Lets look at the news that Russia has announced a complete withdrawal from Kherson oblast north/west of the Dnipro River.
First up: A big picture overview from Peter Zeihan, that I have some minor to moderate quibbles with.
Takeaways:
Russia has announced withdrawing from the Kherson pocket, which is their only territory west of the Dnipro River.
“Reports at this point indicate that the Russians are withdrawing at full speed from all positions.”
Not a rout…yet.
“Based on whose statistics you’re looking at, they’re somewhere between 20,000 and 40,000 Russian forces in the area, but it’s generally accepted on both sides these are the best troops that the Russians have, with the best training and the best equipment.”
Those Russians haven’t been properly supplied for a month due to the Kerch Strait Bridge attack. “Which is the only heavy rail connection that can handle freight transport from Russia proper to the southern front.”
“Everything now has to come in by truck and the Russians have lost the vast majority of their tactical truck support fleet for the military and are now using civilian vehicles, making them very vulnerable.”
“Not enough shells and not enough fuel have been getting to the Kherson front.”
One result: For the last two weeks, Ukrainian artillery has received zero counter-battery fire. “So the Ukrainians have just been able to plug away with whatever ammo they have.”
“The Ukrainians are being presented with a golden opportunity even if it’s only 20,000 Russian troops that are here. They’re now all in a state of retreat and they all have to go to the same places.”
“There are only two bridges across the [Dnipro] river, and the Ukrainians have excellent intelligence on the entire zone, so if the Russians put up a pontoon bridge it usually only lasts for a few minutes before it gets taken out.” I rather strongly suspect that Zeihan is either exaggerating here, or the sources he’s depending on are. It’s a bit too far front the frontlines for easy Excalibur range, and I sincerely doubt Ukrainian observers can get approval for HIMARS strikes within minutes for targets of opportunity. They’re just too expensive, and it’s not like they have huge quantities on hand.
“All of the Russians need to go on the same roads and the same intersections, which are all going to be massive kill zones until they reach the bridgeheads, one of which is at Kherson city, and the other one which is at the dam at Nova Kakhkovka.”
“The Ukrainians have been hitting these bridges with rocket fire for weeks, and they can’t handle heavy equipment any more.” Here Zeihan’s information is out of date; Russia has successfully repaired the bridge at Nova Kakhkovka using aggregate fill, which means it probably can be used for Russian heavy equipment to escape. See the video below for more details.
“Which means the Russians are going to have to make a massive parking jam at the bridgehead, dismount, and then run across while under artillery fire the entire time. The casualties are going to be immense, and that’s the best case scenario.”
“Best guess is that not only are the Russians going to be leaving behind their best gear, but they’re leaving behind more gear than what Ukrainians captured from the Russians in the Izyum assault back in September.” In this I also think Zeihan is overly optimistic. Russia has fought this war very stupidly for the first six months, and the disordered flight from Izyum, leaving so much equipment behind, should never have happened with a competent plan for a fighting retreat. By contrast, all the evidence we have from Kherson (again, see the video below) suggests that Russia is planning a fairly competent and orderly retreat, especially with the ability to use the Nova Kakhkovka bridge. Will Russia leave a lot of good kit behind in Kherson? Probably. Will they leave more behind than Izyum? For that I’m very skeptical. Then again, the Russian military has constantly surprised me with the depths of their incompetence over the past eight months…
“The Ukrainians are likely to enter the war by May with a tank and artillery force that’s more than five times its strength on the first day of the war.” For tanks, I think this figure is greatly exaggerated. According to Oryx, Ukraine has captured 503 tanks total, and they had more than that in active service. For artillery, though still unlikely, it seems a bit more plausible, as Ukraine started with less and Russia has tons and tons of towed artillery, which is exactly the sort of thing that’s going to get left behind in a hasty retreat.
“The Russians have already used the majority of their missile and tank forces, which began this war as the world’s largest.” That, I think, is accurate. Russia has been expending smart ordinance at a furious rate, and with sanctions, it doesn’t have the technological base to easily replace them.
“The Kherson withdrawal, and the likely rout to come, does mark the end of any hope the Russians had of regaining any sort of strategic initiative, or any sort of meaningful offensive operations, until at least to May. It’ll take them at least that long to bring in fresh troops and fresh gear.”
“In that time, the Ukrainians are not going to sit on their hands. They don’t have to cross the river to strike at the Russians. Once they get to the river, the long-range rockets and artillery are going to be able to target the isthmus, which is only about three kilometers wide, that connects the Ukrainian mainland to the Crimean peninsula.” On the Deep State map, I get closer to 9km just south of Perekop. Plus the Chongar strait bridge, which will be in HIMARS range. Plus the rail bridge just south of Syvash. Plus the little road southwest of Vasylivka crossing, which looks too small and precarious to support heavy traffic. Ditto the long, skinny road that runs down the Arabat Spit that separates the Sea of Azov from the Syvash Lake (AKA Rotten Lake), which appears to be a literal dirt road more suitable for dirt biking that main battle tanks. (Actually, there appear to be several weird little dyke-top roads that separate different segments of the Syvash Lake, though none really look up to military duty.)
“Because the Kerch rail bridge is out, Russia cannot only not bring in ammo and troops and fuel, it can’t bring in food. Their only other option are some very light rail and road connections across that isthmus, coming from the rest of occupied Ukraine, all of which Ukraine will still be able to strike.”
“In capturing Kherson, the Ukrainians are going to be able to cut the water flows to the Crimea canal, and water from that canal is solely responsible for three-quarters of the food grown in Crimea. So no imported food, little grown food. Russia is either going to have to evacuate the entire peninsula by car across the Kerch bridge’s remaining road span, or suffer a 1980s Ethiopia style famine.” Here again I think Zeihan exaggerates, as Russia will still be able to bring in food via ship across the Black Sea or the Sea of Azov. Crimeans could well be looking at a very lean year, maybe even Siege of Saint Petersburg lean, but that’s not “Ethiopians dropping dead of famine” lean.
Next up: Suchomimus offers a detailed map update. Zeihan is a geopolitical generalist jack of all trades, but detailed video and geolocation analysis is all Suchomimus does.
Takeaways:
Russia has blown up most (probably all) of the bridges over the Inhulets River.
Russia has several ferries to run troops and equipment over the Dnipro, along with rallying point to stage units for withdrawal. Some of the staging areas have been hit by Ukrainian artillery, but satellite photos show Russian forces spread out in those areas to minimize damage.
No evidence of heavy vehicles using those ferries yet. “It’s unknown if these ferries and barges can actually support anything heavier or not, and if they can, it’s likely they can only carry one at a time.”
There are two ferry loading points in Kherson city itself.
The southern bank shows several unloading spots. “This shows the ferry unloading spots, as well as a number of defensive positions trenches and earth walls which have been constructed. This point is reported to be less used than it was because of numerous calls from Mr. HIMARS. But it’s still heavily defended with trenches.”
