October 27, 2014

Feds identify suspected 'second leaker' for Snowden reporters

Source: Yahoo

The FBI has identified an employee of a federal contracting firm suspected of being the so-called "second leaker" who turned over sensitive documents about the U.S. government's terrorist watch list to a journalist closely associated with ex-NSA contractor Edward Snowden, according to law enforcement and intelligence sources who have been briefed on the case.

The FBI recently executed a search of the suspect's home, and federal prosecutors in Northern Virginia have opened up a criminal investigation into the matter, the sources said.

But the case has also generated concerns among some within the U.S. intelligence community that top Justice Department officials — stung by criticism that they have been overzealous in pursuing leak cases — may now be more reluctant to bring criminal charges involving unauthorized disclosures to the news media, the sources said. One source, who asked not to be identified because of the sensitivity of the matter, said there was concern "there is no longer an appetite at Justice for these cases."

Marc Raimondi, a spokesman for the Justice Department, declined to comment on the investigation into the watch-list leak, citing department rules involving pending cases.


Read more: https://news.yahoo.com/feds-identify-suspected--second-leaker--for-snowden-reporters-165741571.html

---

Well that didn't take long...What was the point of Snow-Wald blabbing to the world about a second leaker when they knew they were putting a big fat target on his back??

Or was outing the second person just a pump-fake as part of a larger ploy?

October 27, 2014

US Embassy in Moscow Faces Cold War-Era Harassment

One American diplomat's tires were slashed. Another's personal email was hacked. Still others reported mysterious break-ins.

The incidents are all signs, U.S. officials and experts said, that aggressive, Soviet-era counterintelligence tactics are back in fashion in Russia.

The number of incidents targeting American diplomats in Moscow has increased in recent years to levels not seen since the Cold War, officials said. Taken together, they paint an escalating pattern of intimidation and harassment that is believed to be led by Russia's Federal Security Services (FSB), a successor to the Soviet KGB.

The trend has alarmed officials back in Washington, who have complained about the treatment to Russian officials at the highest levels, including President Vladimir Putin.

Officials said the level of harassment increased sharply this year as U.S.-Russia relations plunged to their lowest level in decades amid the Ukraine crisis. They, and others interviewed for this article, spoke on the condition of anonymity in order to discuss sensitive diplomatic and security matters.

http://abcnews.go.com/International/exclusive-us-embassy-moscow-faces-cold-war-era/story?id=26425902

October 27, 2014

Question for dog owners

What should I do to stop my dog eating grass? She has these phases where she grazes like a cow some mornings...

Edit: We're unsure of the dog breed; we just know she's a Bichon something or other...

October 27, 2014

South Korean prosecutors seek death penalty in ferry trial

Source: CBS News

SEOUL, South Korea -- South Korean prosecutors demanded the death penalty Monday for the captain of a ferry that sank in April, killing more than 300 people, and life sentences for three key crew members, news reports said.

Prosecutors also requested that a district court sentence 11 other crew members to up to 30 years in prison on charges that they were negligent and failed to protect passengers when the ferry was sinking April 16, South Korean media reported.

Capt. Lee Joon-seok and three other crew members from the ferry Sewol were indicted on homicide charges, alleging they were negligent and failed to protect passengers when the ferry sank. Eleven other crew members were indicted on less serious charges. The 15 crew members on trial were among the first group of people to leave when the ship began badly listing.

The sinking, one of South Korea's deadliest disasters in decades, caused nationwide grief and fury, with authorities blaming overloading of cargo, improper storage, untimely rescue efforts and other negligence for the incident.


Read more: http://www.cbsnews.com/news/death-penalty-sought-for-south-korean-ferry-captain-reports/

---

Seriously? I'm fine with prison, but these folks are talking about the DEATH PENALTY for what was a snowballing litany of systematic and institutional negligence/incompetence/failure??

There are probably no fewer than 50 people in the "accident chain" who also should get the death penalty in that case (assuming the Koreans want to be consistent and punish everyone involved)...

