Top Marine general: 'There's a war coming'

[seemslikeadream]

Top Marine general: 'There's a war coming'

Josh Delk12/22/17 11:16 AM EST
The commandant of the Marine Corps, Gen. Robert Neller, told troops Thursday that "there's a war coming" and urged them to be prepared.

"I hope I'm wrong, but there's a war coming," Neller told Marines stationed in Norway, during a visit there, according to Military.com. "You're in a fight here, an informational fight, a political fight, by your presence," he added.

The commandant pointed to Russia and the Pacific theater as the next major areas of conflict, predicting a "big-ass fight" in the future.

"Just remember why you're here," he said. "They're watching. Just like you watch them, they watch you. We've got 300 Marines up here; we could go from 300 to 3,000 overnight. We could raise the bar."

Neller's visit comes amid tensions between Russia and NATO allies. Russia warned neighboring Norway that the presence of American troops could hurt relations, after Norway decision to host a new unit of U.S. soldiers through the end of 2018.

The administration says the Marines are there to enhance ties with European NATO allies and train in cold-weather combat.

In a question-and-answer session with the troops, Neller said the U.S. could shift its focus after years of fighting in the Middle East to Eastern Europe, citing Russia's conflicts with Ukraine and Georgia.

On Monday, President Trump unveiled a new national security strategy that focused on the threats posed by Russia and China to U.S. interests.
http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing- ... war-coming

[liminalOyster]

Can America's troops successfully fight a second war on *top* of the already fiercely waging War on Christmas? /s

[seemslikeadream]

so hard to choose which war to start in order to get out of being impeached

emptywheel
‏@emptywheel
4h4 hours ago

I sort of wish Trump & family were headed to some Trump property in HI for the holidays bc 1) he'd be far away from DC & it'd take longer to make trouble 2) he'd be in direct line of whatever he incites NK to do.

[82_28]

Psst. Nobody noticed this when I posted it in September. I can't blame anyone for running right past it back then.

Washington is preparing for nuclear war in Europe

viewtopic.php?f=8&t=40676&p=643148

[Elvis]

Looking at this again today, it reads like satire...but nope:

"We have to do that again."

Michael A. Ledeen

September 20, 2001 | National Review Online

Creative Destruction

Foreign and Defense Policy, Middle East

Despite all the easy talk about a new kind of terrorism, and a new kind of war, the models for what we have experienced and what we must do are quite old. The terrorists adopted the methods of the 1940s–kamikazes–with a bit of 1950s brainwashing added to produce a number of Manchurian Candidates. We dealt with the original kamikazes by improving our defenses so as to kill them before they hit us, and by destroying the country that launched them. We have to do that again.

Unless you have been gulled by the leaks from the misnamed intelligence community, you know that the terrorists represent the long arm of evil regimes. We therefore have a dual task: Kill the terrorists, and destroy the regimes that provide them with the critical infrastructure–training, safe havens, travel documents, technology, and all the rest–they need to operate.

The hunt for the terrorists is a technical matter, and we must hope that our military has enough virtue left from the Clinton ravages to do the job. But we should have no misgivings about our ability to destroy tyrannies. It is what we do best. It comes naturally to us, for we are the one truly revolutionary country in the world, as we have been for more than 200 years. Creative destruction is our middle name. We do it automatically, and that is precisely why the tyrants hate us, and are driven to attack us.

So we begin with an enormous advantage. The tyrants fear us, and their oppressed peoples want what we have to offer: freedom. Yes, there are the fanatics, both religious and political. But far too much has been made of the presumed religious fanaticism of our Middle Eastern enemies. Saddam Hussein is not at all a religious leader. His fame and charisma rest on his political and military power, and when the Palestinians dance in the streets, carrying banners with his portrait, and sing odes to Saddam, it is not because of his Islamic faith. It is because of his murderous success. He challenged us, he took our biggest punch and survived, and he now carries the battle to us once again.

And yet he fears us, for he knows that his own people would remove him in a heartbeat if only they could. And the Taliban fear us too, the Taliban who have slaughtered and enslaved the women of Afghanistan with a systematic sadism that would make Stalin proud, and would warm the cockles of the Ayatollah Khomeini’s lifeless heart. And the mullahs and ayatollahs in Tehran fear us, for they know that not one of them could survive a free election in Iran.

Freedom is our most lethal weapon, and the oppressed peoples of the fanatic regimes are our greatest assets. They need to hear and see that we are with them, and that the Western mission is to set them free, under leaders who will respect them and preserve their freedom. The president has brilliantly stressed our respect for Islam, and our conviction that the majority of Muslims are peace-loving people. He should direct Secretary Powell to fully support democratic resistance movements in the terrorist countries, and, failing that, to support more moderate, more pro-Western forces.You cannot remove a regime without having a new one ready to go.

