The EU must seize Russia’s frozen assets, Maria Malmer Stenergard believes, because any other solution would be unfair to Ukraine’s biggest backers.

Nordic countries can't keep taking on a disproportionate share of supporting Ukraine, Sweden's foreign minister warned in an interview with POLITICO.

"A few countries take almost all of the burden," Maria Malmer Stenergard said on her way into a gathering of foreign ministers in Brussels. "That is not fair and it's not sustainable in the long run."

She added: "The fact that the Nordic countries, with less than 30 million people, we provide for one-third of the military support that the NATO countries, with almost 1 billion people, provide this year ... This is not sustainable. It's not reasonable in any way. And it says a lot about what the Nordics do — but it says even more about what the others don't do."

Israeli air strikes pummelled the besieged Gaza Strip on Wednesday, killing at least 33 Palestinians, including 20 women and children, less than 48 hours after the UN Security Council adopted US President Donald Trump's 20-point plan for the enclave.

Israeli fighter jets bombed tents sheltering displaced Palestinians in southern Gaza’s Khan Younis, as well as homes in Gaza City, with more than 70 people reported wounded.

Shelling and air strikes were also reported on Thursday morning, with most of the casualties reported in Khan Younis, local media reported.

The Palestinian group Hamas condemned the latest "massacre" and described it as "a dangerous escalation through which [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu seeks to resume the genocide."

cross-posted from: https://scribe.disroot.org/post/5699302

Archived version

The UK’s national security adviser Jonathan Powell before taking up his current role co-hosted and attended events with a Beijing think-tank with experts linked to China’s intelligence agencies, according to western analysts.

The Grandview Institution (GVI), whose experts met Powell on at least four occasions when he was head of his peace negotiation consultancy Inter Mediate, is privately incorporated and says it is “independent”.

But according to research from the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, corroborated by publicly available information, a number of GVI’s senior staff have current or past links with China’s Ministry of State Security, the country’s primary foreign spy agency, and to military intelligence.

“GVI has remarkable convening power for an unofficial think-tank, arranging meetings for government and military delegations from around the world with senior Chinese government and party officials,” said Bethany Allen, head of China investigations at ASPI.

The links of some of GVI’s personnel to civilian and military intelligence organisations were “not normal for an unofficial think-tank”, Allen said.

ASPI’s research comes amid heightened anxiety in the UK about Chinese influence and espionage. A high-profile case against two Britons accused of spying for Beijing collapsed last month and UK domestic spy agency MI5 warned on Tuesday that China’s intelligence services were targeting people who work in parliament.

The research also highlights the multiple roles played by Chinese think-tanks, which include acting as important channels of communication between foreigners and Beijing policymakers while also promoting Chinese Communist party agendas.

...

UK officials pointed out that Powell had worked on China-related matters since being involved in negotiations on Hong Kong 30 years ago, and that people working with Beijing were well aware Grandview was an “interlocutor” for the Chinese government.

“The idea you can engage with China without speaking to people with close links to the CCP is not a serious position,” one UK official said.

...

GVI was founded by Ren Libo, a former reporter for China’s state media agency Xinhua, according to his biography on the GVI website. But Aspi’s Allen said Ren’s role appeared to be more as a convener for other key figures at GVI.

GVI’s academic committee director Zhang Tuosheng has had a long career with People’s Liberation Army academic institutions and served in China’s UK embassy, according to his publicly available biographical details. He has also chaired the academic committee of the China Foundation for International Strategic Studies (CFISS), which western analysts say is PLA-affiliated. Zhang said he left CFISS several years ago and said the foundation had no relationship with GVI.

...

GVI’s academic committee deputy director Ouyang Wei has also been a director of the China Association for International Friendly Contact, according to publicly available biographical information. CAIFC’s website says it is controlled by the foreign and civil affairs ministries, but western analysts and a 2011 US congressional report have said it is a front for the PLA’s international liaison department, which collects intelligence and conducts Chinese propaganda and perception management campaigns.

