Re: #123 - Main news thread - conflicts, terrorism, crisis from around the globe

[Zambeezi]

In a couple of years time we will all be looking around and asking ourselves...

Where are all the babies?

Children of Men.

pic.twitter.com/IDbK7HkR8G

— DD Denslow (@wolsned) August 6, 2023

why Australia? why are you guys the lab rats?

[Zambeezi]

“The possible departure of French soldiers in Niger is also not on the agenda.
All the efforts of the international community are aimed at forcing the junta
to abandon its dangerous adventure that is detrimental to Niger and the region,”
said French Foreign Minister @MinColonna
The military in Niger, who came to power through a coup on July 26,
announced on August 4 that they were denouncing military agreements with France.

Now in Niger, there are about 1,500 French soldiers.
The French contingent has been in Niger continuously since 1979.

[Zambeezi]

[Zambeezi]

[Mr Badger]

Absolutely THIS

And those expressions in that picture...spot on.

[Zambeezi]

[Zambeezi]

Insider Paper
@TheInsiderPaper
·
25m
BREAKING: Massive explosion reported at port in Derince, east of Istanbul in Turkey

[Mr Badger]

Insider Paper
@TheInsiderPaper
·
25m
BREAKING: Massive explosion reported at port in Derince, east of Istanbul in Turkey

Footage captured the moment of an explosion in the major commercial port of Derince in Turkey

The incident occurred in an elevator as a ship was being loaded with grain, according to media reports.

Four people said to be injured as a result of the incident, their condition is normal

Video: https://t.me/DDGeopolitics/76308

[Zambeezi]

WATCH: Flood waters caused an entire house to collapse in Juneau, Alaska

pic.twitter.com/WY2VilLBzm

— Insider Paper (@TheInsiderPaper) August 7, 2023

[anon]

“The possible departure of French soldiers in Niger is also not on the agenda.
All the efforts of the international community are aimed at forcing the junta
to abandon its dangerous adventure that is detrimental to Niger and the region,”
said French Foreign Minister @MinColonna
The military in Niger, who came to power through a coup on July 26,
announced on August 4 that they were denouncing military agreements with France.

Now in Niger, there are about 1,500 French soldiers.
The French contingent has been in Niger continuously since 1979.

This could escalate.
world war = a war engaged in by all or most of the principal nations of the world
A world war is an international conflict that involves most or all of the world's major powers. A great power is a sovereign state that is recognized as having the ability and expertise to exert its influence on a global scale. While some nations are widely considered to be great powers, there is considerable debate on the exact criteria of great power status. Historically, the status of great powers has been formally recognized in organizations such as the Congress of Vienna of 1814–1815 or the United Nations Security Council, of which permanent members are: China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
If my understanding is correct, when (if) China gets involved (officially) then we have a world war ? And right now we have most world's major powers involved (France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States). This could also mean we are already in a world war ? But it is not "officially" declared ?

The Oxford English Dictionary cited the first known usage in the English language to a Scottish newspaper, The People's Journal, in 1848: "A war among the great powers is now necessarily a world-war." The term "first world war" was first used in September 1914 by German biologist and philosopher Ernst Haeckel, who claimed that "there is no doubt that the course and character of the feared 'European War' ... will become the first world war in the full sense of the word". The term "World War I" was coined by Time magazine on page 28b of its June 12, 1939 issue. In the same article, on page 32, the term "World War II" was first used speculatively to describe the upcoming war. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_war

WW2 Propaganda War Film

https://www.bitchute.com/video/TWDS6xZFpnS7/

https://www.bitchute.com/video/TWDS6xZFpnS7/

[Zambeezi]

Will Browsers Be Required By Law To Stop You From Visiting Infringing Sites?

August 5th, 2023
Via: TechDirt:
Mozilla’s Open Policy & Advocacy blog has news about a worrying proposal from the French government:

In a well-intentioned yet dangerous move to fight online fraud,
France is on the verge of forcing browsers to create a dystopian technical capability.
Article 6 (para II and III) of the SREN Bill would force browser providers to create the means
to mandatorily block websites present on a government provided list.

