PayPal Bank Run!

The fallout from the PayPal "glitch", whereby they announced they would debit customer accounts up to $2500 directly for publishing "misinformation", continues.

Do not take their $15 bribe. Delete your PayPal account. https://t.co/lFd7QBxG7M

— Ian Miles Cheong (@stillgray) October 13, 2022

Despite this, however, it sounds as though PayPal has been experiencing an effective bank run:

Following the trend to boycott PayPal, some users were having a problem closing their accounts.

One user commented, “Endless hours chatting with the support here. Some people are able to close it in seconds. Others it takes weeks. Criminal.”

Another said, “Looks like they’ve disabled Account Closure over at Paypal to prevent customers exiting their platform. No doubt there’ll be the usual corporate-speak on “temporary technical issue” inbound.”

Well, consumers aren't stupid. When I began to research this issue, I discovered information that was already in the public domain: PayPal's Acceptable Use Policy was a risk to businesses long before they mooted the "misinformation" clause:

As a business owner, you want to make it easy and convenient for customers to pay with their method of choice. That’s why it’s so important to find a reliable payments partner that allows you to securely accept credit and debit card payments.

However, not all payment processors are created equal. Some of the biggest names in payments are notorious for their poor treatment of merchants. From Stripe’s restrictive list of prohibited businesses to PayPal’s extreme fines and bans, there are plenty of reasons to steer clear of these payment processing giants.

In fact, running your business through PayPal could cost you everything. Whether you’ve heard the PayPal horror stories or have been a victim yourself, this article will help you protect your business from any further catastrophe.

. . . PayPal’s Acceptable Use Policy is notoriously vague. This allows them to shut down your account or freeze your funds at their own discretion. PayPal can fine your merchant account somewhat arbitrarily, including charging $2500 per violation of the Acceptable Use Policy.

Well before the "misinformation" kerfuffle, the Acceptable Use Policy already listed "the promotion of hate, violence, racial or other forms of intolerance that is discriminatory" as activities that could result in $2500 fines or cancellation of an account. The link continues,

. . . Not only is $2500 a significant fine for small businesses, but there’s also no clear list of violations that result in the fine. So, many business owners are operating somewhat blindly, hoping that they aren’t breaking any of PayPal’s ill-defined rules.

Perhaps the biggest problem with PayPal’s Acceptable Use Policy is that it’s open to interpretation. PayPal uses vague language to define “acceptable use” so they can freeze or charge your business account at their own discretion.

. . . Furthermore, if PayPal decides to ban your account altogether for violating the Acceptable Use Policy, they can hold the funds in your account hostage for up to 180 days. That’s almost six months during which not only is your account closed down, forcing you to look for alternative methods for customers to pay you, but your cash is tied up for no good reason. Unfortunately, that’s often enough to cripple a business and force you to close up shop.

. . . To make matters worse, there is no defined appeals process. They can ban you without warning, potentially without allowing you to cash out your account balance for six months. Plus, they can fine you multiple times to deplete your balance—and there’s not much you can do to stop them.

At minimum, the site's recommendations include withdrawing funds from PayPal as soon as possible after payments are deposited and beyond that, for a business, moving to a more reliable payment processor. The "misinformation" issue is only the most recent and most visible risk associated with its product.

At this point, though, the misinformation flap is starting to metastasize into a textbook corporate crisis for PayPal:

Congressman Darrell Issa (R-CA) is demanding PayPal provide answers about new language added and then removed from its user agreement — asking specifically if the payment processing giant consulted with the Biden administration on the policy.

PayPal this week announced that it would deduct $2,500 from users who violate its policy on “misinformation,” “hate,” or speech the company deemed “unfit for publication,” but then quickly pivoted to reverse the move following backlash.

, , , Issa asks PayPal how they intend to “adjudicate the ambiguous term ‘misinformation’,” asking specifically if COVID misinformation would be included, as well as gender pronouns.

