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Category Archives: United States of America

Bolton on Biden and Renewal of the JCPOA

19 Friday Feb 2021

Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, 21st Century Modern, Iran, Philosophy, United States of America

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

JCPOA, medieval v modern, Past-Present-Future, Western Civilizational Project

@POTUS Putin: 19th C.; Ali: 7th C.; Trumpsters: 1930s. Why would you want to march forward into the past as well?

Turn around.

We face implacable feudal enemies in Beijing, Moscow, and Tehran, and we're forward of where you were in 2016.

Muscle up.

Stand firm.

— J. S. Oppenheim (@JS_Oppenheim) February 19, 2021
Bolton, John. “Boris Johnson holds the future of the fatally flawed Iran deal in his hands.” The Telegraph, February 18, 2021.

Political deja vu — The United States has been here before with its “arch conservatives” and cowardly isolationist and possibly related anti-Semitic and paranoid tendencies. For reference without much ado: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/America_First_Committee | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/America_First_Party_(1943) | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerald_L._K._Smith | https://www.nytimes.com/1976/04/16/archives/gerald-lk-smith-dead-anticommunist-crusader.html |


Among the slashed and burnt of The Great Liar’s One-Term Presidency, John Bolton stands out for greater backbone, discretion, experience, and integrity.

I believe Bolton when he suggests he leveraged his experience in national security to participate in the Trump Administration in order to produce his — not Trump’s — brand of guidance. As Trump required greater sycophancy, Bolton would also leave the malignant narcissist’s den.


The Republican Party, once the Party of the visionary Abraham Lincoln, has in the 20th Century seen equally embarrassing and shamefully self-centered days. That has become something for critically reasoning and independent Americans to take into consideration as the West with its ideas about compassion, freedom, goodness, and real human productivity faces an anachronistic, feudal, and implacable enemy in Moscow and, in post-Cold War association with it, Beijing and Tehran as well.

Tehran, worn by its own conflict-promoting behaviors over time and by sanctions, has shown no signs of retreat in relation to its nuclear missile and warhead programs nor its will, repeated with dulling frequency, to see Israel and the west destroyed for its own marauding and politically absolute ends. Where has the Republican Party (with its increasingly familiar white supremacist attachments) really stood on the Moscow-Tehran relationship? Where has it stood with regard to the rise of the proto-fascist New Nationalism in the United States as well as within NATO (have a look into authoritarian and feudal urges in Hungary, Italy, Poland, and Turkey)?

Parochial and rapacious _reactionary_ conservatism were very much part of the past too. https://t.co/0zJrDyZEUG Roosevelt had to defeat the America First Party and related supporters (like Lindbergh) to align with Great Britain (https://t.co/xlfBpl6cxf).

— J. S. Oppenheim (@JS_Oppenheim) February 19, 2021

Here is a junction in time in which the United States, once leader of the free world — the modern open democratic world, either stands firm against politically retrograde but technologically sophisticated states or slips backward itself into some system of immense power and wealth lording over a hapless constituency whose political voice becomes so much noise to those working the levers for their own enrichment according to class and degrees of ruthlessness.

–33–

From Russia with Contempt? Of Hacks and Windmills and Possibilities

18 Thursday Feb 2021

Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, 21st Century Modern, American Domestic Affairs, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, North America, Russia, United States of America

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Tags

Big Dallas Freeze, Cybersecurity, Grid Failure

I’m not inclined to leap far into conspiracy-think. However, wind turbine technology appears engineered and manufactured by transnational corporations and firms well aware of freezing weather, so this nonsense about renewable energy failing in Texas (why not on the North Sea? Why not in Germany?) just doesn’t hold ice water.

Super conservative angst, disinformation (received or sent), and viciousness get in the way of the public’s more cool-headed gathering and perception of variables contributing to disasters. That discomforting aspect of our collective national psyche notwithstanding, I would ask news (and weather) editors and readers to simply consider the full suite of possibilities in the unfolding of dramatic stories. In this one, finger pointing at wind-generated energy overlooked frozen instruments (!) in other energy systems. Well Whisky Tango & Foxtrot, where is Homeland Security on the Big Dallas Freeze? And may the investigative journalists be all over the possibility, just that (!), of external meddling involving massive critical — and technologically delicate or vulnerable — systems.

