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chessinventor · 2 years

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The Western democracies may eventually dragged into a full scale war with Russia and its very few allies when the export routes via Ukraine's Black Sea ports in Mariupol and Odessa have been cut off. Mariupol has been razed by Russian bombardment and Odessa is effectively under blockade by Russian naval forces. Some Pro-Russia media spread the rumor that it is Ukraine that try to play the food card to "persuade" the Western democracies of more supplies and aids in humanitarian and military arsenals. Is it dumb to not take the food when Ukrainians are facing a similar crisis of food shortage created by war? That wouldn't seems reasonable when the Western democracies are already onboard with Ukraine before such world food crisis unfold, and the worst strategy would be irritate the Western democracies so they would took a blind eye of what is happening Ukraine. The Western democracies gave Ukraine "Save the World" card in the early beginning of the invasion then Volodymyr Zelenskyy could gave a speech claiming it is not just protecting its territory but stop Russia ambition in its track to become the next Reich then it would not be just immoral to see your neighboring nation being bullied but also encourage Russia to gather enough resources from its invaded territories for its next target. It would be very dumb if the Western democracies want to handoff from this conflict in the early beginning when Ukraine gain the moral upper hand. It is the prosperity and safety of its very own citizen being threaten so the Western democracies took the proactive step to drag the Russia feet in its conquest of Ukraine. It has been successful when the original plan to takeover Ukraine is within days and now it became months.

The strategy of wearing down Russia's war and state apparatus has the objective to buy time for the Western democracies to gear up its war apparatus and gathering various resources in case of future war with Russia. The longer this war is contained within Ukraine and Russia then the Western democracies especially the Western European nation would better prepared for the onslaught of Russia troops. In WWII it is estimated that if Red Army is to invade Western Europe then it would be unstoppable given the amount of troops the USSR had, and if Russia could justify to their populace to invade Ukraine given their long historical ties then France and German both had invade Russia, as well as the previous conflicts between Russia and Eastern and Northern Europeans nations in WWII and its aftermath.

The strategy of hijacking the Western democracies by withholding the from export in the Ukrainian port is not a wise one when it could be seen as a attempt to further destabilize those nations who are supporting Ukraine especially given Putin's funding of Anti-EU right-wing political parties as well as its online propaganda against the governments of those nations. It could be seen as four steps to overthrow their government: 1. Infiltrate the political system of Pro-Russia politicians,

2. Influencing the votes by spreading rumors and fake news;

3. Stealing the technological and military secrets;

4. Toppling the governments by stopping its food supplies thus increase its inflation and popular dissidence against the governments (after the COVID pandemic had weaken their economies collectively and they are on track for recovery).

I saw that as adequate rationales for the governments in the Western democracies to declare war on Russia. Aren't they?

#Putin

#war

#invasionofUkraine

#Globalaffair

#internationalrelationship

#foreignaffairs

#russiaattack

#deepstate

#ukraine

#foodcrisis

#Russia

#WWII

#strategy

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eretzyisrael · 2 years

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Sun Tzu, Putin, and the Iran Deal

The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.

If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.

Victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win.

Sun Tzu, The Art of War

As I write, there are Russian tanks in Donbas. Does that mean that we are on the verge of a new European war, as US President Biden suggests? I doubt it. I believe that Vladimir Putin is a student of Sun Tzu. He knows that Ukrainian leaders know that they can’t stand against Russia without outside help, that most of Europe can’t fight, and the few countries that can – won’t. He knows that he has been storing up foreign currency and working to make Russia more self-sufficient for several years to insulate Russia from the financial weapons that will be deployed against her. Above all he knows that America, divided, exhausted, fragile, neurotic, and led by an old man far out of his depth, does not have the will to act strongly enough to stop him.

I date the beginning of the collapse of the US as a world power to 9/11. American political and cultural elites all bought into the idea that this was not a skirmish in the struggle between Islamic and Christian civilizations that has been ongoing for at least a millennium, but rather a “War on Terror,” where the terrorists had “perverted” Islam. “Islam is peace,” pronounced George W. Busha week later, when Ground Zero and the Pentagon were still smoldering. To this day, we have not learned to know our enemy.

Shortly thereafter, the US sent troops to Afghanistan after Osama Bin Laden. Unfortunately, they did not send enough men, and depended on local Afghans to do much of the fighting. They also decided to trust their Pakistani “allies” to cover the back door to Tora Bora. As a result, Bin Laden escaped and was not captured until 2011. But American involvement in Afghanistan continued until Biden oversaw the embarrassing rout of remaining Americans in August 2021.

In February 2003, the US demonstrated its military might when it attacked Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, scaring the hell out of the Iranian regime which, because of its secret nuclear program, expected to be next. American troops captured Baghdad less than a month later. But the military victory was squandered by the remarkably ignorant attempt to remake Iraq into a western-style democracy and the suppression of the Sunni minority that had controlled Iraq under Saddam. The war devolved into an insurgency in which the insurgents were supplied and bankrolled by Iran and Syria. Most Americans left Iraq in December 2021, although a small number remain. Meanwhile, Iranian-controlled militias have solidified their control of much of the country.

These wars cost trillions of dollars and numerous lives, and planted a debt bomb in the American economy that is only beginning to explode today. They demonstrated the truth of Sun Tzu’s belief that sheer military superiority is not enough. “There is no instance of a nation benefiting from prolonged warfare,” he said, and the prolongation of these wars – which were begun with inadequately defined or impossible goals (e.g., establishing democracy in Iraq), has greatly weakened the nation, militarily, economically, psychologically, and politically.

But not only has the real strength of the US declined in recent years, its image as a superpower has been shattered by a series of unnecessary errors. Notable was Barack Obama’s failure to follow through on his threat to punish Bashar al-Assad for Syria’s cruel use of chemical weapons on civilians in 2013. Another misadventure was the original Iran deal, signed in 2015, which did not provide for adequate inspection of nuclear sites, did not limit – even weakened previous limits – on ballistic missile development, and which essentially granted Iran the right to develop nuclear weapons ten years after its signing. It was a signal to virtually everyone (except Obama’s sycophants) that America had chosen the path of appeasement. And there is no need to dwell on the message sent by the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Putin has been watching, and learning. And so has the Chinese leadership, which has studied Sun Tzu if anyone has, and if Putin succeeds, will be encouraged even more to move on Taiwan.

Now the Biden Administration is about to sign another deal with the Iranian regime, and if preliminary reports are to be believed, it will be even weaker and more dangerous than the first. The fact that the American collapse in Vienna is happening at the same time that the crisis in Ukraine is developing is likely to make US negotiators, under the pro-Iranian Robert Malley, even more anxious to give the Iranians everything they want and get it over with.

This is another unnecessary loss for America, which may someday even be a target for the weapons it is allowing the Iranian rogue regime to have. Last month, three US negotiators quit because of Malley’s “soft negotiating stance.” It’s hard to understand why US officials have chosen to surrender here. Where is the American interest in increased worldwide terrorism, the expansion of Iran in the Mideast, and the message of weakness sent to US rivals everywhere?

The deal doesn’t make sense. So what is behind it?

In order to answer that question, we need to know who is behind it, because it’s highly doubtful that Biden or Tony Blinken is determining foreign policy in this administration. And here there is only speculation. My informed guess is that there is an influential group including Malley as well as former Obama Administration officials – Barack Obama himself, Ben Rhodes, Susan Rice, and others – that are guiding the administration’s Mideast policy. Their plan grows out of an idea first voiced in the 2006 Iraq Study Report (which was partly authored by Rhodes. See my discussion here).

The original idea was to reduce pressure on US troops in Iraq by buying off Iran and Syria so they would stop supporting the insurgents that were killing US soldiers with Iranian IEDs. The payoff would be the (possibly fatal) weakening of Israel, which would have been forced to give the Golan Heights to Syria, and to withdraw from Judea and Samaria, where a Palestinian state would be established. Obama, who was closely aligned with the Palestinian cause, adopted many of the ideas in the 2006 document, probably via his advisor Rhodes.

I think that this group now views with alarm the possibility of the rise of a new power bloc in the Middle East, composed of Israel, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the Gulf states, and others. Such a bloc would be very powerful, much more so than even a nuclear Iran, and resistant to control. I also think they see (correctly) that it would mean the end of the Palestinian dream of “return” – and the end of the Jewish state – to which Obama and Malley are ideologically committed. By strengthening Iran, they hope to drive a wedge between the members of this newly coalescing bloc, and return Israel to its isolated status in the region.

Needless to say, this group is acting against American interests. An Israeli-Sunni bloc would almost certainly align with the US, providing intelligence and support for Western interests in the Mideast. On the other hand, since the 1979 revolution, Iran has viewed the US as the “Great Satan” that is their most important enemy, even more so than Israel, the “Little Satan.” Iran is far from America, but its terrorist subsidiary, Hezbollah has increasingly stronger branches in Latin America, where it partners with drug cartels. Given the porous southern border, the potential for terrorism inside the US is great.

I think we can sum up what’s wrong with this policy with one more aphorism. This one is not by Sun Tzu, but it certainly could have been:

He who fights his friends instead of his enemies is guaranteed to lose.

Abu Yehuda

#American politics #China #Iran #Middle east #War

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allthebrazilianpolitics · 5 years

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So, in Brazilian and international reactionarism news, Brazil’s minister of family, women, and human rights, Damares Alves, wants the country to lead a “pro-family” bloc in the United Nations. She said so in the Budapest Demographic Summit, in Hungary. The event pretty much says that certain populations in the West are shrinking and they don’t want to "replace" their white and Christian profile with a more diverse, immigrant society, and the solution would be encouraging families to have more children again and respecting the "traditional" family and the "wills of God".

