The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Professor Demonizes ‘Wealthy White Men’ for ‘Violence, Deceit, Irresponsibility’

Posted on | April 18, 2023 | Comments Off on Professor Demonizes ‘Wealthy White Men’ for ‘Violence, Deceit, Irresponsibility’

University of Texas professor Kirsten Bradbury

As recently as 2018, Kirsten Bradbury was paid $105,697 a year as an associate professor of psychology at the University of Texas. Bradbury, who also has a private practice in Austin as a clinical psychologist, apparently now only teaches part-time at the university, so that her pay in 2022 was only around $60,000, but still I doubt she could be counted among the victims of oppression, as such things are reckoned by the progressive calculus of “social justice.” Nevertheless, Professor Bradbury wants to make sure her students know who to blame for oppression:

A University of Texas psychology professor is apologizing to her students after including a question on a quiz that stated “wealthy white men” are “most likely to repeatedly violate the rights of others.”
The quiz was a part of Professor Kirsten Bradbury’s Personality Psychology course and asked students which demographic is most likely to be diagnosed with Antisocial Personality Disorder.
After stipulating the disease itself is “a racist diagnosis in the way that it has been applied,” Bradbury’s quiz stated: “Neither race nor gender is determinative in Antisocial Personality Disorder. However, if we must go there, which sociodemographic group is most likely to repeatedly violate the rights of others in a pattern of behavior that includes violence, deceit, irresponsibility, and a lack of remorse?” The answer: wealthy white men.

After distributing the quiz to students, Bradbury, who has been celebrated as one of the university’s most outstanding teachers, then backtracked, telling students that “given the current rate of sociocultural and scientific change” the quiz had “grown too stale to use.” She did not indicate what scientific changes had rendered the quiz obsolete or what scientific research had at one point served as the basis for the question.
Bradbury did not respond to a request for comment.
Bradbury was the recipient in 2017 of the University of Texas Board of Regents’s highest teaching honor, which comes with a $25,000 cash prize. Her biography on the university’s website indicates that her academic interests include “parenting stress,” “firearms and firearm safety,” and “firearm-related parenting.”
The syllabus for her Personality Psychology course, University of Texas-Austin’s psychology 309, indicates that the class aims to teach students about the “normal and abnormal development of personality across the life span” and includes open-note quizzes and self-graded “experiential writing assignments” at the conclusion of which students assign themselves a “journaling grade.”
It also includes a diversity statement voicing the department’s commitment to “a journey of inclusion and justice for all students from groups that are marginalized or minoritized.” It goes on to state, “Our department is in the process of diversifying and creating identity safety for all students.”
“In keeping with the department’s values, I am committed to creating a learning environment that is safe and supportive of the identities and perspectives of all marginalized and minoritized people,” Bradbury wrote.

Any objective inquiry would require us to ask whether the “pattern of behavior” typified by the diagnosis of antisocial personality disorder is (a) more common among men than women, (b) more common among the wealthy than among those with lower incomes, and (c) more common among whites than among other races. Only if the answer to all three questions was “yes” could her claim be regarded as true.

Let us consult the Mayo Clinic:

Antisocial personality disorder, sometimes called sociopathy, is a mental health condition in which a person consistently shows no regard for right and wrong and ignores the rights and feelings of others. People with antisocial personality disorder tend to purposely make others angry or upset and manipulate or treat others harshly or with cruel indifference. They lack remorse or do not regret their behavior. . . .
Adults with antisocial personality disorder usually show symptoms of conduct disorder before the age of 15. Symptoms of conduct disorder include serious, ongoing behavior problems, such as:

•Aggression toward people and animals.
•Destruction of property.
•Lying and dishonesty.
•Theft.
•Serious violation of rules.

Antisocial personality disorder is considered a lifelong condition.

Why would Professor Bradbury assert that “the way that [antisocial personality disorder] has been applied” makes it “a racist diagnosis”? Is this something she picked up from an article in an academic journal? If so, could she provide a citation? Some footnotes? A bibliography?

