Tag Archives: Russia

May 15, 2013 · 6:17 AM

Meet The Diplomat And Daily Show Fan Accused Of Being A CIA Spy In Russia

A photo released by the FSB showing a man claimed to be Ryan Fogle in FSB custody on Tuesday, May 14.

TPMDC

Ryan Christopher Fogle, the “third secretary” at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow who was detained by Russia’s domestic intelligence agency and being accused of being a CIA spy Monday night, is a former frat boy and Daily Show fan from Missouri.

According to the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB), the successor to the KGB, Fogle was found in possession of a letter attempting to recruit an officer from one of Russia’s special services to work with the CIA, two wigs, three pairs of sunglasses, cash, and a knife, among other things. After he was detained, Fogle was turned over to the U.S. Embassy and expelled from Russia Tuesday.

Records link Fogle’s family to two different inner-ring suburbs of St. Louis, Mo, Clayton and Richmond Heights. He reportedly graduated from Mary Institute and St. Louis Country Day School, a high school in the wealthy St/ Louis suburb of Ladue, in 2002. Four years later, Fogle graduated from Colgate University.

While at Colgate, Fogle was a member of the Phi Delta Theta fraternity. He also was a member of the Konosioni Senior Honor Society, a group of 26 student leaders chosen by their peers each year to “preserve and promote a greater appreciation and understanding of Colgate’s honored heritage and celebrated traditions.” Fogle participated in student government and, at the end of his sophomore year, was elected to serve as an election commissioner. As a freshman, Fogle was a member of a committee that organized lectures on campus. In 2003, he discussed a lecture he helped plan featuring former Daily Show contributor Mo Rocca with the school newspaper. Fogle was clearly a big fan of the show.

“Not only is Mo Rocca a comedian, but he is extremely talented and well known. Almost everyone here watches the Daily Show with some consistency,” Fogle said. “When he’s on the show he’s absolutely hilarious.”

After college, Fogle stayed in touch with his classmates. A 2008 issue of a Colgate magazine said Fogle attended the Colgate-Georgetown football game in November 2007 with other members of the class of 2006. The winter 2010-2011 issue of his fraternity’s newsletter included contact information for Fogle in Virginia and indicated he wanted to correspond with fraternity members. In late 2011, the email address Fogle listed in the fraternity newsletter was among those identified as belonging to subscribers to briefings published by the global intelligence company Stratfor in a release from the hacking group Anonymous.

Fogle also maintained a presence on Facebook, though most of his page was not visible to the general public. The only pictures that can be seen on his profile are nine photos of landmarks that seem to be from international travels including shots of Masada, the Kremlin, and the Great Sphinx of Giza. Fogle’s profile picture is a photo of waves hitting a beach.

Though Fogle left behind a digital trail, those who knew him offline provided no information about him to TPM. Multiple former classmates of Fogle’s declined to discuss him. A woman who answered the phone at his family home in Missouri who identified herself as “Ms. Fogle” also did not wish to speak with us.

“I don’t really have anything to say. Thank you though,” she said before hanging up.

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February 15, 2013 · 7:33 AM

Meteorite Impact in Russia

Scary scenarios but apparently the impact wasn’t nearly as bad as some science fiction writers have imagined…

TPM Editor’s Blog

Multiple reports say there’s been a major meteorite impact in Chelyabinsk Russia. Videos and more after the jump.

At first I thought this might be a hoax. But there are now multiple news reports and some pretty striking amateur videos.

Voice of Russia.

This one has what seems pretty clearly to be the sound of impact.

This video seems to show the impact of a second or possibly several more meteorites. Note the streak in the sky from the first meteorite already seems a little old when another impact is heard.

Update 12:57: RT.com is now reporting a breaking news flash that “Urals meteorite shot down by Russian air defense — military source.” That makes no sense to me at all. I suppose you could blow up a careening meteorite. But there’s nothing to shoot down with a meteorite. It’s falling. And it’s moving so incredibly fast that I doubt very much you could shoot it down, in the improbable case that you scrambled a plane quickly enough to intercept it. We’ll have to wait to hear more on this. And I’m not much of an expert on air defense meteorite intercepts. But it sounds weird.

Update 1:06 PM: There are conflicting reports about injuries. But as of yet there are no reports of fatalities.

