Tuesday 10 March 2015
Photo, left: NPR HQ.
JOHN BATCHELOR SHOW
Co-host: Larry Kudlow, CNBC senior advisor; & Cumulus Media radio.
Hour One
Tuesday 10 March 2015 / Hour 1, Block A: Sudeep Reddy, WSJ, in re: . . . The Fed may be going in opposite directions to the rest of the world's economies, which tends not to work out well in the short run The stock mkt now is in the top end of historical rangers relative to corporate profits. Non-farm productivity is flat. Compensation is up 2.5%, production up 1%. Yes, profit problem, esp in the oil sector; also in consumer, retail? Some might do better with gas prices low and wages up. Two years ago, the Taper Tantrum. Also a small upset in Oct 2014 with Treasurys rates. (1 of 2)
Tuesday 10 March 2015 / Hour 1, Block B: Sudeep Reddy, WSJ (2 of 2)
Tuesday 10 March 2015 / Hour 1, Block C: John Taylor, Hoover, in re: Inflation in Brazil and a few other countries, but not in the US. Strong dollar having a downward push on inflation. See Consumer Deflator. I want the Fed to get back to the good policies of he past. QE begets QE – we put e dollar down, then Japan sis and now the EECB is putting the euro down – not a good way for the world economy to work. If you think of he Eighties and Nineties, a lot of stability and confidence in what monetary policy was doing, If we returned in some part we'd be in better shape. Liberty Blog, Steve H___ and Cato, supports Rand Paul's bid for the presidency, Wd Milton Friedman want to audit the Fed? No, his attention would be on the rules, which he always emphasized, He'd favor the Fed's describing its policy. . . . Alan was clear and persuasive. The Fed no longer uses the word "patient" – is that a rule? No. Think of the debates about what "patient" means. Stanley Fischer suggests "Fed WiIl Give Less Guidance" – time for more Fed mystery in guidance. the forward guidance has been al over the map. Taylor Rule would have the Fed funds rate at 1.25% or 1.5% or so. . . . LK: Why would you want to tax seed corn, the capital that can grow the economy? JT: We'd have 4% growth if . . . . See: Economics1 blog.
Tuesday 10 March 2015 / Hour 1, Block D: Jennifer Rubin, WAPO, in re: Mrs Clinton looked uncomfortable on stage today at the UN – annoyed to be there. Why did she have to answer all these questions, why is her judgment being questioned? When her ofc sent out responses, read like verbatim quotations from her statements. None of this adds up – the original server explanation was that she was using a server to communicate with her husband – who turns out to have sent a total of two emails in his life, and nether was to his wife. Worse: she seems to have been soliciting funds from foreign govts for her foundation – millions of dollars – while she was in office. Stonewalling so effective for her: She is without shame. She sure believes she's above reproach. She was asked about money from Arab sheikhdoms that abuse women, her reply was, "We do wonderful work at he foundation." She says, "I deleted them." But they can't be deleted. Her server was in New York City in "an official building," says a computer geek [who may have studied the IP addresses]. She leaves the stage in 2025. . . . I’d like to think the American people are on to her, that people are sick of this imperiousness, even Democrats. GOP better put up a strong, pro-growth campaign in 2016 –"or they’ll have another chance in 2020."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-politics-live/liveblog/live-updates-hillary-clinton-news-conference/?hpid=z1
Hour Two
Tuesday 10 March 2015 / Hour 2, Block A: Stephen F. Cohen, NYU & Princeton professor Emeritus; author: Soviet Fates and Lost Alternatives: From Stalinism to the New Cold War, & The Victims Return: Survivors of the Gulag after Stalin; in re: European voices on Ukraine. Minsk II.
