Worst conspiracy theory ever.

[SonicG]

It's almost a perfect storm of clusterfuck...It really is as if cultural, political, ethnic, religious etc. tectonic plates are symbolically moving rapidly (due to the speed of media in the global theater) with nearly real-time real-life reactions...The major media is complicit as fuck in first mainstreaming of far-right views (never forget Dinesh D'Souza on CNN) and now that media is everything, they have brought to life crazy fucks like Gorka...I have to applaud him here for at least coming out in front of the issue on Russia. Trump should have had the balls to say, "Yeah, we're dropping sanctions and letting Putin do what he thinks best in Syria and flipped everyone the finger. Because that is what is happening now:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/seb-gorka- ... n-a-chance
Can't embed the video there but I am elated to see this neo-nazi up front and center spouting nonsense like “These are the two most powerful nuclear nations in the world as [Secretary of State] Rex Tillerson has said just last week, we should have better relations, let’s see if it’s possible and not prejudge.” “Do you wish us to have bad or deteriorating relations with the nuclear power that is the Russian federation? In whose interest is that?” haha basically admitting that NorKor should find a way to develop and build as many nukes as possible...

And the ME...indeed...I have an old acquaintance who took the Counterpunch et. al. path of attacking the attack on Putin/Russia from the left, but he made a very cogent point regarding the joint necessity of Israel and KSA to maintain non-democratic non-secular regimes all across the ME, and thus the (progressive? radical? True?) Left's defense of Putin's defense of Assad as a secular hold-out...When Israel has to go full-on apartheid, it will get little notice because the noble ideal of Democracy will probably be in tatters...and that will be quite soon.

Back to media, here is, yes, a dirty lefty pwog but I think he makes some very important points regarding Trump as the ultimate media candidate:

The Trumpers Don’t Hate Media. They Are Media Creations.

By JOSH MARSHALL Published JULY 14, 2017

I was tempted to say this was a paradox. But it’s too straightforward for paradox. The key truth of Trumpism is that for all the purported hatred of “the media”, the main Trumpers are almost all fundamentally media creatures. They think in media terms. They are media creations.

Trump himself is a self-creation of the 80s and 90s New York City tabloid culture. His comeback in the early part of this century was driven more than most people understand by the success of The Apprentice. Why else do you think people in the Philippines or Kazakhstan paid millions to license Trump’s name? It was the brand driver of the licensing empire which allowed Trump to become the 45th President.

Steve Bannon was a publisher. Before that he was a movie producer. Jared Kushner bought a newspaper and used it to fight his battles in the press. On down the list they are all media people. They don’t hate the media. Indeed, they can only understand most battles in media terms. You see this in Kushner’s frenzied and inane demands to deploy communications office staffers to battle cable news producers over chyrons or “unleash surrogates immediately”, as a Politico story this afternoon has him demanding of Sean Spicer and Sarah Sanders.

They don’t “hate” the media anymore than fish hate the water. Shouting and messaging and attacks are the only language they really understand. What they hate is that they feel like they’re losing on the terrain they believe is the only one that really matters.

I’ve wrestled over the last few months and especially over the last few weeks with the sense that key players in this drama don’t understand the nature of the legal jeopardy they are in or – apart from legal matters – the challenges the White House has had doing things like pushing legislation. We’ve seen the comical and now perennial pattern in which you’ll read an article which describes a White House brought to its knees by some crisis almost entirely of the President’s making. The answer? Time to fire Reince Priebus. There’s a similar story with Sean Spicer. As risible a character as Spicer may be, the job he has is essentially impossible. No communications operation can fix the reality that Trump has created. Yet Trump and the chief people around him believe that challenges in the policy realm or political realm and most especially the legal realm can be converted into the currency of yelling, rapid response and message wars and won on those terms. Like I said, message and narratives – in a word, media, talking.

We live in a media age of course. Messages and stories are how we understand much of the world. They shape our understanding of the reality around us. In this sense they come very close to becoming something like reality. But they are not. Big federal investigations roll forward with an almost total indifference to shouting and message and winning the day. Spin means very little. Equally important, just because media storylines shape our understanding of much of the world around us doesn’t mean that your stupid new messaging idea will matter just because you say it a lot.

Throughout, there is this abiding belief that enough assertion and aggression can change anything. It’s like magical thinking. Or perhaps it is what you see when people who are used to power and privilege and getting what they want start operating in a new context with other powerful people and forces which are, if not intractable, much less than malleable that these people are used to grappling with.

If the reporting we see is close to reliable, Jared Kushner is in profound legal jeopardy. He must be scared and scarred by the time he spent in federal prisons visiting his father during his father’s incarceration. But the lesson Kushner apparently learned from this searing experience was to attack always and always harder. Not committing lots of crimes as a way to stay out of prison seems to be one lesson that didn’t break through.

Remember, Kushner helped goad Trump into firing James Comey. That made Trump himself the target of a federal obstruction of justice probe. And I suspect it’s part of the probe into Kushner as well. This is fascinatingly similar to what triggered Kushner’s father’s final downfall. Charles Kushner was the subject of a tax and campaign finance probe when he pulled a breathtakingly wild attempt to obstruct that investigation by hiring a prostitute to seduce his brother-in-law and videotape their sex. (The brother-in-law and Charles Kushner’s sister were aiding the probe.)

There’s a brew of magical thinking and self-destructive behavior at work here that I confess I have yet to fully understand or be able to make sense of. But I keep coming back to this focus on media, on ‘narratives’ and ‘storylines’ and talking louder. Consider this passage from the eye-popping passage from a piece out tonight from Politico …

A source close to Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and a top White House adviser, said that while he doesn’t have an exact plan for an overall Russia response, he was angry that there wasn’t a more robust effort from the communications team. Kushner wanted them to complain about chyrons on cable news, call reporters to update stories with White House statements, and unleash surrogates immediately. He was angry that there were no talking points offered to surrogates, the source said. One senior administration official suggested that two aides from the communications shop be dedicated just to updating chyrons.

“Jared didn’t like the idea, he wanted people to get aggressive,” said an outside adviser who was briefed on the meeting. “Jared’s the guy who is rushing the front lines and other people are saying, ‘see, wait, hold, and let’s get a battle strategy.’”

