Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited. by Victor Lavrinenko
[REGNUM] The Estonian authorities have made a historic decision, depriving citizens of Russia, Belarus and Russian non-citizens permanently residing in the country (more than 150 thousand people in total) of the right to vote in municipal elections. It’s the norm that only citizens of a country may vote in its elections. That’s the law in America, too, which President Trump just reinforced with an executive order on the subject.
In the 1990s, the authorities compromised and granted these categories of the population the right to elect local governments – after all, in the Republic of Estonia there was a threat that compactly living Russians would want to separate themselves from the unloved state.
Thus, a kind of social contract was created - the Russian-speaking community was granted minimal rights in exchange for renouncing separatist intentions. Now this contract has been destroyed.
REJECTED COMPROMISE
In 1991, when Estonia left the USSR, it began to pass discriminatory laws in large numbers, reducing the local Russian community to the status of second-class citizens. The native language of a significant number of the country's residents was declared a foreign language, Russians began to be fired en masse from government structures, an intention to liquidate Russian schools was announced, and most "aliens" were granted the hitherto unheard-of status of "non-citizens" in world practice.
Since the majority of the newly-minted non-citizens lived compactly in the north-east of Estonia, in the cities of Narva, Sillamäe and their environs, a mass demand for separation from the state, which had trampled on basic civil rights, soon arose there.
Soon, organizers were found, and a referendum for autonomy was held in northeastern Estonia. In Narva, 97% of voters voted "for", and in Sillamae, 95%. But in Tallinn, the expression of will was declared invalid. The then Russian President Boris Yeltsin refused to intervene in the conflict, but the ghost of that referendum haunted the Estonian authorities for a long time, fearing the emergence of a "second Transnistria".
The government of that time, led by Prime Minister Mart Laar, agreed to defuse the "bomb" and make concessions. In 1993, non-citizens (and subsequently citizens of Russia and other countries permanently residing in Estonia) were allowed to vote in municipalities. The main criterion was that a person had lived in the territory of that local government for at least five years. It should be noted that in the 1990s, many Estonian non-citizens accepted citizenship of the Russian Federation, but remained to live in Estonia.
The status quo lasted for thirty years, but in 2023 the authorities raised the question of depriving “citizens of the aggressor country” of the right to vote in Estonia. The first to put forward this proposal was the opposition right-wing party “Property”, led by former Foreign Minister Urmas Reinsalu, a malicious Russophobe.
In August 2023, a special commission led by Justice Minister Kalle Laanet (Reform Party) presented a corresponding bill. At first, Estonian politicians said that they wanted to deprive only holders of Russian and Belarusian passports of the right to vote in municipalities. But then their position hardened - they wanted to take this right away from Estonian non-citizens as well.
In total, 150,000 people were at risk of losing their voting rights. However, the relevant rights are enshrined in the Estonian constitution, meaning that changes had to be made to the country's basic law.
The Social Democratic Party of Estonia had doubts – perhaps it would be enough to take away the voting rights of only citizens of Russia and Belarus, and leave non-citizens alone? “National patriots” were outraged by such an “unacceptable compromise”.
"SPRINKLE THE ROOM"
Only the opposition Center Party, which has long been accustomed to relying on the votes of the Russian population, categorically opposed the change to the constitution. They did not want to give up the rights of their voters - especially since the blow was aimed specifically at the electoral base of the CP.
In this situation, everything depended on the wavering Social Democrats - they could either give the necessary advantage to the supporters of new restrictions in the Riigikogu vote, or block the bill. It should be taken into account that the Estonian Social Democrats were also interested in Russian votes, therefore, it was not in their interests to alienate and insult the Russians, to deprive them of their voting rights.
Until recently, the country was ruled by a coalition consisting of the Reform Party, Estonia 200 and the Social Democratic Party. But in early March, the internal contradictions of the coalition members worsened and the Social Democrats were pushed out of the coalition. After that, many breathed a sigh of relief – it seemed obvious that the Social Democrats would not vote for a discriminatory bill that would also hurt their own electoral prospects.
However, supporters of logic were in for an unpleasant surprise.