“I wonder how many people in this room or this very important senatorial committee really anticipated that one day Putin would land military personnel in Crimea and seize it. I think if anybody said that’s what he is going to do, he or she would be labeled as a warmonger. He did it. And he got away with it. I think he’s also drawing lessons from that. And I’ll tell you what my horror, night-dream, is: that one day, I literally mean one day, he just seizes Riga, and Talinn. Latvia and Estonia. It would literally take him one day. There is no way they could resist. And then we will say, how horrible, how shocking, how outrageous, but of course we can’t do anything about it. It’s happened. We aren’t going to assemble a fleet in the Baltic, and then engage in amphibious landings, and then storm ashore, like in Normandy, to take it back. We have to respond in some larger fashion perhaps, but then there will be voices that this will plunge us into a nuclear war.”
Peace? Springtime ground offensive? Gen Breedlove of NATO speaking of war with Russia on Polish and Balkan frontiers. Russia said to be preparing an offensive to secure the Crimean coast. Stratfor says: 1.) Land bridge: from Donetsk & Luhansk to Mariupol and secure that coast. 2.) Coastal Scenario: same, but to Odessa. 3.) Eastern Ukraine Offensive: Russian forces fan out to Crimea, and along ht Dnieper to Kiev. / What does Putin want: an end to fighting, a stable Ukkraine not in NATO trading with Russia and with he West if it wants. However, if push comes to shove, fear in Moscow that NATO forces will enter Western Ukraine. Contingency planning: wd have to fortify Crimea. There's no Donbass landline from Mariupol to Crimea; bldg the bridge from Kras__ to the mainland.
Tuesday 10 March 2015 / Hour 2, Block B: Stephen F. Cohen, NYU & Princeton professor Emeritus; author: Soviet Fates and Lost Alternatives: From Stalinism to the New Cold War, & The Victims Return: Survivors of the Gulag after Stalin; in re:
Tuesday 10 March 2015 / Hour 2, Block C: Stephen F. Cohen, NYU & Princeton professor Emeritus; author: Soviet Fates and Lost Alternatives: From Stalinism to the New Cold War, & The Victims Return: Survivors of the Gulag after Stalin; in re:
Tuesday 10 March 2015 / Hour 2, Block D: Stephen F. Cohen, NYU & Princeton professor Emeritus; author: Soviet Fates and Lost Alternatives: From Stalinism to the New Cold War, & The Victims Return: Survivors of the Gulag after Stalin; in re: In event of a nuclear war, humans sealed in a bubble-room would launch the end of the world (system designed in 1985). Now 80% of Russians have a negative view of the US; partly because of state propaganda, but US propaganda presents Russians as zombies who've been brainwashed and swallow whatever the state says. That, incidentally, is extremely not accurate. Don't need state TV to see that NATO has crept to Russian borders, find that menacing. Anti-Americanism is a product of US positions toward Russia for the last twenty years.
Hour Three
Tuesday 10 March 2015 / Hour 3, Block A: Salena Zito, Pittsburgh Tribune-Review & Pirates fan, in re: Click here for link An imperial message came from the Internet's one-dimensional darkness Wednesday: “I want the public to see my email. I asked State to release them. They said they will review them for release as soon as possible.” Those brief keystrokes were Hillary Clinton's Twitter response to the firestorm over her apparent bypassing of the State Department's email system and instead using a personal account on “dark” computer file-servers at her Chappaqua, N.Y., home, 260 miles from Washington. Clinton broke her silence two days after the story erupted but only hours after a congressional committee subpoenaed her emails for its investigation of the deadly
Tuesday 10 March 2015 / Hour 3, Block B: Bruce Webster, AndStillIPersist, computer consultant, in re: "The server was physically located on her property protected by the US Secret Service." What kind of security, who was the ISP, what was digital security? Dozens of questions . . . "A pre-existing computer." Huge security risks.
OFFICE OF HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON We wanted to take this opportunity, given how much information has been circulating, to provide the best information we have about an understandably confusing situation. This document is on-the-record as “Statement from the Office of Former Secretary Clinton.”
Background Like Secretaries of State before her, Secretary Clinton used her own email account when engaging with State Department officials. For work, it was her practice to email them on their “.gov” accounts, with every expectation those emails would be captured and preserved immediately in the Department's system.