...

A former vice-president of GVI is Tian Shichen, whose long military career before retiring included stints in intelligence and at the Central Military Commission, the PLA supreme leadership body, according to his publicly available biographical information.

...

GVI’s senior research fellow Li Wei also serves as the assistant to the president of China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations, according to GVI’s website. CICIR is a think-tank under the MSS, which runs the country’s spy agency, Chinese state media has reported in the past.

...

While think-tanks everywhere sometimes employ former members of the military and intelligence services, in democratic political systems they can still be independent from the governing political party, analysts say.

In China’s one-party state, by contrast, particularly under President Xi Jinping, who has called for “think-tanks with Chinese characteristics”, the room for public debate or independent policy outreach is highly restricted.

“We must uphold the Party’s leadership,” Xi said in an article on building a “new type” of think-tank in 2014.

...

Peter Mattis, president of the Jamestown Foundation and a former counter-intelligence analyst at the CIA, said Chinese think-tanks typically had two main external uses: cover for espionage and “to provide an alternative way to convincingly deliver talking points”.

...

cross-posted from: https://scribe.disroot.org/post/5699302

Archived version

The UK’s national security adviser Jonathan Powell before taking up his current role co-hosted and attended events with a Beijing think-tank with experts linked to China’s intelligence agencies, according to western analysts.

The Grandview Institution (GVI), whose experts met Powell on at least four occasions when he was head of his peace negotiation consultancy Inter Mediate, is privately incorporated and says it is “independent”.

But according to research from the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, corroborated by publicly available information, a number of GVI’s senior staff have current or past links with China’s Ministry of State Security, the country’s primary foreign spy agency, and to military intelligence.

“GVI has remarkable convening power for an unofficial think-tank, arranging meetings for government and military delegations from around the world with senior Chinese government and party officials,” said Bethany Allen, head of China investigations at ASPI.

The links of some of GVI’s personnel to civilian and military intelligence organisations were “not normal for an unofficial think-tank”, Allen said.

ASPI’s research comes amid heightened anxiety in the UK about Chinese influence and espionage. A high-profile case against two Britons accused of spying for Beijing collapsed last month and UK domestic spy agency MI5 warned on Tuesday that China’s intelligence services were targeting people who work in parliament.

The research also highlights the multiple roles played by Chinese think-tanks, which include acting as important channels of communication between foreigners and Beijing policymakers while also promoting Chinese Communist party agendas.

...

UK officials pointed out that Powell had worked on China-related matters since being involved in negotiations on Hong Kong 30 years ago, and that people working with Beijing were well aware Grandview was an “interlocutor” for the Chinese government.

“The idea you can engage with China without speaking to people with close links to the CCP is not a serious position,” one UK official said.

...

GVI was founded by Ren Libo, a former reporter for China’s state media agency Xinhua, according to his biography on the GVI website. But Aspi’s Allen said Ren’s role appeared to be more as a convener for other key figures at GVI.

GVI’s academic committee director Zhang Tuosheng has had a long career with People’s Liberation Army academic institutions and served in China’s UK embassy, according to his publicly available biographical details. He has also chaired the academic committee of the China Foundation for International Strategic Studies (CFISS), which western analysts say is PLA-affiliated. Zhang said he left CFISS several years ago and said the foundation had no relationship with GVI.

...

GVI’s academic committee deputy director Ouyang Wei has also been a director of the China Association for International Friendly Contact, according to publicly available biographical information. CAIFC’s website says it is controlled by the foreign and civil affairs ministries, but western analysts and a 2011 US congressional report have said it is a front for the PLA’s international liaison department, which collects intelligence and conducts Chinese propaganda and perception management campaigns.

...

A former vice-president of GVI is Tian Shichen, whose long military career before retiring included stints in intelligence and at the Central Military Commission, the PLA supreme leadership body, according to his publicly available biographical information.

