‘Hilarious & paranoid’: Lavrov laughs at idea that Russia uses memes to destroy US democracy
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. May 2018 © Grigoriy Sisoev / Sputnik
RT | August 2, 2018
The idea that Moscow is swaying elections and bringing down US democracy by ‘meme-sharing’ is preposterous, Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said. The accusations hurled at Russia by the US lawmakers left him baffled.
“It’s just hilarious when I hear that funny pictures can undermine American democracy,” Lavrov told reporters on Thursday, answering RT correspondent’s question about the latest US Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on alleged Russian interference in US domestic affairs.
Experts, brought as witnesses to testify before the Senate on Wednesday, spoke about Russia allegedly using the “less news, more memes” approach online to divide the US public. This led the lawmakers to raise concerns over how Russian “meme-sharing” affects American voters.
“I think that’s just paranoia that goes off the scale,” Lavrov chuckled, saying that talk of weaponizing memes only makes the Senators themselves look bad. “It’s not respectable for American lawmakers to make a sensation out of nothing.”
US politicians consistently accused ‘Russian trolls’ of waging a coordinated campaign to influence elections in the country – something Moscow denies. During repeated hearings in Congress, lawmakers failed to provide any concrete evidence that the alleged nefarious online activity was tied to Russia, and to present data on the effects such a campaign might have caused.
In fact, last year, tech giants Facebook, YouTube and Twitter told Senators that the content allegedly produced by “Russian operatives” made up a tiny fraction of their feeds.
US Senators Introduce Sanctions Bill, Targeting Russia’s Sovereign Debt, Energy
Sputnik – 5 02.08.2018
New legislation introduced in the US Senate would require Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to determine whether Russia should be designated as a state sponsor of terrorism.
A bipartisan group of US senators on Thursday introduced a new package of punitive measures aimed at Russia. A proposed bill includes new sanctions against Russia’s political figures, restrictions on energy investments and limitations connected with uranium imports.
The harshest part of the new bill calls for the sanctioning of Russian sovereign debt.
Six US Senators said in a press release that the legislation “will increase economic, political, and diplomatic pressure on the Russian Federation in response to Russia’s continued interference in our elections, malign influence in Syria, aggression in Crimea, and other activities.”
According to Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, “the current sanctions regime has failed to deter Russia from meddling in the upcoming 2018 mid-term elections.”
“Our goal is to change the status quo and impose crushing sanctions and other measures against Putin’s Russia until he ceases and desists meddling in the US electoral process, halts cyberattacks on US infrastructure, removes Russia from Ukraine, and ceases efforts to create chaos in Syria,” he added.
Congress passed the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA) in July 2017 in response to allegations that Russia sought to influence the 2016 US presidential election. The Trump administration has been widely criticized for not doing enough in response to Moscow’s alleged activities in 2016; however, the White House claimed otherwise, saying that Trump has been tougher on Russia than any previous administration.
Relations between Russia and the United States rapidly deteriorated following the crisis in Ukraine in 2014. Washington introduced several rounds of anti-Russia sanctions after Crimea’s reunification with Russia and the latter’s alleged involvement in the ongoing Ukraine conflict. Russia has refuted all the accusations and issued retaliatory economic restrictions.
Lavrov: Russia’s Sovereignty to Be Defended Despite US Missile Defense Worldwide
Sputnik – 30.07.2018
Russia is guaranteed to be provided with information on the plans that the US military and other states have in mind for it, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov stated while speaking to participants at the Russian Youth Educational Forum “Territory of Meanings.”
“Whatever happens in the world, our security as a state, the security of our citizens, our sovereignty will be most securely protected. This has been repeatedly confirmed by President Vladimir Putin, and I assure you that this is based on real, material changes that are taking place in our country and in our army, “the minister said.
The US impedes the development of rules of behavior in cyberspace in the UN, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said.
“We have been suggesting to develop rules for responsible behavior in cyberspace at the UN for a long time. There are no rules right now, as you know. The country that impedes it is the United States,” Lavrov pointed out. “This is not surprising, because the United States has a dominant position in general with regard to Internet governance.”
Russia-US relations have been tense amid an ongoing arms race and a ban on military cooperation between US and Russian forces.
In May, the US House of Representatives passed a whopping $717 billion annual defense spending bill for the 2019 fiscal year.
No Doubts Greece Decided to Expel Russian Diplomats Under Severe Pressure
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said that he had no doubts that Greece had taken a decision to expel Russian diplomats under severe pressure.
“We have already commented on [the expulsion of Russian diplomats from] Greece. I can just say once again that we have no reason to doubt that these decisions were made under the severe pressure of those who want to turn any country anti-Russian,” Lavrov said at a youth forum.
Earlier in July, the Greek Kathimerini newspaper reported that Athens had decided to expel two Russian diplomats and ban two more from entering the country over national security concerns. The accusations against the diplomatic workers were strongly refuted by Russian Ambassador to Greece Andrey Maslov, who called them “absurd.”
The Germans have a Russian hacking story after all
By Frank Sellers | The Duran | July 30, 2018
Two German broadcasters, ZDF and WDR, are claiming that they have become the victims of a new Russian cyber attack. The attack is being reported as being the work of a Russian hacking group known as ‘Sandworm’. Reports are saying that the attack occurred in June, but has no clue about what the hackers were after, or whether any sensitive information was stolen. Additionally, the ‘Sandworm’ hacking group is also suspected of having ties to the Kremlin, and played a role in the attack on the US DNC servers during the 2016 US Presidential election. Sandworm is also billed as having hacked the Swiss labs which were tasked with analyzing the sample of Novichok that was reportedly used to poison former double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter on March 4th in Salisbury, UK.
Deutsche Welle reports:
Two of Germany’s largest public broadcasters, ZDF and WDR, have been attacked by a Russian hacking group, according to reports. It remains unclear what the group’s intention was or whether any sensitive data was stolen.
A Russian hacking group known as “Sandworm” targeted Germany’s two largest public broadcasters, ZDF and WDR, according to German media reports on Friday.
