#2011 Russian Nationals

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Nobody

* * * *

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

August 2, 2024

Heather Cox Richardson

Aug 03, 2024

Today, Aaron C. Davis and Carol D. Leonnig of the Washington Post reported that there is reason to believe that when Trump’s 2016 campaign was running low on funds, Trump accepted a $10 million injection of cash from Egypt’s authoritarian leader Abdel Fatah al-Sisi. It is against the law to accept direct or indirect financial support from foreign nationals or foreign governments for a political campaign in the United States.

In early 2017, CIA officials told Justice Department officials that a confidential informant had told them of such a cash exchange, and those officials handed the matter off to Robert Mueller, the special counsel who was already looking at the links between the 2016 Trump campaign and Russian operatives. FBI agents noted that on September 16, Trump had met with Sisi when the Egyptian leader was at the U.N. General Assembly in New York City. 

After the meeting, Trump broke with U.S. policy to praise Sisi, calling him a “fantastic guy.” 

Trump’s campaign had been dogged with a lack of funds, and his advisers had begged him to put some of his own money into it. He refused until October 28, when he loaned the campaign $10 million.

An FBI investigation took years to get records, but Davis and Leonnig reported that in 2019 the FBI learned of a key withdrawal from an Egypt bank. In January 2017, five days before Trump took office, an organization linked to Egypt’s intelligence service asked a manager at a branch of the state-run National Bank of Egypt to “kindly withdraw” $9,998,000 in U.S. currency. The bundles of $100 bills filled two bags and weighed more than 200 pounds. 

Once in office, Trump embraced Sisi and, in a reversal of U.S. policy, invited him to be one of his first guests at the White House. “I just want to let everybody know, in case there was any doubt, that we are very much behind President al-Sissi,” Trump said. 

Mueller had gotten that far in pursuit of the connection between Trump and Sisi when he was winding down his investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election. He handed the Egypt investigation off to the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington, D C., where it appears then–attorney general William Barr killed it. 

Today, Brian Schwartz of CNBC reported that Elon Musk and other tech executives are putting their money behind a social media ad campaign for Trump and Vance, and are creating targeted ads in swing states by collecting information about voters under false pretenses. According to Schwartz, their America PAC, or political action committee, says it helps viewers register to vote. And, indeed, the ads direct would-be voters in nonswing states to voter registration sites.

But people responding to the ad in swing states are not sent to registration sites. Instead, they are presented with “a highly detailed personal information form [and] prompted to enter their address, cellphone number and age,” handing over “priceless personal data to a political operation” that can then create ads aimed at that person’s demographic and target them personally in door-to-door campaigns. After getting the information, the site simply says, “Thank you,” without directing the viewer toward a registration site.

Forbes estimates Musk’s wealth at more than $235 billion. 

In June the Trump Organization announced a $500 million deal with Saudi real estate developer Dar Global to build a Trump International hotel in Oman. 

In January 2011, when he was director of the FBI, Robert Mueller gave a speech to the Citizens Crime Commission of New York. He explained that globalization and modern technology had changed the nature of organized crime. Rather than being regional networks with a clear structure, he said, organized crime had become international, fluid, and sophisticated and had multibillion-dollar stakes. Its operators were cross-pollinating across countries, religions, and political affiliations, sharing only their greed. They did not care about ideology; they cared about money. They would do anything for a price.

These criminals “may be former members of nation-state governments, security services, or the military,” he said. “They are capitalists and entrepreneurs. But they are also master criminals who move easily between the licit and illicit worlds. And in some cases, these organizations are as forward-leaning as Fortune 500 companies.”

In order to corner international markets, Mueller explained, these criminal enterprises "may infiltrate our businesses. They may provide logistical support to hostile foreign powers. They may try to manipulate those at the highest levels of government. Indeed, these so-called 'iron triangles' of organized criminals, corrupt government officials, and business leaders pose a significant national security threat."

In a new book called Autocracy, Inc.: The Dictators Who Want to Run the World, journalist Anne Applebaum carries that story forward into the present, examining how today’s autocrats work together to undermine democracy. She says that “the language of the democratic world, meaning rights, laws, rule of law, justice, accountability, [and] transparency…[is]  harmful to them,” especially as those are the words that their internal opposition uses. “And so they need to undermine the people who use it and, if they can, discredit it.” 

Those people, Applebaum says, “believe they are owed power, they deserve power.” When they lose elections, they “come back in a second term and say, right, this time, I'm not going to make that mistake again, and…then change their electoral system, or…change the constitution, change the judicial system, in order to make sure that they never lose.”

Almost exactly a year ago, on August 1, 2023, a grand jury in Washington, D.C., indicted former president Donald J. Trump for conspiring to defraud the United States, conspiring to disenfranchise voters, and conspiring and attempting to obstruct an official proceeding. The charges stemmed from Trump’s attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 election. A grand jury is made up of 23 ordinary citizens who weigh evidence of criminal activity and produce an indictment if 12 or more of them vote in favor. 

The grand jury indicted Trump for “conspiracy to defraud the United States by using dishonesty, fraud, and deceit to impair, obstruct, and defeat the lawful federal government function by which the results of the presidential election are collected, counted, and certified by the government”; “conspiracy to corruptly obstruct and impede the January 6 congressional proceeding at which the collected results of the presidential election are counted and certified”; and “conspiracy against the right to vote and to have one’s vote counted.” 

“Each of these conspiracies,” the indictment reads, “targeted a bedrock function of the United States federal government: the nation’s process of collecting, counting, and certifying the results of the presidential election.” “This federal government function…is foundational to the United States’ democratic process, and until 2021, had operated in a peaceful and orderly manner for more than 130 years.” 

The case of the United States of America v. Donald J. Trump was randomly assigned to Judge Tanya S. Chutkan, who was appointed by President Obama in 2014 and confirmed 95–0 in the Senate. Trump pleaded not guilty on August 3, after which his lawyers repeatedly delayed their pretrial motions until, on December 7, Trump asked the Washington, D.C., Circuit Court of Appeals to decide whether he was immune from prosecution. Chutkan had to put off her initial trial date of March 4, 2024, and said she would not reschedule until the court decided the question of Trump’s immunity. 

In February the appeals court decided he was not immune. Trump appealed to the Supreme Court, which waited until July 1, 2024, to decide that Trump enjoys broad immunity from prosecution for crimes committed as part of his official acts. Today the Washington, D.C., Circuit Court of Appeals sent the case back to Chutkan, almost exactly a year after it was first brought.

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[putinskremlinqueen4palestine64]

🇻🇳 Vietnam

The US lied about the Gulf of Tonkin incident to drag the nation into a needless conflict. (1964)

🇰🇼 Kuwait

The US lied about Iraqi soldiers taking babies out of incubators to rally support for a war against Iraq. (1990)

🇷🇸 Serbia

The US lied about Serbian actions in Kosovo to justify NATO bombings and expand Western influence in the Balkans. (1999)

🇦🇫 Afghanistan

The US lied about its reasons for invading, hiding the true objectives related to pipeline politics and opium fields. (2001)

🇮🇶 Iraq

The US lied about Saddam Hussein having weapons of mass destruction to justify a war for oil. (2003)

🇱🇾 Libya

The US lied about Gaddafi's threats to civilians to establish control over North African resources. (2011)

🇸🇾 Syria

The US lied about Assad's use of chemical weapons as an excuse to topple a sovereign regime. (2013)

🇺🇦 Ukraine

The US lied about Russian aggression to further NATO's encroachment on Russian borders. (2014)

Only ignorant fools believe that, this time, the US is telling the whole truth about the Israeli Palestinian conflict....

[welldonekhushi]

Call of Duty OC: Samantha "Scarlet" Wright 🦋

Finally, after ages, I came up with Scarlet's biography sheet! So in case you guys are curious about her, you can go through this post, hope it helps! (⁠◍⁠•⁠ᴗ⁠•⁠◍⁠)⁠✧⁠*⁠。

If you want to see any artwork or fics on her, go to the #samantha scarlet wright tag for her content!

GENERAL

Name: Samantha

Full name: Samantha Wright

Codename: "Scarlet", Hotel Two-Six

Age: 29 years old

Gender: Female

Nationality: British (UK)

Languages spoken: English (native), Arabic (conventionally), Russian (for intelligence purposes)

Date of Birth: June 9, 1984

Place of Birth: Cambridge, England

Sexuality: Heterosexual

Martial Status: Single (married in 2017 to John "Soap" MacTavish, her childhood friend — diverging canon AU)

Occupation: British SAS (Special Air Services), member of the Task Force 141

Status: Active

Rank: Sergeant

Universe: Original timeline (2011-2017), reboot (alternative AU)

Faceclaim: Jenna Coleman

Song: Tangled Up by Caro Emerald (Lokee Remix)

Biography: Samantha Wright, under the codename "Scarlet" followed her dream in joining the most elite forces of the British Army, after hearing about her father's experiences in the military. As her hard work pays off, she finally gets selected for the SAS, and then for the Task Force 141, for her skills and strength. There, she meets a very old friend, that she missed and deeply cared for..

AFFILIATIONS:

Task Force 141

Captain John Price

John "Soap" MacTavish

Kyle "Gaz" Garrick

Simon "Ghost" Riley

Hannah "Sparrow" Clayton (@revnah1406)

Sergeant Annabelle "Kit" Pham (@applbottmjeens)

2nd Commando Regiment (@kaitaiga)

Charlotte "Jade" La Jardin (@sleepyconfusedpotato)

Sergeant Damien Whitlock

Captain Lachlan Jones

Los Vaqueros

Colonel Alejandro Vargas

Rodolfo "Rudy" Parra

Alyssa "Aly" Martinez (@alypink)

SKILLS AND ABILITIES

Weapon induced: M4A1 Carbine, M4A1 Grenadier w/ Red Dot Sight, M14 EBR Scoped

Fighting style: Hand-to-hand-combat, martial arts, a bit of jiu-jitsu

Special skills: Has good agility, wits and strength from intensive physical and mental training.

Talents: Is able to strategise a plan for greater impact.

Shortcomings: Is a bit sensitive and confused when it comes to choosing a decision which leads to life or death.

PERSONALITY

Myers-Briggs Type: ISFP (The Adventurer)

Is a positive presence among everybody: Yes, a soldier sure is a tough-hard individual who is determined to follow their duty, but Scarlet is the opposite. She maintains her duties and also motivates and cheers others up to keep moving and never surrender, as taught by her father. The reason why others notice when Scarlet is present with them, they feel calm and encouraged.

Emotional, but also dangerous: Sure Scarlet looks like she's a sweet presence among everyone, but at the same time, we shall not forget she's SAS-trained. When things get serious, she gets serious. During some missions (1 and 2), she has shown remarkable strength and courage by eliminating enemy soldiers in combat, as if she's a different person. The cheerful presence Scarlet holds among others has another dark side inside that she never reveals, but towards her enemies.

Can indulge with anyone, and is respectful: She'd love to make friends or teammates! It doesn't mean she doesn't give importance to anyone, but she especially bonds a lot with Soap. They two have been childhood friends since the start and everyone notices how close they both are and thinks if they two are a couple. Even if Soap is her best friend and he has a superior rank, she'd still respect him as her Captain. But sure, personally, they two engage like they used to.

Very empathetic: Whether it's a random person or not who is dying in her arms, it breaks her. It happened once when she tried to save a person who was losing their life and in the end they couldn't make it. It makes her want to blame herself a bit, thinking she didn't do her duty right, even if everything wasn't in her power. Also, if she sees anyone in distress, she's able to console and help them in time of need, the reason why Scarlet is able to sympathise and understand others well.

