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11·6 months agoPutin started this war, the aggressor is Russia, they could easily end the war by just leaving Ukraine.
No profit in peace, champ
This seems indeed be the main theme of Putin and ‘war economist’ Andrei Belousov, who has pushed for aggressive state spending to boost arms production even before he was appointed Russia’s ‘defense minister.’
Russia’s military spending might officially reach ~7 percent of GDP in 2024, many economist say it may even be higher.
In 2025, Russia plans to spend 40 oercent of its state budget for the military, up from 30 percent in 2024.
Today, December 29, the Putin-sponsored government of Georgia will attempt to install the illegitimate president, which the people did not elect. Live blog
There’s a brief documentary on the Shadow Fleet Fueling Russia’s War (24 min)
Invidious link Original YT link
An armada of aging oil tankers is helping to keep Russian oil flowing. Hundreds of vessels are part of a “shadow fleet” that’s allowed the Kremlin to dodge Western sanctions over its war on Ukraine. Bloomberg set out to uncover the traders, intermediaries and investors that make up this network, and how they’re getting rich in the process.
Addition:
Finnish PM calls for tougher measures against Russia’s shadow fleet
Finland’s PM Petteri Orpo (NCP) has called for firmer measures to combat the risks associated with the so-called shadow fleet of Russia, [saying he] had discussions about the issue with his counterparts from Denmark, Estonia, Norway, Poland, Sweden and the European Commission.
[Finnish] President Alexander Stubb, meanwhile, has been in contact with Nato.
International airlines cancel flights to Russia after the passenger plane was shot down, according to media reports.
- Azerbaijan Airlines suspends flights to 7 Russian cities for security reasons
- Kazakhstan’s Qazaq Air suspends flights to Yekaterinburg
- Israeli airline El Al cancels all flights from Tel_Aviv to Moscow
Addition:
Rasim Musabayov, a member of the Azerbaijani parliament’s international relations committee, in an interview with Turan news agency:
“The plane was shot down on the territory of Russia, in the skies of Grozny. It is impossible to deny this. Those who did it must be held criminally responsible and compensation must be paid. If this does not happen, then, of course, relations will move to another level.”
This, of course, is a completely fabricated ‘comment.’
Meanwhile, Putin says that relations between Russia and China have reached “an unprecedented level” as a result of the high level of mutual trust between both countries, as per Chinese state media.
Climate change and the melting of the Arctic ice has intensified interest in Greenland’s natural resources. The island could become the next mini.g frontier. For example, KoBold Metals -a joint venture partly backed by Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, and Michael Bloomberg- and operated by Bluejay Mining in the UK, has been drlling there for critical minerals since 2022.
The outgoing U.S. administration under President Joe Biden has been offering advice to Greenland officials to draft a mining investment law for some time, all aimed at prodding investment in Greenland at standards considered higher than Chinese-linked rivals.
Or that of Australia. In 2023, Greenland Minerals -which is a 100-percent subsidiary of an Australian mining company- initiated arbitration proceedings against the Governments of Greenland and Denmark for the right to mine in Greenland. The Australian company seeks to gain the right to mine in Greenland or USD 11.5bn in compensation (the sum is almost four times Greenland’s annual GDP).
Access to the Arctic (maybe a similar playbook than China’s pursuing with Russia?) may be a thing, too. Just a few weeks ago, for example, Greenland’s capital Nuuk opened an International Airport, enabling larger plane landings in the country for the first time in their history.
the “never again” only applies to European countries. At least, that’s what we are now witnessing.
I’m not so sure. That can happen again in Europe at any time imo as it happens in the Near and Middle East now, as well as in Xinjiang and Tibet, in Russia, Sudan, and many other places. Human rights and democratic values are under pressure everywhere, and this year saw a rise of autocracies and extremists globally. I hope 2025 will be different.
Denmark boosts Greenland defence after Trump repeats desire for US control
The Danish government has announced a huge boost in defence spending for Greenland, hours after US President-elect Donald Trump repeated his desire to purchase the Arctic territory.
Danish Defence Minister Troels Lund Poulsen said the package was a “double digit billion amount” in krone, or at least $1.5bn (£1.2bn).
2·6 months agoI thought you might be familiar with Australia’s threats to ban tiktok whilst ignoring the crimes other tech companies commit and making no effort to protect Australians from them.
Are you sure you read the thelucky8’s comment?
Removed by mod
Your answer has nothing to do with my question.
