Podcasts about united russia

It's Tuesday, September 10th, A.D. 2024. This is The Worldview in 5 Minutes heard on 125 radio stations and at www.TheWorldview.com.  I'm Adam McManus. (Adam@TheWorldview.com) By Kevin Swanson Russian army has destroyed or harmed 630 Ukrainian churches Mission Eurasia reports that 630 Ukrainian church buildings have been harmed or destroyed, in the ongoing war with Russia — including 206 Evangelical “houses of prayer.” This includes 73 in the Kiev area, and the majority in the south and east areas of Donetsk, Luhansk, and Kherson.   Those affected include the Ukrainian Pentecostal Church which had 94 buildings harmed or destroyed, Evangelical Christian-Baptists which had 60 buildings harmed or destroyed, and the Seventh-Day Adventists, which had 27 buildings harmed or destroyed. According to the report, “The Russian armies have conducted searches, made lists of the church members who were present, and collected their personal and biometric information, which they used for further surveillance. After such raids, the faithful were forbidden from conducting any activity in their religious community's premises. In seized church buildings, occupation authorities sawed off crosses and used the premises to house their administrative institutions as bases for Russian soldiers and offices of the Kremlin's political party, United Russia.”  And by the spring of 2023, “almost all non-Orthodox churches in occupied territories were stripped of their right to hold church services.” In one Ukrainian region controlled by Russia, the report found “only one out of 20 religious communities active in the first denomination, none are left out of 16 communities in the second denomination, and four remain out of 48 communities in the third denomination.” Brazilian public revolt over banning of X social media platform What has been touted as the largest free speech rally in the world took place on the streets of Sao Paulo, Brazil on Saturday. Tens of thousands of people flooded into the streets to protest the Luiz Lula government's banning of Elon Musk's X platform.   Former president Jair Bolsonaro joined the crowd, elements of which called for the impeachment of Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes. Moraes ordered a nationwide ban of X on August 30th, assigning a $9,000-a-day fine for any Brazilians who use Virtual Private Networks to access their X accounts. Former GOP Congresswoman Liz Cheney endorsed Kamala Harris Last Wednesday, former Republican Congresswoman Liz Cheney of Wyoming,  announced that she will be voting for Kamala Harris. She made the remarks at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina to the applause of the liberal students, reports The Duke Chronicle. LIZ CHENEY: “As a conservative, as someone who believes in and cares about the Constitution, I have thought deeply about this. Because of the danger that Donald Trump poses, not only am I not voting for Donald Trump, but I will be voting for Kamala Harris.” (students applaud) Former Vice President Dick Cheney also endorsed Kamala Two days later, her father, former Republican Vice President Dick Cheney, tweeted that he will also vote for Kamala Harris in the upcoming November election. Cheney served with Republican President  George W. Bush between 2000 and 2008.  Meanwhile, George W. Bush has stated he will not be endorsing any candidate for the presidential race. In fact, Bush did not vote for either major candidate in the 2016 and 2020 elections, distancing himself from the Trump campaigns. Colorado parents suing school district over dangerous transgender policy Several Colorado parents are suing the Jefferson County School District after their children were allegedly forced into transgendered situations, reports Fox News. One 11-year-old girl had to share a bed with an 11-year-old boy who was pretending to be a girl. Another young boy reports to have been assigned a female counselor pretending to be a man, sleeping in the boys' cabin, and supervising boys' showers. The lawsuit submitted by Alliance Defending Freedom accuses the school district of not providing truthful information to parents concerning school-sponsored trips. God's Word reminds us that, “A woman shall not wear anything that pertains to a man, nor shall a man put on a woman's garment, for all who do so are an abomination to the Lord your God.” (Deuteronomy 22:5) Korean dog strollers outselling baby strollers A South Korean online marketer, Gmarket, has pointed out that dog strollers are now outselling baby strollers. The nation touts the lowest birth rate in the world — at 0.71 children per woman.  South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol is married without children — and, according to one news source, owns at least 10 dogs and cats.  Deuteronomy 28:15-18 reminds us of God's judgment upon nations: "But it shall come to pass, if you do not obey the voice of the Lord your God, to observe carefully all His commandments and His statutes which I command you today, that all these curses will come upon you and overtake you: Cursed shall you be in the city, and cursed shall you be in the country. Cursed shall be your basket and your kneading bowl. Cursed shall be the fruit of your body and the produce of your land, the increase of your cattle and the offspring of your flocks.” Filipino cult leader arrested for child sex trafficking A Filipino cult leader, Pastor Apollo Quiboloy, has surrendered to police after a two-week standoff with 2,000 officers at his compound in Davao City.   Quiboloy faces charges of child sex trafficking in the Philippines and the United States. James Earl Jones, the actor with the authoritative voice, died at 93 And finally, remember this signature voice? JONES: “This is CNN.” Actor James Earl Jones died yesterday at the age of 93, reports ABC News. He starred in blockbusters like Hunt for Red October and Field of Dreams. And through his voice alone, he starred in the Star Wars series as Darth Vader. JONES: “Luke, you do not yet realize your importance. You have only begun to discover your power. Join me, and I will complete your training. With our combined strength, we can end this destructive conflict and bring order to the galaxy.” A Catholic convert, Jones said one of his greatest honors “came when I was asked to read the New Testament on tape.”   JONES: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by Him, and without Him was not anything made that was made. In Him was life, and the life was the light of men, And the light shineth in darkness, and the darkness comprehended it not.” Amazingly, he once stuttered so badly, he went mute from age 8 to 14. It's remarkable to think that God redeemed the vocal chords that were once mute to glorify Himself as Jones read the Word of God. Close And that's The Worldview on this Tuesday, September 10th, in the year of our Lord 2024. Subscribe by Amazon Music or by iTunes or email to our unique Christian newscast at www.TheWorldview.com. Or get the Generations app through Google Play or The App Store. I'm Adam McManus (Adam@TheWorldview.com). Seize the day for Jesus Christ.

Stephen Sackur speaks to Maria Butina, member of the State Duma for President Putin's United Russia party. The war in Ukraine now hinges on strength of will and staying power: the fighting is attritional, the bloodshed horrendous and Nato has just reaffirmed its commitment to Kyiv. Two and a half years after the invasion, is time really on Russia's side?

We have spoken about Russia a lot so far on the international risk podcast, from its ongoing aggression in Ukraine, to the Presidential elections in March, to most recently discussing Russia's current position within Europe, and the risks this poses to both state actors and businesses. Today, we will continue this discussion, extrapolating Russia's european positioning to a global one; and to join us in this discussion, it is a pleasure to welcome Oleg Ignatov onto the international risk podcastAs Crisis Group's Senior Analyst for Russia, Oleg Ignatov focuses on the country's domestic affairs as well as Moscow's role in conflicts around the world. Oleg has previously worked as a leading expert at the Center for Current Policy in Moscow, as a political consultant, and in various roles at the United Russia party. He also holds a Ph.D. in philosophy from Moscow State University. He specialises in Russia's foreign and domestic policy, Russian elites, Russian policy and conflicts in the post-Soviet space, and Russian-Ukrainian relations.

Around 50 protesters have been arrested in Russian cities on the final day of a vote set to confirm Vladimir Putin in office. Long queues formed outside polling stations, heeding a call to gather in protest. The call came from the wife of opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who died suddenly last month at a penal colony above the Arctic Circle. We hear from a member of President Putin's United Russia party.Also on the programme: One resident's story of living in Iceland's volcano zone; and how the tiny island nation of Palau sees its place among the big powers in the Pacific.(Photo: Russian President Vladimir Putin. Credit: Sputnik/Kremlin)

