New video of alleged N. Korean troops surfaces, NATO and Pentagon monitoring closely
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U.S. Says North Korean Troops Are in Russia, Calling It ‘Very Serious’
A TV screen at a train station last week in Seoul, South Korea, showed images of soldiers from the North. Credit...Ahn Young-Joon/Associated Press
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Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III confirmed on Wednesday that North Korea had sent troops to Russia to join the fight against Ukraine, a major shift in Moscow’s effort to win the war. Mr. Austin called the North’s presence a “very serious” escalation that would have ramifications in both Europe and Asia.
“What exactly are they doing?’’ Mr. Austin told reporters at a military base in Italy. “Left to be seen.” He gave no details about the number of troops already there or the number expected to arrive.
His statement came as American intelligence officials said they were preparing to release a trove of intelligence, including satellite photographs, that show troop ships moving from North Korea to training areas in Vladivostok on Russia’s East coast, and other Russian territory further to the north. No troops have yet reached Ukraine, the intelligence officials said.
For two weeks, there have been reports of the movements, fueled by the Ukrainian and South Korean governments, that upward of 12,000 North Koreans were training to fight alongside Russian soldiers.
American officials have said they estimate that about 2,500 North Korean troops have been dispatched so far. But they made no estimate of how many more would follow, or even how well they might perform on territory the North’s conscripts have never fought in, amid fellow fighters who speak a different language.
There was no immediate comment from the Kremlin. Russia has earlier denied earlier reports on North Korea’s troop presence.
Financial cooperation and BRICS expansion are on the table as Putin hosts Global South leaders
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KAZAN, Russia (AP) — Russia’s President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday hosted China’s Xi Jinping, India’s Narendra Modi and other world leaders at a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, part of the Kremlin’s efforts to challenge Western global clout.
Speaking at the start of Wednesday’s BRICS meeting, Putin named the deepening of cooperation in the financial sector as part of its agenda. He said participants were also set to discuss a range of international issues including the settlement of regional conflicts, along with the expansion of the BRICS group of countries.
“BRICS strategy on the global arena conforms with the strivings of the main part of the global community, the so-called global majority,” Putin said.
The alliance that initially included Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa has expanded to embrace Iran, Egypt, Ethiopia, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia. Turkey, Azerbaijan and Malaysia have formally applied to become members, and several others have expressed interest in joining.
The three-day summit in the city of Kazan was attended by 36 countries, highlighting the failure of U.S.-led efforts to isolate Russia over its actions in Ukraine. The Kremlin touted the summit as “the largest foreign policy event ever held” by Russia.
The Kremlin has cast BRICS as a counterbalance to the Western-dominated global order and redoubled its efforts to court the countries of the Global South after sending troops into Ukraine in February 2022.
Russia has specifically pushed for the creation of a new payment system that would offer an alternative to the global bank messaging network SWIFT and allow Moscow to dodge Western sanctions and trade with partners.
Putin, who is set to hold more than a dozen bilateral meetings on the sidelines, conferred with Xi, Modi and South African President Cyril Ramaphosa on Tuesday ahead of the summit’s opening.
Xi and Putin announced a “no-limits” partnership weeks before Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022. They already met twice this year, in Beijing in May and at a Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit in Kazakhstan in July.
During Tuesday’s meeting with Xi, Putin described the relations between Moscow and Beijing as “one of the main stabilizing factors on the world arena.” He vowed to “expand coordination on all multilateral forums for the sake of global stability and a fair world order.”
“Amid tectonic transformations unseen for centuries, the international situation is undergoing serious changes and upheavals,” Xi said, hailing the “unprecedented character” of Russia-China ties.
Russia’s cooperation with India has also flourished as New Delhi sees Moscow as a time-tested partner since Cold War times despite Russia’s close ties with India’s main rival, China.
Western allies want India to be more active in persuading Moscow to end the war in Ukraine, but Modi has avoided condemning Russia while emphasizing a peaceful settlement. “We fully support the quickest establishment of peace and stability,” said Modi, who last visited Russia in July.
On Thursday, Putin is also set to meet with United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, who will be making his first visit to Russia in more than two years. Guterres has repeatedly criticized Russia’s actions in Ukraine.
An Appeal for Brazil’s Forests, Painted 11 Stories Tall
Using natural materials from environmental disasters around the country, a Brazilian activist sends a message to a U.S. farming giant.
A building in downtown São Paulo, Brazil, was painted with a 15,000-square-foot mural of an Indigenous leader, Alessandra Korap.
Two weeks ago, on a rooftop 11 stories above São Paulo, a popular Brazilian street artist, Mundano, sat on an overturned bucket, mixing water, varnish and ash collected from fires that had ripped through a Brazilian rainforest to create a palette of gray tones.
Over the ledge awaited a newly whitewashed, 15,000-square-foot wall of an elegant apartment building in plain view of the buses and cars heading down a main artery leading to the city center.
That evening, he and five assistant artists would start painting a massive mural of an Indigenous leader, Alessandra Korap, in a scorched Amazonian landscape, holding up a sign urging Cargill, the Minnesota-based agricultural giant, to rid its supply chain of crops grown on recently deforested land.
The project is a collaboration with the conservation nonprofit Stand.Earth, which is funding the mural as part of a campaign targeting Cargill.
The final result is to be officially unveiled on Wednesday, though it is hardly a secret to the supermarket shoppers, passers-by and those who work in the small shops that surround a parking lot below the mural.
“I’m already tired and we haven’t started yet,” said Mundano, whose (rarely mentioned) first name is Thiago.
Mundano, a street artist, mixing water, varnish and ash collected from fires that had ripped through a Brazilian rainforest to create a palette of gray tones.
The mural is near a main street leading into the center of São Paulo.
Over long days and some nights, Mundano and his assistants worked from eight suspended scaffolds (like the ones window-washers use).
They used paints made with ash from fires in the Atlantic Rainforest in Brazil, mud from floods that destroyed swaths of the southern Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul, charcoal from charred Amazonian trees and clay from drought-plagued river basins across the country.
“I’m connecting the droughts and the floods and the fires because it’s all linked,” said Mundano, who claims this will be Brazil’s largest mural painted with only natural materials (plus a water-based acrylic varnish), a style that has become his trademark.
The final step was to fill in the six-story-high sign held in the mural by Ms. Korap, a member of the Munduruku tribe who was raised in Pará state. It reads: “Stop the destruction” in English and Portuguese, with the hashtag #KeepYourPromise.
The “promise” refers to a pledge Cargill made in November 2023, setting 2025 as a deadline “to eliminate deforestation and land conversion from its direct and indirect supply chain” of soy and other crops in Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay. Cargill is one of the largest exporters of Brazilian soy.
Mundano, left, and his assistant analyzing the color details of the mural against a photo of Ms. Korap.
Artists made their paints using ash from burned Amazon forests, mud from floods, charcoal from charred trees and clay from drought-plagued river basins in Brazil.
“I want to show an image of our struggle, of this fearless warrior woman” said Ms. Korap, who was one of six winners of the prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize in 2023. “It says we’re alive, we’re fighting every single day.”
In an April report, Stand.Earth cited 18 companies with “confirmed or suspected links” to Cargill that have deforested or converted wild land to soy production. The environmental advocacy group covered the mural’s cost, around $80,000, according to Mathew Jacobson, the Cargill campaign’s director.
In a statement, Cargill said it was “on track to deliver” on its commitment “to eliminate deforestation in soy supply chains’’ in the region.
It also accused Stand.Earth of misrepresenting Cargill’s work.
Of the companies listed in the April report, Cargill said, two are not in its supply chain, three have been removed and four have not done business with Cargill for years. Cargill said it had investigated the others and cleared them of using deforesting land for crops.
Earlier this week, Mundano and his crew methodically painted, filmed and then used brooms and water-filled fire extinguishers to erase 21 versions of the sign calling out members of the billionaire Cargill-MacMillan family, who together control the company.
Mundano using water to erase signs calling out members of the Cargill-MacMillan family.
Brooms also were used to erase the names.
The versions were based on paintings made by members of the Munduruku community at a workshop Mundano held with Ms. Korap in July. They will be delivered by Mr. Jacobson to the Cargill families’ homes in the United States.
“We see them as the leaders and the driving force of the industry that’s most responsible for the destruction of the forests and other landscapes as well,” Mr. Jacobson said, noting that Cargill’s private ownership avoids accountability to shareholders.
“Because of the amount of resources the owners have, the idea of putting in place systems to monitor those things is incumbent on them,’’ he added, “instead of continuing to profit from the destruction.”
Cargill more than doubled its profit in Brazil from 2022 to 2023, the company reported in April.
The campaign is also targeting a long-planned and much-delayed 580-mile railway known as the Ferrogrão, or Grain Rail, which is meant to make it easier to transport agricultural and mining products to the Amazonian river port of Miritituba.
Parts of the planned route of the privately financed government project slice through protected lands.
Cargill said it was “not part of the consortium that was formed to build’’ the railway, but said that increasing transportation capacity while protecting the environment was vital to feeding the world.
The artist known as Hulk, left, and Mundano checking out the progress of the painting.
Daniel Wera smoking a petyngua, a ceremonial pipe, before starting work.
By last week, the artists at the mural site had their routines down. An artist known as Hullk (whose real name is André França), a native of Manaus, a city in Amazonas State, grated dried guaraná fruit into water to make a natural stimulant commonly used in his region.
Daniel Wera, smoked a petyngua, a ceremonial pipe used by the Guarani people he has worked with in the São Paulo region. “I use it so I don’t forget why I’m here,” he said. “I’m here to represent the forest.”
Two sheets of paper displayed over 20 earth and ash tones and their “recipes.” Mundano sat on a varnish bucket, grating clay collected from a drought-stricken region near Ms. Korap’s home in Pará state.. The resulting shade would be used for the traces of smoke floating by trees in the mural’s background.
“Is there any Atlantic rainforest left?” said another artist, André Firmiano, referring not to the fast-disappearing Brazilian ecosystem but to the dark gray tone used to outline the trees.
“No,” someone said.
“So let’s make some more.”
Later, Mr. Wera and Mr. Hullk hung from one of the eight scaffolds, adding detail to the feathers that make up Ms. Korap’s towering tiara, checking their work against a laminated photo of her.
Mundano and his assistants worked from eight suspended scaffolds.
“I’m connecting the droughts and the floods and the fires because it’s all linked,” Mundano said.
Down below, shoppers and workers regularly looked up, curious and mostly admiring.
“This mural was a gift,” said Frankie Medici, 46, who runs the XBull Grill burger stand next to the lot and had grown accustomed to the drab gray paint that preceded the mural.
“Customers have taken so many photos and wondering what’s going in the sign,’’ he said. “It will be a jab at someone, at the very least.”
A few shoppers made pointed jokes, wondering if taxpayer money was financing the art (it was not) and whether the warning to “stop the destruction” was directed at Brazil’s leftist president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. (It wasn’t).
Ms. Korap will not be at the mural’s unveiling; she is back home, but plans to visit next month and has already posted drone footage of the in-progress artwork on Instagram.
“Whether we are rich or poor, whether we live in the forest or in the city,” she said, “if we don’t protect our Mother Earth, we will all crumble.”
During the project, shoppers and workers regularly looked up, curious and mostly admiring it.
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С сожалением и понятными пожеланиями, Dimitriy.
Министр финансов Силуанов подтвердил создание аналога SWIFT в рамках БРИКС. Платежная система объединения будет включать полноценную систему передачи финансовых сообщений. Ее планируют создать с учетом использования цифровых финансовых активов.
Польша пока не собирается высылать посла РФ из Варшавы, сообщил глава МИД.
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Rosyjski ekspert: reakcją Moskwy ws. konsulatu w Poznaniu może być zamknięcie konsulatu RP w Irkucku
Rosyski politolog Igor Grecki, ekspert Międzynarodowego Ośrodka na rzecz Obrony i Bezpieczeństwa (ICDS) w Tallinie powiedział PAP, że reakcją Rosji na wycofanie przez Polskę zgody na działalność konsulatu FR w Poznaniu może być zamknięcie polskiego konsulatu w Irkucku.
Grecki, który jest ekspertem ICDS w sprawach polityki zagranicznej Rosji wobec Polski i Ukrainy, skomentował w ten sposób zapowiedź MSZ Rosji o "bolesnych" retorsjach w związku z zamknięciem placówki w Poznaniu.
"Zwykle w takich sytuacjach strony działają na zasadzie wzajemności. Jeśli wydalana jest jakaś liczba dyplomatów jednej strony, to drugi kraj w odpowiedzi wydala taką samą liczbę dyplomatów. Jeśli zamykany jest konsulat, to odpowiednio, kroki w odpowiedzi polegają na tym, że zamykany jest (również) konsulat" - powiedział Grecki. Przypomniał, ze w 2019 roku wydalony został z Polski rosyjski wicekonsul w Poznaniu. Wówczas w odpowiedzi Rosja wydaliła wicekonsula RP w Irkucku.
"W Polsce znajduje się obecnie ambasada i trzy konsulaty (Rosji). To samo dotyczy polskich przedstawicielstw w Rosji: jest to ambasada w Moskwie plus konsulaty w Petersburgu, Irkucku i Kaliningradzie. Wszystkie działają do tej pory. Jako że polskie MSZ podjęło decyzję o zamknięciu konsulatu w Poznaniu, to jeśli bazować na precedensie z 2019 roku z wydaleniem dyplomatów (...), logiczne jest przypuszczenie, że Rosja w odpowiedzi zamknie konsulat generalny RP w Irkucku" - powiedział ekspert.
Podkreślił, że "jak powiedział minister (spraw zagranicznych RP Radosław - PAP) Sikorski, Polska zdecydowała się na ten krok w związku z tym, że Rosja przeprowadza akcje sabotażu na terytorium Polski".
