Five Keys to Professional and Personal Development

From Jeff Deist on Mises.org (Sept. 19, 2022):

The remarks I’ve prepared today relate to your personal and professional development, which are of course closely interrelated. This is not to be confused with “self-help,” a somewhat disreputable genre whose practitioners often want to sell you shortcuts. Development means just that: developing your skills, knowledge, and interests to advance toward goals which hopefully become more clear as you go through your twenties and thirties. Remember, you may well have a longer work life than your parents and grandparents, so you have more time and more choices perhaps than they did. But it is important not to waste your best years for learning, when your brain’s neurons fire at their best! Even at your age, still in college, it is not too early to view yourselves as professionals and to take your work seriously.

Here are five suggestions you can implement immediately to stand apart from your peers.

1. Sift

Access to information is virtually costless today. Your job is to sift through all of the white noise and recognize what is important.

The supply of information in a digital age outpaces demand, and makes information very, very cheap. In a digital world, information is instantaneous and often free of any financial cost. This is especially true of social media, where information and opinion are readily available but knowledge and discernment are in short supply. When something is cheap and easy, we naturally tend to discount its importance.

This was not always true. In fact, previous generations had to work hard for access to information, which was largely contained in physical books which may not have been easily available or affordable. My great-grandfather, who lived with us very briefly, was born in the late 1800s. Like many of his generation, he did not finish high school and thus was only “qualified” for manual labor. So he took it upon himself to enroll in a correspondence course, the kind of thing literally advertised in the back of magazines. He probably mailed physical cash to an address listed, then waited some time for the materials. He read each course, took tests at home, and sent the tests by mail for grading. All of this took a couple of years, but at the end he had enough knowledge and some kind of credential to become an electrician for a large company. This job paid enough to afford a middle-class home, which he largely built and wired himself. The information needed to become an electrician was quite valuable to him—it was not cheap and instantly available.

But even in the 1980s and ’90s things were much different relative to today. Your average chain bookstore at the mall maybe had a few books by Ayn Rand, and perhaps Milton Friedman’s Free to Choose. You might find John Kenneth Galbraith’s The Affluent Society and something by Henry Hazlitt if you were lucky. You certainly would not have found any Menger, Mises, or Rothbard. This was also true of your local public library, or even a university library.

By contrast, today we hold almost of all the world’s history and accumulated knowledge in the smartphone sitting here. This is both a blessing and potentially a curse. Sifting, not access, is the challenge. Your job is to sift through it all and not get sidetracked by the wrong information. Time is important, and everything you do has an opportunity cost. Forbearance can be as effective as action.

2. Read

The simplest thing you can do to distinguish yourself is to become a voracious reader. This is simple but not easy.

In fact, you should strive to read one book every week. This may be difficult if you are a full-time student, and of course you probably can’t read a 900-page treatise like Human Action so quickly. But if you make the habit now as a young person, when reading speed and retention are higher, you will reap enormous benefits. For longer books, set a target page count each day. When life intervenes, make up the lost day or days over the weekend.

Charlie Munger, the billionaire partner to Warren Buffett at Berkshire Hathaway, describes his friend’s day as 80 percent reading—often five hundred pages. Before he invests his client’s money in a company, Buffett puts the odds in his favor by reading everything he possibly can about the company itself and the broader industry. He is not always right, but he is always informed. We might imagine him flying around on private jets, wheeling and dealing, when in fact he is more likely sitting at his desk, reading everything from the great books to technical analysis.

Mr. Buffett’s reading habit provides a powerful lesson for all of us. But most Americans read almost nothing. A friend who teaches at a large public university thinks less than half of his incoming freshmen have ever read a single book in full! So while our great-grandparents saw access to books (and education) as a luxury, most people today fail to take advantage of our modern tools. This is an opportunity for you to stand out.

