Off The Beaten Track

[H/T MOHIB EBRAHIM] -- BITCHUTE.COM -- [ISMAILI DIGEST ED: We very highly recommend everyone watch this entire video which presents rarely seen official data and research about: the lockdowns, masks, the tests, the so called "second wave," why countries differ, why the severity of and trajectory of COVID-19 trends are similar to previous pandemics, and more.] ARTICLE: In his latest video, Dublin Biochemical expert, Ivor Cummins, crunches the numbers and makes it easier for non-statisticians to comprehend the shenanigans being perpetrated by the 'powers that be' during the ongoing scamdemic. About Ivor Cummins: BE(Chem) CEng MIEI PMP is a technical manager/team leader, biochemical engineer, complex problem solving specialist, with a passion for translating health science into information which can be used to transform your health. ...

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THEFEDERALIST.COM -- According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, one in four young adults say they have contemplated committing suicide in the past month because of the pandemic lockdowns and social distancing. Racial minorities reported higher suicidal thoughts than the general population, with 15% of blacks and 18.6% of Hispanics. Also, more than 40% said they experienced a mental or behavioral health condition and nearly 31% said they had symptoms of anxiety or depression. Other negative effects include a rise in sexual and physical abuse, specifically of children. Health experts are concerned that children have lost their normal routines and are isolated from friends and trusted adults. "The stressors these children are facing will have ...

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CNN.COM -- [ISMAILI DIGEST ED: Hazar Imam at Harvard, 2015: "Perhaps it is a natural condition of an insecure human race to seek security in a sense of superiority.... [However] what is needed, as the former Governor General of Canada Adrienne Clarkson said, is a readiness 'to listen to your neighbour, even when you may not particularly like him.' Is that message clear? You listen to people you don't like!"] ARTICLE: American universities seem committed to every kind of diversity except intellectual diversity. Conservative voices and views are being silenced entirely as the campus police go after serious conservative thinkers. Colleges promise to give their undergraduates a liberal education, which at its root, the word pertains to liberty. And, at the heart of liberty, is freedom of speech. People always understood this meant protecting and listening to speech with which you disagreed. However, there is an anti-intellectualism on the left. An attitude of self-righteousness that says we are so pure, we're so morally superior, we cannot bear to hear an idea with which we disagree. Liberals think they are tolerant but often they aren't. In 2016, a Pew study found that Democrats ...

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THEFEDERALIST.COM -- Children who attend Christian schools are significantly more likely to marry and stay married as adults than peers who attend public schools. Strikingly, the study found that children of poorer parents had significantly better marriage and childbearing outcomes than children of wealthier parents if they attended Christian schools. Numerous studies have demonstrated the superiority of private and Christian schools over public schools for many societally beneficial outcomes, such as lower rates of crime, higher rates of educational achievement, increased patriotism, more volunteering, higher racial integration, and a higher tolerance for religious and political differences. Research has also established that attending a Christian school makes a child significantly more likely to remain in the faith as an adult. This new study suggests ...

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YOUTUBE.COM -- [ISMAILI DIGEST ED: Hazar Imam, 2011: "I have seen situations where energy has been produced by windmills, by solar batteries and the damage that they have done to the environment is simply incredible.... We still don't really know a great deal about the technology of these new energy sources."] ARTICLE: In this 7-minute video I highlight the dark side of so called green energy and show why they are much worse for the planet than claimed. In particular, they create more pollution, more environmental destruction and exploit poor countries. All this of course comes as no surprise to those who have seen Michael Moore's recent viral documentary: "Planet of the Humans." ...

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[H/T MOHIB EBRAHIM] -- YOUTUBE.COM -- CSLEWISDOODLE -- [ISMAILI DIGEST ED: Hazar Imam at Columbia University, 2006: "How can we inspire people to reach beyond ... unprincipled relativism?"] ARTICLE: Until modern times no thinker of the first rank ever doubted that our judgements of good and evil were rational, objective judgements. However, the modern view does not believe that value judgements are really judgements at all. Instead they are subjective sentiments, or attitudes, produced in a community and we merely express socially conditioned feelings when we say something is good. But if this is so, then we might have been conditioned to feel otherwise. "Perhaps," thinks the reformer or the educational expert, "it would be better if we were. Let us improve our morality." Out of this apparently innocent idea comes the fatal superstition that there is no objective standard of good [but only relative standards] and that men creates values. Everyone is indignant when he hears ...

