2 in 5 Russians Believe War With Ukraine Likely – Poll
Dec. 14, 2021

Ukrainian military in the Donetsk region.president.gov.ua

Two in five Russians believe war is likely to break out with Ukraine and blame the United States for heightened tensions, according to a new independent survey published Tuesday.

According to the Levada Center, 39% of Russian respondents believe that war with Ukraine is either highly likely or unavoidable.

Another 38% said that Russian-Ukrainian war is unlikely.

Only 15% rule out the possibility of a Russian-Ukrainian war.

Exactly half of those polled blamed the U.S. and other NATO countries for the current tensions in Ukraine.

Older respondents were more likely to blame the West than their younger counterparts.

The U.S. and its allies have in recent weeks said their intelligence and Russian troop movements near Ukrainian borders pointed to Moscow’s plans to invade Ukraine.

Russia has denied planning an invasion, saying its military maneuvers come in response to Ukraine’s troop buildup. Moscow has also recently stepped up accusations of NATO’s eastward expansion and its deployment of weapons that threaten Moscow’s security.

According to Levada, 16% of Russian respondents pinned the blame for heightened tensions on Ukraine. That figure saw little change when broken down into age groups.

Only 4% blamed Russia and 3% the pro-Moscow breakaway regions in eastern Ukraine for the standoff. These figures also remained unchanged across all age groups.

Younger Russians, however, were more likely to say that no one is to blame for the Russian-Ukrainian tensions or not answer the question than their older counterparts.

Levada conducted the survey among 1,603 respondents across 50 Russian regions between Nov. 25-Dec. 1.

2 in 5 Russians Have No Savings – Survey
Dec. 13, 2021

Sofia Sandurskaya / Moskva News Agency

Two out of five Russians have no savings, according to a Superjob recruitment website survey published by the RBC news website Monday.

According to the poll, 43% of respondents said they have no savings whatsoever. That figure is an increase from 40% in each of the previous two years and 28% in 2008, according to RBC.

Rising Inflation Gives Boost to Russia’s Discount Retailers

Thirteen percent of those who had savings said they'd be able to live on them for less than a month. Another 18% said they would be able to survive for up to two months and 11% for up to half a year.

Only 8% of those polled said they would be able to survive on their savings for up to one year and 7% for more than one year.

More than half of the 43% who have no savings earn less than 50,000 rubles ($680) per month.

The share of Russians who do not plan their costs and savings has grown by double digits since 2019 and now totals 34%.

Superjob conducted the survey among 1,600 adults across all 85 Russian regions between Nov. 9-Dec. 9, RBC reported.

PUTIN PROMOTES ARCTIC DEVELOPMENT

Russia Defends Veto of UN Climate Change Resolution

INDIA VOTED AGAINST IT TOO

By AFP

Dec. 14, 2021

A polar bear is seen on Alexandra Land, an island in the Franz Josef Land archipelago, Russian Arctic National Park.Gavriil Grigorov / TASS


Russia defended Tuesday its move to veto a Security Council resolution linking climate change and global security that was supported by a majority of UN member states.

Backed by Niger and Ireland, the draft resolution called on Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to "integrate climate-related security risk as a central component into comprehensive conflict-prevention strategies."

The text won support from 12 of the Council's 15 members.

"The resolution was completely unacceptable. And not only for Russia, a number of countries supported us," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.

"The topic of climate cannot be a factor that limits the right of countries to develop," Peskov said.

He added that "highly-industrialized" countries which "significantly harmed the climate" in order to develop their economies are now setting the agenda.

India also voted against the resolution, arguing that global warming was chiefly an issue related to economic development, rather than international security.

For diplomats speaking on condition of anonymity, Russia's opposition was hard to understand given that the resolution itself "was not radical," according to one of them.

Russian President Vladimir Putin was for years notorious for his skepticism about manmade global warming and saying Russia stands to benefit from it.

But his approach has changed as Russia — one of the world's biggest producers of oil and gas — sees the devastating effects of climate change.

The country has set numerous heat records in recent years, and the rising temperatures have contributed to severe floods and forest fires that have affected Siberia with increasing regularity.

Putin said earlier this year that Russia — the fourth-highest carbon emitter — was aiming for carbon neutrality by 2060.

Russia Detains Coal Tycoon Over Deadly Siberia Mine Blast

By AFP

Updated: Dec. 16, 2021

Mikhail Fedyayev.Danil Aikin / TASS

Russian investigators said Wednesday they had detained tycoon Mikhail Fedyayev after a blast at a coal mine in Siberia that killed 51 people last month.

