Off The Beaten Track

BUSTLE.COM -- Stay away from your phone two hours before bedtime. Swap out your evening Instagram scroll for a book, and you might feel a world of difference in the morning. Use software and apps that reduce blue light levels. For example, F.lux automatically adjusts your computer's display as it gets darker outside, so that the display doesn't feel as bright and emits less blue light. Similarly use the night shift setting on your iPhone to adjust the color temperature of your phone display to reduce the blue light at night. Go to "Settings," then "Display and Brightness." You should see the option for Night Shift there. Set screen time hours and ...

Click to view ❯❯❯

THEFEDERALIST.COM -- [ISMAILI DIGEST ED: Hazar Imam, 2002: "I mean, we're talking about very basic issues. Think of the food, the food rebellions that you had when the IMF amongst others said you've got to correct your economy. People couldn't buy their food. You know, how can you expect young people not to react? That is so basic to human rights."] ARTICLE: In Sri Lanka, the 2021 inflation surge became a full-scale economic crisis thanks to climate radicalism. Fooled by European Green Deal propaganda to reduce nitrogen emissions, the government implemented a ban on chemical fertilizers, even though 15 of its 22 million people rely on farming, and over 90% them use chemical fertilizers. After the ban, one-third of farmland lay dormant, and 85% of farmers faced crop losses of 50% to 60%. Rice production fell by 20% and prices jumped 50% in just six months. Worst yet, the fertilizer ban hit the tea industry, Sri Lanka's second-highest export. These exports paid for 71% of the country's food imports. After the ban, the tea industry crashed to a 23-year low. Even the European Union, is noticing the Green Deal isn't a good one. Earlier ...

Click to view ❯❯❯

THEEPOCHTIMES.COM -- The Netherlands is world's 5th largest food exporter. However, its government has proposed slashing livestock numbers by 30% to meet Climate Change nitrogen emissions targets. Some parts of the country would have to slash emissions by 70% or even 95%. New Zealand reported "The [Dutch] Minister of Nature and Nitrogen Policy expects about a third of the 50,000 Dutch farms to 'disappear' by 2030." While the United States openly acknowledges that "there is not a future for all [Dutch] farmers within [this] approach." Sri Lanka's ban on chemical fertilizers, to also reduce nitrogen emissions, contributed to an economic crisis that has now destabilized the government. The UN Secretary-General warned on June 24 that "there is a real risk that multiple famines will be declared in 2022," adding that ...

Click to view ❯❯❯

RT.COM -- [ISMAILI DIGEST ED: While we normally do not post on political matters, we are posting on the situation in Ukraine because it is an invaluable case study about Big Tech and Western media. Hazar Imam, 2006: "Journalists transmit superficial rhetoric and slight underlying realities."] ARTICLE: America's sudden love affair with Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky is reminiscent of the West's 1940s campaign to beautify Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin's image. Just 5 years after the Great Purge, when Stalin killed about a million people, Collier's magazine claimed the USSR was evolving "toward something resembling our own and Great Britain's democracy." The New York Times agreed. Similarly today, Zelensky and his army are portrayed as heroic, freedom fighters. However, in 2018, before Russia's military offensive, Reuters pointed out that Ukrainian volunteer militias use Nazi symbolism and recruit Hitler acolytes. Today Ukraine's fascist elements are whitewashed. The fact is Ukraine incorporated neo-nazi militias, including the Azov Battalion, into its National Guard after the country's democratically elected leadership was overthrown in a US-backed coup in 2014. And, once World War II ended, ...

Click to view ❯❯❯

CAITLINJOHNSTONE.COM -- [ISMAILI DIGEST ED: While we normally do not post on political matters, we are posting on the situation in Ukraine because it is an invaluable case study about Big Tech and Western media. ~~ Hazar Imam, 1996: "For centuries, the press has cast itself as the champion of understanding and enlightenment. And yet, even as the press has become more international, it has often left a trail of misunderstanding in its wake."] ARTICLE: "I've spent my career working in the mainstream, and I've covered probably seven, eight, nine shooting wars; I've never seen coverage so utterly consumed by a tsunami of jingoism, and of manipulative jingoism as this one." (John Pilger) ~~ "It's quite interesting that in American discourse, it is almost obligatory to refer to the invasion as the 'unprovoked invasion of Ukraine'. Look it up on Google, you will find hundreds of thousands of hits. Of course, it was provoked. Otherwise they wouldn't refer to it all the time as an unprovoked invasion." (Noam Chomsky) If your neighbor always referred to his wife as "my wife who I definitely never beat," you'd immediately become suspicious because ...

