701: Oatmeal

I'd pref not to have my real name mentioned. As Adam knows MrOil personally I'd prefer it if he could do this shoutout. This is a donation from a 10-10-10 Knight (The Sir Walter) As the official MrOil campaign manager I want to help spread the word about a dear friend being in need: MrOil has done more for the stream over the years than anyone else, and he now needs our help! Doctors can diagnose the cause of his excruciating pains, he's on 200Mg of morphine a day for well over a year now. Please help us give MrOil back to his family! Please mention the campaign url (and put in the shownotes if possible) http://www.gofundme.com/mroil

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Mon, 02 Mar 2015 21:06

The White House

Office of the Press Secretary

For Immediate Release

February 27, 2015

WOMEN'S HISTORY MONTH, 2015

- - - - - - -

BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

A PROCLAMATION

Throughout history, extraordinary women have fought tirelessly to broaden our democracy's reach and help perfect our Union. Through protest and activism, generations of women have appealed to the values at the heart of our Nation and fought to give meaning to the idea that we are all created equal. As today's women and girls reach for new heights, they stand on the shoulders of all those who have come before and carry forward their legacy of proud achievement. This month, we celebrate countless pioneering women and the victories they won, and we continue our work to build a society where our daughters have the same possibilities as our sons.

Courageous women have called not only for the absence of oppression, but for the presence of opportunity. They have demonstrated for justice, but also for jobs -- ones that promise equal pay for equal work. And they have marched for the right to vote not just so their voices would be heard, but so they could have a seat at the head of the table. With grit and resolve, they have fought to overcome discrimination and shatter glass ceilings, and after decades of slow, steady, and determined progress, they have widened the circle of opportunity for women and girls across our country.

Today, more women are their family's main breadwinner than ever before. Women are nearly half of our Nation's workers, and they are increasingly among the most skilled. At the same time, more than 60 percent of women with children under the age of 5 participate in the labor force. This increasing participation of women in our workforce has bolstered our economy and strengthened our families, and it has demonstrated that the policies that benefit women and working families benefit all of us.

But not all of the rules that govern our workplaces have caught up with this reality, and today, too many of the opportunities that our mothers and grandmothers fought for are going unrealized. That is why I am committed to tearing down the barriers to full and equal participation in our economy and society that still exist for too many women. All women deserve equal pay for equal work and a living wage; the Congress needs to raise the minimum wage and pass a law that ensures a woman is paid the same as a man for doing the same work. I continue to call for increased workplace flexibility and access to paid leave -- including paid sick leave -- so that hardworking Americans do not have to choose between being productive employees and responsible family members. And I have proposed a plan that would make quality child care available to every middle-class and low-income family in America with young children. These are not only women's issues -- they are family issues and national economic priorities.

We know that when women succeed, America succeeds. The strength of our economy rests on whether we make it possible for every citizen to contribute to our growth and prosperity. As we honor the many patriots who have shaped not only the destinies of other women, but also the direction of our history, let us resolve to build on their efforts in our own time. As a Nation, we must join our voices with the chorus of history and push forward with unyielding faith to forge a more equal society for all our daughters and granddaughters -- one where a woman's potential is limited only by the size of her dreams and the power of her imagination.

NOW, THEREFORE, I, BARACK OBAMA, President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim March 2015 as Women's History Month. I call upon all Americans to observe this month and to celebrate International Women's Day on March 8, 2015, with appropriate programs, ceremonies, and activities. I also invite all Americans to visit www.WomensHistoryMonth.gov to learn more about the generations of women who have left enduring imprints on our history.

IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this twenty-seventh day of February, in the year of our Lord two thousand fifteen, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and thirty-ninth.

BARACK OBAMA

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The White House

Office of the Press Secretary

For Immediate Release

February 27, 2015

NATIONAL CONSUMER PROTECTION WEEK, 2015

- - - - - - -

BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

A PROCLAMATION

As Americans, we believe that our destiny is written by us -- not for us -- and that ours is a country where hard work should pay off and responsibility should be rewarded. Through all of the challenges we have overcome and the grueling work required to bring our economy out of the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, we have held on to that promise. Yet each day, fraud, abuse, and theft threaten the economic well-being of individuals and families across our Nation who spend their lives striving to build a sense of security. During National Consumer Protection Week, we redouble our efforts to protect Americans from financial fraud and identity theft, and to ensure our economy gives every person a chance to succeed.

Over the past 6 years, my Administration has been committed to protecting the hard-earned money and privacy of our citizens. In today's digital age, we are more connected and do more online than ever before. Unfortunately, the very technologies that empower us to do great good can also be used to undermine us and inflict great harm. That is why my Administration is working to create a single, strong national standard so people know when their information has been stolen or misused, and why we are encouraging companies to equip consumers with their credit scores free of charge so they can quickly detect and deal with fraud. I also continue to call on the Congress to enact overdue cybersecurity legislation that will help protect Americans -- particularly by clarifying companies' obligations when sensitive data is breached.

As part of our BuySecure Initiative, the Federal Government is leading the way by transitioning to a more secure chip and PIN payment system -- because you should be able to visit our National Parks or use the Postal Service without risking your identity. Earlier this year, we convened the first-ever White House Summit on Cybersecurity and Consumer Protection, and we are taking new steps to assist the victims of identity theft. Furthermore, Americans who responsibly prepare for retirement should not be taken advantage of, so we are proposing a new rule to require retirement advisors to put their clients' financial interests before their own. We have also introduced a discussion draft of legislation for a new Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights to safeguard basic principles that both defend personal privacy and allow industry to keep innovating.

Consumers can also take steps to protect themselves and their families. Predatory and deceptive lending practices, identity theft, financial scams, and fraud can cause lasting devastation for victims. By empowering ourselves with information about our rights and the resources available to us, we can be prepared and make better-informed decisions. I encourage everyone to visit www.NCPW.gov and www.IdentityTheft.gov to learn more about the risks and vulnerabilities we all face, as well as the steps we can take to defend ourselves and the tools and support available to help save time, money, and heartache.

When we, as Americans, put our minds together and our shoulders to the wheel, we can accomplish anything. The United States created the Internet and a new age of information -- but we also pioneered the Bill of Rights, and we believe individuals have a sphere of privacy around them that should not be breached. This week, let us recommit to safeguarding consumers, and let us strive to grow our economy in ways that preserve the values we hold dear so that each of us has the power to translate our dreams into reality.

NOW, THEREFORE, I, BARACK OBAMA, President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim March 1 through March 7, 2015, as National Consumer Protection Week. I call upon government officials, industry leaders, and advocates across the Nation to share information about consumer protection and provide our citizens with information about their rights as consumers.

IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this twenty-seventh day of February, in the year of our Lord two thousand fifteen, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and thirty-ninth.

BARACK OBAMA

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The White House

Office of the Press Secretary

For Immediate Release

February 27, 2015

NATIONAL COLORECTAL CANCER AWARENESS MONTH, 2015

- - - - - - -

BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

A PROCLAMATION

Colorectal cancer is the second leading cause of cancer deaths in the United States. This year, more than 130,000 Americans will be diagnosed with this cancer, and nearly 50,000 will die from it. Friends and loved ones will be taken from us too soon by this disease, and the pain of cancer will touch too many families. During National Colorectal Cancer Awareness Month, we recognize all those who have been affected by this disease, and we renew our commitment to a lifesaving endeavor: raising awareness of colorectal cancer and the importance of screening.

Colorectal cancer is often preventable, and early detection and treatment are critical. However, this disease does not always cause symptoms, and most colorectal cancer occurs in individuals with no family history. That is why it is crucial for people of all ages to discuss colorectal cancer with their health care providers and understand the recommendations for, and benefits of, screening. And, people between ages 50 and 75 should get regular screenings. Not only can testing save your life, it can also provide peace of mind to your family and loved ones. I encourage Americans to learn more about the risk factors and symptoms of colorectal cancer by visiting www.Cancer.gov.

Every American deserves health security, and that is why I fought so hard for the Affordable Care Act. Under the law, more families have access to quality, affordable health care, and most insurance plans are required to cover recommended preventive services without copays, including colorectal cancer screenings for adults over 50. Earlier this year, I also announced the Precision Medicine Initiative to accelerate the design and testing of treatments tailored to individual patients. This bold new effort aims to revolutionize how our Nation fights disease, and it brings us closer to curing cancer.

Even as we continue the urgent work of improving care, we cannot fill the void left in the lives of those who know the true anguish of colorectal cancer. This month, we honor the loved ones we have lost to this disease and those who battle it today. Let us stand with their families and all who are committed to advancing the fight against cancer through research, advocacy, and quality care. Together, we can build a future free from cancer in all its forms.

NOW, THEREFORE, I, BARACK OBAMA, President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim March 2015 as National Colorectal Cancer Awareness Month. I encourage all citizens, government agencies,

private businesses, non-profit organizations, and other groups to join in activities that will increase awareness and prevention of colorectal cancer.

IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this twenty-seventh day of February, in the year of our Lord two thousand fifteen, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and thirty-ninth.

BARACK OBAMA

NDAA and Overturning of Smith-Mundt Act

The National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2013 (NDAA) allows for materials produced by the State Department and the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) to be released within U.S. borders and strikes down a long-time ban on the dissemination of such material in the country.[14][15][16]

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Propaganda in the United States is propaganda spread by government and media entities within the United States. Propaganda is information, ideas, or rumors deliberately spread widely to influence opinions. Propaganda is not only in advertising; it is also in radio, newspaper, posters, books, and anything else that might be sent out to the widespread public.

Domestic[edit]World War I[edit]The first large-scale use of propaganda by the U.S. government came during World War I. The government enlisted the help of citizens and children to help promote war bonds and stamps to help stimulate the economy. To keep the prices of war supplies down, the U.S. government produced posters that encouraged people to reduce waste and grow their own vegetables in "victory gardens." The public skepticism that was generated by the heavy-handed tactics of the Committee on Public Information would lead the postwar government to officially abandon the use of propaganda.[1]

World War II[edit]During World War II the U.S. officially had no propaganda, but the Roosevelt government used means to circumvent this official line. One such propaganda tool was the publicly owned but government funded Writers' War Board (WWB). The activities of the WWB were so extensive that it has been called the "greatest propaganda machine in history".[1]Why We Fight is a famous series of US government propaganda films made to justify US involvement in World War II.

In 1944 (lasting until 1948) prominent US policy makers launched a domestic propaganda campaign aimed at convincing the U.S. public to agree to a harsh peace for the German people, for example by removing the common view of the German people and the Nazi party as separate entities.[2] The core in this campaign was the Writers' War Board which was closely associated with the Roosevelt administration.[2]

Another means was the United States Office of War Information that Roosevelt established in June 1942, whose mandate was to promote understanding of the war policies under the director Elmer Davies. It dealt with posters, press, movies, exhibitions, and produced often slanted material conforming to US wartime purposes. Other large and influential non-governmental organizations during the war and immediate post war period were the Society for the Prevention of World War III and the Council on Books in Wartime.

Cold War[edit]During the Cold War, the U.S. government produced vast amounts of propaganda against communism and the Soviet bloc. Much of this propaganda was directed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation under J. Edgar Hoover, who himself wrote the anti-communist tract Masters of Deceit. The FBI's COINTELPRO arm solicited journalists to produce fake news items discrediting communists and affiliated groups, such as H. Bruce Franklin and the Venceremos Organization.

War on Drugs[edit]The National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign, originally established by the National Narcotics Leadership Act of 1988,[3][4] but now conducted by the Office of National Drug Control Policy under the Drug-Free Media Campaign Act of 1998,[5] is a domestic propaganda campaign designed to "influence the attitudes of the public and the news media with respect to drug abuse" and for "reducing and preventing drug abuse among young people in the United States".[6][7] The Media Campaign cooperates with the Partnership for a Drug-Free America and other government and non-government organizations.[8]

Iraq War[edit]In early 2002, the U.S. Department of Defense launched an information operation, colloquially referred to as the Pentagon military analyst program.[9] The goal of the operation is "to spread the administrations's talking points on Iraq by briefing ... retired commanders for network and cable television appearances," where they have been presented as independent analysts.[10] On 22 May 2008, after this program was revealed in the New York Times, the House passed an amendment that would make permanent a domestic propaganda ban that until now has been enacted annually in the military authorization bill.[11]

The Shared values initiative was a public relations campaign that was intended to sell a "new" America to Muslims around the world by showing that American Muslims were living happily and freely, without persecution, in post-9/11 America.[12] Funded by the United States Department of State, the campaign created a public relations front group known as Council of American Muslims for Understanding (CAMU). The campaign was divided in phases; the first of which consisted of five mini-documentaries for television, radio, and print with shared values messages for key Muslim countries.[13]

NDAA and Overturning of Smith-Mundt Act[edit]The National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2013 (NDAA) allows for materials produced by the State Department and the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) to be released within U.S. borders and strikes down a long-time ban on the dissemination of such material in the country.[14][15][16]

Ad Council[edit]The Ad Council, an American non-profit organization that distributes public service announcements on behalf of various private and federal government agency sponsors, has been labeled as "little more than a domestic propaganda arm of the federal government" given the Ad Council's historically close collaboration with the President of the United States and the federal government.[17]

International[edit]Through several international broadcasting operations, the US disseminates American cultural information, official positions on international affairs, and daily summaries of international news. These operations fall under the International Broadcasting Bureau, the successor of the United States Information Agency, established in 1953. IBB's operations include Voice of America, Radio Liberty, Alhurra and other programs. They broadcast mainly to countries where the United States finds that information about international events is limited, either due to poor infrastructure or government censorship. The Smith-Mundt Act prohibits the Voice of America from disseminating information to US citizens that was produced specifically for a foreign audience.

During the Cold War the US ran covert propaganda campaigns in countries that appeared likely to become Soviet satellites, such as Italy, Afghanistan, and Chile.

Recently The Pentagon announced the creation of a new unit aimed at spreading propaganda about supposedly "inaccurate" stories being spread about the Iraq War. These "inaccuracies" have been blamed on the enemy trying to decrease support for the war. Donald Rumsfeld has been quoted as saying these stories are something that keeps him up at night.[18]

Psychological operations[edit]The US military defines psychological operations, or PSYOP, as:

planned operations to convey selected information and indicators to foreign audiences to influence the emotions, motives, objective reasoning, and ultimately the behavior of foreign governments, organizations, groups, and individuals.[19]

The Smith-Mundt Act, adopted in 1948, explicitly forbids information and psychological operations aimed at the US public.[20][21][22] Nevertheless, the current easy access to news and information from around the globe, makes it difficult to guarantee PSYOP programs do not reach the US public. Or, in the words of Army Col. James A. Treadwell, who commanded the U.S. military psyops unit in Iraq in 2003, in the Washington Post:

There's always going to be a certain amount of bleed-over with the global information environment.[23]

Agence France Presse reported on U.S. propaganda campaigns that:

The Pentagon acknowledged in a newly declassified document that the US public is increasingly exposed to propaganda disseminated overseas in psychological operations.[24]

Former US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld approved the document referred to, which is titled "Information Operations Roadmap." [22][24] The document acknowledges the Smith-Mundt Act, but fails to offer any way of limiting the effect PSYOP programs have on domestic audiences.[20][21][25]

Several incidents in 2003 were documented by Sam Gardiner, a retired Air Force colonel, which he saw as information-warfare campaigns that were intended for "foreign populations and the American public." Truth from These Podia,[26] as the treatise was called, reported that the way the Iraq war was fought resembled a political campaign, stressing the message instead of the truth.[22]

See also[edit]References[edit]^ abThomas Howell, The Writers' War Board: U.S. Domestic Propaganda in World War II, Historian, Volume 59 Issue 4, Pages 795 - 813^ abSteven Casey, (2005), The Campaign to sell a harsh peace for Germany to the American public, 1944 - 1948, [online]. London: LSE Research Online. [Available online at http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/archive/00000736] Originally published in History, 90 (297). pp. 62-92 (2005) Blackwell Publishing^National Narcotics Leadership Act of 1988 of the Anti''Drug Abuse Act of 1988, Pub.L. 100''701, 102 Stat. 4181, enacted November 18, 1988^Gamboa, Anthony H. (January 4, 2005), B-303495, Office of National Drug Control Policy '-- Video News Release, Government Accountability Office, footnote 6, page 3 ^Drug-Free Media Campaign Act of 1998 (Omnibus Consolidated and Emergency Supplemental Appropriations Act, 1999), Pub.L. 105''277, 112 Stat. 268, enacted October 21, 1998^Gamboa, Anthony H. (January 4, 2005), B-303495, Office of National Drug Control Policy '-- Video News Release, Government Accountability Office, pp. 9''10 ^Drug-Free Media Campaign Act of 1998 of the Omnibus Consolidated and Emergency Supplemental Appropriations Act, 1999, Pub.L. 105''277, 112 Stat. 268, enacted October 21, 1998^Office of National Drug Control Policy Reauthorization Act of 2006, Pub.L. 109''469, 120 Stat. 3501, enacted December 29, 2006, codified at 21 U.S.C. § 1708^Barstow, David (2008-04-20). "Message Machine: Behind Analysts, the Pentagon's Hidden Hand". New York Times. ^Sessions, David (2008-04-20). "Onward T.V. Soldiers: The New York Times exposes a multi-armed Pentagon message machine". Slate. ^Barstow, David (2008-05-24). "2 Inquiries Set on Pentagon Publicity Effort". New York Times. ^Rampton, Sheldon (October 17, 2007). "Shared Values Revisited". Center for Media and Democracy. ^"U.S. Reaches Out to Muslim World with Shared Values Initiative". America.gov. January 16, 2003.

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Wed, 04 Mar 2015 20:33

(CNN)A Justice Department civil rights investigation has concluded that the Ferguson Police Department and the city's municipal court engaged in a "pattern and practice" of discrimination against African-Americans, targeting them disproportionately for traffic stops, use of force, and jail sentences, according to a U.S. law enforcement official briefed on the investigation.

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Thu, 05 Mar 2015 15:55

Het botert niet tussen het team dat het strafrechtelijk onderzoek doet naar de ramp met vlucht MH17 en de inlichtingendienst AIVD. Politie en justitie hebben een goed beeld van de gebeurtenissen die hebben geleid tot de vliegramp, maar betrokkenen zeggen tegen de NOS dat de AIVD informatie achterhoudt.

Wat weten we van het strafrechtelijk onderzoek? Het onderzoek heeft eigenlijk twee doelen: het vinden van de waarheid en de strafrechtelijke vervolging van de verantwoordelijken. Uit gesprekken met betrokkenen bij het onderzoek komt het volgende beeld naar voren.

Het eerste doel, het vinden van de waarheid, wat is er gebeurd en wie is daar verantwoordelijk voor, wordt gehaald. Het is eigenlijk een journalistiek onderzoek op basis van onder meer foto's, filmpjes en getuigenverklaringen. Het Openbaar Ministerie heeft heel veel materiaal, meer dan een miljoen documenten, filmpjes en foto's. Om dat allemaal te analyseren is er recent weer extra capaciteit aan het onderzoeksteam toegevoegd.

Hoe is de samenwerking tussen politie, OM en de inlichtingendiensten? Die verloopt niet soepel, vertellen bronnen rond het onderzoek. Met name de houding van de inlichtingendienst AIVD roept bij politie en sommige mensen van het OM veel ergernis op. Het OM en de politie willen opsporen en hebben daarvoor informatie van de AIVD nodig. Maar de geheime dienst frustreert het onderzoek in de ogen van een deel van het OM en politie continu, zich beroepend op wetgeving en regels.

Dat de AIVD informatie achterhoudt, bemoeilijkt het onderzoek erg, aldus de bronnen. Binnen het onderzoeksteam vraagt men zich af of hoe gemotiveerd de politiek echt is om de daders voor de rechter te brengen. Betrokkenen denken steeds meer dat de politiek er alle belang bij heeft dat er geen strafzaak tegen de verantwoordelijken komt.

Wat hebben politie en OM tot nu toe gevonden? De onderzoeksresultaten wijzen in (C)(C)n richting. De MH17 is neergehaald door een Buk-raket, die vanaf een Russische installatie is afgevuurd door zeer waarschijnlijk Russische militairen. De Buk-installatie is kort voor de ramp van Rusland naar Oekra¯ne vervoerd. Dat blijkt onder meer uit verschillende filmpjes die op internet zijn opgedoken. Maar Nederlandse rechercheurs hebben in Oekra¯ne ook met ooggetuigen gesproken.

Betekent dat ook dat de daders vervolgd gaan worden? Het is maar de vraag of de zoektocht naar de waarheid ook hard genoeg bewijs oplevert voor een succesvolle strafrechtelijke vervolging. Want dan moet van iedere verdachte vast komen te staan wat diens individuele betrokkenheid is geweest.

En los daarvan: het is de vraag waar de bemanning van de Buk-installatie is gebleven. In het onderzoeksteam wordt er rekening mee gehouden dat de militairen onvindbaar zijn geworden doordat ze een nieuwe identiteit hebben gekregen of mogelijk zelfs zijn geliquideerd, in een poging van de Russische geheime dienst om alle sporen die wijzen op betrokkenheid van Rusland te wissen.

Probeert Rusland het onderzoek te be¯nvloeden?Er zijn in ieder geval sterke aanwijzingen dat de Russische geheime dienst nog steeds probeert in te breken in de computersystemen van politie en OM. Smartphones en laptops die in de Oekra¯ne gebruikt zijn en die bijvoorbeeld via lokale telefoonnetwerken contact hebben gehad, zijn vernietigd. Want de apparaten kunnen makkelijk besmet zijn met spionagesoftware. In enkele gevallen zijn uit voorzorg ook thuisnetwerken van politiemensen weggehaald omdat ze mogelijk besmet waren.