BACKGROUND STORY

Born as Samantha Wright, she lives in a small town in England with her father, Albert Wright, who is a former SAS-soldier under the codename "Bolt", and mother Elizabeth. When Scarlet was a toddler, she used to hear stories from her father about him working in Special Air Services, an elite special forces unit, and retired the day when his one leg was brutally injured that made him unable to walk or run.

Those stories gave Scarlet an idea to also join the SAS like him, but her father chuckled and said that right now she was too young to do so. Sometime later, she met John MacTavish, who recently moved into her neighbourhood from Scotland, but wasn't happy that he shifted away from his homeland. She wanted John to be her friend, and make him familiar with the surroundings so he'll get used to everything and love staying at his new home. And soon, they two grew closer, and became best friends.

They two had a similar goal — to join the defense. And one day, that day had to come between the two, when John had to leave for military school. Bidding her best friend a bittersweet farewell, unsure what future has for them in between, John encouraged her to follow her dreams. Taking that as a motivation, Scarlet kept John close to heart, while continuing her aspiration to join the SAS.

Her father got to know about her plan, saying that it won't be easy, since the SAS had the toughest selection processes. That sure unsettled her for a while, but didn't make her back off from her decision respectively. Instead, she learnt a couple of exercises, tips and tricks on self-defense from him that mentally and physically prepared her fully at the same time.

When she recruited herself in the selection process, it was an absolutely different experience for her. The way her mind drastically changed during the training quite traumatized and scared her, knowing what it feels to be in the SAS. But, keeping her father's words by her side, she didn't let the weakness and fear sink her in and moved on further. At times, she was ridiculed by others that she'd never be able to complete the process, but chuckled it all out instead.

The day came, when her hard work paid off, and she finally became eligible for the special forces. It was a blessed feeling for her, as if luck always stood by her side. And this is where, her journey begins..

[colonna-durruti]

Carlo Rovelli

In 1999, NATO bombed Belgrade for 78 days with the goal of breaking Serbia apart and giving rise to an independent Kosovo, now home to a major NATO base in the Balkans.

In 2001, the US invaded Afghanistan, leading to 200,000 people killed, a country devastated and no political result whatsoever.

In 2002, the US unilaterally withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty over Russia’s strenuous objections, dramatically increasing the nuclear risk.

In 2003, the US and NATO allies repudiated the UN Security Council by going to war in Iraq on false pretenses. Iraq is now devastated, no real political pacification has been achieved and the elected parliament has a pro-Iran majority.

In 2004, betraying engagements, the US continued with NATO enlargement, this time to the Baltic States and countries in the Black Sea region (Bulgaria and Romania) and the Balkans.

In 2008, over Russia’s urgent and strenuous objections, the US pledged to expand NATO to Georgia and Ukraine. �

In 2011, the US tasked the CIA to overthrow Syria’s Bashar al-Assad, an ally of Russia. Syria is devastated by war. No political gain achieved for the US.

In 2011, NATO bombed Libya in order to overthrow Moammar Qaddafi. The country, that was prosperous, peaceful, and stable, is now devastated, in civil war, in ruin.

In 2014, the US conspired with Ukrainian nationalist forces to overthrow Ukraine’s President Viktor Yanukovych. The country is now in a bitter war.

In 2015, the US began to place Aegis anti-ballistic missiles in Eastern Europe (Romania), a short distance from Russia.

In 2016-2020, the US supported Ukraine in undermining the Minsk II agreement, despite its unanimous backing by the UN Security Council. The country is now in a bitter war.

In 2021, the new Biden Administration refused to negotiate with Russia over the question of NATO enlargement to Ukraine, prompting the invasion.

In April 2022, the US called on Ukraine to withdraw from peace negotiations with Russia. The result is the useless prolongation of war, with more territory gained by Russia.

After the fall of the Soviet Union, the US sought and until today is seeking, without succeeding, and constantly failing, a unipolar world led by a hegemonic US, in which Russia, China, Iran and other great nations have to be subservient.

In this US-led world order (this is the phrase commonly used in the US), the US and the US alone has determine the utilization of the dollar-based banking system, the placement of overseas US military bases, the extent of NATO membership, and the deployment of US missile systems, without any veto or say by other countries.

This arrogant foreign policy has led to constant war, countries devastated, millions killed, a widening rupture of relations between the US-led bloc of nations -a small minority in the planet and now not even anymore economically dominating- and the rest of the world, a global skyrocketing of military expenses, and is slowly leading us towards WWIII.

The wise, decade-long, European effort to engage Russia and China into a strategical economical and political collaboration, enthusiastically supported by the Russian and Chinese leadership, has been shattered by the ferocious US opposition, worried that this could have undermined the US dominance.

Is this the world we want?

[mariacallous]

There has been plenty of discussion in Western media about why Russians are not protesting President Vladimir Putin’s regime and the war against Ukraine, whether it’s due to the economy, genuine enthusiasm for the war, or fear. One thing that most experts agree on is that Russia has a severe political apathy problem. That’s true—but it’s also far more pervasive than even Russianists often realize.

This problem is not new; it’s a continuation of Soviet-era cultural norms that have been carefully amplified and curated by Putin’s state propaganda. Russian experts themselves were once able to point out the problem—including Andrey I. Kolesnikov (a member of the “Kremlin pool” of journalists as the deputy CEO of the influential Kommersant newspaper and the editor in chief of Russky Pioner magazine) in an RIA news article from 2006, or academic Marina Podhomutinkova in a 2011 paper.

As statistics on the increasingly low number of people who get involved in politics show, the situation has only gotten worse over time. Apathy, tinged with fear, is the Russian norm. That explains some of the strangeness of public opinion data. Recent polls by the Moscow-based Levada Center show that support for war among the general population remains high, fluctuating around the 75 percent mark. At the same time, 71 percent of respondents would also approve of immediate peace talks. Although part of this can be attributed to the “preference falsification” that researchers find is common in authoritarian states, the apathy that Putin has cultivated goes far deeper than that.

On a personal level, if you ask the average Russian what they actually want from the war or expect to achieve if they win, then the answer is a resounding “nothing.” I’ve asked this question to many Russians—including relatives, friends, and business acquaintances. I’ve also spent a considerable amount of time on various anonymous Russian imageboards and Telegram channels, asking about people’s opinions in situations where anonymity is guaranteed. The result stays the same—the average Russian person just doesn’t care.

As one interviewee told me, “This is a stupid question. I’ve never thought about politics in my life—that’s the smart thing to do. Let politicians do their politics; that’s not for me. Sooner or later, this will be over. Putin will probably figure something out with China and [U.S. President Joe] Biden. I just hope that they don’t start throwing nukes around, but that’s all.”

Unsurprisingly, my interlocutors almost universally asked for anonymity.

Lev Gudkov, the director of the Levada Center, stated a similar conclusion in an interview with Radio Liberty in January this year: “This is indifference and being overwhelmed by life, poverty, and lack of rights, and pacifist beliefs, or simply well-being combined with the position ‘politics does not interest me.’”

As Gudkov noted, in some ways, this helps Putin: Active, ideological pro-war supporters, known as turbopatriots, have certain demands that Moscow has largely failed to fulfill. Look at the imprisoned ultranationalist Igor Girkin, who turned on Putin after the war against Ukraine went sour.

Maxim Katz, a Russian opposition politician-turned journalist-responded when I asked him this question during a livestream : “What an American, very Western question. It’s hard for the people in the West to understand that the average Russian wants nothing from this war, he does not see the victory in any way, he completely doesn’t care. For him, this is a question that his superiors are dealing with. The most important thing for him is to ensure that this war doesn’t affect him personally in any way.”

In part, this cynicism is bred by the gap between propaganda and reality. Russian state media takes nationalism to extremes, but ordinary Russians know that this is nonsense, often using the phrase “war between the TV and the refrigerator” to talk about the discrepancies between broadcast propaganda and the reality of empty shelves or failing appliances. The elites also know that the people know. As the old Soviet saying goes, “You pretend to pay us, we pretend to work.” That mentality is in full swing here.

This charade was a mainstay of the Soviet system. Elections were faked, with 99 percent of the population always voting for the only available party list. Trade unions nominally existed, but they were directly under the control of the Communist Party, never fulfilling any real functions, and any real expression of people’s political will was nearly nonexistent. But patriotism was compulsory, especially over national holidays. This led to an increase in apathy, nihilism, and disillusionment about the Soviet government.

When Mikhail Gorbachev took power, some nonpolitical interest clubs concerning social issues were finally permitted, such as the green movement. Russia had a brief spurt of real politics, freedom of speech, and open discussion—one that also coincided with economic chaos and a deep sense of disillusionment as Russia’s place in the world plummeted in the 1990s. The combination of all of these factors led to many people losing faith in democracy and liberal ideas, an increase of nostalgia toward the Soviet era, and a neglect of politics in general.

There’s a common Soviet era saying that remains popular among Russian speakers: “The folks up there see better.” What it means is that if you’re not one of the members of the political elite, then you should not be questioning their decisions, because they probably know better than you do—so don’t be curious, just do what you’re told. It’s related to another famous phrase—“I’m not an expert in this matter, but…”—that’s reached a meme status on the Russian speaking internet. Sometimes it’s joking, but often it’s used seriously. The idea that only an authorized few should get to have an opinion is embedded deep into the public mentality.

Another familiar trope that serves political apathy is the idea of “tough Russians.” Putin loves to play on that, portraying himself as a strongman who embodies the traditional Russian virtues of virility and masculinity. He makes macho but hollow boasts, such as his response from 2018 to a question about the potential of foreign nuclear threats against Russia: “We will go to heaven as martyrs, and they will just drop dead.”

But for ordinary people, there’s the commonly used term terpila (“the one who endures” or “endurer” in English). It refers to someone who just suffers through everything that life throws at them, without ever doing anything about it. It’s a negative term—but it describes many Russians.

These are the ideals that are being actively reinforced in Russia today as Putin doubles down on Soviet nostalgia. People are shown that they have a strong, powerful leader, who will bring greatness to the country. That is a promise of stability and prosperity, but because of Russia’s Soviet past, it is also a reminder that you shouldn’t bother with politics or civic engagement, and that only a narrow group of specialists are ever allowed to have an opinion in any given matter. If there are any problems, you should endure them as a so-called real Russian and not have any ideas of change.

What does this mean for the war? Well, it’s been decided by the higher-ups, so it’s not any of your business.

Roughly 20 million Ukrainians have relatives in Russia. One-third of Ukraine’s population stated in a 2011 survey that they have friends there as well. So, when Russians answer polling questions about their support for the war, they say “yes”—because that’s a political issue, and they have enough problems to deal with. At the same time, when they get asked about whether they would support immediate peace talks, they respond “yes” again, because the killing of Ukrainians just seems odd to the vast majority of people—even if they’ve bought into Putin’s propaganda about Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s government supposedly being full of Satanists and neo-Nazis.

As one of my own distant relatives told me on the phone, “What do you mean, want from the war? How can you even want something from a war? I want the war to end, and I think that every reasonable person has the same opinion!” Her husband added, “We’re just not that political, as a people, you know. Nobody thought this was possible, but now … now we just want this to end, to return to how things were.”

The bloodiness of this war seems to play little role in the average Russian person’s political activity. Casualties in this conflict are very high—current estimates of those killed or wounded in the conflict put the figure at more than 500,000 people, much higher than the casualties suffered during the Soviet war in Afghanistan, where approximately 15,000 USSR soldiers were lost, with approximately 35,000 more wounded. The difference lies in who is getting mobilized.

During the Afghanistan war, the Soviet Union sent regular conscripts to fight, as per the mandatory service and zinc coffins were seen in cities all over the USSR. In the Ukrainian war, Putin is careful to preserve the illusion of normalcy for the citizens of Moscow and St. Petersburg—it’s the ethnic minorities and convicts that do most of the fighting, as to not provoke the Russian people into caring too much. Especially since he has another political issue with this war that he needs to be careful about.