. . . Former top management at PayPal, including Elon Musk, David Sacks, and David Marcus, spoke out on social media against the announcement.

Markus called the policy “Insanity,” to which Musk replied “Agreed.”

David Sacks warned, “Get your money out of paypal right now.”

I use PayPal primarily to order through eBay, which has much better prices on many items than Amazon. As such, I'm using it exclusively as a payment processor. In the past, as a freelance writer, I sometimes got payments through PayPal, and I withdrew those balances immediately to my normal checking account. As such, for now, I don't intend to make any changes. But clearly the "misinformation" issue has alerted consumers, and especially online small businesses, to the risks of dealing with PayPal, and this in turn could threaten PayPal's ability to continue as a viable operation.

Where's the crisis management team? Typical advice would include:

[I]n the age of social media, the truth – or a version of it – will always come out. If you don’t tell the truth, and get found out (and you will), it will be far more damaging than getting the issue out in the open, on your own terms. Never, ever lie. . . . If you don’t communicate, someone else will – and they may not have your best interests at heart. . . . Put right what’s gone wrong, and tell people (or even better, show them) what you’re doing to make things right.

Rep Issa's letter, quoted in the link above, asks PayPal to

detail the offices and/or departments within PayPal that approved of the updated Acceptable Use Policy language that was posted on the company’s website, with a planned implementation date of November 3, 2022. . . . What categories of “misinformation” did PayPal contemplate needed censorship that were not already covered by the previous policy?

These questions are inevitably starting to emerge, and PayPal is going to need to come up with answers. I suspect this case will wind up in future PR textbooks.

Zelensky Is Driving The Agenda

As I've been saying, since late February, Ukraine President Zelensky has been setting a de facto agenda for the Western response to the invasion, and if he doesn't get what he wants right away, he gets it later. Sec Austin's remarks (translated back to English from a Ukrainian report at the link) at the start of yesterday's Ramstein conference reflect this state of affairs:

In Brussels on October 12, the next Ramstein meeting brought together defense ministers from about 50 countries to discuss assistance to Ukraine.

Opening the meeting, Pentagon chief Lloyd Austin stated that the dynamics of the war unleashed by the Kremlin had changed.

He stressed the serious progress of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in this conflict, Dialog.UA reports .

. . . He stressed that the Ukrainian troops changed the dynamics of the war by seizing the initiative from the occupier.

It seems to me that Sec Austin is talking about two dynamics. Ukraine seized the initiative a few months ago, this isn't new. The dynamic that's changed is the effective Western response to Putin's threats of escalation, which has been in short, if you use nukes, you'll make our day. The implicit consequence, telegraphed by Gen Petraeus, is that this would bring, if not a coordinated NATO retaliation, an individual non-nuclear attack from at least some Western countries like the US or Poland within Ukraine's borders that would destroy Russian forces there and end the war within days.

The dynamic that changed was the recognition of Russia's incompetence at fighting a war -- if they could be fought to a standstill, denied air superiority, and beaten back by a third-rate country using largely Warsaw Pact weapons supplemented by obsolescent NATO reinforcements and drones, there can be no question about the result of a direct conventional confrontation with the US that would make nukes irrelevant. Interestingly, this was the substance of Reagan's strategy toward Moscow, essentially using precision guided weapons to bypass the nuclear threat. At some point, this was filed away and forgotten until World War III actually started in Ukraine, and Zelensky reminded the West they had it.

As I noted yesterday, in Tuesday's G7 meeting, Zelensky outlined a full-scale peace plan, the first part of which was an air shield for Ukraine. This is a further development of his February proposal for a no-fly zone, which was rejected at the time because if Western fighter jets attempted to enforce it against Russians, it would mean escalation. The dynamic that's changed after seven months is that if Western countries supply Ukraine with SAMs that Ukraine can clearly operate, Ukraine continues to act as a proxy, and there's no direct confrontation. But Zelensky effectively gets what he wants.

