中居正広、リオ五輪メインキャスター就任はジャニーズ事務所の「独立封じ」！？TBSのリオ五輪メインキャスターにSMAPの中居正広が決定したことが6日、明らかになった。これで中居は冬季五輪も含めて7大会連続で五輪のキャスターを務めることになる。ところがこれに対して疑問の声が上がっている。ご存知の通り中居はプロ野球の大ファンで、野球に対する知識は深いが、それ以外のスポーツについては素人同然でほとんど知識がない。その野球はリオ五輪の競技から外れているため、なぜ中居が今回もキャスターを務めるのかと不満を持つ人が多いようだ。「特に五輪の注目競技であるサッカーについては、知らないどころか嫌っていると言われています。もともと興味がなかったのに、08年に映画の番宣をするためにJリーグ新潟－浦和戦を訪れ、浦和のサポーターから大ブーイングをくらいサッカー嫌いになったそうです。ですからサッカーのことはほとんど知りません。それでメインキャスターが務まるのかどうか‥‥」（週刊誌記者）

Putin’s Path to the KGBFebruary 6, 2016 
Using his unique access to the Kremlin, German journalist Alexander Rahr shares the inside story on Russian President Vladimir Putin’s formative years in Leningrad and his path to the KGB. Putin never concealed his background. Spiridon, his grandfather on the father’s side, was a cook, but not a regular one. Initially, he prepared meals for Lenin, then—for Stalin. A person working in such a position and in such proximity to the Kremlin’s leaders could not not be a staffer at the People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs (NKVD), KGB’s predecessor. Spiridon served the dictator daily, and it is beyond any doubt that he was being watched much more closely than any Politburo. Portraits of Politburo members decorated the pages of textbooks and posters. As a result, their faces were familiar to any Soviet student. Leonid Brezhnev, the leader of the Communist Party and the head of state, was listed first. Then came Aleksei Kosygin, the Chair of the Council of Ministers, Defense Minister Dmitriy Ustinov—at one point both had direct links to the Leningrad military-industrial complex—and Mikhail Suslov. In terms of the Kremlin Olympus, the latter had the reputation of a “gray cardinal” responsible for the purity and consistency of the Communist ideology. But Vladimir Putin probably remembered the face of the 50-year-old Yuri Andropov best. In 1967, the latter was appointed as the head of the KGB. Five years later, he became a member of the Politburo upon Brezhnev’s insistence: this was a sure sign that the political influence of the organization that he headed—which at one point became the dark symbol of Stalin’s dictatorship—had grown. Of course, at that point Putin could not even imagine that 30 years later he would take over Andropov’s place at Lubyanka KGB headquarters in Moscow.

Putin Judo
A young Vladimir Putin practices Judo, a martial art which he would master.
\At one point in the summer of 1970, 17-year-old Vladimir knocked on the massive door of building #4 located on Liteynyi Avenue. Most Leningrad residents tried to approach this building as rarely as possible, since the KGB Administration was located there. Putin’s future boss described his visit in an interview to Komsolskaia Pravda newspaper as follows: “Putin’s wish to work for the KGB appeared if not in his childhood, then, in the very least, in his youth. Immediately after graduating high school, he visited our Administration and announced right there in the doorway: ‘I want to work here.'”According to Putin, at first he dreamt of becoming a pilot, but by the age of 16, he definitively decided that he would wear the epaulettes of a KGB officer without any doubt. Of course, the fact that his grandfather at one point worked in the system was not an insignificant factor. Yet Putin’s future colleagues were somewhat surprised because no one approached them with this kind of request in quite some time. They immediately explained to the young visitor that this would only be possible after serving in the military or graduating from university. “What university is preferable?”, asked Vladimir. “Law school,” they responded. Thus Putin used every opportunity to get into law school at the Leningrad University, which was located on the 22nd line of the Vasilyevsky Island, that is in the central part of town. This was not easy. He had to overcome his parents’ resistance, who were hoping that their son would choose the profession of an engineer. But in the end, Vladimir got his way. Then it turned out that in order to attend law school, one had to receive recommendation letters from the District Party Committee or the Young Communist League (Komsomol). Exceptions were made for those, who graduated high school with excellent grades. It paints Putin in a positive light that he managed to overcome all the hurdles and was admitted to his faculty of choice upon the very first attempt.A few weeks later, Putin celebrated his 18th birthday, and the next day he heard on the radio that Alexander Solzhenitsyn received the Nobel Prize in literature. In all likelihood, by then Putin had read Solzhenitsyn’s novel One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. At that time, what was known about Gorbachev—who held the post of the First Secretary of the Stavropol Regional Party Committee—was that he treated dissidents with a certain level of sympathy. In contrast, the First Secretary of the Sverdlovsk (today’s Yekaterinburg) Regional Committee of the Communist Party, Yeltsin—who in the middle of the 1970s ordered the demolition of the Ipatiev House, the basement of which witnessed the murder of the tsar’s family in 1918—avoided all contacts with conformists. In general, his manners and management style resembled those of the First Secretary of the Leningrad Regional Party Committee, Grigory Romanov, in many ways.

