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Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka said that if any other country wanted to join the Russia-Belarus union, there could be nuclear weapons for everyone.

The defense ministers of Russia and Belarus on Thursday signed a document on the deployment of Russian tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus, Russian...

Last week, Russia moved ahead with a plan to deploy tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus, in the Kremlins first deployment of such warheads outside Russia since the 1991 fall of the Soviet Union, spurring concerns in the West.

In an interview published on Russias state television late on Sunday, Lukashenka said that it must be strategically understood that Minsk and Moscow have a unique chance to unite.

He further pointed out that Kazakhstan should also join the Union State of Russia and Belarus. No one is against Kazakhstan and other countries having the same close relations that we have with the Russian Federation, the Belarusian dictator said.

If someone is worried ... [then] it is very simple: join in the Union State of Belarus and Russia. Thats all, there will be nuclear weapons for everyone, he emphasized.

On Sunday, the Belarusian Defence Ministry said that another unit of the S-400 mobile, surface-to-air missile systems arrived from Moscow, with the systems to be ready for combat duty soon.

source: Reuters

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Nuclear communism: Lukashenka offers 'nukes for everyone' - TVP World

Translator Angela Rodel, left, and author Georgi Gospodinov have won the 2023 International Booker Prize for Time Shelter. They are pictured above in London on May 23, 2023. David Parry/The Booker Prizes hide caption

Translator Angela Rodel, left, and author Georgi Gospodinov have won the 2023 International Booker Prize for Time Shelter. They are pictured above in London on May 23, 2023.

This year's winner of the The International Booker Prize is a unique spin on time travel. The novel Time Shelter by Georgi Gospodinov, with a translation by Angela Rodel, imagines the 'first clinic of the past,' in which Alzheimer's patients can visit different time periods of their lives on different floors.

"One day, when this business really takes off," therapist Gaustine tells the narrator, a writer, "we'll create these clinics or sanatoriums in various countries. The past is also a local thing. There'll be houses from various years everywhere, little neighborhoods, one day we'll even have small cities, maybe even a whole country. For patients with failing memories, Alzheimer's, dementia, whatever you want to call it. For all of those who already are living solely in the present of their past."

In its review of Time Shelter, The Guardian wrote, "From communism to the Brexit referendum and conflict in Europe, this funny yet frightening Bulgarian novel explores the weaponisation of nostalgia."

Gospodinov's novel was chosen from a shortlist of six books from around the world.

"Intricately crafted, and eloquently translated by Angela Rodel," wrote the International Booker Prize jury, "Time Shelter cements Georgi Gospodinov's reputation as one of the indispensable writers of our times, and a major voice in international literature."

Unlike the original Booker Prize which rewards novels written in English, the International Booker Prize honors fiction translated into English from around the world. This is the first time a Bulgarian novel has won.

Gospodinov and translator Angela Rodel will share the prize money of roughly $62,ooo equally. In addition, the shortlisted authors and translators each receive approximately $3,000.

Time Shelter is Gospodinov's third novel to be published in English. A poet and playwright, he is the most translated writer from Bulgaria to emerge since the fall of communism.

Literary translator Angela Rodel is a Minnesota native who lives in Bulgaria. In addition to Time Shelter, she translated Gospodinov's novel The Physics of Sorrow, as well as a short story collection by Bulgarian writer Georgi Tenev.

In a statement, Gospodinov said, "It is commonly assumed that 'big themes' are reserved for 'big literatures,' or literatures written in big languages, while small languages, somehow by default, are left with the local and the exotic. Awards like the International Booker Prize are changing that status quo, and this is very important."

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Georgi Gospodinov and Angela Rodel win International Booker ... - NPR

The Western world, in the midst of being primed for a war with China, often has a limited understanding of who this supposed enemy is. Is it a communist force ready to challenge the U.S.s capitalist and hegemonic structure? Is it an economic ally providing an indispensable factory floor for our corporate interests? Or is it somehow a combination of both? Joining host Robert Scheer this week on Scheer Intelligence is Suisheng Zhao, professor and director of Center for China-U.S. Cooperation at the University of Denver Josef Korbel School of International Studies, who hopes to provide clarity to these ever growing questions.

