● Oxfam International, a poverty fighting organization, made news at the World Economic Forum in Davos earlier this year with its report that the world’s 85 richest people own assets with the same value as those owned by the poorer half of the world’s population, or 3.5 billion people (including children). Both groups have $US 1.7 trillion. That’s $20 billion on average if you are in the first group, and $486 if you are in the second group.
● Oxfam’s calculations of the richest individuals are based on the 2013 Forbes Billionaires list. I decided to take a closer look at this group of 85 in search of trends. That’s when I realized that they are by now a much wealthier group. The rich got richer. And it was quite fast and dramatic. For example, while last year it took $23 billion to be in the top 20 of the world’s billionaires, this year it took $31 billion, according to Luisa Kroll, Forbes wealth editor, writing on Forbes.com.

Turkey’s online censorship and banning of Twitter is fueling mass adoption of Tor, the most popular anonymity network online, as a tool to circumvent government obstruction. ● Just days ago, the software had already hit a pace of 10,000 new users per week. Now the pace has picked up significantly; Turks are now moving to Tor at a rate of 10,000 new users per day for a total of over 50,000 users and growing. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoðan called Twitter “a menace,” as it played a key role in organizing, recording, and maintaining year-long protests against what critics see as his administration's creep towards authoritarianism.

● Russia's President Vladimir Putin will discuss the 2013-2018 plan for the activities of MinVostokRazvitiye (Ministry for the Development of the Far East) and fine tuning of the State Program "The Socio-Economic Development of the Far East and Baikal Region" with government members on Wednesday, the Kremlin press service reported. ● "Those present at the meeting will also review the elimination of the aftermath of (last year's) large-scale floods hitting the areas of the Republic of Yakutia (Sakha), Primorsky and Khabarovsk Territories, Amur and Magadan Regions, and the Jewish Autonomous Region," the Kremlin press service points out. ● Yuri Trutnev, Vice-Premier and plenipotentiary presidential representative in the Far Eastern Federal District, will make a report on the subject. Upon being appointed to the position last year, Trutnev set himself a task of forming main development institutions in the District as soon as possible organizations which would engage in attracting investors, in developing the territories and fostering human capital.

Pepe Escobar: Asia will not 'isolate' Russia ■ Any (bureaucratic) doubts the New Cold War is on have been dispelled by the Group of Seven issuing a pompous, self-described Hague Declaration. Abandon all hope those who expected The Hague to become the seat of a tribunal judging the war crimes of the Cheney regime. The G-7 also cancelled its upcoming summer summit in Sochi as a means of "punishing" Moscow over Crimea. As if this carried any practical value. [...] All this in the sidelines of a supposed summit on nuclear security in the Netherlands, where US President Barack Obama, at the Rijksmuseum, in front of Rembrandt's The Night Watch, extolled Washington's "support of the Ukrainian government and Ukrainian people". Rembrandt's watchers have never seen anything like it in their glorious lifespan. It pays to be a Nazi after all; you just need to be in the right government, against the right enemy, and fully approved by the hyper-power.

Under Czar Nicholas II, blue and green got introduced to the palette. In 1909, Nicholas authorized Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii to document his empire using a new technique called additive color. Over a period of about six years, Prokudin-Gorskii took some 10,000 pictures, systematically chronicling Russia’s rich culture, industry, and architecture. His stunning photos capture the breadth of life in the last days of an empire, its rugged frontiers and rural landscapes, and the signs of its growing industrial might. They were meant to be presented as “optical color projections” to the nation’s school children, to expose them to the dazzling diversity of Russian life they wouldn’t otherwise see. The images offer a rare glimpse of pre-revolutionary Russia, in color so vivid it’s easy to forget they’re a century old.

They operate on the now familiar principle that a wide range of colors can be reproduced by combining monochrome exposures in red, green, and blue. To achieve this, Prokudin-Gorskii used three oblong glass plates to snap black and white slides in quick bursts through colored filters. James Clerk Maxwellin first proposed the technique in the mid 1800s, and it’s still used today in many televisions and computer monitors.

