billbindc Posted August 30 Share Posted August 30 1 hour ago, BamaMatt said: Did you even read the article? From the article: The filing, obtained by the Washington Post, lists around 100 entities and individuals,...One of firms listed is 8VC, a venture capitalist company co-founded by Joe Lonsdale, co-founder of intelligence contractor and data analysis platform Palantir...On the fund's website, Denis Aven and Jack Moshkovich pop up in the staff section — the sons of sanctioned Russian oligarchs Petr Aven and Vadim Moshkovich. When does two employees of one fund out of 100 entities and individuals become "a large part of the financing for ultra pro-trump anti-Ukraine Musk in buying Twitter come from 2 russian, putin connected oligarchs" This actually is a fair point. Musk's purchase does not have a significant Russian component and what there is mostly by association. The concern with the owners are that they are another galaxy of bad actors who wish to use the platform to push ideas, suppress criticism and affect political discourse...not least among them Musk himself, Thiel, KSA, etc. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FancyCat Posted August 30 Share Posted August 30 Quote Russian volunteer Kashevarova expresses frustration over the thousands of letters she receives from wives and mothers of missing Russian soldiers who have turned to fortune tellers. These fortune tellers claim that their husbands are still alive, but Kashevarova explains that this is a desperate last resort, as the Ministry of Defense provides no information on the missing. She urges people to stop writing to her and to let go of false hopes, stating bluntly that if a soldier hasn't made contact for several months, it likely means he is dead. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Battlefront.com Posted August 30 Share Posted August 30 4 hours ago, Sgt Joch said: The revised set of official preliminary charges is now available: https://x.com/Jacques_Pezet/status/1828881941745017122/photo/1 The number of charges has been cut by half and the language has been substantially watered down. There is no longer any implication that Durov was personally aware or personally involved in any of these illicit activities. The real tell is in the third paragraph where they state that Telegram has not been responding to judicial inquiries (“réquisitoires judiciaires “) regarding multiple cases of child pornography, trafficking and hateful speech (“ multiples dossiers portant sur différentes infractions (pédocriminalité, trafics, haine en ligne)”) and that this investigation was started to determine the criminal responsibility of owners of the App in criminal activity committed by App users (“ouvrir une enquête sur l’éventuelle responsabilité pénale des dirigeants de cette messagerie dans la commission de ces infractions “). This looks more akin to the recent clashes between Twitter and Brazil and Twitter and Australia where national governments are trying to impose national laws on social media Apps with a worldwide reach. These legal clashes happen regularly now, but actually arresting the CEO/owner over it does seem over the top. No fair! You speak French But without reading it I think I know what this is saying. And that is they can not prove that Durov was PERSONALLY aware of the SPECIFICs related to the child trafficking case. I'm sure that's true, as it would be shocking if he knew such a low level detailed account issue. However, I am just as sure he is very aware that Telegram's policy is to not cooperate with authorities concerning their platform being used for explicit illegal activities. Put another way, I'm sure the heads of the cartels in Mexico aren't aware of every single person that is murdered or tortured by their organization, but they sure as Hell know that happens and don't take any actions to prevent it from happening. I don't think it is "over the top" to hold corporate officers responsible for deliberately breaking the law. In fact, many of the world's problems would magically go away if this were the case. Tobacco company executives being People's Exhibit A, petroleum executives being People's Exhibit B, Volkswagen executives being Exhibit C, etc. As a capitalist myself, and until recently the head of a corporation, I have absolutely no problem with the threat of incarceration as a punishment for conducting illegal activities in the guise of "free enterprise". Steve 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Battlefront.com Posted August 30 Share Posted August 30 2 minutes ago, billbindc said: This actually is a fair point. Musk's purchase does not have a significant Russian component and what there is mostly by association. The concern with the owners are that they are another galaxy of bad actors who wish to use the platform to push ideas, suppress criticism and affect political discourse...not least among them Musk himself, Thiel, KSA, etc. Yes, the people that jump at the Russian shadows miss the thing that right out there in plain view. Which is that there's a lot of parties out there who are not directly controlled by Russians or Russian money, but naturally are in alignment with them. For example, certain Republican politicians in the House of Reps. It's been a while since I've seen any one of them singled out for probable and actual FSB handling (Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, for example), but that doesn't mean they aren't deliberately acting in favor of Russia for their own reasons. Steve 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Carolus Posted August 30 Share Posted August 30 1 hour ago, Lieutenant Ash said: https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/world/sweden-warns-of-heightened-risk-of-russian-sabotage/ar-AA1pEWZQ?ocid=socialshare&pc=NMTS&cvid=1b3538423dd94741b05f8122b0a14251&ei=142 Sweden reports heightened risks of Russian sabotage attempts on defence and other associated industries. Over the last months, there has been a series of postal packages containing fire bombs sent via ordinary German transport services, like DHL, to detonate while they are still being transported - in a truck or airplane. A fire broke at an airport in Eastern Germany and a freight container was lost as a result. No one was hurt yet, but the security agencies are advising "heightened caution". The packages are sent from private addresses within the EU and were destined for various addresses in several EU countries. https://www.zeit.de/news/2024-08/30/sicherheitsbehoerden-warnen-vor-brandsaetzen-in-luftfracht 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