"Wydaje mi się, że zamknięcie konsulatu (w Poznaniu) nie zakończy akcji sabotażu ze strony Rosji. Rosja werbuje ludzi na terytorium państw zachodnich przez komunikatory, przez (serwis) Telegram. Celem tych akcji jest wywołanie chaosu w krajach UE, które popierają Ukrainę (...) i osłabienie tego poparcia" - powiedział politolog.
Jak ocenił, "w tej sytuacji ze strony krajów Unii Europejskiej - partnerów Ukrainy byłoby logiczne wzmocnienie poparcia Ukrainy, być może - zaproszenie jej do NATO, a przynajmniej ogłoszenie tego zaproszenia". Zdaniem eksperta "najlepiej, by była to odpowiedź nie tylko Polski, ale wszystkich krajów partnerskich Zachodu, w tym USA".
Grecki zauważył, że "skala wydawania wiz i pracy przedstawicielstw dyplomatycznych w placówkach konsularnych obu krajów - Polski i Rosji - zmniejszyła się". Wyraził opinię, że rzeczniczka MSZ Rosji Maria Zacharowa mówiąc o "bolesnej" odpowiedzi "zaostrza sytuację, atmosferę", ale też podkreślił, że "nie jest przekonany, że ze strony MSZ Rosji wszystko zakończy się na słowach".
Minister Sikorski poinformował we wtorek, że za ostatnimi próbami dywersji w Polsce i w krajach sojuszniczych stoi Moskwa. Oznajmił, że wycofał zgodę na funkcjonowanie konsulatu Rosji w Poznaniu, a jego personel zostanie uznany za osoby niepożądane w Polsce. Szef MSZ powiedział, że Federacja Rosyjska prowadzi wojnę przeciwko Ukrainie i wojnę hybrydową przeciwko Zachodowi, w tym przeciwko Polsce.
Podkreślił, że na wojnę hybrydową składa się agresja informacyjna, ataki cybernetyczne, destabilizacja granicy polsko-białoruskiej oraz akty dywersji. Zażądał zaprzestania prowadzenia wojny hybrydowej przeciwko Polsce i jej sojusznikom. "W wypadku kontynuacji rezerwujemy prawo do podejmowania kolejnych stanowczych działań" - zapowiedział.
Rzecznik MSZ Paweł Wroński wyjaśnił, że decyzja o wycofaniu zgody na funkcjonowanie konsulatu w Poznaniu zostanie przekazana stronie rosyjskiej i prawdopodobnie w ciągu najbliższych dni konsulat zostanie zamknięty, a rosyjscy dyplomaci będą musieli opuścić terytorium Polski.
Rosyjski konsulat w Poznaniu powstał w 1946 r. na mocy porozumienia między ambasadą Związku Radzieckiego a Ministerstwem Spraw Zagranicznych PRL. Konsulat zawiesił działalność w 1948 r. i został ponownie otwarty w 1960 r. 11 lat później, czyli w 1971 r. został przekształcony w konsulat generalny. Pozostałe konsulaty generalne FR w Polsce znajdują się w Gdańsku i Wrocławiu, a ambasada - w Warszawie.
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Top S. Korean, Polish, Czech security officials agree to cooperate on response to...
Министр иностранных дел Южной Кореи Чо Тхэ Ёль, комментируя неподтвержденные и опровергнутые Пхеньяном слухи о якобы возможной отправке северокорейских войск в зону конфликта на Украине, пригрозил КНДР международным уголовным судом, юрисдикцию которого та не признает.
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State Department Holds Press Briefing Amid Reports Of Deployment Of North Korean Troops In Ukraine.
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NATO, US warn North Korea against sending troops to Ukraine | REUTERS
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United States confirms North Korean forces are in Russia.
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North Korea sends troops to Russia to fight in Ukraine.
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S. Korea's intel agency says N. Korea sent 3,000 troops to Russia, with more expected by December
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Власти Южной Кореи: КНДР отправила в Россию 3 тыс. Военных
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🔻По сведениям южнокорейских властей, КНДР уже отправила в Россию 3 тысяч своих военнослужащих, а их общее число должно достичь 10 тысяч, сообщил член комитета парламента Южной Кореи по вопросам разведки Пак Сун-Вон.
🔻Ранее разведслужбы Южной Кореи сообщали, что в России уже находятся 1,5 тысячи северокорейских военнослужащих, которые могут вскоре отправиться на войну в Украине.
«Свидетельства о том, что этих военных обучают в Северной Корее, появились в сентябре и октябре, — сказал член комитета (цитата по агентству Reuters). — Похоже, что военнослужащих уже распределили по различным учебным базам в России и сейчас они привыкают к местным условиям».
🔻В среду министр обороны США Ллойд Остин впервые подтвердил, что у Пентагона есть доказательства присутствия в России военных из КНДР. При этом Остин заявил, что Вашингтон все еще пытается установить, какие именно задачи предстоит решать этим военнослужащим.
🔻Ранее президент Владимир Зеленский заявил, что, по его данным, КНДР может отправить на войну против Украины две бригады по 6 тысяч человек в каждой.
🔻Согласно сведениям американской газеты WSJ, северокорейские военные должны получать реальный опыт боевых действий в условиях войны против Украины, и их отправка была обусловлена тайным положением договора между Москвой и Пхеньяном, подписанного этим летом.
🔻Россия и КНДР неоднократно отрицали сообщения об отправке в Украину северокорейских боеприпасов и военных.
Putin calls for alternative international payment system at Brics summit
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Vladimir Putin has opened the expanded Brics summit by issuing a call for an alternative international payments system that could prevent the US using the dollar as a political weapon.
But the summit communique indicated that little progress had been made on an alternative payment system.
Speaking at the summit in the Russian city of Kazan, Putin said: “The dollar is being used as a weapon. We really see that this is so. I think that this is a big mistake by those who do this.” He said that nearly 95% of trade between Russia and China is now conducted in rubles and yuan.
The move to de-dollarize the world economy unnerves some Brics members – notably Brazil and India – that do not want their rapidly expanding club to become solely pro-Chinese and anti-western.
Russia is working on creating a settlement and payment infrastructure that would bypass the Swift payment system based in Belgium.
The de-dollarization initiative is probably the most concrete proposal likely to emerge from the summit that has been remarkable for giving Putin his biggest international platform since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. The summit has been attended by the nine Brics members including the Indian prime minister, Narendra Modi, the Chinese premier and the president of South Africa, Cyril Ramaphosa.
The UN secretary general, António Guterres, also arrived late on Monday with criticism from Ukraine ringing in his ears for finding time to fly from New York to meet a Russian leader for whom an arrest warrant has been issued by the international criminal court. Ukraine complained that Guterres refused to attend the Ukraine peace conference in July.
Guterres’s spokesperson insisted that he would not retreat from any of his longstanding positions on the illegality of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and would make that clear in his public as well as private remarks. The spokesperson added special provisions applied to allow the UN secretary general to meet world leaders that are subject to arrest warrants.
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The future purpose and size of the Brics summit – now in its 16th year - also proved controversial, with Putin saying it would be wrong to ignore the unprecedented interest in global south countries wishing to join the organisation, and keeping the organisation effective.
Brazil in alliance with India has been trying to prevent Brics, already expanded from five to nine members at last year’s Brics summit in South Africa, being reshaped simply into an anti-western alliance that acts as a cheerleader for Russia and China.
Speaking by video link the Brazilian president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, said: “Many insist on dividing the world into friends and enemies. But the most vulnerable are not interested in simplistic dichotomies; what they want is plenty of food, decent work and quality universally accessible public schools and hospitals.”
Nations to be admitted were only agreed after Brazil successfully held out a veto against Venezuela.
The new members, a diverse geographical and political group, are expected to be Cuba, Bolivia, Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia, Belarus, Turkey, Nigeria, Uganda, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. The decision by Turkey, a member of Nato, to attend has raised eyebrows.
Agathe Demarais, a sanctions specialist at the European Council of Foreign Relations, said: “At this stage it is hard to imagine a widespread development and adoption of Brics financial tools globally. The US dollar’s domination of the global currency landscape is entrenched, both for trade transactions and foreign exchange reserves; more than 80% of global trade transactions are invoiced in US dollars, which also accounts for nearly 60% of central banks reserves.
White House reacts to evidence of North Korea troops moving to Russia.
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U.S. Says North Korean Troops Are in Russia to Aid Fight Against Ukraine
Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III called the situation “very, very serious,” though he said that what the soldiers were doing in Russia was “left to be seen.”
For weeks, the Ukrainian and South Korean governments have fueled reports that more than 12,000 North Koreans were training to fight alongside Russian soldiers.Credit...Ahn Young-Joon/Associated Press
Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III confirmed on Wednesday that North Korea had sent troops to Russia to join the fight against Ukraine, a major shift in Moscow’s effort to win the war. Mr. Austin called the North’s presence a “very, very serious” escalation that would have ramifications in both Europe and Asia.
“What exactly are they doing?” Mr. Austin told reporters at a military base in Italy after a trip to Ukraine. “Left to be seen.” He gave no details about the number of troops already there or the number expected to arrive.
Mr. Austin cast President Vladimir V. Putin’s need for North Korean mercenaries as a sign of desperation.
“This is an indication that he may be in even more trouble than most people realize,” he said. “He went tin-cupping early on to get additional weapons and materials from the D.P.R.K.,’’ he said, using the abbreviation for Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, “and then from Iran, and now he’s making a move to get more people.”
But he said intelligence analysts were still trying to discern whether the troops were moving toward Ukraine.
Ukrainian officials insist they are headed there, and Ukraine’s defense minister was quoted on Wednesday saying he expected to see North Korean troops in Kursk, the Russian territory that Ukraine has occupied, in the coming days.
Mr. Austin’s statement came as American intelligence officials said they were preparing to release a trove of intelligence, including satellite photographs, that show troop ships moving from North Korea to training areas in Vladivostok on Russia’s east coast and other Russian territory further to the north.
For two weeks, there have been reports of the movements, fueled by the Ukrainian and South Korean governments, that more than 12,000 North Koreans were training to fight alongside Russian soldiers.
American officials have said they estimate that 2,500 North Korean troops have been dispatched. But they made no estimate of how many more might follow, or even how well they might perform on territory that the North’s conscripts have never fought in, amid fellow fighters who speak a different language.
There was no immediate comment from the Kremlin. Russia has denied earlier reports on North Korea’s troop presence. But Moscow is straining to maintain its costly offensives in Ukraine without destabilizing Russian society. U.S. officials estimate that Russia is recruiting 25,000 to 30,000 new soldiers a month, just enough to replace the dead and the wounded. Some military analysts believe the Kremlin will have a hard time maintaining that pace without resorting to another round of unpopular mobilization.
To avoid the political cost of a draft, the Russian government has resorted to increasingly unorthodox recruitment tactics. Many Russian regions have sharply increased sign-up bonuses paid to volunteer soldiers and expanded recruitment from prisons and from poor nations such as Cuba and Nepal.
Nonetheless, both Russia and North Korea experts called the arrival of North Korean troops a watershed moment. Desperate not to stir up domestic resentments about the huge casualties Russia has taken — over 600,000 killed or wounded, American officials recently estimated — Mr. Putin is now reaching for mercenary forces, supplied by the same country that has sold him more than a million artillery rounds, many of them defective.
For Kim Jong-un, the North Korean leader, the war in Ukraine has been a pathway out of geopolitical isolation. For the first time in decades, the North has assets that a major power is willing to pay for.
His longer-term plan, experts say, may be to improve the reach of his intercontinental ballistic missiles. He is eager, American intelligence agencies believe, to make it clear that his arsenal of nuclear-tipped weapons is capable of hitting American cities.
“This is the real ‘no limits’ partnership,” said Victor Cha, a North Korea expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies who was a member of President George W. Bush’s National Security Council. “We are in a whole different era if North Korean soldiers are dying for Putin. It will raise the ask when Kim makes demands, and Putin will give him what he wants.”
In comments to reporters on Monday, President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine sought to portray North Korea’s presence as an attempt by Mr. Putin to avoid an unpopular mobilization.
“I wouldn’t say they have run out of personnel,” the Ukrainian leader said of Russia. “However, the reluctance to mobilize their own people is certainly increasing, and there are formats for mobilizing North Korean troops. This is definitely happening.”
“This indicates that the consequences of this war are already impacting Russian society,” he added.
One of the central mysteries American and South Korean intelligence agencies are focused on is what Mr. Kim may be receiving in return for contributing troops.
So far, officials say, there is no clear quid pro quo in the transaction; the United States has not picked up intelligence suggesting that Russia agreed to pay for the mercenaries, or provide oil or much-needed military technology in return. But there have been reports of increased cooperation on missile technology, and in that arena, Mr. Kim has some very specific needs.
He has been trying to demonstrate that his intercontinental ballistic missiles have the range to reach the United States — a goal that North Korea has had since it seriously began work on its nuclear weapons program in the early 1980s.
As Mr. Kim’s missiles have grown more accurate, he has conducted flight tests that have flown in high arcs into space and landed in the Pacific. But he has not yet conducted a test across the Pacific, one that could also demonstrate that his warheads could survive the intense heat and vibration of re-entering the atmosphere — a challenge that plagued the American and Soviet missile programs in the 1950s.
“Kim may believe that going this far for Putin will mean that he can raise the ceiling on what he wants in return, possibly higher-end technology for ICBMs and nuclear subs,” said Mr. Cha. “Both are stated goals of the program.”
Mr. Putin, American intelligence officials suggest, may also have a reason to cooperate. With the Biden administration gradually allowing American-made missiles to be shot into Russian territory by Ukrainian forces, some senior officials believe, Mr. Putin has every incentive to help North Korea show that it could threaten American territory.
Another mystery is how China is reacting to the North’s new deals with Russia. U.S. intelligence has concluded that Chinese officials now want to assure that Russia wins in its conflict with Ukraine, demonstrating that the West, with all its firepower, cannot prevail far from its shores.