Click to view ❯❯❯

PRAGERU.COM -- It has become a dogma of progressive ideology that America is a "secular" nation. There is a problem with this claim, however: It's false. The words "separation of church and state" are not in the Constitution. What the Constitution does say is that Congress was forbidden from one, establishing a national church (on the model of the Church of England); and two, attempting to disestablish or interfering with the established churches that existed in some of the states. None of the Founding Fathers, including Jefferson who was among the least religious of them (though not an atheist), ever entertained the idea that ...

Click to view ❯❯❯

FORBES.COM -- America was founded on the idea of governance through family, church and community. Separation of church and state only meant the Federal Government could not elevate one denomination over others. Other than that our forefathers never sought to evict the church from society. Nor did the Constitution inhibit public displays of faith. On the contrary, the early Republic welcomed public worship. Even non-Christian founders thought religion essential. The Northwest Ordinance of 1787 states: "Religion, morality, and knowledge, being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind..." Alexis de Tocqueville noted that Americans intertwined individual liberty with vibrant faith, stating "It is impossible to make them conceive the one without the other." Meanwhile, the French Revolution's "De-Christianization" ...

Click to view ❯❯❯

WASHINGTONEXAMINER.COM -- [ISMAILI DIGEST ED: Hazar Imam, 2006: "But if freedom of religion deteriorates into freedom from religion -- then societies will find themselves lost in a bleak and unpromising landscape -- with no compass, no roadmap and no sense of ultimate direction." ~~ Hazar Imam, 1965: "What does happen, and this is a danger, is that the left-wing attitudes tend not only to destroy the Faith of a man towards his religion but also the respect of one individual towards another."] ARTICLE: Twelve years ago, an "alert" was sent to the Freedom From Religion Foundation about a coach who led his team in short prayers. For decades, activists pushing freedom from religion have helped reshaped culture and traditions and last week's, already-famous, 6-3 Supreme Court ruling struck back. It is a massive, massive change that moves the country ever so slowly back to its center-right equilibrium after being dragged so hard toward the left by our cultural curators. Anyone paying attention to the down-ballot races in 2020, noticed voters were moving rightward because liberalism went from "Let's all coexist" to "If you don't agree with us, you're a bigot." That shift pushed a lot of evangelical voters to start voting on religious liberty. That constant beating of the bigot drum on everything, ...

Click to view ❯❯❯

PRAGERU.COM -- [ISMAILI DIGEST ED: Mawlana Sultan Muhammad Shah, 1934: "As an ideal, my preference is for [Indian] self-government either on the American federal plan or on Swiss lines leaving ultimate power through the Initiative, the Referendum, and perhaps the Recall."] ARTICLE: After the 1787 Constitutional Convention, legend says a woman asked Benjamin Franklin what kind of government had been created. Franklin responded "...a republic, madam. If you can keep it." A republic? But isn't our country a democracy? Actually, pure democracy frightened the Convention Delegates as a path to mob rule so they rejected it. Instead, they built both democratic and non-democratic features into the Constitution to protect liberty. That's why Wyoming has 2 Senators, the same number as California and every other state, so large population states like California can't overwhelm the needs and interests of small states like Wyoming. "More democratic" doesn't always mean more just. A republic is a brilliant way of diffusing power. Our founders understood ...

Click to view ❯❯❯

THEFEDERALIST.COM -- [ISMAILI DIGEST ED: Hazar Imam, 2003: "[Education] must also stimulate students to consider a variety of perspectives on some of the fundamental questions posed by the human condition: 'What is truth?' 'What is reality?' and 'What are my duties to my fellow man, to my country and *to God?*'"] ARTICLE: The US Supreme Court's June 21, 6-3 ruling shows learning doesn't happen in a moral vacuum, and it's dangerously absurd to insist otherwise. Both the majority and dissenting opinions illuminate a truth about education and religion: the two are closely intertwined. All education is religious, and all religion involves education. Although people think schools have replaced religous values and beliefs with knowledge and skills, they are sorely mistaken. All schools are quite religious, it's just that their religion is secular humanism. They've replaced God with model human beings (world leaders, civil rights activists, scientists, etc.) not to mention, the unrelenting effort to replace the home and church community with the school community. That makes every non-secular school ...

