I smell a big fat KGB rat in all this.

[Kid Berwyn]

Context missing from national press coverage of the national gun disorder and Agent Donald Trump and the Russia Thing.



Even if all the media did was to follow the money, they’d find how Agent Trump and the GOP were helped by a hostile power to win ultimate power in the USA. And now that they are out of the Oval Office, their demented spawn kill innocent people with weapons of war, wreck havoc through law and fear, and create the chaotic socio-economic conditions conducive to fascism.

NRA Was 'Foreign Asset' To Russia Ahead of 2016, New Senate Report Reveals

Tim Mak, Heard on All Things Considered
September 27, 2019

The National Rifle Association acted as a "foreign asset" for Russia in the period leading up to the 2016 election, according to a new investigation unveiled Friday by Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore.

Drawing on contemporaneous emails and private interviews, an 18-month probe by the Senate Finance Committee's Democratic staff found that the NRA underwrote political access for Russian nationals Maria Butina and Alexander Torshin more than previously known — even though the two had declared their ties to the Kremlin.

Snip…

The report indicates that top NRA officials were aware of Butina's and Torshin's links with the Kremlin even as they sought to work more closely together under the banner of gun rights.

In an email later circulated to two senior NRA staff members, Butina wrote that a purpose of the 2015 Moscow trip was that "many powerful figures in the Kremlin are counting on Torshin to prove his American connections" by showing he could bring prominent NRA officials to Russia.

At another point, Butina suggested to participants on the 2015 NRA trip to Russia that she might be able to set up a meeting between them and President Vladimir Putin, referring to him as "Russia's highest leader."

Continues…

https://www.npr.org/2019/09/27/764879242/nra-was-foreign-asset-to-russia-ahead-of-2016-new-senate-report-reveals

This — the proven and still active connection between America’s ultra right and Russia’s Mafiya of oligarchics and spooks — should be brought up in context of the current vast right wing gun-nut cult, officially OK’d by SCOTUS and America’s plutocrats, IF we had an honest and true national news media. Who knows? It might unite the country against a common enemy: Vladimir Putin and the KGB.

[Disaffected]

1. The KGB

Last edited Sun May 7, 2023, 08:37 PM - Edit history (1)

no longer exists.

[Progressive Lawyer]

2. "The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist"

[JanMichael]

9. It's the FSB. do you honestly believe that the Soviet Union still exists?

What is there now or a bunch of kleptocapitalists or basically fascist. Just like Trump is certainly not a communist.

[Progressive Lawyer]

13. If the Devil changed his name from Lucifer to Bob, does that mean the devil no longer exists?

[JanMichael]

14. It's very simplistic. Just try calling it for what it is not what you think it is.

I really don't like playing word games. But if you're an attorney I guess that's your gig.

[Progressive Lawyer]

16. Highlighting just because the KGB does not exist in name does not mean it ceases to exist in spirit.

[paleotn]

33. It exists. By any name it's been a Russian specialty for centuries.

[paleotn]

32. The thing about the Soviets is......

they went so far to the left, they met the fascists on the other side. You do know who Putin's employer was for much of his life? Be it the KGB, NKVD, FSB or GRU, it's the one thing Russia has always been good at. Right from their play book is this gem from the Chinese Book of Qi. The thirty six stratagems which echo's Sun Zui....

Undermine the enemy's ability to fight by secretly causing discord between them and their friends, allies, advisors, family, commanders, soldiers, and population.

[AZ8theist]

68. The devil doesn't exist.

It's religious make-believe.

[AllyCat]

21. I don't think it matters what it's called.

FSB, KGB, Russian mafia, Russian oligarchs…it’s all the same when it comes to the damage done. And Pootles is trying to put the USSR back together anyway.

[ancianita]

24. The FSB is internal to Russia.

The GRU is international and runs cyberwar ops. Putin and the Kremlin operate both.

[Silent3]

72. The KGB wasn't really communist either

It was a tool of power and repression with no political ideals apart from maintaining and expanding power. The FSB is just a renamed KGB with the same goals and methods.

[Disaffected]

50. The devil doesn't exist and neither

does the KGB. Which is not to say that both have not been replaced - in place of the KGB we have the FSB and in place of the devil we have the Republican party.

[Pathwalker]

3. Who are/were the KBG ? Do you mean KGB

[Disaffected]

51. Yeah,

since the OP referred to it as the KGB, that's a pretty good guess.

[PJMcK]

4. Different name

Same shit.

Remember Putin’s past.

[underpants]

11. It still exists

Very brutal too.

[Captain Zero]

5. You're splitting hairs and you know it.

The KGB MORPHED INTO WHATEVER THREE initials Putin, a former KGB officer, chose for them. The FSB or something like it. All Functions of the KGB continue under three other letters.

[Disaffected]

54. Don't tell me what I know.

I was simply pointing out an error and perhaps an object lesson - if one wants to post something believed to be significant, at least get the basic facts correct.

[msfiddlestix]

88. Would you have preferred : Russian Intelligence Services and their myriad of Sections Heads of

(fill in the blank) XYZ Ministry?

Me, I know because I grew up knowing KGB. Period. It's a long standing Code. I don't give a fuck how Putin changed the titles and names and section heads and all of variants under FSB/GRU etc etc blah blah blah

Same fucking thing. and a hell of a lot more economical.






.

[Kid Berwyn]

6. True, but Putin does.

You know who no longer exists in the media, though? Charles McGonigal.



Former KGB colonel receives conspiratorial wink from then-President Donald Trump.

Did the FBI’s Charles McGonigal Help Throw the 2016 Election to Trump?

The shocking indictments against the former head of counterintelligence for the FBI in New York raise many dark questions.

By Craig Unger
The National Review, February 1, 2023

In the course of writing two books on Donald Trump’s ties to Russia, the same question occurred to me again and again: How is it possible that I knew all sorts of stuff about Donald Trump, and the FBI didn’t seem to have a clue? Or if they did, why weren’t they doing anything with it?

Specifically, I knew that:

* Starting in 1980, an alleged “spotter agent” for the KGB began cultivating Trump as a new asset for Soviet intelligence.

* The Russian mafia laundered millions of dollars through Donald Trump’s real estate by purchasing condos in all-cash transactions through anonymous corporations that did not disclose real ownership.

* Trump Tower was a home away from home for Vyacheslav Ivankov, one of the most brutal leaders of the Russian mafia, and at least 13 people with known or alleged links to the mafia held the deeds to, lived in, or ran alleged criminal operations out of Trump Tower in New York or other Trump properties.

* Trump was some $4 billion in debt when the Russians came to bail him out via the Bayrock Group, a real estate firm that was largely staffed, owned, and financed by Soviet émigrés who had ties to Russian intelligence and/or organized crime.

Much of my material came from FBI documents. A lot came from open-source databases. It made no sense. There was an astounding amount of data on the public record. The FBI had launched enormous investigations of the Russian mafia in the 1980s. They had staked out a New York electronics store that was a haven for KGB officers. They knew that’s where the Trump Organization bought hundreds of TV sets. They had their eyes on Ivankov and other Russian mobsters who were denizens of Trump’s casinos and bought and sold his condos through shell companies. They had to know that Trump laundered money for and provided a base of operations for the Russian mafia, which was, after all, a de facto state actor tied to Russian intelligence. They had to know that the Russians repeatedly bailed Trump out when he was bankrupt. They had to know that Russia owned him.

Snip…

As FBI director, Freeh had warned that Russian organized crime posed a grave threat to the United States that far transcended mere criminality. It is not clear how much he was paid by Prevezon after he switched sides, but Freeh later bought a $9.38 million mansion in Palm Beach, Florida, just a 10-minute drive from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago.

