#Romanian Police report

[diagnozabam]

Accidentele rutiere grave în România au scăzut semnificativ în 2024: Un nou raport al Poliției

În 2024, România a înregistrat o scădere semnificativă a numărului de accidente rutiere grave, conform unui raport al Poliției Române. În perioada ianuarie – noiembrie 2024, s-au produs 3.862 de accidente grave, soldate cu 1.333 de decese și 2.980 de persoane grav rănite. Aceste cifre reprezintă o reducere cu 6% față de anul precedent. Reduceri importante comparativ cu 2019 Comparativ cu anul…

[blueiscoool]

Thieves use Explosives to Steal Gold 'Masterpieces' From Dutch Museum

Thieves have stolen four ancient artifacts, including an approximately 2,500-year-old gold helmet, after using explosives to break into a museum in the Netherlands.

The daring heist took place at Drents Museum in Assen during the early hours of Saturday morning, according to Dutch police, who said they received a report of an explosion at 3:45 a.m. local time.

CCTV footage released by police shows the suspects opening an exterior door before a blast sends sparks and smoke into the air. The thieves made off with three gold bracelets, dating from around 50 BC, as well as the 5th-century BC Helmet of Cotofenesti, a historically important artifact on loan from the National History Museum of Romania in Bucharest.

The items were part of an exhibition about the Dacians, an ancient society that occupied much of present-day Romania before being conquered by the Romans. On show since July, “Dacia: Empire of Gold and Silver” featured treasures borrowed from institutions across Romania.

In a press release on its website, Drents Museum described the Helmet of Cotofenesti — which was discovered in a Romanian village almost a century ago — as a “masterpiece.” Its design features mythological scenes and a pair of eyes, located above the wearers’, that were thought to deter enemies during battle while protecting against the “evil eye.”

The exhibition was set to conclude Sunday, though Drents Museum remained closed through the weekend due to the robbery. Its premises were damaged by the explosion, though no injuries were reported, the museum said.

Dutch police announced that they are working with global police agency Interpol and had, as of Sunday, received more than 50 tip-offs. Investigators are currently looking for information about a gray car that was stolen from the nearby city of Alkmaar earlier in the week and was discovered around four miles from the crime scene, on fire, shortly after the overnight heist.

Police believe the suspects abandoned the vehicle, which had stolen license plates, and fled in a different getaway car.

In a press statement, Drents Museum’s general director Harry Tupan, described the incident as a “dark day” — both for his institution and the National History Museum of Romania.

“We are intensely shocked by the events last night at the museum,” he added. “In its 170-year existence, there has never been such a major incident. It also gives us enormous sadness towards our colleagues in Romania.”

By Oscar Holland.

[ukrfeminism]

We’ve been chatting for about half an hour when Eloise lowers her voice to a whisper. Until now she’s been confidently talking through the ups and downs of being a 19-year-old woman in a world she finds unsteady. 

She’s annoyed that, on TikTok, the advertisements she gets are keyrings with rape alarms and “stabby kitties” (a cat-shaped metal keychain with pointed ears sharp enough to cause damage), feels that modern feminism sometimes goes a bit too far, but having grown up in the age of nudes, she doesn’t really trust men. Which is unsurprising considering the story she tells me next.

“So a boy I know was asking a girl at his school for nudes,” she says, quietly. “And then when she refused, he threatened to rape her.” The boy was 14 and had recently posted an Andrew Tate video to his Instagram page, which was Eloise’s first encounter with the online influencer. 

“It said stuff like how women are your property and that it doesn’t matter if women say they’ve been sexually assaulted; if you’re with them that’s your right. I didn’t like it,” she adds.

Tate has made several appearances in the headlines this week. On Tuesday, a Romanian court rejected his appeal to ease the ban on him leaving the country as a legal case against him – in which he’s charged with human trafficking, rape and forming a criminal gang to sexually exploit women – continues. He denies all charges against him. The following day, Ipsos polling for King’s College London’s Policy Institute and the Global Institute for Women’s Leadership found that one in five men aged 16-29 who have heard of Andrew Tate have a positive view of him.

Separately – or, arguably, perhaps not – another survey published in the same week underpinned a renewed focus on the attitudes and beliefs of Generation Z, this time from the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS). The research asked just over 3,000 adults of varying ages – 50.6 per cent of whom were female – about their understanding of rape and serious sexual offences, and the law on consent, and drew troubling conclusions.

Overall, 74 per cent of people surveyed understood that it can still be rape if a victim doesn’t resist or fight back, but the number fell to just over half (53 per cent) of 18-24-year-olds who had the same understanding. Less than half of respondents from this age group recognised that victims might not report a sexual offence to police immediately, that being in a relationship or marriage doesn’t mean consent can be assumed, or that if a man has been drinking or taking drugs, he’s still responsible if he rapes someone. More than 70 per cent of over-65s recognised that even if no physical force is involved a person might not be free or able to consent to sex, compared to just 40 per cent of young people.

Previous generations have become used to hearing that rape myths and misconceptions continue to persist, but that’s precisely why this week’s grim trinity of headlines stings. “There tends to be a public assumption that things are generally always getting better,” says author and feminist campaigner Laura Bates. “Actually, views like these are incredibly widespread among young people.” 

Bates regularly works with schools, talking to pupils who often tell her that “rape is a compliment”, that “it’s not rape if she likes it” or, “it’s your boyfriend, you have to have sex with him”.

She adds: “Attitude surveys have to be taken seriously because they are a real red flag that we’re going backwards – we’re seeing much more extreme and concerning misogynistic attitudes among the youngest generations than we are among the oldest. We have to face up to that and ask, why is that happening?”

Gen Z has never been neatly contained. Growing up as the first digital natives in the chokehold of crisis – climate, Covid, cost of living – has seen them praised for their social awareness, but disenfranchised and forgotten by politics. Their extremely online nature has given them unprecedented access to the world and other people – but, of course, that’s a double-edged sword.

“The internet has made everyone’s voices louder, but that means the most misogynistic people in the world are heard more too,” says Niya Clement-Hickson, a 26-year-old marketing designer from London. He says his generation has been “kind of ruined” by social media.

“You’d be surprised at just how many people around my age will argue that Andrew Tate is not as bad as he seems.”

When I spend an hour talking to 16-year-old Tate fan Manus from Ohio on TikTok, he says exactly that. He’s relatively timid and seems unsure of what he thinks at times, but came across Tate aged 12, being drawn to his motivational speeches, humour, and attitude towards making money. “[Tate] kinda showed me how people really are in reality,” he says. On Tate’s assertions that women are the property of men, he says those beliefs are simply from the Bible (though Manus himself is Muslim).

He maintains he’s never seen Tate speak violently about women, and when I send him leaked voicenote recordings of Tate saying that he enjoyed raping a woman, Manus is certain it’s fake “probably to make him look bad”. I ask for his views on feminism and he responds that feminists now want “superiority” and “more rights”. What rights exactly? “More rights in general,” he says, vaguely.

This opinion is not a rarity – there’s a pervasive idea circling comments sections and pub corners that the pendulum has “swung too far”. “Some of us warned that when you continue to suppress their identity by telling young boys that they are inherently toxic, they’ll start acting irrational,” one comment under an Andrew Tate post this week read. But it’s not just boys who hold this idea. Early last year, a survey from Ipsos UK and the Global Institute for Women’s Leadership at King’s College London echoed this and some of Eloise’s views that feminism has gone too far. They found that 52 per cent of Gen Z and 53 per cent of millennials believe that we’re now discriminating against men. Less than half of Gen Z respondents said they defined themselves as a feminist.

Was it coincidence then, to see that shortly after the research was published in March 2023, the year of the girl was in full swing? A persistently pink summer was punctuated with girl dinners, #tradwives – modern women who believe in traditional gender roles – and stay-at-home girlfriends sharing their daily rituals on news feeds. New York magazine’s The Cut declared it “Woman in Retrograde” as the year came to a close; a cluster of reactionary elements to a significant demise of mainstream feminism.

This shift back to traditional behaviours is also present in younger men, says Niya. “A lot of guys feel that their role is all about providing money, being a protector. But they feel they deserve to get something out of the interaction. They just can’t deal with being told no.”

