harlekin.me

Debunk offi­cial US pro­pa­gan­da from two years ago.

src: click

in five minu­tes, using ChatGPT, becau­se you cant be bothe­red to put any actu­al work into this…

(Are­as were inti­al­ly red and green, mar­ked by the AI yel­low and blue to indi­ca­te the sur­face area it accoun­ted for.)

Hät­te das US Außen­mi­nis­te­ri­um nur genug Bud­get für einen ChatGPT account… Was die sich an Bud­get für mili­tä­ri­sche Brie­fings spa­ren könnten.

Zum Glück müs­sen das unse­re Jour­na­lis­ten nie machen, sag ich immer…

Ich mach das übri­gens des­halb, da das “zurück­er­ober­te” Gebiet nicht befes­tigt war. Die Ukrai­ni­sche Armee hat­te die Depots der Feu­er­wal­ze im tie­fe­ren Raum dezi­miert, die Feu­er­wal­ze kam ins sto­cken, … Was deutsch­spra­chi­ge Medi­en auch nie erwäh­nen. Und mir das seit je her auf den Sack geht.

Laut Reis­ners aktu­el­len Kar­te besetzt Russ­land aktu­ell 22% der Ukrai­ne. Macht 132800 km²

Davon 47,52% sind 63107 km²

Die Ukrai­ne hat in Kurk zu bes­ten Zei­ten 1376 km² gehalten.

Inva­si­ons­start der Ukrai­ne in Russ­land war der 6. August 2024, Kursk gone bye bye am 30.03.2025. Tage dazwi­schen: 236

1376/236 = 5.8 sagen wir sechs.

Ver­dop­peln wirs für rus­si­sche Erfol­ge an der rest­li­chen Front auf 12.

Ver­blei­ben­de Flä­che bis Russ­land die vier Oblas­ten bis zur Dniepr-Grenze erobert hat:

13500 km²

gebro­chen durch 12 = 1125 Tage

Dh. etwas mehr als drei Jahre.

Geht doch.

Das mach ich übri­gens des­halb, weil mir die aktu­el­le Pro­pa­gan­da beim Hals raus­hängt, dass Russ­land das bei der aktu­el­len Geschwin­dig­keit nie schaf­fen würde.

Vgl. zB:

Jetzt wo Pan­zer kei­ne Rol­le mehr spie­len, wie viel Per­so­nal ver­liert Russ­land denn aktu­ell auf Motorrädern? 

src: click

Aktu­ell gilt immer noch mehr wie­der zuge­führt als ver­lo­ren, oder?

Other Con­text:

In its report “Mili­ta­ry Balan­ce” released Wed­nes­day, the IISS esti­ma­ted that last year, Rus­si­an equip­ment los­ses amoun­ted to around 1,400 tanks, as well as 3,700 IFVs and APCs. Over the cour­se of the war, Rus­sia has lost appro­xi­mate­ly 14,000 MBTs, IFVs and APCs, the IISS said.

Its report added that Rus­sia has been able to recon­sti­tu­te some of the­se los­ses by rely­ing on stored Soviet lega­cy equip­ment and that in 2024, Moscow’s for­ces had refur­bis­hed and built more than 1,500 MBTs and around 2,800 IFVs and APCs.

src: click

Die repro rate ist seit dem angeb­lich signi­fi­kant gefal­len, trotz­dem sind da bei der Ver­lustra­te von 2024 noch zwei vol­le Jah­re drin.

Weni­ger wenn sich Russ­land nicht over­ex­ten­den möchte.

Mehr, wenns wider Erwar­ten doch plötz­lich schnell geht.

edit: Brue­gel hat der­weil die Euro­päi­sche Sei­te gerechnet:

Defen­ding Euro­pe without the US: first esti­ma­tes of what is needed

Euro­pe could need 300,000 more tro­ops and an annu­al defence spen­ding hike of at least €250 bil­li­on in the short term to deter Rus­si­an aggression

src: click

Deutsch­land will auf 90 Mil­li­ar­den im Jahr auf­sto­cken, damit sind sie auf das GDP der EU gerech­net 11 Pro­zent­punk­te (towards a total of 100) über Soll.

