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KNOW THYSELF: SYDNEY WILLIAMS

Posted By on September 6th, 2022

http://www.swtotd.blogspot.com

The words “Know thyself” were, according to legend, engraved above the forecourt in the Temple of Apollo at Delphi, located on Mount Parnassus in central Greece. A search for self-knowledge is common, and its importance has been lauded by many, from Benjamin Franklin to Lao Tzu to Pythagoras. To fatalist Greeks the saying meant that one should accept the role nature assigned one. But for those of us today who believe we are also nurtured by our environment. self-examination should be an ongoing process.

There are those who dismiss the concept, because we change. Andre Gide wrote in Autumn Leaves: “A caterpillar who seeks to know himself would never become a butterfly.” But a search for self-understanding is not seeking perfection in the here and now; it seeks to understand; it recognizes that change is given: We have new experiences; we meet different people, and we read. Life does not stand still and neither do we. What if Gide’s caterpillar wanted to become a butterfly? Some conflate self-knowledge with hubris – that in claiming to know ourselves we admit to knowing what we do not know. That, to borrow one of Joe Biden’s favorite expressions, is malarkey. It’s an argument used by woke philosophy professors to confuse young, impressionable minds. It is impossible to know what we do not know.

Self-understanding is important in an ever-changing world. In a recent interview in The Wall Street Journal, American tennis player Danielle Collins spoke “of how to use your strengths and how to work around your weaknesses” to win matches. She understands that her weaknesses will improve with practice, and that her strengths can be harbored and utilized. It was Heraclitus (c.535BC-c.475BC) who is credited with the saying: “Change is the only constant in life.” Knowing oneself is acknowledging that truth.

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Former Feds Give Justice Department a Bad Name The nonstop partisan gaslighting justifies accusations by Trump and his supporters that the Justice Department largely exists to criminalize political dissent in America. By Julie Kelly

Posted By on September 6th, 2022

https://amgreatness.com/2022/09/05/former-feds-give-justice-department-a-bad-name/

Andrew Weissmann is one weird dude, to say the least.

Weissmann, an author, law professor, and MSNBC legal analyst, is a prolific user of social media—but rather than post a head shot on his Twitter bio page, Weissmann has a photo of a dog staring down a doll resembling Donald Trump lying face-up on the floor. It’s unclear if the dog is supposed to represent Weissmann, described as Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s “pit bull” during the Russia election collusion investigation, or it’s just another indication of Weissmann’s insatiable obsession with the 45th president of the United States.

Instead of posting freakish pictures of Trump, Weissmann should send Trump a thank you letter every day for the rest of his life. Without Trump, Weissman—best known for having the Supreme Court unanimously overturn his criminal prosecution of Arthur Andersen in 2005 and his failure to uncover any evidence that Trump was in cahoots with the Kremlin to sway the 2016 election—wouldn’t be the media’s go-to source for explaining why this time the Bad Orange Man is really going down.

He is the de facto head of a cottage industry populated by former federal prosecutors paid to give “expert” legal assessments on the Trump scandal du jour. On any given day, Weissmann and his onetime co-workers can be found on cable news shows or in the pages of the Washington Post ranting about Trump’s alleged disregard for the “rule of law” and reminding their equally-rabid followers that “no one is above the law.”

And the FBI’s pillage of Mar-a-Lago on August 8 put this cabal into overdrive. Despite the amusing shift in talking points about what federal investigators took from Trump’s residence that day—hysteria over secret nuclear codes quickly morphed into hysteria over empty folders after a list of seized “evidence” revealed 99 percent of the contraband included personal items such as news clippings and books—the former feds are convinced the trove is proof of Trump’s guilt.

Weissmann recently asked a Democratic congressman why the House Intelligence Committee isn’t investigating Trump on this matter, too. “There’s been no explanation from Donald Trump whatsoever as to why he took these, why he didn’t return them, why are the folders now empty,” Weissmann said to Representative Peter Welch (D-Vt.) on MSNBC last week. “So one question I have is whether some part of Congress . . . shouldn’t be asking the private citizen who was a public servant to come and testify to explain what happened. He is a citizen, all of us would have to respond to a congressional subpoena.”

