Friday, May 26, 2017

Sergey Gorkov...The VneshEconomBank

**************************

The nature of kingship in William Shakespeare’s play Macbeth follows the events that occur during Macbeth’s unlawful rise to the throne......The themes of greed, arrogance and excessive political ambition are still, very relevant to the world today. Shakespeare got it right - his story of Macbeth still applies to today's world....

**************************

Click Here to view the Index

**************************

"Sergey Gorkov', the Russian bank chairman who met with Jared Kushner in December isn't your ordinary banker. His state-run bank has been under US sanctions for nearly three years. He was appointed to his job by Russian President Vladimir Putin after eight years at Russia's biggest state-owned commercial bank. And he graduated from the Russian academy of Federal Security Service, which trains people to work in Russia's intelligence and security forces."

"Sergey Gorkov's meeting with Kushner, President Donald Trump's son-in-law and one of his closest advisers, will be scrutinized by congressional investigators probing links between Trump associates and the Russian government. Gorkov is chairman of VneshEconomBank, or VEB, a Russian development agency that has been under US sanctions since July 2014......The meeting is raising questions both because of the sanctions and because Kushner spent years as a real-estate developer and was trying to attract financing for a building project of his in Manhattan......The White House said Kushner was acting as a Trump adviser -- not as a private developer -- when he met with Gorkov."

"VEB confirmed the meeting with Kushner in a statement to CNN, though described Kushner in his role as head of Kushner Companies, not as a representative of Trump.......'During 2016 the bank's management repeatedly met with representatives of the world's leading financial institutions in Europe, Asia and America ... including the head of Kushner Companies, Jared Kushner," the VEB statement said. ....Senate Intelligence Committee member Susan Collins, a Maine Republican, told CNN's "New Day" Tuesday morning that it was "interesting" that VEB "seemed to contradict" Kushner's statement that he was acting as a campaign official when he met with the bank president....."I'm sure that that will be an issue that we'll try to clarify," Collins said.

**************************

"President Barack Obama imposed sanctions on Russian financial institutions in 2014 after Russian annexed part of neighboring Ukraine......Trump said during his presidential campaign that he was open to reconsidering the sanctions against Russia. The sanctions weakened much of the Russian finance sector by barring Americans and US companies from buying the debt of Russian financial institutions, which limits their ability to raise money....."Right after the election, there was an expectation on the part of Russia that sanctions will be lifted," said Alevtina Guseva, a Boston University expert on Russian finance."

Vnesheconombank (VEB) (Russian: Внешэкономбанк (ВЭБ)) is a Russian government-owned development bank, meant to provide funding for projects aimed at developing the Russian economy. It is not involved in retail banking activities....Sergey Nikolaevich Gorkov has been Chairman since February 26, 2016.

"In July 2014 the United States Department of the Treasury imposed sanctions that prohibit U.S. persons from providing new financing to VEB after the 2014 pro-Russian unrest in Ukraine.....In March 2017, Jared Kushner volunteered to discuss with the United States Senate Intelligence committee Kushner's relationship and any meetings with Sergey Gorkov, chairman of Vnesheconombank...... During Donald Trump's transition December 2016, these meetings were held in Trump Tower in New York City and had been arranged by Sergey I. Kislyak, Russia's Ambassador to the United States."

"Bloomberg published a scathing overview of the bank’s financial position with the less than subtle title of “Putin’s Once Mighty Bank for Pet Projects Now on Chopping Block”. The article quoted a number of insiders speculating about potential scenarios for the bank’s future. None of them was good and they ranged from the receipt of a large (at least $20bn) bailout from the government to a restructuring/downsizing that would leave the bank in a radically reduced and unrecognizable state......Due to the bank’s political sensitivity there haven’t been many specifics about precisely what (if anything) it has actually done wrong. But there does appear to be a general acknowledgement that the bank is in trouble."

**************************

Donald Trump Was Bailed Out of Bankruptcy by Russia Crime Bosses.....

"In 2008, Donald Trump Jr. attended a real estate conference, where he stated that......'Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets. We see a lot of money pouring in from Russia.'....As it turns out, that may have been an understatement. Human rights lawyer Scott Horton, whose work in the region goes back to defending Andrei Sakharov and other Soviet dissidents, has gone through a series of studies by the Financial Times to show how funds from Russian crime lords bailed Trump out after yet another bankruptcy. The conclusions are stark.....Among the powerful facts that DNI missed were a series of very deep studies published in the [Financial Times] that examined the structure and history of several major Trump real estate projects from the last decade—the period after his seventh bankruptcy and the cancellation of all his bank lines of credit. ...The money to build these projects flowed almost entirely from Russian sources. In other words, after his business crashed, Trump was floated and made to appear to operate a successful business enterprise through the infusion of hundreds in millions of cash from dark Russian sources......He was their man.....

