Posts Tagged ‘Rostov’

LinkSwarm For August 21, 2026

Friday, August 21st, 2026

Trump’s winning in Iran, Russia’s losing in Ukraine, Democrats committing fraud left and right, the data center debate rages on, a crappy movie in China gain sudden popularity because it’s crappy, and Orlando PD get to wrestle an alligator.

It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!

  • National Review comes to the shocking conclusion that Trump’s Iran strategy might actually be working. 

    The “rhetoric” coming from both sides of the conflict over the Strait of Hormuz has “caused considerable confusion and doubt,” CNN’s David Goldman understatedly observed. Yet, at present, “The evidence is clear,” he conceded: “Iran is losing much of its control over the critical waterway.”

    One month ago, the number of commercial ships transiting through the strait via the U.S. approved route along the Omani coast was close to zero. Today, however, over 80 percent of the vessels that have made it through the strait are taking the U.S.-authorized lane. And even though the United States has not responded with kinetic force to every Iranian attack on commercial traffic in the strait, sometimes to the consternation of America’s Gulf partners, that has not dissuaded countries like Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates’ tankers from making “dark traffic” runs on the strait.

    CNN could not independently verify Energy Secretary Chris Wright’s claim that “combined oil transits through the strait and rerouted around the waterway totaled around 15 million barrels per day,” which approaches the pre-war average of 20-million barrels. But it couldn’t gainsay the experts. As one industry analyst conceded, “It increasingly looks like Iran has at least partially lost control of the strait.”

    The Iranian regime is feeling the pain. As Hot Air’s Duane Patterson explained, the economic conditions on the ground inside the Islamic Republic are catastrophic. “Iran’s economy is currently experiencing around 90 percent inflation, and it turns out the worst may be yet to come,” he wrote. Foundation for Defense of Democracies senior fellow Miad Maleki concurs. “Nearly every part of Iran’s oil economy,” he wrote, “owes massive, growing sums to each other, with no real money moving through the system to pay any of it back.”

    The gas lines are growing, and the petrol that Iranians are allowed to buy may soon be rationed. Iranian authorities are triaging their resources by prescheduling hours-long blackouts. The regime is ramping up executions and cracking down on dissent as the prospect of economic collapse brings with it the risk of renewed civil unrest.

  • “Socialists Now Say That Shoplifting Is A-OK.”

    Brooklyn Assemblywoman Emily Gallagher (D-50th District) wants New Yorkers to believe that walking out of a CVS with a fistful of stolen toothpaste isn’t a crime. It’s a “biological need.”

    Yes, really.

    Gallagher, who represents Greenpoint and other parts of northern Brooklyn, made her case Thursday at a news conference outside Manhattan Criminal Court, flanked by fellow far-left officials and activists from Court Watch NYC. The group said it monitored 360 arraignments over four days and found that more than half involved misdemeanor offenses. Gallagher used those numbers to argue shoplifters swiping basic necessities shouldn’t be prosecuted at all.

    “Most of what we saw were crimes of poverty-people who are stealing things like toothpaste, people who were stealing things like, you know, soap,” Gallagher said. “And that means if you’re stealing those things, you need them.”

    Funny how all those films of riot never show people stealing soap and toothpaste, just flat screen TVs and Nikes. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.) 

  • “Minnesota Government’s ‘Outstanding Refugee’ Charged With Medicaid Fraud Connected To Sex-Trafficking Ring.”

    Salman Ahmed Elmi was charged last week with three counts of aiding and abetting by swindle and five counts of aiding and abetting by false representation.

    He made his first court appearance on Monday. Authorities say some of Elmi’s co-conspirators at Reva Health in Golden Valley have connections to a sex trafficking ring bust last week.

    Elmi is accused of billing Medicaid for more than $1 million in services that were not provided or not eligible. Reva Health provided autism services and adult rehabilitative mental health services.

    “The Minnesota Department of Human Services awarded Elmi an ‘Outstanding Refugee Award’ in 2021.” Why do I have the sneaking suspicion that “Outstanding Refugee” is an award for those that stole the most taxpayer money to give to Democrats?

  • “FBI Raids Eric Swalwell’s Home, Seizes Electronics in Connection with Sexual Assault Investigation.”

    FBI agents seized electronic devices from former Representative Eric Swalwell (D., Calif.) at the San Francisco airport on Saturday and then raided his home in connection with an investigation into sexual assault allegations against him, according to several reports.

    Federal authorities executed a search warrant at Swalwell’s home in Washington, D.C., on Sunday, law enforcement sources told CNN and the Associated Press.

    The FBI declined to comment.

    Swalwell resigned from Congress and suspended his campaign for California governor in April after a former staffer came forward with allegations that he had sexually assaulted her twice, including once at a hotel while he was in New York City for a charity gala in 2024.

    Three other women then accused Swalwell of sexual misconduct as well. The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office and the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department opened criminal investigations into Swalwell in response.

    At the time, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg encouraged “survivors and anyone with knowledge of these allegations to contact our Special Victims Division.”

    The reports that the FBI’s investigation into Swalwell is picking up steam comes days after the White House Transparency Task Force released FBI files indicating Swalwell previously admitted to having “physical relations” with suspected Chinese spy Christine Fang on a “handful of occasions,” providing confirmation of the public sphere’s longstanding suspicion that a sexual relationship had transpired.

    I’m hoping the investigation also sheds light on Swalwell receiving money from communist China.

  • Ukraine continues its war on Wildberries. “Best Wildberries Strike Yet! Koledino Near Moscow–Biggest Wildberries Hub in Russia.”
  • “Ukrainian forces hit at least five workshop buildings at Russia’s Kombinat Kamensky defense plant in Rostov region, penetrating several layers of air defenses from Pantsir to S-300 systems. The plant produces solid rocket fuel for Uragan, Smerch and Tornado-S MLRS, as well as other missile and aviation systems. Key workshops had anti-drone protection and were surrounded by earthworks. Several air-defense vehicles were also hit.”
  • “Drone Strike on Moscow Region: Atlant Warehouse Complex Hit.” Not technically a Wildberries warehouse.
  • “Big Flamingo Missile Strike on Russian Rocket Factory in Samara! Only Soyuz Rocket Factory.”
  • “Russian Convoy of Trucks Destroyed on Berdiansk-Mariupol Supply Road.”
  • Updated damage assessment from last week’s Novorossiysk strike. “Admiral Makarov & Admiral Essen Confirmed Out of Action in New Imagery!”
  • The Russian fuel situation has gotten so bad that even Russian newspapers are talking about it. “As of the 16th of August, across Russia, 28.1% of petrol stations had fuel. A week before, it was 41%.” Imagine more than two thirds of stations having no gas and long lines at the ones that do.
  • “Two federal agencies routed taxpayer dollars to terror-linked charities.”

    The State Department worked with World Vision to distribute $2 billion in global health foreign assistance even though an Israeli court convicted the nonprofit’s Gaza affiliate operations manager of sending up to $50 million to Hamas in 2022. Separately, the Health and Human Services Department (HHS) provided nearly $80 million to 14 organizations linked to terrorism and extremism.

    The Middle East Forum (MEF) recently reported that 14 terror-linked and extremist organizations, led by CAIR, collected nearly $80 million from HHS through the Refugee Resettlement, Health, and Mosque Renovation grants. Through this fund, the Council on American-Islamic Relations’ (CAIR) California chapter received the most of any Islamist group, collecting $42.2 million in funding from the HHS to provide legal and social services to Afghan refugees.

  • Concerning: “Chinese Spy Official Who Is Also A Trained Sniper Buys Property Overlooking White House.”

  • “Liberal white woman fights fascism by defacing national memorial to soldiers who died fighting Hitler.” ‘This morning, we are filing two felony charges, Depredation Against Property of the United States and Destruction of Veterans’ Memorials, in Federal District Court against Melissa L. Farris, offenses that carry penalties of up to ten years in prison.” TDS strikes again.
  • How is this legal? “Karen Bass brags that Los Angeles will use tax dollars to provide a 6:1 match for every dollar donated to her campaign.”