Putin has described Ukrainians as belonging to the Russian civilization—misled by the West, yes, but brothers nonetheless. My impression from talking to Russians is that at this point, they’ll support whatever Putin declares needs supporting, whatever scheme he has going on, as long as this confusing nightmare ends faster. Then everyone, ideally, could go back to business as usual, pretending that this war never even happened.

There is a silver lining to this though. Putin is 71 and has been in power for nearly 25 years. Anyone who could have given him an honest opinion, much less some constructive criticism, has long been forced into retirement, pushed into exile, imprisoned, or outright killed. He’s visibly lost touch with reality—according to a recently defected Kremlin insider, Putin does not use a smartphone, nor does he know how to use a computer beyond the very basics of functions. He does not use the internet. A video where he, supposedly, is shown logging in to vote via Russia’s online voting platform in the farcical so-called presidential election in March was laughable, as it’s obvious that Putin has no idea what he’s doing.

But the cynicism and apathy of the older generation may not extend to the younger one. The Kremlin has no clue about what to do with the younger generation, who mainly watch YouTube and listen to podcasts. Among this category of Russians aged 25 to 39, the Levada Center’s April polls showed only 23 percent support for the war. Russia’s best attempt at propaganda on YouTube was its failed RuTube project, where various popular Russian content creators were paid large amounts of money—more than they were making via their channels on YouTube—to move all of their content to RuTube and occasionally include pro-Kremlin content among whatever they were posting normally.

As a result, most of the pro-Putin YouTube channels have lost their audience, and the Russian government is wasting money paying for content that nobody watches. It’s also about to launch a state-approved version of Wikipedia, which will steal articles from the original Russian-language wiki and then automatically censor them. The project is equally likely to crash and burn.

Russians won’t be overthrowing their regime anytime soon. But if the war becomes a more personal problem, attitudes could shift fast. This is important, because people reevaluate their risks on a daily basis—when the regime is strong, they would rather lay low and stay on the safer side. But as soon as cracks start to appear, the very same people can suddenly turn fiercely.

Western policymakers should take this into account. Russian people are absolutely fine with the war ending—as long as there’s a plan for them, and not a repeat of the humiliations of the 1990s.

[pwlanier]

Kostsova Yulia Vladimirovna

"Horayovod"

Oil on canvas, 2014

Kostsova Yulia Vladimirovna was born in Yekaterinburg in 1983. From 1999 to 2004, she studied at the Yekaterinburg Art College named after I.D. Shadra (painting and pedagogical department). 2005-2011 - graduated from the St. Petersburg State Academic Institute named after I.E. Repina, workshop of monumental painting by S.N. Repina, studied with Professor A.A. Mylnikova. Defended with "distinction" diploma with the theme "Gulliver" (teachers I.M. Kravtsov, S. A.Pichakhchi, A.V. Chuvin). Scholarship holder of the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation, awarded the gold medal of the Russian Academy of Arts for success in studies. In the competition "400 Years of the House of Romanov" she was awarded the prize of the Russian Imperial House and the medal "Anniversary of the National Feat. 1613-2013". Multiple winner of the competitions "From Maryino to France" from the IEC "St. Petersburg Artist". Laureate of the prize "Art-Breakthrough 2016", "Special Prize-2018" of the competition of young artists "Muse must work" St. Petersburg. First prize in the competition-plein air "Couleurs de Normandie 2017" Normandy, France.

The painting "Flawless" was awarded by the jury at the international exhibition at Art Capital 2020 in Paris (annually held at the Grand Palace). Since 2012, he has been a member of the St. Petersburg Union of Artists, the Russian Geographical Society, the creative association AURORA. Active participant and author of regional, all-Russian and personal exhibitions, master classes, as well as creative competitions of international plein airs and exhibitions, youth festivals.

OPH Art

[eaglesnick]

“To put political power in the hands of men embittered and degraded by poverty is to tie firebrands to foxes and turn them loose amid the standing corn; it is to put out the eyes of a Samson and to twine his arms around the pillars of national life.” – Henry George

The underlying cause of the current civil unrest on British streets can be summed up in one word – POVERTY.

Poverty and inequality in Britain has been rising since Margaret Thatcher came to power in 1979. In an article in The English Historical Review titled, ‘Poverty, Inequality Statistics and Knowledge Politics Under Thatcher', 08/04/22, the author argues:

“Under the premiership of Margaret Thatcher, economic inequality and poverty in the United Kingdom rose dramatically to high levels that have remained one of the lasting legacies of Thatcherism, with far-reaching implications for social cohesion and political culture in Britain.”

Tony Blair, a man who embraced Thatcher’s neo-liberal free-market philosophy claimed that while he was prime minister New Labour

 “...made the UK more equal, more fair and more socially mobile”  (Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, 14/07/2019)

This is not true for the population as a whole. It is true that more was spent on public services, and on pensioners and those poorer working age adults with dependent children, both groups seeing their economic position improve. However:

“By contrast, the incomes of poorer working-age adults without dependent children - the major demographic group not emphasised by Labour as a priority - changed very little over the period. As a result they fell behind the rest of the population and relative poverty levels rose.( Institute For Fiscal Studies: Labours Record on poverty and inequality’, 06/06/2013)

Not only that, but income inequality also continued to rise under Blair as the already wealthy saw ’their incomes increase very substantially.’ (ibid)

We all know that the last 14 years of Tory government have only made matters worse: homelessness up; NHS waiting lists up; income inequality up; public services starved of cash; benefits cut; rents up, mortgages up. I could go on

Ordinary working people are suffering a cost of living crisis. The already poor have been pushed over the brink, especially in the North where the promised “levelling up” was just an empty election slogan to get Boris Johnson elected to power. Describing the neglected North one commentator said:

“Other countries have poor bits. Britain has a poor half”. (The Economist, ‘Why Britain is more geographically unequal than any  other rich country’ , 30/06/20

Poverty led to the UK Food Riots of 1766. Poverty led to the French revolution in 1789. The Swing Riots, caused by rural poverty swept southern England in 1830. Poverty led to the Russian Revolution in 1917.  Poll Tax riots hit the streets of Britain in 1990 and a report on the London riots of 2011 blamed “deprivation".

The point is, poverty causes feelings of hopelessness, abandonment, anger and resentment.  Sometimes the victims of poverty correctly identify the people or class responsible for their plight, sometimes they don’t. The poverty and inequality experienced in  Britain today is not directly the fault of immigrants. It is the result of deliberate policies by previous Conservative and Labour governments, but mass immigration does exacerbate already existing conditions of inequality and poverty.

There are not enough houses, the health system cannot cope with demand, there are not enough teachers or schools, and unemployment is rising, as is the day-to-day cost of living, while the already wealthy become richer still.

The far-right channel the anger that ordinary working people justifiably feel about this situation towards an easily identifiable target – immigrants and the children of immigrants, especially non-whites.

The most obvious example of this cynical political strategy in recent history is Hitler’s rise to power in Germany during the economic crisis of the early 1930’s, which saw runaway inflation, and a cost-of-living crisis. Hitler used the Jews as scapegoats, playing on existing prejudices and turning them into hatred, not only of Jews but of homosexuals, gypsies, black people, those with disabilities, Poles and even some Christian groups.

Our fathers and grandfathers fought against such racial tyranny and we should do the same but we will not be successful in that fight until our governments subscribe to the goal of a fairer and more equal society, a society where poverty is falling rather than rising.

There is a conversation to be had about acceptable immigration levels in relation to the economy and social cohesion, but that cannot be conducted in isolation to the need to raise the general standard of living for ALL our citizens and not just the few at the top. Martin Lewis warned politicians of this in 2022.

“We need to keep people fed. We need to keep them warm. If we get this wrong right now, then we get to the point where we start to risk civil unrest. When breadwinners cannot provide, anger brews and civil unrest brews – and I do not think we are very far off,”  (independent: 10/04/22)

No one listened and now that day has arrived.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

This day in history

On June 20, I'm keynoting the LOCUS AWARDS in OAKLAND.

#20yrsago Kill a stupid Internet patent https://web.archive.org/web/20040612095150/https://www.eff.org/patent/contest/

#15yrsago Stiglitz: America’s double-standard on economic crises infuriates the poor world https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2009/07/third-world-debt200907

#15yrsago Chinese censorware will expose every PC in the nation to malware, ID theft, botnetting https://freedom-to-tinker.com/2009/06/11/chinas-new-mandatory-censorware-creates-big-security-flaws/

#15yrsago Eliot Spitzer explains himself https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2009/07/out-to-lunch-spitzer200907

#15yrsago Network neutrality advocated by…cable operators? https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2009/06/cable-group-turns-net-neutrality-around-over-isp-access-fees/

#15yrsago Econoblogger explains why Batman villains shouldn’t cooperate https://eco-comics.blogspot.com/2009/06/should-batman-villains-betray-each_2173.html

#10yrsago Armed, masked Russian separatists seize “decadent” hackspace in Donetsk, Ukraine https://www.euronews.com/2014/06/10/in-donetsk-armed-pro-russian-separatists-target-seize-decadent-cultural-centre-

#10yrsago Pensacola newspaper editorial board condemns censorship of Little Brother https://www.pnj.com/story/opinion/editorials/2014/06/11/fear-books/10295745/

#10yrsago Rarity versus the Internet https://medium.com/message/you-need-to-hear-this-extremely-rare-recording-27619411e077

#10yrsago Big Cable fronts fake anti-Net-Neutrality group whose “members” never joined https://www.vice.com/en/article/4w747j/community-groups-were-duped-into-joining-telecom-industrys-anti-net-neutrality-coalition

#10yrsago Join the Fastlane: hypothetical ISP from the cable company fuckery dystopia https://web.archive.org/web/20140614100545/http://jointhefastlane.com/

#10yrsago Happynomics versus econobollocks https://timharford.com/2014/06/the-four-lessons-of-happynomics/

#10yrsago Dada vs Hitler: the anti-Nazi collages of John Heartfield https://web.archive.org/web/20140530122539/http://www.kuriositas.com/2011/06/extraordinary-anti-nazi-photomontages.html

#5yrsago The Church of the Subgenius’s Salvation Pack is the best $35 I ever spent https://memex.craphound.com/2019/06/11/the-church-of-the-subgeniuss-salvation-pack-is-the-best-35-i-ever-spent/

#5yrsago Countries with longer copyright terms have access to fewer books (pay attention, Canada!) https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3401684

#5yrsago Hackers stole a US Customs and Border Patrol facial recognition database https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/06/10/us-customs-border-protection-says-photos-travelers-into-out-country-were-recently-taken-data-breach/

#5yrsago Chrome-derived browsers threaten to fork from Google, refuse to eliminate ad-blocker features https://www.zdnet.com/article/opera-brave-vivaldi-to-ignore-chromes-anti-ad-blocker-changes-despite-shared-codebase/

#5yrsago Detroit charter school salutatorians use their graduation speeches to condemn their school for putting profits before kids https://www.freep.com/story/news/education/2019/06/10/salutatorians-criticize-charter-school-graduation/1381474001/

#5yrsago How fanfic archives lead the world in data organization https://www.wired.com/story/archive-of-our-own-fans-better-than-tech-organizing-information/

#5yrsago The Grand Dark: Richard Kadrey’s headlong rush of noir dieselpunk, so fast and so smart https://memex.craphound.com/2019/06/11/the-grand-dark-richard-kadreys-headlong-rush-of-noir-dieselpunk-so-fast-and-so-smart/

#5yrsago “The Grand Dark”: Kadrey’s latest is a noir, dieselpunk masterpiece that’s timely as hell https://web.archive.org/web/20190612041736/https://www.latimes.com/books/la-ca-jc-review-richard-kadrey-grand-dark-20190611-story.html

#1yrago The Shitty Tech Adoption Curve Has a Business Model https://pluralistic.net/2023/06/11/the-shitty-tech-adoption-curve-has-a-business-model/

[thenuclearmallard]

Anti-War Initiatives Led by Indigenous Peoples in Russia are Inherently Anti-Colonialist

By Anonymous

Anti-war movements in Russia immediately appeared at the onset of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Notably, these initiatives were and are by and large driven by preexisting feminist organizations (The Social Democratic Alternative, Eighth Initiative Group, Eve’s Ribs, the Agasshin Project, and the Feminist Translocalities Projectto name a few) and Indigenous and ethnic minority groups founded in direct response to the war. While currently there is no sole, centralized movement uniting the country’s numerous Indigenous Peoples and ethnic minorities, the appearance of various anti-war organizations, media accounts, and content, and action points to a rather unprecedented impetus of collaboration and solidarity focused on condemnation of the Russia state’s actions. 