Of course, there are other possibilities, much including the architecture and engineering in a region better known for heat than cold and successive building generations in a political environment resistant “global warming” the potential for coming extremes in the known environment.

Still, has the drama been only about old engineering and new weather?

I may be tilting at windmills.

Maybe not.


While some wind turbines did freeze, failures in natural gas, coal and nuclear energy systems were responsible for nearly twice as many outages as renewables, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (Ercot), which operates the state’s power grid, said in a press conference on Tuesday.

Frozen instruments at gas, coal and even nuclear power stations were among the main problems, Ercot director Dan Woodfin said, according to Bloomberg.

Farrer, Martin and agencies. “US conservatives falsely blame renewables for Texas storm outages.” The Guardian, February 17, 2021.

Douglas, Erin and Ross Ramsey. “No, frozen wind turbines aren’t the main culprit for Texas’ power outages.” The Texas Tribune, February 16-17, 2021.

Farrer, Martin and agencies. “US conservatives falsely blame renewables for Texas storm outages.” The Guardian, February 17, 2021.

Patel, Nilay. “Hard Lessons of the Solarwinds Hack.” The Verge, January 26, 2021.

Texas Standard. “How Software From Austin-Based SolarWinds Became the Vehicle for a Massive Government Computer Hack.” December 17, 2020.

Solar Winds – Fast Reference

CBS News. “Former top cybersecurity official on why U.S. intelligence missed Russia’s SolarWinds hack.” February 15, 2021.

Halpern, Sue. “After the Solarwinds Hack, We Have No Idea What Cyber Dangers We Face.” The New Yorker, January 25, 2021.

Jibilian, Isabella. “Here’s a simple explanation of how the massive SolarWind hack happened and why it’s such a big deal.” Business Insider, December 24, 2020.

Last March—if not before, as a report by the threat-intelligence firm ReversingLabs suggests—a hacking team, believed to be affiliated with Russian intelligence, planted malware in a routine software upgrade from a Texas-based I.T. company called SolarWinds, which provides network-management systems to more than three hundred thousand clients. An estimated eighteen thousand of them downloaded the malware-ridden updates, which were embedded in a SolarWinds product called Orion. Once they did, the hackers were able to roam about customers’ networks, undetected, for at least nine months.

Halpern, Sue. “After the Solarwinds Hack, We Have No Idea What Cyber Dangers We Face.” The New Yorker, January 25, 2021.

Posted to YouTube by CNBC, January 22, 2021.

–33–

Books: Reading Highly Recommended: What Americans Defend When Defending America

17 Wednesday Feb 2021

Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, 21st Century Modern, American Domestic Affairs, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, International Development, Politics, United States of America

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American Exceptionalism, American foreign policy, American History and Worldview, American International Relations, American Optimism, FDR, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, medieval v modern, Westrern Realpolitik

For the American President’s navigation: the rise of Hitler and fascism in Germany, Italy, and Spain; the development of an expansionist imperial Japan; polarization in the United States between the forces of self-serving fascist sentiment related to business and popular interest in the Far Left answers to abuses generated in Far Right circles.

Add the global Great Depression.

I have not yet reached the middle of this eye-opening and insightful history, but the story of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s “working the issues” rings clear and sound for this day.

I have made much and will continue to make much of the tensions between politically medieval and modern worlds, and my own energies and hopes are with the modern world, its potential great breadth in personal freedoms, and its obligations as steward of the earth and humanity.

Whoever you may be and wherever you are in the world — and whether you enjoy or have to make yourself do this kind of reading (smile) — this volume will set the benchmark for understanding the United States and the western civilizational project in the appreciation and defense of humanity.