Every indication I have from the reddit /r Ukraine Conflict thread is that Germany, France, the UK, and the US have moved immediately to send Ukraine the SAMS it has requested. Done.

The second point of his peace plan is some type of international guarantee of Ukraine's borders, supplemented with an authority that is able to locate, prosecute, and punish war criminals in Russia. This would require nothing short of an occupation force equivalent to those that imposed peace terms on Germany and Japan in 1945, and it would have equivalent effect on world history. If it imposed partition on Germany in 1945, there would likely be an equivalent result for Russia in the wake of its defeat.

Zelensky is ahead of the game here, it's a big order, but as with his other proposals, I feel pretty sure there will be no real alternative.

The last part of his peace plan is no negotiation, or stated otherwise, unconditional surrender, the Grant-Lincoln policy in the US Civil War and the Allied policy at Casablanca. So far, the Western policy as expressed up to now by Biden and Scholz is that Zelensky and Ukraine are the only ones who can authorize any sort of land-for-peace deal, and that's likely to continue.

I think the reason is that dismantling the Putin state and the potential partition of Russia, especially including a Western-oriented carveout for European Russia, is too attractive and too attainable a prospect to give up. And Zelensky is offering to do it on the cheap. He will have had an effect on European history more profound than Napoleon and Metternich combined.

Interesting guy.

Zelensky's G7 Address

I said yesterday that Volodymyr Zelensky is the de facto leader of the free world. Elsewhere I've maintained the point that he makes proposals that at first seem out of bounds -- longer range missiles like HIMARS, for instance -- but are eventually approved, often in unofficial ways, by Western countries. So far in every case, Ukraine has made effective use of them, which gives him more credibility with each subsequent proposal.

I complained yesterday, as I've complained before, that there's been no Roosevelt equivalent who can lead a Western consensus on what a world would look like after the Axis forces, or in this case, the Russian bloc, is defeated, even though the Russo-Ukraine war almost immediately turned into a proxy conflict between Russia and the West, with the effective defeat of Russia as a geopoliical force the inevitable outcome.

I had an instinctive sense that Zelensky might provide a substitute in his address to the emergency meeting of the G7 yesterday. Some excerpts:

Thank you Chancellor Scholz for convening this extraordinary G7 summit and thank you to all the countries that supported this initiative and to all the leaders who are here today.

For the second day now, Ukraine has been suffering from massive Russian missile strikes. And for the 230th day – from the Russian terrorist war.

In other words, thank you, Chancellor Scholz, for convening a meeting that was effectively called at my request, even though Ukraine isn't in the G7. But then we get to a proposed blueprint for transition to a postwar world, something we most definitely haven't had from Biden or any of the others:

I thank you for all the help already provided. It is big, it is significant. But the Russian leader, who is now in the final stage of his reign, still has room for further escalation. This possibility of his is a threat to all of us.

But we can overcome this threat. We have a formula for peace. And now, reacting to Russian terror, sham referenda and the attempt to annex our territory, we can apply the peace formula so that the terrorist state stands no chance.

The first point is defense support. Air shield for Ukraine. This is part of the security guarantees that are an element of our peace formula.

This is nothing new. Zelensky called for a no-fly zone in February, but by mid-March it had been definitively rejected due to the "risk of escalation". But now he renews his call for it, even as Putin now threatens more escalation. What's going on? I'll comment after his second point.

The second point is the territorial integrity of Ukraine. It is also an element of our peace formula. And it is logically combined with the third point - with punishment, which is an integral element of any peace formula.

The one who started the armed aggression is an international criminal. He must be convicted.

The protection of the territorial integrity of Ukraine is the protection of the entire international legal order, starting from the UN Charter. Various potential aggressors in the world are now watching the reaction of democracies to the farce arranged by Russia with sham referenda and attempted annexation.

