Posts Tagged ‘Switzerland’

LinkSwarm for April 28, 2023

Friday, April 28th, 2023

Our Glorious Elites try mightily to keep us peons from expressing #WrongThink, two high profile media firings, and more Blue City decline. Enjoy a short but sweet Friday LinkSwarm!

  • How the Deep State helped rig the election for Biden.

    It transpires that the infamous incident before the 2020 election in which 50 former intelligence officials signed an open letter declared a New York Post expose about Hunter Biden’s laptop to have the “classic earmarks of a Russian information operation” was instigated at the behest of the Joe Biden campaign. This at least is the allegation in a letter to Secretary of State Anthony Blinken released by Jim Jordan, chair of the House Judiciary Committee, and Subcommittee on the Weaponization of Government.

    In that letter, which is not easy to find, you’ll see three snippets of dialogue from questioning of Morell, who appears to have organized the open letter. In the first snippet, he explains that the idea originated with a call from Blinken, then of the Biden campaign.

  • It looks like every campaign to fight “disinformation” was just a tool to silence dissenting voices.

    I knew things were bad in my world, but the truth turned out to be much worse than I could have imagined.

    My name is Andrew Lowenthal. I am a progressive-minded Australian who for almost 18 years was the Executive Director of EngageMedia, an Asia-based NGO focused on human rights online, freedom of expression, and open technology. My resume also includes fellowships at Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center and MIT’s Open Documentary Lab. For most of my career, I believed strongly in the work I was doing, which I believed was about protecting and expanding digital rights and freedoms.

    In recent years, however, I watched in despair as a dramatic change swept through my field. As if all at once, organizations and colleagues with whom I’d worked for years began de-emphasizing freedom of speech and expression, and shifted focus to a new arena: fighting “disinformation.”

    Long before the #TwitterFiles, and certainly before responding to a Racket call for freelancers to help “Knock Out the Mainstream Propaganda Machine,” I’d been raising concerns about the weaponization of “anti-disinformation” as a tool for censorship. For EngageMedia team members in Myanmar, Indonesia, India, or the Philippines, the new elite Western consensus of giving governments greater power to decide what could be said online was the opposite of the work we were doing.

    When Malaysian and Singaporean governments introduced “fake news” laws, EngageMedia supported networks of activists campaigning against it. We ran digital security workshops for journalists and human rights advocates under threat from government attack, both virtual and physical. We developed an independent video platform to route around Big Tech censorship and supported campaigners in Thailand fighting government attempts to suppress free expression. In Asia, government interference in speech and expression was the norm. Progressive activists in search of more political freedom often looked to the West for moral and financial support. Now the West is turning against the core value of free expression, in the name of fighting disinformation.

    Before being put in charge of tracking anti-disinformation groups and their funders for this Racket project, I thought I had a strong idea of just how big this industry was. I’d been swimming in the broader digital rights field for two decades and saw the rapid growth of anti-disinformation initiatives up close. I knew many of the key organizations and their leaders, and EngageMedia had itself been part of anti-disinformation projects.

    After gaining access to #TwitterFiles records, I learned the ecosystem was far bigger and had much more influence than I imagined. As of now we’ve compiled close to 400 organisations globally, and we are just getting started. Some organisations are legitimate. There is disinformation. But there are a great many wolves among the sheep.

    I underestimated just how much money is being pumped into think tanks, academia and NGOs under the anti-disinformation front, both from the government and private philanthropy. We’re still calculating, but I had estimated it at hundreds of millions of dollars annually and I’m probably still being naive – Peraton received a USD $1B dollar contract from the Pentagon.

    In particular, I was unaware of the scope and scale of the work of groups like the Atlantic Council, the Aspen Institute, the Center for European Policy Analysis and consultancies such as Public Good Projects, Newsguard, Graphika, Clemson’s Media Forensics Hub and others.

    (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)

  • “Eric Adams Blasts Biden, Says Border Crisis Has ‘Destroyed’ NYC.”

    New York City Democratic Mayor Eric Adams ripped President Joe Biden’s policies on the southern border Friday, saying that the White House’s position on the issue has turned the Big Apple into a disaster.

    Adams has repeatedly asked for assistance from the federal government as New York City deals with thousands of illegal immigrants who have made their way to the city thanks to Biden’s lax border policies. New York City will spend $4.2 billion to house and care for illegal immigrants by the middle of 2024.

    “The city is being destroyed by the migrant crisis,” the first-term mayor said during a panel discussion hosted by the African American Mayors Association, the New York Post reported.

    The Democrat then said that his city would have seen the biggest financial turnaround in the city’s history if it hadn’t been for the illegal immigration crisis.

    “If you removed the $4.2 billion that have been dropped into my city because of a mismanaged asylum seeker issue, you [would have] probably witnessed one of the greatest fiscal turnarounds in the history of New York City,” he said.

    Adams is delusional if he thinks illegal aliens alone are destroying his city. Graft, corruption, high crime engendered by leftwing Social Justice policies, high taxes, horribly burdensome regulation, and all the other hallmarks of undivided Democratic Party rule all played bigger roles in New York City’s demise. But the extra illegal aliens didn’t help. So how do you think Texas citizens have felt about the crisis all this time?

