Politico: Putin’s Real Long Game

From beginning to end, the operation took three months. This is how the Russian security state shook off the controls of political councils or representative democracy. This is how it thinks and how it acts — then, and now. Blood or war might be required, but controlling information and the national response to that information is what matters. Many Russians, scarred by the unrelenting economic, social, and security hardship of the 1990s, welcomed the rise of the security state, and still widely support it, even as it has hollowed out the Russian economy and civic institutions. Today, as a result, Russia is little more than a ghastly hybrid of an overblown police state and a criminal network with an economy the size of Italy — and the world’s largest nuclear arsenal. [...]

First, it is a war. A thing to be won, decisively — not a thing to be negotiated or bargained. It’s all one war: Ukraine, Turkey, Syria, the Baltics, Georgia. It’s what Vladislav Surkov, Putin’s ‘grey cardinal’ and lead propagandist, dubbed ”non-linear war” in his science fiction story “Without Sky,” in 2014.

Second, it’s all one war machine. Military, technological, information, diplomatic, economic, cultural, criminal, and other tools are all controlled by the state and deployed toward one set of strategic objectives. This is the Gerasimov doctrine, penned by Valery Gerasimov, the Russian Chief of the General Staff, in 2013. Political warfare is meant to achieve specific political outcomes favorable to the Kremlin: it is preferred to physical conflict because it is cheap and easy. The Kremlin has many notches in its belt in this category, some of which have been attributed, many likely not. It’s a mistake to see this campaign in the traditional terms of political alliances: rarely has the goal been to install overtly pro-Russian governments. Far more often, the goal is simply to replace Western-style democratic regimes with illiberal, populist, or nationalist ones.

Third, information warfare is not about creating an alternate truth, but eroding our basic ability to distinguish truth at all. It is not “propaganda” as we’ve come to think of it, but the less obvious techniques known in Russia as “active measures” and “reflexive control”. Both are designed to make us, the targets, act against our own best interests.

Fourth, the diplomatic side of this non-linear war isn’t a foreign policy aimed at building a new pro-Russian bloc, Instead, it’s what the Kremlin calls a “multi-vector” foreign policy, undermining the strength of Western institutions by coalescing alternate — ideally temporary and limited — centers of power. Rather than a stable world order undergirded by the U.S. and its allies, the goal is an unstable new world order of “all against all.” The Kremlin has tried to accelerate this process by both inflaming crises that overwhelm the Western response (for example, the migration crisis in Europe, and the war in eastern Ukraine) and by showing superiority in ‘solving’ crises the West could not (for example, bombing Syria into submission, regardless of the cost, to show Russia can impose stability in the Middle East when the West cannot).

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The Guardian view on Pope Francis: championing humanity

Sunday 1 January 2017 18.35 GMT Last modified on Sunday 1 January 2017 22.00 GMT View more sharing optionsShares246Comments150Pope Francis leads an organisation that fought against democracy, liberty, equality and feminism for nearly 200 years after the French revolution of 1789. It is a paradox that he is now heralded in some quarters as the global champion of all those causes, which everywhere seem under attack. The key to understanding this contradiction is that the pope is not himself a liberal. He is a conservative with a small c, mistrustful of all grand schemes of human betterment, whether socialist or libertarian, and he believes in sin and the devil – as do most of his 1.2 billion followers. If conservatism stands for anything more than the remorseless pursuit by the strong of their advantage over the weak, it is a profound suspicion of the human capacity to be good, a belief, as Milton put it, that we shall never cease “hammering from our flinty hearts the seeds and sparkles of new miseries for ourselves”. This isn’t the whole truth, but at a time when a world order seemingly based on rational self-interest is being consumed in greed and rage – including the “plague of terrorism” that Francis urged all to confront as it struck Turkey again – a little of Milton’s grim scepticism is salutary; even, almost, hopeful. [...]

