cross-posted from : https://lemmy.zip/post/56349486

Spain, along with Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, and Uruguay, issued a joint statement on Sunday condemning unilateral military actions in Venezuela and calling for a political solution led by Venezuelans.

Paywall? https://archive.is/8tCU5

Netanyahu is also Merz's daddy.

cross-posted from: https://mander.xyz/post/44883299

From February 24, 2022, to January 4, 2026, Ukrainian law enforcement officers recorded 191,822 crimes committed by Russian occupiers.

Of these, 174,883 are war crimes, 9,380 are crimes against the territorial integrity of Ukraine, and 4,639 are crimes related to collaborationism. Another 426 cases of high treason were recorded.

Also, 144 criminal proceedings were initiated for sexual crimes committed by Russian occupiers.

...

At the same time, during the full-scale invasion, 678 children died in Ukraine, 2,315 of them were injured, 2,232 went missing, and 20,000 were deported to Russia.

Another 49,420 children were found and 1,943 children were returned.

...

During 2025, Russia launched more than 60,000 guided aerial bombs, about 2,400 missiles, and over 100,000 drones at Ukraine. Air raid sirens sounded at least 19,033 times across Ukraine.

Web archive link

cross-posted from: https://mander.xyz/post/44882952

Here is the original report published by Ukraine's Foreign Intelligence Service

After statements about an alleged Ukrainian attack on Russian leader Vladimir Putin's residence, Ukrainian intelligence is detecting the Kremlin's spread of "new fabricated information pretexts to prepare Russian and foreign audiences for further escalation."

"We predict with high probability a shift from manipulative influence to an armed provocation by Russian special services with significant human casualties. Expected timing — ahead of or during Orthodox Christmas celebrations. The provocation site could be a religious building or other object with high symbolic value in Russia or temporarily occupied Ukrainian territories," the FIS said.

According to intelligence, to fabricate evidence of Ukrainian involvement, debris from Western-made strike UAVs will be delivered to the provocation site from the line of contact.

"Exploiting fear and committing terrorist acts with human casualties under a 'false flag' fully matches the style of Russian special services. Putin's regime has repeatedly used this tactic inside Russia, and now the same model is being exported abroad, indirectly confirmed by public statements from senior Russian officials," the FIS said.

...

A related report, citing Ukrainian Military Intel, says that, "To falsify evidence of Ukraine's involvement, fragments of Western-made attack UAVs will be used, which will be delivered to the site of the provocation from the line of combat contact."

Web archive link

1. The Russian Model: Biohazardous Disinformation

The concept of disinformation as a “biohazard” underscores its infectious nature. Like a virus, disinformation spreads invisibly, mutates rapidly, and exploits the vulnerabilities of its host societies. Thus, the NDU Press article notes, Russia’s campaigns are tailored to the sociopolitical fault lines of target countries—race, immigration, economic inequality, and vaccine hesitancy, among others. Meanwhile, this precision targeting is facilitated by data analytics and AI-driven algorithms that allow for hyper-personalized influence operations.

2. Evidence-Based Countermeasures: A Path Forward

• Resilience involves enhancing societal immunity to disinformation. This includes media literacy education, public awareness campaigns, and investment in independent journalism.
• Transparency requires holding platforms accountable for the algorithmic amplification of false content and enforcing robust content labeling standards.
• Deterrence suggests imposing costs on perpetrators through sanctions, cyber countermeasures, and diplomatic censure.

3. However, as the Brill article argues, strategies must also respect democratic values and avoid sliding into counterpropaganda or censorship.

NOTE: Happy New Year and let's be alert together. In light of the ongoing wars, turmoil and new events, I thought this hand-out could be helpfull.

Denmark on Sunday made its displeasure known after the wife of President Donald Trump’s most influential aide posted a social media picture of Greenland painted in the colours of the US flag.