Security officials told German weekly Der Spiegel that hackers had managed to compromise the broadcasters’ networks in June. Although the cyberattack was detected relatively quickly, it remains unknown what the group was after or whether any sensitive data was compromised.
ZDF confirmed the attack on Friday, adding that only 10 computers on its network were affected. WDR decline to comment for “security reasons.”
Sandworm is a hacking group believed to be run by Russia’s military intelligence service, GRU. According to US federal investigators, the group is suspected of also being behind the attack on the US Democrats’ computer servers during the 2016 presidential election.
The group first appeared in 2013 and, according to German intelligence, has targeted NATO servers, several western telecom companies and Ukrainian energy suppliers.
Earlier this year, the German government admitted that its computer network had been compromised via a piece of malware. The Russian hacking group APT28 is believed to have been behind the attack.
German intelligence warns key institutions
Germany’s intelligence service (BND) had warned two weeks ago of the potential cyber threats facing several key bodies, including the country’s public broadcasters and media companies.
The BND also said that the Spiez Laboratory in Switzerland, which specializes in chemical weapons research, was also among Sandworm’s targets. Its Swiss lab had been tasked with analyzing the Soviet-era nerve agent Novichok that was used to poison former Russian double agent Sergei Skripal in Salisbury.
A spokesperson for Spiez Laboratory said officials had encountered one phishing attack, sent via a document used in a workshop. However, the institute itself had not been affected.
With the claim about Russians hacking the Budestag falling apart, as I reported earlier, the Germans needed a victim story to sell to the public. Germans have been the victims of Russian hackers, and since the last story didn’t pan out, here’s another one! This one even comes with an attack from a suspected hacking group that we are being told has Kremlin ties, and we are also being told that they tried to derail the Skripal investigation. What’s more, it’s some of the same fellows who hacked the DNC servers! So we can see, then, that the Russians are hacking all of kinds of things, trying to cover their tracks, and that includes hacking the Germans. But so far, after a month, there is no intel suggesting that the malicious Russian hackers managed to get their hands on any ‘sensitive data’, which makes us wonder whether they have some state secrets or something on their servers, have they been in cahoots with Julian Assange and Wikileaks, perhaps? Did the Russians manage to get access to it? Should we be worried that the Russians now have information which compromises the security of Germans and the EU in general? So far, we don’t know, but we do know that the German media which claims it was hacked by the Russians is reporting that it has been hacked by the Russians. So far, an independent investigation isn’t being reported to verify the attack or its origin, or the scope thereof.
Europe Needs ‘Own Mueller’ to Probe Alleged Russian Meddling: EU Brexit negotiator
Sputnik – 30.07.2018
Europe needs its own special counsel, similar to Robert Mueller in the United States, to look into the alleged Russian disinformation campaign, president of the European parliament’s Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE) Guy Verhofstadt said Monday.
On Sunday, the Parliament’s Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) Committee issued a report in which the panel members said they had heard some evidence pointing to a campaign to influence UK election and referenda, allegedly led by Moscow.
“Europe needs it’s own Mueller, to investigate the extent of Russian disinformation campaigns & other attacks on our democracies. In September I will push the Eur Parliament to such measures to clean up our internet & social media. It’s time to fight back!” Verhofstadt, who serves as the main EU negotiator on Brexit, said on Twitter.
Mueller has been looking into the alleged Russian interference in the 2016 US presidential election and the purported collusion between the Russian government and the campaign of US President Donald Trump. The US president has repeatedly described the probe as a witch hunt.
Russian officials have stressed that Moscow does not interfere in the internal affairs of other countries and pointed out that the allegations against Russia had not been substantiated.
Western Collapse… Scapegoating Trump & Putin
By Finian CUNNINGHAM | Strategic Culture Foundation | 29.07.2018
Former US President Barack Obama was in South Africa last week for the centennial anniversary marking the birth of the late Nelson Mandela. Obama delivered a speech warning about encroaching authoritarianism among nations and the “rise of strongman politics”.
Coming on the heels of the summit in Helsinki between Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin, media reports assumed that Obama was taking a swipe at these two leaders for supposed growing authoritarianism.
Obama’s casting of the “strongman” as a foreboding enemy to democracy is a variant of the supposed threat of “populism” that Western political establishments also seem concerned about.
Trump, Putin, Turkey’s Erdogan, Italy’s Salvini, Victor Orban in Hungary and Sebastian Kurz in Austria, among many others, are all lumped together as “strongman politics”, “populists” or “authoritarians”.
Here we are not trying to defend the above-mentioned political leaders or to make out that they are all virtuous democrats.
The point rather is to debunk the false narrative that there is some kind of dichotomy in modern politics between those who, on one hand, are supposedly virtuous, liberal, democratic, multilateralists, and on the other hand, the supposedly sinister “strongman”, “authoritarian”, or “populist”.
In Obama’s pompous depiction of world political trends, people like him are supposedly the epitome of a civilized, democratic legacy that is now under threat from Neo-fascists who are darkly rising to destroy an otherwise happy world order. That world order, it is presumed, was up to now guided by the magnificence of American political leadership. In short, the “Pax Americana” that prevailed for nearly seven decades following the Second World War.
Following the Helsinki summit, the Western media went full-tilt in hysterics and hyperbole. Trump was assailed for “embracing a dictator” while repudiating Western democratic allies.
In a Washington Post article, the headline screamed: “Is Trump at war with the West?” It was accompanied by a photograph of Trump and Putin, bearing the caption: “The New Front”.
Meanwhile, a New York Times piece editorialized: “His [Trump’s] embrace of Putin is a victory dance on the Euro-American tomb.”
Another NY Times op-ed writer declared: “Trump and Putin vs. America”.
The Western establishment political and media commentary promulgates the notion that the US-led Western order is breaking down because of “populist”, “strongman” Trump. In this alleged assault on the pillars of democracy and rule of law, Trump is being aided and abetted by supposedly nasty, like-minded authoritarians like Russian leader Vladimir Putin, or other nationalistic European politicians.