Peter Fabricius suggests that the alliance between the ANC and Vladimir Putin's United Russia party reflects their shared antagonism towards the West rather than any ideological alignment.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In Kyiv, the war against Russia's invasion plays out not only through airstrikes and drones, but also through culture. Well before his full-scale invasion, President Putin was clear in his ahistorical belief that Ukraine is a made-up country, rightfully part of greater Russia. Our first guest, Victoria Nuland, was in Kyiv during the Maidan protests in 2013-14, meeting with pro-democracy protesters as well as then-President Yanukovych. This was the first of many such visits since then. It was just last month that the current Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs was in Kyiv for talks and she joins Christiane from Washington to discuss U.S. support for Ukraine.  Also on today's show: Sergey Markov, Director, Institute of Political Studies in Moscow / Former MP, United Russia; Oleksiy Goncharenko, Member of the Ukrainian Parliament; Gita Gopinath, First Deputy Managing Director, IMF  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Find me and the show on social media @DrWilmerLeon on X (Twitter), Instagram, and YouTube Facebook page is www.facebook.com/Drwilmerleonctd   TRANSCRIPT: Speaker 2 (00:14): Welcome to the Connecting the Dots podcast with Dr. Wilmer Leon. I'm Wilmer Leon. Here's the point. We have a tendency to view current events as though they occur in a vacuum, failing to understand and to truly appreciate the broader historical context in which most of these events occur. During each episode of this program, my guests and I will have probing, provocative, and in-depth discussions that connect the dots between current events and the broader historic context in which they occur. This will enable you to better understand and analyze the events that impact the global village in which we live. On today's episode, the questions are why are American neocons hell bent on starting a conflict with Russia? What's going on in Ukraine? Who was Alexi Naval? And is NATO really still relevant? For insight into all of this let's turn to my guest. He's a former US Marine Corps intelligence officer who served in the former Soviet Union implementing arms control treaties in the Persian Gulf during Operation Desert Storm, and in Iraq overseeing the disarmament of WMD. (01:31) His most recent book is entitled Disarmament In the Time of Perestroika, he is Scott Ritter. Scott, welcome. Thanks for joining me and let's connect some dots. Well, thanks for having me. And first of all, I have to say I love the name of your show in the intelligence business, connecting the dots is what we do. You never get the full picture. You get little pieces of information, and the question is, how do you connect them to get a proper narrative? So I like the idea. Well, thank you, Scott. I appreciate that. So the answers to each of these questions I think could be a show of their own, but let's start with in 2024, why are neocons so afraid of Russia? I mean, when we go back to this nauseating ongoing narrative, Hillary Clinton blamed Russia for hacking into the DNC server. No evidence was presented, but the narrative held and continues to hold in spite of scientific empiric evidence. (02:39) To the contrary, the whole Russiagate fiasco, even now, representative Mike Turner from Ohio, the chair of the House Intelligence Committee, he warns that Russia may be developing a space-based weapon that can target US satellites, NBC reported on the 19th of this month, alarming new warnings about Russia held zapper erosion. Nuclear power plant may be on the verge of explosion. These are just a few examples and we'll get to the specifics of each of these in a few, but just these are just some overarching examples of example, this Russia phobia. Why? Well, I mean, let's just look at historic examples. At the end of the Second World War, we had built up this economy that was a lot of people forget that before the Second World War happened, we had a thing called the Great Depression, and our economy was not the healthiest in the world, and we used global war as a way to mobilize our economy, to get it up to war footing. (03:48) And there was a recognition that with 12 million guys coming home, we needed jobs. And if we tried to transition back to a civilian economy, we ran the danger of going backwards instead of forward. So we had to keep this military industrial complex up and running. But to do that, you need an enemy, you need a bad guy. Therefore, we have the Iron Curtain, Winston Churchill's, Fulton, Missouri speech in, I think 1946, the creation of nato and then the Red Scare. I mean, Russia has always been communism back then. Not just Russia, but communist China was always the perfect boogeyman to say, Ooh, danger lurks. We therefore now have a justification to militarize our economy and back this up politically by pointing to this threat. Back in the fifties, we had the bomber gap. You remember that? (04:52) Read about it little before my time, but I got you. Yeah, I mean, we weren't around back. We're old Wilber, but we're not that old. But yeah, the idea of, I think the Russians took, had like a dozen bombers, but on a military parade, they just flew them over and over and over again in a circle over Moscow, and the people on the ground looked up and said, oh my goodness, there's a whole bunch of bombers. And so the CIA used this, the Congress used this to justify building more American bombers, even though once we got our satellites up, we went, there's only 12. There's not that many, but we never told the truth. Then there was the missile gap. John F. Kennedy was responsible for that one too. The Russians have missiles. We have to build missiles, missiles, missiles until we found out that they didn't have the missiles. (05:40) But it didn't matter. We continued to build them anyways, and this led to the Cuban missiles crisis, which scared the live and you know what out of everybody and got us on the path of arms control, at least trying to contain, but we still called them the threat. That's all that's happening here. I can guarantee you this Wilmer, the neocons aren't looking for a war with Russia because as politically biased as they are, as fear mongers are, they're not suicidal and they know what the consequences of a war with Russia would be, but what they're doing is they're pushing it right up to the cusp of conflict, especially now when you have an American society that's sort of waking up to the fact that we're spending a lot of money over there when we need to be spending a lot of money back here at home, and people are starting to ask questions. (06:30) So the way that you avoid answering these questions is to create that straw man that threat, the Russian threat. The Russians are evil. You said it perfectly. They interfered with our election. They're doing this, that and the other thing, and therefore we must spend 64 billion in Ukraine even though we can't spend $64 million in Flint, Michigan. I mean, it's this sort of argument that's going on, and this may seem as a somo or a juvenile question, but how dangerous is this? World War? I was to a great degree, started on a fluke. It is in many instances or in many minds attributable to the assassination of Archduke Fran Ferdinand. But that in and of itself isn't what started the war. There were a number of skirmishes and a number of tensions that were going on in Europe, and this was really just the spark that led to World War I. (07:33) If my understanding of history is accurate. So do we find ourselves now, whether it be Russia and Ukraine, China and Taiwan, North Korea and South Korea, I mean the United States, what's going on in Venezuela as the United States is interfering in the Venezuelan elections? There are a number, of course, we've got Gaza in the Middle East, so we've got our hands, we're smoking at the gas station and smoking at a lot of gas stations. I'm going to steal that, by the way. I like that analogy. Just letting everybody know I'm using that from now on. Look, first of all, there's no such thing as a sophomore question. The one thing I learned, and I learned this from guys who are 20 times smarter than me, that the only stupid questions, the one you don't ask, you don't ask, but you're a hundred percent right. Barbara Tuckman wrote a book, the Guns of August, I think it was a PO prize winning book about how we got to World War I. (08:38) And one of the key aspects to that wasn't just the different crises that were taking place, but how people responded to that and the thing that made World War I inevitable, even though everybody, if you read the book, everybody in the summer of 1914, nobody wanted war. Everybody believed it would be avoided, it was just suicidal. But then they got into this cycle of mobilization, mobilizing their societies economically and militarily for conflict because that's just what you did when you had a crisis. But it's okay, we're just mobilizing and we're not really going to war. What scares me about today is there's a recognition on the part of everybody that war would be suicidal, that we don't want this, but look at what we've done. We built up the Ukrainian military from tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands and got it equipped, organized, trained to go to war against Russia. (09:44) What do you think we were doing in Ukraine from 2015 to 2022 when we were training a battalion of Ukrainian soldiers every 55 days for the sole purpose of fighting Russians? This helped trigger a conflict. It got Russia to respond. Then we poured more money into Ukraine. What did Russia do? Mobilize People need to put on their hats and go, wait a minute, that's a word we don't want to hear. Russia mobilized not just the 300,000, but the process of mobilization continued to where they trained 450,000 volunteers since January 1st, just for everybody who's wondering what's going on in Ukraine, I know that's going to be later on question. Russia mobilized 53,000 volunteers. This is at a time when Ukraine's thumping people on the head and takes 'em to the front because nobody wants to fight. 53,000 Russians volunteered to go fight in the war since January 1st. (10:42) They're coming in at 1000, 1,500 a day. And let me reiterate, that's not press gangs like they're using in Russia. G roaming the villages taking the men and now women from the streets and putting them into the military. That's not conscription, that's volunteer. And let me make this following point, it's even more interesting than that. It's not a bunch of 22-year-old red meat eating young men who are looking for adventure and romance. The average age of the Russian volunteer going in is about 35 years old. He's married, he has a family, and he has a job. It's the last person in the world that you'd expect to volunteer to go to a war zone. And yet they're doing it because they love their country, because they say we have to do that. What's going on right now is an existential struggle for the survival of Russia against the collective West, which again speaks to the danger of mobilization because Russia is a nation that is mobilizing and has the potential to mobilize even more if necessary. (11:55) And this should scare the heck out of everybody in nato because right now you have nato. What's NATO talking about doing Wilmer mobilizing. They're talking about mobilizing. You have everybody in NATO saying, well, they never say, well, since we kicked this hornets nest and the hornets are now coming out and stinging us, maybe we should stop kicking the hornet's nest. They don't acknowledge the role they played in building the Ukrainian army to trigger this, but what they're saying now is, oh, because Russia now has mobilized and is defeating the proxy army that we built. We have to mobilize in turn. And you have Brits talking about general mobilization, Germans, and what this does. Now, you're a Russian. You're sitting there going, huh? They're talking about mobilizing. Well, if they do that, what do we have to do? I mean, Finland just joined nato. We really don't care until they put on Russia's border, pardon on Russia's border, on Russia's border until they put NATO troops there. (12:50) Now Russia has to say, well, we didn't want to do this. But to give you an example, we keep the determinants mobilized. Wil Russia was compelled to create a new military district, the St. Petersburg military District, because Finland joined nato. There wasn't a St. Petersburg military district. Russia didn't have 70,000 combat troops on the finished border until Finland joined nato. Now, Russia has built mobilized Wilmer. They've put in 70,000 frontline troops divisions ready to march on Helsinki. Not because they wanted to, but because they were compelled to by the mobilization. Bringing Finland and Sweden into NATO is a form of mobilization. What we have here is we are moving in the wrong direction. We are accumulating military power in Europe, and at some point in time you're smoking at the gas station and it's going to go, I'm going to have to use that one, Scott. That's pretty good. (13:51) Feel free. So this time last year, Ukraine was on the front page of every newspaper as of the morning of that we're taping this conversation. I don't see Ukraine referenced. And let me suggest folks, Reid, I don't know if you've read Nikolai Petro and Ted Snyder's piece to end the war in Ukraine expose its core lie. Let me read two quick paragraphs. This is how it opens. The essential argument used to avoid negotiation and continue support for the war in Ukraine is based on a falsehood. That falsehood repeated by President Biden is that when Putin decided to invade, which we can debate that word, he intended to conquer all of Ukraine and annihilated its falsity, has been exposed multiple times by military experts who have pointed out both before and after the invasion, that Russia could not have intended to conquer all of Ukraine because it did not invade with sufficient forces to do so. Scott Ritter, well, look, that was my argument all along. I kept saying they're only going in with around 200,000. Ukraine at the start of the war had around 770,000, and I went, the normal attack defender ratio is supposed to be three to one in favor of the attacker. And Russia's going in with a one to three disadvantage. (15:21) Why? And the answer was because they weren't trying to occupy Ukraine. They were trying to, oh no, it's because Russians can't do math. Well, that too, I mean, I must be Russian because I'm not very good at math either. But my military math was like, this isn't adding up. But Russia's goal is to get 'em to a negotiating table. But I also then when Russia mobilized, because I basically said that Russia's going to have to get 500, 600,000 men to stabilize the frontline just to stabilize the frontline. And they mobilized to do that. And then people said, well, they're going to go on to Odessa. And I went, if they go on to Odessa, they're going to need around 900,000 guys to go on to Odessa and take those things. Russia's got about 900,000 guys there now. So they have enough troops to do that. (16:09) But to go on to Poland, they're going to need about 1.5 million guys. They don't have that. And to go from Poland to Germany, they're going to need around 3 million guys. It's just basic military math. I mean, I could bore you all day about how I come up with these numbers, but it's the logistics of war. It's the scope and scale of the fronts, how to protect flanks, how to sustain offensive operations. The math doesn't lie. I'm pretty good with those numbers and Russia doesn't have it. And here's the thing. We know this. I mean, there's, look, I was a major and I only was a major for a little while. The main part of my military life was spent as a captain. Now, captains are pretty cool, but we're not seniors. We're not the most senior people in the world. So I admit that my perspective was a captain's perspective at senior headquarters. (17:01) I saw the big picture, but I know enough to know what it takes to move troops. I was part of moving 750,000 troops into the Middle East. I know what a tip fiddle is, time phase deployment list, how to surge things in. I planned a core sized operation and had to plan on the logistics sustainability of that. I'm pretty good with the numbers. And so are the people in the Pentagon who are more senior than I am. People who see the bigger picture in more detail. They know what I'm talking about too. And they know no matter how much you talk up somebody, you're only as good as your logistics. I mean, you can have the Lamborghini, but if you ain't got the gasoline, you don't have anything. You have a piece of metal sitting in your driveway, but you got to have the gas and you got to have the gas sustained. (17:53) You got to be able to maintain it, fix it. Lamborghini's brake. You got to have people trained to drive the Lamborghini. We can talk the Russians up all we want to about this, that and the other thing. But the bottom line is they're only human and they can only do that which is physically possible to do. And they don't have the troops to invade NATO to drive on nato. It's a 100% fabrication on the part of these people to justify their own mobilization. But everybody knows that Russia can't. Right now, Russia has sufficient troops to take Odessa to take cargo, to take Nikola, to take nepa, Petros, that's it. They can't do anything more than that. If they want to drive on Kiev, they're going to need another 300,000 troops up in Belarus that they don't have right now. So people just have to put on their thinking caps and think rationally. (18:46) But right now, rational thought isn't in the cards. Apparently, you know a hell of a lot more about this than I do. You speak the language, you listen to the broadcast, I listen to you and other folks, but when I keep hearing statements about what Russia is going to do, the one thing that I never hear following that is evidence to support the position Russia wants to take over Europe. Europe, I've never heard President Putin say that. I've never read anything coming out of Russia that says that. All I hear is Nikki Haley and Joe Biden and Kamala there. There's a litany of folks that'll tell me that, but I haven't seen them present one video of President Putin standing at a podium or taking off his shoe like Stalin and pounding on the podium saying, I'm kicking your, and the other point is, 80% of what I see is defensive, not offensive. Here's another one you might want to use. Don't start nothing, won't be nothing. And it seems as Joe Biden would just shut the up. (20:14) You using my language? I want to be a Marine. Marine. So, okay, you get my point, Scott. Well, here's the thing. If we go back to the January, December, 2021, January 22 timeframe, the US government's running, going, Russia is going to invade, Russia is going to invade. Now, they may have had some intelligence about Russia moving up, logistics and all that stuff, but I said, Russia won't invade right now. They said, why? And I said, because Russia is a nation and the Russian government is ruled by law. Believe it or not. It's their law. It ain't our law, but it's their law. And there are things that have to happen before you can talk about an invasion. I spelled it out. I said, first of all, Russia will not operate in violation of the United Nations charter. So they will have to come up with a cognizable case for invasion. (21:12) And right now, the only one they have is preemptive self-defense. But to get preemptive self-defense, Russia will have to form a security relationship with the Doba, a formal security relationship, which will require the doba to not only declare their independence, but for Russia to recognize that independence. And then once Russia recognizes that independence, then Russia will have to go through, the President will have to go to the Duma, the Duma will have to approve something, go to the Senate, and then the Senate takes it back to the President, who then signs it. And then, and only then can we talk about military intervention. Now, this can take place in a short period of time, but I can promise you guarantee you that Russia ain't crossing the border until that happens. And if we're not seeing that happen, then there will be no military intervention and everybody's like, oh, scout up. Well, everything I said is 100. That's what happened in February. Russia began the process. Now, they did it in a very compact period of time, but every step that I said had to be taken was taken. Why? The rule of law. Putin is not a dictator. Putin is governed by the rule of law. He is not permitted to do things on a whim, and it's the same thing. If he wants to. (22:30) Russian troops cannot operate outside of the border of Russia without the permission of the Duma. He would have to go to them constitutionally, say, Hey, I'd like to send troops to Poland because he can't just send troops to Poland. And then the Duma would say, why are we doing this? What is the threat? And normally, the only reason to justify it is Poland attacked us, so we have to wait for that one. And that's the thing. In order for him to do anything to begin mobilizing, he can't just, why didn't he have 300,000 troops already mobilized to go into Ukraine? Because to justify the mobilization, you need legal justification. He didn't have it, didn't have it, couldn't go to the Duma, couldn't justify it. None of the steps that would be required for Russia to attack Europe are in place. First of all, it's not in Russia's doctrine, their entire approach, and you hit it on the head, their defense. (23:33) Now, the Russians are very good at the counter offensive, so if we attack them, Russian defensive doctors is to receive the attack, to destroy the attack and then to counter attack, and you counter attack to destroy the political center of the beast that attacked you. So yeah, if you want Russian troops in Warsaw, if you want Russian troops in Berlin, attack Russia. But otherwise, don't worry about it because it isn't going to happen. Don't start nothing. It won't be nothing. Won't be nothing. I like it. Alexi Navalny described as, and this is the description, the dominant Western narrative described as Russian President Putin's most formidable domestic opponent fell unconscious and died at polar wolf, Arctic penal colony. Biden described him as a powerful voice for the truth. What has happened to Navali is yet more proof of Putin's brutality. No one should be fooled. Well, the first thing is, if that was true, then what does this say about Biden's unyielding support for genocide in Gaza? What does that say about his brutality looking at the thousands, tens of thousands that people have fought, but that's not the point. If you could quickly unpack the myth of Alexi Navalny and the alleged poisoning and all of that stuff to kind of dispel this myth that Putin has assassinated his most formidable domestic opponent. (25:25) Okay, first of all, we have to understand that the United States government has been in the business of trying to control Russian politics since the collapse of the Soviet Union. The decade of the 1990s was premised on an American policy of promoting democratic reform inside Russia. But what it means by that is by creating institutions that are controlled by the United States and banking and well, money is everything. And what we did in the 1990s is we started using non-governmental organizations. We'd set up these civic societies, these groups for furtherance of democracy, and then we would fund them through various fronts like the National Endowment for Democracy, which in 1983 was created to take over the covert political action functions of the CIA and make it more overt. The US Congress created it, funneled money to it. There's a democratic branch, there's a Republican branch they filter money in. (26:28) The whole idea is again, to create fund, so-called democratic institutions that will lead to the restructuring of a society the way we want it to be restructured. The United States did that in Ukraine in 2014 with the, well, well, we did it before that. If you remember back in the early two thousands, we did a color revolution in Serbia. It was a very successful color revolution, and so we use that as a template that would then repeat it in Georgia, and then we repeated in Ukraine, remember 2004, 2005, the Orange Revolution. What a lot of people don't realize is that we were actively trying to do a color revolution in Russia in 2007, 2008. Why that time period? Again, I don't want to bore people, but this is very important. Vladimir Putin became president end of 1999. He won an election in March of 2000 constitutionally. (27:24) He got to run for two terms, those two terms. It became clear that he was not going to continue the Yeltsin policy of doing whatever the United States wanted to be done, that he was going to try to reform Russia in a Russian image, which we didn't like. So we were pouring money into Russia through these non-governmental organizations for the purpose of carrying out a color revolution in 2007, 2008. The way we were going to do it is in 2007 was the parliamentary elections. The idea of that 2007, 2008 period was that Putin couldn't stand a third term as president, so he was going to do a swap with Dmitri Veev, who at that time was the prime Minister. So Putin was going to become prime minister. Veev would become president, but for this to happen, United Russia, which was Putin's party, had to win the parliamentary election. (28:10) If the opposition could deny United Russia the majority, then Putin couldn't become Prime Minister, and if Putin couldn't become Prime Minister, then vie was vulnerable as president and you could pick him off and suddenly you've swept Putin out of power. This is literally the stated objective of the United States, and we started pouring money into Russia to promote this. One of the guys that got caught up in this was a young lawyer named Alex Navalny. He started working, it's CIA all the way. Look, the CIA trained some people. One of them was this Y Guinea albo. She's a journalist, but she went to Harvard, got groomed by the CIA, whether she knew it or not, but she left the balling, went to Yale. Well, later on, yes, he went to Yale in 2010, but Allach comes in in 2004 and she sets up this political parlor. (29:05) Now she comes from Harvard, she got her PhD. She comes to Russia. The first thing she does is sets up this political parlor funded by British money coming from oligarchs funneled to her through British intelligence. And this parlor attracts these young people, including Navalny, and their job is to create a youth movement that can lead to a color revolution. That's his whole thing. Bottom line is it failed. It failed miserably. But Navalny was identified at that point in time as somebody with potentially started this anti-corruption campaign when mid became the president mid said, I'm against corruption. Naval went good. Let me help you. And he jumped on this thing. He got picked to go to Yale in 2010 where he was groomed by the CIA for what purpose. The next target was, okay, we couldn't stop Putin from doing the swap in 2007, 2008. What we can do now is keep mid in power. (30:01) We can prevent Putin from coming back into office in the 2012 presidential election. Remember Hillary Clinton working the opposition, Michael McFall going in there. It's a big deal. And the volume, he became the front man for this. He went to Yale. He got dipped in, greased by the CIA and he got sent back to Russia. He's a CIA asset, straight up funded by British intelligence trying to overthrow or prevent Putin from coming back in power. Well, what's that thing? If you don't start nothing, there won't be nothing. Don't start nothing. Won't be nothing. Well, Navalny, I mean, before he went to Yale, he spent a summer in Kiro, which is a province about 800 kilometers northeast of Moscow. He got involved in restructuring the timber business, and it looked like he might've done some things that weren't so good. Normally that would be ignored, but he comes back and he immediately starts attacking the interest, the economic interest behind United Russia and Putin. (31:04) And so you started something, okay? So they opened up a criminal case against him, and now you have this situation where Navalny is trying to make himself relevant. And look, he had some traction early on. He ran for Mayor of Moscow and he got 27% of the vote. That ain't bad, but he didn't have any traction outside of Moscow. He couldn't get the kind of numbers necessary to win, but he was a pain in Putin's side. So they started legal, this legal stuff against him, and it ended up in him being convicted of a fraud and embezzlement, some people call it politically motivated. There's no doubt it was politically motivated, but that doesn't mean that the crime didn't take place. He got a suspended sentence. He's on parole. Basically, they did this to keep him from running. They said, because you're convicted, you can't run for office. (31:52) Something needed to happen. And so in 2020, he was poisoned, but he wasn't. Again, I don't want to get too much down the conspiracy track, but let me just put it this way. His medical records clearly show that he wasn't poisoned by Novak. This was a setup to get him out of Russia where he had been effectively neutered over into a safe area, and we know that he landed in Germany, he was flown into Germany, had a miraculous recovery by December. He wait a minute, had a miraculous recovery from Nova Chuck, which from my understanding is one of the most dangerous nerve agents created. I've read. It's so dangerous. It really can't even be used. The story was that he was poisoned at the airport. They poisoned his tea before he got on the plane. No, no. They poisoned his underwear in his hotel room. (32:45) No, no. But wasn't that afterwards, because the story changed. The story changed a couple of times. That's my point that they said that they poisoned his tea in the airport. If I understand it, if you were to put Nova chuck in a cup of tea damn near everybody, at least in that area of the airport would be dead. Then they said, oh, they poisoned his water bottle on the plane. Nobach is so toxic that if they had done that, everybody including the pilot would be dead. Then they poisoned his underwear. The story kept, and this is also interesting to me, is that during all of these changing of the stories, Russia kept saying, send us the toxicology report so that we can investigate this. No toxicology report was ever presented. Yeah, again, I'm not a big conspiracy guy. I don't like it. I am Hamm's razor kind of person. (33:48) But the problem is, CCAM razor points to this because we did get the toxicology, not the ones that the Germans and everybody were saying prove Novare, Wilma, you're a hundred percent right. This is the most deadly substance on the planet, but apparently it can't kill anybody. And by the way, whatever the new name of the kgp is, they're pretty good at assassinating folks as is the ccia. A, if they want you done, cancel your distance and cancel your five bullets. Five bullets in the front of your body tends to do it. You don't have to mess around with Novak. Okay? Yeah. I mean, just look. A Ukrainian pilot, a Russian pilot defected earlier this year to Ukraine and had two of his crew members killed as a result. I mean, he's a murderous traitor in the eyes of the Russians. They just found his body in Spain with five bullets pumped into the front of it. (34:45) That's how the Russians get you. They don't go around doing this Novak stuff. But the point is this Nozek was a manufactured event. It didn't happen. What the German doctors who treated him released the blood work and everything. It showed that Navalny had a whole bunch of different health issues, some serious health issues, and he was also, they found evidence of antidepressants, which is okay. I'm not attacking him, it's not a problem, but it looks like he deliberately overdosed on antidepressants to generate the result that happened so he could be flown out. This was a pre-planned event. I just want everybody to understand that, that Navalny deliberately overdosed on antidepressants to generate a medical crisis that then got him flown out of Russia, because remember, he's on house arrest. He can't leave, but they got him out. What's the first thing that happens after his miraculous recovery? (35:42) They fly him to Germany to a CIA safe house where a film crew comes in and they produce two feature length documentaries in one month, one month, including elaborate computer generated graphics, the whole thing. He claims that he came up with the idea while he was recovering from his and wrote it in a feverish in October, November. Wilmer, I've made a documentary and I'm making one right now. I can guarantee you they didn't get it done in a month. This was prepackaged by the CIA and British intelligence. And then he was, everybody's saying, stay in Germany. And he went, no, I'm going back. Why? Again? In 2021, these election cycles matter. In 2021, Putin was going to change the Constitution so that he could continue to run for office, and he changed the length of the term from four years to six years. He was restructuring the government and everybody who was anybody, including myself, looked at it and went, he's basically guaranteeing that the West will never subvert Russian democracy by doing this. (36:49) He's iron proofing it, bulletproofing it. So the last chance to get rid of Vladimir Putin was to disrupt this effort. Navalny was picked as the guy to do it. Navalny job was to go back to Russia stand trial, and while he's standing trial, they're going to release these documentaries. The first one was called Putin's Palace, which was supposed to expose the corruption of Putin and everything, and the idea that it would generate so much unrest inside Russia that Navalny would be acquitted, put in, become the presidential candidate to oppose Putin. That was the dream. The problem is the people coming up with that didn't understand that Navalny had no support in Russia, never could never get it outside of Moscow. You couldn't get 5%. You might get 12% in Cabo, but that's it. You're not going to win election with 12% support. The numbers I saw for him was about somewhere between two and 5%, more on the 2% side. (37:44) Nationwide, like I said, there's certain bubbles in there where you could get support, but nationwide, he wasn't going anywhere on this. So he goes back and the Russians, what's that? Don't want nothing. Don't start nothing. The Russians know exactly what's going on. I mean, look, Pesco, who's the pre spokesperson in October of 2020, he said, we know what's going on. Navalny is working with the CIA. We know this. We know everything. So they brought him back and they knew what his plan was. They knew what he was supposed to do. So they quickly turned just really quickly because that's what President Putin said to Tucker Carlson when he talked about it's good that you applied to the CIA and that they did not accept you. He was sending a message. I know who you are. I know what you do. Yeah, well, so here's the deal. (38:39) The Russians said, we're not playing this game anymore. We've letting Navali do this stupid stupidity because he's irrelevant. But now you're playing, playing a serious game of messing around with our democracy. So we're just going to end it. The vol, the hammer's coming down, boom, nine years, boom, 30 years, you're in jail for life. Goodbye. Get out of here. Now they did that, and then a lot of people just came out and Bill. Then the Russians turned around and said, okay, we know he's your spy. Do you want him back? We'll trade him for a guy that we want back from Germany. Now, here's the part that gets conspiratorial two days before he died, minute before you get there. Isn't there also footage of Navalny or one of his representatives, but I think it's him talking Tom, I six, about money, about how much money he's going to need to sustain this democracy movement in Russia. (39:38) 2012, Navalny deputy met with a member of MI six in Moscow. Again, how did they get the video? Because the Russians know everything. I mean, when people are sitting there going, Evan Sitz isn't a CIA spy. He couldn't be. I just want to tell you right now, ladies and gentlemen, the Russians have him on film talking about this, about receiving the documents. It's conspiratorial. Putin was very clear about it. He's a CIA spy and Navalny, the Russians know who was paying for him. They know this. So they're sitting there going, we want to give them back. But that's the last thing. The ccia A wants. Why? Because then they have to admit that we're messing around in Russian politics politic. They can't. So this is the part that, this is what I firmly believe, because I believe that Navalny was induced by his handlers to deliberately overdose on depressants in 2020 to get him out, to get involved in the CIA operation to come back in and disrupt the election. (40:37) That is clear. Two days before he died, he was visited by his lawyer. Some people say that his wife was there as well, and they brought medication that's documented. Have you seen Godfather two so many times? I can't tell you how many Freddy five fingers. Freddy. Five fingers. Okay, so Tom goes to talk to Freddie five fingers. You just take a nice warm bath, you slit your words, nice warm bath, open up your veins with the woman. The family will be taken care of, throws the cigar away, shakes his hand, and it's understood. Navalny daughter got a free ride to Stanford courtesy of Michael McFall. Navalny wife now has been appointed. I mean, she was at the Munich Security Conference ready to step in before he died. He died. The script comes in, boom. She's now the new figure of the opposition. She's not tainted by crime. (41:32) She's at Navalny. That's a headline in the Washington Post today. Yeah, she's the new face of the opposition because Navalny had been neutered by the Russians, but as long as he was alive, he was a problem for the CIA. So Freddy five fingers, that's all I'm going to say. He was told Your family will be taken care of. All they have to do is lie in the tub and open up my veins, and it's a quiet, painful day. He overdosed on the drugs they gave him. He went for a walk and he died, didn't come back. His family's taken care of, and that's what I believe happened. I believe that the CIA knocked this guy off in prison. He took a long walk on a very short pier. Yeah. (42:20) So you've got Alexander the Butcher, sarky Ky, the commander of Ukraine's Ground forces. Since the start of the military operation, he is now the new military chief after Emir, Zelensky replaced zany in this leadership shakeup. What does that tell us at this stage of the game? What does that type of move tell us? Are they transitioning now to another phase of this process, recognizing that the war is lost? Again, everything has to have a setup because nothing happens in a vacuum. Ukraine is called the greatest democracy in the world. We know that's not true, but it's called the greatest democracy in the world by America. We overthrew it in 2014. Yes, we would know. But the key aspect of democracies is civil military relations, meaning that the civilian is the commander in chief, and the military always obeys the orders. Let's look at American history. (43:32) George McClellan, Abraham Lincoln McClellan was the commander of the army of the Potomac, and he thought he knew how to win this war, and Abraham Lincoln disagreed and fired him. And McClellan said, sir, yes sir. And he resigned because civil military relations, that's what you do. McClellan went on to challenge Lincoln in the elections and lost, but he didn't launch a coup. That's not what you do. Douglas MacArthur, during the Korean War thought he knew how to win the war, wanted to drop atomic bombs on China. Harry Truman said, Nope, that's not how we're going to do it. And they met in Midway, and Truman fired him, and MacArthur went, sir, yes sir. And he resigned. That's what civil military relations supposed to be in a democracy. Zelensky met with zany, who's the commander of the Ukrainian Armed forces, and he said, I don't like the fact that you're articulating policy that goes against what I want. (44:31) I want to be more aggressive. I have to go out and sell this conflict to the West, and I have to sell it, that we're going to regain all the lost territory. And you, as the general is supposed to say, sir, yes, sir, but you've gone out and given interviews behind my back saying it's a frozen conflict, a stalemate. I can't do that. You're fired and solution. He said, no, I'm not. And Zelensky went. Zany said, not only am I not fired, but here, let me show you this. Here's my picture. Given a medal to a right sector, Nazi from the organization, said, they're going to hang you from the deck, and if you ever go against this, and behind me is a picture of step on Bandera and the right sector flag. Go ahead and fire me now. Zelensky, you're a dead man walking. (45:14) And when Zelensky started calling people up saying Aslu saying no, one of the people he called up was Ky, who said, I just want to tell you right now, Mr. President, myself and the entire Ukrainian general staff support slu, you fire 'em. We come marching, it's over. And now Victoria Newland, and everybody's back there going, can't do this, guys. We're supposed to be giving 64 billion to the world's greatest democracy. We're against coups, and you're getting ready to launch a coup. She flies in panic, and so she cuts a deal. She explains to everybody, if you do this coup, we can't support you. It's over, and then you're all going to die. And the generals realized that, and they went, yeah, we understand that. Zelensky realized that. So zany stepped aside, Zeki took over, but understand what happened. It's a coup. There's one man in charge of Ukraine today, and his name is not Mir Zelinsky. (46:07) His name is Ky. He's the commander of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, and they're calling the shots. How do we know this? Because within days of him coming in, he said, we're going over to the general defensive. He's calling the shots. Zelinsky said, we'll never leave at vca. KY came and said, get 'em out. Pull 'em out, red, destroy the line. We're going to be pulling back the military's in charge. And now you have some interesting things because the coup we didn't want to happen may happen because the nationalists are all upset. And there's talk about driving on Kiev right now. The Nazi nationalists are you're talking about, yeah, the Nazis, the N right sector guys who became Ovv, who now have renamed themselves. They're the third assault brigade, and everybody's going, there's no Nazis in Ukraine because there's nothing called the Azov, except the Nazis are so stupid. (47:03) They say, nah, third of assault brigade we're azo. And they do it right on camera, seeling all this kind of stuff in the West, everywhere. Oh, no, we don't want to see this guy's just calling himself the third assault brigade. But no, the Nazis are there. They're upset. It's a mess right now. But America, I'm just telling everybody's this, right? There was a coup deta in Ukraine. The generals are in charge. Zelinsky is a figurehead right now, but the people calling the shot is the military. Now, that's a new reality. I just want to quickly take a step back and to the point you were making about Navalny, to those that think what you're saying is fanciful and crazy, the United States did a similar action. They didn't kill him, but they did a similar action in Venezuela with Juan Gudo. The United States told the world that Juan Gudo was the president of Venezuela, even though Nicholas Maduro is the democratically elected president. (48:11) And when Gudo failed, now the United States is trying to do the same thing with a woman named Marina Machado, and she has been convicted by the Venezuelan Supreme Court as having worked with, I think it's Peru, against the interests of Venezuela. So the Venezuelan Supreme Court said, because you've gone outside the country and tried to overthrow this government, you are no longer qualified to be a candidate for president. The United States is trying to ignore the, dictate the decision of the Venezuelan Supreme Court and put this woman in place. Anyway, I bring that up just to show that what you have talked about in terms of, now I forgot the guy's name, Naval, Naval, Navalny, the United States is doing this in doing this, a number of places, and Venezuela is the most recent. But yeah. How about President Diem in Vietnam? Well, we can go for people going, well, this is fanciful. (49:19) This is out of a guys. We do it all the time. All the time. When leaders become inconvenient to the Sharan, the Sharan, the Sha Saddam Hussein. I just want to remind people, one of the more interesting, I was involved with a lot of defectors, Iraqi defectors in my time as a UN weapons inspector, and one guy that I interviewed many, many times was Wafi Samara. He was the head of military intelligence for Saddam. He ended up being in London and run by the Brits. So I'd go there and the MI six would take you to a safe house, and Wafi would come in and we'd have long conversations, and I tried to extract information from him that could lead to good inspections. But he just sat there and he talked about how the US intelligence would fly in, because the place I wanted to inspect was a specific office with a specific safe. (50:13) And he said, Hey, when you're in that safe, if you go down to this drawer, boom, you might find some photographs that you recognize. And I said, whatcha talking about? He goes, that's where we kept the American Spy satellite photographs that were given to us by American Intelligence officers who came in and sat in that conference room right next to it. You'll see it when you go in there. I did. And we met there, and they would brief us on the spy satellites, give us the newest signals, intelligence laying out the Iranian ground forces, and they helped us plan the chemical weapons attacks against the Iranians in 1988 and afa. We had this wonderful relationship. He gave me the names of all the guys that he worked with. What I'm trying to say is, ladies and gentlemen, there was a time in 19 88, 19 89, where Saddam was our boy. (50:58) US intelligence was there. Then Saddam became inconvenient. He fired scud missiles at Israel, which is a capital crime, and we ended up going to war removing them and having him hung by the neck until dead because his continued survival would've been inconvenient for America. Let me just make it as clear as this. Navalny had become inconvenient because the Russians were sitting on, the Russians never go public about anything, and their words mean everything. And when Pesco said, in October of 2020, we know what the CIA is doing, the cia, we know who he's working with. We know what's happening. It meant they know. They know everything. They have all the financials, they have all the videotapes, they have everything. And the US knew it too. That interview with Tucker is very telling. He said, I'm not going to talk to Biden. There's really nothing for me to say, but he says, our special services are talking. (51:58) They're talking the language of the special services. Having been in the special services and engaged in those kinds of conversations, they're very frank, because we don't have to play games. When you sit down with somebody and they know what your background is, we don't have to pretend. We talk about human recruitment, we talk about technical surveillance, we talk about the tools of the trade, we talk about the language that we know is going on. And so when the special services of Russia sit down with the special services of the CI and say, we know exactly what you guys did. You met here, boom, boom, boom. We got the goods. He's your boy. Do you want him back? And the CIA went, Nope, we don't want him back. We're going to have a lawyer visit him. And again, it may sound something like that, a movie. (52:40) But remember, Hollywood gets its greatest cues from reality. Frank Pan, angel, Freddy, five Fingers, Freddy, five Fingers baby. Favorite scene in the world. And it's real. I mean, I'm giving away my article, but I'm writing an article that this is going to be explained in great detail, and I talk about Freddy Five Fingers. So the next point here that I want to get to with you quickly is Mike Turner, Republican of Ohio, chair of the House Intelligence Committee. He's warning that Russia may be developing a space-based weapon that could target US satellites. And a lot of the narrative that's surrounding what he said over last weekend is that now Russia has violated, there were some treaties I think signed in the mid eighties that the countries agreed that they would not militarize space. But what seems to be left out of this conversation is that I think when the United States announced the Space Force that was militarization of space, therefore the treaty that they now want to wrap themselves in and call foul based upon, really the United States has already violated it. (54:00) So go ahead. Well, the treaty is the 1967 treaty, the outer space Treaty 67. Okay? And it talks about, it doesn't say demilitarization. What it says is that space should be used for exclusively peaceful purposes and that nobody should deploy nuclear weapons in the space. Now, what Turner has to show the stupidity of Mike Turner and these people. Apparently there's raw intelligence. That's the term that's used, and that's an important phrase. Finished intelligence is when I collect information, I corroborate it with different sources. You connect the dots, I connect the dots. That's right. Bingo. Good job, Wilmer. And you connect the dots, and then you write up an assessment that it's fact-based. But here's the important thing. You disguise the sources of information because if you're going to release finished intelligence to a congressman or Congress, they do what politicians do. They talk. They bring in somebody, Hey, read this. (55:05) You're not supposed to write about it, but wink, wink, read this. And they go, oh my God, the Russians are going to put a nuclear weapon in space. What are we going to do about it? Okay, finished. Intelligence gets leaked all the time. Everybody does it. The president on down. It's just the name of the game in Washington dc. Raw intelligence though, is almost never leaked. Why? Because raw intelligence means we haven't protected the source. So Turner released raw intelligence. He released a raw intelligence report to Congress. He put it in the reading room and said, everybody needs to come and read this thing. Now, a lot of people did, a lot of people didn't, but it created a storm because he issued a public statement, which means the media now, because he knows how the game's played. Now, every reporter worked their salt in Washington. (55:55) Dcs found their congressional sourcing. What the hell is on that report? And people started talking. So what we do know now is that the Russians are developing an anti-satellite capability that incorporates a nuclear device designed to generate an electromagnetic pulse that can shut down all of our satellites in outer space. Now, why is this important? Understand this. Turner released his report on Wednesday, knowing that on Thursday, the gang of eight, four senators, four Republicans from the Intelligence Committee, the leadership was going to meet with the White House National Security Council about this very report and talk about it. So why would you release it when they're already going to talk about it? What are you trying to do? (56:42) On Wednesday, the day he released his report, SpaceX sent up a Falcon Nine rocket with two satellites. These satellites were experimental missile monitoring satellites, part of a constellation of satellites that the United States started deploying last year. We deployed 28 of them last year. It's going to be a constellation of hundreds. It's sort of like a militarized starlink. And the purpose of this constellation is give America total control over the informational domain. That means that we communicate faster, we navigate, we can target, we can collect. We've militarized space. And the Russians have said, they've written reports to Secretary General saying, Hey, this is a violation of the outer space treaty. You're militarizing space. You're creating an advantage at a time when you say you want to strategically defeat Russia, remember, that's the American objective. And the Russians are saying, if you do this, you could launch a first strike against us, and we might not be able to respond. (57:45) You're getting a unilateral advantage here, and if we do go to war, you're going to have this total control over intelligence, collection, communications, et cetera, that gives you an operational and tactical advantage. We can't allow this to happen. So what the Russians did is they developed a weapon. They haven't deployed it yet, but it's a weapon that it will go up. And in one winding flash of a moment, that doesn't threaten any life here in America. It's not like they're going up there with a giant dirty bomb. It's going to be a neutron type device, a small device that's geared towards emitting radiation, the pulse, and it's going to blind the entire in an instant shut down this entire satellite network. But here's the important thing. From Turner's perspective, the entire American military approach to war depends on this. If we don't have this satellite thing, we put talk about putting all the eggs in one basket, we have literally put all the eggs in one basket. (58:44) Everything we do depends on this. If you shut that satellite network down, ladies and gentlemen, we can't go to war. We can't go to war. It's over. And Turner knows it. So what Turner's trying to do is say, guys, why are we investing all this money? This is going to go on for years when we know the Russians can undo it. This is stupid. We need to either get involved in arms control to prevent this from happening, or we need to come up with a backup plan because these satellites ain't going to work the way you want 'em to work when you want 'em to work. That's noble. But here's the problem. He released raw intelligence, which means the Russians now know how we collected it, and at a time when we need to have continued access to this stream of reporting. Now more than ever, let's imagine that the president says, Hey, what are the Russians up to today on that satellite thing, the thing we've been monitoring, you guys came to me and you said, Hey, boss, we put a, I don't know how they did it. (59:49) We tapped a cable and now we're listening to the conversations of these guys. Oh, wow, that's cool. Okay, but boss, we can't talk about, we can't mention the following words because if we mention the following words, the Russians will know what conversation we listen to, and then they'll stop communicating. Well, raw intelligence gives you those words. It wasn't finished product. Mike Turner compromised his source. We will never listen to them again at a time when we actually need to be monitoring this to come up with a strategy. Remember, let's say we want to do the right thing for once in our pathetic lives as Americans, and we say, maybe it's time we do engage in meaningful arms control. This is when we need to know what Russian intent is. How far along are they? Are they going to deploy this? Is this something that the Russians are doing to get to the negotiating table, or is this something that the Russians are going to keep, no matter what, what's going on, it affects our negotiating strategy. (01:00:44) We don't know now because Mike Turner released the raw intelligence to do an honorable thing to get people, he knew that they were going to sweep it under the rug. He knew that the Gang of eight and the White House were just go, Nope, we're not going to worry about this. We're going to keep deploying the satellites. And he's going, that's stupid. But now we are blind. And that's why I call it Turner's folly. I mean, trying to do the right thing. He did the absolute wrong thing. And now at a time when we need to have this intelligence, it's not there. I know there's a lot of people out there that thinks intelligence is a bad word, and it's been misused throughout history. There's no doubt about that. But I'm here to tell you right now that collecting information of this nature is absolutely essential to the national security of the United States because you want our leaders to be informed about the potential threats that exist around the world. (01:01:32) And there's a need for intelligence, not Iris. I'm not talking about violating American constitutional rights. I'm not talking about, I'm saying there's a need for people like me who did it honorably. It's a tough job. It's a dangerous job. Sometimes you have to do things that you wouldn't want to talk about at the PTA, but it's the reality of the world that you have to go out there and you have to get this information so that your leaders are informed so they can make the right decisions. And Mike Turner has cost us that information at a time when we desperately need it. Final question for you. And that surrounds nato and Donald Trump's comments about nato, and there seems to be an awful lot of furor about his talking about defunding NATO and all this kind of stuff, when all that I can read and understand is that NATO is now really obsolete and that it's a money laundering scheme. (01:02:26) Yeah, let me put it this way. There's a foreign minister of Lithuania Landsburg out there, and he's, I mean, Lithuania, the Baltic countries, Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia, they're making a lot of noise right now about Article five and how it's essential that NATO must come to the collective defense. But Lithuania is talking about, for instance, blockading Coing grad, the Russian enclave on the Baltic Sea. They're talking about sanctions. They're talking about a whole bunch of stuff that could lead to a war with Russia. And they're saying, that's okay because we're nato, and NATO will protect us. (01:03:05) The American people need to understand that Lithuania has a population of 2.8 million. The greater East Coast megapolis from Boston to Washington DC is 50 million people. Do you really think that we're going to sacrifice 50 million people to defend 2.8 million people who are kicking a hornet's nest right now? The answer is no. And that's the bottom line about nato. The American people are waking up to the fact that NATO is not about defending Europe from the evil Russians, NATO's a suicide pill. Because you have nations like Poland, you have nations like Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia, that think that because they have this NATO shield behind them, they can behave aggressively to Russian and not have any consequence to it. If they start a war against Russia and a blockade of Coing, grad is an act of war, Russia will respond militarily. And now if you're Joe Biden, it's a sacred thing. (01:04:04) Every inch of NATO soil is sacred. Article five is a sacred, no, it's a suicide pill. It's a trap having poodles trying to get the rottweilers to fight. NATO is an organization that has outlived its usefulness. Donald Trump, he's not the most eloquent person or the most articulate person. And there's a lot about him that just cannot be supported 100%. But I'll tell you right now, he's speaking the mind of many Americans when he says, we ain't doing this anymore. We're not paying your bills. We're not going to be there for you. When you want to kick a hornet's nest. We don't want to get stung. So you're on your own, and that's what's going to happen. I am predicting that nato, it may not last 10 years. It's out. It's on its way out because it's, here's the thing. Remember we talked about mobilization at the beginning? (01:04:56) We talked about mobilization. It's funny to watch the schizophrenia that exists in people like Jan Stoltenberg who stutters his way through everything. Russia is evil, and we must must stand up through Russia. NATO must do, but we cannot afford to mobilize right now. We have no money. Our industry is no longer working, and we don't, but America will pay for it because NATO is a, I mean, it's going back and forth. NATO can't mobilize right now because they don't have the industrial base to mobilize. Not only that, nobody wants to be part the British who are out there. Boris Johnson doing that ridiculous thing. Lance Corporal Johnson reporting, sir, we're going to mobilize the people. First of all, Britain has two aircraft carriers. They built for, I forget how many billions of dollars they can't get out of port because they don't work. They build a whole bunch of new frigates, brand new modern frigates to defend these aircraft carriers, but they don't have enough sailors. (01:05:51) So in order to get the sailors on these new frigates, they have to retire frigates that are still good. So they're military. We're going to fight the Russians. I mean, you hear this British general, we're going to be on the front lines of the next war with Russia, with what? Your military's 72,000. Right now, you can't fill up a soccer stadium, and in five years it's going to be 56,000. Nobody wants to join the British military anymore. Nobody's joining the Navy. Nobody's joining anything because the youth of Europe don't believe in Europe. They don't believe they're not willing to give their lives for this pathetic little enterprise called Europe or nato. So all this talk about 300,000, this, that mobilize. It's all talk. And that's the good news is it's all talk. The better news is I think NATO's done because you used a word that's very important. And normally, as I said, I shy against conspiracies, but NATO's a money laundering scheme, that's all it is. It's an employment vehicle. I mean, I have to be careful. I have relatives that work for nato. They're not Americans, and thank God, I mean, one's married to my sister. So I like the fact that he has a paycheck. It keeps my sister fed and a roof overhead. (01:07:07) But the jobs not a real job. None of NATO's a real job. It's just an employment vehicle for a political economic elite that automatically fallen on these ES because that's what NATO is. It's a sinecure for people just to sit there and collect a paycheck doing nothing. If I have the chance to speak to President Biden, and I know he watches the show regularly, I would have to ask him about the sanctity of NATO that he holds so near and dear, if you believe in NATO to the degree that you do, Mr. President, why did you engage in an act of war as in blowing up the Nord Stream pipeline? Why did you engage in an act of war against a NATO country that being Germany? Because by doing so, article five, the other NATO countries are supposed to respond to Germany's defense in a manner in which they see fit. (01:08:10) So I guess the fact that they didn't respond means they didn't see a manner that they see fit. But I don't hear anybody asking that question. Why? If NATO is NATO and it's sacrosanct as it is, why did you engage in an act of war against a NATO member? That's my final question, Scott Ritter. Well, I mean, it's a great question, but here's even an equally relevant one. Why did the German chancellor stay silent at the press conference in February when the president said that if Russian and invade Ukraine, I'll take out Nord stream. And when he was asked the question, but it's German, how could you do that? It'll get done, I promise you. And Olaf Schultz is sitting there going, not saying a word, not saying a word. So how can you, I mean, the thing about Article five is it has to be invoked by the person attacked. (01:09:05) And Germany never once said, we've been attacked because they were there when it was designed. Olaf Schultz knew all along that this was going to happen because Germany's not a sovereign state. And that's the thing about NATO that people need to understand. It exists only for the United States. It's the exclusive tool of the United States. It exists to promote American national security interests. And this is why when you have Latvia and Poland now believing that NATO's there for their interest, no, it's not. NATO doesn't exist for anybody's interest, but our own. And as Europe wakes up to this reality, they're going to realize that we don't need to be part of NATO anymore because it doesn't benefit us. And there's a lot of talk now about a European security agency and things of that nature. Yeah, and President Putin asked, I thought, a very relevant as we look at, so people say, well, why did the United States blow up nato? (01:10:05) Well, I mean, blow up Nord Stream basically to de-industrialized Germany de-industrialized Europe, and have the Europeans start buying natural gas from the United States and other things. Putin during his speech said, well, you realize they didn't destroy the entire Nord stream pipeline. There is one pipe that can still transmit gas. Why don't you open that up? He said, there's the ability to send gas through Ukraine. Why don't you open that up? There's the ability to send gas through Poland. Why don't you open that up and haven't heard an answer? But that's, you want the best answer. Go ahead. I'll just say this. I grew up in Germany and the car that I loved, I was in love with the Porsche nine 11 SC Turbo, rough modified, and well, guess what's happening. Wilmer Porsche is moving its production to the United States. Michelin, the French Tire company. Michelin has shut down, I think two tire plants in Germany, and they're moving them. (01:11:15) I don't know where they're moving, but they're moving 'em out of Germany. I know that. Can you imagine a Porsche plant and a Michelin plant? I tell you what, there's going to be a new car in my driveway pretty soon. It's going to stay made in the USA on it, but that's what's going on. We've de-industrialized Europe to our benefit. And again, we come b