His new book, The Dragon Roars Back: Transformational Leaders and Dynamics of Chinese Foreign Policy, attempts to frame China and its history for todays moment in time. It demonstrates that it was never just communism that drove China to be the world power it has become but rather nationalism. Zhao focuses on three leaders in Chinas contemporary history, who serve to represent this dragon that has roared back to the world: Mao Zedong, Deng Xiaoping and their current president Xi Jinping. Zhao and Scheer go back and forth, diving into the nuances of each rulers time and their relation to the international order.

[The Chinese leaders] are all first nationalists, then Communist Party members. They all share the same dream to make China prosper and [be] powerful and also redeem the so-called century of humiliation, Zhao says. These are the dragons roaring back, and under their leadership, China will not be denied its place in the world. This place was once respected and a sort of peaceful balance was achieved during the era of Nixon and Mao. Fast forward to today however, and, despite successful economic interdependence being achieved between the two countries, the U.S. has rejected the possibility of a multipolar world with its advances in Taiwan, and this can of worms that Nixon and Kissenger worked to quell has suddenly burst again.

Scheer and Zhao agree on what The Dragon Roars Back strives to clarify: I think what your book challenges is the centrality of the enemy that we had after World War II, of an ideology of communism, and says the real problem is nationalism and that China, with its great history and its importance, is driven by nationalism, which is now threatening our view of the world, Scheer says. This nationalism and enormous success under Xi, Zhao responds, is now challenging U.S. predominance in the world, which perhaps the U.S. cannot accept.

See more here:
The China Dragon Roars Back Whether the US Likes It or Not - KCRW

Members of the digital ID communities in the United States and European Union talked up the federated approach to digital IDs last week at the ID4Africa 2023 AGM.

A fair question after each presentation would have been, are either the U.S. or the E.U. the best models for African nations looking to create a continentwide interoperable ID system?

The EUs effort (much like its still-forming AI Act) lies under volumes of files of memos of rules and regulations.

And it is optimistic in the extreme to think the U.S. is moving to any kind of coherent ID system. Whole swaths of the nation see Biblical evil, communism or White replacement in a digital ID that is no different in substance than a physical drivers license.

Unperturbed by these realities, Gail Hodges, executive director of the U.S.-based OpenID Foundation, and Didier Trutt, chairman of the European nonprofit Security Identity Alliance, addressed the topic at the conference in Kenya.

There are 69 jurisdictions mostly the 50 states, which of each run ID and driving license operations relevant to digital identification in the U.S., Hodges pointed out (startling but there are more than 1,000 jurisdictions of all kinds in the state of Illinois alone).

OpenID has done some groundwork in the country. Hodges pointed out that digital ID standards have been adopted in the business world, including by Apple. But digital ID standards have not touched a large majority of its adults.

Recognizing that a vocal segment of Americans do not want anything to do with government, OpenID is pushing a system that is centralized on private and/or public sector wallets.

Under this scenario, the states would continue to collect and safeguard ID data but would provide public keys to one commonly held, nationwide digital trust service, Hodges said. All relying parties would go to the trust service.

People would have the power and responsibility to choose who see what personal data.

The federal government can get into digitals through a side door most Americans accept through airlines, trains and ships. The Department of Homeland Safety, she said, is asking all states to perform self-assessments to make sure they conform with DHS identification standards created to reduce terrorism.

Trutt said the European digital wallet program will be based on each member state issuing IDs under a notified digital ID scheme built on common standards.

High levels of assurance will be maintained, he said, with compulsory certification.

And there is a proposal for an EU toolbox that defines the digital ID framework.

The session wrapped with an emphatic plea from Joseph Atick, executive chairman of ID4Africa.

