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lurkiestvoid · 6 months ago

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You're being targeted by disinformation networks that are vastly more effective than you realize. And they're making you more hateful and depressed.

(This essay was originally by u/walkandtalkk and posted to r/GenZ on Reddit two months ago, and I've crossposted here on Tumblr for convenience because it's relevant and well-written.)

TL;DR: You know that Russia and other governments try to manipulate people online. But you almost certainly don't how just how effectively orchestrated influence networks are using social media platforms to make you -- individually-- angry, depressed, and hateful toward each other. Those networks' goal is simple: to cause Americans and other Westerners -- especially young ones -- to give up on social cohesion and to give up on learning the truth, so that Western countries lack the will to stand up to authoritarians and extremists.

And you probably don't realize how well it's working on you.

This is a long post, but I wrote it because this problem is real, and it's much scarier than you think.

How Russian networks fuel racial and gender wars to make Americans fight one another

In September 2018, a video went viral after being posted by In the Now, a social media news channel. It featured a feminist activist pouring bleach on a male subway passenger for manspreading. It got instant attention, with millions of views and wide social media outrage. Reddit users wrote that it had turned them against feminism.

There was one problem: The video was staged. And In the Now, which publicized it, is a subsidiary of RT, formerly Russia Today, the Kremlin TV channel aimed at foreign, English-speaking audiences.

As an MIT study found in 2019, Russia's online influence networks reached 140 million Americans every month -- the majority of U.S. social media users.

Russia began using troll farms a decade ago to incite gender and racial divisions in the United States

In 2013, Yevgeny Prigozhin, a confidante of Vladimir Putin, founded the Internet Research Agency (the IRA) in St. Petersburg. It was the Russian government's first coordinated facility to disrupt U.S. society and politics through social media.

Here's what Prigozhin had to say about the IRA's efforts to disrupt the 2022 election:

"Gentlemen, we interfered, we interfere and we will interfere. Carefully, precisely, surgically and in our own way, as we know how. During our pinpoint operations, we will remove both kidneys and the liver at once."

In 2014, the IRA and other Russian networks began establishing fake U.S. activist groups on social media. By 2015, hundreds of English-speaking young Russians worked at the IRA. Their assignment was to use those false social-media accounts, especially on Facebook and Twitter -- but also on Reddit, Tumblr, 9gag, and other platforms -- to aggressively spread conspiracy theories and mocking, ad hominem arguments that incite American users.

In 2017, U.S. intelligence found that Blacktivist, a Facebook and Twitter group with more followers than the official Black Lives Matter movement, was operated by Russia. Blacktivist regularly attacked America as racist and urged black users to rejected major candidates. On November 2, 2016, just before the 2016 election, Blacktivist's Twitter urged Black Americans: "Choose peace and vote for Jill Stein. Trust me, it's not a wasted vote."

Russia plays both sides -- on gender, race, and religion

The brilliance of the Russian influence campaign is that it convinces Americans to attack each other, worsening both misandry and misogyny, mutual racial hatred, and extreme antisemitism and Islamophobia. In short, it's not just an effort to boost the right wing; it's an effort to radicalize everybody.

Russia uses its trolling networks to aggressively attack men. According to MIT, in 2019, the most popular Black-oriented Facebook page was the charmingly named "My Baby Daddy Aint Shit." It regularly posts memes attacking Black men and government welfare workers. It serves two purposes: Make poor black women hate men, and goad black men into flame wars.

MIT found that My Baby Daddy is run by a large troll network in Eastern Europe likely financed by Russia.

But Russian influence networks are also also aggressively misogynistic and aggressively anti-LGBT.

On January 23, 2017, just after the first Women's March, the New York Times found that the Internet Research Agency began a coordinated attack on the movement. Per the Times:

More than 4,000 miles away, organizations linked to the Russian government had assigned teams to the Women’s March. At desks in bland offices in St. Petersburg, using models derived from advertising and public relations, copywriters were testing out social media messages critical of the Women’s March movement, adopting the personas of fictional Americans.

They posted as Black women critical of white feminism, conservative women who felt excluded, and men who mocked participants as hairy-legged whiners.

But the Russian PR teams realized that one attack worked better than the rest: They accused its co-founder, Arab American Linda Sarsour, of being an antisemite. Over the next 18 months, at least 152 Russian accounts regularly attacked Sarsour. That may not seem like many accounts, but it worked: They drove the Women's March movement into disarray and eventually crippled the organization.

Russia doesn't need a million accounts, or even that many likes or upvotes. It just needs to get enough attention that actual Western users begin amplifying its content.

A former federal prosecutor who investigated the Russian disinformation effort summarized it like this:

It wasn’t exclusively about Trump and Clinton anymore. It was deeper and more sinister and more diffuse in its focus on exploiting divisions within society on any number of different levels.

As the New York Times reported in 2022,

There was a routine: Arriving for a shift, [Russian disinformation] workers would scan news outlets on the ideological fringes, far left and far right, mining for extreme content that they could publish and amplify on the platforms, feeding extreme views into mainstream conversations.

China is joining in with AI

[A couple months ago], the New York Times reported on a new disinformation campaign. "Spamouflage" is an effort by China to divide Americans by combining AI with real images of the United States to exacerbate political and social tensions in the U.S. The goal appears to be to cause Americans to lose hope, by promoting exaggerated stories with fabricated photos about homeless violence and the risk of civil war.

As Ladislav Bittman, a former Czechoslovakian secret police operative, explained about Soviet disinformation, the strategy is not to invent something totally fake. Rather, it is to act like an evil doctor who expertly diagnoses the patient’s vulnerabilities and exploits them, “prolongs his illness and speeds him to an early grave instead of curing him.”

The influence networks are vastly more effective than platforms admit

Russia now runs its most sophisticated online influence efforts through a network called Fabrika. Fabrika's operators have bragged that social media platforms catch only 1% of their fake accounts across YouTube, Twitter, TikTok, and Telegram, and other platforms.

But how effective are these efforts? By 2020, Facebook's most popular pages for Christian and Black American content were run by Eastern European troll farms tied to the Kremlin. And Russia doesn't just target angry Boomers on Facebook. Russian trolls are enormously active on Twitter. And, even, on Reddit.

It's not just false facts

The term "disinformation" undersells the problem. Because much of Russia's social media activity is not trying to spread fake news. Instead, the goal is to divide and conquer by making Western audiences depressed and extreme.

Sometimes, through brigading and trolling. Other times, by posting hyper-negative or extremist posts or opinions about the U.S. the West over and over, until readers assume that's how most people feel. And sometimes, by using trolls to disrupt threads that advance Western unity.

As the RAND think tank explained, the Russian strategy is volume and repetition, from numerous accounts, to overwhelm real social media users and create the appearance that everyone disagrees with, or even hates, them. And it's not just low-quality bots. Per RAND,

Russian propaganda is produced in incredibly large volumes and is broadcast or otherwise distributed via a large number of channels. ... According to a former paid Russian Internet troll, the trolls are on duty 24 hours a day, in 12-hour shifts, and each has a daily quota of 135 posted comments of at least 200 characters.

What this means for you

You are being targeted by a sophisticated PR campaign meant to make you more resentful, bitter, and depressed. It's not just disinformation; it's also real-life human writers and advanced bot networks working hard to shift the conversation to the most negative and divisive topics and opinions.

It's why some topics seem to go from non-issues to constant controversy and discussion, with no clear reason, across social media platforms. And a lot of those trolls are actual, "professional" writers whose job is to sound real.

So what can you do? To quote WarGames: The only winning move is not to play. The reality is that you cannot distinguish disinformation accounts from real social media users. Unless you know whom you're talking to, there is a genuine chance that the post, tweet, or comment you are reading is an attempt to manipulate you -- politically or emotionally.

Here are some thoughts:

Don't accept facts from social media accounts you don't know. Russian, Chinese, and other manipulation efforts are not uniform. Some will make deranged claims, but others will tell half-truths. Or they'll spin facts about a complicated subject, be it the war in Ukraine or loneliness in young men, to give you a warped view of reality and spread division in the West.

Resist groupthink. A key element of manipulate networks is volume. People are naturally inclined to believe statements that have broad support. When a post gets 5,000 upvotes, it's easy to think the crowd is right. But "the crowd" could be fake accounts, and even if they're not, the brilliance of government manipulation campaigns is that they say things people are already predisposed to think. They'll tell conservative audiences something misleading about a Democrat, or make up a lie about Republicans that catches fire on a liberal server or subreddit.

Don't let social media warp your view of society. This is harder than it seems, but you need to accept that the facts -- and the opinions -- you see across social media are not reliable. If you want the news, do what everyone online says not to: look at serious, mainstream media. It is not always right. Sometimes, it screws up. But social media narratives are heavily manipulated by networks whose job is to ensure you are deceived, angry, and divided.

Edited for typos and clarity. (Tumblr-edited for formatting and to note a sourced article is now older than mentioned in the original post. -LV)

P.S. Apparently, this post was removed several hours ago due to a flood of reports. Thank you to the r/GenZ moderators for re-approving it.

Second edit:

This post is not meant to suggest that r/GenZ is uniquely or especially vulnerable, or to suggest that a lot of challenges people discuss here are not real. It's entirely the opposite: Growing loneliness, political polarization, and increasing social division along gender lines is real. The problem is that disinformation and influence networks expertly, and effectively, hijack those conversations and use those real, serious issues to poison the conversation. This post is not about left or right: Everyone is targeted.

(Further Tumblr notes: since this was posted, there have been several more articles detailing recent discoveries of active disinformation/influence and hacking campaigns by Russia and their allies against several countries and their respective elections, and barely touches on the numerous Tumblr blogs discovered to be troll farms/bad faith actors from pre-2016 through today. This is an ongoing and very real problem, and it's nowhere near over.

A quote from NPR article linked above from 2018 that you might find familiar today: "[A] particular hype and hatred for Trump is misleading the people and forcing Blacks to vote Killary. We cannot resort to the lesser of two devils. Then we'd surely be better off without voting AT ALL," a post from the account said.")

#propaganda #psyops #disinformation #US politics #election 2024 #us elections #YES we have legitimate criticisms of our politicians and systems #but that makes us EVEN MORE susceptible to radicalization. not immune #no not everyone sharing specific opinions are psyops. but some of them are #and we're more likely to eat it up on all sides if it aligns with our beliefs #the division is the point #sound familiar?#voting #rambles #long post

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mariacallous · 2 months ago

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In late August 2023, Ilya Gambashidze was in a conference room at the office of Social Design Agency, a Russian IT company he founded that is based in Moscow, close to the world-renowned Moscow Conservatory. Gambashidze was relatively unknown in Russian politics at the time, but just a month earlier his name had appeared on a Council of the European Union’s list of Russian nationals subjected to sanctions for playing a central role in a sprawling disinformation campaign against Ukraine.

In the conference room, Gambashidze was laying out his plans for a new target: Along with his colleagues, he began drafting what would become known as the Good Old USA Project. The project was supposed to influence the outcome of the US presidential election in favor of former president Donald Trump, specifically targeting certain minorities, swing-state residents, and online gamers, among others, in a scheme that included a full-time team dedicated to the cause.