These forces exist. In Afghanistan, the Northern Alliance, despite the assassination of its historic leader Massoud, is still a force to be reckoned with, and they have offered us their support in dislodging the Taliban. And there are others, including the deposed king, still formally recognized as the legitimate ruler of Afghanistan by most of the civilized world. In Iraq, we have halfheartedly supported an umbrella organization, the Iraqi National Congress, under the outstanding leadership of Ahmed Chalabi. Yet the State Department, as recently as yesterday, was still telling them that they must not, under any circumstances, operate inside Iraq. That is sheer folly, for it guarantees that we get the worst of both worlds: We enrage Saddam even further, but ensure that we won’t be able to get close to his throat. The president should order these embarrassing restrictions removed, give full support to this democratic resistance movement, and encourage the downtrodden and long suffering Iraqi people to join Chalabi and win their freedom.

In Afghanistan, as in Iraq, we must not think in the unworthy terms of a mere military strike against al Qaeda and its phantasmagorical leader, Osama bin Laden. We want the destruction of the Taliban, without which bin Laden could not have operated.

In other words, it is time once again to export the democratic revolution. To those who say it cannot be done, we need only point to the 1980s, when we led a global democratic revolution that toppled tyrants from Moscow to Johannesburg. Then, too, the smart folks said it could not be done, and they laughed at Ronald Reagan’s chutzpah when he said that the Soviet tyrants were done for, and called on the West to think hard about the post-Communist era. We destroyed the Soviet Empire, and then walked away from our great triumph in the Third World War of the Twentieth Century. As I sadly wrote at that time, when America abandons its historic mission, our enemies take heart, grow stronger, and eventually begin to kill us again. And so they have, forcing us to take up our revolutionary burden, and bring down the despotic regimes that have made possible the hateful events of the 11th of September.

The only consolation is that we know how to do it. And, miraculously, we have some leaders who understand the historic opportunity they hold in their hands.

Michael A. Ledeen is a resident scholar in the Freedom Chair at AEI.

https://www.aei.org/publication/creative-destruction-2/

[82_28]

Bad Moon: (Trouble) Rising

"America is polarized at home; the unitive government has splintered into departments at odds with each other, and with officials leaking on each other; with fake news abounding; with Congress gridlocked, and with American social and political fabric tearing apart."

It seems that we are coming to the crux: President Trump, like Reagan before him, was elected by ‘the people’ rather than by (what Paul Craig Roberts calls the ‘ruling interest groups’):

“As a high official in Reagan’s government who was aligned with Reagan’s goals to end stagflation and the Cold War, I experienced first-hand the cost of going against the powerful interest groups that are accustomed to ruling. We took away part of their rule from them, but now they have taken it back. And, they are now stronger than before”.

I too experienced something of the panic that the end to the Cold War induced among the ‘ruling interest groups’ – after all, American policy in the Middle East (and western Europe) was entirely dominated by an unstoppable momentum to cleanse it of all Russian influence. And then – ‘pop’ – the Soviet enemy suddenly, was an ‘enemy’ no more. Yet, the ‘ruling interest groups’ were, by then, fully committed to a globalized (i.e., a culturally non-nationalist, consumerist, lifestyle) rules-based, political and financial, ‘world’ shaped by the US. Serendipitously, after 9/11, terrorism emerged, serving to underpin the perceived need for a common defense-based, NATO-esque, global ‘order’, as the glue to America’s unipolar moment.

President Obama lay very much in the globalist ‘struggle for a democratic-liberal world’ mold, (though he did try to make the ‘ruling interests’ understand that there were limits: that there had to be boundaries to US commitments). In other words, Obama accepted the globalist premise, though he tried to mitigate some of its military impulses. Notably, however, he acquiesced to re-heating the Russia ‘threat’ (after Medvedev gave place to Mr. Putin (thus ending Obama’s hope of seducing Russia into the embrace of the global economic order).

But then Donald Trump, elected President by his deplorables base, made clear that he wished for détente with Russia, and even disdained the claims made on ordinary Americans by the maintenance of America’s unipolar global ‘order.’ For this heresy, he has been punished by the manufactured ‘Russiagate’ non-scandal. “Can a president, concerned that he might be removed from office by a special prosecutor or possibly assassinated, resist the march toward war?” –asks Paul Craig Roberts, who asserts that the President has been effectively caged, by a trifecta of Establishment generals, on the one hand; and by a Goldman Sachs posse, on the other.

That the ‘ruling interests’ have managed to substantially contain President Trump is undeniable, but what is new, and perhaps – or perhaps not – alters the calculus, is that these ‘ruling interests’ have had to come out from the shadows into the open. The former Acting Director of the CIA, Mike Morrell, an early voice peddling the Russian collusion meme now publicly admits in a surprisingly frank interview with Politico, his leading role in the intelligence community waging political war against President Trump, describing his actions as something he didn't "fully think through," adding that maybe it wasn't such a great idea to leak against, and bash a new president: “There was a significant downside,” Morrell acknowledges. Just to recall: Not only had Morell in an early NY Times op-ed piece asserted that he was committed to doing "everything I can to ensure that she [Hillary Clinton] is elected as our 45th president,” but he went so far as to call then-candidate Trump "a threat to our national security,” while making the extraordinary claim that "in the intelligence business, we would say that Mr. Putin had recruited Mr. Trump as an unwitting agent of the Russian Federation."

Now that Morrell has come clean, and the Robert Mueller investigation increasingly is publicly being revealed as a politicised hatchet operation, why then speak of a possible Bad Moon Rising? Well, simply because Morrell’s bout of candor does suggest that the Deep State now may be thinking compromise: It will give Trump some leeway, but will want its quid pro quo from him, too.

