Fundraising campain in support of Raif Badawi

 I have written before (e.g. here) about the Saudi blogger Raif Badawi who was sentenced to 10 years in prison and 1000 lashes for posts that the authorities did not like. After the first 50 lashes led to worldwide protests, this part of the sentence was quietly abandoned but the prison term remained.

These days, I checked to see whether Raif has been released. It turned out that he has, but he is not allowed to emigrate to Canada where his family is until he pays the hefty fine that was also included in the sentence. Therefore, a fundraising campaign is underway, under the auspice of the Giordano Bruno Foundation. I believe that nobody who reads this blog likes the idea of pouring money into the budget of Saudi Arabia of all states, but for the sake of Raif, you might consider it if you wish.

Russian invaders booby-trap dead bodies

When Ukrainian troops liberate a town from Russian invaders, they warn residents to return with caution because retreating Russians often booby-trap homes, cars, playgrounds, and even dead bodies. An example is described by Azmi Haroun, Yahoo!News:

"Russian soldiers killed a Ukrainian army volunteer on the outskirts of Kyiv and left his dead body in his car trunk fitted with a mine that later exploded when Ukrainian forces attempted to move him, according to Politico.

Lyudmyla Kyrpach, the soldier's widow, told Politico... that the day after the invasion began in late February, Oleksandr, a mechanic, organized volunteer fighters in his village of Kalynivka, near Kyiv.

By March 1, days after Russian troops had encroached on their village, Oleksandr's friends set out driving to see if they could source more intel about Russian troop movements up close... After they failed to return, he set out to find them.

"He said he would be right back," Lyudmyla told Politico. Oleksandr never returned, and unable to sleep, Lyudmyla set out the following day with her friends to find him.

She noticed his sedan on the road, with the keys in the ignition but no passengers in the car, she told Politico.

Lyudmyla's friend noticed that the trunk was riddled with bullets... and they opened the trunk to find Oleksandr's dead body. Her friend pulled her away from the car in fear that the trunk could be booby-trapped...

 

By March 4 they returned to the scene with Ukrainian soldiers.

 

According to the report, the soldiers tied ropes to his limbs and moved far from the car to pull slowly and see if the car was rigged. As soon as they pulled, the "car exploded in a ball of flames." Russian soldiers had placed weight-triggered mine under Oleksandr, Lyudmyla told Politico.

 

"Lyudmyla picked up the pieces of the man she had spent decades with and placed them in a box," Politico reported. Later, she buried him in the garden where they used to plant vegetables together."

A Russian Antigone

 From Allison Quinn at the Daily Beast:

"Russian authorities in Ukraine’s occupied city of Donetsk are tossing the bodies of their dead soldiers in a secret dump “by the thousands” and charging their loved ones money to find them.

That’s according to a new audio recording released by Ukraine’s Security Service on Tuesday, which is purportedly an intercepted telephone conversation between two Russians discussing how one of their missing friends was finally found.

In the two-and-a-half minute recording, an unidentified man tells his female relative that the fate of “Inna’s brother” is finally known after he went missing a month ago.

“It’s better that you don’t hear this,” the man says at first, reluctant to spill all the grim details.

After more urging, he finally explains that the unidentified dead man’s “sister went to Donetsk, and there, basically, roughly speaking, is a dump.”

“They just toss them there. And then later it’s easier to make as if they disappeared without a trace. It’s easier for them to pretend they are just missing, and that’s it,” he said, noting that “there are thousands.”

“There’s nowhere left to place them. It’s a dump. I’m telling you in plain Russian—a dump. It’s as tall as a person,” he said, adding that the site is “fenced off, sealed, they don’t let anyone in.”

According to him, the only reason local authorities at the dump site let the woman find her brother was because she paid “good money.”

After that, he said, “they rearranged it until she found [the body.]”

“It’s not a morgue, it’s a dump.… They are bringing [bodies] by the thousands,” he said, calling it a “shitshow.”...

The disturbing intercept comes after Al Jazeera on Monday released footage of refrigerated train cars holding the unclaimed bodies of Russian troops killed in Ukraine. Inside, there appeared to be human-size bodies stacked on top of each other in white bags. Ukrainian authorities said Moscow has refused to take the bodies back home, apparently to keep the lid on the sky-high death toll..."

Wake up, Russia!

Bulgaria now to give Ukraine "phantom" military aid

 From Tsvetelia Tsolova / Reuters:

"Bulgaria approves repairs to Ukrainian military equipment, not military aid

Bulgaria's parliament voted on Wednesday to allow repairs of Ukrainian heavy military equipment and seek ways to help Ukrainian exports of grains and electricity, sidestepping proposals to provide direct military aid to Kyiv.

 

European Union and NATO member state Bulgaria has condemned the Russian invasion of Ukraine, supported sanctions against Moscow, refused to pay for Russian gas with roubles and hosted over 90,000 Ukrainian refugees.

 

But the Black Sea country remains one of the few in the 27-member EU to have not sent arms and ammunitions to Kyiv as one of the four coalition partners, the Russia-friendly Socialists, opposed the move and threatened to bolt if it were approved.

 

Lawmakers voted to allow the government to provide military-technical support to Ukraine and see how it can repair Ukrainian heavy military equipment...

 

Two other proposals that supported sending military aid to Ukraine did not win enough support in the chamber."