[Kick-starting World War III:] A private military company will be in charge of suppressing protest movements in Eastern Ukraine, said a source in the country's Security Service. According to him, the name of the company is Greystone Limited. According to a source cited by ITAR-TASS, Ukrainian authorities believe that the Security Service is not able to suppress the protest mood and neutralize the leaders and activists of the pro-Russian movement in the eastern regions. According to publicly available information Greystone Limited is a structural part of Blackwater, that was later renamed into Academi [formerly Xe Services/Blackwater USA]. According to military experts, the company is associated with the CIA and the US Defense Department.

The international community should put pressure on Kiev to make it lift the ban on broadcasts of Russian TV channels in Ukraine, says Konstantin Dolgov, the Russian Foreign Ministry's commissioner for human rights, democracy, and the rule of law. "A Kiev court's decision on suspending broadcasts of four Russian TV channels in Ukraine jeopardizes human rights, including freedom of the media," Dolgov said on Twitter on Wednesday. This step is aimed at "cutting people, including millions of Russian-speaking ones, off from truthful information about the lawlessness of ultra-nationalists and neo-fascists in order to better brainwash them," he said. "The international community, including the OSCE, should put pressure on Kiev to make sure that this punitive measure is canceled," Dolgov said.

G. Murphy Donovan: Whatever you believe or say about Putin or Russia, you also have to ask: compared to what? ■ And don’t kid yourself about Ukraine. The issue there is not right or wrong, legitimacy or illegitimacy. Neither side has a sovereignty argument. And the dispute isn’t about democracy or freedom either. The real danger in east Europe is nuclear chicken - a dangerous game with a short fuse. Ukraine has 15 active nuclear reactors. Ukraine dispute has no moral high ground either. US foreign policy folly has done much to undermine personal sovereignty, national sovereignty, and the good name of democracy worldwide. America has been slicing and dicing polities in East Europe, Africa, the Arab world, and elsewhere for decades pretending that the default setting is democracy. Distinctions between legitimate and illegitimate are now arbitrary, in the end, a function of power. And the first democratic election is often the last.

Steve Weissman: Meet the Americans Who Put Together the Coup in Kiev ■ The CIA, NSA, and Pentagon likely provided their specialized services, while some of the private contractors exhibited shadowy skill sets. But if McGovern knows the score, as he should, diplomats ran the campaign to destabilize Ukraine and did the hands-on dirty work. Harder for some people to grasp, Ambassador Pyatt and his team did not create the foreign policy, which was – and is – only minimally about overthrowing Ukraine's duly elected government to "promote democracy." Ever since Bill Clinton sat in the Oval Office, Washington and its European allies have worked openly and covertly to extend NATO to the Russian border and Black Sea Fleet, provoking a badly wounded Russian bear. They have also worked to bring Ukraine and its Eastern European neighbors into the neoliberal economy of the West, isolating the Russians rather than trying to bring them into the fold. Except for sporadic resets, anti-Russian has become the new anti-Soviet, and "strategic containment" has been the wonky word for encircling Russia with our military and economic power.

Alex Lantier: US, EU press Russia to recognize Ukraine’s putschist regime ■ Amid US President Barack Obama’s tour of Europe, US and European Union (EU) officials pressed Moscow to recognize the Western-backed Ukrainian regime that emerged from last month’s fascist-led putsch in Kiev. Speaking with Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte amid a nuclear summit at The Hague, Obama briefly addressed the Ukraine crisis. Denouncing the March 16 referendum in which Crimea seceded from Ukraine and was annexed to Russia, he said: “We are also concerned about further encroachment by Russia into Ukraine. So what I announced and what the European Council announced was that we were consulting and putting in place the framework, the architecture for additional sanctions, additional costs, should Russia take the next step.” He added, “There is another path available to Russia.