    Karen Bass is very worried about losing her mayoralty to left-winger Nithya Raman, who squeaked past Spencer Pratt in the primary election due to a bunch of election shenanigans, and Bass has an interesting campaign strategy.

    Using city tax dollars to fund her campaign!…

    The city of Los Angeles “donates” money to Bass’s campaign in a matching program? If you give $10, the city chips in another $60? And she’s pushing this program?

    Through the foreign-donation-taking ActBlue, no less.

    Per the City Ethics Commission (I kid you not), the city charter allows for “public matching funds.”

    Left-wing group Common Cause California brags about “strengthening” this public match fund in 2019.

    The program is intended to help less-funded candidates get access to funding, but in actuality, all it does is take YOUR tax dollars to fund politicians you hate.

  • Background on the Frankfurt school, one of the intellectual fathers of the poison that is social justice.

    The Frankfurt School. You should know what it was, what it built, and why you are still living inside it.

    1. The Institute for Social Research was founded in Frankfurt in 1923 and relocated to Columbia University in 1934 when Hitler came to power. The civilization they had decided to dismantle gave them refuge when another tried to kill them. They spent the next five decades producing the theoretical infrastructure for that dismantling. Western civilization itself was the problem: reason, the Enlightenment, the family, tradition, authority. Not reformed. Dismantled.

    2. They called it Critical Theory – and the name is the program. Everything is to be criticized; nothing is to be built. In The Dialectic of Enlightenment (1944), Adorno and Horkheimer argued that Western reason — the reason that produced Newton and the rule of law — contained the seeds of Auschwitz. Not that reason had been misused, but that reason itself, taken to its conclusion, produces the death camp. This was not a critique of institutions. It was an indictment of the civilization itself.

    3. Adorno gave them the psychological weapon. The Authoritarian Personality (1950) classified conservatism, religious faith, patriotism, and the traditional family not as political positions but as symptoms of a proto-fascist personality. If you believe in the nation or the father’s authority, you are pre-fascist. The opponent was no longer wrong – he was sick. You don’t argue with a pathology. You treat it.

    This made dialogue impossible. You don’t persuade someone who is wrong; you diagnose someone who is sick. Politics becomes therapy, and disagreement becomes pathology.

    4. Marcuse gave them the political weapon. Repressive Tolerance (1965) argued that tolerating wrong ideas is itself oppression. True tolerance therefore requires suppressing intolerant ideas. The left decides which ideas are intolerant. Everyone else is silenced – not despite tolerance, but “in its name.” Censorship dressed in the vocabulary of liberation.

    5. The generation that read Marcuse at Columbia, Berkeley, and Yale went on to run universities, media, foundations, NGOs, content moderation departments, and the EU regulatory apparatus. They implemented the argument sincerely because they had been taught it as philosophy. This was the Frankfurt School’s greatest achievement: it produced true believers.

    6. French Theory picked up the tools and made them aesthetic. Foucault made the critique of power literary. Derrida made the critique of meaning philosophical. Deleuze made the critique of identity elegant. A political program became a cultural sensibility. You can argue with a program. A sensibility is in the air you breathe. By the time these ideas reached the American campus through the French conduit, they were no longer ideology. They were the water. The fish did not know they were wet.

    7. A civilization stands on three pillars: truth exists and is accessible to reason; good is distinguishable from evil; and there is an inheritance worth transmitting. The Frankfurt School attacked all three – systematically and with considerable intellectual sophistication. It produced a generation that knows how to deconstruct and has forgotten how to build. That sees power everywhere and beauty nowhere.

    The ultimate achievement was to make destruction feel like progress. Every inherited institution became suspect; every constraint became oppression; every act of preservation became reactionary. Deconstruction became the default, while construction became something that needed to justify itself.

    (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)

  • Kurt Schlichter: “The Death of Academic Fraud Jason Arday Won’t Shut Us Up.”

    Fake Professor Jason Arday was found dead in the wake of being exposed as a complete fraud, and if it were my choice, he would still be alive and suffering the humiliation that should be the result of his crimes. I would prefer that he did not likely choose to kill himself instead of facing the consequences of his actions. My preference is irrelevant. If he decided to do himself in, it’s crushing for his wife and kids, and that was a selfish, cruel, and stupid decision. But it was his decision, as was his decision to commit fraud upon fraud. I don’t celebrate his death, and his death changes nothing. We’re not going to stop rooting out the charlatans.

    Of course, the entirely predictable response of the institutional left to his cowardly and apparent self-deletion has been to insist, loudly and with quivering outrage, that his death is our fault. You see, we normal people pointed out that he lied about his background, his achievements, his credentials, and his work. The fact that we did what a functioning institution should’ve done itself outraged his boosters, so these moral illiterates now invert the moral calculus to keep the exposure of academic fraud from happening again. Arday lied pathologically and endlessly, enabled by a ridiculously solicitous academia, then likely killed himself when his lies were exposed. Obviously, the villains are the people who did not lie and did not choose to end his life.

    And you’ll never guess their key accusation in a million years.

    Okay, you guessed it: RACISM!

    Snip.

    Regardless, it was entirely predictable that the left would use his unfortunate demise to try to shut us up, to place all criticism of woke charlatans off limits because the subject of the critique might decide to do something desperate. They can’t help themselves but act out irrationally, you see. The fact that this tactic deprives the minority of any agency is no shock; there’s no racist like a leftist, who considers minorities to be nothing more than political marionettes unable to control their own actions. We’re supposed to give them a pass because the targets of our criticism have no agency. It’s like that NSFW scene in Blazing Saddles where the sheriff keeps the townspeople from lynching him by sticking a gun to his head—“He’s just crazy enough to do it!” Except this time the townspeople were not trying to lynch an innocent man and didn’t back off, and he did pull the figurative trigger.

    We’re not going to play their game. We’re not going to hold fire for fear of feelz. We’re not going to ignore the truth lest the liar lash out at himself or others. Sometimes the truth hurts, but the only people the truth hurts are people exposed doing something they shouldn’t be doing. The truth is more important than feelings. And the truth is more important than Arday’s life. If the choice we are presented with is that Jason Arday will go on living a lie and degrading our civilization by doing so, or that Jason Arday might hurt himself, it’s Option 2 every day of the week. We’re not going to be held hostage or intimidated or shamed into silence and, therefore, complicity.

    (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)

  • “Here’s a Look at the State of Firearms Access in Texas Tribal Territories.” The problem is tribal law enforcement seems to fall between state and federal stools.

    Texas has three federally recognized Native American tribes: Ysleta del Sur Pueblo, located in the western part of the state in El Paso; the Kickapoo Traditional Tribe of Texas, located near Eagle Pass along the Rio Grande; and the Alabama-Coushatta Tribe of Texas, located in the eastern part of the state near Livingston.

    And two of those are along the Mexican border, which means drug smuggling is a big problem.

  • Bookseller Scott Brown has his own piece on destructive scanning of books for AI. I’m quoted in here, but Brown also points out that a lot more companies are doing such destructive scanning, including:
    • Anthropic
    • Meta
    • Amazon
    • He says Elon Musk has promised that SpaceX/xAI will not to do such destructive scanning, but expresses doubt.

    He also lists the company’s buying books for destructive scanning:

    • Zoom Books
    • Far Corner
    • Last Token
    • Innodata
  • “Here Are the Data Center Companies That Agreed to Comply With Gov. Greg Abbott’s Standards.”

    I’m going to quote a largish chunk here just so I can tag the various companies.

    In June, Abbott directed the Public Utility Commission of Texas (PUC) and the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) to require data centers to pay for their own electric infrastructure costs, scuttling at least one project planned for East Texas.

