A Rant! Roundup
Assange, Poop Balloons, and the BRICS Games!
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ALEX’S WEEKLY RANT
A Fucked Up Juxtaposition
Russian intelligence asset Julian Assange walked free this week.
At the same time, Russia launched a closed-door, sham trial of Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, claiming he is a Western spy.
It was a terrible juxtaposition that left me angry. Gershkovich is a real journalist, who followed journalistic standards. He is no spy. Russia knows this, of course, but is using the kangaroo court as leverage over the West.
Assange is not a journalist. He is also not the free speech champion he claims to be. Rather, his work supports authoritarian regimes. His plea deal, admitting he collected and disseminated US national defense information, shows what he really is: a traitor.
Under Assange’s tutelage, Wikileaks provided a list of Belarusian dissidents to that country’s dictator. Many of those people have since disappeared.
Assange had his own show on RT, a Russian-state propaganda outlet.
After Russia’s military intelligence agency, the GRU, hacked the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman, Wikileaks published the stolen emails as part of Russia’s interference in the 2016 US presidential election.
Assange refused to publish a huge cache of leaked documents about Russia. He said there was no need, since Russia allowed the voices of government opponents to be heard. As an example, he mentioned Alexey Navalny (who has since been poisoned, thrown in jail, and murdered by the Russian state).
A number of pro-Russian government voices were very pleased with Assange’s release. Here is a statement from Margarita Simonyan, one of Russia’s top propagandists:
We don’t know what, if anything, Assange had to give the US in order to secure the plea deal. Nor do we know if there are set consequences should he again set about his pro-autocracy fuckery. I have a feeling we’ll be hearing a lot from him between now and the November election, and probably after, too.
Norks And Orcs Go To War Together
Last week, I wrote about Vladimir Putin’s trip to visit his bestie Kim Jong Un and their signing of a mutual defense pact.
Before that, I had written about North Korean poop balloons.
Well, it looks like we may get that Ukraine/poop balloon crossover I wrote about. South Korean news has reported that North Korea plans to send “construction workers and engineers” into occupied areas of Ukraine. Can you imagine coming from North Korea, where you’ve probably never seen a computer built after 1978, and going into a high-tech battle space dominated by drone warfare? This is an actual photo of a 20-year-old Ukrainian flying drones to kill Russians while vaping.
This will scare the shit out of the North Koreans, who will, I imagine, then put that shit in bags and attach a few balloons to send into Western Ukraine.
Speaking Of Dumb Autocratic Schemes…
Russian athletes won’t be allowed to compete under their country’s flag in the Olympics, which start July 26 in Paris. This, since Russia isn’t a welcome member of the international sports community anymore, since they launched an unprovoked war against Ukraine and since they dope all their athletes.
Remember, Russian intelligence ran a Kremlin-mandated doping system for Russian athletes. Once they were found out, the country’s intelligence services went about discrediting the agencies that had called them out. For more on this, see Class 3 in my Foreign Influence Operations course.
In any case, as something of a make up for Russian athletes not fully competing in Paris, Putin launched the BRICS Games, an athletic competition among Russia and such powerhouse nations that are not actually nations like Abkhazia and South Ossetia (both actually belong to Georgia but are occupied by Russia) and the Republic of Srpska (a Serbian enclave in Bosnia-Herzegovina).
The Games featured a number of sports, including rhythmic gymnastics, swimming, and acrobatic rock and roll. Yep, that’s a thing. In fact, one of Putin’s daughters, Katerina Tikhonova, used to be a competitive acrobatic rock and roller. Here’s a video of her performing in 2013.
Anyway, back to this year’s BRICS competition. There was a small hiccup: hardly any athletes showed up.
In synchronized swimming, for example, there was only one entrant. But he won the gold medal!
In wrestling, neither the Latvian nor the Romanian athlete showed up for the contest, leaving the referee—standing alone on the mat—to declare one of them the winner. (He picked Lithuania, even though neither country participated.)
Because almost no one showed up, almost everyone got a medal. So that should make everyone feel happy.
THE WEEK’S LINKS
A roundup of things you should be reading
RUSSIAN OCCUPATION OF UKRAINE
The Counteroffensive: Crossing the ‘gray zone’ from Russia into Ukraine (The Kyiv Independent)
Alex Finley is a former officer of the CIA’s Directorate of Operations, where she served in West Africa and Europe. She writes and teaches about terrorism, disinformation / covert influence, and oligarch yachts. Her writing has appeared in Slate, Reductress, Funny or Die, POLITICO, The Center for Public Integrity, and other publications. She has spoken to the BBC, MSNBC, CNN, C-SPAN’s Washington Journal, France24, and numerous other media outlets. She was also invited once to speak at Harvard, which she now tells everyone within the first ten seconds of meeting them. She is the author of the Victor Caro series, satirical novels about the CIA. Before joining the CIA, Alex was a journalist, covering Capitol Hill, the Pentagon, and the Department of Energy. She reported on issues related to national security, intelligence, and homeland security. Did she mention she was invited to speak at Harvard?
Had to bring up the poop again huh? Click bate!! Flying "dodo balls" ( RIP Mojo Nixon). I suspect the N Koreans will have food comma for a week even if it is Russian rations. But lots to process and make little "Kin Un Jongs". I digress. Wonder about paper...
Speaking of 'T-P for my bunghole', the Australian " cornholio" Assange should be making big rocks into little rocks for another 10 yrs. I think an article by the times (I think it was) mentioned that Trump's DOJ floated illegal policies that would have made a conviction improbable. Those single strand helix cultests really fuCked up. But accountability is for an inflicted the little people.
Great posts