Here he repeats his reference to a "peace formula". Again, this is something the standard-issue Western leaders aren't putting forward. Then he moves to the Casablanca Conference step, unconditonal surrender as the war aim:

We must also recognize the obvious fact: there can be no dialogue with this leader of Russia, who has no future. He himself rejected the dialogue. Despite all our efforts to negotiate peace over the years! He speaks with ultimata, terror is his attitude to the world, to other people.

After the Russian strikes, all the murders, all the abuse of civilians and international law, your societies will not understand you if you do not cut off any prospects for this leader of terror.

All of us in the world should realize: talks can be either with another head of Russia - who will comply with the UN Charter, the basic principles of humanity and territorial integrity of Ukraine - or in a different configuration, so that the key terrorist does not have the opportunity to influence key decisions through terror. Now one person is blocking peace - and this person is in Moscow.

This is the only realistic approach -- the war ends either with an agreement by Russia to comply with the UN Charter, or with a reconfiguration of Russia involving Putin's removal, plus penalties. Nobody else has mentioned this as a war aim. But then he moves to another key point:

Russia is trying to directly draw Belarus into this war, playing a provocation that we are allegedly preparing an attack on this country. Indirectly it has already involved them. And now it wants to involve them directly.

Ukraine did not plan and does not plan military actions against Belarus. We are only interested in restoring our territorial integrity. But in order to completely remove this provocation, to remove these narratives by Lukashenko, to remove even the assumption of any alleged threat from us, we offer our solution.

A mission of international observers may be stationed on the border of Ukraine and Belarus to monitor the security situation. The format can be worked out by our diplomats. And I ask you at the level of the Group of Seven to support this initiative of ours.

Zelensky's point since February has been in effect to say this problem is bigger than Ukraine. Ukraine is fighting Russia; in fact, it has no dispute with Belarus except insofar as Russia is using it to project its own threats against Ukraine. Thus it's an interational situation that's above Zelensky's paygrade (I would add "cough cough"; Zelensky has been de facto running the show).

I think Zelensky is offering what the rhetorician Richard Weaver calls an "argument from circumstance", which Weaver goes on to say is the most desperate form of argument. It bascially argues that the enemy is surroudning us from three sides, and on the fourth is the sea. If we try to swim away, we'll drown. Thus we have no choice but to stand and fight. Charge!

Zelensky's point boils down to this: Russia is violating international law. Putin does not negotiate, he simply makes threats of escalation. An implicit but unstated part of his argument is that the threats have been idle-- throughout the year, Zelensky has made proposals like a no-fly zone that have been rejected due to fear of escalation, but other proposals, like supply of more powerful weapons, have been approved in spite of the threats, and the escalation hasn't occurred.

Thus it will at some point be incumbent on the West to guarantee Ukraine's borders, to stop further Russian aggreession, and to enforce a postwar regime in Russia that includes the ability to punish war crimes and collect reparations. Zelensky is basically saying we can do this now or do it later, but not doing it isn't an option.

Where's The End Game Strategy?

Let's get real. The de facto leader of the free world is Volodymyr Zelensky. For now, everyone else is in reactive mode, and the whole subtext for the rest is what they can send Zelensky in the way of second-tier NATO weapons that won't provoke Putin to use nukes. The result is a slo-mo collapse of the former Russian empire, done on the cheap. It's generally understood, based on the unofficial threat from Gen Petraeus more than a week ago, that if NATO were to step in with more advanced weapons, the war would end in a matter of days.

So the state of the game is Putin loses more or less slowly, or he loses right away, nukes or not. Conversely, Zelensky wins slowly as Western leaders gradually recognize that Putin has no credible response to their weapons, or Zelensky wins quickly when Putin makes some last, critical miscalculation, and either NATO ships long range missles, F-16s, Panthers, or whatever else, or NATO steps in directly.

