Why Do People Apologize For Russia?

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Re: Why Do People Apologize For Russia?

Postby MacCruiskeen » Sun May 06, 2018 1:49 pm

Burnt Hill » Sun May 06, 2018 11:50 am wrote:Okay, maybe not massive.
But were they legitimate protests by real people, or choreographed Liberal propaganda?


I presume they were real people, obviously. No one is disputing that, least of all I, and certainly not the Russian media. Do you think they were androids?

You are comparing it to a staged event? Not a "grassroots" situation?


I have never suggested that it was "staged", and I have no idea whether it was truly "grassroots", the purest astroturf, or some mixture of the two. Do you?

They were also real people at the toppling of the Satan statue in Baghdad. The point at issue -- as I have already made crystal-clear, which is why I asked you, politely, to stop putting words in my mouth -- is the number of people involved. Their motivation and funding, since you bring those topics up, are of course also of interest and relevance. If you know any more about those two matters than I do, please post the evidence. What I do know is this: The US corporate media went out of their way to lie about the "massive" crowds at The Toppling of Satan's Statue in Baghdad. They did so with the help of carefully-cropped and highly misleading photos, and I have seen no evidence to support the fantasy that those mercenary hacks have been born again in Jesus and reformed their wicked ways. If you know of any such evidence, please do not hesitate to post it here, for this Discussion Board is famed for its dedication to the disinterested pursuit of the truth, wherever it may lead. Propaganda is unwelcome.

That comes with the assumptions most are happy with Putin. Are you seeing it that way?


That's what the Russian polls and the Russian election-results say. Are you disputing those results? I think most Russian people are (very understandably) glad that Russia is no longer the hellhole of feuding, marauding US-supported robber barons it was under that US-supported pisshead Boris Yeltsin, who presided over the selling of the Russian people's assets at knockdown prices to the greediest and most ruthless shits liberated by Ronald Reagan and his successors in their selfless drive for Freedom..And I think that most Russian people are (very understandably) glad that the Putin administration is finally standing up for them against US/NATO aggression.

(It's practically inevitable that some damn fool will now accuse me of being a "Putinite". C'est la vie mort.)
"Ich kann gar nicht so viel fressen, wie ich kotzen möchte." - Max Liebermann,, Berlin, 1933

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

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Re: Why Do People Apologize For Russia?

Postby Burnt Hill » Sun May 06, 2018 2:05 pm

Doesn't comparing this protest to the toppling of the statue suggest you are making an equivalence?
The toppling statue was definitely created propaganda, it was not a grassroots response.

MacCruiskeen wrote: Do you think they were androids?


This type of silliness is unwarranted.

And I am not clear on how I am putting words in your mouth. You repeated that.

Otherwise I do appreciate your response.
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Re: Why Do People Apologize For Russia?

Postby seemslikeadream » Mon May 07, 2018 12:01 pm

“Bestselling author” :P

Milo was interviewed by Russian propaganda outlet RT on Saturday. He told them all about how free speech is dying in America & the UK.

Also on Saturday: Russia detained 1600+ people, including prominent opposition leader Alexei Navalny, for "unsanctioned" protests.


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Milo's emergence as an RT darling came at an interesting time, just as his financial problems were taking a turn for the worse.

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https://twitter.com/RVAwonk/status/992989328996519936
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Re: Why Do People Apologize For Russia?

Postby seemslikeadream » Wed May 09, 2018 11:32 am

Caroline O.


NEW: The Senate Intelligence Committee released its prelim findings into Russian targeting of election infrastructure during the 2016 election.

"In a small # of states, Russian-affiliated cyber actors were in a position to, at a minimum, alter or delete voter registration data."

Image


https://www.burr.senate.gov/imo/media/d ... ,Recs2.pdf

https://twitter.com/RVAwonk/status/993999791918145537
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: Why Do People Apologize For Russia?

Postby seemslikeadream » Fri May 11, 2018 8:33 am

House Democrats Release 3,500 Russia-Linked Facebook Ads


Win McNamee/Getty Images
On Thursday, Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee published more than 3,500 Facebook and Instagram ads linked to the Russian propaganda group Internet Research Agency, making it the largest trove of these ads the public has seen to date.

Since last fall, when Facebook disclosed it had sold political ads to Russian actors in the run-up to the 2016 election, details about the IRA's handiwork have trickled out mainly in the form of independent research, individual exhibits presented during congressional testimony, and an indictment of IRA officials by special counsel Robert Mueller. Facebook, meanwhile, has declined to share a comprehensive list of accounts and Pages associated with the IRA on Facebook and Instagram.

With Thursday's disclosure, the House Democrats are painting a fuller picture, which they hope will help assist in further research about the IRA's extensive operation.

"Ultimately, by exposing these advertisements, we hope to better protect legitimate political expression and discussions and better safeguard Americans from having their information ecosystem polluted by foreign adversaries," wrote representative Adam Schiff, ranking member of the committee, in a statement. “We will continue to work with Facebook and other tech companies to expose additional content, advertisements, and information as our investigation progresses.”

The newly revealed ads, some of which are redacted to protect the privacy of innocent Facebook users, track closely to what's already known about the IRA's tactics. The ads date back to early 2015 and continue through August of 2017, covering topics including LGBT rights, Black Lives Matter, immigration, Islam, veteran issues, the Second Amendment, Texas secession, and the presidential candidates themselves. The Pages implicated in this disclosure largely mirror a list published last year by the Russian media outlet RBC, which until now has been the largest list of suspected accounts published anywhere. But there are new names in the House committee's collection, too, including an account called "Black guns matter," which had more than 4,000 likes in November of 2016.