Some such signs of possible quid pro quo have been already apparent: Trump ate his campaign rhetoric on Afghanistan to allow the US military to prosecute its (long and unsuccessful) war there. The Pentagon too, has announced that 2,000 US military, and an additional large number of contractors, will stay on in north-eastern Syria without specific time limit – after the end of anti-ISIS operations there. And fresh troops have been inserted into Iraq, and deployed to within 100 km of the Iranian border. The ostensible justification is that with ISIS’ defeat – a void has opened, and into this ‘void’ Iran might penetrate. Only an aggressive US military presence might stop it, it is said. But American forces in Syria have been becoming ‘aggressive’ there too (against Russian Aerospace Forces, and not just Iranians) – as this report by RT makes clear:

(A US F-22 fighter was preventing two Russian Su-25 strike aircraft from bombing an ISIS base to the west of the Euphrates November 23, according to the Russian Defense ministry).

General Igor Konashenkov said: “The [USAF] F-22 launched decoy flares and used airbrakes while constantly maneuvering [near the Russian strike jets], simulating an air fight.” He added that the US jet “ceased its dangerous maneuvers” only after a Russian Su-35S fighter jet joined the two strike planes, [chasing away the F22]. “Most close-mid-air encounters between Russian and US jets in the area around the Euphrates River have been linked to the attempts of US aircraft to get in the way [of the Russian warplanes] striking against Islamic State terrorists,” the general said.

The statement came as a response to the Pentagon’s claims about Russian or Syrian aircraft crossing “into our airspace on the east side of the Euphrates River,” Lt. Col. Damien Pickart, the spokesman for US Air Force Central Command, told CNN earlier on Saturday.

Konashenkov said that any claims made by US military officials concerning the fact that there is “any part of the airspace in Syria that belongs to the US” are “puzzling.” Konashenkov also said that “Syria is a sovereign state and a UN member. And that means that there… can be no US airspace ‘of its own.’”

All of this rather looks as though the US military wants to flex muscle and is ‘looking for trouble’ with someone. Operational military co-ordination in Syria between American and Russian militaries is being deliberately allowed to wither (from the US side), I understand. President Putin, it seems, has read the runes correctly, and is pre-empting this new US Deep State ‘purpose’ to protect the Middle Eastern (suddenly opening) ‘void’ – by announcing a partial Russian military withdrawal from Syria. Putin is not ‘looking for trouble’ there. The job in Syria is done. He knows that the return of Russia to the Middle East stands as a ‘poke in the eye’ to decades of a neo-con doctrine of precisely trying to expel Russia from the region.

But … into this paradigm of US Establishment re-calibrated purpose: ‘to protect the Middle Eastern void’ from the likes of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, Hash’d al-Sha’abi and Hizbullah, percolating their influence across the region, President Trump has tossed his bombshell of declaring Jerusalem the capital of Israel. Trump had good domestic reasons for this act: the evangelical constituency within the Republican Party is significant (perhaps even fifty percent), and the Israeli Right (Sheldon Adelson has been a big Trump donor), and its powerful lobby, represents a ‘ruling interest’ that has a clout in DC that can match up to that of other components of the Deep State. It can, if it so chooses, cast an umbrella around an American politician.

In any case, ‘the act’ would have appealed to Trump’s delight in defying conventional wisdom (especially, if in so doing, he could snub his predecessor, too). It fits too, with his Art of the Deal methodology: weigh up the elements of power in your hands, and match them against those of your business opponent. And having done this analysis, where possible, remove or weaken your opponent’s components of strength - and build your own. From this optic, Palestinian ‘rejectionism’ in recognising Israel, and insisting on Jerusalem as the Palestinian capital, was the primordial element to any Palestinian negotiating hand. Indeed, it has been pretty much all of it.

And Trump simply KO’d it (or, so it may have seemed to him). Without Jerusalem, and the withholding of recognition of Israel remaining as Palestinian negotiating cards, the negotiation becomes banal. It is then just about ‘real estate’, and the amount of money required to get to a Palestinian ‘yes’. It is a particularly western way of negotiating: the weighing and balancing of literal components of power. It is not however the Hizbullah ‘way’ (I speak with a modicum of experience). Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah (Secretary General of Hizbullah) simply recast Trump’s play: asymmetrically.

‘Yes’, he said: Jerusalem is indeed ‘the core, the axis and the essence of the Palestinian case’. But that is the half of it. For Jerusalem – the Holy City – represents the core, and the essence of Muslim and Christian cultural identity. It is their history, their meaning, their sanctities. President Trump cannot ‘confiscate’ that identity, that history, and meaning – and simply give it to Israel. Nasrallah has called for Israel to be diplomatically isolated, for an Intifada, and for all movements and components to the resistance (Shi’i and Sunni; Christian and Muslim) to join the struggle for Jerusalem – the Holy City - and for al-Aqsa, the holy shrine, which is now in grave peril, he claimed. Nasrallah turned President Trump’s play from a ‘real estate’ tussle into a war of religious symbols - paradigm. His rendering makes it hard for so-called Muslim ‘moderates’ to deny Nasrallah’s casting of the conflict as one of emotionally charged spiritual symbols. They cannot, and are not. (See here, Abdul Bari Atwan, for example).

