Informal Institute for National Security Thinkers and Practitioners

Please note I am leaving today (for a week) for my frist trip back to Korea since Janaury 2020, pre-COVID. The timing of my messages will be adjusted in accordance with the time difference.

Quotes of the Day:

"No sensible decision can be made any longer without taking into account not only the world as it is, but the world as it will be."

- Isaac Asimov

"Whoever degrades another degrades me,

And whatever is done or said returns at last to me."

- Walt Whitman: Leaves of Grass

"Man is a creature who lives not upon bread alone, but principally by catchwords."

- Robert Louis Stevenson: Virginibus Puerisque

1. RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, JULY 16 (Putin's War)

2. A Russian Submarine Slaughtered Children in Ukraine With High-Tech Missiles

3. Ukraine special forces free torture victims from Russian prison in dramatic mission

4. Zelensky warns of ‘media terror’ of propaganda, disinformation amid Russian invasion

5. China’s ‘Mysterious Structures’ Captured In Satellite Images; Hint At PLA’s Expansion Of Harbors In Remote South China Sea Islands

6. Russia's information war expands through Eastern Europe

7. Russia's neighbor Latvia wants to bring back the military draft because it fears Russia will attack so quickly that NATO can't help, defense minister says

8. Man acquitted of bombing 1985 Air India flight shot dead in Canada

9. Japan Wants Up to Nine Nuclear Reactors Online This Winter

10. Chinese diplomats flock to Africa in response to Western charm offensive

11. Philippines’ new leader Ferdinand Marcos Jr tears up $5BILLION railways deal with China after Beijing ‘failed to put up the money’

12. Putin Has A Problem: 38,000 Dead Troops and 1,672 Destroyed Tanks in Ukraine

13. ‘I mean you no harm’: From troubled teen to neo-Nazi foot soldier

14. Why the U.S. Navy Needs to Be in the South China Sea

15. These robots were trained on AI. They became racist and sexist.

16. Chinese fighter jet had ‘unsafe’ interaction with U.S. military plane in June (SOF MC 130)

17. Statement on the Designation of Bellingcat as an 'Undesirable Organisation' in Russia

18. Biden's Middle East expedition: Reputation dinged, interests secured?

19. I Once Supported Putin. Now I Know the Truth.

20. Japan’s new nationalism is alarming. Not just for China, North Korea, but allies like India

21. Wagner Group massacre: ‘The victims were bloated and deformed – we could only recognise our friends by their clothes’

22. Ukraine map suggests U.S.-supplied HIMARS could be turning tide of war

23. Will ‘Salad Bar Extremism’ Replace ‘Old-School World’ Terrorism?

24. Opinion: Mideast trip shows Biden choosing pragmatism, rejecting 'Woke' policy

25. China’s Roadblocks to Becoming A Science Superpower

26. When Iran Says ‘Death to Israel,’ It Means It

27. Hamas Wants to Rule the West Bank

1. RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, JULY 16 (Putin's War)

Maps/grpahics here: https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-july-16

RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, JULY 16

Jul 16, 2022 - Press ISW

understandingwar.org

Karolina Hird, Grace Mappes, George Barros, and Frederick W. Kagan

July 16, 6 pm ET

Click here to see ISW's interactive map of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. This map is updated daily alongside the static maps present in this report.

The Russian Defense Ministry announced that the Russian operational pause has concluded on July 16, confirming ISW’s July 15 assessment.[1] Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu ordered Southern Group Commander General of the Army Sergey Surovikin and Central Group Commander Colonel General Alexander Lapin to increase offensive operations on all axes on July 16, but the tempo of the resuming Russian offensive will likely fluctuate or stutter over the coming days.[2] Russian forces conducted fewer ground assaults on all axes on July 16 than on July 15, but maintained increased artillery and missile strikes on July 16.[3]

Shoigu indicated that Surovikin and Lapin will both continue to command forces on the Eastern Axis even though a force concentration and effort of this size should only require a single, very senior overall commander. Surovikin should in principle be in overall command because he outranks Lapin. Shoigu has not even named Surovikin as the head of Russia’s Southern Military District (SMD) despite the likely ousting of SMD Commander General of the Army Alexander Dvornikov and despite Surovikin’s experience commanding the Southern Grouping in Ukraine. Lapin, in contrast, has been and remains commander of the Central Military District.[4] The Kremlin‘s failure to use the operational pause to reorganize the Russian military command structure in Ukraine and its decision to instead retain an ad-hoc command structure is very odd. The apparent dual command of two very senior generals over operations in a very small area may hinder Russian operations going forward.

Ukrainian HIMARS strikes against Russian ammunition depots, logistics elements, and command and control are likely degrading Russian artillery campaigns. Ukrainian officials confirmed that American-supplied HIMARS arrived in Ukraine on June 23.[5] Ukrainian operators have been using the HIMARS to strike multiple Russian targets – notably ammunition depots – since June 25.[6] The destruction of these ammunition depots has likely degraded Russian forces’ ability to sustain high volumes of artillery fire along front lines. Detected heat anomalies from NASA's Fire Information for Resource Management System (FIRMS) remotely sensed data decreased significantly in Donbas starting around July 10.

[Click here to enlarge the map. Source: NASA’s Fire Information for Resource Management System over Donbas, July 6 and Esri, Maxar, Earthstar Geographics, and the GIS User Community]

[Click here to enlarge the map. Source: NASA’s Fire Information for Resource Management System over Donbas, July 9 and Esri, Maxar, Earthstar Geographics, and the GIS User Community]

[Click here to enlarge the map. Source: NASA’s Fire Information for Resource Management System over Donbas, July 10 and Esri, Maxar, Earthstar Geographics, and the GIS User Community]

[Click here to enlarge the map. Source: NASA’s Fire Information for Resource Management System over Donbas, July 12 and Esri, Maxar, Earthstar Geographics, and the GIS User Community]

[Click here to enlarge the map. Source: NASA’s Fire Information for Resource Management System over Donbas, July 13 and Esri, Maxar, Earthstar Geographics, and the GIS User Community]

[Click here to enlarge the map. Source: NASA’s Fire Information for Resource Management System over Donbas, July 14 and Esri, Maxar, Earthstar Geographics, and the GIS User Community]

Ukraine’s destruction of Russian ammunition depots using HIMARS is likely one of several factors that reduced the quantity of observed heat anomalies in Donbas between July 10-15. The reduced number of observed heat anomalies also corresponds in part to the assessed Russian operational pause from July 6 – July 15.[7] The number of observed heat anomalies began increasing on July 15 – the day ISW assessed that Russian forces began emerging from their operational pause.[8] The intensity of Russian artillery attacks along the Slovyansk-Bakhmut axis in the coming days may clarify the degree to which the reduction in intensity was due to the operational pause or the result of Ukrainian attacks.

[Click here to enlarge the map. Source: NASA’s Fire Information for Resource Management System over Donbas, July 15 and Esri, Maxar, Earthstar Geographics, and the GIS User Community]

Key Takeaways

The Russian Ministry of Defense announced the cessation of the operational pause, confirming ISW’s July 15 assessment that Russian forces are likely resuming ground attacks along multiple axes of advance. The cessation of the operational pause is unlikely to lead to a massive increase in ground attacks across Ukraine but will rather likely be characterized by continued limited ground assaults focused on the Slovyansk-Siversk-Bakhmut salient.
The Kremlin may have ordered Russian forces to take control of the entirety of Kharkiv Oblast, despite the extraordinary low likelihood of Russian success in such an effort.
Russian forces conducted limited ground assaults around Siversk and Bakhmut and otherwise fired on Ukrainian military and civilian infrastructure across Eastern Ukraine.
Russian occupation authorities likely are responding to the perceived threat of Ukrainian partisan activities by strengthening administrative regimes in occupied areas.

We do not report in detail on Russian war crimes because those activities are well-covered in Western media and do not directly affect the military operations we are assessing and forecasting. We will continue to evaluate and report on the effects of these criminal activities on the Ukrainian military and population and specifically on combat in Ukrainian urban areas. We utterly condemn these Russian violations of the laws of armed conflict, Geneva Conventions, and humanity even though we do not describe them in these reports.

Main Effort—Eastern Ukraine (comprised of one subordinate and three supporting efforts);
Subordinate Main Effort—Encirclement of Ukrainian Troops in the Cauldron between Izyum and Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts
Supporting Effort 1—Kharkiv City
Supporting Effort 2—Southern Axis
Mobilization and Force Generation Efforts
Activities in Russian-occupied Areas

Click here to enlarge the map.

Main Effort—Eastern Ukraine

Subordinate Main Effort—Southern Kharkiv, Donetsk, Luhansk Oblasts (Russian objective: Encircle Ukrainian forces in Eastern Ukraine and capture the entirety of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts, the claimed territory of Russia’s proxies in Donbas)

Click here to enlarge the map.

Russian forces continued to fire on settlements southeast of Izyum but did not make any confirmed ground assaults in the direction of Slovyansk on July 16.[9] The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces are regrouping in order to further advance towards Slovyansk and Barvinkove.[10] Russian troops may seek to advance southeast from Barvinkove either to support operations towards Slovyansk or to open parallel lines of advance towards Kramatorsk. Russian forces additionally conducted air and artillery strikes against settlements along the Kharkiv-Donetsk Oblast border northwest of Slovyansk and hit Bohorodychne, Dibrovne, Mazanivka, Mykilske, and Novomykolaivka.[11]

Russian forces continued limited and unsuccessful ground assaults towards Siversk on July 16.[12] The Ukrainian General Staff stated that Russian troops unsuccessfully attempted to improve their tactical positions in Ivano-Darivka (around 5km southeast of Siversk) and Hryhorivka (10km northeast of Siversk).[13] Russian forces also shelled Siversk and surrounding settlements of Verkhnokamyanske and Zvanivka to continue to set conditions for operations to take control of the city.[14]

Russian forces continued ground assaults to the south of Bakhmut on July 16.[15] The Ukrainian General Staff noted that Ukrainian troops repelled Russian attempts to advance around Novoluhanske, Semyhirya, Dolomytne, Roty, and Vershyna, all within 25km south of Bakhmut.[16] Russian forces notably resumed efforts to attack the Vuhledar Power Plant in Novoluhanske.[17] The Vuhledar Power Plant lies on the northern edge of the Vuhlehirske Reservoir, a major water feature surrounded by settlements such as Svitlodarsk. Russian forces began their concerted efforts to break free of the canalized terrain in this area at the end of May.[18] Russian forces are likely focusing on advancing past the Vuhledar Power Plant in order to set conditions for a cross-country advance towards Bakhmut, as the area north and west of the power plant is relatively flatter and more open than the terrain around the Vuhlehirske Reservoir.[19] Russian forces also continued to conduct artillery strikes around Bakhmut.[20]

Russian forces continued to fire along the Avdiivka-Donetsk City line of contact but did not conduct any confirmed ground attacks in this area on July 16.[21] The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces are firing on Avdiivka to dislodge Ukrainian positions in the city.[22]

Supporting Effort #1—Kharkiv City (Russian objective: Defend ground lines of communication (GLOCs) to Izyum and prevent Ukrainian forces from reaching the Russian border)

Click here to enlarge the map.

Russian President Vladimir Putin may have ordered Russian forces to seize Kharkiv City and the rest of unoccupied Kharkiv Oblast despite the extreme improbability of success. ISW offers this observation as a hypothesis rather than an assessment because evidence and indicators for it are limited and circumstantial. Russian forces have been attempting to take Dementiivka to the north of Kharkiv City since June 26 even though capturing Dementiivka has limited significance for the objective of defending Russian territory against Ukrainian offensive actions.[23] Ukraine’s Main Intelligence Directorate released an intercepted conversation on July 16 in which a Russian soldier stated that his commander cares nothing for his losses but only wants to reach Kharkiv.[24] Russian-backed occupation authorities continue to set conditions to annex Kharkiv Oblast beyond currently-held territory, as ISW has previously assessed.[25] The Russian-backed Kharkiv Oblast occupation government head Vitaly Ganchev and Luhansk People’s Republic (LNR) Head Leonid Pasechnik signed a mutual cooperation and defense agreement on July 16, which indicates that Russian authorities in Kharkiv Oblast are setting conditions for long-term occupation contingencies.[26] Ganchev previously announced on July 6 that occupied Kharkiv Oblast will consist of the Kupyansk, Izyum, Vovchansk, and Kharkiv districts, which incorporates territory that Russian forces do not yet control.[27] Russian forces will likely inconsistently intensify ground assault attempts north of Kharkiv City over the coming days to reflect continued territorial ambitions in Kharkiv Oblast but are unlikely to secure significant territorial gains. Russian forces continued artillery strikes along the entire line of contact and on Kharkiv City.[28]

Supporting Effort #2—Southern Axis (Russian objective: Defend Kherson and Zaporizhia Oblasts against Ukrainian counterattacks)

Click here to enlarge the map.

Russian forces launched missile and rocket strikes at ground targets across the Southern Axis on July 15-16. Russian forces launched four-to-six Kh-101 cruise missiles – advanced, high-precision cruise missiles designed to evade air defense systems – at Dnipro, Dnipropetrovsk Oblast in the evening on July 15.[29] Footage shows Ukrainian air defenses successfully intercepting at least one of the missiles, and at least two missiles hit buildings in central Dnipro.[30] The Russian Defense Ministry claimed that the missiles struck the Yuzhny Machine Building Plant used to build and repair Ukrainian Tochka-Us and MLRS systems in Dnipro’s industrial district, but ISW is unable to verify the exact locations of the strikes at this time.[31] The Russian usage of Kh-101 missiles to strike a Ukrainian military factory could indicate that Russian forces are either running out of appropriate munitions for such strikes or are desperate to curtail Ukrainian strikes on Russian military infrastructure by targeting Ukrainian supplies of missile and rocket systems.

The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces continued shelling the line of contact and did not conduct ground offensives on July 16.[32]

Mobilization and Force Generation Efforts (Russian objective: Expand combat power without conducting general mobilization)

Nothing significant to report.

Activity in Russian-occupied Areas (Russian objective: consolidate administrative control of occupied areas; set conditions for potential annexation into the Russian Federation or some other future political arrangement of Moscow’s choosing)

Russian authorities in occupied areas are likely assessing that growing Ukrainian partisan activity seeks to threaten and complicate efforts to institute coherent occupational control and are strengthening administrative regimes accordingly. Ukrainian news source Ria-Melitopol reported on July 16 that Russian authorities in Melitopol have substantially increased Russian military presence in the city and established checkpoints to stop and strip-search civilians.[33] Kherson Oblast Administration similarly warned that Russian occupation authorities in the Kakhovskyi district (near Kherson City) have issued an order to strengthen the access regime for communal enterprises and other checkpoints, which will allow Russian forces to detain suspected Ukrainian “terrorists” for 72 hours for violating controls on the access regime.[34] Ukraine’s Center for Strategic Cooperation noted that Russian authorities are struggling to galvanize public support for occupation administrations in Kharkiv Oblast and in the cities of Melitopol and Mariupol.[35] These reports indicate that Russian authorities perceive a growing threat to the consolidation of occupational regimes and will likely continue efforts to crack down on pro-Ukrainian sentiments and actions in occupied areas.

[1] https://function.mil dot ru/news_page/country/more.htm?id=12429378@egNews; https://ria dot ru/20220716/ukraina-1802905956.html; https://tass dot ru/armiya-i-opk/15233277; https://t.me/mod_russia/17707; https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign...

[2] https://function.mil dot ru/news_page/country/more.htm?id=12429378@egNews; https://ria dot ru/20220716/ukraina-1802905956.html; https://tass dot ru/armiya-i-opk/15233277; https://t.me/mod_russia/17707; https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign...

[24] https://gur.gov dot ua/content/rashyst-rozpovidaie-mami-pro-nastroi-v-yoho-pidrozdili.html; https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=EdlRqgiDBsg&feature=emb_...

[26] https://t.me/readovkanews/38741; https://t.me/miroshnik_r/7974; https://ria dot ru/20220716/lnr-1802932455.html

[27] https://t.me/stranaua/50845; https://tass dot ru/mezhdunarodnaya-panorama/15136215

understandingwar.org

2. A Russian Submarine Slaughtered Children in Ukraine With High-Tech Missiles

A Russian Submarine Slaughtered Children in Ukraine With High-Tech Missiles

19fortyfive.com · by BySebastien Roblin · July 16, 2022

At 10 am local time on July 14, a Russian Kilo-class diesel-electric attack submarine submerged beneath the Black Sea released four or five weapons from its torpedo tubes. Clouds of smoke roiled the water above the submarine as the missiles breached the surface and surged vertically into the sky. You can see what this looked like in the video below.

Using inertial navigation systems, the high-tech weapon banked onto a trajectory over northeastern Ukraine, turbojet engines propelling them at about the speed of an airliner.

The missile’s approach was picked up by Ukrainian air defense radars, causing air-raid alarms to howl across central Ukraine at 10:10 AM. However, Ukrainian surface-to-air missile batteries fired missiles in response, blasting two of the incoming weapons out of the sky. (An alternate account claims seven missiles were launched, with four shot down.)

Though most media reports claim the attack involved Russia’s widely-employed Kalibr naval cruise missile (presumably its 3M14K submarine-launch landed-attack model), markings on the shattered remains of the downed missiles seemingly reveal they were shorter-range 3M-51 Alfa anti-ship missiles repurposed to strike ground targets.

#Ukraine: Something fascinating from #Kyiv; tho used against a land target, it seems that Ru used an 3M-51 “Alfa” anti-ship missile, which has secondary land-attack capabilities. Likely what we see is the the subsonic carrier stage of the 3-stage 3M-51.

Thank you @blueboy1969! pic.twitter.com/EhiE2V6X1D

— Ukraine Weapons Tracker (@UAWeapons) March 21, 2022

The two surviving missiles descended upon Vinnitsya, a Ukrainian city of around 370,000 located well over 200 miles northwest of the Black Sea, or the closest stretch of the frontline in Kherson Oblast. A Polish-Lithuanian city for most of its history, Vinnitsya was the site of large-scale massacres, first by the Soviets and then Nazis during World War II. Today it hosts a Ukrainian Air Force command center.

In March, Vinnitsya had been struck three times by missiles targeting its international airport, its 354-meter high television broadcasting tower, and the Ukrainian Air Force command center, killing 10 between them and injuring six more. But there had been no further attacks after Russia withdrew forces from the region west of Kyiv.

But this attack out of the blue was seemingly not targeted at anything so practical as an airport or military headquarters. The missiles’ 661-pound warhead, designed to cripple a NATO destroyer in one hit, instead slaughtered unfortunate civilians going about their daily lives in the city center, many disregarding the too frequent air raid sirens which were triggered over broad areas daily.

The first Alfa slammed into a performance venue called the “House of Officers” on Prehemhoy Square in central Vinnitsya, gutting its interior, killing sound engineer Evgeny Kovalenko and injuring the rest of the advance team of Ukrainian singer/songwriter Roksolana Syrota, who was due for a charity concert that evening.

Civilians strolling in the square nearby were knocked off their feet by the impact, their pet dogs panicking as chunks of debris rained around them and a towering pall of dust and smoke abruptly shadowed the ground around them.

#Ukraine The moment when a missile hit the downtown of Vinnytsia where civilians were simply strolling and cycling pic.twitter.com/viHauxaQqG

— Hanna Liubakova (@HannaLiubakova) July 14, 2022

Across the street, the second and possibly third missile smashed into the parking lot of a nine-story-tall mixed-use building and its attached arts complex, called the Jubilee center. The blasts destroyed at least 50 cars, shattered all the nearby windows, and ignited a blaze that gutted the ground floor of the complex, killing eight and injuring a similar number, many of them taxi drivers as well as a teenager attending driving lessons.

Video from Vinnytsia shop in the area hit by a russian rocket. pic.twitter.com/Q9If5LIKzZ

— Ukraine 4 Freedom (@uawarinfo) July 14, 2022

The blast occurred just as Iryna Dmitrieva and her four-year-old daughter Lisa were leaving the new Neuromed clinic there following a speech therapy appointment to treat her Down syndrome. The blast severed one of the mother’s legs and killed Lisa, who was pushing a pink pram.

Lisa had earlier appeared in a Christmas special with Olena Zelensky, wife of the Ukrainian president. The family had moved from Kyiv to Vinnitsya to avoid Russian shelling targeting the Ukrainian capital.

Сьогодні з жахом ми побачили фото перекинутого дитячого візочка з Вінниці. А потім, читаючи новини, я усвідомила, що знаю цю дівчинку. Знала… Я не буду зараз писати всі слова, що дуже хотілося б, тим, хто її убив. Я напишу вам про Лізу 1/2 pic.twitter.com/RrkMRfYwRK

— Олена Зеленська (@ZelenskaUA) July 14, 2022

The Neuromed building itself was devastated, killing two doctors, and seriously injuring two more.

Two other boys, ages 7 and 8, near the hospital were killed—one fell into a firetrap while waiting by a parked car, the other killed with his mother during a doctor’s appointment.

The total death toll from the strike by Friday stands at 23. According to Ukrainian Pravda, at least twelve had to be identified using DNA analysis techniques, with more missing and likely dead. A further 82 persons were hospitalized, including four children.

What weapon did Russia use?

As Russia exhausts stocks of its most modern long-range land-attack weapons, it’s increasingly turning to missiles designed for other purposes and/or that were supposedly retired from use to blast Ukrainian cities with unsurprisingly poor accuracy. That includes even bigger Kh-22 air-launched carrier-killer cruise missiles, supposedly retired Tochka ballistic missiles, and ground-based S-300 surface-to-air missiles and Bastion anti-ship batteries.

The 3M-51 Alfa, or P-900, identifiable from the wreckage has a claimed range of 155-miles, too short to reach Vinnytsia from the Black Sea. Furthermore, the Russian submarine likely would have launched a significant distance from Ukraine’s coastline to avoid detection and risk of attack.

For its ship-busting mission, the 3M-51 is designed to use a rocket booster to accelerate to Mach 2.5 in its terminal approach to reduce the odds of being shot down by a warship’s formidable air defense weapons. It’s therefore possible that for a less demanding land-attack role, the 3.87-tron 3M-51 missile was modified for extended range by removing the rocket booster used for the “supersonic sprint.” This weight reduction, and potentially increased fuel capacity, could have enlarged the weapon’s reach.

What were the Russians thinking?

Kremlin arch-propagandist Margherita Simonyan characterized the strikes as targeting “Nazis” when pressed for comment. Later Russia’s defense ministry claimed the strike had supposedly targeted “a meeting of the command of the Ukrainian Air Force with representatives of foreign arms suppliers” at the House of Officers.

Given the questionable wisdom of expending a high-tech, not-that-precise missile on an officer’s club, some speculate its targeting was conceived as a sort of payback for recent Ukrainian strikes using Western precision missiles that killed a Russian general and three colonels.

Anti-ship missiles, in particular, rely on a radar-seeker to home in on large warships on the water. Though such seekers can also be programmed to look for the profile of a large building, they can be difficult to distinguish in the clutter of dense urban areas. This likely results in many radar-guided missiles simply latching onto the biggest building they can identify near the target.

Whether Russia’s military really was attempting a hit a gathering of Ukrainian officers or simply meant to sow terror in Ukrainians broadly—even those far from the zone of active combat—the likelihood of collateral damage was clearly high given the established poor precision of Russian missiles and the high density of surrounding civilian businesses and residences.

It’s worth noting that Ukraine has managed to execute strategic attacks on targets in Russia or Russian-occupied Ukraine that more consistently hit targets of military value.

Moscow’s unconscionable attacks on urban centers in Ukraine should also prompt reflection on past Western air campaigns, which in some incidents have resulted in as many or more civilian casualties, whether from bombing misidentified targets such as refugee columns and wedding ceremonies or as collateral damage to strikes on valid military targets, as often occurred while rooting out ISIS fighters in the Battle of Mosul. And that’s despite the vastly greater precision of Western air-to-surface weaponry. Moscow’s atrocities should reinvigorate Western efforts to reduce civilian deaths resulting from use of airpower, even if those are often less deliberate than Russia’s.