Katie Miller -- wife of Trump’s deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller -- put the contentiously altered image of the Danish autonomous territory on her X feed late Saturday, after the US military operation against Venezuela.

Her post had a single word above it: “SOON”.

Deutsche Bahn's punctuality rate was 62.5% in 2024, and 74.4% in 2015. Germany's rail operator counts a train as late if it is delayed by six minutes or more.

cross-posted from : https://lemmy.zip/post/56310781

Around 70 battery-electric buses supplied by Ebusco to Berliner Verkehrsbetriebe (BVG) have been temporarily withdrawn from service after routine inspections revealed cracks in the vehicle frames.

Archived version

The Irish Military Intelligence Service (IMIS) has provided confidential briefings to university leaders, warning them about the risks associated with Chinese engagement in sensitive areas of research, particularly in fields that could be adapted for military use.

In the first authorised interview by the organisation, a senior IMIS officer said Ireland’s relationship with China posed a unique challenge, as the country enjoyed a beneficial economic relationship with Beijing, but said Irish universities had been warned about the potential consequences.

“It can be hugely detrimental to the West if you empower them [China] by educating them simply because they come to a university with funds. This can be hugely detrimental to the West if you teach them how to twist a knot to the left or right, which helps them to develop a weapon or military application.

We made these points to the universities and it was very successful. It’s done discreetly to empower and protect our democratic institutions,” he said. Irish third-level institutions have collaborated with Chinese universities, which have been linked to cyberattacks and nuclear research.The Irish Military Intelligence Service has provided confidential briefings to university leaders, warning them about the risks associated with Chinese engagement in sensitive areas of research, particularly in fields that could be adapted for military use.

...

Irish third-level institutions have collaborated with Chinese universities, which have been linked to cyberattacks and nuclear research.

The intelligence service also identified Russia as one of the primary threats to the state’s national security and confirmed it had successfully disrupted the activities of foreign spies operating here, ­forcing some to leave the country.

Spies have been made to “pack their bags and go home” after their activities were “disrupted”, the officer said, which made it untenable for them to continue operating here without the need to make an arrest.

“They don’t necessarily know that we’ve been in the background but we have had a lot of success doing that,” he said.

...

The secret organisation said it worked alongside the militaries of European countries including Britain, France and Germany, helping to protect them from aggressive acts by hostile states while upholding Ireland’s stated position of neutrality.

The officer described IMIS as being a “good European neighbour”. The Sunday Times agreed not to identify the officer by name, rank or appearance, or to record the interview, but he plays a part in briefing the government on national defence and authorising covert operations mounted by secretive branches of the military to protect Ireland.

The decision to allow the interview reflects mounting concern within the military about the scale of hostile activity targeting Ireland, and a belief that the public must be made aware of how modern conflict is already being waged below the threshold of war.

...

In a related report from October, an investiation revealed how China’s United Front spy network has sought to influence Irish politicians and exploited a residency scheme.

... China’s intelligence services are infamous for their slow, methodical cultivation of contacts in positions of power — a strategy that embeds them in political and business life long before their aims become clear. The operation targeting Leinster House took years, indicating it was run by the United Front, a shadowy organisation that organises influence operations, but it may also have involved the Ministry of State Security (MSS), China’s foreign intelligence service.

“The United Front is a network of organisations and individuals working under a degree of guidance and control from the Chinese Communist Party. It helps legitimise the party inside China and manage political representation while also being used to push international objectives such as political influence in foreign countries,” Alex Joske, the author of Spies and Lies: How China’s Greatest Covert Operations Fooled the World, said ...

The United Front’s structure is vast and under President Xi it has become a central instrument of Beijing statecraft. It extends its reach through an array of friendship associations, business forums and student groups ...

The UF was also responsible for attempts to secure access to the British royal family by befriending the Duke of York. Prince Andrew first met the suspected agent, Yang Tengbo, in 2013 at a reception during the Shanghai Grand Prix. Yang later became a confidant of the duke until he was banned from entering Britain on national security grounds.

