More Russian Bases In Crimea Go Boom

August 16th, 2022

Looks like more Russian bases in Crimea are blowing up despite being hundreds of miles from the front lines.

First up: France 24 reports explosions on a base in NE Crimea:

Caveat: The video map calls the location Mayskoye, which isn’t in Crimea, but across the Kerch strait in Russia proper. Later, they show a tweet with the location as Dzhankoi, which matches up with the location shown on the map.

More video, where you can see subsequent munitions explosions, and which says that Mayskoye is 14 miles from Dzhankoi:

I assume that the Crimean Mayskoye is a local town or subdivision too small to show up in Google Maps.

There are also reports of explosions on the Russian-occupied airfield near Simferopol.

The Russian mass media report of clouds of black smoke over the military airfield in the village of Hvardiiske, Simferopol district of Russian-occupied Crimea.

Source: Kommersant publication with reference to local residents, Christo Grozev, head of Bellingcat on Twitter

Details: Local residents also confirm that clouds of black smoke are seen above the airbase in Hvardiiske.

According to them, several explosions were heard earlier on the territory of the military base.

According to the source, local military departments and law enforcement agencies assume it could be an attack by a small unmanned aerial vehicle that hit an ammunition storage.

Supposedly this is video of the explosion. Usual caveats apply.

And this is supposedly video of Russians lining up to leave Simferopol following the strikes:

A few takeaways:

  • The size of the explosions suggest that Ukraine continues to receive good location intelligence about Russian military infrastructure and ammo dumps.
  • From the beginning of Russia’s invasion to last week, reports of major Ukrainian strike on Crimea were all but non-existent. Since then we’ve had several. Clearly Ukraine sees a new need and/or ability to strike these farther targets.
  • This may be an attempt to cripple Russian supply lines and air support in support of Ukraine’s slow-developing Kherson counteroffensive.
  • LinkSwarm for August 15, 2022

    August 15th, 2022

    Greetings, and welcome to a special Monday LinkSwarm! Still getting over a bad cold, but both the wet cough and fatigue have improved thanks to lets of bed rest.
    
    

  • Also on the mend: Salman Rushdie, who is reportedly off the ventilator and able to talk and joke.
    

  • Inflation is ever-so-slightly-down at 8.5%, mainly due to lower energy prices, but still near four-decade highs.
    

  • For example, eggs are up 47% over the last year.
    

  • Stories of unparalleled depravity: “Metro Atlanta couple charged with using adopted kids to make child porn.” I see they left out the word “gay” before couple.

    Walton County couple has been arrested and are facing child sex crime charges for acts deputies say they committed against their adopted children.

    Last month, the Walton County Sheriff’s Office raided a home in unincorporated Loganville where they believed a man was downloading child pornography. When interviewing him, the suspect admitted to collecting child porn and identified a second suspect in Oxford.

    The suspect told deputies that the other suspect was making the child porn with at least one child who lived in his home. The first suspect’s identity has not been released.

    Deputies were able to get arrest warrants for both adult men living in the home, William Dale Zulock, 32, and Zachary Jacoby Zulock, 35.

    Walton County’s Division of Family and Child Services joined deputies in responding to the home to help protect the two children in the home.

    After making sure the children were safe, investigators found evidence that the couple, who were the adoptive fathers of the pair of brothers living there, were recording themselves committing sexually abusive acts against the children.

    (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)

  • Speaking of the Democratic Media Complex doing it’s best to try to avoid the existence of pedophiles among its ranks, they really don’t like you using the word groomer. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • Florida isn’t taking tranny madness and child genital mutilation lying down: “Florida Board Of Medicine Moves To Ban Transgender Treatments For Minors.”
  • But teachers unions are still all in on the groomer agenda, the law be damned.
  • Has the war against tranny madness turned the tide in the UK?

    At the end of July, the Tavistock gender clinic in the United Kingdom was closed down by the National Health Service after a review of the clinic’s practices found that its “clinical approach and overall service design has not been subject to some of the normal quality controls that are typically applied when new or innovative treatments are introduced.”

    In a letter addressed to the NHS, Dr. Hillary Cass, who conducted the review, wrote that other providers had “not developed the skills and competencies” necessary to provide the right amount of support to children “with lesser degrees of gender incongruence who may not wish to pursue specialist medical intervention.” Cass acknowledged that there are unanswered questions about the use of puberty blockers as a treatment for children questioning their own gender identity and suggested that much more evidence will need to be collected before she draws a conclusion on their value in these contexts.

    Puberty blockers were initially developed as a treatment for precocious puberty in young children, but have since been repurposed and advertised by transgender activists as a way to hit the “pause” button and buy time for kids who think they may have been born in the “wrong body.” A sizable-but-marginalized group of doctors has long warned that the consequences of puberty-blocker use as a part of the transition process are unclear, and amount to an affirmative and significant step toward transitioning, rather than a “pause.”

    The closure of Tavistock in July came as welcome news to those of us worried about the skyrocketing number of children suffering from gender dysphoria and being treated as though it were a physical malady. Then, yesterday, it was reported that a group of families in the U.K. is suing the NHS arm affiliated with Tavistock for the effects that its dogmatic approach to the treatment of youth — described by Cass as “an unquestioning affirmative approach” — had on their own lives.