Here are some things some people said during this event, of which Brazil was a special guest:

Miklos Szantho, president of the Central European Press and Media Foundation: "We have to show families based on natural values, the relationship between a man and a woman. We want to introduce the family as it naturally is. We cannot be afraid if they tell us that we are politically incorrect. Man must be man, and woman must be woman"

Raul Sanchez, secretary general of the European Confederation of Large Families: "After the feminist revolution and the ecological revolution, we now need a family revolution."

Jaime Mayor Oreja, Spain's former Interior Minister: "moral relativism" and “globalism" would be generating "disorder." With religious quotes, he claimed that the West would be threatened to disappear just as Rome was invaded by barbarians. He asserted a "moral resistance against immigration" and warned of the attempt to destroy "Christian principles". "There is a crisis of European civilization and truth. We need to resist those who want to change human nature. This project is long term. But we have to start now." There is no room for "new rights," and progressives try to impose a "totalitarian view."

Imre Bedo, president of the Hungarian Men's Club: if the husband is a "stable" person, then the wife will have the financial and emotional security she needs to have a second or third child. The the role of man should be strengthened.

Maria Regina Maroncelli, president of the European Confederation of Large Families: the solution to the demographic issue is to give incentives to families with more than three or four children.

Phillip Blond, Anglican philosopher and theologian: the current international moment is one of a "war of values". The "atomized Western model" is responsible for the fall in the birth rate and the strengthening of conservative Russian youth is an example of what would be the way, besides re-valuing romanticism in Western cultures.

Emilie Kao, from Heritage Foundation: the UN is trying to impose on governments laws that recognize same-sex marriage, and foreign ministers should unite to "defend traditional marriages", but "this is not homophobia.” Traditional marriage is "under attack" and that an "ideology is pervading culture, politics and law", like feminism and sexual revolution, which would have "weakened” and made women “fear marriage". “Domestic duties should not be seen as a burden.”

Sharon Slater, Family Watch International representative: "there is a daily attack on our children at the UN", an effort to normalize sex for children. "Their view is that everyone can make their own choices," and sex education was being used by the UN to legitimize abortion. The WHO would be encouraging four-year-olds to touch themselves and openly talk about orgasm. The Unicef is paving the way for freedom of choice "when to start sex and with whom."

Lazslo Kover, Hungarian Parliament Speaker: there’s "totalitarianism" of the ideas, and only traditional families with children can guarantee democracy. There must be "a return to normalcy, with the return of traditional values.", which are under attack by NGOs, "corrupt academics", international entities, and the press, which "serves the culture of death." Abortion laws are part of the cause of shrinking populations in the West. "We have to decide whether we will support death or life," he insisted. “'Globalism' is the new ideology of the rich robbing the poor.'”

Bence Rétvári, a member of Orbán's cabinet: ”[liberals and leftists] want to dismantle identities and destroy families. They are experimenting with humans."

Valerie Huber, US Department of Health adviser: the UN has been adopting a posture of reducing the role of families and ignores the sovereignty of countries. Sex education should be "the role of families," not governments. Moreover, it is societies, not the UN, that must say what sex education is.

Viktor Orbán, Hungarian Prime Minister and host of the event: there must be a closer approach to God and the promotion of larger families. ”Christianity will have to be stronger in Europe.” If Europe is not occupied by more Europeans in the future, then there will be a "population exchange". "Europeans will be replaced by others." There are political forces in Europe that want to "promote the replacement of population for ideological reasons". The answer is to promote European families, always in their traditional model. "Every child has the right to have a father and a mother”, and there’s a need to change the Constitution to "protect families" and prevent courts from making "anti-family" decisions. Repeating a mantra spoken by any others in the Summit, “Without families there is no nation or identity.”

And of course, Damares Alves herself: Brazil "is once again a country of family" and international leaders must form an alliance at the United Nations for these values. Brazil is willing to lead a "pro-family" bloc at the UN.

In the end of the event, participants made it clear that the ideas discussed there would not just be in the conference records. Eastern European governments have indicated that they will coordinate international positions to further this agenda. The US government was already planning concrete actions at the United Nations General Assembly, which begins on Tuesday.

Fun fact: the Summit ended with awards to individuals who contributed to the debates about the future of the family. Organizers not only pointed out the achievements of the stage winners, but also how many children each had in their lives.

(x)

#politics #feminism #lgbt rights #anti racism #anti xenophobia #damares alves #victor orban #brazil #hungary #brazilian politics #hungarian politics #international politics #budapest demographic summit #religion #mod nise da silveira #racism #migrant rights

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collapsedsquid · 5 years

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There are two major narratives of the 20th century: liberal and Marxist; they are both “Jerusalem”-like in the Russian philosopher Berdiaff’s terminology. They see the world evolving from less developed toward more developed stages ending in either a terminus of liberal capitalist democracy or Communism (society of plenty).

Both narratives face significant problems in the interpretation of the 20th century. Liberal narrative is unable to explain the outbreak of the First World War which, given the liberal arguments about the spread of capitalism, (peaceful) trade, and interdependence between countries and individuals that ostensibly abhor conflict should never have happened, and certainly not in the way it did—namely by involving in the most destructive war up to date all advanced capitalism countries. Second, liberal narrative treats both fascism and communism as essentially “mistakes” (cul de sacs) on the road to a chiliastic liberal democracy without providing much of reasoning as to why these two “mistakes” happened. Thus the liberal explanations for both the outbreak of the War and the two “cul de sacs” are often ad hoc, emphasizing the role of individual actors or idiosyncratic events.

Marxist interpretation of the 20th century is much more convincing in both its explanation of World War I (imperialism as the highest stage of capitalism) and fascism (an attempt by the weakened bourgeoise to thwart left-wing revolutions). But Marxist view is entirely powerless to explain 1989, the fall of communist regimes, and hence unable to provide any explanation for the role of communism in global history. The fall of communism, in a strict Marxist view of the world, is an abomination, as inexplicable as if a feudal society having had experienced a bourgeois revolution of rights were suddenly to “regress” and to reimpose serfdom and the tripartite class division. Marxism has therefore given up trying to provide an explanation for the 20th century history.

The reason for this failure lies in the fact that Marxism never made a meaningful distinction between standard Marxist schemes regarding the succession of socio-economic formations (what I call the Western Path of Development, WPD) and the evolution of poorer and colonized countries. Classical Marxism never asked seriously whether the WPD is applicable in their case. It believed that poorer and colonized countries will simply follow, with a time lag, the developments in the advanced countries, and that colonization and indeed imperialism will produce the capitalist transformation of these societies. This was Marx’s explicit view on the role of English colonialism in Asia. But colonialism proved too weak for such a global task, and succeeded in introducing capitalism only in small entropot enclaves such as Hong Kong, Singapore and parts of South Africa.

Enabling colonized countries to effect both their social and national liberations (note there was never a need for the latter in advanced countries) was the world-historical role of communism. It was only Communist or left-wing parties that could prosecute successfully both revolutions. The national revolution meant political independence. The social revolution meant abolishment of feudal growth-inhibiting institutions (power of usurious landlords, labor tied to land, gender discrimination, lack of access to education by the poor, religious turpitude etc.). Communism thus cleared the path for the development of indigenous capitalism. Functionally, in the colonized Third World societies, it played the same role that domestic bourgeoisies played in the West. For indigenous capitalism could be established only once feudal institutions were swept away.

The concise definition of communism is hence: communism is a social system that enabled backward and colonized societies to abolish feudalism, regain economic and political independence, and build indigenous capitalism.

Branko Milanovic with the by-now lukewarm take.

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icymirss · 4 years

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Americans are told every day that Russia is interfering in our internal politics. This is said to be an effort to erode American society and weaken our democracy. Portrayals of Russia in the American press are unfailingly negative, President Vladimir Putin is presented as demonic, and any politician who advocates better relations with Moscow risks being accused of treason. Presidential candidates compete to be more virulently anti-Russian than their rivals, as if this is a measure of patriotism. Tensions between the two countries are in some ways higher than during the worst days of the Cold War.... We have not yet returned to the extreme of 1919, when the United States sent combat troops to Russia in an attempt to preserve Western influence there. Yet Russians have reason to suspect that the United States is still trying to guide the course of their history. We lost Admiral Kolchak 100 years ago but haven't given up.

#history #russia #interventionism #imperialism #foreign policy #politics

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alessandriana · 4 years

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Internet trolls don’t troll. Not the professionals at least. Professional trolls don’t go on social media to antagonize liberals or belittle conservatives. They are not narrow minded, drunk or angry. They don’t lack basic English language skills. They certainly aren’t “somebody sitting on their bed that weighs 400 pounds,” as the president once put it. Your stereotypical trolls do exist on social media, but the amateurs aren’t a threat to Western democracy.

Professional trolls, on the other hand, are the tip of the spear in the new digital, ideological battleground. To combat the threat they pose, we must first understand them — and take them seriously.

On August 22, 2019, @IamTyraJackson received almost 290,000 likes on Twitter for a single tweet. Put in perspective, the typical tweet President Trump sends to his 67 million followers gets about 100,000 likes. That viral tweet by @IamTyraJackson was innocent: an uplifting pair of images of former pro football player Warrick Dunn and a description of his inspiring charity work building houses for single mothers. For an anonymous account that had only existed for only a few months, “Tyra” knew her audience well. Warrick’s former coach, Tony Dungy, retweeted it, as did the rapper and producer Chuck D. Hundreds of thousands of real users viewed Tyra’s tweet and connected with its message. For “Tyra,” however, inspiring messages like this were a tool for a very different purpose.