Click to view ❯❯❯

THEFEDERALIST.COM -- [ISMAILI DIGEST ED: Hazar Imam, 2006: "But if freedom of religion deteriorates into freedom from religion, then societies will find themselves lost in a bleak and unpromising landscape with no compass, no roadmap and no sense of ultimate direction." ~~ "A healthy sense of public integrity, in my view, will be difficult to nurture over time without a strong religious underpinning." ~~ "How can we inspire people to reach beyond rampant materilaism, self-indulgent individualism, and unprincipled relativism?"] ARTICLE: The West is facing its deepest crisis and addressing the crisis requires removing militant secularists' monopoly on education, former U.S. Attorney General, William Barr said at a Chicago conference. He explained self-government cannot exist without a citizenry that is committed to traditional religion. But anti-religious forces now control the minds of American kids due to their monopoly on U.S. education institutions. "You can't finesse it anymore. You can't pretend what's being taught in schools is compatible with traditional religion, nor can you pretend schools are neutral any more." "The last couple of hundred years [has created a new] worldview that boils questions of morality solely down to an individual's internal feelings." Barr said anti-religion leftists have effectively ...

Click to view ❯❯❯

THEFEDERALIST.COM -- [ISMAILI DIGEST ED: Hazar Imam, 2008: "The quest for identity can then become an exclusionary process -- so that we define ourselves less by what we are for and more by whom we are against. When this happens, diversity turns quickly from a source of beauty to a cause of discord."] ARTICLE: To understand what binds the coalition of conflicting groups on the left together, it is more useful to examine what they oppose rather than the policies they support. And the glue that holds them together is scapegoating: identifying a villain, the scapegoat, the victim to be targeted who is blamed for inciting conflict. As The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy explains: the targeted victim is a monstrous creature that deserves to be punished and eliminated for peace. Identifying the left's scapegoats isn't difficult: masculine men become scapegoats when dubbed toxic, sexist enforcers of patriarchy. Stable nuclear families are targets for perpetuating gender roles. The terms for the scapegoats -- the "deplorables," sexists and the racists, rednecks and retrogrades, bigots, different stripes of -phobes -- is what holds the fragile bloc together. Party operatives blame ...

Click to view ❯❯❯

NYTIMES.COM -- [ISMAILI DIGEST ED: Hazar Imam, 2000: "A balanced life, which is guided by faith and intellect, is built upon a value system which you can trust [will], Insha'llah, bring you happiness, spiritual happiness and worldly happiness ... it will give you happiness in many different ways."] ARTICLE: Who is happier: liberals or conservatives? Liberals obviously, right? Wrong, according to much data over decades. Take Pew Research. In 2006 they reported conservative Republicans were 68% more likely than liberal Democrats to say they were "very happy" about their lives. But why? Religion and family seem key. Conservatives make up 80% of religous Americans, liberals just 20%. And religious people are twice as likely to say they are very happy about their lives than secularists (43% to 23%). 52% of married, religious, politically conservative people (with kids) are very happy versus just 14% of single, secular, liberal people without kids. The very happiest Americans are either "extremely conservative" (48%) or "extremely liberal" (35%). The least happy are dead-center "moderates." The Occupy Wall Street protesters may have looked like a miserable mess. In truth none, it seems, are happier than the Tea Partiers, many of whom ...

Click to view ❯❯❯

CONSERVATIVEWOMAN.CO.UK -- [ISMAILI DIGEST ED: Hazar Imam, 1967: "What has been called the permissive society where anything goes, nothing matters, nothing is sacred or private any more, is not a promising foundation for a brave and upright new world." Hazar Imam, 1999: "It's clear that uncontrolled freedom becomes license.... It's probably the most challenging issue that I have to address today."] ARTICLE: It was of course in the 'Swinging Sixties' that the permissive society got under way. And then, with permissive floodgates opened, abandoning Biblical morality became cool and progressive and heralded as a liberal virtue. So began the process whereby on film, TV, stage and the printed page the old landmarks of propriety and decency were removed and the boundaries were constantly being pushed out. Where were the churches when the permissive society was running riot? The defence of Christian moral teaching was generally left to a few valiant individuals. The sexual revolution has continued up to the present day. One of its latest manifestations ...

