RealClearInvestigations' Picks of the Week
April 4 to April 10, 2021 Conservative documentary filmmakers have never gotten much love from the liberal gatekeepers of mass culture. But now they’re starting to fight back, standing up to heightened woke sensibilities in a golden age of nonfiction video fare buoyed by homebound streaming. Christian Toto reports for RealClearInvestigations: - For Black History Month, Amazon stopped offering “Created Equal,” about the black conservative Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas -- but filmmaker Michael Pack found a workaround in conservative media giant SalemNOW.
- Amazon also initially refused to carry Shelby and Eli Steele's against-the-liberal-grain documentary, “What Killed Michael Brown?” -- but a public outcry prodded the streaming giant into an about-face.
- “Uncle Tom,” about black conservatives, “was ignored by the Hollywood ‘we want diversity’ community," says Larry Elder, the black radio host behind the film. But he used his profile to help make it profitable in multiples of its production costs.
- Conservative commentator Dinesh D’Souza, whose “2016: Obama’s America” became the second-highest-grossing political documentary of all time, succeeded without the liberal-dominated festival circuit creating buzz and a path to distribution. But he warned the odds against conservatives have worsened lately because of ramped-up suppression by both Big Tech and woke corporations.
- Still, as the Hollywood Reporter noted recently: “More than 70 million Americans voted for Donald Trump in the November election. … That leaves a big opening for those willing to risk ostracization from the rest of the industry.”
Biden, Trump and the Beltway Hunter Biden's Shady Ukraine Dealings Just the News
U.S. Kills Press Release on Border Terror-List Arrests Fox News
Big Automatic Debits for Unwitting Trump Donors New York Times
$60 Million a Week to Shelter Unaccompanied Minors Washington Post Other Noteworthy Articles and Series National Guard Buries Claims of Sex Assault
Capital Times
National Guard units around the country have buried sexual assault allegations, withheld crucial documents from victims and retaliated against women who have come forward, including denying them career advancement, this investigation finds. A lack of central authority may be tied to the seeming unwillingness to vigorously investigate allegations – which rose to 607 in 2019, from 173 in 2009. The National Guard Bureau, a federal agency that oversees state National Guard units, but does not regulate them, has issued guidance that state Guards should report all sexual assault allegations to local police and the National Guard office. But that doesn’t always occur. The Wisconsin Guard referred to police just 4 of 35 sexual-assault cases, or 11%, from 2009 to 2019. And when state Guards do report cases to the national bureau, authorities there investigate just a fraction of them – 110 out of 368 nationwide, or 30%, in 2019. The National Guard Bureau says it investigates cases only when civilian police decline to investigate or prosecute. 'Leave No Tigrayan': In Ethiopia, an Ethnicity Is Erased
Associated Press
The government of Ethiopia is committing genocide against one of the country’s ethnic minorities, the Tigrayan people, this article reports. Tigrayan leaders had dominated the country’s government for nearly three decades, creating a system of ethnic-based regional states. But when Abiy Ahmed took office in 2018, he moved to centralize power. He sidelined the Tigrayans and made peace with Eritrea after years of war, earning a Nobel Peace Prize. He now stands of accused of teaming up with his ethnic group — his mother was Amhara — and soldiers from neighboring Eritrea to punish the roughly 6 million Tigrayans. Witnesses say they have split much of Tigray between them, with the Amhara in the west and Eritrean forces in the east. Almost all described killings, rapes and the looting and burning of crops that without massive food aid could tip the region into starvation. Washington: New Monsters Replace State Asylums
City Journal
Beginning with passage under President John F. Kennedy of the Community Mental Health Act of 1963, federal and state governments dismantled mental asylums and released the psychiatrically disturbed into the world. The question now is not, “What happened to the asylums?” but “What replaced them?” This detailed article, which focuses on three metropolitan areas – Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Seattle – answers “not much.” In the absence of the old asylums, the mentally ill are often crowded into city-sanctioned tent encampments, then shuffled through the institutions of the modern social-scientific state: the jail cell, the short-term psychiatric bed, the case-management appointment, the feeding line, and the needle dispensary. “In the name of compassion,” Christopher F. Rufo reports, “we have built a system that may be even crueler than what came before.” Images of Huge Russian Military Buildup in Arctic
CNN
Russia is amassing unprecedented military might in the Arctic, CNN reports, and testing its newest weapons – including Poseidon 2M39 torpedo. Powered by a nuclear reactor, the unmanned torpedo is designed to sneak alog the sea floor past coastal defenses – like those of the U.S. The device is intended to deliver a warhead of multiple megatons, according to Russian officials, causing radioactive waves that would render swathes of the target coastline uninhabitable for decades. Satellite images provided to CNN detail a stark and continuous buildup of Russian military bases and hardware on the country's Arctic coastline, together with underground storage facilities likely for the Poseidon and other new high-tech weapons. The Russian hardware in the High North area includes bombers and MiG31BM jets, and new radar systems close to the coast of Alaska. The Russian buildup has been answered by NATO and U.S. troop and equipment movements. Abandoned Gas Wells Are Littered Across Southwest
Grist/Texas Tribune/Pulitzer Center
An unexpected result of the global pandemic: the rise of orphaned oil and gas wells. As energy prices sank due to the economic slowdown, this article reports, many operators abandoned their wells. In Texas and New Mexico it is estimated that there are at least 7,000 such orphans, which the states define as those for which they have no approved operator on record. In such cases the state is on the hook for cleanup. Officials from the two states estimate it will cost $335 million to plug the current crop of orphans. Modeling suggests that many more wells may join the list, with future cleanup costs ranging from a conservative $168 million to a mind-boggling $117 billion. Though they force oil and gas producers to front substantial cash to cover plugging costs in case their wells are abandoned, these bonds only covered one-sixth of Texas’ cleanup costs in 2015. In New Mexico, these bonds would cover just 18 percent of plugging costs for all of the state’s orphan wells. Mexican Cartel Used Ebay to Arm Itself
Vice
Ismael Almada needed to purchase some supplies for his employer. Like millions of people, he found what he needed on eBay and paid for it all through PayPal. The twist, this article reports, is that his employer was Mexico’s infamous Jalisco New Generation Cartel and his shopping list consisted of military-grade weapons and accessories for tactical gear for his fellow criminals. Investigators found some 300 separate transactions, including “night vision goggles, laser sights, armored vests, safety respirators ... additional ammo pouches, gun accessories, muzzle brakes,” as well as grenade-launcher accessories. The Almada case shows how many of these accessories may have entered Mexico via internet shopping and messenger delivery. It is not clear what, if anything, can be done to stop it. Coronavirus Investigations Covid Mutants Multiply Amid Race to Decode Bloomberg
HHS Didn't Scrutinize Coronavirus Grant to Wuhan Lab Daily Caller
Sweden’s No-Lockdown Pandemic Experiment New Yorker
The Story of Johnson & Johnson's One-Dose Vaccine New York
As States Expand Vaccines, Inmates Lack Access AP/Marshall Project |