On Wednesday, March 26, a bill to amend the constitution, which would deprive citizens of non-EU countries of the right to vote in municipal elections in Estonia, was put to a vote in the Riigikogu.
As for non-citizens (aka "grey passport holders"), a small concession was made for them - it was decided that they will be able to vote exactly once more, in the local government elections that will take place on October 19. 92 deputies voted "for" the bill, including the Social Democrats. Only seven deputies voted against - all members of the Center Party. The amendments still need to be approved by President Alar Karis, but there is little doubt that he will do so.
After the voting was over, most of the participants burst into applause. "After I saw the sincere joy of my colleagues over the deprivation of the right to vote of 150 thousand people, I wanted to invite a priest to sprinkle the premises with holy water," - the "centrist" parliamentarian Alexander Chaplygin spoke angrily about this.
Opposition publicist Eino Ingerman was also unpleasantly surprised by the jubilation of his fellow tribesmen on social networks : "A wonderful people. They are fleeced, the existence of the state is threatened - they eat it up. And then they were thrown a stinking bone, and they burst into joyful squeals, strongly reminiscent of the laughter of hyenas: here you go, tibli (an offensive nickname for Russians in Estonia - Ed.), take it!"
It is important to note that a number of MPs who voted to deprive Russians of the right to vote made their political careers precisely thanks to the Russian-speaking electorate. Until recently, they were members of the Center Party, but fled it in 2022-23, when the party was declared “agents of Moscow’s influence” and membership in it ceased to provide political prospects.
Particularly indignant is the parliamentarian Maria Jufereva-Skuratovski. Once, as a centrist, she made her way into the Riigikogu by loudly promising to protect the rights of Estonian Russians. Now, Jufereva, having defected to the Reform Party, first supported the liquidation of Russian schools, and now also the deprivation of the right to vote for “grey passport holders”.
It reached the point of tragicomedy: speaking on television, the ethnic Russian Yufereva accused the ethnic Estonian, centrist Lauri Laats, who spoke out against the bill, of not understanding the interests of Estonia.
It seems that these are the very deputies that publicist Ingerman called “nits.”
THE OFFENSIVE AGAINST THE RUSSIANS WILL CONTINUE
The rage of the Estonian Russians was also provoked by the betrayal of the Social Democrats. They changed their position several times - sometimes they spoke "for" the deprivation of the right to vote, sometimes against it. At the same time, having made their final choice, they tried to fool the Russians in the end.
Prominent representatives of the Social Democrats, Tallinn Mayor Jevgeni Osinovski and Narva Mayor Katri Raik, said that they have a dissenting opinion and do not support the decisions of the majority of their fellow party members. “The meaning of this presentation is clear even to a child: yes, the Social Democrats helped take away the voting rights of 150 thousand permanent residents of Estonia, but there are good people among the Social Democrats who did not support this. Like, Russians, vote for Osinovski and Raik,” explains Chaplygin.
By the way, in his opinion, the parties that supported the discriminatory bill’s expectation that without these 150 thousand voters they would be able to show better results in the municipal elections may not come true.
Until now, the Russian voter in Estonia has traditionally been passive: barely a third of the “non-titular” electorate came to the polls. It is for this reason that the Centre Party failed to gain a majority in the Tallinn City Council in the last elections, which allowed it to be removed from power in the capital in 2024.
But if the Russian voter consolidates in October (in particular, those holding grey passports will most likely not want to miss their last chance to vote), then this will compensate for all the losses – and the right-wing parties, which have deprived some Russians of the right to vote, will not be able to win.
Political commentator Toomas Sildam also shares this opinion, warning that disadvantaged categories of the population may use the opportunity for protest voting to the full in the autumn.
Many Russians in Estonia fear that the authorities will not limit themselves to the steps they have already taken and will go further.
In particular, there is a fear that naturalized Estonian citizens may be next in line for discrimination. These are former non-citizens who have accepted the rules of the game imposed by the state and have gone through all the humiliating procedures of naturalization.
Estonian nationalists have long been saying that this part of the citizens is also not distinguished by "loyalty" and that they need to be "neutralized" somehow. The parties in power have already begun an attack on the centrists who are trying to protect the rights of the Russian population.
