Posts Tagged ‘Moldova’

Peter Zeihan on the Ramifications of Russian Imperial Decline

Thursday, September 15th, 2022

Peter Zeihan says the abysmal performance of the Russian Army is going to have a whole lot of ramifications around the world, many in Russia’s own near abroad. “It means that the image of the Russians as a regional power, much less a global one, is gone, and it’s not coming back.”

Some takeaways:

  • “The countries that had signed on to kind of a Russian Alliance, if you will, [they’re] on their own completely, and that provides opportunities for their rivals to take matters into their own hands.”
  • He covers the Armenia-Azerbaijan flare-up.
  • Belarus: “Here’s a country of 10 million people that has basically hitched itself to Putin’s star. And the Poles, the Latvians, the Lithuanians, the Estonians, the Finns, and the Swedes they have been chomping at the bit for years to try to take Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus down to size and basically peel Belarus out of the Russian orbit. They will now have the opportunity, and it’s unlikely that anyone in Europe or the United States is going to try to stand in the way.”
  • “Unless Lukashenko sues for peace with the Balts and the Nordics, very quickly we should count on seeing him being brought up on war crimes before very long. Because after all he did provide the access that was necessary for the assault on Kiev early in the war.”
  • Georgia: “Here I do expect things to be a little bit more circumspect. The Georgians tried to call Russia’s bluff and invade their former secessionist Republics of North Ossetia and Abkhazia several years ago in 2004, and it was a trap and the Russians were able to destroy the Georgian Army. So the Georgians are not going to do this until a couple of other countries in the region have already pulled this off successfully.”
  • Moldova:

    There’s a small secessionist republic there called Transnistra. It’s only 10 percent of the population of a country of like three and a half million people. There’s not much going on there, but the Russians intervened decisively right at the end of the Soviet collapse to basically make sure that Transnistra could be functionally independent under Russian sponsorship, but unlike the Georgian secessionist territories, which share a land border with Russia proper, Transnistra is on its own. The only way to supply it is through Ukraine, and that has obviously stopped. So the Moldovans and their sponsors in Romania have now a vested interest in ending this historical aberration, and I would expect to see that being wrapped up within a year or two.

  • Israel: Without big brother Russia providing help, Syria may be screwed.

    The Russians have very publicly, unfortunately for them, relocated a lot of hardware from Syria to Ukraine, specifically air defense equipment to help them with their assaults. Which means that if you are Israel, the only thing that is standing in your way of going after the Syrian regime is someone from the Biden Administration saying “You know what? We really don’t want a nuclear event to erupt because there are Russian troops involved.” Well, the tone of the Biden Administration in the last 72 hours has kind of changed. Now it’s more of “You kids go have fun” sort of vibe, so I expect us to see some very interesting pyrotechnics between the Israelis and the Syrians in a very short period of time, followed by the Syrians suing for peace. Which means that we get to revisit the entire Syrian Civil War now without the Russians being players.

    Two caveats from my viewpoint: 1. Given the history of Israeli striking Syria with impunity several times over the past decade, with possibly one Israeli plane hit during that period, I don’t think Russian anti-aircraft equipment have provided any significant deterrent to Israel doing whatever it wanted in Syria. I view it more likely that Israel views a weakened Assad continually beset by a grinding civil war against numerous enemies a preferable option to taking him out entirely. 2. Not sure where Zeihan is getting his information on a change in the Biden Administration’s messaging to Israeli, but I readily concede that he likely does have better sources than I do. It may also be that the most recent failure of the asinine Iran deal has changed the collective mind of whatever passes for a Biden brain trust.

  • Speaking of Iran: “Tehran has lost its primary weapons sponsor, and its primary Security Council sponsor, and that is going to force the Iranians to think differently and act differently in every theater.”
  • Plus possible policy changes in (or toward) Cuba and Venezuela.

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    Posted in Foreign Policy, Military, video | 12 Comments »

    LinkSwarm for April 22, 2022

    Friday, April 22nd, 2022

    Russia eyes Moldova, Ron DeSantis and Florida republicans strip Disney of it’s special privileges in record time, CNN+ dies quicker than Sean Bean, and Florida Man scores a trifecta! It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!

  • A Russian general just announced plans to invade Moldova.

    A Russian General announced plans to occupy the Transnistria region of Moldova on Friday.

    Speaking at a defense industry meeting, Brigadier General Rustam Minnekayev, acting commander of Russia’s Central Military District, stated that the Russian Armed Forces plan to “make passage” into the region – in Moldova’s East, bordering Ukraine and less than 30 miles from the port city of Odessa – to create a “land corridor to Crimea,” Russian media reported. Such a corridor would also purport to connect the Russian mainland to Transnistria.