 

Further unparalleled is the overt and widespread presence of anti-colonialist and anti-imperialist sentiment as activists and laypeople alike criticize Russia’s attack on Ukraine and probe into the federation’s enduring issues of coloniality in quotidian life (racism, discrimination, xenophobia, and the violence they encourage). The invasion of Ukraine is not new or covert; rather, it represents the next steps in a long and ongoing history of Russian colonial understanding of a sovereign Ukrainian nation and distinct Ukrainian culture as a threat needing mitigation. These anti-war, staunchly anti-colonialist, and Indigenous-led initiatives are small in number but increasingly outsized in influence. From the use of native languages in anti-war campaigns to overt castigation of Russian chauvinism, these initiatives point to resistance to both the ongoing war and colonial policy. Their importance cannot be overemphasized since their efforts contribute to a better understanding of, and subsequently, better capacity for dismantling Russian coloniality.

Russia’s claims that it is fighting “neo-Nazis” in Ukraine is a blatant distortion of history, and the irony of this claim is far from lost on many Indigenous Peoples of Russia who grew up in a society steeped in Russian colonialism and who witness growing ethnic Russian nationalism (often abetted by right-wing and neo-Nazi sentiment) on societal and institutional levels (e.g., ethnic Russian nationalism enshrined in the federal constitution since 2020).

Image: Russian ultranationalist march in the "Russia March" in Moscow on Nov 4, 2011. The banner they carry reads "Return Russia to [ethnic] Russians". Yuri Timofeyev for RFE/RL. 

 

Anti-war movements like the Free Buryatia Foundation––the first anti-war initiative started in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and on behalf of an ethnic group––emphasize this paradox and use the current conflict to advocate for a reckoning with historic racism and imperialism within Russia’s own borders. The objective of The Free Buryatia Foundation(Buryats Against the War) is twofold––to fight against the war on Ukraine and to “solve the problem of racism and xenophobia in Russia”. Founder and president of the fund, Alexandra Garmazhapova, says such an organization was needed for a number of reasons: the disproportionate number of Buryat soldiers dying in the war, the overrepresentation in media of Buryats as the main perpetrators of violence, and the latent systemic factors that usher Buryats into military service. 

 

“Our region has been the leader in losses since the very beginning of the war, and it was important for us to declare that we are Buryats, and we are against the war. We consider the war with Ukraine xenophobic, because if Russia had a tolerant society, the idea of ‘denazification’ of Ukraine…would not find support among Russians. The Indigenous Peoples of Russia have been and are being subjected to ‘denazification’, which in reality is complete Russification. We understand what it’s like to have your language and culture banned… Residents of ethnic republics who go to Moscow and St. Petersburg face xenophobia and racism… But at the same time, military personnel from [the ethnic republics] are sent to Ukraine to protect the ‘Russian world’,” Garmazhapova said in an interviewin July.

 

Image: Activists at a rally against the war in Ukraine in San Francisco holding signs that read "Buryats against Putin's [criminal] war" and the flag of Buryatia. Courtesy of Alexandra Garmazhapova's Facebook page.

 

The Free Buryatia Foundation tracks statistics on losses during the war, provides legal advice to help military personnel terminate their contracts, shares credible information to combat propaganda and misinformation, and strives to prevent Russian servicemen from going to Ukraine. The organization is very active on social media sites and regularly collaborates with specialists, activists, and other anti-war initiatives on live-streamed discussions, data collection and sharing, and crowdsourcing. 

 

Most of the Free Buryatia Foundation’s team resides outside the Russian Federation, which shields them from Russia’s growing restrictive legislation, namely “fake news” laws, which criminalize the dissemination of false information about the Russian army and is used by the state to censor, detain, and imprison those who oppose the war. For that reason, there are no large-scale Indigenous-led anti-war organizations or groups based in Russia. Disparate groups and media accounts exist though they tend to maintain anonymity and much of their activism work is shared or takes place on Instagram (only accessible with use of a VPN) and Telegram. These include, but are not limited to the Sakha Pacifist Association, New Tuva Movement, and Asians of Russia(which existed prior to the war but shifted its focus to information about the war and protests), which share information specific to their respective regions in addition to sharing information among each other. 

 

Image: Symbol of the Sakha Pacifist Association with text reading "An appeal to the residents of the Sakha Republic and the people of the world." Courtesy of https://www.instagram.com/sakha_pacifist_association/

 

Image: A post from the New Tuva Movement's Instagram page with text reading "Tuvinians against war!" Courtesy of https://www.instagram.com/new_tuva/

 

Indigenous individuals are actively engaged in anti-war actions though they are targeted by the Russian Federal Security Service and the Center for Combating Extremism (unit in the Ministry of Internal Affairs). The social media pages for various groups often crowdsource funding these activists need for legal aid. While the groups are not organized or affiliated, through their sharing of each other’s posts and through collaborations, they’re forming a kind of network––one that is able to exist under the current Russian state. Through posts on social media are seemingly low-impact, these groups are harnessing social media as a tool to disseminate information restricted by the state and state-run media and building networks on platforms that are relatively accessible.

There is no single position towards the war among Russia’s different Indigenous groups. These groups are often asked how individuals, who carry out demonstrations with signs saying “Tuvinians against the war”, or nameless admins, by using names such as Sakha Pacifist Association or New Tuva Movement, are able to speak for an entire people group. “These action[s] raise the rebellious spirit of the people. [They’re] very important demonstrations and actions for the entire people, as well as a message to the whole world,” wrote sakha_vs_war. The evocation of one’s nationality or cultural background is yet another tool for appealing to the public. The state and regional governments also utilize this tool in their co-opting of national cultures broadly, and of organizations such as the Russian Association of Indigenous Peoples of the North (RAIPON) and the Buddhist Traditional Sangha Center of Russia specifically, in support of hostilities against Ukraine. Identity, language, and culture are effective tools for anti-war movements in this particular case as initiatives consistently underline the imperial nature of this current war. 

Given Russia’s history and continuing legacy of colonial language policy inherited from the Russian and Soviet empires (which systematically afforded/s primacy to the Russian language at the expense of native languages), anti-war slogans in Indigenous languagesare part of reclamatory cultural education which is, at its core, anti-war as it is a struggle against colonialism. The struggle around national languages in Russia is inextricably tied to state-sanctioned xenophobia and Russian supremacy. State language policy has become increasingly restrictive on native language education as Putin proclaimed in 2017 that Russian “the natural spiritual framework of the country” and that “everyone should know it”.  Then, in 2018 three amendmentswere made to Law No. 273 “On Education in the Russian Federation,” which made Russian language learning compulsory at the expense of native languages. National or republican sovereignty movements of non-Russian, and overwhelmingly Indigenous, ethnic groups are thus intimately intertwined with language and cultural sovereignty, making language and culture significant areas the state and its security forces carefully scrutinize. Therefore, with this context, struggles for regional authority or autonomy and the anti-war struggle are innately linked.

 

Image: Anti-war poster with text in the Buryat language.  By Yumzhana Sui for Agasshin.

 

Image: Anti-war poster with text in the Tatar language. By Alisa Gorshenina for Agasshin.

 

Image: Anti-war poster with text in the Chuvash language. By Polina Osipova for Agasshin.

 

For many activists, printing and disseminating anti-war messages in Indigenous languagesis not only symbolic of the resistance against the colonial Russian state, but also a rallying call to compatriots who might support the war or who do not openly oppose it. The Agasshin Project published a series of anti-war postersin Indigenous/national languages created by speakers of the languages (Buryat, Kalmyk, Udmurt, Chuvash) since anti-war activities in Indigenous languages “can be instruments of resistance to both the current war and colonial politics”. Aikhal Ammosov, a Sakha musician and activist, has been tried twice and is awaiting a third trialfor his anti-war picketing and performances in Sakha, Russian, and English. Ammosov was first fined for “hooliganism”, then for “discrediting the Russian armed forces”, and he currently awaits trial and could possibly face up to three years in prison for his most recent art performance involving a banner reading “Yakutian Punk Against WAR”. 

 

Video still posted on Ammosov's Instagramaccount in which he spraypaints a banner with the text "Yakutian punk against war."

 

Following Russia’s February 24, 2022 invasion of Ukraine, activists around the world began publishing texts about colonialism, racism, and violence in Russia with fervor. Though these activists and groups are far from monolithic and cater to regional, historical, and culturally specific needs, these ideas spread and grow horizontally across the sphere of Russian influence, allowing for grassroots collaboration, collectivization, and support to grow.

[2oosterr]

capt. ryan 'orca' murdoch

-> Playlist

GENERAL

NAME: Ryan Murdoch

ALIASES: Orca, Oscar Actual

AFFILIATION: United States Navy, OSOD

RANK: Captain

DOB: March 6th, 1978

AGE: 45

GENDER: F

BLOOD TYPE: B NEG

SEXUALITY: Queer unlabeled

HOMETOWN: Rockland, Maine

CURRENT RESIDENCE: Redcorn Airfield, Odessa, Texas

NATIONALITY: USAmerican

EDUCATION HISTORY: K-12 [1983 - 1991]

EMPLOYMENT HISTORY: US Naval Aviator (Commander) [1994 - 2011], PMC Operator (Captain) [2011 - Present]

APPEARANCE

HEIGHT: 182cm (5’9”)

WEIGHT: 170 lbs

EC: Brown

HC: Black, White

BUILD: Athletic, prominent muscle definition

SKILLS

[23/30]

Strength:             ▮▮▮▯▯

Speed:                ▮▮▮▯▯

Intelligence:        ▮▮▮▮▯

Experience:        ▮▮▮▮▮

Perception:         ▮▮▮▮▮

Communication: ▮▮▮▯▯

SPOKEN LANGUAGES: English (Native), Spanish (C1), Russian (B2), ASL

SPECIALISATION: Can pilot almost any aircraft, including helicopters and the C-130.

WEAPONS: Proficient in close combat, hand-to-hand, air-to-air, and air-to-land combat. Long range is a weak point.

RELATIONSHIPS

Alison Murdoch [Mother] [AGE: 66]

Louis Murdoch [Father] [DECEASED]

Aaron Murdoch [Brother] [AGE: 34]

PSYCHOLOGY

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)

Anger management issues

Chronic alcoholism

MEDICAL

GSW on right side of face

3rd degree burns on right arm

Dog bite scar on left arm

ENHANCEMENT

[GRADE 4 - Extremely Low Risk]

Individual had demonstrated the ability to walk on liquid. Note that individual can submerge in the same liquid when contact point is not the feet.

PERSONALITY

MBTI type – ISTJ-A; Introverted, observant, thinking, judging, assertive.