In sum, Nasrallah, backed by Iran, and in parallel by Egypt’s Sunni religious leadership of al-Azar, by Turkey (taking the Caliph’s mantle) and many others, has redefined President Trump’s Art of the Deal ploy -- not as one robbing the Palestinians of the heart of their cause, but as the re-ignition of the long struggle of all Muslims and Christians for Jerusalem, and all, for which it stands.

The American ‘ruling interests’ – after a long series of failures in the Middle East – will not abide yet more: they will retch at the thought of Israel challenged in this way; of Saudi Arabia humiliated and at Hizbullah and Iran in the vanguard of a regional campaign for Jerusalem, and for Palestine – and by implication, against those who have been seen willing to normalise with Israel.

A Bad Moon is rising: America is polarised at home; unitive government has splintered into departments at odds with each other, and with officials leaking on each other; with fake news abounding; with Congress gridlocked, and with American social and political fabric tearing apart.

Against this background - can a president, concerned that he might be removed from office, and beset still by hitherto hidden ‘ruling interests’ now dragged out from the shadows into the public glare for their tawdry schemes, resist the march toward war – the original question posed by Paul Craig Roberts?

Either a war in North Korea (“the greatest threat facing America”, McMaster says), or an aggressive military show of force against ‘bad actor’ Iran – and in support of a failing Saudi Crown Prince. Is this the diversion that either a now exposed and vulnerable Deep State, and a hobbled President, might welcome as the chance to stand erect in public esteem?

Both might share a common interest in escaping domestic problems to mount a show of American strength and military power. Very possibly they might, but oddly, the US military have chosen to leave American soldiers hostage and isolated in both cases: 30,000 US forces in the DMZ between the Koreas, and in smaller outposts in north-eastern Syria and in Iraq. This may turn out badly. Remember Beirut in 1983.

http://russia-insider.com/en/bad-moon-t ... ng/ri22020

I have seriously been steering as far clear as I can from these Russia threads here and "irl" because none of what I hear anywhere makes any sense and how am I to come off as an expert in the existence of mind control without sounding like a __?. However, here and there I have commented a little, that no matter what we may think of this Russia shit in the early days is just the forming of a fork in the road of propaganda that will become reality -- true or not -- the reality of now is what we will have to move on from. I have taken the position that it will not matter how true or false any of this is. What is the truth is that it is happening and one must not judge it at the time as having been resolved. Deliberate on what is happening now and that alone. Circumstances outside of our control are making THIS the thing. Most of it will be missed upon most. You will, for forever, have to start from the beginning (pick a century, pick the advent of the Gregorian Calendar etc). You will find yourself having to explain why you have not succumbed to what everyone else has by starting at the beginning. Society at large eschews different ways of looking at things, especially when you can muster empathy even for an enemy, even a despot.

Honestly, I just stay out of this Russia shit altogether, because my guess is as good as anyone's.

However, given the level of blind, slavish vitriol that exists in the USA and the generations of minds it has infected, great cruelty can easily be triggered without a specific catalyst. "They" have chosen when it will happen. The infrastructure has been laid for it to go whichever way it is wanted (been chosen) at simply the click of a few buttons in an interface. Many powerful, misanthropic, careless, selfish, stupid people have in their possession a pre-programmed algorithm that can set it into motion. I think this has already has been initiated. Think of how long it takes to reformat and reinstall a basic let's say 1TB hard drive. Exponentiate the size to the time it would take to reformat a planet sized cybernetic hard drive and we are probably about there. They are but ironing out the last of the impediments that have an outside chance of tripping the system "upgrade". To use the pedestrian analogy of a computer, they aren't overwriting the operating system. That's for later. They are installing a different BIOS which will only be able to run the only operating system it is compatible with. And that is theirs -- totally closed source. They are deleting the viruses until they are eventually overwritten themselves.

[seemslikeadream]

Does Russian Insider ever ever mention the Russian Mob? NO? Why is that?

Does Russian Insider even admit there is such a thing as the Russian Mob? Have they ever heard of Semion Mogilevich

The Federal Bureau of Investigation cannot tell us what we need to know about Donald Trump’s contacts with Russia. Why? Because doing so would jeopardize a long-running, ultra-sensitive operation targeting mobsters tied to Russian President Vladimir Putin — and to Trump.



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-k3B-tw2sB0

BI Doc on Russian Mafia Mogilevich Org Tied to Tochtachunov, Genovese – All Tied to Trump, At Least Indirectly (Mogilevich Org Planned to Dump Waste at Chernobyl Too)

https://miningawareness.wordpress.com/2 ... l-too/amp/

Vyacheslav Ivankov, Semion Mogilevich
Vyacheslav Ivankov and Semion Mogilevich (inset) Photo credit: Alchetron (public domain) and FBI / Wikimedia

Four months later, in March 1992, Ivankov arrived in the United States to organize a new criminal network. He would take the disparate elements of already-established Russian-speaking criminals and use them to create a sophisticated, well-managed operation that could launder funds and generate cash flow as part of a transnational network. But authorities had no idea where he was.