ISRAEL Comments turned off

JORDAN IS PALESTINE – A LEGAL ANALYSIS written by Ted Belman

Posted By on September 6th, 2022

https://www.israelunwired.com/jordan-is-palestine-a-legal-analysis/?utm_source=Jeeng

Originally published on Israpundit.org

San Remo Conference 1920

Yes, Jordan is Palestine.

The Arab propaganda machine aided and abetted by the UN, EU, US and the main stream media, which is just about everybody, would have you believe otherwise.

They demand that the Palestinians living in Judea and Samaria and Gaza be granted statehood on all lands not controlled by Israel when the cease fire lines were agreed upon in 1949. This is referred to as the Two-State Solution. This solution is at the heart of the Arab Peace Initiative which was agreed to in 2002 at the Beirut Summit which provided

“(a) Complete withdrawal from the occupied Arab territories, including the Syrian Golan Heights, to the 4 June 1967 line and the territories still occupied in southern Lebanon; (b) Attain a just solution to the problem of Palestinian refugees to be agreed upon in accordance with the UN General Assembly Resolution No 194. (c) Accept the establishment of an independent and sovereign Palestinian state on the Palestinian territories occupied since 4 June 1967 in the West Bank and Gaza Strip with East Jerusalem as its capital.”

Like most peace plans since, it was based on a deliberate misreading of 1967.UN Security Council Resolution 242.  This resolution did not require Israel to withdraw from all lands “occupied in the ’67 War and it allowed Israel to remain in possession of said lands until she had “secure and recognized boundaries free from threats or acts of force”.

This resolution also included this preamble,  “Emphasizing the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war and the need to work for a just and lasting peace in which every State in the area can live in security..“..

None of those principles were mentioned in 1949 when Jordan acquired Judea and Samaria by war and Egypt acquired Gaza by war. No one asked them to give it back and the boundary established was not intended to be permanent. It was merely the agreed upon ceasefire lines. The ’67 War was a continuation of Israel’s War of Independence. But this too was ignored by the Security Council.

Obviously, not requiring Israel to withdraw from all territories and requiring secure and recognized boundaries flies in the face of this preamble.

Not only that, while the UN Charter provides for the “inadmissibility of the acquisition of land by war”, international law allowed for the retention of land acquired in a defensive war, which the ’67 War undoubtedly was.

Nowhere is this resolution is a Palestinian state mentioned.

But that is not the whole story.

The lands in question were not somebody else’s land but Israel’s own land. This fact was totally ignored by the Security Council in passing it.

ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

Science returns to the Middle Ages with a vengeance By Anthony J. Sadar

Posted By on September 6th, 2022

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/09/science_returns_to_the_middle_

Touring Britain’s Cotswolds region in Gloucestershire, England and beyond can be downright inspirational.  Castles long ago conquered, now in ruins, recall a cold, hard past — a past that relied on the sun and wood for heat, coupled with wind and water for power.  And mostly only feudal lords and royal gentry could comfortably afford even paltry luxuries on a regular basis. 

Today it’s back to the future of medieval times with a vengeance and a modern twist.  Not only are we moving back to sunbeam collectors and windmills to power our twenty-first century homes and industry, we are redefining what it is to be human.  Not likely that even the sixteenth-century founder of human anatomy, Andreas Vesalius, thought of recategorizing humans into more than two sexes. 

The foundations of science painstakingly developed since the dawn of humanity have been denied.  The onset of human consciousness established that men were men and women were women by rudimentary deduction. The medieval mindset was too primitive to contemplate that men could somehow menstruate or become pregnant.  After all, with no observance of male lady parts, the nascent scientific method including observation, hypothesis, and testing, was a nonstarter. 