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Thu, 05 Mar 2015 06:25

From:

To:

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Thu, 05 Mar 2015 06:21

TIMEPoliticsLobbyingUkrainian Employer of Joe Biden's Son Hires a D.C. LobbyistPablo Martinez Monsivais'--APHunter Biden waits for the start of the his father's, Vice President Joe Biden's, debate at Centre College in Danville, Ky. on Oct. 11, 2012.An obscure private Ukrainian natural gas company has been hiring friends and family of Secretary of State John Kerry and Vice President Joe Biden, while seeking to influence CongressWhen Vice President Joe Biden's son, R. Hunter Biden, joined the board of a private Ukrainian oil and natural gas company this spring, he explained his new job as a legal one, disconnected from any effort to influence the Obama Administration. In a press release, the younger Biden boasted of his abilities on issues like improving corporate transparency.

But the company, Burisma Holdings, did not disclose at the time the scope of their plans for influencing the U.S. government. Recently released documents show that Biden's hiring coincided with the launch of a new effort to lobby members of Congress about the role of the company in Ukraine and the country's quest for energy independence.

David Leiter, a former Senate chief of staff to Secretary of State John Kerry, signed on to work as a lobbyist for Burisma on May 20, 2014, about a week after Biden announced he was joining the company, according to lobbying disclosures filed this month.

Leiter's involvement in the firm rounds out a power-packed team of politically-connected Americans that also includes a second new board member, Devon Archer, a Democratic bundler and former adviser to John Kerry's 2004 presidential campaign. Both Archer and Hunter Biden have worked as business partners with Kerry's son-in-law, Christopher Heinz, the founding partner of Rosemont Capital, a private-equity company.

Biden's office referred questions to a Burisma spokesman, who says Biden has not been involved in contacting members of Congress or the Obama Administration about the company. ''His role, like all board members, is to provide strategic guidance to Burisma,'' said Lawrence Pacheco, who works in Washington D.C. for FTI Consulting, a communications firm that is also employed by Burisma.

But Burisma is contacting officials in Washington through Leiter's lobbying firm, ML Strategies. ''ML Strategies is working with Burisma to educate U.S. officials about the company and its role in creating a stable and secure energy future for Ukraine, not any specific policy or legislation,'' Pacheco said. ''Burisma supports energy independence, economic growth, national sovereignty and regional stability and will engage as needed to encourage efforts to further these goals.''

Some Democratic senators, meanwhile, have been working to secure more U.S. funding, either directly or through entities like the Export-Import Bank, to improve Ukraine's domestic energy production potential. On June 27, Sen. Edward Markey of Massachusetts, wrote President Obama a letter with three other Democratic senators calling for increased aid. ''We should leverage the full resources and expertise of the U.S. government to assist Ukraine in improving its energy efficiency, increasing its domestic production, and reforming its energy markets,'' wrote Markey, who has also proposed legislation with about $40 million in additional aide for Ukranian energy development.

Markey's letter was trumpeted by Burisma Holdings as a commendable move towards securing the future security of Ukraine. ''Burisma Holdings today applauded the range of U.S. legislative support for development of Ukraine's broad and untapped resources and an increase in transparency and good governance,'' the company said in a statement on the day the letter was released.

An aide in Markey's office told TIME that Leiter, Biden and Archer were not part of discussions that led to the drafting of the letter or the legislation. Staff for the other senators who signed the letter, Ron Wyden of Oregon, Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire and Christopher Murphy of Connecticut, also said they did not have contact with Leiter, who could not be reached for comment.

Burisma Holdings is owned by a Cypriot holding firm, Brociti Investments Limited, which is controlled Nikolai Zlochevskyi, a former Ukranian government minister, according to Cypriot records. It controls government development licenses in three regions of Ukraine, and sells to industrial customers in the country, according to the company.

By taking a job with Burisma, the younger Biden has put himself in the middle of a struggle between the United States and Russia, which currently provides the bulk of the natural gas supplies to Ukraine. Both the White House and European nations have recently emphasized the strategic interest in making Ukraine less dependent on Russia.

Since Hunter Biden took the new job, his father, Vice President Joe Biden, has continued to serve as the Obama Administration's point person on Ukraine, traveling to the country as recently as June for the inauguration of President Petro Poroshenko and talking to Poroshenko by phone at least five times in the last month.

''I've spent a considerable amount of time in the last two months in Ukraine,'' the elder Biden said on June 19. ''You see what the Russians are doing relative to using gas as a foreign policy tool to try to alter behavior. And so it's '-- around the world in varying degrees it's of significant consequence in terms of security, both economic and political security of a nation.''

There is no legal barrier to prohibit Hunter Biden from working with a company that can be impacted by the policy decisions of his father, and the White House has maintained that the Vice President has not been influenced by his son's employment. ''The Vice President does not endorse any particular company and has no involvement with this company,'' said his spokeswoman Kendra Barkoff.

But Hunter Biden's new job, along with the association with Burisma of other politically-connected businessmen, has raised concerns among some Ukraine watchers. ''It's unhelpful when we are trying to get across to the Ukrainians to clean up corruption and special deals for special folks,'' said Ed Chow, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a U.S. think tank. ''It maybe sends the wrong message that Westerners are just hypocritical.''

Additional reporting by Alex Rogers and Zeke Miller/Washington

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Thu, 05 Mar 2015 06:21

Robert Hunter Biden (born February 4, 1970) is the second son of U.S. Vice PresidentJoe Biden and stepson of Second Lady of the United StatesJill Biden. He is a partner at Rosemont Seneca Partners, LLC and is Counsel to Boies, Schiller, Flexner, LLP, a New York based-law firm.[3] His appointment in 2014 to the board of the Ukrainian energy company Burisma Holdings has attracted controversy.[4][5][6]

In late 2012, Biden was selected for limited-duty service in the U.S. Navy Reserve. Commissioned as an ensign in the public affairs branch in 2013, he was discharged less than one year later because of cocaine use.[7]

§Early life and education[edit]Biden was born in Wilmington, Delaware, the youngest son of former U.S. Senator and current Vice President Joe Biden, and his first wife, Neilia Hunter. His mother and younger sister, Naomi Christina Biden, were killed in an automobile accident in 1972,[8][9] in which he and his brother, Beau, were seriously injured. He and his brother encouraged his father to marry again,[10] and Jill Jacobs became Hunter's and Beau's stepmother in 1977. His half-sister Ashley was born in 1981.

Biden received a bachelor's degree from Georgetown University; and a Juris Doctor from Yale Law School.[11] After graduating from college Hunter Biden was a member of the Jesuit Volunteer Corps Northwest,[2] where he met his wife.[1]

§Early positions[edit]From 2001-2008, Biden was a founding partner of Oldaker, Biden, and Belair, LLP, a Washington DC-based law firm.[12] He also served as a partner and board member of the mergers and acquisitions firm Eudora Global. Biden was chief executive officer, and later chairman, of the fund of hedge funds PARADIGM Global Advisors, founded in 1991 by Dr. James Park. At MBNA, a major US bank, Biden was employed as a senior vice president.[11] Following that, Biden was appointed by Bill Clinton to serve in the United States Department of Commerce[11] under Secretaries Norman Mineta and William M. Daley. He was director of ecommerce policy issues in the Department of Commerce.[11]

§U.S. Naval Reserve[edit]In May 2013, Biden was selected as a direct commission officer in the U.S. Naval Reserve, a program that allows civilians with no prior service to receive a limited duty officer's commission after attending a two-week class covering topics such as military history, etiquette, and drill and ceremony, in lieu of boot camp. Because Biden was past the cut-off age for the program he needed a waiver. Biden received a second waiver because of a past drug-related incident.[13][14][15][16] One month after commissioning, Biden tested positive for cocaine use and was discharged from the Navy reserve in February 2014.[17]

News of Biden's discharge was not made public and was not first reported until October 2014, after it was revealed to the Wall Street Journal by a Navy official who spoke to the newspaper on condition of anonymity.[17] In a statement released by his attorney, Biden later acknowledged his discharge.[18] A staff editorial in Biden's hometown newspaper, the News Journal, following the incident described the process by which Biden came to receive the various waivers that allowed him initial entry into the Navy as "soft corruption."[19]

§Burisma Holdings[edit]On April 18, 2014, Burisma Holdings announced Biden's appointment to the board of directors in a press release.[20] Burisma is the largest non-governmental gas producer in Ukraine, it was incorporated in 2006 and is based in Limassol, Cyprus - a European tax haven.[21][22] Burisma holds licenses covering the Dnieper-Donets Basin, the Carpathian and Azov-Kuban basins and has considerable reserves and production capability.[23] Burisma was founded by Mykola Zlochevsky, the former minister of energy minister and deputy national security council chair under Viktor Yanukovych, in 2006.[24] Burisma Holdings is owned and controlled by the Ukrainian businessman Nikolay Zlochevskyi.[25][26] Joining Hunter Biden on the Burisma Board of Directors is Aleksander Kwaśniewski, named in January.[27] Kwaśniewski was President of the Republic of Poland from 1995 to 2005 during the G. W. Bush presidency.[28] Chairman of Burisma is the Wall Street former Merrill Lynch investment banker Alan Apter. Finally, Burisma also at the same time named to the board Devon Archer, Hunter Biden's partner at the US investment firm, Rosemont Seneca Partners, and a manager of the family wealth fund of Secretary of State John Kerry's wife Theresa Heinz Kerry, widow of H. John Heinz III. Archer also sits on the board of the family's Howard J. Heinz trust. So with these two board appointments in April, Burisma gained the son of the Vice President of the United States and the financial adviser to the family of the Secretary of State. In April 2014, Burisma Holdings appointed Vadym Pozharskyi -- who used to be a GEF Focal point in Ukraine as well as the Deputy Head of the State Environmental Investment Agency of Ukraine-- for a position of an Advisor to the Board of directors.

Hunter Biden's father Joe Biden traveled to Kiev on April 22, 2014 and urged the Ukraine government "... to reduce its dependence on Russia for supplies of natural gas."[29] And he discussed how the United States could help provide technical expertise for expanding domestic production of natural gas.[30] Some accuse the United States of maneuvering the Ukraine situation so that Western oil companies have unfettered access to shale gas (from "fracking") and to drill all across the Ukraine. With the revelations that Hunter Biden serves on the board of the Ukrainian company Burisma, many raised concerns about Hunter Biden's interests conflicting with official US government positions. The White House has dismissed nepotism charges against Biden's son.[31][32] But the director of the US-Ukraine Business Council Morgan Williams pointed to an "American tradition that frowns on close family members of government working for organizations with business links to active politics". Williams stated Biden appears to have violated this unwritten principle: "... when you're trying to keep the political sector separate from the business sector, and reduce corruption, then it's not just about holding down corruption, it's also the appearance."[33]

§Memberships[edit]Biden is a member of the bar in the state of Connecticut, the District of Columbia, the U.S. Supreme Court, and the U.S. Court of Federal Claims.

Biden also serves as a member of numerous boards. He is currently Chairman of the Board of the World Food Program USA.[3][34][35] In addition to holding directorships on the Boards of the U.S. Global Leadership Coalition, The Truman National Security Project and the Center for National Policy, he sits on the Chairman's Advisory Board for the National Democratic Institute (NDI). NDI is a project of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED). Biden is a member of the President's Advisory board of the Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Washington; and a member of the board of the Israel Idonije Foundation.

Biden is a former board member of several entities. On May 16, 2006, Biden was nominated by President George W. Bush to the board of directors of Amtrak.[1] He was confirmed unanimously on July 26, 2006 by the United States Senate for a term of five years, and was the vice-chair of the board until January 29, 2009.[36] Biden served as Honorary Co-Chair of the 2008 Obama-Biden Inaugural Committee and is a former board member of the CSIS Executive Council on Development and the National Prostate Cancer Coalition.

§Personal life[edit]Biden is married to Kathleen,[1] and they have three daughters,[1] Naomi, Finnegan, and Maisy.[3]

^ abcdeAll in the family: Hunter Biden, The Iowa Independent, Washington, DC: The American Independent News Network, 23 November 2007, Waddington, L., Retrieved 6 May 2014.^ abHunter Biden quits lobbyist work, ABC.com, New York, NY: ABC News Internet Ventures, 13 September 2008, Hoppock, J., Retrieved 7 May 2014.^ abcFriends of the World Food Program Board of Directors, World Food Program USA, Washington, DC: World Food Program USA, Undated.^http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/06/08/ukrainian-energy-firm-hires-biden-son-as-lawyer/^http://online.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702303851804579560542284706288^http://time.com/2964493/ukraine-joe-biden-son-hunter-burisma/^http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/10/17/us-biden-navy-idUSKCN0I604120141017^Kevin Connolly (August 28, 2008). "Biden shows more bark than bite". BBC News. Retrieved 7 May 2014. ^John M. Broder (August 28, 2008). "Biden Opens New Phase With Attack on McCain". The New York Times. Retrieved 7 May 2014. ^Seelye, Katharine Q. (2008-08-24). "Jill Biden Heads Toward Life in the Spotlight". The New York Times. Archived from the original on August 28, 2008. Retrieved 2008-08-25. ^ abcdStrasburg, Jenny; Weidlich, Thorn (January 31, 2007). "Lobbyist Hunter Biden is sued on Paradigm purchase (Update1)". Bloomberg. Retrieved 7 May 2014. ^Executive profile: Robert Hunter BidenBloomberg BusinessWeek, New York, NY: Bloomberg L.P., Undated.^Cooper, Helene (16 October 2014). "Biden's Son 'Embarrassed' Over Navy Ouster". New York Times. Retrieved 17 October 2014. ^C. Baldor, Lolita (9 November 2012). "VP Biden's son joins Navy Reserve". Navy Times. Retrieved 16 October 2014. ^"Hunter Biden, VP Biden's son, to be commissioned in Navy Reserves". NBC News. 9 November 2012. Retrieved 16 October 2014. ^Barnes, Julian (17 October 2014). "Biden's Son Hunter Discharged From Navy Reserve After Failing Cocaine Test". Wall Street Journal. Retrieved 17 October 2014. ^ ab"US Navy expelled Vice-President Biden's son after positive cocaine test". South China Morning Post. 17 October 2014. Retrieved 17 October 2014. ^Bradner, Erin (16 October 2014). "Biden's son discharged from Navy after testing positive for cocaine". CNN. Retrieved 16 October 2014. ^"Hunter Biden's special exceptions raise questions". The News Journal. 17 October 2014. Retrieved 18 October 2014. ^Biden's Son, Polish Ex-President Quietly Sign On To Ukrainian Gas Company, Buzzfeed, 14 May 2014^"Hunter Biden [son of US VP Joe Biden] joins the team of Burisma Holdings [Ukraine gas producer]" (Press release). Burisma Holdings. May 12, 2014. Retrieved May 13, 2014. ^Vice President Joe Biden's son joins Ukraine gas company, BBC News (14 May 2014)^Another Biden Has Waded Into the Ukraine Crisis - The vice president's son has taken a new role in the country's energy industry, National Journal, 13 May 2014^http://investing.businessweek.com/research/stocks/private/snapshot.asp?privcapId=59556166^http://energy.tdprofiti.com/ukrainian-energy-firm-hires-bidens-son-as-lawyer.html^http://www.mercurynews.com/politics-government/ci_25918984/ukrainian-energy-firm-hires-biden-son-lawyer^(Ukrainian)Former President of Poland also has a position in the oil and gas holding deputy Kliuiev, Ukrayinska Pravda (14 May 2014)^Biden's Son, Kerry Family Friend Join Ukrainian Gas Producer's Board - Ukraine's Burisma Holdings Is Controlled by Former Energy Official Under Yanukovych, The Wall Street Journal, 14 May 2014^Biden Offers Strong Support to Ukraine and Issues a Sharp Rebuke to Russia, The New York Times, 22. April 2014^Biden arrives in Ukraine to show U.S. support as crisis with Russia continues, The Washington Post, May 14, 2014^Hunter Biden's new job at a Ukrainian gas company is a problem for U.S. soft power, The Washington Post, 14 May 2014^White House nixes Biden son 'nepotism charge', China Daily, 14 May 2014^"Muted response to Biden son's Ukraine job". Deutsche Welle (dw.de). August 2, 1997. Retrieved May 19, 2014. ^WFP USA: The Philippines and honoring Bob Dole (video), YouTube, World Food Program USA, 16 December 2013.^The feed: December edition: Final helping: Philippines, World Food Program USA, Washington, DC: World Food Program USA, 18 December 2013.^"Amtrak Board Names Thomas Carper of Illinois as Chairman; Former Chairman Donna McLean becomes Vice Chairman" (Press release). Amtrak. January 30, 2009. Retrieved February 23, 2009. §External links[edit]PersondataNameBiden, HunterAlternative namesShort descriptionAmerican lawyerDate of birthFebruary 4, 1970Place of birthWilmington, Delaware, U.S.Date of deathPlace of death

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Thu, 05 Mar 2015 06:20

Ihor Valeriyovych Kolomoyskyi (Ukrainian: ІÐ"Ð¾Ñ Ð'аÐ>>еÑійович КоÐ>>омойський; Russian: ÐÐ"оÑь Ð'аÐ>>еÑьевич КоÐ>>омойский, Igor Kolomoisky; born February 13, 1963) is a Ukrainian-Cypriot[5]-Israelibusiness oligarch of Jewish descent and the current Governor of Dnipropetrovsk Oblast.[9]

A multibillionaire, Kolomoyskyi is rated as the second or third richest person in Ukraine (after Rinat Akhmetov and/or Viktor Pinchuk) since 2006[10][11] and 377th richest person in the world by the Forbes (as of 2011.)[7] According to the Forbes, his net worth is USD 3b, while the Korrespondent considers it to be USD 6.5b.[8] Kolomoyskyi is the leading partner of the Privat Group and a de facto chairman of the FC Dnipro Dnipropetrovsk.[12]

Ihor Kolomoyskyi's name in English is also spelled as Igor/IhorKolomoyskyi/Kolomoysky/Kolomoisky/Kolomoiskiy/Kolomoyskiy.

Kolomoyskyi is often nicknamed Benya(Беня) (which is a Russian-Jewish short name popular in the early 20th century) and Bonifatsiy after a character in the popular Russian animated film "КаникуÐ>>ы БониÑация" ("Bonifacy's holidays") made in 1965 by Soyuzmultfilm, whose image is visually similar to Kolomoyskyi's in appearance and hairstyle.