In terms of consent, does he hear attitudes that put women in danger? “Absolutely,” he replies. Niya didn’t learn about consent in school – “I don’t think it was ever talked about beyond ‘don’t have sex until you’re old enough’” – and thinks this is quite common for men of his age. For Maya, who’s 24 and neurodivergent, the line of consent is difficult to pinpoint and somewhat shaped by social media. There’s a “disconnect” from what she really wants – and is able to articulate – in the moment.

“I think that we do have less and less sex and more and more porn,” Niya adds. “And I think that once porn is your main and in some cases, only engagement with sex and women, then that is going to completely screw up how you see sex.”

Do all roads lead to porn? Probably. Clare McGlynn, who is a professor of law with particular expertise in sexual violence and online abuse, says: “We know that algorithms promote more extreme content, more hate – and many, many younger people, men and women, are getting this. Millions of people, as we speak, are watching mainstream online pornography that is racist, sexist, misogynist and violent in its content. Of course, it’s shaping attitudes and lives.”

“There’s certainly a pressure on young boys and men, for example, to be taking and sharing nudes – they’re part of a culture that is encouraging them to,” McGlynn explains. During a study, she looked at what material was presented on the homepage of popular sites – she found landing pages which were filled with sexually violent material. “So it’s also not them even actively choosing that material; we’re part of a culture that is grooming young men, teaching them expectations around sex – and asking them to accept and normalise it.”

What appears clear from the survey conducted by the CPS is a dangerous lack of understanding of what constitutes a crime. “I do lectures on criminal law and I’ve had students come up to me afterwards and say that they didn’t know they had been sexually assaulted or raped,” McGlynn adds.

Laura Bates says that we’re in the midst of a “crisis of sexual violence among young people”. 

“Deeply misogynistic misinformation is being spread to young people online at a rate that most people just have absolutely no idea about,” she says. “And there is a massive knock-on effect.

“Some will look at these surveys and go, well, what does attitude matter? But you have to draw a connection between these really worrying attitudes about rape and the fact that nearly 80 per cent of young people told Ofsted inspectors recently that sexual assault is normal and common in their friendship groups.”

So what can be done? More responsibility and accountability from social media companies, says Bates. Tate’s content – some of which reportedly shows him attempting to beat a woman with a belt; she later hides behind a locked door – has been viewed more than 11 billion times on TikTok, she says, adding: “That’s more than the population of the planet.” Last year, advocacy group HOPE found that more 16-17-year-old boys had watched Tate’s content than had heard of Rishi Sunak. “I think it’s really important that the government supports high quality, age-appropriate sex and relationships education,” she adds. 

Actively listening to and engaging with boys – as seen in initiatives like the state of New York’s Starting the Conversation campaign – is also important. Boys must have a safe and judgement-free environment to express themselves: the more their experiences of rape culture are internalised, the more difficult they are to see.

The Online Safety Bill, which was enacted in October last year, she says, was a missed opportunity for change. While it asks for more transparency on social media platforms and imposes sanctions for those not following the act, along with criminalising cyberflashing and sending unsolicited nude images, “it went 250 pages without mentioning women and girls once, until campaigners changed that”, Bates says.

“It’s so much more effective to focus on prevention of radicalisation than trying to unpick it once it’s happened,” she says. “Young people really are prepared to listen and prepared to change their minds, it’s just a shame this isn’t happening in every school.”

“It does make me worried about how safe the world is going to be,” says Eloise, who will begin her twenties in the summer. “What if people really start thinking that women are property again?” Then, she’s quiet again. “I really hope it can change.”

[c0rpsel0v3r]

so I've had these oc's in my mind and yall need to hear me out.

their names are micah and nikolai.

micah is a medium that functions as some sort of ghost magnet. basically all ghosts are drawn towards him, and if he wants to he can make them follow him, even if they dont want to. he uses this to free people's houses from ghosts and demons. one of his friends (a ghost) is quite old and powerful, so it devours these troubeling spirits as dinner, the ones that just wander get dropped of at places where they dont hurt anyone. micah's mum is romanian and his dad slovakian, so he lives in slovakia. he goes to art school and is a very talented graffiti artist, also very good at hiding from the police so everyone and yet no one knows him. when micah needs something, he can be the kindest person possible. he'll do anything to reach his goal. he's also a bigbig pervert. im talking necrophile rapist that digs up the bodies of ghosts he likes very much and fucks them, even if they dont want to. automatically, he loves being the one in control.

nikolai is a spirit, he died at 18 through suicide. he did so by taking an old rope laying in the abandoned train station and hanging himself. he met micah when someone reported the train station being haunted and two people got allegedly killed. micah went there and found out that nikolai was nothinh but an angry spirit that wanted his calm. in order for him to not hurt more people, micah took him in and over time they became best friends. back when he was alive, nikolai loved the supernatural, and now he's dead he wants to make as many people believe as possible. he also loves pranking people, so he throwz things around and sometimes even posesses living people just make fun of micah. he also jokes at very inappropriate times, for example when micah is in life threatening situations.

they are my babies, my loves, and i appreciate them so much. there's so much cool lore on them so yeah...

[beardedmrbean]

Four ancient gold artefacts were stolen from a Dutch museum in an overnight raid in the early hours of Saturday morning.

Thieves used explosives to blast their way into the Drents Museum in Assen, which was hosting an exhibition of priceless Romanian jewellery made from gold and silver.

They left with three Dacian spiral bracelets and the exhibit's central piece - the strikingly decorated Helmet of Cotofenesti, which was crafted almost 2,500 years ago.

Romania's ministry of culture has promised to take all possible steps to recover the stolen items, which had been loaned to the Dutch museum from Bucharest.

Drents Museum director Harry Tupan said staff were "intensely shocked" by the burglary, which he said was the biggest incident in its 170-year history.

Police were called to the scene after reports of an explosion at 03:45 local time (04:45 GMT) on Saturday.

Officers carried out forensic investigation and reviewed CCTV footage throughout the day.

Police are also investigating a burning vehicle which was found on a nearby road, which they suspect may be linked to the burglary.

"A possible scenario is that the suspects switched to another vehicle in the vicinity of the fire," a Dutch police statement said.

No arrests have been made, but authorities suspect multiple individuals were involved. Police have called global policing agency Interpol to help with the investigation.

A statement from the museum said four "archaeological masterpieces" were taken, including the Cotofenesti helmet, which dates from around 450 BC, and three ancient Dacian royal bracelets.

All four stolen items are of huge cultural significance to Romania, with the Helmet of Cotofenesti considered a national treasure.

In the late 1990s, 24 bracelets from the same era were dug up by treasure hunters and sold abroad.

The Romanian state worked for years to get them back from collectors in Austria, Germany, France, the UK and the United States.

[mariacallous]

Having lived in Britain for 12 years, I returned to my native Moldova in 2022 because I was worried that Russia’s war in Ukraine would spill into my country. Thanks to the Ukrainian resistance, the skies are still clear in Moldova. But in the past weeks leading up to the presidential runoff between the pro-European incumbent Maia Sandu and the Russian-supported former prosecutor general Alexandr Stoianoglo, I felt as if I might lose my country once again.

The scale of interference in these Moldovan elections has been unprecedented. As reported by excellent independent journalists in the country, our law enforcement agencies alleged the existence of a large-scale, vote-buying scheme in the first round, run by Ilan Shor – a Russian-backed fugitive oligarch, who denies any wrongdoing.

Before the second round, journalists and others reportedly received death threats in broken Romanian, pretending to be on behalf of Sandu’s team. On election day, the most popular polling stations across Europe for overseas Moldovans had their vote disrupted by bomb threats. The servers of the Central Electoral Commission experienced a temporary cyberattack. The police said they had “reasonable evidence” of illegal organised voter transportation in Russia, Belarus, Azerbaijan and Turkey; people from Transnistria, the region to the east of the country, bordering Ukraine and controlled by Russia, admitted to being transported.

In addition to the alleged rigging, the internet, especially TikTok, was flooded with anti-Europe disinformation before the EU referendum on 20 October.