**************************

Wednesday, May 10, 2017

Michael Flynn and Sergey I. Kislyak

**************************

The nature of kingship in William Shakespeare’s play Macbeth follows the events that occur during Macbeth’s unlawful rise to the throne......The themes of greed, arrogance and excessive political ambition are still, very relevant to the world today. Shakespeare got it right - his story of Macbeth still applies to today's world....

**************************

Click Here to view the Index

**************************

"The Senate Intelligence Committee announced it was commencing an investigation of Russian hacking during the 2016 campaign that would include an examination of connections between Russia and the Trump camp. And a veiled but public exchange between Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), a member of the committee, and FBI Director James Comey during a hearing on January 10 suggested the FBI has collected information on possible ties between Trump and associates of Vladimir Putin."

**************************

May 8, 2017......Sally Yates Tells Senators She Warned Trump About Michael Flynn....Less than a week into the Trump administration, Sally Q. Yates, the acting attorney general, hurried to the White House with an urgent concern. The president’s national security adviser, she said, had lied to the vice president about his Russian contacts and was vulnerable to blackmail by Moscow.......“We wanted to tell the White House as quickly as possible,” Ms. Yates told a Senate Judiciary subcommittee on Monday. “To state the obvious: You don’t want your national security adviser compromised with the Russians.”......But Trump did not immediately fire the adviser, Michael T. Flynn, over the apparent lie or the susceptibility to blackmail. Instead, Mr. Flynn remained in office for 18 more days. Only after the news of his false statements broke publicly did he lose his job on Feb. 13....Even after being warned that Mr. Flynn represented a blackmail risk, Mr. Trump kept the general on as national security adviser for another two weeks, firing him only after The Washington Post found out about the warnings."

It also raised fresh doubts about Mr. Trump’s judgment in keeping Mr. Flynn in place despite serious Justice Department concerns. White House officials have not fully explained why they waited so long......

MacTrump Twitter....Donald J. Trump‏Verified account......@realDonaldTrump......"Ask Sally Yates, under oath, if she knows how classified information got into the newspapers soon after she explained it to W.H. Counsel."...... 8 May 2017

Fired….Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, Foreign policy adviser,..... In February, Trump fired his national security adviser, Michael T. Flynn, after The Washington Post reported that he had not fully disclosed his contacts with Russian officials……Flynn has close links with RT and Gazprom, respectively…. Trump has offered the post of national security adviser to Lt. Gen. Michael T. Flynn, potentially putting a retired intelligence officer who believes Islamist militancy poses an existential threat in one of the most powerful roles in shaping military and foreign policy, according to a top official on Mr. Trump’s transition team…..

Mr. Trump and General Flynn both see themselves as brash outsiders who hustled their way to the big time. They both post on Twitter often about their own successes, and they have both at times crossed the line into outright Islamophobia.......

A lot of people had serious concerns about Mr. Flynn serving as national security adviser. But none of them was named Donald J. Trump.

Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, who briefly led the Trump transition team, did not think that Mr. Flynn was qualified to be the national security adviser. President Barack Obama, who fired Mr. Flynn as the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency in 2014, warned Mr. Trump against hiring the retired three-star general when the two met in the Oval Office after the election.

Michael T. Flynn, the national security adviser, resigned on Monday night after it was revealed that he had misled Vice President Mike Pence and other top White House officials about his conversations with the Russian ambassador to the United States.....Mr. Flynn, who served in the job for less than a month, said he had given “incomplete information” regarding a telephone call he had with the ambassador in late December about American sanctions against Russia, weeks before President Trump’s inauguration. Mr. Flynn previously had denied that he had any substantive conversations with Ambassador Sergey I. Kislyak, and Mr. Pence repeated that claim in television interviews as recently as this month....But on Monday, Feb 13, 2017a former administration official said the Justice Department warned the White House last month that Mr. Flynn had not been fully forthright about his conversations with the ambassador. As a result, the Justice Department feared that Mr. Flynn could be vulnerable to blackmail by Moscow.”……. Michael T. Flynn, then Donald J. Trump’s incoming national security adviser, had a previously undisclosed meeting with the Russian ambassador in December to “establish a line of communication” between the new administration and the Russian government, the White House said on Thursday……..