pWotD Episode 2481: Alexei Navalny Welcome to popular Wiki of the Day where we read the summary of a popular Wikipedia page every day.With 873,471 views on Friday, 16 February 2024 our article of the day is Alexei Navalny.Alexei Anatolyevich Navalny (Russian: Алексей Анатольевич Навальный, IPA: [ɐlʲɪkˈsʲej ɐnɐˈtolʲjɪvʲɪtɕ nɐˈvalʲnɨj]; 4 June 1976 – 16 February 2024) was a Russian opposition leader, lawyer, anti-corruption activist, and political prisoner. He organised anti-government demonstrations and ran for office to advocate reforms against corruption in Russia, and against President Vladimir Putin and his government. Navalny was a Russian Opposition Coordination Council member. He was the leader of the Russia of the Future party and founder of the Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK). He was recognised by Amnesty International as a prisoner of conscience, and was awarded the Sakharov Prize for his work on human rights. As of 2021, Navalny had more than six million YouTube subscribers; through his social media channels, he and his team have published material about corruption in Russia, organised political demonstrations and promoted his campaigns. In a 2011 radio interview, he described Russia's ruling party, United Russia, as a "party of crooks and thieves", which became a popular epithet. Navalny and the FBK have published investigations detailing alleged corruption by high-ranking Russian officials and their associates.In July 2013, Navalny received a suspended sentence for embezzlement, but was still allowed to run in the 2013 Moscow mayoral election and came in second, with 27% of the vote, outperforming expectations but losing to incumbent mayor Sergey Sobyanin, a Putin appointee. In December 2014, Navalny received another suspended sentence for embezzlement. Both of his criminal cases were widely considered to be politically motivated and intended to bar him from running in future elections. The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) later ruled that the cases violated Navalny's right to a fair trial, but the sentences were never overturned. In December 2016, Navalny launched his presidential campaign for the 2018 presidential election but was barred by Russia's Central Election Commission (CEC) after registering due to his prior criminal conviction; the Russian Supreme Court subsequently rejected his appeal. In 2017, the documentary He Is Not Dimon to You was released, accusing Dmitry Medvedev, the then prime minister and previous president, of corruption, leading to mass protests. In 2018, Navalny initiated Smart Voting, a tactical voting strategy intended to consolidate the votes of those who oppose United Russia, to the party of seats in elections. In August 2020, Navalny was hospitalised in serious condition after being poisoned with a Novichok nerve agent. He was medically evacuated to Berlin and discharged a month later. Navalny accused Putin of being responsible for his poisoning, and an investigation implicated agents from the Federal Security Service. In January 2021, Navalny returned to Russia and was immediately detained on accusations of violating parole conditions while he was hospitalised in Germany which were imposed as a result of his 2014 conviction. Following his arrest and the release of the documentary Putin's Palace, which accused Putin of corruption, mass protests were held across Russia. In February 2021, his suspended sentence was replaced with a prison sentence of over two and a half years' detention, and his organisations were later designated as extremist and liquidated, including the FBK. In March 2022, Navalny was sentenced to an additional nine years in prison after being found guilty of embezzlement and contempt of court in a new trial described as a sham by Amnesty International; his appeal was rejected and in June, he was transferred to a high-security prison. In August 2023, Navalny was sentenced to an additional 19 years in prison on extremism charges meaning he would be released in December 2038. Navalny commented that his sentence is as long as either his life or the life of the political regime in the country. In December 2023, Navalny went missing from prison for almost three weeks and then re-emerged in a new arctic circle jail in the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug. On 16 February 2024, the Russian prison service reported that Navalny had died at the age of 47.This recording reflects the Wikipedia text as of 01:25 UTC on Saturday, 17 February 2024.For the full current version of the article, see Alexei Navalny on Wikipedia.This podcast uses content from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.Visit our archives at wikioftheday.com and subscribe to stay updated on new episodes.Follow us on Mastodon at @wikioftheday@masto.ai.Also check out Curmudgeon's Corner, a current events podcast.Until next time, I'm Aditi Standard.