But North Korea has always been highly dependent on Beijing, and Mr. Kim’s move to take advantage of Russia’s need for ammunition and troops is presumed to be unwelcome in Beijing. China remains the North’s critical supplier of oil, and its major trading partner. And it has sometimes used that leverage to insist that Mr. Kim not create instability or conflict in Asia.
Now the provision of troops threatens all that. But so far, officials say, they have not picked up evidence that China is expressing its displeasure.
Цитата:
What We Know About North Korea’s Role in the Ukraine War
North Korea’s supply of munitions has already been critical to the Russian war effort. Now, its troops appear to be poised to join the fight in Ukraine.
A television news report in Seoul on Monday showing soldiers believed to be from North Korea standing in line to receive supplies in Russia.Credit...Ahn Young-Joon/Associated Press
Five months ago, the autocratic leaders of Russia and North Korea signed a treaty on mutual defense and cooperation, deepening ties between the two countries that stretch back beyond the Cold War.
Now, North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, has deployed soldiers to assist Moscow’s war effort in Ukraine. More than 600,000 Russian troops have been killed and wounded since President Vladimir V. Putin launched the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
On Wednesday, the United States confirmed that North Korean troops had landed in Russia to join the fight against Ukraine, a major shift in Moscow’s effort to win the war. Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III called the North’s presence a “very serious” escalation that would have ramifications in both Europe and Asia.
“What exactly are they doing?’’ Mr. Austin told reporters at a military base in Italy. “Left to be seen.” He gave no details about the number of troops already there or the number expected to arrive.
North Korean soldiers started reaching the Russian Far East earlier this month, sailing on Russian Navy ships, according to South Korea’s intelligence agency. There are 3,000 North Korean soldiers on Russian soil at the moment, the agency said on Wednesday, and their numbers are expected to swell to 10,000 by December.
Earlier this week, President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine suggested that North Korea was preparing 12,000 soldiers to fight on the Russian side.
Moscow and Pyongyang have denied the claims, and no hard evidence has emerged that North Korean troops have yet walked onto the battlefield.
North Korea has one of the world’s largest militaries, with 1.2 million soldiers, but it has not fought in a major conflict since the 1950-53 Korean War. For decades, Pyongyang claimed that its military buildup was for deterrence of war on the Korean Peninsula. Dispatching troops to the Ukrainian front would mark its first major intervention in an overseas war.
Here’s what to know about North Korea’s growing military ties with Russia.
How is North Korea helping Russia?
Mr. Kim and Mr. Putin have met twice since last year, signing the treaty in Pyongyang in June. Mr. Putin has relied on Mr. Kim to replenish his dwindling weapons stockpiles.
South Korean defense officials have said that North Korea has sent more than 13,000 shipping containers of artillery rounds, anti-tank rockets and KN-23 short-range ballistic missiles to Russia since August 2023. It also dispatched technicians and officers to help the Russians operate its weapons and to collect data on how its missiles fared in modern warfare, especially against Western air-defense systems.
South Korea’s National Intelligence Service said on Friday that Russian navy ships transported 1,500 North Korean special operation forces to the Russian port city of Vladivostok between Oct. 8 and Oct. 13. The troops were then said to move deeper inland to the cities of Ussuriysk, Khabarovsk and Blagoveshchensk. They were given Russian military uniforms, weapons and forged identification documents so that they could pose as people from eastern Siberia, where indigenous Buryat and Yakut people bear Asian facial features, according to the intelligence agency.
The South also released satellite photos showing what it called Russian navy ship movements near a North Korean port and hundreds of suspected North Korean soldiers assembling in Ussuriysk and Khabarovsk last Wednesday.
A handout photograph from South Korea’s National Intelligence Service that the agency said shows North Korean personnel gathered at a military facility in the Russian city of Ussuriysk, on Oct. 16.Credit...South Korea's National Intelligence Service, via Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
“The troops are expected to be deployed to the front lines once they complete their acclimatization training,” the agency said.
North Korea is prepared to send more troops to the Russian war effort, it added, noting the frequent traffic of Russian transport planes between Pyongyang and Vladivostok.
What do North Korea and Russia want?
Mr. Putin wants to overcome the heavy casualties that Russia has suffered on the front lines in Ukraine.
“This is an indication that he may be even in more trouble than most people realize,” Mr. Austin said. “But again, he went tin-cupping early on to get additional weapons and materials from D.P.R.K., and then from Iran, and now he’s making the move to get more people, if that is the case, if these troops are designed to be a part of the fight in Ukraine,” Mr. Austin said, using the abbreviation for North Korea’s formal name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.
North Korea has been one of the few countries to publicly support the Russian invasion. That backing has provided Mr. Kim with rare leverage to chart a new course for foreign relations after the collapse of his negotiations with former President Donald J. Trump.
Mr. Kim’s military support guaranteed that Mr. Putin would veto any new American-led attempt to impose new sanctions on North Korea at the U.N. Security Council and undermine efforts to enforce the existing ones. North Korea has also been receiving oil from Russia, which would help it sustain its confrontational stance toward the United States and its allies, South Korean officials said.
Less clear is whether Mr. Putin will go so far as to help North Korea overcome technological hurdles in its nuclear and missile programs. Although it has conducted six nuclear tests and launched several intercontinental ballistic missiles, North Korea has yet to master technologies to enable its missiles to reach targets in the United States.
A photo provided by North Korean state media showing President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia with Kim Jong-un at a ceremony in Pyongyang in June. The military ties between the two leaders have deepened.Credit...Korean Central News Agency, via Associated Press
Some analysts say that by sending troops to help Russia, North Korea was emulating a path that South Korea took decades ago.
Seoul cemented its alliance with Washington by committing nearly 320,000 troops to the Vietnam War, the largest foreign contingent that fought alongside American forces. In return, the United States helped modernize South Korea’s decrepit military. It also helped spur its ally’s economic growth with cheap loans.
How has the world responded?
Moscow and Pyongyang have denied the existence of an arms deal, or reports of North Korean troops in Russia.
The strongest reaction has been from South Korea, which has faced increasing belligerence from the North. Seoul has deemed the growing military ties between Moscow and Pyongyang “a grave security threat” and a violation of multiple United Nations resolutions barring any member nation’s military cooperation with North Korea.
On Tuesday, the office of the South Korean president, Yoon Suk Yeol, accused the North of “driving its young people into an unjustifiable war as mercenaries.”
It warned that it could take “phased countermeasures” to respond to the growing “military collusion” between Moscow and Pyongyang. Such steps could include supplying both defensive and offensive weapons to Ukraine, a senior South Korean official said on Tuesday, speaking on condition of anonymity.
So far, Seoul has limited its direct support for Ukraine to humanitarian and financial aid and nonlethal military equipment, such as mine detectors.
Protesters in Seoul on Wednesday called on the South Korean government not to supply Ukraine with lethal arms.Credit...Jeon Heon-Kyun/EPA, via Shutterstock
South Korean officials say that by committing troops to Russian forces in Ukraine, North Korea hopes to win Russia’s military support in return, such as help in perfecting its nuclear program and modernizing its outdated conventional weapons systems. That assistance from Moscow would be crucial if the North started a war with the South.
According to Cha Du Hyeogn, a senior analyst at the Asan Institute for Policy Studies in Seoul, the deepening military ties with Pyongyang “mean that Russia now regards North Korea’s nuclear weapons development not as a problem to solve but as something it can accept.”
Цитата:
North Korean troops are in Russia but their purpose is unclear, U.S. says
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin says the U.S. has evidence Pyongyang has deployed military forces, affirming accusations made by Ukraine and South Korea.
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ROME — Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said Wednesday that the U.S. government has evidence North Korea has sent military forces to Russia, but he told reporters that the purpose of their deployment was not yet clear.
Ukraine and South Korea have repeatedly accused North Korea of sending troops to Russia to aid in its war with the government in Kyiv. NATO and the United States had not previously confirmed the troop movements.
Austin said U.S. analysts continue to scrutinize the issue and “now we are seeing evidence” that there are North Korean troops in Russia.
“What exactly they’re doing is left to be seen,” Austin said. “But yes, there is evidence that there are DPRK troops in Russia,” he added, using the abbreviation for the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.
His comments came after South Korea’s National Intelligence Service said last week that at least 1,500 North Korean special operations troops were training in Russia. The troops had been given Russian uniforms, weapons and IDs, and were being assigned to units composed of Siberian soldiers in a bid to conceal their nationalities, the intelligence agency reported. In a briefing to South Korean lawmakers Wednesday, the spy agency estimated that an additional 1,500 troops had moved into Russia, bringing the total to about 3,000.
A senior Biden administration official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss U.S. intelligence assessments, said there are “thousands of DPRK troops” in Russia to be trained, with no clarity on whether they will fight in Ukraine.
The development raises new, troubling concerns about collaboration between two nuclear-armed nations that have long had a mutually adversarial relationship with the United States. Austin suggested that, depending on the circumstances, its implications could be far-reaching.
“If they’re co-belligerents — if their intention is to participate in this war on Russia’s behalf — that is a very, very serious issue,” Austin said. “It will have impacts, not only in Europe. It will also impact things in the Indo-Pacific as well.”
Austin said it was unclear how North Korea might benefit from the deployment but that it suggested significant weaknesses in the military capability of Russia, which has had to tap allies Iran and North Korea for aid in its war against Ukraine.
“This is an indication that he may be even in more trouble than most people realize,” Austin said of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
South Korea and Ukraine have stepped up their warnings about the North Korean deployment to Russia, which comes as the two nations strengthen their military ties. But top Biden administration officials had not publicly acknowledged any independent corroboration or information about the deployment until Austin’s remarks Wednesday.
On Monday, the deputy U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Robert Wood, said that if true, the dispatch of North Korean troops was “a dangerous and highly concerning development.” A day later, the secretary general of the NATO alliance, Mark Rutte, said it would be “a significant escalation” — if that was the case.
Moscow and Pyongyang have repeatedly denied that there has been a deployment. A Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman on Wednesday called it a “colossal work of the media propaganda.”
Ukraine has said the deployment includes “several thousand” infantry soldiers who are being trained in Russia and may be dispatched into Ukraine, as well as North Korean advisers already on the front lines.
North Korea has provided munitions to Russia, a sign of the strains the war in Ukraine is posing to Russia’s military. Seoul has reported that Pyongyang has provided some 13,000 containers of weapons to Russia in as many as 70 shipments since August 2023, including missiles, antitank rockets and up to 8 million desperately needed 122mm and 152mm artillery shells.
From the beginning of Russia’s February 2022 invasion, North Korea has expressed strong support for Putin’s war in Ukraine, and the two countries signed a mutual defense pact over the summer, promising to expand military cooperation.
On Monday, South Korea insisted that Russia take “immediate” action to withdraw the North Korean troops. South Korean Vice Foreign Minister Kim Hong-kyun summoned Russian Ambassador Georgy Zinoviev in Seoul to protest the dispatch of North Korean troops to Russia and condemned the move “in the strongest terms,” according to the Foreign Ministry.
South Korea warned Tuesday that it could consider supplying weapons to Ukraine in response to North Korea’s actions — which appeared aimed at pressuring Russia, given the domestic difficulties South Korea would face if it were to send weapons directly to support Kyiv.
Seoul is weighing diplomatic, economic and military options and could consider sending both defensive and offensive weapons to Ukraine, said a senior South Korean official, speaking during a briefing with reporters on the condition of anonymity to discuss security matters.
Since the 1950-53 Korean War halted in a cease-fire, both Koreas have maintained robust artillery and weapons stockpiles in case conflict resumes. As the war in Ukraine drags on, those stockpiles on the Korean Peninsula have come under focus. Russia has apparently been turning to North Korea for its old Soviet-era shells and weapons.
South Korea has a robust defense industry and has been backfilling the U.S. artillery supply and delivering arms, in particular K2 battle tanks and K9 self-propelled howitzers, to Poland since 2022, allowing Warsaw to send its own equipment to Ukraine.
South Korean law bans the export of arms except for a peaceful purpose and has stopped short of supplying weapons directly to Ukraine. But South Korean officials are raising alarms about the potential for Russia to provide coveted weapons technology to North Korea in return for sending troops, saying it could intensify the North’s threats against the South.
South Korean officials said they were considering phased countermeasures depending on the progression of Russian-North Korean military cooperation.
In a Tight Presidential Race, Omaha Is Basking in Its Political Relevance
Reliably conservative Nebraska is one of just two states that splits its Electoral College votes. That’s why its one small “blue dot” could make a difference to Vice President Kamala Harris’s campaign.
Jason Brown spray-painted blue dots on white yard signs in his driveway Saturday and ferried stacks of them to arriving cars.Credit...KC McGinnis for The New York Times
For many in Nebraska, autumn typically involves screaming at the television during Cornhusker football games, but the state’s sudden potential to swing the outcome of the super-close presidential race has given voters here something equally exciting: electoral relevance.
High-profile politicians and their surrogates have been parachuting into Nebraska, which is often derided as flyover country when it comes to elections and beyond. The airwaves are clogged with spirited political advertising. Yards are dotted with red or blue signs. Bulletins in churches are stuffed with opinionated voting guides, and preachers are delivering election thoughts from the pulpit.
Nebraska is one of just two states that split its Electoral College votes. (The other is Maine.) By some calculations in the complicated math of predicting the unpredictable outcome of this neck-and-neck race, the Omaha area’s Second Congressional District — a “blue dot” in an otherwise red state — could deliver a single tiebreaking vote for Vice President Kamala Harris on Election Day, a prospect that has focused attention on the region like never before.
Overall, Nebraska votes reliably conservative, just like the other states stacked in a strip in the center of the country. Omaha generally voted Republican too, until it flipped for Barack Obama in 2008, leading Democrats to nickname the city “Obamaha.” It also voted Democratic in the 2020 presidential race, officially marking it as up for grabs.