The post explains why this is an extremely dangerous approach:

A world in which browsers can be forced to incorporate a list of banned websites at the software-level
that simply do not open, either in a region or globally, is a worrying prospect that raises serious concerns around freedom of expression.
If it successfully passes into law, the precedent this would set would make it much harder
for browsers to reject such requests from other governments.

If a capability to block any site on a government blacklist were required by law to be built in to all browsers,
then repressive governments would be given an enormously powerful tool.
There would be no way around that censorship, short of hacking the browser code.
That might be an option for open source coders, but it certainly won’t be for the vast majority of ordinary users.

As the Mozilla post points out:
Such a move will overturn decades of established content moderation norms
and provide a playbook for authoritarian governments that will easily negate
the existence of censorship circumvention tools.

[Zambeezi]

next level infantry tools
Sprinter
@Sprinter99800
The Chinese army demonstrated the level of equipment of soldiers of the reconnaissance unit. The video was broadcast on the local CGTV channel.

In the footage, soldiers can be seen using a smart helmet, which makes it possible to see the image from drones, helps in mine clearance and serves as a means of communication.

Particular attention is paid to drones of all types: from ground to air, from combat to reconnaissance

The Chinese army demonstrated the level of equipment of soldiers of the reconnaissance unit. The video was broadcast on the local CGTV channel.

In the footage, soldiers can be seen using a smart helmet, which makes it possible to see the image from drones, helps in mine… pic.twitter.com/GFWwnQS9KA

— Sprinter (@Sprinter99800) August 7, 2023

[KneelB4Zod!]

https://twitter.com/i/status/1688557887994343424

[anon]

Will Browsers Be Required By Law To Stop You From Visiting Infringing Sites?

August 5th, 2023
Via: TechDirt:
Mozilla’s Open Policy & Advocacy blog has news about a worrying proposal from the French government:

In a well-intentioned yet dangerous move to fight online fraud,
France is on the verge of forcing browsers to create a dystopian technical capability.
Article 6 (para II and III) of the SREN Bill would force browser providers to create the means
to mandatorily block websites present on a government provided list.

The post explains why this is an extremely dangerous approach:

A world in which browsers can be forced to incorporate a list of banned websites at the software-level
that simply do not open, either in a region or globally, is a worrying prospect that raises serious concerns around freedom of expression.
If it successfully passes into law, the precedent this would set would make it much harder
for browsers to reject such requests from other governments.

If a capability to block any site on a government blacklist were required by law to be built in to all browsers,
then repressive governments would be given an enormously powerful tool.
There would be no way around that censorship, short of hacking the browser code.
That might be an option for open source coders, but it certainly won’t be for the vast majority of ordinary users.

As the Mozilla post points out:
Such a move will overturn decades of established content moderation norms
and provide a playbook for authoritarian governments that will easily negate
the existence of censorship circumvention tools.