Womit wir zum war­um für die aktu­el­len Kriegs­lü­gen kommen:

From a macroeco­no­mic per­spec­ti­ve, the num­bers are small enough for Euro­pe to replace the US ful­ly. Sin­ce Febru­a­ry 2022, US mili­ta­ry sup­port to Ukrai­ne has amoun­ted to €64 bil­li­on, while Euro­pe, inclu­ding the United King­dom, sent €62 bil­li­on. In 2024, US mili­ta­ry sup­port amoun­ted to €20 bil­li­on out of a total of €42 bil­li­on. To replace the US, the EU would thus have to spend only ano­t­her 0.12 per­cent of its GDP – a fea­si­ble amount. A more important ques­ti­on is whe­ther Euro­pe could do this without access to the US military-industrial base.

A signi­fi­cant­ly more chal­len­ging sce­n­a­rio for Euro­pe would be an unli­kely peace deal accep­ted by Ukrai­ne. In such a sce­n­a­rio, Rus­sia is likely to con­ti­nue its mili­ta­ry build-up, crea­ting a for­mi­da­ble mili­ta­ry chal­len­ge to all of the EU in a very short peri­od, given cur­rent Rus­si­an pro­duc­tion. The EU and allies inclu­ding the UK and Nor­way would need to acce­le­ra­te their mili­ta­ry build-ups immedia­te­ly and massively.

gut, das konn­ten die deutsch­spra­chi­gen Jour­na­lis­ten wie­der nicht recherchieren.

Was kön­nen die eigentlich?

Das macht aber nichts, sei­ne Leser näm­lich auch nicht… (Kei­ne Rich­tig­stel­lung in den Kommentaren.)

404 Media zufol­ge nutz­te der Hacker eine Schwach­stel­le in Tele Mes­sa­ge, einem Signal-Klon, den Waltz wäh­rend einer Kabi­netts­sit­zung am Mitt­woch ver­wen­det haben soll, wie ein Reuters-Foto nahe­legt. Waltz wur­de am Don­ners­tag ent­las­sen, nur weni­ge Wochen nach­dem ein Skan­dal um die Grün­dung einer Signal-Gruppe durch ihn öffent­lich gewor­den war.

src: click (Der Standard)

So infor­miert der Stan­dard die Bevölkerung.

Und so die Quel­len die der Stan­dard nutzt, aber nie verlinkt:

Yes­ter­day, I publis­hed an ana­ly­sis of what I could publicly find about TM SGNL, the obscu­re and unof­fi­cial Signal app used by Mike Waltz, and pres­um­a­b­ly also by Pete Heg­seth, JD Van­ce, Tul­si Gab­bard, and other fascists in Trump’s government. After­wards, someo­ne pri­va­te­ly sent me the URL https://www.telemessage.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/Signal.zip.

I down­loa­ded Signal.zip and was exci­ted to see that it’s the Android source code for the app!

src: click

The ser­ver that the hacker com­pro­mi­sed is hos­ted on Ama­zon AWS’s cloud infra­st­ruc­tu­re in Nort­hern Vir­gi­nia. By reviewing the source code of TeleMessage’s modi­fied Signal app for Android, 404 Media con­fir­med that the app sends mes­sa­ge data to this end­point. 404 Media also made an HTTP request to this ser­ver to con­firm that it is online.

src: click

Nein, der Hacker nutz­te kei­ne Schwach­stel­le in der App, son­dern im Ser­ver Backend. Nein, die App wur­de auch nicht gehackt, der Anbie­ter hat ein­fach auf sei­nem eige­nen Wor­d­Press blog den Quell­code gelea­ked, gehackt wur­de das Ser­ver­ba­ckend mit den Archiv files.

Archiv Datei­en?

