Tracker

Russia Is Turning to Women Prisoners to Boost Forces After Massive Losses, Ukraine Claims -REUTERS Russian prisoners have been thrown into the meat-grinder battlefields of Ukraine since the invasion began last year. But as massive numbers of casualties have made the situation increasingly desperate for the Kremlin, reports have emerged that female convicts are now also being sent to the frontline. In an update on Monday, Ukraine’s Defense Ministry said Russia has turned to “alternative sources of replenishment of manpower” against a background of “large losses of personnel in the war.” “So, last week, the movement of a train with first-class carriages for the transportation of prisoners towards the Donetsk region was noted,” the ministry wrote on Telegram. “One of the wagons contained female prisoners.” The allegation was bolstered by human rights activist and Russia Behind Bars founder Olga Romanova, who said she heard reports of women prisoners being sent to Ukraine late last year. “They were taken from the colonies of southern Russia,” Romanova told Important Stories. “I don’t know the exact zone, but they worked in Kushchevskaya [in Russia’s Krasnodar Territory]. For about two months they were kept in agriculture, greenhouses and cowsheds.” Romanova said the estimated 100 women were then sent to Ukraine, though it’s unclear how they were deployed. The General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine made similar allegations on Feb. 4, alleging that Russia was “trying to attract convicted women to participate in hostilities.” “Over the course of a week, the occupiers recruited about 50 people from the women’s correctional colony of the city of Snizhne in the temporarily occupied territory of the Donetsk region,” the General Staff said. “It is also known that they were sent to the territory of the Russian Federation for training.” Even Russian sources have given credence to the idea of using female prisoners in bolstering Vladimir Putin’s war effort. In December Vyacheslav Wegner, Deputy of the Legislative Assembly of the west-central Sverdlovsk Region, wrote to Yevgeny Prigozhin—the founder of the mercenary Wagner Group—saying he had been “approached by a team of women serving sentences” asking to serve in the “special military operation.

In this case, there is money involved rather than a criminal prosecution, so a different set of standards. I really hope the civil courts will restore some semblance of consequences to such abhorrent actions.

'Another crisis is building' at Fox News as second defamation lawsuit gets green light for trial A defamation lawsuit against Fox News by voting machine company Smartmatic appears to be headed to trial after the New York Supreme Court gave the green light last week. An analysis by The Guardian found that the $2.7 billion lawsuit could be "more dangerous" than the $1.6 billion lawsuit brought by Dominion Voting Systems. In both cases, Fox News personalities are accused of falsely claiming President Joe Biden won the election because of a voting machine conspiracy. "The Earth is round. Two plus two equals four," Smartmatic's 2021 complaint began. "Joe Biden and Kamala Harris won the 2020 election for President and Vice President of the United States. The election was not stolen, rigged, or fixed. These are facts. They are demonstrable and irrefutable." The complaint also noted: "Defendants did not want Biden to win the election. They wanted President Trump to win re-election … They also saw an opportunity to capitalize on President Trump’s popularity by inventing a story.” Over 100 false claims were made about Smartmatic on Fox News, the complaint said. In its Friday ruling, New York's high court declined to dismiss defendants Fox News, host Maria Bartiromo, and former host Lou Dobbs. Fox News host Jeanine Pirro and attorney Sidney Powell were dismissed from the lawsuit. https://www.alternet.org/fox-news-lawsuit/

Why Putin may be trying to 'weaken' a 'paramilitary mercenary' group he hired to fight in Ukraine: report Russia's invasion of Ukraine has turned out to be much more difficult than President Vladimir Putin anticipated. But over a year after Russian forces launched their invasion, Putin is not giving up. And he has been taking desperate measures. One is recruiting prisoners and convicts to fight in Ukraine. Another is using the Wagner Group, a paramilitary mercenary outfit that operatives outside of Russian law. Technically, private military contractors are illegal in Russia, but Putin has gotten around that with the Wagner Group because the fighting is not taking place within Russian borders. According to Business Insider's Sinéad Baker, however, Wagner leader Yevgeny Prigozhin has "become highly critical of Russia's military leadership." And the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), a Washington D.C.-based think tank, believes that Putin is now using fighting in Bakhmut in Eastern Ukraine to weaken Wagner. “The battle for the eastern Ukrainian city has become one of the bloodiest of Russia's invasion," Baker explains in an article published on March 13. "And the Wagner Group, which has tens of thousands of mercenaries and former prisoners deployed in Ukraine, is heavily involved in the fighting. In an update on Sunday, (March 12), the ISW said that Russia's defense ministry is likely using the battle to significantly reduce the Wagner Group, as a feud between them escalates." According to Baker, the ISW believes that Russian officials are "likely seizing the opportunity to deliberately expend both elite and convict Wagner forces in Bakhmut in an effort to weaken Prigozhin and derail his ambitions for greater influence in the Kremlin." Putin, Baker reports, has "started to distance himself from Prigozhin." And ISW believes that Prigozhin is carrying out "a relentless defamation campaign" against the Russian military. https://www.alternet.org/Bank/putin-weaken-paramilitary-mercenary-ukraine/

Some people need a head start.

It seems to me that the last and only credible presidential candidate the GOP has would be Mitt Romney, but his self-preservation instinct is strong enough to keep him out of that roiling disaster that is unfolding within that party.

