Russia Is Furious That China’s TikTok Just Deleted RT & Sputnik’s Accounts
Andrew Korybko
Sep 22, 2024
Sputnik described this as a “globalist attack” against Russia, accused TikTok of being “co-opted” by the US’” deep state”, and even shared a meme on X of their brand shooting TikTok’s.
The US declared war against Russia’s publicly financed media earlier this month after it claimed that they’re functioning as clandestine arms of that country’s intelligence services and then promised that it’ll apply the utmost pressure upon all members of the international community to ban them too. Few could have foreseen that China, which is one of Russia’s main strategic partners, would follow suit by having TikTok delete RT and Sputnik’s accounts but that’s exactly what just happened over the weekend.
Sputnik reacted with fury by describing this as a “globalist attack” against Russia, accusing TikTok of being “co-opted” by the US’ “deep state”, and even sharing a meme on X of their brand shooting TikTok’s, thus expressing how upset Russia is at being backstabbed by China in the global information war. It’s one thing for Western platforms like Meta to ban Russia’s flagship international media and another entirely for a strategic partner like China to do the same, which is absolutely unacceptable.
Russia’s response will likely remain limited to speaking through Sputnik since the complex interdependencies between them are too important for it to risk ruining their relations by escalating this dispute, however, but its diplomats might still give China’s a tongue lashing behind closed doors. TikTok also just argued in court last week that the US Government’s proposed ban of their app would have a “staggering” impact on free speech, yet then it hypocritically deleted RT and Sputnik’s accounts.
This social media platform plays a powerful role in shaping popular discourse, but Russia’s top publicly financed international media companies are now unable to win hearts and minds through these means after what just happened, which represents a major blow to their country’s soft power strategy. Even worse, it raises larger questions about China’s overall reliability in the face of American pressure, which a growing number in Russia have begun asking after several unexpected developments this year.
A Chinese energy company agreed to comply with US sanctions against Russia’s Artic LNG 2 project and then a bunch of Chinese banks prohibited payments to and from Russia. Interspersed between these two was Russia and China failing to resolve their pricing dispute over the Power of Siberia II pipeline during Putin’s visit. What he and Xi had previously declared to be their “no-limits partnership” very clearly has some real limits to it, and they’re increasingly influenced by American pressure.
China’s direct complex interdependencies with the US account for these scandalous policies, and considering that China and Russia also have such interdependencies between them, it can therefore be said that Russia has indirect complex interdependencies with the US that lean heavily in the US’ favor. This was explained more here and here when analyzing the resumption of Russian-IMF relations, but the relevance to TikTok deleting RT and Sputnik’s accounts is that China isn’t as sovereign as some thought.
Interestingly, despite India being in a similarly direct relationship of complex interdependence with the US as China is and even having close military ties with the US too, India refused to comply with US pressure upon it to ban RT and Sputnik’s national hubs. Reports also suggest that their financial ties have expanded to the point where clandestine channels have now been created for facilitating the export of dual-use technologies to Russia behind the US’ back in order to avoid secondary sanctions.
India’s policies stand in stark contrast to China’s, whose flagship social media platform TikTok just deleted RT and Sputnik’s accounts while its banks are too scared of secondary sanctions to continue business as usual with Russia, thus upending popular expectations. The Mainstream Media (MSM) and the Alt-Media Community (AMC) have hyped up China’s systemic rivalry with the US, each in advance of their own ideological agenda, but it turns out that ties between those two aren’t as terrible as many thought.
Their direct complex interdependencies have been weaponized by the US to coerce China into distancing itself from Russia, both publicly with respect to what TikTok just did as well as behind the scenes with regard to its banks’ voluntarily compliance with American sanctions. China isn’t willing to bear the costs that the US would impose upon it for defiantly standing in solidarity with Russia like India has done, the latter of which correctly wagered that it’s too important to the US to be punished like China would be.
The US is still pressuring India on domestic and regional issues as correspondingly explained here and here, however, so there was never any guarantee that the US wouldn’t punish India like it would punish China. India therefore took a calculated risk that China is too fearful to consider, which speaks volumes about their real sovereignty when it comes to defying American pressure to distance themselves from Russia upon threats to weaponize their complex interdependencies to that end.