    A lawyer for the plaintiffs told Sky News that he believes that misdiagnoses have affected “potentially hundreds of young adults who have been affected by failings in care over the past decade at the Tavistock Centre.” It is, first and foremost, a tragedy that this has happened, but it is undoubtedly encouraging to see the mistreated join together not just to collect damages, but to tell their stories.

    Moreover, the politicians in the country’s Conservative Party are showing signs that they may be willing to push back on the madness. Attorney General Suella Braverman said earlier this week that transgender theory should not be taught in schools. Penny Mordaunt, a near-finalist in the Tory leadership contest, was sunk in part because of her lack of spine on the issue.

    Across the U.K., then, politicians, doctors, and activists are all beginning to recognize that the unquestioningly affirmative model of care for gender-dysphoric children is scientifically unsound, morally dangerous, and the result of, more than anything else, social and political dogma.

    And the U.K. is not the first European country to begin to recognize its past mistakes. In Sweden, the use of puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones have been almost entirely ruled out for minors as of this year. Finland, meanwhile, has determined that “the initiation of hormonal interventions that alter sex characteristics may be considered before the person is 18 years of age only if it can be ascertained that their identity as the other sex is of a permanent nature and causes severe dysphoria” and “the young person is able to understand the significance of irreversible treatments and the benefits and disadvantages associated with lifelong hormone therapy, and that no contraindications are present.”

  • Nancy Pelosi’s Son a Major Investor in Chinese Telecoms Company.” Try to contain your shock. Although that headline needs a corrections: He’s an equity holder in the company, but I don’t think he invested jack in the company. Or squat.

    House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s son has apparently joined the list of political offspring who magically keep landing jobs as “consultants” overseas. The Daily Mail reports:

    Nancy Pelosi’s son is the second largest investor in a $22 million Chinese company whose senior executive was arrested in a fraud investigation, DailyMail.com can reveal, raising questions about his secretive visit to Taiwan with his mother.

    As well as investing, Paul Pelosi Jr, 53, also worked for the telecoms company, Borqs Technologies, in a board or consultancy role, Securities and Exchange Commission documents show.

    Wow, this feels like déjà vu all over again. Just substitute the name “Hunter Biden” for “Paul Pelosi Jr.” and the story would still sound credible.

    For his “consultancy,” Pelosi was given 700,000 shares of stock in the company. At one time he was the second-largest shareholder in the Beijing-based firm, although it’s unclear if that’s still the case today. Either way, it must be nice. Borqs is a telecoms company specializing in the “Internet of Things” products and is “listed on the Nasdaq stock exchange with a current market capitalization of $22 million,” according to the Mail.

    Hunter Biden seems to have a better nose for profitable graft corridors than Pelosi’s get, since a $22 market cap is essentially nothing in the IoT space…

  • “Progressive Pollster Finds That People Oppose Progressive Policies.”

    The poll from the Democratic-aligned Winning Jobs Narrative Project, which surveyed 60,000 voters across 17 states, found that “making villains of corporations” and embracing “culture war topics like abortion” are ineffective strategies for Democrats. Liberals would attract more voters, in fact, if they sounded like conservatives—talking about “respect for work” and placing “government in a supporting rather than primary role.”

    Voters prefer Republicans’ handling of the economy, which remains “the top issue of the coming election,” the poll found. Americans don’t believe President Joe Biden’s claims that “this has been the fastest recovery in 40 years,” instead “looking at the worst inflation in the same period and record gas prices.”

    (Hat tip: Instapundit.)

  • “Despite Strict Gun Control, California Had The Most Active Shooter Incidents In 2021.”
  • Drought has the Rhine river so low that barge transport is impossible in some places.
  • Another day, another Democratic politician refusing to pay his tax bill. “Pennsylvania Democratic Congressman Matthew Cartwright is once again in trouble for being delinquent on his property taxes. Cartwright and his wife share a condo in Washington and tax records indicate that they owed penalties and interest from 2021 due to being late in paying their taxes.”(Hat tip: Instapundit.)
  • “Top Physicist Admits ‘Distant Star’ Photo Was Actually Chorizo.”
  • Wear a kimono in China? That’s an arresting.
  • Home Run Inn recalls frozen pizza over metal pieces.
  • Nvidia announces terrible results. Of course, terrible for them was still $6.7 billion of revenue…
  • Tiny Boat House.
  • “‘The FBI Raid On Melania’s Closet Was Justified,’ Says Merrick Garland Wearing Gorgeous New Evening Gown And Sun Hat.”
  • 

    New Outbreak Of Violence on U.S./Mexican Border

    August 14th, 2022

    A new wave of cartel violence has broken out Mexican cities on the U.S. border.

    Juarez, across the Rio Grande from El Paso:

    MEXICO CITY — A gang riot inside a border prison that left two inmates dead quickly spread to the streets of Ciudad Juarez where alleged gang members killed nine more people, including four employees of a radio station, security officials said Friday.

