#Russian meddling

[mumbledgrumbles]

Don't throw your vote away for Jill Stein who has zero chance of becoming president and has thrown Green Party resources in the garbage every four years.

What has Jill Stein's Green Party done for your local community (the one place third parties could actually make a difference, if they are serious)?

The Green Party in the US, unfortunately, is not serious.

[politicalantibody]

My distrust of Russians meddling in our democratic process has definitely reached a middle.

[tachiharastanacc]

Tachihara losing his brother and not understanding what he was feeling or how to deal with it since he was so young (5). And as he gets older, he starts to wonder if he really missed his brother or he missed the idea of having a brother.

He assumes that because he’s grown since then and it feels so distant that he could handle it if it were to happen now. Maybe that’s because he’s killed people of his own. But he never really wants to dwell on it.

Turns out. It’s not. It hurts just as much, but now he blames himself as well. Why wasn’t he there? Why didn’t he stop Fukuchi when he had the chance? If he’d just asked for help, this all could’ve been avoided.

He’s always been a loner to some extent, never good at processing feelings, always wanting to belong but feeling like he was an outsider.

It’s not until they’re all gone that he realizes how much emptier he feels without them.

Shunzen may have been his brother by blood, but as much as he doesn’t wanna face it. Tachihara barely remembers him.

He remembers them. He spent the last 6 years being raised by them. They always encouraged him, supported him, even when the government and fate itself were trying to control them. And yet.

He wasn’t there.

[lookninjas]

ABOUT FUCKING TIME

[aperfectphantom]

I know this is just Eurovision but I guess it’s important to mention it’s not really a shock how much europe sucks up to israel. Like it was surprising to me in the moment (I felt that their song was average) but when you think about it… Europe did everything for israel. Like it wasn’t israel on their own taking palestine and fucking up those existing communities and stealing their land. And it’s still not just israel committing horrible crimes against Palestinians now. Europe has always had involvement in the Middle East and especially palestine. Israel would not be a thing without them. And they continue to give israel support so they can continue all this violence against Palestinians. Europe does not see palestine like they see Ukraine. They are so far removed from the horrors that Middle Eastern people experience. They speak about peace and then fund and supply israel with anything they need. Not to mention a lot of Israelis are originally European. And this doesn’t just apply to Eurovision, but also any competition or event israel is invited to. Everyone was so quick to boycott Russia from everything… surely israel should get the same treatment.

[mr-moonfucker]

may aha look upon yer wretched soul

say "she's calling me" in my asks for 1-3 3 star propagation blessing(s)

or

say "nah id stay awake" for 1 weighted curio

[newshare24]

Romania scraps presidential election after alleged Russian meddling

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter. Romania’s constitutional court has cancelled a presidential election scheduled for Sunday after allegations that Russia used TikTok to promote the leading candidate. The decision to scrap Sunday’s run-off and annul the first-round victory of Călin Georgescu, who has…

[gurutrends]

Pro-EU leader wins Moldova election despite alleged Russian meddling

Moldova’s pro-EU President Maia Sandu has claimed a second term after a tense election run-off seen as a choice between Europe and Russia. The Moldovan Central Electoral Commission confirmed Sandu’s victory on Monday morning. With most votes counted Sandu had won 55%, and in a late-night speech on Sunday she promised to be president for all Moldovans. Her rival Alexandr Stoianoglo, who was backed…

[kjzx]

Hmm I can't place my finger on it but something about the slitherio starting screen feels new

[kenrakenokwaho]

Romania won, today, in the hybrid war launched by Russia during presidential elections. The Constitutional Court annulled the first round, and the process, which was vitiated from the very beginning, will be restarted from step one.

Everything after the president in office, Klaus Iohannis, listened to the people, and declassified all the documents about Călin Georgescu's Russian-supported campaign with shady financing and TikTok schemes.

The risk of having a pro-Russian president was too high to let things slide. We couldn't be another victim of Putin's meddling. The people who voted for Călin Georgescu scream that it's unfair, that their choice is being overlooked, but they forget that they aren't the majority. They are 2 million out of 19. Their self-proclaimed "Apostle" isn't what he says he is.

If the national institutions – having information on him from all the secret services – took CG seriously, we wouldn’t have reached this point.

The Sun will shine on us again!

[dontmean2bepoliticalbut]

On 7/31/2019 Trump has a private meeting with Putin. On 8/3/2019, just 3 days after his private meeting with Putin, Trump issues a request for a list of top US spies. By 2021 the CIA reports an unusually high number of their agents are being captured and/or being murdered. During the search executed at Mar A Lago the FBI find more documents with lists of U.S. informants on them.