The premise of this establishment narrative is that all was seemingly salubrious and convivial in the US-led order until the arrival of various renegade-type politicians, like Trump and Putin.
That premise is an absolute conceit and deception. If we look at Obama’s presidency alone, one can see how the supposed guardians of democracy and international order were the very ones who have actually done the most to decimate that order.
Obama, you will recall, was the US president who notched up seven simultaneous overseas wars conducted by American military, arguably without a shred of international legal mandate. Under international law, Obama and other senior officials in his administration should face prosecution for war crimes. He also greatly expanded the executive use of assassination with aerial drones, reckoned to have killed thousands of innocent civilians in several countries, including Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen and Somalia, merely on the suspicion of being terrorists.
It was Obama who ramped up the covert war policy of his predecessor GW Bush in Syria, arming and directing terrorist proxies in a failed bid to overthrow the elected government of President Assad. That US-backed covert war in Syria, along with Obama’s overt regime-change war in Libya, largely contributed to the refugee crisis that has destabilized the politics of the European Union.
So here we have the supremely bitter irony. Obama now lectures audiences with his pseudo-gravitas about the specter of strongman politics and xenophobic populism, when in fact it was politicians like Obama who created much of the refugee problems that have given rise to anti-immigrant politics in Europe.
It really is a conceited delusion among US and European establishment politicians, pundits and media that somehow a once virtuous, law-abiding US-led Western order is being eroded by rabble rousers like Trump, Salvini, Orban and so on, all being orchestrated by a “strongman dictator” in the Kremlin.
For the record, Putin, the supposed “strongman” in the Kremlin, warned more than a decade ago in a seminal Munich speech that the international order was being eroded by rampant American unilateralism and disregard for law in its pursuit of illegal wars for US hegemony. That was at the height of US wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, which killed more than one million civilians and forced millions more into infernal destitution.
In truth, the Pax Americana that is presumed to have prevailed over the past 70 years was never about order, peace or justice in the world. The notion that the US guided the world with its “moral authority” and maintained stability throughout is one of the most fatuous delusions of modern history.
From the atomic holocaust in Japan and during subsequent decades, the US has waged wars non-stop in almost every year, whether from covert operations in Latin America and Africa, to full-on genocidal wars in Indochina. The past quarter-century has seen an acceleration and expansion of these US wars, sometimes with the assistance of its military axis in NATO, largely because Washington viewed that its license to kill for mass murder was unchecked after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
This is the real dynamic underlying why the Western order is now seen to be collapsing. The US and its minions among European allies have destroyed any foundations of international order from their unabated wars and campaigns of mass murder. Their corporate-capitalist plunder has eviscerated the planet.
The chaos from these wars, including economic impacts of gargantuan costs to Western populations, has created social conditions which engender politics of protest, anti-establishment, anti-austerity, anti-war, anti-immigration, and so on.
If the supposed order is shaking for the establishment political class and its flunkies like Barack Obama it is because of their own criminal depredations – depredations which have been going on for decades under the guise of Pax Americana.
The writers at Monthly Review had it so presciently right years ago, when they analyzed the actual Western order as “Pox Americana” – a diseased affliction.
This is the historical context which accounts for why US and European establishments are decrying “strongmen” and “populists”. They are essentially scapegoating others for the historic failure of institutionalized Western criminality led primarily by “democratic” regimes in Washington.
Russian President Vladimir Putin stands out as the one international leader who put a brake on the US-led criminal assault on global peace. Putin’s stand first emerged with his landmark speech in Munich in 2007, and then came into clear expression when he helped put an end to the US-led covert criminal war on Syria.
That is why Putin is so vilified and demonized by the Western establishment. The poachers have been stopped from raiding the globe, and in their exasperation, they have whipped up all sorts of disparaging epithets like “strongman” and “authoritarian”.
No one has practiced more fascist-style criminality and brutality towards law and peace than the polite-sounding pseudo-democrats who have been in office for the past 70 years in the US and Europe.
The Western political establishment and its elite-driven capitalism is rotten to the core. Always has been. Its own erosion and oozing corruption is the source of the putrid smell that it now wishes to waft away by scapegoating others.
America’s latest witch-hunt
By Tony Kevin | OffGuardian | July 29, 2018
The current Maria Butina indictment in the US reminds one of Voltaire’s famous saying: “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it”. I do not share Maria Butina’s fondness for guns or for the National Rifle Association’s aggressive lobbying for easy public access to guns. Nor would I put up my hand to attend National Prayer Breakfasts in the US. But she seems to be an innocent victim of current Washington elite Russophobia.
Maria Butina was keen to develop networks in these major pro- Republican US civil society organisations, especially in the years leading up to Trump’s election in late 2016. She has recently been arrested – on 15 July, one day before the Helsinki Summit – on two grounds : conspiracy (18 USC §371) , and failing to register as an agent of Russian influence (18 USC §951(a) ) . Here are the indictment documents.
With sympathetic US government representations to the Court, penalties for failing to register as a foreign agent §951 could conceivably be waived or minimised . But the conspiracy charge §371, if found proven by the Court , is very serious indeed. As Reuters reports the case:
Butina has been accused of working with a high-powered Russian official and two unidentified U.S. citizens, trying to infiltrate a pro-gun rights organization in the United States and influence the United States’ foreign policy toward Russia.’
Maria Butina faces up to ten years in US prison on these charges. The Russian Foreign Minister, Sergey Lavrov, protested vehemently to his counterpart Mike Pompeo, saying the charges are fabricated. The Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova was similarly forceful in condemnation, saying the long-planned indictment had been timed to try to derail the Helsinki Summit. Her detailed 18 July statement:
Arrest of Russian national Maria Butina in the United States
We are dismayed by the reported arrest of Russian citizen Maria Butina in the US on July 15. According to a statement on the website of the US Justice Department, she is charged with conspiracy to act as a foreign agent without registration.
These unsubstantiated claims against our fellow national seem odd, to say the least. As we know, Maria Butina has been in the United States for a long time as a student at a university in Washington and she has not been hiding from anybody.
