When presented with the choice between two hypothetical Republican candidates, only 24 percent of national Republican voters opted for “a candidate who focuses on defeating radical ‘woke’ ideology in our schools, media, and culture” over “a candidate who focuses on restoring law and order in our streets and at the border.”
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40% of the victims of the Maui fires had no insurance.
Lessons from the Wagner Group
The WSJ has an article on the rule of law, Trump's and Biden's legal problems, Wagner founder Yevgeny Prigozhin and Wagner's surprising reach. This is a part of it.
"The Wagner mercenaries adhere to no standards of modern warfare. They are stone-cold killers. Yet it’s generally believed that no framework exists to prosecute stateless mercenaries for the atrocities they commit.
Though a significant event in the Ukraine war, the mutiny left the impression that Wagner is a collection of guns for hire. It is more than that.
This newspaper recently published a detailed examination of the empire that Wagner founder Yevgeny Prigozhin has assembled. The Wagner Group is in fact a military, financial and business organization that operates worldwide outside the established rule of law. It is off the grid.
According to the Journal’s reporting, Mr. Prigozhin operates some 70 linked companies that conduct nominally legitimate business in real estate, government contracting, oil, mining and natural-resource development. Mr. Prigozhin’s shell companies share financing for these commercial operations.
An umbrella group called M-Finance mines gold, diamonds and timber in the Central African Republic. Wagner runs a joint venture with a government-owned mining company in Madagascar, an operation, the Journal reported, “with a projected potential profit of billions of dollars in the next decade.” They have mining operations in Sudan and Mali. A company called Evro Polic protects and derives revenue from Bashar al-Assad’s oil and gas fields in Syria.
At the center of it all is Mr. Prigozhin, a thug and one of the most fascinating figures of our time. He has taken the Putin era’s pseudo-democracy based on oligarchic corruption to its logical endpoint, creating a multinational pseudo-corporation in business with willing sovereign governments.
Mr. Prigozhin, a limitless cynic, is sending a message: Grow up. The world is returning to survival of the fittest, and all your rules be damned. I am simply a rational entrepreneur, creating a parallel system without the burden of accountability."
The accountability question is certainly true but one wonders at the growing kingdoms of entities that follow rules that are not just in violation of the law, they are said to supersede them. All sorts of elements--criminal, religious, sociological--are flying banners that purport to be more basic, more real, more accurate a reflection of who we are, and, thus, more legitimate. The Wagner Group is an autocratic group that believes its outrageous power is just. And deserved. Warlords, like cartels, believe they fill a basic social need. So the social revolutionaries in the West--and especially in the U.S.--do not see themselves as violating the rules of American law, they see themselves as tapped into a basic law or groups of laws that the Constitutional framers either did not understand or overlooked. They believe they have a hold of the truth.
And truth trumps law.
40% of the victims of the Maui fires had no insurance.
***
Preseason football is not very meaningful but Kendrick Green, 87 pick in Round 3 of the 2021 NFL Draft, was meaningfully and worrisomely bad in their first preseason, creating some anxiety about whether they have to find a backup center.
***
Lessons from the Wagner Group
The WSJ has an article on the rule of law, Trump's and Biden's legal problems, Wagner founder Yevgeny Prigozhin and Wagner's surprising reach. This is a part of it.
"The Wagner mercenaries adhere to no standards of modern warfare. They are stone-cold killers. Yet it’s generally believed that no framework exists to prosecute stateless mercenaries for the atrocities they commit.
Though a significant event in the Ukraine war, the mutiny left the impression that Wagner is a collection of guns for hire. It is more than that.
This newspaper recently published a detailed examination of the empire that Wagner founder Yevgeny Prigozhin has assembled. The Wagner Group is in fact a military, financial and business organization that operates worldwide outside the established rule of law. It is off the grid.
According to the Journal’s reporting, Mr. Prigozhin operates some 70 linked companies that conduct nominally legitimate business in real estate, government contracting, oil, mining and natural-resource development. Mr. Prigozhin’s shell companies share financing for these commercial operations.
An umbrella group called M-Finance mines gold, diamonds and timber in the Central African Republic. Wagner runs a joint venture with a government-owned mining company in Madagascar, an operation, the Journal reported, “with a projected potential profit of billions of dollars in the next decade.” They have mining operations in Sudan and Mali. A company called Evro Polic protects and derives revenue from Bashar al-Assad’s oil and gas fields in Syria.
At the center of it all is Mr. Prigozhin, a thug and one of the most fascinating figures of our time. He has taken the Putin era’s pseudo-democracy based on oligarchic corruption to its logical endpoint, creating a multinational pseudo-corporation in business with willing sovereign governments.
Mr. Prigozhin, a limitless cynic, is sending a message: Grow up. The world is returning to survival of the fittest, and all your rules be damned. I am simply a rational entrepreneur, creating a parallel system without the burden of accountability."
The accountability question is certainly true but one wonders at the growing kingdoms of entities that follow rules that are not just in violation of the law, they are said to supersede them. All sorts of elements--criminal, religious, sociological--are flying banners that purport to be more basic, more real, more accurate a reflection of who we are, and, thus, more legitimate. The Wagner Group is an autocratic group that believes its outrageous power is just. And deserved. Warlords, like cartels, believe they fill a basic social need. So the social revolutionaries in the West--and especially in the U.S.--do not see themselves as violating the rules of American law, they see themselves as tapped into a basic law or groups of laws that the Constitutional framers either did not understand or overlooked. They believe they have a hold of the truth.
And truth trumps law.
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