Teenager in Northern Ireland Is Arrested in TalkTalk Hacking Case by MARK SCOTT
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The British police arrested a 15-year-old boy in connection with a cyberattack on the fixed-line and broadband provider, which has four million customers.
The Balkan states have threatened to close their borders if the refugee crisis is not addressed - they aren't the only ones putting up barriers
 CNBC |
Russia's Reserve Fund could run empty in 2016
CNBC Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov prompted more concerns over the health of theRussian economy Tuesday when he said there was a danger that the country's vast Reserve Fund could be entirely exhausted in 2016 if oil prices stay at their current ... Russia Running Out Of Money? Finance Minister Says Reserve Fund Could Be ...International Business Times Russia: key reserve fund to run dry Next year could be last for Russia's Reserve Fund — finance ministerTASS Russia's finance minister sees 1 of 2 rainy day funds depleted by end of next yearU.S. News & World Report all 55 news articles » |
The confirmation of the strikes adds a new level of complexity to the United States’ struggle to craft a coherent strategy to fight the Islamic State.
 РБК |
Порошенко предложил продлить санкции против России
РБК Президент Украины Петр Порошенко заявил о необходимости продлить санкции против России. По его мнению, основанием для этого является несоблюдение минских договоренностей. Президент Украины Петр Порошенко. Фото: Михаил Палинчак/пресс-служба президента Украины/ ... Порошенко заявил, что обсуждение выборов в Донбассе заблокированоРИА Новости Порошенко: Сегодня в Минске презентуют закон о выборах в ДонбассеИА REGNUM Порошенко: ЕК подтвердила, что Украина осуществила большой прогресс на пути достижения безвизового режима с ЕСFINANCE.UA Все похожие статьи: 205 » |
Victim Of 2014 Homophobic Attack In Belarus Dies Of Injuriesby support@pangea-cms.com (RFE/RL's Belarus Service)
A Belarusian man who was brutally beaten in May 2014 in what witnesses say was a homophobic hate crime has died in a Minsk hospital.
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A number of governments risk undermining democracy while pretending to protect it.
 Telegraph.co.uk |
First serving Russian soldier killed in Syria
Telegraph.co.uk The death was first flagged by Conflict Intelligence Team, an activist group founded by Ruslan Leviev, a Moscow-based blogger who specialises in using social media posts and interviews with relatives to monitor Russian military activity in Ukraine and ... First Russian soldier dies in SyriaFinancial Times Russia Confirms Death of Soldier in SyriaNewsweek Parents Say Russian Army Lying About Soldier's SuicideHuffington Post The Independent -Yahoo News UK all 31 news articles » |
Beheadings, Whippings, & Terror: Another Month Of Brutality In IS-Controlled Mosulby support@pangea-cms.com (Joanna Paraszczuk)
September was yet another long month of murder, terror, and brutality for residents of Mosul, the northern Iraqi city controlled by Islamic State (IS) militants for over a year.
It is the first known death of a Russian serviceman in Syria since Moscow began airstrikes in support of President Assad
В заявлении говорится о необоснованности обвинений российских Воздушно-космических сил в нанесении ударов по «умеренной» оппозиции и гражданским объектам в Сирии.
 Комсомольская Правда в Украине |
Глава Пентагона раскритиковал применение российскими ВКС неуправляемых бомб в Сирии
Коммерсантъ Глава Пентагона Эштон Картер на сегодняшних слушаниях в сенатском комитете по вооруженным силам заявил, что Россия при нанесении авиаударов по целям в Сирии использует в основном некорректируемые боеприпасы, что может приводить к жертвам среди населения. «Россия ... Пентагон заверяет, что Ирак не будет сотрудничать с РФ в борьбе с ИГРИА Новости Пентагон опроверг сведения об ударах ВКС России по союзным повстанцам в СирииLenta.ru США пригласили Россию вступить в коалицию против ИГ в СирииГазета.Ru Российская Газета -Московский комсомолец- Взгляд Все похожие статьи: 98 » |
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 Коммерсантъ |
«Вмешательство США может в значительной степени усугубить ситуацию в Сирии»
Коммерсантъ США могут усилить свою группировку в Сирии. На отправке в страну нового контингента настаивают советники Барака Обамы, пишет The Washington Post. При этом американские военные на месте должны только планировать тактику борьбы с ИГ (террористическая организация ... Пентагон тянет Обаму на сирийский фронтВести.Ru США хотят перебросить войска к линии фронта в Ираке и СирииRegions.ru США могут разместить постоянный контингент военных советников в СирииГазета.Ru РБК -Российская Газета -ГОЛОС АМЕРИКИ Все похожие статьи: 134 » |
HIV/AIDS Epidemic in Russia ‘Out of Control,’ Health Minister Says by paul goble (noreply@blogger.com)
Paul Goble
Staunton, October 27 – The HIV/AIDS epidemic in the Russian Federation is growing “out of control,” according to Health Minister Veronika Skvortsova, as a result of which the number of HIV/AIDS cases in that country, already growing at about 10,000 new cases annually, is likely to increase by 250 percent over the next five years (interfax.ru/russia/475156).
