Author: Mastini Perwira

Donald Trump on the sidelines in France where he attended the re-opening of a change of direction of U.S. involvement in helping NATO and Ukraine. This was also confirmed by the Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov speaking at the OSCE conference in Malta. The Russian take the signaling of the European and U.S. as concerning. Trump is perceived as the rising star on the foreign affair domain as a tough negotiator. The toughness becomes evident with the former Lithuanian prime minister becoming the first dedicated defense commissioner this month, tasked with turbocharging Europe’s defense industry and the stuttering push to…

The internet business has all the trappings of false advertisement. Quick riches and easy bucks. But what is not clear is the hijacking of your intellectual property by refusal to release the accounts is unheard. Offender par excellence Godaddy.com with its new “customer care” department. Despite flashy customer-oriented software, with all the bells and whistles, since the company going public and killing the racing queens from the program, the customer service culture has deteriorated. Hours of long waiting, bot generated responses and rude staffing cutting off the inquiries is the norm. The Indian located call center is described as the…

Everything resembles a thriller novel. Early one morning in December last year, after months of undercover investigation and wiretapping, Belgian police officers raided dozens of locations across Brussels. Over the next 3 days, in apartments, hotel rooms and offices, they seized laptops, mobile phones and nearly 1.5 million euros in cash. The following week, 4 people were arrested on corruption charges, including 2 representatives, a former member of parliament and a current member of the European Parliament. Antonio Panzeri, a retired MEP from Italy, who eventually admitted that he was the mastermind of the corruption scheme. Meanwhile, Eva Kaili, vice-president of the…

Casablanca (14/11 – 50). In a recent scan of the local left-wing press, an unsettling trend of pseudo-journalism was uncovered, aimed at manufacturing a scandal using the typical playbook of disinformation. The target? A concoction of conspiracy-laden narrative that blends elements of real-world controversies, celebrity gossip, geopolitical issues, and unfounded claims—essentially, an elaborate form of astro-turfing designed to mislead and create fake influence. At the heart of this questionable journalism is Philippe Engels, a reporter who seems to have drawn inspiration from various disjointed and unrelated stories. The method is familiar: take an American scandal, such as Scientology, mix it…

It was bitter cold, but I don’t remember freezing or being cold. Hemingway wrote that the air was so cold when you took a breath it was like drinking water. We travelled by train, then we walked through the cold streets, no bus was running, we had to hustle to catch the last ride up the mountain, then it was up to the mountain, bundled up in two thick woolen blankets with the snow showering us. It was warm looking out of the peep hole I created, flying up the mountains sitting on the last ride of the day. The…

In October 2024, China’s first comprehensive regulation to tighten state control over the critical sector of rare earth resources took effect. Coming amid the global transition towards clean energy, the regulation demonstrates China’s increased leverage of its rare earth monopoly to outpace its geopolitical rivals like the United States, which remains far behind China in this sector. Intensified competition for rare earth elements risks overshadowing collaborative efforts to develop clean technology.Mountain Pass, owned by MP Materials, is the only large-scale rare earth mining and processing facility in North America. Image from Wikimedia Commons.In the race to develop clean technology, major…

Washington 6 Nov (50). Russian officials and proxy authorities in Russia-controlled areas of Ukraine are undertaking a monumental effort to “filter” the population as a means of suppressing Ukrainian resistance and enforcing loyalty among the remaining population. The United States condemns Russia’s “filtration” operations, forced deportations, and disappearances in Russia-controlled areas of Ukraine in which Russia’s forces and proxies have interrogated, detained, and forcibly deported Ukrainian, according to a broad range of sources, between 900,000 and 1.6 million Ukrainian citizens, including thousands of children. Ukrainian citizens are being taken to filtration camps in a concerted effort to suppress their resistance.…

North Korean soldiers were being disguised as Russians and were acting under the Kremlin’s command instead of their own, South Korean Defense Minister Kim Yong-hyun reported to lawmakers Thursday, his office told NBC News. SEOUL, South Korea — Twelve thousand North Korean troops will be sent to Russia, South Korea said Thursday, vowing it “will not stand by and do nothing” in the face of the significant “provocation.” South Korea’s Defense Ministry shared the new estimate with NBC News after the U.S. joined Seoul and Kyiv in confirming the development and said any troops deployed against Ukraine will be “fair game.” …

A follow-up report issued recently by the UN General Assembly’s Human Rights Council assails Tajikistan’s government for failing to implement recommendations contained in an earlier survey concerning atrocities committed during the country’s civil war in the mid-1990s. The follow-up report relates to a mission conducted in 2019 by UN researchers intent on promoting the closure of old societal wounds left by the civil war. Among that mission’s recommendations was the establishment of a “a truth-seeking State policy” and the development of “specific mechanisms, supported by dedicated resources, for dealing with disappearances caused by and related to the civil war.” The Tajik civil war…

The Ukrainian project “I Want to Live” on Oct. 23 called on North Korean soldiers to surrender to Ukrainian forces in a new Korean-language video. Launched in September 2022 by Ukraine’s Main Directorate of Intelligence, the 24-hour “I Want to Live” hotline helps Russian soldiers willingly surrender themselves or their units to the Ukrainian army. The Russian military is promised that after surrender, they will be held in compliance with the Geneva Conventions. “You must not die senselessly in a foreign land. You must not repeat the fate of hundreds of thousands of Russian soldiers who will never return home!” the…