–33–

One Uniquely Modern American – United States Senator Kyrsten Lea Sinema

15 Monday Feb 2021

Posted by commart in 21st Century Modern, American Domestic Affairs, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, North America, Politics, United States of America

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

A Modern Politics, Arizona Modern, Conservacrats, Kyrsten Lea Sinema

Sinema is considered a moderate or conservative Democrat and a proponent of bipartisanship.[4][5] During the 116th Congress, she voted with President Donald Trump‘s position roughly 25% of the time, the third-most of any Democratic senator, behind Joe Manchin and Mark Kelly.[note 1][6]

Wikipedia. “Kyrsten Sinema”.

NO to the inclusion of a $15 minimum wage in the latest COVID relief plan; YES to the Navajo Nation’s COVID related ‘Major Disaster Declaration’ — Arizona’s one-year-old Senator has chosen for navigation between deeply polarized camps a middle mixture of open bisexuality, conservative thought, and freedom-loving liberal ends.

Related Online

About the Conservacrat Senator from Arizona

BallotPedia. “Kyrsten Sinema”.

Everett, Burgess. “The most influential Democrat you never hear from.” Politico, February 12, 2021.

Fitsimons, Tim. “Kyrsten Sinema makes history as first bisexual member of U.S. Senate.” ABC News, November 13, 2018.

GovTrack. “Sen. Kyrsten Sinema”.

Kyrsten Sinema, U.S. Senator for Arizona

Nwanevu, Osita. “Arizona’s Democratic Senators are Already Angering the Left.” Soapbox, The New Republic, February 15, 2021.

Scott, Eugene. “Kyrsten Sinema broke a slew of barriers with her Senate win. So how was identity a nonissue in her race?” The Washington Post, November 20, 2018.

The Lily. “Kyrsten Sinema is bisexual and claims no religion. But identity was a nonissue in her winning Senate race.” November 24, 2018.

Wikipedia. “Kyrsten Sinema”.


About Kyrsten Sinema and Sgt. Daniel Somers

Dolsten, Josefin. “6 years on, parents of Jewish Army vet who took own life still fight for change.” The Times of Israel, August 5, 2019:

“To force me to do these things and then participate in the ensuing coverup is more than any government has the right to demand,” he wrote. “Then, the same government has turned around and abandoned me. They offer no help, and actively block the pursuit of gaining outside help via their corrupt agents at the DEA [the VA’s Survivors’ and Dependents’ Educational Assistance]. Any blame rests with them.”

Dolsten, Josefin. “6 years on, parents of Jewish Army vet who took own life still fight for change.” The Times of Israel, August 5, 2019.

Sinema, Kyrsten. “Sinema Introduces Daniel Somers Network of Support Act.” Senator’s Senate Web Page, May 14, 2019:

Sgt. Somers served two tours in Iraq and was diagnosed with traumatic brain injuries and PTSD upon returning home. He lost his life to suicide in 2013. After Sinema learned of Sgt. Somers’ story, she worked with his parents, Howard and Jean Somers, to introduce and successfully pass the Daniel Somers Access to Care Act, which ensures veterans who worked in classified jobs can receive behavioral health services in an appropriate care setting. Now, Sinema is working with the Somers to expand their network of support concept.

Sinema, Kyrsten. “Sinema Introduces Daniel Somers Network of Support Act.” Senator’s Senate Web Page, May 14, 2019.

Sworn in on the Constitution

Rep. Kyrsten Sinema (D) will be Arizona’s first female senator. The lawmaker is not new to making history, especially when considering the very conservative state that launched her political career, but identity was not a dominant narrative of her historic campaign.

The former Mormon was the first person sent to Congress to claim no religion. After winning her congressional seat in 2012, she was sworn in on the Constitution, forgoing the Bible chosen by Christians — the dominant religion for members of Congress, especially those from Arizona.

Scott, Eugene. “Kyrsten Sinema broke a slew of barriers with her Senate win. So how was identity a nonissue in her race?” The Washington Post, November 20, 2018.
Posted to YouTube by CBS News, January 4, 2019.

