President Vladimir Putin said the situation in four areas of Ukraine that Moscow has declared are part of Russia was “extremely difficult” and ordered security services to step up surveillance to secure its borders and combat new threats.

Putin’s comments made on Security Services Day, widely celebrated in Russia, came as Kyiv renewed calls for more weapons after Russian drones hit energy targets and as fears grow that Moscow’s ally Belarus could open a new invasion front against Ukraine.

Putin ordered the Federal Security Services (FSB) to step up surveillance of Russian society and the country’s borders to combat the “emergence of new threats” from abroad and traitors at home.

In a rare admission of the invasion of Ukraine not going smoothly, Putin cautioned about the difficult situation in Ukraine’s regions that Moscow moved to annex in September and ordered the FSB to ensure the “safety” of people living there.

“The situation in the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics, in the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions is extremely difficult,” Putin said late on Monday in comments translated by Reuters.

In September, a defiant Putin moved to annex a swath of Ukraine — some 15% of the country — in a Kremlin ceremony, but earlier this month, he said the war “can be a long process.”

Putin’s move to annex the areas was condemned by Kyiv and its Western allies as illegal.

On Monday, Putin made his first visit to Belarus since 2019, where he and his counterpart extolled ever-closer ties at a news conference late in the evening but hardly mentioned Ukraine.

Kyiv, meanwhile, was seeking more weapons from the West after Russian “kamikaze” drones hit energy targets early on Monday.

“Weapons, shells, new defence capabilities…everything that will give us the ability to speed up the end to this war,” President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in his evening address.

The Ukrainian military high command said their air defences had shot down 23 of 28 drones — most over the capital Kyiv — in what was Moscow’s third air strike in six days. Russia has targeted Ukraine’s power grid, causing blackouts amid sub-zero temperatures.

The “kamikaze” drones used in the attacks are cheaply produced, disposable unmanned aircraft that fly toward their target before plummeting at speed and detonating on impact.

To the northwest of Ukraine, there has been constant Russian and Belarusian military activity for months in Belarus, a close Kremlin ally that Moscow’s troops used as a launch pad for their abortive attack on Kyiv in February.

Putin’s trip to Minsk has stirred fears in Ukraine about the broader involvement of Belarusian armed forces in the invasion. Putin and Lukashenko scarcely touched on Ukraine at a post-talks news conference, instead extolling the benefits of defence and economic alignment.

Lukashenko has said repeatedly he has no intention of sending his country’s troops into Ukraine, where Moscow’s invasion faltered badly with a string of battlefield retreats in the face of a major counter-offensive.

The Kremlin on Monday dismissed the suggestion that Putin wanted to push Belarus into a more active role. The RIA Novosti news agency quoted Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov as saying such reports were “groundless” and “stupid”.

Both Putin and Lukashenko were also at pains to dismiss the idea of Russia annexing or absorbing Belarus.

“Russia has no interest in absorbing anyone,” Putin said.

Asked about this comment, U.S. State Department spokesperson Ned Price said it should be treated as the “height of irony”, given it was “coming from a leader who is seeking at the present moment, right now, to violently absorb his other peaceful next-door neighbor.”

The 10-month-old conflict in Ukraine, the largest in Europe since World War Two, has killed tens of thousands of people, driven millions from their homes and reduced cities to ruins.

Ukraine’s General Staff said Russian artillery hammered 25 towns and villages around Bakhmut and Avdiivka in the east and several areas around Kupiansk, a northeastern town retaken by Ukraine in September.

It also said Ukrainian air and artillery forces carried out more than a dozen strikes on Russian troops and hardware, including ammunition dumps, and shot down two helicopters.

Alexei Kulemzin, the Russian-installed mayor of the city of Donetsk, said Ukrainian shelling hit a hospital wing, along with a kindergarten, posting on Telegraph a photo of what appeared to be a waiting room with smashed furniture and fittings.

Reuters could not independently verify the battlefield accounts of either side.