As mentioned above, Russia has repaired the Nova Kakhkovka bridge over the Dnipro River using fill materials. “The main bridge is fully repaired, and there are three smaller and lighter bridges, so this is the only real crossing point…there’s no way to move heavy vehicles other than the ferries, and we’ve only seen light trucks on those so far on the Eastern side. Nova Kakhkovka is the only real option, so they are in a bit of a pickle, at least when it comes to getting heavy vehicles back across.”
“I expect the priority will be holding Nova Kakhkovka for as long as possible.”
Russia has constructed no less than three successive prepared defensive lines on the south/east side of the Dnipro.
Finally, after a month of almost no significant Kherson updates, are we seeing frontline movement indicating a Russian withdrawal? Oh yeah. Here’s Kherson at 4:04 AM Ukrainian time today:
Greetings, and welcome to a special Election Eve Monday LinkSwarm! My Internet is back up, and tomorrow night I will be liveblogging the election returns starting around 7 PM.
For the past week or so, my back-of-the-envelope math envisioned a GOP House majority somewhere between 229 and 241, and I’m sticking to that. Give the Republicans the 212 seats in Cook Political Report, with two-thirds of the 35 races in the toss-up category, and you end up with 235 Republicans and 200 Democrats, so put those down as my final prediction numbers.
Snip.
With Bolduc, Laxalt, and Johnson winning, I come out to a 51–48 GOP advantage by the end of the week, with Walker and Warnock headed to a runoff. It wouldn’t shock me if Oz or Masters or both won, giving Republicans a 53- or 54-seat majority.
On Sunday, Hilary Rosen, a longtime Democratic strategist, predicted on CNN’s “State of the Union” that her party will have a bad night on Tuesday because they did not listen to voters.
“I’m a loyal Democrat, but I am not happy. I just think we did not listen to voters in this election, and I think we are going to have a bad night,” she said.
She faulted the Democratic Party for ignoring voters’ concerns about the economy, and implored them to “stop talking about democracy being at stake.”
“When voters tell you over and over and over again that they care mostly about the economy, listen to them,” she said. “Stop talking about democracy being at stake. Democracy is at stake because people are fighting so much about what elections mean. Voters have told us what they wanted to hear. I don’t think Democrats have delivered this cycle.”
Republican Sens. Chuck Grassley and Ron Johnson gave the federal prosecutor probing Hunter Biden a little nudge Wednesday — sending him more than 200 pages of bank records showing millions in transactions between the first son’s companies and Communist Chinese-tied entities.
Snip.
The senators’ analysis of banking records, first reported by Fox News, finds that between August 2017 and October 2018, $6 million was transferred to a company allegedly set up by Hunter Biden called Hudson West III, $5 million came from Northern International Capital, a [Chinese energy compan] CEFC affiliate, and $1 million was transferred from CEFC itself.
From the pool of cash, $4.8 million was transferred from Hudson West III to other Biden companies, such as Owasco P.C. and Owasco LLC, and to a company associated with President Biden’s brother James, the Lion Hall Group.
The bank records also show that Hunter Biden and his aunt and uncle, Sara and James Biden, went on a “spending spree,” in the senators words, after Hudson West III received the millions in payments from CEFC, through a line of credit that was opened.
“We are also providing bank records showing that credit cards were collateralized by a $99,000 preauthorized withdrawal from Hudson West III,” Grassley and Johnson write, noting that the money was spent for airfare, at Apple stores, hotels, and restaurants, as they detailed back in 2020.
Grassley and Johnson also mention two $3 million wire transfers sent to Robinson Walker LLC, another Hunter Biden-associated company; and by State Energy HK Limited, another CEFC affiliate, saying the purpose of those transfers “is unclear.” The Post reported on those mysterious transactions back in 2020.
The senators also make reference to JiaQi Bao, Hunter Biden’s Chinese secretary, who reportedly pushed for “Uncle Joe” Biden to run for president and has been linked to the Chinese government. The bank transactions included in Grassley and Johnson’s letter show that Hunter Biden made payments to Bao totaling $29,795.84 after Hudson West III received the $6 million from the Chinese firms.
Some names and entities will be familiar to BattleSwarm readers, but other bits are new.
Ballot harvesting, according to the California Democrats who’d like to take it national, is an innocent practice where union members and activists, some of them illegally present in the country, do voters the favor, see, of helping voters fill out their ballots and then collecting those ballots for them so that they need never go to the polls. They call it “a new service.” It’s part of their “make every vote count” agenda, and who could be against that?
But out in Florida, where there’s still some semblance of objectivity, investigators found another story.
According to the Washington Times:
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Florida’s newly created Office of Election Crimes and Security is requesting a criminal investigation into charges of ballot harvesting in Orlando, a Democratic stronghold in the critical swing state.
Cynthia Harris, a Democrat who ran unsuccessfully for District 6 commissioner in Orange County, which includes Orlando, provided a sworn complaint to the election crimes office, alleging left-leaning organizations have been perpetrating a scheme to encourage residents in black neighborhoods to apply for mail-in ballots and to fill out those ballots, which she said have been collected by paid canvassers, and sometimes altered, all in violation of state law.
In an interview with The Washington Times, Ms. Harris said she has video evidence of paid ballot harvesters operating in Orlando neighborhoods in both 2014 and 2017, and that the scheme has been going on for decades, continuing through the 2020 election and the 2022 primary.
If voting fraud is this massive in Florida, how widespread and massive is it in states controlled by Democrats? (Hat tip: Sarah Hoyt at Instapundit.)
Two members of Congress from Texas and one former Trump administration official who now serves in the Texas House of Representatives are asking for answers from the Biden administration after discovering that an open borders group funded by George Soros received millions of dollars in federal grant money last year.
Alianza Americas, a nonprofit that says it is “committed to a human rights agenda for all people, with an emphasis on the inclusion and support of Latin American immigrant communities, and people on the move in Latin America,” received $7.5 million from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in February 2021, according to the Washington Examiner, and then another $1 million from the Health Resources and Services administration in July.
Both organizations fall under President Joe Biden’s Health and Human Services organization, and both grants were to fund COVID relief and vaccination efforts.
The group has also received nearly $1.4 million from George Soros’ Open Society Foundation from 2016 through 2020.
Federal law prohibits government grant money from being spent on lobbying, but Alianza Americas may have violated that prohibition in its activities as a “political advocacy group,” according to a letter from former HHS Chief of Staff Brian Harrison.
Chicago teacher’s unions want to pass an Illinois state constitutional amendment that would basically let them run the state.
If approved by Illinois voters in November, Amendment 1 will give government teachers’ unions an unfettered constitutional right to demand not just anything in their interests, but in what they see as the interests of every Illinoisan. The amendment is not limited to employee matters at the workplace.
Don’t take my word for that. Look at the first sentence of the argument in favor of it as written in the official summary as published by the Illinois Secretary of State: “This amendment will protect workers’ and others’ safety.” [Emphasis added.]
hat particular sentence is just about safety, but it shows the broad interpretation of the amendment beyond the workplace that government unions will assert. The language of the amendment itself supports that broad interpretation, and will extend to anybody’s “economic welfare,” which is pretty much everything.
What will government unions, especially radical teachers’ unions, demand with that new constitutional right?
The Chicago Teachers Union has long been quite open about its purpose. It sees itself as the vanguard of a national movement, led by unions like itself, that is textbook Marxism.
