#Russian state sector

[afloweroutofstone]

Yassin al-Haj Saleh, "The Liquid Imperialism That Engulfed Syria," Commons, December 18, 2023:

Syria is a country of only 71,498 square miles in area, with a population of less than 24 million, and yet two global superpowers (the United States and the Russian Federation) and three of the largest regional powers (Iran, Turkey and Israel) are present on its territory. Israel has occupied the Syrian Golan Heights since 1967, and carries out almost nonstop incursions into Syrian air space today. In centuries past, prior to the heyday of European and Russian imperialism, Iran and Turkey were empires. While it is debatable whether they still qualify as imperial powers, they have never let go of their regional imperial ambitions. One way to understand them, regionally, is as “subimperial”: expansionist and interventionist, including militarily, in neighboring countries.

The U.S. and Russia have well-known histories of expansion and domination of peoples and territories. Imperialism was key to the very formation of both nations. But while Russia’s “manifest destiny” had been, for centuries, to expand into neighboring areas in Central Asia and Eastern Europe, it was in Syria that Moscow established its first overseas outpost. I will return to this crucial fact later.

In Syria, multiple imperial and subimperial powers have poured into one small country — some of them to protect a murderous regime, all of them annihilating any independent political aspirations among its people, dividing up sectors of Syrian society among themselves and their satellites, and denying Syrians the promise of a different future.

This unique situation was made possible by a combination of internal as well as international structures and dynamics involving five key powers — the U.S., Russia, Iran, Turkey and Israel...

One slogan of the recent protests that erupted in the southern city of Sweida on Aug. 20, 2023, speaks directly to the imperial-colonial complex that controls Syria:

["]We want the seaport, we want the land (the oil, in another formula) and we want the airport returned to us!["]

The seaport is Tartus, which, as mentioned, has been leased to Russia. The land is divided by the five occupying powers. And Damascus International Airport has, for several years now, been widely perceived to be under de facto Iranian control. The protestors in Sweida are thus drawing a connection between their economic hardships and the colonial relations between the regime and its Russian and Iranian protectors. In the version of the slogan that refers to oil, the implication is that it has been usurped by another imperial power: the U.S...

Lenin’s argument that imperialism represents “the highest stage of capitalism” has led many to think of imperialism as embodied in a very few capitalist powers. By this logic, there has been only one imperialism since World War II: Western imperialism, with the U.S. as its center and NATO as its military arm. The Soviet Union was not generally seen by those on the left as imperialist: not following World War II, nor after it invaded Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968, nor even after it invaded Afghanistan in 1979. Similarly, Putin’s Russia has not generally been understood as imperialist, even after the annexation of Crimea in 2014 and the intervention in Syria in 2015. For much of the so-called anti-imperialist left, not even the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 was enough.

This conception of imperialism must be challenged. The case of Syria requires a paradigm shift in the understanding of imperialism and the theorizing of new practices and phenomena pertaining to it.

Ultranationalism, expansion, dismissal of international law, exceptionalism, imperial imaginaries — these are characteristics of many powers in the age of the war on terror. With “terror” identified as the principal political evil globally, any state that joins in this alleged war can gain international legitimacy — even those engaged in war crimes and murder on an industrial scale. This has dealt massive blows to the rule of law both locally and internationally. It has contributed to a securitized politics, it has promoted thuggery among political elites and has weakened democracy and popular movements everywhere. Imperialism has permeated the practices of power in many countries, among which Syria is arguably the most unfortunate, with no fewer than five expansionist powers on its territory.

The concept of liquid imperialism is an attempt to capture the fact that five different powers have penetrated one small country. But it also speaks to the lack of solidity or coherence in these powers’ strategies, practices, visions and commitments. Unlike the imperial projects of the past, in Syria there is no “civilizing mission.” Natural resources are not a primary motive (though the intervening states have seized whatever they can get their hands on, from oil and phosphates to seaports and airports, to water and real estate). Rather, this is a scramble to control the future of the country.

There is also a liquid aspect in the relations among the five colonial powers. In Syria, we have two Russias — one of them is called the U.S. On a rhetorical level (especially at the beginning of the uprising), Moscow and Washington seemed to be on opposite sides: The Kremlin stood by Assad and the White House denounced him. Yet operationally, Russia and the U.S. were effectively on the same side — especially after the Islamic State came into the picture and became the central focus of U.S. strategy in Syria. From that point forward, Moscow and Washington were on the same page: The two powers closely coordinated “deconfliction” and their military personnel were on the phone to each other on a daily basis to avoid planes flying in the same location at the same altitude and to ensure airstrikes didn’t hit one another’s “friendlies.” For all the bluster about Washington wanting “regime change” in Syria, the exact opposite was the case. The researcher Michael Karadjis has demonstrated that U.S. policy in Syria was decidedly one of “regime preservation.”

[cumbunnywitch]

I've seen at least one, but posts saying not to blame the people who didn't vote for Harris because whatever are fully in the wrong and they always will be.

You chose moral high grounding and purity culture over the possibility that our protests would work. You chose "she leaned too right in her campaign" over "Trump and the people who want to puppeteer him are going to get a lot of people killed." You chose the democrats being idiots over the republicans want a racist rapist.

You didn't choose? No, you had a choice. You used yours. If you chose not to vote because you wanted to use your non-vote as a voice to show the democrats that they have to win your vote, you're still going to get your face eaten by the leopards. They aren't going to hear you anyway.

Protests work on the left side of our shit-ass two party system because they at least pretend to care.

Here's just, off the top of my head, the things you decided were less important than telling the democratic party "No you have to be good enough":

Student Loan Forgiveness or Relief

Healthcare

Trans Rights

LGBTQIA Safety

Abortion rights

Palestine/Gaza

Ukraine

Industry Regulation(notice all those recalls on food lately?)

Cost of Living

Police Reform

Taxes

There's no such thing as a single-issue voter, not anymore. The right is diametrically opposed to making any of the above better for anyone, whether or not they voted for that shitstain, unless you're very rich, and very white, and a very straight man.

Honestly, if you voted for Jill Stein, at least you fucking voted. Her numbers won her absolutely nothing but at least you voted.

But no. "Don't vote for Harris because she's not good enough! She's running a campaign to secure moderate republicans!" Yea no fucking shit. That's what they've been doing for the last forever. Yea, it still sucks. But most moderate liberals who actually vote still struggle with that list up there. There's literally a democrat trans woman who just got voted in who wants to support Israel's genocidal campaign of murdering every Palestinian.

And you know what? If she sees that line, she might actually stop and think and move a little bit over to my perspective. Every conservative sees that line and immediately thinks "Yea kill the fuckin' brown people!" because they don't consider them fucking people.

If you didn't vote because you saw people saying Harris wasn't leftist enough, not liberal enough, she was a former prosecutor or the democrats haven't done enough for you in the last 4 years, you fell for the Russian psyop. You fell for the propaganda.

Does it suck that Harris wanted to court the swing states and their moderately conservative voting base over to vote for the first woman president? Yea, it's been a shitty idea for decades and they've been doing it for as long as I've been voting. Obama was the center-ist centerist ever, and he still got healthcare reform passed. He also drone striked a lot of people and gave banks billions of dollars when the financial sector faceplanted after trying to balance on a pin for the longest time.

I was gonna add a read-more or chop this up better but no. You get to read the whole thing. If you didn't vote, or you voted for trump, I want you gone. Unfollow me, block me, because you clearly either don't care enough to prevent our slide into authoritarianism and a fixed court for the next 60 years, or you actively hate me.

[gusty-wind]

INTERVIEW OF KASH PATEL ABOUT THE FBI'S TREASON AGAINST PRESIDENT TRUMP THE RUSSIAGATE!

Listen to Kash Patel eloquently explain exactly how the FBI was framing Trump for treason in the Russia Gate scandal. You'd be hard-pressed to find someone more knowledgeable about the inner workings of the FBI crime scene than Kash. They were duping the world into believing Trump was a Russian asset when it was Clinton and Obama who were actually funding and organizing the scheme from the shadows. But they left a money trail. The upper echelon of the FBI was acting as a hand of the deep state and usurping the will of the people. This must all be exposed and we the people want justice! Kash knows exactly where the bodies are buried. In-Depth Clips here:

1: "The FBI met with Igor Denchenko…for three years while he was a confidential human source for the FBI. They could have been asking all these questions. But as I've said from the beginning the FBI is smart enough to know questions they don't want answers to because they didn't want their investigation to be shut down. And that's what they did. They struck page Comey All those people failed on purpose to answer to set forth specific questions because they knew the answers would kill the Russia investigation because they would have no credibility, for their source verification process, and they would have no fundamental facts upon which to go to the Pfizer Court That was their end goal They engineered a crime and worked in reverse. And then they went out there as we'll talk about and offered a bounty to people with information. It is a shocking abuse of the law."

2) "Remember when we broke the news that the DNC and Hillary Clinton had paid for the Steele Dossier? To me, this news is as important and as signify as that. Because now you have not the political party paying for the dossier, you have the United States government and our tax dollars being offered for what...Can you, Christopher Steele, corroborate any of the information we're looking for and we'll pay you a million dollars. Shocking. That is the exact reverse of how you run sources at the FBI."

3: Kash Patel says that the FBI, Clinton and the deep state are the real "insurrectionists" after the Durham Report revealed they were all in on it. "The FBI has become the police state. America does not have a single tier system of justice. Our judiciary and the FBI are corrupt gangsters and they've put it on full display. (They were) committing insurrection acts by trying to overthrow a duly elected President and subvert Democracy and ruining his administration. The Steele Dossier was the basic road map to how they kept doing it version after version all the way up to Hunter Biden's laptop."

4: "They are afraid that President Trump is going to come in and actually use the law to prosecute those who broke it. Whether they are in government, private sector, civilians, and yes, even if they are in the media if they participated in a conspiracy to rig elections and break the law you will be prosecuted.. The entire quote says we will use the constitutional courts of law to go after those that broke the law including those in the media. I think they are threatened because we caught them in Russia Gate, we caught them with 51 intel letter, we caught them on Jan 6th, we are catching them in Hunter Biden/Joe Biden criminal activities, and American citizens are tired of it. And they know they are in on it. That's when criminals fret the most and that's why are they slinging baseless rhetoric and hyperbole."