The MSM might exaggerate the trouble that TikTok’s deletion of RT and Sputnik’s accounts caused for the Sino-Russo Entente while the AMC might predictably ignore or downplay this, each in advance of their own ideological agenda once again, so observers shouldn’t take their reporting about this at face value. The fact is that this represents a disturbing pattern of behavior from China which proves that it’s much more amenable to American pressure than either of those two media camps have made it seem.
China and the US are still systemic rivals, but the complex interdependencies between them have successfully been weaponized by the US to harm Russia, which isn’t the case with India. Even though India isn’t a systemic rival of the US like China is, it’s displayed much more sovereignty when it comes to its ties with Russia than China has, which should give observers a lot to think about. The honest among them will reconsider what they took for granted about China, while the dishonest won’t dare to do so.
https://korybko.substack.com/p/russia-i ... nas-tiktok
(Little Andy never misses a chance to throw sand on the Chinese. Is it cause they're commies or is it just old fashioned Russian chauvinism?)
Armenia Isn’t All That Important To Iran’s Economic & National Security
Andrew Korybko
Sep 22, 2024
Iran has ulterior motives for opposing the Zangezur Corridor.
Iran’s continued opposition to the Zangezur Corridor, which was earlier analyzed here and here, is predicated on the assumption that Armenia is very important to its economic and national security. The thinking goes that they’d be harmed if Azerbaijan and/or Turkiye took control of that corridor, which could then cut Iran off from Europe and lead to the emergence of new threats on the border. Few have reflected on the merits of these claims, however, otherwise they’d have realized how shallow they are.
There was only a paltry €4.7 billion worth of trade between the EU and Iran last year, which approximately equates to 1.3% of the country’s $401 billion GDP last year. While it’s unclear how much of that was conducted via Georgia-Armenia, whatever it was had to traverse through the latter’s mountainous Syunik Province to reach the Islamic Republic. It’s cost-prohibitive to build a railway through there so logistics couldn’t ever realistically be scaled up across that route if trade grew.
In that scenario, and if they decide to conduct more of it through multimodal means across the South Caucasus instead of by sea, then it would make sense to do so via Azerbaijan’s Nakhchivan exclave after modernizing its existing rail infrastructure that Syunik Province lacks. This insight suggests that the future of their trade would therefore have to involve Azerbaijan, thereby discrediting the claim that Syunik Province is indispensable to Iran’s economic security.
Seeing as how Azerbaijan would also profit from this through customs duties, there’s no reason to suspect that it would cut off Iranian-EU trade, especially since that could provoke the West’s wrath. The only scenario in which that might happen would be in the event of another war with Armenia or a future one with Iran, in which case Azerbaijan could easily sever Syunik Province if trade hasn’t yet been diversified across Nakhchivan by then, or truckers might just avoid that route on their own.
Segueing into counterarguments against the claim that the worst-case scenario of Azerbaijani and/or Turkish control of Syunik Province outside of a war with Iran would harm the latter’s national security, it’s enough to know that the border with Armenia is a measly 40 kilometers to realize how ridiculous this is. Iran already has a 689-kilometer-long border with Azerbaijan and a 534-kilometer-long one with Turkiye for a total of 1223 kilometers so an expansion of that by 40 kilometers would only make it 3.27% longer.
Whatever security threats that Iran perceives to stem from those two therefore wouldn’t be exacerbated in that worst-case scenario. At the absolute most, it might briefly embolden some Azeri separatists in Iran’s northern regions, but they’ve stirred trouble before only to always be defeated so there’s no reason to expect them to finally succeed in that event. This observation proves that Iran’s national security wouldn’t be adversely affected if Azerbaijan and/or Turkiye controlled the Zangezur Corridor.
While it’s true that this scenario could facilitate Turkiye’s rise as a Eurasian Great Power if it was followed by the creation of a customs union with the Organization of Turkic States (OTS), most of whom are in Central Asia, this wouldn’t automatically pose a threat to Iran. The Islamic Republic would just have to make its own exports to those markets more competitive through whatever means it decides upon, plus Iran is already rising as a Eurasian Great Power in its own right, so everything would balance out.
