🧵The White House just dropped these mini video profiles highlighting America's first patriotic legends, celebrating their enduring contributions that founded this nation. This thread will contain them. Bookmark worthy.🙂
A little "inside baseball" stuff from the Russian/separatist side in 2014: Text taken from a thread in the X account of Desiderius | Casus Belli 🔱.
Bezler is a far more interesting character than Girkin. GRU agent living in Horlivka for a decade waiting for shit to hit the fan, becomes respected in the mafia community, captures a police station by walking in and appointing some SHADY dude the new chief, Girkin refers to Igor Girkin, AKA Igor Strelok, the reenacting reserve FSB colonel, who claimed at the time he had an active role in the takeover in Crimea and Donetsk.
He has served time for his remarks on the Russian army.
Had the rare reputation of being kind to POWs even though he mock executed three captives on camera, making it look real, then couple of days later said they're fine lol wanna exchange the boys👉👈.
Also kidnapped and killed political opponents and journos
Despises Girkin so much you can't call it a beef, he just sees him as gay crying dumbass. When Girkin fled Sloviansk, Bezler hosted him in Gorlovka and as sign of hospitality let Girkin use the sauna to unwind, then called Moscow laughing that Girkin fled Sloviansk to his sauna.
One of Girkin's officers overhears this and takes out a grenade, but Bezler's new bride stunlocks him with an AK. Then Girkin walks in, refreshed and ready, wearing new camo fatigues that Bezler gifted him. They are actually his wife's.
Sends a squad to Donetsk to attack the central police station (he had a beef with one of the guys there). His squad captures the building and then gets besieged by Vostok, Oplot and other Donetsk-based groups.
They hold them all off, because Bezler had cultivated the least idiotic and the only competent Russian militia. Hearing of their plight, Bezler sends reinforcements and heavy artillery. No half measures kind of guy.
Vostok commander and essentially reluctant ruler of Donetsk Khodakovsky calls him and tells him to chill the fuck out, they'll give him the dude, call it all off. Bezler calls it off. By that time Russian and Ukrainian media alike are full of headlines about civil war in DPR
Nothing happens to him because everyone realize he's actually insane and become scared of him. Khodakovsky says he wanted to make Horlivka a city-state. Plays a role in MH17 shootdown, in that the BUK had to travel through his turf. Apparently becomes somewhat of a sex pest.
Realizes the state of things (Girkin & co fucked it all up, Moscow will now take over). Peaces out instead of sticking around and getting blown up in an elevator. Is old as fuck now but instead of going to SVO shitshow he jumps with parachutes and a cane, chills on yachts.
Several days after he takes over Horlivka, Zelenskyi does a show there. In 2020 Bezler said he regrets not "feeding him lead instead of patties"
[NY Post] Over the past few months, unprecedented developments point to the potential, and potentially imminent, fall of China’s "Chairman of Everything" Xi Jinping. Chinese Communist Party elders — including Hu Jintao, Xi’s immediate predecessor, whom Xi humiliated at the 20th Party Congress in 2022 — are now running things behind the scenes.
Xi is in poor health and likely to retire at the CCP Plenary Session this August or take a purely ceremonial position.
Xi’s downfall has been rumored before. But never have we seen the recent purges (and mysterious deaths) of dozens of People’s Liberation Army generals loyal to Xi; all replaced by non-Xi loyalists.
Zhang Youxia, with whom Xi had a major falling out after helping Xi secure an unprecedented third five-year term, is now the de facto leader of the PLA.
Also, the "un-naming" of Xi’s father’s mausoleum last month was unprecedented. The mausoleum, which Xi has built to honor his late father, was larger than the mausoleums of either Mao’s or Deng’s.
Meanwhile, Xi’s personal protective detail has recently been halved. What world leader cuts his own security?
There was no explanation for Xi’s disappearance for almost two weeks in late May and early June while foreign dignitaries were hosted in Beijing by other CCP Leaders. Xi has also been conspicuously missing from the pages of the People’s Daily, the CCP organ that until recently ran fawning front-page stories on Xi daily.
Xi reappeared to host Belarus dictator/Russian puppet Alexander Lukashenko in early June. Xi looked tired, uninterested — even defeated.
The meeting location was a low-key family-style area of the CCP leaders’ compound (Zhongnanhai) in Beijing that had never before hosted a state visit. Stripped of the pomp and circumstance that used to accompany every Xi gathering, the entire entourage was a mere handful. None of Xi’s translators or senior aides were present.
Compare that to the state visits recently hosted by other CCP leaders; large, extravagant affairs in prestigious CCP conference halls. And following his recent call with President Trump, Chinese state media, including state TV, referred to Xi without any formal title at all. This has never happened before.
While this was later partially corrected, it is inconceivable that such a glaring oversight was an accident. Recently, professors at some of China’s most prestigious universities have published articles directly criticizing Xi, which was unthinkable previously.
These are just a few of many unusual signs from Beijing that signal major changes in the CCP power structure. Although not yet certain, it appears that Zhang Youxia and CCP elders have chosen Wang Yang, whom Deng Xiaoping lifted out of obscurity and who served as a successful technocrat until his forced retirement in 2023, to be the next CCP chairman.
