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Mike Cernovich is exposed as being at best a dumb vehicle for Active Measures, as his #FireMcMaster hashtag is botted and propagated hundreds of thousands of times by the 600 most active Russian fake Twitter accounts ...

John Ziegler confronts Cernovich with that and Cernovich’s conspiracy theory nonsense - that Soros* is pulling McMaster’s strings - Cernovich quivers nervously and makes the feeble counter-allegation that ‘Ziegler is anti-Zionist; just like McMaster.’

* We have long observed that Soros is a convenient Jew for other Jews to throw under the bus, particularly the more ardent Zionists.

John Ziegler, Free Speech Broadcasting.com, August 6th 2017, hour 2:

John Ziegler (25:55): Are you claiming that you alone are the reason that #FireMcMaster has been re-Tweeted at last check over 600,000 times worldwide - you’re saying that’s because of you?

Mike Cernovich: Amazing, the great citizens out there who support “America first”, participating very active, there was a protest today in front of The White House, the people are showing up…

John Ziegler: No, Mike, let me tell you the facts. That happened because of Russian operatives on Twitter.

Mike Cernovich: They’re everywhere, oh my god, the Russians. Imagine you talked about Jewish people the way you talk about Russians? Or you talked about Israel the way you talk about Russians?

John Ziegler: Are you anti-Semitic?

Mike Cernovich: You sound anti-Semitic and you sound xenophobic, because to me you’re xenophobic of Russians, an entire race of people…Russia, Russia, Russia, Russia…

Do you hate Israel the way McMaster does?

John Ziegler: You don’t want to answer the question because its troubling for you.

Mike Cernovich: McMaster hates Israel, do you hate Israel the way McMaster does? He fired pro-Israel Jews, he fired a guy for going to a Bar Mitzvah in Israel. Do you support that decision by McMaster?

John Ziegler (27:15): Are you denying that the 600 most well known Russian operative Twitter handles are responsible for the re-Tweets of the hashtag #FireMcMaster and that it was the top re-Tweet for all 600? Are you (Cernovich) denying that?

Mike Cernovich: I categorically deny that.

John Ziegler (29:03): “Here is my assessment; unless you’re totally lying and since we’re on the phone and we’ve never talked before in any substantive matter so I can’t know for sure; but my sense is that you are not actively working on behalf of Russia; but that Russian forces see you as somebody that they can use because he is so dumb he doesn’t realize he is being used and effectively you are being used as a stooge by Russia to do their dirty work for them among certain elements of the American population, i.e., the Trump cult.

That’s my belief, why am I wrong?

Mike Cernovich: Well my belief is you’re being used by anti-Zionist forces to support McMaster’s attacks on Israel and that’s why you support the purge of Jewish Trump supporters from the Trump administration.

John Ziegler: So you just think it is a coincidence that Russia is behind the fact that the #FireMcMaster hashtag has been re-Tweeted hundreds of thousands of times?

Mike Cernovich: I’m behind hat, I came up with that.

John Ziegler: Donald Trump, when he Tweets, if its a good Tweet, it might get 20,000 re-Tweets. #FireMcMaster has been re-Tweeted over 600,000 times world-wide because of you and you alone?

[...]

You think it’s beautiful that the President said, basically, you’re wrong, I’m not going to fire McMaster?

You implied on line that you did not believe that Trump wrote the statement that supported McMaster.

Mike Cernovich: No, Gen. Kelley definitely wrote that. I don’t believe Trump wrote that, it doesn’t sound anything like him.

John Ziegler: So, you don’t believe Trump is in charge then?

Mike Cernovich: Trump delegates a lot of things.

John Ziegler: Delegates a statement of his personal beliefs about McMaster, his National Security Advisor?

With that, thanks for your time, and I’ll be happy to send you the link to the entire interview un-edited.

Cernovich and Milo, Shills for the (((Trump agenda)))

That’s Mike Cernovich, a conspiracy nut-job, who has become famous in the Alt-Right by being a Donald Trump supporter, who no longer wants to be known as a Donald Trump supporter but is still doing the work for Donald Trump, although Trump is rejecting that work on the issue of whether National Security Advisor, H.R. McMaster should be fired; if you understand all that, you’ve been listening very carefully and I appreciate it.

Related Story: From the week before, Ziegler does a good job exposing Milo Yiannopoulis as a mercenary stooge for Trump, brought onto Breitbart by Bannon and backed by Robert Mercer’s agenda and money. Milo did not promote the interview, which he would tend to do if he thought he came off well (he didn’t, his arguments came across as highly prefigurative, ill-fitting and mercenary for Trump).