空中分解・SMAP お互いに一番頼りにしていた中居と木村2004年、SMAPは「メンバーの中で一番頼りになるのは？」という質問に答えた
中居正広は迷いなく「木村」の札をあげ、木村拓哉も「中居」とあげた
現在は亀裂が生じたと報じられているが、かつては互いに信頼していたようだ

Feat of an Intelligence Officer, one of the spy films Putin watched while growing up.
What did Vladimir Putin think when he heard the news of Solzhenitsyn’s award? It is highly unlikely that he was either disappointed or pleased. The only thing that disappointed Putin was the fact that he, as he later said, was unable to work for the KGB due to being too young. In one interview, Putin defended the existence of the so-called “informants” and stated that the state has the right to use secret agents to receive the necessary information. However, it is highly unlikely that Vladimir Putin wanted to work in the senseless and unenviable field of going after dissidents. There is no doubt that Putin was attracted to a different kind of activities within the KGB. It was during that memorable year that Willy Brandt’s government began to carry out his famous Ostpolitik, and the relationship between the Soviet Union and the West seemed to shift toward détente. As a result, The Federal Republic of Germany became the main European trade partner of the USSR. In February of 1970, Moscow and Bonn signed the first agreement on natural-gas supplies. In August, Federal Chancellor Brandt and Leonid Brezhnev signed an agreement in Moscow establishing the framework for future relations between the two countries.
Did Vladimir want to become a Soviet James Bond? Hardly. First, he lacked the necessary training. He did not serve in the military. However, all faculties at the university had military departments, so Putin, much like the other students, did not need to wear epaulettes and carry a gun. Of course, Putin had to attend military training in his final year. However, he and his peers likely interpreted them as a kind of gym class with a somewhat greater load. After graduating university, Putin was given the title of lieutenant in the reserve.
In 1974, in the middle of his fourth year, the long-time dream of Putin as a student had come true. A KGB officer called him at home and offered to meet. The next day, Vladimir, burning with impatience, waited at the appointed place. The man who called him did not show up, and Putin decided that he was not coming at all. Finally, the KGB officer arrived after all, immediately offered a job in his organization to Putin, and pointedly noted that they did not need just any law student, but only promising “cadres.” Indeed, only three students from the Faculty of Law received this kind of offer in addition to Putin. Working for the KGB was considered prestigious not only because of the high salary. Many were attracted by the prospect of getting unusual training.
Putin had to wait for an entire year before receiving an official invitation to the personnel department of the Leningrad branch of the all-powerful KGB.

