The long version of the story about the international community finally going on a massive counterattack against russian cyber operations
The short version of the story about the international community finally going on a massive counterattack against russian cyber operations
Re: IEA Report
Reminds me a lot of what was being spread about in the US in the 1970’s.
NB: Kasparov has been accurate and prescient about many things. His talk is meant to be inspiring and it may well be that, but it’s also (to me) depressing AF.
Fucking monsters
(Warning: these images are hard to look at)
It would be fascinating, though probably not readily possible, to know what the breakdown in motive is between opposition to waging war on Ukraine vs. opposition to being the expendable cannon fodder sent in with shabby equipment and shabbier promises; but either indifference to or support of the war so long as they specifically aren’t being conscripted for it.
The depressing prospect is that Putin is not the worst-case scenario: someone committed to the same sort of authoritarian rule and aggressive irredentism; but not limited by the economic and military deficiencies that a couple of decades of just astonishingly kleptocratic chop-shop governance impose would be even worse news. It’s obviously not good enough; but self-imposed technical and institutional rot has been the only real check on Putin’s exercise of power.
I don’t know if a historian would support me on this, but examples of recent history suggest that these conditions are too enmeshed to really exist separately. By making a “superior people” who are entitled to all the work of the lesser-thans, it inevitably leads to kleptocratic assholes running the show.
Yeah, the more I learn about present and past dictatorships and such, the more I believe that evil does indeed make you stupid.
Aggressively irredentist authoritarians do not run efficient governments with sound economies; either they corrupt and cripple the government and the economy, or they are ousted.
Given the trajectory of, say, Alexi Navalny, I certainly wouldn’t bet on the election, or even survival, of a genuine anti-corruption candidate; but, given the number of oligarchs who hurriedly moved to London and/or died of deliberately intimidating natural causes after falling out with Putin, I am inclined to wonder whether there would have been room for a policy of more moderated corruption; whether motivated by the pragmatic desire to have a more functional state apparatus to use, a belief that the moral superiority of ‘holy russia’ requires at least some attention to fraud as well as to gay pride parades, or a mixture of both.
Assembling a collection of cronies actually willing to work for their official state salaries seems like an absolute no-go; but given the scale of the looting even an unofficial policy that the first billion dollars is a prerogative of the job, but keeping your fingers in the till beyond that could be career limiting, would have saved the treasury a gigantic amount of money with minimal lifestyle impact on the oligarch class.
Also not a historian, but your point is consistent with my reading and understanding of fascism. The in-group support is bought by stealing from the out-group(s). There is no fascism without corruption and oligarchy.
While the historical part is nice to read, it is a bit distracting from a key part: domestically, the conservatives are now trying to destabilise the now-ruling coalition by proposing fracking and prolonged lifetime of nuclear energy. Both, in fact, are not feasible in the short and even mid-term (i.e., several years up the timeline) to come off of Russian energy imports, and both are so far political suicide for everyone who pursues this avenue. It’sonly for mounting pressure on the coalition. Dishonest assholes.
The problems with that are, the people who would or could limit those sort of things are likely to be subsumed by the corruption, or killed off/exiled because they pointed it out.
It’s either corruption is illegal, and is punished in a (semi) rule of law manner, or it’s a free for all, and the only law is the guy above you always gets a cut.
The Front Line of the Fight to Save Ukraine’s Internet
Since we first announced our support of the work to preserve Ukrainian digital artifacts, thousands of people have contributed to help us fund our archiving tools. We deeply appreciate your generosity–but the work is still ongoing, and the threats to Ukrainian cultural artifacts haven’t disappeared.
Saving Ukrainian Cultural Heritage Online (SUCHO) is one project that utilizes Internet Archive resources, working to identify and preserve websites, digital content, and data that is under threat due to the ongoing invasion. San-Francisco-based news station KPIX recently interviewed SUCHO co-founder Quinn Dombrowski and Internet Archive founder Brewster Kahle about this work, exploring the necessity for and impacts of these archiving efforts.
Watch the video here, or visit SUCHO’s website to learn more about their efforts. Last but not least, if you want to help fund the tools that Quinn and other volunteers are using, you can donate to the Internet Archive here.
Thanks for your support.
Israel should be nervous.
Thread on the history of eastern Ukraine (not complete yet):
Ukraine has officially registered the Russian warship Moskva lying at the bottom of the Black Sea as a “national underwater cultural heritage site”, according to the Kyiv Independent’s Illia Ponomarenko.
Moskva, Russia’s flagship Black Sea missile cruiser, sank last week after an explosion caused by an unexplained fire, the Russian defence ministry said, while Ukraine said it had hit the ship with a missile or missiles.
