WarSclerotic

Putin, Said to Be ‘Perfectly Healthy,’ Is Also Nowhere to Be Seen
By NEIL MacFARQUHAR MARCH 13, 2015 Via The New York Times

(A little trouble in communist paradise perhaps? – LS)

MOSCOW — Where’s Putin?

It was the question preoccupying Moscow and much of Russia on Friday, as speculation mounted about why President Vladimir V. Putin had not been seen in public since last week.

He canceled a trip to Kazakhstan; postponed a treaty signing with representatives from South Ossetia who were reportedly told not to bother to come to Moscow; and, unusually, was absent from a meeting of top officials from the F.S.B., Russia’s domestic intelligence service.

The last confirmed public sighting was at a meeting with Prime Minister Matteo Renzi of Italy on March 5 — although the Kremlin would have citizens think otherwise.

Given that the Kremlin borrows all manner of items from the Soviet playbook these days, there appeared to be an attempt to doctor the president’s timetable to show that all was well.
Russians created a memorial to opposition leader Boris Y. Nemtsov on Saturday at the site of his death in central Moscow. A number of theories have begun to circulate on how he was killed.

The daily newspaper RBC dug into Mr. Putin’s schedule as reported on the usually reliable presidential website, Kremlin.ru. The newspaper reported that a meeting with the governor of the northwestern region of Karelia, depicted as taking place on Wednesday, actually occurred on March 4, when a local website there wrote about it. A meeting with a group of women shown as having occurred on Sunday actually happened on March 6, RBC said.

On Friday, the Kremlin released video and posted a still picture of Mr. Putin meeting with the president of Russia’s Supreme Court, but since the video was not live, questions lingered.

The simplest explanation appeared to come from an unidentified government source in Kazakhstan, who apparently did not get the memo, and told Reuters “it looks like he has fallen ill.”

Since half of Moscow seemed to be suffering from a particularly devastating strain of flu that knocks people on their backs for days at a time, that seemed the most likely explanation.

But there also appeared to be a certain reluctance to concede that Russia’s leader, who cultivates a macho image of being in good health at age 62, might have been felled like a mere mortal.

Mr. Putin’s spokesman, Dmitri S. Peskov, told any news media outlet that called (and most did) that his boss was in fine fettle, holding meetings and attending to his duties. “Perfectly healthy,” Mr. Peskov told one news agency. “Fine,” he told another.

Mr. Putin’s predecessor, Boris N. Yeltsin, used to disappear frequently as well. But that was either because of drinking bouts or, in at least one instance, an undisclosed heart attack. His spokesman settled on a standard explanation that Mr. Yeltsin still had a firm handshake but was busy working on documents.

Mr. Peskov referenced that wryly this week, saying on the radio station Echo of Moscow that Mr. Putin’s grip could break hands and that the president was working “exhaustively” with documents.

Given the uneasy mood in Moscow — stemming both from Russia’s involvement in the war in Ukraine and the Feb. 27 killing of the opposition leader Boris Y. Nemtsov just steps from the Kremlin — much darker explanations have emerged.

Andrei Illarionov, a former presidential adviser, wrote a blog post suggesting that Mr. Putin had been overthrown by hard-liners in a palace coup and that Russians could anticipate an announcement soon saying that he was taking a well-deserved rest. Conspiracy theorists bombarded Facebook, Twitter and the rest of social media along similar veins.

Early in his presidency, Mr. Putin dropped out of sight when the submarine Kursk sank in 2000 and again two years later when terrorists seized a Moscow theater and took hundreds of hostages. But since those two crises, which spawned all manner of questions about his leadership skills, he has been very much an almost daily public presence.

Now, all eyes are on Monday, when Mr. Putin is scheduled to meet with the president of Kyrgyzstan in St. Petersburg.

Sen. Cotton: Why we wrote the letter to Iran
Tom Cotton 8:32 p.m. EDT March 10, 2015 Via USA Today

(Every once and while we have to remind Obama we live in a constitutional republic. – LS)

Iranian leaders need to know that the Senate must approve any deal President Obama negotiates.