When the Department asked former Secretaries last year for help ensuring that their work emails were in fact retained, she said yes and provided printed copies of all of her work-related emails. She has since asked the Department to make the emails she provided available to the public.
She is proud of the work that she and the public servants at the Department did during her four years as Secretary of State and looks forward to people being able to see that for themselves.
Why did she use her own email account? As the Secretary has said publicly, when she got to the Department, she wanted the simplicity of using one device. She opted to use her personal email account as a matter of convenience; it enabled her to reach people quickly and keep in regular touch with her family and friends more easily given her travel schedule. That is the only reason she used her own account. Her usage was widely known to the over 100 Department and U.S. government colleagues she emailed, as her address was visible on every email she sent. To address requirements to keep records of her work emails, it was her practice to email government officials on their “.gov” accounts. That way, they would be immediately captured and preserved in the Department's system.
Was this allowed? Yes. The laws and regulations allowed her to use her own email for work.
Under the Federal Records Act, records are defined as recorded information, regardless of its form or characteristics, “made or received by a Federal agency under Federal law or in connection with the transaction of public business.” [44 U.S.C. § 3301]. In 2009, the National Archives and Record Administration issued guidance reaffirming a prior regulation (36 CFR § 1234.24) on the need to preserve work emails.
In meeting the record-keeping obligations, it was Secretary Clinton’s practice to email government officials on their “.gov” accounts, so her work emails were immediately captured and preserved.
Was she ever provided guidance about her use of a non-“.gov” email account? The Department has and did provide guidance regarding the need to preserve federal records, which included her work emails. To address requirements to keep records of her work emails, it was her practice to email government employees on their “.gov” email address. That way, work emails would be immediately captured and preserved in government record-keeping systems.
What did Secretary Clinton provide to the Department? On December 5, 2014, 30,490 printed copies of work-related emails sent and received by Secretary Clinton from March 18, 2009 to February 1, 2013 were provided to the Department. This totaled roughly 55,000 pages. About 90% of these emails were already in the Department’s record-keeping system because they were sent to or received by “state.gov” accounts
[Before March 18, 2009, Secretary Clinton continued using the email account she had used during her Senate service. Given her practice from the beginning of emailing Department officials on their state.gov accounts, her work-related emails during these initial weeks would have been captured and preserved in the Department's record-keeping system. She, however, no longer had access to these emails once she transitioned from this account.]
Why did the Select Committee announce that she used multiple email addresses during her tenure? In fairness to the Committee, this was an honest misunderstanding. Secretary Clinton used one email account during her tenure at State (with the exception of her first weeks in office while transitioning from an email account she had previously used). In March 2013, a month after she left the Department, Gawker published the email address she used while Secretary, and so she had to change the address on her account.
At the time the printed copies were provided to the Department last year, because it was the same account, the new email address established after she left office appeared on the printed copies as the sender, and not the address she used as Secretary. In fact, this address on the account did not exist until March 2013. This led to understandable confusion that was cleared up directly with the Committee after its press conference.
Why did the Department ask for assistance? Why did the Department need assistance in further meeting its requirements under the Federal Records Act? The Department formally requested the assistance of the four previous former Secretaries in a letter to their representatives dated October 28, 2014 to help in furtherance of meeting the Department’s requirements under the Federal Records Act.
The letter stated that in September 2013, the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) issued new guidance clarifying records management responsibilities regarding the use of personal email accounts for government business.
While this guidance was issued after all four former Secretaries had departed office, the Department decided to ensure its records were as complete as possible and sought copies of work emails sent or received by the Secretaries on their own accounts.
Why was the Department given printed copies? That is the requirement. The instructions regarding electronic mail in the Foreign Affairs Manual require that “until technology allowing archival capabilities for long-term electronic storage and retrieval of E-mail messages is available and installed, those messages warranting preservation as records (for periods longer than current E-mail systems routinely maintain them) must be printed out and filed with related records.” [5 FAM 443.3].