Then there was the late James Kallstrom, who ran the FBI’s New York office in the mid-’90s and oversaw successful investigations into both the Italian Mafia and later the Russian mob. Kallstrom had developed close friendships with two key players in the Trump-Russia saga. He worked closely with then–U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York Rudy Giuliani in the investigation of the Cosa Nostra network that led to the famed Mafia Commission Trial of 1985–1986. Going even further back, Kallstrom had also been friends with Donald Trump since around 1973, when Kallstrom was putting together a Trump-funded parade in New York to honor Vietnam veterans.

Continues…

https://newrepublic.com/article/170328/charles-mcgonigal-throw-2016-election

Surprised these connections aren’t fit for discussion in the news media, let alone bother more people on a political level.

[ancianita]

25. Thank you for the history review. This is info that Jack Smith is well aware of.

[Rebl2]

35. I have

a feeling the Russians have been involved with nra and republicans long before trump was president.

[asiliveandbreathe]

15. KBG??...you try to dilute..BTW, it WAS the KGB.. same shit, different pile..

After completing studies in jurisprudence at the All-Union Legal Correspondence Institute in 1978, Torshin worked in what was then the Russian Republic Prosecutor’s Office, an agency that was closely tied to the KGB. Later, as deputy speaker of the Federation Council, Torshin was appointed to the Russian Anti-Terrorism Committee, an elite body of officials from the security and intelligence services headed by the chief of the FSB, now Alexander Bortnikov. (After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the KGB was was replaced by the Russian FSB.)

[calimary]

70. Yep, you put it so well, asiliveandbreathe.

“Same shit, different pile.”

[mitch96]

22. Same crew, different acronym..nt

[COL Mustard]

43. Yes it does

Just under different names.

[NullTuples]

71. But the ex-head of the KGB very much does and loves power

I can see him saying, "The Cold War is not over until I win"

[Xolodno]

7. Uh...I think you mean the FSB

The KGB of the USSR was basically dissolved. However, the Belarus intelligence services is still called the KGB.

[Kid Berwyn]

30. This guy is so old he was recruited by the original KGB.

Craig Unger lifted up the lid...



Trump’s Russian Laundromat

How to use Trump Tower and other luxury high-rises to clean dirty money, run an international crime syndicate, and propel a failed real estate developer into the White House.

By CRAIG UNGER
The New Republic, July , 2017

Excerpt...

Trump made his first trip to Russia in 1987, only a few years before the collapse of the Soviet Union. Invited by Soviet Ambassador Yuri Dubinin, Trump was flown to Moscow and Leningrad—all expenses paid—to talk business with high-ups in the Soviet command. In The Art of the Deal, Trump recounted the lunch meeting with Dubinin that led to the trip. “One thing led to another,” he wrote, “and now I’m talking about building a large luxury hotel, across the street from the Kremlin, in partnership with the Soviet government.”

Over the years, Trump and his sons would try and fail five times to build a new Trump Tower in Moscow. But for Trump, what mattered most were the lucrative connections he had begun to make with the Kremlin—and with the wealthy Russians who would buy so many of his properties in the years to come. “Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross section of a lot of our assets,” Donald Trump Jr. boasted at a real estate conference in 2008. “We see a lot of money pouring in from Russia.”

The money, illicit and otherwise, began to rain in earnest after the Soviet Union fell in 1991. President Boris Yeltsin’s shift to a market economy was so abrupt that cash-rich gangsters and corrupt government officials were able to privatize and loot state-held assets in oil, coal, minerals, and banking. Yeltsin himself, in fact, would later describe Russia as “the biggest mafia state in the world.” After Vladimir Putin succeeded Yeltsin as president, Russian intelligence effectively joined forces with the country’s mobsters and oligarchs, allowing them to operate freely as long as they strengthen Putin’s power and serve his personal financial interests. According to James Henry, a former chief economist at McKinsey & Company who consulted on the Panama Papers, some $1.3 trillion in illicit capital has poured out of Russia since the 1990s.

At the top of the sprawling criminal enterprise was Semion Mogilevich. Beginning in the early 1980s, according to the FBI, the short, squat Ukrainian was the key money-laundering contact for the Solntsevskaya Bratva, or Brotherhood, one of the richest criminal syndicates in the world. Before long, he was running a multibillion-dollar worldwide racket of his own. Mogilevich wasn’t feared because he was the most violent gangster, but because he was reputedly the smartest. The FBI has credited the “brainy don,” who holds a degree in economics from Lviv University, with a staggering range of crimes. He ran drug trafficking and prostitution rings on an international scale; in one characteristic deal, he bought a bankrupt airline to ship heroin from Southeast Asia into Europe. He used a jewelry business in Moscow and Budapest as a front for art that Russian gangsters stole from museums, churches, and synagogues all over Europe. He has also been accused of selling some $20 million in stolen weapons, including ground-to-air missiles and armored troop carriers, to Iran. “He uses this wealth and power to not only further his criminal enterprises,” the FBI says, “but to influence governments and their economies.”

In Russia, Mogilevich’s influence reportedly reaches all the way to the top. In 2005, Alexander Litvinenko, a Russian intelligence agent who defected to London, recorded an interview with investigators detailing his inside knowledge of the Kremlin’s ties to organized crime. “Mogilevich,” he said in broken English, “have good relationship with Putin since 1994 or 1993.” A year later Litvinenko was dead, apparently poisoned by agents of the Kremlin.

Continues...

https://newrepublic.com/article/143586/trumps-russian-laundromat-trump-tower-luxury-high-rises-dirty-money-international-crime-syndicate

[Xolodno]

61. Yes, but the KGB imploded.

Putin was working as a taxi driver in St. Petersburg after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Granted he used his contacts to eventually get into politics and to become a "non-descript Mayor" before being selected by Yeltsin as a VP. The FSB that replaced it was mostly a joke, granted it was Putin who whipped it into shape.

[paleotn]

34. Like "Elvis isn't dead. He just went home." (Men in Black), the KGB simply changed their name.

The players and the program are still roughly the same. It's just that money has replaced communist ideology, if that every really mattered anyway.

[Xolodno]

62. See my reply at #30

[erronis]

8. Apparently some commentators on this forum don't understand innuendo. KGB eq FSB

Putin was KGB. Putin morphed into FSB. Same as all the rest of the organization.

Putin is a wannabe Stalin. Whether under KGB or FSB or now as his own self-proclaimed strongman.

It's really first the tactics, then the personalities, last the ideology. Communism as a economic/societal goal died 50 years ago (Khrushchev/Brezhnev) but they had to keep the mythology alive to control the proles.

Putin is just another in their string of assassins who gained control of the apparatus.

[Irish_Dem]

10. I know, all serves to dilute the intent and meaning of the OP.

If you say FSB, no one knows what you are talking about.
So it is easier to say KGB.

Sometimes being too esoteric and pedantic renders
the message meaningless to most people.

If you want to deliver important messages you have to
meet people where they are.

[moondust]

18. A century of totalitarian brainwashing

was definitely NOT something that Putin was ever going to give up. The internet has apparently allowed a few Russians to escape the Kremlin propaganda bubble but not nearly enough.

[ancianita]

26. Yep. Putin just changed two letters.

[Kid Berwyn]

31. Dictators all share that trait.

Mass murder.



“It’d be a heck of a lot easier if I were dictator.”

https://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=364&topic_id=1547206&mesg_id=1547206

[COL Mustard]

45. It goes all the way back to the NKVD

Under Yezhov. What a horrible reputation he had, as did Beria.

[Irish_Dem]

12. Of course Putin bought the NRA to destabilize the US and make it dangerous.

And to make democracy look like a failed form of government.

[Kid Berwyn]

64. Weird how the PATRIOT Act took away privacy but not guns.

Scalia and Thomas led the charge to repeal all manner of federal, state and local gun control law.

The result is about 20 million assault rifles in the hands of civilians, many if not most of whom think Donald Trump will make America white again.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/ar15-rifle-nashville-school-shooting-b2310833.html

[uponit7771]

94. +1, ... and so MAGA can take advantage of it bringing fear for votes

[GreenWave]

17. My FL pals detect Russian spoken during J 6 near the window breaking.

[sellitman]

20. Not surprised.

Sickened , not surprised.