The Investigative Committee, which is responsible for probing serious crimes, said it had charged Fedyayev, the owner of the SDS-Ugol company with grave "abuse of authority" and three others with violating "industrial safety" standards.

The mine is in the Kemerovo region, in southwestern Siberia.

NEWS
More Than 50 Dead in Siberia Coal Mine Accident

Russia has seen a number of deadly mine blasts in recent years but this was the first time investigators detained the top owner of a mine.

Fedyayev, 59, is one of Russia's top coal tycoons and is politically well connected.

SDS-Ugol is one of Russia's largest coal producers, and last year Forbes valued Fedyayev's fortune at $550 million (488 million euros).

The general director of SDS-Ugol, Gennady Alekseyev, was detained along with Fedyayev.

His son Pavel Fedyayev is a senior ruling party lawmaker in parliament's lower house, the State Duma.

A total of 51 people — including both miners and rescuers — died after smoke filled the Listvyazhnaya mine following an apparent gas explosion in late November. It was the deadliest mining explosion over the past decade.

In the aftermath, miners spoke of frequent safety violations at the site, saying they were forced to work despite high methane concentrations.

The detentions came a day after the powerful head of the Investigative Committee, Alexander Bastrykin, met with relatives of the victims and ordered investigators to look into "the role of the mine's owners."

Earlier this month, a visibly irritated President Vladimir Putin asked Fedyayev about safety violations at the mine during a televised meeting.

"Is the board of directors monitoring what's happening in the field of safety or just counting money?" the Russian leader asked the tycoon.

The businessman insisted the company never skimped on safety measures.

"I am ready to face any responsibility," he added.

NEWS
Timeline: Russia’s Worst Mining Disasters


At the same meeting, General Prosecutor Igor Krasnov confirmed multiple violations at the mine, saying everything looked good at the site "only on paper."

The detentions came after investigators initially held the director of the Listvyazhnaya mine, his first deputy and several other people.

Mining accidents are fairly common in Russia as a result of poor safety standards, a lack of oversight of working conditions and ageing Soviet-era equipment.

One of the deadliest mining accidents in Russia in recent years occurred at the Raspadskaya mine in Siberia — Russia's largest coal mine — in the summer of 2010, killing 91 people and leaving more than 100 injured.

FEMICIDE IS LEGAL

Russian Laws ‘Enough’ to Combat Domestic Violence – Kremlin

Russia decriminalized first-time abuse offenses in 2017

Dec. 16, 2021

Sofia Sandurskaya / Moskva News Agency

Russia's laws adequately protect victims of domestic violence, the Kremlin said Thursday, a day after Europe’s top rights court ordered Russia to pay damages to four victims for failing to properly investigate their abuse cases.

President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov defended the status quo after one of the high-profile victims expressed hope that the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ruling would prompt Russia to push through legislative changes. Peskov’s comments also contradict a Russian Constitutional Court ruling in April that ordered stronger laws to punish repeat domestic violence offenders.
NEWS

European Rights Court Orders Russia to Pay Damages to Domestic Abuse Victims READ MORE

“We believe that the current legislation provides all the necessary tools to combat this evil. Law enforcement agencies are making efforts,” Interfax quoted Peskov as saying.

“Of course, undesirable and sometimes tragic situations happen, we regret that,” Peskov told reporters.

Putin’s press secretary refused to comment on the ECHR ruling, which among others ordered Russia to pay Margarita Gracheva $419,000 for medical expenses and loss of income.

Gracheva, who became a domestic abuse activist after her jealous ex-husband chopped off her hands with an axe in a forest, attempted to sue police for professional negligence to no avail.

Following the ECHR's ruling, she said she was happy with the outcome and hoped Russia would listen.

"There are many of those who are already dead and can't tell their stories anymore," she wrote on Instagram.

Russia decriminalized first-time abuse offenses in 2017, a move that lawmakers had been working to overturn with new legislation before the coronavirus pandemic broke out.

The speaker of Russia’s senate had vowed to resume debate of the country’s delayed domestic violence bill as soon as “circumstances permit.”

But the bill’s prospects remain unclear after lawmakers prioritized legislation mandating QR code health passes nationwide, another politically charged subject.

Domestic abuse cases more than doubled to 13,000 in April 2020 from 6,000 in March 2020, when Russia imposed strict lockdown measures, Russia’s human rights ombudsperson said at the time.

The United Nations has warned of a “growing crisis within a crisis” of domestic violence cases doubling during Covid-19 lockdowns.

