Are Dzhokhar Tsarnaev's lawyers trying to defend his case on the facts at all, or are they just trying to save his life?

Based on the overwhelmingly lopsided advantage the government holds, with a virtual monopoly on investigative evidence, it's safe to assume the latter.

Whether the intent is to deny Tsarnaev a) any infinitesimal chance of proving his case - or even lessening the charges against him - or b) to prevent embarrassing information from leaking out at trial, the government has brought the legal version of "full spectrum dominance" warfare to a knife fight.

But a close look at the nature of the information Tsarnaev's defense team has repeatedly requested from prosecutors in motions to the court suggests Tsarnaev's lawyers are trying to pry loose something about the government's relationship with the Tsarnaevs prior to the bombing on April 15, 2013.

The story of the Boston Marathon Bombing is rife with contradictions, canards, misconceptions and blatant untruths. Boston Wrong is part of WhoWhatWhy's attempt to set the record straight. This is the first in an occasional series of articles debunking the faulty stories and "facts" which persist, despite evidence to the contrary.

Verbal intimations by government officials and a TV re-enactment have given some potential Boston Marathon bombing jurors the mistaken belief they have seen a video of suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev setting down a bomb-laden backpack in front of a restaurant.

There's just one problem: that footage has never been made available to the public.

During jury selection on Jan. 26, Juror 186 said she believes Tsarnaev is guilty because of the "surveillance video from Lord & Taylor," a department store across the street from the Forum restaurant. Early media reports suggested that the store's dome surveillance camera captured Tsarnaev dropping his backpack at the spot of the second explosion.

The US is behind the attempted coup in Venezuela - that is the accusation President Nicolas Maduro has leveled amid widespread protests back home. And it's none other than Vice-president Joe Biden who's behind the entire operation, Maduro alleges.

This is the first time a direct accusation of this gravity was made in front of thousands of cheering spectators and the world at large, despite an earlier Friday statement, when Maduro struck out at several US federal agencies for allegedly plotting against Venezuela.

"The northern imperial power has entered a dangerous phase of desperation, going to talk to the continent's governments to announce the overthrow of my government. And I accuse Vice-president Joe Biden of this," the head of state said, addressing the people at the 198th anniversary of the birth of a Venezuelan hero general Zamora in Cua, Miranda state.


He also questioned US President Barack Obama publicly, whether he was "aware of these plans to promote violence and a coup in Venezuela" and "appealed to his consciousness."

"There are US diplomats in Venezuela contracting military officials to betray their country, looking to influence socialist political leaders, public opinion leaders and entrepreneurs to provoke a coup," the head of state went on.

Criticizing the Obama administration's handling of the fight against Islamic State, former US Defense Secretary Robert Gates has argued that small teams of special forces will be needed on the ground in Iraq and Syria to assist with airstrikes.

Gates, who served as Secretary of Defense under Obama and George W. Bush, criticized Washington's strategy against the insurgent group as "unrealistic" and "unattainable," he told NBC's Meet the Press on Sunday.

"The president has set an ambitious and, I think under current circumstances, an unrealistic goal when he talks about our intent being to destroy ISIS," Gates said. "With the means he has approved so far, I think that's an unattainable objective."

Gates said that special forces will be needed in Iraq and Syria to assist with the airstrikes. A "re-invasion of Iraq with large ground forces is a false set of options," he added, but "a few hundred troops" should be stationed in the region.

Exclusive: The armchair warriors of Official Washington are eager for a new war, this time with Russia over Ukraine, and they are operating from the same sort of mindless "group think" and hostility to dissent that proved so disastrous in Iraq, reports Robert Parry.

If you wonder how the lethal "group think" on Iraq took shape in 2002, you might want to study what's happening today with Ukraine. A misguided consensus has grabbed hold of Official Washington and has pulled in everyone who "matters" and tossed out almost anyone who disagrees.

Part of the problem, in both cases, has been that neocon propagandists understand that in the modern American media the personal is the political, that is, you don't deal with the larger context of a dispute, you make it about some easily demonized figure. So, instead of understanding the complexities of Iraq, you focus on the unsavory Saddam Hussein.

This approach has been part of the neocon playbook at least since the 1980s when many of today's leading neocons - such as Elliott Abrams and Robert Kagan - were entering government and cut their teeth as propagandists for the Reagan administration. Back then, the game was to put, say, Nicaragua's President Daniel Ortega into the demon suit, with accusations about him wearing "designer glasses." Later, it was Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega and then, of course, Saddam Hussein.

As Eric Kraus has pointed out there is complete confusion in the media today about how to spin the latest EU sanctions decision. Did Syriza fold as per Reuters and Bloomberg. Or did the meeting expose growing splits within the EU as per the Financial Times and the London Times.

The best answer is that nothing definite was decided at the latest EU Council meeting but Syriza did manage to put a marker down.

