The Cutting Edge

The Wall Street Journal report last week that ecommerce giant Amazon is planning to enter the smartphone market with its own handset expected for June is stirring a lot of debate regarding the company’s pricing model in what looks like a saturated and well served market. According to the report, a smartphone with four front-facing cameras or sensors has been demonstrated to developers in Seattle and San Francisco over the last few weeks, with the capability to track the user's gaze, augmented reality features together with a glasses-free 3D-viewing experience.

The auto-stereoscopic 3D screen would serve the on-screen effects based on the user’s head position (as detected by the front-facing sensors). You could certainly extrapolate that back-facing stereoscopic cameras would capture the real world in 3D to support the augmented reality features and match the user’s gaze with the real-world items attracting the consumer’s attention.

Once identified in the real world, these items could be searched and matched in Amazon’s online database to come up with price-competitive offers. In retail stores equipped with Bluetooth Smart beacons, the geolocalized offers pushed to the consumer’s smartphone could even be used by Amazon to fine-tune its contextual counter-offers. Read more ..

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Consumers used to waking up every week or so to news of yet another Internet security hole or data breach may be hard-pressed to understand why Heartbleed, the hole in the commonly used Web security software OpenSSL, is different. But it is: Such diverse and nonalarmist security commentators as Bruce Schneier, along with the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Ars Technica, have all dubbed the bug "catastrophic."
 
"On the scale of 1 to 10, this is an 11," Schneier wrote on his blog yesterday. So: What is it? How do you know if it affects you? What should you do about it?
 
SSL—for Secure Sockets Layer—is a protocol used ubiquitously on the Web to protect confidential user information in transit. This includes, but is not limited to, user IDs and passwords, credit card details, and other personal information. When you see HTTPS at the beginning of the address in your browser's address bar, that syntax indicates that SSL is in use to encrypt the traffic between your computer and the Web server at the other end. Increased used of SSL to protect the queries and messages users type into search engines, Webmail, and social networks so they cannot be read in transit has been an important part of the Web's response to Edward Snowden's revelations of endemic National Security Agency spying on Internet traffic. Read more ..

The United States said on Tuesday Iran has the ability to produce fissile material for a nuclear bomb in two months, if it so decided, as Tehran and six world powers swung into a new round of talks in Vienna on resolving their atomic dispute.

Secretary of State John Kerry's comments in Washington highlighted Western concerns about Iran's nuclear intentions and the wide divisions between the two sides that could still foil a deal. Iran says its nuclear programme is entirely peaceful.

The overarching goal of the powers - Britain, France, China, Russia, Germany and the United States - in the talks is to persuade Iran to scale back its programme to the point that it would take it much longer, perhaps as much as a year, to produce fuel for a bomb if it chose to do so. Read more ..

Secretary of State John Kerry warned of new sanctions against Russia on Tuesday and compared the situation in eastern Ukraine to Russia's annexation of Crimea.

Kerry told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that the protests in eastern Ukraine "could be a contrived pretext for military intervention just as we saw in Crimea."

He said that the pro-Russian demonstrators who have taken over government buildings there are "provocateurs" sent to create chaos. If the situation continues to escalate, Kerry raised the prospect of sanctions against sectors of the Russian economy such as banking and energy. "That's serious business," Kerry said. 

In an attempt to deescalate, though, Kerry announced that he will meet next week with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Ukrainian officials together.  Sen. James Risch (R-Idaho) strongly criticized the administration's handling of the situation, referring back to the 2009 "reset button" and saying, "Somebody hit the wrong button." Risch said Russia continues to outmaneuver the United States. "We’ve seen this movie over and over again," he said. Read more ..

The White House accused Moscow on Monday of stirring up trouble in Ukraine, as pro-Russian demonstrations provoked fears that President Vladimir Putin might mount a second invasion there just weeks after annexing Crimea.

The administration said demonstrators who seized government buildings in the cities of Lugansk and Donetsk were not locals, and were part of a carefully orchestrated campaign backed by the Kremlin.

State Department spokeswoman Jennifer Psaki said the demonstrations were “not a spontaneous set of events,” and White House spokesman Jay Carney said evidence suggested some protestors were paid. A further Russian incursion “either overtly or covertly” would seriously escalate the crisis, he added. Read more ..

