Last Call For Ukraine In The Membrane, Con't

The Biden administration policy of announcing Russia's false flag efforts ahead of time has got to be really annoying to Putin, as it seems Washington has caught his disinformation squad red-handed once again trying to start a pretext for military invasion.

The United States has acquired intelligence about a Russian plan to fabricate a pretext for an invasion of Ukraine using a faked video that would build on recent disinformation campaigns, according to senior administration officials and others briefed on the material.

The plan — which the United States hopes to spoil by making public — involves staging and filming a fabricated attack by the Ukrainian military either on Russian territory or against Russian-speaking people in eastern Ukraine.

Russia, the officials said, intended to use the video to accuse Ukraine of genocide against Russian-speaking people. It would then use the outrage over the video to justify an attack or have separatist leaders in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine invite a Russian intervention.

Officials would not release any direct evidence of the Russian plan or how they learned of it, saying to do so would compromise their sources and methods. But both a recent Russian disinformation campaign focused on false accusations of genocide and the recent political actions being taken in the Russian parliament to recognize breakaway governments in Ukraine lent credence to the intelligence.

If carried out, the Russian operation would be an expansion of a propaganda theme that American intelligence officials and outside experts have said Moscow has been pushing on social media, conspiracy sites and with state-controlled media since November.

The video was intended to be elaborate, officials said, with plans for graphic images of the staged, corpse-strewn aftermath of an explosion and footage of destroyed locations. They said the video was also set to include faked Ukrainian military equipment, Turkish-made drones and actors playing Russian-speaking mourners.

American officials would not say who in Russia precisely was planning the operation, but a senior administration official said that “Russian intelligence is intimately involved in this effort.”

A British government official said that they had done their own analysis on the intelligence and had high confidence that Russia was planning to engineer a pretext to blame Ukraine for an attack. The details of the intelligence, the official said, are “credible and extremely concerning.”

While it is not clear that senior Russian officials approved the operation, it was far along in the planning and the United States had high confidence that it was under serious consideration, officials said. Russian officials had found corpses to use in the video, discussed actors to play mourners and plotted how to make military equipment in the video appear Ukrainian or NATO-supplied.

While the plan sounded far-fetched, American officials said they believed it could have worked to provide a spark for a Russian military operation — an outcome they said they hoped would be made less likely by exposing the effort publicly.

The highlights of the intelligence have been declassified, in hopes of both derailing the plan and convincing allies of the seriousness of the Russian planning. The officials interviewed for this article requested anonymity to discuss declassified but sensitive intelligence before it was released publicly.

 

It's an exceedingly simple, yet effective plan, but that also means like disarming a tripwire, it can be taken down easily once you're aware of its presence. Contrary to popular belief, the Biden administration doesn't want a shooting war in Ukraine. 

Let's hope it stays that way.

The Night The Lights Went Out In Texas, Again

With a brutal winter storm on the way towards the Lone Star State today, and state leaders having done precisely nothing since last February's lethal power outage debacle, Texas GOP Gov. Greg Abbott is once again advising Texans that they are on their own when it comes to power, heat, water, and light this week.

With freezing weather expected to hit a large portion of Texas this week, Gov. Greg Abbott on Tuesday tried to assure Texans that the state is better prepared this year than last, but said there could be local power outages throughout the state.

“Either ice on power lines ... could cause a power line to go down, or it could be ice on trees that causes a tree to fall on power lines,” Abbott said.

This week’s cold front could be the first significant test of the state’s main power grid since last February’s freeze left millions of Texans without power for days in subfreezing temperatures. Hundreds of people died because of that storm.

“No one can guarantee there won’t be [power outages],” Abbott said Tuesday, just over two months after he promised the lights would stay on this winter.

Abbott and other officials at the press conference warned that the winter storm could cause “treacherous” driving conditions due to snow and ice.