[Kid Berwyn]

65. Russia was in the Capitol on January 6.

The open-source intelligence group Blue Hatz posted this side-by-side image comparison that they say proves Charles Bausman was inside the U.S. Capitol building during the Jan. 6 insurrection.



Jan. 6 Video Suggests 'Russia Insider' Entered Capitol

By Michael Edison Hayden
SPLC, September 23, 2021


Russia Insider founder Charles Bausman breached the walls of the U.S. Capitol building on Jan. 6, according to research conducted by a Europe-based open-source intelligence (OSINT) group into video captured during the insurrection.

The findings by the OSINT group build on Hatewatch reporting showing that Bausman traveled to Washington, D.C., on the day of the insurrection, then disappeared from his home in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and reemerged in Moscow. In the months since, he has served as a talking head on Russian television, commenting on American affairs with a reactionary point of view. Hatewatch previously noted that Bausman claimed on a Russian Orthodox Christian-themed television station to have stopped short at the Capitol’s balustrades without entering the building. Footage obtained by the OSINT group, in which a man bearing a strong resemblance to Bausman is visible inside the Capitol, appears to contradict his account.

The OSINT group, whose members choose to remain anonymous, goes by the name “Blue Hatz.” A person who operates a Twitter account associated with the group described them to Hatewatch as “an independent international team of 15 ‘OSINTers’ and investigators from Europe, Russia, Ukraine and US” who have been using found footage to identify those who breached the Capitol building on Jan. 6. In the Russian television interviews, Bausman claims to be a journalist covering the events of Jan. 6, rather than a pro-Trump demonstrator. But the man the OSINT group believes to be Bausman – shown in side-by-side images in a tweet they published – can be seen wearing a red, Trump-branded hat, blending in with other supporters of the 45th president inside a hallway. The video shows the man strolling and taking video with his cell phone as rioters move through the Capitol building.

Continues…

https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2021/09/23/jan-6-video-suggests-russia-insider-entered-capitol

OP: https://www.democraticunderground.com/100216780813

[relayerbob]

19. The right wingers support Putin

They have no problem with any of it, other than that they did not gain control of the country

[ancianita]

27. Yep.

[lonely bird]

48. Welp

They can ship those two fucking assholes to Russia right now.

[ancianita]

52. Haha yeah.

But my point in posting the photo is not to just focus on two loons, but to illustrate the previous point of how MOST trumpculters are pro-Putin loons.

[lonely bird]

57. Oh, I get it

Authoritarianism is, imo, complementary to conservatism. It is static in nature meaning that while some internal shifting of policies/belief structures occurs the basic foundation is control and maintaining power. Money often ends up as a means of keeping score.

This also goes to the whole communism bleating by the RW. There has never been a communist state in history. The end game of communism is, iirc, the withering away of the state. Every so-called communist state is simply an authoritarian state. Imo, the left/right labels don’t even fit in the case of authoritarian states. They may start spouting leftist or rightist agitprop but the end result is the same.

[ancianita]

60. Well,

I can't agree with you that authoritarianism is complementary to conservatism. Authoritarianism is the governmental face of actual fascism -- government run by corporate capitalism.

Your claim that "the basic foundation is control and maintaining power" is not related AT ALL to government of, by, and for, the People. Nothing about authoritarianism is about rule of law, but about rule of men.

ANY at scale solutions -- which we in the 3rd largest country on the planet require -- that involve collective decisionmaking, are called communism by the Right. But that's all bullshit.

[Kid Berwyn]

76. They really do.

A: The Carlyle Group and Friends.



Who’s Enabling Putin’s Enablers?

BY SAM PIZZIGATI
CounterPunch, March 29, 2022

Where would Vladimir Putin be without the Russian oligarchy? Without Russia’s oligarchs, political leaders of the Western world have concluded, Putin would be tottering. Western leaders have made squeezing Russia’s richest a central piece of their strategy to end Putin’s Ukraine cross-border assault.

These same Western leaders, unfortunately, have failed to take seriously what ought to be an equally pressing question: Where would Russia’s oligarchs be without the West, without the Wall Streeters, wealth managers, and assorted other high-finance riff-raff “paid millions,” as Institute for Policy Studies analyst Chuck Collins puts it, “to help billionaires sequester trillions”?

Western leaders have essentially been ignoring this question almost ever since the old Soviet Union collapsed. And now we’re paying the price. Those Ukraine sanctions against Russia’s oligarchs? They come with a huge loophole. The Western world’s opaque web of tax havens and anonymous corporations is essentially rendering much of those sanctions ineffective.

Snippe…

The U.S. wealth defense industry, we need to remember, hasn’t just been helping Russian oligarchs hide their fortunes. America’s money-handlers have for years been helping them pile up ever grander fortunes. They’ve steered the illicit funds of Russian oligarchs into U.S. real estate, investment funds, and “even factories,” says Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Jake Bernstein, a senior reporter on the 2016 bombshell “Panama Papers” tax avoidance exposé.

The Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich has used “a network of banks, law firms and advisers in multiple countries,” the New York Times just reported, to invest “billions in American hedge funds.” Along the way, he tapped the expertise and contacts of U.S. high-finance giants ranging from Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley to BlackRock and the Carlyle Group.

https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/03/29/whos-enabling-putins-enablers/

Gotta have an enemy — the scarier the better.

[orangecrush]

23. ...

KGB, FSB, tomato, tomahto



/revision/latest?cb=20171004030413

[ancianita]

28. Nope. The FSB (former KGB) is internal (kinda like FBI) and GRU is international military intel.

[orangecrush]

38. So the GRU

Has taken over the KGB (Soviet CIA) role?

Military intelligence is quite different from the work CIA does, which includes political and economic intelligence, etc.

[ancianita]

40. ...

No. The GRU and FSB are separate. The FSB is the continuation of the KGB. The GRU is the new Putin international military intelligence engaged in 'hybrid' cyber warfare.

In the US, the CIA is under the commander-in-chief, and so is military cyber command. So the two are closer in function than most think because they are both under the Executive Branch. The military acts overtly, but both intelligence systems operate covertly.

The FSB under the rule-of-men Kremlin's rule, is slightly like the FBI, under the rule-of-law DOJ. Putin and the Kremlin haven't the same separation of powers as our Executive an Judicial branches.

[orangecrush]

44. Thank you.

Thus, CIA is the intelligence branch, and FBI is counterintelligence, though there is no doubt some overlap.

"Secret History of the CIA" by Joseph Trento was a great book, but a long hard read.

[COL Mustard]

46. KGB and GRU existed simultaneously

But yes, they had different mandates.

[ancianita]

49. Please link the timeline. While they now exist simultaneously, the KGB were prior to the GRU.

From my readings, that's my understanding. Not to niggle, because we're now dealing with both, right?

[COL Mustard]

55. Wikipedia has a pretty good timeline

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/NKVD

This explains the NKVD and its children

[ancianita]

58. Okay, cool.

We agree that their functions and mandates are different, and imo, are overblown in power, but are still a pain in the world's ass.

[Kid Berwyn]

85. Product Placement

President Trump gestures to Russia's ambassador to the U.S., Sergey Kislyak, as he speaks to Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in the Oval Office on Wednesday, May 10, 2017. (Alexander Shcherbak/TASS/Getty Images)

“I just fired the head of the FBI. He was crazy, a real nut job," Trump said, according to The Times. "I faced great pressure because of Russia. That's taken off.”



"I'm not under investigation," he added.