Despite all this, Sandu won. “They cannot steal as much as we can vote” was one of the informal slogans of this campaign. In the run-up to the second vote, the police updated the country daily about their arrests and seizures of cash related to the vote-buying scheme. This helped some people realise that receiving payment for votes was illegal and not just a way of getting free money. It also helped mobilise 380,000 people in the capital city Chișinău – more than in 2020 – and an unprecedented 330,000 Moldovans in the diaspora, who amounted to almost 20% of the total number of voters, to come out and vote. Both electorates largely voted for Sandu.

The pro-Russian Socialist party (PSRM), which supported Stoianoglo, said that it did not recognise the election results and that Sandu would only be the “president of the diaspora”. Yet 70% of the votes she received came from within the country.

While I lived in the UK, I queued for hours in order to vote in Moldovan elections at the various polling stations the state opened across London. In 2016, when Sandu first ran against PSRM leader Igor Dodon and lost to him, with thousands of other fellow citizens, I was not able to cast my vote because the polling station ran out of ballot papers. Some people had come from hundreds of miles away in order to vote.

Moldova’s diaspora is relatively new and porous. People first started leaving in large numbers in the 2000s, when President Vladimir Voronin ruled the country with many leading members of the PSRM. Their first destinations were Russia, Italy or Portugal, where they did difficult jobs in construction or care, in order to provide for their families. (My history teacher went to look after the dogs of an Italian star in order to pay for her son’s university fees.) Since then, as many people’s parents and grandparents had been born when Moldova was part of Romania, about a million Moldovans obtained Romanian citizenship – including the two presidential candidates, Sandu and Stoianoglo.

EU passports opened the way for Moldovans such as myself to benefit from better study and work opportunities across Europe, sending vital remittances back home. At the moment, about 1 million Moldovans live abroad and 2.8 million live in the country. Everyone has family members working abroad.

Like me, a number of people have also returned from the diaspora to open their own businesses or join existing private or non-governmental organisations, as well as state institutions. Sandu did this in 2012, leaving her much better paid position at the World Bank in order to become minister of education. Natalia Gavrilița, whom I first met in 2018 in a Moldovan activist group called FreeMoldova in London, left development work to become minister of finance and then prime minister. The list goes on.

Since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, many Moldovans from the diaspora in Russia have returned home. In the more Russian-speaking regions of Gagauzia and Transnistria, people have started emigrating to Poland and the Czech Republic. As I was travelling on the Chișinău-Prague bus to the small Romanian town of Sibiu last week, in front of me a man was listening to Russian propaganda. The second driver, meanwhile, put on a speech by Sandu while resting. Social media have polarised Moldovan society – just like the entire world. Russian propaganda is good at enhancing these cleavages.

Moldova has shown resilience in the recent EU referendum and this presidential vote. But given the country is a parliamentary republic, the great battle will be next year in parliamentary elections. Until then, law enforcement has to get on top of vote-buying schemes. There must be better regulation of social media. And pro-European Moldovans have to collaborate and communicate better than the Russian propagandists.

[capsiclesteebrogers]

Bridgerton fandom is nasty because people like you feel they can police other peoples thoughts and content and they are unable to stay in their lane just like you. So go fuck yourself with the moral highground, guess what I saw today - another nasty Nicola fan talking how Simone is arrogant because she is skinny and a curry sniffer. You seee any kanthony fan making posts in the polin and Nicola tag with this bullshit? Grab a mirror and think for a second why you are feeling you can somehow police other people, nasty romanian comunist

I was debating answering this ask until I got to the last part. It is incredibly insensitive to call someone a comunist simply because you do not agree with what they say. My country is still recovering after communism because we did not have the means to progress faster. My parents still talk to me about how they were affected by it and how awful it was. Please check your xenophobia because it is not normal.

I am not policing people's thoughts and contect. I am calling out people who are being (and have been for the past few years) nasty and deranged towards a real woman. People can post whatever they want but being a decent human being is a requirement for all of us. Call out these fans and make your own post. As I have previously mentioned, I have reported and blocked p*lin fans who have attacked Simone but I see few of these people because I try to curate my space as much as I can.

And yes, I have seen fans tagging wrong. I made sure to tag properly and censor both ship names. If my post appeared in the normal tag then it's tumblr's fault because I always make sure to tag properly.

I suggest you grab a mirror and reflect why you think being xenophobic and fatphobic to a person you do not know is ok. I simply made a post calling out nasty fans. I did not insult the actors nor the ship. Do you honestly believe this behaviour is normal? I made one singular post criticizing some shippers and you have already send me 4 asks. Please block me and leave me alone. Or maybe come off of anon and allow me to block you.

[clockworkdragonffxiv]

I'm gonna say this here because it bugs me. I know, I know, being angry at capitalism on tumblr is spitting in the wind and this isn't going to make me friends, but every time I see those silly Blahaj shark plushes that apparently have... I'm not entirely sure? Somehow something something queer symbol because... I dunno. They're cute and I've been told IKEA is a popular hangout for some queer folks?

Whatever.

Not the point here.

The point is it bothers me. It bugs the shit out of me. Because IKEA fucking murders people. IKEA isn't an ally. IKEA funded the Romanian Secret Police during the Cold War. IKEA still funds gangs of thugs that murder rangers and reporters who investigate their illegal logging of some of the last surviving primeval pine forests in Europe.

If you've bought from IKEA, you're probably using pine extracted from forests that are damn near gone and people have died trying to defend from IKEA.

But hey! Giving them money for the shark makes you an ally or shows that they're... somehow an ally or something, right? Fuck those, uh, well, quite a few dead people, actually. Whatever. You needed that Jakobfors more than they needed to not be beaten to death with timber axes.

So yes. They're, to quote classic Tumblr, problematic.

[brookstonalmanac]

Events 12.31 (after 1950)

1951 – Cold War: The Marshall Plan expires after distributing more than US$13.3 billion in foreign aid to rebuild Western Europe. 1955 – General Motors becomes the first U.S. corporation to make over US$1 billion in a year. 1956 – The Romanian Television network begins its first broadcast in Bucharest. 1961 – RTÉ, Ireland's state broadcaster, launches its first national television service. 1963 – The Central African Federation officially collapses, subsequently becoming Zambia, Malawi and Rhodesia. 1965 – Jean-Bédel Bokassa, leader of the Central African Republic army, and his military officers begin a coup d'état against the government of President David Dacko. 1968 – The first flight of the Tupolev Tu-144, the first civilian supersonic transport in the world. 1968 – MacRobertson Miller Airlines Flight 1750 crashes near Port Hedland, Western Australia, killing all 26 people on board. 1981 – A coup d'état in Ghana removes President Hilla Limann's PNP government and replaces it with the Provisional National Defence Council led by Flight lieutenant Jerry Rawlings. 1983 – The AT&T Bell System is broken up by the United States Government. 1983 – Benjamin Ward is appointed New York City Police Department's first ever African American police commissioner. 1983 – In Nigeria, a coup d'état led by Major General Muhammadu Buhari ends the Second Nigerian Republic. 1991 – All official Soviet Union institutions have ceased operations by this date, five days after the Soviet Union is officially dissolved. 1992 – Czechoslovakia is peacefully dissolved in what is dubbed by media as the Velvet Divorce, resulting in the creation of the Czech Republic and the Slovak Republic. 1994 – This date is skipped altogether in Kiribati as the Phoenix Islands and Line Islands change time zones from UTC−11:00 to UTC+13:00 and UTC−10:00 to UTC+14:00, respectively. 1994 – The First Chechen War: The Russian Ground Forces begin a New Year's storming of Grozny. 1995 – The final comic of Calvin and Hobbes is published. 1998 – The European Exchange Rate Mechanism freezes the values of the legacy currencies in the Eurozone, and establishes the value of the euro currency. 1999 – The first President of Russia, Boris Yeltsin, resigns from office, leaving Prime Minister Vladimir Putin as the acting President and successor. 1999 – The U.S. government hands control of the Panama Canal (as well all the adjacent land to the canal known as the Panama Canal Zone) to Panama. This act complied with the signing of the 1977 Torrijos–Carter Treaties. 1999 – Indian Airlines Flight 814 hijacking ends after seven days with the release of 190 survivors at Kandahar Airport, Afghanistan. 2004 – The official opening of Taipei 101, the tallest skyscraper at that time in the world, standing at a height of 509 metres (1,670 ft). 2009 – Both a blue moon and a lunar eclipse occur. 2010 – Tornadoes touch down in midwestern and southern United States, including Washington County, Arkansas; Greater St. Louis, Sunset Hills, Missouri, Illinois, and Oklahoma, with a few tornadoes in the early hours. A total of 36 tornadoes touched down, resulting in the deaths of nine people and $113 million in damages. 2011 – NASA succeeds in putting the first of two Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory satellites in orbit around the Moon. 2014 – A New Year's Eve celebration stampede in Shanghai kills at least 36 people and injures 49 others. 2015 – A fire breaks out at the Downtown Address Hotel in Downtown Dubai, United Arab Emirates, located near the Burj Khalifa, two hours before the fireworks display is due to commence. Sixteen injuries were reported; one had a heart attack, another suffered a major injury, and fourteen others with minor injuries. 2018 – Thirty-nine people are killed after a ten-story building collapses in the industrial city of Magnitogorsk, Russia. 2019 – The World Health Organization is informed of cases of pneumonia with an unknown cause, detected in Wuhan. This later turned out to be COVID-19, the cause of the COVID-19 pandemic.