As was clear during the congressional hearings with tech giants last November, the IRA's ads on Facebook and Instagram often staked out both sides of the same issue. One ad, created by the page United Muslims of America in June of 2016 and targeted at people whose interests on Facebook included Hillary Clinton and the Muslim Brotherhood, showed Clinton smiling with a woman in a hijab. It invited people to an event entitled "Support Hillary. Save American Muslims!"

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Another ad, meanwhile, purchased by the page Stop A.I.—short for Stop All Invaders—showed a photoshopped President Obama in the Oval Office, with an ISIS flag behind him. "Obama was always a mere pawn in the hands of the Arabian Sheikhs," it reads in part. "All these refugees, which we are about to take in, are soldiers with one simple goal. They are going to try to terrorize the nation."

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Some of the ads promote real-world events organized by unwitting Facebook users. One such event, promoted by the page Black Matters, promoted a night of free legal help for immigrants. Another, published by the page Fit Black, promoted free self-defense classes run by a club called Black Fist. Buzzfeed News previously reported that IRA trolls had lured American fitness trainers to lead these classes, even going so far as to pay them $320 a month.

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What made these ads so deceptive is they rarely looked like traditional political ads. Often, they don't mention a candidate or the election at all. Instead, they tear at the parts of the American social fabric that are already worn thin, stoking outrage about police brutality or the removal of Confederate statues.

Throughout Congress's investigation into Russian meddling in the election, legislators have questioned tech leaders about how the IRA targeted the ads. Facebook has repeatedly said that the majority of ads were geographically targeted broadly to the United States, and the House's trove backs that up. But some ads in the new collection, including a few published by the page Black Matters, specifically target cities with a history of headlines about racial unrest and police brutality, like Baltimore, Maryland, and Ferguson, Missouri. Others target by interest category. In January of 2016, a single ad for a page called Williams&Kalvin, two YouTubers the IRA hired to promote news and video about the black community, targeted users age 18 to 45 who were interested in BlackNews.com, the color black, or HuffPost Black Voices but were not Hispanic or Asian American. Facebook says it has since revisited some of its targeting categories, eliminating one-third of the categories the IRA used.

Williams&Kalvin appears to be one of the pages that tested which messages would resonate most with audiences. Within a single hour on January 14, 2016, that page posted the same ad with two different messages. The ad that read "Community about black social and racial issues! Like to subscribe!" received two clicks. The ad that read "Black Discrimination Awareness! Like to join!" got 2,592. That kind of testing is common in digital advertising, but it suggests the IRA was operating at a certain level of sophistication.

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Facebook has sought to downplay the damage caused by these ads, often emphasizing that the IRA spent just $100,000 on them, compared to the nearly $40 billion in ad revenue the company earned in 2017. But the House's disclosure shows how far even a small sum can go. One ad, purchased on June 23, 2015, by the page LGBT United, cost 99.95 Russian rubles, or the equivalent of $1.59. That ad garnered 26 clicks and 374 impressions in a single day. Looked at this way, Facebook's argument that 50 percent of the ads cost less than $3 doesn't sound all that compelling.

The ads also represent just a sliver of what the Russian trolls posted on Facebook and Instagram. While 3,500 sounds like a sizable number, IRA accounts published some 80,000 organic posts on Facebook and another 120,000 on Instagram, reaching roughly 146 million Americans between the two.

Since these ads ran—and the world found out about it—Facebook has announced significant changes that it says could ward off such malicious behavior in the future. In advance of this announcement, Facebook sent a bulleted list of these changes to reporters. Going forward, for instance, it's requiring all political advertisers, including people advertising about hot-button issues such as abortion and gun rights, to provide a copy of their government-issued identification and an address to verify that they live in the United States. It will require similar verification for popular pages.

The company will also begin labeling political ads as such, and, in June, it will launch a repository of political ads that includes information on the amount spent on the ad, its reach, and the demographics of the audience it targeted. That will eliminate the kind of blind confusion that has ensued over the last year regarding the very ads the House made public Thursday. Meanwhile, Facebook will scale its content moderation team to 20,000 people by the end of this year.

The House Democrats say they plan to eventually publish the organic posts created by the Russian trolls as well. But even on its own, Thursday's data dump could serve as a useful guide not only for researchers who are still mapping out the IRA's tactics but also for other tech platforms—like Reddit and Tumblr—that didn't detect Russian trolls until far later than their larger counterparts. The goal, after all, is not just to recap what happened but to prevent it from happening again.

Update: 10:10 am ET 05/10/18 This story has been updated to reflect that after publication, House Democrats revised the total number of ads from more than 3,300 to more than 3,500.
https://www.wired.com/story/house-democ ... ebook-ads/
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: Why Do People Apologize For Russia?

Postby seemslikeadream » Fri May 11, 2018 9:06 am

We know that Russia will continue to interfere with our elections, and one way we can begin to inoculate ourselves against future attacks is for Americans to see the messages, images and themes they used to divide us in 2016:

--- Adam Schiff



‘Pro-Beyoncé’ vs. ‘Anti-Beyoncé’: 3,500 Facebook ads show the scale of Russian manipulation


Facebook ads purchased by Russian agents, displayed during a congressional hearing with representatives of tech companies. (Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP)

Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee on Thursday released about 3,500 Facebook ads purchased by Russian agents around the 2016 presidential election on issues from immigration to gun control, a reminder of the complexity of the manipulation that Facebook is trying to contain ahead of the midterm elections.

The ads, from mid-2015 to mid-2017, illustrate the extent to which Kremlin-aligned forces sought to stoke social, cultural and political unrest on one of the Web’s most powerful platforms. With the help of Facebook's targeting tools, they delivered their disinformation to narrow categories of users – from black or gay users to fans of Fox News.