–33–

Short Comment on Trump’s Mob and the Abuse of Language

11 Thursday Feb 2021

Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, North America, Philology, Political Psychology, Politics, United States of America

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Medieval Incitement, Medieval Rhetoric, Orwellian Unreason, Trump's Mob

Recorded by CNN and posted to YouTube February 9, 2021.

Trumpian Sins

Accusation in a Mirror, Inverted, Projected;

Agenda-Driven Disingenuous Speech, Bent and Twisted (More Than Some);

Appeals to Emotion with Incitement Absent of Empiricism and Logic;

Defamation and Slander, Conspiracy Laden, Hazy, Vicious;

Disinformation;

Lies;

Innuendo.


Related Online

Cummings, William, Joey Garrison and Jim Sergent. “By the numbers: President Donald Trump’s failed efforts to overturn the election.” USA Today, January 6, 2021.

Kuznia, Rob, Curt Devine, Nelli Black, and Drew Griffin. “Stop the Steal’s massive disinformation campaign connected to Roger Stone.” CNN Business, November 14, 2020.

Related from Literature



Domestic Tranquility

“We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”


Related on BackChannels

Basic Training

Malignant Narcissism

Paranoid Delusional Narcissistic Reflection of Motivation

–33–

Navalny Protests – Related Links & Washington, D.C. Event

05 Friday Feb 2021

Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, 21st Century Modern, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Russia, United States of America

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Navalny Protests


World champ chess player, ⁦@Kasparov63⁩ says the US playbook against Putin -and for the Russian people- should be the one we use to fight organized crime. #Navalny https://t.co/CLgM1WlV9u

— Evelyn Farkas (@EvelynNFarkas) February 5, 2021

https://apnews.com/article/world-news-arrests-moscow-russia-e94fb42740961916ca7686ee475a59c1 “Moscow’s jails overwhelmed with detained Navalny protesters” – 2/5/2021.

https://apnews.com/article/alexei-navalny-russia-jail-52c598a1929341e955d131fddff0d735 “Navalny urges Russians from jail to overcome their fear” – 2/4/2021.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-55938042 – “Russia Navalny trial a ‘low point’ in EU-Russia relations, says Borrell” – 2/5/2021.

https://www.npr.org/2021/02/05/964434008/russia-expels-diplomats-from-3-countries-saying-they-attended-pro-navalny-protes – 2/5/2021.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-55954162 – “Russia expels European diplomats over Navalny protests” – 2/5/2021.


What Is To Be Done?

Event by Free Russia Foundation
Saturday, February 5, 2021 at 2 p.m. EST
Boris Nemtsov Plaza, Washington, D.C.

34–50°F Mostly Cloudy
Price: Free
Public · Anyone on or off Facebook
Join us for the third weekend of protest against the poisoning and jailing of a pro-democracy Russian politician Alexey Navalny by the Russian authorities!
We demand justice and freedom for Alexey Navalny and thousands arrested over two weeks of protests in Russia! We demand an international investigation of the poisoning of Alexey Navalny by Russian Security Service officers!


Putin’s navigating his oligarchic (and mafia) state back to the 19th Century must seem surreal to Russians aware of the modern democratic open societies of the west. Here in the United States, not only “everything goes”, too much goes 🙂 and the wildness in social chaos and exuberance may need some cultural shaping and trimming through natural normative adjustments in years to come, but that such processes take place with the most spacious freedom on earth may speak well to results in the future. Russia, on the other hand, seems to have embarked on official reversions to absurdities as a militarized white Christian (ROC) talking up its nationalist pride while being handled roughly by pernicious forces, wealthy and ruthless, destined, so far, to add to the woes of ordinary and less connected Russians.