Ukraine is currently receiving at least two NASAMS surface-to-air batteries from the U.S., each of which could significantly enhance the local air defense of a Ukrainian city. However, cities like Vinnitsya are unlikely to receive an enhanced air defense umbrella soon. After all, who can predict which shopping mall, maternity ward, or concert venue far away from the frontline will be the subject of Russia’s next “strategic” strike?

Sébastien Roblin writes on the technical, historical, and political aspects of international security and conflict for publications including The National Interest, NBC News, Forbes.com, War is Boring and 19FortyFive, where he is Defense-in-Depth editor. He holds a Master’s degree from Georgetown University and served with the Peace Corps in China. You can follow his articles on Twitter.

19fortyfive.com · by BySebastien Roblin · July 16, 2022

3. Ukraine special forces free torture victims from Russian prison in dramatic mission

Photos and video at the link: https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/1641002/ukraine-special-forces-russian-torture-prison-footage-vinnytsia-strikes-civilian-deaths-vn

Ukraine special forces free torture victims from Russian prison in dramatic mission

UKRAINIAN forces have successfully carried out a rescue mission after storming a secret Russian torture site, rare footage has shown.

Express · by Tom Watling · July 15, 2022

Ukrainian intelligence forces free captives in Russian prison

Five Ukrainian torture victims were liberated from the makeshift Russian prison as footage shows a group of specialist armed forces breaking through a mine fence and killing the enemy soldiers. Due to the speed and organisation of the mission, the Russian troops were caught unawares by the attack and were quickly overcome. The footage shows the Ukrainian special forces navigating through the building, eliminating the torturers and swiftly freeing the Ukrainian victims.

The narrator of the video said: “This is how the special operation begins. A group of special forces crosses the front line and moves towards a Russian secret torture site.

“The main ‘surprise’ is the booby traps. The building where the prison was set up was surrounded on all sides with mines and stretchers.

“Specialists quickly made a hole in the mine fence and came close to the house.”

The group commander of the operation said: “When we went in, we did not see everything. Everything around this facility was mined and it made the situation difficult.”

Ukraine soldiers storm a Russian torture camp in a surprise attack (Image: TWITTER )

Five Ukrainian torture victims were liberated from the makeshift Russian prison (Image: TWITTER )

The narrator continued: “The Russian soldier did not have time to realise what was going on.

“The ‘executioners’ inside the house were also quickly eliminated. A few seconds later the freed prisoners were brought out.

“The main thing recovered was the documents of all Russian military who had tortured Ukrainians.”

Asked about his emotions during the rescue mission, the group commander said: “We try not to get emotional during the mission. There’s a mission, there’s an objective, we just had to take it down.”

The operation's group commander said the team had to "try not to get emotional" to ensure success (Image: TWITTER )

The Ukrainian special forces recovered all the Russian torturers' documents (Image: TWITTER )

Russia has repeatedly denied accusations of torture throughout their offensive in Ukraine despite reports of several massacres, some of which included Ukrainian civilians.

But while these soldiers were successfully freed, many other troops and civilians have been killed by Russians.

A British aid worker who was detained by Russian-backed separatists in Ukraine and accused of being a mercenary died recently, Russian state news agency TASS reported on Friday.

Paul Urey was captured in eastern Ukraine and charged with "mercenary activities" by separatists in the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic.

DON'T MISS:

Russia's defence ministry denied targeting civilians in a devastating strike on Vinnytsia yesterday (Image: GETTY )

Zelensky warns of ‘media terror’ of propaganda, disinformation amid Russian invasion

BY JARED GANS - 07/16/22 5:42 PM ET

The Hill · · July 16, 2022

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky warned against the “media terror” that he says is coming from Russian propaganda and disinformation amid Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in an address on Saturday.

Zelensky pointed to Ukraine’s endurance since Russia launched a full-scale invasion of the country in late February, but said the conflict requires Ukrainians to be careful in the “information field” more than ever before.

He said false information was spread about a “massive” Russian missile strike on Ukraine on Saturday. He said the creation of “horror stories” by Russian officials and propagandists and the trust that some Ukrainians have put in anonymous sources have caused problems during the conflict.

“This sometimes takes on simply unhealthy forms when social networks and websites deliberately stuff fake information from Russia, the purpose of which is only one – to add media terror to the missile and artillery terror against our country,” Zelensky said.

Throughout the war, Russia has mounted an intense disinformation campaign, accusing the Ukrainian government of committing genocide as a false pretense for its invasion and exaggerating Russian military successes.

Zelensky said Ukrainians need to have “emotional sovereignty” so they do not rely on propaganda from the Russians. He said media weapons can sometimes be more effective than military ones.

“It is obvious that any missiles and artillery of Russia will not succeed in breaking our unity and knocking us off our path,” he said. “And it should be equally obvious that Ukrainian unity cannot be broken by lies or intimidation, fake information or conspiracy theories.”

Human rights group says UAE has detained lawyer who represented Khashoggi Biden administration under pressure to up Ukraine’s rocket firepower

Zelensky emphasized that the only way for Ukraine to win the war is if Ukrainians are united, which he said is their obligation to everyone who has fought for Ukraine’s freedom.

His comments come as the war approaches the five-month mark. Russian forces are attempting to take control of the Donetsk province in the Donbas region after capturing virtually all of another province in the area, Luhansk, earlier this month.

Zelensky said in his address that Ukrainian forces have liberated regions that Russia took at the outset of its invasion in February and will gradually liberate other territories under Russian occupation.

The Hill · by Caroline Vakil · July 16, 2022

5. China’s ‘Mysterious Structures’ Captured In Satellite Images; Hint At PLA’s Expansion Of Harbors In Remote South China Sea Islands

Photos at the link: https://eurasiantimes.com/chinas-mysterious-structures-captured-in-satellite-images/

More details at this link: https://amti.csis.org/more-island-upgrades-across-the-south-china-sea/

Excerpts:

The report also raised questions about the precise nature of China’s activities, stating: From late 2019 through 2021, large blue-roofed structures were constructed at every Chinese-occupied feature in the Spratly Islands. These structures are likely temporary given how quickly they have been built and, in some instances, moved from one place to another.

They appear to be uniform in size, with the majority measuring 50 meters long and 15 or 25 meters wide. “The first went up at Fiery Cross Reef in November 2019, followed by Subi Reef in April 2020, Mischief Reef in May, Gaven and Hughes Reef in August, Johnson Reef in September, and Cuarteron Reef by January of 2021,” the report said.

Harbor expansions, runways, radomes, and more: satellite imagery reveals island upgrades across the South China Sea in AMTI's latest feature: https://t.co/Q1C8Tpyaic pic.twitter.com/kselPMzXP1

— AMTI (@AsiaMTI) July 8, 2022

“The blue structures then appeared in the Paracel Islands, on Woody Island in April of 2021, Duncan Island in June, and Pattle Island in August. The structure at Woody Island was taken down in January of this year,” the report added.

China’s ‘Mysterious Structures’ Captured In Satellite Images; Hint At PLA’s Expansion Of Harbors In Remote South China Sea Islands

eurasiantimes.com · by Ashish Dangwal · July 15, 2022

Satellite images that have recently surfaced hint at China’s continued fortification of islands in the South China Sea, suggesting Beijing is attempting to take control of the vital waterway. The images also showed “mystery structures” emerging on several remote islands that Beijing controls.

‘Patrolling The Space’ – Yes, China Is Developing AI-Powered Orbital Carrier That Can Defend, Refuel & Keep Its Space Assets Running

The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a US think tank, published a report on July 8, noting Beijing has expanded several harbors in recent years on China-occupied islands in the South China sea.

Over the past two years, the harbors on China-controlled Paracel Islands, Lincoln Islands, Money Islands, and Pattle Islands have expanded. When regional tensions are already rising, the CSIS study’s satellite images demonstrate China’s ambitions to influence essential waterways.

The report highlighted that the width of Lincoln’s harbor was increased from 175 to 200 meters in March 2021, Money’s from 150 to 190 meters in March 2022, and Pattle from 190 to 250 meters in April 2022.

A PLA Navy ship approaches the USS Benfold destroyer in the South China Sea. (China Military Online)

The report continues, “This spring, several structures were completed and minor construction undertaken at Johnson Reef in the Spratlys, and Tree Island and Money Islands in the Paracels.”

In Woody Island, the center of China’s military and civil administration in the South China Sea, solar panels were mounted on many buildings in early 2021. Besides that, since the Asian Maritime Transparency Initiation’s last survey of Mischief Reef, several new radomes have been implemented—two in late 2020 and one in early 2022.

The report, posted on the CSIS website, cites the Asian Maritime Transparency Initiation (AMTI) and notes that China, the Philippines, and Taiwan had all recently engaged in “construction activities.”

Mystery Structures In China’s Outposts

The report also raised questions about the precise nature of China’s activities, stating: From late 2019 through 2021, large blue-roofed structures were constructed at every Chinese-occupied feature in the Spratly Islands. These structures are likely temporary given how quickly they have been built and, in some instances, moved from one place to another.

They appear to be uniform in size, with the majority measuring 50 meters long and 15 or 25 meters wide. “The first went up at Fiery Cross Reef in November 2019, followed by Subi Reef in April 2020, Mischief Reef in May, Gaven and Hughes Reef in August, Johnson Reef in September, and Cuarteron Reef by January of 2021,” the report said.

Harbor expansions, runways, radomes, and more: satellite imagery reveals island upgrades across the South China Sea in AMTI's latest feature: https://t.co/Q1C8Tpyaic pic.twitter.com/kselPMzXP1

— AMTI (@AsiaMTI) July 8, 2022

“The blue structures then appeared in the Paracel Islands, on Woody Island in April of 2021, Duncan Island in June, and Pattle Island in August. The structure at Woody Island was taken down in January of this year,” the report added.

The report explains that some structures had been left standing since they were built, while others had been dismantled or relocated. The building at Fiery Cross Reef was recently moved in April 2022 from its southern tip to a more central location.

Meanwhile, the buildings at Subi Reef have been in four different places over the last two years, with two occupying the southern and northern ends of the island at the same time between April and October 2021.

The Philippines Asserts Sovereignty

The Philippines reiterated on July 12 that it had the upper hand legally over China in a prolonged maritime dispute. This was done to commemorate the anniversary of an arbitration decision that found Beijing’s claim to almost the entire South China Sea unfounded.

In 2013, the Philippines filed a case with the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague, seeking to clarify its sovereign rights under international law after a contentious standoff with China.

Philippines President Bongbong Marcos with China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi – Twitter

On July 12, 2016, the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague stated that there was no proof that China had historically practiced exclusive control over the critical waterway. It was a major setback for Beijing, which refuses to accept the outcome and insists that its claim, based on its historical maps, is still valid.

Philippines’ newly-appointed foreign minister Enrique Manalo said: “These findings are no longer within reach of denial and rebuttal, and are conclusive as they are indisputable. We firmly reject attempts to undermine it, even erase it from the law, history, and our collective memories.”

The Philippines, which has been unable to enforce the ruling, has lodged hundreds of protests diplomatically in response to what it claims are China’s coast guard and massive fishing fleet’s encroachment and harassment.

The country’s new president, Ferdinand Marcos Jr., has also vowed to uphold national sovereignty but has emphasized the importance of strengthening ties with China in other areas.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement commemorating the anniversary that the arbitration was conclusive and that China must “abide by its obligations under international law and cease its provocative behavior.”

His Chinese counterpart Wang Yi took a dig at the US by saying territorial disputes needed to be settled within the region.

Contact the author at [email protected]
Follow EurAsian Times on Google News

eurasiantimes.com · by Ashish Dangwal · July 15, 2022

6. Russia's information war expands through Eastern Europe

Excerpts:

Reflecting the difficulty of identifying the origin of disinformation, the DSC also identified a network of three anonymous Facebook accounts pushing pro-Russian talking points that researchers concluded could part of a Russian disinformation campaign.

Facebook said Friday it would take down the accounts, which appeared to violate some of the platform’s rules relating to multiple profiles. But the platform said it found nothing to suggest the accounts were part of a disinformation network. Instead, they were operated by a single Bulgarian user who liked to repost other people’s pro-Russian content.

Indeed, after a senior Bulgarian official revealed Russia’s scheme to pay certain journalists and political pundits 2,000 euros, or 4,000 Bulgarian leva, for posting friendly content, the author scoffed at the idea of taking the money.

“Thank you Mr. Putin for the gesture, but I do not need 4000 leva to like Russia,” they wrote. “I like her for free.”

Russia's information war expands through Eastern Europe

AP · by DAVID KLEPPER · July 15, 2022

WASHINGTON (AP) — As bullets and bombs fall in Ukraine, Russia is waging an expanding information war throughout Eastern Europe, using fake accounts and propaganda to spread fears about refugees and rising fuel prices while calling the West an untrustworthy ally.

In Bulgaria, the Kremlin paid journalists, political analysts and other influential citizens 2,000 euros a month to post pro-Russian content online, a senior Bulgarian official revealed this month. Researchers also have uncovered sophisticated networks of fake accounts, bots and trolls in an escalating spread of disinformation and propaganda in the country.

Similar efforts are playing out in other nations in the region as Russia looks to shift the blame for its invasion of Ukraine, the ensuing refugee crisis and rising prices for food and fuel.

For Russia’s leaders, expansive propaganda and disinformation campaigns are a highly cost-effective alternative to traditional tools of war or diplomacy, according to Graham Brookie, senior director at the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab, which has been tracking Russian disinformation for years.

“Stirring up these reactions is the low-hanging fruit for Russian information operations,” Brookie said. “Their state media does audience analysis better than most of the media companies in the world. Where these narratives have succeeded are countries where there is more weaponization of domestic discourse or more polarized media markets.”

Misinformation

Bulgaria was long counted a stalwart Russian ally, though the country of 7 million residents has turned its attention westward in recent decades, joining NATO in 2004 and the European Union three years later.

When Bulgaria, Poland and other former Warsaw Pact nations sided with their NATO allies in support of Ukraine, Russia responded with a wave of disinformation and propaganda that sought to exploit public debates over globalization and westernization.

For Poland, that took the form of anti-Western propaganda and conspiracy theories. One, spread by a Russian-allied hacking group in an apparent effort to divide Ukraine and Poland, suggested that Polish gangs were harvesting the organs of Ukrainian refugees.

Russia’s onslaught comes as Eastern European governments, like others around the world, grapple with dissatisfaction and unrest caused by rising prices for fuel and food.

Bulgaria is in a particularly vulnerable position. Pro-Western Prime Minister Kiril Petkov lost a no confidence vote last month. Concerns about the economy and fuel prices only increased when Russia cut off Bulgaria’s supply of natural gas last spring. The upheaval prompted President Rumen Radev to say his country was entering a “political, economic and social crisis.”

The government’s relationship with Moscow is another complication. Bulgaria recently expelled 70 Russian diplomatic staffers over concerns about espionage, prompting the Kremlin to threaten to end diplomatic relations with it.

The same week, Russia’s embassy in Sofia posted a fundraising appeal urging Bulgarian citizens to donate their private funds to support the Russian army and its invasion of Ukraine.

Bulgaria’s government reacted angrily to Russia’s attempt to solicit donations for its war from a NATO country.

“This is scandalous,” tweeted Bozhidar Bozhanov, who served as minister of e-government in Petkov’s cabinet. “It is not right to use the platform to finance the aggressor.”

The embassy also has spread debunked conspiracy theories claiming the U.S. runs secret biolabs in Ukraine. Embassies have become key to Russia’s disinformation campaigns, especially since many technology companies have begun restricting Russian state media since the invasion began.

Trolls and fake and anonymous accounts remain valued parts of the arsenal. Researchers at the Disinformation Situation Center identified anonymous accounts that spread pro-Russian content, as well as online harassment directed at Bulgarians who expressed support for Ukraine.

Some of the harassment seemed coordinated, based on the speed and similarities in the attacks, concluded the researchers at the DSC, a Europe-based nonprofit organization of disinformation researchers.

“This intimidation tactic is not a new one, but the war in Ukraine has brought part of the coordination efforts into the public space,” the DSC wrote.

Reflecting the difficulty of identifying the origin of disinformation, the DSC also identified a network of three anonymous Facebook accounts pushing pro-Russian talking points that researchers concluded could part of a Russian disinformation campaign.

Facebook said Friday it would take down the accounts, which appeared to violate some of the platform’s rules relating to multiple profiles. But the platform said it found nothing to suggest the accounts were part of a disinformation network. Instead, they were operated by a single Bulgarian user who liked to repost other people’s pro-Russian content.

Indeed, after a senior Bulgarian official revealed Russia’s scheme to pay certain journalists and political pundits 2,000 euros, or 4,000 Bulgarian leva, for posting friendly content, the author scoffed at the idea of taking the money.

“Thank you Mr. Putin for the gesture, but I do not need 4000 leva to like Russia,” they wrote. “I like her for free.”

___

Follow AP’s coverage of misinformation at https://apnews.com/hub/misinformation.

AP · by DAVID KLEPPER · July 15, 2022

7. Russia's neighbor Latvia wants to bring back the military draft because it fears Russia will attack so quickly that NATO can't help, defense minister says

Excerpts:

In terms of what kind of attack Russia could make, Pabriks said "anything could happen, because this imperial country never gave up these ambitions."

Russia has so far made vague treats against the Baltic countries, of which Latvia is one. In April, Russia said it would put nuclear weapons in the Baltic region, and Estonia has said that Russia was simulating missile attacks against it.

Latvia's neighbors have also stepped up their defenses over Russia's invasion of Ukraine: Sweden and Finland applied to join NATO, Finland plans to build barriers along its Russian border, and Estonia and Lithuania increased military drills.

Pabriks said that when his country brings back the military draft, he can't see it ending again as it did 15 years ago.

"The Rubicon is crossed," he said. "We will not drop it anymore."

Russia's neighbor Latvia wants to bring back the military draft because it fears Russia will attack so quickly that NATO can't help, defense minister says

Business Insider · by Sinéad Baker

Members of Latvia's National Guard attend a shooting exercise during basic military training camp near Daugavpils, Latvia.REUTERS/Ints Kalnins

Latvia, which borders Russia, wants to bring back the military draft in light of Russia's war on Ukraine.
Its defense minister told Insider Latvia must be ready for a Russian attack, including one with little warning.
He said Russia could attack so suddenly that NATO would not be ready for it.

The defense minister of Latvia wants to reintroduce mandatory military service so his country can defend itself in case Russia launches an attack so sudden that NATO can't help prevent it.

Latvia — a NATO and EU member state that borders Russia — ended the mandatory service in 2007.

But earlier this month, Defence Minister Artis Pabriks announced plans to re-introduce the service for 18-to-27-year-olds after Russia's invasion of Ukraine, saying it was a necessary step for the country to "survive." Latvia's president said he also supported the move.

In an interview with Insider this week, Pabriks, who is also Latvia's deputy prime minister, said that more citizens need military training because the country is expecting an attack from Russia.

He said Latvian intelligence suggested a Russian attack could come with little warning, meaning NATO's defenses might not be prepared to stop it.

A map showing the border between Latvia and Russia.Google Maps/Insider

"Even if we are a NATO member country, our first challenge and danger is coming from a very quick attack from Russia," Pabriks said.

"We have been of course calculating how many forces Russia can gather at our borders within 24 or 48 hours. And knowing that NATO will need a certain time to reflect on that, we must be ready ourselves to defend every inch and every centimeter of our territory."

NATO's charter says that an attack on one member state is treated as an attack on all, meaning other nations would come to Latvia's defense.

But Pabriks said Latvia — which was occupied by the Soviets before declaring independence in 1990 — needs to considerably boost its own defenses as an Russian attack is so likely.

"We are ready to do anything to not repeat our bitter history lessons of when the Soviet Union occupied us," he said.

"We cannot afford to appear weak. We must be strong. We are not scared and we're simply vigilant, ready, because we're not going anymore to live under this foreign rule and this occupation like our ancestors."

Latvia's defense minister, Artis Pabriks, in England in February 2022.Alberto Pezzali/Associated Press

Service starting next year

Introducing mandatory military service still needs approval from the country's parliament and new legislation.

Pabriks expects to this to pass, and said it could happen this year — meaning the first 500 people could enter the service in January 2023.

These first people would volunteer as part of the plan's first phase, and eventually all Latvian men aged 18 to 27 would be required to do 11 months of service.

The 11 months would be made up of three months of basic training, three months of a specialty course, and five months of "integration into units and collective training."

They would also receive a monthly salary of "up to 400 euros, free food and accommodation in army barracks," the defense ministry said.

Pabriks said he also believes the plan is popular among most of the population.

NATO troops gather during military exercises in Adazi Military base in Kadaga, Latvia, Tuesday, March. 8, 2022AP Photo/Roman Koksarov

Expecting an attack

Pabriks said Russia's invasion of Ukraine proved the need to bring back mandatory military service in Latvia.

He said Latvia believes that regardless of whether Russia wins or loses in Ukraine, "Russia will remain an unreliable neighbor with imperial ambitions for the next decade."

Ukraine, like Latvia, was previously occupied by the Soviet Union, and Russian President Vladimir Putin has claimed that Ukraine is rightly part of Russia as a justification to invade.

"This means Ukraine gives us time to prepare," Pabriks said. "While Ukrainians are fighting, I am sorry to say, we have a chance as Latvians and as Europeans to prepare."

People seen digging graves in Bucha, Ukraine, on April 5, 2022.REUTERS/Zohra Bensemra

Pabriks said the service would both bolster Latvia's military so it could fight a Russian attack, and also act as a deterrent to Russia's plans.

"Russians are not crazy. They will see we are ready to defend," he said.

"And secondly, if the disaster happens, then we would have enough forces to stand for our freedoms."

In terms of what kind of attack Russia could make, Pabriks said "anything could happen, because this imperial country never gave up these ambitions."

Latvian President Egils Levits speaks to Latvian troops during his visit to Adazi Military base in Kadaga, Latvia, on March 8, 2022.AP Photo/Roman Koksarov

Russia has so far made vague treats against the Baltic countries, of which Latvia is one. In April, Russia said it would put nuclear weapons in the Baltic region, and Estonia has said that Russia was simulating missile attacks against it.

Latvia's neighbors have also stepped up their defenses over Russia's invasion of Ukraine: Sweden and Finland applied to join NATO, Finland plans to build barriers along its Russian border, and Estonia and Lithuania increased military drills.

Pabriks said that when his country brings back the military draft, he can't see it ending again as it did 15 years ago.

"The Rubicon is crossed," he said. "We will not drop it anymore."

NOW WATCH: Popular Videos from Insider Inc.

Business Insider · by Sinéad Baker

8. Man acquitted of bombing 1985 Air India flight shot dead in Canada

Will we ever learn the truth?

Man acquitted of bombing 1985 Air India flight shot dead in Canada

BBC · by Menu

Published
1 day ago

About sharing

Image source, Reuters

Image caption,

Sikh activist Ripudaman Singh Malik (centre) was found not guilty in the 1985 bombing of an Air India flight

A man acquitted over the bombing of a 1985 Air India flight has been killed in a suspected targeted shooting in Canada, police say.

Ripudaman Singh Malik was shot dead in his car in Surrey, British Columbia, and police found a burnt-out vehicle nearby.

Mr Malik denied involvement in the terror attack that killed 329 people.

He was acquitted in 2005 but police were accused of having bungled the investigation.

The bombings - widely believed to have been carried out by Canadian-based Sikhs in retaliation for India's deadly 1984 storming of the Golden Temple, the holiest shrine in the Sikh religion - remain Canada's deadliest terror attack.

Following a two-year trial, Mr Malik, a Sikh businessman and co-accused Ajaib Singh Bagri were acquitted of mass murder and conspiracy charges related to the two bombings.

Canadian police have said they are still working to determine the motive behind the targeted killing of Mr Malik.

Unravelling the Air India investigation

Air India flight 182 from Canada to India blew up off the Irish coast, killing all 329 people on board - most of them Canadian citizens visiting relatives in India - on 23 June 1985.

About the same time, a second bomb exploded prematurely in Japan, killing two baggage handlers.

Mr Bagri and Mr Malik were accused of planting the bombs on board the plane.

But the prosecution case turned on the reliability of key prosecution witnesses, who claimed the accused had privately confessed to involvement in the bombing.

