Mar 25, 2022 06:53 PM
Why Hunter Biden’s laptop really matters
https://www.spiked-online.com/2022/03/23...y-matters/
INTRO: The real Hunter Biden laptop scandal is not the laptop itself. It isn’t the sordid contents of this computer that was dumbly handed in to a repair shop in Delaware. It isn’t the fact that the hard drive contains lewd images of Hunter and others doing drugs and having sex. It isn’t even the fact that the laptop contained a trove of emails showing that Hunter was not averse to namedropping daddy – who was then vice-president in the Obama administration – to secure sweet deals with foreign businesses.
No, it’s the fact that America’s media elites studiously ignored the whole damn thing and even flat-out censored it. The scandal is the fact that the scandal was buried, on the grounds that nothing, not even the truth, could be allowed to scupper Joe Biden’s ascendancy to the White House.
The laptop scandal is back in the news. And for quite extraordinary reasons. The New York Times, finally, 18 months after the laptop story first broke, following months and months of America’s liberal elites running the other away the minute anyone mentioned this cursed computer, has confirmed that the laptop is real.
Buried a thousand words into a long report on federal authorities’ investigation into Hunter’s business antics, the Gray Lady casually mentions emails ‘obtained by the New York Times from a cache of files that appears to have come from a laptop abandoned by Mr Biden in a Delaware repair shop’. These emails, says the Times, are ‘authentic’. No shit, Sherlock.
This is an about-face of epic proportions. This is the same NYT that cast doubts like confetti on the Hunter laptop story when it was first covered by the New York Post in October 2020. It turned a blind eye to this explosive story of a presidential candidate’s son leaving his incriminating computer in for repair. Or it just denounced the whole thing as a ‘politically motivated dirty tricks campaign’. Yet now, quietly, and possibly with a hint of shame (if that’s an emotion the NYT even knows), America’s paper of record has fessed up that the whole thing was true.
‘They’re as slow as Joe! Sleepy New York Times FINALLY wakes up’, says the Mail. The Babylon Bee went one better. ‘New York Times announces they have finally confirmed the Watergate tapes are authentic’, its headline said.
It really is worth reflecting on this scandal. No, not on Hunter’s bad behaviour (that can wait), but on the way the elites colluded to ensure that this scandal did not blow up... (MORE - details)
Washington Doesn’t Want Peace in Ukraine
https://amgreatness.com/2022/03/24/washi...n-ukraine/
INTRO: The United States is now overwhelmed with propaganda pushing for Americans to “stand with Ukraine” in its war with Russia. It is not enough to wish the people of Ukraine well. The media, Big Tech, and both political parties have made being a partisan of Ukraine some kind of moral duty. Those refusing to get swept up in anti-Russian hysteria can expect to be condemned as traitors and agents of Vladimir Putin.
Contrary to the claims of self-righteous talking heads and keyboard warriors, it isn’t “treason” to question how supporting a foreign nation at war with a nuclear state serves America’s interests. Without robust debate, sound policymaking on such a vital matter is impossible.
What is Washington hoping to accomplish in Ukraine? Whatever it is, the Biden Administration is prepared to do everything short of inciting World War III to make it happen.
In addition to waging scorched-earth economic war, Washington is sending billions of dollars’ worth of heavy armaments into Ukraine. While this policy is being called moderate and restrained, or even “weak” by many chickenhawk Republicans, these are escalatory steps that promise to draw out and inflame the conflict, not resolve it.
The usual suspects reassure us that victory is just around the corner. But if Western pressure fails to subdue or, as neoconservatives covet, overthrow Putin (neither scenario seems likely), we could be looking at years and years of bloody insurgency. Indeed, Washington is already treating a long-term insurrection with U.S. backing as unavoidable. (Ironically, the United States is arming future neo-Nazi insurrectionists.) According to the Washington Post, officials see “no off-ramps” in Ukraine.
Is that supposed to be reassuring?
The overtly pro-Ukrainian bias in Western media has made honest, serious coverage difficult to find. Instead, we are left with a spurious narrative of inevitable Ukrainian victory that has blinded many in the West to the risks of continued escalation. The trajectory we are on is not sustainable. Russia has nuclear weapons. The conflict, and Biden’s misguided sanctions, are threatening global food and energy supplies.