[hjohn3]

Long Hot Summer

The Rise of the Far Right on Britain’s Streets

Source: Sky News

By Honest John

SUDDENLY, BRITAIN’s fascist moment seems to be a little bit closer. As the summer’s temperatures rise, so does the heat on the street, and the far right are now on a wholly nihilistic march. It has been clear for some years that the fascist right in this country has long abandoned its historical attachment to anti-semitism and visceral biological racism and has turned its focus on Islam - portraying the religion, but more importantly, Muslims themselves, as fundamentally opposed to British values and with an intent to “take over” the country culturally and in population terms. This anti-Muslim stance is allied to a hostility to illegal migration (the “small boats” of Rishi Sunak’s half hearted culture war) and a peculiar advocacy for authoritarian law and order despite the far right “protests” being reliably intimidatory and destructive in towns and cities all over the U.K. since the appalling murders of three children in Southport last week.

There have been a series of “incidents” over the last month that have provoked the spin offs of the disbanded English Defence League, which are myriad and hard to pin down but nonetheless organised, to take to the streets in overtly anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant and racist riots masquerading as protests. The first was a punch-up at Manchester Airport, recorded on CCTV and phone video footage, when two thuggish Asian lads assaulted police officers called to break up a fight, but which culminated in one of said lads being tasered and then kicked in the head while helpless on the floor by an armed officer clearly out of control. This led almost immediately to a liberal leftist/Muslim activist rent-a-crowd protest against alleged racist policing and the Asian boys being represented by dubious lawyer Akhmed Yakoob (who has form as a pro-Gaza candidate at the General Election, and also outed as a base misogynist). What should have been no more than an “incident” requiring investigation, soon took on the contours of a culture war as hyper liberal activists in possession of half the facts turned the fight into a “Muslim” issue and the reliably loathsome Reform MP Lee Anderson opined that he would like to give the police officer who kicked the prone suspect in the head, a medal for his assault. The temperature began to rise, despite the nuanced nature of the affair (significantly Yakoob has since dropped the case).

This incident had been preceded a few days before by a riot in the Hatfield area of Leeds instigated by the Roma Romanian population in response to some Roma children being taken into care by police and Leeds Social Services for Safeguarding reasons. The riot was large scale, dramatic and involved burned out vehicles, damaged buildings and assaults on the police who at one stage vacated the Hatfield streets altogether. This situation got the right wing media outlets (GB News, Talk TV, the Telegraph and the Mail) into a lather along with malign YouTubers like conspiracy theorist and Muslim-hater Charlie Veitch, who arrived in Hatfield to proclaim the site of a burned-out bus was a result of an “Islamist insurgency”. There are legitimate concerns about how the Roma community behaved in Leeds, but whatever the Hatfield riot was, it was neither Islamist nor an insurgency: it was a reaction to what was perceived as a kidnapping of children by the British state, by a group that is over 95% Christian. The riot had literally nothing to do with Muslims or Islamism. But such facts do not get in the way of the false reporting by the right wing media or the “patriotic” Tik-Tokkers and YouTubers that now proliferate.

And so the scene was set for the explosion of far right rage that followed the terrible murders of three young girls attending a Taylor Swift dance class in Southport by a 17 year old young man of Rwandan descent, born in Cardiff and a Southport resident. In the time it took for these crucial details about the identity of the murderer to be revealed, the far right had developed an entirely invented narrative of its own: the murderer was an immigrant, worse than that he was an illegal who arrived in a “small boat”; the murderer was a Muslim called Ali Al-Shakati and an Islamist terrorist to boot. The lines between all three incidents were connected to present a situation of migrants and Muslims, aided by their leftist allies, fighting murderously and violently against British values and British citizens. The fact that none of this was true (the alleged murderer, Axel Muganwa Rudakubana, is likely also to have a Christian background) was irrelevant to the EDL successor groups. In no time Southport, Westminster, Hartlepool, Leeds, Nottingham, Sunderland and many other towns and cities became scenes of riot, intimidation, destruction and the violent targeting of mosques. The would-be Ernst Rohm figure of Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, absurdly known to his fans as “Tommy Robinson”, swaggered through the streets of London, mouthing anti-Islam banalities, until his arrest under the Terrorism Act, but clearly not in charge of anything very much, and even less so since his flight from the U.K. to avoid his court appearance. The far right cells who are organising the disorder are organic in nature, their actual leaders unknown. Their ideology is unclear, but they are given cover by the cynics of GB News (with particular reference to the atrocious Mike Graham and Isabel Oakeshot) who openly describe the criminal activity as somehow a legitimate expression of patriotic opinion by an English population pushed too far. The groups are however also given legitimacy by the ultimate provocateur, Nigel Farage MP, sitting like a Prussian aristocrat in 1930s Germany speculating on whether the government or the police are being entirely honest about the Southport murders, while the modern equivalents of the Brownshirts run riot in British towns. This is the real danger of the swirling toxicity of the current unrest. The middle-aged flag-waving male thugs are easily dismissed as criminals, conspiracy-believing oddballs and yobboes, but their enablers in the right wing media, Reform and the Tory right, provide a level of encouragement, justification and even ideological ballast to what currently remains a street movement but, under more serious leadership than that of Yaxley-Lennon, could morph into something far more sinister.

So what is to be done?

Keir Starmer for the second time in a month, struck precisely the right tone and spoke for the decent majority of this country when he described the rioting as driven by “far right hatred” and announced an intention to protect Muslim citizens from harm and to pool police, security and anti-terrorism resources to combat the extremists on the street, but also to break up its cellular structure. This hard action must be taken. The issue of a Section 34 Dispersal Notice in Greater Manchester which blunted far right action this weekend, is a start. History tells us that the far right do not go away and a level of force is what works to disrupt them - but administered by the police and judiciary, not by left wing groups and their “smash the fascists” placards, who usually prove themselves incapable, in reality, of “smashing” anything very much.

Probably more importantly, is the need for the government and Ofcom to pay far more attention to the toxic falsehoods sprayed indiscriminately by the likes of GB News and Talk TV, and to insist misinformation posing as news is banned and political opinion is confined to explicit opinion slots. Influence over the Wild West of social media is more difficult but the faux-legitimacy of the right wing TV outlets is dangerous while our streets burn, so their lying output must be controlled. Parliament must also exercise control over maverick MPs. In the aftermath of Southport, Farage chose not to attend the House of Commons and represent his constituents but instead decided to post a video slot encouraging conspiracy theorists and rioters. It is high time that the indulgence of Farage’s hail-fellow-well-met persona ends and if an MP can be seen to be implicitly endorsing criminal activity, he or she should be hauled before the Privileges Committee, or even prosecuted.