Because I am merely a journalist, and not an academic with a Ph.D., all I can offer is a few results found via Google, including this article in the Journal of Criminal Justice that explores the possible relationships between race, crime and personality disorders, and suggests that “criminology has avoided offering explanations due mostly to political correctness.” Hmmm. Why would someone say that?

Well, it appears there has been great controversy on this subject centered on the work of a British professor, Richard Lynn, who in 2019 published a book, Race Differences in Psychopathic Personality: An Evolutionary Analysis that directly addressed the topic. You will perhaps not be surprised to learn that Professor Lynn has been denounced as being “at the forefront of scientific racism,” by the Southern Poverty Law Center. Many of my readers will take that as a ringing endorsement — “Denounced by the SPLC? I must buy this book now!” — but probably Professor Bradbury feels otherwise, and I think this is an explanatory clue to the content of that exam question. If there are, as Lynn claims, measurable differences between racial groups in terms of antisocial behavior, then the statistical disparity itself would suffice to render it a “racist diagnosis,” in the eyes of most academics, whose progressive worldview is based on the belief that there is no such thing as real racial differences, but that all such observable differences are caused by systemic racism and the oppression of white supremacy.

Being a mere journalist, I am not qualified to settle such a quarrel among academics, but I do know that if you order Professor Lynn’s book through my Amazon Associates link, I’ll collect a small commission on the sale and did I mention it’s been denounced by the SPLC?



 

 

Category: Education, Racism, Texas

Violent Chaos in Chicago and … Alabama?

Posted on | April 16, 2023 | Comments Off on Violent Chaos in Chicago and … Alabama?

First, the “teenager” problem in Chicago:

Hundreds of teenagers flooded into Downtown Chicago on Saturday night, smashing car windows, trying to get into Millennium Park, and prompting a major police response. At least one person in a car was attacked.
Shots were fired near the corner of Madison and Michigan, and FOX 32 Chicago decided that it was unsafe to keep our news crew on the scene.
Two teens were wounded by gunfire in the crowds in the first block of East Washington Street. A 16 and 17-year-old boy were taken to Northwestern Memorial Hospital in fair condition with gunshot wounds. . . .
A woman whose car was smashed by people jumping on the windshield said her husband was beaten as he sat in the driver’s seat. He’s been taken to Northwestern Memorial Hospital. . . .
Video posted on social media shows people standing on top of a CTA bus and dancing. The CTA said that some service through the downtown area was disrupted on Saturday night because of police activity.
This is the second time this weekend that a group of rowdy teenagers has prompted a police response. On Friday night, hundreds of kids went to 31st Avenue Beach, and a 14-year-old was shot.

What do we know about these “rowdy teenagers” — something everybody knows, without even having to watch the videos — that the media aren’t reporting? While you ponder that mystery, let’s turn our attention to a town of about 3,000 people in southeastern Alabama:

Four people are dead and as many as 20 reportedly injured following a shooting at a birthday party in Dadeville Saturday night, according to multiple reports.
The Alabama Law Enforcement Agency reported that at 11:45 p.m. Saturday special agents launched an investigation at the request of the Dadeville police chief.
The shooting occurred at approximately 10:34 p.m. near the 200 Block of Broadnax Street in Dadeville.
“Currently, there have been four confirmed fatalities and multiple injuries,” an ALEA press release stated. “Nothing further is available as the investigation is ongoing.”
The county coroner declined to comment when reached by AL.com this morning.
The Alexander City Outlook is reporting the shooting happened at Mahogany’s Masterpiece dance studio, in a converted bank, on North Broadnax Street in Dadeville, a town of about 3,000 in Tallapoosa County.
The Alabama Law Enforcement Agency is handling the investigation but has not yet released any details. Crime scene tape flapped in the wind outside the venue this morning as people waited for more details.
WRBL of Columbus, Ga., reported more than 20 people were shot and transported to local hospitals, citing law enforcement sources.
The gathering was a Sweet 16 Birthday celebration, and most of those injured are teenagers.