President Cyril Ramaphosa asked Russian President Vladimir Putin not to attend the Brics summit but could not announce Putin's non-attendance before receiving support from the Chinese and Indian heads of state. Ramaphosa, in a supplementary affidavit filed in the Gauteng High Court in Pretoria, said it was "moot" for the Democratic Alliance (DA) to continue its application to compel the government to state whether it would have executed the International Criminal Court's (ICC) arrest warrant on Putin. This followed the Russian president saying he would not attend the Johannesburg summit next month. Ramaphosa's supplementary statement was filed on Tuesday before Wednesday's announcement Putin would not attend by "mutual agreement". The ICC issued an arrest warrant for Putin in March for alleged war crimes in Russia's war with Ukraine that began in February last year. In his affidavit, Ramaphosa said he first asked Putin not to attend Africa's Ukraine-Russia peace summit on 19 June, and the Russian leader said he would "apply his mind" to the request. Three days later, Ramaphosa added he met with Brazil President Lula da Silva at the Global Financing Pact summit in Paris, France, and lobbied South Africa's position that Putin does not attend the Brics summit, expected to run from 22 to 24 August. "At this meeting [with Da Silva], the president of Brazil agreed that the preferred option, being that President Putin would not attend the [Brics] summit in person, had his support," he said. Ramaphosa said the Brics formation worked on "a consensus" and buy-in had to be sought and received from all five member countries before a decision was taken. "I believe that in these circumstances the DA's application is moot and must be withdrawn," he added. On Thursday, News24 reported the DA was forging ahead with its application, despite Putin saying he would not attend. The party's leader, John Steenhuisen, said it sought a declaratory order for this saga not to repeat itself. "[We] believe that we will continue to court because we believe that the obligation of [the] government needs to be confirmed and because we would like the precedent to be set for any future situations such as this that may [arise]," he said. On Thursday, Department of International Relations and Cooperation spokesperson Clayson Monyela said the government knew for a month Putin would not physically attend the summit. Monyela added the delay was due to the ironing out of diplomatic issues. Ramaphosa had consulted Brics member state leaders of China, Russia, and India. The president told the court by Tuesday, the department had not managed to arrange a meeting with China President Xi Jinping and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Ramaphosa asked the court to keep his supplementary affidavit confidential so as not to jeopardise the negotiations and consensus-seeking efforts. The department's director-general, Zane Dangor, in his confirmatory affidavit, told the court contacting Brics heads of state was "time consuming and difficult to arrange" owing to the leaders' schedules. "Such consultations are always complex, and there is nothing unique about the amount of work needed to arrange them, or the time it takes to finalise such discussions with five heads of state," Dangor said, adding the consultations were finalised on Tuesday. Putin would attend the summit virtually and be physically represented by his foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov. The Russian leader's decision had been labelled as reasonable by the Presidency and Russia's most significant political party, United Russia. The South African Sherpa to Brics, speaking at the media engagement, Professor Anil Sooklal, said Ramaphosa had engaged with Brics leaders regarding Putin's visit. The Brics ambassador labelled the Russian president's decision not to come as a substantial move which allowed the summit not to face threats of withdrawal like the G20 summit in Indonesia in 2022. Other world leaders had protested...

News about the war in Ukraine. More infighting in Russia, this time between Putin's "United Russia" party and what they call "turbopatriots", which is accompanied by a snail's pace in the front and more deaths of the mobilized. Also, some predictions by those very turbopatriots why any Russian offensive is doomed to fail.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/theeasternborder. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

President Macron this week announced that France's anti-jihadist military mission in the Sahel region of Africa has ended. The departure of troops from the former colonial power and the end of Operation Barkhane comes at a challenging time for the region which is in the grips of a security crisis fuelled by Islamist extremists. Both Mali and Burkina Faso face jihadist insurgencies and the countries have seen a combined four coups d'état since 2020. Mali's ruling junta, which has been in power since 2020, has brought in Russian operatives it says are military trainers, but western nations describe as mercenaries from the pro-Kremlin Wagner Group. Could Russia become the new big player in West Africa? Paul Henley is joined by a panel of expert guests. Jean-Hervé Jezequel - Project Director for the Sahel at the International Crisis Group. Niagalé Bagayoko - Chair of the African Security Sector Network, a think tank based in Ghana. Paul Melly - Journalist and Consulting Fellow in the Africa Programme at the Chatham House think tank. Also featuring: Yéah Samaké - A Malian politician and the country's former ambassador to India. Sergei Markov - A former member of the Russian parliament for Vladimir Putin's United Russia party and former adviser to the Kremlin. Producers: Ellen Otzen and Paul Schuster.

Russian- backed authorities in the occupied Ukrainian regions of Luhansk and Donetsk and city of Kherson say they'll hold what they're calling referendums on joining Russia, after Ukrainian counter- offensives recaptured large swathes of territory in the east. Also in the programme: Pakistani health officials say a sharp increase in cases of water-borne diseases threatens a second disaster in flood-affected regions; and the man at the centre of the hit podcast Serial is released after 23 years behind bars, but could he face a retrial? (Image: Russian leaders Dmitry Medvedev, Deputy head of Russia"s Security Council and chairman of the United Russia party (L), General Prosecutor Igor Krasnov (2-L) and presidential administration first deputy head Sergei Kirienko (C) meet the heads of the self-proclaimed Luhansk People"s Republic Leonid Pasechnik (3-R) and the self-proclaimed Donetsk People"s Republic (DPR) Denis Pushilin (R) ahead of a meeting in Luhansk, Ukraine, 11 August 2022 / Credit: EPA)

Contents: Biography Career and political views Aleksandr Dugin Aleksandr Gelyevich Dugin (Russian: Александр Гельевич Дугин; born 7 January 1962) is a Russian political philosopher, analyst, and strategist, known for his fascist views. Born into a military family, Dugin was an anti-communist dissident during the 1980s. Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Dugin co-founded the National Bolshevik Party with Eduard Limonov, a party which espoused National Bolshevism, which he later left. In 1997, he published Foundations of Geopolitics where he outlined his worldview, calling for Russia to rebuild its influence through alliances and conquest, and to challenge the rival Atlanticist "empire" led by the United States. Dugin continued to further develop his ideology of neo-Eurasianism, founding the Eurasia Party in 2002 and writing further books including The Fourth Political Theory (2009). Dugin also served as an advisor to the State Duma speaker Gennadiy Seleznyov, and a leading member of the ruling United Russia party, Sergey Naryshkin. He was the head of the Department of Sociology of International Relations at Moscow State University from 2009 to 2014, losing the position due to backlash over comments regarding clashes in Ukraine. Dugin's influence within the Russian government and on Russian president Vladimir Putin is disputed, with Dugin sometimes being referred to as "Putin's brain", responsible for shaping Russian foreign policy, while others contend that Dugin's influence within the government is limited and has been greatly exaggerated, an impression given by correlations between his work and Russian foreign policy. Title: Aleksandr Dugin Find out about the author(s) & basic information: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleksandr_Dugin Read the full article on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleksandr_Dugin [CC] license: Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0 Photo credited to: By Fars Media Corporation, CC BY 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=87159921 Follow us on Twitter: @Audiowikipedia1 Become a valuable contributor & member by supporting us at Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/AudioWikipedia

Contents: Career and political views Sanctions Death of daughter Dugin's works Aleksandr Dugin Aleksandr Gelyevich Dugin (Russian: Александр Гельевич Дугин; born 7 January 1962) is a Russian political philosopher, analyst, and strategist, known for his fascist views. Born into a military family, Dugin was an anti-communist dissident during the 1980s. Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Dugin co-founded the National Bolshevik Party with Eduard Limonov, a party which espoused National Bolshevism, which he later left. In 1997, he published Foundations of Geopolitics where he outlined his worldview, calling for Russia to rebuild its influence through alliances and conquest, and to challenge the rival Atlanticist "empire" led by the United States. Dugin continued to further develop his ideology of neo-Eurasianism, founding the Eurasia Party in 2002 and writing further books including The Fourth Political Theory (2009). Dugin also served as an advisor to the State Duma speaker Gennadiy Seleznyov, and a leading member of the ruling United Russia party, Sergey Naryshkin. He was the head of the Department of Sociology of International Relations at Moscow State University from 2009 to 2014, losing the position due to backlash over comments regarding clashes in Ukraine. Dugin's influence within the Russian government and on Russian president Vladimir Putin is disputed, with Dugin sometimes being referred to as "Putin's brain", responsible for shaping Russian foreign policy, while others contend that Dugin's influence within the government is limited and has been greatly exaggerated, an impression given by correlations between his work and Russian foreign policy. Title: Aleksandr Dugin Find out about the author(s) & basic information: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleksandr_Dugin Read the full article on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleksandr_Dugin [CC] license: Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0 Photo credited to: By Fars Media Corporation, CC BY 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=87159921 Follow us on Twitter: @Audiowikipedia1 Become a valuable contributor & member by supporting us at Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/AudioWikipedia

Matsyanyaaya: Russia’s response to Crippling Tech Sanctions— Aditya PareekThe Russian government’s response to the devastating series of embargoes, sanctions and export controls barring high-tech components and semiconductor chips is interesting. One of the measures intended for immediate relief is the legalisation of parallel or gray imports. Parallel imports will lead to the Russian market being supplied with products without their Original Equipment Manufacturer(OEM) or Intellectual Property(IP) rights holder’s permission. Gray or parallel imports are generally seen as iterations of a product intended for another market being sold in another - which is either illegal in some jurisdictions or a gray area in others. This gray trade is generally undertaken by intermediaries, stockpilers or resellers who have no formal ties to the OEM or IP owner. The prevalence of gray imports can also lead to lower quality or counterfeit products being supplied, but there are few alternatives for Russia in the short term. In the medium term, Russia is also hoping that Chinese foundries and other production facilities will supply the needed semiconductor chips. However, it is unclear if Chinese companies which own these facilities will risk being slapped with secondary sanctions and losing access to much-needed US IP, to fulfil demand from the Russian market. As identified in our issue paper on the subject, Russia has a few major players like Mikron Group, Zelnograd Nanotech Center, GS Nanotech. However, these Russian companies only have the equipment to work on trailing edge 250-90nm chips and not cutting edge ones. In the long term, Russia plans to invest almost 3.19 Trillion Roubles in setting up more domestic manufacturing capacity. A key goal highlighted behind this new investment is to set up production facilities that can churn out 28nm chips by the year 2030. As identified in these Russian media reports, despite the government throwing money at the problem, it will be a tough nut to crack within 7-8 years as the 2030 timeframe implies. Historical precedent shows that even in more cordial times, it has not been easy for Russia to secure semiconductor manufacturing equipment from foreign sources. Cutting out foreign sources entirely and manufacturing complex photolithography equipment needed for this goal would take even more time, possibly 2-3 decades, by which time the plot will be lost. If you enjoy the contents of this newsletter, please consider signing up for Takshashila’s Graduate Certificate in Public Policy(GCPP) Programmes.Click here to know moreAntariksh Matters: Nuance is important in the era of dual-use of space— Aditya PareekWhile the India-US Space situational Awareness(SSA) agreement is a huge development, it is important to understand the nuance in the fact that which agencies from the two countries signed it.As I highlighted in this tweet thread:Transparency around SSA is an issue that ISRO hadn’t prioritised before, as Pradeep Mohandas & I opined in this The Wire Science article in December 2020. Glad to see that things are now changing with ISRO coming out with a “Space Situational Assessment 2021”.False Information around Russia & StarlinkA worrying claim was circulating on social media around 16th April, that Russia’s military was ordered to destroy Starlink satellites. The reason alleged in the fake statement was that Starlink helped target the Russian Navy’s capital ship “Moskva”. The fake statement was attributed to the deputy chairman of the Security Council of Russia and the chairman of the Russian party in power, “United Russia”. The website which hosted this fake statement had almost identical content (apart from the fakes) to the genuine website of United Russia.The fake website appears to have since been taken down, but according to Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine it existed since at least 2004.Provocative fake content is nothing new in the information domain and has become a major part of modern hybrid wars but the potential for escalation around the conflict in space is a sensitive issue. With the earth’s orbit becoming densely populated with satellites and spacecrafts, any attempts by belligerent countries to take out another’s space objects will also endanger the space assets of countries not involved in any hostilities. Debris generated from a kinetic attack against any space object may indiscriminately damage and destroy anything in its path. This can lead to collaterally affected countries either seeking damages from the country responsible for the attack, or, in a more extreme case, retaliating against it.Matsyanyaaya: How China is Winning the Quantum Computing Race — Arjun GargeyasAn edited version of this article came out in CNN-News18 on April 14, 2022. Recent reports from China have mentioned how researchers and scientists from the country have managed to develop cooling systems using Helium gas as an alternative to the traditional cryogenic cooling systems used in the development of quantum computers. Quantum computing has clearly become an area of concern for the US with regard to China’s rise in the domain as well as potential military applications of the technology so it is not surprising that techno-nationalist tendencies have been showcased by the American government in this regard. For instance, the Export Control Reform Act (ECRA) was extended to quantum technology products in 2018. This included critical quantum refrigerators and cryogenics along with software and AI for building quantum computers. This was done in order to make cross-border collaboration with Chinese nationals and academic institutions more difficult. China and its Rapid Rise While establishing itself as the leader in quantum communications technology, China soon started dedicating its resources to developing alternative quantum computing technologies. As the global leader in patents related to quantum communication and cryptography, China has advanced by leaps and bounds in the quantum computing domain over the last decade. Once behind the West in developing quantum computers, China now houses two of the world’s fastest quantum computers on its soil. The unveiling of ‘Zuchongzhi-2’, the country’s fastest quantum computer, in late 2021 has effectively made the country a powerhouse in quantum computing and on par with the US. The pace at which China has adopted quantum computing technology is truly exceptional, with the country claiming ‘quantum advantage’ in both the superconducting qubit and photonic tech (two different types of technologies used to develop quantum computers). Immense state support has been provided by the Chinese government to both academic institutions (University of Science and Technology China (USTC), Tsinghua and Peking Universities) and private companies (Origin Quantum, Qasky, and Huawei Cloud) for the development of quantum computers in the country. The recent advances made by China in the domain of quantum computing have resulted in increased global protectionism in the field.The Catalysts for the Rise Quantum computing works on the principle of ‘qubits’, also called quantum bits that have the ability to store values anywhere between 0 and 1 resulting in more computational capacity. To operationalise these qubits, there are several different technologies that have been developed. Each has its own advantages and dependencies, based on which the choice is made by the government or private sector to invest. In China, the role of the state and the government have played an important role in spearheading its scientific and technological progress. The synergy that exists between the state and the domestic private sector has been exemplary in various domains and quantum technology remains no exception. The government has provided funding to academic institutions in setting up labs for quantum computing research and financial support to domestic tech companies engaged in building real-world applications for quantum computers. In a way, the state acts like a bridge and a facilitator, helping translate academic research in the quantum computing space to build actual quantum computers and develop applications for these devices. Apart from the role of the government and the state, one of the main catalysts for the rise of China in certain critical and strategic technologies is the ability to bypass restrictions that might prevent its growth and development in the field. There have been numerous export controls and import restrictions in the quantum tech domain on cryogenic (very low temperatures) cooling systems. But Chinese researchers ended up developing breakthroughs in an alternative field of quantum computing technology such as photonic computing that does not need intense refrigeration. Recently, there were also reports about Chinese scientists developing cooling systems using Helium gas that would dilute the existing restrictions in place. Shanghai-based researchers were able to create a device that could create the extremely low temperatures that quantum computers typically operate in. This would mean that China, regardless of the technological sanctions and other restrictions on its industry, continues to rise in the quantum computing field leaving others trailing behind. The Chinese government’s role as a facilitator to academia and the private sector ensured continuous uninterrupted technological development. The ability to negate the restrictions placed by the US and its allies in the quantum computing field also entrenched its position in the domain. It has also led to key technological breakthroughs that would not have seemed possible in case the controls were not in place. Hence, this has created a win-win scenario for the Chinese quantum tech industry, generating both IP and reducing dependencies on the West. India should seek to learn from China’s catalysts for growth to succeed in its own quantum computing initiative. Our Reading Menu[Book] China and Great Power Responsibility for Climate Change by Sanna Kopra[Opinion] As Russia Reels Under Cascading Effects of Chip Starvation, China May Not Be a Dependable Partner by Aditya Pareek and Arjun Gargeyas who are also contributors to this newsletter[Research Article] Mutually assured surveillance at risk: Anti-satellite weapons and cold war arms control by Aaron Bateman[Article] The forgotten history of small nuclear reactors by M.V. Ramana This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit hightechir.substack.com

Every week YIR will introduce you to one Superyacht. This week we introduce you to Superyacht Valerie. Find out all the details you need to know when it comes to this Yacht! Spanish authorities seized the “Valerie” yacht reportedly linked to Russian oligarch and former KGB agent Sergei Chemezov in the port of Barcelona. Chemezov is the chairman of the Rostec conglomerate and a member of the Supreme Council of ‘United Russia', per EU sanctions. When the US sanctioned Chemezov in 2014 — as part of an effort targeting Putin's inner circle — the government said he had known Putin since the 1980s and the two lived in the same apartment complex in East Germany. The yacht is worth approximately $100 million and will remain “provisionally immobilized” until authorities can determine its ownership. A spokesman for Chemezov denied that he is tied to the yacht. OWNER & GUESTS - 12 CABINS: 2 Master, 2 VIP, 3 Double, 2 Twin CREW: 27 BUILDER - Lurssen LENGTH - 85.1m BEAM - 14.28m DRAFT - 3.9m GROSS TONNAGE - 2,755 GT CRUISING SPEED - 12.5 Knots TOP SPEED - 17 Knots BUILT/DELIVERED - 2011/2019 INTERIOR DESIGNER - Reymond Langton Design EXTERIOR DESIGNER - Espen Oeino #yachting #yacht #yachtlife #sailing #yachts #boat #boating #luxury #superyacht #luxuryyacht #boats #boatlife #sea #yachtdesign #luxurylifestyle #yachtlifestyle #yachtworld #megayacht #yachtcharter #motoryacht #sail #travel #yachtinglife #superyachts #sailboat #sailinglife #ocean #yachtinglifestyle #vlog #yachtinginternationalradio

We hear from a Ukrainian member of Parliament, a Russian member of the Parliament or Duma with President Putin's United Russia party and BBC correspondents in different parts of Ukraine.