October 27, 2014

Gunman in Canada Attack Prepared Video of Himself

Source: ABC News

A gunman who shot and killed a soldier at Canada's national war memorial and then stormed Parliament before he was gunned down had prepared a video recording of himself that police say shows he was driven by ideological and political motives, police said Sunday.

Royal Canadian Mounted Police Commissioner Bob Paulson said in a statement they have "persuasive evidence that Michael Zehaf-Bibeau's attack was driven by ideological and political motives."

A detailed analysis of the video was being conducted and Paulson said they cannot release the video at this time. Prime Minister Stephen Harper has called Wednesday's shooting a terror attack, and the bloodshed raised fears that Canada is suffering reprisals for joining the U.S.-led air campaign against Islamic State extremists in Iraq and Syria.

Police are investigating Zehaf-Bibeau's interactions with numerous individuals in the days leading up to the attack and whether they could have contributed or facilitated it.

Read more: http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/gunman-canada-attack-prepared-video-26470259

October 27, 2014

'It was a fight over a girl': Washington school shooter targeted girl who rejected him

A tragic high school shooting in Washington state may have been rooted in a love triangle, students said.

The Marysville freshman who went on a gun rampage Friday targeted the cousins he considered brothers — and the girl who picked his cousin over him, victims' friends and family said.

Jaylen Fryberg barged into Marysville-Pilchuck High School's cafeteria and shot five teenagers, killing one girl and seriously wounding two female and two male students, police said. Then, he turned the gun on himself.

The two boys — 15-year-old Andrew Fryberg and 14-year-old Nate Hatch — are Jaylen's cousins, said Don Hatch, Nate's grandfather and Andrew's grand uncle.

"They're just three complete buddies, and they couldn't be closer than three brothers," he told the Today show.

The 14-year-old killed himself during the rampage.

Jaylen, a football player and the school's recently-crowned homecoming prince, was in an ongoing dispute with one of his cousins over one of the girls he shot, the victim's friend Bella Panjeli told Reuters.

"I heard he asked her out and she rebuffed him and was with his cousin," she said. "It was a fight over a girl."

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/wash-state-school-shooter-targeted-girl-rejected-cousins-friends-article-1.1986823

October 27, 2014

The Bolshevik Who Thinks ‘The Nation’ Is Too Left Wing

his is what it’s like to cast the only vote in the Russian Duma against the annexation of Crimea. In the first days and weeks after the vote, you start to feel alienated by your fellow lawmakers, according to Ilya Ponomarev, the only Russian lawmaker who did such a thing. He said some of his friends and allies in his own voting bloc didn’t return his calls, wouldn’t acknowledge him, or take his meetings. “It was very alienating,” he said.

The next phase is when they prepare the charges against you. For Ponomarev this happened when he was on a business trip to California this summer. It was August. “Kremlin liaisons to the Duma started calling me,” he said. “They asked if I am returning. I said, ‘Of course I am returning.’ I had my tickets for Aug. 30.” But he also got the sense the something was in the offing. By Aug. 20, Ponomarev said he learned that all of his Russian assets were frozen. “All my credit cards were not working, I only had $21 in my pocket,” he said. “This was another message.”

And then Ponomarev found himself facing charges for improperly taking money out of the Skolkovo Foundation, a fund for high tech start ups with which he works closely. “The charges are totally fabricated,” he said. “This is about my vote on Crimea.”

Ponomarev says he intends to one day return to Russia, but he doesn’t know when that day will be. So he is stuck in America, making a little scratch doing some research for a high tech company he declined to name.

“These legal charges that exist right now, they will be over within eight months; that’s when the investigation will be over,” he told The Daily Beast. “By May, I am pretty sure they will try to invent something else. But this particular thing will be over. I really hope next year I can go back. I am doing everything to be able to return, but it could be a long time.”

“No leftists should support Putin, why do you? Putin is an enemy of your values.”
At this point in the profile, it’s supposed to emerge that Ponomarev is the kind of well-meaning liberal Americans like to imagine their dissidents to be. But Ponomarev did not grow up memorizing the Federalist Papers and he is not particularly loved by others in Russia’s opposition. Ponomarev even has a soft spot for Bolshevism, which is strange because he has spent most of his professional life as an entrepreneur.

