By Barbara Liston

ORLANDO, Fla. (Reuters) - A Florida Islamic group announced on Monday it has filed a formal notice with the FBI that it plans to sue the agency for $30 million in the death of Ibragim Todashev, a friend of one of the Boston Marathon bombing suspects.

Todashev, 27, a Muslim Chechen immigrant, was killed in an Orlando apartment in May 2013 during FBI questioning about his links with the Boston suspects. The FBI said the agent shot Todashev after he attacked him.

The notice was filed by the Council on American-Islamic Relations Florida (CAIR-Florida), a civil rights group, on behalf of Todashev's parents who accused the FBI in a statement on Monday of killing their son "in cold blood."

Thania Diaz Clevenger, civil rights director for CAIR Florida, said the group was "seeking answers and justice for someone who was shot seven times by an FBI agent in his own home after hours of interrogation."

An FBI spokesman said Monday the agency does not comment on pending litigation.

CAIR spokesman Ali Kurnaz told a press conference in Orlando "there are a lot of things that happened that day that we don't know ... there are things that don't add up."

For example, the autopsy report and video from the interrogation have not been publicly released, he said.

CAIR accused the FBI of "careless hiring practices" involving FBI agent Aaron McFarlane as well as a lax internal review that cleared him in Todashev's death.

CAIR said in a statement that during his time with the Oakland, California, Police Department he was involved in two police brutality lawsuits, four internal affairs investigations, allegations of beating suspects and witnesses falsified police reports.

Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was in court on Monday for a hearing before his trial starts later this week. Tsarnaev, 21, is accused of killing three people and injuring 264 with bombs in the largest mass-casualty attack on U.S. soil since Sept. 11, 2001.

He is also accused of killing a police officer.

Todashev was a friend of Tsarnaev's brother, Tamerlan, an alleged co-conspirator in the Boston bombing, who was killed in a police shootout.

Todashev's parents in Russia issued a statement through CAIR on Monday, saying their son "was killed by the FBI in cold blood."

"Today, together with CAIR Florida, we are starting a process that will bring, as we hope, justice to our son, our family, and our world."

(Writing by David Adams; Editing by Bill Trott)

BY MEGAN SPECIA 6 HOURS AGO

A video shared by social media accounts linked to Boko Haram on Monday depict the execution of two men by members of the extremist Islamist group, mirroring the gruesome tactic that has become synonymous with ISIS.

This is the latest move by Boko Haram in an attempt to more closely align itself with ISIS, which controls swathes of land in Iraq and Syria. Boko Haram, which was founded in 2002, has long rejected Western secular society and attempted to impose Shariah law — an Islamic legal system based on the Koran and fatwas — and increase its territory under a self-proclaimed Islamic caliphate. ISIS has pursued similar goals.

In the video, titled "Harvest of Spies," two men are beheaded. After a stylized introduction, a man introduces himself as Dawoud Muhammad of Baga, a town in Nigeria, and explains how he was bribed by a police officer to spy on the group.

In the video, Boko Haram militants hold knives to the victims' throats before the clip cuts away. In the background, a man holds what looks like a black flag with faint white lettering, though the insignia cannot be seen in full. The beheadings occur off camera, but the video returns to show the decapitated bodies.

Screenshot of Boko Haram video showing beheading of two men.

The footage is accompanied by three sets of subtitles: English; French; and Arabic.

The world is fraught with dangers for the United States – including cyber attacks, violent extremism, the so-called Islamic State, organized crime and threats from Russia and China – the country's intelligence chiefs testified on Thursday.

In the annual hearing on worldwide threats before the Senate Armed Services Committee, US Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, Lt. General Vincent Stewart (USMC), reported on the intelligence community’s assessment of current and potential threats to American security and interests.

Clapper opened his prepared remarks by discussing cyber threats, which are “increasing in frequency, scale, sophistication and severity of impact.” However, he deemed the likelihood of a “catastrophic attack” remote, and said the intelligence community anticipates more of an ongoing series of attacks from a variety of sources, imposing cumulative costs.

“The cyber threat cannot be eliminated; rather, cyber risk must be managed,” Clapper said.

Later in the hearing, while answering a question about the ways of countering the Islamic State’s extensive use of social media, Clapper noted: “The challenge is, how do you take down the internet?”

Kristin Lord @kristin_lord Follow Cyber-Armageddon less likely than ongoing cyber-attacks that impose cumulative costs says Clapper http:// bloom.bg/1amLADv via @glubold 8:33 AM - 26 Feb 2015

According to Clapper, 2014 was “the most lethal year for global terrorism” in the 45 years the statistics have been kept. Half of all the attacks and deaths occurred in Iraq, Pakistan, and Afghanistan. This contradicts earlier remarks from Secretary of State John Kerry to the House Foreign Affairs Committee, that this was a “period of less daily threat to Americans and to people in the world than normally.”