The purpose of the Tyra account, we believe, was not to spread heartwarming messages to Americans. Rather, the tweet about Warrick Dunn was really a Trojan horse to gain followers in a larger plan by a foreign adversary. We think this because we believe @IamTyraJackson was an account operated by the successors to Russia’s Internet Research Agency (IRA). Special Counsel Robert Mueller indicted the IRA for waging a massive information war during the 2016 U.S. election. Since then, the IRA seems to have been subsumed into Russia’s Federal News Agency, but its work continues. In the case of @IamTyraJackson, the IRA’s goal was two-fold: Grow an audience in part through heartwarming, inspiring messages, and use that following to spread messages promoting division, distrust, and doubt.

We’ve spent the past two years studying online disinformation and building a deep understanding of Russia’s strategy, tactics, and impact. Working from data Twitter has publicly released, we’ve read Russian tweets until our eyes bled. Looking at a range of behavioral signals, we have begun to develop procedures to identify disinformation campaigns and have worked with Twitter to suspend accounts. In the process we’ve shared what we’ve learned with people making a difference, both in and out of government. We have experienced a range of emotions studying what the IRA has produced, from disgust at their overt racism to amusement at their sometimes self-reflective humor. Mostly, however, we’ve been impressed.

Professional trolls are good at their job. They have studied us. They understand how to harness our biases (and hashtags) for their own purposes. They know what pressure points to push and how best to drive us to distrust our neighbors. The professionals know you catch more flies with honey. They don’t go to social media looking for a fight; they go looking for new best friends. And they have found them.

Disinformation operations aren’t typically fake news or outright lies. Disinformation is most often simply spin. Spin is hard to spot and easy to believe, especially if you are already inclined to do so. While the rest of the world learned how to conduct a modern disinformation campaign from the Russians, it is from the world of public relations and advertising that the IRA learned their craft. To appreciate the influence and potential of Russian disinformation, we need to view them less as Boris and Natasha and more like Don Draper.

As good marketers, professional trolls manipulate our emotions subtly. In fall 2018, for example, a Russian account we identified called @PoliteMelanie re-crafted an old urban legend, tweeting: “My cousin is studying sociology in university. Last week she and her classmates polled over 1,000 conservative Christians. ‘What would you do if you discovered that your child was a homo sapiens?’ 55% said they would disown them and force them to leave their home.” This tweet, which suggested conservative Christians are not only homophobic but also ignorant, was subtle enough to not feel overtly hateful, but was also aimed directly at multiple cultural stress points, driving a wedge at the point where religiosity and ideology meet. The tweet was also wildly successful, receiving more than 90,000 retweets and nearly 300,000 likes.

This tweet didn’t seek to anger conservative Christians or to provoke Trump supporters. She wasn’t even talking to them. Melanie’s 20,000 followers, painstakingly built, weren’t from #MAGA America (Russia has other accounts targeting them). Rather, Melanie’s audience was made up of educated, urban, left-wing Americans harboring a touch of self-righteousness. She wasn’t selling her audience a candidate or a position — she was selling an emotion. Melanie was selling disgust. The Russians know that, in political warfare, disgust is a more powerful tool than anger. Anger drives people to the polls; disgust drives countries apart.

Accounts like @IamTyraJackson have continued @PoliteMelanie’s work. Professional disinformation isn’t spread by the account you disagree with — quite the opposite. Effective disinformation is embedded in an account you agree with. The professionals don’t push you away, they pull you toward them. While tweeting uplifting messages about Warrick Dunn’s real-life charity work, Tyra, and several accounts we associated with her, also distributed messages consistent with past Russian disinformation. Importantly, they highlighted issues of race and gender inequality. A tweet about Brock Turner’s Stanford rape case received 15,000 likes. Another about police targeting black citizens in Las Vegas was liked more than 100,000 times. Here is what makes disinformation so difficult to discuss: while these tweets point to valid issues of concern — issues that have been central to important social movements like Black Lives Matter and #MeToo — they are framed to serve Russia’s interests in undermining Americans’ trust in our institutions.

These accounts also harness the goodwill they’ve built by engaging in these communities for specific political ends. Consistent with past Russian activity, they attacked moderate politicians as a method of bolstering more polarizing candidates. Recently, Vice President Biden has been the most frequent target of this strategy, as seen in dozens of tweets such as, “Joe Biden is damaging Obama’s legacy with his racism and stupidity!” and “Joe Biden doesn’t deserve our votes!”

The quality of Russia’s work has been honed over several years and millions of social media posts. They have appeared on Instagram, Stitcher, Reddit, Google+, Tumblr, Medium, Vine, Meetup, and even Pokémon Go, demonstrating not only a nihilistic creativity, but also a ruthless efficiency in volume of production. The IRA has been called a “troll farm,” but they are undoubtedly a factory.

While persona like Melanie and Tyra were important to Russian efforts, they were ultimately just tools, interchangeable parts constructed for a specific audience. When shut down, they were quickly replaced by other free-to-create, anonymous accounts. The factory doesn’t stop. They attack issues from both sides, attempting to drive mainstream viewpoints in polar and extreme directions.

In a free society, we must accept that bad actors will try to take advantage of our openness. But we need to learn to question our own and others’ biases on social media. We need to teach — to individuals of all ages — that we shouldn’t simply believe or repost anonymous users because they used the same hashtag we did, and neither should we accuse them of being a Russian bot simply because we disagree with their perspective. We need to teach digital civility. It will not only weaken foreign efforts, but it will also help us better engage online with our neighbors, especially the ones we disagree with.

Russian disinformation is not just about President Trump or the 2016 presidential election. Did they work to get Trump elected? Yes, diligently. Our research has shown how Russia strategically employed social media to build support on the right for Trump and lower voter turnout on the left for Clinton. But the IRA was not created to collude with the Trump campaign. They existed well before Trump rode down that escalator and announced his candidacy, and we assume they will exist in some form well after he is gone. Russia’s goals are to further widen existing divisions in the American public and decrease our faith and trust in institutions that help maintain a strong democracy. If we focus only on the past or future, we will not be prepared for the present. It’s not about election 2016 or 2020.

The IRA generated more social media content in the year following the 2016 election than the year before it. They also moved their office into a bigger building with room to expand. Their work was never just about elections. Rather, the IRA encourages us to vilify our neighbor and amplify our differences because, if we grow incapable of compromising, there can be no meaningful democracy. Russia has dug in for a long campaign. So far, we’re helping them win.

#this is SO important #read it #study it #and pay attention to what you're sharing!!!#us politics

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armeniaitn · 4 years

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Who is interested in the Nagorno -Karabakh conflict escalation?

New Post has been published on https://armenia.in-the.news/economy/who-is-interested-in-the-nagorno-karabakh-conflict-escalation-54582-01-09-2020/

Who is interested in the Nagorno -Karabakh conflict escalation?

The political development unfolding in Minsk, with high possibility to spill over and spread throughout the former Soviet republic of Belarus is sensitive and delicate. As an ordinary observer from an obscured and remote rural village with inconsistent connectivity, I struggle daily to understand what happens next in Minsk. The first information that emerged about opposition rallying against elected President Alexander Lukashenko was worrying and heart breaking as that country has maintained political economic stability. Of course, just as I personally admired him for his courage, the current political developments vividly reminds me of Republic of Sudan in North Africa.

By geography, Belarus is a landlocked former Soviet republic in Eastern Europe. It is bordered by Russia, Ukraine, Poland and Lithuania. While Sudan is circled by seven other countries, it also has to northeast a huge Red Sea. It is third-largest country in Africa, and the third-largest in the Arab world by area before the secession of South Sudan in 2011. Like many other eastern European countries, Belarus has a negative population growth rate and a negative natural growth rate. Belarus has only 9.4 million while Sudan has a population of 43 million (both 2019 estimates by UN office in charge of Global Population Studies)

Belarus is a presidential republic, governed by a president and the National Assembly. The term for each presidency is five years. Under the 1994 constitution, the president could serve for only two terms as president, but a change in the constitution in 2004 eliminated term limits. Lukashenko has been the president of Belarus since 1994.

That was changed. In 1996, Lukashenko called for a controversial vote to extend the presidential term from five to seven years, and as a result, the election that was supposed to occur in 1999 was pushed back to 2001. Throughout the period, groups such as the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) has declared the elections “un-free” because of the opposition parties’ poor results and media bias in favor of the government.

In the case of Sudan, Omar Hassan Ahmad al-Bashir came to power in June 1989. Al-Bashir, who had been in power for more than 30 years, refused to step down, resulting in the convergence of opposition groups to form a united coalition. The government retaliated by arresting more than 800 opposition figures and thousands of protesters, according to the Human Rights Watch.

Many people died because Al-Bashir ordered security forces to disperse the sit-in peaceful demonstrators using tear gas and live ammunition in what is known as the Khartoum massacre, resulting in Sudan’s suspension from the African Union. Eventually, Omar al-Bashir was gone. Sudan opened a new political chapter with a new Prime Minister, Abdalla Hamdok, a 61-year-old economist who worked previously for the UN Economic Commission for Africa.

What makes the comparison interesting, President Alexander Lukashenko is referred to as the last political dictator in Europe. Similar title was awarded to Omar al-Bashir as the longest ruler and dictator in Africa. Significantly, long service in political position must necessarily reflect on the level development and on the lives of the population.