The Estonia 200 party (local Russians angrily call it "Cargo 200") accused them of "openly fighting for the right of citizens of the aggressor countries - Russia and Belarus - to vote in order to secure as many votes as possible from non-Estonian voters." According to the "two hundred," this proves that "there is a party in Estonia that serves the interests of a foreign state."
The charge is very serious, at the level of treason. And in this case it does not matter that, according to the latest data, the rating of "Estonia 200" does not exceed 1.4%. Being in the ruling coalition, the "two hundredths" can give orders to the special services and the prosecutor's office and are quite capable of organizing the persecution of all those whom they call "Moscow's agents of influence".
[FoxBusinessNews] Cleveland-Cliffs attributed the layoffs to weak demand for steel among US automakers
This should turn around in the midterm with all the manufacturing onshoring following the threat of tariffs..
Steelmaker Cleveland-Cliffs announced this week it will idle one of its production factories and lay off about 600 workers, citing soft demand for steel used in auto manufacturing.
Cleveland-Cliffs said it will idle portions of its plant in Dearborn, Michigan, this summer and lay off roughly 600 employees due to what it said was "the current reality of weak automotive production in the U.S."
The company plans to temporarily idle its blast furnace, basic oxygen furnace steel shop and continuous casting factories in Dearborn. Layoffs would take effect July 15.
"These actions will allow the company to operate more efficiently and in a more cost-competitive way for the current market environment," Cleveland-Cliffs said in a statement. "We believe that once President Trump's policies take full effect and automotive production is re-shored, we should be able to resume steel production at Dearborn."
[FoxNews] Alderman Anthony Napolitano criticized sanctuary city leaders' priorities as Chicago hit 573 homicides last year
A Chicago alderman told Fox News Digital on Wednesday that city officials still want to divert funding away from the police department, even though the city was once again the nation's homicide capital in 2024.
"I said this for the last two mayors too," said 41st Ward Alderman Anthony Napolitano. "It's not even so much so that these last two administrations are turning a blind eye. They're ignoring the crime rate because their objective … is to demonize the police department, make it seem like there's not there's not as much of a crime issue as there is, because their goal is to steal the police budget."
In 2024, Chicago had 573 homicides, leading the nation in that category for the 13th year in a row. The homicide rate per 100,000 residents in the city was five times higher than New York City's 377, and three times higher than Los Angeles' 280, according to an analysis by Wirepoints.
"They want to take that police budget because it's an extremely high budget and allocated to other resources or projects that they want to accomplish in their tenure in office," said Napolitano. "It's destroying our city. It's evident what's going on."
One of those projects, INVEST South/West, was an "epic fail," according to Napolitano.
According to the city, $250 million in taxpayer funds were allocated for that project, which began in 2019, in an attempt to revitalize southwest Chicago in the hopes of luring businesses to the area.
"INVEST South/West is one of the biggest epic fails that they've had," Napolitano said. "Instead of investing in just one neighborhood, in one area, why don't we make the entire city safe by investing in our police force and the safety of our city, so that investors on a larger scale want to come to all of Chicago, not just specific neighborhoods? They refuse to do that."
[American Liberty] Suppose the United States could raise trillions of dollars without raising a single tax rate, without printing another dollar of inflationary debt, and without expanding the federal government by an inch. Would we do it? Of course, we should. But this is Washington, where simplicity is suspicious, and ideas that work too well are often met with raised eyebrows rather than applause. Enter the Gold Card program.
Conceived by Howard Lutnick and referred to with brash confidence as the "Trump Card," this program would allow vetted, law-abiding foreign nationals to purchase permanent U.S. residency for $5 million. In exchange, they receive the right to reside in America indefinitely, without citizenship, and without being subject to taxation on their global income—only income earned within the United States. The numbers, even with conservative estimates, are staggering: if just one million of the roughly 37 million non-American millionaires worldwide opt in, the program would generate $5 trillion in non-tax revenue.
Critics are already clutching their pearls, gasping at what they see as a commodification of American residency. But this misses the forest for the oak-paneled door. The United States, in embracing this program, would not be selling citizenship, votes, or influence—only access to live and spend legally within its borders. And it would do so not through coercion or redistribution, but through the voluntary transactions of the global wealthy, many of whom already maintain homes, assets, and philanthropic footprints within our shores.