acrashb Posted August 30 Share Posted August 30 (edited) 55 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said: The ads are now almost exclusively right wing messaging [...,]since Musk took over, with arbitrary bans on people from the middle and left while the right wing gets no such treatment. [...]Musk is in total control of X and he is, by any reasonable definition, a person who holds extreme political views. Extreme belief in true freedom of speech is NOT one of them. It's your forum and you can say and do what you want, and I'm appreciative that you permit some challenging views - in other words, you practice freedom of speech even when you don't have to. 1) the ads on my feed right now are: shoes to help with bunions; an invitation to try the X API; personalized golf balls and clubs; walking shoes for wide feet; a backpack that is advertised as water-resistant; and a home heat-resistant blanket for putting out kitchen fires. Pretty neutral. To the extent that there is a bias, that would, I think, be from other advertisers leaving due to GARM's activities, now ceased. Twitter has had a constant journey to brand safety, with a significant improvement in 2024, and is now (again?) TAG certified. 2) yeah, he needs to stop that. 3) extreme political views, in Musk's corner, would have been called somewhat centrist until a few years ago as the left stretched out. And I believe, although imperfect, he does both believe in and practice freedom of speech. It's certainly better than the partisan interference documented in the Twitter Files and recently confirmed to have happened on Meta by Zuckerberg. It's also certainly a passionate issue. The connection to the Russo-Ukraine war would be Russia's (along with China, Iran, Myanmar, North Korea, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan) blocking of X to better control the info war inside of Russia. This then loops back to Telegram because of potential ties to Russia's security apparatus and the obvious use of it by Russian forces, as well as the extensive appearance of video and chat relevant to the war. Edited August 30 by acrashb 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
acrashb Posted August 30 Share Posted August 30 Meanwhile in Kursk: 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LongLeftFlank Posted August 30 Share Posted August 30 16 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said: No fair! You speak French But without reading it I think I know what this is saying. And that is they can not prove that Durov was PERSONALLY aware of the SPECIFICs related to the child trafficking case. I'm sure that's true, as it would be shocking if he knew such a low level detailed account issue. However, I am just as sure he is very aware that Telegram's policy is to not cooperate with authorities concerning their platform being used for explicit illegal activities. Put another way, I'm sure the heads of the cartels in Mexico aren't aware of every single person that is murdered or tortured by their organization, but they sure as Hell know that happens and don't take any actions to prevent it from happening. I don't think it is "over the top" to hold corporate officers responsible for deliberately breaking the law. In fact, many of the world's problems would magically go away if this were the case. Tobacco company executives being People's Exhibit A, petroleum executives being People's Exhibit B, Volkswagen executives being Exhibit C, etc. As a capitalist myself, and until recently the head of a corporation, I have absolutely no problem with the threat of incarceration as a punishment for conducting illegal activities in the guise of "free enterprise". Steve But would you have been so sanguine had a foreign court or 'human rights tribunal' indicted you for glorifying Nazism, promoting Nazi-related emblems and symbolism, and other forms of extreme militarism, and also enabling those who might be doing so, via your Combat Mission games? ....'Waffelgrenadiers' notwithstanding. Because that's entirely conceivable in the climate we live in today. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
billbindc Posted August 30 Share Posted August 30 19 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said: Yes, the people that jump at the Russian shadows miss the thing that right out there in plain view. Which is that there's a lot of parties out there who are not directly controlled by Russians or Russian money, but naturally are in alignment with them. For example, certain Republican politicians in the House of Reps. It's been a while since I've seen any one of them singled out for probable and actual FSB handling (Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, for example), but that doesn't mean they aren't deliberately acting in favor of Russia for their own reasons. Steve The way I put it around these parts is that affinity is not the same thing as conspiracy...and in fact it's a far more dangerous problem. Trump, Rohrabacher, Vance, etc are not acting out of simple greed, cynicism or opportunity. They are actual authoritarians who wish to rule in the manner Putin does even when the incentives of democracy are there for the asking. If that sounds odd, consider where