(Archive link)

> Matuss Sutaj Estok called the suspect a “lone wolf” discontent with Bratislava’s policies

> The man who critically injured Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico on Wednesday was a fierce critic of the latter’s decision to stop arms shipments to Ukraine, Interior Minister Matuss Sutaj Estok has said.

> Fico was shot at point-blank range several times on Wednesday as he greeted supporters in the small town of Handlova. The assailant was immediately arrested and the prime minister was rushed to a hospital in serious condition. Local authorities said earlier that there was a “clear political motivation” behind the attack.

> Media reports identified the attacker as Juraj Cintula, 71, said to be the founder of the Slovak Association of Writers and a supporter of the opposition Progressive Slovakia party.

> According to the minister, the suspect closely followed domestic and international events, and protested against several government policies, including the closure of the Special Prosecutor’s Office, and the suspension of military aid to Ukraine. Fico, a critic of the Western stance on the Ukraine conflict, campaigned on a promise to cut arms deliveries to Kiev, which he proceeded to do after taking over as prime minister after the election last autumn’

> “He stated these reasons why he disagrees with the government policy and why he decided to assassinate the Prime Minister,” Sutaj Estok said, describing the attacker as “the so-called lonely wolf” not linked to any groups.

(There is a video at the link of a press conference with the relevant authorities)

(Archive link)

> Some American and European politicians believe an escalation would help preserve their hegemony, according to Sergey Naryshkin

> A number of Western leaders believe they would be able to maintain their hegemony if they plunge the world deeper into turmoil, information possessed by Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) suggests, according to the agency’s head, Sergey Naryshkin.

> The SVR chief’s statements come as French President Emmanuel Macron and several officials from the Baltic states have repeatedly hinted in recent months at the possibility of deploying Western troops to Ukraine. Russia has warned that such a move would escalate the conflict.

> Speaking during a plenary meeting of the Federation Council on Tuesday, Naryshkin stated that his agency had obtained information that “some Euro-Atlantic politicians consider it possible to unleash a large-scale military conflict in order to maintain their hegemony.”

> He noted that there are “strong reasons” to believe that such an escalation could actually occur if the West decides that it would be “reasonably safe” and beneficial to its interests.

> However, the spy chief admitted that there are also “truly responsible” global and regional players in the world who, if united, could have the potential to “ensure the impossibility of unleashing such a conflict, including the use of nuclear weapons.”

WSJ Source for claims

> Foreign bondholders paused Kiev’s debt payments in 2022, but their patience is reportedly running out

> A group of foreign bondholders have taken steps to force Ukraine to begin repaying its debts as soon as next year, the Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday. If they succeed, Kiev could hemorrhage $500 million every year on interest payments alone.

> The group, which includes investment giants Blackrock and Pimco, granted Kiev a two-year debt holiday in 2022, gambling that the conflict with Russia would have concluded by now.

> With no end to the fighting in sight, the lenders have now hired lawyers at Weil Gotshal & Manges and bankers from PJT Partners to meet with Ukrainian officials and strike a deal whereby Ukraine would resume making interest payments next year in exchange for having a significant chunk of its debt written off, anonymous sources told the Wall Street Journal.

> The group holds around a fifth of Ukraine’s $20 billion in outstanding Eurobonds, the newspaper reported. While this figure represents a fraction of Ukraine’s total external debt of $161.5 billion, servicing the interest on these bonds would cost the country $500 million annually, the bondholders said.

> Should the bondholders fail to strike a deal with Kiev by August, Ukraine could default. This would damage the country’s credit rating and restrict its ability to borrow even more money in the future.

> According to the newspaper, Ukrainian officials are hoping that the US and other Western governments will take its side during talks with the bondholders. However, a group of these countries have already offered Ukraine a debt holiday on around $4 billion worth of loans until 2027, and are reportedly concerned that any deal with the bondholders would see private lenders being repaid before them.

> Ukraine already relies on foreign aid to keep government departments open and state employees paid.

> According to the Wall Street Journal, some bondholders have suggested that the US and EU could use frozen Russian assets to pay off Ukraine’s debts. While around $300 billion in assets belonging to the Russian central bank have been frozen in American and European banks since 2022, the US only passed legislation allowing for their seizure last month, and no similar legal mechanism exists in Europe, where the vast majority of these assets are held.

> The International Monetary Fund (IMF) and European Central Bank (ECB) have both urged governments not to steal this money, with ECB chief Christine Lagarde warning last month that doing so would risk “breaking the international order that you want to protect.”

> By Tarik Cyril Amar, a historian from Germany working at Koç University, Istanbul, on Russia, Ukraine, and Eastern Europe, the history of World War II, the cultural Cold War, and the politics of memory

> The meaning of the words ‘civil society’ changes depending on whether Washington is speaking about protests inside or outside the American border

> The elites and mainstream media of the West are so addicted to double standards that spotting yet another one is hardly news. These are the people who have just given us genocide re-labeled as ”self-defense,” who abhor spheres of influence except when they are global and belong to Washington (with a sidekick role for Brussels), and who insist on the rule of law while threatening the International Criminal Court if it so much as dares look their way.

> Yet there is something special about the latest case of Western ‘values’ schizophrenia, this time about the concept of ‘civil society’ in conjunction with two political struggles, one in the US and the other in the Caucasus nation of Georgia.

> In the US, students, professors, and others are protesting against the ongoing Israeli genocide of the Palestinians and against American participation in that crime.