  • “Dem Bigwigs Caught Hobnobbing With Secret Chinese Police Mole.” “New York Sen. Chuck Schumer was recently caught on video rubbing elbows with one of two men arrested for running a secret — and illegal — Chinese police station in New York City’s Chinatown. The hobnobbing occurred at a gala for the Fukien American Association.” (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • “Bud Light’s Marketing VP Takes a Leave of Absence and Will Be Replaced.” Not good enough. Alissa Heinerscheid needs to be fired for cause for destroying billions in shareholder value.
  • Taking the next two in the order they were announced, not order of importance: Don Lemon fired from CNN. Also:
  • Tucker Carlson fired from Fox News. The problem with pairing these is that Don Lemon had one of the lowest rated shows on cable news, while Tucker Carlson had the highest, and ten times Lemon’s ratings (albeit evening rather than morning). Lemon was fired for naked partisanship and low ratings; Carlson was fired for wrong partisanship despite extremely high ratings. Carlson’s own statement after his firing:

  • Least surprising headline: “‘Drag Mom’ who mentored 11-year-old at Satan-themed pub sentenced to 11 months in prison for 11 child sex felonies.”
  • San Francisco Stops Boycotting 30 States With Conservative Laws Because it Had Little Impact.”
  • Remember those brand spanking new littoral combat ships the navy had built over the last decade or so? The navy is now wants to sell off six of them.
  • Weird, disturbing story that suggests a woman was set up for something very unsavory and scary under the guise of a fake job interview.
  • Happy ending.
  • A more efficient rotary engine?
  • Game engines have gotten really good.
  • The working military airport with a public road that runs across the runway.
  • “Revised Hospital Chart Has Patients Rate Pain On Scale From Zero To Watching ‘The View.'”
  • Something About Credit Suisse

    Saturday, March 18th, 2023

    I meant to mention something about the Credit Suisse situation in Friday’s LinkSwarm but ran out of time. I’m not an expert on European banking in general or Swiss banking in specific. (As opposed to being a squinty, one-eyed, myopic man in the land of the blind sort of expert on American banking, which is not very.) But it’s a big story, so I suppose I should post something about Credit Suisse.

    So here’s something.

  • First, as of this writing, it appears that fellow Swiss bank UBS is about to take over Credit Suisse, probably with the financial backing of the Swiss National Bank (SNB)

    Late on Thursday, just hours after the SNB had launched the first (of many) bailout attempts of Swiss banking giant Credit Suisse, Bloomberg blasted the following headline:

    *UBS, CREDIT SUISSE SAID TO OPPOSE IDEA OF A FORCED COMBINATION

    This lack of enthusiasm by UBS to acquire its struggling rival of course forced the Swiss National Bank to front CS a CHF50 billion credit line to hold it over for the next four days amid a furious bank run, one which we said would be woefully insufficient to restore confidence in the collapsing lender, and which we probably used up in just a few hours.

    Then, late on Friday, both banks “unexpectedly” changed their minds and we got the following 180 degree U-Turn report from the FT:

    *UBS IN TALKS TO ACQUIRE ALL OR PART OF CREDIT SUISSE: FT

    So a deal is inevitable after all… but as always, there is a footnote one which we predicted yesterday when we said that a deal would only happen if the acquiring bank – in this case UBS – got a full central bank backstop.

    That now appears to be the case with Bloomberg, Reuters and the WSJ all reporting that UBS is asking the Swiss government for a backstop to cover future risks if it were to buy Credit Suisse Group AG, after the Swiss National Bank and regulator Finma have told international counterparts that they regard a deal with UBS as the only option to arrest a collapse in confidence in Credit Suisse. The FT reported that deposit outflows from the bank topped CHF10bn ($10.8bn) a day late last week as fears for its health mounted.

  • Here’s Patrick Boyle on how Credit Suisse brought itself low:

    One big take-away: It wasn’t bad investments per se that wrecked confidence in the bank, it was involvement in a series of scandals, as they have “a strong, liquid balance sheet.” “Credit Suisse has instead been plagued by repeated scandals. From spying on a former employee, a criminal conviction for allowing drug dealers to launder money, a massive leak of client data to the media, Archegos, Greensill, Mozambique ‘tuna bonds,’ the list is too long.”

    Wait, Mozambique Tuna Bonds? Yeah, it’s a real scandal.

    UK courts are at the heart of a spate of litigation arising out of the Mozambique “Tuna bond” or “hidden debt” scandal. The scandal involved $2 billion of bank loans and bond issues from Swiss bank Credit Suisse and Russian bank VTB. The bank loans were taken out in secret by Mozambican state-owned companies, without the legally required approval of the Mozambique Parliament and backed with hidden government guarantees.

    The loans were intended to finance contracts between the state companies and a Lebanese-UAE based ship builder, Privinvest, between 2013-2016 for three maritime projects. These projects were intended to boost maritime security and develop the country’s fishing industry. However, a 2017 audit by Kroll found that $500 million of loans could not be accounted for and that Privinvest may have over-inflated prices by $713 million. The audit also found that $200 million of the loans were spent on bank fees and commissions.

    So it turns out that Mozambique’s political and business elites are at least as corrupt as our own political and business elites.

    Good to know.

    Ironically, according to Boyle, the reason European banks may be in better shape than our own is because they had to deal with the fallout of the Euro crisis. “This is not because European banks are very good — it is precisely because they have historically been quite bad.”