The political unrest in Sudan basically connected to both politics and economy. Sudan is rich with natural resources, as it has oil reserves. Despite that, Sudan still faced formidable economic problems, and its growth was still a rise from a very low level of per capita output. Next, agricultural production remains Sudan’s most-important sector, employing 80 percent of the workforce. Worse is production practices are rudimentary. There has not been efforts, at least, to modernize agriculture to the growing population. In 2018, 45% of the population lives on less than US$3.20 per day, up from 43% in 2010. There is still a huge increase in unemployment, so of course, politics and economy questions are inseparable.

On the opposite side, and in fact better than Sudan, Lukashenko continued a number of Soviet-era policies, such as state-ownership of large sections of the economy, and opposed Western-backed economic shock therapy in the post-Soviet transition. Over 70% of Belarus’s population of 9.49 million resides in urban areas.

The labor force consists of more than six million people, among whom women hold slightly more jobs than men. In some analysis, nearly a quarter of the population is employed by industrial factories. Employment is high in agriculture, manufacturing sales, trading goods, and education. The unemployment rate, according to government statistics, was 1.5% in 2010.

But the key questions are the advantages that President Alexander Lukashenko has under his armpit. While the political situation is unpredictable, Belarus belongs to Eurasian Union, it also has the Minsk Agreement (Russia-Belarus Treaty) as instruments on which to capitalize in attempts to normalize the situation.

Belarus and Russia have been close trading partners and diplomatic allies since the breakup of the Soviet Union. Belarus is dependent on Russia for imports of raw materials and for its export market. However, the future of the Russian-Belarus union has been placed in doubt because of Belarus’ repeated delays of monetary union, the lack of a referendum date for the draft constitution.

The major problem here is Belarus relations with several European Union members including neighboring Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland. The EU has already threatened imposing sanctions, as United States has done in relation to the election held on August 9, 2020. The authorities accused the Russians of trying to destabilize the situation in Belarus in the run up to the presidential elections. Thousands have rallied across Belarus in some of the country’s biggest opposition protests in a decade.

Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, who has emerged as his main rival, pledges to topple his regime and restore democracy. President Alexander Lukashenko, who has ruled the country since 1994, is facing a united and determined democratic opposition in what may be the toughest political fight of his life. Discontent has been simmering for years. Secretary-General António Guterres has issued a statement underlining the importance for all Belarusians to exercise their civil and political rights.

On August 16, President Vladimir Putin and Alexander Lukashenko held discussion on the situation that has developed following the presidential election in Belarus including with due regard to external pressure. The Russian side reaffirmed its readiness to render the necessary assistance to resolve the challenges facing Belarus based on the principles of the Treaty on the Creation of a Union State, as well as through the Collective Security Treaty Organization,if necessary.

In reality, the world is closely watching to see noticeable changes in Belarus. Some experts suggest a national political dialogue, some argue that Lukashenko should have taken a page from Kazakhstan. Nursultan Nazarbayev ruled the country from 1991 to 2019. He resigned in March 2019, but now the Kazakh Security Council’s chairman-for-life, other school of thought says Lukashenko should listen to President Vladimir Putin.

There has been a decade-long economic stagnation and prospects of further economic integration with Russia – seen by many as threatening Belarus sovereignty – has weakened Lukashenko’s image as the guarantor of stability. Belarus has had a troubled relationship with many of its neighbors. There many other issues which Belarus and Russia have to settle to ensure regional stability in the Commonwealth of Independent States, or at least, in the Eurasian Union. Time will, indeed, show a peaceful exit of the crisis, and/or next for Belarus.

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tomorrowusa · 11 days

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Russian state media loves "Moscow Marjorie" Taylor Traitor Greene. They undoubtedly hope that her attempt to oust Speaker Johnson creates chaos and prevents the already overdo aid package to Ukraine from passing.

The Russian government is engaged in an effort to destabilize and weaken liberal democracies. Greene fits in nicely with their plans.

Secret Russian foreign policy document urges action to weaken the U.S.

In a classified addendum to Russia’s official — and public — “Foreign Policy Concept of the Russian Federation,” the ministry calls for an “offensive information campaign” and other measures spanning “the military-political, economic and trade and informational psychological spheres” against a “coalition of unfriendly countries” led by the United States. “We need to continue adjusting our approach to relations with unfriendly states,” states the 2023 document, which was provided to The Washington Post by a European intelligence service. “It’s important to create a mechanism for finding the vulnerable points of their external and internal policies with the aim of developing practical steps to weaken Russia’s opponents.” The document for the first time provides official confirmation and codification of what many in the Moscow elite say has become a hybrid war against the West. Russia is seeking to subvert Western support for Ukraine and disrupt the domestic politics of the United States and European countries, through propaganda campaigns supporting isolationist and extremist policies, according to Kremlin documents previously reported on by The Post. It is also seeking to refashion geopolitics, drawing closer to China, Iran and North Korea in an attempt to shift the current balance of power.

Just a quick word to point out that Putin is under the delusion that his Axis of Authoritarians would have Russia as its head. China is stronger than Russia and will not kowtow to a country which has a GDP not much bigger than Italy's and is suffering enormous losses in a war with a country which has only a quarter of Russia's population.

Using much tougher and blunter language than the public foreign policy document, the secret addendum, dated April 11, 2023, claims that the United States is leading a coalition of “unfriendly countries” aimed at weakening Russia because Moscow is “a threat to Western global hegemony.” The document says the outcome of Russia’s war in Ukraine will “to a great degree determine the outlines of the future world order,” a clear indication that Moscow sees the result of its invasion as inextricably bound with its ability — and that of other authoritarian nations — to impose its will globally.

In addition to old school revanchism, Russia's illegal invasion of Ukraine is a test to see how far the liberal democracies will let Putin go.

For Mikhail Khodorkovsky — the longtime Putin critic who was once Russia’s richest man until a clash with the Kremlin landed him 10 years in prison — it is not surprising that Russia is seeking to do everything it can to undermine the United States. “For Putin, it is absolutely natural that he should try to create the maximum number of problems for the U.S.,” he said. “The task is to take the U.S. out of the game, and then destroy NATO. This doesn’t mean dissolving it, but to create the feeling among people that NATO isn’t defending them.” The long congressional standoff on providing more weapons to Ukraine was only making it easier for Russia to challenge Washington’s global power, he said. “The Americans consider that insofar as they are not directly participating in the war [in Ukraine], then any loss is not their loss,” Khodorkovsky said. “This is an absolute misunderstanding.”

Putin was taken aback by both Ukraine's fierce defense and by Western resolve to protect the independence of a European democratic state. He refuses to admit that he made an enormous blunder so he continues to sacrifice hundreds of thousands of Russians while hoping that his US servants like Greene, Gaetz, and Trump will rescue him.

#marjorie taylor greene #moscow marjorie #dupe of putin #russia #vladimir putin #russian hegemony #invasion of ukraine #subverting western support for uktaine #nato #russian attempts to undermine liberal democracies #democracy vs. dictatorship #stand with ukraine #ukraine aid now #агрессивная война россии #русский реваншизм #русский мiръ #москва марджори #владимир путин #путин хуйло #мясные волны #союз постсоветских клептократических ватников #путин – это лжедмитрий iv а не пётр великий #руки прочь от украины!#геть з україни #вторгнення оркостану в україну #слава україні!#героям слава!

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chessinventor · 2 years

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Putin has been very good at his objective of hijacking the Western Democracies, first he try to indirectly influencing the result of US presidential election, then he funded the Anti-EU and far right politicians in Western Europe and he thought he is holding the Western Europe's lifeline by controlling the oil and natural gas exports to those nations. That is an attempt to control the public opinions which formed the basis of legitimacy of democracies, then finance those who can sway the public opinion that is Russian puppet answerable to Moscow, then the whole industrial output of those nations are kidnapped when Putin could stop the supplies easily.

Democracies is anything but an empty skeleton when it's people are dumb enough to believe in fake news and propaganda that are originated from Russia (that is bypassing the political parties and its interaction with voters to make important decisions for the state) then with second level of "security" from Russia-sponsored politicians and political parties covertly serving the interests of Moscow, and when it's facing inflation caused by the food crisis due to blocked export form Ukrainian seaport (the indirect threat of death for the poor), and the electricity which is the blood of its industry and economic productivity is generated by Russian oil and natural gas (thus threatening the income and livelihood of basically everyone). If COVID is indeed an conspiracy against the poor then the world would got much worse when Russia is continuing its current strategy of trying to blackmail the world into submission. It is surely irritated not just the politicians but every corporations when their profit is damaged and eventually every citizens seeing the costs of living went skyrocketed. Embolden by Ukrainian resistance, the leaders and political parties are very unlikely to weaken their position on supporting Ukraine. When being a coward is not an option, the other option is first explaining to the public of the Russian blackmail and its consequence, then prepare for a full scale war with Russia as the source of the major trouble for its governance of the people. That is no Russiaphobic but a fight for survival of all the Western democracies.

#Putin

#war

#invasionofUkraine

#Globalaffair

#internationalrelationship

#foreignaffairs

#russiaattack

#deepstate

#ukraine

#foodcrisis

#Russia

#WWII

#strategy

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bbcbreakingnews · 4 years

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Ex-security chief says Russia likely interfered in Brexit and Scotland votes

A former UK security chief today said she believed Russia was likely to have interfered in both the Scottish independence and Brexit votes as MPs prepare to publish a long-awaited report into Moscow’s alleged meddling in British democracy.

Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC) will this morning release the results of an 18 month investigation into alleged Russian interference.

Overnight reports suggest the probe has found that while Russia attempted to influence the Scottish independence referendum, the Kremlin did not try to do the same on the 2016 Brexit vote.