Enrollment is yesterdays problem, Atick said. Momentum and public engagement will die if we dont enable the correct interoperable ID verification in support of ID use.

His message seemed aimed at governments that are perhaps near reaching ID enrollment of their populations. Some have not moved ahead with issues like identity verification, which typically is a more difficult phase of creating a digital ID program.

Wallets, he said. You need to build that into your future, along with the interoperability of trust, public key infrastructure, decentralization options.

Things are not getting simpler, Atick said. African leaders need to keep pushing on each phase.

Africa | digital ID | digital wallet | ID4Africa | ID4Africa 2023 | interoperability | OpenID | OSIA (Open Standards Identity API) | Secure Identity Alliance | standards

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EU, US might not be best digital ID models, but they can help African ... - Biometric Update

Only about half of Canadians are old enough to remember watching the fall of the Berlin Wall live on television. Fewer still are old enough to recall the Polish communists brutal crackdown on protesters in the long December night in 1981.

This likely explains why, according to a recent poll, 50 percent of Canadians aged 18 to 24 believe that socialism is the ideal economic system for their country.

For more than two centuries, socialism has captured the hearts and minds of youth everywhere. Its obvious why: socialisms promise of equality and unparalleled prosperity is alluring.

But for more than four decades in the 20th century, actual socialism captured more than hearts and minds. It captured one-third of the globes inhabitants and subjected them to a grand social experiment. In our new book (coauthored with Konstantin Zhukov) we document the results of this experiment, focusing on the experience of Poland.

Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels claimed that socialism would deliver such an abundance of goods that it would be able to satisfy the needs of all its members. But it didnt work out that way. By the 1980s, Polish per-capita production was just 39 percent of that of the United States.

The average Pole had to work nearly 13 times as long as the average West German to make enough money to buy a TV. And nine times as long as West Germans for cars, twice as long for beef and pork, and nearly three times as long for chicken. Compared with Westerners, only a fraction of Poles had telephones, cars, or homes. Poles waited 15 to 30 years for housing. In the last 15 years of Polish socialism, life expectancy declined.

While most Poles went without necessities such as feminine hygiene products, the elite were able to shop in special well-stocked stores. They paid no taxes. They vacationed in their own resorts. They had their own pension plans and health care.

Because socialist economies were so inefficient, they used more natural resources than capitalist economies even while they produced less output. For example, for every dollar of GDP it produced, the Polish economy used more than three times the amount of steel as did the United Kingdoms economy.

Socialist countries were also notoriously polluted. In Poland, the amount of sulfur oxide in the air per person was nearly three times the amount in West Germany and more than six times the amount in Austria. A 1991 article in the Washington Post described Warsaws tap water as yellowish-brown from the tap, laced with heavy metals, coalmine salts and organic carcinogens. It stains the sink, tastes soapy and smells like a wet sock that has been fished out of a heavily chlorinated swimming pool.

Marx thought capitalist workers would eventually revolt. But in socialist Poland, the workers turned on the workers party and the socialist state. In 1981, thousandsmostly women and childrentook to the streets of Krakw, d, and cities across Poland to protest the deplorable economic conditions. Their signs read We want to eat, How do you eat ration coupons? and, in an obvious reference to the closing lines of the Communist Manifesto, The hungry of all countriesunite.

In December, the government sent 140,000 men into the streets to round up troublemakers. Some 10,000 were arrested and 200,000 were fined. When they came for Lech Walesa, one of the leaders of the protests, he told his captors: This is the moment of your defeat. These are the last nails in the coffin of communism. He was right. The socialist experiment had run its course.

Tadeusz Mazowiecki, Polands first non-Communist prime minister, promised a return to a market-oriented economy. Poland, he said, cannot afford ideological experiments any longer. Decades of shortages ended in weeks. Hyperinflation was tamed. Growth rates more than doubled. And life expectancy began growing again.

Those of us who dream of a better society should never forget the terrible lessons of the socialist experiment.

See original here:
Opinion: Young Canadians should learn about the Polish ... - The Hub