With a passion perhaps possible only to a South American, he loathes the turbocharged US model of capitalism unleashed by Ronald Reagan: he entirely rejects the idea that greed restrained only by self-interest operating through a market will make the world just or good. His Catholicism is almost the polar opposite to the dominant strains of white American evangelical Christianity. He unequivocally opposes torture and the persecution of refugees, and even the death penalty, which are all causes dear to religious Republicans. More Americans support torture as an instrument of government policy than do the inhabitants of Iraq, Sudan or Afghanistan. With a series of dramatic gestures – visiting refugee camps; taking migrants into the Vatican; publicly washing the feet of a Muslim woman – the pope has demonstrated that he wants his church to stand alongside refugees and migrants. As archbishop of Buenos Aires he would visit the slums – and take a bus to get there. [...]

He has been denounced for this by the reactionaries within the church as a heretic, a destructive progressive, and a man whose policies must lead to a historic schism and break with tradition. At the same time he has greatly disappointed progressives who had hoped for some shift in substance on the full acceptance of gay people and on the role of women in the church’s hierarchy.

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Vox: The US may be aiding war crimes in Yemen (Dec 12, 2016)

Independent: Israeli officials 'backing shoot-to-kill policy against Palestinians'

Leading Israeli officials have been encouraging soldiers and police officers to kill Palestinians suspected of attacks regardless of whether lethal force is necessary, according to a new report by a leading human rights organisation.

Human Rights Watch has compiled numerous statements by senior members of Benjamin Netanyahu’s administration and the country’s police force, which appear to endorse using lethal force against suspects, irrespective of whether anyone is in danger.

International human rights law limits lethal force to circumstances in which it is necessary to protect life, and in which no other less extreme option is available. [...]

Since October 2015 there have been at least 150 instances where security forces have fatally shot Palestinian adults and children suspected of violence against Israelis in Israel and the West Bank.

Meanwhile, Palestinian assailants have killed 33 Israelis, including passersby and security officials, in Israel and the West Bank.

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Motherboard: It's a Dog's Life

The market for wearable pet technologies is expanding rapidly, with predictions the market could be worth in excess of $2.3 billion by 2022, and that pet owners could be spending more on wearable devices than on pet food as soon as next year. Several different manufacturers are offering collar-mounted GPS trackers and activity monitors, like the Whistle, cameras, and a number of webcam-based systems such as the PetCube, which allow concerned owners to keep track of what their pets are up to at home when they are out at work, and even communicate with them and play remotely.

While some of the uses of pet-focused technologies are pretty obvious—it doesn't take a genius to realize that attaching a GPS tracker to your pet makes it more likely that you will find them again if they go astray—some potential applications are only becoming clear as the technologies mature and more devices find their way into the hands of consumers.  

Ripley's owners were reassured that with his Whistle, they could keep a close track of the exercise he was getting when walking with them and when he was out with his dog walker. So when one day they spotted a sudden reduction in his high-activity minutes, from his usual 60 down to seven, they knew something was wrong. Ripley himself seemed OK; perhaps a little quiet, but not especially sick.

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Politico: The party that’s pulling the Belgian left to the left

The Belgian Workers’ Party, or PTB, is charging traditional parties from the left, threatening the once-almighty Socialist Party and disrupting the country’s politics that, until today, were drifting slowly to the right.

With a rebooted Marxist platform, the PTB has gained momentum in Belgium’s fractious political landscape, in large part by campaigning against globalization. Its rise comes at the expense of the Socialists and causes particular pain for Paul Magnette, minister-president of the Walloon region, as well as party chairman and former Prime Minister Elio Di Rupo. [...]

Two years ago, the party got its first two representatives elected to the federal parliament and, since then, the party has gained significant support — especially in the depressed industrial region of Wallonia where it was polling at 18.4 percent this month, within striking distance of the French-speaking Socialists (PS) at 25.4 percent and Prime Minister Charles Michel’s Liberal Reformist Movement at 23.1 percent. [...]

For decades, Belgian politics have been divided by language. The Socialist Party, the Liberals and the centrist Christian-Democrats all split into Flemish and French-speaking parties in the late 1960s and 70s. The Workers’ Party is the only party in Belgium that contests for seats across the country’s linguistic borders.