Considering all this, it’s categorically untrue that Armenia is supposedly very important for Iran’s economic and national security, thus leading to the conclusion that ulterior motives such as elite consolidation or pro-Western signaling are behind its continued opposition to the Zangezur Corridor. Iran would therefore do well to explain the real motivations behind this policy since the explanations put forth by its media surrogates don’t add up and are easily discredited as proven by this analysis.
https://korybko.substack.com/p/armenia- ... portant-to
(One gets the sense that Andy doesn't like Russia getting cozy with any of the US's
other targets and prefers that Russia hang alone.)
******
Georgia on track for peace in the Caucasus – but there is still a lot to be done
Lucas Leiroz
September 20, 2024
Tbilisi is beginning to understand that the only way to maintain regional peace is through a policy of friendship with the Russian Federation, ignoring the war plans of the Collective West.
Unlike Armenia, Georgia seems to be choosing a good path for itself and the entire Caucasus region. Despite the West’s attempts to destabilize the country and implement anti-Russian policies, the Georgian government remains firm in its decision not to join the NATO-fueled madness. Not even the pro-EU lobby led by the country’s president seems to be enough to reverse the local people’s choice – represented by parliamentarians – to say “no” to war.
Along with the rejection of NATO, the first steps towards historical justice are beginning to emerge in Georgia. Recently, former Georgian Prime Minister Bidzina Ivanishvili said that Georgia should publicly apologize for initiating hostilities in the 2008 war. In addition, the official said that a “Georgian Nuremberg” should be established in the country to condemn politicians and military personnel involved in crimes during the regime of Mikhail Saakashvili – the then Georgian prime minister who, after losing the war, fled to Ukraine and began a political career under the Maidan regime.
Both Ivanishvili and the current leader of the Parliament, Irakli Kobakhidze, belong to the same party – the “Georgian Dream” – which has been accused of being “pro-Russian” simply because it advocates a neutral position in the current conflict between Moscow and NATO. The main accusers are supporters of President Salome Zourabichvili, who was recently named by Russian intelligence as the main agent in a mobilization to generate a regime change operation in Georgia.
Zourabishvili is the leading figure in the opposition to the ruling parliamentary coalition. A foreigner herself on Georgian soil, Zourabishvili attempted to veto Georgia’s recent law restricting foreign agents, fearing that it would diminish Western influence in the country. The bill was approved by lawmakers despite the president’s opposition, which raised serious concerns in Western countries.
The West fears that Georgia will become less vulnerable to its influence due to restrictions on the work of foreign NGOs. As some Russian analysts point out, there is no “anti-Western” intention in Georgia, and many of its politicians’ statements are simply an electoral maneuver. However, the U.S. and Europe do not seem willing to accept even the minimum of sovereignty for Georgia, demanding absolute subservience.
According to NATO’s war plans, Georgia was supposed to attack the breakaway republics in order to open a second front in the war against Russia. Although revanchist sentiments and Russophobia are indeed strong in Georgia, the current government is not willing to engage in a suicidal conflict just to satisfy NATO’s irrational intentions. In practice, the Georgian government wants to reconcile two contradictory positions: to maintain a foreign policy aligned with the West, but to preserve a minimum of sovereignty so as not to engage in suicidal wars.
In addition to all these factors, parliamentary elections are coming up. In October, Georgians will elect their new representatives to Parliament. The Prime Minister has already warned about the possibility of electoral interference by foreign agents, in a clear attempt to explain the reality of Western interventionism. In recent times, several Western maneuvers to change the regime in Georgia have failed, which is why the West is expected to increase its aggressiveness from now on, investing in direct electoral sabotage.
Furthermore, if it fails to change the regime through elections, the West could simply resort to using military violence. Thousands of Georgian neo-Nazi militants are ready to obey any NATO order. Many of these militants even have real combat experience, as they are involved in anti-Russian hostilities. For example, the participation of the Georgian militia “Caucasian Legion” in the invasion of Kursk, where fascist mercenaries tortured and murdered several Russian civilians and prisoners of war, was recently reported.