Russia says it is waging a “special military operation” in Ukraine to rid it of nationalists and protect Russian-speaking communities. Ukraine and the West describe the Kremlin’s actions as an unprovoked war of aggression.

Related Galleries:

Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert are now openly attacking each other. Boebert is publicly mocking Greene over “Jewish space lasers,” while Greene is accusing Boebert of “high school drama.”

These are both villains, so you love to see it. But it’s also important to understand what’s really happening here. Whatever their personal feelings are, this comes down to their desire to get reelected in their fundamentally different districts. Greene is in a far right R+22 district where reelection hinges on being as hideous as possible for fear of losing primary challenge to an even more awful right winger. Boebert is in an R+7 district and nearly lost to Democrat Adam Frisch in November, and now she’s presumably trying to tone down the hideousness for fear of losing in 2024.

Boebert sees an opportunity to portray herself as a reasonable person by distancing herself from Greene, so she’s taking it. Greene sees an opportunity to cement her hideousness by attacking Boebert for not being hideous enough, so she’s taking it.

Who knows (or cares) if they like or hate each other for real. Either way, they’re each doing what they think will give them the best odds of reelection in their respective districts. These things are about reelection – and that comes down to the ideology of each of their House districts.

Or course when two of the most controversial House Republicans begin viciously feuding in public like this, it makes the entire party look bad, and if it continues through to 2024, it’ll hurt some other House Republicans’ reelection prospects in moderate districts.

This is why a strong leader like Nacny Pelosi (or Hakeem Jeffries) doesn’t allow this kind of thing to happen with their caucus. And it serves to underscore the total lack of leadership in the House Republican caucus, where it’s every creep for themselves, with no viable leader there to protect the party’s overall prospects.

So rather than merely speculating about whether Boebert and Greene are actually pissed at each other or are just putting on a show in public, let’s keep in mind why this kind of thing happens at all. Everyone in the House, good or bad, righteous or corrupt, wants to be reelected. But everyone comes from a different kind of district, where the path to reelection looks a bit different. So everyone looks at the board a little differently.

The two takeaways: 1) Even with their narrow majority, House Republicans are already feeling the pressure of a potential wipeout in 2024, and they’re already publicly attacking each other in a selfish attempt at improving their own reelection odds at the expense of their party. 2) There are no House Republican leaders with the gravitas to stop this kind of public infighting over the next two years. Let the games begin.

The post Lauren Boebert and Marjorie Taylor Greene are now eating each other alive appeared first on Palmer Report.

LOS ANGELES — After a month-long trial and nine days of deliberations, Los Angeles jurors on Monday found Harvey Weinstein guilty of the rape and sexual assault of just one of the four accusers he was charged with abusing.

But the three guilty counts involving an Italian actor and model known at the trial as Jane Doe 1 still struck a major blow against the disgraced movie mogul, and provided another #MeToo moment of reckoning, five years after he became a magnet for the movement.

Read More: TIME Person of the Year 2017: The Silence Breakers

[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]

Weinstein, 70, who is two years into a 23-year sentence for a rape and sexual assault conviction in New York that is under appeal, could get up to 24 years in prison in California when he’s sentenced.

He was found guilty of rape, forced oral copulation and another sexual misconduct count involving the woman who said he appeared uninvited at her hotel room door during a Los Angeles film festival in 2013.

“Harvey Weinstein forever destroyed a part of me that night in 2013 and I will never get that back. The criminal trial was brutal and Weinstein’s lawyers put me through hell on the witness stand, but I knew I had to see this through to the end, and I did,” the woman said in a statement after the verdict. “I hope Weinstein never sees the outside of a prison cell during his lifetime.”

Weinstein was acquitted of a sexual battery allegation made by a massage therapist who treated him at a hotel in 2010.

The jury was unable to reach a decision on counts involving two accusers, notably rape and sexual assault charges involving Jennifer Siebel Newsom, a documentary filmmaker and the wife of California Gov. Gavin Newsom. A mistrial was declared on those counts.

Weinstein looked down at the table and appeared to put his face in his hands when the initial guilty counts were read. He looked forward as the rest of the verdict was read.