For now, the clearest potential Putin miscalculation would be to use nukes. Another potential tipping point would be to widen the war by invading the north of Ukraine via Belarus, with the Belarus army involved. This would widen the war via a third party and make the Poles nervous, with unpredictable results. Either one would simply hasten an already more or less predictable outcome of the war, but then we're still up against the question of what the West wants as an actual outcome.

Here's where the real difficulty begins. Zelensky as a national player has expressed his wishes pretty clearly by this point: Russia withdraws to pre-2014 borders with Ukraine; there are war crimes trials and reparations; Ukraine joins both the EU and NATO; someone other than Putin signs the treaty. Slowly or quickly, this will happen. But how does this affect the world outside Ukraine's borders?

Let's take just the problem of Belarus. For now, it's a close ally of Russia. But once Zelensky gets what Ukraine should have as a local outcome of the war, this leaves Belarus as a Russian ally surrounded on three sides by NATO (assuming Ukraine joins) or NATO and Ukraine as powerful NATO proxy (the current actual state of affairs). There will need to be some official solution of this problem, especially as it relates to Russia. If Belarus is to become a neutral buffer, this will need to be imposed by a Yalta-style consensus -- but under the circumstances, wouldn't Belarus also want to join NATO as well?

And with Ukraine in NATO and a for-now neutral Belarus, how does this affect Kaliningrad/Königsberg? It's farther and farther from Russia and less and less defensible. Hypothetical post-World War III maps show it ceded to Poland, which is what I would bet as well.

Then there's the Kuril Islands dispute between Russia and Japan. According to Wikipedia,

The San Francisco Peace Treaty, signed between the Allies and Japan in 1951, states that Japan must give up "all right, title and claim to the Kuril Islands", but it also does not recognize the Soviet Union's sovereignty over them. Japan claims that at least some of the disputed islands are not a part of the Kuril Islands, and thus are not covered by the treaty. Russia maintains that the Soviet Union's sovereignty over the islands was recognized in post-war agreements. Japan and the Soviet Union ended their formal state of war with the Soviet–Japanese Joint Declaration of 1956 but did not sign a peace treaty. During talks leading to the joint declaration, the Soviet Union offered Japan the two smaller islands of Shikotan and the Habomai Islands in exchange for Japan renouncing all claims to the two bigger islands of Iturup and Kunashir, but Japan refused the offer. This disagreement between the two-island offer made by the Soviet Union and Japan's demand of regaining two bigger islands as well became the cornerstone for continuation of the dispute into the present day.

Last week, President Zelensky in his capacity as de facto leader of the free world called on the international community to recognize Japanese claims to all four disputed islands:

Zelensky said Russia has no right to the territories, and the entire world knows this. He said the international community must “de-occupy” all lands that Russia has occupied and is trying to keep.

“With this war against Ukraine, against the international legal order, against our people, Russia has put itself in conditions — and it is now only a matter of time — of the real liberation of everything that once was seized and is now under the control of the Kremlin,” he said.

I don't see how the West wiggles out of this dilemma. Solving the Ukraine war is going to mean a lot more than just Ukraine. The problem is in fact going to be bigger than just NATO, and it's going to mean overall agreements similar to Yalta. Biden, of course, is not the figure to accomplish this, which means that replacing Biden is at roughly the same level of urgency as replacing Putin.

"Glitches"

Two big events in the social media-tech world went mostly unmentioned over the past weekend. On YouTube, a large number of channels covering the Russo-Ukraine War was demonetized without notice on Saturday morning. The link quotes Denys Davydov, one of those demonetized and a very prominent YouTuber, saying his channel was demonetized because it "exploits, dismisses, or condones the war". The YouTuber at the link says,

So, his daily update videos were averaging about one million views -- one million views in one day -- this makes Denys Davydov one of the largest creators on YouTube, I'm not even joking. But he was entirely kicked out of the YouTube adsense, because he operates more than one channel. He also has the channel Pilot Blog that has over a million subscribers, has nothing to do with the war in Ukraine on this channel, this is his pilot and travel channel, and this was also demonetized. So, it wasn't the channel, it was Denys who was demonetized.

