Puppet MastersS


Compass

New bill for plans to give Russian passports to Ukrainians spark debate


RIA Novosti
Tue, 25 Feb 2014 19:18 UTC
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© RIA Novosti
As Russian lawmakers called for passports to be issued to ethnic Russians in Ukraine, a parliamentary committee chair warned Tuesday that the issue was a powder keg that should be handled carefully.

On Monday, Ilya Drozdov, a deputy in the State Duma - the lower house of the Russian parliament - introduced a bill to simplify the procedure for ethnic Russian Ukrainians to obtain Russian citizenship.

Russia has condemned the uprising in Ukraine that culminated in the ouster of President Viktor Yanukovych at the weekend, and has expressed concern for ethnic Russians there.

Growing calls for ethnic Russians in Ukraine to be granted passports have drawn suggestions from some that Moscow may seek to claim a larger say in Ukrainian affairs by arguing that it is defending the interests of its own citizens. Russian military intervention in Georgia in 2008 was prompted by claims that the South Caucasus nation had launched a military assault on South Ossetia, a breakaway province occupied almost entirely by Russian passport-holders.
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Camcorder

Russian media should increase presence in Crimea including Sevastopol


Voice of Russia
Tue, 25 Feb 2014 21:53 UTC
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© RIA NovostiLeonid Slutsky - Chairman of the State Duma Committee in Russia
Russian media outlets should increase their presence in the Crimea, including Sevastopol, said Leonid Slutsky, Chairman of the Russian State Duma Committee for CIS Affairs, Eurasian Integration and Ties with Compatriots.

"We assumed our mass media were present here [in the Crimea and Sevastopol] on a scale slightly bigger than that of some sporadic landing troops. We are not happy about it," he said at a meeting with members of the Crimean coalition council of Russian compatriots at the Crimean office of the Russian Federal Agency for CIS Affairs, Compatriots Living Abroad and International Humanitarian Cooperation (Rossotrudnichestvo) in Simferopol on Tuesday.
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Brick Wall

Former aides to New Jersey Governor Christie again reject subpoena

Kate Zernike
The New York Times
Tue, 18 Feb 2014 00:00 UTC
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© Mel Evans/AP
Setting up a likely court battle, two former aides to Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey refused again on Tuesday to provide materials subpoenaed by the legislative panel investigating the politically charged lane closings leading to the George Washington Bridge last September.

The special investigative committee had sought information and devices, like cellphones from Bill Stepien, Mr. Christie's two-time campaign manager, and Bridget Anne Kelly, a former deputy chief of staff to the governor. Ms. Kelly sent an email in August calling for "some traffic problems in Fort Lee," the town at one end of the bridge whose mayor did not endorse Mr. Christie for re-election.

After lawyers for the two refused to turn over information earlier this month, citing privacy as well as the constitutional right against self-incrimination, the legislative panel voted to allow its special counsel to take whatever measures he believed necessary to compel them to comply.

The counsel, Reid Schar, tried to open a discussion about conditions under which the lawyers might turn over at least some information, offering a new deadline to meet the demands of the subpoena, and to view the materials privately.
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Eye 1

Snowden documents reveal covert surveillance and pressure tactics aimed at Wikileaks and its supporters

Glenn Greenwald and Ryan Gallagher
The Intercept
Tue, 18 Feb 2014 01:50 UTC
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© Unknown
Top-secret documents from the National Security Agency and its British counterpart reveal for the first time how the governments of the United States and the United Kingdom targeted WikiLeaks and other activist groups with tactics ranging from covert surveillance to prosecution.

The efforts - detailed in documents provided previously by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden - included a broad campaign of international pressure aimed not only at WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, but at what the U.S. government calls "the human network that supports WikiLeaks." The documents also contain internal discussions about targeting the file-sharing site Pirate Bay and hacktivist collectives such as Anonymous.

One classified document from Government Communications Headquarters, Britain's top spy agency, shows that GCHQ used its surveillance system to secretly monitor visitors to a WikiLeaks site. By exploiting its ability to tap into the fiber-optic cables that make up the backbone of the Internet, the agency confided to allies in 2012, it was able to collect the IP addresses of visitors in real time, as well as the search terms that visitors used to reach the site from search engines like Google.

Another classified document from the U.S. intelligence community, dated August 2010, recounts how the Obama administration urged foreign allies to file criminal charges against Assange over the group's publication of the Afghanistan war logs.
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Attention

Russian ships arrive on Ukraine's Crimean coast

Christopher Harress
International Business Times
Mon, 24 Feb 2014 13:26 UTC
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© Ukraine Photos Russian ships have allegedly landed in the Crimea ahead of what many experts are calling a military build up to a coup in the Crimea
According to Russian news site flot.com, Russian military ships carrying soldiers have arrived on Ukraine's Crimean coast in what some are claiming could be the early signs of a Russian coup in the hotly disputed autonomous region of the Crimea.

Russia's large landing ship Nikolai Filchenkov has arrived near the Russia Black Sea Fleet's base at Sevastopol, which Russia has leased from Ukraine since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991.

The ship is reported to be carrying as many as 200 soldiers and has joined four additional ship carrying an unknown amount of Special Forces troops. Flot.com also reported over the weekend that personnel from the 45th Airborne Special Forces unit and additional divisions had been airlifted into Anapa, a city on Russia's Black Sea coastline. In addition, it is believed that Russia's Sevastopol base contains as many as 26,000 troops already, according to the German Institute for International And Security Affairs.
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Bad Guys

Empire: Superclass


Al Jazeera
Wed, 28 Jul 2010 00:00 UTC
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A new breed has emerged; they set the global agenda, ride on Gulfstreams and manage the credit crunch in their spare time.