https://mastodon.social/@nekohayo/110775656176571435

Firefox and Chrome are squaring off over ad-blocker extensions
here’s a growing split over how much room browsers should leave for ad blocking — and Chrome and Firefox have ended up on opposite sides of the fight.The rupture centers on a feature called Web Request, commonly used in ad blockers and crucial for any system that looks to block off a domain wholesale. Google has long had security concerns about Web Request and has worked to cut it out of the most recent extension standard, called Manifest V3, or MV3 for short. But, in a recent blog post, Mozilla made clear that Firefox will maintain support for Web Request, keeping the door open for the most sophisticated forms of ad blocking. Google’s strategy has been roundly criticized by privacy advocates — the Electronic Frontier Foundation has been a vocal opponent — but the search company hasn’t been swayed. Though Firefox has a far smaller share of the desktop marketplace than Chrome, it could be a chance for Mozilla’s product to really define itself. For Google though, sticking with MV3 will have a huge impact on the overall role of ad blocking on the modern web.
Understanding Manifest V3
The changes in Manifest V3 are part of a planned overhaul to the specification for Chrome’s browser extension manifest file, which defines the permissions, capabilities, and system resources that any extension can use.Under the currently active specification — Manifest V2 — browser extensions can use an API feature called Web Request to observe traffic between the browser and a website and to modify or block requests to certain domains. The example Google provides for developers shows an extension script that would block the browser from sending traffic to “evil.com”: The Web Request feature is powerful and flexible, and it can be used for both good and bad purposes. Ad-blocking extensions use the feature to block incoming and outgoing traffic between certain domains and a user’s browser. In particular, they block domains that will load ads and stop information from being sent from the browser to any one of the thousands of tracking domains that collect data on internet users. But the same feature can be used maliciously to hijack users’ login credentials or insert extra ads into web pages, which has been Google’s rationale for changing how it functions in Manifest V3. Under the new specification, the blocking version of the Web Request API has been removed and replaced with an API called Declarative Net Request. Instead of monitoring all data in a network request, the new API forces extension makers to specify rules in advance about how certain types of traffic should be handled, with the extension able to perform a more narrow set of actions when a rule is triggered. For some extensions, this apparently won’t be a problem: Adblock Plus, one of the most popular ad blockers, has come out in favor of the MV3 changes — though it’s worth noting that the extension has a financial relationship with Google. Others, however, may be more severely impacted.Google has presented the changes as a benefit to privacy, security, and performance, but critics see it as a calculated effort to limit the impact of ad blocking on a company that is almost entirely funded by ads. (In its SEC filings, Google consistently cites “new and existing technologies that block ads online” as a risk factor that could affect revenue.)But the creators of some ad blocking and privacy-protecting extensions have said the change will undermine the effectiveness of their products. Jean-Paul Schmetz, CEO of the privacy-focused browser extension Ghostery, took particular aim at Google’s imposition of the MV3 standard in light of the company’s recent statements on protecting privacy:“While Google is pushing a ‘privacy by design’ message on the surface, it’s still asserting a monopoly over the entire ecosystem by stifling digital privacy companies that are already working to give users back control of their data,” Schmetz told The Verge by email.The Ghostery extension is a prime example of a product that would be seriously affected by Google’s changes. Besides blocking ad content, the extension analyzes communications between a website and a user’s browser to look for data that could unintentionally identify a unique site visitor and replaces it with generic data before the network traffic leaves the browser. Doing this requires the ability to modify web traffic on the fly and, as such, will be severely curtailed by the MV3 restrictions, the developers say.
more on link https://www.theverge.com/2022/6/10/23131029/mozilla-ad-blocking-firefox-google-chrome-privacy-manifest-v3-web-request https://archive.ph/i2vGD

Chrome Banishes JPEG XL Photo Format That Could Save Phone Space
What's happening

Google's Chrome team said it will remove support for JPEG XL, a photo format that offers space saving and image quality advantages.
Why it matters

Google likes a rival format it helped develop, AVIF. But JPEG XL has some advantages photographers might appreciate, and the dispute could mean we're stuck with plain old JPEG for even longer.

The new JPEG XL standard needs dramatically less storage space than JPEG while offering top image quality, factors that helped persuade the photo experts at Adobe to embrace the technology. But Google's Chrome team has just rejected the photo format in favor of a rival technology.In a time when you have to decide whether to cough up an extra $100 for the phone with more storage space, technology that shrinks photo file sizes sounds like a great idea. Getting to that future, though, is proving messy. JPEG XL is an industry standard, but Google likes a rival it helped develop called AVIF, and Apple iPhones shoot photos in yet another format, HEIC.There's more to like about JPEG XL than space savings. It's tuned for photographic use, doing a better job at preserving fine details and textures than video-derived formats like AVIF and HEIC. JPEG XL also improves image quality through HDR support, one of the reasons that Adobe -- ordinarily conservative with new file format support -- endorsed it. Facebook praises JPEG XL's speed, and Intel thinks JPEG XL is the best of the next-gen photo format options.Google doesn't have veto power over JPEG XL's future, but as the maker of the world's most-used browser, it can effectively block its use on the web.Squabbles over industry standards are a common problem hampering the arrival of new technology and confusing consumers in the short term. A classic example, VHS versus Betamax, fragmented the VCR video recording industry in the 1980s, leaving millions of customers on the losing end. Smartphone charging is split over USB-C and Lightning, though Apple is moving away from its Lightning port. Wireless charging didn't catch on until the Qi standard vanquished incompatible rivals.As the industry works out its issues, decades-old JPEG gets to keep its place at the heart of the photo world a little longer. So maybe you'd better pay for the extra storage on your phone, Google Photos or Apple iCloud.
Google standing firm: No JPEG XL