But Baroness Neville-Jones, a former chairman of the British Joint Intelligence Committee, rubbished the suggestion that Moscow may have intervened in one but not the other.

She told Sky News: ‘I am surprised by that. I am not sure I believe it. I think it is unlikely that somehow one was clean and the other was interfered with.

‘I would have expected activity in both, frankly. It is an objective of Russian policy to weaken democratic institutions in countries and to weaken alliances between democracies.

‘So anything that actually increases the chances of the Brexit referendum going the way it did, I am not saying it was a decisive entrance, but it would be surprising if they weren’t interested in that.’

However, she stressed there needed to be a distinction between discovering ‘attempts of doing this kind of thing’ and them being successful.

Baroness Neville Jones, the former chairman of the British Joing Intelligence Committee, today said she believed it was likely that Russia interfered in both the Scottish independence referendum and the Brexit vote

MPs will today publish a long awaited report into alleged Russian meddling in British democracy. Russian President Vladimir Putin is pictured on July 20 this year

The Telegraph reported that the ISC probe found ‘credible open-source commentary that Russia undertook to influence the campaign on Scottish independence’ in 2014.

The paper said the report by MPs and peers described the Kremlin’s role in the vote that could have split the UK as ‘the first post-Soviet interference in a Western democratic election’.

But the ISC reportedly found nothing to suggest Russia played any part in the 2016 European Union poll.

The full document is set to be published following months of delays, days after Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab claimed it was ‘almost certain’ that Russian ‘actors’ had tried to interfere in the 2019 general election.

The publication of the ISC report, prepared by the committee’s members in the previous Parliament, was postponed by Boris Johnson’s decision to call a general election and the need to re-establish the committee’s membership.

Mr Raab said last week that ‘Russian actors’ had tried to influence the 2019 contest by ‘amplifying’ stolen Government papers online.

The documents, relating to US-UK trade talks, were picked up by then Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn who said they were evidence the Conservatives were preparing to open up the NHS to US pharmaceutical companies.

Relations between the UK and Russia have been under severe strain since the Salisbury Novichok poisoning in 2018, which left former double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in hospital and led to the death of Dawn Sturgess.

The incident resulted in Russian diplomats being expelled from Britain by then prime minister Theresa May.

Mr Raab also announced this month, in a move that irked President Vladimir Putin’s administration, that he was imposing sanctions on 25 Russian nationals linked to the death in custody of lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, who died in 2009 after exposing massive corruption in the Interior Ministry.

The ISC’s alleged findings of interference in British democracy come after the UK, US and Canada claimed that Russian intelligence-linked hackers tried to steal details of research into coronavirus vaccines.

The Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC) claims Russia tried to influence the 2014 Scottish independence referendum

Russia’s ambassador to the UK Andrei Kelin dismissed the accusations in a BBC interview.

He said his country had no interest in interfering in British domestic politics.

‘We do not interfere at all,’ he said.

‘We do not see any point in interference because for us, whether it will be (the) Conservative Party or Labour’s party at the head of this country, we will try to settle relations and to establish better relations than now.’

Asked about the alleged attempts to steal details of coronavirus research, Mr Kelin said: ‘I don’t believe in this story at all, there is no sense in it.’

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opedguy · 4 years

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Russian Propaganda a Fact of Life

LOS ANGELES (OnlineColumnist.com), March 20, 2020.--Former FBI Director 75-year-old Robert Mueller spent $40 million and 22-months to find the obvious that Russia engages in pernicious propaganda, also finding that 73-year-old President Donald Trump did not conspire with Kremlin to win the 2016 presidential election. Former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and most of the Democrat Party insisted Trump conspired with Russia to win the election. Lead impeachment prosecutor Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), even after Mueller delivered his March 23, 2019 Final Report, insisted he had proof of Trump’s collusion with Russia. Yet Schiff never produced any evidence because there wasn’t any. Now Russia’s accused by the European Union [EU] of a “significant disinformation campaign,” to sow chaos in the West while it battles the global coronavirus AKA CoV-2 or Covid-19 outbreak. EU officials insist that Russia’s up to its old tricks.

Russia’s FSB, formerly the KGB, works around the clock to supply Western news outlets fake news, something their good at with Russia’s state run media. EU documents show that Russia supplies fake news to social networks like Facebook, Twitter and Google, all of which disseminate news to its millions of viewers. U.K, German, French, Spanish, Italian and French social media outlets get a continuous flow of fake news from Russia, as does the U.S. “A significant disinformation campaign by Russian state media and pro-Kremilin outlets regarding COVID-19 is ongoing,” said a March 19 classified nine-page EU report. EU officials believe the Kremilin is trying to subvert Western democracies for the purpose of gaining more domination in world economic markets. Russia was kicked out the G8 when Putin decided to invade Crimea March 1, 2014.

Russia has the 11th ranked Gross Domestic Product at $1,637,892 trillion, just below Canada at $1,730, 917 trillion and above South Korea at $1,629,892 trillion. Unlike Korea and Canada, Russia’s GDP is heavily based on petroleum and natural gas sales, something crashing in the SARS CoV-2 global pandemic. In comparison to the United States at $21,439.453 trillion or EU at $18,705.132, Russia looks like a minor economic power. With oil crashing to under $20 a barrel, Russia’s economy is on thin ice. If there are games played by Russian trolls loosely connected with the Kremlin, it’s because Russia wants to stay relevant. Russian President Vladimir Putin, whose High Court granted him permission to rule until 2036, uses his military to intimidate more defenseless countries like Georgia and Ukraine. Other than that, Russia has watched the world pass them by.

Whatever propaganda spews from Moscow or St. Petersburg, the West isn’t impacted as long its tagged and identified. EU’s database uncovered 80 cases of disinformation since Jan. 22, fake news stories, about the coronavirus outbreak. One fake story said a U.S. soldier spread Covid-19 in Lithuania and Ukraine, both countries with poor relations to Moscow. “The overarching aim of Kremlin disinformation is to aggravate the public health crisis in Western countries . . in line with the Kremlin’s broader strategy of attempting to subvert European societies,” said the EU report. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov denies that Russia has an organized disinformation campaign to subvert the West. “Pro-Kremlin disinformation messages advance a narrative that the coronavirus is a human creation, weaponized by the West,” the EU report concludes, not that different from U.S. conspiracy theories.

Communist China, Russia, North Korea and Iran have much in common when it comes to manufacturing fake news stories to indoctrinate their people or countries around the planet. Putin recently said he’s not a Tsar because he “goes to work everyday” for the Russian people. He can’t explain why his country does not allow independent journalists or, for that matter, why he asked the Russian High Court to grant him several extensions to remain president for life. No one in the U.S. EU or NATO should be surprised by Russian efforts to subvert Western democracies. While the West battles China-originated global coronavirus pandemic, it’s a perfect time for Putin’s bots to slam the West with more disinformation. Disinformation is the technical name for fake news, making up stories to advance political agendas. Watching his economy shrink, Putin looks for ways to assert power.

Putin wants to convince the EU that he would do a better job of managing the SARS CoV-2 pandemic, essentially accusing the Brussels-based European Commission of incompetence. Much like China that rushed into the EU to provide medical supplies for a pandemic they started, Russia likes to emasculate the EU and United States. Russian disinformation has been directed to hit EU countries like Italy and Spain, currently reeling from runaway coronavirus outbreaks. Whether Russia’s disinformation is designed to influence a U.S. election or manage the global Covid-19 pandemic, it all aims to weaken public opinion about Western democracies. Russian trolls are especially active when Putin thinks Russia is becoming more irrelevant on the world stage, especially after watching the price of oil and natural gas fall to 20-year lows, making Putin look bad.

About the Author

John M. Curtis writes politically neutral commentary analyzing spin in national and global news. He’s editor of OnlineColumnist.com and author of Dodging The Bullet and Operation Charisma.

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paulbenedictblog · 4 years

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New Post has been published on %http://paulbenedictsgeneralstore.com%

Bbc news Elecciones generales 2019: ¿cuál es la evidencia de que Rusia interfirió?

Bbc news

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A leak of confidential UK govt paperwork within the scuttle-up to remaining December's traditional election has been blamed on Russian actors. Nonetheless what evidence is there to claim the Russian govt itself tried to interfere in British politics?

With comely about two weeks to switch prior to election day, Labour chief Jeremy Corbynpublished a trove of confidential paperworkoutlining talks between UK and US officials a pair of imaginable future trade deal.

The leak fuelled a debate in regards to the style forward for the NHS and made the headlines for days, specifically afterevidence emergedblaming Russians for the leak.

Nonetheless a key keep an bid to remains unanswered, three months after the vote: Was the Russian govt immediately racy?

Bbc news Reddit and the elusive 'Gregoratior'

The 451-web insist trove of paperworkfirst emerged on-line in October.

A user going by the name "Gregoratior" posted a link to the paperwork on discussion web insist Reddit, suggesting the e-newsletter would "make some noise".

Image copyright Reddit

It did now not within the origin: simplest a cramped substitute of Reddit customers observed the publish and commented on it.

On Twitter, politicians and journalists additionally failed to immediately concentrate on the leak, no topic repeated attempts by a Twitter fable, all yet again with the tackle "Gregoratior", to salvage their consideration. Since then, the fable has been suspended.

Image copyright Twitter

Bbc news BBC Trending

The programme that takes an investigative see at social media, from the BBC World Carrier.

Hear to our investigation 'Did Russia leak British secrets on-line?'

