Russia Russia Russia

Vlad and Kim announced that they are strengthening economic and military ties. I don't know what North Korea has to export beyond 152mm artillery shells of apparently dubious quality and starving conscripts, but apparently Russia needs more of it.

Meanwhile, have a detailed guide to telling various Russian tanks apart.

Also, allegedly this morning the Russians dropped an RS-26 ICBM (SS-X-31) sans warhead on Dnipro.

Another BRIC in the wall

Xi and Putin have been eagerly trying to steer the BRICs nations into becoming a more-or-less explicitly anti-Western coalition. Some member states like India and Brazil aren't too hip with that.

Countries like Brazil and India may subscribe to the overarching philosophy of the BRICS as an institution that can help shape the new “multipolar” world in an age of waning U.S. and Western influence, but they are not interested in subscribing to an anti-Western alliance. Both were originally skeptical of China and Russia’s push to expand the bloc, seeing it as an implicit attempt to dilute their own clout. Some analysts in both countries argue they may be better off quitting the enterprise all together.

“For us, the United States is by far the most important partner in terms of our future growth and technologies and access to technologies, and therefore, we don’t want a situation where BRICS become the focal point of conflict with the West on the economic political fronts,” Kanwal Sibal, former foreign secretary in India and former ambassador to Russia, told my colleagues in an interview.

“So while we are in there, we would like to have more cooperation within BRICS and work on a positive agenda for the form of the international system in a cooperative mode, rather than in a confrontational mode,” Sibal said. “Otherwise the BRICS will move in a direction which would become pronouncedly anti-Western.”

I can see how the fact that they have to hold meetings only in countries where Putin is allowed to travel could cause inconvenience.

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Precision Targeting

Does something in your neighborhood Facebook group or favorite fandom Subreddit really get you spun up about something political? Maybe it was supposed to.

The new disinformation being peddled by foreign nations aims not just at swing states, but also at specific districts within them, and at particular ethnic and religious groups within those districts. The more targeted the disinformation is, the more likely it is to take hold, according to researchers and academics who have studied the new influence campaigns.

“When disinformation is custom-built for a specific audience by preying on their interests or opinions, it becomes more effective,” said Melanie Smith, the research director for the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, a research organization based in London. “In previous elections, we were trying to determine what the big false narrative was going to be. This time, it is subtle polarized messaging that strokes the tension.”

Iran in particular has spent its resources setting up covert disinformation efforts to draw in niche groups. A website titled “Not Our War,” which aimed to draw in American military veterans, interspersed articles about the lack of support for active-duty soldiers with virulently anti-American views and conspiracy theories. Other sites included “Afro Majority,” which created content aimed at Black Americans, and “Savannah Time,” which sought to sway conservative voters in the swing state of Georgia. In Michigan, another swing state, Iran created an online outlet called “Westland Sun” to cater to Arab Americans in suburban Detroit.

Sowing discord on the social media channels of opposing nations is becoming an art form.

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Tab Clearing...

• Head of RT admits in interview that there are more clandestine influence operations where that one came from.


• A tour of Fort Wayne... the one in Detroit, that is.


• Beware of acorns!

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Tab Clearing...

• The only skyscraper designed by Frank Lloyd Wright is up for sale. Opening bid is only six hundred grand! It has a really baller penthouse apartment with built-in furnishings designed by Wright, too. I dunno what the nightlife is like in Bartlesville, Oklahoma, but I bet you can see clear to the horizon.


• How do you say "Join the army or go to jail" in Russian?


• Try something new. You might have a good time!

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Tab Clearing...

Today in headlines:

• Fidelity has cut its estimate of X’s value by 79% since Musk’s purchase


• China, at UN, warns against ‘expansion of the battlefield’ in the Ukraine war


• Switzerland and Italy redraw border due to melting glaciers

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That time we almost got blowed up...

A number of y'all are probably familiar with the time a Soviet Colonel saved the world from nuclear war by staying calm and listening to his gut instincts.

Even if you are, though, this is an excellent deep dive into the background, the details, and the aftermath of that fateful day.

(If you want to read a book about Able Archer 83, this is a good one, with lots of scans of original declassified documents.)

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Frisky Dictators

Even during times of relative global security, countries with clout can get away with rather a lot of shenanigans in weedy little ex-colonial nations with shaky governments. Witness the relative impunity with which we ran rather a lot of the Global War on a Noun, or decades worth of Israeli punitive actions, both clandestine and overt, in the Middle East.

Generally, though, even those countries refrained from getting too frisky in nations perceived to have enough clout to punch back.

That's changed in recent years. Putin's FSB whacking Litvinenko and later trying to poison the Skripals in the United Kingdom was only a precursor to the stuff going down now.

Of course Putin's intelligence organizations remain hard at work: 

There’s a vocal coach arrested in Kazakhstan at Moscow’s request who went mad in a local jail. A caregiver for the elderly detained in Montenegro on Russian orders, carried out by Interpol. A schoolteacher detained by Armenian border guards after telling her students about Russia’s crimes in Bucha. A toy shop owner, an industrial climber, a punk rocker: These are some of the people caught in the Kremlin dragnet, all over the world.

