A bizarre Foreign Ministry report circulating in the Kremlin today states that this Friday past (11 May) Russian Envoy Vladimir Vinokurov, the Consulate General of San Francisco, was approached near his hotel room during a visit to Los Angeles by an agent of the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation identifying himself as Stephen Ivens who warned that he and a former FBI agent named Donald Sachtleben had uncovered evidence of an impending terror attack on US soil stating that those behind the attack were “all insane.”

eutimes.net

A former supervisory FBI agent has been arrested and jailed on child pornography charges. Donald Sachtleben was taken into custody and charged Monday …

CNN

The wife of a missing FBI agent appealed for the public’s help in tracking him down Tuesday, saying in a letter that 35-year-old Stephen Ivens is “more than just a missing person.”

Los Angeles Times

Not only does the EU hate Greece but, apparently, so too, does NATO. A survey by the Atlantic Council of the alliance’s (recently) former luminaries, including ex-Polish President Aleksander Kwaśniewski, outgoing U.S. Senator Richard Lugar, Canada’s former ambassador to Turkey Yves Brodeur, and 54 others, found significant support for ejecting the Greeks from NATO. (One unknown person wanted Luxembourg banished.) The survey also found support for admitting Sweden, opposition to admitting Russia, and a belief European states should increase defense spending. 
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Not only does the EU hate Greece but, apparently, so too, does NATO. A survey by the Atlantic Council of the alliance’s (recently) former luminaries, including ex-Polish President Aleksander Kwaśniewski, outgoing U.S. Senator Richard Lugar, Canada’s former ambassador to Turkey Yves Brodeur, and 54 others, found significant support for ejecting the Greeks from NATO. (One unknown person wanted Luxembourg banished.)

The survey also found support for admitting Sweden, opposition to admitting Russia, and a belief European states should increase defense spending. 

A decision to use destructive force pre-emptively will be taken …
First Deputy Minister of Defense Gen. Nikolai Makarov outlines how Russia will respond to a NATO activation of the Active Layered Theater Missile Defense System. According to Makarov, Russia will engage and destroy U.S. forces located in Romania and Poland which are associated with the Aegis-based missile interceptor network if the Obama administration continues with current ABM plans. 

Russian duma member Andrey Lugovoy - a prime suspect in the dramatic radiation assassination of FSB turncoat Alexander Litvinenko - has passed a polygraph test administered by private technicians, possibly clearing him of involvement in the 2006 killing of Litvinenko in London, where he was living after alleging Russian involvement in the 1999 Moscow apartment bombings. Information on the qualifications or affiliation of the polygraph technicians wasn’t provided.

Which Obama Cabinet Secretary Did Russian SVR Agent Seduce? Did a Juliet agent in the Anna Chapman spy ring come close to seducing an Obama  cabinet secretary in 2010? That possibility was among startling revelations made by a senior official of the U.S. FBI to the UK’s official state media, the BBC, ABC reports. Frank Figliuzzi, Assistant Director of Counter-Intelligence for the FBI, said the decision to break-up the Russian espionage operation came when it did because, “we were becoming very concerned they were getting close enough to a sitting U.S. cabinet member that we thought we could no longer allow this to continue.”
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Which Obama Cabinet Secretary Did Russian SVR Agent Seduce?

Did a Juliet agent in the Anna Chapman spy ring come close to seducing an Obama  cabinet secretary in 2010? That possibility was among startling revelations made by a senior official of the U.S. FBI to the UK’s official state media, the BBC, ABC reports.

Frank Figliuzzi, Assistant Director of Counter-Intelligence for the FBI, said the decision to break-up the Russian espionage operation came when it did because, “we were becoming very concerned they were getting close enough to a sitting U.S. cabinet member that we thought we could no longer allow this to continue.”

Was the elections monitoring report prepared by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) in the wake of the recent Russian presidential elections actually prepared in advance?  The Swiss alt newsletter Zeit-Fragen reports that right-leaning Austrian MEP Ewald Stadler has accused the OSCE monitoring mission - of which he was a member - of bias and fabrication in questioning the fairness of the Russian presidential election.  “I do not agree with the statements of the OSCE. I suspect that it is the aim of the OSCE to purposefully denounce Russia. If so, then the OSCE has abdicated its objective role. I will certainly not get involved in this mean denunciation of an important country of the international community,” Stadler said in a press conference.  Stadler went on to itemize discrepancies between the OSCE report and what he observed. The MEP from Mäder is an attorney who formerly served as a federal ombudsman on police and judicial questions. 
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Was the elections monitoring report prepared by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) in the wake of the recent Russian presidential elections actually prepared in advance? 

The Swiss alt newsletter Zeit-Fragen reports that right-leaning Austrian MEP Ewald Stadler has accused the OSCE monitoring mission - of which he was a member - of bias and fabrication in questioning the fairness of the Russian presidential election. 

“I do not agree with the statements of the OSCE. I suspect that it is the aim of the OSCE to purposefully denounce Russia. If so, then the OSCE has abdicated its objective role. I will certainly not get involved in this mean denunciation of an important country of the international community,” Stadler said in a press conference. 

Stadler went on to itemize discrepancies between the OSCE report and what he observed. The MEP from Mäder is an attorney who formerly served as a federal ombudsman on police and judicial questions. 

[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]
  • Stanislav Lunevon seismic weapon Mercury 18

Col. Stanislav Lunev, Russian defector from the GRU, publicly reveals for the first time - in a September 1998 interview with radio host Art Bell - the name of a Russian seismic weapon: “Mercury 18.”