Were any work items deleted in the course of producing the printed copies? No.
How many emails were in her account? And how many of those were provided to the Department? Her email account contained a total of 62,320 sent and received emails from March 2009 to February 2013. Based on the review process described below, 30,490 of these emails were provided to the Department, and the remaining 31,830 were private, personal records.
How and who decided what should be printed and provided to the Department? The Federal Records Act puts the obligation on the government official to determine what is and is not a federal record. The State Department Foreign Affairs Manual outlines guidance “designed to help employees determine which of their e-mail messages must be preserved as federal records and which may be deleted without further authorization because they are not Federal record materials.” [5 FAM 443.1(c)].
Following conversations with Department officials and in response to the Department’s October 28, 2014 letter to former Secretaries requesting assistance in meeting the Department’s record-keeping requirements, Secretary Clinton directed her attorneys to assist by identifying and preserving all emails that could potentially be federal records. This entailed a multi-step process to provide printed copies of the Secretary’s work-related emails to the Department, erring on the side of including anything that might potentially be a federal record. As the State Department has said, Secretary Clinton was the first to respond to this letter.
A search was conducted on Secretary Clinton’s email account for all emails sent and received from 2009 to her last day in office, February 1, 2013.
After this universe was determined, a search was conducted for a “.gov” (not just state.gov) in any address field in an email. This produced over 27,500 emails, representing more than 90% of the 30,490 printed copies that were provided to the Department.
To help identify any potential non-“.gov “correspondence that should be included, a search of first and last names of more than 100 State Department and other U.S. government officials was performed. This included all Deputy Secretaries, Under Secretaries, Assistant Secretaries, Ambassadors-at-Large, Special Representatives and Envoys, members of the Secretary’s Foreign Policy Advisory Board, and other senior officials to the Secretary, including close aides and staff.
Next, to account for non-obvious or non-recognizable email addresses or misspellings or other idiosyncrasies, the emails were sorted and reviewed both by sender and recipient.
Lastly, a number of terms were specifically searched for, including: “Benghazi” and “Libya.”
These additional three steps yielded just over another 2,900 emails, including emails from former Administration officials and long-time friends that may not be deemed by the Department to be federal records. And hundreds of these emails actually had already been forwarded onto the state.gov system and captured in real-time.
With respect to materials that the Select Committee has requested, the Department has stated that just under 300 emails related to Libya were provided by the Department to the Select Committee in response to a November 2014 letter, which contained a broader request for materials than prior requests from the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.
Given Secretary Clinton’s practice of emailing Department officials on their state.gov addresses, the Department already had, and had already provided, the Select Committee with emails from Secretary Clinton in August 2014 – prior to requesting and receiving printed copies of her emails. 6
The review process described above confirmed Secretary Clinton’s practice of emailing Department officials on their .gov address, with the vast majority of the printed copies of work-related emails Secretary Clinton provided to the Department simply duplicating what was already captured in the Department’s record-keeping system in real time.
When the emails provided to the Department are made available, what is an example of what we will see?
You will see everything from the work of government, to emails with State and other Administration colleagues, to LinkedIn invites, to talk about the weather -- essentially what anyone would see in their own email account.
Did Secretary Clinton use this account to communicate with foreign officials?
During her time at State, she communicated with foreign officials in person, through correspondence, and by telephone. The review of all of her emails revealed only one email with a foreign (UK) official.
Do you think a third party should be allowed to review what was turned over to the Department, as well as the remainder that was not? The Federal Records Act puts the obligation on the government official, not the agency or a third party, to determine what is and is not a federal record. The State Department Foreign Affairs Manual outlines guidance “designed to help employees determine which of their e-mail messages must be preserved as federal records and which may be deleted without further authorization because they are not Federal record materials.” [5 FAM 443.1(c)].