Trump's casino was a money laundering concern shortly after it opened
By Jose Pagliery, CNN Investigates
Updated 8:21 AM ET, Mon May 22, 2017

Story highlights
Trump's Taj Mahal casino broke anti-money laundering rules in the 1990s
It was the preferred spot for Russian mobsters to gamble
http://www.cnn.com/2017/05/22/politics/trump-taj-mahal/

Felix Sater is not a fairy tale.....

Felix Sater's father worked for Semion Mogilevich

Who Is Felix Sater, and Why Is Donald Trump So Afraid of Him?
https://www.thenation.com/article/who-i ... id-of-him/

Donald Trump, Tevfik Arif, Felix Sater
trump's connection to the Russian mob is not a bed time story


Why would trump say over and over and over again

"NOTHING TO DO WITH RUSSIA - NO DEALS, NO LOANS, NO NOTHING!"

Why does Russian Insider completely ignore the fact that Deutsche Bank loaned Russian laundered money to trump?

and besides all that he is a racist sexist disgusting human being and he was not elected by the American people


he did not want détente with Russia ...trump was indebted to the Russian mob why does Russian Insider ignore that FACT!

no American bank would lend trump anymore money....he HAD to take Russian money ...he is a dirty as dirty can get....why does Russian Insider ignore that FACT! Russian Insider must have had a brain freeze!!

WHY DOES RUSSIAN INSIDER IGNORE ALL THIS????

Felix Sater's father worked for Semion Mogilevich


Watch now: The dubious friends of Donald Trump part III: The billion dollar fraud

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oqesw5kwEow


27 SEPTEMBER 2017

Will Donald Trump go down due to his dubious ties to the former Soviet Union? The president seems to be getting in deeper and deeper. Special prosecutor Robert Mueller, who is investigating if Trump colluded with Russia in order to win the elections, is also digging into Trump's past. In that past, one of Donald Trump's business partners plays a crucial role, Felix Sater. A convicted felon who has ties with the Russian mafia. Last May, Zembla disclosed how an American real estate company, co-owned by Sater, used Dutch mailbox companies within a network, which has been suspected of laundering money. Presumably $1.5 million dollars had been diverted. Donald Trump built hotels and apartment blocks with this suspicious company.



In the last few months ZEMBLA received indications of a greater fraud. A billion dollar fraud. And here Sater, Trump's questionable business partner, shows up, as well. The money trail leads to Kazakhstan, to real estate projects in New York and again to the Netherlands. ZEMBLA investigates: How compromising is this case for the current president of America?

ZEMBLA, The dubious friends of Donald Trump III: The billion dollar fraud.

Research: Annette Schätzle
Director: Sander Rietveld
Editor in chief: Manon Blaas
https://zembla.bnnvara.nl/nieuws/the-co ... llar-fraud

Twitter finds hundreds of accounts tied to Russian operatives

Twitter's Carlos Monje, the director of public policy and philanthropy, right, knocks on the door with Colin Crowell, head of global public policy, to enter the closed door meeting with the House Intelligence Committee on Capitol Hill, Thursday, Sept. 28, 2017 in Washington. Officials from Twitter are on Capitol Hill as part of the House and Senate investigations into Russian interference in the 2016 elections. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon) (Alex Brandon/AP)
By Elizabeth Dwoskin, Adam Entous and Karoun Demirjian September 28 at 3:57 PM
Twitter said Thursday it had shut down 201 accounts that were tied to the same Russian operatives who posted thousands of political ads on Facebook, but the effort frustrated lawmakers who said the problem is far broader than the company appeared to know.

The company said it also found three accounts from the news site RT — which Twitter linked to the Kremlin — that spent $274,100 in ads on its platform in 2016.

Despite the disclosures, Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) questioned whether the company is doing enough to stop Russian operatives from using its platform to spread disinformation and division in American society.

He said Twitter’s presentation to a closed door meeting of Senate Intelligence Committee staffers Thursday morning was “deeply disappointing” and “inadequate on almost every level.” Twitter made a similar presentation to House Intelligence Committee staffers on Thursday afternoon.

The company “showed an enormous lack of understanding... about how serious this issue is, the threat it poses to democratic institutions,” Warner said.

Facebook announced on Sept. 21 that it would turn over copies of 3,000 political ads brought by Russian accounts during the 2016 election, while Twitter said on Sept. 28 that it had shut down 201 accounts tied to the same group. (The Washington Post)

The meeting between the company and Congressional investigators was part of a widening government probe into how Russian operatives used Facebook, Google, Twitter and other social media platforms to sow division and disinformation during the 2016 campaign. Those companies are under increasing pressure from Capitol Hill to investigate Russian meddling on their platforms and are facing the possibility of new regulations that could impact their massive advertising businesses.

Facebook, Google and Twitter are also being summoned to a public hearing on Capitol Hill on Nov. 1.

The Twitter accounts, which were taken down over the last month, were associated with 470 accounts and pages that Facebook last month said came from the Internet Research Agency, a Russia-connect troll farm. Twitter said the groups on Facebook had 22 corresponding Twitter accounts. Twitter then found an additional 179 accounts linked to those 22.

