RUSSIA
And what's Biden doing to free here from nasty Russian authorities?
By the way, did I say NASTY loud enough for everybody to understand the current situation?
AFRICA
The Russian Bear Is NOT Falling Asleep
Quote:Russia’s main security agency arrested a dual citizen of Russia and the United States alleging she committed high treason for donating funds to an appeal aiding Ukraine.
The Federal Security Service (F.S.B.) identified the detainee as a 33-year-old woman who lives in Los Angeles, the New York Times reports.
The F.S.B. said in a statement that she had raised money for a Ukrainian organization that bought weapons and other equipment for Ukraine’s military.
The Russian news outlet Media Zona identified her as Ksenia Karelina. She is reportedly 33-years-old and a resident of Los Angeles.
Perviy Otdel, a group of Russian lawyers who specialize in cases involving accusations of treason and other politically charged allegations, said that the woman had been accused of treason for sending just over $50 to Razom for Ukraine, a New York-based nonprofit organization that sends assistance to the country.
Meanwhile the F.S.B. said the detained woman had been arrested in the city of Yekaterinburg in central Russia. She was reportedly in the country visiting her parents.
RIA Novosti, a Russian state news agency, published a video it alleged showed the woman, wearing a white hat that covered her eyes, being handcuffed and escorted by masked security service officers.
If convicted, she could face up to 20 years in prison.
And what's Biden doing to free here from nasty Russian authorities?
By the way, did I say NASTY loud enough for everybody to understand the current situation?
Quote:Deputy chairman of the Russian Security Council Dmitry Medvedev, who was also formerly the Prime Minister and President of Russia in service to Vladimir Putin, has threatened Western capitals with the “entire strategic arsenal” of Russian nuclear weapons. Medvedev, for whom absolutely no slight is too small to necessitate a nuclear response, was speaking of Ukraine’s hope to retake its U.N.-recognised national territory which in some cases have been occupied by Russia for very close to ten years.
Russia has amended its constitution and now considers those areas — Crimea, Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhia — to be full parts of the Russian Republic. Attempting to push the borders back to where they were before will invite a massive retaliation, Medvedev said in his latest threat on Sunday, making clear he sees the Western states aiding Ukraine with arms as legitimate targets.
He said: “Attempts to return Russia to the borders of 1991 will lead to only one thing. To a global war with Western countries using the entire strategic arsenal of our state. In Kiev, Berlin, London, Washington.”
Claiming “beautiful historical places” would be destroyed by Russia’s nuclear weapons, Medvedev suggested it would be better for the forces trying to roll back Russia’s war against Ukraine should stand down “before it’s too late”. Further discussing the consequences of Western-backed Ukraine taking back its legal territory, Medvedev spoke of how losing its newly conquered territory again could push Russia into civil war.
Quote:Russian officials are reportedly refusing to release the body of opposition leader Alexei Navalny to his family after his sudden death in an Arctic prison camp on February 16.
Navalny’s spokeswoman Kira Yarmysh said on Sunday it is “obvious that they are lying and doing everything they can to avoid handing over the body.”
Yarmysh said 47-year-old Navalny was “murdered” at the prison, but officials insisted “no crime had been found” during their preliminary investigation of his death.
When Navalny’s mother went to the prison on Saturday, she was told her son died from “sudden death syndrome” and his body had already been sent to Salekhard, the city nearest to the harsh and remote prison camp. Navalny’s mother and his lawyers proceeded to Salekhard, only to be told the morgue was not open for business and had not received Navalny’s body.
According to Yarmysh, a few hours after enduring that runaround, Navalny’s family and lawyers were informed his body was being held by the authorities pending a full investigation into his death, which will supposedly be concluded sometime next week.
Yarmysh said officials were clearly “driving us around in circles and covering their tracks” by refusing to hand over the body.
Navalny’s wife Yulia released a nine-minute video message over the weekend in which she raged against Russian strongman Vladimir Putin for killing her husband and depriving their two children of a father.
Quote:A Russian pilot who defected to Ukraine, taking his Cold War-era helicopter with him, was the victim of a shooting attack last week, Ukrainian media says.
