REPORT: RUSSIAN HACK ON PENTAGON THE ‘MOST SOPHISTICATED’ IN MILITARY HISTORY

The Pentagon took down the Joint Staff unclassified email system after Russian hackers attacked the emails of 4,000 military and civilian personnel. The email has been offline for the past 11 days.

US officials called the hack the “‘most sophisticated’ cyberbreach in U.S. military history.” In fact, the level of sophistication is so high the officials did not rule out is a “state entity” took part in the hack.

They also told The Daily Beast they are “creating mock hacking scenarios” before the personnel can access the system. The hackers used a “spear phishing attack” to obtain personal information on numerous users.

The attack occurred on July 25, only 16 days after Marine General Joe Dunford, a nominee to be the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the Senate Armed Services that Russia is the greatest threat to American national security. Dunford placed Russia above China, North Korea, and the Islamic State because of its “rapidly expanding military.”

“My assessment today, senator, is that Russia presents the greatest threat to our national security,” he declared.

Relations between Russia and the West soured immensely after Moscow invaded Ukraine in March 2014, annexed Crimea, and issued threats against other former Soviet republics. The European Union and America passed numerous sanctions against Russian companies and oligarchs while NATO added more security to Eastern Europe nations who fear they might be Russia’s next target.

US State Department spokesman Mark Toner fired back that Secretary of State John Kerry does not agree.

“The secretary doesn’t agree with the assessment that Russia is an existential threat to the United States, nor China, quite frankly,” retorted Toner. “You know, these are major powers with whom we engage and cooperate on a number of issues, despite any disagreements we may have with them. Certainly we have disagreements with Russia and its activities within the region, but we don’t view it as an existential threat.”

Kerry has also made similar claims, despite working close with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in the past 16 months. Kerry denied many times that Russian soldiers are stationed in east Ukraine until February, even though he constantly faced a mountain of evidence. He added more pain to American allies when he admitted Russian propaganda worked on him.

“The question asked earlier about… how they present things and the lies about their presence in Ukraine and the training, I mean, you know, it’s stunning but it has an impact in places where it isn’t countered,” he said. “Propaganda works.”

Via: Breitbart

Continue Reading....

Feds Spend $150K to 'Embed' Russian Journalists in U.S. Newsrooms

Even as diplomatic relations between the U.S. and Russia remain decidedly chilly over the Ukrainian conflict, the State Department is reaching out to "up-and-coming" Russian journalists. A recent $150,000 grant offering from the U.S. embassy in Moscow seeks to establish a program to give Russian journalists an "intensive professional exchange experience in American newsrooms," plus "cultural experiences that allow them to learn more about the United States in general."

Although the program is tentatively named the "Russian Journalist Exchange Program," it involves only the placement of Russian journalists in American newsrooms and not vice versa. Although the State Department wishes to focus on relatively new journalists who are "showing promise" in their careers, grant recipients are reminded that "[e]very effort should be made to attract a large and diverse participant pool, including persons with disabilities, minorities, a balanced mix of male and female participants, etc." Grant recipients will carry out recruitment, but the U.S. embassy in Moscow reserves the right of final approval of all participants, as well as approval of the U.S. newsrooms where the visiting journalists will be working.

In addition to being "embedded" for a minimum a two-weeks in "reputable American newsrooms," participants are to be housed with American families to enhance their cultural experiences. While the Russians are expected to "work alongside American reporters" and interact with host families to get "a first-hand view of American family life with all its diversity," the State Department doesn't want the visitors to get too comfortable. Grant recipients are reminded they are not only responsible for arranging an American work, cultural, and family-life experience for the journalists, but also for "ensuring their return to Russia." All participating journalists must "[c]ommit to returning to Russian Federation after completion of the program."

However, the State Department has plans for a continuing relationship with the Russian journalists who participate in the program. One of the elements required of grant recipients is to "plan for post-program participant engagement that includes an outline of any proposed follow-on activities or initiatives and an articulated plan for utilizing Department of State and other alumni tools and social media outlets to provide continued support to program alumni." [emphasis added] A post-program evaluation is also desired using a now-familiar State Department metric: "The more that outcomes are “SMART” (specific, measurable, attainable, results-oriented, and placed in a reasonable timeframe, the easier it will be to conduct the evaluation."