That purpose is well documented. It goes beyond the radical curriculum they teach in schools and encompasses an entire rearrangement of how America works.
Among the first things we wrote about on this site, ten years ago, was the role of the CTU and other teachers’ unions at a Marxism conference held that year:
The event was teeming with teachers who spoke about the new found bond” between Socialism and teachers’ unions according to reports, and Chicago teachers were on the stage. Chicago Teachers Union [then] VP Jesse Sharkey spoke at one breakout session. Becca Barnes, a Chicago Teachers Union teacher and organizer with Chicago Socialists, proclaimed at the beginning of the conference that “the struggle here in the United States has entered a new phase. Nowhere have we pointed the way forward more clearly than here in Chicago with the teachers union strike….”
Since then, militant radicalism has become still more firmly embedded in the CTU. That history is well documented – quite proudly by radicals themselves. The International Socialist Review, for example, lays out a good history of the CTU, saying the CTU “transcended a simple labor dispute and was transformed into a social movement, with the teachers fusing their struggle with that of the community they serve…joining in the Occupy Chicago movement that pointed out the root of societal problems—social and economic inequality.”
A poll that shows ridiculously low support from black voters for defunding the police should be the final nail in the coffin for Democrats’ anti-law and order campaign of the last seven years.
TheGrio.com commissioned a poll, along with the Kaiser Family Foundation, which found that 82% of black respondents want police funding either to be kept about the same (48%) or increased (34%). Only 17% wanted it decreased.
It’s just like Kari Lake said in a recent confrontation with a reporter. If you go into most black neighborhoods and talk about defunding the police, they’ll look at you “like you’re the craziest person on the planet.” But it’s one thing for a white, conservative Republican to say it — it’s far more important to hear black respondents in a poll confirm it overwhelmingly.
Things that make you go “hmmmm“: “San Francisco DA Won’t Release Police Bodycam Video, 911 Calls From Paul Pelosi Attack.”
Great line in the middle of this Ben Shapiro election roundup video: “Andrew Cuomo came to kill all the old people and grab ass, and he ran out of old people.”
Remember all those stories of how bad it sucked for workers in Foxconn’s iPhone factory? It’s worse now.
Hundreds and perhaps thousands of workers fled a Chinese manufacturing complex that accounts for 85% of iPhone assembly capacity. The mass migration, which began this weekend, called into question that country’s COVID-control measures and, more broadly, its reliability as a part of global supply chains.
“Something snapped over the weekend,” Bloomberg News reports. Employees suddenly fled the Zhengzhou plant of Hon Hai Precision Industry Co. Ltd., better known as Foxconn. Videos show, in what is now called the “Foxconn Great Escape” or the “iPhone Long March,” workers scrambling over high chain fences at the plant, known as “iPhone City.”
To avoid detection, workers traveled through cropland by day. At night, they took to the roads. “Some people were walking amid wheat fields with their luggage, blankets, and quilts,” said a poster on WeChat, the popular Chinese social media platform. “I couldn’t help but feel sad.”
Residents of neighboring areas rallied, for instance leaving water and provisions in the open on roadsides. Social media postings reported signs such as “For Foxconn workers returning home.”
Truckers also pitched in. Risking criminal prosecution, they took workers in pick-up, dump, and flatbed trucks. One video shows a woman standing on the back of a big tank truck speeding down a highway in the rain.
Workers fled Foxconn’s “closed loop” system, which isolated the plant from the rest of society. Inside the loop, the company went to great lengths to stop COVID. As a disease-control measure, it had ended canteen service on October 19, forcing workers to eat boxed food in dormitory-style sleeping quarters. Food was reportedly scarce, and conditions in the dorms rapidly deteriorated. On Sunday, Foxconn announced it would resume cafeteria dining.
The political establishment—left and right—want desperately to move on, to pretend the last 30 months didn’t happen. With very few exceptions (Ron DeSantis, Kirsti Noem, Rand Paul, Thomas Massie, Ron Johnson, and a few others, later), they betrayed their core values. Many Republicans and so-called Libertarians quickly capitulated the primacy and importance of individual liberties. Whereas supposedly equality-loving democrats embraced policies that in no uncertain terms screwed women, children and the poor. The 2020 democrat campaign slogan might as well have been “protect the rich, infect the poor.” Or “only the rich need to learn.” They’d all very much like that you forget about that. They’d like to go back to the fights they know how to fight, the golden oldies that turn the bases out, and turn us against each other. But COVID policies turned the whole thing on its side, jumbling us all up and resulting in all sorts of hitherto unheard of alliances. And when your business is maintaining the status quo, that is very dangerous.
Which is why Emily Oster is pleading for an amnesty.
First, let’s be clear to whom Emily Oster is speaking. She’s speaking to the furious well-educated suburban women who are swinging towards Republicans in this cycle, even in the bluest of states. Because it was the bluest of states that were hit hardest by these policies. It was in blue states that the schools were closed longest, that the economic devastation was worst, that crime spiked the most, where masks were required longest. The damage done by these policies is at its beginning, not its end. Dr. Oster, would like women to believe that it was all just a mistake, a mis-understanding, and remember that it is the Republicans who are looking to limit the freedoms that really count. That while democrats had no problem sacrificing the well-being of our living children for three years in support political power, it is Republicans that pose the real threat.
Blue city blues: “Nearly 20% Of Seattle Shootings Happened Near Homeless Encampments.”
Man who used to get all his information on conservatives from the mainstream media realizes he’d been lied to.
When I left the mainstream liberal media bubble & started listening to right-wing media to understand what they want, I became more aware of the world around me than ever before. Without the filter, I got to hear what conservatives actually believe & it's not what I was told.
— Adam B. Coleman, President of Aintblackistan (@wrong_speak) October 21, 2022
For a couple of days, I was at this conservative conference, everyone I spoke with was courteous and supportive and I felt completely comfortable. I didn't have people stare at me or give me the feeling that I wasn't welcome. Actually, quite the opposite.
— Adam B. Coleman, President of Aintblackistan (@wrong_speak) October 21, 2022
However, when I would go on Twitter, they would show clips from the event and reframed this benign conservative conference as being a "KKK rally". If Americafest was a KKK rally, then it was the lamest KKK rally ever.
— Adam B. Coleman, President of Aintblackistan (@wrong_speak) October 21, 2022
Wendell Perez received a call from the elementary school that would alarm any parent. School officials told him that his 12-year-old daughter had attempted suicide in the school’s bathroom. He was told it was because she wanted to be a boy, with a male name and pronouns.
Wendell couldn’t believe it. At home, his daughter hadn’t shown any signs of gender dysphoria or discomfort in being a girl. The Perez family is Catholic, and they raised their children with a biblical and scientific understanding of biological sex.
But when Wendell and his wife Maria arrived at the school, they found out that school officials had been having confidential meetings with their daughter and discussing her discomfort with her gender. Wendell and Maria found out that teachers and staff at school had begun treating their daughter as a boy at school without their consent or knowledge. Wendell was told by staff that they didn’t share information about his daughter’s “transition” with him or his wife because of “confidentiality issues.”
