https://www.rt.com/russia/603929-ukraine-concentration-camps-kursk/
> Ukrainian troops in Russia’s Kursk Region have rounded up local civilians and placed them in “something like concentration camps,” RIA Novosti reported on Thursday, citing a Russian Foreign Ministry report. > > When Ukrainian forces launched an incursion into Kursk Region last month, thousands of civilians were evacuated or themselves fled deeper into the Russian heartland. Some however, including elderly people and those with disabilities, were unable to leave, and their settlements fell under Ukrainian control. > > According to a new report seen by RIA Novosti, those left behind were subjected to detention methods synonymous with World War II. > > “In a number of territories controlled by militants, something like ‘concentration camps’ were created, which civilians who did not want or were unable to leave the territory captured by the enemy were forcibly driven into,” the report said, according to RIA Novosti. These claims were based on eyewitness accounts collected by the Russian Red Cross in Kursk. > > Of those detained, between 70 and 100 were taken to a school in Sudzha, where some of the fiercest fighting took place. Once there, they were subjected to psychological abuse and presented to foreign journalists, RIA Novosti claimed.
*****
https://www.rt.com/news/603943-taiwan-beijing-navy-seal/
> The US Navy’s elite special operations unit, SEAL Team Six, has been training to “help Taiwan” in case of a “Chinese invasion,” according to the Financial Times. The unit is most famous for the 2011 mission that killed Al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden in Pakistan. > > SEAL Team Six “has been planning and training for a Taiwan conflict for more than a year at Dam Neck, its headquarters at Virginia Beach about 250km south-east of Washington,” FT reported on Thursday, citing anonymous sources familiar with the matter. > > So far, the only hints of US plans for a potential conflict around Taiwan have come from Admiral Samuel Paparo, the head of the Indo-Pacific Command, in an interview in June. > > “I want to turn the Taiwan Strait into an unmanned hellscape using a number of classified capabilities so I can make their lives utterly miserable for a month, which buys me the time for the rest of everything,” Paparo told the Washington Post.
***** https://www.rt.com/business/603925-china-western-investment-drop/
> Western firms pulling back from China
> Declining economic growth and the rise of other manufacturing centers in Asia are slowing investment, lobby groups claim
> China is gradually losing its appeal as an investment destination for Western companies, according to reports released this week by the EU Chamber of Commerce in China and the American Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai. > > The two lobby groups conducted surveys among investors and owners of businesses in China. According to their findings, many respondents have been consolidating their operations in the country and no longer see the Chinese market as a primary investment destination. > > An annual poll by the American Chamber of Commerce shows that the number of businesses considering China as their top investment destination has dropped to 47%, the lowest in 25 years. A survey by the EU chamber shows that only 15% of respondents named China as their top investment destination, while previously the figure stood at 20%. > > “Some European Chamber members have begun both siloing their China supply chains and operations, and shifting investments previously planned for China to other markets to increase supply chain resilience, take advantage of comparatively lower labor costs and hedge against future geopolitical shocks,” the EU lobby group stated in its report. > > Experts from both lobbies suggest that one of the main drivers behind the trend is the slump in China’s economic growth. According to official figures, China’s growth slowed to the worst pace in five quarters in April-June this year, at 4.7%. Other factors are intensifying competition from local companies and the appearance of alternative manufacturing centers in Asia. > > For instance, around 20% of the businesses surveyed by the US business lobby said they would be slashing investment in China this year, while 40% stated they would be redirecting it to countries such as India and Vietnam. > > Many of those surveyed said China’s trade tensions with the US were also affecting investor confidence. Washington has been tightening economic restrictions and hiking tariffs on Chinese goods since 2018, when then-President Donald Trump launched a trade war with Beijing. Trump’s successor, Joe Biden, has taken a similarly hostile approach, despite Beijing’s repeated warnings that these measures violate the principles of fair trade. Around 70% of respondents in the survey by the American chamber called US measures targeting China the greatest challenge to the country’s economic growth.
> The US government has confiscated an airplane reportedly used by Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, claiming it violates Washington’s sanctions against Caracas, CNN reported on Monday. > > The US has charged Maduro with drug trafficking and refused to recognize his victory in the last two Venezuelan presidential elections. > > “Seizing the foreign head of state’s plane is unheard-of for criminal matters. We’re sending a clear message here that no one is above the law, no one is above the reach of US sanctions,” an unnamed Washington official told CNN, which first reported the story on Monday. > > According to CNN, the plane is worth around $13 million and was seized in cooperation with Dominican authorities.
> By Tarik Cyril Amar, a historian from Germany working at Koç University, Istanbul, on Russia, Ukraine, and Eastern Europe, the history of World War II, the cultural Cold War, and the politics of memory
> On 6 August, a court in Berlin sentenced a young woman called Ava Moayeri to a fine of €600 for shouting “From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be free.” One of Moayeri’s lawyers, Alexander Gorski, deplored this as “a rather dark day for freedom of expression in Germany.” > > He’s right, even if his comment is an all too understated response to a scandalous miscarriage of justice. Indeed, it is hard to answer the question of what is wrong with this sentence, because, quite literally, everything is. Judge Birgit Balzer’s reasoning, for one thing, was embarrassingly shoddy, irresponsibly misinformed, and ethically and legally misguided, about which more below. > > Beyond Balzer’s failure to do justice to the important issue she had to adjudicate, the case and sentence also represent a larger problem, in Germany and beyond: the West’s perverse pampering of Israel. One form taken by this pampering is to allow the Israeli regime to abuse the memory of the Holocaust, a genocide targeting Jews, to claim impunity for its own crimes against humanity, including genocide targeting Palestinians. > > Balzer, too, explicitly invoked the Holocaust to justify her sentence. Yet Moayeri, the daughter of Communists from Iran, made clear that she has nothing to do with either glorifying violence or antisemitism. On the contrary, her concern is with showing solidarity to the Palestinian victims of Israeli violence and standing up for their rights. Balzer felt entitled to disregard this perfectly plausible position, attribute entirely unproven motives to Moayeri, and, on that fundamentally flawed basis, punish her. In effect, it is clear that Moayeri’s right to peaceful protest and a perfectly legitimate political position was suppressed to protect Israeli narratives from any challenge. And these narratives, in turn, are used to shield Israel from accountability for its crimes, and thus they also withhold help from Israel’s victims.
The whole article is worth reading and perhaps bookmarking as the author takes apart the legal case against this activist for Palestine showing how it doesn't even fit the standards of German law.
A Malian security official says Bamako and Niger have asked the UN Security Council to probe Ukraine’s alleged role in a July terror attack
Suggesting a US intelligence connection and that Ukraine didn't have capabilities on its own to orchestrate this without direct US assistance.
> A Malian official has reportedly questioned Kiev’s ability to act alone in providing intelligence to armed groups
> Mali and Niger have asked the UN Security Council to investigate claims that Ukraine provided intelligence to Tuareg rebels, who killed Malian soldiers and Russian Wagner Group contractors in a recent ambush, according to RIA Novosti. > > Fousseinou Ouattara, deputy chairman of Bamako’s parliamentary committee on security and defense, announced the move in an interview, the Russian news agency reported on Wednesday. > > “It must have been [intelligence] that was mainly transmitted through the Americans, because they are capable of obtaining such information,” Ouattara said, casting doubt on Ukraine’s ability to independently assist armed groups in Africa.