To avoid getting locked in a dangerous cycle, our leaders will have to grow up and expand their thinking beyond “Putin is Hitler” platitudes. Diplomacy will require, yes, “appeasing” Putin a little and recognizing that he has rational strategic interests. The West is quick to dismiss Russian grievances with NATO expansion as nothing but a pretext for imperial ambition, but the West has made no serious effort—despite repeated warnings—to restrain its own imperial ambitions in Putin’s backyard. It doesn’t take a “Putin apologist” to understand that Western meddling in Ukraine has been needlessly provocative, and that it poses an obvious, logical threat to Russian security.
But narcissistic and unserious Western leaders have retreated into delusional self-flattery... (MORE - details)
Resistance is rising to woke colleges’ race and sex discrimination
https://nypost.com/2022/03/24/resistance...imination/
INTRO: People used to talk about “resistance” to President Donald Trump. That’s old hat. Now it’s resistance to the woke. [Campus Reform]
And we’re seeing more and more of that resistance. University of Michigan economics professor Mark J. Perry is working with numerous folks across the nation to file equal-opportunity complaints with the federal Department of Education when colleges and universities discriminate on the basis of race and sex.
Perry recounts that in three years of research, he’s found more than 1,200 Title IX and Title VI violations — and continues to uncover more. “The significant and troubling frequency of violations of federal civil rights laws in higher education demonstrates unaddressed systemic sexism and racism that needs greater awareness, exposure and legal challenges,” he writes.
“Typical and frequent” Title IX violations “that have gone unchallenged for many decades,” he says, include “female-only scholarships, fellowships, awards, study spaces, mentoring, tutoring, special freshman orientations, industry meetings, summer STEM programs, summer STEM camps, coding clubs, leadership programs, entrepreneurship programs, gym hours, etc. that operate exclusively for women while illegally excluding and discriminating against boys and men.”
Perry says that “racially segregated or racially preferential” programs and events that violate Title VI have also “become increasingly common in higher education.”
So far, he reports, the federal government has opened 218 investigations against offending schools, and 133 have been resolved in his favor. More are on the way. And even the schools that escape punishment may think twice before doing this sort of thing again.
Perry, by the way, invites people to contact him if they’d like help filing their own complaints. Professors are suing [...] over what he calls an “atmosphere of terror...” (MORE - details)
https://www.spiked-online.com/2022/03/23...y-matters/
INTRO: The real Hunter Biden laptop scandal is not the laptop itself. It isn’t the sordid contents of this computer that was dumbly handed in to a repair shop in Delaware. It isn’t the fact that the hard drive contains lewd images of Hunter and others doing drugs and having sex. It isn’t even the fact that the laptop contained a trove of emails showing that Hunter was not averse to namedropping daddy – who was then vice-president in the Obama administration – to secure sweet deals with foreign businesses.
No, it’s the fact that America’s media elites studiously ignored the whole damn thing and even flat-out censored it. The scandal is the fact that the scandal was buried, on the grounds that nothing, not even the truth, could be allowed to scupper Joe Biden’s ascendancy to the White House.
The laptop scandal is back in the news. And for quite extraordinary reasons. The New York Times, finally, 18 months after the laptop story first broke, following months and months of America’s liberal elites running the other away the minute anyone mentioned this cursed computer, has confirmed that the laptop is real.
Buried a thousand words into a long report on federal authorities’ investigation into Hunter’s business antics, the Gray Lady casually mentions emails ‘obtained by the New York Times from a cache of files that appears to have come from a laptop abandoned by Mr Biden in a Delaware repair shop’. These emails, says the Times, are ‘authentic’. No shit, Sherlock.
This is an about-face of epic proportions. This is the same NYT that cast doubts like confetti on the Hunter laptop story when it was first covered by the New York Post in October 2020. It turned a blind eye to this explosive story of a presidential candidate’s son leaving his incriminating computer in for repair. Or it just denounced the whole thing as a ‘politically motivated dirty tricks campaign’. Yet now, quietly, and possibly with a hint of shame (if that’s an emotion the NYT even knows), America’s paper of record has fessed up that the whole thing was true.
‘They’re as slow as Joe! Sleepy New York Times FINALLY wakes up’, says the Mail. The Babylon Bee went one better. ‘New York Times announces they have finally confirmed the Watergate tapes are authentic’, its headline said.
