Civil war may be on the horizon in Russia.
More money goes to Ukraine because U.S. bureaucracies can’t add.
And the Titanic sub implosion brings out the darker side of humanity.
Maybe We Can Stop Giving Ukraine Money
It looks like the Russia/Ukraine war might come to an end sooner than expected and Not the way Vlad Putin wants. This whole war may result in a Russian civil war or the assassination of Putin.
There’s a lot to this story, so let’s break it down:
- Yevgeny Prigozhin, the owner of Russia’s feared Wagner paramilitary group, released a series of messages on Friday accusing Russia’s Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu of launching attacks against his soldiers fighting in Ukraine and vowed to take immediate action on the streets of Moscow.
- Here are some things about the Wagner Group.
- They are designated as a Transnational Criminal Organization and is frequently accused of committing war crimes.
- Yevgeny Prigozhin is the leader of the group.
- Prigozhin served nearly a decade in prison after being convicted of “assault, robbery, and fraud” in 1981.
- After being released from prison, he made his living selling hot dogs on street corners and eventually started a catering business, where he eventually met Russian President Vladimir Putin — then a low-level government official.
- The Russian government laundered money to Prigozhin through his catering company, which he eventually used to start Wagner — initially a small group of only a few hundred former Russian soldiers that were hired to do Russia’s bidding in Ukraine in 2014.
- Having Wagner do Russia’s bidding gave the Russian government plausible deniability as the group engaged in dirty work.
- Russian government contracts to Concord Catering have reportedly been estimated to be well into the billions of dollars.
- he group is accused of massacring and raping civilians and exploiting natural resources in poor countries with dire security situations. The resources — commodities like gold, oil, and gas — go back to the Russian government.
- The group operates in South America, Africa, the Middle East, Asia, and Europe.
- The Wall Street Journal said that it identified 64 companies that are linked to Wagner that are used as front companies to move money and assets. The report said that the Kremlin is connected to all of it.
- This is basically Putin’s army like the KGB is Putin’s police force.
- Wagner Group is in Ukraine fighting. Things are not going well for them. They have lost thousands of troops.
- Apparently, while the group was fighting in Ukraine, Russia bombed a base that held 25,000 Wagner Group troops.
- He released a message: “The war was needed so that a handful of scumbags could have a blast and get PR attention showing how strong the army is. The war was needed not in order to return the Russian citizens to our bosom and not in order to ‘demilitarize and denazify Ukraine’.”
- About the missile attack: “A missile attack was carried out on a PMC Wagner base. There are many casualties. According to the information of the fighters who are witnesses, the attack was carried out from a rear direction – that is, it was carried out by soldiers of the Russian Ministry of Defense.”
- He said in another audio communication: “The evil that the military leadership of the country brings forward must be stopped. They have forgotten the word justice, and we will return it. Anyone attempting resistance will be considered a threat and immediately destroyed. This includes all the checkpoints on our path and any aircraft above our heads.”
- Wagner paramilitary forces have surrounded the Russian military’s Southern Military District headquarters in Rostov-on-Don and swore they were moving on to Moscow.
- On Saturday Prigozhin halted his force’s advance toward Moscow to avoid bloodshed after a last-minute deal was reportedly brokered to bring the crisis to an end.
- The announcement comes after Prigozhin reportedly reached a deal with Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko to stop the situation from escalating further after Wagner had advanced hundreds of miles over the past 12 hours on its way to Moscow.
- In a statement, the Belarusian government said:
- “This morning, Russian President Vladimir Putin briefed his Belarusian counterpart on the situation in southern Russia with the private military company Wagner. The heads of state agreed on joint actions.”
- “As a follow-up to the agreements, the President of Belarus, having being additionally informed on the situation through his own channels, and in agreement with the President of Russia, held talks with the head of Wagner PMC Yevgeny Prigozhin. Yevgeny Prigozhin accepted the proposal of the President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko to stop the movement of armed persons of the Wagner company on the territory of Russia and take further steps to de-escalate tensions.”
- Rumors are that Prigozhin is going be exiled to Belarus.
- Many are unsure that this is the end of the rebellion.
- Prigozhin has a tendency to go back on his word.
- The Wagner group has not yet released the bases in Rostov-on-Don yet.
- Belarus is a known Putin ally and a Russian satellite country. Prigozhin would not be safe there and he knows it.
- Russia held a celebration over the cease fire.
Here’s the reality, Russia doesn’t have much to celebrate. At best, the rebellion is over and Putin lost the most experienced military and intelligence operation in his arsenal. At worst, the Wagner Group is stalling for time and reinforcing their military for a future attack on Moscow or planning an assassination attempt , coordinating with anti-Putin people in Moscow (and there are a bunch).
This ain’t over.
American intelligence knew about this rebellion in advance. This bothers the crap out of me because it means that we may be sending money, not only to Ukraine, but now to the Wagner Group. In other words, our role in this proxy war is going to expand while we have yet to expand our own military.
It also brings up the adage, “Politics makes strange bedfellows.” We may start to support a group, the Wagner Group, that hates us and may end up using our own weapons against us.
https://www.dailywire.com/news/owner-of-russias-wagner-group-says-russia-killed-his-troops-vows-to-put-an-end-to-defense-minister
https://www.dailywire.com/news/who-are-yevgeny-prigozhin-and-wagner
https://www.dailywire.com/news/prigozhin-halts-wagners-advance-toward-russias-capital-as-his-forces-neared-100-miles-from-moscow-report
https://www.dailywire.com/news/russia-drops-criminal-case-against-prigozhin-soldiers-who-participated-in-mutiny-will-not-be-punished
Speaking of Giving Away Money
Here’s the real problem with giving the government the responsibility of giving our money away.