Sources:

https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/05/10/527755991/trump-meets-with-russias-lavrov-at-the-white-house-today

https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-nut-job-james-comey-russia-2017-5

“No man. No problem.” — Joseph Stalin

[NBachers]

29. I love the deflection going on here. "The gun that killed 12 people wasn't really an assault weapon"

[Kid Berwyn]

67. Growing body of evidence shows GOP has a paramilitary wing

There's a growing body of evidence showing the Republican Party has a paramilitary wing

by María Isabel Puerta Riera
Alternet, March 16, 2021

United States Senator Ron Johnson said recently that he wasn't scared when, on January 6, armed insurgents sacked and looted the United States Capitol. They "love this country," the Wisconsin Republican said. But "had the tables been turned and President Trump won the election and tens of thousands of Black Lives Matter and antifa [stormed the seat of government], I might have been a little concerned."

That statement was disturbing not only for the implicit racism it carried, but for the stunning confirmation of what's becoming clear to those of us who are paying attention. The Republican Party has a paramilitary problem, and it isn't new.

Snip...

The Republican Party seems to be very comfortable with these groups around, as we have seen in Nevada, Oregon, Michigan, and other states. However, this is not a recent venture, since the accounts of strengthening ties can be traced back even before Trump won the election in 2016. The openness about their common interests is perhaps new, but it's not surprising. Alarms were sounded when state Senate Majority Leader, Republican Mike Shirkey of Michigan, participated in a rally organized by paramilitaries that stormed the Michigan Capitol back in April 2020 alongside a member of a group involved in the planned kidnapping of Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.

Though Michigan has a history of paramilitaries, the state GOP had tied itself to them, especially since the election as party co-chair of Meshawn Maddock. She organized a protest to interrupt ballot counting in Detroit, where paramilitaries were present.

Continues...

https://www.alternet.org/2021/03/republican-paramilitaries/

A standing pattern of anrguments over a tree acronym in order to miss the forest fire.

[paleotn]

36. Why wouldn't they? It's a very old play.

From the old Chinese essay, Thirty-Six Stratagems...

Undermine the enemy's ability to fight by secretly causing discord between them and their friends, allies, advisors, family, commanders, soldiers, and population.

[Kid Berwyn]

77. "A wretched propagandist."

How Alexei Navalny refers to Ms. Butina.

US-convicted Russian operative Maria Butina visits Navalny in jail

by Lexi Lonas
The Hill, April 1, 2021

Maria Butina, who was convicted of being an unregistered Russian agent in the U.S., reportedly visited Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny in jail on Thursday.

Butina visited the jail with Kremlin-funded RT television network to report on the condition of Navalny and the prison after Navalny said he was being sleep deprived and denied medical attention, Navalny’s team said in a post on his Twitter account.

Navalny’s account called Butina a “wretched propagandist” and said she “screamed” about how good the prison was during the visit. The opposition leader’s team claimed she also only interviewed “activists” who preached “how good everything is” in the prison, according to Navalny’s Twitter.

Navalny’s team said he lectured Butina when she visited the prison for her work at the Kremlin-funded outlet.

Butina was rewarded with a job at the Russian broadcasting network, formerly called Russia Today, after she was released from jail in the U.S. under the charge of conspiracy.

Continues…

https://thehill.com/policy/international/546070-us-convicted-russian-operative-maria-butina-visits-navalny-in-jail/

Not much lower than propagandist, especially when tied to wet work.

[Baked Potato]

37. I agree.

And, now as the world witnesses a totality of Russian failures and atrocities, it is apparent that Russia is a system of national corruption which openly auditions itself to wealthy producers looking for the next big score, loyalty to one’s own country be damned.

[Kid Berwyn]

81. Greg Palast: How Billionaires Picked Putin as "Russia's Pinochet"

How Billionaires Picked Putin as "Russia’s Pinochet"

By Greg Palast
BuzzFlash, March 16, 2022

Vladimir Putin did not arrive from outer space on an abalone shell.

Putin went from the virtually unknown Deputy Mayor of St. Petersburg to Russia’s President and potentate by winning a weird competition organized by Russian billionaire Boris Berezovsky who sought a "Russian Pinochet" to succeed Boris Yeltsin as President.

The competition, dubbed "Operation Successor," went so far as to send Russia’s "Larry King," Mikhail Leontyev, to interview General Pinochet for Russian TV while Pinochet was under indictment in Chile on murder charges. Russians were treated to the old dictator’s advice on choosing a leader who could imitate Pinochet’s "strong hand," a police state, while promoting a hyper-capitalist economy.

And Putin fit the Pinochet profile.

Continues…

https://www.gregpalast.com/how-billionaires-picked-putin-as-russias-pinochet/

America’s plutocrats generally back like-minded fellows.

[Baked Potato]

93. Thanks!

[Ilsa]

39. Time to liquidate the NRA. nt

[Kid Berwyn]

66. Speaking of liquidation...

2021 Michigan GOP Chair says assassination only way to remove elected GOP officials.

Fellow UM regents decry Michigan GOP chair for assassination, 'three witches' quips

Craig Mauger
The Detroit News, March 26, 2021

Michigan Republican Party Chairman Ron Weiser labeled the state's top Democratic officeholders "witches" and referenced "assassination" Thursday when pressed for answers about how to remove two sitting GOP congressmen.

In a video obtained by The Detroit News, Weiser made the comments while taking questions from the audience at a North Oakland Republican Club meeting. The comments quickly drew criticism from Democrats around the state, including at least two fellow regents from the University of Michigan.

Watch the video here.

Someone in the crowd asked how to unseat U.S. Reps. Fred Upton of St. Joseph and Peter Meijer of Grand Rapids Township, who were among 10 House Republicans to support the impeachment of former President Donald Trump in January. The Senate voted to acquit.

Continues...

https://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/politics/2021/03/26/michigan-gop-chair-quips-assassination-3-witches-video/7011870002/

“Evil be to him who evil thinks.” — Royal Order of the Garter (1348)

[mjvpi]

41. The NRA is basically insolvent. It has maxed out its line of credit which it had been using .....

……..for operating expenses. If memory serves, in 2015 it was in financial difficulty as well. It received money from people who seemed to get their money from transactions linked to oligarchs. The NRA basically became Trump’s campaign organization. It will be interesting to see how they get out of their current financial straights and f they do t just in time to help Trump. This post fits right in.

[Kid Berwyn]

82. The NRA Can't Erase Its Ties to a Russian Agent Who Targeted Ukraine

Leaders of the gun group long embraced a Kremlin operative who openly backed Putin’s military conquest.

Mark Follman, National Affairs Editor
The Nation, March 10, 2022

Four days into the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the political arm of the National Rifle Association published an article praising a “valiant” Ukranian army and resistance from “ordinary Ukrainians taking up arms to defend their country and communities.” Since early February, the gun lobbying group had used the coming war as an opportunity to talk up gun rights. “What is happening in Ukraine proves the wisdom of our founding fathers in drafting the Second Amendment,” the NRA now reiterated as the bloodshed grew, a right essential to “preserving human dignity, self-destiny and freedom.”

Forgotten in the face of Vladimir Putin’s barbaric attack, it seems, were the cozy ties between top NRA officials and convicted Russian agent Maria Butina. The Kremlin operative didn’t just commit conspiracy against the United States—she also worked on behalf of Putin’s military conquest in the Ukraine region during the same period she was forging alliances, both in the US and in Moscow, with NRA leaders.

Butina is best known for infiltrating the Republican Party and seeking to influence the 2016 election in favor of Donald Trump. She cultivated relationships among the conservative movement alongside her boss, Alexander Torshin, a high-level official from Putin’s party who donated to the NRA as a “life member” and later was sanctioned by the US government. After Butina’s downfall, the NRA sought to distance itself and claimed it had no knowledge of Butina’s foreign activities. But as I and my colleague Hannah Levintova reported in a 2019 investigation, while Butina was spending time with NRA leaders David Keene, Wayne LaPierre and others, information publicly available on social media and from other sources made clear that Butina was aggressively working against US national security interests:

Mother Jones has uncovered a trail of activity showing that during the same period when top NRA leaders welcomed Butina into the fold—meeting with her extensively in Moscow and the United States—Butina actively supported Russian President Vladimir Putin’s military takeover of Crimea. In the immediate aftermath of the invasion and annexation in March 2014, Butina denounced retaliatory sanctions by the Obama administration and traveled to Crimea to promote the arming of pro-Russian separatists. Her efforts there included pledging support to a leader of a militia group that violently seized a Crimean news outlet it deemed “pro-American” and swiftly repurposed for a Kremlin propaganda operation.