For many years, I have criticized the news media for their use of what I call The Atrocity Narrative method of propaganda:

In a populous nation . . . it is always possible to find a few examples of almost any phenomenon. Police brutality, for example. From time to time, innocent people are killed by police and, if the media are willing to be manipulated by activists, you get protest movements like “Black Lives Matter” promoting the idea that such killings are so routine as to constitute a crisis. Heather Mac Donald has pointed out that a police officer is 18.5 times more likely to be killed by a black man than the other way around, but during the height of the “Black Lives Matter” riots, a counterfactual narrative was promoted by CNN and other liberal media, inciting a paranoid anti-police rage.

The media’s selectivity in the determination of what constitutes a story of national importance can produce a warped perspective, where 24/7 cable TV coverage is devoted to events that are statistical anomalies, presented as a “crisis” that demands an emotion-driven political response.

Because so much of what people know (or think they know) about the world is derived from media, the willingness of journalists to engage in systematic distortion of reality is harmful to society in many ways, not least of which is its impact on politics. Why are some “mass shootings” more important than others? Why do some “mass shootings” generate media coverage that focuses on the identity and motive of the killer, while others are presented as arguments for gun control? And why are some massacres treated as strictly “local news,” undeserving of national media attention? Americans need to think critically about this:

Crime is a people problem. If you understand nothing else about crime, you must understand this — crime is committed by people. It is not committed by inanimate objects, and while data on criminal activity can be charted as a trend over time, trends don’t commit crimes, people do. There is a word for people who commit crimes; we call these people “criminals” and, if anyone is interested in investigating trends, one trend is fairly consistent — most violent criminals are repeat offenders, and will not stop this behavioral pattern unless they are locked up in prison.
Keep all these facts in mind the next time you hear Democrats or the news media (but I repeat myself) discussing “gun violence” as an issue. Democrats do not want to discuss crime as a people problem, but rather as a gun problem, because (a) most gun owners are Republicans and (b) most criminals are Democrats. Or, that is to say, the violent crime problem in America is largely concentrated in urban areas where Democrats get the majority of the vote. . . .

Read the rest of my column at The American Spectator.



 

 

Category: American Spectator, Crime

Best Aspiring Rapper Update Ever?

Posted on | April 15, 2023 | 1 Comment

‘BTB Savage’ flashing cash on Instagram

Has it been nearly two months since I gave readers an Aspiring Rapper Update? Wow, getting slack in my old age. However, the long wait will be worth it, because this week we’ve got a splendidly complicated tale that involves two Texas rappers getting shot dead, and a third rapper on his way to prison for a drive-by shooting to avenge the first rapper’s death, a justified homicide about which the second rapper had boasted.

First, I must remind you of the Urban Dictionary definition:

Aspiring Rapper
North American euphemism for a member of the urban criminal class. This unusual occupation is usually mentioned in conjunction with the subject either being slain or being taken into custody for a violent or property-related crime. A relative of the subject usually points out that the subject’s demise or incarceration comes at an extremely inopportune moment, occurring just as the subject was “turning they(sic) life around.”

It would perhaps be unfair to include the late Darrell Gentry, a/k/a “BTB Savage,” in this category because Gentry wasn’t just some petty gangbanger, but actually made money from his performances. A native of Cleveland, Ohio, who moved to San Antonio as a teenager, Gentry’s rap moniker “BTB” stood for “break the bank,” which was the title of one of his more successful tunes. Gentry was all about the money, which he enjoyed flaunting on his social media posts. See that watch in the top image? That’s a $25,000 Cartier. Do you have a $25,000 Cartier watch? Not likely, nor do I have a $25,000 Cartier, but this 21-year-old rapper had one, and I’ll keep that in mind the next time some “social justice” type starts lecturing me about my white privilege. But I digress . . .

