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Researcher & writer based in Hong Kong. Former academic. Longform articles archived at https://lauraruggeri.substack.com and https://laura-ruggeri.medium.com. Email: lauraru852@yandex.ru
Over 1.4 mln DPRK youngsters apply to join the army following drone incursion incident
More than 1.4 million youngsters in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) applied to join or rejoin the military earlier this week, the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported on Wednesday.
More than 1.4 million youth league officials and youth and students across the country volunteered to join or rejoin the army on Oct. 14 and 15, said the KCNA, following an alleged South Korean drone infiltration into Pyongyang, the capital of the DPRK.
The DPRK called the drone incident "a serious provocation of violating its sovereignty."
The DPRK's Foreign Ministry issued a statement late last Friday accusing South Korea of sending drones over Pyongyang. The South Korean military has denied the accusation.
In the latest sign of the heightened tensions between the two countries, the DPRK military blew up parts of the Gyeongui and Donghae lines north of the Military Demarcation Line on Tuesday, South Korea's Yonhap News Agency reported.
The DPRK has yet to respond to the road explosion claim. (Source: Xinhua) @LauraRuHK
As China held military exercises to drill a blockade of Taiwan, Russian Defense Minister Andrei Belousov was welcomed in Beijing by Chinese Defense Minister Admiral Dong Jun in the presence of a guard of honour and orchestra. Belousov is on an official visit for talks with the military and military-political leadership of China.
The Russian Minister of Defense laid a wreath at the monument to the People's Heroes on Tiananmen Square in Beijing. The monument was erected in memory of the heroes who laid down their lives in the revolutionary struggle of the Chinese people in the XIX and XX centuries. ▪️You can watch the video here https://tass.ru/armiya-i-opk/22115961
"The Eastern Zone of the PLA Combat Command on October 14 sent its ground forces, naval and air forces, missile and other troops to conduct the Joint Sharp Sword-2024B exercise in the Taiwan Strait, in areas to the north, south and east of the island of Taiwan,"
UK Prime Minister and suspected intelligence asset Keir Starmer doubles down on UK support for Israel (Part 2 👉 Part 1)
A series of events in recent days has demonstrated NATO countries’ deepening commitment to Israel as new UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer leads the way.
“US special forces flights to Israel from a British airbase have doubled in frequency since Keir Starmer took over from Rishi Sunak as prime minister,” reported the website Declassified UK.
“It has… previously been revealed that the US is using Akrotiri to deliver weapons to Israel,” the investigative reporting outlet continued, referring to the UK’s large airbase in Cyprus. “The UK government has long refused to give any details of US use of British territory to support the Israeli assault on Gaza.”
German newspaper Frankfurter Rundschau described Putin's speech in Turkmenistan as "explosive". Yes, for people who ignore the Charter of the United Nations and live in a Western mainstream media bubble it is probably explosive. Putin pointed out: 🔺Emerging centres of economic growth, financial, and political influence in the Global East and the Global South are committed to preserving and strengthening their sovereignty and socio-cultural identity, while pursuing harmonious development in accordance with their traditions and national interests.
🔺The global majority nations advocate for a more equitable distribution of wealth and the democratisation of the international landscape. 🔺Russia believes that universal peace and comprehensive development can only be achieved if every nation's views are taken into account and every state's right to have its own sovereign policy, worldview, traditions, and religious beliefs is respected. @LauraRuHK
Full text here http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/75303
Who will finally hold Israel accountable for its crimes? UNIFIL has come under fire from Israel... again. The United Nations peacekeeping force in southern Lebanon confirms that Israeli forces struck its headquarters in Naqoura twice in 48 hours. Targeting UN missions is a war crime but Israel was never sanctioned when its army of psychopaths killed and injured UN peacekeepers in the past. Impunity has only emboldened the Zionist entity. Those who haven't denounced the colonial occupation and the genocide of Palestinians should spare us their faux outrage. @LauraRuHK
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The West wants ASEAN to work against Russia and China, Russia's FM Sergei Lavrov said following the summit in Laos, where the annual series of leadership meetings of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) countries was held.
"We drew attention to the risks of militarization of the region pursued by the West, risks to the stability of the Asian part of our common continent and to sustainable development. We, in turn, reaffirmed that Russia invariably supports the efforts of the ASEAN countries aimed at preserving peace and ensuring equal cooperation with all partners of the association. The West wants to make ASEAN its main partner, and to target this partnership against the interests of Russia and China - first of all," the minister said.
