March 17, 2015

Another day, another nutbar loses his shit on an airplane

United Airlines Flight Returns to Washington DC Airport After Passenger Runs Toward Cockpit

A United Airlines flight was forced to return to Washington, D.C., after a passenger failed to comply with crew instructions, a spokesman for the airline said today.

Flight 1074, en route to Denver, returned to Dulles International Airport shortly after takeoff late Monday. The pilots told air traffic controllers the passenger became violent but was restrained by passengers, according to LiveATC.net.

"He ran forward towards the cockpit and he is being restrained by passengers," one of the pilots said. "Cockpit is secure and we would like to return to the airport and have the authorities meet him."

Donna Tellam, a passenger on board the flight, said two men grabbed him and held him down.

"One held his feet and the other one kind of laid on top of him and then the flight attendants went and got some plastic restraints for his arms," she said. “At one point when his head was down he said there were jihadists in the cargo hold and he did say jihad a couple times."

http://abcnews.go.com/US/united-airlines-jet-grounded-disturbance/story?id=29686164

March 17, 2015

Missouri LT. Governor: “More Racism In The Justice Department” Than Entire St.L Area

The lieutenant governor of Missouri says “there is more racism in the Justice Department” than in the St. Louis area, pointing the finger at President Obama and the Justice Department who, he says, often incited “the mob” in the wake of the shooting of Michael Brown back in August of 2014.

“The whole blow up of this protest movement was based on the lie that never happened of ‘hands up don’t shoot,’” Peter Kinder, the Lt. governor told NewsMaxTV’s Steve Malzberg Show Monday. “But it’s bad enough the protestors were behaving that way but we have a right to expect more from the attorney general, the head of the Justice Department of the United States, and the president of the United States. And instead what we got too often from them was incitement of the mob, and, uh, encouraging disorder in Ferguson and distributing the peaceable going-about of our lives in the greater St. Louis region.”

Kinder added President Obama and Eric Holder “took one side” following the death of Michael Brown. Asked why, he said the Justice Department was “staffed with radical, hard-left radical, leftists lawyers.”

“Many of them have spent most of their careers defending Black Panthers and other violent radicals,” he added. ”


http://www.buzzfeed.com/andrewkaczynski/missouri-lt-governor-more-racism-in-the-justice-department-t?utm_term=.ord8WjdNm#.ih5Xr1NGA

Just want to remind certain DUers about exactly what they've been defending as of late

March 16, 2015

Fidan admitted MIT faction executed 3 PKK women in Paris, KCK head claims

Cemil Bayık, the head of the Kurdistan Communities' Union (KCK), has reportedly said that Hakan Fidan, head of the National Intelligence Organization (MIT), admitted that a group within the intelligence body was responsible for the execution of three Kurdish women linked to the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) in Paris in 2013.

In an interview published on Sunday in the Cumhuriyet daily, Bayık, who is also the “number two” man in the outlawed PKK, claimed that the Paris murders were committed by a faction consisting of ultranationalists and members of the "parallel state," in reference to the Gülen movement, also known as Hizmet movement, within MİT, adding, "But he [Fidan] is the head of MİT, and it is impossible to think he is not aware of the assassinations."

Three Kurdish women, Sakine Cansız, Fidan Doğan and Leyla Söylemez, were found dead with gunshot wounds at a Kurdish information center in Paris in January 2013. The killing of the PKK-linked women is yet to be solved.

When asked whether MİT executed key members of the PKK while it was involved in the talks with the group, Bayık, who clearly expressed his lack of confidence in Fidan's argument that he was not aware of the killings, stated that besides MİT, other international actors took part in the murders to interrupt the Kurdish settlement process. The talks were initiated in 2011 in order to seek a solution to the country's decades-long Kurdish problem, which cost nearly 40,000 lives.

http://www.todayszaman.com/national_fidan-admitted-mit-faction-executed-3-pkk-women-in-paris-kck-head-claims_375309.html

March 16, 2015

The Trolls Who Came In From The Cold

ST. PETERSBURG -- Last May, Tatiana N decided she wanted a higher salary than the average journalist can expect.