[patriottruth]

MAGA and Pretty Much All Media Outlets Are Claiming that in the 2024 Presidential Election, donald j. trump received:

100% of all 36 milion Registered Republican votes,

100% of all 32.1 million Registered Independent votes,

and 6,550,754 Registered Democrat votes.

After you subtract an additional 10 million Registered Democrats that MAGA and Most Media Outlets Claim Stayed Home/Didn't Vote, That Left Kamala Harris with a Registered Democrat Electorate of 28,549,246 voters.

42,367,700 previously unregistered voters somehow came out of nowhere during early and same-day voting to vote for Kamala Harris without Republicans ranting and raving about massive cheating and fraud by Democrats? That's as many voters as all 36 million registered Republicans AND the 6,550,754 registered Democrat trump defectors that somehow just appeared out of nowhere during early and same-day voting to vote for Kamala Harris; and Republicans are fine with it? Weird.

1.5 Million Never Trump Republicans that MAGA and Most Media Outlets Are Claiming Voted For donald j. trump (but 10 million Democrats abandoned Kamala Harris by staying home, and 6,550,754 Democrats voted for trump, instead): The Lincoln Project: 1,240,000 YouTube subscribers Republican Voters Against Trump: 252,000 YouTube subscribers Republican Accountability Project: 3,140 YouTube subscribers

Here's a minimum of 23,648,000 Republicans and Independents that MAGA and Most Media Outlets Are Claiming Voted for donald j. trump:

14% of Republicans (5,040,000) said they'd never vote for trump post-felony conviction.

20% of Republicans (7,200,000) said they were undecided or refused to answer if they'd vote for trump post-felony conviction.

58% of Independents (18,618,000) said they'd never vote for trump post-felony conviction.

15% of Independents (4,815,000) said they were undecided or refused to answer if they'd vote for trump post-felony conviction.

That's a minimum of 23,648,000 "No" votes, with another 12,015,000 "Undecided" votes, for a total of 35,663,000 votes out of trump's 74,650,754 total that MAGA and Most Media Outlets Are Claiming Voted for trump Anyway...

The 2024 U.S. Elections Weren't The Only Time donald j. trump Worked With Russians Against United States' Interests: COVID-19, USA Patriot Act Sabotage, The Massive Russian SolarWinds Hack of the U.S. Government and Private Sector, and Russian 2024 Election Day Interference (compiled from Wikipedia):

In November 2019, a security researcher notified SolarWinds that credentials to a third party FTP server had a weak password of "solarwinds123", warning that "any hacker could upload malicious [code]" that would then be distributed to SolarWinds customers. The New York Times reported SolarWinds did not employ a chief information security officer and that employee passwords had been posted on GitHub in 2019.

December 1, 2019: COVID-19 pandemic: First known human case of Coronavirus disease 2019, in Wuhan, Hubei, China.

December 5, 2019: Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi asks the House Judiciary Committee to begin drafting the articles of impeachment against U.S. President Donald Trump.

December 9, 2019: The World Anti-Doping Agency votes unanimously to ban Russia from international sport for four years for doping offences, meaning it will be excluded from the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo, the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing and the 2022 World Cup in Qatar.

December 10, 2019: Democrats in the United States House of Representatives announce formal charges against President Donald Trump, accusing him of abusing power and "obstructing Congress"; he becomes the third U.S. president in history to face impeachment.

December 18, 2019: The U.S. House of Representatives approves two articles of impeachment against President donald trump, making him the third president to be impeached in the nation's history.

December 29, 2019: The Taliban's ruling council agrees to a temporary cease-fire in Afghanistan, opening a door to a peace agreement with the United States.

In January and February 2020, U.S. intelligence agencies delivered over a dozen classified warnings in the President's Daily Brief about COVID-19, including its potential to inflict severe political and economic damage. President Donald Trump typically did not read daily briefs and often has "little patience" for oral summaries, The Washington Post reported. Each brief was also shared with other officials in the administration. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which produces the President's Daily Brief, denied that there were repeated mentions of COVID-19.

On January 8, 2020, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released a health advisory regarding an outbreak of pneumonia in Wuhan, Hubei Province, China, which was being caused by a yet-unidentified virus.

January 16, 2020: The first impeachment trial of the President of the United States, Donald Trump, begins in the U.S. Senate.

On January 27, 2020, Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, predicted that "things are going to get worse before they get better". Three days later, Fauci stated that the COVID-19 outbreak "could turn into a global pandemic".

On February 10, 2020, Trump stated that "a lot of people think that [COVID-19] goes away in April with the heat … Typically, that will go away in April" (later, on April 3, he denied ever having given "a date" for the departure of the virus)

On February 13, 2020, CDC director Robert Redfield contradicted Trump, saying that the "virus is probably with us beyond this season, beyond this year".[44] Redfield also predicted that it "will become a community virus at some point in time, this year or next year".

On February 16, 2020, Anthony Fauci warned that it was not necessarily true that COVID-19 would "disappear with the warm weather."

February 25, 2020, was the day that the CDC first warned the American public to prepare for a local outbreak.[16] That day, Nancy Messonnier, head of the CDC's National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, said that "We are asking the American public to work with us to prepare for the expectation that this is going to be bad." Messonnier predicted that "we will see community spread in this country", and it was only a matter of time. As a result, "disruption to everyday life might be severe". Messonnier stated that the CDC is preparing, and "now is the time for hospitals, schools and everyday people to begin preparing as well."

On February 25, 2020, Anthony Fauci declared that given how COVID-19 was spreading in other nations, it was "inevitable that this will come to the United States" as well. On February 26, CDC Director Robert Redfield said it would be "prudent to assume this pathogen will be with us for some time to come".

On February 26, 2020, Trump contradicted Messonnier, stating: "I don't think it's inevitable" that a U.S. outbreak would occur, "It probably will, it possibly will … Whatever happens, we're totally prepared." Trump additionally declared that the number of infected was "going very substantially down, not up".

On February 27, 2020, The chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Richard Burr, who helped to write the Pandemic and All-Hazards Preparedness Act (PAHPA), which forms the framework for the federal response, warned a private group of his constituents that COVID-19 is much more aggressive in its transmission than anything that we have seen in recent history, and is probably more akin to the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic. "There will be, I'm sure, times that communities, probably some in North Carolina, have a transmission rate where they say, 'Let's close schools for two weeks. Everybody stay home,' We're going to send a military hospital there; it's going to be in tents and going to be set up on the ground somewhere, It's going to be a decision the president and DOD make."

On February 27, 2020, Trump said of the virus: "It's going to disappear. One day it's like a miracle, it will disappear. And from our shores, you know, it could get worse before it gets better. Could maybe go away. We'll see what happens. Nobody really knows." Also on February 27, Trump declared that the risk to the American public from COVID-19 "remains very low".

February 27, 2020 stock market crash: Triggered by fears of the spreading of COVID-19, the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) plunges by 1,190.95 points, or 4.4%, to close at 25,766.64, its largest one-day point decline at the time. This follows several days of large falls, marking the worst week for the index since the 2007–2008 financial crisis.

On February 29, 2020, Trump said that "additional cases in the United States are likely", but "there's no reason to panic at all." When a reporter asked Trump: "How should Americans prepare for this virus?" Trump answered: "I hope they don't change their routine".

February 29, 2020: A conditional peace agreement is signed between the United States and the Taliban. The U.S. begins gradually withdrawing combat troops from Afghanistan on March 10.

On March 4, 2020, donald trump appeared on Fox News's Hannity by phone, where he claimed a 3.4% mortality rate projected by the World Health Organization (WHO) was a "false number", and stated his "hunch" that the true figure would be "way under 1%". Trump also predicted that many people infected with COVID-19 would experience "very mild" symptoms, "get better very rapidly" and thus they "don't even call a doctor". Thus, there may be "hundreds of thousands of people that get better just by, you know, sitting around and even going to work—some of them go to work, but they get better."

From March 6 to March 12, 2020, donald trump stated on four occasions that the coronavirus would "go away". On March 10, Surgeon General Jerome Adams stated that "this is likely going to get worse before it gets better."

March 2020: The nightmare of empty grocery shelves begins. Stores capping/limiting purchases.

By March 11, 2020, the virus had spread to 110 countries, and the WHO officially declared a pandemic. The CDC had already warned that large numbers of people needing hospital care could overload the healthcare system, which would lead to otherwise preventable deaths. Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Anthony Fauci said the mortality from COVID-19 was ten times higher than the common flu. By March 12, diagnosed cases of COVID-19 in the U.S. exceeded a thousand. Trump declared a national emergency on March 13. On March 16, the White House advised against any gatherings of more than ten people. Three days later, the United States Department of State advised U.S. citizens to avoid all international travel.

The USA Freedom Act, which became law on June 2, 2015, reenacted the expired USA Patriot Act sections through 2019. However, Section 215 of the law was amended to disallow the National Security Agency (NSA) to continue its mass phone data collection program. Instead, phone companies will retain the data and the NSA can obtain information about targeted individuals with a federal search warrant.

On August 14, 2019, the outgoing Director of National Intelligence sent a letter to Congress stating the Trump Administration's intention to seek permanent extension of the provisions of FISA that under the terms of the USA FREEDOM Act are scheduled to expire on December 15, 2019, namely the "lone wolf" authority allowing surveillance of a suspected terrorist who is inspired by foreign ideology but is not acting at the direction of a foreign party, the roving wiretap authority regarding surveillance of a terrorist who enters the United States and the authority to allow the Federal Bureau of Investigation to obtain certain business records in a national security investigation, as well as the call detail records program undertaken by the NSA. In reference to the latter authority, the letter announced that "The National Security Agency has suspended the call detail records program that uses this authority and deleted the call detail records acquired under this authority."