    Minnekayev stated that the measure was part of Russia’s second phase in its war in Ukraine, which involves establishing full control over the Donbas Region and Ukraine’s coast along the Black Sea. No timeline was provided for the maneuver to begin, however.

    Rather seems like overweening hubris to think about invading another country when they haven’t managed to defeat Ukraine despite pouring huge resources into the attempt.

    Speaking of Russia walking on rakes:

  • Giant fire engulfs Russia’s biggest chemical plant right after a fire broke out at “a sensitive Russian Defense Ministry research facility in the city of Tver.”

    Huge plumes of smoke were seen enveloping the Dmitrievsky Chemical Plant late this afternoon. The cause of the fire remains unknown. Almost 150 plant workers were reportedly evacuated.

    The facility in Kineshma, east of Moscow produces more industrial solvents than any other in Russia. It is less than 1,000km from the border with Ukraine.

    “Less than 600 miles” does not strike me as super close, even for Russia.

    Naturally, observers are starting to ask in connection to Russia’s war in neighboring Ukraine: coincidence? sabotage operation?

    Anti-Putin racecar driver Igor Sushko in tweeting the above video of the Dmitrievsky Chemical Plant going up in flames commented: “We are beginning to see a pattern develop.”

  • “Florida Governor DeSantis Signs Bill Stripping Disney of Autonomous Legal Status.”

    Governor Ron DeSantis signed legislation Friday that strips Disney of its 50-year-old “independent special district” status in retaliation for lobbying against Florida’s Parental Rights in Education law.

    The law dissolves the Reedy Creek Improvement District, an autonomous area created in 1967 to accommodate the massive Disney World complex near Orlando. The independent status has shielded Disney from significant tax burden.

    The governor fast-tracked the initiative to a special session Tuesday, after which the state Senate voted 23-16 on Wednesday to advance it.

    The parental rights measure keeps gender identity and sexual orientation instruction out of K-3 elementary school classrooms and enjoys majority support among Floridians.

    To quote The Wire: “You wanted to be in the game, right? Now you’re in the game.” For years, The Mouse was considered an unstoppable juggernaut that always got what it wanted. Then Disney decided to to throw it’s corporate weight behind the pro-grooming faction opposing a bill banning discussion of sex in elementary schools, and DeSantis knee-capped them in a week.

    Though the losses from special tax breaks and privileges is going to hurt the bottom line, Disney has done far, far more damage to its brand for stepping into the cultural wars to embrace forcing radical transexism on a resisting American public. That’s going to be destroying shareholder value for years (if not decades) to come.

  • DeSantis Bonus: Christopher Rufo spoke at the signing ceremony:

  • Dana Loesch isn’t shedding any tears over The Mouse.

    Am I and are others supposed to feel bad because the most opportune time to end Disney’s corporate welfare exploits the momentum that Disney created against themselves?

    Because I don’t.

    Disney vociferously and hatefully opposed parents who didn’t want ideological activist teachers lecturing their K-5th grade kids about how they bang their significant others after hours — Disney accused parents of opposing this as literally killing gay people because teachers with fantasy pronouns can’t talk about genitals when kids should be learning math.

    The left hated corporations influencing issues because of Citizens United v. FEC until they realized they could push Disney to lobby for them and now they LOVE corporations again! Party! I’m confused — are corporations still evil? They can’t influence issues or push for candidates that aren’t Democrat and they have more rights to a child than the parents raising said child? We really need some consistency from the left here.

    When corporations act as agents of the state all bets are off. When a corporation’s actual heir, the CEO, and executives say on camera and on their own social media accounts (as Disney’s did) that parental rights erase gay people (I know, what?) and people who support parental rights in the classroom are murderers, all bets are off.

    Who is “gaslighting” whom, here? Where was the opposition to the heinous manner in which parents were smeared? Was that not Disney’s “revenge” for opposition?

    Disney chose the boss fight against taxpaying parents and they lost.

    Losing their corporate welfare isn’t revenge, it’s a reckoning.

  • Relevant tweets:

  • John Nolte: “Yes, Democrats Really Do Want to Groom Your Children.”

    The debate we’re having right now…

    THE LEFT: We don’t want to sexualize little kids behind the backs of parents. Stop saying that. It’s a lie!

    FLORIDA: We’re going to outlaw sexualizing little kids behind the backs of parents.

    THE LEFT: NOOOOooooooo!

    What kind of country are we living in where we even have to pass a bill that outlaws sexualizing kids aged four to eight in the classroom?