Whatever happened to in loco parentis? Or does that just not apply when there are radical transexual activists to mollify?
When the school called his 14-year-old son to the principal’s office for refusing to say a female student was a boy, Matthew Duncan decided he’d had enough.
When the school called his 14-year-old son to the principal’s office for refusing to say a female student was a boy, Matthew Duncan decided he’d had enough.
“There was never a push towards dominance and control like it is now,” said Duncan. “You can’t voice your opinion.”
In response, many families in Grants Pass have withdrawn their children from public school, enrolling them in private school or starting to homeschool, Grants Pass teachers, school administrators and parents told The Epoch Times.
Meanwhile, in a civilized state: “Florida Bans Puberty Blockers and Transgender Surgery for Minors.”
Also, an O’Rourke rally too close to a voting location violated Texas law.
Still more Beto: “New poll shows Abbott gaining six points in eight weeks, 53/40.”
“More California companies moving headquarters out-of-state than ever before.” Texas once again tops the list of destination states, followed by Tennessee, Nevada, Florida and Arizona.
“Democrat Nominee In Arkansas Arrested For Felony Terroristic Threatening. Law enforcement officials in the state of Arkansas arrested Diamond Arnold-Johnson, the Democrat nominee for Arkansas auditor, on Friday for first-degree terroristic threats.” Bonus:
Arnold-Johnson’s husband was on trial in August for allegedly posting terroristic threats on Facebook, police said. During the trial, Arnold-Johnson, 32, admitted that she, not her husband, posted the threatening messages on Facebook that led to the criminal charges, KATV reported.
A warrant was served for Arnold-Johnson’s arrest on October 13, but she refused to comply and a SWAT team was dispatched to resolve the matter.
However, police made the decision to cancel using the SWAT team to force compliance from Arnold-Johnson in an apparent attempt to not risk an explosive situation happening right before an election.
I cannot believe democracy is about to die in America, again.
After years of living under a dictatorship, America rose from the ashes. Democrats took control of the Presidency, the House, the Senate, the university system, Big Tech, the entertainment industry, and major corporations – and thereby defeated fascism by seizing every major lever of power in the nation. With one-party rule established, and all of our critics silenced, democracy was once again free to flourish.
Now, our dear democracy is under attack – by America holding a so-called “election” and allowing idiots to vote. Let us be clear about what the stakes are: if a single person I disagree with is elected in a free and fair election, democracy will be DEAD. If citizens have the power to simply vote the ruling party out of power – when I really like the current ruling party – all is lost.
Commenter Greg The Class Traitor asked about this on another thread, so I thought I would throw this Anders Puck Nielsen video up with a bit of context.
Basically Ukraine managed to hit (but not sink) some Russian warships in Sevastopol harbor with some waterborne drones, and Putin threw a hissy fit, declaring the Ukrainian grain export deal was off. Turkey promptly went “No it isn’t” and said exports would continue with Turkish flags on the grain ships in question, causing Russia to back down and rejoin the deal pretty much immediately.
Historically, there’s no love lost between Turkey and Russia. (Honestly, you could swap out any other of either of those two country’s neighbors in that sentence, and it would still be true.) The fact that there were ten different Russo-Turkish wars (plus the Crimean War and World War I) should give you an inkling of how deep and bitter that enmity extends. That’s one of the factors that made NATO such a useful ally against the Soviet Union during the Cold War. Even today, Russia and Turkey are fighting a quasi-proxy war between Russian-backed Armenia and Turkish-backed Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh, and Russia is on the losing end there as well.
Let’s look at Russia’s backdown over the grain deal.
Takeaways:
“It looks like a diplomatic defeat in a stand-off with Turkey, and it shows that Russia is essentially unable to control the maritime domain in the Black Sea.”
“Russia was clearly very upset about the attack. It was a big deal in the Russian media, and they put a lot of effort into portraying it as a terrorist attack. And just to be clear, when there is a war going on, it is not terrorism to attack the opponent’s military.” This is clearly a “Duh!” point, but one worth spelling out given the vast swarms of pro-Russian bots who argue otherwise.
“The deal was made such that it had a duration of 120 days, so it was up for renewal in November…For quite a while is has seemed that Russia has been unhappy about the grain deal. I don’t think they had expected that it would be such a big success.”
“As I am recording this we are up to 477 shipments and more than 10 million tons of cargo. That’s a lot. I don’t think the Russians had expected Ukraine to be able to make a safe corridor that quickly.”
“If we remember how the war was going back in July, then Russia was still on the offensive. People were still talking about Russia closing the land corridor to Transnistria and maybe taking Odessa. So from a Russian perspective the idea might well have been that the deal would never work. Because it was going to take months for Ukraine to make a safe corridor, and before that time, Ukraine would have lost the access to the ports.”
“But what happened was that the grain deal did become a success. Ukraine has made a lot of money from exporting its agricultural products, and it has reduced the prices of food on the global markets.”
“What this grain does is that it reduces the prices on the global market, so that people in the third world can also afford to buy food. And then it helps the economy because it reduces inflation. But for Russia right now it is a point to have a big economic crisis in the West, and the Ukrainian economy is supposed to be terrible.”
“Turkey was not going to accept that the deal would fall on the ground. So they made it clear that the grain shipments were going to continue, and that they were going to provide the ships to do it, if necessary. And that gave Russia the challenge that if they withdrew from the deal, but it didn’t have any consequences, then it would be embarrassing. Because it would demonstrate that Russia is unable to control the events.”
“The Russian navy can’t actually operate with surface warships close to the Ukrainian coastline, because Ukraine has land based anti-ship missiles, so it would be really hard to interdict the grain traffic. And using long-distance air strikes or submarine attacks on UN cargo ships that are transporting grain to the world to avoid a food crisis…it would turn everybody against Russia. It’s just impossible to explain.”
“Maybe it could even lead to a military confrontation with Turkish warships that were protecting the shipments. So in other words, Erdogan called Putin’s bluff.”
“What this shows is basically two things. It shows that the relationship between Turkey and Russia, it now that Turkey that has the stronger position. It is now Erdogan that tells Putin how things will be. And then it shows that the Russian Black Sea Fleet can’t enforce a blockade on Ukrainian harbors. And if they can’t do that, then I will say that it is getting more and more difficult to see what the role of the Russian navy actually is in this war.”
Plus, if Russia had actually attacked Turkish ships, that would probably lead directly to a military conflict with NATO. And while I’m sure that before Russo-Ukrainian War, there were many Russian ultranationalists who loudly declared that Russia could win a war against NATO, Russian military performance has been so lousy that only the most hopelessly self-deluded could believe that now.
(By the way, my Internet was restored Friday. It turns out three people on my block were affected, so it was a narrowspread outage, evidently because the “traps” were too old to handle a recent network upgrade. I’ll try to do the LinkSwarm on Sunday, if I have time.)
Benjamin Netanyahu appears to be on course for a bigger victory in Israel’s fifth election in less than four years than initial exit polls suggested, all three of the country’s main television channels projected Wednesday morning.