    Then, earlier this month, Abbott asked these agencies to audit all data center projects in the process of connecting to the Texas grid. According to his directive, data centers in the pipeline must provide and verify information about their water usage; their noise, light, and traffic mitigation efforts; how they plan to obtain electricity; whether they receive taxpayer money; and the real identities of their owners.

    A flurry of affirmative replies ensued, including assurances from some of the best-funded users and most prolific developers of data centers in the world.

    Many of these companies have already made use of a sales tax exemption for data center equipment — a 13-year-old state law passed before the remote work boom of the COVID-19 pandemic and the rise of generative artificial intelligence (AI) this decade propelled the industry well past the state’s expectations.

    Here are the data center companies that have agreed to comply with Abbott’s standards, cross-referenced with the state’s list of companies that benefit from the tax break.

    QTS Data Centers

    On August 6, Virginia-based Quality Technology Services (QTS) “applauded” Abbott’s “efforts to increase transparency on power use, water and resource consumption, and community considerations associated with data center development.”

    QTS data centers built after 2019 use fans rather than water for cooling, according to the company.

    The company operates three facilities in Texas and has three more in the pipeline, according to its website. The Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts certified one QTS facility, a 56-acre campus in Irving, to benefit from the state sales tax exemption.

    Vantage Data Centers

    Vantage Data Centers sent a letter of support to Abbott on August 7.

    The company, based in Denver, Colorado, only lists one active data center in Texas, at an undisclosed location in Shackelford County. However, it has secured a sales tax exemption for 12 projects listed by the comptroller, all for Oracle.

    Skybox

    Texas-based Skybox Datacenters agreed to Abbott’s standards on August 7.

    The company has built nine data centers around the state. Besides one in Wichita Falls, all are in the Dallas, Austin, and Houston metropolitan areas, according to its website. The comptroller’s list of qualifying data centers doesn’t include a project with Skybox in the name or one associated with its address at 3131 Turtle Creek Boulevard in Dallas, based on a search of the state’s franchise tax database.

    Digital Realty

    Digital Realty stated on August 7 that it would comply with Abbott’s standards. The Austin-based company claimed in its statement to be “the world’s largest cloud- and carrier-neutral data center platform.”

    Digital Realty operates more than 300 data centers that serve companies including Microsoft, Amazon Web Services, Nvidia and IBM. Twelve of its 14 Texas data centers are in the Dallas area, its website shows.

    Stream Data Centers

    Dallas-based Stream Data Centers agreed to Abbott’s standards on August 7.

    Altogether, nine Stream data centers are either active or in development across Texas, with one on the outskirts of Houston, three in San Antonio, one in Austin, and four in the Dallas area.

    Mara

    Mara agreed to abide by Abbott’s standards on August 7.

    The Florida-based company operates a Bitcoin mining fleet, and it “colocates data centers with power sources to convert stranded energy into digital capital,” its website states.

    The company name doesn’t appear on the comptroller’s list of qualifying data centers, nor do any subsidiary companies registered under the address of its Florida headquarters.

    Rowan

    Rowan Digital Infrastructure, another developer based in Denver, issued a press release in support of Abbott’s orders on August 7.

    The company owns and operates four data centers in Texas that benefit from the sales tax exemption, including one in Temple for Meta and another in Cinco for Google.

    Meta

    Meta, the California-based parent company of Facebook, pledged to comply with Abbott’s standards on Monday.

    Meta’s three Texas data centers are in Fort Worth, Temple, and El Paso, according to its map.

    Multiple data centers owned or used by Meta benefit from the state’s sales tax exemption. One subsidiary company, Polmer LLC, owns the certified data center in Temple and occupies two other data centers on the comptroller’s list of certified projects. The El Paso facility is owned by a Meta subsidiary, Wurldwide LLC, which also makes use of the exemption.

    OpenAI and Oracle

    California-based company OpenAI, which created ChatGPT, agreed to comply with Abbott’s standards on Monday. Oracle, also based in California, made the same commitment on Tuesday.

    OpenAI is collaborating with Oracle and SoftBank on Stargate, a $500 billion AI infrastructure project based in Abilene and funded in part by chipmaker Nvidia. Lancium, a company backed by New York-based investment firm Blackstone, is constructing the facility, according to its website.

    Eleven Lancium data centers and projects appear on the comptroller’s list, spanning Fort Stockton, Turkey, Childress, and Abilene. Seven projects in Abilene are associated with Stargate, with Oracle listed as an occupant.

    Core Scientific

    Core Scientific issued a press release in support of Abbott’s directives on Monday.

    The company, based in Miami, Florida, operates three data centers in Texas: one in Austin, one in Denton, and one in the Callahan County town of Cottonwood, according to its website.

    All three benefit from the state tax exemption, the comptroller’s list shows.

    Google

    The California-based Big Tech titan expressed support for Abbott’s standards on Monday.

    The comptroller lists Google as the owner or user of nine data centers that benefit from the sales tax exemption.

    CleanSpark

    Data center developer CleanSpark Inc. agreed with Abbott’s standards on Monday.

    The Nevada-based company doesn’t publish a comprehensive map or list of its data center locations, but as of February, it owned two plots of land in Brazoria County and Austin County with plans to develop facilities there, according to an investor relations press release.

    Neither CleanSpark nor the only Texas entity registered to its corporate address, Eagles Nest 138 LLC, appear on the comptroller’s list of data centers.

    EdgeConneX

    Virginia-based EdgeConneX announced support for Abbott’s standards in its Tuesday press release.

    The company doesn’t specify how many discrete data centers it operates in Texas, but it’s only active in the Houston and Austin areas, according to its online map.

    The state has certified two EdgeConnex projects for the tax exemption, both in the Austin area.

    SB Energy

    SB Energy sent Abbott a letter on August 6 expressing support for his directives and publicized it on Tuesday.

    The Redwood City, California-based company is building a facility in Milam County in support of Stargate, with Orion listed as an occupant on two projects that benefit from the state sales tax exemption.

    Data Center Coalition

    The Data Center Coalition, a trade association that represents data center companies, expressed support for Abbott’s directives on Tuesday.

  • Speaking of data centers, Trump is in the pro-data center camp.
  • “Former Fauci Adviser David Morens Pleads Guilty to Conspiracy to Hide Covid-Related Records.”

    David Morens, a former senior adviser at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, pleaded guilty on Tuesday to hiding federal records from Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests during the Covid-19 pandemic.

    Morens, a senior adviser at NIAID’s Office of the Director from 2006 to 2022 under Dr. Anthony Fauci, was charged by the Department of Justice in April with five counts related to the scheme.

    He agreed to a deal with federal prosecutors this week that would see him plead guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit offenses or to defraud the United States. The charge carries up to five years in prison.

    Snip.

    The indictment came after the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic found evidence that Morens had used his personal email to discuss Covid-19’s origins and National Institutes of Health grants with EcoHealth Alliance, including a terminated coronavirus grant, in an attempt to keep the communications hidden from hypothetical future FOIA requests.

    The committee obtained a communication between Morens and EcoHealth President Peter Daszak in which Morens wrote, “I can either send stuff to Tony on his private gmail, or hand it to him at work or at his house. He is too smart to let colleagues send him stuff that could cause trouble.”

    Why it was almost like their was a conspiracy of secrecy against the American people…

  • “Tajik killer who avoided jail due to insanity ruling flees U.S. the moment his mental hospital grants him a day pass.”

    Abdulloi Toshpulodzoda left the Northern Virginia Mental Health Institute (NVMHI) on July 6 for an authorized 48-hour pass. He was required to return two days later, but he never did, FOX 5 reported, citing court documents.

    Instead, Toshpulodzoda traveled to Washington Dulles International Airport and boarded a Turkish Airlines flight to Istanbul before continuing to Dushanbe, Tajikistan, court documents show.

    Snip.

    FOX 5 reported that Toshpulodzoda had previously been allowed to travel to Washington, D.C., in 2024 to obtain a passport, with support from the Commonwealth’s Attorney’s Office.