> In Georgia, the issue at stake is a proposed law to impose transparency on the sprawling and unusually powerful NGO sector. Its critics denounce this law as a government power grab and as somehow ‘Russian’ (which, spoiler alert, it is not).

[Poster's Note: Their law is less far reaching than a US law called FARA, additionally most EU states have similar laws.]

> The very different reactions to these two cases of intense public contention by the West’s political and mainstream media elites show that, for them, there are really two kinds of civil society: There is the ‘vibrant’ variety, with ‘vibrant’ an almost comically ossified cliche, used by the Washington Post Editorial Board, in EU statements, and by White House spokesman John Kirby, to name only a few. It is almost as if someone had sent around a memo on proper terminology. This vibrant, good kind of civil society is to be celebrated and supported.

> And then there is the wrong kind of civil society, which must be shut down. US President Joe Biden has just expressed the essence of this attitude: “We are a civil society, and order must prevail.” This is, of course, a bizarre misreading of the idea of civil society. Ideally, its key features are autonomy from the state and the capacity to establish an effective counterweight, and even, if necessary, to offer resistance to it. Putting the emphasis on “order” instead is ignorant or dishonest. In reality, civil society makes no sense, even as an ideal, if it is not granted a substantial degree of freedom to be disorderly. A civil society that is so orderly as to disturb no one is a fig leaf for enforced conformism and – at least – incipient authoritarianism.

> What is more important is that ‘order,’ in his usage, is a transparent euphemism: According to the New York Times, over the last two weeks, over 2,300 protesters have been arrested on almost 50 American campuses. Often, arrests have been made with demonstrative brutality. Police have used riot gear, stun grenades, and rubber bullets. They have assaulted students as well as some professors with massive aggression.

> The most well-known individual case at this moment is that of Annelise Orleck, a professor at Dartmouth College. Orleck is 65 years old and attempted to protect students from police violence. In response, she was slammed into the ground in the worst MMA style, knelt on by beefy policemen, who clearly lack elementary decency, and dragged away with whiplash trauma, as if she had been in a serious car accident. Ironically (if that’s the word), Orleck is Jewish and, at one time, used to be the head of her universities program in Jewish Studies.

> In another, extremely disturbing development, at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), a violent police crackdown – including use of rubber bullets – was preceded by a vicious attack by so-called pro-Israeli ”counter-protesters.” In reality, this was a mob out to inflict maximum harm on the anti-genocide protesters, who, a New York Times investigation has found, maintained an almost entirely defensive stance. University security forces and the police failed to intervene for hours, letting the “counter-protesters” run wild.

> That is a pattern every historian of the rise of fascism in Weimar Germany will recognize: First the SA mobs of the rising Nazi party had a free hand to assault the Left, then the police would go after the same Left as well.

> That is the real face of the “order” that President Biden and all too many in the West’s establishments endorse. But only at home. When it comes to the unrest in Georgia, their tone is entirely different. Make no mistake, there has been substantial violence – and what Biden would denounce as “chaos” if it happened in America – in Georgia. Indeed, while the US anti-genocide protesters have not been violent but disorderly (yes, those are very different things), the protesters in Georgia have used genuine violence, for instance, when they tried to storm the parliament.

> Nothing remotely comparable has been done by the US anti-genocide protesters. Regarding the trespassing and causing public inconveniences that so agitate the US president, there has been plenty of that in the Georgian capital, Tbilisi. By Biden’s logic a protest must not even disturb or delay a campus graduation ceremony. What would that imply for blocking a central traffic node in the capital city?

> Don’t get me wrong: The Georgian protesters report violent police tactics used against them as well, and, more broadly, the rights or wrongs of their cause, or the draft law they reject are beyond the scope of this article. I do believe they are used by the West for a geopolitical play Color-Revolution-style, but that is not the point.

> The pertinent point here is, once again, staggering Western hypocrisy: A West that thinks trying to storm parliament is part of having a “vibrant” civil society in Georgia, cannot mass-arrest and brutalize anti-genocide protesters on its own campuses.

Original Non-archived Source

AP coverage

> America was the sole Security Council member to vote against the resolution

> The US has vetoed a UN Security Council resolution that would have paved a way for Palestine to become a member of the world body.

> Palestine is currently a “permanent observer state” at the UN that participates in many meetings but does not have voting rights.

> The draft resolution debated on Thursday contained a recommendation to the UN General Assembly to hold a vote on updating Palestine’s status within the organization. The document was rejected with 12 votes in favor, one against, and two abstentions.

> US Alternative Representative for Special Political Affairs Robert Wood said that “there are unresolved questions as to whether [Palestine] meets the criteria to be considered a state.” He argued that Palestine cannot be admitted to the UN as long as the militant group Hamas controls Gaza.

The usual "but what about Hamas" from the US that would be replaced by some other excuse if they didn't exist in order to allow their outpost of Isn'treal to continue the extermination and occupation of its genocidal settler white supremacist state.

> Speaking at the Security Council, Russian Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia said that the vote had shown that “for Washington, [the Palestinians] do not deserve to have their own state.”

> “Today’s use of the veto by the US delegation is a hopeless attempt to stop the inevitable course of history. The results of the vote, where Washington was practically in complete isolation, speak for themselves,” Nebenzia said.

> Palestinian Ambassador Majed Bamya said after the vote that the PA was “not deterred in our pursuit for Palestinian freedom and independence.”

> Algeria’s U.N. Ambassador Amar Bendjama, the Arab representative on the council who introduced the resolution, called Palestine’s admission “a critical step toward rectifying a longstanding injustice” and said that “Peace will come from Palestine’s inclusion, not from its exclusion.”