Russia's ruling party has initiated an appeal asking the country's leadership to start supplying military assistance to the self-proclaimed "people's republics" in eastern Ukraine, Interfax reported on Wednesday, January 26. Original Article: https://meduza.io/en/news/2022/01/26/united-russia-asks-putin-to-start-supplying-military-aid-to-donetsk-and-luhansk-people-s-republics

Political analyst Tatiana Stanovaya warns that reforms recently adopted by the State Duma to further the centralization of power in Russia's federal government could endanger the entire political system by pinning too much on the presidency and the Kremlin's "subjective and closed insider logic." "Constitutional Putinism" is supposed to weed out remnants of the destabilizing "opportunism" elevated in Russia's "Yeltsin Constitution," Stanovaya argues in a recent essay for the Carnegie Moscow Center, but Putinism could prove to be even more prone to opportunism if it is incapable of accommodating the multiple power centers that would emerge in a serious political crisis (for example, the loss of United Russia's parliamentary monopoly or a severe decline in the president's popularity). Original Article: https://meduza.io/en/feature/2021/12/17/the-risks-of-constitutional-putinism

The first reading of a controversial draft bill on requiring QR-code vaccine passes for accessing public places in Russia led to a scuffle between Communist Party and United Russia lawmakers in the State Duma on Thursday, December 16. Original Article: https://meduza.io/en/news/2021/12/16/lawmakers-scuffle-as-russian-state-duma-approves-first-reading-of-controversial-vaccine-pass-legislation

Roughly 10 years ago, on December 4, 2011, elections were held for Russia's State Duma. The official results had United Russia, the ruling party, winning 49% of the vote. The mass voter fraud that led to this result, however, sparked protests across the country -- the largest since the early 1990s. The most notable events in the "Snow Revolution" or "Bolotnaya Revolution," as the protests were referred to by the media (though this was far from a revolution) were the rallies in Moscow: the protest at Chistye Prudy on December 5, the protests on Bolotnaya Square on December 10 and on Sakharov Prospekt on December 24, and the march on Yakimanka Street and the rally on Bolotnaya Street on February 4. The "March of Millions," an opposition march on Bolotnaya Street on May 6, ended in a clash with the police and subsequently with the "Bolotnaya Square Case," in which dozens of people were detained. On the 10th anniversary of the protests, a time when many Russians dared to hope for sweeping political change, Meduza looks back at the leaders and what's become of them in the decade since. Original Article: https://meduza.io/en/feature/2021/12/08/the-past-is-a-foreign-country

State Duma deputies from Russia's ruling political party have reportedly been coached on how to respond to anti-vaxxer talking points and objections to pandemic restrictions on movement. Two sources in United Russia confirmed to the news website RBC that the party has circulated guidelines for public engagement to its deputies in the parliament. United Russia's press service told RBC that it regularly shares such materials with deputies to keep them informed and effective. The recommendations to lawmakers are a bit odd at times. Meduza summarizes the public messaging campaign Russia's ruling political party has concocted to counter disinformation and paranoia about the coronavirus pandemic and the vaccines developed to fight COVID-19. Original Article: https://meduza.io/en/feature/2021/12/04/how-to-talk-to-anti-vaxxers

Natalia Poklonskaya is one of the few politicians in Russia with international recognition. She owes this reputation to her two years as Crimea's first post-annexation attorney general (inspiring several Internet memes based on her demure public presence). Afterward, she moved to Moscow and served one term as a federal lawmaker in Russia's State Duma, drawing the media's attention for her religious conservativism and opposition to raising the country's retirement ages (she was the only United Russia deputy to vote against the party's unpopular pension reforms). Original Article: https://meduza.io/en/news/2021/11/12/former-crimean-attorney-general-natalia-poklonskaya-privatizes-730-thousand-moscow-apartment

This week we're featuring 2 guests speaking about Russia. First up, John spoke with author and journalist Dmitry Okrest about the state of anarchist and antifascist movements in Russia, the politics of Putin's United Russia party, nazis and the far right in Russia and successes of the Communist Party in electoral politics. Then, Moscow Anarchist Black Cross member-in-exile, Antii Rautiainen, adds some more detail on repression in Russia, including the hunger strike of Network Case prisoner, Victor Filinkov, calls for solidarity from mathematician Azat Miftakhov and others. A transcript will follow soon at our website and in this post. Give us a week or two. Rad Russia Links: Moscow, Russia Anarchist Black Cross: https://avtonom.org/en/anarchist-black-cross Minsk, Belarus Anarchist Black Cross: https://abc-belarus.org/?lang=en Campaign Against the Network Case: https://rupression.com/en/ List of Moscow ABC-Supported Prisoners: https://wiki.avtonom.org/en/index.php/Category:Currently_imprisoned_in_Russia Instructions to Donate to Those Prisoners: https://wiki.avtonom.org/en/index.php/Donate appeal text for Filinkov in Russian: http://amp.gs/j1Kh3 Dmitry Okrest's Books: https://ussrchaosss.su/en https://sutugabook.ru/en https://hevale.nihilist.li/new-book-life-without-a-state-the-revolution-in-kurdistan/ Russian Limbo, Podcast about prisons: https://open.spotify.com/show/3tyBLCEQnvkY9L3DdrGry1 Antii Rautiainen's podcast links: Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/arautiainen Spotify: https://sptfy.com/arautiainen Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/arautiainen Past interviews on repression in Russia: Antifascist Struggle in Russia (Feb 2019): https://thefinalstrawradio.noblogs.org/post/2019/02/10/anti-fascist-struggle-in-europe-repression-in-russia/ FSB Is The Real Terrorist w Antii (March 2018): https://thefinalstrawradio.noblogs.org/post/2018/03/11/fsb-is-the-real-terrorist-intl-solidarity-with-russian-anarchists-antifa/ Intl Solidarity with Russian Anarchist and Antifa Prisoners w Antii (July 2016): https://thefinalstrawradio.noblogs.org/post/2016/07/12/intl-solidarity-with-russian-anarchist-and-antifa-prisoners/ Anarcha-feminism + LGBT in the former-USSR today: https://thefinalstrawradio.noblogs.org/post/2014/03/10/interview-with-volodya-anarcha-feminism-lgbt-in-the-former-ussr-today/ Announcement Keith "Comrade Malik" Washington In a quick announcement, we want to note that The SF Bay View National Black Newspaper editor Nube Brown just published an article showing that Keith Washington, aka Comrade Malik, admitted in a letter to a prosecutor in 2011 (while throwing a prisoner seeking legal support to the wolves) that he had and would gladly work with law enforcement and the FBI to snitch on inmates or whoever as a source or informant. Malik was then incarcerated in Texas and became involved in organizing with the New Afrikan Black Panther Party and participated in the 2016 nationwide prison strikes, gaining notoriety. Malik came to play a prominent role in the prison movement and was in 2020 released to a halfway house in San Francisco after a surprising parole from Texas and brief stint in Federal prison. Malik helped to run the SF Bay View upon release but has since left. I think a lot of facts on this still need clarification, but some things just don't add up with Malik's situation. Check out the piece by editor Nube Brown with an addendum by former editor Mary Ratcliff at SFBayView.Com and likely in the print edition of the paper. . ... . .. Featured Track: Set Adrift On Memory Bliss (Extended) by PM Dawn from eponymous single

The political bloc of the Moscow Mayor's office has begun campaign preparations for the 2022 municipal elections. As Meduza found out, the city administration plans to bet on public sector workers, who will run either as self-nominees or as members of the ruling party, United Russia. Candidates from systemic opposition parties will likely be able to campaign unhindered, but real oppositionists won't see their names on the ballot. And electronic voting, which proved deeply controversial during the 2021 State Duma elections, isn't going anywhere. Meduza breaks down the key points in the preliminary campaign plan here. Original Article: https://meduza.io/en/feature/2021/11/03/elections-totalitarian-style

Russia's Far East has traditionally been considered LDPR country: in the 2016 State Duma election, the party came in second only to United Russia in every region of the Far Eastern Federal District except Yakutia, where it shared second place with KPRF. Five years ago, LDPR won between 20-30 percent of the vote in the Far East, compared to its average 13 percent throughout the country, and won a similar share of the vote in local legislative elections. In 2021, however, the right-wing Liberal Democrats lost their status as the Far East's main opposition force, winning only half as many votes as in the previous election, and in some places only a third. This year, it was the Communists who embodied the protest vote. While KPRF received 7-18 percent of the vote throughout the Far East in the 2016 State Duma elections, they received 12-35 percent this time around (more than 20 percent in most regions). United Russia still won in districts throughout the region, albeit on shaky ground, but the Communists are confident voters supported them not only as an act of protest but also for ideological reasons -- and they're determined to take their success further. Original Article: https://meduza.io/en/feature/2021/10/14/the-red-east

The world did not disappoint this week in weird and interesting news topics. It also hasn't slowed down with some older stories too. Tonight we will dive into the shipping situation, jobs, China launching nukes through space, and then launch into whatever else we want to talk about and end with some laughter. Stop by and say "hello" live, or leave a comment and listen later.If you like the music check out the artist here: theearthonfireIntro song links: Spotify Apple MusicPlease subscribe to us on YouTube and Rumble to watch videos after they are published.Follow us on Instagram for random funny picsFollow us on Facebook to get notified of LIVE! episode recordings and to join the chat!Links discussed in episode:Union workers strike and threaten to strike to oppose two-tier wagesDemocratic state Sen. Betsy Johnson will launch an independent campaign for Oregon governorChina secretly tests earth-circling, nuclear-capable hypersonic missile – reportTriple threat of factors driving shipping delaysNEW - Russia is working on a law that would force social media platforms to allow their users to disable all recommendation algorithms such as Facebook's AI-powered News Feed (Kommersant) - Deputies from the governing United Russia party are concerned that these types of algorithms are increasing the risks of social conflicts and provocations.China mocks climate targets with plans to build more coal power plantsNetflix stands behind Dave Chappelle's 'The Closer' amid criticism from inside the companyTIL:TIL CIA lost nine cores of plutonium in the Himalayas trying to construct a listening post in the 60sTIL that a cricket match took place between a team of one-armed men against a one-legged team. “After much incident” the match ended in a narrow victory for the one-armed.TIL roughly 70% of businesses in Sicily still pay protection money to the Sicilian Mafia.Shower Thoughts:Life is the only game where your maximum HP decreases as you level up.Road rage would probably decrease if car manufacturers made their horns sound hilarious.Someone needs to create grass that grows about 2 inches tall then stops.Crystals can actually heal you if you have a salt deficiency.The way you make a family is not family-friendly.If a sloth clapped, it would always sound sarcastic

On Tuesday, October 12, the new convocation of Russia's State Duma convened for its first session. Roughly a fifth of all lawmakers -- 88 of 450 deputies -- received their seats from higher-ranked candidates on party lists, winning the jobs because others didn't want them. The candidates who decided against joining the parliament include four of the five figures who led United Russia's federal list, 50 governors, many regional deputies, several famous actors and athletes, and multiple public sector managers. Nine of the Duma's seats weren't filled until the winning candidate and the next two people on the party list all declined. Another three seats passed from hand to hand four times, and one spot didn't find a willing recipient until round five. Original Article: https://meduza.io/en/feature/2021/10/13/hot-potato

On Monday, October 4, Russian President Vladimir Putin appointed United Russia lawmaker Alexander Avdeev as the acting governor of the Vladimir Region. Before entering the State Duma, Avdeev was the mayor of Obninsk, a city in the Kaluga Region. Original Article: https://meduza.io/en/news/2021/10/04/putin-appoints-new-acting-governors-of-the-vladimir-and-tambov-regions

At a United Russia congress ten years ago, on September 24, 2011, it was announced that Vladimir Putin -- after four years as prime minister -- would be running for president once again. As for then-President Dmitry Medvedev, he would be heading up the ruling party's list for the State Duma elections. This switch was quickly termed "castling" -- as in the eponymous chess move, the country's two top dogs would simply swap places. Since then, Dmitry Medvedev and his political influence have faded into the shadows. This has been a great loss for the RuNet. Indeed, there was once a time when Dmitry Medvedev's antics dominated Russian meme culture. Meduza takes a nostalgic look back at this golden age. Original Article: https://meduza.io/en/feature/2021/09/28/relax-this-is-russia

Two of the main results from the State Duma elections: The Kremlin-controlled United Russia party preserved its two-thirds majority in the lower house of parliament, amid allegations and evidence of fraud, and the Communist Party made gains. RFE/RL senior correspondent Robert Coalson joins host Steve Gutterman to discuss the consequences.

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A rigged vote secures a super-majority for the ruling United Russia party setting the stage for the next phase of the ongoing political drama in Moscow. Last week's so-called election to the State Duma was a dress rehearsal for Vladimir Putin's next political project - securing his continued rule until 2036. And this project is unfolding amid the backdrop of mounting discontent with the status quo in society and an escalating crackdown on dissent from the Kremlin. Putin has already ruled longer than any Russian or Soviet leader since Josef Stalin - and he doesn't appear to be going anywhere soon. But he's lost the youth, he's lost the cities, he's lost the urban professional class, and he's losing the working class. So what happens now? On this week's Power Vertical Podcast, host Brian Whitmore speaks with scholar, political analyst, and journalist Vasily Gatov, a visiting fellow, University of Southern California's Annenberg Center of Communication Leadership and Policy. Enjoy...

In legislative elections held between 17th-19th September, Vladimir Putin's United Russia party won another parliamentary super-majority, with the rest of the seats filled by parties who are (to varying degrees) loyal to the Kremlin. In regional elections on the same day, United Russia won most of the contests. We're joined by Dr. Ben Noble of UCL to breakdown exactly what the elections mean in a context which is so uncompetitive and what this contest means for the future of both Putin and the opposition.  Follow us on twitter @Ballotworld, and please rate and subscribe wherever you're listening. 

The graphs below are based on voting results released by Russia's Central Election Commission and compiled by independent analyst Sergey Shpilkin. They demonstrate the relationship between turnout and support for the country's two most popular political parties, United Russia and the Communist Party (KPRF), at individual polling stations nationwide. (The two small blotches at the right end of both charts represent results in Moscow's electronic voting.) Original Article: https://meduza.io/en/feature/2021/09/23/it-came-from-above

How did the European press interpret the mysterious or expected outperformance of United Russia; and how did they report on the volcanic eruption in La Palma - the first in 50 years?

I det lille vestafrikanske landet Guinea har det nylig vært militærkupp, Putins parti United Russia gjorde eit greit valg i Russland og ein ny sikkerhetsavtale mellom Australia, USA og Storbritannia har satt sinnene i kok i Frankrike. I tillegg har årets Raftoprisvinner nettopp blitt annonsert. I studio er programleder Helene Knag, Victor Botnevik og Jakob Kirkholt, med kommentar produsert av Hannah Emilie Johansson.

Check out Today's Agenda Below! - Retired US Diplomat to 5 different nations  David Hunter shares his knowledge, passion, interest, and experience. 1) Afghanistan: On Aug 4th, Herald Phifer---a US Air Traffic Controller serving at the Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul---called into the podcast, and provided on the ground info about what was going on.  Ten days later, the Taliban had taken over Kabul.  We asked him what he would do if that ever happened.  Today he is calling back in to explain how he got out.  And what it was like at the airport. 2)  US Drone Strike on Civilians in Kabul:  Just after an ISIS linked terrorist bombing killed 13 US Marines at the Kabul airport, the US military launched two drone or missile attacks on ISIS targets.  The first was far outside Kabul and reportedly killed 2 terrorists.  But the second was a drone-fired missile that mistakenly killed an Afghan family including 7 children.  The US military just announced this week it was a case of mistaken identity and apologized.  What does this say for our ability to conduct counter-terrorism from over the horizon, by using drones?3)  A Sub Snub?:   The French are in an uproar about the Biden Administration's decision to push them out of a huge 'Deal of the Century' for submarines to Australia.  In what looks like a linked deal, the US has just formed an new military alliance of US-UK -Australia.  This upgrades and militarizes the "Five Eyes" intelligence pact that has operated for years, including US, Canada, UK, Australia and New Zealand.  But how will this new open military alliance,  designed to confront rising China's military power,  complicate things?4)  Russian Elections:  Last week regional elections were held in Russia.  Of course, Putin's United Russia party took 50% of the vote so retains a super-majority and ability to rewrite the constitution.  But the second place winner was the Communist Party with 17%, and third place was Vladimir Zhirinovsky's  Russian Liberal Democratic Party with 7%.  Poor Mr. Navalney's Anti-Corruption party was banned from running, w/ Putin calling it 'anti-establishment' and 'terrorist'.  What do you think, was it a fair election? C.J. Cannon's Restaurant Located at the Vero Beach Airport, where the only thing we overlook is the runway! Your JUNK MONKEYS are just a click away! Don't let your junk drive you bananas!

Voting is done in Russia's 2021 parliamentary races, and the results are now clear: United Russia maintained its supermajority, preserving its absolute control over the legislature; the Communist Party (KPRF) performed much better than it did five years ago; and the right-wing Liberal Democrats (LDPR) had one of their worst showings ever. Also, for the first time since Russia introduced party-list proportional representation, there will be a fifth faction: businessman Alexey Nechayev's New People (a group created with the Kremlin's help). As the dust settles, the biggest unresolved questions surround electronic voting -- specifically, how it affected results in and around Moscow, where online tallies catapulted the candidates endorsed by Mayor Sergey Sobyanin to victories against oppositionists who led in offline counts. Meduza's Andrey Pertsev examines what a weekend of voting says about the direction of Russia's legislative politics. Original Article: https://meduza.io/en/feature/2021/09/22/it-s-official

So, over the weekend there was a three day event in Russia, concerning gosduma where they went to the ballots, threw in some papers and then some of those papers were pulled out and shredded and some more were stuffed in and the remaining papers were counted with people doing so, pretending that it matters. It was a bit of a comedy, bit of a mess, United Russia's still in power. This ep's all about it. Also, hi, I'm back from being hit by a car and have a lot of catching up to do. Enjoy!Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/theeasternborder. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Following three days of voting over the weekend in the nationwide election to the State Duma, Russia's Central Election Commission reported on Tuesday, September 21, that 100 percent of the ballots casted had been processed. Original Article: https://meduza.io/en/news/2021/09/21/election-officials-declare-a-majority-win-for-united-russia-in-state-duma-vote

Russia's cultural capital of St. Petersburg has a reputation for "dirty elections" -- one so bad that even Russian election officials can't help but criticize them. And this weekend's voting in the elections to the State Duma and St. Petersburg Legislative Assembly were no exception. Election monitors reported widespread violations, both during the voting period and after the polls closed. What's more, St. Petersburg police carried out detentions and removed election monitors and poll workers from polling stations throughout the weekend. In the end, turnout in the elections was far below the national average, but United Russia's candidates still managed to come out on top. Original Article: https://meduza.io/en/feature/2021/09/20/dishonoring-the-beloved-city

During the 2020 Tomsk City Duma election, candidates endorsed by Team Navalny's "Smart Vote" initiative won unequivocally. Despite the fact that most of them were previously little-known, Smart Vote-backed candidates won 19 out of the 27 single-mandate constituencies, while candidates from the ruling party, United Russia, won 11 out of 37 seats in the Tomsk City Duma overall. For comparison, in the same electoral race in 2015, United Russia won in 25 constituencies and received 30 seats in the Duma. On the eve of the 2021 elections to the Tomsk City and Regional Dumas, Meduza special correspondent Andrey Pertsev traveled to Tomsk to see how the results of last year's election changed the city's political situation. There, he discovered that the Communist Party had begun using bolder slogans and nominating younger candidates, while United Russia took a new approach, interacting more with voters and even venturing into social media. Meanwhile, the opposition candidates ultimately failed to coordinate on any joint action. Original Article: https://meduza.io/en/feature/2021/09/21/when-it-works

United Russia, the party of President Vladimir Putin, claimed victory in Russia's parliamentary elections this week – while the opposition maintains the results were based on fraud. Concerns about fairness were rampant already in the lead-up to the vote, with opposition politicians largely barred from running and, crucially, heavy restrictions on independent news media. In particular, Russia's so-called “foreign agent” law has made it significantly more difficult for independent Russian media to operate. IPI contributor Anne ter Rele interviews Galina Timchenko, the Editor-in-Chief of Meduza, a critical Russian-language news outlet labelled as a foreign agent earlier this year. What are the consequences of this law? And most importantly, how can Meduza still do its job?