That appeals to voters frustrated by the Balkanization of Belgium, where more decisions are taken at the regional level. The three communities — Dutch-speaking, French-speaking and German-speaking — oversee culture and education, while the regions — Flanders, Wallonia and Brussels — deal with the economy, employment, housing, transport, urban planning and even foreign trade.

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Deutsche Welle: French presidential candidate Macron praises Merkel's refugee policy

The most popular of France's presidential candidates, Emmanuel Macron, took a stance against anti-refugee sentiment in an interview with German daily Süddeutsche Zeitung, which was published on Monday.

The 39-year-old politician voiced admiration for Angela Merkel and Germany for their handling of the refugee crisis.

"Chancellor Merkel and the German society as a whole were up to the mark of our joint values," he said. "They saved our collective dignity by taking in refugees and providing them with accommodation and education." [...]

Macron quit Hollande's cabinet to run for president in April this year. Although he is very popular among the voters and has a roughly 35-percent approval rating, the former investment banker would need to contend both with competition from the well-established parties and Marine Le Pen, who is running on the far-right Front National ticket. [...]

Macron, who resigned as economy minister under Socialist President Francois Hollande in August, called for boosting Frontex, the agency responsible for protecting the EU's outside borders. He also chided Berlin and Paris for not supporting Italy during the early years of the refugee crisis, when thousands of immigrants started pouring onto the island of Lampedusa.

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The Guardian: The EU’s Poland problem: How will Brussels react to Warsaw’s autocracy?

This is the year of a nail-biting election in France, and Angela Merkel’s sternest test yet in Germany after the migration crisis and terror attack in Berlin. But the country whose fortunes will play a major role in determining how far the European Union, for all its frictions and shortcomings, remains a credible community of values, is Poland. There Jarosław Kaczyński, head of the Law and Justice party and de facto ruler, has spent 2016 eroding constitutional checks and balances on the judiciary, public appointments, army, press and broadcasting in a purge of liberals and the post-communist left. [...]

What might change matters? There is one bold route around the problem, namely to persuade member states to trigger article 7.1 – which would allow sanctions to be deployed against both Poland and Hungary if they continue to disregard basic rights. That would neatly end the “fellow traveller” veto, by putting both of the EU’s rogue states in special measures. Failing to observe that warning could lead to the suspension of voting rights.

The threat carries some hefty risks. It plays to the view propagated by Law and Justice that the EU is meddling – and the experience of testing popular opinion against Eurocrats has not had a happy 2016. In addition, Germany, which would need to support a stronger line, will not be keen in election year to pick a fight with a querulous neighbour. But Warsaw’s position is more fragile than its rhetoric. It remains exposed to the whims of the even more vigorous autocracy to its east, Vladimir Putin’s Russia. Too great a tilt to stroppy isolationism, at a point when Washington’s policies towards Moscow are opaque and unreliable, and Poland risks becoming the friendless giant of eastern central Europe.

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Mental Floss: 211 Years Ago Today, the French Abandoned Their Decimal Calendar

In 1793, the French switched to French Revolutionary Time, creating a decimal system of time. A day had 10 hours, 100 minutes per hour, and 100 seconds per minute. The system was elegant, doing away with the complex math required for time calculations under a 24 hour/60 minute/60 second system. But it also brought huge headaches.

French Revolutionary Time came alongside the French Republican Calendar, a further attempt to rationalize time. Months were divided into three 10-day weeks, and there were 12 months. The leftover days needed to add up to 365 or 366 for the year were tacked onto the end of the year as holidays. This was a bit inelegant (days and years being hard to divide cleanly by 10), but at least it was less confusing than trying to sort out what time "noon" was (it was 5 o'clock).

French Revolutionary Time only lasted 17 months. By April 7, 1795 (in the Gregorian calendar), the time system became optional. Decimal clocks and decimal/standard hybrid clocks continued to be used for years, but for practicality, France returned to the same system of time as its neighbors.

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