> Palestinian U.N. Ambassador Riyad Mansour, at times emotional, told the council after the vote: "The fact that this resolution did not pass will not break our will and it will not defeat our determination. We will not stop in our effort."

> [The Zionist Occupation]'s Foreign Minister Israel Katz commended the United States for casting a veto.

Other coverage:

https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/un-security-council-vote-thursday-palestinian-un-membership-2024-04-18/

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/apr/18/us-veto-palestine-membership-request-united-nations-council

(Archive link)

> Over 160 Ukrainian children allegedly “kidnapped by Russia” have been discovered living in Germany, the country's Federal Criminal Police (BKA) has confirmed.

> The head of Ukrainian national police, Ivan Vygovsky, on Wednesday hailed the discovery, telling national media that he had discussed the issue with Holger Munch, president of the BKA, during a meeting earlier in this week.

> Allegations by Kiev that Moscow kidnapped Ukrainian children en masse have been exposed as a lie after some of the purported victims have been found in the EU, according to Russian children’s rights commissioner Maria Lvova-Belova. She is among the officials to have been accused of abducting youngsters from Ukraine amid the conflict between Moscow and Kiev.

> When asked for clarification by RT Deutsch, the BKA said its officers had identified the children after they were flagged as “kidnapping” victims by Kiev. Their personal details were checked against German records.

> The majority of the youngsters had entered Germany as refugees accompanied by their parents or legal guardians, the police said. In a handful of cases, suspicion of “unlawful transfer” remained, the statement added, without offering further details.

> Responding to the revelations, Lvova-Belova said Moscow has “long been drawing the attention of the international community to the fact that Ukraine has created a systemic myth regarding the children, who it claims had been ‘deported’ to Russia.”

> Last year, Lvova-Belova was named alongside Russian President Vladimir Putin by the International Criminal Court (ICC) as the key suspects in its investigation into the alleged unlawful deportation and transfer of minors during the Ukraine conflict. Moscow dismissed the claim as politically motivated, arguing that Kiev had lied to the court about what in reality was an evacuation of civilians from areas affected by the hostilities.

> In her remarks about the German discoveries, Lvova-Belova said her office had identified multiple cases in which children described by Kiev as abductees were actually residing with their parents at home or in other nations, “never having been separated from their families.”

Reminder: this accusation was the basis for the ICC issuing an arrest warrant for Putin as well as several other top officials and several sanctions.

Key points:

> Russian-born IT entrepreneur Pavel Durov said that he was “pressured” by the FBI during his stays in America

> The US government had wanted a backdoor to Telegram in order to potentially spy on its users, the social media platform’s founder Pavel Durov said in an interview with American journalist Tucker Carlson. The attention from the FBI was one of the reasons Durov dropped the idea of setting up the company in San Francisco, he said.

> In an interview published on Wednesday, Durov said that he visited the US several times and even met with former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey. He was under the watchful eye of the FBI, which made his stays in America uneasy, he said.

> According to Durov, one of his top employees once told him that he had been approached by the US government. “There was a secret attempt to hire my engineer behind my back by cybersecurity officers,” the businessman said.

> “They were trying to persuade him to use certain open-source tools that he would then integrate into Telegram’s code that, in my understanding, would serve as backdoors,” Durov said. He added that he believes the employee’s account. “There is no reason for my engineer to make up (such) stories.”

Extremely alarming that there is a claim here certain open-source tools act as back-doors for the western intelligence agencies but it makes perfect sense. Engineered bugs in upstream libraries and tools used by tons of commercial and open source software would always get you your best bang for the buck compromising lots of things. Unlike for example the recent xz debacle I expect these are likely much more well hidden and engineered to hide their nature as nothing but mistakes. There are multiple ways to accomplish this from having NSA/GCHQ employees working directly on these projects as core contributors to paying off or blackmailing core contributors.

I expect this particular revelation to likely be ignored by many of the usual privacy people and spaces just because Tucker Carlson (who has grown funnily more hated for interviewing Putin than anything else he's done among liberals) was the interviewer and of course because Durov is a Russian.

(Archive link)

> The former president encouraged his party to scuttle a bill that was used by the FBI to spy on his campaign

> A group of conservative lawmakers have defeated an effort by House Speaker Mike Johnson to hold a vote on funding the FISA surveillance act. While the act once enjoyed bipartisan support, the GOP’s pro-Trump faction have soured on it since it was used to wiretap the former president’s campaign.

> Drafted in 2008, Section 702 of the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) grants US intelligence agencies the power to monitor messages from abroad made through American networks like Google. The provision, which must be reauthorized every year by Congress, also allows these agencies to ‘indirectly’ collect data from millions of American citizens.

> Once collected, this intelligence is stored for five years, during which it can be searched – for example by name, phone number, or email address – by the agencies without a warrant.

> Ahead of an April 19 deadline to renew Section 702, 19 conservative Republicans opposed a procedural vote on Wednesday that would have brought the measure – along with three other ùnrelated bills – to a full floor vote later this week. With 193 votes in favor and 228 against, the floor vote has effectively been postponed unless Johnson can win back the support of the 19 defectors.

> Among the dissidents are stalwart backers of former President Donald Trump, like Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz. Other Republican critics of the surveillance state, like Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene and Kentucky Rep. Thomas Massie, voted to bring Section 702 to the floor, arguing that they deserve a chance to hold an open “vote on whether the government needs a warrant to spy on you,” Massie wrote on X.