Vladimir Putin as a KGB captain.
In October of 1975, Putin turned 23. His thesis on the subject of establishing a system most favorable to international trade earned the highest grade. Now he had the full right to call himself a lawyer. Vladimir’s cherished dream also came true: he started working for the KGB. What lay ahead was a very stressful life. Of course, Putin had no idea just how exciting and interesting it would be. Excerpted, translated, and edited from the Russian version of Alexander Rahr’s A German in the Kremlin (Alexander Rahr, Wladimir Putin: Der ‘Deutsche’ im Kreml [Munich: Universitas, 2000]) by Nina Kouprianova
そんなこともあって、中居のメインキャスター就任には裏があるではないかと囁かれている。マスコミ関係者が声を潜めて説明する。リオ五輪は8月5日から21日までの17日間。祭典が終われば契約満了はすぐ。その時、中居はどうなっているのだろうか。
Putin’s “Threats” to the Baltics: a Myth to Promote NATO Unity
In his book 2017: War with Russia published a few months ago, former deputy commander of NATO Sir Alexander Richard Shirreff predicts that to prevent NATO expansion Russia will annex eastern Ukraine and invade the Baltic state of Latvia in May 2017. Most dismiss the book as sensationalist fantasy, but it draws attention to the fact that NATO is in fact aggressively expanding, and holding large-scale war games in Romania, Lithuania, and Poland, and Russia is truly concerned.Why Latvia? Shirreff is not alone in trying to depict Latvia and the other Baltic states (Estonia and Lithuania) as immanently threatened by Russia. The stoking of Baltic fears of such are a principle justification for NATO expansion.
It doesn’t actually. Its military budget is one-twelfth of NATO’s.  It has no motive. Russia has responded to the unrelenting expansion of NATO to encompass it with stern words and defensive military measures but calm and ongoing appeals for cooperation with nations it (despite everything) continues to refer to as “our partners.”But since the Baltics have become the focus of (supposed) NATO-Russian contestation, let’s look at what the problem is all about. The three states were part of the Russian Empire under the tsars from the 18th century up to the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. While most of the component parts of that empire soon became Soviet Socialist Republics (such as Georgia, Armenia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan etc.), others, including Poland, Finland and the Baltic states gained their independence at that time. But in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, there remained large ethnic Russian, and Russian-speaking minorities, as there are today. In 1940 the Soviet army invaded these countries and incorporated them into the USSR. This was part of a strategy to avoid German invasion through the signing of the “Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact” that also meant the temporary division of Poland. (We can criticize this, as I surely do, but that’s the history.) A year later the Nazis invaded the Baltic republics and the Soviet Union as a whole. But the Soviets won the war, and the Baltics remained Soviet up to 1991. The Baltic states, never truly happy campers in the Soviet Union, initiated the breakup of the country when, from June 1987, protests in Latvia and Estonia led to demands for secession, which the USSR recognized in September 1991.  These demands for independence were generally supported by ethnic Russians in the republics. They no doubt expected that they would retain their longstanding linguistic rights.
(This issue of language rights is a huge problem in the former Soviet republics, including especially Ukraine. But it is little understood nor appreciated by U.S.opinion-makers, especially U.S. State Department officials and their media echo chamber.) Today the Baltic republics have a population of a little over six million, including about one million ethnic Russians. The Russian figure has declined by about one-third since 1991. It is currently lowest in Lithuania (6 to 14%), and 24-30% in the other states. The restoration of independence produced a wave of nationalist sentiment that included an attack on existing rights of ethnic Russians, distinguished from the others less by looks than by language. As recently as May 2016 a survey co-conducted by the Estonian and Latvian governments found that 89% of ethnic Latvians and 84% of ethnic Estonians are unhappy with this presence and want the Russians to “move back to Russia,” although many are from families who have lived in these countries for centuries. In Latvia, the State Language Law (passed in 2000) requires that documents to local and national government, and to local and national state public enterprises, be submitted in Latvian only, as the sole national language. (Earlier they could be submitted in Russian, or even English or German.) Aside from being perceived by the minority as an attack on their own culture and identity, this requirement imposes hardships especially for older citizens who have never mastered the “national” language. A similar situation pertains in Estonia. Protests not only by Russia but by other countries have resulted in rulings against Latvia by the European Court of Human Rights and the UN Human Rights Committee. Moscow sees itself as the protector of ethnic Russians from Ukraine to the Baltics. This should not be so hard to understand. But that does not mean that Moscow—however annoyed it is by NATO expansion to its borders—has plans to invade its neighbors and spark a general conflagration. NATO in 2013 had 3,370,000 service members in 2013, to Russia’s 766,000 troops. NATO expenditures in 2015 were $892 billion on defense in 2015, compared to Russia’s $70 billion. The idea that Russia poses a threat to any NATO nation is as plausible as the notion that Saddam Hussein threatened the world with weapons of mass destruction. Or that Libya’s Gadhafy was preparing a genocidal campaign against his own people. Or that Iran plans to use nukes to wipe Israel off the map. These are all examples of the Big Lie.
歌手で俳優の福山雅治さんが、8月5日に開幕するリオデジャネイロ五輪で、テレビ朝日のスペシャルキャスターを務めることが19日、分かった。福山さんが同局の夏季オリンピック放送に参加するのは、2000年のシドニー五輪から5大会連続。福山さんはカメラを片手に現地のリオから最新情報を届けるほか、前回の12年ロンドン五輪に続いて、テーマソングも担当し、テーマソングのタイトルが「1461日」であることも明らかになった。(まんたんウェブ