Jurisdiction over the reauthorization of the expiring FISA provisions is shared by the Judiciary and Intelligence committees in the U.S. Senate and the U.S. House of Representatives; the House Committee on the Judiciary and the Senate Committee on the Judiciary held separate public hearings on the reauthorization in September 2019 and November 2019, respectively. Opposition to the call detail records program has led to some Congressional demands that the authority for the program not be renewed. Additional complications hindering reauthorization arose from a report of the US Department of Justice Inspector General finding fault with certain FISA applications in connection with the 2016 presidential campaign, which led some members of Congress to insist on reforms to FISA as a condition of reauthorizing the expiring USA FREEDOM Act provisions. With Congressional attention focused on dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States in 2020, the House of Representatives passed a long-term extension of the USA FREEDOM Act on March 11, 2020, just four days before the scheduled expiration of the Act on March 15, 2020, by a wide, bipartisan margin that kept the protections of the Act largely the same. Two months later, in May of 2020, the Senate passed an extension of the Act by an 80-16 vote that expanded some privacy protections, but the Senate version did not include protection of Americans’ internet browsing and search histories from warrantless surveillance, which was proposed by Sens. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Steve Daines (R-Mont.) and failed by one vote.

According to former KGB major Yuri Shvets, donald trump became the target of a joint Czech intelligence services and KGB spying operation after he married Czech model Ivana Zelnickova and was cultivated as an "asset" by Russian intelligence since 1977: "Russian intelligence gained an interest in Trump as far back as 1977, viewing Trump as an exploitable target." Luke Harding writes that documents show Czechoslovakia spied on donald trump during the 1970s and 1980s, when he was married to Ivana Trump, his Czechoslovakia-born first wife. Harding writes that the Czechoslovakian government spied on donald trump because of his political ambitions and notability as a businessman. It is known that there were close ties between Czechoslovakia's StB and the USSR's KGB. Harding also describes how, already since 1987, the Soviet Union was interested in Trump. In his book Collusion, Harding asserts that the "top level of the Soviet diplomatic service arranged his 1987 Moscow visit. With assistance from the KGB." Then-KGB head Vladimir Kryuchkov "wanted KGB staff abroad to recruit more Americans". Harding proceeds to describe the KGB's cultivation process, and posits that they may have opened a file on Trump as early as 1977, when he married Ivana. "According to files in Prague, declassified in 2016, Czech spies kept a close eye on the couple in Manhattan, … [with] periodic surveillance of the trump family in the United States."

donald j. trump and His Republican Allies Allowed the USA PATRIOT ACT/FREEDOM ACT to Expire on March 15, 2020 and They Didn't Reinstate It until May of 2020.

March 2020: SolarWinds's Orion software hotfixes were released to 33,000 Orion customers. Hackers acquired superuser access to SAML token-signing certificates. This SAML certificate was then used to forge new tokens to allow hackers trusted and highly privileged access to networks. The attack used a backdoor in a SolarWinds library; when an update to SolarWinds occurred, the malicious attack would go unnoticed due to the trusted certificate. APT29, aka Cozy Bear, working for the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR), was reported to be behind the 2020 attack. Victims of this attack include the cybersecurity firm FireEye, the US Treasury Department, the US Department of Commerce's National Telecommunications and Information Administration, as well as the US Department of Homeland Security. Prominent international SolarWinds customers investigating whether they were impacted include the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the European Parliament, UK Government Communications Headquarters, the UK Ministry of Defence, the UK National Health Service (NHS), the UK Home Office, and AstraZeneca.

December 13, 2020: SolarWinds begins notifying customers, including a post on its Twitter account, “SolarWinds asks all customers to upgrade immediately to Orion Platform version 2020.2.1 HF 1 to address a security vulnerability.”

December 15, 2020 SolarWinds Victims named and timeline moves back — Wall Street Journal reported that the U.S. Commerce and Treasury Departments, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the National Institutes of Health, and the State Department were all affected. Various security officials and vendors expressed serious dismay that the attack was more widespread and began much earlier than expected. The initial attack date was now pegged to sometime in March 2020, which meant the attack had been underway for months before its detection.

December 17, 2020: New SolarWinds victims revealed — The Energy Department (DOE) and National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), which maintains the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile, were publicly named as victims of the attack.

On December 21, 2020, Attorney General William Barr, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, the FBI, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, or CISA, and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence all agreed that Russia was engaged in “a significant and ongoing cybersecurity campaign” against the United States. Russian asset, donald j. trump, immediately replied: “The Cyber Hack is far greater in the Fake News Media than in actuality,” Trump wrote. “I have been fully briefed and everything is well under control. Russia, Russia, Russia is the priority chant when anything happens because Lamestream is, for mostly financial reasons, petrified of discussing the possibility that it may be China (it may!).”

March 16, 2020: stock market crash: The the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) falls by 2,997.10, the single largest point drop in history and the second-largest percentage drop ever at 12.93%, an even greater crash than Black Monday (1929). This follows the U.S. Federal Reserve announcing that it will cut its target interest rate to 0–0.25%.

On March 19, 2020, donald trump told journalist Bob Woodward that he was deliberately downplaying the risk when communicating with the public. "I wanted to always play it down," Trump said. "I still like playing it down, because I don't want to create a panic."

On March 24, 2020, donald trump argued that: "We lose thousands and thousands of people a year to the flu … But we've never closed down the country for the flu." On March 27, he stated: "You can call it a flu. You can call it a virus. You know you can call it many different names. I'm not sure anybody even knows what it is."

On March 24, 2020, donald trump declared that "we begin to see the light at the end of the tunnel"; a day later the U.S. surpassed 1,000 COVID-19 deaths.

Throughout March and early April, several state, city, and county governments imposed "stay at home" quarantines on their populations to stem the spread of the virus. By March 26, The New York Times data showed the United States to have the highest number of known cases of any country. By March 27, the country had reported over 100,000 cases.

From March 30 to April 7, 2020, Trump stated on four occasions that COVID-19 would "go away".

On March 31, 2020, contradicting his many previous comparisons of COVID-19 to the flu, Trump said: "It's not the flu … It's vicious". When reporters asked him if his initial dismissive comments on the virus had misled Americans, he replied: "I want to give people a feeling of hope. I could be very negative … You know, I'm a cheerleader for the country." Asked further if he had known—despite his claims that the outbreak was under control—that the situation would turn out so severe, Trump replied: "I thought it could be. I knew everything. I knew it could be horrible, and I knew it could be maybe good."

On November 5, 2024, during the official Election Day, several non-credible bomb threats that originated from Russia briefly disrupted voting in two polling places in Fulton County, Georgia. Both re-opened after about 30 minutes. Republican Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said Russian interference was behind the Election Day bomb hoaxes. In a statement, the FBI said it was aware of non-credible bomb threats to polling locations in several states, with many of them originating from Russian email domains.[61] The bomb threats were solely made against Democratic-leaning areas.[62] On the same day, U.S. federal officials again reported that Russian sources were actively engaged in "influence operations", citing disinformation in specific videos that falsely claimed Kamala Harris had taken a bribe and false news stories about the Democratic Party and election fraud in Georgia.

On November 8, 2024 it was reported that one of the Russian email addresses behind Election Day bomb threats was used in June 2024 bomb threats targeting LGBTQ+ events in Massachusetts, Minnesota and Texas.

Rachel Maddow: Why was donald trump's campaign telling his supporters not to vote, they don't need any votes, and to skip the polls?

74,650,754 trump + 70,916,946 Harris = 145,567,700 votes counted thus far in the 2024 presidential election.

60% to 80% of voters polled across the United States believed donald trump was too old to be president leading up to the election, yet he somehow gained 426,779 votes from 2020, while Kamala Harris lost 10 million votes from 2020.

40% of the American electorate might have been willing to overlook donald trump's extreme cognitive, emotional, and physical decline and vote for him. That makes donald trump's best case scenario 58,227,080 votes for the 2024 election.

20% of the American electorate might have been willing to overlook that donald trump is clearly past his expiration date and not expected to live long enough to finish a 4-year term. That makes donald trump's worst case scenario 29,113,540 votes for the 2024 election.

33% of Republicans and 33% of Independents said for months they wouldn't be voting for donald trump again because of his failed COVID-19 response, his insurrection/January 6th assault to overturn the 2020 election, his proven sexual assault/rape, his felony convictions for his 2016 election interference and cheating on his wife the entire time his wife was pregnant and again 4 months after their son was born, and his classified documents theft, unsecured storage at mar-a-lago, and his sharing America's classified secrets with mar-a-lago guests, yet donald trump somehow gained 426,779 votes from 2020, while Kamala Harris lost 10 million votes from 2020.

2024 U.S. Registered Voter Stats (Pew Research): Republicans: 36 million voters

- 7 million (33%) Never trump voters = 29 million likely trump voters

- 11.5 million (55%) Never trump voters = 24.5 million likely trump voters

Democrats: 45.1 million voters

Independents: 32.1 million voters

- 10.6 million Never trump voters (33%) = 21.5 million possible trump voters

- 17.7 million Never trump voters (55%) = 14.4 million possible trump voters

If 100% of all registered voters actually turned out and voted in the 2024 U.S. presidential election:

trump (with a loss of 33% of Never trump voters and no Democrat defections): 50.5 million votes

Harris (with a gain of 33% of Never trump voters and no Democrat defections): 62.7 million votes

trump (with a loss of 55% of Never trump voters and no Democrat defections): 38.9 million votes

Harris (with a gain of 55% of Never trump voters and no Democrat defections): 74.3 million votes

Democrats outnumber Republicans by 9 million registered voters, and yet Kamala Harris allegedly received 10 million votes less than 2020, lost every swing state, and lost the election by 4 million votes nationwide?

Why is it that 33% of Independents said they wouldn't be voting for trump, yet he somehow received 100% of registered Independent votes?

There are approximately 41 million age 18-29 voters who usually vote Democrat, and up to 20 million of those females were expected to vote heavily for Harris/Walz in 2024, so where are all of those votes?