His Likud party and its natural allies are currently projected to win 65 seats in the 120-seat Knesset, with 86% of the votes counted as of Wednesday afternoon Israel time.
A coalition of Netanyahu’s Likud, the Jewish nationalist Religious Zionism/Jewish Power bloc, Shas and United Torah Judaism would, on paper, be the most right-wing government in Israel’s history.
This, the 37th, makes the sixth government Netanyahu has led (following the 27th, 32nd, 33rd, 34th, 35th), eclipsed only by Israeli founding father David Ben-Gurion’s nine, and Netanyahu is the first to serve three non-consecutive stints in power.
By the time most movies get to a sixth installment, most are going direct to video, but Netanyahu’s pro-security policies have increasingly dominated Israel. Public support for the ever-ephemeral “two state solution” favored by the leftwing opposition has fallen to record lows.
Whoever is running Biden’s foreign policy apparatus seems to be less institutionally hostile to Netanyahu than the Obama Administration was, and Biden met with him earlier this year.
Bibi’s like the Terminator: no matter what the international left throws at him, or how many times he’s been written off for dead, he just keeps coming back.
It occurs to me that the Terminator franchise has also had six films. Let’s hope that Bibi VI is better received than Dark Fate…
Blue cities bleed, more Democrats violating election laws, another Democratic congressional staffer exposed for carrying water for Red China, Elon Musk takes over and immediately starts cleaning house at Twitter, and more transexual lunacy. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
As polling continues to show crime is a top issue for voters, the number of homicides has skyrocketed nationwide.
In fact, homicide rates rose by an average of nearly 10% in 50 of the most populated U.S. cities between the third quarter of last year and the third quarter of this year — and are still rising — according to a new study.
WalletHub compared 50 of America’s largest cities based on per capita homicides for the third quarter (July through September) of each year since 2020, using locally published crime data to compile its findings.
According to WalletHub, these were the ten cities with the highest homicide cases per 100,000 residents from July through September:
St. Louis, Mo. (19.69)
Kansas City, Mo. (14.86)
Detroit, Mich. (13.24)
Baltimore, Md. (12.45)
New Orleans, La. (10.99)
Milwaukee, Wisc. (10.46)
Memphis, Tenn. (9.99)
Philadelphia, Pa. (9.36)
Norfolk, Va. (7.78)
Chicago, Ill. (7.71)
The top prosecutors in most of these cities are backed by progressive megadonor George Soros, a billionaire who’s spent the last several years injecting tens of millions of dollars into local district attorney races nationwide, backing candidates who support policies such as abolishing bail, defunding the police, and decriminalizing or deprioritizing certain offenses.
In St. Louis, for example, Circuit Attorney Kimberly Gardner is one of the first prosecutors bankrolled by Soros’ financial network of organizations and affiliates, heavily funded by these sources in 2016 and again in 2020.
Amid high homicide figures, Gardner has declined more cases and issued fewer arrest warrants than her predecessor, charging fewer felonies and prosecuting thousands of fewer cases as a result. She has also deferred prison sentences for misdemeanors and nonviolent felonies as part of her reform initiatives.
Gardner has said this is part of her “platform to reduce the number of cases unnecessarily charged in order to focus on the more difficult cases for trial.”
Last year, Gardner came under fire after three murder cases under her purview were dismissed in one week due to prosecutors in her office not showing up for hearings or being unprepared.
Her campaign website boasts that she’s “made jail and prison a last resort, reserved for those who pose a true public safety risk,” while limiting “the arrest and detention of people accused of misdemeanors and low-level felonies.”
Philadelphia DA Larry Krasner is another Soros-funded prosecutor.
Soros spent almost $1.7 million through the Philadelphia Justice and Public Safety PAC to help Krasner in 2017, pouring more than five times as much money into the race as Krasner himself. Four years later, Krasner received a combined $1.259 million from Soros-funded groups for his reelection.
During his tenure, Krasner has cut the future years of incarceration by half and slashed the length of parole in probation supervision by nearly two-thirds compared to the previous DA. He has also made a priority of not prosecuting people who are illegally in possession of guns unless they hurt or kill people.
The top prosecutors in New Orleans, Milwaukee, Norfolk, and Chicago have also been backed by Soros-linked money. Many of the others are self-described progressive prosecutors.
According to some experts, progressive prosecutors pursuing soft-on-crime policies have contributed to the spike in homicides and other violent crime.
“Prosecutors in most major cities have failed the people they serve by refusing to prosecute criminals, including those charged with violent crimes,” Tristin Kilgallon, associate professor of pre-law and history at the University of Findlay, told WalletHub. “Countless violent crimes have been committed by those who have been released back into the streets due to recent ‘bail reform’ initiatives or by prosecutors who declined to pursue charges.”
“Texas Secretary of State Finds ‘Serious Breaches’ in Harris County 2020 Election Audit. Auditors found multiple chain of custody issues and violations of state and federal law requiring maintenance of records in the state’s largest county.”
Issues found by auditors relate primarily to the county’s extralegal “drive-thru” voting initiated by then-interim County Clerk Chris Hollins.
Auditors found that for at least 14 polling locations the county does not show chain of custody for the Mobile Ballot Boxes (MBB) and that there were multiple MBBs created for some voting locations. Auditors say the MBBs from the polling locations “were not the MBBs ultimately tabulated.” They also note that they have been able to locate some missing MBBs, but have not been given an explanation as to why the originals were not tabulated. Each MBB can hold 9,999 ballots.
Another issue found by auditors is that poll book and provisional voting data provided by the county do not match the number of cast vote records on some of the devices.
Ennis also noted that after upgrading voting systems the county does not appear to have retained “any equipment or computers that provide relevant reports or alternatively, can read the MBBs” from 2020 or recover the cast vote records stored in them as required by both state and federal election codes.
Why, it’s almost like the Democrats running Harris County wanted to commit election fraud…
Speaking of election fraud, Facebook has been fined $25 million for breaking Washington State election law.
According to court documents, King County Superior Court Judge Douglass North found Meta to be in violation of Washington’s political disclosure law 822 separate times between 2019 and 2021 and issued the maximum possible fine for each instance, which totaled up to $30,000 per violation.
Meta was also ordered to “come into full compliance” with the state’s election transparency laws within the next 30 days as well as pay the attorney’s fees for the case, which Ferguson has requested be tripled for a total of $10.5 million. The final total will be decided by North at a later date.
According to The Seattle Times, the state’s election transparency laws, which have been in place since 1972, require ad sellers to “disclose the names and addresses of political buys, the targets of such ads and, the total number of viewers of each ad.” The judge found that Meta had intentionally violated the standards.
Washington Democrat Attorney General Bob Ferguson said “that he had “one word for Facebook’s conduct in this case – arrogance.”
He told the Times, “It intentionally disregarded Washington’s election transparency laws,” Ferguson said. “But that wasn’t enough. Facebook argued in court that those laws should be declared unconstitutional. That’s breathtaking.”
When Pennsylvania Democrats insist that a candidate who suffered a life-threatening stroke in May is recovering well and “has no work restrictions and can work full duty in public office,” that candidate must look and sound fine to prove they’re telling the truth. Last night, in the lone debate in the Pennsylvania Senate race, John Fetterman looked and sounded very, very far from fine. But you can judge for yourself by watching the whole debate here.
