Russian missile shot down Azerbaijani passenger plane, preliminary findings suggest

A Russian surface-to-air missile was responsible for the crash of Azerbaijan Airlines Flight 8432, which killed 38 passengers, Azerbaijani media reported Thursday.

Unnamed Azerbaijani officials cited by the Baku-based news agency AnewZ said preliminary findings suggest the missile was fired from a Russian Pantsir-S air defense system as the plane approached Grozny in the North Caucasus republic of Chechnya on Wednesday morning.

GPS jamming, previously reported by Flight Radar 24, caused the aircraft to lose communication with air traffic control while flying over Russian territory, the officials added.

Chechnya and surrounding North Caucasus regions were targeted by drone strikes early Wednesday. AnewZ said that, under such conditions, Russian authorities were required to close airspace to civilian aircraft, but for unknown reasons, this was not done.

Addition: NATO calls for full investigation of Azerbaijan Airlines crash

@InevitableList

I thought you might be familiar with Australia’s threats to ban tiktok whilst ignoring the crimes other tech companies commit and making no effort to protect Australians from them.

Are you sure you read the thelucky8’s comment?

Removed by mod

@InevitableList

Your answer has nothing to do with my question.

Isn’t it somewhat strange that Tiktok, whose parent company is forced to closely surveill and censor each politically undesired content in its home country, while it is at the same time not only unable to suppress but reportedly even promotes obviously harmful content on its platforms outside China?

@InevitableList

Isn’t it somewhat strange that Tiktok, whose parent company is forced to closely surveill and censor each politically undesired content in its home country, while it is at the same time not only unable to suppress but reportedly even promotes obviously harmful content on its platforms outside China?

@InevitableList

As AP reports on the same issue:

There has been increasing concern from Albanian parents after reports of children taking knives and other objects to school to use in quarrels or cases of bullying promoted by stories they see on TikTok.

Isn’t it somewhat strange that Tiktok, whose parent company is forced to closely surveill and censor each politically undesired content in its home country, while it is at the same time not only unable to suppress but reportedly even promotes obviously harmful content on its platforms outside China?

[Edit typo.]

@Kolanaki@yiffit.net

… the 14-year-old student was killed and another injured …

As AP reports on the same issue:

There has been increasing concern from Albanian parents after reports of children taking knives and other objects to school to use in quarrels or cases of bullying promoted by stories they see on TikTok.

Isn’t it somewhat strange that Tiktok, whose parent company is forced to closely surveill and censor each politically undesired content in its home country, while it is at the same time not only unable to suppress but reportedly even promotes obviously harmful content on its platforms outside China?

[Edit typo.]

It’s a good article, I have just one remark.

The article says:

Increased state spending is also driving a growing threat to Russia’s economy: inflation. Prices rose 8.9% in November 2024 compared to the previous year, more than twice the state’s 4% target.

This is the (likely) correct official inflation rate, but it doesn’t tell the whole story. I’d argue that things are worse.

In November, prices for food rose +9.9% (compared to +9% in October), most notably butter +34.1% (compared to +29.7% in October).

So the situation is much worse, especially for Russia’s poor described in the article (the poorer you are, the higher the proportion of your income spent for food).

The Russian research center ROMIR calculates the “Deflator Index,” which tracks real changes in prices for everyday goods (Fast-Moving Consumer Goods, FMCG), describing it as “the average personal inflation rate for each consumer.”

ROMIR’s latest update for September 2024 puts annual inflation in Russia at 22.1% (Here again, this is much more important for people in the lower income groups which the article refers to.)

Although it is true that median salaries in Russia rose by 19.8% (Sberbank’s SberIndex latest data shows median salaries rose from 52,272 rubles in October 2023 to 62,632 rubles in October 2024), we must conclude that purchasing power in Russia continues to decline at a much faster pace than official data show us.

Putin’s recent statements that Russians’ “disposable incomes have also increased [and are outpacing inflation]”, and “the overall situation is stable and reliable,” is outright false.

The Prospect provides some more details:

This is the first scandal of the second Trump term, and take a long look, because it’s going to look like all the other scandals: a conflict of interest among his impossibly wealthy advisers and aides (or from Trump himself) seeps over into policy.

The measure at issue is known as the “outbound investment” provision. We have heard for years about the problem of manufacturing businesses shipping jobs overseas to China, with its low worker wages and low environmental standards. China typically forces businesses wanting to locate factories in its country to transfer their technology and intellectual property to Chinese firms, which can then use that to undercut competitors in global markets, with state support.

Congress […] finally came up with a way to deal with this issue. Sens. John Cornyn (R-TX) and Bob Casey (D-PA) have the flagship bill, which would either prohibit U.S. companies from investing in “sensitive technologies” in China, including semiconductors and artificial intelligence, or set up a broad notification regime around it.