Development of the program, recruitment of participants (both Russian journalists and American news organizations), and selection of host families is expected to take until March 2016. The actual exchange experiences are then to take place from March through August 2016.

Via: The Weekly Standard

Continue Reading.....

FIORINA: ‘TITLES ARE JUST TITLES,’ HILLARY’S ‘TRACK RECORD’ IS ME COLLAPSE AND THE RUSSIAN RESET

Republican presidential candidate Carly Fiorina argued that “titles are just titles” and Hillary Clinton’s “track record” includes the collapse of the Middle East and the failed Russian reset on Wednesday’s “Andrea Mitchell Reports” on MSNBC.

Fiorina said, “I come from a world where titles are just titles, and talk is just talk. It’s only in politics where titles and words mean a lot. In the rest of the world, it’s actually about what have you done, actions speak louder than words. People want to know are your words and your actions consistent and are they consistent over time. And so, I think when 82% of the American people now believe that there is a professional political class more interested in preserving its own power and privilege than it is in serving the American people, people expect basic questions to be asked of anyone running for president. ‘What have you done, are you trustworthy, are you transparent, will you answer questions?'”

Fiorina said that while Hillary Clinton has said some “wonderful things” as Secretary of State, “it’s also true that as Secretary of State she took women’s rights and human rights off the table for discussion with China. It’s also true as Secretary of State that she called Bashar al-Assad a positive reformer. It’s also true that in 2011, when she was Secretary of State, she said that Iraq was a free, stable, sovereign nation. And now we have a nation falling apart, Iranian influence growing, ISIS growing. It’s true that she said that she could reset our Russia — our relationship with Russia and Vladimir Putin is on the march. So, I think all of those things I just named go fundamentally to what is her track record.”

After host Andrea Mitchell stated, “You could also argue that a lot of Republicans in the White House and in Congress supported those policies –” Fiorina responded, “absolutely, that’s right. And by the way, every single Republican candidate has been asked about their vote for the war in Iraq. The one person who’s not been asked  that question, because she won’t answer the question is Hillary Clinton. One person who was on the job in 2011, when Iraq started to fall apart, was not the Republican nominees or — candidates for president, it’s Hillary Clinton. she hasn’t been asked yet. What would she do now in Iraq?”

Via: Breitbart

Continue Reading....

Passengers, crew stuck on ship trapped in Antarctic ice ring in 2014

Passengers and crew who set off on an expedition to prove climate change are ringing in the new year in the same place where they have been for the past week: stuck in ice at the bottom of the world.

The 74 scientists, tourists and crew on the Russian ship MV Akademik Shokalskiy, which has been trapped near Antarctica since last Tuesday, are expecting to be airlifted from the ship by a helicopter.

Andrew Peacock, a doctor on board, said the passengers are frustrated but are trying to keep their spirits high with a New Year’s party they planned in the ship’s bar.

"We are preparing for evacuation to a dry ship so a few drinks seems reasonable, but we also have to be ready at a moment's notice for the helicopter arrival so staying sober is important," hetold AFP.

The ship has two weeks’ worth of fresh food, but Peacock said drinks are becoming sparse, with "just enough alcohol left” to ring in 2014.

Via: Fox News

Continue Reading....

A Russian GPS Using U.S. Soil Stirs Spy Fears

WASHINGTON — In the view of America’s spy services, the next potential national security threat from Russia may not come from a nefarious cyberweapon or intelligence gleaned from the files of Edward J. Snowden, the former security contractor now in Moscow.

Instead, this menace may come in the form of a seemingly innocuous dome-topped antenna perched atop an electronics-packed building surrounded by a security fence somewhere in the United States.

In recent months, the Central Intelligence Agency and the Pentagon have been quietly waging a campaign to stop the State Department from allowing Roscosmos, the Russian space agency, to build about half a dozen of these structures, known as monitor stations, on United States soil, several American officials said.

They fear that these structures could help Russia spy on the United States and improve the precision of Russian weaponry, the officials said. These monitor stations, the Russians contend, would significantly improve the accuracy and reliability of Moscow’s version of the Global Positioning System, the American satellite network that steers guided missiles to their targets and thirsty smartphone users to the nearest Starbucks.