    The surge in violence recalled a far more deadly period in Juarez more than a decade earlier. Mexico’s powerful drug cartels commonly use local gangs to defend their territory and carry out their vendettas.

    The federal government’s security undersecretary, Ricardo Mejía Berdeja, said the violence started inside the state prison after 1 p.m. Thursday, when member of the Mexicles gang attacked members of the rival Chapos.

    Two inmates were killed and 20 injured.

    Then suspected gang members outside the prison began burning businesses and shooting up Ciudad Juarez.

    “They attacked the civilian, innocent population like a sort of revenge,” President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said. “It wasn’t just the clash between two groups, but it got to the point in which they began to shoot civilians, innocent people. That is the most unfortunate thing in this affair.”

    Mejía said four employees of MegaRadio who were broadcasting a live promotional event outside a business were killed in the shooting.

    Chihuahua state Attorney General Roberto Fierro Duarte said that a boy wounded in a shooting at a convenience store died later at the hospital, two women were killed in a fire at another gas station convenience store and two other men were shot elsewhere in the city.

    Fierro said 10 suspects had been arrested.

    Violence also erupted in Tijuana:

    U.S. government employees in Tijuana, Mexico have been urged to shelter in place as the U.S. consulate warned of multiple vehicle fires, roadblocks and other incidents early on Saturday.

    “The U.S. Consulate General Tijuana is aware of reports of multiple vehicle fires, roadblocks, and heavy police activity in Tijuana, Mexicali, Rosarito, Ensenada, and Tecate. U.S. government employees have been instructed to shelter in place until further notice,” the consulate’s official Twitter account said.

    The consulate further advised U.S. citizens to avoid the area, seek shelter if in the area, inform their friends and families of their situation and monitor news reports for information.

    Police arrested members of the Jalisco New Generation cartel.

    Borderlands Blog fingers a more specific subject for being responsible for the roadblocks.

    The first suspect of having organized and ordered the narco-blockades yesterday, Friday, in Baja California is Javier Adrián Beltrán Cabrera, according to the first indications received by the intelligence areas integrated in the Coordination Table for Peace and Security, reported the weekly Zeta.

    Beltrán Cabrera, also known as “El Javi”, “El Pedrito”, “El Pit” and “Puma”, was imprisoned in 2011 for possession of a weapon and was released.

    According to Zeta’s publication, Beltran Cabrera is listed as the leader of a criminal cell called “Los Erres” that had served as hitmen for the Sinaloa Cartel, but in 2022 allied with the Jalisco Cartel – New Generation (CJNG).

    “El Puma” was being investigated as the mastermind of multiple murders committed in July and August in eastern Tijuana, but there is no arrest warrant for him.

    Zeta reported that in four hours a total of 24 vehicles were set on fire in five of the seven municipalities of Baja California: Mexicali, Tecate, Ensenada, Tijuana and Rosarito.

    Here’s video of a truck on fire in Tijuana:

    As always, the twists and turns of the ever-present cartel war in Mexico remain seriously under-reported in American media. While calm for a while, Tijuana and Juarez flared up again as turned into hotspots for cartel violence over the last few years, and were ranked the second and third most violent cities in the world last year. (Indeed, seven of the ten most violent cities in the world were in Mexico, along with one each from South Africa, Brazil…and St. Louis. Thanks a lot, Kim Gardner.)

    An administration interested in protecting the lives of Americans might clamp down on border security to prevent more cartel members from entering the country. That is not this administration. Their top goal still appears to be keeping the border wide open to get as many illegal aliens to cross over as they possibly can.

    Reno 911: Texas Edition

    August 13th, 2022

    If your taxes are high and your town government sucks, what solutions are open to you? Reno, Texas has come up with one solution: disincorporation.

    Voters in Reno, a Parker County town west of Fort worth, will consider a ballot proposition next year that would disincorporate their city and abolish the charter.

    The group organizing the petition turned in 496 signatures, securing its place on the ballot.

    Texas code allows such questions to be put before voters provided the group meets a threshold of 400 signatures, a mark reached earlier this summer in Reno.

    Now the prospect will go to the voters.

    If a vote to disincorporate passes, the city’s responsibilities will fall to the larger Parker County jurisdiction.

    According to those pushing this initiative, the goal of disincorporation comes on the heels of years of lackluster city services, including issues with their police department and city maintenance departments. These issues include sudden officer resignations and unmaintained city roads.

    Proponents for disincorporation also claim their city tax rates are “unreasonably high” and that those funds are misappropriated. From 2016 to 2020, Reno property tax revenue increased by more than $150,000. Since 2017, the property tax rate has been kept constant, but rising property values result in higher tax bills. When adopting the tax rate, city officials have the appraisal information in front of them.

    The alleged lackluster service from the city’s police department focused on turnover in 2021 when multiple officers resigned, leaving then-chief Tony Simmons as the only officer presiding over the city of 3,000.

    The city normally has four full-time officers working in its police department.

    Shortly after the resignations of these officers, Simmons and the city mutually agreed to part ways.