    What kind of country are we living in where Florida teachers are angry that they can’t discuss their personal lives with your little kids, much less discuss sex?

    What kind of country are we living in where the Walt Disney Co., a company built on the idea of preserving the innocence of children and teaching them lessons about honesty, hard work, and true love, is now openly bragging about feeding the little kids sexual propaganda?

    Of course, this is grooming.

    What else would you call it?

    What is the rationale for telling innocent little boys that they might be girls or gay or bisexual? What other rationale could there be for that other than to destroy their innocence, to turn them into sexual creatures, and warp their sexuality into something that can later be exploited?

    Behind the backs of parents!

    For the life of me, except for my second-grade teacher talking about the day John Kennedy was assassinated, I cannot remember a single teacher who ever discussed their personal life. A couple of times, I remember seeing a teacher outside of school, at the store or something, and how odd it was to realize they existed outside the classroom.

    The thing to keep in mind here is that this is not a “gay” thing.

    It’s not gay people looking to groom little kids.

    Plenty of gay people are as disgusted by this as anyone. In fact, this sick movement is a terrible disservice to gays. What you have here is the LEFT working overtime to bring to life the very worst stereotypes about homosexuals looking to recruit among the innocent.

    What you have here is Disney bringing to life these terrible stereotypes.

    But that doesn’t change the fact that the left is desperate to groom your kids, to sexualize them behind your back.

    Why?

    Well, a whole lot of leftists want to have sex with your kids, and want to normalize sex between kids and adults. The evidence of that is everywhere. Democrats know opening the southern border will mean the import of child sex slaves. And yet, Democrats still open the border. Democrats continue to release child predators and suspected predators. We’re about to be saddled with a Supreme Court Justice who shrugs at child porn. More than one left-wing publication has asked us to better understand and sympathize with child molesters. The left embraced Jeffrey Epstein for decades. The left-wing Lincoln Project shielded a suspected predator.

    The other reason for the grooming is political.

    Democrats are losing key parts of their coalition: the working class, Hispanics, and chunks of the black population. One way they see of making up those numbers is to create a lot of damaged and broken young people obsessed with their sexuality. It’s just a fact that neurotic, unhappy lunatics and narcissists who define themselves by what they do with their sex organs vote Democrat. So… Democrats want to damage your kids to create a whole lot more of them.

  • “EIGHT news stories about teachers committing sex crimes upon children. ALL TODAY.”
  • Snapshot of our current problems: “In Biden’s Annual Economic Report, The Word “Gender” Is Used 40 More Times Than The Word ‘Inflation.'”
  • CNN+ shuts down one month after launch. There’s not enough schadenfreude in the world. Let a thousand pink slips bloom…
  • Another story getting short shrift because this LinkSwarm is so overstuffed: “Taylor Lorenz Attacked Libs Of Tik Tok Because Corrupt Media’s Main Function Now Is To Destroy The Right, Not Understand Its Appeal.”
  • From Powerline comes two tales of endemic corruption. The first was Yale University employee Jamie Petrone admitting to stealing over $40 million in computer equipment. “So for years, 90 percent of the equipment (sub-$10,000) that Yale’s emergency medicine department paid for–more than $40 million worth–never showed up. It didn’t exist. And no one noticed.”

    That’s the smaller of the two scandals. The bigger:

    A second instance of corruption is the Feeding Our Future scandal in Minnesota. The scandal actually involves entities in addition to FOF, and altogether $460 million or more has been funneled through these agencies by the federal free food programs Child and Adult Care Food Program (CACFP) and the Summer Food Service Program (SFSP). The whole thing turned out to be a criminal enterprise. Various crooks pretended to be feeding many thousands of non-existent Minnesota children. The fraud should have been obvious since, if you added up the numbers, a ridiculous percentage of all of the children in the state were supposedly getting free food through these newly-founded charities.

    The corruption occurred primarily, although not entirely, within Minnesota’s Somali community. Apparently spread sheets have been circulating among fraudsters showing the names and addresses of many thousands of Somali immigrants who can be listed as phantom beneficiaries of government programs. Here, like the Yale criminal, those who were in on the fraud have lived lavishly, with federal taxpayer money administered by the State of Minnesota paying for luxury cars, expensive homes, exotic vacations, and so on. Scott wrote here about a young Somali bride who was given a tray of gold worth $100,000 as a wedding gift by persons involved in the Feeding Our Future fraud.