Trump would be electorally right now if he had actually given a unity speech at the RNC, had not talked about being a dictator, if he vowed believably to respect the rule of law. He'd very likely still be winning. Fukuyama, again, because it bears repeating: “But supposing the world has become “filled up”, so to speak, with liberal democracies, such as there exist no tyranny and oppression worthy of the name against which to struggle? Experience suggests that if men cannot struggle on behalf of a just cause because that just cause was victorious in an earlier generation, then they will struggle against the just cause. They will struggle for the sake of struggle. They will struggle, in other words, out of a certain boredom: for they cannot imagine living in a world without struggle. And if the greater part of the world in which they live is characterized by peaceful and prosperous liberal democracy, then they will struggle against that peace and prosperity, and against democracy.” ― Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man 5 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
billbindc Posted August 30 Share Posted August 30 Ioffe on Durov: https://puck.news/the-durov-delusion/ 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Battlefront.com Posted August 30 Share Posted August 30 13 minutes ago, acrashb said: It's your forum and you can say and do what you want, and I'm appreciative that you permit some challenging views - in other words, you practice freedom of speech even when you don't have to. Thanks! 13 minutes ago, acrashb said: ) the ads on my feed right now are: shoes to help with bunions; an invitation to try the X API; personalized golf balls and clubs; walking shoes for wide feet; a backpack that is advertised as water-resistant; and a home heat-resistant blanket for putting out kitchen fires. Pretty neutral. To the extent that their is a bias, that would, I think, be from other advertisers leaving due to GARM's activities, now ceased. Twitter has had a constant journey to brand safety, with a significant improvement in 2024, and is now (again?) TAG certified. Oh, that stuff has always been there and always will be. But maybe it's because I don't have an X account. Whenever I click on the links posted here I am bombarded with things that "patriots" should know or do. Lots and lots of the usual pro-Trump grifters looking to make money off of his supporters. It's anecdotal, of course, but I don't recall seeing that much BS on a regular basis prior to Musk. We also have the very, very high profile spats between advertisers and Musk, including Musk telling his disgruntled advertisers to do something I can't put into writing here 13 minutes ago, acrashb said: 3) extreme political views, in Musk's corner, would have been called somewhat centrist until a few years ago as the left stretched out. And I believe, although imperfect, he does both believe in and practice freedom of speech. It's certainly better than the partisan interference documented in the Twitter Files and recently confirmed to have happened on Meta by Zuckerberg. No, the definitions have not changed... Musk has changed. There's any number of detailed articles documenting this if it's not apparent to you. His cuddling up to Trump being the most obvious. Centrists don't do that. Also, Musk has a very well documented history of behavior that is contradictory to his stated beliefs in free speech. Look, Musk is free to hold whatever beliefs he wants to. I have zero problem with that. I also have zero problem with him being able to amplify his personal beliefs because he is one of the richest people on the planet. What I do have a problem with is him imposing his belief system on a "free speech" platform. I am also vehemently opposed to protecting speech that is deliberately intended to, and in fact actually can, cause harm. I experienced a bout of that at a public meeting last night with a single woman disrupting a meeting and citing her "freedom of speech" as a justification. 13 minutes ago, acrashb said: It's also certainly a passionate issue. The connection to the Russo-Ukraine war would be Russia's (along with China, Iran, Myanmar, North Korea, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan) blocking of X to better control the info war inside of Russia. This then loops back to Telegram because of potential ties to Russia's security apparatus and the obvious use of it by Russian forces, as well as the extensive appearance of video and chat relevant to the war. Anybody that believes that Russia would allow a true platform for freedom of anything within Russia has a lot of explaining to do. So the fact that Telegram is so popular and publicly a non-issue within Russia makes it fairly easy to draw some conclusions that the reason for that is Putin's regime doesn't view it as a threat. And the only logical reason why he would not view it a threat, when he's clearly viewed pretty much everything else critical of the regime as a threat, is because it is compromised. This is a very typical KGB behavior pattern, BTW. Specifically, give people an outlet that they think is safe, but in fact really is not. Steve 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Battlefront.com Posted August 30 Share Posted August 30 8 minutes ago, LongLeftFlank said: But would you have been so sanguine had a foreign court or 'human rights tribunal' indicted you for glorifying Nazism, promoting Nazi-related emblems and symbolism, and other forms of extreme militarism, and also enabling those who might be doing so, via your Combat Mission games? ....'Waffelgrenadiers' notwithstanding. Because that's entirely conceivable in the climate we live in today. Sure, all laws and law enforcement can be made onerous and even abusive. But that's not a good argument for having no laws or no enforcement. It's a good argument for having checks and balances so that onerous and abusive behavior can be limited/curtailed. There's a big difference between a CEO being held accountable for having some Nazis in a historical wargame and a CEO knowingly selling a product that results in the deaths of millions of people and shouldering society with the costs of taking care of the many more that suffer ill effects. Steve 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
