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Imagine a world without McDonald’s, Nike, or Kraft Foods. A world where the budget-conscious and time-strapped have nowhere to grab a quick bite, where almost no one drives a car, where television is extinct. Sound pretty bleak? This is the utopian vision of the Adbusters Media Foundation. “We will wreck this world,” Kalle Lasn declares in his book Culture Jam: How to Reverse America's Suicidal Consumer Binge -- and Why We Must. That, quite simply, is the goal of the Vancouver-based organization he founded and runs. A self-described group of “anarchists” and “neo-Luddites,” Adbusters are not merely environmentalists, animal-rights activists,...

Back in July, an idea by Kalle Lasn and his colleagues at Adbusters, a nonprofit magazine run by social activists, had started to come together. For months, Lasn had noticed among his 120,000 readers an unresolved anger that wasn’t finding expression. He observed that young people were starting to say they worried about having a “black hole future” ahead of them, and it suddenly felt, he said, “like a Tahrir moment in America was eminently possible.” So the Adbusters team tried something out. They put out feelers for a small protest on Wall Street on Sept. 17. They started a...

Chief Pentagon Spokesman, Sean Parnell, provided the following readout: On September 22, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth spoke with his Estonian counterpart, Minister of Defence Hanno Pevkur. Secretary Hegseth affirmed the Department of War stands with all NATO allies and that any incursion into NATO airspace is unacceptable. The Secretary commended the quick response by European allies' air defenses stating it showed NATO at its best, ready and focused on their core mission. The Secretary ensured the Minister that he was in close consultation with the Supreme Allied Commander for Europe about next steps and would continue to track the...

0:12 Mr. President, excellencies, 0:17 this Emergency Security Council meeting 0:19 has been called because a mere mere week 0:23 after Russia sent drones into Poland, 0:27 three Russian MiG31 fighter jets with 0:30 their transponders off, entered Estonian 0:33 airspace without authorization and 0:36 lingered for 12 minutes. On the same 0:39 day, two Russian fighter jets violated 0:42 the security zone over the Polish 0:44 drilling platform in our economic zone 0:47 in the Baltic Sea. 0:49 If these were accidents, why not 0:52 immediately acknowledge them and 0:54 apologize? 0:56 We have given Russia a pass in...

Three Russian MiG-31 fighter jets lingered in NATO-member Estonia's airspace for several minutes on Friday, according to Estonian authorities. Italian F-35s responded. Estonia's Prime Minister Kristen Michal said on Friday evening that the government has requested NATO Article 4 consultations with the alliance's allies following an airspace violation by Russian jets. "This morning, 3 Russian MiG-31 fighter jets entered Estonian airspace. NATO fighters responded, and the Russian planes were forced to flee," Michal wrote in a post on X. "Such violation is totally unacceptable." Foreign Minister Margus Tsahkna said the jets entered Estonian airspace and lingered over the Gulf of...

The Baltic Defense Line established by Latvia, Estonia, and Lithuania has become the largest fortification effort in Europe since World War II. The multi-layered defensive installation includes anti-tank obstacles, surveillance systems, trenches, and bunkers. The “East Shield” is intended to protect these nations, and therefore Europe, from Russian invasion, which they believe is inevitable. Estonia announced that it has begun construction of a 40-kilometer trench along its border with Russia. Other Baltic States, such as Lithuania and Latvia, have constructed “dragon’s teeth” or anti-tank barriers that act as large pyramid-shaped concrete obstacles for armored vehicles. The three Baltic states will...

This is an excellent 32 minute history lesson on the conflict between the Baltic Countries, Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia vs Russia. It's the best summary that I have found.

Amid increasingly belligerent Russian rhetoric against NATO, tiny Estonia has assumed the role of David standing up to Goliath. In recent months, Tallinn has intensified its signaling that in the case of an imminent Russian invasion, it would not hesitate to strike first. The world is now seeing the country’s logic. In a September 2024 interview with the Estonian public broadcaster ERR, Estonian General Vahur Karus stated that if Moscow showed signs of preparing for an attack, Estonia would strike the Russians first: “Our capability to neutralize the enemy on its own territory is crucial.” In the subsequent months, Estonia...

Lithuania has revealed plans to dig a 30-mile-wide ribbon of defences on its borders with Russia and Belarus that will include minefields and bridges set to blow up in case Russia invades. The plans are part of a Baltic-wide push for more defence, amid increasing aggression from Russia and its allies. Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, alongside Poland, have been fortifying their borders, adding obstacles and redoubts to existing fences. All four are also looking for EU funding for these projects. When complete, having been in the works since early last year, the Baltic defence line is estimated to be more...

The top Kremlin-installed official in the oblast, Yevgeny Balitsky, said Russia should also have its eye on the Baltic states, as well as Poland and Finland, all five of which are NATO countries... In the interview shared by Russia watcher Julia Davis, Balitsky seemed ready to take on the alliance as he spoke of how the Russian Empire that ended with the 1917 revolution had "lost its footing" as well as "great numbers of people." "I'm not even talking about territories. I understand that it includes Warsaw, Helsinki, also known as Helsingfors," he said... "I don't believe in any diplomacy...

