Colonial Pipeline Paid Hackers Nearly $5 Million in Ransom

No one is exactly covered in glory. Yet it is somehow fitting tidings for a shabby, blustering time.

Colonial Pipeline Co. paid nearly $5 million to Eastern European hackers on Friday, contradicting reports earlier this week that the company had no intention of paying an extortion fee to help restore the country’s largest fuel pipeline, according to two people familiar with the transaction.

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Scotland 2021

The protests took place as new MSPs were sworn in to what has been described as Holyrood’s most diverse parliament, taking their oaths is British Sign Language, Arabic, Urdu, Punjabi, Doric, Scots, Gaelic, Welsh and Orcadian, and after an election in which refugees had voting rights for the first time in Scotland.

Guardian
Protesters block immigration van from leaving after Glasgow raid
Standoff unfolds after detentions during Eid al-Fitr in apparent escalation of hostile environment policy

PTSD

I tell my friends the doctor has finally treated my parents.

I Tell My Patients Not to Mask Their Kids Outside
For most young people, the social and emotional benefits of taking masks off outdoors greatly outweigh the personal and public-health advantages of keeping them on.

The Washington casino

Ocasio-Cortez hits Biden for taking ‘the side of occupation’ in Mideast violence
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) criticized President Biden for “taking the side of occupation” amid escalating violence between Israelis and Palestinians in recent weeks.

The progressives are hoping that the administration’s current woes are caused by misfortune and soon end. If on the other hand they are the product of policy error they will persist.

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The anatomy of a stall

By piling on too many progressive policies once Biden created induced drag. Then with reduced power he pulled the nose up and increased the angle of attack beyond allowable limits. Conclusion:

“It’s working!”

The value of a Woke education

An “A” in Equity and an “F” everywhere else. What’s the average?

Kids will pay a steep price for this War on Merit in schools
The War on Merit in America’s schools is spreading — and threatening to take an ever-bigger toll on kids’ education. Last week, California’s Department of Education rolled out a draft framework for…

The shame weapon and Beijing

Memo to the One World Department
From the Aberdeen Hong Kong proving grounds
Re Effect of Mark 19 Super duper shame weapon on the Communist Party of China

China Targets Muslim Women in Push to Suppress Births in Xinjiang
In most of China, women are being urged to have more babies to shore up a falling birthrate. But in Xinjiang, they are being forced to have fewer.
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Selling good intentions, getting bad results

One of the things progressives are good at is selling good intentions, whether racial justice, climate justice, clean energy and/or Middle Eastern peace. However the path to these laudable goals wends through riots, resegregation, carbon taxes, gas shortages and renewed war in Israel. Why is that?

One theory is these bad things — like the depressing jobs report — are signs the progressives are on the right track. ‘Things have to get worse before they get better’.

The public will buy this contradictory experience for a while, just as some have gone along with the notion that more censorship, surveillance and gun control is needed to save democracy. But they will not go along with it forever. Sooner or later a policy becomes defined by what it does, rather than what it intends.

You are what you do. What have they done?