With less than a week to switch prior to the election,Reddit launched a assertionlinking the "Gregoratior" fable to a acknowledged disinformation campaign popping out of Russia.

The web insist banned the fable, along with 60 other connected accounts suspected of misusing the platform and intelligent in what they called "influence operations".

We asked Reddit if we may per chance well survey the evidence the firm holds linking these accounts to Russian operators - but they declined to point out us.

Image copyright Press Affiliation

Image caption Jeremy Corbyn: "At no stage did the head minister or someone issue that those paperwork were proper"

It additionally remains unclear how the Labour Event got support of the leaked paperwork. At the time, they did now not yelp their source, and so that they did now not reply to BBC Trending's latest requests for observation.

At the time of the leak, Mr Corbyn described suggestions that Labour may per chance well per chance collect benefited from a Russian operation as "nonsense".

Bbc news 'Operation Secondary Infektion'

Nonetheless there is stronger evidence pointing to the involvement of Russian hackers - albeit now now not conclusive proof that the Kremlin itself is racy.

Final yr, Facebook shut downdozens of accounts, pages and groups scuttle from Russiafor intelligent in what the firm described as "coordinated inauthentic behaviour".

They were linked to what the Digital Forensic Be taught Lab (DFRLab), half of the Atlantic Council assume tank, would later name as "Operation Secondary Infektion" - a disinformation campaign stemming from Russia.

Thru a network of bogus social media accounts, this campaign tried to spread forged paperwork and fraudulent news tales that, in step with DFRLab, "attacked Western pursuits and cohesion".

Image copyright FunnyJunk.com

Image caption Among the forged tales were suggestions that Spanish intelligence modified into conscious a pair of Remainer reputation to rupture Boris Johnson

Continuously translated into numerous languages, pretty a big selection of those tales were published on websites commence to contributions from the public.

When the leak of UK-US trade paperwork hit the headlines, commence-source investigators observed how the recordsdata were published and disbursed on-line. Quickly, the similarities with "Operation Secondary Infektion" modified into evident.

"The tradecraft modified into fully identical," says Ben Nimmo, who worked on the usual DFRLab myth and is at this time head of investigations at US firm Graphika.

Nimmo outlined the similarities between the earlier operation and the UK leaks ina mythlaunched in December.

"The identical form of pages were being old, comparable username systems were being old," says Lisa-Maria Neudert, a researcher on the Oxford Web Institute. "It both is an actor who's replicating these efforts or it's some distance the identical actor."

Image copyright Reddit

Image caption But one more forged story which modified into half of the operation suggested the Staunch IRA had posted an Arabic-language invitation to Islamist warring parties on-line

There modified into then all yet again one key difference: while "Operation Secondary Infektion" spread fraudulent tales in step with forged paperwork - time and all yet again particular and preposterous fakes - the "Gregoratior" leak of trade talk paperwork looks legit.

The Cabinet Location of enterprise declined to observation on the authenticity of the paperwork, but no govt reliable has yet denounced them as forgeries.

"The tall keep an bid to is calm: How did inner UK govt paperwork stay conscious on Reddit within the first site?" says Mr Nimmo.

As a consequence of the likelihood that hackers may per chance well were thinking gaining salvage entry to to the paperwork, the National Cyber Security Centre is at this time investigating.

Bbc news Moscow denies involvement in leaks

While the evidence aspects lend a hand to Russian territory, it's some distance extra sophisticated to search out out who specifically modified into carrying out the operation and, extra importantly, on whose orders.

"It modified into sophisticated, it modified into effectively resourced," says Mr Nimmo. "The likeliest candidate is both some perform of Russian yelp operator or some proxy of the Russian yelp operators." Nonetheless he and numerous alternative other consultants stay wanting drawing a definitive line to the Russian govt.

Image copyright Getty Photos

Image caption Russian President Vladimir Putin has denied accusations of Russian interference

"Certain, Russia does collect that approach to their playbook," Ms Neudert says. "Nonetheless it'll also additionally be deepest actors, some perform of hacker collective, it'll be some perform of tech-savvy trolling... There are pretty a big selection of styles of actors which may per chance well be hacking deepest data."

The Russian Embassy in London denied any hyperlinks to both "Operation Secondary Infektion" or the leak of UK-US trade paperwork.

Numerous consultants warned that an weird level of curiosity on Russia may per chance well deflect consideration from other campaigns.

"Russia has a habit of looking out to interfere in western international locations' elections," says Elisabeth Braw, a senior study fellow on the Royal United Companies and products Institute assume tank. "They're extraordinarily correct at corrupting our public discourse."

"Nonetheless we now collect a bother where or now now not it's very easy guilty Russia," Ms Braw says. "That's extraordinarily dreadful, because we neglect to survey the actions of alternative international locations that want to weaken our societies, equivalent to China, North Korea, or Iran."

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Media captionA fact-checker's data to stopping faux news

Bbc news Unreleased myth

In October, the UK Parliament's Intelligence and Security Committee achieved a myth outlining the pretty a big selection of systems by which Russia has lately tried to interfere with British democracy.

Downing Facet road delayed the e-newsletter of the parable, prompting accusations that it may per chance well per chance belooking out to suppress its key conclusions. Quantity 10 denies the accusation and says a customary timetable has been adopted.

E-newsletter is now anticipated later this yr, once a brand new Intelligence and Security Committee has been appointed.

Hear:BBC Trending's "Did Russia leak British secrets on-line?" is accessible now

Is there a story we ought to be investigating?Email us

Observe BBC Trending on Twitter@BBCtrending, and procure us onFacebook. All our tales are atbbc.com/trending.

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worldpolitics2017-blog · 6 years

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Nato: a Non- Aggressive Treaty Organisation?

On April 1949 in Washington DC, twelve nations, helmed by the United States, signed the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO). Upon its ratification, first Secretary General Lord Ismay defined the alliance’s purpose “To keep the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down”. At its inception, NATO’s founding principle was that of a defensive organisation for collective security, conveying that an attack on one or more members is an attack on all. Since its establishment, NATO has remained allied and active, even after the disintegration of the Soviet Union. Although some critics of NATO believe that its role has become obsolete after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the organisation is still operating and expanding. However, recent events indicate that NATO has potentially deviated from its original purpose as a defensive organisation and has instead become a more aggressive one. For example, NATO’s 2011 attack in Pakistan killed 24 people and was described as “unprovoked and indiscriminate” by the Pakistani military. Perhaps most significantly, Russia and many Eastern European countries have questioned NATO’s stance as a defense collective, a sentiment which was exacerbated by the 1999 bombing of Yugoslavia.

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/joseph-v-micallef/nato-seeking-relevance-in_b_13988636.html

From a Russian perspective, NATO’s initial purpose to create an alliance against possible Russian aggression, was rendered obsolete after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. However, not only did NATO remain active, but it began to expand. By Russian view, NATO’s continued existence after World War II, when Russia’s military strength was reduced by one quarter, indicates that the alliance was not purely defensive. NATO’s expansion infuriated the former Soviets, as they believed NATO wanted to continue oppressing their non-Western conforming ideology. Not only was NATO membership expanded to include bordering countries such as Latvia, Estonia, and Lithuania, but other actions taken by NATO proved aggressive to Russia.

In 2008, for example, the United States, NATO’s de facto leader, vocally showed support of Georgia and Ukraine’s admittance into NATO by saying that “individual liberty, democracy and the rule of law” should be pursued in all countries. Russia considered this a provocation, as it had been previously established that these countries, due to their proximity to Russia, would not be included in the NATO alliance. However, despite Russia’s rejection of Western influence, the Kremlin has previously cooperated with NATO in global operations. In 2008, Russia volunteered help to NATO’s International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) mission in Afghanistan by allowing ISAF equipment to be transported across its territory while also providing training facilities. In 2013, this collaboration continued when Russia hosted and trained professionals in counter-narcotics identification in an effort to prevent cross-border transportation of substances. Additionally, NATO and Russia also collaborated in the STANDEX program, a scientific venture designed to develop technology to detect explosives in transport facilities. However, despite initially positive interactions, Russia-NATO collaboration was halted in 2014 due to disagreements over the Ukrainian crisis.

Russia views the attempt of NATO to integrate Ukraine, and thus distance it from Russia, as a direct threat. Russian view is that losing Ukraine to the already far reaching Western powers is unacceptable, and in doing so NATO will use Ukraine’s unique position regarding Russia for its own benefit. In 2014, Ukrainian president Yanukovych was overthrown. Russia argues that Yanukovych was democratically elected and was overthrown by an “illegal coup”. Consequently, Russia annexed Crimea to retaliate against an overreaching West. An underlying reason for Russian invasion of Crimea was because Russia cannot afford NATO positioning a naval base in such proximity to Russian territory. Through a Putin-led initiative, it was Russia’s goal to steer Ukraine away from the reach of the West and return it to its pro-Russian roots.

https://theredphoenix.files.wordpress.com/2014/03/ukraine.gif

Ukraine’s relationship with NATO is a contentious one; differing opinions towards integrating with the West served as the catalyst for the Ukraine crisis and Russia’s annexation of Crimea. The Ukraine crisis began on November 2013, when Ukraine president Viktor Yanukovych, supported by Russian government, stopped the implementation of the Ukraine-European Union Association Agreement, and instead accepted a $15 billion investment from Moscow. This compromise was designed to foster political and economic collaboration between between the EU, Euratom (European Atomic Energy Community), and Ukraine. The halt in negotiations, combined with country-wide protests and the fleeing of Yanukovych himself from Kiev, left the country in a state of political chaos. Increased support from pro-Russian regions of Ukraine, added to the heavy presence of Russian military in the border area, culminated in Russia’s annexation of Crimea in early 2014.