...

GVI’s senior research fellow Li Wei also serves as the assistant to the president of China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations, according to GVI’s website. CICIR is a think-tank under the MSS, which runs the country’s spy agency, Chinese state media has reported in the past.

...

While think-tanks everywhere sometimes employ former members of the military and intelligence services, in democratic political systems they can still be independent from the governing political party, analysts say.

In China’s one-party state, by contrast, particularly under President Xi Jinping, who has called for “think-tanks with Chinese characteristics”, the room for public debate or independent policy outreach is highly restricted.

“We must uphold the Party’s leadership,” Xi said in an article on building a “new type” of think-tank in 2014.

...

Peter Mattis, president of the Jamestown Foundation and a former counter-intelligence analyst at the CIA, said Chinese think-tanks typically had two main external uses: cover for espionage and “to provide an alternative way to convincingly deliver talking points”.

...

This is Dystopian AF!

For those who don't Aadhar is a govt ID card for its citizens that doesn't do shit, is unsecured like shit, and doesn't even prove anything about you in legal terms.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.nz/post/30819845

i have a oneplus 9 (LE2113, if that matters) and the battery is starting to give. i'll try to have it replaced when it goes fully unusable but i'd like to already have a replacement in mind so i don't risk going without a phone for too long. any recommendations?

my current phone has never been slow, so i don't really care for a more powerful hardware.
i would like one from a brand with as little software bullshit as possible though (i've seen the horrors of redmi software and want to stay as far away from That as possible).

and in case anyone is wondering, i'm not brave enough to try rooting my main phone lol.

any help would be greatly appreciated

edit: i don't know if i worded myself poorly but by 'rooting' i also mean installing a third party os. i would like a phone that is not awful out of the box if such a thing exists.

Hi guys!

I'm looking for a replacement travel dongle to play my Jellyfin movies whenever I'm traveling. My goto device up to this point has been a Chromecast (with GTV I think). But it's becoming increasingly clear its playback is very unreliable, hanging mid-playback for long periods. I blamed it initially on bandwidth issues over very long distances (the server is on a different continent at the moment!). But playing on the laptop via browser or via the jellyfin media player flatpak works just beautifully. So it clearly seems to be issues with the Chromecast as it's connected to the same Wifi and TV as the laptop.

So I am thinking...what other devices could I look into as Chromecast replacement? There's over 3yr old recommendations about a Walmart device (but I don't live anywhere near the American continent). The other go-to device would be an Nvidia Shield, the canister-looking one. But that still seems a bit hefty for traveling. After all these years, is there any device you'd recommend to use as light-to-bring dongle for traveling?

Thanks!

They convert energy to movement more than heat, but I don’t know how significant a warming factor body heat is generally.

cross-posted from: https://scribe.disroot.org/post/5697633

A former Philippines mayor who was accused of spying for China has been found guilty of human trafficking for her role in running a scam centre.

On Thursday, she and three others were sentenced to life in prison and a fine of 2m pesos ($33,832; £25,942).

The case of Alice Guo has gripped the Philippines for years, after authorities uncovered one of the country's biggest scam centres in her small town of Bamban. Some 800 Filipinos and foreigners were later rescued from the scam hub after a raid, with many of them saying they were forced to run "pig butchering" scams.

The 35-year-old, who was arrested last year after being on the run for weeks, has denied all allegations against her.

It is not yet clear if she might appeal.

There are still five ongoing cases against Guo, including one where she has been charged with money laundering.

...

In 2022, Guo was elected as the mayor of Bamban, north of the capital Manila. Residents of Bamban earlier told the BBC she was seen as a caring and empathetic leader.

But in 2024, the sleepy town was thrust into the national spotlight after authorities uncovered a sprawling scam centre there that was hiding under online casinos, known locally as Philippine Online Gaming Operations (Pogo).

