American arrested in Russia 'while on a spy mission''
An American has been arrested in Moscow on espionage charges that could result in 20 years in prison, Russian authorities said Monday.
"On December 28, 2018 staff members of the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) detained US citizen Paul Whelan in Moscow while on a spy mission," the FSB said in a statement.
A criminal investigation has been launched, and the FSB said Whelan could face up to 20 years in prison if convicted.
Russia's Foreign Ministry said the U.S. Embassy in Moscow was informed "in a timely manner of the detention." The U.S. State Department confirmed it had been notified of the arrest.
"Russia’s obligations under the Vienna Convention require them to provide consular access," the State Department said in a statement. "We have requested this access and expect Russian authorities to provide it."
The department provided no further details, citing privacy considerations.
The Russian announcement came one day after President Vladimir Putin released a holiday greeting to President Donald Trump that stressed the importance of Russia-U.S. relations in "ensuring strategic stability and international security." The one-sentence message also "reaffirmed that Russia is open to dialogue with the United States on the most extensive agenda."
Earlier this month, Russian national Maria Butina pleaded guilty to conspiring to act as an agent for the Kremlin without registering in the United States. Butina also agreed to cooperate with federal prosecutors.
U.S.-Russian relations have been battered by controversy despite Trump's frequent praise of Putin. Scores of Russian diplomats were expelled this year in response to the poisoning of a former Russian spy in Britain that was linked to the Kremlin.
And special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election has brought scrutiny on communications between Trump's inner circle and Russian operatives.
Detroit – A mess over billings and improper shutoffs has led to an $840,000 fine for DTE Energy.
State regulators approved the settlement earlier this month. Sally Talberg of the Michigan Public Service Commission says the commission has “great concern when utilities violated consumer protection rules.”
The investigation began a year ago, months after DTE began using a new billing system. The commission received complaints that power was being improperly shut off. More than 4,000 customers did not receive a proper shut-off notice for nonpayment.
DTE has agreed to refund all deposits and reconnection fees. The utility also will be audited over its shut-off procedures until 2020.
A group known as the Residential Customer Group watched the case and objected to the settlement. Michelle Rison says the fine isn’t high enough, especially when some shut-offs occurred during cold weather.
I wonder how many kids were snatched by CPS for not having any lights.
Ex
Parte, In Camera filings of Green Eggs & Ham on Rye
Yes, it is time to ring in the New Year with another one of Mueller's Ham Sandwiches.
Ham Sandwiches, Corporate Shape Shifters, you know, they are all the same kind of fake corporation with an LLC for its UCC, or whatever it you call it engaging in business when they were not registered to conduct business in the U.S. which is this is called a Ham Sandwich.
Ham Sandwiches is an expression amongst the legal community that is coined to describe a prosecutor who will indict anything, including a Ham Sandwich.
In this instance, the Ham Sandwich did not exist when the Office of Special Counsel issued the indictments, just like the Detroit Land Bank Authority and Title Source did not exist, but that is another story....or is it?
Anyway, Robbin Young is trying to secure her 15 minutes of fame, in direct competition with Stormy, to reinvent her career by sending a boobie shot to Guccifer 2.0., or at least that is what she claims.
What this salacious nugget of journalism tells me is that the public is being primed for the porn.
That is correct, there is a whole bunch of porn that will be coming out of D.C.
Update: Former playboy model and bond girl Robbin Young suggested to us that she may be the subject of the nude selfie in the Mueller investigation, as she sent a Direct Message (DM) to alleged Romanian hacker Guccifer 2.0 - telling The Sun she fell madly in love with him.
Guccifer 2.0 is a persona who claimed to have hacked the Democratic National Committee (DNC) computer network before leaking to the media, including WikiLeaks. According to February 2018 indictments by the special counsel's office, the persona is operated by Russian military intelligence (GRU).
😮 I think Mueller may be referring to my nude photo I DM’d to Guccifer 2.0 in August of 2016.https://t.co/wRk0A8vmY0
But it wasn't long before the pair began sending each other sexy direct messages - with Guccifer telling the former actress she was his "ideal woman".
In one message he wrote: "Wow u r making me breath harder .. ur soul's so pure and unspoiled .. it beckons me."
After she sent him a set of topless pictures, Guccifer wrote: "I'm speachless [sic] u made my day now... i'm forgetting what I was doing... everything i want to do now is look at u again and again."