I go back to my piece about Syriza for Russia Insider. Whether one likes the fact or not, for Syriza relations with Russia are not the priority. Syriza does not agree with the sanctions, but its overriding priority is Greece's own economic crisis.

There is a window of hope, thanks to a U.N. human rights body, for a solution to the diplomatic asylum of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, holed up in the embassy of Ecuador in London for the past two and a half years.

Authorities in Sweden, which is seeking the Australian journalist's extradition to face allegations of sexual assault, admitted there is a possibility that measures could be taken to jumpstart the stalled legal proceedings against Assange.

The head of Assange's legal defence team, former Spanish judge Baltasar Garzón, told IPS that in relation to this case "we have expressed satisfaction that the Swedish state" has accepted the proposals of several countries.

The prominent Spanish lawyer and international jurist was referring to proposals set forth by Argentina, Cuba, Ecuador, Slovakia and Uruguay.

Translated from Russian

Fighting in Debaltsevo outskirts have been continuing for several days. Their intensity approaches the earlier fight for the Donetsk Airport. Considering the length of the frontline, the Battle for Debaltsevo is increasingly reminiscent of the Battle of Ilovaysk.

The wedge that was pushed into Novorossia defenses during the summer had strategic sense for the Ukrainian military. In the event the offensive was continued, one could have launched a disintegrating blow that would have cut off the entire Donetsk-Makeyevka-Gorlovka urban agglomeration in one fell swoop. But during the winter, when it became obvious the Ukrainian military is in no condition to attack, from the military point of view the salient should have been abandoned.

Fierce fighting continues around Debaltsevo. If NAF forces succeed in surrounding the estimated 6,000-8,000 Ukrainian troops in the area - which could happen in the next 24 hours or less - Kiev will be faced with a catastrophic defeat, one that will be hard to recover from.

For an excellent analysis of the current situation, we strongly recommend the latest from Fort Russ.

Here is the most recent update on the fighting that we could find:

According to official DNR evening briefing for 31.1.2015, the main military activity is in the Debaltsevo cauldron. With capture of Uglegorsk confirmed, Chernukhino about to be seized (indications today are, it has already fallen to NAF) and attempts by NAF to close the northern entry at Svetlodarsk/Luganskoye and establish a checkpoint north of Debaltsevo on the road from Luganskoye to Debaltsevo. Seems that NAF is not letting out any military vehicles from Debaltsevo, but is letting civilian vehicles pass.

Last October, International Business Times cited unnamed US intelligence sources reporting that ISIS was plotting to smuggle jihadists into Europe disguised as Middle Eastern refugees so that they can launch terror attacks. US intelligence became aware of this after it "unravelled encrypted talks between the leadership of IS" which revealed the terrorists' plan to take advantage of "relaxed border controls that would allow IS militants to blend in with the thousands of genuine refugees spilling over the border in search of safety."

Isis (now known as the Islamic State) is plotting to smuggle its fighters into Western Europe disguised as Middle Eastern refugees, according to US intelligence sources.

German newspaper Bild reported that American intelligence authorities had unravelled encrypted talks between the leadership of IS.

The sources told the outlet IS was moving away from plans to conduct aircraft hijackings and attacks for fear of tight security and was looking to land a new strategy.

It is seeking to move militants across borders disguised as refugees in a "trojan horse" tactic that would see the fighters use fake passports once in Turkey to reach Western European countries in the hope of carrying out terror attacks.

"In view of the chaotic conditions on the Syria-Turkey border, it is nearly impossible to catch Isis terrorists in the wave of refugees," wrote Bild.

Fast-forward to the present year and we have al-Baghdadi's henchmen themselves admitting to such a plot. An anonymous Islamic State operative, along with his lackey refugee-smugglers in Turkey, allegedly admitted to BuzzFeed News that they are helping to sneak ISIS fighters into Europe disguised as Muslim refugees, where they are to wander around European countries with fake passports and plot terror attacks unchecked. Their somewhat counter-intuitive goal is to stage terror attacks in the West in order to break the resolve of the U.S.-led coalition involved in the airstrikes. According to the article, this is the first time an ISIS member involved in such plans decided to discuss them with the media.

An ISIS operative traveled across the Syrian border late last year, settled in a Turkish port city, and began work on a mission to sneak jihadis into Europe. It has been successful, he said, in an interview near the Turkey-Syria border: "Just wait."

The operative, a Syrian in his thirties with a close-cropped black beard, said ISIS is sending covert fighters to Europe - as did two smugglers who said they have helped. He smuggles them from Turkey in small groups, he said, hidden in cargo ships filled with hundreds of refugees. He said the fighters intend to fulfill ISIS's threat to stage attacks in the West.

The mastermind behind this 'Trojan Horse' operation went on to say that he went from being a member of the Syrian government's security forces to being part of the U.S.-funded Syrian 'opposition', before apparently defecting to ISIS, a rather common pattern in this unmitigated disaster of 'Western humanitarian intervention.'