Repairmen who showed Hunter Biden's laptop now suing media

 From Caroline Downey / National Review:

 

"Hunter Biden Laptop Whistleblower Sues Schiff, CNN, the Daily Beast , Politico

 

The Delaware computer repairman who alerted authorities to the existence of Hunter Biden’s laptop sued on Tuesday Democratic Representative Adam Schiff, CNN, the Daily Beast and Politico, claiming that he suffered financial and reputational damage after they alleged that the leak was Russian disinformation.

 

Business owner John Paul Mac Isaac filed for the suit, he told the New York Post, because his livelihood was significantly disrupted by tech platforms, mainstream media, and Delaware locals after he turned in the laptop, which would eventually become the subject of a federal investigation.

 

“After fighting to reveal the truth, all I want now is for the rest of the country to know that there was a collective and orchestrated effort by social and mainstream media to block a real story with real consequences for the nation,” Mac Isaac told the Post...

Mac Isaac said he came into possession of the laptop when President Biden’s son Hunter dropped it off at his shop for repairs in April 2019 and never came back to claim it. Authorities have since unearthed questionable content on the device relating to Hunter’s foreign business dealings and the president’s knowledge of them. The store owner first gave the laptop hard drive to the FBI in December 2019 and then to former head of the Trump campaign legal team Rudy Giuliani, who provided a copy of the hard drive to The Post.

 

After the story surfaced in October 2020 right before the presidential election, Twitter and Facebook made a concerted effort to bury it and censored the Post’s article, arguing it was unsubstantiated and illegitimate reporting. Biden and over 50 former intelligence officials smeared the laptop revelation as part of a Russian disinformation operation. Over a year later, the New York Times and the Washington Post finally confirmed the story after dismissing it as unsubstantiated for months. Hunter Biden had previously admitted that the laptop did in fact belong to him.

 

Some Republicans have argued that the early tech and liberal media suppression of the story misled the public and may have effected the results of the 2020 election. Mac Isaac said he suffered great harm as a result of the conduct of the social media companies after the story went live.

 

“Twitter initially labeled my action hacking, so for the first day after my information was leaked, I was bombarded with hate mail and death threats revolving around the idea that I was a hacker, a thief and a criminal,” he told The Post. Schiff, who chairs the House Intelligence Committee, “has some explaining” to do after he rejected the new information outright back in October 2020 in what looks like an act of political favoritism, Mac Isaac noted.

 

“Without any intel, the head of the intel committee decided to share with CNN and its viewers a complete and utter lie,” Mac Isaac said. “A lie issued in the protection of a preferred presidential candidate.”

 

Mac Isaac alleges that Schiff and those around him unfairly labeled him a prop of the Russian regime for submitting the laptop to the FBI. The lawsuit includes a defamation allegation stemming from Schiff’s interview with CNN two days after The Post broke the story, during which he claimed Moscow was involved.

 

“Well we know that this whole smear on Joe Biden comes from the Kremlin. That’s been clear for well over a year now that they’ve been pushing this false narrative about the Vice President and his son,” Schiff told CNN host Wolf Blitzer, according to the suit...

 

As a result of the false accusations, Mac Isaac says he faced intimidation and hostility at his business. He shut down the shop after people started throwing vegetables, eggs and dog excrement at his store, he told the Post. Mac Isaac is seeking “at least $1 million in compensatory damages [and] punitive damages which will be the much bigger number and will be determined at trial,” his lawyer Brian Della Rocca confirmed to the publication."

The Pope is mad

From today's article Pope Francis Says NATO Started War in Ukraine by ‘Barking at Putin’s Door’by Barbie Latza Nadeau / Daily Beast: 

"Since the beginning of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Pope Francis has floated the idea that he wants to take a trip to Kyiv to try to broker a ceasefire. But now he says he would prefer to go to Moscow to try to talk some sense into Vladimir Putin, who he has not outwardly condemned in the now nearly three-month-old war and only did so lightly in a lengthy interview with an Italian newspaper.

“I feel that before going to Kyiv, I must go to Moscow,” he told Corriere Della Sera in an interview that ran Tuesday. But the meeting would not exactly be to condemn Putin, based on what he told the paper. He said that the real “scandal” of Putin’s war is “NATO barking at Russia’s door,” which he said caused the Kremlin to “react badly and unleash the conflict.”

Never mind that the 85-year-old pontiff is unable to walk after tearing a ligament in his knee (for which he says he will soon have surgery), or that Putin won’t even answer his calls. Francis repeated comments he has made in general audiences and in other interviews that the war is nothing more than a giant opportunity for a “trade in arms” and that it is still ongoing because of the constant shuttling of weapons to Ukraine. He has spoken twice by phone to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, but mostly to urge him not to fight back...

“I don’t know how to answer—I’m too far away—the question of whether it is right to supply the Ukrainians,” he told the paper. “The clear thing is that weapons are being tested there. The Russians now know that tanks are of little use and are thinking of other things. This is why wars are waged: to test the weapons we have produced. Few people are fighting this trade, but more should be done.”

Whether the Italian journalists didn’t ask—or whether he didn’t answer— there was no mention about what would happen if Ukrainians were not fiercely fighting back, whether it would mean a full annexation of the entire country, millions of deaths, or empowering an already insatiably power-hungry Putin.

Francis veered toward conspiracy theory as he blamed the international community for instigating the war. “You cannot think that a free state can make war on another free state,” he said. “In Ukraine, it seems that it was others who created the conflict. I am pessimistic but we must do everything possible to stop the war.”..."