Click to view ❯❯❯

NATIONALPOST.COM -- While the federal government rightly hosted two consecutive summits on combating anti-Semitism and Islamophobia, attended by the Prime Minister, what I find inexplicable is there is no scheduled summit dealing with the current wave of destructive hostility directed at Christian worshippers. Especially since, that within a period of just two weeks, Canada had 48 acts of violance against Christian churches: from vandalism to total destruction by fire. We may not be in an age of faith and religion, but for many Canadians faith not an incidental pastime. It is core to their being. Indigenous leaders were angered by these attacks on their churces, some of which had served their communities for a long time. Two chruches had no Aboriginal associations. One was built by refugees who fled religious persecution. "Our church brought together a diverse congregation of Coptic, Eritrean, Ethiopian, Iraqi and Lebanese ...

Click to view ❯❯❯

DAILYMAIL.CO.UK -- According to a YouGov poll, the British public hugely overestimates the size of minorities and, thereby, warping the view of society. While official figures show black Britons make up about 3% of the population, those surveyed estimated it was 20%. Conversely, when asked what proportion of adults were white, the median answer was 65% yet the true figure is 87%. Similarly, Britons believed about 15% of the population is Muslim, against the true figure of about 4%, and they estimated the Jewish community stood at 10% when it is 0.5%. MP Sir John Hayes said: "This distorted impression created by much of the broadcast and online media is so out of tune with the facts." The poll revealed that the public thinks 10% ...

Click to view ❯❯❯

NATIONALPOST.COM -- [ISMAILI DIGEST ED: Hazar Imam, 2008: "People come together around competence, around ability, around knowledge. They don't like mediocrity." ~~ Hazar Imam, 2000: "Pakistan, fortunately, like many other developing countries, is moving to what we call a merit-based educational system."] ARTICLE: It is quite likely that the diversity, inclusion and equity (DIE) motivated eradication of objective testing will hinder students from mastering topics such as statistics which social sciences rely on. And so, when I meet someone hired on DIE grounds, should I be skeptical of their professional competence? Even the New York Times expressed its doubts about DIE in a 2021 headline: "Are Workplace Diversity Programs Doing More Harm than Good?" Commenting on the Western woke madness, Vladimir Putin said that although the advocates of so-called "social progress" believe they are introducing a new and better consciousness, Russia has been there already. The Bolsheviks, relying on Marx, led the destruction of age-old values, religion, and relations between people, up to and including the total rejection of family (we had that, too). And they were absolutely intolerant of opinions other than theirs. "We are amazed ...

Click to view ❯❯❯

ACADEMYOFIDEAS.COM -- [ISMAILI DIGEST ED: Hazrat Ali: "Use your intellect to understand something when you hear about it. The intellect that examines and not just the intellect that repeats what it hears, for surely there are many who repeat the knowledge that they hear, and there are few who examine it."] ARTICLE: Repetition is a well-known propaganda technique for solidifying falsehoods and perpetuating fear. By repeating specific phrases and warnings over and over, entire populations can be paralyzed with a fear psychosis. The Nazi Propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels, well aware of this, said: "It would not be impossible to prove with sufficient repetition ... that a square is in fact a circle." Or, as George Orwell wrote: "Political language ... is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind." And, as Voltaire explained, "Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities." To avoid this, one must give up being a common passive propaganda receiver and instead become an active truth seeker. Skepticism is ...