[…] Cornyn-Casey [which added some reporting requirements and enhanced reviews] passed the Senate last year, and after about a year of legislative wrangling, a final outbound investment package made it into the year-end bill. “We’re taking a necessary step to safeguard American innovation against bad actors and ensure our lasting dominance on the world stage,” Cornyn said in a statement.

Funny story: Elon Musk’s car company has a significant amount of, well, outbound investment. A Tesla Gigafactory in Shanghai opened in 2019; maybe a quarter of the company’s revenue comes from China. Musk has endorsed building a second Tesla factory in China, where his grip on the electric-vehicle market has completely loosened amid domestic competition. He is working with the Chinese government to bring “Full Self-Driving” technology to China, in other words, importing a technology that may be seen as sensitive. Musk has battery and solar panel factories that are not yet in China, but he may want them there in the future.

You can argue about whether the U.S. should be restricting investment in China. But it’s incontrovertible that a billionaire who has a bunch of investments in China and wants to make more all of a sudden disrupted a normal congressional process that was going to restrict that investment with a bunch of lies from his media platform. And lo and behold, when the new funding bill emerged, the outbound investment feature was dropped. In fact, all traces of provisions related to China were removed from the bill.

Limesurvey appears to be good (among other sites, Switching Software is good to find alternatives).

From the Ukrainian Center for Countering Disinformation::

War criminals are the new elite of Russia: Temirlan Abutalimov – (archived)

Temirlan Abutalimov is a Russian soldier from Dagestan and a participant in Russia’s armed aggression against Ukraine.

He serves in the 70th Guards Motorized Rifle Regiment of the 58th Army from Dagestan. Before the full-scale invasion, he worked as an investigator in the local police. Following Putin’s announcement of mobilization in September 2022, Abutalimov decided to go to the front.

In 2023, during the battles for Robotyne, he rose to the position of assault company commander. Ukrainian intelligence has identified him as one of the perpetrators who ordered the execution of four captured Ukrainian soldiers. It is also suspected that Abutalimov was involved in other similar crimes. For his actions in the Robotyne area, Abutalimov was awarded the Order of Courage and later received the Hero of Russia Star.

Now, this war criminal is being positioned as part of so-called “Russian new elite”. He became a finalist in the Kremlin’s “Time of Heroes” program, completed an internship, and is preparing for a career as an official.

Another one:

Tell your Senators to oppose Trump’s dangerous pick of Kash Patel for FBI Director

Trump has announced he’s selected Kash Patel to lead the FBI.

A reminder - directors of the FBI serve for 10 years and the mission of the bureau is to protect and defend the United States against terrorist and foreign intelligence threats and to uphold and enforce the criminal laws of the United States.

But instead Patel is one of Trump’s most loyal enforcers and a conspiracy theorist — a 2020 election denier whose main focus is to purge the so-called “Deep State.” He recently publicly pledged to investigate and prosecute Trump’s enemies in the media and government.

Patel is a hyper-MAGA, vengeance-minded Trump loyalist to the point that even some Trump advisers recognize as an extreme liability — even if those aides and confidants aren’t willing to do much to get in Patel’s way, mostly due to Trump’s protection of the man.

You may consider Ghost

@frogman

This paper is banned even from Wikipedia as a reliable source. They’re (in)famous for their unreliability and sensationalism, and even things like copyright infringement and plagiarism (you’ll find ample evidence for this across the web).

Yeah, this paper is of extremely low quality by any comparative standard.

The BBC has a footage (26 sec)

I’d say (and hope) they question the voters’ registrations, while not knowing what people voted for. But this what I guess, I’m not sure.

There’s a lot to learn from Herman and Chomsky, even though the book has been written long time ago. One point I don’t agree with, though, is the notion of ‘manufactured consent’ as the book frames it, as just because individuals in a democracy can’t meaningfully influence ‘corporate mass media’ and their published content doesn’t mean that there is consensus. There is influence at various levels, but not necessarily consensus.

One lesson we can derive from the book is the importance of decentralization not just in media, but in the entire state, its economy, and society. Decentralization is key imo.

(The ironic bit is that the book is sometimes used by Chinese propagandists as a case of Western propaganda (there is a Chinese translation afaik). What they don’t mention is that the Chinese government follows a much harder propaganda playbook than what Herman and Chomsky analyse for the US, and -contrary to China’s media landscape- contrary opinions are allowed, citizen journalists exist, alternative independent media work. In China, all this is impossible.)

Money corrupts; bitcoin corrupts absolutely. Disregarding all of bitcoin’s shortcomings, a financial instrument that brings out the worst in people—greed—won’t change the world for the better.

I disagree with this statement. Blockchain is only a technology, good or bad is what we humans are doing. It depends how we use BTC and other coins, but that’s a human issue rather than a technological one.