Gentry’s ostentatious display of wealth probably explains how he attracted the attention of another Texas rapper. One of the ways the rap scene now operates, apparently, is that successful artists get paid for collaborations with aspiring rappers, and this other rapper arranged such a session to be recorded at Gentry’s home studio in his San Antonio apartment. The rapper brought along some buddies, apparently with a motive not to record a hit song, but rather to rob Gentry. One of this crew, 34-year-old Omar “Stew Wop” Richardson, pulled a gun and a struggle broke out. Gentry’s girlfriend somehow got hold of the gun and opened fire. Gentry was wounded in the left arm, but Richardson got shot twice in the back, and was left for dead when Gentry and his girlfriend fled the apartment. Police determined it was a case of self-defense, justifiable homicide under Texas law, and no charges were filed.

Last month, “BTB” Gentry gave an interview about the shooting:

 

That video was released on March 26, at which point, “BTB” had just four days left to live, because how could any rapper resist the opportunity to brag about surviving such an incident? On March 29, “BTB” posted this to his Instagram page (which had more than 100,000 followers):

So there he is, flashing cash in the first image, then standing at the scene of Omar Richardson’s death — blood stains on the floor, bullet holes in the door behind him — with a caption taunting the dead man about “make his momma throw a fundraiser” to pay for his funeral.

Also, “BTB” somehow let it be known that he had relocated to Houston, which information was helpful to one of Omar Richardson’s buddies:

The family of an aspiring San Antonio rapper who was killed last week in a Houston drive-by shooting believes his death may have been in retaliation for a fatal shooting in San Antonio that had been ruled an act of self-defense and for which the rapper openly expressed feeling no remorse.
Darrell Gentry, known professionally as BTB Savage, was fatally shot March 30 in the affluent River Oaks neighborhood in what Houston Police Chief Troy Finner said appears to have been a targeted attack.
Police were called about 6:10 p.m. to the entrance of a parking garage for reports of a drive-by shooting, where they found Gentry with at least one gunshot wound. The San Antonio man, whose identity was later confirmed by the Harris County Medical Examiner’s Office, was pronounced dead at the scene. Witnesses said two people fled at high speed in a black Subaru SUV.
On Friday, Houston police said they were looking for Montrel Lenard Burley, 40, saying he has been charged with murder in Gentry’s killing. Police also said at least one other unknown person is wanted in connection with the crime.
Gentry’s mother, Bernita Ward, said on social media that she had warned her son not to speak publicly about the fatal shooting of 34-year-old Omar Richardson, which occurred in February in Gentry’s San Antonio apartment. . . .
“My son allowed his friends and social media to hype him up, and these media blogs paying him money to do interviews talking about the matter,” Ward posted on social media. “My entire family pleaded with him to let the family mourn in peace. … I’m not the type of mother that cover up my child’s wrong. My son made his own choices and, as so many of us, has not always made wise decisions.”

Flashing cash, taunting the dead — hey, by the way, in case you didn’t watch that YouTube interview, this article quotes important details:

Gentry and his girlfriend grabbed their son and ran from the apartment so that Gentry could go to a hospital for his mangled elbow.
Gentry told the interviewer that Richardson at that point was still alive but severely injured and crawling toward the hallway asking for help.
“You could tell the bullets in his back were getting to him. … He was saying, ‘Come on, brother, I’ve got kids too. Let me make it home. Don’t let me die.’ And I said, ‘I don’t give a (expletive) about you. … I hope you die. You were going to kill my son,’” Gentry said in the interview. “I’m not taking you to some hospital. … If they come save you, then they save you, but if not, … it’s your last day.” . . .
Gentry told the YouTube interviewer that when a police officer at the hospital informed him that Richardson had died, he replied, “Good, I’m glad. My son was in there, so I ain’t tripping.
“I went to sleep good as hell the next day,” Gentry said. “I didn’t care.”

