#Moldavia)

[batboyblog]

Things Biden and the Democrats did, this week #20

May 24-31 2024

The EPA awards $900 million to school districts across the country to replace diesel fueled school buses with cleaner alternatives. The money will go to 530 school districts across nearly every state, DC, tribal community, and US territory. The funds will help replace 3,400 buses with cleaner alternatives, 92% of the new buses will be 100% green electric. This adds to the $3 billion the Biden administration has already spent to replace 8,500 school buses across 1,000 school districts in the last 2 years.

For the first time the federal government released guidelines for Voluntary Carbon Markets. Voluntary Carbon Markets are a system by which companies off set their carbon emissions by funding project to fight climate change like investing in wind or solar power. Critics have changed that companies are using them just for PR and their funding often goes to projects that would happen any ways thus not offsetting emissions. The new guidelines seek to insure integrity in the Carbon Markets and make sure they make a meaningful impact. It also pushes companies to address emissions first and use offsets only as a last resort.

The IRS announced it'll take its direct file program nationwide in 2025. In 2024 140,000 tax payers in 12 states used the direct file pilot program and the IRS now plans to bring it to all Americans next tax season. Right now the program is only for simple W-2 returns with no side income but the IRS has plans to expand it to more complex filings in the future. This is one of the many projects at the IRS being funded through President Biden's Inflation Reduction Act.

The White House announced steps to boost nuclear energy in America. Nuclear power in the single largest green energy source in the country accounting for 19% of America's total energy. Boosting Nuclear energy is a key part of the Biden administration's strategy to reach a carbon free electricity sector by 2035. The administration has invested in bring the Palisades nuclear plant in Michigan back on-line, and extending the life of Diablo Canyon in California. In addition the Military will be deploying new small modular nuclear reactors and microreactors to power its installations. The Administration is setting up a task force to help combat the delays and cost overruns that have often derailed new nuclear projects and the Administration is supporting two Gen III+ SMR demonstration projects to highlight the safety and efficiency of the next generation of nuclear power.

The Department of Agriculture announced $824 million in new funding to protect livestock health and combat H5N1. The funding will go toward early detection, vaccine research, and supporting farmers impacted. The USDA is also launching a nation wide Dairy Herd Status Pilot Program, hopefully this program will give us a live look at the health of America's dairy herd and help with early detection. The Biden Administration has reacted quickly and proactively to the early cases of H5N1 to make sure it doesn't spread to the human population and become another pandemic situation.

The White House announced a partnership with 21 states to help supercharge America's aging energy grid. Years of little to no investment in America's Infrastructure has left our energy grid lagging behind the 21st century tech. This partnership aims to squeeze all the energy we can out of our current system while we rush to update and modernize. Last month the administration announced a plan to lay 100,000 miles of new transmission lines over the next five years. The 21 states all with Democratic governors are Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Washington, and Wisconsin.

The Department of Transportation announced $343 million to update 8 of America's oldest and busiest transportation stations for disability accessibility. These include the MBTA's the Green Line's light-rail B and C branches in Boston,  Cleveland's Blue Line, New Orleans'  St. Charles Streetcar route, and projects in San Francisco and New York City and other locations

The Department of interior announced two projects for water in Western states. $179 million for drought resilience projects in California and Utah and $242 million for expanding water access in California, Colorado and Washington. The projects should help support drinking water for 6.4 million people every year.

HUD announced $150 million for affordable housing for tribal communities. This adds to the over $1 billion dollars for tribal housing announced earlier in the month. Neil Whitegull of the Ho-Chunk Nation said at the announcement "I know a lot of times as Native Americans we've been here and we've seen people that have said, ‘Oh yeah, we'd like to help Indians.’ And they take a picture and they go away. We never see it, But there's been a commitment here, with the increase in funding, grants, and this administration that is bringing their folks out. And there's a real commitment, I think, to Native American tribes that we've never seen before."

Secretary of State Antony Blinken pledged $135 million to help Moldavia. Since the outbreak of Russia's war against neighboring Ukraine the US has given $774 million in aid to tiny Moldavia. Moldavia has long been dependent on Russian energy but thanks to US investment in the countries energy security Moldavia is breaking away from Russia and moving forward with EU membership.