Trump administration cornered by Mueller in a grand jury investigation.

Trump was not able to veto new sanctions against Russian as it would have been hapless against Capitol Hill’s unanimity on the measure, but betrayed his lack of innocence anyway by attaching a note of complaint (on behalf of his Russian friends?) to go along with his signing.

It would be a similar dead-ringer of guilt, revealing divided loyalties, if Trump tried to remove Mueller from the position of special investigation into Russian influence over his campaign, even if by the proxy of appointing someone who will do the dirty work where Sessions has recused himself - but now even that weasel-out of hiring someone to replace Sessions for the position to fire Meuller is being closed off; the Trump administration is being cornered, such that all administration personnel will be subject to appear before a grand jury and forced to present any documents, financial records, even emails that might have bearing - material evidence that they probably would not disclose voluntarily. 

Politico, “Could Trump Fire Mueller? It’s Complicated”, 3 August 2017:

But the real question is what Congress would do to stop him.

It turns out that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has been calling ducks chickens all year long. In February, April and July, the Senate broke for 10 days or more. Each time, the Senate convened pro forma sessions. Subsequent reporting indicated that this was part of a plan hatched by the Senate GOP to prevent Trump from making any recess appointments at all. So it’s highly unlikely that Trump will be able to make a recess appointment during the upcoming break.

Does this mean Trump can’t ease out Sessions without sparking a messy confirmation process for his successor?

A Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing would inevitably rehash the firing of FBI Director James Comey, and even Republicans would be unlikely to confirm a nominee who didn’t pledge to protect Mueller’s investigation.

But Trump has other cards to play. He can appoint an acting attorney general and never get around to nominating a real one. By default, Rosenstein would take the helm. But Rosenstein is the one who hired Mueller, so if Trump’s goal is to get rid of the special counsel, he needs to pick someone else as acting attorney general.

But while a Grand Jury investigation is anything but good news for Trump and his administration, it is not news failing his incapacity to get rid of the Mueller and the investigation altogether - it is standard operating procedure for a special investigation of this kind:

Washington Post, “Why Mueller’s use of a grand jury confirms what we already knew”, 3 August 2017:

reathless tweets and breaking-news banners notwithstanding, reports that special counsel Robert S. Mueller III has empaneled a grand jury in the ongoing investigation of the Trump campaign and potential Russian collusion are entirely unsurprising. This development isn’t a nothing-burger, but it doesn’t suggest anything we didn’t already know.

Grand juries are how federal prosecutors conduct their investigations. The grand jury has the subpoena power that prosecutors need to compel reluctant witnesses to testify under oath. Grand jury subpoenas are also how prosecutors gather documents such as bank records, emails and corporate papers from entities or people who might not produce them voluntarily.

If a preliminary inquiry suggests there is nothing to a case, prosecutors might never empanel a grand jury. They and the FBI might conduct voluntary interviews, examine readily available documents and determine that no more formal inquiry is warranted.

That quick-look, let’s-move-on scenario was never likely here. It’s been clear for months that the allegations are sufficiently serious to merit a full investigation. And in the world of federal prosecutors, that means using a grand jury.

In fact, prosecutors in this probe have been using a grand jury for some time. Grand jury proceedings take place in secret, so there is often not a lot of news about what is happening in the room.

But someone who receives a subpoena to testify or produce documents is not bound by those secrecy rules. They are free to disclose — to the media or to anyone else — that they received a grand jury subpoena or testified in the grand jury. It may be that someone who just received a subpoena contacted a reporter and that has resulted in the “breaking news” stories.

The reality is that any investigation serious enough to warrant the appointment of a special counsel was always likely to involve a grand jury. It was always going to drag on for months. In a case this complex, it takes a long time to investigate the various allegations, subpoena and review relevant documents, and put relevant witnesses before the grand jury. If there are grants of immunity or plea deals to be negotiated, that takes time as well.

Mueller has already hired more than a dozen prosecutors to staff his investigation. Anyone who thought this was going to be over quickly was kidding themselves. The “news” confirms what we already knew.

Finally, it’s important to remember that the existence of a grand jury investigation does not mean criminal charges will necessarily result. Especially in white-collar cases, it’s not unusual for grand jury investigations to close with no charges being filed. The grand jury is the investigative tool that prosecutors use to determine whether charges are warranted – and sometimes the answer is no.