The full scale of the damage done to Irish interests may be far greater than the government can imagine, however. The agent at the centre of the scandal is part of a larger network of Chinese nationals who have acquired significant wealth in Ireland. An analysis of one business showed it acquired a significant state property in return for investment into a company that appears to have stopped trading and is defunct ...

The threat posed by hostile states such as Russia and China has been identified as one of the most pressing challenges for the government, specifically Jim O’Callaghan, the justice minister, and Harris, now foreign affairs and defence minister ...

Chung Ching Kwong, a senior analyst at the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance in Britain, described UF operations in Ireland as part of wider “grey zone” activity by Beijing in the European Union. Her research has previously uncovered the existence of UF stations in Dublin, two in Cork and one at the University of Galway, identified using information from publicly available Chinese records ...

“At some point intelligence communities will have to come up with a whole-of-state approach to protect ­society. But I haven’t seen those kinds of discussions happening yet,” she said.

...

Chinese state-owned China National Petroleum Corp (CNPC) and China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC) each own 10% of the Arctic LNG 2 project.

All of the shipments were delivered to the Beihai LNG Terminal in China's southwestern Guangxi region.

...

The linked article contains a list of tankers that delivered the cargo to Beihai along with arrival dates, derived from Kpler data.

..

“Under all circumstances, the principles of international law and the UN Charter must be respected. We call for restraint,” she wrote.

Her comments were echoed by European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Council President António Costa, with Commission Vice-President Teresa Ribera adding that “we need a rules-based world.”

France went a step further with its foreign minister condemning the American operation on social media. According to Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot, Maduro “gravely violated” the rights of Venezuelans, but the military operation that led to him being grabbed “contravenes the principle of non-use of force, which underpins international law.”

The extensive damage means that about 35,000 households will be without electricity until Thursday afternoon, Berlin authorities said in a statement. Power should be restored to other homes by early Sunday.

...

Overall, the BBC has confirmed the names of almost 160,000 people killed fighting on Russia's side in Ukraine.

...

The real death toll is believed to be much higher, and military experts we have consulted believe our analysis of cemeteries, war memorials and obituaries might represent 45-65% of the total.

That would put the number of Russian deaths at between 243,000 and 352,000.

...

In October [2025], when a planned second Russia-US summit was eventually shelved, and then in November, when the US presented a 28-point peace proposal, an average of 322 obituaries were published per day - twice the average in 2024.

It is difficult to put increased Russian losses down to any one factor, but the Kremlin sees territorial gains as a way of influencing negotiations with the US in its favour: Putin aide Yuri Ushakov stressed recently that "recent successes" had had a positive impact.

...

...

Russian authorities plan to include drone operation as part of the national GTO program—a Soviet-era system formally described as physical education and fitness training for children, standing for “Ready for Labor and Defense.”

Moscow is also strengthening state oversight of military-sports training for minors, effectively treating such activities as part of the formal educational system.

...

On the regional level, the militarization of youth is becoming increasingly visible. Children are reportedly being allowed to ride on combat vehicles, handle firearms, and participate in holiday events featuring military equipment—such as New Year celebrations where traditional characters arrive on tanks.

Military symbols are increasingly becoming part of everyday childhood experiences.

...

cross-posted from: https://mander.xyz/post/44807878

War-driven boom fades

The year 2025 marked the end of Russia’s wartime growth spurt of 2023-24. After two years of expansion of more than 4%, GDP growth for 2025 is expected to slow to around 1% or lower, with the same headwinds likely to persist into 2026.

The economy has largely exhausted the temporary drivers that underpinned growth in 2023 and 2024. In 2023, rapid expansion reflected a rebound from the shock of 2022, when the economy was forced to rapidly reorient toward wartime production.