Pogos cater to clients in the Chinese mainland, where gambling is illegal.

Guo initially denied all knowledge of the compound, but a senate investigation that followed questioned her inability to detect the eight hectare centre that was located near her office.

It later emerged that the compound - which contained 36 buildings - was built on land which Guo previously owned.

They also found discrepancies in her life story – she was not, as she had claimed, born in the Philippines, but had migrated from China with her family as a teenager. MPs later found that her fingerprints matched those of a Chinese national named Guo Hua Ping.

...

cross-posted from: https://scribe.disroot.org/post/5697622

Archived version

Chinese intelligence officers attempted to recruit “thousands” of people linked to Westminster in a vast online operation that specifically targeted the “weak underbelly of parliament”, Whitehall sources have said.

Officials believe the agents used two recruitment “headhunters”, Amanda Qiu and Shirly Shen, to contact parliamentary staff, advisers and policy specialists as part of a “scattergun” effort o identify people with access to sensitive political information. The pair were highlighted, sources said, because they were allegedly the most prolific among a wider group of Chinese intelligence assets still operating.

“They kissed a lot of frogs,” one Whitehall source said. “This was a widespread scattergun targeting. They certainly sent out thousands of approaches. Some of it was dismissed as spam but it was an effort spread far and wide. They only need one out of hundreds to respond; that’s a win for them.”

...

MI5 told MPs and peers that China was offering “large financial incentives for seemingly low-level information” as a way of building relationships and encouraging targets to provide “non-public sensitive information”. Those approached included advisers to former Conservative ministers, including an ex-chancellor, advisers to Labour ministers, officials and researchers at several think tanks, among them the Tony Blair Institute.

The agency said China was attempting to “cultivate” people who were “one step removed” from high-priority parliamentary figures, and urged MPs to be wary of “unusual questions” from colleagues or contacts that might indicate intelligence-gathering.

...

Ordinary Britons should also be cautious about unsolicited online contact from potential Chinese intelligence operatives, the defence minister said.

...

In a letter to MPs, Sir Lindsay Hoyle, the Commons speaker, said it was of the “utmost importance” that everyone working in parliament understood “how this activity happens and how to protect ourselves against it”. Chinese state entities, he said, were “relentless” in seeking to influence Westminster.

Qiu, chief executive of BR-YR Executive Search, and Shen, co-founder of the Internship Union, have been identified by MI5 as operating LinkedIn accounts used by the Ministry of State Security to “conduct outreach at scale”. Officials believe the pair were specifically tasked with approaching people working in parliament, while other Chinese operatives are deployed against academics, the military, scientific institutions and private industry.

...

Among those contacted was a staff member in the office of Neil O’Brien, the Conservative MP and head of policy for Kemi Badenoch, who has been sanctioned by Beijing. The aide received a message from Shen offering remote consultancy work and praising them as an “excellent candidate”. James Price, a former special adviser to Nadhim Zahawi when he was chancellor, received a similar unsolicited approach framed as a “professional headhunting” opportunity. Both ignored the messages.

...

In September the case collapsed against two men accused of spying for China, Christopher Cash and Christopher Berry, in which prosecutors alleged they had passed information to Beijing. The pair deny wrongdoing.

The National Protective Security Authority, part of MI5, said last month that Chinese agents were posting fake job adverts online to lure British professionals into handing over secret material. Thousands had already been identified.

...

cross-posted from: https://scribe.disroot.org/post/5697622

Archived version

Chinese intelligence officers attempted to recruit “thousands” of people linked to Westminster in a vast online operation that specifically targeted the “weak underbelly of parliament”, Whitehall sources have said.

Officials believe the agents used two recruitment “headhunters”, Amanda Qiu and Shirly Shen, to contact parliamentary staff, advisers and policy specialists as part of a “scattergun” effort o identify people with access to sensitive political information. The pair were highlighted, sources said, because they were allegedly the most prolific among a wider group of Chinese intelligence assets still operating.