According to Town Hall:
As if we needed any more concerns with this Department of Defense (DoD), the Deputy Pentagon Press Secretary Sabrina Singh revealed during a Tuesday press conference that Ukraine will be provided with an extra $6.2 billion.
Before taking questions, Singh revealed that “during the department’s regular oversight of our execution of presidential drawdown authority for Ukraine, we discovered inconsistencies in equipment valuation for Ukraine.” In what Singh said were “a significant number of cases, services used replacement costs rather than net book value, thereby overestimating the value of the equipment drawn down from U.S. stocks and provided to Ukraine.”
The “final calculation” for FY ’23 is $3.6 billion and $2.6 billion for FY ’22, bringing that combined total to $6.2 billion.
Here she is with the big news:
Let me get this straight:
- Our government doesn’t really know how much they are giving Ukraine.
- Our government doesn’t know the value of what we are giving Ukraine.
- Our government doesn’t know what Ukraine is doing with our money.
- And our government solves these problems with giving Ukraine more of OUR tax money.
Yeah, 67% of the population thinks we shouldn’t be giving Ukraine dick and should worry about our country. That includes Democrats. I hope Republicans are watching this because this is a campaign ad.
The Stupid Continues
We talked about the implosion of the Titan submersal last week. It was a tragedy and the only lucky thing for those people on board is that the ship blew up quickly and those people had a quick death. Of course, that doesn’t stop the living from continuing to be stupid.
According to Fox News:
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police is looking into the circumstances surrounding the fatal voyage of OceanGate Expedition’s Titan submersible to determine whether a criminal investigation is warranted.
RCMP Superintendent Kent Osmond said Saturday a team of investigators had been established to decide whether a full criminal investigation would proceed.
“Such an investigation will proceed only if our examination of the circumstances indicate criminal, federal or provincial laws may have possibly been broken,” Osmond said.
Canada must really have nothing better to do. Everyone who knows anything about deep sea diving knows what happened. None of the wreckage will be recovered because of the depth and expense. Finally, the only guy who could be criminally negligent was piloting the ship and died in the implosion.
Go to it Canada.
One of the other things that is amazing about this whole thing is how people are such assholes about it. They seem to always want to put a political spin on things, especially on social media. I have been on Twitter a lot and there have been a lot of distasteful jokes. I mean, guys, wait at least a week before going off.
But the politicos were at it and they are truly a hateful bunch.
Celebrity Leah Dionne released a photo of a killer whale and stated on Twitter:
“I have nothing to say but eat the rich.”
Of course, killer whales don’t swim close to that depth.
TikToker, which is a thing, Ginny Hogan tweeted:
“It’s crazy to think we might only have another 30 hours or so of being able to make fun of the people on the submarine.”
A Reddit user posted:
“Why does it seem hard to feel sorry for the rich people that might die in the submersible?”
Why is that hard? People might even feel bad if this monster died tragically.
Far-left “The Nation” correspondent and frequent MSNBC guest Elie Mystal quipped:
“Next time some rich white person wants to take Sam Alito on an expensive trip, please take him to see the Titanic.”
So, he’s hoping death on a Supreme Court justice he doesn’t like.
But some people do not see this stuff as funny. In fact, they see it as a symptom of a really sick society. The criticisms are coming from some really surprising sources considering they have participated in this sick type of commentary.
Los Angeles Times staff writer, Jessica Gelt wrote:
“Like a digital Tower of Babel, social media is evolving into an increasingly ugly and chaotic space — a real-time repository for our worst impulses, uninspired musings, scatalogical humor and ill-formed thoughts that should be kept to ourselves. It is an online Mall of America: vast, vacuous, relentlessly commercial and soul-sucking. And in a time of immense crisis — political, ecological, social — it has become a garbage dump of vile commentary publicly aired because that’s just what we do now.”
Technology entrepreneur Lon Safko told Forbes:
“It’s also about narcissism, ‘Oh look… 79 people liked my snarky post!’ It’s a form of heckling and getting attention. The bigger the story, the more attention can be diverted from the story to them personally. It is sad to see how social media has allowed us to devolve into a society so self-centered and narcissistic. As with most hecklers, the only way to defuse them is to ignore them, and don’t feed them their negative energy.”
Nextar also weighed in on the issue that has been around for a very long time:
“One main reason given for the perceived glee or dismissiveness with which the incident has been met with is summed up in a German word: ‘schadenfreude.’ As defined by Merriam-Webster, ‘schadenfreude’ means enjoyment obtained from the troubles of others — generally this enjoyment is reserved for those considered by individuals to be ‘above’ themselves.”
The fact is all these people are right. This is sick, hateful and an abomination. It shouldn’t matter who was on that sub, this is a tragedy.
I also agree with some people that this should be admired. This is a quest for adventure and discovery. Yeah, it was done poorly and these people showed bad judgment, but it is still not something to mock.
https://www.foxnews.com/world/oceangate-titanic-sub-royal-canadian-mounted-police-not-ruling-out-possible-criminal-investigation
https://www.foxnews.com/media/online-mockery-titanic-submersible-leaves-cultural-observers-sickened-garbage-dump-vile-commentary