Orca is a natural leader despite her introversion. She commands attention, even from those who aren't willing to follow her, unafraid to put such people in their place with harsh words and biting insults. Her introversion leans more to the ambivert side of things, she prefers the quiet of solitude over a loud social function, but socialising is not out of her comfort zone, and she would never be afraid to speak up and voice her opinions.

The ends always justify the means to Orca. She is willing to do risky, and sometimes deplorable, things to complete her objective, leaving some to question her morality, but those close to her trust that she knows where to draw the line. She's self-assured, confident to the point of cockiness at times, because she's good and she knows it. 

The opinions of others mean very little to her, with the exception of the few people she calls her friends – she cares deeply for those select few. It takes a lot for her to trust, and a lot more to consider someone a friend, but once you've proved yourself, her loyalty is fierce. It’s incredibly difficult, but not impossible, to lose her faith.

Even when she was in the Navy, Orca has never been a fan of authority. It takes effort to earn her respect, which many of her commanding officers never did. In a way, this makes her slightly hypocritical, seeing as she demands respect from those around her but doesn't give it so easily.

Although she appears to be a serious, no-nonsense Captain, under the stony facade Orca actually has a strong sense of humour. She's more than willing to indulge in the jokes her soldiers throw around, but she still reserves the ability to take things seriously when the need arises.

FUN FACTS

Orca learned to play the drums as a way to de-stress. She learned in bootcamp from one of the older kids, and kept it up when she could in the Navy.

Her biggest pet peeve is stupid questions. She’s been known to make people run laps until the sun goes down for not using common sense.

The streaks in her hair are due to a bout of Alopecia Areata that she suffered from for most of her childhood, likely stress induced, and when the patches of hair grew back, they were white. She also has a patch of white where her neck meets her skull, but she keeps that one hidden because she doesn’t think it's as cool as the other two.

Her hair is also the reason for her callsign, since it looks vaguely like the markings on a killer whale, especially when she wears it up.

Her favourite colour is red.

She owns an ungodly amount of orca plushies.

On a similar note, she also owns an ungodly amount of model figures of fighter jets.

She’s obsessed with Top Gun. Like, balls to the wall fucking insane about it.

Like, she references it daily.

Yes, it was the reason she joined the navy. She is not immune to propaganda

Orca actually attended the real TOPGUN in Nevada in 2000, and graduated top of her class.

In 2016, she bought a decommissioned F-22 Raptor thanks to an Admiral friend of hers, and has been slowly refurbishing it in her off time. She keeps it in hangar two, and nobody else is even allowed to go in there.

She does all the repairs to the OSODs aircrafts herself.

BACKGROUND

Ryan's fate was decided before she was even born.

Her mother, Alison, was known to carry the gene for a genetic disorder and as a result, when she was pregnant with Ryan, she opted for a genetic screening to see if it would be passed down to her. It wasn't, but it's thanks to this genetic screening that they found out Ryan carried the NLH gene – the enhanced gene.

From the moment she was born, it seemed that her parents had already given up on her. Neglectful would be an understatement, there was no love in the way they cared for her. It was nothing but a chore to them, having to raise their mutant child when all they wanted was a normal baby.

Her father died when she was five. Shipped out to Iraq in ‘83 and never came back. Her mother shut down after that.

Growing up was difficult. Rockland was a small enough town that most, if not all, of the inhabitants knew about the fact that she was enhanced. She spent the majority of her childhood alone, being avoided by her peers and ignored by her mother, and becoming more and more bitter as the years went by.

She was eight when she finally discovered what her enhancement was; the ability to walk on water. It's a cruel joke, that she never even had a fleeting chance at a normal life because of something so insignificant.

When Ryan was eleven, her half-brother Aaron was born, and she got to witness firsthand what it looks like when someone loves you. Her mother was a completely different person once she brought him home, smiling and cooing adoringly at her infant brother. The resentment for both of them would never leave her.

Enhanced individuals, as the official paperwork refers to them, are required to serve in the military whether they like it or not. Mandatory service, starting at sixteen, and ending when you die. There is no choice, not for those who are deemed sub-human because of a genetic mutation completely out of anyone's control.

Despite the unfairness of it all, Ryan was shipped off to bootcamp a few months after her thirteenth birthday. It was easier there, surprisingly; there were other enhanced kids – people like her, for the first time in her life – and the structure and regiment of it all was something she actually found herself enjoying. The one aspect she struggled with was the demanding authority. She has never been with being told what to to, being a follower, especially by people she has no reason to respect apart from their rank. Her commanding officers were just like every other adult that had failed her thus far, and she earned more than a few disciplinaries for the insubordination of her outbursts of anger.

The three years she spent there helped Ryan for some sense of identity. It was strange, and bittersweet in a way, but she thrived in the military – had she not been conscripted, she may have even joined of her own accord.

The only sense of choice people like Ryan are given is the liberty of choosing which branch of the military they go to, so when she finally reached her sixteenth birthday in the March of ‘94, Ryan picked the Navy. She was on the plane to California the next day.

Once again, her entire life and any sense of structure she had was thrown to the wind. The Navy was harder, she was alone again and this time she had no idea if she was the only one of her kind; outing herself as enhanced didn’t seem like the best idea, especially since being a woman already put a target on her head. They looked down on her, endlessly questioned her abilities with an arrogance that made her blood boil, but Ryan was determined. She would be an aviator, and she’d be leagues better than all the people who thought they were above her – no amount of discouragement from them could change her mind.

It was in the academy that she met her first true friend, Michael ‘Berlin’ Addams. He was Ryan’s wingman, her partner in the skies, and the only person in her life to accept her unconditionally and without question. From the moment they met it was like two puzzle pieces clicking into place, his easygoing and humorous nature was the complete opposite of Orca’s quick temper, but they worked incredibly together like two sides of the same coin.

After Orca and Berlin graduated from the academy, placed first and fourth respectively, the two of them quickly rose through the ranks together, thanks to their raw talent for aviation as well as the synergy they had. They were best friends, practically inseparable, and though there were others they got along with, no one else came close to the bond that they had. For the longest time it was just the two of them, but the incident of March 1999 changed that.

While offshore on a deployment, someone found out Orca was enhanced, and word spread around the aircraft carrier faster than she could’ve imagined. She lashed out, broke another pilot's nose, and had to mop the floors for two months as punishment. While she was cleaning she was approached by one of the sailors, Eric Reyton she would come to learn. He extended an olive branch, and almost got his head bitten off before he revealed that he was enhanced too. It was a relief, learning that she wasn’t the only one, she finally had someone who really understood again. Berlin did his best, but he would never truly know what it was like.

From then on, it was the three of them. Orca, Berlin, and Eric – Static, as they took to calling him – and for the first time she actually started to feel like she belonged. The boys were like brothers to her, the family she never had, and life finally felt like it was looking up after all those long, lonely years.

And then Berlin died.

Shot down over land while they were on assignment. He didn't even have time to eject before he hit the ground.

Orca thought she knew pain. Unloved by her own mother, alone for the first sixteen years of her life, rejected by almost everyone she'd ever met, none of it had been easy; but as she watched Berlin's plane disappear into the treeline, nothing could've prepared her for the agony that ripped through her chest.

The rest felt like an out of body experience. She ejected, sparing not a single though for her own plane as it went down too. The landing fractured her ankle but she ran anyway, through the forest towards the blaze. She clambered up the wing of his aircraft, ripping the cockpit open and paying no mind to the way the searing metal burned through her flight suit and then her skin.

She pulled his body from the wreck, collapsing onto the ground with his lifeless body cradled in her arms. That's how the evac team found her, hours later, still sobbing into his cold skin.

His body went back to his family in New Jersey, but Orca kept his tags. She stayed standing over his coffin for hours after everyone else had left, everyone but Eric. Nobody was closer to Berlin than they were. Nobody understood the gaping hole his death left behind.

They were approached, after night had fallen and they were on their way out of the graveyard. The stranger handed Orca a card and introduced herself – Colonel Ellis – telling her to call when they needed a change of scenery. Eric had to restrain her from clawing the Colonel's eyes out for her audacity.

After the funeral, Orca finally understood how her mother felt when her dad didn't come home. There was nothing that could help the pain, the anguish of losing her best friend, so she drank herself into blackout numbness to escape it. Eric tried to help her, but it only ended in her lashing out. It went on like that for months, the only time she wasn't wasted was on the aircraft carrier where she had no choice. In a desperate attempt to help his friend, Eric ended up calling the Colonel to get them both out of California.

They found out on the flight to Texas that the Colonel was starting a PMC solely for the enhanced. The 'Occult Special Operations Division', she called it, a counter-terrorism taskforce. At first Orca was sceptical, the idea of it seemed almost too good to be true, but Colonel Ellis's achievements spoke for themselves. She was a decorated officer, and there was no doubt she had the power and resources to create something like this.

For a year, Orca and Eric served under Colonel Ellis in the OSOD, along with Lieutenant Klaus Green, Corporal Badger, both marines, and Lieutenant Nina ‘Vulture’ Smith, an Air Force pilot and all soldiers Ellis had worked with for a long time. It was better, being surrounded by people like them, and the freedom they had now was infinitely better than what they had in the Navy, but they were still out of their element. While Ellis, Green, Badger were marines and had decades of experience with active combat and its many intricacies, Orca and Eric were just a pilot and a sailor. Still though, Ellis didn't give up on them. They learned surprisingly fast under her mentorship, picking up what she taught them with ease, and though they were still miles behind the marines, their skills were impressive.

In 2011, Ellis was arrested.

The NLH gene is a random mutation, not something that can be isolated and cut out like a genetic disorder. However, if at least one parent carries the NLH gene, then the offspring are guaranteed to be enhanced as well. Starting in the 70s, sterilisation became mandatory for the enhanced, the same as conscription, as another way to control the enhanced population. Colonel Ellis was born in the late 50s, and conscripted in the 60s; in other words, she evaded sterilisation.

It came out that she had a daughter, around Orca's age, and action was taken almost immediately. Colonel Ezikiel Ellis died two months after her incarceration. The details of her death were never released.

Her death was different. It was obvious foul play was involved, but Ellis's death didn't affect her the same way Berlin's devastated her. This time, she got the feeling Ellis had reached her time, that she'd accomplished what she set out to do in her life, and now it was Orca’s duty to carry on her legacy.

She took over the OSOD as Captain as soon as Ellis's death was publicised. Now down to just the three of them, it seemed like a logical course of action to find some new recruits, and it didn't take long to find some. Ellis's daughter, Sergeant Major Arctic, came to Orca shortly after she took over the OSOD, but despite it being her mother's creation, she showed no interest in taking Orca's place. She agreed to work alongside the OSOD, but remained a free agent.

In the same year, they met Sergeants Eastwood and Vantage, marines like Ellis and Green, and most importantly, both enhanced. They were by far the best of their unit and then some, with expertise between them from insertions to engineering. She hired them on the spot.

Orca got the scar in 2012. A mission gone south, an attempt to save a group of hostages, and a crack shot from the enemy. She took a bullet to the face. If she wasn't enhanced, there was no way she would've made it. As luck would have it, if you could call it that, a doctor was among the hostages, and saved Orca's life that night – Honey Rosenheim, an enhanced combat medic who would work with the OSOD for years to come after their unfortunate first encounter.

██████ ██████ ██ █████████ ████ ██████ ███████ █████. █████████ ███████ ██████ █ █████ ████ ██████ ████████. ████ ███████ ███ ██████ █ ██ ██████ █ █████ Badger ███ ███████ █████ █████████ ████ ███████ ██ █████ ██ ██████ █ █████ ██ █████. Badger ███ ████████ M.I.A. ██ ████ 2014.