“They kissed a lot of frogs,” one Whitehall source said. “This was a widespread scattergun targeting. They certainly sent out thousands of approaches. Some of it was dismissed as spam but it was an effort spread far and wide. They only need one out of hundreds to respond; that’s a win for them.”

...

MI5 told MPs and peers that China was offering “large financial incentives for seemingly low-level information” as a way of building relationships and encouraging targets to provide “non-public sensitive information”. Those approached included advisers to former Conservative ministers, including an ex-chancellor, advisers to Labour ministers, officials and researchers at several think tanks, among them the Tony Blair Institute.

The agency said China was attempting to “cultivate” people who were “one step removed” from high-priority parliamentary figures, and urged MPs to be wary of “unusual questions” from colleagues or contacts that might indicate intelligence-gathering.

...

Ordinary Britons should also be cautious about unsolicited online contact from potential Chinese intelligence operatives, the defence minister said.

...

In a letter to MPs, Sir Lindsay Hoyle, the Commons speaker, said it was of the “utmost importance” that everyone working in parliament understood “how this activity happens and how to protect ourselves against it”. Chinese state entities, he said, were “relentless” in seeking to influence Westminster.

Qiu, chief executive of BR-YR Executive Search, and Shen, co-founder of the Internship Union, have been identified by MI5 as operating LinkedIn accounts used by the Ministry of State Security to “conduct outreach at scale”. Officials believe the pair were specifically tasked with approaching people working in parliament, while other Chinese operatives are deployed against academics, the military, scientific institutions and private industry.

...

Among those contacted was a staff member in the office of Neil O’Brien, the Conservative MP and head of policy for Kemi Badenoch, who has been sanctioned by Beijing. The aide received a message from Shen offering remote consultancy work and praising them as an “excellent candidate”. James Price, a former special adviser to Nadhim Zahawi when he was chancellor, received a similar unsolicited approach framed as a “professional headhunting” opportunity. Both ignored the messages.

...

In September the case collapsed against two men accused of spying for China, Christopher Cash and Christopher Berry, in which prosecutors alleged they had passed information to Beijing. The pair deny wrongdoing.

The National Protective Security Authority, part of MI5, said last month that Chinese agents were posting fake job adverts online to lure British professionals into handing over secret material. Thousands had already been identified.

...

The core function of the planned EU Travel App is for the Council, the option for travellers to transmit their data to the responsible authorities before arriving at the border. This will allow border officials to verify travel documents remotely and also to compare them with police and migration databases.

Despite the promised travel facilitation, civil rights activists and data protectionists are urgently warning against the consequences of digitizing travel documents. They see it as an expansion of the biometric surveillance infrastructure at the EU level. The digital travel app initially provides for automated facial recognition for biometric identification, but it is likely to pave the way for comprehensive and automated collection and evaluation of biometric data. This would restrict freedom of travel in the long term.

560 out of a total of approximately 3200 employees at the Augsburg site will now lose their jobs.

Several Dutch seed producers, greenhouse builders and agricultural machinery suppliers remain active in Russia despite the invasion of Ukraine, according to an investigation by the NRC and Investico.

The NRC identified 10 Dutch agricultural firms that have attended Russian agricultural trade fairs in the past two years. Eight were present this week at YugAgro in Krasnodar, one of the sector’s largest events.

The Netherlands is the second-largest supplier of agricultural machinery to Russia after Germany, according to research by Wageningen University and national statistics office CBS.

Most Dutch companies operating in Russia now do so through local subsidiaries, which means they also pay tax in Russia. Some maintain Russian-language websites and marketing channels, including podcasts, the paper said.

The alleged abuses, including the torture and killing of dozens of civilians, took place at TotalEnergies' liquefied natural gas project in the restive northeastern Cabo Delgado province, the ECCHR said in a statement.