Posted by Alexei Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation fives years ago –>


Related background –>

–33–

FTAC: JCPOA & Tehran – Morning Note to Joe Biden

30 Saturday Jan 2021

Posted by commart in 21st Century Modern, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Iran, Middle East, North America, United States of America

≈ Leave a comment

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Atlantic Alliance, Beijing-Tehran, Biden, JCPOA, Moscow-Tehran

The Right x American-Israeli Right appears to be threatening the Left x American-Israeli Left with claims of a nuclear peace accord revival — return to Kerry’s pink tie escapade and a massive drug deal of a bribe — when, in BackChannels estimation, those days are gone forever. Russia has mumbled through its bullying in Crimea and destruction in Syria; Tehran has never done other than despoil its environment and disappoint its politically suffocated (and once modern) constituency.

From the Awesome Conversation


Given the Moscow-Tehran post-Soviet nexus and Tehran’s aggression via IRGC directly (Syria) and proxies (e.g., Houthi insurgents, Yemen; Hezbollah, worldwide), I’d suggest not doing the $1B drug deal again. Hold the west’s position in the ME; repair the Atlantic Alliance (!); and leverage China — Tehran’s oil buyer — off the extremist-supporting tack.


As if I ruled the world . . . .

The post’s a feel-good made possible by Biden’s page on FB – why not send a note across the virtual hall now that all has been reduced to plain text e- communications? So done although one may ask where such a “missive” really lands — is there a virtual cookie jar for FB or other e-notes to the President? 🙂

###

FTAC: Onward – Addressing a Reactionary Politics

20 Wednesday Jan 2021

Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, 21st Century Modern, American Domestic Affairs, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, North America, Political Psychology, United States of America

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Beijing and Moscow's Political Absolutism, Far Out Right, medieval v modern, Old Communists - Wealthy Party Elites, Rule by the Rich

I don’t know why I should have the spread of friends that I do on Facebook, so many have turned out reactionary conservatives muttering about a communist front that just hasn’t been shaping up as such. Have a look at the Communist Party USA’s membership number. Read Jacobin if you want to — I rather appreciate the alternative views but seem to be missing out on the sound of the earth-shaking thundering herd raging behind it. Inspiration for the following: the boast that former President Trump fought Chinese Communism (China’s elite society and growing class of billionaires left that blue serge lifestyle behind some time ago) and rightly put “America First!” The slogan was old before it came out of his mouth and the go-it-alone of the paranoid narcissistic personality may have only abetted Putin’s 19th Century ideas for destroying the political cohesion of a truly democratic and modern EU/NATO.

November’s election and today’s inauguration brought back to the United States of America the most fundamental of American principles and values riding right beside our glorious Constitution: a government by and for — i.e., responsible and responsive to — The People of the Nation in all our varied colors, cultures, and creeds.

We are Americans — no adjectives required unless appreciated and enjoyed — once again.

From the Awesome Conversation


“America First” also references the earlier “America First Party” — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/America_First_Party_(1943)

Beneath the banner of Communism, Beijing’s financial, ideological, and political realities differ quite from what imagination may supply in minds restricted by tired old presumptions. The state has been fairly minting billionaires and producing an elite within lines of authoritarian control in some ways mirroring what Moscow has going in the way of a deeply autocratic and politically repressive state.

For all intents in the United States, the Communist Party USA (CPUSA) may at best boast a membership around or beneath 10,000.

Excessive autocratic control — totalitarian in China these days — backed by military and paramilitary force have marked Beijing and Moscow’s respective narratives. In EU/NATO, the post-9/11 “New Nationalism” has similarly scarred “The West” in Hungary, Italy, Poland, and Turkey. However, as bad ideas reach their nadir, one may expect the reactionary drift (also in the United States) to reverse and more return to practical democratic approaches to a spread of tough and real — rather than imaginary — issues involving how we live together and how we (Americans) work together as a political society.


###

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Epigram

Hillel the Elder

"That which is distasteful to thee do not do to another. That is the whole of Torah. The rest is commentary. Now go and study."

"If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am not for others, what am I? If not now, when?"

"Whosoever destroys a soul, it is considered as if he destroyed an entire world. And whosoever that saves a life, it is considered as if he saved an entire world."