Biography[edit]Kolomoyskyi was born in a Jewish family of engineers. Kolomoyskyi graduated from the Dnipropetrovsk Metallurgical Institute in 1985.[4] He is married with two children.[1][13]

Kolomoyskyi is the co-founder of the PrivatBank (and its informal Privat Group, respectively) and was appointed Chairman of its Board of Directors in 1997.[4][12] Other fields of activity include: ferroalloys, finance, oil products, mass media,[13] metal and petroleum industries (also in Russia and Romania).[14]

Kolomoysky has a triple Ukrainian-Israeli-Cyprus citizenship because dual citizenshipis not recognized by Ukraine[15][16] Kolomoyskyi explained that: "The constitution prohibits double citizenship but triple citizenship is not forbidden.''[17]

Through PrivatBank he controls Aerosvit Airlines, Dniproavia and Donbassaero.[18] Through the asset management company Mansvell Enterprises Limited, he controls Skyways Express, City Airline, and Cimber Sterling aviation companies.[19]

Part of his vast business empire is Burisma Holdings Ldt, Ukraine's largest private gas firm. Shortly after Russia annexed Crimea, while U. S. Vice-President Joe Biden was engaged in diplomatic talks with Ukraine, Burisma announced that Hunter Biden joined the board of the company.[20]

Kolomoyskyi is a billionaire listed in 2007 by Forbes as the 799th-richest man in the world (with 3.8 billion dollars,[21] in 2010 Kyiv Post estimated his wealth at $6.243 billion.[22]) In March 2012 Forbes placed him 377th with $3 billion.[10] In 2010 Kyiv Post listed Kolomoyskyi as the second richest person in Ukraine;[22] in 2012 Forbes rated him the third richest person in Ukraine.[10] In these lists Kolomoyskyi has only been surpassed in wealth by Rinat Akhmetov or/and Viktor Pinchuk.[10][11]

Since 2010 rumors were circulating that Kolomoiskyi's assets were coming under pressure from the authorities.[22] Kolomoiskyi controls his business empire from Switzerland.[23]

Kolomyski has used Privat's "quasi-military forces" to enforce hostile takeovers of companies, sending a team of "hired rowdies armed with baseball bats, iron bars, gas and rubber bullet pistols and chainsaws" to forcibly take over a Kremenchuk steel plant in 2006,[24] and has used "a mix of phony court orders (often involving corrupt judges and/or registrars) and strong-arm tactics" to replace directors on the boards of companies he purchases stakes in.[25] Kolomyski was criticized by Mr Justice Mann in a court case in London involving an attempted hostile takeover of an oil company, with the judge stating that Kolomyski had "a reputation of having sought to take control of a company at gunpoint in Ukraine" and that there were "strong grounds for doubting the honesty of Mr Kolomoisky".[26]

Kolomoyskyi and Ukrainian politics[edit]Analysts have listed Kolomoyskyi as an ally of Ukrainian politician Yulia Tymoshenko and her Bloc Yulia Tymoshenko.[4] Although according to RIA Novosti (in January 2010), Kolomoysky relations with Tymoshenko "were soured some time ago, probably due to his refusal to finance Tymoshenko's election campaign" in 2010.[23][27]Croatian newspaper Nacional claimed in September 2007 that Kolomoyskyi had become an ally of (then) Ukrainian PresidentVictor Yushchenko and had financed Yushchenko's Our Ukraine''People's Self-Defense Bloc.[14]

In the 2012 Ukrainian parliamentary election Kolomoyskyi was perceived as being one of UDAR's main sponsors.[23][28] This has been denied by UDAR.[29]

On 2 March 2014, amidst the 2014 pro-Russian conflict in Ukraine, acting President Oleksandr Turchynov appointed Kolomoyskyi governor of Dnipropetrovsk Oblast.[30] Two days later, Russian PresidentVladimir Putin described Kolomoyskyi as a "unique crook," and said that the citizens of Dnipropetrovsk were not happy with his appointment as Governor of Dnipropetrovsk Oblast.[9] In contrast, The Daily Beast, a US publication, wrote in mid-June 2014 that Kolomoyskyi enjoyed the local population's strong support.[31]

In April 2014 Kolomoyskyi offered a bounty for the capture of Russian-backed militants and incentives for the turning in of weapons.[32] He also is believed to have spent $10 million to create the Dnipro Battalion,[31][33] and also funds the Aidar, Azov, Dnepr 1, Dnepr 2, and Donbas volunteer battalions.[34] Members of the Aidar Battalion ''have been involved in widespread abuses, including abductions, unlawful detention, ill-treatment, theft, extortion, and possible executions,'' according to Amnesty International, while the Azov Battalion was seen flying flags carrying symbols of a Ukraine neo-Nazi party, Patriot of Ukraine.[35]

Russia is asking for Kolomoyskyi to be put on Interpol's wanted list.[36] On 2 July 2014 a Russian District Court authorized his arrest in absentia for "organizing the killing of civilians".[37]

Kolomoyski and Jewish politics[edit]Kolomoyski is a prominent supporter of Ukraine's Jewish community[38] and the president of the United Jewish Community of Ukraine.[39] In 2010 he was appointed as the president of the European Council of Jewish Communities[40] after promising the outgoing president he would donate $14 million,[41] with his appointment being described as a "putsch"[39][40] and a "Soviet-style takeover"[42] by other EJCJ board members. After several ECJC board members resigned in protest, Kolomyski quit the ECJC and, together with fellow Ukrainian oligarch Vadim Rabinovich, founded the European Jewish Union.[41]

References[edit]^ abc(Russian)Short bio, LIGA^Ukrainian president reshuffles Azarov's government, Interfax-Ukraine (24 December 2012)^(Ukrainian)КоÐ>>Ñ--сніков Ð--митÑо Ð'аÐ>>еÑійович, DA-TA^ abcdIgor KolomoyskyRenaissance Capital^ abRossier, Roland (2014-05-30). "L'oligarque genevois >> qui d(C)fie Poutine". Tribune de Gen¨ve (in French). Retrieved 2014-07-08. ^(Ukrainian)Kolomoiskiy daughter is getting married, Tablo ID (28 June 2014)^ abIhor Kolomoyskyy, Forbes list of billionaires (March 2012)^ ab(Russian)ÐÐ"оÑь КоÐ>>омойский^ abPutin Gets Personal in Ukraine, Bloomberg View (Mar 4, 2014)^ abcdEight Ukrainians make Forbes magazine's list of world billionaires, Kyiv Post (8 March 2012)^ abRich Man In A Poor Country, Kyiv Post (17 December 2010)^ abThree's a crowd for Dynamo and Shakhtar, guardian.co.uk (August 28, 2007)^ abIhor Kolomoysky, Kyiv Post (June 18, 2008)^ abMislav Å imatović (September 25, 2007). "100 richest Eastern Europeans". Nacional. Archived from the original on July 25, 2012. Retrieved July 25, 2012. ^(Ukrainian)З життя укÑаїнських оÐ>>іÐ"аÑхів '' віÐ>>Ð>>а КоÐ>>омойськоÐ"о на Женевському озеÑі, Ukrayinska Pravda (March 10, 2009)^"Up to 10yrs' jail for dual citizenship: Ukrainian bill targets tens of thousands," RT (March 03, 2014 12:36). Retrieved March 03, 2014.^"Ukraine's tycoon and governor Kolomoisky confesses to holding 3 passports" ITAR-TASS (October 3, 2014 20:31). Retrieved October 3, 2014.^Zaitsev, Tom (2010-02-12). "Three Ukrainian carriers seek tie-up approval". Flightglobal (Reed Elsevier). Retrieved 2011-07-22. ^Fraende, Metet (2011-07-07). "Cimber Sterling gets 165 mln DKK lifeline". Reuters. Retrieved 2011-07-22. ^Katie Zezima: "Joe Biden's son discharged from Navy Reserve after positive cocaine test" (October 17, 2014 20:31). Retrieved October 17, 2014.^50 richest Ukrainians, ForUm (May 29, 2007)^ abc#2 Richest: Ihor Kolomoisky, 47, Kyiv Post (December 17, 2010)^ abc"Rule by oligarchs: Kiev appoints billionaires to govern east,"RT (March 03, 2014). Retrieved (March 03, 2014).^An Injection Of Rule Of Law For Ukrainian Business? - Forbes, 15 July 2013^Ukraine's real problem: crony capitalism - The Hill, 15 Jan 2014^Raiders from the east: The oligarchs who won their case but took a battering - The Independent, 11 September 2013^Yanukovych versus Tymoshenko, RIA Novosti (January 20, 2010)^After the parliamentary elections in Ukraine: a tough victory for the Party of Regions, Centre for Eastern Studies (7 November 2012)^Klitschko: UDAR's election campaign to cost Hr 90 million, Kyiv Post (15 September 2012)^Ukraine Turns to Its Oligarchs for Political Help, nytimes.com (2 March 2014)^ abThe Town Determined to Stop Putin, The Daily Beast (12 June 2014)^Ukrainian oligarch offers bounty for capture of Russian 'saboteurs' - The Guardian, 18 April 2014^Ukraine's Secret Weapon: Feisty Oligarch Ihor Kolomoisky, The Wall Street Journal (June 27, 2014)^Ukrainian Nationalist Volunteers Committing 'ISIS-Style' War Crimes^Ukrainian Nationalist Volunteers Committing 'ISIS-Style' War Crime^"Russia puts Ukraine's interior minister, Dnepropetrovsk governor on int'l wanted list". Voice of Russia. June 21, 2014.^http://www.themoscowtimes.com/news/article/moscow-court-sanctions-arrest-of-ukraine-tycoon-governor-kolomoisky/502854.html^Akhmetov joins Ukraine oligarchs in pledging to protect homeland - Financial Times, 2 March 2014^ abA necessary putsch? - Jerusalem Post, 29 Oct 2010^ ab#2 Richest: Ihor Kolomoisky - Kyiv Post, 17 Dec 2010^ abEuropean Jewish Parliament off to a semi-comedic start - JWeekly, 3 November 2011^Like NBA's Nets, European Jewish group gets an oligarch, but some see Soviet-style takeover - JTA, 2 November 2010PersondataNameKolomoyskyi, IhorAlternative namesShort descriptionUkrainian businesspersonDate of birthFebruary 13, 1963Place of birthDnipropetrovsk, Ukrainian SSRDate of deathPlace of death

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Thu, 05 Mar 2015 06:19

DNIPROPETROVSK, Ukraine'--Leaning over a map of eastern Ukraine on his desk, Gennady Korban gripped a ballpoint pen and drew a squiggling blue line down its center.

The border, he said, marked the battlefront in his country's war with pro-Russia separatists. One side was stable, rid of "troublemakers," he said. On the other are "maniacs," he said. "Men without families, who don't want families, they just like...

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Thu, 05 Mar 2015 06:35

You all are well aware of the extraordinary events taking place in Ukraine.

This page devoted to a policy debate initiated by

Roger B. Myerson, 2007 Nobel Prize in Economics, in late February on the need for decentralization in Ukraine.The government of Ukraine has committed to a decentralization reform. The topic of decentralization, however, raises strong emotions because of support for federalization by the Russian government. Of course, the objectives of the Russian and the Ukrainian governments are different.

Timeline

May 16, Roger B. Myerson speaks at a conference on decentralization, which took place at the National Academy of Governance in Ukraine (video, text, in English) April 26, an open letter (in English, in Ukrainian; the Ukrainian version has all signatures) to the Rada (parliament) of Ukraine on the proposed decentralization reform by the government. April 19, an open letter (in English) to the experts on decentralization in Ukraine on the importance of seeking critical feedback from local councilors in Ukraine and the risk of sabotage of the reform.April 19, a survey (in Russian) conducted in the East and South of Ukraine reveals25% support for federalization (not formally defined)45% support for decentralization (not formally defined)19% support for no change of power distribution between the central and regional governments while simultaneously 68% support direct election of governors These results break the simpler notion that direct election of governors and federalization are supported by the same people. They also point out that both direct election of governors and unitary Ukraine with less centralized governance enjoy broad support in the East and South of Ukraine

March 27, Roger Myerson addresses the second Ukrainian forum on self-governance, Lviv, Ukraine, arguing for importance of decentralization for creating genuine political competition in Ukraine. Video (at 2:23:22). February 24, a text calling for debate on decentralization, that has been signed by over 100 economists, political scientists, and lawyers in Ukraine, Russia, the US and Canada, and Europe. Older op-eds and blog posts on our decentralization initiative or expressing views consistent with our initiative

There is substantive demand for the debate on decentralization in Ukraine (in Ukrainian or Russian): Survey on decentralization attitudes in UkrainePrime Minister talks about creating elected regional executive bodiesGovernor Taruta on the need of decentralization, but NOT federalizationPrime Minister of Ukraine, Arseniy Yatsenyuk, on decentralizationVice Prime Minister of Ukraine, Volodymyr Groisman, on decentralization A panel, which includes 3 MPs, on decentralization in Kyiv, Ukraine on March 11, 2014A video statement by the mayor of Lviv, the stronghold of the West of Ukraine, on decentralization (in Russian!)Ex Vice Prime Minister on decentralization of appointing governors IEx Vice Prime Minister on decentralization of appointing governors IIMayor of Lviv on specific steps towards decentralization (municipal police, etc)Decentralization is NOT federalization

Laws on decentralization currently proposed in the parliament in Ukraine (in Ukrainian)

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Wed, 04 Mar 2015 17:52

Moscow will make every effort to ensure India gets full membership in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) at the upcoming SCO summit in Russia's southern city of Ufa, Sergey Naryshkin, Chairman of the Russian State Duma said following a meeting with the heads of both chambers of the Indian Parliament in New Delhi last week, Indian newspaper The Hindu reported.

''India is playing an active role in the SCO, but as an observer. Russia will take all the necessary steps to secure a positive decision on India's application for full membership at the Ufa summit,'' Naryshkin said.

The SCO, is a Eurasian political, economic and military alliance which was founded in 2001 and currently comprises of Russia, China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.

India, Mongolia, Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan, currently hold observer status with the SCO.

In February, the Russian Ambassador to China, Andrey Denisov, said that the accession process of India, Pakistan, and Iran to join the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) could start this year.

Last Friday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov announced that the matter of India and Pakistan's accession to the SCO would be high on the agenda at the summit of SCO and BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) which is set to take place in Ufa '' the capital city of the Republic of Bashkortostan, Russia '' on July 8-10, 2015.

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Thu, 05 Mar 2015 06:06

WASHINGTON '-- Andrew Lack is leaving his position as chief executive of the Broadcasting Board of Governors, the agency announced on Wednesday, one day after it was reported that he was in advanced discussions to return to NBC to lead its news operations.

In a statement, the agency said that Andr(C) Mendes, the Broadcasting Board of Governors' director of global operations, would become the interim chief executive immediately. The board, which oversees United States government-supported international news media like Voice of America and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, is scheduled to meet on Friday to begin looking for a successor to Mr. Lack.

Employees and former employees of the board, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said staff members had been caught off guard by the departure of Mr. Lack. Many believed he possessed the clout and experience to help the agency find its footing in the increasingly crowded field of government-sponsored international broadcasting.

Mr. Lack is known for having rebuilt NBC News and modernized the presentation of television news as president of the unit from 1993 to 2001. He also held top positions at Sony Music Entertainment and the Bloomberg Media Group.

PhotoAndrew Lack, shown in 2010, was president of NBC News from 1993 until 2001.Credit Phil McCarten/ReutersHis expected return to NBC is part of a broader management shake-up expected at the group after the Brian Williams controversy and other management missteps.

When Mr. Lack was sworn in in January as the chief executive of the Broadcasting Board of Governors, the move was widely hailed as a major coup for the agency.

''Andy Lack is the perfect person for the position, given his background as a journalist who has run several major media organizations,'' Jeffrey Shell, an NBC executive and chairman of the Broadcasting Board of Governors, said in an interview at the time.

But his abrupt departure becomes the latest in a series of problems at the agency.

Critics have long accused it of floundering while other countries have built competing international media outlets. BBG Watch, a blog that is written in part by current and former agency personnel, has said that the agency's coverage of major news events is mediocre at best.

Frustrated by what they called a lack of support for United States government policies abroad, members of the House of Representatives passed a bill last year intended to clarify the mission of the Voice of America. The bill is expected to be introduced again because it has bipartisan support.

The bill would revise the news service's mission statement to specify that it has a role in supporting American ''public diplomacy'' and policies. The move set off a revolt among staff members, who said the change would affect their editorial independence.

A version of this article appears in print on March 5, 2015, on page B10 of the New York edition with the headline: U.S. Media Board Chief, in Talks With NBC, Exits.

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Wed, 04 Mar 2015 16:42

Update: 11:27 a.m. WASHINGTON '-- The EPA cannot require that power plants and other facilities seek building or operating permits based solely on the fact of their greenhouse gas emissions, the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 today. But it ruled 7-2 that any plant (or other stationary source) that already emits impermissibly high levels of other, traditional pollutants can be required to also obtain permits related to greenhouse gas emissions.

The ruling does not affect President Obama's latest proposed rules for greenhouse gas emissions that would require states to reduce their total emissions by 30 percent. Those rules are still in draft form and are subject to comments and revisions over the next several months.

The Court today held that EPA can require facilities that are already under its permitting authority for other pollutants make use of so-called ''the best available control technology'' (also known as BACT) to reduce greenhouse gases. but Justice Antonin Scalia, writing for the majority, warned the EPA that it should tread carefully in seeking to impose restrictions on such facilities.

''We acknowledge the potential for greenhouse-gas BACT to lead to an unreasonable and unanticipated degree of regulation, and our decision should not be taken as an endorsement of all aspects of EPA's current approach, nor as a free rein for any future regulatory application of BACT in this distinct context,'' Scalia wrote. ''Our narrow holding is thatnothing in the statute categorically prohibits EPA frominterpreting the BACT provision to apply to greenhousegases emitted by 'anyway' sources.'' (By 'anyway' sources, he means sources that already are required to seek permits from the EPA due to the emission of other pollutants.)

The divided ruling today amounts to a substantial rebuttal to the EPA's aggressive move to regulate greenhouse gases, but does little to ease the burden on facilities that emit greenhouse gases. That's because by EPA's own calculations, 83 percent of the nation's greenhouse gas emissions from stationary sources come from facilities that are already required to seek permits because of other pollutants. As a result, all of those facilities will still be required to seek permits for greenhouse gas emissions under today's ruling.

The rules as proposed by EPA '-- and now struck down by the court '-- would have also required plants whose only imperssible emissions are greenhouse gases to also get a permit. That would have meant that 86 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions from stationary sources would have been been regulated, instead of 83 percent, according to the EPA and Scalia.

Justices Stephen Breyer, Elena Kegan, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor joined in a partial dissent written by Justice Breyer. It argued that the EPA was right to target sources of greenhouse gas emissions, even if they did not emit traditional pollutants to the extent that they fell under the purview of the Clean Air Act. Breyer also argued that the EPA was within its authority to tailor the language of its permitting thresholds to make them reasonable for greenhouse gas emissions. Scalia and the majority rejected that, writing that the changes amounted to given the EPA authority to rewrite the statute.

Two conservative justices '-- Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito '-- wrote a partial dissent that would have gone much further in limiting the EPA's authority to regulate greenhouse gases. They adopted an argument initially made by Attorney general Greg Abbott of Texas, who argued that the 2007 decision in EPA v. Massachusetts should be overturned. That's the ruling where the Supreme Court held that the EPA had an obligation to decide whether greenhouse gases emitted by vehicles should be considered a pollutant, IF so, the court ruled, the EPA was within its authority to regulate their emission.

Abbott had initially made a similar claim in the state's suit against the EPA, Texas v. EPA, one of a handful of cases that were combined into one before the Supreme Court. But that argument was not part of Texas's brief before the Supreme Court, and few observers had predicted it would be persuasive.

From earlier:

The Supreme Court upheld in part and struck down in part the EPA's new rules requiring permits for stationary facilities that emit certain levels of greenhouse gases. In a mixed series of votes amounting to multiple holdings, the court ruled:

* The EPA cannot require facilities to be permitted if its only source of pollution that exceeds federal limits is greenhouse gases. According to the summary in the decision: ''The Act neither compels nor permits EPA to adopt an interpre-tation of the Act requiring a source to obtain a PSD or Title V permit on the sole basis of its potential greenhouse-gas emissions.''

* The EPA was wrong to tailor the statutory thresholds for how much of a given pollutant a facility may emit before its needs a permit. The statute contains thresholds that, if applied to greenhouse gases, would be extremely constricting, requiring permits at millions of facilities. To avoid that, EPA raised the thresholds under its ''tailoring'' authority. The Court holds that it did not have authority to do so. ''EPA lacked authority to ''tailor'' the Act's unambiguous nu-merical thresholds of 100 or 250 tons per year to accommodate itsgreenhouse-gas-inclusive interpretation of the permitting triggers. Agencies must always '''give effect to the unambiguously expressed intent of Congress.''' The power to execute the laws does not include a power to revise clear statutory terms that turn out notto work in practice.

* The EPA may, Scalia wrote for the majority, require permits governing greenhouse gas emissions from facilities that already fall under the EPA supervision as a result of other pollutants that emit.

''EPA reasonably interpreted the Act to require sources that would need permits based on their emission of conventional pollu-tants to comply with BACT for greenhouse gases. Pp. 24''29.(a) Concerns that BACT, which has traditionally been about end-of-stack controls, is fundamentally unsuited to greenhouse-gas regu-lation, which is more about energy use, are not unfounded. But an EPA guidance document states that BACT analysis should consideroptions other than energy efficiency, including ''carbon capture and storage,'' which EPA contends is reasonably comparable to more tra-ditional, end-of-stack BACT technologies. Moreover, assuming thatBACT may be used to force improvements in energy efficiency, im-portant limitations on BACT may work to mitigate concerns about''unbounded'' regulatory authority. Pp. 24''27.(b) EPA's decision to require BACT for greenhouse gases emittedby sources otherwise subject to PSD review is, as a general matter, a permissible interpretation of the statute underChevron U. S. A. Inc. v.Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc. The specific phrasing of the BACT provision'--which requires BACT ''for eachpollutant subject to regulation under'' the Act, §7475(a)(4)'--does not suggest that the provision can bear a narrowing construction. And even if the text were not clear, applying BACT to greenhouse gases isnot so disastrously unworkable, and need not result in such a dra-matic expansion of agency authority, as to make EPA's interpretationunreasonable. Pp. 27''29.

Utility Air Regulatory Group v EPA

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Wed, 04 Mar 2015 16:28

Sajid David'...personally chose Rona Fairhead

Evidence of unhealthy links between Tory papers, HSBC, the culture media & sport Minister, and the BBC continues to build. Now controversial BBC Trust Chair Rona Fairhead is to face a Public Accounts Committee interrogation. The Slog looks into her past, how she got the job, and why a banker is in the CM&S hotseat.

With two of Britain's most legendary Fleet Street titles now owned by non-dom tax-evaders, an active HSBC banker in the Chair at the BBC Trust, and a banker who appointed her in charge at the Dept of Culture, Media & Sport, it is perhaps not surprising such papers have been caught peddling banker wares in their editorial. The main bank involved of course is HSBC, which has been given a suspiciously soft ride in the past by'...spookily, the Telegraph and the BBC.

Equally unastonishing is the fact that CM&S Secretary Sajid Javid doesn't seem that interested in 'investigating' the situation. I can see where he's coming from: it is, after all, a bit tiresome playing Checkers with yourself. But as the Beeb itself admitted early this morning, Fairhead (left) got the BBC job because of Mr David's personal recommendation to Mrs Windsor of Buckingham Palace.

Anyway, to spare him any embarrassment or boredom, BBC director general Tony Hall jumped in two days ago to say he didn't talk about the BBC's investigation into HSBC with Rona as to do so ''would have been improper''. This is a bit like saying that to blow the gaff on the wolf was an unwarranted invasion into the private relationship of Red Riding Hood and grandma. But anyway, that's what he said.

What has Sajid David said? Well, about this little dust-up, nothing so far. But a month ago today he said this while addressing journalists:

''Democracy needs journalists to function. Our journalists face insidious threats from other quarters, be they commercial, judicial or political.''

However, since the cash-for-coverage scandal broke, Mr David has said nothing again. But last November, he told another CM&S gathering that he was ''ruling nothing out when looking at future funding options for the BBC''. At that session, by the way, Ms Fairhead revealed nothing about her HSBC connections and role. But Sajid David hired her '' so he must have known. Especially since, as a former Deutsche Bank high-flier, he met lots of financial journalists'....and Fairhead was (until ousted in April 2014) in the hot seat at the Financial Times. I suppose one must also wonder why nobody on the C&MSC thought to Google the lady, and ask her the question.

