Ukraine – The Optimistic Conservative

“Establishment” for a better future: The historic need of our time

A better future won’t just establish itself.

This essay, while a long one, is considerably shorter than it could be, if I included a lot of quoted citations and deeper discussion of the technical aspects of some of the targeting sequences alluded to (in Iran and Yemen, and with the recent Ukrainian attack on Russia’s high-value strategic aircraft).

It takes forever to put those articles together, and my priority is to convey clearly a top-level point about the “meta-trend” of our thinking on matters like game-changing geopolitical developments, negotiations, and warfare and the uses of power in today’s environment.

I think the meta-trend will be seen more distinctly and usefully if the discussion focuses on that, and doesn’t try to make too many ancillary points. I don’t even want to talk about the ancillary points; I want to get us ahead of the action, inside the OODA loop, by pointing out how appreciating the meta-trend makes us smarter in the face of President Trump’s negotiating style, rather than being held back by overlaying our incorrect assumptions on his actions. Continue reading ““Establishment” for a better future: The historic need of our time”

European scramble for Ukraine: Hijack this

Improbable, perhaps, but European allies could deliver an epic set-up if they follow through.

After the series of unfortunate events in the White House during Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s visit (a few comments appear below), Zelensky talked to the media and left for the UK. Besides a nice photo op with King Charles III, his visit bore fruit in a pledge from Prime Minister Keir Starmer for deployment of British boots on the ground and military aircraft to support Ukraine’s fight against Russia.

Notably, there’s no outline of how, exactly, such assets would be used to support Ukraine. There’s a whole viral theme flying around about the UK having only 40 deployment-ready main battle tanks, but besides not being sure that’s correct, my greater concern is what in the actual firetruck Britain would use MBTs for in the Ukraine situation. (See the image captions for links to X posts below.) Continue reading “European scramble for Ukraine: Hijack this”

Here’s motive: Hindsight 20/20 on Trump’s disruption of Obama-Biden enterprises

It’s a gas, gas, gas.

[Note: Because of its length, I considered breaking this article into sequential parts posted separately. But it’s essential to take it in as a single, coherent story. Think of it as a single-themed chapter in an extensively researched book. The article stops a few times to marshal the facts and implication so far, a necessary technique, I believe, to keep it flowing as a single story. By the end of it, readers will see how Trump’s tenure affected a campaign launched in the Obama administration and pursued from its earliest days. In particular, Trump basically sent now-revealed Biden interests in that Obama campaign down the drain. Because of the length, and because the facts not included here are laid out elsewhere, I have left much that readers will be aware of on the cutting-room floor. This is not because I’m not aware of those facts. It’s because including everything would make this impossibly long, and is not essential to making the main point: Trump policy killed the Obama-Biden show. – J.E.]

On Saturday 18 November 2017, Chinese official Chi Ping “Patrick” Ho, then director of the China Energy Fund Committee (CEFC), was arrested by federal authorities of the U.S. Southern District of New York on bribery charges under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA). Ho and a Senegalese national, Cheikh Gadio, were charged with a bribery scheme entailing money-laundering (through the U.S. affiliate of an international bank) and involving officials of Chad and Uganda. Continue reading “Here’s motive: Hindsight 20/20 on Trump’s disruption of Obama-Biden enterprises”

TOC Ready Room 14 July 2023: $5 million here and there; Trump and the missile launch; Reserve call-up freak-out

What’s wrong and right with the world.

First of all, felicitations to France on the 236th anniversary of Bastille Day, which has a few more hours to play out here in Southern California.

Second of all, a few choice topics for a badly-needed Ready Room update.

April-May 2014 and alleged $5 million bribes to Bidens

This is a quick update on a Bidens-Burisma matter reported at TOC back in March 2022. I won’t rehash the whole history here; it’s all in the original article (scroll down toward the end for the gist).

The basic outline is that in March 2014, Burisma owner Mykola Zlochevsky tried to move $23 million out of a UK account he had established the previous year with the French global bank BNP Paribas. The French bank was under investigation for money-laundering and sanctions violations by the U.S. DOJ in the Southern District of New York at the time, but the probe seemed to move at a glacial pace, and BNP was actually allowed to make banking transactions with sanctioned Iranian correspondents (as well as Ukrainian entities under suspicion of corruption) during the investigation.

Within a month after BNP Paribas reported Zlochevsky’s proposed $23 million withdrawal to the UK Serious Fraud Office (SFO), however, the U.S. DOJ suddenly sprang into action and started turning the screws on BNP. Continue reading “TOC Ready Room 14 July 2023: $5 million here and there; Trump and the missile launch; Reserve call-up freak-out”

The Baturina Chronicles

Making the world go around, one transfer at a time.

The tangled epic of the Biden family and funny foreign money won’t be getting untangled any time soon. Each fresh revelation seems to add a new knot, rather than simplifying the analytical problem.

But we have enough context now to take a walk through it in relation to the Elena Baturina chapter in the saga. When the Senate issued its initial report on the Baturina transactions in 2020, not enough context had been assembled to suggest likely characterizations (other than that it was all bound to look suspicious). But there’s a lot more to work with now.

What follows here can’t be comprehensive, partly because we still don’t know enough to tie everything together with a neat bow. (Party, of course, because there’s just so darn much involved.) But laying out a series of bare facts will be indicative, if not conclusive. Continue reading “The Baturina Chronicles”