GUNRUNNING IS NEOCOLONIALISM
Turkey-Africa summit comes amid Ankara’s rising defence exports to continent

Armed with battle-tested drones, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has been deepening defence ties with African countries ahead of a major gathering of the continent's leaders in Istanbul.

ERDOGAN IS A WEAPONS RESELLER

© Adem Altan, AFP/File

The two-day Turkey-Africa partnership summit starting Friday comes fast on the heels of a top-level business forum in October that focused on investment and trade.

The next phase of this fast-blossoming relationship is security, experts say, with a host of African leaders looking to buy up military hardware at cheaper prices and with fewer strings attached.

Leaders and top ministers from 39 countries -- including 13 presidents -- have confirmed attendance, with Erdogan set to make a speech on Saturday.

Ankara already has a military base in Somalia, and Morocco and Tunisia reportedly took their first delivery of Turkish combat drones in September.

Angola became the latest to express an interest in unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) during Erdogan's first visit to the southern African country in October.

Turkey in August also signed a military cooperation pledge with Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, who has been embroiled in a war with Tigrayan rebels for the past year.

"The most important sector is the defence sector because this is a new asset. Turkey has pushed this sector a lot, especially drones," Federico Donelli, an international relations researcher at the University of Genoa, told AFP.

'Everyone asks about UAVs'

Russia has been the dominant player on the African arms market, accounting for 49 percent of the continent's imports between 2015 and 2019, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).

But interest in Turkish weaponry is peaking.

The TB2 Bayraktar model is in high demand after it was credited with swinging the fate of conflicts in Libya and Azerbaijan's breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh in the past few years.

The drones are made by the private Baykar company, run by one of Erdogan's sons-in-law.

"Everywhere I go in Africa, everyone asks about UAVs," Erdogan boasted after a visit to Angola, Nigeria and Togo in October.

Some of the closest scrutiny has focused on Turkey's ties with Ethiopia, where a brutal conflict has killed thousands, displaced more than two million and driven hundreds of thousands into famine-like conditions, according to UN estimates.

A Western source said Turkey sent an undisclosed number of combat drones in support of Abiy's campaign earlier this year, but that Ankara has since responded to international pressure and halted the sales. "Ethiopia can buy these drones from whoever they want," Turkey's foreign ministry spokesman said in October, neither confirming or denying the sales.

Soaring sales

Official Turkish data does not break down the details of military sales to individual countries, only giving the total sales amount for each month.

These have soared spectacularly in the past year.

Turkish defence and aviation exports to Ethiopia rose to $94.6 million between January and November from around $235,000 in the same period last year, according to figures published by the Turkish Exporters Assembly.

Sales to Angola, Chad and Morocco experienced similar jumps.

Turkey's drones first made international headlines after Ankara signed two deals with the UN-recognised Libyan government covering maritime and security in 2019.

It then swarmed the conflict zone with drones, stalling an advance by rebel eastern forces backed by Turkey's regional rivals and paving the way for a truce.

Turkey cemented its drones' reputation last year by helping Azerbaijan recapture most of the land it lost to separatist ethnic Armenian forces in disputed Nagorno-Karabakh nearly three decades ago.

"Now Turkey with drones has more cards to play when they have to bargain with other countries," researcher Donelli said.

"This is a very good bargaining chip for Turkey."

Growing network

The head of Turkey's Foreign Economic Relations Board -- the NGO that hosted the October forum in Istanbul -- insisted the growing relationship was not just about weapons.

"We care about the defence sector and our relations with Africa," the board's head Nail Olpak told AFP.

"But I would like to emphasise that if we see the defence sector only as weapons, rockets, guns, tanks and rifles, it would be wrong."

He highlighted Turkish mine-clearing vehicles in Togo, which qualify as defence industry sales.

Donelli agreed, referring to Togo's plans to improve its army with the support of Turkey through training and armoured vehicles, weapons and other kinds of equipment.

Turkey has reportedly set up a web of 37 military offices across Africa in all, in line with Erdogan's affirmed goal of tripling the annual trade volume with the continent to $75 billion in the coming years.

(AFP)

SEE LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for PERMANENT ARMS ECONOMY 

MADE IN THE USA

Ghost guns!
Expert warns Jamaica to be on lookout for weapons coming in partially assembled

Unlike these weapons, ghost guns come partially assembled and do not have serial numbers.

