Why Do People Apologize For Russia?

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Re: Why Do People Apologize For Russia?

Postby seemslikeadream » Tue May 23, 2017 2:27 am

Joe Hillshoist » Tue May 23, 2017 1:25 am wrote:
seemslikeadream » 23 May 2017 15:50 wrote:I don't see the transcript and don't see how to watch the show


That's weird. It isn't working now for me either.

Do you get a still image and a big blank space underneath?




yes while I was waiting to hear back from you I went to Youtube ...thanks for mentioning Zygar


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7jHyVIsh1c0

Public Lecture by Mikhail Zygar in Riga: All the Kremlin's Men - New Hope or Phantom Menace Until recently. Presentation of the book in the style of Star Wars. Mikhail Zygar was the editor-in-chief of the independent and controversial Russian TV channel Dozhd.
Mikhail Zygar will give a presentation of todays Russia based on his new book “All the Kremlins Men”. The book tells the story of Russia during the reign of Vladimir Putin from 2000 to 2015, based on open sources and personal interviews with members of the inner circle of Vladimir Putin.
Mikhail Zygar has graduated from Moscow State University and has been a professor at the faculty of International journalism. He has worked as deputy editor in chief for Russian Newsweek and as senior correspondent for Kommersant Publishing House. Zygar is the author of several books: War and War and Myth (2006), Gazprom: Russia's New Weapon, which explores Russia's recent history through the currency of gas(2007) and All the Kremlin's Men (2015). Mikhail have been awarded the International Press Freedom Award, New York, 2014, and Zeit-Stiftung Ebelin und Gerd Bucerius, Hanburg, 2014.


Trump Asked DNI, NSA Director To Push Back Against FBI Russia Probe
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/w ... ssia-probe


Paul Manafort and his “Olig-Daddy”

http://www.madcowprod.com/2017/03/31/ru ... more-13773



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KZUvcFOBGLk
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: Why Do People Apologize For Russia?

Postby Iamwhomiam » Wed May 24, 2017 11:25 am

If the show Joe referred us to is this one:

Monday 22 May, 2017
Trump, Putin and The End

It's a working link and the video at top, front & center 1hr 31 sec.

Just below the video are three buttons at the top of the article pertaining to the show that includes a "Transcript" button, as well as "Questions" button being listed first and "Panelists" button being the third.

You can choose to download the 200mb show, if you'd like to.

http://www.abc.net.au/tv/qanda/txt/s4651256.htm
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Re: Why Do People Apologize For Russia?

Postby seemslikeadream » Thu May 25, 2017 7:52 pm

Russian Hackers Are Using ‘Tainted’ Leaks to Sow Disinformation

OVER THE PAST year, the Kremlin’s strategy of weaponizing leaks to meddle with democracies around the world has become increasingly clear, first in the US and more recently in France. But a new report by a group of security researchers digs into another layer of those so-called influence operations: how Russian hackers alter documents within those releases of hacked material, planting disinformation alongside legitimate leaks.

A new report from researchers at the Citizen Lab group at the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Public Affairs documents a wide-ranging hacking campaign, with ties to known Russian hacker groups. The effort targeted more than 200 individuals, ranging from Russian media to a former Russian prime minister to Russian opposition groups, and assorted government and military personnel from Ukraine to Vietnam. Noteworthy among the leaks: A Russia-focused journalist and author whose emails were not only stolen but altered before their release. Once they appeared on a Russian hactivist site, Russian state media used the disinformation to concoct a CIA conspiracy.

The case could provide the clearest evidence yet that Russian hackers have evolved their tactics from merely releasing embarrassing true information to planting false leaks among those facts. “Russia has a long history of experience with disinformation,” says Ron Deibert, the political science professor who led Citizen Lab’s research into the newly uncovered hacking spree. “This is the first case of which I am aware that compares tainted documents to originals associated with a cyber espionage campaign.”

Go Phish
In his 2003 book Darkness at Dawn, journalist David Satter alleged that Vladimir Putin had arranged for Russian security forces to bomb apartment buildings in Moscow in 1999, in an attempt to incite war with Chechnya. In October of last year, Satter received a phishing email that spoofed a message from Google security requiring him to enter his Gmail account credentials, the same tactic used to breach the inbox of Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta last year. Satter, too, fell for the ruse.

Later that month, a Russian hacker group calling itself CyberBerkut released a collection of emails from Satter’s inbox, just as Russian hackers dumped pilfered emails from Podesta, the Democratic National Committee, the political party of French president Emmanuel Macron, and others. But in Satter’s case, one of those emails had been very clearly altered.

The original message had included a report by Satter on Russia-focused work for Radio Liberty, the US government-backed news outlet. But the version of the report released by CyberBerkut had been altered to make it appear that Satter was instead coordinating the publication of critical articles on a wide swath of Russian opposition websites, including the site of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny. The additions even included a mention of an upcoming article about Russian officials and businessmen by one Russian journalist who hadn’t yet published it, suggesting that she’d been tracked or hacked as well.

CyberBerkut called the doctored leak evidence of US efforts to meddle in Russian politics, and even to inspire a popular revolution. Russian state media outlets RIA Novosti and Sputnik Radio picked up that thread, quoting sources linking the plot to the CIA.

Others have accused Russian hackers of this sort of disinformation trick. But when the Clinton campaign warned that its hacked emails, posted to WikiLeaks, shouldn’t be trusted, it couldn’t point to any specific fakes in the collection. The Macron campaign similarly warned that the emails published from its En Marche party contained unspecified spoofed documents, though in that case En Marche had seemingly planted them as well, in an effort to confuse hackers. The Satter case provides a concrete example.

Citizen Lab notes that CyberBerkut has published fake documents in other cases, as well. They confirm a Foreign Policy report that found the group had altered documents in a late 2015 release to make it appear that George Soros’ Open Society Foundation had funded Russian opposition media and Navalny’s anti-corruption group.

Hacks of State
The Citizen Lab report goes further, though, showing new evidence that the CyberBerkut isn’t just an independent hacktivist organization. They also show that CyberBerkut has key links to the group known as Fancy Bear or APT28, which cybersecurity firms and US intelligence agencies have agreed pulled off the attacks on the Democratic National Committee and the Clinton campaign.

That detective work began when Citizen Lab analyzed the URL shortener, known as Tiny.cc, that the hackers had used to generate the link that led Satter to the phishing site. They found they could generate “adjacent” URLs that were almost certainly created by the same user, and that one of those had been used to hack a reporter at the journalism outlet Bellingcat—an attack that the cybersecurity firm ThreatConnect had tied to Fancy Bear.

In analyzing more of the “adjacent” URLs, they found the hundreds of other likely targets of the Russian hackers, including Russian dissidents and foreign government officials. They also discovered that another of the URLs was tied to what appeared to be a test account that security firm FireEye had previously linked to Fancy Bear. And, of course, the Gmail phishing technique matched exactly with the one used against Podesta earlier in 2016.

Citizen Lab’s Deibert admits that none of this is a “smoking gun.” But it’s strong new evidence linking CyberBerkut’s fake leaks to a group already believed to be backed by the Kremlin. “All we can say is that the indicators we uncovered overlap extensively with other public reporting on APT28,” he says. “These, alongside the context of the targets—which match Russian strategic interests both domestically and abroad—provide very strong evidence that Russia is involved in some manner.”

All of which adds up to the strongest evidence yet that Russian hackers are indeed mixing fakes into their leaks—what the report calls “falsehoods in a forest of facts.” And that could reduce the credibility, Deibert says, of journalists who report on the leaks. It adds
a new layer of falsehoods to an era fraught with fake-news accusations. “Campaigns of this sort have the potential to undermine the public’s already low confidence in media,” Deibert says.

But evidence that Russian hackers are fabricating their leaks could also make them less effective. Mixing fakes in with facts may work for Russian propaganda outlets. When it comes to involving US media in Russia’s influence operations, though, reporters may now think twice about trusting the contents of the next dumped inbox covered in Russian fingerprints.

https://www.wired.com/2017/05/russian-h ... al_twitter
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: Why Do People Apologize For Russia?

Postby seemslikeadream » Thu Jul 27, 2017 9:28 am

KREMLIN IDENTIFIES FORMER ESTONIAN KGB HENCHMAN, CHARGED WITH GENOCIDE AS “SOVIET HERO”
Image
Screenshot of Russian MFA tweet glorifying Estonian KGB henchman, Arnold Meri, who was charged in 2007 with genocide, for his role in the mass deportation of Estonians in Hiiumaa in 1949 https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DFpMRnbWAAA4ewp.jpg:large
The Russian Ministry of Foreign affairs tweeted an infographic Wednesday, identifying a former Estonian KGB henchman, Arnold Meri, as a hero of the “Soviet Union.” The infographic was ostensibly published in response to a NATO short film about the Baltic Forest Brothers, who fought a guerilla war for independence against occupying Soviet forces through the 1950’s.