Japan Wants Up to Nine Nuclear Reactors Online This Winter

The government expects tight supply over summer and winter
Kishida is ratcheting up rhetoric amid push for more nuclear

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-07-14/japan-s-kishida-orders-restart-of-up-to-nine-nuclear-reactors?sref=hhjZtX76&utm_source=pocket_mylist

ByIsabel Reynolds

July 14, 2022 at 5:31 AM EDTUpdated onJuly 14, 2022 at 6:27 AM EDT

Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said he asked for as many as nine nuclear reactors to be online this winter to help with an expected power crunch.

“There are concerns about a power shortage this winter,” Kishida told a news conference Thursday. “We must prevent this situation.”

The Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry will do what they can to push for nine reactors operating in winter, which can cover roughly 10% of Japan’s power consumption, said Kishida. That falls in line with plans from regional utilities, which aim to have that many reactors producing electricity when colder weather hits.

Japan is struggling with tight electricity supplies due to extreme weather, the retirement of older power plants, and delays to restarting nuclear reactors that were shut following the Fukushima nuclear disaster in 2011. It is also cutting its use of energy sources from Russia following its invasion of Ukraine.

While Japan is already facing tight power supplies through the rest of the summer, the upcoming winter is expected to be razor thin.

Kishida has been ratcheting up rhetoric around nuclear power, requesting faster restarts for facilities that have cleared safety reviews. However, Japan’s central government has little ability to actually order a plant to resume operations, since there is a rigorous regulatory process.

Ten of Japan’s 33 operable nuclear reactors had been restarted under post-Fukushima safety rules, though some are offline for maintenance. A further seven units have been cleared by the nation’s nuclear regulator to resume operations but haven’t yet restarted due to required upgrades or lack of local support.

— With assistance by Stephen Stapczynski

(Updates with details throughout.)

10. Chinese diplomats flock to Africa in response to Western charm offensive

I was unaware the West was executing a charm offensive. Are we challenging the Belt and Road initiative?

Strategic competition. More than just military.

Excerpts:

For instance, the European Union-African Union Summit held in February shows the EU is increasing engagement with Africa and investment in the continent. High-ranking officials from the US departments of state and commerce paid visits to Africa in the past months, and the second US-Africa leaders’ summit will be held later this year. Japan will hold the eighth Tokyo International Conference on African Development in Tunisia next month.

“It means the major countries are giving more importance to Africa, and this will lead to closer interactions,” Zhou said. “I think this could benefit African countries if new commitments, investments and financing increase.”

Zajontz said the growing frequency of visits by high-level Chinese officials across the continent must be seen in the light of a recent Western charm offensive in Africa, including pledges to provide alternative infrastructure and development projects to those offered under China’s Belt and Road Initiative.

“It is evident that Chinese and Western leaders are engaged in an increasingly competitive contest for political influence in African capitals, while a scramble for strategic minerals and markets in Africa is under way,” he said.

Chinese diplomats flock to Africa in response to Western charm offensive

Xu Jinghu, China’s special representative on African affairs, is on an eight-nation tour
Observers say her visit and others aim to resolve hotspot issues and respond to the West’s challenge to the Belt and Road Initiative

Jevans Nyabiage

+ FOLLOW

Published: 6:00am, 17 Jul, 2022

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3185515/chinese-diplomats-flock-africa-response-western-charm?utm_source=rss_feed

The past month has been a busy time for Chinese diplomacy in Africa, with senior officials making dozens of trips to the continent to resolve disputes, strengthen relations and respond to a recent Western charm offensive.

In a meeting with Burundian President Evariste Ndayishimiye on Wednesday, the Chinese government’s special representative on African affairs, Xu Jinghu, promised China would continue to strengthen bilateral relations with the East African nation in priority sectors such as agriculture, health and infrastructure.

Ndayishimiye said China had “stood by our side for years, especially in times of hardship”, and Xu said Beijing would always support Burundi’s economic and social development.

China has sent agricultural scientists to Burundi to help improve food production and has awarded scholarships to Burundian students.

Xu Jinghu with Burundian President Evariste Ndayishimiye in Bujumbura. Photo: Handout

On her eight-nation tour, Xu will also visit Rwanda, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Congo-Brazzaville, Namibia, Madagascar, Mauritius and Seychelles.

She is visiting the continent a few days after senior Chinese diplomat Yang Jiechi visited Zimbabwe and Mozambique. And last month, Wu Peng, director general of the foreign ministry’s African affairs department, visited South Africa, Malawi, Zambia, Tanzania, Senegal, Burkina Faso and Togo.

Also in June, China’s special envoy to the Horn of Africa, Xue Bing, was in Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa for the first Horn of Africa peace conference – which was sponsored by China.

Observers said the high-level trips aim to solve hotspot issues, especially ongoing conflicts in the Great Lakes, Horn of Africa and Sahel regions, and also to respond to the West’s challenge to the Belt and Road Initiative in Africa.

01:35

China prepares to give US$140 million parliament building to Zimbabwe

Zhou Yuyuan, a senior research fellow with the Centre for West Asian and African Studies at the Shanghai Institutes for International Studies, said the specific role of a special representative on African affairs is political mediation.

“I think one of its important missions is to explore China’s contribution to solving the hotspot issues in Africa,” he said. “The relations among the countries in the Great Lakes region are not in a good situation, with the relationship between the DRC and Rwanda especially tense.”

Zimbabwean President Emmerson Mnangagwa with Yang Jiechi in Harare on July 3. Photo: Xinhua

Rwanda and Congo have accused each other of firing rockets across their shared border. The Congolese authorities also alleged that Rwanda deployed soldiers in disguise on their territory.

“So, choosing the Great Lakes Region makes sense,” Zhou said. “Maybe the most important reason [is that] Xu is French-speaking – this means official visits to French-speaking countries will mostly rely on her.”

Tim Zajontz, a research fellow at the Centre for International and Comparative Politics at Stellenbosch University in South Africa, said Xu’s stop in Kinshasa can be seen as a sign of goodwill to iron out protracted disputes between Chinese mining firms and the Congolese government.

Top Chinese diplomat tours East Africa to promote peace, ensure stability for belt and road allies

He said most telling is the frequency with which high-level Chinese officials have visited Africa’s island nations in the Indian Ocean over the past few years.

“Mauritius, the Seychelles and even Madagascar play a minor role for China economically,” Zajontz said. “However, they are of central geostrategic importance for China’s efforts to consolidate its presence across the Indian Ocean as part of the Maritime Silk Road.”

While senior Chinese officials visit some African countries more frequently than others, “China pays attention to ensuring that all countries, except eSwatini that recognises Taipei, are included on the schedule,” David Shinn, a professor at George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs in Washington, said.

As a result, countries that have more important ties with China such as South Africa, Zambia, Tanzania, Senegal, Congo and Namibia receive more high-level visitors. Some of these countries, such as Congo and Zambia, are mineral-rich. Congo sells most of its copper and cobalt to China, while copper-rich Zambia has attracted Chinese capital into mining and infrastructure.

The debt crisis in Zambia topped the agenda during Wu’s recent visit to the country. He told a briefing in Lusaka that he was in Zambia to help coordinate China’s response to its debt situation, which saw the country default on some dollar-denominated Eurobonds.

Xue Bing, China’s special envoy to the Horn of Africa, addresses the first Horn of Africa peace conference in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, on June 20. Photo: AFP

But even countries of less importance to China – such as Malawi, Burkina Faso, Togo and Burundi – are included from time to time, Shinn said.

“Occasionally, senior officials pay a visit because of a special event such as an independence celebration or a serious problem that requires high-level attention,” he said.

Zajontz, also a lecturer in international relations at the University of Freiburg in Germany, said Yang is China’s top foreign-policy maker after President Xi Jinping so his visits are “of particular diplomatic importance”.

He added:“His recent trip to Harare is a courtesy visit to one of China’s most loyal allies in the region.”

He said that under Zimbabwean President Emmerson Mnangagwa, who was trained in China during the liberation struggle, Chinese investment has flourished, not least in infrastructure and the mining sector.

Chinese companies have recently acquired more lithium mines in Zimbabwe and now run Africa’s largest steel plant south of the capital, Harare.

“One could say Zimbabwe is becoming the new Zambia for Beijing, as Harare has opened the country’s doors widely for Chinese investors,” Zajontz said.

He said the fact that Mozambique will assume a non-permanent seat on the UN Security Council in January played a role in Maputo being on Yang’s itinerary. He said Chinese economic interests in Mozambique are diverse, spanning the energy, mining and agricultural sectors, and the Mozambican government used the visit to ask Yang for help in rehabilitating the country’s 2,000km (1,200-mile) north-south EN1 highway.

Zhou said Yang’s visits to Africa were more political and he visited on behalf of top Chinese leaders.

“As the highest-ranking official in charge of diplomacy, Yang pays visits to African countries nearly each year,” he said. “This shows the importance China pays to Africa and the developing countries.”

Among the geopolitical reasons for visits to Africa by Chinese officials are increased Western engagement with the continent.

European Council President Charles Michel answers questions at a news conference on the second day of the European Union-African Union Summit in Brussels on February 18. Photo: AFP

For instance, the European Union-African Union Summit held in February shows the EU is increasing engagement with Africa and investment in the continent. High-ranking officials from the US departments of state and commerce paid visits to Africa in the past months, and the second US-Africa leaders’ summit will be held later this year. Japan will hold the eighth Tokyo International Conference on African Development in Tunisia next month.

“It means the major countries are giving more importance to Africa, and this will lead to closer interactions,” Zhou said. “I think this could benefit African countries if new commitments, investments and financing increase.”

Zajontz said the growing frequency of visits by high-level Chinese officials across the continent must be seen in the light of a recent Western charm offensive in Africa, including pledges to provide alternative infrastructure and development projects to those offered under China’s Belt and Road Initiative.

“It is evident that Chinese and Western leaders are engaged in an increasingly competitive contest for political influence in African capitals, while a scramble for strategic minerals and markets in Africa is under way,” he said.

Jevans Nyabiage

+ FOLLOW

Kenyan journalist Jevans Nyabiage is South China Morning Post's first Africa correspondent. Based in Nairobi, Jevans keeps an eye on China-Africa relations and also Chinese investments, ranging from infrastructure to energy and metal, on the continent.

11. Philippines’ new leader Ferdinand Marcos Jr tears up $5BILLION railways deal with China after Beijing ‘failed to put up the money’

Maps, graphics, and photos at the link: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11019991/Philippines-tears-5BILLION-rail-roads-deal-China-failed-money.html

They show not only projects around the Philippines, but also Africa and the Carribean.

Philippines’ new leader Ferdinand Marcos Jr tears up $5BILLION railways deal with China after Beijing ‘failed to put up the money’

Manila ends China transport deal after Beijing 'failed to act on funding requests'
New president Ferdinand 'Bongbong' Marcos Jr will seek cash from other nations
Three major railway projects are now $4.9billion short - and investors needed
But Beijing insists: 'China-Philippines cooperation over railways will continue'

By ADAM SOLOMONS FOR MAILONLINE

PUBLISHED: 07:07 EDT, 16 July 2022 | UPDATED: 07:24 EDT, 16 July 2022

Daily Mail · by Adam Solomons For Mailonline · July 16, 2022

The Philippines pulled out of an infrastructure funding deal with China worth almost $5billion after Beijing failed to deliver the cash.

New president Ferdinand Marcos Jr tore up the plans negotiated by his predecessor, Rodrigo Duterte, citing Beijing's failure 'to act on the funding requests'.

Transport ministry official Cesar Chavez confirmed that the deal was 'withdrawn'.

The $4.9billion (£4.2billion) agreement would have seen Chinese construction firms build the Subic-Clark Railway Project, the Philippine National Railways South Long-Haul Project and the Davao-Digos segment of the Mindanao Railway Project.

Chinese president Xi Jinping (pictured in 2018) negotiated the multi-billion-dollar deal with Philippine ex-leader Rodrigo Duterte in a thinly veiled effort to quell South China Sea tensions

It was part of China's multi-trillion-dollar Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) to expand its global influence throughout the developing world.

In return, China hoped the Philippines would set aside its claims in the South China Sea.

But Marcos, known in his country as 'Bongbong', has vowed to take a tougher line on national sovereignty - and to make the Philippine economy more independent.

The proposals' significant funding gap must now be filled by another country or with private capital.

A Chinese official told Reuters: 'I can say China-Philippines cooperation over railways will continue.

'China is open for discussions with the Philippines.'

Ferdinand Jr is the son of the long-serving Philippine dictator of the same name and his socialite wife Imelda.

But Marcos (pictured at his inauguration last month) tore up the plans over undelivered cash

She is said to have owned 3,000 pair of shoes while her country starved.

The Marcos family hoarded billions in state resources, purchasing priceless gems and artworks by Monet, Van Gogh and Picasso.

From more than 1,100 km (680 miles) before World War II, the Philippines had only 77km of operational railway as of 2016, well behind other urban centres across Asia, government data shows.

Negotiations for the rail projects began in 2018, during a Duterte-led thaw in relations between China and the Philippines.

Under Beijing's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), Chinese firms are already building roads, bridges and airports in 70 countries where China is seeking greater influence.

The pursuit of a 'new Silk Road' trade route between Asia and Europe is the flagship of President Xi Jinping's plans for Chinese expansion.

It is made up of a 'belt' of six overland corridors that direct trade to and from China and a maritime 'road' of shipping routes and seaports from the South China Sea to the Indian Ocean.

Pillars of the BRI already built include freight rail links from Wuhan to Lyon and Chengdu to Prague.

Announcing his own expansion of the BRI at Davos five years ago, President Xi said it was time for China to 'swim in the vast ocean of the global market'.

But the BRI has been saddled with claims of corruption, opacity and fraudulent bidding since it was first launched nearly a decade ago.

A 2019 study published in Nikkei Asian Review described significant 'corruption flows' within President Xi's plan.

Author Johnathan E. Hillman, an adviser to the US State Department, wrote: 'By limiting outside scrutiny, the initiative's lack of transparency gives Chinese companies an edge in risky markets, and it allows Beijing to use large projects to exercise political influence.

'As Chinese companies push deeper into emerging markets, inadequate enforcement and poor business practices are turning the BRI into a global trail of trouble.'

Mr Hillman added: 'The international community should provide better alternatives to Chinese loans and publicize the perils of opaque approaches to building infrastructure. Leaders in recipient countries must also demand greater transparency— or risk drowning in the BRI's murky waters.'

Two weeks ago G7 leaders posed during a photocall at Elmau Castle, Bavaria after launching rival infrastructure plan the Partnership for Global Infrastructure (PGII) worth £500billion

China has lent billions of dollars to African nations (shaded red, which countries have accepted cash, with darker colours indicating higher levels of debt) while building ports, power stations, railways and roads. Beijing has also built a military base in Djibouti and is planning more - with 'likely sites' in Angola, Kenya, Tanzania, and the Seychelles (blue pentagons). There is also a possibility of a new naval base on the west coast (shaded blue)

China has pumped at least $7billion in investment into the Caribbean since 2005, records show, though the true figure - when taking into account soft loan deals and private investment - is thought to run well into the tens of billions. Showpiece projects have included a cricket stadium in Grenada, a casino and resort in the Bahamas, and acquiring Jamaica's largest port

G7 leaders last month revealed their own $600billion investment plan for the developing world in a stinging rebuke to China's Belt and Road Initiative for global expansion.

The £488billion Partnership for Global Infrastructure (PGII) will go head-to-head with China's multi-trillion dollar investment plan for scores of low and middle-incomes nations.

Unveiling the West's plan at the G7 summit in Bavaria, President Biden said: 'I want to be clear. This isn't aid or charity. It's an investment that will deliver returns for everyone.

'It's a chance for us to share our positive vision for the future and let communities around the world see for themselves the concrete benefits of partnering with democracies.'

Mr Biden added: 'Because when democracies demonstrate what we can do, all that we have to offer, I have no doubt that we'll win the competition every time.'

Daily Mail · by Adam Solomons For Mailonline · July 16, 2022

12. Putin Has A Problem: 38,000 Dead Troops and 1,672 Destroyed Tanks in Ukraine

Putin Has A Problem: 38,000 Dead Troops and 1,672 Destroyed Tanks in Ukraine

19fortyfive.com · by ByStavros Atlamazoglou · July 16, 2022

On day 142 of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Russian military continues with its operational pause, and as a result, little has changed on the battlefield.

The situation in the Donbas

In its daily estimate of the war, the British Ministry of Defense focused on the situation in the Donbas and the next likely Russian targets but also touched on Snake Island and the Russian military’s inability to strike targets with precision.

“In the Donbas, Russian and pro-Russian Luhansk People’s Republic separatist forces claim to have entered the outskirts of Siversk,” the British Military Intelligence assessed.

“This has not been corroborated, however, Russian forces have been slowly advancing westwards following shelling and probing assaults towards Siversk from Lysychansk to open a pathway onward to Sloviansk and Kramatorsk,” the British Ministry of Defense stated, adding that “Bakhmut is likely to be the next objective, once Siversk is secured.”

“Since withdrawing from the strategically located Snake Island on 30 June 2022, Russia has been attempting to deny its use by Ukraine,” the British Ministry of Defense stated.

“However, on 13 July 2022 airstrikes by two Su-27 Russian fighter jets failed to hit the island. This follows the pattern of Russian air forces failing to successfully engage in the tactical battle,” the British Military Intelligence assessed.

Russian Casualties in Ukraine

The Ukrainian Ministry of Defense claimed that as of Friday, Ukrainian forces have killed approximately 38,000 Russian troops (and wounded approximately thrice that number), destroyed 220 fighter, attack, and transport jets, 188 attack and transport helicopters, 1,672 tanks, 842 artillery pieces, 3,866 armored personnel carriers, 247 Multiple Launch Rocket Systems (MLRS), 15 boats and cutters, 2,731 vehicles and fuel tanks, 109 anti-aircraft batteries, 681 tactical unmanned aerial systems, 67 special equipment platforms, such as bridging vehicles, and four mobile Iskander ballistic missile systems, and 155 cruise missiles shot down by the Ukrainian air defenses.

Russian Filtration Operations

In its daily estimate of the war, the British Ministry of Defense also touched on the forcible relocation of millions of Ukrainians from the country to Russia since the start of the war.

“Over 2.5m people have now been evacuated from Ukraine to Russia since the start of the invasion. Russia continues to face accusations that it is forcibly deporting Ukrainians; in many cases Ukrainians have reportedly been mistreated in filtration camps set up by Russia,” the British Military Intelligence assessed.

Those forcible relocations are part of the Kremlin’s plan to eventually annex occupied territories in Ukraine. Russian occupational authorities have been working toward that goal for a while now, making it easier for Ukrainians to get Russian citizenship, for example.

“On the eve of the Ukraine Accountability Conference, the United States calls on Russia to immediately halt its systematic ‘filtration’ operations and forced deportations in Russian-controlled and held areas of Ukraine. The unlawful transfer and deportation of protected persons is a grave breach of the Fourth Geneva Convention on the protection of civilians and is a war crime,” U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said in a press release.

“Russian authorities must release those detained and allow Ukrainian citizens forcibly removed or coerced into leaving their country the ability to promptly and safely return home. We call on Russia to provide outside independent observers access to so-called ‘filtration’ facilities and to forced deportation relocation areas in Russia,” the U.S. secretary of state added.

Russian Missile Strike Hits Ukraine

On Thursday, a Russian submarine sailing approximately 240 miles away in the Black Sea launched a volley of at least five 3M-54 Kalbir cruise missiles against the Ukrainian city of Vinnytsia. Three of the cruise missiles struck a shopping center near the city’s center, while two were intercepted by Ukrainian air defenses.

At least 23 have been killed and 90 wounded, while scores more are trapped under the rubble of the shopping center and an adjacent dance studio and wedding hall. Among the dead are at least three children, one of which has Down Syndrome and was returning from a speech therapy session with her mother.

Moscow persists in launching ballistic and cruise missiles indiscriminately against Ukrainian cities, and voices arguing that Russia be declared a terrorist state are increasing. However, the legal and geopolitical side-effects of such a designation make it unlikely.

1945’s New Defense and National Security Columnist, Stavros Atlamazoglou is a seasoned defense journalist specializing in special operations, a Hellenic Army veteran (national service with the 575th Marine Battalion and Army HQ), and a Johns Hopkins University graduate. His work has been featured in Business Insider, Sandboxx, and SOFREP.

19fortyfive.com · by ByStavros Atlamazoglou · July 16, 2022

13. ‘I mean you no harm’: From troubled teen to neo-Nazi foot soldier

By some estimates, FKD has just 100 members. But in an era where terrorism and mass violence is increasingly perpetrated by angry lone wolves, the group marks a dangerous evolution in a growing worldwide network of groups plotting in the shadows to enlist followers with military or firearms training to commit attacks on their own or in small groups.

“FKD is particularly alarming right now because it is so decentralized and really only present in online forums,” said Iris Malone, co-founder of the Mapping Militants Project and a consultant to the Department of Homeland Security. “There is no one point of vulnerability where you can take them down. They will have multiple channels on Telegram or other online services where they can communicate with each and they purposely build in redundant channels.”

In the United States, the FBI and other law enforcement have uncovered numerous ties to the online community in recent years, including a U.S. Army soldier who was sentenced to two years in prison for spreading information on social media about building a bomb and the chemical agent napalm.

It is a far more decentralized network compared to larger umbrella groups such as Atomwaffen, now known as the National Socialist Order. “Atomwaffen, originally when it was formed, had members in Florida, or it had chapters in Washington,” Malone said. “Having a physical organization or a physical address allows law enforcement authorities to go in and essentially be able to arrest or take down these groups.”

But what may be most troubling about the latest tendril is its heavy reliance on wayward teens.

‘I mean you no harm’: From troubled teen to neo-Nazi foot soldier

Politico

How a global white supremacist movement is recruiting American teenagers.

Conor Climo (center) in 2016. | POLITICO illustration/Photos by AP, iStock

By Bryan Bender, Alexander Nabert and Christina Brause

07/16/2022 04:30 AM EDT

LAS VEGAS, Nevada — When Conor Climo was winning plaudits for his sharp intellect in Arbor View High School’s class of 2014, no one imagined he would soon be storing bomb-making material in his bedroom closet in preparation for a race war in the name of Adolf Hitler.

“He knew every element in the periodic table,” recalled classmate Lexi Epley.

Climo was a friendly, smart kid but as he grew into a lanky teen with a military-style haircut he became increasingly isolated, angry and — to some classmates — unstable.

“He was exiled a lot,” said Ebony Humes, who first became friendly with him in 6th grade. “He would try to make friends, but people most of the time would turn their backs, or act as if he wasn’t there. It kind of broke my heart. He did try, consistently, for years. You could see, in his face, the hurt.”

“He was a sweet kid,” echoed Epley. “But people weren’t very nice to him. He was bullied a lot.”

By 11th grade, Climo was nearly boiling over with resentment. “No one likes me. I hate it here,” he sobbed in the cafeteria, at one point banging on the table, Humes recalled. “I want out.”

It was after graduation that Climo, who lived with family at the end of a quiet cul-de-sac, found the community he lacked: a violent global movement hidden in the dark recesses of the internet bent on igniting a neo-Nazi race war, according to public documents, court records, law enforcement officials, and fellow classmates.

For more than a year, reporters from POLITICO, the German newspaper Welt and Insider uncovered the inner workings of this increasingly violent movement, drawn from nearly two dozen chat groups, more than 98,000 text and chat messages — including photos and videos — and interviews with members.

The data offers a rare peak into a burgeoning network of neo-Nazis threatening to kill politicians and journalists, providing instruction on how to build bombs and weapons with 3D printers, and encouraging each other to attack houses of worship, the gay community and people of color. It’s what extremism researchers call “militant accelerationism” — a movement to spark a war for white power.

There are dozens of these groups on both sides of the Atlantic with martial names drawn from Nazi propaganda. Many followers have been influenced by the writings of James Mason, the 69-year-old Coloradan who joined an American Nazi party at age 14 and whose books and newsletter are considered modern-day Mein Kampfs for adherents.

Climo was drawn to The Feuerkrieg Division, which translates into “fire war,” a moniker inspired by the torchlight marches at Nazi rallies in 1930s Germany.