Democrats are hoping to maintain that hold this year. Some have nicknamed the city “Kamaha” and have decorated lawns, light poles, T-shirts and cheeks with blue dots.
“There are too many people across the United States who feel like their vote, their voice doesn’t matter,” said Ruth Huebner-Brown, who along with her husband was spray-painting blue dots on white yard signs in their driveway on Saturday and ferrying stacks of them to arriving cars. “And honestly, there’s some truth to that if you live in a completely red or completely blue state.”
“Here,” she said, “your voice actually does matter.”
Some Democratic supporters in Omaha have nicknamed the city “Kamaha” and have decorated lawns, light poles, T-shirts and cheeks with blue dots.Credit...KC McGinnis for The New York Times
Last month, allies of former President Donald J. Trump began an effort to return Nebraska to a winner-takes-all electoral voting system, a switch that almost certainly would have given the state’s five votes to the Republican. Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina visited Nebraska to push for the change, and Mr. Trump personally phoned into a meeting with Gov. Jim Pillen to lobby for the change. The effort failed, and Democrats say it backfired, energizing their supporters more than ever.
Last weekend in Omaha brought dueling appearances by the Democratic vice-presidential candidate Tim Walz, making his second stop since August, and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard, dispatched by Mr. Trump. The Republican House speaker, Mike Johnson, and Democratic House minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries, also turned up to stump for rival congressional candidates and weigh in on the presidential race.
“This is an incredibly important district and an incredibly important state in terms of the future of the United States of America,” Mr. Jeffries said before heading into a crowded event at Big Mama’s Kitchen, a favorite gathering spot for local Democrats.
Omaha, the biggest city in the state, is the birthplace of Malcolm X and is known for hosting baseball’s College World Series. The congressional district includes 414,000 registered voters who live in interlocking suburban areas as well as a few outlying smaller communities.
The presidential race isn’t the only one up for grabs. Representative Don Bacon, a Republican, is locked in a tight race against his Democratic challenger, Tony Vargas, a state senator who came within 6,000 votes of beating him in 2022. The Senate campaign put on by Dan Osborn, a union leader and independent candidate, has rattled Senator Deb Fischer, a Republican, in a race many had thought was a shoo-in for the incumbent.
The outcome of those races could determine control of Congress, further cementing Omaha as the nation’s smallest, swingiest area. In Omaha, so many political gatherings have been underway that some interested voters are having trouble keeping up.
“Wait, what?” Michael Scott, a onetime congressional candidate, said after he was told Mr. Jeffries was speaking across town. He was taking a break at a gathering of some 1,500 Democrats dressed in blue and being herded to form a giant human blue dot, marveling at what he called the “hoopla” over politics in a state that was reliably Republican during his years anchoring local TV news.
Signs for former President Donald J. Trump have popped up in response to Democratic signs with blue dots.Credit...KC McGinnis for The New York Times
A raft of local races and ballot measures is also firing up voters here, including competing abortion measures, one that would further restrict access and another that would offer protections.
In Omaha, televisions yap with constant campaign ads invoking guns and China and a deadly downtown protest over the killing of George Floyd in 2020. Republican signs with red dots topped by a wisp of Trump-like blond hair have popped up in response to Democratic signs with blue dots.
On Sunday, Hank Kunneman, pastor of Omaha’s Lord of Hosts church, offered his hundreds of cheering congregants a vitriolic sermon comparing liberals to ancient Egyptians who he said were communist, socialist and “known for killing their babies,” and told them God has offered up a “candidate like Moses who can deliver you.”
“God is looking as you go to the voting booth,” he said. “If you want more corruption, you want more evil, you want more insanity, you want communism and Marxism and socialism, then you accept the pursuit from the Left.”
Emotions all around were running high.
Lining up to hear Mr. Walz on Saturday was a teary-eyed, shaky-voiced mom worried about her two transgender children, a Vietnam veteran worried about health care and a retired political operative worried about democracy itself.
The Kennedy event drew an Afghan American man angry at President Biden’s military pullout from his home country as well as a retiree who had knocked on 600 doors for Mr. Trump and feared “the border invasion.” Supporters of Ms. Harris are feeling optimistic about a victory; Republicans here complain they have been outspent by millions.
Last weekend in Omaha brought an appearance from Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard, dispatched by Mr. Trump.Credit...KC McGinnis for The New York Times
A candidate forum last weekend drew dozens of people from the city’s increasingly diverse population, a factor that is contributing to its liberal tilt in what is a stubbornly segregated city.
In such a small area at such a pivotal time, no group is being taken for granted.
“We feel seen,” said Dr. Nada Fadul, a member of Omaha’s Sudanese community who at the forum Sunday secured commitments from both Democratic and Republican congressional candidates to offer more support for Sudanese refugees. “I’m hoping this will kind of frame Nebraska for people and help them appreciate its value for the country.”
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С сожалением и понятными пожеланиями, Dimitriy.
После закрытия генконсульства России в Познани Польшу покинут 10 сотрудников дипучреждения — трое дипломатов, пять административно-технических сотрудников и еще два человека, которые прибыли в страну и должны были получить аккредитацию, заявил представитель МИД Павел Вроньский.
Цитата:
Зампред Совбеза РФ Медведев словами bóbr kurwa прокомментировал планы Варшавы выслать посла РФ — ТАСС.
Цитата:
Захарова призвала польских дипломатов готовиться к ответу после того, как МИД Польши предписал покинуть страну десяти сотрудникам генконсульства России в Познани:
Niemcy: Polityk CDU: terytorium byłej NRD nie jest satelitą Rosji
Moskwa oskarżyła Niemcy o "pełzającą rewizję wyników II wojny światowej" w związku z otwarciem bazy NATO w Niemczech wschodnich (CTF Baltic). Chadecja w Meklemburgii-Pomorzu Przednim jest oburzona. Terytorium byłej NRD nie jest satelitą Rosji - podkreślił Daniel Peters szef frakcji CDU w landowym parlamencie.
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Polityk CDU, cytowany przez portal dziennika "Sueddeutsche Zeitung", mówił o "bólu fantomowym" Moskwy. Z ulgą przyjął fakt, że przynajmniej część rządu landowego opowiedziała się za bazą w Rostocku. Jest to również oznaka rosnącego zaufania do sąsiadów z regionu Morza Bałtyckiego, zwłaszcza Polski - ocenił Peters.
Z otwartej w poniedziałek w Rostocku bazy dowodzone będą siły morskie państw NATO, zarówno w czasie pokoju, jak i w przypadku kryzysu lub konfliktu. Ponadto mają być tam planowane operacje morskie i projekty szkoleniowe. Baza ta zapewnia także całodobowy obraz sytuacyjny wojskowego i cywilnego ruchu żeglugowego na Morzu Bałtyckim.
Oprócz Niemiec w CTF Baltic zaangażowanych jest 11 krajów: Dania, Estonia, Finlandia, Francja, Wielka Brytania, Włochy, Łotwa, Litwa, Holandia, Polska i Szwecja.
Ambasador Niemiec w Moskwie Alexander Graf Lambsdorff został we wtorek wezwany do rosyjskiego ministerstwa spraw zagranicznych, gdzie przekazano mu między innymi, że ustanowienie siedziby bazy w Rostocku jest kontynuacją "pełzającej rewizji wyników II wojny światowej".
Zdaniem rosyjskiej dyplomacji otworzenie nowej bazy NATO narusza postanowienia traktatu moskiewskiego z 1990 roku, który określa międzynarodowy status Niemiec po zjednoczeniu, zakazuje rozmieszczania obcych wojsk na terytorium byłej NRD i ich stacjonowania.
W odpowiedzi na oskarżenia Rosji MSZ Niemiec oświadczyło, że otwarcie nowego centrum dowodzenia nie narusza żadnego postanowienia traktatu 2+4, regulującego status międzynarodowy Niemiec od czasu ich zjednoczenia w 1990 roku.
STEPHEN GLOVER: Labour's rank amateurishness in its call to arms against Trump is unforgivable. And if he wins the US election there'll be a price to pay
There are some basic rules in foreign policy obvious even to the most half-witted politician.
One is that you can never be seen to interfere in any way in the elections of a democratic country. You don't state preferences about any of the candidates, and you don't try to influence the outcome.
This cardinal rule has been spectacularly broken by the Labour Party, which has enraged Donald Trump by apparently lending support to his rival, Kamala Harris, in the presidential campaign.
Labour denies it has done any such thing, pointing out that its activists have often travelled at their own expense to help Democratic Party candidates in previous elections.
Donald Trump's presidential campaign found a post by top Labour official Sofia Patel urging 'party staff' to help elect the first woman to the White House
Maybe. But the Trump camp has unearthed a LinkedIn post from Sofia Patel, Labour's head of operations, encouraging 'party staff' to 'help our friends across the pond elect their first female President'. Activists were invited to send Ms Patel an email. She added that she would be going to America for the final two weeks of the campaign.
What is this if not a call to Labour activists to roll up their sleeves on behalf of Kamala Harris? It would matter less if the post – which has been deleted as Labour desperately tries to cover its tracks – had come from an obscure underling.
But the head of operations is an important figure. She represents Labour. Ms Patel's message is that activists should do whatever they can to defeat Donald Trump. This looks like a blatant attempt by the governing party to influence the election.
It's not the first time Britons have been chastised for poking their noses into U.S. affairs. In 2004, the Guardian newspaper bizarrely asked its readers to send letters to voters in Clark county in the swing state of Ohio asking them not to vote for George W. Bush. Some Americans were furious. Bush won an unexpected victory in the county.
In 1992, the Tory government delved into official files to look for dirt on Bill Clinton while he had been studying at Oxford University. It was done as a favour to George Bush (father of George W.) who was standing for the presidency. Clinton was remarkably forgiving when he found out.
Donald Trump won't be. He is vengeful, and likes to bear a grudge. He also has a low opinion of Labour, which his aides describe in a formal complaint to the U.S. Federal Election Commission as being 'far-Left'. This is a characteristic exaggeration.
Of course, if Trump isn't elected on November 5, Labour's injudicious meddling won't matter. But if he becomes America's next President – an increasingly likely eventuality, which I regard with foreboding – he could bear a grievance against the British Government. That would affect us all.
Trump already knows that the Foreign Secretary, David Lammy, has variously described him in the past as a 'neo-Nazi sympathising sociopath', a 'dangerous clown', and 'a tyrant in a toupee'. At least partly true, but unwise from a man who had hopes of becoming a Government minister, and possibly Foreign Secretary.
Granted, Sir Keir Starmer and Lammy have done their utmost to persuade the prickly Trump that they wish him well. The Prime Minister had dinner with him last month, and they were joined by Lammy. Afterwards the presidential hopeful and Starmer said nice things about each other, which they obviously didn't mean.
Foreign Secretary David Lammy has been highly critical of Mr Trump in past, describing him as 'neo-Nazi sympathising sociopath', a 'dangerous clown' and 'a tyrant in a toupee'
What one would give to have been a fly on the wall during this meeting of two so different men! On the one hand, the devious American braggart. On the other hand, our prim PM with his habitually startled look. At least they have one thing in common – a flexible attitude toward the truth.
The Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary should be congratulated for overcoming their distaste while they courted someone who may soon be the most powerful man on earth. It suggested they are grown-up politicians who realise that you have to get on with the leaders of allies, especially one as important to us as the United States.
Lammy has even gone to the lengths of cosying up to J.D. Vance, Trump's running mate. He has said he can identify with him because of their common working-class and Christian backgrounds.
Now all these carefully contrived links could be in jeopardy as a result of the ill-judged call to arms by Labour's head of operations. Sofia Patel, unschooled in the arts of diplomacy, has revealed what the party thinks of Trump.
This is far from being the only evidence of where Labour's heart really lies. At last month's Labour Party Conference, Immigration Minister Dame Angela Eagle described Trump's rhetoric towards immigrants as 'toxic' and said it had created 'vitriol'.
Steven Cheung, Trump's campaign spokesman, riposted caustically: 'Nobody knows who this random person is or cares what comes out of her mouth. Who is she, and what does she do?'
There are other examples of Labour's preference for Kamala Harris. As the Trump camp points out, Morgan McSweeney, the PM's chief of staff, and Matthew Doyle, director of communications, attended the Democratic Convention in Chicago in August, and met Ms Harris's campaign team.
Deborah Mattinson, until recently Starmer's director of strategy, went to Washington last month to tell Ms Harris's team how Labour had won the election. I imagine her key advice was not on any account to tell the electorate what you really intend to do.
It's typical of Labour to say it wants one thing, and then act in a way likely to stop that happening. The Chancellor, Rachel Reeves, declares that economic growth is a priority. And yet she is reportedly intending to yank up employer's National Insurance contributions by some £15 billion, which will assuredly stifle growth.
So it is with Trump. Starmer and Lammy say they would do business with him. They treat him in a friendly way, while doubtless crossing their fingers behind their backs. Even after the brouhaha caused by the head of operations yesterday, the Prime Minister fondly recalled the dinner he had with Trump, and maintained that they had 'a good relationship'.
No longer, I suggest – if they ever did. Trump isn't a fool. He can see that the overtures by Labour are essentially insincere, and that its true feelings for him are decidedly antagonistic.
There's no shame in having those feelings, and one doesn't have to be a member of the Labour Party to entertain them. What is unforgivable is the Government's rank amateurishness. It knows it is required to be consistently polite to Trump, and to show no favour to his opponent, but lacks the discipline to carry it through.
There'll be consequences should Trump be back in the White House. He won't be keen to pick up the telephone to talk to his professed mate, Keir. Such influence as the Prime Minister may have hoped to exert over him has probably diminished. Any dim prospect of a trade deal has vanished.
The danger is that Donald Trump will now nurse a grievance against the British Government if he wins – and that's not good for any of us.
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American Jews in Israel: Cast your votes for Trump-Vance and the GOP- Like Now!