(Rest of the story at the link)
The former Marine and weapons inspector said the US government was trying to intimidate him
> The RT contributor is reportedly being investigated as a “foreign agent”
> Federal agents and state police have searched the house of former US Marine and UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter in New York state on Wednesday. > > State Police and FBI agents descended on the street of Bethlehem township, south of Albany, around noon, according to the local outlet Times-Union. They carried “more than two dozen boxes” out of the house just before 5pm local time. > > The law enforcement executed a search warrant “related to concerns apparently the US government has about violations of the Foreign Agent Restriction Act (FARA)” Ritter told reporters gathered outside the house after the agents left. > > He denied any allegations of wrongdoing and said the federal government was trying to intimidate him.
> Ritter is a former US Marine Corps major who served as a UN weapons inspector in Iraq during the 1990s. He opposed the 2003 US invasion, insisting that Saddam Hussein’s government did not have weapons of mass destruction, as Washington claimed at the time. > > He has also been an RT contributor and saw his passport seized by the US government when he tried to attend the St Petersburg International Economic Forum in June.
> Niger says the move is in solidarity with Mali, which has accused Kiev of backing rebels involved in deadly attacks
> Niger has severed diplomatic relations with Ukraine in response to Kiev’s alleged support for militants who killed dozens of Malian soldiers and Russian Wagner Group contractors in an attack last month. > > The West African state’s decision on Tuesday came just two days after Mali took the same step, accusing Kiev of supporting international terrorism. Ukrainian officials had earlier indicated that Kiev had assisted Tuareg rebels who staged an attack in the village of Tinzaouaten. > > In an interview following the incident, Ukraine’s spy agency spokesman, Andrey Yusov, indicated on national TV that the insurgents had received intelligence to conduct a “successful military operation against Russian war criminals.” He warned that “there will be more to come.” Ukraine’s embassy in Senegal posted the video – now deleted – on its Facebook page along with a comment from Ambassador Yury Pivovarov, who said “there will certainly be other results.” > > Niamey’s military government spokesman, Amadou Abdramane, called the remarks “indecent” and “unacceptable” in an address on state TV late on Tuesday, claiming that they characterize “acts of aggression.” > > “Niger, in total solidarity with the government and people of Mali, has decided in all sovereignty [...] to sever diplomatic relations between the Republic of Niger and Ukraine with immediate effect,” Abdramane said.
> Since 2012, Mali has been embroiled in a jihadist insurgency that has claimed thousands of lives. A decade-long French military mission failed to quell the violence, which has spilled over to neighboring Burkina Faso and Niger. All three former French colonies, led by their militaries, have severed defense ties with Paris and formed the Alliance of Sahel States to combat terrorism. > > Russia, which Bamako, Niamey, and Ouagadougou regard as a strategic security ally, has agreed to assist the troubled Sahel states in combating long-standing terrorist threats.
More coverage: "Ukraine spreading ‘terrorism’ around the world – Moscow" https://www.rt.com/russia/602260-ukrainian-terrorism-zakharova-kursk/ (archive link)
> Kiev is doing the bidding of the deep states of Western nations, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has claimed
> “Things will get worse in terms of Ukrainian terrorism spreading across the planet. It’s not a joke,” Zakharova warned. > > People in power in Kiev have turned their country into a “terrorist gang” doing the dirty work for Western nations and their “deep state structures,” the diplomat claimed. She also asked what it would take to convince the American people that by bankrolling Ukraine, their government was sponsoring terrorism.
> Ukraine has denied playing a role in a recent terrorist attack in Mali that killed soldiers and Russian Wagner Group contractors, condemning the West African nation’s decision to cut diplomatic ties with Kiev as shortsighted. > > Mali’s transitional government announced on Sunday that it was “immediately” breaking off diplomatic relations with Ukraine in response to comments by Kiev officials in support of Tuareg militants who carried out the deadly assault last month. > > Tuareg fighters ambushed a military convoy carrying Malian defense forces and Wagner contractors in the village of Tinzaouaten near the Algerian border in late July, killing scores of servicemen and destroying multiple trucks. Andrey Yusov, a spokesman for Ukraine’s military intelligence service (GUR), stated on Ukrainian TV that his agents had provided “necessary information” to the rebels, allowing them to conduct a “successful military operation.” > > He vowed that there would be “more to come.” Ukraine’s embassy in Senegal posted the interview on its Facebook page, along with a comment from Ambassador Yury Pivovarov, who said: “There will certainly be other results.” The video has since been deleted. > > Bamako expressed “deep shock” at the officials’ “subversive” remarks, declaring that they demonstrate Ukraine’s “support for terrorism in Africa, in the Sahel, and more specifically in Mali.” > > “Mali fully endorses the diagnosis made by the Russian Federation, which for years has been warning the world of the neo-Nazi and villainous character of the Ukrainian authorities, now allies of international terrorism and shows no willingness to implement the Ukrainian people’s aspirations for peace and stability,” the Malian Foreign Ministry said in a statement.
> Bamako announced a series of measures, including legal proceedings, in response to Yusov and Pivovarov’s comments, claiming they “constitute acts of terrorism and advocacy of terrorism.” The landlocked state also urged other African countries and the international community to denounce Ukraine’s actions, which “threaten the stability” of the continent. > > “Ukraine unconditionally adheres to the norms of international law, the inviolability of the sovereignty and territorial integrity of other countries,” the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry said. > > Mali has been embroiled in a jihadist insurgency since 2012, which, according to the UN, has killed thousands and displaced over 375,000 people. A French military operation failed to end the violence, which has spread to neighboring Burkina Faso and Niger. Earlier this year, the three former French colonies formed the Alliance of Sahel States to combat terrorism. They have also sought increased security cooperation with Russia.
Biden just endorsed Kamala according to news coming across the wire.
Still remember to remind Democrats that you can't vote for her or anyone else because the primary and thus the people in our totally healthy, totally democracy CHOSE Joe Biden and that he was undemocratically forced out by unelected media, donors, and insider. As such you're either withholding your vote in protest of slap to the face of Democratic voters who CHOSE Joe fair and square or writing in Joe.
After all people don't vote for a ticket for its vice president who is a place-holder at most, often a compromise with the visions of the candidate. They vote for the candidate, so it's not at all fair to say votes for Joe were votes for Kamala or transferable to her. Just repeat this at liberals and watch them malfunction and lose it as they cope with their impending loss.
A leading name in cybersecurity, Crowdstrike was deeply involved in the ‘Russiagate’ hoax
> Before a faulty software update dragged the company’s name into global headlines on Friday, Crowdstrike had a long history of involvement with US intelligence agencies, and played a key role in the ‘Russiagate’ hoax. > > Crowdstrike released a defective update to its cloud-based security software on Friday that left an array of users around the world – including banks, airlines, media outlets, and government agencies – unable to use their IT systems. > > The company issued a fix within several hours of the problem being identified, but thousands of flights remained canceled or delayed into Friday afternoon, while hospitals, police departments, and businesses continued to report issues getting back online.
> [...]
>Less than a year after Crowdstrike was founded, Kurtz and Alperovitch brought on board former FBI Executive Assistant Director Shawn Henry to head up its cybersecurity consultation wing. By 2014, Henry’s department was issuing a flurry of hacking and espionage accusations against China, Russia, and North Korea, with information provided by Crowdstrike helping the US Justice Department issue indictments that summer against five Chinese military officers who allegedly hacked US energy corporations.
> [...]
> Crowdstrike was hired by the US Democratic National Committee to investigate the theft of data from its servers in 2016. Published by WikiLeaks, the data revealed that the DNC had rigged the Democratic primary against Bernie Sanders, and that Hillary Clinton had effectively paid to control the committee. > > Crowdstrike concluded that Russia was behind the breach, with Henry testifying to Congress that the company “saw activity that we believed was consistent with activity we’d seen previously and had associated with the Russian government.”