It appears that instead of dealing with its core responsibilities in fighting crime, the Federal Bureau of Investigation is carrying out a blatant political order. As we understand it, the order came from those who continue to stir up Russophobic hysteria, for which purpose they regularly plant more fictional sensations about Russia’s alleged interference in the internal affairs of the United States.
On July 13, twelve Russians, who are currently outside the United States, were charged, as we have already mentioned. Now these ridiculous claims are made against Maria Butina – and she has even been arrested.
We could go on and on analysing this situation. We have the impression that the arrest, as a restrictive measure, was selected specifically to show the seriousness of the issue to the US public and to allies outside the country. The media immediately started referring to Butina as a spy and looked for connections with the security services, to build up tension without any substantial facts.
All this is happened right before the bilateral summit in Helsinki, with the obvious purpose of minimising the positive effect of the meeting and doing this as soon as possible. It appears that somebody took a watch, a calculator and timed when the decision on Maria Butina’s arrest should be taken in order to do as much as possible to sabotage the results of the summit between Russian President Vladimir Putin and US President Donald Trump. This is how good the timing was.
It is possible to elaborate on the subject in the following way. If you have complaints against a person (and it is not a national security issue) you can always bring it to Russia’s attention. And more importantly, the matter could have been discussed, for example, in preparation for the summit. The US could have provided the details to its Russian counterparts and, also for example, discussed it on the margins of the summit or somehow touched base on the issue during the summit. Not a single word was said about it. The entire problem was concocted right after the summit. Given that Russia is a permanent topic of discussion in the US, that all the media are pumping up the hysteria, the bomb eventually detonated.
For our part, we are taking all possible measures to protect the rights and legal interests of the Russian national. The Russian Embassy in Washington contacted the US authorities and is pressing for an urgent consular meeting with Ms Butina, and this consular meeting is mandatory.
Immediately, allegations and rumours spread via social media. Users started to search for pictures of Maria Butina taking part in Russia-US meetings over the past two years.
There was a follow-up Russian Foreign Ministry media statement a week later, on 26 July, which offers disturbing detail of the harsh process of her arrest, and culminating in the claim that she is a political prisoner:
Arrest of Russian citizen Maria Butina in the US
We continue to closely monitor the fate of Russian citizen Maria Butina, arrested in Washington on July 15. Russian Embassy employees have visited her in prison, and have attended the court sessions where a measure of restraint and other procedural issues were determined, including yesterday. We have sent a resolute protest to the US State Department against the actions taken against her, including the severe psychological pressure she was subjected to.
Butina was subjected to an eight-hour search in the arrest process, as FBI agents armed with automatic firearms burst into her rented apartment, literally breaking furniture, shaking and even tearing up things, opening floors and walls. They found nothing incriminating, but despite the complete lack of evidence, Maria Butina was refused release.
The FBI’s thin case against Butina, as anyone can read on the internet, is actually based on decontextualised excerpts from her personal correspondence in social media. They are trying to incriminate her in a violation of the US foreign agents law, although she did not work for any foreign state, but studied at a Washington university and, taking a great interest in weapons, went to National Rifle Association of America events. She did this openly, not hiding her Russian citizenship, not hiding acquaintances or contacts, because there was nothing to hide.
However, certain political forces in the United States, pursuing self-serving interests, invented a story of Russian interference in the US elections, and this mudslinging campaign against Russia actually sent Butina to prison on a framed case – in fact, simply due to her nationality. What is this, if not a witch-hunt? There are fears that any of our compatriots in America might find themselves to be the next targets.
We demand that the US authorities immediately stop this arbitrariness and release Maria Butina. Her arrest is motivated solely by US domestic and foreign politics, and, therefore, she is a political prisoner.
Claiming her to be a likely flight risk into the Russian Embassy, the FBI quickly secured a court order to detain Butina pending her trial. Her trial is proposed by the prosecution to be held in secret because evidence to be presented is claimed to relate to ongoing national security investigations.
The Russian Embassy in Washington commented on Facebook:
We are surprised by the prosecution’s continued attempts to classify #FreeMariaButina case, thereby limiting public access to the details of the legal proceedings. Same tactic, as we see, is used by the 🇬🇧 special services concerning the Skripals case.
According to the Bloomberg report, the next hearing has been set for 10 September. So Maria Butina will have been jailed for eight weeks without trial, preparatory to a secret trial. One can only imagine her fear and distress.
I share the widespread Russian sense of outrage at this cruel and misconceived arrest and legal process. Maria Butina has not been accused of being a spy, of stealing American national security secrets, or of subverting American officials. At worst, she was a naive admirer of American ‘Wild West’ culture and its gun laws, which she wanted to emulate in Russia. She has publicly compared her birthplace, Siberia, to the American West, and Russian Cossacks to cowboys. She is, at worst, naive and imprudent, a fantasist about her imaginary idealised America. Not a spy or criminal by any reasonable or civilised measure.
Most of the preceding and following biographical detail comes from the Wikipedia article on Maria Butina and the court indictment papers, referenced above.
Maria Butina, now aged 29, was born in 1988 in Barnaul, in Altai Krai, Siberia. A tall athletic girl, her father used to take her hunting with him and taught her to shoot and handle guns from an early age. She did well at school and university, taking a degree in political science at Altai State University at age 19 in 2007. She moved to Moscow in 2011 , starting an advertising agency after building a successful furniture retail business in Altai. She joined the youth wing of the United Russia Party, the dominant political party in Russia.
Also in 2011, Butina founded a gun-rights organization, Right to Bear Arms, that lobbied to change Russia’s strict gun control laws. She began traveling back and forth to the U.S., initially with Aleksandr Torshin, who was then a Senator in the Federation Council of Russia, and a leading member of United Russia Party. He had hired her as his “special assistant” that year. In 2012, they lobbied the Federation Council to expand gun rights. In 2015, Butina said that Right to Bear Arms had 10,000 members and 76 offices in Russia.
In August 2016, two years ago, she moved to the United States on a student visa, and enrolled as a graduate student at American University in Washington, D.C. Torshin had become a deputy governor of the Central Bank of Russia in January 2015, and she worked as his special assistant until May 2017.