> “I will not support any version of FISA that doesn’t protect Americans from spying by our own government,” Greene said after Wednesday’s vote. “The American people deserve transparency in this process.If we can’t protect our citizens from their own government, then FISA SHOULD DIE!”

> Prior to the vote, Trump took to his Truth Social platform to encourage Republicans to “KILL FISA.”

> “IT WAS ILLEGALLY USED AGAINST ME, AND MANY OTHERS,” Trump continued, adding: “THEY SPIED ON MY CAMPAIGN!!!”

> Back in 2016, the FBI obtained a FISA warrant to surveil Trump campaign aide Carter Page. However, the agency’s warrant application was built heavily on a dossier of salacious and unproven gossip collected by former British spy Christopher Steele, and omitted key information that would have ensured its rejection.

> Along with a group of progressive Democrats, Gaetz, Greene, and other conservatives want a renewed Section 702 to come with amendments prohibiting the warrantless surveillance of American citizens.

> After Wednesday’s vote, Johnson told reporters on Capitol Hill that he would “reformulate another plan” to pass the contentious legislation, without giving any further details. The bill “is too important to national security,” he added. “I think most of the members understand that.”

Very cool to be honest. Very good to see this kind of thing happening.

(Archive link)

> Washington appears desperate to prevent Ukraine from being associated, in any way, with the horrific murderous rampage in the Russian capital

> By Andrey Sushentsov, program director of the Valdai Club

> The United States of America is trying to control and manipulate the media and political interpretation of the tragic terrorist attack in Moscow last month. In the Western information space, Washington is forming a narrative to try to distract attention from its proxy, Ukraine.

> At certain points, ISIS was a useful tool for the Americans in Syria. There is published evidence suggesting that the US operated in parallel with the terrorist group against the Syrian government. The fact that Washington was ready to offer a coherent version of events from the first minutes after the attack in Moscow is in itself extremely paradoxical.

> Consider this. The Americans have spent decades trying to determine the cause of crimes on their own soil, such as the assassinations of leading US political figures. They lack the resources, attention and enthusiasm to determine who was behind the sabotage of pan-European energy infrastructure: the Nord Stream 2 pipeline.

> However, within 15 minutes, they provided “accurate” information about who organized the terrorist attack in Moscow.

> I am convinced that the Russian government has no intention of defending ISIS if this organization is indeed behind it. The statements of President Vladimir Putin and senior officials show that the Russian position is strictly based on facts. They indicate that the terrorists who carried out the attack were heading towards the Russia-Ukraine border, which they intended to cross.

> Does this mean, to interpret the American line, that ISIS and the Ukrainian government are coordinating their actions? The creators of this tale should have thought several steps ahead about what conclusions could be drawn from it.

> What’s clear is that the US is trying to fill the information vacuum, to offer its interpretation of events in order to divert any suspicion from those it needs now – it looks like some sort of cover-up operation. After all, when American leaders are taken by surprise and such episodes occur, intelligence chiefs often admit directly in congressional hearings that the services did not foresee this or that event. In the case of the Moscow attack, however, the Americans suddenly came up with a coherent version of events within 15 minutes. This is reminiscent of how, within 24 hours of Hillary Clinton’s defeat in the 2016 American elections, false accusations of Russian involvement in the election of Donald Trump as President of the United States were beginning to circulate.

> Kiev understands that its own space for maneuver is shrinking and its resources are being depleted. In fact, it is fighting “on life support”: if the flow of resources dries up, the conflict will stop then and there. All that remains is the gradual radicalization of its own people. Ukraine’s habit of dehumanizing its opponent promotes increasingly irrational thinking, and it is only a short step away from justifying terrorist acts.

> I believe that the calibrated, reasoned, fact-based line that the Russian government is now taking will eventually lead us to a point where we know exactly who ordered this crime. We see a significant gap between how calmly and rationally (as much as possible in this situation), our country’s top officials are handling the investigation and how our Western opponents are trying to present us with their pseudo-reality. The aims of the organizers of the terrorist attack will not be achieved: one of them was to strike at the weak points of our society.

Archive link

We'll see if this holds up in court but I have a feeling the walls are closing in, the boot is falling, the illusion of freedom Americans have been granted will be stripped away soon.

This is not an isolated thing, it happens in the context of things like pushes to force logging on VPN providers, to crack down on piracy, to further control the internet and technology space.

How soon before we can talk of a US great firewall against foreign software of Chinese or Russian origin?

And unlike Chinese and Russian bans which have no reach, no long-arm of the law approach that can force the rest of the world to comply via financial sanctions, the US has the ability to actually impose these bans successfully not only on its own population but on the world if it so wishes.

> The use of Kaspersky Lab’s products is seen as a threat to national security, officials in Washington reportedly say

> Washington is planning to bar US businesses and individuals from using software created by the Russian cybersecurity company Kaspersky Lab, CNN reported on Tuesday, citing unnamed government officials familiar with the matter. The move is seen as “unprecedented,” as measures of the kind have never targeted private companies and citizens.

> The comprehensive ban is currently being finalized and could be imposed as soon as this month, the sources told the news network. The new regulation would use “relatively new Commerce Department authorities built on executive orders” by Presidents Joe Biden and Donald Trump to prohibit Kaspersky Lab from providing certain products and services in the country, they added.

> According to the sources, the order is aimed at mitigating risks allegedly posed by Kaspersky’s software to critical US infrastructure.

The same old story in other words, vague, unspecific, without any proof allegations of possible harm to national security without an explained mechanism or proof the threat exists.