In part, this reflects cuts in government support for health care more generally; and in part, it is the product of the unavailability of many anti-retroviral drugs which are made only abroad and which are not being imported at present because of Moscow’s counter-sanctions and because of high costs.
At present, Skortsova says, Russian doctors are able to treat only about one in five of the approximately one million now infected; and even when Russia begins to produce substitutes for now-unavailable foreign drugs, they will be able to treat only about one in five more. Consequently, the epidemic will expand.
In an article in “Novaya gazeta” today entitled “A Deficit of Understanding,” journalist Anastasiya Ivanova describes some of the other factors that are promoting this epidemic, including not least of all the attitudes of many officials, businessmen, and even doctors (newizv.ru/society/2015-10-27/229604-deficit-ponimanija.html).
“Although the virus has already spread not only among marginal groups of the population, its bearers as before continue to encounter negative stereotypes” in Russia, she writes. “Over the last month alone,” the Duma has considered refusing to register HIV-infected people for marriage and requiring fingerprinting of all those with HIV or AIDS.
Last Friday, the deputies took up a government proposal which would allow foreigners infected with HIV to live in Russia if they have close relatives with residence permits. That would bring the country’s laws into correspondence with a recent Supreme Court decision, Ivanova points out.
But there are problems beyond officialdom. Many businesses fire people as soon as they learn or even suspect they are infected with HIV; many doctors refuse to treat people for any illness if they learn that these people have the infection; and many governments are refusing to treat HIV-infected people unless they are legal residents of the district.
That excludes most migrants and many others and means that in the absence of such treatment, these people are more likely to spread the disease thus reinforcing other prejudices about them.
Russia’s unfortunate and counterproductive approach is especially obvious if one compares it with what Ukraine is doing. Despite the war, Ukraine has “achieved significant success in the struggle against the spread of HIV over the last five years,” “Novaya gazeta” reports, noting that Kyiv has reduced mother to baby infections by a factor of seven and increasing the share of those infected receiving treatment by 20 times.
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Iran's Rouhani: Sanctions Must Be Lifted by End of 2015by webdesk@voanews.com (Reuters)
President Hassan Rouhani reaffirmed Tuesday he expected sanctions on Iran to be lifted by year-end, a week after its clerical supreme leader ordered restrictions that could delay the implementation of Tehran's nuclear deal with world powers. "According to our plans, the oppressive sanctions against the Islamic Republic of Iran will be lifted by the end of 2015," state news agency IRNA quoted Rouhani as saying during a ceremony to welcome the new Spanish ambassador to Tehran. Under Iran's July 14 accord with the six powers, the Islamic Republic must dismantle large parts of its disputed nuclear program before international sanctions over suspicions it had bomb-making purposes can be lifted. Most analysts expect this process, which began on Oct. 18, to take at least four to six months, but Rouhani repeatedly has said he expects sanctions to be lifted in December. The process was further complicated last week when Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's top authority, said Iran would not begin work on two key issues until United Nations inspectors issued a report on their investigation into possible military dimensions (PMD) to Iran's nuclear program. Ali Akbar Velayati, a top adviser to Khamenei, warned on Tuesday that the top leader's support for the deal depended on adhering to these and other restrictions. Iran has said its nuclear energy program is for civilian applications only. The International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N. nuclear watchdog, is expected to issue the PMD report by Dec. 15. That potentially could leave Iranian engineers little more than two weeks to revamp a heavy-water reactor to ensure it cannot produce bomb-grade plutonium and to ship out 98 percent of the country's enriched uranium stockpile to meet Rouhani's timeline. Any delays to the timeline are likely to disappoint Iranian voters, who will go to the polls in February for elections to parliament and the Assembly of Experts, a clerical body with nominal power over the Supreme Leader.