On Wednesday, Gambashidze and his company were named by the US Department of Justice among the architects of a disinformation campaign known as Doppelganger that has for the past two years been targeting Ukraine and, more recently, US elections. The Doppelganger campaign uses AI-generated content on dozens of fake websites designed to impersonate mainstream media outlets such as The Washington Post and Fox Business, using a network of fake social media accounts to disseminate pro-Russian narratives targeting audiences across the globe. Doppelganger is a Kremlin-aligned disinformation campaign that was first linked to the Kremlin in 2023 by the French government.

On Wednesday, the Justice Department announced the seizure of 32 internet domains it says are linked to the Doppelganger campaign which violate US money laundering and criminal trademark laws.

“Today’s announcement exposes the scope of the Russian government’s influence operations and their reliance on cutting-edge AI to sow disinformation,” FBI director Christopher Wray said in a statement. “Companies operating at the direction of the Russian government created websites to trick Americans into unwittingly consuming Russian propaganda.”

The Treasury Department had previously sanctioned SDA and Gambashidze in March for its part in the Doppelganger campaign. But the court documents unsealed on Wednesday contain a treasure trove of documents and meeting notes from Gambashidze and his colleagues, outlining in unprecedented detail the goals and tactics that the Kremlin has been deploying in order to influence the outcome of the 2024 US election.

The records also reveal the plan was discussed at the highest levels of the Russian government, with Sergei Kiriyenko, the first deputy chief of staff of the presidential executive office, playing a key role. The notes appear to show that President Vladimir Putin may have been updated on the campaign; in one meeting with Russian government officials, Gambashidze wrote that government officials told him they had “reported to the President about the project,” which the FBI agent who authored the affidavit said he took to refer to Putin.

The documents show that the orchestrators of the campaign targeted existing divisions within US society, using racist stereotypes and far-right conspiracies to target supporters of former president Donald Trump.

"They are afraid of losing the American way of life and the ‘American dream,’” Gambashidze writes in one document outlining his “guerrilla media” plan. “It is these sentiments that should be exploited in the course of an information campaign in/for the United States.”

The same document is full of racist and conspiratorial claims, including that Republicans are “victims of discrimination of people of color.” It adds that white middle-class people are being discriminated against with high inflation and rising prices, while “unemployed people of color end up being privileged groups of the population.”

And the goal of the campaign, from the beginning, was crystal clear: “To secure victory for [Donald Trump],” Gambashidze wrote in the Good Old USA Project planning document.

The Good Old USA plan openly admits that “none of the significant American politicians can be considered pro-Russian or pro-Putin,” and so rather than focus its efforts on trying to convince people that Russia is great, the plan called for promoting the idea that the US should be focusing its resources less on Ukraine and more on domestic issues, such as rising inflation and high gas prices.

“It makes sense for Russia to put a maximum effort to ensure that the Republican Party’s point of view (first and foremost, the opinion of Trump supporters) wins over the US public opinion,” the Good Old USA Project planning document reads. “This includes provisions on peace in Ukraine in exchange for territories, the need to focus on the problems of the US economy, returning troops home from all over the world, etc.”

As well as getting Trump elected, the campaign’s secondary goals included increasing the percentage of Americans who believe the US is doing too much to aid Ukraine to 51 percent, and reducing the percentage of Americans who have confidence in President Joe Biden down to 29 percent.

The plan lists a variety of audiences the campaign specifically wants to target, including residents of swing states, American Jews, “US citizens of Hispanic descent,” and the “community of American gamers, users of Reddit and image boards, such as 4chan.”

The document describes this category of gamers and chatroom users as the "backbone of the right-wing trends in the US segment of the Internet.” In recent months, the Trump campaign has embraced many of the most influential figures within these communities, including many who share deeply misogynistic rhetoric on a regular basis.

To spread their narrative, the plan called for the creation of YouTube channels that shared pro-Trump content as well as other viral videos (“music, humor, beautiful girls etc,” according to the documents) in order to appear at the top of search results for “US elections.”

Meanwhile, Gambashidze and his colleagues used Facebook, Twitter, and Reddit to create community groups of Trump supporters, with one sample name given as “Alabama for America the Great.” The document also reveals that the Russians planned to use Reddit as a vector to disseminate their propaganda as it is a platform “free from democratic censorship.”

Gambashidze’s plan outlined how Doppelganger would create 18 “sleeper cells” on social media platforms in each of the swing states, which would “at the right moment, upon gaining momentum, become an important instrument of influencing the public opinion in critically important states and portals used by the Russian side to distribute bogus stories disguised as newsworthy events.” It’s unclear if these so-called sleeper cells were created and, if so, whether they are still present on the platform.

The campaign also used targeted ads on Facebook to not only promote their narrative but also to gain valuable insight into what messages were sticking and which were falling flat. “Targeted advertising in Facebook allows tracking reactions of users to the distributed material in real time and directing the psychological response group to contribute to comments thereof,” the document reads. “With the help of a network of bots the psychological response group moderates top discussions and adjusts further launches depending on which group was affected the most.”

One of the key aspects of the Kremlin’s campaign is also to engage with influencers. According to the FBI’s affidavit, Gambashidze’s company “extensively monitors and collects information about a large number of media organizations and social media influencers.”

According to the Good Old USA project document, the Kremlin was seeking to work with influencers who are “proponents of traditional values, who stand up for ending the war in Ukraine and peaceful relations between the US and Russia, and who are ready to get involved in the promotion of the project narratives.”

Among the types of influencers listed as possible collaborators are actors, politicians, media representatives, activists, and clergymen.

The affidavit references one document maintained by the Social Design Agency, which is not included in the unsealed court documents, that contains a list of more than 2,800 people identified as influencers. While this list is global, US-based influencers account for around 20 percent of the accounts being monitored, including many US lawmakers, according to an analysis of the list by the FBI.

The Social Design Agency also maintains another list, again not included in the court documents, that tracks over 1,900 “anti-influencers” from 52 different countries, with US-based accounts. The FBI agent who authored the document assessed that “anti-influencer” refers to accounts which post “content that SDA views as contrary to Russian objectives.”

In a note from one of the meetings with Russian government officials discussing the campaign’s use of influencers, Gambashidze wrote: “We need influencers! A lot of them and everywhere. We are ready to wine and dine them.” Though no links have been confirmed, hours before the Doppelganger affidavit dropped on Wednesday, Tenet Media, an organization that features a slate of right-wing commentators, was alleged in an unsealed Department of Justice indictment to have been largely funded by Russian state-backed news network RT.

The Social Design Agency operation appeared to be extremely well-run and well-resourced. There is a “project office” consisting of four teams that include one entire group dedicated to monitoring the social media posts from GOP lawmakers in order to generate ideas for topics to cover.

These would then be handed to a “text factory," with orders to whittle down the topics handed to them by the monitoring team to four to five main issues, along with eight to 10 basic posts for social media platforms and 40- to 60 comments to post under those social media posts for the network of bots. Another team was called the “manga editorial office,” which was charged with producing a daily output of three to four images, including memes. Finally, a video team was tasked with producing three to four videos each day.

“In order for this work to be effective, you need to use a minimum of fake news and a maximum of realistic information,” the document’s authors wrote. “At the same time, you should continuously repeat that this is what is really happening, but the official media will never tell you about it or show it to you.”

Antibot4Navalny, a group of anonymous Russian researchers who have been closely tracking Doppelganger’s activity, are doubtful that the affidavit will have a significant impact on the campaign’s activity.

“Frankly, I believe it's whack-a-mole as long as EU providers keep doing business with [Social Design Agency], and UK-registered shell companies keep helping SDA with its operation,” the researchers told WIRED, citing their own investigations earlier this year.

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dontforgetukraine · 17 days ago

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Ukrainian language and literature have been a target for Russia for many years. Today, they are the target for its missiles, drones, and bombs. In past centuries, they were the targets of imperialist persecutors who hunted down Ukrainian writers. —MFA of Ukraine

Russia targets printing houses like Faktor-Druk in Kharkiv, which only recently restored some of its printing capacity and began printing textbooks for the new school year.

The Ukrainian language is also suppressed in the occupied territories. You can be tortured and killed just for speaking it. Libraries are targeted and destroyed and there has been an immense loss in the number of Ukrainian books.

In Soviet times, the Ukrainian letter "ґ'" (sounds like the letter g in English) was banned by the Soviet government. Ukrainian spellings were changed to make it more similar to Russian. If Ukrainian words differed from their Russian counterparts, those words were banned and replaced with more phonetically similar words to Russian. Any separation of the Ukrainian language from Russian was seen as nationalistic.

Russian propagandists and useful idiots love to promote the narrative that Russian speakers are oppressed in Ukraine to justify their invasion, but Russia has a lengthy history of committing linguicide of Ukrainian that continues into the current war today.

#Ukraine #Russia is a terrorist state #Ukrainian language #Ukrainian history #Soviet #linguicide #day of Ukrainian language and literature #day of Ukrainian language and writing #Ukrainian culture #Russian propaganda

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tomorrowusa · 2 months ago

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Ukrainian drones blew up a large Russian arms depot west of Moscow. The blast was large enough to have been detected by earthquake sensors.

A Ukrainian drone attack on a large Russian weapons depot caused a blast that was picked up by earthquake monitoring stations, in one of the biggest strikes on Moscow’s military arsenal since the war began. Pro-Russian military bloggers said Ukraine struck an arsenal for the storage of missiles, ammunition and explosives in Toropets, a historic town more than 300 miles north of Ukraine and about 230 miles west of Moscow. Videos and images on social media showed a huge ball of flame rising high into the night sky and detonations thundering across a lake, in a region not far from the border with Belarus. The strike was part of a broader Ukrainian drone campaign targeting Russian oil refineries, power plants, airfields and military factories, and highlights Kyiv’s enhanced long-range drone capabilities. Earthquake monitoring stations registered what sensors thought was a minor earthquake in the area.

The blast was so big that in the first couple of seconds it appears to be during daytime.

youtube

The Kyiv Independent has additional details.

Arms depot in Russia's Tver Oblast built to withstand nuclear explosion heavily damaged by Ukrainian drones

Back in 2018, the Russian Defense Ministry bragged that this facility would be prepared to withstand even a nuclear explosion. Six years later, the claim was proven to be false. According to the SBU, the arsenal stored ballistic missiles, including Iskanders, anti-aircraft missiles, artillery ammunition, and KAB guided bombs. The attack "literally wiped off the face of the earth a large warehouse of the main missile and artillery department of the Russian Defense Ministry," the SBU source said. The construction of the arsenal, controlled by the Main Missile and Artillery Directorate, began in 2015 in the town of Toropets, located 480 kilometers north of Ukraine. The construction was part of a 2012 government program set to improve Russia's storage of missiles, ammunition, and explosives. According to Russia's Defense Ministry, the program, worth 90 billion rubles (nearly $980 million), called for 13 modern arms depots to be built. [ ... ] Yet the source in the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) told the Kyiv Independent that a "very powerful detonation" occurred, and the affected area was 6 kilometers (3.7 miles) wide. NASA satellites also recorded a surge in thermal activity in Tver Oblast, where the 107th arsenal of the Main Missile and Artillery Directorate is located. "The arsenal seems to have been built correctly, with bunkered storage facilities that can hold up to 240 tons of ammunition each," Serhiy Zgurets, military expert and CEO of the Ukrainian media Defense Express, told the Kyiv Independent.