The US and Guatemala launched the "Youth With Purpose” initiative. The initiative will be run through the Central America Service Corps, launched in 2022 by Vice President Harris the CASC is part of the Biden Administration's efforts to improve life in Central America. The Youth With Purpose program will train 25,000 young Guatemalans and connect with with service projects throughout the country.

Bonus: Today, May 31st 2024, is the last day of the Affordable Connectivity Program. The program helped 23 million Americans connect to the internet while saving them $30 to $75 dollars every month. Despite repeated calls from President Biden Republicans in Congress have refused to act to renew the program. The White House has worked with private companies to get them to agree to extend the savings to the end of 2024. The Biden Administration has invested $90 Billion high-speed internet investments. Such as $42.45 billion for Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment, $1 billion for the The Middle Mile program laying 12,000 miles of regional fiber networks, and distributed nearly 30,000 connected devices to students and communities, including more than 3,600 through the Tribal Broadband Connectivity Program

[mapsofnonexistentplaces]

western moldavia romanian miku

[mioritic]

Burial shroud of Maria of Mangop, Princess consort of Moldavia (died 1477)

From Putna Monastery, Suceava County, Romania

[emvisual]

Monasterio de Moldavia. Arte bizantino de los siglos XV y XVI

[nameinconcept-blog]

Photos of Soviet Moldavia from the Soviet Ukrainian photo book "Song of Our Native Land" a book dedicated to the 60-year anniversary of the USSR. 1982

"Kishinev, the capital city of the Moldavian SSR"

"The grape - pride of Moldavia"

"A workshop at the Tiraspol Cotton Combine"

"On the Dnestr"

"Before a wedding"

[bobemajses]

Jewish life in Dorohoi, Romania, 1980s

Located on important trade routes between Poland, Bukovina, and Moldavia, Dorohoi attracted Jews as early as the 15th century. In the 18th and 19th century, Jewish numbers sharply increased, reaching more than half of the population. They were shopkeepers, tailors and sold oils, spirits, grains and cattle. On 1 July 1940, after Bessarabia and Bukovina were occupied by the Soviets, a unit of the Romanian army arrived in Dorohoi and perpetrated a brutal pogrom. It was followed by the deportation of thousands of Jews to Transnistria, with many of them dying on the way. Thanks to the intervention of Jewish leaders in Bucharest and as a result of the changing fortunes of war, the deportees still alive were allowed to return in December 1943, and, despite all the obstacles, the community quickly restablished itself.

[luciluck2046]

NOTE THE FACT THAT TRANSYLVANIA ACTUALLY HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH DRACULA, I'M TALKING ABT TRANSYLVANIAN MIKU BCZ THE TRADITIONAL CLOTHING FROM TRANSYLVANIA IS DIFFERENT FROM THE ONE FROM MOLDAVIA. (I'll lore drop abt the Dracula and Transylvania having nothing to do with each other in other post)

[smbhax]

Ghostbusters II (NES)

[mask131]

It is very amusing - and yet quite terrifying - to see how still to this day there are blogs on Tumblr that support the belief that "All these things the West claims Putin did outside of Russia? He didn't do anything because there's no proof so people are just making it up, Putin's my poor innocent little baby :3 owo". I just saw a post like that two days ago. [It would be interesting to see what those people think the "West" means, because this range from "It is just the USA" to "It is just Western Europe" - anyway]

So, today is my obligatory post about the fuck-ups of Putin's Russia within other countries. And while I always wanted to make a post about the various misinformation campaigns and manipulations of Wagner in various countries of Africa (including the creation of a false mass-grave in Mali that Wagner wanted to use to accuse the French military in place in the area of war crimes - hopefully this plan was foiled because a drone ended up filming them as they were preparing the mass-grave), today I will rather focus on a more recent and more worrying case. And much more "hot-topic" because it involves... The Hamas-Israel conflict, and the mass wave of antisemitism in Europe that recently rose!