Why is it that hundreds of thousands of Americans are documented as voting FOR PRO-CHOICE on their state ballots, but then they all allegedly voted almost exclusively for ANTI-CHOICE donald trump instead of Kamala Harris based on HIS punitive non-Pro-Choice stance, his termination of national Roe vs. Wade protections, and nearly 1,000 women all over the United States are being raped and impregnated every week since his termination of Roe vs. Wade, women have been dying across the nation because they were denied emergency care, and 12 and 13 year old girls are being forced to carry their relatives' babies to term?

Why is it that hundreds of thousands of Americans are documented as voting for down-ballot Democrat candidates,but then they allegedly voted for donald trumpinstead of Kamala Harris?

Why is it that trump did so well in Michigan after repeatedly insulting Michigan during all of his Michigan rallies?

Why is it that trump did so well with Black men across the country after repeatedly insulting Black men across the country during his campaign and his entire life?

Why is it that hundreds of thousands of Puerto Ricans said they were going to put donald trump in the trash after they were called "garbage" at trump's Madison Square Garden rally, yet Puerto Ricans across the United States swung hard in his favor anyway?

Why is it that trump did better with Latinos across the United States than any other candidate in the last 40 years even after he called them rapists, scum, vermin, animals, inhuman, and murderous invaders who he's going to deport whether they're here legally, or not?

Why is it that donald trump told reporters he wasn't expecting any final results for at least 3 days immediately after he voted, but then somehow all of the nationwide election results were returned in less than 12 hours (which has NEVER happened in the United States)?

Lyin' and cryin' cowardly comrade donald j. trump has never won a championship at a course he doesn’t own and operate, always gets a turbo-charged golf cart that goes three times as fast as yours, so he’s always 200 yards ahead, and that gives him time to cheat. One time in L.A., he was playing $50 a hole with these three guys, he hits it in the pond. They see the splash. By the time they get there, it’s in the middle of the fairway, and they’re like, ‘What the F, Donald?’ And he goes, ‘It must’ve been the tide.’ He’s played in Pebble Beach, he’s played in the Tahoe one, where there are rules and judges and cameras. And in those, he’s never finished in the top half. So he wins when anybody who disagrees that he won is out of the club. That’s how he gets it.” - Rick Reilly

Kamala Harris currently has 70,916,946 votes (roughly 10 million votes less than Biden/Harris received in 2020).

Hillary Clinton beat donald trump by 3 million votes in 2016 with a total of 65,853,514 votes.

Clinton total fundraising 2016 election cycle: $769,879,088 Clinton total spending 2016 election cycle: $768,577,907 Clinton 2016 election votes: 65,853,514 Average Clinton voter 2016 presidential campaign donation: $11.69

trump total fundraising 2016 election cycle: $433,392,727 trump total spending 2016 election cycle: $422,620,473 2016 Republican Primary Voters: 31,047,313 trump 2016 election votes: 62,984,828 (202.89% 2016 national election turnout) Average trump voter 2016 presidential campaign donation: $6.88

Hillary Clinton's 2016 fundraising was 156% higher than donald trump's and she won the election by roughly 3,000,000 American votes.

Biden total fundraising 2020 election cycle: $1,624,301,628 Biden total spending 2020 election cycle: $1,614,843,740 Biden 2020 election votes: 81,283,501 Average Biden voter 2020 presidential campaign donation: $19.98

trump total fundraising 2020 election cycle: $1,087,909,269 trump total spending 2020 election cycle: $1,090,633,916 2020 Republican Primary Voters: 18,900,288 trump 2020 election votes: 74,223,975 (392.71% 2020 national election turnout) Average trump voter 2020 presidential campaign donation: $14.69

Joe Biden's 2020 fundraising was 167% higher than donald trump's and he won the election by an easy landslide victory and American patriots mandate of roughly 7,000,000 American votes.

Harris total fundraising 2024 election cycle: $1,048,224,950 9/22/2024 Harris total spending 2024 election cycle: $728,659,506 9/22/2024 Harris cash on hand 2024 election cycle: $364,537,369 9/22/2024

trump total fundraising 2024 election cycle: $802,832,560 9/22/2024 trump total spending 2024 election cycle: $603,161,559 9/22/2024 trump cash on hand 2024 election cycle: $264,091,834 9/22/2024 2024 Republican Primary Voters: 22,264,875

Kamala Harris's 2024 fundraising is 177% higher than donald trump's, her rallies are far larger and more energized, and her Fox News ratings are 2.5 times better than donald trump's. It's definitely time to turn the page on donald trump and his anti-American MAGA Nazi cult, and for American patriots to put country over party and elect the first woman American President of the United States of America; because All Lives Matter, and it's time to finally prove it once and for all by including and uniting all American women and girls at the great American "We The People" table so that President Kamala Harris will be the first woman American President, but certainly not the last.

Why is it that donald trump includes this disclaimer on his financial disclosures so everyone reading the document is supposed to understand it's completely worthless? Accounting principles generally accepted in the United States of America require that personal financial statements and related footnotes to the financial statements: include a provision for current income taxes, as well as estimated income taxes on the differences between the estimated current values of assets and the estimated current amounts of liabilities and their tax bases; include the amount of unused tax credits and expiration dates; include amounts to be received in the future from estimated current values that are nonforfeitable, fixed and determinable, and do not require any future services; record the current estimated value of all closely held and other business entities as a net investment (assets net of liabilities) and disclose summarized financial information about each entity; record non-interest bearing deposits in exchange for rights or privileges; and, include all assets and liabilities of the individual whose financial statements are presented. The accompanying statement of financial condition does not reflect the above noted items. The effects of these departures from accounting principles generally accepted in the United States of America have not been determined. Because the significance and pervasiveness of the matters discussed above make it difficult to assess their impact on the statement of financial condition, users of this personal financial statement should recognize that they might reach different conclusions about the financial condition of Donald J. Trump if they had access to a revised statement of financial condition prepared in conformity with accounting principles generally accepted in the United States of America.

Kamala Harris is a prosecutor. donald j. trump is a career criminal and convicted felon who's been found guilty of rape, massive frauds in numerous court cases, and is being prosecuted for insurrection, election tampering, election fraud, racketeering, election interference, espionage against the United States, and theft of government documents and property. There's pretty much a 0% chance that there's no election fraud and tampering going on with these 2024 election results. donald j. trump and all of his other alleged newly-elected allies have to be able to maintain those lies and not have them overturned during the canvas, confirmation, curing, certification, recount, and litigation process between November 6 and December 17, 2024.

“If I happen to be president, and I see somebody who’s doing well and beating me very badly, I say, ‘Go down and indict them.' They’d be out of business. They’d be out of the election.” - donald j. trump (November 9, 2023)

"I will root out the communists, Marxists, fascists and the radical-left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country.” - donald j. trump (November 12, 2023)

“This is how dictators destroy free nations. They threaten those who speak against them with death. We cannot entrust our country and our freedom to a petty, vindictive, cruel, unstable man who wants to be a tyrant.” - Liz Cheney

“Labeling a political opponent as a ‘fascist,’ risks inviting a would-be assassin.” - Hypocrites, Irony Assassins, and MAGA Nazi Cult Member Republicans Mike Johnson and Mitch McConnell (Finally coondemning donald j. trump and the entire treasonous, bigoted, and misogynist anti-American MAGA Nazi cult for calling all Americans who don't support or vote for donald j. trumpor MAGA Nazi Cult Republicans "traitors, anti-American, enemies from within, very bad people, very dangerous people, racists, radicals, extremists, communists, Marxists, fascists, thugs, liars, sick, ugly, stupid, mindless, thoughtless, brainless, disabled, deranged, criminals, rapists, cheaters, sleazebags, low-lifes, scum, trash, genetically inferior, weak, poison, insects, animals, rats, snakes, and vermin" during the majority of his interviews, speeches, and rallies for years on end since 2011 - October 25, 2024)

"As President, I was never an 'officer of the United States' and I did not take an oath 'to support the Constitution of the United States'. Therefore, Section 3 of the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution doesn't apply to me, can't be applied to me, and can't prevent me from running for or holding office for my actions on January 6, 2021."- donald j. trump (November 27, 2023)

"Get out and vote, just this time. "You won't have to do it anymore. Four more years, you know what, it will be fixed, it will be fine, you won't have to vote anymore.You gotta get out and vote. In four years, you don't have to vote again, we'll have it fixed so good you're not going to have to vote," - donald j. trump to his MAGA cult supporters (July 26, 2024)

“We gotta stop the cheating. If we stop that cheating, if we don’t let them cheat, I don’t even have to campaign anymore. We’re going to win by so much. The 2024 Election, where Votes ha74,650,754 totalve just started being cast, will be under the closest professional scrutiny and, WHEN I WIN, those people that CHEATED will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the Law, which will include long term prison sentences so that this Depravity of Justice does not happen again. “Please beware that this legal exposure extends to Lawyers, Political Operatives, Donors, Illegal Voters, & Corrupt Election Officials. Those involved in unscrupulous behavior will be sought out, caught, and prosecuted at levels, unfortunately, never seen before in our Country.” - donald j. trump on "truth" social (September 7, 2024)

When he was asked about "outside agitators" affecting a peaceful 2024 election, certification, and transfer of power: “I think the bigger problem is the enemy from within. We have two enemies. We have the outside enemy, and then we have the enemy from within. And the enemy from within, in my opinion, is more dangerous than China, Russia, and all those countries. We have some very bad people. We have some sick people, radical left lunatics. It should be very easily handled by, if necessary, by National Guard, or if really necessary by the military, because they can’t let that happen.” - donald j. trump (October 13, 2024)

[mariacallous]

Americans on November 5 will be electing a wartime president. This isn’t a prediction. It’s reality.

Neither candidate has yet spoken plainly enough to the American people about the perils represented by the growing geopolitical and defense industrial collaboration among China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea. This axis of aggressors may be unprecedented in the potential peril it represents.