Prosecutors and defense attorneys had no immediate comment on the verdict.

“Harvey Weinstein will never be able to rape another woman. He will spend the rest of his life behind bars where he belongs,” Siebel Newsom said in a statement. “Throughout the trial, Weinstein’s lawyers used sexism, misogyny, and bullying tactics to intimidate, demean, and ridicule us survivors. The trial was a stark reminder that we as a society have work to do.”

Read More: The Future of the #MeToo Fight, According to Tarana Burke

Siebel Newsom’s intense and dramatic testimony, in which she described being raped by Weinstein in a hotel room in 2005, brought the trial its most dramatic moments. But only eight of the 12 jurors agreed to find Weinstein guilty of those counts.

Jurors were deadlocked 10-2 on a sexual battery count involving Lauren Young, the only accuser who testified at both Weinstein trials. She said she was a model aspiring to be an actor and screenwriter who was meeting with Weinstein about a script in 2013 when he trapped her in a hotel bathroom, groped her and masturbated in front of her.

Lacking any forensic evidence or eyewitness accounts of years-old allegations, the case hinged heavily on the stories and credibility of the four women at the center of the charges.

The women’s stories echoed the allegations of dozens of others who have emerged since Weinstein became a #MeToo lightning rod starting with stories in the New York Times in 2017. A movie about that reporting, “She Said,” was released during the trial, and jurors were repeatedly warned not to see it.

It was the defense that made #MeToo an issue during the trial, however, emphasizing that none of the four women went to the authorities until after the movement made Weinstein a target.

Defense lawyers said two of the women — including the one he would be found guilty of raping — were entirely lying about their encounters with Weinstein. They said the other two had “100% consensual” sexual interactions that they later reframed.

Defense attorneys said during the trial that if Siebel Newsom hadn’t reached her later prominence she would be “just another bimbo who slept with Harvey Weinstein to get ahead in Hollywood.”

“Regret is not the same thing as rape,” Weinstein attorney Alan Jackson said in his closing argument.

He urged jurors to look past the the women’s emotional testimony and focus on the factual evidence.

“‘Believe us because we’re mad, believe us because we cried,’” Jackson said jurors were being asked to do. “Well, fury does not make fact. And tears do not make truth.”

All the women involved in the charges went by Jane Doe in court. The Associated Press does not typically name people who say they have been sexually abused unless they come forward publicly or agree to be named through their attorneys, as the women named here did.

Prosecutors called 40 other witnesses in an attempt to give context and corroboration to those stories. Four were other women who were not part of the charges but testified that Weinstein raped or sexually assaulted them. They were brought to the stand to establish a pattern of sexual predation.

Weinstein beat four other felony charges before the trial even ended when prosecutors said a woman he was charged with raping twice and sexually assaulting twice would not appear to testify. They declined to give a reason. Judge Lisa Lench dismissed those charges.

Weinstein’s latest conviction hands a victory to victims of sexual misconduct of famous men in the wake of some legal setbacks, including the dismissal of Bill Cosby’s conviction last year. The rape trial of “That ’70s Show” actor Danny Masterson, held simultaneously and just down the hall from Weinstein’s, ended in a mistrial. And actor Kevin Spacey was victorious at a sexual battery civil trial in New York last month.

Read More: What’s Changed Since TIME Named the ‘Silence Breakers’ Person of the Year

Weinstein’s New York conviction survived an initial appeal, but the case is set to be heard by the state’s highest court next year. The California conviction, also likely to be appealed, means he will not walk free even if the East Coast conviction is thrown out.

U.S. lawmakers will include a proposal to bar federal government employees from using Chinese app TikTok on government-owned devices in a key spending bill, sources told Reuters on Monday.

The Senate last week voted on a bill sponsored by Republican Senator Josh Hawley to bar federal employees from using the ByteDance-owned short video app on government-owned devices. It was the latest action by U.S. lawmakers to crack down on Chinese companies amid national security fears. The ban is set to be included in a massive omnibus measure to fund U.S. government operations, the sources said.