    Practically every banking regulation in existence commemorates a time when things went badly wrong, and Europe spent a decade toughening up banking regulation because it went through a rolling multiyear euro crisis. The European regulators have a detailed set of standards for testing interest rate risk, with the idea that they will be applied to every significant bank in Europe. Unrealized losses are not ignored under this regime and the global Basel standards on stable funding are applied across the entire banking sector. This is quite different to the regulations applied to community banks in the United States who lobbied the government for regulatory exemptions over the years.

    “The economist Matthew Klein argued in a blog post that banks today can be seen as speculative investment funds grafted on top of critical infrastructure, and that this structure is designed to extract subsidies from the rest of society by threatening civilians with crises if the banks’ bets are ever allowed to fail.”

  • Was Credit Suisse infected with the radical transexual social justice warrior madness as the rest of our elites? Of course they were:

    

    (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)

  • Finally, it’s a chance to embed the Swiss Banker Song from Making Fiends.

    Russo-Ukranian War Update for June 22, 2022

    Wednesday, June 22nd, 2022

    The general course of the Russio-Ukrainian War seems the same (Russia grinding out slow gains in the Severodonetsk front, while Ukraine gains back territory on the wings near Kharkiv and Kherson), but there are a lot of interesting stories out on the periphery of the conflict.

    First, the requisite map snap:

    (These snapshots are not the end-all and be-all of the situation, but back when I was covering the war against the Islamic State, I found that they were helpful in jogging my memory reviewing the course of the war at later dates.)

    Now some links:

  • ISW’s assessment.

    Members of the Russian military community continue to comment on the shortcomings of Russian force generation capabilities, which are having tangible impacts on the morale and discipline of Russians fighting in Ukraine. Russian milblogger Yuri Kotyenok claimed that Russian troops lack the numbers and strength for success in combat in Ukraine. Kotyenok accused Russian leadership of deploying new and under-trained recruits and called for replenishment of forces with well-trained recruits with ground infantry experience—though the Russian military is unlikely to be able to quickly generate such a force, as ISW has previously assessed. Despite growing calls for increased recruitment from nationalist figures, Russian leadership continues to carry out coercive partial mobilization efforts that are only producing limited numbers of replacements while negatively impacting the morale and discipline of forcibly mobilized personnel. Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU) claimed that Russian authorities in Luhansk are arranging gas leaks in apartment buildings to force men who are hiding from mobilization into the streets. The Ukrainian Main Intelligence Directorate (GUR) additionally reported that Russian soldiers in occupied Tokmak, Zaporizhia Oblast, are appealing to local Ukrainian doctors to issue them certificates alleging medical inability to continue military service.

    Ukrainian forces conducted a drone strike (likely with a loitering munition, though this cannot be confirmed) on a Russian oil refinery in Novoshakhtinsk, Rostov Oblast, on June 22. Russian Telegram channel Voenyi Osvedomitel claimed that the strike, which targeted Russian infrastructure within 15 km of the Ukrainian border, originated from Donetsk Oblast. Ukrainian forces have not targeted Russian infrastructure for several weeks, and this strike is likely an attempt to disrupt Russian logistics and fuel supply to Russian operations in eastern Ukraine.

    Though they also note that Russia has been using its anti-air capabilities to better deal with Ukrainian drones.

  • Ukraine attacked long-occupied gas platforms off the coast of Crimea. It also reportedly hit occupied Snake Island, though there seems to be some dispute over this.
  • Did a Russian cyberattack trigger the Freeport LNG explosion on June 8?

    Well, a June 14 press release from Freeport LNG notes that “the incident occurred in pipe racks that support the transfer of LNG from the facility’s LNG storage tank area to the terminal’s dock facilities. … Preliminary observations suggest that the incident resulted from the overpressure and rupture of a segment of an LNG transfer line, leading to the rapid flashing of LNG and the release and ignition of the natural gas vapor cloud. Additional investigation is underway to determine the underlying precipitating events that enabled the overpressure conditions in the LNG piping.” The statement added that federal authorities were assisting with its investigation.

    However, what was not explained is how a critical overpressure event could have occurred without safety systems kicking into action. Two LNG pipeline experts I talked to, who both asked to remain anonymous due to potential retaliatory damage to their business interests, say that pipeline corrosion and other material failures can cause critical incidents. Still, the FBI’s investigative involvement, the specific nature of this explosion, and the scale of damage incurred do raise major questions. The experts suggested that piping from a storage tank to a terminal, as in this explosion, should have extensive safeguards to prevent overpressure events. One expert was highly confident that control of pipeline flows would be undertaken from a networked control facility.

    That brings us to the Russian cyber unit involved in the targeting reconnaissance against Freeport LNG.

    Named XENOTIME by researchers, the unit has utilized boutique TRITON/TRISIS malware developed by the Russian Ministry of Defense’s Central Scientific Research Institute of Chemistry and Mechanics. That malware is designed for the seizure of industrial control systems and the defeat of associated safety systems. In 2017, GCHQ (Britain’s NSA-equivalent signals intelligence service) outlined the need for network compartmentalization to protect safety systems against this malware better. In March 2022, the FBI warned that TRISIS malware remained a threat.

    XENOTIME is assessed by the U.S. and British governments as a critical infrastructure-focused, advanced persistent threat actor. The unit’s modus operandi involves targeting industrial control systems and supervisory control systems in order to effect unilateral control of a network. XENOTIME has caused specific concern in Western security circles for its targeting of safety systems that would otherwise mitigate threats to life during a cyberattack. XENOTIME’s activity has escalated in 2022. Evincing as much, an April 13 U.S. government cybersecurity warning noted, “By compromising and maintaining full system access to [industrial control system]/[safety] devices, [threat] actors could elevate privileges … and disrupt critical devices or functions.”