Tensions between the post-revolutionary Ukrainian government and pro-Russian forces have divided the country into those who support a Western trajectory, and those that reject the notion of the West as the leader in the world stage. This clashing of ideologies has shaped the differing perspectives in Ukraine regarding NATO. For pro-Russian forces in Ukraine, such as supporters of Yanukovych, NATO is a Western-dominated member club that pushes for the expansion of their rhetoric through gradual addition of former Soviet states. This group rejects Western ideology and refuses to accept the fact that the West will overrule their Soviet-rooted ideology. Alternatively, pro-Western forces in Ukraine, such as supporters of the pro-EU Yushchenko (Yanukovych’s largest political rival), see NATO membership as a way into the developed league of countries, and a chance to have a greater world influence. Current Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko, a supporter of Euromaidan protests for closer European integration during the Ukrainian Crisis, expressed his goal of economic, political and military reform in order to gain acceptance into NATO by 2020.Pro-NATO groups in Ukraine believe that it is in their best self-interest to be accepted into the NATO community as this is the only way they will achieve global relevance.

The United Kingdom is another country desiring to retain its global relevance in the current political climate. There is some dispute between foreign policy experts on the impact that the referendum in which Britain voted to leave the European Union, known colloquially as Brexit, will have on Britain-NATO relations. Expert on Defence and Security at The German Marshall Fund of the United States Bruno Lété believes that post-Brexit, “London will seek to reinforce its role and commitments to NATO”, considering that NATO now remains the only option the United Kingdom has for continued cooperation with European member states. Award winning journalist Paul Taylor agrees with Léte, pointing out that Britain will “overcompensate for leaving the EU by investing more in NATO”, and believes that Britain will likely work closely with the United States, a heavy power player in NATO.Conversely, Politico’s Stefano Stefanini believes that Brexit will create small rifts within the West and result in the United States having to choose between maintaining a good relationship with the UK or with EU member states, thus weakening Britain’s power in NATO.

Ultimately, Britain benefits from the political unity and stability that NATO enlargement would offer. In the 2016 Warsaw Summit, a meeting of the heads of states of NATO members, NATO stated that "the Alliance does not seek confrontation and poses no threat to Russia”, and emphasized that the purpose of NATO enlargement is not to infuriate Russia. Rather, they give the option to apply to any state to reassure that the core of European Security is prosperity and stability for Europe. Consequently, Britain sees European stability directly linked to economic growth, and is in favour of an open-door policy regarding new member state’s application.

Britain thus deems it essential to integrate regions that were once under Soviet control into NATO for continued European stability. As more former Soviet states who historically opposed Western integration join NATO, Western influence is able to grow. As a result, security increases and mitigates the threat of a possible future Russian confrontation. Britain, as geographically located in Europe, wants the assurance that the threat of Russian conflict is abolished through the embodiment of Western values throughout Europe. Also, when former Soviet countries join NATO, they are voluntarily accepting Western ideology and values such as democracy and market liberalization ideals, facilitating further economic and political collaboration. This is widely beneficial for the United Kingdom as it opens up new markets and eases the access to raw materials.

https://www.pinterest.co.uk/pin/142144931963569512/

NATO’s role as a defense collective has been compromised by its aggressive attacks such as those in Pakistan and Yugoslavia, but ultimately it was founded on the principle of defense. Despite Russia’s argument that NATO behaves otherwise, the organisation has taken deliberate precaution to avoid provoking Russia. For example, in 1997, the NATO-Ukraine council was set up after NATO accepted the first post-Soviet states of Czech Republic, Poland and Hungary. During the first round of integration of former states under Soviet control, NATO understood that accepting Ukrainian membership would be taken as a direct threat by Russia. At the time, NATO’s goal was to incentivise Russia to become less West-opposed and to gradually not see the NATO as aggressive. Consequently, NATO deliberately did not include Ukraine in order to avoid Russian retaliation, demonstrating NATO’s commitment to remain a defensive organization. Given the actions of Russia in the Ukrainian crisis, it was imperative for NATO to act on its defensive principles and intervene in Russia’s annexation of Crimea, thus forsaking the aforementioned intention to avoid confrontation with Russia.

- Avni Bodwadkar and Gloria Banuelos

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bountyofbeads · 4 years

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That Uplifting Tweet You Just Shared? A Russian Troll Sent It

Here’s what Russia’s 2020 disinformation operations look like, according to two experts on social media and propaganda.

By DARREN Linvill & PATRICK Warren |

Published November 27, 2019 | Rolling Stone | Posted November 27, 2019 |

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Darren Linvill is an associate professor of communication at Clemson. His work explores state-affiliated disinformation campaigns and the strategies and tactics employed on social media. Patrick Warren is an associate professor of economics at Clemson. Dr. Warren’s research focuses on the operation of organizations in the economy such as for-profit and non-profit firms, bureaucracies, political parties, armies, and propaganda bureaus.

#u.s. presidential elections #presidential elections #elections #election integrity #election interference #russia #u.s. news #u.s. politics #tech #technology #tech news #disinformation #politics and government #republican politics #political science #us politics #politics

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musingsofmaniacs · 7 years

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The Slap that Changed The World

All Muhammad Bouazizi wanted to do was to sell his fruits. But his stall was encroaching the premises of Municipal Office of Tunis. So a policewoman, Fedya Hamdi confronted him about it, and the ensuing argument turned ugly when the police woman slapped him and confiscated his produce. Humiliated, the fruit seller approached higher authorities to have his fruits returned. He was refused. Bouazizi turned hysterical and did something that he would never have thought would change everything.

Muhammad Bouazizi. (Image Courtesy: Wikipedia)

He set himself up on fire. And then, something happened.

Tunisia is surrounded by relatively poor countries, and is among the more prosperous ones. A relatively peaceful and stable, riots were rare. Of course, a despot as the head of the government for a long time came with a slew of problems that are typical of a despotic regime, but all was OK, until that act of self immolation by Muhammad Bouazizi.

Protests broke out, massive in nature. Rioting occurred in streets like never before. The populace rose up against Ben Ali, the president and all the detentions, executions, clampdown, curfew did little to stop the anger that had reached the point of no return. 28 days later Ben Ali fled to Saudi Arabia and after after a few adjustments archetypal of a violent revolution, democracy rushed through to its citizens.

So far so good.

Tahrir Square (Image Courtesy: EPA)

The news reached the world almost immediately, through the social media. It also reached the Egyptian people, who came to a realisation that theirs was a situation remarkably familiar and similar. Protests broke out, fierce, and this time with a much greater coverage. This was probably the watershed moment for Facebook, when it truly transformed from a selfie sharing platform to a force so potent that Hosni Mubarak, the Egyptian strongman was slighted by it. For days end, the protesters sat at Tahrir Square, made new friends from people all over the world, sang the songs of a new era which they were sure of bringing, filmed the brutal acts Mubarak ordered his soldiers to commit towards his own citizens and shared it, and it seemed became one united entity against a brutal regime.

Hosni stepped down too, and the world romanticised the idea of a protester, a nobody with no money or power, could take on the entire system with their tanks and its missiles. The Time Magazine paid a magnificent tribute to this institution by proclaiming the protester as the ‘Person Of The Year’.

The revolution turned to Libya, where it turned a bit prolonged and ugly. Siege by the people, failure of outside intervention and a brutal conflict between rebels and Muammar Gaddafi’s forces protracted the war for a long time. The vacuum in governance it created created some extremist terrorist movements, many aligned with malicious organizations like the al-Qaeda. In the end, Gaddafi was deposed, dragged through the streets of Sirte, his birthplace, and shot. His body, along with that of his slain sympathizers’ was stored in a freezer at local market and put on display for days.

Gaddafi’s dead body being captured by a smartphone (Image Courtesy: AFP)

The wave, or the spring as it came to be described snaked northwards while all of this happened and reached Bahrain, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Palestine, Iraq and Syria. It was quickly crushed in Saudi and Bahrain. The regime in Bahrain even went to the extent of razing down a landmark in the capital Manama, called Pearl Roundabout, because protesters were camping around it and the regime feared that the place would become the next Tahrir Square.

As an offshoot, the protests reached even to the countries like USA, India and China. In the latter, it was suppressed as soon as the watchdogs got the whiff of it. In 2011, taking a leaf from the book of their Arabian counterparts on raging against a despotic family dabbing into highly corrupt shenanigans, India decided to take Anti Corruption protests to a new heights and while there were no brutalities as seen in the Arab countries, the movement did change the political landscape of the nation significantly. In the US, the protesters took to the Wall Street to give the finger to the White Collar Mafia that robbed them (and continues to do so) of their wealth by gambling it off all the while filling their pockets.

Arvind Kejriwal during the protests. (Image Courtesy: AFP)

Parallely Vladimir Putin had just begun to flex his muscles. After his meddling in Georgia by sending troops to Abkhazia and South Ossetia Putin had evoked the ire of the Western world. Then he changed the constitution with the help of his lackey Dmitry Medvedev to give him longer term and more power. Then he (allegedly) rigged the general elections, which triggered mass protests and birthed Pussy Riot, but the former KGB agent merrily crushed it all. Then he went on a rampage to make life difficult for opposition, gays and of course journalists. Opponents were conveniently shot or poisoned. It all seemed to lead somewhere.

