MOSCOW – Russia’s Foreign Ministry announced Monday that 100 Canadians have been added to the list of people banned from entering the country in response to sanctions against Russia by Canada.
A ministry statement said author Margaret Atwood, actor Jim Carrey and Amy Knight, a noted historian of the KGB, were on the banned list.
Lucky Buggers!
Russia was not always destined to be so bitterly opposed to the West.
Russia draws little sympathy these days, and quite right, too. It launched a misguided and ill-prepared war, which has already devastated many Ukrainian cities and cost tens of thousands of Ukrainian lives.
Russia, too, is paying a price, though perhaps not yet as high a price as Ukraine and its Western allies might hope. It has likely suffered more casualties than Ukraine. It has lost many of its best-educated young people to exile, and seen its post-imperial weakness mercilessly exposed. But there is another dimension to Russia’s tragedy that is less obvious, but which may become clearer over time.
The Iranian regime is now providing weapons and troops to Russia with full impunity. What are the ruling mullahs of Iran getting in return?
Canada’s ability to detect foreign incursions in its Arctic territories is “very limited” and in need of modernization, says a high-ranking Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) general.
“The North Warning System is very limited in its ability to actually detect the current threat presented by Russia right now and China in the future,” said Lt. Gen. Alain Pelletier, deputy commander of the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), while testifying before the House of Commons national defence committee on Nov. 1.
A suspected Russian spy who posed as a Brazilian academic before his arrest this week by Norway’s domestic security agency spent years studying at Canadian universities with a focus on Arctic security issues.
The man, who called himself José Assis Giammaria, worked as researcher at the University of Tromsø and was arrested on suspicion he had entered Norway under false pretences. On Friday, prosecutor Thomas Blom named the man as Mikhail Mikushin, adding that Norway’s domestic security agency was “not positively sure of his identity, but we are quite certain that he is not Brazilian”.
Hostile countries, a group that includes China and Russia, are targeting foreign nationals and diaspora populations in Canada, as well as activists and journalists, according to the Communications Security Establishment.
“State-sponsored cyberthreat actors almost certainly” target those groups in order “to monitor and control these individuals,” Canada’s cyber defense agency said in a new report. The tools they use include “content monitoring on foreign-based applications, social media-enabled activity and espionage against individuals using spyware.”
We have Bigger Fish to worry about than Russia or China … The enemy within aka the Liberal Party.
A Russian court on Tuesday rejected Brittney Griner’s appeal after the jailed WNBA star begged for forgiveness for her “mistake” — upholding her nine-year sentence on drug charges.
Griner and her lawyers had asked for acquittal or at least a more lenient sentence, which they said was disproportionate to the offense and at odds with Russian judicial practice.
While the Iranian regime is arresting, wounding, torturing and killing protesters, all the Biden administration appears to be concerned with is trying to revive a nuclear deal that will soon give Iran unlimited nuclear weapons capability; lift sanctions against the expansionist regime of Iran thereby pumping billions of dollars into its treasury for further adventurism; build nuclear weapons; provide Russia with still more deadly military equipment; and empower the mullahs even further to oppress and murder their innocent, fed-up civilian population for the “crime” of women showing too much hair. Their mothers must be very proud of them.
US President Joe Biden and his administration have, it appears, decided to sacrifice not only the brave people of Iran now risking their lives in a bid for decent governance, but also the Arabs. This betrayal of longtime allies is taking place, it seems, to appease Russia, ever eager to keep the price of oil at a premium, and its new close ally, Iran.
Russia has been the chief negotiator for the US in the “Iranian nuclear deal” talks; the Americans are not even allowed in the room.
The view that the Biden administration is sacrificing its longtime allies, the Arabs, expressed by Sayed Zahra, deputy editor of the Gulf’s Akhbar Al-Khaleej newspaper, is shared by many prominent Arab political analysts; they say they are extremely worried about the possibility that the US and other Western powers may sign a new nuclear agreement with Iran’s ruling mullahs.
The nationwide anti-government protests sweeping Russia and Iran demonstrate that, despite the efforts of these two rogue regimes to increase the level of military cooperation between Moscow and Tehran, the overwhelming demand of the majority of ordinary Russians and Iranians is freedom from dictatorial rule.
One of the more alarming global developments in recent months has been the deepening cooperation between Moscow and Tehran as they seek to challenge the West on a number of fronts.
Russia has played a key role in supporting Iran’s efforts to thwart the negotiating process aimed at reviving the controversial nuclear deal with Tehran since the start of the negotiations in Vienna last year.
Russia has been seeking to expand its influence in Latin America, especially since Russian President Vladimir Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine and Russia’s subsequent international isolation.
Russia’s way of enlarging its influence in Latin America is comparable to its tactics in Africa, where it has primarily sought influence through arms deals, the use of its mercenaries, election interference, and disinformation.
Russian President Vladimir Putin granted citizenship to former US security contractor Edward Snowden on Monday.
Putin signed a decree offering Snowden citizenship, making him one of 75 foreign nationals to have been offered the path to citizenship by Russia.
The decree was published on Russia’s government website.
MOSCOW (AP) — A gunman opened fire in a school in central Russia Monday, killing 13 people, including seven children, and wounding 21 others.
Russia’s Investigative Committee said the shooting took place in School No. 88 in Izhevsk, a city about 960 kilometers (600 miles) east of Moscow in the Udmurtia region. It identified the wounded as 14 children and seven adults.
The governor of Udmurtia, Alexander Brechalov, said in a video statement that the gunman shot himself.
‼️🇷🇺 The schoolgirl told the details of the tragedy in Izhevsk.. 💔#Russians #Izhevsk pic.twitter.com/wUoowJczdw
— Maimunka News (@Tb4O2u9c7MmZPmR) September 26, 2022
But what is it for? This is the question that the media in Russia, China, Iran and half a dozen countries were posing all last week in the wake of a summit in Samarkand that brought their leaders together as members or aspiring members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO).
The Russian media, echoing President Vladimir Putin’s speech at the summit, say the SCO is designed to end “the unipolar world “by creating a “multipolar system”.
The Chinese media offer a different version. The SCO is meant to offer a new political system for the whole world as an alternative to the Western democratic model.
“Europe Should Be Grateful to Erdoğan”: The quote is the praise Russian dictator Vladimir Putin bestowed upon Turkey’s Islamist strongman Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. Translated into realpolitik, what Putin is saying is: “Russia is grateful to Erdoğan’s anti-Western ideology.” He is right. Erdoğan is bringing NATO member Turkey more and more into Russia’s orbit.