“The only dif­fe­rence is the Tele­Mes­sa­ge ver­si­on cap­tures all inco­m­ing and out­go­ing Signal messages for archi­ving pur­po­ses,” the video continues.
It is not true that an archi­ving solu­ti­on pro­per­ly pre­ser­ves the secu­ri­ty offe­red by an end-to-end encryp­ted messaging app such as Signal. Ordi­na­ri­ly, only someo­ne sen­ding a Signal mes­sa­ge and their inten­ded reci­pi­ent will be able to read the con­tents of the mes­sa­ge. Tele­Mes­sa­ge essen­ti­al­ly adds a third par­ty to that con­ver­sa­ti­on by sen­ding copies of tho­se messages some­whe­re else for sto­rage. If not stored secu­re­ly, tho­se copies could in turn be sus­cep­ti­ble to moni­to­ring or fal­ling into the wrong hands.
That theo­re­ti­cal risk has now beco­me very real. 

src: click

Gut auch das muss der Stan­dard sei­nen Nut­zern nicht erklä­ren, wo kämen wir denn da hin wenn, der Stan­dard sei­ne Leser für voll neh­men würde?

Schnell mehr Qua­li­täts­jour­na­lis­mus För­de­rung für den Stan­dard. VIEL, VIEL mehr Qua­li­täts­jour­na­lis­mus För­de­rung für das Drecksblatt.

edit: In other “Gut das wirs anspre­chen kön­nen!” News:

Dau­er­haf­te Beset­zung des Paläs­ti­nen­ser­ge­biets: Isra­el mit Plan zur „Erobe­rung“ des Gazastreifens

NEIN! (Doch. Oh!)

Bei der Welt hat zum ers­ten Mal jemand auch ukrai­ni­sche Pro­pa­gan­da entdeckt!

Ja dür­fen die das?

under fal­se pre­ten­ses. And kept him in pri­son for two weeks.

Which as a com­mu­ni­ca­ti­ons major, is the dum­best shit I’ve seen, read, or con­su­med in an ent­i­re life­time. Until this point. And thats not hyper­bo­le - I’m just being honest here.

They could have got­ten vide­os like this one out of it:

(minus the tit­le, becau­se that was publis­hed after he was jai­led for two weeks on drum­med up charges) -

But ins­tead they got this gem out of it:

Which would have been ins­a­nely idio­tic, if it was any Vlog­ger with a lar­ge audi­ence - but is the dum­best executive/legal action any one could have pos­si­b­ly made in the histo­ry of auto­cra­tic governments - com­mu­ni­ca­ti­ons wise, when you know who they were dealing with.

Why? Becau­se you watch that you­tuber, becau­se you want decent impres­si­ons of run down parts of coun­tries inter­na­tio­nal­ly. You usual­ly want that, becau­se you are a pro­fes­sio­nal tra­ve­ler thats inte­res­ted in that per­spec­ti­ve, or you watch them as the usu­al you­tube user to get that emo­tio­nal fix, of fin­ding “huma­ni­ty” in the unli­keliest of places.

So, some fiver group of regio­nal FSB agents just got a kick out of “well, we dro­ve to this town to inter­view him for two hours, we cant pos­si­b­ly put in our report - that it was not­hing… -- well, lets discri­mi­na­te against THE ONLY PERSON THATS A 10 OUT OF 10 PERFECT MATCH as a “feel good per­son” for high pro­fi­le inter­na­tio­nal tra­velers, and reli­gious people.

Its like --- you know ever­y­whe­re in the world, has tho­se unspo­ken rules in adju­di­ca­ted law, whe­re you dont impr­i­son the reli­gious­ly dri­ven, insa­ne peop­le, by law, for cri­mes they didnt com­mit, just becau­se you would have to wri­te into your report, that it was not­hing. Yeah. Rus­si­an FSB Agent reads “well if its an Ame­ri­can”, thats the care­er oppor­tu­ni­ty of a life­time into this!

The issue is not that we can all dedu­ce, why his tre­at­ment was struc­tu­red the way it was - I mean five minu­te court hea­rings ftw, its - that we can ALL SEE LAID BARE what errors in jud­ge­ment - actual­ly led to this.

And its so frea­king hard to eva­lua­te, whats more idio­tic - that tho­se errors in judgment were made becau­se of what was likely seen as a care­er oppor­tu­ni­ty wit­hin the sys­tem at first, or becau­se a group of in the end 12 flip­ping FSB agents couldnt for the FUCK of it iden­ti­fy what this you­tube chan­nel is about.