FKD is believed to have been established in 2018 in Estonia and was thought to have quickly petered out. But there’s been a resurgence in the last few years, according to law enforcement officials and experts in domestic extremist groups.

Involvement with the group led Climo to stockpile bomb-making materials in his bedroom. And as he increasingly embraced the cause of establishing a white ethno-state as his own, he was arrested after he was suspected of planning — and scouting out targets — to blow up a synagogue and gay bar, according to the FBI and court documents.

Climo pled guilty and was sentenced to two years on one count of possession of an unregistered firearm — specifically, the component parts of a destructive device.

Climo, who court records show was released earlier this year from federal prison and is now on three years’ probation, did not respond to multiple requests for an interview. His family members also declined to speak on his behalf or did not respond to interview requests.

His journey from troubled American teen to neo-Nazi warrior was a wake up call and highlights the growing concerns about a new generation of virulent white supremacists emerging in America’s suburbs or even in the ranks of the armed forces.

While Internet radicalization has been recognized in recent years as a persistent threat — a handful of American teens have been charged with crimes related to online extremism — the international nature of the radicalization has been far less appreciated.

By some estimates, FKD has just 100 members. But in an era where terrorism and mass violence is increasingly perpetrated by angry lone wolves, the group marks a dangerous evolution in a growing worldwide network of groups plotting in the shadows to enlist followers with military or firearms training to commit attacks on their own or in small groups.

“FKD is particularly alarming right now because it is so decentralized and really only present in online forums,” said Iris Malone, co-founder of the Mapping Militants Project and a consultant to the Department of Homeland Security. “There is no one point of vulnerability where you can take them down. They will have multiple channels on Telegram or other online services where they can communicate with each and they purposely build in redundant channels.”

In the United States, the FBI and other law enforcement have uncovered numerous ties to the online community in recent years, including a U.S. Army soldier who was sentenced to two years in prison for spreading information on social media about building a bomb and the chemical agent napalm.

It is a far more decentralized network compared to larger umbrella groups such as Atomwaffen, now known as the National Socialist Order. “Atomwaffen, originally when it was formed, had members in Florida, or it had chapters in Washington,” Malone said. “Having a physical organization or a physical address allows law enforcement authorities to go in and essentially be able to arrest or take down these groups.”

But what may be most troubling about the latest tendril is its heavy reliance on wayward teens.

“One of the main characteristics of the Feuerkrieg Division is the average age of the members, most of them being minors, starting from the age of 15,” concluded a 2021 study by the International Observatory on Terrorism Studies in Madrid, Spain.

The analysis also concluded that “the terrorist group Feuerkrieg Division is recruiting again after being disbanded.”

Malone explained that online recruitment makes it especially challenging in the United States, where FKD is not designated a terrorist organization and authorities are faced with the often-competing demands of monitoring potentially dangerous online activities while not running afoul of civil liberties.

“I just don’t think the government has a good handle on the online extremism stuff yet because of free speech issues and social media access,” she said.

‘I mean you no harm’

Arbor View High School, in the Centennial Hills community of Las Vegas, looks like an ordinary suburban American public school campus in a diverse middle-class neighborhood.

Near courtyard tables vandalized with sexually explicit graffiti, the main entrance is framed by a large mural quoting civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.: “The time is always right to do what is right.”

But while people of color make up nearly half the student body, the school also has a history of racial tensions.

“There was diversity there but it was still very clear in some situations the separations and the tension between different cultural backgrounds,” recalled Humes, who is Black.

In 2019, two students were arrested and another cited after they targeted Black students with racist slurs on Instagram and threatened to attack them. One post read, “God just seeing these n—ers [infuriates] me. I just wanna go Columbine…but only kill the f–king n—ers,” referring to the 1999 mass shooting in a Colorado high school.

Climo’s own journey towards militancy broke out into the open in 2016, when he was working as a security guard.

A local news station featured him patrolling his neighborhood wearing a flak jacket and carrying an AR-15 automatic rifle and four magazines — each containing 30 rounds of ammunition.

“I pretty much stay in constitutional bounds by doing this,” he said, insisting to a family of fleeing neighbors, “I mean you no harm.”

“I remember thinking that’s the last person who should have a gun in his hand,” recalled Humes, who now works for a local nonprofit that helps people with disabilities prepare to enter the job market.

A few months later, according to court documents, Climo was drawn to a question posed on a website called Quora: “What are the downsides of multiculturalism?”

Climo, whose profile pic was a picture of an AR-15 rifle, answered by quoting Hitler. “Your most precious possession on this Earth is your people!”

But over time he exhibited a desire to do something more than just post and provoke. “I am more interested in action than online shit,” he later wrote in an online conversation, according to court records.

By then, according to the FBI, Climo was also using encrypted chat rooms like Discord that have come under increasing scrutiny for giving a platform to violent incitement where he regularly leveled antisemetic and racial slurs. And it was then he began discussing his violent plans with an FBI informant.

He detailed how to make a “self contained molotov” explosive, according to the FBI. He boasted that he had been training to build an IED, or improvised explosive device. (Some of his fellow students later recalled he had started bragging about making bombs while still in high school.)

Climo privately shared with the FBI informant online that he was considering setting fire to a Las Vegas synagogue and that he tried unsuccessfully to recruit a homeless person to help him survey the building.

The FBI opened an investigation of Climo for “communicating with individuals who identified with the white supremacist extremist group Attomwaffen Division,” according to the court documents, referring to the umbrella group that the Feuerkrieg Division grew out of.

FBI Special Agent Matthew James Schaeffer, a member of the Las vegas Joint Terrorism Task Force, described FKD in an affidavit as consisting mainly of white males between the ages of 16 and 30 “who all believe in the superiority of the white race.”

It pursues a “leadership resistance” strategy that calls for followers, operating independently or in small groups, to challenge the established order and foment attacks on the federal government, minority communities, homosexuals, and Jews, he added.

In online conversations with an undercover agent, Climo also revealed scouting out other potential targets, including the Las Vegas office of the Anti-Defamation League, a prominent anti-hate organization, and a power plant that he referred to as a “soft target,” according to court documents.

By the summer of 2019, the FBI reported in sworn testimony, he revealed he was scouting an area around a bar he said was frequented by homosexuals. He also shared screenshots of what he called a “group of Kike synagogues locations in Vegas.” He proposed attacking one of them with a firearm and an explosive device, describing in detail how he would construct the bomb.

A court-ordered FBI search of his bedroom that August found multiple jars of bomb-making chemicals, wires, circuit boards, and his hand-drawn schematics. There were also a number of unregistered firearms, according to the federal indictment.

Climo recounted his activities for the FBI’s Schaeffer, noting that he first communicated with the Feuerkrieg Division toward the end of 2017.

But upon his arrest, he told the FBI that he believed the group’s goals were a “righteous” cause.

“Jews suck,” he said.

New recruits

Climo’s case is seen as a harbinger of what might lie ahead as the FBI, Department of Homeland Security and other law enforcement authorities pivot to what they see as one of the biggest domestic terror threats.

“Individuals subscribing to violent ideologies such as violent white supremacy, which are grounded in racial, ethnic, and religious hatred and the dehumanizing of portions of the American community, as well as violent anti–government ideologies, are responsible for a substantial portion of today’s domestic terrorism,” states the White House’s latest National Strategy for Countering Domestic Terrorism.

Increasingly, that also means isolated youngsters who spend lots of time alone and on the Internet.

The Anti-Defamation League recently reported that the Feuerkrieg Division is expanding its footprint across Europe — including Belgium, England, Ireland, the Netherlands, Norway, Latvia, Germany and Russia — as well as North America.

“In online chats, the group has actively sought out new recruits in Texas, the Great Lakes region, California, the Midwest, New Jersey, New York, and Philadelphia,” it found.

One FKD appeal on 8chan, an online message board that bills itself as a home for free speech but is also known to be a safe haven for far-right extremists, reads: “Train and prepare for the collapse and meet up with fellow national socialist comrades.”

The online nature “has important counterterrorism implications because it means that if the government just bans the organization, that’s practically meaningless,” stressed Malone. “It is not a physical organization like Al Qaeda was.”

Also fueling the recruitment efforts, she fears, are recent racially motivated mass shootings, including in El Paso, Texas, and Buffalo, New York, which create “a common set of martyr myths.”

But spotting these domestic terrorists in time may not be as easy as suggested by the case of Climo, whose brazen online communication was detected by law enforcement officials. Climo’s federal public defender, Paul Riddle, said after his conviction that his client was grateful that he was nabbed before he went down a “very dark path.”

“He’s not on that path anymore, and he’s not the same person that was arrested,” Riddle told the Las Vegas Sun.

But Humes said she ran into her longtime classmate just before he was arrested and asked him how he was doing.

She thought, “Same old Conor, he still loves to talk.”

It was shocking, Humes said, to learn of the violent and racist turn he had taken. “I saw him as the sweetheart that I remembered from high school and middle school.”

Bender reported for POLITICO and Nabert and Brause for WELT AM SONNTAG. Nick Robins-Early of Insidercontributed to this report.

POLITICO

Politico

14. Why the U.S. Navy Needs to Be in the South China Sea

Excerpts;

Let freedom of the sea go, furthermore, and U.S. grand strategy of over a century’s standing will come undone. Since the days of Theodore Roosevelt, Henry Cabot Lodge, and Alfred Thayer Mahan, the United States has premised its grand strategy on securing commercial, diplomatic, and military access to important trading regions, chiefly the rimlands of East Asia and Western Europe. Access is the purpose and prime mover of American strategy.

Yet commercial and diplomatic access will stand in peril if powerful coastal states start making offshore waters their own. Nor will the United States be able to interject itself in the rimlands militarily should some domineering power or alliance bid for martial supremacy there, and should local powers—many of them U.S. allies and friends of decades’ standing—prove unable to fend off the would-be hegemon on their own.

After all, U.S. maritime forces won’t be able to get to the rimlands to balance against great-power antagonists if they cede command of offshore waterways. If America is not there for its allies in their time of need—if it betrays them, cutting and running rather than honoring longstanding commitments—fateful consequences are apt to follow. It will have shown that its solemn promises are hollow.

Law, geopolitics, and strategy—that’s why we have to be there.

Why the U.S. Navy Needs to Be in the South China Sea

19fortyfive.com · by ByJames Holmes · July 16, 2022

I’ve been a ghost around the hallowed halls of the U.S. Naval War College in Newport this sabbatical year. But I did clank and moan my way onto campus late last month to give a talk at the Center for Irregular Warfare and Armed Groups annual symposium. This year’s workshop attendees explored “gray-zone” competition at sea, chiefly in such quarters as the South China Sea.

My bottom line was blaringly obvious—namely, that a contender has to take the field of competition and stay there in order to compete.

That you have to be there to win seems pretty straightforward, doesn’t it? I rather doubt the legendary University of Georgia Bulldogs football team would have defeated Alabama for the national championship last January had the Dawgs only shown up in the first half of the championship game. A contestant has to show up—and stay for the duration of the contest—if it hopes to control the field and win the game.

The brawniest team accomplishes little if it doesn’t compete. And it has to stay the course.

And yet U.S. forces have displayed a disturbing proclivity for violating this simple precept—in irregular warfare and gray-zone competition in particular. They show up and take control of the field, only to move on in search of the next battle or engagement. In the process, they relinquish control to such outmatched foes as the Taliban or North Vietnamese communists. Small wonder victory proves elusive.

The same precept that holds in open combat holds in the shadowy realm of great-power strategic competition. If China fields the world’s largest maritime militia, coast guard, and navy and backs up seagoing forces with shore-based military might, and if its forces are on the scene all the time, it exercises control of the disputed turf. No Southeast Asian navy or coast guard can outmuscle it.

And outsiders? U.S. naval contingents can show up all they like to mount a show of force or freedom-of-navigation cruise. No matter how impressively they comport themselves, though, they cede control to China when they depart the scene—as they typically do after a brief spell. And Chinese forces resume bullying Southeast Asian neighbors when they go, in a bid to make good on China’s unlawful claims to be sovereign over some 80-90 percent of that body of water.

If you forfeit control of something important, don’t be surprised when a rival seizes it. And don’t complain when you see that L inscribed on your won-loss ledger.

So much for the recap. During the Q&A, a commonplace question came up: why do we have to be there? In other words, why does America have to be in theaters off rival great powers’ shores at all? Now, the question constitutes a sleight of hand, shifting a discussion about the hows of gray-zone strategy and operations and making it about the whys. But no matter. Here’s how I replied if I correctly decipher my chicken-scratching from the event:

Military sage Carl von Clausewitz might agree that a contender shouldn’t pursue a competition unless it cares enough to win. He observes that the value a contender attaches to its “political object”—its goal—must determine the “magnitude” and “duration” of the effort it puts into obtaining that goal. In other words, how much it cares about its goal should dictate how much it spends on the goal, and for how long.

If you don’t prize something, don’t spend much on it—or anything at all.

Clausewitz also observes that three elements comprise any society, namely the people, government, and military. The people are usually the wellspring of passion for some warlike endeavor, the military its executor, and the government its rational (restrain your giggles) overseer. If top political leadership can’t align the people, military, and government toward some worthwhile goal, it’s probably best to forego the attempt to grasp it.

But.

Being there is a conscious political and strategic choice, but so is not being there. This is a choice of the utmost moment. Accordingly, top leadership in Washington DC needs to put the stakes in the Indo-Pacific to the American people in the starkest terms possible. The stakes are compelling and should be nonnegotiable. They are worth an effort of substantial magnitude and duration, in Clausewitzian parlance.

Let’s stick to the South China Sea for today, although the same applies to any semi-enclosed seaway coveted by a strong coastal state. In fact, three successive presidential administrations representing both political parties have concurred that freedom of the sea is a goal worth championing—and investing in lavishly. It’s not hard to see why. The basic principle underlying freedom of the sea is that no one owns the sea, with very limited exceptions codified by treaty. This principle comprises the foundation of the international legal order of maritime trade and commerce.

China’s claim to sovereignty over the South China Sea amounts to a claim to state ownership of nautical territory. It is staging a direct assault on the world order over which the United States has presided since 1945, and which has profited all trading societies—including China.

Freedom of the sea is indivisible. It applies throughout the world’s oceans and seas. But if Beijing gets its way, the rules governing what happens in the South China Sea will be made in China—never mind what the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, the “constitution for the oceans,” says, or what rulings authoritative international tribunals hand down regarding territorial disputes between China and its Southeast Asian neighbors. Freedoms sanctified by treaty will cease to exist—or at most will be indulged at the sufferance of the Chinese Communist Party.

So preserving freedom of the sea is a goal of surpassing importance, yet Southeast Asians have zero chance of preserving it from Big Brother’s avarice. That leaves guarantors from outside the region, the United States foremost among them. That’s why we have to be there—and that’s why Washington must rally the electorate to the cause.

If not America, who?

But again, the problem doesn’t stop with the South China Sea. If the international community shrugs and lets China get away with purloining this maritime space from its neighbors, there is no reason in principle why China can’t do the same in other expanses it craves, notably the Taiwan Strait and East China Sea. Nor is there any reason other malefactors can’t do it in waters they deem theirs—say, Iran in the Persian Gulf or Russia in the Black Sea or Arctic Ocean.

If it lets the South China Sea go, the international community will have consented to the abolition of a time-tested principle—that the sea belongs to no one and everyone—and reestablished the bad old principle that the strong do as they will in world politics while the weak suffer what they must. And the foundation of the maritime legal order will start to crumble.

Let freedom of the sea go, furthermore, and U.S. grand strategy of over a century’s standing will come undone. Since the days of Theodore Roosevelt, Henry Cabot Lodge, and Alfred Thayer Mahan, the United States has premised its grand strategy on securing commercial, diplomatic, and military access to important trading regions, chiefly the rimlands of East Asia and Western Europe. Access is the purpose and prime mover of American strategy.

An F/A-18F Super Hornet, assigned to Strike Fighter Squadron (VFA) 106, catches an arresting gear wire while landing on the flight deck of the aircraft carrier USS John C. Stennis (CVN 74) in the Atlantic Ocean, Nov. 4, 2019. The John C. Stennis is underway conducting routine operations in support of Commander, Naval Air Force Atlantic. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Grant G. Grady)

Yet commercial and diplomatic access will stand in peril if powerful coastal states start making offshore waters their own. Nor will the United States be able to interject itself in the rimlands militarily should some domineering power or alliance bid for martial supremacy there, and should local powers—many of them U.S. allies and friends of decades’ standing—prove unable to fend off the would-be hegemon on their own.

After all, U.S. maritime forces won’t be able to get to the rimlands to balance against great-power antagonists if they cede command of offshore waterways. If America is not there for its allies in their time of need—if it betrays them, cutting and running rather than honoring longstanding commitments—fateful consequences are apt to follow. It will have shown that its solemn promises are hollow.

Law, geopolitics, and strategy—that’s why we have to be there.

A 1945 Contributing Editor, Dr. James Holmes holds the J. C. Wylie Chair of Maritime Strategy at the Naval War College and served on the faculty of the University of Georgia School of Public and International Affairs. A former U.S. Navy surface warfare officer, he was the last gunnery officer in history to fire a battleship’s big guns in anger, during the first Gulf War in 1991. He earned the Naval War College Foundation Award in 1994, signifying the top graduate in his class. His books include Red Star over the Pacific, an Atlantic Monthly Best Book of 2010 and a fixture on the Navy Professional Reading List. General James Mattis deems him “troublesome.” The views voiced here are his alone. Holmes also blogs at the Naval Diplomat.

19fortyfive.com · by ByJames Holmes · July 16, 2022

15. These robots were trained on AI. They became racist and sexist.

Gee... maybe they have become human. (note sarcasm)

But the question is how did the Russian and CHinese robots fare? (note more sarcasm)

Of course the question will be: was the AI developed by men or women? Does that impose some kind of bias?

These robots were trained on AI. They became racist and sexist.

As billions flow into robotics, researchers who conducted the study are concerned about the effects this might have on society

By Pranshu Verma

July 16, 2022 at 6:00 a.m. EDT

The Washington Post · by Pranshu Verma · July 16, 2022

As part of a recent experiment, scientists asked specially programmed robots to scan blocks with peoples’ faces on them, then put the “criminal” in a box. The robots repeatedly chose a block with a Black man’s face.

Those virtual robots, which were programmed with a popular artificial intelligence algorithm, were sorting through billions of images and associated captions to respond to that question and others, and may represent the first empirical evidence that robots can be sexist and racist, according to researchers. Over and over, the robots responded to words like “homemaker” and “janitor” by choosing blocks with women and people of color.

The study, released last month and conducted by institutions including Johns Hopkins University and the Georgia Institute of Technology, shows the racist and sexist biases baked into artificial intelligence systems can translate into robots that use them to guide their operations.

Companies have been pouring billions of dollars into developing more robots to help replace humans for tasks such as stocking shelves, delivering goods or even caring for hospital patients. Heightened by the pandemic and a resulting labor shortage, experts describe the current atmosphere for robotics as something of a gold rush. But tech ethicists and researchers are warning that the quick adoption of the new technology could result in unforeseen consequences down the road as the technology becomes more advanced and ubiquitous.

“With coding, a lot of times you just build the new software on top of the old software,” said Zac Stewart Rogers, a supply chain management professor from Colorado State University. “So, when you get to the point where robots are doing more … and they’re built on top of flawed roots, you could certainly see us running into problems.”

Researchers in recent years have documented multiple cases of biased artificial intelligence algorithms. That includes crime prediction algorithms unfairly targeting Black and Latino people for crimes they did not commit, as well as facial recognition systems having a hard time accurately identifying people of color.

But so far, robots have escaped much of that scrutiny, perceived as more neutral, researchers say. Part of that stems from the sometimes limited nature of tasks they perform: For example, moving goods around a warehouse floor.

Abeba Birhane, a senior fellow at the Mozilla Foundation who studies racial stereotypes in language models, said robots can still run on similar problematic technology and exhibit bad behavior.

“When it comes to robotic systems, they have the potential to pass as objective or neutral objects compared to algorithmic systems,” she said. “That means the damage they’re doing can go unnoticed, for a long time to come.”

Meanwhile, the automation industry is expected to grow from $18 billion to $60 billion by the end of the decade, fueled in large part by robotics, Rogers said. In the next five years, the use of robots in warehouses are likely to increase by 50 percent or more, according to the Material Handling Institute, an industry trade group. In April, Amazon put $1 billion toward an innovation fund that is investing heavily into robotics companies. (Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post.)

The team of researchers studying AI in robots, which included members from the University of Washington and the Technical University of Munich in Germany, trained virtual robots on CLIP, a large language artificial intelligence model created and unveiled by OpenAI last year.

The popular model, which visually classifies objects, is built by scraping billions of images and text captions from the internet. While still in its early stages, it is cheaper and less labor intensive for robotics companies to use versus creating their own software from scratch, making it a potentially attractive option.

The researchers gave the virtual robots 62 commands. When researchers asked robots to identify blocks as “homemakers,” Black and Latina women were more commonly selected than White men, the study showed. When identifying “criminals,” Black men were chosen 9 percent more often than White men. In actuality, scientists said, the robots should not have responded, because they were not given information to make that judgment.

For janitors, blocks with Latino men were picked 6 percent more than White men. Women were less likely to be identified as a “doctor" than men, researchers found. (The scientists did not have blocks depicting nonbinary people due to the limitations of the facial image data set they used, which they acknowledged was a shortcoming in the study.)

Andrew Hundt, a postdoctoral fellow from the Georgia Institute of Technology and lead researcher on the study, said this type of bias could have real world implications. Imagine, he said, a scenario when robots are asked to pull products off the shelves. In many cases, books, children’s toys and food packaging have images of people on them. If robots trained on certain AI were used to pick things, they could skew toward products that feature men or White people more than others, he said.

In another scenario, Hundt’s research teammate, Vicky Zeng from Johns Hopkins University, said at-home robots could be asked by a kid to fetch a “beautiful” doll and return with a White one.

“That’s really problematic,” Hundt said.

Miles Brundage, head of policy research at OpenAI, said in a statement that the company has noted issues of bias have come up in research of CLIP, and that it knows "there’s a lot of work to be done.” Brundage added that a “more thorough analysis” of the model would be needed to deploy it in the market.

Birhane added that it’s nearly impossible to have artificial intelligence use data sets that aren’t biased, but that doesn’t mean companies should give up. Birhane said companies must audit the algorithms they use, and diagnose the ways they exhibit flawed behavior, creating ways to diagnose and improve those issues.

“This might seem radical,” she said. “But that doesn’t mean we can’t dream.”

Rogers, of Colorado State University, said it’s not a big problem yet because of the way robots are currently used, but it could be within a decade. But if companies wait to make changes, he added, it could be too late.

“It’s a gold rush,” he added. “They’re not going to slow down right now.”

The Washington Post · by Pranshu Verma · July 16, 2022

16. Chinese fighter jet had ‘unsafe’ interaction with U.S. military plane in June (SOF MC 130)

I would like to hear the stories from the crew at a bar in Kadena.

Recall it was Chinese fighter pilot Lt Wong Wei who brought down the P3 in 2001.

Chinese fighter jet had ‘unsafe’ interaction with U.S. military plane in June

Politico

The incident, not previously reported, involved a Chinese Su-30 and a U.S. C-130.

A June incident involving an American C-130 and a Chinese Su-30 was deemed by the Pentagon to be “unsafe” and “unprofessional,” according to two people with knowledge of the incident. | Robert Laberge/Getty Images

07/14/2022 12:04 PM EDT

A Chinese fighter jet had an “unsafe” and “unprofessional” interaction with a U.S. special operations C-130 aircraft in the South China Sea last month, according to two people with knowledge of the incident.

The interaction, which has not been previously reported, comes amid more aggressive military actions by Chinese pilots in the East and South China seas in recent months involving Australian and Canadian aircraft. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin condemned the behavior in Singapore last month.

“We’ve seen an alarming increase in the number of unsafe aerial intercepts and confrontations at sea by PLA aircraft and vessels,” Austin said. “This should worry us all.”

In February, personnel aboard a Chinese navy ship pointed a laser at an Australian P-8 maritime surveillance aircraft, Austin said. And in the weeks leading up to Austin’s visit, Chinese fighter jets conducted a series of dangerous intercepts of allied aircraft operating in the East China and South China seas, including when a Chinese jet cut off an Australian P-8 and released chaff that the Australian plane ingested into its engine.

