DNA evidence: cultural connections between Britain and Europe 8,000 years ago

The ancient British were not cut off from Europeans on an isolated island 8,000 years ago as previously thought, new research suggests.

Researchers found evidence for a variety of wheat at a submerged archaeological site off the south coast of England, 2,000 years before the introduction of farming in the UK.

The team argue that the introduction of farming is usually regarded as a defining historic moment for almost all human communities leading to the development of societies that underpin the modern world.

Published in the journal Science, the researchers suggest that the most plausible explanation for the wheat reaching the site is that Mesolithic Britons maintained social and trade networks spreading across Europe.

These networks might have been assisted by land bridges that connected the south east coast of Britain to the European mainland, facilitating exchanges between hunters in Britain and farmers in southern Europe.

Called Einkorn, the wheat was common in Southern Europe at the time it was present at the site in Southern England -- located at Bouldnor Cliff.

The einkorn DNA was collected from sediment that had previously formed the land surface, which was later submerged due to melting glaciers.

The work was led by Dr Robin Allaby of the University of Warwick, in collaboration with co-leads Professor Vincent Gaffney of the University of Bradford and Professor Mark Pallen of Warwick Medical School, the Maritime Archaeology Trust, the University of Birmingham and the University of St. Andrews.

Dr Allaby, Associate Professor at the University of Warwick's School of Life Sciences, argues that the einkorn discovery indicates that Mesolithic Britain was less insular than previously understood and that inhabitants were interacting with Neolithic southern Europeans:

"8,000 years ago the people of mainland Britain were leading a hunter-gatherer existence, whilst at the same time in southern Europeans farming was gradually spreading across Europe.

"Common throughout Neolithic Southern Europe, einkorn is not found elsewhere in Britain until 2,000 years after the samples found at Bouldnor Cliff. For the einkorn to have reached this site there needs to have been contact between Mesolithic Britons and Neolithic farmers far across Europe.

"The land bridges provide a plausible facilitation of this contact. As such, far from being insular Mesolithic Britain was culturally and possibly physically connected to Europe.

"The role of these simple British hunting societies, in many senses, puts them at the beginning of the introduction of farming and, ultimately, the changes in the economy that lead to the modern world."

"The novel ancient DNA approach we used gave us a jump in sensitivity allowing us to find many of the components of this ancient landscape"

Commenting on the research's findings Professor Vincent Gaffney, research co-lead and Chair in Landscape Archaeology at the University of Bradford, said:

"This find is the start of a new chapter in British and European history. Not only do we now realise that the introduction of farming was far more complex than previously imagined. It now seems likely that the hunter-gather societies of Britain, far from being isolated were part of extensive social networks that traded or exchanged exotic foodstuffs across much of Europe.

"The research also demonstrates that scientists and archaeologists can now analyse genetic material preserved deep within the sediments of the lost prehistoric landscapes stretching between Britain and Europe. This not only tells us more about the introduction of farming into Britain, but also about the societies that lived on the lost coastal plains for hundreds of thousands of years.

"The use of ancient DNA from sediments also opens the door to new research on the older landscapes off the British Isles and coastal shelves across the world"

Co-lead Professor Mark Pallen, leader of the Pallen Group at the University of Warwick's Medical School, explains how the researchers employed a metagenomic approach to study the einkorn DNA:

"We chose to use a metagenomics approach in this research even though this has not commonly been used for environmental and ancient DNA research. This means we extracted and sequenced the entire DNA in the sample, rather than targeted organism-specific barcode sequences. From this we then homed in on the organisms of interest only when analysing DNA sequences."

The research builds on the work of the Maritime Archaeology Trust, who also collected the sediment samples from the site. The Trust's Director, Garry Momber, commented:

"Of all the projects I have worked on, Bouldnor Cliff has been the most significant. Work in the murky waters of the Solent has opened up an understanding of the UK's formative years in a way that we never dreamed possible.

"The material remains left behind by the people that occupied Britain as it was finally becoming an island 8,000 years ago, show that these were sophisticated people with technologies thousands of years more advanced than previously recognised. The DNA evidence corroborates the archaeological evidence and demonstrates a tangible link with the continent that appears to have become severed when Britain became an island."