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IMDB.COM -- [ISMAILI DIGEST ED: Trailer and documentary are essential viewing for everyone.] ARTICLE: Set in the dark underbelly of Silicon Valley, The Social Dilemma fuses investigative documentary with enlightening narrative drama. Expert testimony from tech whistle-blowers exposes our disturbing predicament: the services Big Tech provides-search engines, networks, instant information, etc. are merely the candy that lures us to bite. Once we're hooked and coming back for more, the real commodity they sell is their prowess to influence and manipulate us. ...

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INDEPENDENT.CO.UK -- [ISMAILI DIGEST ED: Essential viewing for everyone.] ARTICLE: Netflix's new docu-drama recruits Silicon Valley whistleblowers to explain why they regret building the likes of Facebook and Twitter and why they might have unwittingly started society's destruction. You don't get a much clearer statement of social media's dangers than an ex-Facebook executive's claim that: "In the shortest time horizon I'm most worried about civil war." Its brilliance lies is in laying bare a vast range of complex problems with compelling clarity. "Social media starts to dig deeper and deeper down into the brain stem and take over kids' sense of self-worth and identity," explains ex-Google employee Tristan Harris. At Stanford University, whose psychology professors teach ways that tech can be used to reprogramme the way your brain works until ...

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THEFEDERALIST.COM -- [ISMAILI DIGEST ED: Hazar Imam, 1976: "I have observed in the Western world a deeply changing pattern of human relations. The anchors of moral behaviour appear to have dragged to such depths that they no longer hold firm the ship of life: what was once wrong is now simply unconventional, and for the sake of individual freedom must be tolerated. What is tolerated soon becomes accepted. Contrarily, what was once right is now viewed as outdated, old fashioned and is often the target of ridicule."] ARTICLE: We should have seen 'Cuties' coming. Normalization of such material starts with increased exposure. For two generations now, the entertainment industry has been pushing the envelope of debauchery a little bit at a time -- while calling anyone objects a prude or a puritan. This is precisely how "grooming" works. Parents need to be on guard. Slowly getting people used to small actions they would ordinarily find disgusting so that ...

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YOUTUBE.COM -- TONY HELLER -- Authoritarian control in Europe is being maintained through a "second wave" of COVID-19 'cases, which don't seem to have any connection to reality. ...

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[H/T MOHIB EBRAHIM] -- YOUTUBE.COM -- CSLEWISDOODLE -- [ISMAILI DIGEST ED: C.S. Lews' points about miracles are correct and why Ismaili Ignition produced "Ismaili Imamat's Authenticity: The First Objective Evaluation, 'A Signature in History'." See here: http://isma.li/signature] ARTICLE: Whether miracles occur can never be answered by experience. Every potential miracle is, in the last resort, something our senses experience. And our senses are not infallible so we can always say it was an illusion. If our worldview, a priori, excludes the supernatural, "illusion" is what we always say. So what we learn from experience first depends on the philosophy we bring to experience. It is, therefore, useless to appeal to experience before we have settled the philosophical question. If experience cannot prove or disprove miracles, still less can history because, again, the philosophical question must come first. Here is an example of what happens if we skip the preliminary philosophical task and rush on to the historical. In a popular commentary ...

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NEWSBUSTERS.ORG -- [ISMAILI DIGEST ED: Hazar Imam, 1976: "What was once wrong is now simply unconventional, and for the sake of individual freedom must be tolerated. What is tolerated soon becomes accepted. Contrarily, what was once right is now viewed as outdated, old fashioned and is often the target of ridicule."] ARTICLE: Netflix's CEO went on CNN for a ten-minute interview where the host, Poppy Harlow, clearly doing damage control for Netflix, didn't even ask ONE question about the child pornography controversy and boycott his company is facing over Cuties, "entertainment" that glamorizes and condons pedophilia and child pornography. And it's not just CNN that's covering for Netflix. Look at media headlines on the Cuties controversy. They're almost exclusively news and entertainment outlets praising the film and bashing conservative critics for daring to be upset at child pornography. You also won't see anyone asking Netflix board member Susan Rice or the Obamas, with a reported $50m Netflix deal, about this seriously disturbing problem. The media repeatedly tells us it is their job ...