One question I keep asking myself and others is why Sajid has, um, no credentials at all for the job he's in: he's a very bright and ambitious bloke, but he isn't active in sport, has never worked in the media, and is in no way a culture-vulture. He says his favourite leisure activity is ''taking my time over a smooth cigar'', which doesn't even make the long list for consideration as an Olympic sport. He approves of ticket touts ''because they fill a gap in the market''. And his only known cultural connection is'....he's a Trekkie. Yes, our Culture Secretary sees Star Trek as an artistic gem.

''It's culture Jim, but not as we know it,'' Said First Officer and Vulcanologist Sajid Spock, ''this appointment is illogical. Unless'....er, beam me up Scottie!''.

If I just use the camera to pull out from ECU and reveal a broader horizon, we can tot up the dots:

The Chairman of the BBC Trust is a banker with a still-continuing relationship with HSBC. The Minister of Trade was for several years the CEO of HSBC. The BBC carried out a damning investigation into HSBC while Fairhead had a seat in both camps. The Minister of Culture, Media & Sport was a banker, and he hired Fairhead. Sajid David was put into the CM&S role by David Cameron, whose father was a stockbroker and offshore tax dodger. The main Conservative-leaning newspaper in Britain worked with HSBC on a cash-for-coverage deal'....while Fairhead was an advisor to them on media and other relations. And now we read that Fairhead will give evidence to the Public Accounts Committee alongside HSBC chief executive Stuart Gulliver next Monday. Margaret Hodge '' the Labour Peer who heads up the PAC '' is on the record as saying that the BBC Trust should ''look at'' Mrs Fairhead's past on the HSBC board: ''There are clearly question marks arising out of her role,'' she told the BBC.

The word HSBC appear six times in that last para, and the BBC four times. There's obviously a natural marriage on the cards: I feel a relaunch coming on: the HSBBC '' Highly Suspect British Bankers' Club.

I'll take bets on what happens next. 3-1 it turns into a pointless election bunfight in which the first casualty is calm analysis. 2-1 on that David Cameron announces an Enquiry, which will not report until after the General Election in May.

At the moment, it looks to me like Crony capitalism meets Commercialisation of the media. I suspect it looks like that to everyone with a functioning left frontal lobe. But whether a single voter anywhere will give a damn'...well, that's another matter.

Which will not, of course, stop The Slog from poking at this little nest of neohornets. Stay tuned.

Connected at The Slog: Greece '' a case of one news for the rich, another for the poor

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Thu, 05 Mar 2015 03:25

If you followed media coverage of the April 2013 Boston Marathon bombing '-- and it was hard not to follow it, if you were awake and in the United States '' do you remember seeing the video in which Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the younger of the two suspects, sets his backpack down on the pavement a few moments before one of the bombs goes off? If so, you're in good company: Lots of people do, including at least one federal appeals court judge in Massachusetts and one potential juror in the Tsarnaev case.

But if you think you haven't seen it, you are right. In fact, it may not exist at all.

The public first heard about the video from then-Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick on ''Meet the Press'' on April 21, two days after Tamerland Tsarnaev died following a shootout with police and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was captured. Host David Gregory posed this question: ''Is there anything on the videotape that maybe the public hasn't seen about his reaction that was particularly telling that moved the investigation along?''

Patrick immediately said he had not seen the videotape. But, he said, ''it does seem to '' to be pretty clear that '' that this suspect took the backpack off, put it down, did not react when the first explosion went off, and, and then moved away from the backpack in time for the second explosion. So pretty, pretty clear about his, his involvement and pretty chilling, frankly, as it was described to me.''

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev has pleaded not guilty, but don't expect his lawyers to claim he wasn't involved in the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing. Here's what to expect inside the courtroom. (Gillian Brockell/The Washington Post)

The videotape made its second appearance just two days later, also on NBC, in a report on the criminal complaint against Tsarnaev. NBC said the complaint ''is built on surveillance video, which shows him dropping a backpack near the finish line and walking away as the bombs go off.'' And then it showed the video '-- sort of.

The report began with what appears to be actual surveillance video the FBI used to pinpoint the Tsarnaevs. They are shown turning onto Boylston Street and walking, Dzhokhar carrying a backpack easily on his right shoulder. ''Seven minutes later,'' says correspondent Anne Thompson, ''Dzhokhar Tsarnaev drops his knapsack at the metal barrier in front of the Forum restaurant.'' By this time, though, we are looking not at a video but at a still photograph that shows the backpack on the ground and Dzhokar Tsarnaev a few feet away, apparently walking away. Then again, it could be a picture of him just walking by. The moment of his setting down the backpack is narrated but not shown.

Few viewers could be expected to notice the difference, though, and even fewer would remember it. Last month, during a hearing on the defense's latest bid to have the trial moved, appeals Judge Juan Torruella made reference to the video of the defendant setting down the backpack, saying it had been widely broadcast. Prosecutor William Weinreb, whom Torruella was addressing, didn't contradict him. However, in his dissenting opinion last week, arguing against the court's decision to deny change of venue, Torruella mentioned other coverage but not that video.

But the day after the appeals court hearing, a prospective juror said she couldn't get that video out of her mind, and here was how she described it: ''The image of him putting the backpack behind that little boy.'' Even in the still shown by NBC, no little boy is visible. (The judge had ordered prospective jurors not to read, watch, or listen to anything about the case.)

The Associated Press's Boston reporter used that juror to headline that day's dispatch from court, saying that the juror was ''describing an image authorities say shows Tsarnaev placing a bomb near 8-year-old Martin Richard, one of three people killed when twin bombs exploded near the marathon finish line April 15, 2013.'' The story ran all over the country. Even Boston's public radio station WBUR, whose own reporters have been supremely skeptical of the investigation, ran it and promoted it uncritically.

Anyone who is in the business of eliciting people's memories about historic events knows that collective memory has a way of displacing personal experience. Maria Konnikova recently wrote in The New Yorker about psychological studies that show that people typically misremember what, when and how they learned about big things that happened just a couple of years earlier. Oles Adamovich and Daniil Granin, two Russian writers who compiled an oral history of the Siege of Leningrad, recalled that their subjects would spend hours reproducing received memories '-- stock stories that they had read in books or newspapers or seen in films '-- before getting to their own '-- if they ever did.

In the Tsarnaev trial, the defense has tried at least half a dozen ways to make the very point that saturation publicity has altered people's perceptions in ways of which they are not necessarily aware '' and that this renders meaningless jurors' sincere commitment to being impartial. After imagining this video for a couple of years, what will they feel when they finally see it during trial?

But now an even more difficult question has been raised: What if jurors never see this video? What if there is, in fact, no video? That's just what defense attorney David Bruck said Monday during a hearing on final pretrial motions: The video doesn't exist.

If it existed, prosecutors would use it as evidence. If they were going to do that, they would have had to turn it over to the defense a long time ago. Apparently, they have not.

That may not be good news for the defense. How is it going to counter the effects of something that the jurors aren't even aware of remembering '-- or, rather, misremembering?

Masha Gessen is a Russian-American journalist and the author of seven books. Her book on the Boston marathon bombers, The Brothers: The Road to an American Tragedy, will be published in April.

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Archived Version

Thu, 05 Mar 2015 14:41

by Scott Creighton

UPDATE April 24:Boston Bombing: Who Says it Had to be Two Men? Who Says they Had to be Young?

UPDATE April 23rd:Boston Bombing: Newly ''Enhanced'' Photos of the ''Shootout'' bring the influence peddlers out on Reddit

UPDATE April 22nd:Boston Bombing: The Official Story Proves Dzhokhar Is Innocent '' a Photo Essay

You don't need conspiracy theorists. Just take the Feds at their word and you'll see it.

UPDATE: Uh oh! Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick hasn't been updated on the new narrative and repeats the old ''there are videos but I haven't seen them'' story on NBC.

''Surveillance video from the Boston Marathon attack shows one suspect dropping his backpack and calmly walking away from it before the bomb inside it exploded, Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick said Sunday.

The video clearly puts 19-year-old Dzhokhar Tsarnaev at the scene of the attack, Patrick said on NBC.

''It does seem to be pretty clear that this suspect took the backpack off, put it down, did not react when the first explosion went off and then moved away from the backpack in time for the second explosion,'' Patrick said. ''It's pretty clear about his involvement and pretty chilling, frankly.''

He added, however, that he hasn't viewed all the tapes but had been briefed by law enforcement about them.'' AP April 21st

ಠ_ಠAccording to the Gov. they're ''pretty chilling videos'''... that he hasn't seen. ಠ_à²

So, now when these videos don't show up, can the good Gov. be impeached?

'--'--'--

Yesterday I wrote about how it was that the FBI came to produce the fuzzy images of Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev which they produced to the public with great fanfare on Thursday at 5pm. I wrote that it was certainly odd that they claimed not to know who the boys were since they had already had extensive ONGOING contact with them over the past two years and they must certainly be in their databases which would be searched first after an incident like this. Hell, they live in the area for Christ's sake. They would have been FIRST on their ''to checkout'' list. The local FBI agents would have been the ones who handled their case and they would have also been the agents in charge of this investigation.

So why did they have to ask us to identify the Tsarnaev brothers? And what's more'... what put them on the FBI's radar in the first place?

Today the Washington Post has cobbled together the new official story which focuses nearly entirely on that specific problem because it's a big, big problem. The FBI has been caught in a lie. And when you lie about the investigation of a deadly terrorist plot after 10 years of CREATING terrorists plots, people get a little upset. And rightly so.

What follows is my evaluation of their new ''official story''. It's a story that whitewashes the FBI's failure to identify their own suspects. It's a story that admits they put out the call for help in order to distract the unofficial investigation that was turning up remarkable leads. It's a story that completely forgets the most crucial parts of their original lie and that is:

the video they claimed they had of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev planting the bomb which they say is what brought them to their attention in the first place.the video of the two brothers standing around watching the carnage and then slowly walking away.The new narrative erases these all important videos from the history of the FBI investigation. Without these two videos, the FBI has no reason to suspect those two young men any more than the other 1,000 people in the pictures with backpacks.

Then factor in they lied about not knowing who these two were and how much contact they had with them prior to the bombing and what your left with is a damning indictment of the FBI.

For several days an unofficial manhunt was underway with thousands on online sleuths pouring over every available image of the race looking for suspicious characters. The feds themselves fed deliberate misinfo to various MSM outlets, implicating the wrong people like the two high school runners who were called ''The Bag Men'' by a New York paper and of course the now infamous Saudi national.

''Investigators probing the deadly Boston Marathon bombings are circulating photos of two men spotted chatting near the packed finish line, The Post has learned.

In the photos being distributed by law-enforcement officials among themselves, one of the men is carrying a blue duffel bag. The other is wearing a black backpack in the first photo, taken at 10:53 a.m., but it is not visible in the second, taken at 12:30 p.m.'' New York Post

Contrary to what a new Washington Post article claims, these false leads didn't come from the unofficial investigation but rather from ''law enforcement insiders'' tipping off the major publications like the Times and CNN. They were deliberately given false leads which left the papers with egg on their faces and the netizen investigators chasing down ghosts in blind allies.

But suddenly on Thursday the FBI announced they needed our help to find two guys who came to their attention via two unreleased videos which not only put them on the scene before and after the attacks, but also showed one of them, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, actually planting the bomb.

''Other footage, still unreleased, shows that the two suspects stayed at the scene to watch the carnage unfold, a federal law enforcement official with knowledge of the investigation told CNN's Susan Candiotti.''

''When the bombs blow up, when most people are running away and victims were lying on the ground, the two suspects walk away pretty casually,'' said the official, who has seen the unreleased video. ''They acted differently than everyone else.''

''While video of at least one suspect planting the bomb exists, the FBI had chosen not to release it, according to the official. One reason, according to the official, is that were the media to repeatedly show the suspects leaving the bomb, it might cause some people to overreact if they came into contact with them.'' CNN

These two videos are crucial because they are supposedly what put the Tsarnaev brothers on the FBI's radar in the first place.

Many people, myself included, immediately wondered about why the FBI would claim to have these videos and then not release them to aid the public in identifying the suspects. It made no sense and the claim above from CNN is insultingly stupid.

Turns out there was a reason they didn't release the videos, they didn't exist.

As the Washington Post drops the story of the incriminating videos down the memory hole, their new effort published yesterday tries to fill the void as best it can. It is four pages of covering tracks and literally nothing else.

''How federal and local investigators sifted through that ocean of evidence and focused their search on two immigrant brothers is a story of advanced technology and old-fashioned citizen cooperation. It is an object lesson in how hard it is to separate the meaningful from the noise in a world awash with information.'' Washington Post

Forget the first story from law enforcement officials that there were two videos which put the brothers there, watching the carnage and planting the bomb. That story is no more'...

Now the official story is the guy in the wheel chair, as popular and sympathetic a character as he is, is the one who fingered the brothers while drugged to the gills in a hospital bed.

''While the analysts combed through videos frame by frame, a more traditional tip was developing two miles away at Boston Medical Center. Jeffrey Bauman, groggy from anesthesia, his legs just removed at the knee, managed to eke out a request for pen and paper.

In the intensive-care ward, Bauman, who had been near the finish line to see his girlfriend complete Monday's race, wrote words that would help lead to quick resolution of the bombing that killed three and injured 176 others: ''Bag. Saw the guy, looked right at me.'''' Washington Post

And there you have it. ''Bag. Saw guy. Looked right at me''. Of course, once the FBI got wind of this, it was clear the Tsarnaev brothers did it.

As I pointed out before, the claim that the brothers stood around and watched the carnage and then calmly strolled away is a direct lie. Not just the simple lie that the FBI has a video of it. That's not the only lie. The OTHER lie is that there is a photo of at least one of the brothers, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, running away like everyone else while there is still smoke in the air from the bomb going off. In fact, he's kinda leading the pack if you want to be honest about it. But he's definitely not lingering around enjoying the carnage like the federal law enforcement official ''with knowledge of the investigation'' told CNN's Susan Candiotti. And the proof of that is right here:

running away

So there were no videos like the officials claimed and they had no images of the brothers either planting bombs or standing around watching the carnage. All of that was a lie. There is no way of understanding what really brought the brothers to the attention of the FBI.

So why did they hold the ''presser'' and release the images they magically got of the guys who ended up having been on their radar for years? According to the new narrative, they did it to subvert the unofficial investigation. Their own words'...

''In addition to being almost universally wrong, the theories developed via social media complicated the official investigation, according to law enforcement officials. Those officials said Saturday that the decision on Thursday to release photos of the two men in baseball caps was meant in part to limit the damage being done to people who were wrongly being targeted as suspects in the news media and on the Internet.'' Washington Post

Uh'... I thought we just addressed the fact that the two high school runners were wrongly identified by law enforcement officials. So why would this new narrative try to blame that on the unofficial investigators? And if the online investigation was so wildly inaccurate and out of control, why ask for our help?

''That decision, which appeared to be a straightforward request for the public's help in identifying the two men, turns out to have been a tactic with several purposes.'' Washington Post

You're goddamned right it was a ''tactic'''... they already knew the names of the Tsarnaev brothers. There was no video of the guys doing jack shit except standing around in front of a restaurant waiting for the FBI's confidential informant to show up.

It was a tactic to keep the online investigation from continuing to look for the real perps of this mass casualty event.

''At the news conference, FBI Special Agent in Charge Richard DesLauriers sternly asked the public to view only its pictures or risk creating ''undue work for vital law enforcement resources.'' Washington Post

It was a tactic to create a narrative as to why they were about to submit an entire city to martial law.

The Washington Post's retooling of the official story then does deal a little bit with the absurd contention that the FBI was unable to identify two local guys who had been investigated and contacted by them not all that long ago. They claim that even though the brothers were in their data bases and the DMV, the facial recognition system they had failed to flag recognize them.

Uh, the local agents who had been in contact with them for a while didn't either?

''Davis said he was told that facial-recognition software did not identify the men in the ball caps. The technology came up empty even though both Tsarnaevs' images exist in official databases: Dzhokhar had a Massachusetts driver's license; the brothers had legally immigrated; and Tamerlan had been the subject of some FBI investigation.''

The brothers' mother, Zubeidat Tsarnaeva, told Russia Today television on Friday that Tamerlan ''got involved in religious politics five years ago.'' She said FBI agents had been watching her son for ''three to five years. They knew what my son was doing. .'‰.'‰. They used to tell me that he was really a serious leader and they are afraid of him.'' Washington Post

The FBI field office from the area had been in direct contact with the brothers for years. It's confirmed by the FBI, the mother and the uncle who called them ''losers''

Remarkably, as soon as the Washington Post writes this in the article, they just drop it completely as if it didn't happen. It doesn't even occur to the writer of the article that aside from what the facial recognition software does or doesn't do, these kids were local and had a great deal of contact with the local field office of the FBI'... how the hell did they not recognize them?

Especially after the feds admit they had an ulterior motive for releasing the images on Thursday, the MSM reporters and papers like the Washington Post should have immediately smelled a rat. They knew these kids, they probably had a CI working them. And how they show up as John Doe # 1 and 2 and the Feds pretend not to know who they are? They lie about how they noticed them in the first place and then pretend like that lie never happened? They deliberately fed misinformation to the MSM and then admittedly misdirected even the unofficial online sleuths?

What you are looking at here is not shotty work or the ''fog of war'' as they like to put it when stories like these are exposed for what they are. This isn't some bureaucrat covering his ass to protect his pension'...

'... this is systemic dishonesty and manipulation coming from the leading law enforcement agency in the country.

Ask yourself this: why hasn't someone been held accountable for the failure to protect those citizens?

The FBI, by their own account, let ''terrorists'' slip from between their fingers and kill 4 people including a child and a cop, maiming many many others in the process.

Then they had to go on television and ask 4Chan and Reddit for help with figuring out who the two guys who were known to the FBI were?

And they lied about videos they didn't have?

And now the Washington Post has to step in and try to make it all seem kosher?

Holy shit! You wanna talk about embarrassing to the Justice Department? Do you think you would lose your job if you screwed up like that? Do you think charges of CRIMINAL NEGLIGENCE might be in order?

I mean that's going on the ''as if'' theory that their suspects did it. And that's the BEST CASE SCENARIO for them.

I know this sounds like a rant at this point'.... AND IT SHOULD. They put an entire city under martial law for a kid, a19 year old KID they KNEW IN THE FIRST PLACE and LIED ABOUT.

Yes, it is a rant. The Washington Post should be ranting along with me. EVERYONE should be ranting along with me. This is unacceptable. The fact that no one looses their job over this is unacceptable. The fact that we sit back and let them get away with this is unacceptable.

But as predicted, the videos are down the memory hole. No reason to suspect those guys except for the now painfully obivious fact that they were there to be suspected in the first place and the liars at the FBI can suck up to the complicit media all they want but until they buy enough congressmen and get CISPA passed thru our own Vichy capital, we unofficial investigators are going to continue pointing out their lies, their crimes and their complicity.

So thank you Washington Post. Thank you for proving my point. Thank you for showing us all that the official story of the Boston bombing has always been a lie and will always continue to be a lie.

'--'--'---

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Filed under: American Gladio, Boston Bombing, Neoliberalizing America, Scott Creighton

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Thu, 05 Mar 2015 06:28

They were Boston Strong.

But a North Carolina couple injured in the Boston Marathon bombing is separating after less than a year of marriage, according to a report.

Rebekah Gregory, 27, and Pete DiMartino, 30, were near the finish line waiting for DiMartino's mother to finish the race when twin blasts killed three and maimed hundreds more on April 15, 2013. They were caught in the carnage.

Gregory lost her right leg in November after 17 corrective surgeries couldn't save it. DiMartino lost nearly all of his right Achilles tendon and underwent multiple surgeries to fix a shattered ankle.

They married in April in a storybook affair at a 19th-century estate in North Carolina. Now it's over.

"After the decision was made to amputate my leg in November, I found myself having to make an even more painful choice '-- to separate from my husband Pete,'' Gregory told People magazine. ''Over the last several months I've come to realize that going through such a horrific event together put a fast-forward on our relationship that we each handled differently.

"While my heart is beyond broken, I have a certain peace knowing from day one, I truly gave it my all, and have been fully invested in keeping this marriage, and my commitment before God. I still love Pete with all of my heart and ask that everyone respect our privacy as we try to figure out our next steps. As for now, I am focused on doing what I feel is best for my son and I, and will concentrate my time on healing, both physically and emotionally."

Gregory has been active on the speaker circuit, sharing her inspirational message of hope as she's battled to regain control of her life.

One of those goals is to participate in April's Boson Marathon.

But in a candid post on her ''New Day New Hope'' Facebook page, even she admits to being overwhelmed '-- alluding to the separation and to the pending trial of accused bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.

''Today I realized that lately, life has gotten a little overwhelming,'' she wrote Feb. 17 on Facebook. ''I have set such high expectations for myself, while meanwhile going through other major struggles completely unrelated to my amputation. My dreams have once again been clouded by nightmares (probably due to the 'other stuff' and the trial.) And I have overall had this feeling of being really unsettled.''

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Rebekah Gregory DiMartino's New Day New Hope via FacebookRebekah Gregory, injured in the Boston Marathon bombing, will be running the marathon again this year, using her prosthetic leg.

EnlargeRebekah Gregory DiMartino's New Day New Hope via FacebookRebekah Gregory shows off her running gear in a photo posted Feb. 9, captioned: 'Putting the memory of stiletto heels away and pulling out my running shoes this morning. Felicia's not gonna train herself. Time to get focused and get my head back in the game. #blessed #bostonstrong'

EnlargeRebekah Gregory, injured in the Boston Marathon bombing, says she will be running the marathon again this year, using her prosthetic leg.