Don't expect Google to change its stance.

"During our experiment to support JPEG-XL in Chrome, we concluded that it did not provide substantial benefits over AVIF, and unlike AVIF, JPEG-XL has not been adopted by other browsers," the company said in a statement Wednesday. "We do not plan to support JPEG-XL at this time and will instead continue to focus our efforts on improving existing formats in Chrome."Chrome today supports JPEG XL, often abbreviated JXL for its filename extension, but you have to specifically enable it through a somewhat technical process. In a software update Friday, Google removed the JPEG XL support for Chrome versions that will debut in coming weeks. A Sunday explanation for the JPEG XL removal said Google decided to drop the format for factors including low adoption, insufficient benefits and an effort to improve "existing formats."The result has been a torrent of comments in the feature tracking system in favor of JPEG XL, including longtime JPEG XL advocate Jon Sneyers, who helped create the standard. "I think it's quite clear that JPEG XL does in fact bring things that existing formats don't have," he said in a comment. He also published a detailed blog post touting JPEG XL advantages on Tuesday.
https://www.cnet.com/tech/computing/chrome-banishes-jpeg-xl-photo-format-that-could-save-phone-space/ https://archive.ph/2ihEV

Google’s nightmare “Web Integrity API” wants a DRM gatekeeper for the web
Google's newest proposed web standard is... DRM? Over the weekend the Internet got wind of this proposal for a "Web Environment Integrity API. " The explainer is authored by four Googlers, including at least one person on Chrome's "Privacy Sandbox" team, which is responding to the death of tracking cookies by building a user-tracking ad platform right into the browser.The intro to the Web Integrity API starts out: "Users often depend on websites trusting the client environment they run in. This trust may assume that the client environment is honest about certain aspects of itself, keeps user data and intellectual property secure, and is transparent about whether or not a human is using it."The goal of the project is to learn more about the person on the other side of the web browser, ensuring they aren't a robot and that the browser hasn't been modified or tampered with in any unapproved ways. The intro says this data would be useful to advertisers to better count ad impressions, stop social network bots, enforce intellectual property rights, stop cheating in web games, and help financial transactions be more secure.Perhaps the most telling line of the explainer is that it "takes inspiration from existing native attestation signals such as [Apple's] App Attest and the [Android] Play Integrity API." Play Integrity (formerly called "SafetyNet") is an Android API that lets apps find out if your device has been rooted. Root access allows you full control over the device that you purchased, and a lot of app developers don't like that. So if you root an Android phone and get flagged by the Android Integrity API, several types of apps will just refuse to run. You'll generally be locked out of banking apps, Google Wallet, online games, Snapchat, and some media apps like Netflix. You could be using root access to cheat at games or phish banking data, but you could also just want root to customize your device, remove crapware, or have a viable backup system. Play Integrity doesn't care and will lock you out of those apps either way. Google wants the same thing for the web.Google's plan is that, during a webpage transaction, the web server could require you to pass an "environment attestation" test before you get any data. At this point your browser would contact a "third-party" attestation server, and you would need to pass some kind of test. If you passed, you would get a signed "IntegrityToken" that verifies your environment is unmodified and points to the content you wanted unlocked. You bring this back to the web server, and if the server trusts the attestation company, you get the content unlocked and finally get a response with the data you wanted.