    Snip.

    While the Freeport LNG explosion remains under investigation, multiple sources told me they were struck by the overpressure event along a key pipeline transit route and the evident failure of safety systems to engage. This fits with XENOTIME’s modus operandi.

    That’s an “interesting but unproven” in my book… (Hat tip: Jim Geraghty at NRO.)

  • Switzerland Imports Russian Gold for First Time Since War.”

    More than 3 tons of gold was shipped to Switzerland from Russia in May, according to data from the Swiss Federal Customs Administration. That’s the first shipment between the countries since February.

    The shipments represent about 2% of gold imports into the key refining hub last month. It may also mark a change in perception of Russian bullion, which became taboo following the invasion. Most refiners swore off accepting new gold from Russia after the London Bullion Market Association removed the country’s own fabricators from its accredited list.

    While that was viewed as a de facto ban on fresh Russian gold from the London market, one of the world’s biggest, the rules don’t prohibit Russian metal from being processed by other refiners. Switzerland is home to four major gold refineries, which together handle two-thirds of the world’s gold.

    Almost all of the gold was registered by customs as being for refining or other processing, indicating one of the country’s refineries took it. The four largest — MKS PAMP SA, Metalor Technologies SA, Argor-Heraeus SA and Valcambi SA — said they did not take the metal.

    In March, at least two major gold refineries refused to remelt Russian bars even though market rules permit them to do so. Others, such Argor-Heraeus, said they would accept products refined in Russia prior to 2022, so long as there were documents proving that the gold had not been exported from Russia after beginning of the war, and that accepting them would not benefit Russia, a Russian person or entity anywhere in the world.

  • Though this piece is two weeks old, Frederick Kagan is not impressed with Russia’s Severodonetsk offensive.

    he fight for Severodonetsk is a Russian information operation in the form of a battle. One of its main purposes for Moscow is to create the impression that Russia has regained its strength and will now overwhelm Ukraine. That impression is false. The Russian military in Ukraine is increasingly a spent force that cannot achieve a decisive victory if Ukrainians hold on.

    Russian President Vladimir Putin is therefore trying to turn his invasion of Ukraine into a brutal contest of wills. He’s betting his army on breaking Ukrainians’ collective will to fight on in their country. His own won’t likely break. Fortunately, Ukraine doesn’t need it to. If Ukrainians can weather the current Russian storm and then counterattack the exhausted Russian forces they still have every chance to free their people and all their land.

    Putin amassed the wreckage of Russian combat forces into a lethal amalgam around the cities of Severodonetsk and Lysychansk in Ukraine’s eastern Luhansk Oblast. That amalgam is crawling forward using massive artillery barrages to obliterate everything in its path allowing Russia’s demoralized and frightened soldiers to walk into the rubble.

    The Ukrainian defenders are wisely withdrawing in the face of this reckless barbarism, but at a high price to their own morale and their will to continue the fight. Ukrainian soldiers and citizens are criticizing their government for not supporting the troops on the front lines. Ukrainians are starting to doubt that they can prevail for the first time since they won the Battle of Kyiv. Delays in the provision of Western aid and refusals by the U.S. and other countries to provide certain needed weapons systems are helping to fuel those doubts. And now voices are rising in the West calling on Ukraine to offer concessions.

    All of which is exactly what Putin needs. He cannot defeat Ukraine militarily as long as Ukrainians retain the will to fight and the West the will to back them. So he attacks the will of both by forcing his own troops into the most vicious and brutal offensive of this war, hoping to persuade everyone that he’s finally harnessed the mass and power of Russia that Stalin wielded to defeat Hitler—and thus that resistance to his demands is futile. Putin also holds hostage critical export supplies of Ukrainian food and fuel, hoping to impose high enough costs on the West to persuade it to abandon Ukraine.

    Neither Ukrainians nor their friends around the world must give in to Putin or be deluded by the current mirage of Russian success and power he is presenting in the Battle of Severodonetsk. For mirage it is. Russia’s drive in Luhansk is the desperate gamble of a dictator staking the last of the offensive combat power he can scrape together in hopes of breaking his enemies’ will to continue the fight. and let him claim that he’s taken all of Luhansk Oblast. It is a historical rhyme with Hitler’s determination to seize Stalingrad in 1942 or to hold Kharkov in defiance of his commander’s advice. There are no Russian large reserves coming behind this force to carry its successes forward. On the contrary, Putin has created it only by denuding other key axes of the forces they need to defend against Ukrainian counterattacks. This offensive will likely culminate soon because even this slow, grinding advance will exhaust the forces conducting it. Putin will then be unable to launch another for quite some time.

  • I thought this would be a longer update, but I’m running out of day…

    Battle For Kiev Begins

    Monday, February 28th, 2022

    I’ve been too busy to post earlier today, and the Texas Primary voting day is TOMORROW, so this may be brief.

    Yesterday’s post noted: “Russia has failed to encircle and isolate Kyiv with the combination of mechanized and airborne attacks as it had clearly planned to do. Russian forces are now engaging in more straightforward mechanized drives into the capital along a narrow front along the west bank of the Dnipro River and toward Kyiv from a broad front to the northeast.”

    That’s what you can see on the Livemap of Kiev here, with that red area being controlled by Russian forces:

    If Ukrainian forces can keep them from entering Kiev proper, that will go a long way toward stopping Putin’s invasion cold.