    Sorry, a what? Passport? And then they gave him a 48-hour pass? And then they were surprised that he fled the country and never came back?

    Well done, everyone.

    You may not be surprised to learn that it was the office of far-left Steve Descano, the prosecutor for Fairfax County, that allowed him to get the passport.

    The Trump admin is suing Descano for releasing violent criminals. You may recall that Descano went viral for allowing a registered sex offender to change in the girls’ locker room at multiple HIGH SCHOOLS because the sex offender now identifies as a woman.

    Is Descano backed by George Soros? Of course he is.

  • It’s quite concerning that the USS Benfold, an Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer, was was dead in the water for four days in the South China Sea due to a power systems failure.
  • Nigel Farage wins his election and returns to Parliament.
  • Very suspicious: “Bastrop City Council Holds Official Workshop 100 Miles Away from their Constituents.”

    On August 7th, the Bastrop City Council conducted official workshops not in Bastrop (where one might reasonably expect), but more than one hundred miles away in Fredericksburg. The posted agenda lists the location as the John Wm. Klein Meeting Room at 115 N. Crockett Street in Fredericksburg, roughly a two-hour drive from the city those officials were elected to serve.

    And no, these were not informal “retreats” for city council members to relax and blow off steam. These were formal City Council workshops covering the very decisions that hit taxpayer’s wallets and daily lives hardest: the city budget, setting the tax rate, Hotel Occupancy Taxes, capital projects, the Master Transportation Plan (including an East/West connection north of Highway 71), water and wastewater planning, street projects, and “Future Goals” that include a recreation center, expanded fire and police service, data center policies, and Legislative “advocacy.” An extensive list of hot-button issues all to be discussed far away from their constituents.

    State Rep. Stan Gerdes (R-Smithville), whose district includes Bastrop, correctly called out the problem: “The City of Bastrop is holding a City Council meeting hours away in Fredericksburg, making it nearly impossible for the people they represent to attend and participate.” He noted the agenda’s weight on budget, tax rate, data centers, and surveillance technology and announced plans to file legislation requiring city council meetings to be held inside the city they serve so residents can actually show up, speak, and hold officials accountable.

  • Flock says “I can change!” 

    Security camera company Flock Safety has announced changes to its privacy safeguards amid public opposition to use of the devices and concerns about law enforcement abuse.

    However, U.S. Rep. Keith Self (R–McKinney) told Texas Scorecard that although these changes are welcome, Flock is obviously “trying to gain acceptance and put lipstick on a pig amid the intense pushback they have received from Americans across the nation who are rightfully concerned about their privacy.”

    “The bottom line is Americans do not want to be spied on, and they reject the surveillance state operating in America,” said Self. “The Fourth Amendment is not a suggestion. Federal and state legislation are still needed to ensure the government cannot access this data without a warrant—and that taxpayer dollars are not spent purchasing or installing this invasive spyware. That’s why Congress needs to pass my bill, the PRIVACY Act.”

    Self filed the PRIVACY Act last month. It would require federal law enforcement to obtain official warrants before accessing or querying data collected by state and local systems, including automated license plate readers.

    Powered by artificial intelligence, Flock cameras have been a hotly debated topic across the U.S., with concerned Texans requesting that state lawmakers create guardrails for the technology during the upcoming legislative session.

    Since law enforcement officials do not need a warrant to access the Flock automated license plate reader (ALPR) database, citizens are raising concerns about potential Fourth Amendment violations.

    Among the technology updates is a new default setting of 7-day data retention instead of the previous 30 days. This change is based on Flock’s analysis that all searches “without a full plate are done within a week.”

  • “Cami Clark, the low-profile wife of Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, tried to court Jeffrey Epstein as an investor for her “luxury porn company.”
  • WNBA Reddit bans mention of WNBA player.
  • The Critical Drinker/Gamer covers a hacker group penetration of Rockstar games, evidently including full playable source code of the highly anticipated Grand Theft Auto 6. They’re even threatening to release the ending if Rockstar don’t promise to eschew the greedy enshitification of games (like ending physical media) that’s now standard practice in the industry.
  • Orlando PD vs. one pissed off alligator.
  • Ubobtanium cars.
  • Rick Beato and The Professor of Rock interview take 2.
  • Merica:

    (Hat tip: According to Hoyt.

  • Niu Lai is a sleeper hit in China, mainly because the animation is so bad, something that might have been a 3D animation demo reel in 1994. (Hat tip: Ann Althouse.)
  • Star Trek: Strange New Worlds has a new episode where a transporter malfunction turns most of the crew into Muppets.

  • In news that may be of interest only to me, both BattleSwarm and Futuramen had huge upticks in Views this week, at least ten times normal traffic, though a smaller uptick in unique Visitors, and I notice no single post generating such traffic. I can only assume some AI scanned the entirety of the site. 
  • “DeSantis Explains To Newsom Secret To Counting Ballots In One Night Is Not Committing Fraud.”
  • “Kentucky Derby Convenes Committee To Determine What Is A Horse.”
  • “Chicago Principal Concerned As High School Senior Only Assaulting Teachers At Fifth-Grade Level.”
  • You made me love you…

    (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ..)

    • I’m still between jobs. Feel free to hit the tip jar if you’re so inclined.





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    Posted in Crime, Democrats, Elections, Foreign Policy, Jihad, Media Watch, Military, Social Justice Warriors, Technology, Texas, Waste and Fraud, Welfare State | 8 Comments »

    LinkSwarm For August 8, 2025

    Friday, August 8th, 2025

    The redistricting wars escalate to previously unseen heights, Paxton launches investigation of Democratic orgs backing the quorum busters, Ukraine hits a lot more Russian infrastructure, another spite prosecution from Travis County’s Soros-baked DA, and Saturday Night Live is just as profitable as NBC’s other late night shows.

    It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!

  • How it started: Texas Democrats sue in an effort to save one Commissioner Court’s seat in Galveston County. How it’s going: “Trump Orders New U.S. Census That Excludes Illegal Immigrants.”

    President Donald Trump has directed the Commerce Department to conduct a new census that excludes illegal immigrants from its population count.

    “I have instructed our Department of Commerce to immediately begin work on a new and highly accurate CENSUS based on modern day facts and figures and, importantly, using the results and information gained from the Presidential Election of 2024,” Trump said in a Truth Social post Tuesday morning. “People who are in our Country illegally WILL NOT BE COUNTED IN THE CENSUS.”

    The Constitution mandates a census be conducted every ten years to apportion congressional districts. Since the first census was conducted in 1790, the count has reflected each state’s total population, including noncitizens.

    It’s unclear whether Trump can instruct that illegal aliens be excluded from the census without the approval of Congress, as Article I Section 2 of the Constitution empowers the legislature to determine when and how censuses are conducted.

    When Trump tried to end the practice of counting illegal aliens in the census in his first term, he argued that the executive branch has discretionary power to determine who qualifies as a U.S. resident for apportionment purposes. The move faced legal challenges and was ultimately overturned by Joe Biden before it could take effect.

    Because House districts are apportioned “according to [states’] respective Numbers,” high-immigration states could lose congressional seats and electoral votes if illegal immigrants are not counted in the census. If noncitizens had been left out of the 2020 census, California, Florida, and Texas would have each lost a congressional seat, and Alabama, Minnesota, and Ohio would have retained one seat each they otherwise would have lost, according to a Pew Research Center analysis.

    Maybe this is a cunning ploy to force Democrats to argue before the Supreme Court that illegal aliens count as 3/5ths of a person…

  • Meanwhile, in Texas, the redistricting battle is white-hot following the latest Democratic State Representative’s quorum break. “AG Paxton Launches Investigation Into Soros-Funded Texas Majority PAC. This is the second investigation launched by Paxton in as many days seeking information from groups alleged to be supporting the Texas House Democrat quorum break.”

    Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has announced the launch of a formal investigation into Texas Majority PAC—funded by leftist billionaire George Soros—for its “role in potentially unlawful financial coordination and bribery of Democratic legislators who fled Texas to break quorum.”

    The Texas Majority PAC was founded by former staffers from Robert “Beto” O’Rourke’s unsuccessful campaign for governor and has since gained national attention. The PAC is largely funded by leftist billionaire George Soros. Latest reports indicate it has around $600,000 cash-on-hand.

    Paxton described the PAC as “radical,” with a mission aligned with other left-leaning organizations aiming to influence Texas politics.

    Paxton alleges that the PAC played a “coordinating role” in assisting with illegal fundraising operations and possibly bribing Texas House members. These actions, Paxton maintains, may have incentivized lawmakers to abandon their legislative responsibilities, an act that—if financially rewarded—could constitute bribery under state law.

    “If Texas lawmakers are bowing to the Soros Slush Fund rather than the will of the voters, Texans deserve to know. Getting financial payouts under the table to abandon your legislative duties is bribery,” Paxton stated. “Texas Majority PAC’s actions seem to indicate that it may be using its Soros-funded resources to break the law and fund the illegal abandonment of public office. If that’s the case as determined by this investigation, there will be a heavy price to pay.”

    As part of the ongoing investigation, Paxton’s office has issued a formal Request to Examine to Texas Majority PAC seeking documents and records related to the alleged activities.

    You know discovery for this is going to be lit…

  • That was the second investigation. The first? “Paxton Launches Investigation Into Beto O’Rourke Organization for Alleged Bribery of ‘Runaway’ Democratic Lawmakers. Powered by People may have violated bribery laws, Paxton alleged.”

    Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is launching an investigation into Beto O’Rourke’s organization Powered by People for allegedly “bankrolling” the Texas House Democrats’ ongoing quorum break.

    The Office of the Attorney General (OAG) asserts that according to “public reports,” Powered by People is potentially one the top funders of the recent quorum bust by Texas Democrats, who left the state in protest to House Republicans’ proposed redistricting map — alleging racist motivations and unconstitutional actions.

    Paxton said in a press release on Wednesday afternoon, “Any Democrat coward breaking the law by taking a Beto Bribe will be held accountable. Texas cannot be bought.”

    “I look forward to thoroughly reviewing all of the documents and communications obtained throughout this investigation,” he said.

    The OAG ordered on Tuesday that all quorum-breaking House Democrats must return by Friday morning when the House gavels in, per House Speaker Dustin Burrows’ (R-Lubbock) declaration, or else face removal from the membership.

    Did they return? They did not. Hence:

  • “Paxton Files Texas Supreme Court Petition to Declare 13 Democratic House Seats Vacant.”

    The Texas House again failed to meet a quorum on Friday afternoon, and now Attorney General Ken Paxton is taking additional legal action against 13 Democratic members that fled to other states.

    Paxton has targeted state Reps. Ron Reynolds (D-Missouri City), Vikki Goodwin (D-Austin), Gina Hinojosa (D-Austin), James Talarico (D-Austin), Gene Wu (D-Houston), Lulu Flores (D-Austin), Mihaela Plesa (D-Dallas), Suleman Lalani (D-Sugar Land), Chris Turner (D-Grand Prairie), Ana-Maria Rodriguez Ramos (D-Richardson), Jessica Gonzalez (D-Dallas), John Bucy (D-Austin), and Christina Morales (D-Houston).

    This follows Abbott petitioning the Texas Supreme Court to vacate Wu’s seat.

    I’m in Bucy’s district (TX-136), so I could theoretically run for his seat, assuming I was a glutton for punishment…

    The petition was filed with the Supreme Court of Texas (SCOTX), with the intention to have their seats declared vacant.

    “Because Respondents have abandoned their offices as State Representatives, the Attorney General, on behalf of the State, seeks a declaration that those positions are vacant.”

    The petition goes on to state that because the Democratic members named in the suit “have announced that they refuse to perform the duties of their offices, they have abandoned them, and this Court should declare their offices vacant.”

    It adds, “These actions aim to prevent the Legislature from exercising the legislative power conferred on it by the Texas Constitution, Tex. Const. art. III, § 1, depriving the people of Texas of a functioning government and, if allowed to continue, would create ‘an absolute supermajoritarian check on the legislature’s ability to pass legislation opposed by a minority faction.’”

  • Bret Weinstein offers pretty powerful testimony.

    “Ladies and gentlemen, I believe we must zoom out if we are to understand the pattern that we are gathered here to explore, because the pattern is larger than federal health agencies and the COVID cartel. If we do zoom out and ask, what are they hiding?”

    “The answer becomes as obvious as it is disturbing. They are hiding everything. It will be jarring for many to hear a scientist speak with such certainty. It should be jarring. We are trained to present ideas with caution as hypotheses in need of a test. But in this case, I have tested the idea, and I am as certain of it as I am of anything. We are being systematically blinded.”

    “It is the only explanation I have encountered that will not only describe the present, but also, in my experience, predicts the future with all but perfect accuracy. The pattern is a simple one. You can see it clearly and test it yourself. Every single institution dedicated to public truth-seeking is under simultaneous attack.”

    “They are all in a state of collapse. Every body of experts fails utterly. Individual experts who resist or worse in an attempt to return their institutions to sanity, they find themselves coerced into submission. If they won’t buckle, they are marginalized or forced out.”

    “Those outside of the institutions who either seek truth alone or who build new institutions with a truth seeking mission face merciless attacks on both their integrity and expertise. often by the very institutions whose mission they refuse to abandon. There is a saying in military circles, once is a mistake, twice is a coincidence, three times is enemy action.”

  • “HHS to Announce Proposed Rule Cutting Off Medicare, Medicaid Funding to Hospitals Offering Trans Procedures to Minors.”

    The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) will publicly announce on Thursday its new proposed rule banning Medicare and Medicaid reimbursements to hospitals that provide sex-trait modifications to minors, National Review has learned.

    If finalized, the rule — “Medicare and Medicaid Programs; Hospital Condition of Participation: Prohibiting Sex Trait Modifications for Children” — will “effectively end sex-trait modifications for minors nationally,” a senior administration official told NR.

    Thursday’s announcement marks the beginning of the process of convening meetings with Health and Human Services officials to flesh out the language and formalize the rule. CMS sits under HHS.

    So no longer will our tax dollars be spent mutilating children. Progress!

  • The Austin-American Statesman does some actual investigation of Austin city government, and actually finds a bit of improper waste and fraud.

    Austin’s top administrator, City Manager T.C. Broadnax, continued what had become a costly habit: charging lunches to his city credit card on a near-daily basis.

    Broadnax, one of the highest-paid city managers in the country with an annual salary of $488,800, expensed about 150 lunches during his first year on the job at a cost of about $3,300, according to an American-Statesman review of city discretionary spending. His go-to spot was Sweetgreen, a pricey salad chain where he averaged $20 per order.

    Broadnax is not the only city leader who regularly dined on taxpayer dollars in what appears to be a violation of city policy, the Statesman review found. And the spending went beyond food.

    The review covered food and travel spending records from the City Manager’s Office and City Council offices from May 2024 to May 2025 — the first year of Broadnax’s tenure — and found charges for business-class flights, high-end dinners and retirement parties costing thousands of dollars.

    The Statesman also tallied thousands of dollars spent on snacks and beverages, protein shakes and even chewing gum.

    Overall, the review painted a picture of a widespread culture of lavish spending at City Hall among both the city’s top appointed executives and elected leaders who approve the budget.

    Experts who reviewed the newspaper’s findings and city spending policies said many charges likely violated internal rules or common ethics guidelines.

    “Bring a sandwich for Christ’s sake,” said Cal Jillson, a political science professor at Southern Methodist University.