In doing so, Russia’s online army reached at least 146 million people on Facebook and Instagram, its photo-sharing service, with ads and other posts. Sometimes, Russian trolls also tried to fuel rallies and protests, endeavoring at one point in 2016 to pit Beyoncé fans and critics against each other in New York City.

The release of the ads comes months after top executives from Facebook, Google and Twitter testified at a trio of congressional hearings about Russia’s propaganda efforts, a campaign waged by the Kremlin-sponsored Internet Research Agency, or IRA. Those companies since have pledged to vet political ads more aggressively, and Facebook in particular has said it would begin labeling ads about political candidates as well as some hot-button political issues.

In the meantime, Rep. Adam B. Schiff (Calif.), the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said lawmakers would continue probing Russia’s online disinformation efforts. In February, Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel investigating Russia and the 2016 election, indicted individuals tied to the IRA for trying to interfere in the presidential race.

“They sought to harness Americans’ very real frustrations and anger over sensitive political matters in order to influence American thinking, voting and behavior,” Schiff said in a statement. “The only way we can begin to inoculate ourselves against a future attack is to see first-hand the types of messages, themes and imagery the Russians used to divide us.”

For its part, Facebook stressed in a statement: "This will never be a solved problem because we're up against determined, creative and well-funded adversaries. But we are making steady progress."

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said the world was a "more dangerous place" after President Trump ended the Iran nuclear deal. (Reuters)

In total, ads purchased by agents tied to the Kremlin-backed IRA reached about 10 million U.S. users around the 2016 presidential election, according to Facebook’s own estimates. But the ads are only part of the story: They sought to hook American voters into clicking “Like” or following Russia-created Facebook profiles and pages, which published organic content, like status updates, videos and other posts, which would later appear in users’ News Feeds.

Facebook previously estimated that Russia-tied profiles and pages generated 80,000 pieces of organic content around the 2016 election – either directly in their news feeds or because their friends had shared it. Another 20 million saw IRA-generated content on Instagram. House lawmakers did not make organic posts on Facebook or Instagram available Thursday, but in a later interview, Schiff said that Democrats are working with Facebook to release as much of that data as possible.

"We would like to be able to show the country the full [breadth] of what the Russians were doing on social media to influence the American electorate, so we’re continuing to work with Facebook," he said.

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Russian Facebook advertisements released by the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence show images on both sides of the immigration debate.

In many cases, the Kremlin-tied ads took multiple sides of the same issue. Accounts like United Muslims of America urged viewers in New York in March 2016 to “stop Islamophobia and the fear of Muslims.” That same account, days later, crafted an open letter in another ad that accused Clinton of failing to support Muslims before the election. And other accounts linked to the IRA sought to target Muslims: One ad highlighted by the House Intelligence Committee called President Barack Obama a “traitor” who had acted as a “pawn in the hands of Arabian Sheikhs.”

For two years, Russian agents proffered similar ads around issues like racism and causes like Black Lives Matter. They relied on Facebook features to target specific categories of users. An IRA-backed account on Instagram aimed a January 2016 ad about “white supremacy” specifically to those whose interests included HuffPost’s “black voices” section.

At times, Russian agents also sought to influence Facebook users’ offline activities: One ad from the IRA-aligned page Black Matters promoted a March 26, 2016, rally against “confederate heritage,” which had 161 people saying they would attend. Another by Heart of Texas urged viewers to “honor your ancestors” and join a rally for the state to secede – a post that had been shared 266 times before Facebook removed Russian-generated content.

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Russian Instagram advertisements released by the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence show both pro and anti-Beyonce rallies.

On Instagram, one of the IRA’s ads in February 2016 sought to target people believed to be police officers, firefighters and military officers, urging them to appear at a protest of Beyoncé outside of NFL headquarters. At the same time, another account -- targeting black users -- directed viewers to a pro-Beyoncé protest at the same location. Neither effort appeared to gain any traction, according to data supplied by the social giant to Democratic lawmakers. But it offered one example of the extent to which Russian trolls sought to exploit both sides of major national debates – including football players who knelt during the national anthem to bring attention to issues of racism.

The documents released Thursday also reflect that Russian agents continued advertising on Facebook well after the presidential election. Until August 2017, Russian-aligned pages and profiles advertised their opposition to immigrants, targeting a range of users, including those who appear to like Fox News. They marketed a page called Born Liberal to likely supporters of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), the data show, an ad that had more than 49,000 impressions into 2017. Together, the ads affirmed the fears of some lawmakers, including Republicans, that Russian agents have continued to try to influence U.S. politics even after the 2016 election.

Russian agents also had created thousands of accounts on Twitter, and in January, the company revealed that it discovered more than 50,000 automated accounts, or bots, with links to Russia. It notified about 1.7 million users that they had fallen victim to Russian propaganda during the 2016 election. And Google discovered a small number of ads purchased by the IRA on YouTube, its video platform.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the ... cf607a63b0
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: Why Do People Apologize For Russia?

Postby Sounder » Fri May 11, 2018 9:55 am

When they say "Russian Agents' do they mean click-bait farmers. Well the nerve of those Ruskies cashing in on Zuckerberg's playground.

Anyway Russia has reduced their military budget this year to pay for roads and stuff while US has added 80 billion to an already large amount, including presumably quite a lot for domestic propaganda, because that is now legal.

My guess would be that this is part of that activity.
All these things will continue as long as coercion remains a central element of our mentality.
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Re: Why Do People Apologize For Russia?

Postby seemslikeadream » Fri May 11, 2018 10:04 am

Russia has reduced North Korea’s $11 billion debt.