As Joe Biden might put it, this is "a big fucking deal". Months worth of ammunition, missiles, and other ordnance which was waiting to be used against Ukrainians has been eliminated.

In total, about 30,000 tons of ammunition were stored in the arsenal in Toropets, which could have been enough to conduct attacks for months, according to the expert. Russia most likely stored 122 mm Grad ammunition, 82 mm mines, and missiles for Buk medium-range surface-to-air missile systems, among other munitions, according to Zgurets.

Ukraine apparently destroyed 30,000 tons (i.e. 30 kilotons) of ammo. For comparison, the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima was the equivalent of 15 kilotons.

Ukrainians are intelligent and resourceful. They are now building drones which cannot be jammed by electronic warfare. They may have used those to get to Toropets.

And it seems a bit weird that Russia would build a gigantic arsenal just 4.51 km (less than 3 miles) from downtown Toropets – a scenic town and local administrative center.

So Ukraine has now penetrated and destroyed an impenetrable arms depot. Previously, Ukraine has stopped unstoppable Kinzhal Russian missiles. This war is unwinnable for Russia but the country continues to humiliate itself with its unmistakable military ineptitude.

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girlactionfigure · 3 months ago

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THURSDAY HERO: Johan Weidner

Johan “Jean” Weidner was a Dutch businessman who created an extensive underground rescue network and saved the lives of 800 Jews and 112 downed Allied aviators.

Born in Brussels in 1912 to Dutch parents, Jean grew up in Switzerland in a devout Seventh-Day Adventist home. His father, a minister who taught Greek and Latin at a church seminary, wanted Jean to become a clergyman but instead he decided to go into business. He moved to Paris in 1935 and started an import-export textile firm.

When the Germans occupied Paris in 1940 Jean dropped everything and fled to Lyon in unoccupied France. He had to abandon his company, so he started a new one in Lyon.

In 1941, as the situation for Jews and other enemies of the Nazi war machine grew more dire, Jean took action. He created an underground network secretly run out of his textile factory. To facilitate escape to Switzerland, Jean opened a second branch of his business in Annecy, near the Swiss border. The route was dotted with safe houses and locals sympathetic to the Resistance who sheltered the refugees and helped them cross the border.

Known as Dutch-Paris, the network Jean created became one of the most effective resistance groups during war. Also called “the Swiss Way,” the network’s mission was to rescue people targeted by the Nazis by hiding them until they could help them escape to a neutral country.

Jean was leader of 330 men, women and teenagers working clandestinely in occupied countries of Western Europe as well as in Switzerland.

Dutch-Paris was constantly in need of funds to support their extensive activities, and Jean made a deal with the Dutch ambassador to Switzerland. The Dutch government-in-exile in London would fund the rescue operations if Jean 1) expanded the escape route to reach all the way to Spain and 2) used the route to convey intelligence on microfilm between Dutch resistance groups. Jean agreed to the terms and the expanded network began operating in November 1943.

In January of 1944 they began rescuing downed Allied aviators, an especially dangerous operation because it attracted the attention of German military intelligence officers. In only a month they saved over 112 pilots before tragedy struck. In February 1944, a young Dutch woman working as a courier was arrested by the French police and turned over to the Gestapo. They tortured her physically and psychologically, and threatened her family. She cracked under pressure and gave up names of her colleagues colleagues in the Dutch-Paris network.

Germans started arresting members of Dutch-Paris, including Jean’s sister Gabrielle. Over the next few months, many of the rescuers were sent to concentration camps, where at least forty of them were murdered. Gabrielle survived until liberation by the Russians, but she was so malnourished that she died days later.

Jean was able to escape capture long enough to rebuild networks and continue his rescue operations. In Toulouse he was arrested by the French police, but he escaped before they were able to transfer him to the Germans.

France was liberated in November 1944 and Jean was invited to London by Queen Wilhemina to inform her about the Dutch-Paris route, and the situation for Dutch civilians in areas occupied by the Germans. He was made a Captian in the Dutch Armed Forces but after the war he was let go by the Dutch government for not being a professional policeman. Jean returned to his textile business, and in 1955 emigrated to the United States where he and his wife operated a chain of health food stores for several decades.

He received multiple awards for his wartime heroism including the US Medal of Freedom, the Croix de Guerre and the Legion d’honneur. He was honored as Righteous Among the Nations by Israeli Holocaust Memorial Yad Vashem, and a grove of trees was planted in his name. In 1993, at the opening of the United States Holocaust Museum in Washington DC, he was one of seven people chosen to light candles honoring rescuers.

Jean Weidner died in 1994 in Southern California. Abraham Foxman, then National Director of the ADL said, “John Weidner lived his entire life giving back… Until his death, he lived a life of selflessness and service, working tirelessly to make the world a better place.”

For creating an underground escape route for victims of the Nazis, and saving hundreds of lives, we honor Jean Weidner as this week’s Thursday Hero.

#Thursday Hero

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lcdrarry · 5 months ago

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LCDrarry 2024 Round-Up Post | Week 6

This is the final Round-Up Post for LCDrarry 2024. Reveals are later today, on June 15, 2024! Wheeee!

Happy reading, commenting and sharing! ;)

~Your LCDrarry Mods

PS: Please have a look at the author notes and tags on AO3 for additional information. Thank you!

PPS: Please share far and wide! Thank you!!

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Art

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Go the Whole Wide World

Prompt: "Stranger than Fiction", 2006, Marc Forster Prompted by: @stavromulabetaaa Artists: Anonymous Medium: Digital Art Rating: General Audiences Warnings: None

Summary: When government employee Draco Crick was assigned to audit baker Harry Pascal, neither anticipated falling in love, but sometimes the person right next to you is the most welcome surprise.

View it now on AO3.

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Fic

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Eternalism is a Never Ending Day

Prompt: "Russian Doll", 2019 Prompted by: 5u9as (ao3) Author: Anonymous Word Count: 25,970 words Rating: Teen and up Warnings: Temporary Suicide, Temporary MCD, implied/referenced Depression

Summary: Malfoy has been reliving the same day for longer than he can keep track of now, and has just assumed that he was dead in the real world, which was fine to him. It isn't until the time loop stops doing what he expects that it occurs to him that maybe there's something else going on.

Read it now on AO3.

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Obscuro

Prompt: "Love is Blind", 2020 Prompted by: @DrarryMyHeart Author: Anonymous Word Count: 35,227 words Rating: Explicit Warnings: None

Summary: Draco is grieving. His conversation partner is here against his will. It's a shameless rip-off of an insipid Muggle reality dating show. Hardly the occasion for true love, if you ask Draco. feat. a cat named Marmalade, a bird named Mumble, Lee Jordan's answer to Love is Blind, and two best friends who only want their dads to be happy.

Read it now on AO3.

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First Impressions

Prompt: "Pride and Prejudice", 2005, Joe Wright Prompted by: MoonyEmilie3017 (ao3) Author: Anonymous Word Count: 87,934 words Rating: Explicit Warnings: Period-typical racism and colourism (only present in one chapter), A/B/O dynamics, Dubious Consent, Classism, Smut, Mpreg

Summary: At the Shacklebolts' ball, Ginny found herself irrevocably smitten at first sight with Ms Pansy Parkinson. Meanwhile, her brother, Harry Potter, became the unfortunate target of biting remarks from Parkinson's haughty and aloof best friend, Mr Draco Malfoy. Harry's disdain for Mr Malfoy grew, fuelled by the latter's evident arrogance. Amidst this burgeoning animosity, Ms Romilda Vane began to spread malicious rumours regarding Malfoy, further tarnishing his reputation. Yet, the true nature of his character was far from what these tales suggested. Could Draco overcome his pride and Harry his prejudice, allowing love to blossom between them despite the odds?

Read it now on AO3.

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Please help promote the fest by sharing your favourite submissions, so more people can enjoy all the amazing new Drarry works of LCDrarry. Thank you!

Creator reveals are on 15 June 2024.

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justinspoliticalcorner · 2 months ago

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Judd Legum at Popular Information:

For weeks, major American media organizations — including The Washington Post, Politico, and the New York Times — have possessed internal Trump campaign documents. What do these documents say? We don't know because all three outlets have declined to publish the documents — or excerpt a single sentence. None of the outlets even acknowledged that they had been sent the internal documents until after the Trump campaign publicized that it had been hacked by the Iranian government. Little has been revealed about the topics covered in the documents other than that they include a dossier exploring the vulnerabilities of Senator J.D. Vance (R-OH), who former President Donald Trump chose as his running mate.

Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung demanded the media keep the internal documents secret. "[A]ny media or news outlet reprinting documents or internal communications are doing the bidding of America’s enemies and doing exactly what they want," Cheung said in an August 10 statement. Over the weekend, U.S. intelligence officials "acknowledged for the first time that the Iranian government was behind not only the hack of the Trump campaign revealed last month but also the leak of internal campaign documents." The acknowledgment was consistent with an August 8 press release from Microsoft, which did not name the Trump campaign, warning of operations by the Iranian government "designed to gain intelligence on political campaigns."

Washington Post Executive Editor Matt Murray defended the decision of the Washington Post and other outlets not to publish the leaked internal Trump campaign documents. "[A]ll of the news organizations in this case took a deep breath and paused, and thought about who was likely to be leaking the documents, what the motives of the hacker might have been, and whether this was truly newsworthy or not," Murray said in a statement to a Washington Post reporter. This is a much different approach than the Washington Post took after hackers connected to the Russian government leaked internal emails from Clinton campaign officials and the Democratic National Committee (DNC). The Washington Post published dozens of stories based on these leaked emails. The steady drumbeat of mostly unflattering articles was a major part of the election narrative in the days and weeks before election day.

[...]

Of course, the Washington Post, Politico, and the New York Times may believe they made a mistake in covering the hacked emails in 2016 and are now changing course. But none of these publications have acknowledged any errors in their 2016 coverage or acknowledged that they are taking a radically different approach to leaked internal Trump campaign documents in 2024.

In any event, Trump is an odd beneficiary for the media's change of heart on hacked campaign materials. On July 26, 2016, Trump publicly implored Russia to acquire Hillary Clinton's internal emails, promising that the media would amplify them. "Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing, I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press," Trump said. (It was later revealed that Russia began targeting Clinton campaign officials "on or around" the same day.) When Wikileaks began leaking the emails acquired by Russian hackers, Trump celebrated. He publicly mentioned WikiLeaks 141 times in the month before the election. "WikiLeaks, I love WikiLeaks," Trump told a crowd in Pennsylvania on October 10. A few weeks later, he won the state by less than 50,000 votes, propelling him to the White House.

When hacked emails against Hillary Clinton were in the news in 2016, news outlets dutifully reported on them.

In 2024, with reports that multiple news organizations are sitting on leaked Trump campaign documents, several media outlets instead chose to protect Donald Trump by refusing to report on the leaks.

This is further proof that the MSM wants the Orange Fascist back in office. Vote Harris/Walz to defeat the RW Media/MSM alliance!