Let us go back in time briefly. 7 of october 2023, terrorists of the Hamas organize a surprise attack on Israel. On the 8th of October, Israel starts throwing bombs at Palestine in retaliation - and this is the beginning of the Hamas-Israel war. A war that completely, vividly and violently split the opinion in both Europe and North America, due to how muddled and complex and devastating this conflict is. And a war that had one notable very dark side-effect in Europe (but also in North America) - it woke up a dormant wave of antisemitism. Due to Israel position when it comes to the history of Palestine, and due to how excessive Israel's attacks towards Palestine in retaliation for the Hamas' actions were - notably leading to a grave humanitarian and sanitary crisis in Gaza, that a lot of people chose to define as a "genocide" - a "pro-Palestine" wave arose in Western Europe that was against "Zionism" (understand, support and affiliation with Israel). Problem is - for decades now a lot of antisemitic people had been using "anti-zionism" as a thinley veiled excuse for what was pure antisemitism, due to how Israel is THE Jewish nation. AND for years now, especially in France, antisemitic actions have been on the rise (in France we had the graves of great Jewish personalities covered in antisemitic tags, and various synagogues degraded). As such, alongside movements supporting Palestine and denouncing Israel, numerous antisemitic actions and attacks started happening in various European countries.

In this context, end of October, in the Ile-de-France region, in the Parisian area, over several habitation buildings, more than 250 Stars of David had been painted in blue, overnight. On the morning of the 31st of October, they were on display for everyone to see.

This of course only fueled further the panic and the socio-political debate. The blue color of the stars clearly indicated a tie to Israel. But the fact was that these buildings were habited... by Jewish people. These stars were used to "mark" these buildings - with the clear message "Jews live here". And due to the blue color, it seemed to be part of the whole antisemitic distortion of the pro-Palestinian message: "There are Jews here - There are people of Israel here".

This made all the news, and one interview in particular was in loop over the various info channels of France. Several of the inhabitants of this building were elderly people. Old enough sometimes to have known World War II. And one of the old ladies that lived in these buildings broke down in tears when interviewed because as she explained: "This is all like when I was a child. It is happening all over again."

Because, it should be known - and if you don't know, you will now - that France wasn't just invaded and occupied by the Nazi forces during World War II. The Vichy government of France actively collaborated with the Nazi government to "save" a bit of French independance and "prevent" some casualties - and this formed the darkest part of France's history, La Collaboration. France was divided in two - and while the South was the "free" zone... the North, including the Ile-de-France, was the "occupied" zone where Nazis and collaborators were in control. And Paris saw some of the worst things... Like the infamous "Rafle du Vel' d'Hiv", when the French government, by order of the Nazi government, arrested and gathered in a velodrome more than 13 000 Jews before sending them to the death camps.

As such, to have buildings in the area marked by David stars (the symbol used during World War II to mark Jews on their clothes, shops and houses) as a "visual denunciation" in the context of an antisemitic wave tied to foreign governments' decisions... You can understand how traumatizing this can be - or rather how this wakes up the old trauma and the old shames of France.

But here is where things get INTERESTING.

The police of course searched thoroughly the ones responsible for all these tags - and they ended up finding them... It was a couple. A man, 29 years old, and a woman, 33 years old. They were actually caught while they were painting more of those, in the 10th arrondissement de Paris. But... they were not of French nationality. They were from Moldavia. And this was intriguing. Everybody believed this had been done by antisemitic French people... But no.

And what was the Moldavians' justification for what they did? Support for Palestine? Antisemitism? No. They were "paid" to do so. They just did a job. Curious isn't it? The police found, by digging in the couple's phones, who exactly had paid them and given them the instructions for this operation... And it turned out to be another Moldavian man, but not anybody.

Anatoli Prizenko. A Moldavian businessman known for his strong pro-Russia views and for his open support of Putin. Of course, Prizenko was asked about this whole affair - he was notably interviewed by French media. And what was his answer? When asked why he paid a couple to go paint more than 250 Stars of David in the Parisian region, what did he answer? The funniest and most pathetic excuse you can find. "This was a gesture of support. This was a gesture of support towards the Jews of Europe. It was meant to be positive". I put pictures of the painted tags in this post: I will let you judge if it seems like a support for the Jewish people of Europe, or if it rather looks like the kind of tags left on buildings during World War II.