> As part of preparatory works for the move, the US Department of Commerce has made an “initial determination” to ban certain transactions between the Russian cybersecurity company and US citizens, the sources added.

> They haven’t, however, provided any details regarding the full scope of a final order against Kaspersky products, but said that it would focus on the firm’s anti-virus software.

> In 2022, the Federal Communications Commission placed the internet-security provider on a list of companies deemed a threat to US national security. Following the move, Kaspersky said in a statement that the decision had been made on “political grounds” rather than on the basis of “a comprehensive evaluation of the integrity of Kaspersky’s products and services.”

> In 2017, US regulators banned federal government use of Kaspersky software. Back then, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) cited increased fears that the firm had ties to state-sponsored spying programs as a key reason for the move.

> Later, the company filed two lawsuits against the decision taken by the Trump administration, saying the bans were unconstitutional and that they caused Kaspersky Lab undue harm. In 2018, the District of Columbia court dismissed both cases, having upheld the ban imposed by Washington.

(Archive Link)

(Regime propaganda (CNN) archive link

> China has built a “kill web over the Pacific Ocean to find, fix, track and, yes, target US and allied military capabilities,” Whiting said, describing Beijing’s efforts as moving at “breathtaking speed.”

> Since 2018, Russia has doubled and China has tripled the number of their intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) satellites in orbit, while also testing and fielding anti-satellite weapons. Meanwhile, the US has “the world’s best space architectures,” but its military constellations are “optimized for a benign environment,” he said.

Oh my goodness, you mean just like the US who has built a web of surveillance over the entire world and established a separate branch of its military just to counter, attack, subvert, and militarize space?!?

The same US that once complained when the US attempted to move NSA assets to compromise a Chinese satellite that it moved away and evaded them at speed?

Lol, optimized for an environment of total dominance where others can't fight back or field the same capabilities.

> Russian and Chinese space weapons “hold at risk our modern way of life and how we defend this nation, and we must be able to deter and counter these threats when called upon to achieve space superiority,” the general said.

Yes, they will be part of deterrence to destroy your imperialist capitalist way of life by removing any advantage and crippling your ability to control the rest of the world.

Translation: Give us more money to further militarize space in an ill-conceived attempt to maintain dominance and the ability to destroy enemy capabilities that can only ever end in a Kessler syndrome.

> Washington recently accused Moscow of having undisclosed anti-satellite capabilities, possibly nuclear in nature. Russian President Vladimir Putin said the US claims were “unfounded” and a ploy to manipulate arms control talks. The Russian embassy in Washington has also accused the US of using “Russophobic slogans” to mask its own plans to militarize space.

Russia has every right to deploy any kind of anti-satellite capabilities against the belligerent, aggressive, number one threat to peace the US including nuclear ones if those are needed to take out the vast array of cheap Musk Starshield/Starlink constellations in an all-out war of direct US aggression and as a way to deter them from starting one.

> Lloyd Austin said the US remains “committed” to funding [the zionist occupation], denying mounting accusations of genocide

> The United States does not have any evidence that [the zionist occupation] is committing genocide in Gaza as it carries out its war against Palestinian militant group Hamas, US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has said.

> Austin, who was delivering opening remarks on the Pentagon’s 2025 budget request, was interrupted twice by anti-[genocide] protesters who made it into the hearing room on Capitol Hill, demanding that the US “stop funding Isn'trael” and supporting a “genocide” in Gaza. The demonstrators forced the Senate Armed Services Committee hearing to pause while police removed them from the room.

> Asked by Senator Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) if he agreed with the protesters’ claims of genocide, Austin said he did not.

> “We don’t have any evidence of genocide,” Austin replied. “I would remind everybody that what happened on October 7 was absolutely horrible.”

> Last month, UN Human Rights Council special rapporteur Francesca Albanese concluded in a report that there are, in fact, “reasonable grounds to believe that the threshold indicating Isn'trael’s commission of genocide is met.”

> The UN has also warned of further humanitarian “catastrophe” if the Isn'treali Occupation Forces (IOF) goes through with a planned ground offensive in Rafah, the last remaining Palestinian shelter in Gaza. On Tuesday, Prime Minister [of the Zionist Occupation Regime] Benjamin Netanyahu said his government had set a date for the offensive to begin.

> Although the Biden administration has chided [the zionist occupation] for not doing enough to protect aid workers and other civilians in Gaza, it has refused to throttle back support for the IOF or to place conditions on weapons shipments.

> The Pentagon chief further stated on Tuesday that the US remains “committed” to assisting [the zionist occupation] in “defending its territory and people.”

(Archive link)

> A coalition partner has threatened to pull support from the prime minister should he fail to attack the Palestinian city

> Isn'traeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says his government has set a date for a major ground operation in Rafah, the last remaining Palestinian shelter in Gaza.

> The Isn'traeli leader is under pressure both from close ally the US, which sees the promised offensive as a major threat to civilians, and from members of his own coalition, who demand military action. Some 1.3 million people, most of them displaced from other parts of the Palestinian enclave, are estimated to be crammed into the city, which is located at Gaza’s border with Egypt.

> In a short video statement on Monday night, the prime minister said that achieving a victory over the militant group Hamas “requires entry into Rafah and the elimination of the terrorist battalions there. It will happen – there is a date.”

> Earlier in the day, Isn'trael’s National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir issued an ultimatum to Netanyahu, stating that if he “decides to end the war without a broad attack on Rafah in order to defeat Hamas, he will not have a mandate to continue serving as prime minister.”