In the past weeks, there have been a number of startling and significant developments in the Russia probe. News that the special counsel is using a grand jury is not one of them.

European Outlook, “Propaganda”, 31 July 2017:

By Bill Bailie #44 August 2017

Propaganda

Technology has revolutionised communications. Martin Luther nailed his thesis to the door of All Saints’ Church in Wittenberg and changed the world. Benito Mussolini led the March on Rome to sieze power. And, in the sixties, we relied on street corner meetings and literature. Today, such primitive methods have been overtaken by the Internet.

A young Bill Baillie campaigning for John Bean’s British National Party in the 1964 general election.

We were not an insular nationalist party, we believed in European solidarity and social justice. I went overseas in 1965 and when I came home in 1970 we had been taken over by the National Front and our progressive policies had been dumped. I therefore joined Union Movement and embraced Oswald Mosley’s vision of ‘Europe a Nation’.

Social media is the modern way of communicating and video platforms such as Youtube are very effective. Donald Trump used Twitter and Facebook extensively in his presidential campaign and so did Emmanuel Macron in France.

Newspapers and magazines are expensive to produce and distribute but websites are affordable. We can reach more people on the Internet than we did in the old days by putting leaflets through letterboxes or selling newspapers on street corners. Competing with the mass media is obviously an unequal challenge but having discovered the truth it’s our duty to encourage people to think for themselves and reject media brainwashing.

Newspapers, radio and television dominate public opinion but we can fight back by using the Internet. The State uses anti-terrorist legislation to silence its enemies but we can stay within the law by avoiding insulting or threatening language.

Ten years ago immigration was a taboo subject and only the lunatic-left talked about a “crisis of capitalism.” Today, these ideas have gone mainstream and you don’t have to be a political party in order to have an opinion. So, carry on blogging and posting on Facebook and Twitter. Let our voices be heard.

A Garden Green by William Harris,
first published in ‘Lodestar’ Winter 1986

Each year brings thousands of American tourists to Britain, and it is clear that many of them are seeking something the do not posses in their own continent. This, I suggest, is a past: their own past forged by their own ancestors, and not the pre-Colombian past of the Indian, which is the only true ancient thing they have. They must travel all these hundreds of miles in order to find their roots, be they of Celtic, Anglo-Saxon or Norman descent.

As so much nonsense is talked about Britain’s ‘mixture of races’, it is worth quoting the words of Brian Branson in ‘The Lost Gods of England’. In his chapter ‘Who were the English?’ he mentions these ethnic groups, adding “But none of these inter-breedings was what might be called in genetic terms ‘a violent out-cross’ such as would have been the case if Britain had been successfully invaded by an armada of Chinese, or Red Indians or African Bushmen. Apart from any alteration in physical appearance that would have befallen the new Island Race under such circumstances, one has only to suppose a pagoda in Canterbury, a totem pole in Trafalgar Square, and rock paintings in the Cheddar Gorge to imagine the cultural changes that would have ensued.” He concludes that “the mongrelism of the English turns out to be more apparent than real.” That was first published in 1957, before the minarets of the mosque loomed over the trees in Regent’s Park.

Names are among the most ancient and lasting monuments in a culture, particularly those given to natural features in the landscape. In Britain they are usually Celtic, the Celts being the earliest of the above ethnic groups. The prefix ‘Pen’ for ‘head’ or ‘headland’ and the many instances of the name ‘Avon’, which means simply ‘river’ are two of the most obvious.

The names of our pubs are often far older than the buildings they adorn, and they tell us much. ‘The George’, and ‘The Green Man’, for instance, take us back to the traditional Mummers’ Play of St George and the Turkish knight, and to a character in the Morris Dance, ‘Jack in the Green’. The mummers would usually herald their appearance by announcing “Here come I”. . . and in all these traditions, including that of traditional dance and song which is inseparable from it, there are a number of folk-heroes who emerge: St George, Robin Hood and Maid Marion, King Arthur, Hereward the Wake, Dick Whittington, Dick Turpin, Nelson and Lord Collingwood. The villains (all of whom are often cut down by St George in the course of the mummers’ play) include: Prince Valentine, Captain Rover, Turkey Snipe, Little John, Bonaparte and Sambo. The last prompts me to remark that the blackening of faces (so upsetting to the susceptibilities of the liberal left of today), is probably far older than the ‘Black and White Minstrels’, or the minstrels who used to perform on seaside piers. There are accounts of wassailers or masqueraders blackening their faces, and the ‘Giant of Salisbury’ (a huge effigy , which used to be carried in all important processions in the city, which is now in the Salisbury and South Wiltshire museum) was found to have had his face blackened at some stage in the past, before he was ‘cleaned up’. ‘Morris’, of course, is thought to derive from ‘Moorish’ so, like the Mummers’ Play, it may date from the time of the Crusades.