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Arnold Meri volunteered to join the Soviet Red Army in 1940, after Josef Stalin signed a pact with Adolf Hitler which allowed the Soviet Union to illegally occupy Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. He was awarded the Soviet Union’s Order of Lenin in 1948, but was stripped of it in 1951. Meri admitted to organizing the 1949 deportation of Estonians from the island of Hiiumaa, to the Soviet GULAG. Most of the deportees were women and children, of which, nearly a quarter died.

Meri was charged with genocide in 2007, for his role in the deportations. The Kremlin objected to the charges and Russian state media actively defended Meri as a hero, ramping up efforts to manipulate historical fact and denying the Soviet occupation of Estonia.

Russian State Media Manipulation of Baltic History and Denial of Soviet Occupation and Genocide

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e6frRawCu8E

In July 2017, NATO produced a historical documentary about the Baltic Forest Brothers, a partisan group that fought for the freedom and independence of the Baltic States in the late 1940’s and 50’s. High ranking Kremlin officials, including former leader of a Russian extremist nationalist party, Rodina, current Russian deputy prime minister, Dimitry Rogozin, who linked the Baltic Forest Brothers to Nazis in efforts to discredit the documentary.



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The Kremlin’s effort to distort historical facts to suit current propaganda objectives is not limited to Russia. Kremlin efforts to rehabilitate the crimes of Josef Stalin, who killed over 30 million people, have reached North America as well.
http://upnorth.eu/kremlin-identifies-fo ... viet-hero/



BY MARCUS KOLGA ESTONIA, FEATURE, LATVIA, LITHUANIA, NEWS, POLAND, RUSSIAMAY 12, 2017

REJECTING THE KREMLIN’S FALSIFICATION OF HISTORY & CULT OF VICTORY
Image
This week, veterans groups and individuals gathered in cities around the world to participate in ceremonies marking the Allied liberation of Europe from Nazi occupation. However, many were overshadowed and hijacked by Kremlin coordinated proxy groups in an attempt to rewrite history.

The Kremlin’s May 9th “Victory Day” event, once a significant Soviet era propaganda tool, was resurrected in 2005 by Vladimir Putin. The event is intended to both rehabilitate Stalin’s blood-soaked legacy and intimidate neighbours once occupied and brutalized by Soviet terror. Working closely with local proxy groups around the world, the Kremlin coordinate efforts to glorify the Soviet “victory” in efforts to delegitimize the independence of those states that were occupied by the Soviet Union.

In Toronto, a parade of mock Red Army soldiers marched downtown with Soviet flags and symbols, as onlookers, some of whom were wearing t-shirts emblazoned with the visage of Josef Stalin, rejoiced the bygone era of Soviet imperial might last weekend.
Image
A woman wearing a Stalin t-shirt at a Russian-Canadian Congress organized pro-Soviet rally in downtown Toronto.

To the uninformed, the event may seem like an innocent commemoration of allied triumph over Nazi Germany. After all, Hitler’s defeat should be commemorated and those who contributed to it, should always be remembered and thanked. And indeed we do so at official events throughout the Western world and they include soldiers who fought Nazism in Canadian, British, French, UK and even Soviet, uniforms.

Yet for millions whose families were victims of Soviet occupation in Central and Eastern Europe, this history is far more complicated than the oversimplified Western version which views it through the simple lens of universal Allied victory. Unlike France and Western Germany, which were truly liberated by Western Allies; the Soviet liberators of Eastern and Central European never left, and continued to terrorize these nations long after their defeat of Hitler’s armies.

As the end of the WWII is commemorated, we must also remember that it began with the signing of a non-aggression pact on August 23,1939, between Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin. The collaboration agreement supported the September 1939 Nazi invasion of Western Poland and the Soviet invasion of Eastern Poland shortly afterwards. The Nazi-Soviet pact carved up Eastern and Central Europe including the Baltic States, which were annexed in 1940 in sham referendums that were mirrored by Vladimir Putin during his 2014 annexation of Crimea. It’s worth noting, that anyone who mentions these facts, faces the risk of fine or even arrest in Putin’s Russia (including the author of this article, and anyone else who questions the Soviet version of history or the Hitler-Stalin pact).

In Estonia, political and civil society leaders, newspapers, churches and synagogues were targeted in the initial rounds of repression during the first Soviet occupation in 1940-41. Mass arrests, torture and murder terrorized the region. Tens of thousands were rounded up in the middle of the night by Soviet authorities and were deported to Stalin’s Gulag slave labour prison camps.

By the time the Germans seized control of the region in late summer 1941, much of the heavy work of repressing and eliminating the democratic opposition had been completed and Nazi authorities spent the following three years completing their elimination of the Jewish communities.

Documentary Film “Memories Denied” by Estonian Historian Imbi Paju about Soviet repression in Estonia



Like elsewhere in Central and Eastern Europe, Estonians formed anti-Nazi resistance groups to help liberate their country. When the tide of the war turned in 1944 thousands of Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians took up arms -mostly alongside the retreating Germans- to stop the Soviet advance, in hopes of re-establishing independence as Hitler’s forces retreated. Thousands of others abandoned their homes, either on foot or by sea, fleeing the return of Soviet terror.

Unlike in Western Europe, where liberation from Nazi occupation meant the restoration of freedom, democracy and even justice for those who suffered terror and genocide, the opposite was true for those “liberated” by the Soviets.

In late Fall 1944, Stalin unleashed a sustained wave of terror that saw the arrests and deportations of millions throughout the Baltic States, Ukraine and other Soviet satellite states in Central and Eastern Europe through the early 1950’s.

For anyone, whose families suffered under Soviet and Nazi repression, the symbols of both of these occupying regimes are a traumatic reminder of the terror that their families endured and many fled.

As the flags and symbols of Soviet occupation continue to appear in European and North American cities under the guise of Soviet Victory Day, we must never forget that the Soviet and Nazi regimes collaborated to start the Second World War and that the illegal Soviet occupation of much of Central and Eastern Europe did not end until 1990.

Baltic Refugees Flee Soviet Terror in 1944



While crypto-Soviets may take perverse advantage of Western freedoms to express admiration for Stalin’s repressions in The Baltics, Ukraine, Russia and beyond; we must not accept these distortions of history and reject the symbols of Soviet terror and occupation and recognize them for what they really are.
http://upnorth.eu/rejecting-kremlins-fa ... t-victory/



TECHNOLOGY INTERNET
Russia moves to ban proxy internet services, VPNs and Tor
BY IMMANUEL JOTHAM ON 7/26/17 AT 1:51 PM
Image
Russia protests
The bill was passed on 21 July amid protests from the Russian public
MLADEN ANTONOV/AFP/GETTY IMAGES
A bill that bans the use of VPNs, as well as anonymous browsers like Tor and online proxies, has been passed by the Russian parliament. It has now reached the president's desk where it will become law of the land once Russian President Vladimir Putin signs it.

The bill was passed on 21 July amid protests from the Russian public who took to the streets on 23 July in Moscow. Protesters demanded that the internet remains free and uncensored while also calling for the resignation of the head of Russia's state media regulator 'Roskomnadzor'.

More from IBTimes UK
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Rights activists protested the recent crackdowns by the Russian authorities on free speech over the internet. The Russian government, however, is justifying the censorship arguing that it is battling extremist activity.

It was reported that the protesters numbered in the thousands and raised slogans akin to, "Truth is stronger than censorship", and "Free country, free internet".

The Federal Service for Supervision of Communications, Information Technology, and Mass Media, also known as the Roskomnadzor, will be tasked with creating and distributing a blacklist that contains all the sites that VPN (Virtual Private Network) service providers will have to block.

Emil Khalikov, one of the organisers of the protest, said, "One by one [the Government] is adopting odious, harmful laws that first they adopt — and then they think about how to put in place." Khalikov added, "Our goal is to get these repressive laws repealed, that limit our basic needs guaranteed by the constitutionn"

The bill will ban all forms of VPNs and proxies as well as the Tor browser, a browser that lets its users access any part of the internet, including the dark web anonymously. Along with the blanket ban over private internet usage, it is being said that private messenger services will also be banned. It was not long ago that Telegram was instructed to hand over their source code.

Sarkis Darbinyan, head of the Center for the Defense of Digital Rights, in an interview with the RFE/RL said: "This really does create problems for the connectivity of the Russian segment of the Internet and for access to services."