In 2024, growth rested on a different pillar: a sharp rise in state spending. Federal expenditures increased by roughly a quarter that year, rising to 40.2 trillion rubles ($502.5 billion) from 32.35 trillion rubles ($404.4 billion) in 2023, injecting demand into the economy.

Those drivers were largely absent in 2025, and there is no obvious catalyst to revive growth in 2026.

...

Tax burden rises as revenues erode

For the first time since the pandemic, Russia collected less budget revenue in 2025 than originally planned. When the 2025 budget was approved, revenues were set at 40.3 trillion rubles ($503.8 billion). Updated forecasts suggest actual receipts will come in closer to 36.6 trillion rubles ($457.5 billion).

This marks a break from the previous three years, including 2022, when revenues consistently exceeded initial projections.

The shortfall partly reflects weaker tax intake amid slowing growth, as well as falling oil prices and Western sanctions that have widened the discount Russia must offer buyers for its crude.

Oil and gas revenues in 2025 are now projected at 8.7 trillion rubles ($108.8 billion), well below the originally planned 10.9 trillion rubles ($136.3 billion). With growth slowing and oil prices under pressure, 2026 is likely to bring another year of weak budget revenues.

...

Despite the economic slowdown, Russian authorities have little room to cut military spending as the war in Ukraine drags on.

President Vladimir Putin has shown no sign of backing down from his maximalist demands, repeatedly saying Russia is prepared to fight until it secures control over the four Ukrainian regions it claims to have annexed.

Officially, spending on national defense is set at 13.5 trillion rubles ($168.8 billion) in 2025 and 12.93 trillion rubles ($161.6 billion) in 2026. But actual outlays, including classified spending, are likely to be higher.

Russia does not disclose full military expenditures in its federal budget, publishing only planned figures.

Officials occasionally provide partial disclosures. In December, Defense Minister Andrei Belousov said defense spending amounted to 7.3% of GDP in 2025.

With GDP estimated at 217.3 trillion rubles ($2.72 trillion) in 2025, this implies total defense spending of around 15.86 trillion rubles ($198.3 billion), well above the figures published in the budget.

...

Web archive link

Gillian Tett wrote in the Financial Times (see below) an article on cognitive biases in the global threat landscape, referring to a manual by the Swiss Federal Intelligence Services on cognitive blind spots.

She links to the Situation Report of the Federal Intelligence Service “Switzerland's Security 2025” but not to the manual.

Does anyone in this community have a link to this document?

Why we should know what we don’t know

Cognitive blind spots are undermining our ability to see the world as it is, rather than as we would like it to be

Gillian Tett, Financial Times, 3 January 2026

A decade ago, the Swiss government made an optimistic decision: it dismantled the last of the cold war explosives it had previously installed in its roads, bridges and tunnels to deter an invasion.

The reason? At the start of the 21st century, western elites generally assumed that globalisation, democracy and the free market were self-evidently good, and would keep spreading, creating peace. It thus seemed pointless to plan for a putative invasion.

No longer. As 2026 dawns, “the security situation around Switzerland is deteriorating year by year [and] a global confrontation is emerging”, as a recent report from the Swiss Federal Intelligence Service points out. So, Swiss leaders — like other governments — are now scrambling to rebuild their defences, as they realise that they misread the future.

More striking still, the FIS has also published a manual about cognitive blind spots. “Many people have little to no knowledge of how human thinking works,” the handbook laments, urging the FIS staff to reflect on their mental biases to better understand both the present and future.

More specifically, the manual identifies 18 different cognitive biases that hamper our thinking, such as “group think” (adhering to the cosy assumptions of our tribe), “anchoring” (relying exclusively on whatever information we see first, say on social media), “confirmation bias” (only seeing data that reinforces pre-existing views), “mirror imaging” (assuming others think like us), the “absence of evidence” bias (failing to think about the data we lack) and “survivorship bias” (judging data only with success stories, not failures).