acrashb Posted August 30 Share Posted August 30 1 minute ago, Battlefront.com said: So the fact that Telegram is so popular and publicly a non-issue within Russia makes it fairly easy to draw some conclusions that the reason for that is Putin's regime doesn't view it as a threat. And the only logical reason why he would not view it a threat, when he's clearly viewed pretty much everything else critical of the regime as a threat, is because it is compromised. This is a very typical KGB behavior pattern, BTW. Specifically, give people an outlet that they think is safe, but in fact really is not. On this we can closely agree I'm interested in the Telegram drama because a) free speech and all that and b) it would be interesting if the prosecutorial process dug up incontrovertible evidence of Russian collusion and/or subversion. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Astrophel Posted August 30 Share Posted August 30 https://www.ft.com/content/242552a9-4280-46c0-9d61-bcf6ccd14400 Don't know if this is behind the paywall or not but FT Alphaville got hold of Telegram accounts. They make their money in the Crypto world - including trading assets like names and addresses - and have a lot of russian clients. A good read! 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LongLeftFlank Posted August 30 Share Posted August 30 (edited) On 8/28/2024 at 12:30 PM, Carolus said: https://t.me/zvizdecmanhustu/2144 Mashovets on the situation in the East (Pokrovsk direction), where things are not developing in Ukraine's favor. He does also note, however, that the Russian attacks cannot keep the same intensity on all parts of the front and have to focus on certain areas due to "exhaustion" of various things, especially manpower. But Ukrainian defense is still hard pressed and as he noted in his previous "review", there are not many defenses being prepared behind the current frontline where the UA is becoming brittle, which worries him. Sorry to interrupt our 'For Some Strange New Definition of Civil Libertarian' debate here, but.... https://frontelligence.substack.com/p/what-the-fall-of-pokrovsk-could-mean Pokrovsk, a town with a pre-war population of 60,000, is situated west of Avdiivka at a crucial crossroads of multiple railroad lines. It has become a key delivery and railroad distribution hub.... No matter how well-constructed or numerous the defenses are, if they are only staffed at 10-20% of the required capacity, it’s unsurprising that Russian forces are able to overrun them so quickly. Tatarigami is no alarmist, but he is cautious. 1. Its fall could place all all UA positions east of there en prise, as far as the Sivirsky Donets. Their forced evacuation in turn would bring Russia once again to the gates of Kramatorsk and Liman (i.e. basically they'll have secured nearly all of prewar Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts, which along with the land bridge could be used as the basis to claim a Putin victory, however hollow.) 2. Or else (glass half full version) Sysrski is pulling back in good order to a new strongly fortified line based in solid built up areas. This will also allow the Russians be the ones to get butchered by drones now, while trying to sustain attacks across that largely open countryside they've just occupied. As opposed to up to now, where they have been fighting mainly within 25km of their Donetsk city railhead. ...In short, I am trying to grasp the lethal topography of the new warfare. Edited August 30 by LongLeftFlank 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FancyCat Posted August 30 Share Posted August 30 Anyone attempt to review if Ukraine has built up trenches and such? I know satellite imagery detected the extensive Russian lines. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
danfrodo Posted August 30 Share Posted August 30 (edited) 1 hour ago, acrashb said: extreme political views, in Musk's corner, would have been called somewhat centrist until a few years ago as the left stretched out you live in a fantasy world. The right has gone bonkers, but you have moved so far right with it that it looks to you like the left has moved. As if Biden & Obama & Kamala are some crazy constituion-killing radicals who tried to overthrow electionsa and destroy democracy and are trying to be dictators. Look in the mirror. The left is a little more left on some things. The right is flat out insane and has no idea where reality even begins. Edited August 30 by danfrodo 25 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ts4EVER Posted August 30 Share Posted August 30 1 hour ago, billbindc said: Fukuyama, again, because it bears repeating: “But supposing the world has become “filled up”, so to speak, with liberal democracies, such as there exist no tyranny and oppression worthy of the name against which to struggle? Experience suggests that if men cannot struggle on behalf of a just cause because that just cause was victorious in an earlier generation, then they will struggle against the just cause. They will struggle for the sake of struggle. They will struggle, in other words, out of a certain boredom: for they cannot imagine living in a world without struggle. And if the greater part of the world in which they live is characterized by peaceful and prosperous liberal democracy, then they will struggle against that peace and prosperity, and against democracy.” ― Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man That is some of the biggest nonsense I have read in a while. Is he really claiming that the reason for the post Cold War conflicts is "boredom"? His fetishization of liberal democracy is mind boggling. Capitalist countries will always have opposing economical interests that will foster conflict, no matter how their ruling class organizes their politics. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sgt Joch Posted August 30 Share Posted August 30 1 hour ago, Battlefront.com said: No fair! You speak French nice to be able to actually put it to use for once ... 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Carolus Posted August 30 Share Posted August 30 (edited) 11 minutes ago, Ts4EVER said: That is some of the biggest nonsense I have read in a while. Is he really claiming that the reason for the post Cold War conflicts is "boredom"? His fetishization of liberal democracy is mind boggling. Capitalist countries will always have opposing economical interests that will foster conflict, no matter how their ruling class organizes their politics. There have been very few wars between the liberal democratic countries with these capitalist ruling classes after the Cold War... In fact, I cannot think of one. Regardless of what you think of Fukuyama, the behaviour we see Musk, Trump and other billionaires and their loyal fans exhibit certainly seems like they started to fight peace, prosperity and democracy from within, whatever their motives are. Edited August 30 by Carolus 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
billbindc Posted August 30 Share Posted August 30 7 minutes ago, Ts4EVER said: That is some of the biggest nonsense I have read in a while. Is he really claiming that the reason for the post Cold War conflicts is "boredom"? His fetishization of liberal democracy is mind boggling. Capitalist countries will always have opposing economical interests that will foster conflict, no matter how their ruling class organizes their politics. No. He's saying that internal conflicts in many liberal democracies are happening because of an inevitable reaction to their triumphs as a political system. Rather remarkably, he described in 1989 pretty accurately what we are seeing some 25 years later and did so years before the ascendancy of liberal democracies seemed obvious. That observation is not relative to the normal interests that promote conflict. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ts4EVER Posted August 30 Share Posted August 30 (edited) 17 minutes ago, Carolus said: There have been many few wars between the liberal democratic countries with these capitalist ruling classes after the Cold War... In fact, I cannot think of one. Regardless of what you think of Fukyama, the behaviour we see Musk, Trump and other billionaires and their loyal fans exhibit certainly seems like they started to fight peace, prosperity and democracy from within, whatever their motives are. That may be, but liberal democracies don't need to stay that way if a major part of the national capital feels its needs would be better served by a different system. As an example, the establishment of National Socialism in Germany was in large part because the capitalists in Germany felt that their goals (privileged access to the European markets) would be best achieved by aggressive military action and the Nazis were most likely to do this. The present day version of Germany has achieved this goal peacefully through the EU, but this does not need to stay that way for ever. In fact, the Ukraine war shows that peaceful expansion has ended and that future gains in Eastern Europe will meet Russian counter action, who are defending their own imperialist outposts (or what is left of them). So a change in German policy is not unlikely. I would also argue that liberal democracies have many times demonstrated their willingness to start colonial wars for economic interests, so I don't see why they wouldn't start other ones as well. Edited August 30 by Ts4EVER 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
billbindc Posted August 30 Share Posted August 30 Folks...let's not pretend Musk is anything but what he obviously shows himself to be. 17 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
danfrodo Posted August 30 Share Posted August 30 53 minutes ago, LongLeftFlank said: Or else (glass half full version) Sysrski is pulling back in good order to a new strongly fortified line based in solid built up areas. This will also allow the Russians be the ones to get butchered by drones now, while trying to sustain attacks across that largely open countryside they've just occupied. As opposed to up to now, where they have been fighting mainly within 25km of their Donetsk city railhead. I sure hope your glass half full option is the right one, LLF. It is not concerning to me when RU takes a month to move a couple kms. It is concerning when it's a couple kms a day, for a long series of days. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sburke Posted August 30 Share Posted August 30 (edited) Some Chinese banks are so fearful of sanctions that they're returning payments for goods that have reached Russia, report says (msn.com) Russia's payment whack-a-mole Since the invasion of Ukraine, Russia and its trade partners have skirted sanctions by using smaller banks and other payment modes or non-US-dollar currencies to circumvent the West's ban of some Russian banks from the widely-used SWIFT messaging system. But the doors have been closing for these workarounds since December, when the US approved secondary sanctions targeting financial institutions that were helping Russia. Russia is now rushing to set up alternative payment systems, including crypto, to facilitate trade. Russia and China were even planning to revive the age-old practice of barter trade to get around Western sanctions, Reuters reported earlier this month. Edited August 30 by sburke 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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