The International Criminal Court has reportedly allowed the UK and other countries to submit arguments against the jurisdiction
> Judges at the International Criminal Court (ICC) have postponed a decision on whether arrest warrants should be issued against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant over alleged war crimes in Gaza. > > The delay came after the ICC allowed the UK to submit legal arguments against the jurisdiction over the issue. > > According to court documents made public on Thursday, the UK filed a request with the ICC on June 10 to provide written observations on whether “the court can exercise jurisdiction over Israeli nationals, in circumstances where Palestine cannot exercise criminal jurisdiction over Israeli nationals (under) the Oslo Accords.”
> [...]
> The UK’s argument is that the Palestinian authorities cannot have jurisdiction over Israeli nationals under the terms of the Oslo Accords, and so it cannot transfer that jurisdiction over to the ICC to prosecute Israelis. > > “The United Kingdom submits that the Chamber, pursuant to Article 19(1) of the Rome Statute, ‘is required to make an initial determination of jurisdiction in resolving the application for arrest warrants’ of which ‘[t]he Oslo Accords issue necessarily forms part,’” the ICC said on Thursday. > > The judges added that the court would also accept submissions from other interested parties on the legal issue until July 12. > > According to media reports, granting the UK’s request could delay for months the decision on arrest warrants for Israeli officials, which ICC prosecutor Karim Khan requested in May.
Kaspersky should just ignore it.
They should 1) Continue to provide updates, 2) do their utmost to prevent blocking of updates, provide updates through tor or some other service that makes it very, very hard to block for the US. 3) Do what US VPN providers did when they couldn't do business in Russia anymore which is give all existing customers free usage of the product until such time the market is available again.
Further they should start openly attributing to the US spyware they uncover instead of doing their usual diplomatic analysis of "looks similar to many western government associated actors".
What annoys the shit out of me about this conversation that's going to be had is if they had fears about them taking data and files well they could pass a law that applies to all AV companies and applies strict privacy policies to them but they'd never do that because all western backed AV and info-sec companies are infested up to the gills if not literally founded by funded by national security state ghouls (former of course they'd claim but no such creature).
Sadly Kaspersky are kind of like many Russians, too diplomatic, eager to bend the knee. They should absolutely do what western companies into the anti-Russian propaganda did but in reverse, claim it's their duty to continue protecting their customers especially in repressive western states.
They will absolutely sue of course. They regularly sue copyright trolls and all kinds of others but as I understand it this kind of listing is basically entirely at the pleasure of the US government and they can just sit in court and keep repeating nothing but the words "national security, sources classified, trust us" and win the case because commerce dept I believe has authority to sanction whoever they please.
rutracker has a lot of good album rips and some artist discography torrents. It's actually only semi-private. Anyone can register for an account and you need one to use the API to search though you can use yandex with site:rutracker[dot]org set and search for what you want that way without one.
You could always interview for RED as well. You need to do prep and there's a site for that, educate yourself extensively but it's not at all impossible to get into if you want.
That's just music though. While rutracker has some games they don't focus on retro games, you'd need a more specialized site I think for that. Same with comics/manga.
Here are some links, sorry that they're from reddit:
https://old.reddit.com/r/trackers/wiki/getting_into_private_trackers https://old.reddit.com/r/trackers/comments/6c5dn6/rtrackers_faq_v3/
And of course see the megathread which might help you find what you need in public spaces: https://rentry.co/megathread
They're less safe than small planes as I understand it. There are ways to sabotage them so they come apart in flight in ways that are almost impossible to detect upon a normal pre-flight inspection. Not to mention mechanical failures as they're more complex in principle of operation than planes. And yes their small size makes them prime choices for assassinations when you don't want the heat or issues of bringing down a passenger airliner.
Brace Belden of Trueanon is among others someone who has joked about this and even put it in his trueanon rules.
There are just so many ways the zionists could have done it. In a literal fog no less, they could flown a low-flying in waiting drone right up into it and caused catastrophic mechanical failure without even using explosives, they could have sabotaged it at some point, they could have done something to disorient the pilot. Maybe it genuinely was a fuck-up of the Iranians, the pilot made a mistake, they for some unfathomable reason didn't maintain the helicopter properly, etc but it's just so suspicious when unhinged zionists are around and the fact if they thought there was even a chance they could get away with it with plausible deniability they'd do so.
Flying in a helicopter in general is a bad idea and liable to lead to death when you’re not in the good graces of the west (or even factions in your own country). Doing so while an unhinged Zionist regime is trying to start a war with you to deflect from its genocide and draw the US in to cover for it is doubly so.
This smells like Mossad. For once the US wouldn’t want this but the Zionists have nothing to lose and have already shown they don’t care. They regularly operate in Iran conducting assassinations of nuclear scientists and bombing funerals.
The man who attacked Slovakian PM Robert Fico was a critic of the latter’s decision to stop sending arms to Ukraine, Matuss Sutaj Estok says
> Matuss Sutaj Estok called the suspect a “lone wolf” discontent with Bratislava’s policies
> The man who critically injured Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico on Wednesday was a fierce critic of the latter’s decision to stop arms shipments to Ukraine, Interior Minister Matuss Sutaj Estok has said.
> Fico was shot at point-blank range several times on Wednesday as he greeted supporters in the small town of Handlova. The assailant was immediately arrested and the prime minister was rushed to a hospital in serious condition. Local authorities said earlier that there was a “clear political motivation” behind the attack.
> Media reports identified the attacker as Juraj Cintula, 71, said to be the founder of the Slovak Association of Writers and a supporter of the opposition Progressive Slovakia party.
> According to the minister, the suspect closely followed domestic and international events, and protested against several government policies, including the closure of the Special Prosecutor’s Office, and the suspension of military aid to Ukraine. Fico, a critic of the Western stance on the Ukraine conflict, campaigned on a promise to cut arms deliveries to Kiev, which he proceeded to do after taking over as prime minister after the election last autumn’
> “He stated these reasons why he disagrees with the government policy and why he decided to assassinate the Prime Minister,” Sutaj Estok said, describing the attacker as “the so-called lonely wolf” not linked to any groups.
(There is a video at the link of a press conference with the relevant authorities)
Well there's India and they hate China and would love to help hurt it and have a large population of people living in deep poverty. Of course they probably wouldn't allow the west to exploit them forever, they'd seek to move up the value chain if the west doesn't manage to coup them with compradors but it would at the least buy the west a quarter century of thinking time. There are problems there of course, it's run by extreme religious reactionaries, it doesn't have the proper infrastructure in many places, etc. But I don't ever want to be in a position of underestimating our enemies I suppose. As on the one hand I think it would probably take 10 years for India to get into position to take over a lot of this stuff, on the other it's impossible to tell what they might pull off and my assumptions could be very wrong or outdated.
There's also how they're destroying Europe (and the US too), if you lower the quality of life of an area, hit it with neo-liberal shock therapy, gut social services, hit it with harsh inflation that decreases costs of labor and lowers quality of life and puts pressure on people to keep or get jobs just to stay above water, immiserate the population and make them desperate and if they're quite happy being indoctrinated with liberalism and anti-communism then I see possibilities in the near-term, by 2030. They also have their prison slave population which is near free labor. I fear they are moving for enclosure. Higher prices to deal with the reshoring, more rent-seeking behavior instead of owning things to also deal with consumer inability to afford that. A future where you lose your job and it's not just your apartment but your TV, your computer, your phone, your blender they repossess and that will be life for the lucky ones. Not so lucky ones, exploited under the table labor, servants for the luckier population, uber drivers, grocery pick-up, we see it already. But I hope I'm wrong and if I am indeed I don't see anywhere for them to go though things will get very nasty in the west for workers for some time before we have a chance to make them better I fear.