But lawmakers and analysts criticized Twitter for appearing as if it only accepted and looked into the data that it received from Facebook, rather than conduct a broader internal investigation. Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Ca.), the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, said Twitter needs to launch “a far more robust investigation” into how Russian actors used the platform.

“They have no idea who is on their platform. If it wasn’t for Facebook’s data, they would have no idea these were even Russian accounts,” said Clint Watts, senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute.

In its blog post, Twitter did not reveal who the ads reached and how many times they were shared. It is also not clear whether Twitter did a broader search of its users for Russian interference.

Twitter wrote that it was cooperating with the Congressional investigation. “Twitter deeply respects the integrity of the election process, which is a cornerstone for all democracies. We will continue to strengthen Twitter against attempted manipulation, including malicious automated accounts and spam, as well as other activities that violate our Terms of Service,” the post said.

Former Utah Governor Jon Huntsman, President Trump's nominee to be ambassador to Russia, said there was "no question" that Moscow meddled in the 2016 U.S. election. (Reuters)
But Alex Howard, deputy director of the Sunlight Foundation, said there’s plenty of evidence that Russian intelligence operatives have been on Twitter for years and have used the platform to amplify messages.

“We need to think very carefully about what role we want these companies to have in our debate – and, since these platforms largely regulate themselves, what kind of accountability we want them to have,” Howard said.

Silicon Valley has long enjoyed a hands-off approach from regulators, and has become a major lobbying force in Washington in order to keep things that way. But that attitude appears to be shifting quickly.

Last week Sens. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) and Warner urged colleagues Thursday to support a bill that would create new transparency requirements for platforms that run political ads online akin to those already in place for TV stations, according to a letter obtained by The Washington Post. Lawmakers from across the political spectrum – from Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) to Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex) – have called for more scrutiny into the market power of technology companies over the last few months.

Facebook has faced the greatest scrutiny. The company has said it will provide 3,000 political ads, in addition to payment information and data about who those ads targeted, to Congress in the coming days.

In a Facebook post on Wednesday, Mark Zuckerberg apologized for saying it was “pretty crazy” that fake news could have influenced the U.S. election.

“Calling that crazy was dismissive and I regret it. This is too important an issue to be dismissive,” he wrote. He then emphasized the role Facebook played in spurring authentic debate and sustaining democratic ideals was much greater than any exploitation that took place.

“The data we have has always shown that our broader impact -- from giving people a voice to enabling candidates to communicate directly to helping millions of people vote -- played a far bigger role in this election,” he said.

Google, the largest online advertising company in the world, has also been asked to provide information to Congressional investigators and to testify before Congress, but has not said whether it will do so. The company has said it will cooperate with any investigation and has “seen no evidence” of a Russian-promoted ad campaign. Google did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

In many ways, Twitter has been the most vulnerable to exploitation of all the social media companies. The company officially says the 5 percent of accounts on Twitter are automated bots, but outside researchers say the number could be much higher.

It’s very easy to buy fake accounts on Twitter, making it hard for Twitter to discern the extent of the Russian meddling, analysts said.

“Anyone can create an account anonymously on Twitter and hide its origin,” said Watts, the Foreign Policy Research Institute fellow.

NATIONAL
Ex Trump associates helped fugitive Kazakhs in visa scheme
BY BEN WIEDER, GABRIELLE PALUCH AND KEVIN G. HALL
khall@mcclatchydc.com

JULY 21, 2017 5:00 AM

SANDS POINT, NEW YORK
Two former associates of Donald Trump helped a family of wealthy Kazakh fugitives make extensive investments in the United States, some aimed at helping family members obtain legal residency here, a McClatchy investigation shows.

Felix Sater, an ex-con and one-time senior adviser in the Trump Organization, helped the Trump family scout deals in Russia. He led an effort that began in 2012 to assist the stepchildren of Viktor Khrapunov, who that year had been placed on an international detention request list by the global police agency Interpol.

Viktor Khrapunov
Former Kazakh Energy Minister Viktor Khrapunov, shown in this photo from an Interpol notice in 2012, faces civil lawsuits in the United States alleging that he and his family laundered stolen money through property in the United States and elsewhere.
Interpol

Khrapunov is the former Kazakh energy minister and ex-mayor of Almaty, that nation’s most populous city. He fled to Switzerland a decade ago, after Kazakhstan’s leaders accused him and his wife of stealing government funds. They are now accused in civil lawsuits of laundering money through luxury properties, including Trump-branded condos in the Soho neighborhood New York.

McClatchy’s probe reveals that with the help of Sater and his then-business associate Daniel Ridloff, also formerly affiliated with the Trump Organization, the Khrapunov family invested millions in a short-lived company that sought to place biometrics machines in airports across the country.

The real aim of Khrapunov’s investment was obtaining US residency for at least one member of the family; the company submitted, with the help of the onetime Trump associates, at least three requests to obtain visas for foreign workers.

The McClatchy investigation reveals a deeper relationship than previously known between the former Trump Organization figures and the fugitive Khrapunovs — underscoring how little is known about many of those involved with the Trump Organization.

There is no evidence that Trump himself participated in the courting of the Khrapunovs, but the affair sheds light on the often murky activities of the associates with whom he did deals at home and abroad.