Georgia will hardly be able to face all Western threats without engaging in deep security cooperation with the Russian Federation, including on the level of military and intelligence assistance. The first step towards peace has already been taken by the Georgians by saying “no” to NATO’s request to open a second front against Russia. However, there is still a lot to be done. Georgia needs to overcome revanchism and Russophobia and radically change its foreign policy, aligning itself with the country that is most committed to preserving peace in the Caucasus.
https://strategic-culture.su/news/2024/ ... -lot-done/
******
Hamster and hamsters
September 22, 12:26
Hamster and hamsters
"They cheated me! They cheated me with the hamster!" - couch crypto investors around the world are outraged by the payouts for months of "hamster tapping" - playing Hamster Combat.
The average player will receive from $15 to $50 for six (!!!) months of tapping, buying cards, watching videos and stupid mini-games. Moreover, you can immediately withdraw only 10% of what you earned. But many will not receive even this penny - they were deprived of payments for "cheating" - tricks for developing the hamster without wasting time.
Butts are burning all over the world (
https://t.me/banksta/58125 ), but most of all - in our vast Motherland, Georgia, Turkey, Armenia and the remains of Ukraine. Curious geography, huh?
Before this, millions of players convinced themselves and others that they were not burning hours and days of their lives, but "investing in future wealth" - telling examples with "bitcoin, which no one believed in" and successful tokens NotCoin and DOGS.
People seriously (!!!) counted and discussed how many loans they would close and buy smartphones (and even cars) after the start of payments. True, some ended up in a real mental hospital because of "Hamster" (proof (
https://www.mentoday.ru/life/news/10-06 ... zarabotat/) ) or lost their jobs (proof (
https://harant.ru/questions/q-46437/). )
Actually, as with any MMM, the hamster sect convinces everyone "they definitely won't screw you over in the new season." For reference - in the new season, the users who have accumulated millions will have to earn "crystals", but to do this, they must strictly and rigidly complete all the tasks (watch videos, play, etc.).
Although some are already beginning to guess:
"Blue crystals can be earned by completing ALL mandatory tasks and buying cards. It seems that we are being accustomed to new game mechanics! Now you won't be able to slack off, you'll have to participate in all tasks several times a day, watch all the videos! In short, they want to make an army of trained Internet hamsters out of us, who will watch, click and write everything they need to!"
"It was known in advance that the tappers will receive about 1% of the volume of issued crypto. The remaining 99% will be sold by the organizers," - reports "Banksta (
https://t.me/banksta/58124) ". The profit of the game itself (owned (
https://neolurk.org/wiki/Hamster_Kombat ) "Russian offshore") is several million dollars a day.
https://t.me/glavmedia/359914 - zinc
After all, this has never happened before...
https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/9397036.html
Thomas Cantacuzene goes to Moscow
September 22, 18:44
Thomas Cantacuzene goes to Moscow
In May 1630, Thomas Kantakouzenos, the ambassador of the Turkish Sultan, arrived in Moscow. Thomas himself was an Orthodox Greek "Phanariot", that is, a Byzantine and was officially considered a descendant of the emperors of the Second Rome (there are different opinions on this matter, but, apparently, he was some distant offspring of the former "basileusses").
The Orthodox ambassador of the Islamic Caliph came to Moscow to negotiate joint military actions against Poland. After all, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was then the main and most dangerous enemy of Russia. The Polish King Vladislav, by inheritance from the upheavals of our Time of Troubles, still officially lays claim to the Moscow throne. Soon, in two years, Russia will begin the not very successful "Smolensk War". And the Turks will be our informal ally - they will also fight with the lords at the borders of modern Moldova.
In short, in the spring of 1630, the Turkish ambassador was a welcome guest in Russia – especially since it was already the third diplomatic visit to Moscow for a descendant of Byzantine emperors. But for now we will not talk about geopolitics, but about personal “politics”…
In the retinue of Ambassador Cantacuzinos, a certain “Turkishman” Gadzhi Mugla Tersen-“areiz” arrived. The last term – “areiz” – is how the scribes of the Ambassadorial Office wrote down the Turkish “reis”, which in the language of our ancestors of the 17th century was translated as “shipman”, and today would sound like a captain.