And they tried to kill him for it. Wonder if this was some sort of deranged liberal too hopped up on anti-Russian propaganda.
Strange how none of the pro-NATO puppets who've gutted the quality of life for their people, destroyed industry, ruined jobs, plunged thousands into poverty and strained finances with more expensive heating and food bills, and openly let the Americans destroy their energy infrastructure and force them under the yolk have not suffered any assassination attempts.
Decoupling happening.
Only question is whether the west will actually manage to incentivize the creation or movement of means of production to replace this tariffed production from China. Certainly there are forces in India that would like to take on this role though the level of corruption and other endemic issues like lack of reliable utilities in many areas there and incomplete transport networks, etc makes it an uphill climb. With enough free money and subsidies it's possible I suppose given a few years even in the west. In the end succeed or fail this will hurt Chinese exports a bit, hurt US workers who purchase these things and have to pay massively more whether because of tariffs or higher costs from reshored production. At the end of the day this is shooting the foot efforts to mitigate climate change because this will lessen the appeal of moving to green energy, EV's, etc and it's pretty predictable at the end of all these high prices Republicans (bad cop) will come in, declare the whole thing a failure and gut the subsidies leading to shrinkage of the whole industry and its usage in the west to being a kind of luxury thing.
So not only is Biden abetting genocide in Gaza, he's pushing full steam ahead for full-scale eco-cide and the worst climate outcomes. China should really just gut-punch the US already, slap up a total stoppage on things and crash the US economy into the ground. US politicians are already badly hurting the proletariat with these moves and inflation so it would be a matter of getting very bad fast rather than slowly.
Some American and European politicians believe a military escalation would preserve their hegemony, according to Sergey Naryshkin
> Some American and European politicians believe an escalation would help preserve their hegemony, according to Sergey Naryshkin
> A number of Western leaders believe they would be able to maintain their hegemony if they plunge the world deeper into turmoil, information possessed by Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) suggests, according to the agency’s head, Sergey Naryshkin.
> The SVR chief’s statements come as French President Emmanuel Macron and several officials from the Baltic states have repeatedly hinted in recent months at the possibility of deploying Western troops to Ukraine. Russia has warned that such a move would escalate the conflict.
> Speaking during a plenary meeting of the Federation Council on Tuesday, Naryshkin stated that his agency had obtained information that “some Euro-Atlantic politicians consider it possible to unleash a large-scale military conflict in order to maintain their hegemony.”
> He noted that there are “strong reasons” to believe that such an escalation could actually occur if the West decides that it would be “reasonably safe” and beneficial to its interests.
> However, the spy chief admitted that there are also “truly responsible” global and regional players in the world who, if united, could have the potential to “ensure the impossibility of unleashing such a conflict, including the use of nuclear weapons.”
I remember when Rojava was a thing and chapo including the sub was really onboard with it so a lot of well meaning western left got swept up with that nonsense because of their propaganda banners and symbolism.
Killing people doesn’t make one a bad person. If he was killing ISIS he was killing US proxy forces. If he was killing Syrian government troops or their friends on the other hand he was doing US dirty work.
Some people say it’s proof he’s a US intel op and he could be. But he could just as easily be some weird idealist dude. I don’t think he’s harmful to listen to. He doesn’t have awful politics even if his professed bent isn’t quite ML, doesn’t really punch at AES states to my limited knowledge.
There’s a competing podcast or two that like to accuse him of being a fed which is also something feds might do to someone who isn’t so be careful about believing any random unsourced claims that are too over the top.
This doesn't seem like straight up retaliation, I mean it's not a gut-punch, it's not threatening to severely limit the supply of drugs to the US, just leave the US unable to inspect for health and safety compliance with the pipeline fully open. The US themselves would have to force the issue and literally shoot themselves in the foot and declare they want and will accept shortages (without backing down upon seeing the problem) to cause an issue here so I don't see this as really leverage against the US decoupling and sanctions regime.
If anything this seems like a gift to western capital that has stayed in China in the form of easing their regulatory compliance worries so they can run more cheaply and dangerously beyond the reach of western regulation.
Yes China could just straight up cut supply to the US but they could do that before this law was passed and that's a nuclear option. Thing is the US doesn't really care if lots of its workers die due to adulterated medication or supply crunches (as long as there's still enough for the "important people") so it's unlikely to get them to panic and come to China on hands and knees begging and offering concessions on tech restrictions so they can make sure the drugs are safe for their people. In an absolutist sense yes it's another thing they can bargain with the US over but it's a very weak hand compared to the hand the US holds and not equal to the US for example letting China import advanced AI chips or lithography technology. The types of concessions they could likely get for it aren't IMO likely to change the balance of things.
Now maybe this is an attempt to slow or stymie decoupling which is in fact happening. By preventing Chinese manufacturing knowledge and advancements from being observed and taken abroad to be used in spinning up a reshored factory in India or Vietnam or some soon to be impoverished region of the EU with newly cheap labor.
The US law, FARA is far tougher than this proposed law, with further reach and harsher penalties and the US enforces it vigorously.
Most of the EU states have similar laws. It's incredible and shameless how this is spun as some attack on democracy. It's really an attack on US attempts to gain full control of a country on Russia's border to do Ukraine 2 with.
Deprogramming people from milquetoast liberalism to program them into equally empire-friendly (and ultimately more dangerous) ultra-lefti-ism. Very cool.
I suppose they refer to the fact the DPRK uses crypto-coins to evade sanctions. It's not that their whole economy is based on them and really it seems most likely a large amount of the coins they do own have been stolen from the west via hacks so their exposure to actual risk should the whole thing go down in flames is likely to be lower and less impactful than if you as an individual invested in it and the whole thing went down in flames.
Fact is they don't do a ton of foreign trade so the actual amount of crypto-coins used compared to both total size of foreign trade with friendly countries like China and Russia as well as the total size of their economy which isn't foreign-trade oriented is pretty small so again it's not a big risk for them to use them for sanctions evasion whereas the exposure to an individual putting half their savings in crypto is a lot, lot worse.
I'm not particularly an economic expert so take my words with a grain of salt but I don't see crypto as particularly useful as an investment vehicle, it's basically a situation where you either got in on the ground floor and got rich off a fluke OR you're using them to do illegal things like buy narcotics or send funds to sanctioned or designated groups (though with the latter in particular the US can track an trace a lot of the coins back to people eventually so I really wouldn't risk it). Beyond that I don't think they necessarily have a lot of value. Most of the big investors got in fairly early so if most of the larger coins were to say lose 30% of their value they wouldn't be badly hurt whereas you if you bought now and placed your savings in them would be.
Good. This is basic spy-work within the remit of all legitimate intelligence agencies. When talking about oversteps and outrages it is more appropriate to describe the weaponization of these agencies against domestic elements of dissent and opposition to current regime policies as well as widespread spying on their own populations and those of other nations of no real intelligence value. In other words the overstepping west which spies on everyone, intrudes on everyone is much worse than the respectful, decent Chinese and Russians who classically focus their efforts on targeting fair game fellow intelligence agencies not for the purposes of offense but for the purposes of self-defense.
They have sent the foreign legion so they will be mostly foreigners who wanted French citizenship dying. It won't see parades of funerals with wailing French fathers and mothers in the streets so much as caskets without family in France. Some French officers will die but that will be it, maybe a few dozen at most. They'll just claim they were the mercenary arm and not national army regulars so their evaporation is not indicative of the west's strength.