While a graduate student in US, her favoured hobbies were networking and cultivating her contacts in NRA and National Prayer Breakfast circles, and dipping into American Republican politics. In a June 2015 article published in The National Interest, a conservative American international affairs magazine, just before Donald Trump announced his candidacy for president, she urged better relations between the United States and Russia. At a public meeting in July 2015, she had asked candidate Donald Trump about prospects for lifting US sanctions against Russia If he were elected. She was delighted at his reply that he saw no need for such sanctions.
She was effectively an amateur lobbyist for the cause of improved Russia-US relations and for Russia to adopt US gun laws. In one sense, therefore, she was paradoxically an agent of American influence in Russia. There is a photo of her leading a street demonstration in Moscow with banners advocating relaxation of Russia’s quite strict gun ownership licensing laws.
She loved guns. She thought wider gun ownership would deter violent crime and make Russian society safer. Naturally she became popular in some NRA circles. There are many photos of her toting guns in her cowboy gear.
She cultivated older wealthy men along the way. Nothing unusual there, in a young ambitious woman with no family connections. Torshin had allegedly helped to fund and arrange her move to Washington, and put her in touch with the Russian Embassy there.
Once settled there, she soon developed a personal relationship with an older American, a senior NRA member. The indictment papers report that she told some people this was not for her a deep or committed relationship.
The indictment papers say that she regularly reported on her activities, through entirely overt and non-clandestine open telephone or Internet channels, to a contact in the Russian Embassy in Washington, who was expelled in March 2018 as an alleged spy, in the post-Skripal round of diplomatic expulsions. This history of contact with the Embassy is now being held against her, to support the more serious conspiracy charge.
This vindictive politically motivated prosecution will damage US-Russian relations even further. Her distressed father has called the charges against her ‘psychopathy and a witch-hunt’.
The more this sort of thing happens to Russians in the US, the more that Russians will despise America as a strange and cruel country.
My country, Australia, has just passed similar Agent of Foreign Influence laws. One can readily imagine such a prosecution of an ambitious but naive Russian immigrant or temporary student resident here, coming under surveillance and being eventually arrested for some relatively innocuous political activity like joining in environmental activism involving some minor temporary activities defined in the new laws as sabotage, with some sexual misconduct allegations being thrown in to spice the stew. Sentencing could be severe, as in US. In the current Russophobic official political climate in Australia, no mercy could be expected from government or opposition parties.
This story leaves a nasty taste in the mouth. To my mind, Maria Butina is an innocent casualty of American liberal-Democratic Party and anti-Trump Russophobia, gone feral.
She ticks so many of her accusers’ ‘hate’ boxes : Trump admirer, Putin admirer, admirer of the NRA and Prayer Breakfast cultures, sexually liberated, open about her wish to bring the two countries she loved most – Russia and America – closer together. A lot of ideological scores are being settled here, and this poor young woman is the first victim. There could be more such victims, in the US and possibly here in US camp follower Australia.
Trump has very little scope to help her, even if he wanted to. She is now caught up in the brutal mechanics of the US justice system, and the liberal democratic mainstream media are already busily trying to convict her in the court of US public opinion., crafting a false ‘Red Sparrow’ or Anna Chapman spy image of her. It is a very sad story and I fear it will not end well for Maria.
Neither German nor British intelligence can prove Russia is behind Skripal poisoning – German MP
RT | July 29, 2018
Failure to release any evidence of Russia’s alleged involvement in the Skripal case shows that neither German nor British intelligence services have anything on it, a member of the German Left Party, Heike Haensel, believes.
Western media and politicians still seize every opportunity to pin the blame on Moscow for the poisoning of ex-double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in March. However, German lawmakers received nothing but the allies’ assurances about the case, according to MP Heike Haensel. Speaking to daily newspaper Junge Welt, she revealed that two requests for any proof of the allegation, from her and her fellow MP Sevim Dagdelen, were left unanswered.
“Still neither British nor German intelligence agencies have evidence of Russian responsibility for the attack in March,” Haensel said in an interview published on Saturday.
The German federal government formally responded to the Left Party’s requests only to say that the alleged evidence cannot be released as the data in question is classified. It also claimed that the British side had presented some details regarding its decision to blame Russia, and its contention that no alternative explanation seemed plausible – the mantra that the UK’s Western allies have been repeating since the Salisbury incident, without revealing any substantial details.
Still waiting for any proof to be provided, German politicians seem to be increasingly skeptical about the UK’s claims regarding Russia. In June, the German Bundestag’s Research and Documentation Services concluded that Moscow violated no international norms during the inquiry into the case. The German parliament’s agency report followed news that Berlin had not received a single piece of evidence to suggest that Russia may be behind the attack that took place in early March, according to German media.
Russia has repeatedly denied the allegations, and has complained that the results of the investigation have been kept secret. The Russian envoy to the UK has on several occasions said that London had even tried to “destroy” evidence during the probe. Meanwhile, the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) also failed to establish any links to show that the nerve agent used to poison the Skripals came from Russia.
Read more:
The Salisbury Poisonings: 10 Questions for the Authorities to Answer About Their Handling of This Case
By Rob Slane | The Blog Mire | July 28, 2018
The two most basic claims made by the Government and investigators regarding the method and the mode in the Salisbury poisoning are these:
- That military grade nerve agent was used to poison Mr Skripal
- That it was applied to the door handle of his house
These claims raise a number of very obvious questions. For example, how did the assassin(s) apply such a powerful chemical without wearing protective clothing? How did the people who are said to have come into contact with the substance not die immediately, or at the very least suffer irreparable damage to their Central Nervous Systems? How did this military grade nerve agent manage not only to have a delayed onset, but also managed to affect a large 66-year-old man and his slim 33-year-old daughter, both of whom would have vastly different metabolic rates, at exactly the same time?