'It's bigger than money': Key witness teases explosive revelations in Manhattan's Donald Trump probe Jennifer Weisselberg, a key witness in the Manhattan District Attorney’s "hush money" case against Donald Trump, says there's something different about the investigation that's "bigger than any taxes, paper, insurance, banks…it's bigger than money." In an exclusive, The Daily Beast reports it spoke with Weisselberg, who is "a one-time Trump family confidant embroiled in a bitter divorce," and currently the wife of longtime Trump CFO Allen Weisselberg. Asked about the investigation outside the DA's office at 12:30 p.m., [Jennifer] Weisselberg told The Daily Beast that 'something has changed and it's up-leveled. It's bigger than any taxes, paper, insurance, banks, insurance… it's bigger than money," she told The Daily Beast. Jennifer Weisselberg is testifying before the grand jury today, as is former and longtime Trump attorney Michael Cohen. Calling them "problematic" witnesses, The Daily Beast drops a second bombshell, reporting that Trump could be indicted in "days. The decision by prosecutors to put them on the stand behind closed doors—something they've avoided doing for years in previous iterations of this investigation—indicates that Trump could be criminally indicted in the coming days, according to two people close to the investigation." Prosecutors giving Trump the opportunity to testify, which he has now declined, is another indication the investigation is coming to a close. "Typically, an indictment comes just days later." In the summer of 2021, before the current District Attorney, Alvin Bragg, had shuttered the case against Trump, Jennifer Wiesselberg told journalist Charles M. Blow that the case was wide-reaching, and even included the Wollman Rink in Manhattan's Central Park, which Trump rebuilt. https://www.alternet.org/its-bigger-than-money-manhattan/

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/vern-white-nsicop-china-poilievre-1.6774671

Yet another example of the implosion and decline of the the American would-be empire.

Soooo....we won't need to hold fund-raising raffles for him for a while longer.

Or Bruno.

Sorry- cannot recall but will look for that tomorrow.

I suspect that Calgarians feel that they are so much on a different level that they have outgrown the CFL.

Life in Belarus apartments is ....... convenient.

There is a real fear that the jurors may face threats and/or attacks from rabid Trump supporters- the plaintiff, a psychologist, has already received death threats.- thus the anonymous jurors,

From Wine Country To London, Bank's Failure Shakes Worldwide NEW YORK (AP) — It was called Silicon Valley Bank, but its collapse is causing shockwaves around the world. From winemakers in California to startups across the Atlantic Ocean, companies are scrambling to figure out how to manage their finances after their bank suddenly shut down Friday. The meltdown means distress not only for businesses but also for all their workers whose paychecks may get tied up in the chaos. California Gov. Gavin Newsom said Saturday that he’s talking with the White House to help “stabilize the situation as quickly as possible, to protect jobs, people’s livelihoods, and the entire innovation ecosystem that has served as a tent pole for our economy.” U.S. customers with less than $250,000 in the bank can count on insurance provided by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Regulators are trying to find a buyer for the bank in hopes customers with more than that can be made whole. That includes customers like Circle, a big player in the cryptocurrency industry. It said it has about $3.3 billion of the roughly $40 billion in reserves for its USDC coin at SVB. That caused USD Coin’s value, which tries to stay firmly at $1, to briefly plunge below 87 cents Saturday. It later rose back above 97 cents, according to CoinDesk. Across the Atlantic, startup companies woke up Saturday to find SVB’s U.K. business will stop making payments or accepting deposits. The Bank of England said late Friday that it will put Silicon Valley Bank UK in its insolvency procedure, which will pay out eligible depositors up to 170,000 British pounds ($204,544) for joint accounts “as quickly as possible.” “We know that there are a large number of startups and investors in the ecosystem who have significant exposure to SVB UK and will be very concerned,” Dom Hallas, executive director of Coadec, which represents British startups, said on Twitter. He cited “concern and panic.” The Bank of England said SVB UK’s assets would be sold to pay creditors. It’s not just startups feeling the pain. The bank’s collapse is having an effect on another important California industry: fine wines. It’s been an influential lender to vineyards since the 1990s. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/silicon-valley-bank-collapse_n_640cfebee4b0d15457b63f29

The S & L debacle which was a direct result of Reagan de-regulating the near-banks in the US is a compelling example of this.

Donald Trump may face an anonymous jury in rape defamation suit An anonymous jury may hear writer E. Jean Carroll's upcoming rape defamation suit against Donald Trump, a judge in the case indicated Saturday. Carroll, a former columnist for Elle magazine, has accused Trump of raping her in the dressing room of a Manhattan department store in the late 1990s. She sued him for defamation after he derided her claims, said she was not his "type," and that her accusation was politically motivated. U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan in Manhattan issued an order Saturday asking Trump and Carroll to respond by March 17 if either side has any objections to using an anonymous jury, Bloomberg reported. Kaplan didn't explain why he might opt for an anonymous jury. But jurors could be targets of threats in the politically charged case. Anonymous juries have been used in the past to protect jurors' safety in cases involving organized crimes and terrorists. Kaplan ruled Friday that Trump's controversial hot-mic comments to an Access Hollywood host in 2005 will be allowed at the trial. Trump boasted then about "grabbing" women without their consent, saying he could get away with it because he was famous. https://www.alternet.org/Bank/trump-anonymous-jury-defamation-case/