#Media Bias #Politico #The Washington Post #The New York Times #Donald Trump #Hillary Clinton #Hillary Clinton Emails #Donald Trump Emails #DNC Leaks #WikiLeaks #Mainstream Media #MSM

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voidami · 2 months ago

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The Holodomor

Marxists do not deny that a famine occurred in the Soviet Union in 1932-1933. Soviet archives, along with various Western historians, confirm this. What remains contested is the narrative that this famine was a deliberate, man-made genocide aimed specifically at the Ukrainian people. This portrayal, pushed by nationalist factions and later Cold War propaganda, finds its roots in the disinformation campaigns initiated by Nazi Germany to showcase the “terror” of the so-called “Jewish communists” to the world.

– Socialist Musings. (2017). Stop Spreading Nazi Propaganda: on Holodomor

Anti-Communists and Ukrainian nationalists have framed the Soviet famine of 1932-1933 as “The Holodomor” (which means “to kill by starvation” in Ukrainian). This framing serves two purposes:

It implies that the famine specifically targeted Ukraine.

It suggests that the famine was intentional.

The argument posits that because it was intentional and mainly affected Ukraine, it was, therefore, an act of genocide. This interpretation was first promoted by Nazi Germany during World War II, seeking to fracture the relationship between the Ukrainian SSR (UKSSR)and the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic(RSFSR). Since the 2004 Orange Revolution, the Holodomor narrative has regained momentum, serving nationalist goals by reinforcing Ukrainian identity and fostering the country’s independence from Russia.

The Geographical Reality: Famine Across the USSR

A central problem with the Holodomor narrative is its assertion that Ukraine was the primary target. The reality is that famine spread across large swathes of the Soviet Union. Regions like Kazakhstan were, in fact, more devastated on a per capita basis than Ukraine, while Soviet Russia also suffered severe losses. This broader Soviet famine refutes the genocide argument, showing the effects of poor agricultural policies and environmental disaster across multiple Soviet regions, not just Ukraine (Tauger, 1992).

The rise of the Holodomor narrative in the 1980s coincided with Ukrainian post-Soviet nation-building. Some scholars, like Peter Novick, argue that this narrative reflects a form of “Holocaust Envy,” where nationalists attempt to downplay other atrocities (such as the Holocaust) to elevate their own experience as uniquely tragic. The Ukrainian scholar Lubomyr Luciuk has controversially claimed that the Holodomor was “a crime against humanity arguably without parallel in European history,” reflecting the extreme lengths taken to establish this narrative.

Second Issue

Labeling the famine “man-made” implies that it was deliberate, which was not the case. Although human factors contributed, the main causes of the famine were bad weather and crop disease, which resulted in poor harvests and pushed the USSR into crisis.

Furthermore, kulaks (wealthy peasants owning land, livestock, and tools) who resisted collectivization policies played a significant role in worsening the situation. In the early 1930s In response to the state-enforced requisitioning of grain, some kulaks engaged in active sabotage, burning crops, killing livestock and damaging equipment to resist the Soviet government’s efforts. Poor communication and delayed action across various levels of government also compounded the crisis, leading to greater devastation.

Quota Reduction

What undermines the genocide argument most significantly is the Soviet government’s response once the famine began. Contrary to the narrative that the USSR deliberately starved its citizens, evidence shows that the Central Committee reduced grain procurement quotas after realizing the gravity of the 1932 harvest failure. In May 1932, the planned procurement quota was reduced by 30%, and subsequent decrees further reduced the quotas for various agricultural products. Despite the challenges, Soviet authorities made active efforts to address the crisis, although their actions were far from sufficient (Mark Tauger. (1992). The 1932 Harvest and the Famine of 1933).

Notably, revisionist scholars like James Mace and Robert Conquest have downplayed or entirely ignored these quota reductions, instead focusing on the famine as proof of Soviet intent to starve Ukrainians. Conquest’s work, for example, avoids any discussion of the lower grain procurement targets, despite Soviet records showing that the government tried to mitigate the famine’s effects (Davies & Wheatcroft, 2004 Link).

Rapid Industrialization

Soviet policies of rapid industrialization and collectivization contributed directly to the famine. However, had these efforts not been pursued, the Soviet Union would have faced far greater difficulties later. Stalin’s famous statement in 1931—”We must make good this distance in ten years. Either we do it, or we shall go under”—proved eerily prophetic when Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union just a decade later.

By 1941, the USSR had built a robust industrial base, which was essential in its defeat of Nazi Germany. The rapid industrialization of the early 1930s allowed the Soviet Union to produce the weapons, tanks, and planes that would eventually win the war. In Hitler’s own words from 1942,

“All in all, one has to say: They built factories here where two years ago there were unknown farming villages, factories the size of the Hermann-Göring-Werke. They have railroads that aren’t even marked on the map.”

– Werner Jochmann. (1980). Adolf Hitler. Monologe im Führerhauptquartier 1941-1944.

Thus, while the cost was heavy, including the famine, this industrial base saved the USSR from destruction during World War II.

Collectivization also built resilience among the civilian population:

The experts were especially surprised by the Red Army’s up-to-date equipment… Russians met the German blitzkrieg tactic by two methods, both requiring superb morale. When the German tanks broke through, Russian infantry would form again between the tanks and their supporting German infantry… The Germans found no “soft civilian rear.” They encountered collective farmers, organized as guerrillas and coordinated with the regular Russian army.

– Anna Louise Strong. (1956). The Stalin Era

Conclusion: A Tragedy, Not Genocide

While there is no doubt that the Soviet government mishandled the famine, leading to tragic and widespread suffering, evidence does not support the conclusion that the famine was an act of genocide. The conditions leading to the famine were driven by a mix of environmental crises, poor policies, and sabotage—not by a deliberate attempt to wipe out the Ukrainian population. The Holodomor narrative has been shaped over decades by external propaganda efforts and nationalist revisionism, but a balanced view reveals a broader Soviet tragedy, not an ethnic genocide.

Sources: https://voidami.wordpress.com/2024/09/08/the-holodomor/

#The Holodomor #USSR #Ukraine #Famine #History #Myth Debunking

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fratboykate · 1 year ago

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So what's the KYMAU reunion like when Yelena gets back from Russia? The first time Yelena sees Ri again? Awkward or easier than thought?

Can I just say…no one does drama or angst or heartache like you and I just love you for it. The suffering is real. How do Kate and Yelena ever find their way back to one another? Poor Ri, getting abandoned like that 😭 Yelena just peaced out without telling them. K&Y’s little email exchange breaks my heart.

---

Love how toms whole argument each time has been "we fucked". Also laughing at the idea of Kate and Tom sleeping together quite regularly and her dropping his petty ass as soon as yelena comes back into the picture. How does it go down when he realizes she's in New York again?

---

You do know how to bring the drama! I love it! So does Tom think he’s got a proper shot again now that yelena is out of the picture (for now...) what’s his reaction to when she comes back?!

///

This is another prompt mega-combo. Here's 7k of Yelena coming back from Russia and how that all goes down.

---

Yelena sits by the small oval window, her eyes fixed on the vast expanse of clouds stretching out across the horizon. Her mind is a whirlwind of thoughts as she reflects on the recent events that have upended her life. The people she met and the progress they made together to bring positive change to Russia and beyond fill her brain. Under Yelena's steadfast guidance, the legal department at EcoShield Russia evolved into an unstoppable force and their victories were becoming too prominent to ignore. They were suddenly at the forefront of successful Russian environmental advocacy, championing and winning battles for causes like protecting landowners' rights to grow forests on lands listed as agricultural. This once-illegal act, previously met with hefty fines and land seizures, was now allowed thanks to Yelena’s work. It had been an arduous battle, but her unyielding determination led them to triumph. Yelena repeatedly took the government to court and unexpectedly began amassing rare victories for environmentalism. However, her success came at a steep price.

Mere days after her last win, the authorities labeled Yelena a "foreign agent," accusing her of engaging in "subversive activities" aimed at "harming Russia." False charges of espionage loomed ominously over her, and the government sought to swiftly apprehend her. Thankfully, an ally within the police force alerted her organization, giving them precious time to arrange her escape. In a daring operation, they whisked Yelena away to the Russian-Finnish border, where she crossed over to safety, narrowly evading capture. It was a close call. That single phone call spared her from execution or, at the very least, many grueling years of imprisonment at a hard labor camp.

In Yelena's absence, the government held a hasty and unjust trial, stripping her of Russian citizenship. Fortunately, also being an American citizen spared her from statelessness, but this ruling meant she could never return to her motherland. The NGO she had devoted herself to, the organization that had become her life, was subsequently targeted in a brutal raid. EcoShield was labeled an "undesirable" and "extremist" entity, accused of “interfering with the legislative process”, and after severe government pressure, they were ultimately forced to dissolve. It was an unfair end to the work they fought so passionately for.

As Yelena gazes out at the billowing clouds, her thoughts are filled with a mix of relief and sorrow. She escaped the clutches of an oppressive regime, but what she lost in the process was immense. As a result of her hurried departure from Moscow, Yelena was unable to return to her apartment, leaving behind all she owned, every ounce of the life she built, and everything she cherished. Currently, her only possessions are what she had with her at the office that day — a wallet, a backpack containing her laptop and work necessities, her phone, and the clothes on her back. She spent uneasy days in Finland, waiting for the American Embassy to issue her a new passport. It was her lifeline, the document that would carry her back to the familiarity of the United States.

Yelena and Kate were...in a better place. A visit to New York was mentioned in passing several times, but no concrete plans had been made.

Yelena explicitly intended to honor her commitment to the organization and fulfill her two-year contract before contemplating her next move. The sacrifices she made when she left the city were driven by her dedication to EcoShield and the cause they championed. She had to see this through. Now, less than nine months later, Yelena finds herself on a plane back home. The circumstances surrounding her return may be far from ideal, but Yelena has faith in the promise of this new chapter.

"Ladies and gentlemen. This is your captain speaking. We are beginning our final descent into New York City. On behalf of the entire crew, I would like to welcome you to your destination. We hope you had a pleasant flight with us today. As we approach the…"

Yelena fixates on the skyline that emerges from behind the thick clouds. She closes her eyes, taking a deep, steadying breath.

Here we go.

---

Kate paces anxiously in the bustling "Arrivals" area of JFK, her eyes darting between the carousel where the luggage of Flight 847 arriving from Helsinki starts appearing and the door through which passengers emerge. While antsily chewing on her fingers, she unintentionally ruins the expensive manicure she got the previous night. Her sole focus now is spotting Yelena in the throng of people. Kate needs to make sure she doesn't miss the blonde because Yelena has no idea she should be looking for Kate.

While Kate and Yelena hadn't explicitly discussed Kate coming to the airport, Kate knew the exact time of Yelena's arrival. With a quick Google search, she found the flight Yelena was on.

At some point, while she tracks the eight-hour flight, Kate decides she needs to be there when Yelena lands. Anything else would feel wrong. But Kate reminds herself to remain composed, to stay strong. She's not going to become emotional. She's here solely to pick Yelena up from the airport. That's it. Nothing more.