After responding to an advertisement in the popular HeadHunter job-search website, she became a Kremlin-paid Internet troll. Tatiana -- who, like others interviewed for this story, asked that her last name not be used -- worked out of a 2,500-square-meter warehouse in the suburbs of St. Petersburg.

The job paid 40,000 rubles a month, significantly more than the 25,000-30,000 most journalists make. But it came, she said, "with pain."

Tatiana joined a round-the-clock operation in which an army of trolls disseminated pro-Kremlin and anti-Western talking points on blogs and in the comments sections of news websites in Russia and abroad.

http://www.rferl.org/content/russia-trolls-headquarters-media-internet-insider-account/26904157.html?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter

March 16, 2015

Do not forget about Eston Kohver

On September 3, 2014, US President Barack Obama stood in the centre of Tallinn, the capital of Estonia, and told the world that the defence and security of all the Baltic States is always guaranteed by the US and the North Atlantic Treaty Origination (NATO).

Less than 48 hours later, Russian agents crossed the border and abducted Eston Kohver, an Estonian Internal Security Service officer. This was a well-planned abduction. Communications-jamming equipment was used, as were smoke bombs and stun grenades. Perhaps most shockingly, Russian agents kidnapped Kohver at gunpoint not in Russia, but on Estonian soil in the quiet village of Miikse nine kilometres from the nearest border crossing.

After Kohver's abduction he was rushed across the border into Russia, whisked off to Moscow, and quickly paraded on Russian television. Today, he sits in Lefortovo Prison - a drab mass of concrete in Moscow built in 1881.

Lefortovo Prison served as torture chamber for the NKVD, Joseph Stalin's secret police. It served as a home to hundreds of political prisoners for the KGB. Today, the FSB - the successor to the KGB - operates the prison. Not a pleasant place to be, but Kohver has no choice.

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2015/03/forget-eston-kohver-150315112432470.html

March 16, 2015

A network error routed traffic for the UK's nuclear weapons agency through Russian telecom

For the past week, something strange has been going on in the European internet. For five days, web traffic from Texas to certain addresses in the UK has been routed through Ukrainian and Russian telecoms, taking a detour thousands of miles out of the way. Network traffic often takes a circuitous route as a result of network congestion or interconnection difficulties, but neither one would be enough to account for these routes. Instead, this was the result of a bad route announced by Ukraine's Vega telecom, inserting itself in between. "At this point, I have to believe this was an innocent mistake by Vega," said Dyn's Doug Madory, who first discovered the redirection, "but it's concerning nonetheless."

This phenomenon is known as "route hijacking," and it's a common security concern for network engineers and security researchers alike. It's particularly disconcerting because of the sensitive nature of many of the sites involved. Among the dozens of sites involved was the UK's Atomic Weapons Establishment, which is tasked with managing and delivering the UK's nuclear warheads, as well as the UK's official mail service, the Royal Mail. US defense contractor Lockheed Martin was also running a VPN connection that was caught up in the redirection.

VPN traffic would have been encrypted, as well as almost all email traffic, but anyone listening in on email traffic would have been able to read the IP addresses of the parties involved. Even worse, any site serving data over unencrypted HTTP would have been entirely in the clear, and potentially exposed to injection attacks by a malicious third party with access to an intermediate network. (Both AWE and Royal Mail serve their sites over unencrypted HTTP.) Because of the public nature of the routing table, it's easy to see exactly when and how the route hijacking occurred, but why is still a mystery, and we can't say for sure whether any data was altered in transit.

It's still likely that the redirection was simply an innocent error, but it underscores the insecure nature of the global routing system. While much of the web has grown more wary of digital attack, routing is still based on trust, with networks freely announcing routes and friendly telecoms adopting them as a matter of habit. As a result, inefficient and potentially insecure routes like this one can linger for days without being corrected, without the parties involved ever being aware of them.

http://www.theverge.com/2015/3/13/8208413/uk-nuclear-weapons-russia-traffic-redirect

March 16, 2015

Brazil ruling party's treasurer charged in Petrobras scandal

Source: Reuters

(Reuters) - Brazilian prosecutors formally charged the treasurer of the ruling Workers' Party and 26 others with corruption linked to state-run Petrobras (PETR4.SA) on Monday, in the latest blow to President Dilma Rousseff from the widening scandal.