It is excellent advice — and not just for spooks. After all, 2025 was a jarring experience for anyone raised in the late 20th century western zeitgeist: globalisation was undermined by nationalism, free-market principles were corroded by government meddling; and democracy lost ground to oligarchs. The latter is the opposite of what had been expected, as Anne Applebaum notes in her book Autocracy, Inc.

So as 2026 gets under way, the question is how to make sense of these disorienting shocks? History offers one helpful frame. What is happening today echoes, in some ways, the zeitgeist of a century ago, when great powers vied for hegemonic control (ie dominance) between the world wars.

More specifically, what we are essentially witnessing today is a geoeconomic contest between the US, China and Russia, in which economic policy tools are being used for political ends.

America wields hegemonic power in this fight in finance, because it controls the world’s reserve currency. China has hegemonic power in manufacturing because it controls supply chain nodes. Tech hegemony is still contested.

And while each side wants to break the other’s hegemonic power, neither looks able to do so soon. So expect these battles to rumble on. Or for another perspective on events, look at what anthropologists refer to as “social silences”: our tendency to ignore parts of our world because of cultural frames. These are rife today.

One example is that we pay striking little attention to our dependence on vulnerable cyber infrastructure systems. Another is that western discourse pays scant attention to the fact that we live in a golden age of science (a pattern which reflects the largely non-scientific educational background of most western politicians and journalists.)

Anthropology can also shed light on US President Donald Trump’s White House. The current US government has shattered many modern western norms of rule-based, democratic systems, since it is shaped by the capricious whims of Trump, with officials wielding power depending on their proximity to the president, not an org chart.

Moreover Trump’s inner circle act as if their financial interests are with that of the state, with little shame — but an obsessive emphasis on “face” — or “honour.”

This shocks western liberals. But, as the anthropologist Matthew Engelke has noted, honour-based, kinship-focused political systems have been the rule — not exception — elsewhere in the world.

So one way to parse the White House is to treat it like a Tudor royal court — an insight that Swiss business leaders recently took to heart, when they visited Trump bearing symbolic tributes of Rolex watches and a gold bar.

However, the discipline that Swiss intelligence now prefers to stress is psychology. It can help us understand the behaviour of narcissistic rulers such as Trump. But arguably as important is what psychology tells us about our own mental blinkers — including the failure of so many western liberal elites to anticipate Trump’s rise.

Is there any solution to all these biases? The FIS offers some: “stress test your beliefs”; “think statistically”; “ask yourself what you know and what you don’t”; “show intellectual modesty”, deploy “creative thinking” and periodically “think the opposite” of your assumptions, to break out of our cosy intellectual echo chambers.

Call this, if you like, the fight against tunnel vision. It is painfully hard. But in 2026 we need it more than ever. Remember that when you next see a real Swiss tunnel.

cross-posted from: https://mander.xyz/post/44806589

...

The controversy began as soon as Beijing bought the site from real estate groups for £255 million (€292 million), after the then foreign secretary, Boris Johnson, approved the site's diplomatic use. Setting up an embassy at Royal Mint Court, the Conservative official wrote in a letter to his counterpart, Wang Yi, "will be bold expressions of the strength of UK-China bilateral relations," referring to the UK's parallel plan to renovate its embassy in Beijing.

"The Sunday Times revealed that Boris Johnson had entrusted Edward Lister, his right-hand man when he was mayor of London [2008-2016], with the task of negotiating the transfer on behalf of the Foreign Office, even though Mr. Lister had previously worked for the company chosen by Beijing to identify the embassy site," said Luke de Pulford, a human rights advocate, founder of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China (IPAC) and one of the main opponents of the mega-embassy.

As is standard procedure, Beijing submitted its development plans to the relevant local authority: the Tower Hamlets borough council. But in 2022 ... the council unanimously rejected the project, citing its impact on the residents of about one hundred homes adjacent to the Royal Mint. "The council was concerned about risks to their safety and the traffic congestion that could be caused by demonstrations in front of the embassy," explained Conservative councilor Peter Golds. "It was a humiliation for Beijing, as the mega-embassy had become a major issue in the bilateral relationship," said de Pulford.