The Department of Justice on Monday unveiled a record-shattering crackdown on the corrupt underbelly of America’s health care system. A jaw-dropping 324 defendants — including 96 medical professionals — have been charged in 50 federal districts and 12 states for orchestrating over $14.6 billion in intended fraud, largely targeting Medicare, Medicaid, and federal health programs meant to serve the elderly, disabled, and the poor. The takedown, spearheaded by the DOJ’s Health Care Fraud Unit in coordination with HHS-OIG, the FBI, the DEA, and over a dozen state attorney general offices, marks the largest health care fraud bust in U.S. history....

By stripping batteries and hacking Android phones with open-source Linux, researchers built submersible data hubs for AI-powered image recognition. Researchers hacked 15-year-old smartphones into tiny servers that outperform Raspberry Pi at a fraction of the cost. Kadri-Ann Kivastik/ Via Eurekalert ======================================================================== A team at the University of Tartu’s Institute of Computer Science has shown that obsolete mobile phones can be wired together to do the sort of heavy data processing normally reserved for expensive server farms while keeping thousands of handsets out of landfills. Led by associate professor of pervasive computing Huber Flores, the engineers stripped the batteries from four...

PIUSA, Estonia — As part of a large-scale security and modernization campaign sparked by the invasion of Ukraine, the Estonian government is moving to set up and deploy a “drone wall” across its entire eastern border with Russia by the end of 2027. This massive, in-the-works fortification will include a combination of surveillance assets, multilayer sensors, countermeasure platforms, and uncrewed systems that can take out hostile enemy drones across the roughly 183-mile border, which also marks a major boundary shared between Russia and the NATO alliance. Members of Estonia’s Police and Border Guard Board briefed DefenseScoop and others participating in...

The democratic will of the Hungarian people to clamp down on the proliferation of LGBTQ+ ideology should be punished by the European Commission, a group of 16 EU countries demanded on Wednesday. In response to recent legislation passed by Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s conservative government to ban Pride parades in Hungary, over half of fellow European Union member states signed an open letter demanding that Budapest reverse course or face punishment from Brussels. The “declaration” was signed by the countries of Austria, Belgium, Czechia, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal, Slovenia, and Sweden. […]...

Vladimir Zhirinovsky, an odious leader of the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia has approved militarization of the Russian Federation and said that all the countries of the former Soviet Union were a zone of Russian interests. Vladimir Zhirinovsky, a leader of the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia praised the Russian Prosecutor General’s Office, which began to verify the legitimacy of recognition of independence of the Baltic republics by the State Council of the USSR in 1991, Joinfo.ua reports referring to the Russian media...

Nine EU states are targeting the Strasbourg-based European Court of Human Rights in a wider bid to deport unwanted migrants. A letter spearheaded by Denmark, which is set to take over the rotating EU presidency from July, is demanding more leeway on deporting people who have committed crimes. Published on Thursday (22 May), the letter was signed by leaders of Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Italy, and Poland. It faults the court for placing rights restrictions on deportations of "criminal foreign nationals". They are also unhappy on how the court interprets the European Convention on Human Rights,...

TALLINN/ANTALYA, Turkey, May 15 (Reuters) - Estonia said on Thursday that Moscow had briefly sent a fighter jet into NATO airspace over the Baltic Sea during an attempt to stop a Russian-bound oil tanker thought to be part of a "shadow fleet" defying Western sanctions on Moscow. Russia, which regards sanctions as a malign attempt to crush its economy, says all its ships have free passage in the Baltic and any attempt to stop them is dangerous. Estonia's navy said the unflagged Jaguar ship, which went onto a UK sanctions list last week, refused to cooperate when asked to stop...

Russia's supply of cheap oil is running out, another major blow for Vladimir Putin as he continues to grapple with a growing economic crisis. Businesses and consumers across the country are reeling under the effects of spiralling inflation and high interest rates. In April, the Central Bank confirmed it would keep the key interest rate at 21% for the foreseeable future, much to the bitter disappointment of the Kremlin and business leaders. Many firms are fighting to stay afloat, as they attempt to pay back bank loans originally secured during more favourable economic times. -snip- Gazprom Neft CEO Alexander Dyukov...

A statue of Feliks Dzerzhinsky, the founder of the Soviet secret police, Cheka, was unveiled in front of the headquarters of Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) in Moscow on September 11. The statue is a replica of a larger Dzerzhinsky statue, one of the symbols of Soviet repression, which was pulled from its pedestal outside KGB headquarters in August 1991. SVR Director Sergei Naryshkin said at the ceremony for the statue's unveiling that Dzerzhinsky's face on the original and new statues is turned toward Poland and Baltic states "because the threat to Russia from the northwest remains."

Numerous world leaders and royals have gathered in Rome for Pope Francis' funeral. Among the most prominent figures at the Vatican's St Peter's Square on Saturday morning were Prince William, US President Donald Trump and his predecessor Joe Biden, Britain's Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer and French President Emmanuel Macron. Their attendance comes at a fragile time for international diplomacy, with Trump meeting Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky before the service. So among the VIP attendees, who sat next to whom? Trump was in a front-row seat near Francis' coffin, alongside his wife Melania Trump, across the aisle from Macron and...