I wonder why those 3 prisoners were released to trump :roll:

Russia gets roads America gets trump
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: Why Do People Apologize For Russia?

Postby seemslikeadream » Fri May 11, 2018 11:16 am

Documents Reveal How Russian Official Courted Conservatives In U.S. Since 2009

Tim MakMay 11, 20185:00 AM ET

Russian official Alexander Torshin, appearing in Moscow in 2016, was sanctioned by the U.S. government in April, suspending years of travel back to 2009 during which he cultivated ties with American conservatives.

Alexander Shalgin/Alexander Shalgin/TASS
Updated at 10:55 a.m.

Kremlin-linked Russian politician Alexander Torshin traveled frequently between Moscow and various destinations in the United States to build relationships with figures on the American right starting as early as 2009, beyond his previously known contacts with the National Rifle Association.

Documents newly obtained by NPR show how he traveled throughout the United States to cultivate ties in ways well beyond his formal role as a member of the Russian legislature and later as a top official at the Russian central bank. These are steps a former top CIA official believes Torshin took in order to advance Moscow's long-term objectives in the United States, in part by establishing common political interests with American conservatives.

"Putin and probably the Russian intelligence services saw [Torshin's connections] as something that they could leverage in the United States," said Steve Hall, a retired CIA chief of Russian operations. "They reach to reach out to guy like Torshin and say, 'Hey, can you make contact with the NRA and some other conservatives... so that we can have connectivity from Moscow into those conservative parts of American politics should we need them?' And that's basically just wiring the United States for sound, if you will, in preparation for whatever they might need down the road."

Torshin's trips took him to Alaska, where he requested a visit with former Gov. Sarah Palin; to the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington, D.C.; to Nashville, where he was an election observer for the 2012 presidential race; and to every NRA convention, in various American cities, between 2012 and 2016.

But the jig is up. Last month, Torshin was designated for sanctions by the U.S. Treasury Department.

"We can conclude that the administration thought he was acting to advance Putin's malign agenda, but what precisely [he did] they did not make clear," said Daniel Fried, a former State Department coordinator for sanctions policy who helped craft the sanctions authorities that ultimately were employed against Torshin.

Arriving At Sarah Palin's Doorstep
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Torshin's outreach to the United States started well before Russia's now-public campaign of electoral interference during the 2016 elections. And it appears to be a cultivated effort to reach out to conservatives, even in its earliest stages.

"I really do think the Russians are looking at being able to reach out to the right... to say, 'Hey, you know Russians actually share a lot of the same values,'" said Hall, whose 30-year career in the CIA concluded in 2015.

Hall said their message was: "You know, we don't like LGBT causes anymore than you conservatives on the right in the United States do, we are interested in engaging the NRA... the church plays an important role in Russia just as it should in the United States."

Torshin's earliest known visit to the United States was in 2009, when he requested a meeting with former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin — a request that has never before been reported.

An email from the former Alaska governor's archives, released due to a public records request from activist Andree McLeod and posted online en masse by then-Alaska Dispatch News reporter Richard Mauer, shows how Torshin made the approach through the Russian ambassador to the U.S., who was then Amb. Sergey Kislyak.

An aide wrote to Palin in May of 2009: "You had received a request to call the Russian Ambassador regarding a proposed visit by Mr. Alexander Torshin... Torshin will be visiting Alaska on June 6, 2009 and we have asked the Lt. Governor to meet with him." Neither the Russian embassy nor Palin responded to a request for comment.

2009 request to then-Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (p. 1)
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The Lieutenant Governor at the time was Sean Parnell, who would go on later to become the governor of Alaska. Parnell told NPR he doesn't recall meeting with Mr. Torshin, nor did the name ring a bell — but he said it wouldn't be odd for him to take such a meeting.

"It wouldn't be unusual for Alaska's Lt. Governor to take a meeting with a visiting foreign dignitary, especially if the Governor's Office had been approached first by the visitor/visiting delegation to schedule a meeting and the governor had declined," Parnell said in an email.

Torshin's travels in the United States continued with a strange trip to Tennessee. Public records requests made by NPR shed light on how Torshin managed to become an election observer in Nashville during the 2012 presidential elections.

"The interesting thing about election monitoring is it does get foreign officials out and about in places that they perhaps might not usually go," said Hall, the former CIA chief of Russian operations. "It wouldn't be uncommon for either somebody like Mr. Torshin, or a diplomat, or a Russian intelligence officer to appear in places like Washington or New York... But a place like Nashville, or other locations in the United States, provide sort of an insight about what's really going on in the heartland."

A memo left for Tennessee Secretary of State Tre Hargett on Oct. 11, 2012, shows that local lawyer Kline Preston, known for his support of Putin, made the application for election observer status on behalf of Torshin.

"Russian Senator Alexander Torshin would like to observe our Presidential election. Polling stations," the 2012 message reads.
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2012 phone message for Tenn. Secretary of State (p. 2)
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An email from Tennessee Coordinator of Elections Mark Goins shows that Torshin requested visits to the Davidson County Election Commission and the Williamson County Election Commission. And a sign-in sheet showed that he visited the polling station at Grassland Middle School in Williamson County, Tenn.
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2012 Tennessee Poll Watcher Sign In (p. 1)
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According to these documents, Torshin was accompanied by a Russian diplomat named Igor Matveev. Matveev had postings in Syria and the United States, and is fluent in Arabic and English. Hall said that Matveev, who did not respond to a request for comment from NPR, fit the profile of a professional diplomat rather than an intelligence operative due to his background, "but basically the Russian intelligence services can and do oftentimes co-opt standard diplomats to do their bidding for them."
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Email from 2012 Tennessee Coordinator of Elections (p. 3)
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Torshin made no secret of his visit to Tennessee, and posted it on Twitter, like he has about many of his visits to America. He even posted a photo of himself in line at a Nashville-area polling place.