While this attitude is perfectly understandable — I mean, you come to my house and try to rob me, I ain’t gonna shed any tears over your death — we can say with the benefit of hindsight that it was a bad idea for “BTB” to publicly boast about it. Meanwhile, his killer was arrested Tuesday:

Murder suspect Montrel Lenard Burley

A man accused of killing Darrell Gentry, a rapper known on social media as BTB Savage, has been arrested, according to the Houston Police Department.
Montrel Lenard Burley, 40, was charged with murder on Friday, April 7 after the deadly shooting on Mid Lane in the River Oaks area at the end of March.
Court records revealed that they were able to identify Burley as a suspect by using cell phone records and license plate readers following the shooting. Burley turned himself in on Tuesday, officials said.
The suspects were driving a black Subaru at the time of the shooting which was spotted in the Galleria area and tracked heading to New Braunfels. . . .
Gentry was shot to death in a deadly drive-by shooting that police called a “targeted” incident in one of Houston’s richest neighborhoods.
Witnesses told police that around 6 p.m., they saw a black Subaru with dark windows pull up next to the victim’s Mercedes, with two suspects getting out of the car, and firing dozens of bullets into the car. . . .
Around 11 p.m. [March 30], surveillance footage from a neighbor in New Braunfels captures a man wiping down a black Subaru inside and out. . . .
Surveillance footage from the same neighbor [March 31] catches a man and woman getting inside a black Subaru just before 7 a.m. The couple was later pulled over by New Braunfels SWAT and found Burley inside the vehicle with a woman who was driving.
According to court documents, both were arrested and Burley was charged with narcotics possession. Burley was questioned about his whereabouts during the shooting but stated he wasn’t in the black Subaru when it happened and that someone asked to use the vehicle. He later asked for an attorney and ended the interview.
Burley’s girlfriend, Passion James, said that the black Subaru was rented from AVIS prior to the shooting because Burley was in a car accident. James also told investigators that she knew Burley had a cousin named “Omar” who was killed earlier this year. James stated she did not know Omar’s last name.
The court documents state that Burley and Richardson were not related, but that they would refer to each other as brothers.
Documents show that a rifle shell casing fell from the rear door of the black Subraru while the New Braunfels Crime Scene Unit investigated during the traffic stop. The shell casing was similar to the ones found at the River Oaks shooting scene. . . .
Gentry’s mother, Bernita Ward, told investigators [April 3] that her son was staying at an Airbnb near the Galleria. Documents say that Gentry was receiving death threats from Richardson’s family members after the February shooting and that she advised him to get away.
Gentry told his mother he was going to head to Las Vegas on March 30 or March 31, before he was killed. His mother said Gentry was on the way to the airport when he was shot.
Burley was charged with murder [April 7] after they confirmed his cell phone and the black Subaru were in the area of Mid Lane at the time of the shooting.
Court documents state that his phone and car were both tracked back to New Braunfels hours after the shooting. Burley’s phone was also tracked to be in the Galleria area for several hours near where Gentry stayed on March 30. . . .
Police are still searching for another suspect who has yet to be identified.
Burley appeared in court Tuesday morning and had his bond set at $1 million.

So, two people are dead, one man is charged with murder, and another suspect is still at large. I blame . . . systemic racism!



 

 

Category: Aspiring Rapper Update

How Did He Get Those Secrets?

Posted on | April 15, 2023 | 1 Comment

Ed Morrissey points out that nobody seems to know how or why a 21-year-old Air National Guard member would have access to all those leaked documents:

Jack Teixeira served in the 102nd Intelligence Wing of the Massachusetts Air National Guard, based on Cape Cod. What would the MANG “need to know” about Mossad communications, Russian and Ukrainian military operations, and diplomat communications? The former chief of Massachusetts Homeland Security, Juliette Kayyem, doesn’t have an explanation for it either:

Unless it is deploying under federal orders, the Massachusetts Air National Guard’s job is to protect the commonwealth. Communications of the leaders of Israel’s Mossad intelligence service and discussions among members of South Korea’s National Security Council on whether to sell ammunition that could end up in Ukraine have no obvious relevance to the suspect’s work, intelligence analysts say.
“The Pentagon’s notion of who should have access to what seems very broad, based on what we know now” about the case, said Ms. Kayyem, now a lecturer at the Harvard Kennedy School.

(Hat-tip: Instapundit.)