Dr. Jemima Pierre, associate professor of Black studies and anthropology at the University of California, joins us to discuss the Haitian immigrant crisis. President Biden is struggling to find the right message regarding the Haitian immigrant crisis on the southern US border. Meanwhile, some Haitian officials are demanding a humanitarian moratorium on deporting the immigrants until the political crisis and earthquake response can be brought under control. Professor Ken Hammond, professor of East Asian and global history at New Mexico State University and activist with Pivot to Peace, joins us to discuss China. Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall, the latest Raytheon employee to rise to the top of the military establishment in Washington, has said that his focus is on China and intends to see that considerably more money is spent to address his concerns. Observers and anti-war activists argue that this is merely another example of the war profiteering and corruption surrounding the US Empire's military machine. Dan Kovalik, writer, author, and lawyer joins us to discuss Biden's UN speech. In the shadow of a humiliating exit from Afghanistan, a murderous drone strike in Kabul, and a diplomatic row with Paris, President Joe Biden gave a speech at the UN General Assembly on Tuesday morning in New York. Biden reiterated US imperial rhetoric about leading the world against non-democratic nations.K. J. Noh, peace activist, writer, and teacher, joins us to discuss AUKUS. Russian Security Council Chief Nikolai Patrushev argues that the new US, UK, and Australia alliance known as "AUKUS" is aimed directly at Russia and China. Also, North Korea is reacting to AUKUS with anger, and some analysts believe that the move will drive the small nuclear nation directly into the Chinese military and political orbit.Mark Sleboda, Moscow-based international relations security analyst, joins us to discuss the Russian election. United Russia, the political party that is the political home of Russian President Vladimir Putin, has retained power in the latest election. The US empire and its vassal states are positing that the election is illegitimate and arguing that the Russian annexation of Crimea invalidates the results of the entire electoral process. Scott Ritter, former UN weapon inspector in Iraq, joins us to discuss NATO expansion. In another dangerous expansion of NATO troops, the US Congress is moving to put more troops on the border of Russia. While some security analysts suspect that the move is for domestic purposes, the presence of US troops along with the constant regime change rhetoric coming out of US think tanks could be enough to spark a Russian response and create a disaster.Gerald Horne, professor of history at the University of Houston, author, historian, and researcher, joins us to discuss the US empire. Patrick Lawrence has penned an excellent article in Consortium News in which he revisits the Cold War and explains how this one is similar. Lawrence writes "It is the U.S. that has assiduously sought to kindle Cold War II, just as it, and not the Soviet Union, was responsible for starting Cold War I."Miko Peled, author and activist, joins us to discuss Israel. Miko Peled's latest Mintpress news article discusses the Israeli long-term move to change the foundational story of the Palestinian people in their homeland. Peled says that the narrative change has been an effective tool for Zionists to convince the world to forgive their horrendous crimes against the Palestinian populace.

Denis Rogatyuk, writer, journalist and political analyst, joins us to talk about the results of the Russian Parliamentary Election that took place over the weekend, where United Russia had garnered nearly 50% of the vote, followed closely by the Communist Party with 19%, what we can make of the higher voter turnout this time around, what the composition and platform of the Communist Party is in the country and whether this showing can solely be attributed to nostalgia. We also talk about the media coverage of this election in the West, where its legitimacy has been questioned, and whether these critiques are justified. Abe Paulos, deputy director of communications and policy at the Black Alliance for Just Immigration, tells us about the Haitian refugee crisis in the U.S. where thousands have camped in precarious conditions in the town of Del Rio, Texas, and how the Biden administration, despite previous public statements about being more welcoming towards immigrants, is engaging in similar practices as its preceding administration, and deporting 12,000 Haitian refugees back to their home country. We also talk about whether we will see any changes in these policies and what it could take to pressure the government to implement humane immigration policies.Nate Wallace, creator and co-host of the podcast Redspin Sports, joins hosts Michelle Witte and Bob Schlehuber to talk about the MAGA-inspired rally in Washington, DC for justice for the “political prisoners” from the capital attack on January 6th, and the low turnout, where participants were actually outnumbered by the media and police presence. We also talk about updates in the case of Kyle Rittenhosue ahead of the November trial for his killing of 2 people and injuring one during the Kenosha, Wisconsin uprisings in August of 2020.In our Miss The Press segment, we talk about the Sunday shows' takes on Afghanistan and the border, the 20th anniversary of Darryl Worley's jingoistic hymn "Have You Forgotten", and Fox News Sunday's take on economic issues including the debt ceiling and infrastructure spending, and how real discussions get lost amid party squabbles.

20 de septiembre | Nueva YorkHola, maricoper. Otra de drones asesinos.Bienvenido al maricoffee, una columna y dos titulares de actualidad para empezar bien informado la semana —con podcast narrado.Si te gusta el formato, puedes recibir entregas similares los martes, miércoles y jueves con una suscripción premium con la que apoyarás el proyecto periodístico independiente de La Wikly:Leer esta newsletter te llevará 4 minutos y 34 segundos.Power Rangers. Bienvenido a La Wikly.💥 “Este horrible error”Por Anita PereyraEl secretario de Defensa estadounidense, Lloyd Austin, admitió en un comunicado que Estados Unidos cometió un error cuando lanzó un ataque con drones contra presuntos militantes del Estado Islámico Korashan en Kabul durante los días de evacuación de Afganistán."Ofrezco mi más sentido pésame a los familiares sobrevivientes de los asesinados. […] Pedimos disculpas y nos esforzaremos por aprender de este horrible error", dijo Austin.Las disculpas llegan casi 20 días después de un ataque que dejó un saldo de diez muertes civiles, incluyendo a siete niños. Te hablamos de las informaciones preliminares en esta otra newsletter.La operación del 29 de agosto fue originalmente defendida por el Departamento de Defensa como un "ataque justo" contra un sospechoso organizador de ISIS-K que conducía un vehículo por un barrio de Kabul cercano al aeropuerto internacional donde se estaban llevando a cabo las operaciones de evacuación.Según reconocieron las autoridades, el conductor, Zamarai Ahmadi, era un trabajador humanitario que llevaba varios años trabajando para un grupo con sede en EE.UU. y que transportaba latas de agua para su familia.“Ahora sabemos que no había conexión entre el Sr. Ahmadi e ISIS-Khorasan, que sus actividades ese día fueron completamente inofensivas y no estaban relacionadas en absoluto con la amenaza inminente que creíamos que enfrentamos, y que el Sr. Ahmadi era tan inocente como víctima, al igual que los demás trágicamente asesinados“, dijo Austin.El ataque con misiles se produjo días después de que un ataque suicida en el aeropuerto de Kabul se cobrara la vida de al menos 170 afganos y 13 militares estadounidenses, lo que probablemente contribuyó a generar una sensación de “urgencia'' entre los oficiales militares.La escena que describió a The Washington Post un vecino que presenció la escena es muy diferente a la primera versión oficial ofrecida por militares estadounidenses: los cuerpos de tres adultos y siete niños, que pertenecían a una sola familia extendida, cubiertos de sangre y metralla.Incluso cuando medios de comunicación como Al-Jazeera reportaron la muerte de civiles, la versión oficial estadounidense mantuvo que el ataque fue justo.El general Kenneth “Frank” McKenzie, que encabeza el Comando Central de EE.UU. y supervisó la misión de Afganistán hasta el final, reconoció que los informes publicados por algunos medios de comunicación jugaron un papel en determinar los errores de los militares."El ejército de Estados Unidos solo se vio obligado a admitir su fracaso en este ataque debido al escrutinio global actual sobre Afganistán", apuntó Brian Castner, principal asesor del programa de respuesta a crisis de Amnistía Internacional.McKenzie reveló que Estados Unidos está considerando una compensación financiera "ex gratia" para las familias de las víctimas, pero señaló que ahora es difícil llegar a la gente en el terreno en Afganistán.En entrevistas para distintos medios de comunicación, los familiares de las víctimas pidieron una disculpa “cara a cara” además de la compensación económica.Emal Ahmadi, cuya hija Malika, de 3 años, está entre los fallecidos, pidió que los supervivientes fueran reubicados en EE.UU. u otro país considerado seguro."Hoy fue una buena noticia para nosotros que Estados Unidos admitiera oficialmente que había atacado a civiles inocentes. Nuestra inocencia ha sido probada", dijo Ahmadi.Más información en  The Washington Post.🛂 Abren las puertasLa Casa Blanca anunció este lunes que pondrá fin a las restricciones de viajeros internacionales a partir de noviembre. Eso incluye a visitantes provenientes de países de la zona Schengen que tenían vetado el acceso a EE.UU. desde hace año y medio.La medida tomará efectos “a principios de noviembre” y requerirá que todos los viajeros tengan la pauta de vacunación completa y se hayan hecho un test negativo de COVID-19 en los días previos a su visita.Queda por confirmar qué vacunas aceptarán como buenas. En EE.UU. solo están aprobadas para uso de emergencia las de Pfizer/BioNTech, Moderna y Johnson & Johnson/Janssen.El anuncio encaja en un momento de relaciones diplomáticas dañadas entre Europa y los EE.UU. de Biden, especialmente por parte de Francia, dolida por el acuerdo entre Reino Unido, Australia y EE.UU. para hacer frente a China.Más información en The New York Times.🇷🇺 Putin mantiene poderEl partido de Vladimir Putin, United Russia, se aseguró una nueva y abrumadora victoria en las elecciones parlamentarias celebradas esta fin de semana en Rusia.Tras el primer escrutinio del domingo, las fuerzas opositoras parecían haber recortado terreno a Putin, el suficiente como para hacerle perder la supermayoría parlamentaria al partido del mandatario ruso.Pero el recuento de los votos online anunciado el lunes despedazó las ventajas de los candidatos de la oposición, que terminaron perdiendo en decenas de distritos electorales donde hasta hace unas horas llevaban ventaja.El historial electoral de Rusia no es precisamente el mejor de una supuesta democracia, pero este año la represión contra la oposición ha sido dura en multitud de frentes: detenciones, presiones a los gigantes tecnológicos, sospechas de pucherazo…Este hilo es perturbador.Más información en The Wall Street Journal.En otro orden de cosas, este lunes estuve en Twitch hablando de las elecciones en Rusia, del acuerdo AUKUS entre Australia, Reino Unido y Estados Unidos, y de la erupción del volcán en Canarias, entre otras cosas.Tienes el stream completo aquí.Si quieres apoyar este proyecto, y de paso tener acceso a nuestra comunidad de Discord, los eventos exclusivos que organizamos allí y recibir contenido exclusivo tres veces a la semana, puedes apuntarte a La Wikly Premium aquí:Feliz semana, This is a public episode. Get access to private episodes at www.lawikly.com/subscribe

Despite its lack of popularity, the Kremlin-controlled United Russia party is on track to retain its constitutional majority in the State Duma after a three-day election marred by evidence of fraud. Is it really a win for President Vladimir Putin? Irina Lagunina, director of special projects at RFE/RL's Russian Service, joins host Steve Gutterman to discuss.

The winner of Russia's elections was not in doubt. Vladimir Putin's party, United Russia, came out on top. But despite the ballot stuffing and repression, the opposition still managed to rattle the Kremlin. The Gates Foundation is America's biggest charitable foundation by far and a powerhouse in the world of public health. But its money could be better spent. And we read the tea leaves to explain why bugs are important for your brew. For full access to print, digital and audio editions of The Economist, subscribe here www.economist.com/intelligenceoffer See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

The winner of Russia's elections was not in doubt. Vladimir Putin's party, United Russia, came out on top. But despite the ballot stuffing and repression, the opposition still managed to rattle the Kremlin. The Gates Foundation is America's biggest charitable foundation by far and a powerhouse in the world of public health. But its money could be better spent. And we read the tea leaves to explain why bugs are important for your brew. For full access to print, digital and audio editions of The Economist, subscribe here www.economist.com/intelligenceoffer See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

President Putin's United Russia won two thirds of seats in the lower house of parliament. The party's vote share was down four points on five years ago, and we hear about the new Russian parliament's main economic challenges from Chris Weafer, chief executive of the Moscow-based consultancy Macro Advisory. Also in the programme, ahead of elections this weekend, the BBC's Theo Leggett reports from Munich in Germany on what businesses hope for from the next Chancellor. A month after seizing power in Afghanistan, the Taliban have effectively banned women from working. We get reaction to the latest developments from Pashtana Durrani, who is a women's rights activist in the country. Plus, our regular workplace commentator Stephanie Hare explores the art of storytelling in the workplace. Today's edition is presented by Rahul Tandon, and produced by Clare Williamson and Russell Padmore.

A student armed with a hunting rifle has opened fire at a university in the Russian city of Perm, killing at least eight people and wounding many others. Panicked students leapt from first-floor windows to escape Perm State University while others built barricades out of chairs to slow the shooter, who was eventually wounded and apprehended by police. This all unfolded on a day that President Vladimir Putin's United Russia party won an emphatic majority following a parliamentary election that opponents said was marred by large-scale fraud. Moscow correspondent Stuart Smith spoke to Corin Dann.

*) US says Kabul drone strike killed 10 civilians, including children A US drone strike in Kabul last month killed as many as 10 civilians, including seven children, the US military has admitted, apologising for what it called a “tragic mistake”. The Pentagon had said the August 29 strike targeted a Daesh suicide bomber who posed an imminent threat to US-led troops at Kabul airport. Emal Ahmadi, a survivor whose 10 family members were killed in the strike, has demanded those responsible be punished, saying Washington's apology was not enough. *) French and UK defence ministers' meeting cancelled amid sub row France has pulled out from a defence meeting with the UK as the rift deepens over a new security deal between the kingdom, US and Australia. The two-day talks have been postponed from this week to a later date – that's according to a former British Ambassador. France is frustrated over Australia signing the so-called Aukus deal with the US and UK, which will get Canberra nuclear-powered submarines. This resulted in Australia cancelling a major weapons contract with Paris. *) Early results show Putin party wins majority in the vote President Vladimir Putin's party is on track to win a strong majority in a three-day parliamentary election, following a harsh crackdown on the opposition. Most opposition politicians were barred from running as they were linked to jailed Kremlin critic Alexey Navalny. Allies of Navalny planned to use an app to help voters find candidates to defeat United Russia but the app was removed by Apple and Google on election day. *) Lebanon's parliament is to vote on Mikati government The Lebanese Parliament is voting on the Mikati government and will be discussing its draft programme and plans. New Prime Minister Najib Mikati's government was formed on September 10th after a year of political deadlock that exacerbated a crippling economic crisis. Mikati's government is already facing challenges, with Lebanon's Hezbollah unilaterally importing Iranian fuel at risk of international sanctions. And finally... *) 'The Crown' wins Emmy for best drama series The Crown has won the best drama series at the Emmys, while Apple TV+'s “Ted Lasso” took best comedy series honours. “The Crown” stars Olivia Colman and Josh O'Connor also won top drama acting honours, with Jason Sudeikis, star of “Ted Lasso" a winner on the comedy side. This year's show was far from last year's Pandemmys that were shot from home, with guests in masks and plenty of hugs and kisses going around – but after presenting vaccine certificates.

A student armed with a hunting rifle has opened fire at a university in the Russian city of Perm, killing at least eight people and wounding many others. Panicked students leapt from first-floor windows to escape Perm State University while others built barricades out of chairs to slow the shooter, who was eventually wounded and apprehended by police. This all unfolded on a day that President Vladimir Putin's United Russia party won an emphatic majority following a parliamentary election that opponents said was marred by large-scale fraud. Moscow correspondent Stuart Smith spoke to Corin Dann.

Putin and United Russia, big winners in Parliamentary elections The Duran: Episode 1092 Putin's party declares victory in Russian elections, insists it will retain two-thirds majority after polls show opposition gains https://www.rt.com/russia/535293-united-russia-likely-won-elections/ Russia's Communist Party predicted to slash government's majority in first exit poll after voting in parliamentary election ends https://www.rt.com/russia/534910-parliament-election-preliminary-results/

Attention: These observations are based on preliminary results. A lot could still change. Original Article: https://meduza.io/en/feature/2021/09/19/preliminary-results-a-preliminary-forecast

အာဖဂန္နစၥတန္ ကဘူးၿမိဳ႔ေတာ္ အစိုးရဌာနေတြမွာ အလုပ္လုပ္တဲ့ အမ်ိဳးသမီး ဝန္ထမ္းေတြ အလုပ္မလာရဘဲ အိမ္မွာပဲ ေနဖို႔ တာလီဘန္အမိန႔္ထုတ္၊ ႐ုရွားႏိုင္ငံမွာ ၃ ရက္ၾကာ က်င္းပခဲ့တဲ့ ေ႐ြးေကာက္ပြဲ မေန႔က ၿပီးဆုံးသြားၿပီး အာဏာရ United Russia ပါတီကပဲ ေအာက္လႊတ္ေတာ္မွာ အႏိုင္ရဖို႔ မ်ား၊ စြဲဆိုထားတဲ့ အမႈေတြကို ရင္ဆိုင္တာမွာ တရားဥပေဒနဲ႔ မညီၫႊတ္တဲ့လုပ္ေဆာင္မႈ ေတြကို ေပၚလြင္ ေအာင္ေဖာ္ထုတ္ေပးဖို႔ ေရွ႕ေနေတြကို ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္ မွာၾကား

After bowing to censorship demands a day earlier by disabling Russian users' access to Alexey Navalny's mobile app on its app store, Google has ordered Navalny's associates to delete two documents now available on Google Docs that contain lists of election candidates endorsed by Smart Vote, the team's strategic voting initiative meant to consolidate opposition against the political party United Russia. According to a letter shared by Team Navalny on its Telegram channel, Google says the content is illegal in Russia because the URLs to these documents now appear on the federal government's registry of banned resources. Original Article: https://meduza.io/en/news/2021/09/18/google-orders-team-navalny-to-delete-smart-vote-s-endorsements-from-google-docs

*) HRW reports 'war crimes' attacks on Eritrean refugees in Tigray Eritrean refugees in Ethiopia's Tigray have suffered abuses ranging from executions to rape in what amount to "clear war crimes", Human Rights Watch says. The rights watchdog says the Tigrayans distrusted them as they were the same nationality as occupying Eritrean soldiers, who in turn doubted the refugees' loyalty. HRW said it had received credible reports that Eritrean troops killed 31 people in Hitsats, one of the two camps in Tigray where abuses were documented. *) Google, Apple remove Navalny app from stores as Russian elections begin Google and Apple have removed jailed Kremlin critic Alexey Navalny's tactical voting app from their stores, after Russia accused the tech giants of interference. Russians are voting to elect a new parliament in a three-day vote starting on Friday. The ruling United Russia party is expected to win despite a rating slump after the biggest crackdown on the Kremlin's critics in years. Allies of Navalny, President Putin's fiercest opponent, planned to use the app to help voters find and support candidates to deal a blow to United Russia. *) US defends nuclear sub deal with Australia The US has defended its decision to share nuclear-powered submarine technology with Australia, rejecting criticism from both China and France. China claims the new alliance, referred to as Aukus, damages regional stability, and jeopardises efforts to halt nuclear weapon proliferation. But White House spokesperson Jen Psaki said the agreement is not aimed at China, although the US has mounting concerns about Chinese influence in the Indo-Pacific region. *) Austria hears first lawsuit over virus outbreak in ski resort The first civil lawsuit begins in a court in Vienna over a notorious outbreak of Covid-19 at the ski resort of Ischgl in March 2020, where thousands of people from 45 countries became infected. The case is the first of 15 lawsuits filed by plaintiffs from Austria and Germany, accusing authorities of not responding quickly enough to Covid-19 outbreaks in Austrian resorts. It is being brought on behalf of the family of a 72-year-old who died after contracting the virus in Ischgl. *) New Van Gogh drawing discovered, set to go on display A Vincent van Gogh drawing that has been hidden in a private collection for more than a century has gone on display for the first time at an Amsterdam museum. The work titled "Study for 'Worn Out" depicts an old man sitting in a chair and was sketched by Van Gogh in November 1882 when he was just starting his career. The owners of the drawing, a Dutch family which bought it in around 1910, asked the Van Gogh museum to authenticate it and experts confirmed that it was indeed a "new work" by Van Gogh.