After St George in the play has felled the Turkish knight, a doctor is called for, to ‘cure’ him. He is often played by a small boy dressed in a top hat and frock coat far too big for him and (in the version from Camborne, Cornwall) he says:

“I can cure the itch, the specs and the gout -
If there’s nine devils, I can kick ten out.”

He always cures the wounded knight so that the audience can then enjoy another bout of fighting but, in fact, his origins go back to the idea of death and resurrection which is the basis of most of the world’s religions.

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....tasked with out-Koshering other goyim alum and to put the hit on them gangster style for being in/convenient goyim to the kosher mob. From our point of view, we can be glad that Bannon’s (((Paleocon))) misdirection into his (((Neo-Reaction))) is being throttled by a more distinctly (thereby didactic) Kosher and neo-liberal effort.

Scaramucci blanks like a hootchi.

First, some commentary on the situation by Kumiko:

Death match, Maxine Waters versus Steven Mnuchin.

A number of Cernovich’s people are getting subpoena’d now too.

He’s on Twitter this morning saying he’s worried he’ll be next.

All the FVEY accounts are indicating “LOL we’re coming for all of you.”

The collapse is going to be good fun.

Why would Cernovich be subpoena’d?

Because Putin, quite seriously.

It’s encouraging that this has started to bleed into the Alt-Lite.

Since they thought that everyone had forgotten about them.

It forms part of the logic of why we have actively tried to keep our audience from falling into that garbage when it started up.

All of these people will go down with the ship, because that’s how it works.

The only way to not get taken down is to just not be there.

“I’m just a blogger, surely I can be a grey vector of Active Measures and be left alone, right?”

Yeah no.

The only they were going to escape would have been if Trump had swiftly crushed the entire US intelligence community within a few months of entering office.

But these fluffy guys didn’t think about that, and Trump was incompetent, so now it’s all catching up to them.

There’s still chances for them to squirm out, if Trump starts a firing spree before Graham’s bill passes.

But it’s looking like they won’t make it.

Trump is behind schedule, since he fired Priebus today, but then he realized that Scaramucci doesn’t care about anything and wants to actually fight Bannon.

So they are wasting precious time because Trump didn’t realize that Scaramucci only wanted to enter the White House so he could destroy Priebus and Bannon.

....because they screwed him in a business deal back n 2016.

Now he’s coming back pure ITALIAN BOSS.

...and now they are all falling over each other to try to ‘calm that down’... wasting precious time.

That’s why you see Raheem Kassam and Cernovich now trying to rally the base against Scaramucci “or it’s all over” according Kassam.

If you want to be rid of Bannon’s Neo-Reactionary misdirection into counter-Jihad Paleoconservatism, you have to love the hit Salabucci is putting on him.

Salabucci is just there to kill two guys.

He’s just some guy Trump knew from some business thing, who used to also go on Fox News and give financial commentary.

He spent the whole electoral cycle accusing Trump of being a protectionist bastard, until he realized Trump could be induced to make it worth his while; so he quietly went pro-Trump, sold off his business, and then asked to join the Trump admin.

That’s when Priebus and Bannon blocked him, saying he was on an agenda, and so it meant Scaramucci had divested himself for no reason. At this stage I assume he decided to go for the revenge plot, and this may be it.

So he becomes a factor in the chaos. ...since Trump is an idiot and brought him in despite the fact that he was a time bomb.

That’s why Sean Spicer resigned, since he refused to work under Scaramucci, since he knew Scaramucci is there to wreck things.

Then Scaramucci immediately came in and destroyed Priebus as Spicer likely predicted, lol.

And is now attacking Bannon, claiming that “I’m here to serve America, unlike Bannon who is here to suck his own dick.”

Anyway, yeah, this is why day to day politics can be fun.

On the other side, Trump just ruined his senate majority.

In the process of trying to pass the Obamacare repeal, Trump threatened to economically attack Alaska if Murkowski wouldn’t vote ‘Yes.’