Apparently, contemporary intellectuals know better.  You need not believe your own two eyes or observe an actual condition to affirm its reality.  So, anatomical males can be deemed females and pigs can fly. 

The new science aristocracy has produced not only ethereal new horizons of “science,” but also new fears to enslave serfdom and reenact sumptuary laws to dampen modern pleasures.

In Michael Crichton’s 2004 bestselling novel, State of Fear, a skeptical climate science character named Professor Hoffman said “I study the ecology of thought… and how it has led to a State of Fear.”  The professor went on to explain that the government practices “social control [which is] best managed through fear.” 

Part of the control derives from claimed certainty in dubious climate modeling results and presentation of select disastrous weather conditions as the new norm to frighten the great unwashed into living less comfortably. 

EDUCATION Comments turned off

Biden’s New Title IX Proposals Will Codify the Gender Derangement of the Left By Janet Levy

Posted By on September 6th, 2022

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2022/09/bidens_new_title_ix_proposals_will_codify_the_gender_derangement_of_the_left.html

If there is anything that has advanced American society, you can be sure that ‘woke’ leftists will destroy it. So it is with Title IX – a one-sentence statute of the Education Amendments of 1972 that ended sex-based discrimination in educational institutions, opened the doors for women aspiring to become doctors, engineers, or experts in any field of choice, brought parity to college sports, and launched the battle against sexual harassment. In this fiftieth year of that landmark law, the Biden administration wants to rewrite it to suit the radical leftist ideology of gender identity and fluidity.

This is dangerous because it codifies the spreading gender derangement of the left. Worse, it will immerse young minds in learning environments that condition them to believe, without critical thinking, that the biological idea of sex is false. It will unleash other complications as well.

Already, Americans are suffering the tyranny of ‘woke’ ideology. We have reached the abyss in which some people can’t (or won’t) define what a man or a woman is. Girls are forced to share private spaces with biological males. Teachers are cancelled or fired for using the wrong pronouns. Schools are hiding their curricula from the public and parents, who they think might object. Sadly, the insanity extends to parents losing custody of their children for opposing capriciously imposed (and dangerous) gender transitions. The codification of ‘woke’ gender will only cause the unending stream of such cases to proliferate.

Even scientists are succumbing to such ideology. Recently, the Scientific American mocked binary sex roles in Western science, taking us into the theater of the absurd. The once respected magazine quoted medical anthropologist (gasp!) Katrina Karkazis saying, “Our bodies are far more variable than our categories. Part of what has happened is people become slotted into this binary framework.” Can she possibly mean that a scientifically and religiously accepted fact – that there are two sexes, male and female – is categorically wrong?

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Judge Orders Special Master Review of Materials Seized from Mar-a-Lago A useful check on government law enforcement overreach. Joseph Klein

Posted By on September 6th, 2022

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/09/judge-orders-special-master-review-materials-joseph-klein/

U.S. District Court Judge Aileen Cannon granted former President Donald Trump’s request for a special master to be appointed to review materials that the FBI seized during its raid of Mr. Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence several weeks ago. The special master would not be affiliated with the government and thus would presumably provide an objective third-party assessment of potential attorney-client and executive privilege claims by the former president. The Department of Justice was directed to halt any further use of the materials seized from Mar-a-Lago for investigative purposes “pending completion of the special master’s review or further Court order.” However, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence could continue conducting its own separate classification review and intelligence assessments.

In issuing this order, Judge Cannon upheld the fundamental constitutional principle of due process while balancing national security concerns. While recognizing that “restraints on criminal prosecutions are disfavored,” she concluded nevertheless “that these unprecedented circumstances call for a brief pause to allow for neutral, third-party review to ensure a just process with adequate safeguards.”

Judge Cannon added: “To appoint a special master to make privilege determinations while simultaneously allowing the Government, in the interim, to continue using potentially privileged material for investigative purposes would be to ignore the pressing concerns and hope for the best.”