They are anything but elected; they are entrepreneurs and entertainers, media moguls and former politicians - the self-made super rich who are using their money to lay down a new set of global rules.

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Eye 1

Don't be fooled by her angelic looks, she's as ruthless as she's corrupt: A withering portrait of Ukraine's 'saviour' Yulia Tymoshenko by a Russia expert who knows her well

Edward Lucas
Daily Mail
Mon, 24 Feb 2014 10:32 UTC
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© Getty ImagesMagnetism: The freed Yulia Tymoshenko addresses the crowds in Kiev on Saturday just hours after she was released from prison following a vote in the Ukrainian parliament
Nobody who meets Yulia Tymoshenko forgets the moment. The billionaire Ukrainian politician's charm is formidable. In a political landscape studded with novices and thugs, she stands out.

Her angelic beauty and two-year detention in jail has attracted worldwide sympathy.

On Saturday, she was released following the overthrow of Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych in a dramatic coup.

Later that night, Tymoshenko, who has been suffering severe back pain, appeared in a wheelchair in Kiev's Independence Square, where she made a passionate speech to the 50,000-strong crowd. She called them 'heroes' who had removed a 'cancer' from the country. She also indicated she would run for president in elections in May.

But the prospect of her political comeback makes me fear for the future of the increasingly unstable and volatile Ukraine.

Mrs Tymoshenko's immaculate blonde tresses and sometimes kittenish ways have led many macho politicians in the Ukraine - and abroad - to underestimate her. The truth is that her determination is terrifying. Nobody and nothing gets in her way.

When she needs to, she is prepared to use her undeniable sexual magnetism.
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TV

Piers Morgan leaving CNN

David Carr
The New York Times
Sun, 23 Feb 2014 00:00 UTC
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© Chester Higgens Jr./New York TimesPiers Morgan, shown in 2011, is British and struggled to connect with American viewers. The ratings for his live program suffered.
There have been times when the CNN host Piers Morgan didn't seem to like America very much - and American audiences have been more than willing to return the favor. Three years after taking over for Larry King, Mr. Morgan has seen the ratings for "Piers Morgan Live" hit some new lows, drawing a fraction of viewers compared with competitors at Fox News and MSNBC.

It's been an unhappy collision between a British television personality who refuses to assimilate - the only football he cares about is round and his lectures on guns were rife with contempt - and a CNN audience that is intrinsically provincial. After all, the people who tune into a cable news network are, by their nature, deeply interested in America.

CNN's president, Jeffrey Zucker, has other problems, but none bigger than Mr. Morgan and his plum 9 p.m. time slot. Mr. Morgan said last week that he and Mr. Zucker had been talking about the show's failure to connect and had decided to pull the plug, probably in March.

Crossing an ocean for a replacement for Larry King, who had ratings problems of his own near the end, was probably not a great idea to begin with. For a cable news station like CNN, major stories are like oxygen. When something important or scary happens in America, many of us have an immediate reflex to turn on CNN. When I find Mr. Morgan telling me what it all means, I have a similar reflex to dismiss what he is saying. It is difficult for him to speak credibly on significant American events because, after all, he just got here.
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Compass

Sochi Games over, will Putin take the gloves off with respect to Ukraine?

Timothy Heritage
Yahoo! News
Mon, 24 Feb 2014 07:22 UTC
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© Reuters/David GoldmanRussian President Vladimir Putin walks out from the presidential lounge to take his seat as he is introduced during the closing ceremony for the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics, February 23, 2014.
For more than two weeks while Russia hosted the Winter Olympics, President Vladimir Putin did his best to show the world that he and his country have a soft side.

Now the Sochi Games are over, Western governments are concerned the smile will disappear and the gloves come off in Russia's tug-of-war with Europe over the fate of Ukraine.

The circus artists, dancers and flag bearers hardly had time to leave the stadium after the closing ceremony in Sochi before Russia announced it had recalled its ambassador from Ukraine for consultations in Moscow.

Russian state television could not even wait for the end of the Games to launch a scathing attack on the ousted Ukrainian president, Viktor Yanukovich.

Accusing him of betrayal, presenter Dmitry Kiselyov said: "The consequences are irreversible. Ukraine is one step from a split and probably already beyond the threshold of civil war."

The president has not spoken in public about the fall of Yanukovich, but Kiselyov is a Putin loyalist who has the president's trust. He will soon take over a media organization intended to polish Russia's image.
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Bad Guys

Neo-Nazism unleashed: Eastern Ukraine synagogue hit by firebombs


Jewish Telegraph Agency
Mon, 24 Feb 2014 11:30 UTC
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© Mendy Hechtman/Flash90Illustrative photo of a synagogue in Kiev.
A synagogue firebombed in eastern Ukraine sustained minor damage.

The firebombs hit the Giymat Rosa Synagogue in Zaporizhia, located 250 miles southeast of Kiev, on Sunday night, according to a report the following day on the news site timenews.in.ua. The website published photos showing traces of a fire on the facade of the synagogue balcony. The synagogue opened in 2012.

A spokesperson for the Zhovtneviy District where the synagogue is located said no one was hurt in the attack and that police were searching for suspects. Officers found the neck of a glass bottle that was used as a Molotov cocktail, according to the Central Directorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs.

Several Ukrainian media reported erroneously that the attack happened in Kiev. The Ukrainian capital and other cities have seen a wave of violent demonstrations that culminated this weekend with the apparent ousting of President Viktor Yanukovych.
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