    ”During my time as mayor I came to the realization that continuing to fund the City of Reno did not seem like a sustainable thing,” former Reno mayor Eric Hunter, who is heading up the petition effort, told The Texan.

    “We can’t continue to adequately maintain our roads and physical infrastructure while still keeping taxes low. The way the city council has been mismanaged, they were going to run us off the road. And I thought, why can’t we just be an unincorporated community?”

    About the police department issues, Hunter said, “We had a police department that was well-trained and experienced, and that council ran them off.”

    How did they run them off? It sound like the city council refused to pay officers what they were promised.

    Two former officers have filed labor claims with the state against the city for unpaid wages following their promotions.

    Jason Schmidt, who joined Reno PD at the end of 2018, was promoted to the open position of lieutenant on Aug. 1. The promotion was supposed to come with a raise in pay from $28 an hour to $32, but that didn’t happen, according to Schmidt’s claim.

    “Mayor is refusing to give raise given to me by the chief of police and city administrator,” Schmidt noted in his wage claim, submitted to the state Aug. 19.

    Schmidt’s new role made him supervisor of John Thompson III, who was promoted to sergeant Aug. 1, with a pay raise of approximately $4 more per hour.

    “Mayor stated the council did not approve our promotions,” Thompson wrote in his wage claim as to the reasoning for not being paid. “The council does not handle promotions and our chief followed all policies.”

    Those policies were called into question at last month’s meeting, during which council members tabled Simmons’ request for the new salaries and take-home vehicles.

    One council member said he was unaware that the officers had already been promoted, with Mayor Pro Tem Randy Martin adding they “want to be a part of it” any time there’s a promotion.

    Simmons told the board he had mentioned the promotions to City Administrator Scott Passmore, as he was required to do, and had then been asked to put the item on the agenda. Simmons added that it would not have an affect on his department’s budget, as the salaries were already set for the officers who had vacated those positions.

    Schmidt echoed Simmons’ reasoning in his claim to the Texas Workforce Commission, noting that the city “stated that the pay raise has to go before council. However, it’s already budgeted.

    So the Reno City Council lost their previous police force either because they were too cheap to pay $1,440 a month in promised promotion increases, or because their egos require their police chief to play Mother May I for existing positions in his own department. I can see why all of them left.

    Maybe disincorporation is the right solution.

    Taking A Sick Day; Also, Salman Rushdie Stabbed

    August 12th, 2022

    I’ve come down with the first real cold I’ve had in two years, and the 90 minute recall work on my car took 3.5 hours, so I’m tried and pissed off, Maybe a LinkSwarm tomorrow, assuming I’m feeling better.

    Meanwhile: Open thread.

    Also, writer Salman Rushdie was stabbed in the neck today at an event in The Chautauqua Institution in southwest New York state, near Lake Eire and the Pennsylvania line. As of this writing, Rushdie is evidently still alive and in surgery.

    “The current Supreme Leader [of the Islamic Republic of Iran] repeated and reaffirmed the original fatwa as recently as 2019.”

    And these are the people the Biden Administration is desperate to do a deal with…

    Russians Fleeing Crimea

    August 11th, 2022

    I suppose I should clarify that the Russian fleeing Crimea are not Russian soldiers but civilians.

    Videos posted to social media show Russian vacationers fleeing Crimea following blasts at a military air base in the region that Moscow seized from Ukraine in 2014.

    Black smoke from the Saki air base located in the west of the peninsula was visible from the nearby packed beaches after the attack on Tuesday which the Russian-appointed head of Crimea, Sergei Aksyonov, said had left one person dead and 14 injured.

    The explosion sparked an exodus from the area which has been a popular holiday resort for years with videos showing people driving over the Kerch Bridge that links Crimea with the Russian territory of Krasnodar.

    In one video, a woman expressed gratitude that her car was at least moving in the traffic jam, although she tearfully lamented how she had to leave Crimea.

    “Special operation. Everything goes according to plan. Russians are fleeing Crimea, there are huge traffic jams on the roads,” Twitter user Lieutenant Kizhe captioned the clip, which by Thursday morning had been viewed more than half a million times.

    The news outlet Live Kuban described how Krasnodar residents faced inspections from law enforcement and cars were snarled up in an “incredible” traffic jam. One driver said he had been stuck for almost half an hour just before the bridge.

    “The traffic jams toward the Kerch Strait Bridge connecting Crimea with Russia are now dozens of kilometers long.”

    For all the talk of how Crimea is “inseparable” from Russia, it seems like an awful lot of actual Russians are separating from it as quickly as they possibly can. And all this after one missile strike. That would suggest that the locales know something that all the online trolls confidently and bombastically predicting inevitable Russian victory don’t. It’s also a far cry from the tenacious defense the Soviets put up in places like Leningrad and Stalingrad against actual (not pretend) Nazis, where every foot of advance was paid for in blood.

    There are also reports of Russian military families living near occupied Kherson leaving.

    An accurate picture of who’s winning the Russo-Ukranian War is hard to come by, but right now it sure seems like the Russians are spooked.

    Is China Buying Texas Land?