What Ties?

On paper, Donald Trump’s business relationship with Sater ended almost a decade ago. But earlier this year, Sater re-entered Trump’s orbit when he and Michael D. Cohen, one of Trump’s personal lawyers, were involved with a Ukraine-Russia peace proposal that was presented to Michael Flynn, then Trump’s national security advisor.

Sater, whose LinkedIn profile lists him as a senior adviser to Trump in 2010 and 2011, also gave more than $10,000 to Trump’s presidential campaign and a joint Trump-Republican National Committee fund in 2016, and at least $6,000 this year, according to Federal Election Commission records.

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This as Bloomberg reported Thursday that Trump Soho in New York, where the Khrapunovs invested, were among several Trump businesses being looked at by former FBI Director Robert Mueller in his probe of possible collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign in 2016.

“Do not know,” said John M. Dowd, an outside lawyer for Trump, said of the report in response to questions from McClatchy.


Several key people in Trump’s orbit did business with the Kazakh clan, including the law firm of Trump campaign surrogate Rudy Giuliani and the Bayrock Group, which developed Trump-branded projects in New York, Florida and Arizona and was founded by Tevik Arif, a politically-connected former Soviet official from Kazakhstan.

Lincoln Mitchell, a political consultant who specializes in Russia and its neighboring countries, said virtually any investment from Kazakhstan warrants scrutiny.

"It would be hard to imagine getting Kazakh investment that wasn't close to the ruling family," Mitchell said in a telephone interview from the former Soviet republic of Georgia.

Nursultan Nazarbayev has ruled resources-rich Kazakhstan since 1989, placing his children and their spouses in top government posts. Some of his family assets have been frozen in Switzerland, and a U.S. Justice Department settlement in 2015 spotlighted how bribes paid to senior Kazakh officials ended up in offshore accounts belonging to the Kazakh government.

Both Sater and Ridloff had worked for Bayrock before joining the Trump Organization, Sater being one of its managing partners. Later, the two men facilitated the purchase in 2013 of three condos in the Trump SoHo for $3.1 million by companies tied to the Khrapunov children, Ilyas Khrapunov and Elvira Kudryashova.

In 2012 and 2013 alone, Sater and Ridloff worked with the Khrapunovs on more than $40 million in real estate and investment deals. All came after Kazakhstan added Viktor to the Interpol wanted list in February 2012.

Later, the former Trump associates and their Kazakh investors appeared to have a falling out, becoming mired in acrimonious lawsuits that ended in secret sealed settlements. Yet their business relationship appears to have continued after the settlements, and they continue to maintain a friendship via social media.

Viktor Khrapunov’s wife, Leila, would be added to the Interpol wanted list later in 2012, and stepson Ilyas was added in May 2014.

Ilyas Khrapunov
Ilyas Khrapunov, shown in a photo from an Interpol notice, faces civil lawsuits alleging that he and his father, Viktor, a former energy minister and mayor in Kazakhstan, laundered stolen money through property in the United States and elsewhere.
Interpol
The Khrapunovs – who declined to answer detailed questions from McClatchy — maintain that they are the victims of political persecution by the despotic Nazarbayev, who once offered Viktor the post of prime minister before their falling out.

“This is about a dictator trying to silence his political opponents,” Marc Comina, a Khrapunov family spokesman in Switzerland, said in an emailed statement. “Kazakhstan is using the legal systems of Western countries to harass, wear down and destroy political opponents.”

From Almaty to the Big Apple

On the surface, a multimillion dollar investment by the Khrapunovs in a New York-based health technology company would appear to make little sense.

World Health Networks was formed from the ashes of a failed firm that had created health monitoring kiosks placed in pharmacies. The new company aimed to put similar devices in airports across the world, but first it needed capital.

Enter Sater. He was representing the Khrapunovs, who were looking for US investments, and was introduced to executives of World Health Networks through an intermediary who attended the same synagogue on Long Island, according to a person with intimate knowledge of the deal.

Company executives made a pitch to the Khrapunovs in April 2012, according to documents reviewed by McClatchy, and court documents show that the money started flowing into the New York firm soon after.

World Health Network’s business model evolved over the course of its short existence, from an early plan to attract sponsorships from health insurance companies to a later plan to sell advertising space on the machines.

“It was definitely a real company,” said Ken Williams, who helped develop the firm and sat on its board.

Sater installed Ridloff as the company’s chief operating officer, according to former employees who demanded anonymity because of several ongoing lawsuits.

Silence and Denials

McClatchy reporters knocked on Sater’s door in wealthy New York suburb of Sands Point on July 17. He declined comment when asked about World Health Networks and other dealings with the Khrapunovs, saying he was late for a golf outing. McClatchy returned later in the day, prompting Sater to email that he’d call police if reporters came back again.

His attorney, Robert S. Wolf, declined to meet with McClatchy a day later when reporters went to his office in Manhattan’s Chrysler Building seeking comment.

A Port Washington address Sater has listed multiple times as his place of business turned out to be a UPS store.

“He comes in here once in a blue moon,” said Nagasar Lachman, owner of the store.

This much is known: Ridloff submitted three visa applications for highly skilled workers on the company’s behalf between March 2013 and March 2014, all seeking to hire foreign budget analysts.