It really is worth reflecting on this scandal. No, not on Hunter’s bad behaviour (that can wait), but on the way the elites colluded to ensure that this scandal did not blow up... (MORE - details)
Washington Doesn’t Want Peace in Ukraine
https://amgreatness.com/2022/03/24/washi...n-ukraine/
INTRO: The United States is now overwhelmed with propaganda pushing for Americans to “stand with Ukraine” in its war with Russia. It is not enough to wish the people of Ukraine well. The media, Big Tech, and both political parties have made being a partisan of Ukraine some kind of moral duty. Those refusing to get swept up in anti-Russian hysteria can expect to be condemned as traitors and agents of Vladimir Putin.
Contrary to the claims of self-righteous talking heads and keyboard warriors, it isn’t “treason” to question how supporting a foreign nation at war with a nuclear state serves America’s interests. Without robust debate, sound policymaking on such a vital matter is impossible.
What is Washington hoping to accomplish in Ukraine? Whatever it is, the Biden Administration is prepared to do everything short of inciting World War III to make it happen.
In addition to waging scorched-earth economic war, Washington is sending billions of dollars’ worth of heavy armaments into Ukraine. While this policy is being called moderate and restrained, or even “weak” by many chickenhawk Republicans, these are escalatory steps that promise to draw out and inflame the conflict, not resolve it.
The usual suspects reassure us that victory is just around the corner. But if Western pressure fails to subdue or, as neoconservatives covet, overthrow Putin (neither scenario seems likely), we could be looking at years and years of bloody insurgency. Indeed, Washington is already treating a long-term insurrection with U.S. backing as unavoidable. (Ironically, the United States is arming future neo-Nazi insurrectionists.) According to the Washington Post, officials see “no off-ramps” in Ukraine.
Is that supposed to be reassuring?
The overtly pro-Ukrainian bias in Western media has made honest, serious coverage difficult to find. Instead, we are left with a spurious narrative of inevitable Ukrainian victory that has blinded many in the West to the risks of continued escalation. The trajectory we are on is not sustainable. Russia has nuclear weapons. The conflict, and Biden’s misguided sanctions, are threatening global food and energy supplies.
To avoid getting locked in a dangerous cycle, our leaders will have to grow up and expand their thinking beyond “Putin is Hitler” platitudes. Diplomacy will require, yes, “appeasing” Putin a little and recognizing that he has rational strategic interests. The West is quick to dismiss Russian grievances with NATO expansion as nothing but a pretext for imperial ambition, but the West has made no serious effort—despite repeated warnings—to restrain its own imperial ambitions in Putin’s backyard. It doesn’t take a “Putin apologist” to understand that Western meddling in Ukraine has been needlessly provocative, and that it poses an obvious, logical threat to Russian security.
But narcissistic and unserious Western leaders have retreated into delusional self-flattery... (MORE - details)
Resistance is rising to woke colleges’ race and sex discrimination
https://nypost.com/2022/03/24/resistance...imination/
INTRO: People used to talk about “resistance” to President Donald Trump. That’s old hat. Now it’s resistance to the woke. [Campus Reform]
And we’re seeing more and more of that resistance. University of Michigan economics professor Mark J. Perry is working with numerous folks across the nation to file equal-opportunity complaints with the federal Department of Education when colleges and universities discriminate on the basis of race and sex.
Perry recounts that in three years of research, he’s found more than 1,200 Title IX and Title VI violations — and continues to uncover more. “The significant and troubling frequency of violations of federal civil rights laws in higher education demonstrates unaddressed systemic sexism and racism that needs greater awareness, exposure and legal challenges,” he writes.
“Typical and frequent” Title IX violations “that have gone unchallenged for many decades,” he says, include “female-only scholarships, fellowships, awards, study spaces, mentoring, tutoring, special freshman orientations, industry meetings, summer STEM programs, summer STEM camps, coding clubs, leadership programs, entrepreneurship programs, gym hours, etc. that operate exclusively for women while illegally excluding and discriminating against boys and men.”
Perry says that “racially segregated or racially preferential” programs and events that violate Title VI have also “become increasingly common in higher education.”
So far, he reports, the federal government has opened 218 investigations against offending schools, and 133 have been resolved in his favor. More are on the way. And even the schools that escape punishment may think twice before doing this sort of thing again.
Perry, by the way, invites people to contact him if they’d like help filing their own complaints. Professors are suing [...] over what he calls an “atmosphere of terror...” (MORE - details)