The critical role of Congress in the adoption of international agreements was clearly laid out by our Founding Fathers in our Constitution. And it’s a principle upon which Democrats and Republicans have largely agreed.

In fact, then-Sen. Joe Biden once reflected on this very topic, writing that “the president and the Senate are partners in the process by which the United States enters into, and adheres to, international obligations.”

OUR VIEW: Heedless letter subverts nuclear talks

It’s not often I agree with former senator and now Vice President Biden, but his words here are clear. The Senate must approve any deal President Obama negotiates with Iran by a two-thirds majority vote.

Anything less will not be considered a binding agreement when President Obama’s term expires in two years. This is true of any agreement, but in particular with the nuclear deal President Obama intends to strike with Iran.

Unfortunately, despite our best efforts, the Obama administration has so far completely bypassed Congress in its negotiations with Iran.

The administration cares little about what will win congressional approval — only complete nuclear disarmament — and more about just reaching some sort of deal.

Regrettably, it appears the deal President Obama is negotiating with Iran will not be a good one. In fact, if reports are correct, it will be a bad one that will ultimately allow Iran to continue its nuclear program and ultimately develop a nuclear weapon.

That is why this week, I, along with 46 of my fellow senators, wrote Iranian leaders to inform them of the role Congress plays in approving their agreement. Our goal is simple: to stop Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.

I do not take my obligations as a senator lightly. Nor do those who are signatories to the letter. If the president won’t share our role in the process with his negotiating partner, we won’t hesitate to do it ourselves.

Our constituents elected us to the Senate, in part, to protect them from bad agreements like this and to help ensure their safety and security. And that is what we intend to do.

Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., is a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee and the lead signatory to the open letter to Iran’s leaders.

ISIS releases video purporting to show child soldier killing ‘Israeli spy’
By Haaretz and Reuters Mar. 10, 2015 9:23 PM

(Bibi’s right…the enemy of your enemy is still your enemy. – LS)

Jihadist organization says suspected Muhammad Musallam, 19, from East Jerusalem, was spying for Mossad; he’d gone to Syria to fight for ISIS.

ISIS released a video on Tuesday that it claims shows the execution of East Jerusalem Palestinian Muhammad Musallam, 19, who was taken hostage as an alleged Israeli spy three months ago in Syria.

The video, published by the group’s Furqan media outlet, showed Musallam sitting in a room wearing an orange jumpsuit, talking about how he had been recruited and trained by the Israeli intelligence service. He said his father and elder brother had encouraged him. After that, it showed Musallam being escorted to a field and executed by a boy, described by an older, French-speaking fighter as one of the “cubs of the caliphate”.

The clip, which was approximately 13 minutes long, showed Musallam on his knees as he listened to the older fighter speaking the verdict in French. Then the boy, wearing a military uniform and armed with a pistol, stands face to face with Musallam and fires one bullet into his forehead. Musallam crumbles, then the child shoots him three more times and chants “Allahu Akbar!” (God is Greatest).

In the video, Musallam repeated what he said last month in an interview published by the group’s English language magazine Dabiq, in which he said he had joined ISIS to report to the Israelis on weapons caches, bases and Palestinian recruits. Israel and his family denied that he was an Israeli spy. “I tell my father and my son: Repent to God. I say to the spies who spy on Islamic State: You will not be successful, they will expose you,” Musallam said in the latest video, in Arabic.

Last month Musallam’s family confirmed to Haaretz that their son had traveled to Syria to fight for ISIS. The jihadist organization later published an article about Musallam in its magazine Dabiq titled “Interview with a spy working for the Israeli Mossad.”

Musallam had lived with his family in East Jerusalem. He completed 12 years of schooling and even worked as a national service volunteer with the Israeli firefighting services. His father, Said Musallam, told Haaretz that his son told him three months ago that he was traveling to a course in the city of Rishon Letzion, and asked him for money.

“He left that morning and the next day I tried to call him and the telephone was turned off,” said the father. “I thought that maybe he was busy. After a week we got an email that he wanted to be a martyr and he was giving up everything in his life and his family.”