    August 10th, 2022

    The issue of Chinese interests buying up Texas land is one of those stories that has been flitting around the edges of my peripheral awareness for a while. Now Robert Montoya, Jessie Conner and Emily Wilkerson of Texas Scorecard has done a handy deep-dive on the subject.

    Many Americans assume incorrectly that American soil is reserved for our citizens and businesses.

    The sobering fact, however, is that foreign nationals—both individuals and corporations—own a lot of land in America.

    Particularly troubling are incursions by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) absorbing Texas soil for its strategic geopolitical ends.

    Texas Scorecard recently launched a four-part investigative series exposing CCP infiltration of our state’s education apparatus. During our months-long investigation on the CCP’s activities, it became clear that education was merely one part of a multi-prong incursion into the United States of America.

    The second prong we will explore here is their infiltration of our agricultural land.

    There are some who wave a hand at concerns about foreign entities and individuals owning land stateside, dismissing them as conspiratorial or xenophobic. However, a review of adversarial countries’ actions suggests land holdings are strategic and could undermine national and resource security.

    Furthermore, concern over CCP ownership of U.S. land isn’t a partisan issue. During our investigation, we found multiple instances of Republicans and Democrats making public statements, authoring legislation, and warning of the national security implications of such ownership of U.S.-based assets.

    Snip.

    For the past decade, the number of purchases of agricultural resources by foreign actors has dramatically increased across the nation, with Texas being No. 1 according to a review of USDA documents. Currently, at least 4.7 million acres of Texas’ agricultural land is owned by a foreign entity or individual.

    What is even more troubling is the intended uses of the land and the actors involved in development.

    In theory, the U.S. federal government should be keeping track of foreign agricultural land ownership. But time and again, it’s not until the last moment that disclosures are made and concerns are publicly raised. Texas Scorecard’s research on these holdings shows that on more than one occasion, foreign acquisitions that should have been stopped immediately were allowed to progress and only ultimately stymied with great effort.

    Overview of the widely ignored Agricultural Foreign Investment Disclosure Act (AFIDA) snipped.

    For instance, take China’s land holdings overall. 2020 figures from the USDA put total foreign-owned agricultural land holdings for China at 352,140 acres, up from 191,652 acres in the prior years report. Because of high-profile purchases starting in 2015, a single company owned up to 140,000 acres in South Texas alone.

    Instead of comprehensive reporting from the USDA or state agricultural departments, Americans are left with what amounts to—at best—a (self-reported) guess and a steady stream of stories about foreign entanglements that spring up from time to time.

    Also, it’s a poorly guarded secret that foreign land ownership is hidden.

    One way some foreign farmland owners circumvent disclosure or state-level laws barring foreign ownership of farmland is shifting property into majority U.S.-owned subsidiaries—not to mention that land holdings by foreign owners are often a moving target. For instance, a particular parcel’s inclusion as foreign-owned land can fluctuate annually if it’s owned by a publicly traded corporation. The threshold of stock ownership is relatively low at 10 percent.

    This is the national component of foreign land ownership and the limits of what we can know at that level.

    When it comes to Texas, the state does not prohibit the ownership of agricultural land by foreign individuals or entities. There are multiple states that have total bans, while others at least have limits.

    While this complacency has been the status quo for the better part of the past two decades, lawmakers appear to be more proactive about keeping tabs on foreign actors.

    Global supply chain disruptions in 2020 due to the Chinese coronavirus, followed quickly by the war in Ukraine and growing tensions between the U.S. and China over Taiwan, have lawmakers critically examining foreign infiltrations at home.

    A recently concluded comment period on AFIDA disclosed that foreign interest required to make disclosures increased by 2,250, as more foreign persons acquired or transferred an interest in U.S. agricultural land than in prior years and must comply with AFIDA reporting requirements.

    According to the latest AFIDA annual report, foreign holdings of U.S. agricultural land increased modestly from 2009 through 2015, increasing by an average of 0.8 million per year. Since 2015, foreign holdings have increased by an average of nearly 2.2 million acres, ranging from 0.8 million acres to 3.3 million acres per year.

    Of this increase, most of the purchases are of forest, crop, and pasture lands. Changes in crop and pasture land are “due to foreign-owned wind companies signing, as well as terminating, long-term leases on a large number of acres.”

    Indeed, the largest wind farm in the state of Texas, the Roscoe Wind Farm outside of Abilene, is owned by RWE, a German multinational corporation. The project spans multiple counties and sits atop leased farmland.

    While the American public’s attention has been seemingly fixated on Russia since 2016, the CCP’s activities in the U.S. are just as troubling, if not more. Their ruthless oppression of Chinese citizens, hostile stance towards America, and methodical plan for domination all touch the issue of agricultural land ownership in the U.S. and Texas.

    The latest available data from the USDA reported China holding just 352,140 acres of agricultural land, which is slightly less than 1 percent of foreign-held acres. But, as is the case with foreign funds flowing to higher education, the tracking of these transactions is imperfect.

    It’s likely that China’s ownership of land in the U.S. is understated in USDA’s annual reports.