Google likes to describe its APIs in a generic sense, but in reality, most of the actors in this play would probably be Google. Google may or may not be supplying the website, Chrome would be the browser, and the attestation server would definitely be from Google.Google's document pinky-promises the company doesn't want to use this for anything evil. The authors "strongly feel" the API shouldn't be used to uniquely fingerprint people, but they also want "some indicator enabling rate limiting against a physical device." In the "non-goals" section, the project says it doesn't want to "interfere with browser functionality, including plugins and extensions." That's a veiled reference to not killing ad-blockers, even though the project mentions better advertising support as some of its goals. Chrome already has a "kill ad blockers" plan anyway (or at least "watered-down ad blockers" plan). It's called Manifest V3, which will change the way critical extension APIs work so they can't modify webpage content as effectively. Google also says it doesn't want to "exclude other vendors" from its DRM scheme.Google hasn't done much in the way of public promotion of this idea yet, and even the documentation is only hosted on an employee's personal GitHub account, rather than an official Google repo. The earliest proposal we can find is from April 2022. Over the weekend, an updated spec was published, and the proposal got picked up by HackerNews and device-repair YouTuber Louis Rossmann. This caused the Internet to descend upon the repo's GitHub issues forum and start absolutely cooking Google in the replies. Issue #134 calls the idea "absolutely unethical and against the open web." Issue #113 say they "can't believe this is even proposed." Issue #127 adds: "Have you ever stopped to consider that you're the bad guys?" Another user posted a screed entirely in hexadecimal that, when translated, starts with "Death to Fascists" and wishes explosive diarrhea on everyone involved. So reception so far has been... mixed.Exactly how the rest of the world feels about this is not necessarily relevant, though. Google owns the world's most popular web browser, the world's largest advertising network, the world's biggest search engine, the world's most popular operating system, and some of the world's most popular websites. So really, Google can do whatever it wants. Other projects like Chrome's "Privacy Sandbox" ad platform and the adblock-limiting manifest V3 have been universally panned, but Google has kept right on trucking with the projects. There have been some small project tweaks and delays, but Google keeps marching forward.For now this is only a "proposal" API, but in May Google published an "intent to prototype" notice, meaning it's building the feature into Chrome right now for testing. There's a page for feature-development tracking on chromestatus.com. We've asked Google for a comment and will update this page if it sends anything.
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/07/googles-web-integrity-api-sounds-like-drm-for-the-web/ https://archive.ph/S912x

[KneelB4Zod!]

https://twitter.com/i/status/1688593765303304192

[KneelB4Zod!]

Russian Market
@runews
COUNTRIES THAT HAVE A DESIRE TO JOIN BRICS
Algeria
Argentina
Bangladesh
Bahrain
Belarus
Bolivia
Venezuela
Vietnam
Guinea
Greece
Honduras
Egypt
Indonesia
Iran
Cuba
Kuwait
Morocco
Mexico
Nigeria
UAE
Tajikistan
Thailand
Tunisia
Turkey
Syria
Saudi Arabia
Ethiopia

[KneelB4Zod!]

Strike hit a residential building in Pokrovsk, Donetsk region. pic.twitter.com/rHdgYZ8HLM

— War Monitor (@WarMonitors) August 7, 2023

[KneelB4Zod!]

Ukrainians flee in panic after a raid on the Kherson islands pic.twitter.com/Vw3MFI4jEd

— What the media hides. (@narrative_hole) August 7, 2023

[KneelB4Zod!]

Strike hit a residential building in Pokrovsk, Donetsk region. pic.twitter.com/rHdgYZ8HLM

— War Monitor (@WarMonitors) August 7, 2023

That's part of Donets held by Kiev. Allegedly mercs gathered there.

[Mr Badger]

Consequences of a missile strike of the RF Armed Forces on Krasnoarmeysk (Pokrovsk) - a restaurant where mercenaries gathered, and a hotel where the personnel of the Armed Forces of Ukraine were staying were hit.