    Such criminality is not subtle. Little care is taken to hide it. How can a handful of fly-by-night fraudsters steal hundreds of millions of dollars from the U.S. government and the State of Minnesota, and no one notices? As in Yale’s case, the answer is partly gross incompetence in Minnesota’s Tim Walz administration. But in the larger picture, government at all levels is rolling in so much dough that they don’t know what to do with it. A few hundred million is hardly worth checking up on.

    This goes toward proving my “Working Thesis,” that all new welfare state programs are designed to channel money into the pockets of crooks and left wing activists (to the extent that it’s possible to distinguish the two).

  • Don’t let the FBI ginning up the Gretchen Whitmer kidnapping plot distract you from the fact that they tried to do the same thing in Virginia.

    But the government not only attempted to manufacture “terrorists” in the Whitmer kidnapping hoax—the same FBI operation also tried to coax a man in Virginia to participate in the same sort of plot against Virginia Governor Ralph Northam. That scheme didn’t fully materialize, but the FBI’s attempt to pull off a similar stunt in Virginia reveals just how far agents were willing to go to bolster FBI Director Christopher Wray’s false warning that domestic extremists planned to “kill and assassinate” public officials.

    In summer 2020, Dan Chappel, the main informant in the Whitmer fednapping who was compensated at least $60,000 by the FBI for his services, targeted a man named Frank Butler, a disabled veteran in his late 60s and an alleged militia member. Taking instructions from Jayson Chambers, one of his FBI handling agents, Chappel used the same playbook in Virginia.

    “Dan suggests to Frank that he engage in acts of domestic terror,” defense attorneys wrote in a joint motion filed last year in the Whitmer case. “Like the defendants in this case, Dan suggested to Frank that he attack the governor of Virginia.”

    Screenshots submitted into evidence show a jaw dropping exchange between Chappel and Chambers in August 2020. “Goin [sic] to call frank butler today,” Chappel texted Chambers, asking for direction on what he should say to his target.

    “Mission is to kill the governor specifically,” Chambers replied.

    Just as in the Whitmer plot, Chappel lured Frank Butler into attempting to build an explosive device. Another text exchange in September 2020 shows Chappel and Chambers discussing a “recipe” for a bomb that Chappel can provide to Butler. After passing along the information to Butler, Chappel texted Chambers to tell him Frank planned on purchasing bomb-making supplies. “Awesome. Excellent work,” Chambers told Chappel.

    Chappel also invited Butler to a field training exercise in Wisconsin during the last weekend in October, an excursion attended by some defendants in the Whitmer caper.

    “This event, like all the others,” defense attorneys wrote, “was conceived, planned, and conducted by the federal investigative team of agents and undercover informants working together to provide a stage upon which to manipulate their targets into acting out ostensibly incriminating behavior the government hoped to elicit in its bid to develop and then ‘interrupt’ the operation of a ‘domestic terrorist organization.’”

    Butler, who cannot drive due to disabilities, did not participate. And to date, he has not been charged with any crime.

  • News you might have missed from two weeks ago: “Kenosha County ravaged by BLM riots flips red after decades of Dem leadership.” (Hat tip: Red State.)
  • “Republicans are registering formerly Democratic voters at four times the rate that Democrats are making the reverse conversion in the battleground state of Pennsylvania, a warning sign for Democrats as they try to keep control of the U.S. Congress.” You mean inflation, riots, tranny pandering and talking to elementary children about gay sex aren’t winning issues? Do tell.
  • Speaking of which, Joe Rogan wonders why California schools were trying to preach “antiracism” to his 9-year old daughter.
  • “Seattle’s transit system struggles as riders refuse to pay. So few riders are paying, fares are currently covering just 5% of the system’s operating costs, a fraction of the 40% mark Sound Transit set as a requirement.” (Hat Tip: Dwight.)
  • “Incestuous Dealings in Harris County Government Raise Alarms. Connections exposed between Democrat Commissioner Rodney Ellis and organizations receiving taxpayer money.”

    While most reporting on Harris County’s problems revolve around Democrat County Judge Lina Hidalgo, this citizen’s research suggests ties exist between Democrat County Commissioner Rodney Ellis (a former state senator) and certain organizations receiving taxpayer monies.

    Ellis’ influence, and the influence of at least one of these organizations, appears to reach all the way to Hidalgo’s office.

    Snip.

    To counteract shuttering the economy in 2020, Congress broke open a dam and flooded federal taxpayer monies nationwide. These monies flowed to state and then local governments for eventual distribution. Harris County’s cut from the 2020 CARES Act was $426 million.

    One organization the county commissioners gave some of these funds to was the Coalition for the Homeless. Ties were verified between Commissioner Ellis and this organization.