Neither candidate has outlined the sort of generational strategy that will be required by the United States to address this challenge. Irrespective of whether former President Donald Trump or Vice President Kamala Harris is elected, this will be the unavoidable context of their presidency. One will become commander-in-chief at the most perilous geopolitical moment since the Cold War—and perhaps since World War II.

In that spirit, Washington Post columnist George F. Will this week compared the 2024 US elections to the 1940 US elections, when the United States hadn’t yet formally declared war on Imperial Japan, Hitler’s Germany, or Mussolini’s Italy.

What was different then was that one of the two candidates, incumbent President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, sensed he was about to become a wartime president and was acting like it. FDR, wrote Will, “was nudging a mostly isolationist nation toward involvement in a global conflict” with his 1937 “quarantine speech” on aggressor nations and through his subsequent military buildup.

FDR’s opponent was Republican businessman Wendell Willkie, who like FDR was more internationalist than isolationist, in the tradition of his party’s elites of that time. “In three weeks,” Will writes, “Americans will not have a comparably reassuring choice when they select the president who will determine the nation’s conduct during World War III, which has begun.”

The point is that just as World War II began with “a cascade of crises,” initiated by the coalescing axis of Japan, Germany, and Italy, so today there is a similar axis—China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea. Will reckons our current global crisis began no later than Russia’s 2014 seizure of Crimea.

This isn’t the first time that I have quoted diplomat-historian Philip Zelikow in this column. Writing in Texas National Security Review this summer, Zelikow reckoned that the next president has a 20-30 percent chance of being involved in worldwide warfare, which he differentiates from a world war in that not all parties will be involved in every aspect or region.

Zelikow, who recently expanded on these ideas among experts at the Atlantic Council, reckons that the next three years mark a moment of maximum danger. Should the United States navigate this period successfully, alongside global allies and partners, the underlying strengths of the American economy, defense industry, tech, and society should kick in and show their edge over those of the authoritarians.

The problem in the short term is that the United States is facing challengers in Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese leader Xi Jinping, who may see a window of opportunity in the United States’ domestic distractions, a defense sector not yet adequate for emerging challenges, and an electorate that questions the value and necessity of US international engagement. Both leaders might calculate that acting more forcefully against Ukraine and Taiwan now could produce a greater chance of success than a few years in the future.

Wrote George Will: “From Russia’s western border to the waters where China is aggressively encroaching on Philippine sovereignty, the theater of today’s wars and almost-war episodes spans six of the globe’s 24 time zones.” He says this is what “the gathering storm” of world war looks like, borrowing the title of the first volume of Winston Churchill’s World War II memoirs.

Will charges the two presidential candidates with “reckless disregard” for failing to provide voters “any evidence of awareness, let alone serious thinking about, the growing global conflagration.”

If that sounds like hyperbole to you, it’s worth reading FDR’s third inaugural address in January 1941, almost a year before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, which prompted Congress to declare war on Japan the following day.

“To us there has come a time,” said Roosevelt, “in the midst of swift happenings, to pause for a moment and take stock—to recall what our place in history has been, and to rediscover what we are and what we may be. If we do not, we risk the real peril of isolation, the real peril of inaction. Lives of nations are determined not by the count of years, but by the lifetime of the human spirit.”

War isn’t inevitable now any more than it was then. When disregarded, however, gathering storms of the sort we’re navigating gain strength.

“In the face of great perils never before encountered,” Roosevelt concluded, “our strong purpose is to protect and to perpetuate the integrity of democracy. For this we muster the spirit of America, and the faith of America.”

[panimoonchild]

Unpunished evil returns and grows stronger in its impunity

"13 houses in the residential area were damaged during the rocket attack, the houses have five floors. There is a very large number of broken windows, over 700. Seven humanitarian buildings were damaged," said Kateryna Yamshchikova, Secretary of the Poltava City Council, about the consequences of the missile attack in Poltava on June 17.

Utilities and rescuers are working at the site. They are trimming damaged trees and removing balcony structures. Social workers and psychologists are also assisting.

Also, Vadym Labas briefly explains why certain countries that arrived at the Global Peace Summit in Switzerland did not sign a joint declaration.

▪️ Saudi Arabia is a major hub for the transfer of components and units for Russian weapons, as well as a place of accumulation of billions of Russian money. ▪️ India - supplies units and components to Russia. It has joint military-industrial complex plants with Russia, from assault rifles to missiles. It is a hub for transshipment of Russian oil. ▪️ South Africa - everything is clear here: "Wagner", money and influence. ▪️ Thailand - supplies sanctioned products to Russia and also helps the Russian military-industrial complex with its production. For example, Russia could not produce cable products without Thailand. ▪️ Indonesia - supplies sanctioned products to Russia. ▪️ Mexico is a huge hub for the supply of drugs to Europe and Russian agents to the United States, which generates huge shadow earnings. ▪️ United Arab Emirates - helps to supply sanctioned products to Russia and has a lot of Russian money. ▪️ Armenia - has a huge Russian lobby and is one of the key players in the supply of smuggled military-industrial products to Russia.

All this brings super-profits either to these countries themselves or to influential clans in these countries. Therefore, they are quite satisfied with the current situation.

P.S.: these countries came to the Summit to "keep their finger on the pulse," but they are not interested in peace in Ukraine because they make super profits by helping Russia circumvent sanctions and supplying components. But if they were given a clear signal about the secondary sanctions that could be imposed for helping Russia, their "pulse rate" would increase significantly.

DPRK prepares for the arrival of the world's evil.

Now the most important news: The ratio of forces in the Pokrovsk sector is 1 to 7 in favor of the Russians, said a soldier of the 47th Brigade, pseudonym "Azimuth".

Photo: Approximate front line in the Pokrovsk sector/DeepStateMap.

The Russians are pressing near the villages of Novoselivka Persha, Sokil, and Novopokrovske, trying to reach the Pokrovsk-Konstantynivka highway.

Don't be indifferent. Make Russia pay. Please hear our cry out to the world, keep spreading our voices, and donate to our army and combat medics (savelife.in.ua, prytulafoundation.org, Serhii Sternenko, hospitallers.life, ptahy.vidchui.org, and u24.gov.ua).

[treethymes]

With the exceptions of North Korea and Cuba, the communist world has merged onto the capitalist highway in a couple different ways during the twenty-first century. As you’ve read, free-trade imperialism and its cheap agricultural imports pushed farmers into the cities and into factory work, lowering the global price of manufacturing labor and glutting the world market with stuff. Forward-thinking states such as China and Vietnam invested in high-value-added production capacity and managed labor organizing, luring links from the global electronics supply chain and jump-starting capital investment. Combined with capital’s hesitancy to invest in North Atlantic production facilities, as well as a disinclination toward state-led investment in the region, Asian top-down planning erased much of the West’s technological edge. If two workers can do a single job, and one worker costs less, both in wages and state support, why pick the expensive one? Foxconn’s 2017 plan to build a U.S. taxpayer–subsidized $10 billion flat-panel display factory in Wisconsin was trumpeted by the president, but it was a fiasco that produced zero screens. The future cost of labor looks to be capped somewhere below the wage levels many people have enjoyed, and not just in the West.

The left-wing economist Joan Robinson used to tell a joke about poverty and investment, something to the effect of: The only thing worse than being exploited by capitalists is not being exploited by capitalists. It’s a cruel truism about the unipolar world, but shouldn’t second place count for something? When the Soviet project came to an end, in the early 1990s, the country had completed world history’s biggest, fastest modernization project, and that didn’t just disappear. Recall that Cisco was hyped to announce its buyout of the Evil Empire’s supercomputer team. Why wasn’t capitalist Russia able to, well, capitalize? You’re already familiar with one of the reasons: The United States absorbed a lot of human capital originally financed by the Soviet people. American immigration policy was based on draining technical talent in particular from the Second World. Sergey Brin is the best-known person in the Moscow-to-Palo-Alto pipeline, but he’s not the only one.

Look at the economic composition of China and Russia in the wake of Soviet dissolution: Both were headed toward capitalist social relations, but they took two different routes. The Russian transition happened rapidly. The state sold off public assets right away, and the natural monopolies such as telecommunications and energy were divided among a small number of skilled and connected businessmen, a category of guys lacking in a country that frowned on such characters but that grew in Gorbachev’s liberalizing perestroika era. Within five years, the country sold off an incredible 35 percent of its national wealth. Russia’s richest ended the century with a full counterrevolutionary reversal of their fortunes, propelling their income share above what it was before the Bolsheviks took over. To accomplish this, the country’s new capitalists fleeced the most vulnerable half of their society. “Over the 1989–2016 period, the top 1 percent captured more than two-thirds of the total growth in Russia,” found an international group of scholars, “while the bottom 50 percent actually saw a decline in its income.” Increases in energy prices encouraged the growth of an extractionist petro-centered economy. Blood-covered, teary, and writhing, infant Russian capital crowded into the gas and oil sectors. The small circle of oligarchs privatized unemployed KGB-trained killers to run “security,” and gangsters dominated politics at the local and national levels. They installed a not particularly well-known functionary—a former head of the new intelligence service FSB who also worked on the privatization of government assets—as president in a surprise move on the first day of the year 2000. He became the gangster in chief.

Vladimir Putin’s first term coincided with the energy boom, and billionaires gobbled up a ludicrous share of growth. If any individual oligarch got too big for his britches, Putin was not beyond imposing serious consequences. He reinserted the state into the natural monopolies, this time in collaboration with loyal capitalists, and his stranglehold on power remains tight for now, despite the outstandingly uneven distribution of growth. Between 1980 and 2015, the Russian top 1 percent grew its income an impressive 6.2 percent per year, but the top .001 percent has maintained a growth rate of 17 percent over the same period. To invest these profits, the Russian billionaires parked their money in real estate, bidding up housing prices, and stashed a large amount of their wealth offshore. Reinvestment in Russian production was not a priority—why go through the hassle when there were easier ways to keep getting richer?

