Just the day before yesterday, Hama was captured, and the city's traffic police are already operating normally.
The rebels are making a significant effort to show that life in Hama has returned to normal in the areas they have captured / liberated.
For the same reason, they announced that foreign consulates and embassies can continue operating without interference.
They reiterated this today, even after today's unusual incident involving UN forces (the issued an official statement declaring that international institutions must not be harmed - AA).
It is important for them to show that they can create a "new and improved Syria" that functions like any other state, in contrast to the corrupt and totalitarian state governed by the Ba'ath Party over the last 61 years, 54 of which were under the rule of the Assad family (first Hafez al-Assad, and later his son Bashar).
Just the day before yesterday, Hama was captured, and the city's traffic police are already operating normally.
The rebels are making a significant effort to show that life in Hama has returned to normal in the areas they have captured / liberated.
For the same reason, they announced that foreign consulates and embassies can continue operating without interference.
They reiterated this today, even after today's unusual incident involving UN forces (the issued an official statement declaring that international institutions must not be harmed - AA).
It is important for them to show that they can create a "new and improved Syria" that functions like any other state, in contrast to the corrupt and totalitarian state governed by the Ba'ath Party over the last 61 years, 54 of which were under the rule of the Assad family (first Hafez al-Assad, and later his son Bashar).
Now safely in France with his spouse and three of his children, Kliuchnikov scrolls through Telegram to learn about the devastation happening in his home country. Overall, extreme levels of fear in the market seems to have morphed into something more resembling concern. For example, the Cboe Volatility Index fell from its 2022 peak of 36, which it hit Monday, to around 30 on Friday, a sign of easing tensions. Meanwhile, while the price of WTI crude oil slipped from Sunday’s multiyear high $130 of barrel to $109 a pop. Markets have been expecting heavy restrictions on Russian oil, some of which the U.S. has already imposed, and that would reduce the global supply and bring about even more burdensome inflation. Telegram has become more interventionist over time, and has steadily increased its efforts to shut down these accounts. But this has also meant that the company has also engaged with lawmakers more generally, although it maintains that it doesn’t do so willingly. For instance, in September 2021, Telegram reportedly blocked a chat bot in support of (Putin critic) Alexei Navalny during Russia’s most recent parliamentary elections. Pavel Durov was quoted at the time saying that the company was obliged to follow a “legitimate” law of the land. He added that as Apple and Google both follow the law, to violate it would give both platforms a reason to boot the messenger from its stores. There was another possible development: Reuters also reported that Ukraine said that Belarus could soon join the invasion of Ukraine. However, the AFP, citing a Pentagon official, said the U.S. hasn’t yet seen evidence that Belarusian troops are in Ukraine. At the start of 2018, the company attempted to launch an Initial Coin Offering (ICO) which would enable it to enable payments (and earn the cash that comes from doing so). The initial signals were promising, especially given Telegram’s user base is already fairly crypto-savvy. It raised an initial tranche of cash – worth more than a billion dollars – to help develop the coin before opening sales to the public. Unfortunately, third-party sales of coins bought in those initial fundraising rounds raised the ire of the SEC, which brought the hammer down on the whole operation. In 2020, officials ordered Telegram to pay a fine of $18.5 million and hand back much of the cash that it had raised.
from fr