One caveat with respect to books you read: as Charles Haywood counsels, give strong priority to books written more than one hundred years ago, and be careful with books written in the past fifty years. Older books have passed the market test; we still read Socrates and Shakespeare for a reason. If book or author still resonates after a century, your time is probably well spent. And almost all new books, regardless of genre, have an earlier and better analogue. This may not apply to recent developments in science and technology, but when reading philosophy, history, humanities, and social sciences, you should go to original sources at this point in your education. [read more]

Not bad advice. I do like the second suggestion. The other keys are:

1. Learn Continuously
2. Avoid Arguments
3. Promote People, Not Just Ideas

Massive genetic study finds genes linked to cannabis addiction

From Nature.com (Nov. 20, 2023):

By analyzing more than one million people's genomes, researchers have identified stretches of DNA that could be linked to cannabis addiction. They also found that some of the same regions in the genome are associated with other health conditions, such as lung cancer and schizophrenia.

The findings are evidence that cannabis addiction "could have substantial public-health risks if the usage increases", says Daniel Levey, a medical neuroscientist at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, and a co-author of the study, published today in Nature Genetics.

Taking cannabis recreationally is legal in at least 8 countries, and 48 countries have legalized medicinal use of the drug for conditions including chronic pain, cancer and epilepsy. But one-third of people who take cannabis end up becoming addicted, or using the drug in a way that is damaging to their health. Previous studies have suggested that there is a genetic component, and have shown links between problematic cannabis use and some cancers and psychiatric disorders.

Drug taking and addiction can be in influenced both by people's genes and by their environment, which makes them extremely difficult to study, says Levey. But the team was able to build on data from previous work by including genetic information from additional sources, predominantly the Million Veteran Program - a US-based biobank with a large genetic database that aims to improve health care for former military service members. The analysis encompassed multiple ethnic groups, a  first for a genetic study looking at cannabis misuse.

As well as identifying regions of the genome that might be involved, the researchers saw a bi-directional link between excessive cannabis use and schizophrenia, meaning that the two conditions can in influence each other. This  finding is intriguing, says Marta Di Forti, a psychiatrist-scientist at King's College London. Cannabis use "is the most preventable risk factor" for schizophrenia, she says, adding that the type of genetic data examined in the study could be used in future to identify and support people at increased risk of developing psychiatric disorders through cannabis use.

More information about the biological mechanisms that connect cannabis use with health conditions will provide a better evidence base for policy and medical practice, says study co-author Joel Gelernter, a psychiatric geneticist at Yale University.

He adds that researchers need to continue to build on this knowledge and use the data to understand the health risks of both medical and recreational cannabis use. Di Forti agrees, adding that it will also be important to investigate the specifics of how the drug is administered, and how much of the psychoactive component tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) users consume. [source]

Genetically Engineered Animals and Insects Could Benefit People and the Planet

From Red State.com (Sept. 23, 2020):

Amidst the human tragedy that is the coronavirus pandemic, it’s easy to lose sight of the fact that persistent threats to human health and well-being that pre-existed COVID-19 still remain.

Insect borne diseases, hunger, and malnutrition, constantly simmering threats that only rarely get the attention of the pandemic, kill and harm far more people every year than the coronavirus.

Whatever the new post-corona normal will be, we should sustain and increase efforts to reduce premature mortality from starvation and disease.

Thankfully, biotechnology companies are continuing to develop animals that could both help reduce hunger even as world population grows and increasing numbers of people in developing countries are beginning to include more animal protein in their diets, and that could reduce disease by reducing the numbers of illnesses spread by insects.

Among the biotech innovations currently being developed, tested, or marketed that could help reduce hunger and disease are genetically modified cattle, goats, pigs, salmon, mosquitos, and moths.

Reuters recently reported scientists in the United States and Britain are using the gene-editing tool CRISPR-Cas9 to create farm animals that could be used as “surrogate sires,” essentially sterile blank slates that could then be transplanted with stem cells producing sperm, carrying desired traits.