The yen surged and Asian shares fell sharply on Tuesday after the Bank of Japan’s (BOJ) decision to allow long term interest rates to rise more, a move analysts said could signal a step towards changing Japan’s long-held yield curve control.

MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan (.MIAPJ0000PUS) was down 0.9%.

Japan’s Nikkei Stock Index (.N225) shed 2.2% after trading in positive territory earlier in the day, as stocks resumed trading following the BOJ decision.

In its final meeting of the year, the BOJ said its yield curve control (YCC) targets, set at -0.1% for short-term interest rates and around zero for the 10-year bond yield would remain.

But significantly it decided to allow the 10-year bond yield to move up and down 50 basis point each from the 0% target, against the previous 25 point each.

“The move came earlier than I had expected but a step towards the normalisation process of policy in Japan,” Kerry Craig, JP Morgan Asset Management’s global markets strategist, told Reuters.

“The market implications are most prevalent in the forex markets given the divergence between U.S. and Japanese policy settings.

“While there is still a wide gap, the hint that the BOJ is moving incrementally away from ultraloose policy should be yen positive in the near term.”

The dollar dropped 2.43% against the yen to 133.62 after the BOJ decision, hitting a four-month low.

Australian shares (.AXJO) extended earlier losses to be off by 1.27% in afternoon trade.

Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index (.HSI) was down 1.4% while China’s CSI300 Index (.CSI300) was off 1.15%.

In early European futures trading, the pan-region Euro Stoxx 50 futures were down 0.89% at 3,784, German DAX futures were down 0.91% at 13,888, FTSE futures were down 0.63% at 7,321.

U.S. stock futures, the S&P 500 e-minis , were down 0.52% at 3,825.5.

In Asian trading, the yield on benchmark 10-year Treasury notes rose to 3.6752% compared with its U.S. close of 3.583% on Monday.

The two-year yield , which rises with traders’ expectations of higher Fed fund rates, was at 4.2662% compared to the US close of 4.262%.

Australia’s Reserve Bank considered leaving interest rates on hold at its Dec 6 policy meeting, accoding to minutes published on Tuesday, but delivered a 25 basis point hike.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average (.DJI) fell 162.92 points, or 0.49%, to 32,757.54, the S&P 500 (.SPX) lost 34.7 points, or 0.90%, to 3,817.66 and the Nasdaq Composite (.IXIC) dropped 159.38 points, or 1.49%, to 10,546.03. The three markets closed in the red for the fourth straight session.

“We might not get much of a Santa Claus stock market rally as Wall Street rushes to price in credit and earnings risks,” OANDA analsyt Edward Moya wrote.

The S&P 500, the Dow and the Nasdaq are on track to notch their largest annual percentage losses since 2008, the nadir of the global financial crisis.

U.S. crude ticked up 0.7% to $75.71 a barrel. Brent crude rose to $80.44 per barrel.

Spot gold was slightly higher at $1,792.29 per ounce.

Related Galleries:

אָנהייבנדיק פֿון פֿעברואַר 2023 וועט מען אינעם אַמסטערדאַמער אוניווערסיטעט ווידער אײַנפֿירן אַ ריי ייִדיש־קורסן. דערבײַ וועט דער אוניווערסיטעט ווערן דער איינציקער אין גאַנץ האָלאַנד וווּ מע לערנט די שפּראַך.

דער אוניווערסיטעט פֿלעג לערנען ייִדיש־קורסן אונטער דער פֿירערשאַפֿט פֿון פּראָפֿ’ שלמה בערגער אָבער ווען ער איז געשטאָרבן אין 2015 האָט מען אויך אָפּגעשטעלט דעם ייִדיש־לימוד.