Is this a final admission by the west that they see the writing on the wall?
That after next year when they get their money they're willing to cut Ukraine loose? For me the sticking point in the west's ability to pull out of Ukraine was its ability to find a way to compensate its corporate instruments of bourgeois control for the loans they gave out. Given they may never get access to the rich black soil of Ukraine with the current state of play and their insistence on a total Russian victory rather than negotiations perhaps they see the writing on the wall at last. Though it seems to me to be a bit late.
I hope Russia pushes ahead and breaks Ukraine before then, more money for the Ukrainian people to use after the war that way for their own reconstruction and more suffering and pain for the western empire and its arrogant bourgeoisie. A blow like this won't soon be forgotten by those investors either and may make similar plays in the future by the US more difficult if any expected opposition could occur.
Of course my worry is that the deranged west won't take that lying down, that the threat of losing their investments will cause them to send in troops and that it could escalate. Russia obviously isn't in a state to buy them off for their shares and neither should they given these are the people who have forced them to conduct this military operation and expend so many lives and treasure.
Foreign bondholders want Kiev to resume making interest payments as soon as next year, the Wall Street Journal has reported
> Foreign bondholders paused Kiev’s debt payments in 2022, but their patience is reportedly running out
> A group of foreign bondholders have taken steps to force Ukraine to begin repaying its debts as soon as next year, the Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday. If they succeed, Kiev could hemorrhage $500 million every year on interest payments alone.
> The group, which includes investment giants Blackrock and Pimco, granted Kiev a two-year debt holiday in 2022, gambling that the conflict with Russia would have concluded by now.
> With no end to the fighting in sight, the lenders have now hired lawyers at Weil Gotshal & Manges and bankers from PJT Partners to meet with Ukrainian officials and strike a deal whereby Ukraine would resume making interest payments next year in exchange for having a significant chunk of its debt written off, anonymous sources told the Wall Street Journal.
> The group holds around a fifth of Ukraine’s $20 billion in outstanding Eurobonds, the newspaper reported. While this figure represents a fraction of Ukraine’s total external debt of $161.5 billion, servicing the interest on these bonds would cost the country $500 million annually, the bondholders said.
> Should the bondholders fail to strike a deal with Kiev by August, Ukraine could default. This would damage the country’s credit rating and restrict its ability to borrow even more money in the future.
> According to the newspaper, Ukrainian officials are hoping that the US and other Western governments will take its side during talks with the bondholders. However, a group of these countries have already offered Ukraine a debt holiday on around $4 billion worth of loans until 2027, and are reportedly concerned that any deal with the bondholders would see private lenders being repaid before them.
> Ukraine already relies on foreign aid to keep government departments open and state employees paid.
> According to the Wall Street Journal, some bondholders have suggested that the US and EU could use frozen Russian assets to pay off Ukraine’s debts. While around $300 billion in assets belonging to the Russian central bank have been frozen in American and European banks since 2022, the US only passed legislation allowing for their seizure last month, and no similar legal mechanism exists in Europe, where the vast majority of these assets are held.
> The International Monetary Fund (IMF) and European Central Bank (ECB) have both urged governments not to steal this money, with ECB chief Christine Lagarde warning last month that doing so would risk “breaking the international order that you want to protect.”
> By Tarik Cyril Amar, a historian from Germany working at Koç University, Istanbul, on Russia, Ukraine, and Eastern Europe, the history of World War II, the cultural Cold War, and the politics of memory
> The meaning of the words ‘civil society’ changes depending on whether Washington is speaking about protests inside or outside the American border
> The elites and mainstream media of the West are so addicted to double standards that spotting yet another one is hardly news. These are the people who have just given us genocide re-labeled as ”self-defense,” who abhor spheres of influence except when they are global and belong to Washington (with a sidekick role for Brussels), and who insist on the rule of law while threatening the International Criminal Court if it so much as dares look their way.
> Yet there is something special about the latest case of Western ‘values’ schizophrenia, this time about the concept of ‘civil society’ in conjunction with two political struggles, one in the US and the other in the Caucasus nation of Georgia.
> In the US, students, professors, and others are protesting against the ongoing Israeli genocide of the Palestinians and against American participation in that crime.
> In Georgia, the issue at stake is a proposed law to impose transparency on the sprawling and unusually powerful NGO sector. Its critics denounce this law as a government power grab and as somehow ‘Russian’ (which, spoiler alert, it is not).
[Poster's Note: Their law is less far reaching than a US law called FARA, additionally most EU states have similar laws.]
> The very different reactions to these two cases of intense public contention by the West’s political and mainstream media elites show that, for them, there are really two kinds of civil society: There is the ‘vibrant’ variety, with ‘vibrant’ an almost comically ossified cliche, used by the Washington Post Editorial Board, in EU statements, and by White House spokesman John Kirby, to name only a few. It is almost as if someone had sent around a memo on proper terminology. This vibrant, good kind of civil society is to be celebrated and supported.
> And then there is the wrong kind of civil society, which must be shut down. US President Joe Biden has just expressed the essence of this attitude: “We are a civil society, and order must prevail.” This is, of course, a bizarre misreading of the idea of civil society. Ideally, its key features are autonomy from the state and the capacity to establish an effective counterweight, and even, if necessary, to offer resistance to it. Putting the emphasis on “order” instead is ignorant or dishonest. In reality, civil society makes no sense, even as an ideal, if it is not granted a substantial degree of freedom to be disorderly. A civil society that is so orderly as to disturb no one is a fig leaf for enforced conformism and – at least – incipient authoritarianism.
> What is more important is that ‘order,’ in his usage, is a transparent euphemism: According to the New York Times, over the last two weeks, over 2,300 protesters have been arrested on almost 50 American campuses. Often, arrests have been made with demonstrative brutality. Police have used riot gear, stun grenades, and rubber bullets. They have assaulted students as well as some professors with massive aggression.
> The most well-known individual case at this moment is that of Annelise Orleck, a professor at Dartmouth College. Orleck is 65 years old and attempted to protect students from police violence. In response, she was slammed into the ground in the worst MMA style, knelt on by beefy policemen, who clearly lack elementary decency, and dragged away with whiplash trauma, as if she had been in a serious car accident. Ironically (if that’s the word), Orleck is Jewish and, at one time, used to be the head of her universities program in Jewish Studies.
> In another, extremely disturbing development, at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), a violent police crackdown – including use of rubber bullets – was preceded by a vicious attack by so-called pro-Israeli ”counter-protesters.” In reality, this was a mob out to inflict maximum harm on the anti-genocide protesters, who, a New York Times investigation has found, maintained an almost entirely defensive stance. University security forces and the police failed to intervene for hours, letting the “counter-protesters” run wild.
> That is a pattern every historian of the rise of fascism in Weimar Germany will recognize: First the SA mobs of the rising Nazi party had a free hand to assault the Left, then the police would go after the same Left as well.
> That is the real face of the “order” that President Biden and all too many in the West’s establishments endorse. But only at home. When it comes to the unrest in Georgia, their tone is entirely different. Make no mistake, there has been substantial violence – and what Biden would denounce as “chaos” if it happened in America – in Georgia. Indeed, while the US anti-genocide protesters have not been violent but disorderly (yes, those are very different things), the protesters in Georgia have used genuine violence, for instance, when they tried to storm the parliament.
