territory promised to the Jewish people as a National Home.

Jewish residency was immediately forbidden in all the lands east of the River Jordan, which in time became known as Trans-Jordan and then as the Kingdom of Jordan.

The U.N. Partition Plan of 1947 proposed two states, Jewish and Arab, which were roughly equal in size. But these two states were to occupy only the remaining western geographic area of Mandatory Palestine – from the Mediterranean Sea to the River Jordan – barely 40 miles wide and a mere 20% of what now remained of original Mandatory Palestine.

This plan was accepted by the Jewish leadership with deep reservations, but as a pragmatic solution to the plight of the 850,000 Jewish refugees who were being driven from Arab lands at the time of Israel’s rebirth.

The miniscule size of the state was also reluctantly accepted in order to facilitate the absorption of the surviving Jewish remnant languishing in European refugee camps following the Holocaust.

The State of Israel, thus reconstituted in part of its ancient and biblical homeland in May 1948, was immediately invaded by seven Arab armies in order to completely destroy it and drive the surviving Jews into the sea.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

Palestinian vs. Saudi education – ignored by Foggy Bottom Yoram Ettinger

Posted By on July 14th, 2024

http://bit.ly/3WizbdT

*The October 7, 2023 horrific Palestinian terrorism was committed by graduates of the hate-driven K-12 Palestinian school curriculum, which has been a most effective production-line of terrorists, since it was established in 1993 by Mahmoud Abbas. The tightly controlled Palestinian school curriculum, as well as the official Palestinian mosque sermons, constitute the most authentic reflection of the Palestinian culture, aspirations, strategy and policy.

*In contrast, the UAE school curriculum was thoroughly overhauled since the conclusion of the 2020 peace accord with Israel, highlighting peaceful coexistence, and reflecting the peace-driven vision of the UAE.

*Likewise, the substantial expansion of Saudi-Israeli defense and commercial cooperation has reflected the game-changing moderation of the Saudi school curriculum. It has been introduced by Crown Prince Muhammed bin Salman in defiance of severe domestic opposition – including within the ruling family – with which the ruling families of the UAE do not have to contend. More on the Saudi school curriculum at the end of this article. 

*In contrast to the oppression of women by Iran’s Ayatollahs, the Saudi Crown Prince has also introduced a dramatic enhancement in the status of women, despite the strident opposition by the fundamentalist, puritan Wahabi establishment, whose support has been critical to the domestic legitimacy of the House of Saud.

*Middle East reality has demonstrated a direct correlation between the intensity of hate education and mosque incitement, on the one hand, and the level of violence, terrorism and hostility toward the Western and Jewish “infidels,” on the other hand. 

ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

NO POSTING UNTIL MONDAY

Posted By on July 12th, 2024

NO POSTING UNTIL MONDAY

ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

The Normalization of Terrorism and Jew-Hate by Robert Williams

Posted By on July 10th, 2024

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20770/normalization-terrorism-jew-hate

It apparently never occurred to either the heads of the UN or the EU to consider that if you are a terrorist organization that commits war crimes, you do not get to choose how a war that you started is waged against you.

If you do not want a “bloodbath,” do not take hostages, hide them among civilians, try to prevent a rescue, then if they are rescued, profess shock at the fallout that you yourself have teed up.

BBC news asked with a straight face if, to spare the lives of the Gazan “civilians” who were keeping the hostages locked up in their homes, Israel had given prior warning before launching its rescue operation. The Israeli spokesman, also keeping a straight face, politely answered that a warning might have endangered the hostages and made the rescue more difficult.

The irony of all this seems completely lost on the political and media elites, who kept insisting that the Israeli rescue operation was somehow immoral. By condemning Israel’s rescue operation, they suggest that massacring and kidnapping 240 people is moral, and an act that should not require a military response.

The new purported Hamas agreement to a ceasefire apparently comes with “a major hurdle: The Iran-backed terror group is now demanding ‘written guarantees’ that mediators will continue to negotiate a permanent truce, once the first phase of the plan goes into effect, the Hamas rep said.”

Essentially, this demand means that Hamas and its handlers, Iran and Qatar, would like to start wars and then have someone else stop them when they do not like how they are going.

In contravention of the Geneva conventions, Hamas has refused to allow the Red Cross to check on the welfare of the hostages. One can imagine why.

To this day, there seems little-to-no interest in the fate or condition of the hostages still in Gaza. Instead, there is denial that the October 7 atrocities even took place, compared to an almost obsessive regard for the safety of, and humanitarian aid for Gazans. When the UN is unable to deliver the aid, Israel, not the UN, is blamed.

The Hamas murders, rapes, burning alive of babies and abductions – all the reasons why Israel was forced to go to war with Hamas to begin with — have retreated into the background.

What seems to matter instead to those who set the political and media agendas is to use the Hamas war once again to demonize the Jews as the world’s most inhuman people for wanting to live peacefully on their historical land without daily massacres from Iran and its proxies — Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah and the Houthis — which apparently plan to encircle them in a “Ring of Fire” — “six fronts of aggression against Israel” — as part of Iran’s attempt at hegemony in the Middle East.

Western elites seem happy to assist them in that fight.

Nine months after the Iranian-orchestrated October 7 Hamas massacre of 1,200 mostly Israeli civilians, 116 hostages remain in Gaza, including at least 42 whom Israeli officials estimate were murdered by Hamas, after suffering unfathomable mental, physical and sexual abuse.