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Archived Version

Thu, 05 Mar 2015 06:27

NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

Published: Monday, March 2, 2015, 1:25 PM

Updated: Monday, March 2, 2015, 4:46 PM

Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev's lawyer claimed Monday that a video billed by the FBI as a caught-in-the-act piece of evidence doesn't exist.

The stunning assertion comes just two days before Tsarnaev, 21, goes on trial in Boston on federal capital murder charges stemming from the deadly April 15, 2013 attack.

''That does not exist,'' defense attorney David Bruck said at a pre-trial hearing in Boston Federal Court.

Shortly after Tsarnaev arrest in a shootout that left him wounded, FBI officials touted the gotcha video in a news conference.

The feds claimed the video, which was never made public, showed Dzhokhar Tsarnaev dropping a backpack concealing a homemade bomb next to a 6-year-old boy who was killed.

At the time, FBI officials only released still photos of Tsarnaev mingling with finish-line revelers near where little Martin Richard was standing. Other photos made public showed both Tsarnaev brothers walking through the crowd before the explosions carrying backpacks.

Two other people were killed and more than 160 were injured when two explosives made from pressure cookers ignited near the finish line.

Opening arguments in Dzhokhar Tsarnaev's trial are set to begin on Wednesday.

His defense team previewed its plan to show that Tamerlan Tsarnaev mastermind and executed the twin bombings at one of the country's most iconic sporting events.

Without his brother, Tamerlan, ''the Boston Marathon bombing would never have occurred,'' Bruck said in court Monday.

Tamerlan Tsarnaev was killed in a shoot-out with police days after the bombing.

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is also facing charges that he and his brother murdered Massachusetts Institute of Technology police Officer Sean Collier, 26, while on the run from authorities.

If convicted, Dzhokhar faces the death penalty.

Defense attorneys told Judge George O'Toole Monday that they want jurors to see the bullet-riddled boat where Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was found hiding in the Boston suburb of Watertown, Mass.

Prosecutors countered they only want to bring in a bullet-pocked panel from the boat where Tsarnaev scribbled what investigators claim is a ''confession.'' He wrote the attack was revenge for the U.S. military's action in Afghanistan and Iraq, and called the Boston bombing victims ''collateral damage.''

''When you attack one Muslim you attack all Muslims,'' Tsarnaev's note read.

Bruck argued that showing the entire boat would give jurors a better understanding of Tsarnaev's state of mind when he wrote the message.

Tags:boston marathon bombings ,dzhokhar tsarnaev

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Archived Version

Wed, 04 Mar 2015 20:44

March 3, 2015 by Lara Turner

Tsarnaev Brothers on the day of the marathon bombing. FBI handout.

What do former Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick, an appeals court justice, several potential members of the Boston Marathon bombing jury and thousands of regular Americans have in common?

They all believe that they've seen a video of accused bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev dropping a deadly backpack behind victims at the marathon on April 15, 2013'--a video his defense said ''does NOT actually exist.''

In a pre-trial hearing yesterday, Tsarnaev defense attorney David Bruck argued that the April 18, 2013, press conference in which former Boston FBI Special Agent in Charge Richard DesLauriers identified the brothers should be excluded from evidence. That, he argued, is because the FBI agent described the video footage that doesn't really exist, which subsequently was used to convict Tsarnaev in the media.

U.S. District Judge George A. O'Toole ordered the defense and prosecution to edit the recording of DesLauriers' press conference in a manner satisfactory to both sides. He reserved the right to rule on the defense's motion to suppress the entire recording if the two sides can't agree.

Video? What Video?

Still, how is it that so many people believe they've seen a video that doesn't exist? And, why, if it doesn't exist, was this farce allowed to continue for nearly two years?

As WhoWhatWhy pointed out last month, verbal intimations by government officials, video of Tsarnaev and his brother walking down Boylston carrying backpacks like thousands of other marathon-goers and a TV re-enactment are all that's ever been ''seen'' by the public.

The only time a video of this nature has been seen is in a National Geographic docu-drama entitled, ''Inside the Hunt for the Boston Bombers.'' The video, however, was not actual footage of Tsarnaev, but a re-enactment of video the FBI said it saw. The grainy footage wasn't even shot in Boston'--actors created the scene on the streets of Phoenix, Arizona.

The issue of the video was even considered a reason to move the case out of Boston, with one 1st Circuit Court of Appeals judge comparing it to a televised confession in a landmark Supreme Court case involving prejudicial pre-trial publicity.

At a Feb. 19 hearing, appellate Judge Juan Torruella asked whether a ''video of Tsarnaev placing a backpack at the site of the bombing'' was ''the same thing'' as Wilber Rideau's TV confession. In Rideau, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned his 1961 murder conviction because his confession was broadcast widely in the parish from which his jury was drawn. Tsarnaev's attorneys cited the Rideau case in their attempts'--so far futile'--to argue that such publicity has hurt their client's right to a fair trial in Boston.

And now, as the opening of the trial draws near, inferences and Hollywood re-enactments may be all that's left of the so-called video evidence of Tsarnaev dropping a backpack.

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The FBI's Fantasy Video, Bibi's Gambit & a Plea Deal for Petraeus': Mar. 3, 2015Boston Trial Tribulations, Nuclear Games & Russia's Whodunnit: Mar. 2, 2015'Net Neutrality, Smart Nukes & Oil in Gaza': Feb. 27, 2015Our InvestigationsWill the Boston Marathon Bombing's Original 'Star' Witness Testify?Full Story | Careless Whispers? Petraeus May Be Headed for ProsecutionFull Story | Boston Marathon Bombing Suspect's Alleged Boat Confession May Not FloatFull Story | The Boston Bombing Trial Starts, But Answers Aren't on the DocketFull Story | Boston Marathon Bombing: A PrimerFull Story |

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Archived Version

Thu, 05 Mar 2015 13:50

Former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton writes on her cell phone in Brasilia, April 17, 2012.

For a secretary of state, running your own email server might be a clever'--if controversial'--way to keep your conversations hidden from journalists and their pesky Freedom of Information Act requests. But ask a few security experts, and the consensus is that it's not a very smart way to keep those conversations hidden from hackers.

On Monday, the New York Times revealed that former secretary of state and future presidential candidate Hillary Clinton used a private email account rather than her official State.gov email address while serving in the State Department. And this was no Gmail or Yahoo! Mail account: On Wednesday the AP reported that Clinton actually ran a private mail server in her home during her entire tenure leading the State Department, hosting her email at the domain Clintonemail.com.

Much of the criticism of that in-house email strategy has centered on its violation of the federal government's record-keeping and transparency rules. But as the controversy continues to swirl, the security community is focused on a different issue: the possibility that an unofficial, unprotected server held the communications of America's top foreign affairs official for four years, leaving all of it potentially vulnerable to state-sponsored hackers.

''Although the American people didn't know about this, it's almost certain that foreign intelligence agencies did, just as the NSA knows which Indian and Spanish officials use Gmail and Yahoo accounts,'' says Chris Soghoian, the lead technologist for the American Civil Liberties Union. ''She's not the first official to use private email and not the last. But there are serious security issue associated with these kinds of services'...When you build your house outside the security fence, you're on your own, and that's what seems to have happened here.''

The most obvious security issue with Clinton running her own email server, says Soghoian, is the lack of manpower overseeing it compared with the State Department's official email system. The federal agency's own IT security team monitors State Department servers for possible vulnerabilities and breaches, and those computers fall under the NSA's protection, too. Since 2008, for instance, the so-called Einstein project has functioned as an umbrella intrusion-detection system for more than a dozen federal agencies; Though it's run by the Department of Homeland Security, it uses NSA data and vulnerability-detection methods.

Clinton's email wouldn't have the benefit of any of that expensive government security. If she had hosted her email with Google or even Yahoo! or Microsoft, there might be an argument that those private companies' security teams are just as competent as the those of the feds. But instead, according to the Associated Press, Clinton ran her server from her own home. Any protection it had there'--aside from the physical protection of the Secret Service'--would have been limited to the Clintons' own personal resources.

A more specific threat to Clinton's private email relates to its domain name. Unlike the State Department's State.gov domain, Clinton's Clintonemail.com is currently registered with a private domain registrar, Network Solutions, as a simple Whois search reveals. The domain Clintonemail.com (and thus its registrar) was certainly known to at least one hacker: The notorious celebrity hacker Guccifer first revealed it in 2013 when he spilled the emails of Clinton associate Sydney Blumenthal.

Anyone who hacked Network Solutions would be able to quietly hijack the Clintonemail.com domain, intercepting, redirecting, and even spoofing email from Clinton's account. And Network Solutions is far from the Internet's hardest target: Hundreds of its domains were hacked in 2010, a year into Clinton's tenure at the head of the State Department.

Even if Clinton used the account only for personal messages rather than those of international importance (say, something along the lines of: ''Let's go ahead and drop those bombs, Bibi'') the notion that they could be both intercepted and spoofed through a common hacking vector is particularly troubling. ''Even the most mundane of communications can be interesting to an intelligence service,'' says the ACLU's Soghoian. The NSA, he points out, thought it was worthwhile to monitor German Chancellor Angela Merkel's personal cell phone, for instance.1

There's no evidence, of course, that Clintonemail.com was ever actually compromised. University of Pennsylvania computer science professor Matt Blaze says judging its security versus the State Department's own email servers would require more information. But he notes that the control of the server's domain is a real issue. ''It's certainly true that the domain State.gov is probably harder to hijack than clintonemail.com,'' says Blaze.

To be fair, the State Department's track record for its own email security isn't exactly spotless, even relative to Clinton's DIY approach. Consider this: Some critics have pointed out in recent days that Clintonemail.com currently uses an invalid TLS certificate, another method that a man-in-the-middle might use to intercept or spoof emails from the server; but Stanford researcher Jonathan Mayer points out to WIRED that the State Department's own TLS certificate is currently invalid, too. Mayer believes that Clinton's bad certificate is a result of a misconfiguration that occurred when the email service was transferred in 2013 to the McAfee-owned company MX Logic. The State Department, Mayer says, uses a ''self-signed certificate,'' a less-than-sterling security practice. ''Against man-in-the middle attacks, both are currently insecure,'' he says.

In fact, the State Department has been the target of several successful hacker attacks over the past decade. The most recent one in November of 2014 forced the agency to temporarily shut down its email system as a response to concerns that unclassified communications had been breached by Russian hackers.

But at least, in that case, there was a response. If the same sort of highly resourced hackers had gone after the server in Clinton's basement, there's no guarantee that the same alarms would have gone off.

Bob McMillan contributed reporting to this article.

1Correction: An earlier version of this story stated that the revelation that the NSA spied on Angela Merkel's cell phone came from Edward Snowden. In fact, the source for Der Spiegel's reporting on that phone surveillance isn't publicly known.

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Archived Version

Thu, 05 Mar 2015 04:45

WASHINGTON (AP) '-- A House committee investigating the Benghazi, Libya, attacks issued subpoenas Wednesday for the emails of Hillary Rodham Clinton, who used a private account exclusively for official business when she was secretary of state '-- and also used a computer email server now traced back to her family's New York home.

The subpoenas from the Republican-led Select Committee on Benghazi demanded additional material from Clinton and others related to Libya, spokesman Jamal D. Ware said. The panel also instructed technology companies it did not identify to preserve any relevant documents in their possession.

The development on Capitol Hill came the same day The Associated Press reported the existence of a personal email server traced back to the Chappaqua, New York, home of Clinton. The unusual practice of a Cabinet-level official running her own email server would have given Clinton '-- who is expected to run for president in the 2016 campaign '-- significant control over limiting access to her message archives.

The practice also would complicate the State Department's legal responsibilities in finding and turning over official emails in response to any investigations, lawsuits or public records requests. The department would be in the position of accepting Clinton's assurances she was surrendering everything required that was in her control.

Congress said it learned last summer about Clinton's use of a private email account to conduct official State Department business during its investigation of the Benghazi attacks on a U.S. mission in which four Americans died.

"It doesn't matter if the server was in Foggy Bottom, Chappaqua or Bora Bora," House Speaker John Boehner said. "The Benghazi Select Committee needs to see all of these emails, because the American people deserve all of the facts."

The chairman of the Benghazi committee, Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., told reporters: "I want the documents. Sooner rather than later."

Democrats called it a fishing expedition.

"Everything I've seen so far has led me to believe that this is an effort to go after Hillary Clinton, period," said Rep. Elijah Cummings of Maryland, the top Democrat on the committee.

The questions about Clinton's email practices left the Obama administration in an awkward position. At one point, the State Department directed reporters to contact Clinton, who has not publicly commented about her emails. The White House said it was her responsibility to make sure any emails about official business weren't deleted from her private server.

Meanwhile, the AP said it was considering legal action under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act against the State Department for failing to turn over some emails covering Clinton's tenure as the nation's top diplomat after waiting more than one year. The department has never suggested that it doesn't possess all Clinton's emails.

It was not immediately clear exactly where Clinton's computer server was run, but a business record for the Internet connection it used was registered under the home address for her residence as early as August 2010. The customer was listed as Eric Hoteham.

An aide to then-first lady Clinton was identified in a 2002 congressional report as Eric Hothem, whose name is spelled differently than in the Internet records. Hothem, a financial adviser in Washington, was not available to take an AP reporter's phone call at his office Wednesday. He was a special assistant to Clinton as far back as 1997 and considered one of the family's information technology experts.

A parody Twitter account for Hoteham appeared Wednesday after the AP cited the records, sending satirical tweets supporting Clinton's campaign. Hoteham's name had not appeared with that spelling in public-record databases, campaign contribution records or online background searches.

In most cases, individuals who operate their own email servers are technical experts or users so concerned about issues of privacy and surveillance they take matters into their own hands.

Clinton '-- who emailed so frequently using her BlackBerry as secretary of state that it became an Internet meme '-- is particularly sensitive about disclosures of personal files based on her experiences in confronting congressional investigations and civil lawsuits during her husband's election and presidency and her own roles as first lady, senator, presidential candidate and Cabinet official.

State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf said Clinton as Cabinet secretary never used a government email account on the agency's separate network for sharing classified information, which Clinton would have been prohibited from forwarding to her private email account.

"She had other ways of communicating through classified email through her assistants or her staff, with people, when she needed to use a classified setting," Harf said.

Most Internet users rely on professional outside companies, such as Google Inc. or their own employers, for the behind-the-scenes complexities of managing their email communications. Government employees generally use servers run by federal agencies where they work. Clinton's email practices appear to be far more sophisticated than some politicians, including Mitt Romney and Sarah Palin, who were found to have been conducting official business using free email services operated by Microsoft Corp. and Yahoo Inc.

Clinton has not described her reasons for using a private email account '-- hdr22@clintonemail.com, which appears to include a nod to her middle name, Diane. A spokesman for her did not respond to requests seeking comment from the AP on Tuesday or Wednesday.

Operating her own server would have afforded Clinton additional legal opportunities to block government or private subpoenas in criminal, administrative or civil cases because her lawyers could object in court before being forced to turn over any emails. And since the Secret Service was guarding Clinton's home, an email server there would have been well protected from theft or a physical hacking.

But homemade email servers are generally not as reliable, secure from hackers or protected from fires or floods as those in commercial data centers.

The Hoteham registration is also associated with a separate email server, presidentclinton.com, and a nonfunctioning website, wjcoffice.com, all linked to the same residential Internet account as Mrs. Clinton's email server. The former president's full name is William Jefferson Clinton.

Hothem, the former Clinton aide, surfaced in at least two Clinton administration controversies. A congressional report in 2002 investigating pardons said a Citibank account linked to Hothem wired $15,000 to President Clinton's brother, Roger, in March 2001, while investigators were trying to compel Roger Clinton to testify about his role in several pardon cases. The president's lawyer told investigators the money came from a personal account of the Clintons and was intended for Clinton's brother to hire a lawyer.

In early 2001, Hothem was also named by a former White House chief usher as saying the Clintons were permitted to take furniture when they left the White House that later was determined to belong to the government.

Sue Hothem, his wife, is a well-known fundraiser and political consultant in Washington. Last year, she was named a vice president for the technology lobbying group TechNet. It said she previously headed development efforts for the Democratic Leadership Council and the Progressive Policy Institute.

Mrs. Clinton's email options included using an official State Department account or even a secret agency email address, which the AP revealed in 2013 as a common practice across the U.S. government and by previous administrations. Many senior U.S. officials use alternate addresses that aren't disclosed to the public for official business so they are not inundated with unwanted messages.

But the State Department's email system might not have been attractive to Clinton because it is frequently targeted by hackers. The AP revealed in 2006 and 2014 that the agency had suffered significant electronic break-ins. In the most recent incident, the department took the unprecedented step of shutting down its entire unclassified email system. While Clinton was secretary of state in 2010, a U.S. soldier, Chelsea Manning, stole 250,000 diplomatic cables and turned them over to WikiLeaks, which published them online.

___

Associated Press writers Stephen Braun, Matthew Daly and Donna Cassata contributed to this report.

___

On Twitter, follow Jack Gillum at https://twitter.com/jackgillum and Ted Bridis at https://twitter.com/tbridis

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Archived Version

Thu, 05 Mar 2015 04:43

AP

BY:Brent ScherMarch 4, 2015 2:50 pm

The name of the mysterious individual who registered the servers for Hillary Clinton's private email address used at the State Department bears a striking resemblance to a longtime Clinton aide.

Clinton and her top aides in the State Department were using email addresses on a private server registered to the Clinton's home in Chappaqua, New York, according to Internet records reviewed by the Associated Press.

The customer listed in records registering the Internet address to the Chappaqua home was ''Eric Hoteham.'' The AP, however, was unable to identify an ''Eric Hoteham,'' stating that the ''name does not appear in public records databases, campaign contribution records, or Internet background searches.''

But the name is similar to that of Eric Hothem, who worked as a staff assistant for Clinton during her time as First Lady.

Hothem was involved in multiple personal matters during his service to Clinton and played a role in the controversy surrounding the pardon given to former President Bill Clinton's half-brother Roger Clinton.

A congressional investigation into Clinton's clemency decisions found that as Roger Clinton refused to testify to the committee in March 2001, he received a $15,000 wire transfer from a Citibank account in the care of Hothem.

The name of the account was ''E.C. 934(A) c/o Eric Hothem.'' Lawyers told the committee that ''the account is a personal Citibank account of former President and Senator Clinton'' and that the money was a loan for Roger Clinton to obtain legal counsel for the investigation.

The congressional report points out that the ''payment occurred at the height of public outcry and investigative activity regarding the pardons and at a time when Roger Clinton was deciding whether to provide testimony.''

According to accounts of the final days of the Clinton administration, Hothem told chief White House usher Gary Walters that multiple items of furniture were ''the Clintons' personal property'' even though they were not.

The Clintons would later have to return or pay for more than $100,000 in furnishings stolen from the White House.

Hothem also received a special acknowledgement in Hillary Clinton's book Living History.

Hothem went to work for Citigroup, then moved to JP Morgan Chase in 2013, according to public disclosure reports accessed through the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The documents indicate that Hothem began his financial career in 2002, just a year after his last documented work as an aide to Clinton.

Members of Hothem's JP Morgan office in Washington, D.C., said on Wednesday that they had ''no comment'' to any questions regarding Hothem and directed the Washington Free Beacon to the company's media relations department.

Inquiries made to media relations were not answered by press time. An email sent to an account believed to be Hothem's was also not returned.

An analysis of Clinton's personal financial disclosure forms shows she maintained accounts worth millions of dollars at Citibank throughout her years in the Senate. She moved her largest accounts to JP Morgan in 2009.

Her most recent available public financial disclosure in 2012 shows that she holds up to $25 million worth of assets in a JP Morgan account. Hothem did not make the switch to JP Morgan until Clinton was out of federal office in May 2013.

Hothem has maintained ties to Democratic campaigns. His wife, Sue Hothem, has ''raised millions of dollars in political contributions,'' and helped found a political action committee worth nearly $1 million. She was also the director of development Democratic Leadership Council and the Progressive Policy Institute.

The Clinton Foundation did not respond to a request for comment by press time.

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Thu, 05 Mar 2015 04:42

Posted at 9:09 am on March 4, 2015 by Twitchy Staff | View Comments''Eric Hoteham'' is the mysterious Internet expert who registered the address for Hillary Clinton's homebrew server. But what does ''Eric Hoteham'' really mean? Twitter sleuths are on it!

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Archived Version

Thu, 05 Mar 2015 03:42

(Washington, DC) '' Judicial Watch announced today that it has filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the State Department seeking any and all communications '' including emails '' from then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and her Chief of Staff Huma Abedin with Nagla Mahmoud, wife of ousted Egyptian president Mohammad Morsi, from January 21, 2009 to January 31, 2013 (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of State (No. 1:15-cv-00321)). This latest lawsuit will require the State Department to answer questions about and conduct thorough searches of Hillary Clinton's newly discovered hidden email accounts. Judicial Watch also has nearly a dozen other active FOIA lawsuits that may require the State Department to search these email accounts. Huma Abedin is also alleged to have a secret account as well.

Judicial Watch submitted its original FOIA request on August 27, 2014. The State Department was required by law to respond by September 26, 2014 at the latest to Judicial Watch's request for:

Any and all records of communication between Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Nagla Mahmoud, wife of ousted Egyptian president Muhammad Morsi, from January 21, 2009 to January 31, 2013; andAny and all records of communication between former State Department Deputy Chief of Staff Huma Abedin and Nagla Mahmoud from January 21, 2009 to January 31, 2013.To date, the State Department has not responded.