Again, the disconnect, the belief that yelling and attacking harder can change broad-ranging criminal probes or the equally implausible belief that the Trump White House’s problem has been insufficiently aggressive attacks against those it perceives as enemies. Almost every problem the Trump White House has had, at least the President and in most cases his top advisors have seen it as a failure out of the communications office to sell the administration’s story.

None of what I’m saying here is surprising. It’s what we all knew last year during the campaign. It’s a media event, a media campaign – run for most of the campaign by the candidate more or less on his own, a man with long experience and an intuitive sense of marketing and message. Think about it. Trump seems to spend the better part of his time in the White House watching cable news. It’s not just an obsession with his enemies. It’s who he is, just the way policy people read policies papers. It’s the one language he understands and the only one he thinks – and most of his top advisors think – matters.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/the ... -creations

Fun to see all these conspiracies being spun:

Peter W. Smith’s death was immediately the subject of conspiracy theories, and the note he left behind has done nothing to quell them.

Some of the conspiracies stem from the long-running conspiracy about “Clinton body bags” and rumors that people who had incriminating evidence died. Snopes covered these rumors extensively. But his death is also sparking rumors from the opposite side, based on his possible connections to Trump. It seems that everyone is finding a reason to talk about Smith’s death.
https://heavy.com/news/2017/07/peter-w- ... eath-note/

His suicide note said "NO FOUL PLAY WHATSOEVER"...haha it's all pretty foul at this stage...too bad it wasn't FOWL PLAY though...

And another funny conspiracy...I am looking for the longer article detailing how this played out and was touted by Limbaugh and some alt-right "journos":

More information leaked out today on Russian attorney Natalia Veselnitskaya.

Veselnitskaya told NBC News on Monday she was not with the Kremlin as was reported by The New York Times.

She confirmed her meeting with Donald Trump Jr. was about Russian adoptions in the US.

The law firm where Veselnitskaya is listed as managing partner, Kamerton Consulting, is based in a Moscow suburb and does not even have a website.

A staff member at Kamerton told The Associated Press Veselnitskaya was unavailable for comment on Monday.

Her office in Moscow may be a shell. There is no working phone, email or website.

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Monday that the Kremlin is unaware of a meeting between Trump’s senior staff and Veselnitskaya and “does not know who that is.”

Peskov said,

“No, we don’t know who that is and obviously we can’t monitor all meetings Russian lawyers hold both in Russia and abroad.”

Now this…
Natalia Veselnitskaya was sitting with Obama’s Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul during a Foreign Affairs Committee hearing, 8 days after cold-contacting Trump Jr. in Trump Tower.

Here is another shot from the June 14, 2016 Congressional hearing on Russia and the Ukraine.

MORE— That looks like Emin Agalarov sitting next to Natalia Veselnitskaya. He was mentioned in Donald Trump Jr’s statement this morning. Emin helped set up the meeting with Veselnitskaya.

Veselnitskaya was also connected to Fusion GPS, the DNC opposition research firm that produced the fraudulent and discredited Trump Dossier.

So why was Veselnitskaya hanging out with Obama officials just days after her meeting with Donald Trump Jr.?

And why was Veselnitskaya given a privileged seat up front during the Congressional hearing?

UPDATE: Veselnitskaya’s facebook page shows she was in Washington DC on June 14, 2016.
On June 10, 2016 she was still in New York and posting photos from Central Park.

http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2017/07 ... mp-jr-mtg/

Of course they got all of this completely wrong and are being willfully ignorant about Natalia...Good old Orange County Red Dana Rohrbach invited her and her role in the Magnitsky case is well documented, especially:

In 2015, as the case progressed, Ms. Veselnitskaya was among a group of Russians who submitted reimbursement requests for more than $50,000 in hotel bills and meal expenses as part of the investigation.
U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara filed a letter with a federal judge calling the charges into question.
“These claimed expenses also include multiple expensive meals, such as a $793.29 dinner for five individuals (although, again, only three witnesses were deposed), which included eighteen dishes, eight grappas, and two expensive bottles of wine,” Mr. Bharara wrote.
He noted that expenses also included a two-night stay for Ms. Veselnitskaya at the Plaza Hotel, which cost $995 per night, even though she “was not deposed and did not even attend the depositions in person.”
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/201 ... contacted/

Ah Natalia...I imagine someone somewhere on twitter has proposed that Putin selected banning Americans from adopted "beautiful (Russian) babies" because he realized it would make a good cover story for shenanigans...

[seemslikeadream]

^^^^^ lovely

I think the republican/trumpster word for all of this is nothingburger

I heard the word a million times in the last 2 days

Rinat Akhmetshin



The grifters are going down



so what's the deal trump was set up to take down Russia?

all that Russian mob money was pushed on him ...he was made to accept all of it...to hide it...to launder it from all his casinos?

trump was made to sell all those properties to Russian oligarchs at inflated prices?

Jeff Sessions was instructed to drop case against Russians ...by who?

Jared was made to deal with a Russian bank sanctioned by U.S. government?

Did Felix Sater set them all up?

Who's handling the Mercers?

[Heaven Swan]

Dave Emory doesn't think Greenewald IS a leftist as such

http://spitfirelist.com/news/snowdens-ride-part-6-why-did-glenn-greenwald-represent-neo-nazis-pro-buono/

Thanks for this.

There's lots of good information about GG's background in that article. Way beyond shady.. here's an excerpt -

...
Letter to the Nation Magazine: Glenn Greenwald Is a Conservative/Libertarian Mole.

After listening to Chris Hayes and reading that one of his references to the story about Obama assassinations was Glenn Greenwald, I perused many of Greenwald’s anti-Obama articles cleverly disguised as “civil libertarian” and wonder how anyone in the progressive movement can take Glenn Greenwald seriously. Greenwald admits to being a civil libertarian, much in the mold of Ayn Rand, Rand Paul and most libertarians on the far right. After doing a stint at a Wall Street corporate law firm (Wachtel, Lipton) he strikes it out on his own by representing white supremacist Matthew Hale, who was the leader of the World Church of the Creator, and is now doing forty years in prison for authorizing a hit on a federal judge. Greenwald has not written a single article that has been favorable toward the Obama Administration, and he was one of the leading voices pushing this disproven idea that Obama is “the same as Bush” to try to undermine Obama’s support in his progressive base. The conservative magazine Forbes indicates Greenwald is “one of the 25 most influential liberals in the media,” despite his libertarian views and admission that he is not a liberal.