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THEFEDERALIST.COM -- Teens whose mothers worked part-time or not outside the home were significantly more likely to be admitted to a highly selective university than teens whose mothers worked full time, a study from the Institute for Family Studies finds. The study examined longitudinal federal data for more than 17,000 American ninth graders. "The additional time, energy and attention these mothers were able to devote to their children's studies seem to have paid off in academic success," study author Nicholas Zill said. Although families with both parents working full time earned the most money, parental attention outperformed money at securing children's education prospects. Children whose mothers did not work outside the home achieved at an elite level even though their median family income was 25% less ...

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THEFEDERALIST.COM -- Gallup new poll on K-12 education found that the percentage of K-12 parents homeschooling this year has doubled over last year. One in every 10 families with school-age children is now home-schooling. Critically, the poll was careful to distinguish remote public-school instruction with true home-schooling. Given the poll measured families, not children, the actual percentage of the total student population now being home-schooled could be even higher. Samantha Spitzer, a certified teacher and home-schooling parent, believes this to be the case. "I talked to someone at my county school board office who said that over the August 7 weekend she received 175 notices of intent to home-school -- all from brand-new families." Based on enrollment numbers, Spitzer estimates that in one county, as many as one-quarter of K-12 children ...

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YOUTUBE.COM -- PRAGERU -- Belief in God, according to atheists, is irrational, illogical, and dumb. Belief that the universe created itself is, they say, intelligent, rational, and based in science. This is simply false. Nothing can create itself. Everything has a cause -- including the universe. That cause, argues Peter Kreeft, professor of philosophy at Boston College, is God, the "unmoved mover." Belief in God, as Kreeft shows, is more rational than belief in nothing. Logic, science, and reason, support God. Atheism, as you'll see, is far more steeped in blind faith than is belief. ...

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YOUTUBE.COM -- PRAGERU -- Isn't human suffering proof that a just, all-powerful God must not exist? On the contrary, says Boston College Professor of Philosophy Peter Kreeft. How can "suffering" exist without an objective standard against which to judge it? Absent a standard, there is no justice. If there is no justice, there is no injustice. And if there is no injustice, there is no suffering. On the other hand, if justice exists, God exists. In five minutes, learn more. ...

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YOUTUBE.COM -- PRAGERU -- [ISMAILI DIGEST ED: Hazar Imam, 1965: "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. When the faith is broken down everything goes with it: the family, society, the individual, the intelligence."] ARTICLE: Dave Rubin of The Rubin Report used to be a big progressive. He even had a show with The Young Turks! But now he's not a progressive. He has left the left. Why? Dave Rubin shares his story. ...

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THEFEDERALIST.COM -- [ISMAILI DIGEST ED: Although we generally avoid news stories, we felt this heartbreaking story deserves everyone's reflection.] ARTICLE: The scene in Kenosha was something seen in war-torn countries. Men and women protecting their businesses and homes armed with baseball bats and firearms. Those that did not met a sad fate. Sam, an Indian immigrant who owns a family-run car dealership in downtown Kenosha, lost "every dime" he had after it was destroyed by BLM arsonists and rioters. They burned his dealership two nights in a row, destroying all the cars and looting his office before burning that as well. The 20 people Sam employed have all lost their jobs. "This is not the America I came into," the shattered man said. "What did we do to deserve all this?" he asked. "I'm a minority too. I'm a brown person. I ...

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YOUTUBE.COM -- Heartbreaking video of the devastating destruction and broken lives in Kensohsa (and other American cities) by rioters and looters, which the media calls mostly "peaceful" protests. ...

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MINDINGTHECAMPUS.ORG -- American hating rioters are not an accident but the result of decades of ideological indoctrination at universities. While Marxism was repudiated, Western university professors enthusiastically took it up. Socialists and Marxists could never sell the bourgeois vs. proletariat [ruling vs. working] class conflict to Americans or Canadians because they thought of themselves as middle-class. But when the socialists added identity politics [i.e. intersectionality], they hit pure gold! The conflict was now between gender classes, racial classes, and sexuality classes -- not economic classes. The Marxist class conflict model let activists claim victimhood and denounce their alleged opponents as oppressors. Aided by nihilistic, postmodern ideas, truth was thrown out. Alleged experience and emotion now beat out research, evidence, and logic. And, the rationale for "social justice" ...

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AREOMAGAZINE.COM -- Intersectionality or Social Justice says we hold positions of privilege or oppression due to various identities, such as race, sex, etc. What's striking are how few demands it makes on its adherents. Earlier, relgious moral systems imposed burdens of charity and sacrifice. Intersectionality makes no such demands. It imposes no financial cost, no sacrifice. Intersectionality is a very public morality. To be good, just display the correct attitudes or openly ally yourself with the appropriate causes. Just tweet about historical slavery on your smartphone, whose battery contains Cadmium mined by some of the world's forty million current slaves, including children. You're not expected sacrifice your smartphone. This low burden imposed on adherents explains intersectionality's meteoric rise. As religion has been replaced by science ...

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[H/T MOHIB EBRAHIM] --YOUTUBE.COM -- CSLEWISDOODLE -- [ISMAILI DIGEST ED: Best viewed in HD and in a larger video size (click the cog-wheel 'settings' button at bottom right of the screen for HD and the rectangle for the large player).] ARTICLE: "Nature works in fixed, regular ways: but St Joseph also believed that there existed something beyond Nature which could interfere with her workings--from outside, so to speak," said I. "But modern science has shown there's no such thing," said my friend "Really. Which of the sciences?" "Oh, well, that's a matter of detail," said my friend. "I can't give you chapter and verse from memory." "But, don't you see," said I, "that science never could show anything of the sort?" "Why on earth not?" "Because science studies Nature. And the question is whether anything besides Nature exists--anything 'outside.' How could you find that out by studying simply Nature?" "Look here," said he. "Could this 'something outside' that you talk about make ...

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[H/T MOHIB EBRAHIM] -- YOUTUBE.COM -- [ISMAILI DIGEST ED: Hazar Imam, 1982: "... in certain parts of the world, scientists get blown-up heads because they have discovered something new and they think that they know all the answers to a particular scientific problem ..."] ARTICLE: C.S. Louis said people will believe almost anything if it's dressed up in the name of science. He astutely predicted that "the new oligarchy must increasingly rely on the advice of scientists till, in the end, the politicians become merely the scientists' puppets." However, science doesn't tell you what is best for society, because public policy is not just about technical expertise, it's about what good is worth having *at what price*. Science can't answer these kind of moral and ethical questions and just because someone is a scientist, it doesn't give them the right to dictate answers to society. If you think "I have the scientific truth about something and that's the end of story. I know everything," that really tends to feed ...

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THEFEDERALIST.COM -- Secular progressivism's claim to scientific validation is its Achilles heel because of just how little of that science can be replicated and confirmed. Results of many of the most influential papers in sociology, social psychology, economics, climate science, anthropology, education, and medicine can't be confirmed. The editor-in-chief of the authoritative Lancet believes up to half of the results published in peer-reviewed social science and medical journals are probably wrong. The National Association of Scholars' president argues that many of the "scientifically validated" regulations, laws and social programs have no real scientific basis. There seems to be a direct correlation between how much a state spends to "scientifically improve" its public services and the percentage of its citizens eager to migrate elsewhere. States with the most sophisticated bureaucracies almost always have the lowest-quality schools ...

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THEFEDERALIST.COM -- Our educational institutions have stolen critical knowledge from young people and replaced it with identity politics and political correctness. In 2016, Notre Dame professor of Constitutional Studies Patrick Deneen wrote "our students' ignorance is not a failing of our educational system -- it is its crowning achievement." He described his students as "know nothings," good test-takers and nice people. "Their brains are largely empty. If you ask them basic questions, be prepared for averted eyes and somewhat panicked looks. Who fought in the Peloponnesian War? ... Who was Saul of Tarsus? ... Why does the Magna Carta matter? ... At best, they possess accidental knowledge but are, otherwise, masters of systematic ignorance. Our educational system's goals are built on content-free processes and unexamined buzz-words like 'critical thinking,' 'ways of knowing' and 'social justice.'" On the surface ...

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AREOMAGAZINE.COM -- Social Justice ideology is a low-resolution, cynical look at human nature. It requires no journey of self-discovery and actively seeks vengeance. It offers no window into human existence and has no philosophical depth: its written works are a self-obsessed feel-good manual at best. It leaves non-adherents with no chance of redemption: original "sins" are a sentence. It does not preach kindness and teach forgiveness, but fosters resentment.... Our religious instincts must be channelled somehow. Ultimately, religion is about the human need for meaning which even reasonable liberals agree is fundamental to the human condition. Modern ideologies provide selfish and lazy ways to channel one's spiritual needs. In the absence of traditional solutions to this need, people will seek to replace it with ...