My final recommendation is hard to make. I believe we have reached the limits of identity politics and multi-culturalism. We talk casually of the “Muslim community” in this country when in reality, there is no such thing. The self-identification of population groups who once described themselves as Asian or South Asian as “Muslim”, prioritising religious identity above all others, together with the “Arabisation” of Islamic observant clothing and Qu’ranic interpretation thanks to the influence of Saudi-funded preachers and madrassas, makes the Bengali, Pakistani, Afghan and Indian heritage population visibly different and just the sort of potential scapegoat for societal woes that fascism thrives on. Together with assertive Muslim activism, this level of identity politics gives credence to the othering narrative of the far right. As a democrat, this is difficult to write. Why shouldn’t people be able to wear what they want, worship as they wish, believe what they believe? But in an increasingly divided society, I believe the priority for identity groups should be to accentuate the common social concerns they share with all other communities and to seek far more enthusiastically to integrate with the majority population while maintaining their beliefs. Such a shift after at least twenty years of embedded identitarianism will be difficult and it may never happen, but I maintain that social solidarity is a crucial factor in the long term defeat of fascism and racism.

It may be that these riots will fizzle out as the weather cools, but the current moment feels it might be leading somewhere very dark. An organised street fighting movement, aided by a toxic right wing TV media and encouraged by a far right Parliamentary presence carries too many historical echoes for comfort. All eyes are now on Starmer and Yvette Cooper to control the symptoms of street disorder, but by far the greatest priority is for the Labour government to create a fair economic settlement for all British communities and thus consign the paranoid and violent fantasies of the far right into the dustbin of history, once and for all.

3rd August 2024

[djuvlipen]

[T]he count of half a million Sinti and Roma murdered between 1939 and 1945 is too low to be tenable; for example in the Soviet Union many of the Romani dead were listed under non-specific labels such as “remainder to be liquidated,” “hangers-on,” “partisans,” [&c. . .] The final number of the dead Sinti and Roma may never be determined.  We do not know precisely how many were brought into the concentration camps; not every concentration camp produced statistical material . . . Sinti and Roma often. . . do not appear in the statistics.

Also, as the Auschwitz Memorial Book points out, Romanies were murdered unrecorded, sometimes by the hundreds, outside the camps, in the most numbers in the eastern territories, for which only scant records exist.  As research continues, for example that being undertaken for Czechoslovakia by Polansky (Strandberg, 1994) or for Serbia by Ackoviƒ (1995), the figures rise steadily higher.  In order to estimate the percentage of total losses, we would have to know, in addition to the number of dead, the number of Romanies throughout Europe before 1933, and this we will never be able to determine accurately, although both Colliers Encyclopedia and the Encyclopedia Americana list the pre-war European Romani population as 700,000.  A guess as good as any is that there were perhaps three million Romanies throughout the German-controlled territories at the period of their maximum extent, between one and one and a half a million of whom were murdered, i.e. between a third and a half of the population.  The world population at the same time was probably ca. five million.

Only a few thousand survived in the Nazi-controlled territories, and none was asked to testify in behalf of the Romani victims at the war crimes trials.  Reparations to Romanies as a people have yet to be made by the German government, which has only in recent years even admitted the racial motivation of the Nazi genocidal campaign against the Romani people.

The massive increase in neo-Nazi activity since the reunification of Germany and the collapse of Communism need not be elaborated upon here; it has been documented in a series of book-length treatments published by Helsinki Watch, and in a 50-page report by the Geneva-based U.N. Human Rights Commission.  And in poll after poll, the Romani population in Europe stands as the prime target of both sanctioned and unsanctioned discrimination.  In 1995 alone, in the Czech Republic alone, there were over 450 documented attacks against Romanies, several resulting in death; those were only the reported incidents.  There have been rapes and house-burnings in Romania and Bulgaria; letter bombs and booby-trap explosives have killed four Romanies and blinded and maimed many more.  At the October, 1995 OSCE meeting in Warsaw, one of our delegates was hit and robbed by four youths on the street shouting racial epithets; another was turned back at the Polish border simply because he was a Romani, and as a result was not able to attend the meeting.  The previous year, in the same city, a group of nine of us, all Romanies, were refused service in a restaurant. 

One of the issues at the 1995 conference in Warsaw was the official protest of Romania’s resolution to replace the words Rom and Romani with Úigan in all official documents.  The word, which was a synonym for “slave” during the five and a half centuries of Gypsy slavery in that country, is as offensive for Romanies as the word “n*gg*r” is for African Americans.  The Romanian government’s reason for this is that Romani sounds too much like Romanian, and outsiders might think that Romanians were Gypsies.  In November, 1995, Amnesty International released a 62-page document on human rights abuses in Romania which referred in part to “reports about torture and ill-treatment by police officials [and their] violent abuse of power . . . Massive arbitrary measures against the Romani minority and the lack of protection of this group against racist attacks have continuously posed a problem since March, 1990.”  The Romanian government has responded by declaring that “hereafter, slandering of the state and the nation will be prosecuted by imprisonment of up to five years” (Romnews, No. 46, November 19th, 1995, p. 1.).

-- Ian Hancock, The Roots of Antigypsyism: to the Holocaust and After.

(I censored the n-word)

[shirtlesssammy]

The Winchesters 1x09: Cast Your Fate to the Wind

On a lonely stretch of highway, our little show starts with an armored truck barreling into a station wagon. Things don’t look good for the folks in the little beat up wagon. It’s okay though! They’re just vampires looking to steal whatever is in the back of the truck (are they possibly vampirates?) They’re looking for a missing amulet, but walk away with maps!

Mary and John are still puzzling over Dean the mystery man that gave John the letter from Henry. John loves the car. Mary thinks her son is a babe. PDA ensues. They run into Kyle, the reporter. Kyle is less than impressed that he ran into them all lovey-dovey. John asks Mary if they should tell the others about them. Mary thinks they should keep things simple. 

Carlos alerts them to the vampire case and they head their separate ways. 

“This isn’t how I saw things going when I pushed over that first domino. Thing is, I’ve had more than a few dances with free will, and fate, but as my dad used to say, ‘Fate is what you make it.’” 

At the crime scene, Lata and Carlos talk with one of the truck drivers. Carlos talks with him and gets the full story, but tells him to stick with the original drug story for others. Lata sees the police box up a Men of Letters box with the initials “RJM'' on it. Mary arrives and asks more about the mysterious box. Lata has been mapping out the bunker and notes that there’s a locker room. She thinks she can trace the initials back to the clubhouse. John’s ex, Betty, arrives in time to ask the driver about our intrepid investigators and look suspicious. 

In the bowels of the clubhouse, Lata gives the others the ultimate home tour. 

They locate the locker room and the locker with the initials “RJM” on it. Very convenient. Mary picks the lock. They find the amulet. John “Sam Winchester is my son and does dumb stuff and takes after me” Winchester holds the amulet. He sees a vision of one of the vampires killing him. He drops the amulet, but not before rune symbols are burned into his palm. Well, John, you’re not a real hunter until you’ve died at least once. 

Lata figures out that the amulet is the Gem of Ursitoare, the Romanian gods of fate. This amulet can tell the future. The group breaks up to find some answers to John’s potential fate. 

Betty visits Millie at the repair shop. She voices her concern about John hanging around people that like to hang around crime scenes. Millie assures her that they’re upstanding citizens, despite their rap sheets. 

Lata and Carlos (with John and Mary right behind them) head out to talk with the lore expert, Diana. Lata laments the fact that Carlos didn’t seem to hit it off with his crush, Anton. Yeah, Carlos, what gives? 

At the lore shop, Diana confirms that what the gem shows, must come to pass. 

Diana explains the connection to the vampires and how the amulet doesn’t necessarily show how you die, but your next fated moment in your life. These vamps, the Il Soarta, want their lost amulet back, and they’re not above bribing lore clerks. Diana! We trusted you! Well, the vamps arrive, and Diana trusts them, but they kill her anyway. Fisticuffs ensue. The big bad vamp finds the amulet and sees his future –and John’s. 

Back at the clubhouse, they decide that it’s too dangerous for John to head out to a vamp hunt when he’s fated to die at the hands of a vampire. Instead, Mary calls his mom for some quick John-sitting duties, and reassures him before she heads out. She WILL kill every last vampire in the area if she has to! 

At the apothecary, the crime scene is taped off and guarded by one highly suspicious Betty. She immediately intercepts Mary before sneaking can commence. Mary tooooootally plays it cool. WHAT? Somebody got MURDERED HERE? Oh, what a world! 

