RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/violent-pro-palestine-demonstrations?utm_medium=email&_hsmi=290654609&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-

Anarchic, pro-Palestinian rallies have continued to intensify across the United States ever since Oct. 7, when Hamas massacred 1,200 people and took another 240 hostage. These nationwide protests, marked by highly disruptive tactics, have raised critical questions about the nature of protest, the boundaries of dissent, and the willingness of Western governments to assert and protect basic social values. When one delves deeper into the protesters’ driving ideology, it becomes clear that mass disruption is not a byproduct of their agenda, but the agenda itself.

These groups’ tactics have included blocking roads to international airports on New Year’s Day; endangering passenger planes by launching balloons over the runways; blocking highways that delayed the delivery of organ transplants to hospitals; illegally occupying a House office building near the U.S. Capitol; vandalizing stores supposedly complicit in Israel’s “genocide” of Gaza; disrupting the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade and Christmas tree lighting ceremonies in major cities; and storming the World Trade Center, defacing public monuments, targeting a cancer hospital, and attacking the White House gates while screaming “Allahu akbar” and “intifada revolution.”

What drives these protesters to such extremes, and convinces them to opt for such woefully misguided methods that—by disrupting the lives of ordinary people—appear to be counterproductive to their cause?

At the forefront of these demonstrations are various Islamic organizations often linked to the Muslim Brotherhood, as well as fringe Jewish anti-Zionist groups championing progressive causes such as climate justice and women’s rights. These groups find common ground in an ideology, ostensibly influenced by works of the French Martinican psychiatrist and post-colonial writer Frantz Fanon, that sees “liberation” and “decolonization” as a global revolutionary struggle and perceives their disruptive actions as a vital component of it. They believe that by obstructing crucial social services and public spaces, they effectively challenge superstructures deemed oppressive. This worldview is predicated on the notion that any inconvenience caused to innocent individuals is justified in the pursuit of societal transformation; their obstructive protest methods aren’t a defect, but a requirement of this worldview.

https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/hunter-bidens-laptop-real-joes-guardians-press-working-hard-truth

After years of suppressing the story and casting doubts over its authenticity, last year many in the media belatedly and reluctantly acknowledged that the Hunter Biden laptop is real. 

Some of us reached that conclusion years ago due to the self-authenticating emails confirmed by third parties. However, the denials and doubts have continued, including most recently by Rep. Dan Goldman, D-N.Y., in congressional hearings. The Department of Justice has now again confirmed the authenticity of the device and added details on why these denials are unsupported.

This week, the Department of Justice confirmed that the laptop had been authenticated through forensic examination and a search warrant on Hunter’s Apple iCloud. Hunter’s electronic devices were backed up on the cloud and the DOJ said that “the results of the search were largely duplicative of information investigators had already obtained from Apple.”

That is only the latest such confirmation, but many continue to desperately cast doubts about the laptop, which Hunter himself said might be the product of Russian intelligence. Once again, the last dogs in this fruitless fight are the most partisan among us. Rep. Goldman, for example, recently lambasted witnesses who referenced the laptop and challenged the credibility of a journalist who cited the laptop.

Goldman suggested that Hunter’s infamous laptop may have been “manipulated,” while speaking at a House Judiciary Committee hearing last week. 

Goldman attacked journalist Michael Shellenberger and declared:

“You have no idea, you know hard drives can be manipulated. Hard drives can be manipulated by Rudy Giuliani or Russia. There is actual evidence of it, but the point is it’s not the same thing.”

https://thespectator.com/topic/course-american-empire-biden-trump/

In the 1830s, the English-born American artist Thomas Cole painted an ambitious sequence of five large rectangular canvases delineating “The Course of Empire.” He began with “The Savage State,” which depicts the rude life of humans before the advent of letters, domestication and permanent architecture. “The Arcadian or Pastoral State” is marked by harmony and some early accoutrements of civilization. “The Consummation of Empire,” at fifty-one inches by seventy-six inches, is a third larger than its fellows. Here we see a sun-drenched landscape transformed by a panoply of classical architecture counterpointed by bustling commerce and a triumphal, if overripe, stateliness. Next comes “Destruction.” The skies are dark now, the people besieged by ravening hordes, the monuments broken and burning. A distant full moon presides over “Desolation,” the last canvas. The scene is populated by shaggy, shattered remnants of human ingenuity, vast blighted columns and porticos half overgrown by vegetation, not a human soul in sight. Ozymandias would be at home.