Translation: "Standing in line to the voting station. Like an average American. 6.45 am."

Russia has a long history of politicizing the use of election monitors — for example using Western, pro-Putin observers to vouch for the validity of its contested elections.

Preston, who arranged for Torshin's 2012 election observation status in his hometown of Nashville, recently went to Crimea. In a trip reported by a Russian state operated news agency, Preston declared that the election process in Crimea, which Russian annexed in 2014, were open, honest and trustworthy. He did not respond to a list of questions provided by NPR.

There were very few international doubts about the fairness of America's 2012 presidential elections, which makes Torshin's visit to Nashville for this ostensible purpose all the more perplexing.

And while there have been election monitors in the United States in the past, it usually involves an international organization like the OSCE, which during the 2012 elections sent 44 observers throughout the U.S. to monitor the elections.

"There are of course no real elections in Russia that Vladimir Putin doesn't approve of and essentially run himself," Hall said. "So the idea that any Russian entity would go to be an election monitor anywhere in the world is of course on its face ridiculous. It's sort of like sending an alcoholic to the distillery to make sure that everything is going okay."

More Frequent Visits Leading Up To 2016 Campaign

From 2012 to 2016, Torshin began making regular visits to the United States that suggested Russians were trying to find common cause on issues like religion and guns. Torshin attended every National Rifle Association convention during this time and met high-ranking NRA officials.

These trips took him all across the American heartland, with stops in St. Louis, Houston, Indianapolis, Nashville and Louisville. Last month, the NRA acknowledged Torshin was a life member of the NRA and has been since 2012, but insisted he only ever paid his membership dues to the organization. The gun rights group said it had received $2,500 from about 23 Russia-linked contributors since 2015.

"Based on Mr. Torshin's listing as a specially designated national as of April 6, we are currently reviewing our responsibilities with respect to him," NRA general counsel John Frazer wrote to Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., last month. The NRA has denied wrongdoing and says that it does not accept funds from foreign persons "in connection with United States elections."

Over a similar time period, Torshin also reportedly made repeated trips to Washington, D.C., to attend the National Prayer Breakfast — Yahoo reported that he even had a meeting scheduled with newly-inaugurated President Donald Trump during the breakfast in 2017, but that the president pulled out at the last minute when an aide figured out who Torshin was. The White House did not respond to a request for comment.

Further, Torshin facilitated reciprocal trips during these years in which he brought Americans to Russia. In 2013 and 2015, he hosted gun rights advocates in Russia, including former NRA president David Keene, whom he developed a close relationship with.

His visits to America sometimes puzzled those who saw him there, as he appeared to have no serious expertise in the field he was purportedly representing. A speech Torshin gave in Washington, D.C. in March 2015, as deputy governor of the Bank of Russia, left some in the audience perplexed.

"For anyone at the lunch who's remotely familiar with finance or the world of central banking, Torshin demonstrated no significant expertise in either realm," said a former U.S. official who was at the event. "Torshin's performance was all the more surprising, given the big questions circulating at that time about the fate of the Russian economy, sanctions, Western diplomatic isolation, and the like."

In fact, for those observing Torshin, what he was best known for was not central banking, but allegations of money laundering. In 2013 Spanish authorities alleged that Torshin helped a Russian mob syndicate in Moscow launder money through banks and properties in Spain, according to a report by Bloomberg News.

"It is extraordinary and outrageous that a man caught in international money laundering was appointed... to become deputy chair of the Russian Central Bank," said Anders Aslund, a resident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council's Eurasia Center.

Torshin's travels to the United States continued through to perhaps his most infamous trip: The NRA convention in 2016, where he attempted to get a meeting with then-candidate Trump.

According to a report written by Democrats on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, Torshin used a Republican strategist named Paul Erickson as an intermediary to set up a meeting with Trump himself.

"Happenstance and the (sometimes) international reach of the NRA placed me in a position a couple of years ago to slowly begin cultivating a back-channel to President Putin's Kremlin," Erickson wrote to Rick Dearborn, a senior campaign official and a longtime advisor to Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

That meeting never occurred — though Torshin did meet Donald Trump, Jr., at an event during the convention. Trump Jr. claims they did not discuss the election.

Sanctions Mean The Jig Is Up

On April 6, the U.S. Treasury Department specifically designated Torshin as a target of U.S. sanctions — Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said the agency targeted "those who benefit from the Putin regime and play a key role in advancing Russia's malign activities."

The sanctions mean that any assets Torshin has in the United States could be seized, and the travel to America that punctuated his life for years will end.

"He's, for lack of a better term, become radioactive, certainly to the United States, but really the global financial institutions, that are unlikely to be willing to do any business with him for fear of secondary sanctions from the U.S. Treasury Department," said Boris Zilberman, who works on the Foundation for Defense of Democracies' Center on Sanctions and Illicit Finance.

He also reportedly faces scrutiny from congressional investigators probing the 2016 election and the FBI. McClatchy has reported that the FBI is investigating whether Torshin illegally funneled money to the National Rifle Association to help President Donald Trump's 2016 campaign. The FBI did not respond to a request for comment.

Hall said it also probably reflected intelligence gathered on Torshin's intentions over years of travel to the United States.

"The fact that Torshin has now been personally sanctioned... is an indication that the administration... has seen, probably, intelligence reporting on Torshin and his background, and perhaps what the plans and intentions of the Russian government vis-a-vis Mr. Torshin," Hall told NPR. "It shows that our system... is doing its job in informing policymakers about the dangers of somebody like Torshin."