In comments on a previous post, Dianna Deeley raised the idea that Teixeira is a “fall guy,” but I don’t want to get into conspiracy theories, even though Ed Morrissey — definitely not a tinfoil hat type — delves into speculation that these documents could have gotten into Teixeira’s hands via some kind of complex spy operation: “Did he get them from within American systems? Or did an outside source provide the documents to Teixeira, and if so, for what purpose?” All of which speculation violates Occam’s Razor, because the most obvious explanation is that Teixeira’s job in a military intelligence unit involved using some kind of government computer network where he applied his skills to access classified files that were not properly secured. In other words, Teixeira took advantage of poor opsec at the Pentagon. Speaking of Dianna Deeley, she will join us tonight — 7 p.m. ET — on The Other Podcast, where I’m sure our co-host John Hoge will regale us with tales of his experience in Army intelligence during the Vietnam War. Don’t miss it!



 

 

Category: Military

The Unprincipled and Unhinged Left: Marcy Wheeler as Case Study

Posted on | April 14, 2023 | 1 Comment

Marcy Wheeler has a Ph.D. in comparative literature, and exactly how that qualifies her as an expert on national security can only be explained by the fact that liberalism, per se, is counted as a credential by most journalists (who, really, have no other qualification beyond that).

We’ve seen this phenomenon in recent years with the way liberals on Twitter go from issue to issue as instant “experts” on whatever topic is in the headlines. In 2016, every liberal with Internet access suddenly became an expert on Russian intelligence, but in 2020 the same people became epidemiology experts. Last year, they all became experts on Ukraine. Qualifications? They don’t need no stinkin’ qualifications! They’re liberals, which makes them automatically qualified.

So it is with Marcy Wheeler, whom I recall from the Bush years as being obsessed with the idea that Karl Rove should be “frog-marched” for his supposed role in the PlameGate affair. We have the word of Jane Hamsher — wow, remember her? — on the deranged depths of Wheeler’s PlameGate fixation: “Marcy Wheeler knows more about this case than any other human on the face of the planet.” Except, of course, Rove was never indicted, spoiling liberal hopes of a “Merry Fitzmas.”

Marcy Wheeler is a blogger, full stop. Nothing wrong with that, but it doesn’t qualify you as a national security expert, and the OCD-infused quality of Wheeler’s work — going down rabbit holes to pursue whatever paranoid conspiracy theory the fringe Left may be temporarily fixated on — is more or less self-discrediting. All of this is preamble to Wheeler’s headline yesterday about the Pentagon leak:

The Narcissist with a Top Secret Clearance
Trying to Impress Teenagers
in a Ukraine-Russia Chat Room

Which is a fair take, if you begin with the assumption that leaking America’s top secrets is a bad thing, which I always have. Even though the contents of the leak by Massachusetts Air National Guard private Jack Teixeira included useful information — e.g., Ukraine’s manpower shortage, which Biden has concealed with a lot of unrealistic happy talk — nevertheless, I believe Teixeira should be prosecuted and sent to federal prison, as should any service member entrusted with classified information who violates that trust. But has Marcy Wheeler consistently demanded maximum punishment in such cases? No, she has not.

Manning Faces Up to 136 Years
in Prison for Alerting You to What
Your Government Does in Your Name

That was Marcy Wheeler’s headline in 2013, after Bradley Manning was convicted. In case you’ve forgotten, that case happened while the “War on Terror” was still continuing during the Obama administration. Because the Left considered this “Bush’s war,” they were irate that Obama did not immediately end it as soon as he took office, and therefore leaking national security secrets was good, because it undermined the U.S. war effort in Iraq and Afghanistan. For some reason, Marcy Wheeler has forgotten whatever “principles” led her to sympathize with that Courageous Truth-Teller Formerly Known as Bradley Manning.

Whereas Bradley/“Chelsea” was praised by Wheeler for “alerting you to what your government does in your name,” there is no such praise for Teixeira because . . . Well, Orange Man Bad or something.

