New York Times: How Russia's intelligence services turned Brazil into a ‘spy factory'
Ambush is really the word that defines a lot of the South African front pages today. Daily News saying as much on its front page after that calamitous meeting between Cyril Ramaphosa and Donald Trump. The Sowetan says Ramaphosa "survived the ambush". The paper impressed that he staged "a pushback against lies of a white genocide in South Africa".
In its analysis, the New York Times says Trump cast himself as a protector of persecuted white people. He publicly dressed down the South African president based on a fringe conspiracy theory.
The US daily also reports that Brazil is trying to dismantle a network of Russian spies in the country. This fascinating investigative report looks at how Russia used Brazil as a sort of assembly line for producing Russian spies. The goal was not to spy on Brazil but for its spies to become Brazilian with passports. Brazil's painstaking investigative work, which began after the war in Ukraine, involved dismantling the network, piece by piece. It dealt a devastating blow to Putin's spy program. Times takes us through Operation East which was led by the same counterintelligence agents who investigated former president Jair Bolsonaro. They combed through millions of Brazilian identity records in search of patterns. It began in 2022 with the arrest of Victor Muller Ferreira aka Sergey Cherkasov. Authorities discovered his real birth Brazilian certificate citing a deceased Brazilian woman as his mother. Yet, upon further investigation – they discovered she never had children. Consequently, this network of ghosts began to unravel.
In Ireland, a controversial rapper has been charged with a terror offence. The Belfast Telegraph reports that Mo Chara, rapper of the Irish language rap group Kneecap, was charged with a terror offence. It dates back to last November when the group displayed a flag in support of Hezbollah during a concert. Videos also emerged of the band allegedly calling for deaths of MPs. They later denied support for the groups and apologized. In the UK, Hezbollah and Hamas are declared terrorist organisations, which means it's illegal to express support for them. Irish news site Breaking News reports that it's not the group's first run-in with the law. Last month at Coachella, Kneecap ended their set with three messages on a screen accusing Israel of genocide and war crimes which sparked outrage in the US. They also commissioned a mural in Belfast of a burning Land Rover, the vehicle used in policing in Northern Ireland, which some say glorified terrorism.
Finally, Taiwan has a new rock star envoy to Finland. Freddy Lim founded the Taiwanese heavy metal band Chthonic which is known as the Black Sabbath of Asia. He has now been named envoy to Finland. And his nomination is apt – the band is well known in Finland having recorded four albums with a Finnish label. As the Brooklyn based website Metal Injection notes, Finland has the most metal bands per capita – 80 for every 100k citizens. So where better than Finland to appoint a heavy metal singing ambassador!
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Euronews
an hour ago
- Euronews
Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov rescued from drowning in Turkey
The head of the Chechen Republic, Ramzan Kadyrov, nearly drowned on Thursday while vacationing in the Turkish resort town of Bodrum, according to Turkish media outlets. The incident is said to have occurred at a five-star hotel in the Kaynar district of Bodrum, located in Muğla Province. According to media reports, Kadyrov had entered the water for a swim when he 'suddenly began to lose consciousness' and slipped beneath the surface. Turkish Coast Guard officers and hotel staff noticed he was in distress and intervened. Emergency responders provided first aid at the scene before transferring Kadyrov to a private clinic, where his condition was later described as stable. News sources stated that after undergoing medical evaluation and observation, he was found to be in no 'life-threatening condition". There has been no official statement released by Chechen authorities yet. The 48-year-old Chechen leader, a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, had been vacationing on the Aegean coast when the incident occurred. The Kremlin has relied on Kadyrov to maintain stability in the North Caucasus following years of turmoil. Ramzan inherited the position from his father, Akhmad Kadyrov, a turncoat who originally declared war against Moscow during the first Chechen conflict. By the time of the Second Chechen War in 1999, both Akhmad and Ramzan — who served as his father's personal driver and bodyguard — defected to the Russian side. Both Putin — who went from being the FSB director at the time to being appointed as Russian prime minister — and Kadyrov rose to prominence during the Second Chechen War, which experts and intelligence sources believe was instigated by Putin himself. Although Kadyrov has since been criticised for using extrajudicial killings, torture and silencing dissenters, Russian authorities have stonewalled demands for investigations. The health of the Chechen leader is reportedly worsening rapidly. He attempted to resign in May. However, Putin is said to be opposed to Kadyrov being succeeded by his son Adam, who is 17. Bodrum is a popular destination among wealthy people and regional elites, including Russians.