With this backdrop, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that Glenn Greenwald is a conservative/libertarian mole within the progressive movement with the sole mission of undermining the movement.

I had forgotten about the expose of Greeenwald on the Rancid Honeytrap blog in 2013. Why does Amy Goodman have him on her show so often? Damn... with 'friends' like him no enemies needed.

[seemslikeadream]

yea Emory is great...have you read what he has to say about Wikileaks?

[seemslikeadream]

Rinat Akhmetshin

Russian 'Gun-For-Hire' Lurks In Shadows Of Washington's Lobbying World

July 17, 2016 18:27 GMT

Mike Eckel
In the controversial film The Magnitsky Act: Behind The Scenes, director Andrei Nekrasov (above) uses actors to reenact the arrest and death in prison of Russian lawyer and whistle-blower Sergei Magnitsky.

WASHINGTON -- The hoots and jeers began the minute the movie ended and the lights went up on the seventh floor of the Newseum, a Washington museum dedicated to the free press. The film was a semifictionalized look at the story of Sergei Magnitsky, the Russian lawyer who helped to uncover a massive tax fraud and later died in a Moscow jail.

In the front of the room, a handful of Russian opposition activists shouted, “Shame!” at the director. In the back, out of the spotlight, was the event’s organizer -- a fast-talking, nattily dressed man in a dark blue, double-breasted suit standing at a small table, sipping bottled water and quietly watching the commotion.

The June 13 showing was the film's premiere. Other screenings had been canceled in Europe following protests by critics who say it is a crude attempt to smear Magnitsky's name and that of the Western financier who employed him, William Browder.

That it was shown at all was a small coup for Rinat Akhmetshin, the man at the back of the room who for nearly 20 years has worked the shadowy corners of the Washington lobbying scene on behalf of businessmen and politicians from around the former Soviet Union.

"I call him skilled because -- though I am certain that they exist -- I know of no Russian gun-for-hire who managed to run his campaigns so successfully, running circles around purportedly much more seasoned Washington hands,” says Steve LeVine, a veteran Washington reporter who explored some of Akhmetshin’s past work in his 2007 book The Oil And The Glory.

Barely registering in U.S. lobbying records, the 48-year-old Akhmetshin has been tied to efforts to bolster opponents of Kazakhstan's ruling regime, discredit a fugitive former member of Russia's parliament, and undermine a Russian-owned mining firm involved in a billion-dollar lawsuit with company information allegedly stolen by hackers.

But his most recent campaign has a qualitatively new dimension, thrusting him to the center of an issue that helped send U.S.-Russia relations to lows unseen since the Cold War: Magnitsky’s death in 2009, the alleged persecution by Russian officials he blew the whistle on, and the eponymous U.S. law that punished alleged Russian rights abusers and infuriated the Kremlin.

The grave of lawyer Sergei Magnitsky with his portrait on the tomb at the Preobrazhenskoye cemetery in Moscow.
The grave of lawyer Sergei Magnitsky with his portrait on the tomb at the Preobrazhenskoye cemetery in Moscow.
“You undermine Browder, you undermine Magnitsky. You undermine Magnitsky, you undermine the sanctions,” says one U.S. government official who has followed the Magnitsky saga closely but wasn’t authorized to speak publicly on it. “Then you undermine the entire sanctions regime.”

The Paper Trail

A bespectacled 48-year-old who holds dual Russian-American citizenship and is known to ride around downtown Washington on a retro orange bicycle, Akhmetshin has managed to fly largely under the radar in past campaigns. There are only a handful of records in the congressional lobbying database bearing his imprint.

But a small paper trail in U.S. court records offers an illustrative sampling of his work.

In 1998, he founded the Washington office of an organization called the International Eurasian Institute for Economic and Political Research to “help expand democracy and the rule of law in Eurasia.”

His earliest clients included members of Kazakhstan’s opposition, who were angling against the longtime rule of President Nursultan Nazarbaev and his ruling elite. Years later, he ended up in a public-relations effort to undermine a former Nazarbaev son-in-law before he fell out with the regime and fled the country.

Rinat Akhmetshin
Rinat Akhmetshin
In 2011, Akhmetshin was accused of helping to organize a smear campaign against former Russian Duma deputy Ashot Egiazaryan, who had sought political asylum in the United States in the face of criminal charges in Russia related to a business dispute.

A lawsuit filed in U.S. federal court in Manhattan charged that the campaign sought to persuade U.S. officials to revoke Egiazaryan's asylum status and force him to return to Russia, where he was involved in a heated dispute with a billionaire businessman over a Moscow hotel project.

Akhmetshin was not the target of the defamation lawsuit, but in court filings, lawyers allege he was enlisted, along with another Washington public-relations company and private investigators, to help publish articles in a Jewish newspaper accusing the deputy of anti-Semitism.

He also fought to keep his e-mails and computer files from being released to opposing lawyers.

“Some of my clients are national governments or high-ranking officials in those governments,” Akhmetshin said in an affidavit in August 2012. “My government clients have highly sensitive discussions in my e-mails concerning the location or relocation of American military bases in areas within the former Soviet Union.”

More recently, Akhmetshin was caught up in a particularly nasty $1 billion legal fight concerning a potash-mining operation in central Russia. While a Dutch court was the main venue, the dispute spilled into U.S. courts when lawyers for one of the companies accused their counterparts of organizing a scheme to hack their computers and other communications.

The man who masterminded the scheme was Akhmetshin, according to a suit filed in November in New York state court that also accused him of being a former Soviet military intelligence officer who "developed a special expertise in running negative public-relations campaigns."

In a related filing in federal district court in Washington, where lawyers sought to force him to turn over records and e-mails, Akhmetshin confirmed he was helping in an advisory capacity but denied the hacking allegations.

He also revealed his compensation rates. He said he was paid $45,000 up front; in a later declaration, he stated his normal billing rate was $450 an hour.

In an e-mail response to RFE/RL, Akhmetshin denied that he ever worked for Soviet military intelligence, something he would have had to declare when he applied for U.S. citizenship.