As Kate's pacing intensifies, the tension becomes almost unbearable. Just as she feels on the verge of bursting…there she is. Kate hasn't seen Yelena in eight months, three weeks, and two days. And now...there she is. That’s Yelena, walking to the exit, wholly unaware she’s being watched. It takes a beat for Kate to snap out of her trance and realize she needs to move her feet if she has any shot of catching Yelena before she hops into a cab.

Clumsily dodging people through the crowd, Kate speedwalks in Yelena’s direction. Just as Yelena is about to reach the doors and disappear in the chaos of the sidewalk, Kate musters the courage to call out her name.

"Yelena."

Yelena could recognize that voice anywhere. She stops in her tracks and her head whips around. She doesn't know the source of the familiar pitch, so she looks in every direction.

"Yel."

Kate calls out once more. Confused, Yelena scans the area until she finally pinpoints that the sound is coming from her left. She turns, and...there she is. There's Kate, speedily approaching with a bright smile.

Kate promised herself she wouldn't become overwhelmed, but the way Yelena looks at her, as if she's the most precious thing she’s ever laid eyes on, breaks that resolve. A wide, borderline cartoonish smile spreads across Kate's face. This is already going nothing as planned. She realizes that since her intention to "keep cool" has gone awry, then she should at least keep it in check otherwise. Whatever you do...don't touch her.

Kate closes the distance and her arms instinctively wrap around Yelena's neck, pulling her into a tight hug. FUCK. There goes that plan too.

Yelena drops the small rucksack she carries with the bare essentials she bought to survive for a few days in Helsinki and embraces Kate in return, their bodies finding solace in each other's presence.

They stand there, anchored by the door for what feels like an infinity. This is a real coming home. Annoyed passengers and families navigate around them as they try to enter or exit the area. Eventually, Kate regains her senses and takes a step back, attempting to reclaim her composure and don a more stoic demeanor. She tries to pretend that the effusive outpouring didn't just happen. She must salvage some of her dignity.

"Welcome to New York. I hope your flight was enjoyable.” Kate manages to utter in her most professional, corporate-speak style.

Yelena chuckles softly.

"Thank you?...It was long but good."

"I...uhm...my car is...garage. Yeah. It's in the garage. Parked. There." Kate stumbles over her words, feeling flustered.

Yelena nods.

"Okay."

Kate starts walking and Yelena follows closely.

"You didn't have to come. Thank you...but you didn't have to." Yelena expresses with undeniable gratitude.

Kate stops abruptly and turns around so fast that Yelena nearly collides with her. Overwhelmed by the rush of emotions, Kate's need to embrace Yelena takes hold anew.

"You could've died. I could've never seen you again." Kate whispers into Yelena's ear, her emotions betraying her.

Yelena wraps her arms around Kate a second time.

"But I didn't. I'm here." Yelena leans back to look at Kate reassuringly. "I'm here...and I'm not going anywhere."

"Ever?" Kate asks with trepidation.

"Never." Yelena affirms, her gaze steady and unfaltering.

They stare at each other, their eyes conveying millions of unspoken things. After a long beat, Kate steps back, the intensity of the moment giving way to a mix of relief and anticipation.

"Traffic's going to be a nightmare if we don't go." Kate half mumbles, attempting to regain her composure and shift the focus back to practical matters.

"Yeah." Yelena agrees with a touch of humor.

Kate, still holding onto a tinge of vulnerability, doesn't step ahead of Yelena this time. Instead, they walk side by side toward the parking lot, and quiet settles between them. This is a testament to the unassailable bond that’s weathered the storm.

---

As they make their way back to the city, the atmosphere inside the car is heavy with a comfortable silence. The half-hour ride back is not awkward or tense. They're content to be together in the same place. It's just...silent. They're both lost in their thoughts, unsure of where to even begin.

"You want food?" Kate randomly poses the question as they drive down the freeway.

"I'm not starving, but I could eat. I could at least use something to drink."

Kate hastily crosses four lanes of traffic to catch the exit that is a few hundred feet in front of them, causing Yelena to reflexively grab the door handle tightly. Cars honk aggressively at them.

"We can't eat if you kill us first, Kate Bishop." Yelena facetiously chastises her. Kate grimaces, realizing what she’d done.

"Sorry." Kate looks at the road then nervously bites her lip. "It's been a while...since you said my full name...It's been a long time."

Kate glances at Yelena, who smiles at her and then looks away.

"I missed it."

Kate bites the inside of her cheek in an attempt to ensure her smile doesn't take over her entire face.

"I missed it too."

As they exit the freeway, Kate spots a mediocre chain restaurant and pulls into the parking lot. It's not the best option, but it'll do.

---

Minutes later, Kate and Yelena sit silently, staring at the menus in their hands. Kate abruptly closes hers and looks at Yelena.

"She doesn't know you're here." Yelena looks up, sees the seriousness in Kate's eyes and closes her menu too. Kate starts rambling. "I haven't told her. I didn't know how this would go, so I wasn't sure what to say anyway. I didn't want to get her hopes up and then have..."

Yelena's hand reaches out and lands atop Kate's.

"It's fine. You did the right thing."

"Yeah. Yeah. Okay."

"A week ago, I was halfway around the world. Now I'm here. It's a lot. I get it. I don't want to rush you or her into anything. We can take our time, figure it out, and then we can fill her in if there's anything she needs to know. There's no rush. Like I said, I'm here and not going anywhere."

"Only because they basically ran you out." Kate adds, slight bitterness in her delivery. She quickly catches herself. "Sorry. That was mean."

"I deserved that. And you're not wrong. I'd still be in Moscow if that hadn't happened...But I'm here now. Whatever the circumstances, I'm here now and that's not going to change."

"Promise?" Kate probes timidly and vulnerable.

"I promise."

Kate nods. The only way she can avoid Yelena's intense stare is to hurriedly turn back to her menu, pretending to read it to hide her emotions. Yelena smirks and follows suit, picking up her menu as well.

---

They eat quietly, the primary sound at their table being that of forks clinking on the plates. The bits of small talk they do make are trivial and forced, like they're avoiding the elephant in the room. "How was the weather in Helsinki?", "How's your mom?", "How was the food at the hotel?". These questions are irrelevant, merely placeholders for the actual conversations they want to be having. The weight of unstated words circles the air, and Kate can feel it pressing down on her. They both know what needs to be said, but neither dares to speak it aloud.

Yelena tells Kate over dinner that she’s booked a dingy hotel room for a couple of weeks. Yelena is now unemployed and technically homeless, so a middle-of-the-road traveler's motel is the best she can do. Kate feels a pang of hurt for some reason. She didn't expect Yelena to stay with her; they never discussed it. In theory, she knew they weren't there yet, but it still stung. Yelena is back but staying at some random place. They practically lived together for the last month Yelena was in New York. Even though the blonde still rented the AirBnB down the hallway, she never used it and slept in Kate's bed every night. Almost every night. Kate should have known something was off when Yelena said she would sleep at her place that one random day. When Kate showed up with Ereka at her door mid-morning, Yelena was gone. The assumption that Yelena would be sleeping next to her tonight or even this week was not something Kate had even considered, but suddenly, now that she knows it's NOT happening, it pains her a little. However, Kate can fully admit her feelings are irrational, and she's trying to swallow them. She has no reason to be upset. Yelena staying at a hotel until they figure out what's happening is logical. It’s the responsible, adult decision, and it makes perfect sense. But Kate, who is known to be anything but logical, is still lowkey salty about it.

Kate drives in silence, lost in her thoughts, as they make their way to the address Yelena gives her for her motel. Kate pulls into the parking lot and parks the car across from the small reception area. They sit in silence for an instant until Yelena breaks it.

"Thanks for the ride and the meal."

Kate shrugs.

"You don't have a job, so...only fair I paid."

Yelena chuckles.

"You drove to JFK for me. I would've spent more on a cab. That deserved at least me paying you back with lunch."

"You can get it next time." Kate's face falls when she realizes the implication that there will be a next time. She quickly checks herself. "Not that there...I mean...um...nevermind." Kate turns her attention to the door with the small neon sign above it that reads ‘Check-In Here’. "Do you...uhm...do you need me to come inside?"

"You don't have to." Yelena pauses for a bit. "But you can if you want. I don't want to keep you from anything."

"Nothing. No. Ri isn't out of school for a few more hours."

"Okay."

They stare at each other, immobile and silent, for some time prior to Yelena speaking anew.

"I should..." She trails off, pulling the door handle, and slightly opening it while undoing her seat belt.

"Right. Yeah. Totally." Kate expeditiously unbuckles herself and also steps out of the car.

Yelena retrieves her bag from the backseat before walking to the reception. Kate follows closely behind, lost in thought. Within a few steps, they disappear into the lobby.

---

The check-in process is smooth and painless. The only thing out of the ordinary was the fact that when Yelena reached into her pocket to pull out her wallet and provide her ID and credit card, her hand brushed against Kate's. It was such a small thing, but it seemed to electrify the space around them.

Yelena is in room 119. They now walk down the first-floor hallway that leads there. They pause when they reach the door, hovering in front of it.

"One nineteen. This is me." Yelena gestures to the door.

"This is you."

They both linger for a beat.

"Thank you. For the ride."

"You said that already."

"I did. But I mean it, so felt necessary to repeat."

"You're welcome then. It was nothing tho. It felt like the right thing to do." Yelena smiles but doesn't add anything. "I should..." Kate trails off and points behind her.

"Drive safe."

"You too." Kate catches her blunder and grimaces. Yelena chuckles. "I didn't...You..."

Kate scurries away, feeling her cheeks flush with embarrassment. Yelena watches her go while simultaneously putting the key in the door and pushing it open. Kate's steps slow down, and she walks about twenty feet until something comes over her and she turns on her heels. She marches back toward Yelena, her body trembling with keenness and nerves. Yelena looks confused at the intensity and speed at which Kate is coming at her.

"You..."

Yelena's question gets interrupted by Kate's lips on hers. The kiss is electric, charged with a sense of urgency. Yelena finds herself pulling Kate into the room, dropping her pack with a thud, and kicking it aside. They land on the bed instants later.

Kate frantically tugs at her shirt, desperate to feel the skin-on-skin contact she craves. In a moment of sober thought, Yelena's hands grip the brunette’s, stopping her from going any further. She surveys the younger woman’s blue eyes, reading the unvoiced desires and needs that lay beneath the surface.

"Are you sure?" Yelena half whispers, her cadence soft.

"No. It might be a terrible idea. But right now, I need you inside me more than I need to think.”

Without another word, Yelena leans in and kisses her deeply, the urgency of their zeal taking over. Within seconds, Kate is naked beneath her, their bodies entwined in ardent passion.

---

Two hours later, their bodies intertwined and breaths gradually steadying, Kate rests her head on Yelena's naked chest and her hand traces lazy figures on her toned stomach. Yelena's fingers caress Kate's back, creating a pacifying pattern. Yelena presses a tender kiss to Kate's head and then turns to look at the old digital clock on the bedside table.

"You probably need to go get Ri soon."

"Yeah." Kate agrees while her mind races. She turns and props herself up on her elbow, resting her head on her hand while looking down at Yelena. "Come home."

"What?" Confusion flickers in Yelena's eyes.

"You're not leaving again, right?"

"No." Yelena shakes her head, speaking barely above a whisper.