And it is a truly global operation. In Britain, exiles are being followed and London opposition events are crawling with agents “who stick out like a sore thumb,” Ksenia Maximova, an anti-Kremlin activist there, told me. Russian intelligence officers have been sent to monitor the diasporas in Germany, Poland and Lithuania, according to Evgeny Smirnov, a lawyer who specializes in treason and espionage cases. Other emigrants have been stalked and threatened in Rome, Paris, Prague and Istanbul. The list goes on.

The Chinese are feeling froggy, too. During Xi's visit to California, a Washington Post in vestigation discovered:

• While there was aggression from both sides, the most extreme violence was instigated by pro-CCP activists and carried out by coordinated groups of young men embedded among them, verified videos show. Anti-Xi protesters were attacked with extended flagpoles and chemical spray, punched, kicked and had fistfuls of sand thrown in their faces.


• The Chinese Consulate in Los Angeles paid for supporters’ hotels and meals as an incentive to participate, according to messages shared in WeChat groups reviewed by The Post. At least 35 pro-CCP Chinese diaspora groups showed up to the APEC summit protests — including groups from New York, Pennsylvania and Washington state.


• Videos show at least four Chinese diplomats from the consulates in Los Angeles and San Francisco among the crowd of pro-CCP protesters, sometimes directly interacting with aggressive actors over four days of protests from Nov. 14-17. Some Chinese diaspora group leaders with ties to the Chinese state participated in some of the violence, the videos show.


• Chinese diplomats hired at least 60 private security guards to “protect” Chinese diaspora groups gathered to welcome Xi, according to seven people involved in the arrangement.

Even Modi's Western-curious India has gotten in on the action...

When Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada accused the Indian government in September of being behind the killing of a Canadian Sikh activist near Vancouver, there was fierce denial, skepticism and muted support.

India vehemently denied the accusations and forced out 41 Canadian diplomats. Canada’s allies, including the United States, said little, concerned about offending an increasingly important counterweight to China and Russia.

Even Canada’s opposition leader demanded that Mr. Trudeau “come clean” with the evidence behind the accusations.

But Canada’s case against India and Mr. Trudeau’s lonely stand were shored up on Wednesday after federal prosecutors in Manhattan revealed details of what they said was a separate plot in the United States, with links to the killing in Canada.

These are definitely some interesting times we're living in.

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It makes sense, in an evil sort of way...

Som information is being released regarding the planned terrorist atacks in Vienna that would have included the Taylor Swift show there:

“They were plotting to kill a huge number — tens of thousands of people at this concert, including I am sure many Americans — and were quite advanced in this,” Cohen said Wednesday. “The Austrians were able to make those arrests because the agency and our partners in the intelligence community provided them information about what this ISIS-connected group was planning to do.”

If you're a bad guy who wants to kill thousands of people, first you gotta find someplace where thousands of people are gonna be. Sounds like the playbook was going to be similar to the one at that Ariana Grande concert in England.

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One of the globe's historically bad neighborhoods.

The AP news headline reads thusly:

At least 13 people have died after a boat carrying migrants sunk off Yemen’s coast, UN says

It says something about how messed up that part of the world is that, not having read the story yet, I'm not 100% sure which direction the boat was going.

Odds are that it was full of people fleeing the Sudan and/or the Horn of Africa and hoping to get to the Gulf States, but given Saudi atrocities at the Yemeni border and the hot mess Yemen's been for years now, maybe they were going the other way and hoping to get to, I dunno, someplace reasonably stable like Egypt or Kenya.

*goes and reads story*

Yup, it was the former. Ethiopians hoping to get work in the Gulf States.

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Zero to jackboots...

We tease the Germans about their love for elaborate compound words, but they can be remarkably concise when they want to be. This AfD poster, for example, condenses fourteen English words down to four German ones.

"It's not a Nazi salute! They're just making a protective roof over their darling, pure-blooded Aryan children!"

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Don't Get Played

A BBC News look at Russian social media influence ops:

But before the truth could even get its shoes on, the lie had gone viral. Influencers had already picked up the false story and spread it widely.

One X user, the pro-Russia, pro-Donald Trump activist Jackson Hinkle, posted a link seen by more than 6.5m people. Several other accounts spread the story to millions more X users – at least 12m in total, according to the site’s metrics.

It was a fake story, on a fake news website, designed to spread widely online, with its origins in a Russia-based disinformation operation BBC Verify first revealed last year - at which point the operation appeared to be trying to undermine Ukraine’s government.

Remember, if it makes you feel a surge of anger, or a surge of elation at having your biases confirmed, you might want to do a bit more digging into its veracity.

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Tab Clearing...

• Benjamin Dreyer on the "Singular They". (If you do any writing, you really should read Dreyer's English. He's a delightful and witty writer.)


• Squillionaires with jillion acre spreads in Wyoming can be incredibly petty.


• "Getting canceled by the woke mob" is apparently a career path now.