Click to view ❯❯❯

RT.COM -- [ISMAILI DIGEST ED: Hazar Imam, 2014: "As I look around me, my deep sense is that today the strongest human force, sadly, is fear."] ARTICLE: If you believe that you are a divinely created sovereign being, and that your rights come from God, as the American Founders did, not the government, you have the basis to create something truly wonderful. But how far we have fallen. America in 2022 more closely resembles a giant mental asylum inside a circus than a country of the brave and the free. Sometimes I wonder if most of my fellow citizens even believe in freedom anymore, or are they so fearful and shellshocked they've forgotten what that word means? It's almost like safety is the new American pastime, replacing baseball. Or worse, Safety is the new religion. Neighbors rat on neighbors, calling the cops. All of it driven by instilled fear, all of it devoid of human empathy. Not only are fearful ...

Click to view ❯❯❯

QZ.COM -- [ISMAILI DIGEST ED: Hazar Imam, 2016: "Public wisdom is not dependent on education."] ARTICLE: In 1976, Carlo M. Cipolla (d.2000), a professor of economic history at the University of California, Berkeley outlined 5 laws governing what he perceived as humanity's greatest existential threat: Stupidity. Stupid people, he explained, share several identifying traits: they are abundant, they are irrational, and they cause problems for others without apparent benefit to themselves. He argued there are no defenses against stupidity. ~~ Law 2: The probability that a particular person is stupid is independent of any other personal trait -- gender, race, nationality, education level, income. Every category one can imagine possesses a fixed percentage of stupid people. There are stupid college professors, stupid people at Davos and at the UN General Assembly, and in every nation on earth. How numerous ...

Click to view ❯❯❯

BARIWEISS.SUBSTACK.COM -- I taught English at Yale University for ten years and mostly I taught what one of them herself called "excellent sheep." Excellent sheephood, like wokeness, is a species of conformity. Today's elite college students still regard themselves as children, and are still treated as such. The nature of the authority, parental as well as institutional, that the young now have is an authority that does not believe in authority, that does not believe in itself. It's an authority that wants to be liked, that wants to be your friend, that wants to be thought of as cool. That will never draw a line, that will always ultimately yield. Children can't be children if adults are not adults, but children also can't become adults. The 1960s broke authority, and ...

Click to view ❯❯❯

RT.COM -- [ISMAILI DIGEST ED: While we normally do not post on political matters, we are posting on the situation in Ukraine because it is an invaluable case study about Big Tech and Western media.] ARTICLE: Washington has been deliberately lying about Ukraine's prospects to ever join NATO, former US Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul acknowledged this month in Toronto at the Munk Debates. When questioned by Stephen Walt why, throughout 2021, Washington kept pushing for Ukraine's NATO membership, McFaul interrupted with "And did you believe that?" "So, our diplomats are lying?" Walt shot back. "Yes! Yes, that's the real world, guys, c'mon," McFaul replied. "Our diplomats are lying all the time, yet the Russians should trust them when they're offered assurances," Walt noted, spurring applause from the audience. Russia ...

Click to view ❯❯❯

YOUTUBE.COM -- ACADEMYOFIDEAS.COM -- [ISMAILI DIGEST ED: Hazrat Ali: "He will always excel in merit who takes the initiative." ~~ Hazar Imam, 1963: "I am afraid that the torch of intellectual discovery, the attraction of the unknown ... have left us [Muslims]." ~~ Hazar Imam, 2007: [We must] infuse our students with ... the spirit of adventure.] ARTICLE: Our age has been called many things, but an age of cowards may describe it best. Historically, some of the most prosperous societies were those most oriented towards experimentation and risk taking. The opposite approach, emphasising safety over risk-taking, stunts human potential and growth. To develop as individuals, exploration of the unknown and experimentation with novel ways of interacting with the world is a necessity and this entails taking risks and facing danger. Danger makes men classical, and all greatness, after all, is rooted in risk. A safe life, lacking real challenges and absent in adventure, is inert and leads to a withering away ...

Click to view ❯❯❯

FRCBLOG.COM -- [ISMAILI DIGEST ED: Hazar Imam, 1983: "Children need to be cared for from the time they are conceived until they reach maturity ..."; Mawlana Sultan Muhammad Shah: "The immediate religious duty of all my spiritual children is to learn perfect infant care from conception till maturity."] ARTICLE: The Women's Health Protection Act, more aptly referred to as the "Abortion on Demand Until Birth Act," is the most pro-abortion piece of legislation ever seen at the federal level. Its existence underscores the profound worldview divide between Republicans and Democrats, who increasingly disagree on the definition of personhood. While Republicans routinely vote to recognize preborn babies as human beings deserving of the protection of our nation's laws, Democrats now regularly vote for abortion despite advances in embryology and technology that make the medical and moral case of the humanity of preborn children undeniable. Consider the legislation itself. The bill, which ...