    That’s a big If.

    Other links on the war:

  • Those sanctions are biting hard:

    The “swift and severe” sanctions of the U.S. and its allies took a while to arrive, not taking effect until 96 hours or so after the first steps of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

    But to give credit where its due, once those sanctions did kick in, the consequences were indeed intense:

    • At one point, “The ruble plunged to a record low of less than one U.S. penny” — at one point 118 rubles to a dollar, before recovering to 84 rubles to a dollar.
    • The Economist noted, even with the recovery, that it was “one of the largest one-day slumps in the Russian currency’s modern history, similar in scale to the one-day declines recorded during the worst moments of the country’s financial crisis in 1998, when Russia defaulted on its debt. In mid-morning in Moscow, the Russian central bank raised its key interest rate from 9.5 percent to 20 percent in an effort to stem the ruble’s slump, and the country’s finance ministry ordered companies with foreign-currency revenues to convert 80 percent of their income into rubles.”
    • One analyst on CNBC summarized that the Russian currency has “pretty much lost all value outside of the country. . . . To me, it doesn’t really feel like we’re looking at or at least we’re going to see the bottom in the ruble here. I think there still is plenty more room for weakness to come.”
    • The Moscow stock exchange initially delayed its opening this morning, then declared it would be closed for the day.
    • Russians no longer have faith that their banks will remain solvent: “Russians waited in long queues outside ATMs on Sunday, worried that bank cards may cease to function, or that banks would limit cash withdrawals. ‘Since Thursday, everyone has been running from ATM to ATM to get cash. Some are lucky, others not so much,’ St Petersburg resident, Pyotr, who declined to give his last name, said.”
    • CNN reports that, “One early casualty was the European subsidiary of Sberbank, Russia’s biggest lender that has been sanctioned by Western allies. The European Central Bank said Sberbank Europe, including its Austrian and Croatian branches, was failing, or likely to fail, because of ‘significant deposit outflows’ triggered by the Ukraine crisis.”
  • Chuck DeVore on the fight:

    It’s now five days since Russian President Vladimir Putin sent his mostly conscript army into Ukraine to overthrow the government of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, and it hasn’t gone as planned. In what may signal frustration, Putin has put his nuclear forces on alert in one last desperate move to beat his chest and show the world who’s in charge.

    Time has given some clarity to the operation and allows the drawing of some conclusions.

    I’m a retired Army lieutenant colonel—an intelligence officer. My training, from 1983 to 2007, was a Cold War focus on the old Soviet Union, the predecessor state to the Russian Federation. Never in my time as an intelligence officer was I able to see the worst-case scenario of a large-scale conventional Russian attack in Europe—until now.

    I’ve seen multiple reports of Russian conscripts who didn’t know they were invading Ukraine. They’re confused. They don’t know who to shoot at, as “Ukrainians look the same as us.” The Russian force appears to suffer from: Poor training; poor leadership (bad officers); and a cultural disregard for information-sharing down the chain of command, which prevents lower-ranking soldiers from making informed decisions in the chaos of war.

    The result of all this is a lack of initiative from soldiers when non-commissioned officers and officers are killed or wounded.

    It is important to note that the Russian army hasn’t fought a conventional war against a near-peer enemy since 1945. It’s out of practice, poorly trained, poorly led, and poorly motivated. It does have plenty of heavy armaments—very large thermobaric bombs. It can destroy, but it can’t fight effectively.

    Regarding the “Father of Bombs,” a large thermobaric or “vacuum” bombs capable of destroying a city block, killing 10,000 or more civilians and soldiers. Using one on Kyiv would horrify the world and likely increase calls for war crimes charges on Russian leaders. The Russians have used smaller thermobaric weapons against Ukrainian bunkers.

    This opens another question: How powerful are Russia’s reconstituted zampolit? Putin brought them back in 2018. The zampolit were political officers in the old Red Army, previously called “commissars” until 1942 when the position’s battlefield power was scaled back in response to negative military command implications.

    If a Russian field commander is ordered to use a city-busting thermobaric bomb, will he? Or will he refuse to carry out the order, like German Gen. von Choltitz when Adolf Hitler ordered him to destroy Paris—unless a zampolit is looking over his shoulder with a pistol?

    Logistics is also manifesting itself as a Russian weak spot. Logistics is hard—it’s harder in combat. It requires synchronizing the delivery of fuel, ammo, and food to frontline forces all while the enemy is shooting at your resupply trucks. At four days in, Russian forces are running out of basic supplies. This has a powerfully negative effect on morale.

    Complicating Russian resupply efforts are indications that Ukrainian light forces hunkered down during the initial Russian wave passed by, only to reemerge when the lightly armored supply columns entered Ukraine. Also of note is the increasingly effective Ukrainian use of Turkish-designed BayraktarTB2 drones. These low-cost, slow, non-stealthy drones have scored dozens of kills on Russian columns. Ukraine has about 60 of them.

    As Ukrainian resistance stiffens and tens of thousands of Ukrainian citizens rush to defend their nation, other nations in the region have been emboldened. Germany is sending 1,000 antitank missiles and 500 Stinger antiaircraft missiles. The Czech Republic and the Netherlands are sending small arms and ammunition.

  • Long thread on how Putin has reversed reforms in the Russian military. Tidbit: Russia’s military commander is Tuvan:

    He also says Russia is only using one echelon of troops:

    Is this true? Maybe. It would explain the logistics problems with out-of-gas convoys. But it might not be true of the main thrust toward Kiev.