Robbin, who lives in Las Vegas, said she quickly fell for Guccifer's romantic messages - and at one point told him: "I never communicated with anyone before that was as romantic as I am. You, amaze me."
She then sent him an erotic poem she wrote herself called "Naughty Addiction" about giving him oral sex which ended, "When I'm sexually satiated... After hours of sensual lovemaking...You're my... Naughty addiction.. I desire... Mmmm... French Fries... Why do you... Satisfy me so?" -The Sun
***
Special Counsel Robert Mueller has gone so far down the rabbit hole in his $25 million (taxpayer funded) Russia investigation - going so far as to have "collected a nude selfie" to satisfy his probe.
The claim, according to The Hill was contained within a court filing by Russian firm Concord Management and Consulting - one of three businesses indicted by Mueller in February along with 13 individuals for election meddling.
In the Thursday court filing accusing Mueller's team of illegally withholding information in the case, Concord attorney Eric Dubelier made mention of the "nude selfie," asking "Could the manner in which he collected a nude selfie really threaten the national security of the United States?"
Concord Management and Consulting, LLC. - one of three businesses indicted by Mueller in February along with 13 individuals for election meddling, surprised the special counsel in April when they actually showed up in court to fight the charges. Mueller's team tried to delay Concord from entering the case, arguing that the Russian company not been properly served, however Judge Dabney Friedrich denied the request - effectively telling prosecutors 'well, they're here.'
Owned by Yevgeniy Prigozhin, a Russian businessman known as "Putin's chef" due to his restaurant and catering business which hosted dinners attended by Putin and foreign dignitaries, Concord was accused in Mueller's indictment of supporting the Internet Research Agency (IRA), a Russian 'troll farm' accused of trying to influence the 2016 US election.
In mid-November US District Judge Dabney L. Friedrich of the US District Court for the District of Columbia denied Concord's bid to dismiss the case on the grounds that prosecutors "made up a crime" to criminalize election trolling.
In a 31-page opinion, U.S. District Judge Dabney L. Friedrich of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia rejected that argument, saying prosecutors properly charged Concord with conspiring to obstruct the lawful functions of the U.S. government by evading foreign election and lobbying disclosure requirements and concealing its interference in the American political process. The company is accused of using a far-reaching fraudulent social media campaign to influence the election. -WaPo
"Concord’s concerns amount to a single attack: that the government has charged Concord based on conduct that is not illegal," wrote Friedrich. "But Concord cannot escape the fact that the course of deceptive conduct alleged is illegal."
And now we have a nude selfie floating around. Have we scraped the bottom of the barrel yet?
Well, actually the U.S. Department of Justics has embarked on a conjugal collaboration with lots of different entities who actually care and are working on finally bringing an end to the trafficking of tiny humans, but are just a tad bit slow because of that learning curve, which is why I do what I do, because this netherworld is darker and deeper than they ever imagined.
They know everything about making Black people vote in Detroit!
Upon request by the United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI), New
Knowledge reviewed an expansive data set of social media posts and metadata provided to
SSCI by Facebook, Twitter, and Alphabet, plus a set of related data from additional platforms.
The data sets were provided by the three primary platforms to serve as evidence for an
investigation into the Internet Research Agency (IRA) influence operations. (your tax dollars at work).
Cyber-evidence of Russian mind control
supporting the "Cybersecurity Gurus"
findings of 2016 election interference
targeting Blacks
Hillary Clinton lost the election because these "Cybersecurity Gurus" (a.k.a. Super Smarty Pants) figured out all by themselves how Trump won the election because "The Poors of the darker persuasion"" (always said with clinched teeth) got all mezmerized and stuff with all that fancy psyops crap on social media to vote for Trump.
Yup.
All Blacks changed their votes to Trump because Boris & Natasia made some really, intensely, philosophically deep memes.
"Cybersecurity Gurus" (a.k.a. Super Smarty Pants) know everything about Blacks because they live in the Sequestered Ivory Tower up there in Uber Rich Man's Land and came down to hand out to "The Elected Ones" these sheep dipped talking points for the upcoming legal actions under the Office of Special Counsel.
Yup.
Just listen to Michigan State Senator Marty Knollengerg because he knows everything about how "The Poors of the darker persuasion"" (always said with clinched teeth) cannot learn stuff.
The Russian influence campaign on social media in the 2016 election made an extraordinary effort to target African-Americans, used an array of tactics to try to suppress turnout among Democratic voters and unleashed a blizzard of activity on Instagram that rivaled or exceeded its posts on Facebook, according to a report produced for the Senate Intelligence Committee.