It is not enough to root for Trump and against Harris. This election is shaping up to be so close that a solid vote of American Jews in Israel just might help make a difference. You absolutely must vote now. Op-ed.
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By the time you read this, there will be fewer than two weeks left to the November 5 American election. If you read this publication, you not only know that an American presidential election is happening on November 5 but also that the differences between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris on Israel are as stark as the difference between night and, uh, grapefruit.
There is no comparison. Do you really need an explanation why Israel will be better blessed by G-d with Trump than with, G-d forbid, Harris?
Yes, absolutely, all ultimately is in G-d’s hands. Of course. But if you ever go to work, or ever take medicine or see a doctor, you know you have to act. That’s how He created His world to work.
Unlike an American World Series, an American Presidential and Congressional election is not just about rooting for your favorite (or least hated) team. In this sport, you have to play also. Everybody plays. You have to vote.
America allows Americans overseas to vote. So if you have voting rights, you have to vote for Trump-Vance quickly. It may not be as convenient as reading this article, but it is a must. An absolute imperative.
For those who have been in a coma the past six months, here is my executive summary:
Donald Trump was president for four years between January 2017-January 2021. Thus, we can gauge his campaign promises in great measure by his actual recent record. That includes:
1. Recognized Jerusalem as the eternal capital of Israel.
2. Moved America’s Israel embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.
3. Recognized Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights.
4. Recognized, as legal under international law, all Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria that have not been declared illegal by Israel’s “Supreme Court.”
5. Cut off all funding to the AEJS (Arab Entity in Judea and Samaria) P.L.O. office in Washington.
6. Withdrew the U.S. from the U.N. Human Rights Council.
7. Included Jews under the protection of Civil Rights laws that protect Blacks and others on campuses.
8. Cut off all funding to UNRWA before most Jews ever heard of those anti-Semites.
9. So much more. The whole list of 23 special things can be heard here on the Fox News “Mark Levin Show,” as he reads my article on the subject.
Kamala Harris has been Biden’s Co-President the past almost-four years. She, too, has a record.
1. She received no votes in the 2020 Democrat primaries, so dropped out before the Iowa Caucuses
2. She is an intellectual non-entity whom Biden selected as his Vice President because she is (i) female, (ii) Black, and (iii) no threat even to him
3. She also was selected by Biden to protect him from impeachment for financial crimes because he knew Congress would not dare oust him if it meant Harris becoming president
4. Harris was rated by an independent agency as the most left-wing U.S. Senator, even to the left of Bernie Sanders
5. On Israel, she repeatedly makes two things crystal clear and repeats the identical phrases she has been taught to memorize:
5A. She will support Israel’s right to defend itself. For those of us who know how to listen and read between the lines, she is not standing for Israel when she says that. Rather, by emphasizing “defend,” she is saying she will embargo all weapons Israel can use to attack Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, the Jenin and Ramallah terrorists in the AEJS, and Iran. To “defend,” she will support the Iron Dome, David’s Sling, and Arrow II. That’s all.
Today, under that kind of support, Nasrallah would be alive, as would Ismael Haniyeh, Mohammed Deif, Yahya Sinwar, Fouad Shakur, and the whole Hezbollah command, the whole Radwan Unit command, and all the others in the Hamas and Hezbollah leadership. She will embargo Israel like Macron in France and all the others. She will embargo weapons Israel urgently needs.
5B. She explicitly says — over and over again — that “there must be a Two State Solution.” She has no idea why that is a terrible idea, the sad and sordid history of that failed concept — and, most importantly, what that even means. She has no idea what she is talking about. Rather, she reads stuff that her advisors tell her to say, and it all is terrible for Israel. Even Israelis to the left of center finally have figured out that the Arab Entity in Judea and Samaria (AEJS) must never become a sovereign.
In this article, I am not really getting into the pressing American issues of illegal immigration, crime, the economy, other foreign issues like Ukraine-Russia, social and moral decay in and out of the public schools, and more. I am discussing only the Israel issues that are at the center of concerns facing any American Jew living in Israel. Even if you somehow are a liberal, you won’t be able to hug your trees while spending all day in a bomb shelter being “defended” by Kama;la Harris.
Bottom line: It is not enough to root for Trump and against Harris. This election is shaping up to be so close that a solid vote of American Jews in Israel just might help make a difference. You absolutely must vote now.
The World Series is coming up. (If you are eligible to vote in the American election, you know what a World Series is.) The Yankees are playing the Dodgers. Seventy years ago, my Brooklyn Zaydie, born and bred in Tsarist Russia amid pogroms, would have been rooting for his Brooklyn Dodgers in such a World Series match-up. But when the Dodgers abandoned Brooklyn and moved to Los Angeles for better weather and money, he never forgave them. He said to me: “Bereleh, there are certain things you must never forget. First is that all is Hashem. Hashem created the world, rules the world, never sleeps, and everything that ever happens is from Hashem, all according to His plan. Second is that you must devote your life to learning Torah and to teaching Torah, to loving Jews and bringing them to Torah. And third is that we must remember every day that we can never forgive Amalek for what they did when we were weak, and we can never forgive Walter O’Malley for moving the Dodgers from Brooklyn.”
I have done my best in my life to be true to Zaydie’s adjurations. There was a challenging moral question asked of Brooklyn people in the late 1950’s: “If you were alone on a boat with Hitler, Mussolini, and Walter O’Malley, and you had only two bullets in your pistol, what would you do?” The famous answer was that you would shoot Walter O’Malley twice.
So that’s the World Series. I will be rooting for the Yankees. But I won’t be able to participate and actually play for them; after all, the games will be on Simchat Torah and Shabbat.
But I will be doing more for Trump-Vance on November 5 than merely rooting for them. I know what is at stake, and I will participate actively in the game, casting my vote early, not waiting till the last minute.
You also must cast your vote now. You must cast that vote for Trump — and also vote for the Republican Senate and House candidates on your ballot. Trump needs a Republican majority in both Houses to get his agenda through. We need to get rid of Sherrod Brown in Ohio, Casey in Pennsylvania, Baldwin in Wisconsin, and even vote for the Republican over Slotkin in Michigan. We need to protect Ted Cruz in Texas and Deb Fischer in Nebraska. Trump must not be tied up the next four years with more impeachments. All these races are so unbelievably close that, maybe, we just might help make a difference.
Please vote immediately for Trump and the Republican Senate and House candidates on your ballot.
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Veteran Dem strategist's damning three-word verdict on Kamala Harris' performance in critical CNN town hall
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Kamala Harris branded Donald Trump a 'fascist' and got flustered when confronted about whether the border wall was 'stupid' during a high-stakes CNN town hall just 13 days from the election.
But it was Harris' inability to provide clear answers on both domestic and foreign policy, and trademark meandering responses throughout the 90-minute session that had even CNN's left-leaning panelists ripping her afterwards.
Veteran Democratic strategist David Axelrod, who helped get Barack Obama elected and served as one of his top advisers, summed up Harris' performance with the catchphrase of the night: 'Word salad city.'
Harris stood before undecided voters in the swing district of Delaware County, Pennsylvania as new polling showed Trump taking a slight edge over the VP nationally.
But while she hoped to gain an edge with undecided voters in the Keystone State via the town hall performance, the post-game critiques told another story.
Van Jones, another prominent talking head on CNN who also worked in the Obama administration, echoed Axelrod's key point.
Vice President Kamala Harris called former President Donald Trump a 'fascist' and dodged questions on the effectiveness of a border wall during a high stakes CNN town hall Wednesday
'The word salad stuff gets on my nerves,' he bluntly said on-air after the town hall wrapped.
'I think some of the evasions are not necessary.'
And CNN's Dana Bash said of Harris afterward that 'if her goal was to close the deal, they're not sure she did that.'
Anderson Cooper kicked off the event by first asking whether the Democratic nominee agreed with Trump's former Chief of Staff John Kelly, who this week reiterated his claim that the former president wished to rule as a fascist.
'Yes, I do,' she answered. 'Yes, I do. And I also believe that the people who know him best on this subject should be trusted.'
She was more evasive, however, when Cooper asked if she wanted to 'build some wall,' as she showed support for a bipartisan immigration bill that included wall funding.
'I want to strengthen our border,' she replied instead.
An undecided male college student had kicked off the immigration conversation by asking her about government benefits going to migrants.
Harris started answering the question by giving her usual spiel, knocking Trump for derailing the bipartisan bill that would have provided, in her words, a 'long-term' immigration fix.
Harris appeared flummoxed when asked whether the border wall was 'stupid'
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Cooper pointed out that border wall funds were included in the bill - and noted how Harris had previously called it 'stupid' and a 'medieval vanity project.'
'Well let's talk about Donald Trump and that border wall. So remember Donald Trump said Mexico would pay for it. Come on, they didn't,' she said with a laugh.
'How much of that wall did he build? I think the last number I saw was about 2 percent. And then when it came time for him to do a photo-op. Do you know where he did it? In the part of the wall that President Obama built.'
Cooper again pointed out that the compromise bill included border wall funds.
'I'm not afraid of good ideas where they occur Anderson,' she answered.
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CNN's Anderson Cooper (center) watches Vice President Kamala Harris (left) answer a question during a town hall event in suburban Philadelphia Wednesday night aimed at undecided voters
When pressed if she thought the wall wasn't 'stupid anymore' Harris again criticized Trump.
'I think what he did and how he did it, didn't make much sense because he didn't do much of anything,' she replied, refusing to say out loud that she was backing a wall project.
Harris gave a particularly wordy answer when a female college student asked her how she would ensure 'not another Palestinian dies due to bombs being funded by U.S. tax dollars.'
Harris told the young woman that she understood that 'far too many innocent Palestinian civilians have been killed.'
Cooper then pressed Harris on what she would tell voters who are tempted to vote third-party or not vote at all over the war in Gaza.
'Listen, I am not going to deny that strong feelings that people have. I don't know that anyone who has seen the images, who would not have strong feelings about what has happened, much less those who have relatives who have died - and been killed - and I know people and have talked to people,' she started.
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'So I appreciate that, but I also do know that for many people who care about this issue, they also care about bringing down the price of groceries. They also care about our democracy and not having a president of the United States who admires dictators and is a fascist.
'They also care about the fact that we need practical, common sense solutions. From a leader who is willing to work across the aisle on behalf of the American people and not themselves.
'They want a president who cares about a fundamental freedom, to make decisions about your own body, understanding that we're not trying to change everyone's belief, but let's not have the government telling women what to do with their body,' she went on.
Democratic pundits David Axelrod and Van Jones both said that when Vice President Kamala Harris didn't want to answer a question her tell was that she went into 'word salad' mode
Harris also segued to Trump attacks throughout the town hall.
When a woman asked her about the rise of anti-Semitism, she brought up Kelly's comments that Trump had asked why his generals weren't akin to those of Hitler.
When Harris was pressed on whether Trump - who has Jewish grandchildren - was anti-Semitic, the Democrat instead responded, 'I believe Donald Trump is a danger to the well-being and security of America.'
She also dodged when Cooper asked her if she'd be stronger than Trump on Israel.
That answer, particularly, got under Axelrod's skin.
'When she doesn't want to answer a question her habit is to kind of go to word salad city and she did that in a couple of questions,' he said.
'One was on Israel. Anderson asked a direct question on would you be stronger on Israel than Trump and there was a seven-minute answer, but none of it related to the question,' the Obama adviser complained.
Trump has also been criticized for his less than coherent response to crucial questions
Later in the night, Axelrod pointed out that just because he was critical of Harris' responses doesn't mean Trump is any better.
'Have you listened to his rallies?' he asked. 'They're incomprehensible.'
Afterward, five of the audience members told CNN's John King that they would not be voting for Trump and were open to voting for Harris but only two committed to casting a ballot for the Democratic nominee after the town hall Wednesday night.
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С интересом и понятными ожиданиями, Dimitriy.
Kim Jong Un sending soldiers to Russia complicates Putin's BRICS summit
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KAZAN, Russia — Once again the reality of war may be dictating the direction of global politics.
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The North Korean forces are a small number so far, at least 3,000 the U.S. says, compared with the hundreds of thousands the West estimates have been killed in Ukraine on both sides. But it may allow Russia to reorganize and push forward, and if it works North Korea can send more. It has a million strong army.
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"I am very concerned," James Stavridis, a retired U.S. Navy admiral and the former supreme commander of NATO forces, told MSNBC yesterday. "It’s a real boost for the Russians. And I can assure you, those will be well trained, capable North Koreans."
And it may also have a psychological impact on already beleaguered Ukrainian forces, the implicit message from Russia being: "We can keep fighting for a long time."
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Putin Appears to Say That North Korean Troops Are in Russia
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“Images — that is something serious, if there are images they are a reflection of something,” he said, responding to a question about satellite images appearing to show North Korean troops in Russia.
His tongue-in-cheek response, at a conference of emerging-market economies that Russia is hosting, did not explicitly confirm or deny statements made Wednesday by the Pentagon, which said that North Korea had sent troops to Russia.
He was speaking hours after Russia’s lower house of Parliament ratified a mutual defense treaty with North Korea that Mr. Putin had signed with Kim Jong Un, the North’s leader, when Mr. Putin visited Pyongyang in June.
It was a rubber-stamp vote, but Mr. Putin used it to reaffirm Moscow’s ties to North Korea and send a signal that he was drawing in allies who would bolster his standoff with the West.
“Today, we ratified our treaty on strategic partnership which contains article four,” Mr. Putin continued. He was referring to a clause stipulating that should either nation be “put in a state of war by an armed invasion,” the other will “provide military and other assistance with all means in its possession without delay.”
“We have never doubted the fact that the North Korean leadership is very serious about their commitments to that, but it is up to us to decide what to do about implementing it,” he said.
On Wednesday, U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III called the presence of North Korean troops in Russia “very, very serious,” though he said that what the soldiers were doing in Russia was “left to be seen.” He said there was no conclusive evidence that the North Korean troops were moving toward Ukraine.
