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8·2 days agoHypothesis (shooting from the hip here, apologies if I miss by a kilometer):
- an ex-muslim radicalized as an anti-islamist authoritarian rightwinger goes into a mental health crisis
- his ideology prevents him from seeking help or treatment
- being angry about everything, decides to take random people with him in his suicide by cop
- tries to win his favourite party an election by committing a terror attack typically associated with islamists
- remains alive to face trial
Additional speculation: his former home country (Saudi Arabia) - known for sending teams of assassins with bone saws to kill dissidents in embassies when they apply for a passport - warns about the man, but nobody takes Saudi Arabia’s warnings seriously because they’re a tyranny that kills people. The warning gets thrown away along with loads of false warnings by Saudi Arabia.
As for news, here’s another primary source:
A man drove a car into a group of people at a Christmas market in Magdeburg early Friday evening. According to SPIEGEL information, there are at least five dead, including a small child. According to official information, at least 60 people were injured, including 15 seriously injured.
The driver of the car was arrested after the fatal drive. He is 50-year-old Taleb A., a doctor from nearby Bernburg. He was born in Saudi Arabia and came to Germany for the first time in 2006.
The police currently have no evidence of accomplices. According to information from security circles, the suspect is not known to be an Islamist. He appears on the Internet as an ex-Muslim and opponent of Islam. The background to the incident is still completely unclear - just like the possible motive.
SPIEGEL research has shown that Taleb A. openly sympathized with the AfD online. Read more about it here.
…but the link noted as “here” is unfortunately paywalled, so that’s where my data ends.
I concur - someone should shoo him away (or at least downregulate him).
Until that happens, companies that he owns can be boycotted in the faint hope that he understands something, but that kind of people, nah… they typically won’t.
Once this episode is over - in whatever way - I even think we might see reforms in the US electoral system. To prevent an oligarch from buying everyone a crooked president.
As for Germans, they will probably not appreciate his advise.
It’s going to take some time (and digging) to find out.
However… events that unfolded in Cambodia will almost certainly have exceeded what is going to be discovered in Syria.
Most likely the same can be said about things that happened in Indonesia.
Events that continue to happen in North Korea may possibly exceed - once the place collapses and access becomes possible - which may take a century - what Bashar and his father managed to organize.
Thanks for pointing that out.
Until this report, it was my impression that they tried sticking to democracy and human rights - but had a problem with recruiting underage people, which they admitted and dealt with.
This report is new to me, so I think it might be new to others - I recommend it.
As far as I know, procedures for returning fire don’t require calling the president. There already was an incident about a week ago - they just shot down the drone that threatened them.
I am not the best person to characterize the situation, but…
…it seems that Turkish authorities have always felt very threatened by any ideas of Kurdish autonomy (even cultural autonomy). Domestically, they have been locked in a fight with PKK, that is true. But in recent times - since the civil war started in Syria - they have great difficulty telling PKK apart from YPG. One is an underground terrorist organization, the other is a uniformed military. But when the PKK does something, very often as a result - YPG get bombed.
On the brighter side, Turkey has had a president of partly Kurdish ancestors (Turgut Özal). But the darker side of the coin is: he died of poisoning right before he could negotiate for peace with the PKK.
I have a guess. When Turkey starts approaching peace with PKK, either PKK members commit an act of terror to break down negotiations, or Turkish special services kill their own negotiator. Because both organizations contain people who - tragically - think that peace would not be good for their business. Their business is war and they don’t want it entirely stopped.
I hope I’m wrong - or that I have gradually become wrong as times have changed.
Nice to hear. I haven’t been following the situation, but there was a petition in favour of letting him go already in spring.
Everyone in the region seems to fear the formation of a Kurdish state. :(
So much that Kurds can spend 24/7 assuring they only want autonomy within some provinces, and every neighour still has nightmares of an independent Kurdistan…
…which, to be fair, they should have got - when the Ottoman empire fell apart - but everyone kind of forgot them.
A full-scale invasion of Syria by Turkey, without any political adjustments to the situation, would mean Turkish troops seizing land currently co-held (together with the AANES / SDF) by American troops. Without coordination, Turkish drone and artillery strikes would land near US troops, which would call in reinforcements to remove the drones and artillery.
Needless to say, one NATO ally going at territory held by another is a pretty bad idea.