Renowned author Michael Lewis’s charge that the stock market is rigged against regular investors is making waves in Washington.

Liberal lawmakers in particular believe that Lewis is bringing critical attention to an issue that could boost their efforts to assign a tax on all financial transactions.

Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.) joined with civil rights advocates Friday to hold a rally pushing his financial transaction tax bill. At the event, he mentioned Lewis’s book Flash Boys and blasted high-frequency traders as “predatory” and “parasitic.”

Lewis asserts that Wall Street firms have invested millions to obtain a split-second advantage on market moves. “The insiders are able to move faster than you,” he told “60 Minutes” on Sunday. Those claims made Lewis the center of a heated debate about the worth and potential dangers of trading at the speed of light, something that has come up in the past but not to the degree with which it is now in the spotlight. Read more ..

Members of the Federal Election Commissioners are lashing back at the Supreme Court’s decision this week to strip away a key campaign finance restriction, contending the ruling will only add to the influence of “megadonors.”

In a scathing statement, FEC Vice Chairwoman Ann Ravel and commissioner Ellen Weintraub said they were “troubled” about the high court’s decision to do away with overall individual contribution limits.

“This decision will not increase the number of voices able to participate in the political debate,” the Democratic commissioners said. “Instead, it amplifies the voices of the few to the detriment of the many.” Five of nine justices concluded in the ruling, handed down Wednesday, that aggregate contribution limits — the total amount donors can contribute to federal campaigns and party committees in an election cycle — violate the Constitution’s protections for free speech. Read more ..

The Supreme Court overturned decades-old limits on an individual's overall campaign contributions in a landmark ruling Wednesday that could unleash a new torrent of money into the midterm elections.

In a splintered decision, five of the nine justices found that aggregate contribution limits — the maximum amount that a donor can give to federal candidates and political party committees throughout the course of a two-year election cycle — violate the Constitution’s protections for free speech.

Now set at just over $123,200, the limits were enacted by Congress in the early 1970s and upheld by the court’s 1976 decision in a case dubbed Buckley v. Valeo. Led by Chief Justice John Roberts, the high court overruled that decision, finding that aggregate limits do not pass constitutional muster. Read more ..

During the Cold War, U.S. secretaries of state and Soviet foreign ministers routinely negotiated the outcome of crises and the fate of countries. It has been a long time since such talks have occurred, but last week a feeling of deja vu overcame me. Americans and Russians negotiated over everyone's head to find a way to defuse the crisis in Ukraine and, in the course of that, shape its fate.

During the talks, U.S. President Barack Obama made it clear that Washington has no intention of expanding NATO into either Ukraine or Georgia. The Russians have stated that they have no intention of any further military operations in Ukraine. Conversations between Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry have been extensive and ongoing. For different reasons, neither side wants the crisis to continue, and each has a different read on the situation. Read more ..

Before the UN launched it seemingly permanent relief effort for Palestinian refugees in 1950, UNRWA, it oversaw another, smaller program called United Nations Relief for Palestinian Refugees (UNRPR). In 1948 and 1949 aid was administered for the UN by the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), the International Committee of the Red Cross, and the League of Red Cross Societies.

AFSC and its leaders represented their participation in UNRPR as an outgrowth of relief work they had done in Europe and elsewhere during and after World War II. This work had, with some lobbying, earned a Nobel Peace Prize for the AFSC and its British counterpart in 1947. Read more ..

The campus of Koch Brothers Academy spans a nation.

Learn about the “role of government institutions in a capitalistic society” at South Carolina’s College of Charleston.

Dive into the “integrated study of philosophy, politics and economics” at Duke University and University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill.

And philosophize about the “moral imperatives of free markets and individual liberty” at the Manuel H. Johnson Center for Political Economy at Troy University in Alabama.

Billionaire industrialists David and Charles Koch may rank among the nation’s biggest bankrollers of conservative causes and Republican campaign vehicles. But Koch proselytizing of government deregulation and pro-business civics is increasingly targeted not just at creatures of Capitol Hill, or couch sitters in swing states, but at the hearts and minds of American college students, as well. Read more ..

Possible negotiations between Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov over the Kremlin’s annexation of Crimea appeared more likely after the nation’s top diplomat abruptly scrapped his plans Saturday to return to the United States.