The research is published in a paper entitled: 'Sedimentary DNA from a submerged site reveals wheat in the British Isles 8,000 years ago'.

Journal Reference:

1. O. Smith, G. Momber, R. Bates, P. Garwood, S. Fitch, M. Pallen, V. Gaffney, R. G. Allaby. Sedimentary DNA from a submerged site reveals wheat in the British Isles 8000 years ago. , 2015; 347 (6225): 998 DOI:10.1126/science.1261278

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Orwell and black boxes in car

Orwell had it right; his timing was just off a couple decades.

The world of universal surveillance is upon us and so far not much of anything is really being said about it. Those who talk about "privacy" are written off as crackpots or malcontents. Anyone who complains about being tracked, monitored, or photographed is assumed to be guilty of some transgression against an employer, government edict, or society in general.

There once were technical and practical barriers that prevented corporate and governmental entities from tracking and monitoring our every move. There also once existed political barriers that discouraged intrusive prying into most aspects of our daily lives. These barriers no longer exist.

Inserting a benign microchip in a person's earlobe and monitoring that person's every move is no longer a science fiction event, it's perfectly feasible and tens of millions will willingly comply with such a requirement. All that's needed is the right concoction of incentives.

You say, "no way, the free and the brave will never stand for it!" Well, I've got news for you, they will. In fact they already are. The only difference is that the chip is not in their ear, it's in their car -- and soon to be in your bike.

Our all-seeing corporate and governmental benefactors have big plans for us. Call it "better living through constant surveillance and centralized control." Private and government transportation interests have been licking their chops for years in anticipation of being able to charge/tax motorists on the basis of how, when, and where they travel.

The insurance industry and vehicle manufacturers can barely restrain themselves when it comes to expanding the capabilities of in-vehicle data recorders. There is no limitation to the length of time and range of measurements that can be absorbed and disgorged by these devices. Furthermore, the technology already exists to automatically communicate this data to roadside transponders. Today's "black boxes" are the equivalent of a 60's HD Rapido, but their most important role is fulfilled, setting the precedent for personal surveillance through personal vehicles. Take my word for it, the "V-ROD" version is waiting in the wings.

Surveillance for surveillance sake is sort of a voyeur thing. But surveillance for the sake of control and exploitation are what really get the juices flowing at places like EPA, NHTSA and your average insurance company.

One of the much discussed and hoped for components of the third generation On-Board-Diagnostic System (OBD 3) for emission controls is the ability (actually the authority, the ability already exists) to remotely read emissions systems' status as vehicles pass by a roadside reader/transponder. And, better yet, the authority to send a signal that puts a vehicle in "limp home" mode if defective emission components are detected.

Actually, the "limp home" options are endless. Ride too fast past a reader/transponder? Limp home. Late paying your registration fee? Limp home. Outstanding parking fine? Limp home. Of course only official fee and fine collection agencies will be certified to re-set the limp home trigger.

A few years ago a northeastern wrinkle belly car rental agency received a lot of publicity when it surcharged customers' rental fees several hundred dollars for exceeding speed limits. It turned out that the GPS units in the cars were reporting the vehicle speeds in various speed zones and the mouse print rental contract sanctioned the practice of assessing surcharges for violating speed limits. This was a short-lived operation, but it serves as a window into the future.

Another interesting quirk of the ON STAR navigation system is that the conversations of the vehicle occupants can be listened to and recorded, without the knowledge of those occupants. For this you get to pay extra money???

Of late there has been some interest, albeit minimal, in the black boxes that record vehicle operation events prior to a crash. Throttle position, brake pressure, engine RPM, and vehicle speed are some of the factors collected. The excuse for this data collection is claimed to be "research." And a Step-Through 50 will outrun a Ninja ZX-12R. Read L-I-A-B-I-L-T-Y and E-N-F-O-R-C-E-M-E-M-E-N-T. It's the New Age version of being able to pay for your own gallows rope.

Car manufacturers have solemnly declared that the black box and the information it contains belong to the owner of the car.