● A stunning report prepared by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MoFA) outlining the agenda of Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov for his meeting today with US Secretary of State John Kerry at the Hague Nuclear Security Summit reveals that President Obama is still in “shock” after being ordered by the Chairman, President, and CEO of Exxon Mobil Corporation, Rex Tillerson, to allow Russia’s annexation of Crimea or face “immediate domestic political annihilation.” ● According to this report, Tillerson is the head of this giant American multinational oil and gas corporation, headquartered in Irving, Texas, that is a direct descendant of John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil Company and is the world’s third largest company by revenue. ● Important to note, this report continues, is that Exxon Mobil has long charted a course separate from that of the United States government as evidenced by Tillerson’s predecessor, former CEO Lee Raymond, once stating, “I’m not a U.S. company, and I don’t make decisions based on what’s good for the U.S.”

Stefan Molyneux speaks with Dr. Paul Craig Roberts about the Crimean Crisis, the showdown with Vladimir Putin, the Ukraine political situation and the growing conflict between Russia, the European Union and the United States.

A Swedish expert invited by the government to speak at the release of its white paper on Roma discrimination was on Tuesday denied entry to the breakfast room at Stockholm's Sheraton hotel. She had to drink her coffee in the lobby. ● Diana Nyman, the chairman of the Roma Council in Gothenburg, was set to speak at the release of the white paper on discrimination of Roma and travellers in Sweden. The government put her up at the four-star Sheraton Hotel, a stone's throw away from parliament and the government quarter, but when Nyman, 45, went down for breakfast she was offered a modern-day example of the discrimination that the white-paper on Tuesday admitted had been endemic in Sweden. Nyman, who wears a traditional wide black skirt and frilly blouse and who recently fielded questions about beggars in an online chat, said she was almost knocked over by a staff member who rushed to bar the Roma expert and speaker from entering the breakfast room. "Even after I had showed that I'd paid for breakfast the staff insisted that I stay in the lobby," Nyman told the Dagens Nyheter newspaper (DN) on Tuesday. "They got me coffee so I could drink it there instead."

Gregg Easterbrook ■ NCIS and its sibling NCIS: Los Angeles are the top-rated dramas on television, a distinction they have held for several years. Next season there will be a third iteration, which ones hopes will be titled NCIS: Spinoff. As Quartz’s Jason Lynch notes, viewers love these formulaic procedurals—while critics ignore them. But what exactly are so many Americans watching—and rooting for—when they tune in for these TV shows? A closer look reveals that both series are uncomfortably akin to a cheering section for the NSA: The shows depict a world in which terrorists planning mass slaughter are under every bed, in which viewers root for the good-looking, wisecracking agents to smash down doors without warrants; in which super-advanced electronic surveillance is used exclusively to protect the public. In the NCIS version of reality, we’ll all die unless powerful government agencies treat the United States Constitution like a big joke.

This is a story based on a report out of the Ukraine. Obviously I do not know yet if it is accurate. The information coming out of the Ukraine and Crimea should be sifted carefully, no matter what the source. I find this one hard to believe. I am informed by highly reliable people that no one cares about gold anymore. And very important analysts claim that transporting many tonnes of gold (Ukraine is said to have about 33 tonnes) is very difficult, and so unwieldy and fraught with peril that it must be a multiyear project. But if the Ukraine's gold was taken away for safekeeping, it may be so safe that they will never see it again for a long time. Just ask Germany.

xymphora: Safekeeping ■ "Ukraine Gold Reserves Said To Be Put On Plane For Safekeeping in the US" "The Latest Heist: US Quietly Snatches the Ukraine’s Gold Reserves" We won't hear about this for a while, then it will be quietly used to 'set off' against the real or imagined debt of Ukraine to some American financial institution close to the White House.