    They describe the “Blue Hill Fiasco”:

    Beginning in 2015, Sun Guangxin, a Chinese billionaire, began acquiring land to develop a wind turbine farm in South Texas. Eventually, Guangxin snatched up around 140,000 acres in Val Verde, roughly 7 percent of all land in the county.

    In 2019, five years after acquisitions began, the proposed development of a wind farm on the land led to an uproar in Texas and at the national level.

    A member of the People’s Liberation Army, Guangxin reportedly built his fortune by establishing close ties to Communist party officials, and leveraged these connections to cheaply acquire and redevelop government property to become a real estate tycoon.

    Wang Lequan, who was re-elected as secretary of the Xinjiang Party Committee of the Communist Party of China for three consecutive terms since 1995, is the backer behind Guangxin; the forces behind Wang Lequan are Zhou Yongkang and former President of China Jiang Zemin. Supported by Wang Lequan, Sun Guangxin, chairman of the board of directors of Guanghui Group, is one of the few private oil field owners in China.

    His base of operations in China deserves special attention too.

    The Xinjiang province is where the widely reported oppression of the Uyghur population is taking place. In part, the Uyghur population is used as forced labor. According to Irina Bukharin, two of the goods produced in this region, in disproportionately high figures, include polysilicon (used in solar panels) and wind turbines.

    Sun’s plans for the wind farm in South Texas were covered by state and national media outlets. A billionaire, Guangxin is the chairman of Xinjiang Guanghui Industry Investment, which is the parent company of GH America, the company spearheading the wind farm project.

    But there’s more to this story.

    “The acquisition by General Sun out near Del Rio was done by them forming a Delaware Corp called GH America,” J. Kyle Bass, chief investment officer of Hayman Capital and founding member of the Committee on the Present Danger: China, told Texas Scorecard. “They funded the Delaware Corp with dollars from a CCP-owned institution in America. You basically had a U.S. corporation, funded with U.S. dollars, buying U.S. property. It was really difficult to understand who the actual owner was and what kind of sovereignty was represented there.”

    GH America also positioned itself to influence the legislative process. According to Texas Ethics Commission records, Stephen Lindsey is registered to lobby for the company. He’s widely reported as the vice president of government and regulatory affairs for GH America. According to Transparency USA, from January to September 2021, during the regular and special state legislative sessions that year, Lindsey’s contract was anywhere from $93,150 to more than $186,000.

    There’s also a national security risk. Sun’s planned wind farm at Blue Hill was not far (70 miles) from Laughlin Air Force Base. This proximity alarmed many. There are also liquified natural gas deposits in the area.

    Bass says the CCP’s aim here is surveillance.

    “Basically, they call it ‘over the horizon’ mapping. If you get the point higher and higher, you can map more and more, i.e. you can increase the linear distance that you can map,” he explained. “With their new ability … they can map things within one inch of specificity and clarity of things that are 50 miles away from 700 feet. What’s interesting about that is Laughlin Air Force Base is 30 miles away, and the restricted airspace is 10 miles away from the main ranch.”

    Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller told Texas Scorecard the CCP bought farm land near another Air Force base in North Dakota. “We don’t need to give them listening capabilities to our aircraft coming in out of those [military installations] and other communications coming out,” he said. “It’s crazy enough just to allow our biggest enemy to be purchasing our own soil.”

    Bass discussed how the South Texas purchase was allowed to take place. “Steve Mnuchin at [U.S.] Treasury gave a quick Friday-night special OFAC [Office of Foreign Assets] approval without [U.S. Dept. of Defense] being in the room, which is pretty crazy,” he said. “If Treasury is the nexus of [the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States], and all of the other departments chime in when they can, there should not be an ability for a unilateral approval or approval by the U.S. Treasury secretary, who might be corrupted by the Chinese government.”

    When asked, Bass said we don’t know how much land the CCP or its connected entities have in Texas. He explained the Lone Star Infrastructure Protection Act (Texas Senate Bill 2116 passed in 2021), “encouraged” the U.S. Dept. of Defense to assign task forces to examine CCP land holdings near DOD installations. “I know they found some more in Texas, but I don’t know how much more.”

    Sen. Ted Cruz (R–TX) was a vocal opponent of the Blue Hills wind farm development, issuing a letter in 2020 to then-Treasury Secretary Mnuchin seeking a private briefing on the project. The junior senator from Texas also proposed legislation that would trigger the review of wind projects within a certain distance of a military installation.

    This isn’t the first time a Chinese company has tried to install a wind farm near a U.S. military installation.

    In 2012, Ralls, an American company owned by two Chinese nationals, purchased multiple American-owned wind farm companies with several project sites. Four of these sites were within restricted U.S. Navy airspace in the Pacific Northwest.

    This part of the purchase raised national security concerns, and Ralls was told to divest and destroy the cement pads they’d poured for construction of its mills near the base. The company sued the government and, troublingly, was successful at first.

    Eventually, the company was defeated in its efforts and had to divest. The fact that this episode did not dissuade future attempts speaks to the persistence of the CCP to take part in the production of energy stateside.