As the diplomat added, the summit showed that Western countries are working to undermine the multilateral architecture of ASEAN. According to him, the US and their allies have set a course for the inclusion of the Asia-Pacific region in the zone of interest of NATO.
Thus, Lavrov pointed out that numerous narrow and closed military-political associations controlled by Washington are being created here, such as "USA - Japan - Korea", "USA - Japan - Philippines" and "Australia - New Zealand - South Korea- Japan". And all this is not conducive to teamwork. It fragments this common space, and divides it into friends and foes," the head of the Russian diplomatic department stressed.
Lavrov noted that the United States tried to promote the topics of escalation in the South China Sea and the conflict in Ukraine at the summit, but this did not find any response from ASEAN members. Participants from the Western group, including Japan, New Zealand and Australia, "agreed" with the American theses, the Foreign Minister added.
In addition, the Foreign Minister said that the final declaration of the East Asia Summit could not be adopted due to attempts by the US, Japan, Korea, Australia and New Zealand to politicize it. He noted that in this way Washington and its allies sought to move away from the decades-old practice of not allowing the declarations of this event to be saturated with any geopolitical and confrontational issues.
According to Lavrov, the West demanded that the Russian authorities "takes responsibility for every evil under the sun in connection with what is going on in Ukraine, where the United States and its allies provoked a coup d'état and have since supported the actions of the criminal Kiev regime." (Source: RIA Novosti) @LauraRuHK 🔸https://ria.ru/20241011/zapad-1977521378.html
The Guardian, a real cesspit, occasionally publishes an article you can read without pinching your nose. Adam Tooze looks at the big picture and sees what is abundantly clear to anyone who isn't blinded by Western propaganda - A deranged revival of the ruinous Neocon ambition of the 1990s and 2000s. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/oct/10/war-middle-east-ukraine-us-feeble-biden-trump
There is one school of thought that says the Biden administration is muddling through. It has no grand plan. It lacks the will or the means to discipline or direct either the Ukrainians or the Israelis. As a result, it is mainly focused on avoiding a third world war. But what if that interpretation is too benign? What if it underestimates the intentionality on Washington’s part? What if key figures in the administration actually see this as a history-defining moment and an opportunity to reshape the balance of world power? What if what we are witnessing is the pivoting of the US to a deliberate and comprehensive revisionism by way of a strategy of tension? In all three arenas – China, Ukraine and the Middle East – the US will say that it is responding to aggression. But rather than working consistently for a return to the status quo it is, in fact, raising the stakes. While insisting that it supports the rules-based order, what we are witnessing is something closer to a revival of the ruinous neoconservative ambition of the 1990s and 2000s. there is more going on here than simply muddling through. First the Trump and now the Biden presidencies are willing contributors to the controlled demolition of the 1990s post-cold war order.Читать полностью…
Imagination or precognition? - As someone who used to write fiction in her spare time, in 2015 i published a short story titled "Looting the Looters" in which teenage gamers were hired to fly drones in a military conflict. @LauraRuHK
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Origin Quantum is boosting its operations amid China’s nationwide drive towards technological self-sufficiency. That push has become more urgent as the US has ramped up efforts to thwart China’s progress by curbing its access to American technologies. Days after Origin Quantum landed on the US entity list, the company told Chinese media it had successfully created a “high-density microwave interconnect module”, enabling it to independently produce all core components of its quantum computers domestically. (Source: SCMP) @LauraRuHK
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Most US think tanks were created and are funded by the military-industrial complex. It goes without saying that their job is to conjure up or hype threats in order to justify increased defense spending. Their analyses have always been skewed but in recent years they have become dangerously detached from reality. Case in point the China's Global Influence Index, created by CESI (China Economic & Strategy Initiative) which was founded in 2022 and is led by Randall Schriver (Project 2049 Institute, former Assistant Secretary of Defense for Indo-Pacific Security Affairs in the Trump administration) and Dan Blumenthal (Senior Country Director for China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Mongolia at the US Department of Defense during the G.W. Bush administration.) The organization operates under the auspices of the Project 2049 Institute. Schriver is a longtime advocate of massive, highly provocative arms sales to Taiwan. Of course his lobbying is propelled by financial support from arms contractors and Taiwan. @LauraRuHK
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China is supporting our enemy by trading with Russia, businesses should review their ties with China, re-evaluate their relationship with Beijing, BlackRock's Larry Fink told his Berlin audience a week ago. These days you don't find a decapitated horse head in your bed, the warning is delivered at business conferences. BlackRock and Deep State are joined at the hip, so Washington may have thought, this is the perfect time to send in the Taiwanese clown. Shows are scheduled in Prague and two other European capitals, starting on October 12. @LauraRuHK