Ukrainians must take up arms against Russians so that not even scorched earth will be left where Russia stands; an example of former Ukrainian PM Yulia Tymoshenko’s vitriol in phone call leaked online. ● Tymoshenko confirmed the authenticity of the conversation on Twitter, while claiming that a section where she is heard to call for the nuclear slaughter of the eight million Russians who remain on Ukrainian territory was edited. She tweeted “The conversation took place, but the '8 million Russians in Ukraine' piece is an edit. In fact, I said Russians in Ukraine – are Ukrainians. Hello FSB :) Sorry for the obscene language.” The former Ukrainian PM has not clarified who exactly she wants to nuke. The phone conversation with Nestor Shufrych, former deputy secretary of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine, was uploaded on YouTube on Monday by user Sergiy Vechirko. Shufrych's press service flatly contradicted Tymoshenko, slamming the tape as fake. The press release reads "The conversation didn't take place," as quoted by korrespondent.net. The leaked phone call took placed on March 18, hours after the Crimea & Sevastopol accession treaty was signed in the Kremlin. While Shufrych was “just shocked,” Tymoshenko was enraged by the results of the Crimean referendum. “This is really beyond all boundaries. It’s about time we grab our guns and kill go kill those damn Russians together with their leader,” Tymoshenko said. The ex-PM declared if she was in charge “there would be no f***ing way that they would get Crimea then.” Shufrych made the valid point that Ukraine “didn’t have any force potential” to keep Crimea.

Mike Head: Leading US-backed Ukrainian politician calls for annihilation of Russia ■ Yulia Tymoshenko, a former Ukrainian prime minister and leading backer of the new regime installed by last month’s coup, has called for Ukrainians to take up arms against Russians and for the Western powers to reduce Russia to ashes. In a phone call leaked online, Tymoshenko urged the murder of Russians and Russian President Vladimir Putin. “It’s about time we grab our guns and kill those katsaps [a derogatory Ukrainian word] together with their leader,” she said. (Available from the original source here and with RT’s English translation here). Tymoshenko also advocated the nuclear slaughter of the eight million Russians who remain on Ukrainian territory. She confirmed the authenticity of the conversation on Twitter, while claiming her call for the use of nuclear weapons was edited.

Notorious Ukrainian right-wing militant leader Aleksandr Muzychko, also known as Sashko Bilyi, has reportedly been shot dead in western Ukraine, where he coordinated actions of local groups belonging to the nationalist Right Sector movement. ● Muzychko was killed in Rovno, western Ukraine, according to reports in the Ukrainian mass media.
A Ukrainian Verkhovna Rada MP, Aleksandr Doniy, was among the first to write about Muzychko’s death. “His car was cut off by two other cars. He was dragged out and placed in one of those cars. Then he was thrown on the ground with his hands cuffed behind his back and [he received] two shots in his heart,” Doniy wrote on Facebook. There are differing accounts as to how Muzychko died.

RT.com: Nationalists threaten Ukrainian top cop with 'revenge' over far-right leader murder
RT.com: Muzychko killing: Ultra-nationalist mastermind demands cops’ arrest, Interior Minister’s dismissal

The fascist new defense minister of Ukraine ordered to start a war but was disobeyed. He says that is "regrettable." Not found this in any English language news yet but several German media reports mention this (my translation from FAZ):

Meanwhile it became clear that the commanders of Ukrainian warships on the Crimea defied orders from the provisional government in Kiev to use their arms. The Ukrainian minister of defense Ihor Tenyukh said on Sunday in Kiev, Russia managed "despite orders to all commanders to use weapons" to take over the ships. "Regrettably" the commanders decided themselves on how to proceed, he said.

Tenyugh is a member of the fascist Svoboda party that took part in the February 21 coup against the legitimate Ukrainian government. His legally dubious order to shoot at Russian troops in a rather hopeless situation could have easily started a larger war. My deep gratitude to all those Ukrainian commanders who defied the lunatic order to start a hot war with Russia and allowed a peaceful handover of their equipment to Russian forces.