It is not uncommon for Russia to imprison or blacklist members of the internet community who post or speak against the official stance of the government. According to a Human Rights Watch report, recent laws and policies adopted by the Russian government under Putin "threaten the privacy and secure communications on the internet".

The report also makes a note of the fact that the government has, "unjustifiably prosecuted dozens" under criminal charges for their online activities and use of social media platforms. The Russian public is, according to the HRW report, "increasingly unsure about what is acceptable speech" and what will land them in prison. "State intrusion in media affairs has reached a level not seen in Russia since the fall of the Soviet Union."

Yulia Gorbunova, Russia researcher in Human Rights Watch, said, "These steps are taking place in an environment where there are no legal safeguards. He added, "There are no independent courts and a lot of these measures will be implemented without any judicial oversight."

The Russian government, on the other hand argues otherwise.

However, first deputy head of the presidential administration - Vyacheslav Volodin - in a press conference had said that, Russia went "along the path of self-regulation of the Internet" and there was more freedom on the internet in Russia than most other countries. "Think about where there is more democracy, we have them or them (USA)."https://amp.ibtimes.co.uk/russia-moves-ban-proxy-internet-services-vpns-tor-1632070



#CYBER RISK
JULY 27, 2017 / 12:12 AM / 4 HOURS AGO
Exclusive: Russia used Facebook to try to spy on Macron campaign - sources
Joseph Menn
5 MIN READ

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Russian intelligence agents attempted to spy on President Emmanuel Macron's election campaign earlier this year by creating phony Facebook personas, according to a U.S. congressman and two other people briefed on the effort.

About two dozen Facebook accounts were created to conduct surveillance on Macron campaign officials and others close to the centrist former financier as he sought to defeat far-right nationalist Marine Le Pen and other opponents in the two-round election, the sources said. Macron won in a landslide in May.

Facebook said in April it had taken action against fake accounts that were spreading misinformation about the French election. But the effort to infiltrate the social networks of Macron officials has not previously been reported.

Russia has repeatedly denied interfering in the French election by hacking and leaking emails and documents. U.S. intelligence agencies told Reuters in May that hackers with connections to the Russian government were involved, but they did not have conclusive evidence that the Kremlin ordered the hacking.

Facebook confirmed to Reuters that it had detected spying accounts in France and deactivated them. It credited a combination of improved automated detection and stepped-up human efforts to find sophisticated attacks.

Company officials briefed congressional committee members and staff, among others, about their findings. People involved in the conversations also said the number of Facebook accounts suspended in France for promoting propaganda or spam - much of it related to the election - had climbed to 70,000, a big jump from the 30,000 account closures the company disclosed in April.

Facebook did not dispute the figure.

Seeking Friends of Friends

The spying campaign included Russian agents posing as friends of friends of Macron associates and trying to glean personal information from them, according to the U.S. congressman and two others briefed on the matter.

Facebook employees noticed the efforts during the first round of the presidential election and traced them to tools used in the past by Russia’s GRU military intelligence unit, said the people, who spoke on condition they not be named because they were discussing sensitive government and private intelligence.

FILE PHOTO - French President Emmanuel Macron leaves the polling station after voting in the first of two rounds of parliamentary elections in Le Touquet, France, June 11, 2017.
Christophe Petit Tesson/Pool
Facebook told American officials that it did not believe the spies burrowed deep enough to get the targets to download malicious software or give away their login information, which they believe may have been the goal of the operation.

The same GRU unit, dubbed Fancy Bear or APT 28 in the cybersecurity industry, has been blamed for hacking the Democratic National Committee during the 2016 U.S. presidential election and many other political targets. The GRU did not respond to a request for comment.

Email accounts belonging to Macron campaign officials were hacked and their contents dumped online in the final days of the runoff between Macron and Le Pen.

FILE PHOTO - A supporter of former French economy minister Emmanuel Macron uses a mobile phone at a political rally for his political movement, En Marche !, or Forward !, in Le Mans, France, October 11, 2016.
Stephane Mahe
French law enforcement and intelligence officials have not publicly accused anyone of the campaign attacks.

Mounir Mahjoubi, who was digital director of Macron's political movement, En Marche, and is now a junior minister for digital issues in his government, told Reuters in May that some security experts blamed the GRU specifically, though they had no proof.

Mahjoubi and En Marche declined to comment.

There are few publicly known examples of sophisticated social media spying efforts. In 2015, Britain's domestic security service, MI5, warned that hostile powers were using LinkedIn to connect with and try to recruit government workers.

The social media and networking companies themselves rarely comment on such operations when discovered.

Facebook, facing mounting pressure from governments around the world to control "fake news' and propaganda on the service, took a step toward openness with a report in April on what it termed “information operations.”

The bulk of that document discussed so-called influence operations, which included “amplifier” accounts that spread links to slanted or false news stories in order to influence public opinion.
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-cyber ... SKBN1AC0EI
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: Why Do People Apologize For Russia?

Postby seemslikeadream » Tue Aug 01, 2017 12:59 pm

THE PANAMA PAPERS – FIRST STRIKE AGAINST PUTIN’S CORRUPTION
ERIC GARLAND AUGUST 1, 2017
Image
If you didn’t know much about international finance, you probably didn’t see the journalistic project known as The Panama Papers as a retaliatory move against Vladimir Putin’s Russia. Wikileaks did immediately. Although the tweet was since deleted, the political warfare operation took to Russia Today to complain that the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists wasn’t being ethical about their leaks, which made Vladimir Putin look corrupt. Somewhere between Rossiya Bank, Cyprus, and Panama, Putin had around $2 billion dollars stashed away.

Courtesy of The Guardian, this handy graph depicts the flow of what investor Bill Browder recently testified to be money stolen from the Russian people themselves.
Image
panama papers putin cyprus

Based on hacking that exfiltratrated 2.6 terabytes of financial data, the Panama Papers was the largest leak in a string of such “journalistic” endeavors kicked off by the Russian military intelligence front Wikileaks.
Image
Panama Papers leak file size

When the Panama Papers hit the news in April 2016, it wasn’t well understood that Vladimir Putin may have been the main target. Sure, the cast of Harry Potter had some money flowing through as well, but that was more light scandal than strategic strike. The New York Times published an article that explained which entities had been most exposed by the leaks:

Among others, the documents named close associates of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, the father of Prime Minister David Cameron of Britain and relatives of President Xi Jinping of China and members of the Chinese Communist Party Politburo Standing Committee. Articles published by news organizations in cooperation with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists also named King Salman of Saudi Arabia; Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson, who resigned as prime minister of Icelandafter the revelations; President Mauricio Macri of Argentina; and the soccer star Lionel Messi, one of the world’s wealthiest athletes.

Other soccer players; officials from FIFA, the sport’s world governing body; and UEFA, the governing body of European soccer, were also tied to firms incorporated offshore through the Panamanian firm.

A couple of names stick out: Vladimir Putin, and officials from FIFA, an organization whose Mr. Chuck Blazer used to reside in Trump Tower.

The New York Times also made clear who was conspicuously absent from the Panama Papers:

It is not clear how many United States citizens may have been involved. So far, the documents cited in news reports have not connected any prominent American politicians or other influential Americans to Mossack Fonseca.

It’s not that Americans do not avail themselves of offshore banking regimes. As I explored in The Atlantic back when Mitt Romney’s financial disclosures were in the news, the Cayman Islands are a popular place for American financiers to reduce taxation. Each section of the world has their favorites: England tends toward its Channel Islands, everybody loves Switzerland, Hong Kong and Singapore are Asia’s go-to financial hubs.

But this round of Pulitzer Prize-winning journalism focused on a favorite of Russia’s.

The Panama Papers reporting team began work in early 2015. Members of the team published and broadcast their first stories in April 2016 and continued producing stories throughout 2016. They pored over millions of confidential emails and corporate documents written in French, English, Spanish, Russian, Mandarin and Arabic and used shoe-leather reporting to track down additional documents and verify facts on six continents.

One thing remains opaque about the work begun in early 2015 – who obtained the hacked data in the first place? The Infosec Institute speculated in detail about the how, but the who remained still shrouded in mystery – as it does to this day.

Though we might take an educated guess about who would have the motivation…

WERE THE PANAMA PAPERS A WARNING SHOT AIMED AT PUTIN?

There are a lot of moving parts here, but let us take two issues: the relationship between Russia and West, and cyberwarfare that dramatically intensified after Edward Snowden exfiltrated data from the National Security Agency and gave it to Russia. In 2014, Russia launched an attack on the information systems of the U.S. Department of State. In 2015, Russia nearly crippled the information systems of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. America is now in a long state of emergency as it deals with a “political Pearl Harbor” assault on the 2016 elections, attacks aimed at every possible aspect of its political system.