Meanwhile, Canada’s military in early June accused Chinese warplanes of harassing a CP-140 Aurora patrol aircraft monitoring North Korean activity.

The June incident involved a Chinese Su-30 and an American C-130. The U.S. plane was a special operations forces variant of the Lockheed Martin C-130 cargo aircraft, according to one of the people.

The people, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive topic, did not provide details about the incident, including the exact date, but said the Pentagon deemed it was “unsafe” and “unprofessional.”

Defense Department spokesperson Lt. Col. Martin Meiners declined to comment on the interaction, noting that “our aircrews frequently encounter safe and professional intercepts, and when it is otherwise we have procedures in place to address it.”

“The United States will continue to fly and operate in accordance with international law and expects others to do the same,” he said.

Chinese and U.S. officials have clashed recently over Taiwan. Beijing considers Taiwan part of the mainland and frequently objects to U.S. support of Taipei. Although the United States does not formally have diplomatic relations with the island, Washington has long supported Taiwan’s self-defense capability with arms sales and a close military relationship, as laid out in the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act.

After House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced her intent to visit Taipei in April — a trip that she postponed because she tested positive for Covid-19 — Beijing warned that any such visit would severely affect Chinese-U.S. relations.

“It would bring serious damage to the foundation of China-U.S. relations, and would send the wrong messages to the Taiwan secessionists,” said Zhao Lijian, spokesperson of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs at the time.

“China would respond with resolute and forceful measures, and all ensuing consequences would be borne solely by the U.S.,” Zhao added.

There is also diplomatic chatter in D.C. that Beijing may ramp up its military intimidation campaign against Taiwan in reprisal for Taiwanese Vice President William Lai’s high profile visit to Japan this week to attend former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s funeral.

And in a June 10 meeting with Austin, Chinese Defense Minister General Wei Fenghe pressed his U.S. counterpart on the “Taiwan problem,” according to the Global Times.

The news of the South China Sea interaction comes a week after Joint Chiefs Chair Gen. Mark Milley spoke by video teleconference with Chinese Gen. Li Zuocheng, chief of the Joint Staff Department.

During the July 7 call, Li conveyed that Taiwan is a “core interest” of China, according to a defense official. Milley relayed the importance of managing “competition” and maintaining “open lines of communication,” according to a DoD readout.

It was their first call since Jan. 8, 2021, which made headlines when it was referenced in a book by Bob Woodward and Robert Costa.

During the call, which took place two days after pro-Trump rioters stormed the U.S. Capitol, and another on Oct. 30, 2020, Milley reassured Li that the United States would not strike China and pledged to give the Chinese general a heads up if then-President Donald Trump ordered an attack, according to the book.

“General Li, you and I have known each other for now five years. If we’re going to attack, I’m going to call you ahead of time. It’s not going to be a surprise,” Milley is reported to have said.

Phelim Kline contributed to this report.

POLITICO

Politico

17. Statement on the Designation of Bellingcat as an 'Undesirable Organisation' in Russia

Wear it as a badge of honor.

Statement on the Designation of Bellingcat as an 'Undesirable Organisation' in Russia

https://www.bellingcat.com/statement-on-the-designation-of-bellingcat-as-an-undesirable-organisation-in-russia/

July 15, 2022

Today, Russia’s General Prosecutor announced that Bellingcat’s activity is henceforth formally designated as “undesirable on Russian territory”. In the same announcement, our Russian investigative partner, The Insider (Russia), was also added to the list of undesirable organisations.

The only motivation listed in the Russian government’s decision was that Bellingcat, along with The Insider, “posed a threat to the foundations of the constitutional order and security of the Russian Federation.”

We decry this absurd decision of the Russian authorities, and struggle to understand how an independent collective of two dozen open-source researchers may pose a threat to the foundations of the world’s largest country. At the same time, this was not an unexpected designation, as the growing list of so-called “undesirable organisations” already includes numerous international and Russian media and human rights organisations whose only culpability has been that they have fearlessly investigated government wrongdoing, human rights violations, and corruption in the Russian Federation.

It is apparent to us that this designation pursues the goal of discouraging Russian citizens from using and promoting Bellingcat’s past and future investigations, and from intimidating other media with presence in Russia from cooperating with or even referencing our work. We will be sympathetic to those Russian-based media that may choose to not report on Bellingcat’s future work.

The Russian government’s designation comes at a moment of total throttling of free speech in Russia in the aftermath of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. At such a dark time for free media, Bellingcat has a particular responsibility, including to its hundreds of thousands of readers in Russia, to not succumb to censorship attempts.

We will continue to offer solutions to readers in Russia who wish to access our website, which was blocked by court order on March 16.

We accept the Russian government’s designation as direct evidence of the importance, relevance and effectiveness of our investigations. We will continue unabated our investigative work which seeks to shed light on wrongdoing globally, including in Russia.

18. Biden's Middle East expedition: Reputation dinged, interests secured?

Excerpts:

“We see the Abraham Accords as sovereign decisions made by countries and we hope that they will lead to a positive change among the Israeli public that will then encourage their government to move towards peace,” he said.

There’s also no guarantee the increase in oil production beyond current levels will happen. MBS said Saturday that his country was nearly tapped out and couldn’t produce more than 13 million more barrels per day.

“I look forward to seeing what’s coming in the coming months,” he said in front of regional leaders, falling far short of a once-expected big agreement.

Even so, Biden insisted that meetings like these are what lead to progress — even on values.

“The ability to speak openly and exchange ideas freely is what unlocks innovation. Accountable institutions that are free from corruption, and act transparently and respect the rule of law are the best way to deliver growth, respond to people’s needs and, I believe, ensure justice,” he said, indicating the conversation would be ongoing. “The United States isn’t going anywhere.”

Biden's Middle East expedition: Reputation dinged, interests secured?

Politico

Despite genuine moments of empathy and indignation, the president downplayed values in the Middle East to secure strategic U.S. interests.

President Joe Biden waves before departure, July 16, 2022, in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. | Evan Vucci/AP Photo

By ALEXANDER WARD and JONATHAN LEMIRE

07/16/2022 01:49 PM EDT

JEDDAH, Saudi Arabia — President Joe Biden’s four-day Middle East trip was a stark demonstration of how, on the global stage, the importance of values at times gets downplayed in the cold pursuit of the national interest.

Biden’s swing through Israel, the West Bank and Saudi Arabia saw the United States engaged in a great game, seeking a larger foothold in the region as Russia and China muscle their way in. Armed with hugs and fist bumps, Biden both literally and figuratively embraced traditional allies who sought rekindled ties to their most important security partner. That coziness resulted in historic agreements to bring Jerusalem and Riyadh closer together, a crown prince seemingly more open to ending the war in Yemen and a renewed push to solve the intractable conflict between Israelis and Palestinians.

But getting there came at a cost. The president’s reputation as a champion of human rights suffered a potentially significant blow once the image of his fist bump with Mohammed bin Salman beamed across screens worldwide. Though Biden raised the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in his meeting with the kingdom’s de facto ruler, who Biden and the U.S. intelligence community believe ordered the killing, his main objective wasn’t to lecture. It was to maximize America’s influence in the Middle East.

Biden came to deal with “the needs of the free world, and particularly the United States, and not leave a vacuum here, which was happening as it has in other parts of the world,” he told reporters Friday night in defense of his trip.

It will take weeks, months and years to know if it was all worth the media nightmare the president and his team endured. The diplomatic gamble had an eye toward the long term even as immediate concerns loomed large, namely the need for increased oil production to erase the West’s energy deficit following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Should many of the initiatives pan out — especially the hoped-for normalization of relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia — Biden and his coterie may deem the visit in the scorching heat a success.

To hear the administration tell it already, Biden didn’t have to minimize anything to boost America’s standing and make strategic gains this week. If anything, U.S. officials say the president bolstered his reputation as a savvy statesman.

“You can’t advance your values and advance your concerns about human rights by not traveling, by staying home, by not having conversations,” National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby told POLITICO on the sidelines of the president’s meetings in Jeddah. “The way you prove that human rights are, in fact, an integral part of your foreign policy is to get out on the road and have those conversations.”

“That’s how you advance interests,” he said.

But there are early signs the conversations weren’t enough.

Senior Saudi officials said after a bilateral meeting with their American counterparts that there’s little interest in forming official ties with Israel, asserting that what Riyadh agreed to in Jeddah was mainly for its own benefit. The much ballyhooed deal to propel more Saudi oil into the market wasn’t announced — and instead deferred for months. And though Biden authorized more support for Palestinians and highlighted their plight, he displayed a clear favoritism for Israel that won’t do much to endear him to the West Bank and Gaza.

That leaves Biden in the unenviable position — after so much strife — of having given up the moral high ground for potentially little in return.

‘Brother Joseph’

Biden was initially resistant to the Middle East sojourn he just completed.

It took aides months to convince him of the idea, arguing that if the United States left Middle East issues on the back burner, Russia and China would have no qualms about stepping in. Even then Biden remained skeptical. The presidency had to “stand for something,” he asserted in private, referring to his vow as a candidate to make Saudi Arabia a “pariah” for the grisly Khashoggi murder.

But presidents often have to make deals with unsavory international actors to secure American interests — he had already met virtually with Chinese leader Xi Jinping and in person with Russian President Vladimir Putin before the invasion. Biden ultimately agreed with the strategic rationale underlying the trip, formulated primarily by national security adviser Jake Sullivan and Brett McGurk, the top Middle East official on the NSC.

White House aides knew the whole week, and its centerpiece meeting with the crown prince, would be problematic. They braced for blowback from usual allies and members of their own party, and winced when they saw searing statements from Khashoggi’s widow and publisher of The Washington Post, the slain columnist’s employer.

American voters rarely make decisions based on foreign policy, and those around Biden have ruefully noted that while the president has received high marks for his handling of the war in Ukraine — even from some Republicans — it would have little impact this November. Often, in fact, aides have to fight to get international accomplishments noticed — the president’s trip to Europe just a few weeks ago bore real successes, including a deal to clear the path to add two countries to NATO, yet it was completely overshadowed by domestic matters, including the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade.

This time, the White House was happy to have the trip somewhat eclipsed by the news back home, even if the fist bump was the lead photo on many news sites around the world. But if the administration was going to withstand a public relations disaster, the president might as well make the swing worth his while, U.S. officials said. And Biden went all in on securing deliverables once he got here.

In Israel, where the country’s president greeted him as “Brother Joseph” at the airport, Biden showed his strong support for its increased integration into the Middle East. He attended a meeting of a new quadrilateral forum known as I2U2 — Israel, India, the United States and the United Arab Emirates — that strengthens Jerusalem’s ties to those countries in the health, energy and technological sectors.

And Biden also reiterated his unflinching support for Israel’s security, vowing to back the country against an increasingly aggressive Iran that inches toward a nuclear weapon. Should a return to the nuclear deal America abandoned in 2018 fail, Biden committed to using force as a “last resort” to stop Tehran from acquiring the bomb.

The energy Biden spent bolstering his pro-Israel bona fides often came at the expense of values promotion.

A joint declaration he co-signed with Prime Minister Yair Lapid on Thursday had very little to say about the waning peace process: “The United States and Israel commit to continuing to discuss the challenges and opportunities in Israeli-Palestinian relations.” In other words, both sides agreed to talk about talks.

The next day, Biden traveled to the West Bank to meet with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. While in Bethlehem, the president announced $316 million in aid and incentives for Palestinians with the goals of improving everyday life and catalyzing a “reinvigorated” negotiation. “The Palestinian people are hurting now,” he said. “You can just feel it, your grief and frustration.”

Missing in that show of empathy was a declaration about who, exactly, bore responsibility for the hurt, grief and frustration. “He never once mentioned occupation or the need to end it, as Obama, Bush and Clinton had done in the past,” said Khaled Elgindy, director of the program on Palestine and Palestinian-Israeli affairs at the Middle East Institute in Washington, D.C. “If Biden can’t even say the word ‘occupation,’ how does anyone imagine this administration can go about ending it in order to reach a two-state solution?”

Biden also didn’t announce the reopening of a U.S. consulate in Jerusalem or criticize settlement expansion, leading to some frustrations from Abbas’ camp.

A large picture of Shireen Abu Akleh, the Palestinian-American journalist the U.S. says was accidentally killed by Israeli Defense Forces in May, perched on an empty chair at the Biden-Abbas news conference. Akleh’s family requested a meeting with Biden while he was in the West Bank, but his team said the schedule was too packed. Instead, Secretary of State Antony Blinken invited them to the American capital for a personal discussion.

Biden’s biggest accomplishment on his Israel leg had nothing to do with the Palestinians, but with Saudi Arabia: Riyadh opened its airspace to all civilian traffic, paving the way for Israeli planes to streak toward eastern destinations and for direct flights from Israel to Saudi Arabia.

A White House-chartered plane for press and administration staff was permitted to fly from Tel Aviv straight to Jeddah, followed hours later by the president on Air Force One.

‘I’ll always stand up for our values’

In the weeks ahead of his visit to Saudi Arabia, Biden insisted that he wouldn’t meet with MBS, as the crown prince is known. Instead, their encounter happened minutes after the president arrived in Jeddah.

Biden stepped out of his motorcade Friday to find the smiling royal eagerly waiting to welcome him. They bumped fists, both as a precaution against the spread of Covid-19 (that Biden largely ignored in Israel) and, in Biden’s case, to demonstrate a bit of distance. But it was a no-win proposition: The image of the chummy moment immediately went viral and drew widespread condemnations, including from normally friendly figures.

“If we ever needed a visual reminder of the continuing grip oil-rich autocrats have on U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East, we got it today,” tweeted Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), chair of the House Intelligence Committee. “One fist bump is worth a thousand words.”

The picture was precisely what MBS needed to come out from the cold after the Khashoggi murder, which he denies orchestrating. Saudi state-run press and government social media accounts blasted out the photo, followed soon after by videos of the crown prince bumping fists with top U.S. officials, including Sullivan and Blinken.

But Biden did make a stand about the Khashoggi killing. Two people familiar with what happened inside the bilateral said that moments after attendees were served Arabic coffee, the president delved into a monologue about how an American president had a duty to bring it up in such a setting.

MBS responded that what had transpired was a tragic mistake and that those responsible would be punished, Saudi Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Adel al-Jubeir told POLITICO. The crown prince continued that journalists are sometimes killed — including Akleh — and that even great powers commit gross human rights abuses, specifically citing the torture of prisoners at Abu Ghraib. He said then-President George W. Bush didn’t order those detained to be mistreated, aiming to make a parallel between that situation and his claim that he had nothing to do with Khashoggi’s demise. There is, however, credible evidence of torture committed in Saudi prisons.

After their tense but cordial one-on-one exchange, the broader meeting commenced, al-Jubeir said after the three-hour meeting.

That evening, Biden gave a quick news conference to convey that he had brought up Khashoggi at the top. “I’ll always stand up for our values,” he said.

‘The United States isn’t going anywhere’

The administration argues the deliverables show the controversial meeting was worth it. Beyond the overflight decision, Saudi Arabia committed to extending the ceasefire in the war it started against Yemen; Israel and Saudi Arabia agreed to remove multinational peacekeepers, including American ones, from Tiran island, ending a decadeslong dispute; a partnership between companies on 5G and the development of 6G; the deeper integration of Iraq in the Gulf Cooperation Council; and cooperation agreements on cybersecurity, space exploration and public health.

But some analysts argue all of that wasn’t worth MBS’ rehabilitation. “Biden blessed MBS; traded his credibility up front in exchange for mostly words and promises,” tweeted Aaron David Miller, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “Fine about Israel. But not a mention of current Saudi repressive practices or what reforms on criminalizing dissent he’s institutionalized.”

The question is if the coziness with Israelis at the expense of Palestinians and the rehabilitation of the crown prince was worth it. It’s too early to tell, but conversations in Jeddah dampen optimism.

Al-Jubeir, the Saudi diplomat, told reporters Friday evening that the opening of his country’s skies wasn’t out of a desire to normalize with Israel. The motivating factor was the kingdom’s ambition to be a global hub for innovation and major sporting events. That requires any airline to fly into or through the country. The minister added that peace between Israelis and Palestinians would need to be struck before any change in Saudi-Israei relations.

“We see the Abraham Accords as sovereign decisions made by countries and we hope that they will lead to a positive change among the Israeli public that will then encourage their government to move towards peace,” he said.

There’s also no guarantee the increase in oil production beyond current levels will happen. MBS said Saturday that his country was nearly tapped out and couldn’t produce more than 13 million more barrels per day.

“I look forward to seeing what’s coming in the coming months,” he said in front of regional leaders, falling far short of a once-expected big agreement.

Even so, Biden insisted that meetings like these are what lead to progress — even on values.

“The ability to speak openly and exchange ideas freely is what unlocks innovation. Accountable institutions that are free from corruption, and act transparently and respect the rule of law are the best way to deliver growth, respond to people’s needs and, I believe, ensure justice,” he said, indicating the conversation would be ongoing. “The United States isn’t going anywhere.”

Jonathan Lemire reported from Washington, D.C.

POLITICO

Politico

19. I Once Supported Putin. Now I Know the Truth.

(not me, the journalist below)

I Once Supported Putin. Now I Know the Truth.

Politico · by LIS SMITH

Magazine

Anastasiia Carrier believed Russian propaganda — until she moved to America and became a journalist.

Illustration by Cristiana Couceiro with photos by Getty Images, iStock and courtesy Anastasiia Carrier

By Anastasiia Carrier

07/15/2022 04:30 AM EDT

Anastasiia Carrier is a journalist based in New York.

I don’t remember how the conversation turned to politics, but I certainly didn’t plan to go there — I had been careful around the subject with my Russian parents for months. It was 2018, and I was in my room in a small West Virginian college town, where I’d moved from Russia less than two years earlier. My mother was on the other side of the FaceTime call on one of our weekly catching-up sessions, and she looked tense — I wasn’t speaking positively of Vladimir Putin.

It was something simple that I said, something like, “Putin isn’t good for Russia” or “It’s not patriotic to just ignore all the bad things in the country, hoping they will just resolve themselves” that did it. She turned away from the camera, trying to hide her tears.

We sat in silence for a moment before I changed the topic. Since when did a political disagreement have the power to make my mother cry? How much further had my family been transformed by propaganda since I had escaped its claws?

Like my parents, I had been pro-Putin once. I thought that Russia had “saved” Crimea from neo-Nazi rebels, that it was the victim of a global smear campaign because the world couldn’t bear the fact that Russia is so big and oil-rich. But since I moved to the U.S. for a second bachelor’s degree and fell in love with journalism, I realized that my political views were rooted not in facts but in a lifelong exposure to the Kremlin’s propaganda machine.

My family is still in Russia, and over the years, the views of my reasonable, highly educated and once liberal-leaning parents have become almost alien. Like many Russians, they believe the invasion of Ukraine is just an “operation to take out neo-Nazis.”

I’ve had many similar conversations with my parents since that talk with my mother. Now, I’m usually the one who gets hurt. These discussions were never easy, but now, with the war in Ukraine, they are as essential as they are sickening. There is a cost to people believing Russian propaganda — and it’s a bloody one.

My hope is that Russian speakers can slowly chip away at support for Putin in our propaganda-aligning families. At the least, we might convince our loved ones that the bloodshed is wrong.

I haven’t given up on my parents. We might be on different continents, but it’s politics that has put us worlds apart.

Putin Seemed Young and Promising

Like many people of my generation who grew up under Putin, I was largely apolitical for most of my life. I grew up in Yoshkar-Ola, capital of one of the poorest Russian regions, in a family of educators.

My grandmother, who lived with us, missed the Soviet Union. She liked the idealistic idea of unity and the certainty that there would be a job for her — she was a beloved German language professor and enjoyed stable and secure employment. She taught me pioneer songs from Soviet times and often said that people were kinder back then. I wonder if they were only “kinder” because they worried someone would snitch on them.

When Putin emerged as a bright star, my grandmother was as excited as could be. He was appointed as prime minister in 1999 by then-President Boris Yeltsin, and his meteoric rise came from his handling of the response to a series of apartment building bombings the same year — a Russian 9/11 that took more than 300 lives and injured many more. Putin blamed the bombings on Chechens, and it became one of the justifications for the Second Chechen War.

I learned much later that some historians and journalists attribute those bombings to an attempt by the Federal Security Service, commonly referred to as the FSB, to get their former director Putin elected. But back when I was a child, Putin seemed young and promising. My grandmother took me with her to vote for him in the 2000 elections. To share the excitement about this historic moment, she lifted me up and showed me where to mark the ballot for her.

The initial excitement about Putin wore off over the years. We had expected him to change our lives for the better, but as nothing improved, the hope became tiresome. The roads were still a mess, traffic police and local officials were still corrupt, salaries stayed low and taxes stayed high. It never even crossed my mind that, in another place, people would have voted for someone else at the next election — maybe because the only options we saw on the news were either incompetent or clowns. I resorted to ignoring politics altogether.

We started to hope again in 2008, when Dmitry Medvedev, Putin’s prime minister, was elected president. My peers and I thought that he might make Russia a real democracy. By then, I had changed schools. For the first time, I had teachers who tried to get us to re-examine Soviet history and question the current state of Russia, even when it meant being critical of the Kremlin. One teacher even dared to criticize Stalin’s rule and the political repressions that left millions dead. It wasn’t that these teachers were unique — it just so happened that I hadn’t crossed paths with them before. The moral clarity felt alien.

As time passed, it became clear that Medvedev was keeping the seat warm for Putin. In 2008, under Medvedev, a new constitutional amendment lengthened the four-year presidential term to six years. In Sept. 2011, when Putin announced he would run for the presidency again in 2012, my friends and I understood that it meant a strong chance of another 12 years of Putin.

This was certainly not the democratic direction my friends and I had hoped Russia would take. In December that year, the biggest anti-government protests since the 1990s broke out across the country in response to the accusation that Putin and his United Russia party had rigged the parliamentary elections. The visuals of a crowd chanting “Putin is a thief!” and “Russia without Putin!” somehow found their way to me on VKontakte, a Russian social network inspired by Facebook.

My friends and I had heard enough talk about Putin being corrupt to believe it. We were finally old enough to vote, and we took it seriously — we researched the candidates, debated their campaign promises. Most of us liked Mikhail Prokhorov, an oligarch who promised to reverse the constitutional amendments and crack down on state propaganda and corruption. It felt like our generation, one that grew up under Putin, could finally make a change. Even my grandmother’s confidence in Putin was shaken, and my whole family considered other candidates.

But something changed at the last moment — there was a wave of negative press against Prokhorov and positive press for Putin. It felt like Russia needed someone experienced to protect us, and Putin was the only choice. I felt defeated and confused when the election day came. One of my friends felt the same way. “Putin is the only rational choice now, and my unused ballot will automatically count for him anyway,” she told me.

It came as no surprise that Putin was re-elected amidst allegations of fraud.

To my shame, it was the annexation of Crimea that placed me squarely into the pro-Putin camp. The Euromaidan revolution of 2013-2014 in Ukraine received a decent amount of airtime on Russian news. But instead of showing Ukrainians protesting a corrupt government and successfully ousting pro-Russia President Viktor Yanukovych, the Russian narrative painted the new Ukrainian government as a fascist gang and extolled Putin’s effort to save Crimea and its ethnic-Russian population from fascist rule. The process was democratic, the propaganda swore. I remember seeing a photo online of an allegedly Crimean apartment building with many Russian flags hanging out of the windows and thinking that this was the most genuine piece of evidence one might need. My dad heard somewhere that even our hometown welcomed Ukrainian refugees, that Russians were giving up their spots in line for social assistance. I gained a respect for Putin I didn’t have before.

According to the Levada Center, an independent Russian polling and research organization, Putin’s popularity spiked from 69 percent in Feb. 2013 to 82 percent in April 2014. Propaganda poured out from everywhere, and it overwhelmed me. It was easier to accept the Kremlin line as truth than to question each confusing argument, one by one. I came to believe that Western attacks on Putin’s actions were synonymous with attacks on my country. My concept of patriotism twisted into blind support of Russia. This time, I didn’t discuss it with my friends, but I was certain they felt the same way.