Click to view ❯❯❯

ARCHIVE.PH -- [ISMAILI DIGEST ED: Hazar Imam, 2006: "A healthy sense of public integrity, in my view, will be difficult to nurture over time without a strong religious underpinning."] ARTICLE: In his Farewell address, President George Washington said something many modern Americans would find nonsensical: "Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports" and offered two reasons why. Firstly, he referred to oaths taken in courts of law or on assuming public offices. Such oaths invoked God as a witness and, for the genuinely religious, any deceit carried the fear of penalty in the afterlife. Secondly, he said "Let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion." Echoing this, President John Adams said: "I never read of an irreligious character in ... history, nor have I known one in life, who was not a rascal. Name ...

Click to view ❯❯❯

[H/T MOHIB EBRAHIM] -- ACADEMYOFIDEAS.COM -- [ISMAILI DIGEST ED: This otherwise outstanding video suggests "profiting from the truths of the great religions can be accomplished through a personal effort." However, as Hazrat Ali warns us, "To devote oneself to the religious life without being taught is to resemble the mill-donkey going round and round without moving from the place." ~~ Hazar Imam, 1965: "When the Faith is broken down everything goes with it: the family, society, the individual, the intelligence."] ARTICLE: Today many view religion with derision and scorn, considering this as a sign of enlightenment and progress. In a 1937 Yale University lecture titled Psychology and Religion, Carl Jung called atheism the "urban neurosis" and wrote "Among those in the second half of life there has not been one whose problem, in the last resort, was not that of finding a religious outlook on life." Perhaps without some form of a religious outlook man descends into the chaos of nihilism, totalitarianism, and hatred of self and society. And for those who think science has ...

Click to view ❯❯❯

PRAGERU.COM -- As a therapist, I'm often asked why depression and anxiety are so common among children and adolescents. One explanation -- almost surely the most neglected -- is declining interest in God and religion. A 2018 Harvard study of 5,000 examined how being raised in a relgious family affects the mental health of children. The study found that kids who attended a religious service at least once per week scored higher on psychological well-being measurements and had lower risks of mental illness. Weekly attendance was also associated with higher rates of volunteerism, lower probabilities of both drug use and early sexual initiation, and a sense of purpose. Yet, despite all the evidence that religious involvement leads to positive behaviors, Gallup reports ...

Click to view ❯❯❯

DISCOVERY.ORG -- [ISMAILI DIGEST ED: Hazar Imam, 2006: "Our goal, then, is not to provide special education for a privileged elite -- but to provide an exceptional education for the truly exceptional."] ARTICLE: Here's the sad truth. 25 countries outperform American students. China places first overall and dominates each subject. Americans are 33rd in math, 23rd in science, and 17th in reading. When in-person school resumed after COVID-19, many states continued with reduced instruction hours such as two-and-a-half-hour school days. And, instead of academic instruction, schools focused on "woke academics" under the guise of the innocent-sounding terms diversity, inclusion, equity, and social justice. Equity was redefined as equal outcome [everyone should get the same grades] rather than equal opportunity. Any variations in educational outcomes are chalked up to the education system being systemically racist. Consequently, advanced courses are being removed because challenging high performing students is now considered discrimination. Some schools are doing away with standards altogether. The State of Oregon

Click to view ❯❯❯

WASHINGTONEXAMINER.COM -- As a result of COIVD-19, by the fall of 2021, 11% of American students were homeschooled, a number that's climbing. Another factor driving parents to homeschool is far-left indoctrination dominating today's K-12 classrooms. For example, students as young as age 5 are asked to select their gender identity and the gender they are physically attracted to. Declining academic standards is another concern. Advanced classes and gifted and talented programs are being removed in the name of "equity," denying high performers opportunities. Even graduation requirements have been reduced -- again in the name of equity. Today, more than 71% of American students lack basic academic proficiency at the end of their K-12 school years. As one parent said: "Now that I've started ...

Click to view ❯❯❯