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New Bond ‘Spectre’ Is Money Spinner for Sponsors Tooby webdesk@voanews.com (Reuters)
James Bond is back, and companies such as Omega watches, Gillette shavers and Belvedere vodka have paid undisclosed sums for product tie-ins with "Spectre" in sponsorships that one marketing specialist says are cinema's version of the Olympics. Being a sponsor allows companies to show Bond-themed adverts, as both Gillette and Heineken are doing, or to mount lavish drinks parties — featuring Belvedere martinis, as the spirits company plans for Tuesday night to celebrate the film's British premiere on Monday. It has its U.S. launch on Nov. 6. Cross investments "We can't disclose the actual cost of the franchise but we do invest significantly," David Lette, premium brands director for Heineken UK, told Reuters, adding that both Bond and Heineken beer have "global appeal". For Gillette, the Bond sponsorship is new with this film, but Kara Buckley, associate director of communications for grooming products at Procter & Gamble, Gillette's owner, said it was a way to diversify from sports promotions. "We found that film is another great way to connect with guys, particularly younger guys," she told Reuters at a "Spectre" product tie-in party in London. Jacques de Cock, a marketing consultant and lecturer at the London School of Marketing, said the half-century-old Bond franchise is cinema's marketing equivalent of the Olympics, even if the sponsorship money for the Games is in the billions of dollars, while the Bond money is in the tens of millions. "The marketing and co-marketing of the Olympics is close in terms of branding — in terms of revenue, no," de Cock told Reuters. He estimates Bond movies have earned some 11 billion pounds [$16.90 billion] - in 2015 prices - at the box office, and another $4-5 billion from marketing since "Dr. No" in 1962. Although figures are not divulged, he said the marketing and promotional activities associated with a modern Bond movie could run to 150-200 million pounds, or roughly the cost of making it. "I looked at 'Star Wars', I looked at 'Harry Potter', they actually make more per movie, but they are only seven or eight movies long in terms of franchises. It's the longevity and depth combined that make Bond unique," he said. Fashion makes it mark But not everyone who benefits pays to be seen in, or associated with, Bond. The green dress and hexagonal earrings that Lea Seydoux wears to an intimate dinner with Daniel Craig's Bond on a luxury train, have been plastered on billboards and buses across London — without anyone paying for sponsorship. "We're all just kind of gobsmacked about the whole thing," said a delighted Sameera Azeem, head designer for British-based Ghost, which produced the 225-pound [$345] slinky "Salma" dress that the French actress Seydoux wears to the dinner that ends abruptly when a would-be assassin pounces on Bond. The dress, and the pair of "DiamonDust" earrings Seydoux wears, produced by the London-based jewelry firm Daniel Deyong, were simply bought from shops by costume designers for the film, both firms said. "I would have liked nothing more than a celebrity to wear my jewelery, it's been my dream," Emma Ben-Yair, director of David Deyong, said. "This has been really something because it's global."
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- Putin in Syria: Russian Serviceman Confirmed Killed...LIVE UPDATES: Relatives have confirmed that Vadim Kostenko, a contract serviceman in the Russian Air Force, was killed on October 24 while on duty in Syria. The previous post in our Putin in Syria column can be found here.
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2 French Pilots Convicted of Drug Trafficking Flee Dominican Republic by webdesk@voanews.com (Reuters)
Two French pilots who had been in the Dominican Republic awaiting a court appeal of their conviction for drug trafficking are now back in France, their lawyer said on Tuesday, after what appeared to be a well-planned escape. A report on BFMTV carried photos of the two men in a speedboat, and said they went from the boat to a larger vessel, which then sailed to the nearby French-governed part of the Carribbean island of Saint Martin. The report said the two men arrived back in France on Saturday. Saint Martin is about 730 km (450 miles) from Santo Domingo, the capital of Dominican Republic. The two men had been sentenced to 20 years in prison for bringing drugs into the country by private plane but deny the charges. They had been free to move around under judicial supervision while awaiting their appeal. The lawyer, Jean Reinhart, said the pair were not fleeing Dominican justice, but seeking French justice. He said a Marseille judge was leading an inquiry into the affair. A statement from the Foreign Ministry said the French government was not involved in helping the men flee. According to Le Figaro newspaper the two men, Bruno Odos and Pascal Fauret, were "extracted" from the country by a team of people. Fauret was due to give a news conference later on Tuesday. Two other Frenchmen who were also convicted in connection with the same case are still in the Dominican Republic.
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US Budget Deal Would Sell 58M Barrels of Oil From Emergency Reserves by webdesk@voanews.com (Reuters)
Congressional leaders proposed to sell 58 million barrels of oil from U.S. emergency reserves over six years starting in fiscal 2018 to help pay for a budget deal that ends mandatory spending cuts, according to a copy of the bill posted to a congressional website. The Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) holds more than 695 million barrels of crude in Texas and Louisiana, a bounty that U.S. lawmakers have eyed a few times this year to pay for a new drug program and highway maintenance. Economists have said reducing SPR stocks is the right idea at the wrong time, given low crude oil prices. The White House has urged Congress to pass the budget compromise.
France to Host Talks on Syria Crisisby webdesk@voanews.com (VOA News)
France will host talks on the Syria conflict later Tuesday, with representatives from the United States, Europe, Jordan and Turkey, but without Syria's allies Russia and Iran, according to the French Foreign Ministry. The meeting is expected to focus on the fight against the Islamic State group, the protection of civilians and the proposal for a U.N. Security Council resolution France plans to put forth next week. The resolution is aimed at stopping Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's forces from using barrel bombs against his Syrian population. Barrel bombs are steel drums full of shrapnel and explosives dropped from the air. The meeting will feature mainly lower-ranking officials, with the United States sending Deputy Secretary of State Anthony Blinken in place of Secretary of State John Kerry. French officials were not involved in the latest round of Syria talks between the U.S., Russia, Saudi Arabia and Turkey last week in Vienna. More than 240,000 people have been killed in the war in Syria since it began in 2011.