Okay, so a pro-Russia Moldavian businessman did this in hope to exploit the current tense and hostile climax in France, in light of the disastrous events in Palestine. But beyond his support of Putin, nothing actually clearly ties this operation to Russia, right?

Let us go deeper down the rabbit hole... By November, French authorities revealed that yet another campaign of mass information led by Russian entities was plaguing the French Internet. I say "yet again", because it wasn't Russia's first attempt. Already the French authorities had to denounce and warn the population about an enormous amount of fake websites created by Russians. These fake webpages were almost perfect copies of the ACTUAL websites of the various newspapers and information channels of France, and all covered the war on Ukraine... With the difference that these fake websites twisted the words, faked the numbers or outright invented elements that made it seem like Europe's support of Ukraine was a bad thing, causing all sorts of troubles and dysfunctionments, or that made it look like Ukraine was wasting all the resources it was given. A pure misinformation-operation in hope of making people lose faith in the support of Ukraine, or even making people hate Ukraine for "stealing all our money and weapons".

And they did it again... With this case. Another important Internet operation by Russian - from fake web pages to fake web accounts, this new operation was about mass-sharing and mass-spreading the news of the Stars of David... And insisting upon all sorts of fake rumors that were later debunked, and highlighting the antisemitism in France. (As I said, they didn't really need to do that since there is already an antisemitism on the rise that was well-noted and is already worrying everyone, so Russia didn't invent that... But their point was to overblow this specific incident in order to create a true mass psychosis). France denounced this Internet operation - and Moscow only answered by saying France was "stupid" for suspecting them in such a way...

And does it stop here? NO MY DEAR! Because these last days there's been a new development! Now it is not fully confirmed/revealed, because the investigation is still underway. But after all these months of research, there are pretty solid and conclusive elements to determine who was behind this Internet campaign of misinformation and rumor-spreading... All the clues point towards the "fifth department" (foreign business department) of the FSB, the Federal Security Service of Russia.

So yes... We are back to the Cold War...

And you want to know the worse thing? European countries have started collaborating on this business, because as it turns out, there were a lot of pro-Russian and anti-Otan manifestations or "waves" in several European countries recently (Spain and Germany for example)... that when investigated tie back to the FSB in one way or another. The oldest identified FSB operation of the sort is - at least from what I heard - from the spring of 2023, in Poland. There was a series of misinformation, sabotages and spying actions with strong anti-OTAN slogans used - and at first it seemed that this was a manifestation of the will and desires of Polish people themselves, as it was presented as "the folks of Poland are speaking"... But a bit of investigation revealed the core of this movement were... again, Moldavians, not Polish people. And further digging proved that these Moldavians had ties to the FSB, who very likely ordered them to do all this...

[mapsontheweb]

Romanian majority (and plurality) regions in Moldavia and Transnistria, 1920 - 2014.

by priscus.of.panion

[happypuppypuppy]

🇦🇿 Ziya Babashov defeated 🇦🇩 Vitaly Yeriomenko at the European Wrestling Championship 2024 (credits to wrestleaze)

[themsleeves]

This Tai otoshi setup from Denis Vieru is so attractive...

Can't stop trying to get such "on the fly" grip and gake...

[estbela]

Moldavia(not Moldova) -> I posted about them a few times some time ago. By the way, they use all pronouns. Been thinking about a human name for her. Pretty sure her middle name would be something like Ștefana though, which leds to some ppl(especially Romania) calling them "Fane" which is sort of a diminutive of it.

(I forgot to give her a cross, but she'd def wear a cross)

[mioritic]

A friend’s father chats with a nun at Probota Monastery

Probota (Dolhasca), Suceava County, Romania

11 April 2023

Fujifilm X100V

[afoolishchoice]

Excuse me??

Who let Adriel participate?

[bobemajses]

Tombstone from the Jewish cemetery in Botoşani, Romania (Moldavia region). Many Jewish soldiers from the Romanian army as well as victims of the peasant uprising of 1907 are buried here.