Author: Neal Orlando Glover

Wars are fought in many ways. In trenches, behind the wheel of tank, at the trigger of an artillery piece, in the rear supporting the troops. But the war in the Ukraine also fights with guile and disguise, deceit, surprise and humor. No intelligence, cold warriors, or secrecy but the unmistaken conviction of bringing the fight to the Russian regime. The team is led by a quirky former academic, a housewife, a gifted arty-farty guy, an editor, some journalists and a few volunteers. There is a cat-lady, a Thor of thunder, a bunch of nerds working out the quirks, and…

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…

Federica Mogherini and Bernard Cazeneuve were on the board of Panzeri’s human rights campaign. Now they’ve quit and he’s in jail. It was one of the best-connected human rights groups in Brussels, boasting an office a few meters from the British ambassador’s residence and a clutch of top names on its board. Now it is at the center of an alleged corruption scandal engulfing the European Parliament; those leading patrons have quit and even its own name plate has been removed from the door. Fight Impunity was founded in 2019 by Pier Antonio Panzeri, a former MEP, to promote the…

The cybersecurity agencies of the Five Eyes intelligence alliance (the U.S., U.K., Australia, Canada and New Zealand) issued a warning on Tuesday that hackers were increasingly exploiting zero-day vulnerabilities to access their targets’ networks. It marks a significant departure from similar advisories issued in 2022 and 2021, when the agencies warned that malicious cyber actors were exploiting older software vulnerabilities more frequently than recently disclosed ones. In a co-authored advisory, the agencies list the top 15 most routinely exploited vulnerabilities of 2023, with CVE-2023-3519 — an issue affecting Citrix’s networking product NetScalers — being the most widely used. Reports around the time…

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…

Washington/Vienna/Berlin (10/8 – 45.45)After a tip-off by U.S. intelligence officials and only a few hours left Austrian police made swift arrests. The plot seems too bizarre not to be true. Abul Baraa, aka Ahmad Armih, the German based hate-preacher in Berlin radicalized via Tik-tok or Istagram a 19-year Beran A. to swear the oath of alliance to the Islamic State. After a tip-off by U.S. intelligence officials and only a few hours left Austrian police made swift arrests. The plot seems too bizarre not to be true. Abul Baraa, aka Ahmad Armih, the German based hate-preacher in Berlin radicalized via…

Reporting from the NATO summitWe’re now hearing from US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin, who began by talking about NATO’s history and how the principle of collective security was formed in the wake of the Second World War. He noted that the “first and only time” NATO’s Article 5 was invoked was after the September 11, 2001 attacks on the US. Article 5 sets out that an attack on one member of the NATO military alliance is an attack on all. “NATO stood by us,” he says. “We’re going to stand by NATO”. Looking forward, Austin said the US will “not…

Frankfurt, Paris (14/7 – 23) United States presidential candidate Donald Trump was shot while giving a speech in Pennsylvania, on Saturday (13/7) local time. Trump’s speech to his supporters in Butler City about illegal migration. Suddenly, a gunshot was heard and Trump immediately stopped talking. He covered his bleeding ears and sat behind the podium surrounded by Secret Service escorts. A few minutes later, officers evacuated Trump from the stage, and the former president’s right ear was covered in blood. The US presidential election is scheduled for November 2024. The main contestants expected on the ballot are Joe Biden and…

Budapest (5/7 – 11.11) Former European Commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker defended U.S. President Joe Biden after his disastrous debate performance last week and warned of his rival Donald Trump’s “incomplete mind and flawed reasoning,” in an interview with Brussels Playbook. Juncker, who was Commission president from 2014 to 2019 during much of Trump’s presidency, said he had yet to watch last week’s debate, which triggered calls for Biden to step aside and make room for someone else to run as the Democratic presidential candidate. Still, Juncker insisted that “one can be of a certain age … and do a good job.” But Juncker…

Moscow/Washington (13/6 – 29) We took a holiday from reality. Immanuel Niven, a mathematician and philosopher, has long been scrutinizing Russia’s economic landscape, and his recent assertions suggest a dire forecast. He contends that the “Putin system” is on the brink of collapse, a scenario he had mathematically foreseen as early as March. Niven points to the pronounced tax hikes announced in Russia, the most substantial in its modern history, as well as Putin’s recent rhetoric urging citizens to work as if they were at the front lines. These developments, Niven argues, are symptomatic of the escalating toxicity within Russia’s…