After serving most of an 18-month federal prison sentence, Butina was deported to her native country in October 2019. Putin personally defended Butina, declaring that the US had “nothing on her” and had convicted her “in order not to look totally stupid.” By last fall, at age 33, she began serving in the Russian parliament as a member of Putin’s United Russia party.

Continues…

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2022/03/nra-maria-butina-ukraine-putin-war-crimea-republicans-trump-guns/

The NRA can’t undo history. They can’t escape the truth. And they can’t escape their roles as traitors.

[orthoclad]

42. The Russian Federation is much more like

the USA than the USSR. It's run by a mob of capitalist oligarchs, just like here; we even had a strongman wannabe for a few years.

The FSB employs KGB vets; that set of skills has global demand. They're much like the FBI using the Proud Boys, including their leader Tarrio, as informants on US protests. Or like Erik Prince's counterinsurgent mercenaries.

A Russian dissident said last year that getting rid of Putin wouldn't matter much, because the RF has a whole class of people ready to step into his shoes.

[Kid Berwyn]

83. Absolute Mafiya with Vladimir Putin as Great Protector of Oligarchy.

Sergei Roldugin, the cellist who holds the key to tracing Putin’s hidden fortune

The Russian president’s best friend portrays himself as a modest musician, but leaked (Panama Papers) documents reveal his role in a secret money-go-round

by Luke Harding
April 3, 2016, The Guardian

It’s a touching family photo. In the centre is Vladimir Putin, holding his new baby daughter, Maria. Next to him is Lyudmila, his wife, with a bouquet of flowers. She has threaded her arm through his. On either side are Maria’s godparents, Ira and Sergei Roldugin.

Maria, also known as Masha, was born on 28 April 1985 and the photo was taken soon after. The city was Leningrad, the country – though not for much longer – the USSR. Father’s occupation: KGB officer.

Roldugin was the obvious choice as godfather: he had known Putin for eight years and was his best friend. Putin was at KGB training school with Roldugin’s brother Yevgeny.

“He was like a brother to me,” Sergei Roldugin later recalled of his friend, known by the family as Volodya. They had youthful adventures: cruising the city at night, singing songs, and – as Roldugin tells it – getting into the odd street fight. They played football: “He was tenacious, like a bulldog.”

Snip...

The Panama Papers show at least five secretly owned offshore entities in the Mossack Fonseca files linked to the Roldugin operation. They have largely meaningless names – Sonnette Overseas, International Media Overseas, Sunbarn, Raytar, Sandalwood Continental Ltd.

But one connection brings them all together. The firms are all linked to a company of Swiss lawyers. And they in turn act for a single organisation: Bank Rossiya, which is no ordinary bank.

Continues...

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2016/apr/03/sergei-roldugin-the-cellist-who-holds-the-key-to-tracing-putins-hidden-fortune

The Haves and the Have Yachts

[Initech]

47. I've seriously been wondering how much right wing propaganda has originated from Russia.

Like ever since Fox News first showed up on the scene back in 1997. It's all connected and I wouldn't be surprised if the entire GOP has been compromised by this crap.

[erronis]

56. Since Murdoch has been busy in Aus, Eng, USA, elsewhere - wouldn't we look at his family

as a vector of infiltration?

I'm guessing that all of the world's intelligence agencies (I know, oxymoronic), would know a lot about the lines of power between the Murdochs and those with money/influence.

[Kid Berwyn]

89. A Dozen Questions for John Solomon

by Sidney Blumenthal
JustSecurity.org, November 5, 2019

President Donald Trump’s attempt to force the government of Ukraine to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden was launched through a disinformation campaign whose first and chief propagator was John Solomon, a conservative columnist with a pattern of publishing false and misleading stories. His work, according to the Washington Post, “has played an important role in advancing a flawed, Trump-friendly tale of corruption in Ukraine.”

Excerpt…

Immediately after the Trump-Ukraine scandal was exposed, Solomon abruptly left his perch at The Hill and was hired by Fox News, where he had previously appeared dozens of times to amplify his conspiracy theories. Now, he poses behind the image of an investigative reporter manqué at Fox News while maintaining radio silence about the details of his own convoluted role.

In recent weeks, Trump, Hannity, and Giuliani have all proclaimed that Solomon deserves a Pulitzer Prize.

Many questions about Solomon’s part in the disinformation operation remain unanswered. Here are a few:

1. Did you ever take money or benefit, directly or indirectly, from Dmitry Firtash? Did DiGenova and Toensing introduce you to Firtash to serve as your source? Was it before they formally became his attorneys? To whom and how much did Firtash pay to generate and circulate the disinformation that you published?

2. How much did you pay Parnas? Was it your own money? Whose money was it? Was your employment or use of Parnas arranged by DiGenova and Toensing? Explain the involvement of your attorneys in the full range of your transactions with Parnas.

3. When did you hire DiGenova and Toensing as your attorneys and for what matters? How much have you paid them, over how long a period of time and for which specific services?

4. How many articles have you written that included information provided from sources you knew to be clients of your lawyers, DiGenova and Toensing? On what topics?

5. When you were publishing stories about the Clintons’ alleged involvement with the Uranium One company, did you tell your editors that one or more of your sources were represented by your lawyer Victoria Toensing? Beyond relying on your lawyer, what due diligence did you do to assess the credibility of those now discredited sources?

Continues…

https://www.justsecurity.org/66962/a-dozen-questions-for-john-solomon/

Why are they slow walking the prosecutions?

IMFO, it’s the offshore loot. Them at the top get a piece of the action.

[OhNo-Really]

53. I smell rats, too!

One of the best analyses yet to explain Americas homegrown Suicide Shooters cited below

I’ve been too afraid to post the exact intuitive sense that there might be some “cells” organized to groom Suicidal Shooters.

I’ve “sensed” for too long that there is a concerted effort to enroll and groom potential Suicide Shooters sort of like the Taliban enrolled and groomed its Suicide Bombers.

Since 2015 there has been a sharp increase of mass murder by Suicide Shooters.

I can clearly see the Crazy Billionaires using the Crazy Political Disrupters Nixon enrolled prop up fascistic men in dire need of some modicum of dignity and relevance and a heart full of hate volunteering to be Suicidal Shooters.

[Kid Berwyn]

90. Is Violence How the Right Brings Change?

“Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.” — Mao Zedong

“Terrorism is the best political weapon for nothing drives people harder than a fear of sudden death.” — Adolf Hitler

“(Chicago’s semi-automatic weapons) ban is thus highly suspect because it broadly prohibits common semiautomatic firearms used for lawful purposes. Roughly five million Americans own AR-style semiautomatic rifles. The overwhelming majority of citizens who own and use such rifles do so for lawful purposes, including self-defense and target shooting. Under our precedents, that is all that is needed for citizens to have a right under the Second Amendment to keep such weapons.”

— Clarence Thomas (2015)

Clarence Source: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/02/clarence-thomas-guns/553910/

Now please consider who the GZP Supreme Court wants to own and carry machine guns in public:



Joe Biggs, Proud Boy

Photo Source: https://everytownresearch.org/report/more-than-brawlers-the-proud-boys-and-armed-extremism/

Thank you for the kindness, Oh-No-Really! So glad we have President Biden in the White House and people who give a damn on DU.

[Warpy]

59. Butina was their connection hound

who put them into touch with Russian money and the best way to launder it, only they got caught because they're not led by the smartest people out there. LaPierre got a really fancy house out of it, I suppose the laundered loot going to the GOP and various PACs was a secondary consideration for him.

And yeah, of course the Russians wanted to flood this country with guns. That's one reason they bought the GOP.