Isn’t it somewhat strange that Tiktok, whose parent company is forced to closely surveill and censor each politically undesired content in its home country, while it is at the same time not only unable to suppress but reportedly even promotes obviously harmful content on its platforms outside China?
Isn’t it somewhat strange that Tiktok, whose parent company is forced to closely surveill and censor each politically undesired content in its home country, while it is at the same time not only unable to suppress but reportedly even promotes obviously harmful content on its platforms outside China?
As AP reports on the same issue:
There has been increasing concern from Albanian parents after reports of children taking knives and other objects to school to use in quarrels or cases of bullying promoted by stories they see on TikTok.
Isn’t it somewhat strange that Tiktok, whose parent company is forced to closely surveill and censor each politically undesired content in its home country, while it is at the same time not only unable to suppress but reportedly even promotes obviously harmful content on its platforms outside China?
[Edit typo.]
… the 14-year-old student was killed and another injured …
As AP reports on the same issue:
There has been increasing concern from Albanian parents after reports of children taking knives and other objects to school to use in quarrels or cases of bullying promoted by stories they see on TikTok.
Isn’t it somewhat strange that Tiktok, whose parent company is forced to closely surveill and censor each politically undesired content in its home country, while it is at the same time not only unable to suppress but reportedly even promotes obviously harmful content on its platforms outside China?
[Edit typo.]
3·6 months agoThe Prospect provides some more details:
This is the first scandal of the second Trump term, and take a long look, because it’s going to look like all the other scandals: a conflict of interest among his impossibly wealthy advisers and aides (or from Trump himself) seeps over into policy.
The measure at issue is known as the “outbound investment” provision. We have heard for years about the problem of manufacturing businesses shipping jobs overseas to China, with its low worker wages and low environmental standards. China typically forces businesses wanting to locate factories in its country to transfer their technology and intellectual property to Chinese firms, which can then use that to undercut competitors in global markets, with state support.
Congress […] finally came up with a way to deal with this issue. Sens. John Cornyn (R-TX) and Bob Casey (D-PA) have the flagship bill, which would either prohibit U.S. companies from investing in “sensitive technologies” in China, including semiconductors and artificial intelligence, or set up a broad notification regime around it.
[…] Cornyn-Casey [which added some reporting requirements and enhanced reviews] passed the Senate last year, and after about a year of legislative wrangling, a final outbound investment package made it into the year-end bill. “We’re taking a necessary step to safeguard American innovation against bad actors and ensure our lasting dominance on the world stage,” Cornyn said in a statement.
Funny story: Elon Musk’s car company has a significant amount of, well, outbound investment. A Tesla Gigafactory in Shanghai opened in 2019; maybe a quarter of the company’s revenue comes from China. Musk has endorsed building a second Tesla factory in China, where his grip on the electric-vehicle market has completely loosened amid domestic competition. He is working with the Chinese government to bring “Full Self-Driving” technology to China, in other words, importing a technology that may be seen as sensitive. Musk has battery and solar panel factories that are not yet in China, but he may want them there in the future.
You can argue about whether the U.S. should be restricting investment in China. But it’s incontrovertible that a billionaire who has a bunch of investments in China and wants to make more all of a sudden disrupted a normal congressional process that was going to restrict that investment with a bunch of lies from his media platform. And lo and behold, when the new funding bill emerged, the outbound investment feature was dropped. In fact, all traces of provisions related to China were removed from the bill.
From the Ukrainian Center for Countering Disinformation::
War criminals are the new elite of Russia: Temirlan Abutalimov – (archived)
Temirlan Abutalimov is a Russian soldier from Dagestan and a participant in Russia’s armed aggression against Ukraine.
He serves in the 70th Guards Motorized Rifle Regiment of the 58th Army from Dagestan. Before the full-scale invasion, he worked as an investigator in the local police. Following Putin’s announcement of mobilization in September 2022, Abutalimov decided to go to the front.
In 2023, during the battles for Robotyne, he rose to the position of assault company commander. Ukrainian intelligence has identified him as one of the perpetrators who ordered the execution of four captured Ukrainian soldiers. It is also suspected that Abutalimov was involved in other similar crimes. For his actions in the Robotyne area, Abutalimov was awarded the Order of Courage and later received the Hero of Russia Star.
Now, this war criminal is being positioned as part of so-called “Russian new elite”. He became a finalist in the Kremlin’s “Time of Heroes” program, completed an internship, and is preparing for a career as an official.
And this war has just one aggressor. No aggressor, no war.