The European Parliament plenary voted on Tuesday to adopt the “Findings and Recommendations of the Special Committee on the European Democracy Shield,” which recognized Taiwan as an important partner in situational awareness.

The resolution said Taiwan regularly conducts large-scale civil defense and resilience exercises to counter China’s increasingly intensified gray-zone operations, according to the foreign ministry. The resolution also suggested that the country's whole-of-society resilience experience can help the EU enhance the overall effectiveness of the European Democracy Shield.

The resolution called on the EU to deepen cooperation with like-minded East Asian partners such as Taiwan, Japan, and South Korea on countering foreign information manipulation and interference (FIMI) and on submarine cable security. It highlighted Taiwan’s expertise in high-tech industries and countering China’s hybrid threats and information manipulation.

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Archived

cross-posted from: https://scribe.disroot.org/post/11423931

The European Parliament plenary voted on Tuesday to adopt the “Findings and Recommendations of the Special Committee on the European Democracy Shield,” which recognized Taiwan as an important partner in situational awareness.

The resolution said Taiwan regularly conducts large-scale civil defense and resilience exercises to counter China’s increasingly intensified gray-zone operations, according to the foreign ministry. The resolution also suggested that the country's whole-of-society resilience experience can help the EU enhance the overall effectiveness of the European Democracy Shield.

The resolution called on the EU to deepen cooperation with like-minded East Asian partners such as Taiwan, Japan, and South Korea on countering foreign information manipulation and interference (FIMI) and on submarine cable security. It highlighted Taiwan’s expertise in high-tech industries and countering China’s hybrid threats and information manipulation.

...

Archived

Google's September 2026 Pixel Update Bulletin contains patches beyond what's in that month's regular Android Security Bulletin. According to GrapheneOS, some of those extra patches touch standard Android platform code, the kind that runs on non-Pixel devices, not just Pixel-branded hardware.

None of that platform-level code has reached the regular monthly bulletin or the private preview patches other manufacturers typically draw from to get their own patches ready.

And at this rate, these won't reach non-Pixel OEMs at all until Android 17 QPR2 ships later this year in December.

The project is characterizing this as Google "gatekeeping security patches to the standard Android platform code from Android OEMs." The complaints

GrapheneOS says Android 17 QPR1 shipped new developer APIs that never made it into AOSP. This is something they claim hasn't happened since Android's Honeycomb days.

Google's API diff report backs this up. Comparing Android 17 to QPR1 shows one new package, android.hardware.hid, plus changes across sixteen others, including android.media, android.os, android.provider, android.telecom, and android.view.

GrapheneOS has ported its code to QPR1 before Google even released it, but still doesn't have permission to ship that work. For now, the project is backporting Pixel firmware, kernel drivers, userspace drivers, and HALs from QPR1 onto Android 17 instead.

On top of all that, there's a compliance issue that seems to be recurring.

Google was slow to comply with a GPL source request. GrapheneOS requested sources for a build (CD1A.260905.001.A1) on September 1, and access only came through more than two weeks later.

Why this is worrying

None of these three issues is catastrophic by itself. A three-month patch delay, a paused API rollout, a two-week wait on source code—each is the kind of thing that could pass as a one-off.

Taken together, however, they point to a recurring theme. Google is holding security fixes back from the wider Android ecosystem, withholding new APIs from AOSP for the first time in over a decade, and slow-walking GPL compliance it's required to meet.

Don't even get me started on what they are doing to the Android app ecosystem.

Google is on track to require every Android app developer, whether on the Play Store, F-Droid, or anywhere else, to register with them. Come 2027, that means handing over legal identification and signing key evidence before an app can run on any certified device.

Sideloading an unverified app following this would mean enabling developer settings, waiting through a mandatory 24-hour cooldown, and clicking past several warning screens (classic scare tactics, btw).

GrapheneOS is one of dozens of organizations that signed onto the Keep Android Open campaign opposing this, alongside F-Droid, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and the Free Software Foundation.

If you ask me, this Big Tech company is doing what's regrettably natural for it, clamping down open access to things so that its competition cannot benefit.

Looks more like Laura Loomer if you ask me.

(No that's is distinctly not a compliment in any ground)

cross-posted from: https://scribe.disroot.org/post/11422805

...

For decades, Russia has been one of the few major powers that India could count on to help counterbalance China. The bilateral relationship amounted to a buffer and a hedge, ensuring that instead of being squeezed by its larger neighbor, India retained some geopolitical room to maneuver. But this system cannot work if Russia is hollowed out and dependent on China. And that is precisely the outcome the Ukraine war has produced.

...

After its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, ... China also became Russia’s biggest trading partner and an increasingly important source of the machinery, electronics and industrial goods Russia could no longer buy from the West.

This outcome diverges sharply from the “no limits” partnership of equals that Chinese leader Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin touted just before the war started. Russia is becoming a junior partner of China, which is just fine with Xi — and explains why he is in no hurry to force Putin to negotiate with Ukraine. While Xi pays lip service to a “political settlement,” he avoids putting any public pressure on Putin to seek peace.

...

The calculation is not mysterious. A prolonged war keeps Russia boxed in, and a boxed-in Russia has fewer alternatives — which means more leverage for China. And, as the stalled talks over the Power of Siberia 2 pipeline show, China is not shying away from using that leverage to advance its own interests.

...

China wants a Russia that is strong enough to be useful, but weak enough to remain dependent.