 CBS News |
Russian confirms death of 1st troop inside Syria
CBS News All Russian men are conscripted into military service for a set period of a year or two, but many chose to sign contracts with the Ministry of Defense after that service is up. While the precise payment of these "contractors" is murky, they still work ... Russian serviceman's family dismiss claims death in Syria was suicideThe Guardian Parents receive body of first Russian to die in Syria, doubt suicideReuters First serving Russian soldier killed in SyriaTelegraph.co.uk BBC News-Sky News-Newsweek all 72 news articles » |
Serbian Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic says his country has proved its "friendly attitude" toward Russia when it refused to impose sanctions against it, and pledged to continue this policy.
Across much of Russia, local energy plants provide heat by piping steam into nearby apartments. But residents of the town of Brusyany say that indoor temperatures never rose above 10 degrees last winter. They're forced to rely on old-fashioned wood-fired stoves to make up for the public utility's shortfalls. (RFE/RL's Current Time TV)
Across much of Russia, local energy plants provide heat by piping steam into nearby apartments. But residents of the town of Brusyany say that indoor temperatures never rose above 10 degrees last winter. They're forced to rely on old-fashioned wood-fired stoves to make up for the public utility's shortfalls. (RFE/RL's Current Time program)
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 ABC News |
Coffin Packed With Illegal Caviar Discovered During Traffic Stop in Russia
ABC News A speeding hearse pulled over by Russian police was found with more than half-a-ton of illegal black caviar stashed in the coffin it was carrying. The hearse was stopped Monday night on a highway near Khabarovsk, a city close to the Chinese border ... It's your funeral: Russian police find caviar hidden in speeding hearseThe Guardian Russia: Police catch speeding hearse full of caviarBBC News all 73 news articles » |
Russian serviceman's family dismiss claims death in Syria was suicide by Shaun Walker in Moscow
Parents of Vadim Kostenko, confirmed as Russia’s first military casualty in Syrian operation, reject official version that son took own life at airbase
The family of the first confirmed Russian military casualty during Moscow’s operation in Syria have said they are sceptical of official claims he killed himself.
Vadim Kostenko, a 19-year-old in the air force, died at Russia’s airbase near Latakia on Saturday, his parents said. They had been informed by his commanding officer, who came in person to tell them their son had hanged himself.
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The Hilton Worldwide hotel chain plans to expand on the Russian hotel market in 2018 with the opening of a luxury hotel on Moscow's central Tverskaya Ulitsa, according to a company statement released Monday.
Putin's Mafia Statecraftby support@pangea-cms.com (Brian Whitmore)
Sometimes the Kremlin uses organized crime groups to achieve its goals. And sometimes it acts like an organized crime group itself.
CIA Head: Personal Email Hack Epitomizes Cyber Dangersby webdesk@voanews.com (VOA News)
CIA Director John Brennan said Tuesday he was "outraged" when a hacker broke into his personal email account, but added the attack highlights how everyone's personal data is vulnerable on the Internet. Brennan told a conference on national security at George Washington University in Washington that he was outraged by the publication of sensitive data. “I was certainly outraged by it. ... I certainly was concerned about what people might try to do with that information," he said at the conference, which was co-sponsored by the CIA. Faults media Brennan also faulted the media not only for its coverage of the incident, but also for suggesting impropriety or lax security on his part regarding the email account. "Because of some things that were put out, the implication of the reporting was that I was doing something wrong or inappropriate or in violation of my security responsibility, which was not certainly the case," Brennan told those at the conference. "Giving air to what is criminal activity and propagating information I think was inappropriate," he said about media coverage. WikiLeaks, the anti-secrecy website, began releasing documents from Brennan's private AOL account last week, days after a teenage hacker said he fooled telecommunications giant Verizon into providing him access to Brennan's account. The information included email contact addresses, some of which were out of date, his wife's pension identification number, and the Social Security numbers and personal information of U.S. intelligence officials. Other hacking cases The case marked another instance of hacking involving the U.S. government or government officials, although it appeared to be of a much smaller and more primitive character than previous attacks, such as the massive breach of Office of Personnel Management computers in June. It appears Brennan stopped using the account in 2008 when he rejoined the government after a period in private life. Brennan said the incident should serve as an example for everyone of the growing vulnerabilities of the cyber world. “I think it does epitomize … what we have to deal with in this increasingly modern and interconnected world. It’s a reality of the 21st century,” the CIA chief said. Some material for this report came from AP, Reuters and AFP.
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U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter has said the United States is preparing to accelerate its military campaign against the Islamic State (IS) group with more and heavier air strikes in Syria.