Another well-known YouTuber, Artur Rehi, an Estonian military member who comments on the war based on his military experience, received a similar message.

I discovered today that over the night, monetization has been disabled on all of my videos because I cover the Ukrainian fight for freedom. Some ads are still running and they will be cut also. . . I hope Youtube still allows super thanks and members [alternate means of donating] but I cannot be sure. . . . I read the letter to you now. "Due to the war in Ukraine [unintelligible] of content that exploits, dismisses, or condones the war".

Jake Broe, the YouTuber at the first link, says,

There is the small possibility that this is all a mistake . . . and then YouTube on a case-by-case basis chooses to restore the monetization capabilities. And I partly think this might have been a mistake, because Perun was also demonetized. If you're not familiar with Perun's channel, I mean, this is top quality military content. These are hour-long PowerPoint presentations. There is nothing about condoning or dismissing the war in Ukraine, this is some of the highest-quality content you can find on YouTube. And he also had his channel completely demonetized. So he's Talking to people at YouTube, he's working with them. . .

Later in the day, YouTube issued a perky update that the "issue" was "fixed":

the monetization issue is fixed for all channels & new uploads → creators: you can upload as usual

the fix is still rolling out to some *previously uploaded vids* will send a final final update once fully resolved: https://t.co/VKFCbMXIB5

thx again for your continued patience https://t.co/bQeW0wpzEC

— TeamYouTube (@TeamYouTube) October 9, 2022

This won't fly. Coming from the tech world myself, an "issue" is a problem with how the product works. I press enter, and it doesn't send in the order, say. That's a glitch, and support works with the programmers to fix it. But this isn't an "issue". Somebody, either through human intervention or through an algorithm, implemented a corporate policy, to wit, any channel that in the judgment of the "trust and safety committee" or equivalent body (or an algorithm acting under its authority) who "exploits, dismisses, or condones the war" is demonetized. This is not a "glitch", this is a corporate action that was explained via corporate e-mails.

It apparently required Perun, a prestigious user, to negotiate carefully with said "trust and safety committee" (or someone who could overrule them) to rescind the stated policy. This was not a software update or program fix. In fact, a human operator should have been fired but probably wasn't.

Both Denys Davydov and Artur Rehi announced it had been a big mistake, they'd been remonetized, and indeed, they even groveled, apologizing for jumping to conclusions just because the company had sent them e-mails saying they'd been demonetized for exploiting, dismissing, or condoning the war. Davydov posted,

Channel is being fixed. Many thanks for your support ❤️✈️. I guess I reacted too early… Was sure that my channel will stay demonetized… Now everything is fine and it was a YouTube system glitch where thousands of channels were effected.

The other big unreported event was a similar reversal by PayPal:

In a censorship experiment gone awry, PayPal reversed course Saturday night and said it was withdrawing a new policy that would have allowed the company to fine users $2,500 if they spread "misinformation."

The company sent a statement to the National Review saying the Acceptable Use Policy had been sent out mistakenly,

“An AUP notice recently went out in error that included incorrect information. PayPal is not fining people for misinformation and this language was never intended to be inserted in our policy," the firm said in the statement.

"Our teams are working to correct our policy pages. We’re sorry for the confusion this has caused,” it added.

The policy lit up social media over the weekend, drawing widespread rebuke even from the company's former CEO.

Until the reversal, PayPal was set to impose the new terms, which laid out a list of policy violations which "may subject [users] to damages, including liquidated damages of $2,500.00 U.S. dollars per violation, which may be debited directly from [their] PayPal account."

Among those violations is any activity that "promotes misinformation," though the company did not clarify what it means by that term.

