Another Big Win For Putin!!!
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88m3
Fast Money & Foreign Objects
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Superstar
is that the same israel lapdog dennis ross who wouldn't even talk to the palestinians when he was suppose to be a "fair" negotiator with that other dude george something? he says this "Obama believes in the use of force only in circumstances where our security and homeland might be directly threatened." like that's a bad thing. all israel lapdogs can go fukk themselves.
88m3
Fast Money & Foreign Objects
Russian with links to whistleblower left UK day after death, court told
Andrei Pavlov is a ‘candidate for the killing’ of Alexander Perepilichnyy, pre-inquest hearing in Woking is told
Alexander Perepilichnyy collapsed and died outside his home in Surrey in November 2012. Photograph: Web
Luke Harding
Tuesday 10 May 2016 14.48 EDTLast modified on Tuesday 10 May 2016 15.08 EDT
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A Russian linked to the mysterious death of Alexander Perepilichnyy flew out of the UK a day after the whistleblower collapsed and died outside his home in Surrey, a court has heard.
Andrei Pavlov was in Britain at the time of Perepilichnyy’s death aged 44 in November 2012, new evidence supplied by the UK Border Agency this week revealed. Pavlov was a “candidate for the killing of Mr Perepilichnyy”, the pre-inquest hearing in Woking was told on Tuesday.
Surrey police insist that no foul play was involved in Perepilichnyy’s death. In 2015 toxicology tests showed that gelsemium elegans – a rare fern known to have been used by Chinese and Russian assassins – was found in Perepilichnyy’s stomach. Friends of the whistleblower believe he was murdered.
Perepilichnyy fled to the UK in 2010 after falling out with powerful figures in Moscow. He managed the finances of several interior ministry and tax officials linked to a convicted gangster, Dmitry Klyuev. Pavlov was a “prominent member” of the “Klyuev organised criminal group”, the court heard.
Perepilichnyy revealed details of a $230m (£160m) fraud carried out by the gang. The money was stolen from taxes paid by the investment company Hermitage Capital to the Russian treasury. A lawyer who investigated, Sergei Magnitsky, died in jail. Perepilichnyy passed bank documents to Hermitage and Swiss prosecutors, who froze several accounts.
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Sergei Magnitsky, who died in 2009. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images
Against this backdrop Perepilichnyy received increasingly ominous messages from Moscow, allegedly delivered by Pavlov. The two men met on at least two occasions including at Heathrow airport terminal five and in Geneva. Pavlov allegedly demanded in Skype conversations that Perepilichnyy pay the group €1m (£800m), the court was told.
Henrietta Hill QC, acting for Hermitage, urged the coroner, Richard Travers, to interview Pavlov as a matter of urgency. His whereabouts were unknown, she said, adding that he visited Brussels last week. New UK Border Agency information showed that Pavlov flew out of Heathrow on 11 November 2012, she said. This was a day after Perepilichnyy’s death.
In the months before he died Perepilichnyy took out several multimillion-pound life insurance policies. Bob Moxon Browne QC, acting for the insurer Legal & General, said: “Pavlov was in the country at the time of Mr Perepilichnyy’s death. He was a prominent member of the Klyuev organised crime group.
“He is certainly in any view a candidate for the killing of Mr Perepilichnyy.”
On the day of his death Perepilichnyy also travelled through Heathrow, returning from a business trip to Paris. It is unclear whom he met there.
In an interview with Kommersant newspaper, Pavlov, a Moscow-based lawyer, said he met Perepilichnyy twice in 2012. He said Perepilichnyy had wanted a rapprochement with former customers in Russia, from whom he had fled.
Separately the court heard that a Chechen assassin linked to the case has been arrested in Turkey. Valid Lurakhmaev, 55, was detained in Istanbul last month together with another Chechen, Yuri Anisimov, 52. The authorities suspect the men of killing another Chechen last November who ran a well-known opposition website.
Citing official sources, the Turkish media reported that both men are Russian spies. French police have linked Lurakhmaev to the 2011 murder of a Russian businessman in Nice. During a search of the Chechen’s home they found an alleged hit list which included Perepilichnyy’s name and his home address in Britain.
Hill urged the coroner to seek help from the Foreign Office to arrange for a British police officer to interview the alleged assassin, who also uses the name Alexander Smirnov. She said it was imperative to do this before he was handed back to the Kremlin. “He is significant,” she said.
The court heard that other evidence could be important including CCTV footage from Heathrow airport and the exclusive St George’s estate in Weybridge, Surrey, where Perepilichnyy was living with his wife Tatiana and their two children. Several Skype chats with Pavlov have been retrieved but those from April to November 2012 are missing.
An inquest is due in September.