The report adds new details to the portrait that has emerged over the last two years of the energy and imagination of the Russian effort to sway American opinion and divide the country, which the authors said continues to this day.
“Active and ongoing interference operations remain on several platforms,” says the report, produced by New Knowledge, a cybersecurity company based in Austin, Tex., along with researchers at Columbia University and Canfield Research LLC. One continuing Russian campaign, for instance, seeks to influence opinion on Syria by promoting Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian president and a Russian ally in the brutal conflict there.
The New Knowledge report is one of two commissioned by the Senate committee on a bipartisan
This report on how Blacks voted for Trump
was funded by the
U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee
basis. They are based largely on data about the Russian operations provided to the Senate by Facebook, Twitter and the other companies whose platforms were used.
The Russian influence campaign in 2016 was run by a St. Petersburg company called the Internet Research Agency, owned by a businessman, Yevgeny V. Prigozhin, who is a close ally of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia. Mr. Prigozhin and a dozen of the company’s employees were indicted last February as part of the investigation of Russian interference by Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel.
Both reports stress that the Internet Research Agency created social media accounts under fake names on virtually every available platform. A major goal was to support Donald J. Trump, first against his Republican rivals in the presidential race, then in the general election, and as president since his inauguration.
Among the services the Russians have provided Mr. Trump is to join in and amplify his regular attacks on Mr. Mueller. Posing as fed-up Americans, the Internet Research Agency trolls have denounced the investigation of Russian election interference as a “weird conspiracy” pushed only by “liberal crybabies,” the New Knowledge report says.
One Facebook page, called “‘Merican Fury,” declared falsely that Mr. Mueller “worked with radical Islamic groups.” Another, “Back the Badge,” called James B. Comey, the F.B.I. director fired by Mr. Trump, “a dirty cop.”
"Russia made Blacks vote for Trump and you better believe me or else." said the Super Smarty Pants.
Creating accounts designed to pass as belonging to Americans, the Internet Research Agency spread its messages not only via Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, which have drawn the most attention, but also on YouTube, Reddit, Tumblr, Pinterest, Vine and Google+, among other platforms. Its attack on the United States used almost exclusively high-tech tools created by American companies.
The New Knowledge researchers discovered many examples of the Russian operators building an audience with one theme and then shifting to another, often more provocative, set of messages. For instance, an Instagram account called @army_of_jesus_ first posted in January 2015 images from “The Muppet Show,” then shifted to “The Simpsons” and by early 2016 became Jesus-focused. Multiple memes associated Jesus with Mr. Trump’s campaign and Satan with that of his rival, Hillary Clinton.
The Russian campaign was the subject of Senate hearings last year and has been widely scrutinized by academic experts. The new reports largely confirm earlier findings: that the campaign was designed to attack Mrs. Clinton, boost Mr. Trump and exacerbate existing divisions in American society.
"Vote Trump 2016 in Detroit" (more proof from the Super Smarty Pants that Russian memes made Blacks in Detroit vote for Trump in 2016.)
Americans, which is evident to anyone who examines
“The most prolific I.R.A. efforts on Facebook and Instagram specifically targeted black American communities and appear to have been focused on developing black audiences and recruiting black Americans as assets,” the report says. Using Gmail accounts with American-sounding names, the Russians recruited and sometimes paid unwitting American activists of all races to stage rallies and spread content, but there was a disproportionate pursuit of African-Americans, it concludes.
The report says that while “other distinct ethnic and religious groups were the focus of one or two Facebook Pages or Instagram accounts, the black community was targeted extensively with dozens.” In some cases, Facebook ads were targeted at users who had shown interest in particular topics, including black history, the Black Panther Party and Malcolm X. The most popular of the Russian Instagram accounts was @blackstagram, with 303,663 followers.
The Internet Research Agency also created a dozen websites disguised as African-American in origin, with names like blackmattersus.com, blacktivist.info, blacktolive.org and blacksoul.us. On YouTube, the largest share of Russian material covered the Black Lives Matter movement and police brutality, with channels called “Don’t Shoot” and “BlackToLive.”
The report does not seek to explain the heavy focus on African-Americans. But the Internet Research Agency’s tactics echo Soviet propaganda efforts from decades ago that often highlighted racism and racial conflict in the United States, as well as recent Russian influence operations in other countries that sought to stir ethnic strife.