The Russian army attacked the Druzhba hotel located in Krasnoarmeysk (Pokrovsk) - presumably, the headquarters and personnel of the Armed Forces of Ukraine were based there. The blow also hit the Corleone restaurant, a favorite place for mercenaries, according to locals.

Screenshot:

Video: https://t.me/DDGeopolitics/76339

[Mr Badger]

Already 5 dead and 18 wounded as a result of two attacks on residential buildings in Pokrovsk.

This was announced by Ukraine Interior Minister Igor Klimenko.

According to him, as a result of the first arrival, 4 civilians were killed and 3 were injured.

During the repeated shelling, the deputy head of the Main Directorate of the State Emergency Service in the Donetsk region was killed.

Another 4 rescuers, 8 police officers and 3 civilians were injured.

UPDATE:The number of wounded in Pokrovsk has risen to 31, Interior Minister Klymenko said.

According to him, 19 of them are police officers, 5 rescuers of the State Emergency Service and 1 child.

@DDGeopolitics

https://t.me/DDGeopolitics/76340

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
No doubt the West will harp on for days about this while ignoring the Ukie cluster-bombing of Donetsk...

[KneelB4Zod!]

War Monitor
@WarMonitors
·
9m
Traffic on crimean bridge has been suspended

[Mr Badger]

War Monitor
@WarMonitors
·
9m
Traffic on crimean bridge has been suspended

[KneelB4Zod!]

Sprinter
@Sprinter99800
·
2h
The Russian army, during a series of counterattacks near Rabotino, returned a number of positions, knocking out the Armed Forces of Ukraine from there

[Zambeezi]

Dr. Joseph Mercola
@mercola
The social credit system scheme to topple Mercola.

Last month, JP Morgan Chase Bank canceled all my business bank accounts,
along with the personal accounts of our CEO, CFO and their respective spouses and children.

Over the past three-plus years, countless people and organizations
have been cut off from online payment services and banking services for their views alone.
What makes our current case unique is that Chase is expanding the punishment to key employees of my business and their families
— people who literally have nothing do to with me.

What we’re seeing is the weaponization of finance,
where people whose views or actions go against the official narrative
are cut off from basic financial services.
This is the social credit system at work and, soon, it will be used against everyone.

The debanking of employees and their families is a social credit system tactic
to make people start policing each other by punishing associations.
This creates discord and distrust, and forces people to turn on each other for self-preservation.

What is certain is that Chase Bank is not acting on some high ethical or moral ground.
In addition to ignoring evidence of money laundering by the Biden family, Chase Bank and Dimon himself
also had a decade-long close working relationship with the notorious pedophile and sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein (see email below).

[Mr Badger]

Two explosions reported, one on the left bank of Kiev, one on the right, air alarms were not active.
..."decision making centres"?

[KneelB4Zod!]

China’s People’s Liberation Army(PLA)is testing AR glasses(virtual reality glasses)for the ground forces… pic.twitter.com/UbrRl3dNcj

— Wolf (@Vuk02577707) August 7, 2023

[Zambeezi]

Seyed Mohammad Marandi
@s_m_marandi
·
10h
Iranian naval operations will not be impacted by the US military.

A conflict in the Persian Gulf region will lead to the severe punishment of any regime that hosts or assists US forces.
There will be no more energy exports from those regimes.

It will be far worse than Ukraine.

[Zambeezi]

[Zambeezi]

I wanted to point out to the Putschist leaders the impact of not restoring democracy on the relationship between United States and Niger
I asked to meet the detained president, Mohamed Bazoum, but I was not given an opportunity to meet him by the Military Junta
I did not have the opportunity to meet with the coup leader, General Abd al-Rahman Tianyi

she met with Gen.  Moussa Salaou Barmou, the self-proclaimed chief of defense,
and three colonels supporting him for more than two hours

My meeting with the coup leaders in Niger opened the way for further talks
I stressed to the Putschist Leaders of Niger the dangers of allying with Wagner Group

She asked to meet the French poodle (former president) but was not allowed.