Some will ask: Isn’t this unfair? Doesn’t it favor the wealthy? To which the answer is: certainly—and for good reason. A conservative approach to policy recognizes that not all inequality is injustice. A millionaire paying $5 million into the U.S. Treasury to receive a green card that excludes them from voting or receiving entitlements is not a corruption of democratic ideals; it is their affirmation. The program does not create freeloaders but funders—individuals who, by design, give more to America than they take. Unlike many forms of immigration that strain welfare systems, the Gold Card poses no such burden. In fact, it reverses the paradigm entirely.
[IsraelNationalNews] Recently, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced that there is a deep state in Israel. The term deep state refers to forces that work below the surface to control an ostensibly democratic country regardless of who wins the elections. The deep state, in its simplest sense, is comprised of a group of people who control the state apparatuses, forcing the state to act as it wishes by using mechanisms of the state such as the judicial system, control of state finances, or control of the security forces.
Thus, a group of unelected people who control the critical mechanisms of the state jointly determine the direction that the state will take and in effect run a shadow state that the public is often unaware of.
Is there in fact a deep state in Israel?
My opinion about the nature of the deep state in Israel has changed. In the past when I was asked about the subject, I answered that I don't think that there is a group of people who sit and think about how to overthrow the government, but that there are officials who have fallen in love with power and, as a worldview, believe that they are the state and that they should determine what will happen in it. This worldview permeated the rest of the bureaucracy and so I believed that there was a deep state, but one that didn’t have organized meetings and action plans.
Today, my answer is different. There IS an organized deep state, there ARE people who sit and think about how to rule the country, on which issues to fight and which not to fight. There IS an organized deep state in Israel and its members may be found in every locus of power. They do not try to hide it either.
What happens if someone tries to oppose the deep state? Then "war" is declared, war which may range from personal smears thrown against the person who tries to oppose it, in other instances, opening criminal investigations against him or her, violent armed arrests and incarceration.
Unfortunately, over the years there have been numerous examples of political investigations against people who the deep state did not like. A disturbing example relates to the recent arrest of senior police officers just because they did not cooperate with the Shin Bet (Israel’s internal security service, which on the other hand, does immeasurable life-saving and dangerous work to protect the country from Arab terror) in its campaign to magnify the so-called phenomenon of "Jewish terrorism". Jewish terrorisms is a marginal phenomenon that the heads of the Shin Bet are interested in exaggerating so that it can justify their struggle against the Jews living in Judea and Samaria and promote their support of the "two-state solution".
One of the senior police officers who ran afoul of the Shin Bet was the head of the Judea and Samaria Police District’s investigations and intelligence department, Commander Avishai Muallem. He presented data in the Knesset that showed that the vast majority of cases that were labelled "settler violence" were nothing of the sort.
The response of the Shin Bet was immediate. The Shin Bet contacted the Attorney General and asked her to order the opening of an investigation into Commander Muallem by the Department for Internal Police Investigations (DIPI), the department responsible for investigating the police abuse which is under the authority of the Attorney General.
More often, the DIPI, investigates those police officers who did not cooperate with and support the ideology of the Shin Bet. The Attorney General, in turn, makes sure that the police officers are arrested, as Commander Avishai Muallem was. His home was raided and he was only released to house arrest after spending four days in prison.
Similar tactics have been used for years to oppose Prime Minister Netanyahu and they serve to shed light on the Israeli deep state’s active participation with Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara against the government’s unanimous decision to dismiss the head of the Shin Bet, Ronen Bar. Baharav-Miara has a close personal relationship with Bar.
Ronen Bar is probably the person most responsible for Israel’s failure to stop the Hamas rampage on Oct. 7th. (He also admitted that the Shin Bet erred in deciding on the location of the hostages, ed.) By law, the head of the Shin Bet, currently Ronen Bar, is appointed by the prime minister, serves at his pleasure and is dismissed by the prime minister. A close and trusting relationship between the two is critical to the security of Israel. Prime Minister Netanyahu has said that this trusting relationship is not there.