Betty isn’t buying it. She tells Mary that she clocked her at two crime scenes in one day, and it is QUITE suspicious. She expresses concern that John might get hurt. “I would never put John in any kind of danger,” Mary says and - hey. She BELIEVES it, but girl plz. 

Mary scoots behind the building to meet up with Lata and Carlos. She was serving as a distraction for the cops so that Lata and Losie could sneak inside and loot the place for intel. It worked - Carlos and Lata found Diana’s ledger, which will give them a lead on finding the vampires. 

Millie researches in the clubhouse with John, and lets him know about Betty sniffing around. Betty’s worried that John’s backsliding into some of his “old ways” - which presumably involves, idk, punching people on the street and other hooliganisms. Millie DOES express some of her own concern. John’s middle name isn’t, after all, “Healthy Coping Mechanisms.” John insists that he’s FINE. He has heart eyes for Mary, which helps.

Millie tells John to brush aside the fate fixation. “Everyone told me I couldn’t be a mechanic and look at me now.”

“Fate is what you make it,” Millie assures him. (We point and shout at this week’s catch phrase!) And then they settle back into vampire lore. 

Elsewhere, the gang lands at the vampire nest, but it’s empty. They find the heist plans AND a cool new toy - a magic lock pick! 

Carlos whips out some of the paperwork, and they discover that the stolen blueprint from the cold open heist is of the MoL complex. Furthermore, the blueprints reveal a weakness: a THERMAL EXHAUST PORT! I mean, unwarded sewers. Same thing!

John and Millie are still researching when Mary radios them and warns them that the vampirates are on their way. Suddenly, there’s a huge bang and the room shakes. It’s too late for them to escape the clubhouse but they CAN hide! Lata identifies a vault they can lock themselves into. 

John and Millie make a run for it, and the vampires give chase. They lock themselves in the vault just in time, and Millie fixes the electrics to get the lights working. 

The Scooby Gang pulls up to the clubhouse, greeted by vamps. Carlos pulls off his scarf and swings his hair out for Lata. She uncaps a canteen and soaks his hair. “Holy water hair commercial?” Mary asks him. Carlos smiles with confidence, taunts the vampires, and when they try to get bitey he whips his hair around and paints them with holy water, burning them. Carlos THEN takes them out with graceful swings of his blade. Mmmm you know I love to see it!

Millie, meanwhile, gets the lights working. But John’s not too happy about what he finds. It’s….a room swathed in red carpet. 

Mary slices and dices her way through the vampires guarding the clubhouse. And she does it all in TWO INCH HEELS, fellas!

In John’s Death Pit ™, the vampires pound at the vault’s door while Millie frantically tries to find a way to save themselves. John looks at the room fatalistically. There’s nothing they can use to fight except for the extremely unsafe exposed wires. John tosses an idea her way. 

Finally fighting her way past the vamps, Mary arrives to find the vampire already feeding on John. The lead vampire is strong! He’s confident! He’s totally going to murder Mary! But the vampire starts to choke before he can start his impressively acrobatic vampiratical assault. Millie tells Mary that he’s got dead man’s blood in his system. John was already dead when the vampire attacked! 

Mary slices off the vamp’s head and we catch up via flashback. John had proposed that Millie electrocute him, stop his heart, and let the vampire feast on an already-dead John. Then, they just do some quick CPR and bring him back to life! Easy peasy. John thinks that his preview of death was skewed - it didn’t show him the possibility of life beyond that. 

Mary and Millie perform gentle CPR on him, and it looks like it’s going POORLY. They weep over John’s body for several seconds. Like. SEVERAL SECONDS. And then suddenly John gasps and revives. (Hmmmm sus…) But hooray! He’s great! He sits up and Mary immediately deeply kisses him.

GURL LET THE BOY CATCH HIS BREATH.

Mary admits to their relationship, and Lata and Carlos immediately declare victory. For they hath called it.

Later, Anton patches up Carlos, tenderly cleaning his wounds. Awkward flirting happens. Carlos apologizes for never calling Anton. He was scared, but he’s ready for a second date. They KISS! Doves fly away in formation! Balloons ascend! Roses bloom!

For Cuties Being Cute Science:

Mary and John stow the amulet in a glowing lockbox in the clubhouse. They recap their feelings before heading off to the movies for a real date!

At a diner, Betty talks to Kyle. They discuss that suspicious lass, Mary Campbell.  Betty makes it clear that she’s investigating the Scooby Gang FOR John. Kyle is toooootally just interested as a curious journalist. His collaboration with Betty has nothing to do with the Akrida bite visible on the back of his neck. DUN DUN DUN

__

What did the Akrida journalist say to the witness? I just need an A-quote-a:

Office romances can mess up a work dynamic

Loco es mi segundo nombre

I think it might be time to get a clubhouse cat

What can I say? The Campbells know how to have a good time

I did not expect something called hunting to involve so much reading

Bank heisting vampires would make such a fantastic movie

I told your little friend, nothing can stop fate

Hope looks good on you, Campbell

__

 Want to read more? Check out our Recap Archive!

[ukrfeminism]

Social media influencer Andrew Tate will be extradited to the UK after a British police force secured a European arrest warrant for allegations of rape and human trafficking.

Bedfordshire Police said they are working with authorities in Romania as part of an investigation into the 37-year-old and his 35-year-old brother Tristan.

The pair were detained on Tuesday and appeared at the court of appeal in Bucharest where it was ruled they would be extradited following the conclusion of legal proceedings in Romania.

The allegations, which the two brothers “unequivocally deny”, date back to 2012-2015.

Speaking to reporters outside court following the ruling, Andrew Tate told reporters he and his brother are “very innocent men”.

He said: “I want to give absolute credit to Romanian justice for making the correct decision today.

“Unfortunately I don’t think many people in Romania understand, but in the West, in the countries that are owned by the satanists, when you get to a certain level of fame you either put on a dress or you go to jail and I’m happy to make my choice which is jail every single time, my soul is not for sale neither are my principles.

“We’re very innocent men and in time everybody’s going to see that.

“We are excited to finish this judicial process and clear our names.”

The pair were released from police custody following the hearing, their representative said.

Lawyers representing four women who accuse Tate of rape and sexual assault said they wrote to UK police to request his detention over fears he would flee Romania.

In response to the claims made by law firm McCue Jury & Partners, Tate’s spokeswoman said: “We unequivocally deny any accusations that Andrew or Tristan Tate intends to abscond from Romania to evade the judicial proceedings.

“Our clients are fully committed to actively participating in the legal process and defending their reputation.

“We believe this rumour has originated from a popular online influencer who misconstrued a text message from our clients while streaming live. There is simply no truth to it.”

The law firm said the four British accusers were the subject of an investigation by Hertfordshire Constabulary.

The Hertfordshire investigation was closed in 2019.

In response to the court of appeal’s ruling on Tuesday, the Tate brothers’ lawyer Eugen Vidineac said: “We appreciate the Bucharest Court of Appeal’s decision to postpone the extradition of Andrew and Tristan Tate.

“This ruling provides an opportunity for the brothers to participate fully in their defence and for the legal process to proceed in a transparent manner.”

Commenting on the Tate brothers being detained, Matthew Jury, managing partner at McCue Jury & Partners, said: “Today’s news is very welcome as it has been a significant concern to many that Tate would seek to avoid justice in Romania and abroad.

“We are grateful to the British authorities for taking our concerns seriously and issuing an arrest warrant.”

Mr Jury said Andrew Tate had “spread a vast amount of disinformation about the criminal allegations he faces in the UK” since his first arrest in Romania.

The law firm said it welcomed the court of appeal’s decision on Tuesday.

In a separate case, the Tate brothers are charged with rape, human trafficking and forming a criminal gang to sexually exploit women in Romania after being arrested in the country’s capital in December 2022 alongside two Romanian women.

All four deny the allegations.

[usafphantom2]

NATO Fighters Scrambled As Russian Drone Violates Romanian Airspace

German and Romanian fighters were sent up to investigate the Russian drone, which crashed in Romanian territory.

Thomas NewdickPUBLISHED Dec 14, 2023 3:03 PM EST

05 December 2023, Romania, Constanta: A German Eurofighter takes off from Mihail Kogalniceanu airfield near Constanta (Romania). The German Air Force is currently supporting NATO member Romania with Eurofighter combat aircraft and a defense system against small unmanned aerial vehicles in the NATO program "Enhanced Air Policing South". The Bundeswehr contingent consists of a total of 150 soldiers.

