Month: September 2022

The Prince of Wales says online safety for young people should be “a prerequisite, not an afterthought”.

Fiona Hill argues that Americans have “failed to recognize” the scope of the Ukraine conflict

The West has been fighting World War III against Russia “for a long time” without being aware of it, former White House advisor Fiona Hill told the New Yorker magazine on Thursday. Moscow, however, is aware, with President Vladimir Putin accusing the collective West of waging “hybrid war” on Russia.

“We’ve been in this for a long time, and we’ve failed to recognize it,” said Hill, who served in Donald Trump’s national security council before testifying against him during the 2019 impeachment inquiry.

With the US backing a coup in Kiev in 2014 and supplying military aid to Ukraine while it waged war against the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics in the eight years since,Hill suggested that Washington could reevaluate its stated policy of supporting Ukraine without becoming a direct party to the conflict.

Read more

Nord Stream ‘sabotage’ could lead to WW3 – Trump

“If the goal is to avoid a conflict in which we are already fighting, then does the rest of Washington’s approach to Russian aggression need to be reconsidered?” the New Yorker paraphrased her argument.

While Hill did not directly call for the US to enter open war with Russia, other US lawmakers and former officials have. Shortly after Russian troops rolled into Ukraine in February, a group of these national security experts called on President Joe Biden to enforce a “no-fly zone” over Ukraine. Such a measure would see the US and any willing NATO allies commit to shooting down Russian aircraft, something Moscow has explicitly said it would perceive as an act of war.

Russia already considers itself at war with NATO in Ukraine, and Putin has vowed to use “all available means” to defend its own territory, including four former Ukrainian regions set to join the Russian Federation in the coming days. In a speech on Friday after signing accession treaties for these four regions, Putin accused the West of waging a “hybrid war” against Russia to prevent the development of a “multipolar world.”

A revived Hurricane Ian is bearing down on South Carolina with forecasters predicting a storm surge and more floods.

Germany becomes Ukraine command center. TurkStream sabotage fears. Woke army is better. Update 1
Topic 717

Putin’s historic speech finalizes referenda, infuriates Collective West
The Duran: Episode 1394

Iran said Friday that nine foreigners were arrested during deadly street protests sparked by the death of Kurdish woman Mahsa Amini, as demonstrations across the country entered a third week amid gunfire.

Berlin previously embargoed weapons sales to Saudi Arabia over the war in Yemen

Germany’s coalition government approved $35 million in new arms sales to Saudi Arabia before Chancellor Olaf Scholz visited Riyadh last week, Der Spiegel reported on Thursday. Sales were halted in 2018 over the war in Yemen, but Berlin has relaxed its stance on sending weapons to warzones since the outbreak of the conflict in Ukraine.

Economy Minister Robert Habeck confirmed in a letter to the German Bundestag (Parliament) that several deals had been approved by Scholz shortly before he traveled to the Gulf region last week, the newspaper reported. 

These deals include the sale of aircraft parts worth €1.3 million ($1.26 million) to the United Arab Emirates, and the sale of €36.1 million ($35.1 million) worth of equipment and armaments for the Eurofighter and Tornado fighter jets to Saudi Arabia. German companies will also be allowed to supply ammunition for the Eurofighter.

The export licenses are part of a joint program with Italy, Spain and Britain, the letter reportedly stated.

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German spies secretly helping Ukraine – media

Germany is the world’s fifth-largest arms exporter, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. While Saudi Arabia was once one of Berlin’s top customers – purchasing €1.24 billion worth of German weapons in 2012, former Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government agreed in 2018 to ban the sale of weapons to countries involved in the Yemen war.

The ban contained several exceptions, but a total embargo came into force a year later, following the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi by Saudi security forces. However, news reports last year suggested that the ban was being flouted, with sales authorized to several countries fighting in Yemen.

Prior to last September’s federal elections, the Green Party’s manifesto explicitly stated that it wanted to “end European arms exports to war and crisis zones.” In the days and weeks after Russia launched its military operation in Ukraine in February, Habeck’s Greens and their coalition partners stuck to this policy, citing Germany’s history as an aggressor in World War II to explain their reluctance to arm Kiev’s forces.

That policy has fallen by the wayside, and Germany has since given Ukraine artillery guns, anti-aircraft tanks, armored vehicles and ammunition. Despite this significant U-turn on fueling foreign conflicts, Kiev has repeatedly called for more and heavier weapons from German stocks, including battle tanks and infantry fighting vehicles.

The website of MI5, Britain’s domestic spy service, was briefly taken down by a DDoS attack

The website of UK domestic intelligence agency MI5 was briefly knocked offline by a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack on Friday, according to Reuters, citing a BBC report. The culprits were not named, and it is not clear if they have been identified. 

It is not the first time Britain’s security service infrastructure has been compromised. In 2009, a group called Team Elite reportedly infiltrated MI5’s website to log visitors’ identity and scrape years of their browsing history. While the vulnerability was quickly fixed, London was appalled at the idea that “potentially highly-classified information” like the names of secret agents and informers embedded in criminal groups might have been available to unknown civilians. 