Prosecutors have "ample proof" that Joao Vaccari, treasurer of Rousseff's ruling party, solicited donations from former Petrobras services chief Renato Duque and executives at engineering firms accused of funnelling money from the oil company, prosecutor Deltan Dallagnol said.

Vaccari was "well aware" the donations he was seeking comprised funds stemming from bribes, Dallagnol said, adding that much of the evidence was gleaned from plea bargain deals with executives who were indicted and jailed late last year.

Such plea bargain deals have restored 500 million reais (103 million pounds) of stolen money to public coffers to date, he added.


Read more: http://uk.reuters.com/article/2015/03/16/uk-brazil-petrobras-idUKKBN0MC2CT20150316

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Remember that fake scandal and all the engineered outrage about the NSA spying on Petrobras? Seems like it was not without cause...

March 16, 2015

Scale of racism, xenophobia in Russian soccer is a threat to 2018 World Cup visitors, report says

LONDON — Russian football is plagued by a racist and far-right extremist fan culture that threatens the safety of visitors to the 2018 World Cup, according to a report provided to The Associated Press.

Chelsea fans stop black man from boarding Paris train, shouting ‘we’re racist, we’re racist and that’s the way we like it’.

Researchers from the Moscow-based SOVA Center and the Fare network, which helps to prosecute racism cases for European football’s governing body UEFA, highlighted more than 200 cases of discriminatory behaviour linked to Russian football over two seasons.

“It shows a really quite gruesome picture of a domestic league which is full of aspects of racism, xenophobia: The far-right play a significant role in the fan culture,” Fare executive director Piara Powar said in an interview with the Associated Press.

http://news.nationalpost.com/2015/02/27/a-gruesome-picture-scale-of-racism-xenophobia-in-russian-soccer-is-a-threat-to-2018-world-cup-visitors-report-says/

http://www.messenger-inquirer.com/ap/ap_international_news/scale-of-racism-in-world-cup-host-russia-exposed-by/article_450a1fd0-6ca7-54c3-a93b-687fe1e31ff7.html

Brazil's Hulk victim of racist abuse in Zenit vs. Torpedo Moscow match
http://www.foxsports.com/soccer/story/brazil-s-hulk-victim-of-racist-abuse-in-russian-premier-league-match-vs-torpedo-moscow-031515

March 16, 2015

Russia Today Tells The 'Untold Story' Of MH-17 — But Kremlin Propaganda Already Debunked The Theory

The Russian government's English news outlet, Russia Today, released a 26-minute documentary about the "untold story" of the MH-17 tragedy.

The film's major thesis is that a BUK missile did not — and could not — have been what hit the MH-17 plane. Instead, it was actually a cannon fire from a (presumably) Ukrainian jet.

"The film attempts to establish what might have brought down the ill-fated airline and all 298 people abroad," RT's website says.

The mainstream consensus is that the plane was hit by a BUK missile fired by pro-Russia Ukrainian separatists.


http://www.businessinsider.com/rt-mh-17-propaganda-2014-10

And before the usual moron chimes in with his standard "The crash investigators are squelching the investigation!" bullshit, he should get himself up to speed at the Dutch Safety Board's site:
http://www.onderzoeksraad.nl/en

March 16, 2015

Russia spreads its woes: Olive

Russia’s economy is forecast to shrink by 5 per cent this year. Russia being a petro-economy, its ruble has collapsed in tandem with the world oil price — about 50 per cent in the past year.

The ruble collapse, the Russia-created Ukrainian crisis, and the Western-imposed sanctions in response to that crisis, have caused inflation in Russia to double since the sanctions began a year ago this month. Inflation in February was 16.7 per cent (most Western central banks try to contain inflation to less than 2 per cent).

In a fit of pique, Russian President Vladimir Putin responded to the sanctions by banning food imports from any country imposing them, including Canada, this despite Russia relying on imports for about 40 per cent of its food.

As a result, Russian food-price inflation is running at about 20 per cent, a rate likely to increase. Certain products, including French cheese and German sausage, have disappeared altogether from Russian grocery shelves.

http://www.thestar.com/business/2015/03/13/russia-spreads-its-woes-olive.html