We might now better understand why, in the middle of 2016, stories begin emerging from 2015 hacks that exposed, among other things, how Putin used Cyprus and Panama to traffic billions of ill-gotten gains. It also showed how Trump’s campaign manager Paul Manafort used Panamanian offshore banking to funnel payments from Ukraine back to the United States.

Conspiratorial minds might notice that the Panama Papers were published less than one week after Paul Manafort was named chairman of Donald Trump’s campaign.

Current reports tell us that the United States and its allies became aware of Putin’s plans to hack America’s elections as early as 2015. And true to their forecasts, the political Pearl Harbor arrived on our shores. The story may seem disconnected, but the Panama Papers perhaps show that the U.S. Government planned to expose these covert attacks, and the root of all this evil: Russian money and its flow around the world.

More surprises will come the deeper we go into this story. Though Russia’s attacks on America’s elections will receive the scrutiny and condemnation they deserve, the world may learn more than it expected about the flows of power and money beneath the surface of our public institutions. Russia will surely not be the only country implicated. This will probably result in a mix of reform and crisis.

Then again, it is usually crisis that produces the opportunity for reform.
http://www.ericgarland.co/2017/08/01/pa ... orruption/
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: Why Do People Apologize For Russia?

Postby seemslikeadream » Wed Sep 06, 2017 11:11 am

Ukraine Accuses Russia of the Unthinkable: Terror Attacks Against Its own People

By John R. Schindler 09/05/17

Secret service bosses are a notoriously tight-lipped bunch, particularly in Eastern Europe, where the Soviet legacy of complete state secrecy lingers. In the former Soviet Union, where the KGB ruled for most of the last century, spy chiefs give few interviews, and when they do they say very little of interest. Such is the nature of the espionage business there.

It was therefore something of a shock this weekend when Vasyl Hrytsak, Ukraine's secret service chief, gave an interview jam-packed with bombshells about the nasty SpyWar between Kyiv and Moscow. That clandestine struggle is an appendage to the low boil conflict being waged in Eastern Ukraine between Ukrainian forces and "rebels" who are in fact the Russian military.

Casualties are generally modest - a couple soldiers here, another handful there-- yet they are constant. Shelling, sniping, and patrolling take a steady toll of Ukrainian defenders who are holding the line in the country's east, keeping the Russian invader at bay, and the conflict shows no signs of abating anytime soon. Roughly one-third of the10,100 dead in the Russo-Ukrainian War have fallen since the so-called Minsk II cease-fire was hashed out in February 2015.

The espionage portion of this conflict is seldom mentioned in the media, so Hrytsak's comments were highly unusual. It should be noted that Hrytsak isn't a political hack; he is a career intelligence office who has worked for the Security Service of Ukraine or SBU since the early 1990's and has been its head since mid-2015.

In a TV interview, Hrytsak minced no words in calling out his Russian counterpart, Aleksandr Bortnikov, head of the Federal Security Service, the powerful FSB. Having previously explained three weeks ago that the SBU knew that the Kremlin had dispatched spy-saboteurs to undertake terrorist attacks in Ukraine, Hrytsak now made a direct appeal to Bortnikov:

I appeal to you as an officer. There are rules even in war that should not be broken by secret service agents. You have transgressed all these rules.

Stating how destabilizing FSB terror on Ukraine would be, Hrytsak went on:

Do you realize what geopolitical consequences these actions may have? Don you realize that you will be forced to answer for your actions? It is in your power to stop it. So, stop it now.

Then Hrytsak called out Bortnikov and the Kremlin for a series of terrorist attacks in Ukraine that were perpetrated by the FSB:

You and I both know Russian secret service agents were involved in terrorist acts committed in Odesa, Kharkiv, Kherson and other cities. Dozens of people died as a result. But this time you have broken all the rules and are prepared to destabilize the situation in Russia in order to justify invading Ukraine in a massive military campaign.

The attacks Hrytsak referenced - fires and clashes in Odesa in May 2014 that killed 48, a bombing Kharkiv in February 2015 that killed four, and a car bombing in Kherson in April 2016 that killed one - are believed by the SBU to be Russian handiwork. Kyiv's view is shared by Western security services. A senior American intelligence official with extensive experience in Eastern Europe told me there was "absolutely no doubt" that the FSB stood behind those terrorist attacks inside Ukraine.

Unfortunately, Moscow sending terrorists to Ukraine to foment a broader crisis -- and perhaps a fully renewed war - therefore cannot be ruled out as a malevolent fantasy. Dispatching assassins abroad to create mayhem and settle scores with Vladimir Putin's enemies - even in Washington, D.C. - is something this Kremlin does with disturbing frequency.

However, Hrytsak wasn't content to stop there. He accused Bortnikov of crossing the "red line" by plotting something truly nefarious to justify renewed aggression against Ukraine. That red line, the SBU chief explained, was even more sinister:

You were ready to blow up your own Russian citizens in order to destabilize the situation in Russia and give grounds for invading Ukraine, to launch a full-scale campaign.

In other words, Kyiv has officially accused Moscow of planning false-flag terrorism against its own people to justify a wider war against Russia's neighbor. This sounds like a gad conspiracy theory, not helped by the appropriation of "false flag" - a perfectly normal and legitimate espionage term - by tinfoil-weraring charlatans hawking male enhancement products.

Yet false flags exist in real life, and nobody is more proficient in this dark art that the Russians. This sort of dangerous provocation - what the Russians call provokatsiya - is ubiquitous in Kremlin spy operations, and they've been employing them since the Imperial era more than a century ago. Indeed, anarchist terrorists in the last decades of the Tsar's rule - especially the deadly and accomplished ones - had a bad habit of turning out to be agents provocateurs for the Tsar's secret police.

Things got even worse under the Bolsheviks, who eagerly employed provocations against their enemies at home and abroad. The KGB became very accomplished at employing false-flag operations, including terrorism, to undermine Moscow's enemies. In a recent column, I unraveled one such operation in Cold War Germany, a Communist false=flag murder that had enormous political consequences - all of them negative for the West.

These unpleasant practices continued after Communism's fall and the KGB's successors have employed false-flag in what the call "operational games." One of them seems to have played a pivotal role in the coming of Vladimir Putin to power in the Kremlin. That notorious example was the bombing of four Russian apartment buildings in September 1999 that together killed almost 300 civilians and injured more than a thousand.

These terrorist attacks infuriated average Russians and gave the Kremlin a green light to renew its messy war against Chechen rebels, since the bombing were perpetrated by terrorists from Chechnya, according to Moscow. Of particular note, these attacks bolstered the profile and power of the country's newly appointed prime minister, Vladimir Putin, who had headed the FSB until only a few months before the bombings.

There was never convincing evidence that Chechens were behind these outrages, but there was considerable evidence that the FSB was. The best book on this sordid saga leaves little doubt that FSB officials blew up their own citizens to justify a new Chechen war and boost Putin. Several journalists who looked into the matter wound up dead under violent or mysterious circumstances.

The only question here is whether those Chekist false-flag bombers were acting on orders from the Kremlin or they went rogue - which may not be answerable anytime soon, although I can confirm that our Intelligence Community knows much more about this ugly mystery than it have ever admitted publicly. The notion that the FSB might commit acts of terrorism against Russians to justify was and aggression isn't only plausible, it's likely already happened under Putin. The SBU chief's comments thereof deserve to be taken seriously, particularly in the light of the imminent Zapad 2017 military mega-exerices, the biggest display of the Kremlin's military might since the Cold War, right on the doorstep of NATO - and Ukraine.

Poland's defense minister, Antoni Macierewicz, recently called out Moscow for Zapad, terming it "not at all defensive, but aggressive and that's dangerous," adding that, "according to information that has been reaching us, nearly 100,000 soldiers have been mobilized for these exercises" not the mere 12,500 that Moscow has claimed .

Warsaw has every right to be worried, given Putin's track record of aggression and Moscow's long history of invading Poland. However, the Poles are NATO members and can rely on collective Western security. Ukraine stands alone against Russia, so Kyiv has every right to be even more worried about what the Kremlin might do next.
http://observer.com/2017/09/ukraine-rus ... terrorism/
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: Why Do People Apologize For Russia?

Postby seemslikeadream » Wed Sep 06, 2017 2:04 pm

BLACKOUT
Russia-Linked Hackers Breached 100 Nuclear and Power Plants Just This Year

Intrusions intensified in the U.S. during 2017 and are linked back to Dragonfly, a hacking group that caused power outages in Ukraine.