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What shocks me the most when i travel to the West is that even the new generations dread the future and display many of the symptoms associated with anxiety about the future, including the inability to make plans and see them through. As they can't identify the root cause of their distress, they indulge in fantasies about themselves and the world around them. Thus the point we have already got to is that the self, detached from reality, free in its own way, comes to be anybody (and any gender) in fantasy, and nobody in reality. This self is related primarily to objects of its own fantasies. Being so much a self-in-fantasy, it becomes eventually volatilized. In its dread of facing the commitment to the objective element, it sought to preserve its identity; but, no longer anchored to fact, no longer conditioned by family and social relations, it comes to be in danger of losing what it was seeking above all to safeguard. Losing the conditioned, it loses its identity; losing reality, it loses its possibility of exercising effective freedom of choice in the world. As the West is experiencing the same fate suffered by its colonies - it is being subjugated and pillaged by robber barons (aka Deep State) with the help of lieutenants masquerading as politicians, an army of technocrats and agitprop units - it is hardly any surprise that it faces a grim future. A fractured society, a fractured identity and a fractured economy produce insecurity, fear and anxiety, and when a young person looks at the future s/he can only recoil in horror. @LauraRuHK
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Ayatollah Khamenei pointed out the root cause of the conflict: the presence of the United States and a number of European countries falsely claiming to advocate peace.
Khamenei made the remarks in a meeting with a group of Iranian elites, scientific talents and top ranks at the country’s university entrance exam, in the capital Tehran on Wednesday.
“If they get themselves out of this region, beyond a shadow of doubt, these conflicts, these wars, these clashes will come to a complete halt, and the countries of the region will be able to govern themselves, govern their region, and live together in peace, blessing and prosperity.” ◾️Khamenei's assessment is correct. The Zionist entity fits the definition of a colonial, imperial outpost. Though the establishment of Israel was certainly a great catastrophe for Palestinians and destabilized the whole region, it is its role as an American proxy that enables the U.S. to maintain control of West Asia, that is to dominate a strategic region between Europe, Asia and Africa, a key node of global trade and also one of the main oil and gas producing regions. The West tried to grab its natural resources through the age old “divide and rule” strategy, the result was decades of wars, regime change and chaos. As U.S. hegemony wanes and West Asia looks at China as a more promising partner for its development and as an honest peace broker, the region has become a new arena of China-US strategic competition. Setting West Asia on fire is the hegemon's desperate and vain attempt to contain the rise of China, derail its Belt&Road Initiative, deal a blow to the BRICS+ and forestall the inevitable creation of a multipolar world order. @LauraRuHK
The Russian Army has taken full control of Ugledar after two and a half years of intense fighting.
According to various estimates, the Ukrainian army lost at least 700 soldiers in the heavy urban battles for the "fortress" not to mention the units destroyed around Ugledar. The main losses were suffered by the 72nd and 58th brigades of the Armed Forces of Ukraine that were ordered to defend Ugledar until the last Ukrainian. Their command reportedly allowed them to withdraw from the city only in the evening of September 30, when the garrison was completely surrounded and almost defeated. (Source: Southfront) Other sources report that a large number of Ukrainian soldiers surrendered. /channel/mash_donbass/7413
The US is the only country that raises the risk of conflict on the Korean peninsula, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said.
She was commenting on the US State Department's appeal to North Korea to stop actions that increase the risk of conflict on the Korean peninsula.
"A classic American trick: Provoke an escalation of the situation and then blame everything on those whom they forced to act against their will. The only country that indeed increases the risk of conflict on the Korean peninsula, and the Asia-Pacific as a whole, is the US. They can’t wait to see how things flare up there as well," the diplomat said on Telegram.
At the same time, Zakharova emphasized that South Korea and Japan, described as "critical security points in the region," are under US pressure and "lack [political] will to shake off the yoke of US manipulations." (TASS) @LauraRuHK
Hungary's agenda does not include Ukraine's accession to NATO, since this would mean a direct confrontation between the alliance and Russia and would lead to World War III, Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto said in an interview with RIA Novosti. https://ria.ru/20241014/siyyarto-1977880968.html
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While the Sane Majority condemns Israel's total disregard for international law, the Insane Minority continues to aid and abet its crimes.