(Archive link)

> The Israeli air force is reportedly training to strike “sensitive sites”

> If Tehran responds to the Damascus embassy attack by bombing Israel, West Jerusalem will launch strikes against the Iranian nuclear program, a London-based Arabic outlet has reported citing an anonymous Western security official.

> Two generals of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Quds Force and several other officers were killed in the Israeli airstrike on the Iranian consulate in Damascus last week. Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has vowed that Israel would “receive a slap in the face” in return.

> According to Elaph News, the Arabic-language online outlet operating from the UK, Israel has been training pilots to strike at “sensitive sites” in Iran, which might be those involved in Tehran’s nuclear program.

> The Sun noted that an Israeli attack on any of them would mark an “unprecedented escalation” in the Middle East conflict.

> The US “will remain supportive of Israel” and provide it with all the support, weapons and equipment needed for this mission, the source told Elaph. US President Joe Biden has assured Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that Washington will stand by West Jerusalem “in all circumstances,” the source added.

(Archive link)

> Strategist Edward Luttwak has argued that members of the US-led bloc will have to deploy troops to prevent a Russian victory

> NATO nations can only forestall an inevitable loss to Russian forces in Ukraine by deploying their troops to the former Soviet republic, a former adviser to the US military has claimed.

>“The arithmetic of this is inescapable: NATO countries will soon have to send soldiers to Ukraine, or else accept catastrophic defeat,” military strategist Edward Luttwak wrote in an oped published on Thursday by the British online media outlet UnHerd. “The British and French, along with the Nordic countries, are already quietly preparing to send troops – both small elite units and logistics and support personnel – who can remain far from the front.”

> The conflict can’t be won without direct troop deployments because regardless of the quantity and quality of weapons sent to Kiev, Ukrainian forces are too outnumbered by the Russians, Luttwak argued. “This means that unless [Russian President Vladimir] Putin decides to end the war, Ukraine’s troops will be pushed back again and again, losing soldiers in the process who cannot be replaced.”

> European NATO members face a “momentous decision” because with US forces facing a growing threat of a potential Chinese attack on Taiwan, it will be up to them to provide the manpower that Ukraine needs, Luttwak said. “If Europe cannot provide enough troops, Russia will prevail on the battlefield, and even if diplomacy successfully intervenes to avoid a complete debacle, Russian military power will have victoriously returned to central Europe,” he added.

> NATO-Russia relations have deteriorated so much amid the Ukraine crisis that the Western alliance is already in “direct confrontation” with Moscow, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Thursday.

> Putin has warned that NATO would risk triggering a nuclear conflict if its members send troops to Ukraine.

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>The heinous act of terrorism at the Crocus City Hall concert venue just outside Moscow on Friday night – which is confirmed to have killed more than 130 people at the time of writing – has perhaps shaken Russia more than anything since a similar attack on a theater in the capital in 2002. > >This latest atrocity will certainly have a major impact on the Russian people’s consciousness and the nation’s public security. It could also lead to serious changes in Moscow’s foreign policy, depending on the results of the investigation into the source of the attack and its masterminds. Considering the enormously high stakes involved in its findings and conclusions, there is no doubt that the investigation will have to be incredibly thorough. > >The US government’s version of an Islamic State connection to the attack has been met with skepticism by Russian officials and commentators. Firstly, they were surprised by how quickly – virtually within minutes – Washington pointed the finger at the group. What also drew the attention of Russian observers was the US reference to an IS-linked news site which had claimed responsibility for the crime. Normally, all such sources are subjected to thorough checks. But not this time. Figures in Russia have also noted that American spokesmen immediately, and without prompting, declared that Ukraine was in no way linked to the act of terror. > >Other criticisms of the American version include the style of the attack (no political statements or demands were made); the admission by one of the captured attackers that he had shot innocent people for money; and the fact that this was not planned as a suicide operation. Many experts have pointed out that IS is far from its prime, and that Russian forces defeated its core elements in Syria years ago. This has allowed speculation to grow about a false flag attack. > >Ukraine, true to form, and alone among the nations of the world, has suggested that the Crocus City atrocity was an operation carried out by Russia’s own secret services, launched to facilitate a further tightening of the political regime and a new wave of mobilization. Clearly nonsensical, this interpretation invoked in many Russian minds the old proverb, “liar, liar, pants on fire.” > >Russian President Vladimir Putin, in his five-minute address to the nation on Saturday, refrained from rolling out the Kremlin’s own version. His words and his demeanor were calm, but the style of his remarks was stern. Those behind the attack “will be punished whoever they are and wherever they may be,” the president declared. The direction of Putin’s thinking was revealed by the two facts – not conjectures – he raised: that the terrorists, having fled the scene of the assault, had been apprehended not far (100km or so) from the Ukrainian border, and that “information” had been obtained that they intended to cross the border into Ukraine, where “they had contacts.” > > The results of the Russian investigation will be enormously important. If Moscow concludes that the attack was conceived, planned, and organized by the Ukrainians – say, the military intelligence agency GUR – Putin’s public warning would logically mean that the agency’s leaders [and Zelensky potentially] will not just be “legitimate” targets, but priority ones for Russia.

(Rest of the article at the link)

> By the Directorate 4 team, an analytical and monitoring center researching Islamic radicalism and fundamentalism

> On March 22, Russia suffered one of the worst terrorist attacks in recent history, in the course of which 137 people were killed and 182 others were injured. The four terrorists who carried out the attack chose one of the largest exhibition and concert venues in the country, Crocus City Hall, in the city of Krasnogorsk on the outskirts of Moscow, which hosts large events every day.