[CONTENT REDACTED: SEE MISSION REPORT JUNE 11 2014]

It's 2019 by the time Orca meets Captain Price, through Kate Laswell and, surprisingly, their mutual friend, Nikolai. To say he didn't make a good first impression would be an understatement. Perhaps it's because of Orca's natural hostility and standoffish nature, but the two Captains butted heads constantly. Eventually he realised – with gentle nudging from Eric and the lieutenants – that she wasn't just an asshole for the sake of it, and she was actually a proficient leader. She slowly warmed up to him once she didn't have to fight for his respect.

Since the mission in 2018, the OSOD has collaborated with Captain Price, and subsequently Task Force 141, on multiple occasions.

It took significant work, but Orca was an accomplished Captain, with loyal soldiers and the ability to actually make a difference in the world. Her fate may have been decided before she was born, but Ryan is the one who made something for herself. She still has Berlin's picture hanging up in her office.

[usafphantom2]

British F-35Bs Deploy on Air Policing Mission for the First Time

Four F-35Bs of 617 Squadron have deployed to Iceland to begin a NATO Air Policing deployment, the first ever deployment of its type for the F-35 in British service.

Kai Greet

RAF F-35B Air Policing

An F-35B of 617 Squadron, Royal Air Force, taxiing to depart RAF Marham for Iceland to begin a NATO Air Policing deployment. The aircraft is carrying two ASRAAM air-to-air missiles on its external hardpoints. (Image credit: UK Ministry of Defence)

The NATO Icelandic Air Policing mission dates back to 2007, put in place following the end of a permanent U.S. Air Force fighter presence in the country, which does not have its own air force. Various NATO nations have taken turns to deploy fighter aircraft to the joint civilian-military airfield at Keflavik, around 30 miles from the capital city of Reykjavik.

617 Squadron’s F-35Bs have assumed the mission from the U.S. Air Force’s 492nd Fighter Squadron, whose F-15E Strike Eagles have been stationed at the base since June. Prior to this, four F-35As were provided by the Royal Norwegian Air Force.

This makes the UK the second nation to deploy the F-35B variant on the Icelandic Air Policing mission, after Italy augmented its four F-35As with two F-35Bs during their 2022 detachment as the existing support element in place provided an opportunity for cold climate training.

For the UK, the decision to send F-35Bs rather than the more usual Typhoons is a chance to demonstrate the stealth fighter’s multirole abilities. While the aircraft do maintain an air defence role when stationed aboard the Royal Navy’s two aircraft carriers, the UK’s homeland air defence is provided exclusively by Typhoon FGR4s, and these have always been used for prior air policing missions.

The Typhoon fleet inherited this responsibility from Tornado F3s retired in 2011. In comparison, the aircraft replaced, either in full or in part, by the F-35B, like the Harrier GR9 and Tornado GR4, lacked significant air-to-air capabilities and were not ideally suitable for air policing deployments.

F-35B ZM148/014 departing RAF Marham for the deployment to Iceland. Note two ASRAAM fitted to external hardpoints, and radar reflectors fitted to the aircraft’s upper fuselage. (Image credit: UK Ministry of Defence)

The RAF’s most recent deployment to Iceland with Typhoons was in 2019, where 180 practice intercepts were made and 59 training sorties flown. Alongside various air policing deployments, the RAF Typhoon force has also had to maintain a standing deployment to RAF Akrotiri on the island of Cyprus for Operation Shader – the UK’s counter-ISIS effort – since 2015. By making the Lightning force available for air policing missions, some strain on the Typhoon fleet can be lessened.

Speaking in his role as Minister for the Armed Forces, Member of Parliament Luke Pollard said: “The UK is unshakeable in its commitment to NATO. With threats increasing and growing Russian aggression, it is vital that we stand shoulder to shoulder with our allies… …This latest air policing mission in Iceland displays the UK’s ability to operate and deter our adversaries across the alliance’s airspace.”.

Group Captain John Butcher, Commander of the UK’s Lightning Force, which now comprises two frontline squadrons, one training squadron, and one development squadron, further remarked: “This will be the first time that the Lightning Force has deployed to contribute to NATO Air Policing, and will no doubt once again prove the flexibility that this platform offers as it demonstrates its capability to operate from both a land and maritime environment.”

Iceland’s strategic position in the North Atlantic, as part of the Greenland-Iceland-UK (GIUK) gap, makes it a valuable but also vulnerable NATO member state. Airspace incursions by Russian military aircraft following the withdrawal of U.S. Air Force F-15s from Keflavik in 2006 spurred the creation of the NATO air policing mission, and Russian military aircraft continue to be intercepted off the Icelandic coasts.

Keflavik has never been a stranger to military operations, having been constructed during the Second World War for United States military use, though in the post Cold War era there was a lull in its utility. When the permanently based F-15s left much of the US’ other based units did so along with them, putting the US-run base into mothballed status. The airfield, though, did remain open as the base for NATO air policing, and as Reykjavik’s second airport.

It wasn’t until 2015, after the Russian invasion of Crimea and uptick in long range Russian Air Force and Russian Navy operations that the base was fully reactivated. While no permanently based fighters returned to Iceland, it has become a significant hub for NATO maritime patrol aircraft and even, more recently, US strategic bombers. P-8 Poseidons operating from Keflavik monitor not only local waters and GIUK gap, but also the Baltic region and Barents Sea.

On two occasions, in 2021 and 2023, U.S. Air Force B-2 Spirit strategic stealth bombers have forward deployed to Keflavik for Bomber Task Force exercises. These came after a brief stopover by a B-2 in 2019. These deployments are somewhat out of the ordinary for the B-2 force, who usually operate from airfields specifically equipped to care for the stealth aircraft’s delicate radar-absorbent material coating.

While many of the deployments to Iceland are operational ones, the combination of different assets from different nations in one area also presents good opportunities for joint training exercises. B-2s deployed to RAF Fairford, UK, in 2020 flew to Iceland and joined with F-15Cs from RAF Lakenheath and F-35As that were deployed by Norway on the Icelandic air policing mission to conduct integration and interoperability training.

A Royal Air Force Typhoon FGR4 at Keflavik Air Base on a previous air policing deployment in 2019. (Image credit: UK Ministry of Defence)

About Kai Greet

Kai is an aviation enthusiast and freelance photographer and writer based in Cornwall, UK. They are a graduate of BA (Hons) Press & Editorial Photography at Falmouth University. Their photographic work has been featured by a number of nationally and internationally recognised organisations and news publications, and in 2022 they self-published a book focused on the history of Cornwall. They are passionate about all aspects of aviation, alongside military operations/history, international relations, politics, intelligence and space.

@TheAviationist .com

[beardedmrbean]

HANOI, Vietnam (AP) — Nguyen Phu Trong, general secretary of Vietnam’s ruling Communist Party and the country’s most powerful politician, has died following months of ill health, official media said Friday. He was 80.

“General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Party Nguyen Phu Trong passed away at 13:38 on July 19, 2024, at the 108 Central Military Hospital due to old age and serious illness,” the Nhan Dan newspaper said.

Official media said a state funeral would be held.

Trong had dominated Vietnamese politics since 2011, when he was elected party chief. During his tenure, he worked to consolidate the Communist Party’s power in Vietnam’s single-party political system. In the decade before he took the top role in Vietnamese politics, the balance of power had shifted more toward the governmental wing led by then-Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung.

Born in 1944 in Hanoi, Trong was a Marxist-Leninist ideologue who earned a degree in philosophy before becoming a member of the Communist Party at the age of 22. He viewed corruption as the single gravest threat in maintaining the party’s legitimacy.

“A country without discipline would be chaotic and unstable,” Trong said in 2016 after being reelected to the party’s helm. Officially, Vietnam has no top leader, but the Communist Party chief is traditionally seen as the most powerful.

He launched a sweeping anti-corruption campaign known as the “blazing furnace” that singed both business and political elites. Since 2016, thousands of party officials have been disciplined. They included former presidents Nguyen Xuan Phuc and Vo Van Thuong and the former head of parliament, Vuong Dinh Hue. In all, eight members of the powerful Politburo were ousted on corruption allegations, compared to none between 1986 and 2016.

Trong studied in the Soviet Union from 1981 to 1983, and there was speculation that under his leadership, Vietnam would move closer to Russia and China. However, the Southeast Asian nation followed a pragmatic policy of “bamboo diplomacy,” a phrase he coined that referred to the plant’s flexibility, bending but not breaking in the shifting headwinds of geopolitics.

Vietnam maintained its traditional ties with its much larger neighbor, China, dispute differences over sovereignty in the South China Sea. But it also drew closer to the United States, elevating its ties with its former Vietnam War foe to its highest diplomatic status, a comprehensive strategic partnership.

Trong’s legacy is mixed, with the unintended consequence of the anti-graft campaign being an erosion of institutions within the Communist Party, said Nguyen Khac Giang, a visiting fellow in the Vietnam Studies Program at Singapore’s ISEAS–Yusof Ishak Institute. The party institutions were the bedrock ensuring that a balance of power remained among its different factions, he said.

“Vietnam has become more and more like China, where institutions and norms doesn’t really matter as much as personal power,” Giang said.

Vietanamese President To Lam was appointed the party caretaker on July 18 while Trong received treatment for his ill health. As Vietnam’s top security official, Lam had led the anti-graft campaign until becoming president in May, when his predecessor resigned after being caught up in it.

The party’s Politburo asked Lam to “preside over the work of the Party Central Committee, the Politburo, and the Secretariat,” according to a statement from its central office which was the first official confirmation of Trong’s poor health.

Rumors about his health have swirled in Vietnamese politics since he was first hospitalized in 2019, and more recently when he appeared extremely frail while meeting visiting Russian President Vladmir Putin.

Trong’ death leaves behind a yawning political vacuum in Vietnam. Although Lam is widely viewed as the likely next party chief, Giang predicted “a very uncertain time” in Vietnamese politics because the norms and institutions governing the country are “very shaky.”

“Now it isn’t only about the rules or norms, but it is also about who holds the most power,” Giang said.

The central committee of the Chinese Communist Party sent its condolences to its Vietnamese counterpart and “deeply mourned” Trong’s death, the state-run Xinhua news agency reported Friday.

[namelesssiren]

Every Call Of Duty Game In Chronological Order

Call Of Duty: WW2 (1940 - 1945)

Despite being one of the more recent entries into the shooter franchise, WW2 is set before all of the others.

The earliest year the game goes back to is 1940, yet most of the story occurs between 1944 and 1945. The tale follows Private Ronald "Red" Daniels and his Infantry squad as they try to end the Nazis towards the conclusion of World War 2.

Call Of Duty 2 (1941 - 1945)

While most of the early Call Of Duty titles begin in 1942, the second game is a little different as it starts at the end of '41.

During the campaign, you control soldiers from three of the Allied powers in America, Britain, and Russia. Each of their adventures takes place separately, and they all have difficult obstacles to overcome.

Call Of Duty: Vanguard (1941 - 1945)

Vanguard provides another foray into World War 2. This one is all about a special task force made up of a few skilled soldiers from different allied countries. Their mission is to stop a secret Nazi project. And the operation occurs in 1945.

Along the way, you're treated to plenty of playable flashbacks showing what each character was doing earlier in the war.

Call Of Duty: World at War (1942 - 1945)

At the beginning of World At War, you participate in the Makin Island raid, which occurs in 1942 like its real-life counterpart.

The rest of the story plays out in a similar fashion as you become involved in plenty of famous battles and incidents from WW2. In each mission, you're either following some American troops or focusing on a Russian squad.

Call Of Duty (1942 - 1945)

The Call of Duty series started in World War 2, more specifically, 1942. However, most of the first game is set in 1944 and 1945 as the Allied powers push back against the Nazi forces.