> Nothing remotely comparable has been done by the US anti-genocide protesters. Regarding the trespassing and causing public inconveniences that so agitate the US president, there has been plenty of that in the Georgian capital, Tbilisi. By Biden’s logic a protest must not even disturb or delay a campus graduation ceremony. What would that imply for blocking a central traffic node in the capital city?
> Don’t get me wrong: The Georgian protesters report violent police tactics used against them as well, and, more broadly, the rights or wrongs of their cause, or the draft law they reject are beyond the scope of this article. I do believe they are used by the West for a geopolitical play Color-Revolution-style, but that is not the point.
> The pertinent point here is, once again, staggering Western hypocrisy: A West that thinks trying to storm parliament is part of having a “vibrant” civil society in Georgia, cannot mass-arrest and brutalize anti-genocide protesters on its own campuses.
China and Russia’s advanced and partially automated and augmented defense systems would scramble, hack into, shut down, disable, redirect, or outright destroy or prevent nuclear missile launches. Drones would hack into and shut down facilities or weapons themselves. Infrastructure could be shielded and damage minimized in various ways, and supply chains are something that Global South understands intuitively more than the Global North.
I'm sorry but this is not based on any evidence. No nation including the US has this ability. Among other problems for China and Russia, the US systems are pretty old and hardened, they don't have a lot of attack surface, if anyone is going to get their nuclear system hacked and shut down it would be a power with a more modern system (I'm not sure if that describes either China or Russia). US has the largest number of nuclear missile carrying submarines constantly stationed around the world, roving undetected under the waters, waiting for the order to launch 20+ ICBM's each, each carrying 20+ MIRVs, each carrying a warhead. They can park off Russia or China and have their missiles launched and detonations within 10 minutes. The systems for signaling those are very simple, US mainland land-launched weapons also have dedicated hard-line communication lines, they don't use civilian internet or phone infrastructure.
As to intercepting, no nation including the US has more than a few dozen hypersonic kinetic kill sled anti-ICBM weapons to my knowledge. The US has by contrast over 4000 warheads. Even if they launched only a 1/8th of them on the basis that one cannot reliably count on shooting down a warhead with less than 2 interceptors, that's 1000 interceptors required.
You can't plan around physics other than deterrence. Maybe in 40 years with practical laser or particle weapons systems existing in large numbers you could make it impractical but the science simply isn't there yet. If the science were there already the US would be pushing full steam ahead with their own programs so they could strike first and shield themselves. Fact is though that with evasive maneuvers the US's own tests for success rates with their interceptors are rigged to look more rosy than they are. I'd bet China has better results and Russia as well but it's probably not enough because you have to have the numbers.
As to hacking and scrambling, if Russia could dominate in this way they wouldn't be having the problems they have in Ukraine, they'd have done more damage to their infrastructure, they'd have crippled their defense systems, but CIA/NSA hackers are there with them helping them defend against Russian attacks very successfully.
Let's not forget the US has a starting edge here too. They infiltrated deep into China's systems with their Cisco hardware implants and who knows if the Chinese ever rooted all of it out. I'm sure they're not able to actively spy on them as they were because that would be observable and detectable but that doesn't mean they don't have buried in there, inactive, waiting for a special command, some sort of malware that will shut down and destroy their command and control when the moment of total war comes. China is actively fighting a variety of US attacks on it, the US has been paying Chinese civilians with free hobbyist equipment that serves as CIA/NSA radio-equipped attack platforms which China has been trying to round up among many, many other plots no doubt. By contrast the US freaks out if it sees a weather balloon from China so I doubt the Chinese have the same ability. The US is banning Chinese technology on the grounds it could be used by China for electronic warfare and hacking, I doubt the Chinese intended to do this but I think it's projection and shows US plans and projects already well underway.
On shutting down these weapons. They are specifically shielded against EMPs because one of the earliest concepts of nuclear defense was using nuclear detonations in the atmosphere in the path of incoming warheads to attempt to destroy, misdirect, and otherwise neutralize incoming enemy missiles. (See for example NIKE missile program)
As to scrambling, they don't rely entirely on GPS, their paths are calculated using mathematics that don't require active pinging of positioning systems in orbit, after all these were first developed before GPS was even a dream, let alone a reality and had to be able to get to their destinations.
As to decapitating strikes on the US, they have a fleet of always in the air emergency command and control aircraft specifically for the purpose of ensuring that the orders can be carried out (in fact I recently saw an article where the air force is looking to replace their current fleet of these. It was originally called Operation Looking Glass). (Russia by contrast has a system of several missiles which are programmed with emergency launch codes which can be launched and will travel the length of Russia blasting those codes and ordering all warheads to launch called Deadhand. China to my knowledge has no such system and relies on moving their warheads around in secret and plenty of mobile launchers to simply make it harder to hit them all in a first strike sneak attack but which does little for command redundancy)
So I'm sorry but if the US starts a nuclear attack in earnest with any significant number of weapons, the only solace that China and Russia will get is that their own nuclear weapons will destroy American military bases and burn their cities to cinders in retaliation. I find it improbable that one would be intentionally started even by the US, the real risk is an inability to back down and backing Russia into a corner where it has to use nukes.
As to nuclear war's effects. I recommend the movie Threads from 1984 which went to great pains to be factual. There's a saying among nuclear war theorists and planners and it's that those who die in the atomic blasts would be the lucky ones. And that's because such widespread destruction would cripple industry, food, clothing, manufacture of energy, medicine, etc for decades. Tens of millions would die not from fall-out but from starvation, from deprivation, from cold, from heat, from previously treatable diseases and epidemics which would rage in the kindling of such destruction of cities.
It's a censorship and surveillance panopticon.
Maybe just don't use it? Especially don't use it if you're on the left? Especially, especially don't use it for news and organizing if you're on the left?
I can get the argument (though I don't respect it and I've never let it decide for me) that you need to keep Zuckerbook to keep in contact with grandma. I don't get the argument that it's a great place to find an anti-imperialist news feed or to organize people when it's so transparently hostile and so deeply in bed with the US security state.
You want to view content from Russian funded news, Chinese news, anti-imperialist news? There are these neat things called websites and this other neat thing called the fediverse.
If you have to change a setting you've already lost the majority of people and that's the point of censorship and propaganda, not to control all the people all the time but enough of them.
In The Grand Chessboard by Zbigniew Brzezinski, a key figure in shaping US policy thinking last century and this no doubt, it's mentioned that there is region, a triangle of critical control in the middle east that can prevent the uniting of Asia, Africa, and Europe. It is the cross-roads of all these three and although I'm not sure he mentions destabilization, he does mention control and one way to control a region or at least deny its usefulness to others is to destabilize it with terrorism and extremism. To that end the US wants to prevent China and Russia from having good healthy relationships and trade with Africa and Europe because that's land-power that locks the US, far across the oceans, entirely out. That's a potential that would destroy any hopes for US hegemony.
The US has torpedoed Palestine’s bid to become an official member of the UN
> America was the sole Security Council member to vote against the resolution
> The US has vetoed a UN Security Council resolution that would have paved a way for Palestine to become a member of the world body.
> Palestine is currently a “permanent observer state” at the UN that participates in many meetings but does not have voting rights.
> The draft resolution debated on Thursday contained a recommendation to the UN General Assembly to hold a vote on updating Palestine’s status within the organization. The document was rejected with 12 votes in favor, one against, and two abstentions.
> US Alternative Representative for Special Political Affairs Robert Wood said that “there are unresolved questions as to whether [Palestine] meets the criteria to be considered a state.” He argued that Palestine cannot be admitted to the UN as long as the militant group Hamas controls Gaza.