Y’know, I’ve always said that politics is a team sport, and I understand that this means that partisans don’t get to choose their fights. We defend our team, and criticize the opponent. The issues over which these fights occur will change over the course of time, and at different periods Our Team may be the party in power, or the disgruntled opposition. Given the variability of these factors, strict 100% consistency on policy matters may be impossible. But if Wheeler has any cynical self-awareness about how her status as Democrat team player has affected her attitude toward national security leakers, she’s hiding it pretty damned well.



 

 

Category: Liberals

What Will Amanda Marcotte Say?

Posted on | April 13, 2023 | 1 Comment

Remember how feminist Amanda Marcotte wrote an entire book claiming that the basic reason Trump got elected was because of #GamerGate? That crossed my mind the other day when it was revealed that the FBI’s glossary of terrorist-related terminology included such Internet slang as “red-pilled” and “based.” The idea that you’re some kind of dangerous extremist merely because you disagree with liberals — the uniting theme of both the FBI’s slang glossary and Marcotte’s obsession with #GamerGate — has metastasized over the past six or seven years to such an extent that it seems to inform everything from news media coverage to university curricula. This idée fixe will probably be further exacerbated by the latest news:

Federal authorities have identified and arrested the suspected source of the Pentagon documents leak, Jack Teixeira, a member of the Massachusetts Air National Guard who was the creator of a Discord chat group where the classified documents were originally shared. . . .
Around 2 p.m. on Thursday, the 21-year-old Teixeira was arrested outside his family home in southeastern Massachusetts . . .
Soon after, Attorney General Merrick Garland announced that Teixeira was arrested for “unauthorized removal, retention and transmission of classified national defense information,” which is a violation of the Espionage Act. He will be arraigned later Thursday.
Teixeira is the creator of Thug Shaker Central, an online gaming community on Discord where the classified documents were originally published, according to the New York Times. The publication was able to link Teixeira to the group via his online gaming profile, as well as match up photos of his childhood home, shared on social media, with details visible in the margins of the photographed intelligence documents posted to Discord. . . .
According to members of the Discord group who spoke with the Times, the group of 20 to 30 online friends conversed over their fondness for guns and video games and also liked to share racist memes. Months ago, one of the Thug Shaker Central users began uploading hundreds of pages of intelligence briefings for the chat to parse over; the person lectured his friends on “the importances of staying abreast of world events,” per the Times. . . .

Classified leaks are bad. Much worse, however, a young white male videogame hobbyist turns out to be a genuine national security threat? We’ll never hear the end of this from Amanda Marcotte.



 

 

Category: Crime

An Administrative Note

Posted on | April 13, 2023 | Comments Off on An Administrative Note

— compiled by Wombat-socho


Silicon Valley delenda est.


In The Mailbox is going on hiatus until (at least) April 19. I’m putting in around ten hours a day in the tax mines, which leaves me just enough time to eat, sleep…yeah, that’s about it. See you when the Death March to April 18 is over.


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Category: Taxes

Pentagon Leak Confirms Ukraine Suffering Shortage of Trained Manpower

Posted on | April 12, 2023 | 1 Comment

Forget the media coverage focused on how the leak of classified material happened and speculation on who might be responsible for that leak. I’m sure the FBI will figure that out, just as soon as they’re finished prosecuting people for “parading” in the Capitol and posting funny memes on Twitter. What’s really important is the contents of the leak, as it pertains to the war in Ukraine. When last I updated the Ukraine situation in February, I remarked:

Once the Russians evacuated Kherson and retreated to the south (or east) bank of the Dnieper River, that front stabilized, as the Ukrainians apparently are unwilling and/or unable to mount an offensive across the river. Meanwhile, to the northeast, the Ukrainian offensive east of Kharkiv ground to a halt in October, after driving the Russians back across the Oskil River toward Svatove and Kreminna. At the time, I had hoped that Ukraine would be able to sustain the momentum of its offensive, but once they’d captured Lyman and Kupiansk, they seemed content to hold what they’d gotten, rather than push for a further advance. And thus the situation seemed to settle down into a winter stalemate, as neither the Russians nor the Ukrainians had the wherewithal to mount any major offensives.