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US Concedes It's Struggling in Fight With IS Groupby webdesk@voanews.com (Ken Bredemeier)
The United States says it is stepping up airstrikes against Islamic State targets in Syria and Iraq, as top U.S. military leaders acknowledged to lawmakers Tuesday that the U.S. is struggling to combat the insurgent group. "No one is satisfied with our progress to date," Marine General Joseph Dunford, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told a hearing on the American military strategy in the Middle East. Defense Secretary Ash Carter told the Senate Armed Services Committee he was "disappointed" in the failure of a $500 million U.S. effort to train moderate rebel forces in Syria to fight against the Islamic State. The United States abandoned the program earlier this month after only a few soldiers had been trained. In response, Carter said the United States has intensified its aerial campaign against the Islamic State in hopes of shrinking its hold on Raqqa in northern Syria, the headquarters of the extremist group’s operations. WATCH: Ash Carter outline US plan Frustration at pace of operations At the same time, Dunford said U.S. military leaders are "frustrated by the pace of operations" in assisting Iraqi forces retake vast swaths of territory in their country that IS fighters took control of in northern Iraq and Syria. Senator John McCain, the committee's chairman and a long-time critic of U.S. military policies in the Middle East, said President Barack Obama is overseeing a failed effort in the region and has "not even defined the problem correctly." "Our policy of ISIL (another acronym for the Islamic State) first fails to understand that ISIL, for all of the threat it poses, is actually just a symptom of a deeper problem, the struggle for power and sectarian identity now raging across the Middle East, the epicenter of which is Iraq and Syria," he said. McCain, who ran against and was defeated by Obama in the 2008 presidential election, said, "We've tried to leave the Middle East. Now into this vacuum has stepped (Russian President) Vladimir Putin," with Russia conducting an aerial campaign against rebel groups fighting Syrian troops loyal to President Bashar al-Assad.” "We hear it said all the time, there is no military solution about ending the four-year Syrian conflict, which is a truism," McCain said. "But that too is misleading. The real problem is there can be no diplomatic solution without leverage and there is a clear military dimension to this problem." McCain wants no-fly zone McCain chided Carter for not recommending Obama adopt a no-fly zone over Syria to keep Syrian and Russian airstrikes from hitting rebel forces loyal to the United States, with Assad's fighter jets dropping barrel bombs that have killed thousands of civilians. McCain said that with Moscow's involvement in Syria, "the U.S. is now moving out of the way." He called the U.S. actions in Syria, "not only harmful to our interests, it is immoral." He said Russia will become "the dominant military power in the Middle East." Dunford said Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi assured him last week that it would not invite Russia to conduct an air campaign in Iraq. Carter said the U.S. is "not cooperating" with Russia's Syrian air attacks on the Assad opposition. But Senator Tom Cotton, another critic of U.S. actions in the Middle East, criticized the U.S. military chiefs for not pressing Iraq to end Baghdad's approval of Russian military flights over Iraq as Moscow conducts its Syrian campaign. Despite the U.S. setbacks, Carter vowed, "We will deliver a lasting defeat" to the Islamic State insurgents.
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 Reuters |
Parents receive body of first Russian to die in Syria, doubt suicide
Reuters In an interview with Reuters at their home in southern Russia before they received the body of their son Vadim, Alexander and Svetlana Kostenko said their son had sounded cheerful over the phone as recently as Saturday, the day he died while working at ... Russian confirms death of 1st troop inside SyriaCBS News Russian serviceman's family dismiss claims death in Syria was suicideThe Guardian Russian Defense Ministry Acknowledges Soldier Death in SyriaWall Street Journal Telegraph.co.uk -BBC News -Washington Times -ruslanleviev - LiveJournal all 146 news articles » |
Moscow Patriarchate Becoming ‘Extremist Organization of a Fascist Type,’ Mitrokhin Saysby paul goble (noreply@blogger.com)
Paul Goble
Staunton, October 27 – Three decisions by the Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate last week clearly indicate “the further transformation of the leadership of the church into a rightwing organization of a fascist type,” according to Nikolay Mitrokhin, a longtime analyst of Orthodoxy in Russia.
The first of these was the elevation of Archimandrite Tikhon (Shevkunov), Putin’s advisor, to the rank of bishop; the second, the formation of a joint commission with the Bulgarian Church to seek canonization of a man notorious for his nationalist views; and the third a call for a campaign against neo-paganism (grani.ru/opinion/mitrokhin/m.245335.html).
The elevation of Shevkunov, Mitrokhin says, allows him to “shift from the church’s ‘officers’ into its ‘generals’” and opens the way for him to pursue an even greater church career, possibly even to the point of succeeding Kirill as patriarch. At the very least, it indicates that Kirill’s position is not as unchallenged as it was.
The decision to work with the Bulgarian Orthodox Church toward the canonization of Archbishop Serafirm (Sobolev), one taken at Kirill’s personal insistence, is more instructive. Serafim in the 1930s was an opponent of any ecumenical contacts and also cooperated with Nazi groups. His works will now become more widely available and influential.