Two hours before Abbott’s Tuesday news conference, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, which manages the state’s main power grid, held a conference call with dozens of entities in the Texas power system and told them that gas suppliers have already begun notifying electricity generation companies that some of their expected gas supply will not arrive this week during the freezing weather, according to people on the call who requested anonymity because they were not allowed to discuss the call publicly.

The Texas natural gas system’s ability to perform in the cold has been in question since last February, when the winter storm caused power outages and equipment failures that choked off much of the fuel supply to many electricity generators when they needed it most to produce electricity.

After last year’s storm, state lawmakers did not require natural gas companies — which fuel a majority of electricity generation in Texas — to prepare their equipment for the extreme cold before this winter. Meanwhile, lawmakers required most power generation companies to be prepared by this winter.

During the year’s first cold snap over New Year’s weekend, natural gas production in the state’s top energy-producing region dropped by about 20% as parts of Texas briefly experienced freezing weather. A couple weeks later as another cold front approached Texas, subsidiaries for a major pipeline company threatened to cut off natural gas supply to the state’s largest power generator over an ongoing financial dispute stemming from the February 2021 winter storm.

When asked about the natural gas supply Tuesday, Abbott said “there might be some reduction in the generation of natural gas. We can still maintain power grid integrity even if there is a loss of some level of production of natural gas.”

Abbott said gas producers have “taken steps to ensure that we’re going to have the natural gas that we need.

An ERCOT spokesperson said the grid operator has “planned and prepared” for a drop in natural gas this week.

The natural gas industry has not made significant upgrades since last winter, Todd Staples, president of the Texas Oil and Gas Association, said in December. But Staples said the industry has been preparing for winter weather for years.

 

Sure, Jan. And tens of thousands are already without power ac the ice storm falls.

 

Texas is a third world, failed state.

Go Ahead And Mark Zucker, Burned

Turns out that not only did CNN's investigation into Chris Cuomo turn up evidence of his sexual misconduct, the same investigation also turned up sexual misconduct on the part of CNN head Jeff Zucker, who has now immediately resigned from the cable news network in disgrace as a result.

Jeff Zucker resigned on Wednesday as the president of CNN and the chairman of WarnerMedia’s news and sports division, writing in a memo that he had failed to disclose to the company a romantic relationship with another senior executive at CNN.

Mr. Zucker, 56, is among the most powerful leaders in the American media and television industries. The abrupt end of his nine-year tenure immediately throws into flux the direction of CNN and its parent company, WarnerMedia, which is expected to be acquired later this year by Discovery Inc. in one of the nation’s largest media mergers.

In a memo to colleagues that was obtained by The New York Times, Mr. Zucker wrote that his relationship came up during a network investigation into the conduct of Chris Cuomo, the CNN anchor who was fired in December over his involvement in the political affairs of his brother, former Governor Andrew M. Cuomo of New York.

“As part of the investigation into Chris Cuomo’s tenure at CNN, I was asked about a consensual relationship with my closest colleague, someone I have worked with for more than 20 years,” Mr. Zucker wrote. “I acknowledged the relationship evolved in recent years. I was required to disclose it when it began but I didn’t. I was wrong.”

“As a result, I am resigning today,” he wrote.

Mr. Zucker was referring to Allison Gollust, CNN’s executive vice president and chief marketing officer and one of the highest-ranking leaders of the network, who is closely involved in major business and communications decisions.

Ms. Gollust said in a statement on Wednesday that she was remaining in her role at CNN.

“Jeff and I have been close friends and professional partners for over 20 years,” she wrote. “Recently, our relationship changed during Covid. I regret that we didn’t disclose it at the right time. I’m incredibly proud of my time at CNN and look forward to continuing the great work we do everyday.”

Both Mr. Zucker and Ms. Gollust are divorced.

In a memo to WarnerMedia employees, Jason Kilar, the company’s chief executive, acknowledged that he had accepted Mr. Zucker’s resignation, adding, “We will be announcing an interim leadership plan shortly.”

 

The fact that it took two months after Cuomo's ouster for the hammer to fall on Zucker, well.

 

Make of that what you will.