Category Archives: culture

Blatant Cowardice

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Or blatant aiding and abetting. Or both. Here is the critical part of how things went down in the JBS Corporation hacker attack and JBS’…surrender…to the hackers:

After identifying the incursion early on Sunday, May 30, JBS said it alerted US authorities…. By that afternoon, the company had concluded that encrypted backups of its data were intact, said Andre Nogueira, chief executive officer of JBS USA Holdings Inc.

Then

Tuesday evening, progress getting JBS’s systems back online using its backup data made Mr Nogueira confident enough to issue a statement announcing that the majority of JBS plants would be operational on Wednesday, June 2.
The company’s consultants had continued negotiating with the hackers. Though forensic analyses by JBS and its specialists showed that no customer, supplier or employee data had been compromised, Mr Nogueira said, the cybercriminals claimed they had captured some.
JBS’s cybersecurity experts warned that the attackers may have left themselves some way to pry back in. After JBS negotiators and the hackers arrived at an $11 million sum….

Promptly getting back on the air with sound backups, JBS unharmed even if sorely inconvenienced, Nogueira continued negotiating with the hackers, and ultimately, Nogueira paid off anyway. And all, apparently, because the hackers claimed to have gained “some” data and that, according to his consultants, maybe—maybe—the hackers had left a back door for later use.

Never mind that the hackers claimed, after payment, that no, they didn’t have any stolen data. Who can trust the words of criminals? Never mind that, payment or not, the hackers’ back door remains—if it exists at all. Where’s JBS’ IT? Where’s JBS’ training—with enforced sanctions—of its employees regarding phishing and malware in general?

Then there’s this bit of cynicism:

The cost of the attack, he [Nogueira] said, would be immaterial to JBS….

Except for the part about Nogueira has made JBS an open target for further hacks, and their costs. Never mind the exposure Nogueira’s behavior has created for other businesses by demonstrating that such hacks actually work with impunity and as revenue-generators for the criminals (and political gain-generators for their State sponsors). Never mind, either, the costs this particular hack imposed on JBS’ customers and on the company’s suppliers.

St Louis Fed Fails

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The St Louis Federal Reserve Bank is busily going woke (my term, not Belongia’s and Ireland’s). They describe the following failure of the St Louis Fed:

The Federal Reserve Bank of St Louis is in the early stages of creating an Institute for Economic Equity “to support an economy in which everyone can benefit regardless of race, ethnicity, gender, or where they live,” with an emphasis on “economic outcomes experienced by historically marginalized groups.”

This is a two-pronged failure, and a double disaster if it comes to fruition. By its own description, the St Louis Fed’s IEE is racist and sexist at its core. Beyond that, by pushing outcomes rather than opportunities, the IEE is fundamentally socialist.

And what does the drive to create such an office say about the St Louis Fed’s president and board members?

A Latino Migration?

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It’s a distinct possibility, and it would be IMNSHO a good thing. William McGurn had some thoughts on this, citing a recent mayoral election in McAllen, TX, in which a Republican was elected for the first time ever. McGurn also noted that, in the 2020 Presidential election, nearby Zapata County voted Republican for the first time in 100 years when the county picked Warren G Harding. McGurn suggested that these might be the harbinger of a Latino migration from the (Progressive-)Democratic Party to the Republican Party.

Then McGurn offered some statistics from a National Republican Senatorial Committee survey of Latino likely voters in battleground states. Even accounting for the obvious potential of bias in the survey, the numbers are suggestive.

Asked to choose between two possibilities—Some people say free-market capitalism is the best form of government because it gives people the freedom to work and achieve and Other people say that socialism is the best form of government because it is more fair and equitable to working class people, 63% of respondents opted for the former, and only 17% went for the latter.

Other outcomes of the survey:

  • 67% are “very concerned” their kids “won’t have the same opportunities me and my family came here to find”
  • 58% said too many people in America are happy not to work and “just live off government assistance”
  • 80% percent agree that “public schools are failing”
  • 67% agree that too many Americans “are losing our traditional values centered on faith, family and freedom”
  • 57% “oppose Democrat efforts to pack the Supreme Court with liberal judges”
  • 72% agree “we should do what is necessary to control our southern border”
  • 65% oppose the Democrats’ “bill that would make voter ID illegal”
  • 50% agree that “many of the policies that Democrats say help all minorities actually end up hurting Hispanic families”

Even given the strong potential for bias in the survey, one aspect of its importance, McGurn noted, is that it was conducted during campaign season when then-candidate Biden was overtly pretending to be politically moderate.

Talking

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James Baker III had a very good op-ed in Sunday’s Wall Street Journal. Most of what he wrote was very sound.

However, there’s this:

many Americans had grown weary of being “talked at” rather than “talked to.”

Not exactly. “Talked at” and “talked to” are much more closely allied with each other—making plain, as they do, that the talk is purely one-way, with input from us Americans being undesired—than with the talk that most (not merely many) Americans actually prefer—being talked with.

Some Words on Timidity

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RR Reno, editor of First Things, had an interesting op-ed about why he isn’t interested in hiring graduates of our Ivy League schools. His disdain wasn’t so much for the woke activists effectively running those schools as it was for the rest of the pupils (my term; his more generous one was “students”) there [emphasis added].

Student activists don’t represent the majority of students. But I find myself wondering about the silent acquiescence of most students. They allow themselves to be cowed by charges of racism and other sins. I sympathize. The atmosphere of intimidation in elite higher education is intense. But I don’t want to hire a person well-practiced in remaining silent when it costs something to speak up.

The same applies to existing CxOs of our businesses who show themselves too timid to speak against the woke, or against anything else in which they do not believe. If they’re that timid, how can the companies they run be expected to compete—domestically or globally?

Those meek, acquiescent pupils? Look at the example set for them at those schools: the meek, acquiescent persons of the schools’ administrations, who have spent the last several years, if not their professional lives well-practiced in remaining silent when it costs something to speak up against their woke activist pupils. That studied [sic] timidity doesn’t excuse the silent pupils’ own timidity (their peers provide a different example), but those…administrators…with their example make their timid charges’ paths that much harder.