While much of the testimony was decidedly gloomy, the director of national intelligence did not seem particularly concerned about the threat posed by the Islamic State (IS, also known as ISIS/ISIL). According to US intelligence estimates, the group is running out of money, cutting the pay of its fighters, and even resorting to conscription. Clapper estimated the strength of IS at anywhere between 20,000 and 32,000 fighters.

However, if the Islamic State changed its focus from controlling territory to attacking the West, the group’s access to radicalized Westerners who have fought in Syria and Iraq could provide a ready “pool of operatives.” Clapper noted that more than 20,000 foreign fighters from 90 countries have gone to Syria since the civil war there began in 2011, and at least 3,400 of those were Westerners.

Clapper did say a “relatively small number” of Americans who successfully joined IS have returned to the US, “and we have not identified any of them engaged in attack plotting.”

Damian Paletta ✔ @damianpaletta Follow DNI Chief Clapper says a "small number" of U.S. foreign fighters have returned from ISIL / Syria but none "engaged in attack plotting." 9:54 AM - 26 Feb 2015

As for Syria, the war there is “trending in the Assad regime’s favor” according to Lt. Gen. Stewart, but military intelligence believes it unlikely that Damascus would be able to decisively defeat the rebels in 2015.

Both intelligence directors brought up Russia and China as the most significant state sources of concern, referring to new weapons systems, cyber commands, and increased confrontation over Ukraine and the South China Sea. Both committee chairman John McCain (R-Ariz.) and senior member James Inhofe (R-Okla.) raised questions about arming the government in Kiev against what they termed “Russian aggression.”

READ MORE: Busted: Kiev MPs try to fool US senator with ‘proof’ of Russian tanks in Ukraine

Clapper said the delivery of weapons might prompt a Russian reaction that could “further remove the very thin fig leaf of their position” that Russia was not involved in Ukraine. Prompted by McCain, he stressed he was personally in favor of sending weapons, but stressed that would be a policy decision, not an intelligence one.

No mention was made of Clapper’s 2013 comments regarding NSA surveillance of Americans, for which the director of national intelligence has been roundly criticized in the media. When activists tried to bring it up at the end of the hearing, they were swiftly arrested.

Most Americans spend their lives working for others, paying off debts to others and performing tasks that others tell them that they “must” do. These days, we don’t like to think of ourselves as “servants” or “slaves”, but that is what the vast majority of us are. It is just that the mechanisms of our enslavement have become much more sophisticated over time. It has been said that the borrower is the servant of the lender, and most of us start going into debt very early into our adult years. In fact, those that go to college to “get an education” are likely to enter the “real world” with a staggering amount of debt. And of course that is just the beginning of the debt accumulation. Today, when you add up all mortgage debt, all credit card debt and all student loan debt, the average American household is carrying a grand total of 203,163 dollars of debt. Overall, American households are more than 11 trillion dollars in debt at this point. And even though most Americans don’t realize this, over the course of our lifetimes the amount of money that we will repay on our debts is far greater than the amount that we originally borrowed. In fact, when it comes to credit card debt you can easily end up repaying several times the amount of money that you originally borrowed. So we work our fingers to the bone to pay off these debts, and the vast majority of us are not even working for ourselves. Instead, our work makes the businesses that other people own more profitable. So if we spend the best years of our lives building businesses for others, servicing debts that we owe to others and making others wealthier, what does that make us?

In 2015, the words “servant” and “slave” have very negative connotations, and we typically don’t use them very much.

Instead, we use words like “employee” because they make us feel so much better.

But is there really that much of a difference?

This is how Google defines “servant”…

“a person who performs duties for others, especially a person employed in a house on domestic duties or as a personal attendant.”

This is how Google defines “slave”…

“a person who is the legal property of another and is forced to obey them.”

This is how Google defines “employee”…

“a person employed for wages or salary, especially at nonexecutive level.”

Yes, most of us might not be “legal property” of someone else in a very narrow sense, but in a broader sense we all have to answer to someone.

We all have someone that we must obey.

And we all have obligations that we must meet or else face the consequences.

At this point, Americans are more dependent on the system than ever before. Small business ownership in the U.S. is at a record low, and the percentage of Americans that are self-employed has fallen to unprecedented levels in recent years. From a very early age, we are trained to study hard so that we can get a good “job” (“just over broke”) and be good cogs in the system.

