| The Mythologies Of Black Lives Matter | ||||||||||
| by Victor Davis Hanson via VDH's Blade of Perseus Polls taken in November 2021 showed a sharp drop in the popularity of the Black Lives Matter movement that had once peaked in June 2020 at over 50 percent public approval. The recent liberal Civiqs survey, commissioned by the hard-Left website Daily Kos, found of those registered voters who expressed a clear opinion, about 44 percent were opposed to BLM. Only 43 percent polled supportive. +++ Is the Democrat's commitment to win at all cost too strong to alter and are Democrats powerful enough to assure themselves continued victories through constant manipulations while American voters are too feckless and disorganized to prevent them? A lot will depend upon Soros and the influence of Stacy Abrams, among others. Burying the Hunter Biden Laptop Story Was Journalistic Malpractice, EDITOR IN CHIEF, JNS.ORG
It was buried in the 24th paragraph of a story that was itself buried on page 20 of a newspaper published when the public's attention was focused on Ukraine. But for those whose memories extend back to 17 months ago, the admission published in The New York Times on March 17 was political dynamite—the information on the laptop that veterans of the national security establishment claimed was Russian disinformation was, in fact, exactly what reports published in the New York Post in October 2020 said they were: evidence of the Biden family's influence peddling abroad, that the senior Biden was aware of his son's activities and might well have profited from them. The discovery of the laptop came just weeks before the 2020 presidential election. But the reaction from most of the media—including the Times—was to ignore it. Even worse, the Big Tech companies that control the information superhighway and social media platforms sought to prevent the dissemination of any information about the laptop and what Hunter Biden had been up to in Ukraine and China while his father was vice president. The Post's Twitter account was, for a time, shut down. Those who attempted to retweet the story were prevented from doing so. Anyone who raised the issue or complained about the refusal to cover the story were accused of spreading "disinformation." Many of the same media outlets had spent years spreading accounts about Donald Trump colluding with Russia to steal the 2016 election, which turned out to be false. But journalists and Silicon Valley oligarchs were united in their determination to prevent Trump from winning again and openly boasted of their willingness to put their finger on the electoral scale to defeat him. Now that the Times has admitted that the laptop was real, the question of whether Hunter will ultimately face prosecution is of secondary importance. The real question Americans should be asking is who is to be held accountable for one of the worst scandals in the recent history of American journalism. Biden apologists may claim that the story about Hunter's trading on the Biden name to score big bucks in Ukraine and China would not have altered the outcome of the election. They may be right about that, since the coronavirus pandemic and accompanying economic downturn may have already doomed Trump's hopes. But even if you don't accept Trump's claims of massive voter fraud or think Biden's eight-million popular vote advantage wouldn't have been dented by anything reported about his family, the willingness of all but conservative outlets to silence such a story on the eve of an election is unprecedented. On the other hand, full and open coverage of the laptop story may well have swung the election. A shift of only 43,000 votes toward Trump in three states Biden won by a whisker—Wisconsin, Georgia and Arizona—would have resulted in a 269-269 Electoral College tie that would have sent the election to the House of Representatives, where GOP majorities in state delegations would have flipped the election to the incumbent. Last week's Times story vindicating the Post's reporting was about a federal investigation of possible wrongdoing by the younger Biden. It noted that Hunter had paid off a significant back federal income tax liability and that, in spite of his efforts to settle with the government, a grand jury convened by federal prosecutors was continuing to sift through evidence related to his business dealings. The article described Biden as someone whose "professional life has intersected with his father's public service." While Joe Biden was a U.S. senator, his son was a registered lobbyist for domestic interests. When Joe was vice president, Hunter successfully pursued deals and clients in Asia and Europe. Emails on the controversial laptop helped fuel the investigation into whether he violated the Foreign Agents Registration Act and avoided paying taxes on the money he made abroad. As the Times put it, the emails "were authenticated by those familiar with them and with the investigation." Whether or not Hunter is prosecuted, the point of the original reporting was that the Biden family's attempts to cash in on the vice president's influence was, by definition, corrupt. And in the 2020 election, while he was representing himself as the honest alternative to Trump, Biden was himself guilty of either being part of or acquiescing to sleazy schemes from which his son profited. Yet even now, no one involved in this vast scheme to suppress the news is prepared to apologize—even if it is too late to make amends for what can only be described as journalistic corruption. Not one of the intelligence experts who claimed—based on no information whatsoever—that the laptop story was a Russian plant has made a public mea culpa. The same is true of the media outlets, including the Times, which did everything in their power to cast doubt on the story and accuse those who reported it of spreading lies. The Hunter Biden story isn't the only reason many Americans no longer trust the media or the intelligence establishment. But it is glaring proof that their skepticism is justified, and its result is a society even more bifurcated along political and cultural lines than it already was. But even if apologies were forthcoming, the only reasonable conclusion to draw from the Hunter Biden saga is that the institutions which sought to tilt the election to his father are now so committed to political bias in their reporting and their management of internet platforms that there may well be no path to reforming them. Rather than wait in vain for them to change, the only reasonable response to this scandal may be to avoid them altogether in the future. +++++++++++++++ Putin serves as glue that has united NATO. What happens when things "die" down? George Friedman's view of the length of the Ukraine War. Ukraine and the Long WarThoughts in and around geopolitics.By: George FriedmanFor as often as it happens, nations typically don’t elect to enter wars if they know they will be long, drawn-out, uncertain and expensive affairs. They enter wars when they think the benefits of winning outweigh the risks, or when they think they have the means to strike decisively enough to bring the war to a quick resolution. Long wars result from consistent and fundamental errors: underestimating the will and ability of an enemy to resist, overestimating one’s