88m3
Fast Money & Foreign Objects
US heralds Romania missile defence system as step forward
© AFP/File | The helicopter of Romanian President Traian Basescu lands for the official groundbreaking ceremony at the former Deveselu military airbase in Deveselu village, southern Romania, on October 28, 2013
BUCHAREST (AFP) -
A US missile defence system in Romania will become operational Thursday in a move welcomed by US officials as an "important step" but also one likely to infuriate Moscow.
The missile interceptor station in Deveselu, southern Romania, will help defend NATO members against the threat of short and medium-range ballistic missiles -- particularly from the Middle East, US assistant secretary of state Frank Rose told a news conference in Bucharest Wednesday.
But Russia has taken a dim view of the project, seeing it as a security threat on its doorstep.
"Both the US and NATO have made it clear the system is not designed for or capable of undermining Russia's strategic deterrence capability," Rose said.
"Russia has repeatedly raised concerns that the US and NATO defence are directed against Russia and represents a threat to its strategic nuclear deterrent. Nothing could be further from the truth."
The Deveselu site will host a battery of SM-2 missile interceptors and will officially be integrated into the NATO missile shield at the bloc's summit meeting to be held in Warsaw in July.
Work on the Deveselu site began in October 2013 and is thought to have cost $800 million (700 million euros).
US ambassador to Romania Douglas Lute described the activation of the missile system as a gesture of his country's commitment to Article Five by which all 28 NATO members pledge a one-for-all, all-for-one response to any military threat if a member invokes the treaty clause in the face of an attack.
"Tomorrow is a demonstration that the US, Romania and the other allies contributing to the defence system mean what Article Five says," he said.
NATO decided in 2010 to create a missile shield based on US technology. The project is due to be completed in 2020, with installations in Poland as well as Romania.
The Western military alliance insists the role of the planned shield is a "purely defensive" response to external threats.
US heralds Romania missile defence system as step forward
© AFP/File | The helicopter of Romanian President Traian Basescu lands for the official groundbreaking ceremony at the former Deveselu military airbase in Deveselu village, southern Romania, on October 28, 2013
BUCHAREST (AFP) -
A US missile defence system in Romania will become operational Thursday in a move welcomed by US officials as an "important step" but also one likely to infuriate Moscow.
The missile interceptor station in Deveselu, southern Romania, will help defend NATO members against the threat of short and medium-range ballistic missiles -- particularly from the Middle East, US assistant secretary of state Frank Rose told a news conference in Bucharest Wednesday.
But Russia has taken a dim view of the project, seeing it as a security threat on its doorstep.
"Both the US and NATO have made it clear the system is not designed for or capable of undermining Russia's strategic deterrence capability," Rose said.
"Russia has repeatedly raised concerns that the US and NATO defence are directed against Russia and represents a threat to its strategic nuclear deterrent. Nothing could be further from the truth."
The Deveselu site will host a battery of SM-2 missile interceptors and will officially be integrated into the NATO missile shield at the bloc's summit meeting to be held in Warsaw in July.
Work on the Deveselu site began in October 2013 and is thought to have cost $800 million (700 million euros).
US ambassador to Romania Douglas Lute described the activation of the missile system as a gesture of his country's commitment to Article Five by which all 28 NATO members pledge a one-for-all, all-for-one response to any military threat if a member invokes the treaty clause in the face of an attack.
"Tomorrow is a demonstration that the US, Romania and the other allies contributing to the defence system mean what Article Five says," he said.
NATO decided in 2010 to create a missile shield based on US technology. The project is due to be completed in 2020, with installations in Poland as well as Romania.
The Western military alliance insists the role of the planned shield is a "purely defensive" response to external threats.
US heralds Romania missile defence system as step forward
88m3
Fast Money & Foreign Objects
ADevilYouKhow
Rhyme Reason
Eurovision: Ex-Australia PM aims apparent barb at Russia - BBC News
Lol @Darth Humanist
Anyways I heard Putin took the Euro Vision loss really hard
Lol @Darth Humanist
Anyways I heard Putin took the Euro Vision loss really hard
Eurovision: Ex-Australia PM aims apparent barb at Russia - BBC News
Lol @Darth Humanist
Anyways I heard Putin took the Euro Vision loss really hard
We're still awaiting that shirtfront.
88m3
Fast Money & Foreign Objects
The Geopolitics of Eurovision
Ukrainian officials are thrilled and their Russian counterparts fuming at the results of the popular singing competition.
Ukraine's Jamala, the winner of this year's Eurovision contest Reuters
Eurovision is meant to be a politics-free zone—“lyrics, speeches, gestures of a political or similar nature” are banned, according to the rules. But that doesn’t always happen.
In 2014, when Anastasia and Maria Tolmachevy, the twin sisters representing Russia, got on stage to perform in Copenhagen, the audience booed. The competition aired just two months after Russia annexed Crimea, the Ukrainian peninsula, a move decried by nearly all the participating countries. Both Russia and Ukraine had qualified for the finals, and Eurovision suddenly became a reflection of geopolitical affairs.