A man was found shot dead in a parking garage in Villajoyos, Alicante, Spain last week. Although Spanish authorities haven’t released the name of the deceased, Ukrainian media now says the remains are of Captain Maksim Kuzminov, a Russian military pilot who defected with his helicopter to Ukraine last year.
Ukrainian Pravda cited a source in the Defence Intelligence of Ukraine directorate which “confirmed” the death of the defector, and who said after his crossing to the West Kuzminov had moved to Spain, presumably using the half-million dollar reward paid to him by the Ukrainian government for defecting.
Spanish newspaper El Pais reports Kuzminov’s body was found “riddled with bullets” and that he had also been run over by his attackers. A getaway car was later found burnt out.
The paper also notes Kuzminov was carrying false papers, suggesting he may have been living under an assumed identity, given previous threats to kill him, and that the Alicante neighbourhood where he lived was popular with Ukrainian and Russian expatriates.
Russia had already ordered the liquidation of their “traitor” last year, and said in a response to the news of his demise today that Kuzminov had already died morally at the point at which he decided to flee to the West, calling it a “dirty and terrible crime”. Russia further alleged that Kuzminov may have been killed by Ukraine themselves, to “eliminate… an inconvenient witness”.
Quote:Russia has invited over a dozen Palestinian factions to Moscow at the end of February for a summit aimed at producing a unified front as Hamas struggles to survive in the face of an Israeli counteroffensive following the October 7 terror attack.
The Jerusalem Post reported Monday:
Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh said over the weekend that Russia had invited Palestinian factions to meet in Moscow, according to Al-Ain media in the UAE. Russia’s state news TASS said it could take place from February 29 to March 2. The invitation is the latest Russian move to try to increase its influence in the wake of the October 7 attack on Israel. Moscow hosted a Hamas delegation in October and Hamas has sought to do outreach to Moscow.
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According to Russian state media TASS, Moscow has invited up to 14 Palestinian groups to attend. These include those that are members of the Palestine Liberation Organization, and Moscow has reached out to Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
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Hamas has done outreach to Russia in the wake of the October 7 attack. Moscow has also not condemned the massacre and it appears Moscow saw October 7 as a welcome distraction from the war in Ukraine. The war in Gaza has required similar types of 155mm shells the Ukrainians use, and the focus on Gaza means that Russia has been able to slowly build up its forces in Donetsk, possibly for a spring offensive. Ukraine had to withdraw from a key town near Donetsk over the weekend, and reports say the Ukrainians are outnumbered and outgunned on the front.
Russia appears to be reprising the role that the Soviet Union played during the Cold War, when it provided arms, funding, and ideological support to anti-Israel terrorist groups, including the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), and to Arab states.
Anti-Israel sentiment appears to go hand-in-hand with pro-Russia sentiment among developing nations. Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, or Lula, compared Israel’s response to Hamas to the Holocaust — then defended Russia over the death of opposition leader Alexei Navalny. Likewise, South Africa, which has led the charge against Israel at the International Court of Justice, has also taken a pro-Russia stance in the Ukraine war, refusing to condemn the Russian occupation of Ukrainian lands.
Quote:Estonia´s domestic security agency said on Tuesday that it had apprehended 10 people suspected of sabotage and of spreading fear and creating tension within the Baltic country in a coordinated “hybrid operation” by Russia´s special services.
Among the suspects – detained between December and February – are individuals believed to have broken the car windows of Interior Minister Lauri Läänemets and a local journalist in December, the Estonian Internal Security Service said.
“The information currently collected in criminal proceedings indicate that the Russian special service had coordinated a hybrid operation against the security of the Republic of Estonia, involving the suspects that have been detained,” it said. “To the knowledge of the Estonian Internal Security Service, its aim was to spread fear and create tension in Estonian society.”
Estonia´s relations to neighboring Russia have remained icy ever since its independence in 1991. As a legacy of the Soviet Union, the country of 1.3 million, which is now a member of NATO and the European Union, has a sizable ethnic Russian minority.
According to State Prosecutor Triinu Olev, the suspects have been detained pending the results of an investigation into criminal proceedings.