I have thought often about Cole’s painted morality tale these past months. Where do you suppose we are on the itinerary he traced? I’d say somewhere between “Consummation” and “Destruction.” Is the process inevitable, as Cole seems to have believed? There are heartening signs to suggest not.

Unfortunately, few of those signs are patent in the United States at the moment.

But just look at Argentina. As I write, Javier Milei, the new “anarcho-capitalist” president of Argentina, has embarked in earnest on a regimen of “shock therapy” for his troubled country. You think we have runaway inflation in the US? Well, we do. But it will soon be nearly 200 percent in Argentina.

Milei had barely taken office in December before he cut the government payroll by 5,000 jobs. He has abolished whole departments. He introduced a law legalizing the use of force for self-defense and decreed that welfare benefits would be stripped from anyone blocking traffic while protesting in the streets. He also banned the use of the word “free” to describe government largesse since the services are not “free.” On the contrary, they are paid for by the taxpayer. One commentator described this as “the most sensible law in world history.” Were it implemented in America, he noted, “the Democrat Party would literally not be able to campaign anymore.” Don’t hold your breath, though. Magical thinking obviates a multitude of unpalatable realities.

https://victorhanson.com/houthis-terrorists-trump-chasers-and-rare-moments-at-davos/

https://www.nationalreview.com/2024/01/the-strange-resurrection-of-a-failed-plagiarism-hit-on-neil-gorsuch/?utm_source=onesignal&utm_medium=push&utm_campaign=article

The seriousness of plagiarism depends not only on the facts but also on the field of endeavor in which it occurs.

One of the more desperate efforts made in defense of Claudine Gay as she was toppled from her position at Harvard for plagiarism was to dredge up a failed hit from 2017 on Neil Gorsuch. During the battle over Gorsuch’s confirmation, John Bresnahan and Burgess Everett of Politico wrote that Gorsuch “copied the structure and language used by several authors and failed to cite source material in his book and an academic article.” Ed Whelan responded at the time.

Both noted that there were academic experts, including the “outside supervisors for Gorsuch’s dissertation” and “the general editor for Gorsuch’s book publisher,” who saw no issue with Gorsuch’s writings under the standards for writings on legal philosophy. To my eye, Gorsuch should nonetheless have been more careful in his citations in the examples offered by Bresnahan and Everett. Yet, even they conceded that the handful of challenged passages were “a small fraction of published works by Gorsuch, which include hundreds of legal opinions, academic articles, news articles and his book.”

Are these distinctions without differences? No. Plagiarism is generally bad, but the degree to which it is bad — and the reasons why — can vary greatly by the facts and the setting. As with many things, assessing whether it’s just a minor infraction or a serious firing offense requires judgment and standards.

Is it bad to pass off someone else’s words as your own? Generally, yes. But in some contexts, it’s the norm. Young lawyers are often asked to draft memos, briefs, and complaints. Even when there’s a certain amount of style involved, it’s encouraged to copy from somebody else’s prior work in order to save on time and costs, so long as you’re careful to make sure the research is up to date and you don’t inadvertently leave in facts from a prior setting. It’s the better practice to tell your boss — who often signs the thing before a court or client — that you used a prior precedent in drafting, but nobody gets judged for doing it whether or not they disclose that. Getting the final product done right, on time and on budget, is what matters. That’s quite a different context from journalistic writing, in which giving credit to the writer is important and people get fired for copying the work of others.