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With Biden Loan Bailout, Federal College Aid Could Top $270 Billion A Year

Posted By on September 6th, 2022

https://issuesinsights.com/2022/09/06/with-biden-loan-bailout-federal-college-aid-could-top-270-billion-a-year/

In case you haven’t heard, the price tag for President Joe Biden’s student loan bailout is likely to total $1 trillion over the next decade. This is on top of the massive amounts of money taxpayers already fork over each year to subsidize college education. It’s time to ask whether any of this is worth it. 

The $1 trillion figure comes from a study by the Wharton School of the student loan forgiveness plan Biden plans to implement. As part of the plan, he’d cancel $10,000 in student debt for millions of students, which will cost upward of $519 billion. But that’s only part of Biden’s college loan bailout plan. 

The president is also extending the “emergency” pause on loan payments first enacted in March 2020 during the COVID lockdowns. It was originally supposed to last only a couple months but has been repeatedly extended. The latest plan is to keep this “temporary” suspension in place until the end of this year. That will cost $16 billion, according to Wharton.

Biden also plans to make the “income-driven repayment” program far more generous. This subsidy, started under President Bill Clinton, has been repeatedly sweetened since.

As it stands, anyone who enrolls in the IDR program can cap student loan payments at 10% of their income. Whatever’s left of the loan balance after 20 years gets wiped off the books.

Biden’s plan is to cap payments at 5% of income, nearly double the amount excluded from income calculations, and cancel any remaining debt after just 10 years. Assuming that most students will jump at this opportunity, this will cost taxpayers another $450 billion over the next decade, Wharton calculates.

Add it all up and the 10-year cost of Biden’s student loan bailout hits $1 trillion, according to Wharton.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Arabs to Biden: Do Not Sign the Iran Deal, It Will Start a War by Khaled Abu Toameh

Posted By on September 6th, 2022

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18855/arabs-iran-deal-war

“A few days ago, US officials announced that it was Iran, not America, that had given up core demands. They lie. Iran has not given up on anything essential. On the contrary, Iran has obtained the essential demands it wants.” — Sayed Zahra, deputy editor of Bahrain’s Akhbar Al-Khaleej, August 31, 2022.

“[T]he most dangerous concession made by the US was to waive the inclusion of Iran’s expansionist terrorist role in the region, its threats to the security and stability of Arab countries, the terrorist subversive role that Iran’s proxy militias play in the Arab countries, and the issue of the Iranian missile program.” — Sayed Zahra, Akhbar Al-Khaleej, August 31, 2022.

“He [Obama] did not hide his hatred of Arabs and his admiration for Iran. What Biden is doing today is following the same path, with full conviction on his part.” — Sayed Zahra, Akhbar Al-Khaleej, August 31, 2022.

“Syria has been taken hostage by a regime that is affiliated with the Iranians and Russians…. The Iranian regime…does not differ from the Taliban regime or from Islamic State (ISIS). Terrorism, destabilization, and domination of people are almost the only goals of such regimes.” — Ibrahim Allush, Syrian author, Enabbaladi, August 28, 2022.

“Washington has been very late in holding Iran accountable, or at least trying to hold it accountable for the systematic sabotage that it has practiced and is practicing in Yemen, Syria, Iraq, Lebanon and Gaza. This is the largest international sabotage operation that the Security Council has not been able to consider. None of the Security Council resolutions related to the region’s crises mentions Iran, even though its role is essential in tampering with the four countries and destroying their institutions.” — Abdul Wahab Badrakhan, Lebanese journalist, Al-Watan, August 28, 2022.

“President Biden’s administration is trying to create an image in the eyes of the Americans that Iran’s return to the nuclear agreement will bring it under control. Washington appears to be in a weak and precarious position, especially in light of the absence of an armed option.” — Emil Amin, Egyptian author, Asharq Al-Awsat, August 27, 2022.