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Removepaywall

cross-posted from: https://scribe.disroot.org/post/11422754

cross-posted from: https://scribe.disroot.org/post/11422601

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Every other stream brings a new face and a peek into the mind of another ‘ordinary Russian’ — proud to have started a war, eager to get the next ‘coffin payment,’ and totally unaware of how democracy works.

...

Apart from outright coercion, Russia continues to bribe fighters into the army by writing off overdue loans and paying millions of rubles for signing military contracts. Some regions have increased such payments to over $51,000, despite local budget deficits. So-called ‘coffin money’ for the dead comprises 38 percent of all Russia’s military expenditures in 2026.

...

As signing a contract becomes the only social lift for many Russians from economically depressed regions, this has made Russian economic inequality not just a domestic issue but a catalyst to continue its war efforts in Ukraine.

...

“They live in poverty... For Russians, life at home is worse than being at war. They’re trying to escape this life of theirs, where they’re completely insignificant, and they have to survive on payday loans. Russians want to fight because they’re offered great money for it."

Quite an illustrative example is Tuva, a region near the Russian border with Mongolia. In 2022, it was deemed the poorest. It has no railway; buses run irregularly; access to education, employment, and, in some districts, to basic utilities like water, sewage, and heating is a luxury.

In Tuva, one in 200 residents was killed on the battlefield in Ukraine. Other poor regions like Transbaikal, Chukotka, and Buryatia are also sending overwhelming numbers of their men to war to improve their economic condition.

...

The group that probably benefits from Russia’s war against Ukraine the most is the soldiers’ family members who receive millions of rubles for sending recruits to the army and even more for their death. Since 2023, the influx of contract payments and ‘coffin money’ into Russia’s poorest regions, which provide most of the recruits, has led to a sharp increase in household bank deposits. For instance, in Siberian regions, savings grew drastically, by about 19 percent in Altai, 33 percent in Buryatia, and the record-breaking 57 percent in Tuva.

...

At the same time, recent data shows that these sudden riches are rather fleeting. Ukrainian intelligence reports that some regions started paying less for newly signed military contracts in 2025. Recently, at least six regions have cut ‘coffin money,’ too. Namely, soldiers from the Bashkortostan and Ulianovsk regions get 20 times less money than in 2025, while the Orenburg region canceled local bonuses and now provides only federal payments.

If this trend spreads across the country, it might further slow mobilization.

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Archived

Comments

Stephanie Saal has lived with a series of what-ifs since doctors carried out irreversible surgery on her as a baby that she believes reduced her chances of having children.

She was born in 1995 with an intersex variation: a term that can include a range of genital, hormonal and chromosomal variations that do not reflect a typical male or female body and affects 1.7 per cent of births.

So, this unremarkable looking bird is a Dunnock, an insect eater that scuttles around under garden bushes and the like. I very rarely see them in Prospect Park, but today this one was proudly singing away as a loud as it could on leafless branches - so I'd just like to spread its word that there's something to sing about.

Reading, UK

Canon R5 MkII + RF200-800

cross-posted from: https://scribe.disroot.org/post/11422601

...

Every other stream brings a new face and a peek into the mind of another ‘ordinary Russian’ — proud to have started a war, eager to get the next ‘coffin payment,’ and totally unaware of how democracy works.

...

Apart from outright coercion, Russia continues to bribe fighters into the army by writing off overdue loans and paying millions of rubles for signing military contracts. Some regions have increased such payments to over $51,000, despite local budget deficits. So-called ‘coffin money’ for the dead comprises 38 percent of all Russia’s military expenditures in 2026.

...

As signing a contract becomes the only social lift for many Russians from economically depressed regions, this has made Russian economic inequality not just a domestic issue but a catalyst to continue its war efforts in Ukraine.

...

“They live in poverty... For Russians, life at home is worse than being at war. They’re trying to escape this life of theirs, where they’re completely insignificant, and they have to survive on payday loans. Russians want to fight because they’re offered great money for it."

Quite an illustrative example is Tuva, a region near the Russian border with Mongolia. In 2022, it was deemed the poorest. It has no railway; buses run irregularly; access to education, employment, and, in some districts, to basic utilities like water, sewage, and heating is a luxury.

In Tuva, one in 200 residents was killed on the battlefield in Ukraine. Other poor regions like Transbaikal, Chukotka, and Buryatia are also sending overwhelming numbers of their men to war to improve their economic condition.

...

The group that probably benefits from Russia’s war against Ukraine the most is the soldiers’ family members who receive millions of rubles for sending recruits to the army and even more for their death. Since 2023, the influx of contract payments and ‘coffin money’ into Russia’s poorest regions, which provide most of the recruits, has led to a sharp increase in household bank deposits. For instance, in Siberian regions, savings grew drastically, by about 19 percent in Altai, 33 percent in Buryatia, and the record-breaking 57 percent in Tuva.

...

At the same time, recent data shows that these sudden riches are rather fleeting. Ukrainian intelligence reports that some regions started paying less for newly signed military contracts in 2025. Recently, at least six regions have cut ‘coffin money,’ too. Namely, soldiers from the Bashkortostan and Ulianovsk regions get 20 times less money than in 2025, while the Orenburg region canceled local bonuses and now provides only federal payments.

If this trend spreads across the country, it might further slow mobilization.

...

Archived

Excuse the crappy photo, my phone is a bit geriatric