Monday, March 07, 2022

Lindsey Graham Calls for a Russians to Assassinate Putin - Archivists Make Sure the Internet Doesn’t Forget Russia’s War on Ukraine

Extremely confronting’: Driver in fiery Sydney Harbour Bridge crash stole vehicle, police allege


Sydney Harbour Bridge crash, driver under police guard in hospital |


PRINT THE LEGEND:  The Ghost of Kyiv: A Legend Born of Social Media, But Is He Real?


The debt that pleasure owes to power


Lindsey Graham Calls for a Russians to Assassinate Putin WSJ


So Many Holes in SWIFT Sanctions on Russia, those Sanctions are Useless Mish Talk


Wall Street Is Already Pouncing on Russia’s Cheap Corporate Debt Bloomberg


Putin’s Financial Isolation by World’s Powerful Is a Cautionary Tale for Xi Jinping Bloomberg. Xi is not among the “World’s Powerful”?


Chartbook #91: What if Putin’s war regime turns to MMT? Adam Tooze, Chartbook


Archivists Make Sure the Internet Doesn’t Forget Russia’s War on Ukraine

Vice: “From news reports and social media posts to Ukraine University and government websites, archivists are in a mad dash to preserve the country’s online history. As the Russian invasion of Ukraine accelerates, professional and hobbyist archivists alike are rushing to preserve Ukraine’s online history, cataloging and storing everything from Ukrainian government and university websites, to the torrent of news and social media posts related to the accelerating conflict. The Internet Archive has been archiving the broader conflict in Ukraine since 2014. But as Ukraine government websites face prolonged outages due to sustained cyber attack—as well as the looming risk of defacement or deletion—the organization has taken on another monumental task: backing up the entirety of the Ukrainian Internet. Using the crowdsourced auto-archiving software running on a virtual machine they’ve dubbed Archive Team Warrior, the organization has leveraged volunteers around the world, many of whom have donated countless terabytes of storage capacity for the project. These volunteers have been steadily backing up the Ukrainian Internet since before the war began. All told, 68 million items (web pages, documents, and other files) comprising more than 2.5 TB of data have already been hoovered up from various websites across the .ua top level Ukrainian domain. A second project dubbed Ukr-netaims to preserve tens of millions of additional items and terabytes of additional data across the Ukrainian Internet. Elsewhere, organizations like the Center For Information Resilience have built a crowdsourced map attempting to document every single war-related post to social media made in the region, ranging from civilian photos of the movement of heavy Russian weaponry, to Ukranian government claims of alleged bombing raids on kindergardens…”



The Russia-Ukraine Monitor Map

Bellingcat: “Editor’s note: The Russia-Ukraine Monitor Map is a crowdsourced effort by Centre for Information Resilience (CIR) and the wider open source community to map, document and verify significant incidents during the conflict in Ukraine. Its aim is to provide reliable information for policymakers, journalists as well as justice and accountability bodies about the evolving situations both on-the-ground and online. BellingcatMnemonic and the Conflict Intelligence Team have also begun to contribute to the map in recent days. At CIR we began mapping out verified incidents surrounding the build-up of Russian troops, and later the beginning of the conflict in Ukraine, so that as many people as possible could have access to reliable, accurate information about what is going on and to boost the integrity of the information environment. The map is publicly viewable on both desktop and mobile and, as of 24 February, has had almost 500,000 views. It had also logged more than 570 items to give an up to date, detailed view of what is happening in Ukraine…”



EU’s ban on Russia Today and Sputnik is now in effect - TechCrunch: “The EU’s ban on Russia Today (RT) and Sputnik has just gone into effectafter the bloc formally adopted the sanctions, meaning media regulators are now expected to monitor compliance, with the risk of fines being levied by national watchdogs across the bloc for any platforms found continuing to distribute the Kremlin-linked media firms’ content. It’s a wide-ranging sanction on the distribution of RT and Sputnik and their subsidiaries* — covering not just traditional broadcast channels (like satellite TV) but also online platforms and apps, as we reported earlier. While individual journalists at the two outlets are not being sanctioned at this time (the editor in chief of RT had already been sanctioned), the legal instrument includes an anti-circumvention clause — which could end up targeting individuals, i.e. if they are deemed to be trying to circumvent the restrictions on the channels…”


Benjamin Franklin: A Film by Ken Burns

A new four-hour documentary series about Benjamin Franklin by Ken Burns will premiere on PBS on April 4th. Here’s the trailer and a slightly longer, less formal teaser from Burns: