March 2, 2015

Nemtsov joins long list of those assassinated in post-Soviet Russia

Moscow — If the track record is anything to go by, Russians may never find out who gunned down liberal activist Boris Nemtsov on a bridge beside the Kremlin last Friday, or why.

Mr. Nemtsov, who served as deputy prime minister under Boris Yeltsin, is by far the highest ranking official to meet such a fate. But he is only the latest of well over a dozen high-profile Russian politicians, human rights activists, and journalists who've been murdered over the last two decades in similarly professional style and almost certainly for political reasons.

And those are just the figures whose deaths made international headlines, such as investigative reporter Anna Politkovskaya and human rights worker Natalya Estimirova, and it doesn't begin to illustrate the breadth of political assassinations in post-Soviet Russia. A compendium of journalists from across Russia's 11 time zones who've been slain in the line of work since 1993, prepared by Russian non-governmental groups, runs to well over 300 names.


Not a single one of those major cases, and very few of the lesser-known ones, has ever been fully solved. Even as tens of thousands of Russians gathered in downtown Moscow Sunday to mourn Nemtsov, the few people who keep track of such things were marking the 20th anniversary of the gangland-style murder of Vladislav Listyev, one of Russia's most celebrated political journalists and chief editor of Russia's public TV network. In terse remarks to reporters, spokesman for the Kremlin's Investigative Committee – the same body charged with hunting down Nemtsov's killers – insisted that Mr. Listyev's case is not closed and "investigative measures are under way to uncover the mastermind of this crime and every accomplice."

Oleg Orlov, chair of Memorial, Russia's largest human rights network, says this dismal record is the main reason most Russians shrug and say they doubt Nemtsov's murderers will ever be found. "Law and order is just on the surface; underneath there is no control. Nemtsov devoted himself to struggling for a law-governed state, but he fell victim to this reality," he says.

http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Europe/2015/0302/Nemtsov-joins-long-list-of-those-assassinated-in-post-Soviet-Russia

Meanwhile, Snowden is living the charmed life in Moscow, and Greenwald posts a pro-Putin and pro-RT column three days apart...Time to start asking questions...

March 2, 2015

Greenwald shamelessly shills for Russia Today (again)...

https://twitter.com/cjcmichel/status/572501639476711424
https://twitter.com/Knobelsdorff/status/572489493523111937

More info:
http://rtwatchcuj.tumblr.com/


And for those of you who would jump to proclaim that Greenwald's concern over this issue is legitimate, let me point out some stories he *isn't* reporting (or even commenting) on:



Journalists' safety and media ownership – two challenges for Brazil's President Rousseff
https://www.ifex.org/brazil/2014/11/10/rsf_recommendations/

Brazil's Dilma Rousseff is popular, but not among news media
http://articles.latimes.com/2013/mar/03/world/la-fg-brazil-hostile-media-20130304

Brazil gathers experts to discuss media regulation
https://knightcenter.utexas.edu/blog/brazil%E2%80%99s-government-gathers-experts-discuss-media-regulation

As Brazilian elections near, free expression debate continues to polarize
https://knightcenter.utexas.edu/blog/brazilian-elections-near-free-expression-debate-continues-polarize

Brazil: Humiliation of young TV opens debate on media regulation
http://en.wikinoticia.com/lifestyle/social-criticism/118398-brazil-humiliation-of-young-tv-opens-debate-on-media-regulation

Halftime for the Brazilian press -- Will justice prevail over censorship and violence?
http://cpj.org/reports/2014/05/halftime-for-brazilian-press-censorship-violence.php

March 2, 2015

VFA-102 60th anniversary paint scheme

https://twitter.com/alert5/status/571269621002539008

February 28, 2015

Teen Girl Who Encouraged Friend to Kill Himself Charged in His Death: Police

A young woman who says she tried to help a Massachusetts teen before his 2014 suicide now faces manslaughter charges after text messages allegedly revealed that she encouraged him to take his own life.

In July of 2014, Fairhaven Police found Roy's body in his car parked behind a store. They believe he committed suicide by means of carbon monoxide poisoning. Now, 18-year-old Michelle Carter of Plainville is facing involuntary manslaughter charges, having been indicted as a youthful offender.


After Roy's body was found, according to documents, police accessed his cell phone. There, they found thousands of text messages between Roy and Carter.

"Michelle not only encouraged Conrad to take his own life, she questioned him repeatedly as to when and why he hadn't done it yet, right up to the point of when his final text was sent to her on Saturday evening, July 12, 2014," police wrote after reviewing the messages.

The new charges have reopened old wounds for the Roy family.

"All I can think of is his smiling face," said Conrad's grandmother, Janice Roy. "He used to come play with his cousins on the beach."

Police also allege Carter misled friends and Roy's family members when he was missing. The documents say that in other texts following his death, she told friends she heard him killing himself over the phone.

Police say Roy had told Carter he was scared to leave his family, but that Carter encouraged him to commit suicide.

"When he actually started to carry out the act, he got scared again and exited his truck," read the court documents. "But instead of telling him to stay out of the truck and turn off the generator Carter told him to 'get back in.'"

http://www.nbcchicago.com/news/national-international/Student-Charged-With-Manslaughter-in-Suicide-of-Friend-294368001.html

Jesus fuckin' Christ...Some "friend"...

February 28, 2015

How China is exploiting Edward Snowden… or thinks it’s exploiting Edward Snowden

Reuters’ Paul Carsten had an exclusive Wednesday on China’s crafty steps to shut out Western technology companies. In essence, China is using the outrage over Edward Snowden’s NSA revelations to kick out Western firms and open up a secure market for indigenous Chinese tech firms:

China has dropped some of the world’s leading technology brands from its approved state purchase lists, while approving thousands more locally made products, in what some say is a response to revelations of widespread Western cybersurveillance.

Others put the shift down to a protectionist impulse to shield China’s domestic technology industry from competition.

Chief casualty is U.S. network equipment maker Cisco Systems Inc, which in 2012 counted 60 products on the Central Government Procurement Center’s (CGPC) list, but by late 2014 had none, a Reuters analysis of official data shows. Smartphone and PC maker Apple Inc has also been dropped over the period, along with Intel Corp’s security software firm McAfee and network and server software firm Citrix Systems.

The slow squeeze on technology firms has prompted complaints by European and American firms to their governments. As Quartz’s Adam Pasick notes, it’s part and parcel of a previous move to shut Western software firms out of the Chinese government market. And if you want to get all hot and bothered about the prospect of a trade war with China, you can link this move to China’s ejection of Western consulting firms last summer.

But before everyone panics about Chinese “indigenous innovation” policies, a few words of calm are necessary...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/02/26/how-china-is-exploiting-edward-snowden-or-thinks-its-exploiting-edward-snowden/

February 28, 2015

Ex-Piston, first black NBA player Earl Lloyd dies at 86

Earl Lloyd, the first black player in NBA history, died Thursday. He was 86.

Lloyd's alma mater, West Virginia State, confirmed the death. It did not provide details.

Lloyd made his NBA debut in 1950 for the Washington Capitols, days before fellow black players Sweetwater Clifton and Chuck Cooper played their first games.

"When Earl stepped out on the court on that fateful date in 1950, this remarkable man rightfully earned his place in the historic civil rights movement and, more important, he opened the door to equality in America," West Virginia State president Brian Hemphill said in a released statement.

The 6-foot-5 forward averaged 8.4 points and 6.4 rebounds in 560 regular-season games in nine seasons with Washington, Syracuse and the Detroit Pistons. He missed the 1951-52 season while serving in the U.S. Army.

Lloyd played for the Pistons in 1958-60, averaging 8.6 points, 5.9 rebounds and 1.3 assists. He also was 22-55 as Detroit's coach in 1971-72 and the first nine games of the 1972-73 season.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2015/02/27/389521868/5-quotes-from-earl-lloyd-the-first-black-player-in-the-nba
http://www.freep.com/story/sports/nba/pistons/2015/02/27/earl-lloyd-nba-black-pioneer/24109145/

February 28, 2015

Where Journalism Goes to Die

Glenn Greenwald, Pierre Omidyar, Adnan Syed and my battles with First Look Media.
By KEN SILVERSTEIN February 27, 2015


The delays were caused in part by management’s execution of Racket, which left me with a bunch of stories and no place to post them. But even after I moved over to The Intercept, I struggled to get any work published because of the shortage of editors and general organizational chaos.

All I ask in journalism is that I have the freedom to publish the best, most true pieces that I can. I think that as journalists we should be skeptical of everyone—corporations, governments, non-profits and media. I think you need to be especially critical of your own point of view and of people you admire and be willing to write negatively about them with as much enthusiasm as you do about your “enemies” (of which I very obviously have none). All I ask is that I have the freedom to pursue my reporting as I see fit—and it’s served me well at Harper’s, the Los Angeles Times, and other publications over my long career.

But at First Look, we were never able to be fearless. We couldn’t do anything, because we spent so much time in pointless meetings and being slowed down, when we wrote anything, by a lack of support from management and the dire shortage of editors to actually oversee and work with the writers. We were just lost.