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September 7, 2012 · 8:12 PM

Russian President Vladimir Putin – Obama is ‘a very honest man’

Missile Defense

This may not sit very well the Romney Team or Romney himself.

Voice 4 America

Russia’s President Vladimir Putin was quoted on Thursday calling President Obama “a very honest man”. President Putin expressed his opinion that a compromise on Europe’s missile defense system would be more probable with Obama in office than with Romney in office.
From The NY Times:

President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia sauntered into American presidential politics on Thursday, praising President Obama as “a very honest man” and chastising the Republican nominee, Mitt Romney, for describing Russia as “without question our No. 1 geopolitical foe.”

…

 Mr. Putin said he believed that if Mr. Obama is re-elected in November, a compromise could be reached on the contentious issue of American plans for a missile defense system in Europe, which Russia has strongly opposed.

On the other hand, Mr. Putin said, if Mr. Romney becomes president, Moscow’s fears about the missile system — that it is, despite American assurances, actually directed against Russia — would almost certainly prove true.

“Is it possible to find a solution to the problem, if current President Obama is re-elected for a second term? Theoretically, yes,” Mr. Putin said, according to the official transcript posted on the Kremlin’s Web site. “But this isn’t just about President Obama.

“For all I know, his desire to work out a solution is quite sincere,” Mr. Putin continued. “I met him recently on the sidelines of the G-20 summit in Los Cabos, Mexico, where we had a chance to talk. And though we talked mostly about Syria, I could still take stock of my counterpart. My feeling is that he is a very honest man, and that he sincerely wants to make many good changes. But can he do it? Will they let him do it?”

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April 2, 2012 · 12:10 AM

How Mitt Romney Fumbled The ‘Hot Mic’ Opportunity

How Mitt Romney Fumbled The ‘Hot Mic’ Opportunity

When it comes to campaign political gaffes, poor Mitt Romney, always gets it wrong several times before he eventually just gives up.  It seems this time his foreign policy gravitas is sorely lacking and the Obama camp is seizing the opportunity to let voters know this.

TPM2012

Mitt Romney may be settling in as his party’s presumptive nominee, but his team is still cutting its teeth when it comes to going toe-to-toe with President Obama. This week, a series of misfired remarks over what seemed like an easy political winner for Romney — Obama’s ‘hot mic’ moment with Russia’s leader — is now being turned by the White House into a referendum on the ex-governor’s foreign policy chops.

As a Sunday interview with Vice President Joe Biden made clear, Democrats are on the offensive over the ‘hot mic’ affair.

“He acts like he thinks the Cold War is still on. Russia is still our major adversary. I don’t know where he’s been,” Biden said on CBS’ Face The Nation, pointing out various ways in which Russia is working with the U.S. “So I think what the exchange did — it exposes how little the governor knows about foreign policy.”

So, how did Romney lose control of a story that was destined to hurt Obama?

Last Monday, when Obama’s comment to Russian President Dmitry Medvedev that he would have more “flexibility” on missile defense after the election was picked up by a live microphone, Romney was presented with a golden opportunity. The gaffe fit perfectly into the GOP’s narrative that the president is a radical in sheep’s clothing who will impose far-left policies as soon as he’s re-elected. But over the course of the last week, Romney dropped the ball.

The first mistake: While his campaign was sending out press releases about how Obama would impose “job-killing tax increases” in a second term, Romney was making news by accusing Russia of being “without question our number one geopolitical foe.” The candidate’s pronouncement against Russia turned public scrutiny from Obama back on him. Democrats shot back with a statement from Gen. Wes Clark, saying Romney’s comment “sounds like a rehash of Cold War fears.”

The back and forth went on all week, with Democrats largely defending the gaffe as a statement about the realities of election-year politics and asking Americans not to read anything else into it — but peppering those comments with questions about Romney’s knowledge of foreign affairs.

Then, on Friday, the Romney campaign all but gave up the game. Challenged by team Obama to release his last 30 years of tax returns, Romney spokesperson Andrea Saul responded bycalling on the president to “release the notes and transcripts of all his meetings with world leaders.”

Team Romney’s point was that Obama should prove “that he’s not promising to sell out the country’s interests after the election is over.” Dems slapped their foreheads in response, pointing out the obvious perils of releasing sensitive information from meetings between world leaders, and hammering Romney with another round of attacks on his foreign policy “naiveté.”