For years, Torshin built relationships with governors, NRA bigwigs and conservative activists — making a point of traveling to the United States repeatedly to expand those ties. But with Torshin's designation as a target of U.S. sanctions last month, that door has been closed.

Torshin did not respond to a list of questions provided by NPR.

WPLN's Chas Sisk and NPR's Audrey McNamara contributed to this report.
https://www.npr.org/2018/05/11/61020635 ... since-2009
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: Why Do People Apologize For Russia?

Postby Rory » Fri May 11, 2018 11:26 am

Sounder » Fri May 11, 2018 5:55 am wrote:When they say "Russian Agents' do they mean click-bait farmers. Well the nerve of those Ruskies cashing in on Zuckerberg's playground.

Anyway Russia has reduced their military budget this year to pay for roads and stuff while US has added 80 billion to an already large amount, including presumably quite a lot for domestic propaganda, because that is now legal.

My guess would be that this is part of that activity.


It's standard Propaganda - hystericalize the most rote, mundane political activity, and add layers of sensational, evidence free intrigue to further amp up the drama.

I see Schiff, being mentioned a lot recently, like he's a good actor telling us truth. People seem to forget he's an ultra aggressive Israel firster, who absolutely wanted rid of the Iran Nuclear Deal, and wants to ratchet up tensions in MENA. He supports arming ISIS, arming the ukronazis in Banderastan, bombing yemen, sanctions against Iran, arming and supporting Israeli aggression. He's not on our side - he's bolton/Pompero. In a dem suit
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Re: Why Do People Apologize For Russia?

Postby seemslikeadream » Fri May 11, 2018 11:27 am

if everything you say is true please verify


oh I see you need to stop reading PHOG.....oh and I see you are parroting Kunstler now?

Adam Schiff

The war in Yemen has caused unimaginable human suffering, and millions are now on the brink of famine. Only a political solution can bring it to an end.
https://twitter.com/RepAdamSchiff/statu ... 8407432192



Schiff: Trump made mistake of 'historic proportions' by scrapping Iran deal
v\http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/386751-schiff-trump-made-mistake-of-historic-proportions-by-scrapping-iran


Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., On Why He Supports The Iran Nuclear Deal
https://www.npr.org/2015/08/04/42921971 ... clear-deal


Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., On Why He Supports The Iran Nuclear Deal
The future of the Iran nuclear deal could hinge on Democrats, who are being pulled in two directions. The Obama administration wants them to back the plan, but Israel and pro-Israel lobbying groups want those lawmakers to oppose the deal. U.S. Rep. Adam Schiff is a Jewish Democrat, and the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee. He tells Renee Montagne why he recently decided to support the Iran agreement.
https://schiff.house.gov/news/adam-in-t ... ws_article


Rep. Schiff Introduces Authorization for Use of Military Force Against ISIS, al Qaeda and the Taliban – “Congress Must Debate and Vote on Any New War”
https://schiff.house.gov/news/press-rel ... ny-new-war


I can't find anything on this I am sure you can back it up

arming the ukronazis in Banderastan



Schiff: Bolton likely to exaggerate Trump's dangerous impulses - NBC ...

why do you sound so much like trump so much of the time?

Trump Accuses Adam Schiff of Lying, Leaking
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/20 ... aking.html



you are reading way too much Matt Gaetz

stay away from Fox News ...they LIE

got something else?
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: Why Do People Apologize For Russia?

Postby seemslikeadream » Sat May 12, 2018 9:24 am

Russian hackers posed as IS to threaten military wives

PARIS (AP) — Army wife Angela Ricketts was soaking in a bubble bath in her Colorado home, leafing through a memoir, when a message appeared on her iPhone:

“Dear Angela!” it said. “Bloody Valentine’s Day!”

“We know everything about you, your husband and your children,” the Facebook message continued, claiming that the hackers operating under the flag of Islamic State militants had penetrated her computer and her phone. “We’re much closer than you can even imagine.”

Ricketts was one of five military wives who received death threats from the self-styled CyberCaliphate on the morning of Feb. 10, 2015. The warnings led to days of anguished media coverage of Islamic State militants’ online reach.

Except it wasn’t IS.

The Associated Press has found evidence that the women were targeted not by jihadists but by the same Russian hacking group that intervened in the American election and exposed the emails of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign chairman, John Podesta.

The false flag is a case study in the difficulty of assigning blame in a world where hackers routinely borrow one another’s identities to throw investigators off track. The operation also parallels the online disinformation campaign by Russian trolls in the months leading up to the U.S. election in 2016.


Russian spies masqueraded as Islamic State supporters to threaten vocal spouses of U.S. Army personnel, The Associated Press has found. CyberCaliphate was actually a front for the Russian hacking group that intervened in the American election. May 8

Links between CyberCaliphate and the Russian hackers — typically nicknamed Fancy Bear or APT28 — have been documented previously. On both sides of the Atlantic, the consensus is that the two groups are closely related.

But that consensus never filtered through to the women involved, many of whom were convinced they had been targeted by Islamic State sympathizers right up until the AP contacted them.

“Never in a million years did I think that it was the Russians,” said Ricketts, an author and advocate for veterans and military families. She called the revelation “mind blowing.”

“It feels so hilarious and insidious at the same time.”

‘COMPLETELY NEW GROUND’

As Ricketts scrambled out of the tub to show the threat to her husband, nearly identical messages reached Lori Volkman, a deputy prosecutor based in Oregon who had won fame as a blogger after her husband deployed to the Middle East; Ashley Broadway-Mack, based in the Washington, D.C., area and head of an association for gay and lesbian military family members; and Amy Bushatz, an Alaska-based journalist who covers spouse and family issues for Military.com.