While Russia grew billionaires instead of output, China saw a path to have both. As in the case of Terry Gou, the Chinese Communist Party tempered its transition by incorporating steadily increasing amounts of foreign direct investment through Hong Kong and Taiwan, picking partners and expanding outward from the special economic zones. State support for education and infrastructure combined with low wages to make the mainland too attractive to resist. (Russia’s population is stagnant, while China’s has grown quickly.) China’s entry into the World Trade Organization, in 2001, gave investors more confidence. Meanwhile, strong capital controls kept the country out of the offshore trap, and state development priorities took precedence over extraction and get-rich-quick schemes. Chinese private wealth was rechanneled into domestic financial assets—equity and bonds or other loan instruments—at a much higher rate than it was in Russia. The result has been a sustained high level of annual output growth compared to the rest of the world, the type that involves putting up an iPhone City in a matter of months. As it has everywhere else, that growth has been skewed: only an average of 4.5 percent for the bottom half of earners in the 1978–2015 period compared to more than 10 percent for the top .001 percent. But this ratio of just over 2–1 is incomparable to Russia’s 17–.5 ration during the same period.

Since the beginning of the twenty-first century, certain trends have been more or less unavoidable. The rich have gotten richer relative to the poor and working class—in Russia, in China, in the United States, and pretty much anywhere else you want to look. Capital has piled into property markets, driving up the cost of housing everywhere people want to live, especially in higher-wage cities and especially in the world’s financial centers. Capitalist and communist countries alike have disgorged public assets into private pockets. But by maintaining a level of control over the process and slowing its tendencies, the People’s Republic of China has built a massive and expanding postindustrial manufacturing base.

It’s important to understand both of these patterns as part of the same global system rather than as two opposed regimes. One might imagine, based on what I’ve written so far, that the Chinese model is useful, albeit perhaps threatening, in the long term for American tech companies while the Russian model is irrelevant. Some commentators have phrased this as the dilemma of middle-wage countries on the global market: Wages in China are going to be higher than wages in Russia because wages in Russia used to be higher than wages in China. But Russia’s counterrevolutionary hyper-bifurcation has been useful for Silicon Valley as well; they are two sides of the same coin. Think about it this way: If you’re a Russian billionaire in the first decades of the twenty-first century looking to invest a bunch of money you pulled out of the ground, where’s the best place you could put it? The answer is Palo Alto.

Malcolm Harris, Palo Alto

[feuervogel]

Some selected quotations

In effect, German authorities took the position that support for Palestinians must be understood as support for indiscriminate violence against Israelis. Moreover, they explicitly adopted the view that calling for an end to the war necessarily equates to denying Israelis the right to defend themselves in the face of such attacks.  Accordingly, just as explicitly pro-Palestinian protests were shut down, police often also suppressed calls for “ceasefire” or to “stop the war.” And in response to South Africa’s charge at the International Court of Justice that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, the German government rushed to insist that this “accusation has no basis whatsoever,” and authorities within Germany have often treated the accusation as hate speech. 

These politics of supporting Israel while demonizing migrants as the source of antisemitism in Germany unites the far right with the right, center, and significant parts of the left, twisting the crucial fight against bigotry into a legitimizing ideology for xenophobia. And when it ends up directly harming Jewish people, the absurdity is impossible to ignore.

German authorities have increasingly institutionalized this agenda, appointing “antisemitism commissioners” at all levels of government. As celebrated Russian-American Jewish writer Masha Gessen noted in a widely-circulated New Yorker essay published early November, most of these commissioners are not Jewish — but many of their targets are. Indeed, according to our documentation at Diaspora Alliance, almost a quarter of all known censorship and cancellation cases in 2023 had Jewish targets.

Read the whole thing.

Oh god I just got to this one, what the entire fuck

In response, German journalist Sebastian Engelbrecht took to national public radio to suggest that Germany itself is now being subjected to antisemitism by virtue of its support for Israel. Strike Germany, he argued, sought to “erase Germany from consciousness” in a manner akin to the historical effort to physically erase Jewish life.

[kamogryadeshi]

Sumy region: rescuers extinguished fires in the residential sector three times, which were caused by Russian attacks

At night, the Russians struck two settlements in the Sumy district. There were fires in the residential sector. Employees of the State Emergency Service localized the fires, preventing their further spread and extinguished the fires.

That same night, rescuers, together with workers of the volunteer fire brigade, put out a fire in a house of citizens in one of the settlements of Shostkynskyi district, which was caused by enemy shelling.

[reality-detective]

⚠️⚠️⚠️ EXCLUSIVE LAURA LOOMER INVESTIGATION⚠️⚠️⚠️

I have conducted an investigation and I believe that for the sake of National Security, public interest and now my own personal safety I need to immediately release and publish what I have uncovered about the United States Government’s involvement in recruiting violent American Nazis, White Supremacists, and domestic terrorists and turning them into mercenaries and confidential informants in Ukraine to fight against Russians and kill civilians. Upon their return to the US, some of these Nazis are now engaging in perpetuating hate crimes and other felonies in the US, and they appear to be protected by our government from serving prison time, have received delayed prison time, and even reduced prison time. As many of you saw, this weekend I stumbled upon a Nazi rally in Altamonte Springs, Florida where I encountered 50 Swastika flag waving Nazis affiliated with “Blood Tribe” and “Goyim Defense League” (GDL). One of the individuals in attendance who I filmed at this rally on 9/2/23 is a US Citizen and Nazi named Kent “BoneFace” McLellan. At the rally, he was Seig Heiling while screaming SLAVA UKRAINE. His whole entire body and face is covered in tattoos, including many Nazi tattoos. As I have exposed, he is a Nazi who has traveled abroad to Ukraine to fight in the Ukraine-Russia war. He is an American citizen who was recently given Ukraine citizenship. I have overwhelming evidence that Nazis who are being backed by our government have not only murdered civilians overseas, but they have also been engaged in war crimes. In the case of Kent “BoneFace” McLellan, who resides in Florida, he is a Nazi, a domestic terrorist, and a violent felon who was arrested in Florida in 2012 by the FBI. He was put on the US terror watch list, and then in 2014, he was recruited by the CIA, and the DOD reportedly paid for him to travel to Ukraine in 2014 to join “Right Sector”, and then the Nazi Azov Battalion in 2022, which our taxpayer dollars are now unfortunately funding. Upon his return to the US circa 2022, I have discovered via my investigation that McLellan received a US Army Expeditionary Medal for his “services” in Ukraine. My investigation has uncovered Social media posts he posted in which he posed for a picture, in Ukraine while wearing an Azov Battalion uniform, next to the dead body of a civilian. The image, which I sent to a forensic analyst for verification, has been authenticated. Why is the Joe Biden Regime funding Nazi death squads in Ukraine with US taxpayer dollars? I received a phone call from Kent BoneFace McLellan at 1am last night after someone leaked my personal cell phone number to him, and after he was seen saying “we have a visual on Loomer” on a HAM radio he is not licensed to operate. He published that video to his Twitter account and tagged me. During the phone call I had with McLellan last night, he gave me confessions of various crimes. Here is the evidence of what our US government is doing in Ukraine. These are WAR CRIMES. I have a responsibility to share this damning information I have uncovered with the world.

You Decide 🤔

[rockyp77mk3]

Say you were magically elected president, what are ten things you would do on the first day?

"Magically"? Isn't that how we got the current administration, or as many suspect by sleight of hand? :)

Just off the top of my head:

Close the borders. Stop the influx of illegal immigrants immediately. Oh, fire about 60,000 IRS agents and hire a similar number of Border Patrol agents.

Invite every former service member who was discharged for not taking the jab. Full pay and privileges to be immediately reinstated.

Empanel a large team of forensic accountants, ensure that they have the highest security clearances, and have them totally audit ever cent spent by the US government I want to see every example of waste, fraud, abuse, corruption.

Expand US Counterintelligence capability with an eye toward Chinese, Iranian, NOKO, and Russian collection efforts and their influence in US government, the tech sector, and media.

Release the Epstein client list, among other "Lists".

Have the new and hopefully unbiased and honest Attorney General look into the Federal reserve and the Soros purchase of radio stations, for a start.

Seek to abolish the Department of Education beyond an advisory board. Turn educational responsibility back to the states to increase control by residents.

Establish a policy to prioritize veterans needs over student loan forgiveness, and US citizens over illegal immigrants.

Make it against policy for the government to use propaganda on the public.

Buy some really good Kevlar and hire a few operators and operatives as an extra close protection detail. I have a feeling that I would need it. :)

Thanks for the question.

[rotzaprachim]

the thing is that in real life I’ve been accused of “only caring about Palestinians” or abandoning Jews or something after Oct 7 because I’ve been so focused on the ceasefire efforts and advocacy, and it’s like, of course I am. If I could bring back anyone killed on October 7 I could but I can’t and so the only thing I can do now is prevent more deaths. That’s what I can do. And on here I’ve now been accused of being a selfish nihilistic white nationalist cryptozionist for talking about antisemitism, because that is the fire I see happening every day on social media and at this point it has now got a body count. And it’s like, we have got to allow people the realization that the best thing we can do is put out fires where we see them. We do what we can. That’s the best we can do. but a few addendums:

Let’s stop assuming peoples opinions based on what they /don’t/ post. There’s so so many reasons people are /not/ posting about things on (anonymous/semi anonymous) social media in particular that governments everywhere /are/ cracking down on pro-Palestine activism and so peoples posting may not be apathy but rule number one of protesting, which is don’t doxx your comrades!

in the immediate aftermath of Oct 7 I reblogged a post with links to support, one of those links ended up leading straight to a group that had celebrated the H AMAs attacks. A day later I saw a post trying to discredit recordings of the attacks and it linked to a website that linked to the daily stormer. This is the newspaper of the KKK. I’ve also reblogged things that were shared by people who have also supported the Russian and Syrian governments continuously. This is not me telling you NOT to support journalists or the need, but it is me telling you how I have been part of the misinformation feed as no well and why I am hesitant to share unsourced information. I will not reblog or post anything that does not have an immediate source link. White nationalists, tankies, and white supremacists are not your friends. They do not care about the Palestinian cause.