Saturday, December 18, 2021
BY ALICIA DUNKLEY-WILLIS
Senior staff reporter

JAMAICA OBSERVER 
dunkleywillisa@jamaicaobserver.com


A former Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agent has urged the Jamaican Government to create a fusion centre that would use intelligence to combat the island's crime problem, warning that the country should shore up its capabilities to detect the flow of weapons into the island as the emergence of “ghost guns” will present the State with an even bigger dilemma.

“The point is, pretty soon you won't need to import guns into Jamaica because with the advent of ghost guns you can make a 3D gun on a machine that costs less than US$400; so pretty soon this [guns for drugs and meat trade] will be something we won't even have to discuss. The problem will be how do you stop those machines from coming into making those guns and selling them,” Wilfred Rattigan, who is now an attorney-at-law, said during a virtual panel discussion on December 5 exploring how the Diaspora can assist in solving Jamaica's crime problem.

“Just recently they caught a 13-year-old in Atlanta who sold hundreds of these guns and they are untraceable. The fusion centre will certainly help with that because it's considered an emerging threat,” added Rattigan.

Ghost guns are firearms which are about 80 per cent complete and are sold online as DIY (do it yourself) kits and can be assembled at home by a buyer. However, they are untraceable as they carry no serial numbers — a crucial bit of information that law enforcers use to trace firearms from the manufacturer to the gun dealer to the original buyer.

Rattigan — who was an FBI special agent serving across the world from 1987 to 2017 in several capacities in the bureau's counter-intelligence, counter-terrorism and intelligence divisions — argued that Jamaica does not need another study to understand its crime problem. Instead, the Government should create the fusion centre, merging the various intelligence agencies which, he said, are presently operating “in silos”.

“What I am suggesting is that we need to harness all the information we have. Based on my knowledge of what's going on in the Jamaican intelligence circles, they are operating in silos. Knowledge is power, and they tend to see the picture, not in a panoramic manner, but in a myopic way. So, everyone is looking at their piece of information not realising that the full picture can be gleaned when you share information, and that's because they share by exception. They don't share by rule,” he said.

“The FBI suffered from that; not only the FBI, but US intelligence services suffered from that,” Rattigan pointed out.

“You are going to need a fusion centre, you have parts of that with MIU (Military Intelligence Unit), NIB (National Intelligence Bureau), the Major Organised Crime & Anti-Corruption Agency (MOCA) and C-TOC (Counter-Terrorism and Organised Crime Investigation Branch). The Ministry of Tourism has something called a resilience centre, all of these you can bring them under one roof and have people pipe their information in and you have the analysts who are there to assess the information and disseminate,” he explained.

“So, for example, if there is a crime problem it would be sent to this centre and they would start combining their information, combining their efforts, and in the end a product would go out that would address the issue. There is a lot more to it than that, but that is something that is woefully needed in Jamaica,” added Rattigan, who, at one point was also in charge of the FBI offices in South Africa with territorial responsibility for 16 countries.

In the meantime, he said while funding should not be an issue it will take political will to deal with the fusion centre.

“You are gonna have to have the will of your Government because it's a tall order and there's no restrictions with where you can go with it. I have seen it in operation in New York, I have participated in it in South Africa and all over the world. It requires a significant financial investment to begin with, but I don't think that's a problem because on February 2 of this year the Jamaican Government announced in Parliament that it was committed to spending $1.2 billion on the Plan Secure Jamaica Initiative, so I believe that there is enough funding there to do what I am suggesting,” Rattigan said.

Another panellist, Herb Nelson, who spent 24 years in the United States military and more than 15 years in the US intelligence community, agreed with Rattigan.

“One of the effective things that has occurred has been the advent of the C-TOC and fusion centres. All the research that has been done, all the mapping, all that we are talking about belongs in C-TOC or the fusion centre. We've proposed before, regional fusion centres — Cornwall, Middlesex, Surrey — the three counties in Jamaica,” Nelson said.

“It has been attempted before, where special review forces were brought in to intercept the guns for food, guns for drugs coming out of Haiti, and it was found out that in the six to nine months that the coast guards scanned that area, that the guns were coming through the airports and the illegal seaports,” he told the forum.

Nelson, who is the security chair for the Crime and Security Community Group with the Institute of Caribbean Studies, added: “You need giant X-ray machines at our sea ports and you need the same thing at the airports to X-ray every bit of equipment or so-called cartons filled with equipment to identify what's inside, and it should use an artificial intelligence process to identify gun parts or the parts of other known weapons.”

Canada lifts travel ban from African nations, reimposes testing

Friday, December 17, 2021
OTTAWA, Canada (AFP)— Canada announced Friday the lifting of a ban on foreign travellers from 10 African countries, while reimposing testing and warning that the Omicron variant of COVID-19 risks quickly overwhelming hospitals.

