...

Both Russia and China are critical of the “international rules-based order”, a framework of liberal rules and political norms that emerged after the second world war. They see this order as western-centric and want to reshape the global order in their interest.

Military and economic collaboration form part of their efforts to challenge this order, but global media and online spaces are important too. Both states, for example, frequently disseminate stories that portray western countries as neo-colonial powers.

Another theme is that democracies are hypocritical actors who preach equality and fairness but do not practice it. Stories of a lack of unity in western alliances like Nato or the EU are also consistent in Russian and Chinese narration. Conversely, Russia and China are presented as logical and sane countries, seeking to protect other, more vulnerable nations from western exploitation.

...

It’s often the way a story is told that misleads. Details are withheld or taken out of context. Speculative information is presented as fact. This creates a distorted version of the truth.

The stories are often told in emotive terms in a bid to trigger our anger, shock, fear or resentment. For example, in the context of the war in Ukraine, disinformation might suggest that our governments are betraying us by getting involved in foreign wars, or that ordinary citizens are the ones paying the price for the ambitions of a corrupt elite.

They are laden with scandal and sensationalism, skipping nuance in favour of emotional resonance. This ensures the stories are shared and promoted across social media.

The truth can be complex and, at times, boring. Yet by capitalising on our tendency to gravitate towards the sensational, Russia and China can drip-feed a specific worldview into our own – where democracy is ineffective and chaotic and where they offer a fairer, functional future.

...

I used perchance.org/ai-chat, but they switched to a VERY crappy LLM now.

...

"Operations are being carried out to destroy the positive emotional ties between Poles and Ukrainians, fueling anti-Ukrainian sentiment in Poland," the General Staff of the Polish Armed Forces reported.

According to the statement, Russian narrative operations are creating "an atmosphere of fear and anxiety about Ukrainians' claims in Poland."

...

The General Staff noted that such activities include both direct actions – such as arson attacks on Ukrainian vehicles and defacing anti-war murals – and intensified online disinformation on websites and social media accounts spreading hatred toward Ukraine. An increase in anti-Ukrainian incidents has been observed in areas hosting weapon transfer or aid facilities for Ukraine, such as Gdynia and Gdansk.

According to the Polish General Staff, Russia's goal is "to sow fear and a sense of threat within Polish society over the presence of Ukrainians in Poland."

"In the Russian information sphere, this serves to spread the message that the attack on Ukraine is also an act of support for Poles seeking revenge for Volhynia – allegedly to improve Poland's perception of Russia's actions. Russia seeks to portray Ukrainians as a greater threat to Poland than Russia itself. The aim is to redirect public emotions toward Ukraine, leading Poles, in a desire to restore their comfort zone, to pressure their government into decisions that go against national interests," the statement said.

To counter this fear, the General Staff urged Polish citizens not to give in to emotions, emphasizing that these are not grounded in real threats.

...

The General Staff also recalled that "the distinction between the aggressor and the victim is clear."

"The aggressor lies in the east, and that is Russia. Distancing Poland from Ukraine will only make it easier for Russia to wage its war. Any actions that undermine support for Ukraine – whether narrative or emotional – serve to support Russian aggression," the post concluded.

Polish police earlier detained in Gdynia a pro-Russian anti-Ukrainian activist and livestreamer known as Piotr N., alias "Nazar."

Meanwhile, prosecutors questioned two suspects in the case of the torn Ukrainian flag from the honorary consulate building in Przemysl and charged them with "public insult of a national symbol" and "property damage."

...

"But if there's no actual hunny, what's the point of this "hunnypot"?"

No matter what you tell him, he just stays stuck on "but where's the actual hunny" type questions.

He was interviewed on Majority Report and Emma Vigeland promoted him on X as running to the left of Hochul. Krystal Ball also claimed he was a leftist.

As a former representative, he voted with Biden 100% of the time. Even Politico identified him as a moderate. He's also a former corporate lawyer.

In this interview, he denied to be labeled as a progressive.

It's unfortunate we don't have any other options. If only we could get Cynthia Nixon, Zephyr Teachout, or Jumaane Williams to run again.

Hi all, I'm just getting my feet wet in self hosting and have a plan to start with Nextcloud on a Pi 4 for photo backups, and then try other things for calendar, phone backups, media hosting, etc.

One thing I worry about is losing my data. I have heard "if it's not backed up in two locations, it's not backed up." I'm curious what all of you do for backing up the setup. Remote backup to hard drives in the garage? Pay for cloud backup and encrypt it? Just another backup site over wifi in the house?

I'd be most afraid of losing photos and if there were a house fire or something. So my inital thought was a way of backing up to a server in my detached garage in a weather resistent container, but I want to know what you all think. Thanks for any insight.

The eye is in the center where the beast state lives. You would have to triangulate further as a centrist to reach the dead center but you will never believe what you will find next! Click the center of to find out what happens next!