Over cut melon and coffee at Washington’s swank Mayflower Hotel, Ponomarev described himself at one point as a libertarian communist. And his unlikely biography supports this enigmatic label. In the 1990s Ponomarev was a very young businessman and software engineer who helped build up Yukos, a massive Russian oil concern that is today defunct. By 2002, he was still a technology entrepreneur, but he also became the chief information officer for Russia’s Communist Party, a post he held until 2007.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/10/26/the-bolshevik-who-thinks-the-nation-is-too-left-wing.html

October 23, 2014

Koch-linked group launches pro-weed campaign for North Carolina Libertarian candidate

Sean Haugh, the Libertarian candidate for Senate in North Carolina, is getting a big lift in the waning days of the election from an unlikely group praising his support for marijuana legalization and his opposition to U.S. military action abroad.

The “More Weed, Less War” online ad campaign features beaming young men and women who tout Haugh as “sharing our progressive values,” chant “Get Haugh, get high!” and dismiss Democratic incumbent Sen. Kay Hagan as “out of touch.”

The outfit behind the campaign does not have a history of advocating for marijuana legalization.

American Future Fund, a tax-exempt organization based in West Des Moines, has been frequently used as a pass-through for political money on the right. In the 2012 campaign, it was a major player in a network of politically active nonprofits supported by the billionaire industrialists Charles and David Koch and other conservative donors.

Nick Ryan, AFF’s founder, declined to say who was supporting the campaign. “As a practice, we don't comment on who does or does not contribute to our organization,” he wrote in an email.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-politics/wp/2014/10/23/koch-linked-group-launches-pro-weed-campaign-for-north-carolina-libertarian-candidate/

If anyone needed further proof about the libertarian party being co-opted by the GOP...

October 20, 2014

I'm GLAD they broke off and formed their own state...

Can we build some kind of modernized Berlin wall along the border to keep them out permanently??

October 20, 2014

German Intelligence Claims Pro-Russian Separatists Downed MH17

After completing a detailed analysis, Germany's foreign intelligence service, the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), has concluded that pro-Russian rebels were responsible for the crash of Malaysian Airlines Flight MH17 on July 19 in eastern Ukraine while on route from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur.

In an Oct. 8 presentation given to members of the parliamentary control committee, the Bundestag body responsible for monitoring the work of German intelligence, BND President Gerhard Schindler provided ample evidence to back up his case, including satellite images and diverse photo evidence. The BND has intelligence indicating that pro-Russian separatists captured a BUK air defense missile system at a Ukrainian military base and fired a missile on July 17 that exploded in direct proximity to the Malaysian aircraft, which had been carrying 298 people.
Unambiguous Findings

Evidence obtained shortly after the accident suggested the aircraft had been shot down by pro-Russian militants. Both the governments of Russia and Ukraine had mutually accused each other of responsibility for the crash. After a Dutch investigative commission reviewed the flight recorder, it avoided placing any blame for the crash. Some 189 residents of the Netherlands perished in the downing of Flight MH17.

BND's Schindler says his agency has come up with unambiguous findings. One is that Ukrainian photos have been manipulated and that there are details indicating this. He also told the panel that Russian claims the missile had been fired by Ukrainian soldiers and that a Ukrainian fighter jet had been flying close to the passenger jet were false.

"It was pro-Russian separatists," Schindler said of the crash, which involved the deaths of four German citizens. A spokesman for the German Federal Prosecutor's Office told SPIEGEL that an investigation has been opened into unknown perpetrators because of the possibility that the crash had been a war crime.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/german-intelligence-blames-pro-russian-separatists-for-mh17-downing-a-997972.html

Chickens coming home to roost...

So after all the spin, deflection, speculation, conspiracy articles using invented sources, propaganda from Russia Today, and just outright brazen BULLSHIT, it looks like we're back to square one and I was right after all...

As an aside: Robert Parry is the first person I want to see a full retraction and apology from -- That bullshit he put his name to was the height of irresponsible journalism, almost as horrific as Hersch's "expose" on Syria...(once people start connecting the dots on what those two stories had in common, they will have a much different perspective of those two once-great investigative reporters)