    If that’s the worst they found, I’d suggest they never scrutinized Austin’s homeless services…

  • Ukraine hit two Russian oil refineries, including Novokuibyshevsk oil refinery in Samara and one in Ryazan.
  • And two more , one in Kstovo as well as the Adler oil depot in Sochi.
  • And another, this one the Afipsky oil refinery, where they evidently hit the cracking/fractional distillation tower, the most essential part of an oil refinery.
  • And another railyard, namely Tatsinskaya railroad yard in Rostov.
  • Hackers attacked Russia’s Aeroflot, cancelling lots of flights. All transportation options in Russia seem chancy these days…
  • Trump puts additional pressure on Russia by slapping 50% secondary sanctions on India over its purchases of Russian oil. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • “Sacramento charter school got $180 million it wasn’t eligible for, audit finds.”

    A state audit found that a Sacramento area charter school received more than $180 million in funding it was not eligible for, engaged in wasteful spending, and assigned teachers to classes they did not have the credentials to teach.

    The report from the California State Auditor found that Highlands Community Charter and Technical Schools did not meet the conditions set for its funding and also did not comply with state law in calculating daily attendance.

    The auditor also claims that Twin Rivers Unified School District failed to provide sufficient oversight of the charter school.

    According to the audit, Highlands receives K-12 funding despite serving adult students under the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act. According to the school’s website, it serves adults ages 22 and up at no cost, providing a high school diploma program, English language classes and career technical education.

    “By not offering the required amount of instruction at the schoolsite, requiring students to attend class at the schoolsite for the minimum amount of time required by law, or meeting requirements for nonclassroom-based instruction, HCCS was not eligible to receive the $177 million in K–12 funding it received in fiscal years 2022–23 and 2023–24. Further, Highlands received more than an estimated $5 million in overpayments, of which $3.5 million is in addition to the $177 million in disallowed funding, by not complying with state law in calculating its average daily attendance,” the audit states.

    The audit also alleges that Highlands engaged in “questionable transactions,” including violating prohibitions against gifts of public funds, not seeking board approval for some contracts and purchases, lacked clear hiring and compensation policies, hired and promoted unqualified individuals and in one instance, entered a contract for mentor services with the spouse of a Highlands director.

    The auditor’s report also indicates poor student performance under Highlands.

    “HCCS had a graduation rate of 2.8 percent in fiscal year 2023–24,” the audit noted. “CDE determined that Highlands’ schools’ graduation rates were so low that they dropped the overall statewide graduation rate for the 2023–24 school year by more than half of a percentage point, from 87 percent to 86.4 percent.”

    One possible reason for the poor student performance, the audit posits, is the student-to-teacher ratio, which was about 51 students for every one teacher.

  • Euroweenies: Lift the seige of Gaza or we’ll recognize a Palestinian state. Israel: I guess we’ll just have to occupy all of Gaza.
  • “Majority of Senate Dems Vote to Block Arms Sales to Israel.” Hatred of Israel (and, indeed, all Jews) is a central belief for the Democrat Party’s ideological core.
  • “US Imposes Sanctions on Both PA and PLO Members.” Good.
  • “Texas Roadhouse hit with civil rights complaint alleging DEI discrimination in hiring practices.”
  • J.D. Vance to the Dems: Just keep doing what you’re doing.

    Vice President JD Vance has weighed in on the left’s demented response to American Eagle’s Sydney Sweeney ads and their unhinged claims that the “good jeans” pun is really Nazi eugenics propaganda.

    “My political advice to the Democrats is continue to tell everybody who thinks Sydney Sweeney is attractive is a Nazi,” Vance joked in an appearance on the “Ruthless” podcast Friday.

    “That appears to be their actual strategy,” Vance further highlighted, adding “It actually reveals something pretty interesting about the Dems, though.”

    Which is that you have like a normal, all-American beautiful girl doing like a normal jeans ad, right?” The Vice President continued, “To try to sell, you know, sell jeans to kids in America, and they have managed to so unhinge themselves over this thing.”

    “You guys, did you learn nothing from the November 2024 election?” An exasperated Vance asked.

    “Like, I actually thought that one of the lessons they might take is we’re going to be less crazy,” he continued.

    “The lesson they have apparently taken is we’re going to attack people as Nazis for thinking Sydney Sweeney is beautiful,” Vance urged.

    “Great strategy, guys. That’s how you’re going to win the midterms. Especially young American men,” he further emphasised.

    “Their course correction lasted about 30 seconds,” Ruthless co-host Josh Holmes chimed in.

    “That’s right, [it] lasted 30 seconds, somehow has gotten even crazier,” Vance responded, adding “it’s just so much of the Democrats is oriented around hostility to basic American life.”

  • Travis County is retrying former Army Sergeant Daniel Perry on another charge even after a gubernatorial pardon, because of course they they are.

    Judge Carlos Barrera has refused to move former Army Sergeant Daniel Perry’s “deadly conduct” case from Travis County’s criminal court despite concerns that he cannot be guaranteed a fair jury trial.

    A Travis County jury had previously sentenced Perry to 25 years in prison for murder after District Attorney Jose Garza prosecuted Perry for shooting and killing an armed Black Lives Matter protester. The event occurred in July 2020 during a protest in downtown Austin. Gov. Greg Abbott pardoned Perry in May 2024.

    However, even if a person is pardoned for a felony, they can still be prosecuted by the county attorney for additional misdemeanors stemming from the same incident.

    Thus, Perry is still being prosecuted for his actions, this time for “deadly conduct,” a misdemeanor punishable by up to a year in jail. Travis County Attorney Delia Garza’s Office—which is prosecuting Perry for this lesser charge—claims that the use of his vehicle leading up to the 2020 altercation endangered bystanders. Perry was driving for Uber at the time of the event.

    Soros-backed DA Jose Garza evidently finds it intolerable that an armed citizen was allowed to exercise their right to self-defense against a leftist member of a “protected class,” double-jeopardy be damned…

  • SNL loses money? “CNBC revealed SNL, Fallon and Meyers lose a combined $100 million a year, Thompson said, ‘(Lorne Michaels) cant keep doing that forever.” (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)
  • “Gina Carano has received a settlement in the wake of her 2021 firing from Disney’s The Mandalorian.”

  • Old and busted: Hubcap thieves. The new hotness: Tire thieves.
  • What are you options if your new car turns out to be a lemon?
  • “5 years after iconic photo from BLM riots, St. Louis’s Mark McCloskey finally has his AR-15 back.”
  • Loni Anderson, RIP. Whatever her personal life (she was married four times, divorced three, and Burt Reynolds complained that she almost sucked his bank account dry), she was great on WKRP in Cincinnati.
  • Bad math and physics from movies.
  • Speaking of bad math and physics, here’s the pitch meeting for the new World of the Worlds movie, which was enjoying an impressive 0% Rotten Tomatoes score, but is now all the way up to a sizzling 4%.
  • “Awkward: Obama, Hillary Hire Same Hitman To Kill Each Other.”

    In the end, Black said he was able to settle the conflict and postpone any bloodshed without any deaths by simply explaining the situation to Obama and Clinton.

    At publishing time, the body of Vinny Black had reportedly been found dumped in a ditch on the outskirts of Washington, D.C., with authorities quickly ruling his death a suicide.

  • “Texas Gerrymanders Districts Into Giant Whataburger Logo.”

  • “Study Finds Possible Connection Between Current Heatwave And Giant Flaming Orb In The Sky.”
  • “Gina Carano Settles With Disney, Will Replace Pedro Pascal In All Movies.”
  • “Taco Yet To Meet Emotional Problem It Couldn’t Solve.”
  • Pomeranian 1, bear 0:

    (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)

    • I’m still between jobs. Feel free to hit the tip jar if you’re so inclined.





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    Posted in Austin, Crime, Democrats, Jihad, Media Watch, Military, Social Justice Warriors, Texas, Waste and Fraud, Welfare State | 2 Comments »

    Russian Coup Update for June 24, 2023 UPDATE: Coup Already Over?