A Timeline

• FBI wiretapped Russian gambling ring headquartered at Trump Tower for two years - March 21, 2017

• Trump revealed highly classified information to Russian foreign minister and ambassador - May 15, 2017

• Trump, Putin Meet For 2 Hours In Helsinki - July 16, 2018

• Rand Paul Goes To Russia And Delivers Letter For Trump, Marking Our Era Of Irony - August 9, 2018

• Following the Money: Trump and Russia-Linked Transactions From the Campaign to the Presidential Inauguration - December 17, 2018

• The US extracted a top spy from Russia after Trump revealed classified information to the Russians in an Oval Office meeting - September 10, 2019

• Trump’s Loose Lips Force US to Extract Spy From Kremlin - September 10, 2019

• Was Mar-a-Lago Trespasser a Tourist or a Spy? A Judge Said Her Story Didn’t Hold Up. - November 25, 2019

• Trump downplays massive cyber hack on government after Pompeo links attack to Russia - December 19, 2020

• Russia has been cultivating Trump as an asset for 40 years, former KGB spy says - January 29, 2021

• There was Trump-Russia collusion — and Trump pardoned the colluder - April 17, 2021

• Longtime GOP operatives charged with funneling Russian national’s money to Trump, RNC - September 20, 2021

• Captured, Killed or Compromised: C.I.A. Admits to Losing Dozens of Informants - October 5, 2021

• Files Seized From Trump Are Part of Espionage Act Inquiry - August 12, 2022

• Ex-Clinton aide implies 'President of France' file found at Trump's home during Mar-a-Lago raid could be valuable to Putin as 'kompromat' - August 13, 2022

• Inventing Anna: The tale of a fake heiress, Mar-a-Lago, and an FBI investigation - August 22, 2022

• Russians used a US firm to funnel funds to GOP in 2018. Dems say the FEC let them get away with it - October 30, 2022

• Trump makes shocking comments about trusting Putin over US 'intelligence lowlifes' - January 31, 2023

• Russia's Prigozhin admits links to what US says was election meddling troll farm - February 14, 2023

• GOP operative sentenced to 18 months for funneling Russian money to Trump- February 17, 2023

• Trump allegedly discussed US nuclear subs with foreign national after leaving White House: Sources - October 5, 2023

• 'So appalled': What witnesses told special counsel about Trump's handling of classified info while still president - April 24, 2024

🤔🤔🤔

[mapsontheweb]

Elections to watch in 2025 in Europe

2025 sees critical elections across Europe. Germany's snap election on February 23 follows Olaf Scholz's no-confidence vote, with the CDU/CSU leading and Friedrich Merz a likely chancellor. The possible rise of the far-right AfD will also be closely watched. Romania prepares for a re-run of its annulled presidential election amid Russian meddling fears, while Poland’s May elections pit Donald Tusk’s government against PiS opposition. Further east, Belarus heads into another tightly controlled election under Alexander Lukashenko, while Moldova’s parliamentary elections will decide its EU path amid Russian interference. 

The Czech parliamentary elections next year are likely to be won by Andrej Babiš, who recently made alliances with the Kremlin's right-wing friends in Hungary and Austria. Norway’s September polls may bring a far-right surge against the centrist government. Liechtenstein’s election might feel secondary, but it could elect its first female head of state. The Balkans also faces political tensions. Albania's May elections show a polarised socialist-democratic contest, while Croatia's Zoran Milanović is seeking re-election in the second round with populist policies. 

Kosovo’s February vote tests PM Albin Kurti’s Self-Determination Movement amid Serbian minority issues. The Irish presidential election in November marks the end of the 14-year term of office of Michael D. Higgins, who has reached the maximum permitted number of two terms. The times they are a-changin’. From populism to EU alignment, Europe’s 2025 elections promise to shape its political landscape. Stay tuned for updates!

by europe.magazine/instagram

[iamthetruenhaz]

Russia's prep work

I originally wrote this as a reply to a reddit comment about the prep work Putin's Russia has done to reconquer Eastern Europe (and Central Asia) and soften up the West in order to "reclaim" the "lost" global power status the USSR had.

Putin* has been prepping his "reconquering" of Eastern Europe and Central Asia since he stepped into office. He took on an openly anti-western course since the Munich speech in 2007. He probably saw American global dominance weakening following Afghanistan and Iraq and because Russia had stabilised after the 90s, he thought it was time to act.

