It was broken by Norwegian daily "Dagens Næringsliv" (DN) under the title "Chinese-owned rental cars filmed secret exercise: Saved video of soldiers and codes"

. BUT when you look into the story what actually happened is that, for an exercise, the Norwegian army was short on cars so it rented some from Hertz. Those rental cars had dashcams - as cars do - that the soldiers mistakenly kept on. At one point, some soldiers found out about that: they were clicking through the car menus out of boredom and stumbled on the footage, including clips of themselves typing gate codes in front of the camera. They deleted the footage. There is zero evidence the footage left the car.

THAT'S IT, that's the whole story. China hysteria being what it is in Europe these days, this somehow got transformed into a "China spying" story because Hertz Norway is owned by Volvo, itself owned by Geely (a Chinese company), and 2 of the cars were from a Chinese brand, Deepal. The narrative apparently being that Geely, through Volvo, through Hertz, deliberately left standard dashcams on in rental cars in the hope that the Norwegian military would one day rent them and forget to turn the dashcams offAnd now, as is always the case, it's being spread globally by accounts like Clash Report, which even found a way to make the story dumber: their version has the cars as "Chinese-owned Volvos", when they weren’t Volvos at all. Such is the contemporary media ecosystem: one outlet invents the hysteria, the next one strips away the last remaining nuance and we all end up dumber for it.

https://x.com/BladeoftheS/status/2109440544518934908

https://x.com/ricwe123/status/2109630700232007768

Why China Is Building Its Own Marine Insurance System — and Why It's Not Trying to Replace London

The short version: Lloyd's List recently argued that China is racing to build its own marine insurance and reinsurance system to reduce reliance on London. That's true. But the way the story is framed — as China trying to replace or challenge the Western system — misses the point. China isn't trying to take over. It's trying to make sure its ships and its trade can't be held hostage.

First, the problem is real.

London has dominated global marine insurance for centuries. If you own a ship, insure a cargo, or move oil across an ocean, you almost certainly rely on insurers based in London, Bermuda, or Zurich. That's not just a commercial fact — it's a chokepoint.

When Western countries sanctioned Russia's oil trade, one of the most effective tools wasn't banning ships or banks. It was insurance. Without Western insurance, tankers can't sail. Ports won't accept them. Banks won't finance them. The same thing happened during Middle East tensions — war-risk premiums spiked, and suddenly shipping through the Strait of Hormuz became prohibitively expensive.

For China, which imports most of its oil by sea, this is a direct threat. If Beijing ever found itself on the wrong side of Western sanctions, its energy lifeline could be cut — not by a navy, but by an insurance office.

Second, what China is actually doing.

China is building domestic marine insurance and reinsurance capacity. That means Chinese insurers — like PICC, China Re, and the China Shipowners' Mutual Assurance Association — are being encouraged to cover Chinese-flagged vessels and RMB-settled trade. The government is also pushing state-backed insurers to underwrite war-risk policies and creating alternative risk pools that don't depend on Western reinsurance.

The goal is simple: if Western insurers pull out or refuse to cover Chinese shipping, China has a backup.

Third, and this is the key point — it's not a replacement. It's a parallel system. It's about Resilience.

Lloyd's List frames this as China building a rival to London. That's the wrong way to see it.

China is not trying to become the new global hub of marine insurance. It is not trying to convince European or American shipowners to abandon London. It is not trying to undercut Western insurers on price for ordinary commercial cargo.

What China wants is a parallel system — a separate lane that ensures Chinese shipping can keep moving even if the main lane is blocked.

Think of it like this: The existing Western system is like a main highway. China isn't trying to tear up that highway or build a competing one for everyone. It's building a backup road that only Chinese traffic can use if the main road is closed.

That distinction matters. A replacement system would be aggressive, expensive, and provoke conflict. A parallel system is defensive, targeted, and designed to prevent coercion.

Fourth, why this makes sense for China.

China's trade is increasingly settled in RMB. Its ships are increasingly Chinese-flagged. Its energy imports are increasingly sourced from sanctioned or sanction-threatened countries like Russia, Iran, and Venezuela. In that context, having Chinese insurance is not ideological — it's practical.

When trade is in RMB, shipping is on Chinese vessels, and cargo is Chinese energy, it makes perfect sense to insure it with Chinese insurers. That's not a political statement. It's just good business.

Fifth, the risks and challenges are real.

China's insurers don't have the same depth of data, experience, or global trust as London. They can't yet handle the largest, most complex claims the way Lloyd's can. And if they insure sanctioned vessels, they risk being cut off from Western reinsurance themselves.

Bottom line:

China is not trying to replace Western marine insurance. It is trying to make sure it is never in a position where Western insurers can hold its shipping hostage.