The travel restriction on flights from South Africa, Mozambique, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Lesotho, Eswatini, Namibia, Nigeria, Malawi and Egypt will end at 11:59 pm on Saturday (0459 GMT Sunday), Health Minister Jean-Yves Duclos told a news conference.

The restriction had been announced last month "to slow the arrival of Omicron in Canada and buy us some time," he said. But with Omicron now spreading within Canada it is "no longer needed."

Pre-arrival negative PCR tests for all travellers would also be reinstated as of December 21, Duclos said, while repeating a government warning earlier this week that "now is not the time to travel."

Officials said laboratory tests have confirmed as of Friday nearly 350 cases of the Omicron variant across Canada.

The total average daily COVID case count, meanwhile, has jumped by 45 percent in the past week to about 5,000.

"It is expected the sheer number of (Omicron) cases could inundate the health system in a very short period of time," said Chief Public Health Officer Theresa Tam.

HEY KENNEY, DR. HINSHAW;
Omicron cases doubling in 1.5 to 3 days in areas with local spread: WHO

People pose with syringe and needle in front of displayed

 World Health Organization (WHO) logo, in this illustration

 taken December 11, 2021. 

REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration

18 Dec 2021 

GENEVA: The Omicron coronavirus variant has been reported in 89 countries and the number of cases is doubling in one-and-a-half to three days in areas with community transmission, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Saturday (Dec 18).

Omicron is spreading rapidly in countries with high levels of population immunity, but it is unclear if this is due to the virus' ability to evade immunity, its inherent increased transmissibility or a combination of both, the WHO said in an update.

The agency designated Omicron a variant of concern on Nov 26, soon after it was first detected, and much is still not known about it, including the severity of the illness it causes.

Related:

Omicron more likely to reinfect than Delta, no milder: UK study

Pfizer says pandemic could extend through 2023, studies three-dose vaccine course for children

"There are still limited data on the clinical severity of Omicron," the WHO said. "More data are needed to understand the severity profile and how severity is impacted by vaccination and pre-existing immunity."

It added: "There are still limited available data, and no peer-reviewed evidence, on vaccine efficacy or effectiveness to date for Omicron."

The WHO warned that with cases rising so rapidly, hospitals could be overwhelmed in some places.

"Hospitalisations in the UK and South Africa continue to rise, and given rapidly increasing case counts, it is possible that many healthcare systems may become quickly overwhelmed."

San Francisco declares downtown emergency over drug deaths

US drug overdose deaths surged to more than 100,000 this year for the first time during the Covid-19 pandemic, exacerbated by a flood of fake online pills

 (Photo: AFP/File/Patrick T. FALLON)

18 Dec 2021 

SAN FRANCISCO: San Francisco's mayor on Friday (Dec 17) declared a state of emergency in a downtown district reeling from a severe spike in fatal drug overdoses driven mainly by fentanyl.

The Tenderloin neighborhood, just south of tourist and shopping hotspot Union Square, has emerged as the city's epicenter of an opioid crisis that has surged across the nation.

"We are losing over two people a day to drug overdoses, mostly to fentanyl, and mostly in the Tenderloin and SoMa," said city supervisor Matt Haney, referring to a neighbouring central district.

"This is a public health emergency demanding a crisis level response, with massive urgency, coordination, and determination to confront this epidemic."

Drug overdoses in San Francisco have risen sharply since the mid-2010s as highly potent synthetic opioid fentanyl infiltrated the city.

Related:

US drug deaths surpass 100,000 for first time, spurred by COVID-19 pandemic

A record 711 died from overdoses last year, with 2021 deaths projected to fall slightly below that, according to a San Francisco Chronicle tracker.

The declaration signed by Mayor London Breed on Friday allows officials to quickly open shelters and mental health services by bypassing zoning, planning and contract procurement rules.

It emulates Breed's early move to declare a citywide COVID-19 emergency in February 2020.

US drug overdose deaths surged to more than 100,000 this year for the first time during the COVID-19 pandemic, exacerbated by a flood of fake online pills.

The Tenderloin district near City Hall has long been a hub for homelessness, drug use and drug dealing, and Breed said the measure would "disrupt the illegal activity in the neighborhood" and "get people the treatment and support they need".

Substance abuse issues have soared amid the pandemic, as many treatment programs have stopped or been rolled back, and alcohol and drug consumption rates have risen.
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