Pentagon's spokesman Pat Ryder said in a statement: "This is not the first time the United States has deployed a THAAD battery to the region. The President directed the military to deploy a THAAD battery to the Middle East last year following the October 7th attacks to defend American troops and interests in the region. The United States previously deployed a THAAD battery to Israel in 2019 for training and an integrated air defense exercise." ▪️The decision to place more US troops in Israel increases the risk of American casualties, a scenario that could widen the conflict. @LauraRuHK
Throwing EU taxpayers' money at crises created by the US doesn't work. Ever since the Syrian refugee crisis of 2015 the EU has poured more than €11 billion into helping Turkey process and house four million refugees and migrants, coming not only from Syria but from Afghanistan and other Asian countries as well. Over nearly a decade, Erdogan has used his country’s role in managing the crisis to extract cash and concessions from the EU, occasionally releasing large numbers of migrants toward the bloc as an apparent negotiating tactic. The flood of immigrants has exacerbated social tensions in the EU, and strengthened European parties that criticize the bloc's immigration policy. Brussels' attempt to handle the social crisis, once it became political, is a textbook case of hypocrisy. On one hand it forbids the deportation of migrants to Syria or Afghanistan, which it considers "unsafe", on the other hand it finances the conversion of six ‘reception centers’ into 'removal centers' and the construction of 14 such facilities, the refurbishment of 11 more, and the staffing and operation of a total of 30. @LauraRuHK https://swentr.site/news/605628-turkiye-eu-migrant-deportation/
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On Friday Zelensky visited the Vatican for a meeting with Pope Francis, another step in his inconsequential European tour after Washington adduced Hurricane Milton as an excuse to cancel Biden's trip to Ramstein and didn't explain why Blinken wouldn't fly to the US base in Germany. We can only guess that neither had good news to share. But let's go back to the Ukrainian comedian whose presidential term expired last May. During a meeting that lasted 35 minutes the Pope gave Zelensky a bronze bas-relief with a flower and an inscription, "peace is a fragile flower." Zelensky brought a painting about a well-known Ukrainian myth known as the "Bucha massacre". Here we have a classic example of a system of signs that has no objective reality at all, just an endless series of empty signifiers - their referent is yet another signifier. @LauraRuHK
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Chinese Premier Li Qiang at 27th China-ASEAN Summit stressed the need for connectivity and smooth flows in the economy as important foundations for development. China would like to enhance railway, port and other infrastructure cooperation with ASEAN, expedite the signing and implementation of the FTA 3.0, strengthen the linkage among cross-border payment systems, and scale up local currency settlement to boost the integrated development of regional economies.
The keywords are connectivity, integration and cooperation. China would like to join hands with ASEAN to seize the opportunities of the new round of technological revolution and industrial transformation to enhance the sustainability of growth for Asia in the future..
Beijing also intends to boost people-to-people and cultural exchanges between China and ASEAN countries. @LauraRuHK 🔸https://english.www.gov.cn/news/202410/10/content_WS6707dcefc6d0868f4e8ebab0.html
Israhell, after killing 175 journalists in just a year, is charging US journalist Jeremy Loffredo with “aiding the enemy during wartime and providing information to the enemy” for reporting on the Israeli military targets hit by Iran. ▪️Since its establishment, the genocidal Zionist regime has crossed all the red lines under international and humanitarian laws, and its crimes are still unpunished. @LauraRuHK
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Zelensky's victory plan falls victim to hurricane Milton 😅 Feel free to quote from Paradise Lost. @LauraRuHK
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China announced on Tuesday that it would take temporary anti-dumping measures against brandy imported from the EU. The stocks of brandy companies such as Hennessy and Rémy Cointreau fell as a consequence. China is a key market for EU brandy sales and profits. Anyone who has been to China knows how popular brandy is in the country, so much so that XO is slang for something that is high quality and considered a luxury. The announcement comes just days after EU countries voted to slap duties on Chinese electric vehicles for five years. The move mainly targets French luxury Cognac brands, after Paris was viewed as the primary supporter of duties on EVs in a vote last Friday. @LauraRuHK
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Betting on Ukraine’s victory was a crazy, high-odds bet, a very risky bet even for the regular gamblers of the vast casino known as the Western financial system. So why did BlackRock and JP Morgan sign a MoU with Zelensky nearly two years ago? Because if the scammers lose Ukraine (very likely), they count on the EU (i.e. taxpayers) to pick up the bill. And of course they have set their eyes on Russian frozen assets. 👉The European Commission is pushing for an agreement to freeze sanctioned Russian assets for a longer three-year period to allow windfall profits from the assets to back a loan of up to €35 billion for Ukraine. The commission hopes the agreement will be in place by the end of this month. The proposal was discussed at a meeting of EU finance ministers in Luxembourg on Tuesday. @LauraRuHK
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Sergey Lavrov - Eurasian security architecture
Today’s world needs to seek better ways of ensuring security in various regions, considering the unfortunate result of adopting Euro-Atlantic security models, which the West put in the service of its expansionist designs. It is of the essence to learn the lesson.