Saturday morning, the DNC had yet another foreign policy expert, this time the Dr. Colin Kahl, former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for the Middle East, attack the campaign’s comments as “yet another indication that Mitt Romney is not ready to be Commander-in-Chief.” And now, almost a week after Obama’s gaffe, Team Romney has been silent on the issue for going on two days while the Obama camp — including both Biden and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton — is happy to discuss their opponent’s “Cold War mentality.”

Whether or not Romney is naive about foreign policy, this episode demonstrates some of Romney’s weaknesses in messaging wars with the president. Romney and Republicans will probably continue to use the ‘hot mic’ incident against Obama, but they’ve given the president ample room to bite back.

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March 8, 2012 · 12:58 AM

International Women’s Day

Wikipedia

International Women’s Day (IWD), originally called International Working Women’s Day, is marked on March 8 every year.[1] In different regions the focus of the celebrations ranges from general celebration of respect, appreciation and love towards women to a celebration for women’s economic, political and social achievements. Started as a Socialist political event, the holiday blended in the culture of many countries, primarily Eastern Europe, Russia, and the former Soviet bloc. In many regions, the day lost its political flavour, and became simply an occasion for men to express their love for women in a way somewhat similar to a mixture of Mother’s Day and St Valentine’s Day. In other regions, however, the original political and human rights theme designated by the United Nations runs strong, and political and social awareness of the struggles of women worldwide are brought out and examined in a hopeful manner.

History

In Modern Culture

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December 17, 2011 · 8:42 PM

John McCain Finally Figures Out Twitter, Uses It To Insult Foreign Leaders

This is priceless.  Sen. John McCain and Russia’s Vladimir Putin trade barbs…

Democratic Underground

Yet another reason to be grateful President Obama won the election!

“After 10 years as President of Russia, Vladimir Putin stepped aside and became prime minister. But now, he’s running again for his old job, and political barbs are coming his way – some from across the Atlantic.

Sen. John McCain (R, Ariz.) has been needling the Russian leader via Twitter.  And Thursday, Putin struck back.
….

McCain admits he picked a fight with the embattled prime minister.

He tweeted last week, “Dear Vlad, #The ArabSpring is coming to a neighborhood near you.”

McCain admits he giggled when he sent the tweet. “You know,” he says, “you’ve gotta have a sense of humor!”

The former GOP presidential nominee says he expected a reaction, but not the bizarre personal attacks Putin delivered Thursday on Russian TV.

“Mr. McCain was imprisoned in Vietnam,” Putin said. “They put him in a hole for several years. Anyone would go insane.”

Back on Twitter, McCain played it coy, saying, “Dear Vlad, is it something I said?”

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-500202_162-57344125/mccain-putin-trade-barbs/

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August 2, 2011 · 11:48 AM

Think Progress’ Morning Briefing – August 2, 2011

Think Progress

A top union leader is warning that the deal struck to raise the nation’s debt limit with lead to job losses. Gerry McEntee, president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), called the compromise the House passed yesterday “economic malpractice” that “will slow economic recovery and impose more joblessness, wage cuts and hardship on America’s working families.”

Labor market experts don’t expect the debt deal to jumpstart hiring, fearing instead that trillions of dollars in spending cuts may actually slow economic growth. Said one expert: “I would say this will have little effect if any (on hiring). … At the end of the day, demand trumps all, and right now demand is sluggish.”

In an interview with CBS News last night, House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) said he got “98 percent” of what he wanted in the debt deal passed yesterday. “I’m pretty happy,” he said.

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said the U.S. is “living like parasites on the global economy” and decried dominance of the dollar in a speech to a pro-Kremlin youth group Monday. Russia holds large amounts of U.S. bonds, and Putin hinted that he had watched debt negotiations closely: “If over there there is a systemic malfunction, this will affect everyone.”

For the second time in a month, a federal judge has temporarily blocked Kansas’s law defunding Planned Parenthood and ordered the state to start distributing funds to the clinic. U.S. District Judge J. Thomas Marten issued the preliminary injunction of the law because its purpose was clearly “to single out, punish and exclude Planned Parenthood.”