KEVIN POULSEN
09.06.17 6:00 AM ET
A series of sophisticated computer intrusions at electric companies and nuclear-plant operators this year has been traced back to a hacking group called “Dragonfly” and “Energetic Bear” that’s been previously linked to Russia, according to a new report from the computer-security company Symantec, which has seen about 100 such breaches since the start of the year, half of them in the U.S.
The finding is potentially worrisome, because Dragonfly is one of very few hacking groups to evince expertise in power-grid control networks—the computerized systems that turn off and on circuit breakers. A separate Russia-linked hacking operation has twice demonstrated the Kremlin’s ability and willingness to use that kind of expertise to cause electrical blackouts—once in December 2015, and a second time a year later, both in Ukraine. Symantec believes the U.S. breaches may be moving into similar terrain.
“The original Dragonfly campaigns now appear to have been a more exploratory phase where the attackers were simply trying to gain access to the networks of targeted organizations,” the Symantec report concludes. Now, “the attackers may be entering into a new phase, with recent campaigns potentially providing them with access to operational systems, access that could be used for more disruptive purposes in future.”
So far, though, the U.S. intrusions have been about gathering intelligence— technical diagrams, reports, passwords, crypto keys—mostly from administrative networks that don’t control equipment. In only a handful of the breaches did the intruders make their way to the plant control network. But Vikram Thakur, technical director at Symantec, points out they weren’t quick to leave.
“The ones where the attackers were able to get on the operational side of the house were the scariest to us,” says Thakur. “We’ve seen them get on these operational computers and start taking rapid-fire screenshots. Some would show maps of what’s connected to what.”
If Thakur worries the attackers are moving from spying to outright disruption, he concedes that he’s not a specialist in power-grid control systems. Robert Lee, CEO of Dragos, is such a specialist, and he says he’s seen no evidence that Dragonfly is doing anything that it hasn’t always done: poking around and gathering information.
“It is very concerning to see threat actors targeting the U.S. energy sector,” says Lee. “But we have to be very careful in assuming adversary intent and motivations… We’ve seen no indication that there’s an ability to take down infrastructure. Of course, we don’t want them to have that option.”

The latest wave of energy company attacks drew attention last July, after the FBI and DHS issued an industry advisory warning that unknown hackers were specifically targeting engineers as a way of worming into U.S. energy companies, including some nuclear plants.
The perpetrators in the attacks have perfected a two-pronged approach. In some hacks, they send fake résumés or party invitations to engineers and their managers as Microsoft Word files, specially crafted to leak the victim’s Windows credentials to the attacker’s machine. The second, more insidious approach, involves hacking third-party websites frequented by control-system engineers, such as industry journals and magazines. By planting a single line on the website’s code, the attackers can target any of the site’s visitors with malware. Called a “watering hole” attack, one security expert says at least 60 engineering-related sites have been used in the energy attacks so far.
The attackers are professional and well-organized, but because they make copious use of open-source code and tools available in the computer underground it was difficult to link them strongly to previously known operations. In its new report, Symantec says it finally got the goods on the hackers, in part because they were caught deploying a version of a backdoor program called Heriplor previously used by only one other group, Dragonfly.
Dragonfly was already the obvious suspect. The group was infamous for attacking energy companies around the world beginning in late 2011, using the same techniques now seen in the nuclear hacks. In 2014, Symantec discovered the hacking and published the first report on Dragonfly; Crowdstrike identified the operation as originating in Russia.
After the public exposure, Dragonfly seemed to disappear, according to Symantec. But working backward from the 2017 attacks, Symantec says it has found evidence that the hackers began quietly deploying their new watering hole and Microsoft Word ploys in Europe, along with familiar tricks like backdooring commercial software. This year, they brought the new campaign to U.S. with a vengeance.

Dragonfly has always been focused on control networks, including a crucial technology called SCADA, for Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition. A SCADA network is essentially an electronic nervous system that allows operators to remotely monitor and control all the pumps, motors, relays, and valves that undergird society’s infrastructure. The technology grew out of the electric industry beginning in the 1940s as a solution to the growing complexity of power distribution, which requires constant monitoring and adjustment of equipment at thousands of substations scattered around the country. Rather than keep technicians at every site, utilities began connecting the substation equipment to meters and knobs at centralized control centers, first by wire, later by radio, and today over serial ports and digital networks, with graphical computer controls replacing the meters and knobs.
SCADA systems have been plagued by insecurity, and some security experts have been warning for years that attackers could eventually cause a blackout. It finally happened in December 2015, when the hacking operation dubbed Sandworm—which has been linked to the Russian government—successfully attacked a Ukrainian power plant and triggered a blackout that left 225,000 people without power.
Last year, a second attack by the same hackers plunged a portion of Kiev into darkness for about an hour. That attack used previously unseen malware built specifically to manipulate power-plant networks.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/breaches-a ... via=mobile
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: Why Do People Apologize For Russia?

Postby Wombaticus Rex » Wed Sep 06, 2017 2:11 pm

Yet false flags exist in real life, and nobody is more proficient in this dark art than the Russians.


Image

Schindler is such a sad sack, but man, he does deliver the LULZ. Every. Time.
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Re: Why Do People Apologize For Russia?

Postby seemslikeadream » Wed Sep 06, 2017 2:23 pm

I know it is a faux pas to post anything that puts Saint Putin in a bad light here but I do it anyway

he does love dogs though
Image
Image

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Opposition activists in Saint Petersburg carry a carry a model of a prison cell with the cut-out figure of Russia's President, Vladimir Putin, during a rally against his third term, June 12, 2012. The model's sign reads: "[Convicted] for the KGB-style provocations."
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-06-13/o ... ll/4067302


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Protesters in Moscow call for Putin to resign
4 MONTHS AGO
The protest in central Moscow was organised by the Open Russia movement. At least 500 people handed over a petition for President Vladimir Putin to quit.
http://www.trtworld.com/europe/proteste ... ign-346327
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: Why Do People Apologize For Russia?

Postby MacCruiskeen » Wed Sep 06, 2017 3:34 pm

Image

"Ich kann gar nicht so viel fressen, wie ich kotzen möchte." - Max Liebermann,, Berlin, 1933

"Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts." - Richard Feynman, NYC, 1966

TESTDEMIC ➝ "CASE"DEMIC
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Re: Why Do People Apologize For Russia?

Postby Elvis » Wed Sep 06, 2017 4:10 pm

Wombaticus Rex » Wed Sep 06, 2017 11:11 am wrote:
Yet false flags exist in real life, and nobody is more proficient in this dark art than the Russians.


Image

Schindler is such a sad sack, but man, he does deliver the LULZ. Every. Time.


I'd never heard of him. Sounds extremely reliable and trustworthy.

John Schindler is a security expert and former National Security Agency analyst and counterintelligence officer.
http://observer.com/author/john-r-schindler/


A former National Security Agency analyst who was part of a task force that believed Saddam Hussein maintained weapons of mass destruction
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/201 ... hoto-flap/



John Schindler announced that his relationship with the Naval War College has ended after he was caught in a sexting scandal. Schindler emerged from relative obscurity to become a prominent critic of NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden and Pulitzer-prize winning journalist Glenn Greenwald.

As a former NSA analyst and professor at the Naval War College, Schindler was often quoted by journalists looking to put a face on the clandestine agency that maintains strict controls on communication with the media. Much to the delight of NSA critics, Schindler was happy to oblige media cravings for someone affiliated with the NSA to speak about the agency, even if unofficially. While Schindler’s expertise was useful for the media, his polarizing arrogance served NSA critics who believed the agency was disrespectful to American values and antagonistic towards constitutionally protected personal privacy.

In the course of his social media campaign promoting the NSA Schindler made copious statements regarding both Greenwald and Snowden, most of which revolved around an unsubstantiated claim that Snowden was really a Russian agent. Though some of Schindler’s statements veered well outside his conspiracy theory such as when he compared Edward Snowden to Adolf Hitler and said Glenn Greewald would be well suited to serve Joseph Stalin and be a mass murderer like Lavrentiy Beria. :shock:

But it was not Schindler’s unhinged comments that brought him to official disgrace. It was, ironically, his inappropriate use of communications technology.

The former employee of the premiere signal intelligence agency of the world stupidly decided to send a picture of his penis to a person he met on the internet. The picture, along with a corresponding email where Schindler said he was not in a traditional marriage, were made public by Twitter user @Currahee88. According to @Currahee88 the information was released to shame Schindler though Schindler initially speculated he may be the victim of an intelligence operation.

Schindler was subsequently put on leave from the Naval War College pending a review. The review was completed with the result reportedly told to Schindler in late July that he was out at the Naval War College. He was apparently given the option of resigning rather than being fired, which he took.