Gadzhi Mugla, as follows from the name, was a Muslim. And he came to look for his sons – they were captured by the Don Cossacks during a naval raid.
Indeed, in 1625 – despite the Tsar’s direct prohibition that “they should not provoke the Turkish sultan and should not go to sea” – the Don Cossack chieftains set out on an annual sea raid. Off the coast of Crimea, they ravaged the city of Gözlev (future Evpatoria), and then, having united with their colleagues from the Zaporizhian Sich, they sailed to the opposite shore of the Black Sea to plunder Trebizond. They plundered more or less successfully, but not without losses.
On the way back, the Don Cossacks and the Zaporizhian Cossacks clearly did not share everything. The Zaporizhian Cossacks stabbed one of the Don chieftains to death during an argument about the intricacies of naval tactics and strategy… But they managed to avoid a major discord, and the joint Cossack flotilla captured many Turkish merchant ships off the coast of the Ottoman Empire.
On their retreat, somewhere near the mouth of the Danube, the Cossacks were battered by Turkish galleys. The domestic romantics of power commerce fought back, not without losses. It was during this campaign that the young sons of the "shipman Gadzhi Mugla" - in a Russian record from four centuries ago, "Sadiy da Agmut" - ended up in Cossack captivity.
The Ottoman who arrived with the embassy was clearly rich and had conducted a private investigation before traveling to Moscow. He knew that his sons had been bought on the Don by the "Moscow merchant" Fyodor Tsyplyatnikov.
Since there was peace between the Tsar and the Sultan (they were friends, I remind you, against the Poles), since the Don Cossacks' campaigns against the Turks "for zipuns" were prohibited by the Tsar, the Turk filed an official petition through the Ambassadorial Prikaz to search for his sons.
The case was handled by the Discharge Department.
In Moscow, they quickly found the "merchant of the Vegetable Row" Fyodor Tsyplyatnikov. He said that in 1628 he bought "Turkish captives" "in the Cherkassky town" on the Don: one "little Akhmetka", two "Turkish girls" and a "Turkish woman".
That same Akhmetka was one of the sons of the "shipman Gadzhi Mugla", he was 12 years old and they bought him for 12 rubles. The Turkish "girls Fatmashka and Angudunka" were bought for 13 and 15 rubles (the second one was obviously prettier), and the Turkish woman for 12 rubles. Well, it's logical - girls have always been more expensive than men and women. The prices, by the way, were decent - a good peasant horse in the center of Russia then cost 2 rubles, and a good house only 10.
"Little Akhmetka" on the way from the Don, "the merchant of the Vegetable Row" Fyodor Tsyplyatnikov sold without profit, for the same 12 rubles, to the governor of the city of Yelets, Prince Yuri Andreevich Zvenigorodsky (by the way, a Rurikovich and close associate of the first tsar from the Romanov dynasty).
But "the girl Fatmashka" in Moscow "the merchant of the Vegetable Row" profitably resold to "the German merchant Ivan Nikitin" for 30 rubles (that is, he received 17 rubles in profit!).
Another girl and a woman remained in the Tsyplyatnikov family, and the girl, "the girl Angudunka" was baptized, she became Anna and was married to a certain Timofey.
Timofey, however, was also a similar Turkish captive – he was captured by the Cossacks in 1621, when he was sailing with his father from Istanbul to Azov. On the way they were intercepted by the Cossacks, the Turkish father was killed, and the son was sold. Only Business, Nothing Personal – from that side there are absolutely mirror stories, only instead of Don and Zaporozhian Cossacks there were Crimean and Kuban Tatars. Well, the flow of “captives” to Asian markets was more numerous than to Moscow ones – at least because Ottoman Asia was then much richer than Muscovite Russia…
In the course of further investigation on the petition from the Turkish “shipbuilder” it turned out that his second son – “the little Turk Sadyk” – was bought by “the head of Yelets Ivan Temiryazev”. He bought it for 13 rubles 60 kopecks (at that time in Russia kopecks were considered a "Moscow account", inherited from the Golden Horde - that's why in the documents of the 17th century, of course, not 60 kopecks, but 20 altyns). By that time, the already 16-year-old "Turkish man" was summoned to Moscow. It turned out that he was no longer a "Turkish man", but a baptized Orthodox person and even taught to write in Russian (13 rubles 60 kopecks is quite a solid sum, it seems that Ivan Temiryazev clearly bought the boy with the expectation of investing in him knowledge of literacy).