Kerry, who has been in Saudi Arabia with President Obama, opted instead to fly to Paris, signaling that a meeting with Lavrov could come as early as Monday. State Department spokesperson Jen Psaki said the meeting with Lavrov had not yet been scheduled, but that it would occur “early next week.”

According to a senior administration official, Kerry and Lavrov have been attempting to negotiate a solution that would de-escalate the situation in Ukraine. Russian military forces moved into the ethnically Russian Crimean peninsula late last month, in a move they described as a bid to protect Russian nationals from the new, pro-Europe interim government in Kiev. After a referendum vote within Crimea that heavily favored secession, Russia moved to formally annex the territory. Read more ..

Imprisoned Palestinian terrorist Husni Najjar explained to Israeli Police that he planned a second terror attack in order to be captured and imprisoned by Israel a second time, so that he would receive the salaries the Palestinian Authority pays to prisoners while in jail and following their release.

In his signed statement given to the police following his second arrest, a copy of which is in the possession of Palestinian Media Watch, he explains that the money he received from the PA as salary during his first prison term amounted to only 45,000 shekels.

However, the salary he would receive following his second prison term and subsequent release would leave him with "135,000 shekels." "And thus I would cover my debts," the terrorist explained his motive for planning the attack. Read more ..

A biodegradable, implantable battery could help in the development of biomedical devices that monitor tissue or deliver treatments before being reabsorbed by the body after use.

“This is a really major advance,” says Jeffrey Borenstein, a biomedical engineer at Draper Laboratory, a non-profit research and development center in Cambridge, Massachusetts. “Until recently, there has not been a lot of progress in this area.”

In 2012, materials scientist John Rogers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign unveiled a range of biodegradable silicon chips that could monitor temperature or mechanical strain, radio the results to external devices, and even heat up tissue to prevent infection (see ‘Biodegradable electronics here today, gone tomorrow’). Some of those chips relied on induction coils to draw wireless power from an external source. Read more ..

President Obama sought to rally Europe to intensify Russia’s isolation in a sweeping speech Wednesday that cast the Kremlin’s takeover of Crimea in Cold War terms.

Even as Obama insisted the new fight with Russia was “not another Cold War,” the president described the annexation of Ukrainian territory as part of a decades-old battle with the “darker forces of the past.”

Obama hoped to use his speech capping a four-nation, three-day swing through Europe to unify European partners less comfortable with sanctioning Russia given their economic ties.
The case he made at the Palais Des Beaux Arts in Brussels was a moral one, as he acknowledged that if nations “applied a cold-hearted calculus,” they might shy away from responding to a crisis that did not directly affect their own borders. Read more ..

As I discussed last week, the fundamental problem that Ukraine poses for Russia, beyond a long-term geographical threat, is a crisis in internal legitimacy. Russian President Vladimir Putin has spent his time in power rebuilding the authority of the Russian state within Russia and the authority of Russia within the former Soviet Union. The events in Ukraine undermine the second strategy and potentially the first. If Putin cannot maintain at least Ukrainian neutrality, then the world's perception of him as a master strategist is shattered, and the legitimacy and authority he has built for the Russian state is, at best, shaken.

Whatever the origins of the events in Ukraine, the United States is now engaged in a confrontation with Russia. The Russians believe that the United States was the prime mover behind regime change in Ukraine. At the very least, the Russians intend to reverse events in Ukraine. At most, the Russians have reached the conclusion that the United States intends to undermine Russia's power. They will resist. The United States has the option of declining confrontation, engaging in meaningless sanctions against individuals and allowing events to take their course. Alternatively, the United States can choose to engage and confront the Russians. Read more ..

Author Edwin Black

Fourteen local and national Jewish organizations and synagogues will gather in Englewood, New Jersey, at 8 p.m. on Tuesday, March 25, 2014, to confront the BDS movement and 501(c)(3) groups who finance the movement and make it work. The community-wide event, to be live globally streamed with audience participation worldwide, is called “Time to Unite.” The extraordinary event is the brain child of Unity4Unity leader Lee Lasher. “Time to Unite” was specifically called to hear revelations by bestselling investigative author Edwin Black whose latest book, Financing the Flames, has ignited international repercussions about the role of tax-exempt and taxpayer monies, as well as the human rights movement, in creating a culture of violence, confrontation, and terrorism in Israel. Black’s previous works include million-copy international seller IBM and the Holocaust and the award-winning JTA series “Funding Hate.” In Financing the Flames, Black spotlights American taxpayer-supported monies funding Palestinian salaries for terrorists in Israeli prisons, as well as the organic connection of the New Israel Fund to the BDS movement and the NIF's robust funding of “agitation human rights NGOs.”