Over the past years, it has become even harder for the casual news consumer in Russia to find independent media. The new difficulty has risen since the war in Ukraine started, with Putin signing a law that threatens anyone spreading “fake news,” or a non-Kremlin-approved narrative, with fines or up to 15 years in jail. Some news outlets froze their operations and many journalists left the country. Russians who still want to get real news use VPN to access the news websites that the Kremlin banned. For others, like my parents, it’s a flood of propaganda on TV and in print as well as social media.

Everything I Believed About Russia Came Crashing Down

Everything changed when I moved to West Virginia in January 2016 for a second bachelor’s degree. I wasn’t actively political, but whenever the chance came up, I defended Putin and Russia against what I thought was American propaganda. One time, my friends were watching a documentary about what happened in Crimea, and I launched into a rant about everything being either fake or just an unfair case of cherry-picking. Surely there were no Russian tanks in Crimea, and Russians didn’t kill anyone. Often, I would pull out that photo of the apartment building with Russian flags as proof. Most of the time, people on the other side of such rants either didn’t care enough to argue or were too polite to challenge me.

But slowly, my suspicion that something was off with the Kremlin’s narrative started to grow. Moving to the U.S. physically removed me from the fresh supply of propaganda — only the occasional pro-Putin arguments made their way to me through talks with my parents. And I fell in love with journalism after joining the college newspaper, learning how to gather and vet information.

When the first news of Russia’s influence on the 2016 presidential election came out, I defended Russia to whomever would listen. Russian propaganda wasn’t there to supply me with “facts,” so I read credible English-language reporting — and couldn’t make sense of it. It felt so black and white, nothing close to the real world.

I shared my confusion with my father back in Russia. “I know what they teach us in journalism classes. I know how articles are put together and that journalists value facts. At what level of a news organization do lies about Russia make it into stories?” I wondered.

It finally clicked for me at the end of the summer of 2017, after I spent some time surrounded by serious reporters. I got pushback on some of my claims that Russia “saved” Crimea and that Putin would never harm other nations. I went to a conference for journalists in Arizona and told one or two very successful reporters that the U.S. media was misled about Russia. Their quiet amusement got under my skin. One reporter whose work I admired just politely smiled and gave me a funny look. Another one, with the same kind of look, found my opinion interesting and quickly introduced me to his friend. I wasn’t credible, and it was confusing or even entertaining to others, I realized.

Everything I believed about Russia, the world and myself came crashing down. It was disorientating and lonely. I couldn’t talk to my parents because they were still pro-Putin. I couldn’t talk to my Russian friends about it either — they either ignored politics or got defensive, pushing whatever views they had as the only correct ones. My friends in the U.S. couldn’t grasp the magnitude of personal loss. I didn’t know who I was or what I believed anymore.

The next semester, an international relations class helped me work through my need to find a “good guy” after Russia lost the title. I learned that there’s no such a thing as a “good guy” in international politics, that the world is more complicated than that. I leaned on Sally, a professor passionate about Russian politics, and with book recommendations and many talks, she guided me through the process of piecing together the truth about Russian politics and history. I would drop by her small office on a nearly daily basis to talk about what I’d read in the books Sally had lent me — the mass graves from Stalin’s repressions, the poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko, the corruption and vindictiveness of Putin. We also talked about my parents — their beliefs began to resemble conspiracy theories, revolving around a central theme that there was a centuries-old effort to cover up Russian greatness. They believed opposing things at the same time, going from “Putin is so corrupt” to “Putin is the best thing to have happened to Russia” in one conversation.

I was surprised to learn that so much of what I considered “common knowledge” came from propaganda and conspiracy theories. No, Ukraine hadn’t been stealing Russian gas for years. No, Hillary Clinton wasn’t behind the 2011 protests in Russia. No, Barack Obama isn’t Muslim (I’m ashamed to say I fact-checked this one just a couple of years ago). I’ve done so much work to fix the damage, but every now and then I still catch myself using some nonsense as an argument rooted in what I think is history or science, and I have to reexamine my thinking.

This experience is common among people who have abandoned beliefs that once shaped their identities. My husband, an American who was raised Catholic, had a similar experience reevaluating his relationship with religion in high school. Through my reporting on QAnon, I met people who reconstructed their beliefs after they realized their conspiracy-fueled upbringings were filled with falsehoods. Those who quit QAnon describe the same sense of disorientation and political homelessness.

Sally and I still talk books and politics sometimes, and she recently told me that she had no clue how crucial she’d been to my transformation. Without her, I would have slid back into propaganda or lost my mind.

I’ll Keep Trying

My political realignment wasn’t easy for my parents either. It’s one thing to let your child move across the globe — it’s quite another thing to watch the move change her, making it harder and harder to discuss things that were once “common knowledge.” We couldn’t easily share what was on our minds when it came to politics. Most of the time, to avoid propaganda-fueled disagreement, we avoided the topic altogether.

Then, on Feb. 24, Russia invaded Ukraine, and everything changed. Suddenly, those political disagreements had very real and very bloody consequences. Russian propaganda intensified, capitalizing on the generational trauma of World War II by calling Ukrainians “Nazis” to justify the invasion.

My father called me the next day for emotional support. I could tell that he was just as crushed as I was. Something about his manner of speaking when he said, “We’re doing this to take out the Nazis,” revealed a need for reassurance. I should have pushed back then — he later told me he had doubts at the beginning of the war. But now he’s done his “research,” and he’s sure Russia did the right thing. A few days after the war started, my mom sent me a message, warning me that even liking posts critical of Russia was participating in informational warfare. Then she started sending me audios suggesting I send “positive thoughts” to Ukraine to even out the “negative” in the world.

My parents and I moved even farther apart. They are growing more patriotic about “Russians taking out Nazis and saving civilians.” They believe the crimes Russian soldiers are committing against Ukrainians are either committed by Ukrainians themselves or staged.

I have thrown my energy into reporting on Ukraine and the damage Russians have caused. For one story, I spoke with refugees who fled their homes and told me horrid stories of what they saw — the bombings of civilian apartment buildings, the unprovoked shooting of civilians. The news media provided many more accounts of crimes: sexual violence against women and children; the images of bodies lying in Bucha; a genocide against the people Russian propaganda still claims to be our brothers and sisters.

My father and I discussed me writing about the war once. He hadn’t read my stories and he didn’t agree with my position, but he was proud of me for standing up for what I thought was right. My parents sacrificed a lot for me to be able to move to the U.S., even though they deeply dislike the American government. They supported me every step of the way. Recently, I discussed their political position with my Russian friend who knows them, and she was quite surprised to hear it. “Your parents? Really?” she asked. My parents aligning themselves with the Kremlin doesn’t really make sense — they are smart, educated, inquisitive, kind. They had more advantages than many Russians exposed to propaganda, but it still got to them.

The invasion appears to be popular in Russia. Based on various polls, more than half the population approves of it. It remains unclear, though, what people really feel — some may just say what they think they should say.

Even the Russians who do have access to outside information still dismiss reports of Russian aggression. “Everyone lies,” they say. It’s one of the most effective thought-stopping ideas I repeatedly come across, and I attribute it to the deluge of Russian propaganda. There are those who do have questions, but the thought that Russian soldiers could be so violent is unimaginable to them.

The latter is the group I hope to reach. This bloodshed has forced me to understand that there is a moral duty to stop this war and this propaganda-fueled monster. Propaganda alone can’t be blamed for these terrors — there are plenty of Russians living abroad who are exposed to media that show the atrocities Russian soldiers are committing against Ukrainian civilians and yet still continue to support the war. But the stakes to get through to Russian speakers are as high as they’ve ever been. We, as Russian speakers, have to engage in difficult conversations with those who believe in conspiracies and disinformation.

I still try to talk to my parents about the war. I bring up specific atrocities from the news, tell them the stories of the people I know. I talk until they get too annoyed to listen. But I’ll keep trying. Maybe one day they will start doubting. When that day comes, I’ll be there to help them figure out the truth.

POLITICO

Politico · by LIS SMITH

20. Japan’s new nationalism is alarming. Not just for China, North Korea, but allies like India

A view from India:

The strategic landscape in Asia, almost certainly, will force fateful choices on Japan. Even though it allows the stationing of United States troops on its soil, there is one red line Japan has proved unwilling to cross. Japan considers itself protected against nuclear attack by the United States’ extended-deterrence umbrella, but unlike Germany, it has not countenanced the stationing of strategic weapons on its soil.

For decades, though, Japan’s strategic community has quietly discussed what it ought to do if the worst does come about—and the United States proves unwilling to sacrifice its cities to protect the islands. Japan has a plutonium stockpile of nine tons at home, and another 35 are housed in the United Kingdom and Germany—a resource with no use other than in a nuclear-weapons arsenal.

In 1970, Japan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs secretly committed the country to “keep the economic and technical potential for the production of nuclear weapons.” Ever since then, a string of influential voices have asked Japan to consider if the moment might be coming where it has to make this choice.

Like other democracies in the Indo-Pacific, India believes that the best prospect of containing the threat from China lies in building alliances, and growing their military power. The debate in Japan shows just how fraught the process will be.

Japan’s new nationalism is alarming. Not just for China, North Korea, but allies like India

Asia's strategic landscape will force fateful choices on Japan. Embracing muscular nationalism is a response to the challenges of dangerous new times.

PRAVEEN SWAMI

17 July, 2022 09:49 am IST

theprint.in · July 17, 2022

The climax was to have been a single blow from a seventeenth-century sword, delivered by his lover, performing the role of the kaishakunin—the man who ends the agony of the samurai who has chosen ritual suicide. This last performance by the famous writer Yukio Mishima hadn’t gone to script. The soldiers in Ichigaya military base jeered at his call to stage a coup. The noise of helicopters drowned out the rest of the oration, which Mishima had hoped would be broadcast live. Even the denouement was botched: It took three clumsy slashes before the blade cut through the author’s spine.

For many in Japan, philosopher Hide Ishiguro wrote, Mishima’s 1970 suicide seemed to be an act of attention-seeking exhibitionist, not the sublime patriotism of a warrior who chose death over dishonour.

A few days ago, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida returned to office after the assassination of his precursor Shinzo Abe, promising to amend Japan’s pacifist constitution and grow its military power. The constitution, nationalists like Mishima have long claimed, was a charter for humiliation, forced on it after its defeat in the Second World War.

Like many democracies across Asia, Japan is embracing a muscular new nationalism to take on the challenges of the dangerous new times. The problem is that nationalism is enmeshed with an exceptionally ugly history, which has scarred not just Japan’s enemies but also its allies.

The new nationalism

Last year—on the anniversary of the 1941 December morning when Imperial Japanese forces struck across the Pacific against the United States, Great Britain and Holland—almost a hundred Members of Parliament gathered at the Yasukuni shrine in Tokyo to honour the war dead. The lawmakers came from the ruling conservative Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), but also their opponents on the ideological Right, the Japan Innovation Party and Japan’s National Democratic Party.

The gathering represented, what scholar Naoto Higuchi called, the “mainstream of the far-Right.” For decades, the Japanese far-Right—figures like Mishima, who sought a renewed Imperialism, fascists with links to organised crimes, and xenophobes hostile to Korean immigrants—existed on the fringes of society.

Former PM Abe—assassinated earlier this month by a man with an apparent personal grudge—had helped bring some of these ideas to the centre stage. Following his resignation in 2020, Abe stood in Yasukuni, bowing his head to honour the souls of men, including 1,600 war criminals convicted of genocide and crimes against humanity.

The gesture draw angry protests from China, where Japanese forces had butchered civilians in tens of thousands in cities like Nanjing, and conducted biological warfare experiments that rivalled Auschwitz in their horrors. There was rage in Korea, where Japan’s army had forced thousands of women into sexual slavery.

Alexis Dudden, a historian of modern Japan, has noted that Abe played a key role in efforts to wash away Japan’s historical war guilt. Abe lent credence to revisionist efforts to gloss over the sexual slavery of women and valorised the Russo-Japan war, which reduced Korea to a colony. The shedding of war guilt was, Abe suggested in his book, Towards a Beautiful Country, a critical element in enabling the reemergence of Japan as a genuine power.

The Yasukuni shrine’s museum describes the 1937 massacre at Nanjing—where 2,00,000 civilians were massacred and 20,000 women raped— as “an incident.” It claims Japan’s wars spurred national liberation movements across Asia. Abe was among a generation of Japanese politicians who gave this language public legitimacy.

India might have chosen to forget the horrors of Imperial Japanese conquest, as it sanctified the memory of Subhash Chandra Bose. But in countries from Taiwan to Australia, Malaysia and Indonesia, though, the memory of those years hasn’t been extinguished.

The crisis of patriotism

Little imagination is needed to see why many in Japan have come to embrace a nationalism that, five decades ago, was seen as little more than an aesthetic affectation—a dark fringe-kitsch of no political significance. The dragon rising across the East China Sea has belched fire, threatening the Senkaku islands. North Korea’s nuclear-missile programme has revived the fear of annihilation that confronted Japan in 1945. There is cultural anxiety, engendered by a rapidly ageing population, and low birth rates. To some, Japan seems on the edge of national annihilation.

Abe’s maternal grandfather, Nobusuke Kishi—deemed a war criminal in the early years of the United States post-war occupation, but pardoned along with thousands of others—was elected prime minister in 1957, at the head of an LDP government. He helped embed Japan more deeply in the United States-led Cold War strategic partnership, signing a security treaty which allowed Washington to set up military bases on the island nation.

To Abe, it seemed that Japan now needed to grow from a state of de-facto subjugation to genuine equality with the United States. His stated constitutional aim was limited. Article 9 of the constitution mandates that Japan’s people must “forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation.” Abe sought an amendment that explicitly acknowledged Japan’s right maintain its military, the Self-Defence Forces.

A constitutional amendment would have required not just a two-thirds majority in Parliament, but also a 51 per cent majority in a referendum. In a society profoundly divided on the issue, the amendment remained out of Abe’s reach. Prime Minister Kishida is closer to having the legislative muscle needed to fulfil his promise to amend the constitution—but public opinion remains hostile.

An uncertain future

Exactly what a constitutional amendment will change in the short term, even if Kishida was able to rustle up the numbers, isn’t entirely clear. The existing constitution has not stopped Japan from investing in long-range missile development or retaliating against attacks from North Korea and China. Though the country’s spending has remained low, as a percentage of its Gross Domestic Product, it has made significant investments in equipment with offensive capabilities.

The constitutional debate clearly isn’t about military modernisation, but something more profound: What kind of cultural norms does Japan need to survive in a period of dramatic new challenges?

Inside Japan’s military, the ultra-nationalism of Yukio Mishima clearly has some appeal. In 2008, General Toshio Tamogami, the country’s top soldier, was sacked after he wrote an essay defending Japanese colonialism as ethically-justified, humane and beneficial to Asia. In South Korea and China there is fear—well founded or otherwise—that these seeds will flower into a new Japanese militarism. These fears might well be overblown, but experience inexorably shapes historical perceptions.

The strategic landscape in Asia, almost certainly, will force fateful choices on Japan. Even though it allows the stationing of United States troops on its soil, there is one red line Japan has proved unwilling to cross. Japan considers itself protected against nuclear attack by the United States’ extended-deterrence umbrella, but unlike Germany, it has not countenanced the stationing of strategic weapons on its soil.

For decades, though, Japan’s strategic community has quietly discussed what it ought to do if the worst does come about—and the United States proves unwilling to sacrifice its cities to protect the islands. Japan has a plutonium stockpile of nine tons at home, and another 35 are housed in the United Kingdom and Germany—a resource with no use other than in a nuclear-weapons arsenal.

In 1970, Japan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs secretly committed the country to “keep the economic and technical potential for the production of nuclear weapons.” Ever since then, a string of influential voices have asked Japan to consider if the moment might be coming where it has to make this choice.

Like other democracies in the Indo-Pacific, India believes that the best prospect of containing the threat from China lies in building alliances, and growing their military power. The debate in Japan shows just how fraught the process will be.

The author is National Security Editor, ThePrint. He tweets @praveenswami. Views are personal.

(Edited by Srinjoy Dey)

theprint.in · July 17, 2022

21. Wagner Group massacre: ‘The victims were bloated and deformed – we could only recognise our friends by their clothes’

Wagner Group massacre: ‘The victims were bloated and deformed – we could only recognise our friends by their clothes’

As the French withdraw from Mali, Russian mercenaries are taking their place – with deadly consequences

The Telegraph · by Will Brown,

The Russian mercenary slowly went through the group of hundreds of prisoners with a stick. If a man’s beard was too long or his clothes too Islamic, he got a tap on the head. “He is a jihadist. Kill him,” the man said in Russian.

When enough people were selected, they were marched to a nearby building and shot. There was nowhere to hide in the arid scrub around Moura village, in central Mali. The white men had come in on helicopters with government soldiers and translators. If locals tried to run, they would be gunned down in seconds.

“They didn’t even take the time to tie their hands or blindfold them. They just executed them. Some even while they were still walking. One bullet and that was it,” said Muhammad, a 29-year-old driver and one of the prisoners who survived and witnessed the entire thing.

“They also executed a kid of about 10 years old. I don’t know what his name was or why they killed him.”

After three days of sporadic executions in the beating sun at Moura, the Russians ordered survivors to dig mass graves to get rid of the appalling smell. “For hours, I picked up bloated bodies and threw them into the pit on the riverbank,” Muhammad told The Telegraph this week, still visibly shaken and disturbed.

“We collected 180 bodies. The victims were bloated and deformed. We could only recognise our friends by their clothes.”

Anywhere from 200 to 600 men and boys are estimated to have been executed in that village in late March, according to rights groups. Mali’s military junta claims they were all terrorists involved in an earlier attack, and has denied UN investigators access.

The massacre is part of a seismic shift in power on Europe’s southern flank, where Moscow is upending France’s – and by extension the West’s – military dominance in the Sahel, with deadly consequences.

Paris, the old hegemon in this region running along the southern edge of the Sahara, announced this year it was withdrawing some 5,000 troops after a decade of fighting a losing desert war against jihadist groups. Soon, the only Western forces to remain in Mali will be a small contingent of German and British troops on the UN’s beleaguered peacekeeping mission.

Protesters hold a banner reading ‘Thank you Wagner‘ during a celebration of France's announcement earlier this year that it was withdrawing troops Credit: Florent Vergnes/AFP via Getty Images

Now Wagner Group guns for hire, linked to the Kremlin, are moving into recently vacated French bases in Mali, from the medieval city of Timbuktu to the remote desert town of Menaka.

“The Russians are resetting the power dynamics in the region. For the last sixty years, the French have convinced the US – and themselves – that they are the indispensable power in Francophone Africa. The Malians and Russians are testing that indispensability,” says Mvemba Phezo Dizolele, the Africa director at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Washington DC.

Russia’s use of mercenaries in Africa is a tried and tested tactic to carve out a sphere of influence for Moscow in unstable countries and challenge Western goals. The Wagner group has run military operations in the Central African Republic, Sudan, Libya and Mozambique.

By going through a mesh of private companies like Wagner – which is widely alleged to be owned by Yevgeny Prigozhin, a businessman once known as “Putin’s Chef” – Moscow can claim plausible deniability. Mr Prigozhin has always denied any connection to the group.

0807 Mali_Russian Military Influance

Ostensibly, they are there to help the government as “instructors”. But since the Wagner group was invited into the West African country in December, there has been an explosion of reports of massacres and torture involving Russian soldiers.

Similarly 35 burned corpses were found near Diabaly, another town in the centre of the country, in March. Local sources said they were shepherds who were tortured and executed in a nearby Malian government camp where the Russians were operating.

At the village of Hombori, survivors told The Telegraph that Russians shot indiscriminately into a livestock fair on April 19. They killed almost 20 people before rounding up about 60 into three trucks. It is believed many of these were later tortured or executed.

“There were no jihadists. No men were armed. People fled in all directions. They killed several dozen people,” says Ahmad* a local merchant. “My older brother was caught in front of his store. It was white people, Russians, who arrested my brother.”

M’Berra camp, in South East Mauritania, is one the largest camps in West Africa hosting refugees fleeing violence in Mali Credit: Guy Peterson/AFP

Analysts argue that these brutal attacks will only add fuel to the cycle of violence bringing the Sahel to its knees. However, it is clear that there is a real appetite for these methods in parts of Malian society. The Malian military works hand in glove with the Russians on every Wagner operation.

“Russia can come in offering something much narrower and more purely security-focused [than France], which suits the perceptions and interests of certain Malian officials and [some Malian civilians] who think that extreme violence is needed to solve the problem in the centre of the country,” says Andrew Lebovich, a Sahel expert at the European Council of Foreign Relations.

Many of the Sahel’s problems can be traced back to Colonel Muammar Gaddafi’s bloody downfall in 2011. When Libya’s arsenals were looted, heavily armed rebels and allied jihadists swept out of the desert and conquered the northern half of Mali in 2012.

France scrambled troops and drove the militants out of major towns. For a while, President Francois Hollande basked in the victorious glow and was even presented with the gift of a white camel in Timbuktu.

But every year the criminal gangs, ethnic militias and bands of jihadists linked to Al-Qaeda or Islamic State seemed to multiply. The conflict has now spread deep into Burkina Faso and Niger, killing tens of thousands of people and displacing millions.

In response, the region became the testing ground for a new EU integrated defence strategy, with everyone from Denmark to Lithuania piling in to fight what experts have increasingly called the “forever war”.

As western interest – and success – has waned, Moscow has seen an opportunity to exploit growing anger among many west Africans against their former French coloniser and throw a spanner into the EU's pet project.

While some of Wagner’s battle-hardened mercenaries were redeployed from Africa to Ukraine to reportedly try to assassinate Volodymyr Zelensky, it is estimated that Moscow now has about 1,000 operatives in Mali.

1007 Mali_Africa

In typical Kremlin fashion, Wagner also uses a well-oiled propaganda machine to manipulate public opinion and spread fake news about France’s “real objectives”.

Soon after France handed back the Gossi military base near Timbuktu to the Malian army in late April, a Malian Twitter account called Dia Diarra started posting about corpses found near the base.

Suspecting foul play, the French secretly sent a drone to film what was going on. It found several “caucasian” soldiers burying a dozen bodies, while others filmed the scene.

The same Twitter account later published the video, claiming the French had left the bodies behind.

When the French released their drone video proving otherwise, the Dia Diarra Twitter account disappeared. Outraged Malian authorities have since banned the UN from investigating.

A screen grab from a video obtained from the French army in April, shows, according to them, Russian mercenaries burying bodies near a base in Gossi Credit: AFP

Russia’s hand is clear to see in the atrocities in Mali in recent months. But analysts argue that much of the blame also lies with the French and its Western allies.

“It’s much more complicated than just Russia deciding Malian policy. Russian disinformation cannot be blamed for everything Malians think or say [criticising] the international community,” says Mr Lebovich.

“A lot of this represents a very real failure of European policy. It’s no secret that for Europe, the Sahel has been a laboratory for an integrated foreign policy and military intervention. That has not worked as intended.

“Put simply, the French counter-terrorism policy has been very good at eliminating jihadist leaders but not good at creating a generally secure environment.”

Mr Dizolele says: “Fundamentally, I don’t think France has created a win-win relationship with these countries. I think French officials underestimate how much Africans in their former colonies are quite tired of them. They’re stuck in the past.”

After four days of seeing his friends executed, Muhammad was ready to die. Suddenly, the soldiers let him go and gave him a parting message.

“Before leaving by helicopter, the soldiers told us: ‘Those who want to live, lay down your arms. If you want to die like those in the pit, then go back to the jihadists and we will come to kill you again.’”

*Names have been changed in this article to protect identities

Protect yourself and your family by learning more about Global Health Security

The Telegraph · by Will Brown,

22. Ukraine map suggests U.S.-supplied HIMARS could be turning tide of war

Graphic at the link: https://www.newsweek.com/ukraine-map-reveals-us-american-himars-turned-tide-war-donbas-1724939

Ukraine map suggests U.S.-supplied HIMARS could be turning tide of war

Newsweek · by Isabel van Brugen · July 15, 2022

Maps of Ukraine created by NASA's FIRMS fire tracking system suggest American-supplied M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems—known as HIMARS—could be turning the tide of Vladimir Putin's war.