Pussy Riots, an all girl punk band was a chief Russian Icon of subversion (Image Courtesy:Wikipedia)

In 2014, the nation of Ukraine, a former Soviet territory which gave it one of its heads of the state, begin to boil after Viktor Yanukovych, the erstwhile president refused a closer integration with the EU. A massive pro-EU protests, dubbed the Euromaidan, forced Yanukovych out of Kiev and marked a big victory for the crowd. Until Vladimir Putin decided to take advantage of the situation of a country bitterly divided among pro-Russians and pro-Europeans and annexed Crimea. Since then, Russia has been actively involved in destabilising a pro-Russian Eastern Ukraine, where rebels continue to combat the government and have even accidentally downed a civilian aircraft.

Meanwhile, we return to Syria and Iraq, where the Arab spring turned into a blistering, hot, airless summer. The Bashar al-Assad government was the target of the rebels and the back and forth between rebel and government forces kept continuing. The entire nation was embroiled in a massive civil war, with government resorting to chemical weapons to kill off its own citizens, bombing hospitals and relief camps. Rebels, like in the case of Libya, began getting infiltrated by fundamentalist elements like al-Qaeda. In areas where government ceased to exist, a power vacuum grew.

And this vacuum was filled by a notorious Salafist terrorist organisation with an aim to create a caliphate. It called it itself Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, of Syria, and eventually, just the Islamic State. They distinguished themselves by swanky modern videos with professional looks, an aesthetically designed propaganda magazine, and ruthless videos of beheadings and burning.Their first major victory came with the fall of Mosul in Iraq and they rapidly expanded in Syria and Iraq. Barbaric human rights violation alarmed the world, with incidents like killing, raping and pillaging non-Muslim dominated villages, public beheadings and brutalization of the innocents. Obama and friends were forced to step in after initial reluctance, with a sustained bombing campaign in Iraq. IS became the gravest threat to the stability in the region.

Worth mentioning is the red line that Assad crossed, that of chemical weapons. Obama had promised to intervene if Assad used chemical weapons, and Assad did. But Obama was of course wary of going to Middle-East, so he went to the Republican dominated congress, which promptly sent him back. Obama, weakened from a blow by the Republican party as a revenge for Affordable Care Act, then booked a deal with Putin, by which it was agreed that Assad will dismantle all his chemical weapon stock under supervision of OPCW, an organisation that later would go on to win Nobel Prize for its efforts in ridding Syria of huge stockpiles of deadly chemical weapons. It was of course agreed that any further attempts by Govt. forces to gas its people will not go unpunished.

Clearly it did not work.

The human cost of Syrian Civil War (Image Courtesy: UNICEF)

Assad’s govt. found itself at a prospect of another rounds of sanctions after multiple instances of violations were found post the 2013 agreements, and this is when the proverbial shit began to hit the fan. Russia, which had been instrumental in getting the deal on chemical weapons passed started asserting that the chemical weapon was in fact used by the rebel forces and not the Assad regime, an assertion strongly rebutted by the US and the UN. Things got even messier when Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine illegally in 2014. The entire Western Hemisphere imposed sanctions on Russia. Adding to Russia’s agony were falling oil prices. Cumulatively, Rouble was all but obliterated, and Putin was livid with the current situation. Media continued to get gagged, protestors and opposition continued to get killed, and Putin kept cultivating cult-of-personality persona a la Kims of the DPRK, and selling the dreams of return to the Soviet era superpowerdom. In 2015, Russia finally sent its air force to Syria at Assad’s request, and a beleaguered Assad found himself in a powerful position once again against a host of rebels, some backed by West, some affiliated to al-Qaeda and ISIS (or ISIL or IS or Daesh) itself.

While the superpowers were playing geopolitical soccer, the real cost of war started to pour in, as they somewhat inconveniently always do. The photos of Alan Kurdi’s body washing over to the beach; a gravely injured, muddied and bloodied Syrian kid with a vanquished look in his eyes; reports of boats capsizing in the Mediterranean; bombing of UN aid trucks, shelters and hospitals, the latter being the most cruel sign of absolute breakdown of humanity itself are all too fresh in the collective memory of the discerning half of the public. The rest, well, they had started to worry about the other problem that such strifes create: Refugees and Immigrants.

UKIP’s Leave Ad and Nigel Farage (Image Courtesy: Getty)

As refugees began pouring in Europe, cracks began to emerge. Conflicts among member states vis-a-vis accommodation of immigrants and refugees coupled with the never ending crowd of refugees pushing against the borders developed into a full blown crisis. Angela Merkel, the de facto leader of Europe and its most powerful leader became the refugee angel for persuading Europe to open its borders, accommodate more people and herself allowed thousands to get into Germany. Initially hailed by her compatriots as a hero, the mood soon soured when hundreds of reports of rapes and molestation emerged in Cologne, one of the key immigrant sanctuary cities. Paris was rocked with deadly terrorist attacks, at the Bataclan and later on at Nice. As refugees continued to pour in, the far right parties which until recently were considered toxically xenophobic started to gain traction among an otherwise highly liberal Europe. Geert Wilders of Netherlands, Alternative fur Deutschland from Germany, Beppe Grillo of Italy, Viktor Orban of Hungary, Norbert Hofer of Austria, and most prominently Marine Le Pen of France and Nigel Farage of UK cashed in on anti-immigrant sentiment, even fanning them when they needed fanning. The best solution these populists found for immigrant and terrorist problem (equal in their eyes) was to leave the European Union. They felt EU’s constricting bureaucracy and its rules meant loss of autonomy and loss of control over their borders.

Europe’s Far Right. Clockwise from Top Left: Norbert Hofer (Austria), Marine Le Pen (France), Beppe Grillo (Italy) and Geert Wilders (Netherlands). Image Courtesy: The Telegraph

Campaigning chiefly on the immigrants and islamophobia (because of course: immigrants = Terrorists = Muslims), Nigel Farage gained strong foothold for the ‘Leave’ vote. A vote (ill-conceived in hindsight) called by David Cameron to strengthen his pro-European position among his peers and opposition. He miscalculated, grossly. It did not help at all that opposition Jeremy Corbyn’s response was tepid and uninvolved, even though he voiced his support for EU.

In 2012, Greece as at the brink of bankruptcy. A solvency crisis fuelled by unchecked spending and corruption, Greece was on the verge of defaulting its massive loans to EU. If Greece failed to pay, then it would have had no other choice but to leave the EU. A Euro-hostile leftist government headed by arrogant and cocksure leaders did little to help the matters and mush to raise grave concerns over the fact that Greece leaving could mean a major blow to EU, that Greece leaving could create a domino effect that could blow up the Nobel Prize winning bloc and drown the world economy. Bankers and leaders scrambled day and night to come up with a deal and save Greece. They rejoiced, thinking that they had saved EU.

And then UK just exits. The British people vote ‘Leave’. David Cameron resigns. There is a Hindi saying: चींटी पकड़ ली, हाथी जाने दे दिया| Roughly, it translates to “Catching the ant while the Elephant slips away”.

Brexit, as it came to be fashionably known, sent shockwaves across the world. The biggest jolt to established world order and a shot in the arm to the fringe, the people of Britain took a decision that was widely characterized as dangerously reckless by experts all over the world. All of a sudden the world seemed to look unpredictable. Anything could happen.

And ‘anything’ did happen. The Islamophobia, the refugee crisis, and a general lack of charisma took the most unlikely anti-establishment character to the White House: Donald John Trump. The real estate reality star with his names on skyscrapers all across the world. Trump’s win mainly stemmed from a discontent among the working class with what they perceived as ‘elites’ ripping them off, demographic dilution due to immigration and its perceived effect on jobs, and from discontent among young democrats resulting abstention from voting. Also nudging the scales was intervention by the Russian Intelligence into the elections. Russian state-backed hackers allegedly stole emails from Democrats and Clintons and this leak followed Hillary to her political grave. Trump officials like Mike Flynn and Jeff Sessions were found to be communicating with Russian ambassador Sergei Kislyak and former has been fired. I will not write much about here because it is everywhere. No point in feeding from the same carcass, as John Oliver said.

Divider-in-Chief

Russia continues its operation to this day. Not long ago, Syria decided to use the chemical weapons on civilians. Russia has once again denied the hand of Assad’s forces and blamed it on the rebels. The US was forced to attack a Syrian defence base, where some russian soldiers were also stationed. The relations between Russia and US, once again become frosty. The on again off again relationship continues like a bad soap opera. North Korea’s craziness is now taller than their tall Bond-Villain-Lairesque hotel, and Seoul still remains the world city that can be decimated by a military hardened from punching trees on its way southwards, a ballistic missile that reaches Alaska and a leadership known for its unpredictability. UK has never been in a worse shape, with increasing terror attacks and decreasing confidence in the government. At least Theresa May can thank her stars that her long, hard political career didn’t come to a point where she lost to a candidate with a bucket on his head. Hillary Clinton unfortunately doesn’t have that privilege. The one heartening development amidst the West’s slide to the far-right was election of Emmanuel Macron and defeat of ‘French Trump’, Marine Le Pen. Macron has been hailed as a manna from heaven for Europe, and the indications are that he indeed is.

All Bouazizi wanted to do was sell fruits.

A TL;DR Info-graphic of the politics of this decade. Images that are not flags shown (Clockwise from top right): Euromaidan protests in Kiev, Vladimir Putin, MH17 debris, Alan Kurdi, Donald Trump, Brexit, Narendra Modi, Destruction of Pearl Square, Manama)

Sincerely,

Captain Not So Obvious

Source: As the article is quite exhaustive, I didn’t bother to cite a lot of sources. All information is taken from major Newspapers, Websites, and non-dodgy Wikipedia pages. Readers are welcome to verify the facts, and especially to point out any inadvertent inaccuracies.

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