In the interview, Col. Lunev claims the 1988 earthquake in Spitak, Armenia was the result of Mercury 18 testing. One month after these remarks - in which Lunev claims testing of Mercury 18 is then occurring in Chechnya - a 5.8 earthquake struck that region.

If you talk to me like that, there will be no Qatar.
statement attributed to Vitaly Churkin, ambassador of the Russian Federation to the United Nations, responding to a threat by the Emir of Qatar that Russia should not veto a Security Council resolution concerning events in Syria
The Deadly U.S. Obsession with Greece With the impending collapse of the current iteration of the Pan-Hellenic Socialist Movement (PASOK) government in Greece, we are reminded of a claim that appeared in a last summer issue of the prominent Greek newsweekly Epikaira. According to it, a Russian counter-surveillance team in Athens uncovered “Operation Pythia” - a plan by an unnamed “Greek ally” to assassinate then Prime Minister Kostas Karamanlis (of the right-leaning New Democracy Party) to interrupt that country’s negotiations with Russia over the Trans-Balkan Oil Pipeline. While the “Greek ally” is not named, it is strongly implied it was the United States. Certainly logic would dictate that conclusion as such an operation would, most certainly, be far beyond the wherewithal of Luxembourg, Canada, Belgium or any of the other “filler” countries in NATO.  In a separate incident, in 2006, it was revealed Karamanlis’ mobile phone had been bugged as part of a sophisticated operation the origin of which pointed to “US intelligence agents.”   The United States has strong links to the ruling Pan-Hellenic Socialist Movement. Both the current Prime Minister, George Papandreou, and former Prime Minister, Andreas Papandreou, were American-Greek dual citizens. The elder Papandreou served in the U.S. Navy while the younger Papandreou was born in Minnesota and educated at Amherst College in Massachusetts. It is unknown if the Papendreou family was party to the purported assassination plot. 
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The Deadly U.S. Obsession with Greece

With the impending collapse of the current iteration of the Pan-Hellenic Socialist Movement (PASOK) government in Greece, we are reminded of a claim that appeared in a last summer issue of the prominent Greek newsweekly Epikaira. According to it, a Russian counter-surveillance team in Athens uncovered “Operation Pythia” - a plan by an unnamed “Greek ally” to assassinate then Prime Minister Kostas Karamanlis (of the right-leaning New Democracy Party) to interrupt that country’s negotiations with Russia over the Trans-Balkan Oil Pipeline. While the “Greek ally” is not named, it is strongly implied it was the United States. Certainly logic would dictate that conclusion as such an operation would, most certainly, be far beyond the wherewithal of Luxembourg, Canada, Belgium or any of the other “filler” countries in NATO.  In a separate incident, in 2006, it was revealed Karamanlis’ mobile phone had been bugged as part of a sophisticated operation the origin of which pointed to “US intelligence agents.”  

The United States has strong links to the ruling Pan-Hellenic Socialist Movement. Both the current Prime Minister, George Papandreou, and former Prime Minister, Andreas Papandreou, were American-Greek dual citizens. The elder Papandreou served in the U.S. Navy while the younger Papandreou was born in Minnesota and educated at Amherst College in Massachusetts. It is unknown if the Papendreou family was party to the purported assassination plot. 

Ruben Salvadori documents the staging of conflict photography. WIRED previously uncovered the staging of photos by Reuters during the 2008 Russian police action in Georgia.

October is a busy month in the world elections calendar with balloting taking place, or scheduled, in Tunisia, Liberia, Mauritania, Cameroon, Bulgaria, Kyrgyzstan and the Seychelles. We visit the “Parliamentary Powers Index”, a comparative ranking conducted in M. Steven Fish and Matthew Kroenig’s 2009 text The Handbook of National Legislatures: A Global Survey. According to the Handbook, the world’s most powerful legislature is Germany’s Bundestag, while the world’s least powerful is Somalia’s Transitional Federal Council. The index assigns each legislative body a score of 0.0 to 1.0 based on the percent of powers constitutionally granted to it from a list of 32 common powers, including: immunity from dissolution, necessity for legislative ratification of treaties, the absence of decree-making power by the executive, etc. Higher scores are not considered inherently “good”, they serve only as measures of parliamentary power relative to other agencies of governance and the body politic. For instance, a legislature will score higher if statutes enacted by it are immune from judicial review, even though such a restraint is widely considered positive. Further, the index only assesses the constitutionally prescribed parliamentary powers and does not attempt a subjective evaluation of political realities.
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October is a busy month in the world elections calendar with balloting taking place, or scheduled, in Tunisia, Liberia, Mauritania, Cameroon, Bulgaria, Kyrgyzstan and the Seychelles. We visit the “Parliamentary Powers Index”, a comparative ranking conducted in M. Steven Fish and Matthew Kroenig’s 2009 text The Handbook of National Legislatures: A Global Survey.

According to the Handbook, the world’s most powerful legislature is Germany’s Bundestag, while the world’s least powerful is Somalia’s Transitional Federal Council. The index assigns each legislative body a score of 0.0 to 1.0 based on the percent of powers constitutionally granted to it from a list of 32 common powers, including: immunity from dissolution, necessity for legislative ratification of treaties, the absence of decree-making power by the executive, etc.

Higher scores are not considered inherently “good”, they serve only as measures of parliamentary power relative to other agencies of governance and the body politic. For instance, a legislature will score higher if statutes enacted by it are immune from judicial review, even though such a restraint is widely considered positive. Further, the index only assesses the constitutionally prescribed parliamentary powers and does not attempt a subjective evaluation of political realities.