Photo: Bernd von Jutrczenka/dpa (Photo by Bernd von Jutrczenka/picture alliance via Getty Images

Russian drones targeting Ukraine entered NATO airspace over Romania during the night, leading to the scramble of NATO fighters deployed in that country. The Romanian Ministry of Defense has confirmed that at least one of those drones exploded in its territory, although it was not shot down. Meanwhile, Romania has summoned Russia’s envoy over what is the latest in a series of drone violations of its airspace.

According to a report from the German Press Agency (dpa), Luftwaffe Eurofighters scrambled from their Romanian base in the night to respond to the airspace violation. The Russian drones “were identified by the German crews, including by visual contact, without an order from NATO to shoot them down,” dpa reports.

The German Luftwaffe is currently involved in a rotational deployment to the Romanian 57th Air Base, Mihail Kogălniceanu, near Constanța, on the Black Sea. From here, the four German Eurofighters support the Romanian Air Force in protecting NATO’s southeastern flank including the busy airspace over the Black Sea.

A German soldier walks past a German Eurofighter at the 57th Air Base near Constanta on December 5, 2023. Photo by Bernd von Jutrczenka/picture alliance via Getty Images

Also involved in the incident were Romanian Air Force F-16s, operating from the 86th Air Base at Fetești, home to a new training center that will also teach Ukrainian Viper pilots. F-16s now form the backbone of the Romanian combat fleet, following the retirement of the MiG-21 LanceR. Romania received 17 second-hand F-16s from Portuguese stocks and has now begun to receive the first of 32 more from Norway.

A Romanian Air Force F-16 prepares to receive fuel from a KC-135 Stratotanker from the 100th Air Refueling Wing, U.S. Air Force, over Romania, in September 2018. U.S. Air Force photo by Tech. Sgt. Emerson Nuñez

The NATO Combined Air Operations Center reportedly began tracking the drone strike at 8:42 GMT yesterday, with the order for an ‘Alpha scramble’ following at 9:02 GMT. An ‘Alpha scramble’ involves a jet — or more usually two — armed with live air-to-air weapons being sent to investigate an unidentified or potentially hostile threat. The fighters were airborne at 9:11 GMT in an incident that NATO considered “significant,” according to dpa.

The dpa report suggests that Russia launched “up to 70” Iranian-designed Shahed-136 one-way attack drones against Ukrainian targets overnight.

A Russian-operated Shahed-136 one-way attack drone. Photo by SERGEI SUPINSKY/AFP via Getty Images

The Ukrainian Air Force claims that 41 of 42 drones launched by Russia were shot down during the night, most of them over the Odesa region that borders Romania.

Regardless of the disparity in figures, one of those drones appears to have come down on Romanian territory, according to the Romanian Ministry of Defense. This particular drone was tracked by Romanian air defense radar, according to the Romanian Ministry of Defense.

Romania’s military radar network “indicated a possible unauthorized entry into national airspace, with a signal detected at low altitude en route to Grindu.” The town of Grindu, in the county of Tulcea, on the Danube delta, is around four miles from the Ukrainian border.

The ministry confirmed that the “uncontrolled crash of a drone used in the attack against the Ukrainian port infrastructure” left a five-foot-deep crater in an uninhabited area about 2.5 miles outside of Grindu.

“Measures were taken to secure the area and the competent authorities were notified to collect evidence and conduct investigations, according to the procedures in force,” the Romanian Ministry of Defense added.

Since this summer, when it walked away from a deal that aimed to protect grain exports through the Black Sea, Moscow has embarked on a campaign to attack Ukrainian ports and other facilities on the Danube, with extensive use of drones.

The Ukrainian Danube Shipping Company building shows damage caused by the Russian drone attack on the port infrastructure of Izmail situated on the Danube River Wednesday night, August 2, 2023, in Izmail, Odesa region, southern Ukraine. Yulii Zozulia/Ukrinform/Future Publishing via Getty Images

This is not the first incident in which Russian drones flying from the Ukrainian side of the border have violated Romanian airspace. Drone wreckage was found in Romania, close to the border with Ukraine, in September and October, although there is no evidence that the NATO country was deliberately targeted.

In the September incident, Romanian officials said that they had discovered parts of a drone “similar to those used by the Russian Armed Forces,” and took the matter to the head of Russia’s diplomatic mission to Romania.

The head of the Russian diplomatic mission has now again been summoned to discuss the latest incident, which the Romanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs described as a “new violation of Romania’s airspace, contrary to international law.”

The Romanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said it condemned Moscow’s “repeated attacks” and that it is now involved in talks with “NATO allies on developments at the Romanian-Ukrainian border, including today’s incident.”

An alliance spokesperson, Dylan White, told The War Zone that “NATO has no information indicating any intentional attack by Russia against allies. We strongly condemn Russian attacks against civilian infrastructure in Ukraine and along the Danube. We continue to monitor the situation, and remain in close contact with the Romanian authorities.”

Already, Romania has taken measures to protect the population near the border with Ukraine, including constructing air-raid shelters in the eastern Romanian village of Plauru.

Romanian Army soldiers build a bomb shelter in the village of Plauru, on the Danube Delta. Romania, on September 12, 2023. Photo by MIHAI BARBU/AFP via Getty Images

In the wake of the latest incident, the Romanian Ministry of Defense says that its forces “will continue to conduct airspace monitoring and surveillance missions in the areas where risks may arise as a result of these situations.”

The incident, and others like it, could also increase momentum behind the modernization of Romanian air defenses, especially its fighter fleet. Although it continues to receive F-16s, a possible F-35 purchase is also looking increasingly likely.

What’s unclear, at this point, is how NATO might respond to future airspace violations of this kind. On this occasion, it seems there was no order given to shoot down the drone after it entered Romanian airspace. This may well indicate that it was judged not to present a significant threat. But a drone of this kind — with an integral warhead — would attain an entirely new level of threat if it were to be headed toward a population center.

In that kind of scenario, it would not be surprising if attempts were made to bring down the drone, although that’s easier said than done, even with a missile and cannon-armed fighter. Romania also operates Patriot air defense missile batteries, which could also be used to down drones. Interestingly, last month saw training take place at the Capu Midia firing range on the Black Sea, in which Patriot batteries practiced engaging small drones.

A drone is launched towards the Black Sea to be intercepted and destroyed by a Patriot air defense system during a drill at the Capu Midia firing range next to the Black Sea on November 15, 2023. Photo by DANIEL MIHAILESCU/AFP via Getty Images

At the same time, Romania has expanded a no-fly zone along a section of the border with Ukraine to up to 20 miles inside Romania and to a height of 4,000 feet. Introduced in mid-September, this was intended as a deterrent against Russian drones from deliberately entering Romanian airspace to reach enemy targets.

There have been previous encounters between NATO and Russian crewed aircraft and drones around the Black Sea in recent months.

In March this year, a Russian Su-27 Flanker fighter brought down a U.S. MQ-9 Reaper surveillance drone over the Black Sea. A video released by the Pentagon soon after seems to confirm that one of the Su-27s struck the drone’s propeller, although it remains unclear to what degree that action was deliberate or a misjudgment. Nevertheless, the Flanker pilot was awarded a medal for their actions.

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In an incident in September 2022, the pilot of a Russian Su-27 fired at least one, possibly two missiles in the vicinity of a U.K. Royal Air Force RC-135W Rivet Joint surveillance aircraft over the Black Sea. The missile launch was first explained by Russia as a “technical malfunction,” although leaked classified materials from the U.S. Department of Defense later suggested that the Flanker pilot actually opened fire deliberately after he misunderstood an order.

The violations of NATO airspace by Russian drones, while almost certainly accidental, further reflect the potential for misunderstanding and dangerous escalation that exists in the Black Sea region, where NATO and Russian forces operate in close proximity.

Contact the author: thomas@thedrive.com

@GuyPlopski via X

[beardedmrbean]

Aug. 23 (UPI) -- Romanian authorities placed embattled Internet influencer Andrew Tate under house arrest and his brother Tristan Tate under "special judicial control" as new charges emerged against them, including sex with a minor and trafficking underage persons.