In reaction, Murkowski doubled down on opposing Trump, and voted ‘no.’

So Pence entered the chamber again to try to break the tie.

But then Collins and MCCAIN defected too.

....and the whole chamber erupted as McCain tilted his chin up.

...and the whole fucking thing imploded.

So now Trump is in a position where he is just getting nothing done.

That’s what Kumiko had to say. Here’s what The New Nationalist has to say. They consider themselves “Third Position,” which means that they have some things right - like an eye on the J.Q. and some right wing perfidy. However, they remain insufficiently emancipated from the right wing and are unstable as a result, resorting to some wild speculation where socialization would be corrective.

The New Nationalist, “Move Over Trump, There’s a New Sheriff in Town: Mad Tony ‘The Mooch’ Scaramucci”, 28 July 2017:

Trumpian apologists are doing cartwheels and backflips trying to explain away the bizarre behavior of the administration’s latest “communication director,” one Anthony Scaramucci, also known as “The Mooch.” Sean Spicer was a piker compared to this character. Predictably, The Mooch, 53, is a Goldman Sachs alum and hedge fund manager who boasts “29 years on Wall Street.” He is a member of the nefarious Council on Foreign Relations and, on June 19, became senior VP and chief strategy officer for the U.S. Export-Import Bank.

During his first week on the job as Trump’s chief mouthpiece, Scaramucci engaged the president’s drama squad in a WWWF-style brahaha, culminating in an interview during which he declared, “I’m not Steve Bannon. I’m not trying to suck my own cock. I’m not trying to build my own brand off the fucking strength of the president. I’m here to serve the country.” Classy.

In another rambling interview, The Mooch vowed to hunt down the White House leakers. He suggested that embattled White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus would be fired if he leaks and said he was incensed that Priebus “cock-blocked” him for six months from getting a position in Trump’s administration. He also called Priebus “a fucking paranoid schizophrenic” and seemed to imply that some White House staffers may have committed a felony by leaking sensitive financial information about Scaramucci, even though his financial disclosure form was publicly available. It is also interesting that The Mooch had nothing bad to say about globalists Jared Kushner, Gary Cohn and Dina Powell during his rant.

Sampling of the Mooch’s claims:

         
          The 6 most unusual quotes from Anthony Scaramucci’s CNN interview

No sensible leader would turn such a man loose. No sensible leader would be undercutting his own attorney general six months into his presidency. His Secretary of State Tillerson is rumored to have had enough. There is every indication that the Trumpian executive branch is ungovernable; and worse, governed by tweet. Just about anybody within the sistema will distance themselves soon enough. Former media supporter Breibart is playing a role by doing exactly that.

It is just a matter of time before steps are taken to remove him. The New Nationalist (TNN) theorizes the trigger will be a market swoon, possibly triggered by a faux pas from “Red Queen” Donald himself. This happens after the cognescenti are convinced the rigged “markets” are bulletproof against Trumpian buffoonery and skullduggery. But alas, that will prove not to be the case.

This further reinforces our post-election theory regarding Trump mafioso and oligarch-like appointments. This is a devious and traitorous Trojan Horse operation designed to deliberately take what’s left of the American system down. This is the end game of a multi-generation national demolition project.

Trump’s role is as closer of that project. Unfortunately, few understand that, even his among his opponents. In fact, his Democratic opponents like Hillary and Obama are in on it. Readers need to jettison the erroneous Hanlon’s Razor, which says, “Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.” There is true evil and malice at loose in the world and they operate at the highest level.

Although at this juncture this feels like watching red paint dry, it’s anything but. This crisis phase, when it erupts, should last about six weeks, ending in total breakdown and chaos. The moving parts, such as a summer of urban turmoil (Baltimore and Ferguson multiplied) are in place. The neo-feudal plans of the Crime Syndicate and their international bankster bosses are in place. The police state and Gulag system have been tested and are in place. Human harvesting implementation was test run in Haiti and is in place. Human terrain intelligence for every person in America, if not the world, is in place, locked, loaded.