דער יודאַיִסטיק־אָפּטייל פֿונעם אוניווערסיטעט מאַכט איצט דורך אַ מערקווירדיקן וווּקס. בשעת די צאָל ביז־גראַדויִר־סטודענטן איז בערך די זעלבע וואָס פֿריִער, האָט זיך במשך פֿון אַ קורצער צײַט פֿאַרטאָפּלט די צאָל יודאַיִסטיק־סטודענטן וואָס שטודירן אויף מאַגיסטער. אינעם אָפּטייל לערנען זיך הײַיאָר מער ווי 30 גראַדויִר־סטודענטן. ווי אַ רעזולטאַט איז די מאַגיסטער־פּראָגראַם פֿון יודאַיִסטיק בײַם אַמסטערדאַמער אוניווערסיטעט הײַנט איינע פֿון די גרעסטע אין אייראָפּע.

כּדי צו פֿאַרגרעסערן דעם פֿאַרנעם פֿונעם אָפּטייל האָט מען לעצטנס אָנגעשטעלט אַ ייִדיש־לערערקע, דניאלה זײַדמאַן־מאַוער פֿון אַנטווערפּן, וועלכע האַלט בײַם שרײַבן אַ דיסערטאַציע וועגן די ייִדישע רפֿואה־ביכלעך קעגן דער מגפֿה אין אייראָפּע בעת דעם 17טן און 18טן יאָרהונדערט. זײַדמאַן־מאַוער, אַ געבוירענע ייִדיש־רעדערין, פּלאַנירט זיך צו קאָנצענטרירן אויף דער פֿאָרשונג און אויפֿן לערנען סײַ די מאָדערנע ייִדישע שפּראַך סײַ די אַלט-ייִדישע שפּראַך, כּדי צו דערמעגלעכן די סטודענטן צו פֿאָרשן די אַלטע ייִדישע מאַטעריאַלן אין אַמסטערדאַם ווי, למשל, די פּנקסים און ביכער אין די אַרכיוון פֿון דער ראָזענטאַלעיאַנער ביבליאָטעק.

דער ייִדיש־לימוד איז טייל פֿון אַ פֿאַרברייטערטער פּראָגראַם וואָס נעמט אַרײַן קורסן וועגן דער ייִדישער שטאָטקולטור. צווישן די טעמעס פֿון יענע קורסן: די ראָלע וואָס די שטעט האָבן געשפּילט אין דער ייִדישער געשיכטע, און די השפּעה פֿון די ייִדן אויף די שטעט אין אייראָפּע, בפֿרט אַמסטערדאַם. צווישן דעם 17טן און מיטן־18טן יאָרהונדערט איז אַמסטערדאַם געווען דער צענטער פֿון ייִדיש־דרוקערײַ אין אייראָפּע.

די נײַע ייִדיש־קורסן און די פּראָגראַם פֿון ייִדישע שטאָט־שטודיעס בײַם אַמסטערדאַמער אוניווערסיטעט ווערן געשטיצט פֿון דער „ראָטשילד־פֿונדאַציע הנדיבֿ — אייראָפּע“.

פּראָפֿ׳ אירענע זוויעפּ, וואָס גיט קורסן אין העברעיִש, אַראַמיש און סיריאַק אינעם אַמסטערדאַמער אוניווערסיטעט, האַלט אַז אויב מע וויל שטודירן די געשיכטע פֿון אַמסטערדאַם, מוז מען זיך אויסלערנען ייִדיש. „הגם העברעיִש איז תּמיד געווען די שפּראַך פֿון דער שיל, די ספֿרים און דער הויכער ליטעראַטור, איז ייִדיש געווען דאָס לשון פֿונעם טאָג־טעגלעכן לעבן און פֿון די ביכער וואָס מע האָט געדרוקט פֿאַרן פּשוטן לייענער,“ האָט זי געזאָגט. „די ביבליאָטעקן און אַרכיוון זענען פֿול מיט נאָך נישט אַנטדעקטע אוצרות אין דער שפּראַך.“

The post Yiddish returns to the University of Amsterdam appeared first on The Forward.

Share

China’s anti-lockdown protests last month were the worst blow yet to the prestige of Xi Jinping. One moment, the Chinese Communist Party’s leader was riding high after securing a third term at the top of the party-state. The next, he was challenged by demonstrators in the streets to “step down,” a sentiment that protestors also chanted against the party itself.