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EVIEMAGAZINE.COM -- A new study reveals that those enjoy using social media the most are more likely to enjoy embarrassing or humiliating others. The researchers asserted that social media platforms "unwittingly cater to people who seek rewards from being cruel, such as through cyberbullying or various aggressive online behaviors." This may be due our desire to seek bad news from the internet, called "doomscrolling." If we're constantly viewing and sharing bad news, perhaps we're less inclined to treat others with the care we normally would. Understandably, social media use has increased due to COVID-19 and it's hypothesized that social media habits formed during lockdown will far outlast COVID-19. This means it's crucial now, rather than ...

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QUILLETTE.COM -- Let's look at two schools. Lincoln Elementary, a crown jewel of Chicago Public Schools and, just 12 blocks, Manierre Elementary, a failing school. In 2019, not a single Manierre eighth grader was proficient in reading, compared to 81% of Lincoln's. These two schools, a mere 1.3 miles apart, serve the same neighborhood but the children south of North Avenue, which lies between the two, schools aren't allowed to attend Lincoln. This happens across America. Scholars and journalists choose to ignore the fact that almost 80% of public school children attend their assigned public school. We already have a name for this practice of using your address to determine whether or not you are eligible for valuable government services. We call it redlining. The name comes from 1930s government maps created ...

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QUILLETTE.COM -- If teacher education schools had a track record of helping low-income and minority students close the learning gap between themselves and their more advantaged peers, ideological bias and even low academic standards might be a price worth paying. But they have no such record -- just the opposite in fact. As an NPR headline said "America's high-school graduates look like other countries' high school dropouts." No wonder colleges and universities spend 7 billion dollars a year on remedial courses to get 40% of their first-year students ready for college-level work. And now a professor in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at the Illinois College of Education has called for "defunding math and STEM."It is just the latest of a century-old set of bad ideas which ...

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SUBSTACK.COM -- In the United States, we are inundated with tales of COVID-19 doom and gloom.The mainstream narrative is rife with hopelessness. However, there's one country they don't want to talk about -- Sweden. And for good reason. Sweden debunks the hysteria. In Sweden, there's no masks, no lockdown, no vaccine, and most importantly, no problem. In August, Sweden has registered just one coronavirus death! Similarly in the hospitals: COVID-19 is hardly registering as a blip on the radar. Sweden reported only 4 new COVID-19 patients in their ICUs in August. It doesn't take a math whiz to realize the epidemic appears to have been wrapped up in Sweden for months. Life has largely returned to normal in Sweden, and without the economy-destroying ...

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AMERICANMIND.ORG -- [ISMAILI DIGEST ED: Hazar Imam, 2006: "How can we inspire people to reach beyond rampant materialism, self-indulgent individualism, and *unprincipled relativism?*"] ARTICLE: The left have been the main proponents of scientism and moral relativism for much of the recent past. Scientific knowledge treated as gospel and non-scientific knowledge is considered oxymoronic so knowledge that can't be verified with science can't have a truth value and questions like morality or the meaning of life are just personal preferences with no objective answers. This view immediately gives rise to moral relativism and nihilism. But most people do have at least an intuitive sense of morality, something beyond current societal norms. Our conscience hurts when we do something that we sense to be immoral -- even when we try to rationalize its morality. For a group that doesn't believe "good" and "evil" can be defined objectively ...

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[H/T MOHIB EBRAHIM] -- OZANVAROL.COM -- There's a scene im Good Will Hunting where Will and his friends walk into a bar. Chuckie starts chatting up a girl, pretending to be a Harvard student, when a Harvard grad student, Clark, tries to make him look dumb. In one of the best moments of smackdown in film history, Will chimes in. "You're a first year grad student who's just finished reading some Marxian historian, Pete Garrison probably. That's until next year when you're gonna be here regurgitating ... Were you gonna plagiarize the whole thing or do you have any thoughts of your own?" We regurgitate what others say because it's much harder to form original thoughts so we don't bother. If you want to be less like Clark and more like Will, here are three things you can do ...

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[H/T MOHIB EBRAHIM] -- FS.BLOG -- When I was young, I thought other people could give me wisdom. Now that I'm older, I know this isn't true. Wisdom is earned, not given. When other people give us the answer, it belongs to them and not us. While we might achieve the outcome we desire, it comes from dependence, not insight. Instead of thinking for ourselves, we're dependent on the insight of others. The abundant directives, rules, and simplicities offered by others may make us feel like we're getting smarter, but it's nothing more than the illusion of knowledge. Others help you but they can't do the work for you. Thinking is something you have to do by yourself. Owning wisdom for oneself requires ...

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