On April 17, Putin held his annual televised Q & A session. He did it with ordinary Russians nationwide. He did it for the 12th time. Doing so connects with them.

He responded to questions forthrightly. Most concerned Ukraine and Crimea. He covered lots of ground.

Trust lost is hard to regain, he said. It's been "undermined to a great degree, but why is this happening?

http://www.thepeoplesvoice.org/TPV3/Voices.php/2014/04/20/putin-speaks

Baltimore PostExaminer

Back in early September, 2013, Matthew Green, a computer science professor in cryptography at JHU, tweeted on his blog that the NSA was engaged in efforts “to break encryption” on private servers and was doing so on a big scale. His post was flagged and Green was told by the school to remove the post. Later, the school’s decision to impose its heavy-handed censorship measure was reversed.

On Tuesday evening, April 15, 2014, on the campus of Johns Hopkins U., a public forum featuring three panel members was held to discuss the above matter and the issue of “collaboration” between the NSA & JHU, and other universities. The event was sponsored by the students’ “Human Rights Working Group” and the “New Political Society.” The first speaker was Christopher Soghoain, a representative of the ACLU. Mr. Soghoain, a graduate of JHU, who is experienced in the field of surveillance cases, claimed: “We have an intelligence agency [NSA] that is out of control! This is an agency that is collecting information about law-abiding Americans who’ve done nothing wrong...”

Professor Green recounted his JHU-related blog/censorship experience from last year. He also underscored his concern that the “NSA has been inside ‘Google’s Data Centers‘ collecting data.” An attorney and expert on Constitutional Law, Shahid Buttar, was the third panel member. He is the Exec. Dir. of the “Bill of Rights Defense Committee.” Buttar traced the history of government-sanctioned spying and warned that the NSA’s egregious conduct has currently reached Orwellian proportions and is a serious threat to “Freedom of Thought!”

To learn more, go to: https://www.facebook.com/events/452572404886978/, “The Guardian,” Jay Rosen, Sept. 10, 2013, and the “Pro Publica” article at: http://www.propublica.org/article/johns-hopkins-and-the-case-of-the-missing-nsa-blog-post#update

RT

US confirms CIA chief paid a covert visit to Kiev. This sparked speculation US is helping coordinate activists in eastern Ukraine. For more on this we are joined by former MI5 agent Annie Machon

RT

Ukrainian armoured vehicle crews have switched sides, joining the anti-government protesters in the East. Activists place a Russian flag on one of them.

Sir Daniel Nonfaultson

TED

Appearing by telepresence robot, Edward Snowden speaks at TED2014 about surveillance and Internet freedom. The right to data privacy, he suggests, is not a partisan issue, but requires a fundamental rethink of the role of the internet in our lives — and the laws that protect it. "Your rights matter," he say, "because you never know when you're going to need them." Chris Anderson interviews, with special guest Tim Berners-Lee.

TEDTalks is a daily video podcast of the best talks and performances from the TED Conference, where the world's leading thinkers and doers give the talk of their lives in 18 minutes (or less). Look for talks on Technology, Entertainment and Design -- plus science, business, global issues, the arts and much more.
Find closed captions and translated subtitles in many languages at http://www.ted.com/translate

NextNewsNetwork

Gerald Celente: Banker Suicides Prequel to Global Collapse - The onset of the great depression of the 1930's brought a spike in banker suicides, Will Rogers noted of the time, "When Wall Street took that tail spin, you had to stand in line to get a window to jump out of, and speculators were selling space for bodies in the East River."