Jared Kushner, Mr. Trump’s son-in-law and now a senior adviser, also participated in the meeting at Trump Tower with Mr. Flynn and Sergey I. Kislyak, the Russian ambassador. But among Mr. Trump’s inner circle, it is Mr. Flynn who appears to have been the main interlocutor with the Russian envoy — the two were in contact during the campaign and the transition, Mr. Kislyak and current and former American officials have said. (March 2)….on Dec. 29, beginning shortly after Mr. Kislyak was summoned to the State Department and informed that, in retaliation for Russian election meddling, the United States was expelling 35 people suspected of being Russian intelligence operatives and imposing other sanctions……Mr. Kislyak was irate and threatened a forceful Russian response, according to people familiar with the exchange. He then left the State Department and called Mr. Flynn, the first in a series of calls between the two in the 36 hours that followed……

"Michael T. Flynn, then Donald J. Trump’s incoming national security adviser, had a previously undisclosed meeting with the Russian ambassador in December to “establish a line of communication” between the new administration and the Russian government, the White House said on Thursday......Jared Kushner, Mr. Trump’s son-in-law and now a senior adviser, also participated in the meeting at Trump Tower with Mr. Flynn and Sergey I. Kislyak, the Russian ambassador. But among Mr. Trump’s inner circle, it is Mr. Flynn who appears to have been the main interlocutor with the Russian envoy — the two were in contact during the campaign and the transition, Mr. Kislyak and current and former American officials have said."

Kislyak met with Michael T. Flynn and Jared Kushner in December 2016 to establish a line of communication with the Trump administration......CNN alleged that United States intelligence officials have claimed he is a top Russian spy and spy recruiter....Attorney General Jeff Sessions met twice with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak last year, on top of the conversations with Kislyak that forced Trump’s national security adviser Michael Flynn to resign last month, have cast an increasingly bright spotlight on the once low-profile Russian diplomat.* While diplomatic colleagues like Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and the late U.N. Ambassador Vitaly Churkin seemed to relish international media attention, Kislyak kept his head down for much of his career. That being said, he’s been closely involved in U.S.-Russian relations for more than 35 years, including some of the most contentious and controversial moments of the post–Cold War era.

"...a VIP reception on April 27 at the Mayflower Hotel. The day before the event, Trump had chalked up electoral wins in Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Rhode Island. Trump was in D.C. at the Mayflower to give a foreign policy address when “[a] few minutes before he made those remarks, Mr. Trump met at a VIP reception with Russia’s ambassador to the U.S., Sergey Ivanovich Kislyak,” the Journal reports. “Mr. Trump warmly greeted Mr. Kislyak and three other foreign ambassadors who came to the reception.” “I believe an easing of tensions, and improved relations with Russia—from a position of strength only—is possible, absolutely possible,” Trump said during his speech later."

"President Trump is set to meet Wednesday with Vladimir Putin’s top diplomat at the White House, marking the highest level, face-to-face contact with Russia of the American leader's young presidency......Trump's discussion with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov will take place at the White House after the Russian meets earlier in the day with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson.....The meetings come a day after Trump abruptly fired FBI Director James Comey, dramatically ousting the nation's top law enforcement official in the midst of the bureau's investigation into Trump's ties with Russia and Russia's meddling in the 2016 presidential election."

American intelligence agencies routinely wiretap the phones of Russian diplomats, and transcripts of the calls showed that Mr. Flynn urged the Russians not to respond, saying relations would improve once Mr. Trump was in office, according to the current and former officials……Mr. Flynn’s failure to fully disclose the nature of the calls with Mr. Kislyak ultimately cost him his job last month after a tumultuous 25 days as national security adviser. (March 2)….Current and former American officials have said that Mr. Flynn had contacts with Mr. Kislyak during the campaign. But few of the specifics of those contacts were known. The Russian ambassador has acknowledged that the two men had known each other since 2013 and were in contact during the campaign.

When the F.B.I. began examining possible connections between Trump associates and Russia this past summer, it appeared to have told almost no one — not even Mr. Clapper, who was then overseeing the bureau as the director of national intelligence......Mr. Clapper testified Monday that he was unaware of the investigation into the Trump campaign until James B. Comey, the F.B.I. director, acknowledged it when testifying before the House Intelligence Committee on March 20."