However much of a taboo one is breaking by saying it, there is no cultural identity in a population without a stable ethnic composition

Visigrad Post, “Full speech of V. Orbán : Will Europe belong to Europeans?” 24 July 2017:

Viktor Orbán’s speech at the 28th Bálványos Summer Open University and Student Camp, 22 July 2017, Tusnádfürdő (Băile Tuşnad, Romania)

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán: “First of all, I’d like to remind everyone that we started a process of collective thinking 27 years ago in Bálványosfürdő, a few kilometres from here. That is where we came to a realisation. Just think back: at that time, at the beginning of the nineties, most people – not only in Hungary, but also across the whole of Central Europe – thought that full assimilation into the Western world was just opening up to us again. The obvious approach was adjustment to that world: to in a way shed our skin and grow a new, fashionable Western skin. From this it followed that in our politics we would simply need to copy what they were doing in the West. Back then – 27 years, 28 years ago – we came together here, and we thought that we freedom fighters living on this side of the Iron Curtain could also have something valuable to say to a Europe which had by then been living in peace, freedom and prosperity for forty years. Back then we weren’t surrounded by television cameras, and our words commanded no attention whatsoever.

Now, however, they do. And if I were to name the most important event, the most important Hungarian and European event of the past year – the twelve months since our last meeting – I would say that it is the strengthening of the Visegrád Four. Although there was a presidential election in the United States, and not so long ago the French presidential and parliamentary elections swept away the entire French party system – which are both important things – I’m convinced that the most important development of the past year has been the Visegrád Four cooperation becoming closer than ever before. We can say that Warsaw, Prague, Bratislava and Budapest are speaking with one voice. This is a great achievement, as these are countries which are very different in their characters. Here we have the enthusiastic Poles, the ever-cautious Czechs, the sober Slovaks and the romantic Hungarians; and yet we are able to speak the same language. We can be truly proud of this.

It is customary for the Open University presentations to seek to give an account of the extent of change over the past year, also in a broader civilisational context. Certainly not everyone remembers that in 2009, after his election, President Obama made his first important speech abroad in the city of Cairo. This year the newly-elected US president delivered his first important speech abroad in the city of Warsaw. To illustrate the extent of the changes, it’s enough to quote a few sentences from the speech made by the American president in Warsaw. I’ll quote from it now:

“We have to remember […] that the defence of the West ultimately rests not only on means, but also on the will of its people to prevail and be successful and get what you have to have. […] Our own fight for the West does not begin on the battlefield. It begins with our minds, our wills and our souls. […] Our freedom, our civilization and our survival depend on these bonds of history, culture, and memory.”

He then went on to say: “So together let us all fight like the Poles: for family, for freedom, for country and for God.”

Ladies and Gentlemen,

These words would have been inconceivable anywhere in the Western world two years ago. This is the extent of the change that is taking place around us. This, perhaps, is the point at which I should greet Piotr Naimski and the Polish delegation led by him. He is the President of the Hungarian-Polish Parliamentary Group in Warsaw. Welcome, Dear Polish Friends.

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The New Republic, “Trump’s Russian Laundromat” July 2017:

How to use Trump Tower and other luxury high-rises to clean dirty money, run an international crime syndicate, and propel a failed real estate developer into the White House.

In 1984, a Russian émigré named David Bogatin went shopping for apartments in New York City. The 38-year-old had arrived in America seven years before, with just $3 in his pocket. But for a former pilot in the Soviet Army—his specialty had been shooting down Americans over North Vietnam—he had clearly done quite well for himself. Bogatin wasn’t hunting for a place in Brighton Beach, the Brooklyn enclave known as “Little Odessa” for its large population of immigrants from the Soviet Union. Instead, he was fixated on the glitziest apartment building on Fifth Avenue, a gaudy, 58-story edifice with gold-plated fixtures and a pink-marble atrium: Trump Tower.

A monument to celebrity and conspicuous consumption, the tower was home to the likes of Johnny Carson, Steven Spielberg, and Sophia Loren. Its brash, 38-year-old developer was something of a tabloid celebrity himself. Donald Trump was just coming into his own as a serious player in Manhattan real estate, and Trump Tower was the crown jewel of his growing empire. From the day it opened, the building was a hit—all but a few dozen of its 263 units had sold in the first few months. But Bogatin wasn’t deterred by the limited availability or the sky-high prices. The Russian plunked down $6 million to buy not one or two, but five luxury condos. The big check apparently caught the attention of the owner. According to Wayne Barrett, who investigated the deal for the Village Voice, Trump personally attended the closing, along with Bogatin.