These are perfectly reasonable questions that deserve reasonable answers. I am aware, however, that no matter how obvious and rational such questions might be, doing so places one – at least in the eyes of the authorities – in the camp of the conspiracy theorist. This is disingenuous. One of the marks of a true conspiracy theorist is that he is someone who refuses to accept an explanation for an event, even after being presented with facts which fit and explain it coherently. But when the “facts” presented in a case do not fit the event they are supposed to explain, and are neither rational nor coherent — as in the Salisbury case — then calling the person who raises legitimate questions a “conspiracy theorist” is a bit rich, is it not?
Nevertheless, for the purposes of this piece, what I’d like to do is work on the assumption that the “Military Grade Nerve Agent on the Door Handle” claim is correct. And working from this assumption, I want to ask some questions about how the authorities have handled the case. The point is this: These questions are not really intended to challenge the official claims; rather the intention is to ask whether the authorities have handled the case correctly on their own terms.
1. Prior to the investigation’s focus on the door handle, for a period of almost three weeks there were at least nine other theories proposed by the authorities as to where the Skripals came into contact with the poison. These included the restaurant, the pub, the bench, the cemetery, the car, the flowers, the luggage, the porridge and even a drone. During that time, police officers and investigators were entering and leaving the house, by the door, since it was not known to be the place where the poison was located.
Can the authorities explain how these officers and investigators were not poisoned?
2. Once the door handle theory was established, those who had been in and out of the property during the previous three weeks would naturally have been concerned about the possibility that they had been contaminated.
Can the authorities tell us what steps were taken to reassure these officers?
3. Every officer who entered the house after 4th March, and before the door handle became an object of interest, should have been given a medical examination to check for signs of poisoning.
Can the authorities confirm that this took place for every officer?
4. Initial reports about Detective Sergeant Nick Bailey stated that he was poisoned at the bench, after coming to the aid of Mr Skripal and Yulia. However, on 9th March, Lord Ian Blair stated that D.S. Bailey had actually become poisoned after visiting Mr Skripal’s house. Since he was thought to have been poisoned with a military grade nerve agent, and since it was thought that this had occurred at Mr Skripal’s house, the immediate next step should have been to seal off the house and set up a mobile decontamination unit outside. However, numerous photographs show officers in normal uniforms standing close to the door long after Lord Blair’s claim.
Can the authorities confirm why the house was not sealed off and a decontamination unit set up immediately after it became known that D.S. Bailey had been there, and why officers with no protective clothing on were allowed to continue standing guard outside the house for the next few weeks?
5. Can the authorities explain how these decisions did not put the health and even the lives of those officers in jeopardy?
6. Before the door handle theory was settled on, the majority of competing theories put out by the authorities tended to assume that Mr Skripal was poisoned long before he went to Zizzis. For example, the flowers, the cemetery, the luggage, the porridge and the car explanations all assume this to be the case. What this means is that according to the assumptions of police at that time, when Mr Skripal fed the ducks near the Avon Playground with a few local boys, at around 1:45pm, he was already contaminated. Yet although this event was caught on CCTV camera, it was more than two weeks before the police contacted the parents of these boys.
Can the authorities explain why it took more than two weeks to track down the boys, who – as the CCTV apparently shows – were given bread by Mr Skripal?
7. Can the authorities comment on why they did not air the CCTV footage on national television, in an effort to appeal to the boys or their parents to come forward, and whether the delay in tracking them down might have put them in danger?
8. If the door handle was the place of poisoning, it is extremely likely that the bread handed by Mr Skripal to the boys would have been contaminated. Certainly, areas that he visited after this incident were deemed to be so much at risk that they were either closed down (for example, The Mill and Zizzis, which are both still closed), or destroyed (for instance, the restaurant table, the bench and – almost certainly – the red bag near the bench have all been destroyed).
Can the authorities comment on how the boys, who were handed bread by Mr Skripal, managed to avoid contamination?
9. It has been said that one of the reasons the Government is/was so sure that the ultimate culprit behind the poisoning was the Russian state, is the apparent existence of an “FSB handbook” which, amongst other things, allegedly features descriptions of how to apply nerve agent to a door handle. Given that the Prime Minister first made a formal accusation of culpability on 12th March in her speech to the House of Commons, the Government must therefore have been in possession of this manual prior to that day. However, claims about the door handle being the location of the poison did not appear until late March (the first media reports of it were on 28th March). What this means is there was a delay of several weeks between the Government making its accusation, based partly on the apparent existence of the “door handle manual”, and the door handle of Mr Skripal’s house being a subject of interest to investigators.
Can the authorities therefore tell us whether the Government’s failure to pass on details of the “door handle manual” put the lives of the officers going in and out of Mr Skripal’s house from 5th March to 27th March in jeopardy?
10. On 17th March, Metropolitan Police Assistant Commissioner Neil Basu said:
“We are learning more about Sergei and Yulia’s movements but we need to be clearer around their exact movements on the morning of the incident. We believe that at around 9.15am on Sunday, 4 March, Sergei’s car may have been in the areas of London Road, Churchill Way North and Wilton Road. Then at around 1.30pm it was seen being driven down Devizes Road, towards the town centre. We need to establish Sergei and Yulia’s movements during the morning, before they headed to the town centre. Did you see this car, or what you believe was this car, on the day of the incident? We are particularly keen to hear from you if you saw the car before 1.30pm. If you have information, please call the police on 101.”
Now that Sergei and Yulia Skripal have been awake and able to communicate for around four months, these details are presumably now all known to investigators. In the normal course of such a high profile investigation, details such as these would be relayed to the public in the hope of jogging memories to prompt more information. And in fact, many such details have been released to the public in this case. Yet, confirmation of Mr Skripal’s and Yulia’s movements that day remain conspicuous by their absence.
Can the authorities confirm that the movements of the Skripals that day are now understood, and that they will be made known shortly, in order that more information from the public might then be forthcoming?
These questions have nothing to do with any conspiracy theory. On the contrary, they are all based on the assumption that the two central claims made by the authorities regarding the mode and the method used in this incident are correct. They are, however, very serious and perfectly legitimate questions about the way the authorities have dealt with this incident, on their own terms and on the basis of their own claims.