The process could allow for widespread dissemination of genetic material with traits that produce healthier, more productive animals using fewer resources such as feed, medicines, and water.

“With this technology, we can get better dissemination of desirable traits and improve the efficiency of food production,” Jon Oatley, a reproductive biologist at Washington State University, who co-led the work, told Reuters. “If we can tackle this genetically, then that means less water, less feed and fewer antibiotics we have to put into the animals.”

Alternatively, if one is worried about climate change, this technology might be used to produce animals that need less land or crops for food, and/or that digest food more efficiently, reducing livestock methane emissions.

One must also remember that seafood accounts for approximately 20 percent of the animal protein consumed annually, yet many fish stocks are in decline. With this in mind, in mid-2019, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved the importation of AquaBounty’s genetically modified Atlantic salmon eggs to be raised in the United States.

The bioengineered fish grow to maturity twice as fast as wild salmon, meaning they can be harvested and replenished much more quickly. Raised in controlled, land-based facilities and bred to be sterile, the fish are incapable of affecting wild salmon. Aquabounty’s salmon could become the world’s most sustainable salmon having a smaller environmental footprint than traditional salmon farming or commercial harvesting on the open seas.

Nor have harmful insects been ignored by the biotech industry. For instance, biotech company Oxitec has developed a modified version of the diamondback moth, which could lead to the pest’s extinction. Diamondback moths, the most resistant of all insects to pesticides, can wipe out entire fields of cold weather crops including, broccoli, cabbage, canola, cauliflower, and kale, resulting in billions of dollars in lost crops each year. The Oxitec diamondback moths contain a lethality gene, which when they mate with moths in the wild, prevents the female offspring from developing, so they die as larvae, with half male offspring in each generation inheriting the “lethality” gene meaning the entire population declines over each generation.

Oxitec is also at the forefront of developing genetically modified mosquitos that could reduce the spread of mosquito-borne diseases such as chikungunya, dengue fever, malaria, yellow fever, and the zika virus.

The World Health Organization reports mosquitoes are among the deadliest animals on earth, attributing 438,000 deaths to the insects from malaria alone in 2015. Other mosquito-spread diseases claim thousands more lives each year.

Oxitec’s mosquitos have been modified so when they mate with females, their offspring are incapable of surviving to adulthood. Laboratory tests and field tests have indicated widespread introduction of this mosquito could dramatically reduce the population of the disease-spreading mosquitoes.

Federal government and state regulators in Florida recently approved the introduction of Oxitec’s mosquitos into a small area of the Sunshine State. This follows the actions of the governments of Brazil, the Cayman Islands, Malaysia, and Panama, which have allowed Oxitec to release its bioengineered mosquitos at selected sites. Brazil reported mosquito populations fell by at least 90 percent in the locations Oxitec’s mosquitos were released in the year following their introduction.

Unfortunately, environmental extremists have targeted genetically modified products for extinction, fighting to delay the approval of or suing to block the introduction of bioengineered products, saying genetic engineering is akin to “playing God.”

While caution must be exercised with the introduction of any new technology, genetic engineering carries much promise, and the crops and animals developed using it are the most intensively studied and tested technologies ever to be produced. If the search for a COVID-19 vaccine is teaching us anything, it is that too much caution can be as deadly or even deadlier than too little caution. With millions of lives on the line, research and regulatory approvals should be expedited, not delayed.

If environmental fear-mongers successfully block the use of bioengineered animals, they will be condemning millions of people to unnecessary suffering and early deaths—now that would be playing God (or the devil) with a vengeance. [source]

Grand Jury Indicts Southern Poverty Law Center For Secret Fraudulent Payments To Racist Groups

From The Federalist.com (Apr. 21):

A federal grand jury indicted the far-left Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) on Tuesday for allegedly making fraudulent payments to racist groups, including the Ku Klux Klan (KKK).