But is that what life is about?

Is it about being a cog in a system that ultimately benefits others?

Perhaps you don’t think that any of this applies to you personally.

Well, if someone came up to you and asked you what you truly own, what would you say?

Do you own your vehicle?

Most Americans don’t.

In fact, today the average auto loan at signing is approximately $27,000, and many of them stretch on for six or seven years.

What about your home?

Do you own it?

Most Americans don’t.

In fact, overall the banks have a much greater “ownership” interest in our homes and our land than we do.

But even if you have your home totally “paid off”, does that mean that you actually “own” it?

Well, no, not really.

Just see what happens if you quit paying your property taxes (rent) to the proper authorities.

So if they can take your home away from you for not paying rent (property taxes), do you really own it?

That is something to think about it.

What about all of your stuff?

Do you own it?

Perhaps.

But a very large percentage of us have willingly enslaved ourselves in order to acquire all of that stuff.

Today, the typical U.S. household that has at least one credit card has approximately$15,950 in credit card debt.

And if you do not pay off those credit card balances, the credit card companies will unleash the hounds on you.

Have you ever had an encounter with a debt collector?

They can be absolutely brutal. And they use those tactics because they work. In fact, they are so good at what they do that many of those that own debt collection companies have become exceedingly wealthy. The following is from a recent CNN article…

Yachts. Mansions. Extravagant dinner parties. Life is good for the founders of one of the nation’s biggest government debt collectors.

That firm, Linebarger Goggan Blair & Sampson, rakes in big money from government contracts that allow it to pursue debtors over toll violations, taxes and parking tickets. While the debts often start small, the Austin-based firm charges high fees, which can add hundreds or even thousands of dollars to the bill.

After growing this business from a small Texas law firm in the late 1970’s to a nationwide debt collection powerhouse, the firm’s founders and top brass have walked away with millions of dollars.

And I haven’t even mentioned our collective debts yet.

We have willingly chosen to collectively enslave ourselves on a local, a state and a national level.

It is bad enough that we are doing this to ourselves. But we are also cruelly saddling future generations of Americans with the largest mountain of debt in the history of the planet. The following is from my previous article entitled “Barack Obama Says That What America Really Needs Is Lots More Debt“…

When Barack Obama took the oath of office, the U.S. national debt was 10.6 trillion dollars. Today, it has surpassed the 18 trillion dollar mark. And even though we are being told that “deficits are going down”, the truth is that the U.S. national debt increased by more than a trillion dollars in fiscal 2014. But that isn’t good enough for Obama. He says that we need to come out of this period of “mindless austerity” and steal money from our children and our grandchildren even faster. In addition, Obama wants to raise taxes again. His budget calls for 2 trillion dollars in tax increases over the next decade. He always touts these tax increases as “tax hikes on the rich”, but somehow they almost always seem to end up hitting the middle class too. But whether or not Congress ever adopts Obama’s new budget is not really the issue. The reality of the matter is that the “tax and spend Democrats” and the “tax and spend Republicans” are bothresponsible for getting us into this mess. Future generations of Americans are already facing the largest mountain of debt in the history of the planet, and both parties want to make this mountain of debt even higher. The only disagreement is about how fast it should happen. It is a national disgrace, but most Americans have come to accept this as “normal”. If our children and our grandchildren get the opportunity, they will curse us for what we have done to them.

So can we really call ourselves the “home of the brave and the land of the free”?

Isn’t the truth that the vast majority of us are actually deeply enslaved?

Please feel free to share what you think by posting a comment below…

If anyone has stopped to ask just why global central banks are in such a rush to create inflation (but only controlled inflation, not runaway hyperinflation... of course when they fail with the "controlled" part the money paradrop is only a matter of time) over the past 5 years, and have printed over $12 trillion in credit-money since Lehman, the bulk of which has ended up in the stock market, and which for the first time ever are about to monetize all global sovereign debt issuance in 2015, the answer is simple, and can be seen on the chart below.

It also shows the biggest problem facing the world today, namely that at least 9 countries have debt/GDP above 300%, and that a whopping 39% countries have debt-to-GDP of over 100%!

We have written on this topic on countless occasions in the past, so we will be brief: either the Fed inflates this debt away, or one can kiss any hope of economic growth goodbye, even if that means even more central bank rate cuts, more QEs everywhere, and stock markets trading at +? while the middle class around the globe disappears and only the 0.001% is left standing.

Finally, those curious just how the world got to this unprecedented and sorry state, this full breakdown courtesy of McKinsey should answer all questions.