Secretary Clinton responded to the Department’s request by providing approximately 55,000 pages of her work-related emails. She has also taken the unprecedented step of asking that those emails be made public. In doing so, she has sought to support the Department's efforts, fulfill her responsibility of record-keeping and provide the chance for the public to assess the work she and officials at the Department did during her tenure. 7
After her work-related emails were identified and preserved, Secretary Clinton chose not to keep her private, personal emails that were not federal records. These were private, personal messages, including emails about her daughter’s wedding plans, her mother’s funeral services, and condolence notes, as well as emails on family vacations, yoga routines, and other items one would typically find in their own email account, such as offers from retailers, spam, etc.
Government officials are granted the privacy of their personal, non-work related emails, including personal emails on .gov accounts. Secretary Clinton exercised her privilege to ensure the continued privacy of her personal, non-work related emails.
Can’t she release the emails she provided to the Department herself? Because the printed copies of work-related emails she provided to the Department include federal records of the Department, the Department needs to review these emails before they can be made public. She wants them to be made available as soon as possible.
Was classified material sent or received by Secretary Clinton on this email address? No. A separate, closed system was used by the Department for the sole purpose of handling classified communications which was designed to prevent such information from being transmitted anywhere other than within that system, including to outside email accounts.
How did Secretary Clinton receive and consume classified information? The Secretary’s office is located in a secure area. Classified information was viewed in hard copy by the Secretary while in the office. While on travel, the Department had rigorous protocols for her and traveling staff to receive and transmit information of all types.
Where was the server for her email located? The server for her email was physically located on her property, which is protected by U.S. Secret Service.
What level of encryption was employed? Who was the service provider, etc? The security and integrity of her family’s electronic communications was taken seriously from the onset when it was first set up for President Clinton’s team. While the curiosity in the specifics of this set up is understandable, given what people with ill-intentions can do with such information in this day and age, there are concerns about broadcasting specific technical details about past and current practices. However, suffice it to say, robust protections were put in place and additional upgrades and techniques employed over time as they became available, including consulting and employing third party experts.
Was the server ever hacked? No, there is no evidence there was ever a breach.
Was there ever an unauthorized intrusion into her email or did anyone else have access to it? No.
What was done after her email was exposed in February 2013 after the hacker known as “Guccifer” hacked Sid Blumenthal’s account? While this was not a breach of Secretary Clinton’s account, because her email address was exposed, steps were taken at that time to ensure the security and integrity of her electronic communications.
Was the Department able to respond to requests related to FOIA or Congressional requests before they received printed copies of her work-related emails? Yes. As the Select Committee has said, the Department provided the Committee with relevant emails it already had on the state.gov system before the Department requested any printed copies from former Secretaries, and four months before the Department received the printed copies.
For example, in the well-publicized hack of Sid Blumenthal’s email account, a note he sent Secretary Clinton on September 12, 2012 was posted online. At first blush, one might not think this exchange would be captured on the state.gov system. But in fact, Secretary Clinton forwarded the email, that very same day, onto the state.gov system. And the email was produced by the Department to the Select Committee, and acknowledged by the Select Committee, in August 2014.
This example illustrates: 1) when an email from a non-“.gov” sender had some connection to work or might add to the understanding of Department officials, it was Secretary Clinton’s practice to forward it to officials at their “state.gov” address; and 2) the Department was able to search and produce Secretary Clinton’s emails when needed long before, and unrelated to, receiving the printed copies as they were already captured on state.gov accounts.
When will the emails be released to the public? Secretary Clinton has asked the Department to make her emails available as soon as possible. She is proud of the work that she and the public servants at the Department did during her four years as Secretary of State and is looking forward to people having the chance to see that for themselves.
Tuesday 10 March 2015 / Hour 3, Block C: Robert Zimmerman, behindtheblack.com, in re: Monitoring for a signal from Philae to begin this week Beginning on Thursday Rosetta engineers will start searching for a signal from their lander Philae, hidden somewhere on the surface of Comet 67P/C-G. The likelihood of getting an answer this soon is not high, but the lander is now getting about twice as much sunlight as it did when it landed in November. There is a chance it will warm up enough and get enough stored power to come to life.