    Licia Green-Ellis, Ellis’ wife, is a partner of the Waterman Steele Real Estate Consulting Group. Another partner is Lance Gilliam, who is chairman of the Coalition for the Homeless. Gilliam donated to Ellis’ campaign in 2015, and he also donated to Hidalgo in 2018, 2019, and March and June of 2021.

    Hidalgo’s chief of staff, Alexander Triantaphyllis, is also on the coalition’s board.

    In April 2021, the coalition recommended commissioners allocate taxpayer monies toward “the rapid expansion of housing” for the homeless. This resulted in agreements between the county and multiple organizations, including a more than $1.2 million agreement with BakerRipley Community Developers. We’ll come back to them in a minute.

    The following month, commissioners ballooned funding for the housing program to more than $7 million, of which more than $3.6 million went to BakerRipley for the county’s “Rapid Rehousing” program.

    A lot more at the link. (Note: This piece came out just before the indictments came down.)

  • More Harris County shenanigans:

    That’s why the judge just recused herself.

  • New York City: Now that the pandemics over, everyone’s going to come back to our high-tax hellhole, right? People who used to work in NYC: LOL. Get Rekt!

    A high-tax, highly regulated city, New York has relied for the past 25 years on a growth formula of low crime, a stable social order, and an emphasis on high-value jobs at profitable companies for whom being in the city brought advantages that outweighed the costs. The result was a prosperous but hollow economy that featured well-paid jobs in finance, law, and technology alongside low-paid service-industry jobs necessary to support those workers, but lacked many of the middle-class jobs in manufacturing or financial back offices that the city once boasted.

    The pandemic has changed that calculus. The work-from-home movement has hit New York City’s office market—the backbone of its economy—right in the pocketbook. More than two years after the initial lockdowns that brought much of the economy to a standstill, only 38 percent of office workers have returned to their city jobs, which is below average for major cities. Employers have tried to get workers back to their Manhattan offices, only to be thwarted by Covid surges and resistance from employees who don’t want to return to working in person five days a week. A rise in violent crime and disorder hasn’t helped. Both the city’s current mayor, Eric Adams, and his predecessor, Bill de Blasio, as well as former governor Andrew Cuomo and successor Kathy Hochul, have at various times urged workers to return, but to little avail.

    The more that workers and companies discover they can accomplish through remote work, the greater the danger—because New York is by far the most expensive place to locate a worker in the country. Its overall cost of occupancy, including labor, utilities, and taxes, is 50 percent higher than the next most expensive American city, San Francisco, and three times as high as Dallas, Chicago, and Seattle. The gap is even larger with many smaller metro areas that seem poised for growth. One big component of these costs is taxes: the city and state together out-tax other competitors, taking as much as 45 percent more taxable income than the average of U.S. big cities and their states. No surprise, then, that even in the pandemic’s early stages, experts rated New York one of the places that might struggle the most to recover its jobs and residents.

    What are the Democrats who run New York (city and state) going to do to bring down high taxes? Jack and Squat.

  • Speaking of New York, a court just struck down their redistricting as Gerrymandering. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • In case you missed it, Pakistan’s Prime Minister was ousted two weeks ago. “Pakistan’s political opposition toppled Prime Minister Imran Khan in a no-confidence vote in Parliament early Sunday after several political allies and a key party in his ruling coalition deserted him.” He wasn’t the worst person to run Pakistan, but high inflation (even worse than ours) brought him down.
  • The new Pakistani Prime Minister is former opposition leader Shehbaz Sharif.
  • California’s corporate diversity law ruled unconstitutional. California’s law mandated that corporations stock their executive boards with members from various victimhood identity politics groups.
  • The trifecta! “Florida man arrested after cops find him in possession of drugs, guns and alligator.” Click through to see what a hard 31 looks like. (Hat Tip: Dwight.)
  • “Downtown Greek Restaurant Owner Escapes the Country, Leaving Workers and Rent Unpaid. That’s Simi Estiatorio, and the manager partner who fled the country is George Theodosiou. Read the link for the details. (Hat tip: Dwight.)
  • Heh:

  • Nicolas Cage answers the Internet’s questions.
  • “Jen Psaki Walks Back Claims That She Ever Worked For Biden Administration.”
  • “Check Out These 9 Trans-Friendly Kids’ Shows Coming To Disney.” Including Avatar: The Last Genderbender.
  • Worst thing about Austin this time of year? All this pollen in the air. Really triggers the allergies…

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    Posted in Austin, Crime, Democrats, Elections, Foreign Policy, Media Watch, Republicans, Social Justice Warriors, Texas, Waste and Fraud, Welfare State | 3 Comments »