In classic COD fashion, the campaign lets you see three different perspectives on the war as there are multiple protagonists. The main characters belong to separate nations, but they all have the same goal of tipping the war in favor of the Allied powers.

Call Of Duty 3 (1944)

Call of Duty's World War 2 games usually try to cover several years of the conflict. However, Call of Duty 3's campaign focuses solely on 1944 with most of the attention being on the Battle of Normandy.

Another interesting aspect of the story is that Polish, French, and Canadian forces have big roles in it, alongside the customary American and British soldiers.

Call Of Duty: Black Ops (1961 - 1968)

More than most Call Of Duty games, Black Ops puts a heavy focus on its narrative. Much of the story is told from the perspective of a man named Alex Mason, who's being interrogated in 1968.

During those scenes, he recounts important moments from the past several years, which are shown through playable flashbacks. The first memory occurs in 1961 at the time of the Bay of Pigs invasion.

Call Of Duty: Black Ops Cold War (1981)

As the name suggests, the events of COD: Black Ops Cold War take place during the Cold War. More specifically, the entire campaign occurs in 1981 and sees the return of some characters from the first Black Ops.

They all are a part of a team led by a CIA operative named Russell Adler, who's hunting down a Soviet agent called Perseus. It's up to you to influence how the vital operation plays out over a set of missions that vary in quality.

Call Of Duty: Black Ops 2 (1986 - 1989) - Alex Mason Missions

In Black Ops 2, you control both Alex Mason and his son David at different points of the campaign. When you swap characters, you switch time periods too. Alex's missions occur in the 1980s, while David's sections are in the future.

During the past missions, the older Mason teams up with the likes of Hudson and Woods once again to track down a dangerous man named Raul Menendez.

Call Of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (1996 - 2011)

COD4 was the first entry to take the series away from a WW2 setting. Instead, the game's main events take place during one week in 2011.

You play as Soap from the SAS and Jackson of the USMC, who are separately trying to stop a dangerous terrorist threat. Plus, for two missions, you flashback to 1996 to learn more about the main antagonist.

Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare (1999 - 2019)

The latest entry in the Modern Warfare sub-series isn't a part of the same continuity as the others. However, some classic Modern Warfare characters still return in this one, namely Price.

During the game, Price doesn't just join forces with the CIA; he also allies with Arab Soldiers and Freedom Fighters. They all team up to stop the Russians who've taken over Urzikstan. Parts of the game are flashbacks that take you to 1999.

Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (2016)

Five years on from the events of the first Modern Warfare, Soap MacTavish has become a Captain, and he's leading a special forces unit called Task Force 141.

His group spends the game hunting Vladimir Makarov, who is the leader of the Russian Ultranationalist party. Yet, it turns out that there is another villain in the mix that's closer to home.

Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 (2016 - 2017)

Modern Warfare 3 continues right where its predecessor left off with Price and Nikolai getting an injured Soap to safety.

Like the previous game, the story is all about tracking down and stopping Makarov. Task Force 141, Delta Force, and the SAS are all on hand to end the Ultranationalist threat.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (2022)

Seemingly to confuse everyone, Activision has released two games called Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. The one released in 2022 takes place in the same year it was released. And it's a continuation of 2019's Modern Warfare.

It follows the adventures of Task Force 141, who are attempting to stop a serious Iranian terrorist threat. They also tackle with the Las Almas Cartel in the process.

Call Of Duty: Ghosts (2015 - 2027)

In Ghosts' opening prologue, a group known as the Federation launch an ODIN strike on the United States in 2017.

Then the story jumps ahead ten years where the country is still suffering the effects of the blast, and a spec ops team called Ghosts are at war with the Federation. Most of the adventure occurs in 2027, but there is a flashback to 2015 at one point.

Call Of Duty: Black Ops 2 (2025) - David Mason Missions

The Black Ops 2 missions that follow David Mason (aka "Section") happen in 2025.

As his father did many years before, Section spends his portion of the campaign trying to track down one of the series best villains in Raul Menendez to stop him once and for all.

Call Of Duty: Black Ops 4 (2043)

There is no traditional campaign for Black Ops 4 as the title is all about its multiplayer modes.

However, there are still some cutscenes in the game that focus on telling the personal tales of the multiplayer characters. All of the training missions seem to take place in 2043.

Call Of Duty: Advanced Warfare (2054 - 2061)

In Advanced Warfare, you control Jack Mitchell and face off against several different enemy factions, first as a Marine and then as a member of Atlas. Yet, you don't discover the true villain until partway through the game.

The entire adventure happens in the 2050s and early 2060s. As a result, you're able to make use of some futuristic and high-tech equipment throughout the campaign.

Call Of Duty: Black Ops 3 (2065 - 2070)

Raul Menendez's drone attacks at the end of Blacks Ops 2 caused the world to refocus their efforts back on ground combat with some futuristic weapons.

During Black Ops 3, you experience this renewed interest in ground assaults as you participate in the third Cold War, which is fought between factions known as the Winslow Accord and the Common Defense Pact.

Call Of Duty: Infinite Warfare (Unknown)

Infinite Warfare is the only Call Of Duty game that doesn't mention what year it is set. However, it's clear the campaign occurs sometime in the future as space travel has come a long way.

During the game, the Settlement Defense Front (SDF) is locked in a violent conflict with the United Nations Space Alliance. Nick Reyes, aka you, takes the fight to the SDF throughout the adventure.

(sorry if this confused you ut i hope there some people who will understand<3)

NEXT:Ranking The Greatest Call Of Duty Characters Of All Time

[mariacallous]

In a sunlight-filled classroom at the US State Department’s diplomacy school in late February, America’s cyber ambassador fielded urgent questions from US diplomats who were spending the week learning about the dizzying technological forces shaping their missions.

“This portfolio is one of the most interesting and perhaps the most consequential at this moment in time,” Nathaniel Fick, the US ambassador-at-large for cyberspace and digital policy, told the roughly three dozen diplomats assembled before him at the Foreign Service Institute in Arlington, Virginia. “Getting smart on these issues … is going to serve everyone really well over the long term, regardless of what other things you go off and do.”

The diplomats, who had come from overseas embassies and from State Department headquarters in nearby Washington, DC, were the sixth cohort of students to undergo a crash course in cybersecurity, telecommunications, privacy, surveillance, and other digital issues, which Fick’s team created in late 2022. The training program—the biggest initiative yet undertaken by State’s two-year-old cyber bureau—is intended to reinvigorate US digital diplomacy at a time when adversaries like Russia and China are increasingly trying to shape how the world uses technology.

During his conversation with the students, Fick discussed the myriad of tech and cyber challenges facing US diplomats. He told a staffer from an embassy in a country under China’s influence to play the long game in forming relationships that could eventually help the US make inroads there. He spoke about his efforts to help European telecom companies survive existential threats from Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei in the battle for the world’s 5G networks. And he warned of a difficult balancing act on AI, saying the US needed to stave off excessive regulation at the UN without repeating past mistakes.

“We really screwed up governance of the previous generation of tech platforms, particularly the social [media] platforms,” Fick said. “The US essentially unleashed on the world the most powerful anti-democratic tools in the history of humanity, and now we’re digging our way out of a credibility hole.”

Restoring that credibility and expanding American influence over digital issues will require tech-savvy diplomacy, and the State Department is counting on Fick’s training program to make that possible. To pull back the curtain on this program for the first time, WIRED received exclusive access to the February training session and interviewed Fick, the initiative’s lead organizer, five graduates of the course, and multiple cyber diplomacy experts about how the program is trying to transform American tech diplomacy.

Fick has called the training program the most important part of his job. As he tells anyone who will listen, it’s a project with existential stakes for the future of the open internet and the free world.

“Technology as a source of influence is increasingly foundational,” he says. “These things are more and more central to our foreign policy, and that’s a trend that is long-term and unlikely to change anytime soon.”

Maintaining an Edge

From Russian election interference to Chinese industrial dominance, the US faces a panoply of digital threats. Fighting back will require skillful diplomatic pressure campaigns on every level, from bilateral talks with individual countries to sweeping appeals before the 193-member United Nations. But this kind of work is only possible when the career Foreign Service officers on the front lines of US diplomacy understand why tech and cyber issues matter—and how to discuss them.

“The US needs to demonstrate both understanding and leadership on the global stage,” says Chris Painter, who served as the first US cyber ambassador from 2011 to 2017.

This leadership is important on high-profile subjects like artificial intelligence and the 5G war between Western and Chinese vendors, but it’s equally vital on the bread-and-butter digital issues—like basic internet connectivity and fighting cybercrime—that don’t generate headlines but still dominate many countries’ diplomatic engagements with the US.

Diplomats also need to be able to identify digital shortcomings and security gaps in their host countries that the US could help fix. The success of the State Department’s new cyber foreign aid fund will depend heavily on project suggestions from tech-savvy diplomats on the ground.

In addition, because virtually every global challenge—from trade to climate—has a tech aspect, all US diplomats need to be conversant in the topic. “You’re going to have meetings where a country is talking about a trade import issue or complaining about a climate problem, and suddenly there’s a tech connection,” says Justin Sherman, a tech and geopolitics expert who runs Global Cyber Strategies, a Washington, DC, research and advisory firm.

Digital expertise will also help the US expand coalitions around cybercrime investigations, ransomware deterrence, and safe uses of the internet—all essentially proxy fights with Russia and China.

“We are in competition with the authoritarian states on everything from internet standards … to basic governance rules,” says Neil Hop, a senior adviser to Fick and the lead organizer of the training program. “We are going to find ourselves at a sore disadvantage if we don't have trained people who are representing [us].”

Diplomats without tech training might not even realize when their Russian and Chinese counterparts are using oblique rhetoric to pitch persuadable countries on their illiberal visions of internet governance, with rampant censorship and surveillance. Diplomats with tech training would be able to push back, using language and examples designed to appeal to those middle-ground countries and sway them away from the authoritarians’ clutches.

“Our competitors and our adversaries are upping their game in these areas,” Fick says, “because they understand as well as we do what’s at stake.”

Preparing America’s Eyes and Ears

The Obama administration was the first to create a tech diplomacy training program, with initial training sessions in various regions followed by week-long courses that brought trainees to Washington. Government speakers and tech-industry luminaries like internet cocreator Vint Cerf discussed the technological, social, and political dimensions of the digital issues that diplomats had to discuss with their host governments.

“The idea was to create this cadre in the Foreign Service to work with our office and really mainstream this as a topic,” says Painter, who created the program when he was State’s coordinator for cyber issues, the predecessor to Fick’s role.

But when Painter tried to institutionalize his program with a course at the Foreign Service Institute, he encountered resistance. “I think we kind of hit it too early for FSI,” he says. “I remember the FSI director saying that they thought, ‘Well, maybe this is just a passing fad.’ It was a new topic. This is what happens with any new topic.”

By the time the Senate unanimously confirmed Nate Fick to be America’s cyber ambassador in September 2022, tech diplomacy headaches were impossible to ignore, and Fick quickly tasked his team with creating a modern training program and embedding it in the FSI’s regular curriculum.

“He understood that we needed to do more and better in terms of preparing our people in the field,” Hop says.

The training program fit neatly into secretary of state Antony Blinken’s vision of an American diplomatic corps fully versed in modern challenges and nimble enough to confront them. “Elevating our tech diplomacy” is one of Blinken’s “core priorities,” Fick says.

As they developed a curriculum, Fick and his aides had several big goals for the new training program.

The first priority was to make sure diplomats understood what was at stake as the US and its rivals compete for global preeminence on tech issues. “Authoritarian states and other actors have used cyber and digital tools to threaten national security, international peace and security, economic prosperity, [and] the exercise of human rights,” says Kathryn Fitrell, a senior cyber policy adviser at State who helps run the course.