[Kid Berwyn]

73. Cash Offers for Well-Qualified Manchurian Candidates

One of her last assignments before getting busted, arrested and deported to Russia where she now spies on the imprisoned Navalny.

Link to tweet

Unrolled thread
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1548315766767792128.html

Take a moment to think about the staggering counterintelligence issues in the crazy Dec 18, 2020 WH meeting. A thread.

In the Oval Office, people advocated Trump illegitimately hold on to power, including using the military to seize voting machines.

That group included: (/1)

Mike Flynn, who who was paid by an organ of Russian state media to travel to Moscow to attend a dinner where he was seated next to Putin.

Flynn later plead guilty to lying to the FBI about conversations he had with the Russian Ambassador about election interference. (/2)

Patrick Byrne, one of several men once in an intimate relationship with convicted Russian agent Marina Butina.

Byrne gave money to Butina after her return to Russia, where she ran for the Duma, hounded Navalny, and supported the invasion of Ukraine. (/3)

Patrick Byrne, the pro-Trump former Overstock CEO admits funneling cash to his ex-lover Maria Butina, the glamorous spy expected to be elected to Russia's parliament

Maria Butina, a spy jailed and deported by the US, is standing for the Russia's parliament. Insider spoke to Patrick Byrne about their relationship.

https://www.businessinsider.com/pro-trump-former-overstock-ceo-gave-russian-spy-ex-lover-money-2021-9

Rudy Giuliani, who repeatedly met with and took info from sanctioned Russian agents like Andrii Derkach, despite USIC warnings to the White House in 2019 that Trump’s personal lawyer “was the target of an influence operation by Russian intelligence” (/4)

washingtonpost.com/national-secur…

So in this tiny meeting in the Oval Office where options to upend US democracy were advanced to the President of the United States, there were not one, not two, but three people directly linked to sanctioned and convicted agents of the Russian government. (/5)

While I doubt Russia planned it, their efforts to gain access to Trump’s inner sanctum succeeded beyond their wildest dreams.

And it demonstrates just how successful seemingly amateurish intelligence activity can be. (6/end)
Image
• • •

Tip o’ the hat to NevilleDog.

https://www.democraticunderground.com/100216933009

[Warpy]

79. Right, I know some of these people are being recruited

and coached on public speaking and how to Gish Gallop a bunch of unrelated and utterly false talking points.

MTG is a prime example of that. You can always tell when she's at a loss for words because she always starts to fall back on dittoing a bunch of lame crap about helping ordinary Americans, when she consistently votes against everything that might do just that.

It's infuriating because so many people just can't see through it. YOu'd think they would after lifetimes of listening to "New! Improved!" blatting out of their TV sets from people selling the same old crap that doesn't work.

[Kittycatkat]

63. Trump is clearly a Russian asset. Truth will prevail.

I hope.

[Kid Berwyn]

87. Why Rudy G, John Solomon, OAN, Fox Noise & Dip are in Deep Doo-Doo.

The 2021 FBI raid on Rudy Giuliani is relevant. something special.



Exposes the Big Lie Machine:

Trump's Ukraine scandal is a Fox News story

Fox helped get Trump into this mess, and it's the key to getting him out of it

WRITTEN BY MATT GERTZ
PUBLISHED 11/13/19 8:05 AM EST

EXCERPT...

Fox supercharged Giuliani’s disinformation campaign

Giuliani, with the president’s approval, developed a shadow foreign policy campaign in Ukraine, working with corrupt officials to dig up dirt on Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden, undermine the U.S. intelligence community’s conclusion that Russia had interfered in the 2016 presidential election, and remove U.S. and Ukrainian players that posed obstacles to that effort. That disinformation campaign played out on Fox.

Giuliani filtered the results of his investigation through John Solomon, a conservative writer with a long record of serving as a mouthpiece for right-wing opposition research. Solomon would write up aspects of Giuliani’s work in columns for The Hill, then go on Fox, where his scoops were woven into the network’s conspiracy theories. Over a six-month period, Solomon appeared on Fox News or Fox Business at least 72 times; 51 of those appearances were on Hannity’s program. (Solomon’s role as a Giuliani henchman led to him landing a contract as a Fox contributor last month.) As Fox’s feverish coverage of the Bidens crescendoed, Trump and Giuliani both appeared on the network to bolster the smears.

Depositions from witnesses before the impeachment inquiry reveal that top administration figures at the White House and State Department were forced to monitor Fox for clues about the shape of U.S. foreign policy toward Ukraine. George Kent, a State Department official with oversight over the country, reported tracking extensive coverage from Hannity and Fox host Laura Ingraham. Fiona Hill, a former National Security Council official, testified that she and then-national security adviser John Bolton both regularly tuned in to Fox to keep abreast of Giuliani’s antics, adding that the network’s coverage began to “have an impact obviously on our work.”

Notably, Kent and former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch each testified to an effort by the State Department to contact Hannity in order to thwart what Kent termed a “campaign of slander” against the ambassador. Yovanovitch had apparently become a thorn to Giuliani’s effort to conduct a shadow foreign policy, and so he promoted lies about her that made their way into Solomon’s columns and then onto Fox’s airwaves.

Joseph diGenova, a frequent Fox guest who is Solomon’s lawyer, argued in March on Hannity’s program that Yovanovitch “needs to be called home to the United States for consultation” in order to “answer a slew of questions about her conduct and her assault on the president of the United States.”

According to Kent, State Department counselor Ulrich Brechbuhl subsequently “reached out and suggested to Mr. Hannity that if there was no proof of the allegations, that he should stop covering them.” (Hannity has since denied that State contacted him about Yovanovitch.) In any case, Giuliani’s smear campaign apparently had its intended effect, as Yovanovitch was recalled from her post in May.

SOURCE: https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/trumps-ukraine-scandal-fox-news-story

Now consider the Messengers, armed with disinformation — a clear and present danger to Democracy.



Professional strength propaganda...

A Dozen Questions for John Solomon

by Sidney Blumenthal
November 5, 2019

EXCERPT...

Solomon began his career as a reporter for the Associated Press, but subsequently bounced around in right-wing media from the Washington Times to a website called Circa News (owned by Sinclair Media and now defunct). In 2012, the Columbia Journalism Review concluded that Solomon “has a history of bending the truth to his story line” and “distorting facts and hyping petty stories.” Among his claims to infamy is publishing the debunked Uranium One conspiracy.

Starting in March of this year, Solomon’s articles in The Hill and his tweets spun out a web of conspiracy theories, in some cases then tweeted by Trump: that parts of the Ukrainian government in coordination with the U.S. ambassador to the Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch colluded to help Hillary Clinton’s campaign by leaking financial records of Paul Manafort, Trump’s campaign chairman (who had been a consultant to the Russian backed Ukrainian president deposed in the 2014 revolution Viktor Yanukovych); that the U.S. ambassador had pressured the Ukraine prosecutor not to investigate a George Soros-backed group and “Soros-connected names” who helped the Clinton campaign in the alleged scheme; and that the ambassador told the prosecutor not to investigate a list of individuals and that, according to the prosecutor, former Vice President Joe Biden was supposedly attempting to quash the prosecutor’s probe of his son Hunter’s involvement with Burisma, a Ukrainian gas company.

Solomon depicted a second innocent victim of these conspiracies in addition to Trump: Ukrainian oligarch Dimitry Firtash, “a major target of the Soros group.” Firtash — close to Russian President Vladimir Putin and Russian mafia kingpin Semion Mogilevich, and a chief financier of former Ukrainian president Yanukovych — is fighting extradition to avoid U.S. federal charges of bribery and racketeering. Solomon wrote that Robert Mueller’s investigation was attempting to frame Firtash to get “some dirt on Donald Trump,” but that the case against Firtash was “falling apart.” Solomon stated, “The oligarch’s defense team told me that Firtash rejected the deal because he didn’t have credible information or evidence.”