Tuesday 10 March 2015 / Hour 3, Block D: James Taranto, Wall Street Journal, in re: Caesar’s Wipe
Mrs. Clinton deleted thousands of emails. Four things we learned at the news conference. . . . Clinton ended her news conference after taking several questions over about 20 minutes. Here are four things we learned during this relatively brief appearance in front of reporters:
1 She deleted thousands of e-mails This may be the main takeaway from Wednesday’s news conference: Clinton publicly admitting that she had deleted thousands of e-mails from her private e-mail server, which meant they were not sent to the State Department for review.
“I chose not to keep my private personal e-mails,” she said, adding that they were about things like yoga, family vacations and her daughter’s wedding.
She said that she went through her e-mails and found more than 60,000 were sent and received, half of which she deemed “work-related.”
2 She conceded it was probably not wise to use just a personal e-mail account Clinton said that “it would have been probably smarter” had she used two e-mail accounts — a personal account and a government account — rather than just having everything on her private e-mail. She said that the decision was made for “convenience,” so that she could carry around just one device rather than two devices.
However, she did not explain why she was unable to carry around one device that could access multiple e-mail accounts, which many people commonly do with professional and personal e-mail accounts.
3 The private e-mail server was set up for Bill Clinton The server that was used for her e-mail correspondence was set up for her husband, she said, and she added that she believed it was secure.
“It had numerous safeguards,” she said. “It was on property guarded by the Secret Service. And there were no security breaches.”
Of course, having a server on physical property guarded by the Secret Service has no bearing on whether or not someone is able to remotely hack into or access the device or the e-mails. Clinton did not go into any detail about how she was sure there were no security lapses.
Clinton says she never sent or received classified e-mails This answer seemed to raise several other questions, as Clinton traveled extensively while secretary of state and likely exchanged plenty of e-mails during these trips. But when asked whether she was ever briefed about the security implications of using her personal account to e-mail President Obama, she answered that it was never an issue.
“I did not e-mail any classified material to anyone on my e-mail,” she said. “There is no classified material. So I’m certainly well-aware of the classification requirements and did not send classified material.”
Hour Four
Tuesday 10 March 2015 / Hour 4, Block A: Scott Berg, Woodrow Wilson Part III (1 of 4)
Tuesday 10 March 2015 / Hour 4, Block B: Scott Berg, Woodrow Wilson Part III (2 of 4)
Tuesday 10 March 2015 / Hour 4, Block C: Scott Berg, Woodrow Wilson Part III (3 of 4)
Tuesday 10 March 2015 / Hour 4, Block D: Scott Berg, Woodrow Wilson Part III (4 of 4)
.. .. ..
- Russia said March 10 that it would no longer participate in a consulting group on the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe, Reuters reported. The action has effectively ended Russia's participation in the 1990 security treaty. Russia announced in 2007 that it intended to pull out of the treaty.
- The Nemtsov murder now turns to the accusations against five ethnic Chechens in Moscow. Strange facts so far: the media in the US treats the assassination as solved: Putin did it.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/russia-holds-five-men-from-north-cau...
- A Moscow court filed charges against two men suspected of killing opposition leader Boris Nemtsov, BBC reported March 8. Russian authorities have also detained three other individuals suspected of being linked to the murder. The court claims that one of the charged, Zaur Dadayev, admitted he was involved in the shooting.
- In Ukraine, there is unusual quiet along the Donbass Front. Pro-Russia separatists in Donetsk, eastern Ukraine, removed their heavy weapons from the front line, the head of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic said March 7, BBC reported. The separatist leader also said that Ukraine had not reciprocated. Under the cease-fire signed Feb. 15, both sides are required to move artillery from the front line. Despite sporadic violations, the cease-fire has held, though it has not solved the Russia-West standoff.