He is known as a soft-spoken reformer who supports more free-market policies, more decentralized decision making, and a much less confrontational foreign policy.
Now is not a good time to be confrontational with Donald Trump in the White House, as Iran and its allies have learnt to their sorrow.
To paraphrase Churchill, China is a riddle wrapped in an enigma surrounded by a mystery. So no one can know anything with absolute certainty. But given the disastrous results of Xi’s one-man rule, his ouster would be no surprise.
With over $50 trillion in total debt (national, local and private sector debt is larger than the combined economies of the US and EU),
…to be fair, the debt is the result of stupid CCP ideas since the Clinton era….
well over 50 million unused (and mostly unusable) apartments due to government policy failures (enough for all of Germany), wealthy Chinese emigrating en masse with their assets and an unemployment rate in depression territory... it is not surprising that local riots, factory arsons and anti-government protests have flared all over China.
CCP elders understand China needs a new pragmatic leader to have any chance of escaping the disaster now unfolding.
Such a change will have huge positive implications for the US and our democratic allies if handled correctly. Trump can win the Cold War with China without firing a shot. But Russia, North Korea, and Iran could be devastated by this momentous change.
In fact, Iran’s rapid defeat by Israel and the US has underscored the weakness of Xi’s foreign policy. One CCP elder recently lamented China’s complete isolation on the world stage under Xi, except for a handful of countries that are "good for nothing."
Vladimir Putin, take note: You lost Syria last year, you are on the brink of losing Iran, and you may soon lose China. Excellent news for all democracies, and especially for Israel, America, and the brave people of Ukraine.
Xi Jinping once again proved the adage that "power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." May his replacement learn from the success of the global West (including Asia’s most successful countries) and lead his nation onto the oftentimes messy but ultimately rewarding path of free markets, free people, real democracy, and the rule of law.
Taiwan, Singapore, Hong Kong (before the CCP takeover), and the tens of millions of successful Chinese people outside China make it clear that this is the best, and indeed the only sustainable path forward for China.
[American Liberty] Markets do not wait. Investors, lenders, and entrepreneurs thrive on clarity, not suspense. President Trump understands this better than any recent occupant of the Oval Office. When he senses uncertainty, he instinctively moves to resolve it. He did so with taxes, with regulation, and with foreign policy. The time has come for him to do it again, this time by naming Jerome Powell’s successor as Chairman of the Federal Reserve now, not eleven months from now. This is not a rupture of norms, but an embrace of responsibility. Naming the next Fed Chair is not simply an administrative matter, it is a macroeconomic signal, a moral declaration, and a political necessity.
Consider the context. The US economy is wobbling between resilience and recession. Inflation has cooled but not vanished. Consumers are cautious. Small businesses hesitate to expand. The yield curve remains inverted. And yet the Federal Reserve, under Powell’s sluggish stewardship, refuses to cut interest rates decisively. Their reasoning? Prudence, or perhaps cowardice, cloaked in the language of inflation targeting. But there is a more unsettling possibility, one that few in polite circles dare acknowledge: partisanship. Every single economist at the Federal Reserve is a registered Democrat. Not one has donated a dollar to a Republican candidate in over twenty-five years. That fact, standing alone, ought to give the public pause. Powell told the Senate this week, "If we make a mistake here, people will pay... the cost for a long time." But millions are already paying the price for the Fed’s mistake of raising rates too far, too fast, and keeping them high for too long, even as Europe cuts rates in response to similar economic conditions. The Fed’s refusal to follow suit cannot be attributed solely to monetary caution. It increasingly appears ideological, a quiet campaign of economic resistance against a president they loathe and a movement they fear.
Now enter the central philosophical question. Should the executive branch, led by a duly elected president with a national mandate, exercise some influence over the nation’s monetary trajectory, or should it leave such questions entirely to an unelected elite ensconced in an institution that prides itself on "independence"? That word, like many others in modern technocracy, conceals more than it reveals. Independence, in practice, often means unaccountability. The Federal Reserve is not a Platonic guardian class. It is a government agency, and its decisions, however "data driven," have massive distributive consequences. Rate policy determines who gets a mortgage, who hires, who invests, and who saves.
Historically, presidents have understood this reality and have acted accordingly. Lyndon Johnson infamously browbeat Fed Chair William McChesney Martin at his Texas ranch in 1965 for raising rates during the Vietnam buildup. Richard Nixon hounded Arthur Burns into keeping rates low ahead of the 1972 election. Ronald Reagan, while more tactful, made it abundantly clear what kind of monetary policy he expected from Paul Volcker, and later appointed Alan Greenspan to ensure continuity. These interventions, while criticized in retrospect, were hardly the undermining of constitutional order. They were expressions of democratic accountability.
Continued on Page 47
[Libertarian Institute] In a New York Times opinion article on June 21, Amos Yadlin, a former chief of Israel’s military intelligence, attempted to defend Israel’s recent decision to start a war with Iran, in which Israel was briefly joined by the U.S. government under the administration of President Donald Trump.