The group of five major emerging national economies known as the BRICS has rejected the Western sanctions against Russia and the “hostile language” being directed at the country over the crisis in Ukraine. ● “The escalation of hostile language, sanctions and counter-sanctions, and force does not contribute to a sustainable and peaceful solution, according to international law, including the principles and purposes of the United Nations Charter,” foreign ministers of the BRICS countries - Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa - said in a statement issued on Monday. The group agreed that the challenges that exist within the regions of the BRICS countries must be addressed within the framework of the United Nations.

With the disappearance of those on Malaysian Airlines MH370, billionaire Jacob Rothschild becomes the sole owner of an important semiconductor patent! ● The mysteries surrounding Malaysian Airliner MH-370 continue to grow with each passing day and Mr. Rothschild is smack dab in the middle. Illuminati member, Rothschild, is believed to have exploited the airliner to gain full Patent Rights of an incredible KL-03 micro-chip. The US technological company, Freescale Semiconductor, who shared its rights with Rothschild, had twenty senior members on board who had just launched a new electronic warfare gadget for military radar system’s the day before the plane went missing. The Semiconductor company develops microprocessors, sensors, and other technology including “stand-alone semiconductors that perform dedicated computing functions.” But the questions that arise are why were there so many Freescale employees traveling together? What were their jobs? Their mission? And did they employees carry valuable cargo? With all the power our elite carry, why couldn’t they track down the missing plane? Of the 239 people aboard flight MH370, most of them were engineers and others working to make the company’s chip facilities in Tianjin, China and Kuala Lumpur more efficient.

Battles between the Syrian army and militant Syrian Army groups have raged in Syria's Northwestern coastal province of Lattakia on the Syrian-Turkish borders, as the army launched a wide-scale offensive to capture the Kasab border crossing. ● The Syrian army inflicted hefty losses upon the militant groups, which have launched a wide- scale offensive since Friday to capture the Kasab border crossing on the Syrian-Turkish borders, Xinhua reported. The official media added clashes with the "terrorists" are ongoing, charging that a number of Turkish armored vehicles are firing shells to assist the militant groups. It added that Turkish border guards on the Kasab border point took part in firing at Syrian territories. Syria's permanent representative to the United Nations Bashar al-Jaafari sent letters to the UN secretary-general and the head of the Security Council, charging the Turkish army of covering this "terrorist attack" and providing logistic and military support for the attackers.

SANA: Army's counterterrorism operations continue, More Jabhat al-Nusra terrorists arrested or killed

Exactly 15 years ago, on March 24, NATO began its 78-day bombing of Yugoslavia. The alliance bypassed the UN under a “humanitarian” pretext, launching aggression that claimed hundreds of civilian lives and caused a much larger catastrophe than it averted. Years on, Serbia still bears deep scars of the NATO bombings which, as the alliance put it, were aimed at “preventing instability spreading” in Kosovo. Questions remain on the very legality of the offense, which caused casualties and mass destruction in the Balkan republic. Codenamed 'Operation Allied Force,' it was the largest attack ever undertaken by the alliance. It was also the first time that NATO used military force without the approval of the UN Security Council and against a sovereign nation that did not pose a real threat to any member of the alliance. NATO demonstrated in 1999 that it can do whatever it wants under the guise of “humanitarian intervention,” “war on terror,” or “preventive war” – something that everyone has witnessed in subsequent years in different parts of the globe. Nineteen NATO member states participated to some degree in the military campaign against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (Serbia and Montenegro), which lasted for 11 weeks until June 10, 1999.

NATO bombings of Yugoslavia in 15 dramatic photos
Diana Johnstone: Ukraine and Yugoslavia: Imposing NATO on the Reluctant
Claudio Gallo: NATO bombing of Yugoslavia: Symbolic stage of current World War

NATO's top military commander said on Sunday that Russia had a large force on Ukraine's eastern border and said he was worried it could pose a threat to Moldova's separatist Transdniestria region. [-Nonsense!] - Russia was acting more like an adversary than a partner, NATO's Supreme Allied Commander Europe, U.S. Air Force General Philip Breedlove said, and the 28-nation alliance should rethink the positioning and readiness of its forces in eastern Europe. Russian troops, using armored vehicles, automatic weapons and stun grenades, seized some of the last military facilities under Ukrainian control on Saturday in Crimea, the Black Sea peninsula that Russian President Vladimir Putin formally annexed the day before. [It must be true 'cause Obama said it. He would never lie to us.]