After Ukraine’s success last fall, I was perplexed by their lack of further advances, as maintaining momentum in such an offensive is crucial. Once you score a breakthrough, the opposing forces become disordered and demoralized if the pursuit continues; however, if the attack is paused, the opposing force can rally, establishing new defensive positions and reinforcing with fresh troops. Or to quote Stonewall Jackson:

“Always mystify, mislead, and surprise the enemy, if possible; and when you strike and overcome him, never let up in the pursuit so long as your men have strength to follow; for an army routed, if hotly pursued, becomes panic-stricken, and can then be destroyed by half their number. The other rule is, never fight against heavy odds, if by any possible maneuvering you can hurl your own force on only a part, and that the weakest part, of your enemy and crush it. Such tactics will win every time, and a small army may thus destroy a large one in detail, and repeated victory will make it invincible.”

The failure of the Ukrainians to maintain the offensive after their September breakthrough around Kherson was perplexing, and what I deduced was that there must be a manpower shortage. Despite the obvious urgency of the situation, Ukraine was failing to recruit, train and equip forces in sufficient numbers to establish reserves that could be used as reinforcements for further offensive operations.

The leaked Pentagon documents confirm my deduction:

US intelligence reportedly warned in February that Ukraine might fail to amass sufficient troops and weaponry for its planned spring counter-offensive, and might fall “well short” of Kyiv’s goals for recapturing territory seized by Russia, according to one of a trove of leaked defence documents.
A document tagged as “top secret” quoted by the Washington Post said that Kyiv was facing significant “force generation and sustainment shortfalls” and was therefore only likely to achieve “modest territorial gains”. The document is a snapshot of the situation in early February, and it is unclear how far Ukraine, with the support of NATO member states, has been able to make up the shortfalls since then.
Another document, dated 23 February and seen by the Guardian, gives an overview of the progress of building 12 “combat credible” new brigades to lead the counter-offensive, equipped with a target of 253 tanks and about 1,500 other armoured vehicles of different kinds. Three brigades were to be generated by the Ukrainians alone, while the remaining nine were to be established with the help of the US, allies and partners.
The planned brigades were a long way from readiness at the time of the documents, with five yet to begin their training. Six of the brigades had half or less the equipment they needed to hand.

What has the Biden administration bought with the billions of dollars of aid it has shipped to Ukraine? Talk of equipment shortages is one thing, if we’re talking about heavy equipment like tanks, artillery, etc., but surely there can be no shortage of basic infantry gear — rifles and bullets and such — to explain the inability of Ukraine to assemble and train “combat credible” brigades, can there? Whatever the difficulty NATO may have in providing Ukraine with heavy armament, there ought to be plenty enough equipment available to outfit troops as light infantry, and if shoving lightly-armed troops into a combat meat-grinder is a less-than-ideal tactical situation, the Russians have clearly been willing to do so at Bakhmut and other places, so what’s the problem in Kyiv?

And, while we’re asking questions, what’s the problem in Washington? Jim Geraghty is blunt about what the leaks reveal about Biden:

President Biden’s rhetoric regarding Ukrainian resistance to the invasion increasingly appears to be wildly overoptimistic happy talk, designed to assure Americans that he’s managing the NATO coalition just fine, the military aid to Kyiv is arriving in a timely fashion, and Russia really is diplomatically and economically isolated. . . .
It is bad that this assessment leaked; it is bad that this assessment of Ukraine’s abilities in the spring offensive are so modest or grim; it is bad that apparently lots of foreign-policy experts have doubts about the administration’s approach but are afraid to say so publicly; and it is bad that Biden’s public assessment of the war in Ukraine is the same rosy-eyed, unrealistic optimism that characterized his assessment of Afghanistan, inflation, migrants crossing the border, and the Chinese spy balloon. The president is always telling us that things are going great and that we have nothing to worry about, and a little later, we learn that the truth is the opposite.

You don’t have to be a “foreign-policy expert” to have doubts about Biden, who has “been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades,” as former Defense Secretary Robert Gates once remarked. And as Obama said, never underestimate Joe’s ability to f**k things up.



 

 

Category: Military, Ukraine
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