What Putler Hath Wrought

Finland’s leaders Thursday came out in favor of applying to join NATO, and Sweden could do the same within days, in a historic realignment on the continent 2 1/2 months after Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine sent a shiver of fear through Moscow’s neighbors.

The Kremlin reacted by warning it will be forced to take retaliatory “military-technical” steps.

There had better be a mechanism to immediately admit them as probationary/provisional members. But given the amount of combat power the Russians have tied up in Ukraine, it's not apparent that Russia has the ability to invade Finland, not in the way that they did eighty-two years ago.

However you slice it, without the Russians going full-on Nazi Germany and invading their neighbors using the same rationales that Hitler used to sell his invasions to his subjects, there wouldn't have been any appetite in either Finland or Sweden to join NATO.

Funny Which Politicians the Russians Seek to Buy

One of the biggest donors to Britain’s Conservative Party is suspected of secretly funneling hundreds of thousands of dollars to the party from a Russian account, according to a bank alert filed to Britain’s national law enforcement agency.

The donation, of $630,225, was made in February 2018 in the name of Ehud Sheleg, a wealthy London art dealer who was most recently the Conservative Party’s treasurer. The money was part of a fund-raising blitz that helped propel Prime Minister Boris Johnson and his party to a landslide victory in the 2019 general election.

There should be little surprise that the Russians were interested in funnelling money to politicians who were opposed to European integration. Because that weakens Europe and, let's not forget, that Russia, under Putin, is an enemy of Europe.

Morale and the Russian Invasion

Lucian K. Truscott IV explains why morale matters:

Here's the thing about troops, even the youngest and least well-trained of them. They may be ill-informed and confused at first, but it doesn’t take long for them to get hold of at least their own portion of the bigger picture, and when they do, if they feel they have been misled or lied to, the sense of betrayal in the ranks is palpable. They begin to lose the will to fight.

The Strategy Page has noted that Russian troop discipline collapsed as soon as command told the troops that they were free to loot the Ukrainians. The looting stiffened Ukrainian resistance. Reports from inside Belarus confirm the looting.

The Russians are sowing a legacy of hatred that will be harvested in Eastern Europe for the rest of this century.

Convertible Sniper Rifles?

The Barrett Mk.22, which the marines are adopting, will fire .338 Norma Magnum, .300 Norma Magnum, 7.62mm and, .300 Winchester Magnum. The idea is that they don't have to carry different rifles, just one, with extra barrels.

I don't know how that will work in reality. At what point do they decide which barel and ammo to take? I presume that they're not going into the field with all of that stuff, but one never knows with the Crops.

Interesting Stuff on the Russian Invasion of Ukraine

First off, there are allegations that the Russians have been dumping their dead into heaps in order to conceal the extent of their losses.

Russian authorities in Ukraine’s occupied city of Donetsk are tossing the bodies of their dead soldiers in a secret dump “by the thousands” and charging their loved ones money to find them.

That’s according to a new audio recording released by Ukraine’s Security Service on Tuesday, which is purportedly an intercepted telephone conversation between two Russians discussing how one of their missing friends was finally found.

This is a Twitter thread about Ukrainians attacking Russian tanks deep inside their occupied territory.

Video of an apparent Ukrainian attack on a Russian tank on 6 May is getting much attention for the turret's attempt to go to the Moon. It should be getting a lot more attention, though, for where it happened and what this means for Russia. A short 🧵. /1 pic.twitter.com/93yZXO2E37

— ChrisO (@ChrisO_wiki) May 11, 2022

One interesting thing is that the Ukrainians have been converting hand-thrown antitank grenades into RKG-1600 antitank bombs that are dropped from commercial drones.

Susan Collins, Snowflake Extraordinaire

Susan ("Karen") Collins called tbe cops because somebody chalked a non-obscene, non-threatening pro-choice message on the sidewalk outside of her home.

Collins said that chalking something on a sidewalk was "defacement". That is some primo snowflakeism. It's likely that the reason why the Bangor cops told Collins that no crime had been committed was because writing with chalk on a public sidewalk doesn't constitute vandalism.

Gassing These Down, Here

Indoctrination in Florida

Discussions of gender identity and sexual preference are banned in many Florida classrooms because of governor Ron DeSantis’s “don’t say gay” law, alongside dozens of math textbooks blocked for “prohibited topics”.

Now the Republican who has loudly condemned what he sees as the “indoctrination” of young people has made another subject compulsory: students must receive at least 45 minutes’ instruction every November about the “victims of communism”.
...
The instruction will begin in the 2023-2024 school year, DeSantis said, and will require teaching about Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong and Fidel Castro, as well as “poverty, starvation, migration, systemic lethal violence, and suppression of speech” endured under their leaderships in the Soviet Union, China and Cuba respectively.
...
Educators in Florida are banned, however, from teaching students about racial issues, including the history of slavery, if it makes them “feel uncomfortable”, according to DeSantis’s recently signed Stop Woke Act.

So... Cuban communism--bad, America slavery--good, at least in DeathSantis's Florida. Whether there is merit in what Repulsive Ronnie wants to do or not, it's still state-mandated indoctrination in a particular point of view.

Which one might think that Republicans, the part of limited government involvement, would be against. But not so much.

Horseshit Spouted in Legal Settlements

Empyreal Logistics, a Pennsylvania-based company that transports cash from state-licensed marijuana businesses, has reached a settlement with the San Bernardino County, California, Sheriff's Department, which had seized more than $1 million from Empyreal's armored cars. The Justice Department, which was holding the money pending federal forfeiture, agreed to return all of it last month. According to a joint statement that Empyreal and the sheriff's department issued on Friday, "both parties understand that each [was] acting in good faith when the stops were conducted and have come to an understanding that will enable both sides to move forward amicably."

If you go on to read the story, you'll see that it becomes pretty damned evident that "acting in good faith" is a blatant lie when it came to the conduct of the Sherff's Department. The deputies were lying in wait for the armored cars and were, in point of fact, acting like badged-up robbers.

Highway robbery was exactly what they were doing.

Wait, What? (The Hazard of Using of Stock Photos)

Russian propagandists during a Victory Day concert showed a photo of American gangsters Bonnie and Clyde among pictures of Soviet residents who were separated by World War II. pic.twitter.com/dPmNVNNoWd

— Iuliia Mendel (@IuliiaMendel) May 9, 2022