The California Legislature attempted to restrict access to black box recordings but left in loopholes you could drive a school bus through. For example, a subpoena could be used to get the information. And just how much trouble do you suppose the average DA is going to have getting a subpoena?

How long do you think it will take insurance policies to include a provision that their insureds agree to give them access to the black box data? And, we're told that responders to crash scenes are routinely grabbing the black boxes if the victim is unable to protest.

Realistically, under the current scenario, black box data is available to anyone who really wants it. But, it gets worse. There is virtually no limitation to the breadth of information or the length of time this information could be recorded, depending on the motives and motivations of government and industry.

Picture this: You're riding with the flow of traffic, say 40 MPH and the speed limit, like most speed limits, is under posted at 30 MPH. Suddenly an on-coming car whips a left in front of you and you center-punch the drivers door, doing considerable damage to you and the driver. His insurance company refuses to pay your claims on the basis that you were exceeding the speed limit and that there is evidence that you are a dangerous maniacal rider that shouldn't even have a license.

At the trial the opposition pulls out the black box data. Sure enough, you were going 10 MPH over the speed limit, but traffic records show that everyone travels that road at 10 MPH over the speed limit. Then they show that on 47 occasions over the past six months you hit speeds in excess of 90 MPH! You're portrayed as a loose cannon looking for a place to have an accident. In fact, not five minutes before the accident you were traveling 87 MPH! It doesn't matter that you were executing a clean, safe pass, you were exceeding the speed limit by 27 miles per hour, "reckless driving" according to state statutes.

You get the picture and it isn't pretty.

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Did the U.S. murder Boris Nemtsov?

Headlines around the world have carried some variation of the story: the murder of Boris Nemtsov. Each of these includes some retelling of the pertinent facts: what, who, where, how ... but the real question is 'why'. The answer to this question, or rather, what the west insists is the answer, will tell us a lot about the US's plans to escalate the tensions in Russia over Ukraine, and beyond.

It would be foolish to set aside any hypothesis about this being motivated by people close to him, in the realm of business, politics, or romance. In anything related to business dealings, we might recall that any number of people probably want him dead after his criminality and corruption while serving as director of the now liquidated Neftyanoi Bank, and as chairman of its parent company Neftyanoi Concern.

Much controversy surrounded this back in 2006. Of course in the realm of romantic problems, we have significantly those surrounding the woman he was last seen with. This woman, Anna Duritskaya, was also present during the shooting. Rumors are floating around that this could do with her recent abortion and surrounding points of melodrama.

An obvious link in general with this case is to the ongoing turmoil in Ukraine, but in one variation, this killing may have been motivated by an internal dispute between those pro-US factions there: Nemtsov was connected with the US backed Orange Revolution and Victor Yuschenko, was appointed as an economic advisor then, but left under suspicious circumstances and more enemies than friends.

Among any of these could very well be the motive of the killer or those behind him, but the timing of this shooting and other pertinent facts should lead us to consider that this was politically motivated.

These plots can actually be somewhat complex, it is often the case that two birds are killed with one stone. A personal rival can be given a green light settle a score, and also accomplish something of larger geostrategic significance such as this.

But to the point, here we are looking at whether this was carried out on the orders of one of the major involved players in the present world turmoil. Concretely, the question is whether this was carried out by the Russians and its friends, or by the US and its friends.

Whether the actual shooting was done by contract or not, is also not very important except when looking at forensics of the crime scene, and the immediate circumstances themselves. These might tell us certain things, except that in cases such as this we must always be mindful that looking like an unprofessional job - such as in this case - would be something a professional would do to throw the scent.

For example, we are likely to hear from friends of Russia that this killing does not have the telltale signs of a professional type of hit, the sort a government would carry out. They will point out, of course, that Boris Nemtsov would have died in a car crash, or from a heart attack. It is considered far too sloppy for anyone in the Kremlin to think of shooting him in public, with witnesses.