From September 17-19, Russians are heading to the polls to cast their ballots in the 2021 State Duma elections. The first day of voting on Friday was marked by abnormally long lines at polling stations, reportedly due to pressure on civil servants meant to ensure high turnout right from the start. Allegedly, the authorities are gunning for the United Russia to win 45 percent of the vote. But heading into the elections, the ruling party's polling results were less than ideal. Will United Russia win its proclaimed "optimal" result? Meduza breaks down this question and other key intrigues surrounding the elections here. Original Article: https://meduza.io/en/feature/2021/09/17/the-ones-to-watch

The Dutch city of Utrecht wants to have the world's first bi-directional EV power grid. The Russian government ordered Google and Apple to remove an app meant to guide supporters of Alexei Navalny on how to deprive Vladimir Putin's, United Russia, of votes in regional and federal elections. Protocol's sources say Google plans to add free TV channels to Google TV, and is currently in talks with several free, ad-supported streaming television channels.Starring Tom Merritt, Chris Ashley, Len Peralta, Roger Chang, Joe.Link to the Show Notes.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

The Dutch city of Utrecht wants to have the world’s first bi-directional EV power grid. The Russian government ordered Google and Apple to remove an app meant to guide supporters of Alexei Navalny on how to deprive Vladimir Putin’s, United Russia, of votes in regional and federal elections. Protocol’s sources say Google plans to add free TV channels to Google TV, and is currently in talks with several free, ad-supported streaming television channels. Starring Tom Merritt, Chris Ashley, Len Peralta, Roger Chang, Joe, Amos MP3 Download Using a Screen Reader? Click here Multiple versions (ogg, video etc.) from Archive.org Follow us on Twitter Instgram YouTube and Twitch Please SUBSCRIBE HERE. Subscribe through Apple Podcasts. A special thanks to all our supporters–without you, none of this would be possible. If you are willing to support the show or to give as little as 10 cents a day on Patreon, Thank you! Become a Patron! Big thanks to Dan Lueders for the headlines music and Martin Bell for the opening theme! Big thanks to Mustafa A. from thepolarcat.com for the logo! Thanks to our mods Jack_Shid and KAPT_Kipper on the subreddit Send to email to feedback@dailytechnewsshow.com Show Notes To read the show notes in a separate page click here!

In twenty years as Russia's leader, Vladimir Putin established his reputation as a major figure on the global scene and brought his country back from its dismal appearance during Boris Yeltsin's reign. An important part of his agenda had to do with a pro-active foreign policy backed by military force, from Georgia to the Ukraine and onward to Syria. But next week Putin's political party, United Russia, will be tested in elections - and according to public opinion polls is expected to get a smaller slice of the country's parliamentary pie. Russian voters may long for the real or imagined glory days of the Soviet Union, but they seem more interested in their economy and domestic issues than in Putin's power plays in the Mideast and elsewhere. What does it mean for the next Russian moves in the Middle East? An advance, a retreat or more of the same? Panel: - Jonathan Hessen, Host. - Amir Oren, TV7 Analyst and Host of Watchmen Talk. - Prof. Zeev Khanin, Expert on Russian and Middle Eastern Studies, Bar Ilan and Ariel Universities. - Dr. Nir Boms, Research Fellow, Moshe Dayan Center at Tel Aviv University. Articles on the topic: https://www.tv7israelnews.com/eu-russia-iran-nuclear-deal-within-reach/ https://www.tv7israelnews.com/russia-brokers-israel-syria-prisoner-swap/ https://www.tv7israelnews.com/turkey-defies-us-over-russian-s-400s/ You are welcome to join our audience and watch all of our programs - free of charge! TV7 Israel News: https://www.tv7israelnews.com/vod/series/563/ Jerusalem Studio: https://www.tv7israelnews.com/vod/series/18738/ TV7 Israel News Editor's Note: https://www.tv7israelnews.com/vod/series/76269/ TV7 Israel: Watchmen Talk: https://www.tv7israelnews.com/vod/series/76256/ Jerusalem Prays: https://www.tv7israelnews.com/vod/series/135790/ TV7's Times Observer: https://www.tv7israelnews.com/vod/series/97531/ TV7's Middle East Review: https://www.tv7israelnews.com/vod/series/997755/ My Brother's Keeper: https://www.tv7israelnews.com/vod/series/53719/ This week in 60 seconds: https://www.tv7israelnews.com/vod/series/123456/ Those who wish can send prayer requests to TV7 Israel News in the following ways: Facebook Messenger: https://www.facebook.com/tv7israelnews Email: israelnews@tv7.fi Please be sure to mention your first name and country of residence. Any attached videos should not exceed 20 seconds in duration. #IsraelNews #tv7israelnews #newsupdates Rally behind our vision - https://www.tv7israelnews.com/donate/ To purchase TV7 Israel News merchandise: https://teespring.com/stores/tv7-israel-news-store Live view of Jerusalem - https://www.tv7israelnews.com/jerusalem-live-feed/ Visit our website - http://www.tv7israelnews.com/ Subscribe to our YouTube channel - https://www.youtube.com/tv7israelnews Like TV7 Israel News on Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/tv7israelnews Follow TV7 Israel News on Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/tv7israelnews/ Follow TV7 Israel News on Twitter - https://twitter.com/tv7israelnews

Hopelessness and disgust. That is the mission of Russia's latest batch of "spoiler" candidates and electioneering, according to a new report by BBC Russia correspondent Elizaveta Fokht. The main targets of these "dark technologies" in the September 2021 races are politicians nominated by the (left-wing) Communist Party of the Russian Federation (KPRF), the (right-wing) Liberal Democratic Party of Russia (LDPR), and the democratic opposition party Yabloko. Candidates from Just Russia and the ruling party United Russia have been mysteriously spared. While many of the stunts performed throughout this summer's campaigns seem like smear attempts, experts told Fokht that Russia's spoilers actually hope to discourage swing voters from participating at all. Original Article: https://meduza.io/en/feature/2021/09/09/spoiled-elections

A look at Russian Political parties and the Russian Duma election coming up. Also let me know how my audio quality is for this episode! I changed some stuff and want to see if people like it or not Email: whydocountriesexist@gmail.com Website: https://whydocountriesexist.libsyn.com/ Request/feedback form: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSf5m6cVniic8zkY13UZmUAxwLTNuVdBEkYqHmQCvvyAkGcUSg/viewform?usp=sf_link   Intro 0:00 Background and Political Structure 0:49 United Russia 4:47 Rodina 7:57 A Just Russia (SRZP) 9:29 Civic Platform 11:32 Liberal Democratic party of Russia (LDPR) 13:09 Communist Party of the Russian Federation (CPRF) 15:58 Other parties running for the Duma 19:01 Outro 20:23

In recent months, the remnants of imprisoned opposition politician Alexey Navalny's team have endured police pressure that has no precedent in Russia's post-Soviet history. The authorities have devoted special attention to "Smart Vote," the Navalny movement's strategic initiative (first introduced in 2019 and 2020 for local elections in Moscow, Tomsk, and Novosibirsk) that directs opposition voters to the candidates Team Navalny deems likeliest to defeat nominees from United Russia, the country's ruling political party. In its war against Smart Vote, Russia's federal censor, RKN, has even started threatening some of the world's biggest Internet companies. Here is a chronology of the last three months in this confrontation between the Russian state and Alexey Navalny's last-standing national campaign. Original Article: https://meduza.io/en/feature/2021/09/11/under-pressure

This week join your host Edward Johnson, Head of Global Analysis along with Liana Semchuk, our Lead Europe & Eurasia Analyst and Alex Lord, our Europe & Eurasia Analyst to discuss the up and coming Russian elections. Legislative elections will be held in Russia between 17 – 19 September, with the ruling United Russia highly likely to retain its political dominance. Despite the party's low approval ratings amid prolonged dissatisfaction with socio-economic conditions, the government's use of incentives, targeted repression, and online voting will work in its favour. Meanwhile, the absence of a clear and unifying opposition figure will ensure that the risk of mass protests is limited, though sporadic mass action cannot be ruled out entirely, should widespread electoral irregularities be reported. As such, policy continuity, greater protectionism of domestic IT businesses, and increasing intolerance of dissent are likely to become more pronounced after the election.

Russia's parliamentary elections will be held in September 2021. Many believe one winner has already been decided: Vladimir Putin and his United Russia party.

The independent Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta obtained an audio recording that allegedly reveals poll workers in Korolyov, a city outside Moscow, being trained to rig the vote ahead of the State Duma elections. The woman heard on the tape is believed to be Zhanna Prokofieva, an advisor to the mayor of Korolyov. Speaking at a meeting with local election commission leaders, the "supervisor" heard on the recording tasks poll workers with providing United Russia with 42-45 percent of the vote, and explains to them how to falsify the voting results. Novaya Gazeta sent the leaked recording to Russia's Central Election Commission on September 2, along with an official request for comment. Meduza summarizes the audio recording here. Original Article: https://meduza.io/en/feature/2021/09/02/specific-numbers

In early August, an explosion thundered from beneath the steps of the Smolninskoye municipal hall in central St. Petersburg. This part of the city has been the subject of a protracted and bitter struggle for power between the head of the local council of deputies, Grigory Rankov (who failed to get re-elected two years ago, but managed to cling on to his post), and local oppositionists. Rankov's opponents on the council believe he's the mastermind behind the blast, and although law enforcement have not corroborated his involvement, Rankov has indeed exhibited some odd behavior in recent weeks. For example, posting a video of himself shooting a Kalashnikov rifle, accompanied by threatening comments. Meduza tracks Rankov's journey from IT teacher and ballroom dancer, to municipal councilman now known as "Detonator Greg." Original Article: https://meduza.io/en/feature/2021/08/30/the-dynamite-deputy

In roughly a month, on September 17, three-day parliamentary elections will begin in Russia. Using party lists, opinion polls, and turnout estimates in each region across the country, it's relatively easy to predict the results. As ever, the biggest changes are taking place inside United Russia, the nation's ruling political party. What's the logic behind such changes, and whom should we expect to see in the new legislature? Political scientist Alexander Kynev explains. Original Article: https://meduza.io/en/feature/2021/08/13/september-s-likely-winners

Activists close to Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny are mobilizing ahead of Russia's parliamentary election. Navalny, who was poisoned a year ago, has been detained in a prison camp since his trial.

As this fall's State Duma elections draw nearer, sources close to Putin's administration and the United Russia leadership are saying that Dmitry Medvedev, Russia's former president and prime minister, is set to head the ruling party's list. Though Medvedev has been United Russia's leading candidate in past parliamentary elections, his current political ratings are quite low. Be that as it may, sources told Meduza that after weighing a number of scenarios, the "party of power" concluded that Medvedev was the only viable option. At the same time, United Russia representatives, including Medvedev himself, have declined to comment on whether or not he'll be number one of the party's list - apparently, this question will be resolved at the United Russia congress in Moscow on June 19.

Following United Russia's congress in Moscow on June 19, the ruling party confirmed its election list for the September 2021 State Duma election. The first five names were presented by President Vladimir Putin himself - and United Russia's chairman, former president and prime minister Dmitry Medvedev, was noticeably absent from the list. Sources say that both Medvedev being left out and Putin making the announcement was a "humiliation" for the party chairman. Meduza special correspondent Andrey Pertsev breaks down the notable results of the ruling party's congress, including how the decision to exclude Medvedev was made.

Vinzavod, a former wine factory in central Moscow, has been converted into a space for contemporary art. In this relaxed place that attracts a youthful crowd, it may be easy to forget the bleak political mood in Russia, and the Kremlin's ongoing crackdown on opposition voices. Related: 'Fighting corruption in Russia is now being called extremism,' says Alexei Navalny's top strategist  But artist Katya Muromtseva's latest multimedia exhibition that opened last month ensures that anti-Kremlin voices are heard.The 31-year-old artist uses her artwork to call attention to the uptick in arrests of opposition activists and the forced closures of independent media. "Time Difference," a new art exhibition by Katya Muromtseva, 31, urges viewers to think critically about the Kremlin.  Credit: Courtesy of Katya Muromtseva “This show is based on interviews that I made with people from my generation,” Muromtseva said. Walking into the exhibition, viewers are immediately struck by the huge mural that covers three high, white walls. The mural is made up of lopping black lines in which the shapes of riot police and protestors emerge. The images evoke the mass demonstrations that broke out in the Russian capital earlier this year, against the jailing of opposition leader Alexei Navalny. Related: Navalny's health warrants 'justified, grave concern,' says adviserOn the fourth wall, a set of blood red paintings are covered with similar drawings.  "Time Difference," a new art exhibition by Katya Muromtseva, 31, urges viewers to think critically about the Kremlin.  Credit: Courtesy of Katya Muromtseva Related: One small step: Moscow's first queer dance festival challenges homophobiaMuromtseva said that the paintings are “not comfortable” because “the time when we are living — it is not comfortable." Beneath the wall art, five iPad screens display the text of interviews Muromtseva has gathered, which focus on moments of political awakening.One person she spoke to volunteered to work as an election monitor, only to see ballot boxes being stuffed. Another was a student who began traveling around Europe in 2014, and witnessed the outrage there over Russia's annexation of Crimea. Related: Crimean Tatars face prosecution 7 years after Russia's annexationA third interview is with a man who used to sneak away from his wife at night to graffiti anti-Kremlin slogans around the city. “A lot of people think that we cannot change anything. This is the government, they have the power. ... But that's not true.”Katya Muromtseva, artist, Russia“A lot of people think that we cannot change anything. This is the government, they have the power,” Muromtseva said. “But that's not true.”Related: Russian opposition politician blasts 'two dictatorships' "Time Difference," a new art exhibition by Katya Muromtseva, 31, urges viewers to think critically about the Kremlin.  Credit: Courtesy of Katya Muromtseva Russia's 'fearless generation'Muromtseva is part of a generation that is causing concern for the Kremlin. People her age tend to be more openly opposed to Putin than older generations. They also tend to get their news online, rather than from tightly-controlled state media. “How can we trust the news? Because, it's like we're at the point where all the news is written by the state,” she said.“So, for me, this is the new version of the news, how it can be written. It can be written only with these very particular, very individual emotional stories.”Muromtseva describes herself as a "socially engaged" artist rather than a political one. Previous projects include a video work based on interviews with children about what they imagine life was like in the Soviet Union. She's also worked with older people to redecorate retirement homes. Muromtseva is not the only Russian artist who deals with political themes, but her combination of art, social engagement and journalism is unusual.It's also potentially dangerous.In recent months, authorities have arrested members of Pussy Riot, the performance art group. Police have shut down shows by an independent theater troupe called Teatr.doc. And another young artist in far eastern Russia, Yulia Tsvetkova, is also facing ongoing criminal charges because of her work.Muromtseva said that several guests at the exhibition opening had expressed concern for her safety, because of the “open critique” of the state in the interviews.She understands the concern and admits that this is a hard time for artists.“But on the other hand, I think this is very fruitful for artists to have this kind of tension, because your voice really matters,” she said. Not everyone shares Muromtseva's upbeat outlook. Sergei Khripun, the co-owner of XL Gallery inside Vinzavod, where the exhibition is running until the middle of next month, said he doesn't “see a future in the way that Katya probably does.”Khripun, who's part of an older generation, has seen many protest movements before, including the one that brought down the Soviet Union 30 years ago. Khripun admires Muromtseva's art, but he's critical of the interviews.“I see that these are young people. It's their hopes, it's their frustrations, whatever. Well, let's see, if you consider asking them five or 10 years later.”Sergei Khripun, co-owner, XL Gallery, Moscow“They're quite naive, I would say...I see that these are young people. It's their hopes, it's their frustrations, whatever. Well, let's see, if you consider asking them five or 10 years later.”Muromtseva is convinced that real change can come. She recently worked with Russian teenagers and this gave her hope.“[Teenagers are] so open and fearless and they're very politically engaged and they are really aware of what's going on in our country. They are the future and we are the future.”Katya Muromtseva, artist, Russia“They're so open and fearless and they're very politically engaged and they are really aware of what's going on in our country. They are the future and we are the future.” Russia is holding parliamentary elections in the fall, which the Kremlin-backed United Russia party is all but certain to win, despite its falling popularity. With the opposition forced out of politics, it remains to be seen how Muromtseva's "fearless generation" will make itself heard.

Thursday, May 13, 2021 Hoover Institution, Stanford University   The Hoover Institution hosts Russia: Empire, War, and Revolution on Thursday, May 13, 2021, at 10am PDT. Join the Hoover Institution Press for a discussion of two recent publications based on the acclaimed Russian collections held at the Hoover Library & Archives, moderated by Russian historian Robert Service.  Russia in War and Revolution: The Memoirs of Fyodor Sergeyevich Olferieff features the previously unpublished memoirs of a Russian military officer who participated in key transformative historical events, including World War I and the Russian Revolution. Gary Hamburg, volume editor and author of the book’s introduction and companion essay; and the subject’s granddaughter Tanya Alexandra Cameron, who translated his memoirs, will participate in the discussion. Next, author Anatol Shmelev will discuss his book the Wake of Empire: Anti-Bolshevik Russia in International Affairs, 1917–1920, which examines Russia’s place in international affairs in the years after the fall of the Russian Empire, when the anti-Bolshevik “Whites” fought to maintain a “Great, United Russia.” ABOUT THE SPEAKERS Robert Service, a noted Russian historian and political commentator, is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and a fellow of St Antony’s College, Oxford. Gary Hamburg is Otho M. Behr Professor of History at Claremont McKenna College and author or editor of more than seventy works, including Russia's Path toward Enlightenment: Faith, Politics, and Reason, 1500–1801. Tanya Alexandra Cameron is the granddaughter of Fyodor Sergeyevich Olferieff. She learned Russian and Russian history and traveled extensively to the Soviet Union in order to translate his memoirs. Anatol Shmelev is a research fellow and Robert Conquest Curator for Russia and Eurasia at the Hoover Institution. His area of specialization is the Russian Civil War, 1917–22.

The last few months have seen unprecedented repression in Vladimir Putin's Russia, with a wave of arrests and disappearances among Kremlin critics and international alarm over the deteriorating health of the imprisoned opposition leader Alexei Navalny. At the same time, Russian troops are massing on the border with Ukraine, sending Western countries scrambling to figure out Moscow's intentions. Those developments are playing out ahead of parliamentary elections set for September, amid the government's dismal response to the coronavirus pandemic and plummeting public opinion ratings for the Kremlin's United Russia party. The leading opposition figure Vladimir Kara-Murza joins Jonathan and Greg to explain what's taking place in Russia, priorities for the opposition and what Western countries must do to address Putin's mounting threat.

Rumours that Zhirinovsky is going to step down from leadership of the Liberal Democratic Party look more credible these days, and oligarch Oleg Deripaska is even being mooted as a successor. So, it's time for a bit of an exploration of the LDPR, what it stands for, what role it plays, and where it might go.After the break, I take a quick look at a story in Znak on police procurement (here) and the Amazing Activities of the Singular Bastrykin. I talk about Korolev in this cellcast and in this article.You can also follow my blog, In Moscow's Shadows, and become one of the podcast's supporting Patrons and gain question-asking rights and access to exclusive extra materials right here. 

Shownotes: This week, Matt and Cameron finish Zakhar Prilepin’s Sankya (affectionately retitled Sankya: Reeeeee), reading chapters 8-13. They’ll also be going over the ties between the messaging of the story and some of Prilepin’s real-life political engagement. Major themes: fatherlessness, arson, murderous intent, National Bolshevism. 8:00 - I meant to say 2014. Please don’t come for me in the comments. 13:17 - “eet eez” 17:39 - Right as according to his own moral philosophy, not according to...you know, my moral standards. 35:25 - “For real,” as if them committing arson at the McDonald’s wasn’t real in comparison. 35:33 - United Russia being Putin’s real-life political party. 45:48 - If we consider this most broadly, there are about 72 regions in Russia. Follow us on Instagram, check out our website, if you’re so inclined, check out our Patreon! The music used in this episode was “soviet march,” by Toasted Tomatoes. You can find more of their work on Bandcamp and Youtube.

German authorities say Russian opposition figure Alexei Navalny was poisoned with the Novichok nerve agent. The Kremlin has denied any involvement. State Duma member, Vyacheslav Nikonov, tells DW, Navalny is too irrelevant. Why do so many outspoken Russians face mortal danger?What do you mean by Novichok?" Vyacheslav Nikonov told Conflict Zone’s Tim Sebastian when asked about the poisoning of Russian opposition figurehead, Alexei Navalny. The figurehead of the Russian opposition became ill during a flight from Siberia to Moscow in August. Navalny was evacuated to Germany and treated in a Berlin hospital. Nikonov, who sits in the lower house of the Russian parliament for President Vladimir Putin’s United Russia party, said he “wasn’t very interested in Navalny” and implied Navalny wasn’t important enough to be targeted. The Kremlin has denied any involvement in the incident. "Navalny, as you know, was saved by the Russian doctors," Nikonov pointed out. Nikonov compared the Russian opposition figure to Angela Davis, a leftist radical who was one of the leaders of the American Communist Party during the Cold War. The State Duma member implied Navalny may have been poisoned with the nerve agent after arriving in Germany. "Russophobia is not something new ... actually, in case of Germany, it started like five centuries ago." Nikonov offered this insight into his thinking. "There is always some truth in propaishganda, otherwise it won't work." Asked about the oppression of demonstrations by opposition supporters in Russia, Nikonov said Russian police were polite, especially in comparison to those in the West. "Russian police is much more civilized than German, French or American," Nikonov said. The Russian lawmaker also disputed that the murders of opposition figures were being ignored. "Most of the cases of political murders in Russia have been investigated."