“I am an American citizen since 2009 who pays taxes, earned his citizenship after living here since 1994, and swore an oath of loyalty to the United States of America,” he wrote.

Russian Children, American Adoptions

Congressional lobbying records list other clients for Akhmetshin -- for example, the Azeri Democracy Initiative Foundation, registered in 2006 and 2007.

The newest client, called the Human Rights Accountability Global Initiative Foundation, was incorporated in Delaware in February and registered in lobbying records on April 3. But the initial entry was signed by Akhmetshin only two months later, on June 11, something that experts in lobbying laws and disclosures describe as unusual.

Its address is а shared “co-working” space on the fifth floor of a downtown Washington office building, just a few floors down from Baker Hostetler, a major U.S. law firm that represented the defendant in the Egiazaryan lawsuit.

Baker Hostetler is also the lead firm defending an offshore company called Prevezon that U.S. prosecutors have alleged received some of the $230 million in errant funds that Magnitsky uncovered. Prosecutors are trying to seize millions of dollars in assets in the United States and elsewhere, a case that is currently on appeal on a technical question.

William Browder
William Browder
Records list Akhmetshin as the lead lobbyist for the foundation, along with another man named Robert Arakelian, who could not be located for comment.

The disclosure form indicates no sources of foreign funding for the foundation. Nor does it indicate the issues the foundation intends to lobby on.

In fact, the only indication of its purpose comes from a related, largely unfinished website that states its main goal is to “to help restart American adoption of Russian children.” That is a reference to the Russian adoption ban the Kremlin pushed immediately following the adoption of the Magnitsky Act in 2012.

Akhmetshin has paid at least one visit to Congress in connection with new human rights legislation that builds on the earlier Magnitsky Act. Along with Ron Dellums, a former U.S. congressman from California and longtime Washington lobbyist, Akhmetshin visited House member offices on May 17 to meet with Dana Rohrabacher, another California congressman viewed as one of the most sympathetic U.S. officials to Russian causes.

According to The Daily Beast, the two told congressional officials said they were lobbying on behalf of Prevezon. But Dellums told RFE/RL that his involvement focused on resuming Russian adoptions by U.S. parents.

“I don’t know anything about the other stuff -- Prevezon or anything else,” Dellums said.

Moscow, meanwhile, has made no secret of its desire to undermine the Magnitsky Act and has waged open war against Browder as part of that effort. Browder had been barred entry in Russia even before Magnitsky’s death, and in 2013 he was convicted in absentia by a Russian court for tax evasion. Magnitsky was posthumously convicted on similar charges. A Council of Europe investigation concluded the conditions leading up to his death amounted to torture.

State-run Russian TV has aired investigations about Browder and the country’s top prosecutor has linked Browder to an investigative documentary exploring the shady business practices of the prosecutor’s sons.

But the most potent weapon to date may be the film that premiered at the Newseum, by Russian-born filmmaker Andrei Nekrasov, whose previous films were critical of the Kremlin.

In the film, called The Magnitsky Act: Behind The Scenes, Nekrasov uses actors to reenact Magnitsky's arrest and death in a notorious prison. He then professes to find discrepancies in the narrative, ultimately suggesting that in fact it was Browder who masterminded the original tax fraud and that Browder lied about the circumstances surrounding Magnitsky's death.

Browder, who is American-born but now lives in Britain, has aggressively fought to keep the film from being shown anywhere; a Norwegian film festival pulled the film after legal threats from Browder. A screening in April at the European Parliament was canceled after protests from Magnitsky relatives and a German lawmaker.

Browder, who had appealed to the Newseum not to show the film, charged that the screening was a part of an “intense lobbying campaign” to remove Magnitsky’s name from the new legislation before Congress.

“The Putin regime has embarked on a very ambitious and well-resourced international campaign to discredit me and Sergei Magnitsky in order to try to repeal the Magnitsky Act,” Browder told RFE/RL. “They work through their embassies, law-enforcement agencies, as well as through private individuals with strong government connections.”

A spokesman for the Russian Embassy in Washington called Browder’s allegations “precarious and unfounded.”

The Screening

The June 13 event featured an open-bar reception beforehand and, in a notable choice for such a controversial event, traditional movie snacks -- popcorn, chocolate-covered caramels, and bottled water.

Invitees to the screening received notice via e-mail that included a disclaimer suggestive of a lobbying effort: “This event complies with congressional gift rules so that Members and staff of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives may attend.” A handful of congressional staffers did attend, along with at least one State Department official.

Who exactly is funding the film’s production, promotion, or the ongoing lobbying effort isn't entirely clear. Nekrasov has said the film is financed through grants from arts and film councils in Norway, where he’s partnered with a production company.

Nekrasov told RFE/RL he had originally planned to pay for the June 13 screening -- which the Newseum said cost at least $12,500 -- himself, but “the bill did not materialize and already in D.C. I was told it'd been taken care of.”

Akhmetshin, meanwhile, told RFE/RL in an e-mail on June 29 that he didn’t pay for the event but rather that Potomac Square Group, a Washington public-relations company that in the past had circulated news articles critical of Browder to reporters, did.

“Potomac Square Group was working on my instructions to pay for the event, and I understand that my client Human Rights Accountability Global Initiative Foundation will reimburse PSG for the expense,” Akhmetshin said.

Chris Cooper, one of Potomac Square Group’s principals, confirmed his company had been compensated by the foundation.

Akhmetshin said the foundation had no connection to Nekrasov, has given Nekrasov no money, and that “no funding or direction for the foundation comes from the Russian government at any level or its officials.” That would trigger reporting requirements under federal lobbying laws.

He also said the foundation’s stated goal -- to resume Russian adoptions by American parents -- “can be best obtained by Congress revisiting the Magnitsky Act and, in particular, its name.”

That's an issue not reflected anywhere in the lobbying disclosure records. In the meantime, revisiting, or even watering down, the Magnitsky Act would directly benefit another client of Akhmetshin’s who is also not listed on these or other lobbying forms: Prevezon.

Prevezon and the Human Rights Accountability Global Initiative Foundation overlap in another way. In an e-mail sent in April to a Warsaw-based NGO that was hosting a speech by Browder, Russian Natalia Veselnitskaya identified herself as a lawyer working on behalf of the foundation and sought permission to attend, according to officials with the NGO, called the Open Dialog Foundation. Veselnitskaya is also a lawyer for Prevezon.