MI5’s website was also allegedly taken offline in 2012 by hacking group Anonymous as part of an online protest against the UK government’s treatment of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. 

READ MORE: Israeli military drone maker hacked

At the time, the publisher had been living in London’s Ecuadorian embassy for just a few months, having sought political asylum there to avoid being extradited to Sweden to face sexual assault charges that have since been dropped.

MI5 also engages in mass web surveillance and allegedly collaborated with the CIA to hack into “smart” TVs, using them to eavesdrop on their owners even when they appear to be switched off, under a classified program called Weeping Angel that was revealed in the 2017 WikiLeaks Vault 7 data dump.

Sanctioning Russia is no longer enough for the US, which has now switched to sabotage, the president claimed

The US orchestrated the blasts on the Nord Stream 1 and 2 gas pipelines in the Baltic Sea, which delivered Russian natural gas to Germany, because they “obviously” benefit from it, President Vladimir Putin said on Friday.

Putin accused Washington of trying to pressure the EU into banning Russian supplies to “completely get their hands on the European market.”

“But the sanctions are no longer enough for the Anglo-Saxons,” he said, using Russian shorthand for the US-UK transatlantic alliance. “They have turned to sabotage – it’s unbelievable, but it’s a fact – by organizing the explosions on the Nord Stream international gas pipelines,” the president stated.

“They de facto began the destruction of the common European energy infrastructure. It’s obvious to everyone who benefits from it. Those who benefit are the ones who have done it.”

READ MORE: Putin signs treaties on accession of former Ukrainian regions to Russia

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken denounced Putin’s statement as part of “outrageous misinformation and disinformation campaigns” coming from Moscow.

“I really have nothing to say to the absurd allegation from President Putin that we are or other partners or allies are somehow responsible for this,” Blinken said, according to AFP.

Putin was speaking at the Kremlin ahead of signing treaties on the inclusion of the two Donbass republics, as well as Kherson and Zaporozhye Regions, which declared independence from Ukraine, into the Russian Federation.

The Nord Stream pipelines lost pressure on Monday, after which four gas leaks appeared. The EU and several of its member states said the explosions were deliberate. Putin described the attack on Saturday as an act of terrorism.

Nord Stream 1 was already shut down due to prolonged maintenance when the leaks appeared. Russian operator Gazprom blamed the lengthy delay on Western sanctions that were imposed on Moscow following its military operation in Ukraine.

Nord Stream 2 was never fully operational because Germany halted certification of it in February in response to the Ukraine conflict.

Restrictions only apply to targeting Russia with certain kinds of weaponry, Kiev’s envoy to Washington claims

The US only forbids Kiev’s forces from attacking Russian territory with HIMARS (High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems), not all American weapons, Ukrainian ambassador to Washington Oksana Markarova has said on Thursday.

The US has been Kiev’s main backer during the conflict with Moscow, providing Ukrainian forces with billions of dollars worth of military aid, including sophisticated hardware such as HIMARS multiple rocket launchers, M777 howitzers, and combat drones.

Last month, Ukrainian Defense Minister Aleksey Reznikov said that Kiev had “agreements with the US that we will not use weapons provided to us by the US and partners on the territory of Russia” due to Washington’s concern that it could escalate the fighting even further.

During her interview with Ukrainska Pravda, Markarova was asked if the US ban covered all weapons sent by Washington to Kiev. The ambassador responded by clarifying that “this applies specifically to HIMARS,” but not other American hardware.

She also insisted that HIMARS could still be used by Kiev against Crimea as “it was, is and will be Ukraine.”

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Ukraine can use Western weapons against ‘territories seized by Russia’ – US

The peninsula overwhelmingly voted to become part of Russia in a referendum in 2014,  with Ukrainian leadership vowing to reclaim control on numerous occasions. Crimea has been targeted with drone attacks during the ongoing conflict and several explosions at military facilities on the peninsula have been attributed to Ukrainian saboteurs.

On Friday, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed treaties on accepting the two Donbass republics, as well as Kherson and Zaporozhye Regions, which declared independence from Ukraine, into the Russian state. Residents of those territories voted in referendums, which concluded on Monday, to join Russia. The treaties now await their ratification by the parliament.

READ MORE: Pentagon reveals ‘full’ list of military aid to Ukraine

US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said earlier this week that Washington “will never recognize the annexation of Ukrainian territory by Russia” and therefore would have no objections to Ukraine using American weapons in Donbass, Kherson and Zaporozhye Regions though Kiev’s attacks on the regions have regularly resulted in civilian deaths.

Kremlin press secretary Dmitry Peskov reiterated on Friday that Moscow would from now on treat any attack on those territories as an attack against Russia itself.

Moscow has long criticized the deliveries of weapons to Ukraine by the US and its allies, arguing that it only escalates the fighting and increases the risk of a direct confrontation between Russia and NATO.