Two years later, the tensions were still on full display Saturday in Stockholm. Russia’s representative, Sergey Lazarev, performed “You Are the Only One,” a love song. Ukraine’s representative, Jamala, performed “1944,” a song lamenting the expulsion by the Soviets of Tatars from Crimea. Neither Russian nor Ukrainian juries gave each other votes. While Lazarev won the vote among all television viewers, he scored third place, and Jamala took first place overall. Ukrainian officials were thrilled, but their Russian counterparts were not.
“It was not the Ukrainian singer Jamala and her song ‘1944’ that won the Eurovision 2016, it was politics that beat art,” told Frants Klintsevich, the deputy chairman of the defense and security committee of the upper house of Russia’s legislature, told Russian reporters after the final round. “If nothing changes in Ukraine by next year, then I don’t think we need to take part.”
Jamala, the first Crimean Tatar to perform at the contest, says she wrote “1944” for her great-grandmother and her five children who were deported from Crimea under Joseph Stalin; they were among the nearly 250,000 Crimean Tatars expelled that year. She told Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty that the song is also dedicated for Crimean Tatars living under Russian control now:
When she sings it, she said, she remembers her own family, which is still in Crimea.
“Now the Crimean Tatars are on occupied territory,” she told RFE/RL. "And it is very hard for them. They are under tremendous pressure. Some have disappeared without a trace. And that is terrifying. I would not want to see history repeat itself.”
Russian officials had attempted to convince Eurovision to ban “1944,” which they said was a clear political statement about the conflict in Ukraine—and therefore in violation of the contest’s rules—but Eurovision backed Jamala and Ukraine.
The lyrics of “1944” are in English and Crimean Tatar, the first time a Eurovision entry has included the language of Crimea’s ethnic minority. Human-rights activists say discrimination against Crimean Tatars has increased since Russia took over the peninsula.
Russia Fumes at Ukraine's Eurovision Win
Ukrainian officials are thrilled and their Russian counterparts fuming at the results of the popular singing competition.
Ukraine's Jamala, the winner of this year's Eurovision contest Reuters
Eurovision is meant to be a politics-free zone—“lyrics, speeches, gestures of a political or similar nature” are banned, according to the rules. But that doesn’t always happen.
In 2014, when Anastasia and Maria Tolmachevy, the twin sisters representing Russia, got on stage to perform in Copenhagen, the audience booed. The competition aired just two months after Russia annexed Crimea, the Ukrainian peninsula, a move decried by nearly all the participating countries. Both Russia and Ukraine had qualified for the finals, and Eurovision suddenly became a reflection of geopolitical affairs.
Two years later, the tensions were still on full display Saturday in Stockholm. Russia’s representative, Sergey Lazarev, performed “You Are the Only One,” a love song. Ukraine’s representative, Jamala, performed “1944,” a song lamenting the expulsion by the Soviets of Tatars from Crimea. Neither Russian nor Ukrainian juries gave each other votes. While Lazarev won the vote among all television viewers, he scored third place, and Jamala took first place overall. Ukrainian officials were thrilled, but their Russian counterparts were not.
“It was not the Ukrainian singer Jamala and her song ‘1944’ that won the Eurovision 2016, it was politics that beat art,” told Frants Klintsevich, the deputy chairman of the defense and security committee of the upper house of Russia’s legislature, told Russian reporters after the final round. “If nothing changes in Ukraine by next year, then I don’t think we need to take part.”
Jamala, the first Crimean Tatar to perform at the contest, says she wrote “1944” for her great-grandmother and her five children who were deported from Crimea under Joseph Stalin; they were among the nearly 250,000 Crimean Tatars expelled that year. She told Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty that the song is also dedicated for Crimean Tatars living under Russian control now:
When she sings it, she said, she remembers her own family, which is still in Crimea.
“Now the Crimean Tatars are on occupied territory,” she told RFE/RL. "And it is very hard for them. They are under tremendous pressure. Some have disappeared without a trace. And that is terrifying. I would not want to see history repeat itself.”
Russian officials had attempted to convince Eurovision to ban “1944,” which they said was a clear political statement about the conflict in Ukraine—and therefore in violation of the contest’s rules—but Eurovision backed Jamala and Ukraine.
The lyrics of “1944” are in English and Crimean Tatar, the first time a Eurovision entry has included the language of Crimea’s ethnic minority. Human-rights activists say discrimination against Crimean Tatars has increased since Russia took over the peninsula.
Russia Fumes at Ukraine's Eurovision Win
88m3
Fast Money & Foreign Objects
The Families Suing Russia Over MH17
Thirty-three relatives of victims have filed a lawsuit against Russian President Vladimir Putin and his country over the downed airplane.