I think people are really, really lost on the dangers and extent of antisemitism. I am patently not saying that what’s happening to Jews is /as bad/ or /less bad/ than the absolutely horrific war crimes being inflicted against gazan citizens right now. I am not saying that. I am saying that whole hearted willful antisemitism is being partaken of by a huge sector of people around the world, both white and nonwhite, and I do not think people fully understand there repercussions of it because they think Jews are still ultimately privileged and it ranges from /not that bad/ to /something they’ve all collectively made up to justify war crimes./ I cannot emphasize enough how bad public, violent antisemitism done in the name of the Palestinian cause is to both antizionism and the support of Palestine. This is not a two sides zero sum game, this is something that is actively harming the movement in real time and which people do NOT comprehend is happening in the age of the screenshot, where anyone can get recorded. One of the most significant issue is that attacking Jews and Jewish institutions has now made this a domestic citizen issue in many countries, and that has given Islamophobia and anti-Arab security states a legal prerogative to attack Muslims and Arab communities as well as any Palestinian activism. Calling for the mass death of Jews (even the ones you don’t like) on social media is an incitement to ethnic violence, guys, and it’s made so so much worse when you’ve put a Palestinian flag in your bio. These “neutral” things on social media are having a REAL impact on attacks on Jews AND on legal crackdowns against Palestinian activism.

there are a lot of bad actors out there and both Jewish and pro-Palestine groups I fear have gotten in bed with some really sketchy people because they’re saying what they want to hear. “I hate terrorism and especially Arab terrorism!!!” Is something conservative white nationalists have been saying for years and it’s best if Jews don’t get in bed with those who want to claim everyone is supporting Hamas! Likewise, the idea of “Zionists” and “the Zionist occupied government” or “evil Zionist pigs” has been used by the kkk and other explicitly white supremacist groups for years, and it’s for the fucking best if people don’t deny what actual white nationalists are saying, and don’t decide that everyoneeee calling for the death of the Zionist scourge is their friends.

[thelostdreamsthings]

[Ten years ago, neo-Nazi thugs from the Svoboda party and their affiliated Right Sector militia executed a violent U.S.-backed coup to oust Victor Yanukovich, the lawful President of Ukraine.

These ultra-nationalists took Ukraine down a hate-filled path of confrontation with Russia.

When looking for someone to blame for the tragedy that has unfolded in Ukraine since that day, one need look no further than to the origins of the violence.

One can only hope that the people of Ukraine wake up and rid themselves of the cancer of Banderism.

Otherwise the Russian program of denazification will continue unabated to its bitter end.]

Scott Ritter

William Scott Ritter Jr. (born July 15, 1961) is an American author, former United States Marine Corps intelligence officer, former United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM) weapons inspector

Kharkov to Odessa

~100 years ago, banksters in US/Europe funded a color revolution in Russia.

Two years ago, Putin started Special Military Operation (SMO) to de-Nazify and demilitarize Ukraine, a new geopolitical pawn of the same globalists who have been trying to conquer Russia since the days of Napoleon, who had his own version of NATO.

Hopefully, this will be the last time the psychopaths will poke the Russian bear.

Russian leadership is not elected to suit US.

We understand Washington would've loved a Zelensky in Moscow, ready to sell his country and people for a couple of villas. Not happening.

[patriottruth]

The tulsi gabbard Appointment and The 2024 U.S. Elections Aren't The Only Times donald j. trump and his Russian Asset Republicans Worked With Russians Against United States' Interests: COVID-19, USA Patriot Act/USA Freedom Act Sabotage, The Massive Russian SolarWinds Hack of 33,000 U.S. Government and Private Sector Computer Networks, and Russian 2024 Election Day Interference (compiled from Wikipedia):

In November 2019, a security researcher notified SolarWinds that credentials to a third party FTP server had a weak password of "solarwinds123", warning that "any hacker could upload malicious [code]" that would then be distributed to SolarWinds customers. The New York Times reported SolarWinds did not employ a chief information security officer and that employee passwords had been posted on GitHub in 2019.

December 1, 2019: COVID-19 pandemic: First known human case of Coronavirus disease 2019, in Wuhan, Hubei, China.

December 5, 2019: Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi asks the House Judiciary Committee to begin drafting the articles of impeachment against U.S. President Donald Trump.

December 9, 2019: The World Anti-Doping Agency votes unanimously to ban Russia from international sport for four years for doping offences, meaning it will be excluded from the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo, the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing and the 2022 World Cup in Qatar.

December 10, 2019: Democrats in the United States House of Representatives announce formal charges against President Donald Trump, accusing him of abusing power and "obstructing Congress"; he becomes the third U.S. president in history to face impeachment.

December 18, 2019: The U.S. House of Representatives approves two articles of impeachment against President donald trump, making him the third president to be impeached in the nation's history.

December 29, 2019: The Taliban's ruling council agrees to a temporary cease-fire in Afghanistan, opening a door to a peace agreement with the United States.

In January and February 2020, U.S. intelligence agencies delivered over a dozen classified warnings in the President's Daily Brief about COVID-19, including its potential to inflict severe political and economic damage. President Donald Trump typically did not read daily briefs and often has "little patience" for oral summaries, The Washington Post reported. Each brief was also shared with other officials in the administration. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which produces the President's Daily Brief, denied that there were repeated mentions of COVID-19.

On January 8, 2020, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released a health advisory regarding an outbreak of pneumonia in Wuhan, Hubei Province, China, which was being caused by a yet-unidentified virus.

January 16, 2020: The first impeachment trial of the President of the United States, Donald Trump, begins in the U.S. Senate.

On January 27, 2020, Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, predicted that "things are going to get worse before they get better". Three days later, Fauci stated that the COVID-19 outbreak "could turn into a global pandemic".

On February 10, 2020, Trump stated that "a lot of people think that [COVID-19] goes away in April with the heat … Typically, that will go away in April" (later, on April 3, he denied ever having given "a date" for the departure of the virus)

On February 13, 2020, CDC director Robert Redfield contradicted Trump, saying that the "virus is probably with us beyond this season, beyond this year". Redfield also predicted that it "will become a community virus at some point in time, this year or next year".

On February 16, 2020, Anthony Fauci warned that it was not necessarily true that COVID-19 would "disappear with the warm weather."

February 25, 2020, was the day that the CDC first warned the American public to prepare for a local outbreak. That day, Nancy Messonnier, head of the CDC's National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, said that "We are asking the American public to work with us to prepare for the expectation that this is going to be bad." Messonnier predicted that "we will see community spread in this country", and it was only a matter of time. As a result, "disruption to everyday life might be severe". Messonnier stated that the CDC is preparing, and "now is the time for hospitals, schools and everyday people to begin preparing as well."

On February 25, 2020, Anthony Fauci declared that given how COVID-19 was spreading in other nations, it was "inevitable that this will come to the United States" as well. On February 26, CDC Director Robert Redfield said it would be "prudent to assume this pathogen will be with us for some time to come".

On February 26, 2020, Trump contradicted Messonnier, stating: "I don't think it's inevitable" that a U.S. outbreak would occur, "It probably will, it possibly will … Whatever happens, we're totally prepared." Trump additionally declared that the number of infected was "going very substantially down, not up".

On February 27, 2020, The chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Richard Burr, who helped to write the Pandemic and All-Hazards Preparedness Act (PAHPA), which forms the framework for the federal response, warned a private group of his constituents that COVID-19 is much more aggressive in its transmission than anything that we have seen in recent history, and is probably more akin to the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic. "There will be, I'm sure, times that communities, probably some in North Carolina, have a transmission rate where they say, 'Let's close schools for two weeks. Everybody stay home,' We're going to send a military hospital there; it's going to be in tents and going to be set up on the ground somewhere, It's going to be a decision the president and DOD make."

On February 27, 2020, Trump said of the virus: "It's going to disappear. One day it's like a miracle, it will disappear. And from our shores, you know, it could get worse before it gets better. Could maybe go away. We'll see what happens. Nobody really knows." Also on February 27, Trump declared that the risk to the American public from COVID-19 "remains very low".

February 27, 2020 stock market crash: Triggered by fears of the spreading of COVID-19, the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) plunges by 1,190.95 points, or 4.4%, to close at 25,766.64, its largest one-day point decline at the time. This follows several days of large falls, marking the worst week for the index since the 2007–2008 financial crisis.

On February 29, 2020, Trump said that "additional cases in the United States are likely", but "there's no reason to panic at all." When a reporter asked Trump: "How should Americans prepare for this virus?" Trump answered: "I hope they don't change their routine".

February 29, 2020: A conditional peace agreement is signed between the United States and the Taliban. The U.S. begins gradually withdrawing combat troops from Afghanistan on March 10.

On March 4, 2020, donald trump appeared on Fox News's Hannity by phone, where he claimed a 3.4% mortality rate projected by the World Health Organization (WHO) was a "false number", and stated his "hunch" that the true figure would be "way under 1%". Trump also predicted that many people infected with COVID-19 would experience "very mild" symptoms, "get better very rapidly" and thus they "don't even call a doctor". Thus, there may be "hundreds of thousands of people that get better just by, you know, sitting around and even going to work—some of them go to work, but they get better."

From March 6 to March 12, 2020, donald trump stated on four occasions that the coronavirus would "go away". On March 10, Surgeon General Jerome Adams stated that "this is likely going to get worse before it gets better."

March 2020: The nightmare of empty grocery shelves begins. Stores capping/limiting purchases.

By March 11, 2020, the virus had spread to 110 countries, and the WHO officially declared a pandemic. The CDC had already warned that large numbers of people needing hospital care could overload the healthcare system, which would lead to otherwise preventable deaths. Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Anthony Fauci said the mortality from COVID-19 was ten times higher than the common flu. By March 12, diagnosed cases of COVID-19 in the U.S. exceeded a thousand. Trump declared a national emergency on March 13. On March 16, the White House advised against any gatherings of more than ten people. Three days later, the United States Department of State advised U.S. citizens to avoid all international travel.