    There is also a connection between Ralls and Texas. The blades spinning at many wind farm sites in Texas are produced by SANY, the parent company of Ralls, which is owned by the richest man in mainland China, Liang Wengen.

    According to a Forbes profile, Wengen worked as a top manager at a state arms plant before getting into heavy construction equipment. He joined the ruling elite in 2011, becoming a member of the CCP.

    At the very least, Chinese nationals and the corporations owned by them should have to abide by the same limits China itself places on foreign ownership of land in China. Fundamentally, foreigners cannot own land in China without actually living there, and are further limited to one property per location. Plus there are a wide number of complex rules on foreign ownership of Chinese businesses.

    It seems, at the very least, that a survey of land within 10 miles of military bases in Texas to determine if any have hostile foreign ownership may be in order…

    Russian Airbase In Crimea Goes Boom

    August 9th, 2022

    Multiple loud explosions have rocked a Russian military airfield in occupied Crimea:

    Evidently the explosions shattered windows for a kilometer around.

    Russian military assets blowing up in Ukraine isn’t news, especially now that they’ve fielded HIMARS. What is news is these strikes are a good 200 kilometers from the front line.

    As images of large explosions in Russian-occupied Crimea flashed across social media, the Russian Ministry of Defense on Tuesday claimed they were the result of “several aviation munitions destroyed” at the Russian Navy’s Saki Air Base near the village of Novofedorivka.

    The incident occured [sic] about 3:20 p.m. local time, according to an official Ministry of Defense (MOD) statement.

    Snip.

    A senior Ukrainian military official with knowledge of the situation told The New York Times that Ukrainian forces were behind the explosion.

    “This was an air base from which planes regularly took off for attacks against our forces in the southern theater,” the official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive military matters. The official would not tell the Times what type of weapon used in the attack, saying only that “a device exclusively of Ukrainian manufacture was used.”

    A top Crimean official earlier on Tuesday confirmed there were several explosions in Novofedorivka.

    “So far, I can only confirm the very fact of several explosions in the Novofedorivka area. I ask everyone to wait for official messages and not to produce versions. Oleg Kryuchkov, adviser to the head of Crimea, said on Tuesday on his Telegram channel.

    Viktoria Kazmirova, deputy head of the administration of the Saki district, also reported explosions at the airfield, according to Russian state-run media outlet TASS.

    “Our airfield is exploding. Explosions at the airfield. Here all the windows were broken,” Kazmirova said.

    The regional health ministry “reported that ambulances and medical aviation were sent to the site of the explosions, information about the victims is being specified.”

    Saki Air Base, which Russia occupied when it took over Crimea in 2014, is home to the Russian Navy’s 43rd Independent Naval Attack Aviation Regiment (43 OMShAP). This regiment flies 12 Su-30SMs, six Su-24Ms, and six Su-24MRs, and came to prominence during several encounters with NATO forces in the Black Sea in 2021.

    U.S. officials have told The War Zone in the recent past that targets in Crimea are fair game for Ukrainian forces using advanced U.S. weapons. The U.S. sees Crimea as illegally occupied by Russia and no different than the territory it holds in eastern Ukraine. As such, all military targets are fair game, as well as critical infrastructure it relies on to keep its war machine and occupation efforts running.

    While some Ukrainian officials claim their military carried out an attack on the base, it is not unheard of for major accidents at Russian ammunition supply depots to occur, although the chances of that being the case are relatively slim in this instance.

    However, Novofedorovka is about 124 miles (200 kilometers) from the front lines.

    The Saki Air Base seems to be well beyond the range of Ukraine’s long-range fires.

    Ukraine has 16 M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, or HIMARS, provided by the U.S. as well as three M270 systems provided by the United Kingdom.

    Both can fire a variety of 227mm rockets, including Guided Multiple Launch Rocket System (GMLRS) types made by Lockheed Martin, as well as the Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS) short-range ballistic missiles. So far, the U.S. has only provided Ukraine with an unpublicized amount of M31 rockets with 200-pound class unitary warheads, which are GPS/INS guided and can hit targets at a distance of around 43 miles (70 kilometers.) The Biden administration is reluctant to provide longer-range and harder-hitting ATACMS out of concern that it might rile the Russians. In particular, it could provide a means for Ukraine to execute precision strikes on a large variety of targets well into Russia.

    200km is well beyond the range of the missiles we’ve publicly given Ukraine (and of the UK-supplied MLRS system, but within the range of the ATACMS missiles we haven’t announced we’re supplying.

    It’s possible this was a long-range drone strike, as 200km is well within the range of the Turkish TB2 Bayraktar drones that Ukraine is known to possess. It’s also possible that Ukraine has developed their own long-range missile system. After all, Germany had V1s and V2s that could attacked at that range all the way back in 1944. And it’s also possible that this was a ship-launched attached fired from closer in.

    Whatever the actual weapon used, there seem to be very few locations in Russian-occupied Ukraine safe from further such attacks.

    Harris County Really Doesn’t Want Vote Audits

    August 8th, 2022

    The possibility of having votes audited sent Harris County’s Democratic executives into a preemptive panic.