“The SPLC is manufacturing racism to justify its existence,” Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said in a statement announcing the charges. “Using donor money to allegedly profit off Klansmen cannot go unchecked. This Department of Justice will hold the SPLC and every other fraudulent organization operating with the same deceptive playbook accountable. No entity is above the law.”

According to a Justice Department press release, the SPLC — which has often put targets on the backs of nonviolent conservative organizations by falsely labeling them as “hate groups” — has been charged with 11 counts of “wire fraud, false statements to a federally insured bank, and conspiracy to commit concealment money laundering.” Per the presser, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Alabama Northern Division “filed two forfeiture actions to recover alleged proceeds of the organization’s fraud scheme.”

The agency noted that the indictment returned by the Alabama grand jury detailed how the SPLC reportedly began a “covert network” in the 1980s comprised of individuals “who were either associated with violent and extremist groups … or who had infiltrated violent extremist groups at the SPLC’s direction.” The SPLC, however, allegedly did not inform its donors that “some of their donated money was being used to fund the leaders and organizers of racist groups at the same time that the SPLC was denouncing the same groups on its website.”

According to the DOJ, between 2014 and 2023, the SPLC allegedly took more than $3 million in donor funds and “secretly funneled” it to people affiliated with “various violent extremist groups.” Among these organizations are the KKK, United Klans of America, National Alliance, and several others.

Referencing the indictment’s findings, the DOJ disclosed that the scheme purportedly sought to “obtain money via donations through materially false representations and omissions about what the donated funds would be used for.” As alleged by the agency, the SPLC “opened bank accounts connected to a series of fictitious entities” as a means of “covertly” paying those involved.

“The covert nature of the accounts allowed the SPLC to disguise the true nature, source, ownership, and control of the fraudulently obtained donated money the SPLC paid the individuals,” the press release reads. “In order to keep the scheme going, the SPLC made a series of false statements related to the operation of the accounts.”

Addressing the indictment, FBI Director Kash Patel — whose agency investigated the case alongside the IRS Criminal Investigation division — classified the SPLC’s alleged actions as “illegal.” He further confirmed that the probe remains “ongoing.”

Patel previously severed the FBI’s ties with the SPLC last year following the assassination of Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk. TPUSA is one of several conservative organizations the SPLC has smeared in recent years. [source]

A grift anyone?  Welcome to accountability.

More articles on SPLC:

• The SPLC Is A Hedge Fund With A Dumb Anti-Racism Newsletter
• How SPLC’s $520,000-per-year CEO helped turn civil rights group into a ‘partisan smear machine’
• Analysts: SPLC Fraud, Money Laundering Charges Could Be The Tip Of The Iceberg
• SPLC Finally Faces A Reckoning For The Political Violence It Stoked
• SPLC Indictment Shows Partisan Activists Were Running The FBI Domestic Terror Program
• Biden DOJ Was In Cahoots With SPLC As It Funded Extremist Groups, Former Official Admits    
  

Assassination, Normalized: WHCD Gunman Radicalized by Mainstream Dems, Not Left-Wing Streamers

From Free Beacon.com (Apr. 27):

Cole Tomas Allen, the gunman who tried to murder President Donald Trump and other senior officials at the White House Correspondents' Association Dinner on Saturday, is the latest would-be assassin whose radicalization owes less to the juvenile rantings of left-wing influencers than to the everyday rhetoric of mainstream Democrats and media figures.

Many have pointed out that just days before the failed assassination, the New York Times hosted a roundtable discussion in which radical left-wing pundits Hasan Piker and Jia Tolentino endorsed shoplifting and other crimes while expressing sympathy for Luigi Mangione, the gunman accused of murdering UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson.