The State Department labeled the charges in Solomon’s initial article about Yovanovitch “an outright fabrication.” Later, the Ukrainian prosecutor Solomon quoted as his source, Yuri Lutsenko, was dismissed from his position and disavowed Solomon’s reporting, saying that Hunter Biden “did not violate anything” and now said that his statements to Solomon about a do-not-prosecute list were false. Lutsenko is now under criminal investigation for abuse of power. Meanwhile, the effort to extradite Firtash to face corruption charges continues.

SNIP...

7. You claim that you met Parnas through Congressman Pete Sessions. When did you first become aware of the Parnas and Fruman financial contributions to Sessions? What other favors has Sessions done for you?

CONTINUES...

https://www.justsecurity.org/66962/a-dozen-questions-for-john-solomon/

Garland has the goods on these traitors. There is nothing FOX, OANN, the Moonie Times, etc etc etc can do about it. So, let’s get busy with the indictments already. The future of democracy is at stake.

[Kennah]

69. The Cambridge Five worked for the KGB

Espionage is often quite unlike James Bond. It's intelligence agencies recruiting people "on the other side" to provide intelligence. KGB was much more akin to the CIA in this regard.

[Kid Berwyn]

91. Best spies often come from the enemy's most trusted friends.

Remember when CIA had to extricate a secret agent who worked for decades in the Kremlin to monitor and report Putin’s doings? Our side feared then-peeResident Donald J. Trump would out an American spy to the Russian president, shows the U.S. national security apparatus did not trust Trump to keep secrets from our nation’s enemies.



Exclusive: US extracted top spy from inside Russia in 2017

by Jim Sciutto
CNN, Sept. 9, 2019

In a previously undisclosed secret mission in 2017, the United States successfully extracted from Russia one of its highest-level covert sources inside the Russian government, multiple Trump administration officials with direct knowledge told CNN.

A person directly involved in the discussions said that the removal of the Russian was driven, in part, by concerns that President Donald Trump and his administration repeatedly mishandled classified intelligence and could contribute to exposing the covert source as a spy.

The decision to carry out the extraction occurred soon after a May 2017 meeting in the Oval Office in which Trump discussed highly classified intelligence with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and then-Russian Ambassador to the US Sergey Kislyak. The intelligence, concerning ISIS in Syria, had been provided by Israel.

The disclosure to the Russians by the President, though not about the Russian spy specifically, prompted intelligence officials to renew earlier discussions about the potential risk of exposure, according to the source directly involved in the matter.

At the time, then-CIA Director Mike Pompeo told other senior Trump administration officials that too much information was coming out regarding the covert source, known as an asset. An extraction, or “exfiltration” as such an operation is referred to by intelligence officials, is an extraordinary remedy when US intelligence believes an asset is in immediate danger.

The source was considered the highest level source for the US inside the Kremlin, high up in the national security infrastructure, according to the source familiar with the matter and a former senior intelligence official.

According to CNN’s sources, the spy had access to Putin and could even provide images of documents on the Russian leader’s desk.

Continues…

https://www.cnn.com/2019/09/09/politics/russia-us-spy-extracted/index.html

[IronLionZion]

74. SVR is Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service: Sluzhba Vneshney Razvedki

While FSB is their successor to the Soviet KGB, they are more comparable to our FBI. SVR is like our CIA. GRU is like our DIA. FPS is like our Secret Service.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Intelligence_Service_(Russia)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Security_Service

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GRU_(Russian_Federation)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Protective_Service_(Russia)

[Kid Berwyn]

92. Thank you! KGB on Trump in 1977: "The Perfect Target"

‘The perfect target’: Russia cultivated Trump as asset for 40 years – ex-KGB spy

The KGB ‘played the game as if they were immensely impressed by his personality’, Yuri Shvets, a key source for a new book, tells the Guardian

by David Smith
The Guardian, January 29, 2021

Excerpt…

“This is an example where people were recruited when they were just students and then they rose to important positions; something like that was happening with Trump,” Shvets said by phone on Monday from his home in Virginia.

Shvets, a KGB major, had a cover job as a correspondent in Washington for the Russian news agency Tass during the 1980s. He moved to the US permanently in 1993 and gained American citizenship. He works as a corporate security investigator and was a partner of Alexander Litvinenko, who was assassinated in London in 2006.

Unger describes how Trump first appeared on the Russians’ radar in 1977 when he married his first wife, Ivana Zelnickova, a Czech model. Trump became the target of a spying operation overseen by Czechoslovakia’s intelligence service in cooperation with the KGB.

Three years later Trump opened his first big property development, the Grand Hyatt New York hotel near Grand Central station. Trump bought 200 television sets for the hotel from Semyon Kislin, a Soviet émigré who co-owned Joy-Lud electronics on Fifth Avenue.

According to Shvets, Joy-Lud was controlled by the KGB and Kislin worked as a so-called “spotter agent” who identified Trump, a young businessman on the rise, as a potential asset. Kislin denies that he had a relationship with the KGB.

Continues…

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jan/29/trump-russia-asset-claims-former-kgb-spy-new-book

[malaise]

75. Looks like you're right again

https://www.democraticunderground.com/100217894462

[Kid Berwyn]

96. Why conspiracy theorists and the Kremlin echo each other's disinformation

Last edited Thu May 11, 2023, 06:10 PM - Edit history (1)

Since the beginning of the war in Ukraine, Western conspiracy theorists and the Kremlin have each spread similar disinformation online.

William Audureau
Le Monde, News Analysis, March 3, 2023

“Look at what they're doing with their own people!" In his address to the nation on February 21, Vladimir Putin accused the West of having made pedophilia "the norm." A wild attack typical of the Kremlin leader, but one which resonated with the most far-out conspiracy circles, such as the QAnon community which spreads disinformation about pedophile elites in the White House.

Snip…

The convergence has reached the point where the two circles now feed each other, in an incessant back and forth. "What is difficult," observed Pierre-André Taguieff, political scientist and author of several books on conspiracy, "is to distinguish between propaganda manufactured by Kremlin strategists and the multitude of Russian and French conspiracy circles that gravitate to them and can be manipulated."

Snip…

During the Soviet era, the USSR financed the publication of several books attributing the assassination of J. F. Kennedy to an American conspiracy, and then, in the 1980s, spread the rumor that HIV was an artificial virus created by the United States. Behind this subversive approach is a strategy that international relations researchers now call "sharp power," a venomous counterpoint to the more benevolent and sunny "soft power."

"When you can't subjugate people using the appeal of your own model, you have to undermine the allegiance of the citizens [of foreign countries] to their own system," Rudy Reichstadt explained. And the conspiracy scene, this machine for hating existing elites and democratic institutions, is a perfect channel.

Seen in this way, the novelty lies less in the originality of the process than in the scale and systematization of the phenomenon, facilitated by the polarization of political life, the acceleration of transmission of information through social media, and the possibility of easily flooding these sites. In 2018, Twitter identified nine million tweets linked to Russian disinformation, while in the fall of 2022, Facebook announced the dismantling of two Russian and Chinese disinformation networks.

Continues…

https://www.lemonde.fr/en/les-decodeurs/article/2023/03/02/conspiracy-theorists-the-kremlin-echo-each-other-s-disinformation_6017960_8.html

PS: Mixing truth with falsehood they divide and conquer.

PPS: It sure WAS an American based conspiracy behind the assassination of JFK. He HATED NAZIs, warmongers and traitors.

Most importantly: Thank you, m.

[malaise]

97. Thanks for this

[Hortensis]

80. Funny -- that we have no "honest and true" press is ALSO Russian propaganda warfare.

It is a major message they invested very heavily in spreading in 2016, and every year before and since for that matter.

tRump and RW propaganda also spread that toxic message. Also anti-Democratic LW groups. All depending on confusing and undermining trust in "the press," instead of identifying deceitful press, because informed people can't be fooled by deceits about Democrats.