We await their explanations.
The US 2019 Defense Budget Bill: Congress Defies the New World Order
By Alex GORKA | Strategic Culture Foundation | 28.07.2018
The House and Senate versions of the draft National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for fiscal year 2019 were unveiled by Congress on July 23. Both include a provision to temporarily bar the transfers of F-35 joint strike fighters (JSF) to Turkey. According to the final 2019 defense bill, the Defense Department would be required to submit a report to lawmakers within 90 days about the relationship with Ankara, all its foreign weapons deals, and Turkey’s move to purchase the S-400 air-defense system from Russia before any more sales could go through. Until then the US would sit on any weapons transfers to Turkey. Ankara’s decision to buy the Russian S-400 air-defense system, the “F-35 killer,” has greatly aggravated bilateral ties between the US and Turkey, a relationship that was already clouded by many other issues.
The House is expected to vote on the legislation this month, with the Senate taking it up in early August. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis had warned Congress against punishing Turkey by cutting off transfers of F-35s in retaliation for its plans to buy the Russian anti-aircraft system, but his opinion was ignored. The State Department has been putting pressure on Ankara to try to make it reconsider the S-400 deal, in favor of purchasing the less capable, US-made Patriot system. US Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Wess Mitchell told the Senate “We’ve been very clear that across the board, an acquisition of S-400 will inevitably affect the prospects for Turkish military-industrial cooperation with the United States, including F-35.” Turkish officials view the US demand as blackmail.
Turkey is one of twelve partner nations in the F-35 program, nine of which have received the fighters through foreign military sales. Ankara has planned to purchase the 100 F-35 aircraft it technically already owns by investing $1.25 billion into the project. US legislators fear that using the F-35 and the S-400 together could compromise the F-35 and allow Russia to gain access to the sensitive technology. As a result, the true owner has been denied access to his property by both houses of US Congress.
The bill includes a compromise waiver under the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA) for the countries purchasing Russian military equipment, as long as they are taking steps to wean themselves from it.
The deal with Turkey is a part of a broader picture. The Philippines, also a long-time ally of Washington that has long relied on the United States as its main source of military hardware, is at risk of falling under US sanctions if it proceeds with its purchase of grenade launchers from Rosoboronexport, a blacklisted Russian firm. India has been threatened with sanctions should it decide to buy the Russian S-400.
The US State Department’s Office of Cooperative Threat Reduction has announced a tender for the monitoring of open-source information about arms deals involving the Russian Federation and the CIS countries. The information will be used for shaping the sanctions policy.
This policy goes beyond weapons deals to encompass economic issues as well. One can pay off. Take Germany, for instance. It has been threatened by sanctions in the event that the Nord Stream 2 gas project goes through. The English version of the German newspaper Handelsblatt reported that plans are afoot for a new LNG terminal in Brunsbüttel, a town in the northern state of Schleswig-Holstein. Once the costly infrastructure to cool and liquefy LNG is in place, the German government can demonstrate that the US is wrong to accuse it of being almost fully dependent on Russian gas. There are plans to invest an estimated €450 million ($530 million). Once built, the terminal cannot sit idle. The shipments of American LNG will be guaranteed.
But indeed there is no such thing as a free lunch. If Berlin wants to get cheap Russia gas, it will also have to spend some time and effort on building the infrastructure to receive Moscow’s LNG, and at that point, paying a lot more for American sea-transported LNG will hike the country’s overall energy expenditures
Perhaps Turkey could come to some kind of compromise with the Americans on the S-400, if it buys the Patriot as well. Maybe India will find a way to evade sanctions, if it agrees to the US offer of THAAD..
On July 24, US Senators Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Bob Menendez (D-N.J.), announced that they are working on comprehensive legislation, which officially is aimed at ratcheting up the sanctions pressure on Russia. The text of the proposed legislation does not say so, but the true goal is to lean on other nations to buy US-made goods or else. Forget about the international rules stipulated by the UN Charter and WTO documents — “arms-twisting” has become an element of US foreign policy.
Nobody likes to be ordered around and blackmailed. In the long run, this policy will encourage other countries to reconcile their differences and unify, in an effort to push back against the US. Today Russia China, the EU, and many other actors face a common problem — the “do as I tell you” approach used by the US to tackle international problems, whatever they are. Those who had doubts about the merits of a multipolar world order are beginning to see things in a different light. Any state structure needs checks and balances to maintain an equilibrium, and so does the world. The BRICS summit that kicked off in Johannesburg, South Africa on July 25 symbolizes some global changes, in which poles of power outside of the US are emerging to reshape the political world map.
Pentagon’s $200m Aid To Ukraine Is Slap To Trump
Strategic Culture Foundation | July 27, 2018
Only days after President Donald Trump’s successful summit with Russian leader Vladimir Putin in Helsinki, the Pentagon this week announced that it was sending $200 million in military aid to the Kiev regime.
The new package of military aid is said to be for boosting the “command and control” readiness of the Ukraine Armed Forces (UAF). It follows the supply earlier this year, in March, of $47 million-worth of “lethal” armaments in the form of US-made Javelin anti-tank missiles.
The UAF on the orders of President Poroshenko and the regime in Kiev have been waging a war against pro-Russian separatists in Eastern Ukraine for nearly four years, since the Kiev regime came to power in a CIA-backed coup d’état.
Russia deplored the latest US military subvention to Ukraine, saying it clearly shows that Washington is an “accomplice” to the conflict, not a mediator for a peaceful resolution. The latest $200m aid disbursement brings the total American military support to the Kiev regime to $1 billion since the bloody coup in 2014.
Senator Rob Portman of the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee hailed the Pentagon aid with stridently bellicose rhetoric. Portman said, with typically appalling American ignorance, it sends a “clear message that America stands with the Ukrainian people in their struggle against Russian aggression”. As if the people of Eastern Ukraine aren’t Ukrainian.