Liz Snell, the wife of a U.S. Marine, was at her husband’s retirement ceremony in California when her phone rang. The Twitter account of her charity, Military Spouses of Strength, had been hacked. It was broadcasting public threats not only to herself and the other spouses, but also to their families and then-first lady Michelle Obama.

Snell flew home to Michigan from the ceremony, took her children and checked into a Comfort Inn for two nights.

“Any time somebody threatens your family, Mama Bear comes out,” she said.

The women determined they had all received the same threats. They were also all quoted in a CNN piece about the hacking of a military Twitter feed by CyberCaliphate only a few weeks earlier. In it, they had struck a defiant tone. After they received the threats, they suspected that CyberCaliphate singled them out for retaliation.

The women refused to be intimidated.

“Fear is exactly what — at the time — we perceived ISIS wanted from military families,” said Volkman, using another term for the Islamic State group.

Volkman was quoted in half a dozen media outlets; Bushatz wrote an article describing what happened; Ricketts, interviewed as part of a Fox News segment devoted to the menace of radical Islam, told TV host Greta Van Susteren that the nature of the threat was changing.

“Military families are prepared to deal with violence that’s directed toward our soldiers,” she said. “But having it directed toward us is just complete new ground.”

‘WE MIGHT BE SURPRISED’

A few weeks after the spouses were threatened, on April 9, 2015, the signal of French broadcaster TV5 Monde went dead.

The station’s network of routers and switches had been knocked out and its internal messaging system disabled. Pasted across the station’s website and Facebook page was the keffiyeh-clad logo of CyberCaliphate.

The cyberattack shocked France, coming on the heels of jihadist massacres at the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo and a kosher supermarket that left 17 dead. French leaders decried what they saw as another blow to the country’s media. Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said evidence suggested the broadcaster was the victim of an act of terror.

But Guillaume Poupard, the chief of France’s cybersecurity agency, pointedly declined to endorse the minister’s comments when quizzed about them the day after the hack.

“We should be very prudent about the origin of the attack,” he told French radio. “We might be surprised.”

Government experts poring over the station’s stricken servers eventually vindicated Poupard’s caution, finding evidence they said pointed not to the Middle East but to Moscow.

Speaking to the AP last year, Poupard said the attack “resembles a lot what we call collectively APT28.”

Russian officials in Washington and in Moscow did not respond to questions seeking comment. The Kremlin has repeatedly denied masterminding hacks against Western targets.

‘THE MEDIA PLAYED RIGHT INTO IT’

Proof that the military wives were targeted by Russian hackers is laid out in a digital hit list provided to the AP by the cybersecurity company Secureworks last year. The AP has previously used the list of 4,700 Gmail addresses to outline the group’s espionage campaign against journalists , defense contractors and U.S. officials . More recent AP research has found that Fancy Bear, which Secureworks dubs “Iron Twilight,” was actively trying to break into the military wives’ mailboxes around the time that CyberCaliphate struck.

Lee Foster, a manager with cybersecurity company FireEye, said the repeated overlap between Russian hackers and CyberCaliphate made it all but certain that the groups were linked.

“Just think of your basic probabilities,” he said.

CyberCaliphate faded from view after the TV5 Monde hack, but the over-the-top threats issued by the gang of make-believe militants found an echo in the anti-Muslim sentiment whipped up by the St. Petersburg troll farm — an organization whose operations were laid bare by a U.S. special prosecutor’s indictment earlier this year.

The trolls — Russian employees paid to seed American social media with disinformation — often hyped the threat of Islamic State militants to the United States. A few months before CyberCaliphate first won attention by hijacking various media organizations’ Twitter accounts, for example, the trolls were spreading false rumors about an Islamic State attack in Louisiana and a counterfeit video appearing to show an American soldier firing into a Quran .

The AP has found no link between CyberCaliphate and the St. Petersburg trolls, but their aims appeared to be the same: keep tension at a boil and radical Islam in the headlines.

By that measure, CyberCaliphate’s targeting of media outlets like TV5 Monde and the military spouses succeeded handily.

Ricketts, the author, said that by planting threats with some of the most vocal members of the military community, CyberCaliphate guaranteed maximum press coverage.

“Not only did we play right into their hands by freaking out, but the media played right into it,” she said. “We reacted in a way that was probably exactly what they were hoping for.”

___

Satter reported from Paris. Associated Press writers Michael Conroy in Bloomington, Indiana; Jeff Donn in Plymouth, Massachusetts; and Desmond Butler in Washington contributed to this report.

https://www.apnews.com/4d174e45ef5843a0ba82e804f080988f


America is in the middle of a Russian influence campaign – not at the end

We need only look to London for lessons in how oligarchs apply pressure.

Rick Wilson

Donald Trump’s longtime personal attorney Michael Cohen is playing a starring role in a riveting drama featuring the President, Special Counsel Robert Mueller, Putin-connected oligarchs, shady vory v zakone-adjacent moneymen, and American and Russian corporations seeking influence with the Trump Administration. For Americans, this is a new lurid political drama, but it’s one London has seen up close for two decades. It’s the story of the inevitable consequences that result when Russian money, influence and corruption slither up on Western shores.

Fixers for oligarchs, cash payments for shady real estate deals to launder Russian money, overt and covert political influence, payoffs to mistresses, and the rest of the atmosphere of Rus-inflected sleaze surrounding Michael Cohen are part of a familiar arc. The tidal wave of post-Cold War oligarch money, criminal proceeds needing a safe laundry, and Russian state enterprise capital (but I repeat myself) that have flooded London since 1992 profoundly reshaped that city’s politics, real estate market, banking, and finance.