Akhmetshin did not respond to follow-up e-mail queries on whether Prevezon was the funding source for the foundation.

The day after the screening, Nekrasov and his film crew watched in person as a House committee voted to pass the updated Magnitsky legislation. And they met with Rohrabacher.

Movies And Motorcycles

At the end of the screening of the nearly two-hour film, organizers planned a discussion moderated by Seymour Hersh, the renowned U.S. investigative journalist known for blockbuster scoops. The taunts from opposition activists eventually gave way to a brief question-and-answer session that mainly featured audience members criticizing Nekrasov.

Before the screening, Hersh explained to RFE/RL that he had seen the film a few months prior at Akhmetshin’s behest and was intrigued enough by it that he agreed to host the discussion free of charge.

Hersh said he knew Akhmetshin through mutual acquaintances. He said he had allowed Akhmetshin to park “a couple” of antique motorcycles in the driveway of his Washington-area home -- motorcycles he said Akhmetshin had bought thinking they dated from World War II but in fact were of German manufacture and had been painted over to look like Soviet motorcycles. Akhmetshin confirmed he had a motorcycle parked at Hersh’s house.

At the conclusion of the June 13 event, as the discussion turned loud and rowdy, Hersh tried to get in a final word.

“This is the new truth,” he said.
https://www.rferl.org/a/rinat-akmetshin ... 63265.html

Democrats demand answers from Jeff Sessions on settlement with Russian lawyer
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/democ ... le/2628454

[Rory]

Nothing coming out about Russia in the mainstream comes anywhere close to the election fraud, systemic legal and illegal bribery, organized crime and violence in our political system that independent researchers have been documenting for decades. If you aren't aware of this history, if you have a blind eye towards the corruption of one set of politicians because of ideological beliefs, of course reactions on the left won't make sense.

Why Russia, why now? The oil barons and their bankers are at war over the global energy market and its base currency. Russia is a threat to US dominance, and therefore profits. Trump represents some American interests whose investments wouldn't suffer so much if the BRIC states prevail (Exxon). This is intolerable to the establishment oligarchs, so their servant, the Deep State, is busy getting all of you worked up so they can sort out this economic conflict with more blood in the ME. In reality, no one who isn't an oligarch, or a hyping mad imperialist, has a direct stake in the conflict unless it goes terribly awry, or you live in a war zone, or your kid succumbs to the mind control and goes off to die in one of these rich man's wars. Meanwhile, nearly two decades later, nobody questions the absurdity of voting on electronic machines, which have been hacked to rig the vote since day one, by Americans. If your multi-billion dollar global enterprise is dependent upon the kneecapping might of the largest and most advanced military in history, are you going to let the proles threaten your foreign policy through some antiquated mechanism like voting? Of course not, yet practically everyone still expects some politician to save us.

The masses are pawns dutifully following their programmed media programming, over what to get upset about, and/or decrying the symbols of problems while blinded to actual problems. It is patently and absurdly ridiculous, to be so enthralled to and manipulated by power, but it's always been this way with humans, has it not?

Thank you. One of the few sane voices in here for the last few pages/threads.

[seemslikeadream]

It's all a nothingburger

says Rory







Why Russia, why now?

BECAUSE trump is a fucking traitor and owes his fat fucking body and soul to the Russian mob

Russian-American lobbyist says he was in Trump son’s meeting

Rinat Akhmetshin confirmed his participation to The Associated Press on Friday. Akhmetshin has been reported to have ties to Russian intelligence agencies, though he denies those links.
https://apnews.com/dceed1008d8f45afb314aca65797762a

his admission is a reminder to trump who's in control of him and his children. He didn't have to come forward



http://archive-project.org/individuals/ ... khmetshin/

Complaint: Firm behind Dossier & Former Russian Intel Officer Joined Lobbying Effort to Kill Pro-Whistleblower Sanctions for Kremlin

https://www.grassley.senate.gov/news/ne ... ing-effort



http://www.documentcloud.org/documents/ ... B-v-v.html


Does Kellyann post here?

Conway: Trump-Russia Collusion ‘Goalposts Have Been Moved’

[Elvis]

Willow, I'm always impressed with your wisdom and clarity of thought, to wit:

Nothing coming out about Russia in the mainstream comes anywhere close to the election fraud, systemic legal and illegal bribery, organized crime and violence in our political system that independent researchers have been documenting for decades. If you aren't aware of this history, if you have a blind eye towards the corruption of one set of politicians because of ideological beliefs, of course reactions on the left won't make sense.

Why Russia, why now? The oil barons and their bankers are at war over the global energy market and its base currency. Russia is a threat to US dominance, and therefore profits. Trump represents some American interests whose investments wouldn't suffer so much if the BRIC states prevail (Exxon). This is intolerable to the establishment oligarchs, so their servant, the Deep State, is busy getting all of you worked up so they can sort out this economic conflict with more blood in the ME. In reality, no one who isn't an oligarch, or a hyping mad imperialist, has a direct stake in the conflict unless it goes terribly awry, or you live in a war zone, or your kid succumbs to the mind control and goes off to die in one of these rich man's wars. Meanwhile, nearly two decades later, nobody questions the absurdity of voting on electronic machines, which have been hacked to rig the vote since day one, by Americans. If your multi-billion dollar global enterprise is dependent upon the kneecapping might of the largest and most advanced military in history, are you going to let the proles threaten your foreign policy through some antiquated mechanism like voting? Of course not, yet practically everyone still expects some politician to save us.

The masses are pawns dutifully following their programmed media programming, over what to get upset about, and/or decrying the symbols of problems while blinded to actual problems. It is patently and absurdly ridiculous, to be so enthralled to and manipulated by power, but it's always been this way with humans, has it not?

Kudos to SonicG as well for concise thoughts. And thanks to Slad for documenting the money swamp. It could be that Trump the phenomenon is too useful to too many factions, so that he'll continue to skate by (hope not). Midterm elections should be "interesting." Watch those exit polls!

[seemslikeadream]

Thanks Elvis for being a reasonable person


documenting the money swamp...it is what I do no matter what country or swamp they are from

BAD LOOK
Trump Team Met Russian Accused of International Hacking Conspiracy
Rinat Akhmetshin allegedly stole sensitive documents from a corporation years before he joined Natalia Veselnitskaya to meet Donald Trump Jr., Paul Manafort, and Jared Kushner.