So lets go over this with a fine comb, why dont we. Lear­ning oppor­tu­nities for your coun­tries com­mu­ni­ca­ti­on prac­ti­ces - everywhere.

Who you are dealing with:

Some­what decent­ly edu­ca­ted view­ers of that you­tube chan­nel under­stand that some­thing like watch­ful hand­lers are a thing, in many of the coun­tries that that media per­so­na­li­ty visits, and under­stand, that when that you­tuber talks about a per­son fol­lowing him for two hours by now, after he just visi­ted the most run down part of town and didnt take the pre­ar­ran­ged trip to a bud­dhist temp­le with the ent­i­re rest of the tou­rist group, that was boo­ked into the only hotel in town - its pro­bab­ly not exclu­si­ve­ly him pro­jec­ting para­noia. But the thing thats kept him “rather safe” from actu­al mistre­at­ment so far - is that rather reli­gious urge to find huma­ni­ty in the oddest of pla­ces - being kind of odd himself.

So - we alrea­dy know that thats happening.

But then in rus­sia, a local poli­ce offi­cer first flips out, that “per­son wan­de­ring around doesnt have pass­port with him, only pho­to on pho­ne, like tho­se chi­ne­se do” - and then when the vlog­ger visits a clo­se tra­ver­sal point of cri­ti­cal infra­st­ruc­tu­re bet­ween rus­sia and chi­na, becau­se its the only thing near a sett­le­ment worth watching, gets actual­ly arres­ted by bor­der guards.

So far ever­ything is as expec­ted. That stuff is idio­tic, but at least understandable.

How you then get from “I filed report” to “FSB had to dri­ve for three hours, and the peop­le arri­ved whe­re the dum­best pos­si­ble kind of per­son that thinks they are smart” -- when dealing with a you­tuber with 800.000 sub­scri­bers, is abso­lute­ly bey­ond me. How tho­se peop­le then can see a car­re­er oppor­tu­ni­ty in it, becau­se they arres­ted an ame­ri­can, that can speak chi­ne­se - is an art­form in itself.

And it beco­mes the worst kind of press you can ima­gi­ne, if that you­tuber, then also is able to point out, that they told him “he wasnt on government PR line, and that was a sign - that he isnt rus­sia friend­ly” - becau­se they read (or could under­stand) one word in you­tube sum­ma­ry - is so fuck­ing insa­ne, that it immedia­te­ly makes it clear to EVERY view­er, that the rus­si­an exe­cu­ti­ve is much less a top down con­trol­led sys­tem, than a gagg­le of idi­ots, that want to be pro­mo­ted, and kick down every per­son per­cei­ved as “below them”, when the actu­al aut­ho­ri­ty isnt looking.

So much about the “huma­ni­ty in the oddest of pla­ces” point.

After that, the over­re­ac­tion by the FSB is so flip­ping har­sh, that by now they all have to pull sche­me 33f with night­ly trips through forests, just to sca­re the per­son shit­less, into play - so they under­stand that they arent wel­co­me in the coun­try any­mo­re and no one should fol­low their examp­le - to also show the run down pla­ces of a coun­try, you know on you­tube, when that doesnt fit the messaging of the coun­try at war.

Gre­at - this will work won­ders, ban­king on the Strei­sand effect. Except that you still didnt under­stand who was watching the­se vide­os. Which again - are pro­fes­sio­nal tra­velers, and reli­gi­os nutcases/people that want the emo­tio­nal fix of “friend­ly inter­ac­tions” in the oddest of places.

So essen­ti­al­ly, the FSB just broad­cas­ted to the world - hey peop­le, that alrea­dy knew that this is hap­pe­ning, how about we show you how we abu­se someo­ne you real­ly care about - and to peop­le that are in it for the reli­gious con­no­ta­ti­on (becau­se they cant help it), in modern day rus­sia tho­se reli­gious and ethi­cal safe­guards - of not mistrea­ting a per­son that might have a screw lose, are worth not­hing. Not­hing at all.

YOU OUGHT TO TAKE A FUCKING HINT, when even the chi­ne­se ste­war­dess on his flight out of rus­sia smi­les like a can­dy­ca­ne pri­ce pony - when he final­ly lands in some god for­sa­ken pro­vin­ce in chi­na, BECAUSE THE STORY OF WHAT THE FSB DID TO THIS PERSON made the rounds.