Via: NYT

Continue Reading,...

Doctor search tool still not working on Covered California website

A highly-touted  doctor search tool on the Covered California health insurance website has so far  proven  to be nothing but headaches for consumers and for officials of the state run insurance marketplace, who have  taken the feature offline for repairs. 

During the first week of enrollment that started Oct. 1, the doctor search didn’t work at all. Top officials touted it on opening day as an important tool for consumers who want to confirm that their doctor is included in any new health plan they may buy.

Early last week, Covered California officials announced the search tool was up and running.  But, within hours, those using it found a slew of problems. 

"I had an ophthamologist friend listed as speaking Farsi, Russian and Spanish, and he doesn’t speak any of those languages," says Dr. Richard Thorp, president of the California Medical Assn. The group represents about 37,000 doctors statewide. 

Perhaps even more awkward, data loaded into the site contained errors that linked doctors to the wrong specialty.  For instance, Thorp says,  a gynecologist friend of his was listed as an ophthalmologist. 

"You can understand that that’s a very different kind of encounter: thinking you're signing up for an ophthalmologist," he says, "and finding out the doctor you signed up for is an OB/GYN doctor or, visa versa, for that matter.”  

Covered California spokeswoman Anne Gonzales says the agency took the doctor search tool offline last Tuesday  to fix improperly loaded data. The agency is also trying to make the slow-working search run faster and to make the function easier for consumers to find and to use. 

"It’ll have better page loading speed. We’re going to reconfigure some of the navigation paths so it’s not so confusing, and we’ll have some expanded search functions," Gonzales says. Officials hope the search tool will be running by sometime next week. 

In the meantime, some are advising consumers shopping for insurance on the website to hold off on enrolling in a plan until the doctor search is working.

Via: The Right Scoop

Continue Reading.....

[VIDEO] Ellison Barber Interviews Laura Ingraham on ‘Adopt a New Attitude Project’

BY: Washington Free Beacon Staff
October 15, 2013 5:43 pm

Ellison Barber interviewed Laura Ingraham about the Adopt a New Attitude Project, an initiative intended to raise awareness about Russia’s recent ban on adoptions to the U.S.

Barber profiled the project earlier this week:

Since December 2012 the Russian government has banned all adoptions to the United States.

The ban inspired Laura Ingraham, known to many people as the spirited conservative talk-show host and Fox News contributor, to found the Adopt a New Attitude Project to raise awareness about adoption.

“I didn’t really think all that much about adoption until I adopted,” Ingraham told the Free Beacon. “When I understood that Vladimir Putin and the Russian Duma, the legislature, was considering this adoption ban about a year ago and making it increasingly difficult for Americans to adopt there. I thought to myself, wait a second we’ve got to do something about this.”

Ingraham is the adoptive mother of three children. Her two sons were both adopted from Russia. The oldest of the bunch, and the only girl, was adopted from Guatemala.

Via: WFB

Continue Reading..... 

Syria To Miss First Deadline In U.S.-Russia Chemical Arms Deal

WASHINGTON — The ambitious U.S.-Russian deal to eliminate Syria's chemical weapons, hailed as a diplomatic breakthrough just days ago, hit its first delay Wednesday with indications that the Syrian government will not submit an inventory of its toxic stockpiles and facilities to international inspectors by this weekend's deadline.

The State Department signaled that it would not insist that Syrian President Bashar Assad produce the list Saturday, the end of a seven-day period spelled out in the framework deal that Washington and Moscow announced last weekend in Geneva.

Marie Harf, a State Department spokeswoman, said Wednesday that "our goal is to see forward momentum" by Saturday, not the full list. "We've never said it was a hard and fast deadline."

Via: LA Times

Continue Reading...

Russian Official Gloats Over Navy Yard Shooting

Add caption

With multiple people injured and the gunman still at large, a member of Russia’s parliamentary foreign affairs committee says the shooting is an example of “American exceptionalism.”

Pushkov didn’t seem to understand the outcry in the U.S. over his comments:“The torrent of hate towards us from American citizens is staggering. One writes: ‘It seems that we (that is, the U.S.) saved you from the Germans during WWII for nothing’!!!”