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The fourteen Jewish organizations and synagogues supporting the event include Unite4Unity, Congregation Ahavath Torah, East Hill Synagogue, Temple Emanu-el, Temple Rishon, Temple Avodat Shalom, Congregation Bnai Yeshurun and The Glen Rock Jewish Center, as well as the Jewish Federation of Northern New Jersey, and the Jewish Community Relations Council of the Jewish Federation of Northern New Jersey. Cosponsors include the American Association of Jewish Lawyers and Jurists, Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy, and the Jewish Virtual Library.

Last month, Black embarked upon a parliamentary tour of four legislatures in four weeks: The House of Commons in London, the European Parliament in Brussels, the Israeli Knesset in Jerusalem, and the House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee in Washington, D.C. At each stop along the way, Black astonished lawmakers with details of donor nation funding for specific terrorists under a Palestinian law called the Law of the Prisoner under the aegis of the Palestinian Ministry of Prisoners. The author also spotlighted how the New Israel Fund has marshaled hundreds of millions of dollars to help establish the BDS movement, and to finance confrontation NGOs, which, according to Israeli Knesset leaders and a broad swatch of Israeli military men, seem devoted to destabilizing the Israel Defense Forces and erasing the Jewish identity from the state of Israel. Read more ..

On March 5, the US Department of Justice unsealed a complaint alleging a brazen pattern of high level corruption. A former president had manufactured phony national security expenses and directed his associates to stuff cash from the Central Bank into bags and boxes, which was then spirited through offshore companies in the British Virgin Islands into accounts in the world’s leading banks in New York and London.

The total amount looted through this scheme and other official acts, alleged the Justice Department, was more than half a billion dollars. What made the announcement even more unusual than the vast sums of money involved was its target. The former president whose family’s assets were frozen was not an American, but the late Nigerian dictator Sani Abacha. The roughly half billion dollars being held was a record haul for the recently established Justice Department unit prosecuting his case: the Kleptocracy Asset Recovery Initiative. Read more ..

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As the search for the missing Malaysian plane enters its 13th day and possible sightings of wreckage are reported off Australia’s southwest coast, the Malaysian government is struggling to be responsive to families of the passengers and avoid diplomatic repercussions. Analysts say the incident highlights the need for better regional cooperation.

After families of missing passengers publicly lashed out against the Malaysian government's handling of the jetliner mystery, authorities in Kuala Lumpur announced they will send delegates to Beijing, where hundreds of next of kin anxiously await reliable findings.

The move is a further attempt by the Malaysian government to correct early missteps that have drawn criticism from China, home to the majority of the plane's passengers.

But more than focusing on how one country has handled the crisis, analysts say the struggle to find the plane shows the lack of a regionally coordinated response.
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Health industry officials say ObamaCare-related premiums will double in some parts of the country, countering claims recently made by the administration.

The expected rate hikes will be announced in the coming months amid an intense election year, when control of the Senate is up for grabs. The sticker shock would likely bolster the GOP’s prospects in November and hamper ObamaCare insurance enrollment efforts in 2015.

The industry complaints come less than a week after Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Kathleen Sebelius sought to downplay concerns about rising premiums in the healthcare sector. She told lawmakers rates would increase in 2015 but grow more slowly than in the past.
“The increases are far less significant than what they were prior to the Affordable Care Act,” the secretary said in testimony before the House Ways and Means Committee. Read more ..

The fall of the Ukrainian government and its replacement with one that appears to be oriented toward the West represents a major defeat for the Russian Federation. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia accepted the reality that the former Eastern European satellite states would be absorbed into the Western economic and political systems.