AFRICA
Threats and Slaughters
Quote:A South African member of Parliament, Ahmed Munzoor Shaik Emam of the National Freedom Party, delivered a speech on February 14 in which he warned Jews there would be a “bloodbath” if the “Zionists” tried to make Cape Town a “Jewish state.”
The speech, uploaded to the South African Parliament’s Youtube channel, was reported by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), and has since gone viral internationally.
The speech was part of the annual debate on the president’s “State of the Nation” address. Many members of Parliament wore kaffiyehs in solidarity with the Palestinians.
MEMRI noted: “South African MP Ahmed Munzoor Shaik Emam of the National Freedom Party said in a February 14, 2024 parliamentary debate, which was uploaded to the parliament’s official YouTube channel, that if the [opposition] Democratic Alliance hands over the city of Cape Town ‘to the Zionists, the city of Cape Town will be a bloodbath.’ He added: ‘We will not allow you to make this a Jewish state!'”
Cape Town is already governed by the Democratic Alliance.
The city has a large Muslim minority, which is generally peaceful, though it also includes extremist groups.
South Africa has experienced a surge in antisemitism since the Hamas terror attack on October 7 in Israel. Moreover, South Africa has led the charge against Israel on the international stage, accusing Israel of “genocide” at the International Court of Justice.
Emam’s speech has gone viral partly for that reason: while South Africa accuses Israel of “genocide,” a member of Parliament is threatening genocide against Jews.
Quote:Residents of Ethiopia’s Amhara region told the UK Guardian on Monday that government troops went door-to-door in the town of Merawi in January and murdered dozens of civilians to root out an insurgent militia.
One eyewitness reported seeing “at least 34 bodies” lying in the street after the massacre, some with “their faces completely blown out.”
The Guardian pointed out that its scoop was difficult to compile because the Ethiopian central government has banned reporters from traveling to Amhara and cut the entire region off from the Internet. The Guardian’s sources spoke by telephone and insisted on anonymity, fearing for their safety.
Several brutal civil wars have wrecked Ethiopia over the past few years. The prominent headline-grabbing conflict was the rebellion of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), a Marxist militia and political party that controlled much of Ethiopia’s government before the election of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed in April 2018.
Abiy is a member of the Oromo tribe, another of Ethiopia’s many feuding ethnic factions, and his aggressive reform agenda purged Tigrayans from many positions of power. Tensions escalated steadily and boiled over into violence in 2020.
The Tigrayan civil war was incredibly brutal, with atrocities reported on all sides. The TPLF came close to winning at one point, threatening to attack the capital of Addis Ababa. Abiy, who won a Nobel Peace Prize for negotiation peace between Ethiopia and Eritrea, took to the battlefield as a belligerent war leader and called on his contacts in Eritrea for help, which they were only too happy to provide, as they shared a deep mutual loathing with the Tigrayans.
"For God has not destined us for wrath, but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ," 1 Thessalonians 5:9
Maranatha!
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Maranatha!
The Internet might be either your friend or enemy. It just depends on whether or not she has a bad hair day.
My Original Stories (available in English and Spanish)
List of Compiled Binary Executables I have published...
HiddenChest & Roole
Give me a free copy of your completed game if you include at least 3 of my scripts!
Just some scripts I've already published on the board...
KyoGemBoost XP VX & ACE, RandomEnkounters XP, KSkillShop XP, Kolloseum States XP, KEvents XP, KScenario XP & Gosu, KyoPrizeShop XP Mangostan, Kuests XP, KyoDiscounts XP VX, ACE & MV, KChest XP VX & ACE 2016, KTelePort XP, KSkillMax XP & VX & ACE, Gem Roulette XP VX & VX Ace, KRespawnPoint XP, VX & VX Ace, GiveAway XP VX & ACE, Klearance XP VX & ACE, KUnits XP VX, ACE & Gosu 2017, KLevel XP, KRumors XP & ACE, KMonsterPals XP VX & ACE, KStatsRefill XP VX & ACE, KLotto XP VX & ACE, KItemDesc XP & VX, KPocket XP & VX, OpenChest XP VX & ACE