The discontent with the CCP expressed by demonstrators exceeded that of the more massive 1989 protests at Tiananmen Square, albeit this time with much lower numbers: most of the 19 or more cities where protests erupted drew less than 50 people, while the other half in tier one cities with more foreign contact attracted over 50, some in the hundreds.

Police officers in Luoyang in Henan province wear sunglasses linked to facial recognition software that can identity fugitives. The devices are just some of the advanced surveillance technology used by police in China. Photo: Reuters via SCMP

Though the numbers were small, it was a notable “political coming out of the closet,” (政治出柜, zhengzhi chugui), much discussed in Chinese social media. But to keep it in perspective,  the protests were not thousands of people openly defying authority, as the world now observes in Iran. As far as is known, these were limited actions by small groups in urban centers. 

However, the protests in China at the end of November were bold, as those who participated risked arrest or worse. And there is a chance that the demonstrators represented a larger and more cautious percentage of society. 

Though the party leadership rapidly (maybe too rapidly) eased the “zero Covid” restrictions that prompted this popular anger, those who spoke up soon learned who was boss.

A rough pattern of police response developed, with some similarity to the way some other protestors have been treated. Mere participants were summoned to police stations to explain themselves and sign statements saying they would never do it again. One demonstrator, perhaps typifying others, had tried to disguise himself with a balaclava and clothing change but was quickly tracked down by police. He was surprised at how easily authorities had picked him out of a large crowd, evidently using his phone data and their urban surveillance system.

Leaders of the protests were treated more harshly. At least one—the man who may have led the first “step down” chants in Shanghai—was apprehended at work and has since disappeared. He, too, thought he might not be identified.

Years ago, well before Xi Jinping’s new era of paranoid surveillance, some citizens have been more clued in than others to the regime’s use of mobiles to keep tabs on users. Chinese citizens secretly working for a foreign intelligence agency were trained to, among other things, separate their phones from any incriminating activity.

Those just living lives removed from international intrigue, but who were tech savvy, also chose different ways to minimize surveillance, according to a Chinese American author who has regularly returned to China for research. They would “put their cell phones in another room when they talk, or take out the SIM cards, use different cell phones to contact different people,” similar to the tactics of protestors in the U.S. to avoid surveillance and police use of data.

Subscribe now

Every Move You Make

Another Chinese researcher with a U.S. passport told SpyTalk about his experience of being surveilled during his odyssey around China in 2012-2013, including in Beijing and the Tibetan regions of Sichuan and Qinghai. After conducting his first few interviews, his hosts and those with whom he spoke began receiving menacing calls from people identifying themselves as State Security officers. The agents accused him of being “a member of the Dalai Lama clique,” one of the most poisonous accusations of the time, as it still is today. Even a decade ago, swapping out SIM cards or changing residences at 4:00 am were outdated measures that only drew more attention from authorities.

The surveillance bros. Photo: Global Times, China

 The researcher interviewed several old Tibetan CCP cadres, including the late Bapa Phüntso Wangye, (Phünwang) whose life is chronicled in the classic 2004 book A Tibetan Revolutionary. As the researcher was about to depart China, State Security officers cornered him at Chinese Customs, initiated the usual thorough search, confiscated his computer hard disk drive, and threatened him with permanent exclusion from the PRC if he published anything.  

Compared to now, those were the good old days. “It would be more difficult now,” said the researcher, as authorities “have numerous cameras everywhere, and without a cell phone you really cannot go anywhere or do anything.”

China’s new age of surveillance is in part owed to the maturing capabilities of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), and in part to the ambitions of American companies like Intel, IBM, Seagate, Cisco, and Sun. These firms and others have enabled the CCP to build surveillance systems that retain a massive baseline of data, paired with perhaps the world’s most advanced facial recognition technology. China’s system can save data on every phone user’s movement, activity, preferences, and contacts, even if authorities have not specifically targeted them. 