That's not aggression. That's insurance against being cut off. And in a world where insurance has already been used as a weapon, it's a rational thing to do.

The real risk isn't that China builds a parallel system. The real risk is that the West overreacts and tries to crush it — which would only speed up the split and make the parallel system stronger.

Original article https://www.lloydslist.com/LL1158673/China-races-to-deweaponise-the-West%E2%80%99s-grip-on-marine-insurance or https://archive.ph/Ns5gl

https://x.com/WelcomeTheGulag/status/2109498357106475182

It shows who the Saudis are working for.

The French supermarkets affected in today's attacks had exposed all its refrigeration controllers directly to the internet. Every single device reportedly used the same password: today's date... There's also a documented authentication bypass: sending a POST request to /xml.cgi can bypass the login entirely. Via: GossiTheDog

British power is now almost entirely dependent on the US imperialists, and this will only get worse. Since 1945 there has been a push-pull between Britain and America over who gets what in the relationship. The City of London does very well out of the dollar trade, as Tony Norfield shows in The City, and this dictates everything else in the relationship. Britain is a parasitic imperialist power that has systematically dismantled its own industrial base, including its defence-technology sector.

Most of what Britain will spend on arms over the next decade will flow to US or US-connected firms. The rifles now entering service with British elite units are made by Knight's Armament in Florida, and not a single British firm is even bidding to build the SA80's successor. The fire-control software and launcher hardware of the new Dreadnought nuclear submarines are American — General Dynamics and Northrop Grumman — and the Trident missiles themselves are US-built. The one exception, the Tempest/GCAP fighter, is a tri-national programme with Italy and Japan. The British ruling class needs the US for muscle now, as it is utterly incapable of fighting any war itself — even a Falklands-scale deployment is beyond it, whatever the Strategic Defence Review claims.

So the muscle must be kept happy. When a suspect van full of petrol near RAF Fairford — with no viable explosive, five men released without charge — produces a prime ministerial attribution to the IRGC and fresh sanctions, ask who needed to hear it: the suspects are on bail, but the B-1s had already flown home. The foaming orange cadaver must be appeased though as the British emperor is very naked.

https://x.com/WelcomeTheGulag/status/2109462634890457176

https://consortiumnews.com/2026/10/11/ongoing-tales-of-syrian-chemical-weapons/

If Douma, one of the highest-profile “proven” chemical attacks attributed to Syria’s former Bashar Assad government has been shown to be fake, what does it say about new, undeclared Syrian chemical weapons that have supposedly been found? It says we should be extremely skeptical about news of such discoveries.

OPCW inspectors are not fools. Many of us saw what was going on, seeing the tight political control that the U.S. and to a lesser degree the U.K. exerted over anything to do with the Syrian file. But the draconian confidentiality regime in the OPCW kept everyone subdued.

The chemical allegations followed a well-oiled procedure. Armed opposition groups – who were seeking direct Western military intervention to support their effort to overthrow Assad – would raise the alarm online by posting slick images and videos of an alleged chemical attack.

The breakthrough came after the April 2018 Douma allegation. For the first time, an OPCW team actually got to the scene of an alleged chemical attack, at the town of Douma, in southwestern Syria, about 10 kilometers (6 miles) northeast of Damascus. We did our job thoroughly, and in doing so we identified serious flaws in the allegation.

After trying to secretly modify the interim report by withdrawing it from publication and sneaking in the preordained conclusions that were required by influential delegations, senior OPCW officials went to extremes... and ultimately this led to the ongoing dispute where the two most senior and experienced inspectors in the F.F.M. team objected. The drafter of the team’s interim report, Dr. Brendan Whelan (“Inspector B”), was one. I was the other.

The OPCW has refused to engage in any discussion on the facts and scientific substance of the case, ever since concerns were first raised by Dr. Whelan and me.

This intransigence to re-open the file is likely dictated by the needs of the three belligerent governments [US, UK and France] that subjected Syria to punitive missile strikes in retaliation for the supposed Syrian chemical attack even before the Douma F.F.M. had started work.

Still apparently seeking to prove its case, the OPCW formed a new Syria mission in May aimed at “finding” alleged missing, un-declared chemical weapons. So far as I can see, the OPCW hasn’t found anything remotely close to the desired smoking gun. Anything real, I should say.

There are three partners in this latest endeavour on the anti-Assad chemical narrative.

• the Western governments, belligerents in the Syrian conflict, which worked hard on building the chemical narrative to delegitimise the regime

• the government in Syria, reportedly eager to please their Western sponsors in return for economic favours. They are the Al-Nusra/HTS extremists who, in the case of Douma, fabricated the scene to raise a chemical false flag allegation against the Assad

• and the OPCW

That means the various groups who have been on this mission are a). those who staged scenes of chemical attacks; b). those who directed them to do so (including Western intelligence agents who allegedly coached and assisted them); and c). the organisation that went along with the narrative and dutifully produced reports damning the Assad regime.