And what about Ukraine? The limited moves Russia has taken there have been in direct response of the U.S.-led effort to incorporate Ukraine into NATO, most notably in backing the pro-NATO (and neo-fascist) forces who pulled off the coup of February 22, 2014.  Any support Russia has offered to ethnic Russians in the Donbass opposed to the ultranationalist (and dysfunctional) new regime in Kiev hardly constitute an “invasion.”
It’s all about NATO. Unfortunately, the U.S. masses don’t even know what NATO is, or how it’s expanding. It is rarely mentioned in the mainstream press; its existence is never problematized, or discussed in U.S. political debates (except when Trump says the U.S.’s NATO allies are getting a “free ride”); the fact that its dissolution is not subject to questioning is all very depressing. But wait, I must correct myself. Stephen Kinzer, a senior fellow at the Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University, got an op-ed published in the Boston Globe a few days ago, entitled “Is NATO Necessary?” Without calling for its outright abolition, he declares, “We need less NATO, not more.
But the next day the newspaper website included (as if by way of apology) an op-ed by Nicholas Burns, Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs in the George W. Bush administration and now professor of the practice of diplomacy and international politics at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. It’s entitled, “Why NATO is vital for American interests.” Burns adduces four reasons for NATO’s continuing necessity.
“The first is Vladimir Putin’s aggression — his division of Georgia and Ukraine, his annexation of Crimea, his threats to the Baltic states, and his military’s harassment of US forces in international airspace and international waters.” (In other words, Russia’s restrained response to NATO’s provocations is reasons for NATO to continue, as a provocateur. And what “threats” of Putin can Burns cite? There have been none.)
Strength. Power. Confidence.

剛力彩芽　「うざいくらいポジティブ」　ルーツは母親の“教え”
笑顔で元気、ポジティブなイメージの女優・剛力彩芽（２３）。素顔もポジティブオーラ全開で、周囲を明るくしている。力の源は「家族バカ」を自任するほど結びつきが強い家族の存在。いまだに父親の膝の上に座るなど娘としても理想的だ。今どきまれなほど素直で真っすぐに育った“剛力彩芽のレシピ”をひもといてみる。(スポニチアネックス)
Nato v Russia in 99 seconds
He describes Russia as now the west’s most dangerous adversary and says Putin’s course can only be stopped if the west wakes up to the real possibility of war and takes urgent action. He also rounds on the UK for what he says is the emasculation of its conventional military capability on the assumption that the international scene will remain benign. He says Nato increasingly lacks the knowledge, capability and military hardware to match what he describes as Russia’s ever-improving conventional capability. He is scathing about David Cameron and Philip Hammond, who was defence secretary before becoming foreign secretary, over cuts in the military. Speaking about Cameron, he writes that he has “made himself increasingly irrelevant on the international stage”. Shirreff discloses a clash with Hammond, then defence secretary, in 2014 after the general wrote a piece in the Sunday Times saying that cutbacks were a big gamble. “The defence secretary was so infuriated at being questioned in public that I was summoned by General Sir Peter Wall, the chief of the general staff and head of the army, and told that the defence secretary wanted ‘formal action’ against me. “However, formal action would have involved a court martial and, fortunately for the latter’s political reputation – it also seems he had not appreciated that I reported to Nato and not to him – wiser counsel had prevailed.”Asked at the book launch about the incident, he said “I think it is the duty of senior soldiers engaged with politicians not to think like politicians, not to make life easy for politicians, but to lay out the military consequences of political decisions. And I sense that is something that has got blurred in recent years.” The latter point appeared to be a reference to the failure of senior British military figures to stand up to Tony Blair over the invasion of Iraq. The Chilcot inquiry into Iraq is expected to criticise senior British commanders over this failure. Asked about the consequences for British security of leaving the European Union, Shirreff said it would make the EU weaker and that a weaker EU would make Britain weaker.

Que faut-il faire pour contrer efficacement la menace terroriste ?
17/07/2016  

La France a de nouveau été frappée, probablement par le terrorisme islamique, avec 84 morts et plusieurs blessés. Cela fait partie d’une série des attentants survenus sur le territoire depuis 2012. Aujourd’hui, il est temps de faire une analyse lucide des évenements survenus et d’en tirer des conclusions – je le souligne, lentement et lucidement, sans hâte. C’est pourquoi que j’ai attendu jusqu’aujourd’hui.