And the decision to pursue a campaign against neo-paganism is simultaneously an indication of the Patriarchate’s failure to find points of cooperation with “’socially close’ categories” of young people such as football fans and other sports fanatics and a desire to find a way to rein them in for the service of the Patriarchate.
But all three of these decisions, Mitrokhin argues, must be seen in the context of the problems that the Church has created for itself among patriotically inclined rightwing radicals by its comments on Ukraine and represent an effort by some in the hierarchy to reach out to those who had been alienated as a result.
More important still, the religious affairs analyst says, these decisions are clear “signs of the increasing tendency to adopt fascist positions by the leadership of the church, with that being understood in this case as something which “describes the process of indoctrinating the subject of the public space with a definite complex of ideas and practices.”
Because it was under the control of the communists for so long, he continues, “the Russian Orthodo church in its ideological development was frozen for seven decades and is now passing through those very same stages through which the major Christian churches of Europe passed during the 20th century.”
If under Aleksii II, “mystical black hundreds ideas” were dominant, now under Kirill, the church has passed “into the stage of the modern fascist experiments characteristic of Europe in the 1920s and 1930s” and that was especially marked in the émigré Russian Orthodox Church of that time.
This would be truly worrisome if the entire church as opposed to the hierarchy were infected by this, but in large measure, Mitrokhin says, “there are more generals in this army than there are soldiers.” And it is even possible that the organizational innovations that the hierarchy has made in an effort to promote its ideas will have exactly the opposite effect and open the way to the further transformation of Russian Orthodoxy in a more positive direction.
The real needs of the laity and the lower clergy are very different than those of this group of hierarchs, the analyst continues, and to the extent that they can become more important, there is likely to be for the Russian Orthodox Church its very “own ‘Vatican 2” and even “a post-GULAG theology.” If so, the church will modernize and so too will Russia.
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Last December the two companies signed a deal which envisaged a discount for 2015 gas supplies
 Defense One |
U.S. airstrikes decline in Syria after Russia moves in
Military Times The frequency of U.S. airstrikes on Islamic State targets in Syria has slowed significantly since the Russians began military operations in the region in early September, Defense Department data shows. U.S. strikes averaged about seven per day in ... Dunford: US Will Rethink Its Iraq Presence If Russia Goes InDefense One Russia bombs more Syria targets amid a renewed diplomatic pusheuronews Aleppo Civilians: Russia 'Dropped Cluster Bombs over Us'Breitbart News Yahoo News -Mintpress News (blog) -Center for Research on Globalization all 300 news articles » |
Russia: Key Reserve Fund to Run Dry by End of Next Yearby webdesk@voanews.com (Associated Press)
Russia says it will likely deplete one of its two rainy day funds by the end of next year as it tries to plug the state deficit amid the economic downturn. The economy fell into recession this year for the first time since 2009 due to Western sanctions and a drop in prices for the country's crucial energy exports. Personal incomes have fallen for the first time since President Vladimir Putin came to power 15 years ago. Finance Minister Anton Siluanov told the parliament on Tuesday that the Reserve Fund, which holds 4.7 trillion rubles ($74 billion), is likely to halve by the end of the year with oil prices as low as they are. "This means that 2016 could be the last year when we have these reserves to spend," Siluanov said. "From then on, we will have no resources like this." As oil prices began to climb in the mid-2000s, Russia decided to set aside some profits from oil exports into two rainy day funds. The second one, the National Welfare Fund, now holds $4.9 trillion rubles and is largely used to support infrastructure projects. Unlike in the 1990s, Russia is much better prepared for a recession as its debt levels are low and the currency, the ruble, trades freely on markets. The Russian economy is forecast to contract by 3.9 percent this year and grow by 0.7 percent next year.
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The Billion Dollar Spy: A True Story of Cold War Espionage and Betrayal
David Hoffman
Doubleday (2015)
336 pages
David Hoffman
Doubleday (2015)
336 pages
I didn’t pick up The Billion Dollar Spy: A True Story of Cold War Espionage and Betrayal intending to review it. I read it—or, to be precise, listened to the audiobook—because I stumbled across a podcast of a book talk its author, journalist David Hoffman, had given and found myself intrigued by the story: that of one of the CIA’s most valuable agents in Moscow in the latter years of the Cold War.
I was expecting to be engaged with a true-life John LeCarre-like story, and The Billion Dollar Spycertainly delivers on that.
But it also delivers a great deal more. It is a book about a largely unknown but hugely consequential and successful espionage operation. It is also one of the more careful journalistic portrayals of espionage tradecraft I have seen. Put simply, this is one of the best non-fiction portrayals of human intelligence collection I have ever read. (I do not, should add, recommend the audiobook, which is badly marred by the reader's attempts to impersonate a Russian accent every time he speaks a line by a Russian.)