This is not too compelling, because such clean methods would actually seem to implicate the Russian state, whereas the rather sloppy way Nemtsov was actually killed even compels us to rule this out. If a hit were to be carried out of this sort, then it would make perfect sense of the state to use an amateur method. Because anything is possible, it is not entirely useful to follow this line of reasoning with one exception: if the US was behind this, that it was a murder would have to be obvious, with no doubts.

This is because if the Russians wanted him dead, the value of killing him would be in his absence. If the Americans killed him, the value is in the spectacle of the killing itself. This killing is loaded with spectacle.

While one can argue that Russia could have employed someone to use sloppy methods in order to throw the scent, it is more likely that given the method, that the US is behind it. This could have been arranged through Ukrainian assets, and would not involve actual US agents on the ground in Moscow.

This was very obviously a murder which was wanted to be known as a murder. This does not fit into either a Russian motive or modus operandi.

What complicates things, however, is when we ask the real questions.

The first question to ask is , in this case we know that Russia, in particular Putin, has nothing to gain. The killing of Nemtsov under any of the circumstances does not make any sense from the view of Russian interest. Politically he did not pose a real threat, alive. With less than 5%, his ticket and the Republican Party failed to garner enough support to be sat in the Duma. With approval ratings above 85%, Putin is not in the position to need to resort to these kinds of tactics.

Russia is also at a different juncture politically, where such methods are not likely to be necessary even if there was an opposition figure to be concerned about. Every other form of virtual-media assassination is possible, that actual ones are not necessary. There are also other methods to delegitimize these characters which invariably revolve around their business dealings, underage girls, and so forth.

These other methods are much cleaner, as assassinations make a government look more desperate, create an unnecessary martyr out of a marginal character, and give fuel to other opposition at home and abroad.

While he held an important position in the 1990's under Yeltsin as First Deputy Prime Minister for about a year until 1998, his political career since the early 00's has been of little significance and has not inspired mass support.

It is the US that has the most to gain from this. Western press has painted him for years as the likely person to replace Putin in a serious change of political stability in Russia. This follows a western narrative, where western liberal values are superimposed as natural and universal values around the world.

While Nemtsov was one of the US's favorites, he is not a favorite with the Russian people. The actual 'runner up' party in Russia, which is projected to surpass Putin's ruling party in the event of a serious change, is the Communist Party of Zyuganov. But this narrative cuts against western interests, and is at odds with the west's narratives about the Cold War and its results.

That western press and the leadership of the US and Ukraine are exploiting this is another clue that they had a hand in it.

We can see already statements made by Obama and Poroshenko , Canadian Foreign Minister and also deputy general secretary of NATO happened very quickly, uniformly, and seem to be following a procedure.

These statements from NATO and foreign governments are outrageous, but not surprising, because they imply that the Russian government is behind them. Why would the murder be 'condemned'? Besides that all murders are condemned, generally, by the societies in which they occur (hence there are laws against them), why would this particular murder be 'condemned' politically without knowing if there was a political motive at all?

As we know, on March 1st, tomorrow, there will be another attempt by the pro-US forces and their liberal allies to launch a Russian "Spring", also called the 'Anti-Crisis March'. With this fresh murder just 36 hours before the March, we might expect to see the martyrdom of Nemtsov highlighted.

Just ten days ago, Alexei Navalny, another western backed figure, was arrested for trying to organize for the march, which backers hope will attract as many as 100,000 against Putin.

When Putin was last elected, the same group organized a similar march. The loyal opposition Communists joined this march, and drowned the liberal banners with communist ones. This was an excellent test run and message sent to US handlers, that Russia is ready with its own loyal opposition to frustrate and redirect the aims of any 5th column efforts on the part of the US.

Likewise, on the propaganda front, the patriotic scene has co-opted the term 'Russian Spring' to mean the opposite of what the US has branded it in places like Egypt, Libya, and Syria. Now it means a movement to push back the US's hegemonic schemes, including its use of the Color/Spring tactic.

The biggest concern now for this Sunday's march is not the turnout, or how it will be spun in the west. The problem on the propaganda side of this action so far is that it is quite useless and incomplete.

