Free Republic

The protest in London’s bustling Chinatown brought together a variety of activist groups to oppose a rise in anti-Asian hate crimes. So it was peculiar when a street brawl broke out among mostly ethnic Chinese demonstrators. Witnesses said the fight, in November 2021, started when men aligned with the event’s organizers, including a group called No Cold War, attacked activists supporting the democracy movement in Hong Kong. On the surface, No Cold War is a loose collective run mostly by American and British activists who say the West’s rhetoric against China has distracted from issues like climate change and racial...

"But things got different later. When I was a grad student in linguistics going on the market for jobs, I was told that I needn’t worry whether I would get bids for tenure track positions because I was Black and would therefore be in great demand. Deep down, to me, it felt I was on my way to being tokenized, which I was, especially given that my academic chops at the time did not justify my being hired for a top job at all I was hired straight out of my doctoral program for a tenure-track job at an Ivy...

I got a new text scam that I nearly fell for - well, not quite. It claims to be the Post Office asking for an address to be corrected so they can deliver your package Really? How would the post office know my phone number if they don't know my address? Well, maybe the phone number was on the package - let's click on the link. It goes to usppaeckltc dot info, a somewhat convincing imitation of a Post Office web page. It might fool the average person, but not a skill Unix geek. Pulling up my trust Unix command...

WASHINGTON — New rules proposed by the Education Department to govern a federal grant program for charter schools are drawing bipartisan backlash and angering parents, who say the Biden administration is seeking to stymie schools that have fallen out of favor with many Democrats but maintain strong support among Black and Latino families. The proposal would add requirements to the application process for grants from the federal Charter Schools Program, which has doled out billions of dollars over nearly 30 years to help open new charter schools or expand existing ones. It sets tighter restrictions on the schools’ relationships with...

ATLANTA — The rap star Young Thug, one of the most influential artists to emerge from Atlanta’s famously fertile hip-hop scene, was arrested on Monday on suspicion of gang involvement and conspiracy to violate of the Georgia criminal racketeering law. The rapper, whose real name is Jeffery Williams, was charged in a sweeping grand jury indictment that identified him and 27 other people as members of the same criminal street gang and charged some of them with violent crimes including murder and attempted armed robbery. Mr. Williams has reshaped the rap world throughout his decade-plus career and inspired a host...

Perhaps the most overlooked engine fueling inflation is the “wealth effect,” the extra spending from Americans feeling flush as their stock portfolios and home prices jumped by trillions during a tag-team, Olympic sprint for both. By far the biggest share of the extra outlays on the likes of new cars, home improvements, and laptops comes from America’s top income tiers. Besides opening their wallets as their net worth swelled, those high-earners—who own the most expensive houses—tapped the fast-rising value of their manses as ATM-style fonts for cash. The sudden spike in their nest eggs and their cash-out refis keep the...

It's a video, so you have to go watch.

.... One would think that by now all these anti-woke conservatives and moderate liberals would have learned at least some of the bitter lessons from the last decade about how political power and cultural change actually work, but I guess not. They could have taken note of all the fundamental factors driving this ideological belief system, all of which had to be painstakingly uncovered, layer by layer, even as it swept through every institution. But they have not. (Like, do they even read the pages and pages of erudite Substack anthropology on the topic? No?) They could have recognized by...

An experimental pill to treat Covid developed by the US company Pfizer cuts the risk of hospitalisation or death by 89% in vulnerable adults, clinical trial results suggest. The drug - Paxlovid - is intended for use soon after symptoms develop in people at high risk of severe disease. . . . . Interim data from trials of the treatment in 1,219 high-risk patients who had recently been infected with Covid found that 0.8% of those given Paxlovid were hospitalised compared with 7% of patients who were given a placebo or dummy pill. They were treated within three days of...

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — When Sharif Tabebordbar was born in 1986, his father, Jafar, was 32 and already had symptoms of a muscle wasting disease. The mysterious illness would come to define Sharif’s life. Jafar Tabebordbar could walk when he was in his 30s but stumbled and often lost his balance. Then he lost his ability to drive. When he was 50, he could use his hands. Now he has to support one hand with another. No one could answer the question plaguing Sharif and his younger brother, Shayan: What was this disease? And would they develop it the way their...