The usual "but what about Hamas" from the US that would be replaced by some other excuse if they didn't exist in order to allow their outpost of Isn'treal to continue the extermination and occupation of its genocidal settler white supremacist state.
> Speaking at the Security Council, Russian Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia said that the vote had shown that “for Washington, [the Palestinians] do not deserve to have their own state.”
> “Today’s use of the veto by the US delegation is a hopeless attempt to stop the inevitable course of history. The results of the vote, where Washington was practically in complete isolation, speak for themselves,” Nebenzia said.
> Palestinian Ambassador Majed Bamya said after the vote that the PA was “not deterred in our pursuit for Palestinian freedom and independence.”
> Algeria’s U.N. Ambassador Amar Bendjama, the Arab representative on the council who introduced the resolution, called Palestine’s admission “a critical step toward rectifying a longstanding injustice” and said that “Peace will come from Palestine’s inclusion, not from its exclusion.”
> Palestinian U.N. Ambassador Riyad Mansour, at times emotional, told the council after the vote: "The fact that this resolution did not pass will not break our will and it will not defeat our determination. We will not stop in our effort."
> [The Zionist Occupation]'s Foreign Minister Israel Katz commended the United States for casting a veto.
Other coverage:
https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/un-security-council-vote-thursday-palestinian-un-membership-2024-04-18/
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/apr/18/us-veto-palestine-membership-request-united-nations-council
The “discovery” in Germany of Ukrainian kids ‘kidnapped” by Russia exposes Kiev’s lies, Russian ombudsman Maria Lvova-Belova says
> Over 160 Ukrainian children allegedly “kidnapped by Russia” have been discovered living in Germany, the country's Federal Criminal Police (BKA) has confirmed.
> The head of Ukrainian national police, Ivan Vygovsky, on Wednesday hailed the discovery, telling national media that he had discussed the issue with Holger Munch, president of the BKA, during a meeting earlier in this week.
> Allegations by Kiev that Moscow kidnapped Ukrainian children en masse have been exposed as a lie after some of the purported victims have been found in the EU, according to Russian children’s rights commissioner Maria Lvova-Belova. She is among the officials to have been accused of abducting youngsters from Ukraine amid the conflict between Moscow and Kiev.
> When asked for clarification by RT Deutsch, the BKA said its officers had identified the children after they were flagged as “kidnapping” victims by Kiev. Their personal details were checked against German records.
> The majority of the youngsters had entered Germany as refugees accompanied by their parents or legal guardians, the police said. In a handful of cases, suspicion of “unlawful transfer” remained, the statement added, without offering further details.
> Responding to the revelations, Lvova-Belova said Moscow has “long been drawing the attention of the international community to the fact that Ukraine has created a systemic myth regarding the children, who it claims had been ‘deported’ to Russia.”
> Last year, Lvova-Belova was named alongside Russian President Vladimir Putin by the International Criminal Court (ICC) as the key suspects in its investigation into the alleged unlawful deportation and transfer of minors during the Ukraine conflict. Moscow dismissed the claim as politically motivated, arguing that Kiev had lied to the court about what in reality was an evacuation of civilians from areas affected by the hostilities.
> In her remarks about the German discoveries, Lvova-Belova said her office had identified multiple cases in which children described by Kiev as abductees were actually residing with their parents at home or in other nations, “never having been separated from their families.”
Reminder: this accusation was the basis for the ICC issuing an arrest warrant for Putin as well as several other top officials and several sanctions.
The FBI had sought to “control” how Telegram works, its founder Pavel Durov said
Key points:
> Russian-born IT entrepreneur Pavel Durov said that he was “pressured” by the FBI during his stays in America
> The US government had wanted a backdoor to Telegram in order to potentially spy on its users, the social media platform’s founder Pavel Durov said in an interview with American journalist Tucker Carlson. The attention from the FBI was one of the reasons Durov dropped the idea of setting up the company in San Francisco, he said.
> In an interview published on Wednesday, Durov said that he visited the US several times and even met with former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey. He was under the watchful eye of the FBI, which made his stays in America uneasy, he said.
> According to Durov, one of his top employees once told him that he had been approached by the US government. “There was a secret attempt to hire my engineer behind my back by cybersecurity officers,” the businessman said.
> “They were trying to persuade him to use certain open-source tools that he would then integrate into Telegram’s code that, in my understanding, would serve as backdoors,” Durov said. He added that he believes the employee’s account. “There is no reason for my engineer to make up (such) stories.”
Extremely alarming that there is a claim here certain open-source tools act as back-doors for the western intelligence agencies but it makes perfect sense. Engineered bugs in upstream libraries and tools used by tons of commercial and open source software would always get you your best bang for the buck compromising lots of things. Unlike for example the recent xz debacle I expect these are likely much more well hidden and engineered to hide their nature as nothing but mistakes. There are multiple ways to accomplish this from having NSA/GCHQ employees working directly on these projects as core contributors to paying off or blackmailing core contributors.
I expect this particular revelation to likely be ignored by many of the usual privacy people and spaces just because Tucker Carlson (who has grown funnily more hated for interviewing Putin than anything else he's done among liberals) was the interviewer and of course because Durov is a Russian.
The former president encouraged his party to scuttle a bill that was used by the FBI to spy on his campaign
> The former president encouraged his party to scuttle a bill that was used by the FBI to spy on his campaign
> A group of conservative lawmakers have defeated an effort by House Speaker Mike Johnson to hold a vote on funding the FISA surveillance act. While the act once enjoyed bipartisan support, the GOP’s pro-Trump faction have soured on it since it was used to wiretap the former president’s campaign.
> Drafted in 2008, Section 702 of the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) grants US intelligence agencies the power to monitor messages from abroad made through American networks like Google. The provision, which must be reauthorized every year by Congress, also allows these agencies to ‘indirectly’ collect data from millions of American citizens.
> Once collected, this intelligence is stored for five years, during which it can be searched – for example by name, phone number, or email address – by the agencies without a warrant.
> Ahead of an April 19 deadline to renew Section 702, 19 conservative Republicans opposed a procedural vote on Wednesday that would have brought the measure – along with three other ùnrelated bills – to a full floor vote later this week. With 193 votes in favor and 228 against, the floor vote has effectively been postponed unless Johnson can win back the support of the 19 defectors.
> Among the dissidents are stalwart backers of former President Donald Trump, like Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz. Other Republican critics of the surveillance state, like Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene and Kentucky Rep. Thomas Massie, voted to bring Section 702 to the floor, arguing that they deserve a chance to hold an open “vote on whether the government needs a warrant to spy on you,” Massie wrote on X.
> “I will not support any version of FISA that doesn’t protect Americans from spying by our own government,” Greene said after Wednesday’s vote. “The American people deserve transparency in this process.If we can’t protect our citizens from their own government, then FISA SHOULD DIE!”
> Prior to the vote, Trump took to his Truth Social platform to encourage Republicans to “KILL FISA.”
> “IT WAS ILLEGALLY USED AGAINST ME, AND MANY OTHERS,” Trump continued, adding: “THEY SPIED ON MY CAMPAIGN!!!”
> Back in 2016, the FBI obtained a FISA warrant to surveil Trump campaign aide Carter Page. However, the agency’s warrant application was built heavily on a dossier of salacious and unproven gossip collected by former British spy Christopher Steele, and omitted key information that would have ensured its rejection.
> Along with a group of progressive Democrats, Gaetz, Greene, and other conservatives want a renewed Section 702 to come with amendments prohibiting the warrantless surveillance of American citizens.