Piker is a beefcake moron who hates America and routinely justifies Islamic terrorism and other forms of political violence, but he does not appear to have inspired Allen to take a shot at Trump. On April 22, Allen promoted a post on his Bluesky account (@coldforce) criticizing Piker's defense of petty crime. "I've spent a lot of time in countries where graft and grifting are the norm and I assure you it is worth a truly immense cost to prevent that from taking hold in our society," wrote Bluesky user @machete.gay. "You do not want to live in that kind of society." The same user went on to describe Piker as a "fucking idiot."

Allen seems to have agreed with that assessment. On April 11, he promoted a Bluesky post from Sam Deutsch, the Jeopardy! National College Championship champion turned liberal policy wonk, who wrote, "I do not listen to any streamers because streamers are dumb."

A review of Allen's archived posts on Bluesky—his account is currently suspended, for obvious reasons—suggests that the alleged gunman was primarily drawn to mainstream "resistance" figures. Allen's favorite accounts included Democratic activist Will Stancil, Princeton history professor Kevin Kruse, Democratic propagandist Aaron Rupar, New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie, and Sarah Jeong, the former Times editorial board member who kept her job in 2018 after social media users discovered her racist tweets from years past.

Last week, Allen promoted Bouie's post on Bluesky denouncing Elon Musk as a "vicious white supremacist who thinks poor [A]frican children ought to die, so that the world can be whiter." On the X platform, Allen promoted several posts in 2024 from then-Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin comparing Trump to Adolf Hitler. He would presumably agree with Lincoln Project cofounder Steve Schmidt, who in the immediate aftermath of the assassination attempt condemned Trump as a "vile and disgusting man."

Allen, who donated to Kamala Harris in 2024, appears to have been particularly outraged about the Trump administration's lack of support for Ukraine and NATO, a popular sentiment among #Resistance Democrats and #NeverTrump former Republicans. He promoted a post criticizing Mehdi Hasan after the former MSNBC anchor attacked Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky for being insufficiently pro-Iran. Ryan Wesley Routh, the failed gunman who plotted to assassinate Trump at Mar-a-Lago in 2024, was also extremely distraught over the Ukrainian conflict and Trump's decision to withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal. Routh's manifesto contained rhetoric that echoed the anti-Trump tirades of Ben Rhodes and other former Democratic officials.

Allen expressed disdain for Israel, obviously—but that hardly makes him a leftist radical. Earlier this month, he promoted a post from Ken White, a.k.a. "Popehat," the prominent attorney and political commentator, denouncing Israel for "bombing the shit out of Lebanese civilians like there are Palestinian toddlers hiding there." White authored a Substack post earlier this year in which he argued there was a "plausible argument that it is morally permissible, and even morally necessary, to use political violence against the Trump Administration and its agents and supporters under the current circumstances in America." He is a graduate of Harvard Law School.

In the manifesto he wrote before the attempted shooting, Allen said he was "no longer willing to permit a pedophile, rapist, and traitor to coat my hands with his crimes"—language that would not be out of place on CNN or MS NOW, at a "No Kings" protest, or on a mainstream Democrat's social media feed. Hollywood actor and Democratic activist Mark Ruffalo called Trump a "pedophile," a "convicted rapist," and "the worst human being" on the Golden Globes red carpet earlier this year. Jasmine Crockett, the Democratic congresswoman and former candidate for U.S. Senate, said during a November 2025 appearance on CNN that Trump "may be a pedophile." In June 2025, the official Democratic Party X account described Republicans as the "Pedophile Protection Party." Bouie, the Times columnist, has also insinuated that Trump is a pedophile who participated in Jeffrey Epstein's "massive child sex trafficking ring."

Allen was particularly fond of mainstream Democrats and media figures who attacked Trump's mental fitness and called for his expulsion from the White House. Earlier this month, he promoted two Bluesky posts from Sen. Ron Wyden (D., Ore.), the ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee, in which Wyden vowed to prosecute Trump at "Nuremberg 2.0" for "covering up for pedophiles" and called the president a "deranged" war criminal who "must be impeached and removed from office." He promoted Rupar's post attacking Trump as a "demented old man who takes pleasure in torturing and killing people and is committing crimes with impunity."