The brothers appeared in a Romanian court Thursday afternoon as prosecutors said they are investigating the trafficking and illegal sex allegations. The brothers were two of six people arrested, according to Romania's agency in charge of investigating organized crime.

Authorities said the charges include allegations by 35 victims, including one as young as 15. Andrew Tate angrily refuted the charges in front of reporters on Thursday, calling the allegations "lies."

In the new allegations, the women said they were wooed into making pornography for the suspects which generated nearly $3 million.

Prosecutors had sought for the Tate brothers to be held in custody for 30 days and their representative Mateea Petrescu praised the judge's decision for lesser measures.

"The Tates salute the decision and firmly deny all allegations leveled against them, emphasizing that the accusations are baseless and unsupported by substantial evidence," Petrescu said.

Andrew Tate told reporters that the situation was a "set-up."

"It is absolutely disgusting. Thirty of those girls say we have done nothing wrong. Two are the mothers of our children. Two have never been here to Romania," he said.

Andrew Tate, however, refused to answer questions about charges of having sex with the 15-year-old victim, eventually ending the press conference without explanation.

The Tate brothers were already facing charges from a 2023 indictment with two Romanian females on human trafficking, rape and sexual exploitation allegations.

Tate has gained millions of followers on social media for his so-called "ultra-masculine lifestyle" that some have accused as misogynistic and abusive of women.

Romanian police raided four homes on Wednesday in connection with the new investigation.

[mariacallous]

Moldovans went to the polls on 20 October to elect their next president and to enshrine in the country’s constitution their desire to join the European Union. Both ballots, but in particular the constitutional referendum, attracted considerable pro-Kremlin disinformation and manipulation.

The result of the constitutional vote(opens in a new tab) – with 50.38 per cent in favour and 49.62 per cent against, a difference of just 11,400 – would suggest that Moldovans are deeply divided on the question whether their country should one day join the EU. And indeed, this is the theme the information manipulators seized to push their own narratives about Moldova and the EU.

Still, a clear majority of Moldovans has voiced support for European integration consistently over last few years and polling(opens in a new tab) ahead of the vote had shown more than 60 percent favouring the country’s EU path. The underwhelming result as well as countless reports(opens in a new tab) of Russian hybrid interference in the election suggest that with this referendum more than a usual protest vote against the government might have been at play.

A ‘creeping coup’ fails to deliver

Pro-Kremlin propaganda was in high gear ahead of the vote, seeking to sway voters. In its wake, it went into overdrive, seeking to paint the outcome as a ‘defeat’ for incumbent President Maia Sandu and her pro-EU political allies and the vote as marred by voter suppression and fraud.

The most popular narrative pushed by outlets across German, French, English, and Romanian languages was that President Sandu’s administration had engaged in pervasive electoral fraud to swing the vote its way. It had allegedly employed various nefarious schemes to suppress the will of the people and carry out what RT in German described as a ‘creeping coup d’état towards a one-party state(opens in a new tab)’. This is a version of the classic Kremlin narrative ‘the Elite vs. the People’.

Pravda in English language reported(opens in a new tab) claims by the opposition politician Alexei Lungu that masked, armed police broke into the office of the Victory bloc in Balti and searched the homes of its employees in order to intimidate them.

The leader of the Victory bloc Ilan Shor, oligarch fugitive in Moscow, meanwhile, said that the blocking of opposition Telegram channels by the authorities in Moldova ‘put an end to democracy(opens in a new tab), replacing it with a dictatorship’.

Domestic outlets in Russia asserted that the Sandu administration had banned a number of Russian-controlled outlets(opens in a new tab) to create a ‘sterile’ information environment (something Russian readers would be all too familiar with).

So why, one may ask, did the vote not go the government’s way?

Kremlin convenes its forces… three clusters

Based on data analysis during the election campaign, three distinct clusters of activity were identified within the country’s information space. The first cluster consisted of accounts that had previously engaged in disinformation and manipulation activities in Ukraine. These accounts shifted their focus toward Moldovan audiences, adapting narratives originally developed for disinformation attacks against Ukraine to fit the Moldovan context (degrading people, calling them corrupt, misfit etc.). Some of the channels within this cluster were tied to the global FIMI campaign known as Portal Kombat(opens in a new tab).

The second cluster was formed by a network of Moldovan accounts, which had behavioral links to foreign actors. These accounts functioned as proxies for the first cluster, amplifying similar narratives within Moldova’s domestic information landscape. The central themes promoted by both clusters all edged(opens in a new tab) that ‘Moldova might attack Transnistria’ if the EU referendum or President Sandu’s candidacy were approved, that ‘Moldova could be dragged into the conflict in Ukraine’, and that ‘Moldova might collaborate with Ukraine in Africa to target Russian deployments in the region’. Classic scaremongering to confuse voters.

The third cluster was made up of domestic channels that, although not directly linked to known manipulators, spread similar narratives. This highlights the blurred lines within the Moldovan media ecosystem, where foreign networks are deeply intertwined with domestic channels. This is a particular sneaky tactic as foreign actors can infiltrate mainstream media outlets.

…and the coordination efforts show flooding of the space

Furthermore, Russia-based cyber-hacktivist groups, which had previously engaged in disinformation efforts during the Spanish and Polish elections, claimed responsibility for attacks on Moldovan infrastructure during this period. A common narrative pushed by all three clusters was the allegation of election fraud(opens in a new tab), a claim that accelerated as election day drew near.

Compared to other elections monitored in the past, the level of foreign manipulative activity in Moldova was notably high. Online manipulation appears to be closely coordinated with offline actions. The tactics included fabricating false letters(opens in a new tab), documents, images, and videos(opens in a new tab), using AI-generated voices to impersonate President Sandu and creating a chatbot(opens in a new tab) offering money to promote anti-EU content.

These efforts did not rely on sophisticated techniques or large-scale campaigns. Instead of focusing on single, high-profile events, the manipulators seems to go for repeated, high-frequency actions aimed at generating a cumulative effect to flood the information space.

Commenting on results

Preliminary results on Sunday 20 October evening suggested the vote may have gone against Sandu and the pro-EU forces so pro-Kremlin outlets gleefully wrote about the President’s ‘complete failure(opens in a new tab)’. When the tide turned and a slim victory for the pro-EU side emerged, these outlets simply doubled down and stuck to their narrative of failure and disgrace.

RT [Russia Today] in German summed it up(opens in a new tab), headlining “Pro-European President disgraces herself – Citizens don’t want EU”. According to the piece, this was ‘the dirtiest election in the short history of the Republic of Moldova. Repression, bans, and Western interference have reached an unprecedented level. And yet: Pro-European President Sandu has disgraced herself with her plan to lead the country triumphantly into the EU’.

Russian, German and English language as well as Russia-aligned Moldovan outlets(opens in a new tab) all repeated allegations of widespread electoral fraud. They in particular focused on the Moldovan diaspora in Russia, which they claimed had been denied its right to vote because Moldova only opened two polling stations(opens in a new tab). This was framed as evidence of how the vote was rigged(opens in a new tab) to favour the diaspora in Western Europe and the US.

On a more serious note, EU High Representative Josep Borrell welcomed the outcome(opens in a new tab) on Tuesday: ‘The citizens of the Republic of Moldova made a historic choice to anchor their future within the European Union, despite massive interference and a hybrid campaign by Russia and its proxies to undermine the democratic vote in Moldova. This vote reflects their aspirations for a peaceful, independent, stable, democratic, and prosperous Moldova’.

Unprecedented Russian interference was highlighted also by US State Secretary Blinken who stated(opens in a new tab) that “Russia did everything in its power to disrupt the election and referendum to undermine Moldova’s democracy, including through illicit financing and vote buying, disinformation, and malicious cyber activities”.

While Russia rejected(opens in a new tab) EU accusations of interference in Moldovan elections, its fingerprints and money transfers remain all over the referendum results.

To be continued…

EUvsDisinfo has tracked the pro-Kremlin disinformation in the run-up and immediate aftermath of Sunday 20 October referendum and election. We will continue doing so as the country gears up to the second round of the presidential election on 3 November.