With the first results being reported in closely watched Virginia, former Gov. Terry McAuliffe, a Democrat, is trailing his Republican rival, Glenn Youngkin. Follow along for the latest results and analysis. LIVE Results: Va. Governor Candidate Party Votes Pct. Glenn Youngkin Rep. 1,142,461 55.0% Terry McAuliffe Dem. 919,606 44.3 Source: A.P. | 64% est. votes reported

More than 800 suspected criminals have been arrested worldwide after being tricked into using an FBI-run encrypted messaging app, officials say. The operation, jointly conceived by Australia and the FBI, saw devices with the ANOM app secretly distributed among criminals, allowing police to monitor their chats about drug smuggling, money laundering and even murder plots. Officials called it a watershed moment. Targets included drug gangs and people with links to the mafia. Drugs, weapons, luxury vehicles and cash were also seized in the operation, which was conducted across more than a dozen countries. This included eight tons of cocaine, 250...

BOXBOROUGH, Mass. — Six eBay employees mounted a cyberstalking campaign — including sending boxes of live cockroaches and a Halloween mask of a bloody pig’s face — against a couple who ran an online e-commerce newsletter, according to charges filed by federal prosecutors on Monday. Unhappy with the newsletter’s coverage of eBay, the employees, none of whom now work at the company, barraged the couple with threatening emails and sent disturbing deliveries, including a funeral wreath and a book on how to survive the death of a spouse, said Andrew E. Lelling, the United States attorney for Massachusetts, in a...

"I am finding this unbelievably troubling. The worst debate I have ever seen. "All of the candidates — except one — is attacking everyone. The VERY BEST Circular Firing Squad trump could hope for... all democratic candidates bloodied. . . . . . "This is sickening, a real slug fest with everyone shouting at the top of their lungs as if the world needed a hearing aid. I almost wish I needed one so I could remove it. If these are the survivors of 9 debates, we're in worse trouble than I thought. . . . . "The goal is...

A 48-minute YouTube video at the URL.

The GRU military intelligence agency was accused yesterday of making the largest intelligence blunder in Russian history after the Dutch hacking revelations appeared to result in the outing of more than 300 spies. Aleksei Morenets, one of the four Russian operatives accused of attempting to hack into the chemical weapons watchdog in the Netherlands, was identified in a leaked Russian car ownership database. Morenets’ Lada was registered in 2011 to a Moscow address that is believed to house a GRU barracks and specifically unit 26165, its notorious cyberespionage operation accused of attempting to hack into the Office for the Prohibition...

SANTA FE, N.M. — Have I got a college for you. For your first two years, your regimen includes ancient Greek. And I do mean Greek, the language, not Greece, the civilization, though you’ll also hang with Aristotle, Aeschylus, Thucydides and the rest of the gang. There’s no choice in the matter. There’s little choice, period. Let your collegiate peers elsewhere design their own majors and frolic with Kerouac. For you it’s Kant. You have no major, only “the program,” an exploration of the Western canon that was implemented in 1937 and has barely changed. It’s intense. Learning astronomy and...

Carl Jensen experienced what he calls “the awakening” sometime around 2012. He was a software engineer in a suburb of Denver, writing code for a medical device. The job was high-pressure: He had to document every step for the Food and Drug Administration, and a coding error could lead to harm or death for patients. Mr. Jensen was making about $110,000 a year and had benefits, but the stress hardly seemed worth it. He couldn’t unwind with his family after work; he spent days huddled over the toilet. He lost 10 pounds. After one especially brutal workday, Mr. Jensen Googled...

I own Ku Klux Klan regalia. I use it as a teaching tool in my history classes — oh, and I’m black. These three facts never fail to produce open-mouthed curiosity or incredulity. The most obvious question is how the regalia came into my possession. With a straight face, I say that in the late 1980s the Klan was going through hard times so they started an Affirmative Action program for self-hating minorities. Some people — amazingly — believe that, and some people don’t. (I confess. I have a devilish sense of humor!) The real answer is that before becoming...

..... Even in Ms. Ocasio-Cortez’s district, the Working Families Party line was won by Mr. Crowley, who had secured that party’s endorsement. Bill Lipton, state director of the Working Families Party, said he immediately reached out to Mr. Crowley’s campaign to request that he vacate the line. To Mr. Lipton’s chagrin, his campaign declined; Mr. Crowley will remain on the ballot in November. “You’d think that given the moment we’re in,” said Mr. Lipton, “that Democratic leaders would want to help progressive forces to unite.” Asked about Mr. Crowley’s plans regarding the Working Families Party line, a campaign spokeswoman said...