KEVIN POULSEN
NICO HINES
KATIE ZAVADSKI
07.14.17 10:49 AM ET
The alleged former Soviet intelligence officer who attended the now-infamous meeting with Donald Trump Jr. and other top campaign officials last June was previously accused in federal and state courts of orchestrating an international hacking conspiracy.
Rinat Akhmetshin told the Associated Press on Friday he accompanied Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya to the June 9, 2016, meeting with Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner, and Paul Manafort. Trump’s attorney confirmed Akhmetshin’s attendance in a statement.
Akhmetshin’s presence at Trump Tower that day adds another layer of controversy to an episode that already provides the clearest indication of collusion between the Kremlin and the Trump campaign. In an email in the run-up to that rendezvous, Donald Trump Jr. was promised “very high level and sensitive information” on Hillary Clinton as “part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump.”

Akhmetshin, who had been hired by Veselnitskaya to help with pro-Russian lobbying efforts in Washington, said the Russian lawyer brought a folder of documents to the meeting, which he thinks she left at Trump Tower.
He said the print-outs detailed an alleged flow of illicit funds to the Democratic National Committee. According to Akhmetshin, Trump Jr. asked whether the lawyer had all the evidence to back up her claims and Veselnitskaya said the Trump campaign would have to do further research themselves.
In court papers filed with the New York Supreme Court in November 2015, Akhmetshin was described as “a former Soviet military counterintelligence officer” by lawyers for International Mineral Resources (IMR), a Russian mining company that alleged it had been hacked.

Those documents accuse Akhmetshin of hacking into two computer systems and stealing sensitive and confidential materials as part of an alleged black-ops smear campaign against IMR. The allegations were later withdrawn.
The U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C. was told in July 2015 that Akhmetshin had arranged the hacking of a mining company’s private records—stealing internal documents and then disseminating them. The corporate-espionage case was brought by IMR, which alleged that Akhmetshin was hired by Russian oligarch Andrey Melinchenko, an industrialist with a fortune estimated at around $12 billion.
A New York law firm paid Akhmetshin $140,000, including expenses, to organize a public-relations campaign targeting IMR. Shortly after he began that work, IMR suffered a sophisticated and systematic breach of its computers, and gigabytes of data allegedly stolen in the breach wound up the hands of journalists and human-rights groups critical of the mining company. IMR accused Akhmetshin of paying Russian hackers to carry out the attack.
IMR went so far as to hire a private investigator to follow Akhmetshin on a trip to London. That private eye, Akis Phanartzis, wrote in a sworn declaration to the court that he eavesdropped on Akhmetshin in a London coffee shop and heard Akhmetshin boast that “he organized the hacking of IMR’s computer systems” on behalf of Melinchenko’s fertilizer producer Eurochem. “Mr. Akhmetshin [noted] that he was hired because there were certain things that the law firm could not do,” Phanartzis said.
Akhmetshin denied the accusation, but admitted passing around a “hard drive” filled with data on IMR’s owners. He said the information was all open-source material that he’d gotten from the former prime minister of Kazakhstan, Akezhan Kazhegeldin. The private investigator, though, said he recovered a copy of the data on a thumb drive provided by an anonymous source, and found it consisted of gigabytes of private files stolen in the computer intrusion. A computer-forensics expert examined the thumb drive and found metadata indicating some of the files had last been opened by a user with the initials “RA.”
Lawyers acting for Akhmetshin deny that he allegedly confessed to hacking. They did not deny that he had bragged about his investigatory techniques in a public place, but claimed that his methods did not involve computer intrusion.

These court disputes came after IMR had originally filed an application in the U.S. in April 2014 requesting that Akhmetshin, a resident of Washington, D.C., give a deposition and share documents with the company as part of discovery for a case being heard in the Dutch courts. That case was won in the Netherlands without needing evidence from Akhmetshin.
That changed a year later, when the verdict was appealed and an American judge granted IMR’s request for a subpoena to be issued. During Akhmetshin’s deposition, he refused to answer a number of questions and declined to produce the 261 requested documents, citing attorney-client privilege and non-testifying expert-witness privilege.
IMR successfully argued that his claim of privilege should be reviewed by a judge—out of the courtroom, in the judge’s private chambers—because there was no such protection in a “crime-fraud” case.
In 2015, citing emails and records it obtained in the federal case, International Mineral Resources filed a lawsuit in New York Supreme Court directly accusing Akhmetshin of hacking the company. But early last year the company abruptly withdrew “all allegations made by it against Defendants in the Complaint,” according to a court document. The withdrawal included “allegations therein that Defendants [...] have engaged in any unlawful or improper acts against IMR, including but not limited to hacking any information from IMR’s computer systems, disseminating any information as part of a smear campaign against IMR.” The lead attorney in the case did not return a phone call from The Daily Beast about the lawsuit.
Akhmetshin’s tradecraft extends to U.S. politics. He is a registered congressional lobbyist who was paid $10,000 by Veselnitskaya’s nonprofit group, the Human Rights Accountability Global Initiative Foundation. The group lobbies members of Congress against the Magnitsky Act, a U.S. law designed to punish Russian officials believed to be responsible for the death of a financial investigator.
After Akhmetshin and Veselnitskaya met the Trump team on June 9, 2016, they traveled to Washington, D.C. On June 13, they attended a screening of an anti-Magnitsky Act movie directed by Andrei Nekrasov. The screening at the Newseum was arranged by Veselnitskaya’s group and was open to members of Congress.
The following day, Akhmetshin, Veselnitskaya, and Nekrasov attended a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing on “U.S. Policy Towards Putin’s Russia.” Veselnitskaya was photographed sitting behind former U.S. ambassador to Russia, Michael McFaul, who was testifying. One top congressional aide said she was first in line to attend that hearing.
Later that night, the group convened at the Capitol Hill Club, an official Republican Party restaurant and meeting place. A top aide to Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, a pro-Russian Republican on the Foreign Affairs Committee who also attended the dinner, confirmed the gathering.
Akhmetshin also met and lobbied Rohrabacher, chairman of the Foreign Affairs Sub-Committee for Europe, in Berlin in April.
Akhmetshin admitted to the AP on Friday that he was part of the Soviet military’s counterintelligence unit, but claims he was never formally trained as a spy and was not an intelligence officer. He said the meeting at Trump Tower had been disappointing. “I never thought this would be such a big deal to be honest,” he said.
Rep. Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, told MSNBC the allegations that Akhmetshin "may have had a background in hacking information" is "another disturbing turn of events." He added: "But more importantly, this provides yet another conduit back to the Kremlin."
— with reporting from Kevin Poulsen in San Francisco, Katie Zavadski in New York, Nico Hines in London, and Sam Stein in Washington, D.C.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-team ... =DDMorning