The 11-day shutdown of the FAA that has forced safety inspectors to work without pay will likely last through August as the House recessed yesterday for five weeks without reauthorizing the agency. The partial shutdown has furloughed 4,000 workers and will reportedly cost taxpayers $1 billion unless action is taken this week.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s forces killed more than 100 people across the countrySunday and, according to human rights activists, 24 more on Monday, the first day of Ramadan. President Obama slammed Assad’s use of “torture, corruption and terror” against his own people and said the regime would be “left in the past.”

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen is urging a quick decision from Iraqi leaders about whether they want U.S. troops to stay in the country past Dec. 31. Mullen is alsorequesting immunity for U.S. troops in the country.

As Somalia suffers one of world’s worst famines in recent memory, the Shabab Islamist insurgent group “is blocking starving people from fleeing the country and setting up a cantonment camp where it is imprisoning displaced people who were trying to escape Shabab territory,” the New York Times reports. The group is “widely blamed” for exacerbating the famine by forcing out Western aid organizations.

And finally: Iron-pumper, actor, terminator, governornator, philanderer: Arnold Schwarzenegger has another feather to place in his cap after his hometown of Thal, Austria opened a museum devoted to Schwarzenegger this week. Schwarzenegger was not on hand for the opening, but will make a “future trip for an official ceremony.”

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January 3, 2011 · 4:45 AM

Joe Biden To Take Bigger Role As Obama Faces Stronger GOP

Joe Biden und Barack Obama in Springfield, Ill...

Image via Wikipedia

McClatchy

Vice President Joe Biden is a career politician who has spent virtually his entire adult life in Washington politics — seemingly the antithesis of Barack Obama’s hope-and-change message.

Yet with a new political order in Washington, the success of Obama’s presidency hinges more and more on the negotiating skills and political instincts of his No. 2.

Facing a revived Republican Party, the White House is expected to increasingly deploy Biden as a presidential surrogate to find compromises and coax reluctant lawmakers into crossing party lines. Even Biden’s penchant for veering off message is being re-evaluated inside the White House as a bridge to ordinary voters who appreciate blunt talk.

A model for Biden’s role in the next session of Congress was the recent passage of the New START nuclear arms treaty with Russia. Biden, who built a reputation as a foreign policy expert during his 36 years in the Senate, prevailed in an internal White House debate over whether to press for ratification in the lame-duck session.  More…

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January 2, 2011 · 1:07 AM

Tea Party Activists Angry at G.O.P. Leaders

…and so the GOP civil war with its own far-right Tea Party members begin…

The NY Times

As Tea Party politicians prepare to take their seats when the 112th Congress convenes this week, they are already taking issue with Republicans for failing to hold the line against the flurry of legislation enacted in the waning weeks of Democratic control of the House of Representatives and for not giving some candidates backed by Tea Party groups powerful leadership positions.

Just a month ago, Tea Party leaders were celebrating their movement’s victories in the midterm elections. But as Congress wrapped up an unusually productive lame-duck session last month, those same Tea Party leaders were lamenting that Washington behaved as if it barely noticed that American voters had repudiated the political establishment.

In their final days controlling the House, Democrats succeeded in passing legislation that Tea Party leaders opposed, including a bill to cover the cost of medical care for rescue workers at the site of the World Trade Center attacks, an arms-control treaty with Russia, a food safety bill and a repeal of the ban on gay men and lesbians serving openly in the military.

More…

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December 2, 2010 · 9:02 PM

Vladimir Putin To Larry King: I Don’t Want You To Leave CNN (VIDEO)

Has Vladimir Putin looked into Larry King’s eyes and seen his soul?

Huffington Post

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin told a bemused Larry King that he doesn’t want him to leave CNN on Wednesday’s “Larry King Live.”

King interviewed Putin for the entire hour on the show. The two discussed many different issues, but, as the show was wrapping up, Putin brought up one that had gone unmentioned: King’s imminent departure. (King’s last day is Dec. 16th.)

“Can I ask you one question?” he said. “I don’t know why, but the King leaves the scene at the U.S. stage.”

“I sometimes don’t know why myself,” King cut in.

Putin continued:

“At the U.S. stage and the U.S. mass media, there are many talented and interesting people, but still there is just one King there. I don’t ask why he is leaving. But, still, what do you think? When shall we have a right to cry out, long live the King, when there will be another man who is as popular in the whole word as you happen to be?”

 

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