However, hindering and deconstructing the government elected by one of the strongest majorities in the history of the state was deemed by Baharav-Miara and the deep state to be more important than dismissing Ronen Bar, and the Shin Bet has become an important component of the deep state. (If the head of the Secret Service is above the Prime Minister, we have a police state by definition, not a democracy, ed.)
A number of organizations, including opposition parties, appealed to the Supreme Court to rule against the dismissal, even though it is totally clear that the government has the authority to do so according to Israeli law. The Supreme Court, scandalously but not surprisingly, did not reject the appeals out of hand but froze the dismissal until a hearing could be held on the matter. The Attorney General, in direct contradiction to the law, submitted an opinion to the Supreme Court that the government is prohibited from firing Ronen Bar, denying the government’s legal authority and the government’s concern for the security of the state.
So what do we have here? An Attorney General, who is supposed to give legal advice to the government and who controls the government's legal system, has stated that the government is not allowed to function according to the law. She works together with the head of the Shin Bet who holds enormous power, and together they take steps against those who do not act according to their wishes, open investigations and arrest people in the fight to keep themselves in office and in power.
These are, unfortunately, just two examples among many that demonstrate the modus operandi of the deep state in Israel, a dangerous deep state that stops at nothing, including illegal arrests, to ensure that nothing happens against its will.
The deep state operates against the will and policies of the elected representatives of the people, the very definition of working to destroy democracy. At the same time, as the elected representatives legislate according to the promises and policies they campaigned and were elected for, the deep state representatives demonstrate and accuse them of destroying democracy.
[JustTheNews] "The U.S. faces a spectrum crisis, with long-term negative implications for U.S. economic growth. Rising demand on networks and constrained supply is pushing networks to their limit," the executive summary opened.
#2
No. We need more responsible use of the spectrum. I recently read some article about how someone would not use advance features on their washing machine because it required them to download an app, create an account, and micromanage the dish washer cycles via the app over wireless. Every new thing does not need to connect to wireless.
We cannot have prison planet without all our devices having spectrum and spying on us.
[Zero] Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong - a transplant surgeon-turned-biotech billionaire renowned for inventing the cancer drug Abraxane - has issued a startling warning in a new in-depth interview with Tucker Carlson.
Soon-Shiong, founder of ImmunityBio ($IBRX) and owner of the Los Angeles Times, claims that the COVID-19 pandemic, and the very vaccines developed to fight it, may be contributing to a global surge in "terrifyingly aggressive" cancers. In the nearly two-hour conversation, the Los Angeles Times owner leveraged his decades of clinical and scientific experience to outline why he suspects an unprecedented cancer epidemic is unfolding. This report examines Dr. Soon-Shiong’s background and assertions, the scientific responses for and against his claims, new data on post-COVID health trends, and the far-reaching implications if his alarming hypothesis proves true.
DR. SOON-SHIONG’S CLAIMS
Soon-Shiong is a veteran surgeon and immunologist who has spent a career studying the human immune system’s fight against cancer. He pioneered novel immunotherapies and even worked on a T-cell based COVID vaccine booster during the pandemic. In the interview, he draws on this background to voice deep concern over rising cancer cases, especially among younger people — something he describes as a "non-infectious pandemic" of cancer. He tells Carlson that in 50 years of medical practice, it was extraordinarily rare to see cancers like pancreatic tumors in children or young adults, yet recently such cases are appearing. For instance, Soon-Shiong was alarmed by seeing a 13-year-old with metastatic pancreatic cancer, a scenario virtually unheard of in his prior experience.
"I never saw pancreatic cancer in children... the greatest surprise to me was a 13-year-old with metastatic pancreatic cancer," Soon-Shiong told Carlson, adding that he's seen examples of very young patients (even children under 11 with colon cancer) and unusual surges in aggressive diseases like ovarian cancer in women in their 30s. These personal observations of more frequent, aggressive cancers in youth led him to probe what might have changed in recent years.
"We're clearly seeing an increase in certain types of cancer, like pancreatic cancer, ovarian cancer... colon cancer... in younger people."
— Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[IsraelNationalNews] Recently, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced that there is a 