> After Wednesday’s vote, Johnson told reporters on Capitol Hill that he would “reformulate another plan” to pass the contentious legislation, without giving any further details. The bill “is too important to national security,” he added. “I think most of the members understand that.”
Very cool to be honest. Very good to see this kind of thing happening.
Washington appears desperate to absolve Kiev of any blame in the terrorist attack on Moscow, while failing to invite trust
> Washington appears desperate to prevent Ukraine from being associated, in any way, with the horrific murderous rampage in the Russian capital
> By Andrey Sushentsov, program director of the Valdai Club
> The United States of America is trying to control and manipulate the media and political interpretation of the tragic terrorist attack in Moscow last month. In the Western information space, Washington is forming a narrative to try to distract attention from its proxy, Ukraine.
> At certain points, ISIS was a useful tool for the Americans in Syria. There is published evidence suggesting that the US operated in parallel with the terrorist group against the Syrian government. The fact that Washington was ready to offer a coherent version of events from the first minutes after the attack in Moscow is in itself extremely paradoxical.
> Consider this. The Americans have spent decades trying to determine the cause of crimes on their own soil, such as the assassinations of leading US political figures. They lack the resources, attention and enthusiasm to determine who was behind the sabotage of pan-European energy infrastructure: the Nord Stream 2 pipeline.
> However, within 15 minutes, they provided “accurate” information about who organized the terrorist attack in Moscow.
> I am convinced that the Russian government has no intention of defending ISIS if this organization is indeed behind it. The statements of President Vladimir Putin and senior officials show that the Russian position is strictly based on facts. They indicate that the terrorists who carried out the attack were heading towards the Russia-Ukraine border, which they intended to cross.
> Does this mean, to interpret the American line, that ISIS and the Ukrainian government are coordinating their actions? The creators of this tale should have thought several steps ahead about what conclusions could be drawn from it.
> What’s clear is that the US is trying to fill the information vacuum, to offer its interpretation of events in order to divert any suspicion from those it needs now – it looks like some sort of cover-up operation. After all, when American leaders are taken by surprise and such episodes occur, intelligence chiefs often admit directly in congressional hearings that the services did not foresee this or that event. In the case of the Moscow attack, however, the Americans suddenly came up with a coherent version of events within 15 minutes. This is reminiscent of how, within 24 hours of Hillary Clinton’s defeat in the 2016 American elections, false accusations of Russian involvement in the election of Donald Trump as President of the United States were beginning to circulate.
> Kiev understands that its own space for maneuver is shrinking and its resources are being depleted. In fact, it is fighting “on life support”: if the flow of resources dries up, the conflict will stop then and there. All that remains is the gradual radicalization of its own people. Ukraine’s habit of dehumanizing its opponent promotes increasingly irrational thinking, and it is only a short step away from justifying terrorist acts.
> I believe that the calibrated, reasoned, fact-based line that the Russian government is now taking will eventually lead us to a point where we know exactly who ordered this crime. We see a significant gap between how calmly and rationally (as much as possible in this situation), our country’s top officials are handling the investigation and how our Western opponents are trying to present us with their pseudo-reality. The aims of the organizers of the terrorist attack will not be achieved: one of them was to strike at the weak points of our society.
The White House is reportedly preparing to impose a complete ban on software made by Russia’s Kaspersky Lab
We'll see if this holds up in court but I have a feeling the walls are closing in, the boot is falling, the illusion of freedom Americans have been granted will be stripped away soon.
This is not an isolated thing, it happens in the context of things like pushes to force logging on VPN providers, to crack down on piracy, to further control the internet and technology space.
How soon before we can talk of a US great firewall against foreign software of Chinese or Russian origin?
And unlike Chinese and Russian bans which have no reach, no long-arm of the law approach that can force the rest of the world to comply via financial sanctions, the US has the ability to actually impose these bans successfully not only on its own population but on the world if it so wishes.
> The use of Kaspersky Lab’s products is seen as a threat to national security, officials in Washington reportedly say
> Washington is planning to bar US businesses and individuals from using software created by the Russian cybersecurity company Kaspersky Lab, CNN reported on Tuesday, citing unnamed government officials familiar with the matter. The move is seen as “unprecedented,” as measures of the kind have never targeted private companies and citizens.
> The comprehensive ban is currently being finalized and could be imposed as soon as this month, the sources told the news network. The new regulation would use “relatively new Commerce Department authorities built on executive orders” by Presidents Joe Biden and Donald Trump to prohibit Kaspersky Lab from providing certain products and services in the country, they added.
> According to the sources, the order is aimed at mitigating risks allegedly posed by Kaspersky’s software to critical US infrastructure.
The same old story in other words, vague, unspecific, without any proof allegations of possible harm to national security without an explained mechanism or proof the threat exists.
> As part of preparatory works for the move, the US Department of Commerce has made an “initial determination” to ban certain transactions between the Russian cybersecurity company and US citizens, the sources added.
> They haven’t, however, provided any details regarding the full scope of a final order against Kaspersky products, but said that it would focus on the firm’s anti-virus software.
> In 2022, the Federal Communications Commission placed the internet-security provider on a list of companies deemed a threat to US national security. Following the move, Kaspersky said in a statement that the decision had been made on “political grounds” rather than on the basis of “a comprehensive evaluation of the integrity of Kaspersky’s products and services.”
> In 2017, US regulators banned federal government use of Kaspersky software. Back then, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) cited increased fears that the firm had ties to state-sponsored spying programs as a key reason for the move.
> Later, the company filed two lawsuits against the decision taken by the Trump administration, saying the bans were unconstitutional and that they caused Kaspersky Lab undue harm. In 2018, the District of Columbia court dismissed both cases, having upheld the ban imposed by Washington.
A possibility of conflict with Russia or China in space is no longer theoretical, General Stephen Whiting of US Space Command has said
> China has built a “kill web over the Pacific Ocean to find, fix, track and, yes, target US and allied military capabilities,” Whiting said, describing Beijing’s efforts as moving at “breathtaking speed.”
> Since 2018, Russia has doubled and China has tripled the number of their intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) satellites in orbit, while also testing and fielding anti-satellite weapons. Meanwhile, the US has “the world’s best space architectures,” but its military constellations are “optimized for a benign environment,” he said.
Oh my goodness, you mean just like the US who has built a web of surveillance over the entire world and established a separate branch of its military just to counter, attack, subvert, and militarize space?!?
The same US that once complained when the US attempted to move NSA assets to compromise a Chinese satellite that it moved away and evaded them at speed?
Lol, optimized for an environment of total dominance where others can't fight back or field the same capabilities.
> Russian and Chinese space weapons “hold at risk our modern way of life and how we defend this nation, and we must be able to deter and counter these threats when called upon to achieve space superiority,” the general said.
Yes, they will be part of deterrence to destroy your imperialist capitalist way of life by removing any advantage and crippling your ability to control the rest of the world.
Translation: Give us more money to further militarize space in an ill-conceived attempt to maintain dominance and the ability to destroy enemy capabilities that can only ever end in a Kessler syndrome.
> Washington recently accused Moscow of having undisclosed anti-satellite capabilities, possibly nuclear in nature. Russian President Vladimir Putin said the US claims were “unfounded” and a ploy to manipulate arms control talks. The Russian embassy in Washington has also accused the US of using “Russophobic slogans” to mask its own plans to militarize space.
Russia has every right to deploy any kind of anti-satellite capabilities against the belligerent, aggressive, number one threat to peace the US including nuclear ones if those are needed to take out the vast array of cheap Musk Starshield/Starlink constellations in an all-out war of direct US aggression and as a way to deter them from starting one.