So is this the end for soon-to-be former Professor Schindler? Let’s all hope not. No one has been, to paraphrase Lenin, such a useful idiot for the cause of personal privacy.

Would you want Dr. Dick Pic and those like him having access to all your private personal information?

https://shadowproof.com/2014/08/14/john ... g-scandal/
“The purpose of studying economics is not to acquire a set of ready-made answers to economic questions, but to learn how to avoid being deceived by economists.” ― Joan Robinson
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Re: Why Do People Apologize For Russia?

Postby seemslikeadream » Wed Sep 06, 2017 4:15 pm

Why Do People Apologize For Russia?

8bitagent » Wed Jul 24, 2013 9:31 pm wrote:Not to get all John Mccain neocon, but I never got why conspiracy/anti war/anti government people give big passes to Russia. Because Putin acts as a quasi gutcheck to America?
This is a country that is experiencing a brutal crackdown on LGBT people, including supporters. Signed into law by Putin himself. A country where there is no conspiracy or mystery regarding
the death of many journalists/whistleblowers...done with Mossad like hubris by Russian linked forces.

This is a country who mass murdered countless Chechen innocents not long ago, and installed a puppet regime that then imposed hardcore Sharia law. A country where some cities are still under control of joint FSB-pedo narco mobs. I'm good online friends with people in both Russia and former satellites, and they paint day to day living there as not, well very fun.
Just google "Sudan Russia arms". And who was the FIRST foreign leader Bush called on 9/11? Putin. When it comes to killing Muslims, Putin and the White House have a lovely understanding.

Yet because Russia's government has the conspiracy/left politic friendly RT channel, that somehow makes Russia forgiveable? Hell I still believe FSB orchestrated some of those so called Chechen attacks


and Putin has a right to forget who you were law


Russia: Alleged Crime Figure Seemingly Rebrands Himself Under “Right to Forget” Law
Published: Thursday, 02 June 2016 16:23

Said to have been a key figure in an organized crime group, Sergei Mikhailov has seemingly been working to clean up his image by using a new law to remove information about his past from Russian search engines, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) reported.

Mikhailov was said to have a leading role in the Solntsevo crime group that rose from extorting money from street kiosks into arms and drug trafficking across the world. However, an extortion case after his arrest in 1989 was dropped and he was acquitted of involvement in an organized crime group in the 1990s. Authorities searched his home in 2002 as part of a probe into kidnapping and extortion, but he has not been charged, RFE/RL reported.

NewsRU wrote that the Russian law that came into effect Jan. 1 allows citizens to appeal to search engines to remove information for various reasons, including information “irrelevant due to the applicant’s subsequent action.” Citizens could demand the removal of a former workplace, or hide the fact they were in prison, for example.

RFE/RL found that certain search results for Mikhailov and his alias on different Russian search engines were met with messages saying that some results may have been omitted in consistence with an information law. The search engine Yandex said that they had so far approved around 30% of removal requests, out of several thousand requests, NewsRU wrote.

Several articles and stories about Mikhailov’s past can still be found outside of Russia on the search engines, but his website depicts him as a former professional wrestler who began work on “commercial activity” after employment as a mechanic and hotel manager, RFE/RL said.
According to his website, his charity fund provides assistance to dozens of organizations, and his website also features a list of awards dating back to 1994. Mikhailov said back in 2014 that his charity work with veterans and widows drew the attention of President Vladimir Putin, who allegedly awarded him a watch.
https://www.occrp.org/en/daily/5304-rus ... forget-law


A New Breed of Gangster Is Globalizing Russian Crime
Corruption: Authorities say these wise guys work both sides of the law and rival the Mafia and drug cartels.
September 23, 1998|RICHARD C. PADDOCK | TIMES STAFF WRITER

GENEVA — To Swiss authorities, Sergei Mikhailov is a dangerous man who heads one of Russia's largest crime groups from the isolation of his Geneva jail cell. He has been locked up without trial since October 1996 and going to occasional court appearances in an armored Mercedes with a SWAT team escort.

Police arrested one of his Swiss lawyers, accusing him of smuggling Mikhailov's letters out of jail and passing them to an accomplice who faxed them to Moscow. And, fearing Mikhailov's long reach, the Swiss government took the extraordinary step of granting asylum to the main witness against him--a Russian police inspector.

But to Mikhailov and his defenders, the 40-year-old prisoner is a legitimate businessman who has been unfairly imprisoned simply because he is Russian. He is a dealer in the export of gas and oil, they say, a generous man who buys bells for churches in Russia and donates money to an orphanage.

"I haven't done anything illegal," Mikhailov protested to a panel of judges during a recent court hearing. "I am an honest person. If I did something wrong, show me concrete proof. Where is this alleged criminal organization?"

For the Record
Los Angeles Times Wednesday September 30, 1998 Home Edition Part A Page 3 Metro Desk 1 inches; 28 words Type of Material: Correction
Russian crime--The caption for a photograph accompanying a Sept. 23 Times article on the globalization of Russian crime should have identified the man pictured as defense attorney Alec Reymond.


The answer, police say, is: all over the world. Although Mikhailov's accusers have been slow to bring their evidence to court, authorities allege that he is the boss of the notorious Solntsevo gang--reputed to be the largest Russian crime syndicate. If what they say is true, that would make him one of the most feared and powerful criminals anywhere.

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the operations of ruthless, well-financed Russian crime groups have spread internationally with lightning speed. From Moscow to Geneva to Los Angeles, law enforcement officials say the Russian mob has become one of the world's biggest crime threats over the past six years, rivaling the Italian Mafia and the Colombian drug cartels in scope and power.

"I look at the 1990s as the decade of the Russians," said Larry Langberg, who heads the FBI's Russian organized crime task force in Los Angeles. "We do have a big problem. This is a very active group."

Billions Smuggled From Homeland

Western countries that once worried about the Soviets' military might are now trying to combat the invasion of the brutal and disciplined Russian mafia. With the collapse of the Iron Curtain, Russian gangs have smuggled as much as $50 billion out of Russia and into other parts of Europe, Asia and the Americas, Interpol estimates.

Much of this newfound wealth has been laundered through banks in Switzerland, as well as Cyprus, the Caribbean and other offshore banking havens, officials say. Billions of dollars have gone to finance criminal operations ranging from prostitution and car theft rings to extortion and contract murder. Billions more have been used to buy into legitimate businesses and purchase real estate in locations from the Mediterranean to Manhattan.

Cunning survivors of one of the harshest regimes in history, Russian criminals have easily moved their operations into more than 50 countries, according to the FBI. In the process, they have struck up cooperative relations with powerful international mafia clans and drug cartels.

"What was once organized crime has become transnational crime," said Stephen Handelman, author of the book "Comrade Criminal" and an expert on the Russian mafia. "The Russians were better prepared than other crime groups to take part in the global economy. They have now emerged as a full-blown network, passing huge amounts of money around the world."

Russian gangs have roots deep in the Soviet past. Despite the Communists' efforts to destroy them, they formed a close-knit brotherhood with strict rules of behavior. Their training grounds were Soviet prison camps, and their operations were often run from behind bars by senior bosses.

During the final years of Soviet rule, the mafia grew increasingly stronger, forging alliances with corrupt Communist officials. The black market became one of the principal distributors of goods throughout the country--helping to keep the economy running and the Soviets in power.


When the Communist state collapsed at the end of 1991, the crime syndicates were in a perfect position to take advantage of privatization. Cooperating with corrupt officials, they took over government enterprises and factories and won a controlling stake in the country's economy. Then they stripped wealth from their homeland, shipped it abroad and went into business in the West.

Russian gangs have proved themselves to be a new breed, bringing together crime overlords, entrepreneurs, former KGB operatives and government bureaucrats and engaging in diversified activities on both sides of the law.

"As a former superpower, with intelligence links all over the world, they could take advantage of the channels of information for greed and profit," Handelman said. "Because of the global economy, you have transnational groups now doing legitimate and illegitimate business. It's hard to draw the line between what is illegal and what is legal."

Officials estimate that there are more than 6,000 mafia groups in Russia, many with international ties. More than 200 operate in the United States, according to the FBI.

Russian crime groups, having evolved in a totalitarian state, typically impose rigid discipline on their members and display a callous disregard for anyone outside their circle. While cruelty and contract murders are commonplace methods of doing business, the gangsters are also willing to negotiate profit-sharing agreements with potential rivals.

And in the day-to-day fight between law enforcement and organized crime, it appears that the Russian syndicates are winning. Authorities say crime groups are often better organized and better financed than police agencies. Their operations cross so many international boundaries that intergovernmental collaboration to curtail them can be awkward.