The project appeared to be dead. All the more so as the so-called "Golden Era" between the UK and China has come to an end. The Golden Era was launched by then Conservative prime minister David Cameron in the early 2010s, when the UK prioritized boosting trade with the world's second-largest economy. Now, repression is rampant in Hong Kong, with China reneging on its 1997 promise to preserve the rule of law on the archipelago when London handed over this former British territory.

...

Starting in 2021, the UK offered visas to tens of thousands of Hong Kong residents fleeing repression, while successive Conservative prime ministers Liz Truss (2022) and Rishi Sunak (2022-2024) took a harder line against Beijing. Key figures in the Conservative Party (Tom Tugendhat, Iain Duncan Smith, Nusrat Ghani) were banned from entering China due to their criticism of the treatment of Uyghurs.

...

Opponents have raised the alarm. In addition to the objections of Royal Mint residents, they put forward geopolitical arguments: "We could never imagine during the height of the Cold War that Margaret Thatcher would have allowed the Soviet Union to build the biggest embassy in Europe in London. It's a completely mad idea. My argument would be that China poses a much more acute threat than the Soviet Union ever did," said de Pulford.

Another issue is the size. "The bigger the building, the greater the risks of interference and influence operations," noted the activist, who pointed out the proximity of Royal Mint Court to the telecommunications cables connecting the City to Canary Wharf, the other major financial center in London.

...

Hong Kong dissidents who have taken refuge in the UK also fear increased extraterritorial repression. "There have been a lot of examples before, where China used diplomatic premises to harass citizens or force people to travel back to China to face trials," said Lau. The young woman from Hong Kong is being hunted by authorities on the peninsula, who offered one million Hong Kong dollars (€109,088) to anyone who helped facilitate her arrest. "When I first arrived here, I felt safe. Not anymore: My neighbors received anonymous letters offering them money in exchange for information about me. When I go out, I am constantly looking over my shoulder," she said.

Hong Kong dissidents who sought refuge in the UK still remember the incident in Manchester in October 2022, when, during a peaceful protest outside the Chinese consulate, members of the consulate dragged a demonstrator into the compound and beat him. The crowd managed to rescue the young Hongkonger. The Manchester consul general and five diplomats were recalled by Beijing a few weeks later, before British police had the opportunity to question them. Lau also expressed concern about the many rooms planned for the basement of the mega-embassy. "We have proof that these rooms exist. Beijing refused to specify what they are for," said Golds.

...

Announcing a green light [for China's 'mega'-embassy] could in any case trigger unrest even within the ranks of the Labour Party, following a series of warnings about the UK's vulnerability to Chinese espionage. In November, the domestic intelligence service (MI5) warned about recruiters attempting, via LinkedIn, to contact lawmakers at Westminster on behalf of the Chinese Ministry of State Security.

Downing Street has still not provided a clear explanation for why the espionage trial of former parliamentary aide Christopher Cash and academic Christopher Berry was canceled in September. At the time, the director of public prosecutions said that he had not received sufficient assurances from the government that China constituted a "threat to the national security of the UK" to be able to proceed with prosecuting the two men.

...

The decision regarding the embassy "has become a flashpoint for the wider debate over how the UK should approach potential national security risks from China," noted the Chatham House think tank in a report dated December 3. However, British authorities' responses to Chinese espionage "appear to be largely reactive, driven by scandal and media scrutiny rather than sustained strategic planning," the authors of the report warned.

Archive link

Almost all new cars sold in Norway last year were fully electric, according to official registration data published Friday. It puts the Nordic country within touching distance of effectively erasing gasoline and diesel cars from its new car market. “2025 has been a very special car year,” Geir Inge Stokke, director of the Norwegian Road Traffic Information Council, said in a statement.