Ms. Mahmoud threatened Mrs. Clinton after Morsi was ousted. According to JihadWatch.org:

In the words of El-Mogaz News, Morsi's wife ''is threatening to expose the special relationship between her husband and Hillary Clinton, after the latter attacked the ousted [president], calling him a simpleton who was unfit for the presidency. Sources close to Nagla confirmed that she has threatened to publish the letters exchanged between Morsi and Hillary.''

The report continues by saying that Nagla accuses Hillary of denouncing her former close ally, the Brotherhood's Morsi, in an effort to foster better relations with his successor, Egypt's current president, Sisi'--even though, as Nagla laments, ''he [Morsi] was faithful to the American administration.''

''Now we know why the State Department didn't want to respond to our specific request for Hillary Clinton's and Huma Abedin's communications,'' stated Tom Fitton. ''The State Department violated FOIA law rather than admit that it couldn't and wouldn't search the secret accounts that the agency has known about for years. This lawsuit shows how the latest Obama administration cover-up isn't just about domestic politics but has significant foreign policy implications.''

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Archived Version

Wed, 04 Mar 2015 20:49

By JACK GILLUM and TED BRIDISPublished: TodayFILE - In this Oct. 18, 2011, file photo, then-Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton checks her Blackberry from a desk inside a C-17 military plane upon her departure from Malta, in the Mediterranean Sea, bound for Tripoli, Libya. Clinton used a personal email account during her time as secretary of state, rather than a government-issued email address, potentially hampering efforts to archive official government documents required by law. Clinton's office said nothing was illegal or improper about her use of the non-government account and that she believed her business emails to State Department and other .gov accounts would be archived in accordance with government rules. (AP Photo/Kevin Lamarque, Pool, File)WASHINGTON (AP) - The email practices of Hillary Rodham Clinton, who used a private account exclusively for official business when she was secretary of state, grew more intriguing with the disclosure Wednesday that the computer server she used traced back to her family's New York home, according to Internet records reviewed by The Associated Press.

The unusual practice of a Cabinet-level official running her own email server would have given Clinton - who is expected to run for president in the 2016 campaign - significant control over limiting access to her message archives.

It also would complicate the State Department's legal responsibilities in finding and turning over official emails in response to any investigations, lawsuits or public records requests. The department would be the position of accepting Clinton's assurances she was surrendering everything required that was in her control.

The White House said it was Clinton's responsibility to make sure any emails about official business weren't deleted from her private server.

"There's a responsibility that's associated with that, which is it's important to ensure that when official business is conducted on personal email, that those records are properly maintained and preserved," spokesman Josh Earnest said. He added there was no security review planned for Clinton's email server.

The AP said Wednesday it was considering taking legal action against the State Department for failing to turn over some emails covering Clinton's tenure as the nation's top diplomat after waiting more than one year. The department has failed to meet several self-imposed deadlines but has never suggested that it doesn't possess all Clinton's emails.

It was not immediately clear exactly where Clinton's computer server was run, but a business record for the Internet connection it used was registered under the home address for her residence in Chappaqua, New York, as early as August 2010. The customer was listed as Eric Hoteham.

An aide to then-first lady Clinton was identified in a 2002 congressional report as Eric Hothem, whose name is spelled differently than in the Internet records. Hothem was not available to take a phone call when reached at his office Wednesday.

A parody Twitter account for Hoteham appeared Wednesday after the AP cited the records, sending satirical tweets supporting Clinton's campaign. Hoteham's name had not appeared with that spelling in public-record databases, campaign contribution records or online background searches.

In most cases, individuals who operate their own email servers are technical experts or users so concerned about issues of privacy and surveillance they take matters into their own hands.

Clinton - who emailed so frequently using her Blackberry as secretary of state that it became an Internet meme - is particularly sensitive about disclosures of personal files based on her experiences in confronting congressional investigations and civil lawsuits during her husband's election and presidency and her own roles as first lady, senator, presidential candidate and Cabinet official.

Most Internet users rely on professional outside companies, such as Google Inc. or their own employers, for the behind-the-scenes complexities of managing their email communications. Government employees generally use servers run by federal agencies where they work. Clinton's email practices appear to be far more sophisticated than some politicians, including Mitt Romney and Sarah Palin, who were found to have been conducting official business using free email services operated by Microsoft Corp. and Yahoo Inc.

Clinton has not described her motivation for using a private email account - hdr22@clintonemail.com, which appears to include a nod to her middle name, Diane. A spokesman for her did not respond to requests seeking comment from the AP on Tuesday or Wednesday. Clinton did not mention the issue during a speech Tuesday night at the 30th anniversary gala of EMILY's List, which works to elect Democratic women who support abortion rights.

Operating her own server would have afforded Clinton additional legal opportunities to block government or private subpoenas in criminal, administrative or civil cases because her lawyers could object in court before being forced to turn over any emails. And since the Secret Service was guarding Clinton's home, an email server there would have been well protected from theft or a physical hacking.

But homemade email servers are generally not as reliable, secure from hackers or protected from fires or floods as those in commercial data centers. Professional facilities provide monitoring for viruses or hacking attempts, regulated temperatures, offsite backups, generators in case of power outages, fire-suppression systems and redundant communications lines.

It was unclear whom Clinton hired to set up or maintain her private email server. The Hoteham registration is also associated with a separate email server, presidentclinton.com, and a nonfunctioning website, wjcoffice.com, all linked to the same residential Internet account as Mrs. Clinton's email server. The former president's full name is William Jefferson Clinton.

Mrs. Clinton's email options included using an official State Department account or even a secret agency email address, which the AP revealed in 2013 as a common practice across the U.S. government and by previous administrations. Many senior U.S. officials use alternate addresses that aren't disclosed to the public for official business so they are not inundated with unwanted messages.

But the State Department's email system might not have been attractive to Clinton because it is frequently targeted by hackers. The AP revealed in 2006 and 2014 that the agency had suffered significant electronic break-ins. In the most recent incident, the department took the unprecedented step of shutting down its entire unclassified email system. While Clinton was secretary of state in 2010, a U.S. soldier, Chelsea Manning, stole 250,000 diplomatic cables and turned them over to WikiLeaks, which published them online.

Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., chairman of the special House committee investigating the Benghazi attacks, said the panel learned last summer - when department documents were turned over - that Clinton had used a private email account while secretary of state. More recently the committee learned that she used private email accounts exclusively and had more than one, Gowdy said.

"It doesn't matter if the server was in Foggy Bottom, Chappaqua, or Bora Bora," House Speaker John Boehner said Wednesday. "The Benghazi Select Committee needs to see all of these emails, because the American people deserve all of the facts."

___

Associated Press writer Stephen Braun contributed to this report.

___

Follow Jack Gillum on Twitter: https://twitter.com/jackgillum, and Follow Ted Bridis on Twitter: https://twitter.com/tbridis

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Archived Version

Wed, 04 Mar 2015 18:43

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Wed, 04 Mar 2015 18:39

Products & SolutionsMcAfee SaaS Email and Web Security solutions include all email security, email archiving, and web security services previously available under the MX Logic brand. Learn more about McAfee SaaS offerings.

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Call: 1-877-695-6442Use our web-based eService system to submit an eService ticket, download documentation, and see the current McAfee SaaS Email & Web Security system statusPartnersThe MX Logic PartnerFocus Program is now the McAfee PartnerFocus Program. McAfee is strongly committed to preserving the integrity of the MX Logic value-add channel, maintaining its margin opportunity and tiered pricing, and helping our joint customers adopt the broader McAfee portfolio. Additionally, all partners associated with the McAfee SecurityAlliance Partner Program can now take advantage of these SaaS services currently available in their portfolio.

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Wed, 04 Mar 2015 18:16

All of your MX record, DNS, blacklist and SMTP diagnostics in one integrated tool. Input a domain name or IP Address or Host Name. Links in the results will guide you to other relevant tools and information. And you'll have a chronological history of your results.

If you already know exactly what you want, you can force a particular test or lookup. Try some of these examples:

(e.g. "blacklist: 127.0.0.2" will do a blacklist lookup)

Command Explanation blacklist: Check IP or host for reputation smtp: Test mail server SMTP (port 25) mx: DNS MX records for domain a: DNS A record IP address for host name spf: Check SPF records on a domain txt: Check TXT records on a domain ptr: DNS PTR record for host name cname: DNS canonical host name to IP address scan: Perform a port scan on the host whois: Get domain registration information arin: Get IP address block information soa: Get Start of Authority record for a domain tcp: Verify an IP Address allows tcp connections http: Verify a URL allows http connections https: Verify a URL allows secure http connections ping: Perform a standard ICMP ping trace: Perform a standard ICMP trace route dns: Check your DNS Servers for possible problems New! Other tools

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Wed, 04 Mar 2015 18:12

2011-04-15T17:07:07-04:00http://whois.arin.net/rest/net/NET-208-91-196-0-1208.91.199.255NET-208-91-196-0-1CONFLUENCE-NETWORK-INC22208.91.199.255Direct AllocationDA208.91.196.0AS40034http://whois.arin.net/rest/org/CNhttp://whois.arin.net/rest/net/NET-208-0-0-0-0208.91.196.02012-03-02T08:03:18-05:004

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Wed, 04 Mar 2015 18:00

Netflix announced yesterday that it would be coming to Australia and New Zealand on March 24th, and within the first 200 words, the company abandoned its principled stand on net neutrality. As GigaOm first reported, Netflix announced a special deal with Australian ISP iiNet to exempt its traffic from broadband data caps. Remember: Netflix lobbied hard for net neutrality '-- so hard it even helped change the FCC's definition of it. And zero-rating schemes like Netflix's new deal with iiNet (or like T-Mobile's controversial music freedom program, or AT&T's "sponsored data" program) clearly violate the principles of net neutrality. So was Netflix lying to its customers and the public about its stance the whole time?

Netflix did not respond to our request for comment by the time this story was published, but just consider what Netflix CEO Reed Hastings said on Facebook last April:

Comcast no longer following net neutrality principles.

Comcast should apply caps equally, or not at all.

I spent the weekend enjoying four good internet video apps on my Xbox: Netflix, HBO GO, Xfinity, and Hulu.

When I watch video on my Xbox from three of these four apps, it counts against my Comcast internet cap.When I watch through Comcast's Xfinity app, however, it does not count against my Comcast internet cap.

For example, if I watch last night's SNL episode on my Xbox through the Hulu app, it eats up about one gigabyte of my cap, but if I watch that same episode through the Xfinity Xbox app, it doesn't use up my cap at all.

The same device, the same IP address, the same wifi, the same internet connection, but totally different cap treatment.

In what way is this neutral?

Netflix is now voluntarily participating in the exact thing it has ostensibly been fighting for more than a year. And bragging about it! Here's what Netflix's Director of Business Development, Paul Perryman, said about the deal in iiNet's press release:

Working with iiNet to offer quota-free Netflix content gives more people in the country the opportunity to familiarize themselves with who we are and what our service offers. We're confident that Australian audiences will love Netflix and we're looking forward to shaking things up in the local subscription TV market.

It's a flip-flop even Frank Underwood couldn't make with a straight face, especially coming on the heels of last week's major net neutrality victory in the US. Where do you really stand, Netflix?

Update, 3:09PM: Netflix responded to our story with the following comment:

Zero rating isn't great for consumers as it has the potential to distort consumer choice in favor of choices selected by an ISP. We'll push back against such efforts, but we won't put our service or our members at a disadvantage.

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Wed, 04 Mar 2015 19:50

Florida lawmakers are considering legislation that would make it unlawful to run a website anonymously if it offers "commercial" recordings and videos. The aim of the bill is to close or disrupt websites that don't comply'--all in the name of protecting intellectual property rights.

The bill, which landed on the state's House and Senate floors Tuesday, requires websites to display a "correct name, physical address, and telephone number or e-mail address" of the owner if they play a "substantial part in the electronic dissemination of commercial recordings or audiovisual works, directly or indirectly." The disclosure is required even if all the recordings or audiovisual works disseminated by the website are owned by the website owner.

The "True Origin of Digital Goods Act" raises constitutional concerns, according to Mitch Stoltz, an attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation:

The ability to speak anonymously is an important free speech right. Forcing website owners to identify themselves violates the First Amendment when laws like this one are vague about which sites must comply. Even a site that a court decides is ''likely to violate'' the statute could be de-anonymized.

In addition, using state law to regulate the contents of websites creates constitutional problems because the Internet is borderless. This bill could easily apply to sites hosted anywhere in the U.S., not just in Florida. State regulation of websites can interfere with the federal government's exclusive authority over interstate commerce.

The bill excludes ISPs from its purview and would give copyright owners the right to ask a judge to unmask the identity of the website operator. According to a legislative analysis of the bill, the recording or motion picture industry intends "to proceed with third-party injunctions to discourage Internet service providers, hosting services, payment services or other Internet website services from working with websites that fail to disclose their personal information required by this bill."

Stoltz said similar laws have been used to justify police raids. "In 2007, a Georgia police SWAT team (with RIAA employees in tow) raided the studio of DJ Drama and DJ Cannon, makers of influential 'mixtapes' that record labels used to promote their artists," Stoltz wrote. "The police arrested the DJs and confiscated their CDs and equipment. Their justification wasn't copyright law (which is a federal law) but a more limited version of the same law Florida is considering, one that applies only to physical goods. If Florida expands on Georgia's law by including websites, we could see similar police raids against music blogs or other avenues of online speech. And the works on the site might even be in the public domain, as long as some 'owner, assignee, authorized agent, or licensee''--perhaps a broadcaster'--complains."

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Wed, 04 Mar 2015 16:51

The prank call broadcasted by a radio station in which the hosts impersonated the Queen and Prince Charles that resulted in a nurse committing suicide was illegal, a court has ruled.

The call, made by DJs Mel Greig and Michael Christian, featured the pair trying to get through to Kate Middleton while she was pregnant in King Edward VII Hospital in London.

Tragic nurse Jacintha Saldanha answered the call and, believing it to be real, transferred the presenters to a nurse.

Ms Saldanha was found dead just days later.

Illegal: 2Day FM presenters Mel Greig and Michael Christian's prank call was ruled a breach of law

The mother-of-two's inquest last year heard she blamed herself for the incident and bore responsibility, despite the hospital's support.

The coroner returned a suicide verdict.

An initial investigation by the Australian Communications and Media Authority ruled that Today FM had breached its licence by not obtaining the consent of those involved before broadcasting the call.

Today's High Court ruling upholds that finding, which had previously been overturned by the Federal Court, confirming the Authority does have the power to decide whether a criminal offence has been committed for the purpose of determining whether there has been a breach of the Broadcasting Services Act.

Outside court: Jacintha Saldanha's family and supportersMs Greig apologised for her role in the incident at Mrs Saldanha's inquest last year, and has spoken of her horror and disgust at the part she played in the prank.

In December last year it emerged that Prince William wrote a moving letter to the family of the nurse in the wake of her death.

In it, he wrote: "It is unbelievably sad and we both extend to and your family our deepest condolences.

"We were both very shocked to hear about Jacintha and have been thinking about her a lot recently. Many of the nurses spoke highly of her and I'm sure you know how great a nurse she was.

"Jacintha and her colleagues looked after us extremely well and I am just so sorry that someone who cared for others so much found themselves in such a desperate situation."

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Wed, 04 Mar 2015 21:20

Washington, D.C., March 3, 2015 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Physicians and public health officials know that recently vaccinated individuals can spread disease and that contact with the immunocompromised can be especially dangerous. For example, the Johns Hopkins Patient Guide warns the immunocompromised to "Avoid contact with children who are recently vaccinated," and to "Tell friends and family who are sick, or have recently had a live vaccine (such as chicken pox, measles, rubella, intranasal influenza, polio or smallpox) not to visit."1

A statement on the website of St. Jude's Hospital warns parents not to allow people to visit children undergoing cancer treatment if they have received oral polio or smallpox vaccines within four weeks, have received the nasal flu vaccine within one week, or have rashes after receiving the chickenpox vaccine or MMR (measles, mumps, rubella) vaccine.2

"The public health community is blaming unvaccinated children for the outbreak of measles at Disneyland, but the illnesses could just as easily have occurred due to contact with a recently vaccinated individual," says Sally Fallon Morell, president of the Weston A. Price Foundation. The Foundation promotes a healthy diet, non-toxic lifestyle and freedom of medical choice for parents and their children. "Evidence indicates that recently vaccinated individuals should be quarantined in order to protect the public."

Scientific evidence demonstrates that individuals vaccinated with live virus vaccines such as MMR (measles, mumps and rubella), rotavirus, chicken pox, shingles and influenza can shed the virus for many weeks or months afterwards and infect the vaccinated and unvaccinated alike. 3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10.11.12

Furthermore, vaccine recipients can carry diseases in the back of their throat and infect others while displaying no symptoms of a disease.13,14,15

Both unvaccinated and vaccinated individuals are at risk from exposure to those recently vaccinated. Vaccine failure is widespread; vaccine-induced immunity is not permanent and recent outbreaks of diseases such as whooping cough, mumps and measles have occurred in fully vaccinated populations.16,17 Flu vaccine recipients become more susceptible to future infection after repeated vaccination.18,19

Adults have contracted polio from recently vaccinated infants. A father from Staten Island ended up in a wheel chair after contracting polio while changing his daughter's diaper. He received a 22.5 million dollar award in 2009. 20,21

"Vaccine failure and failure to acknowledge that live virus vaccines can spread disease have resulted in an increase in outbreaks of infectious disease in both vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals," says Leslie Manookian, producer of The Greater Good. "CDC should instruct physicians who administer vaccinations to inform their patients about the risks posed to others by those who've been recently vaccinated."

According to the Weston A. Price Foundation, the best protection against infectious disease is a healthy immune system, supported by adequate vitamin A and vitamin C. Well-nourished children easily recover from infectious disease and rarely suffer complications.

The number of measles deaths declined from 7575 in 1920 (10,000 per year in many years in the 1910s) to an average of 432 each year from 1958-1962.22 The vaccine was introduced in 1963. Between 2005 and 2014, there have been no deaths from measles in the U.S. and 108 deaths reported after the MMR vaccine.23

The Weston A. Price Foundation is a 501(c)(3) nutrition education foundation with the mission of disseminating accurate, science-based information on diet and health. Named after nutrition pioneer Weston A. Price, DDS, author of Nutrition and Physical Degeneration, the Washington, DC-based Foundation publishes a quarterly journal for its 15,000 members, supports 600 local chapters worldwide and hosts a yearly international conference. The Foundation phone number is (202) 363-4394(202) 363-4394, www.westonaprice.org, info@westonaprice.org.

REFERENCES:

1. http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/kimmel_cancer_center/patient_information/Patient%20Guide%20Final.pdf

2. http://www.stjude.org/stjude/v/index.jsp?vgnextoid=20206f9523e70110VgnVCM1000001e0215acRCRD

3. Outbreak of Measles Among Persons With Prior Evidence of Immunity, New York City, 2011 http://cid.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2014/02/27/cid.ciu105

4. Detection of Measles Virus RNA in Urine Specimens from Vaccine Recipients http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7494055

5. Comparison of the Safety, Vaccine Virus Shedding and Immunogenicity of Influenza Virus Vaccine, Trivalent, Types A and B, Live Cold-Adapted, Administered to Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV)-Infected and Non-HIV Infected Adults http://jid.oxfordjournals.org/content/181/2/725.full

6. Sibling Transmission of Vaccine-Derived Rotavirus (RotaTeq) Associated with Rotavirus Gastroenteritis http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/125/2/e438

7. Polio vaccination may continue after wild virus fades http://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2008/10/polio-vaccination-may-continue-after-wild-virus-fades

8. Engineering attenuated virus vaccines by controlling replication fidelity http://www.nature.com/nm/journal/v14/n2/abs/nm1726.html

9. CASE OF VACCINE-ASSOCIATED MEASLES FIVE WEEKS POST-IMMUNISATION, BRITISH COLUMBIA, CANADA, OCTOBER 2013 http://www.eurosurveillance.org/ViewArticle.aspx?ArticleId=20649

10. The Safety Profile of Varicella Vaccine: A 10-Year Review http://jid.oxfordjournals.org/content/197/Supplement_2/S165.full

11. Comparison of Shedding Characteristics of Seasonal Influenza Virus (Sub)Types and Influenza A(H1N1)pdm09; Germany, 2007-2011 http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0051653

12. Epigenetics of Host-Pathogen Interactions: The Road Ahead and the Road Behind http://journals.plos.org/plospathogens/article?id=10.1371/journal.ppat.1003007

13. Animal Models for Influenza Virus Pathogenesis and Transmission http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3063653/

14. Acellular pertussis vaccines protect against disease but fail to prevent infection and transmission in a nonhuman primate mode http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24277828

15. Study Finds Parents Can Pass Whooping Cough to Babies http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/03/health/03coug.html?_r=0

16. Immunized People Getting Whooping Cough http://www.kpbs.org/news/2014/jun/12/immunized-people-getting-whooping-cough/

17. Vaccine Failure -- Over 1000 Got Mumps in NY in Last Six Months http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2010/03/06/vaccine-failure-over-1000-get-mumps-in-ny-in-last-six-months.aspx

18. Impact of Repeated Vaccination on Vaccine Effectiveness Against Influenza A(H3N2) and B During 8 Seasons http://cid.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2014/09/29/cid.ciu680.full

19. http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2012/09/18/flu-shot-increases-flu-illness.aspx

20. http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/staten-island-dad-22-5m-polio-case-lederle-laboratories-article-1.369105

21. http://naturalsociety.com/woman-contracts-polio-virus-vaccinated-infant/

22. http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/00056803.htm

23. http://vaccineimpact.com/2015/zero-u-s-measles-deaths-in-10-years-but-over-100-measles-vaccine-deaths-reported/

CONTACT: Kim Hartke, 703-860-2711703-860-2711, press@westonaprice.org Leslie Manookian, 208-721-2135208-721-2135, leslie@greatergoodmovie.org

Source:Weston A. Price Foundation

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Source: newest submissions : inthemorning

Mon, 02 Mar 2015 06:58

One in four American women is on psychiatric medication. : inthemorningthis post was submitted on 02 Mar 2015

0points (50% upvoted)

shortlink:

Ï Rendered by PID 8944 on app-36 at 2015-03-02 06:58:35.667782+00:00 running fc50792 country code: US.