Russia's present political stability and the popularity of Putin is not in the hands of western media. This represents a monumental change from the last days of old media during the collapse of the USSR, when BBC and CNN presented the spectacle of objective and neutral reporting.

For Russian audiences, and Russian media, this investigation will follow the form of a standard murder investigation. Given the status of the victim and the political implications, it will be given significant coverage. Eventually investigators will make an arrest, and some story will be told. The story may or may not be true, but by and large it will be accepted.

Russians are not losing sleep over this murder, and the outcome of the investigation is not related in any way to their general support for the present government and its policies. Russians have other things to do, places to go, work to get done, and lives to live. Most didn't like him, and only see it as a tragedy, perhaps even a US plot. Those who like him will blame the state, as they hold the state and Putin responsible for much of everything else. All of this is true also of Sunday's planned march.

For western audiences, Russia is already now a totalitarian regime in which opposition is silenced, and its leaders imprisoned and killed in cold blood. This is already the narrative which requires no further reiteration. Putin is Hitler. Appeasement will not work. This is already the line.

All of this means that we haven't heard the end of this yet. It is difficult to see how increased sanctions can be pulled out of this murder, but if there are, that should be no surprise. Past sanctions were based on less. Still, Europe has grown wary of sanctions and any further sanctions are likely to be symbolic, as were the last round.

The biggest concern now is if there are more killings planned for Sunday. The US seems to be going ahead with all of its plans even if the necessary successes at each step before are not met. We have seen this in Syria and Ukraine.

In such an event, it is obvious how the US will spin this, and the call will begin openly for Putin to step down. While this last part may be an eventuality at any rate, the events tomorrow will tell us whether we should expect a serious escalation in this process.

Joaquin Flores is an American expat living in Belgrade. He is a full-time analyst at the Center for Syncretic Studies, a public geostrategic think-tank. His expertise encompasses Eastern Europe and Eurasia,

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SOTT FOCUS: Insignificant 'Putin critic' gunned down by someone who hates Putin

Boris Nemtsov entering the US embassy in 2012

Boris Nemtsov was shot in the back last night as he walked with his Ukrainian girlfriend near the Kremlin in Moscow. Nemtsov ran unsuccessfully for office in 1989 before eventually being elected to Russia's parliament in 1990. As deputy minster for economic reform under Yeltsin, he failed to actually deliver economic reform amid the August 1998 economic crisis and it cost him his job.

In 1999 he founded the Union of Right Forces (SPS), along with fellow liberals Anatoly Chubais and Yegor Gaidar. The SPS was directly sponsored by the US government (via USAID) in 2002 after which it became openly critical of Russia's new President Putin (surprise!). This fact alone establishes Nemtsov and SPS as agents of Western efforts to destabilize Russia and therefore not representative of any significant section of the Russian people. Indeed, in the 2003 election, the SPS failed to reach even the 5% threshold needed to enter parliament.

Realising real politics wasn't for him, Nemtsov decided to try his hand at legalized money laundering banking, joining Neftyanoi Bank which, with Nemtsov as director, was investigated and shut down in 2005 for money laundering and fraud.

In 2004 he joined the Ukrainian government of Mr US-backed-Orange-revolution, Victor Yushenko as an economic adviser. He was kicked out of the job in 2006 because of complaints from cabinet members that he was criticizing their decisions.

With nut-job par excellence and has-been 80s chess champion, Gary Kasparov, Nemtsov formed the political opposition movement Solidarnost (Solidarity) in December 2008. Solidarnost attempts to unite the disparate and, frankly pathetic, opposition groups in Russia. Without US-government funding to Solidarnost this time via NED etc. (USAID was finally kicked out of Russia in 2012) it's unlikely that it would still be operating.

Nemtsov became a prominent face of the "opposition" from 2011 to early 2012 when he and his "uncivil society" friends attended a super covert meeting at the US embassy in Moscow shortly after Michael McFaul had been appointed US ambassador. Unfortunately for the erstwhile 'oppositionists', several TV crews were waiting for them and asked them the obvious question: "why are you visiting the new US ambassador?" There was no response from Nemtsov or the others as they entered, but after an hour or two with the ambassador they appear to have developed some hard core social activist skillz and emerged with camera phones at the ready and a party line to chant at the journalists. You can watch the high jinx here.