Looking to expand the community around Linux Prepper podcast and Living Cartoon Company. Tabled at #SeaGL20205 and considering more conferences in the future; will probably submit to give more presentations on creating theatre shows with Living Cartoon Company as well. Also seems like people have difficulty with notifications directly from Castopod, which is the fediverse actor at @linuxprepper@podcast.james.network

cross-posted from: https://scribe.disroot.org/post/5538882

Download report: Russia's Crime-Terror Nexus: Criminality as a Tool of Hybrid Warfare in Europe (pdf)

Russia has created a network of agents to conduct its hybrid war against Europe. The network brings together government agencies and organized crime and Russian-speaking men with criminal records are being recruited to carry out acts of sabotage, according to a study.

"The study situates Moscow's tactics against the backdrop of its full-scale war on Ukraine, showing that hybrid operations are not a side theatre but a central pillar of Russian strategy," the researchers explain in their introduction. They compared these tactics to the approach of the so-called "Islamic State" (ISIS) terror group that recruited "former criminals who went on to carry out violent attacks in the Levant and Europe." The researcher explained that "today, a new crime-terror nexus has emerged in Europe — this time orchestrated by a state actor – Russia."

The study, entitled "Russia's Crime-Terror Nexus: Criminality as a Tool of Hybrid Warfare in Europe," was conducted by the non-governmental organization GLOBSEC and the International Center for Counter-Terrorism (ICCT), which presented their findings in Brussels at a meeting of the Special Committee on the European Democracy Shield (EUDS).

...

They identified 131 perpetrators, of whom at least 35 had previous criminal involvement and were recruited through criminal organizations or from penal colonies. The overwhelming majority were male and the average age was 30. Most were Russian-speakers from a post-Soviet state and vulnerable in socio-economic terms, which led them to be motivated by financial compensation. "Financial incentives were decisive: payments ranged from a few euros for graffiti to substantial sums for attempted attacks on critical infrastructure."

...

The researchers highlighted that Russia's "hybrid operations are inseparable from illicit finance and sanctions evasion." It found that Moscow had turned to "shadow financial operations to move money covertly across borders, pay operatives, and sustain its war economy."

"These channels enable the Kremlin to bypass restrictions, while simultaneously embedding criminal networks deeper into its hybrid warfare strategy," the researchers said.

It further demonstrates that "illicit finance, criminality, and hybrid operations are not separate challenges but elements of a single playbook. Russia's kinetic campaign — bombings, arson, assassination plots — should be seen as both punishment for Europe's support to Ukraine and preparation for potential wider conflict."

...

The Russian government's use of criminals is nothing new, explained Dominika Hajdu from GLOBSEC, adding that people who "lived east of the Iron Curtain" still remembered how chronic supply shortages in the Soviet Union created and reinforced society's dependence on the shadow economy. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the fight against corruption was not a priority in Russia, unlike in other post-communist countries, she said. Instead, corrupt methods became the norm and the authorities' working method.

According to Hajdu, in 1994, there were over 500 criminal groups active in Russia and they controlled around 40,000 companies.

"In the early 2000s, representatives of the security services, including former officers of the KGB domestic intelligence, consolidated their control over the Russian state," she said. "And their connections to the criminal underworld became part of the state system."

...

A Palestinian man who was dismissed from his job in Gaza after the war broke out is suing the European Union for allegedly breaching Belgian law.

He had been evacuated to Cairo after the war broke out with the assistance of the EU and continued to work there, as did other colleagues in the West Bank.

But he was dismissed this year after the EU decided to close the office in Rafah due to the war.

In the claim submitted to a Brussels tribunal, his lawyer, Selma Benkhelifa, states that Baraka “does not criticise the decision to close the Rafah office” as “the security situation justifies this”.

However, she states that his EU counterparts, who also worked for EUBam in Rafah, “were not dismissed, they were transferred elsewhere” to continue work, giving alleged grounds for “discrimination on the basis of his nationality.”

Fedfree is a website aimed at teaching people how to run their own servers, of various kinds, on libre operating systems e.g. Linux and BSD. It aims to do this, using libre software exclusively, teaching people about the importance of libre software and hardware as it pertains to freedom; the right to use, study, adapt, share. The right to read. Universal access to knowledge... education. Education is the goal.

Fedfree's mission is to bring back the real internet to normal people, the one where you can have your own unique voice on the internet, without plugging into the hive mind that is websites like twitter or youtube.

Most of the internet's problems exist, precisely because of modern centralised providers holding us back from true innovation.

The goal is to spread libre software ideology, while providing a practical means for people to know how to conduct themselves, such as:

• Advice about how to start your own projects
• How to get into computer science, electronics and other computer-related fields... with a view towards libre ideology
• How to run and maintain your own infrastructure, free from interference, completely hardened against intrusion
• Link to resources, covering many different topics. For example, when to use FreeBSD vs OpenBSD or vice versa, or situations where Linux might be better, comparing various servers e.g. postfix vs opensmtpd
• Other examples of links to resources could include: links to books about programming languages, networking concepts, from beginner level all the way to BOFH (Bastard Operator From Hell)

The real internet exists. Fedfree's mission is to teach you how to use it. Every part of it. To most people, it is hidden. Your ISP might put you behind a CGNAT for example, or outright ban you from opening ports; one of Fedfree's goals is to teach you how to set up various kinds of tunnel connections e.g. SSH port forwarding, PPP over L2TP, Wireguard/OpenVPN, etc.