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Wed, 04 Mar 2015 20:07

Lake St. Louis has just voted to open up their checkbook. At the Board of Alderman meeting tonight, Monday March 2nd, the Board voted 5-2 to authorize spending taxpayer dollars to retain attorneys for a lawsuit against....voters. It still seems a bit surreal to me. My jaw still seems to be stuck open. The Acting Mayor took great pains to explain that it was not about Red Light Cameras. They say they have no intention of installing the money-making cameras. Instead, says Mayor Shweikert, it is about not letting anyone tell them what they cannot do. Not even their citizens. THEY run the city, and no little citizens or voters are going to tell them what to do. So they are suing the voters, 73% of whom voted to change the County Charter to forbid Red Light Cameras. It is not about cameras, it is about power. And hubris. I think I may have been the only attendee not there in an official capacity. To say the Board of Alderman meeting was sparsely attended would be an understatement. Perhaps people already see the futility. Perhaps they believe the old adage that you can't fight city hall. Maybe they are unaware or just don't care. Whatever the reason, it is tragic. The irony is incredible. My city is taxing its citizens and then spending that tax money on attorneys to sue those very citizens for having the audacity to try to control their government. The vote was not unanimous. After the meeting I thanked the two rational members of the Board, Tony Zito and Jason Law. Kudos to them for doing the right thing. The other five aldermen are listed below. These folks voted to use our tax money to sue us. If you get a chance, look them up and let them know what you think of that. And perhaps we should all start attending these meetings.

‪ITM Adam , though you'd like to read this (copy/paste) :

#‎Harakat-Hazm‬ the Syrian rebel group one of the White House’s most trusted ‪#‎militias‬ fighting President ‪#‎Bashar‬-al-Assad, with activists posting on Sunday a statement online from frontline commanders saying they are disbanding their units and folding them into brigades aligned with Jabhat Al Nusra(Syria’s Branch of Al Qaeda) giving them all the ‪#‎TOW‬ ‪#‎missiles‬ and training the US gave them.

A story that should have been headline news of Obama’s arming of Al Qaeda across all US media, largely went unnoticed. The only evidence of the story in the mainstream media can be found in the International Business times and the Washington Post. However both articles try to cast doubt. The New York Times did not headline the story and instead buried the information in an article headlined “2 Military bases in Syria Fall to Rebels”. However, The New York Times claimed the TOW missiles may have plaid a central role in Jabhat AL Nusra’s takeover of the bases.

The US government should just announce already their failure to hide that they are the main supporters of AL Qaeda and ISIS. Even their “moderate rebels” couldn’t keep faking it after all.

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Thu, 05 Mar 2015 13:37

Feb. 26, 2015 - 09:15PM JST

KUMAMOTO '--

Two second-year high school girls in Kumamoto City hyperventilated during a panic attack while being shown a television documentary on the radical Islamic State group, the board of education said.

According to the board, the documentary, ''Tracking ISIS,'' was originally shown on NHK on Feb 1. Sports Nippon reported that the teacher, a male in his 40s, decided to show the documentary in his world history class on Feb 20. In one segment, a soldier is depicted shooting a young man to death. Although the gory image had been blurred, the remaining audio and narration upset two girls in the class. Both girls were sent to the school infirmary to rest.

The teacher was quoted as saying he had intended to educate his class about the true severity of radical groups like ISIS and to teach them that most followers of Islam did not share such extreme views.

The board of education reprimanded the teacher, calling his decision to show the documentary poor judgement, Sports Nippon reported.

Japan Today

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Mon, 02 Mar 2015 07:13

The views expressed are those of the author and are not necessarily those of Scientific American.

Let's be clear: The planet is still getting hotter. The so-called pause, or hiatus, in global warming means the rate of temperature rise has slowed. The average global temperature is still going up, but in the past 10 to 15 years it hasn't been going up as quickly as it was in the decades before.

Although the ongoing increase is trouble, a slower rate is preferable. The question is: Why did the slowdown occur'--and how long will it last? We now have an answer. Three well-known climate researchers have combined actual temperature readings from 1880 to 2010 with a slew of climate models and have concluded that the slowdown is caused by the timing of two large ocean cycles, known as the Pacific multidecadal oscillation and the Atlantic multidecadal oscillation. And their analysis, published online today in Science, suggests that the slowdown will end in the next few decades.

The temperature of the Pacific and Atlantic oceans, particularly the upper layers, goes through natural cycles of warmer and cooler, driven by large circulations of water across these and the rest of the world's seas. Warmer and cooler periods can last several decades. The analysis shows that usually, when the northern Pacific is warming, the northern Atlantic is cooling, and vice versa'--offsetting one another in their impact on atmospheric temperatures in the northern hemisphere. But the cycles, and their magnitude, don't match exactly. For the past decade, the magnitude of northern Pacific cooling has been greater than that of northern Atlantic warming, resulting in a net slowdown in temperature rise, according to an email sent to me by Byron A. Steinman, assistant professor of earth and environmental sciences at the University of Minnesota in Duluth, who led the new study.

Understanding these patterns matters because they can counteract or accelerate warming due to human activities. The paper concludes by noting that the two ocean oscillations have ''offset anthropogenic warming over the past decade.'' However, the authors go on to say that, based on the natural cycles over the past 130 years, the offset trend ''will likely reverse'...adding to anthropogenic warming in the coming decades.'' The oscillations have slowed the warming due to human activities for a while, but when that effect inevitably ends the oscillations will instead add to human warming, raising the rate of increase.

So when will the super heat-up begin? The researchers did not design the study to create a precise timeline. But the historical patterns ''suggest that right now we're near the peak negative excursion, and very close to a turning point,'' according to an email from Michael Mann, director of the Earth System Science Center at Pennsylvania State University, and one of the paper's three authors. Once that happens, Steinman noted, ''warming will accelerate as a result.''

Separate work by Mann, presented in a Scientific American article he wrote last April, also indicates that the pause will not last long. Mann calculated that if the world continues to burn fossil fuels at the current rate, global warming would rise to two degrees Celsius by 2036 (compared with preindustrial levels), crossing a threshold that would harm human civilization. And even if the pause persists for longer than expected, the world would cross the line in 2046. The article includes a monumental graph showing all the details. Mann also published the data sources and formula he used, on Scientific American's Web site, so anyone could replicate his calculations.

The lesson in all this is that even though the oceans run through natural cycles of warming and cooling, pumping more and more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere makes the entire system hotter over time. In the past decade the oceans have saved us, to an extent, from rapid atmospheric warming, but when the current ocean effect reverses, our emissions will come back to haunt us.

Imageof Pacific Ocean and clouds courtesy of NASA

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Thu, 05 Mar 2015 06:41

A new primetime CSI show about cyber crime is to debut Wednesday on CBS, but it's already making its way on to pirate sites.

Featuring Patricia Arquette, CSI: Cyber is about the Cyber Crime Division of the FBI that tackles illicit online behavior. Ironically, the first episode was available on Tuesday, a full day ahead of its scheduled premiere.

"The leaked footage comes from a high quality copy and doesn't have any visible watermarks," according to TorrentFreak.

The show will still air at 10pm ET this evening on CBS, and the network has made a small preview available online. The five sneak peeks (all numbered like software iterations'--1.0, 2.0, and so on) don't give us much hope for Blackhat-level dedication to realism, however. In the premiere, a kidnapping sets up Arquette and partner James Van Der Beek for one of the CSI franchise's patented crime scene walkthroughs. And if unfamiliar with any of the now four CSI variants, even the most routine of procedures quickly becomes dramatic.

"What are you guys doing?"

"Confiscating your devices. Faraday bags block the kidnappers from communicating with your devices. The second we zip 'em up it's like locking them in a lead vault."

Cue the zipping noises and the cool visual effect representing digital lockdown; place it all over a pulsating soundtrack beat. If only this debuted a few weeks before our March Hacker Madness poll, maybe we'd have a new entrant.

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Thu, 05 Mar 2015 15:47

[See NewsBusters for more.] According to Good Morning America's Jon Karl on Thursday, Hillary Clinton will ask Americans to simply trust her when it comes to the growing scandal regarding her e-mails as Secretary of State. Talking to George Stephanopoulos, Karl conceded, "George, this is basically going to be the honor system." Stephanopoulos, a former top aide in the Bill Clinton White House, carefully asked, "There had been some suggestions earlier that some laws may not have been fully followed. Is that still the case?" Regarding the news that Clinton used a personal e-mail and her own server while in office, Karl parroted, "...The White House believes, if she did what she said she did, she followed the letter of the law if not the spirit of the law."

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Thu, 05 Mar 2015 14:17

Long-time conservative columnist Cal Thomas writes a syndicated column for Tribune Media, which appears in respected newspapers across the country, from the Baltimore Sun to Newsday, offering conservative positions on everything from immigration to Iran's nuclear program. He also co-writes a separate column for USA Today. The subtitle of his new book, 'What Works?'' -- for which Sean Hannity wrote the foreward -- promises ''common sense solutions for a stronger America.''

Thomas also believes that gay marriage is a sign of the ''end times." For that reason he predicts that the Supreme Court will rule in favor of marriage equality and that there's not much he can do about it because ''everything is right on schedule.''

''I think it's going to go 5-4 or even 6-3 in favor of same-sex marriage. All of these things are not the cause of our decadence, they're a reflection of it,'' he told me in an interview for SiriusXM Progress at the Conservative Political Action Conference in National Harbor, Maryland on Saturday. He'd just moderated a panel that included right-wing radio host Dana Loesch and Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council and focused on what Christian conservatives view as a threat to ''religious freedom,'' mostly from the LGBT rights movement.

''If you read the Scriptures, as I do, in both testaments all of these things are forecast in prophesies, in the book of Daniel and what Jesus and Paul said, so I'm not worried about it,'' Thomas continued, describing his surprising reaction to the Supreme Court possibly ruling in favor of marriage equality. ''I say everything is right on schedule. I'm trying to shore up my own family first and, hopefully, that will be an example to other people'... If you look at not only what Jesus said, but Paul the Apostle, about what things would be like in the end times, people will be lovers of lies rather than the truth. They will elevate things that are called abomination in scripture to normality'... All of the prophesies up to the final ones have come true. And that's why I say that everything is right on schedule.''

Listen to the interview here:

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Thu, 05 Mar 2015 15:42

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State Dep't Believes Clinton Has Handed in All Her Work Emails Because Her Staff Says So See More at: http://cnsnews.com/news/article/susan-jones/state-dept-believes-clinton-has-handed-all-her-work-emails-because-her

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Thu, 05 Mar 2015 15:11

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Netanyahu: Iran's Ayatollah Tweets That Israel Must Be Destroyed See More at: http://cnsnews.com/news/article/melanie-hunter/netanyahu-iran-s-ayatollah-tweets-israel-must-be-destroyed

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Thu, 05 Mar 2015 15:08

''We don't want anything from you; Game over Obama! Egyptians are well aware of your relationship with ISIS and Hamas! You said, 'as-salamu alaykum' [peace be upon you] and tried to fool us, but you just came in order to divide us. Everything is crystal clear now; you have been exposed, Obama! Explain that to your dear Qatar, as well as [Turkish President] Erdogan. Make it clear to Erdogan you have been exposed, [terrorist sympathizing cleric] Qaradawi. You have betrayed your country, you traitor! It seems that you have become senile. Stop inciting and tell me how much money you were given. You coward, American infiltrator!'' say the lyrics new song by popular Egyptian singer Shaaban Abdel Rahim

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Thu, 05 Mar 2015 14:46

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Michelle Obama: 'My Husband Believes Strongly' Getting Mental Health Treatment Is 'Sign of Strength' See More at: http://cnsnews.com/news/article/ali-meyer/michelle-obama-my-husband-believes-strongly-getting-mental-health-treatment

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Thu, 05 Mar 2015 14:31

SHE WAS TAKEN TO UMASS MEDICAL CENTER. KELLEY TUTHILL, NEW VIDEO THIS EVENING? KELLEY: THIS IS FROM INSIDE MARATHON SPORTS ON THE DAY OF THE BOMBING IN 2013. GET RIGHT TO IT NOW. IT CAME UP IN THE TESTIMONY OF THE STORE MANAGER SHANE O'HARA. HE TOOK US INSIDE THE STORE THAT DAY. THE FEAR HE SAID THAT WAS CALM DAY, QUIET IN FACT. PEOPLE IN AND OUT. HE WAS WORKING AT THE STORE AND LOOK OUT. THE BOMB HITS AND YOU SEE IS IN THE SURVEILLANCE VIDEO. HE DESCRIBES IT TWO PANES OF CLASS AND ONE SHATTERS AND ONE STAYS INTACT. SHANE AND OTHERS GET TO WORK AND START RIPPING CLOTHES OFF HANG EARTHS IN THE STORE USING THEM AS TOURNEY TOURNEY COATS. HE SAYS HE STARTS RIPPING THEM. THERE IS A WOMAN WHO COMES IN DAZEND AND QUICKLY MAKES A TOURN TOURNIQUET. IT BECAME A REFUGE AS PERSON AFTER PERSON CAME INSIDE AND THEY EVALUATED WHO NEEDED TO GET OFF SITE AS SOON AS POSSIBLE BECAUSE SOME PEOPLE WERE SIM YUM NEARLY BLEEDING TO DEATH. DRAMATIC VIDEO AND EMOTIONAL TESTIMONY FROM SHANE O'HARA IN A GRUELING DAY AT THE FEDERAL COURT. WE WANTED TO BRING YOU THE VIDEO AS SOON AS WE GOT IT.

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Thu, 05 Mar 2015 06:10

Created by an anonymous useron March 4, 2015

BBG

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Clips from This VideoRelated VideoDecember 17, 2014Political Unrest in UkraineVictoria Nuland talked about the future of Ukraine and what the U.S. could do to help defend the nation's'...

July 9, 2014Developments in Russia and UkraineAssistant Secretary'‚of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Victoria Nuland was among a panel of witnesses'...

May 6, 2014Russian Intervention in UkraineAssistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland was among a panel of witnesses who testified on relations with Ukraine and'...

April 10, 2014Trans-Atlantic Security IssuesWitnesses testified on trans-Atlantic security challenges, Russia's intervention in Ukraine, and NATO'...

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Thu, 05 Mar 2015 06:09

Created by an anonymous useron March 4, 2015

truth is hard to come by. Glad someone is paying attention

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Clips from This VideoRelated VideoDecember 17, 2014Political Unrest in UkraineVictoria Nuland talked about the future of Ukraine and what the U.S. could do to help defend the nation's'...

July 9, 2014Developments in Russia and UkraineAssistant Secretary'‚of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Victoria Nuland was among a panel of witnesses'...

May 6, 2014Russian Intervention in UkraineAssistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland was among a panel of witnesses who testified on relations with Ukraine and'...

April 10, 2014Trans-Atlantic Security IssuesWitnesses testified on trans-Atlantic security challenges, Russia's intervention in Ukraine, and NATO'...

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Thu, 05 Mar 2015 05:59

March 4, 2015Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland testified at a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing on Ukraine and its ongoing conflict with Russia, focusing on U.S. policy toward both nations.

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People in this videoVictoria NulandAssistant SecretaryNational Security Council->European and Eurasian AffairsEliot EngelU.S. Representative[D] New YorkMore PeopleHosting OrganizationRelated VideoDecember 17, 2014Political Unrest in UkraineVictoria Nuland talked about the future of Ukraine and what the U.S. could do to help defend the nation's'...

July 9, 2014Developments in Russia and UkraineAssistant Secretary'‚of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Victoria Nuland was among a panel of witnesses'...

May 6, 2014Russian Intervention in UkraineAssistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland was among a panel of witnesses who testified on relations with Ukraine and'...

April 10, 2014Trans-Atlantic Security IssuesWitnesses testified on trans-Atlantic security challenges, Russia's intervention in Ukraine, and NATO'...

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Thu, 05 Mar 2015 04:30

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Thu, 05 Mar 2015 03:35

After he was asked by the interviewer about a surveillance videotape allegedly in the possession of law enforcement, Patrick answered that although he had not seen it, he had been told by law enforcement briefers what it contained: the "clear" sequence that Tsarnaev had taken off his backpack, put it down on the sidewalk, and walked away.Meet the Press asked:"Is there anything on the videotape that maybe the public hasn't seen, about his reaction that is particularly telling, that will move the investigation along?"Patrick answered:"The videotape is not something I've seen, it's been described to me, in my briefings, but It does seem to be pretty clear that this suspect took the backpack off, put it down, did not react when the first explosion went off and then moved away from the backpack in time for the second explosion. It's pretty clear about his involvement and pretty chilling, frankly, as it was described to me."Therein lies the entire case against Tsarnaev, against whom, despite endless anomalies, photographs, inexplicable contradictions, and astonishing coincidences, there is no solid evidence. A competent prosecution could present the case in one day, and let the traumatized families go home.Massachusetts Governor Duval Patrick says prosecution has tape of Dzhokhar putting backpack downShow the full video segment of Tsarnaev putting the backpack down, not reacting to the first explosion, then walking away before the second one. Case closed.If the prosecution does not show that tape, it means it does not have it, and never did, and that the FBI put a US governor up on national television to lie for its purposes before the entire country.Sure, there is the writing in the boat that Dzhokhar climbed out of, amazingly, not reported until a full month after the bombing. But if Dzhokhar was so willing to take credit for the attack, and send the message that it was revenge for Afghanistan and Iraq, why did he plead "not guilty" at his hospital bedside arraignment? As the authorities continued to release photographs seemingly designed to incriminate Tsarnaev, even after the suspect was captured, why would it sit on this bombshell of a written confession for a month? In light of this, skeptics may be forgiven if they say they think corrupt elements within the authorities had written the message themselves, after the fact.Then there is the mystery witness, "Danny," who is anonymous to this day, who is the only link between the Tsarnaevs and the killing of MIT officer Sean Collier. Recall Danny is the allegedly carjacked Chinese entrepreneur, who played a part in the killing and capture of the brothers. Behind a screen of anonymity, on CNN one night, Danny alleged that Tamerlan Tsarnaev confessed to the Boston bombing, and said "I just killed a policeman in Cambridge." But there are problems with Danny's story.For one, he told WMUR News that he made his escape at a gas station when both brothers were outside the car, while Dzhokhar was inside paying and Tamerlan was pumping gas. He told WMUR:"I thought it was a very good chance for me to run. So, I made a judgment. I used my left hand to unbuckle my belt, my right hand to open the door. I jumped out of the car and ran away across the street."He said:"The guy outside the car [Tamerlan] tried to catch me using his hand,"On the other hand, Danny told John Miller of CBS News that when he escaped the carjack, Tamerlan was not pumping gas, but still in the car. CBS reported:"at a gas station Dzhokhar left the car to pay inside. Tamerlan was fiddling with the GPS. Danny knew this might be his last chance. "I was counting," Danny said. "I was counting. I was just, 'one two, three, four.' And I just do it. And I did it. I can feel Tamerlan trying to grab me..."These are only some of dozens of questions hanging in the air, not all of them to be answered by Tsarnaev. The Dzhokhar Tsarnaev trial is one trial were the FBI has almost as much 'splaining to do as the suspect.The FBI was caught, despite initial denials, having to admit that they knew the Tsarnaev brothers quite well, long before the explosions, having interviewed them and had "multiple contacts, according to North Carolina Senator Richard Burr, member of the members of the Senate Intelligence Committee.Then, despite the small Boston FBI counter-terror unit undoubtedly knowing who the men were in the surveillance photos which showed them standing near the finish line, Boston FBI chief Richard Deslauriers went before the media, four days after the bombing, to ask the public's help in identifying them from the pictures, even though the FBI knew full well who they were.Why?Boston FBI April 18, 2013 Press ConferenceThen Tamerlan Tsarnaev's friend in Florida, Ibragim Todashev, who might know something about Tamerlan's contacts with the FBI, winds up dead of three bullet entrancewounds to the back and one to the top of the head, which the FBI tries to explain by describing a charge that must have looked like a flying back-first partial somersault by the unarmed man, into a drawn FBI gun. Skeptics of the FBI's case against the brothers point to this one impossibility in the FBI's overarching narrative to suggest that the FBI was acting criminally in this case, and for some reason wanted Todashev, one of Tamerlan's few close friends, dead.Autopsy photo released by Todashev family, of three entrance wounds to back.