I expected Fetterman’s debate performance to be a Rorschach test, with Democrats insisting that he was fine and hand-waving away any problems, and Republicans pointing to every verbal misstep, pause, or oddly worded answer. But by the end of the hour, there was little debate, no pun intended. John Fetterman’s ability to hear, understand, process information, and speak appears to still be severely impacted by his stroke. Perhaps the worst moment of the night came when one of the moderators asked him about a statement he made in 2018 opposing fracking, and how he could square that past stance with his current claim that he always supported fracking. After a long pause, presumably from reading the moderator’s question from the monitor, Fetterman said, “I, I, I do support fracking and . . .” and then for a moment, Fetterman’s head shook, and his mouth moved, but no words came out. Then he picked up again: “I don’t . . . I don’t. I support fracking, and I stand, and I do support fracking.” With everyone watching likely mortified and embarrassed to watch Fetterman struggle to finish the sentence, the moderator mercifully moved on to the next question.
Elon Musk took over Twitter late Thursday and fired company CEO Parag Agrawal, CFO Ned Segal, senior legal representative Vijaya Gadde, and general counsel Sean Edgett.
Musk, the world’s richest man, acquired the social media giant through a $44 billion purchase. He reportedly had until Friday to complete the deal.
In a video tweet that went viral, Musk appeared at Twitter’s corporate offices Wednesday carrying a sink, implying that employees would need to accept that he was now in charge.
This is a good start, but all the people on the Safety and Trust Council need to be fired, and all accounts suspended or banned need to be restored.
Rishi Sunak is the new UK Prime Minister, and Nigel Farage is not impressed:
A House Democratic staffer was fired after her outreach to other congressional aides allegedly on behalf of the Chinese embassy was revealed this week, National Review has learned. After an investigation found that the staffer had acted improperly, her boss, Representative Don Beyer, swiftly removed her.
“Congressman Beyer was totally unaware of these activities prior to being contacted by the House Sergeant At Arms,” Aaron Fritschner, his deputy chief of staff, told National Review in a statement this morning. “As soon as he learned of them, he followed every directive he was given by security officials. The staffer in question is no longer employed by the office of Congressman Beyer.”
Fritschner added that Beyer, who has a hawkish record on China, was “deeply upset” upon learning about the activities of the now-former staffer, Barbara Hamlett.
Cleveland Municipal Court Judge Pinkey Carr, a Democrat, was found to exhibit such misconduct that comprise more than 100 incidents over a period of about two years.
The misconduct “encompassed repeated acts of dishonesty; the blatant and systematic disregard of due process, the law, court orders, and local rules; the disrespectful treatment of court staff and litigants; and the abuse of capias warrants and the court’s contempt power,” stated the court’s per curium opinion. “That misconduct warrants an indefinite suspension from the practice of law.”
I’ve long thought that, based on the fragmentary evidence we have (the huge debt load, the ghost cities, the known mismanagement and calculation problem of planned communist economies, etc.), the size of China’s economy is overstated by 40%. Now, according to the measurements of one pretty good proxy for economic activity, it appears that I was too trusting and optimistic about the size of China’s economy, in that it’s probably overstated by 60%.
Takeaways:
Building on the work (caveat: paywalled) of University of Chicago economist Luis R. Martinez, economist and YouTuber Joeri Schasfoort (guest lecturer at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam) calculates that China’s economy is overstated by 60%.
Martinez’s original paper calculates the visible difference between official stated GDP growth in 184 different countries between 1992 and 2008, and compared those numbers to the visible nighttime light from satellite imagery, and mapped the correlation. You know that South Korea/North Korea image comparison? That, but for the entire world, and mapped over time.
“Autocratic countries typically reported a whopping 35% higher GDP growth numbers compared to nighttime lights growth. And for China specifically, Martinez states that, based on his analysis, China’s GDP growth between 1992 and 2008 was likely 4.9% per year, rather than its average reported growth of 6.3%.”
“This would mean that instead of soon becoming the second largest economy in the world, China’s economy is only about a third of the size of the mighty US economy. And it also means that predictions such as those made by billionaire investor Ray Dalio that China is soon to overtake the US as the world’s next superpower are way overblown.”
“For China specifically, Martinez states that, based on his analysis, China’s GDP growth between 1992 and 2008 was likely 4.9% per year, rather than its average reported growth of 6.3%.”
“Based on how much authoritarian countries overstate in GDP growth compared to night light growth, Martinez produced what he calls a GDP deflator. This GDP deflator is basically a number by which to reduce official GDP numbers each year based on how authoritarian a country is using his deflator. We extend Martinez’s analysis to the year 2021, and while between in 1992 and 2021, China reported a sky high GDP growth between 14% and 8%, Martinez’s analysis suggests that China actually only grew between 6% and 2%.”
Still impressive growth by world standards.
“You should take these adjusted numbers with a big grain of salt. But that being said, I do actually think that the adjusted numbers are closer to the truth than the official numbers.”
“China is quite unique in that the central government used to set GDP growth targets for provincial governors. And if any of you ever worked in a company with a growth target, you probably know that while they can be effective, they typically also produce a lot of unwanted side effects.”
“Research has already shown that China’s GDP growth targets led to both wasteful investment projects and, more importantly, to us manipulated GDP numbers. Similarly to Martinez’s study, another economist uncovered that in the years that Chinese provincial governments needed to be selected, there were huge differences between the reported GDP figures for that province and data that could not be manipulated such as electricity consumption.”
“When I myself looked into the nightlife data of a paper published in Nature and compared that to the World Bank GDP data, I found that indeed China has reported much higher GDP growth compared to nightlight growth. And for example, its more democratic also rapidly growing and larger neighbor India. So yeah, there is a lot of evidence that China is manipulating its GDP data just as much, if not more, than other autocratic countries.”
“And this is why, with the caveat that this is an extremely rough calculation, in my opinion, China’s GDP is likely 40% of its official figure.”
(Note: Normally I say “Watch the whole thing.” However, there’s some unrelated tragic news at the very end, so if you’re prone to I Haz A Sadz, you might want to stop at 13:08.)
A massive security breach of the Mexican government unveiled documents from the Mexico Secretariat of National Defense (Sedena). The leaked documents, published online by a group called Guacamaya, reveal that the Mexican military has been supplying cartels with weapons.
According to the leaked documents “On May 31, 2019, the military offered operators of the criminal group (Tejupilco drug cartel) 70 fragmentation grenades at a cost of 26,000 pesos (1300.29 USD) each; the criminal cell confirmed the purchase of eight of them, which were delivered to Atlacomulco, State of Mexico.”
The document then explained that not only were cartel members offered weapons, they were given classified information by military personnel that disclosed in full detail information on armed forces mobility and operations.
Following the May 31 document was an intelligence report made on June 10 of the same year that revealed that Sedena had full knowledge of the exchange and refused to act on it
The revelation comes just weeks after Texas Gov. Greg Abbott designated Mexican drug cartels as terrorist organizations and as millions of illegal aliens have poured across the southern border since President Joe Biden took office.