- NATO is restless, however, all along the frontier: This is a transcript clip from a February 6 testimony by Brzezinski to the Congress: of note because it is consistent with other alarmist remarks by McCain, Neuland, Breedlove and so forth - http://rinf.com/alt-news/featured/democrat-brzezinski-says-russias-putin-wants-invade-nato/ “I wonder how many people in this room or this very important senatorial committee really anticipated that one day Putin would land military personnel in Crimea and seize it. I think if anybody said that’s what he is going to do, he or she would be labeled as a warmonger. He did it. And he got away with it. I think he’s also drawing lessons from that. And I’ll tell you what my horror, night-dream, is: that one day, I literally mean one day, he just seizes Riga, and Talinn. Latvia and Estonia. It would literally take him one day. There is no way they could resist. And then we will say, how horrible, how shocking, how outrageous, but of course we can’t do anything about it. It’s happened. We aren’t going to assemble a fleet in the Baltic, and then engage in amphibious landings, and then storm ashore, like in Normandy, to take it back. We have to respond in some larger fashion perhaps, but then there will be voices that this will plunge us into a nuclear war.”
- NATO's Breedlove chastised by German media for bellicosity consistent with Brzezinski above.
- Der Spiegel said German government officials were surprised when Breedlove said on Feb. 25 that Russian President Vladimir Putin had "upped the ante" in eastern Ukraine. "What is clear is that right now it is not getting better. It is getting worse every day," Breedlove said in Washington . . .
- When asked about the Der Spiegel report, Breedlove said in a statement: "It is my responsibility as the commander of NATO's military forces to deliver clear assessments regarding potential threats in our periphery."
- A Moscow court filed charges against two men suspected of killing opposition leader Boris Nemtsov, BBC reported March 8. Russian authorities have also detained three other individuals suspected of being linked to the murder. The court claims that one of the charged, Zaur Dadayev, admitted he was involved in the shooting.
- Russia said March 10 that it would no longer participate in a consulting group on the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe, Reuters reported. The action has effectively ended Russia's participation in the 1990 security treaty. Russia announced in 2007 that it intended to pull out of the treaty.
A staggering number of Russians hold negative views of the US / Business Insider / By Pamela Engel Anti-American sentiment in Russia is now stronger than it was in the late 1980s, when the Soviet Union was still intact, The Washington Post reports. An overwhelming majority of Russians — more than 80% — now view the US negatively, according to a poll from the independent Levada Center. This number has doubled over the past year, The Post notes. The red line represents a negative attitude toward the US, and the blue line represents a positive attitude (the graph starts in 1990 and goes to 2105):
Russia has vastly enhanced its military capabilities in Crimea since annexing the peninsula, turning it into a 'power projection platform', a senior NATO general has reportedly said. 'What we've seen is easy to describe as the militarisation of Crimea,' the alliance's top commander for Europe, General Philip Breedlove, said in an interview with Ukrainian channel 1+1. 'They've brought an air capability, they've increased their capability to project sea power from there,' he said. 'We see very capable surface-to-air defence systems that range about 40 per cent of the Black Sea and we've seen very sophisticated missile defence systems that range almost the entire Black Sea.' 'Crimea has become very much a power projection platform,' he said in an interview broadcast in Ukrainian on Sunday evening, of which AFP has obtained the original English version.
Russia annexed Crimea after deploying soldiers to the peninsula in late February 2014. The troops took control of the territory, seizing Ukrainian ships and military bases, while the authorities organised a referendum that demonstrated overwhelming support for the province joining Russia. Although Putin initially denied that any Russian troops were involved in the takeover, he later conceded their presence. On Sunday, in a preview of a film about Crimea on state channel Rossiya-1 Putin revealed that he ordered his security chiefs to 'return' the peninsula to Russian rule as early as February 23. Ukraine's government, which has also been battling a bloody pro-Russian insurgency in the east of the country, accuses Moscow of massing forces in Crimea across the de-facto border from its Kherson region. [more]
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