Of course the answer to the question of what they were doing with the good ambassador was a no-brainer. Ambassador McFaul serves on the board of directors of Freedom House and the National Endowment for Democracy and is therefore an 'easy touch' for a few $million worth of 'democracy promotion' bonds.

In 2011 the real US government Brookings Institution published a report that called on the US Senate to confirm McFaul and extolled McFaul's merits in "democracy promotion" (i.e. organizing coups) and meeting with "civil society" representatives in Russia (i.e. paying coup plotters). The Brookings report, Give the Next Russian Ambassador a Powerful Tool to Guard Human Rights, also ordered the US government to equip McFaul with a bill to "sanction Russian officials accused of human rights abuses." As with most rabid anti-Russian diatribes couched in vomit-inducing liberal speak, the Brookings report was penned by arch-Neo-Conservative Robert Kagan who is married to freedom cookie queen of the Euromaidan, Victoria "f**k the EU" Nuland, of the US State Dept.

Since 2011 Mr. Nemtsov was Mr. nobody, politically speaking, with even the BBC stating that he had "fallen out of the limelight over the past few years" and "no longer considered part of mainstream politics in Russia". Still, that didn't stop the Western media from referring to Nemtsov as a "prominent opposition politician" whose death has "provoked a worldwide outpouring of sympathy and anger" Really?

Western politicians with an irrational hatred of Russia (i.e. all of them) also took the opportunity to "condemn" the murder while simultaneously using it to defame the Russian government. David Cameron, for example, stated "[Nemtsov's] life was dedicated to speaking up tirelessly for the Russian people, to demanding their right to democracy and liberty under the rule of law, and to an end to corruption". You get the not very subtle insinuation of course. Obama (and others) obnoxiously demanded that the Russian government carry out a "prompt, impartial and transparent investigation", the implicit message being, "we know you did it Putin, and we're warning you, you better admit to it this time!" Barely 24 hours has passed since the shooting and already the British media is reporting that the Kremlin is being "accused of a whitewash".

Of course, the suggestion that Putin, with an 85% approval rating, would have thought it necessary to publicly assassinate a non-entity former politician who couldn't muster 5% of the vote, on the doorstep of the Kremlin no less, and one day before an opposition rally in which the deceased was scheduled to take part, is utterly ridiculous. The point being, by killing Nemtsov in this way, the reaction of Western governments and their media was always going to be as if Putin pulled the trigger himself and posted a selfie of the event on FB. Ergo, if, as the ranks of Western yellow journalists claim, Putin is responsible....where's the selfie!??

Well, you know what's coming next. Do I even need to say it? 'Cui bono'?

Putin's a thug, Putin killed Litvinenko, Putin shot down MH17, Putin annexed Crimea, Putin invaded Ukraine. Yawn.

One final word of advice though to the other opposition "leaders" in Russia, chess-head Kasparov and Navaly in particular. Russia is obviously a dangerous place for opposition "activists". To ensure your safety, please consider asking yourselves these questions:

How much money have I taken from the US government to prepare the ground for a coup in Moscow?

How much money has the US government spent on promoting me as a "prominent opposition leader" in Russia.

Does the US embassy know where I live and do they regularly track my movements.

Does my usefulness to the US government as a still breathing "anti-Putin" activist outweigh my usefulness to the US government as a dead (assassinated) anti-Putin activist?

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Four more Homan Square torture victims come forward

© unknown

Four more victims of incarceration at Chicago's Guantanamo Bay style secret detention/torture center, known as Homan Square, have come out and spoken to The Guardian about their experience being essentially treated like cattle. They are four black males, Brock Terry, Kory Wright, Deandre Hutcherson and David Smith.

Three of them were held in 2006, and one in 2011.

They were kicked in the genitals while helpless and bound, put in 'kennels for humans', and they heard the bloodcurdling screams of other helpless victims while they thought they would never see the light of day again.