In this era in which we often trivialize the necessity of operational secrecy and lionize those who blow sensitive operations, it thus offers a certain caution about our current enthusiasms for openness and transparency in espionage. The Billion Dollar Spy—without ever mentioning the name Edward Snowden or Chelsea Manning or Wikileaks, indeed while focusing on a different era and on human intelligence, not technical collection—portrays the exquisite value, and the exquisite delicacy, of good intelligence and the secrecy necessary to collect it.
The Billion Dollar Spytells the story of Adolf Tolkachev, a Russian radar engineer who volunteered to spy for the CIA Moscow station in the late 1970s and provided an immense trove of material on Soviet aviation and air defenses until his capture in 1985. In telling Tolkachev’s story, Hoffman has benefited both from a large volume of declassified operational papers and from extensive cooperation from former CIA officers who worked on the case. Hoffman’s dexterity with the bureaucratic history of the case itself, the CIA’s larger work against the Soviet target over time, and things Russia in general give the book a lot of informational heft behind its light, narrative, spy-thriller tone. Hoffman has written a true-spy book, but it’s a true-spy book with an unusual amount of hard information behind it. And in Hoffman’s hands, that information tells a remarkable story.
On the surface, that story is a Cold War yarn about Tolkachev and his remarkable run as a U.S. agent. It’s the story of how he approached the CIA in a gas station offering to spy, how the agency initially pushed him away and how he kept coming back, finally winning the hyper-cautious CIA over. It’s the story of how he first persuaded the agency to engage him at all and then bowled over the U.S. intelligence community and Air Force with the game-changing quality of the material he provided. It’s the story of his motivations and actions and the agency’s efforts to manage him, keep him safe, and often slow his production down to ensure his own protection. It’s the story of the technologies he used and those he didn’t use. It’s the story of the machinations inside the CIA—the push-and-pull between a Moscow station that had gold on its hands and a more risk-averse headquarters that wanted, at once, to go slow but also to pose endless questions to its star agent.
And it’s the story of Tolkachev’s incredible intelligence take over time, which the government assessed as worth literally billions of dollars, and which Hoffman—in a clever Epilogue set during the first Gulf War—assesses by a different means. In Vietnam, Hoffman reports, the United States lost one aircraft for every two it downed. By contrast, in Iraq and in the Balkans, U.S. planes down 48 and lost none:
By the end of the [first Iraq] war, U.S. Air Force planes had shot down thirty-nine airborne enemy aircraft, without losing one. Sixteen of the U.S. kills involved missile shots that were fired beyond visual range, at fighters the U.S. pilots could not even see, a remarkable new dimension in air combat, made possible because the U.S. fighters, guided by AWACS, could shoot with little risk of accidentally hitting friendly aircraft.In direct aerial combat over Iraq, the U.S. Air Force downed every Soviet-built tactical fighter that it confronted. The reasons were many: superior technology, finely honed tactics, and vastly improved pilot training. But all of these advantages were bolstered by something less visible. The United States had collected every scrap of information it could find about Soviet planes, pilots, and radars, every photograph, diagram, and circuit board that could be obtained—by any means.And for this, there was a spy.
All of this is fascinating and would be worth reading no matter what.
But Hoffman's book also tells another story, one more contemporary in its relevance. The Billion Dollar Spy is also, as I say, a story about tradecraft. Hoffman spends many pages describing the cat-and-mouse game of surveillance and surveillance detection conducted by the CIA and the KGB in Moscow. He spends even more pages describing the neurotic—but no doubt necessary—depths to which Tolkachev and his handlers went to escape detection. Along the way, Hoffman describes some of the other operations conducted out of Moscow at the same time. The book is, thus, among other things, a portrait of the intensity of effort associated with good intelligence collection.
It ultimately describes as well the fragility of those efforts. Because Tolkachev was not caught, as things turned out, because of any failure of his or any failure of the Moscow station.
The KGB caught up with him because of a leak: a disgruntled former CIA trainee who betrayed the information to the KGB.
For the record, no, I am not equating or condemning all leaks of classified operational information. And I’m not saying that we should understand the Snowden revelations as this sort of betrayal either.
I am saying, however, that Hoffman’s portrayal of the intense investment and extreme fragility of a major intelligence program offers a cautionary tale to those who celebrate the mass and indiscriminate disclosure of tens of thousands of pages of operational materials—materials over whose every word competent adversaries will then comb and whose scraps of information they will collate with other data collected elsewhere. Do the activists and journalists who trumpet these disclosures really understand what sort of losses they may involve—losses both of intelligence and, potentially, of people? Do they really understand how fragile the most valuable of intelligence operations, operations like Tolkachev’s, really are?
I doubt very much this question was on Hoffman’s mind as he wrote this book. But it was very much on my mind as I read it. And I recommend The Billion Dollar Spy, among its many other virtues, as a useful narrative text through which to ponder the question: What is intelligence really worth, and how precious are the secrets needed to do it well?
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In the past couple years, Russian hackers have launched attacks on a French television network, a German steelmaker, the Polish stock market, the White House, the U.S. House of Representatives, the U.S. State Department, and The New York Times.