“[I]f these billions flow into the coffers of the Revolutionary Guard Corps and the Quds Force, how will Washington guarantee the security of these countries [Gulf states, Iraq, Lebanon, Syria and Yemen] ?” — Mashar Al-Thaydi, Saudi commentator, Asharq Al-Awsat, August 26, 2022.

The Arabs… appear convinced that that pouring billions of dollars on the mullahs will eventually bring terrorism and violence to the US and the other Western powers involved in the new deal, if not a major war.

The talk about an imminent revival of the nuclear deal between Iran and the Biden administration and other Western countries has raised serious concerns among many Arabs. They state that they are especially worried about the billions of dollars that Iran’s mullahs will receive once the deal is done. The Arabs say they have no doubt that the money would be used by the mullahs to promote more terrorism and violence and expand Tehran’s terrorist proxies in the Middle East, including Hezbollah, the Houthis, Hamas and Islamic Jihad, and various militias in Iraq.

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COVID Authoritarianism Paved the Way for Biden’s Socialist Tyranny By J.B. Shurk

Posted By on September 5th, 2022

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2022/09/covid_authoritarianism_paved_the_way_for_bidens_socialist_tyranny.html

It has become commonplace to hear Dementia Joe and his communist cohorts divide the world between “democratic nations” and “authoritarian regimes.”  In his recent prime-time address declaring war on MAGA Americans, Pretend President Biden extolled “democracy” thirty-one times.  It seems as if the more Biden assumes the role of a dictator, the more inclined he is to proclaim himself democracy’s “savior.”  This kind of Napoleon complex is hardly unusual with Marxists.  Socialist regimes always arrive under the pretense of protecting the people, yet, as Lord Acton persistently warned, socialism remains “the worst enemy freedom has ever had to encounter.”

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said explicitly this last week that not agreeing with the majority “is an extreme way of thinking,” while simultaneously accusing Trump-supporters of representing an “extremist threat to our democracy.”  Anyone who doubts that majorities can be just as vicious as brutal dictators need only survey the aftermath of a torch and pitchfork mob.  Mob rule is democracy at its simplest and no friend to human liberty.  It is worth noting that after the elections of both President Donald Trump in 2016 and Prime Minister Boris Johnson in 2019, socialists, Antifa domestic terrorists, anti-Brexiteers, and other leftists took to the streets in huge mobs, clashing with police and chanting, “This is what democracy looks like.”  Protest mobs have no illusions about what democracy means.

The antipode of authoritarianism is not democracy, but rather inviolable individual rights.  America’s Founding Fathers, who were at the forefront of the Enlightenment’s revolutionary advance toward the protection of human liberty, fully grasped this distinction.  It is why the U.S. Constitution, as short as it is, doesn’t just say, “Whoever gets the most popular votes shall decide the law.”  Power is divided between the states and the national government.  The national government is further divided into three separate, coequal branches.  The national government’s legitimate powers are explicitly delineated, and all powers not specifically delegated to the federal government are vested with the individual states or their citizens.  An Electoral College protecting each state’s respective voice elects the president and vice president.  And the Bill of Rights reaffirms Americans’ natural liberties by stating clearly certain individual rights that no government may infringe — whether or not that government is expressing the wishes of the American majority.  This diffuse arrangement of ultimate authority, where power is divided among the federal branches, the states, and even the people themselves, is the heart of the American system’s guarantee against authoritarianism.

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How Woke Won. By Joanna Williams

Posted By on September 5th, 2022

https://www.spiked-online.com/books/

Woke has conquered the West. Identity politics, cancel culture and trans ideology reign. Censorship and public shaming are the price you pay for dissent. How did this once fringe ideology manage to take over our institutions? And how can ordinary people fight back? These are the questions at the heart of How Woke Won, the new book by author and spiked columnist Joanna Williams. She argues that we have much more in common than the woke would have us believe – and that it is time for us to come together to forge a freer, more democratic and truly egalitarian future.