When authorities develop an investigative interest in a person, the system allows Public Security and State Security officers to quickly look deeper and decide on next steps.

Every Breath You Take

Evidence of the conscious and highly profitable role of American companies in helping Beijing perfect its dystopian system abounds: it can be found in books like Surveillance State, a damning essay by Dahlia Peterson in China’s Quest for Foreign Technology, and in a recent comprehensive episode of The Little Red Podcast. 

On Nov. 9, two weeks before the anti-lockdown protests erupted in China, Apple took collaboration with Beijing a step farther by rolling out a feature, just in the PRC, restricting use of the Airdrop app. That made it harder for demonstrators to anonymously share protest information with those nearby.

In such an atmosphere, it may seem incredible that anyone in China would fail to recognize that their mobiles were miniature super-informants, especially since all persons seeking to enter a public place or take any form of transport needed to show a green “health code” (健康吗, jiankang ma) on their phone. (Reports indicate that the government scrapped the health code app on December 7. That rollback may be implemented differently in different provinces—and eventually be reversed if covid infections continue to rise).

Are those who did not fully realize the danger of pocketing a phone while protesting now experiencing an epiphany? Could that gum up the system with creative mischief?

Every Bond You Break

Several analysts interviewed for this article were optimistic, at least about heightened awareness. But many in China will just go along to get along, not unlike Americans resigned to the unblinking eye of Silicon Valley surveillance capitalism. Bowing to the inevitable is a human attribute, and many will probably conclude that they have nothing to hide, preferring the convenience and safety of conformity. 

In addition, there is a strong cultural reason in China to resign oneself to this situation. Chinese society in the modern era “has always been crowded”, with a population that is “never out of sight” of authority, says Dr. Thomas Fingar of Stanford University, who served as the first deputy director of National Intelligence for analysis and headed the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research. “In many respects, high-tech tracing is just a variant of long-standing conditions,” he added. 

Those long-standing conditions included the baojia (保甲) system of imperial control, stretching back hundreds of years before the CCP’s 1949 victory. Afterward, baojia was abolished and replaced by neighborhood committees of informants controlled by the party and the police. 

Yet the masses are uneasy, and so, it seems, is the Chinese Communist Party. Could this lead to more significant opposition to Xi Jinping’s leadership, if not to the CCP itself? 

Not as long as the party-state “continues to enjoy technological dominance,” said Nigel Inkster, the former director of operations and intelligence for the British Secret Intelligence Service, now of the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London. But he added that the limited number of citizens involved so far may be encouraged to protest again if they believe that zero covid was rolled back because of the recent protests.

Whether or not there are further demonstrations, at least some Chinese citizens “have resorted to a kind of citizen activism that falls short of subversive or illegal,” added Inkster. At least in part, “they are pushing back against the excesses of local officials.” 

Give a gift subscription

Resistance may develop from this segment of society and those who silently sympathize, though the total is likely a minority. They and others in China may realize that a good VPN to “jump the wall“ (翻墙, fan qiang) isn’t enough. 

The “Key Political Privacy Guide for Mainlanders to Jump the Firewall” (大陆人翻墙键政隐私指南, Dalu ren fan qiang jian zheng yinsi zhinan), whose authors remain anonymous, was circulated in November on Twitter and is still online here (and accessible even via a VPN location in China). While not necessarily authoritative, it is an example of how the technically adept may be thinking about surviving the CCP’s intrusive surveillance in 2022.

Edited for brevity, the list included these tips:

1. Don’t use domestic mobile phones. Apple is best, followed by Samsung and Google. Don’t install domestic anti-fraud software.