Under the headline "Why Israel Had to Act," Yadlin’s opening sentence states, "Forty-four years ago this June, I sat in the cockpit on the Israeli air force mission that destroyed Iraq’s Osirak nuclear reactor. In one daring operation, we eliminated Saddam Hussein’s nuclear ambitions."
The parallels between that event and the current war on Iran are indeed remarkable—but the real lesson to be learned from it is precisely the opposite of the one Yadlin draws.
In addition to constituting aggression under international law, "the supreme international crime" as defined at Nuremberg, the American and Israeli bombing of Iran’s nuclear facilities proves how policymakers in both countries refuse to learn from the lessons of history.
The claim that Israel’s bombing of Iraq’s Osirak reactor in 1981 halted or set back Saddam Hussein’s efforts to acquire a nuclear weapons capability is a popular myth.
In fact, Iraq had been a party to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) since it came into force in 1970, and its nuclear program was under the safeguards of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which had reported that the program was in compliance with Iraq’s legal obligations under the treaty. [/sarc]
Israel, by contrast, is known to possess nuclear weapons and "has not adhered to" the NPT, as the United Nations Security Council observed in Resolution 487. Unanimously adopted on June 19, 1981, that resolution strongly condemned Israel’s act of aggression.
Continued on Page 47
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The claim that Israel’s bombing of Iraq’s Osirak reactor in 1981 halted or set back Saddam Hussein’s efforts to acquire a nuclear weapons capability is a popular myth.
wherein he explains his considered opinion — having read the Tanakh, the Old Testament or Jewish bible — that modern Judaism is heretical to choose Zionism, and the tiny group of anti-Zionist ultra-Orthodox Jews, Neturei Karta, is right. And thus anti-Zionism is not Jew hate.
#4
There were the Korah in the desert wilderness. The Hellenized Jews resisted Judas Maccabaeus. There are always folks on the wrong side. Joe Biden made a career of it.
Posted by: Super Hose ||
06/29/2025 11:07 Comments ||
Top||
Summary:
Iran's Exiled Crown Prince to Lead a Team of Citizens, Some Military and Security Forces and Members of the Civilian Bureaucracy and to Begin a Peaceful Transition into a Constitutional Society, Starting Perhaps in Six Months
Lara interviews the Crown Prince. Here’s a summary. He says the regime is on the brink of collapse and is at it’s weakest. He goes into detail about a variety of hardships. Iranian citizens have suffered tremendously and lost hope. While the Persian carpet industry may flourish it’s under rigid control, while other industrys have been decimated. They’re the friends of America just as much as before 1979 and they were the first one’s to be targeted by the regime. Thousands of Americans have been killed for their purpose.
His solution is to lead the country to an organized and stable transition. Citizens will vote by referendum to establish the rules, with separation of religion from state. They will be peaceful with all neighbors and especially America.
[Townhall] It is hard even to digest the incredible train of events of the last few days in the Middle East.
Iran had been reduced to an anemic, performance-art missile attack on our base in Qatar -- the last Parthian shot from a terrified regime, desperate for an out -- and a ceasefire.
Iran would have been better off not launching such a ceremonial but ultimately humiliating proof of impotence.
Even worse for the theocracy, Iran's temporary reprieve came from the now magnanimous but still hated U.S. President Donald Trump.
So ends the creepy mystique of the supposedly indomitable terror state of Iran, the bane of the last seven American presidents over half a century.
For Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, it was hard to swallow that U.S. bombers got their permission to fly into Iranian airspace from the Israeli air force.
A good simile is that Trump put a pot of water on the stove, told Iran to jump in, put the lid over them, then smiled, turned up the heat -- and will now let them stew.
As postbellum realities now simmer in Iran, the theocracy is left explaining the inexplicable to its humiliated military and shocked but soon-to-be-furious populace. All the regime's blood-curdling rhetoric, apocalyptic threats against Israel, goose-stepping thugs, and shiny new missiles ended in less than nothing.
A trillion dollars and five decades' worth of missiles and centrifuges are now up in smoke. That money might have otherwise saved Iranians from the impoverishment of the last 50 years.
How about the little Satan Israel, to which Iran for nearly 50 years promised extinction?
Israel had destroyed Iran's expeditionary terrorists, Iran's defenses, its nuclear viability, and the absurd mythology of Iranian military competence. And worse, Israel showed it could repeat all that destruction when and if necessary.
So, the most hated regime in the world crawled into the boiling pot because it looked around in vain for someone to void Trump's ultimatum for a cease and desist.
Continued on Page 47
Posted by: Besoeker ||
06/29/2025 01:01 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[59 views]
Top|| File under: Govt of Iran
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I don’t know about the assertion that they are the most hated regime until I watch a definitive YouTube ranking video.
Posted by: Super Hose ||
06/29/2025 8:40 Comments ||
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[NY Post] Over the past few months, unprecedented developments point to the potential, and potentially imminent, fall of China’s "Chairman of Everything" 