"Then come home. Why spend two weeks here? Why bother finding another place? If you promise you're not going anywhere, just...come home."

"What about Ri?"

"Having you home would make her even happier than me…She misses you. Hasn't been the same since you left."

Yelena averts her gaze, remorse evident in her expression.

"Maybe she needs time. She doesn't even know I'm here."

"If she hates it, I'll drive you back here myself...but I have a feeling she won’t. You can be with us, in my bed, instead of this shitty box spring that reeks of cigarettes."

"It does smell in here."

They stare at each other and laugh.

"I want to do right by her." Yelena's eyes scan Kate's face. "I promise that if you let me back into your life, her life, I won't ever do anything to hurt her again. I won't leave again. You'll have to kick me out if you want me gone."

Kate smiles.

"Promise?"

"I've never been more serious about anything in my life."

Kate's smile widens.

"Then come home. I don't want to stop doing...that...ever, but I'm getting old and there's only so much my back can take. This mattress is not back-friendly. My bed is much more conducive to you having your way with me...However you want."

"That's a sales pitch if I've ever heard one." Yelena chuckles.

"Should we go get our girl?"

Yelena nods as she lifts her head, meeting Kate's lips in a torrid kiss. In an instant, Kate is on her back once more. They indulge their lust for two more orgasms before finally leaving the room.

---

Kate stands near the school entrance, her heart pounding with uncertainty as the final bell reverberates through the buzzing corridors. Eager young voices fill the air, their excited utterances rising in crescendo. Among the lively group, Ereka emerges, her bright green eyes scanning the surroundings until they lock onto Kate's familiar figure. A radiant smile illuminates her face, and she hurtles toward her mother with a burst of youthful energy. She’s a force of nature in motion. Kate gracefully lowers herself into a squat to meet Ereka at eye level.

"Mommy, guess what? I got a sticker for my counting and numbers today!"

"That's amazing, baby! Congratulations. I'm so so proud of you."

Ereka's euphoria at her accomplishment becomes palpable.

"Can you make Mac and Cheese later? Only the best in class get a sticker, so I win a prize. Anything I want."

Kate chuckles.

“I’ll make you some Mac.” Ereka does a celebratory dance. “Hey...I have something I want to talk to you about." Kate speaks the words with slight trepidation as she adoringly glides her hands up and down Ri's arms.

"Okay. What is it?"

"You know the little bakery down the block?"

"Are we getting treats?!”

"We can." Kate’s smile grows at how Ereka lights up. “But here’s the thing…there's someone special waiting for us there right now."

"Is it Daddy?"

Kate hides her grimace.

"No. It's not your dad, baby.”

"Suzu?" Ereka ripostes immediately.

"Not Suzu either...I want you to know that if you don't want to see this person, we don't have to. Okay? You can tell me and we'll go home."

"Who is it, Mommy?”

Kate pauses, her gaze softening as she takes in Ereka's face. After a beat, she speaks.

"Yelena's back and she would really love to see you." Silence hangs in the air as Ereka ponders the revelation. "How do you feel about that?" A nonchalant shrug is Ereka's initial response. "Do you want to go home, then?” Kate offers, ready to respect Ereka's wishes. Ereka takes her time, clearly thinking. After a long beat, she shakes her head. "Do you want to go see her and then decide how you feel?” Another thoughtful pause ensues, Ereka carefully weighing her options. Eventually, she nods in agreement. "Are you sure?"

"Yeah."

It takes a lot to render Kate's kid speechless, but the fact that she's not really talking right now lets Kate know she's having some very big feelings. Kate recognizes the depth of Ereka's inner turmoil, acknowledging her child's need for processing time. With a delicate kiss on Ereka's cheek, she conveys both love and understanding.

"If you want to leave at any point, just tell me, okay? We don't have to stay if you don't want to."

Ereka offers a nearly imperceptible nod, a sign of acceptance. Kate understands that’s probably as much as she’s going to get right now. As their hands intertwine, she guides them away from the school grounds and on the short trek down the street.

---

Yelena anxiously taps her foot on the floor, a manifestation of the nerves coiling within her. She's more nervous than she can remember being in a long time. She's prepared for this to take a while, for Ereka not to warm up to her immediately. Frankly, it's what she deserves. She's ready to face the consequences of what she's done. She's also prepared to do whatever it takes to get that kid to love her afresh. It's become her number-one priority in life.

The door chimes, breaking the silence, and Yelena's gaze snaps to the entrance. It’s been nine long months since she last laid eyes on Ereka.

Sure, she's seen her in photos or stories Kate has posted on her Instagram, but she’s never been around whenever she’s Facetimed Kate since they started talking. Kate has been cautious and protective of Ereka this entire time, which only adds to Yelena's anxiety. And now, there she is, walking towards her. Yelena’s heart pounds in her chest, threatening to burst free. Yelena jumps to her feet and stands by the table, waiting for them to approach. Uncertain of what to do with her hands, she awkwardly stuffs them into her pockets.

Kate senses the palpable trepidation emanating from Yelena and offers an affable smile, attempting to ease the woman’s tension. Ereka's facial expression remains impassive, her face a mask devoid of emotion. As they approach the table, Kate mouths a soft "Hi", deftly sliding the straps of Ereka's backpack off her shoulders and setting the bag down on the floor. Squatting beside Ereka, Kate holds the girl’s hand in a heartening grip, a wordless show of support.

"You want to say 'hi'?" Kate whispers lovingly to the now six-year-old with warmth and affection.

Following Kate's lead, Yelena also squats across from Ereka. The young girl's gaze shifts between Kate and Yelena, holding their eyes briefly then she speaks, her words laced with an accusatory tone.

"You missed my birthday."

Kate bites her lip, stifling a chuckle.

"I did. I'm sorry." Yelena offers a sincere apology.

Ereka's glaring at Yelena intensifies.

"You made my mommy cry. A lot. She drank a lot of wine too. They weren't big days and it didn't even make her happy. Wine always used to make her happy."

Her words hold weight beyond her years. Yelena and Kate's eyes lock. Yelena's expression shifts to one of regret, while Kate feels exposed.

"I won't ever make your mommy cry. Not if I can help it." Yelena pledges, sincere and remorseful.

"Do you still have your job far away?" Ereka's curiosity lingers as she inquires further.

"No." Yelena shakes her head. "I'm back in the city for good."

Ereka's attention turns back to Kate, seeking affirmation. Kate offers a tender smile, assuring her everything is okay. The little girl then redirects her attention to Yelena, her question brimming with hopeful excitement.

"Will you wash my hair and do bedtime again?"

"Whenever you want me to."

Ereka pauses once more, thinking.

“You missed my birthday, but you still have to get me a birthday gift. Maybe two because you weren't at my party."

"Ereka..." Kate interjects, gently reproaching her daughter.

"I will. I'll get you anything you want." Yelena promptly pronounces, determined to make amends.

Ereka's face lights up with an idea.

"A little sister?"

"Almost anything."

"A dog." The young girl's glee wanes slightly as she suggests an alternative.

"That's more doab..." Yelena starts to say, but Kate shoots her a fierce look which prompts Yelena to pivot at breakneck speed. "How about I get you any toy you want?"

"I want a sister then a dog."

"I don't think I can get you either of those. But I'll get you ANYTHING else you want."

Ereka ponders for a short time, weighing her options.

"Nope. Those are the only two things. I got everything else on my list at my party."

"Come up with a new list then." Kate sweetly scolds. "And it can't be anything that requires me taking care of it."

"I can take care of a little sister."

"That's not how newborns work."

Kate explains patiently, rising from her squat to relieve her burning thighs. She settles into the chair behind her. Ereka and Yelena remain at eye level, creating an intimate space for their conversation to continue.

"Are you going to leave?" Ereka poses timidly. Less sure.

"No. Not unless you or your mommy ask me to." Yelena reassures her, gentle yet resolute.

"So you'll go back to being our neighbor?" Ereka's inquisitiveness blends with a hint of enthusiasm.

Yelena steals a glance at Kate, seeking permission to share their plan with Ereka. Kate silently nods, giving her consent.

"Well...I don't really have an apartment right now, so I'd have to look for one and..."

"Come live with us. You can sleep in Mommy's bed like before. Or mine. We can share." Ereka suggests eagerly.

Yelena’s smile lights up her face, touched by Ereka’s invitation.

"Would you be okay with that? You wouldn't mind it if I went back to sleeping in your Mommy's bed?"

"No." Ereka retorts without hesitation. "She told Suzu her bed felt too big."

"Ereka...You're not supposed to be eavesdropping when Suzu comes over..."

"Maybe you were talking too loud." Ereka tells her defensively.

"We weren't. We'll talk about this little snooping habit of yours later."

Ereka turns to Yelena.

"Are you going to sleep on Mommy's bed?"

"I think so, yeah."

"Good." Ereka responds, her elation evident. She shifts her gaze to the display cases at the front of the café. "Can we get treats now?"

"Sure. Whatever you want." Yelena remarks, ready to indulge Ereka in whatever she desires.

"ONE, Ereka." Kate declares as Ereka eagerly dashes off to admire the delectable sweets and baked goods behind the glass.

Yelena locks her eyes with Kate’s as she stands. Kate extends her hand and weakly squeezes Yelena's fingers encouragingly.

"That was great."

"Was it?" A tinge of doubt colors Yelena’s words.

"She loves you……We both do."

Yelena can't help but smile, a mix of joy and relief illuminating her features.

"Feeling's mutual all around."

It's Kate's turn to beam.

"Yelena, can I have this one? And this one? And that one?" Ereka rattles on as she points excitedly to the pastries on display.

"I'll be right there."

Yelena moves to the counter, ready to place their order, but Kate firmly tugs her hand, halting her progress. With a mischievous glimmer in her eyes, she beckons Yelena down to her level, urging her to come closer. Yelena does as told and leans in, bringing their faces mere centimeters apart.

"ONE...You better not come back here with more than one." Kate whispers, offering an affectionate warning.

Yelena nods as her heart races in response, her breath catching in her throat while she gazes into Kate's eyes. Unable to resist, she leans in, their lips coming into contact in a tender, stolen kiss.

"One." Yelena murmurs then reluctantly walks away.

Kate absentmindedly taps her phone screen to check the time and instantly gets distracted by the dozens of notifications she's amassed throughout the day. She begins to address them and her attention shifts entirely to her screen.

---

Ten minutes later, the pair of blondes approach the table with a box full of a dozen different pastries in tow. Ereka hops over, excited at their haul and Yelena offers a 'please don't kill me' smile.

When Kate looks up from her phone, she tilts her head and squints, as she notices the oversized box.

"That's a VERY big box to hold one pastry."

"See...the thing is..." Yelena attempts to defend herself and breaks out her serious, attorney voice.

Kate grabs her purse from the table and the tiny purple bookbag that rests next to her then stands and heads for the door.

"I don't want to be mad at you before you even move back in, so please don't say another word." Kate warns, trying to hide her amusement. "You two together are trouble."

Yelena and Ereka exchange a look. Yelena playfully winks at the little girl and offers a reassuring smile.

"She won't be mad when she sees how pretty they are." Ereka tells Yelena almost convincingly.

"She won't." Yelena replies with affection.