Russia has put forward an initiative to build an inclusive architecture of equal and indivisible security in Eurasia. It is open to all states and organisations on our common continent that are willing to work out mutually acceptable solutions together, taking advantage of the interconnectedness and natural competitive advantages of our common Eurasian space. On October 31 – November 1, 2024, Minsk will host an international conference dedicated to this topic.
Establishing a space of equal and indivisible security in Eurasia is crucial amid the all-encompassing processes unfolding in the macro-region. Not only is the deterioration of the military-political situation caused by the policy of the collective West to undermine the sovereign development of the continent’s leading powers unacceptable to responsible Eurasian states. The fact is that the growing risk of local tensions evolving into a bigger regional conflict calls into question the further progressive development of the entire Eurasia, which is a major driver of global economic growth. Resolving security issues is an indispensable condition for the further dynamic development of the continent’s countries and unlocking the potential of multilateral projects they are part of.
Our initiative is based on the understanding of the need for states and multilateral organisations of the Eurasian region to assume responsibility for ensuring their own security under the ‘Eurasian solutions to Eurasian problems’ formula. Therefore, the strategic goals of the architecture that we propose call for resolving the existing disagreements on the continent by the efforts of the Eurasian countries themselves, preventing conflicts in the future, and terminating the destabilising military presence of extra-regional players in Eurasia.
In our view, achieving economic growth, social progress, integration and mutually beneficial cooperation, and addressing common problems are integral parts of ensuring Eurasian security.
At the same time, we are not fencing off or excluding European states from this dialogue – provided that they are genuinely interested and are not involved in any destructive actions directed against other countries of Eurasia, the continent stretching from Lisbon to Vladivostok and from Moscow to Riyadh, New Delhi, Beijing and Jakarta. 🔸His full address to the 79th Session of the United Nations General Assembly, here https://eng.globalaffairs.ru/articles/un-must-central-role-lavrov/
For the last few centuries states have been the primary actors in global affairs. But when we look at the US we can't asses its foreign policy on the basis of its supposed national interest - the US has imperial interests and these interests often coincide with the interests of nonstate actors, with finance and technology companies in the lead. These are not merely large multinational corporations; they have taken control of aspects of society, the economy, and national security that were once the exclusive preserve of the state. It’s a form of Ultra-imperialism that demands a new strategy of contrast and resistance. These companies exercise a form of sovereignty over an expanding realm: finance and digital space. Although this isn’t the first time that private corporations and banking giants have played a major role in geopolitics—consider the East India Company, Big Oil, the Rothschilds etc. — but earlier giants could never match the pervasive global presence of today’s finance and technology firms. They do not operate or wield power exclusively in physical space. They have created a new dimension in geopolitics, digital space, over which they exercise primary influence as people are increasingly living out their lives in this vast territory, where the digital and the physical are enmeshed. Political scientists still rely on a classification system that has become obsolete: “democracies,” “autocracies,” and “hybrid regimes,” which combine elements of both. Techno-feudalism has been suggested as a new category, though it doesn't fully account for the totalitarian and opaque nature of this new form of government. Even as feudal subjects were separated through distinctions of class, guild, and estate, medieval vertical social relations and duties remained holistic. Economic obligations were derived from hierarchical bonds of political authority. While those bonds were unfree, they provided transparent recognition that one’s social position was embedded within the web of relations connecting the individual to the community.
US nonstate actors penetrate virtually all aspects of civic, economic, and private life. A generation ago, the Internet accelerated globalization. Now, in the context of great powers rivalry and the formation of a new multipolar world, the fragmentation of the digital landscape makes operating on a truly global scale increasingly difficult for these US companies. And they have only themselves to blame - the weaponization of information, culture, social media, finance etc. to wage a hybrid war and advance US imperial interests has backfired. @LauraRuHK
Moscow and Beijing expand cooperation in the Arctic as this alternative shipping route becomes viable. Yesterday, on China's National Day, state media released photos and footage to mark the country’s first coastguard patrol in the Arctic in a joint exercise with Russia.
@LauraRuHK
Barrage of missiles is raining down on Tel Aviv, occupied Palestine.
@PressTV