Alors, qu’est-ce qui s’est exactement passe ?
En mars 2012, puis en janvier et novembre 2015, des musulmans issus des millieux d’immigres en France et en Belgique (agglomeration parisienne, Molenbeek), tous connus aux services de renseignement français et a la police française, ont utilisé des armes à feu pour tuer des dizaines de civils innocents. On ignore encore si l’immigré tunisien qui a tué 84 personnes à Nice était lui aussi un terroriste islamiste ou tout simplement un homme fol.
Quoi qu’il en soit, les auteurs de ces attentats étaient soit des immigrés, soit des fils des immigrés d’origine maghrébine et de confession musulmane, inspirés par de nombreuses mosquées et écoles coraniques à s’engager dans une guerre contre l’Occident.
Bien qu’ils aient été très bien connus aux services de renseignement et la police français, ils n’ont pas nullement été empêchés de commettre leurs atrocités.

能年玲奈　改名の陰に前事務所からの“警告書”
「のん」に改名を発表した能年玲奈(23)に、所属していた「レプロエンタテインメント」が「能年玲奈」使用に関する通知文書を送っていたことが、週刊文春の取材でわかった。(週刊文春)
Il faut mentionner ici que avant et surtout après l’attentat contre Charlie Hebdo du 7 janvier 2015, des mesures très libérticides, et notamment des lois de renseignement modélés sur le Patriot Act américain, ont été adoptés par une large majorité du Parlement. Ces mesures ont donné des pouvoirs d’espionnage sans précédent, presque illimités, hors tout contrôle judiciaire, aux services de renseignement. Qui plus est, depuis novembre 2015, la France est en état d’urgence. Tout cela a pourtant complètement échoué de déjouer les attentats survenus en 2015 et 2016.

Force est donc de constater que :
•Pour le moment, nous ne savons pas encore, et nous n’avons aucune preuve, que l’auteur de la tragédie du 14 juillet ait été un terroriste islamique. (Le ministre de l’Intérieur, Bernard Cazeneuve, dit qu’il ne s’agit pas d’un attentat terroriste ici.) Il n’aurait pas été un homme réligieux et n’aurait pas partagé de vues islamo-terroristes de l’EI. Il parait qu’il était tout simplement fou. •L’auteur de la tuerie survenue a Nice était, dans ce cas-là, un immigré d’origine tunesienne, âgé de 31 ans, donc il n’avait vraiment pas grande-chose, ou peut-être meme rien, avec l’Etat Islamique et la guerre en Syrie.
•Toutes les mesures libérticides adoptées depuis 2012, et surtout depuis janvier 2015, ont complètement et spectaculairement échoué d’empêcher de pires attentants de survenir. A peine quelques mois après que la loi renseignement, dite “loi Patriot a la francaise”, avait été voteée, des terroristes islamistes ont commis les attentants du 13 novembre 2015, faisant plus de 130 morts. On dénombre donc plus de 210 morts depuis la mise en oeuvre de cette loi néfaste. Toutes les promesses des politiciens UMPS que ces lois de surenchère aillent empêcher des attaques pires que ceux du janvier 2015 se sont révélées mensongères. Ces mesures libérticides n’ont absolument rien fait pour améliorer notre sécurité.
•Par conséquent, tout peuple qui cédera ses libértés dans le vain espoir de gagner plus de sécurité sera tristement deçu. Il perdra ses libértés sans rien gagner en matière de sécurité. Tout comme l’un des pères fondateurs des Etats-Unis, Benjamin Franklin, nous a avertis il y a deux siècles.
•Ces mesures libérticides, et les nouvelles réactions de surenchère sécuritaire folle des politiciens fran_ais, notamment ceux des Républicains, démontrent a quel point la classe politique française, et surtout celle issue de l’ “establishment” (UMPS), est stupide et incapable d’une analyse lucide des faits avérés. Eric Ciotti et François Fillon se sont notamment “distingués” dans leur aveuglement aux faits et dans leur surenchère sécuritaire.
•Il est aussi complètement inexplicable pourquoi l’un des sites touristiques les plus populaires de Nice, sa promenade la plus prominente, n’avait pas été suffisament sécurisée pour la soiree du 14 juillet. Mais je ne vais pas automatiquement blâmer le gouvernement actuel. Il faut des enquêters impartiels pour tout analyser et d’éventuellement monter de doigt des coupables.
•Neuf jours avant la Fête Nationale, la commission d’enquête sur les attentats du 13 novembre avait préconisé des reformes importantes de la police, de la gendarmerie et des services de renseignement. Elle n’a reçu aucune reaction de la part du gouvernement. (http://www.lefigaro.fr/actualite-france/2016/07/05/01016-20160705ARTFIG00028-terrorisme-les-propositions-chocs-de-la-commission-fenech.php)
Vu ce constat de faits, je préconise les mesures suivantes :