The reconstructed wreckage of the MH17 airplane, during a presentation of the final report into the July 2014 crashMichael Kooren / Reuters
Families of the passengers of the Malaysia Airlines airplane shot down over eastern Ukraine in 2014 are suing Russia and its president, according to Australian media.
Thirty-three relatives from Australia, New Zealand, and Malaysia have filed a lawsuit against Vladimir Putin and his country over the crash that killed 298 people in 2014, the Sydney Morning Herald reported Saturday. The claim was filed by Sydney law firm LHD Lawyers in the European Court of Human Rights, an international court based in France. The claimants demand $10 million in Australian dollars, or $7.2 million in U.S. dollars or 6.4 million euros, for each victim.
Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, an international passenger flight from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur, was struck by a surface-to-air-missile in July 2014, at the height of fighting in the Ukraine conflict. A Dutch investigation found the aircraft was shot down by a Russian-made rocket, but did not say who fired it. Ukraine and Western nations say Russian-backed separatists in Ukraine are responsible, but Russia accuses Ukrainian forces.
Of the victims, 193 were Dutch, 43 were Malaysian, and 27 were Australian. The remainder were citizens of Belgium, Canada, Germany, Indonesia, New Zealand, the Philippines, and the United Kingdom.
News.com.au reports the lawsuit alleges Russia and Putin violated the passengers’ “right to life.” The other allegations include, according the Sydney Morning Herald:
The documents allege that the Russian Federation has worked to keep its involvement hidden. It has failed to conduct an internal investigation, refused to participate in the cockpit reconstruction and its “Pawn Storm” cyber warfare unit hacked into the Dutch Safety Board investigative website, it states.
Jerry Skinner, a American aviation lawyer who also works at LHD Lawyers, is leading the case, according to Australian media. Skinner helped to negotiate $10 million in compensation from Libya for the families of the victims of the Lockerbie bombing in 1988. In that incident, 270 people were killed when a bomb detonated aboard a Pan Am flight as it traveled over Scotland.
“Our clients want them to accept responsibility and be accountable in some measure that will be satisfying to the individuals," Skinner told Australian broadcaster ABC.
Some families of victims in Australia are considering suing Malaysia Airlines over failing to consider potential security concerns about flying over eastern Ukraine at the time.
Victims' Families Sue Vladimir Putin for MH17, the Plane Shot Down Over Ukraine
Thirty-three relatives of victims have filed a lawsuit against Russian President Vladimir Putin and his country over the downed airplane.
The reconstructed wreckage of the MH17 airplane, during a presentation of the final report into the July 2014 crashMichael Kooren / Reuters
Families of the passengers of the Malaysia Airlines airplane shot down over eastern Ukraine in 2014 are suing Russia and its president, according to Australian media.
Thirty-three relatives from Australia, New Zealand, and Malaysia have filed a lawsuit against Vladimir Putin and his country over the crash that killed 298 people in 2014, the Sydney Morning Herald reported Saturday. The claim was filed by Sydney law firm LHD Lawyers in the European Court of Human Rights, an international court based in France. The claimants demand $10 million in Australian dollars, or $7.2 million in U.S. dollars or 6.4 million euros, for each victim.
Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, an international passenger flight from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur, was struck by a surface-to-air-missile in July 2014, at the height of fighting in the Ukraine conflict. A Dutch investigation found the aircraft was shot down by a Russian-made rocket, but did not say who fired it. Ukraine and Western nations say Russian-backed separatists in Ukraine are responsible, but Russia accuses Ukrainian forces.
Of the victims, 193 were Dutch, 43 were Malaysian, and 27 were Australian. The remainder were citizens of Belgium, Canada, Germany, Indonesia, New Zealand, the Philippines, and the United Kingdom.
News.com.au reports the lawsuit alleges Russia and Putin violated the passengers’ “right to life.” The other allegations include, according the Sydney Morning Herald:
The documents allege that the Russian Federation has worked to keep its involvement hidden. It has failed to conduct an internal investigation, refused to participate in the cockpit reconstruction and its “Pawn Storm” cyber warfare unit hacked into the Dutch Safety Board investigative website, it states.
Jerry Skinner, a American aviation lawyer who also works at LHD Lawyers, is leading the case, according to Australian media. Skinner helped to negotiate $10 million in compensation from Libya for the families of the victims of the Lockerbie bombing in 1988. In that incident, 270 people were killed when a bomb detonated aboard a Pan Am flight as it traveled over Scotland.
“Our clients want them to accept responsibility and be accountable in some measure that will be satisfying to the individuals," Skinner told Australian broadcaster ABC.
Some families of victims in Australia are considering suing Malaysia Airlines over failing to consider potential security concerns about flying over eastern Ukraine at the time.
Victims' Families Sue Vladimir Putin for MH17, the Plane Shot Down Over Ukraine