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Maybe he can see if Snowden needs a roomie...

I see Assange copped a plea.

Julian Assange is like if you boiled down Glenn Greenwald and Edward Snowden in a vat and skimmed off any redeeming qualities, then stirred in about three quarts of sex pest.

Y'ever notice that Wikileaks never leaked anything that would damage Russian interests? I mean, if Assange hypothetically had been getting paychecks hand-signed by Putin, what would he have done differently?

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Increasingly Unhinged

I know this looks like a store-brand knockoff of OANN, but this guy's actually on Russian state-owned TV spouting this stuff.

Generally, though, I prefer the Russian political talk show format where they stand in a circle and yell at each other about blowing up the world. It’s like Meet the Press and professional wrestling had a baby and dropped it on its head.

Anyway, he's ranting like this because Armenia is basically fed up with Russia's shit and is leaving the Russian-dominated CSTO.

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Tab Clearing...

• I've blogged about the collapse of the camera section in big box stores before, but here's someone else taking note of it.


• You may not be at war with Russia, but Russia is at war with you.


• California totin'.

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The Normie Take

If you don't own a red MAGA baseball cap or a "Let's Go Brandon" bumper sticker, but also aren't some raving Bernie Sanders voter who brings your tofu sandwich lunch to work in an NPR tote bag, Ben Dreyfuss's take here is pretty much how things look:

I live in a small town. I drive by the same five police cars every day. If I constantly played “Fuck The Police” as loud as possible and flipped them off as I drove by, if I were ever pulled over for speeding, I would not expect them to let me off with a warning.

Trump, more than any politician in my lifetime, chose a political strategy that involved him antagonizing half this country. From day one, he “owned the libs.” He made himself the main character in our culture. And he won a personality cult on the right that loves him. But, he earned the intense disdain of the other half of the country.

There are lots of reasons why I think that was bad for this country and the world, but one reason you shouldn’t do it out of self-interest is that a lot of people are going to be rooting for your downfall. And they are going to go over everything with a fine-tooth comb. And if you are a criminal who has broken/does break the law, your chances of getting away with it are going to drop precipitously.

If you have a person bound and gagged in your trunk, you probably shouldn’t speed.

So many people in Trump’s orbit were convicted of various low-rent crimes over the last decade, and none of that would have happened if Trump hadn’t won in 2016. They would have gotten away with all of their fraud and bribery schemes. They had gotten away with them. Then they decided to loudly associate themselves with a hugely divisive person who antagonized so many people that the world gave them a closer look.

That’s what happens in life! It’s just a fact of human nature. It’s how attention works. Of course, that now applies to Trump. And it applies to his enemies, too.

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Too Much Scooby Doo.

Keeping Ivan Honest

USAF B-52 bombers have been sortieing over the Baltic, letting the Russians know we're keeping an eye on an area where they've been getting increasingly frisky and provocative.

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Too late, they've bred...

The Collinses didn’t tell me Simone was eight months pregnant when we were making plans for me to spend a Saturday with them at home in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, but I guess it shouldn’t have come as a surprise. They are the poster children of the pronatalist movement, on a mission to save humanity by having as many babies as possible.

Malcolm, 37, answers the door of their 18th-century farmhouse with four-year-old Octavian George, who is thrilled to have a visitor, bringing toy after toy to show me like an overexcited golden retriever. His little brother, two-year-old Torsten Savage, is on his iPad somewhere upstairs. Simone, 36, in an apron that strains across her belly, has her daughter, 16-month-old Titan Invictus, strapped to her back. The imminent arrival of their fourth child, a girl they plan to name Industry Americus Collins, turns out to be only the first in a string of surprises – and one really shocking thing – that I will encounter during my day with the pronatalists.

I don't get these people who act like a bit of population shrinkage would be the worst thing in the world. Remember what a barren, empty hellscape this country was when it only had two thirds as many people as it does now, way back in 1976? Yeah, me too.

Also, are these people trying to make their kids hate them?

Me: "Hahahaha those countries with baby-naming laws are so quaint and authoritarian."

These Dweebs: *name their human daughter in 21st Century America "Titan Invictus"*

Me: "Okay, so about those baby-naming laws..."

I'm like "You people get that these aren't, like, Funko Pops or collectible action figures or lifestyle achievement badges to show off to your friends in your private Discord server, but are actual independent humans who are going to have a life of their own in a surprisingly short number of years and are probably going to loathe their weird-ass given names, right?"

(And before you say "Well, Black people have been naming their kids funny-sounding names for years..." what I want you to understand is that there's a difference between wanting to have names that are cultural signifiers... yet still recognizably names ...that aren't the ones that had been assigned to your family by the people who bought and sold your ancestors as chattel, and just being weird for the sake of being weird. D'shaun or Latisha are names, made-up names, sure, but names nonetheless*. "Industry Americanus" is a dorky-ass affectation.)

*"Why don't they use names from the part of Africa their families came from?" you ask, and the answer is that nobody knows where they came from because it's not like their abductors or purchasers took careful notes on that stuff.

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