[brekin]

Willow, I'm always impressed with your wisdom and clarity of thought, to wit:

Nothing coming out about Russia in the mainstream comes anywhere close to the election fraud, systemic legal and illegal bribery, organized crime and violence in our political system that independent researchers have been documenting for decades. If you aren't aware of this history, if you have a blind eye towards the corruption of one set of politicians because of ideological beliefs, of course reactions on the left won't make sense.
Why Russia, why now? The oil barons and their bankers are at war over the global energy market and its base currency. Russia is a threat to US dominance, and therefore profits. Trump represents some American interests whose investments wouldn't suffer so much if the BRIC states prevail (Exxon). This is intolerable to the establishment oligarchs, so their servant, the Deep State, is busy getting all of you worked up so they can sort out this economic conflict with more blood in the ME. In reality, no one who isn't an oligarch, or a hyping mad imperialist, has a direct stake in the conflict unless it goes terribly awry, or you live in a war zone, or your kid succumbs to the mind control and goes off to die in one of these rich man's wars. Meanwhile, nearly two decades later, nobody questions the absurdity of voting on electronic machines, which have been hacked to rig the vote since day one, by Americans. If your multi-billion dollar global enterprise is dependent upon the kneecapping might of the largest and most advanced military in history, are you going to let the proles threaten your foreign policy through some antiquated mechanism like voting? Of course not, yet practically everyone still expects some politician to save us.
The masses are pawns dutifully following their programmed media programming, over what to get upset about, and/or decrying the symbols of problems while blinded to actual problems. It is patently and absurdly ridiculous, to be so enthralled to and manipulated by power, but it's always been this way with humans, has it not?

Kudos to SonicG as well for concise thoughts. And thanks to Slad for documenting the money swamp. It could be that Trump the phenomenon is too useful to too many factions, so that he'll continue to skate by (hope not). Midterm elections should be "interesting." Watch those exit polls!

Why Russia, why now? Mmh? Maybe because a U.S. candidate now President and his cronies were funded, assisted, influenced, possibly/likely even directed, by hostile Russian paymasters who worked together to influence and undermine democratic candidates, processes, elections, the media, journalism, the presidency, rule of law, international government, women's rights, world trade, environmental regulations, international treaties, etc.

If you aren't aware of the Russian brand and history of election fraud, systemic legal and illegal bribery, organized crime and violence in their political system - and how it differs and is much worse than our version - then you need to crack an actual book instead of some deep state blog. That a sitting U.S. president is under investigation for such shows how far this has gone, and those who think there is no difference, will probably, smugly in due time help the slow slide to where the two systems and conditions do resemble each other.

Do people really think there is no difference between being ruled by domestic corrupt politicians as compared to foreign corrupt politicians?
One is a corruption, the other is a takeover.
Intelligence is seeing connections and similarities, wisdom, though, is in seeing the differences.
Please, everyone, fill out the below and return to me so we can discuss this individually.

[0_0]

[brekin]

Shocking. Cable news is...a business! Critical Trump coverage is... good for ratings! The "Russia thing" is good for liberal eyeballs... even though there is no smoking gun, er at least there wasn't back then, before Jr. spilled the beans.
"Fake News" means false and manufactured news, not bias, which every news org has. And the bias is usually for ratings and money, which this video seems to shockingly expose.

I do like the part where the Health and News CNN producer says, "Even if Russia was trying to swing an election, we try to swing their elections, our CIA is doing shit all the time, we're out their trying to manipulate governments". and his real politicking on journalism ethics in the media. Which brings another huge shocker, the news and media industry is... populated with amoral, dickish media-bro's for hire, literally by anyone who will pay them. Whether that be CNN, RT, or ANT overlords.



More of this Hannity-Borats greatest dirty tricks:

What the latest James O’Keefe video leaves out
https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyl ... ceefb52f91

Conservative activist James O’Keefe caused a stir on Tuesday with the release of a secretly recorded video that purports to show a CNN producer casting doubt on his network’s coverage of possible collusion between President Trump’s associates and Russian officials.But it’s what the video doesn’t show that may be as important as what it does.
The video is a recording of several encounters between a CNN producer named John Bonifield and an unidentified man who was working for O’Keefe’s organization, Project Veritas, which engages in undercover “stings” aimed primarily at mainstream news organizations and liberal groups.Their work has been repeatedly criticized for intentionally deceptive editing, though, and O’Keefe has a criminal record from an effort to illegally infiltrate a Democratic senator’s office. The latest video was apparently shot earlier this month using a hidden camera by a man having a private conversation with Bonfield, who is not involved in political coverage, catching him making several off-the-cuff remarks.

At one point, the producer says the Trump-Russia story could be “bulls---” but that CNN keeps covering the story because it draws viewers. “I just feel like they don’t really have it, but they want to keep digging,” Bonifield says. “And so I think the president is probably right to say, like, look you are witch hunting me. Like you have no smoking gun, you have no real proof.”
The video drew endorsements from Donald Trump Jr., who tweeted his approval, and White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who told reporters at a briefing that she encouraged “everybody across the country” to view it. She characterized it as “a disgrace to all of media, to all of journalism.”
While criticizing the media at a press briefing on June 27, White House deputy press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders encouraged "everybody across the country" to watch a video filmed by undercover conservative journalist James O'Keefe, who has been accused of deceptive editing and tactics.