In light of the Biden administration’s inaction, some members of Texas’ congressional delegation say the time has come for Texas to declare an invasion on the southern border.
“Not only are the United Nations, the Biden Administration, and U.S. nonprofits supporting the invasion of our southern border, now the Mexican military is arming the Cartels smuggling migrants with hand grenades,” U.S. Rep. Lance Gooden told Texas Scorecard. “I fully support declaring the border crisis an invasion and closing our border with Mexico until this coordinated onslaught of migrants is under control.”
Maybe Mexico should get their own house in order before blaming American arms companies…
The Biden administration’s new technology restrictions are already causing disruptions in China as US semiconductor equipment suppliers are telling staff based in the country’s top memory chip maker to leave, according to WSJ, citing sources familiar with the matter.
State-owned Yangtze Memory Technologies Co. has seen US chip semiconductor equipment companies, including KLA Corp. and Lam Research Corp., halt business activities at the facility. This includes installing new equipment to make advanced chips and overseeing highly technical chip production.
The US suppliers have paused support of already installed equipment at YMTC in recent days and temporarily halted installation of new tools, the people said. The suppliers are also temporarily pulling out their staff based at YMTC, the people said. –WSJ
It’s hard to overemphasize how badly fucked China’s chip industry is with this latest move. Semiconductor equipment not only needs regular maintenance, but extremely specialized expertise when something goes wrong and your yields crash, wizards who can look at a wafer defect chart and determine by experience what’s gone wrong with which tool. Without support and spare parts from the western semiconductor equipment giants, expect yields to start crashing in a matter of months, if not weeks, especially if Applied Materials and Tokyo Electron join the pullout.
I just put in a call to the Applied Materials press office to ask them about this. I’ll let you know if I hear back.
As Peter Zeihan notes, these sanctions screw not only China’s semiconductor industry, but every segment of the high tech assembly chain that depends on them.
Takeaways:
Not only is China now unable to import the equipment to make semiconductors, or the tools to maintain and operate the equipment, or the software that’s necessary to operate the equipment, or any mid or high level chips at all. Now any Americans who want to assist with the Chinese semiconductor industry have to make a choice: you can have your job with China or you can have your citizenship.
I’ve read this elsewhere: “One of the provisions of President Joe Biden’s executive order is that any U.S. citizen or green card holder working in China cannot work in the Chinese semiconductor industry or risk of losing American citizenship.” The thing is, I don’t think such sanctions are constitutional, and I’m pretty sure stripping citizenship over trade regulations with a country we’re not at war with would fail the Ninth Amendment “necessary and proper” test.
Back to Ziehan:
“Within about 48 Hours of the policy being adopted last Friday, every single American citizen who was working in China in the industry either quit, or their companies relocated their entire division so they wouldn’t have to lose their staff.”
“For all practical purposes the Chinese semiconductor industry of everything over Internet of Things level of quality is now dead, and that has a lot more implications than it sounds.”
“Chinese have proven incapable over the last 25 years of advancing sufficiently [to run the technology required] to operate this industry, beyond being able to simply operate the facilities that make the low end chips, and even that had to be managed by foreigners. So there is no indigenous capacity here to pick this up and move on.”
“In terms of industrial follow-on, this doesn’t just mean that the Chinese are never going to be able to make the chips that go into cars or computers, it also means that any industry that is dependent upon the hardware dies.”
China can’t do anything remotely high tech (hypersonic missiles, AI, Great firewall, etc.) without buying chips on the gray market.
“This is a deal killer not just for the industry, but for a modern technocratic system from a technological point of view. China is done.”
What’s China going to do about it? “I would expect this kind of ‘bag of dicks’ diplomacy that has evolved in China to get this hard, and loud, which will probably only encourage the Americans to act more harshly.”
In many ways, the Biden Administration’s approach to China has been a continuation and escalation of the Trump approach: No More Mister Nice Guy, with sanctions and reshoring of American industry.
Short of actual military action, it’s hard to see how China can effectively retaliate against America over these moves. American companies are already leaving, and China has built up so much ill will in various international trade organizations that it’s difficult to see how they could lodge a complaint with one of those and prevail.
Higher inflation, widespread corruption in the federal government, the Bank of England makes Liz Truss blink, and Muslims take exception to Dearborn Public School’s gay agenda. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
The Journal reviewed more than 31,000 financial disclosure forms and analyzed more than 850,000 financial assets and 315,000 trades to shed light on any conflicts of interest among more than 12,000 senior career bureaucrats and political appointees. Its investigation found that “thousands of officials across the U.S. government’s executive branch disclosed owning or trading stocks that stood to rise or fall with decisions their agencies made.”
“Across 50 federal agencies ranging from the Commerce Department to the Treasury Department, more than 2,600 officials reported stock investments in companies while those companies were lobbying their agencies for favorable policies, during both Republican and Democratic administrations,” the Journal reports. “When the financial holdings caused a conflict, the agencies sometimes simply waived the rules.”
The federal employees weren’t even subtle about it. Per the Journal, “More than five dozen officials at five agencies reported trading stocks of companies shortly before their departments announced enforcement actions against those companies, such as charges or settlements.”
That’s sus.
To get an understanding of how shady this behavior is, consider examples from a few specific agencies. At the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), for example, the Journal found that “more than 200 senior officials… or nearly one in three, reported that they or their family members held investments in companies that were lobbying the agency.”
Similar corruption plagues the Department of Defense, where, per the investigation, “officials in the office of the secretary or their family members collectively owned between $1.2 million and $3.4 million of stock in aerospace and defense companies, on average, during years the Journal examined. Some owned stock in Chinese companies while the U.S. considered blacklisting the companies.”
Sometimes there’s a major story out there you don’t have time to really pay attention to, and such is the case with the UK “mini-budget”/Bank of England story. Basically, new UK PM Liz Truss and her Chancellor of the Treasury Kwasi Kwarteng went “We’re going to cut taxes despite soaring inflation” and the Bank of England (which evidently said that UK pension funds were hours from collapse last week) went “No you’re not.” Well, Truss just blinked, Kwarteng is out, and now the UK government is going to raise taxes.
Here’s a video explainer of the complexities of the Bank of England intervention in the bond market.
I’ll still trying to wrap my mind around the phrases “pension fund margin call” and “unlimited quantity” of short term repo liquidity reserves.
The Biden administration’s new technology restrictions are already causing disruptions in China as US semiconductor equipment suppliers are telling staff based in the country’s top memory chip maker to leave, according to WSJ, citing sources familiar with the matter.
State-owned Yangtze Memory Technologies Co. has seen US chip semiconductor equipment companies, including KLA Corp. and Lam Research Corp., halt business activities at the facility. This includes installing new equipment to make advanced chips and overseeing highly technical chip production.
The US suppliers have paused support of already installed equipment at YMTC in recent days and temporarily halted installation of new tools, the people said. The suppliers are also temporarily pulling out their staff based at YMTC, the people said. –WSJ
It’s hard to overemphasize how badly screwed China’s chip industry is with this latest move. Semiconductor equipment not only needs regular maintenance, but extremely specialized expertise when something goes wrong and your yields crash, wizards who can look at a wafer defect chart and determine by experience what’s gone wrong with which tool. Without support and spare parts from the western semiconductor equipment giants, expect yields to start crashing in a matter of months, if not weeks, especially if Applied Materials and Tokyo Electron join the pullout.