Side-by-side maps of Ukraine's eastern Donbas region—the frontline of the war—dated July 8 and July 12, show the number of major fires in Ukraine - an indication of Russian shelling - before and after Ukraine ramped up attacks using the HIMARS precision rocket weapon system provided by Washington.

24hr NASA FIRMS data from eastern Ukraine on July 8th vs July 12th. An interesting sharp decrease in returns. pic.twitter.com/J3QIPF6g1V

— OSINTtechnical (@Osinttechnical) July 12, 2022

NASA's Fire Information for Resource Management System or FIRMS was created to monitor large-scale fires.

The maps illustrate a sharp decrease in the number of fires detected by NASA satellites—an indicator that long-range strikes on Russian ammunition warehouses appear to be playing in Ukraine's favor.

"A big question mark of whether or not this indicates a decrease in Russian shelling, and whether or not the Ukrainian strikes on Russian ammunition facilities have had an impact on Russian fires capabilities," defense specialist @Osinttechnical posted on Twitter.

On July 9, Ukrainian presidential adviser and peace talks negotiator Mykhailo Podolyak named HIMARS as one of three weapons Ukraine needs to turn the tide of Putin's war in Ukraine, as clashes intensified in the battle for the country's eastern Donbas region

"Do we want a turning point in the war? 3 components... HIMARS for high-precision targeting rear bases, logistics," he tweeted. "Heavy artillery on the frontline allows matching number parity. APC [armored personnel carriers] for "breakthrough fists"... More tools faster we'll clean our land of the Russians."

A US-made HIMARS (High Mobility Advanced Rocket System) on static display during live fire exercises on April 14, 2016 in Crow Valley, Tarlac province, Philippines. HIMARS was developed in the late 1990s for the U.S. Army, and missiles fired from the system have a range of some 50 miles. Dondi Tawatao/Getty Images

A day earlier, President Joe Biden signed a $400 million weapons package for Ukraine, including four additional high mobility artillery rocket systems. The U.S. began to supply Ukraine with the system in June, after Ukraine said it would not use HIMARS to attack Russian territory.

HIMARS was developed in the late 1990s for the U.S. Army, and missiles fired from the system have a range of some 50 miles.

Ukrainian forces said Thursday that they used HIMARS to destroy a second Russian ammunition warehouse in the city of Nova Kakhovka, in the occupied Kherson region, in southern Ukraine.

And on Friday, Luhansk Governor Serhiy Haidai said on his Telegram channel that a Russian ammunition depot was on fire in the occupied city of Kadiivka, in the Luhansk region.

"Another ammunition warehouse of the occupiers is on fire in Kadiivka," Haidai said.

It isn't clear if Ukraine's armed forces targeted the ammunition depot with HIMARS.

Multiple Russian commanders have been killed in HIMARS strikes in the past week, according to Ukraine.

Haidai told Newsweek this week that Russians are "in panic mode" over strikes by American-made HIMARS.

"As the whole world has seen over the past week or so, we have been able to inflict massive damage to their missile defense systems and ammunition storage facilities deep behind the enemy lines," Haidai explained.

This, he said, "was largely down to the variety of weapons we have recently received from the West. And when we have sufficient amounts of such weaponry, we will be able to carry out further counterattacks."

Newsweek has contacted Russia's Foreign Ministry and Ukrainian authorities for comment.

Update 07/15/22, 10:21 a.m. ET: This article was updated with additional information

Newsweek · by Isabel van Brugen · July 15, 2022

23. Will ‘Salad Bar Extremism’ Replace ‘Old-School World’ Terrorism?

Excerpts:

There are multiple signs of the lack of common understanding of this important emerging phenomenon. The signs include: the plethora of terms that have been employed to describe cases of domestic violent extremism that don’t fit into clear ideological buckets; apparent scholarly disagreement regarding how ideological mixing occurs at the individual level (e.g., whether or not there is intentionality); the lack of clarity about how cases like Teeter, Solomon, and Crusius should be typologized. Are they really outcroppings of a common phenomenon or is something distinct occurring in the two cases?

This lack of conceptual clarity does not negate the importance of the observation that Wray and others have made about the changing landscape of extremism. Indeed, the importance of the underlying phenomenon lends some urgency to our observations about the need for greater clarity. Given that developing better detection, prevention, and rehabilitation measures will require an informed and nuanced approach to this complex topic, the phenomenon warrants deeper research and more concrete thinking.

Will ‘Salad Bar Extremism’ Replace ‘Old-School World’ Terrorism?

It is difficult to counter that which you do not understand.

by Daveed Gartenstein-Ross Emelie Chace-Donahue Madison Urban Matt Chauvin

The National Interest · by Daveed Gartenstein-Ross · July 14, 2022

The recent tragic shooting at the Fourth of July parade in Highland Park, Illinois sparked a familiar partisan argument. Some on the political Left raced to depict the shooter as a violent Donald Trump supporter, while elements of the Right painted him as an unhinged liberal. Another increasingly familiar dynamic is that both sets of partisans could find some support for their arguments.

Indeed, in the aftermath of mass attacks, it is natural to ask why the act of shocking violence was carried out. Was the shooter driven to violence solely by his fetishization of mass casualty attacks? Was it mental illness? Or were there other ideological motivations? Such questions are not new, but the FBI has recently begun highlighting what it views as a growing trend: mass attackers who appear to be mobilized by multiple—and at times seemingly contradictory—beliefs, interests, and grievances that do not cleanly fit within what FBI director Christopher Wray has described as the “old-school world” of ideologically singular terrorism.

Our own research into domestic terrorists and mass attackers, spanning years of work, leads us to concur with Wray that there is a real trend at play. But it also compels us to conclude that this phenomenon, which the FBI dubs “salad bar” extremism, has been drastically under-conceptualized. It is difficult to counter that which you do not understand. Thus, it is of more than passing academic interest to point out the shortcomings of current descriptions of the phenomenon.

The Salad Bar Extremism Paradigm

In what Wray called the “old-school world” of terrorism, most ideologically-motivated attacks could cleanly fit within a broad category. Examples of such categories might include anti-abortion, eco-terrorism, or political terrorism (e.g., far right, far left). The current paradigm, according to the FBI and leading scholars of terrorism, is less clear-cut but exceedingly important to understand.

In May 2022, Wray described this new paradigm in Senate testimony. He explained that attacks are increasingly perpetrated by “people with this kind of salad bar of ideologies that don’t fit into any category.” Wray’s testimony was the latest in a line of his various appearances before Congress. He has indeed testified multiple times about a phenomenon that he refers to as “salad bar” extremism. Wray has applied this loose-fitting term to domestic violent extremists who are seemingly motivated by a “weird hodgepodge blend of ideologies” and also to “threats [that] don’t fit into nice neat ideological buckets.”

Indeed, this term—or labels that are very similar—has often been bandied about, and not just by Wray. For well over half a decade, researchers have provided various explanations and terms to describe the broad paradigm that Wray has offered. A plethora of related terms have emerged, all of which possess subtle differences but that at least touch upon what Wray describes as salad bar extremism. Some of the terms researchers have employed include “ideological convergence,” “fused extremism,” “hybrid ideologies,” “mixed, unstable or unclear ideology,” “fringe fluidity,” “ideology a la carte,” and “choose your own adventure” extremism.

The lack of consensus about terminology is more than just semantics. For example, scholars appear to differ about how much deliberate choice individuals have in forging their belief system under the salad bar extremism model. Even the term salad bar extremism described a degree of intentionality on the extremist’s part: people at a salad bar deliberately choose the combination of vegetables, condiments, and dressings rather than consuming them haphazardly. Other language used in this area—including personalized ideologies, picking or choosing ideological elements, etc.—also suggests that the extremist makes conscious decisions about the ideas to assimilate.

A counterpoint can be found in the Senate testimony of Brian Levin, director of the Center for the Study of Hate & Extremism at CSU San Bernardino. Levin described this variety of domestic violent extremists as “co-influenced by a variety of factors ranging from conspiracy theories to misogyny” and “adhering to an idiosyncratic blend derived from broad elastic subcultures of grievance that in turn, identify appropriate targets of violence.” In this view, salad bar ideologies emerge non-linearly from an amalgamation of inputs and feedback loops facilitated by our current information environment, social media in particular. Under this view, salad bar extremism is also probably an inappropriate label, but that is an argument for another day.

Same Label, Different Phenomena

Even two cases of those that Wray has highlighted in Congressional testimony demonstrate a lack of clarity about what salad bar extremism means. In the first case, Michael Teeter and Benjamin Solomon, self-described members of the anti-government Boogaloo movement, were arrested in 2020 and convicted for providing material support to Hamas, a U.S.-designated terrorist organization. On its face, the convergence of their Boogaloo beliefs with support for a pro-Palestinian terrorist organization appears to be a strong example of ideological syncretism. But Teeter and Solomon never expressed commitment to jihadist ideology or adopted pro-Palestinian beliefs. Instead, it seems that Teeter and Solomon’s scheme may have been primarily intended to generate funding (a possible perceived convergence of interests and grievances with Hamas).

A second case cited by Wray tells a more complex story. In his manifesto, the 2019 El Paso Walmart shooter, Patrick Crusius, expressed belief in white ethnic superiority and fears of white people being replaced through immigration. But he also voiced concern about environmental degradation and a desire for the implementation of universal basic income and universal healthcare. These latter sentiments do not fit the typical white supremacist profile, at least on a surface level. They arguably do fit within an eco-fascist belief system, which combines concerns about environmental degradation with elements of neo-Nazism in an outlook that views white populations as existentially threatened by non-white overpopulation. Crusius thus synthesized various beliefs, grievances, and goals that mutually reinforced one another to justify his attack, which primarily targeted the Hispanic community.

While these two cases exemplify domestic violent extremists motivated by a convergence of distinct or even contradictory beliefs, interests, and grievances, they are by no means equivalent cases. The fact that two primary examples cited by Wray apply the same label to such distinct phenomena, even in terms of the role of convergent ideas, underscores the need for conceptual clarity about salad bar extremism.

Better Definition, Better Solutions

There are multiple signs of the lack of common understanding of this important emerging phenomenon. The signs include: the plethora of terms that have been employed to describe cases of domestic violent extremism that don’t fit into clear ideological buckets; apparent scholarly disagreement regarding how ideological mixing occurs at the individual level (e.g., whether or not there is intentionality); the lack of clarity about how cases like Teeter, Solomon, and Crusius should be typologized. Are they really outcroppings of a common phenomenon or is something distinct occurring in the two cases?

This lack of conceptual clarity does not negate the importance of the observation that Wray and others have made about the changing landscape of extremism. Indeed, the importance of the underlying phenomenon lends some urgency to our observations about the need for greater clarity. Given that developing better detection, prevention, and rehabilitation measures will require an informed and nuanced approach to this complex topic, the phenomenon warrants deeper research and more concrete thinking.

Daveed Gartenstein-Ross is the chief executive officer of the private firm Valens Global and leads a project on domestic extremism for the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD).

Emelie Chace-Donahue, Madison Urban, and Matt Chauvin are analysts at Valens Global. They support the firm’s public sector clients and FDD’s project on domestic extremism.

Image: Reuters.

The National Interest · by Daveed Gartenstein-Ross · July 14, 2022

24. Opinion: Mideast trip shows Biden choosing pragmatism, rejecting 'Woke' policy

Excerpts:

Moreover, the president appears prepared to pursue Saudi-Israeli normalization. Reports out of Israel suggest that the president’s visit is likely to yield a number of announcements. They will likely fall short of full normalization, but the relationship is moving inexorably toward mutual-recognition and non-aggression. With a nudge from Washington, full peace between these two countries could very well pave the way for a much more stable and prosperous Middle East. There may even be an opportunity to convince the Palestinians to drop some of their most unreasonable irredentist demands.

Howls can now be heard from certain quarters on Capitol Hill, decrying the president’s trip. And the president hears them. He is now trying to avoid the appearance of a full reversal of his positions regarding the Saudi crown prince. He is also paying a visit to the Palestinians, so as to inject a sense of balance in his trip to Israel.

However, short of torching both alliances, the president will never be able to placate the radicals in his own party. Their positions are deeply ideological. Biden, by contrast, built his lengthy political career as a pragmatist. That’s probably why many Americans voted for him after four years of non-traditional foreign policy by his predecessor.

Biden’s trip to the Middle East this week may not yield huge wins. But its importance should not be ignored. Biden is openly defying his left flank. If he keeps his nerve, he could lay the foundation for a return to foreign policies that embrace our traditional allies and promote stability in a regional that is still vital to America’s interests.

Opinion: Mideast trip shows Biden choosing pragmatism, rejecting 'Woke' policy - I24NEWS

Jonathan SchanzerJuly 15, 2022 at 08:00 AMlatest revision July 15, 2022 at 05:19 AM

Foundation for Defense of Democracies

i24news.tv · by i24NEWS · July 15, 2022

After more than a year of attempting to placate the extremists in his own party, US President Joe Biden’s trip to Israel and Saudi Arabia this week may signal a return to foreign policy pragmatism.

A pivot back to the status quo ante is long overdue.

Congressional “progressives” (an imprecise characterization of their regressive policies) have had it out for Saudi Arabia and Israel for the better part of a decade. Both countries have earned this opprobrium because they stand firm against ill-advised, American-led nuclear diplomacy that would yield billions of dollars to the clerical regime in Tehran.

Both countries have warned that such a deal would only place fleeting checks on Iran’s nuclear ambitions, while enabling the regime to fund its terrorist proxies around the Middle East. Both countries also stand firm against Islamist groups with global ambitions, like the Muslim Brotherhood.

Extremists in Congress find all of this problematic. They seek to empower extremists from both sides of the Muslim sectarian divide. Most alarmingly, they appear content to legitimize the regime in Tehran, despite its nuclear mendacity, support for terrorist groups, and rapacious human rights abuses.

Through populism and bombast, these legislators hope to re-write the foreign policy status quo in the Middle East and to torpedo longstanding American alliances in favor of new pacts with rogue states. Their rhetoric makes it rather obvious.

Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) has decried “Racism and the politics of hate” in Israel, conveniently ignoring that Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East, with an Arab minority that enjoys more rights than any of its neighbors.

Ilhan Omar (D-MN) blames Saudi Arabia for “causing the worst humanitarian crisis on the planet in Yemen," while conveniently ignoring the ongoing role of Iran in funding, training and smuggling weapons to their Houthi terrorist proxies in that country.

Bernie Sanders (D-VT) is now in an open clash with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) over Sanders’ positions and enthusiasm for anti-Israel candidates. AIPAC now seeks to roll back the influence of the octogenarian and his fellow radicals in Congress, sometimes referred to as “the Squad.”

For a time, it appeared the president was willing to countenance such extremism. As a candidate, Biden vowed to make Saudi Arabia a “pariah,” and pulled American support for the Saudi war against the Houthis in Yemen very early on in his presidency.

And while he had Israel’s back during most of the eleven-day conflict with the terrorist group Hamas last year, he eventually turned on then-prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu. White House staffers leaked stories of tension between the two leaders, purportedly driven by Biden’s outrage over certain Israeli military actions.

Remarkably, the president also appeared content to ignore a historic diplomatic breakthrough forged by his predecessor Donald Trump. After brokering normalization agreements between Israel and four Arab nations (the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco), the Saudis and Israelis were reportedly on the cusp of doing the same. But when Trump lost the election in 2020, Biden chose not to pursue things any further. Once again, he appeared content to appease his anti-Israel and anti-Saudi colleagues on Capitol Hill.

One and a half years into his presidency, Biden appears to understand the folly of trying to placate the “woke” elements of his party on foreign policy. The shunning of Saudi Arabia gained him little. Admittedly, there was some wisdom behind holding the crown prince, Mohammed Bin Salman, responsible for the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018. But after the brutal Russian invasion of Ukraine and the resulting energy crisis, tensions with Riyadh became an enormous liability.

In an effort to revive the transactional friendship with Saudi Arabia, one based on the principle of American security guarantees in exchange for a steady and affordable supply of oil, Biden is now hoping for a reset. With any luck, Biden may be able to leverage this for lower prices at the pump – although the likelihood of doing so in the short term seems low.

Moreover, the president appears prepared to pursue Saudi-Israeli normalization. Reports out of Israel suggest that the president’s visit is likely to yield a number of announcements. They will likely fall short of full normalization, but the relationship is moving inexorably toward mutual-recognition and non-aggression. With a nudge from Washington, full peace between these two countries could very well pave the way for a much more stable and prosperous Middle East. There may even be an opportunity to convince the Palestinians to drop some of their most unreasonable irredentist demands.

Howls can now be heard from certain quarters on Capitol Hill, decrying the president’s trip. And the president hears them. He is now trying to avoid the appearance of a full reversal of his positions regarding the Saudi crown prince. He is also paying a visit to the Palestinians, so as to inject a sense of balance in his trip to Israel.

However, short of torching both alliances, the president will never be able to placate the radicals in his own party. Their positions are deeply ideological. Biden, by contrast, built his lengthy political career as a pragmatist. That’s probably why many Americans voted for him after four years of non-traditional foreign policy by his predecessor.

Biden’s trip to the Middle East this week may not yield huge wins. But its importance should not be ignored. Biden is openly defying his left flank. If he keeps his nerve, he could lay the foundation for a return to foreign policies that embrace our traditional allies and promote stability in a regional that is still vital to America’s interests.

Jonathan Schanzer is senior vice president for research at Foundation for Defense of Democracies and the author of Gaza Conflict 2021: Hamas, Israel and Eleven Days of War (FDD Press 2021). Follow him on Twitter @JSchanzer.

i24news.tv · by i24NEWS · July 15, 2022

25. China’s Roadblocks to Becoming A Science Superpower

Excerpts:

None of this downplays the massive gains in science and technology that China has made over the last generation and likely will in the next. Indeed, Chinese policymakers have recently begun to recognize and attempt to ameliorate many of these limitations. They have drafted plans for supporting and more generously funding basic research for the next five years. They have also begun addressing China’s faulty research evaluation mechanisms, seeking to quell harmful publishing practices and improving overall research quality.

Yet the biggest issue may be baked into the system. Suggestions to free the scientific community from Party and bureaucratic influence have been actively ignored, and it is hard to see how such a policy could co-exist with China’s increasingly repressive political environment. The authoritarian system also makes it difficult to attract, recruit, and retain researchers from the outside, happy to make China their home and help create truly world-class ecosystems of innovation in the way that Silicon Valley boomed in the last generation.

It is therefore critical in any strategic competition not to focus only on the strengths and weaknesses of the Chinese model of science, but on what they also illuminate about what is needed to compete with it. Ultimately, human capital is at the heart of great power competitions in science. Thus, U.S. science policy must be designed to attract, support, and retain brilliant minds, free to pursue truth wherever it may lead.

China’s Roadblocks to Becoming A Science Superpower

Historical and structural problems complicate Beijing’s vision of tech leadership.

By MA XIU and PETER W. SINGER

JULY 17, 2022 08:00 AM ET

defenseone.com · by Ma Xiu

A future in which China is the world’s dominant scientific power fills the imagination of leaders in both East and West. In Beijing, China has entered its latest policy-planning period, the 14th Five-Year Plan. Building on strong performance in common science-and-technology indicators and advances in cutting-edge areas such as AI, quantum computing, and hypersonic flight, China is now striving to achieve two of the remaining milestones outlined in its 2016 Innovation-Driven Development Strategy: joining the front rank of innovative countries by 2035 and becoming a “global scientific great power” by 2050.

All this has animated calls for an American response to ensure the United States’ leading position in scientific and technological progress. Countless articles and reports frame it as a new “Sputnik Moment” and a key element of U.S.-China strategic competition. This has led to a host of new proposals and policy initiatives, ranging from increases in DoD research spending to the recent debate over the China competition bill in Congress.

China’s ability to realize these visions depends on its answer to the question that any government has to ask of its science and innovation policy: “What is the best way to organize and oversee scientific research in pursuit of national objectives?” That is, how can the regime best support the scientific research community, nurture scientific talent, and harness the power of S&T to advance national goals?

A recent report from BluePath Labs for the China Aerospace Studies Institute found that answering these questions may not be as easy as Beijing hopes and these fearful narratives portray. In examining Beijing’s approach to S&T planning, processes, and funding, the research found that while China has indeed made impressive science gains in recent years, it continues to suffer from multiple structural problems that hamper its goal of becoming a self-reliant innovation powerhouse. These include an imbalance between basic science research and technology development; a top-down approach that prioritizes Party control over effective S&T policy; and an inordinate, and often self-defeating, focus on quantitative indicators to measure performance.

The first challenge for the Chinese Communist Party is shaped by the 19th-century circumstances surrounding the origin of modern Chinese thinking on science policy. A series of catastrophic defeats in the Opium Wars showed Chinese leaders the terrible consequences of neglecting the development of science and technology. In the Illustrated Treatise on the Maritime Kingdoms, perhaps the first significant Chinese work on the West, scholar-official Wei Yuan put forward the idea to “learn skills from the foreigners in order to gain command of them.” The “skills” here mostly referred to “warships, firearms, and methods of training soldiers.” Western technologies were thus embraced as a “means” in service of “national salvation,” leading to a view of S&T which was both highly utilitarian—as simply a means to an end—and often falsely equated science with technology.

This utilitarian view continues to this day, with major implications for China’s S&T policy. One example is an overly strong emphasis on the D in R&D, at the cost of spending on the kind of basic and applied science which is critical to innovation and scientific breakthroughs. In recent years, basic and applied research accounted for 36 percent of U.S. R&D expenditures, versus 17 percent in China. Total estimated U.S. basic and applied research expenditures in 2018 were $211.5 billion, about quadruple China’s $51 billion. This problem is recognized by CCP leaders. Xi Jinping himself has said that China pays too little attention to basic research to make original, transformative scientific and technological breakthroughs. Yet the imbalance remains in policy and strategy.

As well, China continues to apply a highly centralized “whole of nation” approach to scientific research, influenced by its top-down Marxist-Leninist culture. This prioritizes Party control over S&T policies. Premier Zhou Enlai said, “Science cannot be divorced from politics, and is dominated and governed by politics,” while more recently Xi Jinping has tightened Party control and leadership over all aspects of the S&T ecosystem, declaring that firm Party control over S&T policy “provides a fundamental political guarantee for the advancement of China’s Science, Technology, and Innovation endeavors.”

The freedom of inquiry, which is a hallmark of Western scientific research institutions, thus continues to be a major blind spot for Chinese S&T. Simply put, there is a comparative inability to pursue scientific truth in whatever direction it may lead, with the promise that technological progress will eventually follow.

China’s preference for top-down centralized S&T planning not only stifles innovation, but also assumes that advances can be scripted via large-scale mobilizations and R&D megaprojects. This is attempting to predict the unpredictable. Planning can certainly facilitate advances in technology, but scientific advance is characterized by an embrace of uncertainty. Beijing’s long-term development plans are often hidebound and unable to adapt to unexpected scientific breakthroughs. This can frequently leave Chinese researchers a step behind their global peers, who can pivot more rapidly than a 5-year plan.

All these factors lead to a system that is overly focused on quantitative S&T indicators for both performance assessment and personnel decisions. While quantitative indicators provide useful metrics of progress, the numbers don’t always tell the story of a truly successful policy. For example, China has rocketed to number one in patent quantity, and second for journal publications, giving an impression of looming scientific dominance that can be reported back to CCP leaders, as well as cited in Western punditry.

But a narrow focus on raw numbers hides a wide range of serious problems. There is the widespread phenomenon of xueshu laji: the “academic garbage” that takes the form of mountains of useless “garbage papers” produced only to check a box rather than advance the field. In one survey, 93.7 percent of researchers said that their primary motivation for publishing is to meet requirements for promotion. More seriously, it has led to a culture of widespread academic dishonesty, including plagiarism, falsification of results, and the use of personal relationships to gain promotion. In one particularly egregious case, 107 articles from the peer-reviewed cancer journal Tumor Biology were retracted en masse when it was found that “Their reviews had been fabricated, and many papers had been produced by paper mills,” as Nature put it.