The culture at First Look was just too strange. And fearless wasn’t a word that would factor into our corporate life. At last year’s holiday party, two of our fiercely “independent” staffers “interviewed” Pierre Omidyar and asked him what he did in the morning. Since you are all hanging on the edge of your seats, he drinks tea and reads stuff, the New York Times and other things and then The Intercept was about No. 5 (he claims). The whole thing was sad.

The beginning of the end for me, though, came as The Intercept launched into what would turn out to be basically the biggest story of its short existence: The Serial chronicles.

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/02/ken-silverstein-the-intercept-115586_Page3.html#ixzz3Sy0lrTb3


To this day I've still never gotten proper credit from DUers for outing the mile-wide and inch-deep fraud of First Look Media (which I'd predicted before The Intercept even went live)...So how much longer does Greenwald stay there before bailing out?

February 28, 2015

Where Journalism Goes to Die

Glenn Greenwald, Pierre Omidyar, Adnan Syed and my battles with First Look Media.
By KEN SILVERSTEIN February 27, 2015


The delays were caused in part by management’s execution of Racket, which left me with a bunch of stories and no place to post them. But even after I moved over to The Intercept, I struggled to get any work published because of the shortage of editors and general organizational chaos.

All I ask in journalism is that I have the freedom to publish the best, most true pieces that I can. I think that as journalists we should be skeptical of everyone—corporations, governments, non-profits and media. I think you need to be especially critical of your own point of view and of people you admire and be willing to write negatively about them with as much enthusiasm as you do about your “enemies” (of which I very obviously have none). All I ask is that I have the freedom to pursue my reporting as I see fit—and it’s served me well at Harper’s, the Los Angeles Times, and other publications over my long career.

But at First Look, we were never able to be fearless. We couldn’t do anything, because we spent so much time in pointless meetings and being slowed down, when we wrote anything, by a lack of support from management and the dire shortage of editors to actually oversee and work with the writers. We were just lost.

The culture at First Look was just too strange. And fearless wasn’t a word that would factor into our corporate life. At last year’s holiday party, two of our fiercely “independent” staffers “interviewed” Pierre Omidyar and asked him what he did in the morning. Since you are all hanging on the edge of your seats, he drinks tea and reads stuff, the New York Times and other things and then The Intercept was about No. 5 (he claims). The whole thing was sad.

The beginning of the end for me, though, came as The Intercept launched into what would turn out to be basically the biggest story of its short existence: The Serial chronicles.

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/02/ken-silverstein-the-intercept-115586_Page3.html#ixzz3Sy0lrTb3

February 27, 2015

The West Is Ignoring Some Unpleasant Truths About Putin

At the beginning of the Ukraine crisis, German Chancellor Angela Merkel is said to have told U.S. President Barack Obama that Russian President Vladimir Putin was "in another world." After months of near-constant shuttle diplomacy, a mere 48 hours after Minsk II was concluded, the West had to watch a humiliating Ukrainian rout at Debaltseve.

While on a recent visit to Hungary, Putin gloated, "Obviously it's bad to lose, but life is life and it still goes on." It seems more and more clear that if anyone is living in another world, it is Western leaders.

Minsk and the subsequent Debaltseve collapse revealed the reality of the West's own situation — it negotiated with Putin on his terms and in his world. It is clear that the West has an interlocutor in Putin whose objectives are not transparent, promises are not trustworthy, and who is making decisions that have heightened conflict in the region.

Last December, an international consortium of investigative journalists, the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) named Putin their "person of the year" for 2014, "for his work in turning Russia into a major money laundering center for enabling organized crime in Crimea and in the Donbass region of eastern Ukraine; for his unblemished record of failing to prosecute criminal activity; and for advancing a government policy of working with and using crime groups."

A runner-up was Hungary's authoritarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban who is on record as wanting to establish an "illiberal democracy" in Hungary.

Most analysts concede the depth of Kremlin thievery and U.S. sanctions specifically target "team Putin." The question however is whether kleptocratic tendencies are central or peripheral to the conduct of Russian policy. Those, like myself, who say they are central agree with opposition activists like Boris Nemtsov that Putin's building and renovation of 20 palaces, his receipt of $700,000 in watches and his unlimited access to yachts, planes, and a Kremlin property management department with a staff of more than 60,000, and an annual presidential office budget of $2.41 billion is costly in terms more than treasure.

It also reveals that at the system's heart is total bespredel — limitlessness. Unconstrained by laws, rules, or any sense of decency, Putin stands astride the world's largest gap between rich and poor.

http://www.themoscowtimes.com/opinion/article/west-ignoring-unpleasant-truths-about-putin/516598.html

February 27, 2015

Greenwald finally writes about Ukraine, and sides with Putin as expected...

Shameful...But not surprising

https://twitter.com/BradMossEsq/status/571413751662051329