The mentality behind Fedfree is that all the organisations out there, like SFC, GNU, EFF, FSF... April... all these organisations are good, but they can only do so much. We as libre software activists must organise, but how? First, we need infrastructure, our own infrastructure that we control, and we need a charter that defines our movement. By definition, the libre movement is loose and free, where people can do whatever they like, but most people today use centralised hosting services like Github, which means we have huge single points of failure.

Download report: Russia's Crime-Terror Nexus: Criminality as a Tool of Hybrid Warfare in Europe (pdf)

Russia has created a network of agents to conduct its hybrid war against Europe. The network brings together government agencies and organized crime and Russian-speaking men with criminal records are being recruited to carry out acts of sabotage, according to a study.

"The study situates Moscow's tactics against the backdrop of its full-scale war on Ukraine, showing that hybrid operations are not a side theatre but a central pillar of Russian strategy," the researchers explain in their introduction. They compared these tactics to the approach of the so-called "Islamic State" (ISIS) terror group that recruited "former criminals who went on to carry out violent attacks in the Levant and Europe." The researcher explained that "today, a new crime-terror nexus has emerged in Europe — this time orchestrated by a state actor – Russia."

The study, entitled "Russia's Crime-Terror Nexus: Criminality as a Tool of Hybrid Warfare in Europe," was conducted by the non-governmental organization GLOBSEC and the International Center for Counter-Terrorism (ICCT), which presented their findings in Brussels at a meeting of the Special Committee on the European Democracy Shield (EUDS).

...

They identified 131 perpetrators, of whom at least 35 had previous criminal involvement and were recruited through criminal organizations or from penal colonies. The overwhelming majority were male and the average age was 30. Most were Russian-speakers from a post-Soviet state and vulnerable in socio-economic terms, which led them to be motivated by financial compensation. "Financial incentives were decisive: payments ranged from a few euros for graffiti to substantial sums for attempted attacks on critical infrastructure."

...

The researchers highlighted that Russia's "hybrid operations are inseparable from illicit finance and sanctions evasion." It found that Moscow had turned to "shadow financial operations to move money covertly across borders, pay operatives, and sustain its war economy."

"These channels enable the Kremlin to bypass restrictions, while simultaneously embedding criminal networks deeper into its hybrid warfare strategy," the researchers said.

It further demonstrates that "illicit finance, criminality, and hybrid operations are not separate challenges but elements of a single playbook. Russia's kinetic campaign — bombings, arson, assassination plots — should be seen as both punishment for Europe's support to Ukraine and preparation for potential wider conflict."

...

The Russian government's use of criminals is nothing new, explained Dominika Hajdu from GLOBSEC, adding that people who "lived east of the Iron Curtain" still remembered how chronic supply shortages in the Soviet Union created and reinforced society's dependence on the shadow economy. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the fight against corruption was not a priority in Russia, unlike in other post-communist countries, she said. Instead, corrupt methods became the norm and the authorities' working method.

According to Hajdu, in 1994, there were over 500 criminal groups active in Russia and they controlled around 40,000 companies.

"In the early 2000s, representatives of the security services, including former officers of the KGB domestic intelligence, consolidated their control over the Russian state," she said. "And their connections to the criminal underworld became part of the state system."

...

The prime minister was clear. He has agreed with the U.S. President that we have obtained an indefinite exemption from the sanctions," Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto said on Facebook.

https://archive.is/Tdx4x

A man on a crowded tram in Warsaw launched into a tirade of verbal abuse when he heard Oleksandra Iwaniuk speaking Ukrainian with a friend, and nobody in the carriage reacted.

Poland's initial wave of support for Ukraine after Russia's invasion in 2022 is now "exhausted", with a growing number of acts of discrimination and hate speech directed towards Ukrainian citizens residing in Poland.

A month after the full-scale invasion, a survey by Warsaw-based pollster CBOS found that 94% of Poles wanted to accept Ukrainian refugees. A CBOS survey last month put that support at 48%, with half of Poles now believing that state benefits offered to Ukrainian arrivals are too generous.

https://archive.is/Q1jPZ

AstraZeneca’s chief executive has said Europe risks losing its “health sovereignty” and historic strength in pharmaceuticals if it does not pay more for medicines, as the industry shifts investment to the US and China.

“You still see a large industrial base in Europe, for historical reasons. A problem is future products rely on new technologies that require new manufacturing tools,” he said. “And these technologies are going to the US, and they’re going to China and other parts of the world, so into 15, 20 years, Europe could easily lose its health sovereignty.”