And according to press reports citing Western intelligence officials, the perpetrators weren't rogue cyber-pranksters. They were working for the Kremlin.
Cybercrime, it appears, has become a tool of Russian statecraft. And not just cybercrime.
Vladimir Putin's regime has become increasingly adept at deploying a whole range of practices that are more common among crime syndicates than permanent members of the UN Security Council.
In some cases, as with the hacking, this involves the Kremlin subcontracting organized crime groups to do things the Russian state cannot do itself with plausible deniability. And in others, it involves the state itself engaging in kidnapping, extortion, blackmail, bribery, and fraud to advance its agenda.
Spanish prosecutor Jose Grinda has noted that the activities of Russian criminal networks are virtually indistinguishable from those of the government.
"It's not so much a mafia state as a nationalized mafia," Russian organized crime expert Mark Galeotti, a professor at New York University and co-host of the Power Vertical Podcast, said in a recent lecture at the Hudson Institute.
Hackers, Gangsters, And Goblins
According to a report by the FBI and U.S. intelligence agencies, Russia is home to the most skilled community of cybercriminals on the globe, and the Kremlin has close ties to them.
"They have let loose the hounds," Tom Kellermann, chief security officer at Trend Micro, a Tokyo-based security firm, told Bloomberg News.
Citing unidentified officials, Bloomberg reported that Russian hackers had stepped up surveillance of essential infrastructure, including power grids and energy-supply networks, in the United States, Europe, and Canada.
Dmitri Alperovitch, co-founder of the security firm CrowdStrike, noted recently that the Russian security services have been actively recruiting an army of hackers.
"When someone is identified as being technically proficient in the Russian underground," a pending criminal case against them "suddenly disappears and those people are never heard from again," Alperovitch said in an interview with The Hill, adding that the hacker in question is then working for the Russian security services.
"We know that’s going on," Alperovitch added.
And as a result, criminal hackers "that used to hunt banks eight hours a day are now operating two hours a day turning their guns on NATO and government targets," Kellermann of Trend Micro told The Hill, adding that these groups are "willingly operating as cyber-militias."
The hacking is just one example of how the Kremlin effectively uses organized crime as a geopolitical weapon.
Moscow relied heavily on local organized crime structures in its support for separatist movements in Transdniester, Abkhazia, South Ossetia, and Donbas.
In the conflict in eastern Ukraine, organized crime groups served as agents for the Kremlin, fomenting pro-Russia unrest and funneling arms to rebel groups.
In annexed Crimea, the Kremlin installed a reputed gangster known as "The Goblin" as the peninsula's chief executive.
And of course there is the case of Eston Kohver, the Estonian law enforcement officer who was investigating a smuggling ring run jointly by Russian organized crime groups and the Russian Federal Security Service.
Kohver was kidnapped in Estonia September 2014, brought across the Russian border at gunpoint, and convicted of espionage. He was released in a prisoner exchange last month.
The Geopolitics Of Extortion
But Putin's mafia statecraft doesn't just involve using and colluding with organized crime groups.
It often acts like an organized crime group itself.
In some cases this involves using graft as a means of control. This is a tactic Moscow has deployed throughout the former Soviet space, involving elites in corrupt schemes -- everything from shady energy deals or money-laundering operations -- to secure a "captured constituency."
This is a tactic Russia attempted to use in Georgia following the 2003 Rose Revolution and in Ukraine after the 2004 Orange Revolution, where "corruption and shadow networks were mobilized to undermine the new leadership's reform agenda," according to James Greene in a 2012 report for Chatham House.
This was particularly successful in Ukraine, where opaque gas deals were used "to suborn Ukraine's post-Orange Revolution new leadership," Greene wrote.
And Putin is clearly hoping to repeat this success in eastern Ukraine today -- especially after elections are held in the rebel areas of Donbas.
"His bet in the eastern Ukraine local election, if it ever takes place, won't be on the rebel field commanders but on local oligarchs who ran the region before the 2014 'revolution of dignity.' Through them, he will hope to exert both economic and political influence on Kiev." political commentator Leonid Bershidsky wrote in Bloomberg View.
In addition to graft, Moscow has also effectively utilized blackmail -- making the international community a series of offers it can't refuse.
It's a neat trick. First you create instability, as in Ukraine, or exasperate existing instability, as in Syria.Then offer your services to establish order.
You essentially create demand -- and then meet it. You get to act like a rogue and be treated like a statesman.
It's how protection rackets operate. And it has become one of the pillars of Putin's foreign policy.
"It’s the geopolitics of extortion, but it’s probably working," Galeotti told Voice of America in a recent interview.
"He’s identifying a whole series of potential trouble spots around the world, places that matter to the West, and is essentially indicating that he can either be a good partner, if they’re willing to make a deal with him, or he can stir up more trouble."
NOTE TO READERS: The Daily Vertical will not appear on October 28, due to the public holiday in the Czech Republic. We'll be back on October 29.
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