    Saturday, June 24th, 2023

    At such a remove from the actions in a vast country with no free news services, it’s hard to definitively say what’s going on with the Russian coup. So here are a variety of “state of play” snippets from various sources (Suchomimus’s discord, MSM, YouTube, Twitter, other social media, etc.). Some of these are rumors that may later turn out to be false, so treat with as many grains of salt as you deem necessary.

  • Wagner Group forces under Yevgeny Prigozhin continue their open rebellion against Russian defense minister Sergei Shoigu and Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov.
  • Livemap now has a separate map on the Russian coup up.
  • They evidently took full control of Rostov-on-Don without firing a shot, and reports are that many Russian regular soldiers there have gone over to their side.
  • Wagner forces headed for Moscow.
  • Reports of Russian aircarft hitting Russian gas and ammo depots along the way to deprive Wagner of them.
  • None of Prigozhin’s statements seem to directly attack Russian dictator for life Vladimir Putin.
  • Despite that, Putin declares that backstabbers will be punished.
  • Moscow is under lockdown, with checkpoints and military trucks in the streets, but actual tanks there seem very thin on the ground.
  • Traffic into Moscow has been halted.
  • Dumptrucks of sand are there to block the routes in.
  • But there are reports Wagner has already broken through:

  • Other reports of backhoes literally digging up the roads.
  • Rumors the government is relocating to St. Petersburg (Putin’s hometown).
  • More Internet restrictions have been instituted for Russians.
  • There are rumors that Wagner has been stockpiling fuel and ammo to do this for some time.
  • Even if not, Rustov-on-Don is the biggest logistical hub for the war against Ukraine.
  • “PMC Wagner reportedly in control of Millerovo airfield.” That’s some 60 miles north of Rostov-on-Don.
  • There are reports of Wagner shooting down at least one (and possibly two) Russian helicopter over Voronezh, where small arms clashes have been reported.
  • And bigger than small arms clashes:

    That’s supposedly Russia hitting a Russian oil depot.

  • A bit later: “Wagner PMC captured all key facilities in Voronezh.” Seems a fairly sweeping statement.
  • “Column of PMC Wagner has reportedly passed Yelets of Lipetsk region.”
  • Unconfirmed reports of unrest in Belarus, with soldiers there being tired of living under Putin’s thumb.
  • Reports that Putin-ally leader of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko flew out of the country, switched off his plane’s transponder, and turned it on again when he was over Turkey.
  • Chechen strongman and bought Putin ally Ramzan Kadyrov has evidently announced he’s opposing Wagner’s coup.
  • There are persistent rumors that Prigozhin wouldn’t have launched this coup without at least some support among powerful Russian oligarchs and command elements of the Russian military.

    • Here are some update videos. From Peter Zeihan on the Ukraine war:

    I think Zeihan is too optimistic about the hole Ukraine put in the Chongar bridge, and I think Russians will try to at least run supply trucks around it and hope it doesn’t collapse.

    From Suchomimus:

    Wagner reportedly has 25,000-50,000 men, plus tanks on transporters and anti-aircraft systems. “This isn’t a ragtag army.”

    Russia was “also building defensive positions near Serpukhov, 100 kilometers away from Moscow. So far the troops based around Moscow look like they do remain loyal to Putin.”

    Developing…

    Update: Is the coup already over?

    Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov announced a deal late on Saturday that Wagner mercenary boss Yevgeny Prigozhin would depart for Belarus in return for being spared prosecution, after an abortive rebellion in which his troops made a dash for Moscow.

    The announcement, carried by the Tass news agency, came shortly after embittered warlord Prigozhin announced his men were turning back from Moscow to avoid a devastating civil conflict. In a voice recording posted to his Telegram channel, Prigozhin said his troops would turn back after advancing within 200 kilometers of the capital.

    It was the culmination of an extraordinary day, in which Putin had accused the Wagner group of “treason” and said that their uprising risked tipping Russia into civil war.

    Prigozhin, smarting over the Kremlin’s handling of the war in Ukraine, announced early on Saturday that his mercenaries had seized the major southern Russian city of Rostov-on-Don, a logistics hub for Putin’s war, and threatened to push on to Moscow. Wagner forces also appeared to be well established in the city of Voronezh, 500 kilometers south of the capital.

    Well, that’s a disappointment to all of us who thought it would allow Ukraine to liberate itself from a distracted Russia.

    Prigozhin’s coup didn’t even last the three days of the 1991 Soviet coup…

    Update 2: Oryx has a list of equipment lost during the coup.

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    Posted in Military, video | 22 Comments »

    LinkSwarm for June 23, 2023

    Friday, June 23rd, 2023

    Busy as hell and I have a cold, but I soldier on. LinkSwarm! Russian coup! Texas! Pedophiles! Portland! Braaaaiiiinnnnnns!

    I cover the world!

  • “The owner of the Wagner private military contractor made his most direct challenge to the Kremlin yet on Friday, calling for an armed rebellion aimed at ousting Russia’s defense minister. The security services reacted immediately by calling for the arrest of Yevgeny Prigozhin…Prigozhin claimed early Saturday that his forces had crossed into Russia from Ukraine and had reached Rostov, saying they faced no resistance from young conscripts at checkpoints and that his forces ‘aren’t fighting against children.'” Unconfirmed reports of fighting elsewhere in Russia. Developing…
    

  • Dallas city employees are being forced to attend transexual reeducation camps.

    The City of Dallas is requiring employees to undergo taxpayer-funded transgender reeducation training any time one of their co-workers comes out as “transgender.”

    According to internal documents obtained from the City of Dallas by The Dallas Express, “non-transitioning” employees are being forced to undergo reeducation training “to support an inclusive and productive workplace environment for all employees.”

    The City of Dallas’ “gender transition toolkit” explains that a transitioning employee should find a “trusted” supervisor or manager as a “first point of contact” to help them through their workplace transition.

    The document includes a list of gender terms and definitions. It then moves on to require employees to work with gender-confused co-workers, allowing the “transitioning” employee to use whichever bathroom or locker room at work they feel most comfortable with, ignoring the comfort of other employees.

  • “Foucault, Gayle Rubin, Pat Califia, Judith Butler… the list goes on. There’s almost no queer theorist who doesn’t also argue for pedophilia.”
  • Speaking of pedophiles: “A former CNN television producer who had pleaded guilty to luring a 9-year-old girl into illegal sexual acts was sentenced Tuesday to more than 19 years in prison and an additional 15 years of supervised release during a U.S. District Court hearing in Vermont. John Griffin of Stamford, Connecticut, pleaded guilty in federal court in December to using interstate commerce to entice and coerce the girl to engage in sexual activity at his Vermont ski house.” (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)
  • Sex club founder kicked out of sex club after revealing that Hunter Biden was kicked out of said sex club for being too big a scumbag. In other news, Hunter Biden was too big a scumbag for an LA sex club.
  • Your tax dollars at work: “Homeland Security is funding college programs that compare Christians and Republicans with Nazis to fight “‘terrorism.'”
  • Middle schoolers told to wear gay rainbow colors. Instead they revolted by wearing red, white and blue.

  • Completely unsurprising headline: “IRS Whistleblower Says Justice Department Slowed and Stymied the Hunter Biden Tax Investigation.” Also, water exhibits high degrees of wetness. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • Is Portland sobering up?

    In the summer of 2020, Portland, Oregon, became the poster child for American urban disaster zones. During the day, tens of thousands of citizens protested peacefully against police brutality following the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis. But everything changed after dark. Nonviolent demonstrators with jobs, school assignments, and kids to raise went home; hundreds of anarchists swarmed in to take their place and waged a low-grade insurgency against the city. They fought pitched battles with the cops—throwing rocks, frozen water bottles, fireworks, buckets of excrement, and even Molotov cocktails. They attacked coffeehouses, immigrant-owned restaurants, mom-and-pop retail stores, banks, museums, churches, bus stops, and the Multnomah County Democratic Party headquarters with baseball bats, crowbars, and hammers. Most were military-age white males wearing all-black clothing and hiding their faces. The violence kept up, night after night, week after week, and month after month, into the winter, long after the rest of America had calmed down. My city had become the most politically violent place in the country, and I got worried e-mails from people I knew around the world—even in the Middle East!—asking me if I was okay and why on earth this was happening.