The Democratic Party is the only significant electoral organization in our nation that is served by and depends on people to learn truth. That's why suppression of trust in honest press coverage, about both us and other groups, is a major anti-Democratic tactic.

And here their anti-press message appears on DU as part of a post offering press coverage of KGB subversion of the NRA. NPR no less. Irony, anyone?

Our nation is awash with truth and pertinent information, too much each day to identify and take in, but it's even more swamped with deceits intended to confuse and destroy ability to find and believe it.

[Kid Berwyn]

86. Astute observation, yours.

We do need a democratic free, fair and unfiltered press. The thing is America’s news media are not a free press. They are a corporate-owned press. And that means they support the largely white, rich and powerful few who own them.

Right Wing Built the Mass Media Long Ago to Manipulate the Masses

https://www.democraticunderground.com/100217547007

Otherwise, how could the Supreme Court get away with overturning Roe v. Wade or let the government go to bat for the wealthiest or abiding the likes of Clarence Thomas arm the ultra right with AR-15s?

[Hotler]

84. kicking ... nt

[Kid Berwyn]

95. Watchdog Shines Light on Activities of Neo-Nazi Cell

This is why CNN giving Drumpf a platform is so irresponsible. He turned the TV time into a recruiting film.

Under the Microscope: Watchdog Shines Light on Activities of Neo-Nazi Cell

SEBASTIAN PORRECA
WhoWhatWhy.org, 05/11/23

Far-right extremism is surging in the US as small neo-Nazi cells, many of them connected, are popping up throughout the country. Now, an investigation of just one of them — a New England-based neo-Nazi gang — offers a glimpse into the criminal activities and inner workings of the group, its ties to other extremists, and the lack of legal action against gang members.

The numbers show that this is a serious issue. Acts of domestic terrorism, most of which have been committed by right-wing groups, shot up by 357 percent between 2013 and 2021, and three-quarters of extremism-related murders in the past 10 years were committed by right-wing extremists.

To show how much impact just one of these right-wing groups has, Task Force Butler, a watchdog organization, has investigated Nationalist Social Club, or “NSC-131” (131 is an alphanumeric abbreviation used by the group for “anti-Communist action”). The findings of the probe were recently released in a comprehensive report.

“[NSC-131 is] a violent terrorist gang that primarily functions to plan, train, and obtain weapons for the explicit purpose of engaging in acts of violence and harassment against religious, racial, and ethnic minorities, the LGBTQIA+ community, and others deemed ‘enemies,’” the investigation found. The report also stresses the need for law enforcement to recognize the inherent criminal aspect of NSC-131.

“Every single criminal act that an NSC-131 gang member engages in on behalf of the organization is the result of a conspiracy by, with, and through the organization’s hierarchical leadership structure, and should be treated as such by law enforcement,” the report states.

The document is not publicly available.

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https://whowhatwhy.org/apprentice-stories/under-the-microscope-watchdog-shines-light-on-activities-of-neo-nazi-cell/

PS: Thank you, Good Friend. Really appreciate that you give a damn.

[H2O Man]

98. Recommended.

[Kid Berwyn]

99. Confronting Russia's Role in Transnational White Supremacist Extremism

by Elizabeth Grimm Arsenault and Joseph Stabile
JustSecority.org, February 6, 2020

A member of the neo-Nazi terror network the Base told a federal prosecutor in December that he believed the group’s leader, known then as Norman Spear, was a Russian spy. One month later, the Guardian revealed Spear’s true name to be Rinaldo Nazzaro and presented evidence that Nazzaro lives in Russia. BBC subsequently reported that Nazzaro was listed as a guest at a 2019 Russian government security exhibition which “focused on the demonstration of the results of state policy and achievements.”

Though Nazzaro’s relationship with the Russian government remains uncertain, these reports point to a broader trend: a mutual affection between Western white supremacists and the Russian government. It also highlights the reality that the distinction between foreign terrorism and so-called domestic terrorism is increasingly irrelevant. Dating back to 2004, David Duke characterized Russia as the “key to white survival,” and American white supremacist Richard Spencer recently identified Russia as the “sole white power in the world.” Both Jared Taylor—founder of the white supremacist outlet American Renaissance—and Matthew Heimbach—a Unite the Right organizer and leader of the now-defunct Traditionalist Workers Party—have met in person with ultranationalist Russian political leaders in 2015 and 2017, respectively.

For its part, the Russian government has exploited this interest. It has both turned a blind eye to far-right paramilitarism within its own borders and actively cultivated neo-Nazism in the West. These decisions align with its broader project to sow discord in Western democracies and influence transcontinental relations, despite its relatively weak military and economy. Russian President Vladimir Putin’s support for right-wing violence in the West constitutes an element in his broader destabilization campaign.

In the United States especially, white supremacist terrorists act upon an ideology that is deeply rooted in the country’s history of racist violence. The United States and its Western allies, therefore, must confront the issue of white supremacist terrorism at home and work towards a long overdue recalibration of counterterrorism priorities. But while the United States and its partners must confront this problem at home, they must also remember that hostile foreign powers have exploited homegrown racism for decades. Moreover, as Western counterterrorism efforts against white supremacist violence continue to ramp up (U.S. authorities, for example, have arrested seven members of the Base and a leader of the Unite the Right rally in recent weeks), extremists and aspiring terrorists may seek refuge in a more permissive environment, exacerbating the problem of Russian support.

To degrade existing links between Western extremists and Russian actors, and prevent the further formation of these connections, the United States and its partners must bolster their diplomatic capacity to confront this threat on a global scale. Here, we assess the current nexus between Western right-wing extremists and Russian actors at the state and non-state level. To be clear, we do not have a complete picture of these connections. Further work—from investigative reporting to intelligence sharing—is necessary to discern the scale of links between Western extremists and Russian actors. The counterterrorism community, however, must proactively work to understand this threat to prevent its further growth.

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https://www.justsecurity.org/68420/confronting-russias-role-in-transnational-white-supremacist-extremism/

[H2O Man]

100. Thanks for this!

I'm just on a brief break from mowing my lawn. All the rain we had, followed by sunny days, has resulted in a length I cannot complete in a day. Likely take me a week. My younger son tells me to cut back on the size of the lawn, but he has little right to talk -- on Saturday, after less than two week's preparation and 3 hours sleep the night before, he ran in a 30+ mile race. Even when I was young, I'd have known to take a full week to even try that! Ha!

From the summer of 2016 on, I've said that Putin put puppet strings on the defendent (formerly known as trump) to promote an international white power movement. Obviously, I was not alone in recognizing that. The young lady shown in the OP is a classic-agent/honey trap. She definitely accomplished her mission. Speaking of this, a friend told me that as a fat, unattractive old white guy, he understood this ..... he said if a pretty cashier calls him "Hon," he ponders for the nest 72 hours what she meant ...... was it the same as she meant for everyone? Or was it special?

[Kid Berwyn]

101. "Honey, I've compromised the kids."

Your son has a great suggestion. Break up the big monster into parts and tackle them over a few days.

My old urban lawn is a tiny, unkept thing, made up of various strains of grasses and hearty weeds. Being Michigan, we had some days in January that were warmer than March. Every spring, it takes me three or four hundred-plus pulls on that frigging cord to get it to sputter to life. I switch off on pulling, awkwardly grabbing with my left hand. Doesn’t matter: Both arms get tired. But I’m mad and don’t quit until it’s chugging and spewing whatever carbonated crud has clogged it because I’m too cheap to hire a lawn service that does a good job without damaging the vinyl siding. Then the first pass through the deep stuff clogs the heck out of my little Honda and I gotta start it back up. Don’t worry, it gets worse as we have a small dog and it lives to poop out bigly all the treats it can eat in a day.

Also understand your friend perfectly. I’m old and still conceited enough to think young ladies don’t notice. My wife is first to remind me: Man, am I wrong. Then, the photographs are proof positive.

Most of all, want you to know: Really, really happy for you, your sons, daughter and family. They are proof of the power of love — the greatest force of all.