So, in some parts of Syria, proceeding with their plan requires a US president - and most likely not Biden - to give them the green light and withdraw US special forces from SDF land. Basically, it requires the US to screw its allies in the fight against the Islamic State. Which would not be out of character for Trump, since Kurds cannot “pay him for protection”. The protection was based on principles (the Autonomous Administration of North-Eastern Syria was the only player in the region that tried sticking to democracy and human rights) and a common enemy (ISIS).
I hope all of this doesn’t happen, but if I were the Kurds, I’d be keeping drone batteries charged and knocking on every diplomatic door for assistance.
In case of things hitting the fan, it might be useful to remember a link to the Kurdistan Red Crescent - Heyva Sor a Kurdistanê. (They can’t supply drone batteries, but deliver medical and humanitarian aid to the region.)
I keep wondering if the folks involved in the settlement process realize that their activity is an obstacle to peace.
Israel had a chance of attempting friendly relations with a new flavour of Syria (currently being reassembled from pieces, with considerable risk of continued violence). Maybe it still has that chance…
… but for some reason, Israeli officials made up their mind without talking to the other side - who were publicly saying that they didn’t want hostilities with Israel - and started making hostile moves anyway, like moving troops into the occupied buffer zone and speaking of approving higher settler numbers for the annexed Golan heights.
I could undertand a few bombing runs on the Assad regime’s strategic weapons stockpiles. But it looks like the government of Israel wants to ruin its relations with the next Syrian government pre-emptively.
My advise to Jews: detain Netanyahu and send him to the ICC, and get someone competent to run the country. (Or maybe in the other order: get someone competent first and detain Bibi soon after that.)
131·7 days agoI would recommend Signal and maybe Tox (protocol, has several clients).
Signal is a nonprofit. They make it a point not to collect your data. Just the phone number. Military folks seem to like them.
Tox is not a centralized entity at all, anarchists seem to like it. Multiple Tox clients exist and use a common protocol and network. Messaging happens via peer-to-peer, lookups make use of servers. For messaging to occur, both communicating parties have to be online, so don’t expect much convenience.
A case of history almost literally repeating itself: quoting from Wikipedia.
In early November 2007, a severe storm caused many ships to ground in the Strait of Kerch, between Ukraine and Russia. One of these was the Volganeft-139, a river oil tanker that lost over 4,000 tonnes of heavy oil.
(Also, in 2007 when Volganeft-139 broke in half at sea, another ship, the Volganeft-123, limped into port with a cracked hull.)
These hulls are shallow and aren’t designed for serious wave stress. Only an idiot sends them to sea during a storm.
Some folks over there have been totally unwilling to learn.
Perspective from Estonia: it was funny. I know that GRU does things which are far from funny, but this case was a comic failure.
According to the sentence, some GRU branch hired a local fan of the Kremlin, who hired an ex-cop with links to organized crime, who hired one subcontractor, who hired another subcontractor, who finally paid some clueless guy to do the job: kick in the window of the interior minister’s private car (a newspaper editor’s car was also targeted).
In doing so, they spent 10 000 euros. To kick in two car windows. While leaking streams of data due to involving a chain of subcontractors, and getting caught. That’s ridiculously inefficient. I’m surprised at how they’re able to actually carry out sabotage at this level of clumsiness. Perhaps their netork in Estonia is simply very shoddy.
Meanwhile, if you gave an anarchist in Russia 10 000 euros (no instructions, anarchists don’t take instructions) you could feasibly expect something important to burn down.
P.S.
Non-paywalled source: English edition of Estonian public broadcaster ERR:
Typically, if the Kremlin says something, you consider the opposite true.
- Armour: severe shortage, soldiers often attacking in unprotected vehicles.
- Personnel: being outsourced from North Korea.
- Air defense: cannot hold back a drone swarm or decent missile.
- Rapid reserves: enough to keep Bashar al-Assad ruling Syria. Oops.
- Losses: 600 000 dumbest ones dead or wounded, 2 million smartest ones in emigration, paying taxes to some other land.
- Economy: interest rates over 20%, insolvencies widespread, butter sold from locked fridges.
…I can totally see them continue for a while, but not a long while. And the breaking point isn’t linked at all to Putin’s goals.
Good riddance and hopefully Bashar al Assad is found and brought back for fair and prolonged trial (because his list of deeds is long, and he needs to testify).
I suspect he’d easily get the maximum punishment available, in any reasonably balanced justice system on the planet. A dictator on trial would also be a cautionary example for future dictators.