One man named Brock Terry was caught with five pounds of cannabis, and ended up being shackled to the arms spread open, being fed only twice in 3 days. The Chicago police are known for turning up the temperature in the facility to extremely high temperatures, and then depriving victims of water while they are tied up, arms extended.

Terry said.

he continued.

He also said he didn't see any other victims there, but he heard cries from people being seemingly tortured, and they screamed and

Another black man named Deandre Hutcherson was shackled in the same vulnerable position, and he said he was punched in the face, and stomped in the genitals

They got kennels - like, for people," Terry also told the Guardian.

Terry continued.

More details will be released as the situation unfolds.

There is a movement to #Shut Down Homan Square tomorrow, and a Twitter storm today.

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CCTV footage of Nemtsov's death released

© Reuters/Sergei Karpukhin

A visitor holds a photo at the site where Boris Nemtsov was recently murdered, in central Moscow, February 28, 2015.

The TVTs TV channel published surveillance camera video which captured the moment of Nemtsov's murder in the center of Moscow. One can see the car and the silhouettes of people.

We can see how Boris Nemtsov and Anna Duritskaya are walking on the bridge toward the Bolotnaya square. They are overtaken and obscured by a snow clearance vehicle with flashing lights. A second later another man runs out from behind the vehicle, gets into a car and leaves.

The snow clearance vehicle stops several meters from the location of the crime. Only one silhouette remains, apparently Nemtsov's acquaintance. Then she walks up to the drivers, and spends several minutes behind the snow clearing vehicle.

[embedded content]

At the same time other pedestrians walk on the bridge. They walk past as if nothing had happened, while others stop briefly out of interest. One individual inspects the place of Nemtsov's death, then runs up to the snow clearing machine, next to which is the girl, then returns to the body. At 23:35 the first vehicle stopped here, and left several seconds later. The girl returned to the place of the crime, then two other individuals walked up to it. At 23:37 another vehicle drives by, abruptly stops, and drives in reverse to the site of the crime. It remains next to the crime scene for some time.

Police arrive at the crime scene at 23:42. We can see two individuals running away from under the bridge.

Investigators are considering all possible versions of Nemtsov's murder. However, sources in the law enforcement say that they are most interested in the scenario in which Nemtsov was killed for personal reasons. In spite of the fact that Nemtsov was fired at no less than six times, not a single bullet struck his companion Anna Duritskaya.

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Keeping fear alive: If terrorism is such a grave threat, why does the FBI need to manufacture plots?

The FBI and major media outlets yesterday trumpeted the agency's latest counterterrorism triumph: the arrest of three Brooklyn men, ages 19 to 30, on charges of conspiring to travel to Syria to fight for ISIS (photo of joint FBI/NYPD press conference, above). As my colleague Murtaza Hussain ably documents, "it appears that none of the three men was in any condition to travel or support the Islamic State, without help from the FBI informant." One of the frightening terrorist villains told the FBI informant that, beyond having no money, he had encountered a significant problem in following through on the FBI's plot: his mom had taken away his passport. Noting the bizarre and unhinged ranting of one of the suspects, Hussain noted on Twitter that this case "sounds like another victory for the FBI over the mentally ill."

In this regard, this latest arrest appears to be quite similar to the overwhelming majority of terrorism arrests the FBI has proudly touted over the last decade. As my colleague Andrew Fishman and I wrote last month — after the FBI manipulated a 20-year-old loner who lived with his parents into allegedly agreeing to join an FBI-created plot to attack the Capitol — these cases follow a very clear pattern:

The known facts from this latest case seem to fit well within a now-familiar FBI pattern whereby the agency does not disrupt planned domestic terror attacks but rather creates them, then publicly praises itself for stopping its own plots.

First, they target a Muslim: due to any evidence of intent or capability to engage in terrorism, but rather for the "radical" political views he expresses. In most cases, the Muslim targeted by the FBI is a very young (late teens, early 20s), adrift, unemployed loner who has shown no signs of mastering basic life functions, let alone carrying out a serious terror attack, and has no known involvement with actual terrorist groups.