Stopped on the street as he left his Manhattan office, Ridloff confirmed to McClatchy that the investment by the Khrapunovs – ultimately $6 million, according to court records -- was aimed at securing Kudryashova, Viktor’s stepdaughter, legal residence in the United States.

The company partnered with the Swiss-based World Heart Federation and managed to place its machines in several airports, including Detroit, San Jose and Sacramento, Calif. But former employees confirmed its revenue couldn’t keep pace with expenses.

The company spent liberally on international travel and a bloated payroll, they said, and it folded soon after funding from the Khrapunovs dried up in late 2014.

It’s unclear the visas were ever issued, or whether the Khrapunovs obtained legal U.S. residence through any other means. The State Department and Homeland Security did not immediately provide documents requested under the Freedom of Information Act about World Health Networks’ visa applications.

Elvira Kudryashova listed a Newport Beach, Calif., address on a 2016 incorporation document for an upscale toy store she owned called Anthill shopNplay. The property in Newport Beach was sold later the same year.

Mall Brawl

Sater and Ridloff also worked with the Khrapunovs on nearly $35 million in U.S. real estate purchases during the same time period.

They started with several acquisitions in N.Y., including the three condos in the Trump SoHo for which they spent $3.1 million.

Then in June 2013, Sater and Ridloff helped a Khrapunov-linked company purchase the debt on the Tri-County Mall in the Cincinnati suburbs for $30 million. A month later, they sold their interest in the mall for $45 million to a U.S. company whose website lists Neil Bush, son of former President George H. W. Bush, on its board of directors.

Sater and Ridloff were owed a $1.6 million commission for their work arranging the Ohio deal, but a lawsuit filed in December 2013 alleged that they took nearly the entire $45 payment.

The lawsuit was settled, remarkably, in one day’s time, on Dec. 20, 2013, and the terms are secret. That might have been expected to be the end of the business relationship between the Khrapunovs and Sater.

But documents and social media suggest a seemingly amicable alliance extending beyond the 2013 lawsuit.

On Feb. 19, 2014 – two months after the lawsuit was filed – Ridloff submitted the third, final visa application on behalf of World Health Networks.

Ridloff incorporated World Health Networks in Kansas in March 2014, 10 days before the company was approved to enter into a contract with the Kansas City Airport in Missouri.

A Khrapunov-linked company made payments of at least $250,000 to World Health Networks in 2014, according to court records in a U.S. civil lawsuit brought against the family, with a payment of $80,000 made in September of 2014.

And Ridloff’s Facebook page shows that he is currently “friends” with Ilyas Khrapunov – years after the lawsuit alleging Sater helped orchestrate a multi-million dollar heist from a Khrapunov-connected company.

Bayrock Origins

Sater first began working with Trump while the Russian emigre was at Bayrock, which developed projects with Trump in Phoenix and Fort Lauderdale in addition to the Trump SoHo in New York.

Trump had given Bayrock exclusive rights in 2005 to develop a Trump International Hotel and Tower in Moscow. Court documents show Sater claims to have led a scouting trip in Russia with Donald Trump Jr. and Ivanka Trump in 2006.

Sater and Ridloff appear to have first become acquainted with the Khrapunovs during their time at Bayrock; in 2007 and 2008, companies tied to the Kazakh family entered into several deals with Bayrock, including a joint energy extraction venture in Kazakhstan called Kazbay and the development of a luxury building in Switzerland overlooking Lake Geneva.

Bracewell & Giuliani, the law-firm co-founded by former New York City Mayor and Trump surrogate Rudolph Giuliani, was retained to handle legal matters for the joint Bayrock-Khrapunov energy venture, according to documents obtained by Dutch broadcaster Zembla. Giuliani left the partnership in 2016 and Bracewell officials did not respond to numerous calls.

The Giuliani law firm’s Kazakh office was also behind the placement of more than $1 billion in corporate debt for Bank Turanalem, or BTA. Its top shareholder was Mukhtar Ablyazov, another fugitive Kazakh, whose daughter is married to Ilyas Khrapunov.

Kazakhstan’s president ordered BTA seized in 2009 and soon after accused Ablyazov of absconding with billions. Lawsuits in Los Angeles, New York and across the globe accuse of the Khrapunovs of co-mingling funds with Ablyazov and laundering the money, which is also the basis for the Interpol request by Kazakhstan. Lawyers for both the Khrapunovs and Ablyazovs deny this.

The Kazbay deal would ultimately fail and the Bayrock Group imploded soon after, in part as revelations emerged about Sater’s past. He had done prison time in the mid-1990s after being convicted of stabbing a man in the face with a broken margarita glass during a bar brawl. Later, Sater pleaded guilty to racketeering in a securities fraud case but avoided prison by becoming a U.S. government informant.

Those revelations didn’t end Sater’s relationship with Trump – he and Ridloff both worked as advisers to the Trump Organization in 2010.

While Sater has said he was scouting potential Russia projects for the Trump Organization as late as 2015, Trump has played down their relationship.

“If he were sitting in the room right now, I really wouldn’t know what he looked like,” Trump said in a Florida deposition in 2013.

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