If the transaction seemed suspicious—multiple apartments for a single buyer who appeared to have no legitimate way to put his hands on that much money—there may have been a reason. At the time, Russian mobsters were beginning to invest in high-end real estate, which offered an ideal vehicle to launder money from their criminal enterprises. “During the ’80s and ’90s, we in the U.S. government repeatedly saw a pattern by which criminals would use condos and high-rises to launder money,” says Jonathan Winer, a deputy assistant secretary of state for international law enforcement in the Clinton administration. “It didn’t matter that you paid too much, because the real estate values would rise, and it was a way of turning dirty money into clean money. It was done very systematically, and it explained why there are so many high-rises where the units were sold but no one is living in them.” When Trump Tower was built, as David Cay Johnston reports in The Making of Donald Trump, it was only the second high-rise in New York that accepted anonymous buyers.

Semion Mogilevich.

In 1987, just three years after he attended the closing with Trump, Bogatin pleaded guilty to taking part in a massive gasoline-bootlegging scheme with Russian mobsters. After he fled the country, the government seized his five condos at Trump Tower, saying that he had purchased them to “launder money, to shelter and hide assets.” A Senate investigation into organized crime later revealed that Bogatin was a leading figure in the Russian mob in New York. His family ties, in fact, led straight to the top: His brother ran a $150 million stock scam with none other than Semion Mogilevich, whom the FBI considers the “boss of bosses” of the Russian mafia. At the time, Mogilevich—feared even by his fellow gangsters as “the most powerful mobster in the world”—was expanding his multibillion-dollar international criminal syndicate into America.

In 1987, on his first trip to Russia, Trump visited the Winter Palace with Ivana. The Soviets flew him to Moscow—all expenses paid—to discuss building a luxury hotel across from the Kremlin. Maxim Blokhin/TASS

Full article at New Republic

        Rubrics:

- Trump made his first trip to Russia in 1987, only a few years before the collapse of the Soviet Union.

- Throughout the 1990s, untold millions from the former Soviet Union flowed into Trump’s luxury developments and Atlantic City casinos.

- Trump Taj Mahal paid the largest fine ever levied against a casino for having “willfully violated” anti-money-laundering rules.

- The influx of Russian money did more than save Trump’s business from ruin—it set the stage for the next phase of his career. By 2004, to the outside world, it appeared that Trump was back on top after his failures in Atlantic City. That January, flush with the appearance of success, Trump launched his newly burnished brand…

- Russians spent at least $98 million on Trump’s properties in Florida—and another third of the units were bought by shadowy shell companies.

- In 2013, police burst into Unit 63A of Trump Tower and rounded up 29 suspects in a $100 million money-laundering scheme.

- In April 2013, a little more than two years before Trump rode the escalator to the ground floor of Trump Tower to kick off his presidential campaign, police burst into Unit 63A of the high-rise and rounded up 29 suspects in two gambling rings.

        Concluding paragraphs:

Semion Mogilevich, the Russian mob’s “boss of bosses,” also declined to respond to questions from the New Republic. “My ideas are not important to anybody,” Mogilevich said in a statement provided by his attorney. “Whatever I know, I am a private person.” Mogilevich, the attorney added, “has nothing to do with President Trump. He doesn’t believe that anybody associated with him lives in Trump Tower. He has no ties to America or American citizens.”

Back in 1999, the year before Trump staged his first run for president, Mogilevich gave a rare interview to the BBC. Living up to his reputation for cleverness, the mafia boss mostly joked and double-spoke his way around his criminal activities. (Q: “Why did you set up companies in the Channel Islands?” A: “The problem was that I didn’t know any other islands. When they taught us geography at school, I was sick that day.”) But when the exasperated interviewer asked, “Do you believe there is any Russian organized crime?” the “brainy don” turned half-serious.

“How can you say that there is a Russian mafia in America?” he demanded. “The word mafia, as far as I understand the word, means a criminal group that is connected with the political organs, the police and the administration. I don’t know of a single Russian in the U.S. Senate, a single Russian in the U.S. Congress, a single Russian in the U.S. government. Where are the connections with the Russians? How can there be a Russian mafia in America? Where are their connections?”

Two decades later, we finally have an answer to Mogilevich’s question.

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Amerika.org, “WHAT THE WEST CAN LEARN FROM THE MORIORI”, 6 Aug 2017:

by Daryl Withycombe

The history of the Moriori, little known outside of Oceania, might appear like a fable, a cautionary tale that people came up with to educate their children. As unnerving as the dark legend about this forgotten tribe might be, the entire story really happened. Hopefully it will serve as a warning, to all other people around the world who chose to rebel against the laws of nature and descend down the path of the Moriori.