Kyiv has said that up to 12,000 North Korean soldiers may be mobilized to fight alongside Russian soldiers. South Korea’s intelligence agency estimated that there are 3,000 North Korean soldiers on Russian soil at the moment, and their numbers were expected to swell to 10,000 by December. In a statement Thursday, Ukraine’s intelligence agency said the first North Korean troops had arrived in Russia’s western Kursk region, where Kyiv staged an incursion in August. The claims could not be independently verified.
In remarks earlier on Thursday, Mr. Putin claimed Russia could not be defeated on the battlefield.
“Our adversaries make no secret of their goal to inflict a strategic defeat on Russia,” Mr. Putin said before the assembled leaders. “I will say directly: These are illusionary calculations, made by those who do not know Russia’s history.”
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Tucker Carlson Tells Crowd Trump Will Give Country a ‘Spanking’
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“When Dad gets home, you know what he says? ‘You’ve been a bad girl, you’ve been a bad little girl, and you’re getting a vigorous spanking right now,’” Mr. Carlson said. Grinning, he went on: “And no, it’s not going to hurt me more than it hurts you. No, it’s not. I’m not going to lie. This is going to hurt you a lot more than it hurts me. And you earned this. You’re getting a vigorous spanking because you’ve been a bad girl.”
The crowd went wild.
Mr. Carlson’s speech — at a rally hosted by the conservative group Turning Point Action that featured Mr. Trump as the headline speaker — was full of disparaging comments about women. He called former Representative Liz Cheney “Dick Cheney’s creepy little daughter” and described Democrats as “the party of weak men and unhappy women, one of which leads to the other, by the way.”
He raged against Vice President Kamala Harris in particular, referring to her as “Carmela or whatever her name is” and asking: “Kamala Harris, who couldn’t change the tire on your truck, much less drive it — how did she wind up at the top of the pyramid? And then once she’s there, she lectures you like you did something. It’s too much! We can’t allow that!” Making a grabbing motion, he described her as a pawn of the Democratic “machine” and called her “just a hapless victim who happened to be there in the right color, so they grabbed her.”
Mr. Carlson told the crowd that they had been unfairly demeaned by Democrats who called their views fringe, exhorting them to view themselves instead as a trampled majority, “the most mistreated group in this nation.”
He cast Democrats as illegitimate, calling them “the most parasitic, useless, violent, nasty, aggressive people in your country.” He said that “they have no legitimacy in a democracy, where the government must rule by the consent of the governed.”
In an apparent reference to people who fought for the Confederacy during the Civil War, he continued: “They tore down statues to their memory. People who never built anything in their lives, they went out of their way to humiliate you and spit on you and the graves of your ancestors.”
And he told the crowd directly that they should not accept the election results if Ms. Harris wins.
“At the end of all of that, when they tell you they’ve won, no!” he said. “You can look them straight in the face and say: ‘I’m sorry, Dad’s home, and he’s pissed.’”
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С интересом и понятными ожиданиями, Dimitriy.
Польша: дело о плакате «Путин, наведи порядок» передали в суд.
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Польская прокуратура в четверг передала в суд дело фермера, который во время протестов против беспошлинного импорта украинской сельхозпродукции вывесил на своем тракторе плакат «Путин, наведи порядок с Украиной, Брюсселем и нашими правителями» и советский флаг.
Как сообщает польское агентство PAP, фермер Пётр Г. и его дочь Агата Г. обвиняются в публичном восхвалении военной агрессии против Украины.
Поначалу прокуратура обвиняла их и в публичной демонстрации тоталитарной символики. Фермер и его дочь вначале отвергали обвинения, но затем, как сообщила прокуратура, признали вину и согласились принять то наказание, которое запросит в суде прокуратура.
Каким именно будет это наказание, не сообщается; за оправдание военной агрессии по польским законам суд может назначить до пяти лет тюрьмы.
Авиарейсы в Иране отменены до "последующего уведомления" на фоне израильской атаки, передает агентство Shafaqna.
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Источники сообщили: Операция «Истинное обещание 3» начнется менее чем через 24 часа.
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Иран готов ответить Израилю на ракетные удары по Тегерану, передаёт Tasnim со ссылкой на высокопоставленный источник.
«Нет никаких сомнений в том, что Израиль получит пропорциональный ответ на любое действие», — заявили в Иране.
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Израиль атаковал десятки стратегических военных объектов в Иране, в том числе заводы по производству ракет и беспилотников, а также базы запуска ракет - 12-й канал израильского телевидения.
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Звуки мощных взрывов вновь прогремели в Тегеране, передает РИА Новости.
В иранских пабликах сообщают о звуках работы ПВО по всему Тегерану.
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Источники сообщили: Дроны и беспилотники-камикадзе были запущены изнутри территории Ирана агентами Моссада.
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Иран закрыл свое воздушное пространство до девяти утра – CNN со ссылкой на иранское управление гражданской авиации.
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LIVE BREAKING: Israel Retaliates Against Iran
CBN News.
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Одним из мест в Иране, атакованных Израилем, была военная база для запуска баллистических ракет, утверждает Sky News Arabia, ссылаясь на источник.
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В воздушном пространстве Ирана, согласно Flightradar, в том числе находятся пять самолетов из России.
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Израиль начал вторую волну ударов по Ирану, взрывы раздались в Ширазе – СМИ.
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Израильские военные заявили, что наносят «точные удары» по военным целям в Иране.
ЦАХАЛ сообщил, что наносит «точные удары по военным целям в Иране» в ответ на то, что они назвали «непрерывными атаками режима в Иране против Израиля».
Иранское государственное телевидение заявило о «сильных взрывах» в окрестностях Тегерана.
Звук громких взрывов «мог быть связан с активацией системы противовоздушной обороны Ирана», передает агентство Reuters со ссылкой на государственное телевидение.
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США были заблаговременно предупреждены о готовящейся атаке Израиля по Ирану, передаёт CBS News.
Телеканал добавил, что ЦАХАЛ ограничился ударами по военным целям Ирана, а не по ядерным или нефтяным объектам.
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С сожалением и понятными пожеланиями, Dimitriy.
'It's non-stop': Swing state voters bombarded with ads - will they make a difference?
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Like many Americans, Hayden Cook decided long ago who to vote for in this year's presidential election.
And yet, every day, the 19-year-old from Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania is bombarded with political ads, despite installing a blocker on YouTube and opting out of cable television.
"It's still so constant," Cook said. "Work is six minutes away - you're already hearing two or three ads; then we have the radio on at work and there's ads there."
More than $10bn (£7.6bn) is expected to be spent on political advertising this election. That is up some 20-25% from 2020 - itself a record-setting cycle - depending on which forecaster is consulted.
Most of that money will be funnelled through a handful of critical, highly competitive states that are expected to decide the election, with almost $1bn going towards one state alone: Pennsylvania.
The Keystone State is expected to attract $935m in ad spending this election, including $450m on the presidential contest between former President Donald Trump and Vice-President Kamala Harris, according to research firm AdImpact.
And that does not include all the free media coverage the candidates have received as they repeatedly return to the state on the campaign trail.
Cook, a political junkie, doesn't mind the barrage - but has been bemused by some of it.
At one point, the family home was getting multiple mailers each day from a conservative group, despite everyone being a registered Democrat.
"It's absolutely non-stop," Cook said. "It's everywhere."
In the UK, election campaigns are limited to 25 working days, spending is capped, and political advertising on radio and television is banned.
So the frenzy in the US can seem nonsensical - especially in a contest where so many voters like Cook have already made up their minds about the candidates.
Polling this year has suggested only a tiny fraction of voters - about 3%, much smaller than in historic elections - are undecided.
But surveys also indicate Trump and Harris are locked in a dead heat while even some decided voters are expressing dissatisfaction and uncertainty, raising the possibility of an election-day surprise.
"Advertising in presidential races typically matters only at the margins - it doesn't matter very much - but if the margin is in play, it matters a lot to the overall outcome," said Erika Fowler, professor of government at Wesleyan University and co-director of the Wesleyan Media Project.
By the numbers
If election success were determined by dollars alone, Harris could be declared the winner now.
Her campaign - and that of Joe Biden before he quit the race - has been significantly out-fundraising and out-spending her Republican rival's.
At the start of September, it had $235m in the bank, almost twice as much as Trump's $135m.
Her campaign spent roughly $135m on media product and ad buys the month prior, which amounted to nearly 80% of $174m in total expenditures in August, the most recent official figures available, according to federal filings.
That was more than double the roughly $57m the Trump campaign spent on advertising and mailers the same month, and his overall $61m in spending was also far lower.
But elections are about more than a bottom line.
In the 2016 and 2020 election, Trump was also outspent but he dominated the headlines, giving him free coverage that helped to narrow the gap, Prof Fowler said.
BBC Question Time comes to US
• the BBC’s flagship political debate programme heads to Pennsylvania on Thursday, 10 October
• it will be recorded at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, presented by Fiona Bruce and featuring a local audience
• panel will include the BBC's Anthony Zurcher, former Trump campaign adviser Bryan Lanza and commentator Mehdi Hasan
• will be streamed on BBC website from 16:00 EST (21:00 BST)
• UK audiences can also watch on BBC One and iPlayer, global audiences on the BBC News channel
This year, since Harris became the nominee, she has appeared to close Trump's lead with free press, while the Democrats' spending advantage has continued to widen, according to Prof Fowler. Over some weeks in September, Harris had been outspending Trump on Facebook and Instagram by a factor of 16:1.
"I have never seen margins like that before," Prof Fowler said.
When you factor in spending by outside groups, the gap between Trump and Harris narrows.
But Geoff Pereira, head of content and insights at MediaRadar's CMAG, which tracks advertising on traditional television and radio, said Trump may be gambling, based on past experience and tight polls, that commercials won't be the deciding factor.
After all, pro-Trump groups backed by some of his wealthiest supporters, such as Elon Musk's America PAC, have claimed they plan to steer their spending to other areas, such as turnout.
"He was outspent in 2016 and 2020 and he's being outspent to a greater extent this cycle, at least so far," Mr Pereira said. "Will it matter?"
"Reading between the lines, he thinks he doesn't necessarily need it."
Backlash risk
Advertising by a candidate has been found to help boost turnout by supporters, said Cameron Shelton, a professor of political economy at Claremont McKenna College. That makes it potentially important in states like Pennsylvania, where polls suggest margins will be slim.
But unless it is targeted, the messages can also backfire, Prof Shelton warned.
His research on the 2012 and 2016 elections found that political ads were as likely to propel opponents to the polls in anger as they were to bring in supporters.
"Ads don't persuade," he said. "What happens is the ad just pushes you towards your preconceptions. It polarises, it enflames."
"If you get a balanced audience, it looks like you're increasing the other side's votes just as much as your own," he said.
Harris's Facebook page is currently running more than 300 ads targeting voters in Pennsylvania, compared with 22 on Trump's page, many of them pitched to younger audiences and women, a BBC Verify analysis found.
But mass advertising on traditional television - which tends to reach a population of older, more reliable voters - continues to account for the majority of spending for both campaigns.
Over the summer, campaign ads focused on issues important to each candidates' base: immigration for Trump and healthcare and abortion for Harris.
But in more recent weeks, the economy - an issue of importance to voters in both camps and one in which Trump and Republicans have historically held the advantage - has gained focus, Prof Fowler said.
In Pennsylvania, Trump has attacked Harris over fracking, an advanced oil and gas drilling technique which she previously supported banning. Fracking plays a key role in the state, which is the second biggest producer of natural gas in the US.
Harris has spotlighted adverts aimed at traditional Republicans and rural voters, in which former Trump voters and farmers argue that he worked only for the wealthy.
All the ads can make for awkward moments in politically diverse company, said Tim Anzelone, a 36-year-old from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, who recently hosted a watch party to celebrate the start of the season for his NFL team, the Steelers.
Worried about political ads spurring arguments among his guests, he strategised ahead of time to mute the television during every commercial break.
The plan worked, he said: "People didn't pay attention... I would guess 50% of the ads were presidential [election-related] and nobody talked about it."
He said he was ready for the election to be over, having already made up his mind about the race - a private decision he declined to share.
"The ads definitely don't sway me at all," he said. "I always do think it's a huge waste of money but it must be working for someone."
In future elections, Prof Shelton said he expected targeting to become much more precise, reducing the risk of backlash and uncomfortable party dynamics - but also likely pushing America further apart.
"My sad projection would be then we're going to get even more siloed and polarised," he said. "I'm going to see a certain set of ads that make me believe one thing and you're going to see a certain set of ads that make you believe another."
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Inside the Secretive $700 Million Ad-Testing Factory for Kamala Harris
Future Forward has ascended to the top of the Democratic political universe, but it has also drawn suspicion and second-guessing.
Future Forward, a super PAC supporting the campaign of Vice President Kamala Harris, has raised a staggering $700 million in combination with an affiliated nonprofit group.Credit...Erin Schaff/The New York Times
The biggest super PAC in American politics is in the middle of an unparalleled spending spree, unleashing more money on television advertising in the closing weeks of the 2024 race than the campaigns of Donald J. Trump and Kamala Harris combined.
The group, known as Future Forward, has ascended to the pinnacle of the Democratic political universe with remarkable speed, winning over some of the world’s richest people with grand promises of a “Moneyball” method to political advertising that it has pitched as the most sophisticated ever undertaken.
The group is, in some ways, an ad-making laboratory masquerading as a super PAC, testing thousands of messages, social media posts and ads in the 2024 race, ranking them in order of effectiveness and approving only those that resonate with voters. Ad makers produce roughly 20 potential commercials for every spot that ever airs. And Future Forward has conducted nearly four million voter surveys since Ms. Harris entered the race — and more than 10 million since January.