Yet the video includes several journalistic evasions and shortcuts that would likely elicit outrage from critics if a mainstream news organization had employed the same techniques.
For example, it never mentions that Bonifield is a producer of health and medical stories, raising questions about how relevant his views are, and how informed he is, about CNN’s political coverage.
The video identifies him as a “supervising producer,” suggesting a senior decision-making role. O’Keefe, who appears on the video as a kind of master of ceremonies, furthers this impression by saying the footage describes “the real motivation behind our dominant media organizations.”
But CNN said Bonifield speaks only for himself. In a statement, it said stood by him and that “diversity of personal opinion is what makes CNN strong. We welcome it and embrace it.” The network said it had no plans to take any disciplinary action.

The video also doesn’t identify the man to whom Bonifield is speaking, nor does it provide any clue about how he came to record Bonifield.
A Project Veritas spokesman, Stephen Gordon, declined to offer details on those points, saying that doing so could reveal the organization’s methods and identify its practitioners. He said, however, that the “undercover journalist” was introduced to Bonifield by “a third party,” whom he also did not identify. People at CNN said Project Veritas’s operative was referred to Bonifield through a social-services organization in Atlanta called Rainbros that matches young adults with mentors. Bonifield met the man in question about five times, and apparently was under the assumption that he was interested in a career in journalism.

Although some mainstream news organizations have engaged in “undercover” journalism, the practice is uncommon and generally considered unethical.
Project Veritas, which is headed by O’Keefe, regularly uses such methods in order to expose what it says is corruption and fraud. Its operatives often have gained access to their targets by using false identities and by lying about or failing to disclose their actual intentions. Its various projects have also been clouded by accusations of deceptive editing.
O’Keefe pleaded guilty in 2010 to unlawfully entering the New Orleans office of then-Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) after he and three associates went to the office dressed as telephone workers in an alleged attempt to tamper with the senator’s phones. He received three years of probation, a fine of $1,500 and 100 hours of community service.

Later that year, O’Keefe attempted to lure a CNN correspondent, Abbie Boudreau, onto a boat filled with sex toys in order to film the encounter and “punk” Boudreau, who was reporting a story on conservative filmmakers. Among the props O’Keefe reportedly intended to use were a jar filled with condoms, posters and paintings of naked women, fuzzy handcuffs and a blindfold. Boudreau declined the invitation.
In a video “sting” of two Democratic Party organizers last year, Project Veritas operatives posed as political donors to persuade two men to speak to them about purported efforts to provoke violence at Trump’s campaign events. One of the men, Robert Creamer, sued O’Keefe earlier this month, claiming a violation of federal and District laws against unauthorized recording of private conversations.
In perhaps O’Keefe’s most famous project, he and a female associate posed as would-be clients of a community agency called ACORN. The pair sought advice about how to set up a brothel and evade taxes. The resulting video showed ACORN members offering their assistance.
The video triggered a public-relations crisis for ACORN, which subsequently lost its federal funding and went out of operation.
O’Keefe later paid $100,000 to settle a lawsuit brought by one of the employees seen in the video. Rather than abetting O’Keefe and his partner, the man said he had called the police to report them.

[seemslikeadream]

Why Russia, why now? Mmh? Maybe because a U.S. candidate now President and his cronies were funded, assisted, influenced, possibly/likely even directed, by hostile Russian paymasters who worked together to influence and undermine democratic candidates, processes, elections, the media, journalism, the presidency, rule of law, international government, women's rights, world trade, environmental regulations, international treaties, etc.

If you aren't aware of the Russian brand and history of election fraud, systemic legal and illegal bribery, organized crime and violence in their political system - and how it differs and is much worse than our version - then you need to crack an actual book instead of some deep state blog. That a sitting U.S. president is under investigation for such shows how far this has gone, and those who think there is no difference, will probably, smugly in due time help the slow slide to where the two systems and conditions do resemble each other.

Do people really think there is no difference between being ruled by domestic corrupt politicians as compared to foreign corrupt politicians?
One is a corruption, the other is a takeover.
Intelligence is seeing connections and similarities, wisdom, though, is in seeing the differences.
Please, everyone, fill out the below and return to me so we can discuss this individually.

I took the test...passed it

thanks for the voice of reason and sanity

[8bitagent]

Dave Emory doesn't think Greenewald IS a leftist as such

http://spitfirelist.com/news/snowdens-ride-part-6-why-did-glenn-greenwald-represent-neo-nazis-pro-buono/

Thanks for this.

There's lots of good information about GG's background in that article. Way beyond shady.. here's an excerpt -

...
Letter to the Nation Magazine: Glenn Greenwald Is a Conservative/Libertarian Mole.

After listening to Chris Hayes and reading that one of his references to the story about Obama assassinations was Glenn Greenwald, I perused many of Greenwald’s anti-Obama articles cleverly disguised as “civil libertarian” and wonder how anyone in the progressive movement can take Glenn Greenwald seriously. Greenwald admits to being a civil libertarian, much in the mold of Ayn Rand, Rand Paul and most libertarians on the far right. After doing a stint at a Wall Street corporate law firm (Wachtel, Lipton) he strikes it out on his own by representing white supremacist Matthew Hale, who was the leader of the World Church of the Creator, and is now doing forty years in prison for authorizing a hit on a federal judge. Greenwald has not written a single article that has been favorable toward the Obama Administration, and he was one of the leading voices pushing this disproven idea that Obama is “the same as Bush” to try to undermine Obama’s support in his progressive base. The conservative magazine Forbes indicates Greenwald is “one of the 25 most influential liberals in the media,” despite his libertarian views and admission that he is not a liberal.

With this backdrop, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that Glenn Greenwald is a conservative/libertarian mole within the progressive movement with the sole mission of undermining the movement.

I had forgotten about the expose of Greeenwald on the Rancid Honeytrap blog in 2013. Why does Amy Goodman have him on her show so often? Damn... with 'friends' like him no enemies needed.

Damn, good to see Emory is still around. His Spitfire podcasts way back in the day re: 9/11 was some fascinating stuff.
Also had no idea Greenwald defended neo Nazi terrorist Mat Hale. Greenwald just went about seven billion points down in my book. What an idiot.

[8bitagent]

So where is the liberal/mass media outrage over Clinton and Ukraine?
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/did-ukraine ... -election/

or the dictatorship of Kazahkstan
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/24/us/c ... mpany.html

This 1950's cold war era obsession over Russia by the left and the media reminds me of the right wing tea party obsession over
Obama's birth certificate and "Benghazi"