Moscow claims to have been assured that former Soviet republics would be left as a neutral buffer zone and not absorbed. Washington and others have disputed that this was promised. In any case, it was rendered meaningless when the Baltic states were admitted to NATO and the European Union. The result was that NATO, which had been almost 1,600 kilometers (1,000 miles) from St. Petersburg, was now less than approximately 160 kilometers away. Read more ..

The relationship between President Obama and Russian President Vladimir Putin appears to have reached the breaking point over the crisis in Ukraine.

Through a series of long telephone conversations, Obama and Putin have talked extensively behind the scenes about the fate of Crimea, with the United States repeatedly warning Russia against a grab for territory.
But Putin appears to be forging ahead, defying Obama’s calls for a diplomatic solution that would allow both sides to save face.

Now the United States and its allies are directly hitting some of Putin’s closest advisers with sanctions in a move intended to isolate and punish the Kremlin. Read more ..

Announcing that the U.S. and its allies have mobilized to isolate Russia, President Barack Obama has imposed sanctions on key individuals Washington deems responsible for a Moscow-backed referendum in Ukraine's Crimea aimed at putting the region under Russia's control.

Speaking at the White House, Obama announced that he ordered sanctions against 11 Russian and Ukrainian officials, including two top advisers to Russia's President Vladimir Putin, in addition to ousted Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych. All will be subject to asset freezes.

In an executive order issued earlier, Obama said that the policies and actions of the Russian Federation have been found to “undermine democratic processes and institutions in Ukraine; threaten its peace, security, stability, sovereignty, and territorial integrity; and contribute to the misappropriation of its assets, and thereby constitute an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States.” Read more ..

The White House on Sunday was quick to dismiss a referendum that showed overwhelming support in Crimea for seceding from Ukraine and joining Russia.

Exit polls showed a vast majority of voters Sunday backed secession, but the Obama administration reiterated that it and the global community viewed the results as illegitimate, and the result of Russian intimidation.
“This referendum is contrary to Ukraine’s constitution, and the international community will not recognize the results of a poll administered under threats of violence and intimidation from a Russian military intervention that violates international law,” the White House said in a statement.

“No decisions should be made about the future of Ukraine without the Ukrainian government.”

Ninety-three percent of Crimean voters, a Russian-speaking region of Ukraine, voted in favor of secession, according to Agence France-Presse, citing exit polls.

The vote sets the stage for the United States and European allies to ramp up pressure on Russia.

After diplomatic talks and public criticism have failed to slow Russian military forces from amassing in and around Crimea, U.S. officials and allies are preparing to impose economic sanctions on Russia and several high-ranking officials in Russian government and industry. Read more ..

European auditors say the EU should stop paying the salaries of thousands of Palestinian civil servants in the Gaza Strip who are not going to work. The auditors examined about 1bn euros (£840m; $1.3bn) of EU spending in Gaza between 2008 and 2012.

They called for a major review, saying money spent on civil servants there should go to the West Bank instead.

Many Gaza civil servants had not worked since the Islamist movement Hamas came to power in 2007, the auditors added.

Hamas, which won parliamentary elections the previous year, ousted forces loyal to Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas and his Fatah faction, and set up a rival government. Israel subsequently tightened its blockade of the territory, with Egypt's co-operation, to weaken Hamas and end rocket attacks. Read more ..

Malaysian, American and other authorities investigating what happened to a missing jetliner en route to China one week ago are concluding that its disappearance was a deliberate action.

Malaysia's prime minister confirms that whatever took Flight 370 off course was not an accident.

Najib Razak told reporters Saturday the transponder of Flight 370 appears to have been deliberately switched off before the airliner turned back, flew west over peninsula Malaysia and then shifted to a northwest heading.

Najib said, "Up until the point at which it left military primary radar coverage these movements are consistent with deliberate action by someone on the plane."

But the prime minister emphasized that hijacking is not the only possibility authorities are considering for the suspicious actions.

The Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 with 239 people on board was en route to Beijing from Kuala Lumpur. Read more ..

Some of the world's most advanced military technology is on display in Asian waters this week in the search for the missing Malaysian passenger jet, but the plane's whereabouts are still a mystery six days after it disappeared.

Chinese media are describing Bejing's deployment of four naval vessels, four civilian search ships and multiple aircraft as the biggest Chinese rescue effort ever assembled. State-run television said two ships were using underwater sonar and robots to try to find the missing Boeing 777 with 239 people aboard.