    Food for thought.

  • Bank runs everywhere in Russia.
  • Hacker group Anonymous joins the fight against Putin:

  • Even Switzerland is abandoning its vaunted neutrality to impose the same sanctions as the EU on Russian people and entities.
  • Rambo fighting for Ukraine:

  • I cranked this out in haste and have a lot more links to go. Maybe tomorrow…

    LinkSwarm for August 13, 2021

    Friday, August 13th, 2021

    Happy Friday the 13th!

    This week’s LinkSwarm features Democrats behaving badly (a timeless theme).

  • Immediately after Senate Republicans caved on the pork-filled infrastructure bill, Democrats turned around and passed a highly partisan $3.5 billion budget bill. Good job, idiots.
  • Hunter Biden is the gift that keeps digging: “The Russians have videos of me doing crazy f***ing sex!’ Hunter Biden is seen in unearthed footage telling prostitute that Russian drug dealers stole ANOTHER of his laptops.” 1. Hunter has more Russian-related felonies in a single weekend than Donald Trump had in his entire lifetime. 2. I don’t lose pennies the way Hunter loses laptops…
  • “How Many Other Andrew Cuomos Are Elites Covering For?”

    The obvious fact is, however, that this corrupt corporate press and the Jennifer Rubin “conservatives” of the world are the ones who propped Cuomo up as “the gold standard,” to use Joe Biden’s words, even describing themselves as “Cuomosexuals.”

    Cuomo’s “radical transparency” made him a “terrific bureaucrat,” they said. Cuomo is “inspiring, uplifting, fascinating,” and truly “magnificent,” they insisted. He’s “honest, direct, brave,” and what “real leadership” looks like. Elites gave him an Emmy and blessed him with softball interviews and comedy-hour airtime, with left-wing activists working behind the scenes to discredit Cuomo’s accusers.

    Tuesday’s resignation signals it’s the end of the road for Cuomo — for now. But if the media can sit and twiddle its thumbs — or worse, kiss keister and perform comedy sketches with giant Q-Tips — while thousands of elderly folks die in New York nursing homes and women in the double digits tell of a gropey governor’s disgusting habits, we must ask: How many other Andrew Cuomos is the media covering for?

    Covering for elite misconduct is a perpetual problem in the media; it didn’t start with Cuomo. As Federalist Political Editor John Daniel Davidson wrote on Tuesday, the media did the same with Harvey Weinstein, Jeffrey Epstein, and Theodore McCarrick. Don’t forget Bill Clinton or Roman Polanski, either.

    “Everyone knew. No one cared. No one said anything until forced to. Then the feigned shock and outrage, the concern about the treatment of women, the hand-wringing and Me Too-ing, the performances on social media,” Davidson wrote. “As long as sexual harassment, assault, abuse, even the sex trafficking of underage girls stays quiet, then [the media] stay quiet, too.”

  • “New York’s Capital Is Crazytown

    You read all this and think: The governor is a letch, a creep, a dirty old man. But also a nut—a high-functioning one, a politically talented one, but a nut. Only a nut would do these things, and only a nut would think he wouldn’t be found out.

    No one in New York is walking around saying “I don’t believe it” or “That’s not the Andrew I know.” It’s apparently the Andrew Cuomo a lot of people knew.

  • Cuomo could still end up in prison. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • “Arizona state Sen. Tony Navarrete resigns seat after arrest in child sex abuse case.”
  • Old and busted: Democrats want to segregate students by race. The new hotness: Democrats want to segregate students by race.
  • How inflation is undoing the four years of wage growth and price deflation President Trump brought to the economy.

    Read the whole thing, especially the parts on the EU and Canada.

  • Devin Hogan, head of the Minneapolis Democratic Party, said that burning down a police building was “an act of pure righteousness.”
  • “Swiss Police Threaten to Stop Enforcing COVID-19 Rules. Group warns in letter that lockdown laws violate fundamental rights.”
  • Oregon has decided that it’s going to stop requiring Oregon high school graduates to prove they can read and write.
  • Baltimore professor arrested for dealing math. “Prof. Edward C. Ennels taught math at Baltimore City Community College but appears to have been offering a running lesson on supply side economic theory. Ennels reportedly was selling grades on a sliding scale depending on your worth and your ambition: $150 for a C; $250 for a B; and $500 for an A. He has now earned jail time after pleading to 11 misdemeanor charges, including bribery and misconduct in office.”
  • Speaking of Baltimore schools failing their students: Some Baltimore high school students test at grade school levels.
  • Dan Crenshaw slams Jennifer Ruben for a huge mistake:

    That’s a big mistake even by her standards. How did she make it? The Texas Tribune screwed the pooch on the original story:

    That’s a hell of a correction. “When we wrote Nolan Ryan struck out 383 batters in a single game, we meant he struck out that many in a single season…”

  • YouTube takes down another video by Rand Paul.(Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • Dumbass: Running from the police. Extra Dumbass: In a stolen vehicle. Super Turbo Dumbass: On a stolen ATV. (Hat tip: Dwight.)
  • “Mongo ist nur Schachfigur im großen Spiel des Lebens.” (Hat tip: Dwight.)
  • “Dems Considering Another Lockdown To Wipe Out The Few Small Businesses That Survived The Last One.”
  • “Bill Gates Announces He Too Will Go To Space Once His Rocket Is Finished Installing Updates.”
  • Golden throats:

  • LinkSwarm for January 19, 2018

    Friday, January 19th, 2018

    This morning starts with Republican house members calling for the release of a deeply disturbing secret memo that evidently relates to the whole FISA/Clinton/Obama misuse of America’s national security assets to spy on Domestic political opponents, including Donald Trump’s Presidential campaign. House members who have read the memo say the scandal unveiled is “worse than Watergate.” Those reading this blog should already be broadly familiar with the outlines of the scandal.