    A crime wave followed. Shootings and homicides exploded 300 percent between 2019 and 2022, robberies rose 50 percent in 2022 alone, vehicle thefts hit record highs, and work-order requests for graffiti removal shot up 500 percent between 2020 and 2022. The City of Roses suffered 413 shootings in 2019 but 1,306 in 2022 and nearly twice as many homicides as San Francisco, though Portland is only three-fourths its size. Meantime, statewide crime actually declined from 2019 to 2021.

    The homelessness crisis also intensified. The slow-motion collapse of Oregon’s mental-health infrastructure, a dramatic surge of cheap and deadly fentanyl and a far more potent and addictive form of psychosis-inducing meth, and a crippling housing shortage led to the formation of more than 700 tent cities in residential neighborhoods and business districts across the city.

    But while it’s too soon to declare that Portland’s troubles have passed, the worst may now be over. Despite ongoing woes, Portland looks and feels much better than it did in dystopian 2020. The riots stopped, and the crime wave seems to have peaked, with shootings down by nearly 40 percent and homicides down more than 50 percent in the early months of 2023. A sober mood shift has taken over the city. Voters passed a ballot measure to restructure city government, while the three newest elected officials on the city council are steering Portland in a different direction. The city, county, and state are taking steps to reverse the decline.

    Portland is suffering a serious livability crisis. Eighty-eight percent of respondents in early 2022 told the Portland Business Alliance that the quality of life is worsening. Portland is hardly the most dangerous city in America: the homicide rate in St. Louis is more than four times higher, with 65 murders per 100,000 people, compared with Portland’s 15 in 2022. Portland’s rate peaked at more than double the national average, but of all the cities with higher crime rates than Portland, only Chicago gets as many national headlines. That’s probably because Portland’s increase in crime was the worst in the country. No other city’s homicide rate rose so spectacularly. And unlike St. Louis, Baltimore, and other notorious hot spots, Portland was recently a destination city that touted its high quality of life as a reason to move there.

    Of late, though, rather than attracting new residents, Portland has actually lost population, either to the suburbs or out of state. “I’ve never seen money move out of here,” commercial real-estate salesman Stu Peterson told Willamette Week. “Nobody ever wanted to leave Oregon. It’s a beautiful place. Most evacuees are high-wage earners who are fed up with the crime, taxes, and homelessness, in that order. There’s an ugly spiral.” Real-estate agent Justin Harnish described a client who left downtown Portland for the suburb of Lake Oswego after she saw a woman stab another woman in the face with scissors.

    Accompanying the crime wave is a drastic staff shortage at the Portland Police Bureau. Portland now has fewer than 800 sworn officers, a smaller number than it had decades ago, when the city was barely half the size it is now. And with the surge in violent crime, the police have little time to deal with anything that isn’t life-threatening. Prioritizing shootings and other emergencies, they’re forced to neglect break-ins, stolen cars, vandalism, and just about everything else. The traffic police unit has been defunded, reduced to a single full-time traffic cop—not for ideological reasons but because the city has no one to staff that division.

    Part of the blame rests with the months of demoralizing anti-cop violence in 2020, but Portland would probably be short of police officers anyway. Every city agency, from fire and rescue to the transportation bureau and the public defender’s office, faces staff shortages now. And while a shrunken police force didn’t cause Portland’s crime wave on its own, a police department that can barely react to anything but emergency calls aggravates the problem. Criminals behave as though they can get away with essentially anything and commit far more crimes than they would if they were investigated, arrested, and prosecuted swiftly. The Woodstock neighborhood, where Joe Biden won 88 percent of the vote, is considering hiring its own private security force.

    Snip.

    I spent more time talking to my neighbors that year than I ever had before or have since. A lot of us suddenly became friendlier outside our houses, and we weren’t talking about sports and the weather. Residents and business owners alike worried about where things were headed and expressed dismay at the city’s inability to defend itself. I didn’t talk with a single person who thought that everything was okay, that city hall was on top of it, or that the anarchists were not a menace. And nobody could understand why the homeless camps at the elementary school down the street or at the park hadn’t been cleared. No, I didn’t conduct my own scientific public opinion survey, but it was obvious that regular people were nearing the end of their rope and that the status quo was bound to be upended.

    In 2021, that’s exactly what happened. A tsunami of outrage inundated the mayor, the city council, and the police bureau. Phones rang nonstop. Furious citizens shouted at meetings. Newspaper editors published scathing letters, and journalists at mainstream outlets covered distressed neighborhoods and interviewed disgruntled citizens while largely ignoring the activist set that booed every conceivable solution and told civilians that the problems were in their heads. Lawsuits against the city proliferated. Polls showed city council members languishing on political death row, with approval ratings in the teens.

    Though most residents still wanted accountability for bad cops and citizen oversight of the police bureau, the complaints were primarily about crime, about how the police hardly ever show up anymore, and about disorder dragging neighborhoods down. Even some of the fashionable middle-class neighborhoods endearingly satirized in the Portlandia comedy series were enduring weekly gunfire.

    In the fall of 2022, 82 percent of Portland respondents in an Oregonian poll said that they wanted more cops. If some Portlanders felt overpoliced a few years ago, hardly anyone felt that way after the chaos, with a mere 15 percent saying that they wanted fewer officers in 2021.

    Before the city council elections got going in 2022, voters fired repeated warning shots in public opinion surveys. An overwhelming 85 percent of respondents said that they found the city council ineffective, with a clear majority describing it as “very ineffective.” For a while, it looked as though Portland was gearing up to fire every single official in a landslide election.

    Two city council members, Dan Ryan and Jo Ann Hardesty, ran for reelection last year. Ryan managed to defy expectations and win despite the temper in the city, though it’s easy to understand why: he set aside his ideological views and changed with the times. Though he first ran during a special election in early 2020 on a campaign promising to cut police funding, he soon reversed himself. Anarchists vandalized his home seven times because he refused to cut the police budget.

    Hardesty didn’t fare as well. Pushing bills to defund the police and opposing the cleanup of homeless camps, she put herself wildly out of step with her constituents. Mingus Mapps, a moderate on the council who had easily dispatched the left-wing populist Chloe Eudaly two years earlier, endorsed Hardesty’s challenger, Rene Gonzales, and bluntly said: “It is time to put ideology aside and elect people who will fight for Portland. I need colleagues who use debate, reason, and logic to solve our many crises.” Gonzales said, “Our once beautiful city is struggling in ways that were unfathomable a short time ago. . . . City hall’s ineffective, ideologically driven policies are ruining the city we used to proudly call home.” Gonzales won, and Portland replaced the city council’s last progressive firebrand with a centrist. It was the kind of event that marks the end of an era.

    Sounds a lot like Austin, except for the sobering-up part. (Also, it’s good to read Michael Totten again. He seemed to disappear from view for several years. Probably because he was writing for The Bulwark…)

  • Speaking of Portland, the homeless drug addict who said that living on the streets of Portland was “too easy” is now back with her family and getting treatment. They thought she was dead…
  • “FBI Groomed Developmentally Challenged 16-Year-Old To Become A Terrorist, Then Arrested Him.”
  • Is Fox News going full woke?
  • “Guy who bought $37k in stolen human organs literally put “braiiiiins.” in the memo line on PayPal.” On the one hand, that’s really stupid. On the other hand, how could you not? (Bonus: Stolen body parts were coming from Harvard.)
  • European flopball match breaks out in the most vicious slap fight you’ve seen this side of Fire Island.
  • Not to walk on two legs, this is the law. Are we not dogs?

    (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ pet thread.)

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    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…

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