For the Record
Los Angeles Times Wednesday September 30, 1998 Home Edition Part A Page 3 Metro Desk 1 inches; 28 words Type of Material: Correction
Russian crime--The caption for a photograph accompanying a Sept. 23 Times article on the globalization of Russian crime should have identified the man pictured as defense attorney Alec Reymond.


"They cooperate with each other much better than we do," said Gwen McClure, who heads Interpol's organized crime section at its headquarters in Lyons, France. "Unfortunately, organized crime groups have fewer laws, less bureaucracy. They share intelligence much better. They have much more money than we have. They can afford to get the best technology."

FBI Task Forces in Major U.S. Cities

In the United States, the Russian mafia found ready victims and a good base of operations in the communities of Russian Jews who immigrated during the Soviet era. Recognizing the mounting Russian crime threat in 1994, the FBI formed task forces in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago and New York to deal solely with the Russian mafia.

In 1996, the U.S. government scored its biggest success with the New York extortion conviction of Vyacheslav Ivankov, the top Russian crime boss in the U.S. and an alleged associate of Mikhailov.

In Los Angeles, the FBI says, the Russian mafia is involved in protection rackets within the Russian community and in frauds such as staged auto accidents and phony medical insurance claims. Russian criminals also engage in scams such as stealing credit card numbers or "phone cloning," in which they illegally obtain cellular telephone numbers from the airwaves and sell them.

Outside their homeland, Russian criminals are most active in the United States, Switzerland, Cyprus, Canada, the Caribbean and Israel, authorities say. In major European cities, Russian syndicates have built a thriving prostitution business, bringing in women from the former Soviet states as virtual slaves.

Money laundering is central to Russian criminals' operations as they try to legitimize their earnings. Russian syndicates have bought as many as two dozen banks, mainly in Cyprus and the Caribbean, to hide illegal money, according to Interpol. In Berlin, Russian mobsters launder money through more than 200 gambling parlors they own or control, police say.

In Israel, where Russians make up one-sixth of the population, the Russian mafia has brutally shoved aside Israeli criminals and taken over prostitution, gambling, money laundering and racketeering operations.

In one prominent Israeli case, Russian mobster Gregory Lerner pleaded guilty in March to defrauding banks of $48 million and trying to bribe officials, including members of parliament and Shimon Peres when he was prime minister. Lerner is serving eight years in prison and has become something of a cult figure. He placed fourth in a "most popular immigrant" poll conducted by a Russian-language newspaper.

Notorious Killer Slain in Greece

One of Russia's most notorious gangsters, Alexander Solonik, was found strangled last year in an Athens suburb. Solonik murdered four Russian police officers in 1995 and then escaped from prison. Police say he was dealing in arms and running a prostitution ring in Greece. The week he died, he was reportedly due to carry out a murder in Italy, where police say he kept an apartment stocked with weapons.


In Geneva, the case of Mikhailov has demonstrated the difficulty of prosecuting an alleged mafia chief who has conducted his activities around the globe.

A waiter in Moscow during Soviet times, Mikhailov was first schooled in the world of crime when he was 26 and spent six months in jail for falsely reporting his motorcycle stolen to claim the insurance. After his release, he allegedly began organizing the Solntsevo gang, named after a district in southwest Moscow. The gang grew to dominate much of the city after winning a series of bloody turf battles with rival gangs.

n 1989, he was arrested on extortion charges but released after the main witness refused to testify. In 1993, he was detained in the killing of a casino operator, but the case fell apart for lack of evidence. At one point, he had one ID saying he was a CNN correspondent and another saying he was a member of the Kremlin security detail, according to "Who's Who in the Russian Criminal World" by Alexander Maximov.

Mikhailov, also known as Mikhas, moved to Israel in 1994 and was granted automatic citizenship because of his marriage to a Jewish woman. Last May, seven Israelis--including former employees of the Israeli Interior Ministry--were convicted of helping Mikhailov and other Russian mafia figures obtain citizenship by forging documents and arranging fictitious marriages.

While the nature of his business activities is unclear, Mikhailov has built a far-flung empire with dealings in the United States, South America, Israel, Austria, Belgium, Hungary and other parts of Europe. His attorneys say he was involved in negotiating gas and oil deals with Russia. Press reports say he was building a five-star hotel in the Hungarian capital, Budapest, and exporting bananas from Costa Rica. Authorities say he was involved in arms dealing, drug trafficking, blackmail and money laundering.

For the Record
Los Angeles Times Wednesday September 30, 1998 Home Edition Part A Page 3 Metro Desk 1 inches; 28 words Type of Material: Correction
Russian crime--The caption for a photograph accompanying a Sept. 23 Times article on the globalization of Russian crime should have identified the man pictured as defense attorney Alec Reymond.


He moved to the village of Borex outside Geneva, where he traveled around in a blue Rolls-Royce. He allegedly bought a villa there through a Swiss intermediary.

Costa Rica made him an honorary consul and gave him a diplomatic passport--although Russia refused to recognize his appointment. He was carrying the Costa Rican passport--along with Russian and Israeli passports--when the Swiss police arrested him on his arrival at the Geneva airport in 1996.

Mikhailov is charged with being a member of a criminal organization, laundering money, falsifying evidence and buying real estate illegally. The police froze $4 million in his Swiss bank accounts.

"This is not preventive detention," said Swiss Atty. Gen. Carla del Ponte, who has been personally involved in the case. "He is kept in jail so he doesn't flee and so he doesn't tamper with evidence."

But Mikhailov's Swiss defense team protests that the government has kept him behind bars for nearly two years without enough evidence to go to trial.

"I have to emphasize that Mikhailov did not commit any crimes on Swiss soil," attorney Alec Reymond said. "In Russia, he is not accused of anything either. I think the prosecution doesn't know what to do with him, and that's why they are keeping him in jail for so long."

During Mikhailov's recent court hearing, armed guards were posted throughout the courtroom, and police officers with machine guns stood watch outside. Mikhailov seemed frustrated and weary from his long detention.

"If Russian authorities have concrete proof, let them show it," he told the court. "I haven't been to Russia in four years. All the evidence the Swiss supposedly have is false. Why does Switzerland treat an innocent man this way? I don't feel guilty."

Times staff writers Rebecca Trounson in Jerusalem and Richard Boudreaux in Rome, Times researcher Christian Retzlaff in Berlin and special correspondent Maria Petrakis in Athens contributed to this report.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

About This Series

In this four-part series, The Times examines Russia's post-Soviet convalescence.

* Sunday: It is becoming clearer by the day that epidemic corruption is not a fleeting ailment. More and more, it is looking like an enduring framework for doing business.


* Monday: Theft has emerged as an integral part of Russia's "privatization" of property once owned by the state. For millions of Russians, stealing is a normal part of life.

* Tuesday: Meet Volodya. He killed a man when he was 10. He belongs to Russia's young and angry underclass, with no way of surviving except through crime and violence.

* Today: Western countries that once worried about the Soviets' military might are now trying to combat an invasion by the brutal and disciplined Russian mafia.
http://articles.latimes.com/1998/sep/23/news/mn-25630

viewtopic.php?f=8&t=40330&p=629158&hilit=right+to+forget#p629158
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: Why Do People Apologize For Russia?

Postby MacCruiskeen » Wed Sep 06, 2017 4:41 pm

seemslikeadream » Wed Sep 06, 2017 3:15 pm wrote:Why Do People Apologize For Russia?



Can Excessive Cannabis Use Cause Brain Damage? If So, Is That Damage Exacerbated By Excessive And Indiscriminate Media Consumption?

Questions, questions...

Image

I think we should be told.
"Ich kann gar nicht so viel fressen, wie ich kotzen möchte." - Max Liebermann,, Berlin, 1933

"Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts." - Richard Feynman, NYC, 1966

TESTDEMIC ➝ "CASE"DEMIC
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Re: Why Do People Apologize For Russia?

Postby seemslikeadream » Wed Sep 06, 2017 4:45 pm

back to your old tricks Mac? Wouldn't think any less of you

how about LGBT in Russia Mac?


https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_cont ... EV9O_O7EB8

All rested up and loaded for bear?

what is worse...plastic paddy or stoner Image....who can say? :lol: :lol: :lol:

Image

it's my story and I am sticking to it :partydance:
Image



I laugh at every little insult you have thrown my way...keep 'em coming I love to be amused

The Fates Of 5 Men Connected To The Trump-Russia Dossier
02/11/2017 02:27 pm ET | Updated 38 minutes ago

Seth Abramson

Attorney; Assistant Professor at University of New Hampshire; Poet; Editor, Best American Experimental Writing; Editor, Metamodern Studies.
This post is hosted on the Huffington Post’s Contributor platform. Contributors control their own work and post freely to our site. If you need to flag this entry as abusive, send us an email.
As President Trump begins his historic détente with Vladimir Putin, it seems a good time to check in with five other men who, along with Trump and Putin, were mentioned in the explosive “Steele Dossier” that hit U.S. media several weeks ago and has since been largely forgotten. The dossier, which accuses Mr. Trump and members of his campaign staff of treason against the United States, was compiled by Christopher Steele, a former high-ranking agent for Britain’s MI6 intelligence service—and the head of that service’s Russia desk.