> Even though the investigation is still ongoing, the West has already claimed that the Islamic State (IS) is responsible for the tragedy. This was first reported by some media outlets, including Reuters and CNN, and was later picked up by Western officials. For example, on Monday, this was stated by White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre.

> However, when we compare this terrorist attack with other IS attacks, we notice more differences than similarities.

Summary (read article for full text):

• Early on IS's mode of operation was to call believers to join them in the Caliphate in Syria

• However as they lost territories they began to call on followers to conduct attacks abroad where they lived

• Their standard for claiming attacks was as simple as someone contacting a bot and swearing an oath, often the perpetrator was the only one who died but it didn't matter and this is also why it occasionally took credit for attacks it had no involvement in.

• The attack at Crocus does not match their pattern of behavior

• Four people who had not previously known each other were recruited to carry out the terrorist attack. One of them was in Türkiye in February, and from there he flew to Russia on March 4.

• According to unofficial information, he met with a certain “Islamic preacher” in Istanbul. However, it is also known that the terrorists corresponded with the “preacher’s assistant.” According to Fariduni, this anonymous person sponsored and organized the terrorist attack.

• After arriving in Russia, the main suspect visited Crocus City Hall on March 7 in order to see the site where the crime was to be committed. From this, we may conclude that the attack was to take place soon after his arrival from Türkiye. On the same day, the US embassy in Russia warned its citizens to avoid large gatherings “over the next 48 hours” due to possible attacks by extremists.

• None of the terrorists planned to “join the Houris in paradise,” as is usual for IS followers.

• After shooting people in Crocus City Hall and setting the building on fire, they did not attack the special forces which arrived at the scene and instead got in a car and fled from Moscow. Neither did they wear “suicide belts” – a characteristic detail of IS followers who are ready to die after committing their crime.

• Another detail which is uncharacteristic for IS is the monetary reward promised to the terrorists. The payment was supposed to be made in two installments – before and after the attack. The terrorists had already received the first payment, amounting to 250,000 rubles ($2,700).

• The most important detail is the location where the terrorists were detained. Traffic cameras allowed intelligence services to monitor where they were headed. They were eventually detained on the federal highway M-3 Ukraine – a route which used to connect Russia and Ukraine but lost much of its international importance after the deterioration of relations between the two countries in 2014, and particularly after the start of Russia’s military operation in 2022.

• The terrorists were detained after passing the turn to route A240, which leads to Belarus. At that moment, it became obvious that there was only one place where they could be headed: Ukraine.

• Despite the fact that the terrorists were armed, only one of them, Mukhammadsobir Fayzov, put up resistance. All of the terrorists were detained alive, which was most likely an order given to the security forces involved in the operation. However, as we mentioned above, the terrorists themselves did not want to die.

• This, too, is uncharacteristic for IS, since someone who carries out a terrorist act, especially an outsider, is always considered “disposable.” Even if he makes it out alive, no one will help him. Moreover, in earlier years, IS usually didn’t take responsibility for an attack if the perpetrator remained alive, as this could harm him during the investigation. However, later the organization no longer cared about this due to the deplorable state in which it found itself.

• All this comes down to the fact that compared to other attacks carried out by IS in the past few years, this one is strikingly different when it comes to the level of preparation, detailed planning, and financial compensation.

• Since 2015, it has been known that the Security Service of Ukraine tried to recruit radical Islamists with the goal of carrying out sabotage and terrorist attacks, etc. on Russian territory. Ukraine’s intelligence services were also active among the terrorists in Syria.

• Ukraine is the place of residence not only for many terrorists, but also IS administrators and those who sympathize with the terrorists. It has also been a way of crossing into the EU of at least one Islamic extremist terrorist who intended to carry out an attack in the west according to western intelligence.

• The quick and repetitious insistence from the west with which they (who were in no position to know all the facts not being the victim country or in possession of the terrorists or the site of the crime) and their media have insisted that IS and IS alone did this and that Ukraine was not in any way responsible seems to strongly indicate they are hiding something and attempting to plant the seeds of doubt already for any connection that the investigation may discover.

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Specifically this one: https://hexbear.net/post/2147888

I've tried putting the community it's in in my url bar as lemmygrad.ml/c/literature@hexbear.net but only 3 posts, all very old show up. I've tried doing the same for the user who posted it but I can't go beyond the first page of their user page.

Searching for the title and community also don't yield results.

Is there a way to from the url of a post or comment access it via another instance?

I've also tried using an account on another instance that's federated with them but can't find the post via it either.

Is this just a sign they're having issues with federation right now? (News community seems to work fine)

(I just want to reply to one of the comments there and let people know the only edit in the linked youtube video from Season 26, Episode 8 (The Curse of Fenric) is the addition of the USSR anthem over the video and otherwise there is a member of the Soviet military who in the canon uses his hammer and sickle lapel pin and his faith in the revolution to do psychic damage to vampires)

> The self-deception practiced by journalists writing about the country is leading to dire consequences

> By Glenn Diesen, Professor at the University of South-Eastern Norway and an editor at the Russia in Global Affairs journal

> Western media coverage of every Russian election is bad. But this time it was even worse than usual.

> Instead of lashing out at the incompetence on display, it's more constructive to explore why rational discussions about the country continue to appear impossible.

> Reason versus conformity to the group

> One of the first things learned sociology is that humans are in a constant battle between instincts and reason. Over tens of thousands of years, we have developed the instinct to organize in groups as a source of security. This is the result of evolutionary biology as survival demands that we organize into “us” versus “them”. In-group loyalty is augmented by assigning contrasting identities of the virtuous “us” versus the evil “other”, which helps stop an individual from straying too far from the pack.