By now we know there isn’t any “smoking gun” evidence. If there had been, it would have been cited in the mission and I.I.T. reports.

"Congo cannot sell its minerals to anyone around the world before giving it to the US first," noted Kambale Musavuli, Lead Policy Analyst at the Center for Research on the Congo-Kinshasa, who sat down with fellow pan-Africanist - Sovereign Media's Ahmed Kaballo - to discuss the crisis in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) from an anti-imperialist lens.

Musavuli was referencing a 5 December 2025 US-brokered "peace deal" between the DRC and Rwanda.

Almost a year on, Musavuli noted that there has been no change on the ground, amid the ongoing presence in the mineral-rich eastern Congo of the Rwanda-backed M23, a militia widely accused of atrocities.

Instead, Musavuli described the deal as "the new act of Berlin," in reference to the 1884 conference in the German capital whereby European empires carved up Africa and divided it among each other.

"The more you read it, the more you ask yourself: how come the mainstream media is not covering this deal?" he asked.

Musavuli connected the imperial extraction of Congolese resources to the global tech and artificial intelligence boom.

"This Apple device, ChatGPT, Claude and all these AI tools have a direct connection to the Congo because they can't exist without Congo's minerals," Musavuli explained, detailing how tantalum and coltan absorb heat and accelerate electricity on circuit boards.

While the DRC holds up to 80% of the world's reserves, its neighbouring Rwanda that profits by exporting minerals smuggled from the M23-controlled Rubaya mine, leaving Musavuli to ask "what is the European Union doing?"

Finally, amid social sentiments that pit the movements against each-other, Musavuli highlighted the solidarity linking the DRC and P*lestine, citing instances whereby P*lestinian activists organised for the Congolese cause.

"We are both exploited by the same system... We are fighting the same beast," Musaveli said.

Step 1: provoke. Step 2: call it "failed deterrence." Step 3: sell a book about avoiding the war you helped make inevitable. Step 4: cast Taiwan in the sequel

Same playbook that got over a million killed - but this time US bases would get hit on day one, and the stage is an Chinese island 1/17th Ukraine's size, half the people, zero strategic depth. Taiwan never auditioned to be your next Ukraine fighting for US interests.

The rules for "reservation" from mobilization are changing in Ukraine.

The number of employees protected from mobilization in the defense industry and energy sector will be reduced from 100% to a maximum of 85%, and in the areas of heat supply, water supply, and garbage collection from 75% to 60%. Other critically important enterprises keep 50% employees protected from mobilization.

Employees who have a deferral for other reasons (parents of 3+ children etc) will no longer be counted when calculating the number of "reservations" of the enterprise.

Zhelezniak explains with an example: "There were 100 people and 50 reservations — it will become 80 and 40"..

The status of an enterprise's criticality will be determined by a new body — a Coordination Center under the Cabinet of Ministers. It consists of 17 people from the SBU, GUR, Foreign Intelligence Service, and police.

Vladimir Putin🇷🇺 on a potential strike against Europe:

‘If, heaven forbid, it comes to some sort of strike, Europe has no missile attack early warning system. They are defenceless. Instead of minimising victims, casualties could potentially escalate indefinitely.’

‘The Europeans must also consider if those with whom we engage in such conflicts cease to exist, will the Americans even participate in the conflict at the level of strategic weapons or not? I have serious doubts about it.’

https://x.com/ricwe123/status/2109622271740367155

Just like Elensky loves himself an 8 ball of blow, NAFO loves themselves some 8 ball too!

It starts with a specific grievance: exam failures, unemployment, or voter rolls. Then the demands grow. First, someone must resign. Then the protests will not stop until the government itself is gone. Talk of bloodshed enters the picture, while opposition networks and foreign media amplify the unrest.

We have seen similar patterns in Bangladesh in 2024 and Nepal in 2025. A real grievance becomes the starting point. The demands expand, the pressure builds, and eventually the entire political system is presented as the problem.

India’s strategic position matters here. It remains part of BRICS and maintains ties with Russia, while pursuing an independent foreign policy. Not everyone in Washington will be comfortable with that.

Regime change does not always require tanks or military intervention. Political pressure, NGO networks, funding channels and media amplification can also play a role in destabilising a government. The key question is whether genuine public anger is being exploited to achieve a wider political objective.

This is not about blindly supporting India’s current government.

It is about recognising the pattern and asking who benefits when domestic grievances turn into a campaign to bring down the entire political order.

India should pay attention.

So should everyone else.