Intelligence agencies on both sides of the Atlantic say Steele is highly competent and thoroughly credible.

Reviewing the fates of the five men below, we find that, since their alleged involvement in the activities detailed in the Steele dossier, one of these men was fired from his job, while another was promoted. A third man was found dead in the back of his car the day after Christmas, while the whereabouts of a fourth are unknown—as he’s gone into hiding for fear of his own and his family’s safety.

A fifth met with Vladimir Putin as recently as two weeks ago.

This list of five men does not include former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort, who was mysteriously pushed out by Trump after reports emerged that Manafort indirectly assisted Russia’s invasion of the Crimean Peninsula in Ukraine—the very international crime the Trump administration now opposes leveling sanctions to punish. Prior to his departure in August, it was widely reported that Manafort had also been behind the Trump campaign’s efforts, at the Republican convention in July, to amend the party’s platform to adopt a more favorable view of Russia’s annexation of Crimea.

Carter Page. On March 21, 2016, then-presidential candidate Donald Trump told the editorial board of The Washington Post that Carter Page was a key member of his foreign policy team. To be clear, Trump cited Page, unprompted, by name—indeed, Page’s was one of the very first names Mr. Trump could think of in offering up his roster of foreign policy advisers. Four months later, Page travelled to Moscow to give a speech at the Higher Economic School. It was at this point, according to the Steele dossier, that the CEO of Russia’s national oil company, Igor Sechin, offered Page brokerage of a 19 percent stake in the oil company if he would convince Mr. Trump to lift U.S. sanctions on Russian oil.

Four days after Mr. Trump’s inauguration, Russia sold a 19.5 percent stake in its oil company to an undisclosed buyer.

U.S. media, which has repeatedly asserted that it cannot confirm any facts in the Steele dossier, seems to have done virtually no investigation of this uncanny coincidence.

Will the media change its tune, now that intelligence agencies have announced, this week, that in fact they can confirm some of the dossier?

In any case, the source for Mr. Steele’s inclusion of the Page-Sechin meeting in his dossier was “a trusted compatriot and close associate” of Sechin—now believed to be one of Mr. Sechin’s top aides, Oleg Erovinkin. Steele is no longer the only person to report on the meeting; last July, further confirmation of the meeting came from a U.S. intelligence source who spoke to Yahoo’s Michael Isikoff.

Politico reports that while in Moscow Page may also have met with Sergei Ivanov, the then-chief of Putin’s presidential administration. And Isikoff’s sources claim that Page also met with a third man—a senior Kremlin internal affairs official named Igor Diveykin.

Steele’s dossier, which also contends that Page met with Diveykin in Moscow, suggests that it was at this third meeting that Diveykin revealed to Page that the Russian government held compromising material (called kompromat in Russia) on Mr. Trump.

Page’s Moscow speech condemned—shockingly—the United States for its purportedly “hypocritical focus on ideas such as democratization, inequality, corruption and regime change” in its Russia policy. Page was dumped from the Trump campaign in September—two months after his Russia trip—and President Trump’s press secretary Sean Spicer now insists that Mr. Trump “does not know” Page.

That appears to be a lie.

We needn’t take Donald Trump’s statements to The Washington Post as proof of this, however. Why? Because Page himself has spoken on the issue. Page now says that “I’ve certainly been in a number of meetings with Trump, and I’ve learned a tremendous amount from him.”

This wouldn’t be the first time high-level officials in the Trump administration have lied about who they know or have talked to; indeed, it was just revealed this week that Michael Flynn—Mr. Trump’s top adviser on Russia policy—seemingly lied to the vice president of the United States, the chief of staff to the president, and the White House press secretary about whether he was negotiating with the Russians prior to Mr. Trump’s inauguration. Did Mr. Flynn go rogue? Or did Mr. Trump—who now claims to be mystified about the news of Mr. Flynn’s pre-inauguration conversations with the Russian ambassador to the U.S.—order the conversation and then deny knowledge of it, much like he had many conversations with Carter Page and then denied knowing him at all?


Trump’s national security adviser, Michael Flynn, at an RT party with Russian president Vladimir Putin.
Igor Diveykin. The former deputy head of the domestic politics department in Vladimir Putin’s presidential administration, who allegedly informed Carter Page of the compromising material on Mr. Trump held by Mr. Putin, soon after received a promotion. He is now the deputy chief of the State Duma Apparatus and chief administrator of Duma Affairs. He has told reporters in Russia that he wants to sue the U.S. media outlets that reported on his alleged meeting with Page.

Oddly, no such lawsuit has been forthcoming.

Igor Sechin. Sechin, a former deputy prime minister in Russia as well as the current head of its state oil company, remains in Putin’s good graces, having met with him as recently as a couple weeks ago. Unfortunately, Sechin is now without the services of his “closest associate”: Oleg Erovinkin.

Oleg Erovinkin. Erovinkin, Sechin’s “closest associate” and reportedly a “key liaison” between Sechin and Putin, was long “suspected of helping former MI6 spy Christopher Steele compile his dossier,” according to The Telegraph.

And guess what? He’s dead now.

Erovinkin was found slain in his car the day after Christmas—and was immediately removed to a morgue run by Russia’s FSB, the successor to the KGB.

Per The Telegraph, multiple media reports in Russia allege that the death was a murder.

It’s just another “coincidence” related to the Steele dossier that U.S. media has not yet seen fit to investigate.

Christopher Steele. So what about Mr. Steele himself? Mr. Trump said the entire Steele dossier is “fake news” and “phony”—a claim we now know is untrue, based on the revelations this week that U.S. intelligence has confirmed many the dossier’s claims—so what sort of fate would we assume for a man who wrote a dossier that could bring down the two most powerful men in the world? Were the dossier entirely fake, as Mr. Trump has falsely stated, Mr. Steele would be of no danger to anyone—merely an annoyance. But if the dossier were entirely accurate or nearly so, Steele would be the most valuable witness in a criminal investigation currently alive, sought by both members of Putin’s government and allies to Mr. Trump to ensure that the former MI6 agent couldn’t provide U.S. intelligence agencies with any additional information about either his sources or his dossier.

So guess what?

Mr. Steele is now on the run for his life. And so is his family.

He believes he will be murdered, and that his family will be murdered.

No one knows where he is.

While none of the above proves the veracity of the most salacious claims made in the Steele Dossier—claims that Donald Trump sold away U.S. policy toward Russia to avoid Russian blackmail—the fates of these five men (as well as a sixth mentioned frequently in the dossier, Paul Manafort) seem inconsistent with President Trump’s insistence that the Steele dossier is “fake news.”

The information above seems inconsistent, too, with Mr. Putin’s concurrent claim that the document is “clearly fake.”

Indeed, it would not be unreasonable to observe that this is quite a lot of drama, death, and fear to be surrounding a document which, according to the U.S. president, is mere hooey. Nor would it be unreasonable to add that both our current president and Russia’s president have repeatedly been caught in lies—and seem disproportionately likely to put their own personal interests ahead of those of their respective nations.

The only question remaining, now, is whether U.S. intelligence agencies and/or the U.S. media can, with sufficient diligence in their investigations, begin to do something about it.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/the ... bf74f03cd6



Facebook says it sold political ads to Russian company during 2016 election

Facebook officials reported that they traced the ad sales, totaling $100,000, to a Russian “troll farm” with a history of pushing pro-Kremlin propaganda
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics ... 81c69a3679
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: Why Do People Apologize For Russia?

Postby Elvis » Wed Sep 06, 2017 9:17 pm

Putin is Putin and I'd be looking past him to see what comes after. Hopefully the U.S. will fiddle with their election and get a good guy in there. I nominate Pissoffsky.

I kinda miss Putin already.


I always get loaded before doing my proofreading jobs. They pay me, can you believe it? By the way, there's an apostrophe in the possessive "its" on that poster. Nothing we can do about it now, I suppose. :crybaby
“The purpose of studying economics is not to acquire a set of ready-made answers to economic questions, but to learn how to avoid being deceived by economists.” ― Joan Robinson
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