On the face of it, the Pentagon is pointedly undermining President Trump and what he appeared to agree with President Putin in their landmark summit in Helsinki on July 16. The two leaders stated then that they agreed to cooperate on finding a political solution to the Ukraine conflict: meaning a renewed endorsement of the Minsk Peace Accord, which Russia had overseen with the European powers of Germany and France under the so-called Normandy format back in 2015.
By ratcheting up its military support to the Kiev regime, the Pentagon is evidently egging on Poroshenko and his UAF to ignore the Minsk accord and to seek a military solution, not a political solution.
That inevitably means more emboldened aggression towards the breakaway self-declared republics of Donetsk and Luhansk. The war in Ukraine is set to become even hotter than it already is. The Pentagon is effectively giving a green light to more deadly conflict on Russia’s Western border.
This has to be placed in the wider context of the relentless buildup of US-led NATO forces along the entire Russian Western flank. This week, Russia’s Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu reiterated serious concerns that NATO was escalating more offensive capability, and that Russia must make appropriate defensive preparations.
What we are seeing since the Trump-Putin summit is a determined rearguard move by forces within the US political-military establishment to sabotage the American president’s attempted rapprochement with Moscow. Immediately following the summit, the US establishment and its dutiful corporate news media embarked on a full-scale campaign to undercut Trump, labelling him a “traitor” and denouncing him for capitulating to an “enemy state”.
The US media rhetoric, post-Helsinki, has been nothing short of hysterical Russophobia.
The move by the Pentagon to boost the Kiev regime’s military is part of that countervailing effort by deep US political-military forces to prevent any normalization with Russia. President Putin indeed warned of these malign US forces last week during an address to his diplomatic corps in Moscow only days after Helsinki.
Another corollary of this sinister countervailing influence was seen in Syria this week. US military commanders said they had no intention of cooperating with Russian counterparts in enabling the resettlement of refugees to Syria from neighboring countries. Again, the proposal for military-to-military cooperation on the return of Syrian refugees was something that Trump had agreed to with Putin in Helsinki.
The summit in Helsinki was a welcome sign of long-overdue dialogue and commitment to partnership between the American president and his Russian counterpart.
Unfortunately, subsequent signals from Washington do not augur well for substantial follow-up to what was agreed in Helsinki.
President Trump is evidently not the master of his American house. It is impossible to discern a reliable American policy. The president seems to say one thing, while other factions within the American ruling class have other, nefarious agendas.
The problem for Russia is that President Trump, in spite of his personal cordial inclinations, is not the arbiter of American policy nor, ultimately, US power for that matter. The American deep state and its strategic planners seem to have a hellbent antagonism towards Russia. That thesis is corroborated with several strategic policy documents that have been published under the Trump administration, which provocatively define Russia, as well as China, as a global enemy standing in the way of dubious American hegemonic ambitions.
In short, American imperialism is not a negotiating philosophy. It does not know nor wants to know the meaning of multilateralism. American power is predicated on domination, with zero tolerance of any independence shown by others. Russia in particular.
Aiding and abetting a deranged, anti-Russian regime in Kiev which exalts Nazi partisans from the Second World War is a sobering indication of Washington’s real and sinister agenda towards Moscow.
Donald J Trump may have been an agreeable summit attendee in Helsinki. But the property-tycoon-turned-president is not the real deal.
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Israel’s recurring use of terror on civilians
By Bob Finch | January 26, 2009
Insanely disproportionate use of violence against unarmed civilians… continue
Blog Roll
Aletho News- “STAGED”: Conspiracy Theories Are Everywhere!
- NATO courts screenwriters to embed alliance messaging in film, TV
- Iran replaces UAE ports with Pakistan corridor to break US blockade
- Iran sets one-month deadline for end to US-Israeli war, blockade: Report
- At the edge of the Strait: A superpower in a narrow sea
- Iran unveils new control measures over Strait of Hormuz transit
- House Resolution Calls for Tech Companies to Censor Speech
- Ceasefire no longer viable after 200 days of Israeli violations: Hamas
- Israeli strikes intensify across southern Lebanon, casualties reported
- Left in Disbelief: Israel in Panic over Hezbollah FPV Drone Nightmare
- If Americans Knew
- As Palestinians die, Ben-Gvir celebrates birthday with golden noose cake – Daily Update
- Israel’s New Ambassador to the ‘Christian World’ Served as Envoy to Azerbaijan During the Ethnic Cleansing of Christians from Nagorno-Karabakh
- US set to sell $1B “Advanced Precision Kill Weapon System” to Israel – Daily Update
- Israeli Strikes Kill at Least 32 Across S Lebanon, Including Children – Amid “Ceasefire”
- Israel to pour $730m into propaganda arm amid reputational crisis
- Real Cost of Iran War Likely Double the $25 Billion Figure the Pentagon Gave to Congress
- Israel conducts farthest-ever strike in long history of attacks on Gaza humanitarian aid flotillas
- In Gaza, Israel commits 10+ ceasefire violations a day – Daily Update
- US ships 6,500 tons of munitions, equipment to Israel in 24 hours
- A New Library in Gaza Rises From the Ashes of Destruction
- No Tricks Zone
- Wind Energy Is Toxic, Hazardous To Human Health, Scientific Review Shows
- Oversupply Of Volatile Solar Energy Leads To Record NEGATIVE Prices!
- New Study: Extreme Heat Records, Heatwaves, Extreme Cold Records Declining Across US Since 1899
- It’s The Cold, Stupid! Cold 20 Times More Lethal Than Heat, Multiple Studies Show
- European Institute For Climate And Energy: “Climate Debate is Seldom About Science”
- New Study: The Climate May Be 5 Times More Sensitive To Solar Forcing Than Commonly Assumed
- EV Industry Reached $70 Billion In Losses In 2024 Due To Delusional Green Ideologies
- Reality Check: Maldives Have Actually Grown In Size Or Remained Stable Over Recent Decades
- Abrupt Climate Change Also Occurred NATURALLY In The Past …25 Times During Last Ice Age
- Cave Discovery Reveals Today’s Desert Climates Were Recently Far Warmer, Wetter, Teeming With Life
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