**************************

Saturday, May 6, 2017

Hacking The French Election

**************************

The nature of kingship in William Shakespeare’s play Macbeth follows the events that occur during Macbeth’s unlawful rise to the throne......The themes of greed, arrogance and excessive political ambition are still, very relevant to the world today. Shakespeare got it right - his story of Macbeth still applies to today's world....

**************************

Click Here to view the Index

**************************

While there is no evidence that the recent hack against Mr. Macron’s campaign was organized by this loosely connected group of extremist campaigners, the American activists have been regularly gathering on sites like 4Chan and Discord, which was previously used to coordinate support for Donald J. Trump’s presidential campaign.

One popular tactic, according to experts, has been so-called Twitter raids, or efforts to hijack trending hashtag and topics on the social media site and inject far-right and anti-Macron propaganda.

Just days before the last French presidential debate, an anonymous user on 4Chan, whose message boards include anti-Semitic, white supremacist and other far-right discussions, posted what were said to be copies of documents showing that Mr. Macron had supposedly set up a bank account in the Bahamas to avoid paying taxes. He denied the allegations......Ms. Le Pen referred to the potential overseas bank account during the vicious debate, leading to a bitter rebuttal by Mr. Macron’s team and an official investigation into the false information.

Yet within hours after the hacked documents were made public, the hashtag #MacronLeaks began trending worldwide, aided by online far-right activists in the United States who have been trying to sway the French vote in favor of Ms. Le Pen.

Jack Posobiec, a journalist with the far-right news outlet The Rebel, was the first to use the hashtag with a link to the hacked documents online, which was then shared more widely by WikiLeaks. Mr. Prosobiec remains the second-most mentioned individual on Twitter in connection with the hashtag behind WikiLeaks, according to a review of the past 100,000 Twitter messages posted since late Friday.

Jack Posobiec is a writer, filmmaker, and recovering political operative. In 2016, Jack was the Special Projects Director for Citizens for Trump, the largest Trump grassroots organization in the US....... Jack is a proud member of #SlavRight....Antifa Assault On Jack Posobiec Captured On Camera

The Rebel Media (often stylized as TheRebel.media) is a right-wing Canadian online political and social commentary media platform founded in February 2015 by former Sun News Network host Ezra Levant. The Rebel Media broadcasts its content on the Rebel Media YouTube channel and website.

4chan is an English-language imageboard website. Users generally post anonymously, with the most recent posts appearing above the rest. 4chan is split into various boards with their own specific content and guidelines......The site has been linked to Internet subcultures and activism, most notably Anonymous, the alt-right and Project Chanology... The site's anonymous community and culture have often provoked media attention....4chan users have been instrumental in coordinating attacks against other websites and Internet users, and posting threats of violence in order to elicit individual and public reactions. The Guardian once summarized the 4chan community as "lunatic, juvenile, ridiculous and alarming."

4chan....http://www.4chan.org/......4chan is a simple image-based bulletin board where anyone can post comments and share images. ......

Discord...https://discord.me/page/thehackercommunity...... The Hacker Community......This is a place for hackers to just chit-chat. We also accept non-hackers here as well! Feel free to join! We also accept people that program! ....Sample Posting:..."I got tired of going to Wells Fargo and a bunch of indian/acutal kikes fucking with me and asking me to fuck myself. So I've taken to hiding all my cash in Jars and burying them...and before you kikes get any ideas I've greased the jars with porkfat, and each one includes a cricifix."

**************************

"Mr Macron's team has already been the victim of hacking attacks, for which it has blamed groups based in Russia and Ukraine. It suspects the Kremlin of wanting to help Ms Le Pen, who supports a pro-Moscow foreign policy.....Macron campaign servers went down for several minutes in February after attacks apparently originating in Ukraine......Last month security experts from the company Trend Micro said that Russian hackers were targeting Mr Macron's campaign, using phishing emails, malware and fake net domains in an attempt to grab login names, passwords and other credentials of campaign staff........Russia has denied that it is behind attacks aimed at Mr Macron."

Trend Micro Inc. (トレンドマイクロ株式会社 Torendo Maikuro Kabushiki-Gaisha?, Chinese: 趨勢科技) is a global security software company founded in Los Angeles, California with global headquarters in Tokyo, Japan, and regional headquarters in Asia, Europe and the Americas. The company develops security software for servers, cloud computing environments, consumers, and small, medium and enterprise businesses.

**************************