PublicIntelligence.net

Why? Why indeed.Yes, there is the testimony of Jeff Bauman, the wounded survivor who said that Tamerlan looked him in the eye and walked away before one of the bombs blew off his legs, which is direct eyewitness testimony. But Tamerlan is dead, and not the one on trial. Dzhokhar is. And as the younger brother, Dzhokhar's relationship with his, according to those who knew him, charismatic and overbearing brother is one of the issues at hand.The questions go on. How did Dzhokhar come out of the boat with no neck wound and then suddenly wind up in critical condition with a grievous neck wound? Why did the legion of law enforcement officers obviously have orders to kill Dzhokhar, as evidenced by the footage captured by a Watertown resident showing the police lighting up the boat?There was no way Dzhokhar was supposed to climb out of that alive.Dzhokhar emerging from hide-out, with wound on right neckDzhokhar Tsarnaev was photographed by Massachusetts State Police tactical photographer Sgt. Sean Murphy, as a laser sight was trained on his head

Sgt. Sean Murphy

Boston SWAT team leader describes neck wound as if by "knife"Police fusillade into Tsarnaev boat hideoutAnd little things. Rather than lock down an entire city for more than a day, to hunt for Dzhokhar, who had escaped probably bleeding and on foot, why not just call out the bloodhounds? There is no way you can beat a bloodhound, and Tsarnaev had a fresh, bleeding scent. He was found fairly near to where he fled the car.And then there is the capture of the shootout footage in which the brothers are apparently trying surrender, yelling "Chill out!" and police fire and yelling "We didn't do it!"So many questions. Will the prosecution just cut straight to the chase and save us all a little time? Produce the video surveillance tape showing Dzhokhar clearly putting the backpack down, as Governor Patrick said, and not reacting to the first explosion. Produce "Danny."Either they have the tape or they don't.

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Wed, 04 Mar 2015 20:33

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Wed, 04 Mar 2015 17:43

OTTAWA - Canada's spy agency is eyeing the threat of a homegrown anti-Islam movement spreading online.

The Canadian Security Intelligence Service advised the office of Public Safety Minister Steven Blaney of its concerns during a secret September briefing.

CSIS flagged well-known warnings of the persistent menace posed by terrorist groups al-Qaida, Hezbollah and the more violent and radical Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, or ISIL, say notes obtained through the Access to Information Act.

But under the heading Domestic Extremism, the spy service also underscored what might be the flip side of that coin '-- the recent development "of a Canadian online anti-Islam movement, similar to ones in Europe."

CSIS characterized it as an "ongoing risk, particularly as its proponents advocate violence."

The Sept. 18 briefing for Blaney's office came a little more than a month before soldiers were killed in Canadian attacks just two days apart '-- murders committed by young men that authorities say were motivated by Islamic extremism.

Shortly after the killings, there was vandalism of mosques in Ottawa and Cold Lake, Alta., threats against the B.C. Muslim Association, and a general increase in reports of public bullying and harassment of Muslims.

However, CSIS is likely more interested in the kind of anti-immigrant, anti-Islam sentiment that has taken root in some parts of northern Europe, even among the middle class, said Lorne Dawson, a University of Waterloo sociology professor and co-director of the Canadian Network for Research on Terrorism, Security and Society.

"They're just not used to dealing with immigrants at all, let alone immigrants that are quite different," Dawson said of Europe. "We have a much longer track record of immigration in general '-- waves and waves of immigrants that have come for decades."

Dawson suspects CSIS is motivated by the horrific July 2011 slaughter of 77 people in Norway by Anders Behring Breivik, who penned a manifesto outlining his far-right ideology, including an extreme anti-Muslim outlook.

"In Europe, it tends to attract violent individuals. So if (there's) any chance it's starting to take wings in Canada, then you can see why they're concerned," he said. "I suspect they're just seeking due diligence to be on top of this at the earliest possible moment in light of Breivik."

A Norwegian official briefed CSIS shortly before the release of an inquiry report that found the Scandinavian country's security services could have prevented Breivik's attack.

CSIS spokeswoman Tahera Mufti did not respond to requests for comment.

A simple online search quickly turns up websites with Canadian domain addresses spouting anti-Islamic invective.

The government's anti-terrorism bill, to be scrutinized at a Commons committee starting next week, would give the RCMP power to seek a judge's order to remove extremist propaganda from websites.

National security threats are not confined to Canadian borders, the CSIS presentation notes warn.

"International developments have a considerable impact on Canada's interests."

CSIS faces a challenging investigative environment in which the rapid movement of people and modern communications technology has "extended the reach" of those who pose a threat and has increased the ease and speed with which they can act, the notes add.

"Co-operation with domestic and foreign partners is critical, including reliable access to information."

Follow @JimBronskill on Twitter

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Tue, 03 Mar 2015 08:46

Nigerian Islamic terrorist organization Boko Haram has taken a page out of the ISIS playbook, releasing a new video Monday of two prisoner beheadings so similar to clips posted by the Middle East jihadist group that experts now believe the terror groups are working together.

The 6-minute video, titled ''Harvest of Spies,'' translated into English, French and Arabic, was posted Monday on Twitter by Boko Haram's media arm and initially reported by Terrorism Research & Analysis Consortium (TRAC), which monitors terrorist groups online. It shows a farmer confessing under duress to spying for the police, and shows a second man, then cuts to footage of both, decapitated with their heads on their chests. The video was tweeted out by ISIS-affiliated Twitter accounts.

''This latest release shows Boko Haram is not a mere copycat of ISIS; rather, it is incorporating itself into the Islamic State,'' said Veryan Khan, editorial director of TRAC. ''Islamic state supporters are already starting to call Boko Haram the 'Islamic State Africa.'"

The grisly beheading video was produced in the style of ISIS videos that have shown Americans James Foley, Steven Sotloff, both journalists, and aid worker Peter Kassig before and after they were killed. Boko Haram previously published only one beheading, of a Nigerian fighter pilot whose plane went down in September.

''This latest release shows Boko Haram is not a mere copy cat of ISIS, rather it is incorporating itself into the Islamic State.''

- Veryan Khan, TRAC

Even before Monday's gruesome video, experts had begun to notice the African terrorist group was beginning to adopt ISIS tactics. A slick recruiting video package Boko Haram released last month was so similar to one the Middle East jihadist group put out previously that analysts told FoxNews.com it could not be coincidental. A trailer Boko Haram released on Feb. 18 was followed by a feature film posted days later on Twitter Feb 21, a pattern that has become a hallmark of ISIS.

''This is huge news,'' said Veryan Khan, editorial director of the Terrorism Research & Analysis Consortium, after seeing videos released by Boko Haram that use high definition cameras, special effects, and the same media platform as ISIS as polished as any of ISIS' sophisticated cinematography productions.

''I believe Boko Haram is more than just copying the Islamic State -- their image is being 'shaped' at very least in the ISIS media wing,'' Khan said. ''Immediately after Baghdadi declared the Islamic State Caliphate, Boko Haram's leader Abubakar Shekau did the same. We then started seeing (in the videos) the Islamic State flags being painted onto Boko Haram's most prized possessions, their AFVs and tanks, most recently on Feb. 20 during the ops within the Northeastern Nigeria border.''

ISIS' cruelty -- beheading, crucifying, stoning and even burning alive its prisoners and putting it on high definition video -- has horrified the world. Boko Haram is much older than the one-year-old ISIS, and has driven some 3 million people from their homes in northeast Africa over the last five years. Both groups have slaughtered whole villages, taken women and children slaves, and set off bombs that kill dozens at a time.

There is more evidence of this growing allegiance, including the ISIS flag on its logo, ISIS music and songs in latest Boko Haram propaganda videos; and Boko Haram's leader, Abubakar Shekau, praising leader of ISIS Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

Jasmine Opperman, TRAC's director of African operations, and Khan, noted there also are similar propaganda strategies in terms of frequency, content representation and use of the social media Twitter.

''Jan. 18, Boko Haram opened its first Twitter account -- it was taken down within a week, but the group had never tried a campaign via Twitter before,'' Khan said, noting Boko Haram immediately gained more than 3,000 followers. ''There was grassroots support for Boko Haram from Islamic State-affiliated Twitter accounts.''

Another noticeable change '' some of the messages from leaders are targeting the West, translated into English, likely indicating the Twitter handler's content is produced, managed and distributed from outside northeast Nigeria, Khan said.

Another significant change to the Boko Haram strategy '' Shekau '' who Khan compares to a ''witch doctor'' '' does not make an appearance in the first new video or on the Twitter account.

''The very first video presented on this account was 'new style' video featuring an interview with a Boko Haram spokesman, not Shekau,'' Khan said. ''This is very important to note because Shekau loves himself so much he almost never allows a major video to go out where he is not the star.''

Then there is the notable image 'makeover' for Shekau in a video release that followed.

''If you have spent any time watching Boko Haram, you would know that Shekau is truly insane and his version of Islam is even too radical for Islamic State, a mixture of part witch doctor/part voodoo/part radical Islam. He is usually screaming, surrounded by a posse, and at least one tank,'' Khan said. ''This last video is a totally new Shekau, calm, cool collective. Someone is directing his image. My thought is he is a wild card that Islamic State cannot afford to ally with unless they rebrand him or get rid of him entirely.''

So why would the world's most terrifying groups align from different continents?

''The ISIS is clear in its objectives -- to expand the Islamic Caliphate Project by means of expansion and control,'' Opperman said. ''This is not only achieved by means of gaining physical control in areas, but gaining support and loyalty from individuals, groups and organizations. A pledge of allegiance from Boko Haram will serve this objective.''

In addition, Boko Haram is the only other terrorist group in the world that currently holds and governs territory, and is the only really successful terrorist group in all of Africa, Khan said.

The implications, both Opperman and Khan agree, are staggering.

''Boko Haram's power projection will gain an image boost with such a pledge,'' Opperman said.

She questions whether this will lead to actual action on the ground. Except for Libya, groups in North Africa -- Algerian and Tunisia -- pledged allegiance but did not gain much in terms of battlefield capabilities from the ISIS alliance, Opperman said.

''Unless there is a concerted effort from the ISIS to ship in fighters and weapons, Boko Haram is not going to gain immediate increased capabilities,'' Opperman said.

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Tue, 03 Mar 2015 04:41

2 March 2015Last updated at 19:34 ET By Patrick JacksonBBC NewsIn the absence of any arrest or claim of responsibility, there are multiple theories for the murder of Russian opposition politician Boris Nemtsov.

Was he killed because he opposed the policies of President Vladimir Putin and Russia's alleged covert war in Ukraine?

Was he cut down in full view of the Kremlin in an attempt to discredit Russia's leaders or even intimidate them, or incite a rebellion against them?

Perhaps it was an opportunistic attack by someone harbouring a grudge?

Here we look at some of the principal lines of inquiry.

Was it Putin?"Illogical" and "unacceptable" is how Mr Putin's spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, described this allegation when contacted by the BBC.

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Dmitry Peskov, spokesman for President Vladimir Putin, says the Kremlin was not involved in the killing

On the face of it, Nemtsov was a well-known, media-friendly, veteran opposition politician who was just days from leading an anti-war rally in Moscow (cancelled after his death).

"If you support stopping Russia's war with Ukraine, if you support stopping Putin's aggression, come to the Spring March in Maryino [a Moscow suburb] on 1 March," he wrote in a social media post, published hours before he was shot (in Russian).

According to Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, Nemtsov was planning to publish "some persuasive evidence about the involvement of Russian armed forces in Ukraine".

Such activities were bound to antagonise the Kremlin (as well as Russian nationalists backing the rebel cause in Ukraine, of course).

Yet even if you accept the possibility that the Kremlin might murder dissidents, the question remains: why kill Nemtsov and not other, younger, much more dangerous opposition figures such as Alexei Navalny?

Multiple, dubious corruption prosecutions have beset Mr Navalny since he mounted arguably the most serious challenge ever to Mr Putin's rule, from the streets of Moscow in the winter of 2011-12.

During those same protests, Nemtsov played a minor role, jeered at times when he took to the stage alongside other opposition figures.

If the court proceedings against Mr Navalny were politically motivated, as many assume they were, where is the logic in killing a minor irritant but only gagging a real opponent?

Could Russian rogue elements have been at work?The security services already enjoy massive power under President Putin, whose own popularity rating increased last month to 86%, according to one poll.

It seems unlikely that some sections might have planned the killing in order to justify some draconian new crackdown.

But why, on a bridge just outside the Kremlin walls covered by numerous security cameras, has no distinct footage emerged of the killers?

Could Russian ultra-nationalists with connections to the security services have had Nemtsov the pacifist, and labelled a traitor by some, killed as a warning to Mr Putin not to back down in the conflict over Ukraine?

A ceasefire the Russian president personally helped to negotiate last month finally seems to be taking hold in the conflict zone.

Ukraine conflict: Marathon in Minsk

Was it Putin's enemies?Condemning Nemtsov's "vile and cynical murder", the Russian president vowed to bring to justice its organisers and perpetrators. It "had all the hallmarks of a contract killing" and was "entirely provocative in nature", he said.

The clear implication here is that Mr Putin, at least in public, regards the killing as an organised assassination, not a random shooting in the street.

"Provocation" is Kremlin code for an attack aimed at destabilising the Russian state. As to who might be behind such an attack, the Kremlin's "chief spin doctor", TV anchorman Dmitry Kiselev, made clear who he thought stood to benefit most.

"When he was alive, Nemtsov was no longer necessary to the West, he had no prospects," he said. "But dead, he was a lot more interesting."

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The crowds are shouting "Russia without Putin", reports the BBC's Sarah Rainsford from the Moscow march

Following this Russian state TV scenario, if some foreign intelligence agency did indeed organise the assassination of Nemtsov to undermine President Putin, it appears to have miscalculated.

Some 50,000 people turned out to protest at his death on Sunday - a fair-sized crowd but nothing like the anti-government protests of 2011-12 - and there was no significant disorder.

The killers Gunman fired into Nemtsov from behind with a pistol as he walked across a bridge below the Kremlin hand in hand with a young woman Killer then jumped over the barrier into the road and got into a waiting car, which looked like a Russian vehicle, a witness called Viktor told pro-Kremlin Russian news website LifeNews (in Russian) A police source told LifeNews the gunman was around 1.7m (five foot seven) tall with short dark hair, wearing blue jeans and a brown sweater Nemtsov's walking companion, Anna Durytska, saw a light-coloured car speeding off A police source told Russian daily Kommersant old bullets were used, possibly fired from a homemade gun. "Participants in the investigation are only sure of one thing - that the killers were not professionals," the source said Who hated Nemtsov enough to kill him?Undoubtedly, there were Russians who hated Nemtsov for his liberal brand of politics and opposition to the war, seen as a sacred cause by many nationalists.

"It is no secret that there are some very radical characters among both sides in the conflict [over Ukraine], who are not subordinated to any authorities," said Vladimir Markin, spokesman for Russia's powerful Investigative Committee.

"So who's Nemtsov?" asked one Moscow tweeter. "So much fuss while children and old people perish in Donetsk [eastern Ukraine] each day. Who remembers them?"

One common extreme reaction circulating on Russian-language social media was, "A dog's death for a dog."

If the killers' idea (it appears there were at least two, in a car) was to confront Nemtsov, however, why shoot him in the back?

Another theory advanced by the Investigative Committee (often accused of political bias itself) is that the killers might have been Islamist extremists enraged by his condemnation of the Charlie Hebdo massacre in Paris.

Nemtsov, a famously outspoken politician, made no secret of his Jewish extraction though he was a baptised Christian. But again, where is the credible claim of responsibility?

Who was Boris Nemtsov?

Other theoriesNemtsov had been involved in a well-publicised anti-corruption campaign in Yaroslavl, a provincial town not far from Moscow, and he also had a number of business interests.

Contract murders for commercial reasons have become less common in Moscow under Vladimir Putin but do still occur. However, the killers were taking a massive risk attacking Nemtsov in one of the most heavily guarded areas of Moscow.

What of the late politician's love life? Even admirers used the epithet "womaniser" in regard to him.

However, the Ukrainian model less than half his age (he was 55) who was with him when he was shot on Friday night could say little about the attack.

Anna Durytska, who was unhurt, told Russian media she had not seen the killer, who had struck from behind. All she had seen, she said, was a light-coloured car which quickly drove off. Into the dark.

Nemtsov killing polarises Russian society

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Source: BBC News - Home

Tue, 03 Mar 2015 04:23

The wealthy banking family - the Rothschilds - were famous in Europe for their extravagance and elaborate style of decorating.

When Hilter invaded Austria in 1938, his army plundered the mansions of the Austrian-branch of the family - looting thousands of works of art.

While a bulk of the artwork was returned to the family after the war, Austrian law prohibited the export of a portion of the Nazi-looted art.

For decades, Rothschild family members worked to reclaim the items acquired by the Austrian government - and were successful when the law was reversed in the late 1990s.

Now a collection of the historic items are on display at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, Massachusetts.

The collection was a gift of Bettina Burr, the granddaughter of Baron and Baroness Alphonse and Clarice de Rothschild of Vienna. We recently spoke to her about the exhibit.

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Mon, 02 Mar 2015 16:18

Former Rep. Allen West (R-Fla.) visited with TheBlaze Radio Friday at the 2015 Conservative Political Action Conference. West, the president and CEO of the National Center for Policy Analysis, a conservative think tank in Dallas, talked conservative politics, possible 2016 candidates and President Barack Obama's executive actions.

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When asked about Obama's anticipated move to limit access to ammunition for popular rifles like the AR-15, West was quick to respond, ''This is how devious people on the progressive, socialist left can be, if they can't stop the gun, they will look to see if they can't stop the means by which you operate the gun.''

''Basically, what they want to do is turn the hand gun into a hammer and the rifle into a baseball bat,'' he added.

West wondered about the wisdom of disarming the American people in a time when the country is facing what he called ''the threat of domestic Islamic jihadism.'' Referring to the brutal midday beheading of British soldier Lee Rigby in London, West said, ''All that the people did in England '-- they stood around with cellphone cameras.''

Asked for his thoughts on 2016, the former congressman said, ''I believe the country will right itself. I believe that the American people are starting to arise and see we've got a government that's getting out of control.''

While not formally endorsing any particular potential 2016 candidate, West offered some advice for any and all who might choose to run, saying, ''We have to talk about solutions '... we have to talk about how fiscally we get our country back on track, tax policy, regulatory policy, monetary policy, energy policy and national security policy.''

He ended his advice with a request for a more serious tone from the GOP, adding, ''And I hope that's what the people speaking here at CPAC will focus on and stop with the joke-telling!''

Listen to the entire interview with West (starting at 10:10):

'--

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Mon, 02 Mar 2015 02:42

');jQuery(owl._items[0]).find('.media__icon').remove();}}function currentVideoCollectionContainsId (currentVideoId) {var nextVideoIndex = 0,vidObj,i;if (jQuery.isArray(currentVideoCollection) && currentVideoCollection.length > 0) {for (i = 0; i 0) {for (i = 0; i 0) {nextPlay = currentVideoCollection[getNextVideoIndex(currentVideoId)].videoUrl;if (nextPlay === undefined || nextPlay === null) {nextPlay = currentVideoCollection[0].videoUrl;}moveToNextTimeout = setTimeout(function () {location.href = nextPlay;}, nextVideoPlayTimeout);}}callbackObj = {onAdPlay: function (containerId, cvpId, token, mode, id, duration, blockId, adType) {clearTimeout(moveToNextTimeout);},onCVPReady: function (containerId, cvpId, event) {setCarouselDisplayIndex();},onContentPlay: function (containerId, cvpId, contentId) {clearTimeout(moveToNextTimeout);setNowPlaying(contentId);},onContentMetadata: function (containerId, playerId, metadata, contentId, duration, width, height) {if (typeof metadata !== 'undefined') {embedLinkHandler.show(JSON.parse(metadata));}},onContentBegin: function (containerId, cvpId, contentId) {clearTimeout(moveToNextTimeout);try {embedLinkHandler.hide();}catch (error) {}},onContentComplete: function (containerId, cvpId, contentId) {navigateToNextVideo(contentId);},onContentEnd: function (containerId, cvpId, contentId) {navigateToNextVideo(contentId);}};if (typeof configObj.context === 'undefined' || configObj.context === null) {configObj.context = 'videos'.replace(/[\(\)-]/g, '');}if (CNN.VideoPlayer.apiInitialized) {window.cnnVideoManager.renderMultipleContainers({videoConfig:configObj, eventsCallback:callbackObj});} else {CNN.VideoPlayer.addVideo(configObj, callbackObj);}});Byron Allen, CEO of Entertainment Studios, is on Reliable Sources to discuss his lawsuit against Comcast, Time Warner Cable & Al Sharpton. Are the charges warranted?

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Mon, 02 Mar 2015 02:03

The violence and crisis in eastern Ukraine has deepened in recent weeks, despite ceasefires.

But where diplomacy has failed, students from both countries have stepped in. YouTube videos are being filmed and uploaded by students in both countries, exchanging frank views.

It's impossible to verify the authenticity of these videos, with accusations that both sides manipulate social media and create propaganda. But the number of videos uploaded has snowballed and many millions are tuning in.

Reporter: Mukul Devichand

Video journalists: Greg Brosnan and Dmytro Zotsenko

For more videos subscribe to BBC Trending's YouTube channel.

You can follow BBC Trending on Twitter @BBCtrending. All our stories are at bbc.com/trending

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Wed, 04 Mar 2015 18:46

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Thu, 05 Mar 2015 02:02

Sen. Jeff Sessions (AL.com file photo)Guest opinionThere was a pretty heated exchange recently between Alabama's Sen. Jeff Sessions and EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy during a Senate Environment and Public Works Committee hearing.During the hearing, Sessions said he hears a large number of complaints from constituents about the Environmental Protection Agency's "overreach." Sessions then questioned McCarthy on data about droughts, hurricanes and the figures used to show climate change.

On droughts, McCarthy said: "I don't know in what context (a scientist) is making statements like that..."

On hurricanes she said: "I cannot answer that question. It's a very complicated issue."

And on temperature she added: "I do not know what the (temperature) models actually are predicting that you are referring to..."

That last one was a step too far for Session who responded: "This is a stunning development, that the head of the Environmental Protection Agency--who should know more than anybody else in the world, who is imposing hundreds of billions of dollars in cost to prevent this climate temperature increase--doesn't know whether their projections have been right or wrong."

You can watch the full exchange below. The real fireworks start around the 4:40 mark.