The USA Freedom Act, which became law on June 2, 2015, reenacted the expired USA Patriot Act sections through 2019. However, Section 215 of the law was amended to disallow the National Security Agency (NSA) to continue its mass phone data collection program. Instead, phone companies will retain the data and the NSA can obtain information about targeted individuals with a federal search warrant.

On August 14, 2019, the outgoing Director of National Intelligence sent a letter to Congress stating the Trump Administration's intention to seek permanent extension of the provisions of FISA that under the terms of the USA FREEDOM Act are scheduled to expire on December 15, 2019, namely the "lone wolf" authority allowing surveillance of a suspected terrorist who is inspired by foreign ideology but is not acting at the direction of a foreign party, the roving wiretap authority regarding surveillance of a terrorist who enters the United States and the authority to allow the Federal Bureau of Investigation to obtain certain business records in a national security investigation, as well as the call detail records program undertaken by the NSA. In reference to the latter authority, the letter announced that "The National Security Agency has suspended the call detail records program that uses this authority and deleted the call detail records acquired under this authority."

Jurisdiction over the reauthorization of the expiring FISA provisions is shared by the Judiciary and Intelligence committees in the U.S. Senate and the U.S. House of Representatives; the House Committee on the Judiciary and the Senate Committee on the Judiciary held separate public hearings on the reauthorization in September 2019 and November 2019, respectively. Opposition to the call detail records program has led to some Congressional demands that the authority for the program not be renewed. Additional complications hindering reauthorization arose from a report of the US Department of Justice Inspector General finding fault with certain FISA applications in connection with the 2016 presidential campaign, which led some members of Congress to insist on reforms to FISA as a condition of reauthorizing the expiring USA FREEDOM Act provisions.With Congressional attention focused on dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States in 2020, the House of Representatives passed a long-term extension of the USA FREEDOM Act on March 11, 2020, just four days before the scheduled expiration of the Act on March 15, 2020, by a wide, bipartisan margin that kept the protections of the Act largely the same. Two months later, in May of 2020, the Senate passed an extension of the Act by an 80-16 vote that expanded some privacy protections, but the Senate version did not include protection of Americans’ internet browsing and search histories from warrantless surveillance, which was proposed by Sens. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Steve Daines (R-Mont.) and failed by one vote.

According to former KGB major Yuri Shvets, donald trump became the target of a joint Czech intelligence services and KGB spying operation after he married Czech model Ivana Zelnickova and was cultivated as an "asset" by Russian intelligence since 1977: "Russian intelligence gained an interest in Trump as far back as 1977, viewing Trump as an exploitable target." Luke Harding writes that documents show Czechoslovakia spied on donald trump during the 1970s and 1980s, when he was married to Ivana Trump, his Czechoslovakia-born first wife. Harding writes that the Czechoslovakian government spied on donald trump because of his political ambitions and notability as a businessman. It is known that there were close ties between Czechoslovakia's StB and the USSR's KGB. Harding also describes how, already since 1987, the Soviet Union was interested in Trump. In his book Collusion, Harding asserts that the "top level of the Soviet diplomatic service arranged his 1987 Moscow visit. With assistance from the KGB." Then-KGB head Vladimir Kryuchkov "wanted KGB staff abroad to recruit more Americans". Harding proceeds to describe the KGB's cultivation process, and posits that they may have opened a file on Trump as early as 1977, when he married Ivana. "According to files in Prague, declassified in 2016, Czech spies kept a close eye on the couple in Manhattan, … [with] periodic surveillance of the trump family in the United States."

donald j. trump and His Republican Allies Allowed the USA PATRIOT ACT/FREEDOM ACT to Expire on March 15, 2020 and They Didn't Reinstate It until May of 2020.

March 2020: SolarWinds's Orion software hotfixes were released to 33,000 Orion customers.Hackers acquired superuser access to SAML token-signing certificates. This SAML certificate was then used to forge new tokens to allow hackers trusted and highly privileged access to networks. The attack used a backdoor in a SolarWinds library; when an update to SolarWinds occurred, the malicious attack would go unnoticed due to the trusted certificate. APT29, aka Cozy Bear, working for the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR), was reported to be behind the 2020 attack. Victims of this attack include the cybersecurity firm FireEye, the US Treasury Department, the US Department of Commerce's National Telecommunications and Information Administration, as well as the US Department of Homeland Security. Prominent international SolarWinds customers investigating whether they were impacted include the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the European Parliament, UK Government Communications Headquarters, the UK Ministry of Defence, the UK National Health Service (NHS), the UK Home Office, and AstraZeneca.

December 13, 2020: SolarWinds begins notifying customers, including a post on its Twitter account, “SolarWinds asks all customers to upgrade immediately to Orion Platform version 2020.2.1 HF 1 to address a security vulnerability.”

December 15, 2020 SolarWinds Victims named and timeline moves back — Wall Street Journal reported that the U.S. Commerce and Treasury Departments, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the National Institutes of Health, and the State Department were all affected. Various security officials and vendors expressed serious dismay that the attack was more widespread and began much earlier than expected. The initial attack date was now pegged to sometime in March 2020, which meant the attack had been underway for months before its detection.

December 17, 2020: New SolarWinds victims revealed — The Energy Department (DOE) and National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), which maintains the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile, were publicly named as victims of the attack.

On December 21, 2020, Attorney General William Barr, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, the FBI, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, or CISA, and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence all agreed that Russia was engaged in “a significant and ongoing cybersecurity campaign” against the United States. Russian asset, donald j. trump, immediately replied: “The Cyber Hack is far greater in the Fake News Media than in actuality,” Trump wrote. “I have been fully briefed and everything is well under control. Russia, Russia, Russia is the priority chant when anything happens because Lamestream is, for mostly financial reasons, petrified of discussing the possibility that it may be China (it may!).”

March 16, 2020: stock market crash: The the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) falls by 2,997.10, the single largest point drop in history and the second-largest percentage drop ever at 12.93%, an even greater crash than Black Monday (1929). This follows the U.S. Federal Reserve announcing that it will cut its target interest rate to 0–0.25%.

On March 19, 2020, donald trump told journalist Bob Woodward that he was deliberately downplaying the risk when communicating with the public. "I wanted to always play it down," Trump said. "I still like playing it down, because I don't want to create a panic."

On March 24, 2020, donald trump argued that: "We lose thousands and thousands of people a year to the flu … But we've never closed down the country for the flu." On March 27, he stated: "You can call it a flu. You can call it a virus. You know you can call it many different names. I'm not sure anybody even knows what it is."

On March 24, 2020, donald trump declared that "we begin to see the light at the end of the tunnel"; a day later the U.S. surpassed 1,000 COVID-19 deaths.

Throughout March and early April, several state, city, and county governments imposed "stay at home" quarantines on their populations to stem the spread of the virus. By March 26, The New York Times data showed the United States to have the highest number of known cases of any country. By March 27, the country had reported over 100,000 cases.

From March 30 to April 7, 2020, Trump stated on four occasions that COVID-19 would "go away".

On March 31, 2020, contradicting his many previous comparisons of COVID-19 to the flu, Trump said: "It's not the flu … It's vicious". When reporters asked him if his initial dismissive comments on the virus had misled Americans, he replied: "I want to give people a feeling of hope. I could be very negative … You know, I'm a cheerleader for the country." Asked further if he had known—despite his claims that the outbreak was under control—that the situation would turn out so severe, Trump replied: "I thought it could be. I knew everything. I knew it could be horrible, and I knew it could be maybe good."

On November 5, 2024, during the official Election Day, several non-credible bomb threats that originated from Russia briefly disrupted voting in two polling places in Fulton County, Georgia. Both re-opened after about 30 minutes. Republican Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said Russian interference was behind the Election Day bomb hoaxes. In a statement, the FBI said it was aware of non-credible bomb threats to polling locations in several states, with many of them originating from Russian email domains. The bomb threats were solely made against Democratic-leaning areas. On the same day, U.S. federal officials again reported that Russian sources were actively engaged in "influence operations", citing disinformation in specific videos that falsely claimed Kamala Harris had taken a bribe and false news stories about the Democratic Party and election fraud in Georgia.

On November 8, 2024 it was reported that one of the Russian email addresses behind Election Day bomb threats was used in June 2024 bomb threats targeting LGBTQ+ events in Massachusetts, Minnesota and Texas.

If you're an American who wants this matter and the anti-American traitors responsible investigated by the U.S. Department of Justice, please contact Democratic Leaders Schumer and Jeffries, Marc Elias and Democracy Docket, and Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington regarding enforcing donald j. trump's insurrectionist disqualification and electing Kamala Harris as the 47th President of the United States. If you want this matter investigated and prosecuted, the best person to do it is an experienced criminal prosecutor sitting as the U.S. President.

[mariacallous]

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen stated that a heat and power plant in Lithuania is being gradually transferred to Ukraine.

She announced this at a press conference with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on September 20.

"Currently, an entire heat and power plant in Lithuania is being dismantled and transferred to Ukraine in parts," von der Leyen stated.

Speaking about support for the Ukrainian energy sector, EU President mentioned that the EU has provided €2 billion and member states are also offering material support, including 10,000 transformers and generators.

"There will be even more. Yesterday, I announced a support package of nearly €160 million for repairs and the provision of emergency winter equipment," she said.

Part of this funding comes from frozen Russian assets.

[yuri-alexseygaybitch]

Assuming the AO3 hackers are some Russian state-backed operation (a massive fucking stretch backed by zero evidence other than some cybersecurity guys saying they give Russian vibes but let's role with it) trying to "sow division" by briefly shutting down a *fanfiction website* this should be an instructive lesson in how overblown and frankly pathetic the scope of "Russian-backed internet influence ops" that the national security state has been boogeymaning about for the last 7 years actually is and how the fear of said influence ops and the power and narrative control it gives to the state and tech sector far outweighs whatever dangers are posed by Le Russian Hackers