Chinese helicopter teams say they are carrying out airborne searches in a methodical fashion. Yet one commander, Zhou Zun, said that spotting someone still alive in the water would be difficult. Read more ..

Sen. Charles Schumer (D) and the State Department are at odds over whether the American government is systematically denying Israeli visa applications.

The New York Democrat points to a dramatic increase in refusals of Israeli visas and recent discussions between his office and the State Department in arguing there has been a policy shift at Foggy Bottom, while the State Department maintains there has been no change.

“All visa applications are reviewed individually in accordance with the requirements of U.S. immigration law,” State Department spokeswoman Pooja Jhunjhunwala told The Hill. “When any individual makes a U.S. visa application anywhere in the world, a consular officer reviews the facts of the case and makes a determination of eligibility based on U.S. law.”

But Schumer argues the State Department is summarily rejecting applications for young Israelis planning to travel in the United States after the completion of their compulsory military service, but before they complete their educations. Read more ..

President Obama is caught in the middle of an increasingly bitter feud between the Central Intelligence Agency and Democratic allies on Capitol Hill.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s (D-Calif.) stunning accusation that the CIA spied on her panel plunged the president into a controversy over the separation of powers that threatens to become a major headache for his administration.

The White House did its best to steer clear of the storm on Tuesday, but Obama could soon be forced to take sides. Democrats are pushing to release their investigation into interrogation techniques used during the George W. Bush administration and have been fighting for months with the CIA over declassifying its contents. Read more ..

Sporting turquoise-striped walls and massive steel cooling towers, the new industrial complex rising from bluffs astride the Pacific Ocean here looks like it might produce consumer electronics or bath salts.

But in reality it is one of the world’s newest, largest, and most controversial production plants for a nuclear explosive.

The factory’s private owners said three months ago that after several decades of construction, it will be ready to open in October, as part of a government-supported effort to create special fuel for the country’s future nuclear power plants.

Japan’s leaders affirmed last month they intend to proceed with that effort, a decision that has stoked anxiety in East Asia and set off alarms among Western experts who worry about the spread of nuclear weapons technology — including some inside the Obama administration. Read more ..

States run by Republican governors and legislatures are slowly adopting the Medicaid expansion under ObamaCare, boosting Democratic hopes they can run on the issue in the midterm elections.

Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) has launched a petition on her website urging Gov. Bobby Jindal (R-La.) to agree to the expansion, which she argues would bring health insurance to more people who cannot afford it.

The issue is giving Landrieu a chance to run not only against her GOP opponent Rep. Bill Cassidy (R-La.), who opposes the extension, but against Jindall as well. She argues the expansion would close “the Jindal Gap.”
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If there is a new cold war with Russia, many observers believe the U.S. is losing it.

First under President George W. Bush and now under President Obama, the U.S. and Vladimir Putin’s Russia have engaged in a series of foreign policy battles — and Putin has repeatedly got his way.

The Russian president’s objective is clear. He wants to reassert Russia’s influence in Eastern Europe while preventing NATO’s further expansion toward Russia, said Erik Brattberg, a resident fellow at the Atlantic Council. Diplomatic fights over Syria in 2013 and Russian’s military clash with Georgia in 2008 have given Putin confidence in the current fight over Russia’s invasion of Crimea, a region in eastern Ukraine with long ties to Moscow. Read more ..

Hearings were held on Capitol Hill on March 5 by the Subcommittee on Terrorism, Non-Proliferation, and Trade of the House Foreign Affairs committee about growing threats to Israel, including the funding of international terrorism by non-profit organizations in the United States and elsewhere. The subcommittee hearing was chaired by Rep. Ted Poe (R-TX). Members of Congress were briefed by award-winning investigative journalist Edwin Black, attorney Steven R. Perles, and Dr. David Pollock of the Washington Institute on Near East Policy.

Congressman Poe opened the hearing by noting the long-standing alliance of the United States with Israel, and extolled “common values of liberty and democracy that unite us, among other things.” Referring to the Obama administration, which has had differences with Israeli premier Benjamin Netanyahu, Poe said “This administration sometimes forgets this. Be it the Iranian nuclear program or pressuring Israel over peace talks with the Palestinians, our recent relations have damaged our relationship.” The hearing came just two days after President Barack Obama and Netanyahu met at the White House to discuss the ongoing negotiations for Mideast peace, as well as Iran’s nuclear weaponization program. Read more ..