own capabilities, going to war for incorrect or insufficient reasons, or underestimating the degree to which a powerful third party might intervene and shift the balance of power. If a nation survives the first blow, then the probability of a victory increases. This is particularly the case in the long war. The nation initiating the war tends to have committed available force at the beginning, maximizing the possibility of an early victory. The defending power has not yet utilized its domestic forces or those of allies prior to the attack. Therefore, the defender increases its military power much more rapidly than the attacker. The Japanese could not match American manpower or technology over time. The United States underestimated the resilience of the North Vietnamese, even in the face of an intense bombardment of their capital. There are exceptions. The Germans in 1914 failed to take Paris, and in the long war were strangled by the British navy and ground down on the battlefield. This is not a universal truth, but long wars originate in the attacker's miscalculation, and with some frequency with the attacker moving with the most available force, while the defender, surviving the initial attack, has unused resources to draw upon. It is possible for the long war to grind down the defender's resources and will, but having survived the initial attack, the defender likely has both will and resources to draw on, while the attacker must overcome the fact that it is fighting the enemy’s war, and not the one it planned. The war in Ukraine is far from over and its outcome is not assured. But it began with a Russian attack that was based on the assumption that Ukrainian resistance would be ineffective, and would melt away once Russia came to town because the Ukrainians were indifferent or hostile to an independent Ukraine. This faulty assumption is evidenced by the relatively casual deployment of Russian armor. It also explains the Russian strategy of both bombing and entering cities. It’s difficult to subdue cities by bombing alone (think London, Hamburg and Hanoi). They are resilient, and the tonnage needed to cripple them is exorbitant. And they are notoriously advantageous for their defenders, who are more familiar with alleyways, roads, dead ends, and so on. The fact that the Russians operated this way indicates that they had low expectations of their enemy. This is to say nothing of Russia’s massive intelligence failure, which misread the enemy. (There are reports that the chief of the FSB intelligence agency's Ukraine unit has been placed under house arrest.) The most important failure was the failure to see that Ukraine would counter with a large, relatively decentralized infantry force. The protraction of the war allowed the West and its allies to initiate economic warfare against Russia on an unprecedented scale. It takes time to implement economic warfare, and the Russians gave away precious time. Similarly, Moscow didn’t anticipate the substantial military aid that would flow into Ukraine, particularly the kinds that were ideally suited for a light infantry force. None of this has defeated the Russians, of course, but it has created a crisis. A military force shocked by the inaccuracy of intelligence must determine without confidence in its intelligence what to do next. Russia thus seems to have abandoned the goal to occupy all of Ukraine or even Kyiv, shifting instead to a strategy of creating a land bridge from Russia to Crimea. If there is no military dimension to the future, this is a reasonable retreat for the Russians. But a long, relatively narrow salient – military-speak for a bulge or vector – is vulnerable to many forms of interdiction. This leaves the Russian salient at the mercy of Ukrainian action at the time and place of Kyiv’s choosing. The question of the long war depends on Russian resources, without which there is nothing to discuss. Russia is apparently short on infantry, or it would not be recruiting and trying to integrate Syrian and other soldiers. The possibility of having forces that don’t speak Russian and haven’t experienced Russian training would only be considered by a force short of manpower. And such a force, depending on how it is integrated and what the mission would be, would be taking a large risk in maintaining large-scale operations. The problem has thus become political. The initial war plan failed. The Russians are certainly able to continue the war, but they apparently need more people and an overall better logistics system, which is hard to improve in the face of constant combat. The United States, facing the same essential problem, chose to continue the wars in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan. The cost was substantial but did not threaten core national security because of the vast oceans between the war and the homeland. The Ukraine war is on Russia’s doorstep, and an extended war, with intensifying distrust of the government, can result in a trained Ukrainian special forces group expanding the fighting into Russia. Russians cannot assume immunity. It is painful, from a political point of view, for presidents and chiefs of staff to admit failure and cut their losses. The desire to keep trying, coupled with a reluctance to admit failure, carries with it myriad problems. Russian President Vladimir Putin needs an honest intelligence review, but he had one before invading. It was not a lie; it was just wrong. In a long war, the defender has the opportunity to grow strong, and the attacker is likely maxed out in anticipation of victory and the intent to throw everything into it. If Russia has resources not deployed and held in reserve for another possible threat, and doesn’t ruthlessly cut its losses, it will be joining a long line of defeats, from Algiers to Khartoum to Hue. ++++++++++++++++++++ Op Eds:
This could be for real or deceptive. In today's propaganda war you never know: LISTEN: Intercepted Russian Phone Call by Military Leader Reveals How Bad Off Russian Military Is
A phone call reportedly captured between Russian troops reveals the sad state of Russia’s invasion into Ukraine in a new way according to a Newsmax report. The audio shares a Russian soldier saying 50% of his soldiers have frostbite. He complains that he was told the operation would only last hours and that this operation is so disorganized Russian planes have even bombed their own troops. The Ukrainian people have fought back valiantly. Despite heavy losses, up to 15,000 or more Russian soldiers have been killed in the past month in Ukraine. In addition, the conditions of many soldiers sounds dire. From frostbite to running out of food, gas and other supplies, Russia armed forces are increasingly frustrated and defeated. Despite being ranked the second-best military force in the world after the U.S., the 190,000 troops that began along the border are struggling against a much smaller country. Newsmax notes the Ukrainian people are putting on a show, and it’s getting better as more countries send supplies and thousands of volunteers have showed up to help defend their land. Vladimir Putin didn’t expect it, but he may now be looking for a way to end the war soon rather than quickly winning it. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ |
No comments:
Post a Comment