Oriana Fallaci
"Whether it comes from a despotic sovereign or an elected president, from a murderous general or a beloved leader, I see power as an inhuman and hateful phenomenon...I have always looked on disobedience toward the oppressive as the only way to use the miracle of having been born."

Talmud 7:16 as Quoted by Rishon Rishon in 2004
Qohelet Raba, 7:16

אכזרי סוף שנעשה אכזרי במקום רחמן

Kol mi shena`asa rahaman bimqom akhzari Sof shena`asa akhzari bimqom rahaman

All who are made to be compassionate in the place of the cruel In the end are made to be cruel in the place of the compassionate.

More colloquially translated: "Those who are kind to the cruel, in the end will be cruel to the kind."

Online Source: http://www.rishon-rishon.com/archives/044412.php

Abraham Isaac Kook

"The purely righteous do not complain about evil, rather they add justice.They do not complain about heresy, rather they add faith.They do not complain about ignorance, rather they add wisdom." From the pages of Arpilei Tohar.

Heinrich Heine
"Where books are burned, in the end people will be burned." -- From Almansor: A Tragedy (1823).

Simon Wiesenthal
Remark Made in the Ballroom of the Imperial Hotel, Vienna, Austria on the occasion of His 90th Birthday: "The Nazis are no more, but we are still here, singing and dancing."

Maimonides
"Truth does not become more true if the whole world were to accept it; nor does it become less true if the whole world were to reject it."

"The risk of a wrong decision is preferable to the terror of indecision."

Douglas Adams
"Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?" Epigram appearing in the dedication of Richard Dawkins' The GOD Delusion.

Thucydides
"The Nation that makes a great distinction between its scholars and its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards and its fighting done by fools."

Milan Kundera
"The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting."

Malala Yousafzai
“The terrorists thought that they would change our aims and stop our ambitions but nothing changed in my life except this: weakness, fear and hopelessness died. Strength, power and courage was born.”

Tanit Nima Tinat
"Who could die of love?"

What I Have Said About the Jews

My people, not that I speak for them, I nonetheless describe as a "global ethnic commune with its heart in Jerusalem and soul in the Land of Israel."

We have never given up on God, nor have we ever given up on one another.

Many things we have given up, but no one misses, say, animal sacrifice, and as many things we have kept, so we have still to welcome our Sabbath on Friday at sunset and to rest all of Saturday until three stars appear in the sky.

Most of all, through 5,773 years, wherever life has taken us, through the greatest triumphs and the most awful tragedies, we have preserved our tribal identity and soul, and so shall we continue eternally.

Anti-Semitism / Anti-Zionism = Signal of Fascism

I may suggest that anti-Zionism / anti-Semitism are signal (a little bit) of fascist urges, and the Left -- I'm an old liberal: I know my heart -- has been vulnerable to manipulation by what appears to me as a "Red Brown Green Alliance" driven by a handful of powerful autocrats intent on sustaining a medieval worldview in service to their own glorification. (And there I will stop).
One hopes for knowledge to allay fear; one hopes for love to overmatch hate.

Too often, the security found in the parroting of a loyal lie outweighs the integrity to be earned in confronting and voicing an uncomfortable truth.

Those who make their followers believe absurdities may also make them commit atrocities.

Positively Orwellian: Comment Responding to Claim that the Arab Assault on Israel in 1948 Had Not Intended Annihilation

“Revisionism” is the most contemptible path that power takes to abet theft and hide shame by attempting to alter public perception of past events.

On Press Freedom, Commentary, and Journalism

In the free world, talent -- editors, graphic artists, researchers, writers -- gravitate toward the organizations that suit their interests and values. The result: high integrity and highly reliable reportage and both responsible and thoughtful reasoning.

This is not to suggest that partisan presses don't exist or that propaganda doesn't exist in the west, but any reader possessed of critical thinking ability and genuine independence -- not bought, not programmed -- is certainly free to evaluate the works of earnest reporters and scholars.

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