They then find another Muslim who is highly motivated to help disrupt a "terror plot": either because they're being paid substantial sums of money by the FBI or because (as appears to be the case here) they are charged with some unrelated crime and are desperate to please the FBI in exchange for leniency (or both). The FBI then gives the informant a detailed attack plan, and sometimes even the money and other instruments to carry it out, and the informant then shares all of that with the target. Typically, the informant also induces, lures, cajoles, and persuades the target to agree to carry out the FBI-designed plot. In some instances where the target refuses to go along, they have their informant offer huge cash inducements to the impoverished target.

Once they finally get the target to agree, the FBI swoops in at the last minute, arrests the target, issues a press release praising themselves for disrupting a dangerous attack (which it conceived of, funded, and recruited the operatives for), and the DOJ and federal judges send their target to prison for years or even decades (where they are kept in special GITMO-like units). Subservient U.S. courts uphold the charges by applying such a broad and permissive interpretation of "entrapment" that it could almost never be successfully invoked.

Once again, we should all pause for a moment to thank the brave men and women of the FBI for saving us from their own terror plots.

One can, if one really wishes, debate whether the FBI should be engaging in such behavior. For reasons I and many others have repeatedly argued, these cases are unjust in the extreme: a form of pre-emptory prosecution where vulnerable individuals are targeted and manipulated not for any criminal acts they have committed but rather for the bad political views they have expressed. They end up sending young people to prison for decades for "crimes" which even their sentencing judges acknowledge they never would have seriously considered, let alone committed, in the absence of FBI trickery. It's hard to imagine anyone thinking this is a justifiable tactic, but I'm certain there are people who believe that. Let's leave that question to the side for the moment in favor of a different issue.

We're constantly bombarded with dire warnings about the grave threat of home-grown terrorists, "lone wolf" extremists and ISIS. So intensified are these official warnings that earlier this month cited anonymous U.S. intelligence officials to warn of the growing ISIS threat and announce "the prospect of a new global war on terror."

But how serious of a threat can all of this be, at least domestically, if the FBI continually has to resort to manufacturing its own plots by trolling the Internet in search of young drifters and/or the mentally ill whom they target, recruit and then manipulate into joining? Does that not, by itself, demonstrate how over-hyped and insubstantial this "threat" actually is? Shouldn't there be actual plots, ones that are created and fueled without the help of the FBI, that the agency should devote its massive resources to stopping?

This FBI tactic would be akin to having the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) constantly warn of the severe threat posed by drug addiction while it simultaneously uses pushers on its payroll to deliberately get people hooked on drugs so that they can arrest the addicts they've created and thus justify their own warnings and budgets (and that kind of threat-creation, just by the way, is not all that far off from what the other federal law enforcement agencies, like the FBI, are actually doing). As we noted the last time we wrote about this, the Justice Department is aggressively pressuring U.S. allies to employ these same entrapment tactics in order to create their own terrorists, who can then be paraded around as proof of the grave threat.

Threats that are real, and substantial, do not need to be manufactured and concocted. Indeed, as the blogger Digby, citing Juan Cole, recently showed, run-of-the-mill "lone wolf" gun violence is so much of a greater threat to Americans than "domestic terror" by every statistical metric that it's almost impossible to overstate the disparity:

In that regard, it is not difficult to understand why "domestic terror" and "homegrown extremism" are things the FBI is desperately determined to create. But this FBI terror-plot concoction should, by itself, suffice to demonstrate how wildly exaggerated this threat actually is.

© Mary Altaffer/AP

UPDATE: The ACLU of Massachusetts's Kade Crockford notes this extraordinarily revealing quote from former FBI assistant director Thomas Fuentes, as he defends one of the worst FBI terror "sting" operations of all (the Cromitie prosecution we describe at length here):

If you're submitting budget proposals for a law enforcement agency, for an intelligence agency, you're not going to submit the proposal that "We won the war on terror and everything's great," cuz the first thing that's gonna happen is your budget's gonna be cut in half. You know, it's my opposite of Jesse Jackson's 'Keep Hope Alive'—it's 'Keep Fear Alive.' Keep it alive.

That is the FBI's terrorism strategy — — and it drives everything they do.

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