[Same warning from The Guardian:] Russia ready to annex Moldova region, Nato commander claims
[Oh, yes, kidnapping too:] Three senior Ukrainian officers missing, believed held by Russians
[And danger seems to be lurking everywhere:] MI5 warns British officials to beware of Russian 'honey traps'

BBC 'total fabrication from beginning to end' of Syria 'atrocity'; call to revoke visas for intel agents posing as reporters in NATO targets; CIA caught infiltrating CNN, and Operation Mockingbird is back.

Japan will announce Monday that it will turn over to Washington more than 700 pounds of weapons-grade plutonium and a large quantity of highly enriched uranium, a decades-old research stockpile that is large enough to build dozens of nuclear weapons, according to American and Japanese officials. The announcement is the biggest single success in President Obama’s five-year-long push to secure the world’s most dangerous materials, and will come as world leaders gather here on Monday for a nuclear security summit meeting. Since Mr. Obama began the meetings with world leaders — this will be the third — 13 nations have eliminated their caches of nuclear materials and scores more have hardened security at their storage facilities to prevent theft by potential terrorists.

A court in Egypt has sentenced to death already 529 supporters of ousted Islamist President Mohammed Morsi. They were convicted of charges which included murder of a policeman and attacks on people and property. The group, members of the banned Muslim Brotherhood, are part of a larger trial of more than 1,200 Morsi supporters. Egyptian authorities have cracked down harshly on Islamists since Mr Morsi was removed by the military in July. Hundreds have been killed and thousands arrested. The Muslim Brotherhood's general guide Mohammed Badie was among those convicted.

China has demanded that the US stop the snooping activities of its National Security Agency against Chinese officials and companies. Beijing has also asked Washington to explain the reports on the illegal spying. ● Chinese foreign ministry spokesman, Hong Lei, said on Monday that China is “extremely concerned” about allegations that the US National Security Agency (NSA) infiltrated the servers of Chinese telecom giant, Huawei, targeting the Chinese Trade Ministry, national banks, leading telecommunications companies and the country’s top officials. “China has already lodged many complaints with the United States about this. We demand that the United States makes a clear explanation and stop such acts,” the spokesman stressed. Hong cited media reports on “eavesdropping, surveillance and stealing of secrets by the United States of other countries, including China,” which were based on the revelations of the former NSA contractor, Edward Snowden. The Snowden leaks published by The New York Times and Der Spiegel on Sunday exposed the details of the NSA’s activities in China, which allegedly involved spying on the former Chinese President Hu Jintao.

PressTV: China demands clear explanation from US over spying

● Directed by David Belhassen and Asher Hemias. The documentary won the award for "Best Documentary" at the Haifa International Film Festival and was featured as a documentary at the Israel Film Festival in Los Angeles in 2007.
● It is claimed in the documentary that the X-ray radiation used on the children was thousands of times beyond the maximum recommended dose and it is suggested that the program was funded by the United States in order to test the effects of large radiation doses on humans. In fact, the treatment in Israel was the same that was used elsewhere in the world. The documented dosages given to the Israeli children were similar to (if not less than) that administered to children treated for ringworm at New York University Hospital between 1940 and 1959. A study from the early 1950s found X-ray treatment effective in almost all cases of ringworm. The documentary alleges that 100,000 children were irradiated, and that 6,000 of them died shortly after receiving treatment. Many of the 'ringworm children' later developed cancer, and in 1994 the Knesset passed a law mandating the Israeli government to provide them with compensation.