LeMonde
an hour ago
- LeMonde
Faced with China, Europe is weak
The 25 th summit between China and the European Union (EU), held on Thursday, July 24, in Beijing, quickly turned into a dialogue of the deaf. Even on climate change, a topic on which China and Europe are supposed to stand out while the US has abandoned any ambition on the issue, it took considerable effort to reach a joint statement. On all other subjects, the divisions became glaringly apparent after just one day, rather than the two initially planned. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Council President Antonio Costa had to resign themselves to traveling to the Chinese capital, as the head of the Chinese party-state, Xi Jinping, had made it known that he would not set foot in Europe. By contrast, he makes time each year to visit Moscow and celebrate his "no limits" friendship with Vladimir Putin. He was there again in May and will host the Russian president at the end of August for four days to once again formalize what Xi calls "great changes not seen in a century," a recalibration of the world order to the detriment of the West. The US began to focus on the threat posed by China's rise much earlier than the Europeans, as Beijing's project is a more explicit challenge to American hegemony. Europe, led by German car manufacturers, saw only the promise of the Chinese market, while security concerns seemed remote and abstract. Only when Europeans were directly affected did they wake up to this risk. A new world Today, Europe finds itself facing this risk on two fronts at once. First, in Ukraine. Russia has been able to continue its war for three years only because China finances it through purchases of hydrocarbons and provides the parts and machinery to assemble the drones that attack Ukrainian civilians every day. Second, in trade. The European Union has watched the imbalance in its relationship with China deepen, with no clear way out of this spiral. In a decade, the EU's trade deficit with China has doubled, surpassing €300 billion per year. Brussels is right to criticize the massive public subsidies that have made Chinese competition unfair, creating a heightened risk for jobs and industry in Europe, and to implement protective measures that China has never abandoned. But von der Leyen also saw, from the window of the Hongqi ("Red Flag") limousine provided by the Chinese protocol, just how much a new world has emerged in China. New cars, mostly electric or hybrid, new brands, and an unmatched expertise: In the race to develop the best batteries, only two Chinese players stand out – the world's largest supplier, CATL, which supplies Stellantis, Renault, Tesla, and Rolls-Royce, and the world's leading electric car brand, BYD. Europeans are mere bystanders. China believes Europe has only itself to blame. On this topic, as on the Ukrainian front, von der Leyen at least offered this diagnosis: Chinese-European relations are at a "turning point." Yet nothing suggests that the EU has even the beginnings of a solution to these fundamental problems.
Euronews
2 hours ago
- Euronews
Romanians are nostalgic for communist dictator Ceaușescu: who was he?
According to respondents to an INSCOP research survey, most Romanians believe Ceausescu's so-called "Golden Age" saw the country take better care of its citizens, and more cooperation between Romanians. Of those polled, 66.2% believed that Ceaușescu was a good leader, with only 24.1% voicing a negative view. Even the communist regime seems to fare well in the opinion poll: for 55.8% of the respondents it was rather a good thing for Romania, whereas only 34.5% disagreed. An overwhelming majority of respondents were fully aware of the lack of freedom under the communist era: 80% stated that there was none, while 9% believed that there was more back then. Data was collected using telephone interviews method on a sample of 1,505 people aged 18 years and over. Ceaușescu's repressive and iron fist communism was the only regime in Central Europe that ended in bloodshed in the late 1980s. The result looks shocking for a country that is a member of both the EU and NATO. Many in Romania believe that selective memory and nostalgia for simpler times, revived recently by Russian propaganda, are to blame Decline and fall Nicolae Ceaușescu was at the head of communist Romania from 1965 until December 1989 when his regime was overthrown by a ten-day revolution, only a month after the fall of the Berlin Wall. They were the last months of the Cold War. The communist regimes of Central and Eastern Europe were drastically changing or falling peacefully one after the other, marking the end of the Yalta Order: Hungary, Poland, East Germany. On December 21st, following days of deadly repression in the western city of Timisoara, the dictator was supposed to address 100 thousand supporters that marched into central Bucharest; yet unexpectedly in a few minutes the cheering turned into booing as Romanians were fed up after years of misery and repression by the communist regime. The repression forces fired into the demonstrators and 24 hours later, Ceaușescu and his wife Elena had to flee Bucharest hastily. On the run from Bucharest, Ceaușescu and his wife Elena were captured and then executed by the army and the new revolutionary political leadership, in Târgoviște,** some 70 kilometers from the capital on 25 December 1989. Official reports say that a military court pronounced the death sentence after a one-hour summary judgement, while the orders were given by the National Salvation Front Council. This was an emergency executive body, whose creation was announced the 22 December, the day after beginning of the unrest in Bucharest and Ceasescu's