The Democratic National Committee today filed a lawsuit against the Russian government, Donald Trump's presidential campaign, and WikiLeaks, alleging the Trump campaign 'gleefully welcomed Russia's help.' Court papers describe a far-reaching conspiracy to disrupt the 2016 presidential campaign, and throw the election for Donald Trump through a complex and well-funded global disinformation campaign.

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Yesterday, I wrote about the way that tech-sector concentration was making it nearly impossible for Russia to block the encrypted messaging service Telegram: because Telegram can serve its traffic through giant cloud providers like Amazon, Russia can only block Telegram by blocking everyone else who uses Amazon. Read the rest

Russia's communications regulator says it has blocked IP addresses owned by Google and Amazon because Moscow claims the internet addresses are used by the Telegram messaging service that was banned by Putin's regime this week.

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The United States and Britain today accused Russia of launching a new wave of internet-based attacks targeting routers, firewalls and other computer networking equipment used by government agencies, businesses and critical infrastructure operators around the globe.

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Russian investigative journalist Maxim Borodin died in a hospital after falling from his fifth floor apartment in Yekaterinburg on Friday. Recently Borodin had been writing about the Syria-based activities of a Russian mercenary organization called the "Wagner Group." Officials say there is no sign of foul play, but one of Borodin's friends, Vyacheslav Bashkov, said that security personnel had surrounded his apartment the day before he fell.

From BBC:

Journalists in Russia have often been harassed or attacked in recent years for their work. On the same day that Maxim Borodin was found fatally injured, the editor of an official regional newspaper was assaulted in Yekaterinburg, reports say.

Much of Russia's media is controlled by the state and Russia is ranked 83rd out of 100 countries for press freedom by Freedom House.

One of Russia's best-known investigative reporters, Anna Politkovskaya, was shot dead in a lift at her block of flats in 2006. Politkovskaya exposed Russian human rights abuses in Chechnya.

Anna Politkovskaya's reports were highly critical of President Vladimir Putin Two years later, journalist Mikhail Beketov was left brain-damaged. He had highlighted corruption and fought against the planned destruction of the Khimki forest near Moscow to make way for a road. He died in 2013.

Oleg Kashin, was severely injured in an assault in Moscow in 2010. He had been reporting on protests against the Khimki forest highway.

Last year, well-known Russian radio presenter Tatyana Felgengauer was stabbed in the neck while at work at her radio station, Ekho Mosvky.

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A court filing in the case of President Donald Trump's lawyer Michael Cohen shows that prosecutors obtained “covert” search warrants on multiple email accounts belonging to Cohen. An early report says “Cohen is in fact performing little to no legal work,” according to sources, and “zero emails were exchanged with President Trump.”

If that's the case, attorney-client privilege doesn't apply.

According to all that is publicly known, Trump does not use email, personally. Others may read out the contents to him, or print out the messages. But he doesn't email.

Significant: In seeking the search warrants for Michael Cohen court docs say, the Government asserts concern "records could have been deleted" without the search of Michael Cohen's property.

— Shimon Prokupecz (@ShimonPro) April 13, 2018

FYI: they are therefore arguing attorney-client privilege does NOT apply. https://t.co/rO981OrAsw

— Jim Sciutto (@jimsciutto) April 13, 2018

Breaking: Court filing reveals prosecutors obtained “covert” search warrants on multiple email accounts of #MichaelCohen, showing “Cohen is in fact performing little to no legal work, and that zero emails were exchanged with President Trump."

— Jim Sciutto (@jimsciutto) April 13, 2018

Breaking: US Atty in NY argues #MichaelCohenRaid sought evidence of conduct “for which Cohen is under criminal investigation.” Court filing redacts what he is under investigation for. Filing responds to Cohen’s motion to restrain evidence collected.

— Jim Sciutto (@jimsciutto) April 13, 2018

Trump doesn't use email... https://t.co/HDJjWY4DfJ

— Natasha Bertrand (@NatashaBertrand) April 13, 2018

Judge: “how did you get that understanding?”Cohens lawyer: “discussions among the defense team about the case”Judge: “who on the defense team said there were thousands?!?...How do you as an officer of the court have basis to tell me there are thousands of documents?”😬

— Amber Jamieson (@ambiej) April 13, 2018

Just another Friday afternoon: Cohen search was separate from Mueller probe, prosecutors say https://t.co/pzaw3VuGMw via @bpolitics

— Joe Schneider (@joe_in_nyc) April 13, 2018

The government response to Michael Cohen’s motion to block review of the material seized during the search of his office https://t.co/5StphsLBxC

— Julian Sanchez (@normative) April 13, 2018

This is a remarkable list in any time, place or dimension.

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Reader recommended, and absolutely delightful, The Unbitten Elbow depicts the fervor and zelotry of the Soviet state as it rots from the brain to the heart.

Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky is another fantastic Soviet era writer of dystopic fiction. Folks in Russia were already living in the worst dystopia most Westerners could imagine. In The Unbitten Elbow, we see an old Russian proverb, that the elbow is always near but impossible to bite, tested by the strength of an entire nation.

Absurdity abounds in this 10-15 minute read.

The Unbitten Elbow by Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky via Amazon Read the rest

New Zealand set about expelling any Russians who might be spies, but couldn't find anyone who fit the profile. Apropos of nothing, there is a subreddit called "Maps Without New Zealand" dedicated to world maps that omit the island nation, as if the creator simply forgot that it existed or never knew in the first place. Read the rest

St Petersburg's Internet Research Agency -- AKA "The Troll Factory" -- is in the news since Robert Mueller indicted 13 of its employees, but it first came to public attention in 2013, when investigative reporters working for the independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta revealed that the agency was working to manipulate Russian public opinion in favor of Putin and the Kremlin and against opposition politicians by flooding Russian online discussions with thousands of "patriotic" posts made under a welter of pseudonyms. Read the rest

The military-grade nerve toxin attack on Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia may have left the victims with 'compromised mental capacity,' a British judge said on Thursday. It is unclear whether the former Russian double agent and his adult child will recover from being poisoned with what the UK says was a Russian chemical weapon known as 'Novichok.'

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After Vladimir Putin stole another Russian election, Trump placed an official call to the Kremlin; his national security advisors' briefing notes for the call included the all-caps instruction "DO NOT CONGRATULATE" -- naturally, Trump congratulated Putin. Read the rest

Special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation has issued a subpoena to the Trump Organization for an array of documents, including those related to contact with Russia.

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Sergei Skripal was convicted of spying by Russia in 2006.

Russia-made nerve agents, chemical weapons of war, were used to poison a former spy who was living in the United Kingdom, and his daughter. That is the determination of the intelligence agencies of Britain, said Prime Minister Theresa May today from London.

She says an inter-agency investigation found that the mysterious poisoning of Sergei Skripal, 66, and his daughter, Yulia, 33, is being treated as a political assassination by Russia on British soil.

Prime Minister May today said it was an “indiscriminate and reckless act against the United Kingdom.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin in public comments last week obliquely seemed to take responsibility, while not addressing the event directly. “Those who serve us with poison will eventually swallow it and poison themselves,” Putin said, as news of the ex-spy's poisoning first broke.

BREAKING: British PM May: "The government has concluded that it is highly likely that Russia was responsible" for nerve agent attack on Russian ex-spy. pic.twitter.com/gKjNEvam2u

— NBC News (@NBCNews) March 12, 2018

Russia is known for bold and cruel assassinations—-by chemical agents-- of citizens it identifies as traitors to the state. But the audaciousness of this attack, on an elderly man and his adult child in a sleepy small town, was notable.

This is sick. Remember, Kiselev works for Putin. https://t.co/tdCDBABhAz

— Michael McFaul (@McFaul) March 11, 2018

On MSNBC as the news broke this afternoon, U.S. Ambassador Michael McFaul said, “This is outrageous, They went to a town and poisond a pensioner in Salisbury, Hundreds of people were poisoned and injured. Read the rest

Donald Trump was so eager for Vladi­mir Putin to attend his 2013 Miss Universe pageant in Moscow, he personally wrote the Russian President a letter inviting him. Robert Mueller's investigative team somehow got a copy of the document. It is the first known communication that shows Trump trying to establish contact directly with Putin.

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Admiral Mike Rogers, America's Cyber Command chief, told lawmakers today that President Donald Trump and his administration have not granted him the 'authority to disrupt Russian election hacking operations where they originate.' Huh. Wonder why.

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When you try to buy online ads from Facebook's self-serve ad-auctioning platform, merely being the highest bidder isn't enough to guarantee that your ads will get through: Facebook multiplies your bid by a software-generated prediction about how responsive the audience will be to it, so the clickbaitier your ad is, the less it costs to place it. Read the rest

This week I found several stories by Anatoly Dneprov, shared free on the series of tubes we call the internet.

Anatoly Dneprov, a science teacher, wrote wonderful, fast-paced, and oh-so very representative of Russia science fiction in the 1950s and 1960s. Not only does Dneprov masterfully communicate the headspace of living in a dystopic society, but his ideas about self-replicating machines, 3D printing and number of other things-to-come are eerie to the point of disbelief.

The Purple Mummy is a fantastic story about first contact coming from someplace completely unexpected. In just a few pages, as these stories are short, Dneprov launches quite a few huge ideas, and brings the story to a conclusion that doesn't feel lacking. Advances in medicine, the birth of 3D printing, and some very Russian existentialism over an anti-Universe are all strung together in a way that makes more sense than it should.

I also enjoyed his short The Maxwell Equations.

Links are via the Internet Archive and offer all the e-versions you might want.

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