“They’re probably the most analytics- and evidence-driven PAC I’ve ever seen,” said David Nickerson, a political scientist who ran the experiments division of Barack Obama’s 2012 presidential campaign.
Publicly, Ms. Harris and Democratic leaders are appreciative of the group’s work. But Future Forward’s insular approach to spending the staggering $700 million it has raised in combination with its affiliated nonprofit group has led to suspicion and second-guessing, including inside Ms. Harris’s headquarters.
The story of Future Forward’s rise and its central if mostly hidden role in 2024 is based on interviews with more than four dozen Democratic strategists, donors and aides to Ms. Harris and the group, many of whom insisted on anonymity to share closely held information. The New York Times also reviewed internal Future Forward records and donor presentations.
Founded by a group of wonkish Obama campaign veterans, Future Forward is animated by the idea that a blend of data science, political science and testing can usher in a new era of rigor in advertising. The group’s ads were widely praised in 2020, and Future Forward earned the coveted designation as the official super PAC first for President Biden and then for Ms. Harris.
But throughout the year, some top party strategists have worried about the consolidation of so much money and decision-making in a single group. They warn of succumbing to what some describe as a tyranny of testing and about what they see as an almost dogmatic belief by Future Forward in the power of late advertising — to the detriment of other methods of reaching voters.
In September, the Harris campaign made an unusual public statement suggesting donors back other groups devoted to get-out-the-vote operations.
Soon after, Billy Wimsatt, who runs a donor group called the Movement Voter Project, warned in a memo to Democratic donors, Future Forward and the Harris campaign last month that get-out-the-vote operations were “dangerously underfunded” — to the tune of $165 million, mostly affecting groups that turn out Black, Latino, Asian and young voters.
“It seems like a ton of money is going to paid media and not enough to the ground game,” Mr. Wimsatt warned. More recently, the Harris headquarters has been frustrated by a lack of mailers being sent by allies.
Democratic campaign literature in Georgia. The Harris campaign has wanted allies to send more campaign mailers.Credit...Kendrick Brinson for The New York Times
Future Forward’s belief in designing digital and television advertising to appeal to the general population — “gen pop” ads, in industry shorthand — has also worried strategists who want more messages tailored to people of color. Future Forward says its ads are placed on platforms watched disproportionately by minority audiences and the group is on pace to spend $30 million on Spanish-language television. Still, Future Forward officials have advised Democrats that more broadly focused ads often prove most effective, and the group’s roughly $450 million in advertising decisions reflects that belief.
It’s a big bet, and the sheer volume of spending means that Future Forward will receive at least some credit if Ms. Harris wins — and blame if she loses.
655 Harris ads
A trove of Future Forward’s ad-testing results, obtained by The Times, shows the remarkable level of detail in the ways the group studies what is on the airwaves.
Since July, the group has ranked the effectiveness of more than 300 ads that were run online and on television on behalf of both candidates — down to a tenth of a percentage point of precision in multiple categories.
The results show the top-testing Harris ad through the end of September was a 60-second spot of her delivering a speech about her most popular economic proposals. The most effective Trump campaign television ad featured Ms. Harris dancing and called her the “border czar” while denouncing her as “failed, weak, dangerously liberal.”
Future Forward compiles its findings in closely read emails called “Doppler” and “Flight Radar.” One recent message warned of the need to focus on how Ms. Harris’s specific policy proposals would tangibly affect voters’ lives, rather than engaging in lofty rhetoric. “When we go high, effects go low,” it said.
The group has also shared broad thematic findings with allies, including that purely negative ads against Mr. Trump barely make a difference.
In Ms. Harris’s first months as the Democratic nominee, Future Forward has commissioned 655 potential ads from 25 different ad makers at a cost of $6.6 million. The biggest paydays go to those firms whose ads actually run — so far, slightly more than half. Privately, some ad makers compare the opaque process to a “Hunger Games” competition.
Future Forward uses online surveys to measure which potential ads will move voters most. It’s a laborious process, but officials say the ads that emerge are on average 35 percent more effective than those they reject.
Much of the testing is run through an independent firm incubated by Future Forward called Blue Rose Research, whose scoring regimen some Democrats fear has too much agenda-setting power, in part because of Future Forward’s strong recommendation. “If we’re right, we’re all right,” said one person involved in the effort, granted anonymity to candidly discuss the group’s influence in Democratic politics. “If we’re wrong, we’re all wrong.”
Ishanee Parikh, Future Forward’s creative director, said in a rare public statement that the process led to the “most effective ads.”
“We use multiple tests, focus groups and polling to understand what works, produce hundreds of spots with dozens of firms, and air the ads we know are most persuasive,” she said.
A super PAC from nowhere
When Future Forward first began reserving huge volumes of television airtime four years ago, Mr. Biden’s presidential campaign team was alarmed. “We were concerned they were a new pro-Trump super PAC,” recalled Anita Dunn, a senior Biden adviser at the time.
It turned out to be just the opposite.
A collection of Democratic megadonors, mostly from Silicon Valley, had plotted with a handful of number-crunching strategists to surprise Mr. Biden’s team with more than $100 million in supportive ads.
Leading the group was Chauncey McLean, who sits at the center of a close-knit network of Ph.D.s who have ascended in the party by displaying encyclopedic knowledge of randomized-controlled trials and political science literature more than working the Washington cocktail circuit.
Two other members of this political clique are Future Forward’s co-founders Gaurav Shirole and Jon Fromowitz. Mr. Shirole formed a survey firm named for their first initials, GCJ Research, which conducted so many surveys for the super PAC that people have posted on Reddit asking whether it’s a scam.
Mr. McLean, who lives in Seattle, can be elusive. One strategist who talked to Mr. McLean several times a week for a year said he had never met him in person. Several donors and elected officials who munched on Giordano’s pizza and mini Chicago hot dogs at Future Forward’s luxury suite during the Democratic convention had to be reminded exactly who Mr. McLean was by Katie Petrelius, a senior Future Forward adviser and former top Biden fund-raiser. The Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz has given Future Forward more than $50 million since 2020, but has never spoken to Mr. McLean, according to two people familiar with the relationship.
Chauncey McLean, in 2012. One strategist who talked to Mr. McLean several times a week for a year said he had never met him in person.Credit...Andrew Hetherington/Redux
The group prizes secrecy, conducting much business on the encrypted app Signal and keeping information siloed even from people and groups it works with. The super PAC has shielded from disclosure the source of over $130 million in contributions, nearly 40 percent of what it has raised. It has done so by receiving money in a secret-money nonprofit arm and then transferring those undisclosed donations to the super PAC.
Some past super PAC leaders have become national figures. Mr. McLean, however, has made only a single public appearance this entire election cycle. He declined to comment for this article.
All that discretion appealed to the Biden team. Four years after scrambling to find out about Future Forward, Ms. Dunn helped broker its selection as Mr. Biden’s super PAC — and now works for it.
Mistrust among Democrats
Future Forward’s advertising strategy can be summed up in four words: Reserve early, spend late.
The group began booking fall ads in January to secure the best prices. The most intense spending is occurring now, guided by an unswerving belief that the persuasive effect of ads decays quickly.
The strategy sounds simple enough. In practice it meant sitting on the sidelines over the summer as Mr. Biden was drowning politically after his disastrous debate with Mr. Trump. Mr. McLean told donors that Mr. Biden faced a problem advertising could not solve.
Mistrust spread when polling leaked from firms with deep ties to Future Forward that showed how damaging the debate had been to Mr. Biden — twice. The first survey explicitly tested possible alternatives to Mr. Biden as the nominee. Then, days before Mr. Biden dropped out, another report circulated on Capitol Hill detailing the woeful state of the Biden campaign.
But the most intense friction between Democratic groups and Future Forward has concerned issues of race.
Future Forward opened October spending $35 million to broadcast a single advertisement that juxtaposes Mr. Trump telling his “rich as hell” supporters that he will cut their taxes with a Black voter supporting Ms. Harris because he is “not rich as hell.”
The idea is to target everyone at once, and Future Forward found in testing that the spot was in the 95th percentile for effectiveness with white, Black, Asian and Hispanic voters — as well as the electorate overall.
But the approach has skeptics among party strategists who believe Ms. Harris needs to specifically mobilize key Democratic constituencies in other ways.
“I think they’ve had too narrow a vision for how we’re going to win this election,” said Quentin James, who leads Collective PAC, a group aimed at building Black political power that has recently received a small donation from Future Forward.
Black senior campaign officials have fielded complaints from Black groups that Future Forward is not moving money quickly enough to them. Future Forward’s defenders say the group has been improving its approach.
Greg Speed, who runs the progressive group America Votes, which has received tens of millions of dollars for field programs from Future Forward since this summer, said “there has been a broadening of their strategic aperture as we’ve gotten into the final weeks here.”
This month, Ms. Harris’s sister, Maya Harris, appeared on a Zoom call for 100 of Future Forward’s donors and did not wade into the simmering complaints about the group.
“For them,” she said, “it’s all about impact.”
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Door-Knocks, Texts, and Ads, Ads, Ads: Life on the Swing-State Battlefield
This year’s campaign offers a vivid reminder of how much the playing field in presidential elections has shrunk, giving voters in a handful of states a disproportionate influence in the decision.
Voters in swing states have premium seats for the fight over who will be the next president, while giving this same small group of Americans disproportionate influence in the decision.Credit...Nic Antaya for The New York Times.
Electronic billboards along Route 22 in eastern Pennsylvania, usually a flickering procession of ads for car dealerships, are now flashing images of Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald J. Trump. Billboards along Interstate 94 near Milwaukee feature Republican ads blaming Ms. Harris for rising prices.
In Arizona, college students are opening their phones to text messages reminding them to vote for Ms. Harris. And those watching the Raiders-Browns game on television in Nevada one recent Sunday were repeatedly interrupted by a much higher-stakes matchup: Ms. Harris versus Mr. Trump, played out in a march of political ads across their screens at almost every commercial break.
For the vast majority of voters, the presidential election is playing out at something of a distance, to be followed on television, news sites, TikTok, Instagram, X, Substack, Facebook and blogs.
But as the presidential campaign moves into its final stage, voters in just seven states are living on the campaign battlefield. They have been buried by barrages of television advertisements, texts, internet pop-up banners, dinner-hour telephone calls, get-out-the-vote door-knocks, candidates swooping through remote parts of their states and tense conversations with co-workers and neighbors.
That is true in all seven of the swing states that will decide the winner of the Electoral College — Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, North Carolina, Georgia, Nevada and Arizona — but particularly in states like Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin and Nevada, where critical Senate and House contests are also being fought. It seems as if there is a sign on every corner in Clark County, Nev., with the name of a candidate for something, from the White House to a local school board, from Congress to City Council.
Supporters of Ms. Harris at a campaign rally on Wednesday in Greenville, N.C. For those who happen to find themselves in the battlegrounds this fall, the campaigns are everywhere.Credit...Erin Schaff/The New York Times
At a campaign rally in Atlanta on Tuesday.Credit...Nicole Craine for The New York Times
“I’m a Pennsylvania native and have been through many election cycles in a state that is no stranger to high-profile competitive campaigns, but I haven’t seen anything like what is playing out here this fall,” said Christopher Borick, a political science professor at Muhlenberg College in Allentown, Pa. “I share a laugh with my mailman when he drops off our mail because of the size of the pile of mailers he brings each day, and I’m getting used to evenings and weekends full of knocks on my door.”
This year’s campaign offers a vivid reminder of how much the playing field in national elections has shrunk, giving voters in a handful of states a ringside seat to the fight for the presidency — as well as disproportionate influence over the outcome. Fewer than 20 percent of the estimated 244 million Americans eligible to vote this year live in those seven swing states.
The campaigns are tailoring their messages, appeals and itineraries to reach any remaining undecided voters in these seven states.
In Georgia, Ms. Harris is attacking Mr. Trump over his record opposing abortion rights in her appeals to women, while Mr. Trump’s allies are warning that crime will spike should Ms. Harris get to the White House. In Michigan, with its concentration of auto manufacturers, Mr. Trump is assailing Ms. Harris for her support of electric cars, while in Nevada, which has been battered by a housing shortage, she promotes her pledge to address soaring rents.
Not that every ad is geographically targeted: Across all the swing states, Mr. Trump is attacking Ms. Harris on immigration and transgender issues. An ad assailing Ms. Harris over her support for trans rights, showing images of her and a drag queen, aired repeatedly during the Raiders-Browns game.
For those who happen to find themselves in the battleground states this fall, the campaign has become unavoidable. Ms. Harris is campaigning around Atlanta this weekend and returns to Georgia on Thursday with former President Barack Obama. Mr. Trump heads to Georgia for his own campaign swing on Wednesday.
In Green Bay, Wis., the advertisements come in clustered barrages: A single commercial break during NBC’s “Today” show on Tuesday morning was all political ads. In one, Ms. Harris assailed what she called lies her Republican opponents have told about her. A Republican advertisement attacked Senator Tammy Baldwin, a Democrat, and promoted her challenger, the businessman Eric Hovde. Another ad attacked a Democrat running for a competitive State Assembly seat.
Standing on the porch of his North Las Vegas home last weekend, Dennis Fritts, 72, said he had long ago made up his mind to support Mr. Trump.
He described the torrent of television ads as “stupid” and said no amount of pro-Harris messaging would budge him.
“My remote has a really strong mute button,” he said.
So many leaflets are being mailed to Wisconsin voters that Mr. Hovde came up with a trick to break through the clutter: The vote-for-Hovde mailers are printed in green and yellow, the familiar colors of the Green Bay Packers.
The front of a house in Orion Township, Mich. Some voters who live in the swing states say that at this point, they try to tune out.Credit...Nic Antaya for The New York Times
A painted yard above the town of Beaver, Pa. The campaigns, too, have gone to great lengths to reach as wide an audience as possible.Credit...Jeff Swensen for The New York Times
Many voters say they try to tune it all out. Cary Wiesner, 67, of De Pere, Wis., said he mostly uses streaming services that have no advertisements.