However, given that he’s not entirely out of resources, I think he may temporarily slip away into a country that agrees to host him.
About things in Syria: I worry that civil war isn’t over. Judging by the fighting in Manbij, one faction of the rebels (SNA) is now attemping to conquer territory from the SDF (Autonomous Administration of North-Eastern Syria). Unlike the government, the SDF however isn’t demoralized - they aren’t fighting for dictator Assad, but democracy and autonomy, and they can be expected to mount an effective resistance.
I hope that someone reminds the parties to the conflict that they need to stop and negotiate really soon now.
If it were true (currently I don’t think so) we’d have a warm spot on FIRMS and civilian reports of a transport plane coming down, but nobody has reported one so far. (However, Syria is likely to have so many warm spots currently that a private researcher may be unable to count them and make sense.)
However, assassinating someone with an air defense complex while retreating / evacuating yourself in face of an advancing opponent - that’s unreliable. (Russians were last seen evacuating their air defense systems and flying away with what could be taken along, but rebels did get some really interesting items.)
As far as I understood, Georgescu declared zero campaign expenses and then had thousands of accounts advertising him, primarily on Telegram and TikTok (side note: who the hell does politics on TikTok?). propelling him to the run-off election.
That does sound a bit fishy indeed.
I’m not the Romanian supreme court, but if they had a look at the disclosed intel, and decided a foreign state was messing with their elections, it is within their rights to invalidate and rerun the process. A re-run is frustrating, but getting tricked is even more frustrating.
While thinking of that, it’s also advisable to think of all the schools and hospitals ruined across the world, if all dictators should realize: “if you are big and have nuclear weapons, there is no international law - take what you want, treaties and borders are mere ink on paper”.
It is also worthwhile to compare the expenses in Ukraine to the US budget.
This hard-won assistance package (it was stuck in Congress for months) totals about 60 billion. Of that, about 7 billion actually goes to Ukraine as weapons - the rest goes into other purposes like humanitarian and economic aid, purchasing new weapons to replace the donated weapons, etc. A considerable part of the money never leaves US soil.
So, the number to compare against is either 7 (pure weapons) or 60 billion (all allocations permitted by the bill).
The US budget is 6 trillion. One trillion is 1000 billion.
This means that weapons to Ukraine form about 1 / 1000 (one promille) of the US budget, and the total volume of the bill (not limited to Ukraine) forms at most about 1 / 100 (one percent) of the US government budget.
Meanwhile, to put things in perspective, Ukraine is defending itself with approximately one half (50%) of its government budget, and Russia is attempting to conquer Ukraine with approximately one third (30%) of its government budget (likely to reach 40% in the next year).
Basically, while the sums are huge, US isn’t about to fall over from supporting Ukraine, but Russia is indeed going to fall over, sooner or later, from continuing to attack Ukraine, if other countries bother to support Ukraine somewhat. Which I trust they will.
failed to end the civil war,
It’s not a civil war if “separatists” get weekly weapons, fuel and food convoys from Russia, and the whole thing was started by GRU agents, and requires thousands of Russian troops. That was the case approximately from 2014 to 2022. I have a prejudice against people who refer to the Russian-backed insurgency in Eastern Ukraine as a “civil war”. It typically tells of which information sources they prefer and consume.
A prolonged war is the absolute worst case scenario for the people living in Ukraine and former Ukrainian territories
Every war is prolonged as long as armies are willing and able to fight, and politicians don’t make peace.
The easiest way to get a sustainable peace is simple: Putin needs to withdraw troops from Ukraine. Alas, he’s not in the mood - not yet. But he regularly orders polls and reads results, and has some understanding of how Russia’s economy is doing. He could be in the mood within a year.
Compared to supporting Ukraine through another year of fighting to obtain a lasting peace at acceptable terms (ideally: internationally recognized borders), making an unstable and unjust peace by undermining Ukraine (so they’d cave in and agree to an unjust peace in the minimum amount of time) might not be the best option.
Unfortunately it looks that Trump is going to try exactly that. And there’s hardly anyone in the US who can alter the outcome. Other members of NATO can alter the outcome however, by (almost) doubling their support.
Background: Iceland is already a member of the European Economic Area, the European Free Trade Association and the Schengen border control area, and has sent an application for EU membership in 2009.
Accession negotiations proceeded at a careful pace, until the application was withdrawn in 2013 after a change of government.
Discussions about holding a referendum (to decide about restarting negotiations) have been ongoing since 2017.