The story of the Moriori begins more than five hundred years ago, when a group of Maori left New Zealand by boat, looking for new unpopulated land to settle. After a long journey they landed on a remote island group, now known to us as the Chatham islands. The environment they encountered here was different from the one they left. Temperatures were colder and the crops they were used to growing would not grow. They were forced to adapt to these new circumstances. Their diet changed to one largely composed of fish and plants native on the islands.

These isolated islands never sustained a lot of people, thus the Moriori society inevitably remained a tight-knitted community. After a violent tribal conflict between different groups, a 16th century chief known as Nunuku-whenua declared that from now on, all violence would be forbidden, because of its destructive impact on such a small community. Disputes from now on would be settled through consensus, or, in the worst case, through a duel that would stop as soon as first blood was drawn. Cannibalism was forbidden and passive resistance to oppression was endorsed. This became known as the Code of Nunuku.

Maori war canoe

Because overpopulation would lead to violence, the Moriori decided to implement cruel measures to artificially constrain their population. It was not uncommon for them to castrate some of their newborn boys. The birth rate would be constrained as a consequence and the boys would remain docile, growing up to be the hunter-gatherer equivalent of Antifa and social justice bloggers.

Living in isolation, the Moriori could sustain their way of life for over 300 years. But then, in the 19th century, the vacuum they had created was suddenly punctured. British people began to land, bringing with them ex-convicts and Maori sailors. The formerly culturally homogeneous Moriori now had to learn to adapt to the presence of different cultures, but greater problems were still ahead of them.

The growth of the British population on New Zealand’s Northern island had displaced two Maori tribes, the Ngāti Tama and Ngāti Mutunga. In 1835 these tribes, numbering about 500 people in total, captured a British ship and its crew and forced it to set sail for the Chatham islands. Some sources seem to claim that the Maori tribes traveled to the Chatham Islands, precisely because they knew how passive the Moriori were.

Tattooed warrior

When the Maori landed, the Moriori, who numbered around 2000 people, decided to take care of them. After they figured out that the Maori were not temporary visitors but planned on staying on the islands, the Moriori decided to withdraw to their sacred place. Here the Moriori debated with each other how they should deal with the newcomers. They decided to implement a policy of non-aggression, reportedly against the insistence of the young. The code of Nunuku had to be followed under all circumstances.

The Maori then began to lay claim to the land, wandering through it carrying weapons, without greeting the natives. If the Moriori inquired, they were told that they were now their vassals. Although most narratives don’t lay out a precise time-line, it is clear that the first boatload of Maori killed a twelve year old Moriori girl and hung her flesh from posts. A second ship arrived a few weeks after this event, carrying another 400 Maori.

Hundreds of Moriori were murdered and cannibalized, the rest were enslaved. Instead of fighting back, the Moriori hid in holes beneath the ground. Moriori were forbidden from marrying each other by their Maori overlords and the Moriori women married Maori men. The Maori prohibited the Moriori language, and forced them to desecrate their sacred sites by urinating and defecating on them. Only 101 Moriori out of a population of about 2,000 were left alive by 1862. The last Moriori of unmixed ancestry, Tommy Solomon, died in 1933.

Maori warriors in the 19th century.

Lessons to Learn

It doesn’t take a genius to figure out what the Moriori did wrong. Had the Moriori been ruthless, they could have sunk the first ship before it landed. Had the Moriori been more balanced, they could have risen up when a 12-year-old girl was murdered and hung from a pole. At the time, they were still dealing with a mere 500 invaders, among whom were women and children. Sadly, the Moriori submitted. By the time the second boat arrived, the outcome had been determined.

It’s interesting that children in school are never taught about the Moriori. Instead, they are taught about the sacred trinity of Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela, and Gandhi. We teach our children that they should submit when wronged and these children then grow up to be adults who will only submit when wronged.

We could consider it the outgrowth of Christianity, but it seems that Jesus’s teachings never quite became dominant until the 20th century. Had these teachings become dominant earlier, Christianity would never have grown to be successful. Medieval knights were slapped in the face when knighted, told that these would be the last slaps they could ever accept without having to retaliate.

Europeans are modern day Moriori. When their continent is invaded by men in boats, they worry about the boats that sink, offer Turkey billions of dollars and decide to take in more invaders through an “air-bridge.” When their children are raped in swimming pools and their women harassed, they do not see an invading force that’s testing the waters, they see people who need to be educated about how to treat women. I’m sure the Moriori assumed the invading tribes could be taught to adapt their pacifist ethos too.

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