The IRGC may be mobilizing retired servicemembers and other affiliated officers to suppress protests in Tehran on October 15.
Protesters have killed more Iranian security personnel in the current protest wave than in any previous wave in the regime’s history according to regime statistics.
Anti-regime protests occurred in at least 11 cities in seven provinces.
Social media accounts that are representing themselves as youth groups organizing and coordinating protests called for countrywide unrest on October 15.
Snip.
Social media accounts that are representing themselves as youth groups organizing and coordinating protests called for countrywide unrest on October 15. Dozens of social media accounts are presenting themselves as provincial components of a broader youth movement aimed at overthrowing the regime. The movement does not appear to have a central headquarters or hierarchy—at least on social media—and some of these groups’ rhetoric is notably disjointed from the others. These accounts claim to have a presence in multiple Iranian cities, including Tehran, Karaj, Neyshabour, Hamedan, Shiraz, and Ahvaz. Some of these accounts called for protests in Khuzestan on October 14, which did materialize in three different cities across the province on that date. Another account claimed that it had activated “sabotage groups” to destabilize the regime on October 14. The Tehran Neighborhood Youth group currently has the most followers and has posted for the longest period of time, possibly suggesting that it inspired copycat accounts based in other cities.
Some of these groups are presenting themselves as having moved from protest organization to coordinating phase one insurgency attacks.
In private, Democratic party officeholders are super racist.
But they’ll arrest parents and take their children if you fail to bow to their transexual madness. “Virginia Democrat Bill Would Criminally Prosecute Parents Who Don’t Affirm Their Kids As Transgender. Previous attempt at the bill was co-sponsored by a senator who served jail time for having sex with a teenager.”
A Virginia Democrat lawmaker says she will introduce legislation to have parents criminally prosecuted if they do not “affirm” their child as transgender. Teachers and social workers would report parents to Child Protective Services under the bill envisioned by state Delegate Elizabeth Guzman (D-Fauquier).
Guzman told WJLA that “It could be a felony, it could be a misdemeanor, but we know that CPS charge could harm your employment, could harm their education, because nowadays many people do a CPS database search before offering employment.”
Guzman, a social worker, went public with her plans to introduce the bill a week after The Daily Wire reported that a National Association Of School Psychologists official named Amy Cannava boasted that she was working with an unnamed state delegate matching Guzman’s description to craft such legislation. “I want to see a kid in a home with food and shelter and insurance and support, but I also don’t want to lose kids to death,” Cannava said, adding that “I will not deny the fact that I have put parents in their place in my office or at school.”
Cannava is also affiliated with a group called the Pride Liberation Project that said it would pick up trans and gay teens who didn’t like their parents, and “work with other supportive adult organizations in the region to find you someone who can provide you a kind and affirming home.”
A similar bill was quietly introduced in 2020 by Guzman and four other Democrats immediately after they took control of the legislature in the 2019 elections. It redefined the term “abused or neglected child” to include one whose parent “inflicts, threatens to create or inflict, or allows to be created or inflicted upon such child a physical or mental injury on the basis of the child’s gender identity or sexual orientation.”
The sole Senate sponsor of the 2020 bill was Joe Morrissey, who served prison time for contributing to the delinquency of a minor after sleeping with his teenage secretary. He accepted a plea deal after initially being indicted on possession of child pornography and other charges.
You know who else hates rolling out the gay agenda to public schools? Muslims.
The only religious people the left is truly scared to offend are Muslims. Criticizing Muslims is completely off the table according to the left’s rules of engagement, so if Muslims are upset about something, the amount of twisting, back-bending, and acrobatics the left will perform in order not to offend them will be something to see.
So when hundreds of Muslim parents, upset at gay porn in the school libraries, showed up to a school board meeting in Dearborn, Mich., and it devolved into shouting and chaos with board members running away and gay protesters being chased to their cars, the fallout was absolutely hilarious. The headline in the Detroit Free Press after the event went haywire was “LGBTQ and Faith Communities Struggle for Unity.” BAHAHAHAHAHAHA. Can you imagine what the headline would have been if it were a Baptist church chasing gay protesters to their cars? “Fascist White Supremacist Book Burners Bash Gay Man in Parking Lot,” or “Rabid Religious Zealots Terrorize Gay Man Defending Right to Read,” or something equally terrible. I don’t know about you, but I’m enjoying this disaster.
Enjoy this thread and all the videos in it. I know I did.
Shouting between various factions as groups take over Dearborn public schools board meeting. Board members have left. Unclear if they are coming back or if meeting will restart. Heavy police presence. pic.twitter.com/XIMEqIRR1X
Problem: Too many Germans are voting for a rightwing party the left disapproves of. Solution: Ban it. Thank God banning other political parties in Germany has never had any negative consequences…
Speaking of things that could never possibly have any negative consequences, Balarus dictator and Putin toady Alexander Lukashenko decrees that all price increases are forbidden. Enjoys those coming goods shortages, Belarussians. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
Florida Surgeon General releases study showing heightened cardiac death rates for men ages 18-39 after taking the Flu Manchu mRNA vaccine. So Twitter banned him. Thou Shalt Have No Other Gods Before The Narrative. (They later reinstated him.)
Ukrainian troops shoot down a cruise missile with a MANPADS.
Alex Jones ordered to pay $965 million to Sandy Hook families. As I noted last week, Alex Jones is an unreliable loon, but that judgment seems excessive and punitive merely for running his mouth.
Weeb Union (not my favorite Ukraine war mapper channel) is reporting a huge Ukrainian offensive just got underway in Luhansk:
Takeaways:
“The reported numbers in this offensive is between 35,000 and 40,000 Ukrainian soldiers over a length of about 50 kilometers.”
Goal seems to be full control of the P-66 highway running from Troitske to Kreminna.
“They are trying to attack and capture Svatova.”
“Svatova is the supply hub of the Russian army here in the Luhansk border.”
He postulates this is the last Ukrainian offensive before Russian mobilization reinforcements reach the area. I think he greatly overestimates the effect Russia’s hastily mobilized, ill-equipped and ill-trained new recruits might have on the battlefield.
Not seeing any confirmation elsewhere yet. Developing…
Update: Reporting From Ukraine (which I generally trust more than Weeb Union) also reports a lot of activity in Luhansk, but with a different overall thrust and timeline.
Takeaways:
Russia launched a spoiling attack to prevent Ukraine from advancing on their defensive lines before they were fully repaired, and has some success.
Ukraine launched a counterattack south and north of the main Russian spoiling attack, also with some success.
They also launched a counter-attack in the center of the line, but with more limited success.
He also reports that new Russian conscripts are being put to work building the defensive position, which I can well imagine; any able-bodied adult human should be able to dig a trench. (Unless it’s Texas clay, then all bets are off…)
How to reconcile these reports? Both could be right, just looking at different slices of time.