    However, since that memo hasn’t been released as of this writing, on with a regular Friday LinkSwarm.

    Oh, and Democrats are still threatening a government shutdown over illegal alien amnesty for Obama’s “Dreamers.” So you’ve got that to look forward to as well.

  • Speaking of “Dreamers” (which, by the way, is also the name of a porn store in north Austin), illegal aliens of “Dreamer” age have a crime rate double that of American citizens.
  • Including the accused cop killer who says he “wish he killed more of the motherfuckers.”
  • “Analysis: Leftism is a status machine. A very, very successful status machine. Conservatives have lost status battle after status battle, often because they fought it as a policy battle. It rarely is.”

    The media offers people clues about what things are high status within the areas they cover. People notice, and act accordingly. Yet most conservatives still don’t understand Trump’s response:

    If I lower the media’s status, I will wreck their power.

    So The Donald says that the media has “some of the most dishonest people” he has ever seen. Not an arm’s length complaint. A direct and personal status attack, rooted in truth.

    Trump also acts in ways that cause journalists to fulfill his pre-suasion labeling. He makes “outrageous” statements, which many people outside the Beltway Bubble agree with. Those statements receive over-the-top media attacks, which make his enemies look ridiculous. Then events swiftly show that Trump had a point. Trump rubs it in, using the media’s own “Fake News” term against them and pouncing on every sloppy and dishonest mistake. As a final topper, Trump makes the dishonest media a focus during every massive rally. Which strengthens his out-grouping effect among participants and viewers.

    He uses ridicule and lèse majesté, not bended knee and appeals — note that subordinating word — to logical argument.

  • Jim Goad offers a brief essay on comparative shitholes:

    In terms of life expectancy, Norway leads the pack at 81.8 years. Then comes the USA (79.3), with a sudden drop to 63.5 years for Haitians and a mere 55.0 years for Somalians.

    Norway also wins the blue ribbon when it comes to per-capita income, which is a staggering 38 times that of Haitians and 173 times that of Somalians.

    The noble Norsemen also win when it comes to their nation’s mean IQ, which is 100 compared to the USA’s 98. Somalia (68) and Haiti (67) both suffer a mean IQ that is below the commonly accepted cutoff line for “retarded.”

    The only category where the USA comes out on top is the percentage of the population with access to improved sanitation facilities—one index claims that 100% of Americans can find a functional toilet if they try. Next comes Norway at 98.1%. Haiti (27.6%) and Somalia (23.5%) are far, far worse. According to Wikipedia, “Sewer systems and wastewater treatment are nonexistent” in Haiti, which would mean the country is a literal shithole.

  • Andrew McCarthy goes into great detail about what a nothingburger the entire Trump-Russia conspiracy fantasy is. Though larded up with the requisite National Review distaste for Trump, it does include a few valuable nuggets I hadn’t chanced across heretofore, including that the law firm of BakerHostetler was who was funneling payments from Natalia Veselnitskaya and Prevezon Holdings to Fusion GPS founder Glenn Simpson. (Hat tip: Ann Althouse.)
  • Is Sweden contemplating sending the army to regain control over no-go zones?
  • Democratic Senator Patty Murray’s office: “We don’t care about anti-Semitism in this office,” Murray’s senior adviser said. “We care about transgenders, we care about blacks, we care about Hispanics, we care about gays, we care about lesbians, we care about the disabled.”
  • Switzerland Rejects Citizenship Bids of Residents Who Have Been on Welfare.” (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
  • Speaking of which: “Swiss town denies passport to Dutch vegan because she is ‘too annoying.'”
  • Why hasn’t power been restored to Puerto Rico? Maybe because Puerto Rican authorities were hoarding bital electrical equipment?
  • Austin on finalist list for Amazon’s second headquarters.
  • Baltmore’s mayor fires the police commissioner.
  • Dear Millennials: It has been scientifically proven that your music sucks.
  • East Coast Comicon bans Kevin “Hercules” Sorbo because he’s friends with Sean Hannity.
  • Dolores O’Riordan, the lead singer for The Cranberries, dead at the untimely age of 46.
  • Former Senator, Republican Majority leader, Presidential candidate and World War II veteran Bob Dole just received the Congressional Gold Medal. Best tweet from the event:

  • Gonna pass on the expedited shipping, thanks.
  • A little light today, but I want to hit publish on this before that memo drops…

    LinkSwarm for June 17, 2016

    Friday, June 17th, 2016

    Today is a quadruple witching hour for markets, so try not to freak out if there’s more than the usual market volatility today.