This week our guest on the podcast is Dmitry Aleksandrovich Petrov. Dmitry Aleksandrovich is deputy chair of the council of municipal deputies of the Yakimanka district in Moscow. He is also a co-founder of an environmental project for the public monitoring of air pollution levels in his district and the city more widely.The issues we discuss in the podcast include: What is Yakimanka district? What powers do council members have? Is the public interested in municipal elections? How much time does working as a deputy take up? Why were you elected from the Yabloko party? What were the elections in 2017 like? Are local elections similar to national ones? What is the environmental project “breathe:Moscow”? How do you see the future of your municipality and the city of Moscow?This podcast is in the Russian language. You can also listen on our website or at SoundCloud, Spotify or iTunes. The music, from Stravinsky's Elegy for Solo Viola, is performed for us by Karolina Herrera.Sergei Nikitin writes on Facebook: “The poem ‘I enter every house on Yakimanka,' which we remember from childhood can well apply to Dmitry Petrov. Last week Simon Cosgrove and I spent more than an hour in an interesting conversation with Dmitry, a member of the council of deputies of the Yakimanka municipal district. A huge puddle in front of the entrance to his house, which got in everyone's way, was, as it is now called, a trigger for Dmitry. Over the next two and a half years, Dmitry worked to convince the local government that it was their responsibility to keep the local area in good order, and as a result of his persistent reminders and demands he achieved the desired result. ‘It's difficult to participate in the life of the city,' says Dmitry. The bureaucrat's art of avoiding responsibility and issuing noncommittal responses often sends citizens who have lost hope ‘back to the sofa' with the feeling: ‘The world is against us!' The desire to show people that in the city – at least on the municipal level – there can be government with a human face led Dmitry Petrov to run for deputy. I found his story about how he gathered signatures to stand for election particularly interesting, how he and his team visited all apartments (incidentally, when I lived in Moscow I never opened the door to any unexpected caller), how ten people were elected to the council of deputies of Yakimanka municipal district, of whom nine were from Yabloko and only one from United Russia. As to be expected, Dmitry told us how the powers of a municipal deputy (at least in Moscow) are severely restricted. As a deputy you are obliged, literally, to do very little. But if you want you can work to achieve quite major and important things for the city. The full verse of Agniya Barto's poem sounds a little frightening: ‘I enter every house in Yakimanka. And I put iron scrap on my sled at every gate.' Dmitry Petrov does not need iron scrap, and he does not need a sled. It seems to me that he is an excellent deputy, ready to help people, and he sees his main task as follows: ‘I would like at least some of those people whom I serve to rid themselves of the false notion of their own supposed helplessness'.”Simon Cosgrove adds: If you want to listen to this podcast on the podcasts.com website and it doesn't seem to play, please download by clicking on the three dots to the right. A summary of some of the week's events in Russia relevant to human rights can be found on our website here

In Hokkaido, where Ainu, the indigenous people thrived since the 10th century, a national museum called "Ainu Museum and Park" has opened last Sunday. At the opening ceremony, there were the governor of Hokkaido, Naomichi Suzuki, and the head of office of Ainu, Toshiya, Tone. A day before the ceremony, Chief Cabinet Secretary Suga Yoshihide visited the facility as well. As far as I researched, none of the attendances raised topics such as discrimination towards Ainu and the occupation of the land by the Japanese pioneer in Meiji era. The facility also known as Upopoy which means "singing in a large group" in Ainu language. Should it be exploited by the tourism? https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/news/20200712_03/ In the far east of Russia, thousands of protesters marched for the jailed governor of Khabarovsk, Sergei Furgal who is remanded in custody over the alleged murder 15 years ago. Furgal defeated the candidate of Putin's United Russia party in elections two years ago. Estimates by regional media and opposition put the number of demonstrators on Saturday, at between 5,000 and 40,000, BBC reported. According to the Russia's law, Putin will review this case personally and decide whether Furgal resume his duty or not. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-53373132 A Chinese activist in Melbourne was tracked by the authority in China over her online activity. A woman known as Zoo organised rallies in Melbourne in support of Hong Kong protesters and whistleblower Li Wenliang, the Wuhan doctor who died after first warning of the coronavirus outbreak. Her father has been questioned in relation to her online activity, she said. The video footage shows a police officer telling that she is "not permitted" to post via a Twitter account despite Zoo denied that is not her account, SBS reported. https://www.sbs.com.au/news/this-activist-says-she-is-being-tracked-and-harassed-in-australia-by-chinese-police

I speak to MMA Legend, Jeff Monson about how an American ended up living in Russia and serving as a Deputy Councilman on the Krasnogorsk Duma. Jeff takes us through how travelling the world as a fighter led him to Anarchism. His journey through the Russian Communist Party which led him to the conclusion - 'there are no Communists in the Communist Party!'. His relationship with Vladimir Putin and the United Russia Party. Also how he intends to use his platform to help the poorest in society, especially children to break the cycle of poverty. I have a lot of respect for Jeff, he's willing to put ideology which he is very passionate about to one side to be pragmatic to solve problems. Great interview, a couple of slight audio fades.

Alan Curtis Kay is an American computer scientist. Alan Kay is fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, and the Royal Society of Arts. Alan Kay also was professional jazz guitarist. Alan Kay is the president of the Viewpoints Research Institute, and an adjunct professor of computer science at the University of California, Los Angeles. Alan Kay was a senior fellow at HP Labs, a visiting professor at Kyoto University, and an adjunct professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Steve Jobs and Alan Turing. Power of Now is the book by Eckhart Tolle. If you want to connect to Thomas Hansen follow his work on https://polterguy.github.io to learn about his open source projects and https://servergardens.com - the latter being the “Magic” framework and project’s commercial offspring. Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin relinquish control of Alphabet to CEO Sundar Pichai (current Google CEO): https://www.blog.google/inside-google/alphabet/letter-from-larry-and-sergey VR for cows: https://nat-geo.ru/science/v-podmoskove-testiruyut-vr-ochki-dlya-korov/ Real 3D holograms: https://youtu.be/tzWP-NL3Lck On importance of math, statistics and cause-effect by Bill Gates: https://youtu.be/6mFM3Q8cWm0 VR for HL3VR is tested. The Search for an HIV vaccine may soon be over: https://youtu.be/2On9PVrBaHY OpenAI GPT-2 fine tuning update: https://openai.com/blog/fine-tuning-gpt-2/ Reid Hoffman on decentralized currencies vs centralized in Rap form: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/bitcoin-rap-battle-hamilton-vs-satoshi-reid-hoffman Robert Aleksandrovich Schlegel is a Russian political figure, a former member of the Russian State Duma, and a member of United Russia (Шлегель). Works in Acronis now. We are for open software and human rights. You Need to Practice Being Your Future Self: https://getpocket.com/explore/item/you-need-to-practice-being-your-future-self Podcast on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4HNBzcFMvmVAVc4OTkkHxa Podcast on Apple Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/ru/podcast/podcast/id1488262887?l=en Podcast on Breaker: https://www.breaker.audio/podcast-183 Podcast on Google Podcasts: https://www.google.com/podcasts?feed=aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmNob3IuZm0vcy9lYzc3NDc0L3BvZGNhc3QvcnNz Podcast on Radio Public: https://radiopublic.com/podcast-6Vyndm Podcast’s RSS: https://anchor.fm/s/ec77474/podcast/rss Episode #5 on ListenNotes: https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/podcast-tim-ivaikin-f924io7gnQP/ Episode #5 on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQa5raA_wo8 Podcast episodes on Medium: https://medium.com/@t.s.ivaykin_24653/podcast-by-sergey-mikheev-tim-ivaikin-%D0%B2%D1%8B%D1%88%D0%B5%D0%BB-%D0%BD%D0%B0-apple-podcasts-25860f505ccb Telegram Podcast Live: https://t.me/podcastro_live Telegram Podcast Channel: https://t.me/podcastro Telegram Podcast Chat: https://t.me/podcast_chat Good Results book by Tim Ivaikin http://greatergoodresults.com/ on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Good-Results-efficiency-powerful-growth-ebook-dp-B07N4R52H2/dp/B07N4R52H2/ref=mt_kindle?_encoding=UTF8&me=&qid=

During the Obama administration, political appointees, not military members, drove the agenda. James Hasson, who served in the military during President Barack Obama's presidency, talked to generals and other military leaders to get the inside scoop on what really happened in the military in the Obama era.We also cover these stories:• Border crossings are down, according to new government data.• Almost all U.S. states have joined together to launch an antitrust probe into big tech companies.• Vladimir Putin’s United Russia party suffered a major setback in a city-wide election in Moscow.The Daily Signal podcast is available on Ricochet, iTunes, SoundCloud, Google Play, or Stitcher. All of our podcasts can be found at DailySignal.com/podcasts. If you like what you hear, please leave a review. You can also leave us a message at 202-608-6205 or write us at letters@dailysignal.com. Enjoy the show!Release date:9 September 2019 See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

This weekend’s vote will fill some fairly inconsequential city positions. But how it plays out will indicate the strength of a rapidly broadening, national movement against the ruling United Russia party. China has long been repressing the Muslim-minority Uighurs; worryingly, it’s now starting to squeeze the Huis, more dispersed followers of Islam. And, a well-intentioned anti-knife-crime push in Britain draws ire after targeting fried-chicken shops. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

This weekend’s vote will fill some fairly inconsequential city positions. But how it plays out will indicate the strength of a rapidly broadening, national movement against the ruling United Russia party. China has long been repressing the Muslim-minority Uighurs; worryingly, it’s now starting to squeeze the Huis, more dispersed followers of Islam. And, a well-intentioned anti-knife-crime push in Britain draws ire after targeting fried-chicken shops. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

On today's episode, we talk mostly about the EPP slowly admitting they realise Orbán's a bit shit. We also talk about a weird La Lega funding scandal, that seems very legit if you ask me. Support us on Patreon! WE HAVE A T-PUBLIC STORE what a fashionable way to support our podcast We now have a website that you can find here! Feel free to send us an email at PreviouslyInEurope@gmail.com or follow us on Twitter @PrevInEurope If you can please leave us a review on Apple Podcasts and if you can't do that tell a friend, this stuff really helps us out Also, have you considered Matteo Renzi? Nonsense Section AfD wins case against spy agency "The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution", the not at all sinister sounding German domestic spy agency, apparently aren't allowed to announce they're looking into the AfD (https://www.dw.com/en/afd-wins-case-against-spy-agency/a-47695697) France is planning a 5% "digital tax" The French finance minister is apparently planning a 5% tax to promote 'fiscal justice'. This is largely due to the EU not pushing forward with something similar (https://www.bloomberg.com/technology). The problem being that some EU countries (cough, Ireland and Luxembourg) do quite well out of the current system The second referendum campaign is just kind of embarrassing God damn you fucking nerds! https://www.wooferendum.org/ Moldovan parliamentary election https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Moldovan_parliamentary_election,_2018 The general takeaway of this election, The Party of Socialists is still the biggest party but there still needs to be a government formed. The newly implemented voting system is terrible. Topic 1 €3M from Russia to La Lega ##Report: Russia offered Italy's Salvini €3m for EU election Russia was preparing to help Italian far-right deputy prime minister Matteo Salvini contest the European Parliament elections in May with a clandestine €3m funding boost for his League party, Italian weekly L'Espresso reports. The money was to come via a cushy oil deal brokered by a Russian state firm and Salvini's aide, Gianluca Savoini, in Moscow last October, L'Espresso said in a teaser ahead of further revelations due Sunday. https://euobserver.com/tickers/144246 Main article in L'Espresso http://espresso.repubblica.it/plus/articoli/2019/02/28/news/la-trattativa-per-finanziare-la-lega-i-nuovi-particolari-sull-uomo-di-salvini-a-mosca-1.332173?ref=HEF_RULLO&preview=true People involved: Gianluca Savoini, president of the Lombardy-Russia Cultural Association, and Claudio d'Amico, a senior foreign policy adviser to the party. They own Orion LLC. a Moscow-based company. At the weekend, the Italian magazine L'Espresso published a series of cases where senior figures in and around Lega were linked to businesses based in Russia, and, more significantly, allegations that the party was in talks to secure funding through an oil deal brokered by Savoini. The League has never hidden its desire to forge close economic and ideological links with Russia. League representatives have frequently travelled to Russia and appeared regularly on state-controlled media there. In 2017, a formal "cooperation and collaboration" agreement was signed between Russian president Vladimir Putin's ruling United Russia and the League, aimed at boosting business, legislative and cultural ties between the two countries. https://euobserver.com/opinion/144255 Topic 2 People are starting to notice Orbán isn't a Christian Democrat Orbán has gotten used to getting his way nationally - having fun spending the tax payers' money on "information campaigns". In a repeat of last year for the Hungarian elections they're doing it again but this time against the current EU administration, which is run in a grand coalition with Orbán's own EPP party... The anti-Junker ads are a curious decision. Everyone should refer to the 2018 "stop Soros" ads which apparently cost the government €8m (https://english.atlatszo.hu/2018/03/22/hungarian-government-spent-e8-1-million-on-its-latest-stop-soros-campaign/) in the run up to their national elections. This is also generally money spent for air time and billboards controlled by Orbán friendly media (Politico have a fun chart https://www.politico.eu/article/viktor-orban-media-empire-hungary-election-antal-rogan-fidesz-propaganda/). The content is equivalent to low effort memes (https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/27/world/europe/viktor-orban-hungary.html) Currently they're running basically the same idea but with Junker included as a Soros co-conspirator in his anti Hungarian people immigration agenda. EPP notice... /s In a shocking turn of events the EPP notice /s. We're now on 5-8 parties officially having said they've asked for Fidesz expulsion or suspension: Flemish Christian Democrats (Belgium) Walloon Humanist Democratic Center (Belgium) Luxembourg's Christian Social People's Party (Junker's party, Luxembourg) CDS-People's Party (Portugal) (https://www.politico.eu/article/belgian-and-luxembourgish-conservatives-ask-epp-to-expel-fidesz/) Swedish Moderate Party late last month also indicated they'd be on board (https://www.politico.eu/article/sweden-moderate-party-viktor-orban-fidesz-party-to-be-kicked-out-of-epp/) Swedish Christian Democrats National Coalition Party (Finland) Current count is at 10ish according to Politico (https://www.politico.eu/article/fidesz-epp-european-peoples-party-viktor-orban-what-happens-next/), but mostly parties with small seat numbers. Christian Democratic Appeal from the Netherlands have said there needs to be a conversation but it's unclear whether they're asking for expulsion. They need 7 parties to ask for expulsion for it to come to an EPP internal vote - "A proposal for the exclusion of a member may only be submitted by the Presidency or seven Ordinary or Associated Member Parties from five different countries." (https://www.epp.eu/files/uploads/2019/01/EPP-Statutes-adopted-by-the-Helsinki-Congress-on-7-Nov-2018.pdf). So this may happen, but whether they get a majority to vote them out is questionable. The EPP internal structure is controlled based on previous EU election results so... yeah maybe https://www.epp.eu/structure/political-assembly/. There's some powerhouses on the list of people who would probably vote against expulsion. Tajani (EU parliament president, Forza Italia) has been pretty pro Orbán previously and their block would probably vote against. PP from Spain are pretty gross lately. Les Republicans have been conspicuously quiet on it... So maybe not Orbán seems to think this is good fun Originally the news late in the week was they'd take the posters down on March 15th (as originally planned). Now they've revealed they're just going to replace them with Vice President Frans Timmermans posters ( https://www.dw.com/en/hungary-to-replace-anti-juncker-posters-with-anti-timmermans-posters/a-47753965). Now Timmermans isn't in the EPP, but he's part of the grand coalition ruling majority being in the S&D... so... I don't know, maybe some people will find that fine in the EPP... Merkel says posters bad, Orbán very bold (https://www.dw.com/en/merkel-voices-solidarity-with-juncker-stops-short-of-calling-for-orbans-fidesz-to-be-thrown-out-of-epp/a-47619513) The Hungarian government's website says that the response from the commission to the ads is a "confession" (http://www.kormany.hu/en/government-spokesperson/news/the-official-opinion-of-the-european-commission-is-yet-another-confession). Also who knew the Hungarian government had an English version? They're making the Left is evil argument Orbán is basically saying that criticism of him is just going to help the left wing (https://www.politico.eu/article/viktor-orban-calls-epp-critics-useful-idiots/), which is a curious message from someone who is running ads saying the effective leader of his EU party is a puppet of Soros... Maybe the EPP could just do with out him? They'd be giving up the juicy 13 seats of their coalition. They'd still be the largest party by a sizeable majority on current polling... I don't think Orbán's bullshit is worth it. Thought the current narrative is they're going to take a massive hit in seats from the last parliament so maybe not... (https://www.politico.eu/article/new-politico-2019-european-parliament-election-seat-projection/)

Does electoral fraud stabilize authoritarian rule or undermine it? The answer to this question rests, in part, on how voters evaluate regime candidates who engage in fraud. Using a survey experiment carried out after the 2016 State Duma elections, we find that voters withdraw their support from United Russia candidates who are reputed to have used electoral fraud. This effect is especially large among strong supporters of the regime. Core regime supporters are more likely to have ex ante beliefs that elections are free and fair. Providing them information about fraud significantly reduces their propensity to support the ruling party. These findings illustrate that fraud is costly for autocrats not just because it may ignite protest—as several scholars have argued—but also because it can undermine the regime’s core base of electoral support. Because many of its strongest supporters expect elections to be free and fair, the regime has strong incentives to conceal or otherwise limit its use of electoral fraud.

Nike caused outrage among football fashionistas at the weekend, but why?(0m39s) Defending champions Germany lose, Brazil and Argentina draw as the tournament favorites stutter during the opening weekend.(05m10s) We've seen a game each from Messi, Neymar and Ronaldo but which one of 'The Big 3' has outperformed the others?(13m45s) Vladimir Putin's United Russia party are implementing a Bill that will make it illegal to criticise the National team.(26m44s) Our ‘Alternative Sponsor' comes from the hosts of The 2022 World Cup Qatar, as they aim to justify their selection.(34m57s) We look to the past and apply VAR to some of the most infamous moments in World Cup history.(39m27s) Rate, review, share on Apple Podcasts, SoundCloud, and join the conversation on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and email. We've been The Linesmen!

Greetings, Comrades!This is my account on the events in the Russian elections, together with some analysis. Normally, I don't insist on it, but, please, if you can, share it and recommend to people, who want to know how things actually went down. One thing, that really matters tho, is that while this episode was being edited, Zhirinovsky already managed to declare, that United Russia plans to abolish elections, and create some sort of a grand council, which would hold all the power, and where the membership would be for life. And yes, it is Zhirinovsky, but hey...like I said, he's an over the top mouthpiece. But a mouthpiece still.Enjoy. We live in very interesting times. Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/theeasternborder. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

In this episode of The Russia Guy, Kevin discusses a new Meduza-OCCRP investigative report about the secretive groups funding Vladimir Putin's re-election campaign.Questions asked and answered in this episode:* What does it mean that Putin's re-election campaign is funding itself through nonprofit foundations affiliated with United Russia? Is that any different than how he's always done it?* What are these foundations, and how are they connected to influential political players like billionaire Gennady Timchenko and Moscow Governor Andrey Vorobyev?* How does the central organization responsible for funding the Putin campaign's warchest respond to allegations that it exists purely to hide the president's real donors?And don't miss Meduza's full report, which includes an impressive infographic linking everyone and everything in this murky business:https://meduza.io/en/feature/2018/03/13/putin-s-secret-bankrollersSupport the show (https://www.patreon.com/kevinrothrock)

(Not the news source.) Joining us is Sean Guillory of Sean's Russia Blog and Podcast, at seansrussiablog.org. He has a PhD in Russian History from UCLA. Sean helps us dive into the nitty gritty about what's actually going on with Russia today. We ask: -Who's in charge? How does Russia's leadership work? -Why is United Russia so popular? -What's the economy really look like? -How corrupt is Russia? -How do Russians feel about the world? -What's the plan in Ukraine? How's it going? -What about the Syria intervention? -Did Russia manipulate US elections? -Why is Russia picking a fight with NATO? -What common narratives about Russia just don't make sense? Enjoy! See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.