The U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, Samantha Power, said in an exclusive interview Wednesday that the United States will vigorously pursue economic isolation of Russia if it does not back down on Ukraine intervention. "The issue is whether Russia is prepared to deescalate," she said in a television interview.

Power urged Russia to ease its military posture and embrace mediation to solve the deepening crisis. She said Russia has made a number of claims about the poor treatment of ethnic Russians and Russian speakers that Washington finds baseless. And she urged the quick dispatch of monitors to eastern Ukraine and the Crimea to report on the situation.

“Our point to the Russians is, if you have these claims and you are saying to the international community that certain things happened, what are you afraid of?" she asked. "Why not allow monitors in on a large-scale to offer assurance that ethnic Russians will be protected? We have been rebuffed up to this point, but we are still pushing that," she added. Read more ..

The Russian military says it has test-fired an intercontinental ballistic missile, as tension continues over Ukraine's Crimea region. A Topol RS-12M missile was launched from Russia's Kapustin Yar test range near the Caspian Sea to the Sary Shagan range in Kazakhstan, it said. It comes after the US accused Russia of an "act of aggression" in Crimea. The US said it was notified of the launch before it took place, as required by arms treaties.

Moscow is in de facto control of the Crimean peninsula after troops thought to be Russian or pro-Russian took control of strategic points in recent days. US Secretary of State John Kerry, visiting the Ukrainian capital Kiev, praised the "restraint" of the new government there, which took power after the overthrow of Russian ally President Viktor Yanukovych last month. Read more ..

Secretary of State John Kerry on March 2 blasted Russian President Vladimir Putin’s “stunning, willful” choice to invade Ukrainian territory and warned of possible sanctions.

“You just don’t in the 21st century behave in 19th century fashion by invading another country,” Kerry said on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” one of several appearances on network interview shows.

“It’s serious in terms of the modern manner in which countries resolve problems,” Kerry said.
“That’s not the act of somebody who’s strong, “ Kerry added, saying Putin is acting out of “weakness” and “desperation.”

On ABC’s “This Week,” Kerry called Putin’s move a “brazen act of aggression” and raised the possibility that allied nations would move to kick Russia out of the Group of 8 in addition to boycotting the G8 summit in Sochi this summer. Read more ..

"Ukraine Must Reject Roots of Violence. If Ukrainians seek a brighter future, they must recognize, isolate and reject the inclinations to use violence that are now (emphasis added) deeply rooted in the country's political culture..." said a recent publication by the Wilson Center. But violence in Ukraine is nothing new. Ukrainian history is riddled with massacre, pogroms and war. Peacefulness has never been a Ukrainian trait. Violence was and is.

Like all the "Bloodlands" between Russia and Germany, there is a long history of violence in Ukraine. According to the 2001 census, the country's ethnic groups consisted of 77.8% Ukrainians, 17.3% Russians and relatively small percentages of Jews, Belarusians, Moldovans, Crimean Tatars, Bulgarians, Hungarians, Romanians, and Poles. These ethnic groups (especially Jews and those who call themselves Ukrainians) have seen the multitude of political, economic, religious and racial attacks, pogroms and provocations that accompany both military and non-military struggles for outside control and hegemony. Read more ..

It's hawk vs. hawk when it comes to the new defense budget cuts.

Defense hawks are decrying reductions in Pentagon spending, but their budget hawk brethren see more fat to be trimmed.

Both sides are gearing themselves up for a prolonged fight over the size and shape of the military as the war in Afghanistan winds down and more sequester cuts loom.

The intra-party fight among Republican factions will play out in the coming months as lawmakers decide whether to try to boost the Pentagon’s budget this year. They also must decide whether to roll back additional automatic cuts known as the sequester that are planned in 2016.

The Pentagon this week announced plans to reduce the size of the Army to its lowest level since 1940, a year before the nation entered World War II. It also wants to cut benefits for troops and to retire fleets of planes. The cuts were made to fit the Pentagon’s 2015 base budget under a $496 billion spending ceiling. Read more ..