“I try to avoid all political commercials,” said Mr. Wiesner, who said he would vote all Democratic this year. “I don’t even want to watch the commercials for the people I support. They’re more like propaganda.”
Others have just become inured to it and are counting the days until Nov. 5.
Steve Srubas, 42, a Green Bay architect, said he relies on his 85-pound dog to dissuade people who come to his door, at the end of a day when he has already navigated the pop-ups on Instagram or the texts from Mr. Trump, whom he does not plan to support.
As for those candidates and canvassers who are not frightened off, he might answer. “I can’t imagine I’d hear anything that’s going to sway me, but I try to be as polite as possible when I ask them to go away,” Mr. Srubas said.
Chris Martin Jr., 21, a Harris supporter who lives in the suburbs of Flint, Mich., has become resigned to the blur of Trump and Harris yard signs when he drives to work and the political ads when he logs on to Instagram or Facebook. It is more difficult, he said, to navigate the fraught conversations with neighbors and acquaintances in an environment where the campaign seems to have landed in everyone’s backyard.
“Sometimes it feels like right now that you have to kind of watch what you say,” he said.
A more pressing question is whether the law of diminishing returns could kick in: whether more becomes less, for voters who have already made up their minds or are not listening to any ads or anyone trying to persuade them how to vote.
But both campaigns — and particularly that of Ms. Harris, who has raised more than $1 billion for this contest — have the money to spend. (And that is not even taking into account the millions of dollars being poured into these states by independent political action committees.) There are effectively only seven states where it can be spent with results. And with the polls extremely close, swaying a handful of voters here or there could very well determine the winner.
“The costs to either activate a voter or shift a preference here is very high,” said Professor Borick, of Muhlenberg. “But given the deep pockets of the campaigns, very slim margins in the races and the winner-take-all nature of the elections, it seems clear that the candidates will not err on the side of moderation.”
So it is that the candidates, in search of new or less frequent voters, are fanning out across relatively remote parts of these states, where many people are getting a first chance to see an actual future president or vice president.
Senator JD Vance, who is Mr. Trump’s running mate, appeared a few weeks ago in a speck of northwest Georgia at a venue that usually hosts weddings, not White House aspirants. When Ms. Harris campaigned in Savannah in August, it was the first time in decades that the city had hosted a presidential nominee in the post-convention stretch. (Mr. Trump canceled a visit planned for Oct. 22.)
And for those who weren’t at home watching the Raiders-Browns game on television, planes were dispatched over Allegiant Stadium in Paradise, Nev., to write “Vote Kamala” in the blue sky.
Sam Park, a Democratic state representative from the Atlanta area, said that voters “understand why they’re receiving so much mail and are seeing so many campaign ads on TV.” But, he added, that does not mean they want all this attention to last.
“Folks are looking forward to the election being over,” Mr. Park said. “It’s just a lot of constant pressure that folks are feeling.”
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С интересом и отраслевыми ожиданиями, Dimitriy.
Mel Gibson gives Kamala Harris a scathing assessment: ‘She’s got the IQ of a fence post’
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Mel Gibson has given a scathing assessment of Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris and reaffirmed his support for Donald Trump ahead of the US election.
The often outspoken Mad Max actor, who has been defended by his collaborators following antisemitic outbursts, has been a supporter of Trump for several years now, even saluting the former president at a UFC event in 2021.
The 68-year-old has now shared his thoughts on the forthcoming election battle on 5 November, with the two candidates practically level in the polls.
Speaking to TMZ as he walked through LAX on Thursday (24 October), Gibson was asked his thoughts on the election, to which the Braveheart star jokingly replied: “Whoa, that’s a big question.”
“I don’t think it’s going to surprise anyone who I’ll vote for,” he added.
The What Women Want actor then switched his attention to Harris, for whom he had some choice words.
“I know what it’ll be like if we let her in and that ain’t good,” said Gibson. “Miserable track record – appalling track record. No policies to speak of. And she’s got the IQ of a fence post.”
When asked about his political views in the past, the Australian Oscar-winner said during a 2020 interview with Fox News: “Who the hell cares what I think? I’m not an expert – what am I qualified to talk about?”
Earlier this month, Andrew Garfield, who was the lead actor in Gibson’s 2016 war film Hacksaw Ridge, defended working with him, saying: “He’s done a lot of beautiful healing with himself.”
In an interview with People, Garfield continued: “And thank God. Because he’s an amazing filmmaker, and I think he deserves to make films. He deserves to tell stories because he has a very, very big, compassionate heart.”
Gibson, who is prepping sequels to The Passion of the Christ and Lethal Weapon, was arrested for suspected drink driving in Malibu in 2006, and made antisemitic remarks to a policeman, for which he later apologised, claiming that the comments were “blurted out in a moment of insanity”.
According to a police report, Gibson asked the officer if he was Jewish and said: “F***ing Jews. The Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world.”
At the time, Gibson said there is “no excuse, nor should there be any tolerance, for anyone who thinks or expresses any kind of antisemitic remark”.
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Opinion
Why I’m not quitting the Post
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The Washington Post Building on K Street NW in D.C. (John McDonnell/The Washington Post)
On Thursday night, at the Pulitzer Prize Awards Ceremony in New York, my Post colleagues were feted for winning top honors in three categories. A series, assembled by more than 75 Post journalists on the AR-15’s singular capacity to kill, won for national reporting. And on the editorial side, The Post had a double win: In the commentary category, Vladimir Kara-Murza, writing from prison in Russia, won for his columns demanding democracy in his country; in the editorial writing category, David E. Hoffman won for his series on the “Annals of Autocracy” and the global battle for democracy.
Yet the next day, my colleagues and I were deluged with emails and messages from readers on social media. Many said they love our work but are canceling their subscriptions. Still others demanded that we all quit:
“Your lack of resignation is a silent endorsement of Donald Trump for President.”
“The Washington Post has gone from All The President's Men to All The Dictator's Lapdogs.”
“This paper can never be trusted to bring truth to power.”
“Without resigning you are basically endorsing Hitler.”
A Facebook friend of my wife’s, in an overwrought message, said that those who keep their Post subscriptions are like Neville Chamberlain appeasing Nazis and that we (Nazi) Post journalists should be put out of work like “coal miners who lose their income when polluting mines close.”
What happened between Thursday night and Friday afternoon, of course, was the Post’s non-endorsement in the presidential race. As The Post reported, owner Jeff Bezos, in effect, directed the newspaper not to publish its endorsement of Kamala Harris.
I get the anger, and I share it. I helped organize the statement Post columnists published calling Bezos’s action “an abandonment of the fundamental editorial convictions of the newspaper that we love.” Most of my colleagues, I’m sure, agree with our revered former editor, Marty Baron, who called the decision “cowardice, with democracy as its casualty.” It’s certainly the owner’s prerogative to adopt a general no-endorsement policy, and it might well have been reasonable if it had been done outside of the political cycle (such endorsements long ago stopped swaying voters), but coming 11 days before the election, it gave the appearance of cowering before a wannabe dictator to protect Bezos’s business interests — particularly because Donald Trump met with executives from Bezos’s aerospace company, Blue Origin, the same day.
But I can’t endorse the calls to cancel The Post. Boycotting the newspaper won’t hurt Bezos, whose fortune comes not from Post subscribers but from Amazon Prime members and Whole Foods shoppers. His ownership and subsidization of The Post is just pocket change to him. And if readers want to strike a blow for democracy, they’d achieve more by knocking on doors and making calls for Harris for the next eight days. But boycotting The Post will hurt my colleagues and me. We lost $77 million last year, which required a(nother) round of staff cuts through buyouts. The more cancellations there are, the more jobs will be lost, and the less good journalism there will be.
If Trump wins next week, the institutions of our democracy will be under threat like never before. Newspapers and other media outlets have been decimated as our business model collapsed, and disinformation has filled the vacuum. Trump has made clear he will come after us in a second term: “They’re so nasty. They’re so evil. They are actually the enemy of the people,” he said Saturday. There are noble efforts underway to build nonprofit journalism models to replace corporate ownership, but these are not yet at a scale where they can substitute for existing media. This is why I’m not quitting The Post. Those of us working in the news business for the last quarter century know what it’s like to “watch the things you gave your life to, broken/ And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools,” as Kipling put it. For all its flaws, The Post is still one of the strongest voices for preserving our democratic freedoms.
Of course, if Friday’s non-endorsement announcement is followed by other demands from our owner that we bend the knee to Trump, that’s a different matter. If this turns out to be the beginning of a crackdown on our journalistic integrity — if journalists are ordered to pull their punches, called off sensitive stories or fired for doing their jobs — my colleagues and I will be leading the calls for Post readers to cancel their subscriptions, and we’ll be resigning en masse.
But except for the endorsement debacle, Bezos hasn’t interfered in The Post’s journalism in such a way. The newspaper has expanded significantly since he bought it in 2013 and won 18 Pulitzer Prizes, including for its coverage of the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection, its exposure of Trump’s phony charitable work, revelations about secret surveillance at the National Security Agency and lapses at the Secret Service, and its reporting on police shootings, poverty, abortion, racial justice and climate change. Just two weeks ago, The Post won two Loeb Awards, the top prize in business journalism, including for my colleagues Heather Long and Sergio Peçanha’s editorials on post-pandemic revival of America’s downtowns. All three finalists in the commentary category were from The Post.
Compared to them, I’m just a hack who keeps howling into the wind about MAGA attacks on our democratic norms. But for the past nine years, I’ve been labeling Trump a racist and a fascist, adding more evidence each week — and not once have I been stifled. I’ve never even met nor spoken to Bezos.
The moment I’m told I can no longer report the truth will be the moment to find other work. Until then, I’ll keep writing. I hope you’ll keep reading.
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A mystery swirls around Capitol poop statue: Who took Pelosi’s nameplate?
The former House Speaker’s nameplate was broken off of the statue, which was intended to “honor” the Jan. 6 insurrectionists.
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People stop to take photos of a satirical art installation that “honors” those who participated in the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on the National Mall in on Oct. 24. (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)
The bronze statue of poop atop a replica of Nancy Pelosi’s congressional desk has become something of a conversation piece since its installation on the National Mall last week.
On Sunday, there was a new reason to yak about the cheeky memorial to the Jan. 6 insurrection: Pelosi’s nameplate was missing — broken off, along with a few letters from a plaque honoring the “brave men and women” who “broke into” the U.S. Capitol “to loot, urinate and defecate throughout those hallowed halls in order to overturn an election.”
Had vandals decided to add their own untamed touch to the art?
A security guard who said he was there to watch over the installation declined to comment. The National Park Service, which granted the permit for the art to be displayed on the Mall, did not immediately respond to an email. Julia Jimenez-Pyzik, who requested the permit, did not answer text and phone messages seeking comment.
Chris Guthrie, 67, a retired computer programmer, showed up for a second day to photograph the installation, and took it upon himself to tell other visitors what was missing.
“You can see it was removed,” he said, pointing out the darkened spot on the desk where Pelosi’s nameplate had been to J.K. Leo, 53, of Chantilly, who stopped to take photos.
[img]https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-apps/imrs.php?src=https://arc-anglerfish-washpost-prod-washpost.s3.amazonaws.com/public/D25SAGP35NUKAGXLVTHPJP4SNI_size-normalized.jpg[/img]
The nameplate of then-House speaker Nancy Pelosi was on the desk in the statue's original installation. (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)
[img]https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-apps/imrs.php?src=https://arc-anglerfish-washpost-prod-washpost.s3.amazonaws.com/public/ICKTAEO6ANDM5N57V3Z4F3JAMI_size-normalized.jpg[/img]
A close-up of the area where the nameplate once sat. (Paul Schwartzman for The Washington Post)
“That’s cool, best monument yet,” Leo said before pausing to consider the installation’s message. “It’s a statement of what we are as a country. It should be in a place where we can freely express ourselves.”
His idea of free expression, though, does not include vandalism.
“That’s destruction of property,” he said. “It should be what it is.”
The installation, facing the Capitol on 3rd Street NW, is titled “The Resolute Desk,” according to the NPS permit, which says that it arrived on the mall Oct. 24 and is to remain until Wednesday. Under “purpose,” the applicant wrote that the desk “represents the heart of democracy” and that it stood “firm” when “rioters broke in to destroy those ideals.”
Sarah Parker, 53, an economist who lives on Capitol Hill, had heard from neighbors that Pelosi’s nameplate had been removed before stopping for her own look Sunday.
Eying the plaque, she saw more damage where it said: “President Trump celebrates these heroes of January 6th as ‘unbelievable patriots’ and ‘warriors.’”
The letters r-a-t had been removed from “celebrates,” along with “6,″ leaving white outlines instead.
The “o” in “election” was also gone.
[img]https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-apps/imrs.php?src=https://arc-anglerfish-washpost-prod-washpost.s3.amazonaws.com/public/4RNZLH2TLVBVDCRKB6VK5PZ5OU_size-normalized.jpg[/img]
Damage on the statue's plaque. (Paul Schwartzman for The Washington Post)
“I’m actually astonished there’s not more damage,” Porter said.
“I figured someone would come with a baseball bat,” Guthrie said.
Buddy Taylor, 60, an engineer who lives in Bowie, said the missing letters and nameplate suggests “we’re annoying the right people.”
A police officer stopped for a look at what everyone was photographing. He chuckled, then said he knew nothing about any reports of vandalism, and went on his way.
Just then, Jeannie O’Brien, 51, a designer who lives in Northwest Washington, arrived and started taking her own photos. She encouraged a passerby to compel her dog to leave an appropriately fitting deposit to enhance her photo opportunity.
“No!” the woman replied. “This is public land, we have to respect it!”
O’Brien gazed at the damage to the installation.
“I’d love to know who did it,” she said.
_________________
С сожалением и понятными пожеланиями, Dimitriy.
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