On April 12, Allen promoted Stancil's post arguing that Trump "absolutely cannot [be] allowed to continue" because he, along with "the entire Republican Party," is "destroying" the country. Replace the word "continue" with "win the election," and you have Democratic Party's closing message from 2024. Trump was repeatedly denounced as a "fascist" who posed an "existential threat" to American democracy. Democrats lost the election, but their voters didn't forget the hysterical warnings. Several months into Trump's second term, Axios reported that Democratic lawmakers were hearing from panicked constituents who insisted that "civility isn't working" and urged them to prepare for "violence … to fight to protect our democracy."

It's not yet known whether Allen was a fan of Jimmy Kimmel, the former comedian turned ABC News late night host. Kimmel, who is also a prolific Democratic fundraiser, was briefly suspended in 2025 for falsely suggesting that Tyler Robinson, the alleged gunman who killed conservative activist Charlie Kirk, was a Trump supporter. Last week, a mere 48 hours before Allen made his mad dash for the Washington Hilton ballroom, Kimmel aired a monologue in which he joked that Melania Trump had a "glow like an expectant widow." [source]

Of course he was. The Dems keep saying President Trump is a Nazi, an existential threat to America's democracy.  It's almost like they want Trump to be assassinated.

More article and videos on the killer:

• Sources Say Suspect's Gunfire Hit Secret Service Agent
• He Tried to Kill the President. I Found His Tweets.
• Judge to Accused Would-Be Trump Assassin: 'I Apologize'
  
• The Most Disturbing Part of the White House Correspondents' Dinner Shooting [video]
• It’s CLEAR Why the Third Trump Assassination Attempt Happened [video]

Why We Cannot Be “Uncontroversial” Christians

From John Stonestreet on Breakpoint.org (Nov. 25, 2022):

The girls’ volleyball team at a rural Vermont high school was banned from their own locker room when several players reported feeling uncomfortable after a male teammate, who identifies as transgender, was allowed to join them in the locker room and watch them change clothes. When the girls said they’d prefer to not share this private space with a boy, they were told that, by law, they had to.

The school also suspended one of the female volleyball players for allegedly “harassing” her male teammate by calling him a “dude.” The girl’s father, a soccer coach at the school, was suspended without pay for the rest of the season because he called the student a boy on Facebook. After the father and daughter filed a lawsuit on free speech grounds, the school walked back its disciplinary actions against the girl. Her father remains suspended, and her team remains barred from their locker room.

This kind of story isn’t as rare as it used to be. Thanks to the Biden Administration’s creative new interpretation of Title IX, which was meant to protect female athletes, many school officials believe they have to allow boys to use girls’ restrooms and locker rooms if asked to do so. As a result, kids are being put into dangerous situations, like the two girls who were allegedly raped at school in Loudon County, Virginia, last year when a boy who said he was a girl was granted access to the girls’ restroom.

Scripture teaches that Christians are called not just to follow Jesus in abstract ways, but in the specific times and places to which we’ve been called. How we respond to our own cultural moments will look different, depending on how God has gifted us and how the Holy Spirit empowers us. At the same time, because of our culture’s embrace of harmful ideas about gender and sex, from our medical institutions to our schools, not responding to this cultural challenge in some way is not an option.

What this young volleyball player and her dad did in Vermont was courageous, but it would be a mistake to view their actions as exceptional. Refusing to stand by while your daughter’s school tries to force her to undress in front of a boy shouldn’t be viewed as this particular man’s unique or special calling. Anyone presented with this scenario should refuse to subject any kids to this kind of danger. Opposing boys in girls’ private spaces has become an unavoidable part of our call to love our neighbors, as has speaking out against subjecting kids to dangerous ideas, not to mention hormone treatments and invasive and irreversible surgeries.