2. Domestic cloud services are untrustworthy, including Apple’s Guizhou servers.

3. Don’t use China social media IDs or variants

4. Don’t use a +86 telephone number (the PRC country code) to register for a U.S. app

5. Don’t sync feeds (photos, texts, videos) between Wechat and other China platforms and those you use overseas.

6. Don’t use domestic email like QQ and 163. Use Protonmail or Gmail

7. Don’t use domestic routers, input methods, browsers, or VPNs.

8. Never expose your face when people take videos.

9. If you think your account has been traced by officials, don’t post anything about your life or habits.

Every Game You Play

As extensive as they are, these steps seem unlikely to overcome the all-seeing eye of the party-state. As outlined in a story from The Intercept, Iran, one of China’s few close allies, runs SIAM, a system to monitor mobiles and the activities of their users. It is highly effective in identifying a phone through the IMEI number, even when the SIM card is changed. SIAM can also slow a phone on a network, thus crippling encryption and making other smartphone features all but unusable.

In China, CCTV cameras have sprouted up “like bamboo shoots after a spring rain” in the largest coastal cities where opposition to the regime happens to be the most vocal. But the system is not perfect: the dozens of cameras that can sometimes be seen at one intersection are not necessarily integrated into a single system but separately run by Public Security, State Security, the traffic police, municipal regulatory authorities, and others. 

Nonetheless, the CCP’s security apparatus seems technologically far ahead of those who would try to get around it, and Chinese protestors do not have the numbers of their counterparts in Iran. Chances seem slim that Chinese thinking of organizing other protests will be able to escape the observation of authorities unless they can more seriously challenge the CCP’s technical dominance.

Matthew Brazil is co-author of Chinese Communist Espionage: An Intelligence Primer (Naval Institute Press 2019).

Thousands of striking academic workers began voting on Monday whether to ratify a deal with the University of California and end a 5-week-old walkout that unions say is the biggest work stoppage ever at a U.S. institution of higher education.

The proposed contract agreement was hailed by union and university supporters as a landmark labor deal that would set a new national standard boosting wages and working conditions for graduate students employed at public universities.

The tentative settlement was reached last Friday, a week after the two sides enlisted an independent mediator, former state senator and Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg, to help break a stalemate in the talks and broker a deal.

The striking scholars, who walked off the job on Nov. 14, include teaching assistants, researchers, tutors and other graduate student instructors at all 10 UC campuses and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

They are to remain off the job until the agreement is approved by simple majority among those casting ballots in the ratification vote, which runs through Friday.

The walkout dragged on for weeks as the fall term drew to a close, disrupting final exams, study sessions and grading of papers throughout California’s flagship university system. In terms of workers involved, it ranked as larger than any previous strike at a U.S. academic institution, union leaders said.

The tentative pact would provide wage increases of up to 66% over the 2-1/2 year life of the contract, according to leaders of the two United Auto Workers (UAW) union locals representing the 36,000 graduate students covered by the deal.

Two other UAW locals negotiating on behalf of 12,000 post-doctoral scholars and researchers ratified a separate settlement and returned to work earlier this month.

The UAW, expanding its ranks in recent years to include economic sectors beyond the auto industry, had made achievement of living wages a top priority for its academic workers, many of whom the union said have faced staggering rental burdens and debt on part-time salaries as low as $24,000 a year.

By the fall term of 2024 under the proposed agreement, the minimum nine-month salary for teaching assistants would rise to $36,500 at UC Berkeley, UC San Francisco and UCLA, and to $34,000 at other campuses, according to the university.

Union leaders urging ratification of the deal also pointed to expanded benefits for childcare, public transit and workplace protection

But some detractors said the tentative pact falls short in meeting the living costs grad students face in pricey cities where many UC campuses are located, and critics faulted the deal for giving up on union demands to tie wage gains to housing costs, the Los Angeles Times reported.

YUMA, Ariz. (NewsNation) — Yuma, Arizona officials say a jump in flu cases, paired with a migrant surge, is straining the county’s health care resources.

On Monday, Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts issued an administrative stay, which temporarily pauses the expiration of the controversial Title 42 border restriction policy.

Yuma Mayor Douglas Nicholls told NewsNation’s “Rush Hour” on Monday that the pause is “great,” but said he believes it will be short lived. Nicholls went on to say that that “every city in this country should be concerned about the movement of large numbers of people who are coming into this country, not through regular order.”

You can watch the full interview in the video player at the top of this article.