Equally critical was preparing diplomats to promote the US tech agenda from their embassies and provide detailed reports back to Washington on how their host governments were approaching these issues.

“It's important to us that tech expertise [in] the department not sit at headquarters alone,” Fick says, “but instead that we have people everywhere—at all our posts around the world, where the real work gets done—who are equipped with the tools that they need to make decisions with a fair degree of autonomy.”

Foreign Service officers are America’s eyes and ears on the ground in foreign countries, studying the landscape and alerting their bosses back home to risks and opportunities. They are also the US government’s most direct and regular interlocutors with representatives of other nations, forming personal bonds with local officials that can sometimes make the difference between unity and discord.

When these diplomats need to discuss the US tech agenda, they can’t just read monotonously off a piece of paper. They need to actually understand the positions they’re presenting and be prepared to answer questions about them.

“You can’t be calling back to someone in Washington every time there’s a cyber question,” says Sherman.

But some issues will still require help from experts at headquarters, so Fick and his team also wanted to use the course to deepen their ties with diplomats and give them friendly points of contact at the cyber bureau. “We want to be able to support officers in the field as they confront these issues,” says Melanie Kaplan, a member of Fick’s team who took the class and now helps run it.

Inside the Classroom

After months of research, planning, and scheduling, Fick’s team launched the Cyberspace and Digital Policy Tradecraft course at the Foreign Service Institute with a test run in November 2022. Since then, FSI has taught the class six more times—once in London for European diplomats, once in Morocco for diplomats in the Middle East and Africa, and four times in Arlington—and trained 180 diplomats.

The program begins with four hours of “pre-work” to prepare students for the lessons ahead. Students must document that they’ve completed the pre-work—which includes experimenting with generative AI—before taking the class. “That has really put us light-years ahead in ensuring that no one is lost on day one,” Hop says.

The week-long in-person class consists of 45- to 90-minute sessions on topics like internet freedom, privacy, ransomware, 5G, and AI. Diplomats learn how the internet works on a technical level, how the military and the FBI coordinate with foreign partners to take down hackers’ computer networks, and how the US promotes its tech agenda in venues like the International Telecommunication Union. Participants also meet with Fick and his top deputies, including Eileen Donahoe, the department’s special envoy for digital freedom.

One session features a panel of US diplomats who have helped their host governments confront big cyberattacks. “They woke up one morning and suddenly were in this position of having to respond to a major crisis,” says Meir Walters, a training alum who leads the digital-freedom team in State’s cyber bureau.

Students learn how the US helped Albania and Costa Rica respond to massive cyberattacks in 2022 perpetrated by the Iranian government and Russian cybercriminals, respectively. In Albania, urgent warnings from a young, tech-savvy US diplomat “accelerated our response to the Iranian attack by months,” Fick says. In Costa Rica, diplomats helped the government implement emergency US aid and then used those relationships to turn the country into a key semiconductor manufacturing partner.

“By having the right people on the ground,” Fick says, “we were able to seize these significant opportunities.”

Students spend one day on a field trip, with past visits including the US Chamber of Commerce (to understand industry’s role in tech diplomacy), the Center for Democracy and Technology (to understand civil society’s perspective on digital-rights issues), and the internet infrastructure giant Verisign.

On the final day, participants must pitch ideas for using what they’ve learned in a practical way to Jennifer Bachus, the cyber bureau’s number two official.

The course has proven to be highly popular. Fick told participants in February that “there was a long wait list” to get in. There will be at least three more sessions this year: one in Arlington in August (timed to coincide with the diplomatic rotation period), one in East Asia, and one in Latin America. These sessions are expected to train 75 to 85 new diplomats.

After the course ends, alumni can stay up-to-date with a newsletter, a Microsoft Teams channel, and a toolkit with advice and guidance. Some continue their education: Fifty diplomats are getting extra training through a one-year online learning pilot, and State is accepting applications for 15 placements at leading academic institutions and think tanks—including Stanford University and the Council on Foreign Relations—where diplomats can continue researching tech issues that interest them.

Promising Results, Challenges Ahead

Less than two years into the training effort, officials say they are already seeing meaningful improvements to the US’s tech diplomacy posture.

Diplomats are sending Washington more reports on their host governments’ tech agendas, Fitrell says, with more details and better analysis. Graduates of the course also ask more questions than their untrained peers. And inspired by the training, some diplomats have pushed their bosses to prioritize tech issues, including through embassy working groups uniting representatives of different US agencies.

State has also seen more diplomats request high-level meetings with foreign counterparts to discuss tech issues and more incorporation of those issues into broader conversations. Fick says the course helped the cyber officer at the US embassy in Nairobi play an integral role in recent tech agreements between the US and Kenya. And diplomats are putting more energy into whipping votes for international tech agreements, including an AI resolution at the UN.

Diplomats who took the course shared overwhelmingly positive feedback with WIRED. They say it was taught in an accessible way and covered important topics. Several say they appreciated hearing from senior US officials whose strategizing informs diplomats’ on-the-ground priorities. Maryum Saifee, a senior adviser for digital governance at State’s cyber bureau and a training alum, says she appreciated the Morocco class’s focus on regional issues and its inclusion of locally employed staff.

Graduates strongly encouraged their colleagues to take the course, describing it as foundational to every diplomatic portfolio.

“Even if you're not a techie kind of a person, you need to not shy away from these conversations,” says Bridget Trazoff, a veteran diplomat who has learned four languages at the Foreign Service Institute and compares the training to learning a fifth one.

Painter, who knows how challenging it can be to create a program like this, says he’s “heard good things” about the course. “I’m very happy that they've redoubled their efforts in this.”

For the training program to achieve lasting success, its organizers will need to overcome several hurdles.

Fick’s team will need to keep the course material up-to-date as the tech landscape evolves. They’ll need to keep it accessible but also informative to diplomats with varying tech proficiencies who work in countries with varying levels of tech capacity. And they’ll need to maintain a constant training tempo, given that diplomats rotate positions every few years.

The tone of the curriculum also presents a challenge. Diplomats need to learn the US position on issues like trusted telecom infrastructure, but they also need to understand that not every country sees things the way the US does. “It's not just knowing about these tech issues that’s so essential,” Sherman says. “It's also understanding the whole dictionary of terms and how every country thinks about these concepts differently.”

The coming years could test the course’s impact as the US strives to protect its Eastern European partners from Russia, its East Asian partners from China and North Korea, and its Middle Eastern partners from Iran, as well as to counter Chinese tech supremacy and neutralize Russia’s and China’s digital authoritarianism.

Perhaps the biggest question facing the program is whether it will survive a possible change in administrations this fall. Officials are optimistic—Fick has talked to his Trump-era counterparts, and Painter says “having an FSI course gives it a sense of permanence.”

For Fick, there is no question that the training must continue.

“Tech is interwoven into every aspect of … American foreign policy,” he says. “If you want to position yourself to be effective and be relevant as an American diplomat in the decades ahead, you need to understand these issues.”

[marykk1990]

My next post in support of Ukraine is:

Next site is a little different, I only have one pic. It's a pic from 2011 of the main building of Tavrida National V.I. Vernadsky University in Simferopol, Crimea, Ukraine. And a link to an article about displaced universities in Ukraine due to the 2014 invasion of Crimea and the Donetsk and Luhansk regions of Ukraine. Tavrida (or Taurida) V.I. Vernadsky National University was founded in Simferopol in 1918 but is now located in Kyiv. It's named after geologist Vladimir Vernadsky, who was born in St. Petersburg, but he was of Ukrainian descent. His parents came from Kyiv. Though his mother was from an old "russian" noble family, on his father's side, they were believed to be descendants of Zaporozhian Cossacks. But back to the university. It is now based in Kyiv and has 16 departments and 20 academic institutes. Below is the emblem of the university.

#CrimeaIsUkraine

#StandWithUkraine

#SlavaUkraïni 🇺🇦🌻

[athis333]

The changes I saw on television, I ached to witness on the ground: activists pushing against dictatorships in Belarus and Central Asia, national movements rising in the Caucasus, religious communities coalescing in Siberia. I wanted to learn about China’s new business interests in the far east of Russia, and to meet the shaman with six fingers on one hand who worshipped on the shores of Lake Baikal. Some KGB archives opened: The country was learning about its past crimes. One could so easily fall into the trap of believing that Russia was free.

And so my family and I moved to Russia from the United States in 2005. We saw no sign of Russia’s impending catastrophe. The capital was alive with tourists, artists, and businessmen from all over the world. At the opening of a basement theater for plays with political themes, I saw actors mock Putin without fear.

But all was not really quiet during those years. Chechnya was rebuilding from ruins after a decade-long war with the Russian army that killed thousands of people. As a correspondent for Newsweek, I covered terrorist attacks, armed conflicts, and KGB-style repression in the post-Soviet democracies. Still, in Moscow, the word stukach, or “informer,” sounded like a relic of an earlier time. Russia was awake, voting, protesting.

As a reporter, I wanted to get behind the country’s polished facade and look into what Russians call glubinkas, or “little depths”—the remote and miserable corners of a country’s life. I covered neo-Nazi groups, asbestos mines, provincial youth facing unemployment, and the temptations of a life in crime. I went to the Arctic, to the border with China, to places that many in Moscow considered godforsaken in their obscurity; but on coming back to Moscow, I began to bear witness to the gathering of a much worse darkness still.

Journalists often walk the paths where good is losing to evil. I stepped along those byways, saw victims, and reported on crimes against ordinary people. Some were my friends. Natalia Estemirova, or simply Natasha, lived in Grozny. She was an investigative reporter and a human-rights defender, as well as a single mother of a 15-year-old girl. During the Second Chechen War, I stayed at her house, its walls pocked with holes from shrapnel, the two of us talking late into the night. She told me about the dozens of abductions she had documented in what she described as a growing epidemic, crimes for which no one was held accountable.

On July 15, 2009, Natasha was herself abducted in broad daylight in front of her house. The men who pushed her into an unmarked Lada have never been identified or prosecuted. A few hours later, her bullet-riddled body was found on the side of the road. Together with a small group of journalists and human-rights defenders, I went to Chechnya to accompany her hearse along Vladimir Putin Avenue, Grozny’s sinisterly named central boulevard. Perhaps the people she’d helped during the war were too afraid of Chechnya’s brutal leader, Ramzan Kadyrov, to join us. Or were they indifferent? That day, one of Kadyrov’s aides told me that if I didn’t leave Chechnya immediately, I, too, would be made to disappear.

During Putin’s first two terms in office, we journalists often went to such funerals for our assassinated colleagues: Anna Politkovskaya, Stanislav Markelov, Anastasia Baburova, and others. These were restive years, especially 2011 and 2012. Russia had seen enough of Putin, his war in Georgia, his penchant for repression that smacked of an earlier era. Protesters ventured into city squares; Muscovites sought out sources of independent news on paper and television. But activists and their leaders started to be arrested, and statues of Felix Dzerzhinsky and Stalin sprang up around the country. I remember a feeling of suffocation, as if somebody were pumping the oxygen away. That feeling was one I had experienced as a child.

“This city has clogged pores, this city has shut up mouths, telephone calls are like confessions of mutiny,” my father wrote in a 1979 poem about my hometown. Now all of Russia began to seem that way, as though it were heading back to the 1970s. The number of informers was rapidly growing: People called “hotlines” to report on their neighbors to authorities. I sometimes felt that we told the truth only at the funerals of our assassinated friends. And I questioned my past nostalgia: Was this what Russia had been all along?

Then Boris Nemtsov, a democratic politician, one of the very best Russia had, with my last name but who was no relation, was shot in the back on a sidewalk within sight of the Kremlin walls.