escape from Palace Square, nowadays Revolution Square. Timișoara's mutiny, the spark that lit the flame On 16 December 1989 the Hungarian minority in the western city of Timisoara staged a small protest against the Ceaușescu's regime for the repressive measures adopted against the ethnic Hungarian protestant pastor László Tőkés for the criticisms he expressed on the Hungarian TV against the Communist political system. This was the seed of an uprising. The city's population joined the small protest galvanising it into a full blown anti-communist revolution. The demonstrators stormed the local headquarters of the Communist party and destroyed Ceaușescu's personality cult symbols. The army and the feared political police Securitate fired into the demonstrators on December 17 causing dozens of fatalities, while the whole city rose up against the communist regime. On December 20th, after 3 days of violent repression, the army withdrew and the city became free of communism. The echoes of Timișoara's uprising spread to the entire country and to Bucharest paving the way to the epilogue of the regime. The root causes of economic turmoil The causes that led to the fall of Ceasescu's regime were determined by both external and internal factors, such as the sunset of the Cold War and the unbearable weight of the communist autocracy imposed by the Ceaușescu family and its power circle. By the end of the 1980s, the Romanian people were exhausted by a decade of economic restrictions and increasing repression of fundamental freedoms by a regime based on the cult of personality. The propaganda called Ceaușescu the 'Genius of the Carpathians' or simply the 'Conducator', the leader the same title used by Ion Antonescu the head of the Romanian fascist regime during WW2 Nicolae Ceasescu took advantage of the 1977 destructive earthquake to start building a new Romania inspired by the principles of two communist leaders such as China's Mao Zedong and North Korea's Kim Il Sung, grandfather of Kim Jong Un. It was the so-called Systematisation. This was a rather dystopic infrastructural urban and farm planning that was meant to pave the way to the full collectivisation of the Romanian society. Old towns and villages were demolished (Bucharest, the Banat and the and Transylvania regions' urbanism were put upside down) entire populations were forcibly displaced to create new rural and industrial centres based on production models inspired by Mao's China. Ceaușescu's grand design was economically unsustainable for an impoverished population (with Central European traditions) and a country burdened by a heavy foreign debt. Consequence: popular dissatisfaction grew, and the regime thought to solve the problem by increasing repression against any form of dissent or simple criticism. The underground opposition called him 'the Danube of the Thought' to mock his irrational political, social and economic policies. Harsh repression and dystopia The regime established a strict control of the society through the Department of the State Security (the Securitate, a Stalinist political police structure) that had a vast and extensive network of informants. Any communication was intercepted and controlled, while all the typewriter machines of the country were registered by the security services. The Securitate had complete freedom to torture and eliminate opponents, even abroad. Artists and intellectuals were systematically persecuted as well as the ethnic minorities. The regime banned contraception (even condoms) and abortion, not with religious or moral motivations, just to increase demography and the future workforce. Pregnant women were strictly controlled by the authorities. Multifaced dictator Nevertheless, Nicolae Ceaușescu enjoyed political respect on the international scene until the start of the 1980s. The West saw him as an autonomous voice (vis-à-vis Moscow) within the Warsaw Pact. Ceasescu's Romania was the only country in the socialist military alliance that did not send troops to Czechoslovakia to suppress the Prague Spring. From the late 1960s onwards, Romania developed a foreign policy that was often detached from the broad lines dictated by the Soviet Union to the socialist countries. This allowed Nicolae Ceaușescu to establish political relations both with the West and with Mao's China, a communist country but opposed to Moscow. It was precisely the Romanian dictator who contributed to the preliminary steps that led to the great rapprochement between the China of Mao and Zou En Lai and the USA of Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger. This world policy enabled Romania to obtain foreign credits from western banks, to the point of being one of the few socialist countries to become a member of the IMF in early 1970s. Romania in 1974 was the only socialist country to sign a preferential tariff treaty with the European Community, what later became the EU. The 1972 oil shock gave Romania relative power on international markets. The country was in fact a small producer of crude and had preferential agreements with Iran and Iraq. The price of oil brought great benefits to Ceaușescu's policies. Because in the 1970s it allowed the regime to conduct expansive policies with relative benefits for the population that had access for the first time in its history to mass consumption and a fairly generous welfare state. From the early 1980s, falling oil prices and misguided economic measures forced the country into severe austerity measures with the ambition of wiping out its foreign debt. The result was a drop in productivity and mass impoverishment, not a context of harsh political repression, an explosive mixture that led to the violent end of the regime in 1989.