> Yet, human beings are also equipped with reason and thus the ability to assess objective reality independent of their immediate circle. In international relations, it's imperative to place yourself in the shoes of the opponent. The rationality required to see the world through the perspective of the “other” is vital for reaching mutual understanding, reducing tensions, and pursuing a workable peace.

> Every successful peace process and reconciliation in history has been based on this.

> We expect journalists to be objective in their reporting of reality, which is especially important during war. But this seems to be almost impossible, especially during conflicts. When human beings experience external threats, their herd instincts are triggered as society demands group loyalty and we punish those who deviate. The political obedience demanded during war time usually results in the weakening of freedom of speech, the role of journalism, and democracy.

> Why did Russians vote for Putin?

> If we use our reason and resist our tribal instincts, it should not be difficult to understand the popularity of Putin. While the 1990s was a golden period for the West, it was a nightmare for Russians. The economy collapsed and society disintegrated with truly horrific consequences.

> The country's security also collapsed, as NATO expansion meant there was no chance to agree an inclusive European security architecture. This had been outlined in the Charter of Paris for a New Europe in 1990 and the OSCE founding documents.

> A weakened Russia meant that its interests could be ignored, and NATO was able to invade Moscow's ally Yugoslavia, in violation of international law.

> When Putin took over the presidency on 31 December 1999, it was commonplace in the West to predict that Russia would share the fate of the Soviet Union. That is eventual collapse.

> However, Russia has instead become the largest economy in Europe (by PPP), its society has healed from the disastrous 1990s, its military might has been restored, and new international partners have been found in the East and Global South, as evidenced by the growing role of BRICS.

> Furthermore, most Russians believe it's not a good idea to have major disruptions to leadership in the middle of a NATO-Russia proxy war in Ukraine that is deemed an existential threat. Don't change horses in midstream as the American proverb, often attributed to Abraham Lincoln, advises.

> Mikhail Gorbachev argued that Putin “saved Russia from the beginning of a collapse”.

> Today, any Western journalist repeating this would be immediately branded as a “Putinist” – implying a betrayal of the “us”. Western journalists cannot acknowledge the immense achievements of Russia since 1999 as it could be interpreted as lending legitimacy and signalling support for the "bad" side.

> The price of self-delusion

> Acknowledging Putin's achievements over the past 25 years is treated as expressing support for him, which is tantamount to treason.

> Meanwhile, journalists hardly ever discuss Moscow's security concerns and the extent to which our competing interests can be harmonized. Instead, Russian policies are conveyed by referring to derogatory descriptions of Putin’s character.

> As in our other wars, conflicts are explained by the presence of a bad man and if we could just make him go away, then the natural order of peace would be restored. Putin, the narrative contends, is our most recent reincarnation of Hitler and we constantly live in the 1940s where an adversary must be defeated and not appeased.

> How can journalists then explain to their audience Putin’s popularity and the reasons for his huge personal vote when it is not allowed to say anything positive about the Russian president? Unable to live in reality and unable to place ourselves in the shoes of the opponent - how are we supposed to have sensible analysis and policies? As I always warned my students of international relations: Do not hate your rivals, it produces poor and dangerous analysis!

> How can we pursue our interests when we have committed ourselves to self-delusion and have banned reality from our analysis

> I have attempted to explain for two years why the anti-Russian sanctions were doomed to fail and why Russia will win the war, only to be told that it is Russian propaganda to undermine support for sanctions and to challenge the narrative of a pending Ukrainian victory. Reality be damned! Ignoring reality results in a distorted picture of Russia which predictably leads to miscalculations.

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> Troops may be sent to the regions bordering Belarus in order to free up Kiev’s units to be sent to the front

> France is preparing to send troops to Ukraine, Aleksey Goncharenko, a senior Ukrainian MP, wrote on his Telegram channel on Wednesday. The official is currently in France for a meeting of the committee of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE).

> According to Goncharenko, who represents the city of Odessa in the Ukrainian parliament, Paris is considering deploying a military force to the Ukrainian regions bordering Belarus, discussions about which “are proceeding effectively.”

> “I’m in contact with my French colleagues. And I can already say that everything is serious... There is talk about a deployment of European soldiers to the border with Belarus, [a mission] that will free the Ukrainian military stationed there and allow it to move to other directions. This will help strengthen our eastern and southern fronts,” Goncharenko wrote.

> According to the MP, his sources close to President Emmanuel Macron claim the French leader is “very determined” to send troops to Ukraine, but the number of soldiers is still being discussed. Goncharenko claims that in order to form the force, France wants to create a coalition of allies, which could include Poland and the Baltic states. Germany is unlikely to join the effort, he notes, as Berlin sees boots on the ground as “an unnecessary escalation” and is “afraid of a direct confrontation with Russia.”

> The MP also stated that Macron wants to create “a joint base for training [of military personnel] and the production of ammunition” in Ukraine. Two locations in the West of the country are currently being considered for the purpose.

> “It looks like France is tired of Russia. Europe is preparing to show strength,” Goncharenko concluded.

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Prior coverage on this: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/4020135

Related alarming headlines strongly suggesting escalation from the west: Putin won’t be allowed to ‘dictate peace terms’ in Ukraine – Germany's Scholz

> Germany will not let Russian President Vladimir Putin forcibly alter Ukraine’s borders or impose the terms of peace, Chancellor Olaf Scholz has vowed.