First he paved the way with the Chechen war where he "won" and got to jump on the War on terror bandwagon and use Islamic terrorism as a boogeyman for his own imperialistic purpose to rile up Russians against external threats.

Then he invaded Georgia to probe the soil and see how the west would react. They mostly ignored him so he went on to meddle in Eastern European politics, coerce Ukraine for gas and fund right-wing parties all across Europe (at the time mostly to drive a wedge between Eastern and Western Europe and suck EE countries back into Russian orbit) while pumping anti-western sentiment and Soviet nostalgia at home.

He saw that the west was disunited because of the US-UK-EU split following the wars in Iraq, Libya and Syria. He capitalized on that in several ways using both the wars and the refugee crisis that followed. One, to increase racist and nationalist propaganda and stir up hatred against "the liberal gay western cabal" and the resulting Euroscepticism. Two, to prop up the "proper" traditionalist Russia as an alternative. Three, to paint Eastern European countries as a puppet of the US liberals who were "ackschually" nazis in disguise, which was easy when the West was divided between trying to coax them into the EU and leaving them as a buffer-zone backwater. The brightest example of the latter was in late 2021 when Lukashenko started dumping Middle Eastern migrants on the Polish border so the Poles could be painted as a racist, white supremacist state. Unlike, you know, Belarus (really Russia) which weaponized the migrants.

Then he failed in Ukraine when his puppet's sharp turn away from a planned EU accession path caused the Euromaidan revolts. Pro-Russian protesters soon spawned, staging provications (my own country had a wave of protests and pro-russian counter-protests back then and I remember neonazis and other paid protesters being at the forefronts). Russian media started hurling accusations of nazism against pro-western protesters.

All of a sudden, it's like a switch was flipped in Russian society. Decommunization was out the window. In 2015, Stalin was chosen as the most influential figure in *world* history by Russians. All the anti-Western, Russian irredentist, traditionalist, racist and homophobic sentiments coalesced into one, directed against the "evil nazi gay jewish West". Putin started openly provoking the West with displays of military force, close flybys in territorial waters, playing Cuban missile crisis in Kaliningrad. All to rack up the atmosphere of an imminent Cold War II and maybe even WWIII where a "wronged", "humiliated" Russia would finally make the West pay. The WWII victory celebrations also took on the appearance of a war cult, with jingoistic slogans like "we can do it again", "to Berlin" and "we're coming for the German women" displayed on every 9th May parade. Eastern European countries, especially the Baltics and Poland, noticed and tried to raise alarm, but were mostly told to keep their paranoia down and ignored.

In the last decade, he used his military and propaganda machine (what we call "hybrid warfare") to create the impression of the following: (1) The West is imperialist (and is being hypocritical about it), waging pointless bloody wars in the Middle East; (2) The West is weak in those wars, causing Russia to step in like in Syria and deal with the issue "properly"; (3) Western democracies are weak in dealing with "barbaric" refugees because they're too greedy not to let them in but too soft to throw the bad apples out (this was used to boost nationalism and Euroscepticism).

By those means, Russian propaganda managed to manipulate both anti-imperialist and nationalist groups within the West as well as in Russia and Eastern Europe and pave the way for its "just war" of "reconquering" Eastern Europe. In the West, the image of Eastern Europe was molded as either "poor backwards savages we're better off without" (for nationalists), "paranoid silly yokels crying wolf about Russia who is now playing nice" (for moderates), "ingrates not worth defending so we'll pull out" (for Trump-like US conservatives) or "backwards homophobic barbarians we don't want here because they'll ruin our utopia" (for progressivists). In Russia, they were portrayed as "lost property", accused them of being "taken over by nazis" anytime they tried to acknowledge any of the repressions suffered from USSR, and "unconscious puppets of the West" and routinely threatened with "annexation in 3 days" whenever they "misbehaved" by taking a stance against Russia's politics, whether past or current. Finally, in Eastern European countries themselves, Russia tried to ruin the image of the liberal West by portraying them as "the real fascists", "liberalism gone so far it circled back to fascism" and to prop up its own image as the "savior from debauchery upholding the good ols ways".

Also worth noting that Putin was all too eager to intervene in any country that tried to reject Russian dominance or even its own pro-Russian dictatorship. He was ready to support Belarus in 2020 and intervened in Kazakhstan in 2022 just a month before the invasion of Ukraine.

So yeah, it was quite the prep work. All to ensure that when he went on his imperialistic crusade in EE, people at home and in the West and even in Eastern Europe itself would applaud him, failing that be indifferent, failing THAT remain unheard.

* by "Putin" I don't necessarily mean just him, but the lobby behind him as well.