Ereka casually reaches for Yelena's hand, their fingers intertwining effortlessly as they stride forward together.

"Can you help me with my art homework?" Ereka looks up at Yelena as they try to keep pace with Kate, whose longer legs make it a challenge for their shorter ones to catch up.

"I’m not great at art, but I'll try my best."

"Good. Mommy's terrible at art."

"I'm sure she is." Yelena says with a smile.

Within thirty seconds, they reach Kate, who steals a fleeting glance at Yelena and offers a flash of a smile then promptly resumes her facade of annoyance as a result of the pastry debacle. Yelena's heart swells as Ereka enthusiastically shares stories from her day at school. She missed this. She missed her girls. And she's thrilled she'll never have to again for the rest of her life.

---

They make dinner as a family, with Ereka perched on the kitchen island while Kate and Yelena work together, joyfully preparing a celebratory Mac & Cheese dinner. The tantalizing scent of fresh pasta, mouthwatering cheese sauce, and sizzling steak fills the air.

Seated around the table, they relish in their meal together, sharing laughter and lighthearted banter. It's remarkable how fast they fall back into a routine, as if no time has passed at all.

After dinner, Kate and Yelena settle at either side of Ereka, snuggled up on the couch, ready for a cozy movie night leading up to Ereka's bedtime. They bask in the warmth of their togetherness, savoring every second.

Sometime around six-thirty, a sharp knock interrupts their tranquility.

"I'll get it." Yelena volunteers, rising from the couch. As she passes by, Kate cheekily taps Yelena's ass. "Behave." Yelena scolds her with a playful grin.

Yelena approaches the door and swings it open to reveal Tom standing on the other side.

"What the fuck?" Tom blurts out. "What the fuck are you doing here?!"

At the sound of Tom's voice, Kate hastily pauses the movie and stands.

"Daddy!" Ereka exclaims and perks up. "Can he watch the movie with us, Mommy?”

Kate lifts Ereka from the couch and gingerly nudges her to her room.

"No, baby. I need you to go to your room and start getting ready for bed."

"But it's early!" Ereka whines.

"Now." Kate asserts sternly, conveying there's no room for negotiation.

With a disgruntled huff, Ereka clomps away and down the hallway, grumbling under her breath. Kate rushes to the door to find Yelena and Tom already embroiled in an argument.

"...fuck out of my house!"

"Pretty sure you're not on the lease, so this isn't 'your' house." Yelena counters with defiance.

"You..." Tom's eyes narrow when he sees Kate approach. "KitKat...what's this bitch doing here?" He adds a malicious emphasis to the 'bitch'. "You need to get her away from Ri."

Kate lightly squeezes Yelena's forearm and Yelena turns to face her.

"Can you help her get ready for bed, please?" Yelena glares at her. "...Please."

Yelena shoots one final contemptuous glare at Tom before turning and stomping away.

"What THE FUCK is that?" Tom seethes with fury.

"You need to tone it down. Don't raise your voice at me." Kate warns firmly.

"Then tell me what that fucking dyke whore is doing here."

"Yeah, you're not gonna do that. You're not going to call her names. And you're NEVER going to say those words in front of Ri."

"SHE..."

"She lives here now. She's back and we are back. She moved in today. So...this..." Kate gestures between them, unwavering. "...no more. It’s over. You can't show up unannounced anymore. You can only come over if we’ve agreed this is where you’re picking up Ri.”

"My kid lives here. I can show up whenever I want."

"Not anymore. Things changed."

"I was fucking coming inside you last week. Then you stop answering my calls and now..." Kate apprehensively glances over her shoulder, pushing him away from the entrance and further down the hallway as she shuts the door behind her. Yelena doesn't know that. She doesn't need to know that. "...What the fuck is this shit?"

"I'm doing what's best for me. For Ri."

"Horseshit. BULLSHIT!"

"Keep your voice down." Kate warns firmly.

"What's best for her is her family together, not you fucking off and playing pretend dyke."

"If you say that word one more time, I'm walking back inside."

"Then what are you doing? Tell me." He grits through his teeth.

"Moving on. It's about time we both do that."

"No. No. You're my wife. I don't need to move on from you."

"I haven't been that in a long time."

"Then why was my fucking dick inside you on Thursday? HUH?!" Tom's anger flares up. Tom's hand clenches tightly around Kate's upper arm.

"I need you to let go." Tom glares at her, his grip tightening. "Thomas..." Kate's is stony, as if reprimanding a misbehaving child.

After a beat, Tom releases her. He punches the nearest wall in frustration then leans right into Kate’s face.

"You're gonna regret this. She's gonna fuck you over. I'm not gonna let her fuck my kid up. I'm not."

"Okay. I'm going inside now."

Kate turns away, refusing to engage any further. Tom's demeanor shifts. He becomes softer, almost frail. This is him trying to play the manipulation card.

"KitKat...I need you. I need our family back together. We were so close. We were happy."

Kate doesn't even look back at him.

"Maybe you were..."

"Fuck you." That stings Tom and the words slip out of his mouth.

"Go home. You're picking her up from school tomorrow and I'm getting her from your mom’s Sunday night."

"Fuck her. Fuck all of this."

Kate stands at the door, her expression stoic, wordlessly observing him seethe. He's standing there, face flushed, and breathing heavily. Just by looking at him, Kate can tell his blood pressure must be through the roof.

"Good night. Get home safe." Kate utters calmly while closing the door.

---

Kate enters Ereka's bedroom to find Yelena sitting on the small section of the mattress that's unoccupied. Yelena holds a book in her lap while Ereka wraps her arms around Yelena's waist, leaning on her while she watches the pages as Yelena reads them aloud.

Kate lingers by the door, giving them their moment. Ereka senses her presence and turns to her.

"Where's daddy?"

"He had to go help grandma."

"He didn't say good night?" Ereka inquires, evidently disappointed.

"No, baby." Kate approaches. "Grandma really needed him, so he had to leave. But he sends you kisses and told me to tell you that he loves you very, very much."

"He could've come say 'hi'. Grandma could've waited two minutes."

Kate and Yelena's eyes meet. Kate can sense the disapproval in Yelena's eyes.

"You'll see him tomorrow. He's picking you up from school and then you’ll go stay with him and grandma until Sunday."

"But Yelena's back..."

"And she'll still be here on Sunday. Your dad gets you this weekend."

"But..."

"No 'buts’. It’s time for sleep."

Ereka frowns and huffs, dissatisfied. Yelena resumes reading, trying to distract the girl.

"With steady aim, she drew back the string in her bow, feeling the suspense build. As she released the arrow, it soared through the air, finding its mark with precision. The crowd erupted in cheers…”

Kate presses a kiss to Ereka's forehead and tenderly strokes her leg, soothing her into sleep.

The three of them stay there until well after Ereka falls asleep.

---

Hours later, Kate and Yelena lay in bed spent. Their naked bodies are intertwined and glistening with sweat. Exhausted, Kate drifts to the cusp of slumber while Yelena is wide awake...her mind going a million miles an hour, overflowing with thoughts and worries.

"If we don't check him, he'll be a problem." Yelena murmurs, her words tinged with concern.

Kate amorously kisses Yelena's collarbone, trying to comfort her.

"I can handle him. He's fine."

"Kate..."

"He just needs some time to adjust. We'll be okay. Sleep." Kate looks up and places her hand on Yelena's chin, pulling on it to turn Yelena's face, forcing their eyes to meet. "Thank you for coming back."

"Thank you for taking me back."

"Easy choice." Kate leans in, her lips meeting Yelena's in a soft kiss. "I love you. So much."

"I love you too."

"I know." Kate nods, a serene expression on her face. "Sleep."

"Yeah."

Yelena, unwilling to argue tonight, sets aside her nagging feeling about how much of a nuisance Tom will be in their lives. However, the tight knot in her stomach serves as a warning, urging her to brace. Yelena has learned to trust her gut instincts, knowing they rarely lead her astray. But that’s a problem for tomorrow…

"Night." Kate whispers, peppering Yelena's skin with soft kisses.

"Good night."

Before long, they're sound asleep in each other's arms, officially starting their journey as life partners.

#bishova #bishlova #katelena #kate bishop #yelena belova #kate x yelena #kymau #kymaup #anonymous #answers #myposts

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partisan-by-default · 2 months ago

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Trump’s Surprising Ties to Another Russian Disinfo Scheme

Former Trump policy aide George Papadopoulos and his wife, Simona Mangiante, have become involved with Intelligencer, a growing conservative site heavily critical of the war in Ukraine (the right-wing site has no apparent connection with New York magazine’s Intelligencer). Nearly half of the company’s board members are former aides, surrogates, or fake electors for Trump’s previous campaigns, The Guardian reported Thursday.

The site’s financial backing did not indicate that it had received funds directly from the Kremlin. Instead, Intelligencer began as a subsidiary of a right-wing radio station in Australia that covers a host of conservative U.S. issues, including climate change denial and Covid-19 conspiracies, until George Eliason, an American journalist with experience in Ukraine, took over the website. In recent months, Intelligencer’s conspiracy-laden articles have been shared by the likes of Alex Jones and former Trump aide Roger Stone.

“Intelligencer appears to be one of several [Russia-friendly] operations targeting the upcoming U.S. elections, leveraging a network of far-right figures and disinformation tactics,” Olga Lautman, a senior fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis, told The Guardian.

Intelligencer is far from the only conservative site that’s been busted in a recent government crackdown ahead of the November election. Earlier this month, another pro-Trump media group—Tenet Media—folded under the pressure of a Justice Department investigation that found the company had been backed to the tune of millions of dollars from Russian state-controlled media.

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nikproxima · 21 hours ago

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Horizon Lore Post

The Climate Victory Compact, contrary to its name, was not an admission of victory - it was a crushing defeat on all sides. The Great War acted as the primary driver for this, a massive, continent scaling conflict that saw every piece of military equipment utilized. Initially a proxy war between states, by the 2080s the Rus-Sino-NATO conflict had boiled over into full peer-to-peer conflict, with both forces making territorial grabs across Asia and Northern Africa. Resources were scarce, and the quest for continued extraction had come to blows. The Siberian steppe became the new Verdun, and NATO-Allied forces held their own for nearly two years. In the Middle East, oil fields were hastily burned to prevent Chinese and Russian forces from making a land grab. Lines were breaking on both sides, and the tunnel vision of conflict prevented the major powers from identifying the sheer degradation of global order. Nations grew tired, people grew tired, and the delicate framework that kept the planet together seemed to border on crisis. In space, battles raged - automated war frigates carried out their espionage and counterspace maneuvers, a cat and mouse game that had unfortunately broken the allure of space for peace. On the Moon, the great settlements locked their doors, and astronauts bolstered rifles as their home countries duked it out on the surface. It is unknown if any skirmeshes occurred on the lunar surface. Mars was silent, as it always was. Cities had been ravaged by natural disasters, one after the other, for so many years - and many were beginning to wonder if the end of times was truly upon them.