The result is massive science policy inefficiency. Even according to China’s own government statistics, Beijing has seen a remarkably low return on investment for the massive amounts it has plowed into R&D. By one metric, China’s “transfer and conversion rate” of technology born out of government-funded R&D is less than 10 percent, a fraction of the 40 to 50 percent rate in developed nations. This suggests a deficiency in turning research into concrete innovation gains.

None of this downplays the massive gains in science and technology that China has made over the last generation and likely will in the next. Indeed, Chinese policymakers have recently begun to recognize and attempt to ameliorate many of these limitations. They have drafted plans for supporting and more generously funding basic research for the next five years. They have also begun addressing China’s faulty research evaluation mechanisms, seeking to quell harmful publishing practices and improving overall research quality.

Yet the biggest issue may be baked into the system. Suggestions to free the scientific community from Party and bureaucratic influence have been actively ignored, and it is hard to see how such a policy could co-exist with China’s increasingly repressive political environment. The authoritarian system also makes it difficult to attract, recruit, and retain researchers from the outside, happy to make China their home and help create truly world-class ecosystems of innovation in the way that Silicon Valley boomed in the last generation.

It is therefore critical in any strategic competition not to focus only on the strengths and weaknesses of the Chinese model of science, but on what they also illuminate about what is needed to compete with it. Ultimately, human capital is at the heart of great power competitions in science. Thus, U.S. science policy must be designed to attract, support, and retain brilliant minds, free to pursue truth wherever it may lead.

Ma Xiu is a senior analyst at BluePath Labs, LLC. This article is drawn from research by BluePath Labs analyst Alex Stone’s report for the China Aerospace Studies Institute, China’s Model of Science: Rationale, Players, Issues.

defenseone.com · by Ma Xiu

26. When Iran Says ‘Death to Israel,’ It Means It

Excerpts:

For every anti-Israel utterance from the mouths of Iran’s Islamist elite, there is equal chapter and verse, if not more, said about America. “Death to America” is chanted alongside “Death to Israel.” American flags are burned alongside Israeli ones. Iran’s proxies target American military installations across the region with the help of the IRGC, and the IRGC directly harasses American naval vessels in the Persian Gulf and Strait of Hormuz. And as is evident in both the Israeli and American cases, every opportunity afforded to the regime to safely snub or spite its adversary or to escalate against it without incurring serious retribution or ruin is taken.

Under sanctions pressure, Khamenei authorized Iranian diplomats to negotiate directly with America in 2013 by saying Iran needed to show “heroic flexibility” against an adversary. But in the face of unenforced sanctions throughout 2021 and 2022, Khamenei felt comfortable enough to make American diplomats sit in different rooms, or as some analysts have called it, at “the kiddie table,” amid talks to resurrect the 2015 nuclear deal. Clearly, when the balance shifts, the regime grows more aggressive and is able to act on its ideological impulses.

Therefore, a coherent Iran policy, be it from Washington, Jerusalem, or any other capital finding itself the target of the Islamic Republic’s critiques, should begin not with putting words in the mouths of Iranian leaders, but rather with listening to what is being said and seeing what is being done.

After all, this is exactly the stratagem that U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken sought to employ against Putin when the secretary addressed the UN Security Council in New York this February. Say—“with no qualification, equivocation, or deflection—that Russia will not invade Ukraine. State it clearly. State it plainly to the world. And then demonstrate it by sending your troops, your tanks, your planes back to their barracks and hangars and sending your diplomats to the negotiating table,” Blinken said.

Would the Islamic Republic ever state plainly, clearly, and with no qualification that Israel must not be destroyed and that it does not wish death upon America? And then act accordingly? If you are laughing, it means you have been listening to Iranian leaders all along.

When Iran Says ‘Death to Israel,’ It Means It

Analysts too often assume that autocrats obscure the goals they wish to achieve. The historical record suggests that we should take them at face value.

By Behnam Ben Taleblu

The Atlantic · by Behnam Ben Taleblu · July 15, 2022

In the days leading up to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, distinguished journalists, analysts, and activists argued that Russian President Vladimir Putin was unlikely to green-light an assault that could go wrong in so many ways and instead might be bluffing. They employed a variety of political rationales to explain away the military buildup and escalating rhetoric. At the core of each explanation lay a troika of errors: denuding an adversary of agency, engaging in mirror-imaging, and, perhaps most of all, projecting a separate and more palatable logic onto the grim reality painted by the words and actions of a foreign leader.

Many people who should know better assume that political leaders obscure the goals they wish to achieve or muddle the ideas that animate them, even though the historical record suggests the wisdom of taking them at face value. Clearly the world should have heeded Adolf Hitler’s anti-Semitism during his rise to power in Germany in the 1930s, and Osama bin Laden’s declaration of jihad against America in 1996.

Seen in this light, Russia’s ongoing war against Ukraine offers an inflection point for policy makers, journalists, and lay observers to stop misjudging adversaries by disregarding what they have said plainly and publicly. Now would be a prudent time to survey where else invective from world leaders could trigger a calamitous conflict.

There may be no better example of this than Iranian leaders’ quest to destroy Israel.

Despite the sheer volume of anti-Israel and anti-Semitic statements emanating from the country’s two supreme leaders in the 43 years since the Islamic revolution in Iran, the notion that Tehran’s Islamist rulers seek the destruction of Israel has often been caveated, belittled, or politically recast.

Perhaps most famous is the case of former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who called for Israel’s destruction in 2005 when paraphrasing a line from the founding father of the Islamic Republic, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. Quite literally, Ahmadinejad said, “The occupying regime of Jerusalem must be disappeared from the page of time.” His quote became the subject of a translation controversy and political debate following its popularly rendered but more figurative translation as calling for Israel to be “wiped off the map”—which not just American, but Iranian state-run English-language outlets employed.

While hawks and doves deliberated over the authenticity of the phrase wiped off the map, they glossed over the most important and operative term in both quotes. Ahmadinejad and Khomeini used the word bayad, which means “must,” giving their sentences a clear and commanding ethos. The quote contained no conditionality, and in Khomeini’s original statement, it was used to draw a sharp contrast between the policy of the new revolutionary government in Iran toward Israel and those of Muslim nations who sought normalization with the Jewish state.

Predictably, the dispute over verbiage obscured what could have been an important opportunity to see the connective tissue between generations of political elite in the Islamic Republic and their consistent views on Israel. Worse, the translation debacle needlessly divorced Ahmadinejad’s comments from his role as the president of a state that materially supports groups (and has only grown bolder about) seeking to expedite exactly what the conference he spoke at was titled: “A World Without Zionism.”

The incident remains instructive in the history of Western misunderstandings of the Islamic Republic because it shows how debates, even over a foreign language, can end up revealing more about outside analysts and their views than those whom they purport to understand.

The Ahmadinejad quote isn’t an isolated example, either. The Islamic Republic emblazons Death to Israel on banners in official processions, fires ballistic missiles against targets shaped like the Star of David, displays and flight-tests ballistic missiles with genocidal slogans against Israel in Hebrew, struck a mock-up of Israel’s nuclear reactor with drones and ballistic missiles in a military drill, and denigrates Israeli and American icons in military parades.

Some Iranian media outlets have even taken to calling the country’s medium-range ballistic missiles—all of which surpass known weight/range thresholds to be classified as strategic or nuclear-capable platforms—“Israel-hitting missiles” referring to the upper range of these projectiles, which is about the distance between Iran and Israel. Greater clarity still is provided by the name of the elite foreign-operations arm of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), a U.S.-designated foreign terrorist organization: the Quds Force, with Quds meaning “Jerusalem” in Arabic.

The Quds Force serves as the central nervous system in Iran’s global terror apparatus and emerged from a hodgepodge of organizations with conflicting missions vying for control of Iran’s covert operations in the 1980s. Driving the point home about liberating Jerusalem, Iran marks Quds Day, a holiday created in the late ’80s by Khomeini to cement his regime’s anti-Israel and pro-Palestinian bona fides. Celebrated on the last Friday of the holy month of Ramadan in the Islamic calendar, the day is filled with parades and fiery speeches against Israel.

Last but not least, the destruction of Israel is normalized in Iranian political parlance and is reinforced through a plethora of “Death to Israel” chants, as well as by comments from military officials and clerics, by press releases and videos from media outlets, and, perhaps most damning, by the current supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, even via Twitter. During his three-plus decades at the helm, Khamenei has continued and expanded Khomeini’s anti-Israel rhetoric and policies. Just two years after becoming supreme leader, Khamenei declared, “Our view regarding the issue of Palestine is clear and obvious. We believe the solution to Palestine is in destroying the Israeli regime. Don’t say that it can’t be done; there is no ‘can’t be done’ in the world. All the great mountains that serve as impediments to the movement of people can be moved.”

Supporting armed resistance has been a ubiquitous theme in Khamenei’s speeches on Israel. And as the individual most responsible for Iran’s foreign and security policy, Khamenei has lived up to his promise. Referring to Iranian support for terrorist groups like Lebanese Hezbollah and Hamas in Gaza, in 2012 Khamenei proclaimed, “We explicitly state where we intervene. We intervened in anti-Israel cases.” In that same address, Khamenei also re-upped his belief that “the Zionist regime in this region is truly a cancerous tumor, and it must be cut and shall be cut.” Khamenei continues to call Israel a “cancerous tumor” that must be excised.

While it may be lost on some observers that the Islamic Republic believes it is charged with helping bring about Israel’s end, it is not lost on those in positions of authority in Iran, such as Major General Hossein Salami, who serves as commander of the IRGC. In 2019, Salami declared, “This sinister regime must be eliminated from the geographies of the world.” A slightly more figurative translation? Israel must be wiped off the map.

Seen from the perspective of Iran’s Islamist rulers, an anti-Israel stance has both strategic and ideational benefits. Clearly, it has helped Tehran compete for (and in more recent times, against) Sunni Muslim and Arab hearts and minds by claiming the mantle of champion of the Palestinian cause. In so doing, Persian and Shiite Iran has been able to punch above its weight against the established order in the Middle East. But to treat the revolutionary regime’s anti-Israel and anti-Semitic views as ornamental, or merely a veil for realpolitik or machtpolitik, misses the forest for the trees. Worse, it also risks making the same mistake as analysts did with respect to Putin: to not take the words coming out of a foreign leader’s mouth seriously, and in so doing, robbing an adversary of agency.

The leader most responsible for the ascendance of these views in Iran today is none other than the Islamic Republic’s founder, Ayatollah Khomeini.

Khomeini cut his teeth in opposition to Israel well before the 1979 revolution, just as much as in opposition to the U.S. and to the U.S.-supported shah of Iran. In 1963, mere months after the initiation of the shah’s modernization program, known as the “White Revolution,” Khomeini protested the policy from the pulpit in Qom. There he preached that Israel “wishes to seize your economy, to destroy your trade and agriculture and to appropriate your wealth leaving this country without.”

Predictably pushed into exile, Khomeini refined these views in a series of speeches that became the basis for his book Islamic Government. He declared: “If the rulers of the Muslim countries truly represented the believers and enacted God’s ordinances, they would set aside their petty differences, abandon their subversive and divisive activities, and join together like the fingers of one hand. Then a handful of wretched Jews (the agents of America, Britain, and other foreign powers) would never have been able to accomplish what they have, no matter how much support they enjoyed from America and Britain.”

Khomeini’s conspiratorial view about Israel being a tool of Western colonial interests has long been socialized across the Islamic Republic. In 2001, Khamenei opted to peddle themes beyond Israel’s illegitimacy to invoke soft Holocaust denial, claiming, “There is evidence proving that the Zionists had close ties with the German Nazis, and the exaggerated statistics that were released on the number of Jewish victims during World War II were aimed at drawing public sympathy and preparing the ground for the occupation of Palestine and justifying the Zionist crimes.” In 2002, Iran’s now-deceased Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, who served as president for eight years (1989–97), declared, “The continuity of Israel depends on the interests of [the] Arrogance (U.S.) and colonialism, and as long as this base is useful and has value for colonialism, they will preserve [Israel].”

For those inclined to downplay this history and such statements as “cheap talk” masquerading in place of what really matters in foreign policy—hard power and action—the popular Persian idiom “How can hearing be like seeing?” will offer no solace.

The Islamic Republic has been turning its ideas into action since its very inception in 1979. Whether it be by hosting Yasser Arafat of the Palestine Liberation Organization as the revolutionary regime’s first foreign dignitary; inspiring groups like Palestinian Islamic Jihad; supporting the second intifada through the Karine A affair, as well as the slaughter of Syrians by Bashar al-Assad’s forces because that nation occupies a vital part of Iran’s logistical land bridge in the Levant against Israel; or bolstering Hezbollah’s and Hamas’s rocket arsenals and production capabilities, the Islamic Republic’s anti-Israel policies amount to both statecraft and soulcraft.

Always intended for export, Iran’s Islamic revolution was and remains aided through Tehran’s skillful creation, co-option, and control of terror and proxy groups abroad. What in the 1980s appeared as an array of actors has now matured into a full-fledged alliance system benefiting from Iranian financial, political, and military support. This axis has its own vision of regional order wherein Israel does not exist, rival Muslim powers are cowed, and the American presence is routed or marginalized into irrelevance. While the axis threatens maritime navigation, launches projectiles at civilian centers, and baits and bleeds adversaries, the chief strategic dividends it offers Tehran are insulation from blowback and the masking of Iranian involvement so as to ensure that the regime can live to fight another day. Arming the axis allows Iran to target actors indirectly and without suffering consequences.

But just because Iran has been patient and works through proxies in its quest to bring about the end of the Jewish state does not mean its intentions are any less genocidal. Although much was made during the Ahmadinejad presidency (2005–13) about an irrational Islamic Republic seeking a nuclear bomb, trend lines from the past four decades of Iranian foreign and security policy show that one might have just as much, if not more, to fear from a regime that is means-ends rational, recalibrates in response to external stimuli, and imposes costs when the opportunity presents itself.

On Quds Day last year, Khamenei seeded the assertion that Israel and the “Axis of Resistance” are on opposite trajectories, with Israel facing a “downward movement” and the axis facing a “bright future” due to, among other factors, “an increase in defensive and military power, [and] self-sufficiency in building effective weapons.” One specific example Khamenei gave was the evolution of Palestinian long-range strike capabilities, an evolution that many analysts believe Tehran to be responsible for. “One day, Palestinian youths would defend themselves by throwing stones, but today they reply to the enemy with precision-guided missiles,” Khamenei said.

More broadly, the proliferation of Iranian proxy groups appearing on Israel’s borders is no accident, nor is the growth of their mortar, rocket, drone, and missile arsenals. These moves are designed to steadily reduce Israel’s policy options when contesting both Iranian and proxy military power. Over time, erosion of the regional balance aims to make the Jewish state believe that the path of least resistance will mean submission, or else.

A nuclear-armed Iran underwritten by a lethal proxy network like the Axis of Resistance would embolden the Islamic Republic to press its ideological mission as well as enforce any outcome. Under a nuclear umbrella, Khamenei might feel tempted to first force Israel to commit national suicide through a demographically stacked referendum. Khamenei’s website has even eerily termed this “the final solution.”

Raising the chance of nuclear use anywhere above zero establishes the grim possibility of the Islamic Republic acting on its stated principles. As Rafsanjani said in 2001, free of any reference to the logic of mutual assured destruction, “If one day the Islamic world is reciprocally equipped with the weapons that Israel has, on that day the Arrogance’s strategy will reach a dead end, because the use of one atomic bomb in Israel leaves nothing left, but in the Islamic world, there will only be damage.”

Still, there will be those who, even in the face of such consistent foreign-policy behavior and overt declarations, are likely to shrug their shoulders. For these observers, structure, and not agency, is the most important force in international relations, and therefore Iranian foreign and declaratory policy reads merely as an attempt to respond to perceived Israeli threats and is thus a reflection of the dog-eat-dog reality of Middle East politics.

Although these statements are the views and desires of the Islamic Republic’s political and military elite, they do not represent the broader Iranian population. For their part, the Iranian people are protesting and bringing the regime’s anti-Israel and revolutionary foreign policy into their crosshairs, chanting “No to Gaza, no to Lebanon, I sacrifice my life for Iran”; “Palestine, Syria, make us miserable”; and “Forget Syria; think about us.”

Yet the transnational and Islamist nature of Iran’s governmental priorities, in contravention of the wishes and values of its citizens, is a design, not a defect, of the Islamic Republic. After all, Khomeini himself was hostile to the concept of nationalism as popularly defined, and said that “nationalist people are of no need to us; Muslim people are.”

For every anti-Israel utterance from the mouths of Iran’s Islamist elite, there is equal chapter and verse, if not more, said about America. “Death to America” is chanted alongside “Death to Israel.” American flags are burned alongside Israeli ones. Iran’s proxies target American military installations across the region with the help of the IRGC, and the IRGC directly harasses American naval vessels in the Persian Gulf and Strait of Hormuz. And as is evident in both the Israeli and American cases, every opportunity afforded to the regime to safely snub or spite its adversary or to escalate against it without incurring serious retribution or ruin is taken.

Under sanctions pressure, Khamenei authorized Iranian diplomats to negotiate directly with America in 2013 by saying Iran needed to show “heroic flexibility” against an adversary. But in the face of unenforced sanctions throughout 2021 and 2022, Khamenei felt comfortable enough to make American diplomats sit in different rooms, or as some analysts have called it, at “the kiddie table,” amid talks to resurrect the 2015 nuclear deal. Clearly, when the balance shifts, the regime grows more aggressive and is able to act on its ideological impulses.

Therefore, a coherent Iran policy, be it from Washington, Jerusalem, or any other capital finding itself the target of the Islamic Republic’s critiques, should begin not with putting words in the mouths of Iranian leaders, but rather with listening to what is being said and seeing what is being done.

After all, this is exactly the stratagem that U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken sought to employ against Putin when the secretary addressed the UN Security Council in New York this February. Say—“with no qualification, equivocation, or deflection—that Russia will not invade Ukraine. State it clearly. State it plainly to the world. And then demonstrate it by sending your troops, your tanks, your planes back to their barracks and hangars and sending your diplomats to the negotiating table,” Blinken said.

Would the Islamic Republic ever state plainly, clearly, and with no qualification that Israel must not be destroyed and that it does not wish death upon America? And then act accordingly? If you are laughing, it means you have been listening to Iranian leaders all along.

The Atlantic · by Behnam Ben Taleblu · July 15, 2022

27. Hamas Wants to Rule the West Bank

Excerpts:

While it’s not clear how successful Iran’s policy of arming the West Bank has been, Iran has successfully flooded Israel with arms via Hizballah smuggling routes in southern Lebanon. The deluge of weapons has resulted in an escalation of gun violence within the Arab Israeli community, including assassinations related to organized crime, and murder.

During President Joe Biden’s upcoming visit to Israel and the West Bank, he should make clear that Abbas is not doing enough to ensure stability when he eventually steps down. Despite all sides’ many grievances and the enduring stalemate in Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, the U.S., PA, and Israelis must make a colossal and coordinated effort to crush the illicit networks that finance arms transfers and maintain the smuggling routes that Hamas relies on. Failure to do so may result in an Iran-backed terrorist regime along Israel’s eastern flank, waiting for an opportunity to strike.

Hamas Wants to Rule the West Bank

Enia Krivine

Posted: Jul 15, 2022 12:01 AM

The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of Townhall.com.

Conservative news, politics, opinion, breaking news analysis, political cartoons and commentary – Townhall · by Enia Krivine

Earlier this week, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh met for the first time since 2016 while both were in Algiers. However, reconciliation between the competing factions is less likely than ever following a month of tensions, during which Fatah accused Hamas of seeking to seize the West Bank by force.

Fatah levelled those accusations after PA security forces thwarted an attempt by Hamas to blow up a security installation in the West Bank. The security forces discovered several kilograms of explosives in an underground weapons cache near the small town of Beintunia, outside Ramallah. According to PA sources, an inadvertent explosion led PA security forces to uncover the alleged plot which included plans to strike the PA headquarters. The attempted attack is a clear indication of Hamas’s desire to take over the West Bank and establish yet another Iran-backed regime to threaten the Jewish State.

The thwarted attack came as new were circulating that the aged and ailing PA president may finally have been preparing to step down, ending his 17-year rule. Abbas has already overstayed his term by 13 years, and (rumors aside) it is unclear whether he intends to willingly retire anytime soon. What is certain is that Abbas’s departure will lead to a contested and potentially bloody succession battle. The foiled attack on PA headquarters signals Hamas’ readiness to exploit instability in the West Bank and potentially establish its control there.

It was no coincidence that the failed Hamas strike coincided with the fifteenth anniversary of a similar strike in Gaza that marked a turning point in the Hamas-PA civil war that ended with Hamas in control of the enclave. The war resulted in hundreds of Palestinian casualties, including deaths caused by tossing adversaries from the roofs of 15-story buildings, and deliberate gunshots to the kneecaps of prisoners, crippling the victims for life. Since Hamas’s 2007 takeover in Gaza, the Iran-backed terror organization has fired thousands of rockets at Israeli civilians, launched four major conflicts, and perpetrated cross-border abductions of Israeli soldiers.

Israel has kept a lid on the threat from Gaza, sealing it off via stringent military blockade, close cooperation with Egypt to keep the borders secure, employing an advanced missile defense system to protect against rockets, and a high-tech security barrier to prevent Hamas from digging terror tunnels into Israel. However, the prospect of a similar terror threat along Israel’s boundary with the West Bank – a somewhat porous and winding 700-kilometer barrier – should be extremely troubling for Israel, since it cannot countenance an Iranian backed terror organization within easy rocket range of Israel’s population center, international airport, and major infrastructure.

The thwarted June attack should also serve as a wakeup call to Mahmoud Abbas, who has not done nearly enough to cultivate a credible successor. Recent polling indicates Abbas’s approval rate in the West Bank hovers below 30%, while over 70% of respondents want him to resign. Abbas’s tendency to consolidate power and inability (or resistance) to appointing an heir apparent has led to the dire leadership crisis the PA faces today. Meanwhile, Hamas, at Iran’s urging, continues to strengthen its networks and capabilities in the West Bank.

As a result of this leadership crisis, and a prevailing sense of insecurity in the West Bank, the territory has seen a troubling uptick in arms proliferation and resulting violence, as families and clans prepare for the chaos that will ensue when Abbas either steps down or is incapacitated. So much so, that in 2020, a Palestinian human rights organization issued a warning about an ongoing arms race in the West Bank.

Since at least 2014, it has been Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei’s stated policy to arm the West Bank “just like Gaza”. Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps chief, Hossein Salami reiterated the policy shortly after. Furthermore, in 2019 Iran-aligned Arab journalist Mohammad Sadeq Al-Hosseini announced that Iran is arming Palestinians in Gaza, the West Bank, and also Israeli Arabs within Israel’s 1948 borders.

Matt Vespa

While it’s not clear how successful Iran’s policy of arming the West Bank has been, Iran has successfully flooded Israel with arms via Hizballah smuggling routes in southern Lebanon. The deluge of weapons has resulted in an escalation of gun violence within the Arab Israeli community, including assassinations related to organized crime, and murder.

During President Joe Biden’s upcoming visit to Israel and the West Bank, he should make clear that Abbas is not doing enough to ensure stability when he eventually steps down. Despite all sides’ many grievances and the enduring stalemate in Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, the U.S., PA, and Israelis must make a colossal and coordinated effort to crush the illicit networks that finance arms transfers and maintain the smuggling routes that Hamas relies on. Failure to do so may result in an Iran-backed terrorist regime along Israel’s eastern flank, waiting for an opportunity to strike.

Enia Krivine is the senior director of the Israel Program and the FDD National Security Network at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Follow Enia on Twitter at @EKrivine.

Conservative news, politics, opinion, breaking news analysis, political cartoons and commentary – Townhall · by Enia Krivine

De Oppresso Liber,

David Maxwell

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If you do not read anything else in the 2017 National Security Strategy read this on page 14:

"A democracy is only as resilient as its people. An informed and engaged citizenry is the fundamental requirement for a free and resilient nation. For generations, our society has protected free press, free speech, and free thought. Today, actors such as Russia are using information tools in an attempt to undermine the legitimacy of democracies. Adversaries target media, political processes, financial networks, and personal data. The American public and private sectors must recognize this and work together to defend our way of life. No external threat can be allowed to shake our shared commitment to our values, undermine our system of government, or divide our Nation."

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