Another very popular YouTuber, Romanian Tvee, commented on the policy, making the point that no serious business can rely on PayPal if it announces that it can debit your account for $2500 per infraction for arbitrary reasons. He makes the very valid observation that naive tech users treat PayPal as a bank and leave balances in their accounts that are simply vulnerable to this type of action, whether PayPal rescinds a particular policy or not. His advice is to use PayPal exclusively as a payment channel that deducts payments from your separate bank or card account, and likewise to withdraw all balances from payments on a daily basis. He wonders how it could happen that

the mom and pop website PayPal, this little upstart company, did not have a team of lawyers to look at their statement, they did not have any fact checkers, they did not have any editors, this little tiny website on the corner of the intenet, and they just happened to goof! Yes, everyone makes mistakes, yes!

Glitches! No such thing. Major corporations are in fact letting Karens run amok. The lizard people need to get a grip.

Biden Gets Spanked Again

In this post, I advanced my theory that, as a result of the disastrous Afghanistan withdrawal followed by the public disagreement over sending Polish Migs to Ukraine, the lizard people through the agency of Antony Blinken told President Brandon that he was not to interfere in Ukraine policy, and in addition, he was not to say anything about the conflict that had not been previously drafted and approved by Secs Blinken and Austin -- and in addition, when he delivered any such approved statements, he was to deliver them without deviation. (A normal president, even a Donald Trump, would understand this implicitly. The problem with Brandon isn't medical, it's the Dunning-Kruger effect -- he thinks he's the smartest guy in the room.)

A data point emerged yesterday that, at least for me, confirms this:

Canadian [sic] socialist tyrant Emmanuel Macron is spending the weekend in Prague, attending a European Union summit along with other NATO leaders. During one press gaggle, Macron was asked about Joe Biden’s recent comments where he invoked the image of “Armageddon” if Vladimir Putin deploys any tactical nuclear weapons in Ukraine. Macron took the bait and decided to criticize Biden, saying he needed to display prudence and “choose his words carefully.” Oddly, Macron also made a reference to not engaging in “political fiction” when it comes to Mad Vlad and his stockpile of nuclear warheads.

Leaving aside the truly awful standard of copy editing on display at Hot Air, this stikes me as a calculated response to Brandon's violation of his orders. On Friday, I noted my own discomfort with the Armageddon remarks and the implication that he knows more than anyone else about what Putin might do, or more importantly, what his actual capabilities are. In fact, I privately wondered if this was in fact a violation of the hard carveout he'd been presented with, and what the outcome might be.

I think we've got our answer. As best I can read the tea leaves, Secs Blinken and Austin -- who were in business together as global strategy consultants while out of the government after 2017 -- appear to have worked out a strategy to cover Putin's nuclear threats. The US would say nothing directly. A "knowledgeable" third party, in this case Gen Petraeus, would speculate without attribution about what the response might be and what may have been conveyed to Putin through channels. This no doubt was also throroghly reviewed and massaged among NATO leadership, including President Macron.

And suddenly Joseph R Brandon jumps in with all four feet at a Deomocrat fundraiser to yap about Armageddon. On one hand, this is understandable -- I've got to assume this is an event with a clubby atmosphere of heavy hitters where the tone is entre nous, and in return for their open checkbooks, they're expecting some sort of unique insights the plebs won't get. But this is dangerous to the candidates. It's where Mrs Clinton made her "basket of deplorables" remark that helped lose her the 2016 election.

In fact, the problem with the event was that it fed Brandon's ego, which didn't need feeding, and he felt the need to preen before his audience about how well he knows Putin, precisely the sort of thing he should not have been doing, and my guess is also that it was just the sort of thing Macron and others had been assured Brandon would not be allowed to do. I also assume that Macron was previously on the phone, not with Brandon, but with Blinken. Things working the way they do, words to the effect of prudence, careful choice of words, and political fiction were incorporated in that discussion some hours previous to Macron's public announcement.

I went to school with these people.