November 19th, 2089 was a day like any other. The US-led "Cavalier Brigade" was preparing to push through a Chinese blockade, potentially allowing for a small town's water filtration system to fall back into NATO hands. CENTCOM had it first, a brilliant flash had been observed by SBIRS satellites hiding out at GEO, roaring upward from the deserts of Iran. A missile had been launched - it's target unknown. In a quick ballistic arc, the missile would shed its first and second stages, before deploying a confusing volley of chaff - designed to confuse enemy interceptors. And then, it began to fall. Skipping across the atmosphere, the warhead sought its target before finally detonating over the city of New Dehli. 76 megatons would kill millions in moments, the largest wartime nuclear detonation since Hiroshima. A decapitation strike, the Indian government could not respond - and for a precious few minutes, the world hung in the balance. The Indian president, away for a UN summit, found his nation in ruins - an entire line of government destroyed. In a passionate speech delivered to the UN, he pleaded his case - citing the destruction of his beloved home city as a failure of the modern world. It would not fall on deaf ears.

Gradually, the war would lead to atrophy - as constrained resources made the conflict harder to keep up. Even with the advent of fusion power, the outdated equipment being thrown into the conflict could not be maintained sustainably. The last shot was fired by an M1 Abrams tank in January of 2090, as a 1,000 year storm ravaged the East Coast. Sheltering in the UN headquarters in New York, leaders of the world began to face what they had made. Superstorm Elena is marked by many as the final blow of the Rus-Sino-NATO war, later referred to as the Great War or the Dark War by Lunar historians. It is out of this 3 day storm that the agreements of the C-V-C were established, the creation of a combined, UN military for keeping of the peace, and the transition to sustainability projects with the hope of protecting a crippled world from slipping further into darkness.

#science fiction #horizon #writing #worldbuilding #science #conflict #alternate history #space #sci-fi

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mariacallous · 3 months ago

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In March, a little-known volunteer organization dedicated to “reviving the religious and secular unity of the Russian people” escorted agents from the Internal Affairs Ministry and the Russian National Guard on a raid in the remote city of Orenburg, a city of 500,000 near the Kazakh border.

Their target was a bar called Pose, which was locally famous for its drag shows. The volunteer organization, called Russian Community Orenburg, posted videos of the raid online, highlighting people in skimpy outfits, asking attendees why they were in a “faggot bar,” and showing clubgoers cowering on the floor as agents conducted their search.

“This is not [a scene from] the decaying West, this is from within the ranks of a country that is at war for a third year,” the group lamented when it posted the video online.

Conservatives in Orenburg had been outraged about Pose since it opened in 2021, according to the Russian outlet Mediazona, and a local media outlet published a sensationalist article about the club, complaining that laws like Russia’s longstanding “gay propaganda ban” did not give local law enforcement the tools to shut it down. That law, enacted in 2013, only bans materials made available to minors and carries light penalties.

The agents in Pose that night were armed with a major new weapon in Russia’s long crusade against its queer citizens. Last November, in a secret proceeding sealed to observers, Russia’s Supreme Court decreed the “international LGBT movement” to be an “extremist” organization, adding it to a list of banned entities that includes terrorist groups and the political operation of the late opposition politician Alexei Navalny. The decision is so broad that it can potentially be used against anyone who has—or simply “promotes”—a “nontraditional sexual orientation,” including people who are not LGBTQ but support queer people’s rights. People convicted under the law face up to 10 years in some of Russia’s harshest prisons, where queer people fear sexual violence or worse.

“This is not a decision to punish you for a few years. This is the death penalty, and it’s clear for everybody,” one longtime activist said, referring to the harsh conditions in Russian prisons. (The activist asked not to be named due to security concerns.) “We will not have a chance to survive there.”

Pose’s owner and two of its employees are now awaiting trial. A court announcement on Telegram notes they are accused of “being persons with nontraditional sexual orientation … who also support the views and activities of the international public LGBT association banned in our country.”

Others close to the bar are now living in fear. Only one regular Pose patron would agree to speak with me, and he said his friends had mostly stopped communicating with one another, afraid they could be discovered. Several had left the city or the country. He thinks he should maybe leave the country, too, but doesn’t have a passport or the money to go into exile, nor a safe place to flee to.

Pose, the patron said, “was my whole life. It was the only place where they accepted me.”

Homophobia became a major part of President Vladimir Putin’s political strategy in 2013. That’s when the Duma passed a national version of the “gay propaganda law.” The legislation was domestically useful to Putin, who was seeking to reinforce his political support by cozying up to the Russian Orthodox Church.

The law, which went into effect just before Russia was due to host the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, provoked an international outcry, and Putin detected homophobia could also be a tool of foreign policy. His government leaned into the controversy, portraying Russia as a defender of traditional values against a degenerate West that had lost its way. Kremlin allies also began using it in a more targeted way in Ukraine, where an oligarch close to Putin ran an ad campaign warning closer ties to the European Union would force the recognition of same-sex marriages. His decade-long strategy has used homophobia to try to drive a wedge between Eastern Europeans and the West, as well as to delegitimize fundamental notions of human rights and democracy.

To some Russian LGBTQ activists, it was inevitable that the Russian government would double down on going after queer people following Putin’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Swiftly, the Russian government made a broad effort to dismantle the last spaces for opposition to his regime. Other steps have included shuttering Russia’s remaining independent media outlets and effectively banning any speech critical of the war or of Putin.

The organization Coming Out, which held an eight-day annual public event in St. Petersburg as recently as 2021, decided to move its whole team outside the country almost as soon as Russian tanks rolled across Ukraine’s borders.

“A few weeks after the war started, I understood that things were not going according to the plan,” said Aleksandr Voronov, Coming Out’s former director, who led its relocation to Lithuania. “I understood that they were going to start looking for new enemies.”

Putin also justified the war partly as a crusade against the LGBTQ movement, which he initially derided in a speech announcing the full-scale invasion as part of a Western plot to “destroy” Russia’s traditional values. Then, in September 2022, he referred to the movement as “satanic” in a speech illegally annexing four Ukrainian regions.

As the war continued, the regime’s propaganda machine pushed outlandish stories, rushing a state television crew to an LGBTQ center in decimated Mariupol that it claimed was “practically under the direct patronage” of U.S. President Joe Biden. Russian lawmakers also responded, expanding the gay propaganda ban in November 2022 and enacting a draconian anti-trans bill in 2023 that would outlaw gender confirming medical treatment, prohibit people from changing their gender on legal documents, and prohibit trans people from adopting children.

“A special military operation is taking place not only on the battlefields, but also in the consciousness, in the minds and souls of people,” said Aleksander Khinshtein, a member of the Russian parliament and an author of the updated gay propaganda law, in a speech to the Duma in October 2022. “LGBT today is a tool of hybrid warfare. And in this hybrid warfare, we must protect our values. We must protect our society and we must protect our children.”

Despite many threats to Russia’s queer movement—the original gay propaganda law, a state requirement that forced many LGBTQ organizations to register as “foreign agents,” growing vigilante violence—Russia’s queer movement had remained vital throughout most of Russia for most of the past decade. (A notable exception is Chechnya, where local officials have detained, tortured, or murdered dozens of queer people.) Queer organizations continued to work and even hold major public events like St. Petersburg’s long-running QueerFest, a multiday festival of LGBTQ-themed talks and exhibitions ending with a large public concert. But the extremism designation is far more dangerous than any previous threat.

Part of the danger comes from the court’s secrecy around the ruling. It not only closed the proceedings, but also barred LGBTQ organizations from participating when they tried to challenge the Ministry of Justice’s petition. Technically, any group the government seeks to declare extremist has a right to respond to the allegations against it, but the Ministry of Justice brought its petition against the “international LGBT movement,” which meant no specific organization would have standing to respond. And even when a group of LGBTQ activists formed an organization called the International LGBT Movement in an effort to intervene, the court refused to allow them to participate.

In fact, the Supreme Court never officially made the order public. It only reached LGBTQ activists in their lawyers when prosecutors in the city of Nizhny Novgorod attached it to their filings in a case against a woman who was arrested for wearing rainbow-colored earrings. (The six-color pride flag and other LGBTQ symbols were banned by the order, and the court sentenced the woman to administrative detention, despite the fact that the woman’s earrings were not discernible pride symbols—they had seven colors and were shaped like frogs.)

Olga Baranova, who has been executive director of an LGBTQ community center in Moscow since 2015, told me that the movement is now backpedaling after years of encouraging people to come out. They used to believe visibility would gradually make Russian society more supportive of LGBTQ people. Now it’s just dangerous.

“We’ve worked all these years just to be [out] and to be in the mainstream. And now we just say, ‘Okay, stop, stop, stop!’” Baranova said. Most people she knows who were visibly out have left the country, Baranova said—as has she—and she and other activists now advise people living in Russia to stay in the closet for their own safety.

Natalia Soloviova, chair of the Russian LGBT Network, a federation of more than 20 queer organizations from across the country, called the decision “absolutely horrifying,” but said that even despite it, the reality is that most queer people are not able or don’t want to flee Russia. The war has made it harder for LGBTQ people to reach countries that promise the most safety to LGBTQ refugees—like the United States or members of the European Union—because those countries have radically restricted visas for Russians. Georgia, which allows Russians to enter without visas, has become an important haven for Russian dissidents of many kinds in the past two years. But Georgia’s ruling party has advanced its own laws attacking LGBTQ people, one of many initiatives to bring the country closer to Moscow’s orbit.

Still, Soloviova estimates a significant exodus, with “hundreds” going abroad. Almost 40 percent of the Russian LGBT Network’s member organizations have relocated at least some members of their team abroad, generally visible activists or people in senior management. And many other queer people have been displaced internally, fleeing threats in their hometowns for larger cities where their pursuers are less likely to find them. Baranova acknowledged that if queer people all either leave the country or live in the closet, as she and others counsel them to do, “the movement will expire.”

Soloviova is one of those who’ve left the country. She first spoke to me in April from Georgia’s capital, Tbilisi, but has since left Georgia. (She feared that country’s new propaganda law and also knew of three queer Russians who were attacked on the street.) She is from the Siberian city of Novosibirsk—Russia’s third-largest city—and said she’d never thought she’d live outside Russia until the extremism designation.

Even today, key details about the Supreme Court order remain secret. For example, the order refers to a list of 281 individuals and 40 organizations considered part of the outlawed movement, but no one knows who is on those lists.

“The hardest thing here is that you have no opportunities to protect yourself,” Soloviova said. “You never know if you’re going to be prosecuted or not, and you will know only when the police come to your house directly and get you to prison directly.”

The charges in Orenburg are the first to reach court, but police appear to be flexing their new muscles across the country. In February alone, Mediazona reported several raids on “private parties” and a night club. LGBTQ activists told me they knew about several other similar incidents but didn’t want to share details, fearing publicity would put those involved in greater danger.

The arrests in Orenburg are just the beginning, worries Stanislav Seleznev, a lawyer with the Russian human rights organization Net Freedoms Project. Regional security officials generally have quotas for making significant arrests, and now LGBTQ people are an untapped pool of so-called “extremists” that can help them reach their goals.

“I’m compelled to assume that we are currently witnessing a model process that will be spread as much as possible all over the Russian regions,” Seleznev said. “Many more people are in a very dangerous situation now.”

Additional reporting contributed by a Russian reporter who asked not to be named, fearing that this article could lead to their arrest under the extremism law.

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