Renee DiResta, one of the report’s authors and director of research at New Knowledge, said the Internet Research Agency “leveraged pre-existing, legitimate grievances wherever they could.” As the election effort geared up, the Black Lives Matter movement was at the center of national attention in the United States, so the Russian operation took advantage of it, she said — and added “Blue Lives Matter” material when a pro-police pushback emerged.
“Very real racial tensions and feelings of alienation exist in America, and have for decades,” Ms. DiResta said. “The I.R.A. didn’t create them. It exploits them.”
"Vote Trump 2016 in Detroit "
Of 81 Facebook pages created by the Internet Research Agency in the Senate’s data, 30 targeted African-American audiences, amassing 1.2 million followers, the report finds. By comparison, 25 pages targeted the political right and drew 1.4 million followers. Just seven pages focused on the political left, drawing 689,045 followers.
In response, the N.A.A.C.P. said it would not use Facebook or Instagram for a week and urged its social media followers and partners to do the same.
While the right-wing pages promoted Mr. Trump’s candidacy, the left-wing pages scorned Mrs. Clinton while promoting Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Jill Stein, the Green Party candidate. The voter suppression effort was focused particularly on Sanders supporters and African-Americans, urging them to shun Mrs. Clinton in the general election and either vote for Ms. Stein or stay home.
Whether such efforts had a significant effect is difficult to judge. Black voter turnout declined in 2016 for the first time in 20 years in a presidential election, but it is impossible to determine whether that was the result of the Russian campaign.
The New Knowledge report argues that the Internet Research Agency’s presence on Instagram has
been underestimated and may have been as effective or more effective than its Facebook effort. The report says there were 187 million engagements on Instagram — users “liking” or sharing the content created in Russia — compared with 76.5 million engagements on Facebook.
In 2017, as the American news media focused on the Russian operations on Facebook and Twitter, the Russian effort shifted strongly to Instagram, the report says.
The New Knowledge report criticizes social media companies for misleading the public.
“It is unclear whether these answers were the result of faulty or lacking analysis, or a more deliberate evasion,” the report says.
“Regrettably, it appears that the platforms may have misrepresented or evaded in some of their statements to Congress,” the report says, noting what it calls one false claim that specific population groups were not targeted by the influence operation and another that the campaign did not seek to discourage voting.
“It is unclear whether these answers were the result of faulty or lacking analysis, or a more deliberate evasion,” the report says.
The report suggests a grudging respect for the scale and creativity of Russian influence operations.
But the Russians were not eager to take credit for their own efforts.
After the election, the report says, the Internet Research Agency put up some 70 posts on Facebook and Instagram that mocked the claims that Russia had interfered in the election.
Nowruz is the joyful and auspicious occasion of the Persian New Year. We wish you and yours a very happy, healthy, and prosperous New Year on behalf of our entire dedicated team at Child Foundation.
Spring and Nowruz are almost here, a time when we traditionally help those who are less fortunate than us, especially children with gifts and eidi. This year, Child Foundation is providing gift baskets to families in earthquake stricken area in Kermanshah. Each basket contains Nowruz related items such as sweets, nuts (Ajil) as well as hygiene items for each family. The cost of each basket is $60.
Please donate generously so together we can bring a smile to the face of many who are suffering in these hard times.
One time donation to a single child General one time donation Monthly contribution to my sponsored child Nowruz gift to my sponsored child One time donation to my sponsored child 4120 extra need (laptop, bike, etc.) Birthday gift for my child Emergency assistance Kermanshah earthquake Refugee fund Simin Behbahani's memorial scholarship Back to school Medical assistance Food package donation Child without a sponsor Help to support Syrian refugee children Wedding of Amalie Matin
Bethany Global believes in a world where every child has a loving family
Bethany Global takes the expertise in child protection and welfare it has developed from over seventy-five years of work in the United States to eight countries around the world.
Our expert global social workers partner with in-country organizations and governments to establish in-country foster care and family preservation services. This is why we do what we do around the world: Every child has the right to a nurturing, protective family. Only a family setting can best support a child’s spiritual, physical, psychological, social, and emotional needs. Many orphans and vulnerable children cannot live with their families of origin because of abandonment, migration, war, abuse, or disease.
"Happy New Year's Eve. Time's running out for that tax exemption."
It seems Fred Rogers was well-versed in the industry of trafficking tiny humans and tried to find a way of helping children deal with it in the best way he knew how through Mr. Rogers.
It is my belief Fred was an original source on a mission...