While the FBI and American law enforcement were forced to confront the impacts of this emergence of Russian cash, families, money, and criminality that came to the U.S. after the end of the Cold War, America’s experience was but a faint echo of what hit London. Russian mobsters in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn were buying taxi company medallions and running pump-and-dump stock scams. Some were picking up condos in Trump Tower. Russians in London were buying soccer teams, Renaissance art and whole blocks of Knightsbridge.

As many in Londongrad have already discovered, and Americans will soon learn, Russian money always finds a way. Like an Ohm’s Law of Corruption, their methods are programmed to seek a shortcut, a weak spot, a vulnerability to exploit. The U.S. is in an early phase of the Russian money-and-influence game; London is, I think, quite a bit further down the road.

Russians oligarchs and government officials saw in Trump a kindred spirit to their own Vladimir Putin and modeled the same kind of influence operations that ensured their both their prosperity and survival in Putin’s one-man state. Pay-to-play isn’t an outrage in Russia; it’s standard operating procedure in a game of survival. The spycraft practice known by the acronym of MICE — Money, Ideology, Compromise, and Ego — came into play with their approach to Donald Trump. They just needed the right access.

These soft invasions always require fixers; men with both connections to be effective at achieving the ends of their oligarch masters and the flexible morality to ignore from whence all that sweet, sweet cash is coming. Russian oligarchs need native armies of lawyers, accountants, finance experts, tax attorneys, real estate agents, PR minions, and security personnel. Western governments and finance systems aren’t going to rig themselves, after all.

The staggering number of ties to Russia and Russians that define both Trump’s business dealings and his campaign is almost comical, and for the Russians he presented a target even more rewarding than they could have imagined. His political advisor Roger Stone was in bed with Russian hacker Guccifer. Paul Manafort, the President’s campaign chairman, was the Kremlin’s go-to guy for keeping Ukraine under their control. With business connections stretching back 30 years, Donald Trump, Jr. once bragged, “Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets.”

To hook Trump, however, would take a special kind of man. It would take a man on the inside of Trump’s world who knew where the bodies were buried (and may well have buried them). They would need a trusted bagman to deliver the kind of payoffs they believed Trump, like Vladimir Putin, would demand. It wouldn’t hurt if that man was a shallow, slackjawed, not-terribly-bright mall lawyer.

Michael Cohen is obviously such a man. He is a self-consciously cinematic consigliere, a swaggering tough-guy fixer, a vain wannabe Ray Donovan. He was the private emissary to the demimonde of Trump’s priapic adventures, the cleanup man for a constellation of adult film stars, pageant girls, actresses, models, and random D-grade celebrity livestock who needed silencing. As lurid as the stories of Cohen’s role as the NDA-and-Payoffs Czar of Trump World have been, it’s quite obvious that the Russians could also smell corruption on Cohen like a hog sniffs out truffles. He was the perfect access point into Trump and his Administration.

Cohen already had Russian bona fides before Trump; he’d been in business with a variety of Russians and Ukrainians, with more than a few connected to the old country in less than savory ways. He was, as they say, comfortable in situations of moral ambiguity.

Cohen’s payments from Russian-connected sources are a matter of great concern to Special Counsel Robert Mueller and money coming in to Cohen’s Essential Consultants, LLC look overtly like payoffs from Russians very tightly tied to Vladimir Putin. That’s a bad look for anyone, particularly a man selling his close association with the President of the United States. Recently revealed payments to Cohen from American firms seeking influence with Trump look like the familiar swamp of Washington; sleazy, grubby and venal, but sadly, oh so recognizable.

The last two years have been an education for Americans who thought that stories of a Russia defined by bad actors and hostile intentions were nothing but Cold War nostalgia, but the Kremlin’s overt interference in the 2016 U.S. election in the form of active measures supporting Donald Trump’s campaign was a Homeland plotline made real. Americans are in for a wake-up call; we’re not at the end of the Russian influence campaign, we’re in the middle of it.

As the Cohen saga unfolds, Americans will become aware that the Russian government, Russian oligarchs, Russian organized crime, and Russian intelligence services are all deeply intertwined. (Kak skazat “Overlapping Venn diagram” po-Russki?) As London has discovered, once the Russians are in the system, it’s hard to get them out.

It’s inevitable that the corruption that attends Russian influence often bleeds into violence. Russians living in England who are on Putin’s enemies list have experienced violent retribution, often with fatal consequences. If I were in Cohen’s shoes, I’d avoid rooftops, enter the Witness Protection Program as soon as Bob Mueller makes the offer, and retain the services of a food taster, especially if he’s going to dine at Trump-branded restaurants.

And Michael, that’s a side of Novichok with your well-done steak.
https://usa.spectator.co.uk/2018/05/ame ... t-the-end/





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Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
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Don’t forget that.
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Re: Why Do People Apologize For Russia?

Postby Rory » Sat May 12, 2018 11:20 pm

IMG_20180512_201516.jpg


IMG_20180512_201527.jpg
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Re: Why Do People Apologize For Russia?

Postby JackRiddler » Sat May 12, 2018 11:23 pm

Can you explain the pictures, please?
We meet at the borders of our being, we dream something of each others reality. - Harvey of R.I.

To Justice my maker from on high did incline:
I am by virtue of its might divine,
The highest Wisdom and the first Love.

TopSecret WallSt. Iraq & more
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Re: Why Do People Apologize For Russia?

Postby Rory » Sat May 12, 2018 11:51 pm

It was referenced in this article, https://www.rt.com/politics/425929-oppo ... ny-police/

It was a "thousands strong", protest against how telegram is being blocked. But as you can see, it's another of many Russian protests given the Saddam statue toppling treatment
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