Security desk: Indictment Should Make Kremlin Squirm
The real bombshell in last week’s indictment in the Russia hacking probe is Robert Mueller’s “apparent ability to link specific actions, such as searches and technical queries, to specific officers” of the GRU, Russian military intelligence. This, contends Bloomberg’s Leonid Bershidsky, is “an enormous leap” from past disclosures by US intelligence. It draws “the first straight line from the hacking and spearphishing of US Democrats to the Russian government” — specifically, Military Unit 26165, which handles cryptography. How did Mueller do it? One possibility: “The US had a mole within the GRU.” Another: “The US or an ally penetrated the GRU network and watched the operation in real time.” Either way, “Russian military intelligence appears to have been seriously compromised.”
Professor: Shut Down the Nation’s Universities
Left-wing ideology dominated US universities when he first entered college in 1985, recalls DePaul Prof. Jason D. Hill at The Hill. But “free speech was alive” and “one still could get a fair, balanced education.” Not so today: “The core principles and foundations that keep the United States intact, that provide our citizens with their civic personalities and national identities, are being annihilated.” So he proposes a radical solution: Defund universities, disband and rebuild them with values “advocating individualism, capitalism, Americanism, free speech, self-reliance and the morality of wealth creation.” The “cultural relativists” who rule the campus favor letting “politicized knowledge supersede truth, objectivity, facts and genuine learning.” Sad to say, “one cannot argue with such people.” So “withdraw your support and let them fund themselves.”
Conservative: Now Dems Are Dumping Their Moderates
Over the weekend, reports National Review’s John Fund, the California state Democratic committee voted to spurn moderate Sen. Dianne Feinstein in favor of left-wing foe Kevin de Leon, whom she trounced in last month’s primary. Feinstein apparently “didn’t keep up with the changes in California.” And though she’s shifted left in recent months, “it wasn’t enough” — hard-left activists are demanding she “help shut down the Senate rather than allow Brett Kavanaugh to be confirmed for the Supreme Court.” Other moderate Democrats shouldn’t be complacent, warns Fund: “The party’s left wing is gunning for them” in a headlong rush to socialism. But if these “warmed-over Marxists “think they can scare voters into supporting Democrats by flying Donald Trump blimps and brandishing his image on posters, they may be in for a rude surprise.”
Culture critic: What Happened to Sacha Baron Cohen?
Twelve years after he appeared on-screen, Sacha Baron Cohen’s Kazakh reporter, Borat Sagdiyev, is still funny because “he was a mirror that reflected the good, the bad, and the ugly” in America, says Liel Leibovitz at Tablet. But that was then. On his new TV show, Cohen looks and sounds “like someone you’d find posting feverishly to Twitter at two in the morning, hoping to ‘own’ the libs or ‘destroy’ the Republicans.” Like much of the rest of the media, “this one sharp comedic mind [has] grown lazy and sniffling, all sound and fury and signaling of virtue.” Fact is, he’s now traveling in “the shallow waters waded by the likes of John Oliver, Michelle Wolf and the other TV hacks who confuse outrage for insight and who select their targets from a very, very short list of pre-approved bugbears.”
Media writer: Israel Has Become a TV Powerhouse
Over the past two decades, reports Hannah Brown at Commentary, Israel “has become one of the world’s most prolific exporters of ‘formats’ — industry jargon for concepts and programs.” Israeli-originated hit TV series, of which there are dozens worldside, include “Homeland” and “Fauda.” Indeed, Palestinian fans who don’t speak Hebrew watch the latter series on Netflix with English subtitles, “and it’s become a guilty pleasure on the West Bank and in Gaza.” Moreover, pressure by anti-Israel activists to cancel the show “backfired” when Netflix decided it “was not going to let a group of easily offended activists dictate its programming.” So “the fact remains that millions of viewers around the world are watching programs developed by Israelis every day, and many more such shows are in the pipeline.”
— Compiled by Eric Fettmann