    Harris County Commissioners Court voted 3 to 2 along party lines this week to mount a legal challenge to a state-planned audit of county-run elections over the past two years.

    “There’s no reason for a politicized and politically motivated election audit especially after democracy nearly crumbled over this pandering,” said County Judge Lina Hidalgo, who equated the audit to the January 6 riot in Washington D.C.

    “Politicized and politically motivated” means “we can’t let Republicans catch us cheating.” Remember, this is the county where the voting administrator had to resign over a horribly botched March primary this year.

    Last week, the Texas Secretary of State’s (SOS) office announced the random selection of four counties for an audit of all elections from the 2020 general election through the 2022 general election, including all primaries. Senate Bill (SB) 1, the state’s new election overhaul law passed last year, mandates audits of two counties with populations fewer than 300,000 and two with populations greater than 300,000, selected at random.

    Although the Office of the Secretary of State posted a video of employees drawing the names of counties to be audited from a bucket, County Attorney Christian Menefee told commissioners he found the drawing suspicious. He said the video looked like “a sketch comedy show,” and complained that the SOS had neither posted rules for how the counties would be selected nor notified counties ahead of time.

    “Had we known this was going on, we would have had somebody there to ensure there was transparency in the process,” said Menefee.

    You have to have a lot of damn gall to complain about “transparency” after being accused of turnings security cameras off.

    Prior SB 1, in September 2021, the secretary of state’s office announced it would launch audits of the state’s two largest Democratic and two largest Republican counties — Dallas, Harris, Tarrant, and Collin — for the 2020 election as permitted under law. The commissioners court voted 3 to 2 to legally contest that audit at the time but took no action.

    Those 2020 audits are still underway, but earlier this year, the secretary of state’s office published a progress report indicating Harris County’s voter rolls included 3,063 potentially non-citizen voters.

    Judging from the shenanigans pulled in the 2020 Presidential election, illegal alien voting fraud is probably only the tip of the iceberg…

    Ukraine Export Deal: Too Little, Too Late

    August 7th, 2022

    You may remember Peter Zeihan’s analysis of world agricultural output in the wake of of deglobalization and the Russo-Ukrainian War, and his forecast of famine late this year.

    That was just before the Ukraine export deal was signed. Now he’s looked at the facts and run the numbers, and says it isn’t going to help much.

    Takeaways:

  • “Right now the Ukrainians have about 18 million metric tons stored up in their silos at or adjacent to their ports. That’s a lot that needs to move. That is in excess of half of a normal harvest for the country.”
  • “On August 1st we got our first ship, the Razoni, to dock to load up and to leave for Lebanon. It’s carrying 26,000 metric tons. So we need 700 more ships of this size if we’re going to get that grain out.”
  • “The Ukrainian harvest starts in less than 45 days. So you’re talking about needing to get a dozen or so vessels in there every single day. So far we’ve had one. I don’t have a lot of hope for this.” (Note: Since then we’ve had four more.)
  • “Right now the Ukrainians have nowhere to put it. Their silos are full from last year’s harvest. They weren’t able to export because the war started back in February.
  • “Even if the farmers were able to work their fields and not be molested by Russian troops (and remember we’ve already had mass evacuations from eastern and southern Ukraine) the problem remains that they can’t get fuel into the country. So you’re talking about needing to harvest industrial levels of wheat without industrial equipment.”
  • “The likely end result here is that this is the last year that Ukraine participates in international grain markets. They simply don’t have the capacity to get stuff up at a scale. In fact the only place that they might be able to ship stuff is by rail and at most with significant upgrades that have not yet been done. They can probably only ship about one-fifth of their normal produce out that way the rail lines are just not designed for that kind of bulk cargo.”
  • Why not? Well, the biggest problem is Ukraine has a different rail gauge from the rest of Europe, another Soviet legacy.

    Bottlenecks have arisen due to the different rail gauge used in Ukraine, dating back to the Soviet era. That means shipments are being transferred to new wagons at the border.

    Ukrainian Infrastructure Minister Oleksandr Kubrakov has targeted the upgrading of rail infrastructure in western Ukraine as a priority the EU should focus on. “Rail transport can partially undertake all the transportation of agricultural products, particularly grain,” he said. “However, transporting goods is difficult due to western Ukraine’s low border-crossing capacity, which is not designed for transshipping such volumes.”

    “Some 768,300 metric tons of Ukrainian grain was exported by rail between May 1 and May 16.”

  • Back to Zeihan: “And a lot of them have to transit little territory called Transnistra [in Moldavia], which is under Russian control.”
  • The sobering conclusion:

    You remove the world’s fourth largest wheat exporter from the market and you’re going to look at cascading problems. Not just with food prices and malnutrition, but civil conflict and breakdown, most notably in the Middle East. The last time we had a doubling of global wheat prices, we saw the Arab spring back in 2011. What we’re dealing with is an order of magnitude more complicated and deeper rooted. And to think that we’re only going to have doubling of prices is ridiculously optimistic.

  • Well, it’s a good thing the Middle East isn’t know for having populations full of unstable hotheads looking for an excuse to kill each other at the drop of a hat…