  • “Obama Is Bringing 100 Syrian Refugees Into U.S. Every Day.”
  • And Syrian refugees are blowing big holes in Sweden’s welfare budget. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • The rich aren’t paying their “fair share,” they’re paying everyone’s share. (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
  • Swiss overwhelmingly turn down “guaranteed income,” the latest pie-in-the-sky socialist scheme to rob every Peter to pay every Paul.
  • David Horowitz believes that Donald Trump’s post-Orlando foreign policy speech is a game changer. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • Not a game-changer: Continued vapid liberal cheer-leading for multiculturalism at all costs. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • “Orlando wasn’t about ‘gun violence’ or ‘homophobia.’ It was about Islam. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • Yet another MSM journalist caught lying about guns.
  • “Why it’s called a ‘modern sporting rifle‘ and not an ‘assault weapon.'” (Hat tip: Instapundit, who notes “Remember, none of this is about saving lives. It’s about the cultural domination of the people in flyover country, by their coastal ‘betters’ who get a near-erotic thrill out of such domination, and who are reduced to blind rage whenever their efforts at domination fail.”)
  • Aside: Is the Washington Examiner paying Ashe Schow enough? She’s like some indefatigable writing machine…
  • The Corrosive Politics of the New York Times Editorial Board Led to the Orlando Shooting. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • “Right now the debate seems choked with people who don’t know, are proud of not knowing, and think you’re a redneck gun-nut asshole if you want them to know because they feel very strongly about this.” (Hat tip: Dwight.)
  • No charges for officer Brad Miller. He’s the one who shot the “unarmed teen” who had driving his Jeep through a plate glass window and was in the process of vandalizing cars.
  • And here’s a police shooting where the use of lethal force was clearly justified.
  • JFK and LSD. Meh. It’s not that I think Kennedy wouldn’t have dropped acid given a chance, but Timothy Leary was basically a con man, and we already know that Nina Burleigh is irrational.
  • Wow, believe it or not, still another reason to never visit Oklahoma. “I’m going to need your driver’s license and all the money on your prepaid debit cards.”
  • “The prohibition of comments that are considered biased or hateful is an explicit denial of freedom of speech.” (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
  • Australia’s women’s Olympic soccer team defeated by teenage boys.
  • Are shipping containers the future of farming?
  • Your auditor finds huge cost discrepancies in Houston ISD construction costs. Does HISD: A.) Call in an outside auditor, B.) Launch a criminal investigation or C.) Suspend the auditor who found the problems?
  • New UT President Greg Fenves is a vast improvement over Bill Powers merely by being mediocre.
  • Land’s End decides to commit suicide.
  • Father buys car for son to go to college. Son decides to smoke pot and hang with no-good friends instead. Father sells car.
  • You’re not authorized to know the dire secrets of the Amtrak snack car! (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • Affluent buyers snapping up Hill Country land and building mansions.
  • LinkSwarm for June 3, 2016

    Friday, June 3rd, 2016

    Another week, another Texas flood. Try to stay dry and enjoy a Friday LinkSwarm:

  • Paglia on Clinton: “If it were a Republican in the crosshairs, Hillary’s shocking refusal to meet with the Inspector General (who interviewed all four of the other living Secretaries of State of the past two decades) would have been the lead item flagged in screaming headlines from coast to coast. Let’s face it—the genuinely innocent do not do pretzel twists like this to cover their asses.” (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • New York Magazine massively re-edits article on why Hillary won’t debate because the original wasn’t fawning enough.
  • Eight reasons Hillary sucks. Including Obama: “she does not seem to want to run on Ben Rhodes’s foreign policy, Jonathan Gruber’s Obamacare, Lois Lerner’s IRS, Lisa Jackson’s EPA, Eric Holder’s Justice Department, or Barack Obama’s racial healing. And yet she needs Obama’s hard-left base. So far she has rejected her 2008 Annie Oakley, Reagan-Democrat schtick, gambling that her Black Lives (alone) Matter and transgenderism pandering can ensure that she will match Obama’s historic share of the minority vote. But so far it seems just as likely that she will lose more voters among the white working class than she can lease from Obama’s core.”
  • College students are allowed to ask Hillary Clinton original, spontaneous questions that just happen to be scripted by the Clinton campaign. (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
  • At judge’s order, 20,000 documents related to Fast and Furious scandal released. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • Trump is right: Some illegal aliens are being lavished with more benefits than our own veterans.
  • How a naval contractor named “Fat Leonard” infiltrated the Navy with bribes, prostitutes and lavish parties. “The Soviets couldn’t have penetrated us better than Leonard Francis.” Our country is in the best of hands. (Hat tip: Dwight.)
  • Oberlin students are among the most precious of snowflakes.
  • More on the same theme. Alas, this morning I just don’t have time to explicate all the manifest idiocies on display by the Social Justice Warrior Campus Cadets…
  • Obama Administration bitch-slapped for attempting ex-post facto regulation. (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
  • Columbia was once a basket case and Venezuela a thriving nation on the rise. Thanks to The Magic Power of Socialism™, they’ve switched places.
  • This bitch is so crazy I can’t even keep up with her crazy bitch shit.”
  • Enya: rich crazy cat lady.
  • Flooding-related blackout leads to Texas prison riots.
  • City Manager behind Dallas’ controversial city-owned hotel steps down.
  • If your political party openly calls for the complete destruction of the oil industry, maybe you shouldn’t have your national convention in Houston.
  • Science Fiction writer Gregory Benford on university host escort duties for G. Gordon Liddy, Ray Bradbury, Kurt Vonnegut, and a certain “Tom.”
  • Space City Comic Con turns into an actual con. As in the fraud kind…
  • Swiss open world’s longest tunnel with ceremony featuring marching uniform worker drones, a horned goat god, and a giant flying death baby.