Can a group of 12 offi­cers be any more incom­pe­tent than the FSB was in this case? No. Abso­lute­ly not.

So just for the ran­dom rea­ders enter­tain­ment -- HERE IS THE PERSON, YOU JUST ALMOST MIGHT HAVE ARRESTED FOR 20 YEARS BECAUSE OF first drum­med up drug pos­ses­si­on char­ges, and then becau­se of the oppor­tu­ni­ty of being pro­mo­ted, becau­se he actual­ly could have had them!

First you­tuber that almost didnt make it out of Nige­ria, after a visit to a gang run Village:

First you­tuber that tried to film the Wuhan labs after Covid:

First you­tuber that lost his spon­sor­s­hips, ins­tead of pul­ling this video:

Or that time, when they…

I mean, you always hear tho­se sto­ries, about socio­lo­gists being kil­led, becau­se some aut­ho­ri­ta­ri­an coun­tries bureau­cra­cy fucked up, and now the­re is one posi­tively cra­zy per­son less in exis­tence, haha fun­ny joke, we all laug­hed -- but to actual­ly hear that from the per­son after being dri­ven out of rus­sia, and it inclu­ding 12 FSB offi­cers and the towns fuck­ing eng­lish teacher!?!?

Wow­zers.

So the sto­ries about the gra­dua­ti­on clas­ses of an ent­i­re year of FSB gra­dua­tes pho­to­gra­phing them­sel­ves for social media, and get­ting open source iden­ti­fi­ca­ti­on matched to the local poli­ce sta­ti­ons they are working at now are true then! I mean, may­be someo­ne could teach them why reli­gious free­doms are a thing (peop­le get­ting real­ly emo­tio­nal about dumb stuff like this), like they do in offi­cer trai­ning in the rest of the world, and may­be even, that when you are dealing with a social media mul­ti­pli­ca­tor “having vide­os of run down rural vil­la­ges in rus­sia floa­ting around not being the worst thing that pos­si­b­ly could happen”.

Essen­ti­al­ly, in one sen­tence, this was like tel­ling the ent­i­re diplo­ma­tic com­mu­ni­ty in the world, that the FSB is still a place, whe­re mas­si­ve fuck­ups hap­pen routinely.

And Chi­na is not.

A com­mu­ni­ca­ti­ons sci­ence marvel.

Should be taug­hed in every mas­ters level cur­ri­cu­lum in every com­mu­ni­ca­ti­ons school from now on, as a how not to hand­le this situation.

Hmm, that Ukrai­ni­an peop­le dont want to live under rus­si­an occup­a­ti­on, gai­ned so much emo­tio­nal believa­bi­li­ty after watching that! And yes, I kind of know the ratio of peop­le that would actual­ly care, and peop­le that would rather igno­re most things poli­ti­cal and go on with their lives, so ratio­nal­ly I shouldnt -- but becau­se of this HUMONGOUS FSB FUCKUP, I stran­ge­ly do. And will pro­bab­ly remem­ber that, as a fuck­up, for the ent­i­re rest of my life…

When you thought auto­cra­tic regimes had figu­red out how to con­trol popu­la­ti­ons, an FSB offi­cer didnt want to have made a two hour trip in vein and bad­ly wan­ted a promotion…

Can’t make this shit up.

In post soviet rus­sia, sta­te arrests and detains you for two weeks for - ehm, ehm, ehm, -- word inva­si­on in a you­tube video descrip­ti­on, when you hold an ame­ri­can passport?

Non con­tex­tua­li­zed? Becau­se OFFICER COULDNT SPEAK GOOD ENOUGH ENGLISH.

And fax machi­ne to ask hea­d­of­fice in Moscow cost too much, dont take away his pro­mo­ti­on oppor­tu­ni­ty of a life­time! It could be a spy! Quick - lets all take photo!

The offi­cial chi­ne­se minis­te­ry of invi­ta­ti­ons to tea par­ties must have pis­sed them­sel­ves laughing…

Peak Demo­kra­tie.

Peak Kampf gegen Fake News.

src: click

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