In short, the Turkish pope was denied satisfaction of the petition - according to all the laws and concepts of Muscovite Russia of that era, those baptized into Orthodoxy cannot be given or extradited or sold to "infidels". If those boys had officially kept the Islamic faith, the conversation would have been different; most likely they would have given it to their father when he reimbursed the expenses of the bona fide buyers.
But it is clear that children who were "captured" at the age of 11-12 could hardly have consciously kept their former religion.
In short, the story is almost common for that era. For the Turkish Pope, it is very sad. But for the former "little Turchenin Sadyk" it is not so sad - a literate person there and then is a very enviable social position in any class situation.
P.S. But for whom this story is especially sad is for the descendant of the Byzantine emperors, the ambassador Thomas Kantakouzenos.
During his next diplomatic visit to Russia, he and his ambassadorial retinue, which also consisted mainly of Orthodox "Greeks", were killed by those same Don Cossacks.
In justification of the murder of the diplomats, the brave (really very, very brave, this was just the beginning of the extremely heroic "Azov siege" without jokes), but not at all sinless atamans of the Don came up with a creative idea, even for that era bordering on childish naivety - they wrote to Moscow that the murdered ambassador and his retinue were engaged in witchcraft: "They did great mischief with evil magic... they cast elegant spells on our camps."
Well, and the valuables and documents of the embassy, according to the Cossacks, "were destroyed by some unknown means."
PPS However, the Cantacuzines were used to such deaths. The father and uncle of Thomas Cantacuzene, killed by the Cossacks, were once executed by the Ottoman sultan at the end of the 16th century. So they were used to losing their heads. The era, sir. Harsh.
https://t.me/alter_vij/3205 - zinc
https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/9397977.html
Google Translator
******
Russian and Western Nuclear Industries Remain Interdependent
Posted on September 22, 2024 by Lambert Strether
Lambert here: What could go wrong. Although 3% a year through 2026 seems like rather a short time-frame. Readers?
By Tsvetana Paraskova, a writer for Oilprice.com with over a decade of experience writing for news outlets such as iNVEZZ and SeeNews. Originally published at OilPrice.com.
The nuclear energy industries in Russia and the West have remained interdependent after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which partly explains Europe’s unwillingness to impose sanctions on Russia’s nuclear sector, the World Nuclear Industry Status Report showed on Thursday.
“Despite repeated calls—notably by the European Parliament—the nuclear sector remained exempt from sanctions—a clear indication of dependency on Russia in the field,” according to the annual industry report which assesses nuclear energy developments in the world.
The authors of the report found that interdependence between Russia and its Western partners remains significant.
For example, Russian state firm Rosatom is implementing all 13 nuclear power reactor construction sites started outside China over the past five years. As a result, Western providers of parts for the nuclear industry, such as France’s Arabelle turbines, do not have any foreign customers besides Rosatom, the report noted.
“The close mutual industrial and market interdependencies between the Russian nuclear industry and its Western counterparts at least partially explain European hesitations to impose sanctions on the nuclear sector,” the report reads.
The Russia-West interdependence remains as many allies of the U.S. and the EU—with the notable exception of Germany—have turned to nuclear to step up energy security and depend less on energy commodities since the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Despite being an industry notoriously known for years of delays and huge cost overruns, a global nuclear power renaissance is underway.
The comeback of nuclear energy is expected to drive a record-high electricity generation from nuclear in 2025, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said early this year.
Even as some countries phase out nuclear power or retire plants early, global nuclear generation is expected to rise by nearly 3% per year on average through 2026, according to the IEA. The key growth drivers will be the completion of maintenance works in France, restart of some nuclear power plants in Japan, and new reactors coming online in China, India, South Korea, and Europe, among others.
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2024/09 ... ndent.html