Biden and the results of the 2020 Götterdämmerung strategy, defeat Trump at all costs with promises to the extreme fringe, are coming back to haunt the lizard people, whose current priority, in the spirit of Nelson Rockefeller-Averell Harriman centrism, has been to defeat Russia in a proxy war in Ukraine and open the former empire to Western markets. One of their key problems is that Biden is proving even less controllable than Trump, while other aspects of the fringe agenda are also in conflict with their aims in Ukraine -- will Zelensky be on board with having Ukraine in the EU if the EU imposes radical reductions in agriculture, as it's tried to do in the Netherlands?

However, whatever else occurs, I think it's more certain that Biden will be told what his decision on whether to run in 2024 will be, irrespective of what Dr Jill or anyone else thinks. The lizard people will need to find a credible replacement, but I assume they're on it.

I Feel A Disturbance In The Force

From Reuters,

A powerful explosion seriously damaged Russia’s road-and-rail bridge to Crimea on Saturday, hitting a prestige symbol of Moscow’s annexation of the peninsula and the key supply route to Russian forces battling to hold territory captured in southern Ukraine.

. . . It now represents a major artery for the Russian forces who have taken control of most of southern Ukraine's Kherson region, and for the naval port of Sevastopol, whose governor told locals: "Keep calm. Don't panic."

It was not yet clear if the blast was a deliberate attack, but the damage to such high-profile infrastructure came at a time when Russia has suffered several battlefield defeats and could further cloud the Kremlin's messages of reassurance to its public that the conflict is going to plan.

This is a key event in the war, symbolically as important as the sinking of the Moskva, but strategically much more important, as among other things, it appears to have caused panic among the Russian occupiers in Crimea. But it's also a significant blow to Russian supply along the whole southern front:

The strike on the Crimean bridge will significantly affect further events on the front. This was announced by military expert Alexander Musienko during the information telethon.

He drew attention to the fact that most of the weapons and reinforcements of the personnel of the Russian army were carried out from the Crimea. Troops across the peninsula were transferred to the Zaporozhye direction and to the Kherson region. The destruction of the bridge will make this impossible.

To be clear, photographic evidence shows that only two of the four highway lanes have been destroyed, while what appears to be a prestressed concrete rail bridge section is visually intact, although it's likely that the heat of the hydrocarbon fuel fire on the train will cause less visible but critical damage to the rail bridge as well:

These fires release enormous heats within seconds and then come into being extremely high temperatures that can almost melt a lot of materials, as shown in Fig. 2 (Baidu, 2022b). Consequently, bridge fires are typically high and intense followed with explosive burning. Peak temperature stemmed from these bridge fires can exceed 1000 °C as discussed above.

These high and intense fires can lead to severe deterioration of the structural rigidity and load-bearing capacity in key structural members of bridges. This deterioration of rigidity and strength in main structural members can cause commonly complete failure and even collapse of fire-damaged bridges.

According to The Guardian, the Russian transport ministry has announced that rail traffic will resume at 8 PM. But as a commenter said, "And will halt again at 8.01pm when the first train collapses the span and falls into the Black Sea."

As of now, it simply isn't clear how this was done. As far as anyone can tell, this was two simultaneous detonations, one on the train carrying flammable fuel, and a separate one that collapsed two spans of the highway bridge in one direction. This leaves two highway lanes open out of four, plus the theoretical ability simply to pull the wrecked train off the bridge (very carefully) and repair the track -- but Western engineers almost certainly would not regard this as a realistic solution due to the clear fire damage to the concrete rail spans.

In fact, I would imagine that the damage to the rail spans due to the hydrocarbon fire was planned by Ukraine as part of the operation.

And although the bridge has been damaged and not completely destroyed, it's plain that if Ukraine was able to do this once, they can do it again, especially as it's just not clear how they did it. But Putin has ordered an investigation.

I think this thing is going to end a lot sooner than people expect.