In other words, this is not one of those situations in which a variety of responses are valid, as if some will be called to “take a public stance” and others to “stay above the fray.” That principle only holds if our cultural and political leaders agree about what is good and safe for children but have different strategies about how best to achieve it. Now, there is no shared or defensible understanding of what good or safe is. Because children are the disproportionate victims of our bad ideas, Christians have a duty, a calling, to defend them.

Pastors need to prepare their congregations to join believers throughout the centuries who were labeled “controversial.” Christians need to be ready to support our neighbors caught up in a controversy in every way we can, spiritually, emotionally, or even financially. When the tension comes to our daughters’ schools or our workplaces, we need a theology that refuses to live by lies or to “go along” with them, like the two employees of the Kroger supermarket chain fired recently for refusing to wear a new company-wide uniform with the rainbow LGBTQ logo casually slapped on the front. We need a theology of getting fired, suspended, kicked out of locker rooms, and refusing to submit to “re-education” efforts. We need a theology of being labeled controversial, and a theology of helping each other through the professional, reputational and personal fallout that comes with that label.

I’m not suggesting we should go looking for trouble. I am suggesting that, in this case, the trouble has come to us. [source]

Amen. Protecting the innocent is the natural default action. Or should be. It’s what decent people do. Now, putting the innocent in situations that makes them feel unsafe or that goes against their core beliefs is borderline evil.

Obama-era CIA Cover-up, the Havlish Lawsuit and Islamists Groups

On December 22, 2011, U.S. District judge George B. Daniels ruled in Havlish, et al. v. bin Laden, et al., that Iran and Hezbollah were liable for damages to be paid to relatives of the victims of the September 11, 2001, jihad attacks in New York and Washington, as both the Islamic Republic and its Lebanese proxy had actively aided al-Qaeda in planning and executing those attacks.

Daniels found that Iran and Hezbollah had cooperated and collaborated with al-Qaeda before 9/11 and continued to do so after the attacks.

…..

The Obama-era CIA went to great pains to try to ensure that information about Iran's role in 9/11 did not come out in the Havlish case. In August 2010, a CIA official pressured a Havlish witness to withdraw his testimony in exchange for a new identity, new passport, and new job. In December of that year, another CIA operative approached a different Havlish witness, showed him documents stolen from the case, and took him to a U.S. embassy, where he was subjected to five hours of interrogation and finally offered cash if he recanted his testimony. Says Timmerman, "After I reported those attempts at witness tampering to a Congressional oversight committee, they ceased."

Judge Daniels determined that Iran, Hezbollah, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence and Security, and other Iranian government departments, as well as the Ayatollah Khamenei himself and former Iranian president Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani were all directly implicated in Iranian efforts to aid al-Qaeda in its 9/11 plot. He awarded the plaintiffs in the Havlish case 394,277,884 dollars for economic damages, as well as ninety-four million dollars for pain and suffering, eighty hundred and seventy-four million for mental anguish and grief, and 4,686,235,921 dollars in punitive damages, along with nine hundred and sixty-eight million in prejudgment interest, for a total of 7,016,513,805 dollars.

..….

In it, Muslim Brotherhood members were told that the Brotherhood was working on presenting Islam as a "civilizational alternative" to non-Islamic forms of society and governance, and supporting "the global Islamic state wherever it is." In working to establish that Islamic state, Muslim Brotherhood members in the United States: "must understand that their work in America is a kind of grand jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and 'sabotaging' its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and Allah's religion is made victorious over all other religions."

The Muslim Brotherhood has been active in the United States for decades, and is the moving force behind virtually all of the mainstream Muslim organizations in America: the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA), the Muslim American Society (MAS), the Muslim Students Association (MSA), the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), the International Institute for Islamic Thought (IIIT), and many others.

Source: The History of Jihad: From Muhammad to ISIS (2018) by Robert Spencer.