Алексей Пушков@Alexey_PushkovFollow

Поток ненависти к нам от амер.граждан поразителен. Один пишет:"Видимо, мы ( т.е. США) зря спасли вас от немцев во второй мировой войне"!!!

8:45 AM - 16 Sep 13

• Reply
• Retweet
• Favorite

Pushkov was tweeting based off unconfirmed reports of the shooting, the exact number of victims of which is still unknown. The Associated Press cited a Pentagon official as saying that several people were killed and as many as 10 injured.

Pushkov is not the first Russian lawmaker to gloat at the U.S. on Twitter after the White House accepted a Kremlin proposal to avert a strike on Syria. Last Friday, a Duma colleague and former Olympic athlete tweeted a racist photo of Barack and Michelle Obama, then refused to apologize.

Via: Buzz Feed

Continue Reading....

Elite Syrian Unit Scatters Chemical Arms Stockpile

A secretive Syrian military unit at the center of the Assad regime's chemical weapons program has been moving stocks of poison gases and munitions to as many as 50 sites to make them harder for the U.S. to track, according to American and Middle Eastern officials.

The movements of chemical weapons by Syria's elite Unit 450 could complicate any U.S. bombing campaign in Syria over its alleged chemical attacks, officials said. It also raises questions about implementation of a Russian proposal that calls for the regime to surrender control of its stockpile, they said.

U.S. and Israeli intelligence agencies still believe they know where most of the Syrian regime's chemical weapons are located, but with less confidence than six months ago, U.S. officials said.

Secretary of State John Kerry met Thursday in Geneva with his Russian counterpart to discuss a road map for ending the weapons program. The challenges are immense, Mr. Kerry said.

Via: WSJ

Continue Reading....

UPDATE 2-Russia sends warships to Mediterranean as Syria tension rises

 Interfax says two Russian warships head to Mediterranean

* Navy official says no plans to beef up forces

* U.S. is repositioning warships in Mediterranean (Adds details of naval force)

By Timothy Heritage

MOSCOW, Aug 29 (Reuters) - Russia is sending two warships to the east Mediterranean, Interfax news agency said on Thursday, but Moscow denied this meant it was beefing up its naval force there as Western powers prepare for military action against Syria.

Interfax quoted a source in the armed forces' general staff as saying Russia, Syria's most powerful ally, was deploying a missile cruiser from the Black Sea Fleet and a large anti-submarine ship from the Northern Fleet in the "coming days".

Any strengthening of the navy's presence could fuel tension, especially as the United States has said it is repositioning naval forces in the Mediterranean following an alleged chemical weapons attack which it blames on Syrian government forces.

"The well-known situation now in the eastern Mediterranean required us to make some adjustments to the naval force," the source said in a reference to the events in Syria.

It was not clear when the vessels would arrive but Interfax said the Moskva missile cruiser was currently in the North Atlantic and would set sail in the next few days.

Via: Rueters

Continue Reading....

The Miracle that would save America from Obama-imposed American Marxism

Falls to 77.7 million Catholics to save America from Obama imposed U.S. Marxism

There’s a promise made over an unbeknownst open mic to outgoing Russian President Dmitry Medvedev on March 26, 2012, that awaits the outcome of November 6.

“This is my last election…after my election I have more flexibility,” President Barack Obama told Medvedev, indicating a chilling confidence that he would win a second term.

Prime Minister Medvedev, his replacement President Vladimir Putin, the reelection-bound Venezuelan despot Hugo Chavez, Fidel Castro, and Obama-propped Egyptian president Muslim Brotherhood member Mohammed Morsi await the fulfillment of that not meant to be heard promise.

They are the enemy at the gate who will goad Obama on to the continuing destruction of America should the worst happen on Tuesday, Nov. 6.

We have been in the dark before but never has the dark been so dangerous as now when Marxism and radical Islam have joined forces to deliver world populations over to the One World Order-driven United Nations.

The world thought the 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall ushered in the end of communism.  Few knew back then that Communism would join radical Islam to begin in earnest smothering the freedom of the West in 2008.

Via: Canada Free Press

Continue Reading...